May PC Gamer Article Discussion

[Pifanjr]

I do like Linux, but I find myself screwing with it and trying to get it configured just the way I like a whole lot more than I find myself actually using my computer for computer stuff when I run it.

This is my main problem with Linux too, it would just take too much time to configure it compared to just continuing to use Windows.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'd rather a turn-based strategy game, as I love XCOM 1/2, but I'm down to see what he can come up with. Honestly, The Sims/Gilmore Girls is far more interesting to me than Marvel characters. I've heard Midnight Suns is great, but I cannot get over the hump of superheroes, which I just can't muster a single **** about.

Midnight Suns is pretty good if you can get past the non-stop, blockbuster-style banter rotting your brain.

 

[Zloth]

Midnight Suns is pretty good if you can get past the non-stop, blockbuster-style banter rotting your brain.

`Tis good banter!

 

[Brian Boru]

my main problem with Linux too, it would just take too much time to configure it

You guys are way ahead of me. When I looked into putting Linux on an old laptop, I got derailed by choosing between the ~200 different versions of it. I decided to keep being grumpy about Windows' 6 different versions instead!

 

[Hveðrungr]

Ubisoft insists yet again that its uncanny AI-generated 'NEO-NPCs' will make games 'more alive and richer', whatever that means

Are you feeling immersed yet?

www.pcgamer.com

I still think that the idea of a game you can play forever is something a lot of people think they want, but would get bored of very quickly

prepares to load up Skyrim again

 

[Hveðrungr]

Midnight Suns is pretty good if you can get past the non-stop, blockbuster-style banter rotting your brain.

I thought the banter was a lot better than in the movies. They were able to get to human pathos, rather than just Joss Whedon quips. The main exception was Deadpool in the expansion, but that's just Deadpool.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

How much of Midnight Suns is playing the game vs hanging out with Superheroes? Ive little to no interest in the characters, but the card part game sounds pretty interesting and reviews made it sound like it was mostly just chatting in the base.

 

[Pifanjr]

Ubisoft insists yet again that its uncanny AI-generated 'NEO-NPCs' will make games 'more alive and richer', whatever that means

Are you feeling immersed yet?

www.pcgamer.com

I still think that the idea of a game you can play forever is something a lot of people think they want, but would get bored of very quickly

prepares to load up Skyrim again

I agree. There are already a lot of games I could play "forever", like Skyrim, I just need to alternate between them. I don't think AI would change anything about this.

 

[Hveðrungr]

How much of Midnight Suns is playing the game vs hanging out with Superheroes? Ive little to no interest in the characters, but the card part game sounds pretty interesting and reviews made it sound like it was mostly just chatting in the base.

So, there are three parts of the game:

1. The fights
   These are the card-driven battles and they are really excellent. You take three heroes and each has a deck of eight cards that you get to customise. A bunch of your time back at base will also be unlocking new cards and upgrading your deck. Assuming you play on a sufficiently hard difficulty, which you should (the game brilliantly incentivises this with extra cosmetics) this will be about 60% of your time.
2. The adventure-puzzler
   Before and after each day's fight you can go jogging around the grounds of your country mansion, picking flowers (crafting materials), solving little puzzles, and discovering lore. It's actually lovely and a great relaxation between the battles, though I can see why people who just want battles might find it a drag. You can ignore this if you want, you'll just have slightly fewer resources to improve your decks but that's fine as you can just keep the difficulty lower if you're struggling and the game is super-easy on low levels. A good balance is to only do it intermittently: the game doesn't make clear enough that there are way more resources available when it's raining, for example. Even if you do it a bunch this will probably be about 30% of your time.
3. The dating sim
   The most controversial bit, most evenings you can engage in a friendship dating sim with your party. You go on friendship dates with your party, give them gifts they'll like, pick dialogue options they'll like, etc. I was very sceptical of this as I'm not into capesh*t movies but I found it to actually be quite chill and sweet. Again this is optional, your heroes will just be slightly weaker: there are battle perks and special combo cards you unlock by playing the friendship dating sim. There are group activities which are a) totally optional but b) fun and very important in terms of getting the lore. Obviously there are also major plot beats that have their own cutscenes and so on, like in any game such as XCOM. Even if you go in deep on this it will probably be about 10% of your playtime.

I think people who say that the game is “mostly” the non-fight bits are not playing on a hard enough difficulty level. On Ultimate III each fight will take a long time, and you will have to reload to try different strategies to complete them. I don't mean save-scumming for RNG, as the RNG has been almost all removed, but realising that strategy A wasn't working and reloading to try strategy B.

 

[Brian Boru]

There are already a lot of games I could play "forever", like Skyrim, I just need to alternate between them

Yep, this—I already have a stable of such games, some from 00s.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Thanks, more likely to grab it when its on sale now at least.

 

[ZedClampet]

I thought the banter was a lot better than in the movies.

That bar is so low you can't even trip over it

 

[Hveðrungr]

The bar runs alongside the ocean-floor cables that carry the internet between continents.

 

[red_5ive]

You guys are way ahead of me. When I looked into putting Linux on an old laptop, I got derailed by choosing between the ~200 different versions of it. I decided to keep being grumpy about Windows' 6 different versions instead!

I haven't touched Linux since the 90s when Red Hat was king. There were far less choices back then, but it still wasn't any better as configuring each device was a nightmare and you had to know every single spec. I think my first build took close to a month to get dialed in. A lot of head scratching and WTF moments, and there was no YouTube back then to save you.

 

[ZedClampet]

Microsoft is reportedly taking the nuclear option: releasing the next Call of Duty day one on Game Pass

They're really going for it.

www.pcgamer.com

according to The Verge, Game Pass failed to meet its subscriber growth targets in 2021 and '22, while a recent IGN report quoted 2023's subscriber growth as having slowed down even more.

So this will fix this year's subscriber growth, and then Microsoft will make next year's projected subscriber growth something unattainable, and they'll be back in the same boat again.

The business world's basic idea of endless growth needs to be replaced with something like "sustained profitability". But, no, that doesn't help people's get rich quick stock schemes, which inevitably leads to acquisitions, contractions, inflation and layoffs--all the nastiness of modern capitalism. It's an unsustainable economic death spiral that has been going on for many years and will eventually end in a long depression.

Happy thoughts.

 

[Colif]

That fixes cod as well, as its not just Game Pass that isn't getting the numbers they need. Watched videos in last few days, every new COD game they release recently, they get less people coming back. They need a new audience (this seems familiar) before its only AI bots playing the game.

This way people who might not have bought it are thrown into a game where no one wins... I mean, you not allowed to dominate, the game will put you into lobbies where you can't win. They made is noob friendly already, it just penalises people if they get good. Its there to sell you weapons, not to be a fun game to play. They have found that good players don't buy skins... so better to drive them off once they past a certain lvl, they no use to you now.

Its a way to get people to experience their shop. For "free"
If they can get AI bots up and running that replicate other players, new people may never know any better.

 

[Hveðrungr]

If you hire me to train your dog I'll get soap in its eyes, pat it with a severed hand, and teach it to disembowel your enemies

What's your favorite dog trick? Play dead? Or… kill?

www.pcgamer.com

I hook up a trailer to my truck, stuff a customer's horse into it (facing backwards, which I don't know for sure is incorrect but definitely feels incorrect)

Ackshually, horses do usually ride backwards in horse trailers. You see them on the motorways quite often. Apparently, it's something to do with them falling when facing forward and being unable to get up

 

[ZedClampet]

That fixes cod as well, as its not just Game Pass that isn't getting the numbers they need. Watched videos in last few days, every new COD game they release recently, they get less people coming back. They need a new audience (this seems familiar) before its only AI bots playing the game.

This way people who might not have bought it are thrown into a game where no one wins... I mean, you not allowed to dominate, the game will put you into lobbies where you can't win. They made is noob friendly already, it just penalises people if they get good. Its there to sell you weapons, not to be a fun game to play. They have found that good players don't buy skins... so better to drive them off once they past a certain lvl, they no use to you now.

Its a way to get people to experience their shop. For "free"
If they can get AI bots up and running that replicate other players, new people may never know any better.

I'm not sure they've had fewer sales each year. I think their player engagement and retainment have been worse. Maybe this will help that. Not sure about that either. I'm just going off of Steam sales. Maybe consoles have been down.

And are the numbers really going down or are they just not going up enough to meet projections?

 

[DXCHASE]

Call of Duty and sub-par franchises like it should be relegated to gamepass anyways. Its been sub-par for a decade now and there are plenty of other franchises that deserve to be off something like gamepass more than CoD. Also, because the campaigns in these games are ~3 hours long, its a good chance for players like me who have absolutely 0 interest in its MP, to play its campaign because it was once a great SP game, without spending 70 usd.

 

[ZedClampet]

Call of Duty and sub-par franchises like it should be relegated to gamepass anyways. Its been sub-par for a decade now and there are plenty of other franchises that deserve to be off something like gamepass more than CoD. Also, because the campaigns in these games are ~3 hours long, its a good chance for players like me who have absolutely 0 interest in its MP, to play its campaign because it was once a great SP game, without spending 70 usd.

Honestly, I can't believe they still make a single-player campaign. It's very expensive to make and does nothing for the part they really care about, selling skins to multiplayer people. I guess they think people will refuse to actually pay for the game without the single-player.

 

[Colif]

Chatgpt 4.0 has a memory tab, it can record things about you and learn your interests. If you want to look at what it remembers, look in settings/Memory. You can edit and remove things you don't want it to remember.

 

[ZedClampet]

Chatgpt 4.0 has a memory tab, it can record things about you and learn your interests. If you want to look at what it remembers, look in settings/Memory. You can edit and remove things you don't want it to remember.

Currently I'm using Google's AI. I don't know about ChatGPT in it's raw form, but after Microsoft gets ahold of it and tacks it onto Windows, it refuses to answer a wide array of questions due to political correctness and misplaced moral guidelines. I told it to make me a picture of a freckled kid with a big smile and missing teeth, and it told me it couldn't do that. Thanks for making me feel unnecessarily uncomfortable, Microsoft. I assume I'm on some sort of Microsoft pervert watch list now.

 

[Hveðrungr]

@ZedClampet If you're concerned about “political correctness and misplaced moral guidelines”, I'm surprised you're willing to use Gemini (previously Bard).

 

[Colif]

I don't use any of them. I ignore Gemini on my phone and I took co pilot off my task bar in win 11. I only use chatgpt sometimes to look at possible answers.

They could be a powerful tool if we can get one that isn't biased politically. Might be hard to do but we have to try.
Need to also stop AI from making up things that don't exist. They need to be reliable.

Right now people think they are intelligent... when really the bot doesn't know what it said last sentence. Being used to answer questions on Google search means people will believe everything they say. Its not ready yet but true believers think it is.

So far Chatgpt 4.0 and the Gooogle search AI is only in USA. Lucky I can ignore it for the time being... google one might be harder. Will have to find ways to block it on Firefox.

 

[ZedClampet]

@ZedClampet If you're concerned about “political correctness and misplaced moral guidelines”, I'm surprised you're willing to use Gemini (previously Bard).

It's far more permissive in what it will answer than Copilot. I need to use one of them because they are great tools.