Yeah, imo they fumbled at the start very bad but all these continuous updates really made it one of the rare open universe space games.

It is if you mod it enough :D

Zomboid literally is a game of the dead, so yeah, this checks out.

I’m trying to play it but I’m whatever appeal the game has for millions of people is somehow lost on me. I play Minecraft, Factorio, Valheim, Project Zomboid etc., having all the fun with exploration, combat, base building, loot hoarding and roleplaying but I can’t find fun in any of these aspects in Terraria, maybe except exploration.

Looting has QoL stuff like quick stack to all nearby chests, but with the amount of vanity and variety items in the game, it feels like one would be better off with using whatever there is currently and not even using a base. Decoration and furniture, along with all the random material or unknown-purpose items possibly being just another form of decoration could have been properly annotated or colored imo.

Base building is rather frustrating with how the block distribution of any desirable chunks other than dirt or stone is scattered all around the place, with too much unnecessary mining going on.

For combat, sure there are quite a variety of weapons with different mechanics, but after a while they do boil down to melee, ranged and magic with seeker missiles, and the whole weapon rarity and weapon types thing quickly boils down to having mostly the same tier or worse tier stuff clogging inventory.

Exploration can be fun with the gravity being the main movement influencer and tools to traverse are nice. Most biomes have a good feeling of exploration progression, but after going down to a biome once, it feels like there is nothing else to expect from the same biome somewhere else.

Roleplaying with like 9-pixel characters and maybe some pets is just an unmentionable aspect I guess.

Hard mode looks like it offers more than pre-Hardmode, but I’m not sure if there is anything to do after grinding the base ores and then hunting specific sets or weapons.

The arena thing looks very much fun once then just nothing else.

Back to the looting topic, all the crafting benches and combinations and transmutations and terraforming is just completely unintuitive and a slog that requires checking the wiki constantly. Probably the most boring part of the game for me. In comparison, completing Valheim by going in totally blind was the most intuitive and fun exploration+combat+item progression I ever had, and that game also does not have any in-game progress trees or tutorials either.

What am I missing with Terraria?

Somehow this is the only game I’d be expecting to be older. Huh, just 5 years? Guess a game released pretty complete with just a bit of continuous news that is mainly about it going on sales or giveaways makes a game already a nostalgic memory in such a short time.

Basically trivia to make noise, nothing else. Advertisement is advertisement, even if the game is probably like 10 years away at this point.

I have more than a soft spot for Valve. Their price recommendations over the years Turkish Lira reached the moon was stellar for the consumers here, and it wasn’t just us. There are whole regions of countries that Steam has provided affordable game prices, which would otherwise simply have to resort to piracy completely.

On another side, Steam’s many features like lenient refund policies, extensive yet on-point and open profile/library/workshop/community infrastructure add more than 50% of the content and quality on some games, and a complete easy of use for consumers.

Whatever one can say about their specific policies on some topics, I’m going to argue no other for-profit company has ever put this much feature on display without immediate gain from all of them. This is almost on par with many FOSS projects with such development behind them.

However, on this price-matching practice, I believe it is totally not a pro-consumer one. It is not exclusivity, which could completely bankrupt and erase all other competitors long ago if Steam went that way, but it is still somewhat meddling with blocking cheaper options for consumers.

All that said, and with another commenter mentioning that 30% price cut is standard in the industry and a developer selling a game expensive on Steam and having the possibility to sell it cheaper on another wouldn’t make sense with the same cuts in place, I don’t think this policy completely lacks any merit. Having unreachable presence on Steam and using it as an advertisement platform thanks to its reach while selling the game cheaper elsewhere with the same cuts, or even no-cuts in their own stores, would open a hideous scam many of the well-known companies in the industry would jump on without blinking an eye.

When the competition is trying to bring in scummy, sugar-mommy approach to gaming by luring unsuspecting players with sweets, a company that has consistently proved to be rationally pro-consumer is bound to earn the right to be defended, as long as they keep their pro-consumer approach intact. Which Valve still does, while others are quite shit.

Except GOG, but I’m gonna presume GOG had higher currency conversation rates or advised rates, which made the games there 3-4 times more expensive than Steam in many 3rd world countries. Still cheaper than most other storefronts, but it was more expensive than Steam till the latest currency change.

Tbh, even letting the platforming aside, the difficulty levels were pretty glossed over in Eternal.

Choosing hard for the pushing yourself for fast paced gaming turned the health of every enemy to 11, making some weapons pretty useless instead of leaving them satisfying gameplay parts. Enemy animations were rather broken, too. In 2016, you could see every attack being prepared no matter how quick they were. In Eternal, it felt like playing an online game where animations were simplified and as if you were playing through a tick rate game where the game skipped cues for next enemy movements. A scrawny, naked possessed taking several melee hits wasn’t fun at all.

On easy, it is not even Doom.

I don’t know any 2 months but it seems like the U.S. based game industry companies are now on a roll to see which can close more studios per ceo now.

I’d say peak Bethesda publishing was with the Wolfenstein The New Order (2014) by Machine Games, Doom (2016) by id Software, and Prey (2017) by Arkane Austin. Bethesda managed to put in one mediocre -in comparison- game in 2015, Fallout 4.

Wolfenstein The New Order was coupled with a short but rather good prequel The Old Blood, and The New Order managed to pull in quite good semi-linear progression mechanic with weapon upgrading interjected to make a good game. Latter games marketed with “Lets blast some Nazis, HELL.YEAH BROTHER” kinda zealous and soulles propaganda machines rather than being games, imo.

Bethesda squandered the critical acclaim of Doom 2016 with rgb sales of Doom Eternal imo. 2016 was a pretty novel entry in Doom series, and they went with all the controversy of soundtrack composing, stat-based difficulty, all-color ui shit that distracts from gameplay, pretty unconnected region/planet jumping, cheesy orbital station upgrading/unlocking, etc.

Even though I had not played the first Prey game, I’d still say the most and only bad thing about the Prey 2017 is its name. The name is forcibly put into the game in one memo and isn’t mentioned anywhere else, as if the hardest part of making that game was coming up with a new name and they just gave up, using an old IP. The game was so good tho, that it really could rival Half-Life if it had a couple more intriguing elements. Other than that, the gameplay area, enemy, weapons and utilities designs are spot on. Interconnectivity and reuse of old maps with new designs were excellent. The different mechanic of zero gravity environments really shone with the outside of the Talos I, with how good they implemented the feeling of going into empty space, skirting the station, etc. There wasn’t much to do outside, but the empty scenery was breathtaking anyway. The contrast of the opening of the game and its slow connection to the rest of the game, environment design with every bit of elements fitting the current space station environments, while adding the old Soviet style that the station was taken from, the weapon and ability progress that matches the same good mechanics from Wolfenstein and Doom, how the story is well written and flows very nicely even though the game is actually open world, which in turn changes a lot with respect to the story, etc.

Yeah I don’t understand these pushes for “switch to another engine” without defending monopolization in game engine industry. I don’t understand it even more do these years, when we are not praising or criticizing the graphics much and just want more intricately-written RPG games. Hell, even Bethesda must have broken their own expectations with how few bugs there have been in Starfield, which they are infamous for.

Even with the underlying mechanics, Unreal, for example, doesn’t produce many games with any other feeling than the base, rather rigid processing that is fortunately not much janky, for now.

Hunt: Showdown is also another good option. It is not the same timeline, it is set in 1890’s Florida swamps, but as a Battle Royale without region limitations or anything forcing combat, it is a great game to stalk your prey or go for close quarters combat. Ballistics and medical system is rather simpler yet still very effective in how encounters go down, and also no inventory hassle.

Slower fire rate, no extraction point campers, all kinds of weirdos doing all kinds of shit that makes no sense but make every round somewhat unique and memorable. 500 hours in with 2 buddies in a year and the game still feels fresh without shoving new weapons down every month.

Also no progression hassle. 99% of the weapons can be utilized on every round, just gotta consider how you play with them and how to play against other hunters’ weapons.

It is not something that can scratch the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. itch, though.

I used to use old (current before the update hits stable) family sharing and I’d say among 250 games, at least more than 220-230 were available on family sharing. This included MGSV:PP and Max Max back when they were released. I don’t know if developers become more restrictive on family sharing over the years, but seeing that old designations will carry on to the new Steam Family thing, I reckon this will be a huge hit in the age of crackdown on password sharing in other media platforms.

Steam is anti consumer and only wishs to kill their competition by locking you in.

There is a 30% tax being exerted on all games by like three companies.

First of all, your two sentences in two comments conflict. If there are already other companies practicing the same prices as with Steam, Steam can’t be killing competition by pricing, but with other things like superior service, which is the only benefit sought from competition.

Second, although I agree in general that no private person or company should hoard massive wealth, in a lot of situations owning capital is the only way in current economic workings of the world to develop new things and not stagnate with the same old, years later outdated service. I mentioned very low profit Steam Deck, a push for VR with both hardware and an actual game rather than a tech demo, very low profit Linux gaming, completely unnecessary (profit-wise) indie game fests, that mean out-of-pocket expenses or development time that is not with utmost shareholder profit in mind. For defense of this point’s main premise of accumulating wealth beyond meeting regular interval maintenance work, I would ask that do you deride any taxes or extra price on products that go to government for funding undeveloped or harsh sectors like agriculture, medicine, better transportation ways, etc. that none of which you may utilize but pay a cut for? I’m not staying Valve is a public institute, but it also does research and development with consumers as main beneficiaries on its own scale.

Third, Valve making 10B through 30% cut means Valve held their responsibility and successfully finalized the sales of the games before they cut their share, not in advance of games being sold. This means that developers already got their 70% in their accounts. I’m not saying it is still a just amount of cut when the effort between developing a game and distributing it is compared, but Valve isn’t obligated to just take maintenance fees. They are a private company, like their competitors, and they also have a right to make profit, as their competitors do. Unlike most of their competitors, they actually provide wide variety of quality services and consumer-focused R&D. Sure I’d like to buy games for 10-20% cheaper with Valve going down on its cut, but it is for my best interest that I’m not limited to Windows, most-advertised games only are shoved down my brain but actually good but less advertised games are shown to me, I have very easy access to multiplayer and game related content easily through integrated utilities, etc., none of which their same-percentage-cut having competitors nor their lower-percentage-competitors do and seem to intend to do.

Fourth, Gaben is a weird choice of target for attacking personally for earning huge money through their company and service. I don’t know how many rich CEOs or shareholders you can count that have as little ego Gaben shown to have through his personal deliveries of Steam Deck packages, his constant highlight and emphasis on the team members who he worked with and reached success on many project by name basis and not as a general “as a last thought, I’d like to make random comment to thank my team” in all of his interviews, personally taking time to answer a huge amount of direct consumer emails.

If Valve took a lesser cut, could they achieve all these? Maybe. Would I, the customer, buy games for cheaper? Yes. Would I be deprived of the services that are better for my best interest? Maybe. Do their competitors with same cuts or lower cuts achieve or strive to achieve at least a closer level of what Valve provided to its customers and open internet? No indication of that at all for years now.

I seriously doubt hosting all game files, literally accessible version history and old depots, discussion-artwork-mod forums and files, very customizable profiles besides also hosting plethora of game servers warrant an anti-consumer or monopoly considerations for the cost.

Add to this the actual no-extra cost of developing compatibility for extended OSs and environments like Proton for Linux, platform-wide controller and other input support (including shitty aftermarket and off-brand controllers), native VR support without limiting it to Index.

Also add the access of all information contained to the open internet, promoting various niche genres and games through oft-held week-long “XYZ fests”, encouraging the return of free game demos for people to try out, an automatic refund system with actually rather quick and understanding human support, and not forcing exclusive releases for its platform.

Did I mention the rather cheap Steam Deck and also Valve still being self-sustaining and apparently being able to continue its services for years to come solely thanks to the customer base and not rich sugardaddy rich parent companies?

Do I also need to mention most of the services directly and indirectly help all developers releasing their games in steam? By forums, refund policies allowing consumers to try out games without fears, unified server systems, etc?

I apologize if my tone is harsh, but in the face all the services of Valve, now tell me again how this 30% is an unfair and anti consumer, anti competitive cut and stealing from the devs, please.

I’m pretty content with them making an absolutely excellent and pro-customer online store instead of good games. Even though we have a lot of the good games, and there are never enough of them at the same time, we have just one or two good gaming stores thanks to Steam and GOG.

Hunt servers definitely need an overhaul, especially with influx of new players these last few events brought in. Just a bit better tick rate, and fixing server downtime issues would be pretty nice. Game is slow enough that the servers wouldn’t need to be top tier.

Gotta get something for the marketing expenditure.

Tbh this thing sounds like that very much. It may not be an assassination attempt at all, ut the ridiculous rules to “show face when speaking so we can see how do you feel about what you say” is very much bullshit in this scenario. A proper written essay about the working of Valve would suit the questions way better than having someone put in person in a limited time to answer things out of mind under pressure.