July 2023 PC Gamer Article Links and Discussion

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Hey, D&D powergamers: I promise you'll have more fun if you don't min-max in Baldur's Gate 3

For this one, let's all spend less time checking our maths and more time enjoying the adventure.
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The only time I've really thought about the "min-maxing" thing is when playing ARPGs like Diablo 2 or Grim Dawn, where how you build your character, in terms of combat, is critical.

In story-based and/or party-based RPGs, I've always focused on the story, or narrative, and just went with my gut instinct in creating a character. Combat efficiency, though important, has always been secondary to opening up unique dialogue, story, and companion events.
 
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Starfield's economy is already in shambles—a spaceworthy ship can go for as little as 25 sandwiches, 48 steaks, or 10 plates of bugs

Maybe the sandwich pirate was onto something, after all.
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That's not as crazy as it seems. You see, in our world, grilled cheese sandwiches make you fat and lead to heart attacks, so they are cheap. But what would they be worth if they not only didn't make you fat, but healed you as well? There's no real world equivalent to a Starfield grilled cheese, but I suspect it would be worth quite a bit.
 
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mainer said:
In story-based and/or party-based RPGs, I've always focused on the story, or narrative, and just went with my gut instinct in creating a character. Combat efficiency, though important, has always been secondary to opening up unique dialogue, story, and companion events.
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Step #1 for the big RPGs lately has been "find out the classes of the interesting characters and avoid those." Divinity: Original Sin 2 made that pointless by letting you pick classes for the characters.
 
Depends on how long they have to be inactive. If you haven't logged in for, say, five years - I'm fine with nuking it. After all, people do die or just flat out give up on gaming. Ubisoft can't be expected to maintain their accounts forever.

It would be a lot better if they would sync up with Galaxy or, better yet, just get rid of UPlay completely, but this might not be so bad. EA and 2K making us use launchers that break their own games is far worse in my book.
 
Zloth said:
Depends on how long they have to be inactive. If you haven't logged in for, say, five years - I'm fine with nuking it. After all, people do die or just flat out give up on gaming. Ubisoft can't be expected to maintain their accounts forever.

It would be a lot better if they would sync up with Galaxy or, better yet, just get rid of UPlay completely, but this might not be so bad. EA and 2K making us use launchers that break their own games is far worse in my book.
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Well, I'm not fine with it, and neither, it seems, are most people. The amount of data my information takes up on their servers is absolutely trivial.

Oh, and their launcher broke every game for 6 months when they went to Epic. Epic had to take their games off the market.
 
I only own Black Flag actually through UBI because it came with a graphics card back then. But what about games bought through Epic or Steam that the require UBI launch to run?

This does suck, digital purchases already feel impermanent and stuff like this just makes it worse. Hopefully Valve remains privately owned and Gabe lives forever. If and when I ever retire in 90 years time, having undergone genetic rejuvenation I would love to be able to play the games I bought and paid for along the way again.
 
ZedClampet said:
The amount of data my information takes up on their servers is absolutely trivial.
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Trivial size, sure. Though millions of people times trivial isn't always going to be so trivial, my main worry would be the types of information they have: a password, payment information, even name & address together... it's all potentially private information. If your company has it, you might be required to report on it, maybe encrypt it in certain ways. If somebody uses the same password for their Ubisoft account as they use for their bank account and their bank account gets hacked, your company can get hauled into court.

If an account is still being used, obviously you keep it going. If the customer doesn't log in for several years, though, they aren't coming back. Change the password to randomness, wipe out anything personal, and maybe just keep track of the email address and what games the account had.
 
ZedClampet said:
They are closing people's accounts
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Do you know how many they've closed so far? I couldn't find anything to quantify that. This definitely concerns me if it's more than some PR error—I have a number of games directly thru Ubi.

Seems to be a definite problem with this strategy tho if it's real, for people whose Ubi account email address has lapsed—eg ISP closed down.
 
Brian Boru said:
Do you know how many they've closed so far? I couldn't find anything to quantify that. This definitely concerns me if it's more than some PR error—I have a number of games directly thru Ubi.

Seems to be a definite problem with this strategy tho if it's real, for people whose Ubi account email address has lapsed—eg ISP closed down.
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The article didn't say. I think they requested more info from Ubi.

One thing that bothers me is that Ubi only has so many games. I can easily see myself going years without playing an Ubisoft game. If I were an Assassin's Creed only player, well, it's been 3 years since the last Assassin's Creed, and what if I want to wait till the new one goes on a decent sale before I buy it? That could total 4 or 5 years. No idea how long you have to be inactive before they delete your account, though. Something like 10 years would be less threatening than 5, but it's just the concept that is irritating.

Steam has over 120 million active accounts. Can you imagine how many dead accounts it must have? Yet you don't see Steam closing people's accounts. Ubisoft only has a small fraction of that, I'm sure.

Just migrate accounts you think are dead to their own server if you are having DB problems. If someone wants to use an old account, have a short and easy process for them to reactivate it. Heck, one PC and a backup could store all the dead accounts. Could have it's own separate site page where you could check to see if your account is there.
 
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DXCHASE said:
Playing it solo atm and its TOUGH. But its a great game, i agree
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It's especially tough when you are playing co-op and your co-op partner jumps off a cliff thinking he can make it, and then you have to survive to the next check point against co-op-scaled levels of enemies. 🤣

I've come to realize that Guido was cursed with my "I can make this jump" gene.

Edit: I'm not actually sure if the difficulty changes between solo and co-op.
 
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