UH was added to ZD the same time they added NG+, so I feel like that's how it was designed; they expected that you could jump in with maxed out gear and dump frost on everything before obliterating it with the arrow equivalent of a cannon.
I'd never play a brand new game in it, but I like that it has the option because I know there are players out there who'd complain if it was NG+ only (the people who complain that Souls games are too easy). They all but say 'you really don't want to do this straight away, but you do you and we won't stop you'.
Chairman Meow on
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
0
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited April 10
I always hate a difficulty setting locked behind a playthrough. It's unlikely I'll use it either way but unless the game is pretty short, there's almost zero chance I'll do the super-duper hard version on NG+. But if the game difficulty is tuned way low, at least I have the option from the start to find a difficulty that is reasonably challenging.
I literally cannot remember the last game I played where the difficulties were actually balanced. It is so fucking hard to do, and the vast majority of the time the devs just don't bother. Here, you do less damage, the enemies do more, and they have more health. Even on the two most recent Doom games where I played on the harder difficulty, it's still the same thing. And don't even get me started on the PS3 and 360 games with difficulty trophies/achievements. Fucking asshole devs.
I suspect that balancing the difficulty via AI is tricky to get right for even one difficulty setting, so going back and reworking it for four different difficulties is prohibitively hard. It's a lot easier to bump up a hit point total than to make the enemies convincingly smarter.
My operating theory is that they tweak the AI until it looks believable, and then adjust hit points and damage after the fact.
Something like "Okay, this one attack is super hard to dodge, so at the damage to take off about 50% of your hit points, but no more. We don't want them to have to heal more than once or twice, so set its hit point total so it'll die before it can get off that attack more than three times."
Chairman Meow on
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
I literally cannot remember the last game I played where the difficulties were actually balanced. It is so fucking hard to do, and the vast majority of the time the devs just don't bother. Here, you do less damage, the enemies do more, and they have more health. Even on the two most recent Doom games where I played on the harder difficulty, it's still the same thing. And don't even get me started on the PS3 and 360 games with difficulty trophies/achievements. Fucking asshole devs.
I suspect that balancing the difficulty via AI is tricky to get right for even one difficulty setting, so going back and reworking it for four different difficulties is prohibitively hard. It's a lot easier to bump up a hit point total than to make the enemies convincingly smarter.
My operating theory is that they tweak the AI until it looks believable, and then adjust hit points and damage after the fact.
Something like "Okay, this one attack is super hard to dodge, so at the damage to take off about 50% of your hit points, but no more. We don't want them to have to heal more than once or twice, so set its hit point total so it'll die before it can get off that attack more than three times."
Oh yeah that is absolutely what they do. And I don't have a problem with it as long as they don't try and force the harder difficulties on you. Thankfully none of the recent Sony first party games have tried that. Other games I have played recently have tried that though and it is very frustrating as some one who tries really hard to get the platinum trophy in most games I play.
What I especially like is the ability to change the difficulty pretty much whenever. If I hit a frustrating spot that is just giving me a headache for whatever reason, I can bump the difficulty down a notch just to pass it and then bump it back up.
Sometimes I really want a challenge, but sometimes I just want to chill and enjoy the ride, and tailoring those experiences on a whim is really nice.
Chairman Meow on
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
What I especially like is the ability to change the difficulty pretty much whenever. If I hit a frustrating spot that is just giving me a headache for whatever reason, I can bump the difficulty down a notch just to pass it and then bump it back up.
Sometimes I really want a challenge, but sometimes I just want to chill and enjoy the ride, and tailoring those experiences on a whim is really nice.
that's what I did with the Arenas when I did my mostly Very Hard run. And yet, I know at some point I probably will punish myself attempting 100% on Ultra Hard.
Yeah, for the arenas I just dropped it down to easy so I could quickly grind for some goodies. I tend to not be the best at things like that and the hunting grounds and such. I can take down a Thunderjaw okay on my own terms, which is usually taking advantage of the terrain and using specific weapons or whatever. But when it's "remove this specific part from this machine with this shitty weapon in 90 seconds" I'm out of my comfort zone.
Chairman Meow on
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
I turned it down to "babby's first videogame" for the arenas and felt zero shame.
I did too, because I can't help myself from always wanting to get overpowered.
Chairman Meow on
0
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited April 10
I don't mind not being overpowered, but I utterly utterly detest being totally declawed and forced to use weapons I hate set up in ways I don't control. I use the weapons I use because I like them and I configured them a certain way because I build my arsenal to cover all the important bases; fuck around with that and I'm losing major tools that prioritize dealing with the obstacles I want to get rid of.
I tried the Arena on whatever I started the game with (Hard, I think?), but very quickly turned the difficult down to the minimum because fuck a lot of those setups. Fuck most of them, to be honest. If I'm struggling through regular fights, at least they always yield XP and materials when I finish. In the Arena, I only get stuff for hitting certain rank levels and only the one time.
Not sure I like the underwater stuff. Just had a mission where you are forced into stealth/retreat since you can't fight the 3 snapmaws. Worse, if it becomes night, good luck seeing anything.
Heavy weapons suck? Just had a mission where their was a disc thrower and the game specifically tells you to use it against the clamberjaws. Yet the projectiles are so slow, 1 monkey dodged every single one. And it wasn't like I was sniping from afar, the innate AI patterns for smaller machines seem to just be jump around and twist. I had the same issue with a Dart Gun, used concentrate on a clawstrider, but the bolts aren't dead on, so the machine just dodged all but 1, which didn't do much damage. I'm fully upgraded as well.
Speaking of machines, the Apex stuff sucks. I get it for story missions, but I'm just wandering in the raintrace towards a mission point and every Clawstrider is apex. I found a group of 2 + 3 clamberjaws and thought it would finally be fun to override something to fight with. Nope, can't do it. Not sure why I'd even bother with the last 2 cauldrens when the game seems to want to me play only a few ways (usually I find height and snipe the machines to death since they come in packs of 4+ and always seem to alert other machines nearby if I'm having to dodge them.)
Tons of glitching on climbing stuff. The amount of times there will be yellow right next to where i'm at, but no matter the camera angle, Aloy won't climb to the next one. Usually have to climb down then back up a couple times to try and find the time where she'll move on.
Still not sure on the weapons. I got a purple ropecaster, which I tried on a fireclaw and didn't do much of anything. Additionally the ammo takes a purple part that is sort of rare. I might try the canister one, as folks mentioned using it almost like traps. The spike thrower seems to be my go to for any sort of damage. The sling and hunter bow is great for status effects, and the boltblaster full auto is great at close range. But bows just don't seem to do any damage anymore with normal arrows and this is on easy.
It is good to see the human AI is still really dumb haha.
Chairman Meow on
Origin ID\ Steam ID: Trajan45
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Are there people who are irritated by the excess of content in HFW, but not by the amount of content in ER? Or are the people who are irritated by one irritated by both?
I'm legit curious.
I would say that your initial hypothesis is likely close to explaining it. Much of what Elden Ring succeeds at - and what partially differentiates it from preceding Souls games - is the way its expansive and minimally explained nature enables the player to feel like they dictate the journey and its outcomes. Which due to the immense amount of Content can be incredibly varied between one player and the next.
Whereas the Open World Ubisoft model of hyper-annotated maps marked with Developer Approved Areas of Interest can feel overly prescribed and thus grates at our belief that we, the holder of the Controller, are actually in control. Even if, ultimately, we have just as much or as little control as we do in Elden Ring.
This is basically it in a nutshell for me. Elden Ring makes you feel like you are in control of the adventure, you go where you want, when you want. What's behind that hill, or in that cave? Go find out. Of course with a bit of analysis we know there is still a "golden path" through the game, still "developer approved areas of interest", but ER does a far, far better job of masking the game elements from you. Similar to Breath of the Wild. I've fallen off the HFW wagon twice because of how much the game wants to hold my hand through everything. Aloy is constantly quipping at me about this or that, trying to guide me toward what the game wants me to do and see. Eventually you figure out the pattern in ER as well and it feels more gamey, but it does a much better job of holding the adventure and mystery close to it's chest for much longer.
HFW is a beautiful world, with a reasonably compelling story, but the act of actually playing it is tedious in some of the worst open world trope ways. I guess I really am just burnt out on this kind of open world game.
One other complaint I have is that the skill trees are too shallow. I can upgrade my trap skills and my machine combat skills, but I don't use traps and I don't fight on machines. Except you can pretty quickly max out the other trees, so then you have nothing to do with your points except burn them on crap you won't use.
I would prefer having skill trees where it's impossible to get everything, so you have to choose, but if you focus on a certain tree you can get just absurdly good at that one thing. If I want to be a glass cannon and ignore defense and stuff in exchange for being able to fuck some shit up in stealth, I'd like that option.
Imagine sitting in stealth and plotting out your strategy for taking everything out without being seen, knowing that if you make a mistake, you're fucking hosed.
As opposed to right now, where I can fight from stealth or fight with traps or whatever but it really doesn't matter, because eventually I'm going to be running around shooting arrows in exactly the same manner.
And I should clarify that I really do love this game. The world is rad, it's gorgeous, fighting robots just feels right. But there are some major missed opportunities here.
Chairman Meow on
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
+3
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Not sure I like the underwater stuff. Just had a mission where you are forced into stealth/retreat since you can't fight the 3 snapmaws. Worse, if it becomes night, good luck seeing anything.
Heavy weapons suck? Just had a mission where their was a disc thrower and the game specifically tells you to use it against the clamberjaws. Yet the projectiles are so slow, 1 monkey dodged every single one. And it wasn't like I was sniping from afar, the innate AI patterns for smaller machines seem to just be jump around and twist. I had the same issue with a Dart Gun, used concentrate on a clawstrider, but the bolts aren't dead on, so the machine just dodged all but 1, which didn't do much damage. I'm fully upgraded as well.
Speaking of machines, the Apex stuff sucks. I get it for story missions, but I'm just wandering in the raintrace towards a mission point and every Clawstrider is apex. I found a group of 2 + 3 clamberjaws and thought it would finally be fun to override something to fight with. Nope, can't do it. Not sure why I'd even bother with the last 2 cauldrens when the game seems to want to me play only a few ways (usually I find height and snipe the machines to death since they come in packs of 4+ and always seem to alert other machines nearby if I'm having to dodge them.)
Tons of glitching on climbing stuff. The amount of times there will be yellow right next to where i'm at, but no matter the camera angle, Aloy won't climb to the next one. Usually have to climb down then back up a couple times to try and find the time where she'll move on.
Still not sure on the weapons. I got a purple ropecaster, which I tried on a fireclaw and didn't do much of anything. Additionally the ammo takes a purple part that is sort of rare. I might try the canister one, as folks mentioned using it almost like traps. The spike thrower seems to be my go to for any sort of damage. The sling and hunter bow is great for status effects, and the boltblaster full auto is great at close range. But bows just don't seem to do any damage anymore with normal arrows and this is on easy.
It is good to see the human AI is still really dumb haha.
Underwater stuff just stinks, yeah. There is at least not much of it in the game, but anything around enemies is dumb. All the machines are like three times faster and more aggresive in HFW than HZD, so heavy weapons definitely suffer pretty badly as a result. You can get skills that greatly mitigate this but as a rule you're just way better off not using the heavy weapons nine times out of ten because enemies will pounce on your ass almost immediately from a hundred feet away; it's not like HZD where you can rip the launchers off a Thunderjaw and empty the magazine to all but kill the machine. Instead, you'll go pick it up, turn to aim, and the Thunderjaw will already be plowing you under before you can get a shot off. I also encountered a few glitches while climbing, but they didn't last long; basically exactly what you describe, with the game not letting you jump to a point that is obviously the next point. And ropecasters have to either hit an unarmored spot and/or be charged before firing but even then, avoid armored spots because you'll end up just yanking off an armor plate. Get critters in the "muscle" and it should work fine.
I dunno about using canister rounds, I found them utterly utterly useless. Why would I use an elemental canister that is a pain in the ass to shoot the moment the target aggros (which is immediately when you hit it the first time) and I can't deploy the elemental effect until I hit the canister when I could just use an elemental weapon that deals the elemental effect directly? I guess it could work alright with elemental canisters coupled with elemental bomb launchers but again, why would I not just throw the bomb first instead of putting a canister on and then using a bomb?
I got a lot of mileage out of a disc thrower specced for acid. You can retrieve a disc up to three consecutive times and damage increases with each consecutive hit, then the final hit explodes into huge elemental damage. Great for chewing up smaller enemies on the cheap because you can often kill them without losing a disc (learning to catch the disc on the way back is something I found as a fun little minigame) and even on big enemies you can deal a lot of cheap damage once you get the acid effect going because their defense is basically zero.
I feel like there's a lot of potential ways to play in Horizon, and I may be cheating myself by just sticking to arrows, bombs and javelins. But it works, damn it.
I could lay traps, tripwires, or lure them under that log pile and cut it loose. Or I could shoot them.
Basically, this: threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-daddy-take-downs (Ironically, the first two panels are how I played Bioshock)
That's probably part of my problem with the Arena; it's forcing me to use these weapons I don't use and be effective with them, and I refuse to learn.
(Honestly, watching videos of some people utterly obliterating the Arena on Ultra Hard just have me scratching my head at how they presumably hacked the game)
One other complaint I have is that the skill trees are too shallow. I can upgrade my trap skills and my machine combat skills, but I don't use traps and I don't fight on machines. Except you can pretty quickly max out the other trees, so then you have nothing to do with your points except burn them on crap you won't use.
I would prefer having skill trees where it's impossible to get everything, so you have to choose, but if you focus on a certain tree you can get just absurdly good at that one thing. If I want to be a glass cannon and ignore defense and stuff in exchange for being able to fuck some shit up in stealth, I'd like that option.
Imagine sitting in stealth and plotting out your strategy for taking everything out without being seen, knowing that if you make a mistake, you're fucking hosed.
As opposed to right now, where I can fight from stealth or fight with traps or whatever but it really doesn't matter, because eventually I'm going to be running around shooting arrows in exactly the same manner.
And I should clarify that I really do love this game. The world is rad, it's gorgeous, fighting robots just feels right. But there are some major missed opportunities here.
After playing both KOTOR and Alpha Protocol, I feel like any system that wants to go this way, you better have an easy way of respeccing your skill points. When I played KOTOR, I somehow avoided every possible force power needed for the final boss fight and turned it into a nightmare. Likewise for Alpha Protocol, the very first boss fight I was suddenly thrust into, I had not a single helpful combat skill needed for it.
There's no easy answer for this issue. You give out enough points to max out every skill, then by the end it doesn't matter, you're a master at everything and there's no real choice. You limit points and make your choice matter? You better plan for the fact that it might be possible for a player to pick absolutely fucking wrong every step of the way. And if you can respec at any time you want? Then do your choices really matter when you can just redo them at the drop of a hat? Like I said, there's no easy right answer to this.
Chairman Meow on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
The problem I have with designing a game specifically to not have enough skill points to max out is that for someone like me, who never comes close to finishing all a game's optional content, I already fall short on skill points in games that let you max out your skills. I'm gonna be super weak unless they don't tie skill points to optional content, which of course is going to be annoying for people who need XP/skill points as a motivation to do side content. There's literally nothing a dev can do to make everyone happy. Though you could try imposing limitations on yourself, and refuse to spend all your skill points.
It's just a design decision. They could keep most of the XP to main and main-adjacent side quests. Some games do this since it allows you to better balance difficulty to what you are looking for as a dev since you know folks are likely at level X by point Y in the game.
The main issue, and I have no idea if it's a pervasive idea in dev shops or if it's coming from corporate types outside, but needing these expensive games to be longer. Infinite XP like quests, collectables, etc is a way to do that.
I definitely wouldn't mind adding a re-spec option in there on top of deeper trees. Even if you could change your skills around, you still wouldn't be able to master everything at once, so you would have to choose how you play on any given battle. Your choices would still be meaningful.
I just feel there must be a better design than this one, where I'm currently at level 25 in the mid game and have done some side quests, but by no means all, and I've already run out of upgrades I care about because I will never give a shit about traps and fighting on mounts.
It actually seems like it's too easy to be overpowered. None of the melee skills against humans matter to me because I can effectively hide in a bush and stealth murder everyone from afar. If I'm in melee, it's because I done fucked up. So it seems like this could be addressed by actually spreading out the skills a little more. Instead of three levels of progression for a skill, make it six, but top out at the same eventual power.
Chairman Meow on
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
For the amount of npcs and dialogue forbidden west has, its face and dialogue animation is simply stunning. Like it rivals something like uncharted or last of us, and those are linear games with a relatively small number of characters and animated dialogue sequences
I honestly don’t know how they do it, it’s nuts, it seems a mix of a really good system as well as bespoke and custom animations. I wish every game had it. It’s spoiled other open world games for me, where most npcs and like side mission interactions look incredibly stiff and dated by comparison.
For the amount of npcs and dialogue forbidden west has, its face and dialogue animation is simply stunning. Like it rivals something like uncharted or last of us, and those are linear games with a relatively small number of characters and animated dialogue sequences
I honestly don’t know how they do it, it’s nuts, it seems a mix of a really good system as well as bespoke and custom animations. I wish every game had it. It’s spoiled other open world games for me, where most npcs and like side mission interactions look incredibly stiff and dated by comparison.
What I had heard is they pretty much mo-capped every conversation and scene in the game.
Chairman Meow on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I honestly don’t know how they do it, it’s nuts, it seems a mix of a really good system as well as bespoke and custom animations. I wish every game had it. It’s spoiled other open world games for me, where most npcs and like side mission interactions look incredibly stiff and dated by comparison.
Yeah, I just finished Life is Strange: True Colors, basically an interactive narrative rather than an action game, and the dialog and facial animations were really lackluster compared to HFW.
Understandable. But when I finally went through the first game, one of the things I did was totally throw myself into the Frozen Wilds early on, farm up the currency needed, and then buy a few of the super end game bows. And then proceed to spank the rest of the game with them. That was neat.
Chairman Meow on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Posts
I'd never play a brand new game in it, but I like that it has the option because I know there are players out there who'd complain if it was NG+ only (the people who complain that Souls games are too easy). They all but say 'you really don't want to do this straight away, but you do you and we won't stop you'.
I suspect that balancing the difficulty via AI is tricky to get right for even one difficulty setting, so going back and reworking it for four different difficulties is prohibitively hard. It's a lot easier to bump up a hit point total than to make the enemies convincingly smarter.
My operating theory is that they tweak the AI until it looks believable, and then adjust hit points and damage after the fact.
Something like "Okay, this one attack is super hard to dodge, so at the damage to take off about 50% of your hit points, but no more. We don't want them to have to heal more than once or twice, so set its hit point total so it'll die before it can get off that attack more than three times."
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
Oh yeah that is absolutely what they do. And I don't have a problem with it as long as they don't try and force the harder difficulties on you. Thankfully none of the recent Sony first party games have tried that. Other games I have played recently have tried that though and it is very frustrating as some one who tries really hard to get the platinum trophy in most games I play.
PSN:Furlion
Sometimes I really want a challenge, but sometimes I just want to chill and enjoy the ride, and tailoring those experiences on a whim is really nice.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
that's what I did with the Arenas when I did my mostly Very Hard run. And yet, I know at some point I probably will punish myself attempting 100% on Ultra Hard.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
I did too, because I can't help myself from always wanting to get overpowered.
I tried the Arena on whatever I started the game with (Hard, I think?), but very quickly turned the difficult down to the minimum because fuck a lot of those setups. Fuck most of them, to be honest. If I'm struggling through regular fights, at least they always yield XP and materials when I finish. In the Arena, I only get stuff for hitting certain rank levels and only the one time.
Heavy weapons suck? Just had a mission where their was a disc thrower and the game specifically tells you to use it against the clamberjaws. Yet the projectiles are so slow, 1 monkey dodged every single one. And it wasn't like I was sniping from afar, the innate AI patterns for smaller machines seem to just be jump around and twist. I had the same issue with a Dart Gun, used concentrate on a clawstrider, but the bolts aren't dead on, so the machine just dodged all but 1, which didn't do much damage. I'm fully upgraded as well.
Speaking of machines, the Apex stuff sucks. I get it for story missions, but I'm just wandering in the raintrace towards a mission point and every Clawstrider is apex. I found a group of 2 + 3 clamberjaws and thought it would finally be fun to override something to fight with. Nope, can't do it. Not sure why I'd even bother with the last 2 cauldrens when the game seems to want to me play only a few ways (usually I find height and snipe the machines to death since they come in packs of 4+ and always seem to alert other machines nearby if I'm having to dodge them.)
Tons of glitching on climbing stuff. The amount of times there will be yellow right next to where i'm at, but no matter the camera angle, Aloy won't climb to the next one. Usually have to climb down then back up a couple times to try and find the time where she'll move on.
Still not sure on the weapons. I got a purple ropecaster, which I tried on a fireclaw and didn't do much of anything. Additionally the ammo takes a purple part that is sort of rare. I might try the canister one, as folks mentioned using it almost like traps. The spike thrower seems to be my go to for any sort of damage. The sling and hunter bow is great for status effects, and the boltblaster full auto is great at close range. But bows just don't seem to do any damage anymore with normal arrows and this is on easy.
It is good to see the human AI is still really dumb haha.
This is basically it in a nutshell for me. Elden Ring makes you feel like you are in control of the adventure, you go where you want, when you want. What's behind that hill, or in that cave? Go find out. Of course with a bit of analysis we know there is still a "golden path" through the game, still "developer approved areas of interest", but ER does a far, far better job of masking the game elements from you. Similar to Breath of the Wild. I've fallen off the HFW wagon twice because of how much the game wants to hold my hand through everything. Aloy is constantly quipping at me about this or that, trying to guide me toward what the game wants me to do and see. Eventually you figure out the pattern in ER as well and it feels more gamey, but it does a much better job of holding the adventure and mystery close to it's chest for much longer.
HFW is a beautiful world, with a reasonably compelling story, but the act of actually playing it is tedious in some of the worst open world trope ways. I guess I really am just burnt out on this kind of open world game.
I would prefer having skill trees where it's impossible to get everything, so you have to choose, but if you focus on a certain tree you can get just absurdly good at that one thing. If I want to be a glass cannon and ignore defense and stuff in exchange for being able to fuck some shit up in stealth, I'd like that option.
Imagine sitting in stealth and plotting out your strategy for taking everything out without being seen, knowing that if you make a mistake, you're fucking hosed.
As opposed to right now, where I can fight from stealth or fight with traps or whatever but it really doesn't matter, because eventually I'm going to be running around shooting arrows in exactly the same manner.
And I should clarify that I really do love this game. The world is rad, it's gorgeous, fighting robots just feels right. But there are some major missed opportunities here.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
Underwater stuff just stinks, yeah. There is at least not much of it in the game, but anything around enemies is dumb. All the machines are like three times faster and more aggresive in HFW than HZD, so heavy weapons definitely suffer pretty badly as a result. You can get skills that greatly mitigate this but as a rule you're just way better off not using the heavy weapons nine times out of ten because enemies will pounce on your ass almost immediately from a hundred feet away; it's not like HZD where you can rip the launchers off a Thunderjaw and empty the magazine to all but kill the machine. Instead, you'll go pick it up, turn to aim, and the Thunderjaw will already be plowing you under before you can get a shot off. I also encountered a few glitches while climbing, but they didn't last long; basically exactly what you describe, with the game not letting you jump to a point that is obviously the next point. And ropecasters have to either hit an unarmored spot and/or be charged before firing but even then, avoid armored spots because you'll end up just yanking off an armor plate. Get critters in the "muscle" and it should work fine.
I dunno about using canister rounds, I found them utterly utterly useless. Why would I use an elemental canister that is a pain in the ass to shoot the moment the target aggros (which is immediately when you hit it the first time) and I can't deploy the elemental effect until I hit the canister when I could just use an elemental weapon that deals the elemental effect directly? I guess it could work alright with elemental canisters coupled with elemental bomb launchers but again, why would I not just throw the bomb first instead of putting a canister on and then using a bomb?
I got a lot of mileage out of a disc thrower specced for acid. You can retrieve a disc up to three consecutive times and damage increases with each consecutive hit, then the final hit explodes into huge elemental damage. Great for chewing up smaller enemies on the cheap because you can often kill them without losing a disc (learning to catch the disc on the way back is something I found as a fun little minigame) and even on big enemies you can deal a lot of cheap damage once you get the acid effect going because their defense is basically zero.
I could lay traps, tripwires, or lure them under that log pile and cut it loose. Or I could shoot them.
Basically, this: threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-daddy-take-downs (Ironically, the first two panels are how I played Bioshock)
That's probably part of my problem with the Arena; it's forcing me to use these weapons I don't use and be effective with them, and I refuse to learn.
(Honestly, watching videos of some people utterly obliterating the Arena on Ultra Hard just have me scratching my head at how they presumably hacked the game)
After playing both KOTOR and Alpha Protocol, I feel like any system that wants to go this way, you better have an easy way of respeccing your skill points. When I played KOTOR, I somehow avoided every possible force power needed for the final boss fight and turned it into a nightmare. Likewise for Alpha Protocol, the very first boss fight I was suddenly thrust into, I had not a single helpful combat skill needed for it.
There's no easy answer for this issue. You give out enough points to max out every skill, then by the end it doesn't matter, you're a master at everything and there's no real choice. You limit points and make your choice matter? You better plan for the fact that it might be possible for a player to pick absolutely fucking wrong every step of the way. And if you can respec at any time you want? Then do your choices really matter when you can just redo them at the drop of a hat? Like I said, there's no easy right answer to this.
The main issue, and I have no idea if it's a pervasive idea in dev shops or if it's coming from corporate types outside, but needing these expensive games to be longer. Infinite XP like quests, collectables, etc is a way to do that.
I just feel there must be a better design than this one, where I'm currently at level 25 in the mid game and have done some side quests, but by no means all, and I've already run out of upgrades I care about because I will never give a shit about traps and fighting on mounts.
It actually seems like it's too easy to be overpowered. None of the melee skills against humans matter to me because I can effectively hide in a bush and stealth murder everyone from afar. If I'm in melee, it's because I done fucked up. So it seems like this could be addressed by actually spreading out the skills a little more. Instead of three levels of progression for a skill, make it six, but top out at the same eventual power.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
Yeah, this may be the turning point for me now that PS5s are actually somewhat available.
I honestly don’t know how they do it, it’s nuts, it seems a mix of a really good system as well as bespoke and custom animations. I wish every game had it. It’s spoiled other open world games for me, where most npcs and like side mission interactions look incredibly stiff and dated by comparison.
What I had heard is they pretty much mo-capped every conversation and scene in the game.
Best Buy has them. You have to ask the person at the front door about it because they don't put them on the shelf.
Yeah, I just finished Life is Strange: True Colors, basically an interactive narrative rather than an action game, and the dialog and facial animations were really lackluster compared to HFW.
Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!