Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

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Monday news, the second part:

Satisfactory 1.0 is finally out in September with two megaton changes: easier-to-manufacture computers and flushable toilets
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/satisfactory-10-is-finally-out-in-september-with-two-megaton-changes-easier-to-manufacture-computers-and-flushable-toilets/
Oh how I've been waiting for this day. The game that swallowed several months of my life during lockdown, Satisfactory, is finally leaving early access and launching in 1.0 on September 10, just a hair over two months from today. Coffee Stain announced the release in a short, silly trailer that shows nothing new from the 1.0 update but does advertise surely its most important addition, flushable toilets. As we've written in the past, you can understand a lot about a game through its virtual toilets, and I look forward to reexperiencing Satisfactory with a new, empowered flush mindset.

Oh no, Rust just added my least favorite item from DayZ: handcuffs
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/oh-no-rust-just-added-my-least-favorite-item-from-dayz-handcuffs/
Multiplayer survival game Rust continues to get bigger and deadlier with each passing patch. This month's update, called Road Renegades, adds new vehicles like motorbikes and bicycles, a traveling vendor in an armored truck, and… 
Oh, no. Oh, no no no. The update also adds handcuffs. 

Original Fallout lead Tim Cain says the team planned for there to be 1000 Vaults, but he thinks there are actually far fewer in the setting
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/original-fallout-lead-tim-cain-says-the-team-originally-planned-for-there-to-be-1000-vaults-but-he-thinks-there-are-actually-far-fewer-in-the-setting/
In a new vlog on his YouTube channel, veteran programmer and RPG designer Tim Cain revealed some more of the background he and his team initially planned for Fallout's vaults. The crew at Interplay conceived of there being 1,000 Vault Tec vaults in the United States, a figure with some in-game and real-life logistical issues that Cain then explores, all with the caveat that this is him having some fun: "This is just me talking about it⁠—it's not canon!"

The next Transformers game will be a combat-racing roguelite
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/racing/the-next-transformers-game-will-be-a-combat-racing-roguelite/
The tough thing about making a Transformers game is that you can't just make an action game about giant robots. You've also got to be able to handle the vehicle side of things, and there aren't a lot of studios out there who are equally adept at making racing games or flight sims as they are at making big robot action games. 
Transformers: Galactic Trials, in development from 3DClouds, seems to be leaning more heavily on the racing side of things. The singleplayer mode has you traversing "battle-race circuits" that consist of both combat and driving challenges you have to face in the relevant forms, while collecting Prime Relics that can be spent to improve skills as well as unlocking more characters and skills. The press release says it has a "rogue-lite combat elements", which presumably means permadeath but with persistent level-ups.

Here's a game where you're a fantasy dungeon's put-upon janitor
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/heres-a-game-where-youre-a-fantasy-dungeons-put-upon-janitor/
Somewhere between dungeon crawler and visual novel and satire we've got upcoming game Mops & Mobs: A Sweeping Dungeon Novel—release date to be announced, demo available now. In it you're the janitor for a fantasy dungeon populated by weird monsters, often-raided by adventurers, and lorded over by some kind of Dungeon Master who, it seems, is well-loved but not particularly capable.

Besiege's watery expansion will get a patch adding new missions, giant sharks, tentacled horrors of the deep
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/besieges-watery-expansion-will-get-a-patch-adding-new-missions-giant-sharks-tentacled-horrors-of-the-deep/
Besiege will get an expanded expansion as the Splintered Sea campaign receives an update on the 22nd of July, later this month. With new levels, new challenges, and new enemies to defeat/hazards to avoid it'll be a beefing up of an expansion that some players found underwhelming. Included in that are some very large sharks and a betentacled beastie.

Tend a cozy garden and stave off corruption, with the help of some cool gnomes, in Horticular
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/tend-a-cozy-garden-and-stave-off-corruption-with-the-help-of-some-cool-gnomes-in-horticular/
A pleasant new game about gardening is on the way out this week, with the gnomes of Horticular asking you to revitalize a wasteland into a nicely-sculpted ecosystem of plants and animals that can stand up to the decay of the corrupted world around it. The little game is an indie with some real scope to it for such a simple premise, giving you all kinds of aesthetic and magical tools to tweak your landscape and bring in inhabitants like new animals, plants, and eventually housing for the various gnomes that will aid your cause.

'Very few' people would play a Morrowind-style RPG with 'no compass, no map' and a reliance on quest text, says ESO director, 'which is kind of sad'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/the-elder-scrolls/very-few-people-would-play-a-morrowind-style-rpg-with-no-compass-no-map-and-a-reliance-on-quest-text-says-eso-director-which-is-kind-of-sad/
Back in my day, we didn't have these fancy-schmancy newfangled quest markers and compass points—we had to download add-ons if we wanted the minimap to tell us where our ten boars were, and then walk up the hill, both ways!
If you've been playing RPGs since the early 2000s, you've likely got a similar old man yelling at clouds in your soul. Simply put, open-world RPG design has slowly moved away from the discovery part of "questing".
It used to be that quest givers in RPGs (both single-player and massively multiplayer) would rely far more on verbal instructions than UI elements. Morrowind in particular doesn't even have a compass—locking every quest behind some local's vague approximation of the land. That kind of design's gone the way of the dodo, unfortunately, as per an interview with Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor in a piece on open-world design by RockPaperShotgun.

Hooded Horse CEO hits back at claims that Manor Lords slipped up in early access: 'Not every game should be aimed at becoming some live service boom or bust'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/hooded-horse-ceo-hits-back-at-claims-that-manor-lords-failed-in-early-access-not-every-game-should-be-aimed-at-becoming-some-live-service-boom-or-bust/
Over the last couple of weeks, the same old debate about what makes a game successful and how devs can hold on to that success emerged yet again. Some decided that Helldivers 2 losing 90% of its playerbase was an issue despite the live service game having a healthy 40,000 or more concurrent players each day. And now Manor Lords, the small city builder that managed to climb to the most wishlisted game spot on Steam, is also apparently showing cause for concern. 

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty couldn't have been as good 'if the initial reception of the game wasn’t as negative', says lead quest designer
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-couldn-t-have-been-as-good-if-the-initial-reception-of-the-game-wasn-t-as-negative-says-lead-quest-designer/
Cyberpunk 2077, as you might know, didn't have a great launch. Described (accurately) by PC Gamer's online editor Fraser Brown as "one of the highest-profile launch disasters in videogame history", the game had performance issues so bad on one console it was removed from its storefront, an infestation of more bugs than the cheapest motel mattress—heck, the thing was even causing seizures with no warning.
Which makes it all the stranger that, well, it's quite good now—especially with the 2.0 update and the release of expansion Phantom Liberty. I've had plenty of complicated feelings about it myself, but that didn't change the fact that 65 hours of my life melted away in front of my eyes.
According to the game's lead quest designer Pawel Sasko in an interview with The Gamer, though, we might have that shoddy launch to thank.