It sucks that music replacement is almost expected. A track was popular once, they’ll ask for 30x royalties on the next go.

I’m also curious if there’s any risk of the Japanese government finally cracking down on those places and setting stricter laws on gambling. Maybe not in the next few years, but sometime in the future.

I’m still not sure why there’s a trend of scaling down the experience. Half-Life: Alyx felt shorter than a Half-Life game, and had MUCH fewer weapons.

At best, these games are slightly extensive tech demos.

Dead by Daylight added mystical smoke grenades survivors can use that are a lot of fun - many are suggesting it might become an ability as part of the main game.

I’ll admit, AW2 has been a hard sell for me. Paranormal mystery always is, because it wants to invite you to ask questions, but it can pull answers literally out of anywhere. Why doesn’t anyone remember old events? Paranormal magic. How did Alan Wake survive at the bottom of a lake for all those years? Paranormal magic. Etcetera.

I don’t even mind games like Ace Attorney that set up a paranormal system like spirit channeling, but cleanly express all their rules and limits before they become involved in the mystery. I’ve watched some partial streams of AW2 but it felt so easy to get lost and have no expectations for it to suddenly defy.

I finished Crow Country, a cool survival horror game that looks a lot like classic Final Fantasy 7. Great game, actually had a decent story and the final confrontation was pretty eerie.

No big spoilers, but there’s a scene near the end of the protagonist descending a giant, disconnected ladder in total darkness that was chillingly effective.

There’s no smaller surprise in the day for me than someone saying they’re uninterested in a Ubisoft game. What baffles me is the incessant need to keep vocally informing other people you don’t care about that thing, though.

I am not entering Train Simulator 2024 threads to loudly announce I don’t care about trains. Just scroll past.

I think campiness can be okay in short bursts but a lot of recent Japanese writing just overstays many jokes.

FFXIV (the mmo) for instance, often gets the balance right and most conversations involving the main heroes are about political drama, with the brief befuddled funtimes.

I just finished a horror game called Crow Country, and it gets some good laughs out of twisting surprise expectations; but it also keeps most conversations and general exploration serious.

Like a Dragon is definitely better with camp. It’s often very segmented to the side quests, and doesn’t just play up fanservice alone.

I’d like a Final Fantasy 7 remake.

Yes, a remake, not a pseudo-sequel lore platform action combat game with all the cutscenes slowed down to 0.02x pace of the original.

Honestly I wouldn’t even mind keeping visuals more basic for standard gameplay just so the rest can be updated.

Bazzite lets people choose between GNOME and KDE when downloading it. I had no familiarity with either, but received tips that GNOME is more user-friendly.

In terms of discoverability, I was investigating the OS’ settings menu pretty intensively, and saw no suggestions that I could add commands to the menu. My other annoyance was around having the right set of things available from the left-hand quick-access on the Files screen. On Windows, this is simply a matter of drag and drop. It’s possible I could change this on Bazzite’s base file explorer, but if so, it did not make anything readily apparent, even from investigating the available settings and everything in the default menus.

I’d definitely prefer Flatpaks for software, but not every program is available by browsing the Software screen. Programs that I attempted to install through BoxBuddy both took far more terminal knowledge and googling than should be necessary, and didn’t actually export to my programs menu as they claimed.

I’m okay with adjusting to a different experience. Less okay with things just not working as documented, or losing out on obvious discoverability options. It feels like an OS has less longevity when its documentation is not built in and relies specifically on message boards - many of which apply their solutions more broadly to Arch or Ubuntu than something as niche as Bazzite.

Bazzite seems excellent if you’re putting it on a gaming handheld. I had my own complaints when using it on a desktop.

I really really wish Bazzite’s file explorer was a bit better. The right-click options for file interaction are miniscule - definitely built for baby users. You can install another like Dolphin, but it will still use the other interface anytime a program needs to open a file.

And, of course, I ran into myriad issues trying to use BoxBuddy and its system of containers to run other (native) Linux software. Not something for amateurs used to “apt install whatever”.

Wish I could say the same. Several times I came back from sleep and the whole OS was suffering from graphical corruption.

It was worth it when you had the surprise hits coming in. Things like, a rhythm-based combat game about a corrupt corporation.

I ended my sub a month or so after finishing Dawntrail’s story. My choice of “time filler” was to level up Blue Mage, which gave an interesting and fun new spell every few levels. But even with the many XP bonuses in effect, it was taking an achingly long time and I was realizing I was treating the game like a job.

I had given my shot at high level content, and its indecipherable on top of needing carpal tunnel inputs, so, not for me.

Look, I’m not here for a pointless back and forth where we just call each other wrong over and over again, so I’m making one last comment then I’m leaving it at that.

No, that’s not how discussion works. If you want to participate and have your points criticized, open yourself up for response. You don’t get to steal the last word and seem brave about it.

I’ll read the rest of that if you feel like actually engaging. In future, if you decide you don’t want to be involved in an online discussion, don’t participate in it; even for having the “last word”. I promise you, you’re probably better off for it and no one will call you a loser for deciding not to argue online.

I’d be all in favor of regional pricing so that people can buy games based on “price of bread” economics, but key resellers and VPN users ruined that approach.

Sorry, no, do not see any implication.

The interviewer asked him to give an explanation for why people hate Denuvo. The reasons are varied, so no matter what he says, that answer is not going to represent every single gamer. Instead, he comes up with one major explanation for the source of Denuvo hatred, and it makes sense. He even points out, as you quoted that “they have a lot of time to spend in communities and share their view and try to blame Denuvo for a lot of things”. As a result, once there’s even circumstantial evidence that - for instance - the tech hurts performance or causes games to crash, that ends up getting a lot of non-pirates on their side. So to bring up that specific case of how that message spread, it even seems to go against the implication “all Denuvo haters are pirates”.

Basically, two different parties are going into online discussions with their own relatively biased goals of changing opinions about Denuvo. As of this interview, Denuvo is one of those. No one is denying they have an agenda. He’s making the point that pirate groups are the other. Nowhere in that paragraph that I quoted did I see anything even implying “All gamers are X”, and honestly I’m tired of people making that leap in logic.

Lastly, what did you even mean about burning a bridge?

I never said I was in favor of launchers, either - they’re annoying. I only pointed out they’re the visible ones. I’m trying to figure out just how far the hate for “everything 3rd-party” goes. I’m trying to qualify the statement.

Right - that’s why I’m confused about Kraxx’s stance. He/she generalized to not liking “3rd party anything” which just seemed ridiculous to me. One way or another, our games are built around tons of 3rd-party software. Launchers are the more visible portion of that, but there’s plenty of others.

Streisand effect is when someone wants a certain piece of info hidden.

A ton of gamers are already putting Denuvo into discussion - this isn’t quieting it, it’s just giving their take (whether you care about it or believe it is up to you).

The nebulous “third party anything” sounds absurd to me though. It’s traditional for games to have 18 libraries/toolkits from SpeedTree to modeling components to renderware. Quite often half of those are badly implemented.

Just out of curiosity: How would you feel about metrics tracking, which is often 3rd party? Eg, software that tells the devs that anyone who doesn’t pick up a secret piece of armor dies at least 50 times to the first boss? When devs are following that they tend to make better decisions around design, and it’s often yet another library layer thrown on.