Earnest question, how is this actually legally viable?

Obviously the decompilation is open source, but those are usually distributed without assets, in some kind of builder that requires a copy of the game. And clearly the original game isn’t open source, or else this decompilation wouldn’t need to exist.

So… has the game been released free to the public without the source code? Has Lego or the original developer blessed this project? Or is the game just… in legal limbo or something where they feel comfortable taking the risk?

We had a similar experience with our cat when she was a kitten. Got in the ceiling through our little maintenance closet, was quite an experience hearing our cat pacing and meowing in the ceiling, while trying to lure it back to the way it got in with taps and treats.

The closest argument that “the Bible argues for a work week” is the first two chapters of Genesis. God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th.

… That’s it. That’s the whole reason our work week is the way it is. Jewish tradition really ran with that, and Christianity started as a Jewish sect. And of course for-profit business tried to jam as much work as possible into that framework. You can thank unions for the second day in your weekend.

Everything else here, the “10 hours a day” and whatever else, is all just embellishment, possibly citing other parts of the Bible to make it sound more plausible.

Interesting, I wonder if this is more stable than it is on Windows?

I find it handles controllers just fine, but I find the headset (the official Xbox one) drops out regularly. Still leaps and bounds better than Windows Bluetooth, but the drops definitely worsen the experience. Although it also did that to me on Series X.

Alright, fair enough. The brand new AAA graphical showcase doesn’t run above 40FPS if you’re insistent on native 4K from a 6800XT. I’m not sure that qualifies as “runs like ass” like your original comment, but it’s a fine thing to qualify.

I will add however that there’s no mention of XeSS issues on the “known issues” page, so I’m unsure what you’re referring to. Only an issue with FSR frame generation and manual window resizing, and frankly I wouldn’t recommend frame generation in any circumstance anyway. Perhaps the issue you’re referring to has already been resolved?

… am I supposed to be impressed by that?

It’s better than you’re getting on the tier-up card from the exact same generation as what you’re running, so… it pretty clearly indicates something is going wrong on your end.

And that’s with the forced ray tracing. Regarding FSR, DF recommends using XeSS, which I’ve had no problems with even using performance mode to play on a 4K display.

It’s only really fair to judge the performance cost of the ray tracing if you’re actually running the game fairly. If you’ve maxed out every setting to ultra nightmare at native 4K or something to get that “can’t go above 40FPS” figure, then I have no sympathy for you or your performance complaints.

I think you may want to look into DF’s recommended settings (just skip to the table and read from there if you aren’t interested in the details), touching base with my friend who I sold my previous 6700XT to, he reports a rock solid 60FPS targeting native 1080p.

That said, they don’t claim a performance increase that drastic, so you may have some other performance issues?

Oh, and DF stands for Digital Foundry, often considered the best source for benchmarking new games these days. They have several recent videos on Doom: The Dark Ages, graphics nerds always take an interest in a new idTech title.

Dude, what are you on about? Sure, it’s not as easy to run at 300 FPS, but it’s a new boundary pushing game and for what it’s doing it runs astoundingly well.

Absolutely gorgeous, and must rely on black magic because even DF reports it never has any stutter, traversal or shader, despite having massive levels with ridiculous fidelity and not even having a shader precompilation step. Hell, I can’t even understand how they got Denuvo to not introduce stutter.

Not to mention it’s somehow fairly light on the CPU despite huge enemy counts with good AI, raytracing, the best destruction physics I’ve seen in ages, and the streaming demands of massive levels. I’m completely GPU limited with a decent CPU and a 7900XTX.

Hell, it even hits 60 on consoles while doing all of this, the game’s performance is witchcraft. Eager to see the path tracing and how far we’ll be able to push this game a decade from now, like how I can run Eternal at native 4K/120 now.

I can provide an earnest argument, if you like. I put 400+ hours into DotA in college, and enjoy games like Valheim, Lethal Company, and Monster Hunter with friends regularly, but pretty adamantly avoid competitive anonymous multiplayer these days.

1. I dislike the increased commitment of multiplayer games. When playing with a group, I have to worry about “letting down” the group, and must play fully sweaty at all times. Learning is also much more stressful and frustrating due to the social element. Even if the group isn’t toxic, I’m more aware of my failures and their consequences.
2. There are engaging and difficult PvE games that challenge me, with good AI. Souls, Sekiro, DOOM Eternal, and Hollow Knight are all excellent examples with lots of unique and interesting challenges. I also enjoy stuff like speedrunning, which can take easy but fun games like Mario Odyssey and raise the skill ceiling infinitely.
3. Matchmaking eliminates the feeling of progression. I love the satisfaction of improving. I.E. Beating Sekiro and starting NG+ only to crush the opening areas that took hours because your skills have improved so much, travelling through an earlier area in Dark Souls and marvelling at how easy it feels now, or setting a huge new PB in a speedrun. Matchmaking with strangers eliminates these moments, because your MMR increases with your skill, trapping you at a 50-ish% win rate permanently, unless you smurf, which is short lived and kinda scummy. You may improve and hit a win streak, but will quickly be slapped back as your MMR increases. And I don’t find seeing that number climb up to be nearly as satisfying as real moments that prove your skill.
4. I enjoy some atmosphere and narrative. It’s tough to deliver a cool world via character trailers exclusively, and most multiplayer games never get an “Arcane”. A single player experience will always have some of that, and it can be awesome.
5. Pacing and variety. A good game experience is paced out with moments of calm, maybe some puzzle solving or narrative, and moments of intensity and tough fights. That stuff is good when done well. Something like DOOM Eternal gets my heart pounding like nothing else in arenas on higher difficulties, but knows to let you breathe in between, so I can enjoy that heart pounding pace for more than 30m at a time. Online games will try with something like spreading players out in a Battle Royale, but it’s not the same.
6. Also, I just like pausing, lol. If my wife needs something, it’s nice to be able to just put the game down, I don’t like being chained to my desk for 20-40 minutes depending on how the game goes because I’ll lose rank and disappoint the team.

Also, I say anonymous because a lot of these problems disappear if you play exclusively with friends. I love the Smash series, for example. You have an objective skill benchmark in the friend you’re playing with, as well as someone who’s understanding when you have to go or do something. That’s really cool, but also damn hard to schedule and not something I do often for PvP.

Competitive anonymous multiplayer is great, for those that like it. More than happy to let you enjoy that. But personally these cons outweigh the pros for me, and I’ll continue to be disappointed when something I’m excited for turns out to be competitive anonymous PvP.

At this point I think it’s just fun. So much of the conversation around Elon is deadly serious, doom and gloom, and this is just… lighthearted mocking about something that doesn’t matter. It’s a refreshing change.

And it does seem to matter to him, so undermining that image he works hard to curate is an added bonus. And hell, if Path of Exile is what makes someone realize what a pathetic lying moron he can be, then that’s fantastic as well, even if it’s an odd thing to have that epiphany for.

Yeah, HDR is one of my main hangups as well. Very interested in moving my living room gaming PC over (the only place I deal with Windows), but I need a lot of things to just work with little to no hassle, and also no hit to performance. I didn’t build a very expensive PC for a compromised experience, as much as Windows is regularly a massive PITA.

I think a lot is being made of this headline, honestly. Indiana Jones did the same thing using the same engine… and runs well on a broad variety of hardware, including AMD cards with no dedicated RT accelerators. And that’s not an experience designed with high framerate competitive action in mind.

I also literally booted Doom Eternal for the first time in a while today, enabled raytracing, and played at 120FPS with 4K native on a 7900XTX, all settings on High. Id knows how to frigging optimize a title, and you can bet their raytracing implementation will be substantially better optimized than the RT we’re used to seeing. So long as you don’t run it with Path Tracing (a future forward feature, like Crysis back in the day), I fully expect you’ll still be able to get high framerates and incredible visuals.

Wait for the Digital Foundry tests before buying if you’re uncertain, absolutely, but I really don’t see any reason to be concerned with the way idTech 8 has been shaping up.

Exactly. Consoles exist as a super low barrier to entry, value play for casual gaming. If you just want to have something on your living room tv, a console instantly achieves that, with no debugging or technical know-how required whatsoever.

I switched from a Series X to a living room gaming PC last year and absolutely adore it, but I’m also willing to spend hours tinkering with emulators, playnite, settings, etc. I actually enjoy messing with it, so this is way better for me, but I’m absolutely aware that it’s been a massive amount of fiddling to get my experience this clean and integrated, and I’ll never manage something like Quick Resume.

If you want it to “just work” absolutely go with a console. If you like to tinker, are bothered by nitpicky details, play a lot and need to cut costs, or just really care about features like higher refresh rates, and aren’t put off by a lot of settings and performance testing, then 100% go for a PC.

It’s not lying as much as it’s advertising. If they’re asking about your greatest weakness, tell them. Just don’t neglect to mention how you mitigate that weakness too, and are improving. Don’t let your answer end on “I’m a disorganized mess”, end it on “so in the last year, I’ve started building and using checklists and it’s been really effective”.

In the same way, be up front if they ask about the criteria you don’t meet. But consider your entire answer, again, you can say something like “I actually haven’t worked in that language before, but I’ve done lots of work in Python and Java, so I’m confident I can pick it up quickly as needed”. If they don’t ask, then it probably wasn’t really that important of a criteria to them, so you shouldn’t waste your interview time talking about it either.

Don’t volunteer all your worst traits, you only have an hour, so focus on describing your strengths as often as you can. Nobody expects to completely understand you as a person in one hour, they’re specifically asking you to come in and advertise yourself. Instead, read between the lines in the listing (I.E. Things mentioned in the job description or title are likely more important than something in a single bullet point. Look for repetition, or how much they talk about each requirement.). Figure out what the “customer” wants that you’re good at, and ensure you emphasize it, repeatedly. Define clear takeaways and make sure they know what you’re offering, and will actually remember it too.

And practice your answers to many questions. Come up with your best anecdotes for “a time you resolved a conflict with a coworker” and all that nonsense in advance, so that you can confidently segue into those stories that best emphasize your takeaways when asked. Do some research on the company to come up with a good answer to questions like “why do you want to work here?”. The answer doesn’t have to be your top priority, which is obviously “a paycheque”, but just append an unsaid “instead of somewhere else” and answer honestly, because people are good at detecting insincerity. You likely haven’t applied to every company on earth, so tell them why you chose them.

Lastly, like an advertiser, don’t be afraid to segue from other questions into your prepared answers. “Yeah, I’ve always loved X, that’s why I wanted to work here actually, I’d heard a bit about how you were getting involved with X, but with this interesting twist, and thought that sounded like something I’d really enjoy working on”. The interview questions are designed to get you talking about yourself, it’s not a survey where the strict questions are all that matter, and you can simply joke about it if the question comes up later.

Haha, dang it. Seems I got confused, turns out that was just a bedrock thing. Could’ve noticed that if I’d looked more closely at my own link 🙄

To add to this, Minecraft Java Bedrock used to ship their code with all the debug symbols included, making modding easy. Although these were recently removed, much to the displeasure of the modding community. Everyone should throw a vote at this feedback issue to request them back, btw:

https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/360054740151-Re-add-debugging-symbols-to-the-releases-of-bedrock-edition

Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.

I don’t think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).

But you’re right, I’d love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I don’t think they’re done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.

I also agree there’s some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Malenia’s waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge that’s impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more “reactionary” play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.

I’m not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but I’m also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but it’s far from a boring +1 iteration that doesn’t try anything.

Let’s clarify a little bit here, because I actually am curious. How much easier would you actually want the game to be? Howlongtobeat puts Sekiro’s main story at 30 hours. Asking a friend who’s very experienced at Sekiro and has played it dozens of times, he takes ~10 hours to beat it on a replay. So even if the game was dead easy, and had nothing to teach you, and you had no reason to explore or look around, you’d only save a maximum of 2/3rds of that time. More realistically, it would probably take 15 hours to complete if we factor in the exploration, even if the game was straightforward enough that you could kill each boss in only a few attempts.

So what would you have liked this easy mode to look like, in order to save you that time? And what value would you have gotten from that, in what amount of time, compared to setting aside 30 hours, or watching someone else play it?

To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?

I mean… quick recap here. You said the way I was behaving was “very, very weird”. You claimed I was offended solely “because I had to see an option on the screen”. You claimed my reasoning was about “lesser gamers being able to play it”, clearly insinuating that I simply have a superiority complex as a “weird ideological axiom”, as if it’s the foundation of the way I think. You also basically stated that I’m deeply bothered by anyone having a different opinion or experience.

Don’t try to gaslight me about this being insulting. I’ve never expressed any anger here at disagreement, nor have I brought up anything about superiority or inferiority. You’re bringing baggage into this from other people you’ve argued with before, and then insulting my character over a strawman version of my argument.

Also, when you clearly associate a behaviour with a person, insulting that behaviour is insulting the person. You can’t claim you didn’t associate the two when you chose to write “YOU” in all caps several times while describing the behaviour you were insulting.

It’s also not at all ridiculous to assume the “What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?” at the end of that rant was rhetorical like the questions preceding it, again, don’t try to gaslight me into thinking that quote was purely “laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was”, and that I’m being “sensitive”.

If you actually didn’t mean offence, then I’d encourage you in future to skip the “array of possibilities”, especially when those possibilities are exclusively descriptions of assholes.

That aside, thank you, I actually do appreciate you recognizing that you can’t just “double your health and damage” and get a good easy mode. That’s an argument I frequently come across while having this discussion, that they could “just scale everything down” in an hour or so, it’s become what I tend to assume people mean when they say “just add an easy mode”. You’re also a very different person than what I usually end up having this argument with, in that you have actually played Souls, and understand the value of the more challenging default, but still wanted an easy mode. In that sense, I’d have no issue if you had played an easy mode. There’s lots of mods to do so, for example, and I wouldn’t have any problem if you had gone and played one. Frankly, I wouldn’t have issue with anyone installing a mod to play an easier version. The option is literally there, just not on console, unfortunately, but I blame the console manufacturers for that, not From Software. I like the clarity in installing a mod that you aren’t playing the game as intended and getting the full experience, which means it doesn’t “segment the user base” or potentially cause people to miss out by thinking they’ve experienced everything From Soft intended.

The argument I generally take issue with is that From Software have some kind of “moral responsibility” or are “stupid and losing business” for not adding an explicit easy mode. A half-baked easy mode would do more harm than good, in terms of review scores and giving many players a worse experience. And a well-made easy mode is not an insignificant amount of work. Balance is one of the hardest things to get right, From Soft is literally still doing balance patches on the base game of Elden Ring, and easy mode would essentially double the amount of situations where things have to be balanced. It would also double QA work, as every scenario needs to be tested in both difficulties. And just… loading different things conditionally into a space isn’t always easy either, look at all the struggles and weird bugs id have experienced with DOOM Eternal’s Master Levels, and they’re a team lauded for their technical prowess. One of From Soft’s best attributes is that they iterate very quickly. A team of ~400 people have made Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring in 11 years. That’s more than a game every 2 years, not even counting DLC and other projects, in an era where game development is trending towards 5+ years as the norm. I’ve already asserted that I don’t feel an easy mode would be nearly the same quality of game as the main entry, so I’ll come out and outright say that I don’t think an easy mode would be worth the months of effort that properly balancing and tweaking such a mode to make it good would add to development. But that’s totally subjective, and you’re more than welcome to do that math differently.

If From Soft release their next title with an easy mode, then great. I won’t go picket their office or anything, I’m not pathetic. But if they do, then I really hope it’s good, and I really hope the people who finally “get” to play will give the intended difficulty a chance.

Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole “participating in the zeitgeist” thing.

A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesn’t have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit “putting your foolish ambitions to rest”. If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without “learning the attack patterns of the monsters”, and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? There’s an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:

We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment. We want everyone to feel elated and to join that discussion on the same level. We feel if there’s different difficulties, that’s going to segment and fragment the user base. People will have different experiences based on that [differing difficulty level]. This is something we take to heart when we design games. It’s been the same way for previous titles and it’s very much the same with Sekiro.

If all you really wanted was to just… experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube let’s play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.

I’ll also add, that stuff doesn’t go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. It’s what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lil’ Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.

I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I don’t think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didn’t realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the “Dark Souls saved my life” people, who might’ve picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and “fragment the user base”.