Video Games

[Iduno]

Oh god. Morrowind. On the one hand, you can actually fly. On all the other hands, fucking cliffracers everywhere



~never forget, never forgive

I kind of miss the excesses of Daggerfall. I maybe want somewhere between Daggerfall and Morrowind. If you want to look into why spell creation systems (and to a lesser degree, most benefit/drawback systems) are such a pain for GMs, check out Daggerfall. We got up to some real horseshit with that system.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I don't have a problem with cliffracers. I am playing what is called a Nightblade by the game but a stealth archer by Skyrim standards and picked up bound bow very quickly, I drop them in one hit.

[maglag]

I don't have a problem with cliffracers. I am playing what is called a Nightblade by the game but a stealth archer by Skyrim standards and picked up bound bow very quickly, I drop them in one hit.

I remember that the thief chain quest in Skyrim led to joining a Nightblade organization with some sweet stealth gear and bow, so "stealthy archer"=Nightblade pretty much by Elder Scrolls standards.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Are there any good bows to look out for? My research seems to me that indicate that bows are not common and I might as well roll with my permanent bound bow I made with enchanting.

[Whipstitch]

Civ 5 complete is on sale again, as it always is. I'm still a civ 4 grognard in a lot of ways but with expansions civ 5 smacks around a lot of games you'll see in the same price range.

[Stahlseele]

Civ V is in my mind still very much superior to Civ VI.

[Whipstitch]

For about half my life now it's been my habit to wait until the sequel is about finished before finally adopting the current Civ game.

[RelentlessImp]

Random thoughts on what makes a good MMO (or game), utilizing PSO2 and Star Wars The Old Republic as examples. Visual clarity. In PSO2, the enemy attacks are well animated and almost all have some sort of wind-up to watch for, and nailing down the timing of dodging (and then doing more damage) forms a core part of the combat system. Additionally, situational awareness plays a key part, because aside from specific boss fights, it's never a 1-on-1 and you can get blindsided freely and smacked around. But once you learn a mission or fight, there's almost never a reason to take damage once you have timings down.

Contrast to TOR: SWTOR has basically zero indicators for attacks, leaving me to continually wonder how the fuck I died, why I took so much damage, or even how much damage I just took before hitting 0 health. When it comes to animations, damage happens, then the animation. If you're not watching the tiny cast bar above HP bars, which are situated at the bottom of the screen, right over the hotbars (all default UI setups use this, and the UI is not very customizable), you'll have no reason to know what just happened. And even then, not every fuck-you attack has a cast bar, or an indicator, or basically any visual cues as to how the actual fuck things are happening. There's also no feedback window so you can see what killed you, leaving you to massive amounts of 'What the fuck just happened'. TOR is a game where the UI, ability design, and the link between animation and damage and when they happen in relation to each other actively hampers your ability to learn. It's a terrible design choice that they've never, ever overhauled (aside from the ability to move things around a little). Additionally, spell effects are fucking blinding, so even if you're watching animations or anything but the tiny space above HP bars for enemies casting, you're probably going to miss any cues that a fuck-off attack is coming.

Why is it so hard for video games to make their visuals and feedback, well... visually striking? FFXIV and WildStar got shit on for having such highly visible AoE markers, but they were a step in the right direction. Nobody wants to die to bullshit they can't see coming because of other players' spell effects or an obtuse UI.

Another nice, clear example from one of the grandaddies: EverQuest. EverQuest was, and still is, a very simple game, but it always made it clear why you died. Combat log was easily accessible (and once the UI was overhauled, capable of being moved to another window). Bullshit attacks like Death Touch were on a timer, and since you were already watching the combat log for your damage, well, a zone-wide shout from the boss calling the player's name that just got DT'd was really all you needed, and you knew you had 30-45 seconds (varies by boss) before it hit again. (Nowadays it's all voice triggers with a third-party program because they tried to complicate everything with a game engine so old it can't possibly keep up with what they want to do. Not to mention the spaghetti code is fucked and unupgrade-able.) The spell effects were simple and quick and triggered on each player individually, so you knew you just got hit with a spell and had immediate access to what it just did to you.

...Basically, I just want visual clarity these days, and so many games just don't have it.

[OgreBattle]

PSO2 is action dodging base, while most MMO's are "stand with percentage to hit or be hit" based like XIV

Man I really wish XIV played like Phantasy Star Online.

Monster Hunter World crossover helps

[OgreBattle]

Been playing Eggnog+, a Nidhogg inspired game https://madgarden.itch.io/eggnogg

Free to download, it's a simple dueling/race game

Gameplay demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGPTZrtY6-A

[RelentlessImp]

PSO2 is action dodging base, while most MMO's are "stand with percentage to hit or be hit" based like XIV

Man I really wish XIV played like Phantasy Star Online.

Monster Hunter World crossover helps

I also play XIV, and it has some of the clearest, most distinct dodging possible (Omega11 notwithstanding - fuck youuuuu Larboard/Starboard and my bad spatial awareness) which is why I used TOR as the example and its total distinct fucking lack of it.

[Pariah Dog]

WildStar got shit on for having such highly visible AoE markers, but they were a step in the right direction. Nobody wants to die to bullshit they can't see coming because of other players' spell effects or an obtuse UI.

I'd like to think it got shit on more by the fact that it was built (difficulty wise) for the crowd that pisses into a mountain dew bottle and shits into a sock which was pretty deceptive given its cartoony and casual nature. When there was a large backlash that even the first 5 man dungeon in the game was a nightmare to pug and the devs response to this was "Get Rektd, nerds". The Devs even demonstrated a hilarious failure to learn for their own fuckups when they added a tutorial dungeon they added still relied on a level of coordination you would not find in your average PUG.

I personally preferred The Secret World which was a hybrid of the two systems. Auto attacks were generally standard MMO fare compare attack and defense values, with distinct visual "Do not stand in this chalk outline or you'll be one" special attacks. Granted it had its own issues, namely its deviation from standard MMO gearing and it's flexible build system made it very easy to gimp yourself. And generally a full DPS build screwed you over hardcore while out in the open world.

Having done Raids in the above mentioned games yeah ToR you generally had no idea WTF killed you unless you knew the mechanics and even then some things were not consistent such as in those style of MMOs the damage/effects were applied the instant the cast finished and not when the animation of your fireball/blaster shot hit the target but ToR decided to have those work inconsistently (this Sith taunt is instant but this Bounty Hunter one only applies when the projectile hits the target)

[Chamomile]

TOR and The Secret World both fall in my bin of "games that would be much better if they were not MMOs." And it's not that I dislike MMOs as a genre. I had fun with Guild Wars and City of Heroes and Tera Online and even TOR, so clearly I'm okay with the basic conceits of MMO gameplay. It's just that TOR and the Secret World are constantly screaming for single player game play, or at least for much heavier instancing. Being limited to having just one companion around at a time in TOR feels dissonant because these characters are still written just like the NPC companion party that you get in a standard BioWare game.

For the Secret World, they've got a bunch of interesting conspiracy-themed puzzles and sub-plots, but I didn't even get past the Innsmouth knock-off before giving up because investigating these mysteries is annoying as Hell when moving from one end of town to another requires mowing down a massive horde of zombies and Deep Ones. It would've been way better off as a single player game with far less frequent enemies and probably more survival horror-ish mechanics rather than a Diablo clone with way too much build complexity.

[Stahlseele]

owo what's this?
https://old.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comm ... h=85b4ac25

DESIGNERS' NOTE
For the second time in less than three years, everything you knew about this game is now wrong. Good luck.

Megacorp Expansion Features
Added the Megacorporation empire type, which strips away all of the bullshit other empires use to adorn and excuse their naked profit motive so you can simply get straight to the business of bleeding every person, place, and thing in the galaxy dry for the sake of getting rich.

Megacorps can establish branch offices on other empires' planets, allowing them to aggressively lobby for the idea that regulations on hatchlings cleaning out dark matter reactors is wanton government overreach.

Added new ascension perk: Arcology Project, enabling the decision to convert a planet into a soulless hellscape of Novamarts and shitty apartments that haven't had any fatalities from Betharian poisoning in nearly four subcycles.

Added new ascension perk: Xeno-Compatibility. You see that weird slug thing over there? Now you can fuck it.

Added new ascension perk: Universal Transactions, which makes it easier for Megacorporation empires to strip everything of worth from a previously functional society to fund a hyperspace racing league that conscripts convicts as pilots due to the extremely high mortality rate.

Added the Caravaneers, nomadic space traders who Wiz says aren't really worth killing, but seems to underestimate to what degree doing so will become its own reward.

Added new Megastructures, like a laser that somehow sucks rocks out of a black hole and an art project that requires such a massive extraction of natural resources, we're not sure the people who came up with it really get this whole "art" thing.

Added a galactic Slave Market so you can buy or sell slave Pops because Stellaris is a terrible game for terrible people

New Utopia Expansion Features
Added new ascension perk: Hive Worlds, which allows Hive Minds to cover a planet in functional agglomerations of their own saliva and chewed up wood pulp to make sure that none of those disgusting, corporate aliens get any ideas about speculating on their property values.
2.2 ‘Le Guin’ Free Features
Replaced the tile system with districts and jobs, so your scientists can no longer spend all their work hours tirelessly digging massive Science Holes and assuring you that there's definitely tons of science to be found down there.

Pops and Pop Jobs now belong to a social class that determines how many DLCs they can buy.

Social classes are ranked, and Pops that belong to a higher social class will refuse to do anything genuinely useful to society, adding realism.

Added unemployment for pops the Megacorps will call lazy and blame for their own misfortune, even though these same corporations got laws passed that destroyed local industry by allowing them to import alloys from planets that produce it using massive amounts of slaves abducted by marauder raids.

Added planetary housing, usage of which depends on pop's social strata (rulers and specialists = a pleasure palace complete with nine species of Xeno-compatible concubines, slaves and menial labourers = a metal crate with what may or may not be blood dried all over the inside of it)

More dynamic pop growth system: populations can grow and decline based on their rights, living standards, immigration/emigration, and how many different kinds of alien they are banging.

Added crime. Crime is generated by overcrowding and poor living conditions, though the Megacorps will continue to insist it's caused because "some people" are just maybe not as good as others.

Added new resource types since it turned out making spaceship hulls out of unmodified pig iron was causing some structural and mass to thrust ratio problems.

Added the Internal Market, where resources can be converted into other resources at a cost of the suffering of the working class

Added the Galactic Market, in which all game resources can be bought and sold in open exchange between empires, with prices fluctuating based on supply and demand. This is formed when enough Empires are in contact with each other, replacing the Internal Market. Genocidal empires and empires that the Megacorporations have lobbied to be classified as genocidal based on spurious evidence do not get access to the Galactic Market.

Added trade routes to better facilitate the importation of Xeno-compatible slug waifus/husbandos to the thirsty masses.

Added commercial pact diplomatic agreement, which will absolutely be used against you in your own court system when a Megacorporation insists that they broke no laws when they detonated a neutronium bomb at that 9000-year-old cultural heritage site to make way for a new branch office.

Added empire development, a soft cap that models the fact that vomiting out colonies all across space with no sensible infrastructure in place to govern them would create a few problems.

Added Empire Cohesion because bordergore is cancer and if you do it, you should be punished mechanically in addition to feeling bad about yourself and your choices.

Tweaked army display and ground combat screens so it looks a bit less like a game you downloaded onto your graphing calculator in high school

Reworked planetary bombardment to produce devastation, creating opportunities for Megacorps to secure absurdly lucrative government urban restoration contracts that they will use a small portion of to set up a few more metal crates as apartments and blow the rest on drugs and hyperlane grand prix gambling.

Sectors are now slightly less of a garbage feature.

Added Shared Burden civic for those who prefer bureaucratic space tyranny over corporate space tyranny.

Replaced authoritarian Caste System with Stratified Economy living standards, which is basically the same thing except it justifies all the inequality bullshit by insisting that poor people are lazy, rather than saying they are looked down upon by the gods from birth.

Added technology Resort Worlds that unlocks the ability to designate a colony as a Resort World. This colony will be unable to have districts and most buildings built on it, but will give Megacorporations the opportunity to take advantage of very low labor costs among primitive locals to sell overpriced souvenirs and other bullshit to rich space tourists who won't openly admit that they came here specifically to bang the slugs. But they totally did.

Added tech for Penal Colony worlds which have high crime rates but decrease crime on other planets, because why simply banish poor people you don't like to a slum or a big island when you can transport them to another planet for being caught with a small amount of the xenoleaf they use to get through one more day at their shitty job.

Added a tech for slaver empires to designate a world as a Thrall-World, which like most worlds is full of billions of unfree slaves laboring for the benefit of the rich, but in this case they don't try to pretend like it's pleasant or democratic or whatever.

Added new civic: Byzantine Bureaucracy to make sure the rules of your Space Marxist-Leninist paradise are too complicated for anyone outside The Party to ever figure out how they don't work.

Deploy Hunter-Killer Drones decision can now be toggled on and off. KillCorp has publicly apologized for the terrible oversight of forgetting an "Off" switch, and promises to compensate the families of the victims with a brand new metal crate unit at a discounted rent for the first three months.

End game victory conditions reworked so you can continue to not care about them in new, exciting ways.

Colony ships can now be filled with incoming migrants from another empire, because we're not sure we want to risk the lives of our own master race until we've seen what those things with all the colorful horns are and what they're going to do if you poke them.

Planetary decision now allows you to mandate the use of Space Condoms, though it's probably going to really upset the tourists who came to bang the slugs.

The homeworld of the First League is now a lifeless ecumenopolis, because liberalism is totally great.

Notifications dealing with the player’s own empire are now marked with a golden yellow rim because honestly who gives a shit about anyone else?

Balance
Removed Leader Capacity because we figured out it's probably better to spend the extra cash far overextending our government rather than let the unwashed masses on the outer rim have some say in their day-to-day lives.

Federation members now pay 15% of their income in Federation taxes. See, they rope you in with all this talk of mutual defense because they're eventually going to start rolling out this bullshit. I told you not to sign, man.

Federations are now always led by the most powerful member empire rather than having a rotating presidency because that was deemed too equitable. I'm telling you, this is just vassalage and they're going to start charging extra fees to bang the slugs soon. Mark my words.

Certain empires can now distract their pops with weed and anime body pillows to keep them from reproducing.

Added Cadet difficulty setting as an 'easy' level below Ensign, because we saw T.J.'s last Life Seeded run and it was really pretty embarrassing.

Drastically reduced the Machine Uprising's starting fleets so they shouldn't tweet: "Transistors $200, Data $150, Spare parts $800, Destroying All Organics $3,600,775,050,000, Maintenance $150. someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my power supply is dying"

Culture shock is now a planet modifier rather than a pop modifier, because our own people are just as disgusted by those five-eyed, foul-smelling bastards as they are of us.

Xenophobes now get +10%/+20% pop growth because the weird self-help cults they belong to insist that they're not supposed to masturbate.

Having Psionic pops in your empire allows for the possibility of cutting them open to find out how they work rolling the Psionic theory tech if not otherwise possible.

Species trait Thrifty now increases Trade Value production, new trait Ingenious increases Energy Production, to distinguish between species who are good at getting each other to buy a bunch of bullshit and species who are good at getting xenos on other planets to buy a bunch of bullshit.

Having a ship's science officer actually help out with like, doing science no longer needs to be unlocked through a tradition.

Distinguished Admiralty no longer makes your admirals better at commanding large fleets. It just makes them more capable of yelling, "FASTER! FIRE FASTER!"

UI
Added more new screens that you won't be able to find when you need them.
AI
AI will no longer print maps showing that your systems belong to them to put on the wall at state dinners if they're worried about pissing you off.
Bugfixes
Fixed a handful of Crystalline Entities not being affected by the Crystal Pacification project. KillCorp has publicly apologized for the awful oversight of not realizing some of the tuning units were calibrated in such a way that just makes the crystals angrier, and promises to compensate the families of the victims with a voucher for 50% off their next wormhole trip to the planet where you can bang the slugs.

Fixed Leviathans first contact report not firing in some cases. KillCorp has publicly apologized for the horrendous oversight of failing to issue proper warning about the creature to its mining ships operating in the area, and promises to compensate the families of the victims with a limited-edition plush of the space monster that ate their loved ones.

Oh, it is just the . . 4th game under the Title of Stellaris appearantly x.x

[maglag]

So Artifact, the new Dota-flavored digital collecting card game from Valve where you can only get more cards by paying cold real cash for either random packs or buying directly from other players. Artifact is currently with "Mixed" reviews.

And seems like 90% of the positive reviews are some variant of "opened starter packs, managed to sell the cards inside for more than I paid for the game to rich kids, uninstalled".

Wonder how long it will hold the current system. Getting some memories from Diablo 3 that also had a real money market at start, but then Blizzard closed that.

Hope it will go f2p (or at least free to start) since Artifact unironically looks interesting with each player controling a full Dota team including the creeps and needing to spread forces over the 3 lanes so I would like to try it but refuse to spend a cent upfront to what's such a filthy money grab right now.

[Iduno]

...game from Valve...a filthy money grab...

Honestly, the least believable part is that they actually released a game.

[Axebird]

It's literally the TCG model. The only difference client-side is that the money you make selling cards can only be spent on other cards or video games on Steam.

[maglag]

...game from Valve...a filthy money grab...

Honestly, the least believable part is that they actually released a game.

Heh, a significant amount of people pissed off because they wanted Half-Life 3 or something else for their currently supported games and instead Valve releases this, which will also be draining their production resources for the future.

It's literally the TCG model. The only difference client-side is that the money you make selling cards can only be spent on other cards or video games on Steam.

Worse than that since Valve also takes a cut from every card sale.

It was even worst at start since there was no "casual" play so you had to pay real money every time you wanted to play with the cards you already had bought but then the backlash was so intense they added a couple of free play modes that offer zero in-game reward.

[Prak]

In the continuing saga of Fallout 76 fuckery...

The support database glitched and now players can see, respond to, update, and close support tickets. And they can see all the personal info attached to tickets, like credit card numbers.

[Iduno]

In the continuing saga of Fallout 76 fuckery...

The support database glitched and now players can see, respond to, update, and close support tickets. And they can see all the personal info attached to tickets, like credit card numbers.

Honestly, people who continue to give Bethesda money after 20 years of their bullshit deserve to have it all taken away from them anyway.

[OgreBattle]

Youtubers got the real canvas bags lol

Bethesda is a reflection of America at the moment

[Leress]

Youtubers got the real canvas bags lol

Bethesda is a reflection of America at the moment

Not YongYea, he got the shitty one. He doesn't know why he got the items in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHLOiVZv7o

[Stahlseele]

So, i got myself Pathfinder: Kingmaker.
Is there, like, any good source of info on the game somewhere?
Items, Races, Skills, Feats and their stats for example?
Is there, for example, a one handed weapon with reach?

[Whipstitch]

I forgot how vaguely annoying I find the Paradox forums and their "Respectfully Disagree" bullshit. I'm a Denner, god dammit. I don't respectfully do anything.


Anyway, I'm giving Stellaris a shot and haven't formed a particularly strong opinion yet other than noticing it plays pretty damn slow if you're not smashing that Fastest time passage option. Also, what's with Paradox players and their "bordergore" angst? You can't throw a rock around that neighborhood without people bitching about "snaking" and "inorganic expansion." Which, near as I can tell, means that they're pissy that people like me won't put a space station in the middle of a featureless void without first being given a good reason.

[Axebird]

The only gameplay effect I can think of is empire cohesion. If you have a lot of external hyperlanes per system you control your empire will start counting as lager than it actually is, which is bad for a few reasons but mostly it increases the cost of research.