algroth

But I would say that DM is the crucial difference there. I have never done any P&P roleplaying but I have no doubt a per-rest system can work very well in that context, because you have the DM there who's probably not going to have you take a nap after every fight (and presumably, in that sort of setting the roleplaying component will be much more pronounced so most people wouldn't want to either). But of course P&P also offers much more flexibility in getting around a fight and such. If your party is exhausted and your casters low on spells, and they spot some unfriendly ogres on their path, they can maybe just go around, or prepare an ambush, or attempt to scare them away / convince them to leave (using an illusion spell maybe, or just a really convincing / intimidating character). Hell, they could set fire to the surrounding forest and drive them off that way. And I should imagine that in P&P gaming, beating a tactical retreat is actually possible as well (realistically, having seen you off the ogres are probably not overly interested in chasing you to the ends of the earth). I would love for this to be actually possible in computer games as well. But you'd need an equivalent of a DM in the game to be able to do that, and in general an engine that allows for vastly more flexibility. That is very hard to actually do, of course. I seem to have side-tracked somewhat, but yeah... per-rest systems work just fine in that context. To me, it never felt it translated at all well to cRPG. The cost of resting and time elapsing is just too ambiguous for it to balance very well. Which isn't to say that per-encounter doesn't have flaws, it clearly does. Having longer-term tactical aspects and being incentivised not to use the same abilities every fight are certainly things I would like to see very much as well (and in general, more organic design than discrete resource pools and spell levels and power levels and such). I don't thing 'per-rest' can properly accomplish that though. Have you tried the Baldur's Gates and the Icewind Dales? You can get ambushed while resting in dangerous areas, or while traveling through dangerous areas. I'm not saying the balance was immaculate, but there are better ways of limiting rest than gold/expendable resources. All that meant was that you quick-saved before every rest and reloaded if you got ambushed. It was dumb. It was doubly dumb in BG and IWD (versus BG2 and IWD2) because many ambushes were nowhere near balanced for even a partially resource-expended level 1-2 party so if you didn't reload you would probably be game over-ed anyway. (Same thing with ambushes when going from map to map.) That's interesting, personally I always felt they made for some very easy grinding, back in those games. Especially in the case of Icewind Dale, the yetis at the Vale of Shadows (I think that was tge area's name) made for plenty of easy money and experience early on, and I could easily survive three or four ambushes before I needed to actually rest. It was a very easy system to abuse and definitely trivialized some of the next dungeons. Either way I definitely agree that it was not well implemented at all. I'll still argue that resting can only be implemented correctly if you set a real, non-avoidable risk or tradeoff when doing so. For example, using time as a constraint, and making it so that certain quests are time-critical and so resting too often can lead to running out of time and thus failing said quest. Actually one of the games that to the best of my memory made resting a relevant risk was Mask of the Betrayer, because resting meant that your hunger would still increase through that period and thus force you to feed on souls more often. But random encounters, supply-based systems and so on, that does very little to limit resting or give it some genuine purpose in my opinion.

I really dig the record Piazzolla made for the '78 world cup.

Yeah, I was just discussing the album with a friend and we both had a very similar feeling to yours. For me it's just that the kind of imaginary she goes for here, which is similar to that of Arca and the likes too, is not one that's entirely attractive to me. But there's a few really good songs in the album amidst all the saccharine pop and somewhat aimless IDM that surrounds them. It's worth a listen.

Enjoyed the new album by SOPHIE... injurai, I think you might like it too.

(I enjoy reading this thread in the voice of Sam Riegel)

Almost. Too many missed opportunities. And Messi should have been penalized. Nice goal in the 2nd though. What for? I didn't see any foul play from him. There was a pretty obvious second penalty for Argentina that the referee missed though.

That was a dodgy penalty and then some. But, Ronaldo things.

What does this mean exactly? (The expression usually means done correctly.) I may be incorrect, but I usually understand it as meaning something is done in a very predictable/generic/formulaic fashion. I wouldn't agree at all with the remark myself though.

Oh but you were making a comparison and you are doing it again in your reply just now. You are saying that people generally don't care about difficulty because <your Torment example>. To which I replied that Torment didn't have a difficulty issue because it was evenly difficult all the way. It doesn't matter that Torment wasn't difficult to begin with. It's about consistency. If Torment became easier as the game progressed then people would have complained about that. Not many people complained about the difficulty at the start of PoE II. People have generally complained about the difficulty further into the game and this is due to the points I explained earlier. Open world and levelling system. Things that are completely different from how Torment was set up. Uh, no. I was replying specifically to the assertion that "the hardest" meant "for people who actually like RPGs". I was providing an example of a very easy game that is widely considered as one of the best RPGs of all time by people who "actually like RPGs" to show that it is incorrect to assume that people who like RPGs necessarily care about difficulty or do so because the games are diffuxult in the first place. Your comparisons regarding Deadfire and Torment are your own, and they are moot to the point I was making.

Them's fighting words. *rolls back sleeves* (Though in all frankness I was glad we didn't win, because it meant one less populist argument to be exploited by the Kirchner government at the time. But still.)

Err, yes? It's what these games do? Would we not argue the same of the likes of Poko Kohara, the Drowned Barrows, Cignath Mór or Splintered Reef in Deadfire, which are arguably tougher what with their greater variety of challenges and enemies throughout? And this is why defining "the hardest" is a good idea, I suppose, because when people speak of difficulty tuning here they're never really referring to "reading difficulty".

Not sure what your point is. Is it that the game is hard or something? If you take the OPs, sure, but not at all if you look at the replies each discussion has garnered (and one of them was because the OP dun goofed his build and had the Nameless One using Porphatys' Dagger, which made him lose control during the battle).

In modern game design it's "for people who actually like RPGs / combat". No. Just no. RPGs can be fun without a high difficulty, heck story quality and game difficulty are not linked. Combat can also be fun without being masochistic. Don't conflate your taste with everyone's standard of fun. Though I am of the opinion that challenging gameplay can often enhance a story, I agree here. Heck, Planescape: Torment is hardly a very challenging game yet there are several in this forum (as shown by this poll I made a few months back for example) who consider it one of the greatest RPGs ever. I don't think the people who take part in the official forum for a developer dedicated primarily on the development of RPGs are not gonna be people who don't "actually like RPGs". Combat, now, that is a very different thing - but again, taking Torment's example above, combat isn't necessarily what RPG fans look at in their RPGs. That's actually a poor comparison. Planescape Torment isn't an open world game. It's difficulty also doesn't go up or down much any way you play it. The issue with POEII is, like with Skyrim, Fallout 3/4 and Dragons Dogma, that you can level yourself to crazy heights and even with level scaling you will overpower your enemy. It's the levelling system that is to blame together with the choice to go open world. Nothing else. This takes the fun out of the game. Planescape doesn't have you completely overpower your enemy, the difficulty remains more or less the same. Whether you find it challenging is a different topic altogether. I was never making a comparison in the first place. Torment is an RPG, one that has found a very devout niche audience, and yet not a very hard one at that. In that sense, it proves that not all people who "actually like RPGs" are people who are actively looking to beat a game at its hardest difficulty or who even care about whether a game is hard or not at all. Whether it is an "open world game" or not, or whether difficulty goes up or down or sideways or whatever, is moot (and arguable too, considering how grinding is an option in that game that is largely non-existent in Deadfire, but again, it's all moot). The point is merely that saying "the hardest" means "for people who actually like RPGs" is a rather bull**** remark when it is utterly demonstrable that plenty of players who "actually like RPGs" don't necessarily play them in their hardest difficulty or look for a challenge when playing these games at all. It's just an asinine "no true Scotsman" remark that does absolutely nothing to answer the question it is allegedly responding.

Yeah, it's a shame because I always like Holland. They're a great team to watch and they love to spice things up when drama hits the field too (see their many confrontations v. Portugal for example). :D

In modern game design it's "for people who actually like RPGs / combat". No. Just no. RPGs can be fun without a high difficulty, heck story quality and game difficulty are not linked. Combat can also be fun without being masochistic. Don't conflate your taste with everyone's standard of fun. Though I am of the opinion that challenging gameplay can often enhance a story, I agree here. Heck, Planescape: Torment is hardly a very challenging game yet there are several in this forum (as shown by this poll I made a few months back for example) who consider it one of the greatest RPGs ever. I don't think the people who take part in the official forum for a developer dedicated primarily on the development of RPGs are not gonna be people who don't "actually like RPGs". Combat, now, that is a very different thing - but again, taking Torment's example above, combat isn't necessarily what RPG fans look at in their RPGs.

I'll be watching for certain. Unfortunately I'll be missing the first Argentina match as I got a shoot on Saturday. But oh well. We aren't looking too hot this year but here's hoping.

Ghost of Tsushima has me a bit split to be honest. I like that the game seems to aim for a more historical Japanese setting and how the combat seems to borrow a fair bit from the flow and pace of the chambaras of old (or so it seemed in parts of the presentation), but the dialogue felt really ham-fisted and what with all the AAA gloss I cannot shake the feeling that this reminds me less of Kihachi Okamoto's Sword of Doom for example and more of the Keanu Reeves vehicle 47 Ronin instead. But it's a damn sight better than the likes of Sekiro and Nioh which seem to follow that "fantasy Japan on steroids" aesthetic that was already naff around the time Onimusha came out. And to the best of my awareness they aren't trying to pass this one off as a Kurosawa adaptation. Overall I'm curious about it for certain, but not without some hesitation.

Yeah, it was a stronger E3 than the last couple for certain. There's a few games here that have genuinely interested me and not merely in an "I'll add it to the increasingly unwieldy backburner" sort of way.

Updating with the ones that have caught my eye today: Cyberpunk 2077 Doom: Eternal Ori and the Will of the Wisps Metro: Exodus Tunic Dying Light 2 Rage 2 Quake: Champions Starfield The Elder Scrolls VI Beyond Good & Evil 2 Sable Rapture's Rejects Two Point Hospital The Last of Us Part II Ghost of Tsushima Control Death Stranding

Only Beyond Good & Evil 2 has caught my eye so far today, and I say that trying to ignore at how desperate Ubisoft seemed to divert people attention away from any "gameplay" footage. The PC show was utterly hopeless.

I'm very excited for Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom: Eternal above all others. Also the following games I'm looking forward to, or caught my attention: Ori and the Will of the Wisps Metro: Exodus Tunic Dying Light 2 Cyberpunk 2077 Rage 2 Quake: Champions Starfield The Elder Scrolls VI

That's a funny way of looking at it. I can see what you mean...because in the first movie, Thor was basically a total nincompoop with little to no self-awareness, leading to slapstick situations because he's just so buffoonish and apparently does not realize that his behavior is ridiculous. Thor 3, in comparison, felt a little slapstick-y not because the characters were stupid idiots, but rather the opposite: it seemed like they were smarter, more tongue-in-cheek and self-aware. I actually liked and enjoyed Thor's character a little in this movie, which I really, really did not in the first movie. The second movie I can't speak as much about, since I can only vaguely remember it and I can only remember being supremely bored...I THINK the humor was mainly supposed to come from other characters, and Thor himself was much more serious, BUT I could be wrong. Now, it's probably just a part of his character progression throughout the series, which I would agree would probably be fine from a storytelling standpoint if I'm looking at it objectively, but I pretty much freaking hated everyone else in those first two movies (besides maybe Loki), too, which means our main character also being an annoying dummy (1st) or super serious boring (my impression from the 2nd) just makes it so that the movies weren't enjoyable. So this was a nice departure from that. Yeah, that's really about the gist of the first movie: Thor walks out of the set of a bad Lord of the Rings rehash into a more "realist" setting (all within the context of MCU of course, so take that with a grain of salt) and comedy ensues from his overly grand and self-absorbed personality in contrast to the others. Hence all of the "I require sustenance, this mortal form grows weak" lines and so on. Future films kind of reimagined him as a quippier and more self-aware character, but his personality in the first film absolutely worked for what Branagh was going for with it, or so I felt. I really liked it, and I didn't find him annoying though, granted, that's entirely your prerogative if you do.

Maybe it's because I haven't paid attention to Squeenix for years, but I don't know what else you expected? Isn't that what they do? I'm not saying it isn't, but I guess I was hoping for a change all the same. Bethesda and Microsoft were quite positively surprising this year so I guess I was hoping to get something out of their presentation as well. Anyhow, it's just my reaction towards their work I guess.

That Squenix conference was some dog**** weeb trash tier and then some. Just about the only thing to take out of it all was a NieR: Automata DLC for me, was actively repelled by the rest of that nonsense (well, okay, I was indifferent to Captain Spirit, Just Cause 4 and Octopath Traveller - still...).

Wait, what? The first Thor was totally taking the piss, it was arguably the most openly comedic of the first wave of MCU films what with the whole fish out of water and overt "no longer a god" type slapstick throughout. I thought it was good fun myself (actually I've enjoyed all Thor films on a more consistent basis than I have those of any other Avenger, though it's not saying a terrible lot either).