July 2023 PC Gamer Article Links and Discussion

[Zed Clampet]

Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom....

Baldur's Gate 3 will let you treat your companions terribly, including biting off their limbs

Chews your own adventure.

www.pcgamer.com

What does Jeffrey Dahmer do when he gets bad breath?

He eats Men-toes.

 

[Zed Clampet]

You'd better believe House Flipper 2 was the most played Steam Next Fest demo

Pinocchio Bloodborne couldn't outdo the allure of knocking down walls to make houses feel more spacious.

www.pcgamer.com

No one cares, but I have to plug House Flipper. Great game, great devs.

 

[Pifanjr]

The base-building system in this fantasy co-op survival RPG looks pretty incredible

Enshrouded is part Zelda, part Valheim, and has some seriously impressive base-building tools.

www.pcgamer.com

I agree, the base building system does look pretty incredible.

The combat looks promising as well:

https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256950980/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1689256302

This game looks like it has a ton of potential. I've put it on my wishlist to keep an eye on it.

 

[mainer]

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.

www.pcgamer.com

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.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Studio makes actual minigame compilation based on those shovelware mobile game ads you see everywhere

The games that "you wanted to play to your heart's content, but couldn't."

www.pcgamer.com

This actually looks pretty fun. If you spend any time on social media (God help you), you'll recognize the types of games these are, only these actually exist. Game is $9.99 (I mention it because the price must have been changed since the article was written).

 

[Zed Clampet]

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.

www.pcgamer.com

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.

 

[Zloth]

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.

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.

 

[Zed Clampet]

It's official. Ubisoft is the worst. Glad I don't own my Ubi games on their site, and certainly never will now. They are closing people's accounts and revoking their licenses for the games they paid for. Why? Because of inactivity.

Your Ubisoft account can be permanently deleted for 'inactivity,' but Ubisoft says that won't happen if there are purchases attached to it (Updated)

I have no idea when I last logged into my Ubisoft account.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Zloth]

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.

 

[Zed Clampet]

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.

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.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

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.

 

[Zloth]

The amount of data my information takes up on their servers is absolutely trivial.

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.

 

[Brian Boru]

They are closing people's accounts

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.

 

[Zed Clampet]

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.

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.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Ubisoft clarifies it does not delete inactive accounts that have purchased games after its policy came under question

After its policies were called into question over the weekend, a Ubisoft spokesperson tells PC Gamer that the company does not delete inactive accounts with purchased games.With an account deletion no

www.pcgamer.com

Okay, this is much better. Ubisoft now says they are not deleting accounts that have game purchases.

 

[Zed Clampet]

The Expanse proves that Telltale is back, baby, and recapturing some of that Walking Dead magic

It's like Telltale never went away.

www.pcgamer.com

Telltale is back. I've never seen The Expanse TV show (I can't watch TV anymore due to ADHD), but I read most of the books, and they were fantastic, although I drifted away in book 4 as it went a direction I wasn't interested in going.

I used to love Telltale games, but I couldn't play them anymore. I've become QTE intolerant.

 

[Pifanjr]

The Little Big Adventure reboot has been cancelled because publishers just aren't interested

It turns out that the Twinsen games are a little too niche for their own good.

www.pcgamer.com

I loved Little Big Adventure 2 as a kid, but I have my doubts whether the gameplay would hold up if I were to play it again now, even in a remastered form.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Remnant 2 is a hit, beating everything except CS:GO on Steam's weekly top sellers list

The co-op shooter sequel is one of the most-played games on Steam right now.

www.pcgamer.com

Great, great game. If you have a co-op partner, I can't recommend it enough.

 

[dxchase]

Remnant 2 is a hit, beating everything except CS:GO on Steam's weekly top sellers list

The co-op shooter sequel is one of the most-played games on Steam right now.

www.pcgamer.com

Great, great game. If you have a co-op partner, I can't recommend it enough.

Playing it solo atm and its TOUGH. But its a great game, i agree

 

[Pifanjr]

Dwarf Fortress's publisher is now helping the best early access roguelike across the finish line after 8 years on Steam

Caves of Qud will hit 1.0 in 2024.

www.pcgamer.com

I wishlisted it after seeing the trailer:

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcgamer.com%2F&source_ve_path=MTY0OTksMjg2NjQsMTY0NTAz&feature=emb_share&v=2c6burNvtsU


It looks like an amazing roguelike, one that you could spend years playing and still discover new things in.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Playing it solo atm and its TOUGH. But its a great game, i agree

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.

 

[Brian Boru]

my "I can make this jump" gene

You guys too, huh?
At least half my deaths come from sticking the landing—ie sticking my head thru the ground!

If ye ever go back to Far Cry 6, grab the Libertad mod—one of its top things is reduced falling damage.

 

[Zloth]

You guys too, huh?
At least half my deaths come from sticking the landing—ie sticking my head thru the ground!

Here's my ship from No Man's Sky. Here's my ship after trying to land after being away from the game for a couple of years. I hope to "stick the landing" even more in Starfield!

 

[Brian Boru]

Interesting sounding Early Access release on August 15th, 2023:

This factory game RTS uses programmable drones instead of conveyor belts

Desynced seeks to combine the base-building, factory management, and RTS genres.

www.pcgamer.com

Publisher seems ideal:
"PUBLISHER: Forklift Interactive"

Desynced on Steam

 

[Zed Clampet]

Interesting sounding Early Access release on August 15th, 2023:

This factory game RTS uses programmable drones instead of conveyor belts

Desynced seeks to combine the base-building, factory management, and RTS genres.

www.pcgamer.com

Publisher seems ideal:
"PUBLISHER: Forklift Interactive"

Desynced on Steam

The battles look more interesting than the ones in Factorio, which I always just turn off