Arkaelus

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

Hell, I'm a Millennial and it's a no-brainer... Food or gas, emission taxes, road taxes, maintenance costs, and everything else which comes with owning a car. Including the car itself. And that's just from an economic standpoint, I'm not even gonna go into the impact it has on the climate and how EVs are mostly just expensive and not-really-efficient pieces of jewellery still.

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

Too bad pretty much everyone, including Larian, Owlcat, all of these "we're doing it for the game and for the fans" adherents have also fallen for the "Rush to Market, Fix It Later" mentality. Been deep-diving Rogue Trader for the past weeks and playing through rough Beta content really isn't fun when the game is considered launched and complete. Same for Baldur's Gate 3, I binged it at launch and had to stop in Act III because most of my quests were soft-locked, or displayed incorrect information in the Journal.

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

Again, too bad completion doesn't show up on that list. The games eventually being good is no excuse for shoving half-finished software out the door at full price, no matter how you cut it.

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

No, the industry needs to stop selling half-baked goods because they know they can get away with it. Having to patch a game for months, non-stop, after launch day, after it's been, as you've said, a century in Early Access, is not a misunderstanding of bug severity, it's focusing on profit more than on the product. Not taking away the games' 'goodness,' but just as an underbaked cake, you still have to swallow a lotta raw eggs with that goodness.

Arkaelus , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

While I understand your point, I still tend to disagree. I've had ten years of experience working in QA, both on games and on misc. software, and the amount of bugs with which games are shipped as of late shifts the discussion from severity and prioritisation to volume - it isn't a question of what should have been fixed first when basically everything is busted. As such, it becomes a business problem entirely.

Another aspect which underlines this is the fact that, taking Baldur's Gate 3 as an example since we started with it, it's usually the latter half which is most affected. These trends taken together indicate a front-loading with QA in order to sell, then (hopefully) stealth-fixing the latter half before people get to it. Which doesn't work, because you get maniacs like me who spend 200 hours in-game during the first two weeks after launch. Same goes for Rogue Trader, for example. Game's all there, technically, first two Chapters are pretty much sterling, but how is one supposed to appreciate the creativity behind it considering half of the game may be inaccessible due to bugs (talking about soft-locking quests, busted progression triggers, busted scripting, and even more mechanical aspects which require trial-and-error with repeated reloads in the hopes that you stumble upon the right combination of actions which bypasses the bug).

In my perspective, creativity, while it is to be appreciated, becomes sort of moot in this case - it'd be like ignoring the fact that half of the painting is drafted on napkins with a big TODO stapled to it, or being sold a partly assembled phone with the promise that they'll send you the rest of the components later on down the line.

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

I'd stuff my .mp3 library under my mattress, I swear :(

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

Oh, that's the plan! Started out with a couple of external drives for the important stuff, but at this point I'm preparing to set up a proper NAS considering how things are going... Might as well...

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

This should be a do-or-die grade in the finals, globally. And don't let anyone know when or where they'll be evaluated and graded, make'em think the Civics teacher/professor will stalk them around town, putting together their resupply patterns, and grading their mall etiquette. That'll put the fear o'God in'em!

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

Completely agree with you! But that may be a bit idealistic at this point, to be honest, and it pains me to accept it, too, believe me! I'm starting to think more in the lines of "doing the best with what we've got," and we ain't got much...

Edit: of course I was joking in my initial comment, just to dispel any potential uncertainty! But everything with its grain of truth and all that...

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

More, please. I like where this is going, would totes sub!

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

Huh... is this how dogma started?

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

Hehe, pot. Can relate, sibling.

Also, kinda' reflects the actual socio-political climate, Fascism's been on the rise on this side of the pond, too. Hell, I'm nearer to Russia than I am the UK, and you can feel the scales tipping to overcompensate for what uninformed (i.e. most) people still think is Socialism. Gonna be a stompin' party all around the globe when things come to a head.

Arkaelus , 5 months ago

This must be the absolute epitome of this AI replication poor taste... The person who thought it would be a good idea to do this with Carlin, probably the one human who hated human bullshit more than anyone else to have ever existed, is either so out of touch they don't even vibrate at the same frequency as the rest of existence, or so far up their own ass that they're staring at their pancreas... An absolutely disgusting move.