Videogames: "No E3 for you!" edition.

[Inkdaub]

 

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Gorn said:

Crusader Kings 3 confirmed for September 1st. Easily the biggest release of the year for me, and the new previewed features look amazing: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/05/14/hands-on-preview-crusader-kings-3-is-the-rpg-that-will-suck-you-into-grand-strategy/

Not that I'll buy it on launch day, of course. I was burned too many times by uncooked Paradox releases.

The question will be how long until the inevitable ASoIaF mod launches for the game. I give it three weeks.

[Toth]

I honestly don't understand simracers. This can't be how cars in real life behave. It's impossible. So... Another invitational event and this combines basically everything I hate about Project Cars. British tracks, a completely undrivable car and rain. The "Historic GT5 UK" something something. I'm forced to drive the Ford Zakspeed. This car is utter shit. In the entire game I haven't seen something like this before. A car that hates steering so much like this one. After countless spins in practice I figured out that you aren't allowed to steer and accelerate at the same time, it will immediately swerve visciously to the side. This piece of shit is a winner in 24h races and I can't even survive 3 laps without killing myself? How the fuck does that work?!? I deeply doubt that its drivers were such inhuman gods that they spend hours on end without making a single mistake. Heck, even if I don't make any mistakes the car keeps trying to kill me, forcing me to go off the acceleration and get immediately punted into the grass by the 15 suicidal maniacs who are with me on the track. They don't seem to have any of the trouble that I have. Heck I have seen one car overtake me by driving straight through the grass!

2 hours. I have spent two hours trying to survive this fucking nightmare of a race at Donington now. The best I could do was to reach second before turn 3 when the track started getting soaked and I aquaplaned away. It was always the exact same moment in exact the same corner when suddenly all physics started trying to kill me and I couldn't drive at all anymore. In the end I didn't even care about getting points anymore, I just wanted to get home in one piece and even that I couldn't do. For some reason my tire damage turns red at the end of lap 2, adding to the impossibility to drive and the moment I spin off because my car suddenly decides that swerving hard right is the way to go on a long straight the tires are totally gone. After like 20 attempts I let the field pass me and try to bring it home, but no. I spin and spin and spin and spin and I end up nearly lapped till I finally make it through the finishing straight BACKWARDS.

I have to emphasize again: This car... was made for 24h races. How the fuck is this possible? Normal fucking cars have no problems driving on motorways without constantly spinning to death and this car makes me loose control driving 20km/h?!? Are you fucking kidding me? 20?!? Gah! Why am I wasting my time with this shit?

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Man, it's too bad the writing is so bad in Mass Effect Andromeda. The gameplay is really a ton of fun, and I love the open world aspect. I'm having a ton of fun leveling up, collecting things, fighting, etc. I also have some mods that make my squadmates useful which has made this game so much more enjoyable. The enemies still only focus on me, but as they close in on my position and I have low health and no shields, Drack will just destroy them. It's great.

 

Edit: Anyone try Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky? I had this series recommended, and I do love JRPGs, so I went for the first one, and I'm finding it kind of hard to get into (prologue). Right now, I find the dialogue to just drag on forcing me to skip a ton of it, and the battles are pretty slow (though I just did find you can speed up with the trigger button). What's the hook of this game/series?

[Inigima]

After ignoring it for years, I bought the cheap complete edition of FF XIV to try out and... I'm actually really enjoying it? Coming from years of WoW, it's refreshing to play an MMO that doesn't hate its players. Easy teleportation anytime! 100% droprates on all quest items! The map shows you where to go for all your quests! You can level every class on one character and switch between them anytime, for free! Most people aren't screaming assholes! It's not perfect but it's a lot friendlier to players than I'm used to from WoW. 

[Werthead]

Having fun with the Fallout 4 replay, mainly because I got and installed all the other DLC before playing (I previously only had Far Harbor) and I've ended up doing a lot of their quests which are completely new to me. The underground vault you can explore is absolutely massive (getting on for Blackreach size from Skyrim), the first time I actually felt one of the in-game vaults was as big as it was supposed to be, and I was surprised at the amount of content there even if you don't want to use it for construction purposes. Clearing out the place can be pretty hairy.

The key weakness of Fallout 4 - it's pretty much not an RPG any more, just a FPS with dialogue choices - remains very firmly in place though.

1 hour ago, Inigima said:

After ignoring it for years, I bought the cheap complete edition of FF XIV to try out and... I'm actually really enjoying it? Coming from years of WoW, it's refreshing to play an MMO that doesn't hate its players. Easy teleportation anytime! 100% droprates on all quest items! The map shows you where to go for all your quests! You can level every class on one character and switch between them anytime, for free! Most people aren't screaming assholes! It's not perfect but it's a lot friendlier to players than I'm used to from WoW. 

FF14's reputation as the most welcoming and friendly MMO around seems quite well-earned. Elder Scrolls Online and The Old Republic also aren't too bad and FO76, although not an MMORPG in the traditional sense, still has a lot of friendly players. I don't think there's really a modern major MMO with too toxic a playerbase (there's definitely some lower-profile ones with iffy reputations though).

[Poobah]

58 minutes ago, Werthead said:

FF14's reputation as the most welcoming and friendly MMO around seems quite well-earned. Elder Scrolls Online and The Old Republic also aren't too bad and FO76, although not an MMORPG in the traditional sense, still has a lot of friendly players. I don't think there's really a modern major MMO with too toxic a playerbase (there's definitely some lower-profile ones with iffy reputations though).

No love for Guild Wars 2? It's my on-off game of choice, and generally seems to get praised for having an extremely friendly and welcoming community. I think ArenaNet as a studio seem pretty fucking useless on a number of counts, including their incapacity to market their own product, but the game is actually very fun to play, and while I think the lack of vertical endgame (which is what it might be most known for?) does tend to turn some off I think there's more than enough content there that even people who are purely "numbers go up" driven will be playing for a good while before they get to a point where they can only get prettier, or do narrative content for non numerically increasing rewards.

[mcbigski]

On 5/14/2020 at 8:40 AM, Luzifer's right hand said:

I guess I will get my SO a new console once the new generation is out. 

The PS5 looks like the better option right now from a hardware point of view. 

PS controllers suck for us though as my SOs hands hurt after a short time playing with one. The Xbox One Elite controller is pure perfection as far as my SO is concerned . My own hands fall asleep when I use a PS3 or PS4 controller. 

Personally I don't enjoy gaming with controllers much unless it is a short game of stuff like Mario Kart. I mostly gave up on the Switch because of that despite the fact that it had some awesome games. My hands don't fall asleep with Switch or Xbox controllers though.

I'm with you.  I think it's about hand size, but I went PS2 to 360 because the controller felt better.  I think I started a thread about 12 years ago looking for a mouse set up that didn't make my hand hurt.  When it gets too bad I switch to left hand for a few months, but XBox controllers have never been an issue.

On 5/14/2020 at 4:19 PM, aceluby said:

After a couple decades of backwards compatibility I've come to the conclusion that it's a fairly useless gimmick, at least for me.  I might use it for the first 6 months if there is a game I missed in the last generation and the initial launch of games isn't great.  Even in that case there were a lot of games that actually come out on two generations (TLOU, DS2, any sports game).

It feels like a way to sell consoles when the game library is too small to justify the hefty price tag (and is usually a contributor to that price).  It also feels unlikely that those who are getting launch day consoles are ones who never had one before, so at this point I just don't get it beyond the marketing ploy of "over 10,000 titles to choose from".  

FWIW I went against the board wisdom and bought an XBOX 1 X in March, figuring I'd have extra at home time, and having just bought a 60 inch or so 4k screen in December.  Didn't want to wait for next gen.  Been replaying Oblivion instead of whatever Jedi game I got as part of the package.  Will switch over eventually, but having some back compatible is definitely a feature that helped me lean towards XBox, since I had their last gen console.

[Inigima]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

FF14's reputation as the most welcoming and friendly MMO around seems quite well-earned. Elder Scrolls Online and The Old Republic also aren't too bad and FO76, although not an MMORPG in the traditional sense, still has a lot of friendly players. I don't think there's really a modern major MMO with too toxic a playerbase (there's definitely some lower-profile ones with iffy reputations though).

I've played ESO, and it did a nice job of making its MMO quests stuff you might actually care about. Wasn't as good for group content though. My interactions with others were pretty limited. 

FFXIV is definitely pretty welcoming and friendly. I will say that I've been told that bad players in dungeons will usually slow you down but not stop you, and it can be hard to gauge how you're doing as DPS; one thing I like in MMOs is doing the best job I can, so I wish I could get a bit more data. They specifically outlaw combat parsing, though, although people do still do it client side, to prevent people from being dicks to other players. 

49 minutes ago, Poobah said:

No love for Guild Wars 2? It's my on-off game of choice, and generally seems to get praised for having an extremely friendly and welcoming community. I think ArenaNet as a studio seem pretty fucking useless on a number of counts, including their incapacity to market their own product, but the game is actually very fun to play, and while I think the lack of vertical endgame (which is what it might be most known for?) does tend to turn some off I think there's more than enough content there that even people who are purely "numbers go up" driven will be playing for a good while before they get to a point where they can only get prettier, or do narrative content for non numerically increasing rewards.

I really hated GW2. Just nothing about it motivated me to play it at all. We were promised dynamic quests; what we got was quests that don't matter with no narrative value. Maybe I'd like it more now with more experience in the genre, but neither GW nor GW2 ever gave me a desire to keep playing, ever. Other than letting me name a Mesmer "Olivianewtonjohn."

[Argonath Diver]

Terraria released a new update that adds a whole ton of stuff. A Journey mode lets you basically customize your game to exactly how you want to play - EZ mode, super challenge mode, hoarder mode, etc. It's bloody perfect. I am loving it, though if it's anything like my original few plays, I'll stall out once I have an acceptably cool house and NPC hotel.

[Rhom]

3 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Man, it's too bad the writing is so bad in Mass Effect Andromeda. The gameplay is really a ton of fun, and I love the open world aspect. I'm having a ton of fun leveling up, collecting things, fighting, etc. I also have some mods that make my squadmates useful which has made this game so much more enjoyable. The enemies still only focus on me, but as they close in on my position and I have low health and no shields, Drack will just destroy them. It's great.

 

Edit: Anyone try Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky? I had this series recommended, and I do love JRPGs, so I went for the first one, and I'm finding it kind of hard to get into (prologue). Right now, I find the dialogue to just drag on forcing me to skip a ton of it, and the battles are pretty slow (though I just did find you can speed up with the trigger button). What's the hook of this game/series?

We are definitely on a wave length in gaming... totally random.  I have trumpeted Andromeda as the best gameplay in the series for years now.  It’s why I want a sequel desperately.  Keep the game assets and give a team of writers a real opportunity and you have something that could really excel.

Aaaaand to really be weird, I bought the first three Trails of the Sky games on GoG a few months back and just started playing the first one a couple days ago.  I’m in the same spot as you.  I’m not sure if it will grab me or not, but it’s scratching the quirky JRPG vibe that I used to love so much.  Reminds me of Lunar and Arc the Lad in the gameplay and the light hearted tone is definitely in the Lunar neighborhood.

Speaking of, pretty sure my Sega CD won’t work... I have been wondering where to get the Lunar games again reasonably.  Might be something I would emulate.  

[Rhom]

3 hours ago, Inigima said:

After ignoring it for years, I bought the cheap complete edition of FF XIV to try out and... I'm actually really enjoying it? Coming from years of WoW, it's refreshing to play an MMO that doesn't hate its players. Easy teleportation anytime! 100% droprates on all quest items! The map shows you where to go for all your quests! You can level every class on one character and switch between them anytime, for free! Most people aren't screaming assholes! It's not perfect but it's a lot friendlier to players than I'm used to from WoW. 

Also funny... because I bought the same package to check it out.  I have a Lancer on a lowish level.  I do also like the ease of getting into the game.  I even just played a few training quests that teach me how not to stand in the fire when running dungeons.  

[Inigima]

3 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Also funny... because I bought the same package to check it out.  I have a Lancer on a lowish level.  I do also like the ease of getting into the game.  I even just played a few training quests that teach me how not to stand in the fire when running dungeons.  

What server are you on? I'm on Excalibur. I've been leveling THM, CNJ, and GLD so far, all at lv 25 (well, GLD is about to be the next time I turn anything in); THM was my original and I think if it as my "main," but the term barely has meaning for me at the moment. I was thinking of trying another class out, too.... 

Edit: Do every one of those sprout dungeon training quests, the rewards are great and will last you a while. 

[Rhom]

1 minute ago, Inigima said:

What server are you on? I'm on Excalibur. I've been leveling THM, CNJ, and GLD so far, all at lb 25 (well, GLD is about to be the next time I turn anything in); THM was my original and I think if it as my "main," but the term barely has meaning for me at the moment. I was thinking of trying another class out, too.... 

Edit: Do every one of those sprout dungeon training quests, the rewards are great and will last you a while. 

I’m on Ultros. I’m level 20 but haven’t drifted to any other class yet.

[Fez]

5 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Edit: Anyone try Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky? I had this series recommended, and I do love JRPGs, so I went for the first one, and I'm finding it kind of hard to get into (prologue). Right now, I find the dialogue to just drag on forcing me to skip a ton of it, and the battles are pretty slow (though I just did find you can speed up with the trigger button). What's the hook of this game/series?

I've heard it described as the JRPG MCU, and I think that's right. There's 9 Legend of Heroes games spread across 3 different series and they're all connected. It's not always the same A plots, and the main characters change, but its the same meta-story slowly being advanced and the later games are filled with references and characters from earlier ones. And there's a strong attention to world building, both through all these connections and through the little details. For instance, every single random NPC in the game will have new things to say after every single big event.

Now personally, I don't love the games; at the least not the three I've played. The meta-story moves painfully slowly, and in most of the games the main story drags on too. Plus the combat starts getting old too pretty quick. There's definitely some charm in the games, but I don't know if its worth the hundreds of hours it'll take to get through all of them. But the people who are fans of the games really love them, so there's definitely something there for some people.

[Derfel Cadarn]

15 hours ago, Inigima said:

After ignoring it for years, I bought the cheap complete edition of FF XIV to try out and... I'm actually really enjoying it? Coming from years of WoW, it's refreshing to play an MMO that doesn't hate its players. Easy teleportation anytime! 100% droprates on all quest items! The map shows you where to go for all your quests! You can level every class on one character and switch between them anytime, for free! Most people aren't screaming assholes! It's not perfect but it's a lot friendlier to players than I'm used to from WoW. 

I like it. Whats great is, my original PC account links to PS4 so i can play the same characters across platforms on the same servers. Albeit I eould need to upgrade each plstform with apropriate xpacs

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:53 PM, Rhom said:

We are definitely on a wave length in gaming... totally random.  I have trumpeted Andromeda as the best gameplay in the series for years now.  It’s why I want a sequel desperately.  Keep the game assets and give a team of writers a real opportunity and you have something that could really excel.

Aaaaand to really be weird, I bought the first three Trails of the Sky games on GoG a few months back and just started playing the first one a couple days ago.  I’m in the same spot as you.  I’m not sure if it will grab me or not, but it’s scratching the quirky JRPG vibe that I used to love so much.  Reminds me of Lunar and Arc the Lad in the gameplay and the light hearted tone is definitely in the Lunar neighborhood.

Speaking of, pretty sure my Sega CD won’t work... I have been wondering where to get the Lunar games again reasonably.  Might be something I would emulate.  

That's cool though (that we're on the same wave length). I'll check with you on my next purchase! I want to like Trails, but I guess we'll see. Speaking of Andromeda, I just saw the Krogan fist fight. WTF? Come on "Bioware" (I know it wasn't really them who made this game). 

Though, I think it'd be super cool if those rumored (confirmed?) remasters integrated the combat from this game into the OT. I'd love that so much. Oh, and give us a Krogan squad member in the third game. Is that so much to ask?

23 hours ago, Fez said:

I've heard it described as the JRPG MCU, and I think that's right. There's 9 Legend of Heroes games spread across 3 different series and they're all connected. It's not always the same A plots, and the main characters change, but its the same meta-story slowly being advanced and the later games are filled with references and characters from earlier ones. And there's a strong attention to world building, both through all these connections and through the little details. For instance, every single random NPC in the game will have new things to say after every single big event.

Now personally, I don't love the games; at the least not the three I've played. The meta-story moves painfully slowly, and in most of the games the main story drags on too. Plus the combat starts getting old too pretty quick. There's definitely some charm in the games, but I don't know if its worth the hundreds of hours it'll take to get through all of them. But the people who are fans of the games really love them, so there's definitely something there for some people.

I see, that's pretty cool--i love EUs. So, as opposed to Final Fantasy these games are much more interconnected. Thanks for the answer. I'll keep playing and be patient.

[red snow]

My brother gave me his copies of res 2/3 remake. Weirdly, i think the games succeeds too much with the horror feel. Zombies that keep Coming back (my precious ammo) and a very claustrophobic feel makes it quite hard to relax (which is my primary goal in playing a game). I'll stick with it until mister x appears but i may have to put this one being too good at creating a tense atmosphere.

[Toth]

On 5/16/2020 at 2:48 PM, Toth said:

I honestly don't understand simracers. This can't be how cars in real life behave. It's impossible. So... Another invitational event and this combines basically everything I hate about Project Cars. British tracks, a completely undrivable car and rain. The "Historic GT5 UK" something something. I'm forced to drive the Ford Zakspeed. This car is utter shit. In the entire game I haven't seen something like this before. A car that hates steering so much like this one. After countless spins in practice I figured out that you aren't allowed to steer and accelerate at the same time, it will immediately swerve visciously to the side. This piece of shit is a winner in 24h races and I can't even survive 3 laps without killing myself? How the fuck does that work?!? I deeply doubt that its drivers were such inhuman gods that they spend hours on end without making a single mistake. Heck, even if I don't make any mistakes the car keeps trying to kill me, forcing me to go off the acceleration and get immediately punted into the grass by the 15 suicidal maniacs who are with me on the track. They don't seem to have any of the trouble that I have. Heck I have seen one car overtake me by driving straight through the grass!

2 hours. I have spent two hours trying to survive this fucking nightmare of a race at Donington now. The best I could do was to reach second before turn 3 when the track started getting soaked and I aquaplaned away. It was always the exact same moment in exact the same corner when suddenly all physics started trying to kill me and I couldn't drive at all anymore. In the end I didn't even care about getting points anymore, I just wanted to get home in one piece and even that I couldn't do. For some reason my tire damage turns red at the end of lap 2, adding to the impossibility to drive and the moment I spin off because my car suddenly decides that swerving hard right is the way to go on a long straight the tires are totally gone. After like 20 attempts I let the field pass me and try to bring it home, but no. I spin and spin and spin and spin and I end up nearly lapped till I finally make it through the finishing straight BACKWARDS.

I have to emphasize again: This car... was made for 24h races. How the fuck is this possible? Normal fucking cars have no problems driving on motorways without constantly spinning to death and this car makes me loose control driving 20km/h?!? Are you fucking kidding me? 20?!? Gah! Why am I wasting my time with this shit?

Ironically after I complained about this on Reddit I was recommended looking up old races of the Ford Zakspeed and did so. This was the first result on Youtube:

I think I feel better now about my skills. XD

[aceluby]

Started up God of War this weekend for a new, non-VR game to play while it rained.  Game is MUCH different than the previous ones and I'm torn as to whether that's good or bad.  I was kind of hoping for some mindless hack and slash with a decent story - but instead it's got a kind of souls-like feel in combat, builds, equipment, leveling; an open world that I constantly feel lost in; and a pretty deep story line that carries a pretty heavy emotional weight to it.  It's great, and I'm enjoying it in short bursts - but it's not at all what I expected.