In other news, the Stadia team recently held a Q&A session with Founders in a special section on their community site. In response to questions about people pointing out the famous Google Graveyard, something people love to bring up constantly, Chris from Google replied to say:

You can rest assured that Google is in it for the long haul. We saw something special in cloud gaming, and we think we have the tools and knowledge to push this technology to the next level. It's okay to be unsure; the future is uncertain. But we care deeply about this space, because we are gamers too, and we want Stadia to succeed.

While the other Stadia staff member involved in the Q&A, Grace, said:

Ah, yes I hope you all know that I see those comments that say "Stadia is headed for the Google Graveyard". My response to this is... please give the Stadia team time. It's been less than a year since we've launched, and we have a lot in store for you all.

So, essentially, they said nothing that could actually alleviate any reasonable fears that this won't be around anymore in a year or two.
It's just PR blurb, of course they are saying this. I'd bet money they said the same thing about Google+ and all the other projects in the graveyard at the time.

Which, to be fair, is the only thing they can say and I don't even doubt they really mean it.
It's just not their decision when the higher-ups decide that the time is over.

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Quoting: DefaultX-od

Quoting: dpanterWho designed the new website? :neutral:
Granted the old site wasn't exactly amazing either, but this new one is impressively poor...

Ok, boomer

Nah, got nothing do with it.

It just really isn't well designed. At least the colors aren't.
Way too much contrast all-around with the alternating between straight white and almost-black when scrolling, the colors when hovering over things are just all over the place neon-styled rainbows, etc.
The navigation itself isn't that bad.
Honestly, it just needs some improved CSS to prevent triggering epilepsy when scrolling too fast ;)

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: slaapliedjeMy first Elder Scrolls game was Daggerfall. It still seems to be the 'best, and most ambitious' of the games. It expanded on what was in Arena, and made the land huge. Then came Morrowind, which is a fantastic game, but tiny in comparison to Daggerfall... Then Oblivion, they dumbed down and Skyrim they dumbed down further. All of the little side games that came out for it were even more basic. Wonder what MS will do with the series now that they own Zenimax...

I generally agree, but I wonder what you think they dumbed down from Oblivion to Skyrim.
Honestly, I think Skyrim is better than Oblivion in every regard and I don't see any further dumbing down between those two games, just a fixing of tons of mistakes from Oblivion.

A Morrowind-quality (and gameplay depth) game at the size of Skyrim is something I'd really love to play. Not that it will ever happen, of course.
AA/AAA devs nowadays are simply too afraid of doing open gameplay RPG systems that allow players to potentially break their "balance" and demand some time & thought investment.

Two things off the top if my head, skill progression, and ammo no longer weighed anything.

Isn't skill progression the same in all Elder Scrolls games?
You improve a skill by using it, you get a level-up after X improvements. What exactly the level-up does differs, but I'd really only call that differ, not dumb down.
Oblivion gets base stat improvements, Skyrim has these skill "trees".
I'd even call that added complexity as stats are a no-brainer (you'll always bump your main stats in Oblivion and ignore the rest), while these trees at least offered some choices (not good ones, mind you, at least without mods).

Ammo without weight?
Yeah, thankfully! If a game doesn't give you the (very realistic, but somehow almost never implemented) option of having a horse+cart, the least it should do is not bog down your weight with stuff like ammo or gold.
You already have to do multiple treks to clear out dungeons that actually contain some good loot.
Without ways to deal with the added weight, ammo/currency weight only serves to stretch gameplay and add menial repetition, which I do not consider positive gameplay elements.

Oh, wait, Daggerfall actually has that horse+cart! Plus banks to deal with your masses of gold.
Yeah, I remember how I was first pissed at how weight is handled (even currency has weight in Daggerfall), but then was pleasantly surprised that they give you the possibility to get a horse+cart as well as exchange your gold for bank certificates (which can be exchanged for gold again at different locations).
Definitely the best solution to the problem - man that game was, and in some ways still is, ahead of its time.

But having no weight for ammo/gold is still better than having weight for them, but no ways to deal with it.

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I used to use Plasma, but for the second time now, this ancient, still unfixed bug where the kwin_x11 process just continues to hog up CPU until 100% (making the entire system unresponsive) has occurred - and once it does, only fresh install will fix it.

In the end, I just switched to Cinnamon. Not quite as pretty, but a hell of a lot more reliable.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeMy first Elder Scrolls game was Daggerfall. It still seems to be the 'best, and most ambitious' of the games. It expanded on what was in Arena, and made the land huge. Then came Morrowind, which is a fantastic game, but tiny in comparison to Daggerfall... Then Oblivion, they dumbed down and Skyrim they dumbed down further. All of the little side games that came out for it were even more basic. Wonder what MS will do with the series now that they own Zenimax...

I generally agree, but I wonder what you think they dumbed down from Oblivion to Skyrim.
Honestly, I think Skyrim is better than Oblivion in every regard and I don't see any further dumbing down between those two games, just a fixing of tons of mistakes from Oblivion.

A Morrowind-quality (and gameplay depth) game at the size of Skyrim is something I'd really love to play. Not that it will ever happen, of course.
AA/AAA devs nowadays are simply too afraid of doing open gameplay RPG systems that allow players to potentially break their "balance" and demand some time & thought investment.

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The last seal will be broken when 666 articles are published in a month.

Then, the ultimate Wine pun to end them all shall be released to wreak havoc upon the unsuspecting.

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Nice. Noise suppression has always been an issue for streamers and required some really creative solutions from some.

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Well, if that does come to fruition, it would scratch so many itches I won't have to shower for weeks!

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Interesting - though I'm way too dependent on a whole bunch of Chrome plugins and its syncing to do any Browser switch.
Chrome would have to somewhat collapse for me to take the time to switch browsers - last time that happened, it was Firefox that collapsed, forcing me to switch to Chrome.

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I had to check to make sure the video wasn't playing at half speed.

It doesn't look bad, but I think everything in that game needs to happen at twice the speed. Everything just looks so... slow.

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