Videogames 2023 pt. II: Can We patreon This Man an Alienware Already?

[IlyaP]

22 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Hmm. I can't recall but I believe if you can get LOD installed and working you can download the mods launcher and gi from there. I have both CDKeys attached to my ancient bnet account and to reinstall LOD as I recall it asks for both.

You sir, are correct. Did exactly that and it worked for me. 

[Argonath Diver]

Enjoy the best version of d2!

[IlyaP]

11 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Enjoy the best version of d2!

Hey hey hey, Resurrected is ok! I enjoy it as a newcomer to the series who never much enjoyed the games when they first came out back in the 90s!

[Argonath Diver]

Oh, D2R is great. Gorgeous, and of course a far larger player base and more stable servers than this 3rd party mod I'm endeared to. This one is smashing together what 20 year D2 vets always wanted, plus modern stuff people liked from D3 and POE. I'd pay an absolutely silly amount of money for D2R with full modding support (although the fella behind PD2 says it'll never be possible to port with just how much code changed). 

My interest in this mod is also due to my apathy regarding D4. Love how it looks, and if they actually pull it off, I'll likely dive in headfirst. My skepticism sees Blizzard/Activision's predatory pricing - paying another 10 bucks for the first week is incredibly lame to me. In game, I very much dislike level scaling in open world games and I still think the itemization (including spoilers from leaks) looks incredibly underwhelming. At least the paragon board manipulation sounds resonably complex. I'm also done with POE until their big expansion - although it has excellent player retention, I found this current league to be a big disappointment.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Argonath Diver said:

My interest in this mod is also due to my apathy regarding D4. Love how it looks, and if they actually pull it off, I'll likely dive in headfirst. My skepticism sees Blizzard/Activision's predatory pricing - paying another 10 bucks for the first week is incredibly lame to me. In game, I very much dislike level scaling in open world games and I still think the itemization (including spoilers from leaks) looks incredibly underwhelming. At least the paragon board manipulation sounds resonably complex. I'm also done with POE until their big expansion - although it has excellent player retention, I found this current league to be a big disappointment.

Give it a year, let it drop in price, and get fully patched and updated after Blizzavision fixes whatever obvious bugs, exploits, etc., will crop up and several rounds of completely avoidable scandals results in dramatic changes that makes the game enjoyable and not some kind of consumerist nightmare.

So, y'know, kinda like Diablo 3! 

[Gorn]

19 hours ago, Werthead said:

I switched to turn-based and used my MC as a tank with two healers just constantly spamming heal on her whilst she did okay damage, and then flanked the troll with my barbarian to do massive damage.

Incidentally, the game using every other mega-pedantic D&D 3.5/PF1 bullshit rule in existence but not the flanking bonuses is pure bullshit, but okay.

I may need to reconsider my party. The bard (Linzi) and cleric (Harrin) are both focused on crossbows as their ranged weapon of choice, so the only person who can use the Devourer of Metal is either one of my three melee powerhouses (not ideal considering their job) or my...mage, which is even more suboptimal (even with dex bonuses, she did little in the troll fight). My mage (Octavia) is decent, so keeping her and swapping out one of the melee characters for Ekun might work, but the problem is that all three melee characters are pretty good at their job, and the advice seems to be to keep Valerie as there is no other party member in the game who can tank as well as her. The barbarian, Amiri, does do excellent damage but she is a bit crap in terms of finding good armour for her so far, so I might try substituting Ekun for her.

You don't actually need a mage in your party, I played most of the game without one. I went all-in on dealing physical damage and taking out foes as quickly as possible. My party for most of the game was:

- Main character, a dual-wielding knife nut (high-dexterity, high-stealth melee rogue subtype which deals crazy amounts of damage).

- Nok-Nok, another dual-wielding knife nut that you get later in the game. Playing with two almost identical melee damage-dealing characters might seem counterproductive, but it's actually very fun

- Valerie, typical tank with every possible AC booster, with formation set in such a way that enemies see her first and focus their attacks on her

- Harrim, a healer and second tank. Both him and Valerie had "shield wall" perk which boosted AC of both when they were close to each other

- Ekun, ranged damage dealer, with his wolf as a free extra melee party member (a surprisingly decent one)

- Linzi, as a supporting spellcaster/booster

Of course, I didn't actually finish the game and I eventually ran into a wall where this approach no longer worked, so my tactic may have been... suboptimal.

[Toth]

Okay, thankfully the frame rate drop was a one-time thing. Apparently there is some kind of memory leak somewhere because when I went back to Star Wars interworlds, it was never again so badly stuttering, but the framerate did dip here and there the more I played. I guess this means I just have to avoid playing for long stretches of time... time I don't have anyway, so I'm fine with that.

So I continued a little and made more money doing sector patrol missions, mine clearing and some awkward taxi missions where I better don't think too hard about where my passenger had to get crammed into, given that I was still only flying my TIE Fighter: https://i.imgur.com/Fdi4Ng5.jpg

My most intense fight so far had been me getting lost on my supposed patrol of Ord Mantell and engaging in a battle at Ithor instead, aiding a small imperial battlegroup against Mandalorians. I took out two of their fighters but then had to turn tail as the next wave came in with more firepower and me... well, not being able to take any kind of firepower.

In any case, I made a solid 700.000 credits and made it so quickly that I was considering doing some more missions to get the mining ship straight away that I had eyed for the long term, which should cost me about 1,2 Million. However I am impatient and I want to see as many ships as possible. So I bought this little thing: https://i.imgur.com/Qn2RNal.jpg

The TIE Shuttle's interior looks extremely rough and I have even more difficulty entering and exiting as I had with the TIE Fighter. But I guess that's just part of the charm... Well, now I will try my hands at a little trading. Especially because the TIE Shuttle is hardly capable of anything else. I tried to shoot a criminal civilian craft earlier and... somehow couldn't make any damage. Oddly, mine clearing works. Makes me wonder why I even bothered buying the slightly more expensive guns.

[RumHam]

I think I'm late on this but Raft is a really cool game. It's the minecraft formula but your base is a raft so it's kinda like Wind Waker in how you sail around looking for islands. There's also a research bench you can build and I gather some really fancy stuff you can make down the line. I can't even figure out how to smelt ore yet. Killed a shark though!

[Argonath Diver]

Raft is a terrific game. Lots of fun to figure out the crafting tree and find new mats. And a lovely little story campaign once you feel like it. 

I had some great nights over Covid shutdown building a chaotic with my brother and his buddies on the other side of the country. Just four guys chillin' on a boat, doin' some fishin. In a way.

[RumHam]

24 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Raft is a terrific game. Lots of fun to figure out the crafting tree and find new mats. And a lovely little story campaign once you feel like it. 

I had some great nights over Covid shutdown building a chaotic with my brother and his buddies on the other side of the country. Just four guys chillin' on a boat, doin' some fishin. In a way.

Oh shit, really? That's awesome. I haven't figured out fishing yet.

I just recently realized you can craft rope. It was my main bottleneck as I thought you had to get it from barrels and crates. 

I do have one question, I see rocks, mufflers, other pieces of scrap metal in the shallows. When I mouse over them I see the hook icon. I cannot figure out how to "mine" them though. Rock is probably my second biggest bottleneck and while it's just sitting there I can't figure out how to get it. 

[Argonath Diver]

it's been a year or two, but surely you have your hook with you? Just hold the button on em. The reefs have all sorts of delights to move your tech tree forward! Hope you're getting comfortable jousting with sharks! I figured out a sort of dashing up-swing straight through their attacking mouth that harms them and doesn't get you bit, but it takes timing and facing an angry shark!

They won't spawn a certain distance from your boat, so I usually parked on a far side of a small island and hurried to the other to do my snorkeling.

edit: Oh you have to be fully underwater yourself to "mine" the underwater stuff, no standing up and pulling it out of the water, that'd be just silly!

Edited May 4, 2023 by Argonath Diver

[IlyaP]

Looks like we're getting a Pathfinder ARPG, which - hey, that could be fun.

[Darryk]

My brother works for Blizzard and he's not happy the Microsoft deal got blocked by Britain. He says the Blizzard management are useless and was really hoping Microsoft would come in and fix things.

[Caligula_K3]

Eight days till Zelda. I haven't felt this excited and impatient for a video game since probably Dragon Age Inquisition, which was now almost ten years ago. Why is waiting so hard?

[polishgenius]

It's great that one week we're getting an open-world game with a clear focus on creativity and building things and slamming parts together to see what happens. And a week after that there's the Lego 2k game. 


(which also looks banging btw)

 

Just a release date for Silksong- which was promised to us to be before before the 12th of June, so a shadowdrop of that would be wildly cool, though I doubt they'll hit that date at this point - and the year will be complete. 

[Arakasi]

I am doing Nenios last dungeon and it’s a slog with huge number of puzzles. I’m going to come out of here with like 2 million gold after selling everything. Ofc I won’t have anything to buy with it other than crusade units except I’ve defeated all the enemies already. But I just need to get out of this dungeon and then go complete the last couple spots. Not like anything has been hard so far since the Midnight Isles DLC boss is the only enemy so far that can last a single turn from my MC.
 

I really want to start a new play through with the mod that brings it more in line with table top. Probably put the difficulty up more from the start and focus on using characters this time I didn’t last time. (Regill, Ember, Lann, Sosiel instead of Wenduag, Seelah, Arueshulae, Woljif)

Edited May 4, 2023 by Arakasi

[Raja]

Some Jedi Fallen Order thoughts below - I'd say I'm probably 70% done with the story so far

Spoiler

 Gameplay - I think gameplay is generally decent, using the light saber is satisfying but I don't think there is a lot of variation in what I can do with it, would have liked to see more of that.

I think there are some weak points though

1. Going to 'x' planet and then exploring and figuring out the story is...kinda rote. They make *some* planets fun, but this is rare sso far. The only time where it's been a refreshing change is when you go to kashyyyk - at least there it was a bit of a change but the rest of the planets, it has not been that at all and that is quite disappointing when that is such a core part of your game.

2. If you want me to explore planets, then surely you've gotta let me explore them properly - places are gated off which you can't go through because you just haven't acquired x or y power or progressed enough in the story is not fun. It takes the whole 'exploration' but completely out of the video game. If you want to commit to this sorta open world thing, then commit properly.

3. I think the story is sorta...okay? there's enough in it that I'm engaged and I think Trilla is a good antagonist but there is absolutely ZERO relationship between Kal and Cere and the pilot. I have this emotional scene with the pilot and I'm like the game has not built up to this at all.

4. I really do not care about fighting animals for 90 percent of this game.

5. It might sound like I'm pretty down on the game, but I think it's enjoyable enough and solid but I just feel like it could have been so much better.

 

[polishgenius]

On part 2 within that spoiler: as a massive Metroidvania (and old-school Zelda) fan I'd disagree that games shouldn't be made that way at all, but people had complaints about the way the first game did it and you having a problem with it here suggests the team still hasn't really got a handle on how to do it without it clanging. 

 

 

[Raja]

33 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

On part 2 within that spoiler: as a massive Metroidvania (and old-school Zelda) fan I'd disagree that games shouldn't be made that way at all,

I'm talking about the first game to be fair! Just catching up before I play Jedi Survivor, whenever they end up making that workable on PC.

I don't mind *that* much if games are made like that, but you have to make it engaging enough that I don't mind doing that again, which the game isn't doing. There's also the fact that a lot of the times in this game I have to find my way back to where I started from and traversing back also seems like a chore, even if they make short cuts.

[polishgenius]

1 minute ago, Raja said:

I'm talking about the first game to be fair! Just catching up before I play Jedi Survivor, whenever they end up making that workable on PC.

 

 

 

Ha, well that makes sense.  

Yeah, it seems like you're far from the only one who had a problem with the way the game implemented that style. There was some talk about it in one of these topics a while back. From what people said, it does sound like part of the issue is that it's not one interconnected world, typical for Metroidvanias both 2D and 3D: breaking them apart into separate sections (islands, planets, whatever) that you bounce between isn't unheard of, but it requires really careful handling.