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Video Games: A Far Cry From E3


KiDisaster

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Still playing through God of War... soooooo much side content, its unbelievable. Not only that, but its a genuine joy to actually explore, there's always something unique/rewarding around the corner. So far its amazing, unless RDR2 really surprises this will probably end up being my GOTY. 

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36 minutes ago, Azzanadra said:

Still playing through God of War... soooooo much side content, its unbelievable. Not only that, but its a genuine joy to actually explore, there's always something unique/rewarding around the corner.

Same I’ve been taking my time with it. I love just exloring. Beautiful game. Still I’ll be surprised if Red Dead isn’t my #1. Spoiled to get both in one year with Last of Us two right around the corner as well. 

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Got into an frustrating groove in BattleTech where I'm running around clearing up low-level missions. This is great because it gives me a fair bit of money and also XP, which is key. I'm boosting my lance pilots all the way up the ranks quite nicely between missions now.

The problem is that although I have three Heavies, two of them are Dragons, which are close-range brawlers. On most missions that's fine, but the second I start trying higher-tier missions (like just half a skull above the 2 skulls I can normally do with ease) they bring out 8 mechs, usually 4 mediums and 4 heavies, and then I'm toast, as they can wipe me out before I close to range. It doesn't help that my only viable ranged sniper is a Vindicator medium, who immediately attracts the fire of every unit on the battlefield so is of limited utility on the battlefield. Ideally I need to find more useful and versatile heavies, but that's been tough so far.

It's annoying because I want to get on with the next story mission, but right now that's impossible as I die the second the enemy reinforcement lance lands, as my damage output isn't enough to deal with the 4 mediums and lights at the start of the game without taking damage, and then the 4 heavies take me out very quickly.

The amount of grind in the game is annoying, especially because it seems highly variable: I seem to be about 50-60% of the way through the story at 35 hours and am running around grinding, and other people are reporting finishing the whole game in 20-25 hours because they had a smooth run of picking up heavy and assault mechs very easily thanks to the RNG gods.

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I, too, am having a hard time with BattleTech. It sucks that the game keeps you only at 4 mechs, and because most of the good payoff missions, you always have to deal with 2 lances, (one usually being a "surprise"). I've been trying to complete this story missions 3 times now, which gives a high payoff, but can't finish it without incurring heavy losses. 

I've only gotten one heavy mech so far, a Dragon, the rest are medium mechs. I still have the original Blackjack and the Vindicator, but primarily I use a Centurion and 2 Shadowhawks.

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I played a decent amount of RDR, but it didn't really do it for me. So I'm ambivalent about RDR2.

Take-Two also seems like one of the big bads when it comes to nickle and diming with microtransactions. Perhaps they will leave RDR2 alone in that respect, but I would not be surprised if they screwed with it to make it a live service, persistent revenue platform not too much different to how WB completed screwed over Shadow of War.

You know all these big publishers are looking for ways to milk as much money out of gamers beyond the up front $60 by using FTP revenue models in full priced games. I'm pretty worried about this infiltrating all games from 3rd party publishers as it seems to be being brought in for all flagship titles. It's almost like the last bastion of the pure $60 game will be Nintendo and Sony games, and even Sony won't be totally pure. You know gaming is hitting a bit of a low point when God of War (as good as it is) is being hailed for the fact that it's a single player game and it has no micro-transactions, or key bits of content as on-disc DLC (eff you Creative Assembly for having significant amounts of Total War: Warhammer listed as DLC when it's simply locked content behind a paywall that comes with the base game), as if that sort of game has become so rare that every instance of it needs to be celebrated as such.

Perhaps Mass Effect Andromeda killing Mass Effect is a mercy killing, because it would be some much worse if it was killed off in the manner of Destiny 2 or Star Wars Battlefront 2, with lootboxes and scabby micro-transaction BS. 

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15 hours ago, Werthead said:

The amount of grind in the game is annoying, especially because it seems highly variable: I seem to be about 50-60% of the way through the story at 35 hours and am running around grinding, and other people are reporting finishing the whole game in 20-25 hours because they had a smooth run of picking up heavy and assault mechs very easily thanks to the RNG gods.

Not sure if I've been blessed by RNG or just been grinding. I'm about 30 hours in (no idea how far, storywise, I just did the back-to-back Artu missions), but everything is pretty easy now that I've got 6 Heavies that are mostly tricked out with + gear. I've got another 3 Mediums ready in the bays, something like 7 pilots that are all 6s and 7s in stats (plus a couple rookies), a mostly fully upgraded ship, $6 million cash, and a ton of lights and mediums in storage if I ever need to sell for a cash infusion. It definitely feels like I've broken past the difficulty curve (although, the story just straight-up rewarded me my first Assault Mech, so maybe I am where I'm supposed to be).

It also feels like the game has outstayed its welcome at this point though. Its been fun, and the backstory is great, but neither the writing nor the gameplay has been nearly as interesting as the Shadowrun games.

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3 hours ago, Fez said:

Not sure if I've been blessed by RNG or just been grinding. I'm about 30 hours in (no idea how far, storywise, I just did the back-to-back Artu missions), but everything is pretty easy now that I've got 6 Heavies that are mostly tricked out with + gear. I've got another 3 Mediums ready in the bays, something like 7 pilots that are all 6s and 7s in stats (plus a couple rookies), a mostly fully upgraded ship, $6 million cash, and a ton of lights and mediums in storage if I ever need to sell for a cash infusion. It definitely feels like I've broken past the difficulty curve (although, the story just straight-up rewarded me my first Assault Mech, so maybe I am where I'm supposed to be).

It also feels like the game has outstayed its welcome at this point though. Its been fun, and the backstory is great, but neither the writing nor the gameplay has been nearly as interesting as the Shadowrun games.

I feel this game doesn't quite have the replay factor that the XCOM games do. I'll try to continue to grind away and attempt to finish the story, but I don't think I'll go again afterwards.

In my campaign, I recently finished the mission where you capture Lady Espinosa, and I must say I managed to play it to near perfection, with only some damage to my mechs, and no injuries. And 2 of my pilots were rookies, because the prior story mission was nearly disastrous. Right now I am in a decent place, but I still only have 2 Dragons as heavy mechs, and the rest are mediums. I have my character typically in a Centurion, and I find that if I can keep him from getting damaged, my Centurion is usually the decisive mech in most engagements.

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12 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Take-Two also seems like one of the big bads when it comes to nickle and diming with microtransactions. Perhaps they will leave RDR2 alone in that respect, but I would not be surprised if they screwed with it to make it a live service, persistent revenue platform not too much different to how WB completed screwed over Shadow of War.

That happened with GTA 5 right?

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5 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I feel this game doesn't quite have the replay factor that the XCOM games do. I'll try to continue to grind away and attempt to finish the story, but I don't think I'll go again afterwards.

In my campaign, I recently finished the mission where you capture Lady Espinosa, and I must say I managed to play it to near perfection, with only some damage to my mechs, and no injuries. And 2 of my pilots were rookies, because the prior story mission was nearly disastrous. Right now I am in a decent place, but I still only have 2 Dragons as heavy mechs, and the rest are mediums. I have my character typically in a Centurion, and I find that if I can keep him from getting damaged, my Centurion is usually the decisive mech in most engagements.

Is that the one on the moon where you first have to destroy the dropship? I think this was the one I was stuck on. There were 4 light/mediums and tons of turrets. Once you take them out and blow the dropship, 4 heavies then land, including one that has two 2 PPGs. The problem I had was that I couldn't take down the lights/mediums without taking light damage, and then the heavies blew me to pieces almost immediately.

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14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Is that the one on the moon where you first have to destroy the dropship? I think this was the one I was stuck on. There were 4 light/mediums and tons of turrets. Once you take them out and blow the dropship, 4 heavies then land, including one that has two 2 PPGs. The problem I had was that I couldn't take down the lights/mediums without taking light damage, and then the heavies blew me to pieces almost immediately.

Yeah, that's the one. It took me 2 tries. First try didn't go so well, not knowing what's coming at me, but the 2nd one was gold. I was able to use the terrain to great advantage, both in the beginning, where the light/medium mechs mostly approached me one at a time, and the turrets couldn't take shots at me (and I destroyed their generators). When the reinforcements came in, rather than take them head on, I went around. (unfortunately the AI proved to be weak here, because they just sat near their landing location, rather than try to do a search & destroy) I moved my mechs on the ridge near their drop point, and thus gained the high ground. That heavy mech with the 2PPCs got overheated taking shots at me, but missing half the time. I was able to mostly pick them off one at a time.

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I think you guys are playing through the Battletech campaign at a much brisker pace than I do. By the time I did the mission to take out the dropship my lance was mostly composed of heavies.

I found it useful to have a composition of 1 LRM boat that hangs back (if you can't get your hands on a Trebuchet the Centurion you get early on will do, though I turned mine into a Yen Lo Wang knockoff), 2 long range snipers (preferably sporting AC/5s because those things are ridiculously more powerful in this game than in the tabletop version and easily outperform PPCs) and one close range brawler. I used the aforementioned Centurion for that, later a Hunchback 4P and then a Grasshopper, which seems made for the role. This 'mech tends to take lots of damage and more often than not I'll have to eject the pilot to save them, but until then it's capable of downing others in its weight class with a single alpha strike to the centre torso (even more easily when you manage to get behind the enemy) while the rest of the lance mops up everything else. Short of being completely outmatched (2 lances of assault 'mechs vs. 3 heavies and a medium...) or the assassination target getting up from a knockdiown and immediately limping into the evac zone that spawned right next to it, most missions tend to go pretty smoothly.

Right now I'm trying to get the last two assault 'mechs missing for my collection, the Atlas and the King Crab, before finishing up the campaign.

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Wait, you can eject the pilots?

I can't say I play at a brisk pace, but I choose my missions based on difficulty and payouts. If I feel that I can do a story mission better than a side contract, I'll do that, especially since they pay better. Numerous times I've been on the brink of bankruptcy, and had to sell items. It doesn't help when you get your butt kicked, and you need to spend money your don't really have to refit your mechs.

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1 minute ago, Corvinus said:

Wait, you can eject the pilots?

Yep. I think there's even a loading screen hint about it.

2 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I can't say I play at a brisk pace, but I choose my missions based on difficulty and payouts. If I feel that I can do a story mission better than a side contract, I'll do that, especially since they pay better. Numerous times I've been on the brink of bankruptcy, and had to sell items. It doesn't help when you get your butt kicked, and you need to spend money your don't really have to refit your mechs.

I went looking for money and salvage and ended up doing a bunch of missions on behalf of the Federated suns in Taurian territory.

Later I returned there and basically bounced between New Vandenberg and Taurus (both rich, manufacturing worlds with Inner Sphere level civilization) in order to farm assault 'mechs until I got bored and went back to the story.

I found that at least at a certain point it paid more to max salvage in contract negotiations since even medium 'mechs sell for hundreds of thousands of C-bills. You do need a bit of a cash reserve first though, since you'll probably have to do 2-3 missions for larger payouts. I'm rapidly approaching the 20 million achievement and it's not like I'm being particularly frugal.

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1 hour ago, Jon AS said:

Yep. I think there's even a loading screen hint about it.

I went looking for money and salvage and ended up doing a bunch of missions on behalf of the Federated suns in Taurian territory.

Later I returned there and basically bounced between New Vandenberg and Taurus (both rich, manufacturing worlds with Inner Sphere level civilization) in order to farm assault 'mechs until I got bored and went back to the story.

I found that at least at a certain point it paid more to max salvage in contract negotiations since even medium 'mechs sell for hundreds of thousands of C-bills. You do need a bit of a cash reserve first though, since you'll probably have to do 2-3 missions for larger payouts. I'm rapidly approaching the 20 million achievement and it's not like I'm being particularly frugal.

I guess that's another aspect of the game that I didn't fully explore. The star map is so uninteresting, that I think of going out into the galaxy, and just stayed in the general area where contracts automatically appeared. I'll have to change my tactics.

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4 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I guess that's another aspect of the game that I didn't fully explore. The star map is so uninteresting, that I think of going out into the galaxy, and just stayed in the general area where contracts automatically appeared. I'll have to change my tactics.

You'll always get contracts from the closest few systems around your current position, so it's not like you're going to find yourself in a star system without any missions available (though the next best one might be a jump away).

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I picked up an AC20+++ which is sitting in my inventory taunting me, because my Dragons and Quickdraw can't mount it (at least not without stripping them of all their armour).

I'm thinking of switching my two Dragons to real close-up death-dealers. Their melee is more powerful than any other mechs apart from the Atlas, and apparently if you give them jets and put the leg armour up to maximum you can destroy a Medium from full health just by jumping on them without taking too much damage. That'd also allow me to outfit them with the tons of SL and SRMs which I have clogging up the hold. This might make the dropship mission more bearable as well.

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I hate to interrupt this thread on Battletech (that is what we're talking about isn't it?) but I've been playing God of War for a few days now.  Having not played the original trilogy of games (it came out at a time that I was lost in the World of Warcraft and didn't do much console gaming), I am kind of assuming this is a big departure from a gameplay standpoint?  Or were all the games an Uncharted/Last of Us style game with axes and gods?

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7 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'm thinking of switching my two Dragons to real close-up death-dealers. Their melee is more powerful than any other mechs apart from the Atlas, and apparently if you give them jets and put the leg armour up to maximum you can destroy a Medium from full health just by jumping on them without taking too much damage. That'd also allow me to outfit them with the tons of SL and SRMs which I have clogging up the hold. This might make the dropship mission more bearable as well.

I think the Dragon works best as long range support. It's fairly mobile for a heavy, so it can get into good firing positions easily, but the large engine also means they don't have much tonnage to spare for weapons and armor, so they will get shredded if they draw too much attention, which close range brawlers inevitably do. The only way I see to make that somewhat viable is to give it nothing but that AC/20 plus 2-3 tons of ammo and then max out armour.

Dragons aren't second to the Atlas in melee damage (there are about 10 that do more damage, and about 2-3 that are the same; most of these have more mount points for SL or MG which complement melee attacks), and even the heaviest 'mechs can't use DFA more than once or twice before they start losing legs. Also: DFA is a cool maneuver when it works, but boy do you feel silly when you miss...

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15 hours ago, Rhom said:

I hate to interrupt this thread on Battletech (that is what we're talking about isn't it?) but I've been playing God of War for a few days now.  Having not played the original trilogy of games (it came out at a time that I was lost in the World of Warcraft and didn't do much console gaming), I am kind of assuming this is a big departure from a gameplay standpoint?  Or were all the games an Uncharted/Last of Us style game with axes and gods?

It is a very big departure. There was always climbing and puzzle solving but the combat was pure hack-n-slash with a far more zoomed out camera, sometimes a top down view. I really like the change they made, the combat in this latest one is fantastic. 

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14 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

It is a very big departure. There was always climbing and puzzle solving but the combat was pure hack-n-slash with a far more zoomed out camera, sometimes a top down view. I really like the change they made, the combat in this latest one is fantastic. 

I agree. The Valkyries are some of the best bosses I've fought in a while. 

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