For me, it wasn’t about the AI. It’s that early development of the game was all PvE play. PVP was something that was added at launch, and the game is tagged as PvE, along with PvP on steam. Stupid me thought there would be PvE only lobbies and I was clearly mistaken. I tried playing it, I put 100 hours in. The entire game was me grinding the easy map, to level up and craft/buy better guns, only to be shot on sight by someone and have everything I worked for taken. I would solo down bastions, leapers, and bombdiers to have someone run up and shoot me on site, without asking if I would share loot. (I would rather share than lose everything.) Events in the game also reward PvP play by awarding cred. People are making smurf accounts so they can end up in friendly matches to dominate people that don’t want to pvp. Enemy spawns are fucked up too. I’ve downed arc only for the corpses to despawn as I attempt to loot it. I’ve walked into clear areas, only to have bombadiers spawn on top of me out of nowhere. The worst part of the game is being dropped into a map/match after 10 minutes has elapsed, which means anything decent has already been looted and you’re more likely to run into people camping extraction points. They have a temp event running that rewards PvE cooperative play, and I’ve still gotten killed on site, although less frequently. After the event is over, I’ll probably uninstall the game again.

Tangentially related: Fuck Arc raiders.

Epic’s corporate overlords don’t have an original thought rattling around in their collective heads. Their entire business model is to flail around, copy anything that seems remotely successful with a reskin, and hope it sticks. Not even free products will convince me to download their laucher, or anything they put their mierdas touch on.

Some of us have already been burned by EPIC and we aren’t going back.

A decade ago, I was playing a game called Paragon that was being “beta” tested via EPIC. (I would say it was an alpha release because there were SOOOO many changes to gameplay and map, no sane person would consider it a BETA test.) Steve Superville was in charge. Early iterations were pretty sweet, match length could go 40-60 minutes because there were lots of mechanics that could dramatically shift the flow of a match. This is because the game was being designed as a MOBA, and it was a true MOBA. As someone who enjoys strategy and MOBAs, the early product was amazing.

Then the bean counters entered and forced production to reduce map size because they felt a 40-60 minute match was too long, despite no one from the community complaining about it. The bean counters forced more map shrinkage in an attempt to make the game play more like a brawler, when it was clearly not. They were just trying to ride the overwatch hype train because brawlers were successful at the time. Eventually Steve Superville was forced out of the project and they brought in Donald Mustard, because he was willing to turn the project into a pay to win riddled with microtransactions piece of trash.

These corporate bean counters alienated their entire customer base and acted surprised when the product failed. The best part is that while it was in BETA, they were fucking charging money for skins. When they closed the product you couldn’t get a cash refund for the skins you bought. You got refunded in credits you could spend on their other products. I was alpha testing Fortnite at this time too. It was a plants/zombies type game with building. When they axed paragon, they rolled tons of those assets into fortnite, and redesigned the whole product to mimic PubG, because they wanted to ride the PubG hype train. No way was I willing to accept anything less than a cash refund for what I spent while I was beta testing their product.

Epic’s corporate overlords don’t have an original thought rattling around in their collective heads. Their entire business model is to flail around, copy anything that seems remotely successful with a reskin, and hope it sticks. Not even free products will convince me to download their laucher, or anything they put their mierdas touch on. /rant

There are other platforms devs can release games. GOG, microsoft, epic store, or you can release physical CD copies to sell at retailers. Steam isn’t gate keeping anything.

Oh my gosh, I had no Idea Jim is trans. My bad.

Jimquisition is an amazing reviewer/games journalist. I like how pro-consumer she* is. Obligatory fuck Konami.

You are correct. It’s the reason why I never played that anno 2070 game I bought, besides constant crashes when I tried to launch.

Yup. I upgraded my PC in Jan of 2025. The writing was on the wall back then.

This is satire, but tickles me every time. How to spot a pedophile.

Truth be told, I’ve never even downloaded their software. I pretty much plug and play. I’m using the G502 hero as a mouse and the astro A20 headset. I always keybind in games, but I’ve never really used the extra buttons in any of my applications, so didn’t need to bother with their software. This explains why I haven’t experienced the frustration other people have. Yeah, if I was the kind of person that wanted to keybind in other applications, I’d rage at a shitty app for that too.

I had no idea that the software side of the company was such trash, but that’s probably because I’m using windows. All my peripherals for the past decade have been logitech, and I’ve been super happy with them. Do linux users have these kinds of issues with logitech devices?

112 hours of gameplay and still being shot on sight after stating I was friendly, don’t shoot.

I gave up last night. I wrote a review in one of the gaming forums if you want to see what I thought about it. Jimquisition also wasn’t impressed by it. I gave up last night after a total of 112 hours of game play. I don’t think it’s a fun or good game. Clearly I’m in the minority of players, but I won’t be back until there are strictly PvE lobbies.

I’ve only taken friendly actions and still keep getting put into matches with PvPers that shoot me on sight and keep shooting after I tell them I am friendly. Had 3 matches in a row where I was ganked and lost everything each time. Their matchmaking is still trash. I uninstalled.

There is absolutely nothing innovate about arc raiders. It’s rust lite.

I just started playing this game. I cried at the end of the fucking prologue. What amazing writing and voice acting.

I used to have the right to an abortion, clean air, and clean water, but then I took a republican to the knee.

Distant Worlds 2 looks pretty sweet. Thanks 😁

For those of you that have 401Ks and Roths or other retirement accounts; look at your portfolios. I know lots of us just pick investment options based on how well the funds do over time. You should also look at the holdings, or what companies those funds are investing in. Many of my investments had NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Google as the largest holdings of the trust. I didn’t sell what I already bought, but I changed where my investments are going and made sure to pick trusts that AREN’T investing in NVIDIA and the other tech bros.

I’m a pleb. I don’t hold much power. Collectively if we change our investments we can turn off the money faucet for NVIDIA. If you’re of the mindset that the AI bubble will pop, moving your money into something else means you won’t be left holding the bag if the bubble pops. I decided to pick options where the stocks in the trust were related to minerals and mining, since those business will see growth due to the need for minerals to increase chip production. Those minerals are also important for EV and battery production as well. Still risky, but at least I’m not giving it straight to NVIDIA, and maybe the EV market side of things won’t be hit as hard when the bubble pops.