I bought STALKER 2, a masterpiece of post apocalyptic fiction and storytelling.
I was running the game on launch, an old friend calls me up on Discord, and says:
“So how is it?”
I say: “I don’t know yet, I just got to the first town past the tutorial.”
He says: “No, I mean the multiplayer.”
I lost the ability to think for a good 30-60 seconds trying to formulate the right string of words to respond with, from the psychic damage he’d inflicted with the presumption that it was a live service multiplayer game.
I think capitalism has weaponized brain rot into profits. As long as people open their wallets and not their brains, things will continue as planned. We’re literally paying for it.
What is a live service multiplayer shooter game and how is it different from like old school duke nukem 3D multiplayer?
I’ve been seeing the term “live service” and I can’t get a clear answer from Google. My computer gaming days are mostly behind me and I don’t always keep up.
Live service means the content comes from the company’s servers, and likely changes rapidly. The quintessential example is Fortnite. Updates are expected, not merely necessary fixes. Duke Nukem 3D had all the content installed on your computer from day one, without expectation that it would change (unless you made your own maps, or downloaded maps other USERS made).
Live service also means with every update are new forms of monetization (cough cough skin microtransactions), because according to the c suite, live service means continuous profit, or whatever the fuck that means
Live service means there are constant “content” updates being released by the developer/publisher.
This can be character skins, weapon skins or other cosmetics, new maps or modes, new classes, skills or really anything. A lot of times these are wrapped up in to “battle passes” time limited, purchaseable collections of stuff designed to keep players engaging with the game daily for carrots being dangled in front of them. Most of these are also time limited so if you don’t jump through all of the Hoops before the timer expires you no longer have access to the content that you were playing for and paying for.
To relate to old school gaming think of them like mini-expansion packs. The part that most people take issue with is the strategy behind the majority of them.
Almost all live service games are designed to keep players running on the hedonistic treadmill looking for the dopamine hit of that next unlock. In the more egregious free-to-play games you see that crafted through dark patterns in a way that incentivizes users to buy shortcut items through the marketplace to either automatically collect the ranks needed for the unlock or provide double accrual rate for whatever the experience marker is.
The reason they are coined lives service is due the nature of them receiving this constant update drip in a manner that would be live as opposed to static in traditional, Old School multiplayer games where you may see a large expansion every once in awhile but certainly not a weekly or monthly drip feed of new shit for the players to grind away at trying to unlock.
I bought STALKER 2, a masterpiece of post apocalyptic fiction and storytelling.
I was running the game on launch, an old friend calls me up on Discord, and says:
“So how is it?”
I say: “I don’t know yet, I just got to the first town past the tutorial.”
He says: “No, I mean the multiplayer.”
I lost the ability to think for a good 30-60 seconds trying to formulate the right string of words to respond with, from the psychic damage he’d inflicted with the presumption that it was a live service multiplayer game.
I think capitalism has weaponized brain rot into profits. As long as people open their wallets and not their brains, things will continue as planned. We’re literally paying for it.
What is a live service multiplayer shooter game and how is it different from like old school duke nukem 3D multiplayer?
I’ve been seeing the term “live service” and I can’t get a clear answer from Google. My computer gaming days are mostly behind me and I don’t always keep up.
Live service means the content comes from the company’s servers, and likely changes rapidly. The quintessential example is Fortnite. Updates are expected, not merely necessary fixes. Duke Nukem 3D had all the content installed on your computer from day one, without expectation that it would change (unless you made your own maps, or downloaded maps other USERS made).
That shit sounds addictive as fuck for the right kind of brain. Thanks for the explanation! .
Live service also means with every update are new forms of monetization (cough cough skin microtransactions), because according to the c suite, live service means continuous profit, or whatever the fuck that means
Live service means there are constant “content” updates being released by the developer/publisher.
This can be character skins, weapon skins or other cosmetics, new maps or modes, new classes, skills or really anything. A lot of times these are wrapped up in to “battle passes” time limited, purchaseable collections of stuff designed to keep players engaging with the game daily for carrots being dangled in front of them. Most of these are also time limited so if you don’t jump through all of the Hoops before the timer expires you no longer have access to the content that you were playing for and paying for.
To relate to old school gaming think of them like mini-expansion packs. The part that most people take issue with is the strategy behind the majority of them.
Almost all live service games are designed to keep players running on the hedonistic treadmill looking for the dopamine hit of that next unlock. In the more egregious free-to-play games you see that crafted through dark patterns in a way that incentivizes users to buy shortcut items through the marketplace to either automatically collect the ranks needed for the unlock or provide double accrual rate for whatever the experience marker is.
The reason they are coined lives service is due the nature of them receiving this constant update drip in a manner that would be live as opposed to static in traditional, Old School multiplayer games where you may see a large expansion every once in awhile but certainly not a weekly or monthly drip feed of new shit for the players to grind away at trying to unlock.
So, how far are you into it?
Oh, I finished it already and got the true ending.
Just like Stalker 1, it pays to not blindly run at quest markers and make up your own mind.
The game is a treat, but struggles to run on many systems, so my recommendation is the following:
FSR 3.1: Quality (66% resolution scale)
Frame Generation: On
AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2: On
1440p Epic on a 7900XTX averages 60 FPS in busy towns like Rostok.
60 FPS Native -> 120 FPS FSR 3.1 -> 240 FPS AFMF
I’ve got a 240 Hz OLED (for the dark scenes), and the total video draw latency with all of that is 3.11 ms.
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