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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  Gaming  |  Topic: So, what're you playing? 0 Members and 7 Guests are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: So, what're you playing?  (Read 2172984 times)
Mosesandstick
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Reply #15050 on: May 13, 2022, 08:41:41 AM

Finished Before Your Eyes. Short and sweet, though I thought the main mechanic (blinking) wasn't always well utilised. It was pretty impactful in some moments though.
01101010
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Reply #15051 on: May 13, 2022, 12:12:10 PM

Made the mistake of downloading Stellaris on Xbox game pass... so much to process at the same time.  ACK!

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
lamaros
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Reply #15052 on: May 13, 2022, 05:23:28 PM

Finished Before Your Eyes. Short and sweet, though I thought the main mechanic (blinking) wasn't always well utilised. It was pretty impactful in some moments though.

There were a couple of point where it worked really well and did something unique and interesting, and a lot where it was just there... For me the tension of wanting to not blink to hold on to a moment as long as possible, but inevitably ending, was the most poingant part.

Overall the story being forced and the writing quality being a bit sub-par held it back the most. But it had moments.
Ragnoros
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Reply #15053 on: May 13, 2022, 06:28:29 PM

Recently sunk a bunch of hours into Stellaris. It's strange. 20 hours in it's an amazing game. 100 hours in it's a terrible game. That first game was soo full of discovery, decisions, struggle. It feels like there is so much potential and possibility to tap.

Then the second game is kinda the same. And the third. And the fourth... The slow realization that you're just going through the same moves over and over. Worse, that half the systems don't do anything. Spying, Federations, Archeology, Pre-FTL civilizations, all just window dressing.

Only a few things seemed to matter ultimately. Hope you got a good starting spot, and more importantly, hope some AI on the other side of the map didn't get off to an insane start and take over half the galaxy before you can do anything about it.

It didn't help that the automatic planet management sucked. At one point after a few dozen turns of not paying attention the auto governor had turned all my planets into bureaucratic centers, putting all of of my resources into the negatives while giving me thousands of unused admin capacity.

Oh well, the wait on something to supplant Civ 5 continues.

Owls are an example of evolution showing off. -Shannow

BattleTag - Ray#1555
lamaros
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Reply #15054 on: May 13, 2022, 11:18:50 PM

Weird West is very interesting so far. I don't care for the combat or camera, but the premise and execution of this type of game is pretty remarkable. No one will probably play this (niche of niche) and it'll be an abject flop, but I'd recommend giving it a shot if you have gamepass. If you like "immersive sims" like Dishonored or Prey, this is probably worth checking out. Also occult heavy western is a neat setting.

It's got a lot of neat systems and environmental interactions. I just wish the combat was something else entirely. Turn based would have been ideal, but then perhaps some might conflate it with Fallout or Wasteland. I'm probably playing this to completion just to see where the story goes.

edit: Weird not Wild. Heh.

Started playing this. WTF it's not turn based I don't know...
Khaldun
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Reply #15055 on: May 14, 2022, 08:36:17 AM

Spying definitely doesn't do much in Stellaris--that was a very undercooked addition. Pre-FTL/Uplift is just a bit of side questing, yeah.

I think if you want a game that feels different, you have to play one of the civs that has really different goals. The eradictor civs are the most dramatic in that respect--the pace is pretty relentless, you gotta wipe out enough of your neighbors before they gang up on you. The slaving civs aren't that different than the others but a bit. I haven't tried one of the capitalist/criminal civs, so I dunno.
Sky
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Reply #15056 on: May 16, 2022, 06:39:36 AM

Had an urge to play some minecraft. It's been a while and a lot more mods are maturing into the newer versions. I remembered Stoneblock being a nicely put-together pack, and the sequel is no different. So many QoL changes, like crouching to see contents of containers and extended readouts of machines? It's crazy how much easier it is to see what is going on in the workshop at a glance.

I don't mind the stoneblock (solid volume version of a skyblock), but I miss the overworld, adventure mods, etc. So I also loaded up MC Eternal, the last general pack I was playing and it's crashing. The biggest downside to modded minecraft...it can sometimes be more troubleshooting than game.

So back to Stoneblock 2...Also got a 999 dmg beheading sword as a quest reward, so....it's been a weird run already.
Phildo
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Reply #15057 on: May 16, 2022, 06:40:42 AM

I always liked playing tall and tech-rushing in Stellaris, let me build my egalitarian technocratic society in my own quiet little corner of the map and leave me alone please.  But my experience with the game has been wildly different over time.  When it first launched, I hate planet management and couldn't get into it at all.  A few years later, they redesigned the feature from the ground up and I started to love it, really found my groove.  Then they redesigned it again and I didn't like it as much as before, and I'm left wondering why they have to constantly redesign systems for a game that's been out for so many years.  Can I get a legacy copy of 2.0, please?
Rasix
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Reply #15058 on: May 16, 2022, 11:54:12 AM

Beat the fourth boss in Rogue Legacy 2. Once I stopped being dumb about it, it was quite an easy boss. Really helps if you run some sort of damage over time component in your build. Lots of dodging is required.

Doing the PoE expansion, but going really slow. Like half hour or an hour per day. Only through Act IV and haven't done more than one act in any day. Seems to be a good strategy, outside of being easier on my arm, due to the content being completely over tuned at the start. They did a rare mob rebalance and it's fucking bonkers.

-Rasix
Samwise
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Reply #15059 on: May 16, 2022, 02:18:27 PM

Beat the fourth boss in Rogue Legacy 2. Once I stopped being dumb about it, it was quite an easy boss. Really helps if you run some sort of damage over time component in your build. Lots of dodging is required.

When you said the game felt too hard I thought "that's about how the first one felt for a while".  Glad you got over the hump.   DRILLING AND MANLINESS

"I have not actually recommended many games, and I'll go on the record here saying my track record is probably best in the industry." - schild
Rasix
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Reply #15060 on: May 16, 2022, 02:21:29 PM

You get better. It is hard, but once I thought to myself "this isn't fucking harder than Elden Ring", I started to make some real progress with that boss. Each boss has taken around 5-10 tries, except for the pirates. Those were really easy.

-Rasix
schild
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Reply #15061 on: May 16, 2022, 02:38:22 PM

another game where DOTs are good

we gotta stop putting those in games
Soulflame
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Reply #15062 on: May 17, 2022, 06:48:17 AM

DoTs are a weird mechanic.  Either they're useless or overpowered.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a middle ground with them.
Trippy
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Reply #15063 on: May 17, 2022, 02:27:58 PM

EverQuest, oddly enough, had a pretty good balance, at least in the early days cause mana (regen) was such a precious resource so how much "sustained" damage you could output before having to sit and stare at a book was a real thing. E.g. I remember Druid DoTs vs Wizard nukes for soloing and kiting was an endless debate about which was more efficient.
Tebonas
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Reply #15064 on: May 18, 2022, 04:36:20 AM

EverQuest, oddly enough, had a pretty good balance, at least in the early days cause mana (regen) was such a precious resource so how much "sustained" damage you could output before having to sit and stare at a book was a real thing. E.g. I remember Druid DoTs vs Wizard nukes for soloing and kiting was an endless debate about which was more efficient.


And still you had people that mathematically proved to you that you were wasting your time using DoTs because Method x had better DPS, be it clicking on usable Items like a moron or doing the Cannidance.

DoTs in Everquest were about convenience, not about raw damage. I suspect that this is true in most games where they are used.
Rasix
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Reply #15065 on: May 18, 2022, 07:50:13 AM

Being able to run around, dodging shit with 100% DPS uptime is a decent benefit.

-Rasix
Khaldun
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Reply #15066 on: May 18, 2022, 09:47:37 AM

It would work better if DoTs were always combined with high mobility and insta-stealth so that the playstyle was about wearing something down while staying out of the way, with less risk but more time spent on a fight vs. a direct-damage template that was about trying to burst shit down as fast as possible but with higher exposure to the risk of taking a lot of damage. E.g., really coherently aligned differences in how you do combat, which I don't think is all that common.
Rendakor
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Reply #15067 on: May 18, 2022, 06:01:25 PM

Warlocks at a time in WoW had an interesting DoTs vs Nukes option. Speccing for DoTs meant your pet would more reliably hold aggro, while if you focused on Nukes you would get aggro yourself; this meant you would often not even bother with the tank pet, instead using a DPS pet and kiting.

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Trippy
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Reply #15068 on: May 18, 2022, 06:50:30 PM

Nukes also had the disadvantage of possibly breaking root (stopping mob movement).
Khaldun
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Reply #15069 on: May 18, 2022, 07:31:43 PM

The problem is always that folks theorycraft so intensely that pretty soon they find out what's optimal, even if the edge is incredibly small, and then the ecosystem becomes crazy lopsided.

That also might be a good design idea--just making any build that is too predominant by some metric have diminishing returns as more people adopt it.
Sky
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Reply #15070 on: May 19, 2022, 06:51:10 AM

For tackling group content, my buddy and I had a third (his online girlfriend, he was all the internet tropes). He played a wizard (after watching me play one at release in a top-tier guild, which I sold when we got to rubicite, quit the game for a year), his friend played a druid and I played a necro. He ended up getting into a pretty high tier guild but the three of us grouped was some of the best EQ experiences I had.

Good variety of nukes/dots and cc. We were handling most dungeon content effectively. We did have the upside of my buddy and I playing in the same room (we dealt with the book by smoking pot and listening to music...I still can't believe the book was a thing). Necro was such a fun class to play, right up there with monk. I was definitely a ho for feign death, it saved us on several raids (and again, being in the same room so he could see my screen to communicate with the guild (he was an officer, I was a volunteer because fuck guild drama).

That game was fun in its time, but it was definitely a niche.
lamaros
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Reply #15071 on: May 19, 2022, 06:21:13 PM

Warlocks at a time in WoW had an interesting DoTs vs Nukes option. Speccing for DoTs meant your pet would more reliably hold aggro, while if you focused on Nukes you would get aggro yourself; this meant you would often not even bother with the tank pet, instead using a DPS pet and kiting.

Warlocks were well tuned in WoW for solo outdoor activity, lots of fun managing aggro back and forth between summon and your char depending on the builds.

When it got to BC raids though Warlocks were comparatively OP, because of raid design. Which then falls into the optimal stuff. When the edges are there, even if small, then they add up over a group of players, so you need to take all of them.

I don't think there's any inherent issue with DoTs. They are an interesting way of playing, you just need content design that matches. I've been playing a lot of tactical turn based games at the moment, and for the most part they never favour dots, because one dead enemy is better than a few slowly dying while they damage you. Easy enough to overcome with game design, but most follow the same design templates and so.. they dont.
Khaldun
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Reply #15072 on: May 19, 2022, 07:02:20 PM

I've had one or two fights in Elden Ring where poisoning helped kill whatever I was fighting in a useful way, but mostly it's good example of most DOT application mechanisms not being powerful enough to be worth it. I was especially annoyed that given the number of Z-axis set-ups, there's incredibly few situations where gaining elevation and then bombing the shit out of something is worth the trouble and time it takes if you're otherwise melee and I suspect (having not played this build) even if you're built for distance.

That's the thing about most games--the developers don't want you to have an 'easy' win with DOTs or remote damaging.
Fabricated
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Reply #15073 on: May 19, 2022, 07:27:03 PM

Playing XCOM2 again for some reason.

"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
Tebonas
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Reply #15074 on: May 19, 2022, 10:39:55 PM

Had that hankering as well, bought the new Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate Daemonhunters (yes, the names are becoming a handful) instead. And boy, had these developers a crush on XCOM  awesome, for real
Zetor
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Reply #15075 on: May 19, 2022, 11:03:12 PM

Everyone's playing srpgs / tactical games nowadays, it seems.  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

I played through Telepath Tactics Liberated... technically replayed it, since this is just the Unity rerelease of the 2015 game (it used Adobe AIR back then, lolz) with a bunch of improvements. Verdict: still pretty damn good (and hard, at least in the early to midgame)! It's basically a Fire Emblem-esque sRPG with a fair amount of battlefield manipulation (push/pull units, build or destroy bridges and barricades, etc) and with every unit having a limited form of FE's "Canto" (i.e. you can move half of your movement, move with some other units, then resume movement on your turn) that makes for some interesting tactics. It also rewards taking risks (ranged units do more damage up close, f'rex), and has (optional) permadeath ala FE. It also has a lot of content, steam says I spent 31.5 hours on the campaign in the new version and that's with the time-saving benefits of having already done a pretty in-depth let's play of the previous version of campaign 7 years ago. It also has multiplayer (co-op and pvp) and a campaign builder, but I'm too old for that shit.

It's a very heavy game though. Some of the maps are massive, on par with the more epic Fire Emblem maps... and can take up to an hour or more to complete sometimes. For an extreme example, on the final map, you can deploy 18 [!] units, and you'll need all of them since all 4 corners of the (yuge) map have a sizable enemy force that also drops reinforcements each turn until you disable the spawners. Thankfully the dev added the option to save at the beginning of each turn, so you don't need to do the map in one sitting anymore...

Now playing the One Vision mod for Tactics Ogre PSP on the steam deck and IMO it's a pretty big improvement. From what I remember, the original game (as a remake of the PSX game which itself was just a port of the SNES game) had some huge balance issues with godmode archers and tons of useless classes/items/skills, but it feels like every unit has its purpose now, and it's a lot more important to use teamwork. It also removes a lot of the grind requirements, apparently. Of course it could turn into total shit as I get into chapter 2 (not looking forward to fighting that crazy archer again), but right now it's holding up pretty well.

edit: unfucked links
« Last Edit: May 20, 2022, 01:23:10 AM by Zetor »

lamaros
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Reply #15076 on: May 20, 2022, 12:43:28 AM

I gave Wasteland 3 another go. Got into it a bit now, though at around level 12 and the repetition is a bit dull. I find the loot and crafting system a bit lame, and the overall narrative is not strong. The general writing isbetter than I thought back when I first gave it a go though.
Endie
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Reply #15077 on: May 20, 2022, 02:03:21 PM

Can I get a legacy copy of 2.0, please?

With Paradox stuff on Steam you usually can choose the version you want to play, if that's the channel you're using?

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Kail
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Reply #15078 on: May 20, 2022, 05:33:27 PM

Had that hankering as well, bought the new Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate Daemonhunters (yes, the names are becoming a handful) instead. And boy, had these developers a crush on XCOM  awesome, for real

No joke, ugh.  I wasn't a huge fan of new XCOM, mainly due to that mechanic where new enemies popping up in your vision fucks with your remaining actions, and WH:40K:CG:DH definitely hangs on to that.  I'm not super far in to the game, and so far, it is getting pretty annoying that cultists will move one, shoot one, and then overwatch one RIGHT ON TOP OF YOU so you're stuck eating the overwatch if you do anything... just shoot me twice, assholes, I'm just going to pop Aegis, you're wasting everyone's time.  Still, fun game, excellent presentation.  I feel like I'm losing ground because every time three bloom thingies pop up, I miss one, but so far nobody has actually said why that matters.  Titan, send more interceptors, please, I only have one and he's always orange.

Played a bit of Tin Can: Escape Pod Simulator.  It's a lot of fun for a weekend or so, it's one of those games with a very steep learning curve that you get to the top of very quickly.  Once you've figured out how to get past the half dozen or so environmental hazards, you've basically won, but it's pretty fun figuring that out.  I'd maybe get it on sale, but I don't think it's going to be pulling me back for replays in five years time.
Trippy
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Reply #15079 on: May 21, 2022, 06:02:09 PM

No joke, ugh.  I wasn't a huge fan of new XCOM, mainly due to that mechanic where new enemies popping up in your vision fucks with your remaining actions, and WH:40K:CG:DH definitely hangs on to that.
It's not the same as XCOM. When you reveal an enemy group that was hidden they get a chance to move but all your action points from all Knights are reset back to full. So your "point" Knight is able to move into cover or even completely out of view if you want. It's still better to move your units up slowly as a group if there are no enemies revealed so you don't have Knights way in the back when a group is revealed. But it's not as punishing to stumble into groups like it is in XCOM.

Quote
I feel like I'm losing ground because every time three bloom thingies pop up, I miss one, but so far nobody has actually said why that matters.  Titan, send more interceptors, please, I only have one and he's always orange.
The ones you miss will increase in corruption which makes them harder (tougher enemies will spawn, etc.). If you want to keep those levels down you'll want to prioritize the highest one first and let the lowest leveled ones increase in value if you can't get to them in time.
Velorath
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Reply #15080 on: May 21, 2022, 06:45:39 PM

GMG has the Castlevania Anniversary Collection for $3.20 so I've been playing through classic Castlevania games. Castlevania III is more nut-punchy than I remembered for all the praise it seems to get as one of the best games in the series (yes, I'm aware the US version was made harder by Konami because of video game rentals). I legitimately had more fun playing the first terrible Game Boy Castlevania than III. The Genesis game, Bloodlines, has been the surprise as it's a lot more relaxed and fun and seems not to take so much delight in killing you.

My main takeaway is that anyone who ever complains about the Souls games being unforgivingly hard is either too young to have played NES games or needs to go back and remind themselves what games from that era were like. I'm using save states early and often here, and some bits of these games still find a way to stomp your dick into the dirt.
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Reply #15081 on: May 21, 2022, 07:25:48 PM

GMG has the Castlevania Anniversary Collection for $3.20 so I've been playing through classic Castlevania games. Castlevania III is more nut-punchy than I remembered for all the praise it seems to get as one of the best games in the series (yes, I'm aware the US version was made harder by Konami because of video game rentals). I legitimately had more fun playing the first terrible Game Boy Castlevania than III. The Genesis game, Bloodlines, has been the surprise as it's a lot more relaxed and fun and seems not to take so much delight in killing you.

My main takeaway is that anyone who ever complains about the Souls games being unforgivingly hard is either too young to have played NES games or needs to go back and remind themselves what games from that era were like. I'm using save states early and often here, and some bits of these games still find a way to stomp your dick into the dirt.

I've play a lot of this stuff fairly often and I find I've still retained a lot of muscle memory. Particularly Mega Man 2 and 3 and the clock portion of Castlevania 3. Playing Bullet Hell games in my 20s probably helped me keep my edge until the souls stuff and whatnot came along (also I still play bullet hell games).

What's harder than I remember is weird old puzzle games like QIX.
Velorath
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Reply #15082 on: May 21, 2022, 08:18:05 PM

The first 3 Mega Man games I remember well enough that I could still get through them without too much issue. Even though I owned Castlevania 3 back in the day it was the one I played the least.
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Reply #15083 on: May 21, 2022, 08:20:37 PM

Yeah, coincidentally it's the one I played the most by a huge margin. The way the first game interacted with the environment was a bit tougher, but the third had marginally better controls for the characters.

Anyway, all of them are hard. You're right in that the entire era is a nightmare.
Velorath
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Reply #15084 on: May 22, 2022, 12:20:49 PM

Now I will say I made the first Castlevania 3 playthrough a little bit harder on myself than it needed to be in order to get Steam achievements. Each character has an achievement for beating the game and I decided to do a solo Trevor playthrough first, but I made that decision after going through the paths to get to Alucard. Problem being, a number of the  areas that come after are designed to be a lot easier if you turn into a bat. The one area in particular where you have to spend like 5-10 minutes waiting for blocks to fall in order to progress up was a massive pain in the ass.
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