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Topic: So, what're you playing? (Read 2422482 times)
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Mandella
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1236
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After being pulled back into Vermintide 2 thanks to it being given out for free to all of my friends, now I'm obsessed with Warhammer 40k Darktide. I would not recommend it to everyone, but if you have a stable group of online friends and you are looking for a new coop game, this is fantastic. Granted, if you skipped Vermintide 2 that is fantastic too and in many ways, even better because it has tons of content (Darktide isn't even out yet), but it costs a fraction of it even if you didn't get it for free.
They are basically Left4Dead evolutions, with a little less mindlessness and very good production value. Compared to L4D it helps that they have spme progression, so builds, weapons with random stats, story. Hell, Vermintide 2 even has a completely free roguelite expansion that is almost like a separate game.
Boy do Skaven heads come off easy. If I were one of them I'd definitely invest in an iron neck collar. And somehow I'd never even heard of this game until I saw some notice somewhere that it was free for the taking last weekend. Shrewd move on their part since I've since bought their DLC, plus put notice out to friends to pick it up so I'd have someone to play with outside of PUGs. It's still on sale as of this moment for about 6 bucks American.
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11125
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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That was a super winning move on their part. Not only resurrected a dead game placing it high on Steam charts with over 70k concurrent players for a couple of weeks, and making people buy their discounted DLCs - because it IS a good game and it was underrated. But it also ended being the best advertisement for Darktide, which has been sitting at 60k+ concurrent players for days even though it's just beta with only 4 missions. Darktide won't say there long as these kind of games never have enough content, but they certainly sold a ton of boxes just thanks to Vermintide 2 being given away for free.
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Typhon
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2493
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I love Vermintide 2, but I'm struggling to find the joy in Darktide. Latest disappointment; the thunder hammer. In V2 all the chars and many of the weapons are just fun to play. Yeah, yeah, I'm in beta, there will be a miracle patch that... oh right, it's a Fat Shark game, may as well shelve it for a year and try again. At SOME point they'll get it right.
That said, I'm having fun some fun with the Vet, but I REALLY want to enjoy the Psyker or Zealot, and that just isn't happening. ONE thing they've finally gotten right - tasks/quests (I don't know the right name) that you start to get at level 11 are, in fact, GROUP quests. Got to kill 500 scabs? Good news is that you get credit for anyone in your team killing scabs, so you don't have to do stupid shit to compete with team mates. Of course, they don't actually make this obvious, so people are still doing stupid shit, but I can't blame that entirely on Fat Shark. I'm happy for baby steps.
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11125
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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I don't think there will be any miracle patch. Beta or not, they showed most of it in the last couple of days and so this is the game at launch. Some more missions will come but overall this is it. To me it's much better than Vermintide in all departments, except obviously in the quantity one: I want more of everything and clearly it will take at least 2 years of DLCs and expansions to bring it where Vermintide 2 is at the moment. So yes in many ways better to shelf it and play it down the road. But then again, isn't that true for pretty much 95% of the games these days?
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Typhon
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2493
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I agree on games releasing in an unfinished state being the norm.
As far as V2 versus Darktide, I'm curious what you like better?
There are just so many things I think V2 did better, for example, specials. In V2 you almost always hear them before you see them/they see you. I enjoy that sense of terror; where IS it!? With Darktide I feel like we're really only given a heads up on the exploder (popping sound) and, to some extent, the sniper. But I hate the sniper as often times it spawns in a part of the map the player can't get to, OR see clearly. Continuing on in this, "mobs go places players can't" theme; I dislike the pathing that hordes take, as they leap up/down paths we simply cannot go making choke point pretty difficult to anticipate/force. Can't tell you how many times I said, "how the FUCK did that get behind me?!"
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11125
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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I like theme, visuals and hybrid combat more. Vermintide 2 was amazing (even though it took me a few years to fully appreciate it) but this is more up my alleys. The audio cues seem fine to me. Not for everything of course, for example the Sniper is more an Elite than a Special to me, but for the most part you can tell when the very dangerous ones are coming. I take the hordes coming from nowhere as a good thing, as to me the best part about these games is being overwhelmed and being kept on my toes the whole time.
What I don't like is only 4 classes/characters instead of 5. Sure more will come but at the moment that's a step back from Vermintide 2's launch. I am also not sure about the missions not having a definite order. I liked the Acts structure of the previous games as it mimicked the L4D's one which was perfect to me. Here it is too obvious that they want for players to repeat stuff and keep playing, while I've always been more than happy in these games to play and complete the campaign on be done with it. The way things are now, what even is the campaign?
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Typhon
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2493
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Ha, I didn't even think about the (lack of) campaign. I think I like the med stations (as opposed to health potions). Do you know what the deal with the demon host is? Are we suppose to not attack them unless we're sure we can kill them? They seem really over-tuned for the levels I've been seeing them at.
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11125
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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The demon host is clearly the new Witch from L4D. My understanding is that you have to TRY and leave it alone. Especially because I don't think you get anything out of killing it (like the Witch...). Demonhost can be heard whispering and moaning (if you are not in the middle of a horde, that is), so it could be easier to avoid in theory, but I still have to find it myself as I decided not to play any further until the 30th.
About the campaign, they said multiple times that this game will receive more frequent updates than the Vermintides, as they see it as a live(r) service and the story will evolve through these updates. In fact, they gloated about having this great writer from the 40k books working on it, but since we haven't seen much I reiterate that this will probably be a much more complete game in a year or two (or three, or four).
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Man, if you have a stomach for eurojank and haven't tried Outward yet, it's pretty cool. Definitely needs some love in the worldbuilding, but I'm coming from decades of Gothic on that front. Outward has a bit less of that, feels more like an early mmo world. I'm digging it and surprised to see only a couple folks have sunk even a dozen hours into it. Not really enough time to start digging into things after getting your feet under you. I did watch an hourish tube video of a lets play (which is what spurred my purchase), and I do recommend that to get a basic grasp of how it works and get an overview of the early city/zone. But once you get that rolling, it's all pretty explorer friendly...in that you need to pay attention and learn by experience.
Combat pretty stiff, at least for melee (there is a lock-on that makes ranged kinda cheese). Need to learn enemies' move sets, lots of dodge/roll/block type stuff (animation timing is as thing). Full set of resistances you need to deal with. This plays into another thing I dig, it gets the feeling of an old school pnp rpg where you need to pack for the adventure you're taking, not just 'head out of town'. Make sure you bring the right supplies, wear the right gear. No fast travel (or even mounts), so also bring the right bedroll/tent. And then winter hits and you need to deal with that, too. Anyway, monsters tend to hit like a truck, and the fast ones take a lot of very careful timing. But fast enemies are also more prone to being knocked down, 'impact' is another stat to track on both sides, how well you can knock down enemies (which is fun) and also defend against being knocked down (which is not).
Balancing encumbrance is a thing, too. You have a 'pocket' and a 'bag'. Your bag is your backpack, upgradable with bigger packs, packs have different stats like a strongbox that adds some armor or a pack that slows food decay. Packs mess with your ability to dodge, and items inside can be damaged in combat (esp if you get flanked, positioning matters), so in general you'll drop your pack on the ground during combat. Which leaves you with your pocket contents (there are some clothes with more pockets, but it's always tiny) for combat. Want to switch to that heavy warhammer? Too bad, it's in your pack (which you can access like a chest while it's on the ground, but you will probably die trying). Make sure you have the right things in your pockets for the combat you're about to engage in, know your enemy's weaknesses.
Going back to that old mmo feel, it does give a bit of a jones for some Spirit of Wolf kinda speed buffs. I already found speed boots and a speed mask that balance out armor weight/bulkiness a bit, and added a class passive for 10% more on top of that. So I travel pretty quickly, which burns stamina when I sprint, but I just chug tea. Your health/stam/mana pools all accrete a burn, reducing the max available for the pool. Sprinting a lot slowly burns your max stam, the tea recovers burnt stam. Combat and some skills will also burn pools, so managing that (either with consumables or rest because you did pack the good tent, right?) is another thing to keep track of.
Anyway, it all gels into a pretty nice old school experience. But it takes some digging to get into.
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Fraeg
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1018
Mad skills with the rod.
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Overwatch 2 Playing in CA with my 12 year old nephew in CONN. He has twitch reflexes for days but the strategery of a turnip. I generally support him and give him gentle coaching, which is a lot of me saying "Line of Sight" over and over again. I am having fun, pugging, little competitive. Reinhardt, DVA, soldier 76, Moira, Kiriko. Not setting the world ablaze, but it is fun enough.
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"There is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life and death without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell and in sailing toward the great abyss with a smile."
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11125
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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Overwatch 2 is definitely still a lot of fun, somehow. Especially with the Role Queue making for more balanced groups and overall matches. Hard to question how smooth the gameplay is and how diverse and satisfying the selection of characters is.
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10631
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Snagged a PS5 right before Thanksgiving and took advantage of the Black Friday discount on the PS+ premium 1y sub for $90. Have been playing Horizon Zero Dawn on "streaming" mode though PS+. I really like the game so far (though I am about to the point of lowering it to easy or even story difficulty because I am old and have poor motor skills that make it difficult to kill things)
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23646
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Yeah, playing a console shooter on a, uh, console, can be rough for those that aren't used to thumbstick aiming. There is a "bullet time" skill you can get and power up, though, that helps a lot. Also stealth attacks, both melee and ranged, are very helpful.
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SurfD
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4037
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If it's anything like the first game, then outside of the Cauldron Boss fights you really want to be stealth killing everything or headshotting / weakzone sniping stuff from range. Getting in mele fights with giant killer robots was almost always a bad time.
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Darwinism is the Gateway Science.
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11125
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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Marvel's Midnight Suns so far seems really good. Being a superhero and Marvel hater it says a lot about how addictive this game is because I am very much into it in spite of my disliking of the Avengers and shit. This is inspired and influenced by Slay the Spire more than by XCOM, but it takes from the previous Firaxis games the high production value and the focus on upgrades and progression. And it's not just a Slay clone as space plays and important role, and there's also a ton of story and social interactions to be had and managed. More like Mass Effect (minus the sex) than Persona, but you get the idea.
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Reg
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5281
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I'm playing Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. It's got a very steep learning curve but once you figure it out it's a fun game. Very replayable too.
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Zetor
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3269
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I'm playing Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. It's got a very steep learning curve but once you figure it out it's a fun game. Very replayable too.
Yea, it's my favorite game from the recent years, actually I'd say it's on par with Baldur's Gate 2 (and the combat is better than BG2 for sure). I've been playing Tactics Ogre Reborn, and it's really good. Normally I'm not a fan of the re-re-remake trend (hi bethesda), but this is easily the best version of the game. Classes feel balanced, XP and loot grinding is removed, combat feels crunchy and challenging. There's also voice acting, which is a bit hit and miss, but I vastly prefer it to Triangle Strategy f'rex. The only weak point is the kind of 'eh' UX with keyboard+mouse, but that's why the Steam Deck exists.
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« Last Edit: December 04, 2022, 10:41:28 AM by Zetor »
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15188
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I liked Wrath of the Righteous until its endgame when it started to feel frustrating. A problem with its predecessor as well.
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Phildo
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There's also voice acting, which is a bit hit and miss, but I vastly prefer it to Triangle Strategy f'rex.
Triangle Strategy has some absolutely awful voice acting. For all the tight quality control that Nintendo has, it's amazing that amateurish VA gets a pass. re: Wrath of the Righteous, I just wish you got the final mythic rank a little earlier. I've finished the game twice since the DLC came out and I'm usually too burnt out on the character by the end to give it the post-game content a try. Still need to try a Swarm-that-Walks, Devil, and Gold Dragon playthrough so maybe I'll use one of those for it some day.
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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Just had knee surgery, so I've had to put anything that requires sitting down for a long time on the back burner. Hopefully I can remember what the hell happened in Yakuza: Like a Dragon and GoW:R (plays just fine on PS4 Pro), when I get back to them. This could be a while as a new PoE league is out on Friday. Hopefully, I'll be a bit better by then.
Finished up Xenoblade Chronicles 3. This was a really good game, but at some point you just have to forget all of the side shit and finish it. Last battle is literally 2 hours long, and I'm not sure the whole of the story makes any sense in the end. I have doubts that I'll ever go back and finish up the parts that are left.
Still playing a ton of Marvel Snap. I am not good at card games, so this is a lot of slow progress upward. While this isn't exactly pay to win, there is a credit gap that is vastly accelerated by spending tons of money and there's already a $100+ whale bundle in their shop. There's just a lot of decks I can't build due to not having enough credits to acquire some of the more necessary cards (card acquisition is still gated by your luck).
I'd really love to do some replays check out new features in a lot of games. I've never played the expansion content in Pathfinder WoTR (Gold dragon was OK). I'd like to do a necromancer play through, even though it's hard for me to play evil characters. Valheim has the Mistlands now. Witcher 3's getting an update/director's cut version. AND MORE AND MORE. Arrggg.
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« Last Edit: December 05, 2022, 08:51:33 AM by Rasix »
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-Rasix
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I'm holding the line for the Witcher upgrade. I had returned to my previous save earlier this year and want to actually, you now, finish the game at some point. Never made it too far in Valheim, I think the fire bees or something? area is where I left off. Got tired of the grind and limited stuff to do (and janky building).
Outward should carry me through the next couple weeks pretty easily, though. Found out it plays well on the Deck, too (I figured it would, since I've been playing with a controller on the big pc). I wish there were more games like this one! Let's all go murder camping!
Then there's the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion next year, I have a fear that I'm going to complete a third playthrough of that game...
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Typhon
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2493
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Has anyone played Valheim with Mistlands? I played for a month or two after it first got popular, did all the content and stopped. Was most chaffed by the end at how much of a chore it was to keep myself fed. Wondering if they've made any progress in that specific area (keeping well fed) as well as early impressions on the Mistlands stuff (and magic).
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Soulflame
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6487
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Mistlands isn't out yet, probably not for at least a week, maybe two, seems to be the guess. Food was reworked a bit a while back, but still has an annoyingly short duration. Increasing the duration and removing the falloff is one of the first things that gets modded for servers I've been on.
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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Ahh ok. I thought it was out. It made the rounds with some of the streamers I follow, but didn't want to see any spoilers. Forgot to mention that I also want to play the RimWorld expansion and Dwarf Fortress when the Steam client is done.
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-Rasix
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Soulflame
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6487
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Mistlands is in public beta, that's probably why you were seeing it on streams.
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Rendakor
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10138
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For all the tight quality control that Nintendo has
It's like you've never played a modern Pokemon game.
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"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
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Typhon
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2493
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Mistlands is in public beta, that's probably why you were seeing it on streams.
Whoops, thanks!
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Phildo
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For all the tight quality control that Nintendo has
It's like you've never played a modern Pokemon game. I haven't, but I'm aware of them so fair point. I have some vivid memories of doing compliance testing on a DS game a while ago and having to nitpick specific language that was used when referring to using the stylus, for example. Guess that doesn't mean anything for VA or graphics, though.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Mistlands is in public beta, that's probably why you were seeing it on streams.
Whoops, thanks! Well that worked out well for you!
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Typhon
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2493
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my plan is to wait and ask again. I'm trying to figure out if I have it in me to put all the effort into building again. It was the most fun the first time, I just can't figure out if it would be fun the second time.
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Surlyboi
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10966
eat a bag of dicks
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Surprisingly, the bro shooter of bro shooters, COD.
I've been playing a lot of the new DMZ mode which is like a cross between Tarkov and Day Z but you're limited to a 30-odd minute window to get the fuck out of dodge with your ill-gotten gains before the world ends.
I may have to do a new radicalthon.
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Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something. We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11125
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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Have you played Tarkov? How does it compare to that? I have 400 hours in Escape from Tarkov and even though I am one of the worst players in the world, it's some of the best fun in gaming I had in recent years. Every engagement was worth a radicalthon.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Kind of bummed that DF doesn't scale well to a 4k tv. The text isn't too bad, but the cursor will only run as a native 4k cursor (not respecting Windows scaling to 250%), so I have like a 3 pixel cursor.
Then there's the, from what I can decipher, design decision to not be able to zoom in the camera closely. So all those cool new graphics and interesting characters are wasted because they're too small to really see well (and it's not like my display is exactly small).
I was working around the cursor thing, but as the game started to pull me in with one particular greybeard who was stepping up to do most of the work, I wanted to zoom in to look at him. And just zoom in, in general. Found myself constantly trying to zoom in, over and over. Seems like a tiny (heh) problem, but after a while of that constant urge to zoom, I had to quit because it was a low-level irritant that was starting to spoil the fun.
Hopefully it gets fixed inside the refund window, I've been waiting years to play a more accessible version of this game. But I also feel the vanguard of grognards don't give a shit, so I'm not sure anything will ever be done to change the camera at this point.
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15188
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Finally did dive back into Conan Exiles with the Age of Sorcery stuff. I'm not sure how much of what feels new to me is just them fixing some incomplete things--there are events now that trigger at sites that always felt designed for events, but most of them are damn nuisances if you're playing solo. I haven't really dived into sorcery as such except to capture a sorcerer NPC and build the bench that connects to them. I know some spells but I don't really know what to do with them or if they're any good in the first place.
There's also a monetized thing where you do dailies and get goodies for them. It's not the worst thing ever but it gets old fast and again I'm not even sure what to do with some of it. There's a lot more you can build now, though, especially if you add a couple of the most popular mods.
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Teleku
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10516
https://i.imgur.com/mcj5kz7.png
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Kind of bummed that DF doesn't scale well to a 4k tv. The text isn't too bad, but the cursor will only run as a native 4k cursor (not respecting Windows scaling to 250%), so I have like a 3 pixel cursor.
Then there's the, from what I can decipher, design decision to not be able to zoom in the camera closely. So all those cool new graphics and interesting characters are wasted because they're too small to really see well (and it's not like my display is exactly small).
I was working around the cursor thing, but as the game started to pull me in with one particular greybeard who was stepping up to do most of the work, I wanted to zoom in to look at him. And just zoom in, in general. Found myself constantly trying to zoom in, over and over. Seems like a tiny (heh) problem, but after a while of that constant urge to zoom, I had to quit because it was a low-level irritant that was starting to spoil the fun.
Hopefully it gets fixed inside the refund window, I've been waiting years to play a more accessible version of this game. But I also feel the vanguard of grognards don't give a shit, so I'm not sure anything will ever be done to change the camera at this point.
Do you mean, not able to zoom in even closer? You can zoom in the new version by pressing the +/- buttons in the top left next to the map window (or by pressing [] on the keyboard I think).
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"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor." -Stephen Colbert
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