Various video game stuff not deserving its own thread

[rusty_shackleford]

I really dislike 'standardized' mechanics in RPGs. For example, the advantage/disadvantage system in 5e. It feels like the game is decoupled from the narrative when different abilities give the same result.
Especially so when it feels like everything has been hammered to fit into this tiny box instead of having unique mechanics. It's as if they looked at the end result and thought the process of getting there didn't matter. Sure, you can represent mirror image as some abstract increased evasion statistic, but it no longer mechanically feels like a mirror image spell.

e.g.,
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mirrorImage.htm

Several illusory duplicates of you pop into being, making it difficult for enemies to know which target to attack. The figments stay near you and disappear when struck.

Mirror image creates 1d4 images plus one image per three caster levels (maximum eight images total). These figments separate from you and remain in a cluster, each within 5 feet of at least one other figment or you. You can move into and through a mirror image. When you and the mirror image separate, observers can’t use vision or hearing to tell which one is you and which the image. The figments may also move through each other. The figments mimic your actions, pretending to cast spells when you cast a spell, drink potions when you drink a potion, levitate when you levitate, and so on.

Enemies attempting to attack you or cast spells at you must select from among indistinguishable targets. Generally, roll randomly to see whether the selected target is real or a figment. Any successful attack against an image destroys it. An image’s AC is 10 + your size modifier + your Dex modifier. Figments seem to react normally to area spells (such as looking like they’re burned or dead after being hit by a fireball).

While moving, you can merge with and split off from figments so that enemies who have learned which image is real are again confounded.

An attacker must be able to see the images to be fooled. If you are invisible or an attacker shuts his or her eyes, the spell has no effect. (Being unable to see carries the same penalties as being blinded.)

vs

https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wi ... ored_Image

Caster: +25 Deflection until Hit or Critically hit for 60.0 sec

Narrative completely decoupled from game mechanics.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm just forcing myself to play GW2 because there's a good game buried here and I'm hoping it improves. I really dislike the combat(hate guitar hero MMO ****) and themepark design tho.
Excellent world events, stories, AI(not combat AI but 'general' AI) makes the world feel rather alive. I aggro'd a raptor and kept running past a neutral emu-looking bird and the raptor switched targets to the emu, which felt like something a predator would actually do by judging how difficult its prey would be.
High attention to detail e.g., was doing a world event after I retook a base to rebuild the north/south gates, the north gate finished before the south so the NPCs helping guard the engineers at the north gate ran to the south to bolster its defenses. Nice touch.

Also, the animations are extremely good, perhaps some of the best in any game. Maybe they don't look the best individually, but it feels good, and I don't really have a word to describe this.

Also 2, as I was typing this the guards and chef got into a fight over the lack of any food and an event to go hunt wurms for meat with some of the defenders started.

So, is it worth playing?
Meh.

It's a real shame that, for whatever possible reason, such a lively game world is stuck behind such a mediocre game. Guild Wars had similar stuff going on, but it was actually a good game too.

[Emphyrio]

I couldn't get into AI war 1, but I finished a game of AI War 2. It's perfectly casualized for casuals like me.

Some stuff is weird. Instead of sending scout ships to explore like in a normal rts, you can only explore by capturing planets to reveal the next couple planets in the lane. You can't even travel to unexplored planets. There are scout ships but all they can do is stealth and sit in an already-explored planet to keep it watched.

You don't build ships and they don't permanently die. You have flagships that have a few different types of ships attached to them. Dead ships are replaced to the cap when you're at or adjacent to an owned planet or a support fleet. You can't pick really which ships you get, you can only shuffle them around between fleets to try and make a coherent build. You can find some new ship loot in the galaxy and pick 2 or 3 options. If you want specifically stealth ships or tractor beam ships or shield ships and can't find them, sucks for you. If you have some types of ships that are pretty much useless, about all you can do is stick them on a back-line flagship and use it to patrol for garbage. Technology points are limited so you'll probably upgrade your good ships while the **** ones get even more useless.

[Rand]

I'm just forcing myself to play GW2 because there's a good game buried here and I'm hoping it improves. I really dislike the combat(hate guitar hero MMO ****) and themepark design tho.
Excellent world events, stories, AI(not combat AI but 'general' AI) makes the world feel rather alive. I aggro'd a raptor and kept running past a neutral emu-looking bird and the raptor switched targets to the emu, which felt like something a predator would actually do by judging how difficult its prey would be.
High attention to detail e.g., was doing a world event after I retook a base to rebuild the north/south gates, the north gate finished before the south so the NPCs helping guard the engineers at the north gate ran to the south to bolster its defenses. Nice touch.

Also, the animations are extremely good, perhaps some of the best in any game. Maybe they don't look the best individually, but it feels good, and I don't really have a word to describe this.

Also 2, as I was typing this the guards and chef got into a fight over the lack of any food and an event to go hunt wurms for meat with some of the defenders started.

You're right. The software bones are good, but the world feels hollow and random. A bit of an MMO problem, but still...

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm tired of reading comments about how microtransactions and lootboxes are greed. They're not. They're laziness and apathy.
Greed would be maximization of profits without concern for the game itself. This often, but not always, coincides with a better product. Lootboxes & microtransactions are an attempt to maximize profits with the least effort.

The idea that corporations always seek to maximize profit is false. Modern corporations, with musical chair executives, attempt to maximize the appearance of profit to appease investors. They, the executives and investors, have no long-term stake in the corporation, nor any attachment to it.


This has been my Ted talk, thank you.

[aweigh]

[rusty_shackleford]

Even asian games make the characters look nothing like the actress it's based off of. The only difference is that it actually improves them.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm just forcing myself to play GW2 because there's a good game buried here and I'm hoping it improves. I really dislike the combat(hate guitar hero MMO ****) and themepark design tho.
Excellent world events, stories, AI(not combat AI but 'general' AI) makes the world feel rather alive. I aggro'd a raptor and kept running past a neutral emu-looking bird and the raptor switched targets to the emu, which felt like something a predator would actually do by judging how difficult its prey would be.
High attention to detail e.g., was doing a world event after I retook a base to rebuild the north/south gates, the north gate finished before the south so the NPCs helping guard the engineers at the north gate ran to the south to bolster its defenses. Nice touch.

Also, the animations are extremely good, perhaps some of the best in any game. Maybe they don't look the best individually, but it feels good, and I don't really have a word to describe this.

Also 2, as I was typing this the guards and chef got into a fight over the lack of any food and an event to go hunt wurms for meat with some of the defenders started.

So, is it worth playing?
Meh.

It's a real shame that, for whatever possible reason, such a lively game world is stuck behind such a mediocre game. Guild Wars had similar stuff going on, but it was actually a good game too.

They change the entire 'cast' of characters for the story content after the base game story and they're all annoying, btw.
Vaguely mixed race Norn(you know, the race that's just fantasy vikings? Yeah), an alright-I-guess charr, an annoying as **** child genius, and two lesbian lovers whose writing is they're lesbians who love each other. Yeah, it was at that point in gaming where they realized they could put gay romances in by having two attractive women kiss each other. I'm sure they're replaced with gay males as you go further into the content.

It's insufferable tbh

[rusty_shackleford]

This is easily one of the most iconic video game advertisements of all time and it was probably also one of the cheapest due to it being a partnership


People who didn't play EQ2 knew it as "that game with the pizza command"

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'm just forcing myself to play GW2 because there's a good game buried here and I'm hoping it improves. I really dislike the combat(hate guitar hero MMO ****) and themepark design tho.
Excellent world events, stories, AI(not combat AI but 'general' AI) makes the world feel rather alive. I aggro'd a raptor and kept running past a neutral emu-looking bird and the raptor switched targets to the emu, which felt like something a predator would actually do by judging how difficult its prey would be.
High attention to detail e.g., was doing a world event after I retook a base to rebuild the north/south gates, the north gate finished before the south so the NPCs helping guard the engineers at the north gate ran to the south to bolster its defenses. Nice touch.

Also, the animations are extremely good, perhaps some of the best in any game. Maybe they don't look the best individually, but it feels good, and I don't really have a word to describe this.

Also 2, as I was typing this the guards and chef got into a fight over the lack of any food and an event to go hunt wurms for meat with some of the defenders started.

So, is it worth playing?
Meh.

It's a real shame that, for whatever possible reason, such a lively game world is stuck behind such a mediocre game. Guild Wars had similar stuff going on, but it was actually a good game too.

They change the entire 'cast' of characters for the story content after the base game story and they're all annoying, btw.
Vaguely mixed race Norn(you know, the race that's just fantasy vikings? Yeah), an alright-I-guess charr, an annoying as **** child genius, and two lesbian lovers whose writing is they're lesbians who love each other. Yeah, it was at that point in gaming where they realized they could put gay romances in by having two attractive women kiss each other. I'm sure they're replaced with gay males as you go further into the content.

It's insufferable tbh

Yeah. The base game cast voice actors were expensive, so they got sidelined for the first two seasons. Then in the first expansion some of them get brought back, most notably Steve Blum as Rytlock. Taimi is utterly insufferable in season 2, and then they dial her down a bit, and then Gorrick slowly takes over her role, and he was much more likeable. Braham having an absentee black father has unfortunate implications, surprised the writers didn't think about that one. Rox eventually gets written out of the game. The Marjory/Kasmeer thing gets pushed into the background after season 2 and doesn't come up again until End of Dragons' epilogue.

I think there might've been some more degenerate stuff planted in side content, but nothing in your face during the story until Icebrood Saga, when Jormag is retconned from being a he into having a woman's voice (good choice creatively since we already had two male Elder Dragon villains, not counting Zhaitan who never spoke directly) and everyone refers to her as "they". Male nation leaders and authority figures are either killed off, pussyfied, and replaced by female NPCs. Then in End of Dragons, you have that engineer introduced who insists he's a they. Also, strawmen racists are introduced and the game conflates concerns about foreign influence and national security with racism. Defense Minister Li was correct that everything started going wrong when the foreigners showed up and started barging into top secret facilities and causing an apoclaypse, but gets dismissed as a bigot and beaten up and deposed in a boss fight.

[rusty_shackleford]

****** need to start tagging their games with 'anime' on Steam, they never ******* do and they're clearly animango style.

[maidenhaver]

The Imperial Cult is called the church multiple times in Oblivion, making it one of the few games where a church is actually allowed to just exist without falling into nip tropes, or being some reddit commentary on organized religion.

[rusty_shackleford]

Before DLC and after manatory guides/1-900 numbers came anti-rental features. These don't show up in PC games for obvious reasons, but a lot of console games had them, features which prevented you from beating the game in a weekend or week just by adding pointless grinding.
I'm convinced this is a large part of the reason JRPGs have so much grinding in them to this day.

[rusty_shackleford]

Majesty: Chinkoid edition

Apparently it has some English translation

[Humbaba]

Majesty isn't that good unless you really like watching ant farms.




-Humbaba

[Acrux]

Majesty is an excellent game. This game, however, looks like - God forgive me for what I am about to say - Majesty 2.

[aweigh]

[maidenhaver]

You insult our *******? You get the earthquake bomb. Kneel, or next time it'll be tsunamis from both sides.

[Emphyrio]

Majesty is an excellent game. This game, however, looks like - God forgive me for what I am about to say - Majesty 2.

Majesty plays itself except for clicking upgrades and replacing dead heroes. The only strategy is realizing that you need to spam tons of heroes, knowing which heroes aren't worth building (warriors, wizards, monks, healers, paladins, the fast quarterstaff guys), and making sure you have inns on the front line.

The majesty/dungeonkeeper formulas seem to be a dead end. Nobody can make one that's more than a casual clicker.

[Acrux]

The only strategy is realizing that you need to spam tons of heroes

Curious, I can win most scenarios with only using the guilds you mention. And absolutely not by spamming them. You have to know what the uses for each are, though - like monks are terrible for attack but good for defending your buildings, same as the Lunord adepts. But, I've also been playing it for over 20 years now.

[rusty_shackleford]

behead those who insult majesty

[Emphyrio]

The only strategy is realizing that you need to spam tons of heroes

Curious, I can win most scenarios with only using the guilds you mention. And absolutely not by spamming them. You have to know what the uses for each are, though - like monks are terrible for attack but good for defending your buildings, same as the Lunord adepts. But, I've also been playing it for over 20 years now.

of course you can. Very easy game except for the gimmick levels.

[Acrux]

What happened to you, man? You used to be cool.

[Decline]

Majesty: Chinkoid edition

Apparently it has some English translation

There's also



No idea about the quality, it's done by the same people that did Grim Dawn.

[rusty_shackleford]

Majesty: Chinkoid edition

Apparently it has some English translation

There's also



No idea about the quality, it's done by the same people that did Grim Dawn.

A shame the developers gave up on that game. I've read Farthest Frontier is a worthy successor.

Let me know when they fire this designer who responded to a question asking about churches by asking if they'd be satisfied by the inclusion of mosques & temples
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t ... /116730/32

[KnightoftheWind]

The Imperial Cult is called the church multiple times in Oblivion, making it one of the few games where a church is actually allowed to just exist without falling into nip tropes, or being some reddit commentary on organized religion.

Still rather off-putting to see what is supposed to be a cathedral being turned into a place where a fictional pantheon is worshipped. Elder Scrolls lore is interesting, but not really based in any way. A lot of the NPCs and backstory involves outright demon worship (daedra). I am thankful they didn't go the average JRPG route though, and have you fight Akatosh or something as a not-so-subtle bit of commentary.

[maidenhaver]

There is anti-monotheism in the Prophet Maruk and Alessian Order, but otherwise ingame "the Gods" could be read "God" and nobody would ask. The only npc who hates the church and God the gods is a secret satanist dagonite who murders you for saving the town. Oblivion is actually really accurate with its portrayals of witches trying to burn down America, and later you even take a plane to not-Bongistan where the king has mental illness.

[Emphyrio]

What happened to you, man? You used to be cool.

a cool guy don't take it personally when another cool guy doesnt like all the same stuff he likes

[rusty_shackleford]

I got a bunch of steambux and need to find something to spend them on before the sale ends.

[maidenhaver]

Hogwarts