Community MetaSteam | February 2019 - The Frontier of the Hyper-Toxic Pro-Consumer Computer Cowboy
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Who else is staring at Twitter waiting for AJ to post his Anthem vid?
Without numbers is really hard to make any assumptions, but so far everything suggest that indeed that base is very hard to monetize, including the fact that they haven't even made any attempt to do so.
As a general rule since both Tim and Sergey like to run their mouths on Twitter, I'm always assuming the lack of information indicate unfavorable news for Epic.
What, that would mean that I'm getting some enjoyment of all this Anthem drama. I would neeeeeeeeeeeeeever do that....
(hits F5 to refresh his twitter page)
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OP
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same ... it was so PAINFULLY obviously when Sergey, all gloating, posted that "we now have more active players than steam!" (or was it concurrent users?) tweet ... and when people asked him if those were the PC numbers - he said he couldn't tell, lmao
so yeah ... i think we can safely assume that if they aren't talking about how good any of that stuff is doing - it's probably not doing very well
i mean - you'd think they'd AT LEAST gloat about how many people downloaded any of those free games ... and yet - absolutely nothing, not a peep
Hmmm, I didn't think of that. All the people downloading and playing those games (heck, I'm one of them for Subnautica) should have made it easy to have some good numbers to gloat, including the important metrics like monthly active users for the store. Indeed it is pretty telling they didn't mention it anywhere.
Now, an very interesting number would be how much of the Fortnite playrbase did bother to even try the free games so far.
Oh my God, I clicked it and the first 30 seconds already had me rolling.What, that would mean that I'm getting some enjoyment of all this Anthem drama. I would neeeeeeeeeeeeeever do that....
(hits F5 to refresh his twitter page)
The loading bit at the beginning was indeed inspired.
That was a brutal review. Bioware appears to have really messed up the "loot" part of loot shooter... ouch.
I need someone, Schreier or NoClip or whoever, to get a post-mortem on this game someday.
I'm sure EA must have meddled with the game to some extent, and tried to include some of the more egregious GaaS stuff (the grind seems like it might be EA-management inspired maybe).
But as much as I hate EA, I agree with the thing that Joe says repeatedly in the review: "WHAT WERE YOU DOING FOR SIX YEARS?"
Even if EA was meddling, how did BioWare forget the loot part of a loot game?
I need to know what the disastrous process was that created this thing.
I find it impressive that Epic store support local pricing in "230 countries", yet they somehow manage to miss real countries like Norway:
Two months to add new currency, which apparently can't be done simultaneously for non dollar pricings (well charging in currency, since they display prices in local currency to maximize confusion when they get charged for currency conversion):
that sounds really slow to me. But then again banks usually are.
The Epic Games Store as described by Sergey Galyonkin (SteamSpy Creator, Currently At Epic) (Update: Sergey Clarifying Points on Twitter)
I'd imagine biggest target audience of indie games on Epic Store now,
but it could be even less as some portion of those could still play on F2P games.
Galyonkin himself has said that F2P players are hard to convert.
Your target audience doesnβt exist β Steam Spy
So probably until Fortnite dies, not many are going to convert and they might as well switch to another F2P as young generation (who is main audience of Fortnite), are used to games being free. I guess they may try, if it's free or they get it free
I'd imagine it be very hard to sell them $60 dollar AAA single player games.
Of course due to money hatting none of this matters, developers get their money if no one buys game.
Two months to add new currency, which apparently can't be done simultaneously for non dollar pricings (well charging in currency, since they display prices in local currency to maximize confusion when they get charged for currency conversion):
that sounds really slow to me. But then again banks usually are.
Well there was this:
The Epic Games Store as described by Sergey Galyonkin (SteamSpy Creator, Currently At Epic) (Update: Sergey Clarifying Points on Twitter)
So about 20% of PC Fortnite players use Steam actively.
I'd imagine biggest target audience of indie games on Epic Store now,
but it could be even less as some portion of those could still play on F2P games.
Galyonkin himself has said that F2P players are hard to convert.
Your target audience doesnβt exist β Steam Spy
So probably until Fortnite dies, not many are going to convert and they might as well switch to another F2P as young generation (who is main audience of Fortnite), are used to games being free. I guess they may try, if it's free or they get it free
I'd imagine it be very hard to sell them $60 dollar AAA single player games.
Of course due to money hatting none of this matters, developers get their money if no one buys game.
Swiss francs is also still missing. TBF steam only introduced CHF in 2015 so it took them long enough as well.
I'm not sure if Fortnite actually will die someday. You don't hear much about Minecraft, CS:GO these days but they're still kicking years later. BR games might be a different story though with so many new BR games releasing each year. Epic's goal is just to draw new users to their store with the free games and exclusives.
Epic started 2019 with almost 50% less revenue than in december. Granted december is the best month in the year for microtransactions but still.
SuperData Research | Games data and market research Β» Worldwide digital games market: January 2019
And now with the release and success of Apex I'm sure they're feeling the heat. It will be interesting to see if they will stop the moneyhatting once the Fortnite mullah stops rolling in.
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OP
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they sure are ... desperately buying google ads to show fortnite ads above search results for "apex legends" ... and stealing features yet again (they're "thinking" about adding respawns and pings to fortnite ... i woooonder where they got that idea from
)
OP
OP
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Maybe it's my ISP/internet then.
EDIT: Yeah it's on my end, just needed to reset my router
Anyone got suggestions to get rid of this white fog in Murdered SS? I want to use SweetFX or ReShade but I tend to apply AA via Nvidia Inspector so I don't want either of the two to inject anything outside of getting rid of some effects or improving colours.
EDIT wait seems it resolved itself weird.
I'm confused about something. I want to apply SSGSS anti aliasing in W40K Space Marine but this guide is confusing. Could someone tke a screenshot of what settings should look like in NVidia Inspector with anti aliasing compatibility set to 0x004112C1
3DCenter Forum - Einzelnen Beitrag anzeigen - Antialiasing - KompatibilitΓ€tsbits - Sammelthread
EDIT wait seems it resolved itself weird.
Post automatically merged:
I'm confused about something. I want to apply SSGSS anti aliasing in W40K Space Marine but this guide is confusing. Could someone tke a screenshot of what settings should look like in NVidia Inspector with anti aliasing compatibility set to 0x004112C1
3DCenter Forum - Einzelnen Beitrag anzeigen - Antialiasing - KompatibilitΓ€tsbits - Sammelthread
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I also want to learn more about it. A lot of people are speculating that the game did suffer at least one reboot, so it wouldn't surprise me if in the end we have a very similar history as Andromeda, where the developers spent years and years trying to implement grandiose but impractical ideas before having an "oh shit" moment and rushing to cobble something together with the few functional systems (like the flying). Only this time it wasn't a game genre they had any experience with or could simply copy the mold from a previous game like Andromeda did from Inquisition.
It is interesting they appear to be threatened even though Apex isn't even on mobile, but if there was one thing Epic does well is to react to these things (and copy them). Fortnite BW was born this way, and so far the Epic Store is also just catching up and copying other stores features.they sure are ... desperately buying google ads to show fortnite ads above search results for "apex legends" ... and stealing features yet again (they're "thinking" about adding respawns and pings to fortnite ... i woooonder where they got that idea from
But I can't really blame for copying the ping system, Now that Apex has really nailed it (I swear I remember seeing that somewhere else first - besides Dota) I expect to be copied *everywhere*.
OP
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well i guess it worked out for them when they did it the first time around (ripping off PUBES) ... so they might as well do it again
Portal 2 has some kind of Ping System. Wouldn't be surprised if Apex Legends one was based on that.
OP
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yup ... it's funny how people forgot just how GOOD Portal's ping system is
Ahh, thats the one I was remembering, thanks. After refreshing my memory with some videos, yeah... that was *very* useful for the coop puzzles. A very clever solution to avoid the endless discussions of "where do you want me to place to portal?". Strange that was not used more often since then, nut given the popularity of Apex that's probably going to change now.
If we want to talk about βcOMpETitIon,β Apexβs arrival seems to have lit something of a fire under Epic.
The game has had increasing complaints for the past two-ish seasons about the annoying meta and lack of meaningful competitive options for play. I donβt know how many people itβs driven away, but I know the lack of a ranked system made me lose a lot of interest since people have gotten too good for me. Whereas Apex seems to be primed to add a Ranked mode only a month or so after release, and had its own good βideasβ like the ping and red pawn system.
Funny how their biggest competitor is competing in FEATURES AND IDEAS instead of anti-consumer maneuvers.
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I don't know if everyone saw it already, but this week the Adventure Gamers website (in cooperation with Gamewalker) had their 2018 Aggie Awards (for adventure games).
They made a few slick looking videos, that highlight how 2018 was truly a great year for the genre, with some really awesome games seeing the light of day.
It's worth a watch.
And here's the text version, that goes a bit more into detail about each of the nominees:
The Aggie Awards β The Best Adventure Games of 2018 | Adventure Gamers
They made a few slick looking videos, that highlight how 2018 was truly a great year for the genre, with some really awesome games seeing the light of day.
It's worth a watch.
And here's the text version, that goes a bit more into detail about each of the nominees:
The Aggie Awards β The Best Adventure Games of 2018 | Adventure Gamers
I haven't played through it yet :V I wanted to test NVidia Inspector SSGSS on it with positive results but it's gonna be lingering on my HDD for a while before I decide to play it :X
You could ping the map in Dawn Of War back in 2004.
It's not some new thing.
It's also not very different to Battlefield's "enemy/vehicle/whatever spotted" report which they enhanced with each sequel (after 2 introduced it?). Or other games where one teammate seeing something makes it visible through walls for you as well. It's a nice system though. Not that I think every such game should have it, I don't think it would work for PUBG's semi-realistic take on the BR thing for example. It fits in Apex which is more Hero Shooter like within BR constraints and Overwatch also has skills and such that let teammates benefit from what you do/see itself so you can say it borrowed from that as well. I think earlier Monster Hunter games also let you ping the area you were in for teammates to see it on the mini map and follow, but I'm not sure which introduced it.
I don't know if Apex will have longevity though, there are legitimate concerns about its flow of play and how the smaller maps and everything being fast & immediate means you can feel punished for getting into battles rather than waiting it out as any firefight will be easy to spot for everyone in a chain effect of reports and if you're left in a weakened state the next guys will simply get you no matter what if on equal skill footing for example. Stuff like that, I dunno.
I'm not very into PVP though I dabble some times, just going by what I heard. I'm waiting for the next Titanfall 2 esque campaign from the devs to care
I don't know if Apex will have longevity though, there are legitimate concerns about its flow of play and how the smaller maps and everything being fast & immediate means you can feel punished for getting into battles rather than waiting it out as any firefight will be easy to spot for everyone in a chain effect of reports and if you're left in a weakened state the next guys will simply get you no matter what if on equal skill footing for example. Stuff like that, I dunno.
I'm not very into PVP though I dabble some times, just going by what I heard. I'm waiting for the next Titanfall 2 esque campaign from the devs to care
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This is pretty much inherent to any BR game thoughIt's also not very different to Battlefield's "enemy/vehicle/whatever spotted" report which they enhanced with each sequel (after 2 introduced it?). Or other games where one teammate seeing something makes it visible through walls for you as well. It's a nice system though. Not that I think every such game should have it, I don't think it would work for PUBG's semi-realistic take on the BR thing for example. It fits in Apex which is more Hero Shooter like within BR constraints and Overwatch also has skills and such that let teammates benefit from what you do/see itself so you can say it borrowed from that as well. I think earlier Monster Hunter games also let you ping the area you were in for teammates to see it on the mini map and follow, but I'm not sure which introduced it.
I don't know if Apex will have longevity though, there are legitimate concerns about its flow of play and how the smaller maps and everything being fast & immediate means you can feel punished for getting into battles rather than waiting it out as any firefight will be easy to spot for everyone in a chain effect of reports and if you're left in a weakened state the next guys will simply get you no matter what if on equal skill footing for example. Stuff like that, I dunno.
I'm not very into PVP though I dabble some times, just going by what I heard. I'm waiting for the next Titanfall 2 esque campaign from the devs to care
In Fortnite, you are almost unquestionably better off quickly finding a good gun, grabbing some shields and hiding in a bush for half the match than actually ever engaging other players. Literally my only solo Victory Royale happened like this:
- I land in a tree in Wailing Woods, thinking I'd just idle there to farm XP for the Battle Pass.
- End up thinking I should just play the round for the hell of it, right as the storm circle starts to move in.
- Find a blue AR
- Shoot one dude, take his mats, guns and health items.
- Run clear across the map past Tilted Towers for the next 5-10 minutes, never seeing anyone, while everyone else kills each other.
- Get to the hills behind Tilted, took so long to get there, there's literally only five other people left.
- Take some potshots at one person's building on a hill
- Run up and around the side of the other hill, shoot my second kill with my AR, blast a third with a shotgun.
- By now there's only one dude left on the other hill.
- I flank around his hill, blow up his building, he falls, I pump him in the head. The end.
Same thing happened in my only squad Victory Royale. We only killed (between all four of us), like five or six players. Two we killed early on, the latter three were the final kills of the game. I watched the replay afterwards, and it just weirdly happened that we took a route around the map that somehow avoided all the other players (except for the two buddies we killed) until the very end of the game.
ANYWAYS, this was all a very long-winded way to get back to Apex. Even though it has a small map, it feels like it's actually at least a little bit less punishing to get into fights because of the respawn system. The very nature of BR still makes it beneficial to avoid fighting when you can, but the respawn system changes the calculus a bit.
But if you do happen to get in a fight it's not necessarily the case that everybody else will be able to locate that given the size of the maps in PUBG, at least initially, you also have more leeway to drop somewhere where you're hopefully within larger distance to others and have a chance to find some items before getting in the thick of it. Apex seems much more compact and you have much faster mobility too making it seem even smaller. Idk, like I said, not too much into.
The innovation with Apex's ping system is that it's context based and you can ping everything. The most common use is pinging spots on the map, enemies, and stuff on the ground, but it can also be used for pinging stuff in your inventory to tell team mates you need ammo or weapon parts or whatever. In Battlefield it's used for pinging enemies. In classic RTS it's used for pinging spots and buildings on the map. I believe Brink had a similar pinging system. DOTA 2 has a very versatile system where you can ping pretty much everything and convey context based information, like cooldowns, being out of mana, what you're missing in the item build, gold etc.
Other games have had systems like this in the past, but now that Apex popularized it, context based pinging systems are probably gonna show up in most new multiplayer games.
Other games have had systems like this in the past, but now that Apex popularized it, context based pinging systems are probably gonna show up in most new multiplayer games.
Yelling for medics and ammo and such stuff was common too though (edit: googling this, BF1942 had those hotkeys in 2002, since Bad Company 2 at least on console you could also look at a friendly medic, assault, whatever and press the same as the "x spotted" key to call for their role's need, for health, ammo, repairs or whatever, that's a lot like the Ping in Apex after all, I'm not sure if that has remained in all BF games since), it just wasn't always part of a unified system (on PC you can still set specific ping hotkeys in Apex instead of aim at them and press the general ping which emulates those functions). I think you could also say stuff like "ammo here" (or weapon or medkit) in L4D 1 or 2 when you found them on the map? I see Apex's Ping as an iteration that may or may not work for a game rather than an evolution that needs to become widespread. PUBG doesn't even want to give out information beyond teammate positions for example, leaving much of the rest up to communication (last I played). Tactical games like ARMA want even less gamey info etc. It always depends on many things.
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Devil Engine is awesome!
There's a lot of shmups on Steam, and I enjoy most of them, but I'm seriously impressed so far with this one.
Many games try to use a retro look, but this one looks like the real deal. The screenshots on the Steam store don't fully translate how great this game looks in motion, and how awesome the animations (explosions, enemies, ...) are.
Also, for once, it's nice to have a new classic, non-bullet hell, shmup.
There's a demo available, if anyone wants to give it a try.
Here's a gameplay video from an older demo:
There's a lot of shmups on Steam, and I enjoy most of them, but I'm seriously impressed so far with this one.
Many games try to use a retro look, but this one looks like the real deal. The screenshots on the Steam store don't fully translate how great this game looks in motion, and how awesome the animations (explosions, enemies, ...) are.
Also, for once, it's nice to have a new classic, non-bullet hell, shmup.
There's a demo available, if anyone wants to give it a try.
Here's a gameplay video from an older demo:
Pleasantly surprised that The Council story is really good. doing a great job of having you try and solve the mystery
What... you are saying that a good product with smart marketing can be successful in a field that has one or two very dominant players? Surely you must be joking
... Tim said that the only way to compete is by buying exclusives!It remains to be seen if Apex is going to stay popular, but it has already shown that you can "get the foot in the door" without those kind of tactics.
In the end that what's going to matter. Valve in particular seems to have used in several games like Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and Dota 2 (that's not a FPS but it is very versatile there) but if Apex remains popular we will probably just read "The Apex ping system" everywhere. And that's fine because it appears to be a very good implementation and it will be very useful in other games.
Shmups aren't usually my thing but this does look good. Going to try the demo.
Stop reminding me of games that I need to buy .... (check Steam Library)... ok, it already is on my backlog. Nevermind....
OP
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story of our lives
"oh, this game looks rad, i must buy it .... oh, wait, i've owned it for 5 years now"
The art style reminded me of Steredenn. Another good shmup with procedural level generation
Hell yeah, thanks for the b-day wishes. I want the Epic Store to stop buying exclusives for my b-day.oh shiiiiit!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY uraizen!!!
have an awesome one, dude!
it's already well past midnight here, lol
Capcom COO : PC is an Important Platform , PC Sales ratio improving every year for us , Will Strive to Further expand it
Yup. I posted about it too~No one did the Monthly retro challenge? Didn't Tizoc beat it?
I thought that I had Metal Slug, but it seems I missed every time it's been in a bundle
I should have asked for something more realistic like Denuvo being wiped out of existence.
The next AssCreed is supposedly set in Rome. Again.
So for me, that's a safe skip. Sorry Ubi. I'm kinda tired of Europe at this point, but especially all this ancient Greek/Rome blah blah. Wouldn't mind seeing medieval Germany or Jeanne d'Arc France though.
Really I want AssCreed in Meiji or fedual Japan, Warring States or later China, and how about Russia around the time of Rasputin? Then I'll come back to the series.
So for me, that's a safe skip. Sorry Ubi. I'm kinda tired of Europe at this point, but especially all this ancient Greek/Rome blah blah. Wouldn't mind seeing medieval Germany or Jeanne d'Arc France though.
Really I want AssCreed in Meiji or fedual Japan, Warring States or later China, and how about Russia around the time of Rasputin? Then I'll come back to the series.
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