Doctor Destiny

Man, they're really reaching hard calling it a controversy. Bullshit? Yeah, sure... but controversial? mmmm, a bit far of a reach there. If they were to reach any further, they'd need a selfie stick.

> Call of Duty > falling My keks are top. Call of Duty isn't going anywhere. It's still the top dog online FPS. There's a good reason for it - it's fucking good. You can shit on Call of Duty all you want, but it drives the industry and ushered in an entire new era of FPS gaming. If you don't realize that Call of Duty 4 is what really brought the FPS genre to the forefront, you're just ignorant. Regardless, the games are doing fine. BO4 will be an interesting game. If there's no SP, well... that will be pretty lame but the BO3 campaign was pretty asstastic in all the wrong ways. As a sci-fi game, it was okay but as a Call of Duty? It was awful. Infinite Warfare had an awesome campaign though... so does WW2. It's still kickin' good and hard.

Neither SSD was that pricey and good 6 to 8 TB drives aren't cheap. They're still too much for me to justify spending at the moment. I only got new parts thanks to a hefty tax refund.

Is it just the intro video? Is it playable otherwise or not playable at all?

You can see how fake a lot of things look. It's a nice attempt but it falls really short. The graphics are fine but the aesthetic is too... real world. If I want that, I just go to work or sit in traffic...

While those years were great for releases, they didn't do a whole lot to advance PC gaming forward...

Really only care about Black Ops 4 and Battlefield 5. The rest just don't pique my interest.

Case: Thermaltake Suppressor F31 w/ Tempered Glass Window CPU: Core i7 8700K @ 3.0 gHz CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i v2 AIO water cooler Mainboard: ASRock Z370 Extreme4 (ATX LGA1151) RAM: 32GB G.Skill Aegis (DDR4-2400) SSD1: 500GB Samsung 960 EVO (NVME) SSD2: 500GB Crucial MX500 HDD1: 750GB Western Digital Black HDD2: 1TB Samsung Spinpoint HDD3: 4TB Western Digital Black HDD4: 4TB Western Digital Black HDD-E: 3TB Seagate Expansion ODD: Pioneer BD-ROM GPU: EVGA GTX1070 8GB PSU: Corsair RMx 750 (750W, Full Modular) Fan Controller: Lamptron FC Touch Monitor: AOC i2367F IPS @1920x1080x60hz, ViewSonic VX2452mh @ 1920x1080x60hz (x2) OS: Windows 10 Professional 64-bit Keyboard: Corsair K70 RGB Mouse: Corsair M65 Audio: Dayton Audio 6.5" bookshelf speakers with a Lepai Tripath Amp Headset: HyperX Cloud Controller: Microsoft XboxOne (wired) Lighting: NZXT Hue+ Finally got my new build up and running. It's not fully deployed but that's the full parts list.

New build incoming. Just waiting on parts before I can build it. Tempered glass side panel. =D

Might have to pick this one up. Looks like classic 90s action.

Mostly playing WW2 online. Despite the flaws, still a great game to play. Having a ton of fun with a modern WW2 game. Also playing Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash. Laugh all you want. It's surprisingly fun... once you get past the janky ass control setup. xD

Compression adds overhead. Not a lot usually, but it can stack up if done wrong. And not everything can actually be compressed that well.

They needed the time to flesh the engine out properly, and now that the functionality is there, any project spearheaded by EA can use that to their advantage. Things are always rewritten in game engines. It's a necessity of creating your project. Do you really think that any game genre can use Unity out of the box without a lot additional work? If you do, you're delusional and if developers are, they're lazy parasites trying to make a quick buck. Massive companies such as EA, Activision and Ubisoft have an additional incentive - shareholders, to whom they are beholden. Studios that don't have that to contend with can easily get away with game sales and DLC sales alone. However, when you have to kowtow to someone beyond the execs, you're going to need alternate revenue streams, which is where lootboxes can actually come in handy. Nmenth has made a great point about this. Given that shareholders are a thing, they're going to be part of the scope whether you agree with them or not. For companies like EA, staying in the black while ensuring shareholders receive a proper ROI is difficult. Hence the advent of things like lootboxes, which have been around for quite some time in one form or another. Most things that are fashionable, at least in the tech world, usually achieved that status by being useful in some capacity. Smartphones and tablets are fashionable devices but they serve a specific use and excel at it. The same holds true for other pieces of technology, including software development and network engineering. Standards in place a decade ago may not always be relevant today. There are some obvious ones that are but most come and go and trying to maintain decade old garbage is a nightmare. The ease of use for the end user dies and supporting it becomes a complete nightmare whereas something up to date is much easier for users and easier to support and maintain. There's a reason why the word "legacy" exists in a technological context. A focus on graphics does not necessarily negatively impact the game. Look at The Witcher 3. It's graphically and aesthetically stunning, but is also a top tier game at the same time. There are many other decisions, well outside the scope of the graphics department, that negatively impact gameplay quality. Most times, it's different departments entirely that work on those aspects so lumping them together is doing a disservice to those teams. While I balk at your attempted sleight against the fact that I enjoy Call of Duty, I play more games beyond that and have a varied set of titles in my Steam catalogue. I dedicate plenty of time to games that aren't graphically demanding or contain any lootbox of any kind. However, that's a completely irrelevant point. The fact of the matter is that big budget titles for massive corporations need more than game and additional content sales alone for a plethora of reasons, not just one or two that you cling to. Budgets have grown because teams have grown. Games are complex software made of multiple teams, if you're speaking in terms of a company like EA or Activision. It's not five people in someone's basement there. Hundreds of people are hard at work making those titles. And all of them need to get paid. Advertising has started to grow and there are numerous other things like licensing fees for brand names, etc. The rise in complexity, size and scope has led to the inevitable rise in budgets. It's honestly staggering how little you understand about the business world. It's not 1998 anymore where 30 people could make a polished AAA game. Massive AAA titles, specifically, require more man hours than ever before.

What? Resources are getting larger and my games are larger too?! It's obvious with the advancements made.

It's more and more becoming necessary to supplement revenue with something other than initial game purchases due to the rising costs of development and server maintenance. I would rather see loot boxes than rising prices of games.

And there's Plokite throwing around speculation as though it's fact. When you have a homegrown engine, it's easier for the studios to navigate if they've seen it before. While Unity and Unreal are available, they're not free for commercial products. They must be licensed, which, depending on the situation, can be quite prohibitive. Not all the time, but at least part of the time. EA doesn't need to spend their time on another engine when they have their own dedicated engine, which they can use for any purpose. Even if they have to modify it to suit other needs, so does anyone who picks up a freely available engine. The more general purpose you make something, the more work actually goes into tailoring it to your project. EA doesn't have this problem and they can do whatever they want with the engine and not have to pay any royalties for its use. In any case, this isn't about EA and their engines but about loot boxes and why some people think they're the greatest sin to gaming. I'm not a fan but I see the necessity from a business perspective, which it seems many people lack. That aside, Plokite doesn't understand the value of keeping current. I work in a software company and shit from ten years ago would hardly be effective today. I have to deal with legacy applications and they're a nightmare, which is why keeping current with technology works in your benefit. Ten years ago Windows XP was still a thing. Do we really want to gimp ourselves by clinging to outdated shit from 2007 and 2008? No, we really don't. I have a decade old laptop and while, yeah, it works, it's hardly that usable anymore. The same thing happens with software - games and game engines included. An engine designed for a game in 2008 isn't nearly as relevant as one designed for a game in 2015. Not to mention, there's server technology and that comes with its own set of challenges. Sure, we could use game engines from 2007 and run everything on Pentium 4s but it wouldn't be worth its weight in shit to attempt something so foolish. Making claims like "things from ten years ago are just fine" then trying to apply it to anything remotely technological is a fool's errand and only serves to make you look uninformed on the topic. I'm not surprised that Plokite still doesn't understand the business aspect. As technology evolves so do its costs and requirements to run optimally. This is just a simple fact of life. The top tier games have massive budgets and that money has to come from somewhere. Game sales alone aren't enough, unless they raise the price substantially. I'd rather drop $60 for a game and maybe buy a DLC pack for a few bucks than have prices jump to $85 a pop then the DLC on top of it. Rather not go there.

Well, no, it doesn't. As the cost of living rises, so do wages. Technology is ever increasing in complexity and it costs more to run than before. A decade ago, it was far cheaper to maintain. Now it's far more expensive if you don't want to use archaic tech. As costs increase, the need for additional capital is always present. Your point is invalid. It might have been if you had pointed to a year or two ago instead of ten.

That's only because EA pulled an EA and did something stupid, forcing it into the limelight. Short of that, people still buy lootboxes and I don't see them going anywhere any time soon.

Normally, you'd be right but if the silent majority is still buying into the corporate bullshit and they're making money, the loud minority will be ignored.

With the amount of crap politicians, at least in the US, gravitate towards, that's not really helping your argument. Many non-issues turn into wildfires because people are stupid and it gets clicks. An actual controversy would have affected some real change, or, at the very least, caused some severe turmoil. Butthurt gamers doesn't really count for either of those. There is a functional need for them to exist and that's in the form of continual revenue streams. It's how some companies make all of their revenue and other companies who don't rely it have extra capital and having extra capital is always a bonus. Game companies are businesses at the end of the day and anything that keeps them in the black is good for them, and, sometimes but not always, us.

Does it generate any crash logs? Is it a consistent crash time? If you have the resources, it might be worth just setting up an XP virtual machine to run the game. You don't need 3D for it (2D works fine). I do that on Windows 8/10 so I don't need to fight the installers and it plays just fine being a relatively simple game. What do you use to make Red Alert 2 run on Mac? It might just not be compatible with the emulation layer. I'm assuming an emulation layer anyway.

He's not wrong but the main issue is that there's not enough gamers actually doing anything. The number of those who do something versus those who do not is vastly in favor of those who do not. Until it's a majority pitching a fit, nothing's gonna change.

Calling it a controversy is overstating things a bit I think. They're not that controversial and EA just made a stupid move (no shit? EA fuckin' it up? gotta be kiddin' me!) and that's really the only thing in 2017 that's even noteworthy enough to mention. They've been around a while and while I don't like them much, I understand the functional necessity of them. As stated before, in free to play games, they're fine. I can get over them in paid games IF there's a decent method to earn them without money. In both cases, it should be cosmetics only. Germany banning shit? No way! While I admire a lot about Europe, a lot of shit they do makes me cringe. Banning loot boxes is one of those things. Would be interesting if it happened though. Wonder how Activision, EA and Blizzard would react.

Windows 10 S is a decent idea. It will keep a lot of bullshit from infecting PCs. The average user probably doesn't need much more than Windows Store apps and anyone who does will be smart enough to know what they're getting. Granny doesn't need 10 Pro - S would be fine to send email, type documents and browse Facebook to communicate with the grandkids. Though, I'm certain there's a way around any blocks. I'm using Pro anyway and there's honestly no reason for Home to exist. At the end of the day, the idea behind S is a decent one. Knowing Microsoft though... they'll manage to fuck it up completely.

I've gotten some new stuff since my last post in here. Main Collection - https://imgur.com/a/QkQ9z Recent Acquisitions - https://imgur.com/a/UrkoI Misc Westwood - https://imgur.com/a/3FRwE Outdated for the Westwood stuff though. Got plenty of WW stuff.