I may yet still. I've played 60 minutes so far and it doesn't quite feel right; I'm not sure if I should chalk that up to an update to the formula that I need to get used to or if it feels fundamentally flawed in some manner.
I may yet still. I've played 60 minutes so far and it doesn't quite feel right; I'm not sure if I should chalk that up to an update to the formula that I need to get used to or if it feels fundamentally flawed in some manner.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
Me and my immortal vampire horse Neighsforatu
He's my new immortal vampire horse after I accidentally killed my last immortal vampire horse.
He's my new immortal vampire horse after I accidentally killed my last immortal vampire horse.
Colif
Moderator
How to make multiplayer games seem popular even if they aren't
How to make MMO appear the same way.
Easy, make AI bots that copy how the actual players play and make them available to the game when the player is offline. I bet they never remove them so a games population will never shrink again. Only grow. More various characters to show new people who may not realise everyone else playing is a bot.
One way to keep WOW alive. Forever.
What am I talking about? Activision patents
Video is about COD but its everywhere. You pay $70 to play an algorith set up so you only win when they want you to. They rig games so if you buy a gun, the next match will make it seem like the purchase was a good one, to make you consider buying more
this isn't a game anymore. Casinos are almost a better investment and I don't believe in gambing... but you might actually get something out of it if you lucky. Here, its all set up to make you pay them for pixels.
How to make MMO appear the same way.
Easy, make AI bots that copy how the actual players play and make them available to the game when the player is offline. I bet they never remove them so a games population will never shrink again. Only grow. More various characters to show new people who may not realise everyone else playing is a bot.
One way to keep WOW alive. Forever.
What am I talking about? Activision patents
Video is about COD but its everywhere. You pay $70 to play an algorith set up so you only win when they want you to. They rig games so if you buy a gun, the next match will make it seem like the purchase was a good one, to make you consider buying more
this isn't a game anymore. Casinos are almost a better investment and I don't believe in gambing... but you might actually get something out of it if you lucky. Here, its all set up to make you pay them for pixels.
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ZedClampet
Community Contributor
I don't have time to watch the video right now, but if the video is about Activision patents, I have to point out that most patents are never used and never turn into anything at all. Companies and individuals file a lot of patents that are 'just in case' sorts of things. So just going by the odds, the best bet is that these patents aren't being used and never will be.
Yes, none in the launch. The problem was we all told them the game was unplayably bad, but they didn't delay it and then it got absolutely trounced. We weren't expecting them to get anything done in time for that launch date, we were expecting them to delay it.
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Colif
Moderator
He does comment on that and the statements of 2 Activision people seem to indicate it is in place. At least in COD. Its been in use since 2019, they put it in to replace Loot boxes. Its their way of making money without the players being aware its happening.
With more another indie game completed, i'm moving onto the next indie games i can pick up and finish quickly. this time i'm moving onto Carrion, which so far has been a jolly monster delight. I do have super house of dead ninjas installed but whether i want to play it i don't know. I've beaten the game on normal and pretty much seen most of what i want. being a roguelike i'm not really enticed to keep playing it as i've seen everything (hard is just no continues and you start from the top and have to complete it in one go). So i might just cross that off the list as done.
Onto other news, i've been kinda window shopping on various pc part stores to see whats around and i might switch to amd in the future, namely for its compatiability with future generation processors so i can upgrade the processor without shelling out new motherboards like intel. 2 things atm stop me from doing so. Firstly is energy/heat consumption. Secondly performance outside of gaming. The latter who knows might be negligible, considering my CPU is 7 years old and seems to be fine. Perhaps a couple generations down the line it might be fine.
Onto other news, i've been kinda window shopping on various pc part stores to see whats around and i might switch to amd in the future, namely for its compatiability with future generation processors so i can upgrade the processor without shelling out new motherboards like intel. 2 things atm stop me from doing so. Firstly is energy/heat consumption. Secondly performance outside of gaming. The latter who knows might be negligible, considering my CPU is 7 years old and seems to be fine. Perhaps a couple generations down the line it might be fine.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
Well it's yet another example of toxic/illegal behavior by big publishers who then turn around and act as if they have no idea why gamers are so angry all the time.
If they are really doing what the video claims, they better hope the FTC doesn't find out.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
If you like cyberpunk cities, relaxing city builders and free things, you can get all this at the same time with Dystopika, which is essentially free while in early access. Every update leading to launch gets added to the demo.
store.steampowered.com
Below is not nearly my best work. I just wanted to quickly throw something together for a screenshot. Took less than 5 minutes.
You start off with a number of buildings you can place, and new ones unlock over time, as do some things I obviously didn't get to while making that picture.
Dystopika on Steam
A city-building sandbox for futuristic cities. No goals, no management, just creativity and dark cozy vibes.
Below is not nearly my best work. I just wanted to quickly throw something together for a screenshot. Took less than 5 minutes.
You start off with a number of buildings you can place, and new ones unlock over time, as do some things I obviously didn't get to while making that picture.
Wow, Sacrifice is WAY shorter than I remembered! After just one afternoon, and I'm about half way through the campaign!
I started playing ELEX 2.
I like cutscenes more than the next guy, but even I'm getting bothered by them not just wresting control away from me out of nowhere, but also teleporting me when they do.
I climbed up a cliff and started exploring a seemingly abandoned town, when suddenly I triggered a cutscene. POOF! My character teleported over to the other side of the little town where a road enters. I was completely disoriented until I recognized one of the bigger buildings.
Another was even worse. It's right after the tutorial, so no worries about spoilers here:
View: https://youtu.be/OIait5EgSyY?si=DAqe7lq6LT1UYWii&t=705
For me, it was even worse than what this guy got because I was on the other side of the valley and up higher, so I was nowhere near those critters below. Then, suddenly, I was on some barren landscape!? I thought the game was showing me some sort of flashback!
I started playing ELEX 2.
I like cutscenes more than the next guy, but even I'm getting bothered by them not just wresting control away from me out of nowhere, but also teleporting me when they do.
I climbed up a cliff and started exploring a seemingly abandoned town, when suddenly I triggered a cutscene. POOF! My character teleported over to the other side of the little town where a road enters. I was completely disoriented until I recognized one of the bigger buildings.
Another was even worse. It's right after the tutorial, so no worries about spoilers here:
For me, it was even worse than what this guy got because I was on the other side of the valley and up higher, so I was nowhere near those critters below. Then, suddenly, I was on some barren landscape!? I thought the game was showing me some sort of flashback!
Did forums die? We started using Teams for a lot of company communication and it sure looks a lot like a forum to me. They don't call it that, of course - that would be like saying "thin client" when you're talking about cloud computing.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
(Note: I couldn't track down the beginning of this conversation, so if I've misunderstood what you were talking about, I apologize. If you were just talking about business intranet forums, then I don't know anything about that as I never worked at a company that had one)
Forums are definitely not dead. It just depends on the situation. On3, Rivals and 247Sports are thriving, each with hundreds of forums, and On3 only started about 2 years ago. You have to pay $9.99/mo for those forums, too, and many game developers have forums, although I don't belong to any because you have to have a separate log-in from their sites.
Steam has 10's of thousands of forums, most of them active. Many tech companies have forums. On and on.
Sure some things have moved to social media, but forums are alive and kicking.
No, just lost market share naturally as more competing and simpler comms apps appeared. In my own case, our viewership is not a techie audience, so simplicity will always win out, = our forum dead.
Epic Rewards
Anyone get some rewards out of the blue?
Colif
Moderator
They don't like to talk about matchmaking in COD. It took them years to even admit they use Skill Based Match Making. But they don't give a lot of details about how it works exactly. And in reality its more a hybred as they also use Engagement Optimised Match Making which tries to get people to play the game as long as possible, and puts players in a situation where they buy things their opponents are using against them. its about expanding time or money spent in game.
Combined you are constantly playing against people of same ability as you and it can become grindy... so pay more money to go faster. Pay to win... or at least, pay to get somewhere. Some people will, many will give up over time.
If you do play better its likely to dump you on a server full of cheats or people same lvl as you, just to make you lose. Lag seems to get worse the better you get as well. Guy in video below reverse boosts himself into servers with people with low KDI just to get no lag at all. They try to equal out skill with lag.
Its a game about equity, you all end up with nothing.
They deny using bots and yet - AI bots seem to show up in games and either assist you or ruin your game.
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ZedClampet
Community Contributor
Honestly, I don't know anything about it. I thought all PvP games had bots. Counter Strike replaces players who disconnect with bots. I read them talking about how they made the bots slightly worse than the average human player so that teams wouldn't start voting to kick people out just so they could get bots on their team. Rocket League does the same thing, but not as well. If your Rocket League teammate disconnects, you might as well disconnect, too, because the bots are miserable. Those are the only two games I know about other than Forza, which is too complicated to go into at the moment because there are so many different types of races.
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Colif
Moderator
I only found out today myself. I mostly ignore the COD games. Apart from to laugh at numbering system as they up to 29 games now. Wouldn't know it from numbers... keep restarting. Must appear new and not old worn out ideas rehashed for the 5th time... WW2 has lasted forever it seems. Up to Black Ops 5 now... its due for a restart itself.
Its population is dropping, people coming back to look at next game drops every year. Only an estimated (since they never mention actual player numbers apart from Steam) 500k people play it worldwide now (on all platforms (excluding mobile)), so adding bots will let them extend it longer... extract as much money from people as possible.
That 500k is for the entire franchise, not just one game. So 3 games in total.
A few more years of it to come, can't let it die without killing it.
Its population is dropping, people coming back to look at next game drops every year. Only an estimated (since they never mention actual player numbers apart from Steam) 500k people play it worldwide now (on all platforms (excluding mobile)), so adding bots will let them extend it longer... extract as much money from people as possible.
That 500k is for the entire franchise, not just one game. So 3 games in total.
A few more years of it to come, can't let it die without killing it.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
Don't cheaters use bots in a lot of games? Pretty sure I've heard of that happening.
Colif
Moderator
I can see lots of reports of bots in cod mobile. Its difficult to get past the COD Mobile answers for cheat bots.
There are AI controlled bots that you can add to some modes for offline use but I think the issue above is about bots showing in modes that they shouldn't be in. Or haven't been announced as being in. Filling in parties in MP when players can't get anyone to join... for instance.
callofduty.fandom.com
I think most of the cheats used in game are aim assists or ones that let you see everyone even through walls.
There are AI controlled bots that you can add to some modes for offline use but I think the issue above is about bots showing in modes that they shouldn't be in. Or haven't been announced as being in. Filling in parties in MP when players can't get anyone to join... for instance.
Bots
Bots (known as a short term for robots) are A.I. controlled players that appear in Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare , Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered...
I think most of the cheats used in game are aim assists or ones that let you see everyone even through walls.
Most use aim assists/wall hacks, but with games like COD, you also have hacks where people can use more advanced settings for adjusting just how much you are cheating and even with what type of gun you want to be cheating with. Often they toggle the cheats depending on whether they have spectators on them or not. In games like Escape from Tarkov, they even use their own personal body movement to tell the other exploiters that they also are abusing the game so they can avoid each other.
Bots are for the most part used for FPS games and if I am not mistaken Unreal Gold was one of the first games that introduced them. I remember playing against them, and on the hardest difficulty, they were quite hard.
Bots managed by players you'll find mostly in MMO games. World of Warcraft is perhaps the most famous example. I remember griefing people using bots in WOLTK (Wrath of the Lich King) by attacking mobs the bots were farming for materials and having them finish them off while I got the materials myself since I had done the most damage. I made it so annoying that one of the guys controlling the bots made an appearance, yelled at me in Chinese, and removed the bot. That was a good day.
Lost Ark is another example also of how severe the bots problem is. They have taken over the economy and when I logged in last time in Lost Ark, the first thing I noticed was tens of tens of different bots running in lines going from one farming spot to another. It is insane how bad it still is and it shows that some companies have no clue what they are doing or they are like Blizzard and "keep" the bots because it gives them tons of income and an artificial increase in player numbers.
Bots are for the most part used for FPS games and if I am not mistaken Unreal Gold was one of the first games that introduced them. I remember playing against them, and on the hardest difficulty, they were quite hard.
Bots managed by players you'll find mostly in MMO games. World of Warcraft is perhaps the most famous example. I remember griefing people using bots in WOLTK (Wrath of the Lich King) by attacking mobs the bots were farming for materials and having them finish them off while I got the materials myself since I had done the most damage. I made it so annoying that one of the guys controlling the bots made an appearance, yelled at me in Chinese, and removed the bot. That was a good day.
Lost Ark is another example also of how severe the bots problem is. They have taken over the economy and when I logged in last time in Lost Ark, the first thing I noticed was tens of tens of different bots running in lines going from one farming spot to another. It is insane how bad it still is and it shows that some companies have no clue what they are doing or they are like Blizzard and "keep" the bots because it gives them tons of income and an artificial increase in player numbers.
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ZedClampet
Community Contributor
Random suggestion for Supermarket Simulator.
Since through most of the game your store will be short and wide (like your mother), put your aisles horizontally instead of vertically. You'll be able to get a lot more products in your store.
Since through most of the game your store will be short and wide (like your mother), put your aisles horizontally instead of vertically. You'll be able to get a lot more products in your store.
Colif
Moderator
shame the only answer is anti cheat programs that run at ring 0 access on PC, and think they own the PC, not you. I know Valorants anti cheat does this, not sure about others. It can stop other programs running.
Blizzard sees it as a way to make money too. Do a mass bot ban and make all that extra money from new accounts being added again. Bots in WOW have been there for over 20 years now.
AI Bots run by the company who makes game and who can replicate the actions/profiles of other players is a new twist. Will Wow one day be full of bots... farmers and AI bots pretending to be real people... they have added a feature where items put on sale on AH by players are bought by the game, to make it easier for people to sell their stuff on servers with low population counts. So will farmer bots notice that there aren't actually any players? Probably when no one is buying gold. Wow will be dead when there aren't any farmer bots in it anymore.
Next step in illusion would be for the AI copies of players to also show in the guild lists and chat with players so they think they not alone. Must keep money rolling in.
I finally bought Animal Well last night and got only 2 hours in. So far I’m loving it. It does not hold your hand at all, you are figuring out the game all on your own which is very refreshing. It’s not a very hard game, but you need to explore the well on your own and figure out you next moves just by exploring. I got a few items and I love how they work. For example you have a bubble wand that shoots a bubble platform you can jump on. There are certain rules on how it works and you learn it by experimenting. The bubble goes down as you stand on it, and once you jump off it pops. If it’s above a fan, you can use a bubble to lift you up to a high platform. You use these different rules and mechanics to your advantage and the game gets quite cleaver about it. It’s small things like this that inspire you to get creative and wanting to learn all the mechanics of the game. The music is also so soothing, it’s a very ambient soundtrack but it fits the visuals and tone nicely. The only thing I didn’t like so far is the CRT scanlines but luckily you can turn off that effect. I prefer the pure pixels without the overlay effects. I’m looking forward to playing a lot more over the weekend.
Elex 2 definitely doesn't sound much like what Piranha Bytes has been making for the last 25 years. Too bad, because even though Gothic definitely had cutscenes here and there, they didn't feel super intrusive.
But this does remind me I should still try the first Elex at some point. I own it, just never bothered with it.
It's really unfortunate that this is the general state of multiplayer games these days, it seems. Rife with cheaters and bots, to the point that it's really not worth getting into anything and even if it's not infested with all of them, everything is so toxic (ugh, I hate that word) and sweaty, it just isn't fun. Don't feel like there's much of anything that can be done to change that.
I'm feeling a little listless with games right now. Been playing HROT, which I am very much loving, but it feels like it's going to go quickly and I'm still looking for something with a little more staying power to play right now, but I don't know what that might be. I just don't know what I'm in the mood for at the moment, but it does feel like I'm on a bit of a first person perspective kick. Would like to play something on my Steam Deck, but shooters are just not fun for me on it, so I'm not sure what to do with that. Maybe I'll see if I can get Outer Worlds working on it again.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
What if the developer's bots start chatting with the cheat bots? What if there's no one actually playing, just bots?
Ever hear of heaven-banning? It's the idea that instead of shadow-banning a user, which frustrates them because they can tell they aren't getting any interaction, you put them in a fake instance surrounded by bots that only they can see and who praise their contributions endlessly, thus keeping the user happy and away from the rest of the population.
Like this post if you're a bot who wants to prove that I am being heaven-banned right now.
Like this post if you're a bot who wants to prove that I am being heaven-banned right now.
Colif
Moderator
I guess it depends on purpose of the cheat bots. If they there to farm resources, its likely the people selling gold will notice a drop off in customers. As they only farm to sell on markets to make gold, to sell to players... no players, no reason to run bots.
So far we don't have player run bots that can play as well as humans, so that aspect of cheating doesn't exist yet.
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