What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life

[majestic]

33 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Torment for me is an interactive novel, I count it as the worst IE game. Regarding Pathfinder Kingmaker I was talking about the gameplay more than the story tbh, but I agree that it wasn't very inspiring and neither were the companions very memorable. Then again Pillars of Eternity had great artwork, voice overs a decent story but I still stopped playing it when my characters reached max level, I simply didn't like the gameplay enough to force myself to finish it.

I think KP was refering to Torment: Tides of Numenera when he referred to IE derivatives here, not the original Planescape: Torment, which indeed had not so great gameplay, but which IE game had great gameplay? Or even good combat? I enjoyed the games, each for their own reasons, but it takes mods to make the combat fun. It is also the reason I rank the first IWD dead last. The game is actually helped by the Enhanced Edition insofar as you can pick a sorcerer to come along. It's not much more engaging to simply nuke the million enemies in the game with fireballs, but sure is a lot faster.

8 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

I think you're regarding BG1 with a fair bit of the rose tinted there. You tend to forget all the the times you got wiped by kobolds in the Nashkel mines with their ludicrous crit dealing bows shooting your mages and thiefs or when you stumbled into an Ogre who gibbed everyone in 3 rounds just outside Candlekeep because it's been 23 years and you know what is coming.

It would be interesting to know how many players began BG1 without setting their CON score to their class' highest hitpoint bonus and ended up being killed by random lucky dice throw from Shank or Carbos. 

[Sarex]

@Wormerine It took me 116 hours to finish it, but I did, 2/3 of the way through, install the Kingdom Management mod and trivialized the whole mini Kingdom game as I simply found it unfun, which shows how badly they implement it as I'm usually a sucker for these things. As for comparing it to BG1, I would not agree with you there. For me BG1 was clunky and unconnected. I get that they wanted you to explore the map and find quest, but to me it was really badly done. But to be fair I played BG1 after BG2.

I didn't find season of bloom to stand out that much compared to the other chapters, but I do agree with you that they did a really poor job, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, with showing any impact your decisions had on the kingdom, be it in the map or with you subjects.

@majestic IWD2 and BG2 had great gameplay for me at least (judging them by the time they were released, or at least when I played them). Haven't played the new Planescape so I can't comment on it.

Edited February 13, 2021 by Sarex

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

49 minutes ago, majestic said:

I think KP was refering to Torment: Tides of Numenera when he referred to IE derivatives here, not the original Planescape: Torment

I was, but I also think that the original is bad too. It would have been much stronger if it was outright an interactive novel or whatever, but playing it (with the restoration mods) is basically hacking your way through tons of boring encounters to get to any good bits. I should say that I didn't play any IE game at release as NWN was out when I was starting to play D&D and finding games was difficult for a kid without too much money or knowledge. When I did start playing them I had the benefits of tons of mods, so I should note that my BG2 experience is significantly different than someone who played it vanilla at launch.

1 minute ago, Sarex said:

@Wormerine It took me 116 hours to finish it, but I did, 2/3 of the way through, install the Kingdom Management mod and trivialized the whole mini Kingdom game as I simply found it unfun, which shows how badly they implement it as I'm usually a sucker for these things.

I have never played without it. What I saw of the kingdom minigame was a lot like the PoE2 ship combat minigame so I ran the hell away as fast as I could. I hope Wrath of the Righteous army minigame is more streamlined and less time consuming.

[Sarex]

1 minute ago, KaineParker said:

I have never played without it. What I saw of the kingdom minigame was a lot like the PoE2 ship combat minigame so I ran the hell away as fast as I could. I hope Wrath of the Righteous army minigame is more streamlined and less time consuming.

I really wanted to give it a shot, as I said I'm a sucker for building mini games, but this was beyond me. It was really poorly done. I have the same hope for the sequel, but am very doubtful. My hopes for WotR is that they improve the inventory, work on the bugs and make the maps more interesting. I already know that there won't be much voice over as they said it will be comparable to Kingmaker.

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

I think you're regarding BG1 with a fair bit of the rose tinted there. You tend to forget all the the times you got wiped by kobolds in the Nashkel mines with their ludicrous crit dealing bows shooting your mages and thiefs or when you stumbled into an Ogre who gibbed everyone in 3 rounds just outside Candlekeep because it's been 23 years and you know what is coming. Or that literally every in game problem could be solved by, well, summoning allies, then summoning more allies and summoning more again.

I don't think so. I did play BG2 first though, and I liked BG1 much less. Still, I mentioned BG1 as I think both games share a lot of the same issues - it's just BG suffers from them to a lesser extend. 
There is one clear BS in BG1 that I remember and that's Basylisks. I thought it was a horrible design to have an enemy who destroys you if you don't have a cenrtain spell or item but is defenceless otherwise. I still think so today. Never ever, did I doubt in BG1 if I am going a wrong way, or if it's an enemy I can deal with. And the awkward spikes in difficulty that happened were rarity, not the norm. I do think that the benefit of having less levels is that there is less chance of being drastically over/underleveled. Kingmaker, though, is all basilisks. 

And I wouldn't mind "come back later" design if the game properly supported it. Inventory punishes you for carrying everything, but you don't know if you need something until you get there. Resting is tedious, but you don't know what spells to prepare unless you went and died there. You can't make in-game notes, so good luck remembering which of those nodes had the enemies I wasn't able to beat 20h of gametime earlier. I do remember what's coming in BG1&2. I couldn't tell you whats coming in Pathfinder - because while tough it's all forgetable. I can't tell you how many times I took a journey to the same "undiscovered" note only to enter the same encounter I am not not able to beat for hours to come and have to reload the game. It might be that BGs systems were simpler, and that meant you generally have access to all tools you need. It's far easier to miss something crucial in Pathfinder. But Pathfinder's world map and structure is a cluster... 

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

It would be interesting to know how many players began BG1 without setting their CON score to their class' highest hitpoint bonus and ended up being killed by random lucky dice throw from Shank or Carbos. 

Oh, I never invested in high con. A lot of quickloads. Luckily at the time, I had far higher tolerance for loading screens. And I didn't understand systems, which meant it was just "hardcore". 

I think in Pathfinder its all about inventory screen for me. Force me to look for a specific potion or scroll in my inventory and I ALT-F4 out. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

24 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I really wanted to give it a shot, as I said I'm a sucker for building mini games, but this was beyond me. It was really poorly done. I have the same hope for the sequel, but am very doubtful. My hopes for WotR is that they improve the inventory, work on the bugs and make the maps more interesting. I already know that there won't be much voice over as they said it will be comparable to Kingmaker.

Increasingly I'm against minigames on principle. Like Yakuza does them very well, but for the most part they're not fun and tedious. 

[Sarex]

@Wormerine The game suffers from a lack of a search bar in the inventory, but I disagree with you on the limitations, in fact I would have liked to see the old inventory from the IE games (I think I'm probably the only person who liked the inventory system of the IE games). You shouldn't be able to carry everything with you early game and for later on you can add bags of holding.

@KaineParker I think Yakuza is more about the mini games then it is about the main game.

[majestic]

Look at you guys complaining about Kingmaker's Kingdom building minigame even though it went through several patches and now actually works. Back when I played we had to hike up a mountain backwards every time we wanted to go to school.

No, actually, it was so broken you constantly had to edit the save game to fix the variable states for upgrades and promotions to work properly (and even then most of the craftsmen didn't show up for me).

And it made the secret ending unavailable, what with that curse research counter not doing what it should (for me, my game was a mess of bugs).

48 minutes ago, Sarex said:

@majestic IWD2 and BG2 had great gameplay for me at least (judging them by the time they were released, or at least when I played them). Haven't played the new Planescape so I can't comment on it.

Tides of Numenera just had a handful of encounters, and almost all of them were optional. They realized that PS:T's combat elements hurt the game, but created weird interactive novel with stats and a whole caracter system that felt wasted by not doing any encounters, and said encounters were often cumbersome and slow. Not to mention buggy.

Oh, and it was unecessarily verbose and overwritten.

Still liked it better than Pillars of Eternity: The Quest for Balance.

As for gameplay of the IE games, my experience was slightly different, but at that point I had some years of playing AD&D games under my belt. Having the manual for the game was nice because I finally got to read how all the stats are calculated and all, but I figured out how to, uhm, approach stats and magic in AD&D from games like Eye of the Beholder by careful observation and experimentation (it's not like I understood a lick of what was on the screen in Eye of the Beholder, I was nine or ten at the time).

And boy was I happy that my characters ate without me having to click on food in Baldur's Gate. Worst mechanic ever, or maybe tied with money taking up inventory space or having weight. Or both.

 

[ComradeYellow]

17 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I have never played any of the Wasteland games 

You aren't missing much, they're redneck trash.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

57 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I think Yakuza is more about the mini games then it is about the main game.

That's one of the many good things about it. Like each minigame feels more developed than some entire games are.

40 minutes ago, majestic said:

Look at you guys complaining about Kingmaker's Kingdom building minigame even though it went through several patches and now actually works. Back when I played we had to hike up a mountain backwards every time we wanted to go to school.

No, actually, it was so broken you constantly had to edit the save game to fix the variable states for upgrades and promotions to work properly (and even then most of the craftsmen didn't show up for me).

And it made the secret ending unavailable, what with that curse research counter not doing what it should (for me, my game was a mess of bugs).

Tides of Numenera just had a handful of encounters, and almost all of them were optional. They realized that PS:T's combat elements hurt the game, but created weird interactive novel with stats and a whole caracter system that felt wasted by not doing any encounters, and said encounters were often cumbersome and slow. Not to mention buggy.

Oh, and it was unecessarily verbose and overwritten.

Still liked it better than Pillars of Eternity: The Quest for Balance.

As for gameplay of the IE games, my experience was slightly different, but at that point I had some years of playing AD&D games under my belt. Having the manual for the game was nice because I finally got to read how all the stats are calculated and all, but I figured out how to, uhm, approach stats and magic in AD&D from games like Eye of the Beholder by careful observation and experimentation (it's not like I understood a lick of what was on the screen in Eye of the Beholder, I was nine or ten at the time).

And boy was I happy that my characters ate without me having to click on food in Baldur's Gate. Worst mechanic ever, or maybe tied with money taking up inventory space or having weight. Or both.

 

Man, waiting for things to get patched before trying was a good idea. Even though there's still some ****ty bugs in the vanilla game, like the Dragon bloodline capstone making the item tailor made for fire dragon sorcerers remove their ability to buff themselves.

[Zoraptor]

49 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

I don't think so. I did play BG2 first though, and I liked BG1 much less. Still, I mentioned BG1 as I think both games share a lot of the same issues - it's just BG suffers from them to a lesser extend. 
There is one clear BS in BG1 that I remember and that's Basylisks. I thought it was a horrible design to have an enemy who destroys you if you don't have a cenrtain spell or item but is defenceless otherwise. I still think so today. Never ever, did I doubt in BG1 if I am going a wrong way, or if it's an enemy I can deal with. And the awkward spikes in difficulty that happened were rarity, not the norm. I do think that the benefit of having less levels is that there is less chance of being drastically over/underleveled. Kingmaker, though, is all basilisks.

Dunno, most of the defensive 'requirements' in Kingmaker seemed pretty sensible to me. If you're fighting undead make sure you have death ward and restoration, if you're fighting stuff that poisons have poison resistance etc. It's way more of a all buffs all the time game compared to the BGs but then BG spells were largely cheese fests with different balance issues like the aforementioned summoning. And again, I'd suggest there's a lot of rose tinted on the Baldur's Gate side. BG2 Beholders and illithids? The liches with Imprisonment? All instant gameover or as good as if you fail a save, if you even got a save. It's just that everyone knows how to counter those because they're for a 20 year old game, so people go get the Shield of Reflection first etc.

I'd criticise Kingmaker for being too... random in its macro level results (ie for difficult encounters I'd often lose terribly, then retry and win trivially next time using exactly the same tactics) for combat, but that was exactly the same in BG1/2 where often the combat was decided by who got off [mass status effect] spell first and who failed saves in the first 2 rounds. For higher levels, who gets the enemy mages via Breach or whatever. That's just how D&D type combat is, any encounter is trivial with a lucky throw or two, and most encounters can be difficult with the reverse.

Kingmaker definitely suffered from a decent dollop of game system opaqueness though, no doubt about it.

More generally, I rather liked most of the kingdom management aspects, though they should definitely be optional (as they are, by setting). It's definitely underdone on the matter of visible consequences/ results with a few exceptions though. The main mechanical complaint is that you can't abort a project involving the PC if something comes up, and the timings for the big events usually started events before their 'due' date which could lead to 2 weeks of pop ups telling you about drunk giants running amok or whatever. Otherwise my main complaint would be not enough options for all the positions, which is pretty minor.

[marelooke]

Well, finished Cyberpunk 2077, and I gotta say, the endings were kinda disappointing.

I wasn't expecting a "and they lived happily ever after", but unfortunately the game decided to commit one of the biggest narrative sins there is (imho, anyway): they changed the rules in the ending to force a desired outcome.

Major spoilers inc, obviously:

Spoiler

So yeah, there's basically two outcomes for V: you die (or stop existing, if you prefer), or you are dying. What changes is how people think of you afterwards (there's issues there too, but ehhh, the entire ending section just feels rushed, and the credit slides have a lot of inconsistencies too. At least the quests are a somewhat coherent whole, unlike KotOR2's...).

And it's the "reason" for the second that annoys the hell out of me. After being split from Johnny (either by Arasaka, or by Alt) you are told your body is rejecting...you, because the Relic has been making DNA changes (early in the game it's said that not just your mind will be taken over by Johnny, but your body will turn into him as well, so no real big surprises so far) and your body no longer recognizes your mind.

So suddenly the Relic is unable to take over the "host" because of "DNA incompatibility", and getting "rejected" by your immune system, whereas that apparently wasn't a problem at all early in the game... One could argue that initial Relic was unique and got lost in the Arasaka ending when they removed Johnny so you're SOL, but then again the person who created it in the first place is right there, and you've been lugging the blueprints to the thing around for like half the game, so yeah...
It doesn't make sense in the Aldecaldos ending either as Alt presumably reprograms the chip with...you, meaning it must be the same chip and as a result ought to have the same capabilities (at least I presume she doesn't just reprogram your brain directly...).

The 6month thing just feels like a very forced cliffhanger for continuation's sake because the more reasonable (based on in-game knowledge) problems stemming from the chip would have been a lot harder to continue from. It also "saves" them from having the Arasaka ending be a "good" one, I guess (at least as far as V is concerned)

So the way they've set it up now V ends up living (for now, anyway) in all endings but two (the one where V merges with Alt, and the suicide one), but the way they've gone about it is...disappointing, especially since the game appears to go to pretty great lengths to be internally consistent up to that point.

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by marelooke

[uuuhhii]

tides of numenera have a lot of interesting story in it

but get into it seems to be extremely difficult

maybe will try again with enough time

[Wormerine]

15 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

More generally, I rather liked most of the kingdom management aspects, though they should definitely be optional (as they are, by setting).

They are in the game about being the king, where everyquest revolves around defending your kingdom and where yours as well villains motivations revolves around saving/destroying the kingdom. It is not Pillars of Eternity or BG2 were keep is purely an optional sidequest. In Kingmaker everything revolves around Kingdom and as the kingdom sucks (mechanically and narratively) the game sucks as the result. Adaptation of the system might be good, but I don't think it is a good way of utilizing it. Narratively, every "adventure" is a chore - something you have to deal with in order to come back to managing the kingdom in piece. I find it difficult to be engaged if that's the set up. And I rant about gameplay frustrations because there is nothing more to distract me from it. No interesting dungeons, no fun sidekicks. 

It's like reverse XCOM - two layers, but instead making each other better they detract from each other. Adventuring isn't fun as Kingdom Management is getting upset that you dared to left the capital. Succesful Kindgom Management only sucks out your wallet (at least in the early game as I have more money then I can spend by now) and contributes little to your advnturing. 

@SarexI agree, and overall, a lot of game's frustrations could be minimized with better UI design - proper search function, way to mark things on world map/perhaps better distinction between types of locations, better UI, better designed kingdom (dont' force me to go through loading screen 5+ times everytime I pay a visit to the capital, don't force me to walk back to the capital only to talk to a companion in my party so she can tell me to talk to her in the tavern, so then she can tell me to go back to where I was when I got the notification to talk to her in the throneroom. Kingmaker has so many frustrating bad designs that just waste your time. Little things, that to me become insufferable - too many of them popping up at every corner, choking life out of anything potentially fun. I am curious how WotR will be - because Owlcat certainly has passion, but not experience to, for example, forsee that forcing players to contantly load back and forth between Kingdom Management and Throne Room is probably not worth a fancy-looking Kingdom Management Screen... as nice as that screen may look like.

[melkathi]

Got the Steam Achievement in Troubleshooter that I didn't want to get. Failed to rescue a civilian. Totally avoidable. Was doing a mission on challenge mode and didn't know the villain I shot had gotten the random trait to enter frenzy and attack the closest living thing on taking damage. So a civilian got a katana to the face

[Sarex]

2 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I agree, and overall, a lot of game's frustrations could be minimized with better UI design - proper search function, way to mark things on world map/perhaps better distinction between types of locations, better UI, better designed kingdom (dont' force me to go through loading screen 5+ times everytime I pay a visit to the capital, don't force me to walk back to the capital only to talk to a companion in my party so she can tell me to talk to her in the tavern, so then she can tell me to go back to where I was when I got the notification to talk to her in the throneroom. Kingmaker has so many frustrating bad designs that just waste your time. Little things, that to me become insufferable - too many of them popping up at every corner, choking life out of anything potentially fun. I am curious how WotR will be - because Owlcat certainly has passion, but not experience to, for example, forsee that forcing players to contantly load back and forth between Kingdom Management and Throne Room is probably not worth a fancy-looking Kingdom Management Screen... as nice as that screen may look like.

Yup, those are all the things I would like to see fixed in the next part. I guess they just didn't outweigh the good parts for me.

[Raithe]

Being escapist from everything, taking a step away from the RPG slice of things to swim around the ocean in Subnautica.

I seem to have slid into that batch of survival / build games of late...

[Sarex]

37 minutes ago, Raithe said:

Being escapist from everything, taking a step away from the RPG slice of things to swim around the ocean in Subnautica.

I seem to have slid into that batch of survival / build games of late...

I have Below Zero installed, but I think I will wait for 1.0. Until then Breathedge will be coming out on Feb 25th, so I'm really looking forward to finish that.

[Hurlshort]

I'm also waiting for Breathedge to to release. I played with it a bit in beta and it is a bit odd. Definitely more quirky and silly than Subnautica. 

I got really into Below Zero a few months ago. I think it might be even better than the original when it comes to base building, and I like the brief above ground stuff and the fact there is actually other people alive out there somewhere. They definitely know how to pace advancement in these games, I always feel like I'm about the build something awesome. Below Zero is much smaller in terms of map, but it is still pretty sizeable.

Handmade maps with biomes and very well crafted areas are so much more superior to the randomly generated maps that some survival games go with. Conan Exiles has the same attention to detail and it just makes it way more engaging for me.  

[Raithe]

I think it's that survival with a loose element of storyline to follow, mostly paced at when you feel like it, but structured to guide you to fresh areas / new knowledge.

Not just dropping you someplace with no clue apart from what the game box says for how you ended up there.

Conan has that in a shallow guiding way. Empyrion has it in a general way. Subnautica has it in a more significant manner. ARK Survival is pretty non-existent with those elements.

[melkathi]

I can now train legendary beasts in Troubleshooter. The hunt for the golden chocobo can begin!

[melkathi]

On 2/12/2021 at 8:11 PM, melkathi said:

I had about 145K in cash in Troubleshooter when I decided it was time to upgrade Albus' equipment. So I now have around 85K in cash (having accidentally crafted the same Jacket twice... )

So after crafting an equipment set which cost me about 10K in materials per item, I decided to bask in its awesomeness. Then I noticed it gives no bonus whatsoever to Speed. Doh.

  Reveal hidden contents

Guess I need to change my masteries.

 

1 of those Legendary crafting materials I had bought materials to craft myself had cost me around 16K + some materials I already owned.

Went on a mission now. Looted 26 of those Legendary crafting materials...

[Malcador]

Got gold in the RT3 1848 scenario at last.  Got lucky with having good credit and low rates and just spammed bonds to open up Prussia, still not entirely sure how best to handle express freight but that is the money maker, did spoke and hubs sort of.  That scenario being only silver on my list has been over my head for 18 years

[melkathi]

145 Hours, I have finished Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children.

As the first DLC is already out, the ending credits merged into the opening credits of Troubleshooter: Banished Children.

I think I'll start that tomorrow though.