Author Topic: What digital games are you playing?  (Read 36032 times)

Jubal

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #15 on: September 23, 2020, 10:12:39 PM »
Duly completed the game. Mostly got the endings I wanted with the one glaring exception of getting quite a bad result for Sagani, who given she was about my favourite NPC was a bit of a bugger to say the least. But having looked it up, it was kind of hard to reconcile the ways to get better outcomes with the sort of character I was trying to play :/
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DeepCandle Games

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #16 on: September 24, 2020, 07:38:46 AM »
I played some Dawn Of War with a friend recently, great experience

I still hold the same criticism of the game series not having co-op campaigns in the first set of expansions but otherwise terrific!
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Phoenixguard09

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #17 on: September 24, 2020, 03:44:08 PM »
Bought a  brand new gaming laptop a few months back. Been nothing but trouble. Thankfully it is under warranty and I am getting a replacement shipped, but in tried and tested fashion, my technology curse has struck once more.

Was having a lot of fun playing Warhammer Total War and The Isle, in amidst inarticulate rage as the machine would freeze and crash intermittently.

EDIT* Baragon, the original Dawn of War, and specifically the Dark Crusade expansion, was the high point of the series for me. Remains one of my favourite games.

Also my first foray into modding, way back in the day.
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Clockwork

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #18 on: September 25, 2020, 11:03:19 PM »
Duly completed the game. Mostly got the endings I wanted with the one glaring exception of getting quite a bad result for Sagani, who given she was about my favourite NPC was a bit of a bugger to say the least. But having looked it up, it was kind of hard to reconcile the ways to get better outcomes with the sort of character I was trying to play :/


Yeah I didn't want to say earlier as you hadn't completed it then but unforunately the Sagani quest is a bit of a let down. And I realise that's the point of it but I walked away from it going 'well that was rubbish' rather than 'huh, yeah I guess that's life'. Also the Hiravis quest is weird and grieving mother is all round bad imo.

As you say, hiring randomers has no impact on the game whatsoever, aside from the Rp you give them internally (mine were the crew of my pirate ship :D)

Pillars 2 is leagues ahead of 1 in terms of companion interaction. Unfortunately, it has it's own problems but they mostly revolve around none of the factions being likeable and the main quest being the least interesting part of the game and the pirating minigames being the most fun. It does have full turn based mode, and the spells are *so* much better, like night and day.

The Arda dragon, you can bypass it entirely by letting it possess a dragon hunter or I found it's not so bad with a large amount of crowd control spells like paralyse. I think I brought eder, aloth, durance, grieving mother and probably sagani. Eder, aloth and durance are must haves imo, regardless of player character class.

The xpac makes the fight a ton easier though as you can level higher and get more soulbound weapons which are the most powerful in the game. Some nutcases have done the whole game on max difficulty, solo, ironman. Like... Why? Why do that to yourself?

Did you meet the archwizards at all? I can't remember if that was basegame or xpac. Llengrath and Concelhaut (sp?)
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DeepCandle Games

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #19 on: September 26, 2020, 12:54:55 AM »

EDIT* Baragon, the original Dawn of War, and specifically the Dark Crusade expansion, was the high point of the series for me. Remains one of my favourite games.

Also my first foray into modding, way back in the day.

What sort of mod work did you do? is it difficult? most of the dev kit they used for it seems kind of alien for me
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dubsartur

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #20 on: September 28, 2020, 06:04:07 PM »
Athena Scalzi also has a post complaining that she feels like a lot of big commercial games today set the difficulty too high for players with a couple of hours a week to play.

Jubal

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #21 on: September 29, 2020, 11:43:18 PM »
Duly completed the game. Mostly got the endings I wanted with the one glaring exception of getting quite a bad result for Sagani, who given she was about my favourite NPC was a bit of a bugger to say the least. But having looked it up, it was kind of hard to reconcile the ways to get better outcomes with the sort of character I was trying to play :/


Yeah I didn't want to say earlier as you hadn't completed it then but unforunately the Sagani quest is a bit of a let down. And I realise that's the point of it but I walked away from it going 'well that was rubbish' rather than 'huh, yeah I guess that's life'. Also the Hiravis quest is weird and grieving mother is all round bad imo.

As you say, hiring randomers has no impact on the game whatsoever, aside from the Rp you give them internally (mine were the crew of my pirate ship :D)

Pillars 2 is leagues ahead of 1 in terms of companion interaction. Unfortunately, it has it's own problems but they mostly revolve around none of the factions being likeable and the main quest being the least interesting part of the game and the pirating minigames being the most fun. It does have full turn based mode, and the spells are *so* much better, like night and day.

The Arda dragon, you can bypass it entirely by letting it possess a dragon hunter or I found it's not so bad with a large amount of crowd control spells like paralyse. I think I brought eder, aloth, durance, grieving mother and probably sagani. Eder, aloth and durance are must haves imo, regardless of player character class.

The xpac makes the fight a ton easier though as you can level higher and get more soulbound weapons which are the most powerful in the game. Some nutcases have done the whole game on max difficulty, solo, ironman. Like... Why? Why do that to yourself?

Did you meet the archwizards at all? I can't remember if that was basegame or xpac. Llengrath and Concelhaut (sp?)

I don't think the archwizards are in the base game, I certainly didn't meet them. I did have a soulbound magic sceptre thing which was pretty cool. IIRC Adra dragon is immune to paralyse but not to petrify - I could just never get the petrify spells to land, I had two wizards chucking petrifies at it and no dice at any point. I'm sure I must have been doing some stuff pretty wrong regardless since I struggled to take down the xaurips and adragans with any speed given their healing capabilities, probably I tended to keep my party too immobile for some of the rougher fights. I do think the Adra dragon wasn't a well made fight though - I mean I get it's kind of nice to have some uber hard challenges, but that was just painful and also really overshadowed the comparative cakewalk of the final boss.

I agree Hiravias' quest was weird, the end fight of it seemed to come very much from nowhere and it seemed like a way to push you round more of the Glanfathan areas in a slightly disjointed fashion. Which is a pity, because I liked Hiravias (not least getting some interesting insight as to how my own character would be seen as a fellow Orlan). I actually sort of liked Grieving Mother, she was creepy-weird and her "quest" felt a bit "sit here and talk through the very obvious options and reach conclusions that you're railroaded towards", but the concept was interesting. Sagani's quest... I see what they were trying to do and I don't dislike the concept, I just think the execution of it needed way more build-up and clarity and actually reaction after the event? Like the let-down of the final point on the quest felt like a midpoint in her emotional arc but it's then just cut off weirdly. The let-down wasn't per se a problem (arguably pretty much all the companion quests confound expectations a bit like that - Kana, Eder, and Aloth certainly all fail to find the certainties they were looking for), but I was rattled by the fact that she had such a grim ending and the game I felt never really flagged up to me that that was even a remote likelihood.

Quote
Athena Scalzi also has a post complaining that she feels like a lot of big commercial games today set the difficulty too high for players with a couple of hours a week to play.
Got a link? I'd be interested to read. I generally don't feel or find this, though I think a lot of big commercial games do assume a lot of time commitment, I'd say the issue is less difficulty and more just speed of plot advancement, if I had just 2hrs/week on an average modern RPG I suspect it'd take me pretty much a year to get through it. Difficulty, well, most games do have an easy setting, though in some cases I think they could put in an easier one, and I often take a dislike to any game which tries to nudge you into not playing on easy.
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dubsartur

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #22 on: September 30, 2020, 06:23:29 PM »
Quote
Athena Scalzi also has a post complaining that she feels like a lot of big commercial games today set the difficulty too high for players with a couple of hours a week to play.
Got a link? I'd be interested to read. I generally don't feel or find this, though I think a lot of big commercial games do assume a lot of time commitment, I'd say the issue is less difficulty and more just speed of plot advancement, if I had just 2hrs/week on an average modern RPG I suspect it'd take me pretty much a year to get through it. Difficulty, well, most games do have an easy setting, though in some cases I think they could put in an easier one, and I often take a dislike to any game which tries to nudge you into not playing on easy.
'Twas Get Gud, Scrub.  Scalzi is one of those sites whose URL I don't save because a lot of the posts are angry American or UK political / culture war stuff, although he's certainly a lot calmer than many other people today. 

Jubal

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #23 on: October 09, 2020, 12:02:08 PM »
Been back to playing CK3 a fair bit over the past week, playing as East Anglia since the W European stuff is currently the best developed part of the game (AIUI there'll be DLCs to expand on a lot of the other areas).

Been a fairly mad game. England never formed, the Kingdom of Alba became dominant across the British mainland and I joined the Kingdom of West Francia to defend from them - which then turned into the Empire of Francia and is now the main West European power. A sub-branch of my house became Emperors at one point which gave the Empire the "Saxon Elective Monarchy" law so it's now an elector-Empire. Byzantium exploded across the map and was really hyper-dominant, including a brief period in control of Francia, reaching the Baltic, and getting close to the Gulf of Guinea - I think Songhay are still Orthodox Christians as a result in this setting. Religion has also been chaos, there was a big Cathar period though that's died down, Insular (that is, Celtic) Christianity is the major faith in the British Isles and also in southern Germany, Austria, the northern Balkans, and bits of eastern Europe. As it stands I've just finally broken through and taken the Kingdom of England for my house off the Albans (still within the Empire of Francia) and also founded my new sect of Pantoleonism which is basically "Insular christianity but we legalised witchcraft and homosexuality and made the gender laws equal".

I definitely need to write some stuff about CK3's mechanics, maybe for The Public Medievalist or something - there's a lot of good stuff there but also some really awkward bits (hyper-absolutist approaches to religion, breeding congential intelligence into families, other things which are kinda dodgy like that).
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Munz6

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #24 on: November 11, 2020, 02:47:48 PM »
I am playing now Dragon age as I am working now remotely and chilling with this game
« Last Edit: January 05, 2021, 01:26:07 PM by Glaurung »

Jubal

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #25 on: November 11, 2020, 08:29:33 PM »
Ooh, which of the Dragon Age series?
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Munz6

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #26 on: November 12, 2020, 10:51:32 AM »
dragon age 2

Jubal

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #27 on: November 12, 2020, 11:24:15 AM »
Oh cool :) I've only played Origins, I should get round to 2 at some point.

(Also, welcome to Exilian! How did you find us?)
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Munz6

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #28 on: November 13, 2020, 11:26:30 AM »
Thanks! I have found this forum on another forum :D I don't actually remember what forum it was exactly

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #29 on: November 13, 2020, 02:42:12 PM »

dragon age 2
Also welcome! I did like dragonage 2

I've been playing through "They are billions". It's a good fun RTS about zombies.

I'd been finding it frustratingly difficult on the 2nd easiest setting (the default), even a couple of levels in. So I popped it down to the easiest difficulty which I've found a better stress to enjoyment ratio! :D
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