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Messages - insektmute

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2
I haven't found PC gaming to be particularly troublesome. It's more complicated than using a console of course, but that's because there's a learning curve. If you want to do it right, you need to be building your own PCs, and that means learning about hardware, installing and configuring Windows effectively, etc. 

Once you have that knowledge, 'complication' mainly just means you have options at your disposal that don't exist on console. Use any controller you want, run emulators, upgrade parts, use apps like Nvidia Inspector or MSI Afterburner to improve performance or visuals, and so on. Properly configured, there is no game that won't look and perform better on PC as a result. If a problem does happen, you have the means to fix things yourself.

By comparison, consoles are meant to be affordable, compact, and simple to operate. There are definitely upsides to that kind of accessibility, in that non-technical people can use them without any real difficulty, but the trade-off is that they're closed ecosystems that allow very little user control - pop the game in, off you go.

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General / Re: Anger Quits
« on: January 14, 2018, 03:25:36 pm »
I haven't raged about a game since I was like, 10 years old. Adults having temper tantrums about video games is totally inexcusable and childish - don't like it, don't play it, and if you really can't control your anger, get professional help.

4
Site Feedback / Re: List acquired DLCs under each games
« on: January 05, 2018, 12:18:05 pm »
It has already been requested to be able to make database entries as child/parent items. This is currently not available and some special consideration would have to be made concerning digital games... such as the fact people can buy digital DLC for physical games. You may not think of it that way, but if say the PS4 acted like VGC, then if you add a physical game, you also would get the digital game added and then the DLC. Currently collectors typically will not add *both* a physical and the digital equivalent to their VGC collection for those types of hardware.

You'd have to resolve this by reformatting the site a bit. Right now, there's a standalone listing for every individual item, so when you do a search, you have to wade through all the various permutations. A better approach would be to have a master entry for each game, with sub-entries for each platform, and DLC specified as children attached to each sub-entry that are freely assignable to both digital and physical. So for example:

Master Entry - Alien: Isolation
Sub-Entries:
- PC/Steam
- PS4
- PS4/PSN

DLC Entries:
- Last Survivor (PC) (no format needed unless there are both physical and digital)
- Last Survivor (PS4) (no format needed unless there are both physical and digital)

Painstaking, but it would have the added bonus of cleaning up search results quite a bit. No more hunting and pecking around for whatever platform, and it gets really dodgy if it's something with numerous re-releases. It would also eliminate stuff like Nintendo Network being its own primary platform category.



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Site Feedback / Re: List acquired DLCs under each games
« on: January 05, 2018, 11:50:03 am »
I'd love this feature. I tried at one point to add DLC I'd purchased under comments, but ran into character limits.

6
I wish I could completely get behind it, but there are a few things that hold me back:

- All sub-4K content, which is the vast majority of movies, games, etc, has to be upscaled.
- 4k, 60fps content requires massive GPU power. To hit 60fps, this means something on the order of a 1080 Ti, SLi, or Crossfire setup, which is not exactly affordable even by high-end standards.
- Games that do run natively at 4K are often only 30fps. If you've never played higher framerates, this probably seems irrelevant, but 60-120fps and correspondingly high refresh rates is what we should all be striving for. The "30fps is more cinematic" idea people are trying to sell is uneducated nonsense.
- Many games need to be visually cut back to run at adequate framerates in 4K. The resolution bump makes up for some of this, but it's a crapshoot.
- Longer term, until ISPs get off their butts and upgrade their infrastructure, we're going to hit bandwidth problems very quickly, especially with companies like Comcast implementing data caps. 30-60GB downloads pile up VERY fast.

Much as I hate IGN, this touches on a lot of what I'm talking about - http://www.ign.com/wikis/playstation-4/PS4_Pro_Game_Upgrades_and_Differences
Most native 4K games are older, and numerous others have texture/shadow/lighting trimmed back selectively to keep the framerate reasonable, or are just upscaled.

In about 3-5 years, we'll be in better shape, but right now? Meh.

7
General / Re: What do you think the gaming industry lacks in ?
« on: October 06, 2017, 12:15:51 pm »
Indie games are made with less spectacularly graphics because something made with the quality of something of a gigantic budget isn't really what people want. Most people who happen to play indie games probably don't really care about the graphics since they're rarely an important selling point of pretty much any of them. It's kinda comparing apples to oranges; The way indie games and regular games are seen and the expectations towards them are always going to be different to an extent because they cater towards different people and different people play them.

Though if I had a problem with them it's the fact that they're relentless repetitive. Once you've played one "hard as nails platformer throwback with retro graphics!" you've played them all. For something that was originally praised for allowing innovation and all that it starts to become really anti creativity

I don't agree with that. While mechanics are the core of any game, this is an audio/visual medium. You don't need a gigantic budget and AAA realism, but style and visual identity always contribute to the experience, even if they're not the prevailing concern.

You can't really paint "people who play indie games" as some special group, either. Just about everyone has at least some indie games in their collection.

To be clear, I don't have any special axe to grind against indies in principle, but do I think the hipster air people try to cultivate around them is ridiculous.

8
General / Re: Do you buy games you know you probably won't play?
« on: October 06, 2017, 11:41:26 am »
I do, though I always tell myself I'll get around to them. While I always buy stuff I would/want to play, the main problem is my backlog is just too big, so I'm perpetually 'behind' on stuff. Online games like Destiny and FFXIV tend to add to that backlog, since I'm not actively progressing through the stack lol

Still, I keep buying, and I don't really sell anything unless it's something I just flat out didn't like, or wound up with multiple copies of.

9
General / Re: What do you think the gaming industry lacks in ?
« on: October 05, 2017, 11:17:52 pm »
Publishers care about quality?  Ubisoft Published Beyond Good & Evil & Assassin's Creed Unity, RE Umbrella Corps and VII were published by Capcom, Sonic Mania & Sonic Boom published by Sega.   All HUGE names which are 'marketable' because that's what the publishers care about, they have exhibited multiple time that they're content with shipping gold or garbage because they can get away with it and fix it later 'maybe'.  Skullgirls lost Konami as its publisher and it's still a great fighting game that went Indie. Yooka-Laylee & Mighty No. 9 picked up a Publisher midway through development, and it appears to have done sod-all for their quality. 

I'm sorry for nitpicking but there's so much wrong with this statement.  I understand what you mean though, the ratio of indie games worth playing at all is heavily skewed against the guys giving it there all.  But surely this is down to lack of industry experience and poor planning, not 'has a publisher Yes / No'.

I think you misunderstand. I'm not saying publishers automatically make good games and push quality, and touched on this in my comments about over-saturation and quality over quantity in general. The core issue is that indie games are constantly being touted as some sort of savior for the industry, flush with fresh and original ideas, here to save us from the stagnation of pro studios. When you boil it down though, you've basically got an assortment of "art" games, puzzle games, walking simulators, 2D throwbacks that pay homage to a game that some pro studio made 20-30 years ago, and tumbled together Unity asset cash-n-grabs. Steam, in particular, is absolutely flooded with them.

Since these are indie games, and lack AAA budgets, they're assessed on different criteria as well, so the bar for greatness is lowered. Cave Story or Super Meat Boy, for instance, are pretty rough looking in a lot of ways, but people love them for plenty of other reasons. Something low budget like Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls? Numerous reviews bagging it for poor visuals, and I'm sure it took more than a few review scores down a peg or two.

I'm not saying a game must have AAA visuals to be good, and I'm not ragging on these games in particular, but we've basically got one barometer for indie games, and one for professional games. Those games got a pass for graphics, Wizardry didn't. Is it really that unfair to say we should judge games on equal footing regardless of who made it, especially when there are countless examples of AAA games with mammoth budgets that are otherwise total crap?



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General / Re: What do you think the gaming industry lacks in ?
« on: October 04, 2017, 03:40:01 pm »
I don't think it's lacking much, but there is too much emphasis on . Overall:

- Over obsession with having some sort of 'gimmick' for hardware. Waggle controls, a touchpad on the controller, a screen inside the controller, a camera that records your movements, VR, 3D... like ok, we get it. What are you going to DO with all this tech? The answer is usually 'nothing worthwhile'.

- Market oversaturation. The sheer quantity of games every month and year is insane, to the point that nobody can keep up, and most are middle-of-the-road in quality. A handful get the bulk of marketing, the rest just get thrown at the wall in hopes they stick. Any that succeed are then driven into the ground with sequels (Asassin's Creed, Call of Duty, etc), while riskier efforts fall by the wayside. We're at the point where selling 6M can be considered a failure, which is absolutely idiotic.

- Indie games. I don't believe all indie games are bad, but there are far too many flooding the market, and most of them suck. Funny thing about having no publisher is that there's nobody standing behind you to tell you that your game is trash. Curiously, a US indie studio can release a game with horrible graphics and it's a 9.0 score, but a small Japanese studio doing the same gets taken down several notches for it, despite similarly limited resources.

- Consumers and companies who fixate way too much on "games journalism" and fabricated controveries. I don't really care what Kotaku, IGN, or GameSpot have to say about anything, and it's kind of bizarre that so many other people hang on every bit of crap they churn out.

So on and so forth. We need less of all this garbage, more focus on crafting quality games, more attention paid to developers and publishers who actively try to put out good work. CD Projekt comes to mind as a particularly great example for others to follow.

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Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Duplicate List 2017
« on: September 25, 2017, 08:57:49 pm »
F.E.A.R. (Steam)
https://www.vgcollect.com/item/16629
https://www.vgcollect.com/item/110693



Fixed spelling error in original entry as well -pacpix

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Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Duplicate List 2017
« on: September 25, 2017, 08:55:37 pm »

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Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Error Listings 2017
« on: March 26, 2017, 01:33:02 pm »
Pretty sure Dead Space never came out on the "Other" platform... https://www.vgcollect.com/item/88270


15
It really depends on whether Microsoft, Sony, and/or Nintendo create conditions that facilitate it. Right now, all of them lack sufficient infrastructure to make it work efficiently, and the interfaces of their storefronts are pretty terrible, both in terms of finding games and keeping track of existing purchases. There's also the long-term concern of what happens to those games, and your ability to re-download, once a console is discontinued.

On the PC side, it's already happened - you really can't find many fully offline retail games anymore, and most retail games require activation on Origin, Uplay, or Steam, and so the included discs are basically worthless. Download speeds are super quick considering the size of most games, library management is simple, updates for games download without prompting, you can freely backup your games to physical media, prices (particularly on Steam) are drastically lower, and there are no 'generations' to be concerned about.

It's always possible that console manufacturers will simply force it next gen, and most will simply go along for the ride even if it's rough going at first, but I don't think there's any question of it being inevitable at some point

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