Community MetaSteam | February 2021 - We Don't Do Regional Pricing in This House

[Wildebeet]

Oh wow, thanks. I knew that the day you get the games had changed but not the day they charge you. This has to be a way to sucker people into getting charged unknowingly, right? Between that and that thing about someone getting their classic plan revoked because of too much pausing, it seems to me like they must not be doing too well these days. Almost like their bundles have been consistently shit or something!

Funny thing is that the bundles that I look at like, "what the hell is this thing," somebody else is like "best bundle ever!" I kind of think they should give more choices, and you get a number of credits, and you can buy more credits if you want. Or spend fewer credits if you'd prefer (like the $1 tier in a bundle). That way, when I've already got the headliners or I just wanted some random indie at the bottom, I don't have to miss the whole deal completely, and they don't have to take $0. There has to be a better way to do this. I am pausing month after month because I don't want to buy games twice and what I do want isn't really worth $12. They should accept some number between 0 and 12.

Or alternatively, it could be like Resident Evil inventory tetris, where you have games of different sizes, and you try to figure out how to make them all fit in a briefcase.

 

[lashman]

I wonder if Valheim's success will finally show some survival game devs that the audience they tend to cater to is pretty much a very loud minority (the ones who always force those games to be full hardcore PvP with no option for PvE servers or more relaxed PvP at the very least). I hope so, at least.

yeah, i hope so ... PvP is exactly why i don't play any of those games

 

[fantomena]

I wonder if Valheim's success will finally show some survival game devs that the audience they tend to cater to is pretty much a very loud minority (the ones who always force those games to be full hardcore PvP with no option for PvE servers or more relaxed PvP at the very least). I hope so, at least.

I think that's part of why I have never gotten into Rust, but Im really enjoying games like Valheim and The Forest. They allow me to survive and build at my own pace.

 

[toxicitizen]

Funny thing is that the bundles that I look at like, "what the hell is this thing," somebody else is like "best bundle ever!"

Yeah, it's definitely subjective. I've seen people on here calling certain months shit that made me go "Are you insane?!?" lol. Not everyone is interested in/already owns the same games. I do feel that a good monthly needs at least one or two bigger games to be worthwhile, though, and for at least a few of the other titles to be a little more notable. When it's mostly mediocre-looking indies I've never even heard of, I'm not really inclined to take the risk.

Like, take the current one. It's not exactly mind-blowing but it's not completely awful either. I already own VC4 but that's a pretty solid title to have in a bundle. As is Endless Space 2. There's also a couple of indies like Valfaris that I'm mildly interested in, so when they offered me a 4$ discount earlier, I decided not to pause. But I never even heard of that Outward game and, after a quick look at its Steam page, if it was the sole headliner of the bundle then it would be a hard pass from me.

 

[Tizoc]

Sir Daniel Fortesque has had enough of your shit

Also nice rendered train

 

[Wok]

Like, take the current one. It's not exactly mind-blowing but it's not completely awful either. I already own VC4 but that's a pretty solid title to have in a bundle. As is Endless Space 2. There's also a couple of indies like Valfaris that I'm mildly interested in, so when they offered me a 4$ discount earlier, I decided not to pause. But I never even heard of that Outward game and, after a quick look at its Steam page, if it was the sole headliner of the bundle then it would be a hard pass from me.

I check Group Buys every month, and the bundle is always worth it for $12 (or less). I mean that people there are able to make a profit, sometimes sizeable with the $12 price. For this month, Outward and Valkyria are the headliners, but there are other good items like Valfaris or Trine 4 (I have paid 6€ for Trine 4 alone 3 months ago), plus smaller ones like Endless Space 2 or The Wild Eight.

Moreover, some games will not be discounted as aggressively as with the Humble Choice. Typically, the best deal ever for Valkyria Chronicles was when it appeared in a Humble Monthly bundle in 2015. At that time, I think you could have snatched it for 2-3€ in a bundle split. Since then, you could have gotten it at best for 4€, and most likely for 5€. Ditto with the Yakuza games, etc.



In short, if the bundle is split with fair prices, it is always worth it. If you keep everything for yourself, then it is another story, and it may not be good.

 

[Wildebeet]

Like, take the current one. It's not exactly mind-blowing but it's not completely awful either. I already own VC4 but that's a pretty solid title to have in a bundle. As is Endless Space 2.

Yep same. If I didn't have VC4 it would be an easy buy. But then Endless Space 2 is $10 on sale all the time anyway ... and I never buy it because I bounce off Endless Space 1 every time I try it.

So I'd prefer to have about 20 choices or something. Each game has a credit value, like Big Game is 6c, pick two. Middle games are 4c. Indies are 2c each. Pick up to 6. Or mix it however you want. Buy more credits if you want to. Or if it has to be $12/mo, save credits toward next month if you don't see what you're looking for.

But either way, you get the stuff you want for a lower price, and Humble at least didn't get $0 for the 5th month in a row. There'd be no choice to make, really. You can always find at least one game that seems ok. But no, you have to reject the whole bundle or take the whole thing. They should ditch that.

Any Meta member happen to be a senator from North Dakota? I call this, the Humble Fairness Act Plan. Let's talk.

 

[dfghstrbght]

PC (via Battle.net)

 

[madjoki]

PC (via Battle.net)

Making 3 previously free games, free /w purchase is news worthy?

 

[CommodoreKong]

Why is the bethesda launcher still not killed off yet?
Phil is slacking.
Forza H 4 on Steam is nice but kill the bethy launcher please. Some of us want to get that fancy discounted Deathloop game on PC, damnit.

I don't think Microsoft actually owns Bethesda yet they're still working through the process.

 

[dfghstrbght]

Making 3 previously free games, free /w purchase is news worthy?

they're releasing ps4/xboxone/switch, also without the blizzcon bundle is not free, it's $20 apparently

 

[madjoki]

they're releasing ps4/xboxone/switch, also without the blizzcon is not free, it's $20 apparently

They were originally made free in 2013-ish separately (no longer available for some mysterious reason). Getting collection free /w purchase of blizzcon is downgrade, I mean.

 

[Shahem]

In addition, could WoW steam be announced today ?

 

[dfghstrbght]

i know

also

 

[TheTrain]

Blizzard is literally out of control, they're in a really sad state. Its really devastating seeing them in this condition

 

[yuraya]

Not even a hint of a release window or date for Diablo IV lol.

They showed a class + some UI character skins and a little gameplay....then stopped talking about it.

Probably late 2023 at this point.

 

[toxicitizen]

In short, if the bundle is split with fair prices, it is always worth it. If you keep everything for yourself, then it is another story, and it may not be good.

Yeah, I don't really do trading/selling. I just keep the games for myself. I'm not concerned with whether or not the bundle has enough value to recoup the cost, only with whether or not I'm actually interested in the games.

 

[QFNS]

Blizzcon announcements were as expected. Kinda meh.

 

[Hektor]

I've done so much homeoffice now that whenever i type in 'M' into the adress bar, it autocompletes to MySignins.microsoft.com instead of metacouncil.com

SAD!

 

[Mivey]

I've done so much homeoffice now that whenever i type in 'M' into the adress bar, it autocompletes to MySignins.microsoft.com instead of metacouncil.com

SAD!

sadder still to have to use anything microsoft related for work.

 

[C-Dub]

sadder still to have to use anything microsoft related for work.

I have to use Outlook, Word, Excel, Yammer, Internet Explorer and Teams for work. We also use Surface Pro 6 tablets, but they're being replaced by EliteBooks because some bespoke software we use for CRM causes the Pros to overheat.

I dread to think how much money Microsoft gets from my organisation of nearly 60k people.

 

[lashman]

I've done so much homeoffice now that whenever i type in 'M' into the adress bar, it autocompletes to MySignins.microsoft.com instead of metacouncil.com

SAD!

that's a sign you need to post more

 

[Mor]

CLEARLY my favorite event was Nintendo Direct just because of the Japanese content, oh well, nothing I care about from Blizzard.

 

[Arsene]

Blizzard just showed an amazing 45 minute video showing a shit ton of new OW2 content and news and it looks incredible and they couldn't even put a small preview in the opening ceremony itself?

Wat

 

[Kvik]

sadder still to have to use anything microsoft related for work.

Sadly I still need an MS account to sign in to the Azure Cloud portal. Well, at least MS didn't seem to mess around with GitHub too much and we don't need an MS account sign-in for that one.

 

[vitormg]

I can't believe how well the LOTR movies still holds up. Im rewatching some scenes to see what I can use for my teaching class on monday and the movie has aged like fine wine.

The charges or rohirrim
"For Frodo"
"I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you, cmon"
"You bow to noone"

The movies are so damn good.

I wish there were some good video games based on LOTR. I was never very fund of the WB games.

LOTR is an all time great. It's so hard to reach even close beats to how epic and amazing its universe is.

I recommend reading the books if you haven't. They manage to be even better at some points. I feel like the movies and books complete each other.

Regarding Microsoft tools for work, I use the Office package for teaching, and their terminology database for translation.

Why don't you guys like to use their tools? Pretty good at what I need

 

[yuraya]

Kind of disappointing to see such a small graphical and technical leap for Overwatch ---> Overwatch 2.

A little bit of iteration to core gameplay but It looks like the first game despite being nearly 7+ years apart in release. Seems kind of weak.

Compare that to Team Fortress classic ----> Team Fortress 2 which also about 7 years apart. That was like a 2 generation leap lol.

I get that not all devs are tech driven but companies have so much money these days it would be nice for tech to be pushing limits and not be so stagnant/repetitive. GaaS really did kill off so much potential in the industry.

 

[Arsene]

Kind of disappointing to see such a small graphical and technical leap for Overwatch ---> Overwatch 2.

A little bit of iteration to core gameplay but It looks like the first game despite being nearly 7+ years apart in release. Seems kind of weak.

Compare that to Team Fortress classic ----> Team Fortress 2 which also about 7 years apart. That was like a 2 generation leap lol.

I get that not all devs are tech driven but companies have so much money these days it would be nice for tech to be pushing limits and not be so stagnant/repetitive. GaaS really did kill off so much potential in the industry.

Keep in mind OW2 is releasing on Switch, PS4 and X1. There’s only so much you can improve. Especially since all the old content is transfering to the new engine as a free update.

 

[vitormg]

Kind of disappointing to see such a small graphical and technical leap for Overwatch ---> Overwatch 2.

A little bit of iteration to core gameplay but It looks like the first game despite being nearly 7+ years apart in release. Seems kind of weak.

Compare that to Team Fortress classic ----> Team Fortress 2 which also about 7 years apart. That was like a 2 generation leap lol.

I get that not all devs are tech driven but companies have so much money these days it would be nice for tech to be pushing limits and not be so stagnant/repetitive. GaaS really did kill off so much potential in the industry.

Usually these multiplayer heavy games aren't super technically impressive, because the idea is to get as many people as possible playing them. Entry level PCs would be left out of the party otherwise.

 

[yuraya]

Keep in mind OW2 is releasing on Switch, PS4 and X1. There’s only so much you can improve. Especially since all the old content is transfering to the new engine as a free update.

Dated hardware isn't a good enough excuse for not pushing new tech tbh. Something like Witcher 3 came to the Switch and that game was a massive technical leap over Witcher 2.

Making a sequel used to mean something. Nowadays GaaS slows everything down. Instead of spending 7 years of dev time to make a new engine/tech and push new gameplay/mechanics from the ground up....in reality its more like spend 3 years supporting previous game + spend another year apologizing to community + then only like 3 years of real dev time to make a similar game but slap a number after it.

I expected more from Blizzard after the success they had with OW.

At least they seem to be doing better job pushing the next Diablo. We'll see how that turns out.

 

[dummmyy]

I am incredibly stoked about Diablo 2 Resurrected! Oh man, that's multi-buy day 1!!! Anybody else excited ?!

 

[vitormg]

Now that I've played Satisfactory for a dozen hours (and previously Factorio for 50+) I came to a few conclusions.

First of all, 3d is a nice change of pace. Sometimes it helps with my creativity and is fun, sometimes it gets on the way. I feel like there's no winner here, since each feel unique in this regard.

Satisfactory has an amazing feature that Factorio doest have which is limiting your buildings output rate to any % you want. It's very useful to get exactly what you want at any point, or optimize resource utilization on the go.

Also, another key difference is that Satisfactory is also an exploration game of sorts, similar to Subnautica, where you are able to find blueprints and specific resources around the map. You need to explore. This part is kind of a mixed bag for me, I don't think I'm a huge fan. I just want to build my factory in this kind of game. The exploration is not that interesting to me.

The combat in Satisfactory so far has a lot to be desired too. Don't like it very much. I like the "combat" in Factorio more.

Overall, I prefer Factorio a lot more. It's all about factory building and base defending, which is what I was searching for in this kind of game. Satisfactory is pretty good though, and I'll be going through all the available content as of yet for sure. I'm currently building up resources for the third space station upgrade.

 

[texhnolyze]

Not even a hint of a release window or date for Diablo IV lol.

They showed a class + some UI character skins and a little gameplay....then stopped talking about it.

Probably late 2023 at this point.

It's a good thing. More time for people to enjoy Diablo 2.

 

[inky]

Diablo 2 is the best thing Blizzard has shown in ages. Funny that it's the one being made by not-Blizzard.

Not sure I'm eager with that $40 price point, but it's not a completely unfair price.

 

[QFNS]

I am incredibly stoked about Diablo 2 Resurrected! Oh man, that's multi-buy day 1!!! Anybody else excited ?!

Let me talk to you about a game called Warcraft III: Reforged and why you should hold your expectations until the final product is out.

 

[NarohDethan]

So not 0nly the source material for Howarts Legacy is a chud. the director of the game also is a chud.

 

[Ruvon]

This is such a good thing. Why aren't more people talking about it?!

Because websites are like OMG NINTENDO DIRECT BLIZZCONLINE LET'S MAKE A LOT OF CLICBAIT ARTICLES ABOUT IT.

Apparently being able to play again games you already played 10-15-20 years ago and PAYING AGAIN for that is more interesting for some gamers. Yeah, the same one that cries about "why there's no creativity in games anymore, everything looks the same and have already been done" the next second.

I am incredibly stoked about Diablo 2 Resurrected! Oh man, that's multi-buy day 1!!! Anybody else excited ?!

You can suscribe for the technical Alpha here (with a battle.net account) :

Diablo® II: Resurrected

Evil is resurrected in the timeless action RPG classic Diablo® II, and its acclaimed expansion Diablo II: Lord of Destruction®, now remastered and upgraded.

diablo2.blizzard.com

 

[dummmyy]

Let me talk to you about a game called Warcraft III: Reforged and why you should hold your expectations until the final product is out.

let me talk to you about unbridled optimism.

You can suscribe for the technical Alpha here (with a battle.net account) :

Did it immediately! Thanks, Ruvon!

 

[Tizoc]

Yo I'm a blind optimist and even I am being cautious with Blizzard's remake of D2. I do have some optimism about it but at the same time hesitance. This is ActiBlizz after all.

So
Uh
What's releasing in march again? Getting that highlight thread ready and I need to cover my bases.

 

[spiel]

This is such a good thing. Why aren't more people talking about it?!

I got the $10 tier and the game entertained me for 1.5h. It's cute. It's a simple side-scroller and the main progression is collecting coins to buy items that grant extra abilities, and I liked how it all came together once you unlock all the items. There are a couple of secret interactions to discover. The challenges will keep you occupied for longer if you want 100%.

I wonder if they managed to get a higher cut on Steam since it's for charity. Otherwise itch.io might be better if you're not concerned about regional pricing.

 

[beep boop]

So not 0nly the source material for Howarts Legacy is a chud. the director of the game also is a chud.

Even has a Slytherin avatar. But I'm sure he finds all the blood purity stuff absolutely uncouth. Surely.

At another point in time, I would've found the irony of a misogynist working on a radical feminist's IP amusing, but lately it seems that the leadership in the industry is just rife with really hateful people. So of course.

 

[C-Dub]

So not 0nly the source material for Howarts Legacy is a chud. the director of the game also is a chud.

This game was already on my Do Not Buy list because Rowling is awful, but now it's getting two entries just in case I forget.

 

[Deku]

In Valheim, do you create your own server to play with others?

 

[fantomena]

Diablo 2 R looks really good, but I expect Blizzard to fuck it up someway, so I won't pre-order.

 

[C-Dub]

Diablo 2 R looks really good, but I expect Blizzard to fuck it up someway, so I won't pre-order.

They're definitely talking the talk, but you're right - pre-ordering this one is asking to be disappointed.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

They were originally made free in 2013-ish separately (no longer available for some mysterious reason). Getting collection free /w purchase of blizzcon is downgrade, I mean.

looks like its still available here?

Download Battle.net for Windows and Mac | Battle.net

Download Battle.net to connect with friends and launch games.

us.battle.net

 

[madjoki]

looks like its still available here?

Download Battle.net for Windows and Mac | Battle.net

Download Battle.net to connect with friends and launch games.

us.battle.net

So looks like they were removed from EU only. That page works.

 

[fantomena]

The Forest is a pretty good game alright.

With games like The Forest, Valheim and Grounded, I see why I never got into Rust despite it being somewhat in the same genre. Rust is a MP-only PvP game, while the others are PvE or have a SP-focused mode.

 

[Readher]

So looks like they were removed from EU only. That page works.

Pretty sure they were never on the EU site.

 

[fokkusu]

Yakuza 3 Remastered - Patch Now Live – February 19, 2021 - Steam News

Hey everyone, Our latest patch is live. Thanks to everyone that participated in our beta, we appreciate your support! This patch addresses the below issues: Proper dedicated GPU detection so that the game won’t try to launch on integrated GPUs. Setting ‘Auto’ as default framerate settings. High...

store.steampowered.com

Yakuza 4 Remastered - Patch Now Live – February 19, 2021 - Steam News

Hey everyone, Our latest patch is live. Thanks to everyone that participated in our beta, we appreciate your support! This patch addresses the below issues: Proper dedicated GPU detection so that the game won’t try to launch on integrated GPUs. Setting ‘Auto’ as default framerate settings. High...

store.steampowered.com

Yakuza 5 Remastered - Patch Now Live – February 19, 2021 - Steam News

Hey everyone, Our latest patch is live. Thanks to everyone that participated in our beta, we appreciate your support! This patch addresses the below issues: Proper dedicated GPU detection so that the game won’t try to launch on integrated GPUs. Setting ‘Auto’ as default framerate settings. High...

store.steampowered.com