December 2023 General Discussion Thread

[Pifanjr]

I forgot this happened until I just started up Stellaris again: I got an event that an asteroid was heading for a planet where I had discovered an iron age civilization. This event spawns an asteroid "enemy" that slowly moves to the planet and you can send some ships to blow it up.

However, apparently they didn't bother implementing the asteroid as a special kind of enemy, meaning my construction ship which happened to be in the system at the time of the event did an emergency jump to escape this dangerous enemy and is refusing to go back until the asteroid has been dealt with...

 

[ZedClampet]

I just got a notification from the Steam app that No Man's Sky is on sale, but when I checked I noticed that it seemed more expensive than I remembered from the last sale. So I checked Steamdb and apparently they increased the price a couple of months ago from €55 to €59.

I was curious if there were any better deals and discovered that the price increase was only for Steam. On GoG and the Windows store it's still €55, which seems strange.

I did see it's available on Game Pass as well, so now I'm considering trying that €1 first month. Maybe when my Christmas vacation starts...

Don't forget the Steam Winter Sale starts in a couple of weeks. It's typically a good one.

 

[Brian Boru]

No Man's Sky is on sale

$19 is the cheapest it's been, on GameBillet.

asteroid … send some ships to blow it up

Wouldn't that create a bunch of smaller enemy asteroids? Can you nudge it off course instead?

 

[ZedClampet]

Played Weed Shop 3 just a little too long this afternoon. The longer you play it, the more unstable it becomes until it finally crashes your entire system. Takes a few hours, though. Fortunately I'd just saved.

 

[Pifanjr]

Wouldn't that create a bunch of smaller enemy asteroids? Can you nudge it off course instead?

It does create a bunch of smaller asteroids, but those just burn up in the atmosphere. Though I ended up forgetting about it for just a bit too long. Luckily the civilization on that planet survived, though it did regress to the stone age.

I also forgot to deal with one of my scientists who went rogue and got himself worshipped as a god by a different primitive society, accelerating their ascension to intergalactic society. However, after refusing to grant them independence they just joined my empire, which is apparently so utopian they didn't even care they weren't independent.

I did manage to lose my entire fleet trying to help my allies when they got attacked again, but with @Brian Boru 's help I did fix my alloy shortage, so I just built a new (and better) fleet. Which was done just about the same time as the event for the local pirate faction where they got a massive horde and started attacking everything around them, including me.

Luckily I'd been pouring my newfound wealth into upgrading my starbases, so I only lost a single system which I immediately took back. Now I just have to wait for my newly researched Titan to be build and hope that's enough for a counteroffensive.

 

[Zloth]

So I put the game down for now, and bought Horizon Zero Dawn for $6 after my Steam wallet balance.

That game was FUN! Well, eventually. It takes annoyingly long before it finally starts to tell you what "zero dawn" is about. But once it does... oh my!!

Weather in games

It's hard enough to get games where the clouds aren't just skyboxes. It would be great to see more realistic... well, more realistic ANYTHING in the sky! (Except the sun. Please don't put a circle on my screen that can blind me.)

 

[BeardyHat]

I definitely need to play Stellaris again. Last I played was also in 2016, but I've been steadily buying the DLC over the the years; I don't have all of them, but I apparently have the best DLCs for it.

Ended up sort of burning myself out on WoW for right now. Really like playing as a Hardcore character, scraping for every little inch of ground, but unfortunately, that's my biggest issue. I put all the time into really making my character as strong as I can make them, I really don't want to lose it all. Would hate to lose all the time I've put into them, even though it doesn't ultimately matter, because I've "lost" so many characters over the years just by getting bored and abandoning them, but still, it's nice to know they're still there.

Anyway, I finally decided to seriously play Alien: Isolation. So far, I think it's pretty neat, having just encountered and evaded the Xenomorph for the first time, I'm excited to keep picking away at it.

Also started playing Silent Hill, for the first time. I enjoy the Resident Evil series, so I'm hoping to get into this one as it seems so widely loved. My only problem so far is that I can't decide which of my systems that I want to play it on. I always love playing on my Vita, but it lacks quick and easy save states and is generally a little slower. My Miyoo Mini is nice and so compact, but it's screen can be so small, it's easy to miss details and items, though it's save states are easy and fast.

 

[Brian Boru]

Picross Touch

This'll probably never reach the Completed Games thread, so I'll call out this little milestone in its place:

Still under 3% complete with 1,000 played!
I've stuck with the 15x15, it's just right for me. 10x10 is too easy, and 20x20 is too much like work—could take me up to 10 minutes to solve one of those.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Finished Ruiner today, great little game. Nice story, great art style, fantastic music and fun hectic shooty gameplay. Fun boss battles too. Only took me 6 hours total, but I'd play it again and it only cost me €4 on sale.

 

[neogunhero]

That game was FUN! Well, eventually. It takes annoyingly long before it finally starts to tell you what "zero dawn" is about. But once it does... oh my!!

I must have spent a lot of time grinding in the prologue area, I’m at the part where Aloy is taken to the mountain lodge area with all the matriarchs (I honestly forget what it’s called) and I’m already level 10. I was having lots of fun killing the small dinos in that area, grinding for XP and resources, but I suspect much larger ones are coming soon.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm seriously considering cheating in Weed Shop 3, partially because they don't allow mods, but mainly because the game is a terrible grind. I've got 99.6 hours in it, and I'm still far away from the best upgrades. Very far away.

On the other hand, I hate to play that long and then throw away an honest victory at the 100 hour point. I just don't know how much more of it I can take.

Don't get me wrong. I've had a blast with the game, but I'm probably another 100 hours from the end, and it's not going to be a fun 100 hours. It's going to be standing around waiting to earn money from customers.

 

[neogunhero]

New CP2077 update is here and it has added a lot of stuff that is really making me want to come back to it. It added a lot of “immersive” features, such as being able to use the subway system fully, sit at nearly any seat in the game, interact with bartenders, listen to radio while on foot, binoculars that look over vistas, and much more. These are all things I wished for when the game first came out, so I’m glad they’re finally here. Anything that makes you able to interact with the world and feel a bit more or a part of it is what I love in games. Haven’t played it seriously since its launch, have picked it up for an hour a couple of times between then and now, but I’m starting to want to come back and fully sink my teeth into it again.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'm looking forward to getting into Cyberpunk again too, played the campaign through a few months after release and I've always liked Idris Elba so will be fun to see that story as well.

 

[ZedClampet]

New CP2077 update is here and it has added a lot of stuff that is really making me want to come back to it. It added a lot of “immersive” features, such as being able to use the subway system fully, sit at nearly any seat in the game, interact with bartenders, listen to radio while on foot, binoculars that look over vistas, and much more. These are all things I wished for when the game first came out, so I’m glad they’re finally here. Anything that makes you able to interact with the world and feel a bit more or a part of it is what I love in games. Haven’t played it seriously since its launch, have picked it up for an hour a couple of times between then and now, but I’m starting to want to come back and fully sink my teeth into it again.

I'm looking forward to getting into Cyberpunk again too, played the campaign through a few months after release and I've always liked Idris Elba so will be fun to see that story as well.

So it would seem that Cyberpunk 2077 is officially finished as of today. Subtracting whatever time was devoted to the DLC, should they have waited until these free updates were in the game before releasing it? That would be 3 years ago as of Dec 10.

The game has already sold over 25 million copies (at least I think that's what the PCG article said). If they sold all those copies at $60 (which they didn't), that would be a gross of $1.5 billion. (Bing is telling me that, accounting for discounts they have made $1.25 billion--take that with a huge grain of salt. It told me the development and marketing costs were $1.5 billion, which is ridiculous. The actual number was announced as $439 million).

But the question I have is, did CDPR have enough money to keep delaying it? Based only on Bing's answers to my questions about The Witcher 3, the cumulative net income of TW3 in December of 2020 was probably around the same as the cost of CP2077 at that point. They were really burning through the money making Cyberpunk.

Would early access and a chart of the planned additions have helped? That's never going to happen with CDPR. They don't communicate about anything. I'm just trying to figure out what CDPR could have done differently taking in the possibility that they might have been on the verge of losing money.

 

[neogunhero]

Would early access and a chart of the planned additions have helped? That's never going to happen with CDPR. They don't communicate about anything. I'm just trying to figure out what CDPR could have done differently taking in the possibility that they might have been on the verge of losing money.

Games as big as this never go into Early Access and I’m not sure why. Maybe it would ruin the hype and marketing strategies if one of the largest games of that year went into early access, and wasn’t already finished and ready to be enjoyed in its entirety the day it is first available, but what CDPR did in this case was almost blatant lying. All of the marketing and trailers leading up to the initial release were far from many players actual experiences. I played it on Day 1, and I did have some bugs, but not on the same level as so many others that led to its negative reputation. I think what they could have done differently is kept quiet on it longer, not set a release date until everything was totally ready, and be more transparent with the development process as it was happening. AFAIK there was a lot of corporate meddling, sounded like chairmen and the likes wanted to push it out faster to capture all the hype their marketing generated. Even when you’re as big of a company as CDPR, when the corpos are funding the majority of your game, you have to do what they say most of the time.

It was always going to be a great game, but we just weren’t sure how long we really had to wait to get it. This is a terrible trend that I’m sure we’re all against, but on the other hand I’m glad the game is finally in a state that we all hoped it to be in at launch.

 

[Johnway]

Whilst i wait for the new POE league to begin i've had a look at the massive meta changes and so far mixed opinions. From someone who knows very little of the mechanics on the surface most of the gems took a nerf apart from the most basic starting ones which got some bonuses or slight tweaks to compensate.

however, what's more interesting are the transfigured gems. They look damn tasty. Assuming i can snag the right one. i suspect it will be all random so the ones i won't be there. hell, i suspect i'm going to have to trade for the one i want at endgame. Cue horrible market cashing in on the more popular/powerful build gems.

As to what build to take i'm not so sure. Poisonous concoction seems still relatively viable, boneshatter was pretty good in my last play so i might play that. Creeping frost remains... ok i guess as a league starter. Truth be told i'm not going to be going all out endgame as i never acquire the currency to be gamebreaking powerful. need to find a build that works for both mapping and boss killing. my last build boneshatter did terrible against single targets. but with bosses that brought minions it wasn't a problem and made the whole battle a push over.

other then that? Well twitch drops are in play and its for a pretty nice pet. So all things considered i'm walking away with something decent plus on christmas i can probably expect another lootbox reward. Presumably another item of disappointment.

 

[Brian Boru]

I'd play it again and it only cost me €4 on sale

Aah, this lad shows promise.

Far Cry 5

Sidearm

I have discovered a new sidearm. Not a pistol, but rather a Sin Eater:

If I see a bear or moose or cougar, I now run towards them, with this thing in hand.
ETA: Maybe in the base game, this isn't available early on? Looks like you have to defeat Faith to get it—I may have it due to DLC or the Resistance Mod.

Loadout

D2 is doubly useful cos it frees up the slot previously occupied by the excellent SPAS-12 shotgun, the connoisseur's choice for rate of fire So now I bring along SA-50 sniper, again a rate-of-fire preference.

Other 2 slots are still 45/70 AR for accuracy, and Recurve Bow with Explosive Arrows for anti-vehicle.

Ammo basically grows on trees, just not an issue—and more so if you have Boomer tagging along. I never bought any until I was looking for uses for my money—then I loaded up, incl lots for weapons I have no intention of using.

Money

This becomes useless quickly. Once I've bought my weapons and upgrades, what is there? Some maps and special ordinance to pick up whenever, but yeah… they should've made better use of it as a resource. Forcing ammo buy would be one thing, maybe for all beyond basic weapons.

Buddies

I went for Boomer first, then Adelaide, and have just gotten Jess Black to unlock the 2-Buddies perk. That's a good sequence I think—Adelaide's chopper support is fairly useless, she gets shot down too easily, but the other 2 are tops. I've made a note to consider going for Jess first on next replay, and getting the Harvest Master perk in tandem for 4x skins when she drops wildlife with her bow—but of limited value since money stops being of value so early.

Missions

Water Treatment Plant is my least fav so far, all it requires is getting lucky in a maze—I dropped it halfway thru due to frustration with too many wrong turns this time.

Flavor Country is another later one I've never gotten, almost certainly due to my lack of skill with vehicles—it requires roadkill of 4 antlered animals, and finding those beggars on a road is an achievement in itself, never mind the "Hey, just stand there for a moment while I run you over' part of the deal. I suspect the horny guys didn't get the memo

More Difficult than FC6

It's a couple of years since I played 5, and I got killed a few times early on due to playing like I'd done in 6. I'm not sure how much of that is down to the Health systems—in 6 Health just doesn't matter, whereas in all earlier ones you need to buff it via perks, and carry crafted or bought cures with you. I'm still on base Health, whereas it can be perked up to 300% via 4 perks.

Perk Choices

This part of 5 is so much better than 6, provides real strategic choices to make re what gameplay priorities you want. As said, maybe I should've perked up my Health early on—this is usually a priority for me in other shooters. But I went with maxing weapons—you only start with sidearm and one other, so I went for the extra 2 slots asap… I hadn't 'discovered' the D2 yet, so 1 extra would do for a while in future. My first 7 were:
Additional Holster
Black Market
Grapple
Locksmith
Parachute
Sneaky Sprint
Weapons Collector

Quotes

Dutch
"I know what you're thinking and no, I ain't gonna have you climbing towers all over the county for me, so don't worry."

Adelaide Drubman
"Yes, I'm Hurk's mom, and no, I don't want to know what he's been up to. It's called plausible deniability."

 

[neogunhero]

Buddies

I went for Boomer first, then Adelaide, and have just gotten Jess Black to unlock the 2-Buddies perk. That's a good sequence I think—Adelaide's chopper support is fairly useless, she gets shot down too easily, but the other 2 are tops.

Hurk and Sharky will always be my favorites, even though Hurk is a bit impractical for most occasions. He isn’t very safe with that rocket launcher, mainly because he does dumb stuff like blow up an enemy 5 feet away from him. Sharky is great with that shotgun though, and of course their banter is great.

Perk Choices

This part of 5 is so much better than 6, provides real strategic choices to make re what gameplay priorities you want.

I loved how you can continuously upgrade certain perks once they’re unlocked. This is great in New Game+, I’m pretty sure on my last save file I was able to hold up to 20 of every kind of throwable, and leveled up my ammo capacity tons.

Quotes

Adelaide Drubman
"Yes, I'm Hurk's mom, and no, I don't want to know what he's been up to. It's called plausible deniability."

I love how Adelaide and Hurk Sr. are disappointed in Hurk but love him at the same time. They can see how big of a dumbass he is, but a lovable, huggable dumbass.

“See that steaming pile of disappointment praying over there? That’s my loinfruit, Hurk Jr. Dumber than a coal bucket. He takes after his mama.”


Also, with the Resistance mod, am I able to play the game pretty vanilla just without the “kidnap the player to progress main story” missions? I don’t want to mod it to add new stuff or cheats, just mainly want to not have to do those missions where you are kidnapped. I wouldn’t mind having more weapons and stuff as long as I still need to unlock them.

 

[Brian Boru]

This is a terrible trend that I’m sure we’re all against

Oh gosh no, I'm all in favor
Game gets fixed, price comes down, DLC included, normal hardware becomes usable, real player reviews, mods, mods, mods… the list goes on, lots of advantages to this wonderful trend!

with the Resistance mod, am I able to play the game pretty vanilla just without the “kidnap

Yes.

It's mainly a mod manager, with loads of mods pre-loaded—and there's also the option of getting some from Nexus as long as their description states they work with Resistance.

I can't load Resistance UI to show you, due to problem mentioned here a few days ago, so here's my thread re FC6 Libertad mod—the UI and usage are pretty much the same.

Far Cry Modding

This is mainly a shout out to what appears to be a superb site for major FC mod packages—Far Cry Modding—but of course, all mod mentions are welcome. As you can see, they have content all the way back to FC2. There are big mod packages for the main FC games from FC4 on—ie FC4, Primal, FC5...

forums.pcgamer.com

NB I'm not sure if it still applies, but early on you shouldn't change Resistance points until you cleared Dutch's island—the starting location after the intros, or where you start if you disable the intros. If you changed the RPs before that, you couldn't get off the island!

But I think that's been 'fixed' now, there have been a lot of updates to the mod since back then. I'm fairly sure you don't have to change RPs at all now, that there's a "Don't capture me' choice to tick and you're done—I've pissed off John and Faith so far without any kidnap, despite getting some pointed warnings

 

[ZedClampet]

Had another bug in Weed Shop 3. My max level merchandise manager lost her mind and started putting things all over the place instead of where things were labeled to go. Meanwhile, I can't think of very many redeeming qualities for Pumping Simulator 2 except that I enjoy the progression system.

I'm getting near the end of both. I'm going to try to find something less crap after this. I've enjoyed them both, especially Weed Shop, but I want something a little more carefully engineered for my next game. Playing these two at the same time was probably a bad idea.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

So it would seem that Cyberpunk 2077 is officially finished as of today. Subtracting whatever time was devoted to the DLC, should they have waited until these free updates were in the game before releasing it? That would be 3 years ago as of Dec 10.

The game has already sold over 25 million copies (at least I think that's what the PCG article said). If they sold all those copies at $60 (which they didn't), that would be a gross of $1.5 billion. (Bing is telling me that, accounting for discounts they have made $1.25 billion--take that with a huge grain of salt. It told me the development and marketing costs were $1.5 billion, which is ridiculous. The actual number was announced as $439 million).

But the question I have is, did CDPR have enough money to keep delaying it? Based only on Bing's answers to my questions about The Witcher 3, the cumulative net income of TW3 in December of 2020 was probably around the same as the cost of CP2077 at that point. They were really burning through the money making Cyberpunk.

Would early access and a chart of the planned additions have helped? That's never going to happen with CDPR. They don't communicate about anything. I'm just trying to figure out what CDPR could have done differently taking in the possibility that they might have been on the verge of losing money.

CD Projekt annual revenue 2022 | Statista

In 2022, CD Projekt Group generated over 213.5 million U.S.

www.statista.com

Dont know how accurate Statista is here, their number dont match up with some other reports of earnings a quick scan of search showed supposedly directly from CDProjekt.

I think the changes they made to the levelling system and whatever else are at least partly due to community feedback, so they wouldnt have necessarily come up with the same product if they hadnt released it fully.

I suspect they had enough money to cover expenses going by the revenues above. Would the shareholders have been happy with a lack of profit growth for another year? They had some other games like Gwent and Thronebreaker, the mainline Witcher games and obviously GOG over the 2010's as well.

Dont see why they couldnt have done EA, other than its not a thing AAA studios do.

 

[Pifanjr]

I think I'm nearing the end game of my Stellaris game. The pirate horde that spawned got wiped out by another faction, so there's nothing threatening me at the moment. As far as I can see I'm (vastly) superior in tech, diplomatic weight and economy to all other factions. The only thing I'm still lagging behind in is military power, as I have a total of about 70k of fleet power, while another faction has a single fleet that has 100k+ with probably a bunch of smaller fleets and several allies with their own powerful fleets.

So it would seem that Cyberpunk 2077 is officially finished as of today. Subtracting whatever time was devoted to the DLC, should they have waited until these free updates were in the game before releasing it? That would be 3 years ago as of Dec 10.

The game has already sold over 25 million copies (at least I think that's what the PCG article said). If they sold all those copies at $60 (which they didn't), that would be a gross of $1.5 billion. (Bing is telling me that, accounting for discounts they have made $1.25 billion--take that with a huge grain of salt. It told me the development and marketing costs were $1.5 billion, which is ridiculous. The actual number was announced as $439 million).

But the question I have is, did CDPR have enough money to keep delaying it? Based only on Bing's answers to my questions about The Witcher 3, the cumulative net income of TW3 in December of 2020 was probably around the same as the cost of CP2077 at that point. They were really burning through the money making Cyberpunk.

Would early access and a chart of the planned additions have helped? That's never going to happen with CDPR. They don't communicate about anything. I'm just trying to figure out what CDPR could have done differently taking in the possibility that they might have been on the verge of losing money.

If I'm reading this article correctly, Cyberpunk 2077 was significantly more successful than The Witcher 3:

Cyberpunk 2077 generated about $116 million in 2022, over 50% of CD Projekt’s annual revenue | Game World Observer

CD Projekt has released its financial report for the full year ended December 31, 2022. Thanks to strong sales of Cyberpunk 2077, the company recorded its second-best year in terms of both revenue and net profit.

gameworldobserver.com

It's impossible to say how the sales numbers would have changed if they released later, but it seems like it at least wasn't a total failure to release early.

One other interesting thing the article mentions is that GOG is costing them about $7 million a year.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

If I'm reading this article correctly, Cyberpunk 2077 was significantly more successful than The Witcher 3:

Cyberpunk 2077 generated about $116 million in 2022, over 50% of CD Projekt’s annual revenue | Game World Observer

CD Projekt has released its financial report for the full year ended December 31, 2022. Thanks to strong sales of Cyberpunk 2077, the company recorded its second-best year in terms of both revenue and net profit.

gameworldobserver.com

It's impossible to say how the sales numbers would have changed if they released later, but it seems like it at least wasn't a total failure to release early.

One other interesting thing the article mentions is that GOG is costing them about $7 million a year.

Pretty clear whatever numbers I've seen that Cyberpunk has made way more money than W3.

Either I'm missing something (very possible) or the article says that GOG makes a loss right above the chart showing that GOG makes a 2.8% profit?

 

[ZedClampet]

I think I'm nearing the end game of my Stellaris game. The pirate horde that spawned got wiped out by another faction, so there's nothing threatening me at the moment. As far as I can see I'm (vastly) superior in tech, diplomatic weight and economy to all other factions. The only thing I'm still lagging behind in is military power, as I have a total of about 70k of fleet power, while another faction has a single fleet that has 100k+ with probably a bunch of smaller fleets and several allies with their own powerful fleets.



If I'm reading this article correctly, Cyberpunk 2077 was significantly more successful than The Witcher 3:

Cyberpunk 2077 generated about $116 million in 2022, over 50% of CD Projekt’s annual revenue | Game World Observer

CD Projekt has released its financial report for the full year ended December 31, 2022. Thanks to strong sales of Cyberpunk 2077, the company recorded its second-best year in terms of both revenue and net profit.

gameworldobserver.com

It's impossible to say how the sales numbers would have changed if they released later, but it seems like it at least wasn't a total failure to release early.

One other interesting thing the article mentions is that GOG is costing them about $7 million a year.

Pretty clear whatever numbers I've seen that Cyberpunk has made way more money than W3.

Either I'm missing something (very possible) or the article says that GOG makes a loss right above the chart showing that GOG makes a 2.8% profit?

I'm getting a little confused by the conversation. Yes, Cyberpunk was tremendously profitable, much more than Witcher 3.

GoG TLDR: GoG isn't listed separately in the quarterly reports so it's impossible to tell if they are still losing money.

I just researched GoG, and looking at the latest quarterly report from CDPR, it's impossible to tell if GoG is losing money still because it isn't listed out separately, so I think there's a lot of confusion out there in articles.

It appears to be listed as "Goods for resale and materials" and has a revenue of 51,693 and a cost of 38757. Per the report:

"Cost of goods for resale and materials sold represents mainly the cost of goods for resale and materials sold via the GOG.COM
platform"

However, an undisclosed portion of the "Selling Expenses" of 66,000 is attributed to GoG.

"The second largest category of the Selling expenses comprised costs recognized in the GOG.COM segment in respect of marketing
activities relating to the GOG.COM platform and the work on the development and processing of sales executed through that
platform."

So if more than 13000 of that 66,000 in Selling Expenses is attributed to GoG then it lost money in the last quarter.

Either way, it appears to be in better shape than it used to be.

 

[neogunhero]

Oh gosh no, I'm all in favor
Game gets fixed, price comes down, DLC included, normal hardware becomes usable, real player reviews, mods, mods, mods… the list goes on, lots of advantages to this wonderful trend!

Ah yes, the patient gamer lifestyle. Get suckers like me to buy it day one so it can fund the next three years of development so they can fix the game

…there's a "Don't capture me' choice to tick and you're done—I've pissed off John and Faith so far without any kidnap, despite getting some pointed warnings

That’s about all the convincing I need to replay FC5. Loved it the first time, but couldn’t make it too far in NG+ because that is perhaps the most annoying storytelling mechanic in a game I’ve ever seen…