@jazilla @ExThanos @Yams1980 These are hard economic times, and a lot of people have been out of work for a long time. I can see being envious of someone who at least has a steady paycheck, and presumably a benefits package. But that doesn't mean developers should simply accept harsh working conditions and a poor quality of life. Game development is creative work, and should be a job that people can love, not something that keeps them away from their families and turns their hair gray.
@King9999 I can't like your comment, but I can't dislike it either. It's just a sad statement about the industry that someone might not want to work at a studio that makes AAA titles because of concerns about working conditions.
It's one thing if the long hours and poor work conditions result in a great game. It's something else if they result in a poor to mediocre game (probably just someone trying to make deadlines for reasons that have nothing to do with making good games). It's not right in either case, but as a gamer I would have to be more forgiving of the former case than the latter. The results speak for themselves, and are what the gaming public and game critics see.
There needs to be more coordination and communication between developers and reviewers, and they both have to do what's necessary to serve the interests of the public. Thorough, but timely reviews by the reviewers. Honest representations and follow through by developers. The industry requires a partnership between developers and reviewers that serves the end user/consumer. Okay GameSpot... Make it happen. In the meantime I'll remember that there's plenty of blame to go around when reviews are late or inaccurate. It's not all on you. :)
I want real-time photorealism in 1080p or higher (and it's high time someone made a 2560x1600 desktop monitor at smaller than 30" diagonal). But my main thing is that I'm a PC gamer, and since most of the best new games are developed for multiple platforms these days, that means my visuals are limited by the consoles. If the next generation of consoles are weak, then the games I get to play are limited by the greedy console manufacturers who put gimmicks and profits above power and visual quality.
We're still a long way from real time photorealism. Perhaps in ten more years. I believe I've been playing this at DX 11 High, which is the best compromise between performance and visual quality on my year and a half old laptop. Performance is actually pretty good in regular gameplay, but seems choppy in some of the story sequences. My laptop's screen is 1920x1200 at 17" diagonal. That's a finer pixel pitch than you can get with a desktop monitor, and it means I barely notice the jaggies, but if they ever make a 2560x1600 desktop at less than 30" diagonal, I'll have to get one, because it's not easy to upgrade a laptop. With a desktop PC you just swap out the graphics cards every couple of years.
There are games today that struggle at 2560x1600 if you max all settings and run with only one or two GPUs. So I see why some people might want a three GPU setup.
So it seems to perform about on par (sometimes better, sometimes worse depending on the game) with a single-GPU nVidia GeForce GTX 280. Fortunately, that's what I have in my system, so I don't feel like I'm losing out. Also, isn't having two GPUs on the same card cheating? I'm just skeptical of multi-GPU anything right now because of all the driver-related crashes I had when running dual 8800 Ultra in SLI with Vista 32-bit. Also, like my GTX 280, the 4870 X2 requires both a 6-pin and an 8-pin. I actually had to use an adapter to convert a pair of 6-pins into an 8-pin, and now I don't have enough PCI express power cables in my machine to run multiple GPUs, in spite of my "future-proof" Enermax Galaxy 1000W PSU, which I bought barely over a year ago.
The lack of camera rotation/orbit functionality in Titan Quest sucked, because the early gameplay movies while it was in development lead us to expect that functionality. Iron Lore is gone, so perhaps Diablo 3 is the closest thing we'll ever have to a Titan Quest 2 (unless someone else picks up the IP). Blizzard never promised us a flexible camera in Diablo 3, so I probably won't be disappointed by its absence (especially if they take this into account fully in the gameplay, so you don't feel you need more camera control options to target enemies attacking you from certain directions). It goes to show that it is important to make most of the core design decisions before you start releasing information on a game.
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