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Samovar posted:What's the exact mechanics of the warp out ability? You cannot warp out if members of your fleet have disabled engines, and you cannot warp out if your path is obstructed. E: Update on the previous page.
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# ? Mar 31, 2017 23:13 |
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# ? May 4, 2024 16:31 |
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It is better to die for the Emperor than live for one's self.
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# ? Mar 31, 2017 23:59 |
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:You cannot warp out if members of your fleet have disabled engines, and you cannot warp out if your path is obstructed. Do engines self-repair over time, or are you expected to go mercy-kill them on the way out?
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# ? Apr 1, 2017 03:45 |
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ManxomeBromide posted:Do engines self-repair over time, or are you expected to go mercy-kill them on the way out? They do repair, but I think it's something daft like 30 seconds, which is a lot in this game.
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# ? Apr 1, 2017 10:30 |
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"Oh a frigate, nice. Wait, a beam frigate?" Please tell me we're talking Homeworld Cataclysm style multi-beam frigates.
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# ? Apr 1, 2017 17:44 |
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For those wondering, you can always tell when you're inside a shield bubble by the blue haze on the edge of the screen.
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# ? Apr 1, 2017 19:53 |
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:They do repair, but I think it's something daft like 30 seconds, which is a lot in this game. You're was down for 60 seconds and I think in the previous mission I saw something ridiculous like 240 seconds on one of the civ ships. It seems like unless you have high vet and/or a good fleet, if a ship loses engines, let them sink and bug out. At least that's what i would do in this game.
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# ? Apr 1, 2017 21:15 |
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When your allied capitals lose engines, is that due to locational damage or EMP weapons?
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# ? Apr 1, 2017 22:56 |
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PurpleXVI posted:When your allied capitals lose engines, is that due to locational damage or EMP weapons? It's due to getting shot in the engines. The player can disable subsystems by targeting and shooting them, but I don't think EMP will do it since it doesn't do any damage to hull.
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# ? Apr 1, 2017 22:58 |
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Or just do it like Star Wars Rebellion did and have non jump capable ships self destruct when you flee
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# ? Apr 2, 2017 01:21 |
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Warlord, Part 4 Slaughter at Tannhauser Gate: Transport ships that may be carrying families of high-ranking traitor officers are moving through TANNHAUSER GATE. Send a message. Send a few. Blockade Run at Bastille Gate: Our last dreadnought, INV VINDICTUS has been outfitted with scourge warheads and is the only way to the throneworld is through BASTILLE GATE. Thankfully, you've caught them by surprise. See to it that the VINDICTUS makes the crossing. Last Stand at Ol's Shelter: Compete against other Dragons in a randomly-generated daily challenge. How long can you survive? Each TRAITOR LORD kill adds time to your host uplink terminination timer. Destroying secondary BOUNTY TARGETS will reward you with fleet-wide bonuses. Codex: VI: "The star trade is the blood of my Empire and the nobles are the blood of their house. I decree a union of blood. All the great nobility shall be Interfaced, so that they may live as one with their ships. Thou shall keep only one copy of thy soul. Thou shall keep it in one fixed place. Thou shalt not possess the unwilling body, unless thou art my Dragon." # "Whensoever one of My Worlds joins a rebellion, I shall take as penitence a thousand years of their memory. Whensoever one of My Worlds sparks a rebellion, my Royal Guard shall rain devastation until no life remains." ENEMY STARFIGHTER - Wave Clear There's a lot I can say about the Wave Clear mode, and its daily challenge mentality. Originally, the campaign mode itself was to have a daily challenge setup with procedurally generated systems. In mid 2014, Scott Manley was given access to the game's wave clear mode. You can really see the similarities to the current implementation but most strikingly its differences, which I believe amount to a superior product. I recommend you view this for yourself and come to your own decisions, but I find that the system within the video rights all of the wrongs with this implementation of "Challenge Mode".
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# ? Apr 2, 2017 14:11 |
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It's hard to get a sense of how useful the allied ships actually are.
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# ? Apr 2, 2017 21:23 |
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Warlord, Finale The Physician: The Emperor is dead, so the court physician should be as well. Slay LORD MONTRIENN and his CENSORS while he visits a waystataion in KOTH. He likely knows you're coming, and is an excellent marksman. The Prince: HIGH PRINCE OL is overseeing a transfer of hidden treasury reserves at OUTPOST KARAHDOR. He is also field testing a prototype interceptor, but this may be the only chance we have to catch him. Kill him and his carrier of fanatics, the FNV VENDETTA. Inferno at Rhal'tuum Prime: They know you're coming, and there's nothing they can do now. Extinguish the light of the throneworld. Codex - Entries IV and VII 0 TRAITOR LORDS REMAIN
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 21:39 |
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Are more codex entries unlocked at higher difficulty? This Empire officially gives me the creeps, given what the Emperor's power appears to be built on.
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 22:57 |
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Those are quite the ending answers. What are the two LOCKED options?
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 23:04 |
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radintorov posted:Those are quite the ending answers. For the higher difficulties.
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 23:19 |
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It wasn't 4 million you had left. It was 4 billion. That sure was... grim.
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 23:37 |
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I like the way HOTDS handles the ending. It adds a nice capper to a thoroughly ugly universe, and offers a surprising amount of hope.
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 23:40 |
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Loxbourne posted:I like the way HOTDS handles the ending. It adds a nice capper to a thoroughly ugly universe, and offers a surprising amount of hope. There are two endings left.
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 23:51 |
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Some of those ending choices become more interesting in the light of those handful of Codex entries (III and V-2, in particular0 that imply the Dragon's condition is not wholly voluntary.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 04:48 |
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The first ending implies that the Dragon somehow brought about the rebellion that would cause it to target Rhal'tuum Prime for Scourging. How would it do that, if it sleeps until there is rebellion? (Also the Longrifle description says it is useless up close. How does this manifest?)
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 10:20 |
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The Lone Badger posted:The first ending implies that the Dragon somehow brought about the rebellion that would cause it to target Rhal'tuum Prime for Scourging. How would it do that, if it sleeps until there is rebellion? My interpretation is that the Dragon doesn't care about the souls of those who rebel, only their blood. So the Physician sells the Emperor's clone bodies to the rebels, who possess them, blow up the Emperor's currently possessed body and, awaken the Dragon in doing so. The Dragon then goes: "Hmmmm, these rebels smell like people who live on Rhal'tuum Prime! I'm going to kill them, then incinerate their homeworld, yay!" The Dragon may feel relief at the ultimate outcome, but it has no agency in the matter, only programming(with bugs that can be exploited by the Emperor's enemies, as they did).
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 11:18 |
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PurpleXVI posted:My interpretation is that the Dragon doesn't care about the souls of those who rebel, only their blood. So the Physician sells the Emperor's clone bodies to the rebels, who possess them, blow up the Emperor's currently possessed body and, awaken the Dragon in doing so. The Dragon then goes: "Hmmmm, these rebels smell like people who live on Rhal'tuum Prime! I'm going to kill them, then incinerate their homeworld, yay!" The Dragon may feel relief at the ultimate outcome, but it has no agency in the matter, only programming(with bugs that can be exploited by the Emperor's enemies, as they did). Does seem like something of the sort, aye. Although it went so well for Montrienn the Physician, as, either way, he would have been interpreted as an enemy. If he'd genuinely been a rebel, welp, he was the doctor, gently caress him. If he'd ensured everyone associated with the Emperor was suddenly considered a rebel, then welp, he was the doctor, gently caress him. So he was either extremely brave, or not nearly as clever as he thought he was.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 15:18 |
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The Dragon is killing traitor lords for good every time it pops a pod. Only the Dragon has access to the soul shunt. Since Rhal'Tuum led the rebellion, Rhal'Tuum must burn, and all worlds that followed it will suffer a dark age.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 16:10 |
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The Lone Badger posted:The first ending implies that the Dragon somehow brought about the rebellion that would cause it to target Rhal'tuum Prime for Scourging. How would it do that, if it sleeps until there is rebellion? I thought the implication was not that the Dragon started the rebellion as part of a master plan, but rather that the Dragon wouldn't have fought so hard or ruthlessly if it didn't also end up in Rhal'tuum getting blown up. More a target of opportunity thing than a root cause. ...I only just started watching this, so if you're doing any more, Herp, does Doom on you make an appearance amongst your ranks?
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 11:55 |
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Crazy Achmed posted:I thought the implication was not that the Dragon started the rebellion as part of a master plan, but rather that the Dragon wouldn't have fought so hard or ruthlessly if it didn't also end up in Rhal'tuum getting blown up. More a target of opportunity thing than a root cause. Yeah, I've just got a minor cold, so don't expect any updates for another few days. Still planning on Harbinger difficulty. One thing I'd like to comment on, I love the fact that there are so many different interpretations that one can draw from the Codex entries plus the ending options. Personally, I prefer the last one since that honestly encapsulates the reason why I think everyone should play the game at some point. It's 40% off at the moment and I could not recommend it more at that price point. nweismuller posted:Are more codex entries unlocked at higher difficulty? This Empire officially gives me the creeps, given what the Emperor's power appears to be built on. The Codex is complete now. We know the full backstory. All that is left is the last remaining interpretations, the last two ending options.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 14:18 |
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Harbinger, Part 1 Commodore Freyv: Traitor flagship that launches support corvettes which carry repair drones. Commodore Asgauth: Shielded flagship. Commodore Elduette: Appeared to be a vanilla flagship. Didn't notice anything special about it. Enemy Starfighter - Podding dyingsun.com - February 13th, 2014 posted:One thing missing from the game was a satisfying currency reward loop for killing fighters. The tumble alone felt good and you earned points for it, but a new layer has been added: the escape pod. As mentioned before, shooting escape pods was the form of currency generation back when the game featured a different main currency: Dread. Dread was a representation of the fear you generated within the enemy forces as you cleared a path through enemy space. You would then spend the acquired dread at certain rips in space, called Warrens. This was used for things such as new ships, including interceptors, destroyers, frigates and dreadnoughts. Escape pods would be automatically taken out by the interceptor's now removed point defense system. In the game's current form, escape pods are only used by the traitor flagships, and you must take them out with manual fire or the AI will kill them. This is a very minor change, but I personally feel that the loss of the escape pods detracts greatly from the feeling of being the bad guy, which even in this version of the game you clearly are. Here's a video of a build featuring the escape pod mechanics circa 2014. Unfortunately, the VoDs that were not marked as videos have since been lost due to Twitch wiping a lot of their older content, and only some of the 2014 streams remain. It's a damned shame too, as the 2015 builds of the game were the most promising of the original vision. More on that later. HerpicleOmnicron5 fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Apr 10, 2017 |
# ? Apr 10, 2017 18:38 |
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The game looks really interesting, like a mashup of homeworld, TIE fighter and FTL, and the flight physics look like a really great 3D translation of star control. That said... Was an explanation ever given as to why the roguelike elements were removed? It feels like it could have really benefitted from at least having a mode where your fleet persists between battles and your 'money' can be spent on ships as well as upgrades. A semi-random starmap similar to FTL also seems like it would have worked well.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 11:42 |
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Crazy Achmed posted:The game looks really interesting, like a mashup of homeworld, TIE fighter and FTL, and the flight physics look like a really great 3D translation of star control. That said... Basically, he felt that the random elements didn't really generate 'memorable' encounters, and he cited Dark Souls as an example of what he meant. His argument was that the deliberate placement of every enemy in dark souls was part of the appeal, and part of what prevented fairly same-y enemies from becoming repetitive.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 16:15 |
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In fairness, doing procgen well is really super hard. I can definitely believe that someone might spend a few months trying to make a procgen mission system, look at their efforts, look at how the audience responds to those efforts vs. to the hand-built levels, and say "y'know what, procgen just isn't working for me." That's not to say that procgen wasn't a possible way to go, or even that it wouldn't have been awesome, just that the amount of work required to build procgen into a product that customers would have enjoyed was much greater than what they could allocate with their budget and timeline.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 16:59 |
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Harbinger, Part 2 Lord Commodore Seigfast: Shield and torpedoes, with Ember Lance equipped destroyers as escort. Lord Commodore Ganuun: Standard Traitor Flagship with a carrier escort. Traitor Admiral Anruns: Railguns and torpedoes, shielded with Ember Lance equipped destroyer escort. Enemy Starfighter - Campaign The campaign was the greatest betrayal from the original idea of Enemy Starfighter, and it really was a betrayal atop betrayal. In its original form, it was very much Rainbow Six crossed with Homeworld. Your initial job would be that of the Flight Officer in TIE Fighter, carefully assigning a meticulously planned strike package to complete missions. Missions would be randomly generated, and losses would be permanent. This initial hook in 2012 would take a radical turn in February 2014, which is when Kairo switched his plan from Rainbow Six in space to, as he described it, 'Grand Theft Starfighter'. He can describe it better than I: Grand Theft Starfighter - Feb 13, 2014 posted:Battle-planning has been replaced with hunting and hiding. Before, each battle was fed to you via a simple mission generator and menu. It wasn't dynamic, lacked tangible persistence, and it certainly didn't fulfill the fantasy of being a starfighter harassing the enemy deep in their territory. I can go into this in detail if people want, but I won't bore you with that here. There were also separate factions, including on the enemy side (System patrol craft defending certain targets, Lane Marshalls which would defend jump gates and investigate disturbances and the Nobles that would fortify themselves at the jump gate, and IIRC some would proactively hunt you). It's a drat shame the stream VoDs are gone now, but I'll try my best to describe the starmap gameplay from memory: You would strike supply locations and the such, undefended and weak depots, and you'd have a time limit to take out enemy ships in the area. Go beyond that time limit, and enemies can call for reinforcements and alert the main enemy fleet. As you were fighting, the music ramped up and either calmed down or went full you've hosed up the entire fleet is after you run like hell. You'd then go back to the Warren, use the dread you accumulated by smashing enemy outposts to build up a fleet strong enough to take out the enemies guarding the jump gate, and your goal was to eliminate the High Kings, or High Lords of the region. During that time, Kairo likened it to MGS' alert system. You'd also pick a noble house within the Empire, which would determine starting gear. You'd find and purchase upgrades. You would feel an increase of power throughout the game, tangibly, through the process of the game. It was around September 2015 that things began to change. Kairo states that he received "consistent feedback" as to the "campaign mode framework". In November, he said: "Kairo - November 29th, 2015 posted:Early in September, the game was the equivalent of a film studio getting a 4 hour first edit of a film. There were a lot of good ideas mixed in with a lot bad ones, and mostly it wasn't cohesive and it lost a lot of my playtesters. So I'm trying to edit that meandering 4 hour cut into 80 minutes of focused awesome which is really tricky. In February, it was: "Kairo - February 27th, 2016 posted:The campaign has received considerable iteration and simplification based on the feedback I received. It's where I've been spending 90% of my time, and I'm hitting a milestone with it very soon. Over the course of four years, a whole game was shelved, made, scrapped, and then made from the patchwork resulting from all of that a linear campaign was made. 14 missions. Upgrades purchasable before missions. The results of each mission are totally negligible. Now, Kairo cites TIE Fighter, a game that was 22 years old at that point, and still delivered a game with less content than its smallest expansion pack, Defenders of the Empire, which was released in 1995. Furthermore, unlike these two old games, there is no way to make your own missions in House of the Dying Sun. Originally, Enemy Starfighter would have infinite content with a narrow scope. Kairo decided to widen that scope, still with infinite content. That widening required the game to be narrowed further (no variety in strike craft loadouts for example, no bombers etc.) to be a streamlined experience for its new nature. Then, the game was re-narrowed to generate "memorable encounters" a la TIE Fighter and Dark Souls. Kairo posted:Some kinds of combat are great with the volatility of randomness, like Diablo. But compare that with something like Dark Souls, which is superficially similar, but utterly dependent on level design. But IMO, it has WAY better combat. Bloodborne was interesting because they tried to RNG with the the chalice dungeons and it fell kinda flat. TIE and Freespace have similar combat sandboxes, which is why they require someone to actually do the work and design fun combat. Now, I've LP'd TIE Fighter and I've played Dark Souls. I can tell you for a fact that I can only recall three missions: One because it was loving bullshit, and the other two because they have memorable dialogue. Dark Souls is not remembered for its "memorable encounters" outside of certain bosses or bullshit enemy placement (especially 3, gently caress the gold guys on the bridge). It's remembered for the world and writing. I remember Anor Londo because that place was cool, I don't remember Blighttown because of where they put a zombie. I only remember four of 14 levels in Dying Sun and I'm playing through it presently. Those are the first one (because of the rocks), The Cleric (because of that massive rock), The Masters at Arms (because of the rocks), and the last one (because of the genocide). This is a minor detail, but Kairo wanted to change the colours from Red vs Blue (and the player being Red) because of confusion in focus testing. There was minor outrage when it was changed to be more generic, but then Kairo settled on Orange vs Blue. The changes to the campaign map happened because: Kairo posted:This. You were essentially be spending a minute or two doing the equivalent of sneaking around a box in Metal Gear while a guard checks out a noise. In MGS, that takes 4-5 seconds. It's one of those things that sounds great on paper, and even when you're first working on it. It could still be neat, but I also think a lot of these mechanics are just way better in something that's not an action space game. Kairo posted:Also, the warping around is a nice fantasy, but it utterly failed all sorts of playtesting. People had a hard time mastering it, and even then they thought it was boring. One of my testers literally turned around and asked if they could go back and play the PAX demo level. Ouch. Kairo posted:Friends, family, colleagues. And so Kairo cut out the old Campaign to appease his testers. The same ones who couldn't tell themselves apart from the enemy because the colours deviated slightly from the norm. I'm never going to argue that QA isn't an important aspect of game design, it is, but we lost a fantastic game because of it.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 17:22 |
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To be honest, I don't think we did. I didn't follow it particularly closely but I'd rather have 14 set levels than infinite "maybe this one's fun" ones or having to do some tactical space stealth action before combat. quote:Dark Souls is not remembered for its "memorable encounters" outside of certain bosses or bullshit enemy placement (especially 3, gently caress the gold guys on the bridge). It's remembered for the world and writing. I remember Anor Londo because that place was cool, I don't remember Blighttown because of where they put a zombie. Everyone remembers Blighttown because of the poison and the traps, the Anor Londo archers, the dragon in the parish. It's chock full of them! quote:Over the course of four years, a whole game was shelved, made, scrapped, and then made from the patchwork resulting from all of that a linear campaign was made. This is true of all games in development, by and large. Homeworld is an excellent example; its cinematics are sketchy hand drawn and black and white, with minimal dialogue. They actually originally planned (and had) a vastly more fleshed out plot, with more characters, voice acting and traditional story arcs planned. They had to pare it down when they ran out of time at the end. They look sketchy and almost unfinished because they actually are (it just also happens to look very stylish). Homeworld 2 was originally an entirely different plot and game they couldn't quite make work and had to start over almost from the beginning at one point. Halo was a RTS. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Apr 13, 2017 |
# ? Apr 13, 2017 17:54 |
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"The game" for the free-roam iteration wasn't the individual system fights (although those probably would have given more variety and engagement than the 14 small fights we got) it was the one level up meta of dealing with local system patrols, working your way to new warrens, and running from the False King while he hunted you down (at least until you had enough Dread and enough upgrades from killing Lords to face him.) Kairo listened to people who wanted their cookies now and refused to eat dinner first, even though it would have made a better game. e:Thinking more about it, I've come to the conclusion that part of the problem is Kairo making a false connection from ES to Dark Souls. I don't see a lot of Souls DNA in any of the previous forms of the game. I suppose you could say there's roguelike dna in there, but that's because people will call anything with progression a roguelike if let them. wiegieman fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Apr 13, 2017 |
# ? Apr 13, 2017 18:02 |
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Yeah, building up a reputation in each system and take down the enemy sounds like a much more fun game than the "click next mission button; fight inside circle; leave and repeat " It seems like QA wanted what Star Citizen keeps promising. This game looks really pretty, but it feels like an extended tech demo than a full-fledged game at times.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 18:48 |
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:It seems like QA wanted what Star Citizen keeps promising. I guess that's why ultimately I don't care that we got what we want. Star Citizen doesn't sound interesting at all to me, even if it weren't a ripoff. I thought it was refreshing we just got a straight up space combat game.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 18:50 |
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RBA Starblade posted:To be honest, I don't think we did. I didn't follow it particularly closely but I'd rather have 14 set levels than infinite "maybe this one's fun" ones or having to do some tactical space stealth action before combat. My main issue isn't that the procedural campaign was lost, is that something that had that level of effort put into it didn't replace it. I would be fine with a TIE Fighter style campaign game, but this game totally lacks all that made TIE Fighter compelling. All this game has is great space combat. The encounters are not great and memorable, nor are they lengthy. Challenge mode is great but it isn't compelling as there are many faults with it, such as the inability to reinforce your capital ships. The 14 set levels are all verging on "okay" and are extremely samey and are beatable in just under two hours on normal. Meanwhile, TIE Fighter's base game is 36 levels, beatable in 11 hours. I'd rather have infinite "maybe this one's fun" than less than two hours worth of "eh that was alright", and tactical space stealth action is loving dope.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 19:05 |
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quote:The 14 set levels are all verging on "okay" and are extremely samey and are beatable in just under two hours on normal. I beat the game in three, I think. So let's say another 3 one difficulty up. Then one again. That seems to be how it's expected to be played, it's a pretty arcadey set up, like Star Fox or Afterburner. quote:All this game has is great space combat. That's all I really wanted.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 19:09 |
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RBA Starblade posted:I beat the game in three, I think. So let's say another 3 one difficulty up. Then one again. That seems to be how it's expected to be played, it's a pretty arcadey set up, like Star Fox or Afterburner. Great, but you can do the same with TIE Fighter. E: Oh, and TIE Fighter even adds new objectives to shake the missions up. This game does not. Also, Star Fox (not sure about Afterburner) had branching paths. This doesn't: it's just a bloody mission select screen with a nonsensical unlock order. RBA Starblade posted:That's all I really wanted. Same, so the game should've adopted the format that would've allowed that to shine better: Procedural mission generation like the original pitch. The missions themselves are all just "alright" with that last one in the video being the height of bloody tedium unless you're going after Traitor Flagships, and a certain other one coming up being a pain in the arse without the gap drive, again especially if you're going after Traitor Flagships. HerpicleOmnicron5 fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Apr 13, 2017 |
# ? Apr 13, 2017 19:25 |
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quote:Great, but you can do the same with TIE Fighter. Cool, I never played it actually but I don't think it's a problem two of that kind of game exists now. The game's made by one guy over years, I think not having the output of Lucasarts is forgivable. quote:Same, so the game should've adopted the format that would've allowed that to shine better: Procedural mission generation like the original pitch. I guess anymore I don't really want quantity, just quality. I'd rather have less and better instead of more and worse. For the most part I got that. It's like how I was really excited about Bloodborne's chalice dungeons and the idea of "infinite Dark Souls holy poo poo!!!". Then you actually play them and realize that sucks a whoooooole lot. That said I wouldn't have said no to more weapons to try out. e: I guess ultimately the other idea that didn't pan out don't inherently sound better to me, just different. I understand being disappointed in not getting it. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Apr 13, 2017 |
# ? Apr 13, 2017 19:39 |
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# ? May 4, 2024 16:31 |
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I'm seeing both arguements for and against... And I'm inclined to think that the non-procedurally generated arguements win me over - my experiences with Rogue-likes makes me feel that the game would be... kinda dulled? I do think it needed to be longer with more mechanics, tho.
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# ? Apr 13, 2017 20:12 |