I will fully concede that the trend of game makers releasing half-baked, poorly optimized games that are buggy and unplayable at launch is totally a thing and it is frustrating and we should demand better (though we keep buying so why would they stop?).
BUT.... the online game community is so insufferable and this Cities Skylines II launch is a great example of it. The game is not about 4k 120 fps gameplay. It is a simulation game that runs fairly well even on last gen's hardware if you drop SOME of the fidelity settings. But that's not the predominant discourse. If people can't play it at 4k out of the box on their overpriced 4090 then they take straight to the internet to complain (and mind you they have tried fiddling with exactly 0 knobs to make it runnable).
I am by no means making excuses for game makers who certainly share much of the blame for creating an environment of distrust among game fans. But the online discourse is just rage baiting and looking for anything to hate with minimal evidence or sometimes even outright lies. Makes me want to go into a cave and play my games without seeing any content or discussion about it.
> If people can't play it at 4k out of the box on their overpriced 4090 then they take straight to the internet to complain (and mind you they have tried fiddling with exactly 0 knobs to make it runnable).
The top comment contains this extract from an IGN review:
> I have a 13900k, 64GB of RAM, and a RTX 4090, playing on a 1440p ultrawide monitor. I got 35fps at the main menu and in game on a brand new map w/o building a single thing. Turning off motion blur and depth field increased this from 35 to 50fps. Not a single other graphics setting changed the performance at all. I turned off every single setting I could or set it to the lowest possible, and still only got 50fps.
Yes, I was addressing the broader discourse more generally, specifically Reddit. But you're right that the article did directly address this though I would say the tone and title of the article are incongruous with the simple fact that they were able to get the game to run well with minor tweaks.
I take issue with "only got 50fps". This is not Counter Strike or a game that demands 300fps. 50fps (if your 1% lows are within reason) is completely playable.
It's not about the number by itself, it's what the number implies. If an RTX 4090 can't get to 60 FPS on an empty map, what will happen when the game is running on an RTX 4060 and it has to render a complete city?
>I take issue with "only got 50fps". This is not Counter Strike or a game that demands 300fps. 50fps (if your 1% lows are within reason) is completely playable.
You're complaining about people complaining. If you're satisfied with the game being playable then play it, but others may have different expectations of quality, and it's not wrong for them to voice their opinion when the product they paid money for doesn't meet them. I personally don't remember participating in a congress of gamers where everyone agreed not to complain about a game unless it was practically unplayable.
>If you're satisfied with the game being playable then play it, but others may have different expectations of quality, and it's not wrong for them to voice their opinion when the product they paid money for doesn't meet them.
I'm all for voicing opinions in a civic and calm manner. Most people online voicing their opinions come off as know-it-all teens or children throwing tantrums. It's as-if they have a _right_ to a CS2 with 120fps. Paradox warned about bad performance prior to launch (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/updates-on-modd...). Nobody claimed or said performance was gonna be great. And still, people act surprised.
It's no surprise that the reviews was down at close to 30% a couple of hours into the release and today at 52%. Why is there such a massive bias towards large reviews at the first hours? Because many gamers loves thrashing about. It's much more important than taking a step down and calming down.
The people who reviewed the game in the first few days were the ones who either pre-ordered it or bought it as soon as it came out. They were so excited to play the new installment they took a gamble and trusted that the developer would produce a polished product, because they wanted to be able to play it as soon as possible. When they got to play the game, they saw it ran poorly to the point that it might have spoiled the experience for them. They're right to be angry about it, especially when developers and publishers make most of their money during the first few weeks since launch. By releasing a half-finished product they're treating their most enthusiastic users like crap. They didn't have to do that, they could have delayed the launch. Be it because of decisions made by the publisher or by the developer, they chose to release when they did. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it. I don't blame anyone who raves about performance, because what was released was well outside the realm of what's acceptable for a finished product, regardless of what said prior to launch. You don't get to sell a car with an asterisk that says "by the way, the fuel tank leaks so until we find a way to fix it you'll use twice as much fuel as normal".
> You don't get to sell a car with an asterisk that says "by the way, the fuel tank leaks so until we find a way to fix it you'll use twice as much fuel as normal".
Yeah. But in case of CS2, gamers did buy the leaking car. Devs analogously said "by the way, the fuel tank leaks" and people just went with "OK" and bought CS2, after which the customer started to complain (rave?!) about leaking fuel tanks. The car salesman retail store said "Well you can have all money back no questions asked until you've driven at least 160km". Steam has generous refunds. What does the customer do? (S)he still goes onto review sites and bitch about bad leaking fuel tanks. It is very much in bad faith on the customers part.
I wouldn't rush to Colossal Games defense if customers just said "It ran bad for me on my 4090 for some reason so I refunded". That's not what's going on with the negative reviews though. People act entitled.
I would argue a dealer telling you about a major defect directly before you buy the car is a bit different than a post on some forums that the product they're selling is not well made.
I would suggest it's not reasonable to expect that someone buying a game has to do research on a forum to know the game is unfinished -- if it's being sold as a finished game it's reasonable to expect it's in a playable state. the original post was meaning to say it would be unheard of for other products to allow companies to sell known unfinished products as finished products, even with the promise of completing the product. and consumers would similarly balk at such a proposal for virtually any other object.
it was more the absurdity of the different way games are treated which is anti-consumer.
>I would suggest it's not reasonable to expect that someone buying a game has to do research on a forum to know the game is unfinished -- if it's being sold as a finished game it's reasonable to expect it's in a playable state
It is playable, though. Now, if you wanted it to be a perfectly optimized, polished experience with no hitches even on older hardware: well, you get what you pay for, I suppose.
>it would be unheard of for other products to allow companies to sell known unfinished products as finished products, even with the promise of completing the product.
if "120fps" is your minimum requirement of "playable", then you probably care enough about performance to the point where you need to research every game you buy. Similar to how someone interested in road rallies or drag style street racing probably won't be satisfied even with perfectly driveable cars.
The kinds of people making these complaints are those "street racers", so to speak.
You're still not getting it. Yeah, if a car dealership had such a generous return policy you could get your money back and get a car that does what you need within your budget. But these people didn't want just a city builder and they happened to buy this one. They wanted to play the new version of Cities: Skylines. They're loyal fans and they're treated like beta testers.
Yes, it's entitlement. Customers are entitled to get a quality product in exchange for their money. When Paradox goes to spend their earnings they're not going to be throttled to do it at 45 cents per second.
It runs perfectly fine on my 1080 with low settings and a city of 50k.
Quite frankly I'm tired of people speaking out of their ass when there are people who are actually fucking playing the game. Do you also postulate about the weather without looking out the window?
Even 30 FPS is perfectly playable in any game. People have truly gone off the deep end with this FPS shit. Back in the day, most (all?) console games ran at 30 FPS, and we somehow managed to play them and have fun. I would love to see the people complaining about "only" 50 FPS try to wrap their brains around that one.
In your opinion only, not one to be shared by all.
> Back in the day, most (all?) console games ran at 30 FPS
No they didn’t.
> I would love to see the people complaining about "only" 50 FPS try to wrap their brains around that one.
Well it helps that first of all, you’re wrong. Secondly, there is a SIGNIFICANT difference with CRT motion quality meaning it’s not at all comparable to frame rates on LCD/OLED today.
most/all 3d games did for gen 5 and 6, and most of 7 before engines can utilize that hardware. Ocarina of time ran at 15 fps IIRC. Crash Bandicoot ran at 30fps. Final Fantasy 7 fell back down to 15fps.
Once we got to the PS2 era stuff started being 30fps, with the truly exceptionally optimized games hitting 60. Final Fantasy X would get bumped to 30fps and Jak and Daxter: the precursor legacy would be 60fps but often have some spikes down to 30fps. From what I can find, The original Halo also targeted 30fps.
>Well it helps that first of all, you’re wrong
but you just said it was their opinion not shared by all. This is why people don't take the gaming community discourse seriously.
As someone that primarily plays on PC i haven't thought 30 FPS is acceptable since the NES era.
Cities skylines 2 is being released on PC where the expected baseline has been 60 fps for 25 years or so. 60 fps at a reasonable resolution should be available to most users. If even people with a top of the line CPU and $1800 GPU are limited to 50 fps you failed.
this take is not fair to the community. almost all games auto set graphics settings as per your hardware since many years now.
any good developer would test these configurations on common hardware combinations (at least on the popular GPUs) before shipping. other than maybe the graphics preset, why are we expected to change all the dials just to start the game from the menu?
in the crossplatform era, PC has been treated as second class citizen with optimization. forza motorsport is also another example where even having above their minimum requirements give a slideshow on launch, despite lowering all settings.
expecting every gamer on PC to be tinkerers is just a myopic take that does not help with development priorities.
It's predominantly people with strong opionions who actively partake in online communities (instead of just lurking), so the vitriol is to be expected.
Just as an alternate data point, I personally prefer the new design as I find it more inviting, and easier to browse on mobile. I think both should exist because there are enough people who prefer the old way but it does beg the question of whether it is worth supporting both from an engineering perspective. I'm sure it has a real cost to Reddit.
For mobile web, I can see how the new design would be an improvement there. The old site doesn't even support mobile.
I posted a reply to another comment here about some of their stats accessible to mods of subreddits. So far it seems to me that enough people use old.reddit.com to make it worth it.
Too many great options in this thread already so I'll stray and focus on small 2-player games I discovered this year and enjoyed:
- Trails
- Jaipur
- The Agora expansion to 7 wonders duel (added more of a unique take than Pantheon I think)
I take the video with a grain of salt of course but just to be fair here, the video spends the majority of its time explaining in great detail why Linus did NOT just slap his name on a megapro screwdriver. I actually found the minute details of how they designed, prototyped, and stressed over the screwdriver quite fascinating and while it may or may not translate to quality... it at least is a weak signal to me that someone considered every facet which I believe is somewhat correlated with quality.
Every comment I have seen is flabbergasted by the price but I think there is a lot more interesting about these headphones. For example, they're clearly being marketed as "premium" over-the-ear headphones but they get the Airpods branding and not Beats? What does that mean for Beats? A 20 hour battery life beats my Bose 700s so it will be interesting to see if that holds up. Perhaps more jarring is the high price tag for what amounts to a cloth cover for a case but I suppose they are making the claim that you don't need to power it off?
What I find really interesting in this debate is how the same story can be spun two ways. Here, the headline is listed as "Apple Ending "Fortnite Save the World" Updates for Mac" which is a word for word title from Epic's blog post. Fair enough.
The same story on Techmeme linked to an article about the blog post has the title "Epic says it will shut down Fortnite: Save the World on macOS on September 23rd".
Notice the tone shift from "Apple is shutting this down" to "Epic is shutting this down". I guess I don't really have a point here other than the title is not enough to draw a conclusion. Even reading a single source's take on a story is not enough context to draw a balanced conclusion. There is bias and nuance to every side and a healthy dose of skepticism is needed.
I think your general point is valid, but the first line of this is literally:
> Apple is preventing Epic from signing games and patches for distribution on Mac, which ends our ability to develop and offer Fortnite: Save the World for the platform.
If we assume that that statement is true (and isn't Epic straight up lying), it's pretty clear cut that this is Apple's decision and not Epic's. By taking away Epic's capability to release updates, Apple is the one that has made the decision. Again, unless you are insinuating that Epic is lying.
Apple’s argument is that Epic forced this action by violating their contract. Epic will respond that the contract is unfair and illegal, and Apple’s treatment of different developers under the contract is inconsistent. It ends up being a conversation about who you favor in the Apple vs Epic fight, and not really a falsifiable factual question.
But did epic actually violate any part of their MacOS developer agreement, or just their iOS agreement? I've seen some conflicting information here that makes it seems as though Epic did nothing wrong on the MacOS side.
The Apple-defense being pushed here seems to be that all Apple agreements are one Apple agreement. Ie, if you have an issue with Apple in one are of business, that Apple-as-a-company can retaliate in any other area of business.
It will get interesting if it extends to (although I can't image it would) "Epic violated our App Store rules, therefore we were forced to disable Apple services usage from all of their Apple devices. Unfortunately for security reasons Apple devices are unable to function without those Apple services".
Framing this as an "Apple-defense" seems kind of odd when it's just the legal reality of the situation. There is a single agreement that covers development for all Apple products.
The fact that you might be involved in multiple areas of business is no more relevant here than it would be if you had a food delivery app, a yoga app, and a music app. The same agreement governs all of your conduct with Apple.
Even if it is the "legal reality", Apple wrote that "reality" in a way to use its market position in one vertical to control people's actions in other.
I'm not sure the point you're trying to make with your analogy, but I personally don't think it's reasonable that doing a chargeback on a food delivery app (for any reason) should be grounds for me to lose access to my music or yoga apps.
Google taking action like this (blocking accounts across their entire network of companies) comes up on HN every once in a while, and Google is always "the evil one". Apple is doing the same thing here but it's apparently more acceptable?
> Apple wrote that "reality" in a way to use its market position in one vertical to control people's actions in other.
Again, that is your framing and doesn't take into account that maintaining independent contracts for each individual app would be incredibly impractical. Some developers have hundreds of apps in the app store. Are you really suggesting that if the developer commits a fraudulent act in a single app within a large portfolio of apps, that Apple should only be allowed to take action against that one specific app as opposed to banning the developer entirely?
> I'm not sure the point you're trying to make with your analogy
My point is that this is standard industry practice so framing it as something particularly evil that Apple has done is kind of silly. Look at Google's Play Store agreement, or Steam, or even Epic's own game store. The fact that all these different companies do things the same way indicates there's probably a valid reason for it.
> I personally don't think it's reasonable that doing a chargeback on a food delivery app (for any reason) should be grounds for me to lose access to my music or yoga apps.
As a consumer, no. But we're talking about two businesses here. If you commit fraud in your food delivery app why should Apple (or any company) be required to continue distributing your music or yoga apps? How do they know you won't do the exact same thing in your other apps?
This example isn't just hypothetical, it's a real issue in the Google Play Store. Malicious developers will build up a portfolio of apps, and then once the install base is large enough, begin to sneak malware into future releases of the apps. Google is constantly playing a whack-a-mole game against these developers. Imagine how much harder that game would be if they couldn't ban the developer and had to wait until malware was discovered in each individual app before they could ban that app.
None of this changes the fact that Apple is using technical measures to prevent Epic from developing software for Apple's “open” platform, the Mac. Everything else is some distant tiny noise from another conversation. This is the moment the frog has been boiled.
>it's pretty clear cut that this is Apple's decision and not Epic's
This is a chicken or egg problem. Epic was the one that violated the rules of the App Store, not Apple. If Epic hadn't done that, Apple wouldn't have been forced to take away their capabilities to provide updates. You can follow that chain of events without insinuating that Epic is lying.
Epic publishing an app on iOS that breaks Apple's policies does not force Apple to prevent Epic from publishing any software on any of their platforms. That's a choice Apple made. The whole thing is a choice by Apple because Apple is the one writing the policies in the first place. They're not forced to do anything, it's their platform.
This has not been true since 2015, when the various developer programs (Mac, iOS, and Safari) were combined into a single Apple Developer program (for $99/year).
Source: I've been a member of the Apple Developer program since at least 2006, which was the first year I attended WWDC. The current program is described at <https://developer.apple.com/programs/>.
> one that violated the rules of the App Store, not Apple
This is an invalid comparison because Apple cannot, by definition of them writing the rules with the ability to change them whenever they want, violate the "rules" of the App Store. Phrasing it like this implies that "Apple violating the rules" is even a possibility.
You're using a silly grammatical error to gloss over the entire point of my statement. Apple obviously can't violate their own rules. That wasn't the point. The point was that the impetus of the situation was Epic, not Apple. Epic willingly chose to violate the rules and that kicked off the whole situation. If you want me to rephrase the statement, then here: "Epic was the one that violated the rules of the App Store. Apple didn't start the chain of events that caused this situation. Epic did."
Well, it makes sense that this story's headline would favor Epic - it's a headline on epicgames.com. They're the only ones still pretending like they're the victim.
Epic cannot do anything to release updates and fix bugs on the macOS platform. Epic wants to continue to support their application on macOS - but because of a completely unrelated issue regarding an iOS application they can't. Are you suggesting that they aren't a victim of Apple's anti-competitive and draconian tactics?
Sure, I'll go ahead and suggest that Epic may not be "a victim of Apple's anti-competitive and draconian tactics".
"Anti-competitive" is a matter for courts to decide. Epic could have taken Apple to court without violating Apple's ToS, but they decided to use their fans as leverage in hopes of forcing Apple into an agreement faster than the traditionally slow legal system.
"Draconian" is an inflammatory label a reasonable person could easily dismiss.
"Victim" depends on whether Apple's ToS are actually anti-competitive. Reasonable people can make arguments to support either position, which is why we have a legally system to resolve conflicts like this. Only time will tell which is legally true.
Until then, it's just as true that Epic is an irresponsible aggressor abusing their fans in the hopes of gaining leverage in a negotiation.
It's hard to feel bad for either company, only the fans deserve sympathy, but I don't see how any reasonable person could claim that Epic couldn't foresee the consequence of their strategy.
They can release updates and bug fixes on the macOS platform by removing the native payment feature they included that tries to route around Apple's in-app payment system. Epic broke the rules on purpose and then started a public relations fight when Apple enforced the rules that Epic agreed to when they started developing on Apple's platforms. They are in no way a victim; that's a hilarious idea. This is all part of a deliberate strategy born from their desire to not pay Apple the cut that every other developer on the platform pays. You can argue that Apple's cut is too high, but that isn't germane to this issue. Apple's cut is a tradeoff you make in order to have access to the large audience of Apple users.
If you're a landlord and I rent your apartment and you tell me that I can't smoke on the balcony and I go ahead and do it anyway, I'm going to face the consequences of breaking that rule. Epic isn't a victim, they are just unsuccessfully trying to use their own enormous leverage to try to make Apple back down.
No, I'm suggesting that their tactics are neither anti-competitive nor draconian. Epic violated the terms of a store that they willingly entered into. Apple owns the App Store. They do not have a monopoly on mobile phones, app stores, or devices and, as Apple just provided to the judge in the case (who agreed with the response), Apple was the single largest driver in mobile growth and competition. How can they be anti-competitive if they've nearly single-handedly been responsible for the growth of those market segments?
> No, I'm suggesting that their tactics are neither anti-competitive nor draconian. Epic violated the terms of a store that they willingly entered into. Apple owns the App Store.
I think perhaps you don't know what anti-competitive means, or are thinking of it purely as a portion of monopolistic practices. Apple's actions in multiple levels of their platform are by definition anti-competitive.
> They do not have a monopoly on ...
A monopoly is not a prerequisite for anti-competitive practices, it's just something the U.S. identified in the late 1800's and early 1900's as something that makes anti-competitive practices very effective, so laws were made to combat them because they are easier to identify and classify. Stopping anti-competitive behavior that harms consumers (though increased prices and reduced options) is the goal. Stopping monopolies is just a side-effect.
Apple has nearly 50% of mobile market share. Anything above 30% is close to a monopoly in my opinion, as it has a high impact in number of people reached.
And thats just mobile, they absolutely decimate the tablet market. I've vowed never to become an Apple Developer, since I've had 2 different apps rejected based on arbitrary rules.
Indies are hurt the most in this battle. Game publishers like Voodoo steal people's ideas and Apple lets them corner the market, removing/rejecting those who were there first.
Other stores are starting to mimic Apple's behavior, which is leaving Indies to battle it out in the last free open space... The world wide web.
Not saying that Google is or isn't breaking the intention of GDPR here but thinking as a critical reader:
- this complaint is lodged by an upstart privacy-based browser which directly competes with a Google product (Chrome) so they are not objective players here
- reading through the PDF linked in the blog post, it seems there is no "canary in the coal mine". It is a spreadsheet with a lot of empty cells and red backgrounds. The post and the facade of the spreadsheet scream "look at this, something's wrong" but the content doesn't match that at all. The impression is that they have found Google to be doing something wrong but the reality is that they want regulators to check and see if Google is doing something wrong. Is there presumed innocence in this circumstance (really asking here because I don't know)?
As with most things, the truth often lies in the middle. It seems to me at least that this is both a click-baity blog post and complaint meant to drum up media and press for Brave as much as it is a spotlight on Google's data practices. Both are bad.
> this complaint is lodged by an upstart privacy-based browser which directly competes with a Google product (Chrome) so they are not objective players here
This is not really a problem. Quite the contrary, it's unusual for a neutral party to be the one lodging a complaint. The important thing is that whomever processes the complaint is a neutral/objective party.
> As with most things, the truth often lies in the middle. It seems to me at least that this is both a click-baity blog post and complaint meant to drum up media and press for Brave as much as it is a spotlight on Google's data practices. Both are bad.
I agree on this, but if there's a company trying to make a name for itself by attacking privacy violators, and if the benefits of that accrue even to people who aren't customers of the company, then I don't overly begrudge the company a little (or, let's be honest, a lot of) breathless self-generated PR in the process.
The penalties will also accrue even to people who aren't customers of the company. It may be harder to see when that occurs.
Google's speech model, for example, was bootstrapped on the audio collected from GOOG-411. Is the GDPR intended to prevent things like that? Then it's "intended" to hinder development of practical speech models the likes of which hadn't been seen from decades of research that lacked access to hundreds of hours of input from users asking real questions in real environments.
"Then it's "intended" to hinder development of practical speech models the likes of which hadn't been seen from decades of research that lacked access to hundreds of hours of input from users asking real questions in real environments."
This is simply not true.
Google can absolutely obtain data from users in a manner that's transparent and clear for specific purposes.
They have 40K highly paid Engineers and $100B sitting in the bank. They have ample resources with which they can draw meaningful data necessary - but they'd rather not, if they can just use your data for whatever they want.
Uh, if they don’t use it then the cost/benefit ratio is even more balanced over to the cost. The point is that the cost was never consulted in the first place when the benefit was sought.
I'm responding to the statement that GP made which was that to someone who never used GOOG-411, the cost-benefit ratio is further into the cost category [compared to someone who did use GOOG-411]. This would imply that there is some cost to someone who never used the service, hence my question.
To the extent that users benefit from desired violations of their own privacy, they can consent to it. To the extent that other users benefit from violation of my privacy, they have no right to it.
The government has a right to that information. For-profit companies do not. (Also, traffic counters can easily be anonymised, if they're not already, whereas Google's data is essentially worthless to them if anonymised.)
> The government has a right to that information. For-profit companies do not.
That seems like a very arbitrary distinction, and I'm not sure how one arrives there. There are a lot of for-profit companies that build business around data analysis of things that most people could count (given time and inclination to do so) but do not, be it cars on the road or the average price of gasoline state-by-state. Is that a moral red-flag?
> That seems like a very arbitrary distinction, and I'm not sure how one arrives there.
I think a blurring of the difference between "things that the government can do" and "things that a private company can do" is a very unfortunate (and also very deliberate) development in modern society.
To me, the distinction is far from arbitrary; it is fundamental. Democratic governments are elected, and at least nominally accountable to the people over whom they exercise their reserved rights; for-profit companies are generally accountable only to their shareholders, not to those over whom they exercise these privileges—and technically to governments, although governments seem unwilling to exercise much of that right of restraint.
(This is a response to your point about the distinction being arbitrary, not to your question about private companies analyzing data. If a dataset of which I am a part is used without identifying me as part of it, or after obtaining my consent to be included in it, then my qualms about it go away. If, however, the company gathering this information, while counting the traffic flow of which I am a part, decides to sell information about where they've noticed I like to shop to advertisers, then, yes, that's a moral red flag for me.)
For-profit companies are also accountable to the market; a company lying about the traffic numbers, for whatever reason, loses when a competitor offers more accurate numbers.
What happens when the government chooses to lie about the numbers? What if it's doing so because the public has signaled it wants to be lied to (which happens from time to time)?
As some one who exclusively uses Apple Maps on the west side of LA, I have found the routing to be similar or the same. The killer function for me is the HUD when I have it mounted on my dash. Light-years better. Also...the lane accuracy is unparalleled.
BUT.... the online game community is so insufferable and this Cities Skylines II launch is a great example of it. The game is not about 4k 120 fps gameplay. It is a simulation game that runs fairly well even on last gen's hardware if you drop SOME of the fidelity settings. But that's not the predominant discourse. If people can't play it at 4k out of the box on their overpriced 4090 then they take straight to the internet to complain (and mind you they have tried fiddling with exactly 0 knobs to make it runnable).
I am by no means making excuses for game makers who certainly share much of the blame for creating an environment of distrust among game fans. But the online discourse is just rage baiting and looking for anything to hate with minimal evidence or sometimes even outright lies. Makes me want to go into a cave and play my games without seeing any content or discussion about it.