Oh I understand now. I won't enter in this discussion "society have success because of X". As far as I know for instance in Europe things were set in motion by the black death aftermath. But that might totally be wrong ofc.

My sole point was that, for any reason which might be whatever you like (resources, climate, superior race, grace of God, alien uplifting, WHATEVER), we can agree that at a certain point a society "grows" and becomes "better" and its members start to make more with less jsut because they are part of it. It's not a starting condition, it's a consequence of something else (in Stellaris that would be excess influence I guess). But it sticks to societies and it adds up.

I was just happy Pdx timidly tried to add some of that in the game, since I believe that is key to allow vertical gaming. All I see from them is until now is wide gameplay, only that they try to replace "land" (or space in this case) with pops. And imho that's boring. When not just silly. The (only) optimal way to game now, due to severe pop growth limitations, is essentially finding an effective way to steal population. Even cause disasters in foreign space to produce some hundred billions refugees to then welcome in your Ecumenopolis is legit (never trust egalitarian xenophiles).

So on my part is just that. No history rewrite agenda.

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Wow. The nostalgia.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: MalUhm. Interesting.

That's the first time they actually do something for the (fabled) vertical gameplay.

Planetary ascension tiers finally try to capture those mechanics that in history allowed numerically small communities to be stronger than larger ones.

In history, as far as I can make out numerically small communities were only stronger than large ones if they had a tech advantage.

Tech advantage is more of a consequence of a more efficient society, rather than the cause. After all real world research doesn't grow on land tiles for pop lucky enough to settle nearby to gather. Even today, inside the same nation, you might find areas where it's "easier" to make art, produce something or make reseach. That's not because of better tech, but because of the local culture (sub culture in the case of different areas in the same nation). Which produce, among other things, better tech.

Move the same person from one cultural area to another, and that average person will produce % more or less on average. That's how countries with smaller pops can topple countries with much more pops. Their society multiplier compensate the demography. And moving "tech" will certainly give a boost. As can money, weapons or resources. But only temporarily: the disparity in production overtime enlarges the gap again.

Anyway I read on reddit that the first impression on the beta is that those ascension bonuses are negligible, so I guess PDX is far from enabling actual vertical gameplays (it's not just countries, also game companies have hard time in ascending their culture :grin:).

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Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: MalFalse. Even today you can (try to) run any windows game on wine or proton, and if works fine, if it doesn't work the developers don't owe you support.

If this was the case then we wouldn't be having this discussion. To quote Valve (emphasis by me):

[…] it does require you [the developer] to manually enable support for your build […]

Proton without EAC => Unsupported action by users
Proton with EAC => Supported action by the developers

We're mixing different support meanings here.

One is technical support for proton. And, according to them, it's about getting the latest libray (which everyone will do at some point regardless) and tick the checkbox.

Another one is client support for proton. Which require I guess some kind of eula, or at least some kind of commercial campaign or documentation that sugggests to your (potential) buyers -and thus commits you- that you will support their proton setup.

One is not the other.

You can check the box and not "-contractually?-" commit yourself to support proton.

The only way I would, as a customer, require you to give support on proton is when you explicitly advertize proton compatibility. Like with the proton badge.

But if you don't want, you can check box, don't apply for the badge (and thus that marketing advantage against that "negligible purchaser audience" that is the 0.x% of deck owners) and just rely on protondb or the likes to generate interest on your product (from said negligible % audience).

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Quoting: furaxhornyx

Quoting: kon14

Quoting: poiuzThere is a simple reason, not to ship it: If they ship it, they have to support it! That will always cost resources (i.e. money).

Except they don't need to officially support Linux through Proton either. They can just enable it for anyone wishing to play the game while clearly stating they do not offer any support or guarantees about the compatibility continuing to work in the future.

Sure, sounds a bit hypocritical, because it is, but if this was opt-out instead of opt-in nobody would ever call them out for their game breaking at some point.

Lets be real, EAC and BattleEye won't just drop support for Proton now that it's officially included, not unless there's a huge reason to do so, nor would it just stop working for anyone using the official Proton builds from Steam.

The only real world issue with any of this is how userspace detection of cheats on the client side is never going to catch up with kernelspace detection, therefore devs might be reluctant to potentially downgrade the experience for the majority of their userbase over us.
With that being said, I'm not even sure if EAC or BattleEye is actually kernelspace on Windows at this point.

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: poiuzThere is a simple reason, not to ship it: If they ship it, they have to support it! That will always cost resources (i.e. money).

False. Even today you can (try to) run any windows game on wine or proton, and if works fine, if it doesn't work the developers don't owe you support. You can open tickets ofc. But they can copy paste "not supported" and close them faster than you open them.

As a customer I would expect that "proton supported" games, with the badge clearly visible on the steam page, will offer support. But that's on voluntary basis.

Unfortunately, it may be a bit more complicated than that.
Sure, they may choose to enable compatibility and not support Linux users.

However, they still need to support their current users against cheaters, be they using Windows, Linux, or whatever. Which means testing, to be sure that some nasty people don't find a way to cheat through this compatibility, and ruin the game for your player base, which would be terrible.

Errr... That's EAC job, not mine. If I have to worry about with cheaters myself, I don't see why I should pay EAC license and bind my code to theirs.

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Quoting: poiuzThere is a simple reason, not to ship it: If they ship it, they have to support it! That will always cost resources (i.e. money).

False. Even today you can (try to) run any windows game on wine or proton, and if works fine, if it doesn't work the developers don't owe you support. You can open tickets ofc. But they can copy paste "not supported" and close them faster than you open them.

As a customer I would expect that "proton supported" games, with the badge clearly visible on the steam page, will offer support. But that's on voluntary basis.

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And that's indeed few clicks away. Unless a studio lost the sources or the libraries, there is little excuse now to not add support.

Well done, both Valve and Epic!

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Uhm. Interesting.

That's the first time they actually do something for the (fabled) vertical gameplay.

Planetary ascension tiers finally try to capture those mechanics that in history allowed numerically small communities to be stronger than larger ones.

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Quoting: wvstolzing

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: GuestNext up Ubisoft?

Nah. Microsoft is highly opportunistic with its aquisitions. Unless it explodes in its hands -some angry Activision shareholders being able to fight this- this is obiously them getting Activision at discount price thanks to the recent exploits of the Bobby Kotick charming persona. Culture aside, Activision is a money printing machine.

ubisoft fought pretty hard recently to avoid being bought out by the French conglomerate Vivendi (link [External Link] -- ironically, to 'maintain their independence'. 'Ironic', because they're at the vanguard of most of the 'industry's nonsense (from microtransactions, to 'live services', to even 'nfts' nowadays) entirely willingly anyway.

I didn't mean that Microsoft wouldn't be interested. I just say that usually Microsoft (founded by a businessman, with the culture of a businessman, with business in mind) it's very good at recognizing good deals and quick to go to action before the opportunity window closes. When they bought Mojang they did it to avoid having to pay taxes on those 2 billions (so, it effectively costed them a fraction fo that price). Now they buy Activision for a fraction of its (true) price (way less then share value before the scandal. But the scandal is temporary and the IPs, sales and game success are still there. sure they will have to fork out some hundred million to fix the Bobby scandal, but they save dollars in the billion order on the purchase price).

Sure they might buy Ubisoft in the future. Why not. But my personal idea is that they are way slower when it's about buying stuff for the "right" price.

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Quoting: kaktuspalmeAt first I was shocked but a second later, I don't care. Haven't played any of their games the last couple of years. Indies amaze me much more atm.

For me we should be happy. Activision had no budget for games with less than a 10 billion revenues potential. Bobby wanted to absorb Blizzard to save his dieing company... but for wow, not the rest.

With Activision there would be no hope to get a new Diablo or Starcraft. Not without some shit attached for the boardroom schemes (remember d3 awful drops and real money ah? Or SC2 being only playable in multiplayer in competitive ladder with no custom games support? Both games then were fixed in the expansions and became what they were meant to be since the beginning, but having failed at launch they never reached the success they deserved).

Microsoft at least has the capacity and will to fund niche projects. Look at aoe4. A new RTS in the age of F2P, microtransactions, ntf and mobile?

After today I believe we could get a Diablo 4 or Starcraft 3 that are good games. Ok. Just maybe on Steam, probably not Linux. But better that way that never have them.

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