Video game thread

Too demoralized to play Path of Exile anymore. The most recent update added a new league, and with it, new nerfs. Dying is now easier. The player’s base physical and spell damage is lowered, skills cost a lot more mana especially if they have a bunch of support gems attached to them, elite monsters are more aggressive with their special attacks that do a lot of damage, and enemies that can one shot kill you are still a thing. And that’s upsetting, because PoE was a challenging enough game as is. I don’t know why they would drastically depower the players like that with how easy it was to still die. 99% of players never play Hardcore for a reason.

@Humble Oriathan  
Sounds like they’re planning on selling a shit ton of pay-to-win trash.

@EverfreeEmergencies  
Might consider running a health test on your drive, something like CrystalDiskInfo, then. Unless you have your Library on an external and Steam on an internal; that always leads to random problems.
 
@Officer Hotpants  
The New World beta’s optimization is reportedly so bad that it’s sending some GPUs, including bleeding edge ones, into thermal and actually bricking specific hardware.

@Azure Fang  

Sounds like absence of v-sync and retarded design on said specific hardware that allows it to be bricked by overheat/overpower.

I have a machine that allows me to play games like Team Fortress 2 fairly smoothly as long as I have a “high performance” config, flat textures and low poly model mods installed and there are no more than 6-7 players in each team.

@Azure Fang  
And that’s why you don’t participate in betas.

@Officer Hotpants  
You must admit it’s a pretty common business model these days.

@Anonymous #0A6B  
Everyone wants to be the next GTA Online. If today’s g*mers are happy to garble up piles of shit, why make anything different? Just slap “free” in front of anything and they’ll gladly whip out their credit cards and pay to skip the wait.

@Officer Hotpants  
Participatory betas used to be an honor and used to supplement existing staff. The two big, real betas I was recruited for were Vangard: Saga of Heroes (“Phase 1” - staff and insiders only - I was recruited by Sigil staff from my test server participation in EverQuest and interaction with the team members that ended up leaving Sony to join Sigil; payment was a lifetime paid account for the MMO “if I wanted it”) and the online component for Ratchet: Deadlocked (PS2, invitation via Sony’s short-lived “Gamer Advisory Panel”; I think I still have the disc somewhere, and I know I still have my GAP ID card).
 
Anymore, though, betas are hardly more than a “pre-order incentive” that covers for a lack of internal testers. There are some respectable Early Access runs, which if done right should be in a feature-complete beta state in the first place, but more often than not modern betas are indeed utter trash.

@Anonymous #0A6B  
So are sweat shops and sexual slavery. Which also come from China, now that I’m thinking about it…
 
@Azure Fang  
I can accept it when player input is actually meaningful and they’ve sorted out their engine first so that there’s no major issues (like the aforementioned bricking). Particularly when they actually ask what people want to see and how they’re handling various mechanics and make changes accordingly. An increasing number, however, don’t appear to actually give a fuck about that kind of player feedback. They simply use you as an unpaid–a paying, even–intern to do bug testing for them before they’ve even fully left alpha (any product that causes hard drive failures and system overheating with any kind of regularity is not in the beta stage yet).

Fallout 4 style quick loot mods are probably some of the better ones I’ve used for Skyrim and NV. Makes checking which bodies/containers are worth looting so much faster.

>TFW next year is 2022  
May there be an anniversary edition of Morrowind for PC, Xbox Series S|X and Xbox One.

Gee, I wonder why Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe didn’t have nearly as much of an icy relationship with its Japanese branch during the 5th gen like Sega did, despite the multiple delays of the N64 and the cancellation of Star Fox 2…

@EverfreeEmergencies  
Ooh. They have that for New Vegas? I wonder if there’s one for Morrowind…

i have been playing a decent ammount of alien issolation as of late  
i have never hated a filthy xeno so much in my life, this is why we need more baneblades

@TeamBlueplant  
Needs more baneblades. Don’t worry. I got you covered.

@TeamBlueplant  
Excellent fucking game. Best horror game of the decade in my opinion. I just wish the alien wasn’t so Damn close all the time. He’s like a starving bloodhound and  
I’ve got a sausage link in my pocket.

@Officer Hotpants  
Yes

@EverfreeEmergencies  
Oh shit. I’ll have to keep an eye on that. Thanks.

@Terminal Red  
yeh, it takes it like a full half hour to fuck off into a vent only to reapear 5 seconds later
 
i also really like how aiming the FT makes it slowly aproach you instead of a full on sprint

@TeamBlueplant  

boy you’re in for a surprise later

@Barhandar  
reactor later or “it doesnt give a fuck about fire while inside vents” later?

@TeamBlueplant  
“Anything you use to slow it down gets less effective the more you use it” later  
aim flamer at the xeno too much and he’ll return to sprinting

@Barhandar  
oh yea, the darn AI learns, to be fair im the kind to hoard as much resources as possible, so i only use it when there is absolutely necesary, wich only was like.. 5 times total