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MentalEdge

@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz

Eskating cyclist, gamer and enjoyer of anime. Probably an artist. Also I code sometimes, pretty much just to mod titanfall 2 tho.

Introverted, yet I enjoy discussion to a fault.

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MentalEdge,
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I don’t know about mobile but on PC it’s just straight up on steam.

MentalEdge,
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Or steam, for PC.

MentalEdge,
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This is a huge reason I never even considered getting into Destiny after the fact.

I literally can’t play it from the beginning.

It’s like if new players who wanted to get into Mass Effect, had to start with ME2, because the first game had been purged from the face of the earth, for no-one to ever play again.

MentalEdge,
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Anyone able to comment on Valorant?

MentalEdge,
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I swear, some of the best titanfall 2 matches I ever played were on northstar cusrom servers.

MentalEdge, (edited )
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I also think it’s an impossible problem to solve.

The same player isn’t going to perform identically every session, and accounting for every possible weapon or character/class they might play, potential synergies with teammates, or potential advantages/disadvantages in matchups against any given opponents…

It all makes for a literally infinite number of variables, all of which must be accounted for.

The correct way to get interesting matches, imo, is to make it semi-random, and not try to have all the players on both teams be exactly the same skill level. Rather, put players on both teams from a range of estimated skill levels. This way both teams have weaker links for the other team to potentially exploit, and both teams have strong players which will try to stop that.

Instead, the system should just enforce common sense stuff, like not pitting someone who is literally playing for the very first time, against a team with someone who is 2000 hours in, and hence might straight up deny the new guy a chance to play at all.

I should know. I literally wrote THE team balancer for titanfall 2 community servers. For a time it even used the Tone online database of player stats, to know how to balance players that had never played on a given server before.

I was genuinely shocked how good the resulting games were. All I did was take the completely random players that decide to join a server, and simply figured out a slightly smarter way than other balancer scripts at the time, to divide them into two teams that are close enough to equal.

MentalEdge,
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If you play enough, pure random chance will eventually get you a game that feels like a fair fight.

But quite often, video game matchmaking systems will fail to accurately estimate player skill correctly, creating teams where one will utterly demolish the other.

MentalEdge, (edited )
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Surprisingly, that somehow makes for far more enjoyable and friendly competition.

Go figure.

MentalEdge, (edited )
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Personally, I think it’s about how impresonal modern matchmaking is.

You’re only ever playing against “enemies” and “enemies” should be “hated with the hot passion of a burning sun”. And if you lose, you’re never at fault, because your teammates sabotaged you!

People don’t have to maintain cordial relationships, because they will never meet their teammates or opponents again.

Compare that to stuff that works using servers, where each team is made up of the same pool of people from one round to the next. People actually make friends with each other, friend or foe, and have more fun as a result.

MentalEdge,
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Not so much a counterpoint. It’s actually a factor that I’ve thought about too, and I think it adds to the problem.

In one of my other comments here, I talk about how it’s an impossible problem, and how I’d solve it by not trying to find a bunch of players of the exact same skill level to begin with. You go for roughly even teams, not precisely even players.

If you have 10 people at almost the same skill level, the tiniest difference in ability gets massively magnified, because that’s the only deciding factor that’s left.

MentalEdge,
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Yeah but I’m explaining the meme, not writing an essay like I was in the other conment.

MentalEdge,
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The only kernel of truth required is that most people have experienced completely unfair matches, and attribute that to the shortcomings of modern skill-based matchmaking.

What exactly the mechanics behind those shortcomings are, matters little.

MentalEdge,
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!deadlock

Also spend ur souls.

MentalEdge,
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You’ve got several upgrade options, and wouldn’t divine barrier or the two shield items be good stopgaps before the full Divine Kevlar?

MentalEdge,
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I’ve had some good games.

Then again my build never relied on spirit damage.

MentalEdge,
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Well, in the sequel “The New Colossus” they made it to mercury.

MentalEdge,
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I’ve had the steam overlay bound to shift+f12 for years, for this exact reason.

Also, framedata and system usage overlay toggle on shift+f9, obs recording on shift+f11, and linux terminal on shift+f10.

MentalEdge,
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Yes.

If your keyboard is RGB, you could even color-code your F-keys according to what they do.

MentalEdge,
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Changing voltages and fan curves is super situational. And depends on how much you value noise over performance.

That said, I undervolted and underclocked the i7 cpu on my G501 gaming laptop back in the day.

This helped a ton, because the heatsink between the discrete GTX 660M and the CPU, shared a heatpipe. The CPU would only throttle at 90, while the GPU would throttle at something like 75. This meant that because it was basically always hotter, heat from the CPU would conduct via the heatpipe INTO THE GPU, causing it to always thermal throttle, and be unable to be cooled. Because even though it was maxing out and trying to cool down by throttling, the CPU would just keep going because for it the temps were fine. So it would keep pumping heat into the heatsinks and heatpipes, which would then keep the GPU hot, too.

Undervolting the CPU allowed it and the GPU to run at closer to same temps, raising FPS by way of allowing the GPU to actually run a full tilt, even though the CPU was then significantly slower.

MentalEdge,
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To be fair, Intergrade and Rebirth remix some things that mean they don’t really replace the original game.

They’re doing something different with the story that we still haven’t had fully explained, which means I’m playing completely riveted to the story, with no idea what’ll happen, even though the original game has existed longer than I have.

And the gameplay is obviously completely different.

It means they’re more than “remakes”, imo. They’re more like adaptations, making changes that alter the source material to fit a new medium. Almost like going from book to TV.

And in the same way, both the “book” and the “TV Series” both remain worthy of being experienced. Different people might prefer one or the other, while others will insist the “full experience” is to engage with both. Either way, both add to the whole by existing.

MentalEdge,
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I’m halfway through Rebirth, and shit has me so confused I stopped trusting any of my theories for what is going on.

It’s continued to be good though. Excellent even.

MentalEdge,
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K

MentalEdge,
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I absolutely adore the remake games. They both follow a type of game-design that makes me feel like I’m playing something from the PS2 era again. Both the good and the bad. Makes me feel like a kid in the best kind of way.

The games do have some trouble with time-wasters. It’s both improved and made worse in Rebirth. Luckily, in open world fashion, a lot of it can actually be ignored in Rebirth. And if you don’t ignore it, you get rewarded with actually good side-content. And Rebirths fast travel is good to the point you basically never have to travel anywhere “the long way” twice.

I have the same problem with the combat being too easy. It wasn’t too bad with Intergrade as I was new to the combat system, but with Rebirth I am absolutely crushing enemies. I’m deliberately sabotaging my character builds to make it more challenging, but I really wish they didn’t lock “hard” behind ng+. Coming from the first game, you should be able to jump into the second at that higher skill level from the start. But no.

Don’t worry too much about your stuff not carrying over. The characters do not get reset to level zero, and no abilities. They start with a little less than what you have at the end of Intergrade, but a lot of the stuff you’ll have gotten by the end of Intergrade, is what you have at the start of Rebirth. And then over the course of the second game, you get a lot of NEW stuff, rather than just re-aquiring the stuff you had in the first.

MentalEdge, (edited )
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If you’re just watching, you won’t get the main appeal of the modern FF combat systems. That being the underlying turns and the strategy around what to do with them.

And unfortunately, at lower difficulties, you can get by with button mashing. It’s really disappointing that the difficulty that actually requires thinking is locked behind ng+, but at that level, the system really shines.

It’s all strategy, dressed up as a hack and slash, but if you just button mash, don’t min-max your builds, utilize the entire party, their abilities, spells and synergies, you are dead.

And it’s all made more intense by the combat happening in real-time (though you can slow time to a crawl at any time). I really love the panic of the way you are forced to control any last surviving party member, waiting for your turn to be available so you can use a phoenix down.

MentalEdge,
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Rebirth does something with the open world mechanics I haven’t seen in other games. It interconnects everything.

The life springs give you a shitton of materials for the crafting system, they reveal the locations of crafting recipes, and eventually the area boss.

All of which interconnects with side-quests, not just at the start as a tutorial, but throughout each region.

It hence manages to make you want to do everything, almost on accident. If you do all the sidequests, you progress the collectathon a bunch. If you do the collectathon, you end up progressing quests a bunch just by “coincidence”.

Add to that the fast travel that lets you jump anywhere instantly, and nothing ends up feeling like a chore.

MentalEdge,
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The synergy skill that allows you to have another party member throw you into the air at an enemy, when controlling a melee fighter, (Tifa, Cloud, Red) is so satisfying and welcome in Rebirth when fighting flying enemies.

MentalEdge, (edited )
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I don’t know how much you know about the intricacies of the newer FF combat systems, but “turns” are still in there, but among a bunch of new stuff that may or may not jell with you.

If you want, in the remakes you can set the combat to “classic” which makes it so that the AI controls all three charachters, rather than just the two you aren’t playing as.

This leaves you to deal with only the “turns”, and which abilities, spells, or items, to use them for. And you don’t need to be quick, the passage of time nearly pauses while you engage with the action menu to decide what to do with a turn.

Characters and enemies can only engage in basic attacks outside of their “turn”. To use abilities, spells or items, it must be your “turn”.

All the decisions that make turn based combat interesting are overlayed on top of the real-time action. At times they even overlap. When not using classic mode, it matters how you control a characters real time actions. The exact timing of when you use a turn can have consequences, you need to make sure you are standing in a good spot for a given ability, you need to make sure you’re not about to take an attack that might interrupt an action, etc.

You have to decide stuff like whether you need to use your turns to spam cure just to keep the party alive. Should Aerith spend one turn and the MP to use Cura on one party member, or wait two turns to use Pray on everyone. Should Cloud go for damage on this turn, or build stagger in case it leads to a stun and bonus damage next turn? Can Tifa keep herself alive with Chakra or do I need to have another charachter heal her? Do I remember the pressure conditions for this enemy or do I need to spend a turn on Assess to find out?

If all you want is turn based classic gameplay, then yeah, it isn’t here. But they have made something very interesting. It’s got hack slash style flashy action, but with an amount of strategy involved I don’t think any other games have achieved. It’s unique.

MentalEdge,
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Looks at persona

Are you sure?

That said I really like the combat system in modern FF games. It’s a mix of hack n slash + strategy you don’t really get anywhere else.

They’ve made something unique, and I approve. My only complaint is that they don’t lean into it, and all but the highest difficulty lets the player get away with button mashing.

MentalEdge,
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The combat is fanatastic. But they don’t lean into it enough, and so you don’t get to fully engage with it beyond a superficial level. Except for some fleeting moments most people wont even notice.

I love it, but I hate how they’re too afraid to commit, even to the point of not allowing you to play Rebirth on hard until ng+.

Day 201 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots (pxscdn.com)

Today i continued through Alan Wake 2. I have started Alan’s Section. I got to the very end of Chapter 2, but ran into a bug where Alan doesn’t push a subway car door open while being chased so i stopped there....

MentalEdge, (edited )
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Edit: I feel like my comment got colored by a lot of the consequent replies. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, nor that if you want every detail, there isn’t more to see by playing it first. I’m saying AW2 isn’t among the interconnected games that you might as well not even play unless you’re up to date on every detail. Yes, it has a lot of interconnects with other Remedy games, but it’s fan-bloody-tastic entirely on its own.

You can. It’s not necessary.

It ties into stuff from Control a lot more, but even there you could play them in either order.

MentalEdge, (edited )
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They created an entire new character, who is just as new to the situation as a player who might not have played the first game, allowing a new player to step into the story quite smoothly, sight unseen.

Not necessary, is not the same as “not worth doing”. All “not necessary” means is that AW2 stands entirely on its own even for players who might not’ve player the first one, or Control.

Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 20th

Three day weekend … Messed up my schedule. Oh well, what have you been playing? I’ve been checking out a ton of cool playdate stuff, as well as more binding of Isaac. I also picked up a game called the roottrees are dead that I’m excited to check out! It seems like a game similar to case of the golden idol which is one of...

MentalEdge,
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Nothing. My GPU is in for RMA. It died in the middle of me and a friend finally hanging out to get into the RE4 Remake together.

What I WANT to play is Deadlock.

…

Actually, I have a steamdeck, so I’ve been tackling an MGR playthrough on revengeance difficulty. But holy crap the Deadlock withdrawal is real.

MentalEdge, (edited )
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Everything?

It has the complexity of a MOBA (but genius level UX that completely addresses how that would normally be daunting, through a fantastic community item build system), movement approaching the intensity of Titanfall and a match format that finally fills the hole in my heart that was left by Battleborn, and is maybe even better.

It has a a unique 80s magic/fantasy aesthetic, and what we know of the lore so far is fantastic. (I laughed out loud when walking by a radio in-game and a newscaster voice went “Have love potions ruined dating?! These 20-somethings tell all!”)

My advice, hit up !deadlock, get an invite, and just give it a try. The way it’s looking, it might turn out my favorite game of all time.

MentalEdge,
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MOBA is an accurate description of the game systems, but playing it, it feels like the first genuinely fresh game in a decade.

To me, at least.

MentalEdge,
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There’s a third person mod for it if that style of gameplay would suit you better.

It’s an absolute masterpiece, but it requires your active attention. You have to put the pieces it gives you together, or you won’t get that expansive “more than the sum of it’s parts” effect that really good art can do.

MentalEdge, (edited )
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Because it introduces latency.

Higher framerates only in part improve the experience due to looking better, they also make the game feel faster because what you input is reflected in-game that fraction of a second sooner.

Increasing framerate while incurring higher latency might look nicer for an onlooker, but it generally feels a lot worse to actually play.

Day 162 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots (pixelfed.social)

Today’s game is Control. I’ve been wanting to finally finish this after beating Alan Wake II. Today, i 100% Silent Hill 2, and decided to pick it up and give it a try. I must have stopped at the worst time because i stopped right before the ashtray maze, and i finally understand why people love this game. I don’t want to...

MentalEdge,
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If you like the combat and the quarry, the Jukebox lets you play a bunch of challenge levels in locations from the same dimension as the quarry is in.

MentalEdge,
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Is it really like that for you? Does the same thing happen with books, movies, TV? Should they have an “option”?

I have absolutely no trouble immersing myself into Aloy, Lara Croft, Jesse (Control), Red (Transistor), Bayonetta, Faith (Mirror’s Edge), and others.

Like, the character not being the same gender as me, doesn’t even register as an obstacle for inhabiting them. I’m able to mentally become them in literally the exact same way I do any other protagonist.

Since, it’s not like I need to be the same as someone in order to see the world through their perspective.

The opposite, the less they are like me, the greater the chance I’ll get to experience something from outside my own lived experience. And I like that.

I’m with women in that they should have representation in games (and stories in general), but even just for myself I’m cheering this particular progression on for the sheer variety it brings.

Day 140 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots (pixelfed.social)

Today’s game is Portal 1. I didn’t really have time to start the Hospital in Silent Hill 2’s New Game+, but i wanted to play something. So i downloaded Portal 1 and played through a few of the challenge maps for the Gold Medals. I’ve been meaning to get the achievements out of the way at some point anyways. I got Gold in...

MentalEdge,
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Puzzle game hall of famer, this.

My sister made me a crocheted friendship cube. It always sits next to my wifi router.

Anyone else bounce around from game to game with no clue what to play?

Used to spend most of my days playing live service games that required a huge amount of time, or big AAA titles that are critically acclaimed. For example, Fallout 4/76, Battlefield 2042, rainbow six, World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Skyrim, Destiny 2, OverWatch… Basically any really big game that you would find on the top 20 of...

MentalEdge,
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Sone more suggestions:

  • Journey
  • Donut County
  • Furi
  • event[0]
  • Inside
  • Katana ZERO
MentalEdge, (edited )
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The bouncing around isn’t a bad thing.

In fact, if anything, I try to be sensitive to when I start to burn out on a game, and when that happens I avoid playing until the desire is really strong again.

Sometimes looking for something to play means having a LARGE number of false starts before I find the thing, but I make a note of not trying a bunch of similar games whenever something isn’t scratching the itch. I make each attempt with something very different.

And coming back to a game can take years.

That’s kind why you need a TON of games if you don’t want to take breaks from gaming entirely, because otherwise the medium just doesn’t have enough variety to keep the human brain engaged.

You should try shorter games, and completely ignore whether something is “big” enough to be worth your time. The big stuff is what’s boring you right now, so don’t waste time on trying to force the enjoyment.

Plus, if you’re restricting yourself to stuff that achieves critical acclaim, you’re limiting yourself to games everyone likes. That means you’re probably missing some stuff only you and people like you would like.

Not all good things are enjoyed by everyone universally, some things are just for a subset of people.

MentalEdge,
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Crying Suns is really cool. Neat to see someone else who got hooked in the wild.

MentalEdge,
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I’ve literally used it on a boat in the middle of the sea with no connection of any kind.

The deck, and steam, pretty much just keep working without internet where any installed games are concerned. Even if you don’t activate “offline mode” in advance.

MentalEdge,
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No. I’m the sole user. Anyone borrowing it just uses my profile.

Did I claim any and all features work out in the woods?

Profile switching on steam currently logs you out, and then into the other account. There’s no login retention of every user that’s set up, so switching between users obviously won’t work while offline. Maybe it could, but not the way it works rights now.

This is like asking me if I’d tried logging in while offline. The answer is no.

MentalEdge,
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Today a lot of people learned that some always saw a nose, while others have always seen a mouth.

MentalEdge,
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Ace Combat would like to know your location

MentalEdge,
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You’re commenting on their posts tho.

If you can’t handle actually getting engaged with, block em. What’s with this whiny shit?

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