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Increasing to level 99 felt so pointless, just tedious at some point upgrading your gear to keep up with enemies. By 70 (and even earlier) or so you should have gotten most of the skills you want for your build and what’s left is tedious minmaxing masteries.
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Jun 11, 2020 09:00
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Falukorv posted:Increasing to level 99 felt so pointless, just tedious at some point upgrading your gear to keep up with enemies. By 70 (and even earlier) or so you should have gotten most of the skills you want for your build and what’s left is tedious minmaxing masteries. You can do that for most builds by level 25, minus some of the spear level 5 stuff but that’s only contingent on Cult kills and none of the final points are build defining. By 70 you should have the entire tree more or less and only swap gear to play any build you want. The RPG side of the game is not deep.
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Jun 12, 2020 00:55
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Falukorv posted:Increasing to level 99 felt so pointless, just tedious at some point upgrading your gear to keep up with enemies. By 70 (and even earlier) or so you should have gotten most of the skills you want for your build and what’s left is tedious minmaxing masteries. Raising the level cap so soon after release was when i decided to stop giving a poo poo about playing it as a service game and wrap things up and be done with it. I've since hardened my position against service games more in general, as much because nobody has the hard drive space for all of these permanent commitments as anything, but transparently adding more meaningless levels for people to grind to get the same feeling of number go up a clicker game might provide pissed me off. If anything the level cap was too high to start with, though that ties in with the map being too big and everything else. It's a great game, but it's designed in a way to make sure people play until they don't like it anymore instead of just letting people finish the thing while they're still having fun.
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Jun 12, 2020 01:10
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Yeah completely agree, even my stated level for a near perfect build was exaggerated. All it does is forcing you to spend resources on gear to keep parity with level-scaled enemies. Which gets a bit ridiculous when this random Athenian archer militia guarding the wall gets tougher relative to you because you go up some numbers while already unlocked demigod powers.
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Jun 12, 2020 02:38
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Yep, if there really is one thing I hope they take to heart for Valhalla is they can tone down the scale of the game and still have a fantastic overall experience. Odyssey is ultimately a very good game but it creates it's a lot of its own flaws by just trying to keep you engaged way past the line where anything feels meaningful.
Mazz fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 02:44
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Mazz posted:Yep, if there really is one thing I hope they take to heart for Valhalla is they can tone down the scale of the game and still have a fantastic overall experience. Odyssey is ultimately a very good game but it creates it's a lot of its own flaws by just trying to keep you engaged way past the line where anything feels meaningful. Yeah, it's the same issue with just too many subsystems. Odyssey gives you the cultist hunting, the mercenary system, the ship upgrades/lieutenants, and the whole war thing. Each of them could have been quite fun and interesting by itself. But by throwing all of them at you at once, none of them really quite get the focus and polish they need to be properly interesting, and as a consequence I only really ended up interacting with them when a quest brought me to it.
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Jun 12, 2020 10:40
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the conquest battles were pretty underwhelming and mechanically not *that* much different from an arena fight or even just when you get spotted in a fort honestly plotting against a leader and eventually taking them out when they were vulnerable was much more fun than the battle that came after
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Jun 12, 2020 12:02
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jesus WEP posted:the conquest battles were pretty underwhelming and mechanically not *that* much different from an arena fight or even just when you get spotted in a fort Or accidentally running into a leader at a fort and everything turning into a giant clusterfuck battle with multiple mercenaries getting involved and by the time you're done it's a wonder that there's anybody left to fight in the conquest battle at all.
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Jun 12, 2020 12:18
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Hard agree on the conquest battles feeling anticlimactic.
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Jun 12, 2020 12:38
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apart from anything, if you can gently caress a leader’s resources so badly that they’re left sitting cross legged in a little shack with no guards at all and you can just walk up and stab them, it doesn’t really make much sense that the other side needs a big battle to come in and take over
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Jun 12, 2020 12:43
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Conquest battles are way worse than fort battles, because a battle in a fort has architecture and terrain, the option to try a stealth approach, and map/quest objectives that are more compelling than "keep stabbing until we tell you you're done". And there's not even a point, the only consequence is a palette swap between red and blue until the next time that region flips, which you'll always do because it's more rewarding than not flipping. The rewards are just levelled loot, which is nice if you need some upgrades but still pretty boring.
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Jun 12, 2020 12:46
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Yep, and all the conquest battles ultimately don’t mean poo poo because the war itself influences nothing. That in itself makes it kind of pointless. There really should’ve been more of an overarching “choose a side” element for sure.
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Jun 12, 2020 12:50
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My guess is conquest battles started out as a tech demo for “look how many dudes we can have on screen at once!” and somehow just became a part of the game
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Jun 12, 2020 12:52
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jesus WEP posted:My guess is conquest battles started out as a tech demo for “look how many dudes we can have on screen at once!” and somehow just became a part of the game It feels very much tacked on in how simple it is and how little it integrates with the rest of the game. I assume they realised the game didn't do enough to sell the setting as being in the middle of a big war, and that there should be big battles and dynamic faction territory, but it happened late enough that they didn't have the resources or time to do it really well so they just put on what they had. All the other systems feel like they were at least something that was always fairly integral to the concept. The game was always going to include the boat stuff, the cult system is a pretty clear expansion on the Order from Origins (and all the templar hunting from the previous games and AC1 in particular), the mercenary system is the next step up from the phylakes, but the conquest system is entirely new and apparently underdeveloped. It just has that stink of being added later in the process.
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Jun 12, 2020 13:44
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I could easily see the whole procedure of "Weaken Nation" -> "Assassinate leader" -> "Decisive Battle" having initially started out as a regular quest chain somewhere, and then somebody was like "You could make a
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Jun 12, 2020 13:46
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Perestroika posted:I could easily see the whole procedure of "Weaken Nation" -> "Assassinate leader" -> "Decisive Battle" having initially started out as a regular quest chain somewhere, and then somebody was like "You could make a I think the areas it is a quest-centric item it actually works okay; Megaris, Mykonos, etc. that being said I agree the mistake was when they decided to implement it everywhere as with this inch deep mile wide setup Mazz fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 14:11
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The battles might have been cooler if they were like half as long and framed as ways to take over smaller regions and weaken a nation. Stabbing the leader who you've left with so few resources and power that he sits in a shack should be the leadership change moment. I'd mostly argue that they're in the wrong order. Edit: though you could have added more meaning by making certain quests/equipment only available depending on who's controlling the region.
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Jun 12, 2020 15:01
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My fix for the battles is to make the maps and objectives more interesting. Set them in an existing village/fort/city in the region so it really feels like you're actually taking something, and gives a much more interesting battlefield to play on as well. And give it more interesting objectives, like it could have been a king of the hill area control thing, or a reach the objective and raise the flag thing (like Black Flag's forts), or to murder a few specific enemy officers to break their morale. I think it works fine for them to be the final part - it's not as if the enemy soldiers would actually abandon the town as soon as you stab the local population, but it would be a good abstraction of the process of actually pushing the enemy out and moving your guys in. Still wouldn't fix the fact that doing the battles is pretty pointless. That would need some entirely new mechanics. I don't know if there's a historical basis for it but it would have been really cool if the factions actually had interesting differences, like different equipment in forts, or soldier AI, or overall battle strategy, that would change the way you approach them. Also different equipment based on the faction/region so you'd get different rewards from looting depending on whether you had that area red or blue. Some kind of incentive to actually care about the outcome.
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Jun 12, 2020 16:08
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The conquest battles were fine but for a game that considered things like how annoying it can be to have to manually pick up loot after a kill it felt silly after the conquest to run around grabbing everything that was dropped like the guy at a race track who scrounges on the floor for someone's winning tickets long after the action's done.
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Jun 12, 2020 16:24
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Yeah so I was actually gonna ask about the conquest battles. I roughly plan to side with Athens cuz Spartans are a loving backwards civilization full of rapists and stunted baby-men. So loving around Athens-controlled Phokis, I kill the leader, burn supplies, etc... and then go to win the conquest battle for Athens and then the region is just Athenian owned again. So, like, is there virtually any significance at all? Could you stay in one region just flipping it back and forth with no real repercussions or rewards? Cuz if so, why would you waste the time at all?
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Jun 12, 2020 17:40
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Sandwolf posted:Cuz if so, why would you waste the time at all? To not be an empty quote, you pretty much only do a conquest battle when you’ve done all the leading steps for bounties and you happen to get close enough for it to not be out of the way. That’s really pretty much it.
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Jun 12, 2020 17:43
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no it’s just red baddies vs blue baddies a new Vegas style reputation system where you get way more leeway in forts and other restricted areas with a high rep, or possibly hostile on sight for super low rep, would be one way of making it mean something. Hostile on sight tends to be a huge pain in the rear end in this series though
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Jun 12, 2020 17:44
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Sandwolf posted:So, like, is there virtually any significance at all? Could you stay in one region just flipping it back and forth with no real repercussions or rewards? Cuz if so, why would you waste the time at all? No, yes, no idea. If you join the attacker side, you get two pieces of purple tier gear. They don't take long at all to run so it can be a good way to get that if you're behind and having some bad luck. That's the only reason to play them outside of when a quest tells you to.
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Jun 12, 2020 18:13
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Sandwolf posted:Yeah so I was actually gonna ask about the conquest battles. I roughly plan to side with Athens cuz Spartans are a loving backwards civilization full of rapists and stunted baby-men. So loving around Athens-controlled Phokis, I kill the leader, burn supplies, etc... and then go to win the conquest battle for Athens and then the region is just Athenian owned again. There's no story significance at all. There is some arcane stuff going on under the hood regarding region control that wouldn't matter to the absolute vast majority of players. People who are into power leveling have figured some things out that are meaningless for the rest of us. Basically surrounding region control can have an effect on contracts in a particular region. If you can get the region control set up correctly, you can stack contracts and get a huge amount of xp from one bounty fulfillment. The big farming loop is Pephka, because those contacts can be fulfilled by killing people/predators in the arena. So if you make Pephka, Messara, Paros, Naxos, and Kos all the same faction, you can go to one message board and stack contacts from all those regions. This video goes into detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFI-p32wzcs&t=155s
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Jun 12, 2020 18:54
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Big Bidness posted:There's no story significance at all. There is some arcane stuff going on under the hood regarding region control that wouldn't matter to the absolute vast majority of players. People who are into power leveling have figured some things out that are meaningless for the rest of us. Basically surrounding region control can have an effect on contracts in a particular region. If you can get the region control set up correctly, you can stack contracts and get a huge amount of xp from one bounty fulfillment. The big farming loop is Pephka, because those contacts can be fulfilled by killing people/predators in the arena. So if you make Pephka, Messara, Paros, Naxos, and Kos all the same faction, you can go to one message board and stack contacts from all those regions. This video goes into detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFI-p32wzcs&t=155s This would be good for that guy that wanted to quickly hit 71 for the next level boost, I cancelled Uplay+ but I'm thinking of picking it up again for anno and to do side quests in Odyssey, it's such a great podcast game.
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Jun 13, 2020 01:00
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Ancient Greeks fighting an intermingled brawl instead of lining up in formation doesn't seem right at all to me. Also, seeing the initial charge and clash of two armies is the high point of a battle scene in any media and they skip it entirely.
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Jun 13, 2020 01:19
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The real reason to do the battles is to flip regions because you're farming strategos tokens for those two dicks in Athens and Sparta.
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Jun 13, 2020 15:05
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I just finished the Elysium chapter and it was...really weird? Like for some reason everyone hates Persephone, so I just go along with it 'cuz sure why not, and then everyone's fighting each other, and then everyone gets hosed and I fall down a hole after failing to accomplish anything. But it's all a simulation or something. The actual world was cool I guess. Goddamn these were some big "forts."
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Jun 14, 2020 12:35
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Finally finished up Origins' main quest. The final act(s) of the story felt weirdly unfinished. Like the writers knew what high points they wanted to get to, but didn't have time to actually connect everything. It was also odd that Aya suddenly turned into the protagonist, while Bayek didn't really get an ending that felt satisfying. I do have the DLCs to still play, but I think after 60 hours I'm a bit burned out on the game. The various visions Bayek had where the writers played with Egyptian mythology were really cool though.
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Jun 14, 2020 14:27
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Raygereio posted:It was also odd that Aya suddenly turned into the protagonist Yes. I usually much prefer female protagonists, but when I'd spent so much of the game wondering when Bayek would realize she did not love him and was wrong about everything, I was really expecting a 'get away from me you psycho' option at the end. Getting to play her instead was uncomfortable.
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Jun 14, 2020 14:46
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Oh dear me posted:Yes. I usually much prefer female protagonists, but when I'd spent so much of the game wondering when Bayek would realize she did not love him and was wrong about everything, I was really expecting a 'get away from me you psycho' option at the end. Getting to play her instead was uncomfortable. It never felt like Aya never loved Bayek to me, if anything it felt more like she needed to move on after the death of their son. I guess if anything I was hoping Bayek and her would have a honest heart to heart about it and he’d realize it then. I felt like their relationship for the most part was one of the higher points of the game.
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Jun 14, 2020 17:24
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Aya definitely loves Bayek. She basically abandoned her dreams of living it up in Alexandria for him, and in the first half of the game they're all over each other. Even at the end when they realise it isn't going to end happily, it's clear she's doing what she thinks is necessary, not what she wants. She does renounce the relationship when they start up the Hidden Ones, but when she actually turns up to rescue him in Sinai, it's pretty clear they have to try very hard to remember they're not really a couple anymore. She also gets buried with him in the end. The problem is that they didn't support each other in their grief. Bayek developed his obsessive revenge quest and fucks off for a year, abandoning her in Siwa. She initially just goes back to Alexandria because she has family and friends there and can distract herself in the library, but then she gets caught up with Cleopatra and discovers the Order, at which point she develops her own obsessive revenge quest. Bayek makes the frankly questionable assumption that after everything he can just go back to his old life and assumes Aya will drop her things to go with him. I do feel for him because he does not get a happy ending at all, but it's also kind of his fault. Deformed Church fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Jun 14, 2020 |
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Jun 14, 2020 18:10
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Skeezy posted:It never felt like Aya never loved Bayek to me, if anything it felt more like she needed to move on after the death of their son. I guess if anything I was hoping Bayek and her would have a honest heart to heart about it and he’d realize it then. I felt like their relationship for the most part was one of the higher points of the game. I think the reason I never believed it was that they have no conversation. Even conversation on the main quest is limited, with Aya right from the outset actively stopping Bayek's efforts to talk. Big red relationship flag for me, even if the developers just wanted to cut down on dialogue.
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Jun 14, 2020 18:16
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Uplay has a free weekend for Origins. Starts tomorrow, but you can pre-load it now.
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Jun 18, 2020 11:16
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Deformed Church posted:Aya definitely loves Bayek. She basically abandoned her dreams of living it up in Alexandria for him, and in the first half of the game they're all over each other. Even at the end when they realise it isn't going to end happily, it's clear she's doing what she thinks is necessary, not what she wants. She does renounce the relationship when they start up the Hidden Ones, but when she actually turns up to rescue him in Sinai, it's pretty clear they have to try very hard to remember they're not really a couple anymore. She also gets buried with him in the end. wow
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Jun 18, 2020 15:04
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Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:Goodness...this game was so much fun. I agree that the initial setup for Origins was a bit weird with the time skips and then piecing together the plot during the tutorials and then it comes together when heading to Alexandria. Definitely when starting on Origins (which I bought after seeing screenshots) it was a "wow AC sure got even weirder after IV, I guess I'll hate-play this plot but enjoy the Egypt sightseeing" and then it grew on me. Odyssey though I think has a much better initial hook and plot but the main plot somewhat suffers compares (especially with the DLCs) compared to Bayek. It would have been nice to have a tighter start for Origins and really focusing on Bayek and Aya as characters. Octavian vs. Anthony would have been great for a Brotherhood style game of building up the assassin order.
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Jun 23, 2020 18:37
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behind 
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Valhalla's apparently so bad the creative director is jumping ship.
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Jun 24, 2020 23:02
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Kuiperdolin posted:Valhalla's apparently so bad the creative director is jumping ship. lol, he's leaving for personal issues. You have a serious disdain for any of the newer games, we know from your relentless posting on this, but let's just not make poo poo up whole cloth
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Jun 24, 2020 23:07
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This article says it's because he got caught cheating on his wife. https://kakuchopurei.com/2020/06/25/assassins-creed-valhalla-creative-director-steps-down-from-project/ I mean, adultery is inconsiderate, but I think this is an overreaction.
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Jun 24, 2020 23:09
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"Personal reasons" is an empty statement that can cover any situation. Nobody tweets "I leave my post because the project I lead is a disaster and I want someone else to be holding the bag in December", you have to read between the lines.
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Jun 24, 2020 23:12
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