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[From Dust] droppin' lava like it's hot. out now on 360 and PC.
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It's that publishers are struggling to retain control of their once dominant position in the market, which are now being disrupted by indies, which in my mind is rather similar to the way mobile phone companies are reacting to first Apple's iPhone (a whole new eco system they were completely unfamiliar with, where I see parallels to digital distribution of games) and then along comes Skype, Viber and other solutions which almost completely renders them obsolete and robs them of the majority of their profit.
The publishers are facing a similar scenario and currently scared shitless of their future.
This is their final battle, and Ubisoft's strategy consists of spamming Uplay across all of the digital download services they "are forced" to use now. As I said earlier, I think it's just going to rack up collateral damage as it's not that different to the bloatware of the mobile phone companies. Also (and I think I'm going to loose many people here, if I've not lost all of you already) I've noticed how several car companies are doing concepts which are very far from cars, like bikes and stuff. What it all boils down to is that the future is changing like never before, and past superpowers are scrambling to try to retain control.
I think they will all fail, though (read Clayton Christensen and my mad ramblings might all come together for you... hopefully).
Perhaps I should have posted this in the industry thread...
they did not say that it would require you to be online every time you launched
We could argue all day about the DRM, if you don't have a problem with it, that's fine, but other people do, and they have valid issues. In my opinion Ubisoft has missed the forest for the trees with DRM this rigid, especially at this particular price point. Even Games for Windows Live isn't as obtrusive, and frankly, that is sad, because GFWL is terrible.
The DRM combined with bad port job is enough of an annoyance that I will vote with my wallet and spend it elsewhere in the future, but beyond a slight feeling of getting ripped off, I don't much care either way, it is after all, just a game.
Whats that you say? Gold ore lies under my house? Man fuck that you gotta dig for it.
There's two huge conflicts here. One: the bad stuff shouldn't be supported. Two: The good stuff should be supported.
In this case the good in this outweighs all the bad so heavily you should buy it anyway.
Which is, I think, a pretty telling indicator of just how good this game actually is. It really is that good. You really wont care once you get into it.
I feel genuine pity and regret for anybody who refuses to ever play this masterpiece because it requires a little work to get into it. This game is immensely satisfying if you sit down, relax, and put some patience into it.
If you refuse to play it on PC and have an xbox, buy it on xbox. The game is not so demanding that the console cursor will be detrimental.
But.... that's what Ubisoft DRM is.
Edit: And just to be clear I am in no way advocating piracy, just pointing out that even the best DRM usually doesn't last long in the wilds of the internet.
Lots of people decided to wait for the PC version over the 360 because they wanted better controls
guess what didn't happen
There is a very large tendency on this hugely public forum for a smattering of bad to be generalised to the wrong thing. I'm trying to make sure people are aware that there's light at the end of the rainbow. This game is worth two or three times the money asked for it.
A choice between annoyingly packaged genius and no genius, you should pick genius though.
The control scheme is annoying if you are expecting populous or any other molyneux style god game. However this game is not about being a god. It's about crafting the raw firmament of the elements as they move and shape the world around you. It's not about lightning storms and fireballs or micro managing your people.
There's one fantastic stage later on that gives you nothing but a few small islands and a volcano just emerging from the ocean. It's up to you to stick your hand in this volcano's guts to grab balls of molten rock and from it shape the world for your people to move about on.
Should have gotten this on Xbox. There don't seem to be any high end video tweaks so the game look like it does on Xbox and setting the resolution to what my screen actually supports puts the menu off screen. I had to guess at clicking until I got the options to change. Doesn't support launch options through steam and you can't directly launch with a short cut thanks to ubi. The mouse controls are sluggish, but that might be because I haven't futzed with mouse sensitivity yet.
The game itself isn't much fun simply because I've been spoiled on all the initial cool stuff from reviews and previews. I get the feeling I'd have a lot more fun if I didn't know about fire trees or lava or tidal waves before hand.
Its got enough to keep me going thoughand ill finish the game... if only to get the sandbox mode.
caffron said: "and cat pee is not a laughing matter"
Because, simply put, I will not buy a game where the controls are that terrible, performance is that bad (tearing problems and no vsync? Really?), and there aren't proper graphical options to attempt to mitigate things. I barely tolerate less crappy controls on larger games; I see no reason to reward the publisher for doing such a slapdash job.
In the event a patch comes out that fixes all or even most of those complaints, I will very cheerfully part with my hard-earned dollars, because I had my wallet open and was reaching for the credit card when I found out about the issues with the PC port. It's not about the price ($15 is at the "eh...I'll buy it if it looks decent" range), it's about not buying a broken product.
The game's trailer made me want it, but Ubisoft has succeeded in overshadowing that desire. Good job, guys.
The 2012 issue of Fornax. | Steam and Origin: Espressosaurus
But the real issue here is, they tried to play it off as if it did not have this DRM when it did. It would be like someone claiming "Game X doesn't have co-op!" then the publisher coming back and stating "No wai, this game totally has co-op!" then the game ships and it doesn't have co-op. They lied to you to get a sale, and you should not support BS antics like that.
i have a problem with DRM but saying ubisoft should make some fancy special version of their games just for steam when they aren't using steamworks is pretty silly from a business perspective.
Yes, I am aware of that. It's a crap system as far as I'm concerned. I don't want some meta achievement currency that you can earn in one game and spend in another. If you want to reward people for achieving something in a game, then tie the reward to an existing achievement IN THAT GAME.
I have quite a few games that use Uplay and quite a few Uplay points. I still think it's dumb.
eobet says it best:
The sole purpose of Uplay is to force the user to funnel through Ubisoft's crappy overlay so that Steam doesn't dominate the whole "digital overlay" thing. It's so asinine.
Yeah they actually have 3 different types of DRM; always on, where if you lose your internet it closes. Alwaysonlaunch, where if you aren't connected when launching it won't. And then their not retarded one which doesn't require the internet at any point.
People claimed it had the first one, Ubi replied back with "No way it totally doesn't require an always on internet connection.", then never mentioned that it still had the second one which is just as bad.
Basically because it's stupid to do on a 15 dollar game, as it makes Ubi look petty, myopic, and out of touch. $15 is the price point that PC indies reside at, and there is very little DRM from them, which makes the contrast to Ubi's approach all the starker. Indies provide a lot bang for the buck, and most DRM consists of polite statements from the creators about "hey we're just two guys doing this for the love of it, please don't steal." At best Ubi doesn't understand this market, more likely they simply don't care, instead choosing to focus on consoles. (Which is fine.) Still, I can't imagine the value gained in piracy retention is going to equal out the horrible press this game is getting because of their shortsightedness in tacking on an extra DRM layer, especially when it offers so little positive aspects to the player instead being yet another hoop to jump through.
Ultimately though, if the port was decent, I don't think this little tempest in a tea kettle over the DRM would have much legs.
Also, you totally missed his point because the DRM is only an "extra layer" if you bought it on Steam as opposed to D2D, GMG, Impulse, etc.
If you bought it from anywhere other than Steam, basically, it is not an "extra DRM layer", it is the "sole DRM layer"
Woah, hey, one of my favorite games. I only beat it once, but I was young and incompetent. I still carry it around in my main CD case (along with the Creatures series and BG2).
The more obtrusive DRM is, the more effort pirates will put into cracking it, unless the game is just terrible and nobody cares
The game doesn't run as good as it should though, and should have more graphics and audio options. I put that down to console development junk.. which I am starting to get used to on PC games which are cross-platform with consoles sadly. That said, I haven't had screen tearing or anything, just minor slowdown in a few spots (perfectly playable), but I do have a relatively fast GPU.
I personally don't care about the DRM as my internet is more or less always on, and if it wasn't I would read a book or something. But I understand why people don't like it. UPlay is essentially one extra button to click. It worked fine for me in Assassin's Creed, though when I was playing From Dust earlier today the UPlay service seemed to be overloaded or something, and it was having trouble syncing. Hopefully that is a temporary issue.
Steam (Ansatz) || Planetside 2 - Vanu (Ansatz) || GW2 Officer (Ansatz.6498)
Not even gonna bother with a shoddy port.
Currently playing: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Metro 2033
As an aside with the mouse scroll turned off this game is a gem, and I love games like these. I hope they do some sort of DLC in which they add extra animals and more interactions with the tribe. There is quite a bit of room they purposely left open to see how well the game sells like it is and despite it being an Ubisoft product, I hope it does do well.
And that's sad, because Ubisoft doesn't care about PC gamers.
Luckily for them, most people aren't very tuned into DRM issues, and only notice when they inevitably fuck up.
As much as I dislike Lolzsec in general, I'd love for them to DDOS Ubisoft's DRM for a launch week or two on a popular game just to show people how terrible this really is. Some people won't learn until it gets brought home.
I personally will be playing Bastion, which wisely opted not to include any DRM besides the effective non-DRM of Steam. I find it sad that a god damn cartoon company can provide a more intelligent DRM scheme than a dedicated games publisher.
because I find it highly suspect that the guy on the title art is so much lighter skinned than the very dark people in the game.
and Operation Flashpoint: Red River code to trade/sell
and Halo: Reach code
and Portal 2 code
Bridges, that's what.
This, regardless of the silly hoops I need to jump through when first setting everything up and the DRM it is a very fun game.
The tribe "elders" I guess cover themselves in white, you will have your dark dudes running around and a couple of guys that look like they covered themselves in white dust/mud/whatever using staffs to walk around.
edit:
Which is not uncommon for tribal cultures to do, for many reasons, to show rank, get ready for war, show off, and so on.
edit2: granted how he looks on the xbl art is a bit weird, as it does look like rambo stole some tribal gear, but I don't work for ubisoft so I don't know what to say there.