marelooke

Pretty much what I do, since I also upload my screenshots to my own domain I haven't opened the Steam Screenshots window in very long time. Anyway, haven't really been feeling like playing much that really engages the brain, thankfully there's the kinda brain dead, but cinematic, nature of much of Star Citizen's currently available game loops, like cargo hauling (well, when not dodging (wannabe) pirates anyway)... Star Citizen regularly has a soft reset, where one of the things that resets is your starting location. Recently I've been using that opportunity to move around the Stanton-system and until the last reset (earlier this week), I was based out of Hurston (capital: Lorville), home of Hurston Dynamics. My favourite "large" combat ship: the Constellation Andromeda. Tanky, big pew pew, and missiles for daaaaays. Landing one of these elegantly is a bit of an art. Hitting the chin against the floor is a pretty real possibility with the landing gear that far back... Finally saved up for one of these: an Aegis Eclipse. Resulting in probably one of my favourite screenshots so far. My, so far, last addition to the fleet is a MISC Reliant Tana because it has a great "bubble" ****pit, while still being decently fast in atmosphere, which makes zipping around planets taking in the sights a pretty great experience. (and if that ship makes you think of some other ship in some other universe, the person that designed this apparently ended up moving to LucasFilm...)

In Steam's settings under "In Game" there's an option to save an uncompressed copy of your screenshots. And to stay on topic here's a screenshot

Played an completed The Chant, it's sort of an interesting occult horror-ish game. It's ... OK (I mean, I finished the main game), not sure if, or when I'll get to the DLC though. 6/10 I'd say. Picked up Mass Effect: Andromeda in a sale and it starts out decent enough (I'm pretty early in, I assume anyway, as I just completed my crew), well, story-wise anyway. But graphics, dialogues, characters, and their motivations (including the PCs, tbh) etc. all seem a pretty clear downgrade over the previous games. Feels like a game with potential that a committee got their hands on. At least it hasn't bored me into no longer wanting to boot it up, so far anyway, unlike Bethesda's latest attempt.

Starting from scratch is how I end up with relatively many characters (7 on my "main" Exiled Lands save, 3 in Siptah, and 2 in a very "throw all the mods at it and see when it breaks"-game). I just keep the same save and swap between them occasionally to fix up damage done by patches, or to continue/expand some build when new things release or new ideas come up. Doing it this way also means I kinda force myself to be a bit more creative than I'd otherwise be when choosing base locations as some spots are now already occupied by previous characters. Modwise I've mostly been running the same ones for years now as I try to keep my save as stable as possible given I don't tend start over from scratch.

Well, I have multiple characters on this server, many over lvl100, so yeah, just having a go at the place was a bit easier for me I'll probably have to build a base purely for triggering purge attacks, my usual, extremely large, bases are way too prone to them spawning inside, an issue I've been told isn't solved with the new system

Checked it out and they do look Stygian (don't always sound it ), also seem to respawn infinitely on a very short timer, combined with the broken combat system(*) I think I'll give it a pass for the time being. Ironically enough one of my characters has a base right across from the new fortress, so that is convenient... (*) modders will fix it: "Chapter 3 Combat HotFix (by Xevyr)", so we can attack in the direction we're looking again. Of all the obnoxious changes they've done over the years this one truly does take the cake, at least it was apparently easily modded out.

You confused me, and I have lots of hours into this game. Hmm, I wonder how ma... *checks Steam* ... errr, let's talk about something else... Anyway, marking these as spoilers in case you want to discover things for yourself, since they concern specific locations/mechanics (that you may not even be aware exist at this point, depending on how much the marketing material spoiled) With regards to the Stygian stronghold: With regards to packing up and moving: That said, after playing...this many hours...I generally run with a mod that removes the level cap so weight limits aren't that much of a concern, and when I build a new base there's generally little reason to drag all that many things along.

New Star Citizen patch dropped (3.22), and the thing that excites me most is the new and upgraded ... hairstyles I did look for a screenshot with the old hair, but all I got are ones from character creation, or NPCs, because pretty much nobody, including yours truly, took off their helmets like, ever... and at least for now many people actually do. It's kinda crazy how much better all characters look by just pimping the hair... Really interested to see what the impact of the new character creation tool will be as it will add even more options (and not just for the hair ), what we got now is just a little teaser, compared to what they showcased at Citizen Con. If nothing else the ability to actually export/import your character so you don't have to re-do things every major patch will be very welcome...

Was just flying around, looting outposts for free armour/weapons, you know, as you do When I noticed someone had parked a Reclaimer on a hill outside, leading to some pretty eery atmosphere... Especially with Crusader in the night sky... Felt the urge to go running around trying to make better screenshots, but I couldn't be sure the Cutter parked outside the outpost, or the Reclaimer itself were unmanned, and I didn't feel like getting shot. So I just circled the area a bit and decided to just peace out after a while.

Haven't really been gaming much outside of a lot of The Division 2 (crashiest game I've had the honour of playing in a while), and the ongoing raiding in FF XIV (finally cleared the final savage boss and got my BIS set for the first time ever. Party!). Aside from that I've been mostly poking at Star Citizen after I sorta lost interest in Elite Dangerous since it feels like it's in maintenance mode on top of being actively new-player hostile (think I've mentioned that part before, but it's been a while ) It's one of the things I really enjoy about Star Citizen, there's an out-of-MMO component (Arena Commander) where you can practice against AI (can also play with/against players without having to deal with...MMO-things), so you don't blow all your starting money on rookie mistakes, like having no idea what the flight controls are. Don't know if I mentioned it before, but I sprang for a HOSAS (dual stick) setup and it's been a game changer, really. Recently I also added face-tracking to look around during flight, which was another game-changer. Unlike what the manufacturers of stuff like the Tobii Eye Tracker would want you to believe for this purpose all you need is a halfway decent webcam where refresh rate and ability to discern things in the dark are the most important (unless you like to play in bright rooms, I guess). Personally I got a Nexigo N660P (as it supports 60fps, which is more important for tracking than resolution) which I use with OpenTrack/AITrack and it's been pretty great. Bonus is that you now also have a halfway decent webcam for...webcam things It does measurably impact CPU usage though, which I doubt is really a problem with any modern CPU, but figured it worth mentioning.

Been a little while, IAE2953 (Intergalactic Aerospace Expo) has come and gone, so got to mess around with lots of ships during the free fly... Alien ships: Human stuff: One of my favourites, the RSI Constellation Andromeda: One of the things that's really hard to convey is the sense of scale, some of these things are just massive:

Just casually flying my Tie Interceptor Fury over Hoth Microtech, taking in the sights.

How's the later game? Enemies feel quite a bit more bullet-spongy at low levels (I started a new character), and given that there's level scaling now that's a bit of a worry. Also seems to be impossible to sneak up on cyberpsychos now? Has anyone managed? If so I guess my pure stealth build is out of the window... Fighting them sure as hell isn't an option early game when you're all in on Cool. Unless they get stuck, of course... Do get a lot more income from jobs, so that's nice, shouldn't be too hard to pay off Vic before The Heist from the looks of it. New police system seems worse, for the way I play anyway, than before, which is a merc, not a gta-thug/cyberpsycho. Seen some pretty epic shootouts and police just ignores them entirely. They're also everywherel, and here I thought the NCPD was understaffed...

Just got to the point where you are forced into in Starfield, I'm sure they give you absolutely no choice in the matter because of some story reason that the writers couldn't be bothered find a more creative way to deal with. Keeping my "called it" cared handy. Ugh

Goodbye Port Olisar o7 Crusader, as seen from Port Olisar in 2018: More or less the same spot in 2023 at night: You'd come up to the pad after going up the stairs from this walkway: To be greeted by this view: Getting to your ship (an Aurora MR, aka "small starter ship") with Crusader in the "background": Nowadays you can actually fly down to the planet, to Cloud City Orison: Which looks especially amazing at night:

I think that's why most MMOs stopped actually messing with the world state and generally use areas frozen in time. It was pretty bad for new, and old, player retention alike. (see WoW: Cataclysm and GW2 with their early living world seasons)

I got wind that Port Olisar, Star Citizen's oldest space station and the original starting location before there were any planets or moons to land on, is getting removed with the next major update (3.20), so I dusted of my HOSAS to visit the OG one last time. Spawning at PO in the "Habs", walking through the station to the airlock, hearing the sound deaden when the airlock cycles, stepping outside and walking to the open landing pad the ship sits on, with the absolutely massive gas giant that is Crusader looming overhead is a core gaming memory for me. Port Olisar so far is the only place in a game that managed to inspire that sense of awe by actually driving home the ridiculous scale of the universe. The station needed an overhaul, but it is a shame that the features that made it memorable, the spacewalk and open pads, are being lost in the process. o7 Port Olisar, you will be missed.

My opinion of Starfield is going downhill the more I play it. I've gone from "Eh, a 7/10, maybe?", to "No more than a 6/10", so far. The UX is just atrocious, and clearly built around a very limited set of buttons ("press and hold" to exit the map, really?) to make it controller friendly, but they couldn't even be consistent in which button does what across UI elements (Tab? Hahaha, no, this time it is Escape). Needing a mod to disable the obnoxious "toggle to sprint" is mind boggling and, in my mind anyway, a clear indication the UX really was built around controllers. In summary Bethesda clearly learned nothing from the terrible UX of Skyrim and/or Fallout 4, and even managed to make it worse, somehow... Which brings us to lock picking which is now also much more annoying. Thankfully someone already modded it out. But can we, please, stop these obnoxious mini-games and just go back to skill checks, like in New Vegas? Especially for things you have to do every five steps? In a similar vein, outposts seem worse than the Fallout 4 implementation (outside buildings, like solar panels, don't snap to a grid, so things look like they are just haphazardly thrown around. But even inside decoration is an exercise in futility as the "rotate" granularity is abysmal, so aligning anything to a wall is borderline impossible). Additionally finding a good, resource rich, landing zone on a planet is just a dice roll since the granularity of the map isn't good enough to actually land where you intended, so you think you're landing on the intersection of 3, or 4, desirable resources but after touchdown one of them is nowhere to be found. I mean that spot may exist somewhere on that "the size of Fallout 4's map"-map that you can only traverse on foot. Which they clearly did to try to hide the inability of their engine to stream in entire planets by making it unreasonable to traverse the entire thing (well, until modders mod in vehicles or other faster ways of getting around, anyway). Especially since they're mostly empty and things are 700/1400m apart, so trudging on foot through vast tracts of nothingness to get to randomly generated events (to be fair, some of them are pretty good). Maybe if reviewers would start picking on the lazy choices Bethesda made instead of praising them to the moon for doing nothing new they'd actually try to make a better game next time. But for some reason Bethesda consistently releasing mediocrity is praiseworthy. Or am I simply unreasonable in expecting that if they make the same game every 10 years or so, it would at least have improved over its predecessor in some tangible way? Especially when they somehow think it's worth charging substantially more for it? As usual, underneath the technical/UX disaster is a decent enough game, but well, we are, once again, going to need the modders to do what Bethesda couldn't be bothered to, which is to actually make it enjoyable to play. At least by then the price should've come down, hopefully...

Yeah, got similar vibes. Feels like a mix of Fallout 4 and No Man's Sky. Game's "fine" so far, which means it's better than Fallout 4, which I couldn't stand until I started modding it. So far it certainly doesn't feel like it's worth the insane asking price, as far as I'm concerned.

Patch 1.63 released. Lots of fixes, the one that stands out to me is this one: Chippin' In - It is now possible to examine all of the clues on Ebunike before becoming detected. That one really bothered me as you were missing out on some significant lore on Adam Smasher due to this bug.

Summary of the expansion + general game updates coming with it shamelessly stolen from Reddit: Trailer's already linked in the general news thread, but figured it may warrant some more discussion and this seems like the more appropriate place. My only real worry is that they'll give in to the Cyber GTA crowd a bit too much, which would be especially bad news for the next game. While the map being kinda dead once you're done with the story was a bit of a shame I'm not sure gamey sounding random activities will make it better. But we'll see how they manage to spin it, probably should have a bit of faith in CDPR on this one. Similar thoughts about the police system: if you play as a merc, and not a (GTA-style) thug you wouldn't exactly interact with it very often, at least imho so I can't say I particularly care about it being overhauled. Looks like it'll be a busy end of year with Starfield supposedly also releasing.

Timberborn I've played, and completed (minus DLC) Terminator Resistance. Decent little shooter, makes you actually fear the Terminators, even though they're dumb as bricks. It's not a game with a massive budget so don't expect too much depth. Most annoying things were a few pretty obvious spelling mistakes and a single CTD (on a bossfight...). Worth it on a sale, solid 6/10, maybe a 7/10 if you're really into Terminator. Started playing Airborne Kingdom after that. City builder where your city floats. Difficulty seems to ramp up slowly (so far) as you basically scavenge resources from the ground below, but you're burning through them increasingly quickly as your population grows, which may lead to some interesting logistical challenges down the line.

Been a while since I played it, but it was really fun then, at least. Rather relaxing game.

I have. The teleporters do have their drawbacks, which I've spoiler tagged in case you want to find out for yourself: I'd say that the locations the Map Room connects to generally are still useful, especially since some you can't build close to (like the Archives), but having only Map Room that can be reached with a teleport is probably sufficient. They also just allow for much freer base location choice since being near an Obelisk doesn't really matter at all anymore. Especially nice for those among us that don't really use mounts... Obviously, they're absolutely fantastic on Siptah because no map room there at all, and rare materials are anything but on Siptah

Made it!