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Messages - Spectere

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16
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: April 14, 2022, 02:56:51 AM »
Beginning of the month there was actually series x consoles on amazon for like...28 hours. I was tempted to snagging one, but the only exclusives I want to play is...the next elder scrolls game, and that won't be out for a while. Playstation I'll have GT, final fantasy 7 (figured since I now plan on buying a ps5, pointless to spend time on the ps4 version I only spent 2 hours on), more death stranding because I'd totally play it again, and street fighter 6 whenever that hits. Still hard to tell myself no to a new console when I am in the market for one. I did sign up on the playstation website to drop me an email when they feel like selling me a console, so maybe they'll drop me a line in a few...months...

Well, for what it's worth, you'll be able to play the Series X stuff on PC. It seems like Sony jumped on the timed exclusive train with regards to PC for some games at least, but there's definitely more reason for most people to get a PS5 than a Series console.

I'm honestly surprised that Microsoft hasn't partnered up with Steam to make the Series S/X (and, hell, why not the Xbox One as well?) a Steam Link. It feels like it would be a match made in heaven.

It's a lot, the more I play the more I think I have to adjust stuff. Now my arms are getting tired from how far the wheel is...but it feels about the same distance as my daily driver. I do typically drive with my right hand on 5 o clock position, resting my arm on the center console thingy. So maybe I just got weak arms, but even then in high traffic or bad weather I am 10 and 2 and I don't notice fatigue driving.

I dunno about the Fanatec wheels, but it definitely takes a bit more force to turn the wheel on my dad's G923 than it does on my Civic (in addition to having to fight through the force feedback). I think that's just a side effect of how those wheels are made. It definitely gives you a workout.

Biggest impediment is the way I am playing GT. I am a power gamer a lot of the time and path of least resistance, get all the things the most efficient way possible...and that is unfortunately the opposite of "getting better at wheel" when I am using pad to gradually cut my times a good 4 minutes faster per run AND making an attempt to learn manual transmission while doing so(no clutch, just paddles or X and Square buttons on pad). After either A I get tired of farming for cash, or B they nerf the method soon I can try and figure out how to learn the game efficiently.

Ah yeah, I know that feeling. It's hard to commit to a different control style when you're at a certain level of mastery with a different one, especially when you're in a situation where there's an easy, and undoubtedly temporary, method for farming.

VIDEO REPLY BECAUSE yknow showing > telling

Yooo, thanks! The one I was looking for was the "maximum steering angle." Gotta say, their config tool looks a lot more pleasant to use than the Logitech one.

Meh, I'll probably just save up for one of the Fanatec wheels. I've always loved me some racers, and it seems like every time I stop by my parents' place I wind up spending at least an hour placing racing sims on my dad's rig.

Trying moving wheel away from my couch changes things. Not better...but I think a lot of my issues were adjusting the settings on the wheel and in game, AND my sitting position. Will have to figure out a better setup in this living room that is also portable enough to put away.

That's the nice part about having a full on sim rig. Much easier to find a comfortable position, and much harder to stow the damn thing.

17
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: April 12, 2022, 05:52:10 PM »
There's a...bug? Probably, that takes the dodge tomahawk x which is a 1200 or something PP car, and you can mess with the gear ratio to a point where it knocks it down to 560. You then take this car which has stupid speed and grip into the wtc600 race on tokyo expressway. 12 laps, ~500,000cr payout, ~850,000cr with clean race bonus (even ramming walls and bumping other cars, for whatever reason I ALWAYS get clean race bonus). It's just too damn good not to do.

Heh. To be fair, this has been a problem since the dawn of time with GT due to the sheer number of variables at play. The main difference is that since GT5 they've been able to actually patch this stuff.

I'm not sure it's ever been quite that out of whack (though I distinctly recall GT3 having some very, uh, interesting quirks), but I haven't really looked into it in any sort of real detail.

Not sure if it's like this where you live, but I've noticed in a few stores there isn't even a section they'd stock playstation consoles. Like there's switches behind glasses, the xbox section usually has mostly nothing or a single series S console, and the playstation section...isn't there? Like you can buy games and controllers, but not even a section they'd stock a console.

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but a few months ago that was the case for both the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles at my local Best Buy. Both the PS5 and XBS/XBX systems were perpetually out of stock to the point where they reallocated the shelf space to things that actually exist. I think they've been having a slightly easier time with the Switch, since there was still shelf space for it, albeit no consoles up for sale. Considering the Switch came out in 2016 that's still kind of impressive IMO.

The only reason I ended up getting my Series X is because they had some program where you could effectively reserve a console if you used a special financing option that covered both the system and two years of GamePass Ultimate. It was slightly more than the combined cost of both (I think it was like $40 more?), but 1) it's still way cheaper than buying it from a scumbag scalper, 2) I would upgraded to GamePass Ultimate anyway (I was already a GamePass PC subscriber), and 3) you can unlock dev mode and install RetroArch, and it's one of the most powerful off-the-shelf emulation boxes money can buy.

AANNNDDDD a few notes on the wheel. Messing with settings is making things easier, looking up the fanatec recommended settings makes steering easier, but they see the force feedback toned down, which also makes things easier but less immersive. Will need to do more googling and experimenting with settings, would like a balance between immersion and improving my skill. With some of the grinding I've been doing on GT I have been going back and forth between the wheel and controller. The wheel can be physically fatiguing, and my times on pad still blow the pants off my  wheel times. I am improving enough to actually play the game instead of crash everywhere, but it'll be some time before im actually confident with the thing.

Being a bit discouraged, I have noticed I am not alone. Going from pad to wheel is like "way more fun, more immersive, but god damn is it hard and my times are worse".

Oh no, you're definitely not alone. There's a pretty big adjustment period with any dedicated controller, but I think steering wheels are probably one of the most extreme cases of that. I think the only thing that's easier with the wheel is shifting with a clutch (Forza lets you do that with a gamepad, but it never felt right to me).

You pretty much have to work up to a point where the wheel becomes second nature, to the point where its primary advantages over the gamepad win out. It's not at all surprising that wheels give you more granular control over the vehicle, but one thing that they don't have is input dampening (except in Horizon, apparently, which is another good reason to avoid that game). Racing games apply a bunch of input filtering on gamepads in order to prevent rapid thumb movements from causing the controls to spaz out. That's good because it makes them actually playable (and prevents pad players from having a turning speed advantage in competitive games) but it does allow wheel players to make faster steering corrections. When you get to that level your times will probably improve over your old pad times.

Oh, one more wheel question: I'm not sure if you tried playing any Windows racers with it, but do the Fanatec drivers let you adjust angle limitations? The wheels on Formula 1 cars, for example, have as much of a turning radius as normal cars. My dad's G923 lets you adjust that. It obviously doesn't limit the physical range, but it makes it so that if you turn the wheel, say, 180 degrees, it counts as a full turn.

18
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: April 08, 2022, 10:45:54 PM »
I have video.If you're curious about anything else and I'll see what I can do.

I SAW A KITTY.

And yeah, that's exactly what I was looking for. I kinda doubted it would be one of those setups where the brake pedal would just flop down to the floor with zero pressure, but it's good to know how it works.

Thanks for the vid!

Yeah I'd go with where the majority of your hours will be spent. Gran Turismo vs Forza, with...everything else being pc so at least you can use whatever on that platform.

The problem with me is that I generally like both games equally, haha. I somewhat doubt that the graphics are going to be too different between the Series X and the PS4 Pro (I mean, FM7 is technically an Xbox One game and it still looks fantastic. Racing games just don't seem to age as quickly), but I guess it would still be best to favor the current-gen console? I dunno.

Then again, GT7 is actually out and FM8 kinda isn't. But I have a copy of FM7, which is still hella fun?

Gah.

And good luck to both of us finding a ps5. Shoulda bought one last November when I seen them in person...

I don't know anyone who owns a PS5, yet I know two other people that own the Series X. I'm not sure if Microsoft's just not selling as many units or if they're just legitimately doing a better job with the whole manufacturing thing.

On one hand I could probably do without it, but on the other hand the new Patchet & Clank game looks incredibly fun, and despite my mixed feelings of the FF7 Remake so far I would like to see more of it.

19
Random Chat / Re: The Lamest Topic Ever Conceived
« on: April 08, 2022, 06:15:45 PM »
Pretty sure that watercooler issue I had also fried one of my NVMe drives (partial failure: a handful of cells died, but it was still generally usable). The one closest to the CPU ended up getting so hot that the glue on the Samsung sticker started melting out all over the place. Yikes. Fortunately I didn't lose any data (the OS partition somehow was completely unaffected, and the data partition literally just has Steam games on it, which I could just verify/redownload).

As with before, Falcon Northwest overnighted me a new drive, I dumped my old image onto it, and I've been keeping an eye on the temperatures just in case (they're higher than the other drive, given that this one is right between a 5900X and a 3090, but even with a full system load it still doesn't exceed 60C, which is fine).

Gotta say, it's nice having a single company deal with all of the RMA bullshit for me rather than having to hassle two different companies. I've had less downtime with this arrangement than I would have had with a single outage with parts that I sourced myself.

I also noticed that I neglected to mention anything about the support experience itself. I've never had a company as pleasant to work with as Falcon. They give you plenty of options for replacement, from them sending the parts to you to you sending the rig back to them (on their dime), will happily talk you through replacement if you need assistance, and everything is so unbelievably fast. Like, in both cases I expected to be down for a solid week, but that was far from the case.

Oh, they also use UPS instead of FedEx. Can't help but throw that jab in there. :P

20
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: April 08, 2022, 05:58:45 PM »
Well to be fair Eggman would argue over everything...I had my share of internet nerd arguing with him. Didn't help that I wasn't exactly that mature back then either. I think he was bad mouthing Shadow Complex for not being Super Metroid, and like, it isn't, but doesn't mean it can't still be a great metroidvania (which it IS). Not all games need to be the best ever to be worth playing, and no game is immune from criticism.

Fair enough. I still thought it was pretty goddamned hilarious, though. :P

Pretty pointless to pledge allegiance to a multi million/billion dollar company who literally doesn't care about you. I do see less of that in our age bracket, so maybe it's an age thing.

It doesn't help that we're all getting old and cynical at this point. I mean, we all pretty much got punched in the face by a recession right when we reached adulthood. That's enough to cause anyone to become a bit jaded.

I guess the same is true with a bunch of older zoomers now, too, given the economic effects of COVID.

I beat the game, but I swear those "friends" were meant to be insufferable? That said, I do have less tolerance for that stuff now a days, I'm not opposed to skipping dialogue/story anymore if it isn't entertaining "cough" inquisition "cough".

Given the general vibe of the newer Far Cry games, it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

I think I could still tolerate FC3 because you have a ton of shooty shoot time between story segments, but FH5 doesn't let up in the slightest. I should have probably seen it coming given how in your face FH4 was, but FH5 is somehow even worse. The game constantly pauses itself to show you something, there's always someone talking to you on the radio, there's a ton of obnoxious characters. The game will let you up for air for a few moments, then you'll hit some sort of milestone and it'll just plunge you back into the toilet bowl for another swirly.

I mean, I've played the late Xbox/early 360 Need For Speed games (you know, the ones literally modeled after the Fast and Furious) fairly recently and those manage to have a fun edginess to them without making me want to bludgeon myself into unconsciousness with the Duke.

I'm only being slightly hyperbolic. Honest.

I really wish I could change the music in GT7...it isn't horrible, but you have no say over what plays in the menus. AND FRANKLY I DONT WANT MY CAR RACING GAME TO SOUND LIKE A WEDDING, classic stuff is great, but wrong context. Hopefully ps5 version lets me play some chill beats or something, but ps5 is a hoax doesn't exist, what was I talking about?

GT's music selection has always been a little odd, though they did throw some humor in there once in a while, like playing Yello's "Oh Yeah!" when you lose a license challenge in GT4.

I just distinctly remember GT5's opening video. It had this almost anxiety-inducing song, followed by My Chemical Romance's "Planetary (GO!)". I mean, I love MCR and that's a great song (one of the only goodies on Danger Days, sadly), but that just seems like an odd song for a racing game, y'know? Kinda makes me wonder what they had playing on the original JP release.

Wheel Stand 2.0 + Fanatec Gran Turismo DD Pro.

Sexy af.

-having never experienced a FF wheel, this 5nm wheel has more force than my SUV...literally. I mean it makes sense for a car going 100mph to have, but one is my actual SUV, the other is a videogame. It's an experience.

Granted, I've never drove in a car with a racing spec suspension, but driving on a road at 100mph gives you surprisingly little feedback even with a sport-ish suspension.

I imagine the thing would really come alive (and I mean that very literally) in DiRT Rally. I had to grip the G923 tight to be able to overcome the forces in that fucker. Good god, imagine how the 8nm system would feel...yikes.

-the pedals are better than expected, they kinda look cheap, and foam on the break...PRETTY GOOD. Not outstanding, but well built and nice to use.

I'm curious: does the brake pedal have spring tension on it? Like, it doesn't just go to the floor when you press it lightly, does it?

-wheel comes with no screws. all the wheel came with was a few metal brackets you can use to bolt to a stand, but no bolts. wheelstand 2.0 had me covered with the correct bolts/washers/nuts I needed, but ymmv depending on your wheelstand of choice.

To be fair, I think that's pretty standard with higher end sim kit. My dad's G923 only came with mounting hardware for Logitech's included desk mount and my X56 HOTAS didn't come with any mounting hardware (I had to source my own for my 3D printed mount, and my MONSTERTECH mount has its own hardware as well).

I think they probably assumed that any mounting system is going to have its own brackets and such, so there isn't much of a point in including something that the user won't use.

-my gameplay with this thing. I expected to be slightly better than pad off the bat, what I got was I am SIGNIFICANTLY worse on wheel. I might need to dial in a few settings, but it's VERY hard for me to clean lap even an easy course like monza with this thing.

Don't worry, it's not just you. Using a proper setup is definitely more demanding than fiddling around with a controller.

At the end of the day, the extra precision and control more than makes up for it.

GT7 blurb

Thanks for the update!

It kind of seems like if I want to get a console-compatible wheel I'm going to have to pick a faction, at least for the time being. Since I've got the SeX I'm probably going to get a wheel that works with that, and after that I might look into getting something that I can hook up to the PS4.

Or maybe a PS5, if those things ever actually come out. :)

21
Gaming / Re: 2022 The Backloggening
« on: April 03, 2022, 04:20:06 PM »
Yeah, the story has to compliment the gameplay. If devs want to mostly tell an interactive story they can make a walking sim. Excellent gameplay can generally make up for having a bad story, but the opposite is never true.

I think a lot of the shift in Bioware's focus has to do with the increasing amount of time they're spending under the EA umbrella, honestly. Mass Effect turned from detail-focused sci-fi to drama-focused sci-fi pretty much in an instant, and while I don't have nearly as much experience with Dragon Age (I've only played a few hours of Origins) it wouldn't surprise me if it wound up in the same boat. It doesn't help that many of Bioware's old guard is long gone.

I'd say that Balder's Gate 3 is in good hands. Larian Studios does some pretty fantastic work. At some point I really need to play through Divinity: Original Sin 2. I mean, you can play as a scaly dude(ette) so I'm pretty much obligated to try it.

Funny, most of the people I know who played ToR wound up dropping the game when they got to Taris, including myself (as Sith, so I would have been in the high 30s, I think?). I appreciate some of the really wonky ways you can play it, too (light side Sith, dark side Jedi). It was pulled off surprisingly well, all things considered.

But yeah, it's definitely not KOTOR. I don't think we'll ever get a Star Wars game of that quality (or that of the LucasArts classics: Dark Forces, TIE Fighter, X-Wing, etc.) ever again.

22
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: April 03, 2022, 01:29:25 AM »
I have the first cup mostly cleared in FM7 (I technically have the cup, but I’m not moving on until I complete as many events in that division as I can) and it’s holding up for the most part.

I would say that the biggest mechanical issue I’ve run into so far is the dynamic environment system. One of the big features in the game is that the time can transition from day to night (and vice versa) and the weather than change. It looks fantastic and the devs have every right to be proud of it. However, I think they’re a little too proud of it. I know weather can, at times, be unpredictable, but I somewhat doubt that 20% of all races start with a clear, sunny day and end in torrential downpours.

One thing that I haven’t mentioned yet is the ForzaVista mode. I’m honestly amazed at how detailed Turn 10 modeled the car interiors. I have a car that’s fairly close to one in the game in terms of interior design (I drive a 2019 Civic EX, and the game features a 2018 Civic Type-R). I can’t really comment on the stuff that’s specific to the Type-R, but they even include subtle details like the side curtain airbag badging on the pillars and even normally-unnecessary details in the backseat (like the rear door kick panel speakers in the Civic hatchbacks).

If I had to complain about one thing, it’s that the widget that displays the turbo boost pressure on the console is too responsive. Maybe it’s better on the Type-R (you know, since it’s a Type-R and all), but the one on my EX is a bit laggy. :P

This doesn’t really have anything to do with the game itself, but rather the console itself. Music streaming! While the Xbox doesn’t have support for Apple Music or YouTube Music (I think it has a Spotify app, but Spotify’s audio quality is ass, so…), I found that it does have an app called AirServer that lets you connect to the Xbox via AirPlay, Google Cast, or MiraCast. So, basically, I can queue up a bunch of music on my iPad (or my phone), connect it to my Xbox via AirPlay (or Google Cast), and stream sick tunes as background music without having to dick around. Fucking sweet. I don’t know if the PS5 has anything like that, but I know the PS4 doesn’t.

This isn’t really all that new, either. The Xbox 360 allowed you to stream music from a PC running Windows Media Player, so when I was playing Forza 2 obsessively I would use that to listen to my own music.

23
Gaming / Re: 2022 The Backloggening
« on: April 03, 2022, 01:11:11 AM »
When you hear from people "single player mmo" usually people are exaggerating, but after a while this game really feels like one, and by all means is it a negative connotation.

No joke, the first time I saw gameplay of Inquisition I literally thought it was an MMO. I wonder if it was originally designed to be one before being shifted back into a single player RPG.

If not, this might be one of those cases where devs/publishers think “gee, well, people want AAA games to have more than 5 hours of content, and people get hundreds out of MMOs!!!!11” without realizing that people generally don’t play MMOs for the questing experience. I mean, yeah, it’s fun for a while, but there’s far more to them than just quests and a big world to explore. Even SW:TOR, which is probably one of the most story-driven MMO on the market (which, weirdly enough, is a bit of a downside…the dialogue system is extremely problematic when questing as a group), isn’t the most exciting thing. It still has that wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle issue in many ways.

24
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: March 31, 2022, 08:57:06 AM »
See, stuff like that makes me really wonder if the GT people even played Forza. You most certainly can trade credits for cars. That's never not been the case. The roulette wheel was always for bonus loot. To really hammer home how hypocritical that complaint is, I distinctly recall GT3 having a roulette wheel that could give you one of the best cars in one of the first cups. The gross FM5 MTX that I referred to before lets you directly buy cars with cash, but 1) that never replaced the credits system and 2) that's been out of the game for longer than it's been in it at this point.

It's honestly kind of hilarious how batshit insane diehard GT/Forza fans end up getting, especially when you consider that neither title is really considered to be full sim. It's like when Eggman completely lost his shit because I dared to criticize some of the worst elements of GT5 (which. from what I can gather, is considered by fans to be the worst game in the franchise, at least prior to this recent GT7 debacle). Pretty sure his meltdown is documented on this iteration of s.net if you need a laugh one of these days. :P

I dunno. I love both franchises for different reasons. Not sure why the concept that both games can be flawed in certain ways is controversial, but, y'know, console wars.

Anyway, FM7 replaces the wheel with a system that gives the player a selection between a) credits, b) either a discounted car or a free car (depending on how ridiculous the car is), or c) CLOTHES!!1 when they reach the next driver level. Yeah, you can dress up your driver. Who woulda thunk it. *shrug* I like how it isn't always a free car. It never felt quite right to me when games give you badass cars for free (and yes, this includes the monthly gift system…sigh. I doubt that's going away, though).

I think a big part of the Forza/GT thing is that they always had to walk a fine line between being on the most popular systems of the day, being appealing to sim racers, and being playable with a controller. Assetto Corsa, iRacing, beam.ng, and friends don't really have to bother with adding in steering dampening and stuff like that. It also helps that the PC is capable of addressing any ridonkulous input device, while the consoles generally have more stringent standards.

And yeah, Forza Horizon's biggest sin (aside from the dudebro complex it developed, but that was fairly recent) is the fact that it's labeled as a Forza game. The game is fine, but when you see that name it's hard to shake the pedigree of the main series. Honestly, I enjoyed FH1 just fine. The main issue I had with FH5 (and FH4, to a lesser degree) is that the characters are absolutely insufferable. If you've ever played Far Cry 3: you remember the bit at the beginning where it showed the pictures of their vacation shenanigans? That's basically the entirety of FH5. I'm not saying that your racer and his/her friends need to be captured by Vaas or anything like that, but they just needed to turn the volume down a bit. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit, lol.

I haven't looked into FM8 much. My general policy when it comes to games is to check the release date, make a mental note of it, and check back later when the title releases. It's pretty much the best way to avoid getting hyped, and it allowed me to enjoy DNF and CP2077 for what they were rather than for what I hoped they would be. The downside to this approach is, of course, that I'm the absolute worst person to ask about upcoming games. :P

I think you've basically talked me into the Fanatec ecosystem if I do happen to get a wheel at some point. I don't really care too much about the accuracy of the force feedback (my dad's G923 feels fine, and that sucker is strong like bull) but I do like how modular the whole setup is. Considering how much abuse wheels generally go through, being able to replace parts piecemeal is far from a bad thing.

But yeah, let me know what you think after it arrives!

25
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: March 30, 2022, 10:39:38 AM »
I've managed to play around with FM7 for a couple hours now. So, let me start off with what annoys me right out the gate.

So, the car licenses expired. From what I understand, car manufacturers tend to be rather unfriendly when it comes to license deals, so I guess it's no surprise that a bunch of them expired and essentially halted digital sales. However, the game itself wasn't really programmed to manage this in a sane way. See, the game gifts you with a bunch of cars, like the other Forza games. Monthly giveaways, yadda yadda. Here's the problem: a bunch of those cars are DLC, so right now I have a bunch of cars in my garage that I literally can't use. If you haven't claimed the free DLC and registered it to your account, or purchased the car packs in the past, you are now permanently locked out of them.

Now I'm sure if they had a choice they would have kept the packs up for purchase indefinitely, so I can't blame them for that, but couldn't they have released a final patch that prevented non-purchased or non-claimed DLC from showing up? Argh. The worst part is that the game doesn't handle it all that gracefully. You select it, it shows a download bar that instantly finishes, and…nothing happens. Annoying.

It would have been nice if they would have at least kept the licensing valid up until the release of FM8, but it's not like they could have predicted a pandemic. I'm sure that delayed the game by quite a bit.

I'm a bit "meh" on the new cup format that Forza uses. And by "new" I mean "the system they've used since FM3." It's a bit more of a guided experience (select a cup, do four races, select a different cup, repeat) rather than a system where you can freely select events. It's not bad, per se, but I dunno. I think it does unlock the ability to freely select events after you've completed everything, but we'll have to see.

Thankfully, the rest of it is good. Very, very good. Amazingly well-polished experience, very solid graphics despite it being a last gen title (it's Xbox One X enhanced, so it even runs at native 4K), and I think the only downside is that it hasn't gotten a 120hz patch for the Series X. Oh well. 4K60 is fine. It's a bit chatty, but it doesn't yank the controller out of your hand and beat you with dudebro bullshit like the later Horizon games do. If you already know what's up you can just hit A and continue on with your day. No big deal.

One thing I sorely missed when I messed around with the Horizon series is the feeling of weight and power. FM7 delivers that in spades, and it just feels right. You can't soar through fields at 200mph like you can in FH5, and thank god for that.

Oh, and the rewards are quite generous. Completing one event essentially earned me 350k credits, which can buy quite a bit of cars and upgrades.

I can definitely see myself enjoying this all the way up until FM8 comes out ("late 2022").

26
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: March 27, 2022, 01:01:08 PM »
Ugh. Turns out Forza 7 isn't actually available digitally due to licenses expiring, but for some reason it still let me install it despite not owning it? Wha? Good thing my Internet connection is uncapped, I guess.

Anyway, I did the logical thing and ordered a physical copy. Should be here tomorrow. Blargh.

Edit: Tried playing Forza Horizon 5. Fuck, I forgot how annoying the Horizon games are. It's basically the Far Cry 3 of racing games. Just a bunch of obnoxious dudebro bullshit, coupled with the game shoving shit in your face every five minutes. Like, I just wanna fuckin' collect cars and race.

Speaking of collecting cars, another huge issue with FH5 is the fact that they just shower you with S1/S2 cars at the beginning of the game. Like, you gave me a goddamn McLaren pretty much right from go. Why would I want to go through and buy worse cars after that? What happened to the idea of starting from the bottom and working your way up? Sheesh. I mean, if you want to start from something a little better than a baseline Honda, you can give the player a selection between, say, a Mustang Fastback, a WRX STI, a Civic Type-R. Y'know, reasonably zippy cars in that ~$30-35k price range that produce around 300bhp. Actually, those three would be perfect since you'd have your choice between FWD (Civic), RWD (Mustang), and AWD (WRX).

But hey, what do I know.

At least FH5 is a GamePass thing, so I'm only out a couple hours. And hey, uninstalling it allowed me to reclaim 114GB of storage on my Series X, so that's kinda neat.

27
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: March 26, 2022, 08:34:38 PM »
Hah! A Friday apology post. I knew it!

Yeah, it still bothers me that they did the nerf in the first place. I mean, they had to have known that it wouldn't go down well. From what I've seen GT7 is already kind of grindy, even by series standards, and I don't understand what they could have possibly thought would happen after they implemented it.

Still, keep me posted. If their rerebalance patch makes the game playable again I might pick it up. I dunno.

I ended up installing Forza Motorsport 7 (on Series X, though it's available on PC as well). I'll let you know how that goes after I log some hours. Honestly, I think one of the biggest advantages of the Forza franchise is cross-platform support. It's nice having the option to either chill out in the living room or to crank up the graphics and enjoy it at 144hz on my gaming rig.

28
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: March 23, 2022, 09:26:28 AM »
The ball's definitely in Polyphony's court now. Someone wrote an auto-farm script that works with PS Remote Play that nets 15 million credits per day. Now, are they going to hack together a "fix" for that (and bear in mind that since the script is just automating gameplay, "fixing" that would most certainly impact gameplay) or are they going to actually address the root of the problem? Going to be interesting to see, methinks.

As far as credit earnings are concerned, earlier GT games had tiered earnings. Basically, the pricier the cars in a certain tier would be, the more money you earn. Of course, that's on top of stock car races, manufacturer-specific challenges, and stuff like that. It was a good system, and the rate of advancement felt strangely linear despite everything.

I think you'll really dig GT4. It's modern enough to be very playable, even by today's standards, and it's just consistently good. GT5 was a bit uneven in a lot of ways: disqualification in some events if you hit another car (including if the AI just fucking rams your rear bumper), inconsistent model detail (most cars were literally lifted directly from the PS2 version, with a small number of "premium cars" being PS3-quality), etc etc. I haven't played GT6 so I can't speak for that one, but I heard that it largely resolves GT5's numerous issues.

Dammit, this is making me want to sit my ass down in front of my PS2 and boot it up. Agh. Gran Turismo always had a certain feeling that even my favorite Forza games lacked. I don't know what it is, considering how much overlap there is between the two titles. Maybe it's because Forza feels more like a game (wide range of difficulty settings, etc) while GT feels more like an experience (no bullshit. Just drive. If you lose, git gud).

And yeah, I do need to try Death Stranding at some point. It really seems like something I'd be into.

29
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: March 20, 2022, 08:09:25 AM »
Heh yeah, I heard about GT7's recent outage. Their excuses for their service model are shockingly close to the excuses Blizzard used for Diablo III on release, which is weirdly fitting.

Thanks for the heads up about the credits nerf. I hadn't heard about that little mess, and making a somewhat grindy game even grindier just reeks of trying to profit from MTX. It really sucks that they felt the need to do that. The worst part is that they could have easily sold car and track expansion packs (you know, providing tangible, à la carte, and undeniably optional content) instead of taking the bullshit Shark Cards approach.

You know what's funny? It sounds like they nerfed the credit gain to be at roughly the same level as the older games (bear in mind that the last one I played heavily was GT4). It sounds like the car prices are out of fucking control, though. I mean, there are some expensive cars in the older games, but I think the median point was somewhere around 100-200k? I dunno. It's been a while.

Goddamn, Snowrunner looks sick. Might have to pick that up for my pops, drive to his place, and commandeer his computer and wheel (it's my old PC, and the wheel was a birthday gift, so it's all technically mine, right?). :P

From what I can gather, Turn 10 did eventually stop putting in predatory microtransactions in the Forza games. I ended up dropping FM5 because it was so in-your-face that it was kind of gross, but apparently FM7 is MTX-free. I can also confirm that FH5 does not have microtransactions, just the traditional car/track expansions. If GT7 doesn't straighten up it looks like I might just hold off for FM8. It helps that I'll probably be able to just snag it on GamePass, so if they did decide to revert to their past shittiness I can just uninstall it and forget that it exists.

30
Gaming / Re: Racing Sims
« on: March 13, 2022, 04:09:03 PM »
Oh hey, interesting timing. I ended up getting my dad a Logitech G923 for his birthday this year. It's less than half the cost of the Fanatic one, including a shifter (and the G920 is even cheaper, though it didn't seem to be all that widely available). Might be worth looking into! I played some DiRT Rally with it and it is pretty goddamn solid. He ended up buying a mount for it as well (not one of the fancy rigs with a monitor stand and seat, but a standalone one he could plop in front of his PC), which makes everything a lot more stable.

And yeah, I still get into the vroom vroom once in a while! Since I got my Series X I've been playing Forza Horizon 5 off and on (though it is worth noting that the Microsoft Store PC versions of them are very solid—I played quite a bit of Forza Horizon 4 on PC), and I'm eagerly awaiting Forza Motorsport 8. I might actually pick up GT7 just so that I have something to play on the ol' PS4, especially since you mentioned that it still plays well.

IMO, Forza and Gran Turismo have similar levels of accuracy in varying ways (Forza seems to focus on tire physics while GT seems to focus more on the car itself), but I'd say that Forza is generally more accessible while GT leans toward being a more serious driving experience. Both titles are considered intermediate sims by people in the sim community, with Assetto Corsa (and other high-end sims) being a pretty big step over them. It's also worth noting that Forza Horizon takes some pretty serious liberties with realism (I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that you can drive and steer while off-roading at 200 km/h), so that strays pretty far from the mainline series. Fun games, though.

Dammit, this is making me want to buy my own wheel. Argh. y u gotta du dis 2 me mr vlad

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