Lurker > adjl

SinisterSlay posted...

Although technically with the overlay they do know your resolution and framerate, so they could take a guess.

True, but that's still data they'd have to collect and turn into a summary, which is work that's largely redundant when other services offer similar answers.

Bear in mind also that the primary use of such a feature would be to identify games you shouldn't buy. There'd be a handful of sales that would be made to people with crappy computers who didn't think they could run something and realized they could after Steam told them, but those would mostly be cheaper games anyway. On the flip side, I expect there have been many sales where the buyer wouldn't have bought the game if they knew how poorly it was going to run, but because it was kind of borderline put up with it instead of refunding it, and even more where the game turned out not to run but the buyer didn't figure that out until after the refund period had passed.

Basically, it would cost Valve money to implement it and would likely only reduce their total revenue instead of giving them any sort of return on that investment. It'd be convenient for users, certainly (I quite agree that it'd be really nice to see a "users with similar hardware to yours have averaged X FPS at 720p, Y FPS at 1080p, and Z FPS at 4k" section on each store page, and the technology is absolutely there to do that), but I understand why they haven't.

That is, however, something one of Steam's prospective competitors might want to look at, since that would be an actual service advantage that might justify jumping ship.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

steam also collects the necessary data for that though lmao

you think they don't know what hardware you have?

They know what hardware you have. They don't know what games people have managed to run on that hardware or how well.

SinisterSlay posted...

Some part of that seems wrong.

We know inflation has caused all prices to double since 2012.
Did anyones wage quadruple in these last 12 years? mine didn't

The causality doesn't go both ways. Increasing wages by 10% increases prices by 0.4%. Increasing prices by 0.4% doesn't necessarily increase wages by 10%.

Because there are several other services that have collected the necessary data to answer that question, making it unnecessary for Steam to also collect (and store and process) it.

Lokarin posted...

what if it's the realdoll you're trying to hide?

Another pair of Groucho Marx glasses.

Indeed. The usual suspects lose their collective minds whenever the idea of a wealth cap is tossed around, but really, the only reason to want more than a billion dollars is if you're trying to exercise way more power than any one person should ever have anyway. If you want to watch numbers go up, go play Cookie Clicker or something and stop ruining the economy for everyone else.

As a concept, a flat minimum wage will never work. It'll inevitably fall behind inflation, stagnating until the gap becomes severe enough to generate enough political will to fix it, by which point the economy has come to depend so extensively on poverty wages that fixing it is deeply disruptive and gives more ammunition to opponents of future increases.

Instead, it needs to be a sliding scale based on the regional cost of living: the minimum wage for a given position must be high enough that working for 40 hours a week pays as much as median rent for a 2-bedroom apartment (equivalent to paying 2x what's needed to pay for half of it, aiming for paying 3x what a sub-median apartment would cost) within a 30-minute walk of the workplace, or enough for a similar apartment within a 30-minute drive if you also cover the cost of owning and using a car. The benefits of that are twofold: you ensure that employees are able to afford to live, plus it automatically moderates the cost of living because jacking up prices to cover higher wages will prompt people to move somewhere cheaper and thereby force housing prices down.

The exact numbers will obviously need tweaking, and the increase will initially cause many of the same problems that any minimum wage increase will, but codifying that sort of policy is what's needed to ensure that minimum wage laws serve their intended purpose in perpetuity instead of being a constant uphill battle. Toss in some re-zoning measures to add more mixed-use properties in neighbourhoods to make it easier for people to work and shop locally, and you've got a recipe for a self-regulating system that ensures everyone is able to afford to live.

That, or just do UBI and abandon the idea of minimum wage altogether. That's probably simpler, though it still runs into the issue that living wages are not universal and there'd need to be some regional variation there (with some kind of checks to make sure people don't just move to expensive neighbourhoods so they get more UBI).

SinisterSlay posted...

So maybe the quick solution, if you openly support dictators, your taxes are raised to 99.99999%. Call it the treason tax. So only Musk, Trump, etc have to pay it basically. And we end poverty overnight

Fun fact: If you took away 99.99999% of a billionaire's net worth, they'd still have $10k left. Musk and Bezos would still be millionaires. A billion dollars really is a ludicrous amount of money.

At least this time was shorter. Still weird to have it two days in a row, though.

Not helped by the fact that anyone calling about an insurance claim is probably already having a pretty bad day to have to claim something against insurance.

JOExHIGASHI posted...

I think bad customers just stick out more. Usually people get what they want pay and leave with no trouble.

Pretty much. You don't notice the people that don't do anything to make themselves more noticeable, which skews your perception of how common remarkably bad customers are. Unless you've actually kept a tally, I can almost guarantee you're overestimating the percentage.

Solid_Sonic posted...

What happened? GameFAQs doesn't update its social media feeds anymore.

The site went read-only for a couple hours. Nothing terribly unusual, but I'd be lying if it didn't cross my mind that it might have been the end of the site.

Pretty much every notable game wins some GotY award or other.

BoomerKuwanger posted...

If they were gonna shut the place down it doesn't make sense to me that they'd put it in read only mode. If only though. Set me free from this dumb site

It makes some sense. Read-only would be less resource-intensive than having to process inputs as well, including not needing to have anyone to moderate content. In read-only mode, they still get ad revenue from anyone that ends up coming to read guides or whatever posts are left (which show up in search engines), so there's some value in keeping the site alive in read-only mode for that.

Well that was a thing.

BoomerKuwanger posted...

I think that PS2 is unequivocally retro at this point, but the scale isn't linear. Some games that are 10 years old (or more) still strike me as "modern" whereas, say, 1988 to 1998 has a much wider gap of what popular games of the time are like.

It also doesn't help that a lot of modern games deliberately evoke the styles and mechanics of older games. There are still often noticeable differences, like you'd never actually ask if Sea of Stars was a contemporary of Chrono Trigger despite the obvious similarities, but it does mess with our ability to assign an overall "feel" to a given era when that feeling has been mixed with that of prior eras.

Thinking about it, that sort of deliberate retro styling is something that mostly started after 2000 (in part because handhelds were 1-2 generations behind consoles and therefore effectively kept retro-styled games alive without a deliberate effort to do so), so I guess that might be part of why I don't feel like gaming has changed as much in the last 20 years as in the 20 years prior.

Lokarin posted...

Klingons are still called Klingons even though their ancestral homeworld of Kling is gone

That may just be their decision to kling on to the name, though.

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

Wait, why am I finding Direct Videos on Youtube already, TC said tomorrow?

He said "tomorrow" yesterday, in all North American time zones. I guess it would have been like 2 am today your time, but it was between 5 and 10 pm for all NA users.

The URL also specifies 2-21-2024, which should clear up any confusion.

Finally, a Fantasy Life release date. That was announced *last* February as a 2023 release, and kept being listed as such until like December when they said "Yeah it's not coming this year we're aiming for next summer."

Otherwise, nothing super exciting. Can't say I was expecting a new Endless Ocean (I honestly forgot that game existed), but I guess it makes a lot of sense with the currently popularity of chill exploration cozy games. Not really my thing, but good for the people that like it.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Penny's Big Breakaway!

I can't say I've followed it closely, but I'm getting the vibe that it's a matter of Sonic Mania doing well, Sonic Team not following through on its success because that's just how Sonic works now, and the studio just saying "fine, we'll make our own game that follows through on Mania's success." That's something that's good to see. The management of the Sonic franchise has just been baffling in how insistent they seem to be on trying something different every time regardless of whether or not the last idea worked, which has resulted in a ton of wasted potential.

Just put a pair of Groucho Marx glasses on it and nobody will notice.

Idiot_Savant posted...

I generally assume that anyone that seems to die in any media will be revealed to be alive later if somebody decides it'll help the story

That too, but falling in a visual medium is deliberately ambiguous enough to make it easy to say they survived. Same with being buried under rubble or caught in a chaotic explosion where they disappear. If there's no body, there's a good chance they survived.

shadowsword87 posted...

Boycotting an entire town seems weird, normally it's one specific company or product.
An entire town seems dumb.

Depending on what they're shipping, it could even be characterized as terrorism. If it's stuff like heating oil or food that are essential for life, a large enough movement to limit the availability of those items is putting people in danger to coerce the local government into making changes.

I generally assume that anyone that seems to die by falling in movies/TV will be revealed to be alive later if somebody decides it'll help the story.

Probably like 6-7. Apparently I have shingles, and I spent a good chunk of Sunday in the ER getting checked out because it's right around my eye and that's super dangerous, but it's a fairly mild case and it's better today than it has been for the last few days. Still bothersome, though.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

No, it is the children who are wrong.

There is only one "old-school". The rest is just new school, slightly less new school, and still kinda new school.

As much as the chronology disagrees with us, I do kind of agree. Games from 20 years ago feel a lot more similar to modern games than games from 40 years ago did to those 20-year-old games. Many of the gameplay conventions that we consider standard now were established in the early 2000's, including the controller designs that have become pretty much universal, and there haven't been any major paradigm shifts like the 2D to 3D jump. I'm sure part of it is just that I make less of a distinction between the games that came out in the second half of my life than the first, simply by virtue of the fact that the second half feels faster and less varied, but the last 20 years of gaming have still definitely progressed very differently from the 20 years that preceded them.

I keep meaning to learn how, but with no driveway and no garage, I don't really have a convenient place to do it. I tend to just roll it in with a seasonal tire change (which, again, I could do myself if I had a convenient place, but I don't really want to do it on the side of the road) and a general check-up (which I can't really do myself). In the grand scheme of things, it's not that expensive, so I don't mind too much.

I have, however, replaced two lights now (rear turn signal on my old car, headlight on my current one), and that's something I'll never be going to a garage for again. That's an incredibly easy repair.

Not that many, though my experience is from working in a small bakery with quite a few regulars that were great, so I expect I got off easier than people in larger chains do. That was also nice because the owners worked in the store, so when we did get bothersome customers, they were just as bothered as the rest of us and would sympathize afterwards (or intervene if it was a real problem, though those were rare).

Problem customers do tend to stand out enough to feel like they make up a greater percentage than they actually do, though. Even if you're serving a couple hundred people in a shift and almost all of them are perfectly fine, one really awful one can ruin the whole day.

faramir77 posted...

Nintendo is at a weird point. There aren't any major titles on the horizon. They'll need to show something good otherwise this will be total useless. Somehow I doubt this will be where they announce the next system, unless they just acknowledge it's a thing.

Recently, they've tended toward showing major titles relatively shortly before their release. The last few February directs have come at an apparent lull in their release lineup, but set the stage for most of the rest of the year with titles that come out within ~6-8 months of their announcement. Personally, I kind of prefer that over the industry standard of "here's a trailer for a game that might come out three years from now."

That said, they're specifying this is a "partner showcase," which I expect means it's going to be mostly third-party stuff, and 25 minutes is pretty short. In the absence of another February direct, I suspect this means we're going to be getting a bigger one in March-April that unveils a new system. That's mostly just a hunch, though.

The nuance of determining whether or not graffiti/street art has enhanced its canvas gets really tricky to actually sort out in a formal legal context, given how inescapably subjective art and aesthetics are and the basic concept of people having a right to decide what their private property looks like, but as a high-level concept I do like the idea of not prosecuting people who have created art that does enhance the space.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

yeah, it's like they all think every city is the version of Detroit in robocop

Bonus points where the "high taxes" thing is often parroted by people who live in suburbs and therefore have their low tax rate overwhelmingly subsidized by those higher taxes in the city core. Most single-family suburban homes in America are tax-negative when you factor in all of the other infrastructure costs involved in servicing those neighbourhoods, and while I can understand preferring to pay less property tax than more (because who doesn't?), it's pretty short-sighted to gripe about cities' high taxes when they're literally the only reason they have a road at the end of their driveway.

Indeed. I'm referencing how similar his post sounds to the city-fearing rhetoric so common among the sort of people who glomped right on to that song when it came out.

Lokarin posted...

ya, but they're all poor people

100,000 people giving $5 each is $500,000. Poor people in large enough numbers can collectively afford some pretty expensive things, and there's no shortage of people willing to pay for their messiah's crimes.

Lokarin posted...

how are they at $270k already?

In case you haven't noticed, Trump has a few fans that aren't exactly sensible about what they donate to.

Muscles posted...

There's a lot of great things about America and cities aren't one of them, they have have some cool shit in some cities but mostly they suck. Like I love Chicago food, and you can't have sports teams without cities and you probably won't be getting any cool concerts near you without cities, etc. but they are also overly taxed, crime ridden cesspools that will try to take all your money, whether it's the politicians or the fellow people.

Try that in a small town.

It's not even just that he lost, they're protesting because they believe he should be above prosecution for crimes he's committed. They don't believe he's innocent, just that he shouldn't face any consequences that might interfere with his ability to act as their messiah.

Side note: Apparently there are 3.54 million truckers in the US. Even if every single one of them were on board with this (and they aren't), that's not very many millions. This is "one million moms" (actually about 10k) all over again.

TheGuiltySpark posted...

Is your problem with the "MAGA" part or the "boycott" part?

Because if you believe in boycotts, but only for people that think like you, then...

You can believe in boycotts as a concept while disagreeing with or disapproving of any particular boycott.

You can celebrate whatever you want however you want, so long as you aren't hurting anyone (or expressing an intent to do so). Just don't necessarily expect other people to celebrate with you or understand why you're celebrating if you aren't following some sort of established social norm.

Devil_May_Cry posted...

I never said criticism of Israel is antisemitic.

"Look at these poor Israeli diplomats that have to justify their genocide to the UN because those idiots at the UN don't know what their 'Never Again' badges mean."

At every turn since the most recent eruption of open war, you've been quite clear that you believe anyone critical of Israel's actions (actions which include wholesale slaughter of civilians, destruction of critical civilian infrastructure, deliberately engineering one of the worst refugee crises in recent memory while actively impeding efforts to provide humanitarian aid, and other blatant war crimes) is doing so because they're antisemitic, not because Israel's government (which is notably very distinct from Jews as an ethnic collective) is comprised of genocidal maniacs and people don't like that. You've been handwaving atrocities and digging as hard as you can for silver linings in an apparent effort to garner sympathy for Israel (who doesn't deserve it) and Jewish people (who do deserve it, but generally already have it among the circles where you're saying these things).

If that hasn't been your intent, consider this a wake-up call that you need to re-evaluate how you've worded things and how you interpret situations in which people are critical of Israel, because that is the position you've been communicating.

Devil_May_Cry posted...

Palestinians should have the right to happiness and all but Hamas is the problem.

Hamas isn't the one forcing Palestinians to line up for hours every morning to cross checkpoints to get to work. Hamas isn't the one expropriating Palestinian's homes and inviting Jewish immigrants to come take them. Hamas isn't the one forcing babies to be delivered in the mud at the side of the road because pregnant women in labour haven't been able to get through checkpoints fast enough to reach hospitals.

Hamas is *a* problem, absolutely, but they are not the only barrier to Palestinian happiness. Brutally oppressive apartheid policies that punish innocent civilians simply for being born the wrong race ensure that's not a readily attainable goal. Those policies are, in many ways, why Hamas exists: The dogmatic nature of the conflict in the Middle East and the grossly unfair way in which Israel was created mean there will likely always be antisemitic extremists one way or another, but it would be a lot harder for those extremists to gain traction against an Israeli government that treated Palestinians as equals than against an Israeli government that gives Palestinians a legitimate reason to hate them (hatred which, in turn, victimizes innocent Israeli citizens).

If I remember. I often don't, but that's not a deliberate snub.

Devil_May_Cry posted...

Strawman, I want happiness for all people. If you want my views on the war in the Middle East ask me in another topic

I don't really need to. You've already expressed such delightful views as (and these are near-direct quotes) "If Israel were bad they wouldn't have given Palestinians advance warning before they bombed their homes into oblivion" and "sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice civilians to fight evil." You've made it clear that your vision of "happiness for all people" in this context is for all Palestinians to find somewhere else to live and let Israel take over unimpeded and that you feel any suggestion to the contrary is "antisemitic."

streamofthesky posted...

t's a topic about the inventor of console gaming being Jewish and people start ranting about Israel.
That's pretty f***ing depraved to me.
Try that sort of unhinged racist s*** w/ literally any other ethnic minority and the mods would actually do something about it, but for some reason when it's Jews it's ok.

"I don't hate Jews, I just don't like what Israel is doing. Which is why I bring up Israel in any discussion about any Jewish person."

In a vacuum, that'd be the case, but based on TC's posting history you can read between the lines and know that when he says "antisemitism," he means being at all critical of Israel. He's got a pretty extensive history of not only making no distinction between being pro-Holocaust and being against nuking Gaza, but pushing back against efforts to do so. These responses are in response to that history, not to what's immediately at hand.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I refuse to vote in this poll out of principle.

No game beyond the second generation of video games (or third at most) should ever be called "old school".

The PS2 is now older than almost every game that was considered "retro" was when it was released (23 years in October, 23 years prior to its release was 1977). There are now many different "old schools," even if some are older than others.

Devil_May_Cry posted...

but I digress please dont derail my topic with depraved rants about Israel people.

"Genocide is bad stop doing it"="Depraved rants" now, I guess.

Bonus points where the central concept of the show revolves around perpetuating the idea that civilizations other than ours were primitive savages who couldn't possibly have figured out the things we have, which is an attitude that gets dangerously close to white supremacy at times.

If Hitler had a Nintendo I bet WWII would never have happened.

The real master race was Excitebike.

It's not impossible, but it would be so hideously expensive as to not be at all feasible. Weather carries a ton of energy, which means it would take a similar ton of energy to emulate it. Given that the more novel weather would be an experience not unlike watching a storm or volcano on TV (watching a sealed room from the safety of a viewing spot) and the more mundane stuff isn't that hard to just experience yourself with a bit of travel, I don't think there'd ever be enough demand to justify the cost.

In my experience, I much prefer to have somebody I can ask for help as needed than to get trained through a large info dump when I start that I have to remember. So long as you can achieve that goal of helping her feel comfortable asking questions, that's going to do more for her onboarding experience than any amount of better teaching might. Just take everything a step at a time, walking her through each process, and be available to answer questions if she needs help and you're probably good.

A house cat/dog seems like an obvious choice, except for the rather large number of domestic cats/dogs that end up on the streets, stuck indefinitely in shelters, or with owners that mistreat them. But then I guess a domestic animal's worst day is pretty typical for a wild animal, so that consideration is more recognizing that it might not work out wonderfully than thinking it'll be worse than being something wild.

If you're looking to individually render the kills, I don't think it's realistically possible. If every other pixel on a 1080p screen were an instantly-respawning enemy and you killed all of them once every second, that'd still only be about a million kills per second and reaching a billion would take you ~17 minutes of doing that continuously. That's doable, but that's a ridiculous extreme and would not make for a game that I'd even really call playable, let alone enjoyable, and anything less extreme (like 20-pixel enemies that you wipe every 5 seconds) than that is going to inflate that required time considerably (that example would take 144 hours).

If you do want to rack up a billion+ kills, you'll need some sort of abstraction in there, like a multikill mechanic for overkill (scaling damage non-linearly is easy enough) or destruction on a city/town scale instead of an individual one.

It looks like you tagged him properly on my end. I think you're good.

Used to do mornings, but my girlfriend prefers evenings, so I switched when we started living together.