Video Games: No Man's Pie

[Jasta11]

5 hours ago, briantw said:

Apparently the PC version of No Man's Sky is an absolute disaster right now.  A lot of gamers can't even boot up the game, as it crashes at the title screen.  Alt-tabbing breaks the game.  The frame rate is terrible even on the best machines.  This could be an even worse PC launch than Arkham Knight, which would be goddamn impressive.

No kidding. One of my friend's GoG version crashes on startup everytime. He claims that he's tried rebooting, changing drivers, all the works, then saw that he was hardly alone and many, many people had his problem, when they weren't getting 20 FPS on 4000$ top-tier hardware. Hopefully those issues get fixed so that the people who have a chance of actually enjoying that game (heaven knows I don't) can actually play it properly.

In related news, it seems Jim Sterling's website got DDoS'd after he gave the game a 5/10. The lenghts to which dedicated fans will go to silence all dissent so they can keep living in their bubble astounds me sometimes. I mean, I don't have that much love for Sterling himself, but trying to crash his website is not only petty, but pointless as he's known to support himself via Patreon, not ads.

Personally, I have Mankind Divided in my sights, trying my best to ignore some of the tacky marketing surrounding it and hoping the actual game is a bit more subtle in its themes.

[Red Hermit]

The problem with space sims is that they always seem to go for quantity of locations over quality.  More of a focus on meaningful content and less on scope would be appreciated.

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, Red Hermit said:

The problem with space sims is that they always seem to go for quantity of locations over quality.  More of a focus on meaningful content and less on scope would be appreciated.

No Man's Sky isn't really a space sim. The actual stuff in space is incredibly barebones, especially compared to Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen. At least E:D has worked this out and they're now bolting more hand-crafted quests and content onto the game, which is helping expand the depth problem (especially with the Thargoid invasion looking reasonably imminent).

[Rhom]

So how do things like the PC launch of NMS and Arkham Knight even happen?  I mean... The devs have actually played the game on a PC before, right?

[MerenthaClone]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

So how do things like the PC launch of NMS and Arkham Knight even happen?  I mean... The devs have actually played the game on a PC before, right?

Sure.  On specific pieces of hardware with specific drivers, in specific configurations, I'm sure NMS and Arkham Knight were 100% stable.  Its harder to design for the kind of variation that PCs have.  

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

So how do things like the PC launch of NMS and Arkham Knight even happen?  I mean... The devs have actually played the game on a PC before, right?

The AK situation is far more unforgivable, IMO. That was a game developed by a major studio with support from a major publisher, that had a history of having great PC launches. There's no good reason why it happened.

NMS, for all its hype, was still developed by a relatively small studio. And while it had support from a major publisher, that publisher was Sony, who was naturally only interested in the PS4 launch going smoothly. So it makes sense why the PC launch might be rocky.

Of course, at the same time, it should've been obvious to Hello Games that this was going to be a problem, and they should've delayed the PC release a lot more than the few days they did to try to fix the issues.

[Jasta11]

It's not always easy to predict a rocky launch on PC, given the hundreds of thousands of possible configurations, plus the myriad problems that could be on the user's end (outdated drivers, bad hardware, etc.). It may have worked for the devs on their PCs.

Still, this doesn't seem like enough of an excuse. There are many reports of crashes and/or terribly low FPS for a game that doesn't look that good, as well as other quirks like ugly pop-in (saw it on a stream, it does look grainy and awful) and a badly designed option menu that forces you to restart the game every time you change them. A quick gander at Steam reviews show that game has tons of detractors already based on that.

So yeah, it does look like a bad port. And after the deliberate vagueness of Sean Murray and the outright lies about multiplayer, far as I'm concerned that's three strikes, out for this developper. I'm not going to buy any of their games before launch, that's for sure.

[Argonath Diver]

Sure was fun playing a nice six or so hour block of No Man's Sky tonight instead of hanging out with my friends. Basically like Terraria with fancy graphics.

That is, until my stupid fucking spaceship, upon its auto-launch, flew itself straight up, hit a chunk of Aluminum Deposit about 150 feet above the cave it landed itself in, got stuck half inside it, rapidly shattered all its shields, killing me.Takes about 15 minutes from where I spawn to reach the broken ship which is not movable, is completely fucking broken, and the game never bothers to tell you what the fuck to do if you're stranded in the middle of nowhere and the glitchy ass procedural bullshit makes your ship un-recoverable. I spent two hours trying to repeatedly run back up this absurd rock formation to reach it, only to be killed multiple times by angry scouts who don't want me to try to remove the aluminum from under the ship (which doesn't work anyway).

Needless to say, my happiness with the game went south incredibly fast. I can't even figure out how to tell this goddamn game to let me start over and waste tonight's adventures. Back to my normal games until some random night that I think "Oh hey, I should try to play that ruined my fucking Saturday night."

Thanks for listening.

[Lord Hanna]

On 8/12/2016 at 3:06 PM, briantw said:

Apparently the PC version of No Man's Sky is an absolute disaster right now.  A lot of gamers can't even boot up the game, as it crashes at the title screen.  Alt-tabbing breaks the game.  The frame rate is terrible even on the best machines.  This could be an even worse PC launch than Arkham Knight, which would be goddamn impressive.

Really? Damn, i must have got lucky. Haven't had any of those problems. 

[briantw]

13 hours ago, Lord Hanna said:

Really? Damn, i must have got lucky. Haven't had any of those problems. 

Apparently they pushed out a same-day patch that fixed some of the issues, most notably people not getting past the initial loading screen.  Still kind of amazing that a glitch of that magnitude even made it into the day one version of the game.  Did they even test it?

[The Anti-Targ]

18 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Sure was fun playing a nice six or so hour block of No Man's Sky tonight instead of hanging out with my friends. Basically like Terraria with fancy graphics.

That is, until my stupid fucking spaceship, upon its auto-launch, flew itself straight up, hit a chunk of Aluminum Deposit about 150 feet above the cave it landed itself in, got stuck half inside it, rapidly shattered all its shields, killing me.Takes about 15 minutes from where I spawn to reach the broken ship which is not movable, is completely fucking broken, and the game never bothers to tell you what the fuck to do if you're stranded in the middle of nowhere and the glitchy ass procedural bullshit makes your ship un-recoverable. I spent two hours trying to repeatedly run back up this absurd rock formation to reach it, only to be killed multiple times by angry scouts who don't want me to try to remove the aluminum from under the ship (which doesn't work anyway).

Needless to say, my happiness with the game went south incredibly fast. I can't even figure out how to tell this goddamn game to let me start over and waste tonight's adventures. Back to my normal games until some random night that I think "Oh hey, I should try to play that ruined my fucking Saturday night."

Thanks for listening.

Hmmm, seems like there should be an option of when your ship has been totalled to re-set to your last successful landing.

[Corvinus85]

I've been trying XCOM2 again, this time with Ironman mode, Veteran difficulty. I suck. Three tries now, and every time it's a slow, but sure road to disaster. Last time, I lost 3 of 5 guys in the first black site mission. Ironman is too much for me. I already beat the game at same difficulty without Ironman, so I'm not really inclined to go that route again. smh 

[Muttering Bill]

On ‎8‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 11:57 PM, Argonath Diver said:

That is, until my stupid fucking spaceship, upon its auto-launch, flew itself straight up, hit a chunk of Aluminum Deposit about 150 feet above the cave it landed itself in, got stuck half inside it, rapidly shattered all its shields, killing me.Takes about 15 minutes from where I spawn to reach the broken ship which is not movable, is completely fucking broken, and the game never bothers to tell you what the fuck to do if you're stranded in the middle of nowhere and the glitchy ass procedural bullshit makes your ship un-recoverable. I spent two hours trying to repeatedly run back up this absurd rock formation to reach it, only to be killed multiple times by angry scouts who don't want me to try to remove the aluminum from under the ship (which doesn't work anyway).

That's an issue that they've said they will be patching soon.

In the meantime, head to the nearest waypoint and summon your ship.  Not every waypoint will have it, but all of the big ones should at least.  Will be either a small terminal if it has a landing dock, or it could be a short pillar if it doesn't.

[Talleyrand]

Mafia II was 80% off on steam which seemed like a fair deal and I remember enjoying the first one so I bought it. Enjoying it so far, seems to be hitting most the beats for a Mafia story with more than a couple obvious influences/homages/rip-offs of popular films and tropes but it's not totally cliche.

And it's not a GTA clone like I'd feared which was made rather clear when I got a fine for speeding in the first 20 minutes of playing.

[Rhom]

Latest in No Man's Sky.  Landed on a planet and discovered a distress beacon for a crashed ship.  Found it and with a few repairs it became mine.  An alien I couldn't talk to wanted my multi tool, I gave it to him and he gave me a better one.

Still not understanding what I'm doing... But I'm getting better at it!  

ETA:. Also, still fiddling with WoW.  There's a demon invasion goin on and you can get iLevel 700 gear for your 100's.  PvP is enabled though, so mainly the Horde just takes care of things while Allies afk in the sky for rewards.  My level 50 guy is now level 64 in two days of parking him at the edge of a zone.

Today at work, I discovered I could afk and minimize the game while pulling up NMS on PS4 remote play. Ironically, I'm playing it on a computer with fewer problems than PC people can!  While still leveling my lowbies!!!  

[Lord Hanna]

So.....i accidentally got rid of the anti-matter given to me. Needed to warp drive and go to different galaxies, and i spent the past few days trying to find more.....and i can't. Anybody got a clue where to find some? 

[Rhom]

9 hours ago, Lord Hanna said:

So.....i accidentally got rid of the anti-matter given to me. Needed to warp drive and go to different galaxies, and i spent the past few days trying to find more.....and i can't. Anybody got a clue where to find some? 

I craft mine now, but you won't be able to without the recipe.

Best bet would be the galactic terminal on the space station in your starting system.

[Inkdaub]

I was in Best Buy today looking at an HP Envy desktop that I will probably buy soon.  I spent about a half hour in the game section staring at the XBox display.  I was going back and forth on whether to just pick it up and buy the thing.  We'll see.  I am absolutely quivering in anticipation of the NES Classic that comes out on November 11.  WoW and Super Mario Bros are easily my favorite games. 

Spent a little while earlier questing on my warlock.  I will probably boost him for Legion but want to get him to level sixty for the prof boost.  He's fifty-nine now.  I'm pretty much done with WoD and haven't really ever gotten into it.  I'm hoping Legion will be...less orc.  There are other races in the game.  Less orc is all I ask.

[Rhom]

2 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

Spent a little while earlier questing on my warlock.  I will probably boost him for Legion but want to get him to level sixty for the prof boost.  He's fifty-nine now.  I'm pretty much done with WoD and haven't really ever gotten into it.  I'm hoping Legion will be...less orc.  There are other races in the game.  Less orc is all I ask.

Park your Lock in one of the Invasion Zones.  They last 3 hours and there are two active at any one time.  Dun Morogh, Westfall, and Hillsbrad in Eastern Kingdoms.  Azshara, Tanaris, and Northern Barrens in Kalimdor.

The mobs scale to your level, so you can help if you'd like, but even if you just cross over into the zone you will get XP and two chests with blue weapons/armor.

As I said above, had a shammy that has been level 50 for 8 years now... Because of this event, I have afk'd him up to level 66 in two days.

On average, seems to take 20 minutes or so per event.

As to Legion being Orc heavy, Gul'Dan features prominently early on, but all the mobs I've seen in the DH starter area are demons and likewise the Broken Shores scenario and the Invasions.

[Lord Hanna]

8 hours ago, Rhom said:

I craft mine now, but you won't be able to without the recipe.

Best bet would be the galactic terminal on the space station in your starting system.

Thank you. Been a couple days of me going around all the planets trying to find some, no such luck, even at the trading posts. The grind continues.