[Video Games] toddpilled and howardmaxing

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Video Games] toddpilled and howardmaxing

(Thread IKs: Buck Wildman)

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

gradenko_2000 posted:

I played through the prologue/intro of Kingdom Come: Deliverance and good lord this game is authentic. I couldn't win a fistfight with the town drunk for the life of me, and the lockpicking controls were so squirrely that I couldn't get that to work either, so I snuck up on him, knocked him out with a choke-hold, lifted the keys from his body, and opened his chest to take his stuff back that way. It really feels like the game wants to drive home the notion that fighting is really loving difficult and dangerous and you need to find other solutions whenever you can.

There's also a ton of lore about the Holy Roman Empire that you can read in the codex if you want to immerse yourself in the game's universe.

I broke all my lockpicks before looking it up online and realizing that you need to move fast (and since I'm using controller this will probably be easier with the simplified controls). Apparently you actually have a decent amount of "wiggle room" if you go fast. Tbh the game is partly to blame for not explaining that better, because I couldn't figure out what I was even doing wrong (it was "running out of time").

From what I understand, you get good at the combat later, though fighting a lot of guys at once is always supposed to be a risky affair.

The game looks and runs very nicely for me. Smooth 4k/120fps and the visual style is very good at making everything that isn't "other people" look very realistic.

(I got this game yesterday after noticing it was very cheap on sale and is apparently supposed to be quite good - I was previously under the impression it was supposed to be bad for some reason)

# ? Apr 20, 2024 08:57

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# ? May 3, 2024 08:18

BONGHITZ: Jan 1, 1970

World War Mammories posted:

the only games i need in order to learn about the holy roman empire are crusader kings and pentiment

# ? Apr 20, 2024 11:17

evilmiera: Dec 14, 2009; Status: Ravenously Rambunctious

Cuttlefush posted:

shoulda stuck with it. sword is enjoyable to use once you know how

Or in my case it got enjoyable once I did the main quest to actually learn how to use it. Several dozen hours after I had been ignoring the main quest that is.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 11:32

Real hurthling!: Sep 11, 2001

Jibs Monteef posted:

Dragon's Dogma 2 really refines and improves on the best part of the first game - exploration. The world is much bigger, and fast travel is expensive and limited - there's only a handful of preset points to use as destinations, the crystals to make new destinations are very limited unless you engage in exploration to the really remote corners of the world, and fast travelling itself costs an item worth 10k each time you do it. When every third goblin gives you about 500 bucks, that's gotten me to walk back to town even when I'm poisoned and at 40% max hp.

When you get hurt while travelling, you can only recover a portion of the damage. Your max health is lowered whenever you get injured, eventually meaning that if you get knocked around a lot and fail to dodge/deflect enemies, or fall into traps a bunch, then you'll have to deal with your max health dropping lower and lower, making it more likely for you to be one-shot by a goblin getting lucky and powerbombing you over a cliff. There are again consumables that help with this - limited in supply, a reward for thorough exploration - but your party members also suffer attrition, and you can only carry so much before you need to return to an inn or one of your homes and deposit all the crap you've picked up. Your limited health pool can also be restored at your home/an inn, and any fatalities among your party can be replaced here. You can camp out in the wilderness using camping kits - they're even reusable! - but if you get unlucky monsters will attack the campsite as you sleep, and they may even destroy your tent, meaning you can't recover health. Camping kits are heavy, and wilderness campsites don't have anywhere for you to stash all your assorted griffin perineums and cyclops dongliz.

So you actually plan expeditions into the wilderness. You mark routes that'll take you into unknown terrain, but make sure that you know how to get to a safe place - be that one of the rare towns or an accessible campsite. You often find yourself far away from any kind of safety, knowing that the game only has one save, and there's something big knocking over trees down in that forested grove that you might actually want to avoid, since you're at about 70% and while that may be a cyclops that you're well equipped to knock out, it could also be a drake, or something worse. You actually engage with all the systems, really paying attention to the world around you - which also means you're more likely to spot that sneakily hidden chest or seeker's token tucked away, which rewards you and feeds into the loop. It's incredibly good if you want an RPG that makes the journey the most compelling part - the combat's fantastic, and I like the world and story, but the exploration is what has really drawn me in to this one.

However, they removed Magic Knight and the replacement tank class for the main character sucks poo poo, so it's a bad game and you shouldn't play it.

it my perfect game.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 14:24

MeatwadIsGod: Sep 30, 2004; Foretold by Gyromancy

Real hurthling! posted:

it my perfect game.

It's so drat good. Once it gets its own version of Dark Arisen with a big dungeon and more difficulty settings it'll be even better.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 14:32

Real hurthling!: Sep 11, 2001

MeatwadIsGod posted:

It's so drat good. Once it gets its own version of Dark Arisen with a big dungeon and more difficulty settings it'll be even better.

yeah my only criticism so far is the second half of the game kinda feels unfinished with most of the south area being just a huge monster clusterfuck with no quests to pick up but also, i kinda like fighting the huge monster clusterfuck

# ? Apr 20, 2024 14:42

MeatwadIsGod: Sep 30, 2004; Foretold by Gyromancy

Real hurthling! posted:

yeah my only criticism so far is the second half of the game kinda feels unfinished with most of the south area being just a huge monster clusterfuck with no quests to pick up but also, i kinda like fighting the huge monster clusterfuck

Yeah Battahl is kind of a mess but it also has stuff like Drabnir's Grotto and the Dragon's Breath Tower which were probably my favorite areas in the entire game. I'm guessing they really got squeezed for time when that part of the main quest was being finalized.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 14:45

Cuttlefush: Jan 15, 2014; Gleichheit soll gedeihen

evilmiera posted:

Or in my case it got enjoyable once I did the main quest to actually learn how to use it. Several dozen hours after I had been ignoring the main quest that is.

wonder how many people just didnt give bernard the time of day. they deserve what they get

# ? Apr 20, 2024 14:46

Real hurthling!: Sep 11, 2001

MeatwadIsGod posted:

Yeah Battahl is kind of a mess but it also has stuff like Drabnir's Grotto and the Dragon's Breath Tower which were probably my favorite areas in the entire game. I'm guessing they really got squeezed for time when that part of the main quest was being finalized.

im about to enter the grotto now. then kick off the end game. i scoured the entire map and did everything else already except volcanic island

plan is to pick up the magic archer on volcanic island and get all their pawn buff augments on the way to the true ending and then play ng+ as trickster.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 14:50

Jibs Monteef: Dec 13, 2009

Real hurthling! posted:

im about to enter the grotto now. then kick off the end game. i scoured the entire map and did everything else already except volcanic island

plan is to pick up the magic archer on volcanic island and get all their pawn buff augments on the way to the true ending and then play ng+ as trickster.

I'm a little ways past that, on the volcanic island, and I think I'd like trickster a lot more if you weren't hard locked into relying on your pawns and throwing baddies to do any damage at all. Like, I get that the censer smoke is meant to misdirect and not hurt a goblin, but if I smash a metal ball on a chain into a beastie it should do more than zero damage. That said, I have the brain damage where if any of my classes aren't maxed out I have to play them instead of the ones I really like, so it's trickster until I get some new ones.

I do like all the illusions and murderbuffs and stuff, they just don't seem terribly... practical? effective? if your pawns get jammed up somewhere behind a rock and the monster fiesta in these southern parts just chain-juggles you into a lake.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 14:58

Augus: Mar 9, 2015

Real hurthling! posted:

yeah my only criticism so far is the second half of the game kinda feels unfinished with most of the south area being just a huge monster clusterfuck with no quests to pick up but also, i kinda like fighting the huge monster clusterfuck

it was a big letdown when the big tower that was built up from the beginning of the game wasn�t an actual dungeon, you just take an elevator straight to the top.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 15:49

External Organs: Mar 3, 2006; One time i prank called a bear buildin workshop and said I wanted my mamaws ashes put in a teddy from where she loved them things so well... The woman on the phone did not skip a beat. She just said, "Brang her on down here. We've did it before."

Real hurthling! posted:

it my perfect game.

I beat my first griffin and golem last night, it was loving cool and fun.

I am wondering if I'm spending too much time in the starting area though. I'm almost level 30 and basically always have Vermund less than a days travel away. Just been plinking along with quests.

I do think it might be time to set myself up for a longer journey south, though. Maybe tonight.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 15:49

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

drat so many people are playing modded FO4 that it's DDOSing Nexus

# ? Apr 20, 2024 16:29

Buck Wildman: Mar 30, 2010; I am Metango, Galactic Governor

I feel bad for so many folks experiencing nexus content for the first time

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:11

Al!: Apr 2, 2010

gradenko_2000 posted:

drat so many people are playing modded FO4 that it's DDOSing Nexus

100,000s of thousands of downloads for guts who are going to spend hours installing mods to play for maybe 4 hours, ftw

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:15

Pepe Silvia Browne: Jan 1, 2007

Al! posted:

100,000s of thousands of downloads for guts who are going to spend hours installing mods to play for maybe 4 hours, ftw

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:17

Buck Wildman: Mar 30, 2010; I am Metango, Galactic Governor

Al! posted:

100,000s of thousands of downloads for guts who are going to spend hours installing mods to play for maybe 4 hours, ftw

sounds awesome

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:25

Blame Pyrrhus: May 6, 2003; Me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.; Pillbug

Pulcinella posted:

From Software's technical shortcomings claim another victim. Every indie developer and most AAA devs think they can just make their own soulslike just because "From's games don't have the most advanced graphics, have performance problems, and they reuse assets so it can't be that hard!" They don't realize that that From has some of the best level design in the entire industry and they polish their level and combat encounter designs to a mirror shine. The core of the games are the level designs and how the player overcomes the combat encounters and stage hazards within those levels. Its why the Chalice dungeons aren't very good and why just having a dodge roll doesn't mean your game is a good soulslike, or even a soulslike at all. Also the combat really relies on the specific animations and values From uses for things like attack ranges, attack speed, how much an animation moves your character forward, etc. You can't just fudge it, they need to be very finely tuned. Otherwise you get stuff like Steel Rising where the developers think soulslike combat is clunkier than it actually is and the fastest 1-handed weapon in Steel Rising is only about as fast as the slowest 2-handed Berserk sword in one of From's games.

Sorry for the rant. "Level design is important and should be good" is my dumb gamer pet issue and hill to die on and I am annoyed by people thinking four enemies in a square room is a soulslike just because there is a dodge roll and enemies telegraph their attacks from a mile away.

Fromsoft level design is so good you never need a map. I've never once thought "sheesh I wish I had a map" because around every corner is a unique and memorable scene. DS2, despite one of my favs, probably had the the worst level design in that aspect, but it was still miles ahead of any other wannabe.

Boring "square room -> hallway -> another square room" design is why I didn't make it past the first area in Lies of P. There are stairwells that remind me of the first time I was building quake levels in the 90s. It occurred to me that P, as well as a lot of souls likes, have similar level design to the PS2 Castlevania games.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:27

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

gradenko_2000 posted:

drat so many people are playing modded FO4 that it's DDOSing Nexus

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:34

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

Al! posted:

100,000s of thousands of downloads for guts who are going to spend hours installing mods to play for maybe 4 hours, ftw

Best part of playing a Bethesda game.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:38

World War Mammories: Aug 25, 2006

Al! posted:

100,000s of thousands of downloads for guts who are going to spend hours installing mods to play for maybe 4 hours, ftw

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:41

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Blame Pyrrhus posted:

Fromsoft level design is so good you never need a map. I've never once thought "sheesh I wish I had a map" because around every corner is a unique and memorable scene. DS2, despite one of my favs, probably had the the worst level design in that aspect, but it was still miles ahead of any other wannabe.

Boring "square room -> hallway -> another square room" design is why I didn't make it past the first area in Lies of P. There are stairwells that remind me of the first time I was building quake levels in the 90s. It occurred to me that P, as well as a lot of souls likes, have similar level design to the PS2 Castlevania games.

The level design was, imho, the correct thing to scale back on with their limited budget, time, and experience. It's a much more linear experience, but it's a very quality one, lovingly made and with lots of little stuff like how you can hear different stuff at windows like gasping and ominous dragging sounds if you listen for it and turn the music off. I think it would've been a worse game if they had tried to nail the level design but scaled back the other interesting stuff they did like the bonkers premise and weapon crafting and combat generally. If they'd done that I don't think I would've been sold, now I just hope they do something bigger with the success of the base game with the equally bonkers premised DLC hooks

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:42

Al!: Apr 2, 2010

Buck Wildman posted:

sounds awesome

yeah its legit fun

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:45

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Got Morrowind running on my gaming flash drive now, complete with OpenMW. Technology really is wonderful. I haven't done a full playthrough since I was a wee lad and before the end of the year I'd like to complete it again as an older, wiser fat slob, but this time I'm going to be a rebel and do blunt weapons instead of long blade

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:50

Pepe Silvia Browne: Jan 1, 2007

Buck Wildman posted:

sounds awesome

that's what ftw means

# ? Apr 20, 2024 17:55

Tankbuster: Oct 1, 2021

Al! posted:

100,000s of thousands of downloads for guts who are going to spend hours installing mods to play for maybe 4 hours, ftw

That sounds fun.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 18:38

Al!: Apr 2, 2010

modding morrowind or fallout for me is kind the light version of installing unreal and creating a floating, glowing, shrieking orb for my own amusement then not touching it again for another 4 years

# ? Apr 20, 2024 18:54

Popy: Feb 19, 2008

the only mod l looked for when playing FO4 was a 40k space marine power armor mod but it didnt exist i felt let down by my fellow nerds, but this was not long after release i bet they exist now.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 19:04

Redezga: Dec 14, 2006

Fallout 4 is perfect and needs no mods.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 19:12

BONGHITZ: Jan 1, 1970

mods detract from Todd�s vision

# ? Apr 20, 2024 20:13

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Popy posted:

the only mod l looked for when playing FO4 was a 40k space marine power armor mod but it didnt exist i felt let down by my fellow nerds, but this was not long after release i bet they exist now.

Took the nerds a bunch of time to get it painted

# ? Apr 20, 2024 20:16

External Organs: Mar 3, 2006; One time i prank called a bear buildin workshop and said I wanted my mamaws ashes put in a teddy from where she loved them things so well... The woman on the phone did not skip a beat. She just said, "Brang her on down here. We've did it before."

BONGHITZ posted:

mods detract from Todd’s vision

That's right. He's too short to see giant knockers.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 20:18

RealityWarCriminal: Aug 10, 2016; Can't post for 3 hours!

new dota event is out and it's really good. lot of people are coming back for it. unranked has been very chill. never fight uphill without aegis, me boys.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 20:50