Carighan

Carighan, rok temu

Deep Rock Galactic: Fantasy Edition is looking pretty meh, tbh.

It’s a shame because if you describe it to me on paper, the concept of a co-op game where a group of dwarves build/rebuild Moria or at least a tiny portion of it sounds interesting. But among other things it’d need an art style. I mean it also needs a good one that is evocative of the world Tolkien created, but hey, first of all it needs an art style.

Carighan, rok temu

Sidenote: Pioneers of Pagonia is by the actual developer of the actual old The Settlers.

I loved it. And yeah, it’s a simple management game without much depth or fuss, but that chill easygoing settling of the landscape is what enchanted me about the original right around 30 years ago, and it worked just as well with the demo. In fact I found that comparing Against The Storm, I kinda prefer the less gameplay that PoP has, exactly because it has less gameplay. ATS sits a bit in the middle, still being a chill town builder but also wanting to be deeper, and in that case I just want a proper 4X or Grand Strategy game instead. PoP is then the exact opposite of that for me, it appeals to the chill&relax part of gaming, a bit like playing Dorfromantik or something.

Though, as you say, it really was quite janky.

Carighan, rok temu

Just remember how plasticky and stiff the characters in Dragon Age Inquisition looked because of the mandate to use the Frostbite 3 engine for ~everything, no matter how unsuited it was to a high fantasy world.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah but I think they did it back in 2013. No clue whether the contract is still valid or it’s all old capture.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah in theory this sounds awesome. But given the shoddy state of the multiplayer alpha, I wonder how/when this will release.

Still, if they actually bring this out in a year or so, I would definitely check it out (given 1-2 years for bugfixes, learning from CP2077).

Carighan, rok temu

“Opiods are fun. God forbid you enjoy some drugs line [sic] OxyContin 🙄”

It’s not really nice to call an addiction “fun”. Especially if you were to ask an addict about that.

Carighan, rok temu

No, whales subsidize the cost of a yacht for the CEO. The games could be paid just from the money you pay for them, if the companies weren’t continuously being siphoned off the top by C-suites and shareholders.

Carighan, rok temu

And yet plenty drugs and medicine are controlled substances because they’d be so easy to abuse or hurt yourself with. We could just assign the same to ingame gambling, no? Since that’s also on an individual basis, handle it the same all around?

So to buy a lootbox:

1. Go to a doctor.
2. Doctor prescribes you a daily dosage of say, 1 lootbox.
3. Each day you can go to the pharmacy and pick up a pack of 1 lootbox code, you can have at maximum a store of 4 of them at home then pharmacies stop giving you more so you cannot stockpile. (going by the pills a friend of mine gets prescribed here)

Carighan, rok temu

You do realize this whole thread and post is about gambling addiction yes? You’re essentially doing the “I have a black friend, I can’t be racist!” but for gambling addiction.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah that’s a bit confusing, too. And sure, Endwalker brought a Healer and Shadowbringers brought a Tank, but they both also brought DPS, and now it’s a DPS only expansion making queues worse again. They need to do 1-2 expansions of only adding a tank and a healer.

Carighan, rok temu

Sure, but they’ll be even easier, so we’ll be hitting Yoshi levels by the next game. 😑

Carighan, rok temu

Oh my! I just finished the reboot, and it was fantastic. Time for more System Shock (again) in my life! 😍

Carighan, rok temu

Ouff, that’s a tough one.

But I think Persona 5 wins this one, owing to:

• Rivers in the Desert
• Life will Change
• Phantom, it’s menu background music
• The spin-off Strikers has the absolutely brain-infecting Love te Wonderland

However, I’ve recently finished Cassette Beasts, and it’s a really really strong contender. Imagine creating an OST piece as amazing as Same Old Story, then going back and adding lyrics for it for when you are fused. And then there’s the even more phenomenal Shot in the Dark (only linking the lyrics version here).

Carighan, rok temu

I crouch on sand, I’d assume. Next to me a woman pulls a purple sword out of her own chest, tells me to get going then disappears. On my other side a sniper with bandaged eyes talks about a piece of her soul before shooting someone.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah but game production isn’t about the consumers. It’s a business.

Carighan, rok temu

Get D4 (Dungeons 4) instead! It’s coming out soon!

Carighan, rok temu

I just finished it, and loved it.

But you need to know what you’re getting. The game looks fresh, and has some relatively minor QoL done with interactions and shooting and all (and the replaced Cyberspace), but it is a nearly 30 years old game.

And the remake fundamentally still is. A very good game that in many regards is still unmatched, but also one tremendously outdated in plenty other regards.

Carighan, rok temu

Eh? That’s not how a block chain works.

Carighan, rok temu

It makes them money off of desperate or in turn grifting people, I suppose. Just like all of crypto.

Carighan, rok temu

My big one, because I am playing the successor right now would be the Commandos-reinvention line of games by Mimimi Software:

• Shadow Tactics (feudal Japan)
• Desperados III (Wild West)
• Shadow Gambit (undead pirates)

They’re very faithful reproductions of the old Commandos-formula, real time tactics about sneaking and stabbing through a dense map full of guards covering each other, finding spots where to get in with specific abilities of your varying characters. In the newest one in particular, your pirates are recruited in any order you like, and being supernatural in nature they have some wild abilities. Your starting character can briefly freeze time for a target. Your Quartermaster can possess people. A skeleton has a golden head he can toss to make guards come over to try pick it up and then make their corpse disappear by using his fishing pole to drag it into the endless chest he has on his back.

Carighan, rok temu

You can always see your own nose BTW, your brain just usually excludes it from what you actively notice.

Carighan, rok temu

Oh, don’t mistake me preferring Steam (and GOG, for example, who have an actual value proposition to me as a consumer - unlike Epic!) to “Valve worship”. They’re simply the least bad option, but of course they’re all huge corporations. Realistically though Valve has actually surprisingly little bad given the amount of money and market control they have, so eh… for now, I’m happy buying about half my games there (usually ends up that way, though I prefer GOG for games also releasing on that).

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah, GOG is my preferred store if there’s feature parity, too. On that note, anyone here got AoW4 from GOG? Are all mods available through Paradox, or at least all you’d ever need? Or is most bound to Steam like back in the AoW3 days?

Carighan, rok temu

Oh that’s another really good point: Epic trained the consumers to open Epic weekly to get free games, then close it again. It’s a weird thing to be known for.

Sure, had them cornering the sellers market worked out - unrealistic as it was in hindsight - then having the buyers already all have the store installed for the free games would have been a genius way of getting more and more people onto the store. But it did not, and now it has just cemented the Epic store as a place you do not spend money on!

Carighan, rok temu

Also their near-infinite Fortnite money.

Carighan, rok temu

Same, I always check whether GOG has a game first, and whether it’s patched up to par. Sadly, surprisingly often while games release on GOG they then lack features (although personally I do not really care about achievements) or worse, the devs give up on releasing patches for the non-Steam versions.

Carighan, rok temu

In what way? Genuine question? The dev cited there has a reason for his opinion, after all.

Carighan, rok temu

💯

Although, I can imagine supporting Epic is annoying. Unlike even GOG, they don’t have their own support mechanism like a forum. I can see why someone would release on Steam (and hence stuff like GMG and Humble) and even GOG but not Epic. Example Baldur’s Gate 3, which released on everything except Epic. Although in their case Larian commented that the decision to not release on Epic was specifically to not show support for their exclusives-everything stance. Hence on everything except Epic.

Carighan, rok temu

This is almost always a situation that can be pinned on Steam, actually. The games that end up doing this are usually using Steamworks, which essentially forces them into a sort of soft-exclusivity on Steam since their multiplayer features and such can only exist there.

But Steam doesn’t force them to use Steamworks, so I don’t really see “steam’s fault” fault here. Although, of course, it’d be cool if Steamworks would work for non-steam games at least for modding/multiplayer. Granted.

Carighan, rok temu

I think the pseudo-quote you wanted to do the other way around.

The thing is, sure, I prefer buying things from say, GOG. But Epic is horrible, and that’s even just from my consumer perspective with it’s bad client, terrible discoverability and lack of forums or anything. So as a consumer I have no incentive to support Epic, no matter whether I want to give my money to Steam or another place.

Carighan, rok temu

I just finished playing the System Shock Remaster yesterday night after ~22 hours. I could still do everything from memory pretty much, and it remains an amazing game to this day, especially with the slick fresh paintcoat from the remaster.

Now I’m exploring Shadow Gambit a bit. Always loved the Commandoes games, and this is the third - and sadly final - Mimimi game that copies the gameplay verbatim. And from the little I’ve played so far, it’s fantastic. Having actual supernatural characters fits the abilities really well, and the voicework is done tremendously well, too.

Carighan, rok temu

Nah, it’s a very faithful remake - after a lot of back-and-forth of them considering changing the game more they ended up making a near 1-to-1 graphics update.

So I would recommend it. There are some parts that are made more challenging. Inventory management is a big one. OTOH that makes sense, as the modern controls enable *far more accurate combat and hence saving ammo is somewhat easy and you can easily use the shotgun or the magnum as staples.

I basically saved teflon ammo whenever I found it (dumped it all near the cargo lift) then before entering level 8 retrieved my modded Scorpion from there with nearly 1500 ammo and just went to town with that + leftover shotgun shells. But the drops are also changed, so both teflon bullets and magnesium ones for the Assault Rifle still commonly drop in the final few areas.

And of course, taken from the main game, EMP grenade into berserk-stim Laser Rapier is always an option and kills even the toughest enemies in the game before they recover.

That being said, one specific thing is annoying: Beta grove now deals constant and quite significant damage even with the enviropack on. You have to rush rush rush it, luckily it is brief. Other than that, it’s neatly improved, modern graphics with a cool retro-effect from the nearest-neighbor filter, modern controls and combat and some better and more convenient HUD, redone audio including new recordings from Terri Brosius (SHODAN), they also completely redid cyberspace. While I like the original, I can see why most did not, so I really don’t mind this part.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah same, I always felt this game would be so much more awesome as a cozy co-op thing instead of a tense PvP thing.

Carighan, rok temu

The freaking Deviator the Ordos had in Dune II.

It turns your units against you. Sure the ROF is low, but damn. Plus, given how the controls worked (or didn’t) back in the days, this caused utter havoc not only with the unit control but also other unit’s pathing.

Carighan, rok temu

A golden parachute so big he could trivially buy into the next company. If he wanted to retire, he would have long done it.

Worse, what if he ends up as the boss fo GamePass or Xbox?

Carighan, rok temu

Why? As in, why are they “the last hope”? What can they do that ActiBlizzKing cannot?

Carighan, rok temu

They would just contract Blizzard to make that, so if they were able to do it they would have done so already.

Carighan, rok temu

And SS1 came out 29 years ago and just got a remaster. This isn’t a years-pissing context. Starcraft II was supported way long, and extensively. And like all good games, eventually the vast vast majority of players have moved on, and then the devs might move on, too.

Carighan, rok temu

It’s such a shame - and such a bizarre decision - that this is based on the vanilla Persona 3, not the Portable edition with the optional female MC and all the extras.

Carighan, rok temu

Really not my kind of game, but wow it looks spiff. I might be tempted to get it on a steep sale on the future just for looks.