What Are You Playing Now: Gaming Lives

[Raithe]

Started up the single-player Conan Exiles to see what its like and pick up how it works, spent about 5 hours collected stone and tree stuff, killing a few things built a small house at that first river/lake area to get to grips with how things work. Am kind of disappointed in the combat so far - yes, its somewhat brutal, but it does feel very random hack and slashy. I'd have expected something a bit more elegant and gruesome from a Conan game.

[Katphood]

7 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Borderlands 3 released the 4th DLC, which included another max clvl jump (5 more, to 65).  I started to farm xp to level up and then thought about how that would mean farming new guns etc.  It's likely they'll raise the cap yet again (even tho they claimed early on they weren't going to raise cap much, and I have a bridge to sell). So screw it.  I'm waiting until they make up their minds what the final cap will be. Might be 70, might be 80. Maybe by next Summer.

I think I've about had it with (looting) games that like to do level cap increases in frequent but tiny increments over many months as some kind of incentive. 

I really enjoyed both Borderlands 1 & 2(never got around to finish The Pre-Sequel for some reason). Still haven't touched 3 though, I hear that it's pretty good. Might pick up a 'Complete Edition' or something like that someday.

[marelooke]

5 hours ago, Raithe said:

Started up the single-player Conan Exiles to see what its like and pick up how it works, spent about 5 hours collected stone and tree stuff, killing a few things built a small house at that first river/lake area to get to grips with how things work. Am kind of disappointed in the combat so far - yes, its somewhat brutal, but it does feel very random hack and slashy. I'd have expected something a bit more elegant and gruesome from a Conan game.

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.

Edited September 12, 2020 by marelooke

[ComradeYellow]

Because I'm that weird guy, I'm playing Kingdom's of Amalur Re-Reckoning. 

It's actually not too bad.  Then again, I'm not too picky as long as the game accommodates my Archer/Mage fetish fairly decently.  Skyrim does not, this game does.

[Raithe]

36 minutes ago, marelooke said:

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.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions.   I'm mostly just using the single-player mode to get a feel for it and know what I'm doing.  I'll likely give one of the normal servers a try at some point to see what things are like with other players around.

[Majek]

I want to play more Wasteland 3 but i can't seem to get interested enough.

I want to get back into Destiny before the next Expansion but can't.

I've played some MHW Iceborne but the damn tempered super saiyan monkey made me quit in rage and tears, mostly tears.

Warzone i still play almost every day. Am not very impressed by Black ops Cold war reveal, hopefully the don't **** up warzone ( more) with it's release. I especially don't want those terrible gun animations and sounds.

There is also that game BOTW that i play whenever i pick up the Switch pro controller instead of DS4 by mistake.  Maybe i should go defeat that 2nd  divine beast some day soon.

Desperados 3, C&C remaster, THPS 1+2 will probably reamain on the wishlist for now, probably next year as well.

I wonder where BG3 will fit into all of this.

[melkathi]

Three Two Good things about Necromunda:

 

1. Traits: When you recruit a ganger, you select three traits. The first is the body type (Resilient, Athletic, Healthy, Agile) and that affects the actual body type. Resilient are big boned, Athletic muscular, Healthy average, and Agile svelte.
2. Name Character Limit: Names can be rather long compared to other games. My Goliath pirate crew is the "Sump Sea Salvage Company Inc." under "Mad Kaptin Laser-Eye" is reality.

[Hurlshort]

4 hours ago, Raithe said:

Thanks for all the suggestions.   I'm mostly just using the single-player mode to get a feel for it and know what I'm doing.  I'll likely give one of the normal servers a try at some point to see what things are like with other players around.

I've played in a couple multiplayer servers, but at the end of the day I enjoy the single player version more. The pacing is a bit slower, but I do like the feeling of progression. Whenever I tweak stuff it feels like it gets too easy and I end up starting over.

[melkathi]

Started transfering paint jobs and personalities from my tabletop Necromunda gang to the video game counterpart. So future screenshots may have different colour schemes than previous ones.

[Hurlshort]

Took down the Sacred Foil cult in Chimera Squad. It was a bit tricky, but I found that my robotics lady was pretty invaluable throughout. Godmother is an absolute murderer at this point in my game. I sat my psych guys for most of this run, but I imagine they will be valuable for the last push against the psionics.

[melkathi]

Patchwork is the best character in the game. Anyone who disagrees hasn't used her correctly.

[majestic]

Eh, wow. Currently at the very end of Wasteland 3 and it's not entirely what I expected. And by "not entirely" I mean... not at all. Holy crap I done made a mess out of that.

[Guard Dog]

If anyone is still playing FO4 I found a GREAT radio mod. It's a Boston version of Galaxy News Radio. The DJ is fully voiced and does news and banter. Whoever he is he sounds a like Morgan Freeman. The best part is the music. They play all 1930's & '40's blues. Great stuff!

Galaxy News Radio - Boston Mass.

[Tale]

Finished AWE in Control. Super weak. Alan Wake is coming back! He has no role in the story, he's just teased in it. It's just chasing after a darkness monster in a new wing of the Oldest House with a few darkness gates from Alan Wake.

[Hawke64]

Decay of Logos. Defeated the third and the forth bosses. Technically, it was one battle, I am unsure how it would go, if I defeated the first boss, then lost to the second. I found a short-cut to one of the early-game areas and could not understand why it was there - walking from the main hub would take less time. I also found a fire zweihander and a mask.
I think, I am close to the ending.

[Mamoulian War]

On 9/10/2020 at 9:12 AM, BruceVC said:

Mamie why arent you playing DK3 and how would you compare DS1-3 for someone who has never played any games from the franchise, I have DS1&2 on Steam but I have never played them before. I see their are several Mods on Nexus for these  games and that generally is always a good sign around real support amongst the fanbase  and sustainability for any game 

Sorry to keep you waiting for so long, but got few busy IRL days behind me, soo. I do not play DS3 simply because I have never played DS2 before this year. So my own comparison is that DS2 is for me harder to play than DS1. Keep in mind, I played both games on PS3, so in both instances, these games can be little bit laggy, and I have found out, that DS2 is little bit more laggier and that is an issue to me.

Myself, I would recommend you to play both games, and DS1 first, due to different rolling mechanics, which IMO is worse in DS1. So if you start play DS2, you might not like to get back to DS1, despite it being IMO better game overall. And before you start to play, thing about your temper, how easily you can enrage, when defeated I can asure you, that DS series is not for easily enrageable people And for DS3, unfortunately, I have not played the game yet. Some people are saying, that is the best game of the series, some people are angry at that game, because of Poise stat change and prefer DS1 or DS2 because of that.

@Hawke64 You are correct, the Ascetic worked in Majula, unfortunatelly I have still not found a single instance of a hint that it might work at Drangleic

 

Back to the bossfights Next in line was again Guardian Dragon. As before, very easy encounter to fight, because he is extremely weak to Soul Magic. First try, and 1min 11s to get his soul *shrugs*

 

[majestic]

Finished Wasteland 3.

I just killed all the insane kids and installed Team November as the leaders of Colorado. Since everything in this game is a pun or two the achievement for that is aptly titled November Reign. Heh.

According to the statistics only .2% of all people unlocked that achievement on GOG. I find that somewhat odd. Probably comes down to people not finishing the game at all.

The endgame seems a bit bugged. There's a ton of missing acknowledgements* (well, presumably) and some consequences seem wrong given what I did in the game. Not much of a surprise since my political liason berated me for messing up from the beginning of his presence. You know, before even embarking on the main quest outside the starting location. That was weird.

Not sure how much faction reputation really matters. I've stormed Colorado Springs and managed to talk down the Marhalls because they liked me, but other than that nothing much else happened. The Gippers came up in an ending slide being happy with Valor as their god president and Flab was happily leading the Bizarre, but consequences or anything? Eh, nah.

The game also pretended that the way I did things caused Arizona to starve but funnily enough the primary ending slides told me that my actions saved the Rangers in Arizona and made them stronger than ever.

*Deciding to storm Colorado with the Rangers and Angie caused half the base to turn hostile and we had to put down some people, including the Ranger General's brother, something that never came up in the ending slides. Seems strange. Either bugged or an oversight.

[Tale]

I should be playing The Last of Us 2 and finishing Final Fantasy XIV. I'm not.

Instead I'm playing Dragon Age Inquisition. The weakest Dragon Age and the one I've only ever played once before. I actually really like it (I should, I bought it three times), but too much of it feels like filler. And the characters and plot don't engage the way they did in the first two. But I hear great things about Trespasser, so I'm going to push through.

Crysis is probably my biggest example of better the second time. I didn't even get Crysis the first time I played it, trying to play the titles like every other FPS. Now I'm sprinting behind rocks to recloak and sneaking up behind people like a Predator who can't hide in trees and whose cloak only lasts 4 seconds. Is fun.

[Hawke64]

Decay of Logos. Finished the game and left a negative review. The first half of the final battle was a joke.

Spoiler

I could win or lose to the King, but the next cut-scene played out the same, regardless. Thus, I just minimized the game until the true final boss has done monologuing (cut-scenes were unskippable) and the actual final battle has begun, which I replayed twice for achievements. The ending was more or less the same.

 

[bugarup]

Finished "Bound by flame". Well, kind of. Lost to boss a couple of times, decided I'm too old for this and watched the ending on youtube because, a) worst boss fight ever, worse even than "Two worlds 2", b) I wasn't that invested in the story anyway. Anyway, the game really wanted me to do all that parrying and dodging crap which probably is no big deal with a controller but really annoying on the keyboard unless you're a centipede; fortunately, it also gave me fireballs so I could eventually ignore all that dancing with swords nonsense, still -- since I primed myself for not totally hating hack and slash -- I'm having a go at Witcher 2 again. Lessee if I get farther than tutorial this time.

Also, someone on the writing team was reaaalllly into "Black company". Also², Keyrock, you were right, it was indeed so, so edgy mcedgelordy.  I still liked the setting though, I'm a sucker for "The world is doomed but we still fight because what else is there to do?" thing. 

[melkathi]

Worse than Nomad Soul?

[Mamoulian War]

Right after Guardian Dragon, I ventured into Giant Memories, and after some talking with Benhart I’ve summoned him for the third fight in his personal quest chain. The fight with summon was super easy, barely an inconvenience, and he fell down on first try. After that, I went to meet Benhart again, and finished his questline. Reward was his nice equipment and one more trophy

 

 

[marelooke]

On 9/12/2020 at 3:45 PM, Raithe said:

Thanks for all the suggestions.   I'm mostly just using the single-player mode to get a feel for it and know what I'm doing.  I'll likely give one of the normal servers a try at some point to see what things are like with other players around.

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".

22 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

I've played in a couple multiplayer servers, but at the end of the day I enjoy the single player version more. The pacing is a bit slower, but I do like the feeling of progression. Whenever I tweak stuff it feels like it gets too easy and I end up starting over.

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

[Malcador]

Made some good progress in Wasteland 2, getting Angela Deth (nice name) and Vulture's Cry has made combat smooth thus far, been popping everyone pretty easily with my sniper.  I will learn from my playthrough in FO:T and not forget to level energy weapons.  Lost an entire playthrough as robots shrugged off bullets.

[bugarup]

14 hours ago, melkathi said:

Worse than Nomad Soul?

Never played it, looked up the fight on the 'tube. Seems to be of similar awfulness.