marelooke

FF XIV must be the MMO with the best music...

Not really, my VDSL2 line wasn't impressed for some reason. There's been other mega-screenshots in the past (the Witcher 3 ones come to mind), that did take a while to load. These...not so much, for some reason. Wonder if the fact that they're basically upscaled means they're just much more compressible, and as such easier to handle for bandwidth challenged folks on older hardware (my PC is 10 years old now).

*Sad GTX970 owner noises* But my PC is ancient by now and I rather expected needing to upgrade for Cyberpunk (CDPR appears to have taken ID Software's spot in : "new game means buying new hardware"-land) Heh, I thought that was fixed after that got out? I mean, I'd expect they'd get in trouble for stuff like that, legally...at least in some parts of the world... Ah yes, after they didn't give out console review copies and forced reviewers to review on PC... Sorry CDPR, I like you guys, better than most, anyway, but you done goofed up. Not anywhere near as bad as nVidia going after Hardware Unboxed/Techspot, but well, nVidia hit rock bottom so hard the bottom fell out...

Well, since I'd need a new PC for Cyberpunk I guess I'm part of the PNP alliance So I've been building, of course. Gotta love having merged my different savegames into one, it's kind of cool to run into my own buildings from other characters in the wild. My first base: My old Khitan base, built against a large stone pillar Also been working on a base for my Darfari using (mostly) the new Stormglass set. The set has actual windows instead of just holes in the wall for a change! They look a bit like early class, so they allow light and a distorted view of outside through. Top-down view, hopefully giving a slightly better idea of the layout... Same, but at night. I like the light behind the windows, at least in as far as the draw distance actually draws it... Building a little village around the castle Map Room at the top of the left tower, took some doing to make this work with the stability...

Prey is fantastic. One thing I would recommend though it not going for a powerhouse/jack-of-all-trades build. I'd strongly recommend sticking to one "side" (you'll know what I mean when you get there, and yes, there is a third option, would not recommend, certainly not for a first playthrough). Having to make compromises to get around makes replaying the game quite a bit more interesting and really shines a light on how nice some of the level design is. Combat is perfectly viable, though you're not exactly a powerhouse. Each enemy does have specific weaknesses, not exploiting those is going to make combat hard, or a slog, or a hard slog, and ammo most likely a problem. First time through I did "remove" most obstacles in my way where it made sense. The DLC are not at all like the base game though, so I'd recommend doing some reading before getting either of those. Probably *after* playing the base game though, as researching either is likely to lead to spoilers of some sort. Neither of them adds to the base game (in fact, they both launch as standalone games), so there's nothing you'll miss out on. But an attempt at a quick, spoiler-free summary: Mooncrash is a rogue lite-ish dungeon crawl thing where you just keep on going through the same map with semi-randomized item placements, and obstacles, with different characters (with different abilities), and everything resets when your last available character dies, or the timer runs out. There's some exposition here (but nothing you can't infer from the base game, from what I understand), but I didn't care for the gameplay at all, which is nothing like the base game, so I never finished it. Typhon Hunter is a multiplayer only PvP thing that I imagine is pretty much dead, and, well, "Mostly negative" reviews on Steam probably sums that up. I don't think either of them is worth it, but that's just my opinion, of course.

Looks like Gog might happen after all. Not sure why they couldn't be more direct about it though, since they just gave standard non-answers when asked about it. Either way, no confirmed date yet, so likely later than Steam. But few more weeks after a year delay barely matter.

Using "family" as a substitute to actually trying to get the player to form a bond with a character. Both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 did this, but I'd be surprised if they were the only ones.

Wonder if backers will get their promised Steam keys, no mention about that anywhere that I could find. Sounds like Gog backers are getting shafted though. Par for the course for Snapshot Games, at this point.

It worked with Fallout, and seems like Larian is also cashing in on the Baldur's Gate reputation rather successfully... Sales of the original games hardly matter when you have a cult classic and all you need is to be able to cash in on the name. 90% of the people buying the new game won't have played, and won't ever play, the originals anyway, so the fact that they resemble their predecessors about as well as Star Trek resembles Star Wars is entirely lost on them.

Aside from people constantly talking about the "human malware" nothing much has changed for me. So...where can I pick up my hermit certification? On the gaming front, been dabbling a bit in the Outer Worlds which I picked up now that it was available on Gog. Having a bit of the same problem LadyCrimson has: I just hike around looking and poking at things but don't really have any real drive to push the plot forward. Though the realisation that no matter what choices I make it's probably going to end badly might have something to do with it as well...

Reminds me of Agony, but these seem to be different devs? Any relationship between the two?

Well, it only took 9 years of occasionally firing up the game, but I've unlocked the last achievement I had left in TES V: Skyrim. Namely, killing a legendary dragon, which, as a prerequisite for them to spawn, means your character need to be at least lvl78. I could, of course, just have cheated and gotten this aeons ago, but I just had to do it the hard way, because that's how I roll. (oh, and I ended up being lvl79 when I got it. Ironically it attacked me just when I left the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary upon finishing that entire questchain)

Hmm, was searching for reviews and inevitably ended up on Metacritic and couldn't help but notice early access games cannot be reviewed by users (or scored by critics). Given how the game appears to basically be a full release (going by the fact that many reviews praise how polished it is), at full price, I can't help but feel they're trying to dodge the backlash they expected to get for calling D&D: Original Sin "Baldur's Gate 3". Hell, a whole bunch of reviews don't even bother comparing the game to the Baldur's Gate games at all, they just straight up compare it to D:OS2. Which, while not unexpected, and certainly not after reading the impressions of people in this thread, just goes to show that using the name was just a "because we can capitalise on it" type of deal. Most of the people I grew up with that played the IE-games appear to be taking a "Meh, will get after reviews, or when on sale" stance because they didn't enjoy D:OS all that much. So going to assume the name dropping would only really work on those that know the IE games solely by reputation but never played them themselves. Not sure why they bothered at all, honestly.

Arguably "Fallout" was already pretty damaged after Fallout 4, which was a mess in all respects. The fact that Fallout 76 was so much worse that it made people mostly forget about Fallout 4 is, well, impressive. Fallout 4 had the whole paid DLC controversy (combined with other mod-unfriendly behaviour, like disabling achievements in modded games. Bit nasty since the unofficial patch is almost mandatory) which severely damaged the modding community for Bethesda games (effects of that entire fiasco could, and still can, be felt even in Skyrim modding). Technically the game is just barely holding together (it's bad, even for a Bethesda game). And what passes for a story, well, let's not even go there. Still, having Obsidian make a Fallout might result in people being much more likely to give that franchise a second chance given how well received New Vegas was (once it got patched into a state that people could actually play it). Not to mention the generally positive reception of The Outer Worlds. At this point having another studio with Fallout cred handle the franchise might be the "reset" that's needed. BioWare is going to have a much harder time with Mass Effect in my estimation at least, because not just the Mass Effect "brand" has been tarnished (don't forget the ME3 ending controversy either, it's not just Andromeda), but BioWare has also driven its own brand into the ground on almost every occasion it's had to do so. The fact that the studio is owned by EA doesn't do it any favours either (strange are the days when MS is viewed in such a positive light, comparatively, heh)

Ahh, hugely ambitious, my kinda build! On that note, been plugging away at my pyramid: Pretty at night, still need to do the Jhebbal Sag dungeon on this character for the fourth beam: Started working on a map room (finally): Noticed that, now that I've merged my save games, I'm living pretty close to one of the initial large builds I did with my first character. Some of you might remember this one

Game now always connects to "Funcom Live Services", not sure if it'll launch when that check fails but given the negative reviews resulting from it I'm going to assume not. No idea why they decided to do that, they already had their (optional) anti-cheat stuff so that can't be the excuse. It really is just user-hostile without any benefit to them that I can think of.

It's entirely separate. Need to run a separate server instance for it as well (so I have two Conan servers running now...) The good news being that multi-map is now supported, so stuff like Age of Calamitous should be easier to support for modders.

Been mucking around with an alt in Final Fantasy XIV. Playing through the early game again really underlines how "heavy" the story becomes later. In Conan Exiles I've mostly been playing the new DLC map, Isle of Siptah. I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. the entire map feels PvP focused, every resource is centralized in some way to maximize the chance you'll run into other players, but it is a new map, with new story to uncover Wild Surges only spawn low tier Thralls, T2 crafters are as rare from Wild Surges as T4 spawns are in the Exiled Lands oh yes, Surges are the only real way to get Thralls there's no Purge, so there's really no reason to build a defensible base in PvE (then again, the Purge is so buggy that even a defensible base doesn't help if they just spawn inside. So yeah, just ditching it was easier than fixing it, I guess) to get better thralls you have to grind a whole bunch of new resources to spawn a "greater" Surge, which only gives you a chance at better Thralls. A very low chance, if the CE forums are to be believed, and there's then even the chance that you'll get non-humanoids spawned too, which are entirely useless. there's basically nothing to do on the island until you get high enough level (45+) the various combat and healing nerfs that came with the expansion have made boss fights, and the early game, really painful (combined with the terrible hit detection and dodgy server code...well, combat's not the game's best side, imho) various crafting materials drop that you cannot use since the recipes appear missing from Siptah (but maybe just haven't found them yet) Since the last mod I needed updated for my Exiled Lands save has now been updated I might just go back to playingbuilding there for now. Still got a humongous pyramid to complete, after all

Thralls are literally dropped out of the air Always in groups of six, picking them off one by one is challenging with melee. Might need to start using a bow. There are only ever T1 crafters in these groups though. Haven't seen any named NPCs either. Ventured nearer to the centre of the island but need higher tier cold resistance gear since the area around the tower is freezing. Not quite sure how to get the crafters required for that though. Anyway, Saruman says "Hi!"

The Isle of Siptah, on a normal day This time you end up stranded There's definitely something not right here... Not sure if an Island should be doing stuff like...that...

Quick update on Isle of Siptah. Created a second character and started in the south-west ("easy" start according to the description), starting point was near a river and so I just hiked down that river and tripped over all kinds of resources, including Aloe (after fighting off packs of dogs and a few crocodiles) Seems the starting areas could use some balancing with regards to availability of truly essential resources (like resources for healing items...).

Spent some time on the new Isle of Siptah map for Conan Exiles, which is in "early access" (more on that later). Started off rather promising, and the setting is definitely different, no desert this time around. The reset back to the bottom of the food chain combined with new unexplored locations was definitely exciting at first. It will be fun to figure out what's going on in this place Combat feels like it had some tweaks, it feels slightly better than after the "rework" (but the rework had me basically give up on combat, so take that for what you will ), however, even the slightest unevenness in terrain (and the isle basically slopes up from the coast, so yeah...) means combos will miss and you'll get chewed up by enemies while you're locked in the animation. They also appear to sometimes just ignore my shield entirely. Not fun when fighting something that gobbles up 1/4 of your hp pool in one hit (and there's plenty of those mini-bosses even in the early parts, so even a "drive-by-hit" can ruin your day. See also next point) Which leads to the next problem: unless you get lucky and find Aloe early on there is no reasonable way to heal. Food no longer heals (ya rly!). Instead it now just gives you a "Sated" buff which heals like 2hp every few seconds (basically the passive heal from before this patch) and there appears to be no difference between different qualities of food (at least not between any that you'd have access to early game). As such it takes absolutely forever to heal any damage (I built quite the big base waiting for my character to heal up...). Oh, and I've been looking specifically for Aloe and I've found none so far. Yay. Combined with the mob density (reminds me of the area around the frozen lake in the North on the vanilla map, where you couldn't go two steps without aggroing something) this makes for really annoying exploration. On top of that I've so far not found a single human NPC, I imagine those are to be found further inland (further inland = harder, or so it would appear) so the only way to get thralls early on would be to tame beasts. This also means there's no access to improved armour recipes, or any of the other perks provided by crafter thralls (reduced material costs, faster crafting,...). I should note that there's different starting location options. I just went with whatever the game suggested (East, which was labelled as "safe") so other locations might have different challenges. Actually I might just create a new character and see how other locations pan out. Maybe find some Aloe that way... As for the "early access" status of the map. Well, the gameplay changes are foisted onto the "vanilla" map as well, so everybody gets to experience the "improvements" to food etc. (at least Aloe is common in the Exiled Lands starter area)

Since I managed to finally merge my disparate savegames. Imagine being newly exiled, following "the road to the city, any road road, all roads lead to Romethe city" and seeing this when you reach the edge of the desert... It's rather hard to get the entirety of this, well, city at this point, into a single screenshot as the games' LoS just doesn't allow for it. It's my first "home" in my first playthrough and I've been adding layers to it ever since, the latest of which being these watchtowers and multiple gatehouse entrance from the desert. While I did tweak the resource costs to build this (to 50%, iirc), everything was gathered the legit way (aka, not spawned in with admin commands) and built the legit way (no spawning in of building blocks either) in a single player game. Now I've merged it together with my "local server" games into a single save database running on my personal Conan Exiles server, this should hopefully allow me to acquire certain resources more quickly (fish traps "gathering" fish while not playing being a big one)

The official servers are basically "default" settings. If not part of a clan it's sloooooow, and the PvE servers often have trolls that block off resources and the like. Finding a well managed non-official server is probably your best bet, though very few of those are "stock". I've never tweaked combat, though I did make the Purge pop up faster (if playing solo on a personal server you're unlikely to ever be able to trigger it otherwise) and a bunch of building/crafting QoL changes (reduced material cost, mostly). Of course where the line is drawn for what's a QoL change and what is gameplay affecting is different for everyone

Combat is very "meh" imho, and since they revamped it and removed the "cheese tactics" (basically perma-stun on most non-boss enemies, combined with how hard bleeds hit) I consider it mostly a nuisance as it really pushes you to just be the cheerleader of your Thralls (which are *much* stronger than you, so letting them do the work make sense, it's just not very engaging. Though I think they were messing with remediating this. Somewhat, anyway). The exploration, world building and well, building aspects are great though. One thing of note is that due to how long things take it might be worth considering running your own server (if you have a PC somewhere that is on 24/7). If you combine that with some tuning of stuff for a more single-player experience (wish there was a way to decrease requirements of only "common" resources though, and leaving the "rare" alone, but I digress) it takes a lot of the slog out of it since you can just queue a bunch of work and let it process overnight. It has a few other advantages, or rather, it does away with some major disadvantages of single-player too, namely that everything despawns once you go too far from an area. This can, of course, be (ab)used to get the spawns you want, on the other hand it also means that if there's multiple desirable thralls in a location you can't really grab all of them since the rest will despawn while you drag the first to camp (even if you knock them all out). If you run a local server otoh, it really does work like a "real" server with all the perks as well (like stuff being actually persistent, at least until you restart the server) Of course, the major drawback is that the server software is a technical disaster and leaks memory like a sieve, so you kinda have to restart the thing at least once a week anyway. As for things I usually tune (off the top off my head): thrall breaking speed (think it's usually set at 0.25 of normal) resource requirements (0.5 or 0.25) how quickly the purge bar fills (if you want purges at all, if not, well, you can just turn them off. Worth noting the best Thralls can only be acquired from purges, and yes, they are better than normal "named" thralls) how often you need to drink (food isn't as much of a nuisance, the defaults for water otoh...) Of note, all the numbers in the server tuning window are multipliers, so 1.00 is 100%, so if you want to speed things up you don't make it 2.00, you make it 0.5 to double the speed.