The Gaming Den

If I'm understanding what an idea game is correctly, I could understand Cookie Clicker. It was novel. Past that?

Eh....

I liked idle games back when you didn't even have to click and it was called Progress Quest.

Idle games seem like the purest, most cynical possible form of 'videogames as an addiction'. Minimal interaction, empty reward, wait for brain to reset. Minimal interaction, empty reward, wait for brain to reset. It doesn't exactly inspire me with hope for the fate of mankind to see how easily the human brain can be gamed.

DSMatticus wrote:Idle games seem like the purest, most cynical possible form of 'videogames as an addiction'. Minimal interaction, empty reward, wait for brain to reset. Minimal interaction, empty reward, wait for brain to reset. It doesn't exactly inspire me with hope for the fate of mankind to see how easily the human brain can be gamed.

You're mostly right, but there's at least a little value to some of them. Most popular idle games have an aspect of optimization to them, like trying to math out the most efficient route to certain periods of the game (Cookie Clicker or Realm Grinder) or creating sustainable supply chains (Kittens Game). This one looks like it's directly ripped from Crusaders of the Lost Idols, which is about setting up synergistic formations of units (with varying constraints based on the level) that have location based passives and variable activated abilities.

Why it's branded with 5e D&D is beyond me, though.

It's pretty laggy, clicking has almost no value, the prestige currency doesn't appear to compound, there are forced resets at the end of each quest, the cash shop prices are laughable, and the formation constraints (through the first 9/12 characters) are minimal. I'd like my time back, please.

And Stellaris immediately got a 1.8.1 Hotfix patch to fix some issues.
On the one hand, i like that the devs are very susceptible to peer pressure on what needs fixing . . on the other hand, i hate that the quick fixes and patches mean mods break and usually stay broken <.<

So, I'm giving Tyranny a try. Yeah, I'm late to the party on this one, but I've been craving a new cRPG lately and decided to try this. And... what the actual fuck is this game. Okay, it's less stupid than Pillars of Eternity by a smidge, if only because they include alt-text over different-colored words that give you a quick run-down of what their proprietary words mean. But then they take that a step further and have actual characterization hidden under the alt text instead of right out in front of the player. For example, I'm chattering away with the Voices of Nerat and the sea foam green alt-text adds additional verbiage from him, her, it, whatever while he's beating the souls he's eaten into submission when they get uppity. It's an improvement over Pillars of Eternity only because you can just, hover your mouse over the proprietary bullshit to see a quick run-down and right click to go straight to its Codex entry, but it's still not an elegant way of introducing the player to the world.

The combat is ... kind of stupid? You don't just have hitpoints, no, you have to have wounds too, which act as a limiter on your hitpoints, and the only indication you have of taking a wound is a quick flash of "WOUNDED" when an attack deals wounds and your HP bar going from cyan to red. It... could be better. It's another real-time/turn-based thing that provides zero in the way of strategy because there's no actual movement and the AI is shit-stupid - the first person people aggro onto is who they stay aggroed onto throughout the fight (unless one of your characters uses a taunt ability), so obviously, you save scum the shit out of the game when it springs a bullshit ambush on you so your heavily-armored character goes in first, springs the scripting, and aggros everything and gets all the hits and takes zero wounds because the combat in this game varies wildly between padded sumo and high lethality, because once you start taking wounds you start taking more wounds and wind up dead on the ground.

The ideas in this game, however, are actually interesting. Right at the start you have an 8 or 6 day time limit, so you avoid 99% of the problems of most computer RPGs like this in that you can't rest willy-nilly and go into every fight with full resources. You get some quasi-interesting abilities that are hampered by short durations or one/encounter, one/rest limitations, but they're legitimately powerful so the restrictions make sense because they generally just straight up delete an enemy off the battlefield. At least, early on.

There are a lot of dumb ideas, too. Smart tactically, but with the real-time system you have zero opportunity to interact with them tactically. Traps, for instance - you have a brief chance to find them and disarm them but by the time you see them the AI's triggered and your party runs straight across them taking massive damage and wounds. That said, it avoids the pitfalls of having a game like this have traps and lets you drag stupid AI over the traps so they trigger them and take the damage, but again, save-scumming to find them, hit them, reload and use them to your advantage.

The leveling system is schizophrenic. You have both skills that level up as you use them AND a class/level system. Can we, once and for all, pick one or the other? Having the freedom to go outside the class system and pick up and level skills via use makes for a unique character - like a Mage learning Subterfuge and picking locks, or a Warrior type scooping up a few magical buffs - but we could have that WITHOUT also having a leveling system.

Mechanically, the game is like someone played Good Idea/Bad Idea and shoved everything into the game they could. I don't know, maybe I'm just too old now to appreciate the old school style of doing things - though I still play the fuck out of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale - but I think a game like this would have really, just like Pillars of Eternity, benefited from a more turn-based, grid-based combat system just so you have opportunities to actually interact with the tactical aspect of combat instead of throwing everything you can at everyone and slugging it out in real time padded sumo/suddenly lethal combat.

Additionally, I tried Tides of Numenera, and wound up deleting it off my machine after about three hours. Comparison, I spent maybe two on Pillars of Eternity, and am about four into Tyranny now. So if 'time played before getting sick of its bullshit' counts for anything, Tyranny is the best 'new isometric computer role-playing game' put out in the last few years yet.

Actually, I’be been on a kick recently and did Numenera, Eternity, and Tyranny in that order. Overall, they are all less interesting than Baldur’s Gate, mostly because of the writing. I think Tyranny is probably the best.

Currently on Divinity 2: Original Sin. The combat is not innately more fun, but the unexpected combos with the environment can be really memorable and fun. Story is decent, and the character-building is decent, and fights are unforgettable, so I’d suggest it.

RelentlessImp wrote: The ideas in this game, however, are actually interesting. Right at the start you have an 8 or 6 day time limit, so you avoid 99% of the problems of most computer RPGs like this in that you can't rest willy-nilly and go into every fight with full resources. You get some quasi-interesting abilities that are hampered by short durations or one/encounter, one/rest limitations, but they're legitimately powerful so the restrictions make sense because they generally just straight up delete an enemy off the battlefield. At least, early on.

Er. Well. There are a couple per rest companion combo-abilities and artifact abilities. Mostly though everything is a on a cooldown timer, and bothering to remember you have 1/day crap is entirely optional.

As for the time limit... it doesn't matter. Unless you're trying to trigger it on purpose, it is not at all relevant.

Mechanically, the game is like someone played Good Idea/Bad Idea and shoved everything into the game they could. I don't know, maybe I'm just too old now to appreciate the old school style of doing things - though I still play the fuck out of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale - but I think a game like this would have really, just like Pillars of Eternity, benefited from a more turn-based, grid-based combat system just so you have opportunities to actually interact with the tactical aspect of combat instead of throwing everything you can at everyone and slugging it out in real time padded sumo/suddenly lethal combat.

Pillars and Tyranny are specifically RT rather than turn based to appeal to nostalgia boners. For Pillars particularly, it is where the money came from- people who half remembered BG (well, actually given the railroady nature of the game and preeminence of combat, IWD) ponied up cash for the-same-thing-but-legally-distinct.

But a lot of the ideas in Pillars (and Tyranny) are the brainchild of Josh Sawyer, Black Isle's forum moderator who is now a dev at Obsidian, and fancies himself a real game designer. And he drew heavily from 4e D&D for some of the restrictions and bullshit you see in the two games- the weird health system of current endurance drawing from overall health is an attempt to mimic healing surges, and the tiny durations, no pre-buffing or summons or indeed, any ability use at all outside combat is his 4e-esque solution to the 'problem' of people approaching combat in the original Infinity Engine games strategically (which is to say, scouting, making preparations and actively trying not to die in life or death situations, as people would do).

He felt it made it too easy, so his answer was 'fuck you, no, delete,' because he didn't have any ideas or solutions to make combat actually challenging. The nostalgia boner is basically a trap. The 'engagement' system that forces melee to stick is pretty much his fault as well. It particularly meshes badly with the fact that they haven't mastered pathfinding AI, and sometimes characters just wiggle their position about in rapid succession and die from disengagement attacks of opportunity (another not actually old school idea in these 'old school' clones).

K wrote:Actually, I’be been on a kick recently and did Numenera, Eternity, and Tyranny in that order. Overall, they are all less interesting than Baldur’s Gate, mostly because of the writing. I think Tyranny is probably the best.

I think your list is completely insane. Tyranny is by far the worst of the three. The roleplaying in Tyranny is beyond broken. You want to be a faithful servant of Kyros? Fuck you, you can't. You want to work as a Fatebinder instead of slavishly serving the archon you aligned with? Fuck you, you can't. You want to make decisions which are not completely stupid? Fuck you, you can't. You want an ending?... Act 1 is the only good part of Tyranny, and everything after that is a railroad where the only choice is to jump to the "kill everyone" track.

Not to mention that the promise of "play as the bad guys" is a total lie. In Kyros' evil empire there is no organized religion, freedom of sexual relations, and most people on the occupied territory even get to keep their land and government.

Actually, you can do all those things.

Act 3 is the typical Obsidian bullshit where they just line up boss fights, but you can stay loyal, and be independent from the other archons. You still have to meet with them, but you still make your own choices.

Lack of organized religion and freedom of sex isn't... lack of evil. I'm not sure why I'd even have to explain that. That they can live on their old territory is not the same as keeping it or their government. For one there is definitely a larger government being imposed on them, and generally you can execute or kill their leaders leaving them without 'their' government. Unless you side with them explicitly, they definitely end up with a new absolute ruler and new justice system, and a military that will smash their faces in at minor provocations.


The new DLC is awful though. A couple companion quests with little impact (beyond a new model) and mostly you dig through a hole, repeating the worst of the original's gameplay (the 'dungeons' with the pointless spirit fights). Rather than expanding the weak act 3, it continues to ignore it and offers up an irrelevant side mission instead.

There any fun fan made mods for baldur's gate II?

OgreBattle wrote:There any fun fan made mods for baldur's gate II?

I can't speak to compatibility with the remaster or whatever it's called that came out recently, but in the ancient times of yore when I played BG II, this was the place I went to for mods, and it had many that I found good. Suppose depends on what you want.

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/index_mods.php

OgreBattle wrote:There any fun fan made mods for baldur's gate II?

The answer to this depends entirely on how much change you're looking for.
At the low end, Baldur's Gate Trilogy (BGT) combines BG1, TotSC, BG2, and ToB (yes, that's four things, and only two actual games, I didn't name it, don't ask me) into one game, effectively backporting all the cool upgrades from BG2 to BG1 and making character importing seamless. BGT also ships with/requires a bunch of fan patches that make the game a good bit less buggy, more consistent, etc.
At the high end (weighing it at 36+ GB in size, yes it is indeed ginormous) is the Big World Project. BWP is the result of one man's ongoing quest to play the BG series with EVERY MOD EVER, ALL AT ONCE. Multiple major content mods, with quests and areas as large as the base games, functionally building in Icewind Dale as well, TONS of new kits/classes/spells/abilities/items/companions/etc. It's huge. It also has a 900 page pdf explaining how to install it all, so have fun with that.
Or, thankfully, use Big World Setup, a (constantly updated) program that will, with a minimum of configuration, download and install all of that over the course of about 24 hours. You can switch off anything you don't want (there's a whole bunch of 'Expert' mods that make the game harder, for instance, that you can ignore with one click) and it can just do the BGT install for you if you like.
Unfortunately, BWP and BWS don't have a neat and orderly fixed home. They operate out of Spellhold Studios (which is generally a major hub for Infinity Engine game modding), but you're gonna need to search about the forums to find the most up-to-date version of BWS.
And yes, it is being updated for the Enhanced Edition versions, but not everything is compatible.

Longes wrote:I think your list is completely insane. Tyranny is by far the worst of the three. The roleplaying in Tyranny is beyond broken. You want to be a faithful servant of Kyros? Fuck you, you can't.

A recent free patch promises to resolve this specific problem, by adding a 5th ending route where you stay loyal to Kyros. I should return and try this one.

nockermensch wrote:

Longes wrote:I think your list is completely insane. Tyranny is by far the worst of the three. The roleplaying in Tyranny is beyond broken. You want to be a faithful servant of Kyros? Fuck you, you can't.

A recent free patch promises to resolve this specific problem, by adding a 5th ending route where you stay loyal to Kyros. I should return and try this one.

It did. It isn't anything special. You can stay loyal through the game, but the end is still just a button press and an end game panel, because obsidian is shit at endings. (And both pillars and tyranny take the mass effect approach - throw out the preceding gameplay and press a button for the ending credits you desire.)

I figure I'll play through BG Enhanced I/II before doing a Big World mod run

Ah apparently some quests don't finish correctly and this mod fixes that
https://github.com/AstroBryGuy/bg1ub/releases/tag/v14.1

Longes wrote:

K wrote:Actually, I’be been on a kick recently and did Numenera, Eternity, and Tyranny in that order. Overall, they are all less interesting than Baldur’s Gate, mostly because of the writing. I think Tyranny is probably the best.

I think your list is completely insane. Tyranny is by far the worst of the three. The roleplaying in Tyranny is beyond broken. You want to be a faithful servant of Kyros? Fuck you, you can't. You want to work as a Fatebinder instead of slavishly serving the archon you aligned with? Fuck you, you can't. You want to make decisions which are not completely stupid? Fuck you, you can't. You want an ending?... Act 1 is the only good part of Tyranny, and everything after that is a railroad where the only choice is to jump to the "kill everyone" track.

Not to mention that the promise of "play as the bad guys" is a total lie. In Kyros' evil empire there is no organized religion, freedom of sexual relations, and most people on the occupied territory even get to keep their land and government.

Literally none of those things is true. I think you are talking about a pre-patched or Early Access version.

I could provide a list of mods I have functioning on a BGT (using Original BG1/TotSC/BG2/TOB discs + patches) install, as I've gone for a by-hand megamod install since BWS refuses to work for me, but I don't recommend the experience. I spent 6 days uninstalling/reinstalling and playing through until encountering CTD errors before finally getting a mostly-stable install (Kelsey and Solaufein still don't play nice together but that's the only crashing problem I have left so fuck it).

So Shadow of War is out. Neat new toys, neat new orkemon, godawful writing. I know Shadow of Mordor wasn't exactly thrilling either, but they seem to have forgotten the thing they did best in the first game was comedy, and insisted on coming up with shocking twists instead.

It's a fun game mechanically, and I'd heartily recommend it, but ... the story. Ugh. I got to Act IV right now and just uninstalled it. Can't be assed to keep going any further.

This is the ideal spider body. You might not like it, but this is what peak spider looks like.

Nachtigallerator wrote:So Shadow of War is out. Neat new toys, neat new orkemon, godawful writing. I know Shadow of Mordor wasn't exactly thrilling either, but they seem to have forgotten the thing they did best in the first game was comedy, and insisted on coming up with shocking twists instead.

It's a fun game mechanically, and I'd heartily recommend it, but ... the story. Ugh. I got to Act IV right now and just uninstalled it. Can't be assed to keep going any further.

If you don't give a shit about Tolkien canon, the story isn't that bad. Not award winning by any means, but far more fleshed out than Shadows of Mordor.

I've yet to come across anything I'd regard as a 'shocking twist.' The first overlord reveal had me laughing my ass off, but that was about it. The traitor was expected (and a little obvious), everything else so far has been consistent with their Alternate Universe narrative.

There are actual people to interact with this time, which is a big improvement, and the tension between his initial allies and Talion slowly realizing that his aims and his ghost buddy's aims aren't exactly congruent are pretty well done. (Though so far he doesn't seem to act on that).

My biggest problem is Talion starts off making a stupidly bad deal (which is driven home in every dialogue with Celly), and is far too passive about everything. It sort of fits, since he's dead, but he has no agency at all, and just follows along in everyone's wake, pursuing their goals, regardless of what the beings in question are (and there is a surprising variety), what they want or why.

Game-wise it is a significant improvement. More environment variety, more ability variety, more enemy variety (the tribes help, as do the trolls), and while the game is still throwing tutorial shit at you in the second act, they don't do the 'you must kill 30 ghuls with a full bar or you can't progress at all' mission bullshit that the first game did.

They did change up some things with no explanation. I was desperately trying to get the cursor centered for 'last chance' attempts (both giving and receiving) several times and failing before I realized that the game wasn't doing that anymore. It just hadn't explained it. It was just a matter of not touching anything until the big circle converged onto the little circle. I actually though the mouse icon was bugging out.


@Count- as far as that peak spiders go:

She was actually pretty well done. It's complete bullshit, but they basically recast her as a Maia (or whatever pseudo-angel)*, same as Sauron. But Lady of Spiders rather than Lord of Werewolves (his Silmarrilion title). It actually works pretty well if you can ignore canon, and her goal is basically 'no one wins,' because she regards (rightfully) Celly-Brim-Bore as an unmitigated ass as well, who would be just as bad as Big S.

*though she's still the daughter of Ungoliant, which leaves the question of who fucked that goddamn big spider. My bets are on Gandalf or Radagast

Peak spider is one of many, many places where an almost completely unrelated character is dragged into a role that doesn't suit them at all when it would've been easier to make up a new one. I would've been willing to roll with it if Ungoliant had another daughter who was a human with magic spider powers. My issue with Shelob is that we've seen Shelob. She has a major role in a movie that is far more popular and well-known than the Shadow series, there is absolutely no way the Shadow creators could reasonably have thought to themselves "yeah, Shelob's a pretty obscure character, most people won't notice if we rewrite her." Celebrimbor is an obscure character, they can get away with mangling him, but Shelob? Is Frodo going to show up leading an army of hobbits to storm Barad-Dur next? Is Sam going to be rewritten as Samantha Gamgee, his loyal and sexy companion? Is Aragorn going to show up and offer the crown of Gondor to Talion?

Meh. The idea that maybe she's more than just an immortal giant spider that the heroic sidekick has to triumph over to earn his own status doesn't really bother me. Tolkien honestly builds her up way too much for an overly literal 'pass the torch' moment. (Where Sam picks up the Light, the Sword and the Ring and goes off to rescues his Damsel).

The treatment is interesting enough that I actually like it. It fits a bit better to have her as a minor power in her own right rather than a pathetic scavenger that eats orc runts and no one cares.

If I cared, I'd pick something else to complain about as far as canon goes. Like:

that Celly, not Sauron, made the One Ring and Rampaged around With it a Bit,
the One Ring Mark Two,
the spare Balrog,
Probably-an-Entwife, or
Some Dude just Conquering Mordor (twice)