NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com
on 16 Sep 19:33
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I accepted and just didn’t buy it to begin with.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 20:17
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Was going to say… Who is out there buying games way outside their machines’ specs? Seems pretty straightforward.
I do get a little annoyed at the folks angry at BL4 using a higher end engine. Like, it does look a lot better than previous iterations. That engine upgrade wasn’t for nothing.
There are a ton of looter shooters floating around that aren’t using the Unreal 5 engine. Just play one of those instead. Hell, go back and play BL1. I’m pretty sure that thing runs on a toaster.
inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 20:31
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This game goes into the twenties on a freaking 4070 at 1440 on high settings and doesn’t even get 60 at medium settings
Now let’s take a look at the “recommended specs” Randy put out there
Sorry but when in the world is that even remotely acceptable that you consider last Gen was outside machine specs when the developers said sure two generations ago is perfectly fine, which btw, holy crap it’s not.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 21:42
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There’s a difference between a game being way outside of your specs because it’s graphically very advanced and your hardware is old, and a game just being unoptimized slop that expects its users to deal with by throwing higher specs at a fixable problem.
I have a brand new 5070ti that can play all kinds of UE5 games with much better graphics than BL4 at 4k resolution with ray tracing at a decent frame rate without relying on frame gen. And I’m in the top few percentiles here.
CaptainBlinky@lemmy.myserv.one
on 16 Sep 22:52
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I have a 3090 in a 7800x3d box with 64 gb ram and I had to drop from 7680x2160 to 3840x1080 to get decent framerates. I get better performance in Star Citizen. After a few CTD’s I just went ahead and got a refund.
UE5 can run fine on older hardware, but most devs either aren’t given the time to properly optimize or don’t give a fuck about it and would rather rely on upscaling and frame gen tech.
Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 20:38
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After the borderlands 3 trainwreck it seems weird that people are apparently buying BL4
ampersandrew@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 21:04
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It’s hard to consider an 81 on OpenCritic to be a trainwreck. People tend to buy games that review well, especially when it’s a co-op shooter with basically no competition.
Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 21:22
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Damn I had to look that up cause it seemed unbelievable. I am shocked it reviewed that well. It just seemed so awful to me.
Am I so out of touch?? No, the children are.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 21:24
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Nah, that game’s great. The writing’s not good, especially for the villains, but people like that game because it’s good.
You aren’t out of touch. Even the worst games don’t get that poor of a review. When you job depends on being on their side, it turns out you can’t voice an honest opinion.
bl3 is a fine game. its just critics of it are so very vocal that nobody feels like saying they like it.
jordanlund@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 22:02
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From what I hear from people actually able to play the game, it’s better than 3.
Something like:
2 > 4 > 1 > 3 > Pre-Sequel
CaptainBlinky@lemmy.myserv.one
on 16 Sep 22:49
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I honestly don’t know what this “trainwreck” talk is. BL3 was passable. I didn’t like the antagonists, but the game played fine if purples dropped way too much and the new guns weren’t great. People make it seem like it was the Worst Game Ever and I don’t get it. The pre-sequel was hot garbage, but 3 was fine.
there’s no nuance in anything anymore. you can’t just say “oh this isn’t really for me, honestly.”
you have to write 18 paragraphs about the fall of the video game industry because of this one game and how its hot trash, kills newborns while they sleep, etc.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 19:37
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Is this not the third tabloid style headline here about essentially the same thing?
tidderuuf@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 20:11
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It’s 100% an astroturfing campaign. Doesn’t matter if it looks good or bad, it’s still getting awareness out there about the game which generates clicks and probably makes more money than the game itself.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 20:12
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That would be hard to believe, because the game already conservatively made tens of millions of dollars in a few days.
That would have to be the weirdest advertising strategy in the history of all advertising.
My our game, it’s really shit
CidVicious@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Sep 20:13
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Well it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but Randy Pitchford is really good at providing ammo for these types of headlines. Guy needs to learn to keep his mouth shut sometimes.
jordanlund@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 19:41
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How is it on console though? Better on PS5 or Xbox?
inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 21:03
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The cam girl porn was the valuable bit. I sure as hell know nobody wants the Borderlands code
very_well_lost@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 21:50
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Yet!
givesomefucks@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 20:12
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Apparently the graphics are basically the same as 3, but performance is dog shit on even the best hardware and crashes are unavoidable.
When people complained, he said they need to use AI fake frame and upscale from 720. Which still wasn’t good performance.
It might get fixed later in updates. But this guy is handling so badly he might legitimately be mentally unwell. It’s at the point it’s weird he still has a job
Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de
on 16 Sep 22:57
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That’s probably not the cause of the issues here though. Denuvo impacts game performance but not as badly as Borderlands 4 is seeing. The engine they chose has issues even on non denuvo games. It’s an unoptimized mess and then gearbox didn’t optimize any further themselves.
SoupBrick@pawb.social
on 16 Sep 20:14
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BL4 is running horribly, even on higher end PCs. I have a 4090 and a decent processor, but only getting 80FPS max with a good few settings on low or off and AI frame gen on (I would rather not, but performance is just that bad).
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Sep 21:21
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Holy shit you get 80 fps with frame gen on with a 4090? What resolution?
According to hardware unboxed 4090 at 1440 natively on the badass preset gets an average of 67 FPS. I'm not defending the poor performance of Borderlands 4, it's definitely ass, I just don't think we should take insane statements from randos at face value. Always verify performance with reputable sources instead of someone saying something on the web without giving the full picture. Who knows what they've done with their computer to get such poor performance.
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Sep 12:57
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That doesn’t really seem to contradict the other person’s claim that much? In fact like your said if just a few other things are running on that person’s pc and eating some resources, their claim seems super believable in the context of what you just said so I’m not sure what your point is.
A reviewer/tester is going to be benchmarking in a best case scenario environment. Real people using their real computers will be experiencing a huge variety of other environments. Different temps, hardware settings, programs running, etc. None of that context excuses the performance, and makes that person’s performance claim believable.
And Silksong will also run like shit if I run an AI model in the background that's hogging all resources, but if I said Silksong ran like shit on a 4090 you'd say I'm full of shit. But with Borderlands 4 it would be okay to say that because it fits your biases?
My point is you can't take such statements at face value. They need to be looked at critically because who knows what the person is doing with their machine or what kind of information they're omitting. Maybe the other person has a CPU bottleneck because they threw a 4090 together with a Ryzen 7 2700X? If you take them at face value you're just reflecting your own biases which means you call it bullshit if it doesn't fit your bias or you agree with it when it does fit your bias.
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Sep 14:54
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But my guy, you provided context which shows that Borderlands 4 does run like shit on a 4090 in a lab environment.
Borderlands 3 on highest settings with a 4090, a worse cpu, at 1440p ran at 210 average fps.
You telling me that Borderlands 4 looks good enough compared to 3 to explain a 143 fps drop?
spamfajitas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Sep 23:51
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What’s crazy is how inconsistent the problems seem to be. I’ve got a 4080 Super and a decent processor, and I’m getting 120-140fps with most settings as high as they can go with frame gen on at 1440p. Only crashed once in about 40 hours of gameplay.
SoupBrick@pawb.social
on 17 Sep 00:33
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I am going to need to double check my settings then. I might have only enabled DLSS and not frame gen.
Oh, you have identical specs and built at the exact same time? Yeah, half of you are going to randomly have issues and half won’t. Enjoy head casing about that.
I’ve got a 6800xt and it runs really well on medium settings. Looks pretty good as well. Never had the game crash on me either. It’s 60fps but I’m cool with that. Gameplay feels smooth at that and it’s steady. No upscaling no frame Gen. 3440x1440.
I have heard a lot of people are having issues with Nvidia hardware though.
USSEthernet@startrek.website
on 17 Sep 04:37
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That AAAA to you!
Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Sep 20:00
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Say it with me now: “Fuck Randy Pitchford”
UE5 is a shit engine as of now, but what can be expected of a company run by someone just as insufferable? Epic took the advent of tech like DLSS and frame generation as an excuse to disregard performance and functionality.
All you have to do is pick out any UE5 game that exists and Google that + “performance.” Even meeting the recommended specs for Rogue City, I still had to find specialized configs to get the game the game stop crashing on launch, and even then, those specs were based on using upscaling and frame generation. In reality, “recommended” was about 25fps at 1280x720. That used to be, and realistically should be unthinkable.
AND EVEN THEN, the engine’s built-in settings for upscaling and frame generation caused even more crashing. Ultimately, I had to disable it in-game and turn it on in my driver settings because of the busted-ass engine. This is a problem with the state of gaming, and people like Randy, Tim and their supporters are only exacerbating it.
The engine’s not the problem. Personally, I have only played a single game on UE5 that had shit performance on my aging PC (I can’t even use DLSS), and it’s an early access, independently made, survival crafting game. It was never going to perform well or even be finished.
Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 20:29
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All this stuff sounds like Randy Pitchford building out his personal brand.
I wish anything involving Pitchford was not reported on (at all).
I swear I have no idea why they let him talk. He doesn't even own the company, surely someone at 2K could just go... you know... shush.
I don't even think the BL4 thing is that bad, on the face of it. There is really no need to make it worse.
"We have been made aware of some performance issues in certain systems in our new release, we'll be looking into performance improvements in future patches". It's not that hard. At this point just copy/paste whatever the other thousand UE5 games said, go fix the wonky precompilation boot step and stop digging a hole.
Hell, it's even easier than that, because they have actually pretty much put that out. All he really needed to do was shut up about it.
rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world
on 16 Sep 22:00
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I have come to accept that this is a PR campaign to plaster the name everywhere all over social media and let it worm its way into currently pissed off gamers’ heads for a few months down the line when they’ve calmed down and inevitably buy the fucking thing.
Pitchford is a slimeball. Rarely has a man who is allegedly not an insurance or used-car salesman given off such nakedly scummy vibes.
We need to stop giving free publicity to this little marketing man, and to this poorly optimised, expensive game.
I don’t think there’s anything that well thought out, and it’s just someone who takes things personally and cant resist blurting out their thoughts.
Since after what he said my thinking was even if my friends beg me to get the game on discount I wont because of how personally irritated the comments have made me.
rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world
on 17 Sep 07:14
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Not casting aspersions towards you personally, but we all know how gamer boycotts go generally. As in, they don’t. People cave and buy the games anyway, once they’re over the initial outrage. This is 100% marketing.
Those people buy games regardless. But this feels like a personal challenge of being called out. Like the face popping out and going “yeah I knew you couldn’t resist bitch”. Usually there isn’t that psychological push back being put out there. It’s not needed.
rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world
on 17 Sep 17:51
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We’ll see how it comes out in the sales figures, I suppose! I would like to believe you’re right but I just have absolutely not a jot of faith that people will stick to their outrage. 😂
The game already charted high on steam before he said anything. The game didn’t need customers to be directly insulted to get attention, and there’s so many better ways to get attention if controversy is the intent like saying people can’t see over 60 fps and that over 1080 is something most people don’t notice. Gamers are spoiled expecting more when 30 fps was the standard, etc.
Telling people to refund if they don’t like it is just bizzare. The game isn’t struggling for marketing. And there’s many other things that can be said. BL4 will sell just fine but if headlines and calling out consumers was effective marketing then Saints Row and Concord would have sold better. Its more BL4 will sell well inspite of Randy’s attempts to tank it.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Sep 22:47
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I played the first one but after that the formula felt pretty samey and I was bored of it. Would a fourth Borderlands game even be good if it wasn’t laggy?
I’m enjoying the game. And yeah, a lot of cool folk work there. Sure a few suck, but there are a lot of neat humans that poured their heart into this game.
I also haven’t had a single issue on a two year old mid-tier laptop so i can’t empathize with the fuss over performance. I’m sure there are older machines out there that wont run it at 1000FPS or whatever.
At the end of the day, it’s a game. Calm tf down and play something else rather than raise your blood pressure over something so relatively trivial.
Deep breath people. It’s a game. Support it or don’t. Edginess not required for this decision.
Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Sep 23:48
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You should get it for free elsewhere. Don’t give this asshole your money.
Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Sep 23:54
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Denuvo :'(
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 17 Sep 00:22
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And Empress is gone, though they were pretty toxic so that’s no big loss for me.
CaptainBlinky@lemmy.myserv.one
on 17 Sep 02:48
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That’s an option, but there were a lot of people involved in making the game. I’m not a fan of collective punishment. They most probably did their best, he’s just a shit spokesperson.
Gearbox was been scummy for a while now. Customers can learn to stop giving them money or can keep putting up with this.
aesthelete@lemmy.world
on 17 Sep 04:02
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Borderlands 3 kinda sucked it. I realized when I played it that they had hit peak during Borderlands 2.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
on 17 Sep 05:00
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Eh, the people are dumb as fuck and will keep buying their slop. Just look at Nintendo, one of the most horrible companies out there, releasing the same 5 games over and over again, but the idiots keep buying. They will keep buying their Mario Kart until it’s $200 a month
figjam@midwest.social
on 17 Sep 01:35
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his new game is failing. He must keep it in the zeitgeist for as long as possible. This is just some guy trying to be relevant
dustyData@lemmy.world
on 17 Sep 01:48
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For a long time he was told by everyone in public and in private that he was awesome and perfect, and the greatest game developer, which made him a ton of money and very famous. Now his latest game is failing and his overinflated ego is panicking.
Seems to me he and Gearbox have been in lots of shit for a while now (the infamous USB drive, serious plagiarism accusations when Borderlands did an artistic 180 during development, Alien : Colonial Marines released broken as hell after funneling its funding to make BL2, Duke Nukem Forever…)
And every time Pitchford’s (mostly unnecesary) public answer has been terrible.
As far as DNF goes, it was probably an easy profit for the company. They bought it from 3D Realms and patched it up into something releasable. I doubt they spent a lot on the deal. It didn’t have to sell many copies for them to hit break even.
Not a bad business decision, and I’m glad that development story had a definitive ending.
It’s the year of the wealthy personalities who dont keep their mouth shut because they believe they are right and everyone will agree with their points and love them.
Happening right now with Mark Cuban on the NBA side.
This has been there already with Ubisoft games. It wont end well for the IP and also, the main problem is Randy Pitchford. That problem wont be fixed any time soon.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world
on 17 Sep 04:04
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I haven’t played 4, but I played 1, 2, and a bit of the presequel or whatever it was called. They were essentially all the same game. Run, shoot, run, shoot, hear vaguely off-color joke, run, shoot. Is there any particular reason to bother with an overpriced remake of the same old game? Is there a reason for worrying about 4KUHD textures on a game where the aesthetic is cartoony? If you’re a 9 year old who’s never played, and it’s all on mom’s dime, I could see being tricked into buying it by the advertisers, but why is anyone else excited about it?
Any interest I had in the game, which was already fairly minimal, was completely obliterated when the price was announced.
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Sep 05:09
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I played the hell out of the first Borderlands (including New Game+ across all expansions), but promptly bounced off 2 & Pre-Sequel because it literally just felt like more of the same and I was already sated.
BL3 and now BL4 are literally just more of the same, but with ever increasingly more egregious monetisation.
QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Sep 11:13
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2 was good because of the Handsome Hack commentary.
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Sep 13:40
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I think that was the one that started in an ice zone, if I remember correctly? I literally couldn’t get past it because I find that aesthetic quite boring…
The ice zone (Southern Shelf) is only the very beginning of the game, you reach more interesting areas after defeating the first major boss, Captain Flynt.
MadameBisaster@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 17 Sep 05:57
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Started with 2, liked it, hated 3, now playing 4 since yesterday with a friend and gameplay wise it has a bunch of changes/improvements. So if someone enjoys the gameplay its good. I mean cod and battlefield and fifa are also nearly the same game every time ;)
First game was just Diablo 2 but FPS with guns. But I can totally respect anyone that didn’t jive with that. The humor was very hit and miss and definitely made but a group of people who insisted they were hilarious.
Pre-Sequel, 3 and Wonderlands have all been great games that I had lots of fun with. I also know I’m going to have upwards of 100 hours of fun with 4. That’s what makes this whole story even more frustrating…
But I’m a patient gamer. I played the previous BL games years after they came out. I’ll do the same for this one - not because I can’t afford a 60€ price tag but because articles like this.
Sad.
BL4 is awesome so far. Works fantastic on PS5. I hope next time they just skip releasing a PC version at all and use the extra resources for the other versions like GTA.
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org
on 17 Sep 09:56
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Their games are so bad now that it would be better to not play them.
Randy needs to get comfy with the fact that he may go broke.
Do what the doctors in goa (a state in India) did to their health minister. But in this case impact his income & force him to grovel.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
on 17 Sep 05:33
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The game is grossly overpriced and infected Denuvo malware. Those things are all symptoms of Randy Pitchford being involved. I’ll pass.
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
on 17 Sep 06:20
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The reality is you made a game that few will play for several years. You could have made a game that could be playable on most contemporary machines. You didn’t and will now have to suffer from shitty sales due to your inability to understand that the majority of us don’t have the money to spend like you do you out of touch clueless ballsack.
Anyone that remembers Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever knows that Randy Pitchford is garbage. He also ran off most of the talent behind BL1 and BL2, which is why BL3 writing was shitty.
What french fuckin year is it where ANYONE feels the NEED to wear a bowtie?! You can just wear your boxers as a neckerchief if you like…
OmegaMan@lemmings.world
on 17 Sep 12:36
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Bowties are fine for formal (social) occasions like weddings and parties. Wearing them around every day is weird. Wearing them to work is (generally) weird.
Committing to wearing them everywhere and STILL buying pre-tied ones and not learning how to tie them yourself all while being a mega douche is cringe af.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Sep 13:45
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Yeah, learn to tie them if you’re going to make it part of your personality.
itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Sep 13:41
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Honestly, I think he might actually fall into the category of cares more about appearing smart than being smart. Not to say he’s dumb, but I do get the sense the reputation is very important to him
Celebrities with distinct looks almost by definition have to be exceptions to this discussion. Wearing a giant clock necklace to work would absolutely be weird unless it were Flavor Flav.
i think it’s more about him having gotten used to it when he played a character on a children’s programme. he also has the face for it, which randall does not.
Katana314@lemmy.world
on 17 Sep 13:35
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Countdown to him getting fired in 3…2…3…4…8…49…
Because companies ultimately seem to love leaders that are toxic these days.
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
on 17 Sep 15:13
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He wasn’t the only founder and Embracer bought them in 2021. Later TakeTwo acquired the studio when Embracer had to restructure. They operate under 2k now so he can most surely be fired.
Also probably why he is even more of a cocky cunt nowadays. He already cashed out.
1 was a flawed revolution and had great dlc. 2 was … A very clear sign of stagnation but has one of the greatest badguys in multiplayer gaming.
There were a few interesting moments and side stories and unique characters after that, but for example, the transitory moment of seeing Ashley Burke come alive as Tiny Tina was once in a lifetime chance that you had to live through in that year/era. Going back now, it’s not really that special since everything is derivative and we live in the future.
ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 17 Sep 20:41
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Glad you enjoyed the games, I suppose. But I never really cared for the Borderlands games and reading how Pitchford is behaving makes me not want to even try the games.
I like first person shooters, the original counter strike is one of my roots. I also have many fond memories of Diablo 2 and LAN parties. Borderlands 1 was a taste of what could be and was VERY exciting, as it was trying to combine two things I loved in games and really wanted (and still do). Unfortunately, Pitchford has been driving it into the ground ever since BL1, and wasting his position at the helm. Godawful behavior aside, it’s time for him to move aside for somebody with more talent for game development or something.
If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you ever care for the borderlands games? Just for frame of perspective, I want/like to understand what people like and don’t like and why.
Considering i didn’t bother to buy anything borderlands related since Borderlands 2, it will keep preety muchbthe same for me
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
on 17 Sep 18:22
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Same, got 1&2 on a humble bundle. I remember one running great, and 2 bearable on a 1gb netbook att. Cell shaded games shouldn’t be this resource intensive!
threaded - newest
I accepted and just didn’t buy it to begin with.
Was going to say… Who is out there buying games way outside their machines’ specs? Seems pretty straightforward.
I do get a little annoyed at the folks angry at BL4 using a higher end engine. Like, it does look a lot better than previous iterations. That engine upgrade wasn’t for nothing.
There are a ton of looter shooters floating around that aren’t using the Unreal 5 engine. Just play one of those instead. Hell, go back and play BL1. I’m pretty sure that thing runs on a toaster.
This game goes into the twenties on a freaking 4070 at 1440 on high settings and doesn’t even get 60 at medium settings
Now let’s take a look at the “recommended specs” Randy put out there
Sorry but when in the world is that even remotely acceptable that you consider last Gen was outside machine specs when the developers said sure two generations ago is perfectly fine, which btw, holy crap it’s not.
There’s a difference between a game being way outside of your specs because it’s graphically very advanced and your hardware is old, and a game just being unoptimized slop that expects its users to deal with by throwing higher specs at a fixable problem.
I have a brand new 5070ti that can play all kinds of UE5 games with much better graphics than BL4 at 4k resolution with ray tracing at a decent frame rate without relying on frame gen. And I’m in the top few percentiles here.
I have a 3090 in a 7800x3d box with 64 gb ram and I had to drop from 7680x2160 to 3840x1080 to get decent framerates. I get better performance in Star Citizen. After a few CTD’s I just went ahead and got a refund.
UE5 can run fine on older hardware, but most devs either aren’t given the time to properly optimize or don’t give a fuck about it and would rather rely on upscaling and frame gen tech.
After the borderlands 3 trainwreck it seems weird that people are apparently buying BL4
It’s hard to consider an 81 on OpenCritic to be a trainwreck. People tend to buy games that review well, especially when it’s a co-op shooter with basically no competition.
Damn I had to look that up cause it seemed unbelievable. I am shocked it reviewed that well. It just seemed so awful to me.
Am I so out of touch?? No, the children are.
Nah, that game’s great. The writing’s not good, especially for the villains, but people like that game because it’s good.
You aren’t out of touch. Even the worst games don’t get that poor of a review. When you job depends on being on their side, it turns out you can’t voice an honest opinion.
bl3 is a fine game. its just critics of it are so very vocal that nobody feels like saying they like it.
From what I hear from people actually able to play the game, it’s better than 3.
Something like:
2 > 4 > 1 > 3 > Pre-Sequel
I honestly don’t know what this “trainwreck” talk is. BL3 was passable. I didn’t like the antagonists, but the game played fine if purples dropped way too much and the new guns weren’t great. People make it seem like it was the Worst Game Ever and I don’t get it. The pre-sequel was hot garbage, but 3 was fine.
there’s no nuance in anything anymore. you can’t just say “oh this isn’t really for me, honestly.”
you have to write 18 paragraphs about the fall of the video game industry because of this one game and how its hot trash, kills newborns while they sleep, etc.
Is this not the third tabloid style headline here about essentially the same thing?
It’s 100% an astroturfing campaign. Doesn’t matter if it looks good or bad, it’s still getting awareness out there about the game which generates clicks and probably makes more money than the game itself.
That would be hard to believe, because the game already conservatively made tens of millions of dollars in a few days.
That would have to be the weirdest advertising strategy in the history of all advertising.
My our game, it’s really shit
Well it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but Randy Pitchford is really good at providing ammo for these types of headlines. Guy needs to learn to keep his mouth shut sometimes.
How is it on console though? Better on PS5 or Xbox?
insider-gaming.com/borderlands-4-console-performa…
Take from that what you will.
Nothing from digital foundry yet.
DF is who I’m waiting on, but from what I’m hearing, they didn’t send reviewer codes so it’s all delayed and that’s never a good sign.
I’ve seen multiple people report they have to reboot after an hour or two or play because it has memory leak issues.
Oh look the piece of shit opens its mouth again.
We understand you stumbled dick first into your position of power. Now please shut the fuck up, you somehow sentient sludgeball.
Out of the loop, is it a AAA game drama?
Yeah, so it’s just the usual
Just your typical Randy drama you get at every BL release.
At least he didn’t punch anyone this time.
True, no physical punches just metaphoric ones to every gamer right in the genitals with his BS yet again.
Nor did he leave a USB stick containing sensitive design data and camgirl porn at a Medieval Times
Things are looking up for ol’ Randy
The cam girl porn was the valuable bit. I sure as hell know nobody wants the Borderlands code
Yet!
Apparently the graphics are basically the same as 3, but performance is dog shit on even the best hardware and crashes are unavoidable.
When people complained, he said they need to use AI fake frame and upscale from 720. Which still wasn’t good performance.
It might get fixed later in updates. But this guy is handling so badly he might legitimately be mentally unwell. It’s at the point it’s weird he still has a job
It’s got Denuvo running
That’s probably not the cause of the issues here though. Denuvo impacts game performance but not as badly as Borderlands 4 is seeing. The engine they chose has issues even on non denuvo games. It’s an unoptimized mess and then gearbox didn’t optimize any further themselves.
BL4 is running horribly, even on higher end PCs. I have a 4090 and a decent processor, but only getting 80FPS max with a good few settings on low or off and AI frame gen on (I would rather not, but performance is just that bad).
Holy shit you get 80 fps with frame gen on with a 4090? What resolution?
2560 × 1440
Holy fuck that is so much worse than I realized it was. What a joke.
According to hardware unboxed 4090 at 1440 natively on the badass preset gets an average of 67 FPS. I'm not defending the poor performance of Borderlands 4, it's definitely ass, I just don't think we should take insane statements from randos at face value. Always verify performance with reputable sources instead of someone saying something on the web without giving the full picture. Who knows what they've done with their computer to get such poor performance.
That doesn’t really seem to contradict the other person’s claim that much? In fact like your said if just a few other things are running on that person’s pc and eating some resources, their claim seems super believable in the context of what you just said so I’m not sure what your point is.
A reviewer/tester is going to be benchmarking in a best case scenario environment. Real people using their real computers will be experiencing a huge variety of other environments. Different temps, hardware settings, programs running, etc. None of that context excuses the performance, and makes that person’s performance claim believable.
And Silksong will also run like shit if I run an AI model in the background that's hogging all resources, but if I said Silksong ran like shit on a 4090 you'd say I'm full of shit. But with Borderlands 4 it would be okay to say that because it fits your biases?
My point is you can't take such statements at face value. They need to be looked at critically because who knows what the person is doing with their machine or what kind of information they're omitting. Maybe the other person has a CPU bottleneck because they threw a 4090 together with a Ryzen 7 2700X? If you take them at face value you're just reflecting your own biases which means you call it bullshit if it doesn't fit your bias or you agree with it when it does fit your bias.
But my guy, you provided context which shows that Borderlands 4 does run like shit on a 4090 in a lab environment.
Borderlands 3 on highest settings with a 4090, a worse cpu, at 1440p ran at 210 average fps.
You telling me that Borderlands 4 looks good enough compared to 3 to explain a 143 fps drop?
What’s crazy is how inconsistent the problems seem to be. I’ve got a 4080 Super and a decent processor, and I’m getting 120-140fps with most settings as high as they can go with frame gen on at 1440p. Only crashed once in about 40 hours of gameplay.
I am going to need to double check my settings then. I might have only enabled DLSS and not frame gen.
This feels like Halo Infinite all over again.
Oh, you have identical specs and built at the exact same time? Yeah, half of you are going to randomly have issues and half won’t. Enjoy head casing about that.
I’ve got a 6800xt and it runs really well on medium settings. Looks pretty good as well. Never had the game crash on me either. It’s 60fps but I’m cool with that. Gameplay feels smooth at that and it’s steady. No upscaling no frame Gen. 3440x1440.
I have heard a lot of people are having issues with Nvidia hardware though.
That AAAA to you!
Say it with me now: “Fuck Randy Pitchford”
UE5 is a shit engine as of now, but what can be expected of a company run by someone just as insufferable? Epic took the advent of tech like DLSS and frame generation as an excuse to disregard performance and functionality.
All you have to do is pick out any UE5 game that exists and Google that + “performance.” Even meeting the recommended specs for Rogue City, I still had to find specialized configs to get the game the game stop crashing on launch, and even then, those specs were based on using upscaling and frame generation. In reality, “recommended” was about 25fps at 1280x720. That used to be, and realistically should be unthinkable.
AND EVEN THEN, the engine’s built-in settings for upscaling and frame generation caused even more crashing. Ultimately, I had to disable it in-game and turn it on in my driver settings because of the busted-ass engine. This is a problem with the state of gaming, and people like Randy, Tim and their supporters are only exacerbating it.
The engine’s not the problem. Personally, I have only played a single game on UE5 that had shit performance on my aging PC (I can’t even use DLSS), and it’s an early access, independently made, survival crafting game. It was never going to perform well or even be finished.
All this stuff sounds like Randy Pitchford building out his personal brand.
I wish anything involving Pitchford was not reported on (at all).
I swear I have no idea why they let him talk. He doesn't even own the company, surely someone at 2K could just go... you know... shush.
I don't even think the BL4 thing is that bad, on the face of it. There is really no need to make it worse.
"We have been made aware of some performance issues in certain systems in our new release, we'll be looking into performance improvements in future patches". It's not that hard. At this point just copy/paste whatever the other thousand UE5 games said, go fix the wonky precompilation boot step and stop digging a hole.
Hell, it's even easier than that, because they have actually pretty much put that out. All he really needed to do was shut up about it.
You got it!
I have come to accept that this is a PR campaign to plaster the name everywhere all over social media and let it worm its way into currently pissed off gamers’ heads for a few months down the line when they’ve calmed down and inevitably buy the fucking thing.
Pitchford is a slimeball. Rarely has a man who is allegedly not an insurance or used-car salesman given off such nakedly scummy vibes.
We need to stop giving free publicity to this little marketing man, and to this poorly optimised, expensive game.
I don’t think there’s anything that well thought out, and it’s just someone who takes things personally and cant resist blurting out their thoughts.
Since after what he said my thinking was even if my friends beg me to get the game on discount I wont because of how personally irritated the comments have made me.
Not casting aspersions towards you personally, but we all know how gamer boycotts go generally. As in, they don’t. People cave and buy the games anyway, once they’re over the initial outrage. This is 100% marketing.
Those people buy games regardless. But this feels like a personal challenge of being called out. Like the face popping out and going “yeah I knew you couldn’t resist bitch”. Usually there isn’t that psychological push back being put out there. It’s not needed.
We’ll see how it comes out in the sales figures, I suppose! I would like to believe you’re right but I just have absolutely not a jot of faith that people will stick to their outrage. 😂
The game already charted high on steam before he said anything. The game didn’t need customers to be directly insulted to get attention, and there’s so many better ways to get attention if controversy is the intent like saying people can’t see over 60 fps and that over 1080 is something most people don’t notice. Gamers are spoiled expecting more when 30 fps was the standard, etc.
Telling people to refund if they don’t like it is just bizzare. The game isn’t struggling for marketing. And there’s many other things that can be said. BL4 will sell just fine but if headlines and calling out consumers was effective marketing then Saints Row and Concord would have sold better. Its more BL4 will sell well inspite of Randy’s attempts to tank it.
I played the first one but after that the formula felt pretty samey and I was bored of it. Would a fourth Borderlands game even be good if it wasn’t laggy?
Don’t let the name fool you, it’s the sixth game.
Welp, that’s what I did. Got my money back. I’ll buy it when it’s $19.99.
I was going to do that originally but now I’m never playing it.
I’m not going to punish the entire development team just because he’s a tool.
They got paid already and most of them will be laid off or moved to different projects by the time the games is $20.
It’s not that he’s a tool it’s at the game it has poor performance. And being a tool is just a guarantee that issue will never be fixed.
So in a way I kind of do blame the team, they must have done testing they know what the performance is like.
I’m enjoying the game. And yeah, a lot of cool folk work there. Sure a few suck, but there are a lot of neat humans that poured their heart into this game.
I also haven’t had a single issue on a two year old mid-tier laptop so i can’t empathize with the fuss over performance. I’m sure there are older machines out there that wont run it at 1000FPS or whatever.
At the end of the day, it’s a game. Calm tf down and play something else rather than raise your blood pressure over something so relatively trivial.
Deep breath people. It’s a game. Support it or don’t. Edginess not required for this decision.
You should get it for free elsewhere. Don’t give this asshole your money.
Denuvo :'(
And Empress is gone, though they were pretty toxic so that’s no big loss for me.
That’s an option, but there were a lot of people involved in making the game. I’m not a fan of collective punishment. They most probably did their best, he’s just a shit spokesperson.
Gearbox was been scummy for a while now. Customers can learn to stop giving them money or can keep putting up with this.
Borderlands 3 kinda sucked it. I realized when I played it that they had hit peak during Borderlands 2.
Eh, the people are dumb as fuck and will keep buying their slop. Just look at Nintendo, one of the most horrible companies out there, releasing the same 5 games over and over again, but the idiots keep buying. They will keep buying their Mario Kart until it’s $200 a month
They destroyed the first update for risk of rain 2 when they bought it as well. They kinda made my favourite game a lot worse
Sorry I can’t hear you Randy. I am playing silksong and after that, I am doing another BG3 playthrough.
Or an Expedition 33 new game+ This is truly a great year for games, current post aside
Why is he like this?
his new game is failing. He must keep it in the zeitgeist for as long as possible. This is just some guy trying to be relevant
For a long time he was told by everyone in public and in private that he was awesome and perfect, and the greatest game developer, which made him a ton of money and very famous. Now his latest game is failing and his overinflated ego is panicking.
Was he?
Personally I’ve always thought of him as a bit of a prick.
Really? Was that a long time ago?
Seems to me he and Gearbox have been in lots of shit for a while now (the infamous USB drive, serious plagiarism accusations when Borderlands did an artistic 180 during development, Alien : Colonial Marines released broken as hell after funneling its funding to make BL2, Duke Nukem Forever…)
And every time Pitchford’s (mostly unnecesary) public answer has been terrible.
As far as DNF goes, it was probably an easy profit for the company. They bought it from 3D Realms and patched it up into something releasable. I doubt they spent a lot on the deal. It didn’t have to sell many copies for them to hit break even.
Not a bad business decision, and I’m glad that development story had a definitive ending.
It’s the year of the wealthy personalities who dont keep their mouth shut because they believe they are right and everyone will agree with their points and love them.
Happening right now with Mark Cuban on the NBA side.
This has been there already with Ubisoft games. It wont end well for the IP and also, the main problem is Randy Pitchford. That problem wont be fixed any time soon.
I haven’t played 4, but I played 1, 2, and a bit of the presequel or whatever it was called. They were essentially all the same game. Run, shoot, run, shoot, hear vaguely off-color joke, run, shoot. Is there any particular reason to bother with an overpriced remake of the same old game? Is there a reason for worrying about 4KUHD textures on a game where the aesthetic is cartoony? If you’re a 9 year old who’s never played, and it’s all on mom’s dime, I could see being tricked into buying it by the advertisers, but why is anyone else excited about it?
Any interest I had in the game, which was already fairly minimal, was completely obliterated when the price was announced.
I played the hell out of the first Borderlands (including New Game+ across all expansions), but promptly bounced off 2 & Pre-Sequel because it literally just felt like more of the same and I was already sated.
BL3 and now BL4 are literally just more of the same, but with ever increasingly more egregious monetisation.
2 was good because of the Handsome Hack commentary.
I think that was the one that started in an ice zone, if I remember correctly? I literally couldn’t get past it because I find that aesthetic quite boring…
The ice zone (Southern Shelf) is only the very beginning of the game, you reach more interesting areas after defeating the first major boss, Captain Flynt.
Started with 2, liked it, hated 3, now playing 4 since yesterday with a friend and gameplay wise it has a bunch of changes/improvements. So if someone enjoys the gameplay its good. I mean cod and battlefield and fifa are also nearly the same game every time ;)
Yeah, you won’t hear us defending those games either ;)
30 seconds of fun repeated, the golden rule. The games fun as fuck.
He can deep-throat my dad’s days-dead dog’s decaying dong.
Damn, dude! 😂
Of course the borderlands guy would look like that
You ain’t exactly handsome yourself bud😅
Randy Pitchfork looks like a mix of the first second generation employee of blizzard (aka Piratesoftware) and Steve buscemi
Now I can’t unsee this
My mom says I am
way ahead of you there, guy
Couldn’t have been less interested. Borderlands hasn’t been remotely interesting since 2 and everything since then has been a soulless cash grab.
I played an hour of the first game and that was enough for me, so I’m not exactly their target demo anyways.
First game was just Diablo 2 but FPS with guns. But I can totally respect anyone that didn’t jive with that. The humor was very hit and miss and definitely made but a group of people who insisted they were hilarious.
I honestly don’t remember anything about it except that I didn’t really enjoy it that much. that was a looong time ago
Hard disagree.
Pre-Sequel, 3 and Wonderlands have all been great games that I had lots of fun with. I also know I’m going to have upwards of 100 hours of fun with 4. That’s what makes this whole story even more frustrating…
But I’m a patient gamer. I played the previous BL games years after they came out. I’ll do the same for this one - not because I can’t afford a 60€ price tag but because articles like this. Sad.
Interesting. To me that game was just the worst:
Unskippable, long, very very very long, boring dialogues.
Shitty weapons, but fantasy. E.g. no oomph feeling when you hit the enemy with a large ice explosions. It just scraps a little of their health.
Boring, unchallenging fights.
BL4 is awesome so far. Works fantastic on PS5. I hope next time they just skip releasing a PC version at all and use the extra resources for the other versions like GTA.
Their games are so bad now that it would be better to not play them.
Is she, though?
I don’t know about you but I feel like telling slaneesh she’s wrong is the last thing you would do.
Man i’m just trying to survive out here.
Randy needs to get comfy with the fact that he may go broke. Do what the doctors in goa (a state in India) did to their health minister. But in this case impact his income & force him to grovel.
The game is grossly overpriced and infected Denuvo malware. Those things are all symptoms of Randy Pitchford being involved. I’ll pass.
The reality is you made a game that few will play for several years. You could have made a game that could be playable on most contemporary machines. You didn’t and will now have to suffer from shitty sales due to your inability to understand that the majority of us don’t have the money to spend like you do you out of touch clueless ballsack.
Anyone that remembers Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever knows that Randy Pitchford is garbage. He also ran off most of the talent behind BL1 and BL2, which is why BL3 writing was shitty.
They’re using a poorly made graphics engine and got scammed into implementing malware into their game.
For a AAA game Unreal 5 seems like a reasonable choice for an engine because you have access to Epic Games devs.
Guys who wear bowties are not smart, but desperately need people to think they are.
What french fuckin year is it where ANYONE feels the NEED to wear a bowtie?! You can just wear your boxers as a neckerchief if you like…
Bowties are fine for formal (social) occasions like weddings and parties. Wearing them around every day is weird. Wearing them to work is (generally) weird.
Committing to wearing them everywhere and STILL buying pre-tied ones and not learning how to tie them yourself all while being a mega douche is cringe af.
Yeah, learn to tie them if you’re going to make it part of your personality.
Finally, someone agrees with me on the fucking bow tie thing.
Love the tie. Wear the tie. Talk about the tie. If you can’t tie the tie but you do the first 3, I can’t respect you.
I present to you bill nye as a counter argument
Honestly, I think he might actually fall into the category of cares more about appearing smart than being smart. Not to say he’s dumb, but I do get the sense the reputation is very important to him
Celebrities with distinct looks almost by definition have to be exceptions to this discussion. Wearing a giant clock necklace to work would absolutely be weird unless it were Flavor Flav.
i think it’s more about him having gotten used to it when he played a character on a children’s programme. he also has the face for it, which randall does not.
Countdown to him getting fired in 3…2…3…4…8…49…
Because companies ultimately seem to love leaders that are toxic these days.
I could be wrong, but doesn’t he own the company?
He wasn’t the only founder and Embracer bought them in 2021. Later TakeTwo acquired the studio when Embracer had to restructure. They operate under 2k now so he can most surely be fired.
Also probably why he is even more of a cocky cunt nowadays. He already cashed out.
I worked for Take-Two. The bankers that run that company absolutely see the world the way Randy does. Fuck’em.
Never bought any of the Borderlands games and probably never will.
weird flex but okay
That’s okay, I love being weird.
1 was a flawed revolution and had great dlc. 2 was … A very clear sign of stagnation but has one of the greatest badguys in multiplayer gaming.
There were a few interesting moments and side stories and unique characters after that, but for example, the transitory moment of seeing Ashley Burke come alive as Tiny Tina was once in a lifetime chance that you had to live through in that year/era. Going back now, it’s not really that special since everything is derivative and we live in the future.
Glad you enjoyed the games, I suppose. But I never really cared for the Borderlands games and reading how Pitchford is behaving makes me not want to even try the games.
I like first person shooters, the original counter strike is one of my roots. I also have many fond memories of Diablo 2 and LAN parties. Borderlands 1 was a taste of what could be and was VERY exciting, as it was trying to combine two things I loved in games and really wanted (and still do). Unfortunately, Pitchford has been driving it into the ground ever since BL1, and wasting his position at the helm. Godawful behavior aside, it’s time for him to move aside for somebody with more talent for game development or something.
If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you ever care for the borderlands games? Just for frame of perspective, I want/like to understand what people like and don’t like and why.
Considering i didn’t bother to buy anything borderlands related since Borderlands 2, it will keep preety muchbthe same for me
Same, got 1&2 on a humble bundle. I remember one running great, and 2 bearable on a 1gb netbook att. Cell shaded games shouldn’t be this resource intensive!
I still have my physical PC copy for the first Borderlands, it sounds almost a whole different world when i read 512mb vram recommended on the specs…
A “Pitchford” - the meme of Randall Pitchford always, ALWAYS being an ass. This isn’t anything new, just “fresh” again.
He's looking like the Anti-Gaben Newell in that picture there.
I wasn’t too keen on that $70 basic version price tag in the first place, so thanks Randy. Can’t wait for it to be $39.99
Why stop there? Pretty sure BL3 was free at some point recently.
Dude is such a tool.
Soooo, is Borderlands 4 cracked yet?