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Videogames: New Year, New Thread


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20 minutes ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

How long would you estimate comes the pickup? I am past the tutorial, I think, as I've been tasked to go out and do some quests. I'm probably level 13, did some hunting ground challenges, and went searching for a person from the village and finished that questline. 

The game, at this point, is fine, and while I love open world and exploring, this one isn't capturing me yet.

It's been a while, but my second go through clicked pretty quickly.  I became really invested once I got the arrow that explodes and takes out electronic systems and the combat started opening up in a way that allowed me to stop relying on sneaking all over the place.  The combat is actually pretty deep, but is very restricted at first.  I skipped the hunting grounds for the most part, but did every other quest in the game.

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41 minutes ago, aceluby said:

It's been a while, but my second go through clicked pretty quickly.  I became really invested once I got the arrow that explodes and takes out electronic systems and the combat started opening up in a way that allowed me to stop relying on sneaking all over the place.  The combat is actually pretty deep, but is very restricted at first.  I skipped the hunting grounds for the most part, but did every other quest in the game.

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of the hunting grounds stuff either.  Did every other quest.

If you aren't feeling it, I'd say follow the main story on through for a bit and streamline it.  I really enjoyed alot of the side content though.  Finding the vistas where you could see a glimpse of the world before the collapse was interesting and then tied in with the main story in a satisfying way later.

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22 hours ago, RumHam said:

I could never get past Dwarf Fortress's presentation, sadly. One of the reasons I was glad when I discovered Rimworld. I'm actually no clear on what the difference is beyond the graphics and setting. 

I couldn't get into Dwarf Fortress either. As far as I can tell Dwarf Fortress seems to rely less on external events and more on the world itself going apeshit crazy due to out of whack world generations and a stupidly high degree of moving parts. Explosively breeding cats eating the entire continent bare seem to be a rather common thing to happen.

Meanwhile in Rimworld I'm wondering about dabbling with the caravan function. I just got a ludicrously good quest that tasks me to bring a village that is 2 days away 21 clubs in exchange for two rocket launchers and a statue. These rocket launchers might come in handy if I ever open up that Ancient Danger. So... what is it I need to pack for the trip? In addition to the clubs I'm thinking three colonists, my donkeys, six meals for the trip there, some raw food for the trip back (I still have some packaged survival meals, but I'd like to keep those as an emergency reserve), some kibble for the donkeys, a couple of healroots, three bedrolls and a couple of junk weapons and bad quality furniture to sell at their market while I'm already there. Anything I missed?

Also looking at the abysmal transport capacity of donkeys, I wonder whether taming the Muffalo's on the map might be more advantageous in the long run. The only downside is that I... would instead really like to have some milkable or egg-laying animals to get kibble without using meat. It's a shame that my map so far only spawned male turkeys and absolutely nothing that has milk.

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5 minutes ago, Toth said:

I couldn't get into Dwarf Fortress either. As far as I can tell Dwarf Fortress seems to rely less on external events and more on the world itself going apeshit crazy due to out of whack world generations and a stupidly high degree of moving parts. Explosively breeding cats eating the entire continent bare seem to be a rather common thing to happen.

Meanwhile in Rimworld I'm wondering about dabbling with the caravan function. I just got a ludicrously good quest that tasks me to bring a village that is 2 days away 21 clubs in exchange for two rocket launchers and a statue. These rocket launchers might come in handy if I ever open up that Ancient Danger. So... what is it I need to pack for the trip? In addition to the clubs I'm thinking three colonists, my donkeys, six meals for the trip there, some raw food for the trip back (I still have some packaged survival meals, but I'd like to keep those as an emergency reserve), some kibble for the donkeys, a couple of healroots, three bedrolls and a couple of junk weapons and bad quality furniture to sell at their market while I'm already there. Anything I missed?

Also looking at the abysmal transport capacity of donkeys, I wonder whether taming the Muffalo's on the map might be more advantageous in the long run. The only downside is that I... would instead really like to have some milkable or egg-laying animals to get kibble without using meat. It's a shame that my map so far only spawned male turkeys and absolutely nothing that has milk.

Any chance you can research and build transport pods? Then you can fling everyone there and just have to worry about walking back. You should bring meds too if you've got them. It's possible you could be ambushed en route. I'd consider bringing any silver you have too, the place could have some cows to buy or something. 

And of course don't leave your base defenseless! You can still get attacked while your caravan is out. Oh and as the tooltip says it pays to set up a caravan spot, make a stockpile zone, set it to "important" and only to hold what you intend to bring. It makes the "assembling caravan" part much quicker. 

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1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Any chance you can research and build transport pods? Then you can fling everyone there and just have to worry about walking back. You should bring meds too if you've got them. It's possible you could be ambushed en route. I'd consider bringing any silver you have too, the place could have some cows to buy or something. 

Thanks alot for the quick reply! Mmh, transport pods aren't part of my plan anytime soon. Right now I'm researching survival meals as I'm setting up a new building near the new barn containing a cooking station and a small recreation area with tables and a billard table (I'm annoyed by my colonists getting 'ate without table' mood debuffs as they tend to the southern fields). Medicine I took with me as well, but only healroots because I am rather low on the fancy stuff.

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

And of course don't leave your base defenseless! You can still get attacked while your caravan is out. Oh and as the tooltip says it pays to set up a caravan spot, make a stockpile zone, set it to "important" and only to hold what you intend to bring. It makes the "assembling caravan" part much quicker. 

That's why I split my colony in half. I take one gun and two bows on the expedition and keep two guns and one bow defending the colony. I guess it's also helpful that I was attacked by raiders already immediately before I sent away my caravan. My boars were happy about three more corpses on the pile! Well, my new additions to the colony have proven oddly a bit more squirmish than my initial bunch, so I stop butchering humans and just feed them to the pigs directly. I guess down the line it's less of a hassle as well.

Oh, and the milk situation at least resolved itself, even though I unfortunately wasn't able to acquire cows. But an exotic goods trader also arrived just before I set out and I was able to sell them my shitty -8 beauty wood statues in exchange for two goats that I just put into the alpaca pen until I know where to put them down the line.

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6 minutes ago, Toth said:

Thanks alot for the quick reply! Mmh, transport pods aren't part of my plan anytime soon. Right now I'm researching survival meals as I'm setting up a new building near the new barn containing a cooking station and a small recreation area with tables and a billard table (I'm annoyed by my colonists getting 'ate without table' mood debuffs as they tend to the southern fields). Medicine I took with me as well, but only healroots because I am rather low on the fancy stuff.

That's why I split my colony in half. I take one gun and two bows on the expedition and keep two guns and one bow defending the colony. I guess it's also helpful that I was attacked by raiders already immediately before I sent away my caravan. My boars were happy about three more corpses on the pile! Well, my new additions to the colony have proven oddly a bit more squirmish than my initial bunch, so I stop butchering humans and just feed them to the pigs directly. I guess down the line it's less of a hassle as well.

Oh, and the milk situation at least resolved itself, even though I unfortunately wasn't able to acquire cows. But an exotic goods trader also arrived just before I set out and I was able to sell them my shitty -8 beauty wood statues in exchange for two goats that I just put into the alpaca pen until I know where to put them down the line.

Oh god "ate without table" is the worst. WALK TO ONE OF THE MANY TABLES THEN IF YOU'RE SO FOND OF TABLES. 

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Got a win in with spear now thanks to extending jab, Aphrodite epic attack, Hermes epic attack and 2 chaos attack specials. Pretty safe single target damage and has smouldering air plus Zeus aid along with chain special and Poseidon special and sea storm for crowds. Was quite safe and my easiest clear against Hades so far in the melee end. Now I have 22 blood and this I can max Chiron and max out someone else too. Thinking Eris or Chaos or Poseidon. 

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9 hours ago, Werthead said:

I do find myself yearning for a return to the days of the 20-30 hour game, which is plenty of entertainment. FF7 Remake and The Outer Worlds were both welcome for that, although they both also got criticised for being "too short." That's also where BioWare excelled; apart from Baldur's Gate II, whenever they've gone over 30 hours the game has immediately suffered from a surfeit of tedious makework filler (reaching some kind of apotheosis in Inquisition, where they had game devs telling people to skip parts of the game because they knew it was tedious horseshit because they'd been ordered to make it so).

This part of what makes every single Assassin's Creed game so tedious as well. Excess activities for activity's sake. Figure out the story you want to tell and then get on with telling it. Stop introducing distracting side activities that add nothing of any consequence. I sadly subjected myself to the numerous side-quests in DA: Inquisition because I'm a sucker, even though they made no sense whatsoever. Shard collecting? To open a door in the oasis? Where did they even come from? They make no sense from a lore - let alone gameplay - perspective.

The two most recent AAA games that felt like they knew what they were doing was Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Both games took me about 75 hours to complete (including DLCs) and felt just the right length and told complete, interesting stories. And any and all side activities were complete optional and usually also fairly interesting, if not outright educational.

It's interesting to hear that The Outer Worlds was criticised for being too short? It was about a 23 hours long game for me, and that felt just right. Haven't tried any of the DLCs yet, but the size, scope, scale, duration, it all felt just about...right. It was a game that didn't overstay its welcome and left me actually wanting a bit more - which is rare.

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16 hours ago, IlyaP said:

It's interesting to hear that The Outer Worlds was criticised for being too short? It was about a 23 hours long game for me, and that felt just right. Haven't tried any of the DLCs yet, but the size, scope, scale, duration, it all felt just about...right. It was a game that didn't overstay its welcome and left me actually wanting a bit more - which is rare.

Oh yeah, people moaned about that at tremendous length.

Makes me concerned about the Knights of the Old Republic remake. If they just remake the original game with shinier graphics, people are going to be enraged at it "only" being ~25 hours long, but the alternative will be to fill with tedious busywork, which won't improve the game any (the problem Final Fantasy VII Remake partially has).

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I really liked The Outer Worlds and while it was a little bit on the short side compared to other games I've played recently it's not really too short for the story it's telling. Not every game has to be a 100 hour slog.

And tell you the truth, I found The Witcher 3 tedious towards the end. I finished the main campaign, and along the way completed some of the DLC missions but I never played either DLC storyline to completion because it just got too samey after a while. Steam tells me I've put 75 hours into it so far.

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25 hours for KOTOR 1? That sounds like a rushed first-time playthrough unless you don't bother with some side-quests and epxloration. Granted, I'm always slow and thorough, but iirc it took me nearly 45h the first time. As usual, 2nd playthrough was faster by possibly up to 1/3.

Yet even the average and median playtime seem globally to be quite longer than 25h: https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=9111

Sure, it's not BG2, Skyrim, Witcher 3 or the last Assassin's Creed ones, but one can't seriously complain about KOTOR's length. I could see some people complaining that Jade Empire was shorter than most Bioware RPGs (I don't think it took me more than 25h indeed), if not the shortest of them But KOTOR is reasonably timed, compared to many other great games - don't think it's shorter than Witcher 2, or Deus Ex (original or HR), or Dishonored; it would be quite rich to complain it is too short.

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41 minutes ago, kungtotte said:

Not every game has to be a 100 hour slog.

 

Games should be as long as they need to be. A Short Hike is one of the best open worlds of the last few years and I'm pretty sure you can complete the main objective in under an hour and finish absolutely everything in six or so. 

Sometimes pricing becomes a concern - like as much as I enjoyed Metroid Dread, it does feel a bit of a swizz that it's a full-price Switch game when comparable indie Metroidvanias of similar quality give you much more content for like half or a third of the price- but other than that, nah. 

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45 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

25 hours for KOTOR 1? That sounds like a rushed first-time playthrough unless you don't bother with some side-quests and epxloration. Granted, I'm always slow and thorough, but iirc it took me nearly 45h the first time. As usual, 2nd playthrough was faster by possibly up to 1/3.

Yet even the average and median playtime seem globally to be quite longer than 25h: https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=9111

Sure, it's not BG2, Skyrim, Witcher 3 or the last Assassin's Creed ones, but one can't seriously complain about KOTOR's length. I could see some people complaining that Jade Empire was shorter than most Bioware RPGs (I don't think it took me more than 25h indeed), if not the shortest of them But KOTOR is reasonably timed, compared to many other great games - don't think it's shorter than Witcher 2, or Deus Ex (original or HR), or Dishonored; it would be quite rich to complain it is too short.

Well I think Jade Empire had a perfect length, really short and sweet, so I played it about three times in a row.

As opposed to something like Dragon Age: Inquisition which I really enjoyed the first time but am reluctant to play again. Even the Mass Effect trilogy I've only played through twice.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Makes me concerned about the Knights of the Old Republic remake. If they just remake the original game with shinier graphics, people are going to be enraged at it "only" being ~25 hours long, but the alternative will be to fill with tedious busywork, which won't improve the game any (the problem Final Fantasy VII Remake partially has).

KOTOR is a 40 hour game at best. If they can replicate that length of gametime, I'll be a happy boy.

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2 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

25 hours for KOTOR 1? That sounds like a rushed first-time playthrough unless you don't bother with some side-quests and epxloration. Granted, I'm always slow and thorough, but iirc it took me nearly 45h the first time. As usual, 2nd playthrough was faster by possibly up to 1/3.

Yet even the average and median playtime seem globally to be quite longer than 25h: https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=9111

Sure, it's not BG2, Skyrim, Witcher 3 or the last Assassin's Creed ones, but one can't seriously complain about KOTOR's length. I could see some people complaining that Jade Empire was shorter than most Bioware RPGs (I don't think it took me more than 25h indeed), if not the shortest of them But KOTOR is reasonably timed, compared to many other great games - don't think it's shorter than Witcher 2, or Deus Ex (original or HR), or Dishonored; it would be quite rich to complain it is too short.

I don't have a timer playthrough for KotOR (I still have the DVD-ROM) so had to go by the save game stamps. I don't remember it being much more than 25. Might have been 30. KotOR 2 was slightly longer. Of course, those stamps don't reflect reloads, which is a big advantage of how Steam tracks it. Still, KotOR 1 and 2 are super linear; there really isn't much scope for side-quests and optional content because you pretty much encounter everything in a single playthrough.

Mass Effect 1 is I think BioWare's shortest game. I completed it at 11 hours with a significant bug which sometimes froze the game in cut scenes, so I had to skip most of the cut scenes in the game or risk the same thing happening (and read the plot description on a website to fill in the gaps). The second time, when that problem was fixed and I had the DLC installed and I spent fucking ages humping mountains with the buggy, it raised the play time to about 17 hours.

Jade Empire was somewhat longer, I've played it through three times and I think it was between 20 and 25 hours.

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Mmh, so in the end my caravan trip was relatively uneventful, aside from one of my donkeys giving birth and four cases of food poisoning due to the berries they foraged. -.- I guess I seriously need to make those survival meals for next time. I also got a bit frustrated with how useless my donkeys feel. The speed bonus they give was barely noticeably and their low carrying capacity was quite a hindrance in getting rid of crappy furniture (couldn't take a single bed with me...). So I'm seriously thinking about replacing them with those muffalos. Matter of fact, that would also allow me to get rid of the alpacas for wool, so... win, win, especially given how much space I am needing for trying to go for a ranch right now.

... then again, just now two Thrumbos arrived on my map as well, so not knowing how long they stay, I probably should train my animal handling skills on the muffalos anyway (right now my highest is at 9). I should also hurry because another grizzly bear also entered the map and just killed one of the muffalos. There was another grizzly bear on the map before who amusingly picked a fight with a warg, won, but bled out due to its wounds and went unconcious, so I jumped it and turned it into kibble.

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43 minutes ago, Toth said:

Mmh, so in the end my caravan trip was relatively uneventful, aside from one of my donkeys giving birth and four cases of food poisoning due to the berries they foraged. -.- I guess I seriously need to make those survival meals for next time. I also got a bit frustrated with how useless my donkeys feel. The speed bonus they give was barely noticeably and their low carrying capacity was quite a hindrance in getting rid of crappy furniture (couldn't take a single bed with me...). So I'm seriously thinking about replacing them with those muffalos. Matter of fact, that would also allow me to get rid of the alpacas for wool, so... win, win, especially given how much space I am needing for trying to go for a ranch right now.

... then again, just now two Thrumbos arrived on my map as well, so not knowing how long they stay, I probably should train my animal handling skills on the muffalos anyway (right now my highest is at 9). I should also hurry because another grizzly bear also entered the map and just killed one of the muffalos. There was another grizzly bear on the map before who amusingly picked a fight with a warg, won, but bled out due to its wounds and went unconcious, so I jumped it and turned it into kibble.

I've walled Thrumbos in before so they couldn't leave while I tried to tame them. 

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