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

[Humanoid]

3 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

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.

Yeah, I'm slowly getting through it in co-op, indeed very slowly because one or two sessions a week of 2-3 hours each doesn't get you far. But the design of the campaign feels very perfunctory, I daresay similar to how NWN1's was. And I can't help but feel it's getting worse as the game goes on, my last main story quest feeling like I'm just being guided from room to room and being told to fight whoever is in it. Even any notion of setup has been discarded, the last two questlines I remember simply teleported the party into a small room, the inevitable fight against the villain of the week plus a few random mooks starts after a couple throwaway lines of dialogue, quest ends, onto the next quest.

In that context even the dungeon crawling part no longer holds, it's feeling closer to a few amateurishly cobbled together set pieces now. All sense of place has been lost. This may be because I'm fairly close to the end, probably. I think we've got maybe 5 of the 7 gems?

[Humanoid]

So I thought I'd finally try out the Fate of Iberia DLC for CK3. Ironically my prep game that I started prior to the DLC launch made me take a break from the game for a while and I haven't felt the pull to play it again until now.

 I started a game in Navarre and played for several hours, almost 150 ingame years, wondering why so little seemed different. It turns out, uh, I haven't installed the DLC. I own it, but I didn't install it. The free patch changes that shipped alongside the DLC made me think it was, but nope. Oh well, I'd say I'd wasted my time, but then I got attritioned down by the huge Umayyad blob as is usual for the 867 Iberia start, so the game was almost over anyway even if I didn't realise my mistake.

[Malcador]

Still having fuel tanks randomly explode on me in Hardspace, pretty sure I flushed the tanks too.  In Act 3 of the story, the soulless middle manager is being a colossal **** to my team, but they literally own our bodies.

[MrBrown]

Playing a bunch of Barotrauma with friends. It's a lot of fun, though at the same time kinda weird how about half the time we get attacked we get huge amounts of water inside the sub.

Not for people who don't like crafting mechanics.

[InsaneCommander]

The last stage of Unepic was really annoying, but nothing that couldn't be solved with a respec.

Oh, and the ending was really good!

[Malcador]

Finished storyline of Hardspace, was fun enough, although a bit rushed the mission where you stiff the company by blowing stuff up was great fun. Reactor detonation did a lot less than I had hoped for.  Fun game, needs more variety in the ships but even doing the same ship you've done over and over is enjoyable in a relaxing way as you go through the motions.

Sort of amused people were grousing about the story or game being woke.  I guess a lot of people see Communism when a union is mentioned

[LadyCrimson]

Tiny Tina Wonderlands -

TLDR: I like the more concentrated maps and sense of idle discovery vs. lots of empty space designed for driving cars, re:map designs. It's tons better than BL3 by far, with plenty to do beyond the short main campaign and that Tiny Tina BL2 DLC flavor, but the lack of NG+ or lengthy replay value (eg, BL loot grinding obsessions) hurts it. Still, it's the type of game most might play thru once or twice initially and have quite a bit of fun for that first run or two, and many only want that anyway, so in my mind it was "worth" buying. But I think they should've release-priced it at $39.99-49.99 vs. $60+.  Oh, and "normal" difficulty has been mostly a little too easy, so some might want to start off with the harder setting right off the bat.

EditEdit: I think hubby and I have about 40 hrs. on our chrs - we are fairly slow players, however. We might finish "everything" in another 24+ hours.
===========================

We are, I think, at the point where the next main quest/small area forward leads to the last boss fight of the campaign. So we're ignoring it and cleaning up other areas and the Overworld stuff as well. There are still quite a lot of side quests we haven't done and we haven't done the supposedly very short DLC missions that came with the edition we bought, nor the end-game rift-like grind.

Two gameplay mechanics that I was disappointed in:

----While you can dual-class, you still can only have one Action Skill active/usable at a time. So if you dual class, you have 4 total possible Action skills and have to pick only one at a time. eg, if you're the spelllcaster class, you're unlikely to want to use anything but the one that lets you have two spells equipped (vs. Spell+ attack Action Skill), thus making the dual-class only for, say, a npc companion partner, or a few 2nd class skill bonuses that might synergize well, just like putting points in other trees in previous BL games.
----the whole "find all lucky dice"/luck chance bonus is credited account-wide. So you do not have to "find" them again with any new character you make, the spots they're in are just empty. I mean, once you know where most are, the fun of first-finding them would be gone, but I still find that a bit annoying, since they also acted like small loot chests which is nice for a new playthru. No other stat/puzzle/chr stat-record stuff carries over like that. I've seen no way to disable it for new characters.

Edited July 11, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Wormerine]

10 hours ago, Malcador said:

Finished storyline of Hardspace, was fun enough

I feel rather sour about the game - mainly because I spend a decent time playing it in EA and it felt like the game stopped developing months into early access. The core gameplay is still fun, but I felt like the game didn’t become any more fun in a year+ that passed since I last played it. Some hazards were added, but none really adding anything meaningful. 

I am one of the people who dislike the addition of the story - I liked the tone of the game far better without it. It’s a bit too “on the nose” and intrusive. It’s also criminal how often game forces you to sit through mandatory VO - strange choice as one would think that radio chat in missions, would be a more obvious way of dropping the exposition. The mission you described is the only part in the game where gameplay and story intersects. 

still, dissecting ships is still as fun as it was when the game entered early access. 
 

 

[marelooke]

Played, and finished Necromunda: Hired Gun.

Game is a mixed bag, objectively it ain't that good, but I had a lot of fun anyway.

It's developed by the same people that also created Space Hulk: Deathwing and feels similar in many ways. Keeping in mind that this game is mobility focused I think you get a pretty good idea as to what to expect.

Story doesn't really matter, and is basically wasted potential. The main character is a one-dimensional doofus that, despite being from the Underhive, doesn't seem to understand how things work around there (or "here", I guess).

Game starts off being pretty hard (especially the side missions with their infinite spawns), but it is very easy to max out your bionics rather early on. Weapons and upgrades are a mixed bag, and balance is kind of all over the place. While I'm sure all weapons are "functional" there's also quite a few that just don't work too well, especially later in the game (shotguns, in general, but the two shots from the double barrel especially are problematic given the floods of enemies and its inability to deal effectively with shields)

Gameplay wise offensive mobility is very much crucial, the game seems to push wallrunning but I barely used it (getting that achievement is going to be a chore) since it's kinda jank. The grappling hook, and just jumping all over, on the other hand... As for the "offensive" part, medkits are very limited and can only be stocked prior to the mission, you're supposed to heal using bionics, which only triggers after you have gotten hit yourself (yep, if you're on a sliver of  health, out of medkits, have no more shields, and somehow are still alive you really are SOL).

Story missions are quite a bit of fun (except the boss battles, most of those are, ehhhh, but I'm not a big fan of boss battles in general, so ymmv). I especially enjoyed the train mission.

Side missions are a mixed bag, and risk/reward is way off for most of them. I'd imagine many players will quickly decide "Capture" (Domination, for all you UT99 players) missions, aren't worth the frustration, and in general just 'settle' on a set of favourite (or "to avoid") mission types and locations. On the note of locations, secondary missions are set on parts of the main mission maps where the same mission type will always use the same part of a given map. Similarly "secret" chests that contain upgrades are always in the same spots.

The game also has its fair share of bugs, though most qualify as "annoying" rather than "breaking".

The grappling hook is liable to get you stuck in terrain (that said, I've not gotten stuck anywhere in a way that forced a reload). Enemies can also get stuck in terrain, for side missions it doesn't generally matter as more will spawn, for main missions this can block progress  (I've had to reload the last mission because of a stuck enemy that I couldn't get to in any way).

When it comes to mission bugs there was only one that I found that is breaking, in the mission with the container puzzle, if you touch the controls "too soon", you break the whole thing and have to reload, that said once you know how it's triggered it is easy to avoid, but yeah, should've been fixed by the devs, really.

"Finishers" don't seem to work reliably (often there's no prompt when there probably should be), maybe there's some hidden cool-down, but it's a good way to get killed for sure. Similarly it seems that the heal-on-damage mechanic doesn't always work reliably, or doesn't heal as much as it should (especially obvious when finishers heal tiny amounts)

There were also some graphical issues, personally I had clipping issues with the armor of my character. Not exactly game breaking, since the game is first person so you only really see it in cutscenes, or loading screens, but when the devs are selling skins that is kinda...hmmmm... (that said, I did scroll through Steam screenshots and saw people using the same skin without issues, so maybe something with my system).

There's also some very underdeveloped systems: side missions are given out by factions that you rank up with, but there doesn't seem to be any real incentive to do so (aside from "for fun", of course). Sure you get a one-time "bonus" reward for maxing out a faction, but that's about it. As a sidenote: you can also gain reputation with factions you're actively fighting, which, errr, doesn't make much sense.

Another thing of note: for some reason it turned on FSR 1.0 by default for me, while my PC can handle the game just fine with everything cranked up without FSR. Took me a little bit before I figured out why things weren't quite as sharp as they probably should be...

I'd probably give it a 6/10. I had a good time, but the game feels very undercooked. Just like Space Hulk: Deathwing, really, there was potential there, but they called it "good enough" way too soon. If you can get it on sale and enjoyed Deathwing and/or WH40k and/or janky shooters you could definitely do worse.

Edited July 11, 2022 by marelooke

[Malcador]

5 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I feel rather sour about the game - mainly because I spend a decent time playing it in EA and it felt like the game stopped developing months into early access. The core gameplay is still fun, but I felt like the game didn’t become any more fun in a year+ that passed since I last played it. Some hazards were added, but none really adding anything meaningful. 

I am one of the people who dislike the addition of the story - I liked the tone of the game far better without it. It’s a bit too “on the nose” and intrusive. It’s also criminal how often game forces you to sit through mandatory VO - strange choice as one would think that radio chat in missions, would be a more obvious way of dropping the exposition. The mission you described is the only part in the game where gameplay and story intersects. 

still, dissecting ships is still as fun as it was when the game entered early access. 
 

 

Yes, I played a bit in EA then left it so as to not get burnt out on the game and it's nothing really new. I didn't even encounter of the AI nodes they warn you about in the tooltip.  The story is on the nose, yep, I guess one thing they should have done was play up Hal and LYNX being bigger and bigger **** to you, rather than just you seeing him bully Kaito, Dee Dee and Lou. I didn't really find the unskippable VO to be so onerous, but am in a minority looking around

 

[Theonlygarby]

I beat trails of cold steel finally.  What a slog that game is.  Couldn't imagine it without the fast forward button.  I liked it, kind of.  It does the JRPG thing where the game is a breeze until the end of game boss gauntlet.  There is a mech battle at the end that really makes me worried about the next game, because the mech fighting is really really dumb.   Basically rock paper scissors.

6/10

[Humanoid]

So Fate of Iberia has this stupid catch-22 situation where completing the Reconquista - i.e. the resolving struggle system the DLC introduces and forming the Empire of Hispania, is tied to culture in your primary Kingdom. Actually there are three possible resolutions to the conflict, but the following explains how three options rapidly dwindled down to one, and then to none:

1) Peace and harmony and sunshine and rainbows and stuff. The condition for this one is to ally with everyone else in the region, which technically I fulfil because I am the only kingdom in the region. But I'm not eligible because there is a limit of 50% ownership of the region, thus having 100% ownership disqualifies me.

2) Calling it a draw. Once again there's a limit of 50% ownership, but now it applies to all rulers. Basically completely Balkanise the region and ensure everyone remains weak. This is a bizarre ending that like all fair compromises leaves absolutely no one happy.

So with those two options out, I should be aiming for the third and final ending condition right? Well it's...

3) Domination. Which you'd think conquering the entire Iberian peninsula would qualify as. But the catch is, you must also establish a monoculture in your primary Kingdom. So as Galicia I must convert all counties in De Jure Galicia to the same culture. Except there's a problem: it takes 8 years to convert one county's culture, and you can only convert one at a time. Meanwhile, De Jure drift means adjacent counties gradually become part of the Kingdom. The maths end up working like this: In 100 years, I'll be able to flip 12 counties. Meanwhile, in those same 100 years, 20 more counties are scheduled to join the Kingdom and every single one of them will need to be flipped. So at the end of it, I'll actually have achieved negative progress towards the goal. Yeah... (Of course there's ultimately a finite number of counties in Iberia, but then there's also a finite number of years the game will run for, and I'm not sure that's a race I can win)

___________

So that's Fate of Iberia. I've essentially soft-locked myself from completing the objective of the DLC. True to the law of unintended consequences, it seems that what it's achieved is to lock out the creation of the Empire of Hispania - which requires resolving the Iberian Struggle - and anyone playing in the region is simply better off creating a custom Empire, or perhaps a neighbouring one like Francia instead, which is much, much easier. But for those sensible players, the icon in the bottom corner will remain, constantly and pointlessly cycling between phases of the struggle, an eternal reminder of the Quixotic task they set out to accomplish.

[uuuhhii]

36 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

So Fate of Iberia has this stupid catch-22 situation where completing the Reconquista - i.e. the resolving struggle system the DLC introduces and forming the Empire of Hispania, is tied to culture in your primary Kingdom. Actually there are three possible resolutions to the conflict, but the following explains how three options rapidly dwindled down to one, and then to none:

1) Peace and harmony and sunshine and rainbows and stuff. The condition for this one is to ally with everyone else in the region, which technically I fulfil because I am the only kingdom in the region. But I'm not eligible because there is a limit of 50% ownership of the region, thus having 100% ownership disqualifies me.

2) Calling it a draw. Once again there's a limit of 50% ownership, but now it applies to all rulers. Basically completely Balkanise the region and ensure everyone remains weak. This is a bizarre ending that like all fair compromises leaves absolutely no one happy.

So with those two options out, I should be aiming for the third and final ending condition right? Well it's...

3) Domination. Which you'd think conquering the entire Iberian peninsula would qualify as. But the catch is, you must also establish a monoculture in your primary Kingdom. So as Galicia I must convert all counties in De Jure Galicia to the same culture. Except there's a problem: it takes 8 years to convert one county's culture, and you can only convert one at a time. Meanwhile, De Jure drift means adjacent counties gradually become part of the Kingdom. The maths end up working like this: In 100 years, I'll be able to flip 12 counties. Meanwhile, in those same 100 years, 20 more counties are scheduled to join the Kingdom and every single one of them will need to be flipped. So at the end of it, I'll actually have achieved negative progress towards the goal. Yeah... (Of course there's ultimately a finite number of counties in Iberia, but then there's also a finite number of years the game will run for, and I'm not sure that's a race I can win)

___________

So that's Fate of Iberia. I've essentially soft-locked myself from completing the objective of the DLC. True to the law of unintended consequences, it seems that what it's achieved is to lock out the creation of the Empire of Hispania - which requires resolving the Iberian Struggle - and anyone playing in the region is simply better off creating a custom Empire, or perhaps a neighbouring one like Francia instead, which is much, much easier. But for those sensible players, the icon in the bottom corner will remain, constantly and pointlessly cycling between phases of the struggle, an eternal reminder of the Quixotic task they set out to accomplish.

always avoid de jure drift

change it to 300 years or something

or just hold all the kingdom title possible to avoid it

[Humanoid]

21 minutes ago, uuuhhii said:

always avoid de jure drift

change it to 300 years or something

or just hold all the kingdom title possible to avoid it

Between having the drift which actually benefits me, versus hobbling myself in order to achieve some convoluted "victory" condition, I'll take the former every time.

I've barely gotten out of Confederate Partition, and am a looooong way away from anything better than standard Partition so creating the other kingdoms is a no-go, and I don't like to game succession *that* much with the usual tricks like disinheriting kids embracing celibacy, legitimising bastards, etc.

I suppose my point in general is that it seems to be an oversight when a natural sort of playthrough ends up in a stalemate like this. There should probably be more options to end the struggle, covering more eventual game states.

[uuuhhii]

2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Between having the drift which actually benefits me, versus hobbling myself in order to achieve some convoluted "victory" condition, I'll take the former every time.

I've barely gotten out of Confederate Partition, and am a looooong way away from anything better than standard Partition so creating the other kingdoms is a no-go, and I don't like to game succession *that* much with the usual tricks like disinheriting kids embracing celibacy, legitimising bastards, etc.

I suppose my point in general is that it seems to be an oversight when a natural sort of playthrough ends up in a stalemate like this. There should probably be more options to end the struggle, covering more eventual game states.

duchy level drift was not a benefit

lose kingdom level war would be catastrophic

and when time come to become empire level the big kingdom title only cause more problem

Edited July 12, 2022 by uuuhhii

[Hawke64]

Participated in review-bombing Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD, which if I remember correctly was an average AC (played once in 2014), and which Ubisoft tried to take away from the people who had purchased it. The game is available on Steam again, though the note on the store page now says: "DLC for this product and online elements and features will become unavailable, as of Sept 1st, 2022. The base game will continue to be playable" (previously it was that the game itself will not be accessible). I find it increasingly difficult to rationalise purchasing any Ubisoft game in the future. Then again, they haven't released anything I'd be interested in for quite some time.

Playing Nioh 2. Reached the second DLC (which is included in the PC edition from the start), got chewed by a demonic cart.

Spoiler

 

[Humanoid]

Ugh, the recent patch seems to have messed with Solasta's behaviour when tabbed out. Used to be I could freely do it while my co-op partner was taking their turn, but now doing so causes the game to have a seizure and stop responding until a few seconds after I tab back in. And it makes the Alt key stick until I hit Alt again too, so instead of moving I just spam waypoints on the map.

The game has always had some odd behaviours with task switching, mind you. Like graphically it proceeds just fine while you're elsewhere, but the voice lines don't trigger until you're back, which if you're in a cutscene usually results in multiple characters talking over each other.

On the plus side, the game actually has an icon in the Xbox app now, instead of a generic placeholder that it's had forever.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Humanoid

[Chilloutman]

12 hours ago, Humanoid said:

must also establish a monoculture in your primary Kingdom. So as Galicia I must convert all counties in De Jure Galicia to the same culture. Except there's a problem: it takes 8 years to convert one county's culture, and you can only convert one at a time. Meanwhile, De Jure drift means adjacent counties gradually become part of the Kingdom. The maths end up working like this: In 100 years, I'll be able to flip 12 counties. Meanwhile, in those same 100 years, 20 more counties are scheduled to join the Kingdom and every single one of them will need to be flipped. So at the end of it, I'll actually have achieved negative progress towards the goal. Yeah... (Of course there's ultimately a finite number of counties in Iberia, but then there's also a finite number of years the game will run for, and I'm not sure that's a race I can win)

 

I think trick here is that YOU can only convert each province at the time but your vassals can do it to - you need to appoint vassals of correct culture and let them convert each land on their own (at least that was a trick I tried to use in my restoring roman empire campaign) - its not bullet proof tho

[Humanoid]

1 hour ago, Chilloutman said:

 

I think trick here is that YOU can only convert each province at the time but your vassals can do it to - you need to appoint vassals of correct culture and let them convert each land on their own (at least that was a trick I tried to use in my restoring roman empire campaign) - its not bullet proof tho

Yeah, I do make sure to appoint the right culture dukes under me, but the game's been running for 200 years with probably 100 of them under my iron rule - hasn't happened yet. I mean it has the diagonal shading indicating a transition period but no luck yet with actual flipping. Waiting for them to conquer Francia on my behalf would probably be quicker.

It's always been weird how it takes the player as long to convert the religion of their holdings as it is their culture, but for vassals the religion switch is almost instantaneous, partly because of the weird loophole where a converting ruler can instantaneously flip everyone with them, but I swear there's another factor at play too.

[Chilloutman]

44 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Yeah, I do make sure to appoint the right culture dukes under me, but the game's been running for 200 years with probably 100 of them under my iron rule - hasn't happened yet. I mean it has the diagonal shading indicating a transition period but no luck yet with actual flipping. Waiting for them to conquer Francia on my behalf would probably be quicker.

It's always been weird how it takes the player as long to convert the religion of their holdings as it is their culture, but for vassals the religion switch is almost instantaneous, partly because of the weird loophole where a converting ruler can instantaneously flip everyone with them, but I swear there's another factor at play too.

I think they need to have good steward or however is doing that swap

[Theonlygarby]

Played an hour of far cry 5 on game pass.  Remembered why I don't like ubisoft games.  It's a shame too because the story is interesting albeit very unrealistic.

[Mamoulian War]

Having rage moments at Assetto Corsa Competizione ranked races at Low Fuel Motorsport, then chilling out at Atelier Totori

[BruceVC]

20 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

Played an hour of far cry 5 on game pass.  Remembered why I don't like ubisoft games.  It's a shame too because the story is interesting albeit very unrealistic.

What dont you like about Ubisoft games? What they good at around design and mechanics have generally always been the same but they improve on this formulae. So Im interested in what you dont like about  there basic design 

For me they very entertaining, the game worlds are always beautiful and authentic around lore and historical accuracy, like AC Odyssey, and the side activities are fun. But as with all Ubisoft games you  inevitably get to that " Ubisoft fatigue " where suddenly the clearing of bases and camps becomes boring and at that point I just focus  on the main quest 

Edited July 13, 2022 by BruceVC

[Keyrock]

I'm roughly halfway through Yakuza Kiwami 2. It's standard Yakuza where the main story is a gripping serious drama with Kiryu being the most stoic man of all time and the side stories are a mix of heartwarming and completely ridiculous goofball comedy.

There are the tried and true mini-games like karaoke and darts plus others, and a variety of gambling games; western ones like poker and blackjack, as well as a bunch of Asian gambling games that I have absolutely no idea how they work. I always tell myself that I'll learn at least one of them, but I never do. There are 2 reasons for this: First, there is so much other content that I not only fully understand but also enjoy that, why would I waste many hours learning a game that I may or may not wind up enjoying when I can instead do the gravure photo shoot mini-game?  Second, I don't even understand what I'm looking at. I would first have to spend an undetermined amount of time learning what all the cards in a hanafuda deck mean before I can even attempt to decipher the rules. Since I have zero desire to 100% this game, or any other, for that matter, why waste my time on completely optional content I don't understand in the slightest?

Anyway, besides the smaller mini-games, Yakuza always has 1 or 2 big... I hesitate to call them mini-games, given that they're so deep and meaty  that they could easily be standalone games. ThIs time around it's Majima Construction Company and Club Management. Majima Construction is essentially a RTS while Club Management is, well, a management game. I am completely and utterly dog$#!+ at RTS, so I'm not going to bother with Majima Construction. Club Management, on the other hand, is super fun, so I plan to see that through to completion. I haven't looked up a guide or wiki, but I'm guessing that the rewards for completing these are Rush Style and Beast Style, given that I've only had access to Kiryu's basic Brawler Style. With any luck, completing Club Management grants Beast Style, it's always my favorite. I have no clue what would grant Dragon/Legend Style, but that usually isn't available until late game.

[Wormerine]

14 hours ago, BruceVC said:

What dont you like about Ubisoft games?

For me Ubi games lack “meat” - their games are extremely repetitive and core gameplay loop is just too shallow to make those enjoyable to me. They are pretty but the glamour disappears after a session or two. The closest I came to enjoying a modern Ubi game was FarCry3 - shooting was enjoyable enough and it wasn’t padded that badly - I still started to get bored with it halfway through.
I didn’t bother trying AssCreed reboots as while they shake things up a little bit, they seemed to add stuff I tend to hate, like grindy power progression in an action game. 

Edited July 14, 2022 by Wormerine