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Longes
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Post by Longes »

Voss wrote:So... the new WW put a fanfiction app on steam with an eye-gouging color backgrounds
Vampire's not that bad - it's just drawings of varying quality. Mage is headache inducing though, especially when you enter the Quiet segments and the game decides that moving green and red text around is the best thing to do.
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Post by Korwin »

Bloodbowl 2 is (or at least was yesterday) on sale -75%.

Edit: On Steam
Last edited by Korwin on Thu Feb 23, 2017 7:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
Red_Rob wrote: I mean, I'm pretty sure the Mayans had a prophecy about what would happen if Frank and PL ever agreed on something. PL will argue with Frank that the sky is blue or grass is green, so when they both separately piss on your idea that is definitely something to think about.
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Post by Maxus »

Nioh get

I did the beta. If you did it, too, you get a couple of helmets themed after the bosses of the beta missions

For some reason, the actual game is a lot easier (we'll see if I say that upon reaching the Bat Bitch). But that might also have something to do with me figuring out something simple and small and helpful.
Snipe the fools.

If you see a group of enemies, start the fight by taking one out with a headshot, then go to your melee weapons. Also, arrows are quiet and all, but matchlock shots will explode a samurai's head, helmet or no. I only died on the first mission once, thanks to an oni getting dancey on me and comboing me up before I could heal right, and it got much easier getting from point A to point B if I stayed observant a put arrows in unprotected heads and bullets in protected ones.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by Whipstitch »

So, uh, since Pillars of Eternity 2 was successfully crowdfunded I decided to take a peek at some of the Q&A stuff they did on about the project and discovered this exchange:
Question: People are worried about unviable builds now that there are so many combinations of multiclasses/subclasses.

Answer from MikeyDowling: "I totally understand your concern. What we've done is a couple of things - (1) We merged our universal game data editor into the engine (we didn't have time to do this on Eternity 1), that let's the designers balance things much more quickly, 2) we are starting with a system we already know, we aren't creating it and balancing it at the same time, and 3) We were incredibly lucky to have Dave Williams join the project - he's been a designer in both computer and board games, and was the creator of the Legend of the Five Rings card game. He's incredibly good with big complicated systems."
Image
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Stahlseele
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Post by Stahlseele »

Stellaris Utopia Release Date Announced via Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmvGlBFaFEU
April 6th/7th 2017
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Sigil »

I've been playing a LOT of For Honor (71 hours on steam, in addition to the 22 I had in the open beta), so I figured I would give a small update to my opinion on it in case anyone is still curious about it.

I love half of the game, the other half of it is, unequivocally, trash. All of the 4v4 modes (Elimination, Skirmish, and Dominion) are the trash ones, it's unfortunate that Ubisoft saw fit to make Dominion the premier mode. In these modes the gear that you can earn via in-game currency (that you can also buy for $$$) has not only cosmetic effects, but also mechanical effects that unbalance the game. You will not be matchmade against players of similar gear levels, nor will you be matchmade against players of similar playtime. You will be matched against whoever it feels like throwing you into a match with. Even if you also have max or near max gear scores, the styles of play that speccing your gear encourages simply aren't fun. The few times I've been seduced into playing these larger game modes with groups of friends I've left feeling like I got tricked into wasting my time, even when I won.

Duels (1v1) and Brawls (2v2) on the other hand are where I feel like the game shines. For honor plays like a fighting game with a relatively low skill floor, and with a decently high skill ceiling. I've played 2 classes enough to get very familiar with them (Warden and Conqueror) and enjoyed my time immensely. There are balance issues, and I have concerns as to whether Ubisoft will adequately address them, but this early into the games lifespan they've got me willing to just wait and see. Conqueror is by no means a top-ranked class in the meta, but I still have great fun playing it and can be successful in 1v1 matches.


The brawls have a sort of culture of their own, and it's worth mentioning even if it's not actually a game mechanic since I've been talking up brawls and you'll encounter most people playing this way if you decide that its your main method of play. The playerbase by and large agree that certain actions are 'honorable' or 'dishonorable'. Environmental kills are largely deemed dishonorable, unless your opponent has elected to fight you on, say, a narrow bridge or other trap-filled spot where its understood that someone is getting thrown to their doom. Ganging up on a player is also dishonorable, it's odd but generally agreed upon that 2v2 doesn't mean its a team mode, it's a sort of mini tournament. Players start of relatively far from their teammates, paired off against a single opponent (there's one map where this is not true), if you finish off your opponent first you're supposed to walk over and observe the other match. If your partner loses, you and the remaining opponent then proceed to 1v1. If any one person in the match breaks any of these rules it turns into a free for all in subsequent rounds, no holds barred. If you genuinely want '2v2' gameplay, you'll get some salt about dishonor. This can be annoying, I play with a friend sometimes that genuinely likes the clusterfuck of 2v2s. Announcing your intent to be 'dishonorable' ahead of time generally assuages this and everyone has a good time, and you can do this in text chat well before the match starts. You'll get some salt no matter what you do in any game mode, it is an online game, but I have had lots of positive encounters with people where all four of us opted to rematch repeatedly. I've trained a few scrubs how to dodge and punish conqueror's shield bashes that they felt were 'spam' and helped others better understand the warden's mixup vortex and what to do if you get caught in it.


Lastly, there are netcode issues. Sometimes you just fail to join a match. Sometimes you unceremoniously get dropped from a match you were in. I'd like to say I'm also giving Ubisoft the benefit of the doubt here, but based on how they handled Rainbow Six Siege, I'm not hopeful. The issues are pretty rare in Duel and Brawl, by virtue of just having less people playing (Ubisoft decided to try to pioneer mesh-networked multiplayer games with For Honor, so any person dropping out has the chance to cause instability), but I've found issues pretty frequent in the larger modes.

P.S. Just like this Post Script, the campaign was only an afterthought for me. I haven't played more than 1 mission in it. Being so familiar with the core mechanics of the game already, it didn't seem fun. If I was a new player learning the ropes it might have been alright. People seem to think it's pretty acceptable.
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Post by Shrapnel »

So, I have a question about the Nintendo Switch. The commercials show that you can take it out of the house and even to places like parks and shit. Does this mean it has the same portability of a Gameboy or 3DS? Like, could I bring it on the train and still play Breath of the Wild while I'm my way from Forest Hills to North Station? Or is Nintendo just once again raising my expectations?

Basically, can I use the Switch as a replacement for my 3DS in terms of portable, travel-ready video game systems?
Last edited by Shrapnel on Thu Mar 02, 2017 12:12 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Sigil
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Post by Sigil »

The answer is yes, you can take it on the go and play Breath of the Wild on the train, for 2.5 hours.
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Post by Shrapnel »

2.5 hours? Eh, good enough. Does it come with a portable charger?
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Voss
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Post by Voss »

Whipstitch wrote:So, uh, since Pillars of Eternity 2 was successfully crowdfunded I decided to take a peek at some of the Q&A stuff they did on about the project and discovered this exchange:
Question: People are worried about unviable builds now that there are so many combinations of multiclasses/subclasses.

Answer from MikeyDowling: "I totally understand your concern. What we've done is a couple of things - (1) We merged our universal game data editor into the engine (we didn't have time to do this on Eternity 1), that let's the designers balance things much more quickly, 2) we are starting with a system we already know, we aren't creating it and balancing it at the same time, and 3) We were incredibly lucky to have Dave Williams join the project - he's been a designer in both computer and board games, and was the creator of the Legend of the Five Rings card game. He's incredibly good with big complicated systems."
Yay for facepalms.

Point 2 is pretty fucked up as well, in that a 'system we already know' is more than a little disingenuous. Sawyer already talked about how they're shredding and rebuilding so much for their weird-ass approach to multi-classing,* so yeah, some abilities and spells will still be there, but they're rebuilding (again) base statistics and progression, what classes can do, and hanging 2 or 3 subclasses off of each class. For example, fighters have 'Discipline' as a power source, which isn't a thing at all in PoE1, so it's essentially a brand new class. It's really a 1st edition to 3rd edition D&D sort of jump in how the game functions.

*multiclassing is essentially bad math based.
https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?u ... 50#updates
Basically, multi-class characters are intended to be weaker (75-85%, whatever the fuck that means), and each level you get 3 points in the class that just got leveled and 1 virtual point in all other classes, which become real when you pick a level in a second class (and get 3 points on top of all your virtual points). And you get level appropriate abilities at certain break points (3/8/14/20/26/32)

So a 10th level fighter would have access to level 5 abilities (has 30 points, which isn't enough to get 6th level abilities), but an 8th level fighter/2nd level wizard would have 26 fighter points and 14 wizard points... enough to ALSO have 5th level fighter abilities and 3rd level wizard abilities on top. Which strikes me as 100% plus better if you're intelligent about dipping your second class. It won't be true at all levels, but...

given that a lot of the best mage and cipher spells in Pillars 1 were low leveled ones means that this system is built for exploiting the living shit out of it.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Shrapnel wrote:So, I have a question about the Nintendo Switch. The commercials show that you can take it out of the house and even to places like parks and shit. Does this mean it has the same portability of a Gameboy or 3DS? Like, could I bring it on the train and still play Breath of the Wild while I'm my way from Forest Hills to North Station? Or is Nintendo just once again raising my expectations?

Basically, can I use the Switch as a replacement for my 3DS in terms of portable, travel-ready video game systems?
The big difference, other than lower battery life, is that the graphics card is underclocked when its not docked. This is both because of power issues, and because the dock has a fan to aid heat dissipation, which you aren't taking with you. This means that some titles are likely to run slightly slower.
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Post by Sigil »

It doesn't come with a portable charger, but charging is done via usb-c, and any traditional portable charging battery with enough capacity/amperage should be compatible with it, though people have mentioned that their chargers can't keep up with intensive games like Breath of the Wild, which drain faster than their charger will charge. I'm pretty sure a more capable charger would alleviate this problem, but then the cost of a nice charging solution becomes a relevant factor.

@hyzmarca, it's notable that the native screen of the tablet is a 720p screen, and the docked mode outputs (by default) as 900p through hdmi. It turns out that Breath of the Wild actually gets substantially better framerates in portable mode due to to the lower resolution. Which is stupid as shit, but is nontheless true.

Someone on a reddit thread did the (simple, I'm lazy) math for me: "When docked: 50% increase in resolution but only 20% increase in clock speed."
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Post by Longes »

Nier Automata is the best game ever and everyone should play it. It's probably one of the best written games I've seen in quite some time.
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Post by Stahlseele »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqGrB0HX6Ok
Finally, i can play as a fanatical pruifier!
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Utopia is out.
I bought it for 20€.
And now they do a publisher weekend with massive discounts for most anything paradox on steam.
Including Utopia. Which is already 33% off.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by Archmage Joda »

So, I just got Dark Souls 3 (yes, I know, late to the party on that one, it just took til now for it to both be on sale and for me to have the spare capital to get it), and was wondering, what would be the best way for me to get started would be? Should I go simple melee dude for my first time, or would I be able to be, say, a Pyromancer and still succeed? Any advice for a newbie (you know, besides the oft memed "git gud")?
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Post by Longes »

Pyromancy can be used to augment any build, but for your first time I'd suggest just going sword and board - it's simple and fun.

Pyromancy scales with Intelligence and Faith, reaching soft cap at Int+Fai=80. You should of course take the Pyromancer class if you want to play as a Pyromancer. For a pure Pyro get Int 40, Faith 40, put everything else into endurance and vitality and use a long sword as your sidearm. For a magic knight take 20 out of one of your casting stats and move it to dex or strength.
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Post by Kaelik »

The games are better if you play as a melee fighter. They just are. You can be a pyromancer, but the honest truth is, that's just not going to be much fun.

You sort of have to stab things all the time anyway because the paths are just a lot longer than you have mana for.

And it's just more fun in DS, I think so at least.
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Longes
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Post by Longes »

Kaelik wrote:The games are better if you play as a melee fighter. They just are. You can be a pyromancer, but the honest truth is, that's just not going to be much fun.

You sort of have to stab things all the time anyway because the paths are just a lot longer than you have mana for.

And it's just more fun in DS, I think so at least.
I agree, though I think a case can be made for magic knight builds. Off-hand the implement and focus on dodging and using buffs with occasional offensive spell. Or using a staff as a secondary weapon with Faron's Flashsword.
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Post by Kaelik »

Longes wrote:
Kaelik wrote:The games are better if you play as a melee fighter. They just are. You can be a pyromancer, but the honest truth is, that's just not going to be much fun.

You sort of have to stab things all the time anyway because the paths are just a lot longer than you have mana for.

And it's just more fun in DS, I think so at least.
I agree, though I think a case can be made for magic knight builds. Off-hand the implement and focus on dodging and using buffs with occasional offensive spell. Or using a staff as a secondary weapon with Faron's Flashsword.
Indeed, I think that's a reasonable thing to be, so long as your primary focus is killing things with your regenerating stamina.

At a certain point you get a ring that regens magic when you "critical" things, I've actually built a character that wears that, and parry farms to regen magic for one run, but it's just not viable usually.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Archmage Joda
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Post by Archmage Joda »

So basically, I should be a sword and board fighter, and not bother with/worry about magic (be it sorcery, miracles, or pyromancy), at least until I really know what I'm doing.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

Archmage Joda wrote:So basically, I should be a sword and board fighter, and not bother with/worry about magic (be it sorcery, miracles, or pyromancy), at least until I really know what I'm doing.
Sssort of. Your starting class is just that--your start. Being a Pyromancer has early applications--some of the early bosses and superenemies are weak to fire. I personally use pyromancy along with a sword-and-board build. Well, on my main. My other major character is the Battlepope (Str/Faith build, wearing the Archdeacon's set, and using a big hammer).

I'd say Pyromancer or a melee class as starting, be on the lookout for equipment upgrades. When you find Lothric Knights--assholes in full armor and red surcoasts with sword-and-board or spear-and-bigass-shield, can't miss 'em--fight them for souls and practice and they'll also drop goodies like upgrade materials or gear pieces, every now and then.

If you've got the chops, there's a hostile NPC you can fight to get a katana; katanas will cause a bleed status effect--enough hits in enough time will take off a percentage of max enemy health.

What platform are you on, by the by?
Last edited by Maxus on Sat Apr 08, 2017 11:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by Archmage Joda »

I have DS3 on Steam. It was a midweek sale where it was half off, and was on my wishlist, so I took the opportunity. Also, would controller or mouse + keyboard be easier to play with?
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I gave Fallout New Vegas a try again. Once I got it stable and managed to get going I'm enjoying it. I'm a little disappointed, I've been stealing anything that's not nailed down and I still have very high alignment, It's like you're expected to be a big damn hero then come back and steal anything that's not nailed down and can't be forcibly pried up or broken into.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Yeah, you pretty much need to clean out several locations of all innocent life before you get any sort of bad reputation. Even joining the Legion is no automatic shoot on sight thing.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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