What are you Playing Now? - Games don't make you violent, lag does

[MrBrown]

24 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

You won’t get the content and story tied to this origin (though you can see their story as companions). There is also Dark Urge, who is a customisable origin.

Wait, so you get *less* stuff of the origin you pick?

[Wormerine]

11 minutes ago, MrBrown said:

Wait, so you get *less* stuff of the origin you pick?

Sorry, it’s late my English is off. You will miss out on origin content if you create custom character - I am not aware of any Tav specific content.

[speculation] Picking an origin might push you into specific situation at times outside player control - specifically dark urge has been rumoured to occasionally take control away from the player. As we haven’t seen origins being played, we don’t really know how they evolved since d:OS2.

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by Wormerine

[HoonDing]

None of the origin characters are very appealing, tbh. Maybe I'd pick frog girl for a Chaotic Stupid playthrough, killing as many party members as possible.

[Mamoulian War]

So I have run a long Tales of Arise marathon with breaks after each hour played, and I was able to clear all of the Rifts and some Ultimate colosseum solo fights. 4th rift was the reminiscence of Tales of Zestiria, on top of the mountain, where one big dragon was living. Fifth was homage to Takes of Berseria, also on top of the mountain, where Magilou has said final good bye to her teacher. The last rift was for some reason called Vesper Rift, but it was part of the Tales of Xillia 2. Namely the last battle arena in the Land of Canaan, where you have fought final boss. The hardest battles for me were Abyss and Berseria, but I was able to successfuly defeat all of them and I have finished all but one quest. The game is 89% complete. Although to 100% the game, there is needed part of the New Game + to get some items. We’ll see if I ever go for that. The goal for now, is Platinum Trophy  

[Bartimaeus]

On 7/21/2023 at 7:56 PM, InsaneCommander said:

Played a little bit more of BG3. Tried to avoid something that is supposedly inevitable.
 

  Hide contents

Playing as a Githyanki, I killed Shadowheart and left the artifact in her body. Apparently, it will stay there.

This was a bit complicated. It didn't come to me because I had already killed her once and resurrected her. I returned the artifact, but when I tried to leave she attacked me. I guess being a Githyanki Cleric of Selune, not saving her on the ship and killing her once was too much for her and she decided I was not going away.

I'll have to try this after early access and see if Larian predicted it.

 

"I'M HERE WITH THE BOX IN MY HAND! USE THIS BOX!" You know, BG1 had Biff the Understudy that replaced critical plot characters if you murdered them, it's not really that different. The DM trying to figure out how to make everything work and play along with the player's fickle whims can be difficult, especially given that this is a game and requires all sorts of assets to account for every possibility, whereas a real DM playing tabletop can do just about everything from the seat of their pants if necessary (...even if it results in spontaneous, potentially terrible, and/or just downright silly writing in order to keep up). Sometimes, it requires having a lady appear from thin air and shove the all important artifact that you somehow missed a hundred times up to this point straight into your hands in order to not completely break the campaign.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Bartimaeus
extra words removed, missing words added, very bad post

[Hawke64]

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

"I'M HERE WITH THE BOX IN MY HAND! USE THIS BOX!" You know, BG1 had Biff the Understudy that replaced critical plot characters if you murdered them, it's not really that different. The DM trying to figure things out how to make everything work and play along with the player's fickle whims can be difficult, especially given that this is a game and requires all sorts of assets to account for every possibility, whereas a real DM playing tabletop can do just about everything from the seat of their pants if necessary (...even if it results in spontaneous, potentially terrible, and/or just downright writing in order to keep up). Sometimes, it requires having a lady appear from thin air and shove the all important artifact that you somehow missed a hundred times up to this point straight into your hands in order to not completely break the campaign.

What would happen if you murdered Biff?

Spoiler

I recruited Shadowheart, but left her and the rest of the active party far behind while exploring as a rogue. When I reached a map transition (I think, the one behind the Gith patrol), the box teleported to me and a cut-scene triggered. I assume, this would happen if Shadowheart was never encountered?
On another note, is there a reason, story-wise, to stay in the area, instead pushing to a large city with a competent cleric? In the EA version, upon interacting with an exit/transition, it plainly said that nothing else was available in EA, so nowhere to travel, but there were location-mark-like icons on the world map.

---
Get in the Car, Loser. Defeated the Act 3 boss and did not run out of fuel. Gameplay-wise, it is one of the worst things I've played, alongside Final Fantasy XIII, which apparently, was the inspiration. Story-wise, it is decent. Questioning whether my gamer ego can let go of something that unpleasant or should I hit the credits for my opinion on it to be "valid".

Elden Ring. Found and upgraded a nice shield. Though, I might have to respec to make it more effective.

Batbarian. Started the game. So far, I can tell that the controls are rebindable, the fonts can be switched from pixel style to dyslexic ones (I don't have dyslexia, but the last 2 games with pixel fonts were hard to read), the mouse is supported, the writing is funny. Also, there is a cute pet bat.

[Bartimaeus]

32 minutes ago, Hawke64 said:

What would happen if you murdered Biff?

I don't think you're ever given the opportunity: he just appears when he's needed and then disappears afterwards. But even if you were able to, I expect he'd just go on and appear the next time he's needed anyways.

BG3: Sorry, I have no idea, as I haven't played BG3 for even a second and it seems very unlikely I ever would. Turn-based tactical combat makes my soul scream out in mortal anguish.

P.S. Proofread your posts: my previous one was a disaster.

[Wormerine]

11 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

"I'M HERE WITH THE BOX IN MY HAND! USE THIS BOX!" You know, BG1 had Biff the Understudy that replaced critical plot characters if you murdered them, it's not really that different.

The difference is that I never encountered the Biff (outside his cameo in BG2 theatre) after playing games for about 20 years.

What Larian did is tie a mandatory quest item to a skippable companion. In EA box has been very dodgy narratively unless you took Shadowheart with you. Hopefully they polished the various ways of getting the box in the final release, so it feels more natural no matter what the player decides to do. 

[Keyrock]

This was likely a limitation of the Infinity Engine, but it used to drive me crazy when a cutscene would play and my party would just stand there frozen in place (well, their idle animations would play, but I couldn't move them) while Sarevok or whoever would walk onto the screen, give a lengthy speech, do something horrible, and walk off, all while my party are standing 40 yards away like idiots. Sometimes the devs would at least put something there that could conceivably block me from getting to the villain while they are doing villainous things, like a chasm, never mind that I could shoot arrows across a chasm, but at least it's something. However there were times where there was nothing in between me and the villain and my dumbass party just stood there and did nothing. They had enough time to where they could have made sandwiches, eaten said sandwiches, cleaned up after themselves, and still had plenty of time to intervene, but instead they just stood there like idiots. Anyway, please tell me that Larian did away with that in BG3.

[HoonDing]

There's now hundreds of hours of standing around like idiots in cutscenes.

[InsaneCommander]

8 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

 

  Hide contents

When I reached a map transition (I think, the one behind the Gith patrol), the box teleported to me and a cut-scene triggered. I assume, this would happen if Shadowheart was never encountered?

 

I guess that is what willhappen in my case too. No need to check it.

[Mamoulian War]

And two more hours spent with Tales of Arise. I was able to clear all Solo Ultimate Training Grounds challenges with all partymembers. The two which made me most troubles were Rinwell a d Dohalim. Rinwell, because I kind of sucked at avoiding poison from the big mob, which then ran over me, and with Dohalim I had just wrong spells assigned to him. As soon as I was able to avod the poison, and equip the correct Staff Strike spell, I went through these challenges like a breeze  In the meanwhile, I was also able to clear the Group Ultimate Training Ground challenge, with which, I have unlocked one more trophy. Unfortunatelly, I have missed the target time by 36 seconds, so I did not get the extra reward, but it is definitely doable, as I am only level 96 and got KOd to many times  with Alphen. We’ll see how it goes. Need to finish only the last and hardest quest now.

[Hawke64]

17 hours ago, Keyrock said:

This was likely a limitation of the Infinity Engine, but it used to drive me crazy when a cutscene would play and my party would just stand there frozen in place (well, their idle animations would play, but I couldn't move them) while Sarevok or whoever would walk onto the screen, give a lengthy speech, do something horrible, and walk off, all while my party are standing 40 yards away like idiots. Sometimes the devs would at least put something there that could conceivably block me from getting to the villain while they are doing villainous things, like a chasm, never mind that I could shoot arrows across a chasm, but at least it's something. However there were times where there was nothing in between me and the villain and my dumbass party just stood there and did nothing. They had enough time to where they could have made sandwiches, eaten said sandwiches, cleaned up after themselves, and still had plenty of time to intervene, but instead they just stood there like idiots. Anyway, please tell me that Larian did away with that in BG3.

It is applicable to any game with cut-scenes. E.g. the spawning animation for the Fume Knight in Dark Souls II allowed to take 20% of his health bar before he started moving, while during Godrick's cut-scene in Elden Ring, the PC was listening patiently to his introduction. In regard to BG, it was possible sometimes to throw a fireball, thus switching to the combat mode and skipping dialogues entirely. In D:OS2, usually (not always), only the character who initiated the dialogue was locked into it, while the rest of the party could reposition freely (preferably, behind the foe's back or on the high ground). The drawback was that the battles were balanced with the meta-knowledge on who would spawn where in mind. From what I've played of Larian's D&D game, they went with the "cinematic" hard-locking cut-scenes. Fortunately, like in BG, it seems to be possible to start combat with a well-placed attack and skip the cinematics.

 

17 hours ago, HoonDing said:

There's now hundreds of hours of standing around like idiots in cutscenes.

Pretty much, yes.

[bugarup]

Solasta. Really not a fan of that concentration thing, so much that I avoid picking spells with this tag when leveling. Why is this? To make casters less OP? Why not make a dude with a zweihander less boring instead? 

[Wormerine]

16 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Solasta. Really not a fan of that concentration thing, so much that I avoid picking spells with this tag when leveling. Why is this? To make casters less OP? Why not make a dude with a zweihander less boring instead? 

My guess would be that precasting multiple spell buffs before combat encounter is boring. PoEs allowed for buffing in combat only, 5e went with concentration. 
 

Personally I like it - I find having to protect your caster from damage to keep everyone stronger. Solasta has a very powerful feat (flawless concentration?) that prevents concentration checks unless damage exceeds 10. It is probably too powerful, but makes it much, much easier to keep the concentration spells up.

[Hawke64]

1 hour ago, bugarup said:

Solasta. Really not a fan of that concentration thing, so much that I avoid picking spells with this tag when leveling. Why is this? To make casters less OP? Why not make a dude with a zweihander less boring instead? 

Concentration loss on hit is possible to disable in the options, if it is too irritating. Not sure if it applies only to the party or to the opponents as well.
Also, as was mentioned, there are feats to protect from it.

[bugarup]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

My guess would be that precasting multiple spell buffs before combat encounter is boring. PoEs allowed for buffing in combat only, 5e went with concentration. 
 

Personally I like it - I find having to protect your caster from damage to keep everyone stronger. Solasta has a very powerful feat (flawless concentration?) that prevents concentration checks unless damage exceeds 10. It is probably too powerful, but makes it much, much easier to keep the concentration spells up.

Yeah, that feat is a must on casters. Countering buff hullabaloo is a Very Good Thing (side-eyeing you so hard, Wrathfinder ), but surely a caster should be able to wrangle more than one spell at a time, no? And I don't quite get the logic behind it, like, Mage Armor is not a concentration spell but Barkskin is? 

Edited July 24, 2023 by bugarup
Also a poster should be able to wrangle more than one sentence at a time

[uuuhhii]

On 7/22/2023 at 9:04 PM, Mamoulian War said:

 

Yup, you can’t pick the shape of your pubic hair on premade character

player can edit premade character in original sin 2

why would larian going backward

[Gorth]

On 7/23/2023 at 11:49 PM, Keyrock said:

This was likely a limitation of the Infinity Engine, but it used to drive me crazy when a cutscene would play and my party would just stand there frozen in place (well, their idle animations would play, but I couldn't move them) while Sarevok or whoever would walk onto the screen, give a lengthy speech, do something horrible, and walk off, all while my party are standing 40 yards away like idiots. Sometimes the devs would at least put something there that could conceivably block me from getting to the villain while they are doing villainous things, like a chasm, never mind that I could shoot arrows across a chasm, but at least it's something. However there were times where there was nothing in between me and the villain and my dumbass party just stood there and did nothing. They had enough time to where they could have made sandwiches, eaten said sandwiches, cleaned up after themselves, and still had plenty of time to intervene, but instead they just stood there like idiots. Anyway, please tell me that Larian did away with that in BG3.

Could also be a Bioware limitation. I can remember at least twice, where you beat the crap out of the villain and grind his face into the dirt with your boot on his neck, just for the game to decide that the villain somehow mysteriously won and you have no chance... after beating the living daylight out of him and hanging him out to dry. Malak in Kotor and Kaileng in ME3...` so despite overwhelming victories, the game takes control away from the player and creates a 180 degree opposite outcome of events.

 

[melkathi]

Similar to a lot of strategy and tactics game, where you clear the map of every opponent and then the cut scene has your side retreating due to overwhelming force.

 

Expeditions: Rome had a terrible scenario in Gaul, where once you beat the fight your whole party was actually defeated in the cutscene and has to be rescued by NPCs.

[MrBrown]

8 hours ago, bugarup said:

Solasta. Really not a fan of that concentration thing, so much that I avoid picking spells with this tag when leveling. Why is this? To make casters less OP? Why not make a dude with a zweihander less boring instead? 

It's basically there to get rid of using lots of buffing spells at the same time. Play the Pathfinder games to see the opposite end of the scale.

Personally I like it. Most concentration spells are very good too, like Hold or Dominate.

 

As for classes being boring, this is a big problem with 5th ED. Some classes are just plain boring to play. Barbarian comes out on top of that, imo. Fighters in PnP have a subclass that gets a lot of options, but they have a boring subclass too. In Solasta they're boring too.

It's not that big of a deal when you control a whole party, though.

[Hawke64]

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Tried to replay for a bit, spent an hour respeccing (from a rogue to an Aldori Swordlord) and just running around Drezen. The CPU does not like WotR much for some reason, though I can't remember if it was an issue when I last played. Since it's the GOG version, the game couldn't have changed. I suppose, the replay will have to wait a bit longer - I'd rather feel more progress during short gaming sessions.

Anno: Mutationem (not the grand strategy series). Explored the starting area, fought the tutorial battle. The controls are partially rebindable, the mouse is not supported during gameplay. So far, it somehow reminds of Devil May Cry in terms of combat (directional attacks, though Anno:M has a separate key for dodge, like Bayonetta), but 2D and sci-fi.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Hawke64

[Keyrock]

On 7/24/2023 at 10:42 AM, Gorth said:

Could also be a Bioware limitation. I can remember at least twice, where you beat the crap out of the villain and grind his face into the dirt with your boot on his neck, just for the game to decide that the villain somehow mysteriously won and you have no chance... after beating the living daylight out of him and hanging him out to dry. Malak in Kotor and Kaileng in ME3...` so despite overwhelming victories, the game takes control away from the player and creates a 180 degree opposite outcome of events.

 

BioWare is certainly not alone in pulling a stunt like that, I've encountered that crap quite a few times and it drives me crazy every time. There will be a boss fight and when you reach a trigger point, 33% boss health, 25%, whatever, the cutscene plays with the boss leaving me a bloody, beaten mess barely clinging to life. it doesn't matter if I was absolutely mopping the floor with them during the actual fight. Why even have the fight if you're going to have me get stomped in a cutscene? Forget the fight, just have me get stomped in the cutscene. Better yet, there are a few games that handle this sort of thing in a much superior way by putting you in a battle you are supposed to lose (usually very early in the game). However, the battle is not impossible, it's just LUDICROUSLY difficult. If you manage to beat this battle that you are supposed to lose the game continues and it will slightly alter your early game, but there comes a time where it doesn't matter and the game is the same regardless of if you lost like you were supposed to or you beat the nearly unbeatable battle.

[bugarup]

9 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. [...] The CPU does not like WotR much for some reason, though I can't remember if it was an issue when I last played. 

Always been. My GPU doesn't fancy it much either, so much I have to cap FPS and avoid playing in hot weather. Launched it yesterday to see if patch rollback borked anything (it did, but reloading same save file helped for some reason) and if I want to proceed with my abandoned Aeon. Nah, not yet...but kinda want to make yet another Lich sorcerer. 

6 hours ago, Keyrock said:

BioWare is certainly not alone in pulling a stunt like that, I've encountered that crap quite a few times and it drives me crazy every time. 

I read this is widespread disease in JRPGs. Me, I only played two of them, both had multiple incidents of this garbage and made me wish for a kill everyone playthrough.  

Speaking of Bioware, they had this "win the impossible battle" situation in Dragon Age: Origins. If you won, you got the impossible boss's Big F††ing Sword. If lost, you had to spring yourself from jail while your party of misfits tried to do the same from the other side of the door. Either result was rewarding in its own way and the whole scene was really good. 

[BruceVC]

Im about 80 hours into Gothic 2 and its been the fantastic PB experience I was expecting.  Most PB games have the same  excellent design which include 

• no level scaling and you get killed easily if you try to face all enemies on lower levels 
• no map hand holding, you need to actually explore to find quest objectives
• open world, you can go where you want and you can progress your character on multiple paths in different ways

I am now level 25 Paladin and I have just started the dragon hunt, I havent faced any dragons yet but Im killing orcs and other monsters  in the Valley of Mines and gaining XP. I like the Paladin magic and ease of use of runes

I adopted a good strategy to kill certain monsters at lower levels which included the following tried and tested PB mechanics 

• using spells, most scrolls only use 5 mana
• running away and using long distance attacks
• finding companions and letting them draw aggro and then I helped in combat. Im using Biff the dragon hunter at the moment for that but Im at the level and skill where I dont really need him as much 

But its a fantastic game, very entertaining 

Edited July 26, 2023 by BruceVC