The Gaming Den

Is the Bentley OK?

I have to say that I don't have a lot of sympathy. You suffered catastrophic system failure and still have half your save games, and you're... blazing mad at the company who retained those saves? Did they also fail to send you candy and a stripper?

For the record, it's also very easy to believe that a limited warranty doesn't cover physical damage of any kind, let alone complete vehicular encrushening.

Warranty is when the product fails due to faulty design, not replace it because you fucking ran it over.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I have to say that I don't have a lot of sympathy. You suffered catastrophic system failure and still have half your save games, and you're... blazing mad at the company who retained those saves? Did they also fail to send you candy and a stripper?

For the record, it's also very easy to believe that a limited warranty doesn't cover physical damage of any kind, let alone complete vehicular encrushening.

90% of my post was sarcastic/a reference to Bicycle Repair Man. I find using humor in my vents relieves a lot of stress. Mostly I am actually mad at the Bentley driver who, I must say, didn't seem too sorry that he killed my Switch. Rich white bastard.

And yes, I know warranties don't cover physical damage. Again, sarcasm.

(Also, thank you PD, for thinking I could ever in this lifetime own a car.)

Riot's making a new version of LoL for mobiles.

And a digital card game.

And a class-based shooter (based on new IP).

And some sort of diablo rpg.

And a cartoon.

And their own line of breakfast cereals, mobile phones, console, video-streaming service, and political party.

The digital card game seems somewhat interesting in that it will allow and be based on reaction plays. So every card your opponent plays, you can play one in response. It appears that even creatures can be dropped on the board as a reaction by default, not just a special ability like in MTG.

Creatures cannot be played on the stack. Unless they have an exception, they have to be played raw and outside the combat phase.

maglag wrote:Riot's making a new version of LoL for mobiles.

And a digital card game.

And a class-based shooter (based on new IP).

And some sort of diablo rpg.

And a cartoon.

And their own line of breakfast cereals, mobile phones, console, video-streaming service, and political party.
.

And a fighting game.

Xiaomeng "VKLiooon" Li is the first woman to become global Heartstone champion!

Also Diablo 4:diablo harder, Overwatch 2: 1 new champion, and Warcraft remastered's campaign won't have any story/mechanics modifications after all.

Yeah, let's talk about Activision-Blizzard for a moment.

Activision-Blizzard (always use their full name) is a cancer on the video game community. Overwatch was one of the first (non-mobile) games to introduce lootboxes, and while the lootbox controversy was going on, Activision-Blizzard said that Overwatch didn't deserve to be involved, despite this fact. Call of Duty: WWII had loot boxes airdropped into the general lobby, which was motherfucking Normandy Beach, where everyone could see a person open them and see what they got, as a psychological manipulation to push people towards engaging in the microtransactions.

Diablo 3 was hamstrung at launch by fucking with the loot distribution, giving you LESS chance of getting loot your class could actually USE in order to push people towards using the Real Money Auction House, of which Activision-Blizzard took a decent cut. No, it doesn't matter that they changed it later, the fact is the game launched in that state as a testament to greed altering game design and balance.

The last BlizzCon had the infamous 'Do you guys not have phones?' line in response to people obviously not being on board with a mobile Diablo game.

And the fact that Activision-Blizzard is dropping not one, not two, but THREE game announcements at the same time - Diablo 4, WoW Expansion, Overwatch 2 - is clearly them trying to make us forget that they chose to support a tyrannical, totalitarian government over human rights when they banned Blitzchung and the two casters a scant couple of weeks ago. The non-apology that opened up BlizzCon featured zero details and zero actual apology, and the script it was written on isn't even fit to be used as toilet paper.

In short, fuck Activision-Blizzard. I've uninstalled everything, including the Battle.net launcher, in response to that last point, when they chose to support a despotic regime over basic human rights because China is the only goddamned place their travesty of a Warcraft movie wasn't a financial failure. They make these decisions and kowtow so as to not lose access to a market containing several hundred million potential customers (not the full 1+bn of the country's population can interact with the economy Activision-Blizzard is in).

Fuck them, fuck their profit margins, and fuck their game design based on greed.

"despotic regime over their native country".... like in general I agree with your points, but who is "their native country" that they should be siding with?

It's bad when corps support authoritarian dictators over say... their oppressed citizens, but also, their native country has and had authoritarians dictators and even if it was democratic (or if the shambling fake democracy has a competent not intentionally evil person in the main office if not most of them) we probably don't want to say 'countries should be nationalist and support the US over other countries' when if two democracies have conflicting interests, we don't actually want the corps making decisions weighing nationalism in those calculations?

Okay, fair point. In that case, Activision-Blizzard chose supporting a tyrannical, despotic regime over basic human rights.

I don't know that their making three announcements was to make us forget. It's Blizzcon. They probably would've made those announcements even without the controversies. The part that's related to the controversy is the non-pology that was given. It was pretty much a "We're sorry that you didn't live up to some unspecified ideal and we will work in an unspecified way to reach that ideal going forward". It was a pretty empty speech but I guess there weren't enough protesters in that room to call him out on the bullshit.

Diablo 4 was very much in response to last year's BlizzCon, when Immortal very much did not live up to (corporate) expectations during its announcement. The gameplay trailer is extremely rough, and is clearly pulled from a very, very early alpha build - most likely representing the most recent stable development build they have. The fact that the build looks so rough makes me think that this was them trying very hard to make us forget that they shit on us last year with Immortal's announcement and their damage control was terrible, while also helping us to forget the more recent debacles. Additionally, another reason to think that Diablo 4's announcement was a blind is that: Immortal isn't out yet. It's the dumbest fucking company move to announce a competitive product to something you're already releasing, which means either they don't think Immortal is going to do well (which would put the lie to everything they've said about Immortal ever since Red Shirt Guy got up and blew them a new asshole) or they are in extreme damage control mode and needed an announcement of one of their flagship products to help blind people.

Overwatch is always going to be one of Activision-Blizzard's most popular franchises. It exploded in popularity from the moment it was released. I feel it's also a blind, because the entire announcement reeked of desperation of 'Remember when you liked us? Hey! Here's from when you really loved us! And we're adding new, cool things, please forgive our actions!'. I don't think Overwatch 2 was originally planned to be announced at this BlizzCon, simply because it looks so identical to Overwatch, and Activision-Blizzard, when doing a sequel (at least the Blizzard side of it) wants things to look different.

WoW: Shadowlands was probably the only announcement they intended to make. It's roughly in the right time frame for a new WoW expansion to be announced - about one year after Battle for Azeroth's release, which has been their announcement schedule for the past several expansions.

What would this BlizzCon probably have looked like if they hadn't fucked up with Blitzchung? Probably more information on Diablo: Immortal, a longer presentation about Shadowlands, maybe teasers about Overwatch 2. There wouldn't have been a fucking whisper about Diablo 4 because they wanted Immortal to be the only Diablo on the block at least until after its release, because that's the smart thing to do, business-wise. That gameplay trailer for D4 was clearly from a build meant for internal viewing only, and was very much not ready to be seen by the public.

RelentlessImp wrote: What would this BlizzCon probably have looked like if they hadn't fucked up with Blitzchung? Probably more information on Diablo: Immortal, a longer presentation about Shadowlands, maybe teasers about Overwatch 2. There wouldn't have been a fucking whisper about Diablo 4 because they wanted Immortal to be the only Diablo on the block at least until after its release, because that's the smart thing to do, business-wise. That gameplay trailer for D4 was clearly from a build meant for internal viewing only, and was very much not ready to be seen by the public.

Diablo Immortal had already sparked a pretty negative reaction, so I'm pretty sure they would've announced a Diablo for PC this time around either way.

There's not even competition between Diablo Immortal and 4 since lots of fans made it pretty clear that they had zero interest on a mobile-only Diablo. Activision Blizzard had already screwed up that one long ago, they thought modern gamers would be perfectly fine with mobile-only and when proven wrong started to rush a proper PC Diablo release.

Overwatch did start out pretty strong, but has been eclipsed by PUBG/Fortnite and everybody else doing arena battleground shooters recently, so Acti-Blizzard would surely announce something to try to revitalize it. Plus grab some extra cash while they're at it.

And releasing an expansion for full price is just how Activision Blizzard has been rolling. See: Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. Yes, Overratedwatch 2 it's a glorified expansion at best since it's been confirmed that players from the first game will be able to play directly with the new one meaning mechanics must remain 100% compatible between both.



If they just wanted to recover goodwill, they would've released the fancy PxE mode as a fucking free patch.

I think the last Blizzard game I enjoyed was Black Throne, and it wasn't that great. Rock'n'Roll racing was cool, though it had some pretty absurd design choices like the campaign tracks not being available in the non-campaign mode.

maglag wrote: There's not even competition between Diablo Immortal and 4 since lots of fans made it pretty clear that they had zero interest on a mobile-only Diablo.

People went to Blizzcon, to lap up announcements from Blizzard about things they'll buy no matter what because they love Blizzard. It's a self-selecting crowd of consumers who are agreeing with anything they say, and Diablo mobile still got booed like Trump. It warms the cold, dead hole in my chest to think about.

And I don't think they have to recover good will. They just need to put out a new Overwatch, and you'll get plenty of people willing to pay them to forget about human rights.

Iduno wrote:

maglag wrote: There's not even competition between Diablo Immortal and 4 since lots of fans made it pretty clear that they had zero interest on a mobile-only Diablo.

People went to Blizzcon, to lap up announcements from Blizzard about things they'll buy no matter what because they love Blizzard. It's a self-selecting crowd of consumers who are agreeing with anything they say, and Diablo mobile still got booed like Trump. It warms the cold, dead hole in my chest to think about.

Indeed, there was a crowd of the most fanatic fanboys in the world, and they still went "nopenopenopenope". The only way it could've gone worst would've been if an actual physical riot had broken out and they had set fire to the place while chopping the announcer's head and sticking it in a spear.

Let's be real: If Red Shirt Guy hadn't stood up and asked if it was an out-of-season april fool's joke, the crowd wouldn't have turned on them at all.

Bullshit. The general reaction was stunned silence and the vods of the virtual chat was basically WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT.

I buy the Diablo 4 announcement being pushed forward because of the negative reaction to Diablo Immortal and/or as a distraction from the Hong Kong controversy, but the WoW expansion is pretty normal. They've announced one every other year (usually at Blizzcon) and then released it the next fall, and this is an announcement year.

Normally I am not the sort of person who roots for failure. It is not part of my self-image. But Wasteland 2's dull writing and retrostupid attribute system has me kinda excited at the prospect of Wasteland 3 doing poorly. I have zero faith in those bumblefucks and if they're going to ruin the return of turn based rpgs they could at least do me a favor and fail downwards instead of upwards.

I like Wasteland 2.
You casn't go in expecting it to be like Fallout though . .
Wasteland is less humorous and tries to be at least somewhat more realistic.
It is not a 50's scifi setting on drugs.
I hope Wasteland 3 will be good though.

Stahlseele wrote: You casn't go in expecting it to be like Fallout though . .

I would agree insofar that it's trying to be even more retro-stupid than Fallout but otherwise I can draw a pretty direct line between the shit I hate most and things old Fallout did.

I think the most indefensible bit is the presentation of Luck and Charisma as attributes that are nominally equal with such luminaries as Intelligence and Awareness. It's a fucking joke, particularly since the game tries super hard to make sure you can't possibly benefit from 2 leaders being near each other at any point. The developers were in fact so mortally afraid that captains and lieutenants might mildly buff eachother that back in the beta they apparently toyed with the idea of overlapping leadership bubbles applying "conflicting orders" penalties. The game really goes out of its way to make you feel bad for putting Charisma into anyone but a designated recruitment monkey. It's just a game that kinda throws things at the wall and doesn't care if it's intuitive or punishing or not.

So, the new Battletech DLC dropped appearantly.
And with it, of course, all mods broke. Again.
But now there is "official mod support" supposedly.
Gonna see how that turns out.
I just started a new campaign fresh from the start.
And the shops are throwing assault Mech Parts at
me even before i got to the first priority mission.
With some very risky selling and spending i now
have my first victor after just having finished said
first priority mission to get the ship from the moon.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecial ... mods/30532

Holy hell this guy is stupid.