I can finally play D&D instead of always being the default GM! Yay!
It’s a fantastic game and I am having a blast with it. It’d be neat if they found a way to incorporate a little more of the utility stuff (scrying etc.) but I can imagine how difficult that would be. The scope of what you can do in the game is definitely much farther than I thought they’d go!
Scrying type spells are not in the game as far as I know. There are a lot of non-combat spells in D&D that are not present, likely because they are based on creative liberties, and difficult to replicate on a computer.
If you’re not averse to piracy, you could go that route.
If you are averse to piracy, and have consoles to play on, buy used copies of games (where it’s even possible to) - the publisher sees no proceeds from that.
Failing that… There’s a lot of great indie games out there that aren’t problematic. I know it feels like you’re missing out if you aren’t playing whatever the current big AAA game is, but really, there’s plenty of indie games that are just as good, or that you’d get just as much enjoyment out of.
I'd recommend against piracy in either case. Part of the action you take as a consumer is not just refusing to give Bad Company A your money, but you're also giving Bad Company A's product less attention and mindshare while spending money and attention on Good Company B's product, encouraging more of Good Company B's product to be made. The likes of Ubisoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard, etc. used to be the companies that made games that a lot of us loved, but they trimmed their portfolios of their less profitable (note that I didn't say "unprofitable") games, which means they're not scratching all of the itches they used to scratch, and they've diluted a lot of the games that we still enjoy with business models that encroach right up to the point where they annoy or anger us. So if the business models they're using now piss you off, it's important to stop supporting those and instead show that buying a great product at a fair price is what we as customers want.
For me, if a game requires an internet connection instead of letting us host our own servers or run a LAN or run local play totally offline, I don't buy it, I don't pirate it, I don't play it. I just move on to games that respect their customers.
You know, it’s funny, I used to feel big FOMO when it came to games I wanted to play. Then the Epic Game Store came along, and started paying for timed exclusives, and I adopted the philosophy that I’d just wait for the games to get a Steam release.
There’s only been a handful of instances where I even bothered buying them once they came to Steam; turns out that by not buying them when they’re being hyped by all of the new release marketing, I’ve mentally moved on to other things by the time they come to Steam, and I just don’t feel the need to buy them anymore. I just needed help getting past that initial mental hurdle.
The same applies to companies whose philosophies I object to; as long as I have a reason to mentally justify not buying them initially, I just lose interest in the products entirely very quickly.
People would often respond to me with the sentiment that "games aren't fungible", which is true, but there's so much good stuff out there that something else will be pretty close to the itch you're looking to scratch, great in its own ways, and you don't have to feel lousy about supporting it. Like if Diablo IV feels scummy, I hear Grim Dawn is great. That kind of thing.
Hades really is a banger. I cannot wait for Hades 2, my goodness.
Another perfect game for me is Outer Wilds. It’s hard to really get across the emotional impact it has on you.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the game, you can only really ever play it once. You are able to complete the game immediately, but the whole point is you discover clues as you explore that eventually build up to a point where it all clicks together, and suddenly you know what you must do.
Go in completely blind. Play on your own with your headphones on and get truly immersed. Try not to look up any guides. If you can get there on your own it’s truly satisfying.
When people say videogames are stupid I think of this game and feel sorry for what these people miss out on!
Edit: Oh mechabellum too - great shout. It’s criminal how small the player base is for such an addictive and fun game.
I’ve already told my wife that if I suffer a brain injury and lose all memories, to not bother showing me pictures of our wedding day or any of that guff. I want to play The Outer Wilds again.
Although having said that she might take the opportunity to pretend she never met me.
Outer Wilds is top of my list for most profound video game experiences. I have never went from joy to thinking "Oh. Oh..." so fast in one game. Plus, the music and graphics are so well done and support the narrative themes and mood. Just a masterpiece game.
I need to play Outer Wilds. I think I actually own it already, but I’ve not got round to it. You’re like the fourth person I’ve seen in this thread mention it
I played in 2016 and started playing again in 2023 and I was surprised at how little had changed but its par for the course for the pokemon franchise.
Almost all your other grievances are partly due to how mobile games are monetized and how much of it relies on fear of missing out (applies to regular pokemon events too). Pokemon Go is a constant stream of FOMO to try and get you to spend money when there’s barely any payoff. A pokemon you can catch in the wild can already be 87% of the way to a perfect pokemon you spend months (years?) getting stardust, candy and XL candy to max out.
Same here. I played in 2016, dropped it for ages because there wasn’t much too it (especially for those of us who don’t live in cities), and picked it up again in 2023. That was largely because friends were playing it. I got bored and dropped it again in less than a week. Apparently my Pokemon from 2016 are quite valuable because of… something that was added to the game that makes them very desirable? But given I didn’t want to keep playing, what would I trade them for that I’d actually want?
I mostly picked it back up to have access to the PoGo exclusive shinies (Mew, Jirachi, Meltan/Melmetal, Genesect and Deoxys) but I just spoof instead (trying to play in negative temps outside of a city is no fun) and just trade cool stuff to friends (who live in different places so I can’t even trade with them legitimately if I wanted to).
Another example of bullshit is the PAID shiny Mew ticket. Even after you pay for it you still need to complete a potentially ridiculous requirement of completing the kanto dex. Which would be fine if they didn’t geolock Kangaskhan to Australia (outside of events in the past?) so you would be shit out of luck if you didn’t either already have one or knew someone you can meet up with in real life that did.
As for your 2016 mons, the first 9 or so you trade will be guaranteed to be lucky meaning an IV floor of 12/12/12 or 80% (and half stardust cost) so you would ideally trade them for something strong and/or shiny like a shiny legendary or strong mega/dragon/top within its type pokemon. All 2016 pokemon have like a 75% of making a trade lucky so they’re all valuable. Another trick to get people to nag their friends and family to start playing again.
I think Achievements are useful if they’re tracked separately by each save game. Minecraft does this, and I find it helpful when I return to a world save after a long time because I can use the achievements I unlocked to help remind me what I was doing and resume from there instead of looking at what clues may have been left behind.
I love New Game + mechanics. I think it’s a travesty more games don’t have them.
I hate excessive collectathons or overly repetitious cutscenes or dialogue. I love TotK, but the end-of-shrine bit got old real fast; I found myself missing pre-BotW heart container hunts where they could just be in a chest somewhere. I also feel exhausted just thinking about all the Koroks; I like trying to 100% save games, and the Koroks start to feel like work after a couple hundred in total.
I like when fps weapon recoil moves the player view with the recoil, particularly if the view resets back to where the player was aiming as the recoil cooldown ends. It’s satisfying and also gives the player an odd feeling of agency because the recoil mechanic lets them play “can I control the hose?”
I think Achievements are useful if they’re tracked separately by each save game. Minecraft does this, and I find it helpful when I return to a world save after a long time because I can use the achievements I unlocked to help remind me what I was doing and resume from there instead of looking at what clues may have been left behind.
That only works, though, if the achievements resemble game progress. Some games use achievements as entirely optional bonus challenges…
Fair, but from back when I played a ton on my 360, a large number of a games’ achievements were progression-based, sometimes entirely. That being said, tracking optional challenges within the save game itself can also be helpful in some instances.
For example, if there are challenges that require you to not use special weapons at all, and then you violate the challenge requirements, it could be grayed out to signify that the player locked themselves out of anything related to completing that challenge in that playthrough.
Resident Evil 4: Remake already does this to a degree, though my thought is that it would be most helpful in long rpgs, where it may not be clear after loading where you are in story or what you have and haven’t done if the save hadn’t been touched in months.
Oh yeah, I’m not arguing against your idea. It would need to be implemented per game anyways, so the devs can decide themselves, whether they want their achievements to be suitable or not.
Having said that, maybe what you really want is a similar idea, which I saw pitched a while ago: Dynamic recaps.
Basically, the game would detect that you haven’t started it in a while, so could offer a quick rundown of the controls. And if you’re loading a save from a few months ago, it could offer a quick summary of your most recent milestones in the story / game progression.
So, yeah, pretty much your idea, but it’s not re-using achievements for that…
Lazy UI porting between PC and console. It goes both ways - radial menus showing up in a PC game or a joystick-controlled-cursor in a console game. M+KB vs controller are not comparable input methods, so trying to manage the UI with one that was built for the other is always a massive pain in the ass.
Inventory restrictions in games that throw a LOT of shit your way. Looking at you, Bethesda. Fortunately there's usually a mod of some kind to make items weigh like 0.01 lbs, or kick your slots up to 9999 or something. Sometimes realism adds to the experience... inventory management isn't one of those times.
Sluggish controls. I want to actually enjoy the Dark Souls games SO BAD - they look beautiful, I fuckin love that dark fantasy setting... but moving and combat feel like I'm driving a school bus with boxing gloves on my hands and diving flippers on my feet. I get that the cumbersome controls are a huge part of what makes it difficult, and that the difficulty is what a lot of players are after, but personally that's not a flavor of difficulty I'll ever be able to enjoy.
Love:
Good QOL features, especially involving the topics above. Like 'Hot Deposit' certain items to all designated storages in range, or AoE loot when a bunch of foes die in a pile. The quick loot style menu from Fallout 4 is another great example. Love that stuff!
Lore. Good story writing, believable/relatable characters, ESPECIALLY the antagonists. Hitting the sweet spot there is a quick ticket to my all time favorites.
Environmental challenges, with fun ways to overcome them. When I was new to Ark, one of the biggest challenges in my first play through was getting into the super cold zones and not freezing to death. My cold weather gear didn't cut it... the solution I came up with was to tame a paracer (kind of an elephant looking dino) and build a platform on its back: and made like 6 camp fires on the platform. So the I was, trudging through an insanely cold environment on a flaming elephant, cozy as can be. As a veteran player now, there are SO much more efficient methods to solving that problem, but the experience gave a unique sense of accomplishment, which is the kind of thing that got me hooked on that game.
Escorts matching the move speed of the player. 'nuff said.
Hot take, but I actually love well implemented radial menus on PC. When games bother to reset your cursor to the centre of the circle you can just quickly flick the mouse in a certain direction to make your selection, which is faster than most other mouse menus and a lot more comfortable than trying to reach for the 9 key.
How about creating a separate sub for that kind of content? It worked well for Reddit. They have r/games for discussion and r/gaming for memes and shitposts.
Personally, I think a gaming meme community is too niche for our instance at the moment. Especially when our general jokes and humor community doesn’t see much posting. I would think this type of content could be posted there any day of the week
If you’re enjoying yourself while you play, then the time was well spent. Like you said, try to remember that nobody is making you play every game you start to 100% completion, that’s an entirely self-imposed rule.
That said, for me personally, the length of a game is generally irrelevant to whether or not I will enjoy that game. If I enjoy a game, I enjoy that game. If it’s long, it’s long. If not, cool.
The big thing for me is that if I play narrative-focused games like immersive sims, I want to dive deep into those worlds, and that takes a certain amount of brain energy.
Something like RDR2 but focused on the life sim part. Instead of narrative driven game where your main action in the world is violence, go all in on the simulation part with actually working economics, job choices etc.
I want to be a lumberjack hauling wood to the local mill via the river, not a bandit robbing every passer by. Also, I should be able to buy high heels from the big city store.
There are roleplay servers for modded RDR2 online (RedM) where you can actually do this. I just started playing on one with some mates and it’s a player driven economy, so if people need wood they either have to chop it themselves or someone has to do it for them. I haven’t tried it personally but you start with an axe and there seem to be areas where you can chop wood. I just like wandering about picking flowers and saying yeehaw to people.
Sealed room murder mystery, with no quirky characters. And with puzzles that require you to wiki stuff.
RPG that takes place outside of western European / American / Japanese setting. I wanna see games that take place in Korea, India, Africa
RPG that takes place in a small city where you can interact with most people, a small open world like Kamurocho (maybe larger), but allows interaction with most people, instead of just handful of quest givers.
Igavania but with modern sci-fi settings. Shadow Complex exists, but that’s more metroidvania (no leveling up or equipment drops from enemies)
Flight simulator but for road trip. Truck simulator but with real world map data
Flight simulator but for underwater exploration, with real world data.
PS3 Africa, but expanded to more regions, more animals.
God of War, but other mythologies, e.g. Egyptian, Chinese, South East Asians, Africans, Polynesians, etc.
Also Lucas Pope surprised me when he used Minnan / Hokkien / Formosan language in that game, it’s very close to my native tongue.
But of course
spoiler___ the game is less of a sealed murder mystery, more of a supernatural mystery. While I would love to see a realistic whodunnit, that requires you to research on physics / chemistry / actual real life tools, etc.
Yeah, like I said it’s not an exact match, but if you hadn’t tried it I thought perhaps it would scratch that same deduction itch. Plus it has that Wiki element since a fair bit of clues are based around cultural and nautical history as well as languages and dialects.
Polynesian for the original source of mana as a loan word would be cool. I also find stuff like Aztec would work really well for an RPG.
If I had a wish though, it would probably be to make a scaled down world that samples most of the historical cultures of each continent. Then do something where quests need you to do a bit of syncretism to solve them.
ETS2 and ATS work both really well as road trip games, though they’re both in 1:19 scale afaik. Promods don’t change the scale, just add massive amounts of new content to it.
I regularly play multi-player convoy with my friends, where we just set up a spotify playlist that we sync through discord and cruise around.
The ability to pick something up easily, make some progress, pause it, and resume quickly at the next available window appears the best way to go.
Then you want the steam deck. This thing is powerful enough to run elden ring at a pretty stable 30 FPS, sometimes even up to 60, while being portable enough to fit in a backpack. I take it with me on business trips and it’s perfect for flying, bussing, wherever, with the caveat that you want it plugged in more often than not - the battery life is a little on the low side for those high-impact games.
Then if they’re gonna whine about it, but pay anyway, they’re basically saying the company can do whatever they like and they (the players) will just suck it up. So what’s the use of whining then?
I don’t give a shit about RuneScape. But being vocal is how people give their feedback. For the players, it’s better to give feedback before the price changes, in hopes of making a difference.
If you whine about the pay increase, but pay it anyway (or continue to pay it now)…the feedback you’re giving is that it’s actually worth that price to you, and your words are effectively meaningless.
This is super cool! I’m in a position right now where I have to walk my dog a few times a day. I’d love to chip in, but I just don’t have anything to spare right now. I’m gonna sign up for the beta and cross my fingers. Thank you for making this
Thank you! We’re accepting people who’ve applied to the Closed Beta throughout the wave, so there’s a good chance you’ll gain access! The wave ends on October 6th.
We’ve got a lot of pictures of happy doggos on the Discord :D I have cats that I walk sometimes, but they’re not as effective from XP gain perspective.
Edit: and just to clarify here, access gained during any point of Closed Beta stays until Open Beta when everyone can start playing it. Open Beta is planned for next year.
We made it in! I chopped my first wood lol. I am liking the look of everything. This will make walking the dog less of a chore, and more fun. Thank you again
bin.pol.social
Ważne