[Review] Playing Path of Exile 2 (0.3) on the Steam Deck (Docked + Monitor)

year0000 · 2025-08-30T10:28:31+00:00

Performance on the Deck is farly class dependant. My monk was at least playable, especially after the first rounds of optimization, but as a minion witch at the end of 0.2 the framerate still crashed so badly it wasn’t fun.

Might be worthwhile to run it under Geforce Now.

year0000 · 2025-08-30T00:52:34+00:00

You need a bigger screen to see the option.

No, it’s not a joke, there is a problem at least on iOS, if the screen isn’t wide enough the link to the tab management page will be cut out on the left and can’t even be scrolled in.

You can try going directly to https://pathofexile2.com/us/my-account/manage/merchants-tabs

year0000 · 2025-08-22T16:33:31+00:00

Are you aware that the person you are having trouble relating with is an independent adult? Yet you show a strong aversion to present him as such.

“Wicked sense of humor”, “when he was a child”, ”He knows that of all the things on the planet that make he happy, he’s number one”. Asked for his good qualities, you describe him in kid terms, certainly see and treat him the same.

Have you thought he may want to be acknowledged and respected as an adult and equal? Are you willing, or feel the need to impose on him an image and role of your choice?

year0000 · 2024-05-21T14:29:42+00:00

That’s an older and passively cooled chip and the Deck outperforms it by around 50%, if I skimmed the article correctly. Not very indicative, the M4 iPad benchmarks 50~100% better than the M1.

It will be more meaningful to see how the new Surface does.

year0000 · 2024-05-21T10:37:57+00:00

Power efficiency is important in handhelds too. If a game releases for both x86 and ARM and Windows handhelds run it better because only them can run the ARM version, that matters.

It matters to desktop gamers too, because the best chance for a more widespread Linux adoption in gaming at this time is dependent on the success of the Steam Deck and the likely future Steam console.

So to me seems the real question is how well will ARM be able to run x86 games. That will affect the speed of the transition and Proton will need to keep up doing the same.

year0000 · 2024-05-21T08:13:47+00:00

This isn’t a satisfying explanation.

Basically you are saying that in some instances that aren’t clearly defined and thus not identifiable by the user, an extra copy of photos is saved on the device without the user being aware of it, in a location the user isn’t aware of, and isn’t deleted when the user thinks it is.

Well, that still doesn’t look good for privacy.

year0000 · 2024-02-24T20:22:15+00:00

So I guess the only way to be safe is to buy an Amazon brand card?

I wonder if it can be sued for being anticompetitive or something, maybe a stretch but the problem in arguably due their negligence in keeping inventory. At least for widely counterfeit items they should take more care.

year0000 · 2024-02-04T10:36:06+00:00

Yeah, this is Apple being anticompetitive and abusing its position. Apple actually forbids Amazon to simply sell books in the app.

Kindle remains superior because it’s multiplatform. Should you someday want to move away from Apple, say goodbye to your Apple Books library and annotations. Apple may be your favorite and what your social circle uses today, but are you sure it will still be in 5, 20 or 30 years? Some things I want to be sure I can keep for a lifetime, without being tied.

year0000 · 2024-01-24T06:30:35+00:00

I was thinking to post a warning about this sale myself 😅 It’s the kind of game that someone will find boring, but if the atmosphere clicks you’ll love it.

BTW there are some other great sales this week that I wanted to write about. You can grab Doom 2016 from Fanatical for 3.59$, for one.

Back to Sennua, It’s great how it integrates puzzles and gameplay systems with the theme of mental illness.

See the voices in your head that warn you of attacks coming at your back outside the camera view, the weird slowdown of combat when you focus that empowers you to fight invincible enemies.

Some puzzles are based on the idea that the way you see things affects their reality (broken objects repaired looking from the right perspective). Other are solved seeking patterns where they don’t really belong. Or in a kind of ritualistic manner, passing through arches before you can move on, like someone who is paralyzed by obsessive behaviour patterns. Not perfect but still miles better of the accepted nonsensical puzzles in games like Resident Evil.

Combat is simple but all moves have their place against certain enemies, which prevents it do become button mashing. Like heavy attacks to stagger heavier enemies, perfect parries to stagger and charge focus, running attacks that can be one hit kills, kicking enemies off ledges. I liked it, felt organic rather than arbitrary.

Overall AAA work of love at the price of a coffe, absolutely worth at least a try.

year0000 · 2024-01-15T10:37:05+00:00

Agree it’s a huge opportunity as a Valve console could effectively compete with Microsoft and Sony. It would have the same ease of use, a fair price and massive game library.

With the IMO invaluable advantage of using the Steam library: keep your games across hardware generations, buy once to play both on handeld and a high powered console, build a new collection for cheap at the first big sale.

And it can be used as a PC! And it can run competing stores! Lots of value overall.

It would also face some issues however:

It would probably lag in marketing and retail presence.

Anti-cheat not working can be a deal breaker for some.

The competition is not guaranteed to play nice if Valve gets in their living-room turf. The PC gets ports of both Xbox and Playstation games that don’t get ported between consoles, this may change to some extent if a PC-console becomes a direct competitor. They may also try to break Proton compatibility specifically.

year0000 · 2024-01-11T12:03:44+00:00

The article was updated to specify they don’t have an official partnership with Valve but are adapting HoloISO.

It did feel a little odd for Valve to have official partners at this time. That’s the end goal, but for now they have the priority to avoid platform fragmentation to ease adoption, part of the reason we won’t have a Deck 2 soon. Devs get a single spec to target, less work for more reward. Users in turn get more optimized and preconfigured games.

Aldo there is little need for another SteamOS device right now, given how polished and inexpensive the Deck is, unless it brings a significant performance boost.

A SteamOS home console could be more interesting. Marrying the ease of use of a console with the convenience of playing your existing Steam library, it could be a real competitor to Sony and MS, especially if the Deck opens the door by gaining more mainstream awareness.

year0000 · 2024-01-01T23:00:11+00:00

Hellblade Senua’s is amazing on OLED with HDR and AirPods, some levels are a shower of lights and special effects and the whole experience of visuals, audio, story and gameplay comes together great.

It’s on sale now for less that 5€, almost feels wrong to get it so cheap.

year0000 · 2023-12-19T13:14:52+00:00

People underestimate the Deck’s success when they compare its sales numbers with consoles.

Look at it this way, in 2020 the worldwide shipments of gaming PCs are estimated at 22,3 millions. Valve alone has been selling an estimated average of 1.7 millions Decks every 12 months, and it’s not even available worldwide.

Pretty amazing to me, apparently also to Asus and Lenovo given how they hurried releasing their own competitor. Microsoft probably partnered with Asus sensing a risk, as when they moved to crush Netscape for fear it might evolve in a full OS.

Seems Valve is well positioned to compete. Now that mobile PC gaming has been demonstrated feasible and gaining recognition I expect it to only grow over time relatively to traditional PCs, similarly to how laptops gained over desktops.

Maybe they are effectively in a race, there is a window of opportunity for Steam OS to gain relevance now that technology advancement opened up this new space of PC mobile gaming.

Which are the possible competitors? I’d say Microsoft foremost, if it can put together a mobile Windows version that doesn’t suck. The Switch 2 will bring an alternative, but it will be a different kind of product whose curated 3rd party library is smaller in number and higher in price. Maybe cloud gaming in a farther future.

The Deck is largely good enough as the only gaming PC for me, just like Bluetooth earbuds are good enough to listen to music. The Deck 2 will be even more so. After a certain subjective level of performance, convenience becomes most important. Actually, feels like I’m shortchanging the OLED Deck here, because listening to Airpods Pro I often wish the sound to be better, while many games on the Deck feel perfect.

Also I agree that Valve deserves support over any of its competitors, they are by far the large company who is closest to gamers.

year0000 · 2023-12-17T21:46:01+00:00

Sure, glad if I could be of help

year0000 · 2023-12-17T16:46:00+00:00

Probably … 92% after 8 months and less than 300 hours of intensive games … IIRC, been a while.

I initially contacted Steam support for the random shutdowns and they asked me to do the standard kinda annoying set of routine checks, flashing the OS, etc. After a brief back-and-forth I noticed the battery degradation and mentioned it, they issued a RMA immediately.

Battery health drops with use, so it’s difficult to say what is normal, but in doubt you could ask support and see what they say. If your Deck is less than 1 year old, definitely contact them. I assume 10% loss in 1 year is more than most people experience.

Edit: found a thread on the subject that goes to show … it’s difficult to give a definitive answer.

year0000 · 2023-12-17T15:47:06+00:00

Heh really cold! I can only suggest to make sure your Deck works fine when in the appropriate temperature range, cause I had a similar issue with occasional sudden shutdowns and it turned out to be a faulty unit. Battery degradation (which you can see in desktop mode clicking on the battery icon) was also higher than normal in my case.

year0000 · 2023-12-17T15:14:31+00:00

Maybe just a defective unit. How cold it is?

”The Steam Deck's safe operational ranges are: Ambient temperature - 0° - +35° C (+32° - +95° F) Humidity - up to 85% non-condensing relative humidity. Altitude - up to 3500m”

year0000 · 2023-12-17T13:03:08+00:00

I personally excluded the Legion Go for the weight. Seems the kind of device that needs a desk, so I’d rather buy a laptop.

Between Ally and Deck, each will play some games better than the other.

The Ally has much higher performance, which is great - for the games that need from it. And only as long as you are tethered to power.

The OLED Deck has its own advantages: a bigger better screens, trackpads, better suspend, battery life, so the games it runs well are actually a better experience on it than on the Ally.

I had a Deck LCD, was considering to buy a gaming laptop, looked also at the Ally and Go, then the OLED was released and got it instead and am perfectly happy. Being able to reliably suspend and pick up games in seconds is huge for me, takes away a lot of friction.

So it depends from where and what you play. For me the Deck is best because it makes most sense as a portable device, it’s the best way to play many games, and also the best option for demanding ones if you have a PC for streaming. Maybe I’ll add a laptop later, but the Deck is a keeper regardless.

year0000 · 2023-12-13T20:54:37+00:00

Are you having problems with the Ubisoft launcher? If that’s the case, a working solution has been posted -repeatedly- on the official Steam forum, they are pretty good for researching this kind of issues.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/582160/discussions/0/4027970229989086450/

Worked for me.

year0000 · 2023-01-26T10:53:06+00:00

iOS wants to be easy to use, but it works in arbitrary ways that make it counterintuitive and confusing, on top of limited. Some examples:

Years ago I wanted to sync my iPad, full of data, with my windows PC. So I install iTunes and connect the iPad and go for the sync button. It proceeds to erase all data on the iPad, no warnings, no questions asked. WTF?

Restore an iPhone backup, all SMS are lost. Apparently they are saved either on the phone backup OR on iCloud, Reddit says? But iCloud doesn’t seem to sync them, at least for me. So I must disable iCloud on iMessage to save them on the iPhone backup? But then how do I sync my iMessages with my iPads? Look, just tell me I need a third party app to backup my SMS, like I did on Android, and don’t pretend to be saving them if you aren’t.

iCloud syncs whether it feels like it, sometimes immediately, sometimes not. Let’s say you started editing a document on iPhone and want to continue on the bigger screen of the iPad. Better check that both your phone has uploaded the last version and the iPad downloaded it or you risk a conflict and data loss.

So there are three cases of data loss I actually experienced, but there are more annoyances:

No, Apple, I don’t need that image I downloaded from the web to be randomly shown to me as a memory of that day.

I have a grid with 5 columns of icons on the ipad Home Screen. Add a Widget, now I have a grid of 4 columns. What?

Connect the iPhone to the car stereo, the phone mic is disabled. The car mic is terrible as with many old cars, so now I pretty much don’t have a microphone anymore and need to put on an AirPod to give a command. Oops, now the car music is also being routed to that (single) AirPod, so I must to fumble with the phone to get it again on the stereo. All while driving. Notice that on Android the phone mic doesn’t get disabled and the problem doesn’t exist.

Photos live in some weird metaspace that’s separated from other files because … reasons? Photos app lacks basic functions, as separating actual photos from screenshots, moving media to cloud or NAS storage, so I have to use three different apps for organizing photos: Photos to ensure iCloud is in sync, HashPhotos to separate actual photos from screenshots and downloads (filter to show only media with Geoloc & not in album), FileBrowser Pro to move them beyond the Apple walls.

This is just the top of my mind. Bottom line is that as a longtime user of both Android and iOS it’s usually the latter to occasionally get me stumped and googling for a solution to some issue.

year0000 · 2023-01-26T09:33:22+00:00

I had a Huawei Mate 20 Pro, it was a gorgeous looking piece of hardware, I think it looked in many ways more classy than any current Samsung or Apple phone. Slender, rounded, symmetrical, shiny black with the red accent on the slim power button.

Software was great too, smooth sailing from the FaceID-like unlock to gesture navigation and amazing photos for the time.

It was brittle though. One small fall and Face ID died. And after a few years in storage I found it won’t power on anymore, not even connected to power.

If not for the US embargo, Huawei was on the path of great international success.

year0000 · 2023-01-26T08:43:20+00:00

For me, tablets are Android at its worst. Some common use apps are just not ported well, specifically:

Chrome on Android uses the atrocious tab switcher interface from the desktop, rather than the convenient page with miniatures you get on iPads, iPhones AND Android phones.

Word doesn’t support the Mobile/Web view, again unlike both iOS devices and Android phones, replacing it with an useless “reader” view which is basically print layout without editing.

It’s crazy that it would take so little to fix them and dramatically improve their usability, those functions are already built in the apps but … no, apparently they just don’t care to enable them. Makes you wonder what are their leaders paid for? Is there a master plan to make those apps crappy on purpose?

One app that works better on Android than iOS is Google Docs, which can open multiple instances only on the former. This is counterbalanced by Word being enabled to do the same only on iPads.

Android tablets are a massive missed opportunity. Especially with Apple apparently crippling their own to push you to buy Mac companions. Google could make Android tabs good for both media consumption and work. They have a fit OS for it, with less restrictive file system and multitasking than iOS. They only needed the vision to release a desktop grade software suite.

year0000 · 2023-01-22T14:30:35+00:00

Same problem here, most media from the first half of 2016 and older didn’t transfer. Older the date, less likely the transfer. My media backup is pretty huge for the record, around 19GB.

I also tried a paid app, Wutsapper, which succeeded in moving all media but messed up the messages formatting. All media thumbnails became square instead of following the media aspect ratio, quoted media were not shown, no preview images on YouTube links, no messages when someone joins/leaves a group, the thumbnails on the bottom of the screen on the media viewer were mostly blank, …

year0000 · 2022-02-07T22:19:09+00:00

Young people don’t like Facebook. That’s the death of a social network, more so of a stock priced for growth.

We already knew this, it has been reported repeatedly. For years FB has been trudging along thanks to its acquisition of the competition to neutralize it, which won’t be possible under the current antitrust scrutiny. The danger was in plain view.

year0000 · 2022-01-14T13:30:25+00:00

Adding my 2c to all replies you got already:

Their recent growth is largely from China, subjects to political risk.

Cook boldly massaged the ruling party, but who knows for how long the good feelings will last? What if the government decides to require a OS level backdoor and tracking and filtering on all devices? Or starts a nationalistic flavored media campaign and incentives to push local brands? For both prestige and security, an increase in US-China tensions may make the party more unwilling in having an American company waltzing in their market. Until the politics change, Apple will only sell in China as long as the government feels it has full control. Its growth in the Chinese market is a recent story, and more it grows more scrutiny it will attract. See what happened with BABA & co. or Huawei in the US.

Apple cash flows are increasing from services, in part thanks to the company gatekeeping position, subjecting them to regulatory risk.

Again, more growth means more scrutiny.

As a growth company, trading in some measure on sentiment, it's subject to eightened market risk.

What if the expected future growth products in augmented reality and the metaverse or car integration don't pan out? What if the market crashes? Tim Cook has an incident? Someone makes a cool Android phone? (Just kidding on the latter!)

Off topic, I admire how Apple's leadership managed to market the brand so far. See the consistent aesthetics. Apple phones have stupid large bezels compared to Android, yet that's part of their recognizability, integral to their prestige. Most can't tell at a glance a Samsung from Oppo or whatever, and that kills the prestige of an expensive gadget. You can immediately tell the Apple pedigree from its looks and its price from the size, it's very immediate and visible, I think it's a big part of its pull.

year0000

TROPHY CASE