What game are you playing?

[Silvanus]

I'm playing Age of Decadence now. I love the combat system and the way that skill checks are implemented. It has all the pieces of an excellent RPG, but something intangible holds the game back from being truly top-tier. I'm not sure what, perhaps all the Torque3D jank.

[wndrbr]

but something intangible holds the game back from being truly top-tier.

constant teleporting?

[WaterMage]

Re playing Morrowind, this time with Vampire embrace mod and hardcore mode mod. Also playing BF1 but low ping servers are hard to find.

[rusty_shackleford]

but it was still very much present in 2e

Nowhere near to the same level. Fully buffing in the pathfinder games takes minutes if done manually.

[Silvanus]

but something intangible holds the game back from being truly top-tier.

constant teleporting?

That definitely doesn't help, but the alternative of constantly walking back and forth to relay messages doesn't feel too appealing either.

[rusty_shackleford]

Outside of combat, the game plays itself. It uses dialogue for things that should be game mechanics.

[Roguey]

but it was still very much present in 2e

Nowhere near to the same level. Fully buffing in the pathfinder games takes minutes if done manually.

Not for me, but I also played with enemy stats closest to the rules as written and not on the powergaming munchkin difficulty modes.

[bloodedhunter]

Playing Starsiege. The soundtrack definitely nails the tone of the setting and its a competently told story that gets to the point and has just enough depth to compel you to look into it more via the Starsiege Compendium. Instead of the autistic "better do your homework to figure out what the **** is going on" ******** of post-343 vidya.

https://starsiegecompendium.com/

However from a gameplay perspective, its a poor mechwarrior clone without the ability to rotate the upper torso of the mech or even side strafe. So its a ****** tank sim and I can see why the franchise died in the late 90's. Though the fanbase was able to get one of the lead writers, Blake Hutchins, to help work with them on a fan project that was cancelled. Starsiege 2845.

So all the doomfagging discordniggers going "vidya sux all is lost!" only have themselves to blame for the dire state of vidya.

[Roguey]

Finished with Wario Land 3. I normally love puzzle platformers, but in this one you're immortal (except for boss fights), so all the difficulty is oriented around solving the puzzles which made it frustrating at times. One of the worst involved a trial and error maze where you had to beat a path through solid walls with multiple routes and no clear direction of where the right exit is. There were still a good number of fun levels though. I saw the credits with 57 out of 100 treasures collected and I'm fine stopping there. Regarding the ending

► Show Spoiler

I thought it was a funny twist how it looked like the hidden figure helping you was some racist caricature of an African but then it turned out to be an evil clown, well done Nintendo

[Roguey]

Finished Gargoyle's Quest, Gameboy spin-off of Ghosts 'n Goblins that plays like a very basic and abbreviated version of The Adventures of Link with gliding. Didn't care for the random encounters, and the platforming in the penultimate level was absolutely infuriating (the guides I looked up and the LPs I watched showed that there's no way to reliably avoid damage, and the best thing to do is just go in at full health and take the damage and advantage of the invincibility frames that follow). The frame rate in certain scenes was also annoying. Nevertheless, I actually had fun, and I guess this means I should give Demon's Crest a try later.

[Silvanus]

Outside of combat, the game plays itself. It uses dialogue for things that should be game mechanics.

True, especially in the stealth sections.

[aweigh]

my currently installed games... technically I'm playing all of these.

[Roguey]

Finished Mega Man IV for Gameboy. Read that this was the first of the GB Mega Mans that was decent and indeed it was. Not too much obnoxious design aside from one section in the middle where you have to blow up missiles to clear a path while the level is exploding behind you. There were a a couple of instant death gotchas, but I have the power of rewinds so that didn't bother me too much (would have been absolutely seething otherwise).

[KnightoftheWind]

Replaying Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The last time I played it was years ago on the PS3, circa 2012-2013. The performance benefits of the PC version are obvious and appreciated, of course. So far I'm having a good time, and I wonder what took me so long to play it again. The game has a warm, almost cozy feel to it with it's **** yellow palette and techno music. The story also does a good job of keeping you engaged throughout it's runtime, which is something I cannot say for pretty much any JRPG-equivalent.

The game gives you choices when it comes to upgrades, and choices in how you approach most situations. If you want to be stealthy, you can, or if you want to go in guns blazing you can too. But it may be more difficult, since unlike a true action game, Jensen can't take a whole lot of abuse. Even if you upgrade your armor. The executions in this game are also hilarious, whether it's to pacify or to kill, Jensen will lay the smackdown on enemies and it never gets dull. The voice acting is also enjoyable, but the sore spots are the primitive character animations and blurry pre-rendered cinematics, which have not aged well at all. I will say the game has a genuine "Metal Gear" sort of feel to it, especially the bosses you engage with. It really strikes me as what a Metal Gear game would be, if it had a story that was actually competent and gameplay that wouldn't bore you to tears. Kojima wishes he could make a game like this.

I also recall hoping that Cyberpunk 2077 would be an open world Deus Ex, back when the initial trailer for that game came out. I think a lot of people desired that as well, and based their enjoyment of playing Human Revolution on their initial impressions of the game. Of course, that didn't really turn out to be the case, especially thematically.

[Roguey]

Finished Castlevania Legends for Gameboy. About an hour long (so longer than the first NES vania when played perfectly), mediocre, a few ******** areas where it's impossible not to get hit (but you have a hearts-draining power-up after the second boss that restores your life bar to maximum which I assume this is balanced around) and also non-canon now, but you play a girl Belmont so I didn't mind going through it. Of course I played on easy.

I also tried to play Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare for Gameboy Color and just could not do it. Terrible font, terrible graphics, terrible combat, confusing maps. Dropped it after 20 minutes.

[Finarfin]

Installed Space Marine 1 yesterday to refresh my memory in preparation for Space Marine 2. Also playing Age of Mythology Retold

[Tweed]

Finished Castlevania Legends for Gameboy. About an hour long (so longer than the first NES vania when played perfectly), mediocre, a few ******** areas where it's impossible not to get hit (but you have a hearts-draining power-up after the second boss that restores your life bar to maximum which I assume this is balanced around) and also non-canon now, but you play a girl Belmont so I didn't mind going through it. Of course I played on easy.

Iga did the right thing cutting that slop from the timeline.

[Nooneatall]

Only thing that comes close is NWN/NWN2, it simply was not anywhere near as prevalent prior to 3E.

3rd edition exacerbated it, but it was still very much present in 2e. Josh Sawyer talking about Brian Mitsoda QA testing Icewind Dale:

Even among hardcore PC RPG fans, there is a wide spectrum of skill, experience, and preference. When I started at Black Isle, I designed a bunch of fights in IWD that only a handful of veteran BG testers could get through. Memorably, I saw a QA tester blow a fuse because a fight in Lower Dorn's Deep was "impossible". When I showed him how I got through it, I started off by having my casters go through six rounds of buffs. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Uh... buffing my party?" This seemed normal to me. DUH YEAH BUFF YOUR PARTY TO HELL AND BACK LOCK AND LOAD PAY ATTENTION FFFFFFFFFF. Despite his high experience with RPGs and Baldur's Gate, he just... never thought of it. The problem was that the entire fight was balanced around a party that was optimally built and lit up like a Christmas tree from stacked buffs.

About halfway through IWD's development, a QA tester (who went on to become a pretty well-respected developer) came up to Black Isle and was furious at the difficulty of a fight in Lower Dorn's Deep. He had been trying to legitimately get through it for 2 hours and hadn't succeeded. Kihan Pak and I loaded it up and beat it on the first try. He asked to see what we were doing. Naturally, we were pre-buffing for 5-6 rounds before we even went into the fight. Because there was no opportunity cost to using buffs, this was "the way" to get through fights, but it was tedious -- and for people who were not D&D veterans, it was not something they ever thought to do, which resulted in a full roadblock (see also: Burial Isle misery, which was also pretty easy for me and Kihan).

It's how 90s-00s D&D crpgs are played.

I don’t like to use words dated but this the few times were this certainly fits the case. Wouldn’t be much of issue in most cases In other old CRPG’s but Owlcat encounter design is throwing endless trash mobs with inflated stat numbers that becomes ludicrous by late game. Now you get away with this on normal difficultly with the right character build but higher then that it becomes mandatory with buffing.

I wouldn't say it's dated, just a particular way of doing things. Though ideally there should be a way to make it easier through the UI or perhaps restrictions on how many buffs any given character can have.

I didn't care for 5e's implementation of concentration and Sawyer's way of handling the pre-buffing problem by not allowing it was also unpopular.

This is bad game design. The only way this is bearable is if you can set party ai or only side and post game content requires it. I'm ready to get flamed I don't care.

[Roguey]

This is bad game design. The only way this is bearable is if you can set party ai or only side and post game content requires it. I'm ready to get flamed I don't care.

If enough people enjoy something, it isn't bad, just a style of gameplay that doesn't appeal to you.

[Nooneatall]

This is bad game design. The only way this is bearable is if you can set party ai or only side and post game content requires it. I'm ready to get flamed I don't care.

If enough people enjoy something, it isn't bad, just a style of gameplay that doesn't appeal to you.

You enjoy ******** so your opinion isn't valid. I'll wait for a straight person to reply.

[bloodedhunter]

my currently installed games... technically I'm playing all of these.

Did the discord ***** cabal ever divulge how to make mods for the persona 3 remake?
That modding scene just insists on gatekeeping such info and making unfunny shitposts that are not based mods.

[Roguey]

You enjoy ******** so your opinion isn't valid. I'll wait for a straight person to reply.

I do not "enjoy ********."

[Nooneatall]

You enjoy ******** so your opinion isn't valid. I'll wait for a straight person to reply.

I do not "enjoy ********."

Suzi's cute, popular, and has a voice that's nice to listen to, simple as.

Saying I find a transperson attractive is not whatever you hallucinated.

[Irenaeus]

You enjoy ******** so your opinion isn't valid. I'll wait for a straight person to reply.

I do not "enjoy ********."

Suzi's cute, popular, and has a voice that's nice to listen to, simple as.

Saying I find a transperson attractive is not whatever you hallucinated.

Why do you do this to me? I have that mega ****** on ignore now I end up reading his ******** and gay **** anyway.

[Nooneatall]

I do not "enjoy ********."

Suzi's cute, popular, and has a voice that's nice to listen to, simple as.

Saying I find a transperson attractive is not whatever you hallucinated.

Why do you do this to me? I have that mega ****** on ignore now I end up reading his ******** and gay **** anyway.

But he insists it's not gay to be attracted to men dressed as women, bro. Totally not gay...

[Nooneatall]

This is bad game design. The only way this is bearable is if you can set party ai or only side and post game content requires it. I'm ready to get flamed I don't care.

If enough people enjoy something, it isn't bad, just a style of gameplay that doesn't appeal to you.

Your opinion is brain dead not only because you are a stupid ******, but you are doing one of them logical fallacies. Lots of people enjoy to dress up as animals and **** in diapers but it's not valid. There's also plenty of people who enjoy drawing and viewing loli ****, again, not valid.

[Ratcatcher]

Managing buffs in a non obnoxious way in a cRPG is an interface issue, not a design one. Buffs are there to offer another layer of preparing your characters, do remember those are pnp systems first and foremost, prepping in a smart way is literally 75% of the 'gameplay' there.

Ofc, if you base a game on such a well known IP as PF and don't include a good portion of the base and core buffs, people that know the system, that is your core audience, will turn their head. I definitely would. I second the suggestion abou using bubble buffs for WotR, it works very well and allows you to setup your most used buffs, their targets and some additional special resources. It can be abused by casting dozens of spells while in combat but just don't do that, use it as a single button fire and forget solution for the majority of the spells you'd always cast on the same target anyway. You can even specify different sets of buffs so you can have one set of long lasting spells you immediately hit after resting and another one with a duration of rounds/turns you use right before entering combat.

What boggles the mind is, if modders were able to do this, why haven't devs thought of this simple solution?

[Nemesis]

That modding scene just insists on gatekeeping

What is there even to gate keep? No mods are that valuable.

[Nooneatall]

Managing buffs in a non obnoxious way in a cRPG is an interface issue, not a design one. Buffs are there to offer another layer of preparing your characters, do remember those are pnp systems first and foremost, prepping in a smart way is literally 75% of the 'gameplay' there.

Ofc, if you base a game on such a well known IP as PF and don't include a good portion of the base and core buffs, people that know the system, that is your core audience, will turn their head. I definitely would. I second the suggestion abou using bubble buffs for WotR, it works very well and allows you to setup your most used buffs, their targets and some additional special resources. It can be abused by casting dozens of spells while in combat but just don't do that, use it as a single button fire and forget solution for the majority of the spells you'd always cast on the same target anyway. You can even specify different sets of buffs so you can have one set of long lasting spells you immediately hit after resting and another one with a duration of rounds/turns you use right before entering combat.

What boggles the mind is, if modders were able to do this, why haven't devs thought of this simple solution?

Valid straight opinion

[Roguey]

Your opinion is brain dead not only because you are a stupid ******, but you are doing one of them logical fallacies. Lots of people enjoy to dress up as animals and **** in diapers but it's not valid. There's also plenty of people who enjoy drawing and viewing loli ****, again, not valid.

There are a lot of people who think any kind of friction in a game is "bad design." Or that having to do any kind of reading at all is "bad design." Just a nonsense judgment based on the preference of the person making it. "Prebuffing is bad" belongs in the same category.