What are you Playing Now? - Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll

[MrBrown]

Or when saves get corrupts.

Recently played Mass Effect Andromeda, where there was a bug that autosaves that occurred when your vehicle was in the air would be corrupt. And if you died, that's where it would try to load the game. And autosaves would be tagged by time only, so it was hard to find the right one. And loading an autosave the game would always try to make a new one, so it got even more confusing.

[Zoraptor]

While the save system sounded awful enough to put me off initially it worked fine practically for KCD1. From what I remember the autosave function was both pretty generous* and- if you really wanted to- gameable. Far less annoying than, say, Alpha Protocol where you might have a hard autosave going through a one way door with no indication the door was one way and no in mission manual saves at all.

*one of the games GOG asked me to delete cloud stuff from a while back iirc it made so many. Though nowhere near as many as, ironically given they share a parent company, Witcher 3.

[Serrano]

I completed Pillars of Eternity a couple of days ago. I had such a good time, I haven't played an old school RPG for a couple of years despite it being my favorite genre and Obsidian made an absolute banger here. It had a really good story, and not having the curtain pulled back until the very end made all the reveals very impactful. I was planning to play something that's totally different between Pillars 1 & 2 so I didn't get bored with the real-time and pause genre but after the last couple of hours of PoE1 I just have to know what happens next now so I've started playing Deadfire immediately.

I've basically just started, I'm about to repair the ship and leave the first island. It was a bit jarring for the first hour or so with the new UI and going from a typical medieval setting to a swashbuckling pirate adventure but it's already obvious that the quality of the writing and RPG mechanics are so much improved here. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the rest of the game.

Edited Sunday at 09:27 PM by Serrano

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, Serrano said:

I completed Pillars of Eternity a couple of days ago. I had such a good time, I haven't played an old school RPG for a couple of years despite it being my favorite genre and Obsidian made an absolute banger here. It had a really good story, and not having the curtain pulled back until the very end made all the reveals very impactful.

Yeah, honestly, during my first playthrough I was rather lukewarm on PoE1 - I liked it, but thought story was meandering. But, that final reveal ties things up so nicely, I ended up immediately starting 2nd playthrough, doing a very compressed playthrough reading every single ingame book I could find and backed the sequel without the hesitation. I just hope Avowed will be on the level.

[Malcador]

Grinding along in Kotor 2. Being lazy and playing a melee character, is fun to wreck things, but then I forget I need to switch to my NPCs now and then and it's a struggle, hah.   Still can't make the Disciple a Jedi though, annoying.

Maybe I'll play a game that isn't 20 years old next.

[BruceVC]

7 hours ago, Serrano said:

I completed Pillars of Eternity a couple of days ago. I had such a good time, I haven't played an old school RPG for a couple of years despite it being my favorite genre and Obsidian made an absolute banger here. It had a really good story, and not having the curtain pulled back until the very end made all the reveals very impactful. I was planning to play something that's totally different between Pillars 1 & 2 so I didn't get bored with the real-time and pause genre but after the last couple of hours of PoE1 I just have to know what happens next now so I've started playing Deadfire immediately.

I've basically just started, I'm about to repair the ship and leave the first island. It was a bit jarring for the first hour or so with the new UI and going from a typical medieval setting to a swashbuckling pirate adventure but it's already obvious that the quality of the writing and RPG mechanics are so much improved here. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the rest of the game.

Yes I found PoE2 improved on almost every level and PoE1 was a great game 

I particularly liked the open-world design of PoE2 and the whole sailing  mechanics 

And great party members to interact with, my favourite being  Xoti with her cute Southern accent 

 

[Hawke64]

21 hours ago, Sven_ said:

"In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, we attracted quite a lot of people who never play games, which is sort of unique," senior game designer Ondřej Bittner says. "It's sort of like Euro Truck Simulator – a lot of people who play Euro Truck Simulator don't play other games. So we interact with a lot of people who love history, or fencing, or historical martial arts, or whatever, and they didn't have a problem with most of the mechanics." So we interact with a lot of people who love history, or fencing, or historical martial arts, or whatever, and they didn't have a problem with most of the mechanics. It was usually the gamers – like [controversial save item] Saviour Schnapps! People who never played games would be like 'It makes sense to have to eat or sleep', while people who play games are like 'I can't just press F5 to quicksave?"

Gamers have a frame of reference, while the people who are less familiar with the medium do not. And yes, mods can solve this issue, but an appropriate saving system (and some sort of Very Hard Single-Save mode) should be built-in by default from the start. Granted, I liked Lunacid despite its saving system (I had to mod in quick-saving, which also respawned all foes in the area), because the other aspects were good.

[MrBrown]

2 hours ago, BruceVC said:

And great party members to interact with, my favourite being  Xoti with her cute Southern accent 

I literally couldn't have her in my party because I found the accent too annoying.

[BruceVC]

2 minutes ago, MrBrown said:

I literally couldn't have her in my party because I found the accent too annoying.

Its funny you mention that because other people have said the exact same thing about Xoti, her accent was the biggest criticism about her

I loved it, I cant recall another game that has that pronounced Southern  accent for a character?

But I like the Southern accent so it worked for me

 

[kanisatha]

7 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Its funny you mention that because other people have said the exact same thing about Xoti, her accent was the biggest criticism about her

I loved it, I cant recall another game that has that pronounced Southern  accent for a character?

But I like the Southern accent so it worked for me

A woman speaking with that slow Southern drawl, especially from around Georgia, is a huge turn-on for me.

[BruceVC]

Im 45 hours into W3 and Im loving all the different side quests and activities apart from the main narrative. W3 really is the best example of an open-world RPG that aligns with the broader Witcher narrative and lore.

Some key points
 

• I have just completed the Bloody Baron quest and it was brilliant, very nuanced and thought provoking around what the Baron did and the botchling. I also decided to help the Baron free his wife from the Crones. The Crones really are diabolical even though I worked with them around killing the tree\druid evil spirit but I now want to kill them. I laughed how they flirted with Geralt..imagine having a foursome with them  
• I like how you can get so many different Witcher contracts, this is exactly what the Witcher is about. Killing beasts and monsters and having to plan how to do this before you engage
• EE and Redux makes the skill advancement realistic and I prefer it to level advancement. You gain skill points when you use them so you have to focus on the type of build you want if you want to progress
• The economy has been rebalanced with EE and Redux and I like it, you cant sell everything for maximum money and special item upgrades and crafting is expensive but thats a good thing because Im always short of money and I have to go on quests and hunt for gold. It encourages exploration
• Triss is so beautiful aesthetically with my advanced graphic settings and 4K mod , its going to be difficult to decide who to support between her and Yen but that is a decision I will make later once the narrative unfolds

[Sven_]

My playthrough of KCD2 turns more and more into the REAL THIAF 4. 

First, I assassinated another bunch of bad guys in their camp one by one with a stab of the knife. Then I stole something valuable from the landlady of the tavern at night -- she just wouldn't give it to me. Whilst I was at it, I decided to play a prank on her and also stole all of her clothes. Now she's actually REALLY running around in her nightgown all day, barefoot serving customers. 

This game. 

Edited 15 hours ago by Sven_

[Wormerine]

11 hours ago, MrBrown said:

I literally couldn't have her in my party because I found the accent too annoying.

"That was about as useful as a bump on the pickle".

I quite like that Eora is populated by a wider range of accents. Dyrwoodians (and Readcerian's) using American accents felt appropriate considering certain similarities between once real life colony of a distant world power.

While it is no PoE1 cast, I have warmed up to PoE2 companions, especially after reputation was tweaked (and even more so in my recent playthrough, where I slowed down reputation gain even further - though it did prohibit a few inter-party banter to trigger) so they won't all try to pounce on my poor Watcher as soon as they join the party.

[Wormerine]

7 minutes ago, Sven_ said:

My playthrough of KCD2 turns more and more into the REAL THIAF 4. 

First, I assassinated another bunch of bad guys in their camp one by one with a stab of the knife. Then I stole something valuable from the landlady of the tavern at night -- she just wouldn't give it to me. Whilst I was at it, I decided to play a prank on her and also stole all of her clothes. Now she's actually REALLY running around in her nightgown all day, barefoot serving customers. 

This game. 

You make it sound like "What if like Baldur's Gate3, but the systemic design actually manages to provide payoffs". Dang, can't wait to finally jump into KCD1&2. Avowed first though.

[Sven_]

7 hours ago, Wormerine said:

You make it sound like "What if like Baldur's Gate3, but the systemic design actually manages to provide payoffs". Dang, can't wait to finally jump into KCD1&2. Avowed first though.

Well in this case, it's actually quite a systemic thing. In the morning, NPCs get up, get to their box of stuff™ and take out their clothes to put on.... and so this happened. They also notice if something was stolen from them, calling the guards (in a settlement). It's proper NPC scheduling, which makes me remember Ultima VII (and Gothic!). Various NPC dialogue even suggests you should take NPC behavior into account, like when planning to rob someone. "Watch people's behavior. When they go to work, when they go to bed."

Reckon I could rob all the village guards off their weapons and armor whilst asleep (they are actually taking shifts, so that the place is guarded all day). In fact, I may just try that. What are they gonna use against me if they catch me thiefing then? Harsh language?

Some stuff doesn't work though. For instance, there is a big event coming in the area. And the NPC involved in that, you can only choke her, not kill her. Obviously for plot reasons, then. I actually tried to do that, trying if I could "cancel" the event. But the game wouldn't let you. All I could do was to KO her. Of course, I did so, carrying her body a couple hundred metres, dumping it into the field. Took the keys to her house from her. Then I sneaked around in her and her father's place (which is guarded by guards). I almost forgot about her when all of a sudden she came back, bursted into the place screamed that she was KO'd. The guards got alerted, spotted me and I was forced to run the **** away.  

 

edit: Yeah, works. Guarding barefoot and with only their shirts and pants on. Now only gotta clear the guards' weapon chamber (which seems separate, found it though). editedit: Damn, they caught me.  



 

Edited 7 hours ago by Sven_

[Hurlshort]

I decided it was time to set aside my Battle Brothers play through and get ready for Avowed. So I re-upped my Gamepass account for $11.99. Then I splurged on the $25 pre-order so I can play it in a few days. It was still a lot cheaper that the $70-90 on Steam.

But now that I have the Gamepass, I'm thinking I might give Indy a try. I downloaded the massive game overnight, so we'll see if I have any time to play it before Avowed drops.

Edited 13 hours ago by Hurlshort

[majestic]

So, like, I just finished grinding out the last season journey objective, which for me was raising 10 Witchraft powers to level 20 (any given build in the game uses five, so that was a waste of time), only to find out that there no longer is an achievement (well, Feat of Strength, that is) for fully completing the season. The one that there is I got yesterday already, because it is only tied to fully finishing the last tier of the season journey.

So anyone playing Diablo 4 like @MrBrown and @Malcador - you don't need to bother with anything but fully finishing the Destroyer objectives if you want the Feat of Strength. The bitter irony of it is that I already had those finished before I passed Slayer - because those silly heads and altars were so hard to get prior to the recent larger patch. Googled a bit to see if I missed something, but nope, the change was apparently not communicated. Good job.

Good to know for future seasons though. Unless they reintroduce a second Feat of Strength without telling anyone. Le sigh.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

So, like, I just finished grinding out the last season journey objective, which for me was raising 10 Witchraft powers to level 20 (any given build in the game uses five, so that was a waste of time), only to find out that there no longer is an achievement (well, Feat of Strength, that is) for fully completing the season. The one that there is I got yesterday already, because it is only tied to fully finishing the last tier of the season journey.

So anyone playing Diablo 4 like @MrBrown and @Malcador - you don't need to bother with anything but fully finishing the Destroyer objectives if you want the Feat of Strength. The bitter irony of it is that I already had those finished before I passed Slayer - because those silly heads and altars were so hard to get prior to the recent larger patch. Googled a bit to see if I missed something, but nope, the change was apparently not communicated. Good job.

Good to know for future seasons though. Unless they reintroduce a second Feat of Strength without telling anyone. Le sigh.

Do you have fun while playing Diablo 4?

[Serrano]

19 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Yes I found PoE2 improved on almost every level and PoE1 was a great game 

I particularly liked the open-world design of PoE2 and the whole sailing  mechanics 

And great party members to interact with, my favourite being  Xoti with her cute Southern accent 

 

My early thoughts are that Deadfire feels like Neverwinter Nights 2 and it's expansions in the Infinity Engine, in a really good way. I noticed that there are Critical Role portraits and voicepacks, I wonder if the popularity of shows like that and LA by Night had anything to do with Obsidian going so heavily for that pen & paper vibe with all the skill checks and little details like everyone reacting to you being a godlike. I think that's amazing by the way and I'm all for it, but it's crazy to think how much effort that must have taken, they went way above and beyond anything I've seen before in an RPG. It's super impressive to see how much work and talent Obsidian poured into Deadfire.

I've made it to Neketaka and I'm overwhelmed and intimidated by the size of the city, let alone the rest of the game. I have a list of all the companions and sidekicks and where to recruit them, so I'm just ticking those off initially, so far they all seem like an interesting bunch. Did Obsidian say why they reduced the party size to 5? I'd guess it's because it's easier to balance the roleplaying side of things but for combat it's a bit like losing a limb.

[Sven_]

Really curious about performance benchmarks re: Avowed. Requirements aren't ultra steep, but a good notch above Outer Worlds prior. Nowadays you can't tell anymore what those requirements are for anyway unless specifically stated (which Obsidian don't do). 720p/30fps? 4K/144 fps? Upscaled? Native? With FrameGen or without? And even then..... I mean, Stalker 2 obviously runs worse than "advertised". Whereas KCD2 runs massively better, with even a GTX 1060 still able to churn out 50-60ish FPS in 1080P native, rather than the 30fps that was advertised (on lower settings, mind). I wish there were more projects like this, btw: Taking established tech that may not be the absolute most cutting edge anymore (OH NO! NO HARDWARE BASED RAYTRACING IN THIS ONE!). But that by now is understood and mastered by a dev team. That's how some decent and optimized sequels got made: Underworld 2, Thief 2, Shock 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Pillars 2, Police Academy 2 (no wait!)...
 

1 hour ago, Serrano said:

Did Obsidian say why they reduced the party size to 5? I'd guess it's because it's easier to balance the roleplaying side of things but for combat it's a bit like losing a limb.

It being easier to follow and manage, mainly. Unlike Owlcat, Obsidian seems to have realized that the Infinity Engine was, after all, an (A)D&D 2e game affair. That means only mages had a bigger arsenal of tools at their disposal. Whereas in newer systems, even fighters tend to be kinda non-mages that throw non-spells left and right (28:20 in).   
 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Sven_

[BruceVC]

12 hours ago, Sven_ said:

My playthrough of KCD2 turns more and more into the REAL THIAF 4. 

First, I assassinated another bunch of bad guys in their camp one by one with a stab of the knife. Then I stole something valuable from the landlady of the tavern at night -- she just wouldn't give it to me. Whilst I was at it, I decided to play a prank on her and also stole all of her clothes. Now she's actually REALLY running around in her nightgown all day, barefoot serving customers. 

This game. 

KCD2 sounds amazing,  I can only imagine how much more fun its going to be once we see the mods that get created 

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Serrano said:

My early thoughts are that Deadfire feels like Neverwinter Nights 2 and it's expansions in the Infinity Engine, in a really good way. I noticed that there are Critical Role portraits and voicepacks, I wonder if the popularity of shows like that and LA by Night had anything to do with Obsidian going so heavily for that pen & paper vibe with all the skill checks and little details like everyone reacting to you being a godlike. I think that's amazing by the way and I'm all for it, but it's crazy to think how much effort that must have taken, they went way above and beyond anything I've seen before in an RPG. It's super impressive to see how much work and talent Obsidian poured into Deadfire.

I've made it to Neketaka and I'm overwhelmed and intimidated by the size of the city, let alone the rest of the game. I have a list of all the companions and sidekicks and where to recruit them, so I'm just ticking those off initially, so far they all seem like an interesting bunch. Did Obsidian say why they reduced the party size to 5? I'd guess it's because it's easier to balance the roleplaying side of things but for combat it's a bit like losing a limb.

I ended up loading a mod that increased my party size to 6, I like 6 people in my party 

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/288?tab=description

 

[majestic]

7 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Do you have fun while playing Diablo 4?

Surpsingly enough, yes. With some exceptions like the tempering system (tempering is great, the RNG of it that can destroy equipment worth a lot, well, not so much), the core gameplay and "endgame" of Diablo 4 are pretty solid, the best the game series and ARPGs are outside of Diablo 2 (and possibly Grim Dawn), but the seasonal mechanics are lacking, more often than not. I just recently learned that there's an odd and an even team at Blizzard working on seaons in parallel, which explains a lot. The odd team is clearly worse at creating fun seasons than the even one, as all the really good seasons were even numbered. The current one is season seven.

That I can't stop myself from grinding out the seasonal objectives because they used to have a hidden achievement, well, that's hardly the fault of the game.