The last time I used one, I had to edit some paths in a .md5 file to get the hash verification to work.

Keep in mind, the time period he’s talking about is the early '00s, before online distribution got big. Back then if GameStop (et al.) didn’t believe your product would sell, they wouldn’t stock it, and then nobody would be able to buy it.

Can’t understand why […] System Shock sort of got ditched for other companies to remaster.

IIRC Ken Levine wanted to make another System Shock game but Irrational couldn’t get the rights.

Not sure what the last one was, but the last couple PC games I bought physical copies of could be installed from the disc, but also had Steam keys in the box and then didn’t require the disc to play.

Well shit, I’ve been launching Epic through Lutris. Guess it’s time for me to check out Heroic.

Don’t dumb down the gameplay systems

Bethesda design challenge: impossible.

There’s a board game called History of the World that does something like this, where score is tracked per player, but you play as a new civilization every turn. (And, depending on the draw, may wind up fighting against your previous civ.)

It’s a good game, but, yeah, it’s hard to imagine that working in something like Civilization.

It also helps that Steam sales are nowhere near as good as they used to be. I don’t even remember the last time I saw a 90+% discount, but there was a time when they’d pop up regularly during the winter sale.

But yeah, these days my standard for even considering a purchase is “will I play it right now?”

I think TES NPCs have been reacting to clothing since Daggerfall. Back then it was just a disposition modifier based on the total value of what you were wearing, but still.

maybe there can be spin-offs in this case

They haven’t said they intend to stop making D&D games. And every D&D crpg in the last 20-odd years (since Torment, I think) has been set in the Forgotten Realms. So it seems highly likely that future games will be loosely related to BG, just without that specific title.

I would love to see them bring back some of the weird old settings, like Dark Sun, Spelljammer, or even Dragonlance. But I’m not holding my breath.

Yeah it was my first real encounter with wh40k, and I really enjoyed it.

That said, I felt that act 3 massively overstayed its welcome, and act 5 seemed kind of vestigial.

In retrospect, I also think the RP and faction system didn’t really work given what it’s meant to represent. You’re supposed to be unimaginably wealthy, with the output of entire planets at your disposal. You should be able to get a basically unlimited number of anything non-unique. But the way it’s implemented means that your ability to actually purchase anything is still limited by the value of whatever junk you found lying around, in a way that is significantly less flexible than a traditional cash-and-vendors rpg economy.

Oh, and can anyone give me an in-universe explanation for why “scrap” continues to be a limited resource after Kiava Gamma and/or Vheabos VI?

Well, that all came out sounding rather negative, but as I said I really did enjoy it. Those are really my only complaints.

I would go so far as to say that DRM only affects paying customers.

It took them years to implement a shopping cart. A basic feature that literally every online shop has had since forever.

They are not good at e-commerce.

I’m almost certain I’ve seen a woodworking community when browsing all.

I also don’t think it’s necessarily a question of subject matter so much as that Lemmy’s user base is simply not large enough yet to sustain active niche communities, and it’s an open question if we can get to that point without degrading the quality of the less focused ones, like /c/crafting or /c/diy.