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Latest Comments by TheSHEEEP
Canonical planning an immutable desktop version of Ubuntu
5 June 2023 at 11:39 am UTC Likes: 4

For desktops, I'm not sure about the use case.

Even without immutability, most big distros are already "it just works" - and in addition also offer more possibility to customize.

What it would offer is more security to not accidentally mess up your system, I'd wager.
But even then, that's what rollbacks are for, so... yeah, I'm really not sure about the use case on normal desktop.

Total War: PHARAOH announced - Linux port from Feral Interactive (UPDATE: incorrect)
26 May 2023 at 5:51 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou know, my background is in English literature. I've read starting from Beowulf, through Chaucer, Shakespeare, Pope, Swift, the Romantics and through to T.S. Eliot and such. It is my considered opinion that the greatest work of literature of the 20th century . . . has trolls in it.
My dude.... you are reading books that are not a 1-to-1 portrayal of historical facts.
What a childish thing to do!

Total War: PHARAOH announced - Linux port from Feral Interactive (UPDATE: incorrect)
25 May 2023 at 6:04 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think TheSHEEEP is being a bit over the top in claiming they're automatically going to be rubbish.
I never said that.
I think there are some great purely historical games out there.
And I also think CA's more historical ones are pretty good.

What I did say is that they are going to get boring a lot faster than fantasy ones due to the limitations of sticking to history, but I'm not sure if that has much to do with overall quality.

It's just a simple fact that they aren't doing as well as fantasy ones because the audience that tends to favor that stick-strictly-to-history isn't big enough.

Total War: PHARAOH announced - Linux port from Feral Interactive (UPDATE: incorrect)
24 May 2023 at 12:36 pm UTC

Quoting: Deleted_UserI can't understand where you got these statements from. Neither CA (which wouldn't include Feral sales) nor SEGA released any relyable numbers on the sales of the titles.
Steam reviews provide all you need for a good ballpark estimate of sales.
The amount of reviews for games is at something around 0.5-1% (some very good recent titles have even gone up to 1/60 and indies regularly get a lot more).
From that you get the rough sales numbers.

3K did indeed not sell badly. Afaik, it was the fastest selling title CA ever made?
But you need to look at what really rakes in the cash for games like that over time: DLC. And those need concurrent player numbers.

Now, I don't know if any of CA's games made them a net loss - in fact I doubt it, they are much better run as a company than they are as developers - but it is very clear from player numbers alone which titles did well and which ones did not.
3K basically dropped down to around 5K players just a few months after launch - and still sits there. With DLCs not having made much of a dent.
And the other historical titles fared much worse (though again, hard to say what kind of EGS deals were made for Troy). Troy and Thrones Of Brittannia sit at like 300 people playing.

Meanwhile, WH3 - despite a launch so terrible it will be remembered forever as a complete fumble - sits rather comfortably at around 25k players a year after launch. With DLCs definitely making a dent.
So there really can't be much of a discussion if fantasy-themed games are doing better than historical ones.

But I must admit, to my surprise the older historical titles are still doing surprisingly well, with player numbers in the 2k region:
https://steamcharts.com/search/?q=total+war
I did NOT expect especially Empire to still have such a stable player base. Despite spending a lot of time in TW communities, I've never encountered anyone talking about Empire.

So, who knows. Maybe they can afford to just play the long game here with the historical titles after all.

Total War: PHARAOH announced - Linux port from Feral Interactive (UPDATE: incorrect)
24 May 2023 at 9:28 am UTC

Quoting: Deleted_UserFact is, that the "accurate history Total War" community haven't got a proper game since years. Warhammer aside, both 3 Kingdoms and Troy are fantasy adaptions in some way - so i think it would be fair to get a "pure historical" TW.
Yes.
Because that community is too small for CA to focus on.
3K had a historical mode, and other than the "super generals" the normal mode was as historical as you can get with that period. Even the more strange units (like some artillery) actually existed, albeit maybe more as prototypes than actual battlefield use.
Anyway, it didn't do well, and boy did they drop that one like a hot potato.

Troy was a historical (well, mostly) game before they added the mythical creatures.
It didn't do well (EGS cash paid for that game).
Attila was historical.
It didn't do well.
Thrones Of Brittannia?
Didn't do well.
Rome Remastered?
Didn't do well - although I'm certain they invested A LOT less resources into it than into any of the Warhammer ones. Hard to say if this one flopped (judging by review & player numbers) or was never meant to be very successful.
Before that, my memory fails me, but I do remember Empire failing pretty badly.
Basically, they tried again and again and again to cater to the more historically focused crowd, and it didn't pay off for them - while even their completely f*cked up WH2 & 3 releases raked in the money.
The last big success in the historical sector for CA must've been Medieval 2? 2007? And I'd argue that was largely due to (fantasy themed ) mods.

The point is, this isn't a question of fairness.
It's a business decision.
And the historical accuracy fans are just a very small group, which is why major companies avoid them and they are mostly served by small and/or indie devs, such as many Slytherine titles, etc. Games that look more like Excel than Total War, unfortunately.

I'm not saying there will never be a good purely historical game in a Total War style, but I very strongly doubt that CA will be the ones to deliver it, they focus on where they smell the cash for their AA-AAA productions. At this point I also doubt they even have the right "history buff/excited for history" people to pull it off to begin with.
I'd put my money on some indie developer eventually filling that particular gap of large scale real-time battles in a historical setting.

Total War: PHARAOH announced - Linux port from Feral Interactive (UPDATE: incorrect)
24 May 2023 at 5:30 am UTC

Quoting: GuestDisgusting. I hope they don't add monsters and mythology. That ruined troy for me, since I want to play a real historical general and relive an alternate history where the particular civilization survives the odds.
Maybe they won't do that.
And then the game will die as quickly as 3K did...
Or maybe this is meant to be a quick-ish cash-grab for them like Troy was.

The LARP that you want is much better served with 4X games of the Paradox kind.
Those where you never really enter the battlefield.
Or something like AoE that is "mostly" historical, but the small unit size enables a very different kind of gameplay.
But in the Total War style of gameplay, being restricted to historical units only is just plain boring. Because there isn't much you can do wrong, there isn't much you can do right, either.
There just aren't enough variables to keep the gameplay interesting - otherwise you'd still see people playing it.
There's also the issue of units looking identical at a glance (from a distance a guy with a sword looks pretty much the same as one with a spear/shield/zweihander/etc) - now a big-ass troll, that one always sticks out and helps readability on the battlefield.

Quoting: GuestPlaying with monsters is just childish rather than the chess game its meant to be.
Do you ever listen to yourself or do you just blurt stuff out, fire-and-forget mode?
"My historical make-believe is so much less childish than the make-believe with fantasy creatures"
"RPS combat is like chess, really, huehuehue *sips wine, tips fedora*"
Dear lord

Total War: PHARAOH announced - Linux port from Feral Interactive (UPDATE: incorrect)
23 May 2023 at 7:51 pm UTC Likes: 1

Indeed.

On Pharaoh itself...
Usually, historical games are not really my cup of tea, but with Troy they eventually added mythical creatures and people rightfully loved that addition.

Sticking to historical units just limits possibilities so much compared to when you have magic + creatures available.
There's only so much you can do with basic archers, swordsmen, pikemen and cavalry. And that gets old quickly in this kind of game.

Three Kingdoms was a really good game (in many regards better than WH3), but the limited unit variety still meant the game died a very quick death through players stopping to play, as all factions were basically identical except for cosmetics.

From the description, it sounds to me like this could be another Three Kingdoms - but I'm really curious if or how they want to spice it up.

Total War: PHARAOH announced - Linux port from Feral Interactive (UPDATE: incorrect)
23 May 2023 at 7:41 pm UTC

I've been playing WH3 (and 2 before) through Proton anyway.

Quite frankly, the Feral port isn't terrible, but it tends to come months after an update, and then not even include the latest patches for that update. I doubt Feral is to blame for this, most likely CA is giving them access way too late.
Anyway, all of that means it is borderline impossible to play the game with mods, or only for a very short time until the mods become incompatible (since they need to be up-to-date with the main game).

And since mods are the lifeline to make up for CA's incompetence in fixing their own bugs and balancing their own game, Proton is the way to go for their games anyway.

Starship Troopers: Extermination is a little janky but so much fun
18 May 2023 at 9:29 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: TcheyMy issue with these games is, i find it fun to play with total strangers randomly logged in, and at the same time i really hate playing with people yelling in the mics, panicking, swearing etc. I’ve always been a very calm and quite player, never yell or stress or throw my mouse over the desk or anything like that. For years i was still typing on keyboard, players muted, while "everyone else" was already on mics...
I find that it depends very much on the kind of game.
With a more cooperative game like Deep Rock Galactic, people tend to be very chill, so voice is fine. I'd assume the same here, to be honest. Everyone is just doing their part

But with competitive games like PUBG, Fortnite and all those... hell no! Bunch of amped up tryhards just being pissed half of the time. I don't need that in my ears.

Of course, I almost never play games of the second category anyway.

Steam gets game trials with Dead Space being first, plus Valve dumps Google Analytics
17 May 2023 at 5:30 am UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: TrainDocI hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Steam Deck UI and the new Steam desktop UI are based on CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework). The same browser basis steam used for web browsing in its previous revisions of Steam. So they've become even more dependent upon google imo.
Eh, Chromium is open source (with a very permissive license, too, from having a quick look at the license file). It is no more dependent upon a single dev or company than other projects.
Would Google drop it, the community would more than likely just pick it up.

There is no harm in such projects, same as something like using React.js in projects. Yeah, it's made by Faceb-... uhhhh "Meta", but it stands on its own.
And the dependency would only exist in case it was closed source, which it thankfully is not.