Marthos
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Posts posted by Marthos
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Sour grapes anyone ?
It seems that for quite some time the high street game retailers have neglected the PC market, you've all walked into a gaming shop at some time or another and thought "where the hell have all the PC games gone ?".
Retailers have focused on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Nintendo DS, PSP etc because they've thought that that was where the money was and neglected the PC gamers, so there was hole in the market and Steam and other digital retailers have filled it, now that these digital retailers can be seen to be doing rather well and making large amounts of money, the retailers are up in arms about it when they really only have them selves to blame.
I'm no lover of these digital retailers and still prefer to walk into a game shop and come out with a box with a shiny disc in it, partly for the reasons Ginny gives in an earlier post and partly because its the feeling of having bought something tangable rather than an invisable bunch of noughts and ones on my harddrive.
But if high street relailers want my money they're going to have to (a) stock the games, (b) price them very competatively, © know what they're talking about when you ask them a question. In other words, give the sort of service that will bring them customers, boycotting game titles will do them no favours at all.
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Yes but are they complaining about a game that is running? Mine won't run AT ALL. They have sold me something that is not fit for the purpose, quite apart from the fact that as regards New Vegas, you really cannot control the autoupdates even though they say you can. They are making me CROSS.
I've been here with steam (same issue and had to format and reinstall windows after steam totally botched the install) and didn't get my money back. I was also threatened with a ban if I raised the issue again so I wont have steam on my pc, thankfully I only had four games that require steam and their replay value is low.
As for New Vegas, I've seen far to many negative posts and talked to too may unhappy people to be bothered about not being able to play it. Really think Beth dropped the ball twice by involving steam in whats essentially a modders game and by releasing it with far too many bugs and before people start giving it the "all games have bugs routine", the answer is yes they do but it seems to be becoming a far too often occurence to be seeing comments like "bugfest", "unplayable" and "god this game needs a serious patch" instead of "this game is great". Things need to change for the better.
Really hope you get your money back Ginny
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Gothic 4 not running is a huge improvement over it working,
Post of the day Jim.
That did make me chuckle, that game qualifies for my "turd of the year award" for 2010
Your also very correct when you say its time that consumer rights for software purchases are kicked into touch. Something that also should made compulsory is that if a software company wants to sell in other countries they will have to come up with a EULA that is applicable to and abides by the laws of said country.
Hope you get your money back Ginny, but I'll be surprised if you do, can you imagine how many people that have bought that pile of pants and want their money back, steam must be inundated with complaints over it. I downloaded my version from Game.co.uk and after a prolonged back and forth email conversation with a chap called Marco from their customer service's, I got my money back, yay :biggrin:
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Oh noes! I though I'd never see one of them again Marthos. That thing gave me horrible RSI.
Now I just use a Roccat Kone [+]. Much better. :thumbsup:
To be honest, I spent more time twiddling with it than playing my games, so its now on permenant loan to a friend.
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Glad your enjoying the game.
The thing with the resolution is a bit odd, Ego Draconis did it too, it will only recognise resolutions up to the size of your desktop but not beyond, think its because of the "desktop res matching for menus" so if you want to hike the res you'll have to do it on your desktop first.
I too am impressed with the devs being active on the forums and having a natter with folk, it makes me think that they enjoy what they do and that their customer base is more than just a source of income, it also seems to be a pretty tight knit community over there too.
The writing, the humour, the voice acting and the storyline is all top notch and just keeps getting better as you progress through the game, I'm seriously impressed.
As you get further into the game you'll meet a certain female char that will have you in stitches, just think of the blonde in blazing saddles is all I'm gonna say.
I did the pig quest too, Kevin seemed like a such nice pig I had to save him. Btw, if you don't want to fight a high level killer bunny that will make mincemeat outta your ass, don't kick too many rabbits, though I know that now I have said that the first thing your gonna do is kick the crap outta every rabbit you see.
The only downside is that when I've completed this one, every other game I buy in future will have a lot to do to compete with it.
I also have to get back into the game now, coz I can fly !
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Hi Maigrets
Thanks for the links, will check em out when I get round to playing Riven after DKS.
Nice to see you got your copy of DKS, running mine on extreme settings but if you disable HDR and Screen Space AA in the game options you can force AA in your grapics cards settings, really tidies the game up somewhat and it didn't hit me on performance either.
Try disabling v-sync too, some slight screen tearing but game flows a lot smoother.
The patch for disabling the fps cap is up on the Larian support website, once installed you can edit the config files to suit your system / personal prefs which I think is a good idea and I think the devs have done pretty well to get it out as quickly as they have.
Overall, I'm pretty happy (for once), the game seems as stable as a rock, not one crash yet and the plot is deep enough to keep me interested.
Hope your enjoying it as much as I am.
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I agree with you about the issues and understand perfectly what your saying, I don't like it anymore than you do.
I'm just waiting for the day that the preverbial hits the fan and there is a big court case, it may never happen as dangerous precedents could be set for either camp, though it would be interesting to see some of the "you will do this and you won't do that" market crontrolling giants taught the meaning of a little humility.
Monopolies are never a good thing, no matter how well (or otherwise) intentioned.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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That goes both ways, Marthos. Intentions are one thing, waterproofness is quite another
And I agree with you Surenas, but it still remains that that is their intent and "The Terminator" just hit the nail on the head with his last post.
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And as I said, your opinion of it won't change the fact that the software owner or rights holders intent is to sell you a license to use the software, not to sell you the software itself.
You can use as many different anologies as you wish Surenas, it won't change that fact.
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Just to make one thing clear:
I didn't say that I agreed with content of most EULA's, as some of them actually transgress the law depending on your country of origin and some of them can be borderline ridiculous and whether any of them would stand up in court is debatable to say the least, unless your second name is Gates.
However, the fact remains that regardless of the fact that you dislike, disagree or otherwise have any other issue with it, "you are buying a licence to use the software" as the intent of the actual owner of the software or holder of the rights to the software is to let you "use" said software. If the owner or rights holder of the software was actually selling you the software, it would cost you a damn sight more than what you would pay for a game in the shop.
Debate it as much as you wish, its a fact and you won't change it with an opinion of how "you" think it should be.
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Thanks for the tip about Harbour Town, but think Risen is on a back burner for bit now :whistling:
So, The Dragon Knights, first impressions, I'll try to keep spoilers out of it.
Played for a few hours and well, I did buy the original Ego Draconis but was immediately pee'd off by the bugs and the crashing and the black screens etc, so took it back to the shop.
This however is thankfully different, there are a couple of flaws, one is a bit of a biggie which I'll get to in a minute or three, the game now feels more polished, finished if you like, as it should have been in the first place, I'm running on extreme settings (everything maxed out) and played for 5 hours straight and not one freeze, black screen or crash, seems as stable as a rock, yay :thumbsup:
Character gen is minimal with set choices for gender (obviously) face and hair but you do get a voice with your char and you can choose which style of speech you like best.
Graphics are better than the original and the game world seems an ok place to be, while this version seems better and has plenty of detail etc, its still no Crysis or Oblivion, so don't expect to much. There is ingame support for AF but they use their own version of AA, which sort of works and sort of doesn't, but its better than none at all. Enabling AA in the CCC has no effect in game, but maybe ATI might fix this in future, then again maybe they won't, so tell me if you get AA working with your Nvidia, if you do I'll build another rig and use Nvidia cards and then in future I'll be able to play whichever game on whichever rig suits it best, as you can probably tell, I like to have my cake and eat it.
The good news ? Yay, marvelous, wonderful and champion, voice actors that sound like their actually putting something into it, even a touch of humerous overacting which brought about a giggle or two which to me is far better than the usual flat monotony that seems almost the norm these days.
Already, I feel that I'm being drawn into the game and want find out whats round the next corner and thats how it should be, right now I'm waiting for my fatfest huge indian takeaway to arrive (just a Saturday treat, you understand), which I'm gonna throw down my neck as I'm itching to head for my gaming rig and get back into the game.
So far so good and I think you'll enjoy this one, but hangfire, there are a couple of issues, as I mentioned earlier.
The camera, its a bit of a prat, its third person only and mostly its ok till you try to look down at something, as you do the camera zooms out so you are looking down at the top of your head from about thirty feet up, so you struggle to see what you wanted to look down at anyway, maybe this will be useful in dragon form or maybe it won't, we will have to see and if thats why they've done it, it would be nice to be able to switch to a normal cam when you want to. Maybe a mod or an alteration on a file somewhere will alter this but haven't had a chance to get my snout through the game files yet.
Now they biggie, and its a bit of a burger, they've capped the frame rate to 30 fps, why ? they apparently had problems on lower spec rigs with stutter and loading lags so elimated them by using a 30 fps cap, how wonderful ! and facepalm while holding a building brick.
I can see where they're coming from but its too low, if you pan the camera round quickly, the game world comes round like a slide show, some of the NPC's can move pretty sharpish and when they do, they can actually disappear and reappear 2 feet away from where they were, I really can see this being a stinker when your flying in dragon form and moving at speed.
Hopefully this will be a line of script in an ini file somewhere and we'll be able to change it, fingers crossed because it needs to be changed.
So all in all, for a game downloaded on the day of its release, apart from those two issues its not doing too badly at all, a lot worse can be said for many games on the market even after patches, ( yes Bethesda, that was a dig).
My food has arrived so I'm off to get fat.
Regards, M.
Edit:
Ha ha yip, just been on the official forums and Larian are working on a fix for the framerate cap, they've taken notice of their customers and got to work to try to solve the issue, what more can you ask for ?
A review, its in french but google translate is your friend.
http://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0001/00013749-divinity-ii-the-dragon-knight-saga-test.htm
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Technicaly you can do anything with your data since you own it, you have the right to make as many copies of it as you want and use them freely however you want as long as you don't break any other laws in doing so.
Unfortunely thats incorrect.
When you pay for your software, you are not buying the software, you are buying a limited license to use that software, in most countries you are entitled make one copy of the software as back up.
A lot of EULA's state a lot of things, but depending on your region of residence, some things will be applcable and somethings won't.
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Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
Voted Elves
Its odd but as an avid bookworm even at an early age, Tolkiens words and the pictures in my head of the wondrous worlds he decribes in his books means that elves have always figured prominantly in my imagination.
Am I fan, I guess so, to me Tolkien was a wordsmith of the highest order and I still read LOTR at least once a year, its become more of a mythology than just a story and one I can get totally lost in each time read it.
So yup, elves.
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Thanks for that ufw7, I'll have a look at them.
Regards, M.
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Ha ha, get yourself to the Divinity website, its been released, I've disregarded my own advice about waiting and bought it direct from their online shop and mines downloading as I type, gonna be long night if this one lives up to my expectations of it.
I've been watching that Demon Souls for a while now as there were rumours floating about that Sony were going to do a PC version but I don't think its going to happen, shame because that game looks really very good, bit of a PITA that what looks like being one of the best RPG's for quite a while is only available on a console.
That guy that did the Dragon Age review has done quite a few for other games aswell, some of the comments left by people who got upset because he dissed their fave games are hilarious.
Arx Fatalis was gone, bummer but will find it somewhere else, I'll download things I can't get anywhere else but I much prefer a disc in my paw and a box to put on the shelf so I'll see if I come across it again somewhere.
Risen seems not bad, played a few hours last night, have applied the patch but a couple of things are jerking my chain, it wont remember my settings for a few of the options, keep having to set them again each time I run the game. The other one is that while there's Anistropic Filtering, there's no Anti Aliasing and when I force it in the ATI CCC all the vegetation and body textures are invisible, you've got a head & a pair of feet trotting round a baren landscape :wallbash:
Apparently, the devs were having problems getting AA to work in game so instead of fixing it they just left it out, its a bit of a biggy for me as I play on a 60" plasma, at that screen size you really notice the jaggies so I really miss AA when its not there. The good thing is that its running completely maxed out and gameplay is as smooth as chocolate so I'll forgive it that foible for now. Oh yeah, those Death Moths creep me out, that little screech of theirs is horrible.
If you can't get your paws on the Divinity 2 I'll post tommorrow and let you know whether its thumbs up or poo all over.
Regards, M.
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Funny you should mention it, but I've just been and bought Risen today, just waiting for the house to go quiet and the dogs to go to kip and I'll slap it in the drive and if its any good, probably surface sometime in the morning.
If the bumf about Two Worlds is to be believed, it "should" be good so will be keeping an eye on that one and lets face it, they would have try hard to make it as bad as the first one.
I did buy Dragon Age but (watch me get shouted at here) thought it was a completely over hyped and mediocre offering, this guy nails it in some rather colourful terms. Put this in your address bar without the quotes, it contains bad language so I won't direct link it.
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I had Arx Fatalis in my hands last week and put it back on the shelf, damn, it was only £4 aswell, I'll go back tomorrow and see if its still there but I doubt it. I'll do some googling on the others you mention and have a look at them.
Arcania would probably be ok with a good community patch but hey, those voices, it would be better to buy a foreign language version and read the subtitles, in a different language it may not sound so bad, no two ways about it though, Jowood deserves a slap down for that one.
Another thing, all this "the gaming community sorting problems" seems to be getting more and more depended upon by the game companies, can you imagine any other industry where this would be acceptable ?
"Yes we aren't very sorry that your car is mising a wing, a radiator and parts of the braking system Mr Jones, but you can finish what we started can't you ? You can, oh wonderful, right knock of now lads, the pillocks going to finish it himself".
Well I mean, really !
Have had and still have issues with Steam but we won't talk about that or somebody will be bound to post something like "you can't call yourself a serious gamer if you don't have Steam installed" or words to that effect. I don't call myself anything, I game for me, achievments mean Jack, patches get installed when I install them and the software on my pc does as I say.
Thanks for the suggestions Maigrets, I'm gonna have a quick scan of the forums and then go install Risen.
Regards, M.
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Thats an extremely well written, concise and knowledgeable post, applauded.
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Sensible man re the firewall thing, so many people think "go offline" means it will actually do it.
As for keyboard and mouse, I know what you mean, I like to try before I buy to see if they fit my paws, years in the building trade means my hands have about had it so I like a keyboard and mouse that make things easier for me.
Just for the purposes of testing, see if you can pick a cheapy couple of quid each set, as long as they work and let you test to see if your problem is caused by your current mouse and keyboard, no point replacing the ones your using if you like them and they're not causing the problem.
Hope you get it sorted.
PS:
If you want to go supermouse-ified, you might try and tame one of these wee beasties.
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How did you block Steam ?
Just by its own "go offline" command or have you done it another way ?
I ask as in some instances Steam will still try to connect, cant see how that would cause probs with your mouse and keyboard unless it was using a mental amount of system resources trying to do it but even then it doesn't seem to make sense.
If you've got another keyboard and mouse laid about, have a swap round and see if it still does it and if you can, run a resource monitor to see just whats running when it happens, if you see a process that you don't recognise or think shouldn't be running, type the exact name of the process into google and see what it chucks back at you. Monitor your network traffic also if you can.
Regards, M
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I'll keep an eye on the Dragon Knights Saga, see how it does.
Your right about Nehrim (nice one on the translation thing btw), I put about 80 hours into it and completed the quests (main quest was a beaut though, think it beats Oblivion hands down) and then it started feel a bit rinse and repeat, basically because I've played Oblivion so much, but I do think the SureAI team did a fantastic job on it and I'll run through it again sometime in the future, theres more stuff in the offing for it anyway. I thought the gameworld was truly beautiful and the whole game was much more atmospheric, I'd have happily payed full price for it in a shop.
Barring a couple of hours on a mates rig I haven't played Fallout NV, (me & Steam don't mix) but New Vegas has me slightly worried about Tes V if its ever going to happen, I hope they don't just take Oblivion and tweak and polish it a bit and give it a new storyline as they seem to have done with NV, it needs to be a "new game or its going to feel tired from the start.
Never played the Dues Ex's, might see if I can find the 2nd one somewhere and give it a run through, Fear 3 is supposed to be out in March and I did enjoy Fear 2 so I'll be giving that a blast.
Dammit, the bulb in my lamps just gone with a bang and scared the wabs off me, second one in a week so its heading for the bin.
Yeh, this casual gamer thing seems to be taking over, its been mentioned a fair bit in the reviews for "Not Gothic 4" and there seems to be more and more console to PC ports floating about, it wouldn't be too bad if they were ported well, but to leave out AA & AF like Jowood just have is really a bit pants, was thinking of picking up a PS3 and a couple of games to have a play with but I really can't see it getting close to the experience of a good game on PC, plus game controllers aren't my thing. I'd probably end up giving it away like I did with my Xbox 360.
Plus if you walk into a games shop these days theres usually next to nothing for PC, though the big Game.co.uk store at a local retail park has had a shufty round and theres now three small aisle's for PC games whereas there was only one before, but their prices are heading skyward though and the staff have no knowledge of the PC stuff yet they could talk all day about the Wii doo daa and that break yer neck what is it, a fit board ?
I'm struggling to find anything to buy game wise tbh, I like being able to switch from first to third person and having totally open world space but they're getting very few and far between, I tried LOTRO but the combat system had me shaking my fist at the screen and I find WOW too cartoony looking to settle into it. I've got all three of the Stalker series and thoroughly enjoyed them, modded and vanilla. Crysis and Crysis Warhead were good but far too short so they're gathering dust along with a few others, can you think of anything else I can have a go at, online or single player ?
Any suggestions will be gratefully recieved.
Regards, M
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@Marthos: I guess that was back in the days of Half Life 2's launch. I have no idea how Steam could break your operating system, especially considering my understanding of how it works, but I can tell you my best guess at why Steamworks was picked instead of no DRM or GfWL: it's for DLC distribution. Games for Windows Live was, by all accords, rubbish at that, and the only alternative currently is Steam. The small fact that GfWL is definitely withering on the vine also helps in this decision.
I wish it had been that far back, I might of been able to forgive them in that length of time, it was 2 months ago.
The download / install tried to overwrite directx and visual basic files and corrupted the lot and then chucked game files all over my second drive, gigs of them and only half the files that should have gone in the Steamapps folder were there, it was easier to start afresh than to clean that mess up.
How do know the fault wasn't at my end ? I formatted, reinstalled Win 7/64, whacked all the drivers in and reinstalled Steam and downloaded the game again, exactly the same thing happened.
And after all that they told me to basically shutup or get banned.
If Beth had done two separate versions, one for Steam and one for retail, the DLC for the retail version could have been up for download on their website, I think they got the download page on their site up and running again recently anway.
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Marthos, this is esactly what i'm saying. It WAS our choice. We knew months in advance that steam was going to be required. Myself, I decided it was worth it. If you didn't want steam, you could've refused to buy FONV. perhaps if enough people did this, bethsoft would've thought twice next time. However, NV pre-sold like mad, and has been doing gangbusters ever since. This tells the company that "we did good, let's follow this formula".
I have refused to buy it, as you say "its our choice" and its not a choice I made lightly as I was looking foward to it very much.
The last time I had Steam on my PC I ended up out of pocket with a goosed operating system from a download / install that went haywire, Steam customer support turned round and told me it must have been a fault with my PC, when I queried this (as I 100% know it wasn't a fault at my end) I was told that if I raised the issue again, my account would be banned.
I have also emailed Bethesda and very politely told them how disappointed I am and that they have lost a customer, and then wished them well in their future endeavours.
I don't like Steam and I won't have it on my PC ever again but I don't knock those that do, I hope to god for all your sakes that Steam never goes bust or you are all going to be out of pocket and gameless, (yeh, I know what Valve have said they'd do if that happened but I also don't believe a word of it).
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People keep mentioning the DRM argument - why ?
DRM deosn't work, Fallout NV was cracked just hours after release so as a form of DRM, Steam isn't effective.
I betting the biggest reason Steam was used was to combat the 2ndhand games market, in fact I think its a dead cert that thats the case.
And apart from all that, forget all the Steam sucks / Steams great arguments, the bottom line is, it should have been up to the customer to decide.
Ie:
If you like Steam and want to use it, fine, buy it on Steam.
If you don't like Steam buy a retail version and deal with the securom or whatever issues.
Whats so wrong with that scenario, would it be oh so hard to do ?
We are the customers, its our money, it should be our choice.
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Hi Maigrets
I agree entirely, its a big disappointment, made much worse as by now, Jowood really should know much much bettr.
I did play for more than half an hour but had pretty much made up my mind in that first half hour and nothing happened to change my mind after that.
I wonder if the effects of the lack of AA & AF were worse for me as I'm running crossfired (tri - fired actually) dont see how as it doesn't effect other games.
I could have bought a brand new small car for what I've spent on my gaming rig and run a tight ship with it, everything kept updated and cleaned etc and latest drivers, (except for CCC 10.10 god they were bad, went back to 10.9), and while I could run the game maxed out it wasn't what I'd call a smooth experience.
I'd hang fire on the Dragon Knights Saga for while, Ego Draconis was pretty buggy when it came out, think the first patch for it was over 700 mb, might be better to see how it does before handing over your money.
I think the next "good un" is going to be The Witcher 2, or at least I hope so, its time we had another truly good game to get lost in.
If your bored, give Nehrim a shot, I truly enjoyed it and its free, but I would recommend a clean install of Oblivion before you install Nehrim, makes things a bit easier.
Retail threatens Steam ban
in PC Gaming
Posted
So many arguments for it
So many arguments against it
So many people happy about Steam
So many people unhappy about Steam
The most disappointing aspect of the whole damn caboodle is that a monopoly is being created that takes away a consumers (and an individuals) most fundamental right, the right to choose.
Release a Steam version and a none Steam version so people can choose which one they want to use and everybody is happy, rather than the current scenario of "its Steam or nothing".
Would it be wrong to implement this?
NO
Would it be so hard to implement?
NO
Would eat all the profits to do this?
NO
Would game companies loose sleep at night because they actually did something that would keep all of their fans happy ?
I sometimes wonder.