Yeah, they know they are doing though, they are aiming for those that work 9-5 have life and kids and some spare changes and milk them hard. Like this game would take 200 hours to complete fully with X hundreds of hours of post game content that was designed to make your grind, but you can also pay for this [xp booster, resource pack, legendary set, etc] to make sure you can enjoy the post game content if you don’t have the time to grind the game how it’s “meant to be played”.

In my AC:Odessey example, I think at one point the designer might be doing a heavy zelda influenced where you just pick up stuff enemies dropped and the blacksmiths are there for you to repair items broken as resource dump. (which make sense and very fitting of that era and how resource would work) But once that MTX department put their finger in now you have a derailed system. There is a spread sheet that list the hours required to upgrade a legendary piece to which level, and recommended level to get them(as their starting level is fixed and not like the enemy droppped item that matches your level), I saw the numbers and downloaded the cheat engine table the next hour.

I got AC:Odyssey during one of the sale cause I dig Greek mythology, had to get cheat engine and spare me the grind for upgrading gears and ship. Like sure you can just keep picking up randomly dropped Epic/Rare and replacement them when you leveling up(there are even player quest that put in specific spot to give you resource for those upgrades, just so other players can farm it) But I ain’t get any time for that, I just cheat engine in max out resource and upgrade my Legendary gears I found through out the game. And you know what? By the end of the game(and I didn’t find every Legendary, like maybe 60~70% of them) it would take me setting the resource to max twice to fully upgrade all my legendary + epic(with perks I like) gears. It would take probably months of my gaming time should I got it on console and can not use cheat engine.

No, upgrade gear is not required to finish the game. But after this experience I decides to never get another Ubisoft AC game nor any RPG on console or with always online feature(which means all transaction are done and authenticated to prevent cheating. ) I’ve done plenty open world, RPG, Monster Hunters without having to cheat. But the recent single player grinding + selling time saver booster pack make me whip out the cheat engine again. And I only cheat those stupid resource gating game that are designed to pad hours in to your play through.

Because FSR3 is really new, released Sep 2023. Even the games that actually can patch in FSR3 didn’t get to do it properly until Avatar nailed it and just earlier this month released another update to push it further. In short, AMD is working with devs to improve their plugin integration to various engine devs, and I don’t think 3.1 is the “end goal”.

FSR 3’s result really depends on how developer understand and work with the proposed render pipeline compare to DLSS(which basically runs AI kernal to guess what pixel values to fill). Especially with games that features pip scope(fake UI scopes with on the fly fov changes are fine) or some translucent elements where it can not do the velocity buffer properly. (basically most of the fringeness on edge or flickering/swimming are mostly from precision, and ghosting are from wrong velocity when you see the old FSR artifacts).

cause commercial rental is a commitment, if you can’t find another company to take over your lease, chances are you have to pay the majority of left over amount + penalty + restoration. Licensor commitments are similar but probably on tech/software licensing, ie. server rentals, Maya/Speedtree licensing agreement for the site, whatever cloud service they use for backup and share stuff, etc. Those at bigger scale aren’t paid year to year like your regular indie studio just subscribe to Adobe/Autodesk for app uses per seat.

Yeah, the title is pretty much just written that way to have that shock factor.

OP, I’ve blocked any channel that has his head in the thumbnail on youtube, but I will make an exception to your account because you are cool and on lemmy. But next time I will block the account that post link that has this head(or other head I don’t like) in the thumbnail.

Since they are bought by Amazon I think any service they wasn’t on AWS would have been moved to AWS. Basically, on demand video streaming service (netflix, youtube, etc) does have finer control of how they want to re-encode and have like bit rate throttle on the server/client side so you don’t see too much buffering if internet connection is acting up. This means they can throttle you down to 360p like youtube auto if their data center isn’t fast enough to fetch the high bit rate yet and then feed you the higher quality one once they got it. (or down grade if your connection goes bad) But twitch stream is like I have a 10Mbits stream incoming and I have to copy, run a 2nd pass on the fly for different resolution, duplicate to outgoing servers and send to user all under 4~6s delay. I am not expert on the backend side and only have some experience dealing with streaming around 2016~2018. So to me that’s incredible feat but the short timespan means they can’t crunch the output bit rate even if it’s pretty static video. Compare to youtube, if I uploaded a 20~30 minutes video in about 12GB on disk, it took them about 3~5 hours to re-encode, even if the source is already encoded with AV1. (I am not partner so I join the queue like any normal pleb on the internet.)

edit forgot to respond to the cloud GPU thing, I think AWS will be charging Twitch the same way as other company, so AWS aren’t really “losing” money if Twitch choose to use cloud instance with GPU(which would be kinda dumb). They need higher throughput for the data in/out so whatever the CPU ingest part I mentioned above is just to breakdown the stream and feed to user as quick as possible. They are not going to waste anytime to give you better quality stream with lower bandwidth cost. they just feed you whatever fits into their bandwidth budget basically.

very typical for people that never even run or host their own server from data center or even cloud service.

live streaming is worse in bandwidth consumption compare to youtube with same resolution input to output. Like youtube can do whatever they like to keep the outgoing low even if you encode according to spec. But streaming with the demand of like 4~6s delay their 2nd pass to try lower the output bitrate is just not gonna be as good as youtube. That’s why twitch still don’t have 4k stream, they have new beta programs thanks to newer codec on newer GPU, as otherwise their data center is gonna get crushed hard.

They even bought out Rocket League and delisted it from Steam, even though it was already published and had been on the platform for years.

As a PSN/Steam launch Rocket League player and still playing. The only thing I don’t like about this decision is that it’s losing the workshop integration since Epic doesn’t have their own implementation. Otherwise I don’t blame them for doing this and it does not affect any “new” players after the F2P switch. Workshop was eventually rectified with community mod for EGS version but I wish there is workshop maps on consoles as well, some of them are really well made, my son love those a lot.

Note, it does not mean I like or approve how they run Rocket League and recent changes. In fact I decided to stop buying anything on RL with recent removal of player trading until they implement new features or improve RL that’s worth my bucks. I’ve paid enough in RL to let me go another 5~7 years for my share of server cost. (base on my calculation of hosting a server with similar capacity, my numbers might be off but pretty sure I paid more than enough. average around 70~90 CAD each year since launch. )

I can’t criticize Epic for making their own properties exclusive

If I buy off Skyrim’s right and have my own store and did the calculator for risk and return, you’d be dame sure I will delist it and only host on my store so I don’t have to pay another store front 30% for the new Alan Wake II engine powered version of Skyrim.

Why buying exclusive deals are everywhere because making profitable games are almost like making correct bet on penny stocks. As a developer I would choose safe income to ensure we can keep going if no one else is willing to offer exclusivity deals. Those deals are really good for indie games especially if they are self-publishing instead of having to split with a stronger backing publisher. This is the part most steam worshiper or people that criticize Epic’s moves don’t get their head around and then threaten to “boycott” their once “loved” projects or developers, call them greedy, and abandon the fans, or backers. I believe some dev even promise to give out steam/gog keys after the exclusive deal expires but still getting shamed to death by accepting such deal. Developers aren’t your personal slaves, they got bills to pay and company to run.

Sorry, I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at with this. Are you saying other storefronts/platforms on PC aren’t free, or that Epic Games Store currently does a better job?

No, sorry for my failed sarcasm, EGS as storefront are probably worse than EA’s Origin that was retired or Ubisoft’s crazy Uplay. It’s impossible with the current market share and dominance from Steam even if Epic actually put serious resource into making EGS better, and we all know they aren’t. Because any right minded person would put more resource on product that make them money, for Epic it’s Fortnite, for Valve it’s Steam and not [Insert project name] 3. Just like Gabe have his plenty of pet projects, Tim also have his own pet store front and law suits. Rich people do what rich people do.

And, I want to point out, Tencent the venture capital/investment arm and Tencent the publisher is very different entity. Like yeah they have the CCP tie and stuff but the people that runs the venture capital is just similar to any other venture capital, they want their investment make them profit. Compare to say, EA/Activision buying your studio, I’ve heard better things from industry friends. Oh, and they would try to avoid publish that Tencent owns their shares etc to avoid this kinda of finger pointing from internet folks. Even the Tencent venture capital people knows this and suggest keeping acquisition/investment under wrap. Epic is public company so they have to disclose. Wouldn’t it make sense? If you are a venture capital project manager would you:

1. pick and invest company that have good potential and planning to carry out their project and product then make big bucks in return and racking in your bonus. Less effort more result?

2. invest and dip your fingers into everything you can using your board voting power thus make future investment collaboration more difficult. And then getting fired because the company complaint in postmortem?

EA/Activision did their thing because they were in the game of owing your IP and then cut you off from your creation. They have long history of doing that and then fuck up the sequels/prequels/reboots, they don’t care since they got what they wanted. EA was doing much better now from what I can hear.

My points and arguments are solely on don’t view Epic as a malicious actor and focus on what changes it can bring to the digital game selling store front. Way too many people just “fuck Epic” and does not see the full picture and place their loyalty with a platform, just like fans of console wars. For example, during the past sale, I bought Witchfire on EGS, bought Cyberpunk on GOG even though I don’t have good experience with Galaxy, almost bought the new Jedi on EA Play but decided against it because Disney doesn’t need more of my money and I should not give in to my StarWars fan itch and buy a so-so product from the reviews I read. I made my purchase decision solely on one simple rule, how can I give the developer more revenue cut from the purchase I made.

There is actually a case going on regarding the platform pricing parity.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action

And there are other articles that checks for if you can sell at lower price(without temp sales) on EGS, only 5 out of 41 did so. I take it with some handful of salt cause ars didn’t actually list out the games and who is the publisher behind those 5. That’s why I post the first link from a developer’s stand point. We will only know details once the case developed more.

Regarding reviews, it’s like manage or moderate a forum, but it has huge impact if your changes aren’t communicated, I just list this one but if you are more interested you can dig up older/newer changes. Simply put, if it wasn’t through backlash and developers pulling teeth to push some odd changes like this back to a more neutral place. (ie. Early Access Reviews, Product received for free, product refunded tags are all much later than this article.) Steam’s reviews would be something like youtube shorts that I simply skip. Is it better in the end? I don’t know, cause you can still influence how popular a review is by the upvote/found useful from marketing campaign. Extra costs from developer to marketing(and still subject them to exploits), harder to navigate for consumer(like Amazon reviews), it’s really messy and not really consumer/producer friendly.

I put my points in simply because there is a overwhelming “worshiping” of Valve/Steam that make the 30% cut seems justifiable, and distribution for digital good seriously can’t be more expensive than physicals right? you can go check how much average Amazon charges seller even given it’s dominant position as digital market place. Or simply put it this way, youtube/netflix/social bandwidth consumption is bigger than game distributions for average user. It might be a case for triple-As that come at ~45G per game but vast majority of games are about 1~2 hours worth of streaming(<20GB), I’d like Valve simply provide a usage based charge like cloud providers and developers can pick and choose what features they wanted to pay accordingly. 30% cut is not normal just as lootbox is not normal, they did it simply because they can. (as in traditional brick-and-mortar shop like BestBuy charging extras for cables etc, even with Amazon as competitor.)

Sorry if I miss some parts to provide follow ups, simply too tired to focus on stuff. Mark my words, once Gabe passed gamers are gonna have the reckoning coming for them. All my purchases are based on how much money the developers can get at the end. I buy games on store/launcher even if I don’t like them, but if more bucks goes to developer, that’s where I choose to buy. That’s the important part, we buy stuff to support the developer we like/love, not to support the “platform” selling them.

Valve’s steam provides values to consumer but aren’t entirely “consumer friendly”. Some of their “give ins” are entirely because of competition.

Examples:

• self refund and refund window, directly copy EA’s origin.
• allow big publisher to negotiate store cut, direct response to Epic’s store cut.
• linux push is entirely for steam’s own survival, not a pro-consumer move.
• their policy changes on steam reviews over the years.
• the Steam UI revamp multiple times and makes discovery pretty messy when they tried to gamify the discovery process. All for easier marketing campaign pushes. (I found it pretty annoying, but I also don’t like the Netflix style on EGS or other store front.)
• Valve’s market place and their key/lootbox and cross game drops are among the pioneers just shy of the scummy gacha from the mobile space.
• Valve’s policy dictates that you can not sell at lower price on different store front. Ie. a game dev selling on EGS can take off 18% and get the same amount of revenue from the store front, but they can’t price lower because of Valve’s policy. That’s not consumer friendly.

The fact that Valve can just charge 30% even if a developer didn’t use “any” steam feature is simply because they can. And we are all eating the cost cause developers have to factor that in as well.

care to layout how he buy his way into his own monopoly?

• buy exclusives or studio? most big publishers do that.
• give free games out? It’s consumer friendly.
• drive Valve or other store front out of business? lol
• make EGS/EOS so good and free that no one wants to publish on Steam? lol, any advance in that 2 department Steam as platform will respond way before they take foot hold. (EOS voice chat back end does work nicer compare to steam’s one if the game build for it. BUT, many gamers just use discord instead.)

anything I missed?

Epic’s capital is tiny compare to other big publishers.(MS, Sony, Tencent)

good luck with that angle, practically “all” creative industry software have a free learning or community edition until you cross certain threshold and they are also all very dominant software, not because there are no competition, but more like existing market share friction. Like asking Maya artist to transition to Blender.

There are also plenty of game engine out there that are free or cheaper, UE4 or UE5 aren’t exactly click 2 buttons and you have a game. (in fact, people spend decent amount of time to trim features/plugins they don’t use/need from the source to cut build time and memory cost for the shipping build.

I bought on launch, and it’s getting new content and NG+ on 16th.

Lol, this is something they could have done before the layoff.(no seriously, how hard it is to just disable any notification with a preference?)

fast is still consider intensive encoding, so if you want to record higher fps you need to use veryfast. Without hardware based codec everything will be running on CPU so it’s normal to go full steam.

make sense, python really does not have a good ide for it and I don’t understand why, cause it’s so widely used. I wrote some python tools for Unreal Engine and I still use the old execute, check exception output method. (since UE’s python binding is kinda tacked on afterward so their modules and exposed functions are tied directly to their C++ counter part. compare to other more mature DCC tool(like Maya, Houdini) you can pretty much run things in python mode without opening the editor.

Maybe I am not advance users so I don’t usually run into issues that much. Things I use (for C++):

• find usage
• rename functions(refractor?) so I don’t have to hunt them down
• debug stepping/watch
• P4 integration
• the auto prompt/complete
• they have good Unreal Engine integration so I can also know if a function is called/used in a blueprint.

well, Jetbrains are pretty high quality products though, I don’t mind paying their price if I have to pay for IDE for my personal work. I think even the corp level license pricing is not too bad compare to VS.

Have you consider sending your collection of ticket and professional bug reports to Latina and properly get a 2nd job and earn your justified income?

Granted I haven’t finished my first run, but locking out contents/dialog/story path is part of the deal in crpg no? (Or, like if you killed some NPC and then later not be able to finish a side quest involving that dead guy is fairly normal.)