Community MetaSteam | March 2020 - Rise and Shine, Ms. Vance, Until It Is Done!

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yuraya

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May 4, 2019
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You can't use regular external drives for storage? Isn't the SSD storage thingie just if you want fast ass storage?
You can store next gen games on external storage but you won't be able to run them unless they are on the main 1TB ssd (or proprietary cards).

Its kind of like Playstation Vita.

At least you will be able to run older stuff off regular external drive but still this is gonna be an expensive pain in the ass for people who buys/play a lot of games.
 

Le Pertti

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You can store next gen games on external storage but you won't be able to run them unless they are on the main 1TB ssd (or proprietary cards).

Its kind of like Playstation Vita.

At least you will be able to run older stuff off regular external drive but still this is gonna be an expensive pain in the ass for people who buys/play a lot of games.
Ah yeah that is what I assumed. But yeah shame that it will only work on xbox, I would love to have a thing like that for my computer! Sure there are external SSDs on PC but I'm assuming also that the xbox card thingie has faster transfer rates.
 

BlackRainbowFT

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Since roughly 50% of the trains are canceled and I had to wait almost 30 minutes on the platform, freezing my ass off, I decided to give the Steam Link app a serious try.

Playing Dicey Dungeons felt pretty good (I lost...)! But man, Voxelgram is a nightmare... I tried one of the smallest puzzles (which usually take me less than 1 minute) and it took me almost 6 minutes ! Fiddly doesn't even come close to describe the experience.
 

BlackRainbowFT

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Since I'm going to get fast internet, what multiplayer games are the ones to try out?
I don't think you're going to have a significantly different experience even going from 50Mbps to 10Gbps. Unless you want to stream your own stuff or use a streaming service.

I think... ring... ring... huh ? hello ? yeah... oh okay. hangs up

It was a very excited Google rep on the phone and he told me that they want your business.

Nah, to be honest the big deal is downloading games and avoiding preloading (unpacking takes more time than downloading the game... even on a SSD)

edit: unless your question is actually implying that before switching to the faster connection you hadn't played any of the most recent online games...
 

Le Pertti

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I don't think you're going to have a significantly different experience even going from 50Mbps to 10Gbps. Unless you want to stream your own stuff or use a streaming service.

I think... ring... ring... huh ? hello ? yeah... oh okay. hangs up

It was a very excited Google rep on the phone and he told me that they want your business.

Nah, to be honest the big deal is downloading games and avoiding preloading (unpacking takes more time than downloading the game... even on a SSD)

edit: unless your question is actually implying that before switching to the faster connection you hadn't played any of the most recent online games...
Ah yes I haven't been able to play any multiplayer with tethering my phone for internet connection haha, with my new internet I will finally have good enough ping to play online.
 
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「Echo」

竜の魔女。
Nov 1, 2018
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For online games, I think ping/latency matters A LOT more than speed. One nice thing about living so dang close to Ubisoft's East Coast servers. I have like ~9ms ping to the R6 Servers.

I definitely do NOT recommend R6 as a first time MP game. It's very frustrating start for beginners because map knowledge and knowing common operator strats reigns supreme. It takes 100's of hours to master just the launch ops and maps lol. And even with 1300 hours myself I'm still learning new angles every now and again from players even higher level than me.

Monooboe
Since you already have it, have you tried Div2 online?
 

Le Pertti

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For online games, I think ping/latency matters A LOT more than speed. One nice thing about living so dang close to Ubisoft's East Coast servers. I have like ~9ms ping to the R6 Servers.

I definitely do NOT recommend R6 as a first time MP game. It's very frustrating start for beginners because map knowledge and knowing common operator strats reigns supreme. It takes 100's of hours to master just the launch ops and maps lol. And even with 1300 hours myself I'm still learning new angles every now and again from players even higher level than me.

Monooboe
Since you already have it, have you tried Div2 online?
For Div2 MP, isn't it kind of recommended to have the season pass? I never really played any of them online, always played them as single player things.

I'm thinking about playing Destiny 2, but using Geforce Now! How does multiplayer games work with it?
 

lazerfox

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Dec 31, 2018
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Since I'm going to get fast internet, what multiplayer games are the ones to try out?
Really depends on what you like.

CSGO is an obvious one and probably benefits the most from having low ping. There's a matchmaking server in Paris so you'll probably get >10ms ping which feels really responsive. If you're into Battle Royales, the new hotness right now seems to be the F2P Call of Duty Warzone mode. Apex Legends and PUBG are a lot of fun as well.

And of course there's all the MOBA's which are pretty much unplayable with high ping.

I'm thinking about playing Destiny 2, but using Geforce Now! How does multiplayer games work with it?
Now idea how Geforce now works but Destiny 2 is a great choice.
 

「Echo」

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No, it's required.
USB storage is only for data/backward compatible titles.
New gen games will be made with 3 GB/s data transfer speeds in mind.
Wait does this mean SSD's connected via SATA cables are "slow" now? :(

Edit:
Dang, I guess it is pretty slow since m.2/NVME became a thing. Guess I'll have to save for one. My mobo does have the slots at least, but man, I was hoping I could just skate by with a GPU upgrade this console cycle.
 
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TheTrain

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Wait does this mean SSD's connected via SATA cables are "slow" now? :(

Edit:
Dang, I guess it is pretty slow since m.2/NVME became a thing. Guess I'll have to save for one. My mobo does have the slots at least, but man, I was hoping I could just skate by with a GPU upgrade this console cycle.
I've both of them on my PC (x1 NVME, x1 SATA SSD), the difference is clear between the two but going from an HDD to an SSD is still the biggest gap I've ever experienced.
 
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Le Pertti

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Yay the guy is here to connect the fibre. But he can't find where in the building he has to do it haha!



Well fuck, my typical luck... the technician can't get to the important place because the guardian of the building is on lockdown and now I have to wait 2 to 4 weeks to get it connected.
 
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Durante

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I don't understand the question. If you download a released game it is not encrypted as far as I know, just compressed.

Even if it were encrypted, while decrypting a download your decryption speed only needs to match the download speed for it to not have an impact on total time. On the other hand, if you decrypt local data you can't hide the decryption time by overlapping it with the download time.
 

Deku

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Are there any experts on OpenVPN? I am trying to establish a VPN connection for our office, so that my co-workers can connect to our office network while at home. I was able to create a VPN connection, but after trying to connect once and got it to work it doesn't work anymore after connecting a second time. I don't get an IP-address assigned for some reason

I am using an ASUS Router RT-AC68U to create a VPN connection
 

Swenhir

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Apr 18, 2019
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Yay the guy is here to connect the fibre. But he can't find where in the building he has to do it haha!



Well fuck, my typical luck... the technician can't get to the important place because the guardian of the building is on lockdown and now I have to wait 2 to 4 weeks to get it connected.
I have no words for how much it sucks. I'm sorry for you :(.
 

madjoki

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What is this? madjoki

Advertising apps were sale slots in front page or sales pages.
These were recently migrated to curators / new event system. (for new sales anyways)

I don't understand the question. If you download a released game it is not encrypted as far as I know, just compressed.

Even if it were encrypted, while decrypting a download your decryption speed only needs to match the download speed for it to not have an impact on total time. On the other hand, if you decrypt local data you can't hide the decryption time by overlapping it with the download time.
Internally it's always encrypted.

Depot Chunks are first compressed (LZMA or Deflate iirc depending on chunk) then AES-256 crypted.

This applies to workshop mods too, which also are depot that has same id as app itself, regular depots start from appid + 1, with each version corresponding to a version of mod)

In preloads it's written to disk as is (with depot chunks stored in 1GB or so files iirc nowdays?), with released decrypted on memory and written to files.

I assume download servers will never know keys, to be safe to host with any third party.

So yes, it's read/write cycles that slow it down. (Maybe steam not being optimized for fast SSDs either?)
 
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Durante

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I still would argue that saying "read/write cycles slow it down" gives the wrong impression.
With a normal internet connection (even a fast one) you simply don't know how long the decryption takes, since it will be faster than the download (unless of course someone observes that the download actually is faster than just the local decryption process). And not just that it feels faster, which I know it does, but that it actually is ;)

Also:
 
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lashman

lashman

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I don't understand the question. If you download a released game it is not encrypted as far as I know, just compressed.

Even if it were encrypted, while decrypting a download your decryption speed only needs to match the download speed for it to not have an impact on total time. On the other hand, if you decrypt local data you can't hide the decryption time by overlapping it with the download time.
Internally it's always encrypted.

Depot Chunks are first compressed (LZMA or Deflate iirc depending on chunk) then AES-256 crypted.

This applies to workshop mods too, which also are depot that has same id as app itself, regular depots start from appid + 1, with each version corresponding to a version of mod)

In preloads it's written to disk as is (with depot chunks stored in 1GB or so files iirc nowdays?), with released decrypted on memory and written to files.

I assume download servers will never know keys, to be safe to host with any third party.

So yes, it's read/write cycles that slow it down. (Maybe steam not being optimized for fast SSDs either?)
I still would argue that saying "read/write cycles slow it down" gives the wrong impression.
With a normal internet connection (even a fast one) you simply don't know how long the decryption takes, since it will be faster than the download (unless of course someone observes that the download actually is faster than just the local decryption process). And not just that it feels faster, which I know it does, but that it actually is ;)
 

gabbo

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Dec 22, 2018
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I still would argue that saying "read/write cycles slow it down" gives the wrong impression.
With a normal internet connection (even a fast one) you simply don't know how long the decryption takes, since it will be faster than the download (unless of course someone observes that the download actually is faster than just the local decryption process). And not just that it feels faster, which I know it does, but that it actually is ;)

Also:
Now all I can see is a thong with a bowtie
 

madjoki

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Sep 19, 2018
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I still would argue that saying "read/write cycles slow it down" gives the wrong impression.
With a normal internet connection (even a fast one) you simply don't know how long the decryption takes, since it will be faster than the download (unless of course someone observes that the download actually is faster than just the local decryption process). And not just that it feels faster, which I know it does, but that it actually is ;)
Yeah maybe that's bad way to word it, but basically what you said. This whole encryption is free when you're downloading (unless you have 10 Gbit internet and slow CPU I guess), but takes significant amount of time.

Maybe Steam doesn't fully take advantage of multithreading and SSDs either.
 
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Durante

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Maybe Steam doesn't fully take advantage of multithreading and SSDs either.
Yeah, it does feel like it's slower than it should be. Might be sequential. I'll try to look at CPU and SSD usage next time the decryption is running.
 

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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ME4 wasn't THAT bad. I still played through it on XBO
I played through ME1 just before trying the ME4 demo, and yeah, it's THAT bad. Like, comparing the mood and enthusiasm when you are in the Citadel, with the equivalent moment in ME4, it's day and night. Maybe the game gets something going on later, but nothing turned me off that game more than actually playing it.
 
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