What are you Playing Now? - Right Now at the moment edition

[BruceVC]

15 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Don't play Drova then. It's not just the main plot, but so much of your power is locked behind joining a faction, you want to do it ASAP.

As for FNV, you could just walk past the deathclaws north of the starting town, if you kept to the hills on the eastern side of the track. If you climb a bit high, the deathclaws can't reach you. No particular need for exploits.

But the F:NV design of open world  is what I prefer anyway

You can go north and escape the Deathclaw in the beginning and get to NV but you will be very low level and wont survive most battles in the NV region

Its a choice but its a bad choice to make and taking the longer route just makes sense 

[bugarup]

8 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

You can go north and escape the Deathclaw in the beginning and get to NV but you will be very low level and wont survive most battles in the NV region

Its a choice but its a bad choice to make and taking the longer route just makes sense 

Nah, you'll be fine, just not overpowered enough to facetank perhaps. I usually go North via dodge-the-Cazador route and it's way more fun this way, you have to utilize whatever you have in your inventory. 

I once went to Lonesome Road on hardest difficulty at something like level 8. It was very immersive. 

[BruceVC]

9 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Nah, you'll be fine, just not overpowered enough to facetank perhaps. I usually go North via dodge-the-Cazador route and it's way more fun this way, you have to utilize whatever you have in your inventory. 

I once went tho Lonesome Road on hardest difficulty at something like level 8. It was very immersive. 

Thats interesting, as you might remember  I played F:NV recently but it was a heavy modded game and there were  definitely regions with enemies I couldnt defeat until higher level and that included Deathclaws

[bugarup]

2 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Thats interesting, as you might remember  I played F:NV recently but it was a heavy modded game and there were  definitely regions with enemies I couldnt defeat until higher level and that included Deathclaws

I assumed that we are not to be fighting Deathclaws, cazadors and other critters that serve as roadblocks any time soon, because we're talking here exactly about how to sneak around them, no?  But regular mooks, including Legion retribution squads, are all doable. 

[LadyCrimson]

18 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Don't play Drova then.

Feeling forced to join one of multiple factions (especially if sorta seeming "politically" story motivated) just to finish the plot is probably why I largely stopped playing certain types of rpg's. Mostly deep lore type rpg's. That type of "choice/consequence" doesn't really do it for me. imo there should always be a neutral/no faction option. Pfft.

It was fine when it was something simple/two toned like "Choose Dark or Light" ala Might and Magic series where you'd just get a slightly different end spell set or something, but stuff like Morrowind just makes me go "le sigh." 

Edited October 24 by LadyCrimson

[LadyCrimson]

Any arpg'rs try Wayfinder yet? I keep hearing it's not too bad, except the loot variation is a little lacking - more like Borderlands than Diablo, for example maybe. Looks like a mish mash of a lot of different games/styles. But I can't decide if it looks "simple" enough for my current gaming brain/if I'd like the mechanics I've seen in reviews/videos.

Interesting that they were a MT/MMO thing, then publisher bailed on the dev's or something - note I do not not know any details - so dev's decided to turn into a SP/no-MT/offline (does have peer to peer coop) instead. Almost makes me want to buy to support "no MT/offline" gaming. Almost.

Edited October 24 by LadyCrimson

[MrBrown]

9 hours ago, BruceVC said:

But the F:NV design of open world  is what I prefer anyway

You can go north and escape the Deathclaw in the beginning and get to NV but you will be very low level and wont survive most battles in the NV region

Its a choice but its a bad choice to make and taking the longer route just makes sense 

No no, you go to Vegas to get Int bonus from the surgeon, to maximize skill points gained during the game. 

[LadyCrimson]

Why 7 Days doesn't have Steam cloud saves:

--start new "6k" map, save folder size: maybe 16-18MB
--1/4 of that map explored/revealed with countless terrain/building;container etc. edits everywhere: 350MB (most of this is "region" data)
--by the time I reveal all the map (if I do, ofc, often I don't) and do even more terrain/building etc: 1+ GB save? I've seen ppl who run a server say bigger map saves get up to 10+GB. I imagine if I tried to redo the entire map with tunnels and towers and every POI altered, it'd be ginormous/even higher.

--Final Fantasy 15 save, all revealed/finished etc: 2-3 MB.
--Borderlands 3, single chr save: 1.1MB is the highest
--No Man's Sky, single chr. save: 1.1MB is the highest (terrain is destructible but it's not permanent/areas reset after an edit limit is reached and other things)

I hear Minecraft can be similar/worse, keeps growing and growing if you stay in one save forever and ever and ever.

Edited October 24 by LadyCrimson

[MrBrown]

I just spent 2 hours in Drova looking for a place, only to realize I had glitched into an area that was supposed to be inaccessible from that point on. So I spent the next two hours trying to glitch out, because of course I had no recent saves outside the place.

Eventually I managed, and found the thing I was looking for, just slightly away from there. Apparently "near a forest" is not the same as "in a forest".

[Wormerine]

Alan Wake2 - Lake House.

It's ok. Another short DLC (2-3 hours?), one bugged achievement that requirest tanking framerate to trigger. It's new enemy type is a highlight but also feel underutilised - perhaps it is a downside of AW2 barebone gameplay that there is only that much as one can do with it, outside shining light at enemies and shooting them.

Story is ok, though on a simple side. There is also a teaser for Control2, but it feels far less clumsy than Controls: AWE DLC - the teaser bit isn't relevant to our adventure in the Lake House, so while missable it does feel tacked on. I assume that like "Night Springs" DLCs, "Lake House" can be triggered at certain point during main AW2 playthrough - and I think it will be fine as a minor sidestory and break from main AW2 story. Still, I found AW2 DLCs to be far weaker than Controls - again, perhaps because that title is much less gameplay focused.

 

[Hawke64]

Finished Steelrising. 20FPS in some areas definitely was not exactly comfortable. The hitboxes are very tight (the foes miss a lot) and the difficulty overall is on the easier side. The writing is rather odd - between the occasional random French words (why???) and all characters having more random memory gaps (a major plot point was explained, everyone was calm, then in the next scene it was explained again, everyone was shocked). The level design is Spiders and I would not be able to finish the side quests without the compass (a regular in-game item, not an accessibility setting). The rebindable controls and the somewhat customisable character were most welcome.

Edited October 27 by Hawke64

[Malcador]

Wandered on to a ship, found scratches on metal. Immediately knew I should have left  

Thankfully, I guess the genestealers just stayed there and let me kill them, so that was ok.

[majestic]

Completed all of the season journey objectives and the Dark Citadel on Torment IV, which means I am done for the season, I guess, unless Blizzard adds something. They are adding "Meat or Treat" with The Butcher for Halloween, so I'll check that out. I'll probably also occasionally check if Blizzard managed to fix the Tenets of Akarat, silly little puzzles strewn through the expansion area that often bug out and cannot be completed.

The first wing of the Dark Citadel was by far the hardest as the wing final boss is both a gear check (given the damage Spiritborn do, more like a defensive stat check, as I found out to my detriment when the unavoidable damage instantly killed me) and requires some coordination between the party members in different zones and you need one group to activate a portal for the other once they're done. All the other bosses have more involved mechanics, but you're always in the same screen with your party members. Well, maybe not at the last wing's final boss where you can miss a portal, but that respawns really quickly.

The in-game timer tells me I have played for 86h, which is fine. It felt a little more grindy than the other seasons thanks to the Infernal Hordes being basically the best at any farming activity outside of levelling your glyphs (and that is just because you can't level glyphs in hordes) or getting runes, but some of that time is playing the expansion "story" which I won't have to any more from this point forward. Luckily. The Diablo games never had intricate storylines, but they used to be interesting and well written, and ever since Diablo 3, they're just neither. Although that can be said for every game Blizzard made since 2009. Wrath of the Lich King was the last time a story told in a Blizzard game was interesting and  they actually cared for world building, and it is such a pity that the story of Warcraft 3 was completed in an MMORPG.

The wording implies that Blizzard will be making more of these group only dungeons. Can't say I am looking forward to that, but maybe the next one is going to be more interesting. I also hope Blizzard finds some way of making them challenging without overly relying on either timed instant death mechanics where you need to complete an objective before the timer runs out or spamming the room with instant death effects.

Torment IV can also use a wee bit of rebalancing. Having enemies deal so much damage that you die almost instantly is fine when that damage can be reasonably avoided. It is not fine when the entire screen is full of player effects that overlap and make it impossible to see the attacks happening, or cause so much lag that you can't see the enemies perform their actions. World bosses are particularily egregious, The Wandering Death does a giant laser instant death effect that plows through the screen and you're supposed to dodge it, but it was invisible due to massive server side lag. Most of the players near the boss died. I had a good laugh, but that can't be fun for Hardcore players.

I guess it is understandable though, Blizzard is a newcomer at this online play business, they only have like three decades of experience, things like that can happen, right?

Edited October 26 by majestic

[MrBrown]

I finished Drova. Will probably do a second playthrough to get all the achievements, it'll be much less annoying when you know where everything is.

Overall I'd say it's a decent game. It's generally what it looks like from a quick glance on the Steam page, so if that seems your thing, you should probably try it.

My two big negatives are:

- The map is way too maze-like, and it can take a lot of time to just find things because you can never go somewhere in an even remotely straight line.

- The main plot forces you to do things you wouldn't want to. In my game, the 2nd in command of my faction had me do some stuff under the nose of the 1st, and I was called a traitor afterwards. No option to do anything else.

[Sven_]

On 10/24/2024 at 10:59 AM, bugarup said:

I hate this pixel trend so very much that I see pixels --> instant ignore. Video tech evolves and keeps evolving, then why the f  do I have to scrape my eyes on the corners of huge ugly rectangles? 

I'm the same with any game that treats me like a tool -- or as if Looking Glass had never existed. Yeah it's a mockup, but you probably know by looking what I mean. Unless it's something I really wanna play.  It's funny how studios spend gazillions on photo realistic visuals. There's entire task forces dedicated to hairdos alone. And then it's all down the toilet as you're either reminded constantly you're playing a damn video game and/or you can't touch anything without being told when, how and if to do so. Waste of time, people and money -- doubly so if you consider the ridiculous dev cycles mainly caused by visual fidelity.

Speaking about which, Drova is scary. I'm hesistant to post my playing hours, because the game must scratch an itch that hadn't been scratched recently much. And reading about the devs, I know which one it is. Aside of the obvious Gothic1+2 inspirations, what really drove them forward was the desire to make a game where you get to explore and figure things out for yourself. 

I think I may revisit some of these thereafter...
 

 

Edited October 27 by Sven_

[Mamoulian War]

Goal nr. 10/2024

October 26, 11:45 – More of Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate on my PS4. I have decided to finally finish the last missing branch to get 100% in the Aftermath story mode and finished the story as evil Shang Tsung.

[Hawke64]

10 hours ago, Sven_ said:

I'm the same with any game that treats me like a tool -- or as if Looking Glass had never existed. Yeah it's a mockup, but you probably know by looking what I mean. Unless it's something I really wanna play.  It's funny how studios spend gazillions on photo realistic visuals. There's entire task forces dedicated to hairdos alone. And then it's all down the toilet as you're either reminded constantly you're playing a damn video game and/or you can't touch anything without being told when, how and if to do so. Waste of time, people and money -- doubly so if you consider the ridiculous dev cycles mainly caused by visual fidelity.

It also makes the environment harder to read, so we get the yellow paint on the breakable barrels.

Since it was bothering me a lot during my Steelrising playthrough, I would like to share - some platforms could be jumped on/ledge-grabbed and also there were special hook points. The former were usually marked by white chalk or cloth and the latter by amber lights (and an interaction prompt). The thing is that the white cloth often was hanging on random non-grabbale fences and platforms and all street lights were amber (not in the "look, the path/loot is here" way). Same with the slightly-broken bushes and random indoor doors* - some were walls, some were paths, and the only way to find out which is which is by trying to pass through/open them.

*the outdoor gates had clear indicators that they were openable - a small wooden lock panel in the middle.

---

EA App. This piece of DRM refused to launch Dragon Age: Inquisition after a week, so I uninstalled the app, forgetting that it also removes the save files. On a positive note, I have managed to un**** Origin (by dropping a totally-not-suspicious DLL into its folder), which is still a very good reason to pirate every last EA release, but it at least runs offline.

Ironically, the game looks much better than Steelrising, because the style, unlike the tech, remains.

Edited October 27 by Hawke64

[BruceVC]

Im about 15 hours into Dark Messiah of M&M

Im  really enjoying it, I think the myriad of combat mechanics are well done and Im enjoying the overall narrative 

I like Xana,  she makes me laugh and I have just found out who I really am. Very unexpected twist  

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

Im about 15 hours into Dark Messiah of M&M

Oh, Man. I love that game. Not flawless, but nothing like that. Creating ice puddles for enemies to slipped on never gets old.

[majestic]

https://www.smbgames.be/super-mario-crossover.php

Pretty good idea, worth a playthrough just for the heck of it. 

[Malcador]

Finished VoH campaign, I like that Akarat is the stereotypical Jesus in appearance.   Shame no resolution, but I guess there's more money to be made.  Wonder when or if we ever get to tangle with Diablo.

[bugarup]

Finished Hades. Well, sort of. Beat up my dad on the third try and full God mode, went out, said hello to me mum and got dragged back to Hell. Guess what, if I want to ask her (and dad) questions on what and why, I have to complete the cycle again. And then probably again if I have more questions, I guess.

... u wot m8??????

Oh, and to unlock stories of those interesting characters you meet along the cycle you have to stuff them with gifts that are either random or dropped by bosses also randomly, and you'll need a lot of them so better be ready to grind those three environments with same mooks over and over again.

Guess what? No thank you! .

Supergiant games, where intriguing story is thwarted by tedious, annoying, bad, no good game mechanics, 3 games out of 3.

 

 

[Gorth]

Off to a new thread...