legend

5 hours ago, Bacon said:

You know, I hate to say it, but if this game came out in Acts, I think that would have been stellar. I hate to keep harping on similar topics (he lied as easily as he breathed) but Act 3 is just too packed.

30 minutes ago, UpvoteShittyTakesOnly said:

importantly not-for-profit doesnt mean dont try to maximize revenue

 

it is a tax structure that disallows distribution of profit to the owners of the organization and instead requires excess revenues to be pushed back in to the mission of the org

 

the capped profit thing was a bit silly as it is trying to have your cake and eat it situation and was rightly lambasted

Sure, but the point is being a trillion dollar company is supposed to be a non goal and to get there you would likely be in conflict with the supposed goals

59 minutes ago, UpvoteShittyTakesOnly said:

reading what many people are willing to write openly on twitter about the situation these people all do hate each other lol

 

openai could have been a trillion dollar company with the head star they got by shooting chatgpt and subsequent updates out like a firehose and now they are risking tons of enterprise value for not much in the way of good reasoning 

That's kind of the rub, though, isn't it? Open AI was supposed to be a non-profit. The switch to a capped for-profit company was obviously BS and they wanted money, but it left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth. Them being "non-profit" is regularly made fun of and they earned a lot of bad will from the AI community for the shadiness of it all. The "board" doesn't want to be a for-profit company so pointing out that they could have been a trillion-dollar monolith isn't going to persuade them.

Now is that reason for this? I have no idea. I'd honestly be impressed if it came down to the non-profit side trying to stop this, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

1 hour ago, mclumber1 said:

Boring!

 

I think we all secretly wanted the reason for Altman to be fired because of some kink fetish or because the company has already reached AGI and Altman "accidentally" released it into the wild. 

If you want drama, his sister accused him of sexually abusing her.

Well this should be interesting. I'm not a fan of many of the things Sam has been saying, but I somehow doubt whoever replaces him will be any better.

Feel like I'm seeing hitching in it.

8 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Well, sure, but like I have so many "notable features" that I find it hard to find all the buffs. Like, I think Astarion only needs a 19 to crit, yet he hits consistently more crits than anyone. He just crits too often so I feel like I'm missing something that makes him crit on 18. I looked but I only see 19 but i don't believe it. That's why I wish the game just told you in a menu or something. I want proof that I've just be giga lucky with his dice rolls.

I *think* the combat log will tell you the details of the event (like a critical hit) if you hover over the events. Which means when he get's a crit you can hover over it to see the calculation. But it's possible I'm conflating that with Pillars of Eternity and Roll20.net  

It's a shame it will likely be a dud, because I really like Sofia Boutella as a physical actress and wish she was in more stuff.

3 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I mean I wish it displayed what the lowest crit roll was somewhere. As in, usually it takes a nat20 to crit, but you can lower that in various ways. I wish there was some tracker for that. Like right now I have various characters who crit on 19 and 20 instead of 20. 

Oh you mean the to hit. I suppose, though that doesn't seem that hard to track?  

8 hours ago, Bacon said:

Wish the game displayed your crit range just so I can keep track of that info. I want to lower the floor as much as possible so I can crit as often as possible. By the end of the game I should be able to crit on a 16 or 17 I think.

Critical hits just roll your damage dice twice (add your modifiers once) so you should be able to figure it out.

Don't tell me you all don't remember her!

7 hours ago, Bacon said:

Damn, I really wanna make a deal with the devil.

You can get what you need without him. It's just the harder path.

7 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

100%. It's a neat thing we can do, and I'm sure there could be a useful thing it could be useful for some day, but it is not this day. Almost all of what it gets used for is selling things with forced artificial scarcity, or FARTS for short.

 

That doesn't mean the technology has no value, it just means that for now it's just blowing wind. Wait until someone applies the concept to something that isn't immediately about making themselves a ton of money for nothing.

There may come a day when a use finally emerges for it, but a few years ago I did spend a fair amount of time thinking about different applications where it might be useful and came up empty. And given how many other people were also trying to find applications for it for so many years and failed, we may be waiting a long time before such a problem emerges!  

Just finished the story tonight! A really great game and one of the best puzzle games out there.

I still have a number of the extra puzzles to complete (lost/golden gate/stars, etc.) that I'll go back and do. Well... not sure about doing the stars, but I want to at least do the golden gates.

24 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

the big problem was always going to be that sure you own a thing in one game. That doesn’t mean any developer, even the same developer has to make their next game support or recognize your NFT or ownership of a thing. I mean we already see sequels and the like where cosmetics bought in a previous game are not available in the next game or need to be repurchased, despite the company having your account purchase history. 
 

the only time they could make sense is for games with very long life spans and have an in-game economy between players. And even then the NFTs will only originate and be useful in that one game. Something like World of Warcraft could have done it back in 2004. Or Eve Online. Games that have been around for decades with a persistent world. 

This. The hard part of cross-game items has absolutely nothing to do with making the data available and everything to do with

1. The technical challenges of actually supporting other content in your game even when provided the data for those items;

2. (and even worse) the fact that those alternative items might make zero sense in your game and cannot be balanced.

Making the data available was always something that's relatively easy with lots of ways to do it, yet NFTs only address that aspect that can already be solved.

NFTs are the ultimate solution looking for a problem. It never actually solves real problems and they're almost always a technically *worse* solution than existing alternatives. The whole concept of blockchain in general is aimed to solve a problem that is never a problem in practice That is, it solves "how do you timestamp events when you cannot trust any timestamp sever or set of servers to even timestamp anonymized data?" This is a fascinating intellectual question that has no real world instances, and the various technical costs you pay to solve it are substantial and multifaceted.

8 minutes ago, MarSolo said:

It’s TOTK and it’s not even close. 
 

I’m still cracking up at the replies on Twitter whining about FFXVI getting robbed. Quite possibly the most boring game I’ve ever played. 

Naa, it's absolutely close with BG3 in the running and I even lean BG3. But both are generational games that happened to come out in the same year.

Wife and I finished this tonight. Absolutely stellar. Bring on season 2.

On 8/11/2023 at 4:47 AM, Fizzzzle said:

Eh, her version is distinct enough that I didn't notice it until you mentioned it (now I can't unhear it)

 

I don't really mind people using the same chord progressions. 90% of music uses the same shit just arranged slightly differently.

 

Polyphia, one of my favorite progressive bands, literally makes their music by taking rap/pop songs, deconstructing them, then reconstructing them with lots of polyrhythms and such. But the underlying chord structure is still very simple.

 

Ex: (this one doesn't really have much much polyrhythms but it's the general vibe)

 

I just wanted to say that Polyphia is amazing.

12 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Ubisoft is on the NFT sauce again: A new partnership with Web3 platform Immutable aims to create 'a fresh new experience that players will love' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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Ubisoft's own Quartz NFT initiative may not be up to much, but the company is clearly still enamored with the idea of 'digital ownership.'

 

This was *always* a really stupid idea, but pushing for it yet again well after it's plummeted is even dumber.

10 minutes ago, Bacon said:

 

 

While 16 was a somewhat sour experience overall, Ben Starr killed it.

 

Neil Newborn should become a major VA if he wasn't already. Fantastic Actor.

Agree that both were great.

In the case of Neil (Astarion) I was really impressed with how seamless he could transition from over the top and above it all into deeply emotional and serious attitudes.

BG3 crushed it at the Golden Joystick awards with a record breaking 7 awards.

Here are all the Golden Joystick Awards 2023 winners | GamesRadar+

WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM

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Baldur's Gate 3 wins big as it takes home a record-breaking seven awards

All awards:

• Best Storytelling - Baldur's Gate 3
• Still Playing Award - No Man's Sky
• Best Visual Design - Baldur's Gate 3
• Studio of the Year - Larian Studios
• Best Game Expansion - Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
• Best Indie Game - Sea of Stars
• Best VR Game - Horizon Call of the Mountain
• Best Multiplayer Game - Mortal Kombat 1
• Best Audio - Final Fantasy XVI
• Best Game Trailer - Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
• Best Streaming Game - Valorant
• Best Game Community - Baldur's Gate 3
• Best Gaming Hardware - PSVR 2
• Breakthrough Award - Coccoon / Geometric Interactive
• Critics' Choice Award - Alan Wake II
• Best Lead Performer - Ben Starr, Final Fantasy XVI
• Best Supporting Performer - Neil Newborn, Astarion, Baldur's Gate 3
• Nintendo Game of the Year - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• PC Game of the Year - Baldur's Gate 3
• Xbox Game of the Year - Starfield
• PlayStation Game of the Year - Resident Evil 4
• Most Wanted Game - Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• UGOTY - Baldur's Gate 3

Breaking the rule for this one:

7 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

This seems laser focused to strike down every one of the main criticisms the general public has about the Steam Deck. OLED? Done. HDR? It's there. Bad wifi? Fixed. Battery life? Massively improved. Runs hot and loud? Now it's cooler and quieter.

 

It's good that they focused on these sensible and easily felt wins over trying to juice up the power so soon before there's even decent tech to do that to a degree that makes the upgrade worthwhile, catering to the people who want a Deck to play AAA titles at hotel rooms or whatever is exactly the wrong move and would massively increase the price, kill the battery life more (which, again, is a massive complaint from the average Steam Deck user, they absolutely do care!) and just not be very satisfying. It would also be a huge mistake with the Switch's sequel on the horizon. You don't want to make a half-step that is outdated the second Nintendo puts their new product out, as it makes it harder to justify buying a Deck.

 

No VRR is kind of a shame, but you need a baseline of at least 40 FPS to even begin to notice VRR, and the average person just wouldn't notice. VRR has never worked any kind of magic on me because it doesn't magically get rid of stutters or give a big stability bump like people seem to say -- it helps smooth things out a bit, but it's not a magic bullet I care about as much as either a nicer screen or just more raw power. If they can get it in there with software, great! But frankly the 90hz screen is a good one for me. Yeah you ain't playing Alan Wake 2 at 90FPS, but I play tons of games that could easily hit 90FPS on the Deck, so getting those above 60 will be great.

If they were to follow advice from this thread, they'd be led down a disastrous path where they're catering to ultra enthusiasts with tons of disposable income, whereas the Deck, believe it or not guys, it supposed to be a simple, relatively budget-friendly solution to handheld PC gaming. I get wanting more and better, but I think for a simple hardware revision this is excellent, and I'll happily pick one up.

I think VRR in 40s is significantly better than the alternative of VSync dropping far lower or otherwise having tearing, but is still not great and I'd prefer to tune performance to be higher. But I *do* like VRR a lot when your baseline is >60.

2 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

No, because I don't wear overcoats!

Would you buy this one if you did?