Lexx

Well that trailer looks completely different to what Rage was, so I wouldn't expect there to be much connection, except for a couple weapons and enemy types maybe. It's probably going to be like old Prey and new Prey, or old Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the new ones, etc. I'm pretty sure this is going to be a Mad Max, Borderlands and Fallout mix, set in the Rage universe.

Oi, did you chose your item ID randomly or is there some reason behind it? Just trying to understand how crap works right now.

Huh, never ever would I have expected to see a new Rage game. But looks like they are turning it into some sort of Borderlands. Eh..

Just finished Yoga Fire. Took me 46 hours according to Steam.... Played Battletech for 74 hours and Hunt: Showdown for 85 hours... in the past 1 1/2 months? I really should get back to doing something useful.... Liked PoE2 quite a lot because of the setting, etc. It does have a lot of unused potential, though. I'm recognizing all the usual modern-day rpg quest mechanics in it as well, especially Obsidians footprint. No matter the writing, in its core it does somehow always feel kinda same-y, but "normal people" (unfamiliar with at least a bit of game quest design) probably wouldn't notice it, I guess. It's waaaay too easy. Thing is, just cranking up the difficulty wouldn't be the right thing to do either. It'll just make all combat tedious again... it's a really though topic, to be honest. I want some challenges... sometimes... and other times I just want to steamroll stuff. Anyway, I'm too tired to write more right now. Gotta hit the bed.

I think I'm about to wrap up my PoE2 playthrough. 42 hours in and most bounties and quests done + it feels like the endgame is nigh. The game does have some quests that seem quite complicated and allow for multiple choices, but here is the thing: It's not just the combat that is easy, but also all dialog checks? Maybe I'm min-maxing too hard, no idea... but due to this, my choices don't really feel as if I've managed something big. Here is an example: To put that in perspective with Vault City and Gecko in Fallout 2... making this work is actually hard. You can't just go to the bosses, power through some tiny dialog checks and done. You need hard facts, you need the appropriately skilled character for it, you can easily **** it up. But once done, you feel like you did something meaningful.

PoE2 combat is a lot better than PoE1 combat, imo. But yes, it gets pretty easy rather quickly. I've already upped the difficulty a notch, which I really didn't thought I'd do. Thinking about increasing it one more. Thing is, on lower difficulty levels you can just keep the party ai on and it'll wreck the mobs easily. On higher difficulty levels you'll have to micro-manage more, but due to this also wreck the mobs easily. PS: I found out that I can just sink enemy ships and still get loot out of it, which means the boarding mechanic can be skipped entirely (then what exactly is the point of it?). Now I'm just spamming my cannons and then collect the scraps.

I don't think it is necessary to replay PoE1 before Yoga Fire. You're just burning yourself out. If you made it to your castle before, that's enough to understand the story.

The game was meant to be turn-based, but remember: Back in these days, real time was THE THING and every such game required it. Turn-based was dead to the mainstream. Heck, makes me remember the early days of not yet released Fallout 3. The internet was exploding in a warfare about turn-based combat. So, so, so many people thought turn-based system existed only due to technical limitations. Some of the articles and youtube videos that spawned about it still infuriate me today when just thinking about them... ... anyway, that's why Fallout: Tactics, Arcanum, etc. got that ugly and ****ty real-time combat and a botched (optional) turn-based combat. You just can't make a game that features both mechanics. This never worked out so far. Gotta thank the new X-Com games for bringing back turn-based combat, I guess.

Don't forget about the PMCs. Tried to google some raw numbers, but it's kinda hard to find out how many are stationed in Iraq.

Huh, what the hell happened to Fear the Walking Dead? It is... dare I say it... it is actually good right now. The last couple episodes of season 3 suddenly have been really good, and season 4 started out really good as well?! ... Did a quick trip to google and it turns out the writers have changed. Well, that explains some things. Now they should change the writers for The Walking Dead as well, I guess.

I, too, am at a point now where I just steamroll stuff. Started on relaxed with no level scaling except for the critical story path. The game had its hard moments, but they become much more rare now. Ship battles are sometimes really though. Doesn't help that I'm not very hot on the ship battles anyway due to the bug that makes the boarding minigame obsolete. Doesn't matter how many people you kill in it, once you start the boarding, the enemy ship is full with critters.

Gotta say it, I kinda like that most dialog in Yoga Fire has been voiced. I'd wish some folks to have a different actor (narrator could be older, for example), but other than that... Playing it for longer than PoE1 now and I'm still not tired of it. Really digging the setting and all that jazz. To think that I would have passed over it if it weren't for MCA and the drama bringing it closer into my field of view...

Noooooo The Expanse. Why, just why. But garbage stays on air? What's wrong with people?

Hmm I really wouldn't mind if pilots who lose all their health roll a dice and then eject or not. If they eject, they live... and if not, they likely die. I mean, srsly, does any player actually eject manually? I never did it in my 80 hours... I'd rather reload. This way you know the pilot is alive and the mech didn't suffer a center torso meltdown. I'm more inclined to keep playing in that situation than if I think the pilot might or might not be dead for real (and the mech being in total scraps).

There is *much less* random filler combat. And the ones I had did not feel as painful as it was in the first game. In fact, I'm quite enjoying it here, while in PoE1 I just switched to story-mode, so I can get done with it. Agreeing a bit about the companions... but I'm pretty sure increasing the party number wouldn't really change it at all. You'd just end up with the same problem but a bigger active party. In a weird way Yoga Fire reminds me a lot of Arcanum. Really makes me wish to have a new Arcanum game in that engine. Or just a remake with fixes and improvements.

Still playing PoE2... already longer than I expected. I'm actually really liking it. Much better than the first game. Oh, and the writing has improved after the intro scenes. There's less boring filler text and descriptions. Also I'm very happy not to see the backer reward soul something-something NPCs from the first game again. As Battletech has shown recently as well, you just can't have backers write a bio and have it appear in such a game. It never works out well (unless your aim is to give cancer to the player).

It's a beginning. You can't have changes over night-- america tried that multiple times and it made things worse, every single time. PS: Saudi Arabia is not an inch better than Iran, yet they are our "friends" .. lel. /edit: Trumps circus isn't much better, by the way.

Bwahahaha, that's more like it! Could you imagine the full body convulsion that would take place worldwide if the US government did that? That's 15 or what idiots out of 290. Somehow every news article forgets to mention that. But yes, surely they must all be the same, yadda yadda.

Well, pretty much all side missions in the campaign are based on the skirmish mode. Considering this (the campaign is only like 8 missions or something), it makes a lot sense to balance around the actual skirmish mode. Still doesn't mean light mechs should become crap at a certain tonnage limit. 213374U suggestion with the evasion could work, by the way. I'm curious if HBS will do something like this.

So far I like the Caribbean theme, the visuals, the music, etc. What I can't stop complaining about is - once again - all of the overwritten dialog. I've just started (played about 80 minutes), but already seeing me skipping the greyed out texts in dialog. Had the same issue in PoE1 and Torment and any other nowadays game...

lol PoE2 is just out of the door and there already comes an announcement for 3 DLCs. They really should have waited at least a week for that, imo.

Yeah. The longer I play, the more I wish they had added a tonnage limit (per mission?). This way you would have to chose e.g. if you want to bring 1 heavy + 2 mediums + 1 light, or 3 mediums + 1 light, etc.. This way it would have been easier to make light mechs still viable in late game. I can't see how that would otherwise be possible.

Is it just me or is the forum dying right now? Also 4.7k users online. Usually I don't scroll down this far, so I don't know how many people are online on average.

Trump has yet to announce about the iran deal? Boy, what is taking him so long... Waiting for half the day already.

Yeah, seen it just a second after. Then I thought, ah whatever, because I suck at haikus.