marelooke

Game just pulled in a 5.6GiB update on Gog. So far no patch notes so not sure what's in there.

Since Lost Ark is unavailable in my region due to gambling laws I started another Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough. Boy, must I have gotten lucky with my first playthrough because I've had to redo missions so many times because of bugs I'm seriously considering just giving up at this point. Not to mention quite a few graphical glitches. I barely had any issues prior to 1.5, but now the game is just a mess. Couple of examples, helping the monk: Jotaro gig: Had a few annoying glitches as well. Like people stuck in the floor and Jackie's motorcycle randomly being in the middle of the street (without Jackie). Also got hit (literally) by the "stuff spawns behind your back" "feature". Look around before crossing street, you know, as one does... Get driven over by car that spawned behind me. Ugh. The mission bugs might be ones I just managed to dodge before, since I went full stealth last playthrough.

Eh, so far nothing of value is being lost. Which, really, isn't surprising given the types of games that tend to include these "mechanics". Still, would be nice to stomp this predatory behaviour out. Last I heard quite a few countries were looking into updating their legislation to deal with predatory practices in games, not the least of which being France and the UK.

Well, I fired up the game. Had to respec my character, which is annoying as I hardly remembered what I put where in the first place. Then I found out they changed attribute requirements on weapons as well without refunding those, so my character-that-finished-the-game can no longer use the weapon-she-finished-the-game-with proficiently. Closed the game again. Might start a new character, but really getting a bit tired of these types of sweeping changes in single player games.

Well, it was bound to happen. Some new MMO launched (Lost Ark), and it's not available in Belgium/Netherlands due to the in-game gambling, or "surprise mechanics" if you're EA. Can't wait for the EU to finally get its **** together and ban this garbage outright, union wide (before any game I might care about is affected, preferably )

Stadia is still a thing? Anyway, sounds like a good time for a new playthrough. Shame it's still impossible to find a GPU at anything resembling reasonable prices, and with the dropping of 700series support I'm now literally on the minimum spec GPU-wise (GTX970)... There's two things that come up commonly that are, as far as I can tell, still not addressed: more stuff to do once you're "done" with the game that isn't just driving around and shooting up random gangs. Would be neat if they could generate semi-random Fixer jobs. I'd compare to Bethesda's radiant quests, but maybe something a bit better/more challenging than their system ability to not look like a clown Additionally, as far as I can tell form the patchnotes, most more "visible" cybernetic augmentations are still NPC only (at least without resorting modding) Edit: oh yes, also still no New Game+ seems like?

Haha, the latest Conan Exiles update is why I started playing Subnautica, as it broke my private servers something fierce for quite a few days Fact that they released the patch while I was messing with the docker image didn't help, of course, so wasn't entirely clear whether the breakage was mods, or my changes. Found this server tuning guide that improves quite a few aspects. Especially looking forward to how combat will feel, especially once the server's been running for a while (got really "NPCs teleport around"-y for me after a week or so. Then usually crashes with out of memory). I imagine much of it is applicable to single player too (since it just runs the server locally), though performance might be a consideration depending on the gaming hardware (one of the reasons I started running my server on a separate machine in the first place) Currently building a massive base/city in Siptah. Really enjoying the changes they made to the Island after the beta. It's also kind of interesting how things sort of make sense from a continuity perspective even if you played before these major changes that added the NPC camps etc. As for Subnautica:

Started playing Subnautica. Really great game. Start was bit rough, got a suboptimal location for an absolute newbie (ironically, it's a pretty great location in general, and I relocated there on my 2nd go), but got a new location after I forgot to save before exiting the game. Yep, no autosaves on this one, not even when exiting to desktop... It ticks all the boxes: dumped in "bad situation", gotta figure out how to get out of "bad situation", gotta figure out the mystery of what even is "bad situation" and how you got into "bad situation" in the first place. To do that gotta survive "bad situation", and to survive "bad situation" gotta build stuff. Hearing some really mixed signs about the sequel, but thankfully I doubt I"m done with this one soon And well, "started" got quite a ways in already:

Yes, after playing through it vanilla my current game is decently modded (which is my usual modus operandi for most moddable games). Mostly with regards to cosmetics and building options. I am rather careful about which mod authors I use mods from, as my games tend to be very long running and breaking my save database because of someone abandoning their mods is rather high on my list of things to avoid. For those who might be interested this is my Isle of Siptah server's current mod list (mod id followed by mod name):

Ummm... Hi?

Since it's almost impossible to post any FF XIV Endwalker screenshots without massive spoilers here's one from Shadowbringers: Il Mheg And one from Endwalker's credits Always a nice touch when they thank the players for playing.

They're mostly running around and talking to people. There was surprisingly little combat involved in Endwalker (if we ignore the mandatory dungeons). The side quests (which became entirely optional in Endwalker, due to the main quest giving you enough XP to get to level cap) at least tend to deepen out the lore, though they are usually more typical MMO-fare (go there, kill/fetch that) Older expansions, and especially ARR, were worse in that respect, but I wouldn't really have any qualms playing the game just for the story (and as a matter of fact, a not insignificant part of the playerbase does just that) If they handn't just shut down registration of new trial accounts I'd recommend just giving it a go, base game and first expansion are free nowadays. Maybe something to keep in mind once the server congestion situation blows over.

Finished the FF XIV Endwalker Main Story Quest. As far as MMORPGs go FF XIV easily has some of the best story and world building. The combination of setting things up many expansion in advance as well as how they manage to just make things that were more than likely not planned entirely deliberate is pretty awesome. As an example they reused the "Answers" song (this one, used when the Calamity struck on FF XIV 1.0 to reboot the game into 2.0, aka A Realm Reborn) three times over the course of the last decade, and three times expanded upon its meaning. It's pretty hard to believe that was the intent when they rebooted the game, but they sure manage to make it look extremely intentional. Pacing was bit off this expansion, some things that should have gotten more attention, didn't, others dragged on way too long. But the 5th map and associated trial (the second one) absolutely delivered and were definitely the high point for me, though the ending was satisfying as well. Aside from that, just getting into the game is a chore on a technical level. Square Enix, despite which FF XIV became a good MMO, has refused to invest in servers for a long time (the European data center was already close to capacity before the WoW exodus, or the silicon shortage, basically during a "low" player activity period there were still queues), so now that we have both (alongside New World refugees), along with a new, highly anticipated, expansion release servers are just way over capacity with multi-hour long queues just to get in. They even stopped selling the game, or allowing trial accounts in. So yeah it's bad... The good part is that the game is actually stable and once you get in you can actually play without really having to worry about crashing out.

Queueing to get into Final Fantasy XIV early access. If game runs fine once I get in I'll probably put up with the queues, if it just crashes/disconnects all the time I"ll probably just go back to playing something else. Forza Horizon, most likely.

Getting that a lot on the forum lately, even when agreeing to the social media cookies. Something's clearly broken somewhere... Let's try that again: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixww37DKuY

Kinda same, been poking at Forza Horizon 5. It's fun, and it's more inline with Horizon 3 than 4 (which I didn't like and barley played). This about sums it up, honestly: This content cannot be displayed until agreeing to our use of Social Media cookies. Learn more. Manage cookies I wish someone would create a proper TDU sequel ... (no TDU2 does not exist, and never has)

Been playing a bunch of Timberborn. It's a city builder about beavers and your greatest enemy is drought. Every x in-game time a draught happens and you have the rest of the time to prepare for it, basically. Aside from the obvious solution (building vats to store water) you're also leading, you know, beavers, so building dams, redirecting flow, creating artificial lakes, are all tools you can use to store water (or just keep your crops hydrated) Wouldn't say the game is hard, at least so far, on normal, but you can get caught unawares pretty easily, especially when your beavers start "getting it on" and your population explodes. The draughts do get longer though, not sure if they keep getting longer, and longer, until things become unwinnable or whether there's a cap to them. Note the game is early access, but it runs great, haven't had any crashes or seen any obvious bugs, so mostly hoping for the devs to add additional stuff to do. Maybe add some more (optional) challenges. Stuff like that.

This thread appears to be lacking a certain something... Oh! I know! Can't believe I'm still playing building stuff in this game. Tried a few others, but always end up coming back to this one for my building fix...

Patch 1.31 out, 51GiB through Gog for me

Probably because I had to AFK a bit due to a phonecall. Not sure how long you're marked as active once you start writing a post, but I guess the answer was that I was gone too long Going to chalk it up to just an unfortunate series of events. Bit of a bummer it doesn't at least let you save it somehow, but oh well, merely slightly annoying not exactly the end of the world (On a forum that supports BBCode I'd write the post in a text editor first though... *cough* )

Aaand it seems I lost a rather long reply because locking a thread just makes the forum software eat it. Anyway. RE: Horizon Zero Dawn. I thought the "main" plot point being predictable was intentional (anyone on this forum would figure it out within 30min of starting the game, I'm sure), where the game eventually ends up going was not something I was able to predict until at least a few major story missions in. I don't mind the walking simulator missions quite as much, though some were overlong exposition dumps and should probably have been spread out over more missions. Certainly prefer it over that very long one where they shoehorned some enemies in that shouldn't have been able to be there at all (that was kinda jarring). To me HZD's world feels more akin to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. rather than a "modern" open world game, and I think I personally prefer that approach over the "crammed with stuff"-design we tend to get nowadays. As to what I'm playing, still mostly, Final Fantasy XIV trying to get all jobs to max level before the expansion hits. I've also been back to building in Conan Exiles, it seems the server software has become a bit more stable, not sure if that's related to the big patches recently or the improvements brought by the Debian upgrade and potentially a newer Wine version but I had a server running for over a week without it going Out of Memory. (bets on how long it'll take before I have to eat those words are open ) Still haven't made it back to my Siptah-game, keep getting distracted by...ooooooh, good building spot!

Finished Horizon: Zero Dawn Great game overall, would highly recommend. So most criticism I have should be considered of the more nitpicky sort. If you haven't played this I'd recommend picking it up (unless this genre is just not up your alley, of course) The lore is pretty great and hits close enough to home to be a tad disconcerting. Can't go into any more detail without at least minor spoilers, but the settings is right up my alley for sure! The environmental storytelling is rather on point. There's quite a few collectibles and a few of them are actually really worth collecting for the lore bits, especially the "Vistas" are top-notch (the Banuk statues are OK, the rest is..."ehh"). I appreciate how they made it fairly hard to miss any of the major lore collectibles (journals etc) unless you really don't pay attention, and as far as I can tell you could go back to most places should you miss anything anyway. My initial impression was a bit unfavourable due to how mine and Aloy's early goals didn't appear to quite align. The game solved that issue beautifully though. There were, unfortunately, a few places with "forced dumb" where you're forced to just stand around and watch things happen "because story", or where your character makes certain decisions you almost know will backfire. Most of these instances I feel could have been handled a lot more elegantly than they were. A few main quests are (or contain) large exposition dumps which I feel could have been handled a bit more peace-meal. Gameplay-wise the game works rather well on mouse+keyboard. Combat works fine, with a few minor niggles, like animation locks sometimes meaning you get hit because it potentially locks you into a long animation which enemies then "cancel" with a faster attack while you can't do anything about it even when you see it coming. There's also at least one enemy type in the Frozen Wilds DLC that's horrendously obnoxious to fight except with one very specific weapon whose ammo eats resources like there's no tomorrow. Your growth in power is rather well done and closer to how S.T.A.L.K.E.R. works than most other MMOs, level ups mean relatively little, with skills mostly opening up additional options (except for melee attacks) and the power increases mostly come from a combination of better gear and a better understanding of your environment. One minor niggle is that whoever gets the killing blow, gets the XP, meaning friendly NPCs often steal your XP. Can be a tad frustrating when you're fighting something very tough and some guards pass by and manage to get the killing blow. The one thing I absolutely hope they'll fix in the next instalment though is the inventory. There's so many machine and upgrade parts and you really don't know what's useful and what's not that inventory management is just an utter nightmare where you'll keep stuff you end up never needing, while tossing things that you then later (quite literally) have to go hunt for. The same goes for some resources that I didn't use until I needed boatloads of them (see "specific weapon" from before) As mentioned earlier I didn't like the Hunting Grounds. After the disappointment that was the "stealth" one I mostly ignored them. The DLC had a quest that was hunting ground related where you were set up with a limited arsenal (only specific weapon and limited amount of ammunition) to accomplish a task, but without a timer which I felt would have worked a lot better for most of the Hunting Ground trials. So I really hope they go that route if they want to retain the concept for the next game. From a technical POV...well, my Gog copy CTD'd twice on its own, and screenshots are very liable to crash the game as well (seen that on Gog with other games, so not sure if Gog issue or game issue, regardless, my usual screenshot-happiness suffered greatly). I had one instance of textures simply not loading, forcing a reload, and a few cases of them loading slowly. There's also the "optimizing textures" bit that's bugged, it's supposed to help the game load faster but it ran on every game launch for me. I tried some of the troubleshooting tips but none seemed to work, so game loading times were agonizingly slow. The UI is acceptable. It's a fairly direct console port and the most annoying part of it is the inability to "slot" more than four weapons at once, which is purely a controller-imposed limitation as you can swap out weapons in combat without drawbacks, so would be nice to see that resolved in the future. Overall would rate it an 8/10 "Very good".

As far as I remember about how the "alignment" system worked this wasn't as much of a problem in ME1, but the way it was designed in ME2/3 meant you basically had to pick a "side" and stick with it. Even a single deviation could throw things off massively. It was a horribly broken mechanic. Still playing HZD myself, must be getting close to the end of the main quest. I'd rate it a solid 7 or 8/10 so far. But I'll try and just do a more detailed write-up once I complete it. I'll say I absolutely loathe the Hunting Grounds side content though. The fact that you basically have to do all of them to get anything out of it made me just not bother once I came across the timed stealth section one. I noped the hell out right there and then. Despite GW2 being one of my favourite MMOs of the past decade I'm fairly confident I'm done with it, or, more accurately, I'm done supporting ArenaNet in any way, shape, or form. The last expansion (and the next one) are just fan service, pulling on hyped up content from the previous game to try and lure people in (isn't it just weird how you can hype up people with stuff they never experienced themselves? See also Baldur's Gate 3). Besides I thought Path of Fire was pretty terrible, and I'm rather unimpressed they absolutely 100% dropped some major unfinished business from HoT (the whole Pale Tree debacle...) But much more importantly than whatever passes for a story is that ArenaNet has proven to have a broken moral compass, especially when it comes to lootboxes (aka gambling) in their game, for which they promised a solution years ago and they have done exactly squat past making the content inaccessible in a few countries (a list that hasn't been updated since to boot, meaning they're actively violating gambling laws in multiple countries at the moment), which was supposed to be a temporary measure pending a more structural solution. There's a few more egregious problems, like everything "desirable" basically boiling down to a massive gold grind, which can be conveniently shortened by just buying said gold with real world money. It's a bummer, because aside from FF XIV I can't think of any other actually good MMO out there right now but each time I've tried to get into it and catch up with the Living World stuff I just meh'd out.

Picked up Horizon Zero Dawn on Gog. Enjoying it so far, though the transition from the "tutorial" part of the game to the "main" game was slightly jarring. Hope we get to do some archaeology at least, figuring out what happened to "those that came before" is usually high on my list of things I try to dig into.

Hmm, the combat section early on looks very action-y. In the previous games playing like that would likely have gotten you killed in very short order. I do hope that was just for the trailer and the actual game preserves the deadliness of the earlier games' combat.