What are the choices?

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One thing I didn't like when I tried the game half a year ago (or more?), was that especially in the early game, there is basically one build order to rule them all and if you don't do it more or less exactly like that, you're toast.

Another problem was that once you fail, it means starting all the way from 0 again. There was no way to rebuild or continue from day X or so. Which wouldn't have been such a problem if the first days weren't pretty boring (once you get the hang of it).

Has any of the above changed somewhat?

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Quoting: 14

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Purple Library GuyFree to play without any pay to win . . . say, how do these outfits make money exactly?

Being a truly good game helps.
Just look at Path Of Exile - probably the best Hack&Slash game out there, way better than Diablo 3. It is a Windows game, but runs on Wine.
And they finance themselves only via cosmetic items in the shop. Bought some useless fluff just to support them as I felt bad for not doing so.

I agree with this, but, personally, my money output is nowhere near $15/mo. I've probably spent about $15 total per F2P game that I spent so many hours that I felt I should really pay some money.

They don't need every player to do that. F2P games are financed mostly by whales (people who spend absurd amounts of money on them) and people who maybe spend 5$ every now and then (or like me, kinda buy "one game worth" of stuff in their shops once). What exactly the distribution of those is for PoE, you gotta ask the devs.

Most people probably play forever without paying anything.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyFree to play without any pay to win . . . say, how do these outfits make money exactly?

Being a truly good game helps.
Just look at Path Of Exile - probably the best Hack&Slash game out there, way better than Diablo 3. It is a Windows game, but runs on Wine.
And they finance themselves only via cosmetic items in the shop. Bought some useless fluff just to support them as I felt bad for not doing so.

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Seriously, how messed up can your production pipeline be if an extension takes considerable work per platform?

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I tried it for a bit but I can't really recommend it. Posted the below also on the Steam forum.
Usually I'd give it a thumbs down with a review, but I don't like doing that with indies that are struggling to sell copies anyway and the game isn't terrible.

First of all is the lack of options. A game without audio sliders? When was the last time I saw THAT outside of mobile games? Can't even remember. Game blew my ears away and had me adjust system volume.
Same for controls: Can't change them. Admittedly there are not too many actions to take (left, right, release ball), but still. At least you can adjust the movement speed.
No graphics options, either. Want to change fullscreen/window/borderless fullscreen/resolution? Nope.
Options are the first thing I check when trying a game (this is PC, after all), so it was off to a bad start already.

The gameplay itself is just too random, especially later on.

The first bosses can be dealt with based on player skill (how to aim the ball), but the later ones require that in addition to pure luck. I don't think arcade games should have a big luck factor.

It just happens way too often that your only decision is if you want to die by not even trying to get the ball or if you want to die by trying to get to the ball, get stunned by something and thus missing the ball. The forge boss is especially ridiculous here with calling down a curtain of fire that has a "safety gap" - which is of course entirely useless as it isn't where the ball is.
Quite honestly, the breakout/bullet "hell" mix doesn't work out too well.

Additionally, the amount of lives you get seems to be very random. I once had 10 lives by the time I got to the fifth stage, another time I had six - in neither case did I lose any so one run was just way more lucky.

A few of the power ups are also underpowered. You will curse each time you get a shield, as they are really only useful in fringe cases - only when you cannot avoid being hit on your own while also trying to get to the ball. Basically the above described case - when that happens, you won't usually have a shield ;)
The barrier also is highly situational, in some cases even harmful.

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Quoting: BasianiAll WINE users, dual booters and VM users are counted as Windows users. So whats matter?

Yeah, absolutely. I took part in the survey at least 5 times in the last 2-3 years. Each time, I just happened to be on Windows (once via Wine)...

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Ah, my bad. Was a bit confused by the layout ;)

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Getting this when trying to vote for a game in the audio category.

Voting is not currently open, so check back soon!

.... I tried!

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Quoting: GuestI've also seen other LGC/LGN articles stating a game is coming or on Linux when I couldn't find any information at all about that happening, and sources are usually not cited.

Well, that's modern gaming "journalism".
Only very few like GOL or Yong Yea do it properly.

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