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Latest Comments by TheSHEEEP
Valve's card game Artifact has lost almost all players and designer Richard Garfield has left
11 March 2019 at 1:09 pm UTC Likes: 3

There are just so many things that are sad.
The failure would have been entirely preventable and was for the most part foreseeable.

A virtual trading card game that requires an entry fee? Bad idea on its own.
A virtual trading card game that requires an entry fee and THEN additionally a lot of money to pump into it? Bad idea.
No meaningful progression in a TCG? Bad idea.
No good matchmaking in a TCG? Bad idea.
Announcing it to a crowd of people who wanted something entirely different? Bad idea.

As Liam wrote, the core gameplay is actually good, which makes it all the sadder that everything around it never really gave it a chance.

Quoting: rkfgSure, but there are two ways to acknowledge the issue: either fix it or give up. Valve can lose the trust these 1.5m put in them or regain it if they fix the game one way or another. I don't believe the appropriate response to players abandoning the game is doing the same from the developer side, at least not for a big company like Valve. For indies this really might be too much to handle and it might be the time when they sell their car and house to cover the debts and move to the mom's basement or wherever (can't blame anyone in such situation, it sucks but it happens). But Valve can do better.
Valve would be incredibly stupid from a business perspective to invest further in this game. Maybe they'll keep it alive with a skeleton crew. But anything more than that would be wasted money.
You have one chance with a game like that, and they failed.
And Valve didn't lose that much trust because most player never cared for the game to begin with - it never was anywhere near as popular as MtG or Hearthstone. They can afford to lose some people - a better loss than the loss of money trying to ressurrect this game.
And Valve realized that and acted accordingly. If you own a business, you need to face reality sometimes.

Valve would really only need to do one thing to give people what they want: Learn to count to three. Half-Life, L4D, Portal, ...

ATOM RPG to get a much improved English translation, modding support and tons of new features
5 March 2019 at 5:37 pm UTC

That's great news. I played through the game once and was waiting for a good time to do a second playthrough.

GOG are ending their 'Fair Price Package program', soon after letting staff go
4 March 2019 at 12:59 pm UTC

Quoting: Desumthe binaries for Beamdog's Enhanced Editions are probably not going to be trivial to get running in a decade or so under GNU/Linux
Why would you think so?

Intense looking indie horror title 'WOUNDED' is coming to Linux
4 March 2019 at 11:41 am UTC

"A Linux version is headed to Linux".
You might want to rephrase that ;)

ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove is out and it has Linux support
1 March 2019 at 8:07 pm UTC

And apparently, Macaulay Culkin is the producer.
What.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/02/macaulay_culkin_revealed_as_executive_producer_on_toejam_and_earl_back_in_the_groove

Not really sure about the game. I saw some videos and they look like you just walk around and try to no be hit by enemies. Is that all?

Cold Hearts, a visual novel about dating household appliances is real and heading to Linux
28 February 2019 at 8:30 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: SalvatosI feel like they seriously missed an opportunity here by not making the fridge say "Put your meat in me" :|
Maybe it is open to modding?
Couldn't wait to see what Loverslab would do with it.

GOG are ending their 'Fair Price Package program', soon after letting staff go
27 February 2019 at 3:29 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: GuestThat's all nice and all but I for myself don't care that much about Updates. When it runs and I can finish the Game why bother?
Because you get an improved experience. I hope I don't need to explain to you why people would want to bother with an improved experience.
If you don't care as long as you can somehow finish the game, fine, but most people do care.

Quoting: GuestAnd for the rest like Automatic here and there I call lazyness. Before Steam there was no such thing either and everyone was okay with it.
You confuse efficiency with laziness. People will always go for the more convenient option, because in doing so, they can save time.
Lifetime is the only resource that is truly limited, so why waste it on something inefficient if doing so gives you no other advantages? And to most people, GOG has no real advantages over Steam. Sure, some care about the DRM stuff and the ability to just download an installer. And some just hate Valve for no apparent reason. But that is and always will be a minority. Most people, surprisingly, just want to play a game :)

My experience with a GOG game on linux was:
A) The slowest installer I have ever witnessed. Seriously, it took about 20 minutes to install Battletech. 20 minutes for unzipping a handful of GB... Wtf.
B) I had a bug that prevented me from continuing. I knew there was a patch out that fixed it. But you cannot download patches on GOG (or rather, no dev bothers offering only patch files). So I had to download the entire installer again and go through the entire slow-ass installation again.

Compare that to Steam, where installation is near instant and so is updating... In fact you don't even have to bother with updating, it happens automatically if you don't opt out (for example, in order to keep your game compatible with some mod).

I see nothing lazy in preferring Steam over GOG, just a much more efficient use of my time.

GOG are ending their 'Fair Price Package program', soon after letting staff go
27 February 2019 at 7:45 am UTC Likes: 4

I stopped using GOG entirely the moment I realized they aren't going to support linux with Galaxy.
Won't even buy Windows games there any more, because what's the point, really? In all likelyhood, I'd just be able to play it via Steam Play on linux anyway, so to Steam it goes.

Rise to Ruins, the godlike village sim is leaving Early Access this year, big update out and Linux sales info
25 February 2019 at 4:30 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: gradyvuckovicIs there anything which could be done to make Linux more attractive to use in China? Because as a free to use OS it could do very well in China if it gained some popularity. Are Linux distros perhaps lacking in some translations for Chinese? Because that's seriously a big potential market for users and it is in fact the Chinese market that seems to pull down Linux's userbase numbers everywhere, including on Steam. We really need to do something about that.
I'm no expert on it, just started learning Chinese, but I already noticed a bit:

Certainly a large number of apps lack localization, including but not limited to Chinese. Basically, using linux at the moment assumes you know English rather well if you use anything that goes beyond large apps like Steam.
Adding to that, I'm sure fonts are a problem with some apps as well. Especially with somewhat older apps, I don't think too many could even display Chinese.

As further proof of how fragmentation hurts, there are basically two standards for language support, ibus and fcitx (there are actually more, but afaik those are the big ones). Needless to say, that isn't helping anyone, just making things more complicated.

None of the input methods I tried are as good as the one in Windows. None look as good, nor are they as smooth.

Hotkeys to change between input methods vary for distribution/window manager and/or installed input framework. It's a mess. At the very least, distro devs should stick their heads together and set some standards all adhere to. We all know this will never happen.

Honestly, if nobody takes some cash into their hands and funds some serious effort, I do not think this will ever improve too much.