What Are You Playing Now: Gaming Lives

[Skarpen]

Finished Wasteland 3. I think I did everything I could and even with the highest charisma character exploit I've only managed to get to lvl 30, which is fine as the max level is actually 35 not 50 as was reported earlier and random encounters grind is not my cup of tea. I've played both final scenarios and siding with the Patriarch is by far the better option.

Spoiler

Angela Deth turned out to be psychotic, incompetent idiot. To bad siding with patriarch makes Cordite leave as I have build him up to be very decent tank/brawler.

Definitely will do a second run after a couple of patches drop. My final score 8/10. 

Edited September 14, 2020 by Skarpen

[Theonlygarby]

1 hour ago, Skarpen said:

Finished Wasteland 3. I think I did everything I could and even with the highest charisma character exploit I've only managed to get to lvl 30, which is fine as the max level is actually 35 not 50 as was reported earlier and random encounters grind is not my cup of tea. I've played both final scenarios and siding with the Patriarch is by far the better option.

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Angela Deth turned out to be psychotic, incompetent idiot. To bad siding with patriarch makes Cordite leave as I have build him up to be very decent tank/brawler.

Definitely will do a second run after a couple of patches drop. My final score 8/10. 

She seems unhinged...  My first playthrough is my idealistic naive playthrough...  Try to do everything that my younger self believed in...  My second play will be more cynical where I'll side with the patriarch.  Third if I get to a third will be psycho(I rarely finish these as I tend to feel guilty even if it's make believe)

 

8/10 seems right... Could be a 9 of those damn loading times were cut down 

Edited September 14, 2020 by Theonlygarby

[Chilloutman]

I felt like there could be more 'out of combat' content in WL3. I know its not supposed to be Fallout but i think they could do a bit more quests. Also reputation with factions was.... useless? I feel like it all depended on one or two quests you done with sad group so what was the point of reputation if there is no way to change it?

[Skarpen]

3 hours ago, Chilloutman said:

I felt like there could be more 'out of combat' content in WL3. I know its not supposed to be Fallout but i think they could do a bit more quests. Also reputation with factions was.... useless? I feel like it all depended on one or two quests you done with sad group so what was the point of reputation if there is no way to change it?

There were random encounters with faction vendors that could give you special items based on reputation ☺ So not completely useless

[Mamoulian War]

Next in line was again Vendrick. I could have gone against him right after Velstadt, but because how it went last time, I've decided to put him on hold temporarily. After getting lot of souls out of Guardian Dragon and Giant Lord for few more levels, I've decided to go at him for proper attempts. And the same as before, my reflexes were pretty much outmatched by this guy once in a while, so it took me 19 attempts to defeat him And in this attempt, there was also one close death call, which I still do not understand how he missed my toon

 

[redneckdevil]

Playing wasteland 3 and loving it.  The load times are a bit long but so far nothing that annoys me.  It’s scratching that fallout/shadow runs itch something fierce  

[Theonlygarby]

2 hours ago, redneckdevil said:

Playing wasteland 3 and loving it.  The load times are a bit long but so far nothing that annoys me.  It’s scratching that fallout/shadow runs itch something fierce  

Just wait until you've gone between Colorado springs and the palace a few times.  Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the game.  I dread reloading or entering areas due to the very long load times.  I blame unity

[marelooke]

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)

Edited September 16, 2020 by marelooke

[redneckdevil]

14 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

Just wait until you've gone between Colorado springs and the palace a few times.  Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the game.  I dread reloading or entering areas due to the very long load times.  I blame unity

Shoot, just reloading the many times I do for almost every chat with someone makes me understand people’s problem with the loading and speed of vehicle.

i guess I’m a bit biased in that with the amount of fun I’m having with this game after not having this amount of enjoyment since I’m guessing shadow runs game came out.  The load times aren’t bothering me as much because my annoyance turns to enjoyment as soon as it’s done loading and I’m able to play lol.

[marelooke]

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...).

[Malcador]

Have enlisted a legion of screaming goats in WL2.  We shall see what use they are.  Not very good for minefield clearing though.

[Mamoulian War]

Another bossfight, which I've tried to postponed as much as possible was optional Darklurker. Not because his difficulty, but because of annoying way, who to get to the fight, and the need to use one humanity each time you die. To my surprise, the "gauntlet" to him in three areas needed to clear was much more casual friendly than in NG. Probably, because I had much better spell arsenal now Anyway, as before, one of the more interesting fights with enjoyable fight mechanics Three attempts and 1 minute 20 seconds in the final attempt were needed
 

 

[melkathi]

Finished the story campaign in necromunda. The story is ok for the setting. It is within the scale of the setting.

The bugs though...

 

The last Mission took me around six hours to complete. The reason crashes and a bug tied to them. The main mission objective is to clear the map of infinitely respawning enemies. To achieve this you seal the 11 spawn points. But the game does not save the state of the spawn points, so if you reload (after a crash) the doors show up as sealed in your quest log, are in fact though open and have to be resealed. With limited healing items this means you race towards spawn points that can have to up to four fresh enemies appear at the end of the turn.

 

[Raithe]

I can't actually say I'm playing Conan Exiles at the moment. The trouble being whenever one of those sorts of games releases huge update/expansion....  Now every time I go "Oh, I have some time to have a quick half hour / hour play before I have to deal with x" I log on.. and it then spends 50 minutes doing an update / patch and leaving me staring at the "preallocating" message from steam while nothing appears to happen.

Le Sigh.

[Melusina]

I'm deep into Crusader Kings 3. Trying to make my character die as fast as possible.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Melusina

[Keyrock]

I reached a new area, Gate of the Dead, in La-Mulana 2. It's an Egyptian themed area with a cool gimmick where certain special doorways flip the entire area upside down. It's a pretty great area, despite all the traps. I'd post screenies, but any still won't do it justice because there are a lot of moving parts in the background.

[Mamoulian War]

Aaaand it was time to visit Ancient Dragon again This time, I've decided to clear all mobs in the area, so I would not get any interruptions while trying to get to the boss. In NG it took me 139 attempts to defeat him, in NG+, he went down after 5 without any extra cheese When you learn all of the gimmicks of the fight, he became much less of the threat, and you are able to outmaneuver his randomness much easier

 

[Malcador]

Boon times for Brno in my FM game, the owner checked his couch and came up with 100K euros so I can get some players.  Also will offload some, have a pair whining about my management when one is a striker that only puts one shot out of 15 on target and another only has the stamina to play for 30 minutes, so can get rid of them

[Hurlshort]

I finished Xcom: Chimera Squad. It was an excellent game. 

I feel like Firaxis has been slowly getting closer to the formula that made Jagged Alliance 2 my favorite game ever. Growing up, the top two games in terms of gameplay for me were Xcom UFO Defense and JA2. I had plenty of other favorites, but it tended to be because of story much more than gameplay. 

Firaxis really nailed the Xcom formula for me with their first game. But with Enemy Within and Xcom 2, they started to allow more depth of personality in the soldiers. The colorful cast of mercs has always been one of the main things missing from games not titled Jagged Alliance, but I could tell Firaxis was getting closer.

So now we get a little side quest Xcom with a colorful cast of characters trying to clean up their city. First off, the gameplay was great, but that was no surprise as Firaxis has shown they know how to keep the gameplay fresh. Each soldier felt very different from a gameplay perspective. But I also enjoyed their banter and the backstories. 

It wasn't super deep, and I think the 25 hours was probably about right, because a longer campaign may have started to feel grindy, but it was a fun and fast adventure with an interesting roster. 

Godmother, Axiom, and Blue Blood were absolutely deadly by the end of my game, and Terminal was huge in support. I also had Verge, Shelter, and Patchwork stepping in nicely. Cherub was a bit boring, but he did have one really good mission where he stood in the middle of a room with his shields up and drew all of the attention while his heavily injured teammates slowly whittled down the overwhelming odds. 

[bugarup]

Casual gaming news. Currently playing "Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game", or should I say, it plays itself while I do chores while taking occasional peeks at it to see if I leveled up enough to come up with new recipes or add new deco. Currently running three builds - snobby expensive seafood restaurant "R'Lyeh", where I try combine quality and optimization, "Grease & Starch" canteen for the working class where I'm experimenting with how gross and revolting I can make grub for it still to sell (as long as its cheap), and "Have I told you lately I'm a vegan?" joint where I'm going to see if I can overcharge plant connoisseurs just as outrageously as IRL. 

So far so good, only pity that I cannot run alternative business like in "Pizza Tycoon", where I used my mafia money to fund my hobby of creating and serving horrible food and could go wild, here I have to make profit and unfortunately cannot make things too atrocious. So far at least, here's hoping to find a way.

 

[melkathi]

39 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

Godmother, Axiom, and Blue Blood were absolutely deadly by the end of my game, and Terminal was huge in support. I also had Verge, Shelter, and Patchwork stepping in nicely. Cherub was a bit boring, but he did have one really good mission where he stood in the middle of a room with his shields up and drew all of the attention while his heavily injured teammates slowly whittled down the overwhelming odds. 

 

Now you need to meet Torque.

 

Also, Patchwork is simply amazing with the right skills, as she can stun the entire map.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2088436494

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2092895698

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2088436644

Edited September 17, 2020 by melkathi

[Tale]

Dragon Age Inquisition's loot system is annoying the crap out of me. It's one of those games I feel is trying too hard with loot.

You have three tiers of loot, 4 rarities, customizable upgrades, and loot progression that goes alongside character level. Then, if you're a mage, you have to sort 3 damage types for your weapon because this will be on the test. Which means you're constantly finding utter crap. And you have to navigate the slow menus one item at a time just to make sure it's crap. And even when it's not crap, you're now going into another slow menu to take off the upgrades from your old equipment to put the upgrades on the new one. Your equipment basically has their own equipment submenu that requires accessing through a special location. 

And if you want to keep your entire roster's equipment up to date, you need to do this process like 10 times. Because you never know when you'll need to take someone off the bench.

 

Customization is desirable because it's supposed to reduce the doing of all this. Find something you like the looks of and you can keep it by upgrading. Find something with stats you like and you can make it look cool. Here we're just adding more loot, more stats, more junk, more menus.

 

I'm not even saying that games need to stop doing loot. They just need to loot to not be an obligation. It needs to be an interesting game system. It should have the value of a good skill tree, representing a play style. And only upgrading when it changes substantially or when you want a player to try something out different. Not just be ups. Soulsborne games are great at this. Even many games with too much loot show they know how... in their endgame. But games don't need the earlier filler. If the end game is where the interest is, the whole game needs to catch up.

[Malcador]

Well, bugger, Lazio nabbed my star youngster for 2MM.  So on bright side I can get some players, only problem is I've not scouted people who cost money

[majestic]

13 hours ago, Tale said:

You have three tiers of loot, 4 rarities, customizable upgrades, and loot progression that goes alongside character level. Then, if you're a mage, you have to sort 3 damage types for your weapon because this will be on the test. Which means you're constantly finding utter crap.

So have you noticed yet that craftable weapons can be enhanced with rate components that are annoyingly hard to grind and that can have varying special properties? So finally finding that rare ore doesn't mean you'll be getting the one special you desire.

Yeah. Loot in DA:I is like loot in an Asian grinder MMO.

[Mamoulian War]

I bet, you have the “convenience” to buy the “right” loot in the DA:I store. Only 2.99$