Author Topic: What are you playing right now?  (Read 613796 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline procdrone

  • Formerly TheHound
  • 29
  • Balance breaker! Thats me!
    • Steam
Re: What are you playing right now?
It's important to remember that you should never give EA any money.

The idea that anyone would 'like EA' is absurd.  I guess they haven't gotten around to utterly destroying a game or game studio you love yet.

That. x99999999999

EA is souless corporate thing that ONLY looks to maximise profit and minimise effort. They used to make good games but became very corrupt novadays. Today, im enemy of whole EA company and their modern "products"
--Did it! It's RELEASED! VeniceMirror Thread--

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
EA is souless corporate thing that ONLY looks to maximise profit match the profit margin across the company to their EA Sports franchises.

Made it more factual. I'd elaborate but sadly the detailed annual earnings reports of EA is not public infomation.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2018, 10:03:48 am by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Turambar

  • Determined to inflict his entire social circle on us
  • 210
  • You can't spell Manslaughter without laughter
Re: What are you playing right now?
If we only boycott EA Sports, then EA continues to exist.

EA currently has the rights to make Star Wars games.

For the future of Star Wars games, if we ever want them to be better than mediocre, EA must be destroyed.

It'll be fine, all the studios and developers will find new jobs.  The parasites that run the business part of EA will also get new jobs, of course, but hopefully they will have seen that running **** into the ground isn't a good way to make money anymore.
10:55:48   TurambarBlade: i've been selecting my generals based on how much i like their hats
10:55:55   HerraTohtori: me too!
10:56:01   HerraTohtori: :D

 

Offline karajorma

  • King Louie - Jungle VIP
  • Administrator
  • 214
    • Karajorma's Freespace FAQ
Re: What are you playing right now?
Sounds like someone has been channelling Jim Stirling.

Good.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 

Offline Bryan See

  • Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
  • 210
  • Trying to redeem, but under Tiger Parents
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: What are you playing right now?
I'm playing DOOM 3 BFG Edition recently, using a custom fork derived from RBDOOM3-BFG, unlike FSO, licensed under GNU GPL3.
Bryan See - My FreeSpace Wiki User Page (Talk, Contributions)

Full Projects:
Shattered Stars

Campaigns:
Lost in the Mist - Cyrene vs. Psamtik
FreeSpace: Reunited

Ships:
GTS Hygeia, GTT Argo, SC Raguel

Tools:
FSO TC/Game template

I've been under attack by Tiger Parents like Jennifer Pan...

 
Re: What are you playing right now?
It's important to remember that you should never give EA any money.

The idea that anyone would 'like EA' is absurd.  I guess they haven't gotten around to utterly destroying a game or game studio you love yet.

Nah I just appreciate companies that deliver games on a regular basis, as opposed to most people who seem to praise companies for failing to deliver a game on time.

I also realize that any studio which folds under EA was first sold to EA by the studio's original owners, often at a time of financial decline, meaning the owners got a fat payout and/or released a couple of turds and were not going to be around much longer anyway.  OR, in other words, I don't solely blame EA for being one dancer in a tango.

That aside, many of the best games from a studio have come out AFTER they've been bought by EA.

Privateer, Wing Commander III, Ultima VII, Ultima Online from Origin Systems
Dungeon Keeper from Bullfrog
The Sims from Maxis
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 from Westwood
Mass Effect 2 from Bioware

People love to say "EA ruined my studio", they don't like to mention that the best game from that studio came out after EA bought them.  But most people's mental gymnastics around this fact is to attribute any successes of a game to the developer, and any failures of the game to the publisher, even though it was the developer's failures which often led to their acquisition in the first place.


For the future of Star Wars games, if we ever want them to be better than mediocre, EA must be destroyed.

As for Star Wars Battlefront 2.  I played it, wasn't too bad for the single player campaign anyway.  It was very much like Battlefield Bad Company, it was obvious a single player campaign built from a multiplayer game.  And when you consider that some games are sold full price for console but have no single player campaign (see Overwatch), then it doesn't seem all that bad.  As far as campaigns go it had good variety of missions.

Also be careful what you wish for, Games Workshop gave their licenses out to pretty much anybody and a lot of the games that came out for 40K and so forth look like straight garbage. VERY inconsistent quality.  Not to mention that most movie-tie in games are not very good from the outset.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 03:09:55 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
    • My old squad sub-domain
Re: What are you playing right now?
I think it's a very pretty game.  With game play from 10 years ago.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Novachen

  • 29
  • The one and only capella supernova
    • Twitter
Re: What are you playing right now?
Well because i worked for EA as a Freelance developer years ago, i do not think that EA is bad.

Unfortunately EA loses its trendsetter image nearly ten years ago. Since then they actually only follow trends that were introduced successfully by other studios. DLCs, LootBoxes,Strictly Free2Play systems were always introduced by other developers. EA only took that systems over. But only after EA made those decisions the gamer community is upset.

Paradox Interactive serves as a shining example for many gamers. In reality they remake the same games over and over again and flood them with countless DLCs. If that would be EA it would be bad.

It is always very strange, because EA has a reputation as one of the best employers within the industry... but their reputation from gamers could not be worse. Could never understand that.

EA also does not destroy studios. No one of the Developers were forced to sign a takeover bid. No one forced them to use the giant personal and financial resources EA has to offer... the reason why many studios were closed is more or less, that the developers waste the resources and so created a game that was simply too expensive to make profit... or it was simple bad in the first place, because several good ideas did not worked out as they should.

Westwood, Origin etc. would still be active if they had always created games, that were successful. This did not happen. Maybe they have died even sooner without EA.

It is confirmed, that Westwood had total freedom back then, especially after the takeover because of all the EA resources which were available. And they simply developed their own grave with Earth & Beyond in the end. And one of their previous games, Emperor: Battle for Dune to call it explicitly, was also not very successful.

Yes, today EA is maybe more restrictive, for example all developers has to use Frostbite which was a very strange decision in 2016, because this engine was not even capable for several genres back then.
But well, i do not think that this is a bad decision, because it make the support and developing of games much easier, because you can simply add some team members from other studios to the projects.

But well, the LootBox system was took over by EA ten years ago in their Sports Games. It was only a matter of time, that this one is used in other games as well. Interestingly Ultimate Team was never a big issue as the Ultimate Garage (Need for Speed) or Ultimate Characters (BFII) is. Actually, i never fully understand that agitation.
EA actually do not need any other games except their Sport games with Ultimate Team, because it is a bonanza. There are millions of people who buy this card packages. And because they do, you can hardly blame EA for that, that they use this feature in other games as well. It is more surprising that EA need nearly a decade for this step.
Female FreeSpace 2 pilot since 1999.
Former Global moderator in the German FreeSpace Galaxy Forum.
Developer of NTP - A Multi-Language Translation Library Interface, which allows to play FreeSpace in YOUR Language.

Is one of my releases broken or not working? Please send a PM here, on Discord at @novachen or on Twitter @NovachenFS2, a public tweet or write a reply in my own release threads here on HLP, because these are the only threads i am still participating in.

 
Re: What are you playing right now?
I think it's a very pretty game.  With game play from 10 years ago.

About the age of the original Battlefront 2, just what the fans wanted.

 

Offline Torchwood

  • 27
  • Mechanical Templar
Re: What are you playing right now?
Daily reminder that EA published the original Wasteland. Without EA, we wouldn't have Fallout.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

  • 211
  • The Cthulhu programmer himself!
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: What are you playing right now?
That aside, many of the best games from a studio have come out AFTER they've been bought by EA.

Privateer, Wing Commander III, Ultima VII, Ultima Online from Origin Systems
Dungeon Keeper from Bullfrog
The Sims from Maxis
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 from Westwood
Mass Effect 2 from Bioware
...So the last time EA published a good game was 8 years ago?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Privateer, Wing Commander III, Ultima VII, Ultima Online from Origin Systems
Dungeon Keeper from Bullfrog
The Sims from Maxis
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 from Westwood
Mass Effect 2 from Bioware


That was mostly past EA and even then the only reason Dungeon Keeper went the way it did was because Molineaux was reportedly very good at bull****ting the EA suits while the developers did their thing with the game undisturbed.
Also Mass Effect 2 isn't better than the first, it has just a wider appeal, often to the detriment of artistic coherence (where the **** are the spacesuits gone during hostile enviroments missions? Gotta show that space-leather-clad booty I guess.).
The thing is that EA has basically become the classic all-devouring corporation that only operates in superbig projects that either have great success or crumble under their own weight, and it's a wider tendency in the market nowadays. It's also the reason we don't have a Star Wars spacesim, it would have to be midbudget and EA doesn't do midbudget.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline Mongoose

  • Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
  • Global Moderator
  • 212
  • This brain for rent.
    • Minecraft
    • Steam
    • Something
Re: What are you playing right now?
Working through what I'd put on the short-list of the best platformers of all time: Donkey Kong Country 2.  An improvement on its predecessor in pretty much every way, and easily one of the greatest soundtracks in gaming history.  Unfortunately it didn't make the cut for the SNES Classic (I'd much rather have it than the original on there), so I had to resort to the Virtual Console.  The cool part is that the NES/SNES Classic controllers use the same ports as the Wiimote Nunchucks, so I can hook up the SNES controller to the Wii U and do things proper.  It's like I'm 9 years old in my neighbors' basement again.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: What are you playing right now?
So, I went away for a bit to prepare for a conference and I didn't think the EA "discussion" would still be on-going...
... and even if it hadn't I still had a message to put here.

Basically, I am here to claim my part of the responsibility why this kicked off:
Please behold for a moment the metaphorical quiver of "stuff I know". One of the arrows in this quiver is knowledge I have from sources well acquainted with EA's inner workings and buisness practices. I have this knowledge and I keep it because for one, I don't wish to harm the people who were so kind to provide me with these insights and trust me that I keep their names and the particulars of their disclosures ('cause as long as I am vague nothing of what I say is legally actionable); secondly, I keep this knowledge because it touches subjects that fascinate me deeply but which I didn't have the time and ressources to properly investigate/research.

Despite this I could not resist my worst instinct and do a "cat who ate the carnary"-act which escalated this discussion when it was in nobody's interest to do so.

I can of course not claim fully responsibility because some of what has been said here more or less is a form of social performance, appearently integral to some people's identities (this is NOT a value judgement). But regardless of that, what I did was detrimental to the tone of the discussion and undermined the discussion as an exchange of ideas and perspective.

What I did was wrong, and I have but the decent thing to do and apologize for it. I am sorry.


Before I bow out, attending to other buisness, let me just add the following to the discussion:

To understand any economic actor, which EA is as a publisher of commercial art and entertainment products, it is best to first try to understand them on the basis of their buisness. When doing so it is important to accept the facts as they are, even if they defy your expectations - doubly so, when you are suddenly faced with realisation that you have only been observing the tip of the iceberg.

If you do that, you might find that there perspectives that allow you to see objectionable behavior and practices as making sense as rational actions (if they are sensible remains a different matter entirely).

That knowledge doesn't have to lead to agreement but can help you  sharpen your critique, expand your tools, and light the way to possibily successful action.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2018, 05:42:39 pm by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Det. Bullock

  • 29
  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Part of the fault lays also with me not noticing how old certain posts were.  :nervous:

I've been trying out Torment: Tides of Numenera because of the Steam free weekend but unfortunately I'm stuck at work most of the time so even if I had money on my paypal account this is no time to play it properly.
I also been playing Arkham Knight (PC) because at eight Euros being a DC fan I couldn't pass it up, it's fine but this fixation of shoehorning the Batmobile in everything is frankly irritating.
Same with the weird tendence of damseling characters fo inordinately long stretches of time, fortunately I did read a few spoilers because otherwise a certain moment played purely for shock value and get Batman even more angsty than usual might have made me quit there and there.
But since I have basically only a couple of hours at a time with my desktop PC lately, I dusted off my arcade stick to play some Street Fighter Alpha 2 via MAME and some Double Dragon Trilogy on my old laptop.
I also have King of Fighters 2002 from a gog.com giveaway but it doesn't detect my arcade stick for some reason so after some unconclusive googling I uninstalled it.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

  
Re: What are you playing right now?
I have yet to install Tides of Numenera, I'm giving Doctor Wily in Megaman 8 a fierce battle right now instead. But I've been deciding if the next CRPG should be;
a. Tides of Numenera. b. Planescape Torment or c. Transfer my not optimum Baldurs Gate 1 character over to Baldurs Gate 2.

(I keep forgetting that I have Mechwarrior 2 installed.)



I also have King of Fighters 2002 from a gog.com giveaway but it doesn't detect my arcade stick for some reason so after some unconclusive googling I uninstalled it.

SNK's PC ports aren't known for being good. KoF 13 and 14 I know personally are pretty good ports however. KoF 14 is basically a Dream Match anyways.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

  • 211
  • The Cthulhu programmer himself!
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: What are you playing right now?
KoF2k2 is run through an emulator, IIRC; it doesn't surprise me that a proprietary emulator wouldn't have great joystick detection.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 
Re: What are you playing right now?
It's also the reason we don't have a Star Wars spacesim, it would have to be midbudget and EA doesn't do midbudget.

You do realize that you're a diehard fan of a dead, niche genre right? 


That was mostly past EA and even then the only reason Dungeon Keeper went the way it did was because Molineaux was reportedly very good at bull****ting the EA suits while the developers did their thing with the game undisturbed.

Like I said:

People love to say "EA ruined my studio", they don't like to mention that the best game from that studio came out after EA bought them.  But most people's mental gymnastics around this fact is to attribute any successes of a game to the developer, and any failures of the game to the publisher,

 
Re: What are you playing right now?
You do realize that you're a diehard fan of a dead, niche genre right?

You say that, but I am actually surprised that nobody in the publishing sphere has thought about starting a project designed to rake in that sweet sweet Star Citizen money.

 
Re: What are you playing right now?
You do realize that you're a diehard fan of a dead, niche genre right?

You say that, but I am actually surprised that nobody in the publishing sphere has thought about starting a project designed to rake in that sweet sweet Star Citizen money.

Star Citizen isn't a game, it's an idea, the benefit of which is that it allows players to imagine what they will experience and those imaginations can always go so far beyond what the game is actually capable of.  Because when you imagine, ANYTHING is possible, but when you make a game- only very specifically what you put into the game is possible including unforeseen emergent behaviour.  And when people finally do play the game, they stop imagining and instead start evaluating the experience compared to their expectations.

For reference on people's reaction to imagination meeting reality, see No Man's Sky.


Did EVE Valkyrie do well after they dropped VR requirement and cut the price in half? I'd check Steam spy but the owner decided to ruin it by begging on patreon.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2018, 02:17:45 pm by Akalabeth Angel »