That’s two games today that I was hyped for that ended up being trash. Just gonna get hyped for indie games from now on

  • worlds_okayest_mech_pilot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Anyone else feel like this is just every game now? Every single game I’ve been following for months now has run like doo doo on all systems. I already only play mostly indie games but it’s getting hard to be excited about anything. Especially because the actual quality of the games this year has been overwhelmingly great.

    • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.netM
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      1 year ago

      I think a lot of companies forcibly targeted new hardware and had unrealistic expectations about adoption rate, on top of pushing deadlines that do not allow time for optimization.

      Developers are under many unrealistic constraints that make it difficult or even impossible to deliver solid products.

      • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        AAA studios are relying on huge memory and even frame generation as a crutch for not optimizing their games. Meanwhile NVIDIA/AMD are scamming people with new generation hardware that is hardly better than the previous one but relies on shit frame gen.

        The end result is shit unoptimized games requiring more powerful hardware which we don’t have because the duopoly figured out they can keep the high margins making obscene priced shit hardware if they just start cheating benchmarks.

        The usual tech channels are talking about it a lot now, GN/Hardware unboxed.

      • worlds_okayest_mech_pilot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Yeah. It just makes me sad to see all these devs forced to push for “the next big tech” instead of letting the workers do their thing. Every exec and shareholder just wants to shill the “industry-leading” garbage at their presentations and meetings.

        I’m still going just fine on a 1080 Ti graphics card, and even that’s overkill for the games I play. I have never been interested in raytracing or anything like that. I don’t even want my games to look all that pretty, honestly. Just load fast and play well. That’s it.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      When I was a kid, almost every CoD and BF game would have server issues on day 1. I never understood how billion dollar companies are unable to just have extra capacity as a buffer. I have never been excited for a game since I was a child because I realized they don’t care

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Its because its around the time where last gen consoles are being dropped from support, so the minumum requirements to run a AAA go up a lot

    • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      It’s the new capitalist game development paradigm. Slash the QA budget, push out a buggy, incomplete mess of a game as quickly as possible to maximize profits, let the dupes who bought it early do all the QA testing for you, take in all the user feedback telling you why this game is a buggy incomplete mess, then release a bug fixing patch a week or two later to address the major problems players are making noise about. Because god forbid they delay launch and properly bug test so the game can be released in a stable, playable state.

      It’s why I will never, ever preorder any game ever again, and why I pirate every game to see how it runs before I consider buying it on steam (and I only pay for indie games, anything from AAA studios stays pirated forever).

  • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Just logging in to tell you all that if you ever plan on playing paradox games, only buy the base game. Pirate the dlcs and load them with cream.api.
    This allows you to still play online, get all the updates with no hassle and use the workshop, without wasting 1000’s

    • BRINGit34@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Okay so I have seen this game a few times. Is it like a propaganda fest or anything. I’d hate to play it and then get spoonfed “communism bad”

      edit: spelling

      • betelgeuse [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        It’s a resource management game and a city builder. You can set the level of detail on what you have to set up, but you can set up every single aspect of your economy and city. You build a farm and then must build tractors and combines and trucks to service the farm. You build a food factory to turn produce into food. You build trucks to deliver produce to the factory and food from the factory to the grocery store. The grocery store needs workers, it all needs workers. So you need housing. You need to build busses to get workers from the housing to the factory (they walk if it’s close enough). You need fertilizer for your fields or they won’t be nutritious. So you can build a fertilizer factory. Then you need all the stuff to support that. You need power and metal and wood and bricks, so you have to build all that.

        You can also import goods from the broader Soviet Union or from the West. It’s like if Cybersyn was a SimCity game.

      • nicklewound [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Nah, nothing like that. I’ve noticed zero anti-communism or anti-soviet propaganda in the game. Seems the opposite to me.

        It’s good actually!

      • sloth [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        It is, unironically, ‘just communism’.

        First thing I noticed is you have three currencies when building, Rubles, Dollars, and Build With Resources (i.e. local labor, equipment, and materials).

        The train system can be finicky but at least it has a very detailed railroad system, it is almost 1/3 the gameplay.

          • sloth [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Not really, you can select how you want to fund your building projects. From the wiki

            In Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, the player works towards building a self-sufficient republic by constructing Buildings, Utilities, Infrastructure, and other construction projects. There are two ways to complete a construction project:

                 Funding with currency
            
                 Construction with resources
            

            The cheapest way to build the republic is for the player to build everything himself using construction facilities and the proper resources.

            • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Funding with currency is importing resources and labour (and in non-realistic mode, importing magic labour that doesn’t need transporting to site). It doesn’t really affect your internal “market”.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        It’s good but steep learning curve with a lot of things you’ll spend learning outside the game. Fully socialist economy means you’ll be collecting resources and turning those resources into industries in order to do build society, provide jobs and so on. Instead of just zoning and leaving things up to the market. This obviously has a lot more complexity though as you learn exactly how all the chains work, how vehicles are managed to do logistics across all the chains, etc etc.

        Once it does all start to click into place it’s rewarding though.

    • worlds_okayest_mech_pilot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Runs like dogwater apparently. Recommended specs are higher than 80% of Steam gamer PCs. Also, it’s missing a ton of features from CS1’s DLCs, which people were hoping for (this is all just what I read, haven’t played it).

      • Also, it’s missing a ton of features from CS1’s DLCs

        A sequel missing features from DLC? In a Paradox game? And it sucks shit at launch? I’m going to need some time to process this… Please give me space to heal while I come to terms with it

          • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Stellaris in particular was a absolutely wild release even by Paradox standards. They were reworking core features up until fairly recently, after it had been out for years. It’s essentially a completely different game than it was at launch lol. It also had completely dogshit performance for years and years.

            • combat_brandonism [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              They were reworking core features up until fairly recently, after it had been out for years. It’s essentially a completely different game than it was at launch lol.

              this has actually kept me coming back lol. every time I fire it up it feels new

          • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            CK3 at least felt like a big step up from CK2. It ran well, and had some actually interesting new features in hooks and lifepaths (or whatever they were called).

      • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Runs like dogwater apparently. Recommended specs are higher than 80% of Steam gamer PCs.

        This is like 95% of all new release games on computer.

        Also, it’s missing a ton of features from SC1’s DLCs, which people were hoping for

        This is like 95% of Paradox Interactive’s business model.

        I don’t know what the freeze-gamers expect.

        • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          the performance is egregious, I’ve read

          like you can’t hit 30 fps on medium settings with a 4060 @ 1080p

        • Comp4 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Eh thats not “really” true. I “think” most pc games these days are indie games or small scale productions and most of the time they have rather low requirements. Now if you move into the AAA space or even just AA games your statement is closer to truth.

            • Comp4 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Well with early access you are at least not buying a product that is supposedly finished. Even then I would assume there is a a lot of early access indie games that run just fine (I play many of them) they are just lacking in content and scope which gets added over the months till release.

              Also to be fair if the game really runs poorly it will reflect in the user reviews. There are loads of early access games with glowing reviews.

        • worlds_okayest_mech_pilot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Yep, yet another case of [current year] gaming. freeze-gamer s will never learn.

          Like, it’s better in every way to wait at least 6 months for games. Cheaper, better optimized, more features, decent guides online if you get stuck… the day-one buy is just not worth it.

    • Basically the same thing that happened with Kerbal Space Program 2 - outrageous system requirements with only minor graphical improvements, stripped down gameplay vs the original game (Obviously this is Paradox so the intent is DLC).

      I haven’t checked on KS2 since release so don’t @ me if they fixed it.

      • SuperSpruce@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I absolutely agree that the performance is dogcrap and the graphics aren’t a big upgrade from the original (at playable framerates) but the gameplay is definitely not stripped down from the base game without DLCs; on the other hand, some things from some of the DLCs have been implemented into the new game along with stuff we haven’t seen at all.

    • Cxyz@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      I looked at the reviews on Steam and most of them say that performance is terrible.

    • Comp4 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The game seems ok or even good (hard to judge this early) . Problem is the performance is absolute trash. Even if you have a decent card and are on only 1080p you are not guaranteed to get 30fps. Some people get sub 20fps with weaker rigs.

      I think I could run it since I own a 3080 but honestly I would rather wait a couple months/patches for more optimization.

  • betelgeuse [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The snapping is weird, it’s like it doesn’t snap. There are no bikes. There are pedestrian roads though, so that’s good. It works like it did in CS1 except without the special zoning or services.

    It does look better, graphically. I do experience stuttering. I’m not sure if I like the architecture. It looks like something a very liberal city would create to be modern while also being cheap for building associations. Houses look like boldly colored, giant chicken coops. I’d much rather they let you set that stuff up with the themes, which probably will come eventually.

    Selling resources seems like ez mode for money management. You can have a poorly designed economy but still make money just by selling your water and power. I expect a balance patch.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    This is normal for paradox, unfortunately. After 70 DLCs and $1000, it’ll be critically acclaimed. Of course, I will spend $0 and still get access to the entire game.

  • NoisyOwl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The success of the cities skylines series has shown me that I really had the completely wrong idea what people want in a city builder.

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I definitely can, 4090 is in theory powerful but I have been having doubts around it’s efficiency and software utilization, as most of my friends have been getting better results from both 1080’s and 3070’s with many modern games. I think there were some shortcuts taken at some point in development and there are a lot of bugs to be worked out.

          • LeylaLove [she/her, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I’ve also noticed this. I hear practically no complaints from people with 1080s or 3070s. Could be wrong, but I think I remember nvidia fucking with bus width a lot over the past few generations.

            • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              I would almost guarantee it’s some sort of software efficiency and load distribution issue. A couple close family friends used to develop for Western Digital and their software was always developed well after the hardware and usually got underfunded and shortchanged in time, then developed by patches after product drop. Hardware is just an absolute bitch to develop for because you don’t really know what it can and can’t do really well until it comes to market and the big problems start cropping up. No small statistical sample can actually match the product run sample problems and other issues from other people’s stiff interacting with your product.

              I don’t doubt that the 4090 will be a monster in a couple of years here, but I genuinely believe that they pulled a Cyberpunk on the hardware here and that is why so many people are complaining. They paid an ungodly sum of money for a graphics card that simply doesn’t perform as well in the field as it should outside of testing software, so they are complaining about it en masse whenever those problems crop up with a specific game.

  • beef_curds [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Can someone explain what the promise of CS2 was? I only caught glimpses of it, but it seemed mostly the same except some parking simulation, streamlining stuff like power/water, and a dlc reset.

    What was the killer feature?

    • kornel@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      CS1 never fully integrated expansion packs, so there were three different ways to zone the industry, and a long disorganized list of ad-hoc zoning policies. CS2 had a chance to start with more of this more coherently designed.

      Plus CS2 made road editing much more precise and flexible. You can add and remove lanes instead of having separate road types for 150 different lane configurations.

    • FloridaBoi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      More control over economy, better zoning, basically a lot of stuff mods did was baked into the game but it also looked like a lot of unnecessary stuff was added

  • kornel@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    It’s more likely that they’ve hit a driver bug, or accidentally pushed a build with some debug junk. They wouldn’t intentionally release game that runs 15fps on 4090.