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My issue with D3 endgame progression is that it goes Plateau for a bunch of time while you do runs Get one piece of gear (or two parts of a set) that spikes your power by an obscene amount Plateau for a bunch of time while you do runs Repeat. Sure, you get paragon levels the whole time, but the benefits they give you are so small they're extremely hard to notice. D2 at least had you leveling your skills while you farmed for gear, so even if you didn't get the power spike from that one drop your planned build needed, you'd still be gaining incremental progress.
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Oct 15, 2019 00:24
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JackSplater posted:My issue with D3 endgame progression is that it goes Until you hit the level cap and it was the exact same as D3. But also the builds in d2 were based around only putting skills into the big skill and the ones that synergized with it and nothing else. Sure you hit that plateau in D3 faster than D2 but at least you get your skills a helluva lot faster and you can actually play around with them
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Oct 15, 2019 00:37
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Speaking of games in that general style, boy does Destiny 2 throw you right into the deep end these days! I really wish it didn't just toss you into the endgame with level 700 equipment or whathaveyou while relegating the actual beginning of the game to a random lady who gives you flashback sequences. It'd be nice to have the OPTION to start from how it was "intended" when it first released because it's really overwhelming and doesn't explain anything at all in its current state. I don't wanna start with all of the skills and abilities unlocked and be at max level! I just booted up the game for the first time and picked my class 5 minutes ago!
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Oct 15, 2019 01:24
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CJacobs posted:Speaking of games in that general style, boy does Destiny 2 throw you right into the deep end these days! I really wish it didn't just toss you into the endgame with level 700 equipment or whathaveyou while relegating the actual beginning of the game to a random lady who gives you flashback sequences. It'd be nice to have the OPTION to start from how it was "intended" when it first released because it's really overwhelming and doesn't explain anything at all in its current state. I don't wanna start with all of the skills and abilities unlocked and be at max level! I just booted up the game for the first time and picked my class 5 minutes ago! It's a mess.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:28
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exquisite tea posted:The fun part to any ARPG is making swift progression, seeing your character improve as your build begins to come together, and achieving whatever goals you set out to make for that class. When this feedback loop slows down and upgrades are few and far between, the endgame gets boring. New seasons reset the clock on progression every few months so that you can again feel the rush of achieving quick gains in your character build, which are amplified thanks to seasonal gimmicks and each classes' rotating free set. If "the main fun of the game is the progression, not really the end state" for you then seasons should make perfect sense, because that's where advancement is most rapid. Yup. As far as I can tell once you get passed the rapid progression part it mostly becomes about grinding for "ancient" (rarer, better) versions of the unique/set gear you already have.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:29
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LIVE AMMO COSPLAY posted:It's a mess. It sure is! The game seems to have like no idea where it wants you to "start", hopefully at some point they get it all sorted because if I hadn't streamed it just for fun I wouldn't have ever figured out the Amanda lady giving you the "real" beginning of the game missions. But it's goofy as hell and I'm enjoying it a whole lot regardless at least.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:32
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d3 was a lot of fun but it tapers off way faster than other arpgs. there's definitely only so much grinding in rifts i can do to get an ancient version of a legendary i already have. it has phenomenal moment-to-moment gamefeel, but there's just not enough game there. poe tends to hold my attention a lot longer with its vastly varied itemization and builds and its gamefeel has improved over time, but i wish that it had an adventure mode so i didn't have to do the campaign again every single league on every single character. also gently caress gender locks.
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Oct 15, 2019 02:29
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Destiny 2 fell into the problem that a lot of MMOs do where they just kinda vomit a whole bunch of quests at you that are just "hey this person exists and they give you this thing, you should go do that" without explaining why you should actually care or what you should be priortizing. I'm giving it another spin after having beaten the campaign once and I'm having fun but I still have no idea what half of the high-end crafting doodads actually are or why you need them. Oh well! Edit: It very much reminds me of where Division 1 ended up, where the core open world looty shooty was more or less untouched but then you got a bunch of bounties and tokens and loot boxes and extra bonus activities dumped on top out of nowhere. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 02:41 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 02:34
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Generally speaking the best way to handle stuff like that is to either focus on doing what you know for now and learing as you go, or joining a discord with people who can explain stuff. Honestly it is nice that discord makes getting help from others easy, but it kinda sucks that any online game that's existed for 3 years or so and is more complex than a basic shooter ends up needing those for anyone who's not already decided on if they plan to keep playing.
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Oct 15, 2019 04:25
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CJacobs posted:It sure is! The game seems to have like no idea where it wants you to "start", hopefully at some point they get it all sorted because if I hadn't streamed it just for fun I wouldn't have ever figured out the Amanda lady giving you the "real" beginning of the game missions. But it's goofy as hell and I'm enjoying it a whole lot regardless at least. the base game (i.e. the plot that you used to start on) is fantastic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and ended up pumped to do a bunch of shooting poo poo with buddies. Starting at max level sounds insane.
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Oct 15, 2019 04:50
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Can you raise your power level in Destiny 2 now without buying dlc?
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Oct 15, 2019 04:59
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sebmojo posted:the base game (i.e. the plot that you used to start on) is fantastic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and ended up pumped to do a bunch of shooting poo poo with buddies. Starting at max level sounds insane. It's very strange. I've been playing through the original base game missions and they start you off at such a high power level that there's been absolutely no challenge. I'm just sleepwalking through huge hordes of enemies, my shield/health has never even depleted all the way, the only death I've had so far is in the stream I linked (I got pasted by an enemy spawn cannonball in the intro lol). It's a real shame because I'm having fun, but I'd be having a lot more fun if there was any challenge at all to the story missions. edit: The way it is now, starting a new character dumps you in the endgame hub with absolutely everything available to you and you can do stuff completely out of order, do raids right from the very beginning, join up with people who are actually in the endgame and didn't just start 5 minutes ago... none of it makes any sense. The game is super awesome but boy is it a rough start! CJacobs has a new favorite as of 05:37 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 05:30
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LIVE AMMO COSPLAY posted:Can you raise your power level in Destiny 2 now without buying dlc? As far as I can tell, yes. I took my character from the starting level of 750 to 900 doing basic stuff. Now I’m at a soft cap and have to get specific engrams to keep going, so we’ll see how that goes. It seems like there’s enough activities to do to get equipment, so I guess I need to figure out which one is the best.
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Oct 15, 2019 06:52
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CJacobs posted:It's very strange. I've been playing through the original base game missions and they start you off at such a high power level that there's been absolutely no challenge. I'm just sleepwalking through huge hordes of enemies, my shield/health has never even depleted all the way, the only death I've had so far is in the stream I linked (I got pasted by an enemy spawn cannonball in the intro lol). It's a real shame because I'm having fun, but I'd be having a lot more fun if there was any challenge at all to the story missions. In that case I'm really glad I got to play it properly, the power curve was really satisfying.
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Oct 15, 2019 08:59
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It sounds like maybe it was a solution to that old problem of MMOs that had been around a long time, namely that new players are jumping in and have to play dozens of hours before they can do the cool stuff their friends are. Doesn't necessarily sound like it was good solution but it's something the genre has struggled with for a long time.
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Oct 15, 2019 09:33
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RagnarokAngel posted:It sounds like maybe it was a solution to that old problem of MMOs that had been around a long time, namely that new players are jumping in and have to play dozens of hours before they can do the cool stuff their friends are. This is one of the things that stunned me when City of Heroes shut down and I had to try other MMOs, because that was a game designed to avoid that problem by making starting new characters fun. You were supposed to make a bunch of characters with different powersets and playstyles, and that gave the devs full freedom to put new content into lower level ranges, because established characters could just make new characters to play them (or use the 'flashback' feature they added in later to make it easy to play content you'd outlevelled). It also solved the 'level 80, still being threatened by wolves' problem because it just meant they could put the content they wanted in whatever level range works; if they want a street-level plot about gang thugs, they put it in the level range where that makes sense rather than have a punk with a shotgun and that's it be equal level to an otherworldly monster because that's just the level everyone's already got their characters at. It was very weird to get into other MMOs and learn just how back-loaded they all are, because the content they keep making is all the stuff for people already at the endgame. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 10:51 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 10:45
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RagnarokAngel posted:It sounds like maybe it was a solution to that old problem of MMOs that had been around a long time, namely that new players are jumping in and have to play dozens of hours before they can do the cool stuff their friends are. That solution at least made me play my Warlock again because I didn’t have to play the main campaign a third time. But blowing out the levelling curve was a weird idea. That said, there’s a cap on what your power level does. If you’re twenty (I think it was twenty) levels above the recommended level any more power levels won’t have an effect.
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Oct 15, 2019 10:50
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RagnarokAngel posted:It sounds like maybe it was a solution to that old problem of MMOs that had been around a long time, namely that new players are jumping in and have to play dozens of hours before they can do the cool stuff their friends are. It certainly is, yeah, but I wish they'd done the thing most MMOs do where they sell a potion of instant leveling or whatever that jumps you to the endgame if you want it.
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Oct 15, 2019 12:59
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CJacobs posted:It certainly is, yeah, but I wish they'd done the thing most MMOs do where they sell a potion of instant leveling or whatever that jumps you to the endgame if you want it. The weird part is they’ve traditionally done that for expansions, too. They’d give you one for free and you could buy one for the remaining character if you wanted.
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Oct 15, 2019 13:03
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RagnarokAngel posted:It sounds like maybe it was a solution to that old problem of MMOs that had been around a long time, namely that new players are jumping in and have to play dozens of hours before they can do the cool stuff their friends are. its between that and part of the free to play relaunch of the base game and activities. They want you to be able to pick the parts of the game that you like ASAP and only buy the bits that you're interested in. They could uh probably have done a much better job of it. The PCGamer beginners guide is probably a good way to get your head around it.
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Oct 15, 2019 13:03
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I played through the story of destiny 2 and let me tell you it does not in any way prepare you for any of the actually fun parts of the game.
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Oct 15, 2019 14:34
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Fwiw you were unlikely to die at any point in the original campaign either. Destiny 2's story content just isn't very difficult.
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Oct 15, 2019 15:03
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Yeah I played Destiny 2 back when Bungie was still partnered with Activision. It didn't really click for me back then and I didn't get far so I uninstalled it and forgot about it. The game becoming F2P on Steam caused me to become interested again. Not having to sign in to another game launcher probably helped with that as I like having all my games on Steam or GOG if I can help it. Starting a new character was an interesting experience but it was a change I approve. The original campaign start had some slow and painful moments so maybe that's why I bounced off hard from it. At the end of the day shooting and punching aliens in the face feels good and I could care less if I started at power level 750 or whatever. Not every MMO game needs to be a loving grindfest. Also, I forgot how pretty the game is. 
wafflemoose has a new favorite as of 15:09 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 15:07
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rodbeard posted:I played through the story of destiny 2 and let me tell you it does not in any way prepare you for any of the actually fun parts of the game. im surprised anyone is able to find "the story of destiny 2" given how hard they've pushed it aside to the point where any new player would need a guide just to play the main questline
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Oct 15, 2019 15:10
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wafflemoose posted:Yeah I played Destiny 2 back when Bungie was still partnered with Activision. It didn't really click for me back then and I didn't get far so I uninstalled it and forgot about it. The game becoming F2P on Steam caused me to become interested again. Not having to sign in to another game launcher probably helped with that as I like having all my games on Steam or GOG if I can help it. I would say that "playing the video game from the beginning" doesn't really count as a grindfest unless you are, as mentioned, trying to catch up to friends who have played it before and are already in the post-game stuff. Some people in the chat on my stream also said that you had to grind the storyline to get to the endgame repeatable stuff before this overhaul and that just sounds so weird to me. What do you mean grind? What do they mean grind? The stuff you're grinding is the content. Play the video game or don't.
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Oct 15, 2019 15:12
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Destiny 2 was so bad at launch it was hard to believe. I remember getting past the hours and hours of identical newbie jail that didn’t evolve in any way just to get to the tower, see 5 strikes and a raid, and wonder how that could really be all there was. they legitimately expected people to just run challengeless public events and the same 5 strikes forever with two identical weapons and horribly throttled exp, while pushing you to buy lootboxes. The weapon change and getting to skip all the hours of newbie jail to go straight to all the activities added since then like menagerie and forge ignitions make it a completely different game.
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Oct 15, 2019 16:03
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CJacobs posted:I would say that "playing the video game from the beginning" doesn't really count as a grindfest unless you are, as mentioned, trying to catch up to friends who have played it before and are already in the post-game stuff. Some people in the chat on my stream also said that you had to grind the storyline to get to the endgame repeatable stuff before this overhaul and that just sounds so weird to me. What do you mean grind? What do they mean grind? The stuff you're grinding is the content. Play the video game or don't. It's poor word choice, sounds like, because what I recall was you had to play the main story per character if you wanted to have a character of each class. Worse, for a lot of people this didn't feel optional because the best way to level your power fast is to do the powerful rewards on every single character, because powerful drops scale based on the best equipment you own, even if its not equipped and in storage. I had to do it so I could do stuff with every class and let me tell you the story was pretty fun the first time but on run 2 and 3 having to do stuff like the incredibly slow and dramatic walk through the ruined city was not a fun experience.
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Oct 15, 2019 16:06
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Zoig posted:It's poor word choice, sounds like, because what I recall was you had to play the main story per character if you wanted to have a character of each class. Worse, for a lot of people this didn't feel optional because the best way to level your power fast is to do the powerful rewards on every single character, because powerful drops scale based on the best equipment you own, even if its not equipped and in storage. I had to do it so I could do stuff with every class and let me tell you the story was pretty fun the first time but on run 2 and 3 having to do stuff like the incredibly slow and dramatic walk through the ruined city was not a fun experience. Destiny 2 is good now but god the game is full of baffling, horrendous or outright scummy decisions and I'm not willing to blame Activision for all of it just yet
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Oct 15, 2019 16:18
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Speaking as someone who beat the campaign a year ago. What exactly is money used for? Is it just for fun like Itchy and Scratchy money? What are the point of sidequests when they barely differ from the main campaign and don't reward anything after a point? Why is the main game this standard, easy FPS guff but if you want a raid you have to micromanage this elite team for an hours-long operation? What's the point of levels if you cap early at 20? Do any of the guns do anything interesting like turn enemies into bombs or bark Aussie swears?
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Oct 15, 2019 17:04
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Inspector Gesicht posted:0? I have a gun (Graviton Lance) that does, in fact, turn enemies into bombs. Enemies killed in that explosion also explode, so it can turn a swarm of weak enemies into a fireworks show. It rules.
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Oct 15, 2019 17:05
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I think if in Destiny 1 they just stuck to one philosophy for levelling it would have been so much more rewarding. Either have something where you can do what you like - solo single player, PvP, PvE, team DM, etc - and progress in some universal way or just keep it all separate. It seems like they were aiming for something that was universal up to a point and then you were railroaded into doing specific things to progress further to encourage people to play the different modes on offer. I was not able to make sense of it without looking it all up on the internet. Whenever I came back to it, it was bastardised further and that really killed any enthusiasm I had for the sequel.
Pocket Billiards has a new favorite as of 17:26 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 17:22
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Speaking as someone who beat the campaign a year ago. Money: basically everything requires a small amount. Basically nothing but it's pain if you run out. Sidequests: I think they were originally intended as something to do while leveling to meet campaign mission requirements. Now pointless. Difficulty: Broader adoption. The raids ain't that bad though, communication is required so you need a mic, but it's not the most complicated poo poo in the world. Levels: They got rid of them. Originally a consequence of scattered design document. Guns: No.
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Oct 15, 2019 17:54
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Speaking as someone who beat the campaign a year ago. There’s a much better spread of difficulty of things to do between the braindead casual of the campaign to the tryhard of the raids now. Although if you want to get everything you’ll still have to play that full gamut of experiences and the game will continue to have a confused identity. at some point they changed a bunch of yellow weapons, I think around the warmind expansion, and they’re now a lot more interesting. I apparently had a yellow called the gravitron lance sitting in my stash from when I first played and never remembered it because it was just as boring and forgettable as everything else. but now it makes killed enemies release a bunch of exploding purple balls which can chain on anything they kill too, wiping out a cluster of weaklings. The riskrunner SMG they give you for a quest gets infinite ammo and chain lightning for 5 seconds if you get hit by arc damage, which vs one enemy faction basically means the gun has a bottomless magazine and permanent chain lightning. Good stuff. the non-yellow weapons are almost as samey as before but the game’s way more engaging in practice since they reworked weapon types so you can actually use a sniper rifle or a shotgun more than once a year. The weapon situation was truly dire when the game launched, god
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Oct 15, 2019 18:20
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› PYF Little Things Dragging This Game Down - Guns: No.
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Oct 15, 2019 18:20
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I've gotten to play a couple hours into Indivisible, and honestly, I'd be happier if the overworld navigation wasn't a 2D maze with walljumping platformer mechanics. I get some interest in exploring and finding ways to get to items/hidden areas, but after a while of death spikes and temporary platforms I'm just starting to roll my eyes at each new challenge. It feels very much like Celeste, but without it being the main gameplay focus it's just clumsy and awkward enough to often feel like a chore to get through. e: and another thing, since it seems repeated after several big boss fights: so far they're conveniently split up into two or three parts with some mild platforming segments in between, but.....no checkpoints  Why? That seems like a theme with the last couple games I've played, it can take ages to whittle down some of the bosses but you screw up or spend a while learning it? Too bad!
Captain Hygiene has a new favorite as of 22:05 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 19:55
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Len posted:Until you hit the level cap and it was the exact same as D3. But also the builds in d2 were based around only putting skills into the big skill and the ones that synergized with it and nothing else. I don't think I need to go into what a huge mess D3 was from inception because of the ill fated auction house, but for better or worse I really miss having a reason to start a new character in the same class, and having actual investment in that character's progression. I certainly agree that having flexibility to play around with new abilities is fun for awhile, but in practice it's always wound up being "slap on the weapon that has the biggest number and anything else that happens to give bonuses to the abilities you're currently using" until the late game, which means you generally wind up settling on one samey progression of a build anyways, until you hit that all important power spike mentioned above. Hot swapping abilities and feeling way weaker because your items don't give them specific bonuses feels pretty dreadful. The way D3 is now I just feel exactly the same as every other character in my class, literally the only difference being the sampling of items I have to slap on, which you're more or less mandatorily expected to use one of 3 or 4 builds because that's what the set bonuses tell you to do. Something like Diablo 2's trees with a not-inconsequential time-investment re-spec fee would be a happy medium, for me. As much as I find Path of Exile way too complicated for how trivial actual gameplay is, (and much too heavy a time investment to reasonably play as a human,) I really really like that aspect of it- your character absolutely has a direction, and it's an incredibly unique direction from a myriad of other ways you could play them, and while you are handed an armful of re-spec points during the plot they're not infinite, and the only other way to get more is to find or trade for an item that grants you them, which can get pretty expensive if you want to do an extensive re-spec. If Diablo 4 could be a merger of a more approachable ARPG experience with PoE's style marketplace and customization I think it could be really great. That said, lol Blizzard, anything they produce is going to be mired with microtransactions and some pretty rough political discourse. Too bad, as I feel like the genre is hurting for something new that isn't as insane as PoE.
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Oct 15, 2019 22:15
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The fact that D2 was easy as balls and didn't have any infinite content was actually huge point in its favor, IMO. It struck the right balance of needing just enough gear/grind to handle Hell difficulty, while also being relatively painless if you got a rush. Meanwhile, the danger was gentle enough that you could have fun with inexpensive off-meta builds like Tesladins. I haven't played POE in about a year, but unless things changed there's no way around the grind to endgame, and while the number of viable off-meta builds puts D2 to shame they tend to either hit a wall early into the map grind or cost a prohibitive amount of currency.
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Oct 15, 2019 23:01
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What's the point of a stat-system in Diablo if you ONLY have four and there's no real dilemma or choice to where things go? E.g. This level 70 Wizard has 30 STR, 30 DEX, 5000 INT and 3500 VIT.
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Oct 15, 2019 23:01
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Big Mad Drongo posted:The fact that D2 was easy as balls and didn't have any infinite content was actually huge point in its favor, IMO. It struck the right balance of needing just enough gear/grind to handle Hell difficulty, while also being relatively painless if you got a rush. Meanwhile, the danger was gentle enough that you could have fun with inexpensive off-meta builds like Tesladins. No but it did have the grind for the Ubers
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Oct 15, 2019 23:03
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Inspector Gesicht posted:What's the point of a stat-system in Diablo if you ONLY have four and there's no real dilemma or choice to where things go? E.g. This level 70 Wizard has 30 STR, 30 DEX, 5000 INT and 3500 VIT. Yeah, agreed, though somewhat to blame is the fact that STR and DEX don't *do* anything attractive for mages, and vice versa. Many games try to stymie this with stat breadth, but it's tough to put actual meaningful choices in them, especially when defense very rarely feels helpful.
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Oct 15, 2019 23:46
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