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Katana314

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Marvel Rivals Apologizes Following Alpha Banning Controversy (gamerant.com)

​​​​​​With such a broad scope on what counts as “disparagement,” this has caused quite a stir among the community, with some players being banned without realizing the terms of this contract. The developers released a statement addressing these terms, with NetEase saying it is aware of the “inappropriate and...

Katana314 ,

They were not misleading or miscommunicated terms. They literally banned negative subjective reviews.

So now they’re guilty of both controlling reviewers, and lying.

Katana314 ,

I sort of saw it that way, but the last bit about “subjective negative reviews” seems unusual even for contracts.

There’s enough lazy rage bait “Turns out X is DOGSHIT?!?” videos out there that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to put some terms in expecting some professional effort. But disallowing even polite criticisms definitely seems too far.

Katana314 ,

I’m wondering if better AI could save this genre. I always hated the fragility of any soldiers I wasn’t actively controlling, having idle workers, workers trying to chop wood in the middle of enemies, etc.

If the computer can take your high level commands but also put out logical low level ones, and maybe also punish high APM, it might restore some of the moderate-paced feel of the game.

Katana314 , (edited )

No no no…

Support techs do not have access to insider industry information. They deal with dozens of region-blocked game support issues a day, and in 95% of cases that block was placed by the publisher. The tech is likely just using that term out of assumption and familiarity.

I’m not saying it’s impossible that Sony are the culprit, but a random support reply to an individual is not how we’d find out. It’s happened before that a Valve official puts out a correction to something support says.

EDIT: Seems like I was right.

They should have been part of the original restriction and it was noticed when the restriction was put in place for Tsushima. This was noticed and executed independently by Valve.

Katana314 ,

According to new info, it did.

www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/…/ar-BB1mhic0?ocid=…

Do NOT trust journalists using hazy sources like job postings, replies from support, or patent claims as proof of anything. There’s plenty of places looking to generate headlines and clicks.

Katana314 ,

No, YOU’RE the one claiming speculation. The null statement is “Without a PR statement, we don’t know who delisted the game”. The speculation was “We believe Sony delisted it.” It just means he’s not satisfied by any evidence in place. You don’t demand sources to make someone disprove a speculative.

Katana314 ,

No matter how poorly thought Sony’s international release plan is for PC, that’s far easier to assume brief incompetence than malice around. Firing people who made a GOTY is a whole different level of evil.

Katana314 ,

Social communities like Lemmy aren’t their target demographic. Mostly, it’s our job to ignore them until they buy a studio we actually like.

Katana314 ,

The other point to make here is, obviously you look at this highway trip and say “Well I am obviously not walking or biking it.” But, the expansive gaps between home and destination are often caused by many many roads and parking lots like this one. We have dedicated gigantic land masses specifically to cars, and it actually lengthens travel time to our destinations.

I have been to countries where, even if thin highways exist, they’re not the rule and it’s easy for other modes to get under or around them; and their roads don’t dominate the urban areas. There, the answer is simple: Just walk, you don’t even need a bike.

Katana314 ,

It’s like an administrator/tenant relationship. Generally, the publisher controls the region locks, but if the publisher starts doing something potentially illegal or brand-damaging, like selling a bricked game, the store owner can also manipulate the locks.

If they couldn’t, a dev’s efforts to willingly commit brand suicide by releasing a game that bricks people’s computers (not beyond the pale given how stupid publishers are now) would also take Steam down with them.

Katana314 ,

I’d only take this as a valid point if you could point to any games succeeding in spite of being cloud only. When Stadia tried it, it kneecapped them.

Katana314 ,

I play DBD, and one of the playerbase’ biggest annoyance is balance by win rate and usage rate. Sometimes an option is just fun and well designed, without being too strong.

It’s especially important to look at what’s fun for multiple players. A good example might be Helldivers 2’s jet pack. Yes, it’s so fun to cover a lot of ground at once, but if the way that’s used is to abandon a cornered teammate to go do objectives while they die surrounded, then it suddenly makes teammates feel slow and useless.

Meanwhile there’s dopamine-driven team synergy potential with the assisted reload weapons. But, there’s not a lot of mechanical information encouraging their use, and it’s pretty simple for people to just use them alone.

I remember TF2’s simple idea where all weapons did more damage the closer you were to enemies, and it demonstrates what I think can be really good balancing design.

Study reveals "widespread, bipartisan aversion" to neighbors owning AR-15 rifles (www.psypost.org)

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes...

Katana314 ,

I may be unaware of the rats living in a small nest inside of a drainspout near me, but that still doesn’t mean rats are “okay” or “harmless”. So this isn’t quite a gotcha about their normality.

Katana314 ,

I have a problem with living near a AR-15 owner and rolling the dice about how honestly responsible every member of their household is, but it seems like neither of us is getting a simple solution.

Every parent of every school shooter would also claim to be a responsible gun owner. Who wouldn’t?

Katana314 ,

“Not caring” about other people’s safety is definitely characteristic of gun owners, so full consistency there.

Katana314 ,

It’s easy to picture powerless people as “cowards”, but now think about a victim of rape who has several known exes they worry about meeting again.

Katana314 ,

I just categorize my concerns to semi-autos; size is irrelevant. Australia went so far as to ban just about all of them, even though that’s a very broad category.

Katana314 ,

Obvious frustrations aside, this article gives a great summary not just of current events but the last decade with Microsoft/Xbox.

Katana314 ,

For what? They can’t even use a lot of these IPs anymore. Fallout is now associated with 76 unless you’re thinking of Obsidian. Bethesda as a whole is not trusted for big RPGs after Starfield. Blizzard is a shell of its old self, cutting interest in Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch. Id has been doing okay, but has had a lot of brain drain, and they definitely don’t produce the “live service hits” MS appears to be looking for - just things people would love to see on Game Pass and discard. There’s rumors even Call of Duty is struggling to retain relevance in new releases.

…We about to see Crash vs Spyro Autobattle Royale?

Katana314 ,

This is an excellent explanation of why the layoffs were a terrible idea.

I wouldn’t have volunteered $30-$40 for Hi-Fi Rush on release because of my low budget for new singleplayer games - but I did play it through Game Pass, and knowing how good it is now I would’ve paid more. Similarly, MS has put out many “mixed” games that are perfect for certain types of people but not many others. Those are the things that keep people on Game Pass. Nobody needs to be paying $100 a year to keep playing the few familiar live service games they know.

The “unsubscribe” button is really easy to reach the month Game Pass stops putting out anything new and interesting, and that’s coming soon now that they have no one ready to put out these surprise hits.

Katana314 ,

I really hope this bites them if the industry goes less IP-centric. We’ve gotten a slow build of “From the developers of…” fan hype, and I don’t think a big “2” matters as much as it used to.

Elden Ring, Overwatch, Cyberpunk, Genshin Impact, were all technically “new franchises” but built insane followings off either good marketing or high knowledge of their studio. So now all MS can do is copy the death path of their parrot studios like 343 Industries and The Coalition, which were built to try to tentpole their old franchises made by better studios.

Katana314 ,

In a way, in Activision/Blizzard’s case, it seems more like it slightly postponed their death.

Tango Gameworks, however, was murdered.

Katana314 ,

I suppose anyone who saw the rise of EA a decade or so back saw this coming.

I didn’t, because, well…I think I naively expect the world of business to make sense.

Katana314 ,

Even if I side with the community on the turnout, I feel like a community manager’s job is to represent the company’s interests to some degree. Kind of like a defense lawyer.

They shouldn’t go as far as lying to people or making bad promises, which can make it a tough job, but they definitely shouldn’t be siding with the players against the company, or the internal employees are catching flak from both sides.

Katana314 ,

The smartest thing is to buy the dough, sauce, and mozzarella yourself for $18. …wait-

Katana314 ,

Taking a look at the other replies can certainly explain how American grocery stores became such big places. I’m American, but have the luck of comparing to European town layout and actually being walking distance from a grocery store. Theoretically, if the shops (and streets and parking lots) themselves were smaller, you could make frequent backpack-sized trips for fresh whatever because it would be a tiny distance.

Katana314 ,

Taking a look at big-cash high profile releases like Redfall and Starfield…is “guaranteed failure” what they’re going for? Because those indie games were pretty much the main reason I kept subscribing to game pass.

Katana314 ,

They are announcing that they are ready to announce the announcing of a future announcement of further announcements.

Katana314 ,

The biggest stumble seems to be from releasing without the requirement initially, and making the game available for sale in non-PSN countries.

Other studios like EA and Microsoft have traditionally required their accounts on online games since release; but unless I’m wrong, those accounts are also available in more countries.

Katana314 ,

Newer gasoline/petrol cars are also data collection machines. False dichotomy there.

Even if the electricity comes from fossil fuels, the efficiency of large plants is far better than that of individual combustion engines; and it provides better opportunity to replace the source with something renewable or at least safer, like solar, wind, or nuclear.

Katana314 ,

Okay…so everything you’re talking about is irrelevant to the conversation?

I grant that anyone continuing to use their old car is doing the best thing for the planet. This article discussion is around production of new cars, and which ones people buy.

Katana314 ,

So basically, one side is a hive mind that’s required to always do what its most powerful members want, and the other has free thinkers that sometimes disagree, and you’re saying that the latter is weak, pointless, and should never exist.

Buddy, this is a terrible definition of “weak”. What you’re describing is a goddamn borg cube.

Katana314 ,

There was a theory that the purchase restrictions were put in place by Valve, not Sony (because those countries couldn’t make an account without violating TOS). If so, Valve might shortly remove the restrictions.

Katana314 ,

Valve can remove games from sale for any reason they like - it’s been a point of consumer contention when they are accused of censorship for certain risque anime games, too.

  • They can completely remove a game from sale if it turns out to be bricking people’s computers or function terribly. (Sony did this with Cyberpunk on PSN, without CDPR’s approval)
  • There may be suspicion the game is not legitimate for sale, for instance it illegally uses someone else’s work.
  • Going country-specific, if a game is revealed to be slightly less than universally positive to the perfectly infallible, totally-not-genocidal Chinese Communist Party, they may want to stop sales in China.

If a game lets you buy it in Tanzania, download it in Tanzania, and then to play, has you sign an agreement that says “I truthfully state that I do not live in Tanzania”, then that bone-headed agreement reflects poorly on Valve, so they have almost a legal need to take it out of sale in that country.

Basically, each country has its own laws of sale. Having those switches to turn off sales in certain places is important for the store’s own safety. While 60% of the blame for selling a faulty product goes to the manufacturer, 40% still goes to the storefront that chose to stock and sell that faulty good. In this case, the fault was specific to the country of play.

Katana314 ,

So, someone in my Discord channel posted a tweet that maybe alters perspective a bit;

cdn.discordapp.com/…/not-surprised-but-damn-v0-jj…

To summarize or if the link breaks, one of the devs “knew beforehand” they’d have to require PSN accounts post launch, but disabled them for a smooth launch. That’s interesting, but as long as Sony was acting as publisher I feel like the blame still goes on them for selling the game to non-PSN countries initially.

Katana314 ,

I expect media companies to be greedy. What feels absurd is when they act out of blind, unmonetized efforts of control that seem to hurt their bottom line - like forcing employees to commute instead of work from home.

Katana314 ,

There’s a Smash Bros mechanic called Stale Moves where repeating the same move many times causes it to deal less damage. It feels like a worthwhile topic to delve on for more interesting fights, but given the way knockback works there could be a better target than just damage adjustment.

Katana314 ,

Summarized it much better than I could.

If you’ve ever seen isometric pixel sprites, authors often draw those first “naked” to get the shape right. If they show an in development model that’s naked, and later have added clothes, is that then “censorship”? No of course it fucking isn’t.

Katana314 ,

There’s such thing as consumer-driven censorship.

Let’s say that I’m a game developer, and also a terrible person. After beating my game, it shows a victory screen that says “You know, Hitler might have been right!” Everyone will shit on the game; and that’s just normal player reaction.

Now, it’s easy to predict that no one would be so negative towards giant exposed breasts - except yes, plenty of people are. For all the porn-obsessed pervs out there, tons of people just want to enjoy an action adventure game without cringing distractions.

Don’t believe me? Look at Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The game lost a bunch of its potential sales to players that might enjoy a sweeping JRPG, but couldn’t stand frequent boob/butt shots of its overendowed and subservient female main character.

Katana314 ,

I’ve still not really seen issues in just including options for total overthrowing of difficulty. I’ve enjoyed some hard games that have prompted frustration from some Dark Souls players; eg, Furi, Tunic, . The options menu include capabilities for infinite stamina and invincibility, and I just ignored them.

Even though I can beat those games without those options, I consider them better for having them because each player plays differently. It is not a tremendous ask for the developer to decide on the best way to address playability concerns, even if they go for something extremely simple that removes challenge and lets them explore the world.

On topic: A new Spongebob-Souls game is out called “Another Crab’s Treasure”. It has positive reviews, and its own implementation of this (aside from being generally a bit easier) seems to be an options menu box which gives your crab a gun.

Katana314 ,

I would argue there are facets to many people’s life that they leave “at default” because they “don’t care enough to fix it how they want”.

Take random Linux User XYZ; They still have to nudge their front door to get it open after unlocking, because they’re not a home improvement afficionado that wants to look up door repair videos on YouTube and attempt to put a stabilizer of some kind on the hinge. Or, they might accept the terrible interface in their car because they don’t know of easy ways to get it replaced with something simpler. Or, they don’t have their money invested anywhere because they don’t like/trust researching investment tips.

For us, it’s just that computers are something we’ll always tune to our preference. For others, it’s other things.

Katana314 ,

I may yet try it in the next few years. I think one large frustration I anticipate (among others) is keyboard shortcuts. I’ve become very experienced with those on Windows, and my brief efforts at Linux (eg, on my Steam Deck’s monitor hookup) have not come across enough matches for them.

I can absolutely see value in enduring the pain of a large switch though.

Katana314 ,

I’m curious if they decided to go with a story reboot. I think even EDF 4 had most of humanity’s population killed in the chaos.

Not that story especially matters in these games!

Katana314 ,

Marketing these days goes far beyond putting out awareness of existence (that step I’m aware of and support - it’s great when a YouTube ad shows something interesting I actually need). These days it’s all psychological reinforcement of an invented need.

Katana314 ,

There’s potentially some cloud-based options for this, if someone doesn’t want to maintain a gaming device.

Basically, it seems like Game Pass Ultimate will let you play games like The Sims 4 and Minecraft using a constant video connection to an Xbox server. If I’m right, these are in fact the mouse/keyboard version of the game. Probably not as moddable though.

It’s not a great option especially considering the subscription, but it sometimes feels more hassle-free depending on the user.

Katana314 ,

It’s been so tiring clicking through the Do Not Recommend option on every single channel mentioning Sweet Baby as the new flat earth conspiracy.

Katana314 ,

No matter how much hobbyists liked selling their games back to GameStop so the store can mark them up 500%, I have always hated that the industry of used games punished releasing fantastic short singleplayer games much much more than perpetual 2000-hour microtransaction live service games.

That crowd of gamers absolutely contributed to the fall. The general distrust of digital is acknowledged, but if people were just paying low/moderate sale prices for each SP game and keeping them, instead of paying used prices, we’d probably have fewer publishers moving this way.

Katana314 ,

TOO FOOL

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