June 2024 PC Gamer Article Discussion

[Zloth]

RTS can absolutely be played as mostly tactical—ref the infamous 5-minute rushes in C&C multi or the APM play in Starcraft. But that's a different genre, not RTS—it's the Get my name higher on Leaderboard genre 🙂 And it's fine, but please call it what it is—RTT—so we still have a name to distinguish games with strategy once the real-time part of the game has commenced.

Blitz Chess gets a different name.

Sins of a Solar Empire and Solaris are real time with both strategy and tactics. So, we call them 4X games. Who's running this hobby, anyway?

 

[Zed Clampet]

Isn't strategy just the collection of your tactics?

 

[Brian Boru]

Isn't strategy just the collection of your tactics?

No, that's cart before horse, suggests the tactics exist before the plan is formulated.

Not that strategy exists in a vacuum, you formulate it with the constraints imposed by available tactics. But the plan comes first, else it's likely to be just a reactive encounter.

 

[Hveðrungr]

Yeah that seems to be the case. But what do we call real strategy games then? Slow Tactics? 😀

We could make up a new word for that meta-level concept like stractics

 

[Zed Clampet]

No, that's cart before horse, suggests the tactics exist before the plan is formulated.

Not that strategy exists in a vacuum, you formulate it with the constraints imposed by available tactics. But the plan comes first, else it's likely to be just a reactive encounter.

I didn't mean the plan didn't come first, but that it is comprised of the tactics that you will use.

Has Dragon Age lost its identity, or am I just being grumpy about BioWare’s new take on it?

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Assemble, more like

www.pcgamer.com

Bioware getting slammed for its Hollywood-styled trailer. Trailer usually means nothing, though. Doubtful that it was even made by the dev team.

 

[Zloth]

Bioware getting slammed for its Hollywood-styled trailer. Trailer usually means nothing, though. Doubtful that it was even made by the dev team.

They got ripped for the first Dragon Age: Origins, trailer, too - and deservedly so. "This ain't your daddy's Bioware, look, we've got buckets of blood! Even our logo is all made of blood! Damn we're edgy!" (They made up for it with the Sacred Ashes trailer.)

It's been so long since that was made, they could say "This ain't your daddy's Dragon Age" this time around.

 

[Hveðrungr]

They got ripped for the first Dragon Age: Origins, trailer, too - and deservedly so. "This ain't your daddy's Bioware, look, we've got buckets of blood! Even our logo is all made of blood! Damn we're edgy!" (They made up for it with the Sacred Ashes trailer.)

It's been so long since that was made, they could say "This ain't your daddy's Dragon Age" this time around.

Gave me more of a “dis ur ❤️daddy❤️'s Dragon Age uwu” vibe tbh

 

[Pifanjr]

FOMO is alive and well—Life is Strange: Double Exposure has a 2-week early access period if you cough up some dough for its Ultimate Edition

Wanna avoid spoilers? You best avoid using YouTube for two entire weeks.

www.pcgamer.com

I think we should stop using the term "early access" for this phenomenon. Early Access already has a meaning and I'm sure publishers are hoping that their costumers are more lenient on bugs in their Ultimate edition releases by calling it "early access".

There must be a better term to distinguish this practice. Something like calling the "Ultimate" version, or whatever publishers call it, the "FOMO edition" of the game.

 

[Hveðrungr]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard's gameplay reveal emphasises just how terminally out of touch EA and BioWare have become

BioWare's latest RPG seems to be simultaneously ignoring its roots and stuck in the past.

www.pcgamer.com

Wow I really hate the combat in this gameplay reveal. It's nothing like what went before. It's a similar type of change (on a small scale) as going from Fallout 1&2 to Fallout 3.

 

[Zloth]

Wow I really hate the combat in this gameplay reveal. It's nothing like what went before. It's a similar type of change (on a small scale) as going from Fallout 1&2 to Fallout 3.

Certainly nothing at all like what has gone before. They've been trying to trend toward "more actiony," but this time it looks like you can only give your companions vague orders, you don't get to control them like before. So yeah, Mass Effect style companions, just as the article says.

Of course, Mass Effect was mighty fun, too.

The big question is, how complex and interesting is it going to get? The player is level 1 here. They've got to give all the people new to gaming some confidence, so it's going to be seriously easy for a while. What's going on 20 hours into the game? Is that going to be different than what's going on 40 hours in? Are we going to get into some open spaces, or will the game stay one long (but very pretty) corridor like in this reveal?

 

[Zed Clampet]

Obsidian CEO responds to worries Xbox could shut them down, too: 'I'm not worried about tomorrow'

The beloved RPG maker isn't watching its back after the sudden closures of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin.

www.pcgamer.com

Obsidian is one of the most beloved PC game developers. Closing them down would have long-term repercussions for Microsoft in the PC community. They already have their backs against the wall, losing so badly to Sony. Nothing good would come from this.

 

[Hveðrungr]

If only “Nothing good would come from this.” were historically a common reason for megacorporations not to make bad decisions.

 

[Zed Clampet]

If only “Nothing good would come from this.” were historically a common reason for megacorporations not to make bad decisions.

Yeah, no. I fully expect them to be gone next year at this time.

 

[Hveðrungr]

Yeah, no. I fully expect them to be gone next year at this time.

Exactly.

 

[Colif]

I think we should stop using the term "early access" for this phenomenon. Early Access already has a meaning and I'm sure publishers are hoping that their costumers are more lenient on bugs in their Ultimate edition releases by calling it "early access".

Um, yes... 2 weeks isn't early... its more paying to help us test the servers. You get to experience all the game breaking bugs and find them for us... who need QA. If you lucky we might even fix them in three months.

Early Access is getting game one year early and playing that game as its created. Star Citizen is the extreme version of Early Access... somewhere between 2 weeks and 14 years counts... closer to one end than other.Last Epoch was early access, I played it a year before they released it.

Anything less than a few months is just pretending to be early access.

 

[Hveðrungr]

@Pifanjr @Colif Steam recently came up with the term “Advanced Access” to fix the nomenclature problem you are discussing:

Steam closes refund policy loophole, finally comes up with a name for the thing where you can play a game early if you preorder

Let's hope publishers play ball and stop using "early access" to refer to two completely different things.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Colif]

its a start but as they say - Please, EA, Ubisoft, and everyone else, do us a favor and play along.

it depends on if there is money to be made in the confusion.
They must do it intentionally to attract all the kids who grew up playing early access.
Its the same thing, now give us $130 to do it...

 

[BeardyHat]

its a start but as they say - Please, EA, Ubisoft, and everyone else, do us a favor and play along.

it depends on if there is money to be made in the confusion.
They must do it intentionally to attract all the kids who grew up playing early access.
Its the same thing, now give us $130 to do it...

Haha, "all the kids." Early access isn't that old.

https://imgur.com/a/U8Z0y6n

WTF.

 

[Colif]

Well, its only been 11 years. Thats possibly a generation of people who grew up with the idea.

Prior to that you might get a few days extra if you bought collectors edition, I remember I started a little early in Age of Conan... just to find game wasn't finished yet. First area was amazing, it was where all reviewers saw, but after that it was sparse. It was an mmo though so early access was possible.

 

[BeardyHat]

Well, its only been 11 years. Thats possibly a generation of people who grew up with the idea.

Prior to that you might get a few days extra if you bought collectors edition, I remember I started a little early in Age of Conan... just to find game wasn't finished yet. First area was amazing, it was where all reviewers saw, but after that it was sparse. It was an mmo though so early access was possible.

WoW too, sort of. At least, there was the "beta" right prior to launch, but they wiped everything during actual launch. Still, I was 20 then.

Why is time like this?

 

[Colif]

i didn't play wow beta. I played it after it had been out a while.

it doesn't look so good now. I amazed I had 310ms while i played. Rubber banding across regions sometimes happened

just happened to have looked at photo earlier today.

Only games that could offer anything early were mmo I guess. Not that many online only single players until last 8? years.

 

[neogunhero]

The studio that made one of the first MMOs just announced a new one after 27 years

New zombie survival MMO Persist Online promises a "tough old-school experience."

www.pcgamer.com

Pretty interesting. I haven’t played, nor ever heard of Tibia before this, but I hope that the games 27 year long history will help make this new game really good. Looking forward to potentially trying this out. I generally like MMOs and the idea of them, but besides ESO, haven’t really gotten into them. Keeping on eye on this for sure.

 

[Pifanjr]

The studio that made one of the first MMOs just announced a new one after 27 years

New zombie survival MMO Persist Online promises a "tough old-school experience."

www.pcgamer.com

Pretty interesting. I haven’t played, nor ever heard of Tibia before this, but I hope that the games 27 year long history will help make this new game really good. Looking forward to potentially trying this out. I generally like MMOs and the idea of them, but besides ESO, haven’t really gotten into them. Keeping on eye on this for sure.

Tibia is the best MMO I've played because it's the only one where I didn't feel like I was just doing exactly what every other player was doing. A big part of that was that the game was far less linear than other games. The dungeons in particular were more like mazes and allowed you to feel like an explorer.

Though a large part was also that I never got to a very high level. I later learned that more serious players would know exactly where rare monsters spawn and you'd have large groups of players camping right outside the spawn zone, hoping to be the first to grab the loot when the boss respawned and was defeated.

 

[neogunhero]

Xbox isn't a console anymore, it's a multiplatform game development giant

Microsoft 'won' the summer showcases, but what does that mean when Marcus Fenix and Kratos are both on Steam?

www.pcgamer.com

Xbox is still obviously wanting to make hardware, and I have some thoughts on that. Consoles are increasingly getting just as powerful as your average gaming PC. I just did a little bit of research, the Xbox Series X was released at $450 MSRP, and for an equivalent gaming PC in terms of hardware, it would cost you closer to $1000 to build one in 2020. A Ryzen 3600 and RTX 3060 is apparently pretty close to the same gaming performance as that Xbox. Microsoft sells their consoles at a loss, recouping profits via game sales on its platforms.

With that business approach, I think Microsoft could more aggressively price their new consoles while maintaining good performance. With the walls between console and PC gaming starting to disappear, I think consoles will be the entry level machines for budget conscious gamers. Of course this has always been the case for as long as PC gaming and console gaming have coexisted, but now is the time to really market it more specifically that way. Introduce more PC exclusives to consoles, sell consoles cheaper, and get more people playing more games. No longer are customers wanting the latest console to play the latest exclusive, but instead they see games that were once PC only but couldn’t afford to buy a gaming PC, now buying a console as a low cost entry point to play those same games. There’s lot of games on Steam and the PC platform as a whole that haven’t made it to consoles. If we are bringing console exclusives to PC, then PC games should move the other way as well. Every game on every platform, but now with consoles as the cheaper route and gaming PCs as the more high-end premium route.

Don’t know if this makes much sense to anyone but me, I may have just worded this weirdly, but I think I got my point across.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Don’t know if this makes much sense to anyone but me, I may have just worded this weirdly, but I think I got my point across.

The problem is that there are no PC exclusives. No one pays anyone not to put their game on console. They just don't want be on console.

To get Sony games on PC, you talk to Sony. To get Xbox games on PC, you talk to Xbox. Who do you talk to to get PC games on consoles? There isn't anyone because PC is an open system. You would have to talk to each individual publisher/developer, and it would be pointless because for whatever reason they've already decided not to launch on console, mostly because they don't have enough money or knowledge to port the game.

It's just not a thing. There are no PC exclusives.

If Xbox and Playstation really liked your idea, you know what they would do? Stop being proprietary and run Windows. You know that Microsoft could easily make the Xbox run Windows games. They just don't want to. And Sony could build their OS in Linux and use Wine.

Wizard with a Gun developer Galvanic Games is closing: 'Sales are not strong enough to sustain our studio'

Wizard with a Gun launched just eight months ago.

www.pcgamer.com

This is more sad news. I'd heard of the game, but I thought it was a retro shooter, so I wasn't interested. Now that I actually visited the Steam page, I'm kind of thinking about getting it.