What are you playing right now?

[GhostofAnakin]

Yup. That was pretty much the same experience I had. Shame, the setting had tons of potential but now the game is simply dragged down by bad gameplay and a sub par story.

 

 

Downloading Sea of Thieves. Gotta see what the fuss is all about and if It is possible to play it without a headset.

 

At the very least, there should have been a better counter system in place.  I don't know who designed that combat system, but I hope whoever it was isn't in charge for the next installment.

[Katphood]

Next Assassin's Creed game?

 

AC: Fiji Islands!

[Keyrock]

I'm up to HR 34 in MHW now.  I just did a quest where I had to hunt 2 Bazelgeuses at the same time.  As you can imagine, that was mighty chaotic.  Bazelgeuse is a party crasher, his modus operandi is dropping in unannounced while you fight another large monster, and it doesn't make an exception for one of its brethren, so I had to scrap with both at the same time a decent chunk of the time.  I managed to use this to my advantage several times by finding a place to stay out of the way and letting them scrap.  One of them was clearly stronger than the other and did a good bit of damage to the weaker one on my behalf, which helped me to finish off the weaker one quickly to narrow it down to a one on one fight.  The battle with the stronger one was pretty rough and lengthy, but I did get it done with just over 5 minutes left on the timer.

 

I'm looking forward to the next time the Xeno' jiiva quest becomes available again (it pops up periodically).  I've killed Xeno 4 times already, but I still need one more tail from its carcass to be able to craft a pretty dang sweet hammer.  I already have the highest physical damage hammer in the game, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best (there is no single best weapon for all occasions, it matters what monster(s) you are facing).  The hammer I'm trying to craft, Xeno Maph'agarna, has fairly low physical damage for a tier 8 hammer, but it has decent dragon element damage and elder dragon seal (unfortunately low level seal).  More importantly, it has 2 tier 3 decoration slots, which will let me boost it quite a bit in the future (once I actually get tier 3 decorations  ).  As a bonus, it also has 15% affinity (chance to critical) and a really high sharpness gauge.  I need to eventually make a really strong hammer for each of the elements.  I already have a really strong poison hammer and a really strong blast hammer, plus a decent sleep hammer.  I'm kinda lacking in the other elements.

[Drowsy Emperor]

I've finally gotten around to playing Pillars of Eternity.

 

It reminds me so much of Baldur's Gate. So, needless to say, I'm enjoying it. 

 

One improvement for the future is definitely the color palette, and better solutions for rendering 3D objects in isometric view from larger distances. Environments have too many analogous colors. Characters tend to look like a jumble of details when you zoom out. That's the price of going for 'realism', which I don't think is easy to successfully combine with tiny models.

 

I think the solution is to go for a stylized look from the outset. Just not the World of Warcraft/Torchlight/Orcs Must Die style because far too many games have used it.

 

Don't get me wrong,  PoE is pretty, but some of the imagery has a very pre-rendered environment look from the late 90's, which were, as a rule, drab. There has to be a more vibrant way of doing it.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Rosbjerg]

I can see why you don't like it, but the cel-shading type graphics from Torchlight, Warcraft and Borderlands have really grown on me - mostly because it scales so well over time - even older games can look very good, as the resolution increases.

 

The problem with traditional graphics are that they generally age really fast - making it hard to play games just 10-15 years old, as they UI scales horribly and models look pixelated.

[Keyrock]

The Deviljho update for MHW released today and it just finished downloading for me.     Now, I just have to wait until after work to actually play it and hunt the new monster. 

[Drowsy Emperor]

I can see why you don't like it, but the cel-shading type graphics from Torchlight, Warcraft and Borderlands have really grown on me - mostly because it scales so well over time - even older games can look very good, as the resolution increases.

 

The problem with traditional graphics are that they generally age really fast - making it hard to play games just 10-15 years old, as they UI scales horribly and models look pixelated.

 

I don't dislike them, I was all for it, just advocating a different style, within the same type of 'comic' graphics - as in, not realistic. WoW and Torchlight is just one way of doing comic style graphics, even if it is tremendously successful. 

[Katphood]

Finished Sunset Overdrive. 

 

what. a. game.

 

So what's so cool about it? Over the top action, fun arsenal of weapons, weird surreal humor, the main character is funny and has many cool lines, you get to customize your character with lots of weird clothing, beautiful graphics and art direction, superb soundtrack and most importantly: it's fun!

[Majek]

Finally caved in and bought Nintendo Switch ... i don't dare to unpack it though. :D

 

Playing Dead Cells, having a blast. I'm not progressing far so i should start getting better not getting hit. Maybe playing on the controller will help.

[ShadySands]

Firing up a new game of CK2 with the latest CK2+ mod

[GhostofAnakin]

Still pushing through AC Origins.  So many random characters showing up that know Bayek, yet I have no clue who they are or why I should care about them.

[Katphood]

Decided not to play Sea of Thieves for now because I have no one to play it with me on the Xbox One. 

 

Instead I decided to go for Halo: The Masterchief Collection. Great stuff, playing the first game is still fun but man, I had totally forgotten that this game had no iron sights. Pushing the select button on the gamepad instantly changes the upgraded visuals to the old OG Xbox graphics which is a nice thing to have around.  

[Drowsy Emperor]

I'm still playing PoE.

 

I just got the stronghold. So far the story, quests and characters have been interesting, even if a bit on the mundane side. Regardless, the exploration is a lot of fun. It is really like Baldur's Gate 1 with some of the features of the sequel so far.

 

I'm playing a cipher. So far he seems okay, it's possible that I just don't know how to build him well. If I want to use his abilities I need him to rack up the Focus points and the only way I found that to be viable is to give him a ranged weapon and initiate combat with the character (sneak attack crossbow bolt to the head). Otherwise I would hardly have the opportunity to use more than one or two spells per encounter.

 

The problem is, if you favor the attributes that make his abilities better (Intelligence), he's far too squishy for close quarters combat, and if you make him a combat character, his abilities won't be as powerful, to say nothing of the fact that classes such as Fighter simply do it better. So I'm a bit confused as to how to play the class efficiently.  

Edited March 23, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Fenixp]

I just got the stronghold. So far the story, quests and characters have been interesting, even if a bit on the mundane side. Regardless, the exploration is a lot of fun. It is really like Baldur's Gate 1 with some of the features of the sequel so far.

That's what I enjoyed about Pillars the most I think. My biggest disappointment with BG2 was that I wasn't particularly fond of what later became the Bioware formula - its ditching of semi-open world for locations ties to quests and stories.

 

Pillars just does what BG1 did, and in my opinion it does it quite a bit better. Not much of an achievement considering BG1's age, enough to make PoE my GOTY of 2015 tho.

 

The problem is, if you favor the attributes that make his abilities better (Intelligence), he's far too squishy for close quarters combat, and if you make him a combat character, his abilities won't be as powerful, to say nothing of the fact that classes such as Fighter simply do it better. So I'm a bit confused as to how to play the class efficiently.

Don't forget that Might influence all damage and healing your character causes - it'll affect damage of directly damaging spells, healing strength of directly healing spells, but also damage caused by ranged weapons.

 

Intellect 'only' makes abilities with time of effect last longer - making them more powerful in the process, yes. And some of the most powerful abilities Cipher has are duration-based, so it's still a tradeoff. Nonetheless, good thing to keep in mind.

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

I just got the stronghold. So far the story, quests and characters have been interesting, even if a bit on the mundane side. Regardless, the exploration is a lot of fun. It is really like Baldur's Gate 1 with some of the features of the sequel so far.

That's what I enjoyed about Pillars the most I think. My biggest disappointment with BG2 was that I wasn't particularly fond of what later became the Bioware formula - its ditching of semi-open world for locations ties to quests and stories.

 

Pillars just does what BG1 did, and in my opinion it does it quite a bit better. Not much of an achievement considering BG1's age, enough to make PoE my GOTY of 2015 tho.

 

The problem is, if you favor the attributes that make his abilities better (Intelligence), he's far too squishy for close quarters combat, and if you make him a combat character, his abilities won't be as powerful, to say nothing of the fact that classes such as Fighter simply do it better. So I'm a bit confused as to how to play the class efficiently.

Don't forget that Might influence all damage and healing your character causes - it'll affect damage of directly damaging spells, healing strength of directly healing spells, but also damage caused by ranged weapons.

 

Intellect 'only' makes abilities with time of effect last longer - making them more powerful in the process, yes. And some of the most powerful abilities Cipher has are duration-based, so it's still a tradeoff. Nonetheless, good thing to keep in mind.

 

 

BGII had a semi-open world, it was just predominantly the Athkatla urban sprawl as opposed to wilderness. Of course, to make the city feel alive they it ate up a lot of the best quest content of the game. From the point of the developers I think it made sense at the time, as the story matured from a low-key DnD adventure to a high-power setting. Having high powered characters trudging through the meadows, and killing kobolds just wouldn't do. Also they could reuse the assets and focus on putting more story and quest content in the city, which was, on the whole, much more memorable than the wilderness of BG1. 

 

Anyway, I like both approaches, particularly since it's all part of a single,more or less continuous, narrative. If you look at it as a whole, you eventually get the best of everything. 

[melkathi]

Decided to try and to the achievements in Defiance to unlock content in Defiance 2050 when they re-launch the franchise in the new game.

Now I need to kill 2500 of each enemy type.

Maybe I should re-evaluate my decision.

[Katphood]

Had to stop playing Prey. :/

 

Story doesn't pick up, the enemies are getting more tough and for some reason, I can't craft enough ammo anymore. Maybe I'll try playing it later but so far it has been a very grindy and clunky experience. I love how Talos I is built. Each place is crafted with much thought and care but reading through numerous emails is not my thing and enemies are sometimes tougher than they should be. 

[HoonDing]

"BGII had a semi-open world, it was just predominantly the Athkatla urban sprawl as opposed to wilderness. Of course, to make the city feel alive they it ate up a lot of the best quest content of the game. From the point of the developers I think it made sense at the time, as the story matured from a low-key DnD adventure to a high-power setting. Having high powered characters trudging through the meadows, and killing kobolds just wouldn't do. Also they could reuse the assets and focus on putting more story and quest content in the city, which was, on the whole, much more memorable than the wilderness of BG1. 

 

Anyway, I like both approaches, particularly since it's all part of a single,more or less continuous, narrative. If you look at it as a whole, you eventually get the best of everything."

 

did they really need to put a lich in every closet though

[majestic]

Got the No Khan Do achievement in my current Stellaris game in the most underwhelming and hilarious way possible. The part of the galaxy where my empire is still had a small patch of utterly unexplored systems beyond a neighbouring empire that my federation "liberated" a while ago. The small, unexplored patch was bordered by a marauder empire on one and a fallen empire on the other end.

 

Sometime during the mid 2300s I got the message that the Great Khan unified the tribes of a marauder empire that I never heard of. It was right in the middle of the unknown regions. The Great Khan was, uhm, stuck between hostile marauders and a fallen empire and promptly proceeded to get his entire fleet trashed, effectively killing the first marauders and his own in one fell swoop.

 

'Twas easy pickings from there.

[SonicMage117]

Replaying Hollow Knight, this time going after the sub-sub quests and getting all items. If I remember correctly, the new expansion is around the corner and it's going to add more than what's already in the game....

 

And I thought the game was already open enough

[Drowsy Emperor]

"BGII had a semi-open world, it was just predominantly the Athkatla urban sprawl as opposed to wilderness. Of course, to make the city feel alive they it ate up a lot of the best quest content of the game. From the point of the developers I think it made sense at the time, as the story matured from a low-key DnD adventure to a high-power setting. Having high powered characters trudging through the meadows, and killing kobolds just wouldn't do. Also they could reuse the assets and focus on putting more story and quest content in the city, which was, on the whole, much more memorable than the wilderness of BG1. 

 

Anyway, I like both approaches, particularly since it's all part of a single,more or less continuous, narrative. If you look at it as a whole, you eventually get the best of everything."

 

did they really need to put a lich in every closet though

 

Aaaand, behind random door in a slum, meteor shower.

 

/ragequit

[GhostofAnakin]

Ran into my first semi-game breaking bug in AC Origins.  I had to assassinate a fort captain to complete a quest, but the captain somehow got stuck "under" the floor and wouldn't come out.  So I had to re-start the entire quest in order to finish it.

[marelooke]

 

 

I'm 40 hours into Fallout 4 and (to my mild shame) I'm having a good time.  I just wish they could have jettisoned that utterly incompetent (weird cg potato) baby plot thread...or at the very least get a truly capable writer to make it work.

 

In fact if the game could have had just a handful of genuinely deep and interesting characters I'd find it easier to ignore the way they tore the heart out of the franchise.  As it stands I'm trying to be forgiving and take the game on it's own merits and I have to admit that it does the Bethesda formula very well. 

 

After getting past my initial outrage I'm starting to see it as the Oblivion of the Fallout franchise.

 

Yes, at least the companion quality seems to be going up each game (hope I didn't jinx it now), Nick Valentine is pretty nice and he easily gets the most screen time out of all of them with the ties into Far-Harbor. If they'd just fix the main story thing and deepen out the companion backgrounds more that's all I want. Because honestly, all most (or maybe I'm the odd one out *cough*) people want from a TES game is an excuse to roam around, trying to tell a deep and engaging overarching story in an open world setting seems a bit beyond Bethesda.

They should have just stopped at the cryogenically frozen part, ditched the "kidnapped child" bollocks and played the "fish out of water" element out a bit more (more references to the old world, more banter with Ghouls, maybe run into some (more) acquaintances from before the war that got Ghoulified (and are not feral..), etc. Try to keep the initial "what the hell hapened to the world" vibe from the start going.

 

Other than that, it's mostly fixing all the broken stuff in the game. And boy, is there a lot to fix, with the loading times in certain areas (central Boston mostly) and the utterly broken settler and companion behaviour kind of being the top of my list currently (and their treatment of mods, of course, but that's not really a technical issue...).

 

 

Yeah the companions are pretty decent for a Bethesda game.  Right now I'm wandering around with Deacon and he's made me chuckle.  I especially like the way his costume changes tend to match the environment, baseball gear for Diamond City and a lab coat around Cabot House.

 

Loading speeds are (insanely...) tied to vsync, Load Accelerator  cuts down those two minute monsters to 15 seconds, it's essential.

 

 

Thanks for pointing that mod out to me, huge QoL improvement.

 

I was in fact aware of the vsync issue (which is pretty ridiculous, really) and I tried turning it off entirely at some point, resulting in the lockpicking minigame actually becoming challenging Needless to say, I turned vsync back on given the huge amount of locks that need picking, I also didn't remember the difference in loading times being particularly noticeable, but it's very well possible I didn't test it long enough.

 

One weird thing I encountered though is that the first time I loaded a save after setting up that mod the loading times were absolutely insane (like almost 10 minutes or so, I literally went to make coffee and very nearly alt+F4'd when I got back), after that they were actually better than before and I've not yet seen the crazy long thing come back. 

 

Fifteen seconds, however, I'm not getting... I'd say they went from "absolutely unacceptable" to merely "bad" in busy areas (eg. downtown and huge settlements like Vault 88). I imagine that an SSD could bring them down even further though.

 

 

As to my actual game. I started a new character in Fallout 4 a while ago. Trying to give it a bit more of a RP spin, my character is less braindead than the one Bethesda provides and realizes that the chances her son is still alive after all this time are extremely slim and has settled for figuring out what happened and eventually getting revenge if such a thing makes sense at that point (as in: chances that the perpetrators are pushing up daisies by now is also pretty big). This kind of takes off the pressure of the main quest in my mind.

I also limited my usual urge to just explore everything by saying that I will only go to places I'm sent to through (radiant) quests or that I get told about. Exploring outside areas along my route is OK too as long as doing so makes sense.

I also go everywhere on foot, but to avoid making things too tedious I stipulated that it should be from a settlement (major hubs like Goodneighbor and Diamond City qualify as well, though I haven't yet used those in practice).

 

One not so RP thing I did though was making a beeline for Vault 88 as soon as possible as I intended to make that my main settlement this time around. Clearing that place out at lvl10 was interesting, especially the Mirelurk Queen was a pain (and ammo sink), the Legendary Alpha Deathclaw was less of an issue since I could just plunk down a bunch of turrets there...

 

I'm now lvl54 (or so) and I've yet to get really started on most major questlines. While I ran into Danse while helping the Minutement the BoS has not yet arrived in the Commonwealth. I searched out the Railroad based on a rumor in Diamond City (I half expected not to deal with them, but Bethesda really doesn't want you to miss any content). Currently I've picked up Piper and Cait (while the Combat Zone was mentioned by NPCs it didn't really make much sense for my character to seek them out, so I kinda sinned and metagamed a bit there, though I did pass it on the way to some Minutemen radiant quest and got attacked, so I'll use that as my defense...), plus the companions that are hard to miss: Codsworth, Preston and Dogmeat. I also rescued Nick but I haven't gone back to his office yet.

 

I'm considering doing Nuka-World next and then maybe pushing forward the main quests a bit more after that.

 

One funny result of this way of playing was that most of the power armours I found (except for the very first one) ended up being higher tier ones.

Edited March 24, 2018 by marelooke

[Bartimaeus]

"BGII had a semi-open world, it was just predominantly the Athkatla urban sprawl as opposed to wilderness. Of course, to make the city feel alive they it ate up a lot of the best quest content of the game. From the point of the developers I think it made sense at the time, as the story matured from a low-key DnD adventure to a high-power setting. Having high powered characters trudging through the meadows, and killing kobolds just wouldn't do. Also they could reuse the assets and focus on putting more story and quest content in the city, which was, on the whole, much more memorable than the wilderness of BG1. 

 

Anyway, I like both approaches, particularly since it's all part of a single,more or less continuous, narrative. If you look at it as a whole, you eventually get the best of everything."

 

did they really need to put a lich in every closet though

Let's see if I can remember them all...one behind the painting in the inn at the Gates district, the Twisted Rune encounter in the random door in the Bridge district that I think has a Lich (or something equivalent to one), the Docks house with Kangaxx in it, the Bridge house with a Kangaxx guardian in it, the Sewers Kangaxx guardian...I think there's also a couple of spots that a Lich can spawn if you're high level enough, like the Temple of Amaunator (where you fight the Shade Lord) and the undead section of the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, too.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Eventually we traded in the liches for bisexual minotaurs, and the rest, as they say, is history.