Quoting: gregfI want AMD not intel, and I want a good keyboard like on a think pad. Till then it's a no go for me.

If I am not totally mistaken, that's because AMD doesn't have a competitive on-board GPU solution. It also is not considered a force for dedicated mobile GPUs. Intel still kinda has a monopoly on that. Which is why nobody considers AMD for building a laptop, still.

I otherwise agree with the sentiment. I'd love to see a good AMD laptop platform one day.

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Quoting: 14Usually when people speak in ultimatums, they're exaggerating due to a lazy mind or anger-fueled irrationality.

Needless to say, I disagree with you. But that's fine.

For the most part I would agree with you that absolutes rarely exist, and there's usually an exception or two to every statement one can make. I felt fairly comfortable generalizing in this particular instance though, and still do. The reason for this lies in the very effect the "Free"-to-Play model causes on game design, which makes these games bad by definition.

I will try to explain:

For a Buy-to-Play game, the game design focuses on delivering the best possible experience for the player. There are no secondary concerns for game design - the monetization has already happened.
For a "Free"-to-Play game, monetization has to happen DURING play, and AFTER giving the player access to it. The design no longer focuses on the best possible experience for the player, it focuses on motivating the player to pay up. Which for the F2P side of the industry is habitually done by intentionally making the game boring or tedious after a few hours of playing it, while giving players the opportunity to buy away these nag-mechanics with micro-transactions ("Don't want to wait 100 hours for this cooldown to expire? Just pay $10!").
In short, you can safely say that F2P games are universally designed to suck unless you pay up. It's how these games make you pay when you otherwise would have no reason to.

Now, you might say "But what about vanity and cosmetic items that have no effect on gameplay? Selling these don't make a game suck!"

Unfortunately, it does.

In a B2P game, cosmetic items are earned in-game, by PLAYING it. For many games, getting better-looking gear is the very essence of our motivation to play them in this first place. But with F2P games, you just BUY them. You can't earn the good-looking stuff in game, because it's moved to the cash-store. All you do is swipe your credit card and done! Your character looks great now. The only problem is that moving in-game rewards to a cash-store is that it kills in-game content, because your already great-looking character doesn't have to do any dungeon crawling to become great-looking. Cash-stores, even if cosmetic only, leave game designers with a lot less options to design rewarding and engaging content.

Maybe this helps you to understand why I made my absolute statement the way I did. There is simply no way to make a F2P game NOT suck, because the problem is in the business model itself.

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Quoting: 14

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: rkfgMake it F2P,

100% of all so-called "free"-to-play games suck. As in all of them, no exceptions. Because all of them are designed to suck unless you dump more money into it than you ever would in an actual for-purchase game.

Oh, like Dota 2?

I'm fine with buying a digital card game if I can play a trial mode first. I was too hesitant to put money down on Artifact and so never experienced it. I wish they had a free weekend or a trial mode of some sort. I also think it's OK to charge money for card packs just like Magic (etc) does in the physical world... as long as the game includes a Draft mode!

Not sure which part of "100% no exceptions" wasn't so clear. If a game was -designed- to be "free" (haha!) to play, it sucks. FTP is probably the most successful fraud ever conceived. Except that it's (yet) legal.

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Quoting: rkfgMake it F2P,

100% of all so-called "free"-to-play games suck. As in all of them, no exceptions. Because all of them are designed to suck unless you dump more money into it than you ever would in an actual for-purchase game.

Why anybody still thinks FT2 is the solution is beyond me. In today's gaming business, it's the root of the problem.

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Let's open a bottle and celebrate! :D

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Monopoly is a game I really, REALLY need to stream, because my local PC won't be able to render it! Hey, who cares what a total waste of energy and network resources that is, anyway! I am just glad that it's FINALLY there!!! How did people ever play computer Monopoly without having access to multi-Teraflops computing power?

Oh...wait...

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: MaathLooks like its other name is "Zelda Maker."

Since I was a kid I've always wanted to make video games. Too bad I'm not an artist. No matter how easy these engines make creating a game, the art assets will probably always be the major hurdle. Sure there's sites like opengameart.org, but that can get you only so far.

You've also got Kenney Assets.

Kenney's stuff is super cartoony, and if you're anything like me and just HATE cartoon art, his stuff won't help much either. I am otherwise in the same boat. I got a few decades of coding experience, but I suck at art. The closest thing I have found to a universally usable starter set for RPGs is https://opengameart.org/content/dungeon-crawl-32x32-tiles

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Haha, I got all of these already, too. I guess I just love their games too much. :D

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Quoting: ShmerlI don't see how it makes it any better. Users who don't want to use that store (or can't for whatever reason), won't be able to play those games. Exclusivity is all about excluding users. So I never see it as good.

Agreed. I also can't imagine any situation where exclusivity would be good for anyone, except the ones using it as a weapon.

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Quoting: HoriTrue but it just prolongs the inevitable.

Again, wishful thinking. There is no historic evidence that democracy is the inevitable outcome of a nation's development and neither is there any evidence that democracies are intrinsically stable. Right now we're witnessing the -opposite-, rather. It's not authoritarian systems that are falling. It's the democratic ones that are converted back into more authoritarian systems.

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