As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
🖥️🎮 - Pizza Possum, Wildmender, Diluvian Ultra & Overpass 2 out today!
Brolo
BroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
BroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
20230807 Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain (Visual Novel Comic Book LGBTQ+ Story Rich)
20230803 Baldur's Gate 3 (RPG Choices Matter Story Rich)
20230803 WHITE ALBUM: Memories like Falling Snow (1990's Romance Visual Novel Dating Sim Cute)
20230803 Word Factori (Puzzle Programming Logic Automation Typing)
20230803 Canvas of Kings (Software Hand-drawn Procedural Generation 2D)
20230803 Project F (FPS Action PvP Shooter 3D Cyberpunk )
20230802 Golden Record Retriever (Early Access Indie Deckbuilding Board Game )
20230802 A Guidebook of Babel (Adventure Story Rich Time Manipulation Puzzl)
20230802 Axon TD: Uprising - Tower Defense (Tower Defense Real Time Tactics Strategy PvE )
20230802 Thronefall (Strategy Tower Defense City Builder Medieval )
20230802 Ninja or Die: Shadow of the Sun (Roguelite Ninja Fast-Paced Precision Platformer )
20230802 Post-Apo Builder: Prologue (Strategy Outbreak Sim Time Management 3D )
20230802 Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm (Platformer Physics Difficult Indie Atmospheric)
20230801 Out of the Mist (Platformer Physics Difficult Indie Atmospheric)
20230801 Settlemoon (Casual Simulation City Builder Idler 2D )
20230803 Baldur's Gate 3 (RPG Choices Matter Story Rich)
20230803 WHITE ALBUM: Memories like Falling Snow (1990's Romance Visual Novel Dating Sim Cute)
20230803 Word Factori (Puzzle Programming Logic Automation Typing)
20230803 Canvas of Kings (Software Hand-drawn Procedural Generation 2D)
20230803 Project F (FPS Action PvP Shooter 3D Cyberpunk )
20230802 Golden Record Retriever (Early Access Indie Deckbuilding Board Game )
20230802 A Guidebook of Babel (Adventure Story Rich Time Manipulation Puzzl)
20230802 Axon TD: Uprising - Tower Defense (Tower Defense Real Time Tactics Strategy PvE )
20230802 Thronefall (Strategy Tower Defense City Builder Medieval )
20230802 Ninja or Die: Shadow of the Sun (Roguelite Ninja Fast-Paced Precision Platformer )
20230802 Post-Apo Builder: Prologue (Strategy Outbreak Sim Time Management 3D )
20230802 Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm (Platformer Physics Difficult Indie Atmospheric)
20230801 Out of the Mist (Platformer Physics Difficult Indie Atmospheric)
20230801 Settlemoon (Casual Simulation City Builder Idler 2D )
DJ Eebs on
+2
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Hooray we no longer have two threads with Baldur's Gate in the title!
And that's the story of how I'll be getting Starfield for half off.
When I was younger I would make sure to take my time and unlock every single thing in a game, but as I've grown up I give mysf permission to just play the game and see where things land. It's very freeing.
The major recent exception to that is Elden Ring where I sunk 160 hours on my initial playthrough and scoured every goddamn inch of that world.
How does everyone around here approach games and completionist behavior? Especially for open world stuff.
I got so deep into Sekiro that eventually the only thing I had left was to get all the Achievements. It turns out that the fastest way to get the one for capping out every skill tree is to get to about the fourth cycle of NG+, go to a particular bridge with a lot of the strongest non-boss enemies in the game, perform about 14 chained backstabs in a row, and then use the idol to go back to the nearby statue and repeat. For... about an hour and a half, which is still faster than going up to the next level of NG+ and reaching the same spot.
After doing so, I stopped, looked at what that had produced-- a momentary notification and a record on my Steam account that I'd done it-- and have ever since been cured of doing something for no other reason that to put a check in a tickbox. I do something in a game if it feels meaningful to do it, particularly if there is some kind of narrative behind it. But for only the act of doing it? Never again.
On the other hand, I have also made an effort to meet games where they are-- the phrase I've used specifically in regards to BotW and TotK is "zenning out". Where the idea is less to have everything done and more to take joy in the act of doing. And likewise with, say, Disco Elysium: rather than save-scum for a desired outcome of the dice, I just took every roll as it was given to me. (It helps that that game is very intentionally designed to be played that way and "failures" lead to narratively interesting outcomes*.)
... I don't know how well that actually answers your question; I feel like this has been a diffuse ramble (including the footnote below, which I wrote before this). Short version: there is no sense in filling all the checkboxes just because they're there. These days I do only what actually feels significant (though I still fall into the trap of "But what if I need those quest rewards to be strong enough for the main plot eventually?").
* I'd meant to say this with regards to Baldur's Gate 3 and D&D-based games in general previously. In D&D, every character is a warrior. There is a <tacit assumption / general structure> that there are skills which may be used to avoid fighting if correctly executed, but failure always brings you closer to swords drawn. Which means that (especially in 3E), putting character-build resources into social, stealth, or other not-fighting abilities means weakening your focus on fighting, thereby taking a risk that, if you do fail out of avoiding combat, you then land in a situation that your character isn't optimized for and which also presents a hard stop-- you either win the fight or die, and dying ends the game. I think that's what leads to the sense that you must min-max, because the fear (whether well-founded or not) is that eventually you're going to hit a situation where the game simply will not let you proceed, despite (or even because of) your attempts to find a way around.
Disco Elysium also deserves a double shout out for 'i am absolutely not reloading anything' because failing and persisting in the story is the entire experience.
EDIT: Most games with a roleplaying aspect I try to play, more or less as myself. A good guy willing to sacrifice, but also has no problems completely demolishing 'bad guys'. Sometimes that leads to, 'Well I'm going to do this and it's certainly going to fuck things up, but I think it's the right thing to do?'
fuck you, you can't make me touch that
There needs to be a way for me to know what collectibles I'm missing in order for me to try and get them all. Not like Assassin Creed 2 (I think it was) that had all those feathers hidden but no way of marking uncollected ones on a map or even telling how many were left in an area.
I used to do this with Amazon gift cards but it was almost always broken so I'd get the coins counted and get cash back for free. I think they fixed that little loophole eventually.
AC2 had it marked by area and was therefore pretty easy. It was AC1 that was pure Hell with its 100 flags *waves hand vaguely* somewhere.
I hope you all answered FIFTY DOLLARS!
You can say a lot about gamers, God knows I have, but underestimating gamers' attention to granular details is a bad bet.
Side note, I'm years late on this but Spider-Man absolutely nails the superhero feeling that the Arkham games were always just on the cusp of, that "swinging across the city for an important mission and stopping to save someone being mugged or in a car crash". Plenty of complaints about the game but that specific vibe it just pulls off perfectly.
I think the insane requirements that the Gears games have for some of their achievements really helped to make completionism seem pointless and too much of a time sink.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Well the new port is on Switch, so in a way it is on PC as well
Yeah things that offer a gameplay enhancent or exp or something sure maybe. But like just for a cheevo? Heh fuck you I got shit to do with my life.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I had completely forgotten about Crackdown.
A game that lets me leap over tall buildings in a single bound to get better at leaping over tall buildings?
Beautiful design.
This I agree with, I wanted to explore that world, so yeah let me find all the who dads and whatsits.
Like ultimately that's what I want from an ubisoft/open world game, a reason to explore your shit. I think Fall out 4 had that for me in spades as did rdr 2, just great environmental story telling.
pleasepaypreacher.net
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yes please jesus, an indicator, or god forbid a map that is purchaseable with some kind of in game blah to just find what I'm missing.
pleasepaypreacher.net
- I absolutely love that hearts simply refill mana. Keeps the motif around. They really ought to have done so in Harmony, because once you have a spell book, there was never any reason to use the base weapon.
- Julius was horrible for me. I could not figure the fight out for love or money and he has a ridiculous amount of HP.
- Died to Chaos my first time through, and it is such a perfect touch that this gives you a full ending cutscene: Soma lounging on the throne as Julius comes in; a wine glass is thrown; and cut to black.
where's my DS collection, Konami?
this video kept getting recommended to me, with the title "now this is voice acting"
I thought it was going to be something just making fun of some cheesy line delivery
but actually... someone really acted the shit out of this
which is impressive since someone who didn't have this kind of emotional and vocal range could have made this scene go completely sideways into a bad parody territory
And not just because the portraits took a dive in quality
pleasepaypreacher.net
At minimum, the things should have distinct names/entries in whatever in game tracker instead of just being some number of things. That way instead of just knowing you have 43 out of 45 things, you know you're missing #4 and #37, or whatever which means you can use the internet to locate the last couple instead of looking at all the possible locations.
I don't have any especially poor memories of it. I really want to revisit Portrait, though, as I recall having a really great time with that. And I'd like to finish Order of Ecclesia.
I could dig out the DS and go back through them, I guess. I may. I just really don't want to go back to the tiny screens on the handheld, especially when there's no real reason the game(s) can't work fine on a PC.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
I prefer 4 pistols to zero pistols, advantage 4. (I hate the RPG games' combat systems and lack of climbing and equipment bloat and...)
This might have to do with how games are primarily a storytelling medium for me and the gameplay tends to be secondary or tertiary to that, with maybe art style coming before gameplay in terms of my priority
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
I do kinda like using achievements as an inducement to try new things as well. But yeah there are too many interesting things to do with your time to get like ‘purchased the Expensive Nonsense after spending 40 hours grinding the Good Drop’ just because it’s 0.5% completion rate.
If I am aware of them I will seek them out but if I'm not I do not give a shit.
pleasepaypreacher.net