I swear that Bethesda tries as hard as possible to mess up everything they do. There’s not much hope left for them so we just have to twiddle our thumbs and wait till they release Elder Scrolls 6, receive more awful reviews and outrage, and then get gobbled up entirely by Microsoft.

Good points on the saturation thing. My experience in the vr space is that most companies aim right at the middle of all of those goals and fail as a result. The price ends up lower, but not low enough. Software is supported, but not enough. Software is targeted but then turns out underfunded.

In my opinion, Sony should have created a headset targeting $300-$400 and then focused not on just making random good VR games but play off of existing titles.

The reason that works so well is that many people have a favorite PS5 game, why not offer 3D models viewable in VR? Or the maps? Or a shot minigame mode with small bits of content for a low price? These things are relatively cheap to do but have a huge impact on gamers wanting to get into VR.

Resident evil is a great example of this. The Horizon game less so. Either way, use those titles all the time to your advantage. Try to get a VR camera mode in more 3rd person games. Promote VR movies and streaming maybe.

You still have this issue though of pivoting out of a catch-22. No software, no gamers, no money, so no software or hardware. The way to break out of that is by maintaining a library of games and adding to it over time as adopters get on board. This is why them ditching PSVR1 killed the second headset. Build that library to a tipping point like SteamVR and Meta are working on, don’t abandon it.

Sony could’ve done a lot of things to help this push honestly and they did nothing. It’s like none of these companies even know how to exist in experimental spaces anymore and it shows big time.

Well even then, if the content was there, people would buy it even at its ridiculous price. You have to consider there is a massive amount of PlayStation users so if only 1% of their playerbase has enough money for this, that’s still a ton of people compared to current VR numbers.

So I stand by saying the price is a barrier, but not a problem or dealbreaker. The real issue is just that PSVR1 people are no longer getting support, PSVR2 has few games since they don’t include the previous library. And why buy a PSVR2 if you know they’re going to lock your games into that specific headset? Sony put all that money into hardware and has zero idea how to exist in markets that aren’t already growing, so this was inevitable

I mean I think VR has a bright future but it won’t be until Meta can gain some serious traction with their headsets that we get some really good games on other platforms.

Now Meta would assume this is a win but they’re just going to generate temporary traction for themselves and then people will move elsewhere as Valve and Sony are better at both software and hardware. They’re letting Meta do the expensive part, the R&D, for them. Then all of these players plan to swoop in and steal their business. You’ll watch it happen in 6-10 years.

I really wish that people would pile on Sony for not having PSVR1 games be compatible with the second headset. I would consider buying their headset just for PCVR and the entire PSVR1 library plus the PSVR2 stuff. At that point if you also own a PS5 like I do, that opens up a lot of games and rivals what Meta is doing.

I think PSVR2 is dead in the water unless Sony invests a lot into it. Great PC headset but otherwise no. I really think Meta is doing an okay job with their library, so if you aren’t super worried about Meta having personal data on you, bite the bullet there. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with the stagnant SteamVR offerings which only have a worthwhile longer experience a couple times a year.

This is exactly why I think Valve is primed to bring Steam Machines back. They’re already working on making a full functioning Linux OS, Steam OS. They have a huge library of games that regularly go on sale that you can now play on a handheld. Your save games sync across platform. Your Steam Machine would support existing controllers from either Xbox or PlayStation. I mean at this point they would be silly NOT to make them again.

It seems that steam pulls refunds directly revenue in most cases which means that the publishers and studios feel an immediate impact in their numbers from them.

Valve may choose to absorb some of the refunds but I don’t see why they would. Sony made the games unplayable in certain regions while telling Steam they wanted the game sold in those exact regions beforehand. They misused the store and I’m sure they paid dearly for it with those refunds.

These companies are obsessed with money. The money they lost on refunds forced by Steam is the punishment.

I mean sure but I don’t see how this is “half assing it” since you have no idea what happens on the server side.

And look I’m not saying they’re in the right here, I’m just saying that people are quick to jump to them hating their players and wanting their data when this seems to be more like something that’s being done to make their backend function.

Yes but they likely have existing infrastructure on PSN so it makes sense to do that. Theyre just taking your steam ID and verifying your purchase, then using a PSN ID on their end after the purchase validation for online matchmaking and server side stuff. Not to crazy.

Otherwise they’d have to redo their server code and what not just to handle Steam and for a game that’s already this old, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to do that.

Apparently this was always a planned feature but probably wasn’t ready for prime time at launch.

It is entirely possible and potentially more effective to satire the US while centering the story outside of the US

How dare you make this comment and not drop a link to the game. You must hate indie devs!

Ah I see your point and I’d be interested in what that implementation looks like. I think it would highly depend on the game so the type of thing you’re talking about is more applicable to Esports titles.

The culling of players beyond eyesight or through walls is absolutely something that can be done to minimize cheats. If I remember right, CS has been doing this for a long time. However it has limits. Ping becomes very important as the culling will screw up interpolation.

Then you start talking about cheaters moving and aiming like real players, that can get hard because you have to set acceptable limits on these things. I don’t think it solves the problem though.

Even if someone using cheats is kept within the bounds of maximum human performance, well, they can still outperform most humans can’t they? And that doesn’t solve much of my issue. Like say we set cheating limits in actual sports at the best players capabilities, how do we even know what those are? And if someone normal dopes and can perform at that high level, it’s wrong. And it’s wrong at any skill level to do so. Because it undermines the sport or game.

Now I think this can easily be better in most games. Most games don’t even ban people who are sliding around the map at inhuman speeds and getting 50 headshots a minute. CS doesn’t even do that and I have no idea why. The bar is in the floor for stopping cheaters honestly.

If you mean that bots can be restrained within the same rules as normal players, sure. If you mean that cheats will be forced to mimic human players, no.

For instance, how would you catch someone who can see through walls in a game? You can check if their crosshair follows someone through a wall maybe. But most of it is about game sense. So someone who is walking is undetectable by heuristics and by server side anti-cheat.

This is also the same for radar hacks. Or if you play a MoBa, screen alert hacks. All they do is boost player performance without being detectable. Most server side anti-cheat can only pick up on certain things, I don’t know Minecraft’s solution but I doubt it catches disguised cheating via code injection.

The reason I care about people cheating is that there’s an actual competition and it’s a social thing. If I wanted to play bots, I’d play bots. But I don’t and I don’t know of any game with serious competitors who would accept cheating so long as it “looks legitimate.” Because then why play? Why put in hours of practice to get better at something that I could click a button and be better at?

Cheating will continue to kill games and at this point I have basically retired from PvP since it’s gotten so bad.

if bots played like humans, I think it’d be a different conversation but they don’t. And we don’t have a good way to restrain them into only playing like humans. Sorting people by skill is already what is being done but that also isn’t working. And most heuristics have their limits and can catch normal players.

But all of it is kind of irrelevant, most players aren’t using sophisticated cheats. They’re just injected cheats which are hard to detect within the program, hence the rootkits. Now if we could restrain them to playing like normal people, I’d still hate them because I don’t play PvP to play against bots. If people did that, then in-person chess would have no appeal.

Rootkits are dumb because the gaming industry is not trying with their anti-cheat software. It is so easy to cheat in these games even with a rootkit that it’s unbelievable.

Since the industry is moving this direction, I would like it far more if the OS just had a mode that essentially separated your normal OS from one used to play Esports titles. Put a wall between those operating modes, get rid of the desktop, and only boot the game and maybe a control panel.

The OS can then dump whatever it wants to the game without the game having control of my entire PC and file system. This seems like an obvious solution since it’s kind of the best of consoles without the worst of consoles.

Why are they not separated out in any way? There should be separate bins for “active posters” “active commenters” and “active voters”. Otherwise you’re going to get some wacky data problems like this.

Yeah it doesn’t take a genius to hate Nintendo for simple things like artificially limiting amibos stock to make more money

How would one go about downloading and building it from that link?