melkathi

I'll keep you posted about second impressions.

Devs Are Idiots or at Least Have Never Even Been in the Same Room as a Video Game a first impression post about Necromunda Now, nobody denies that Mordheim had a less than stellar launch. Only 4 warbands to choose from, with one of them being 3 of the tabletop ones combined into 1 (which made sense). It had problems and some would never be fixed (Big guy AI, I am looking at you (or AI in general)). Mordheim kept a loyal playerbase by doing something right: offering a sandbox campaign in which players could grow their warbands and get attached to them over hundreds of hours. Many avoided the story missions with huge maps and endless reinforcements, as those could at best simply take up hours of running back and forth, at worst ruin a warband (the Aluress mission being extremely good at doing that, with daemonettes respawning every turn right next to the player). Once experienced, players would know to be prepared for those missions though and see them as just an hours long tedium. Let's hold onto these points: Mordheim Good: Personal, customizable warband players get attached to in Sandbox Mordheim Bad: Confusing, big maps in Story Missions, endless reinforcements in Story Missions, and fixed later on: too few warbands at launch, unable to choose deployment of fighters during missions at launch With Necromunda the dev team wanted to avoid previous mistakes. They were more experienced and had seen how players reacted to things in Mordheim. They weren't going to do Early Access again to avoid the early reviews about an unfinished product. In theory they could have learned from mistakes made by others, such as Shadowrun Returns and the fundamental changes during development (they changed game engine or what?), but that would mean caring about what happens in the industry one works in. During the first friends and family and very few randoms Alpha, the devs found out: their gameplay was pants. Simultaneous real time first person running around until an opponent enter LOS when the game would freeze to turn based. Every gamer could have told them that was a bad idea - I picture Unreal Tournament (I date myself, I know) and when that dude with the sniper rifle hiding in that sweet spot sees me, instead of me finding out because I die, I find out because the game freezes and enters turn based mode. So they scrapped that and had to go full turn based. Yay. A shame about all the time and resources wasted. So the game launches. It doesn't launch with 4 gangs, the devs having learned from Mordheim that 4 is not a good number - 4 warbands had been a major point of unhappy gamers. Instead they launch with 3 gangs. 3 != 4 so it is a good number. As players had been unhappy with the story missions in Mordheim, the approach to narration changes in Necromunda as well: a Story Campaign separate from the Sandbox game. The story campaign is 15 missions (apparently) with set gangs played in order. As it isn't in the Sandbox environment there is no gang management - no returning to base, the Avenger, Chimera Squad Warehouse or other names the in-between missions management screens get given. In this the devs may have managed a first: a tactics game with a campaign lacking even rudimentary management. During story missions the set fighters with set equipment are pre-deployed. Before these fighters activate, players have no ability to properly check their equipment. Also, some missions of course have endless reinforcements - not really a biggy so far: in the missions I encountered with those, I ran for the exit before the first reinforcement fighter even had a chance to activate. The story campaign is meant to act as a long tutorial, but by cutting out the management level of the game and just giving players some fighters to activate with little information, it actually confuses more than it explains. Naturally, many players decided to skip the campaign and go for the sandbox they bought the game for. Especially if they hadn't planned to play Escher (the first 5 missions of the story). Mordheim had quite a nice variety of customization options and Necromunda promised to have even more. The advanced colour palette options are great and allow you to easily work out a unified colour scheme for the whole gang. Then comes the rude awakening: customization options are locked. As it isn't EA or Paradox, not behind a paywall. Finish the Story Campaign to unlock Hair Customization. ... ... Yeah, read title of this post. Nice graphics, nice atmosphere, possibly a good game if you wade through enough dev stupidity. It isn't nice to talk bad about devs. The internet is full of haters and trolls. But sometimes devs really just are idiots.

Oooh, the first game in the 4R genre... Looks interesting.

Incoming. GMG did a last day of pre-order 30% discount instead of the 20% other sites were doing so convinced me. Played the first two missions last night (the game unlocked 1AM GMT so 3AM MST (Melkathi Summer Time)).

Not necessarily the best comparison when you compare your first reaction to that of reviewers when the game had just released / was about to release. There seems to be 5 years between that. That can be quite important.

Whichever game Obsidian is bringing out, has a new(ish) forum section for and this new user meant to post in I don't know. I just troll these boards, I don't keep up with the game.

Quite likely. Never got into them back then, so don't have much nostalgia either.

So basically you killed Nasrudin

Didn't that only just release this week?

Humble 1C bundle has good stuff: Fell Seal + dlc, Deep Sky Derelicts (without dlc I guess), Stygian (without an ending)... Enjoyed all three of those.

Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars is not very good. It has made no progress from that months long pre-order beta. It doesn't inspire me to write more of a review.

Obviously. If you did, your nose would be pointed towards her breath.

I read that name as Badbreath

majestic is playing.

Troy. They got the theme right. The problem of the game is that it is still a Total War game.

Total War: my fleet is caught mid sea by the enemy fleet. A naval battle ensues. It takes place on a forested hilltop. When you can't see the ocean for all the trees.

Total War: I offer to join another kingdom in their war against a third faction. They demand I pay them all my resources in exchange for accepting my aid... So I simply declared war on the other faction and laid siege to their city without "helping".

Trying out Total War Troy. The problem is, I am not a fan of Total War games in general.

Ippokampus is the full name of the ability I think. The game's alternate spelling for the mythological sea-horse Hippocampus. Pandora's Box is an ability that copies a random ability from the game. This time it copied one of the skills, I think from the Vessel hidden class which has "summons" like that.

Werewolf on Werewolf violence: When "random effect" actually does something useful for a chance:

Though you can also ask here and someone will answer. (with someone quite likely being Skazz or me)