Video Games - Legendary Edition

[Jon AS]

11 hours ago, Werthead said:

It was also funny reading they deliberately gave Yang a flaw in that he's obsessed with Medium Lasers and will stick tons of them on everything, so on almost every build it's worthwhile ripping out 50% of the Medium Lasers and replacing them with other things (like heat sinks for the other half). Often leaving his builds as is is pointless because you build up too much heat to actually use them.

Wait, there's an option to have Yang customise 'mechs for you? In all my time I spent with this game I never noticed that.

Of course being obsessed with medium lasers is kind of understandable, since they are pretty much the most efficient weapon. Even on the tabletop their only real drawback is limited range, which is generally not a concern in the video game. If you're going for custom builds, you can never go wrong taking a chassis with plenty of energy hardpoints (e.g. Hunchback 4P, Black Knight, Banshee 3M) and stuffing it with medium lasers and heat sinks.

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Slurktan said:

If you aren't enjoying things (as you put it) and are instead feeling shame over it, then why the fuck do it?

Why do it? To try. To try and enjoy it. And engage with the material and figure out why it doesn't speak to them. Which is a helpful way of identifying what one's contemporary tastes are as much as they are not. And because sometimes, much to our surprise, after several unsuccessful attempts - we might find ourselves actually able to finally engage with the material on account of changed tastes, life situations, improved patience, etc. (A relevant case in point: I absolutely did not like Diablo as a teen. Yet this past year I've spent easily over 50 hours on it and it's been an absolute blast.)

[Slurktan]

9 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Why do it? To try. To try and enjoy it. And engage with the material and figure out why it doesn't speak to them. Which is a helpful way of identifying what one's contemporary tastes are as much as they are not. And because sometimes, much to our surprise, after several unsuccessful attempts - we might find ourselves actually able to finally engage with the material on account of changed tastes, life situations, improved patience, etc. (A relevant case in point: I absolutely did not like Diablo as a teen. Yet this past year I've spent easily over 50 hours on it and it's been an absolute blast.)

So a Masochist then. I guess that explains it.

[Corvinus85]

11 hours ago, Jon AS said:

Wait, there's an option to have Yang customise 'mechs for you? In all my time I spent with this game I never noticed that.

Of course being obsessed with medium lasers is kind of understandable, since they are pretty much the most efficient weapon. Even on the tabletop their only real drawback is limited range, which is generally not a concern in the video game. If you're going for custom builds, you can never go wrong taking a chassis with plenty of energy hardpoints (e.g. Hunchback 4P, Black Knight, Banshee 3M) and stuffing it with medium lasers and heat sinks.

Werthead can shed more light here, but I interpreted his comment as the builds you get by default when acquiring a new mech skew towards too many M lasers. I don't care what Yang does, tinkering with the mechs is one of the best parts of the game.

[Werthead]

24 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Werthead can shed more light here, but I interpreted his comment as the builds you get by default when acquiring a new mech skew towards too many M lasers. I don't care what Yang does, tinkering with the mechs is one of the best parts of the game.

Yup. Everything you get in the game comes up M lasers all the time. I noticed the difference playing MechWarrior 5 when M-lasers are a lot less in evidence everywhere, and the game's wiki notes that it's Yang going hogwild with the M lasers. They also note some deviations from the tabletop versions of the exact same builds with the lasers (although there's also the fact that in the video game, L lasers are almost completely useless because going for 2x or 3x M lasers is always a better trade-off, or stepping up to PPCs).

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Yup. Everything you get in the game comes up M lasers all the time. I noticed the difference playing MechWarrior 5 when M-lasers are a lot less in evidence everywhere, and the game's wiki notes that it's Yang going hogwild with the M lasers. They also note some deviations from the tabletop versions of the exact same builds with the lasers (although there's also the fact that in the video game, L lasers are almost completely useless because going for 2x or 3x M lasers is always a better trade-off, or stepping up to PPCs).

If you're talking about L lasers in BattleTech, I disagree. They are pretty accurate, and use less weight and heat, so they could still hit well and allow you to put them on better armored mechs.

[Jon AS]

The base configs in the game are just the official designs from the tabletop game. They are what the 'mech in question actually looks like. Refitting BattleMechs isn't supposed to be as easy as it is usually made in video games, that's the big advantage that the later OmniMechs offer. Though as every BattleMech still has several official variants it obviously still happens.

The one thing to note is that several 'mechs in the game actually have some of their lasers rear-mounted in the tabletop version. These have all been flipped around to the front for the video game. Examples include the Centurion, Quickdraw, Archer, Battlemaster and Atlas.

2 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

If you're talking about L lasers in BattleTech, I disagree. They are pretty accurate, and use less weight and heat, so they could still hit well and allow you to put them on better armored mechs.

Yeah, large lasers are good. But since you're also usually limited by the number of energy hardpoints. sometimes going for PPCs can give you overall higher damage output. Plus PPCs are just plain cooler than lasers.

[Werthead]

I got the Star League-era Highlander, so transferred Glitch into that. With her insane tactical score she can now critical enemy central torsos at 82% every time, so with the Gauss Rifle she's tearing through enemies like no tomorrow. She overtook Behemoth's kill score as my best direct-shooter, though I then built Dekker a Stalker missile boat (4x LRM15s), so he's maintaining a narrow lead by dint of being able to core-shot anything in the game with 60 missiles in one go (which is a guaranteed insta-kill on all Lights and Mediums and most Heavies). I also put my character in a Battlemaster, which I was iffy on in my first game but this time around has proven itself to be a very solid all-rounder. I've left Behemoth in an Awesome for the time being as my new PPC shooter, but I feel she needs a more well-rounded mech. Though her two PPCs are both massively enhanced for stability damage, so she has a solid chance of knocking over anything with a single salvo hit, which makes it vaguely tempting to keep her in it.

BattleTech incidentally just became my third game on Steam with more than 100 hours in it (after Fallout 4, Skyrim and XCOM: Enemy Unknown), just edging past Cyberpunk 2077.

On an almost-totally-different note, Railway Empire was on sale today so I picked that up. Reportedly a solid successor to Railroad Tycoon, with some very cool options for building railroads across America. It's from the same team as Surviving Mars and the Tropico series, which are all very solid city-builders.

[Corvinus85]

I've been playing a lot of Bannerlord lately. I made an Aserai character, with the hopes of focusing on being a strong trader, but eventually still went more on the mercenary/adventurer route. Then I became a lord of the Aserai. I was granted a castle at the border with the Western Empire after an Aserai army of which I was a part of took it from the Imperials. Not long after, the Aserai sultan died of natural causes and the lords elected a new sultan... me. Oh fuck, all of a sudden I had my own kingdom. Me with one border castle, while other lords have cities. Ha!

Becoming a lord also triggered the next phase in the main quest line, which in hindsight I shouldn't have done at all, as it's become a major distracting chore. I decided to ignore the related quests that keep repeating from now on, to be able to properly focus on the wars to come. I do intent to weaken the Empire, and I hope the Khuzaits continue to be appeased by the tribute we've been paying them, and the Vlandians continue to be busy with the Battanians.

Besides the castle and its villages, I'm getting a nice steady income from 5 workshops and 3 caravans, though periodically I lose a caravan, and have to go find the character I assigned to lead it to send them on again. It's annoying that after your companions escape captivity they don't make their way back to you, instead sitting on their butts in a random town until you go collect them. 

From some youtube videos I found out you can make a boatload of money from well crafted weapons, so I've started developing my smithing skill. There doesn't seem to be a smith wandering around to recruit.

[aceluby]

Tried snagging a PS5 today at target.com.  Had it in my cart for 15 minutes trying to check out.  Tried w/ my redcard and with apple pay, both kept giving me errors until it was removed from my cart because there wasn't any left.  Ugh....

[RumHam]

I don't understand why there's not a waitlist you can get on with Sony. They'd make more money selling them directly. Same thing with the video cards. Like this scalper situation is a solvable problem if any of the companies selling the things actually wanted to solve it. 

[Fez]

8 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I don't understand why there's not a waitlist you can get on with Sony. They'd make more money selling them directly. Same thing with the video cards. Like this scalper situation is a solvable problem if any of the companies selling the things actually wanted to solve it. 

Selling directly would incur a ton of new costs, plus it would piss off the retailers, who are still valuable sources of revenue in normal times due to impulse purchases.

Plus, scalpers do nothing to affect the companies' bottom lines. A sale is a sale, doesn't matter if its too a scalper or a consumer. And the scalped ones will eventually get into consumer hands, so software purchases will net out the same anyway.

[RumHam]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

Selling directly would incur a ton of new costs, plus it would piss off the retailers, who are still valuable sources of revenue in normal times due to impulse purchases.

You think they'd stop selling their products though?I mean Gamestop really can't or what would they sell? Probably NFTs of games or something....

Personally the only physical game I've bought since getting my XBox One was Dark Souls for the switch. I wanted something to fill the cartridge slot. 

But anyway Target, Walmart, Gamestop, Best Buy could all do waitlist / one per address and credit card. I bet that would cut down on a lot of it.

5 minutes ago, Fez said:

Plus, scalpers do nothing to affect the companies' bottom lines. A sale is a sale, doesn't matter if its too a scalper or a consumer. And the scalped ones will eventually get into consumer hands, so software purchases will net out the same anyway.

True, but I still wish they'd do something. The video card situation especially is ridiculous. 

[Rhom]

17 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I don't understand why there's not a waitlist you can get on with Sony. They'd make more money selling them directly. Same thing with the video cards. Like this scalper situation is a solvable problem if any of the companies selling the things actually wanted to solve it. 

 

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

Selling directly would incur a ton of new costs, plus it would piss off the retailers, who are still valuable sources of revenue in normal times due to impulse purchases.

Plus, scalpers do nothing to affect the companies' bottom lines. A sale is a sale, doesn't matter if its too a scalper or a consumer. And the scalped ones will eventually get into consumer hands, so software purchases will net out the same anyway.

Sony does sell directly though.  They just don't stock it either.

I'm with @RumHam I said long ago that it would make sense to send a unique link to get on a waitlist to all subscribers to PlayStation Plus.  Your most loyal customers are the ones on the subscription and they are the ones who will actually buy games.  Back in December, I linked an article that pointed out that more systems had been sold than games for this generation.  Essentially proving that it was all scalper activity.  Given that the consoles generally lose money for every unit sold, getting the install base out there to your actually paying customers is vital.  Take some steps to be proactive.

[RumHam]

1 minute ago, Rhom said:

Sony does sell directly though.  They just don't stock it either.

Huh I didn't know that. It seems Microsoft will sell you one for $34.99 a month for 24 months. But you can't just buy it outright direct from them. It says they're out of stock everywhere too. 

[Rhom]

Just now, RumHam said:

Huh I didn't know that. It seems Microsoft will sell you one for $34.99 a month for 24 months. But you can't just buy it outright direct from them. It says they're out of stock everywhere too. 

Yeah, the fact that video game consoles are now getting to the point where they are on monthly payments like cell phones is at least vaguely disturbing to me.

Playstation Direct.  PS5 console page.

[Fez]

24 minutes ago, RumHam said:

You think they'd stop selling their products though?I mean Gamestop really can't or what would they sell? Probably NFTs of games or something....

Personally the only physical game I've bought since getting my XBox One was Dark Souls for the switch. I wanted something to fill the cartridge slot. 

But anyway Target, Walmart, Gamestop, Best Buy could all do waitlist / one per address and credit card. I bet that would cut down on a lot of it.

True, but I still wish they'd do something. The video card situation especially is ridiculous. 

Not Gamestop. But places like Target/Walmart/Best Buy I think would totally cut off a console maker in this kind of situation.

And I totally agree with you that the situation is really stupid and I wish something would be done. Just saying I don't think the relevant companies have any incentive to act.

[RumHam]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

Not Gamestop. But places like Target/Walmart/Best Buy I think would totally cut off a console maker in this kind of situation.

And I totally agree with you that the situation is really stupid and I wish something would be done. Just saying I don't think the relevant companies have any incentive to act.

I mean they sell for example apple products that can be purchased online from apple no? 

Edit: oh duh and Rhom pointed out that Sony is already selling the PS5 online they just don't have a waitlist. 

[Fez]

6 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I mean they sell for example apple products that can be purchased online from apple no? 

Edit: oh duh and Rhom pointed out that Sony is already selling the PS5 online they just don't have a waitlist. 

Right. I was more referring to if Sony (or Microsoft/Nintendo) dramatically changed the current status quo, decreasing the allocations to retailers so that more can be sold through their own online stores.

[Kalbear]

The other thing they do is agree on not charging less or having exclusive bundles. How this isn't price fixing i don't know.