Video Games: Next Stop... Andromeda

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Just off the top of my head, that ignores whatever Europa Universalis games have come out since then, Stellaris, the new Homeworld game from last year, and the Sins of a Solar Empire game. I'm also pretty sure there's been good Dawn of War games since 2006. And probably plenty of others.

The visibility of RTS games has been largely over-shadowed by MOBAs, but the games are still there for people who want them.

Europa Universalis, Stellaris and Sins of a Solar Empire are 4x strategy games, not real-time strategy games of the CoH/C&C mould.

Deserts of Kharak was a fine game, very enjoyable, but it certainly wasn't as good at a tactical level as Company of Heroes. DoK also had some annoying bugs that haven't been fixed.

The original Dawn of War, which was an RTS, came out in 2004. Dawn of War II (2009), was an action-RPG thing with a few minor RTS elements. It wasn't really an RTS and it wasn't as good as CoH.

The major RTS games since 2006 have really been the StarCraft II family, which were good but just reiterations of the original game (and WarCraft III) and didn't bring much new to the table; and Company of Heroes II, which wasn't as good as the original. There was also Command and Conquer III, which was actually pretty good fun, and Command and Conquer IV, which was shit. Also Red Alert III, which was daft and forgettable.

Actually, the only RTS I'd put up against CoH since it came out are World in Conflict (2007), which was a very solid and decent game, and Supreme Commander (2007) which was impressive for its scale.

The only other recent RTS games to attract a fair bit of attention were Planetary Annihilation (meh), Act of Aggression (fun but lightweight) and Ashes of the Singularity (not played). The genre isn't entirely dead, but it's not going strong either.

[Melphis Amekia]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

The major RTS games since 2006 have really been the StarCraft II family, which were good but just reiterations of the original game (and WarCraft III) and didn't bring much new to the table; and Company of Heroes II, which wasn't as good as the original.

Actually, the only RTS I'd put up against CoH since it came out are World in Conflict (2007), which was a very solid and decent game, and Supreme Commander (2007) which was impressive for its scale.

StarCraft II and it's expansions are far from being just reiterations of SC1/Brood War, although I guess the difference is mostly seen at competitive levels of play instead of campaign/casual level of play. And I'd definitely argue that the strategic, micro and macromanaging levels in SC2, especially with the changes in Legacy of the Void, are (way) beyond what Company of Heroes has to offer(yes, I have played both games.) Perhaps in the tactical department, CoH beats SC2(although definitely not BW), but SC2 is a much faster game as it is now which makes most tactical decisions seem invisible(even if they aren't), and SC2 is getting improved upon to become a better game constantly. If anything, the last great RTS is SC2, and then we go to CoH as the second-to-last.

Supreme Commander was definitely an amazing game, though. I wish we could get a game like that on newer systems and a lot better optimized.

[briantw]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Europa Universalis, Stellaris and Sins of a Solar Empire are 4x strategy games, not real-time strategy games of the CoH/C&C mould.

Deserts of Kharak was a fine game, very enjoyable, but it certainly wasn't as good at a tactical level as Company of Heroes. DoK also had some annoying bugs that haven't been fixed.

The original Dawn of War, which was an RTS, came out in 2004. Dawn of War II (2009), was an action-RPG thing with a few minor RTS elements. It wasn't really an RTS and it wasn't as good as CoH.

The major RTS games since 2006 have really been the StarCraft II family, which were good but just reiterations of the original game (and WarCraft III) and didn't bring much new to the table; and Company of Heroes II, which wasn't as good as the original. There was also Command and Conquer III, which was actually pretty good fun, and Command and Conquer IV, which was shit. Also Red Alert III, which was daft and forgettable.

Actually, the only RTS I'd put up against CoH since it came out are World in Conflict (2007), which was a very solid and decent game, and Supreme Commander (2007) which was impressive for its scale.

The only other recent RTS games to attract a fair bit of attention were Planetary Annihilation (meh), Act of Aggression (fun but lightweight) and Ashes of the Singularity (not played). The genre isn't entirely dead, but it's not going strong either.

I'm curious where you'd (not you specifically but the general term you) place Shadow Tactics.  It's obviously real time strategy, but it's also obviously not the same type of game as Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, Planetary Annihilation, etc.  Is it in its own genre, stealth RTS or something?  If it counts as an RTS game, I'd say that's it belongs on the list of great RTS games.  Just not sure it counts.

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, Melphis_Amekia said:

StarCraft II and it's expansions are far from being just reiterations of SC1/Brood War, although I guess the difference is mostly seen at competitive levels of play instead of campaign/casual level of play. And I'd definitely argue that the strategic, micro and macromanaging levels in SC2, especially with the changes in Legacy of the Void, are (way) beyond what Company of Heroes has to offer(yes, I have played both games.) Perhaps in the tactical department, CoH beats SC2(although definitely not BW), but SC2 is a much faster game as it is now which makes most tactical decisions seem invisible(even if they aren't), and SC2 is getting improved upon to become a better game constantly. If anything, the last great RTS is SC2, and then we go to CoH as the second-to-last.

Supreme Commander was definitely an amazing game, though. I wish we could get a game like that on newer systems and a lot better optimized.

StarCraft II and its expansions are fun games, but they are tend heavily towards rock-paper-scissors, where every unit has a specific counter and every strategy a distinct counter-strategy. The lack of randomisation (every shot always hits) means that the unpredictable chaos of genuine combat is never really invoked. None of that is a slight against the game, as that style of play is enjoyable. The problem for me , however is that StarCraft II detracts from the laser-sharp focus of the original game (and Brood War) and its near-perfect balance by having larger unit rosters and units that replicate positions in the ecosystem. That does allow greater army variety but it does detract from what StarCraft did best, which is high unit specialisation. The balance in StarCraft is a work of art, in SC2 not so much. There's a reason Blizzard had to pretty much force epsorts channels and teams (particularly in South Korea) to give up playing StarCraft once SC2 came out, as many people preferred the original game for its superior unit balance.

Company of Heroes is a somewhat different game which invokes the chaos of combat more effectively but is also much better at giving units unexpected ways of countering different units and strategies. In StarCraft your Marine will always die when a Battlecruiser turns up, maybe inflicting a near-negligible amount of hull damage first. But in CoH a single soldier can lob a grenade to, if he's very lucky, blast out the tracks of a Tiger tank, even though the differences in unit strengths is overwhelming. The focus and balance on that type of things creates a much more random and difficult-to-predict game. That actually makes it less compelling for esports where people want to discuss micro and macro strategies and all those other buzzwords that make the soul die. StarCraft is gonzo speed-chess on crack, whilst CoH is chess where the pawn can suddenly move two steps backwards and kill the queen without warning, which is both awesome and makes it less suitable for that kind of competitive play.

Quote

I'm curious where you'd (not you specifically but the general term you) place Shadow Tactics.  It's obviously real time strategy, but it's also obviously not the same type of game as Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, Planetary Annihilation, etc.  Is it in its own genre, stealth RTS or something?  If it counts as an RTS game, I'd say that's it belongs on the list of great RTS games.  Just not sure it counts.

Stealth, or stealth tactics. A very small genre, since the only other games in it are Commandos 1-3, Desperados 1-2 and Robin of Sherwood (and Satellite Reign kind of nods at it as well). 

[A True Kaniggit]

Ahhh Commandos 2. I haven't played that game in at least a decade. The joy when you find out you can give an allied AI player an empty rifle, but he never runs out of ammunition.

[Melphis Amekia]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

StarCraft II and its expansions are fun games, but they are tend heavily towards rock-paper-scissors, where every unit has a specific counter and every strategy a distinct counter-strategy. The lack of randomisation (every shot always hits) means that the unpredictable chaos of genuine combat is never really invoked. None of that is a slight against the game, as that style of play is enjoyable. The problem for me , however is that StarCraft II detracts from the laser-sharp focus of the original game (and Brood War) and its near-perfect balance by having larger unit rosters and units that replicate positions in the ecosystem. That does allow greater army variety but it does detract from what StarCraft did best, which is high unit specialisation. The balance in StarCraft is a work of art, in SC2 not so much. There's a reason Blizzard had to pretty much force epsorts channels and teams (particularly in South Korea) to give up playing StarCraft once SC2 came out, as many people preferred the original game for its superior unit balance.

Brood War is actually far from a perfectly balanced game. What makes BW seem like a balanced game is the limitations it has in its engine and all the little exploits/bugs you can make the units do if you are skilled enough. Yet, in both BW and SC2, if you can get to enough Carriers(and at least some decent support on the ground), you can almost count like you've won the game since they are actually too strong as units to be countered by anything. While BW had less of hard countering, that doesn't mean there is no hard countering rock-paper-scissors style. Again, an example would be noticing the Protoss opponent has started building carriers, make a squad of 12 goliaths and push before the carrier numbers were overwhelming and you've probably won the game. That is just one out of MANY examples of things that would seem utterly broken if BW was released today and people would cry for patches(Vulture run-byes would be a very good example too). BW's "perfect balance" is a combination of game limitations with perfected strategies and tactics that come from the best high level play in an RTS from the best players in the world, but it would be false to say it's much better balanced in real terms compared to SC2.

Also, IIRC, shots don't miss in BW unless it's a high ground-low ground situation, where it has a algorithm for if it will shoot or not shoot the unit, or at least, the miss potential on equal ground level is insanely low. While I agree it would be an interesting addition to SC2 when it first came out(since there's no way they're adding that now), I'm not sure how it would translate to a much more modern game and audiences since it's an element of actual randomness that might not suit a modern RTS.

The actual reason why SC2 didn't become as popular in Korea(and it's not true they had to force non-Korean esports to display SC2 compared to BW; in fact, Twitch rode SC2's back massively when it first launched to become as popular as it is, with League overtaking only later, as just one example, and EVERYONE in the non-Korean scenes were investing tons of money into SC2 at the start) wasn't actually the balance - it is the fact that BW was their national sport, one the top players and coaches spent perfecting over 12 years before SC2 came out, where the level of play in every single aspect of the game was so much higher that Koreans just didn't overall give that much of a damn for SC2 when they could just play and watch their national sport. If there was a way for SC2 to have the same level of play at the release as BW did at its height, it could possibly have been a different story, but, we are where we are. SC2, btw, is catching up with the level of play it displays in its games - if you look at games from WoL start and compare them to today, mid-to-high Diamond level players on ladder today show greater skill than the best pro games back then, not to mention how much the level of pro play has risen. Today's SC2 would have had a much better shot of winning the Koreans over and overcoming the bad memes and negativity which took a toll on it as an esport.

Yes, SC2 also did have several period characterized with strategies that were massively OP(Brood Lord/Infestor era of WoL and Swarm Hosts for most of HotS), and do you know why those were not patched even if they were a huge problem? Because they listened to Koreans who told them to delay patches as long as possible because pros "will find a way", while a lot of the community raged that changes weren't happening quick enough. That's quite the conundrum, isn't it? To patch it somehow, or do it the way it was done in BW, where pros would just find solutions for what would be considered OP strategies when they were introduced.

You could say Blizzard's mistake was not having SC2 be a literal reiteration of BW, which is something they decided it won't be during development. They wanted to try and make a game distinct in play from BW and they suceeded, for better or worse.

[Werthead]

Brood War actually disrupted the balance of the original game (since Corsairs, Valkyries and Devourers were too specialised to really be preferable to Fighters, Wraiths and Mutalisks). Medics were useful, but otherwise I found the new unit selection in Brood War to be underwhelming. It's the original game that had the shit-hot balance and the expansions and sequels failed to match it.

Bit like CoH, actually. Opposing Fronts, Tales of Valour and CoH2 really didn't add much to the original game.

[Durckad]

So I finally picked up Civ 6 this week when it went on sale. I get it installed and... the game won't launch. Steam says it's launching the game but then nothing happens. After digging around on forums I think I've tracked the issue down to a faulty/corrupted Windows Updater which apparently can only be fixed by reinstalling Windows. That's... not as bad as it sounds, I've been planning on building a new PC this year along with upgrading to Windows 10, so now I just want to start moving forward on that sooner than I anticipated. I was hoping to get at least time in on Civ 6 first, but I guess that was not meant to be.

Oh well, back to slowly playing through Pillars of Eternity I guess.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Playing Stainless Steel mod for Medieval II on very hard/very hard difficulty and you know what? It's actually very hard.

Never had any difficulty killing Scotland before, but I lost Normandy to them while committing my forces to crushing their settlements in the north, and then loads of turns later after finally reclaiming Normandy fucking William Wallace turns up with 2 full stacks and takes Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

Fortunately Scotland couldn't support that army with the resources from Bruges and they promptly went bankrupt. Wallace himself decided to sit in Edinburgh with 300 men while sending his armies north toward Inverness and Aberdeen, which allowed me to bring up reinforcements and kill him as I took Edinburgh back. I then searched for the army to the north of me and found that it had rebelled against Scotland.  Just Aberdeen left to take then and everything will be in order again. Lost Caen to France though.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 11/02/2017 at 1:18 AM, Werthead said:

I think a Mass Effect TV show would be pretty good. You'd have to change the story a bit for Seasons 2 and 3 (you'd probably need more regular castmembers than just Shepard, Tali and Garrus) and the budget would be pretty high, but it could work quite well.

IM with a Mass Effect TV series you start with first contact and go from there. The appearance of Sovereign and the events of ME1 come in at about season 5 if it gets that far and could be resolved in a single season or perhaps 2 seaons. That gives them plenty of time to resolve the Reaper situation in a sensible fashion. 

I never properly understood the official alternative (or original) storyline around the Haestrom's star dying. Something about Mass Effect technology destabilising the fabric of the galaxy? But what little of it I think I recall it seems as dumb a concept as how ME3 concluded. So they would have to come up with something else entirely as a raison d'etre for the Reapers, if a TV show did go ahead and if the RFeapers were to be part of it. Probably the reason I'd prefer a Dragon Age TV show over Mass Effect. At least on that central big threat (arch demons and blights) we can see a clear logic and understandable motivation for how that shit all started: man's greed and desire for power. Nice, simple and the usual reason for things going bad on a big scale, both in fiction and reality.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

17 hours ago, Durckad said:

So I finally picked up Civ 6 this week when it went on sale. I get it installed and... the game won't launch. Steam says it's launching the game but then nothing happens. After digging around on forums I think I've tracked the issue down to a faulty/corrupted Windows Updater which apparently can only be fixed by reinstalling Windows. That's... not as bad as it sounds, I've been planning on building a new PC this year along with upgrading to Windows 10, so now I just want to start moving forward on that sooner than I anticipated. I was hoping to get at least time in on Civ 6 first, but I guess that was not meant to be.

Oh well, back to slowly playing through Pillars of Eternity I guess.

I personally don't think Civ 6 is in a playable state yet in single player. Its maybe 2 patches away from having working AI. At the moment I've tried and given up numerous times, but the AI is some bad at the game its not worth it.

[Rhom]

Went and got Legion last night... still have 5 loyalty missions and the DLC's to go.  Sorry Normandy crew.  I love you guys and all... but I gotta see what this robot has to say about a lot of places.   

Do wish I'd gone ahead and picked him up before Haestrom though.

ETA:  As I'm nearing the end of my ME2 playthrough, I'm naturally starting to turn my attention to ME3.  I'll be honest;  other than the fact that I know I can play as Garrus and Tali, and I remember loving the Prothean character... I don't remember for the life of me who else is on the team in that game.   

[KiDisaster]

On 2/7/2017 at 5:49 PM, Fez said:

I picked up A House of Many Doors

SNIP

I gave that a try last night and man, I do not like the combat at all. I don't feel like the tutorial bubbles do a very good job of explaining things. All I can do is click on my gun and click somewhere on the enemy ship? What about my engineers and medics? They can't heal and repair stuff? If they can I haven't figured out how to make them do it. The rest of the game seems cool though. Very, very similar to Sunless Sea. 

Oh and why on earth is there not a tab where I can see a breakdown of my stats and how they effect gameplay? You get one tutorial popup that tells you what each of them do and then you can't access it again as far as I can tell. 

---

Finished Ratchet & Clank and decided against going for the platinum trophy for now cause some of those achievements would just be way too long and grindy. Am now working my way through Gravity Rush 2. I never played the original though. It's interesting but very repetitive so far. Also the weirdness of constantly falling in different directions occasionally makes me feel dizzy and lose any sense of which way is up or down (in game). 

 

[Fez]

1 hour ago, KiDisaster said:

I gave that a try last night and man, I do not like the combat at all. I don't feel like the tutorial bubbles do a very good job of explaining things. All I can do is click on my gun and click somewhere on the enemy ship? What about my engineers and medics? They can't heal and repair stuff? If they can I haven't figured out how to make them do it. The rest of the game seems cool though. Very, very similar to Sunless Sea. 

Oh and why on earth is there not a tab where I can see a breakdown of my stats and how they effect gameplay? You get one tutorial popup that tells you what each of them do and then you can't access it again as far as I can tell. 

Yeah, the lack of transparency on the stats is definitely an issue. On the plus side, the developer, who is just one guy, has put out patches I think every weekday since the game was released; and has been pretty active on the steam community hub soliciting feedback about what improvements players would like to see. So maybe the stats will get better surfaced at some point.

As I understand it, medics will automatically heal crew if they end a turn in the same room as wounded crew, and engineers will automatically repair equipment if they end a turn in the same room as damaged equipment. Gunners need to end a turn in the same room as a gun. You can use guards to board the enemy ship if you advance within 50 yards of it; and they can repeal enemies if they board you. I think guards automatically attack hostiles in their room at the end of a turn.

The chief engineer is an engineer, the guard captain is a guard, the surgeon is a medic, and I think the lookout is a gunner (it might be someone else). I'm not sure if they attack generically or have buffed stats. And I'm not sure if the other named crew does anything in combat.

In general, you want to avoid combat until you get a few upgrades; especially better armor and more guns (and there are multiple types of guns beyond the basic "does damage"). There are three ways to win a fight: destroying the ship, killing all the crew, or dropping the crew's morale to zero. And which one you try to do will vary depending on what guns you have and the enemy's setup. But for a long time combat will either be unwinnable or the enemy will be weak enough that you should destroy their ship.

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

ETA:  As I'm nearing the end of my ME2 playthrough, I'm naturally starting to turn my attention to ME3.  I'll be honest;  other than the fact that I know I can play as Garrus and Tali, and I remember loving the Prothean character... I don't remember for the life of me who else is on the team in that game.   

Liara, Ashely (but later), EDI in bot form, and new guy Vega.

[Rhom]

3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Liara, Ashely (but later), EDI in bot form, and new guy Vega.

Oh yeah... Forgot about those.

[KiDisaster]

10 minutes ago, Fez said:

In general, you want to avoid combat until you get a few upgrades; especially better armor and more guns (and there are multiple types of guns beyond the basic "does damage"). There are three ways to win a fight: destroying the ship, killing all the crew, or dropping the crew's morale to zero. And which one you try to do will vary depending on what guns you have and the enemy's setup. But for a long time combat will either be unwinnable or the enemy will be weak enough that you should destroy their ship.

Yeah I learned that the hard way last night as I was going to do one of the first mission objectives and got attacked by a zeppelin that had two guns vs my one. There was no way for me to win that fight cause they just had twice the damage output, which was annoying. I'll probably start over tonight and see about heading to the city straight away to buy some upgrades if I can afford any.  

The info about the medics and engineers is helpful, thanks

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

On 2/7/2017 at 7:35 PM, Fez said:

I played it for around 8 hours. I didn't like it that much. The game is absurdly, unfairly hard; to the point that you cannot beat missions using regular tactics. Doing so will almost always result in at 2 of your squad being injured or killed (that's if your lucky; it'll usually be more than that); and the costs of replacing them will cripple your progression and you'll lose. Instead, and the developers having even said this is playing as intended, you need to beat missions by figuring out exploits in AI behavior.

Alternatively, and this is what I mostly did, you can run every missions with the minimum size squad; this makes the missions a lot easier since enemy squads are always exactly the same size as yours. And when there's less enemies, its easier to surround their commander. This isn't true for story missions though, since there's unlimited enemies in those missions; they are level-locked instead of scaling though, so the way to beat them is excessive grinding in non-story missions (which are the bulk of the game).

The problem is that you are always evenly matched against opponents; which makes it like a chess game. And like in chess, you'll lose pieces on the way to winning. The problem is, the game's meta-economy isn't set up for you to be able to regularly replace pieces. Its set-up to be like X-COM and it expects you to have few casualties and to be regularly leveling up your squad. But that's not possible to do, unless you play the game in ways that aren't particularly fun.

 I've been playing the living shit out of this and enjoying it. It's a lot like Darkest Dungeon in that it is very hard at the start. You kind of have to accept that you are going to lose a handful of characters in order to build up a handful of others. Once you get a core squad that is moderately leveled and geared, it becomes much easier.

 You're right that the meta-economy is fairly harsh as well, but this also becomes easier as you progress. The key is farming wyrdstones. You hit the occasional map that has a fuckton of them, and you can get ahead of the gold grind if you can manage to collect a large number of them.

 I've been playing the Sisters Warband, and from what I can tell they seem to be the best at the survival end of things. Your leader starts with a nice group buff spell, and if you keep your band together in a tight formation, you are really hard to beat.At about 4th level you can get a group heal spell for her which puts you at a great advantage. The AI doesn't really coordinate group attacks well. It seems to mostly come at you with 2 or maybe 3 pieces at a time, so keeping your band en masse is a solid strategy. The only downside to this is when you come across a spellcaster who has an area effect attack.

[aceluby]

Picked up Nioh over the weekend and have enjoyed it quite a bit so far.  The way to describe it is a more arcade version Dark Souls mixed with Diablo looting mechanics in an Onimusha-like universe.  The action is quite a bit faster than Dark Souls, but a lot of the same tactics apply.  There is also summoning like DS, but no invading; instead when you die you leave a blood stain that can be summoned into your world for a tough NPC fight.  Also instead of a truly open world, you have missions to complete that have various loot offerings, so you can replay missions as many times as you like.  The difficulty is quite high, but nothing unimaginable so far.  

I've made it to the 2nd island (which I regret since I left a mission unfinished) and am slowly making my way through the missions on that island.  I like the way the missions are set up so that there is a definite beginning and end to them.  No saves in the middle of a mission though, but you can just set it to Rest Mode w/out issue.  

So far so good!

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 I've been playing the living shit out of this and enjoying it. It's a lot like Darkest Dungeon in that it is very hard at the start. You kind of have to accept that you are going to lose a handful of characters in order to build up a handful of others. Once you get a core squad that is moderately leveled and geared, it becomes much easier.

 You're right that the meta-economy is fairly harsh as well, but this also becomes easier as you progress. The key is farming wyrdstones. You hit the occasional map that has a fuckton of them, and you can get ahead of the gold grind if you can manage to collect a large number of them.

 I've been playing the Sisters Warband, and from what I can tell they seem to be the best at the survival end of things. Your leader starts with a nice group buff spell, and if you keep your band together in a tight formation, you are really hard to beat.At about 4th level you can get a group heal spell for her which puts you at a great advantage. The AI doesn't really coordinate group attacks well. It seems to mostly come at you with 2 or maybe 3 pieces at a time, so keeping your band en masse is a solid strategy. The only downside to this is when you come across a spellcaster who has an area effect attack.

Glad to hear its working out for you. I'd say I'd give it another shot, but I have such a backlog of games as is, that I probably won't get back to it.

I had started as the Sisters but it was a complete disaster. When I restarted as the mercenaries it went smoother (this was also when I started the trick of always sending the smallest warband possible), but I just wasn't having enough to keep going. Those archers can be really useful though.