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I can't think of anything they would've gained from adhering to the movies instead of making stuff up.
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Aug 20, 2023 05:30
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Tried out Salt and Sanctuary today, got my rear end beat by the Sodden Knight (first boss) a few times and did a little more exploring, leveled up again, went back to the fight, and got my rear end juggled again. I've played and beat all 3 souls games, I like hard boss fights, but trying to control the little S&S character feels like I'm trying to control a marionette after drinking a fifth. I went and looked up the final boss to see how the gameplay changes over the course of the game, and it looks like melee builds will change out their armor and their weapon to get bigger numbers, but it's still a drunken puppet show. The comparison's probably been done to death at this point, but S&S really did feel like playing somebody's proof-of-concept 2D Flash Demake of Dark Souls, complete with having an extremely janky-feeling dodge roll that can probably be improved or replaced over the course of the game? But if that's the dodge roll you choose to present to the player, I'm not gonna spend time polishing that particular turd
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Aug 20, 2023 09:00
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It gets better! If you try to roll through a huge guy but your roll is too short, you glide back to your original position. Zero Punctuation called it "Dark Souls with dumber names" and yeah
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Aug 20, 2023 09:44
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Xenoblade Chronicles 3 manages to overload on sidequests in an entirely different way than Xenoblade Chronicles 1 overloaded on sidequests. XC1 basically fell into the MMORPG trap: every single city or settlement you could find had a fuckton of quests, some of which had interesting stories but most of which were basically just glorified fetch quests or 'Kill 10 Rats'. It eventually just leads to ignoring most of the quests, regardless of any potential rewards--although the rewards are mostly junk, too. Xenoblade 2 had the right angle of paring quests down to basically only the stuff that's actually interesting to do; it can still get repetitive, but they all either tell worthwhile stories, have worthwhile rewards, or involve worthwhile gameplay, and often have more than one of those. Xenoblade 3 somehow combined those to create a totally new problem. The game's overall pitch and structure is about freeing colonies from an endless war, after which you usually get a new character class to play as. After you do that, usually a bunch of sidequests open up relating to that colony, either learning about how they operate or what their problems are now that they're out of that war (and therefor their army's support), with more opening up over time as the story progresses. So basically, you end up having a bulk of quests comparable to XC1's, but with the level of purpose or uniqueness that SC2's sidequests have. The problem comes when you realize that to upgrade those character classes you get from a colony, you usually have to complete a bunch of that colony's sidequests. You are not told this, nor are you told when sidequests open up in earlier areas; sometimes the story (or other sidequests) might bring you back to that part of the map, but there's nothing communicating that you should go back to those early-game colonies later on unless you happen to like their whole thing--and if you do end up going back there, chances are you've probably levelled past them, leading to those sidequests being total pushovers that don't feel like they should have any relevance to you unless you happen to know that the class upgrade comes later. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 10:58 on Aug 20, 2023 |
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Aug 20, 2023 10:51
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bawk posted:Tried out Salt and Sanctuary today, got my rear end beat by the Sodden Knight (first boss) a few times and did a little more exploring, leveled up again, went back to the fight, and got my rear end juggled again. I've played and beat all 3 souls games, I like hard boss fights, but trying to control the little S&S character feels like I'm trying to control a marionette after drinking a fifth. I went and looked up the final boss to see how the gameplay changes over the course of the game, and it looks like melee builds will change out their armor and their weapon to get bigger numbers, but it's still a drunken puppet show. Salt and Sanctuary reminds of Demon's Souls back in 2009 in that the combat system is actually good, but like 1/3 people who aren't used to it will bounce off of it and call it janky. Salt and Sacrifice sucks, though.
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Aug 20, 2023 12:02
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The Moon Monster posted:Salt and Sanctuary reminds of Demon's Souls back in 2009 in that the combat system is actually good, but like 1/3 people who aren't used to it will bounce off of it and call it janky. Salt and Sacrifice sucks, though. I'm sure that there'll be a point in S&S where I could get the combo of items that makes me say "these things at least make the slow/janky combat fun" like I could from DS1 (Dark Wood Grain Ring/Target Shield/Estoc or DWGR/Grasscrest Shield/Zweihander) but I'm 10 years older now and there's a ton of these games nowadays that don't require additional exploration and experimentation to patch up the lovely parts of the vanilla combat. If you give me an equipment loadout and send me off into the world to fight dudes, I'm expecting to enjoy fighting dudes without caveats and exceptions (which FromSoft even did lately with Sekiro and Elden Ring) The ceiling is so high in how fun and challenging 2D action/exploration/platformer games can be, I'm not hurting bad enough for one to play before Blasphemous 2 comes out that I'll keep bouncing off S&S until it clicks.
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Aug 20, 2023 18:08
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Salt and Sacrifice is my favorite of all the "2D Dark Souls" games because it's the only one that actually feels like Dark Souls. But yeah, there are shitload these days.
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Aug 20, 2023 22:55
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State of Decay 2 lets you bring a single follower along, and they are incredibly worthless. They will almost never use a gun, and instead go sprinting into a group of zombies to hit them with a wrench. As the game goes on, zombie groups are larger and larger so there is a point where you need some real firepower to take them down. This especially is noticeable in the Homeland DLC, where there are huge swarms of enemies and your ally is just standing around.
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Aug 21, 2023 01:21
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CitizenKain posted:State of Decay 2 lets you bring a single follower along, and they are incredibly worthless. They will almost never use a gun, and instead go sprinting into a group of zombies to hit them with a wrench. As the game goes on, zombie groups are larger and larger so there is a point where you need some real firepower to take them down. This especially is noticeable in the Homeland DLC, where there are huge swarms of enemies and your ally is just standing around. Ah, you fell into the trap of having your follower be one of your own community members. You can hire one from an allied Enclave instead (inspect them all first just in case there's somebody you'll want to recruit later), and then you have a merchant to sell all the trash loot to so you don't have to take it home (and you get Influence in the process). If they do stupid poo poo like try to knife-fight a blood-plague-infested Juggernaut (all Juggernauts above Normal difficulty), then you just leave and not give a gently caress. Followers kinda suck in that game, though. There's no way to command them to switch weapons or back off or focus on one target (don't stab the bloater, guys). I've also found that if you use a gun (to shoot a bloater or a screamer or something), then they seem to take it as permission to go loud and start shooting everything all the time. If you do have a follower you don't want to die (some quests force community members to join you), and they're doing stupid poo poo, run away as fast as possible. If they despawn from being too far away, they won't die, though they'll probably be injured when you see them again. Fifty Farts has a new favorite as of 02:26 on Aug 21, 2023 |
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Aug 21, 2023 02:20
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I gave Scorn a try today because it's on gamepass and now I'm wanting my time back. I love the aesthetic and having to figure out both the puzzle and solutions, but Scorn is a bit too obtuse when it comes to the puzzles. The first puzzle I had to look at a walkthrough for because despite solving the pod puzzle and getting it down to the track, I just couldn't figure out how to actually get the chair to the pod after it was lowered down. Turns out that despite the pod being lined up with the track, the arm holding the pod looking like it was fully lowered and at the perfect height for the pod to be put into the chair if I could move the chair to it, there was another "down" that extended it towards the chair. The game also enjoys wasting my time by having the pod person follow you slooooooooowly through the tunnels, and needing you to be at the EXACT angle and distance from something to interact with it. No, no game, don't just take control of the camera and move the PC around to "help" the pod person, make me waste my time to line up perfectly for you. I completely overlooked the first weapon for the longest time because despite approaching the thing that it comes out of, because I didn't walk ALL the way up to the sunken pod, it stayed down the first time I went to where it was and ended up walking around to look through the big window with the puzzle setpiece in. Also, combat feels off, where you have to be a lot closer than it feels like you should be to hit the drones with the pokey rod. Either way, I did the first two "main" puzzles, PC got splattered with liquid flesh, I woke up in a pod and decided I really didn't want to deal with the janky system. Going by what people online have said about the combat, sounds like I may have dodged a bullet.
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Aug 21, 2023 03:05
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beats for junkies posted:Ah, you fell into the trap of having your follower be one of your own community members. You can hire one from an allied Enclave instead (inspect them all first just in case there's somebody you'll want to recruit later), and then you have a merchant to sell all the trash loot to so you don't have to take it home (and you get Influence in the process). If they do stupid poo poo like try to knife-fight a blood-plague-infested Juggernaut (all Juggernauts above Normal difficulty), then you just leave and not give a gently caress. Followers kinda suck in that game, though. There's no way to command them to switch weapons or back off or focus on one target (don't stab the bloater, guys). I've also found that if you use a gun (to shoot a bloater or a screamer or something), then they seem to take it as permission to go loud and start shooting everything all the time. The Homefront campaign doesn't give you an option, you only have certain ones. I gave up at the point, the game was chugging really bad and the performance was making it hard to drive, and got tagged by a bloater and a feral, and the feral pulled my guy out the truck into a cloud and then died.
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Aug 21, 2023 04:59
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I think followers are not going to use guns if they are not silenced unless you are going loud with the gunfire. I had better results giving them silenced rifles once I had those, because they'll fire more frequently, don't use ammo and I believe they don't lose durability either. But yeah, the ferals in the Homecoming DLC suck. I made a lot of use of the shotguns that fit in the sidearm slot, so I could switch if I whiffed my primary weapon. I don't remember if it staggered them or just had enough impact to deal with those rabid fuckers. The beginning of the DLC is also tough in general until you have a medic facility that cures the infection over time. You're pretty much walking on eggshells until you can rotate in healthy people without having to ration your cures. Mierenneuker has a new favorite as of 08:34 on Aug 21, 2023 |
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Aug 21, 2023 08:20
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CitizenKain posted:State of Decay 2 lets you bring a single follower along, and they are incredibly worthless. They will almost never use a gun, and instead go sprinting into a group of zombies to hit them with a wrench. As the game goes on, zombie groups are larger and larger so there is a point where you need some real firepower to take them down. This especially is noticeable in the Homeland DLC, where there are huge swarms of enemies and your ally is just standing around. If I remember right, the ally AI prioritizes melee and being quiet until they get low on stamina and then they bring out the guns to horde clear. I find it works fine on Dread (one step above normal), and survivors are often surprisingly tough. But going against a plague heart means you need to open with maximum violence, and bringing an ally is basically more about hoping they can distract the horde long enough for you to finish the job.
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Aug 21, 2023 16:21
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Randalor posted:I gave Scorn a try today because it's on gamepass and now I'm wanting my time back. I love the aesthetic and having to figure out both the puzzle and solutions, but Scorn is a bit too obtuse when it comes to the puzzles. The first puzzle I had to look at a walkthrough for because despite solving the pod puzzle and getting it down to the track, I just couldn't figure out how to actually get the chair to the pod after it was lowered down. Turns out that despite the pod being lined up with the track, the arm holding the pod looking like it was fully lowered and at the perfect height for the pod to be put into the chair if I could move the chair to it, there was another "down" that extended it towards the chair. The game also enjoys wasting my time by having the pod person follow you slooooooooowly through the tunnels, and needing you to be at the EXACT angle and distance from something to interact with it. No, no game, don't just take control of the camera and move the PC around to "help" the pod person, make me waste my time to line up perfectly for you. I completely overlooked the first weapon for the longest time because despite approaching the thing that it comes out of, because I didn't walk ALL the way up to the sunken pod, it stayed down the first time I went to where it was and ended up walking around to look through the big window with the puzzle setpiece in. Also, combat feels off, where you have to be a lot closer than it feels like you should be to hit the drones with the pokey rod. I also just tried Scorn the other day and I bounced hard off it just from how obtuse the puzzles were. Also not a fan of the game deciding to use its own icons for controls instead of just showing the controller ones. Then the game crashed and I decided I just didn't care.
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Aug 21, 2023 18:33
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Scorn is a triumph of world design and aesthetics, shame about the gameplay.
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Aug 21, 2023 18:38
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Philippe posted:Scorn is a triumph of world design and aesthetics, shame about the gameplay. In a nutshell. Could have been a massive hit if they'd dropped the combat entirely and beefed up the puzzles a bit.
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Aug 21, 2023 19:03
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Finally started playing Baldur's Gate III. I'm loving it. It's so good  But for gently caress's sake, you have to micromanage your party's pathing or else they will walk directly into hazardous terrain without a care in the world. I've had more close calls with death due to bad AI pathing than I've had with monster encounters. It feels pretty lovely considering that anyone besides the groggiest of grognard DMs would say something like"alright, you're out of combat, we will assume that since you know these spiderwebs require a saving throw to step on, that you decided to get from A to B using the stone pathway 5 feet to the left" Also because i'm pretty sure that this wasn't as much of an issue in Divinity Original Sin 2
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Aug 21, 2023 21:39
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bawk posted:Finally started playing Baldur's Gate III. I'm loving it. It's so good It's so bad considering they will jump over stuff if you do, but won't follow the exact path you do, or avoid the detected traps etc.
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Aug 21, 2023 21:49
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That reminds me of Neverwinter Nights, and how your trap-disarming companion would frequently spot a trap, yell "I'll take care of it!" and proceed to like, underestimate how long it takes to decelerate and blunder right into the trap. Every loving time.
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Aug 21, 2023 21:57
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Jagged Alliance 3 suffers from the same problem. Moving one explosives skilled merc around? They'll detect a landmine and stop short. Moving the squad as a whole? Can't stop won't stop *boom*
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Aug 21, 2023 21:58
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credburn posted:That reminds me of Neverwinter Nights, and how your trap-disarming companion would frequently spot a trap, yell "I'll take care of it!" and proceed to like, underestimate how long it takes to decelerate and blunder right into the trap. Every loving time. Just like a real tabletop session! 
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Aug 21, 2023 22:02
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I'm playing Yakuza Like a Dragon at the moment and while there are no traps to step on like in the above posts, the game does make me question why some games force you to have a party that is always walking and running around with the player character. In YLAD they add nothing until a battle begins and they don't even wear the stupid suits I put them in until battle starts anyway. And they're not intangible so I frequently am running into them and bouncing off or they catch up to me while I'm running and they're always so shocked when they run into my legs.
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Aug 21, 2023 22:07
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marshmallow creep posted:If I remember right, the ally AI prioritizes melee and being quiet until they get low on stamina and then they bring out the guns to horde clear. I find it works fine on Dread (one step above normal), and survivors are often surprisingly tough. But going against a plague heart means you need to open with maximum violence, and bringing an ally is basically more about hoping they can distract the horde long enough for you to finish the job. I gave State of Decay a shot a while back and thought it had a lot going for it but all the micromanaging and team control (or lack thereof) eventually led me to bounce off of it. The blueprint for a really cool open world, base building, resource management and squad mechanics is pretty solid but, like a lot of games that are similar, everything gets to be a bit much and not enough care was put into juggling all that poo poo. Maybe "care" is the wrong word but more about gameplay decisions and mechanics that are actually FUN to do instead of bogging you down. I think it's a really hard balance to achieve - that whole "You Can Do All This Stuff" style with "well, does that make it fun or just a pain in the rear end to manage?" Usually I side with the latter and think that strategic base building and team management type games are better off if that's close to 100% of the actual gameplay. Some games try to do too much (open world, item collection, crafting, team juggling, base building, AI control of a squad, etc.) and it becomes a drag.
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Aug 21, 2023 23:28
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bawk posted:Finally started playing Baldur's Gate III. I'm loving it. It's so good My favorite* example of this is the following:
*least favorite
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Aug 21, 2023 23:52
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credburn posted:That reminds me of Neverwinter Nights, and how your trap-disarming companion would frequently spot a trap, yell "I'll take care of it!" and proceed to like, underestimate how long it takes to decelerate and blunder right into the trap. Every loving time. "Aye, it's done!" is burned into my brain forever because of that game.
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Aug 21, 2023 23:59
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The RNG seed in BG3 is screwy. Last time I played, I rolled so many 1s that I was convinced I had somehow enabled a special Wil Wheaton simulator joke mode. It was a statistically significant number of 1s. And, no, karmic dice are off. Speaking of the which, karmic dice are their own little thing. It prevents streaks of good and bad luck by forcing a 20 after several low rolls, and a 1 after several high rolls. Except it works both for and against you! Enemies can also benefit from the pity 20.
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Aug 22, 2023 00:07
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DoubleNegative posted:The RNG seed in BG3 is screwy. Last time I played, I rolled so many 1s that I was convinced I had somehow enabled a special Wil Wheaton simulator joke mode. It was a statistically significant number of 1s. And, no, karmic dice are off. I have rolled like ten 2s in today's play session alone. I'm playing a Halfling, so I would get to immediately reroll any 1 for free, but no. I haven't rolled a single 1 yet. Not this entire goddamned campaign. 
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Aug 22, 2023 01:31
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DoubleNegative posted:The RNG seed in BG3 is screwy. Last time I played, I rolled so many 1s that I was convinced I had somehow enabled a special Wil Wheaton simulator joke mode. It was a statistically significant number of 1s. And, no, karmic dice are off. Is this a reference to something or are you just saying that everything Wil Wheaton does is a failure?
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Aug 22, 2023 02:05
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DoubleNegative posted:Speaking of the which, karmic dice are their own little thing. It prevents streaks of good and bad luck by forcing a 20 after several low rolls, and a 1 after several high rolls. Except it works both for and against you! Enemies can also benefit from the pity 20. Allegedly, Karmic Dice used to work against you in Early Access, but they changed it at some point. Now it only gives you better rolls after a streak of bad luck, it won't punish you for rolling 20s. It still applies equally to enemies though! I honestly don't entirely get what they were going for. On first blush it sounded like it was supposed to be like nu-XCOM's invisible percentage nudging but I've seen someone claim it's just meant to just accelerate combat for good or ill. credburn posted:Is this a reference to something or are you just saying that everything Wil Wheaton does is a failure? Wil Wheaton has a tabletop games show where he consistently rolls poorly. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 02:40 on Aug 22, 2023 |
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Aug 22, 2023 02:37
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I have a friend I've been playing pathfinder with for about six months who somehow always rolls 2s. It's come up so much that when she rolls a two I just give her a reroll because I'm sick of seeing them. I've even bought her new dice to try and thwart this curse to no avail.
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Aug 22, 2023 04:12
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marshmallow creep posted:I have a friend I've been playing pathfinder with for about six months who somehow always rolls 2s. It's come up so much that when she rolls a two I just give her a reroll because I'm sick of seeing them. I've even bought her new dice to try and thwart this curse to no avail. Only twos? All of a sudden I want to see a Final Destination movie, except instead of attempting to outrun their fated grisly death, they're just trying to avoid an inevitable toe stub or accidental loud noise at a comedically inappropriate time during a stealth sequence.
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Aug 22, 2023 04:21
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marshmallow creep posted:I have a friend I've been playing pathfinder with for about six months who somehow always rolls 2s. It's come up so much that when she rolls a two I just give her a reroll because I'm sick of seeing them. I've even bought her new dice to try and thwart this curse to no avail. Shoutout to the 2 Crew  Maybe I'm just only seeing 2s in my game because the 1s are being automatically and silently rerolled under the table instead of flashing "Lucky!" on screen for my halfling and letting me reroll
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Aug 22, 2023 05:43
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Been rolling a D20 that goes 2-21 the entire time.
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Aug 22, 2023 05:47
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credburn posted:Is this a reference to something or are you just saying that everything Wil Wheaton does is a failure? It was already explained, but yeah. Wil Wheaton is pretty well known for his terrible luck in tabletop games. He has an uncanny ability to consistently roll super low, no matter if he switches his dice for supposed "lucky" ones.
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Aug 22, 2023 08:25
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I don't understand vendor trash in games. Nobody really likes it, do they? So why bother spending time and money on including a feature that people actively dislike? I played Rage and Rage 2, and in those games vendor trash makes sense because spray paint, canned goods, old tools, and unopened boxes of shoes are valuable trade goods in the post-apocalypse. The locations of these items also usually makes sense; you'll find them on shelves and such. But now I'm playing Cyberpunk and there's just a bunch of random crap lying around. I'm not against having vendor trash in principle if it fills out the setting, but in Cyberpunk only a handful of items do that, namely the jewelry you can pick up. The rest actually makes the world less atmospheric, because after every fight I'm zooming around the battlefield with my eyes on the floor tapping a button, in case some of this worthless crap is a health potion. But why am I picking up literal garbage like old cans and used bandages and selling them to a gun store? They could have at least made vendor trash that fits the setting and that somebody might conceivably want to buy, like electronic components or decorations made from real organic wood or a hundred other things.
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Aug 22, 2023 16:14
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Are dildos still a common currency in Cyberpunk?
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Aug 22, 2023 16:21
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I thought that was in Cyber Nations?
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Aug 22, 2023 17:17
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't understand vendor trash in games. Nobody really likes it, do they? So why bother spending time and money on including a feature that people actively dislike? I think Etrian Odyssey does vendor trash pretty well, selling it off unlocks more options at merchants, and special drops can only be obtained by meeting various conditions. It adds some depth to the system. I guess FFXII actually did it first, although I think EO pulled it off better. If your games not doing something like that then yeah just give me the money. I don't care if it's weird that a giant spider is carrying 10 dollars.
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Aug 22, 2023 17:24
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Its weird to me that more games don't do what Dishonored did with vendor trash. As soon as you pick the item up, it automatically converts it into money. So you still have the flavor/worldbuilding of picking up jellied eels and whale oil and stuff but without the meaningless busywork of having to manually sell it all.
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Aug 22, 2023 17:47
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That's a great example. And as I recall, the stuff you could pick up added up to a meaningful amount of money, rather than like $3 when random trash pistols you take off dead gangbangers will eventually sell for at least a few hundred. Edit: The main use of vendor trash in Cyberpunk is to disassemble them to get item components, but that just means you're picking up bubblegum, ashtrays, discarded tattoo needles, dildos, condoms, and vinyl records to that you can use them to retool your shotgun. Halloween Jack has a new favorite as of 18:24 on Aug 22, 2023 |
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Aug 22, 2023 17:52
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