August 2024 PC Gaming General Discussion Thread

[Colif]

Ubisoft stock price has dropped almost 40% in the last year.

They need their games to succeed right now and for many of the people to take the $20 sub offer to give the company some income going forward

I won't be doing that any time soon. I also don't like renting games and they have been known to remove old games in past. All the sub services do it... that isn't an excuse though. More a reason to only buy on Steam as you at least own them until Steam is bought and destroyed. How dare it let people buy games and not keep paying for them...

They don't need any controversy around any of their upcoming releases... oops.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I think the controversy around Shadows is a storm in a tea cup. Most people buying the game wont even be aware of it, Ill put fiver on it doing OK relative to their other games. I dont think stock price is necessarily always a good indicator of a companies value, they made a huge loss last year, this year looks like theyve done OK so far according to what I can find.

I finished up a short Beastman campaign victory in Warhammer 3. Was on the way to a long victory fairly easily when the end game crisis kicked in and the Dwarves I was mopping up on the way to their Empire allies in Middenland and Reikland suddenly started spawning gold levelled doom stacks at the rate of about 4 a turn. I only had 4 armies, and couldnt be bothered to do all the fights. Auto resolve is so broken against the dwarves, apparently because it heavily favours armor as a statistic. Anyway I faffed about with a Brettonia campaign for a few turns but wasnt feeling it. Come back later I think.

Fired up Iron Harvest instead which I picked up with the fiver @Colif is going to owe me when Ass Creed Shadows doesnt totally bomb It seems decent so far, but Im only finishing off the tutorial.

Ran out of Steam with Elden Ring, Im in the last area of the DLC on the way to the final boss and havent felt like going back so far. Another I'll come back to when I have more time, its a hard one to play when theres other people around for me.

 

[Colif]

Fired up Iron Harvest instead which I picked up with the fiver @Colif is going to owe me when Ass Creed Shadows doesnt totally bomb It seems decent so far, but Im only finishing off the tutorial.

i don't bet so I don't know who agreed on my behalf.

I just want the big AAA dinosaurs to die off... hoping for an asteroid.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Godspeed on your mission, theres not much Ubi makes that I've liked a lot. The other monster companies make some franchises that I care about so I'd rather they didnt die though.

 

[Colif]

I feel Brian may try to stop me to save some of the games he plays... or might intend to play if they release new Far Cry games.

I don't remember last EA game I bought, My last Blizzard game was over a year ago. Not really in rush for Microsoft to die but that is more based on my Operating System, not any games they have made. Since I am keeping this to PC, no need to mention the console makers.
I am sure I missed someone as I don't keep track.

 

[Zloth]

Since I am keeping this to PC, no need to mention the console makers.

Well, Microsoft is on your list already. Sony published Horizon: Forbidden West. That's two out of the big three.

 

[Colif]

Sony also messed around people who bought Helldivers, especially if they live in one of the 170+ countries that couldn't access the games they had bought before the need for a logon... so they can die too. Nintendo have never messed up that much so they can live. Mainly as they don't release anything on PC (AFAIK)

Microsoft on list mainly as they own other games companies, I had forgotten they make Xbox. Easy enough to do.

 

[ZedClampet]

@Colif you are in for a lot of disappointment. None of those companies are going to fail. How about we hope they become more ethical instead. That's unlikely, but has a better chance than failure.

***

I need a break from Factorio. That game is exhausting. I need Satisfactory 1.0.

 

[Brian Boru]

list of games that are released finished

There's a diff between games released without further work on them, and games where devs were happy with what they put out.

Ubisoft stock price has dropped almost 40% in the last year.

28%—~$5 to ~$3.60

When I was discussing this a few years ago, I was 'sure' MS were going to buy Ubi, seemed so obvious. Then MS went mega on ActiBlizz—altho they did give Ubi rights to ActiB's cloud gaming.

They're down over 80% over 5 years, I'm amazed the Guillemots have held out in the face of the sweet Vivendi offers, and then TenCent's presumed interest—altho that might be defensive on TC's part.

Word is they're pivoting to cash-rich games, ie 'free' to play stuff. They say this is in parallel with AAA releases, but I won't be surprised if the early $$$ results from freemium change the balance there.

 

[ZedClampet]

There's a diff between games released without further work on them, and games where devs were happy with what they put out.


28%—~$5 to ~$3.60

When I was discussing this a few years ago, I was 'sure' MS were going to buy Ubi, seemed so obvious. Then MS went mega on ActiBlizz—altho they did give Ubi rights to ActiB's cloud gaming.

They're down over 80% over 5 years, I'm amazed the Guillemots have held out in the face of the sweet Vivendi offers, and then TenCent's presumed interest—altho that might be defensive on TC's part.

Word is they're pivoting to cash-rich games, ie 'free' to play stuff. They say this is in parallel with AAA releases, but I won't be surprised if the early $$$ results from freemium change the balance there.

A nice first step to righting the Ubi ship would be to release their new games on Steam. Out of everyone, Ubi is the most clueless AAA company out there, constantly doing and saying bizarre things. Guillemot needs to go.

 

[Brian Boru]

Guillemot needs to go

Yep, may be the worst CEO in gaming. You can disagree with others' choices, but there's usually some biz logic to be seen—with Ubi it's very well disguised.

However, the 'family firm' vibe seems to be as entrenched as the French love affair with their small farmers. No surprise I suppose since Ubi biz started out in the real farming sector.

Hey Zed, they could make the best-ever farming sim, right?
'Plough it Under' ™
'Choke My Artis' ™

 

[Frindis]

@Pifanjr How is the progress in the BG3 Tactical run going? I just finished Grym yesterday using a rather silly method. The tactical run has so far been pretty ok, spending a lot of the time micromanaging items and picking up everything I see. The combat is doable as long as I don't mess up with positioning or get too unlucky with the spell procs. With a little more knowledge about synergies, I think I should be ready for Honor Mode after this one OR maybe I am just getting to confident 😅

I have around 2,5K food supply now and it is steadily growing and also why I think 80 supply for resting is kind of pointless since you find so much food anyway. Hell, you can even buy food if you are desperate for it. I just got the summon for Scratch and "found" a couple of new barrels, including a bigbadaboom!

 

[Pifanjr]

@Pifanjr How is the progress in the BG3 Tactical run going? I just finished Grym yesterday using a rather silly method. The tactical run has so far been pretty ok, spending a lot of the time micromanaging items and picking up everything I see. The combat is doable as long as I don't mess up with positioning or get too unlucky with the spell procs. With a little more knowledge about synergies, I think I should be ready for Honor Mode after this one OR maybe I am just getting to confident 😅

I have around 2,5K food supply now and it is steadily growing and also why I think 80 supply for resting is kind of pointless since you find so much food anyway. Hell, you can even buy food if you are desperate for it. I just got the summon for Scratch and "found" a couple of new barrels, including a bigbadaboom!

I haven't played since I last posted about it here (when I played through the entire night. It took me a while to recover from that and with my kid still having summer vacation I have a lot less free time.

 

[Colif]

watches video

sees the cloud and thinks, I have seen this before

It was a strange show, but well, it was translation of old Chinese book, made by a Japanese company, and translated into English... it never stood a chance.

It adds up, they both the same story, one was just a TV show. Looks like the English versions only showed in UK, Aust & NZ. So only some in those nations might get flashbacks... small number of us.

Monkey (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ZedClampet]

watches video

sees the cloud and thinks, I have seen this before

It was a strange show, but well, it was translation of old Chinese book, made by a Japanese company, and translated into English... it never stood a chance.

It adds up, they both the same story, one was just a TV show. Looks like the English versions only showed in UK, Aust & NZ. So only some in those nations might get flashbacks... small number of us.

Monkey (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

He's the original Goku. Monkey King and Journey to the West have been fairly influential outside of Asia, though many are still unfamiliar with the origin story.

Besides being the origin of Dragon Ball ("Goku" is basically Japanese for "Wukong"), there have been a number of shows, like one on Netflix called The New Legends of Monkey

There is also a Warframe called Wukong.

 

[Brian Boru]

old Chinese book,

Weird coincidence, we had a new player a couple of days ago asking for game suggestions—he'd played Journey to the West before… is that a sudden chill breeze? *shiver*

 

[ZedClampet]

Woohoo! I'm happy. I found my new game for awhile. It's called "Another Brick in the Mall". It's an economy game where you are building and managing a mall (obviously). It looks similar to Prison Architect.

I started to realize I was going to like it when I finished the tutorial, did everything the game told me to do, and was bleeding money. I did the tech industry thing and started firing everyone I didn't consider essential at the moment. On day 5 I turned a $6 profit, A few days later, my one last office worker finished researching "night hours" and I hired a cashier to run the store in the evening. She was overrun with customers, so I hired a second cashier. Money is still tight, but we're making about a $150 profit a day and researching the alcohol license so I can open a bar.

Anyway, I'm going to get a decent amount of hours out of this.

 

[ZedClampet]

Weird coincidence, we had a new player a couple of days ago asking for game suggestions—he'd played Journey to the West before… is that a sudden chill breeze? *shiver*

I'm not sure you would call that a coincidence because of the Journey to the West game releasing today. Black Myth: Wukong, a huge and highly anticipated AAA game, is releasing in about 2 hours.

For those not following along, Wukong is the Monkey King from Journey to the West.

Black Myth: Wukong on Steam

Black Myth: Wukong is an action RPG rooted in Chinese mythology. You shall set out as the Destined One to venture into the challenges and marvels ahead, to uncover the obscured truth beneath the veil of a glorious legend from the past.

store.steampowered.com

Black Myth: Wukong review

A mythical action RPG with remarkably bizarre characters and daring boss battles.

www.pcgamer.com

Black Myth: Wukong—Here are the best settings to use with Arc, GeForce, and Radeon graphics cards

The visual tour-de-force demands upscaling and frame generation for the best performance but at least you don't need huge amounts of VRAM.

www.pcgamer.com

Black Myth: Wukong has some bonkers streamer guidelines about not using the game to spread 'feminist propaganda' or discuss anything about China

Monkey business.

www.pcgamer.com

I really want to buy this. I would love to play something beautiful right now. There's just almost no chance I would stick with it.

They may get review-bombed because of what that last article talks about.

 

[Zloth]

Eeeesh, if you thought publishers getting their hands into games to make them profitable was rough, try dealing with a censorship board.

The Steam forum is going to need moderators watching it 24/7 for months.

 

[ZedClampet]

Eeeesh, if you thought publishers getting their hands into games to make them profitable was rough, try dealing with a censorship board.

The Steam forum is going to need moderators watching it 24/7 for months.

If that's how the publisher wants to spend its time and money, but they should be aware that Valve has demonstrated zero patience with publishers banning or muting people for frivolous reasons and generally overturns the bans. Valve has plenty of games to sell. I doubt they'll fall to their knees for Wukong.

 

[Zloth]

I doubt they'll fall to their knees for Wukong.

Oh! Sorry, I was unclear. By doing what they did, they've opened themselves up to all sorts of China bashing, US bashing, feminist bashing, anti-feminist bashing, fake accounts baiting as many people as possible - that whole big mess.

 

[ZedClampet]

Wukong just released and there are already over half-a-million concurrents.

 

[Colif]

Chinese users cannot access the community pages or Dev workshop pages without a VPN so who actually gets involved in the discussions is limited from that country. I wonder if they even see same version. More people speak Chinese now on Steam than English (reported March 2024).
The preload had more downloads per second on weekend than Cyberpunk did, hit 71tb/s. 58tb of that was Asia, so I expect that 500k playing now will grow. This is a highly anticipated game in China.
At one stage, 85k concurrent users were just running the benchmark. The hype was real.

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh it's definitely going to grow. We're up to almost 900k in under 40 minutes. Could it set its sights on Palworld? I doubt it, but we'll see. It's already the 2nd biggest game of the year.

Steam may have more Chinese than English users, but China is still 2nd in sales behind US. They will pass US eventually.

 

[ZedClampet]

Just flew past 1 million. User reviews are all positive except for one person who obviously didn't update his video drivers, and one lone person shouting about misogyny.

Officially one of the largest launches of all time.