Video Games: Mystery Box Character Creation

[Corvinus85]

1 minute ago, Toth said:

Rome 1 had the necessary mechanics though. It had solid unit collision and soldiers that tried to stick to their place in their formation no matter what. Which in turn made line-depth and 'pushing' thin formations until they break totally valid tactics. They also had Macedon phalangites (even though they gave the formation to other units that looked absurd with it) and all the other unit types that mattered. I'm also pretty certain that even though Rome's AI was still crap, at least the pathfinding wasn't utterly broken, I never saw units randomly getting stuck, freeze and get slaughtered, which I had happen with infuriating frequency from Medieval II onwards.

All Europa Barbarorum did was get rid of copy-pasted barbarian armies and ramp up the defense stat of every unit to make them more tanky. I remember when I was a teenager I noticed during a siege when my Triarii clashed with a Gallic unit of fanatics amidst the constraints of a narrow street, they hacked at each other for about a minute before the first soldier died. I found that fantastic! EBs system allowed even cheap levy units to competently stall an enemy in order for your heavier hitters to arrive, becoming even more powerful in sieges where the entire gameplay revolved around cordoning off streets and shield walls pushing each other through alleys as if in a deadly tug-o-war.

I don't ask for much. Yes, slower pace in the battles would be neat, but working unit collision and pathfinding are actually my main priorities.

Rome 2 has more unit formation options than Rome 1. The phalanx is present there, too, and still indomitable if you attack them in the front, and they're in the right formation. But the problem is, and always has been the AI, and the fast pace of the battles. There are mods for Rome 2 that improve battles, as well. Unit collision was indeed atrocious, but CA has continued to support the game over the years, and I think, not 100% sure, that they made some improvements with this.

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, Toth said:

Rome 1 had the necessary mechanics though. It had solid unit collision and soldiers that tried to stick to their place in their formation no matter what. Which in turn made line-depth and 'pushing' thin formations until they break totally valid tactics. They also had Macedon phalangites (even though they gave the formation to other units that looked absurd with it) and all the other unit types that mattered. I'm also pretty certain that even though Rome's AI was still crap, at least the pathfinding wasn't utterly broken, I never saw units randomly getting stuck, freeze and get slaughtered, which I had happen with infuriating frequency from Medieval II onwards.

All Europa Barbarorum did was get rid of copy-pasted barbarian armies and ramp up the defense stat of every unit to make them more tanky. I remember when I was a teenager I noticed during a siege when my Triarii clashed with a Gallic unit of fanatics amidst the constraints of a narrow street, they hacked at each other for about a minute before the first soldier died. I found that fantastic! EBs system allowed even cheap levy units to competently stall an enemy in order for your heavier hitters to arrive, becoming even more powerful in sieges where the entire gameplay revolved around cordoning off streets and shield walls pushing each other through alleys as if in a deadly tug-o-war.

I don't ask for much. Yes, slower pace in the battles would be neat, but working unit collision and pathfinding are actually my main priorities.

This actually details my biggest dissatisfaction with the Total Wars. Street battles aren't just boring, they're nonexistent. The AI is so bad that once you know where they're going a single Cohor can wall off a street and kill an army as the struggle in. It's frustrated my attempts at playing the Niceans in the Attila 1212 mod. 

[Corvinus85]

In TW: Three Kingdoms (and other titles, too, me thinks) it does matter where you strike at a unit. The unit's morale will sap faster if you flank them and hit them in the side, and even faster if "you take them in the rear". Their defensive stats also come into play with this. Units with shields can be good at defending against missile fire, but only if they face the right way.

I haven't played the game in some time, and I don't know if they nerfed some of features, but there are some ridiculous unit formations that allows a unit to survive punishing missile fire, or powerful charges etc. Then again, the missile units are/were pretty powerful. In some ways, it feels like it's in the spirit of how the Han developed their military. 

[Heartofice]

I’ve played with a lot of mods like Darthmod that slowed down battles making them a lot more sedate and I have to be honest I found it hugely frustrating. Clashes went on forever and nobody would route even when attacked in the rear.

There simply wasn’t very much to actually do once units have engaged.. and I guess that is the trade off. It is still a game after all. 
 

While I don’t love the fast paced nature of the game as it is, I know the slower pace also doesn’t work for me. But maybe that’s because it’s still just an RTS masquerading as a strategy game. Slowing it down doesn’t change that.
 

If there was some deeper level of strategy going on or if you felt like you had in fact out thought your opponent then that would be really appealing.

[Werthead]

25 hours into Horizon: Zero Dawn and completed all the optional cauldrons, vantage points, all but a couple of the corrupted zones, and found almost all of the collectables. Resumed the main story quest and the major backstory revelations are starting to kick in. I really like the worldbuilding and atmosphere, it's really clever trying to piece together how we went from the modern world to the SF world to the post-apocalyptic world.

Also, 

Spoiler

surprise Lance MFing Reddick showing up out of nowhere! I knew he was in the sequel, wasn't expecting him to show up in the first one.

Slightly annoying new bug has surfaced which can stop the game starting, which is weird. If you run into this, you can fix it by disabling auto-Steam synch, deleting your profile and then restarting the game and re-engaging auto-Steam synch. You do have to reset any options you changed before starting the game (like controls, graphic settings etc). Slightly annoying, as I've had it happen twice in the last 15 hours of gameplay or so.

4 hours ago, Slurktan said:

I would think and I hate to say this but a way to have the historical series sell more would be to also sell the modding tools for them.  Medieval II still sells amazingly for a game of its age and that is 100% because of mods.  They haven't given proper mod tools for any of the later games.  So sell the mod tools and make it so that you can only use mods if you have the mod tool and boom.  I really like Three Kingdoms outside of the battles so if you could mod it to play say Third Age or DaC, I'd buy that in a heartbeat

This isn't going to happen. CA kept getting their arses handed to them by modders (Third Age: Total War and the historical mods Toth mentions are better than any CA game by itself) and they realised they could do things the modders were doing but make money from it; they got the idea for the Warhammer TWs from Call of Warhammer, one of the most popular Medieval II mods. They are never going to make it possible for modders to show them up like that again when they could be making green from those ideas instead.

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I believe this is part of the Warscape engine limitation. You cannot do a full conversion mod to any game using this engine. There is a mod for Attila called Medieval Kingdoms 1212 (I think) which is about the closest I've seen to a full conversion mod. But when it comes to settlements and provinces, they were forced to limit themselves to just cities, which takes the charm away when you don't have castles.

Warscape allows you to reskin battle units and change unit stats, so you can create new armies in appearance and capability, although I believe they have to be based on an underlying, existing unit in the first place. You can't redesign cities or castles and I believe you can't change the UI. You certainly can't change the campaign map other than raising or lowering the sea level, which they haven't really done much with (ironically they could do a post-apocalyptic, sea level-changed kind of game, but no-one's done that yet).

I think you can also fiddle with the AI. There's a guy called Radious who does an AI overhaul for every Total War game and makes it better, to the point there are players who pointblank refuse to play a game until the Radious mod is released (usually within 3-6 months of the original game release).

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That's Europa Barbarorum battles not Rome Total War battles. Rome 1s battles were just as fast if not faster than Warhammer 2's as at least most things don't rout immediately due to there being a hero on each side in Warhammer.   CA has never and will never release a game with battles like you say.  You need mods.  Which requires a better modding system than anything post Med 2.

Rome's battle started fast but then slowed down as the various sides gained access to heavier armour. The heavier armour your troops had, the longer they could stay in the fight without breaking. Medieval II, with even heavier armour, did the same thing, although you could also upgrade your weapons to try to overcome enemy heavy armour. So whilst it's true that battles could be as short as the Warscape games, in practice not really, not over the course of a whole campaign. I had battles in both games where I ran out the clock, which is borderline utterly impossible in the more titles.

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Interestingly at least Med 2 had a bare bones system where the battles took place where you picked where to fight the battle on the campaign map.  Be it bridge, river ford, mountains, forest etc.  Again, gone post that.

The Rome/Medieval II Engine had that built in. The campaign map is divided into invisible squares and each square generates a unique battle map based on the campaign map at that point, its heightmap, foilage cover, how close it was to the coast etc. Rome went really wild with it, so if you were near a city you could see the city on the horizon, if a fleet was nearby you could see it in the background, if you were near one of the Seven Wonders it would actually appear in the background. I think the Pyramids even appeared on the battle map, which considering probably 1% of players ever fought a battle in that space is quite impressive. I think the two games had something like 16,000 distinct battle map combinations.

Warscape could do the same thing - I think Empire had a version of that, but each of the three theatres was significantly smaller than the Rome/Medieval II maps - but they seem to have given up at some point and have a smaller number of possible battlefields generated from some kind of seed number. I think it's still a lot, but it's dozens to a couple of hundred, not thousands.

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I’ve played with a lot of mods like Darthmod that slowed down battles making them a lot more sedate and I have to be honest I found it hugely frustrating. Clashes went on forever and nobody would route even when attacked in the rear.

The Warscape games have things hardcoded into them so there's a limit to what you can do (unlike the previous engine which allowed you to do pretty much anything you wanted with it). So you can slow battles down by changing certain values, but it just turns things into a slug fest. It means you can pin troops down and then hit them with cavalry or heavy units in the flank, but the changes also make that less effective, which is frustrating.

[Corvinus85]

30 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Warscape allows you to reskin battle units and change unit stats, so you can create new armies in appearance and capability, although I believe they have to be based on an underlying, existing unit in the first place. You can't redesign cities or castles and I believe you can't change the UI. You certainly can't change the campaign map other than raising or lowering the sea level, which they haven't really done much with (ironically they could do a post-apocalyptic, sea level-changed kind of game, but no-one's done that yet).

I think you can also fiddle with the AI. There's a guy called Radious who does an AI overhaul for every Total War game and makes it better, to the point there are players who pointblank refuse to play a game until the Radious mod is released (usually within 3-6 months of the original game release).

You can make changes to settlements, too. You can change layouts and even add other features. I've recently played Warhammer II with a mod where they made custom settlements for many of the major cities, to be more lore friendly. The cities they changed now have real depth to them, or various landscape features that makes attacking or defending them more fun, not just a wall with towers. There is one city, Middenheim, which is built on a steep hill with narrow streets, and there are massive stationary canons embedded at various heights, that can pack a massive punch. And they gave the cities of Kislev an Eastern European flair with pointy domes, including the towers.

I've played the Radious mods for Attila. They're quite good, but oddly I didn't find it necessary to use many mods for Warhammer, mainly because of all the DLCs they've released. 

[Werthead]

Arrrrrrgghhhh. HZD crashed again juster after I killed a Thunderjaw but before I could get its trophy so I could join the Carja Hunting Lodge. Infuriating.

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

You can make changes to settlements, too. You can change layouts and even add other features. I've recently played Warhammer II with a mod where they made custom settlements for many of the major cities, to be more lore friendly. The cities they changed now have real depth to them, or various landscape features that makes attacking or defending them more fun, not just a wall with towers. There is one city, Middenheim, which is built on a steep hill with narrow streets, and there are massive stationary canons embedded at various heights, that can pack a massive punch. And they gave the cities of Kislev an Eastern European flair with pointy domes, including the towers.

I've played the Radious mods for Attila. They're quite good, but oddly I didn't find it necessary to use many mods for Warhammer, mainly because of all the DLCs they've released. 

Ah, that's good.

[Kalbear]

Would this be the part where I talk about the differences in pc vs console stability?

:p

[Werthead]

They dropped a micropatch for HZD today and it seems to have addressed all of the major problems in the game near-instantly. No more crashes, most of the stuttering has gone and pretty much everything is smoothed out. There's still the odd bit of stuttering in high-speed transitions (notably when ziplining, when the engine can't quite keep up with the speed with which you transition the map) but apparently that also happened on PS4. Guerrilla need to get some feedback from Kojima, who got the same engine working flawlessly on Death Stranding (although DS was developed natively for PC, not ported over after the fact, which helped).

Anyway, completed all the optional side-content in the game (apart from the hunter's trials), which has now required me to kill five Thunderjaws, which were all epic fights (reminded me of Jurassic Park, if the T-Rex was a Zoid). Also several Stormbirds, which are far more annoying. I don't think the combat quite handles flying creatures the way it should, particularly the way they sometimes fly past you at such a speed that by the time they've stopped they've gone out of their visual range and lose track of you, which is odd and self-defeating.

Really deep into the main story and I have to say the worldbuilding and the background detail is phenomenal. They could have a whole science-fantasy novel series set during the original war with the robots, the backstory to the civil war in Meridian, the conflict in the tribes, the various excursions into the Forbidden West. The writing in the game is exceptional (as I'd expect from the lead designer of New Vegas, but he really excelled himself here). 

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Would this be the part where I talk about the differences in pc vs console stability?

Again, this is on the developers, not the platform. I give Guerrilla some rope here because they've never developed a PC game before (neither has Sony, effectively, at least not this division) and seem to have underestimated the stress testing involved. Plus they've fixed the major problems pretty fast, in under two weeks.

[Fez]

My game has actually gotten less stable since the patch. I've had three crashes; whereas before I didn't have any (after the initial two the first two times I tried launching the game).

Shame too, because I'm really enjoying the game (except for all the open world combat) and am genuinely invested in seeing where the story goes. Fortunately the checkpointing is pretty good at least.

[Werthead]

It's a very consoley thing to have checkpoints so ridiculously close together that you might as well not have bothered and just had a quicksave option. Especially given the fast travel is so generous anyway (you can fast-travel in the middle of a hectic fight which is a bit odd).

With my exacting playthrough I've got to the last mission of the main game (apparently) at the 48 hour mark but that was with being ridiculously pedantic in everything. You could easily shave 10-15 hours off without being as thorough as I was. According to the Internet, this is the best time to break off and do the Frozen Wilds expansion, so that's next on the checklist.

I do need to wrap it up fast-ish because I want to get MS Flight Simulator when it launches on Tuesday (it looks phenomenal) and that's pretty hefty on the hard drive space, reportedly.

[RumHam]

Flight Simulator seems like something I have to try, but like how "gamey" is it? Like is there stuff to do other than find your house / sightsee? Is there any sort of progression? 

Not that my laptop can probably run it anyway, I suspect I'll be waiting for a console version. 

[Fez]

Well, I made some choices and stayed up far too late last night to beat Horizon: Zero Dawn. I was really invested in the main story and skipped Frozen Wilds as well as a handful of side quests, which I'll go back and finish. I also skipped all the Hunting Grounds after the first one, only did 2 cauldrons, 3 bandit camps, etc. I won't complete them, I don't love the combat that much.

I've had my complaints about gameplay and game stability; but as far as story, writing, and world-building (and visuals), that game is a hell of an achievement. In fact, as far as creating a setting from scratch, it might be the single most impressive game I've played; at least of the sci fi variety. Mass Effect is of course way up there too, but Mass Effect was able to take some narrative shortcuts by being similar enough to other mainstream sci fi setting. Whereas, H:ZD, I've certainly read books with similar concepts (although, the machines look like animals is a new one to me), but I think "post-apocalypse society has gone primitive" takes more work to set up properly then "humanity has reached the stars and there's a lot of aliens out there."

I'm especially impressed at how well they balanced telling the story of what happened before to telling the story of what the world is like now. And also that, at least for a while, the main quest didn't feel so overwhelmingly important that the idea of doing side quests makes no sense (a problem most RPGs have). Eventually it hit that point (which the game even telegraphed when you're at Sunfall; although it made it sound like that was a point of no return, which it wasn't), but far later than most games.

I do feel like the game could've done more with the characters who aren't Aloy though. You met a ton of them, they almost all have great voice actors and good-to-great writing, and they almost all disappear after a quest or two. Which meant that when I did met some of them again later in the game, it had very little impact because I was struggling to remember who most of them were. I think the game could've benefitted from having a few more characters who were present throughout the game (besides Sylens). Errend almost was that, but he's pretty much the other one. That's something I'd like to see in the sequel.

I'd also like to see the sequel do more with the gameplay side of the Focus; I got really tired of following the same looking tracks in so many quests. I also think the combat needs to be tweaked. For how time consuming most of the fights are, there are far too many of them. I think the game either needs to go more action RPG, and have there be even more fights but have them all be faster; or go full Monster Hunter and have the fights be much rarer but significantly longer and harder.

[RumHam]

Ghost of Tsushuma is getting a new co-op campaign

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Today I am very excited to reveal Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, a new online cooperative multiplayer* mode that will come as a free download for Ghost of Tsushima owners on PS4 later this year.

Legends is an entirely new experience — it’s a separate mode that doesn’t follow Jin or the companions from his journey, but instead focuses on four warriors who have been built up as legends in stories told by the people of Tsushima. Ghost of Tsushima’s single-player campaign focuses on an open world and exploring the natural beauty of the island, but Legends is haunting and fantastical, with locations and enemies inspired by Japanese folk tales and mythology and an emphasis on cooperative combat and action.

I really need to find a PS4 before they disappear and catch up on all the exclusives. 

[Caligula_K3]

15 hours ago, Werthead said:

It's a very consoley thing to have checkpoints so ridiculously close together that you might as well not have bothered and just had a quicksave option. Especially given the fast travel is so generous anyway (you can fast-travel in the middle of a hectic fight which is a bit odd).

 

Quicksaves are pretty annoying in console games though. Controllers tend not to have enough buttons to have a save button. I get why most games use this checkpoint system; it sure as hell beats losing twenty minutes of progress in Skyrim because you forgot to save.

Damn, I'm really excited to play Horizon. Though I'll probably wait for a sale and hope that by then most of the game-crashing glitches have been ironed out.

 

[Werthead]

16 hours ago, RumHam said:

Flight Simulator seems like something I have to try, but like how "gamey" is it? Like is there stuff to do other than find your house / sightsee? Is there any sort of progression? 

Not that my laptop can probably run it anyway, I suspect I'll be waiting for a console version. 

There's a number of challenges and tutorial missions to complete, and then a large number of achievements.

In terms of any kind of story/progression, no, it's a pure sandbox in that sense. The idea though is that the game is going to be continuously updated over the next 10 years (!) so a whole ton of stuff will be factored in as it goes along.

Just to note that the game will be available on the X-Box Game Pass on PC for £1 for a trial month.

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Well, I made some choices and stayed up far too late last night to beat Horizon: Zero Dawn. I was really invested in the main story and skipped Frozen Wilds as well as a handful of side quests, which I'll go back and finish. I also skipped all the Hunting Grounds after the first one, only did 2 cauldrons, 3 bandit camps, etc. I won't complete them, I don't love the combat that much.

The Cauldrons are surprisingly varied, which I wasn't expecting after the first two. The last three have one that has caved in and nature and bandits have invaded it, so it's a really different experience and the other two are much smaller and more focused (one of them does make you fight a Thunderjaw in a tight spot though, which is yikes). The bandit camps take about 5 minutes each to clear out.

Taking out the Cauldrons is important because it allows you Override every single machine in the game, which makes fights significantly easier.

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I've had my complaints about gameplay and game stability; but as far as story, writing, and world-building (and visuals), that game is a hell of an achievement. In fact, as far as creating a setting from scratch, it might be the single most impressive game I've played; at least of the sci fi variety. Mass Effect is of course way up there too, but Mass Effect was able to take some narrative shortcuts by being similar enough to other mainstream sci fi setting. Whereas, H:ZD, I've certainly read books with similar concepts (although, the machines look like animals is a new one to me), but I think "post-apocalypse society has gone primitive" takes more work to set up properly then "humanity has reached the stars and there's a lot of aliens out there."

I'm especially impressed at how well they balanced telling the story of what happened before to telling the story of what the world is like now. And also that, at least for a while, the main quest didn't feel so overwhelmingly important that the idea of doing side quests makes no sense (a problem most RPGs have). Eventually it hit that point (which the game even telegraphed when you're at Sunfall; although it made it sound like that was a point of no return, which it wasn't), but far later than most games.

 

Agreed on these points. HZD is a bit of an Ubisoft collect-em-up game, but the side-activities, errands, main quest and area-based missions all blend together in a way that makes sense. Aloy is a hunter in a primitive(-ish) society, so yes, her getting materials to craft a better backpack makes sense in a way that it very much doesn't in Far Cry.

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I'd also like to see the sequel do more with the gameplay side of the Focus; I got really tired of following the same looking tracks in so many quests. I also think the combat needs to be tweaked. For how time consuming most of the fights are, there are far too many of them. I think the game either needs to go more action RPG, and have there be even more fights but have them all be faster; or go full Monster Hunter and have the fights be much rarer but significantly longer and harder.

I didn't find the fights to be too bad once you get the Tearblast arrows. By the time you get those, you should be able to one-shot Watchers and Striders, whilst Scrappers take maybe two hits before dying (if you hit the big module on their back twice). Ravagers, Sawtooths and Stalkers are slightly more involved but can usually be taken down quickly by Tearblasting their primary weapon and then dealing out damage.

It's only really the Thunderjaws and Stormbirds which take significant amounts of time and usually you can fight them in a way that gives you a tremendous advantage (having cover to throw off the Stormbird and being able to snipe Thunderjaws from the edge of their range; Thunderjaws also have those two massive "exhaust ports" which do staggering amounts of damage if you hit them, and if you can blast off and grab their disc launchers, it's pretty much game over).

That's all on Normal. I was looking at some videos of the machines on NewGame+'s "Ultrahard" setting and that was nope.

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Damn, I'm really excited to play Horizon. Though I'll probably wait for a sale and hope that by then most of the game-crashing glitches have been ironed out.

It has been released on sale already (it's £25 down on a full-price new title) so I doubt it's going to get cheaper any time soon. I'd say it's well worth the price.

[Rhom]

Yeah, the fights started to be almost trivial by the end for me in HZD other than some of the more unique enemies.  That of course is not the case in Frozen Wilds where every enemy is much tougher and a couple of the newly introduced enemies are just really, really tough.  Many of the fights really come down to figuring out a good strategy that works for you and using all your weapons in unique ways.  The upgraded ropecaster really makes the Thunderbird fights much more manageable.

HZD really is a fantastic world.  I loved the information and the pace it was leaked to you on what happened.  Unraveling what happened to the world in conjunction with what is going on in the current world was a great balancing act.  Watching what happened amongst the scientists in the last days made for great drama.

I also do encourage you to do the cauldrons like Wert said.  Those are worthwhile.  Bandit camps are not as necessary, but they really don't take long on average.

 

[Ramsay B.]

4 hours ago, RumHam said:

Ghost of Tsushuma is getting a new co-op campaign

I really need to find a PS4 before they disappear and catch up on all the exclusives. 

Well damn, I didn’t see this coming. I love how it’s focusing on supernatural folklore too. Can’t wait.

The weakest part of HZD for me was definitely the bandit camps. I’m really hoping they make fighting humans funner in the next one. The Frozen Wilds DLC was great, and yes, a few of the enemies up there don’t fuck around. It’s way more of a challenge.

[Fez]

I suspect I wasn't meeting HZD's combat entirely where it wanted me to be, and did a bit too much brute forcing. Still, I agree that most solo enemies aren't that bad; other than the really big things like Rockbreakers, Thunderjaws, Deathbringers, Stormbirds, etc. My issue was more the group fights that kept popping off: the story mission where there's like 3 corrupters at once, the herd of Tramplers that wouldn't leave me alone in the open world, etc. Those kinds of fights. 

I went back wrapped up the remaining side quests and errands in the base game that I hadn't finished. There weren't that many left. I think the game could've done a better a job organizing all those quests though. There side quests that were pretty short and sweet and didn't matter much, but then it turned out one that I ignored because I thought it was going to be that was a two-quest chain that ended a pretty major change in the world setting (Queen's Gambit). And then there were errands that mattered more than some of the side quests; the one about Olin's family stands out in particular.

I'll probably do Frozen Wilds later this week and then call it for the game. Maybe I'll have time to finish my EU4 campaign before the next game I'm really looking forward to releases. A different post-apocalypse, Wasteland 3.

[Werthead]

Baldur's Gate 3 livestream.

Interesting confirmation that 

Spoiler

The game opens in Avernus and ties in directly with the Descent to Avernus module, and only moves back to the Realms later on.

Also, your pet mobile brain minion is freaky AF.