Community MetaSteam | February 2022 - Good night, and good luck, Lowly Tarnished

[thekeats1999]

Failbetters next game, Mask of the Rose, has a demo up.


Apparently s visual novel so If it's up to the same writing quality as their previous games then it should be good.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

servers are back up and characters that "were not missing" have been fixed and not missing anymore...if that even makes sense

Apparently the "fix" was to point the servers at the actual Live environment not a Production/Dev environment.

Most of the people i know in I.T. were...

 

[ZKenir]

starting to climb

 

[moemoneyb1]

hi

 

[pinson]

Just beat Demon of Hatred in Sekiro after 1+ hour of trying. I'm am literally shaking holy shit

 

[DeejayDoom]

 

[Panda Pedinte]

Crazy peak.

hi

Welcome back lashman, we missed you.

 

[PC-tan]

By the way was the Portal thing only part of the JPN Nintendo Direct? Or did they also show it as part of the NA and EU direct?

Since that might give a clue to this one crazy theory I saw someone come up with.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

By the way was the Portal thing only part of the JPN Nintendo Direct? Or did they also show it as part of the NA and EU direct?

Since that might give a clue to this one crazy theory I saw someone come up with.

It was on the EU direct anyway, I saw it

 

[QFNS]

By the way was the Portal thing only part of the JPN Nintendo Direct? Or did they also show it as part of the NA and EU direct?

Since that might give a clue to this one crazy theory I saw someone come up with.

It was on the NA direct too.

 

[Alexandros]

Good to see you again lashman

 

[Vantr]

hi

Welcome back!!!

 

[Li Kao]

hi

Wait, are we sure that’s really lashman and not his anime loving evil doppelgänger ?
…
…
Hey man, good to see you, would you like to come and watch the integral of One Piece with me ?

Spoiler

Love to see you back

 

[Le Pertti]

When will Valve bring back our official Mayor, Mayor Carol!?

 

[Li Kao]

So after weeks of not playing it and with the risk of dropping it, I resumed my playthrough of Ys VII, and I fear I would classify it as a shit Ys.
It has the known flaws of modern Ys, so yap yap yap, yap yap yap, and maybe I could interest you in another bit of yap yap yap. And it's group Ys, so combats are a little messy, boss a little spongy, strategy is less important than BPM.

But fuck, it also has a super uninspired dungeon design, and the writing is a joke. Now you don't play Ys for its plot, but there is often a flavor to them, and several of the games have genuinely serviceable to great stories. In Ys VII, while I expect some development in the final part of the game, the storytelling was a joke. Basically 'hey, something happened in this specific location, might as well visit the other specific locations'.

It's Ys on auto-pilot, and while by no means as bad, I can't shake the feeling it's the Assassin's Creed Liberation of the Ys series.

 

[Mivey]

So after weeks of not playing it and with the risk of dropping it, I resumed my playthrough of Ys VII, and I fear I would classify it as a shit Ys.
It has the known flaws of modern Ys, so yap yap yap, yap yap yap, and maybe I could interest you in another bit of yap yap yap. And it's group Ys, so combats are a little messy, boss a little spongy, strategy is less important than BPM.

But fuck, it also has a super uninspired dungeon design, and the writing is a joke. Now you don't play Ys for its plot, but there is often a flavor to them, and several of the games have genuinely serviceable to great stories. In Ys VII, while I expect some development in the final part of the game, the storytelling was a joke. Basically 'hey, something happened in this specific location, might as well visit the other specific locations'.

It's Ys on auto-pilot, and while by no means as bad, I can't shake the feeling it's the Assassin's Creed Liberation of the Ys series.

So to be sure, do you mean Ys Seven or YS VIII (with three III)?
I liked the story bits in VIII about the old civilisation, just because it gives us a glance about a society from pre antiquity that isn't just the Eldeen. But yeah, the modern story bits were fairly dumb, but I also didn't really care much about the plot and it was easy to ignore since I enjoyed the combat and music so much.

 

[Joe Spangle]

Hi lashman good to have you back.

'Cities: Skylines' modder banned after discovery of major malware risk

Hidden malware was being used to implement malicious code.

www.nme.com

Jeez thats pretty shitty. Some people are just not right in the head. Attacking fellow modders and disrupting their code to get more downloads. Pretty devious.

 

[Li Kao]

So to be sure, do you mean Ys Seven or YS VIII (with three III)?
I liked the story bits in VIII about the old civilisation, just because it gives us a glance about a society from pre antiquity that isn't just the Eldeen. But yeah, the modern story bits were fairly dumb, but I also didn't really care much about the plot and it was easy to ignore since I enjoyed the combat and music so much.

Did I typo somewhere ?
I'm indeed talking about Ys 7 ! Still have 8, 9 and 0 to play. As a typical Ys fan I have never been that interested into an Ys without Adol, so it will be played last I suppose. Though seeing the glowing praises for it I also suppose it will be a better time than 8 or 9.

 

[Cacher]

Just finished House of the Dead: Overkill. Damn, other than the writing is juvenile (it's like something written by an edgy middle-school kid) as fuck, this is actually a pretty good game. Maybe the best HOTD game out there.

 

[Mivey]

Did I typo somewhere ?
I'm indeed talking about Ys 7 ! Still have 8, 9 and 0 to play. As a typical Ys fan I have never been that interested into an Ys without Adol, so it will be played last I suppose. Though seeing the glowing praises for it I also suppose it will be a better time than 8 or 9.

It's just that it's usually written Seven or 7, so I got confused.

The story in Ys Seven was pretty basic, that true. It was the first game that wasn't directly or indirectly about the Eldeen people, so at least it was nice that it tried to expand the setting a bit. Some elements in the lore of this game overlap a bit with Ys VIII, like the Tritheism thing.

 

[Alextended]

Replaying Karnak Sanctuary on Saturn's Powerslave I think that version flows better overall (although some trapdoors with enemies opening after progression and a falling platform are nice changes). I hope later more complex levels (I just got the partial lava/waste protection to get to the other Sanctuary exit) don't have any confusing changes that make them annoying or make things easy to miss. For example the first key in Karnak Sanctuary is hidden behind a trapdoor in the remaster, which opens when you simply approach the otherwise dead end of that corridor. On Saturn there's no trap door so you can see the key when you turn the corner. Sure, most players will probably go there for the loot after killing enemies/breaking pots but you could just as easily not care for the ammo and health and simply think it's a dead end and take the other routes. Sobek Pass seems to flow better on Saturn as well though I can't point to the changes here as I didn't play them one right after the other to test. Karnak is better on Saturn also, you can finish it the first time just beelining to the exit without even needing a key but if you explore a bit even before getting the appropriate artifacts for the other exits it teaches you to explore the levels for side paths like getting to the ammo refill behind the door of time. It's not bad in the remaster either but, I dunno, why change it at all. The original game could be confusing at times, having things that look like doors that don't open and have no message saying it's sealed or opens elsewhere or whatever here and there, but overall it was painless. Also in the remaster it seems trickier to make some jumps that require you to use the slow float at the absolute maximum height of the long jump to the point I thought I had to bomb jump at a part it wasn't necessary. Also a gap that opens by having a pillar retract in, I forget what level, you can fall through that gap but it's very tricky to get it right, it needs many tries. Which is I guess good to not accidentally fall but it just feels glitchy when you have to keep trying to fall. I don't recall if you were supposed to be able to fall through there on Saturn or not though. Still, finicky physics and gaps and jumps should be fixed up to make it more polished here (making sure that making those jumps easier doesn't also let you jump to places you shouldn't without other artifacts of course). I prefer the flow of the original enemy selection and placement also in the early stages, I think the changes should have only been done in higher difficulties (I debated to play it on harder mode to start given we're no longer gimped by controllers not suitable for FPS games but the game's not so much about the combat experience, which is still good, anyway, it's more about exploring and unraveling the levels as you revisit them after acquiring more artifacts and what not). Oh well. All the speedrunners will probably have some fun with this game, it's a breeze to play with modern controls and there's sequence breaking potential here and there.

 

[Cacher]

Honestly most big games (if not all) don't need a long marketing period now. People will do the promoting for companies on Twitter.

 

[lashman]

https://steamdb.info/app/1905180/

 

[beep boop]

All this Powerslave talk makes me really want to pick it up already, but I have so many other games I got recently but haven't finished yet

To that point, I continued my Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom playthrough. It's a really well put together game. Really smooth to play and very much a fun-first design.

I did notice some input oddities when using the Switch Pro controller that aren't present on my Xbox controller. When you transition screens, there's a momentary freeze in your inputs and it seems to just repeat whatever was held prior to transitioning. Annoying but so far it hasn't killed me yet. Sometimes it will also lose inputs altogether, which very nearly got me killed once. Usually I'd disable Steam input as a diagnostic, but this uses Steam input natively so I don't know what's going on there.

 

[Stevey]

hi

The Return Of The King

Hope you're doing OK man

 

[lashman]

Hope you're doing OK man

not really, but thanks - i appreciate it

 

[prudis]

I've bought Mortal Kombat 11 for €9.99 last night and I want to upgrade it to the Ultimate Edition. The UE bundle on Steam costs €17.99 and also contains the base game, but for some reason I'm still being charged the full price. Is this a bug with Steam's self-adjusting bundles or has the publisher excluded the base game for this feature?

most likely just badly setup package ... probably intentional by the dev/pub

 

[fantomena]

This month is gonna crush my time. I still need to go through Greedfall (just started), Outriders, Maneater and Ascent. Just tried Lost Ark (really fun), then I have pre-ordered Warhammer 3 and Elden Ring, also considering Forbidden West 2 in order to avoid my PS5 to dust down even more.

 

[gabbo]

hi

Good to see you back lashman, hope you're able to st a spell with us .

By the way was the Portal thing only part of the JPN Nintendo Direct? Or did they also show it as part of the NA and EU direct?

Since that might give a clue to this one crazy theory I saw someone come up with.

What's the crazy theory you heard, as it was in the NA stream as well

 

[Ascheroth]

Well

 

[fokkusu]

How many in queue though

 

[fantomena]

Tim: We got SIFU
Gabe:

 

[PC-tan]

Tim: We got SIFU
Gabe:

It's weird,


So far we know that it sold like 500k on PS and PC. With a vast majority of the people who are buying it are likely buying it on PSN and not EGS. The numbers so seem high but that might also be to this being one of those indie titles that Sony is helping promote. 500k at $40 seems pretty good.


Do we have numbers on some other indie games on PSN and how much units they have sold on there. Is 1 million the max cap of indies on the platform? Which doesn't seem bad but it also doesn't seem to happen that often, which is a shame

 

[fantomena]

It's weird,


So far we know that it sold like 500k on PS and PC. With a vast majority of the people who are buying it are likely buying it on PSN and not EGS. The numbers so seem high but that might also be to this being one of those indie titles that Sony is helping promote. 500k at $40 seems pretty good.


Do we have numbers on some other indie games on PSN and how much units they have sold on there. Is 1 million the max cap of indies on the platform? Which doesn't seem bad but it also doesn't seem to happen that often, which is a shame

Is it sold? I read "players", not copies sold, but yeah, most of them will be on PS5, definetly.

 

[Mivey]

Speaking of Tim Apple, did EGS publish their statistics for 2021? It's been over a month now. From what I recall from the 2020, they had basically no real growth, despite pretty big exclusives and a pandemic that kept millions of people at home for months.

 

[fokkusu]

When Steam started to track concurrent users?

 

[Parsnip]

lashman

Good to have you back on the forum as well, not just discord.

OK, so real talk friends (because you are the only ones I trust on this):

How bad is the 2K launcher? I've been avoiding XCOM 2 DLC and Chimera Squad like the plague because of it and it's the only reason I haven't pulled the trigger on the XCOM Collection bundle on Steam.

I might direct you towards AML instead. GitHub - X2CommunityCore/xcom2-launcher: The Alternative Mod Launcher (AML) is a replacement for the default game launchers from XCOM 2 and XCOM Chimera Squad.
From what I gather it seems to still work just fine despite recent 2K launcher updates.
By XCOM 2 DLC do you mean War of the Chosen? Go get it and play it right now.

By the way was the Portal thing only part of the JPN Nintendo Direct? Or did they also show it as part of the NA and EU direct?

Since that might give a clue to this one crazy theory I saw someone come up with.

It seems both directs had the same content, just in different order for some reason.
A nintendo-like solution.

Welcome back!

Oh man this is great! I am going to paint the deck into something not black.

May I interest you in Hot Dog Stand.

 

[Stevey]

When Steam started to track concurrent users?

Uhh, years ago

 

[Ge0force]

most likely just badly setup package ... probably intentional by the dev/pub

Like Deku said, there was a separate upgrade package. Kind of confusing, since I assumed this wasn't necessary because of the price-adjusting bundles.

Oh well, I have the ultimate edition.

Speaking of Tim Apple, did EGS publish their statistics for 2021? It's been over a month now. From what I recall from the 2020, they had basically no real growth, despite pretty big exclusives and a pandemic that kept millions of people at home for months.

Yes, it was mentioned in the EGS thread. Revenue from 3rd party games increased to 300M (vs 270M last year), which isn't great considering the amount of popular exclusives, strong increase in non-exclusive games and many sales and coupons. A negative growth would have been better of course, but I can live with this result

 

[fantomena]

Valve must seriously be happy Amazon chose to release their games only on Steam and Amazon must be happy that Steam exists. According to Schreier, Amazon bosses did not want to give Valve the revenue cut, but the employees protested that they need Steam to grow their games.

So Valve got a big bunch of big launches so far this year, EGS....Sifu? Well, we have no idea on any stats from them, so who knows.

 

[Ascheroth]

How many in queue though

A lot. Lol.

---

Another ~100k and it passes DOTA and CSGO and takes #2 all-time concurrent peak. Whew.

 

[Alextended]

Yikes, so your Lost Ark characters are server-locked but the servers can be busy when you aren't playing so if you don't wanna start over there's nothing to do but wait? That's bad design, no? Shouldn't it sort of guarantee your spot (maybe giving your account x days of inactivity before you lose your spot on that server) after you choose a server and not let more new people choose that server when they first start if it's full to avoid this? Or alternatively let you freely server hop since it doesn't look like there are different rulesets, economy, whatever per server? I don't understand this, did they not see it coming? All Europe is busy...

 

[kio]

I give up... what's Lost Ark and why's everyone nuts about it?

 

[fantomena]

I give up... what's Lost Ark and why's everyone nuts about it?

PC-only F2P Big Titties Diablo-Ish from Korea.

 

[kio]

PC-only F2P Big Titties Diablo-Ish from Korea.

So in a word anime, gotcha. I should have figured it out.

 

[dex3108]

And that is 7h game finished this year. Mafia Definitive Edition is still one hell of a game. But i must admit that games released since original mafia impacted my experience with Definitive Edition. Most noticeable thing is that there is kinda no fluidity in the story because story jumps a lot between themes and in time. Lack of side content where you could spend more time with some characters is something that i missed too. I mean Tommy, Sam and Paulie are best buds but you actually don't get to spend time with them outside missions where shootouts are main thing. Little it of downtime spent with them would do a lot to bring those character closer to players.

 

[yuraya]

Valve must seriously be happy Amazon chose to release their games only on Steam and Amazon must be happy that Steam exists. According to Schreier, Amazon bosses did not want to give Valve the revenue cut, but the employees protested that they need Steam to grow their games.

So Valve got a big bunch of big launches so far this year, EGS....Sifu? Well, we have no idea on any stats from them, so who knows.

Its funny because Valve themselves have basically become the Amazon/Walmart of the games industry.

If you want to sell a lot of copies of your games you basically have to release them on Steam otherwise you lose money and competition can crush you long term.

Also I think the new Saints Row should the be biggest EGS get this year unless it has terrible reviews ofc.

EGS is most likely gonna be quiet this year after all the $$$ they gave Square last year. I wonder if there is a shifting focus for their first party. Maybe they will be pressured to make Rocket League 2 or Fall Guys 2. It may be their only play to bring in big new userbase in the future.

 

[Ascheroth]

And here we go~

I legit think almost half of that is people sitting in queues though, I just checked out of curiosity and literally all 19 Europe servers are full with an average queue size of 10k.
I don't think Amazon/Smilegate were expecting these numbers.

I give up... what's Lost Ark and why's everyone nuts about it?

Korean F2P MMORPG with hack-and-slash combat and isometric camera. (Outside of that it's not really comparable to Diablo though as far as I know)
It's the 2nd biggest game in Korea after League of Legends, has a ton of stuff to do both for casual and hardcore players and the developer has an excellent reputation with the community.

 

[lashman]

 

[Ge0force]

PC-only F2P Big Titties Diablo-Ish from Korea.

Perhaps I should give it a try after all