PC Owners Thread

[yourbeliefs]

Kotaku published a good article describing the fiasco with Digital Homicide suing 100 community members, as mentioned in this thread. While the guys at DH obviously have some fault, Steam is really the main culprit by first allowing such a bad developer on their store, not doing any sort of quality control post release, allowing a secondary market from card trading, and finally not having any sort of proper message moderation to protect developers.

http://steamed.kotaku.com/steams-digital-homicide-fiasco-is-valves-fault-1786870927

 

[king3pj]

Well luckily if Battle.Net keeps going down, we don't have to suffer because we have a free version of this game on Steam now!

http://kotaku.com/the-mildly-overwatch-ish-paladins-enters-open-beta-1786708717

This video goes into rather humorous detail about the similarities of this to Overwatch (and even Battleborn)

I decided to move this out of the Overwatch thread now that I've actually played it. I didn't want to clutter up that thread with my thoughts about Paladins.

When I first watched this youtube video I had no desire to play Paladins and I was a little hesitant when yourbeliefs asked me to check it out with him last night. From the youtube video I was expecting a terrible free to play game that was trying to capitalize off Overwatch's success without putting in the work to make sure it was fun to play and properly balanced.

As soon as I saw the Hi-Rez Studios launcher come up after I launched the game from Steam I felt a lot better. For those who don't know Hi-Rez is the developer of Smite, which was the first MOBA I was actually able to get into. I ended up spending quite a bit of time with it after trying out Dota 2 and immediately bouncing off of it because it was so dense and the community was so toxic. It was very well balanced and it did some innovative things like adapting the MOBA genre to controls and a camera that felt more like a third person shooter. That's why I trusted Paladins a lot more after seeing that it was made by Hi-Rez.

It's not that there aren't clear ripoffs from Overwatch but the game does feel different enough to me to enjoy it as it's own thing. Just off the top of my head there are characters that are clear ripoffs of Reinhardt, Roadhog, Reaper, and Torbjorn. There are also payloads in some maps but to be fair Overwatch just took that from TF2. There are differences in the way these characters play even if they look the same though. The Reinhardt clone is the exception to this. He is a straight ripoff.

Paladin's is a free to play game with a rotation on which heroes will be free at any given time. You can permanently unlock heroes to play whenever you want with gold that you earn by playing the game. Unless you have tons of hours to dedicate to the game you are going to need to buy heroes with real money if you want more than a few to always be available.

After yourbeliefs got off for the night I took a look at the store page on Steam. When I saw that the Founders Pack is currently on sale for $13.39 I decided to buy it and jump back into the game for another hour or so. The Founders Pack permanently unlocks every current and future hero in the game. It essentially removes the free to play aspects from the game, although you can still buy character skins with real money or gold. I wish more free to play games had this option. I would absolutely buy a similar bundle for Heroes of the Storm, although I have earned enough gold in that game to buy all the heroes I really wanted.

I bought this because the price is relatively low and I'd rather not have the free to play grind and constant pressure to throw money at the game. I also felt better about buying this because I like the way they handled the Founders Pack for Smite. In that game it was $30 because there are a lot more heroes but when they ported the game to Xbox One they let us pair our Gamertag to our Hi-Rez account and use all of our unlocks on that version as well.

Paladin's is not going to replace Overwatch for me. Overwatch is a much better game. Paladins was good enough that i want to play more of it though. I think I will be able to get my $13.39's worth of playtime out of this game, especially if they are as good about updating it as they were with Smite. Smite added new heroes on a regular basis and also new modes.

 

[yourbeliefs]

As far as Paladins goes, I agree it isn't a straight Overatch ripoff. For one, at least it's a true F2P game and not a $60 game that uses cheap F2P elements like Overwatch does. Also, the objective and payload gameplay goes back to TF2, and hell the game even gives you TF2 skins if you buy the Founders Pack. However, some of the stuff there's simply no excusing. A good number of the characters are at best "inspired" and at worst complete rip offs of Overwatch characters. Even though the devs posted concept art and alleged gameplay footage from years back, A: That stuff is easily faked, and B: The sheer amount of similarities is too much too ignore. 1 or 2 similarites is one thing. There shouldn't be enough to make a 2+ minute video about it. The only other explanation is that Blizzard ripped off Hi-Rez, but I'm pretty sure they would have cried foul a while ago if that was the case.

It also doesn't help that they appeared to have ripped off Guardians of the Galaxy as well.

Still, the core gameplay seems decent enough and there weren't any game breaking issues I ran into while I played. I am NOT a fan though of the complete lack of tutorials within the game. It's very annoying to jump into a game where every character is very unique and not have any sort of way to try out what everything does before you get into combat. Hell, if nothing else it'd be an easy way to help sell more characters by letting you try them out in some sort of "demo" area with no enemies where you just get to try out stuff. Too bad they didn't rip THAT off from Overwatch. I'm willing to give it some time to see how it is, and I may even investigate Smite now to see how that is.

 

[king3pj]

As far as Paladins goes, I agree it isn't a straight Overatch ripoff. For one, at least it's a true F2P game and not a $60 game that uses cheap F2P elements like Overwatch does. Also, the objective and payload gameplay goes back to TF2, and hell the game even gives you TF2 skins if you buy the Founders Pack. However, some of the stuff there's simply no excusing. A good number of the characters are at best "inspired" and at worst complete rip offs of Overwatch characters. Even though the devs posted concept art and alleged gameplay footage from years back, A: That stuff is easily faked, and B: The sheer amount of similarities is too much too ignore. 1 or 2 similarites is one thing. There shouldn't be enough to make a 2+ minute video about it. The only other explanation is that Blizzard ripped off Hi-Rez, but I'm pretty sure they would have cried foul a while ago if that was the case.

It also doesn't help that they appeared to have ripped off Guardians of the Galaxy as well.

Still, the core gameplay seems decent enough and there weren't any game breaking issues I ran into while I played. I am NOT a fan though of the complete lack of tutorials within the game. It's very annoying to jump into a game where every character is very unique and not have any sort of way to try out what everything does before you get into combat. Hell, if nothing else it'd be an easy way to help sell more characters by letting you try them out in some sort of "demo" area with no enemies where you just get to try out stuff. Too bad they didn't rip THAT off from Overwatch.

Yep, I immediately thought of Groot and Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy when I saw those characters last night.

There are a couple things I noticed last night after you got off. The game doesn't have an easy way to read what your hero's abilities do during the game. This is another thing they should have ripped off from Overwatch. In that game you can press F1 at any time to read a description of what your abilities do. While Paladins doesn't have anything like that in the match you can go into the hero gallery and get this information from each hero's skill page. The game is still in early access so hopefully they make it easier to see this stuff in the actual match soon.

I'm willing to give it some time to see how it is, and I may even investigate Smite now to see how that is.

If you wanted to try Smite I would be willing to jump back into it even though I haven't played it in a really long time and I'm probably terrible now. If you wanted to try out a MOBA I would probably suggest Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm instead though. While Smite's third person perspective can make it easier to see what is going on the game still has concepts that can make a MOBA hard to comprehend for new players.

Smite has an item shop in match like Dota and League. There are hundreds of items and which ones you choose highly depends on which character you are playing, who you are playing against, and which items you already picked earlier in the game. Also, it is sometimes hard to tell what these items actually do. Luckily Smite is a little more user friendly than most MOBAs because there is an auto-buy option that lets the AI make these decisions for you. HOTS doesn't have an item shop to worry about. You just pick between a couple upgrade options when you level up and they all have descriptions of what they do.

Smite also follows the more hardcore MOBAs in that each player has their own XP and levels up individually. If you aren't getting kills, healing teammates, killing creeps, or taking down towers you won't get much XP. The biggest thing for XP is kills and only the person who gets the last hit gets credit for the kill. If you don't get XP you don't level up. If you don't level up you have less hit points and do less damage than your teammates and enemies and you also don't earn the abilities that come when you level up. If you aren't earning these abilities early it makes it even harder to catch up later because everyone else will be stronger than you. For example you don't unlock your ultimate ability until you hit level 10.

HOTS throws the idea of individual leveling out the window. Instead your team has a level and everyone contributes to the same XP pool. You level up together so no one gets left behind. You can still end up weaker than the other team if they get more early kills than your team but at least one player isn't weak while everyone else is strong.

I do think Smite is a very good game and I played a lot of it before trying out Heroes of the Storm. Smite is friendlier to beginners than Dota or League of Legends but HOTS is quite a bit friendlier than Smite. There is still a lot of information to take in and you can't just play it like a team deathmatch game but I think it's much easier for a new player to pick up and play. Plus Heroes of the Storm has the Blizzard level of polish that most other developers are unable to match.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Looks like Steam is getting a bunch of changes in the near future.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1284032

 

[yourbeliefs]

I feel like I'll be doing the same thing next year with my rig..

 

[king3pj]

Paladins released a patch today that added a new hero and added payload as a game mode that can come up for 3 more maps. They also added a lot of cosmetic stuff and made some balance changes.

http://forums.paladins.com/showthread.php?13122-Open-Beta-34-Patch-Troublemaker

 

[yourbeliefs]

Paladins released a patch today that added a new hero and added payload as a game mode that can come up for 3 more maps. They also added a lot of cosmetic stuff and made some balance changes.

http://forums.paladins.com/showthread.php?13122-Open-Beta-34-Patch-Troublemaker

Well.. so much for using Paladins as an alternative for Overwatch when its down..

Edit: The downtime wasn't too long. Also, it looks like they added a "Shooting Range" which lets you play around with all the heroes, so kudos for ripping off something useful from Overwatch.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Looks like the new Quantum Break Steam Release still isn't very well optimized.

 

[king3pj]

Looks like the new Quantum Break Steam Release still isn't very well optimized.

It could definitely be better but to be fair that is a 4K benchmark with all settings maxed including 4X MSAA. For those that don't know MSAA is a form of anti-aliasing that renders the game at a higher resolution than you are playing at and then downsamples the game to your native resolution. Because it is rendering at a higher resolution this is usually the form of anti-aliasing that causes the biggest performance hit and it is not recommended for people playing at 4K because that resolution is already demanding enough that even a 1080 has trouble holding 60 FPS in many games.


Here are the 1080p and 1440p benchmarks (in that order). Everything I said about 4X MSAA in the last paragraph applies to these benchmarks as well but since they aren't starting at 4K before applying the MSAA the performance isn't as terrible. It still isn't great and apparently there is no way to turn off MSAA in the settings which would allow people to gain quite a bit more FPS.

Edit: Also the game has a "very positive" rating on Steam and I only saw one review on the front page saying they were having performance problems. Maybe there has been a new driver or patch since this Russian website benchmarked the Steam version.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Jeeze.. looks like my card gets great performance.. Good thing I don't feel any urge to play that again on a different platform. That's likely going to be my winner for most disappointing game of the year. I really hope nothing beats it.

 

[king3pj]

Jeeze.. looks like my card gets great performance.. Good thing I don't feel any urge to play that again on a different platform. That's likely going to be my winner for most disappointing game of the year. I really hope nothing beats it.

I actually had a pretty good time with it. The only thing that really turned me off was the unnecessarily hard final boss fight with mechanics that were unlike anything else I had done in the entire game. The first few times I died in that boss fight I didn't even know what was happening. I had to look it up on Youtube just to see what I was supposed to be doing. I thought the rest of the game was pretty good though.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I actually had a pretty good time with it. The only thing that really turned me off was the unnecessarily hard final boss fight with mechanics that were unlike anything else I had done in the entire game. The first few times I died in that boss fight I didn't even know what was happening. I had to look it up on Youtube just to see what I was supposed to be doing. I thought the rest of the game was pretty good though.

Well I didn't think the game was BAD but I feel as though it didn't live up to its own hype. It just came off as rather generic and pedestrian, and this wasn't helped by the advertising of "Your decisions affect what happens!" when at the end of the day they really don't. I'll go into more details at GOTY.

On a completely unrelated note, it appears that 2K has finally released a patch to fix the broken Bioshock Remastered Games.

https://www.destructoid.com/the-bioshock-remasters-finally-get-a-patch-on-pc-391629.phtml

 

[yourbeliefs]

Mafia 3 on PC isn't making people happy...

 

[king3pj]

I don't have good enough internet to watch any of those videos right now but I did see that the patch to remove the 30 FPS cap has already gone live.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I don't have good enough internet to watch any of those videos right now but I did see that the patch to remove the 30 FPS cap has already gone live.

Yes, the cap has been removed. Sadly, the game is so unoptimized that it's not doing much to benefit the majority of users.

 

[king3pj]

Well king3pj looks like you're entitled to $30..

https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit...graphics-card-false-advertising-class-action/

I'll take it, assuming it's not more work than it's worth to claim.

I haven't gone to the effort of seeing exactly what is necessary to get the settlement directly from Nvidia yet. Since I technically have receipts for 2 970s even though I only paid for one of them it might be possible to get $60 if they give me credit for both cards. If they require serial numbers I won't be able to get credit for anything since I sold both cards though.

Either way, I can't complain too much since I used these 970s for a year and a half and then sold them for more than I paid. Selling the 2 of them to buy a 1070 while still making putting $50 cash in my pocket (after selling and shipping costs) is pretty tough to beat.

I got the email saying that I qualified for this settlement last week. I finally got around to submitting my claim. It was a pretty easy process. All I had to do was go to their claim website and copy my claim number over from the email they sent me. Once I did that it automatically filled in my contact info. We'll see how long it takes to get the money and whether I end up getting $30 or $60.

 

[king3pj]

Yes, the cap has been removed. Sadly, the game is so unoptimized that it's not doing much to benefit the majority of users.

PC issues aside, I watched the Giant Bomb quick look and this game looks pretty cool to me. I'm looking forward to playing it but it won't be until after I get through the big Fall releases and the game goes on sale. Hopefully by then the PC issues will be straitened out.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I honestly doubt I'll ever get to it. I had planned on trying it out when it was announced but then when WWE 2K17 and Gears 4 got the same release range, I didn't exactly agonize over the choice.

Most of the problems in the game seem to stem from the fact that the devs that made it had no previous experience with a game of that scope, and for some reason they decided to build their own engine. In this day and age for a game like that I don't see any reason to not just use something that can be licensed, although to be fair during this gen quite a few companies are now developing internal engines, like what EA has with Frostbyte. I'm not sure how much influence 2K Czech had in the development of the game, but when you look at some of the comparison videos of how you interacted with the world in the previous games versus the current one, it is a little jarring.





One thing I find slightly annoying is that I was looking more forward to an actual sequel to Mafia 2. The game ends in a very open manner, in that it's clear that there's more of Vito's story to be told. But instead we now have a whole new protagonist and world to deal with (yes I realize both games share the same universe with Vito making a cameo, but it would have been nice to see a definitive conclusion to Mafia 2.)

 

[king3pj]

I think it's cool that they are doing something interesting with the story instead of doing something we have seen in lots of other games and movies. To be fair, I have never played the previous Mafia games so I have much less reason to want to see a continuation of that story though. Since this will be my first foray into the series I like the fact that it is less of a sequel and more of a stand alone game. Again, I'm sure I would feel differently if I was really into Mafia 1 and 2.