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Sydin posted:Game rules, in a year that's seen so many banger releases I'm surprised how much I'm feeling this might float to the top as GOTY. Are there any specific choices I need to make on NG+ to continue the progression, or just pick an ending that I didn't pick the first time? just do the opposite of every decision mission you did before - and there's a new choice mid-mission that pops up during Chapter 1, say 'yes' to it dmboogie fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Sep 6, 2023 |
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Sep 6, 2023 06:58
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It's time to talk about Branch and Nightfall/Raven (The Original Raven) The game doesn't give us too much information about them, However from the fight with the cataphract we know that Nightfall/Raven set the events of the game in motion by leaking the information about Coral returning on Rubicon. We also know that Nightfall/Raven was letting AllMind, the PCA, and all the other corps think they were dead. What we do know is that Branch was actively messing with the PCA and disrupting their plans, PCA does whatever the engagement system tells them too which may or may not be under the control of AllMind. My Theory is that Branch and Nightfall/Raven were actually trying to stop AllMind and their plans, My reasoning for this being, that if the information was never leaked than the other corps and walter would never have arrived AllMind would have been able to complete their plans, though on a longer timeline. I do hope we get a DLC or expansion that gives us some more information on Branch and Nightfall/Raven. after beating NG++ it also feels like there was originally a 4th ending planned as well that they couldn't find a way of fitting in
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Sep 6, 2023 07:07
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NG+: I was not expecting Iguazu and Volte to be one of the hardest fights in the game. I was having fun cruising through the early missions in an ultralight spike/missile AC until I ran into this brick wall. Desperate not to have to completely rebuild I tried zimms/songbirds and still got crushed by Volte because he can just instantly deal 7000 damage with no warning and is nearly invincible. Luckily those narrow cannons are great for quad plasma tank. gently caress you Volte, get stuck against a wall and damage raced by purple explosions.
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Sep 6, 2023 07:27
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Sindai posted:NG+: I was not expecting Iguazu and Volte to be one of the hardest fights in the game. I was having fun cruising through the early missions in an ultralight spike/missile AC until I ran into this brick wall. Desperate not to have to completely rebuild I tried zimms/songbirds and still got crushed by Volte because he can just instantly deal 7000 damage with no warning and is nearly invincible. Lmao guess what weapon Volta is using
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Sep 6, 2023 07:50
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I've become fixated on S ranking as many missions as possible with my primary source of damage being charged up pilum punches this poo poo is heroin.
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Sep 6, 2023 08:07
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NG++ ending: Walter's goal was to stop the Coral from exploding out killing everything... and then when you allow Coral Release to happen, not only does it create a black hole strong enough to rip the vascular plant to shreds, but every downed AC and MT is now under the control of Coral. And between Ayre's comments at the end of the Arena ("I see, humanity took this shape to fight other humans  ") and the final line being "Combat Systems Activated", I can't help but feel like the galaxy is hosed.it was a fun final boss though. Unfortunately it's kinda hard to see all the dialogue, because different lines occur at different levels of health, and the final boss hits hard enough that I needed to out-DPS it in order to survive.
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Sep 6, 2023 08:12
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Blaziken386 posted:NG++ ending: Walter's goal was to stop the Coral from exploding out killing everything... and then when you allow Coral Release to happen, not only does it create a black hole strong enough to rip the vascular plant to shreds, but every downed AC and MT is now under the control of Coral. And between Ayre's comments at the end of the Arena ("I see, humanity took this shape to fight other humans Not quite. Walter is concerned about Coral hitting critical mass and geometrically reproducing across the universe and poisoning humanity. Coral Release is specifically concentrating all the Coral together because they grow faster in proximity to one another and creating a black hole that accelerates Coral mutation and gaining sentience. Coral just lives everywhere with humanity now. Combat Systems Activated is what COM says when your AC starts moving around.
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Sep 6, 2023 08:41
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Assessor of Maat posted:record an attempt so we can https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDwjqit3qAA
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Sep 6, 2023 09:26
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You're usually safer being closer to Balteus than far away from him. Keep pressure on him, try not to stop shooting. Priority one is maintaining speed, speed is life, but aside from that you really want to be bursting down those pulse shields as quickly as possible then hammering him with all your DPS. Try switching to plasma cannons on your shoulders if you've got em.
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Sep 6, 2023 09:31
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I found the 8 cell vertical missle launchers a lot more helpful against him in stage 2. You're missing with your shoulder weapons a lot so you might want to try two of those.
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Sep 6, 2023 09:37
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You're spending a lot of time further than 250 meters from Balteus shooting at him with your bubble gun which is outside it's effective range, and you are also spending way too much time recovering from the recoil from the two laser cannons. The recoil from the lasers plus your bazooka means you are spending up to half of the fight unable to move, I would suggest doing one of the following 1.) Get rid of the bazooka for some more constant reliable damage like the burst rifle 2.) Removing one of the shoulder lasers for the vertical plasma launcher 3.) Doing all the above ............ and I just finished the video where you kill him at the end. Ignore me then
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Sep 6, 2023 09:40
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That first run was a heart breaker. It would have been a kill if your lasers had hit a split second earlier and stunned it out of the shield recharge. Anyway, congrats. If you can kill Balteus you can beat the game. Later bosses are overall about the same difficulty given the better tools you have access to. Sindai fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Sep 6, 2023 |
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Sep 6, 2023 09:48
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lol nice. I reckon, might've gotten it a few attempts earlier if you'd been using your other weapons to deplete the shield that tiny bit faster. but hey, a win's a win
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Sep 6, 2023 09:48
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I noticed in that particular video you dont use Target Assist so Baltheus pretty much gets to do whatever while you are trying to get your camera sorted. There's fights in this game where Targeting Assist helps a lot. But you dont have to use it all the time. (Tutorial also says the exact same thing but worded differently) WaltherFeng fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Sep 6, 2023 |
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Sep 6, 2023 10:25
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Eej posted:Not quite. Walter is concerned about Coral hitting critical mass and geometrically reproducing across the universe and poisoning humanity. Coral Release is specifically concentrating all the Coral together because they grow faster in proximity to one another and creating a black hole that accelerates Coral mutation and gaining sentience. Combat mode is another way to say the AC is going at full systems maximum blast. In otherwords when the AC is most alive. If the Coral entities are now living in ACs, they need to be in combat mode to well, live
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Sep 6, 2023 10:29
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AtomikKrab posted:Combat mode is another way to say the AC is going at full systems maximum blast. In otherwords when the AC is most alive. If the Coral entities are now living in ACs, they need to be in combat mode to well, live yeah I view the final line as just "and then they had more adventures". Not "genocide time, starting now" Though I suppose the two are somewhat interchangeable in AC Brandfarlig fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Sep 6, 2023 |
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Sep 6, 2023 10:45
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Sep 6, 2023 10:46
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aegof posted:I ended up fighting Carla on the bottom floor, mostly under the second level, and for whatever reason only had to deal with her until I beat her and moved on to the next. They should've ganged up on me but didn't.  not that fight yet i guess, this was the grinder thing
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Sep 6, 2023 12:37
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Arc Hammer posted:Fastest I've gotten without sacrificing firepower was about 350 using the Steel Haze Ortus assembly with the triple nozzle Schneider thrusters and the V20C power plant. At ~350 a lot of the bosses that give people trouble have attacks that cannot even track you. I think this is why I kind of just beat ibis/ayre the first time I saw them and some people get stuck for a while. It’s not because I knew the fights or that I’m a savant (I die to so much stupid poo poo). I just like fast mechs and it lines up well. You can still run very heavy weaponry at that speed, it’s cool
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Sep 6, 2023 12:47
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My first trip through the game, my AC's weight plotted over time was a linear graph, so for NG+ I decided to try a light, fast knife murderer build. I was a little worried that I wasn't actually skilled enough to handle a fragile speed demon, but I blasted through that first alt mission like it was nothing. Then it took 5 tries to clear Balteus. It could just be the case that an AC assassin build isn't nearly as suited to taking down bosses, or I'm way too dependent on the hoppiness of reverse joint legs, but its convinced me more than ever that Balteus is just way overtuned for the chapter 1 boss. There is as much poo poo flying around on screen as the endgame bosses, and that is not really fair to people showing up with a rifle and the Melander parts who are still struggling not to overshoot targets with assault boost. Sure, it's good training for what you'll eventually have to deal with, but maybe that Itano circus needs to tickle a little more, or at least track the player a little less. Or maybe tone down his loving death rockets, those don't need to be an instant cast 3000 AP attack either.
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Sep 6, 2023 12:51
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Vaguely related, but I've found it possible to build an AC that has a higher boost speed than quick boost. I popped into the testing sim real quick and you do still get SOME acceleration off quick boosting, but it's negligible. Just a gentle nudge in a direction, really. So not at all practical, but still fun that it's possible I suppose!
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Sep 6, 2023 12:57
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NG++ Final line discussion: I might be misremembering, but I thought ALLMIND notes that humanity's evolutionary process is essentially just "constantly seek conflict". I thought that final line kind of hinted that humanity's drive for conflict doesn't just magically go away even with this newfound symbiosis with Coral.
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Sep 6, 2023 13:01
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Time posted:At ~350 a lot of the bosses that give people trouble have attacks that cannot even track you. I think this is why I kind of just beat ibis the first time I saw them and some people get stuck for a while. It’s not because I knew the fights or that I’m a savant (I die to so much stupid poo poo). I just like fast mechs and it lines up well.
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Sep 6, 2023 13:27
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PathAsc posted:Lol, I tried the new hawken and it's poop from a butt It's a bummer about Hawken because the first video reveal years back was a treat. Also sad that Gundam Evolution died I got super hooked on it despite not being a Gundam guy at all. What we really need is Bioware to reverse its fortunes by making a sequel to Shattered Steel.
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Sep 6, 2023 13:56
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Groovelord Neato posted:It's a bummer about Hawken because the first video reveal years back was a treat. Yeah, I'm waiting on hawakening to get the pvp sorted out and it's back to business there at least. Back on the core side of things, I was messing around with speed builds again and in some of the replays they've pretty helpful. I miss my heavier weapons but it is fun to cover distance so drat fast and basically always have a qb on tap
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Sep 6, 2023 14:07
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Down to one mission left to s-rank. I'm kind of disappointed with s-rank in this game. 90% of the time, it's about speed. It doesn't care about ammo or repair (and obviously don't use checkpoints). I'm sure most of you saw there was a lot of discussion yesterday. I just wanted to chime in with this: This is a good game, make no mistakes about it. It's well made, has a good amount of content and challenge (probably still pretty difficult for the average gamer) It's fun, it's frantic. Is it a good Armored Core game? That's a debate I'm not gonna undertake. That has some very very deep topics we would need to dive into. But some of the discussion reminded me a little bit like the Pokémon franchise. There's obviously people that are proponents of the old way and the new way. There is always going to be an audience either way and you'll never have everyone be happy. You can't really say there is a true 'Armored Core', the franchise is evolving with 25+ years of technological improvements and gameplay theory. Armored Core is Armored Core and let's not make the individual games more than what they are. Enjoy them for what they are because From Software are the owners and the makers and whatever armored core they make, that's what we get.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:07
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It'll never be a true armored core game until I have to use the shoulder buttons to look up and down.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:14
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Cursed memory, but fair
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Sep 6, 2023 14:18
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Groovelord Neato posted:What we really need is Bioware to reverse its fortunes by making a sequel to Shattered Steel. lol, lmao Somewhere in EA's labor camp, the overseers just started beating the zombified corpse of Bioware even harder. Ineffiable posted:You can't really say there is a true 'Armored Core', the franchise is evolving with 25+ years of technological improvements and gameplay theory. Armored Core is Armored Core and let's not make the individual games more than what they are. Enjoy them for what they are because From Software are the owners and the makers and whatever armored core they make, that's what we get. People get their identities tangled in games all the time. I started rewatching Noah Caldwell-Gervais' 5 hour long video essay on Dark Souls yesterday and it was a nice little reality check for me. I've been getting wound up in what builds other people were using, and what the 'true intention' of the game is, and generally losing the thread of how the game wants you to look at the problem in front of you and solve it in whatever way works best for you. Is that using shotguns? Pistols? Putting the controller down and walking away? Fromsoftware doesn't care, these are all equally valid solutions. People on the other hand build these narratives about what the 'true vision' of the developer was, and that usually is shorthand for what that person's vision is and has little or less correlation with what the developer wants. Then they try to impose that on everyone else because of course they are objectively correct. And so you get arguments on the internet that never die, and the pernicious 'git gud' mentality that kinda flies in the face of how the games actually play.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:19
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it's absolutely worth talking about the developer's intention re: a series like Dark Souls, speaking as someone who preferred way of playing those games is completely different than what I think Miyazaki is typically shooting for DS is also an especially good example because he talks about his goals and the experience the games are meant to evoke all the time, like it's not a mystery lol
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Sep 6, 2023 14:22
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Warmachine posted:
Yeah that's what I was sort of trying to get at. Some people were right in that zone yesterday. We have to take a step back and understand this is a video game. It's basically a commercial product made to make From Software money. Unless we get a true in depth interview and maybe autobiography from the staff, it's a futile effort to argue about the true vision. We get fun times, they get our money. Play armored core VI, roll the credits, maybe do optional stuff like S rank every mission if you're insane and move on to another game. Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 (ps5) came out this week.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:26
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PathAsc posted:Cursed memory, but fair Thankfully emulation makes it a non issue and you can just assign poo poo as you want now. I distinctly remember getting AC2 and maybe 3 and being immediately turned off by the lack of sane camera controls.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:27
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:it's absolutely worth talking about the developer's intention re: a series like Dark Souls, speaking as someone who preferred way of playing those games is completely different than what I think Miyazaki is typically shooting for I think there can be a difference of intention in 'I made this harsh but challenge world for you to explore and bosses to overcome' And 'dual Zimmermans on tank treads only lol' Intention can be worth discussing but we have to be too careful not to get too deep into how the game *should* be played.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:27
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The only moral Armored Core is my Armored Core.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:30
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Ineffiable posted:Down to one mission left to s-rank. Which one do you have left? I agree about S-ranks, but what I find more baffling is the occasional mission where it wants something more than speed. Some of them are obvious like stopping every coral transport, but that fuel supply one drove me crazy trying to figure out what I was supposed to do.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:32
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Dark Souls have never been about being good at videogames. It's about putting points into your hp.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:34
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The Postman posted:Which one do you have left? Funny enough it's actually just the first one (besides the intro) I think destroying the artillery? I literally just finished the fuel supply and baws this morning (they're probably some of the hardest to pull off, baws is definitely about speed. While fuel supply, I watched a video of someone doing an s rank and destroyed the same targets they did. The lc near the first set of fuel tanks seems mandatory for s rank) I left an easy one because I was debating if I should save the platinum for a milestone but I think I'll just pop it today.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:36
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Dark Souls is about the struggle. By the point you've actually got gud at the games you've basically graduated from the target audience. The hilarious thing about difficulty whining is not that the whiners are being gatekept by more experienced players, but that they're already experiencing peak Dark Souls and don't actually like it, and assume there must be some secret pleasure that's been withheld from them rather than accept it for what it is. Now, admittedly, it's also fun to get to the point of personal mastery where playing the game is basically effortless. A lot of my criticism of the games is grounded in liking this mode of play. But I also want to be clear that this is pervert poo poo and I 100% understand and accept that it's an accidental by-product of a completely unrelated goal.  e: Sekiro (and AC6) on the other hand strike me as much more interested in mastery; like, I can't even conceive of Dark Souls giving you special rewards and a little S-rank badge for clearing a level quickly, it would be a completely alien and counter-productive approach to the game. Similarly part of the reason Malenia feels so out of place in Elden Ring is not just that she's really hard but that she represents this sudden intrusion of mechanics designed to promote aggression and suppressing the AI's most dangerous patterns into a game that's otherwise mostly about patience. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Sep 6, 2023 |
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Sep 6, 2023 14:41
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The Postman posted:NG++ Final line discussion: i think that ayre says something like that in the arena fight. but i think that that the last line is also there to show that, for whatever reason, Ayre has replaced the AC's COM
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Sep 6, 2023 15:18
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I'm not there yet but I don't care about spoilers Wouldn't she say that because the ACs in this game never say they return to NORMAL mode like they used to?
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Sep 6, 2023 15:21
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