What are you Playing Now? I name all the operations that go down in Taipei.

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, kanisatha said:

I'm surprised anyone still goes to that forum. Their forum moderators  blacklisted me and then eventually created an excuse to ban me for being a constant critic of BG3 (as they did to several other BG3 critics). As such I no longer have any interest in anything Beamdog.

I cant believe you have been banned  before, I never would have guessed that. Only people like me normally get banned 

[melkathi]

Why would you get banned? Excessive positivity?

I mean, I could totally understand that, but it doesn't normally happen.

[kanisatha]

2 hours ago, melkathi said:

Why would you get banned? Excessive positivity?

I mean, I could totally understand that, but it doesn't normally happen.

Hehe. Thanks.

It's just the culture on that forum. The mods there effectively are all close friends of each other who think they own the forum, which may be true as Beamdog has zero oversight of them in any way. So the mods make up rules as they go, and enforce rules entirely subjectively based on if you're their buddy or not, with the most basic rule (literally; this is what they openly say) being no one can ever challenge or question what a mod says, and doing so is a bannable offence.

And criticizing BG3, loved by all their mods, became a cardinal sin on the forum. I refused to be cowed and kept on with my criticizing, which I did with quite civil and polite language, even after I knew a few other fellow BG3 critics had been booted off the forum. So eventually, after "warning" me a couple of times, they banned me. But of course they couldn't say they were banning me for being a BG3 critic, so instead they banned me for saying, in a thread where someone else had posted something about many people in America being whiney and entitled, to which I responded, "Yeah, I too feel that Americans have collectively lost their minds in recent years." A mod told me this was "hate speech" aimed at a group of people and so I was banned. Go figure.

Edited July 3, 2022 by kanisatha

[melkathi]

I got banned from the GW2 forum for reporting someone for making racist comments.

(Which I have probably said a few times before)

So don't worry, you are in good company.

[Mamoulian War]

After 6 years and 11 months, I've decided to get back to my unfinished 3rd playthrough of Atelier Rorona on PS3. The goal for this playthrough was Pie Master ending, while getting Rorona's Alchemy level to 50. Both goals were achieved successfully, although after three days of playing, I have remembered why I have abandoned the run all these years ago . Getting this ending was almost as much busywork as getting the Astrid Ending, which little bit spoiled my fun during last two days of playing. It took me 62 hours this time. Thankfully all other endings are much easier to achieve, so I hope, I will be able to get back to another playthrough after much shorter break .

[Keyrock]

I got one of the endings in AI: The Somnium Files, it was super duper sad... Well, I reached 2 endings, but 1 of them was a full ending with roll credits and the works, the other was just a temporary dead end. The story progression is similar to how it works in Zero Escape; there are branching paths which will sometimes hit dead ends. You have to go on a different path and do something to unlock the way forward on the previous path. If you choose to go all the way to get to the true ending, you wind up hopping back and forth between parallel timelines, I'm assuming it's the same way in AI:TSF. Spike Chunsoft, like myself, are apparently proponents of the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

[Malcador]

Hardspace is depressing when I'm pretty sure the corporate drone they send in game to motivate you says the same things I read in corporate mass mails at work.  Granted they dont just shout "INNOVATION. COLLABORATION. SYNERGY. PRODUCTIVITY.." at us like he does in the game, but at least the game it's somewhat more honest in its distilled state.

[BruceVC]

15 hours ago, melkathi said:

I got banned from the GW2 forum for reporting someone for making racist comments.

(Which I have probably said a few times before)

So don't worry, you are in good company.

I first read this as " I got banned and reported by someone for making racist comments " ...it didnt sound like you 

[Theonlygarby]

Beat Symphony of War... I enjoyed it, pacing was weird.  Got very easy about halfway through.  They kept giving you new super powerful units.  I thought they missed an opportunity with the storyline.  Ended up going a cliche way with it instead.  7/10 I guess

[melkathi]

I finished Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters. Now you don't have to. You are welcome.

It gets tedious. Playing the same mission over and over while waiting for the story to progress. Getting interrupted by random events that after a while just interrupt your flow.

Difficulty in the few story missions is mostly added through endless waves of enemies.

That said, they have tried more than most XCOM clones to have interesting boss battles. Even if while fighting *no spoilers that guy* in the last battle made *that guy* less stressful than the reinforcements.

Though I guess people into 40K can work out the antagonist, and people not into 40K wouldn't care about the name...

[majestic]

Everspace 2, an early access game that is so wonderfully optimized that sometimes starts having slow downs even on an i5-12600 with a RTX 3060 (in FullHD resolution, so nothing fancy).

I backed this on Kickstarter after really enjoying Everspace, and my old computer just couldn't handle it. The game has numerous issues other than its optimization which will certainly get a pass or two later in its development. The biggest issue is that the gameplay remains largely unchanged from Everspace, which was a roguelite arcade space shooter meant to be played in small one to two hour spurts. There the core gameplay loop works well enough, and you progress and feel more and more powerful.

Everspace 2 does away with the roguelite elements and leaves the gameplay for a sort-of freeform space exploration with highly annoying level-scaling. In other words you're flying around, doing the same thing over and over again, and while it does get easier in time, it's kind of... not fun for the extended time, and I'm only in the second of the 8 or so planned systems. It basically has the same problem as the loot system of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.

Ideally they'll trim all the fat out of the game prior to launch. I don't see people wanting to keep on playing for long unless they just follow the main quest and maybe do the odd sidejob or two. Then there's the issue of having zero enemy variety. It's the same buch of enemies over and over again, with the same tactics and the same ways you can defeat them. Like I said, nothing of that matters for a quick playthrough of the first game, because it is over before it becomes apparent, but it really, really doesn't lend itself to a sustained gameplay experience that is fun.

[Hurlshort]

5 hours ago, melkathi said:

 

Though I guess people into 40K can work out the antagonist, and people not into 40K wouldn't care about the name...

Is it Judge Dredd? He is in WH40k, right?

[Keyrock]

I just reached another temporary dead end in AI: The Somnium Files and what I wrote earlier about the game not being as dark as I expected... I'm sorry for doubting you, Spike Chunsoft. The path I just took... The pile of corpses... Pile of pieces of corpses. I'll never doubt you again Spike Chunsoft.

[melkathi]

40 minutes ago, Hurlsnot said:

Is it Judge Dredd? He is in WH40k, right?

The Adeptus Arbiters were/are a direct judge dredd rip off. Though at least for Necromunda there are now also local Enforcers that are planetary law enforcement and not part of the Arbiters. Which kinda makes the Arbiters the FBI of 40k I guess.

[Hawke64]

The Waylanders. Replaying it as a Mourian Ranger, as I was often switching to a ranged character during the first playthrough. The differences so far include that none of the companions wants to talk to me after completing their loyalty quests (2 left, so it might change later), but I was able to recruit the last companion, whom I had missed (the cut-scene had not triggered) on the previous playthrough. It might have something to do with the order of completion of the main quests, but not sure.
Also, my lore-wise immortal ranger has been repeatedly called a mortal, which suggests that the story was written with a human MC in mind. On the other hand, after gaining the title of Mil Espaine, the MC is only Mil Espaine (whatever that it, the Wikipedia article and the in-game encyclopedia did not help me to figure it out).

[Oner]

On 7/4/2022 at 7:22 PM, melkathi said:

I finished Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters.

How'd you deal with the yellow seed boss? I got hammered by a bunch of negative events that happened to take away my best tools and the fight itself felt super tedious and I haven't mustered up the will to bang my head against it.

[melkathi]

Which one is the yellow boss? The one that summons the effigies? That one I defeated by having two teleporting knights (an Interceptor and a Librarian in my case) to take out the first few effigies, then use a teleport stratagem to get everyone close and just DPS him for the last stretch.

You don't fight every boss.

Spoiler

The bosses I fought were:

1. Aeger, Great Unclean One for the green strain that you have to fight first with the Nurglings.

2. Malathian, Great Unclean One that summons effigies that debuff you. (go and destroy them)

3. Munificus, chaos spawn you have to crit the limbs off to reduce max HP as he heals full after every hit.

4. Morgellus, the daemon engine that destroys the ground underneath you.

 

I never fought Cruciatus the chaos titan.

 

When you have two prime seeds left, the game goes in a different direction, so you don't hunt those reapers, but you will face a random one of the two surviving ones later.

 

[Keyrock]

I reached another full ending in AI: The Somnium Files, this one much much happier than the other. I found the killer and brought them to justice (read: shot them in the head) and there were warm feels. There are still loose ends to tie up, though, and that is likely not the true ending. While I did solve the specific case I was investigating, there's more to this...

Edited July 6, 2022 by Keyrock

[Oner]

18 hours ago, melkathi said:

Which one is the yellow boss? The one that summons the effigies? That one I defeated by having two teleporting knights (an Interceptor and a Librarian in my case) to take out the first few effigies, then use a teleport stratagem to get everyone close and just DPS him for the last stretch.

You don't fight every boss.

The third one on your list, Munificus. I know how I'm supposed to fight it, I just don't know how to do it efficiently when I'm a: spammed with the bloomspawn, b: it jumps into a remote corner that takes several turns to run to even when I don't have to fight stuff on the way and bombards my guys all the while.

[melkathi]

Do you have a purgator with the ability to auto crit with a ranged attack?

That helps a lot as you don't have to get as close. A falchion melee crit interceptor should be able to clear out a lot of bloomspawn, as crits instakill them.

Ranged AoEs, for example with a psycannon are also useful to clear out bloomspawn.

It is the boss fight I had the least trouble with.

 

Also, I found the stratagem helpful that increases your knights resistance for three turns. It makes the bloomspawn far less a nuisance when you are virtually immune to half their attacks.

Edited July 6, 2022 by melkathi

[LadyCrimson]

Tiny Tina Wonderlands -

---the Overworld map is a tad more integrated into the main questline then first thought. Nothing major but occasionally to reach the next "main quest" map you have to do a minor quest via the Overworld to gain initial access.
--a lot of Overworld stuff is done in like random encounter maps (just a tiny instanced combat arena you have to clear to finish) or tiny bits in Overworld itself, but at least one (maybe a few or more?) of the quests open up a whole new giant map that has nothing to do with the main quest, with its own sidequests. We are enjoying that aspect a lot, because even if the main quest is kinda short, you still have plenty to explore/do.
--all side quests seem to level up with you, so no outleveling them. But if you try to do only the main quest, you will be quite underleveled at certain stages as it seems to ramp them up at points.

---the biggest con for me is still that you're often standing still waiting for an npc to finish talking/doing their cutesy/meta joke routines before you can click on whatever it is to progress a quest. Can't hit spacebar to make them finish/stop talking. And ofc, too much meta sometimes. Other than that, I might like this BL - in terms of game and combat play+map design at least - almost the best vs. all the previous.  BL2 is still the best plot/villain tho. Oh, and for anyone who doesn't like Claptrap, he's seemingly hardly in it. One side-quest had him, so far.

Edited July 6, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Oner]

12 hours ago, melkathi said:

Do you have a purgator with the ability to auto crit with a ranged attack?

That helps a lot as you don't have to get as close. A falchion melee crit interceptor should be able to clear out a lot of bloomspawn, as crits instakill them.

Ranged AoEs, for example with a psycannon are also useful to clear out bloomspawn.

It is the boss fight I had the least trouble with.

 

Also, I found the stratagem helpful that increases your knights resistance for three turns. It makes the bloomspawn far less a nuisance when you are virtually immune to half their attacks.

I do have both an auto crit purgator and a falchion interceptor. With my slow and steady approach the boss got enough crit immunity that even the 100% crit power went down to like 70-80%. 

Thanks for the input, I'll try again. Someday.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Oner

[Keyrock]

I finished AI: The Somnium Files all routes, it took me about 35 hours. Gameplay is a mixed bag while the writing is excellent.

Gameplay takes 3 forms. The majority of the game plays like combination point & click adventure and visual novel. You travel to a location where you cannot move, except that you can turn in place, though not quite the full 360⁰. The majority of the progress comes from talking to the character(s) in the scene, but you can also click on various objects. This game continues the tradition of some of the better point & clicks where it's worth it to click on objects everywhere even if that doesn't advance the game at all because you sometimes get a pretty funny description or interaction.

The second type of gameplay takes place inside a Somnium, hence the name of the game. A Somnium is a dream state inside a subject's mind, not unlike Inception, that you can enter to gather information that they may be withholding or repressing. Here you have full movement and it's basically a puzzle with resource management, that resource being time. This is my favorite gameplay type in this game and is also where the paths branch, as some Somniums have multiple solutions.

The third gameplay type are the action scenes, which consist of cutscenes with QTEs. There is a decent variety of QTE types, but these are still the weakest gameplay sections. Thankfully, these occur the least often of the 3 gameplay types.

Writing is easily this game's strongest point. The plot, once you get to the later paths where deep truths are revealed, is so bat*** crazy that Hideo Kojima would be proud. The story starts out as a fairly straightforward murder mystery, but as you get deeper it gets more and more demented. The really impressive thing is that the plot remains logical and consistent through multiple timelines. To be clear, the whole thing is completely ludicrous, but within the rules that this wacky world sets for itself, everything makes sense. All of the timeframes, the motivations, and the clues sprinkled throughout the many paths all fit logically with all the different paths. When you get the full story, which is quite different than the early stories, everything works, and it all works in the early stories too, even the information you didn't have at the time. Thoroughly impressive attention to detail was paid to make sure everything fits across multiple levels.

If you're the type of gamer that skips through dialogue to get to the action, this game is not for you. If you're like me and you like a ridiculous, convoluted, but nevertheless logical mystery, you will probably like this game a lot. I'll definitely be picking up the recently released follow up soon. In a perfect world, it pops up on Game Pass, like it's predecessor and several other Spike Chunsoft games.

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Keyrock

[kanisatha]

Just returned to playing Solasta after a few months' break. The updates and the new DLC have certainly improved some things here and there. But I'm increasingly frustrated that Solasta is ultimately only a D&D 5e simulator and dungeon crawler. There is precious little to story, character development, and meaningful quests.

[Humanoid]

So I've heard over the years that FIFA's career mode is pretty barebones, sort of an afterthought to their money-spinning, lootbox infested Ultimate Team mode. I've heard of some stupid things like advice that you shouldn't train to improve your stats, because by doing so you increase your value so much that no other club will ever be able to afford to buy you, and thus you'd be stuck with your crappy starting team permanently. But I was not prepared to experience first-hand just how janky it actually is. For one, I discovered that the manager AI does not take injuries into account at all.

To briefly explain, your stature in the team is abstracted into a single progress bar, which is a measure of how much the manager likes you as a player. Well, I started off a new game in the Australian A-League, and given that I'm starting on the quite easy "Semi-Pro" difficulty, I had no issue working my way up the pecking order. I filled the bar completely, was the team's star player, first name on the team sheet, etc, etc. Then I got injured - torn quad in the process of scoring a goal even - and am out for 3.5 months. The manager rating starts to drop over time, quite reasonably I thought at first since no one can expect to get straight back into it after a long injury layoff. But it kept dropping, below the first-team threshold, then below the bench player threshold, and with about a month left on the injury the bar drops into the persona non grata zone, the manager informs me that I'm no longer in his plans and I've been put on the transfer list. It's like no one actually informed him that I was injured and he assumed I was out partying every night or something.

Oh well, I'm actually sold to a club in the Spanish second division, which is a step up from any form of Australian football, so whatever. Then for my debut for them, I'm subbed on in the 86th minute with the team losing, the game is over in the blink of an eye, and the commentators start talking about what a disastrous debut it was. Yeah... this mode is a disaster.