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Protocol7 posted:My god I even tried to do a 2v2 in Hero's Hour and my AI partner got wiped off the map on day 2 of week 2. This is gonna be a learning experience, isn't it? The only way I've found to do well is to pick a hero and playstyle that lets you minimize your losses until you can snowball to bigger units. There are a lot of ways to do this but some are: The Empire hero that starts with healing magic + buffs all allies after casting a spell. Just cast shields/heals on your units to keep them alive, and as a bonus they kill faster. As Tide, upgrade the tier 1 chaff melee units ASAP because it gives them Retreat, which makes them prioritize fleeing to your capitol over dying and then you can go pick them up again later The Mercurial talent on anyone that can get it - the one that converts mercury into disposable slime units weekly. It's incredibly good and provides the meat shield any army needs. One of the strongest strategies in the game. Undead with the talent that curses enemies when you cast a spell on them and strategic use of spells Any faction's ranged healer/caster unit is good at keeping your more survivable units alive (Empire and Tide get one, I forget who else) Dwarves have a kind of innate answer to minimizing losses which is their dead units come back to life as more powerful ghosts and with the right talents those ghosts amalgamate into stronger ghosts or something Academy with Elemental Conflux or whatever it's called, the ability that summons elementals when you cast a spell. You can cast e.g. a fireball right into the enemy ranged line, which does damage and spawns fire elementals that tank their shots and deal more damage, then the fire elementals explode when they die. You can combo this with the talents to summon permanent elementals after battle and to summon a flood of elementals during battle. etc. Basically your first priority should be some kind of replenishable ablative armor to keep your recruited units from dying. My second tip which you already figured out is recruit a second hero early and hand their units to your main hero, then use them to scout and collect unguarded resources. If you're Tide, get the building that lets you turn any army into a fleet and use them to explore the ocean, there are aggressive neutrals at sea you need to avoid but also tons of rewards. Third, upgrading some units to tier 2 in the first week seems to be better than spamming out all the recruitment buildings, because they're more survivable than tier 1 units. Also not 100% sure this is how it works but anecdotally it seems like not digging up the obelisk treasure until higher level leads to much better rewards - chiefly set pieces. The set artifacts are absurd and should be hunted down whenever possible.
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Apr 23, 2022 18:23
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Spermanent Record posted:I refunded Teardown. Was hoping for some Guerilla style smashing but the physics is way off. A whole house can be held up by a single brick and then it just drops down vertically when you remove it. This sounds completely authentic to guerilla though lol
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Apr 23, 2022 18:56
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Mierenneuker posted:Sometimes you like something so much that you'll settle for far less to get a bit more of it. This is why I tried it during the demo event. It looked like it was Opus Magnum with some new mechanics added on top (throwing elements around, in particular) so I tried it to see what that added to the formula. But it feels just so bad to play, in just about every way possible. There's no persistent device palette - you need to click the little button in the lower right to slowly animate the palette into the middle of the screen which blocks the playing field, then you need to drag what you need out to the edges, close the palette, and THEN move them where you want. Like Opus Magnum you can use shortcuts to quickly place actions onto the action timeline, but instead of arranging the shortcuts spatially appropriate to the positions on the action palette grid, as in Opus Magnum, Velone use F1-F12 so it's unintuitive to place actions. There are way too many elements and their transformations are unintuitive, with colors jumping all over the rainbow instead of following some kind of progression. Tthe element throwing mechanic, the thing that attracted me to the game, has to have a corresponding catch action in the arm that receives the element, so you need to get the exact distance right in the timeline or it'll fail and you'll have to redo it. Going by the Steam reviews there are even worse mechanics I didn't come across - apparently there's an energy system for devices that persists between levels and you need to refill it with a minigame?? Opus Magnum is my favorite Zachtronics game so I'd be all for a shameless ripoff as long as it brings new stuff to the table, but... this aint it. Pigbuster fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 19:24
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Spermanent Record posted:I refunded Teardown. Was hoping for some Guerilla style smashing but the physics is way off. A whole house can be held up by a single brick and then it just drops down vertically when you remove it. I've kept the game but yeah the physics are weird and not very satisfying. Buildings in Guerilla had strain points where it'll creak and crack until eventually the whole thing comes down and that's just not how Teardown works. A single column of bricks from a left over chimney connecting the top and bottom floor of a house will magically suspend the entire top floor until you break those bricks.
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Apr 23, 2022 19:30
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My ideal outcome for Teardown were missions were you had x amount of seconds/amount of TNT to bring down an entire building. There’s some missions that do that but I absolutely loathe all the heist missions and gave up on the campaign as soon as Workshop support came out.
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Apr 23, 2022 19:34
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I actually think some of the heist style missions were the more interesting part of Teardown compared to straight demolishing because of the weird physics. But it does still leave me wishing it was more physically accurate at times.
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Apr 23, 2022 19:53
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Red Faction Guerilla is still the game with best demolishing physics and it came out like 10 years ago.
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Apr 23, 2022 19:55
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Jack Trades posted:Red Faction Guerilla is still the game with best demolishing physics and it came out like 10 years ago. 13 years. When designing the game, they would program in buildings that would spontaneously collapse, so they had to hire actual architects to help them design their video game buildings to be structurally sound. Kind of surprised there wasn't/isn't a sandbox mode for the game you can enable to just go hog wild on destruction. drat shame they kind of killed the franchise by trying to make it Gears of War-ish instead of open world sandbox sims.
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Apr 23, 2022 20:04
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I liked Armageddon  The magnet gun was great, and I'm a sucker for any game where you can shoot black holes at poo poo. And it had s score attack destruction mode, which was ready fun.
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Apr 23, 2022 20:42
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pentyne posted:drat shame they kind of killed the franchise by trying to make it Gears of War-ish instead of open world sandbox sims. Also according to Jim Boone, Red Faction Guerrilla lost money back in the day, though I suspect its had a long tail when it comes to sales or they wouldn't have bothered with remastering it.
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Apr 23, 2022 22:13
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Okay I played 10 hours of Samurai Bringer and I'm pretty confident I've seen everything the game has to offer. I'm very disappointed that there's no extended difficulty options, it has a ton of fresh, fun, flexible mechanics and systems that you can stack on top of each other to inflate your power level but then it never gives you anything to actually do with all of them because it's absurdly easy to make a single-animation basic attack that kills even bosses in just a few hits. Still recommended because it's only $10, very fun, and has some extremely rad mechanics. It was about ~8 hours in before I broke the game over my knee and those first 8 hours were a blast. I hope some DLC or a sequel comes out that adds some longevity to it 
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Apr 24, 2022 00:33
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Jack Trades posted:Red Faction Guerilla is still the game with best demolishing physics and it came out like 10 years ago. Since you mention that: the lead tech designer for RF Guerilla - and only him, it's a solo effort AFAICT - is making Instruments of Destruction, basically Besiege v9.0 with all that lovely building-collapse physics we want and it kicks rear end https://i.imgur.com/S0gGx5O.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/Mgaa2Xv.mp4 Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 00:54
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Space Hulk Deathwing is on a pretty steep discount; is it one of the good Warhams? I liked Vermintide.
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Apr 24, 2022 01:11
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Rebel Blob posted:Another victim of the Sci-Fi Channel. They funded the game in conjunction with their own long forgotten Red Faction TV-movie, but had all sorts of demands for the developers. So it became a linear game with aliens as the primary enemy based on their notes.
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Apr 24, 2022 01:16
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Hollandia posted:Space Hulk Deathwing is on a pretty steep discount; is it one of the good Warhams? I liked Vermintide. Def not as good as Vermintide and overall pretty mediocre and repetitive. Nice looking tho, it really feels like you're slogging your way through the bowels of an Imperial ship emphasis on "slogging."
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Apr 24, 2022 01:19
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Mordja posted:Def not as good as Vermintide and overall pretty mediocre and repetitive. Nice looking tho, it really feels like you're slogging your way through the bowels of an Imperial ship emphasis on "slogging."
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Apr 24, 2022 01:26
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The original Red Faction was mind-blowing back in its day and it's comical to look up videos of how primitive its destruction engine was now  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAeU7nPtWFA I liked it way more than Guerilla because it was trying to be a FPS first and foremost, and it by no means particularly excelled at that, but the environmental destruction was like an optional tool in your arsenal instead of literally the entire focus of the game. I couldn't get into Guerilla because I've never enjoyed tediously kicking childrens' sandcastles until every grain of sand is gone and that's what it was, in videogame form. There's lots of getting stuck on physics objects and waiting while things slowly fall to the ground and looking for that one last support beam of the building to make the whole thing fall down, and OG Red Faction has the superior geo-mod version where you just shoot a wall and then you instantly have a door you can walk through
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 01:53
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While on the subject, Just Cause 2 (and only 2) is also a S-tier destruction simulator.
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Apr 24, 2022 02:07
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3 was better, both for explosions and in general
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Apr 24, 2022 02:11
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deep dish peat moss posted:The original Red Faction was mind-blowing back in its day and it's comical to look up videos of how primitive its destruction engine was now I mean hey, when you had to run on a system that had 32MB of system RAM to work with, it was pretty impressive!
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Apr 24, 2022 02:32
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Red Faction Guerilla was great and then some executive at THQ looked at Dead Space and said "Make the sequel more like that".
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Apr 24, 2022 02:38
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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire The game should be familiar to most people in this thread as the original Pillars was a massive Kickstarter success and kickstarted (lol) a return to the classic isometric crpg style of the Baldur's Gate series. This series, along with Divinity OS and Pathfinder, are arguably the best of their type of games in the last decade. I'll get this out of the way first, but it was originally designed as a real time with pause style game, but they added turn based mode as option when you start. You can't swap between the two at will like Pathfinder without a little extra work editing the game files though. That said, per someone in the main game thread, you can probably beat the main story with about 8 total combat encounters. It's not a game where you have to fight your way through tons of trash mobs where you'd probably just select all and click "attack" to resolve the combat. There's two things that stand out about this game as great, the combat system (totally redesigned from PoE1) and the amount of story/quest based variety you can get from choices and decisions including imported choices from the first game. It's much more in the style of Fallout New Vegas, where the main story is ~10-15% of the game and the rest is exploring this open world dealing with the various factions and balancing how much they hate or love you. The factions also gives you a choice on who you want to support, which consists of - Fantasy Italy (trading guild, uber wealthy) - Fantasy England (kind of? Super strong navy, not super rich) - Fantasy Pacific Islanders (natives with a rigid caste system) - Some jumped up pirates Some examples would be two factions want you to explore a island, one wants you to blow something up but the other wants it fixed and you have to pick a side. It's not super complex and having good social skills means you have options to talk your way out of betraying the factions without taking a huge reputation hit. It's more of a roleplay thing if you want to dive into it, as going for max diplomacy etc. can carry you through until the final chapter where you have to pick a side. The combat has finally ascended past the classic Vancian casting of per rest abilities and now is focused specifically on characters having per encounter powers/spells with a limited pool per day you can use to boost a specific attack or regain limited ability use. Anyone familiar with most crpgs knows that buffing your characters exhaustively before starting combat is common, but Pillars restricts a lot of abilities to use only in combat which makes for way less tedium in general. There's a unique mechanic called penetration which compares your weapon 'strength' to the enemies defense, and if you match you do 100% damage, but if you are lower its reduced and the same for the reverse. It takes a bit to figure out, and early on it's going to be a major source of damage dealing issues until you do but really encourages variety in combat rather then spamming the same thing every time. Character building is pretty crazy, because they added hybrid classes, like druid/fighter, and you can take mixes of each archetype to get a specific "hybrid" class so you can do everything from a buffing fighter tank to a punching wizard. There's enormous flexibility and practically 0 trap options if you engage with the mechanics and learn how the characters play out. There's actually very little major power differences between a min-maxed class and a normal sub-optimal build. The balance for this game's combat is really good. The games got some weak areas, mostly the ship based stuff which was a problem in development in general and what you get is okay but not worth engaging with past learning how to trivialize it. You can skip ship-ship combat entirely and just go straight to boarding, which has your 5 man party plus your other party members as AI support fighting against the enemy. The only issue with this game is that it is so, so much better then Pillars 1 I'd recommend playing it first if you are curious about the series. It does basically start with spoiling the major dramatic story reveal at the end of Pillars 1 though. Like how Deadfire is New Vegas with ~15% main story, Pillars 1 is the reverse where its 80% main story and lore because it has to introduce the entire fictional world and history. If you are a game purist who doesn't want to start in the middle of the series, Pillars 1 is still pretty solid story wise but a bit weak on combat, and also has in general way more combat encounters.
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Apr 24, 2022 05:02
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That's Fantasy Venice and Fantasy Imperial Japanese East India Company thank you very much.
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Apr 24, 2022 05:17
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PoE2 is like a shining example on how not to open a game. It's like they heard of the idea of what a "hook" is and decided to aggressively go in the opposite direction. You start out in an empty room with a deity talking down to you about your past, briefly asking which of his pantheon you sided with in the last game. No, no context, get to it, chop chop. After a few brief lines about how the world needs you again, the screen fades to black and you find yourself in a galley in a storm and - oh no, pirates attack! Combat tutorial. I refunded right there because I was so aggressively uninterested whatever the hell they where trying to do, and I wish to be clear here, Icewind Dale style combat is something I suffer through for the sake of the game around it. Tyranny (by the same people?) did a good job with a setting and setup, so going from one to the other was some serious whiplash.
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Apr 24, 2022 05:33
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tight aspirations posted:I liked Armageddon Red Faction Armageddon was great even if a lot of people hate it but i guess most of them just used the boring automatic weapons instead of the explosive ones or the Magnet Gun, starting a fight by throwing entire buildings at enemies was really fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDYF88F_ExI I tried various times to play Red Faction Guerrilla and could never get pass the 3-4 hour mark in that game, once the novelty of the destruction wears off it's a really boring game.
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Apr 24, 2022 10:25
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Serephina posted:I refunded right there because I was so aggressively uninterested whatever the hell they where trying to do, and I wish to be clear here, Icewind Dale style combat is something I suffer through for the sake of the game around it. Tyranny (by the same people?) did a good job with a setting and setup, so going from one to the other was some serious whiplash. The writing in Tyranny feels very different from that in PoE. I wonder if they have a second team for prototyping ideas that just got free rein on Tyranny.
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Apr 24, 2022 10:52
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Deadfire is an incredible game and basically improves on everything from the first Pillars game (a game I very much enjoyed as well). I think ropekid has said a POE3 is unlikely after it took so long to recoup the costs of making 2? Which is a shame, but 2 does basically finish things where there's plenty of room for other types of games in that world (is Avowed still being made?) which is better than nothing.
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Apr 24, 2022 10:56
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Hollandia posted:Space Hulk Deathwing is on a pretty steep discount; is it one of the good Warhams? I liked Vermintide. It oozes atmosphere, like it absolutely nails it, so might be worth it at the current discount since you'll get some enjoyment from the basic campaign. But unless you have friends you intend to play it with afterwards, then it's sadly pretty mediocre with bad AI teammates
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Apr 24, 2022 11:30
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Jerusalem posted:(is Avowed still being made?). It is. People who generally have decent insight into Microsoft projects think it could be an early-mid 2023 release, so maybe we see something at not-E3 this year, or worst case at the Keighley’s in December. Anno fucked around with this message at 11:49 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 11:47
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I liked Pillars 1 well enough to finish it, but was underwhelmed enough to not bother with Pillars 2 until way way later, which is a shame, because it is an improvement in every area. It is definitely Obsidian's best game since New Vegas.
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Apr 24, 2022 14:08
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Probably also the last good Obsidian game we'll ever get tbh.
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Apr 24, 2022 14:40
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Antigravitas posted:Probably also the last good Obsidian game we'll ever get tbh. Have you heard the good word about Josh Sawyer's In The Name of The Rose inspired investigative RPG that's in development? fez_machine fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 15:15
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Fresco Elysium 
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Apr 24, 2022 15:37
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Disco Shrewsbury
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Apr 24, 2022 15:48
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fez_machine posted:Have you heard the good word about Josh Sawyer's In The Name of The Rose inspired investigative RPG that's in development? I have, but I'm taking Outer Worlds as an omen.
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Apr 24, 2022 16:03
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All my Hero's Hour gametime has had me itching for a more classic RTS. Ended up reinstalling Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation and I don't love it as much as I loved SoaSE but it's still a good time.
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Apr 24, 2022 16:15
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fez_machine posted:Have you heard the good word about Josh Sawyer's In The Name of The Rose inspired investigative RPG that's in development? No but that sounds cool as gently caress
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Apr 24, 2022 16:18
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deep dish peat moss posted:The original Red Faction was mind-blowing back in its day and it's comical to look up videos of how primitive its destruction engine was now Man me and my brother used to play multiplayer and just hollow out bunkers with the original Red Faction and then fight from there
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Apr 24, 2022 16:31
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Guerilla has a lot fewer "pieces" in a building than Teardown, so the physics calculations could be made more complex without bogging down the CPU
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Apr 24, 2022 16:36
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Serephina posted:PoE2 is like a shining example on how not to open a game. It's like they heard of the idea of what a "hook" is and decided to aggressively go in the opposite direction. PoE2 is a sequel. It expected you to play the first one. Jerusalem posted:Deadfire is an incredible game and basically improves on everything from the first Pillars game (a game I very much enjoyed as well). I am very disappointed that the Pillars series didn't do well. Maybe if it had turn based combat from the start?
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