Lttp but Resident Evil 2 looks incredible and reminds me I need to upgrade my 980ti but the 2080 isn't worth it and the 2080ti is a billion dollars ;-;
PC Gaming Era | January 2019 - Return of the Obra Dinn wins PC Gaming Era GOTY
- Thread starter MRORANGE
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Is it frustrating or is something else rubbing you the wrong way? I don't see myself spending 15 on it tbh.
Frustrating but it's also not my sorta thing anyway, I just thought I better try it for free.
Thanks a million, Galdere!
Actually, Relik sent a key my way a couple hours ago.
I think I'm more grateful for both of your combined generosity than the actual key itself, lol.
Thanks a bunch, gang! Many walking dead will be slayed in your honor.
Scared easily mate
Was going to get it anyway, definitely will now
Wheres pricing?
EDIT: Ah in forums
I've made it to the second map in Far Cry 2 and...it's not a very good game.
I'm going to try and power through the second map, because I really want to beat the game, but I can't think of another game I've played that felt so unfinished, almost like a team set up the map with basic gameplay and then just left it that way. There is basically one kind of mission - go to place and shoot - and the places you go are very similar and really boring. Just ramshackle buildings with the occasional object to blow up. Exploration is fairly non existent with the exception of a few well hidden diamonds. And the limited fast travel is a killer.
I should look up and see if there are any post mortems on this game. How it differed so much from Far Cry and how it even got out the door like this.
A really cool game would be a true sequel to Far Cry. Crysis was close, of course, but a real modern Far Cry without the aliens and suits would be great.
I'm going to try and power through the second map, because I really want to beat the game, but I can't think of another game I've played that felt so unfinished, almost like a team set up the map with basic gameplay and then just left it that way. There is basically one kind of mission - go to place and shoot - and the places you go are very similar and really boring. Just ramshackle buildings with the occasional object to blow up. Exploration is fairly non existent with the exception of a few well hidden diamonds. And the limited fast travel is a killer.
I should look up and see if there are any post mortems on this game. How it differed so much from Far Cry and how it even got out the door like this.
A really cool game would be a true sequel to Far Cry. Crysis was close, of course, but a real modern Far Cry without the aliens and suits would be great.
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Yea, I get that. I had a hard time making any progress in RE7 cause i got too scared and it was stressing me out. I'll finish it eventually, still got it installed
I legit get anxious in games like Tomb Raider or RPGs in case something just jumps out and attacks me aha
Ya i get that. It happens to me all the time with horror games.
What constitutes an abusive review? Personal insults, bigotry, threats, racism, etc. should not be tolerated on any platform. Are those reviews allowed? Because I thought there were moderators on both the stores mentioned despite this whole "wild west" perception. I don't spend my day reading reviews on Steam or Amazon so maybe my exposure to them is limited, but obviously I don't want to read that crap either. There are what, 30,000 games on Steam right? Maybe more manpower to get rid of those is needed, but I don't think Valve's or Amazon policy is that they are acceptable in the first place.
"This game is fucking garbage and not worth your time" is probably abusive and of little value to a certain potential customer (detrimental to the product seller itself of course), but I don't see the reason to prevent such a review from existing. If we start delineating what is considered "accurate" or genuinely "helpful" we'd never agree because my best interest as a customer might not align with the seller's best interest (which I actually think is the main reason why suddenly user reviews are seen as such a threat to games). I mean, there is a difference between a review saying "this game doesn't have controller support" when in fact it does, and "this game is short and has little content" when there might be certain factors pushing someone to hold such an opinion. Do we just call this kind of review harmful and inaccurate and damaging to the game itself (like a lot of people did recently in a The Order 1886 thread) when the validity of either claim can be questioned, and there is no agreed criteria? A lot of reviews from mainstream published media ignore the endgame content completely in genres like loot driver ARPGs, which I not would only consider "essential" but pretty much the whole point of the genre... Should I campaign for those "innacurate" and "unhelpful" reviews to not exist because they don't serve my expectations?
At the end of the day, I think for most people can tell for themselves what information is useful and what is not as a purchasing recommendation, and arguing for fewer amounts of information is something I can't agree with. I'm not saying I agree with people being purposely deceptive or beyond that, offensive and out of order, but in service of me as a customer, I think Steam reviews have enough tools to make my own mind about what reviews I pay attention to and what reviews I don't. Even tools to tell me if the game is being victim to a bombing campaign and I'm observant enough to make my mind on the merit of such a thing. IGN's Halo 4 review might be "factual" and "informative", I'm sure it helped sell a lot of copies too, but for me as a consumer it's as bad a review as I have ever seen and has 0 value, even more so considering it came from a large publication with supposedly some editorial standards, and not a random internet user. I also don't have a problem with it existing but such are things.
At the end of the day, I think user reviews are a give and take between developers and consumers and the platform holder deciding which of them they want to serve the most. I'm sure that when Epic rolls out their optional review services, even who decides to make them visible vs who doesn't will give potential buyers some useful information.
"This game is fucking garbage and not worth your time" is probably abusive and of little value to a certain potential customer (detrimental to the product seller itself of course), but I don't see the reason to prevent such a review from existing. If we start delineating what is considered "accurate" or genuinely "helpful" we'd never agree because my best interest as a customer might not align with the seller's best interest (which I actually think is the main reason why suddenly user reviews are seen as such a threat to games). I mean, there is a difference between a review saying "this game doesn't have controller support" when in fact it does, and "this game is short and has little content" when there might be certain factors pushing someone to hold such an opinion. Do we just call this kind of review harmful and inaccurate and damaging to the game itself (like a lot of people did recently in a The Order 1886 thread) when the validity of either claim can be questioned, and there is no agreed criteria? A lot of reviews from mainstream published media ignore the endgame content completely in genres like loot driver ARPGs, which I not would only consider "essential" but pretty much the whole point of the genre... Should I campaign for those "innacurate" and "unhelpful" reviews to not exist because they don't serve my expectations?
At the end of the day, I think for most people can tell for themselves what information is useful and what is not as a purchasing recommendation, and arguing for fewer amounts of information is something I can't agree with. I'm not saying I agree with people being purposely deceptive or beyond that, offensive and out of order, but in service of me as a customer, I think Steam reviews have enough tools to make my own mind about what reviews I pay attention to and what reviews I don't. Even tools to tell me if the game is being victim to a bombing campaign and I'm observant enough to make my mind on the merit of such a thing. IGN's Halo 4 review might be "factual" and "informative", I'm sure it helped sell a lot of copies too, but for me as a consumer it's as bad a review as I have ever seen and has 0 value, even more so considering it came from a large publication with supposedly some editorial standards, and not a random internet user. I also don't have a problem with it existing but such are things.
At the end of the day, I think user reviews are a give and take between developers and consumers and the platform holder deciding which of them they want to serve the most. I'm sure that when Epic rolls out their optional review services, even who decides to make them visible vs who doesn't will give potential buyers some useful information.
There is a 0% chance Gabe will have his employees sit around all day long reading user reviews to see who is trolling. Can't think of a single bigger waste of time for any employee at any company.
There are literal millions and millions of user reviews on steam so its not happening. CSGO alone is reaching 3 million reviews. 3 fucking million!
Developers are talking to a wall basically when they complain about that stuff.
There are literal millions and millions of user reviews on steam so its not happening. CSGO alone is reaching 3 million reviews. 3 fucking million!
Developers are talking to a wall basically when they complain about that stuff.
They don't have to tho. You could say the same thing about their forums, but they do indeed have moderators for them. The thing Valve loves doing is leveraging their userbase to do work for them. A report button (just like in this forum) is usually the basic tool they need to be pointed in the right direction, bypassing the need to manually screen every single word. And it's not the only tool they can use either.
How much profit does Valve churn every year? Just outsource review moderation to a third-party customer services company, with clear guidelines, and a memo that anything on the cusp of such guidelines gets thrown to Valve so they can review it, then add guidelines for future cases. I've never believed Valve should deal with abusive reviews/non-reviews, but I have always believed they can solve the problem of them.
I would generally agree with this opinion, except for the fact that a thumbs-down negatively affects the total review score of a game. So misinformation (such as your example of "no controller support") together with Thumbs Down unfairly affects the devs game. Remove total user score and then let the consumer decide? Sure, that would get a ton of "bad" reviews flagged and be useful. But it's not fair to keep review scores and let bad reviews continue to exist.
Edit: badly phrased this part of my post, so removing it.
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People will still complain. Don't you all act like any of that would fix it.
For the forums, don't the devs appoint the moderators and its just fans of the game or something?
For the forums, don't the devs appoint the moderators and its just fans of the game or something?
The report button for reviews already exists, and in 2018 they already started having dedicated teams to go through reports.
User reviews have the same "problems" everywhere (Amazon, etc) but here some developers think the solution should be removing them completely.
As always, Valve could probably do a better job in some things. The report button should be easier to find and I don't really know how efficient they are on dealing with these reports. But individual abusive reviews will usually be statistically insignificant and we already have the tools to detect if there is a review bombing going on and see for ourselves if it's warranted or not.
In the end, as a consumer, the positives of the current system are far greater then the negatives, so the suggestion to start heavy censorship or simply removing to deal with the problems doesn't really sit well with me.
As always, Valve could probably do a better job in some things. The report button should be easier to find and I don't really know how efficient they are on dealing with these reports. But individual abusive reviews will usually be statistically insignificant and we already have the tools to detect if there is a review bombing going on and see for ourselves if it's warranted or not.
In the end, as a consumer, the positives of the current system are far greater then the negatives, so the suggestion to start heavy censorship or simply removing to deal with the problems doesn't really sit well with me.
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
Something i can't help but notice is, that only bad reviews are ever being critizised for not being helpful or being worthless, but never the positive ones, as if the default, expected state of a review is positive and is allowed to be positive under any and all circumstances, but a bad review needs to have an explicit, understandable reason or else submitting one is a crime.
That said, i don't want to defend actually abusive, harmful reviews, but i think an abusive review is a very different thing from an uninformative one and the guy in the tweet is mixing both.
That said, i don't want to defend actually abusive, harmful reviews, but i think an abusive review is a very different thing from an uninformative one and the guy in the tweet is mixing both.
Right, it's another case of videogame devs/pubs thinking their industry is somehow different to books/DVDs/kitchen accessories. But just like reviews that ranted about Pizzagate on Hillary Clinton's books skewed the total score for no reason, so too does shitty racism or pointless memes skew the review score of Steam games. It shouldn't be hard to tackle Steam review s better than Valve are currently doing.
I understand that misinformation unfairly affects the devs, it also unfairly affects the consumer's purchasing decisions because they can base their expectations on incorrect or incomplete information, but are we making the argument that it's a widespread problem or something we can work within the current system to correct with the tools we have? And the community also has tools to combat misinformation by reporting/responding to such reviews. Even developers can respond to spurious claims under the current system.
What I'm not sure of, is why you followed up that argument with the next, obviously deliberately offensive example. I think I made it pretty clear what I think of reviews like that and I have no problem saying that Steam should do better on that front. But I don't think the whole argument developers are making against the simple existence of user reviews tied to a store page is based on that.
Of course devs are biased against bad reviews, it's in their interest to be critical here.
I feel the advantages of having reviews at all probably make up for any downsides, though I do agree that any and all reviews, thumbs upor down, that are more about external elements than intrinsic elements of a game are not worth calling a "review". Voice your discontent in the forums, don't buy the game, but stuff like "Refugees should stay in Syria, fuck this SLJ game" (as above) should really be deleted (even if it was the opposite, like, "The West should be more open to refugees! {read up on my blog here)") . In a future where AI with perfect textual semantic understanding exists and is cheap and easy to deploy, stuff like this should be deleted, and perhaps if a user keeps posting such irrelevant reviews, they should be blocked from writing reviews in general.
Of course, even with thousands of manual checks on reports, no on can expect a human work force to moderate millions and millions of reviews on tens of thousands of games. That's beyond unrealistic. I guess devs understand this when they ask for options to turn off reviews (which is, of course, complete insanity. )
Valve kinda doesn't know what they want their own review system to be. Their response to reviews trying to be meta or funny was to add a new label ("Funny") instead of moderating them to make reviews useful again. It turned a Valve problem into a user problem, which is something Valve is want to do when faced with a problem. (See also: Game sorting in Tags, curation in Greenlight and then Curators, game surfacing in the daily queue, and forum moderation in how developers moderate themselves.) For years, this has worked to undermine what a user review is supposed to be, leading to the system we see before us: one where almost anything goes.
Like, I dunno about y'all, but I look at the review percentage, check recent and top reviews for any red flags on a game (which I could also use the forums for), and that's it. Steam's user reviews aren't helpful on their own, they're only helpful as a wider metric for the state of a game. (which Valve further enforced with their review timeline thing) It's yet another system Valve doesn't want to deal with so it just puts a bandaid on the thing and sets it aside.
And in terms of review bombing, the answer is moderation. As in, review standards that are enforced by Valve themselves. But I doubt Valve is willing going to do that so they might as well give up now. Because you can't put it in developers hands because that will be abused, and expecting anything more from users (like reporting useless reviews when there's already too many of them) is too much to ask.
Valve's continued problem is that they want to turn Steam into a perpetual machine that operates on its own when that's impossible. Their answer of offloading work from themselves has to stop. They have to take control of the platform they've created and own it all.
Like, I dunno about y'all, but I look at the review percentage, check recent and top reviews for any red flags on a game (which I could also use the forums for), and that's it. Steam's user reviews aren't helpful on their own, they're only helpful as a wider metric for the state of a game. (which Valve further enforced with their review timeline thing) It's yet another system Valve doesn't want to deal with so it just puts a bandaid on the thing and sets it aside.
And in terms of review bombing, the answer is moderation. As in, review standards that are enforced by Valve themselves. But I doubt Valve is willing going to do that so they might as well give up now. Because you can't put it in developers hands because that will be abused, and expecting anything more from users (like reporting useless reviews when there's already too many of them) is too much to ask.
Valve's continued problem is that they want to turn Steam into a perpetual machine that operates on its own when that's impossible. Their answer of offloading work from themselves has to stop. They have to take control of the platform they've created and own it all.
First of all, I wasn't meaning to cause offence - that specific part of my argument was more tying-into this part of my post:
But I can get that it could be read another way. Will edit my post in a second.
Next:
I think it's both. I think that it's a widespread problem that could be solved if Valve (or a third-party) were quicker on the ball. I reported that Bury Me, My Love review last week. It's still there, just being shit. If the response time were quicker, and there was communication back to the person flagging reviews, I would be more willing to flag them, but as it stands, I feel like I'm tilting at windmills. Era's system of "report post > Your recent report has been resolved" would make quite a bit of difference, I think.
A lot of bad reviews actually tick the "prevent comments on this review" checkbox, which means it's not actually easy to combat misinformation. It'd be great to see a banner across the top of misinformed reviews, from Valve, correcting bad information. Something like "Valve have independently confirmed that controller support now exists for this game". Like, this review here of Artifact is outdated in the progression and ticket points, but cannot be corrected - "Comments are disabled for this review." - and would benefit from a banner stating this. Either that, or remove it from the review score aggregate, since it's outdated bad information.
lmaoooo
I have to slide right between those first two sentences. It's not just a sentiment of gamedevs (even if that is what spawned the conversation), but also one you can see among users of this forum, i remember there being a certain discontent to the idea of giving a bad review when a game launches in an unplayable state because it might get fixed in a few days and somesuch.
I have to slide right between those first two sentences. It's not just a sentiment of gamedevs (even if that is what spawned the conversation), but also one you can see among users of this forum, i remember there being a certain discontent to the idea of giving a bad review when a game launches in an unplayable state because it might get fixed in a few days and somesuch.
Critical post mortems on Far Cry 2 are heavily divided between people who love it at a conceptual level and those who dislike it for the actual execution.
There are tons of game designers that hold FC2 up to some mythical standard and I get their reasons, but whenever I hear them talk about it, I get the feeling they played it for about 3 hours and that's it. SIDE NOTE: this is super common though, both for developers and "normal" game players, as they get their fill and feel like they know what the game has to offer after about that much time. Especially single player games.
What they applaud:
1) Unique 'failure is not death' system with your buddies helping you out of a downed state. Your relationship with them figures into how much/often they'll do this. It ties story to mechanics and doesn't just equate death to "redo this".
2) Lots of physics driven systems that tie directly into moment to moment action; fire propogation, grenade physics, enemies with a wide moveset, wildlife, etc.
3) Open ended mission design - none of the missions appear to be restricted with Rockstar-style fail states where they don't allow you to do something obvious to get you to do something prescripted.
4) A world that doesn't feel "designed for the player". This is highly debatable (by me), but they love how hostile the world feels, how impersonal the obstacles, how it doesn't have convenience for convenience's sake....which leads me to...
5) Disempowerment of the player. Malaria, guns jamming, enemies that try to run you over, stealth that has no indicator of sight or sightlines, a realtime map that doesn't pause, etc. The gaming intelligentsia loves this shit because it's so antithetical to modern game design (or, at least it was in 2008).
But I'm part of the camp that only kind of likes FC2 and I share those reasons with the generally more wide populace that dislikes it because:
1) While the systemic game space is broad, its effective strategy set is so narrow that all the fun stuff doesn't matter. For instance:
-Fire propogation is cool, but unless you specifically plan for it to make a difference in a fight, it probably won't
- Every mission is to kill someone, so the effective strategy will be to shoot a lot of people
- stealth is vague and difficult, so it's unreliable, so you're better off just shooting everything from a distance
- being revived is somewhat random and unreliable, so you just play it like any other shooter
- the checkpoints respawn so quickly that they become a situation the player quickly tries to find the minimum difficult path through: get a turret truck, drive into the middle, shoot everyone.
- VROOOOOMMMMMM out of nowhere means constantly going tree-to-tree to ensure you always have something to put between you and a vehicle.
- crouch walking WIDE around checkpoints to just not fight them all the time is boring as fuck
- you just do the same thing all the time
2) All of the "cool" systems are just ways to artificially lengthen the length of the game.
- Malaria - just do the pill mission whenever it comes up
- guns jam - just go to a gun house and pick up a fresh gun before every major mission and your gun will never jam. Guns jamming is more a system for the level designers to put awesome guns in the enemy hands and then not have to worry about the player having access to them too early because they will jam after 4 shots
- Buddy system - make sure you always go do the buddy missions when they come up
- Set point fast travel - just makes you do a lot of walking, slow walking past check points, or fighting a lot of checkpoints
- Respawning checkpoints - you do a lot of shooting dudes
3) Respawning checkpoints are hot garbo design that is just there to waste the player's time.
4) Open world feels like a set of subway tunnels rather than a piece of land
5) Every mission feels the same.
These problems crop up after you've played the game for 5 or 6 hours and you realize that it's all the same thing over and over. If you only play 4 missions over the course of a year, then yeah, a lot of it can seem cool, but god forbid you die 3 or 4 times due to "emergent" mechanics and you have to do the same leaden path over again.
That said, there's a lot of cool stuff about the game and I'll say that, while yeah, the second half just feels like a photocopy of the first half, the last couple of missions and the ending sequence have a legitimately cool payoff that I didn't see coming. So you might as well keep going.
I was surprised by the review average - but there have been a lot of open world games since 2008 to compare to.
And yeah, those kamikaze trucks are BS
That and a lot of people have reported clearly, ipso facto abusive/uninformative reviews only to be met with "This review is valid" by Steam mods. I don't have enough data to say that it happens every day, but when you have a negative review that simply says "Shitty game" or "Game sucks", and you report it as toxic, but it comes back as a valid review, that is some super bullshit.
Reviews should have a minimum playtime and a minimum wordcount (full disclosure: I've been guilty of quick reviews in the past). That would of course not fix the problem (a big issue that I have with Valve is that they constantly act like they can fix issues that can only be lessened), but it would help lessen it. At least BS reviews would be harder to ignore.
While saying that a game sucks might not be the most elaborate or thoughtful review it's not in any way toxic nor is it worth any less than a review that simply says "game is fun" which - with all due respect - im sure you don't report.
No offense taken, I just didn't get the context of tying both together. Thanks for the clarification.
Valve's response time on many issues is something I am genuinely in support of getting improved. I don't know how much of it is lack of will, resources or their backend systems, but not something I'm against. I get developers could spring them into action more swiftly, but I've not seen too many interested on that instead of either blaming a system wholesale or advocating for fewer consumer options, which I obviously don't agree with.
That's something I didn't know actually, that you can block comments from developers too. But even that kind of stuff also tells us something, in this case maybe other reviews mention the change and people doing their due diligence can understand the game was improved from the moment that review was made. If the problem is that not enough people do their due dilligence, then the problem is with people itself and finding workarounds for people or educating people themselves is beyond any review system that could be designed.
I definitely don't think it's feasible to expect every single bit of outdated information to be corrected either and in most reasonable cases, I wouldn't count it as a problem. Games change a lot nowadays, and public opinion does in the same way and we do have tools that show us different aggregates divided by periods of time. No Man's Sky review average has been raising steadily and I don't think there is a single "reasonable" person going into the store page and getting the same impression they did at launch. Of course a lot of people wrote the game off altogether by now, but the game keeps finding an audience still, and in that sense I think reviews served both purposes. There are games there that have been going on for years and years and many reviews will be outdated naturally without any malicious intent.
I can sympathize and understand how it can be frustrating for developers, but it's part of the conversation of how these tools serve us make decisions and, speaking from a purely personal and pragmatic point of view, Steam reviews are only one of several different tools I use to get an opinion; generally one that benefits me more than it does developers, true. Maybe there is no way we will ever see eye to eye on it, devs and me. I know the mob does as the mob will and I definitely don't think better of people who base their purchasing opinion on a single word representing an average or a single Steam review, or who use the system to express awful views either. But I don't think excising options is good enough for me either.
I'm only now looking at this thread and how was Biohazard 2 not recommended?
Anyway after watching the DF video I feel like picking up AC7, are there any good deals? I want to get the Deluxe version (because why not) but $85 USD is too steep for me, if it was closer to $60USD then I would buy that.
Anyway after watching the DF video I feel like picking up AC7, are there any good deals? I want to get the Deluxe version (because why not) but $85 USD is too steep for me, if it was closer to $60USD then I would buy that.
I'd like it if reviews in general had guidelines. We shouldn't be in a situation where reporting drive-by reviews - positive or negative - isn't done because there are either too many of them or you don't want to seem like you're abusing the system.
Either it's an obvious & big enough game that everyone thought it won't be possible for people to miss it, or there was simply no one that bothered to submit a recommendation.
Probably a combination of both, everyone thought that someone would submit one anyway, but it never happened.
I'm trying to get another copy of Battlefield 2 after my disk broke like ten years ago, but it's not easy. Especially since I don't even own a PC with a disk drive anymore :/
Finally bought Dragon Quest 11, maybe I'll actually play it!
Also have decided to buy a 2080ti which I will probably regret because ridiculous. Hopefully my tax refund comes one day lol
Also have decided to buy a 2080ti which I will probably regret because ridiculous. Hopefully my tax refund comes one day lol
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Did the Steam page for God Eater 3 only just go up today? (since the oldest thread is from 8 hours ago)
If so welp, I guess that Bandai is not doing much to promote the game?
Also you can not pre-order the game, I was wondering if there was going to be a pre-order bonus or something but I guess not.
And the game releases just 2 weeks away
If so welp, I guess that Bandai is not doing much to promote the game?
Also you can not pre-order the game, I was wondering if there was going to be a pre-order bonus or something but I guess not.
And the game releases just 2 weeks away
Yes, it's just up earlier today but still not available for pre-order it. Unless people suddenly whistlisting the game in droves, there's basically no way for the game to gain traction until the release date without pre-orders. Bamco is doing their best to release the game silently on Steam.
Let's not pretend its being marketed on ANY system, I had no idea it was out this soon tbh.
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