Topic: PC Gaming

Seems the problem is that people are expecting the world and are chucking a tanty when they don't get exactly what they want. Well, not seems, because that's exactly what they are doing

@shaneoh On the surface, that's kind of true, but there's also a reason quality PR people make big money. Sometimes it's not the actual activity but the way it's presented that causes a problem (or causes buy-in to something that doesn't deserve it.)

In this case, you don't build a high budget conference, invite people from a demographic that has very well known desires, ask them to spend money to attend (for the people in the room) and to be excited for it, and then when they get their proudly unveil to them something meant for someone else that may or may not put in jeopoardy the existence of the thing they wanted that they paid for and put energy into.

In other words, you don't send out invitations for $100 tickets to an all you can eat sushi buffet, and then when people arrive, proudly tell them that you're giving out unlimited coupons for frozen fish sticks for the supermarket down the street without expecting a revolt.

If they announced the thing on Twitter, nobody would care much. If they announced it and then put a Diablo IV logo in the screen behind them, it would have been fine. If they did nothing at all with Diablo and announced new mobile Heroes of Hell game, it would have been fine. Instead they gathered only the most hardcore Diablo fans willing to spend money and travel time into one room, and told them the next Diablo is meant for another market, primarily on the other side of the world, made by a Chinese mobile games company, and will likely be designed as a whale farm to extract limitless money.....after they finally escaped the Auction House controversy.

I mean you can't possibly get worse messaging. Heads will roll for that. This isn't just internet fan reaction, this is brand-crisis level stuff. The target market is in open revolt. It's XBone level, and it took the XBox brand 4 years to start recovering from that disaster...and Blizz/Acti doesn't have MS type money. They've been deleting comments and re-posting their trailer, and it still has few views. It's just carnage. Internet fans are poisonous, but this one was handed to them.

Kotaku had an interesting article, Schrier did some digging, and it appears, from inside leaks, that they were supposed to announce D4 as a "coming someday" kind of thing afterward, but decided just a few weeks before the show to not do that because they didn't feel ready to announce it. That very bad decision caused this reaction. It also discussed how D4 is in terrible development hell, and the whole thing has been scrapped and restarted multiple times. So...the D3 development cycle, only worse.

Even FFXV still have people remembering the "good old times" of the first release as it were :V

(I remember looking through steam forums for FFXV and wow, that was hell with some people also screeching about how it doesn't look like the original unveil... Or just ranting how it sucks versus the original)

@DarthNocturnal @subpopz @NEStalgia add to the fact that they placed the annoucement of Diablo: Immortals as the ending announcement of Blizzcon which was typically reserved for their biggest reveals! If they ended with Warcraft 3:reforged it would have been fine

@diwdiws It's a bleak day when any announcement regarding WC3 is seen as a "better" alternative.

@subpopz That's the worrying part. I mean Blizzard's always been about the broad audience. They were building 640x480 sprite games when everyone else was on 3D to reach the broadest audience possible. So in a way mobile makes sense. But in this case, it's not just a PR disaster of giving the wrong message the wrong way and figuring it out too late. It seems like they genuinely misunderstand their market at the most basic fundamental level. That's a problem that doesn't get fixed easily and explains their inability to release games and the internal wars and constant team changes. I mean Blizzard has always been a mess. It was once described to me as "a game company run by artists", and all the problems that generates. That was back in the SC2 era. And their mobile vision makes sense too: Who would think mobile apps are the best thing after sliced bread other than a bunch of Macbook toting, iPhone wielding artists in California who see the world through Twitter and Snapchat?

IMO Diablo: Immortal itself they could recover from, but the clear demonstration that they're now so far removed from their core market they don't even comprehend what does ore doesn't appeal to them and are genuinely confused by the reaction.....I think they just took themselves out of the race. Someone can easily cash in on an opening they left now with the right game.

This is a terrible week for game conferences. It's like the evil ugly cousin of E3. First Blizzard melts down at their own convention. Then Square-Enix announces they have absolutely zero idea what they're doing, are hemorrhaging money, and are cancelling the rest of FFXV. Then Activision says that Destiny isn't performing well (despite selling quite well) and they're going to look for new ways to monetize.

One more conference this week. X018. I'm not sure I can even watch. I'm waiting for the rails to sink into the mud. Why not, every game company but Nintendo has imploded in a single week

Would anyone be able to help me do a bit of troubleshooting with MAME (though the android version)?

I downloaded the app and got everything running smoothly (I even managed to successfully map the controls to my tablet's keyboard), and while the game I have downloaded boots up just fine, it doesn't respond to the controls (other than adding credits), whether it be the on screen inputs or my keyboard.

The game in question is Taisen Hot Gimmick (I've been addicted to the Switch version, but wanted to try out the arcade original).

waiting for CES next year to kick in (been a pc gamer for nearly 15 years, only preceded by gameboy with pokemon red) for my next $5000 upgrade in due for Cyberpunk 2077. That's a long time away, but feels nothing in comparison to think my Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu will arrive only by the month's end to this side of the world.

@subpopz

It's one of the best games you'll ever find for doing that. The amount of detail in the world, the lore, the characters, is incredible. You can be 150 hours into the game and stumble upon a random sidequest that ends up being one of the most interesting in the whole game.
Make sure you have the DLC too. Hearts of Stone fits onto the main game so can easily be played at the same time. Blood and Wine is entirely separate though and can be just played as a separate game.

@subpopz

Try not to miss the "Place of Power" points in the opening area. There are like 5 of them. You probably won't go back to that area for a while.

I love Witcher series. The novels are awesome too, especially the short story collections. Have fun in W3!

@subpopz A quick tip if you want the best experience; Complete Hearts of Stone before you beat the main game (and maybe don't wait until the very end either). You can leave Blood and Wine for post-game, it's a completely separate story anyway.

I played Hearts of Stone after I beat the game and I wish waited because it does a very clever thing you'd otherwise miss out on. Of course, that also depends on the choices you make, but one of the endings can be of great value to the main game, whether you need it or not.

@subpopz When the main quest reaches around level 25. You'll know when something big is about to happen. But you can start Hearts of Stone any time before that. The required level is a bit higher for the DLC oddly enough, but if you do plenty of side quests you'll be over leveled anyway!

GMG has discounts on upcoming prepurchases right now. With the regular + VIP discounts, I just prepurchased Resident Evil 2 for $45. <3

Won't be able to play at launch, but I absolutely know what I'm playing when I get back!

So what are your thoughts about Epic snagging exclusive rights to Metro Exodus just two weeks before release?

i dont want my pc gaming to be split between different launchers. i know steam having a monopoly is not good, but they way epic acts is super annoying. i was actually thinking about getting metro day one and then just a few hours later it was announced that you can only get it with the epic games store. i won't buy it though. might actually look into pirating as the game uses denuvo which slows down games.

this is just another thing that shows how gaming is really going down right now. lootboxes everywhere. same games everywhere. no innovation. online always. splitting up platforms. gaming is on a qualititve decline.

@Octane

There's nothing Epic could do that would make me download their launcher. If there was a game I wanted to buy on steam that was poached by Epic, I'd wait the year.

I do think it's a bit underhanded to poach games away from a rival storefront if the game had been available for pre-purchase though. In this case, like The Walking Dead Season 3, all steam pre-purchases will be honoured.

I like it, competition is good for all. I think the "outrage" about is completely ridiculous though, instead of console wars it's like now we're having launcher/store wars lol. Having to use another launcher isn't the end of the world & I think Valve is going to have to make some changes here soon. Will be interesting for the rest of the year to see where other big games end up

I've no intention of getting the game regardless of where it's being sold, but taking it at the last minute is pretty scummy. I'm happy with Steam and GoG so I'm not bothering with the Epic launcher. I don't see it taking off regardless of how much money they throw at devs, it will just turn out to be another Origin.

I left PC gaming predominantly because of Steam's pseudo-monopoly, so I have to say I'm happy to see competition entering the arena beyond the two DRM-free stores and EA/Ubi. OTOH, my opinion of Epic as a business is far, far, far below my opinion of Epic as an engine developer, and my opinion of their engines has always been lower than id. Replacing a store monopoly with an engine monopoly running a store may not be better than EA/Ubi anyway. Especially when it's fueled by Fortnite blood money.

They knew about it weeks ahead of time, yet still accepted pre-orders on Steam. The Epic Store is not really a good online store at the moment, missing many features that are prominent on other sites, and Epic seams to care much more about snagging 3rd party exclusive games on a platform that never has to deal with that sort of situation (and honestly, most consoles don't even get this many timed exclusives anymore) over simply having a feature-rich storefront that consumers actually want to use. The backlash is warranted.

I mean, I'm not mad - I'm gonna get it on the PS4 when it comes out regardless. Still, it doesn't take a genuis to realize that they've shot themselves in the foot.