I think this is a very positive option, as the option to purchase the DLC permanently and individually is still available.

I already have all the DLC I care about (and some I don't), and even for Paradox games where I don't have any DLC yet it would certainly be better to buy stuff normally. But if you aren't sure you are going to play the game for years (or even more, if you are sure you'll only play for a few months and quit), this is good. If you can't spend a ton of money at once, this gives the full package at once and it would be years before you took a loss - and you can cancel when you aren't playing. Or if you tend to play in short bursts - spend a month playing furiously and then not touching it for several months - this can be quite economic.

Yes, I like having "permanent" ownership of stuff, and I hate the hassle of subscribing and then unsubscribing to stuff. I'm concerned about the move to subscription-only models as a way to erode rights, and I'm concerned about subsidized subscriptions where there is a purchase option but it is too expensive (again, with the intention of eroding rights and keeping control over stuff). But, for a game that is relatively old and already has a successor out, for which no new content is expected, but that has a lot of accumulated content, and which retains the old purchase options at the same prices, I'm fine with it. Eventually it will be old enough that I'd want them to phase out the subscription and just sell a cheap full edition, but for now it looks reasonable.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: MassinissaEU4 is so much more complex than other PAradox games (excluding Vic2), I don't even really understand it or how combat or trade works. I hope there were some detailed noob guide, I didn't find any.

I'm not sure, HoI4 has a bunch of obscure stuff too, and CK2 is not as complex but more counter-intuitive. But yeah, it is extremely complex.

How detailed you want the noob guide to be? If it is "over 45 hours of video", there is this one: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQFX9B_9L4-nsTuK1eDEOuBHKVoKc4cQN [External Link] (you don't really need to watch to the end, though, and it is decently entertaining). It is a nice tutorial because it is a very experienced player, but he is teaching someone new to the game (but not totally clueless about games) as they go so it ends up being a better learning experience. Not 100% up to date, but more than good enough for most of the basic stuff.

But there are plenty of other guides, tutorials and gameplay videos around, it's more a matter of filtering than finding any.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Dang, this is cool.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Great to see a port. I played a bit before (on Wine), and the game is solid (after a few balancing changes it had in patches to make it less arbitrary). Very difficult, though.

While it worked on Wine, having official support is nice - it helps with edge cases and makes it less likely to break with updates, as well as being more accessible.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, the other day I was talking with my friends about how studios acquired by Tencent either remain totally unchanged (in the case of well-established properties) or immediately shift into exploitative gacha (the smaller, less famous ones). So I'd say Klei is on the safe, regarding creative autonomy - even safer than it would be with most other studios like Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, 2K or Sony that are famous for meddling with stuff.

Still, always sad when studios are bought out by megacorps.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This is certainly exciting from a Linux perspective (having a fully portable OS that you can plug into any computer!), but I'm not sure how this would translate into a marketable product. You already have a PC (presumably with Windows), why would you plug a flash drive with Linux to play games instead of playing them on Windows? If you didn't have Windows, you would want to have Linux installed directly on the hardware. This wouldn't help, per se, either selling devices (which shouldn't need your computer to run...) or enabling anyone to use Steam that already couldn't do it on their native

A few possibilities I could think of:
1) A portable device you could "dock", like a Nintendo Switch? Play on its own or plug into your computer to use the more powerful hardware, but with the exact same OS. Not sure if it makes sense, though, and is massively difficult.
2) A way to play your own games in public computers, like cybercafes (yes, they are still popular in some places). They do have tools already for those, so this could be a very convenient tool.
3) Use it in thin clients, that play games through some kind of streaming (either in their servers, Stadia-like, or from your own gaming PC). Like an evolution of the current Steam Link, but with an entire OS attached?. Not sure why it would be a live OS though.
4) Investigating the possibilities of having a full isolated OS, with standardized libraries and stuff, to run the games. Like the extreme version of containerization. This sounds like it is either quite distant, or would be a massive headache for us that already use Linux.
5) Just a normal "it is now easier to try out Linux on your computer without commitment, which helps Linux adoption in the long term". Which I don't quite doubt anymore Valve would do, but wouldn't be a big thing in itself.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedjeMy usual strategy is get the virus to not be deadly and have it spread as fast as possible, then to crank up the deadliness once it gets clise to 100% infection. But then the game cheats and RNAs their way out of it by coming up with a cure and being able to ship it world wide MUCH faster than reality would allow.

Yeah, that's the basis of most strategies (except weirder diseases). But when you get symptoms early, even only coughing or sneezing, it becomes much more likely to be discovered - when you start somewhere like China, it might be better to avoid that for a while to build up a significant infected population (using rats or livestock to spread, for example).

Of course, starting with high lethality pneumonia right from the start would be a rookie mistake in the game, everyone would just act to eradicate the virus as fast as possible. Which means we are getting our asses kicked by a rookie virus.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: PhiladelphusWhile Plague Inc is certainly a fun game (and this DLC looks interesting), I now find its claims of being a "realistic simulation" especially ludicrous when nearly the entire population of China can be infected with my new disease before a single person in a single other country catches it. Sure, a lot of diseases aren't as infections as COVID-19, but if upwards of a billion people can catch it in the same country surely someone in a nearby border town's going to pick it up, right?

I guess it also depends on methods of transmission - if you mutate the airborne transmission to transmit over planes, and respiratory symptoms, it is more likely to spread out of the country (but not a great strategy in the game); if you pick others you might instead intensify in the same region.

I'm just sad that real humanity apparently are below minimum difficulty. From what I remember easy mode was "doctors don't wash hands, sick people get hugs"; how do we call "authorities try to break quarantine and to undermine vaccination efforts"? Sandbox mode?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: The_Aquabatit surprises me taking into account how buggy Cyberpunk currently is. It's a bad sign that devs are getting away with buggy releases imho.

There isn't any issue that can't be circumvented by throwing truckloads of cash into marketing (this is the basis of our society) - the hype for this was absurd, there was no doubt it was going to be huge. They delayed just enough that it wasn't unstable enough to spiral out of control in a vicious cycle of bad press, and then tried to overcome any problems by sheer size. Sure, thousands of people will be turned away, but they have millions.

And also, spending money into easily scalable things like high-fidelity 3D graphics (get render farms and more artists, probably contracted from other companies) or more content (story, enemies, places, quests, items, etc). You can't necessarily just solve a bug faster by hiring more and more programmers to look at the same piece of code, or by giving the same programmers more cash, but you can throw money at other things to dazzle people into letting it slide. On a related note, you might get negative press by abusing your workers, but is it cheaper to pay for more marketing/PR or to not abuse the workers?

I'm just a bit disappointed that so many people are buying the game instead of downloading the illegal "Hacker Edition". I mean, it makes sense thematically, doesn't it?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This looks very cool. While I don't have much hope that major studios will use this, it opens a great possibility for FOSS games of all kinds - from engine recreations that might have trouble re-implementing this element, to the reasonably big projects, but maybe even small games like Sudoku or Solitaire implementations? It could also be very useful for non-FOSS indies that want to use itch or distribute in other, non-Steam channels.

Achievements can be pretty important (though it is all over the place, not all games make good use of it). It may seem like a small thing, but goals to accomplish are a crucial element of games. Comparing yourself to your friends, having a register of what you accomplished, having different side-goals to aim for, getting cool landmarks for progressing are all natural elements of gameing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments