Pillars of Eternity tries to be helpful and informative by giving you all the calculations and stuff laid bare, including power durations down to the hundredth of a second for all those times you're playing with a god durned stopwatch at your desk, but neglects to explain what any of it means, and still, twenty years after the first Infinity Engine game came out, fills the screen with bright glowing spell effects so when you pause there is every chance you won't even be able to tell who is doing what to whom
PoE also neglects to clarify how buffs stacks, which modals can be activated at the same time, and has some other weird inconsistencies buried in all the stats you can look at
Deadfire development aims to streamline all these problems, so we'll see how that turns out - I'm already liking the changes they've made to modals (as in tying most of them to weapon proficiencies) so we'll see
not sure if I'm gonna keep my character a rogue for PoE or try something different
maybe multiclass as a rogue and either a Paladin, Fighter, Monk, or Barbarian
depends on how committed I am to being Guns McKenzie
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cambridge dictionary says that "come in useful" is a UK expression, so maybe that's why you guys haven't heard of it? (They also claim that "come in handy" is American English, for what it's worth)
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
crysis in 4k still holds up really well for a 10 year old game
it looks very good
controls kinda weirdly, but it has a charm and a nice complexity to its level design without always being really obvious for what is the "correct" path
Yeah I got the DLCs for PoE but never played them (steak sale? Backer tier?) And since I have about no recollection if the entire story thought I may replay it.
So I went on the forums for builds, and came across a shout barbarian build that yells opponents accuracy so low that they can't touch you and reading up on it, it's crazy what stacks in that game.
I played the first dungeon and immediately remembered my #1 dislike: Why am I fighting the same fight 10 times in a row.
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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LasbrookIt takes a lot to make a stewWhen it comes to me and youRegistered Userregular
edited April 2018
I'm clearing out browser tabs, which includes some past humble bundles. Would anyone like these games?
Day of the Tentacle
Nuclear Throne
Guacamelee! Gold Edition
Hand of Fate
Grim Gandango
Day of the Tentacle again
cambridge dictionary says that "come in useful" is a UK expression, so maybe that's why you guys haven't heard of it? (They also claim that "come in handy" is American English, for what it's worth)
it didn't occur to me that "come in useful" sounded strange in american english until it was pointed out but yeah the expression I'd use would be "come in handy"
which would actually be even better for the dick-collecting
+1
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Come in handy is the more widely used colloquialism here, but I think if someone said "come in useful" to me I wouldn't really think twice about it?
also i want to clarify that when i made my post i shorthanded and didn't say "the common american usage is this and that's why it's sounding weird to people" but i want to caveat that i am a big proponent of people not calling regional idioms and dialects etc wrong
it is very interesting to hear that it is a phrase that is used around the world. I thought it really sounded like a translation error because it's just a bit "off", like using an adverb in place of an adjective while still being perfectly understandable, but it's interesting to hear that it sounds perfectly fine and common to others.
I really love this character. She shoots a massive blunderbuss named Leadspitter and then beats you up with your own soul. Coool.
Also, I have no idea what is going on with the story, but convienently I'm right at the level to go to the White March which are an encapsulated seperate thing from the main campaign (which is a point of contention in reviews)... so I just did that. I guess I still won't have any idea whats going on when I finish and come back. But hey.
I really love this character. She shoots a massive blunderbuss named Leadspitter and then beats you up with your own soul. Coool.
Also, I have no idea what is going on with the story, but convienently I'm right at the level to go to the White March which are an encapsulated seperate thing from the main campaign (which is a point of contention in reviews)... so I just did that. I guess I still won't have any idea whats going on when I finish and come back. But hey.
The White March isn't like, directly related to the main campaign but it's not Journey to Throwaway Town either. The story exists independently of the main Pillars story but adds a lot of needed context to some major setting and plot elements that I think would have seemed to come from kind of out of nowhere if I had just plowed through Pillars before the expansion came out (my first two stabs at the game saw me tap out at the start of act 3).
I really enjoyed the story and setting stuff that White March added to the game
A lot of the stuff pertaining to the final arc was super fascinating, especially given my knowledge of things from when I first played through the game. Enhanced a lot of the mystique of the setting for me and tied a bunch of stuff together
also White March ends with
you basically having a philosophical argument with the partial embodiments of a dead deity that is kinda being reborn and holy heck it felt good to change their minds
there are a lot of quirks of CRPGs that just feel nonsensical to me. That one runs into issues I have with the mechanics (freedom of movement) intersecting with the narrative*
When you first arrive, the 'act intro' text claims blizzards and hazards abounded on the road up, but after that you can flit back and forth as you please. I mean, I don't think there should be a 0.025% chance for a party member to suffer even a wound, let alone potentially dying, but ...
I get that the whole thing is necessary for a lot of reasons, but it leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth.
*
slowly being driven insane by the voices in your head, you take ... a few months to travel up north?
Tamin on
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
The main plot of PoE is definitely one of those that makes the inevitable (and arguably requisite) pissing around that you do feel kind of jarring.
+3
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Dwarf fortress is adding a persistent memory system:
“The numbers might change, but the current system allows for eight short-term memories, which are the emotion+event combinations that have had the highest positive or negative impact on the dwarf over the last year (on a rolling basis). Every so often a dwarf can “remember/relive/dwell upon” the memory, if their personality leans toward the given emotion (positive or negative), and receive an additional stress change. Once a year passes, a short-term memory can be saved to one of eight long-term memory slots (if it is stronger than the current memories), or else it is forgotten. Long-term memories periodically return to affect the dwarf forever, until they are overwritten.”
“It’ll take some player testing in longer, real forts to see if various parameters need to be adjusted, but initial testing showed differences from the previous behaviour. Dropping a boulder on somebody and then leaving my dwarves unattended outside with nothing to do for a year resulted in tantrums, depression and oblivious wandering, so it seems to be working. When the first long-term memories were stored for one dwarf, it was horror at seeing their lover die, grief at their lover being dead, and fright at being haunted by their dead lover, with proper impact values not likely to be overwritten any time soon, certainly not by the old culprits of seeing nice furniture and completing jobs, though those still decrease stress a little bit day-to-day when experienced and are thus good to have in a dwarf’s life.”
The base construction component contributed to PoE's time-elapsing weirdness.
"I need to get over to Twin Elms, but it's a 2 day journey and my herb garden will be finished in 3 hours. I guess I'd better find something to do here for a little while longer so I'm not wasting building time for my hedge maze."
Honestly the thing about a lot of time-sensitive things in CRPGs is that you gotta make what you want of them
It's hard to add time sensitive things AND a semi-open world with explorable areas in such a way that will satisfy everyone, so sometimes it's easiest to just have both and allow players the choice of how they want things to play out, personally.
For me in a lot of these games I go off exploring when I feel like my character has a need to get stronger, or acquire more equipment, spells, reputation, allies etc. Sometimes just rushing after something because it feels urgent would be the foolhardy choice.
But yea the whole going back and forth between White March and the regular PoE area did feel a tad too much, so I just dealt with the White March story in one go and then returned to the main story. Also the stronghold was... Not as well thought out as it could've been and I'm pretty sure they've publicly reflected on that too.
Really the reason I like the PoE story so much is because it resonates really strongly with a lot of the companions, and the companions are frequently my favourite parts of CRPGs so it just enhanced something I was already very enamoured with.
I downloaded and played Stellaris for the first time yesterday, then soon after I lost my first game.
I requested to be some big ol' alien race's protectorate, and eventually graduated to vassal. (Hint: Don't do this! There was literally zero benefit except for faster research!) Before I knew it, the game ended and said I'd been defeated, presumably because my overlord was way too powerful and they said I couldn't be independent because I was too helpless.
I'm very bad at strategy games. I like the part about building space society though.
I'm onto Siege Of Dragonspear now. It's clearly made with a lot of love, but some of the writing and design is not good. More often than not, I'll clear a dungeon and end up with a bunch of mystery objects, then have to look up a walkthrough to see where I was supposed to find the quest giver who needs them. There's also a ton of hunt the pixel bullshit.
The infamous trans cleric is honestly pretty embarrassingly badly written. It's tokenist to the extreme, she exists purely to immediately tell you that she's trans and has no other character traits or purpose in the plot. She's also voiced by what I'm pretty sure is a cis lady trying to do a deep voice which seems a little offensive, I don't know. The game could use a good cleric (or a thief, please god a thief), why not make her a party member, fill out her plot and do the job properly? They had the energy to fill out the character of (ugh) Safana, a character who rivals Sera as my least favourite RPG character of all time but who is mandatory in my team because there are no other thieves.
Safana's writing in this game is excruciating.
This is just all the negative stuff though, mostly it's pretty good Baldur's Gate
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Pillars of Eternity is a weird one for me.
I think that the main plot is good, but there's definitely some format clash. I think another game could easily tell the main storyline of PoE better, if it were to tell it in isolation (and possibly not in the style of the CRPG, so as to be more straightforward).
But I also think that a number of the side plots are very good. Furthermore, I think a lot of side plots are very good in specific relation to the main storyline - they speak to a fully realized world, where other things are happening for similar reasons to what's happening with you. And that feels like a rare thing to me - so many other CRPGs have side plots that are just completely unconnected from what you're doing, that don't give you any further context or anything.
And you really couldn't tell many of those stories without the main plot.
Yeah I started playing BG:EE again on the weekend after all the talk in here just stoked a fire inside me to finally play all of the EE and SoD.
I decided to do an evil party since I never actually did one. Currently have my protag (trying out this famous kensai/mage build), Kagain, Dorn, Baeloth (subbed Edwin out for him) Vicona and Safana
and uh yeah Safana is handy but her dialogue is... whew, not great.
I think that the main plot is good, but there's definitely some format clash. I think another game could easily tell the main storyline of PoE better, if it were to tell it in isolation (and possibly not in the style of the CRPG, so as to be more straightforward).
But I also think that a number of the side plots are very good. Furthermore, I think a lot of side plots are very good in specific relation to the main storyline - they speak to a fully realized world, where other things are happening for similar reasons to what's happening with you. And that feels like a rare thing to me - so many other CRPGs have side plots that are just completely unconnected from what you're doing, that don't give you any further context or anything.
And you really couldn't tell many of those stories without the main plot.
The interesting thing about the PoE main story is that it's kind of a neat spin on the whole journey of self-discovery thing. Except in this case it literally is (your past life) and it's also integral to your future sanity (being awoken and a Watcher).
And that simple facet of your character ties you into the world with such strength and fluidity that even the little side stories sometimes end up feeling quite personal- because your nature as a watcher or an awoken or both relates to it.
I think the places PoE gets a bit muddier are the whole stronghold thing, and maybe they push you to get embroiled in local politics a bit harder than feels right.
But all the stuff with Lady Webb and trying to find more information about your nemesis give a good reason for the more sandbox-y portion of the game, I feel.
also Lady Webb is the fucking best
+1
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Hey do we know what the plot of PoE2 is?
I'm just realizing that I've learned so much about like, the updates to the character creation system and the new companions and have been building all of my party in my head and all of that.
I'm just realizing that I've learned so much about like, the updates to the character creation system and the new companions and have been building all of my party in my head and all of that.
But uh, what's that game about?
Okay so (mild spoilers for PoE folks)
Eothas is reborn. He's somehow come back to life, and has come to the mortal realm again and possessed the giant Adra statue buried below your stronghold. In doing so, he also stole life essence from everyone there, killing a lot of people and weakening you greatly (he stole a portion of your soul) and then for whatever reason, he's headed off into an archipelago region called Deadfire. Wanting that part of your soul back, and answers, you give chase.
Posts
i would disagree
at the very least, i would say that "come in very useful" is different to "come in useful", which still isn't all that common?
Steam // Secret Satan
the problem is that english is a complete mess of a language
PoE also neglects to clarify how buffs stacks, which modals can be activated at the same time, and has some other weird inconsistencies buried in all the stats you can look at
Deadfire development aims to streamline all these problems, so we'll see how that turns out - I'm already liking the changes they've made to modals (as in tying most of them to weapon proficiencies) so we'll see
not sure if I'm gonna keep my character a rogue for PoE or try something different
maybe multiclass as a rogue and either a Paladin, Fighter, Monk, or Barbarian
depends on how committed I am to being Guns McKenzie
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
you know
crysis in 4k still holds up really well for a 10 year old game
it looks very good
controls kinda weirdly, but it has a charm and a nice complexity to its level design without always being really obvious for what is the "correct" path
Steam // Secret Satan
So I went on the forums for builds, and came across a shout barbarian build that yells opponents accuracy so low that they can't touch you and reading up on it, it's crazy what stacks in that game.
I played the first dungeon and immediately remembered my #1 dislike: Why am I fighting the same fight 10 times in a row.
Day of the Tentacle
Nuclear Throne
Guacamelee! Gold Edition
Hand of Fate
Grim Gandango
Day of the Tentacle again
Steam
2017.
hm. In that spirit, which of your games holds the record for 'longest time between purchasing and playing'?
Probably something I haven't played yet
Get 20% off at GMG with code APRIL20
https://www.greenmangaming.com/
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
it didn't occur to me that "come in useful" sounded strange in american english until it was pointed out but yeah the expression I'd use would be "come in handy"
which would actually be even better for the dick-collecting
I dunno
Not for me, but um, my wife would be ecstatic if she could have that Stardew Valley, she's been wanting to play it for a good while.
Sorry, I just sent it to someone else who PM'd me.
Steam
Steam // Secret Satan
it makes sense so why fuss about it, right?
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
I really love this character. She shoots a massive blunderbuss named Leadspitter and then beats you up with your own soul. Coool.
Also, I have no idea what is going on with the story, but convienently I'm right at the level to go to the White March which are an encapsulated seperate thing from the main campaign (which is a point of contention in reviews)... so I just did that. I guess I still won't have any idea whats going on when I finish and come back. But hey.
The White March isn't like, directly related to the main campaign but it's not Journey to Throwaway Town either. The story exists independently of the main Pillars story but adds a lot of needed context to some major setting and plot elements that I think would have seemed to come from kind of out of nowhere if I had just plowed through Pillars before the expansion came out (my first two stabs at the game saw me tap out at the start of act 3).
A lot of the stuff pertaining to the final arc was super fascinating, especially given my knowledge of things from when I first played through the game. Enhanced a lot of the mystique of the setting for me and tied a bunch of stuff together
also White March ends with
It was certainly very convienent for me to go 'I have no idea where I am or where I'm going... off to the White March!'
But if it helps me drop back into the rest of the world too, that would be even better
there are a lot of quirks of CRPGs that just feel nonsensical to me. That one runs into issues I have with the mechanics (freedom of movement) intersecting with the narrative*
When you first arrive, the 'act intro' text claims blizzards and hazards abounded on the road up, but after that you can flit back and forth as you please. I mean, I don't think there should be a 0.025% chance for a party member to suffer even a wound, let alone potentially dying, but ...
I get that the whole thing is necessary for a lot of reasons, but it leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth.
*
Dwarf fortress is adding a persistent memory system:
“The numbers might change, but the current system allows for eight short-term memories, which are the emotion+event combinations that have had the highest positive or negative impact on the dwarf over the last year (on a rolling basis). Every so often a dwarf can “remember/relive/dwell upon” the memory, if their personality leans toward the given emotion (positive or negative), and receive an additional stress change. Once a year passes, a short-term memory can be saved to one of eight long-term memory slots (if it is stronger than the current memories), or else it is forgotten. Long-term memories periodically return to affect the dwarf forever, until they are overwritten.”
“It’ll take some player testing in longer, real forts to see if various parameters need to be adjusted, but initial testing showed differences from the previous behaviour. Dropping a boulder on somebody and then leaving my dwarves unattended outside with nothing to do for a year resulted in tantrums, depression and oblivious wandering, so it seems to be working. When the first long-term memories were stored for one dwarf, it was horror at seeing their lover die, grief at their lover being dead, and fright at being haunted by their dead lover, with proper impact values not likely to be overwritten any time soon, certainly not by the old culprits of seeing nice furniture and completing jobs, though those still decrease stress a little bit day-to-day when experienced and are thus good to have in a dwarf’s life.”
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/04/16/dwarf-fortress-dwarves-to-be-given-memories-dev-shows-no-remorse/
"I need to get over to Twin Elms, but it's a 2 day journey and my herb garden will be finished in 3 hours. I guess I'd better find something to do here for a little while longer so I'm not wasting building time for my hedge maze."
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
It's hard to add time sensitive things AND a semi-open world with explorable areas in such a way that will satisfy everyone, so sometimes it's easiest to just have both and allow players the choice of how they want things to play out, personally.
For me in a lot of these games I go off exploring when I feel like my character has a need to get stronger, or acquire more equipment, spells, reputation, allies etc. Sometimes just rushing after something because it feels urgent would be the foolhardy choice.
But yea the whole going back and forth between White March and the regular PoE area did feel a tad too much, so I just dealt with the White March story in one go and then returned to the main story. Also the stronghold was... Not as well thought out as it could've been and I'm pretty sure they've publicly reflected on that too.
Really the reason I like the PoE story so much is because it resonates really strongly with a lot of the companions, and the companions are frequently my favourite parts of CRPGs so it just enhanced something I was already very enamoured with.
I requested to be some big ol' alien race's protectorate, and eventually graduated to vassal. (Hint: Don't do this! There was literally zero benefit except for faster research!) Before I knew it, the game ended and said I'd been defeated, presumably because my overlord was way too powerful and they said I couldn't be independent because I was too helpless.
I'm very bad at strategy games. I like the part about building space society though.
The infamous trans cleric is honestly pretty embarrassingly badly written. It's tokenist to the extreme, she exists purely to immediately tell you that she's trans and has no other character traits or purpose in the plot. She's also voiced by what I'm pretty sure is a cis lady trying to do a deep voice which seems a little offensive, I don't know. The game could use a good cleric (or a thief, please god a thief), why not make her a party member, fill out her plot and do the job properly? They had the energy to fill out the character of (ugh) Safana, a character who rivals Sera as my least favourite RPG character of all time but who is mandatory in my team because there are no other thieves.
Safana's writing in this game is excruciating.
This is just all the negative stuff though, mostly it's pretty good Baldur's Gate
I think that the main plot is good, but there's definitely some format clash. I think another game could easily tell the main storyline of PoE better, if it were to tell it in isolation (and possibly not in the style of the CRPG, so as to be more straightforward).
But I also think that a number of the side plots are very good. Furthermore, I think a lot of side plots are very good in specific relation to the main storyline - they speak to a fully realized world, where other things are happening for similar reasons to what's happening with you. And that feels like a rare thing to me - so many other CRPGs have side plots that are just completely unconnected from what you're doing, that don't give you any further context or anything.
And you really couldn't tell many of those stories without the main plot.
I decided to do an evil party since I never actually did one. Currently have my protag (trying out this famous kensai/mage build), Kagain, Dorn, Baeloth (subbed Edwin out for him) Vicona and Safana
and uh yeah Safana is handy but her dialogue is... whew, not great.
The interesting thing about the PoE main story is that it's kind of a neat spin on the whole journey of self-discovery thing. Except in this case it literally is (your past life) and it's also integral to your future sanity (being awoken and a Watcher).
And that simple facet of your character ties you into the world with such strength and fluidity that even the little side stories sometimes end up feeling quite personal- because your nature as a watcher or an awoken or both relates to it.
I think the places PoE gets a bit muddier are the whole stronghold thing, and maybe they push you to get embroiled in local politics a bit harder than feels right.
But all the stuff with Lady Webb and trying to find more information about your nemesis give a good reason for the more sandbox-y portion of the game, I feel.
also Lady Webb is the fucking best
I'm just realizing that I've learned so much about like, the updates to the character creation system and the new companions and have been building all of my party in my head and all of that.
But uh, what's that game about?
Okay so (mild spoilers for PoE folks)