What games are you currently playing?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

One of the criticisms made by a DToid user that made me want to headdesk was the Wii U's lack of DirectX 11 support.

Prophesying gloom and doom over touch screens is part of his gig, though, so saying dumb shit like that was par for course. I'll never understand people that champion developer laziness on control schemes and feel no pity for them when thier PC games have an interface better suited for a PS3 or 360 since the developer didn't bother to try.

It actually says a lot that EA of all companies is using the WiiPad to great effect with ME3 allowing you to use an overhead map to manipulate squad member placement or that 5th Cell could find more practical uses for the screen than Rocksteady bothered to.

Rocksteady's awesome idea was give Batman a super meter and activate it with the touch screen. Eight years of DS and five of iPhone and this is the best "core" developers can do. That and tilt control for the remote Batarang - because it wasn't annoying enough before.

[DakAttack]

Not in so many words, though. Skyrim's problem - and by extension, Bethesda's - is that Bethesda is terrible at writing efficient code. It shows more on the PS3 version simply because it has a less flexible memory architecture, but the laundry list of bugs in Skyrim that needed (and quite a few that STILL need to be) squashed is quite long.

Bethesda has this horrible tendency to create these sweeping game designs and force their code to conform to their ideal, even if it means the code becomes easily broken or inconsistent. The fact that every key you ever collect stays with you is the silliest of silly features. Sure, blah blah you could take every key in the game and drop it in your house derp derp derp derp... in the mean while it's eating up a chunk of memory because the game has to remember all those keys in your inventory instead of doing the smart thing and leaving the door permanently unlocked in the zone once the key is used and deleting the key.

That's just one example of massive stupidity in Skyrim's design, and it's not the only one.


Icemage

The game works wonderfully on PC and the Xbox 360. So it MUST be anybody but Sony's fault that the PS3 can barely handle it.

[Firewind]

Not in so many words, though. Skyrim's problem - and by extension, Bethesda's - is that Bethesda is terrible at writing efficient code. It shows more on the PS3 version simply because it has a less flexible memory architecture, but the laundry list of bugs in Skyrim that needed (and quite a few that STILL need to be) squashed is quite long.

Bethesda has this horrible tendency to create these sweeping game designs and force their code to conform to their ideal, even if it means the code becomes easily broken or inconsistent. The fact that every key you ever collect stays with you is the silliest of silly features. Sure, blah blah you could take every key in the game and drop it in your house derp derp derp derp... in the mean while it's eating up a chunk of memory because the game has to remember all those keys in your inventory instead of doing the smart thing and leaving the door permanently unlocked in the zone once the key is used and deleting the key.

That's just one example of massive stupidity in Skyrim's design, and it's not the only one.


Icemage

That doesn't even scratch the surface with Bethesda games. Remember that leaving doors open increases the size of both savegames and the memory chunk. Let's not even get started about random and fixed loot on containers, corpses in general and locked/unlocked doors.

Skyrim does alleviate this somewhat by only preloading the current cell and any surrounding cell while outdoors but it still is very inefficient considering that NPCs offscreen can eat up resources by fighting each other without you even realising.

[DakAttack]

With all these claims flying around, it'd be nice to see a few sources.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I think its also worth noting that PS3 isn't exactly a pro about efficiency itself. Remember, Sony mandates that all data on Blu-Ray remains uncompressed for their "lossless" audio and video spin. That is horrendously inefficient, especially considering there is a level where you can compress and the eyes and ears wouldn't know the damned difference. 360 and PC games enjoy shorter, more efficient install times since these platforms allow for compression. What's more is PC has the freedom and flexibility to allow for even HD texture packs, pushing games like Skyrim even further ahead of PS3 and 360.

What's goading is Sony adopted the lossless stance purely on pride, not technical merit as there is none. They maintain it in the face of Blu-Ray's tremendous loss to HD video streaming. Blu-Ray was, and remains little more than the last bottleneck before we go purely digital. One last grandstanding hurrah for physical media, though I am certain they'll whip up another proprietary format, but it will fail.

As it stands most games seldom even fill have the BD, if that.

[Firewind]

Problem is is that HD video streaming is not only a horribly inefficient use of bandwidth but the sheer size of HD video files means that most people won't be able to use that. Especially considering the fact that a lot of ISPs have monthly download caps and that there are very few countries with the infrastructure to even take advantage of it (Sweden, South Korea, Japan, France, maybe Germany).

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I have little sympathy for consumers that don't educate themselves and call their ISPs on their bullshit. There's a legit reason to cap wireless data, but capping ground-line bandwith is based on superstitious mumbo jumbo that just isn't true. It costs less than 1 cent to produce 1GB of bandwidth, next to nothing.

These ISPs cap because consumers let them. Just because people don't educate themselves of right the ISPs doesn't mean BD isn't little else but a stalling tactic.

Ground-based ISPs that cap will never get my business, period.

[cidbahamut]

Ground-based ISPs that cap will never get my business, period.

So what do you tell folks who only have one ISP in their area? "Sucks to be you."?

It's all well and good to have ideals, but sometimes reality will take those ideals and use them to hit you in the balls repeatedly.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

So what do you tell folks who only have one ISP in their area? "Sucks to be you."?

Band together with other consumers and BITCH LIKE HELL AT THE ISP.

Being the only game in town comes with this downside - you're the only game in town. If people are unhappy, that is bad for business. Just imagine what happens when ISPs pull this in places where people do have options.

TWC tried to make Greensboro, NC a test market for bandwidth capping. They already had a market there, but they had to test bandwidth capping. That alone proves capping is bullshit. People not only in Greensboro protested it, they managed to get Winston-Salem, High Point, Durham, Raleigh and Charlotte in on some noted protests and nasty phone calls to Time-Warner over this. And we had other options. I called and told TWC I was switching over the consideration of this. And i did.

Guess what? Greensboro never became a test market for capping.

[Firewind]

What about the people who live in an are where they can get uncapped internet access but are lucky to get connection speeds of higher than 8MB without having to pay obscene amounts on the one ISP that has the monopoly in that area like you know...The parts of Europe not called "Sweden", "France" "South East England" or "Dortmund"

[Malacite]

One of the criticisms made by a DToid user that made me want to headdesk was the Wii U's lack of DirectX 11 support.

Prophesying gloom and doom over touch screens is part of his gig, though, so saying dumb shit like that was par for course. I'll never understand people that champion developer laziness on control schemes and feel no pity for them when thier PC games have an interface better suited for a PS3 or 360 since the developer didn't bother to try.

It actually says a lot that EA of all companies is using the WiiPad to great effect with ME3 allowing you to use an overhead map to manipulate squad member placement or that 5th Cell could find more practical uses for the screen than Rocksteady bothered to.

Rocksteady's awesome idea was give Batman a super meter and activate it with the touch screen. Eight years of DS and five of iPhone and this is the best "core" developers can do. That and tilt control for the remote Batarang - because it wasn't annoying enough before.

Word from EA is they've seen and are very excited about all 3 new consoles and that it'll be loads better than the current gen.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

What about the people who live in an are where they can get uncapped internet access but are lucky to get connection speeds of higher than 8MB without having to pay obscene amounts on the one ISP that has the monopoly in that area like you know...The parts of Europe not called "Sweden", "France" "South East England" or "Dortmund"

First off, we have options whether or not to stream in HD. 360 and PS3 actually do not stream in Netflix in HD by default - you have to manually enable it from the Netflix site. Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime are the same way, but Hulu lets you do it within the app. Obviously, the Wii is an exception here since it only does SD.

Physical media is viable for now, but you're citing geographical difficulties, which are pretty much the same difficulties that pose problems for the Cloud. My point about Blu Ray is that, for the Americas where applicable and likely Japan as well, BDs value is diminished in the face of streaming services. The streaming options are too good and too cheap to pass up most of the time.

As it stands, there's no reason for there to be another format beyond BD. Its got space to spare right now, but that does not mean the space is used effectively.

Hell, the indie scene and App Store thrive on using far less than what most PS3 games require for a minimum install. Even the best DLC games on PSN are efficient because they know their network infrastructure is shit and downloads take too long.

Word from EA is they've seen and are very excited about all 3 new consoles and that it'll be loads better than the current gen.

EA being excited in that way is only reason for pause.

[Icemage]

The game works wonderfully on PC and the Xbox 360. So it MUST be anybody but Sony's fault that the PS3 can barely handle it.

Yes it works so wonderfully that it has been patched three times, with broken stuff still happening. By the time they're done with patching, Bethesda's patch notes for Skyrim will likely be just as long and ridiculous as Fallout 3's or Oblivion's.


Icemage

[DakAttack]

Yes it works so wonderfully that it has been patched three times, with broken stuff still happening. By the time they're done with patching, Bethesda's patch notes for Skyrim will likely be just as long and ridiculous as Fallout 3's or Oblivion's.


Icemage

A company voluntarily shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct their mistakes? Why, this is the very definition of evil!

Sometimes the sense of entitlement is palpable.

[Icemage]

A company voluntarily shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct their mistakes? Why, this is the very definition of evil!

Sometimes the sense of entitlement is palpable.

I'm sorry that you think that people expecting things that they purchase to work as intended is "entitlement". Bethesda going back to patch Skyrim (or any other software company doing the same) is about as "magnanimous" as a car manufacturer issuing a recall on vehicles with a dangerous mechanical flaw.


Icematge