What Are You Playing Now: The Other, Other Thread

[Malcador]

8 hours ago, johnnyy said:

Civ6 is one of my fav games, I'm playing it right now

Nice try, Skazz.

[Skazz]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

Nice try, Skazz.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Skazz

[marelooke]

  

 

On 5/27/2020 at 4:24 PM, Tale said:

Final Fantasy XIV, the MMO, was free on PS4 recently. And it was lots of fun for a few days. Until the story completely failed to present a hook after like a dozen hours and I looked stuff up and saw there was nothing cool to look forward to in abilities. At that point it just started feeling like every other MMORPG I played and got tired of. It's cool to have the Final Fantasy brand, but sucks that it has none of the Final Fantasy coolness and power fantasy. As a Thaumaturge, all I have to look forward to is eventually getting Flare. Limit Breaks can only be used in parties.

I have precisely 0 interest in spending dozens upon dozens of hours doing nothing but a blizzard/fire juggle. Thunder, my favorite of the three common FF spells, has been turned into a dot.

As to the story failing to hook, the entire story so far has been about a criminal gang out in the desert who aren't even worth giving names. I'm level 30 with a 50 cap and I've seen one cutscene of some Empire I know nothing about doing nothing I care about.

So I bought Astroneer and I'm exploring space. And it is good to explore space. 

It's odd that they'd cut you off around lvl30, that's a lull in the story iirc. But as been mentioned before, ARR (aka "the base game") is a bit "meh" in the storytelling department, there's loads of set up for later though. As to who the bad guys are...well, I'm still wondering that after having finished the game (well, up to the current patch, I mean, MMOs and all). Things aren't as black and white as they are presented, which is a nice change of pace, honestly.

It is one of the things I rather like about the game, many events that appear random, have consequences down the road, and not just within the same expansion, sometimes things show up again many expansions later. To me this signifies they *know* where the story is going and they work their way there. Which is entirely unlike most other MMOs out there (excepting possibly LotRO)

Another thing I enjoy is how you just start as some random adventurer, sure you're "touched" by Hydaelyn, but even that is not exactly uncommon, so while it makes you somewhat special it doesn't exactly elevate your character to the level of "teh chosen one!1!1!" since there's dozens with the same gift. This of course shows in the early game, which is somewhat slow and makes you do rookie adventurer stuff, learn about the world, its politics, and you train in your chosen profession (class) and all that rot.

That said, there's enough tropes there as well and the storytelling in the base game is, as mentioned...questionable at times (as is all the backtracking, it gets better, I promise, though it never goes away entirely), but once you scratch past the surface the story can be surprisingly good (even some things that made me roll my eyes so hard I think I saw my brain turned out well when seen through to their conclusion). As to the Garlean Empire, I thought that was recapped, but if not then watching a recap video of the FF XIV 1.0 events might be in order (I'm *sure* it gets recapped later though as there's a dungeon devoted to it where you get to visit the Agrius and Midgardsormr's corpse)

But the game really picks up steam with Heavensward (as mentioned by Oner), though the post-ARR and pre-HW quest patches can be...really tedious, depending on your inclination. I'm glad I played through them, but I can see why many choose to skip them (missing out on all the HW setup that happens in them, which is unfortunate)

Also, as far as I'm aware SE is reworking the base game (delayed due to human malware), cutting down on some of the backtracking and removing some of the filler fluff. However, they will also make the entire Crystal Tower raid mandatory (since it's a really important story arc for Shadowbringers, did I already mention how they set things up multiple expansions in advance? )

On 5/28/2020 at 1:08 PM, Oner said:

Guild Wars 2 has a decent story once you reach the first expansion and the subsequent living story episodes. FF14 is praised for the story of the first, but especially the second xpac. Friends of mine have been praising Blade and Soul's story, though I haven't played it. I've heard good things about LOTRO too from the forumites here.
But yeah, there's not a lot to pick from if you want an MMO with worthwhile storytelling, I'm still convinced that any story you do in an MMO, no matter how good, would be a lot better as a singleplayer game.

Guild Wars 2's story went down the drain after the last expansion (which I thought was pretty bad in general), and due to the negative reception of HoT  they never really finished the entire Mordremoth storyline (which was pretty good imho). The fact that their entire writing team (and most, if not all, of the senior devs) has quit multiple time since then didn't exaclty help matters if you ask me.

Anyway, personally still playing FF XIV (all but in name quit GW2 at this point), my Dragoon made it to lvl80 and I'm rather close with my Astrologian (healer) too. I said I'd do a write up once I got to 80 but  you'll have to wait a little longer on my ramblings

Edited June 4, 2020 by marelooke

[Zoraptor]

Finished Deus Ex Human Revolution. Overall I liked it a lot and it's a worthy predecessor to the original game, though there's tons of minor stuff to criticise like the stupid cutscenes for so for so many in game actions. A 5 second break for every takedown was nearly enough to send me homicidal instead especially when you needed to do something else after it quickly and couldn't be sure when you'd get control back. Boss fights were utterly pointless, but on the positive side even on the hard difficulty were pretty trivial to win once you knew to employ tactics cheesier than the Encyclopaedia of Curd Based Dairy Products. For some reason the sniper rifle scope was out by about half an inch too (I'd suspect 1440p ultrawide to be the culprit, except everything else with a scope worked fine). The plot was, of course and as is tradition, a pastiche of pop culture clichés held together by some puffed up pseudo intellectual dialogue, and was all the better for it. The one thing I absolutely cannot excuse was Dr Kavanaugh's New Zealand accent in the DLC. Made the Ocker 'thinks fir gitting mi een' girl from the original sound like a true blue ridgy didge Sydneysider in comparison.

Overall though it had a good dose of all the stuff I loved about Deus Ex, and most of the complaints are minor annoyances and nitpicking.

Having said that, perhaps the most serious problem with it was a bad case of Cutscene/ Scripting Derangement Syndrome. I'll spoiler it just to be safe

Cutscene Jensen is an utter moron most of the time. The start to every boss fight has you basically toe to toe with the boss after a cutscene. So the first thing you do on hard difficulty is run away waving your arms looking for the 'trick' to make the encounter trivial for your tech/ stealth build, or trivial because you have a weapon that will stun lock them and have found cover and a bottleneck. Then there's letting the obviously prevaricating Zhao getting into her panic room in a cutscene after playing the poor weak woman card and with no interaction. And your ex girlfriend is so clearly very very dodgy. All the other scientists are locked in their labs, hard at work, and obviously frightened. She's... in a luxurious bedroom, with the recently departed Hugh Darrow's personal computer and an unmade double bed, and knows far far too much stuff like... how to actually rescue the other scientists while you open up the hangar for them. Yet you just accept what she says at face value. Certainly that section shows distinct signs of being rushed and retasked, but as it is you're left with the impression Jensen's an idiot for trusting her, and stupid for just accepting what she says. That's only cemented by the post credits scene.

[Mamoulian War]

And I got asskicked by Mytha and lost 20k souls on her. I will have to skip her for now, because I do not have a clue how to fight her now Please no spoliers yet

 

[Oner]

2 minutes ago, marelooke said:

  Guild Wars 2's story went down the drain after the last expansion (which I thought was pretty bad in general), and due to the negative reception of HoT  they never really finished the entire Mordremoth storyline (which was pretty good imho). The fact that their entire writing team (and most, if not all, of the senior devs) has quit multiple time since then didn't exaclty help matters if you ask me.

Hmm, I disagree to a degree. Yes, there's some cheap Epic Save The World Fantasy elements that keep popping up every now and then, plus some characters are pretty amateurishly handled (Braham's tantrum, Livia's "personality") or scenes fall a bit flat (was unimpressed with Kralk's death scene, personally), but I'd say the overall quality of the writing has gone up, especially compared to the base game, but that's a low hurdle to clear. There's decent twists, some scenes hit the emotional levers just right, actual payoff to earlier setup, the elder dragons (or Kralk at least) have *gasp* personalities, and I find more than 2 companions likable now.

I enjoyed the HoT story for what it was, but at the same time wasn't wowed.

All that said, the story has enough individual parts one can like or dislike that every person you ask would have a different opinion on what works and what doesn't, I think.

[Hurlshort]

LotRO definitely has a very clear story line that you are working towards. It just took them like 10+ years to get there, whereas the movies got there in 10 hours. 

Speaking of which, my Mordor dwarf has just reached level 40 and fought the evil dwarf Skorgrim alongside Gimli. I've been sticking mostly to the book quests, so things are moving quickly. I remember it took about a year of regular play to get to 40 when the game first came out. I'm excited to reach Moria at 50, but I want to try and finish all of the book quests before I do that. I bought some of these coins that let you jump directly to certain quest givers, since I know they can send you all over the map and it gets pretty tiresome trying to hoof it everywhere.

I also have a Beorning delivering mail in the shire and and avoiding nosey hobbits. I think I might just stay there with him, it's such a nice change of pace to just wander around there.

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

And I got asskicked by Mytha and lost 20k souls on her. I will have to skip her for now, because I do not have a clue how to fight her now Please no spoliers yet

 

That's the snake lady in the poison windmill, right? Since you asked for no spoilers, all I'll say is that it's considered one of the sorer points of the game design-wise, .

[ShadySands]

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

poison windmill

Trump was right all along

I've not played much of anything today but I did get to level 31 is ESO the day before. I think what drives me so crazy is that I never feel like I'm accomplishing much as I level up as I barely feel more powerful at 31 than I did at level 1. Also still trying to clear out the majority of my quest log because when I started the game I had a quest that took me all over the place and I kept picking up more quests along the way and the log tops off at 25. I'm pretty sure the game started me someplace else than when I played before because I was fighting dragons without knowing what I was doing, other than dying a lot.

Finished another game of Civ 6 yesterday. I didn't win yet but I was dominating so much that it was no longer fun. I'm not even that good but I had legendary start even though I don't think that exists in Civ 6 as a mechanic like it did before. I picked random civ and got the Maori who I've never used before and really had no strategy. I started in the ocean on a boat but landed on some islands between two continents that had goody huts galore and tons of resources. I was able to quickly expand to all five islands in my chain and also get a city on the coast of each continent. So with 8 cities fairly early in the game and all of the resources I could want I was already sitting pretty when the Ottomans or someone declared war on me. AI must have glitched or something because they had next to no army and fell like me trying to go down stairs. So now I had 11 cities who were strangely all happy enough not to rebel. A bunch of turns later I was winning in every category so I just called it quits because it's fun to dominate a little bit but not the entire game. 

Edited June 5, 2020 by ShadySands
Been meaning to get back to LOTRO as well

[Lexx]

The problem with FFXIV is that A Realm Reborn is for the most part EXTREMELY BORING. It's a 110% fetch-quest galore and the developers have no shame to send you over the whole worldmap time and time again. Sometimes they send you to a far away place to talk with a character (3 lines of dialog) and then you are to move back from where you came. Horrible.

However, once you are past this terrible slog, the game becomes a lot more fun. The post-ARR story quests suddenly become good, the story becomes interesting, and there is much less fetch-quest stuff. This continues into the first expansion, which looks and feels a lot better already. Can't say how it continues after that, because I just finished it myself and will head into expansion #2 next up. As far as I've read, though, it keeps improving and getting better.

So yeah, the biggest issue of the game is that you first have to get through the initial slog, which sadly are quite a few hours of content...

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, ShadySands said:

LotRO Edit

Expansions are like 99 coins (or whatever their currency is) to unlock right now, in case you are missing any. I started a brand new account, so it was nice to unlock everything for relatively cheap. My son has my old account. I regret it a bit because that means my high level captain is pretty much retired, but I wanted him to have access to everything as he started out, and it was a gopod way to get me to start fresh.

Just reached Angmar.

[Mamoulian War]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

That's the snake lady in the poison windmill, right? Since you asked for no spoilers, all I'll say is that it's considered one of the sorer points of the game design-wise, .

Yes it's the poison windmill lady

Actually I was trying to figure out how to get her down on my own, but with no success... Later I have just checked BlueLizardJello's Everything possible videos, how many secrets I have missed, and there was one thing, which I believe would never find out on my own... 

 

To burn down one of the mills wind a torch...

I really cannot imagine, how anyone would figure out this one without the walkthrough of the game, I spent hours around Earthen Peak and something like this has not even crossed my mind... I was also completely convinced, that I've wasted on Phaross Lockstone, and after seeing that video, I still think I've wasted it... Oh well...

 

Anyway, I have not watched the bossfight yet, so we'll see how the encounter will go now, and how many deaths awaits on me there

Edited June 5, 2020 by Mamoulian War

[Bartimaeus]

4 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Yes it's the poison windmill lady

Actually I was trying to figure out how to get her down on my own, but with no success... Later I have just checked BlueLizardJello's Everything possible videos, how many secrets I have missed, and there was one thing, which I believe would never find out on my own... 

  Hide contents

To burn down one of the mills wind a torch...

I really cannot imagine, how anyone would figure out this one without the walkthrough of the game, I spent hours around Earthen Peak and something like this has not even crossed my mind... I was also completely convinced, that I've wasted on Phaross Lockstone, and after seeing that video, I still think I've wasted it... Oh well...

 

Anyway, I have not watched the bossfight yet, so we'll see how the encounter will go now, and how many deaths awaits on me there

That's exactly what I was talking about. No hint of being able to do it, no real logical reason for the prompt to be where it is, and just kind of dumb in general.

[Mamoulian War]

Aaaand before struggling on Mytha, I have encountered the easiest bossfight in Souls games so far, Covetous Demon, in less than 2 minutes was this Jabba clone beaten flat... The main difficulty of this boss, was to get to him through all of the poisoned stuff laying around...

 

[Lexx]

I forgot how much harder Tiberian Dawn is compared to Red Alert. Sitting on the GDI campaign today, I'm in mission 13 or 14 and it's frustratingly hard at times. I'd actually say it is very unfair most of the time, due to cheating ai and weird / bad mission design. Bit of a shame, because I kinda like the setting of TD more than that of RA, but RA pretty much improved every area of the first game.

I mean ... hell, you even have to micro-manage the repair bay in TD. The "mark x units, click repair bay, wait for everything to be done"-thing was added with RA and doesn't work in TD ... (IMO this is something they really could have brought into the game with the remaster) and that's just one example.

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

I forgot how much harder Tiberian Dawn is compared to Red Alert. Sitting on the GDI campaign today, I'm in mission 13 or 14 and it's frustratingly hard at times.

Kane's subtle reminder that you should be playing Nod, not GDI. :nod:

[Malcador]

I am slowly plodding along in Tiberian Dawn.  Dreading mission 11, worst beach landing ever.  Missions seem harder than I remember (naturally it is the game's fault), I failed Bialystok a lot, trying to fight the tanks with just grenadiers was taxing

Edited June 6, 2020 by Malcador

[Keyrock]

I finished Dark Nights With Poe & Munro. It's essentially a choose your own adventure in FMV form. The game has 6 episodes (they released all at once, so it's not episodic in that sense) each one being a self-contained story, and they're all quite weird. Anyway, it was entertaining enough and I'll probably run through a couple of the episodes again to get different outcomes. 

[Lexx]

11 hours ago, Malcador said:

I am slowly plodding along in Tiberian Dawn.  Dreading mission 11, worst beach landing ever.  Missions seem harder than I remember (naturally it is the game's fault), I failed Bialystok a lot, trying to fight the tanks with just grenadiers was taxing

Haha yeah, exactly that. The worst is - half the missions so far don't even require you to destroy all enemy units ... but of course they don't tell you that.

What infuriates me is how easily the infantry dies. And NOD is spamming flamers like crazy... they even wreck your vehicles fast. It reminds me of why I always did tank-spam back in the days. In a way, mixing units is way more important in TD than in RA where all you do is just to throw the heaviest tanks you have at the enemy.

Nevertheless, I still love these games so much. And the updated graphics are very faithful too - after just a few minutes I don't even realize anymore that this isn't the pixelated original. Sometimes I also just hit the space bar just to get back to the old. It's great they added this feature in.

 

/Edit: I've started playing the Covert Ops missions. I actually never had the addon for TD, so this is a 100% first for me. Turns out these missions are A LOT more enjoyable. Guess they learned from their mistakes from before.

Edited June 7, 2020 by Lexx

[Mamoulian War]

And after finding the way, how to remove the poison from her arena, I was able to finally defeat Mytha, the Baneful Queen. Not very hard fight without the poison, just my old bones needed to adjust the reflexes to her fast moves In total 9 tries to defeat her (including two with the poison still there).

 

 

[Malcador]

19 hours ago, Lexx said:

Haha yeah, exactly that. The worst is - half the missions so far don't even require you to destroy all enemy units ... but of course they don't tell you that.

What infuriates me is how easily the infantry dies. And NOD is spamming flamers like crazy... they even wreck your vehicles fast. It reminds me of why I always did tank-spam back in the days. In a way, mixing units is way more important in TD than in RA where all you do is just to throw the heaviest tanks you have at the enemy.

Nevertheless, I still love these games so much. And the updated graphics are very faithful too - after just a few minutes I don't even realize anymore that this isn't the pixelated original. Sometimes I also just hit the space bar just to get back to the old. It's great they added this feature in.

 

/Edit: I've started playing the Covert Ops missions. I actually never had the addon for TD, so this is a 100% first for me. Turns out these missions are A LOT more enjoyable. Guess they learned from their mistakes from before.

I recall TD being very lazy in that all the missions need you to kill all units.  Mission 14 is annoying for that as they have stealth tanks, so you need to comb the map looking for that one hiding there.  On the commando mission where you can skip a mission if you somehow know to blow up the airstrip (never did figure out how you were to know what to blow up...well or why you need to blow up an airstrip only). 

Still in Arma 3's campaign. I liked the mission where you are alone and have to evade CSAT.  In missions where I command a squad, having trouble working with the UI

Edited June 8, 2020 by Malcador

[Amentep]

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