Get your game on!

Nightflyer · November 16, 2020, 1:31am

It’s felt like a real grind in Shadow of Death lately, because at this point I need a lot of resources to level up new gear and it feels like progress is so slow. But I’m not kvetching-- I had a great day today!

My second-best* character, my melee tank, needed to fight 5 rounds in Arena for a Daily Quest. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it, since he’d already made it to Champion level and that’s where I struggle. To my surprise, I won all five rounds, including a match against a player with nearly twice my strength! I’ve beaten fighters bigger than me before, but this is probably my biggest upset so far.

My opponent:

All that purple that you see is Ultimate gear, the strongest in the game.

Here’s my lovely tank, Raventhorn:

Yes, the pic is edited, but only to paste in the stats Detail panel. All but one of my gear is Legendary (red), the second-best equipment. You can’t see my Costume gear in this pic, but that’s Legendary too. (AFAIK the only way to get Ultimate costumes is to buy them, and I don’t have the spare cash to do it yet.)

As you can see, I was pretty much thoroughly outclassed… but I still won!

Edited to add: this doesn’t include all the relevant numbers, but it gives you some idea. I also put more resources into Skill points and Mastery than they did, which might have evened the odds.

(I have video, if there’s any interest.)

* It’s debatable which character is my “best” fighter. My ranged mage’s Power stat (indicated by the crossed Swords, some sort of synthesis of all the other numbers) is higher than my melee tank, so technically she’s the strongest. But the tank outranks her in many areas, and somehow he feels stronger than my ranged mage does during play, especially in the Arena. (That may change with the next update, when the mage’s skill levels get adjusted to fix what got broken in a previous patch, so we’ll see.)

My ranged mage, for comparison:

ficuswhisperer · November 17, 2020, 6:53am

Nonentity · November 17, 2020, 2:01pm

I suppose you’ll tell us the time period also wasn’t entirely run by opposing groups of assassins either?!?

ficuswhisperer · November 21, 2020, 2:05am

I’m an old school Sega fanboy, and I didn’t even know this was a thing.

Some fascinating reverse engineering here.

Nonentity · November 21, 2020, 2:40am

I’ve gotten sucked back into No Man’s Sky a bit lately…

Multiplayer is… still finicky. But there have been a lot of interesting updates.

Unfortunately, updates have also caused me some issues. When I logged in after a long time away, the beautiful, calm paradise planet I had set up base on had transformed into a “worm-ridden” planet with weird ugly plant life everywhere. Worse, when I tried to play multiplayer with someone else, every planet I’d already explored had entirely different weather for me than for them… that base planet was still completely storm-free for me, but they were beset by constant horrible storms that made it useless to stick around. We ended up having to explore in entirely fresh areas before we started seeing the same thing.

Still, once that issue was worked around, it’s been a nice way to get some human interaction while doing precautionary isolations. It’s also helpful that I’m able to run it on my laptop… the hardware’s fairly recent, but since the game released in 2016 it’s had some time for minimum specs to age a bit.

ficuswhisperer · November 21, 2020, 11:28pm

I fucking love the Yakuza series and it’s been an obsession of mine this year. As typical for most any huge and sprawling game series, it can have some troubling aspects. But as a whole, it seems to do a lot more right than it does wrong when it comes to representation of marginalized groups. (And in the remasters, some of the troubling parts have been contextualized, re-written, or excised completely.)

ficuswhisperer · November 22, 2020, 8:05pm

I spent untold dozens of hours playing this on the PS2 and can’t wait to dive back into it. I didn’t even realize this was coming out.

MalevolentPixy · November 22, 2020, 8:16pm

I read PS5 and the jealousy hit.

I missed pre-order, and now dogs know when I can actually get hold of one. Especially since I am a human who can’t code themselves a bot to check store sites a million times a day to see when they change from “sold out” to “in stock”.

And fuck predatory resellers.

ficuswhisperer · November 22, 2020, 8:17pm

In case it’s not clear why this is such an impressive feat, here’s a great article on the game they were playing:

ficuswhisperer · November 22, 2020, 8:30pm

I hear ya.

I lucked out and was able to get an Xbox Series X on pre-order day but it was an utter shit show. I’m in no hurry to get a PS5 right now especially with so much stuff in my PS4 queue. On my PS4, Yakuza 4, 5, 6, Persona 5 Royal, Death Stranding, and Last of Us Part 2 are all mocking me, and none of them are short games. With my limited amount of gaming time these days that’s a years worth of backlog as it stands. I might hold out for a little while in the hope of an all black or less ginormous model in the future.

This doesn’t count the other games in my Xbox backlog like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (which I’m currently playing), Yakuza 7 (which I really want to play but I might hold out on until I get through 4-6 to avoid any spoilers), and the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077.

Fuck, I need a vacation just so I can get through all the video games I want to play.

MalevolentPixy · November 22, 2020, 8:56pm

I got lucky with my Switch, and I know it’s just a matter of patience.

The main reason I want a PS5 is it’s backwards compatible with the 4, so I don’t have to haul out an old console to keep playing favourite games, but will have the hardware for the sequels. But I just have to be patient.

And hope that M$ acquisition of Bethesda doesn’t mean that it’s going to turn those franchises into PC/XBox exclusives. I don’t mind delayed launch, but taking full franchises away just for being on a rival console would be the kind of shitty (and stupid) move M$ would make to sell more hardware.

ficuswhisperer · November 22, 2020, 9:08pm

I doubt it. Getting software into as many platforms as possible makes a lot more money than forced exclusivity. Seems to me like Microsoft is using Game Pass as the big console differentiator here.

MalevolentPixy · November 22, 2020, 9:36pm

Fingers crossed.

I am still playing Fallout 4… easy mode when I don’t want my brain to bother and just want to splatter things, Survival when I need a challenge. As long and 5 (and ES5) stay single player, I am going to want them.

And I don’t want to have to buy one of everything. Switch was mostly because of the portability factor, especially for things that require a lot of waiting around and doing nothing (non plague laundry, I am looking at you).

Yes, the smart move is wide distribution. Quasi monopolies aren’t always smart.

MarjaE · November 26, 2020, 5:42pm

So I can’t stand the D20 system. It’s very complex and not very realistic. But there are a lot of classic adventure paths written for PF and DnD. I’ve thought of converting to SW or even TinyD6…

https://www.peginc.com/big-surprise-for-savage-worlds-announcement-thanksgiving/

Now Savage Pathfinder is coming out next year.

MalevolentPixy · December 1, 2020, 9:23pm

TIL: There is an actual, real life defense contractor called General Atomics.

How the Fallout people have been allowed to get away with their version (since the RL one has been around since 1955), is either sheer DGAF from the real one, or a disturbing example of just how deep the military industrial complex is embedded.

DaakSyde · December 6, 2020, 9:07am

I’ve been playing World of Tanks for 9 years now (got my 9-year bonus loot a few days ago). One thing I’d like to call out about it is the attention to detail they put in. After 9 years, I just got my first-ever posthumous kill. And got credit and a medal for it (An Eye-For-An-Eye, or something like that).

I was deep in enemy territory, had taken a few hits, and jumped a hill only to see a tank that I probably would have lost against in a fair fight. It was right on the edge of the water though. I slammed into it at full-speed, destroying my own tank instantly from ramming it, but also injuring all of that tank’s crewmen (so they couldn’t repair) and knocking out its tracks. Momentum carried us both into the water. The other tank, being unable to move, was destroyed about a minute later due to drowning.

As a programmer, I can appreciate how much went into connecting those events. It’s easy to make a tank immobile if the tracks take damage. It’s easy to make it harder to repair damage if the crew is stunned/injured. And it’s easy to make a tank destroyed if it spends too long underwater. But to know that all of that happened due to a collision that occurred like 3600 frames ago and credit it properly, that’s not easy.

Tonight was just another fun run, where I got deep behind enemy lines and knocked out one of their artillery units while keeping it between me and their defending tank-destroyer (which could easily have knocked me out if it could’ve gotten a shot without hitting their own artillery), then circled around knocking out the TD and also a light tank that came running back to try to help them defend. Meanwhile the rest of my team took out the rest of theirs.

And that kinda reveals my tactics. Run deep, try to distract about a third of the enemy team, so that my team has a 3:2 advantage, knock out some of their support units, and disrupt them from behind so that even the ones I’m not engaged with get distracted. When it works, it’s awesome.

infundibulum · December 7, 2020, 12:15am

I’m playing the end of the Bloodmoon expansion of Morrowind and boy is it hard. I love the story, but the mechanics of this expansion are a little goofy.

Nonentity · December 29, 2020, 5:31am

Yep, I’m on another puzzle game. Currently on sale in the Steam winter sale. You’re a little stick-figure, crossing back and forth between street signs that can be connected in multiple ways between doors and ladders.

Very interesting so far, neat mechanic of shifting around the play area to get a solution. Some of the reviews I’ve seen say it’s pretty short… since I’m somewhere inside it I can’t tell yet. It’s had some spots where it took me a bit (and a break away from the game) to wrap my head around what was wanted so I can’t complain about it so far.

I’m sort of playing this to psych myself up for Superliminal, which I got as a gift this year. Looks like an extremely interesting puzzle game, but also a bit of a brain-bender with non-euclidian gameplay. Doesn’t help that I’ve also seen a small part of a speedrun that ends up using exploits to jump outside of the map and so forth…

infundibulum · December 31, 2020, 1:35am

I just finished my Morrowind playthrough. Fantastic game. I think I might go back and play Skyrim now - such a good cold weather game.

DaakSyde · December 31, 2020, 4:55am

I did mostly good about not succumbing to the Steam sale this year, just by looking at the games I haven’t played yet. But I have been wanting something new and none of the ones I have fit. So after looking at all the games on my wishlist that were on sale, I ended up picking one that’s not on sale, but still only $7.99.

It’s a strategic Cold War game influenced by Balance of Power and Twilight Struggle - the goal is to win the Cold War without triggering nuclear armageddon, gaining the most global influence via diplomacy, foreign aid, spies, supporting insurgents, coups, and controlled proxy wars, as well as the space race of course. So far I’ve only played the tutorial and one game, but I won the first game.

Seems to be just the right level of abstraction/complexity that I was looking for. Not too complicated or lengthy, but fits the “series of interesting choices” definition of game. There’s always stuff to do and you can’t do all that you want - and some of it may have repercussions. But never so much that you’re overwhelmed and can’t make a choice.

Also it’s brightly colored and all the national leaders are depicted as their countries’ animals. So that helps make it feel like play.

I got all of South Asia, a majority of East Asia, as well as the Arab League and Nato. I think on turn 40, the turn after this screenshot and final turn, I got Brazil too for a majority in South America. Red had a lot more earlier, but by carefully playing the escalation standoffs, the AI lost a lot. I lost Canada and Spain and a few other countries, but made up for it well enough. The Middle East and Southeast Asia were a tough struggle, and things in Africa kept flip-flopping, especially toward the end. But in the end I was 1-4 points from instant victory while the USSR had zero points left.
Still haven’t got the hang of spies and counter-intelligence. I only had one left while the AI still had all their spies.

Next game to play as the Soviets.