setsneedtofeed

setsneedtofeed, 11 days ago

Fallout 1: If you play it going in blind and don’t look up help, a first playthrough can be stressful early on if you don’t know how much progress you are making on the time limited main quest.

Kenshi: The game doesn’t have quests or main goals, so it is up to the player to figure out what they want and how to get it. Certain game areas are lethally dangerous, factions can be angered if you don’t figure out their customs, and even in less lethal areas being beaten and crippled by bandits is a real problem.

setsneedtofeed, 19 days ago

Far Cry 5 strangely has very enjoyable fishing.

setsneedtofeed, 20 days ago

Deep Rock Galactic.

There is a huge amount of loadout progression for each class, and a seemingly infinite amount of cosmetics to acquire. While there are only a limited number of mission types, the randomized nature of the level population and all of the various modifiers and enemy types that have been added keeps the game fresh. The game is entirely co-op with no PVP element, which keeps the tone more focused on helping other players instead of ever seeing them as competition.

setsneedtofeed, 27 days ago

I’m over here supporting Tamriel Rebuilt myself.

setsneedtofeed, 28 days ago

RA2

Have you seen DORF?

…steampowered.com/…/DORF_RealTime_Strategic_Confl…

setsneedtofeed, 29 days ago (edited 29 days ago)

Well not how much you’ve spent, how much it values your collection. But what’s that number based on?

Please re-read the article. The values are on Steam itself, based on your interactions with it.

setsneedtofeed, 29 days ago

From the page with the values:

“OldSpend” is the amount of external funds applied before Friday, April 17, 2015 18:00:00 UTC.

From Steam support regarding package only:

This row includes the portion of the account’s total funds spent that could not be transferred. For example, a hardware purchase, gifted game, or in-game item does not count toward Package Only Spend, but a game purchase for your own library would.

setsneedtofeed, 28 days ago

You asked what package only means, and I found an answer.

Total is total, with old spend being the cutoff of old spending.

None of the numbers are guaranteed to add up to each other.

I don’t know what’s missing from the reply.

setsneedtofeed, 28 days ago

From the steam page:

“TotalSpend” is the total amount of external funds applied to your account.

“OldSpend” is the amount of external funds applied before Friday, April 17, 2015 18:00:00 UTC.

setsneedtofeed, 28 days ago

It’s a remaster of 2033 with a bunch of tweaks to mechanics and improved visuals.

setsneedtofeed, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

My goodness, this is some insane mountain out of a molehill reporting. The article is extrapolating a lot based on some vague and not particularly noteworthy qualifications bulletpoints that should be expected for military shooter VFX work.

setsneedtofeed, 3 months ago

I know of a great way to get gear early in the first STALKER game, but everyone hates me for it.

All you have to do is goad the military into getting into a firefight with the rookie camp and hide in the shop until the shooting is over and the military loses interest. Lots of dead rookie gear to sell, and at least a few dead soldiers to provide some mid-game rifles early.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

Fallout 1, which I’ve probably replayed about ten times more than the second game. It’s concise, with this depressing and dark world that gives a feeling never fully replicated in sequels.

Lords Of The Realm 2, a great little strategy game with an effortlessly charming aesthetic.

Civil War Generals 2, when I feel like really grinding out a strategy game. It has the bright colors and charming graphics which create a clear and readable battlefield that can be brutally difficult as units get ground down into ragged bands.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

I’m commenting late, but there is The Precursors which does require Slavjank tolerance, but if you have it, it provides an interesting flavor on a space opera adventure.

I also haven’t tried The Tomorrow War which seemingly requires even higher Slavjank tolerance, and probably isn’t a top of all time game, but seems interesting if you like peering into strange forgotten games. Warlockracy did a video of this one.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

Really it just means the sorts of bugs you find with minimal QA testing combined with stilted voice acting, potentially untranslated audio or text, cultural beats that don’t quite cross over, and some game design choices that are different than how a game developed alongside western games might do things.

If you can stand this lack of polish, these sorts of games can at least give amusement for their price point.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

TLDR Bloated staff sizes and poor workflow management means salary costs skyrocket while a lot of people on staff are left waiting for things to do. The article keeps saying the costs aren’t just about better graphical fidelity, but I think this issue is somewhat related because a big chunk of staff are going to be artists of some variety, and the reason there are so many is to pump up the fidelity.

Not that it much matters to me personally. I’ve said before that games have long ago hit diminishing returns when it comes to technical presentation and fidelity. I’d rather have a solid game with a vision, and preferably a good visual style rather than overproduced megastudio visuals. Those kinds of games are still coming out from solo developers and small studios, so it doesn’t affect me one bit if big studios want to pour half a billion into every new assemblyline FPS they make.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

The tiles are double sided and I don’t believe we even used all the provided ones for this scenario.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

The box comes with 9 different missions, and there are expansions with more missions and player characters. I’ve only played just this once so far though.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

Mechanically I don’t think anything changes with the number of players, since you always have 4 player characters no matter how many players.

I personally don’t think it would be as fun solo. You would have more control and precision which might appeal to certain people, but for me the chaos of having other people doing things and having to negotiate a plan where everyone is constantly inputting was part of the fun.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

In the stealth section there are static guards and patrolling guards. At the bottom of every turn the players pull from a deck of cards which says which of the patrolling guards will move and also a special event- this can be the meter towards the alarm ticking down, some of the guards reversing direction of their patrol, or reinforcements prestaging just off board.

During stealth if a dead guard or a player character is spotted by a specific guard, it will shout alerting other guards inside a certain radius and act according to the combat logic. At this point the stealth section will likely shortly end because of all the negative stealth modifiers.

In the combat section, enemies will move towards and fire at whatever spotted player character is nearest. The combat is very simple, which is balanced by it being very difficult for the players to survive, which means you want to delay combat as long as possible.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

Took me about 7 hours but I was poking around and going back for screenshots. It should probably take about 6 normally.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a1a460cc-7f07-460e-84b4-9f03424a42e6.jpeg

I’ve been working my way through Half-Life Opposing Force. It is harder than the base game, but I do enjoy it. It has a lot of ideas like the squad mechanics that would be great to see reworked.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

Why did that scientist say it like that? What was his problem?

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

Visuals are very important in games, but Nintendo pursues clear and readable designs. Their games are easy to look at, and they age more gracefully than games pursuing realism.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

A lot of comments in this thread are really talking about visual design rather than graphics, strictly speaking, although the two are related.

Visual design is what gives a game a visual identity. The level of graphical fidelity and realism that’s achievable plays into what the design may be, although it’s not a direct correlation.

I do think there is a trend for higher and high visual fidelity to result in games with more bland visual design. That’s probably because realism comes with artistic restrictions, and development time is going to be sucked away from doing creative art to supporting realism.

My subjective opinion is that for first person games, we long ago hit the point of diminishing returns with something like the Source engine. Sure there was plenty to improve on from there (even games on Source like HL2 have gotten updates so they don’t look like they did back in the day), but the engine was realistic enough. Faces moved like faces and communicated emotion. Objects looked like objects.

Things should have and have improved since then, but really graphical improvements should have been the sideshow to gameplay and good visual design.

I don’t need a game where I can see the individual follicles on a character’s face. I don’t need subsurface light diffusion on skin. I won’t notice any of that in the heat of gameplay, but only in cutscenes. With such high fidelity game developers are more and more forcing me to watch cutscenes or “play” sections that may as well be cutscenes.

I don’t want all that. I want good visual design. I want creatively made worlds in games. I want interesting looking characters. I want gameplay where I can read at a glance what is happening. None of that requires high fidelity.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

I can think of many older games in dire need of facelifts, but the thing is they don’t need a facelift into photo-realistic territory. Just enough to bring the vision out from developers reaching just a little further than their old tech could support. I’m thinking of a lot of early 3D games. Many of the older sprite based games still hold up great.

The AAA gaming industry has gone off the rails trying to wow us with graphics and the novelty has long worn off.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

This is a good example. The cartoony graphics work well for Nintendo because it fits their hardware better as well.

For my personal example I can still play Starfox64 easily, but Goldeneye (one of my favorite childhood games) literally gives me a headache to look at. Goldeneye was going for a more realistic look on the engine of the time and aged terribly. Starfox is all big bright cartoon designs.

setsneedtofeed, 4 months ago

Not as much as you’d think. I keep my soldiers faceless and unattached until they are fairly leveled up. By the the time they get customized, they tend not to get meatgrindered. Usually.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9017b895-f3a0-4ec3-909b-eb83e6887fc0.jpeg