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moosecow333 posted:I’ve heard so much about Pathfinder: Kingmaker in the last few months and it has literally all been bad. Why have so many people played that game when it has a massive list of issues that all seem to be designed to gently caress over the player? Tabletop mechanics do not translate well into gaming but there are so few examples out there they might as well give it a try. Maybe it'll be their right kind of bad this time.
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Jul 8, 2020 18:23
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moosecow333 posted:I’ve heard so much about Pathfinder: Kingmaker in the last few months and it has literally all been bad. Why have so many people played that game when it has a massive list of issues that all seem to be designed to gently caress over the player? With the turn-based mod it feels like a kinda fun tabletop-y strategy game, though with a couple caveats. (Also with the current version, I haven't really hit any noticeable bugs, other than 2 crashes and losing music in one battle, once.) One of the things for me is despite it being pretty poorly designed (and relying on a terrible goddamn underlying system.) there are a lot of points of it that are pretty neat. It has a kingdom-building mechanic system that, while shallow, is pretty neat to interact with, and isn't something you see all that often in games. Building that little sandcastle is a neat way of keeping you invested. And while the writing in it isn't great, it's very referential and connected to what you do. A lot of people reference stuff you've done, and what you do / quest outcomes often have repercussions later on. Then on top of that a lot of quests have good outcomes that don't rely on you just picking the [blatantly the correct option] each time and always getting the best resolution. Companions have quests, and have a number of outcomes tied to them, and an accompanying change in view, for better or for worse. In a great many ways it's pretty neat to see more repercussions and benefits pop up through a game, instead of it being the obligatory 'you helped 1 major quest npc, they will pop in at the final battle.' Though truth be told I'm just doing the end out of spite at this point, it's been pretty fun up until this slog of a final dungeon. But yeah, on the whole it is very rough, there's just a couple gems in the mud that kept me around for a while. Samuringa posted:Tabletop mechanics do not translate well into gaming but there are so few examples out there they might as well give it a try. Maybe it'll be their right kind of bad this time. In many ways, yeah. Though hopefully once BG3 pops out, the tabletop-rpg-game genre can look at them and just copy their way of adapting mechanics. (Though a big part of BG3s appeal is really that they're doing it turn-based from the ground up, none of this tabletop-system-to-RTWP-directly-drat-playability-planning-and-oversight nonsense.)
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Jul 8, 2020 18:49
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All I want from Baldur's Gate III is for it be to be like Original Sin 2, minus the lovely Arx chapter, and with the same kickass soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opyon8hxo8k
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Jul 8, 2020 19:31
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I just finished The Messenger, which is still good. Three things kept it from being great though: 1. The big twist that happens halfway through means nothing. They don't do anything with it, they never revisit it, and it doesn't affect the game in the slightest after it's revealed. 2. The writing is so, so weak. The writer(s) didn't trust their ability to actually have a story so they make metajokes through the whole narrative, basically removing every story beat in favor of bland internet humor. 3. You would think that doesn't matter because the real reason you play is the gameplay, right? Well the second half of the game is 80% replaying the previous levels except with no bosses. Also all the secrets in the game are now put on a map for you, so exploration is out the window too. Oh well still fun to play.
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Jul 8, 2020 22:18
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Remnant: From the Ashes started off well. Then a huge difficulty spike happened in the second area which completely put me off.
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Jul 8, 2020 23:45
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Samuringa posted:Tabletop mechanics do not translate well into gaming but there are so few examples out there they might as well give it a try. Maybe it'll be their right kind of bad this time. I kind of disagree and honestly wish there were more turn based and skills driven tabletop style video games out there that just let all the rules lawyering and poo poo from a stack of books be handled by the CPU and interface. I remember the old Pool of Radiance and Baldur's Gate games that did this really well 20 years ago. I think it's actually easier to let the AI/CPU handle all that poo poo than using tiles and minis. Granted, a CPU can't handle the storytelling and spontaneity of a table top game but as far as dealing with the mechanics, I wish there were more games that tried the D&D 3.5 (or whatever system) approach.
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Jul 8, 2020 23:59
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Samuringa posted:Being a magic user in most fantasy games suck poo poo, that's a little thing dragging an entire setting down. Yeah that's true. I love magic but most games I start with a warrior type because it's so common for magic to be rear end.
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Jul 9, 2020 00:39
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Robert J. Omb posted:Remnant: From the Ashes started off well. Then a huge difficulty spike happened in the second area which completely put me off. What precisely was the problem? I can't think of anything in rhom thats too much of a pain aside from maybe the minibosses, but if it was just everything getting tougher thats simply how the game scales based on the level of your gear. You can't avoid it either each area has a minimum possible level too, so its like oblivion scaling, but functional. Phigs posted:Yeah that's true. I love magic but most games I start with a warrior type because it's so common for magic to be rear end. Magic is either horribly busted, or completely useless with rare inbetween. Zoig has a new favorite as of 00:46 on Jul 9, 2020 |
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Jul 9, 2020 00:44
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Phigs posted:Yeah that's true. I love magic but most games I start with a warrior type because it's so common for magic to be rear end. I always start with magic, because I'm hopeful, and when magic in an RPG is good then it's really fun. Unfortunately, RPGs are apparently in a swing where magic has to suck and all the fun mechanics have to go to melee combat. I'd be really curious to learn why that is, because it's weirdly widespread.
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Jul 9, 2020 00:48
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Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 went on sale so I picked it up with some DLC. - The UI is glitchy. If you go into "x ray" mode and you look away from the car or the lift passes in front of your vision in any way, the mode turns off. Shopping lists and inventory management are both bare-bones. - How the hell does a worn out plastic base for an air filter cause loss of power? How the hell does a plastic tub wear out in the first place? - I took a job on a DLC Porsche. It only needed the crankshaft replaced. But to get to that part, you have to remove EVERYTHING in the rear end, piece by piece. Dozens and dozens of parts to remove and put back. It's literally the last piece left in the bay. And due to the insane way the engine is built, it takes twice as long to disassemble as normal. When it was done, the payout was a few hundred bucks. For comparison, a simple gearbox job can easily pay over $1,000 but takes 90% LESS time to complete. They apparently don't factor in the amount of good parts you remove to get to the bad part. Dumb. - Not enough quick keys - Few parts are repairable, even if they logically should be - Expensive cars often don't have proportionally higher parts costs (or profits). So working on a supercar might not pay more than the same repair on a cheap econobox.
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Jul 9, 2020 00:49
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Cleretic posted:I always start with magic, because I'm hopeful, and when magic in an RPG is good then it's really fun. The pendulum is probably just in the arc of “magic is fun, why would anybody play a boring fighter with his dumb fight stick, let’s make melee fun” and then in a year or two we’ll go the other way.
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Jul 9, 2020 01:05
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Eclipse12 posted:Car Mechanic Simulator The what now? Sorry but this genuinely made me laugh. Not trying to be mean, really, but you made me think of games like Road Paver, Fridge Repair and Electrician Master. Or in my case, Car Wrapper 2020. gently caress, just go do it for real and get paid for it.
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Jul 9, 2020 01:17
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BiggerBoat posted:The what now? 
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Jul 9, 2020 01:21
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christmas boots posted:The pendulum is probably just in the arc of “magic is fun, why would anybody play a boring fighter with his dumb fight stick, let’s make melee fun” and then in a year or two we’ll go the other way. I'd like it to happen in a year or two, but I feel like the 'let's make melee fun' drive started with Skyrim in 2011 and just hasn't stopped.
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Jul 9, 2020 01:26
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BiggerBoat posted:The what now? But going outside is like, sweaty and stuff
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Jul 9, 2020 01:38
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Cleretic posted:I'd like it to happen in a year or two, but I feel like the 'let's make melee fun' drive started with Skyrim in 2011 and just hasn't stopped. Sure but the melee in Skyrim wasn't fun either soooo... Anyway I played a whole lot of Graveyard Keeper recently. It's kind of a charming game, almost like...well you know how 'eurojank' is used to frequently describe third-person RPGs that almost have a budget for QA and such, but not quite? This is like a eurojanky stardew valley-esque game. There are a number of mechanics in the game that are present and used lightly but never explored in-depth, there are a number of items that are straight-up useless except for selling or for maybe one quest, farming is almost entirely useless except for two types of crops...it's a bizarre game. Interesting to play through. Don't pick it up if you're looking for a stardew-valley type of game though, it's got nothing in common except that there's a town, you can farm veggies, and the top-down point of view of the game. One of my biggest complaints is with a DLC called "Breaking Dead", where you can raise zombies to do some of the more monotonous work like mining or such. I didn't get it, because whatever, but there are numerous areas in the game where the DLC has its hooks in, like a mine shaft where you character comments that only the undead could get through, or a locked gate in your cellar that you can interact with but you won't ever be able to open unless you get the DLC. Annoying poo poo like that.
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Jul 9, 2020 02:06
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BiggerBoat posted:The what now? CMS is pretty legit, as far as simulator series go. Doesn't quite reach the quality and breadth of Euro/American Truck Sim but it's still a clear step above the kind of cheap and painfully dry sims shown in the meme up above. Even as someone with like, negative interest in cars I find it strangely cathartic (carthartic). I do hope actual mechanics are just as pissed off when they need to deal with Porsches. 
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Jul 9, 2020 02:21
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I've found magic to be the only fun style in Skyrim. Melee is slow and stodgy. Arrows leave bows at a weird downwards angle and lose their ability to collide with enemies way too close to you so often phase through your enemies for no good reason, at least if you like trying to snipe people off from long range. Which was especially disappointing after Oblivion where I thought archery felt great and would often snipe people from hundreds of meters away and even behind cover. Magic on the other hand just mostly works. Problem is the funnest to use of the damaging spells are the streaming damage ones you start with and they don't scale at all so they're useful for all of 5 hours of gameplay then everything is too strong for them and you have to use the next tier of spells, the projectile ones. And the fire ones are annoying to aim because of the wavy fire effect taking up most of the screen while you're prepping it, and the shock ones have annoyingly low range, and the ice ones are weak against Draugr so in other words half the enemies. The game really needed spell crafting so I could just make a stronger(and maybe longer ranged) version of the starting flames/shock/frost spells. Or failing that more ways of increasing damage of destruction spells than just 2 perks per element and potions which were too fiddly to use due to low durations. On the other hand my first playthrough of the game I focused entirely on illusions and had a blast frenzying camps of bandits so they all killed each other then going in and calming the remaining one and backstabbing them, calming and backstabbing over and over until they died. Until I started trying to actually progress the main quest and realized I basically couldn't hurt dragons at all anyway. Could only really fight them by luring them to giant camps or cave bears which weren't always available hah.
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Jul 9, 2020 02:29
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BiggerBoat posted:The what now? I get it. I have no interest in Farming/Trucking/Plumber Simulator or whenever. But I like cars and it's relaxing in a zen kinda way. It has a simple gameplay loop that isn't fundamentally different from a lot of other games in that you get choose a quest, do a puzzle, get some loot/money, repeat, with some long-term progression along the way. Most of our games are stupid if you want to look at them a certain way. Go play soccer for real and get paid for it! Go join the army for real and get paid for it! Like, the cars in this game aren't real, but it's still fun to interact with them. Dragons aren't real in but Skyrim, but you can still interact with them (but you shouldn't because it's boring and dumb)
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Jul 9, 2020 02:29
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The biggest letdown is that Tank Mechanic Simulator wasn't as well developed. It wouldn't be fun, but I bet it'd be really interesting to tinker with heavy military vehicles.
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Jul 9, 2020 02:33
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As a mechanic that all sounds pretty accurate. Especially having to take way too many unrelated things apart just to fix the one piece of poo poo you need to fix
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Jul 9, 2020 02:38
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Retro Futurist posted:As a mechanic that all sounds pretty accurate. Especially having to take way too many unrelated things apart just to fix the one piece of poo poo you need to fix Well yeah, but you charge by the hour for that poo poo
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Jul 9, 2020 03:07
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Robert J. Omb posted:Remnant: From the Ashes started off well. Then a huge difficulty spike happened in the second area which completely put me off. Honestly my friends and i found the earliest levels, particularly the first bosses, to be the hardest part of the game.
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Jul 9, 2020 03:32
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Thing dragging games down is me and also Capcom. I wish Megaman.ExE was more popular so it didn't have to stay as a GBA spinoff series. I want a Kirby game skinned like a MegaMan one. There's so many Cross Soul forms in there, and honestly I was never really a fan of Classic or X style side scrolling stuff to want to get one of the games myself.
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Jul 9, 2020 06:47
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Battle Network is my Mega Man, but I think it does get unfairly maligned and forgotten amongst the various Mega Man franchises. Maybe because it's a straight-up RPG among shooters, or possibly because it's the one that explicitly stars and is focused towards children so it lost a lot of the 'I like this one because I think it's edgy and serious' crowd. I wonder if it'll get a Legacy Collection now that they've gone through classic, X, and Zero. There's undeniably audience for it--I believe when you look at the sales numbers, a Battle Network is the only Mega Man outside of the classic series to break the top five, or something like that. You don't even have an emulation hurdle, since the Zero/ZX collection did both GBA and DS.
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Jul 9, 2020 07:03
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Eclipse12 posted:Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 went on sale so I picked it up with some DLC. This is realistic for a German car and exactly why places charge for labour. Cleretic posted:Battle Network is my Mega Man, Mmbn owned for being weird jokey games with fun battle mechanics. I tried one step from eden but hooooo it feels like megaman took a load of cocaine before plugging in.
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Jul 9, 2020 07:19
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does car mechanic simulator realistically depict having to fight through rusted out shitpiles and bolts that tommy torquewrench had a go at?
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Jul 9, 2020 07:22
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Cleretic posted:Battle Network is my Mega Man, but I think it does get unfairly maligned and forgotten amongst the various Mega Man franchises. Maybe because it's a straight-up RPG among shooters, or possibly because it's the one that explicitly stars and is focused towards children so it lost a lot of the 'I like this one because I think it's edgy and serious' crowd. Some Capcom devs said in a recent-ish interview that they're open to the idea of an entirely new Battle Network game but need to consider all the factors (whatever that means), so I wouldn't be surprised if a Legacy collection (possibly with Star Force) drops eventually to test the waters.
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Jul 9, 2020 07:23
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If they threw the mmbn games on steam (or gog please) I'd definitely buy them.
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Jul 9, 2020 07:49
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Zoig posted:What precisely was the problem? I can't think of anything in rhom thats too much of a pain aside from maybe the minibosses, but if it was just everything getting tougher thats simply how the game scales based on the level of your gear. You can't avoid it either each area has a minimum possible level too, so its like oblivion scaling, but functional. I think my issue is how quickly my character dies. Even after sticking all my upgrades into health, a couple of hits from some of the bigger enemies and it’s game over. The dragon heart mechanic was a good idea, but by the time the animation winds up, I’ve been finished off (particularly in the smaller areas like the subway tunnels with the sudden appearance of teleporting, projectile enemies). To be fair, it’s probably a ‘me’ problem. I’ve generally steered clear of this genre as I like my gaming pretty fun and chilled (I play most on ‘Easy’ difficulty). I thought I’d give it a go on GamePass, though. marshmallow creep posted:Honestly my friends and i found the earliest levels, particularly the first bosses, to be the hardest part of the game. Good to know - thanks! I might come back to it when I have more time/patience!
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Jul 9, 2020 08:04
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0 rows returned posted:does car mechanic simulator realistically depict having to fight through rusted out shitpiles and bolts that tommy torquewrench had a go at? No its more like Youtube tutorials where they show you how to replace suspension parts in your old car and they just take everything apart and do it and you spend two hours on the first loving bolt because its rusted to gently caress and oh loving great now the head is round just get me the loving angle grinder.
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Jul 9, 2020 08:40
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Manager Hoyden posted:I just finished The Messenger, which is still good. The bit which almost broke me was the chase sequence. I enjoyed the game otherwise.
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Jul 9, 2020 11:47
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marshmallow creep posted:Honestly my friends and i found the earliest levels, particularly the first bosses, to be the hardest part of the game. Biggest thing dragging Remnant: From the Ashes down is its exceedingly dumb name. I do kinda love its visual design. All the areas have a very different feel to them, the enemies are all very distinct in looks and behaviour, and it manages the weird alien-magic stuff without just ripping off Blizzard and their dumb metal halos.
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Jul 9, 2020 11:55
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Remnant: From the Ashes is a very bad name for a very good game, but unfortunately Lawnmower Man was already taken.
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Jul 9, 2020 11:59
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RareAcumen posted:Thing dragging games down is me and also Capcom. I wish Megaman.ExE was more popular so it didn't have to stay as a GBA spinoff series. I want a Kirby game skinned like a MegaMan one. There's so many Cross Soul forms in there, and honestly I was never really a fan of Classic or X style side scrolling stuff to want to get one of the games myself. There was a Battle Network game for the GameCube that was a sidescroller. It was OK, and it had Zero.
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Jul 9, 2020 12:13
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Shai-Hulud posted:No its more like Youtube tutorials where they show you how to replace suspension parts in your old car and they just take everything apart and do it and you spend two hours on the first loving bolt because its rusted to gently caress and oh loving great now the head is round just get me the loving angle grinder. The truest post ever written.
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Jul 9, 2020 12:20
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AngryRobotsInc posted:Some Capcom devs said in a recent-ish interview that they're open to the idea of an entirely new Battle Network game but need to consider all the factors (whatever that means), so I wouldn't be surprised if a Legacy collection (possibly with Star Force) drops eventually to test the waters. Next year is the series 20th anniversary so I’d bet a modest sum of money that we get a legacy collection then
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Jul 9, 2020 13:03
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Magic vs. melee has been a problem since D&D 1e. The problems usually start with the designer not having a clear idea of what magic can and can't do in the setting. Can magic users bend time and space? Is magic a method of preparation used to give the user an edge in a future endeavor, like a witcher's potions? What cost does magic put on the user's body, finances, mind, and, setting permitting, soul? Further, the existence of magic would have huge societal effects. Who can use it? How are magic users viewed in the society in which the game takes place? How does society affect the use of magic? After all, in your typical fantasy setting where magic can create all manner of great and terrible wonders and can only be utilized by a select few, it seems natural that either those select few would be the sole rulers, or would have been purged and driven underground by a populace who doesn't trust a small percentage of strangers to walk around with the equivalent of Fat Boy and Little Man in their pockets. All of that needs to be worked out before even thinking about how to make magic balanced with melee combat, and God help you trying to make non-magical ranged combat fun, too. Now, for nuts and bolts game design, what can the player do with magic? Melee combat is high level conceptually easy: it's different ways of hitting things with other things (actually making that fun is the difficult and immensely time consuming part). The same goes for non-magical ranged combat. What makes magic mechanically different from those two? Typically, it involves another resource to use (MP and cooldown times being the most common), does more damage hit for hit than a standard melee attack, and has a larger AOE. Magic users are also typically range focused and have lesser defenses than a melee character, which steps on the toes of non-magical ranged characters, so those archers need some melee skills as backup. What happens when an enemy breaches melee range on a magic user? Better give the wizard some tools to get out of there. Resistance boosting spells, teleports, and spells that boost melee attributes come in...and now your melee fighters are second class to a well prepared magic user in a hand to hand fight so long as the magic user's resources and spells hold out. But what about equipment? Jesus Christ this post is long enough without stumbling blindly through THAT minefield. Ultimately, there is no single right way of designing magic in a video game, although it's a lot easier to get wrong than right. My favorite method is to make all classes or skill trees explicitly magical, even the ones based around whacking enemies with sticks, because it's easier to deal with it conceptually if you start with "the player character can do magic, so why do anything else?" Magic being something the player can do regardless of class as a method of preparation rather than something quick fired in the middle of a fight is also easier to work around than trying to balance melee and magic, like the aforementioned witcher's potions being prepared and ingested before a fight. Games that just slap some stock spells (magic missile! Fireball! Chain lightning!), robes, and staves on a character and a blue bar beneath the red one show a lack of imagination that is a little worrying these days, since falling back on those old standbys shows that the rest of the game isn't going to be anything new, either. We're entering into a phase of video game design in which RPGs are finally moving from basic, one button sword attacks and slightly more complex magic to detailed melee combat. Magic design is lagging behind for all of the reasons I've laid out above an more I haven't even thought of because I'm just spitballing here.
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Jul 9, 2020 15:30
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ilmucche posted:Mmbn owned for being weird jokey games with fun battle mechanics. I tried one step from eden but hooooo it feels like megaman took a load of cocaine before plugging in. I got One Step From Eden like two weeks ago and it loving owns really hard, but that is a delightful description. Almost every fight feels like some insane MMBN postgame thing and I am so there for that.
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Jul 9, 2020 15:50
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Does one step from eden have the stops to select chips? I feel like they were drawn off a library as they got used. I quite liked the pause and chip selection part of mmbn, it was a nice stop to the battle to plan things out a bit, and shipping chips back for extra draws was a neat little thing.
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Jul 9, 2020 15:58
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