What are you playing right now?

[Bartimaeus]

There, killed Asylum Demon with a sword hilt. YOU'LL NEVER HUMILIATE ME AGAIN, SUCKER!

 

And I got a useless hammer for it!

Yeah, it's easier to just take the black firebomb starting gift and throw a few of them at him.

[Keyrock]

Well, looks like it's another break from Hard West for me.  For me, the 1.2 patch has made the game significantly worse.  The shadow flickering is still there, the disappearing UI problem persists, more importantly, the game still crashes, more often than before.  I just had the game crash at the end of a battle, just before it saved so that I have to go through the battle again.  I started the game up again and it crashed before I even loaded the game.  I started it up again, loaded the last checkpoint (before the battle), did the battle again, and it crashed in the same spot, right before loading.  It's really frustrating and I'm not willing to deal with the frustration.  Time to shelve this for several weeks, if not longer.

[marelooke]

Completed the second storyline mission of Act I of the Sisters campaign in Mordheim. Took me about 2 hours and ended with "losing" a warrior due to a Skull Fracture (makes them basically useless so she got fired), it seems helmets don' t quite protect against those, alas. The way she got it was really annoying too: respawns.

 

For those who aren't melkathi : in story missions the devs thought it would be great to add respawns after a certain point so as to avoid the drag where all you are doing is waiting for the turn to end while you slowly make your way to your objectives once all the baddies have been crushed. At least I assume that's the reasoning. The actual result is that now you need to spend turns on combat and can't as easily split up your warband (since there will be hostiles) so things take even longer...

 

Anyway, back to the Skull Fracture, what had happened is that one of my sisters took some pretty nasty damage, so I moved her to a safe spot (together with some other units to protect her) while the rest of the warband handled the swatting of respawns and the finding of mission objectives. So then the game decided to spawn a ranged unit on the building next to said heavily wounded sister, who got to take his turn before her... So yeah, that sucked Thankfully she was only rank 2 so not that big of a deal, just a pretty annoying way to have it happen.

 

Still having great fun with the game (obviously, or I wouldn't be sinking this much time in it, even with the loading times ). Not quite sure how I feel about storyline missions though. On the one hand they break the normal flow a bit and they generally seem to use special maps too (change of scenery is always nice) but the respawns and the collecting of objectives seems to often turn them into a bit of a drag once the initial enemies have been defeated. Then again, I've only played two of them so far (not sure how many there even are per Act) so I'm reserving judgement until at least the end of Act I.

[melkathi]

The thought behind respawns was exactly as you suspected. At first story missions didn't have the respawns and people were complaining about the tedious running up and down the map searching for quest items etc. The devs failed to realize that in a game with hardly any healing, the respawns would only make the tediousness worse.

For at least two missions the respawns are now being removed again next patch. Because when those annoying respawns happen to be Damonettes (ignore parry, high crit chance, high armour penetration, spell that causes stupidity), then those missions cease being tedious and annoying, and become truly messed up.

 

And yeah, the story missions have their own set of maps. Though maps are shared between the stories of the different warbands.

 

If you ever get stupidity on an important warrior, get Guidance on someone else.

 

I currently seem to mostly get Amnesia on my injury rolls. Trying to level people up, but they keep forgetting what they were just doing.

[Fenixp]

Yeah, it's easier to just take the black firebomb starting gift and throw a few of them at him.

I know.

 

You're a wuss.

[Bartimaeus]

As the guy that's beaten the game on NG7 at SL1 with the sole exception of Four Kings (mostly because I don't feel like mastering the art of fighting three to four of them at once), clearly.

[Fenixp]

I bet you talked Gwyn to death by repeatedly talking of dangers of firebombs. He jumped on his sword rather than to be listening to you.

 

I, on the other hand, am currently doing a heroic Shield + Spear + Bow playtrough. There ain't a more difficult way to play Dark Souls.

[Bartimaeus]

On NG1? Hah, yeah, let me know when you switch back to beating bosses with that sword hilt.

[Majek]

 

Useless at the start maybe, can make a pretty fun build later.

Not as long as Great Club exists - it's got only slightly lower damage but scales better, not to mention it being lighter and not having such insane strength requirements

 

I said fun not OP.

[Humanoid]

I keep getting annoyed by stupidly designed mechanics in Darkest Dungeon, and the inability, other than for the Corpses and Heart Attack mechanics, to toggle them. But since we've long established that I'm an unapologetic cheating bastard, I'm happy to dive right into the game's plain text files to adjust the rules to my liking. Yeah, the net effect is an easier game, but I don't mind that at all, especially as the latest patch released a few days ago made it all-around harder.

 

I like how easily tweakable just about everything is. On the other hand, I suspect all of these plain-text files being read in contributes to the game's surprisingly slow load times.

 

The actual tweaks under the spoiler tag:

 

 

 

Hunger: Hunger is a dumb mechanic. It's actually implemented as a trap, just that instead of the trap causing damage or something traditional like that, it triggers the hunger event which forces you to consume food. Fix: In map_generator.darkest,  lines that read .hallway_hunger x y indicate the number of that type of tile in a given dungeon, where x is the minimum number of hunger traps on a given map, and y is the maximum. Setting it to 0 0 gives obvious results. (Apparently it's still possible to spawn hunger tiles when backtracking, as the respawning of traps on previously explored tiles is handled by a different bit of code)

 

Quest items: These things don't stack. If you need to collect three identical McGuffins from a dungeon, then they each consume an inventory slot. Worse yet, quests where you have to cleanse some McGuffins with some other McGuffins, which force you to have those same slots wasted from the very start. Fix: In inventory.darkest, the numbers to change should be fairly self-evident.

 

Level restrictions: Higher level heroes will refuse to go into dungeons that are too low level for them. I understand the reasoning for this as it can trivialise the beginner dungeons, but it's poorly implemented, often resulting in being locked out of quests altogether. I'm just removing the restriction altogether and go "honestman" with it - i.e. I'll take at least one level-appropriate hero into any given dungeon. Fix: in quest.json change the numbers at the bottom of the file like so (the comment is a bit useless, so not exactly clear what the numbers mean):

    "restriction":

    {

        "difficulty":

        {

            "comment": "This table restricts what level heroes can go on what level quest. ROWS are DIFFICULTY, COLs are QUEST LENGTH",            

            "resolve_level_threshold_table":

            [

                6,

                6,

                6,

                6,

                6,

                99,

                99

            ]



        }

    }

Abomination: This class is not permitted to be in a party with "religious" heroes, that is, Crusaders, Lepers and Vestals. While I can sort of see the narrative justification (which is wildly arbitrary anyway since they have no problems grouping with other "evil" classes), the gameplay effect is terrible and massively restricts the player's ability to plan out a viable party. One potential fix is by just massively increasing the maximum roster size (probably stage_coach.building.json) but I've chosen to just remove the restriction instead. Fix: In abomination.info.darkest remove the final line that reads incompatible_party_member: .id abomination_religion .hero_tag religious

 

 

Edited December 4, 2015 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

I'm playing Bound by Flame.  As with previous Spiders games, there are scant few open areas and maps consist of a bunch of winding corridors with liberal use of invisible walls.  The narrative and dialogue sounds like it was written by a 5th grader and the voice acting is mediocre (I guess it's a step up from the cringe in Mars: War Logs).  The most disappoint thing, though, is that my female char has no ass, like zero ass.  On the other hand, the combat is actually surprisingly good.  The targeting lock on is a bit iffy, but the actual swordplay works really well.  It's honest to goodness skill and timing based combat rather than mindless button mashing and, despite your character being limited to 2-hander, daggers, crossbow, and magic, you have a decent amount of different ways to approach combat depending on how you spec your character (I'm focusing on 2-hander and magic). 

 

With any luck, I'll be playing Xenoblade Chronicles X later today too. 

Edited December 4, 2015 by Keyrock

[HoonDing]

There's no point to playing a female in BbF, it's not an inclusive game.

 

You want to be male to be able to bang Edwen (and yes, you will want to).

[Malcador]

Ah yes, remembering the one pain in the ass in Caesar 3. The recruitment radius, means you can't evolve all residences.

 

Still not as irksome as 4 with the equites needing walls.

[Keyrock]

There's no point to playing a female in BbF, it's not an inclusive game.

 

You want to be male to be able to bang Edwen (and yes, you will want to).

But are there hunky studs for me to sex up, right? 

[Amentep]

 

There's no point to playing a female in BbF, it's not an inclusive game.

 

You want to be male to be able to bang Edwen (and yes, you will want to).

But are there hunky studs for me to sex up, right? 

 

 

Randval or Rhelmar, if you've met them.

[Keyrock]

 

 

There's no point to playing a female in BbF, it's not an inclusive game.

 

You want to be male to be able to bang Edwen (and yes, you will want to).

But are there hunky studs for me to sex up, right? 

 

 

Randval or Rhelmar, if you've met them.

 

I have.  Rhelmar is an elf, so he's out (yes, I am prejudiced).  So Randval it is.  I just defeated him in a duel, in fact.  Can I go full demon and evil and still sex him up, or will that screw up my plus relationship points with him?  I'm not sure how the sexy time works in this game yet.  Can I buy him presents, BioWare style?

[Amentep]

Can't say, didn't romance anyone in the one game I played.

 

Internet seems to indicate you can.  The internet also seems to imply you can romance both of them at once, though, so...not sure about that.

[Keyrock]

Can't say, didn't romance anyone in the one game I played.

 

Internet seems to indicate you can.  The internet also seems to imply you can romance both of them at once, though, so...not sure about that.

Sweet.  I'ma get my horny on in more ways than one. 

 

He seems like a noble guy, I wonder if I can corrupt him?  Maybe if I sex him up I can get him to come over to the dark side.  That would be awesome. 

Edited December 4, 2015 by Keyrock

[Fighter]

Playing Dreamfall Chapters. It's now full of ham-fisted sjw-isms every other conversation... One badguy sleezebag is a racist sexist atheist (or would be: hates the idea of gods and magic) who rants about female incompetency and yearns for a world built for man, preferably "Northern man" (yes he specifies). If you click on him Zoe says (jokingly), "I could kill this reactionary misogynist and no court would convict me, it would be justifiable homicide."

 

It's like they took all of tumblr and shoved it into one character interaction and made it as unsubtle as possible out of fear you wouldn't get it.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Fighter

[HoonDing]

I liked Book 4 a lot.

 

Enough TLJ pandering to make it enjoyable in spite of the terrible Kian parts.

[Fighter]

It's good to hear I'm somewhere in the beginning.

[HoonDing]

Remember the time when a lot of adventure games had young, spunky women as protagonists? As it is now, I just find them all incredibly annoying.

 

Not even sure a replay of TLJ would still hold up. Bitchy April in Dreamfall I can stomach.

 

Strange how Alice in Alice: Madness Returns is wholly different, then again she has class.

[Maedhros]

Finished Life is Weird. It's not without flaws, but all-in-all actually one of my best gaming experiences this year.

[Amentep]

 

Can't say, didn't romance anyone in the one game I played.

 

Internet seems to indicate you can.  The internet also seems to imply you can romance both of them at once, though, so...not sure about that.

Sweet.  I'ma get my horny on in more ways than one. 

 

He seems like a noble guy, I wonder if I can corrupt him?  Maybe if I sex him up I can get him to come over to the dark side.  That would be awesome. 

 

 

I really should play the game again.  It was fun.

[Keyrock]

I really should play the game again.  It was fun.

 

I may do multiple playthroughs to see how the choices change things.  I haven't had a meaningful choice yet, but I read that there are a number of them in the game that have real consequences.  I've been having a great time with it.  The combat is really fun.