What are you Playing Now? - What doesn't kill you, gives you XP

[BruceVC]

I just completed FO1 after about 40 hours or so. As I mentioned earlier it was an excellent CRPG experience that includes

• open world and  a great sandbox overall experience
• no map quest hand  holding on the area maps, you need to explore and ask people questions to complete quests. Like the Deathclaw quest in the Hub
• deep character customization and this allows you to really create different characters and that can influence your journey
• great lore and interesting quests
• unique towns and each one with there own characteristics

I dont recall any bugs with Fixt but I might not have known because this is the first time I played FO1 but everything seemed to be fine

I ended up  getting a Plasma Rifle at Mariposa which made me deadly in combat and I enjoyed how the game provides so many different weapons. I really battled with the final  Master fight, I was killed about 7 times before  I adopted a winning strategy. I buffed up on drugs  and then aimed for his eyes and fortunately scored critical hits and he died after about  5 rounds, I used super stimpacks and ignored the other enemies attacking

 

I didn't particularly enjoy having to run out the Cathedral and Mariposa knowing there was 300 seconds but it was fun to get out the buildings and survive

Now Im going to play FO2, Im really in the Fallout mood 

[Keyrock]

4 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

I buffed up on drugs  and then aimed for his eyes

You learned your lesson from BG well.

 

[Wormerine]

After BG3 scraching an RPG itch, I finally gathered courage and installed Pathfinder:WotR. I created character, went through intro with some community play flavour to it "It is I, protector of this fair city, and also a dragon!". My enthusiasm evaporated as soon as I gained control over characters.

Why is it, that recent RPGs can't be asked to design a UI? Both Pathfinder and Baldur's Gate3 are awful in that regard. You get a character, and all you get is a pile of icon and it is up to you to make sense of it. I can manage it for one character, but I already got 4 party members with classes I am unfamiliar with and I have to stop, read up and play a bit of "design your UI" before venturing forth.

[Hawke64]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

After BG3 scraching an RPG itch, I finally gathered courage and installed Pathfinder:WotR. I created character, went through intro with some community play flavour to it "It is I, protector of this fair city, and also a dragon!". My enthusiasm evaporated as soon as I gained control over characters.

Why is it, that recent RPGs can't be asked to design a UI? Both Pathfinder and Baldur's Gate3 are awful in that regard. You get a character, and all you get is a pile of icon and it is up to you to make sense of it. I can manage it for one character, but I already got 4 party members with classes I am unfamiliar with and I have to stop, read up and play a bit of "design your UI" before venturing forth.

I suspect it might be the general complexity of the ruleset. There are tooltips, but they might be insufficient. I used to auto-level up unfamiliar classes and focus on the ones I knew. Also, it should be possible to respec relatively early.

I think, overall, PF had a more user-friendly GUI than Larian's D&D game, though the inventory systems were rather inconvenient in both (PF had less junk items). But. The level progression screen and actual pause!

[melkathi]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

Why is it, that recent RPGs can't be asked to design a UI?

Probably part of the wider Dev conspiracy to stop people from enjoying their games.

It is obvious they do it on purpose.

[LadyCrimson]

No Man's Sky:  Bought a Site map at some small ship base, like a treasure map I guess. Made a destination marker. "Travel time: TWENTY HOURS?" .... got in my ship and hit the takeoff/fly button for the 1st time to check.  "Two hours?"  ...  "Is that in real time?"  Apparently, no it isn't. But it was still maybe 15-20 minutes of pressing W+Shift (boost speed).

During that flight - the first time I'd used the spaceship - I remembered why I don't tend to play spaceship games. Controlling movement/pitch/direction of ships with their windshield PoV is something I never "get good" with. At most I may get to a point where instead of a fall-down drunk seeming driver, I'm only a fairly tipsy driver. I don't get motion sickness or anything, but it's very annoying, lol.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, melkathi said:

Probably part of the wider Dev conspiracy to stop people from enjoying their games.

It is obvious they do it on purpose.

But you know wearing a tinfoil hat prevents this? The Devs cant destroy your gaming experience if you take this type of preventative measure

Melkie the rabbit hole is deep but even the deepest rabbit hole cant overwhelm tinfoil hats 

[uuuhhii]

owlcat ui are just ancient and unwieldy

still much better than the console friendly ui some rpg use in the last decades

everyone can equip 4 skill even on pc

horrible design limitation turn into feature

[LadyCrimson]

Trying to speed the gamestages up, so now I've built my first tiny hut-base in No Man's Sky. And the tutorial keeps going for more basics. Which led me to start reading wiki's (apparently I'm not too far from the tutorial end I guess).

I'm not sure I like the sound of all the long-activity/routes for having more than a single base-storage chest, increased suit inventory slots, base-building skills/crafting much beyond super basic. For me, sounds like days and days before I'd get anywhere near it so I could think mostly about "sandboxing" vs. questing. Can those of you who've played this game tell me if it's as involved/long as it sounds, or if maybe one storage box per base claim enough - so I could just skip it all? I wasn't planning on making giant/artistic bases or anything so I could probably skip/avoid all that line. Gotta have more suit inventory tho....

[bugarup]

3 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I'm not sure I like the sound of all the long-activity/routes for having more than a single base-storage chest, increased suit inventory slots, base-building skills/crafting much beyond super basic. For me, sounds like days and days before I'd get anywhere near it so I could think mostly about "sandboxing" vs. questing. Can those of you who've played this game tell me if it's as involved/long as it sounds, or if maybe one storage box per base claim enough - so I could just skip it all? I wasn't planning on making giant/artistic bases or anything so I could probably skip/avoid all that line. Gotta have more suit inventory tho....

I have a base on the starter planet which is basically one giant hollow cuboid with storage stuff, teleporter and some generators plus some parking space for space vehicle and buggies outside. I certainly have more than one storage box but that's because RPGs trained me to hoard everything like a dragon, I probably doesn't really need that. I have another base where there's just some floor with a teleporter and a generator to fuel it, but don't use it much. Suit and ship inventory upgrades can be bought, if I recall correctly, in space stations and costs money. I don't spend time on base other than sometimes building yet another storage box for loot and most of the time just fly around. Or repair found ships. 

 

[Hurlshort]

Inventory management in No Man's Sky is a bit of a pain. The easiest way to mitigate it is to get a big ship. It's easy to store extra stuff on a ship with lots of spaces. Opening up slots on your personal inventory was kind of a pain, if I remember correctly. 

The boxes at the base help a bit, but I didn't like having to go back there and get stuff.

[Wormerine]

On 9/19/2023 at 11:16 PM, Hawke64 said:

I suspect it might be the general complexity of the ruleset.

I don't think RPS are that complex to play gameplay wise. PoE1&2 and Solasta did a fine job making UIs that help to understand and engage with the content. Perhaps Pathfinder and BG3 just assumes familiarity with the system - if you know what you are looking for finding it isn't easy. I don't enjoy getting new character and getting a vomit of disorganised icons and having to read up, memorise and organise them by function and resource.

edit. I will probably get back to it once I am in a right brain space. Also some modding will be needed. I had the same issue with pathfinder where I found the camera to not zoom out enough.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Wormerine

[LadyCrimson]

No Man's Sky

...go into a cave, expecting a not too large area (all the others I'd found weren't huge). Saw minerals I wanted. Kept going forward to mine them and it turns out this cave was ginormous, seemingly never-ending caverns and twists, as if it maybe continued under half the planet's crust. Long time later I ran out of bag space with maxed 9999 stacks and tried to make my way back out. There's no mini-map in the game. It's dark. I thought I'd kept to a fairly straight path, not taking side turns and I tried to backtrack. But ... I got lost. I wandered and wandered, realized I hadn't been this way or that way yet from unmined thingies. The compass markers of the surface did not help much since I hadn't taken note of what and where before going in. 

...after 20 minutes of ever increasingly desperate wandering, I finally remembered something - I took the terrain shaping tool out and blasted a tunnel upwards out to the sky. I think that's the worst that I've ever been "lost" in a game, ever. And it was glorious.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

On 9/19/2023 at 5:16 PM, Hawke64 said:

I think, overall, PF had a more user-friendly GUI than Larian's D&D game

I think BG3 wins out for me because there is some customization possible, while Owlfinder just fills up the tabs with abilities and doesn't let you remove them. That can be a big problem if you have a lot of abilities because you can lose access to rows that overflow, which is a possibility if you're playing an abilities heavy character or have lots of abilities from items.  

[Hawke64]

TESIII: Morrowind. Was chosen as the Hortator for 3 Great Houses (several councillors died unexpectedly. Very tragic) and as the Nerevarine for 4 tribes. Somehow, the Great Houses were easier to convince than the tribes, which involved dungeon crawling, slavery, wiping out a group of worshippers, and expediting succession.
Finished the main story line. Discovered that potion effects stack together and the Dunmer Living Gods wear very little armour. Going to finish some side quests and the Tribunal expansion. I think, the assassin whose armour I used for most of the game was related to it.

[Wormerine]

I took a deep breath, slogged through UI maintenance, and continued with WotR. Finished the opening dungeon. Seems like a step up from Kingamer, so still there was a bit more repeat encounters that I wished they would be. 

I was almost impressed by opening companion choice, with both characters making compelling arguments for their stance - alas the pragmatic one turned out to be lying, psychotic monster. How unfortunate - they created a compelling decision, only to make it binary good vs evil.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Wormerine

[Keyrock]

I'm just starting my Morrowind adventure. After arriving in Seyda Neen I opted to hoof it to Balmora rather than utilizing a silt strider; I needed to stretch my legs after being cooped up on that boat for days. On the way I visited Fort Pelagiad where I did a bit of shopping to get myself armored, though I was still lacking pauldrons and gloves (plenty of heavy armor choices but not medium). It was getting late so I decided to spend the night at the inn there and was rudely interrupted by a Dark Brotherhood assassin who was keen on exploring my insides with his dagger; nothing a steel mace upside the head couldn't solve, plus he was kind enough to leave me all his gear, which, while not my style, will fetch a pretty penny from a vendor, hopefully several pretty pennies. Moving on, I met some lady who is sweet on a brigand who robbed her and agreed to find said brigand for her. She'll have to wait a while longer, though, as getting to Balmora to see Caius Cosades is my priority (not to mention I want to get more/better gear there before I go gallivanting through the countryside). I made a quick stop at Moonmoth Legion Fort just outside Balmora and told a guard about the rather rude awakening I had experienced the prior night. He didn't want anything to do with it, but did refer me to his superior in Ebonheart. From there, Balmora was just a stone's throw away. Despite not having played this game for well over a decade, I knew exactly where to go to find Caius Cosades. He initiated me into The Blades (I didn't have a choice in the matter) and referred me to several of his associates, I guess they are now my associates too. I'm going to spend some time here getting to know the locals. First stop, the South Wall Cornerclub to get a stiff drink or three. 

Edited September 22, 2023 by Keyrock

[LadyCrimson]

No Man's Sky -

I do have some minor irritations.
--the KB/M keybinds are often terrible, imo. Yes you can remap them but still terrible. As in, awkward at times.
--For some reason when in the Galaxy warping ship map I cannot path a route with the KB/M. But the controller works for that just fine, so I keep switching back and forth. On the flip side, there was one function that didn't seem to work using the controller, even tho game was telling me to press this - when I did, it didn't work. Which is why I used the KB/M.
--the Technology additives for some stuff, like more suit poison resistance, that needs to recharge with batteries - the battery lasts like 3-5 minutes in use, which it often is in use constantly if the planet atmosphere is of that hazard or something.  It's ridiculous, why even bother.

--I like exploring planets, resource gathering, treasure hunting, randomness. Although I could see it becoming repetitive after a while, like most such.
--I love the visual look/style, the animals, all of that.
--the language/word learning is kinda neat.
--hate the space flying/travel re: control, I'm going to avoid that as much as possible.
--I have zero curiosity re: the main quest/mystery and all the mumbo jumbo they're tossing around. Edit: not an issue for me at all, just saying it's not that type of game.

Edited September 22, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[Malcador]

Beat all the races in WoW, some were pretty challenging.  Got gold by 0.4 s in some cases, but win by a inch or a mile is still a win.   Going back to playing Star Wars Rebellion, should make a Win98 VM to play this though, the GOG version functions okay enough barring crashes and the tactical battles having flickering and such.  Will check for mods.

 

[InsaneCommander]

17 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I think BG3 wins out for me because there is some customization possible, while Owlfinder just fills up the tabs with abilities and doesn't let you remove them.

Is that the case? I could rearrange the abilities and drop what I wanted on top of what I didn't.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

31 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Is that the case? I could rearrange the abilities and drop what I wanted on top of what I didn't.

Yeah, you can customize the quick bar but the abilities tab is locked. 

[LadyCrimson]

No Man's Sky - so apparently terrain regenerates at some point. Or sometimes it doesn't, but sometimes it does? In other words, don't try to dig out/make underground rooms/bases.  >.>

I need a mod that removes all the HUD with a hotkey vs. having to go in and out the main menu constantly to change it. I don't know why games don't always make that sort of function hotkeyable vs. graphic menu option.

[Hawke64]

Reached a satisfactory point in TESIII: Morrowind. I've got a house in Pelagiad and moved all my items from the magical corpse in Balmora to the various containers in the house (the corpse had unlimited storage capacity, the containers did not). I also tracked down and eliminated the Mournhold branch of the Dark Brotherhood and (after several attempts and looking up the most broken combinations of alchemical concoctions) their employer. Additionally, in Mournhold, it was somehow odd to have Levitation limited just after I had gotten used to have it. Overall in the expansion, in terms of design and gameplay, the "dungeons" being literal dungeons and the local sewers system became more noticeable, while the foes were hitting significantly harder than in the main game. I also had a rather unexpected side quest with an unfriendly and deadly normal-looking NPC. The encounter ended with me reloading. Though, I liked the concept of a large multi-area city that is not Vivec.

[melkathi]

Blood moon next?

[LadyCrimson]

Some guy landed his ship near my small base. He had 5 more ship storage slots, so I bought it. It was much boxier and uglier tho, so I had to rename it Ugly Boat.  For a second I thought I was going to get to keep two ships, but the starter one disappeared when I ported out/back to the planet. Between that and a few more backpack slots, I feel ok on earlyish storage for now.

I'm at the stage in NMS where I'm not entirely sure if I love the game or just sorta like it. On the one hand, for me, great chill sandbox. On the other hand, not quite enough motivation to do the sandbox if one isn't into the base building or ship combat etc. which is the main reason to find/horde resources or work on upgrades. I've tried to do more questing, not feeling it - akin to not feeling it in Bethseda games, really.

It's currently a cool game tho - depends what you want/like to do is all. And checking new planets for scenery gazing/exploration could soak up a lot of time just on its own.

Edit: oh I guess there will be ground vehicles. The Base Computer gave me a mission that gives one I think, but I need some resource I don't have yet.

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by LadyCrimson