Post: #2276

'Dark Messiah, of Might & Magic' - always with a modded soundpak, overwriting the Xana dialogue. Shit, ever since Halo, every other fuckin' 1st person has that 'companion spirit' bullshit.

Post: #2277

(05-11-2017 10:11 PM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  I was also massively impressed with Skyrim until the "ultimate sandbox" concept just, to my mind, completely shit itself.

You go to complete a quest and pick up 5 more on the way. The game is just one endless distraction after the next to the point where you've put 50 hours in, you're getting up in levels, still being tasked to kill the the local marauding mudcrabs while alternately having to kill dragons every five seconds that literally become a nuisance.

'Ugh. Another fucking dragon. Can I just leave him alone? Oh wait. He attacked a village and killed a relevant NPC. Now I'm going to lose a whole quest line. Yay.'

The enemy levelling system is also sad and broken. Either you funnel your entire character into a very narrow skill set or you end up fighting monsters way above your pay grade because you chose to take a little bit of everything and your level ended up stupidly high for your large pool of low level skills and attributes.

Beyond that the game simply lends itself to doing a single google search before being broken utterly with a combination of blacksmithing and enchanting, the irony being that the single-hand warrior/blacksmith/enchanter becomes as rich as a king and as powerful as a God on day one but try to build a magic user and you'll be fucked all day long from start to finish.

I understand the cult following. I myself had fun with it breaking the system doing autistic shit like casting soul trap on my horse 5000 times to level up the skill to max (since it was the only way to get relevantly powerful summon spells early in the game) but unlike the me of 15 years ago I tired of that bullshit pretty quickly and started to see the matrix instead of the game world.

One thing these games need to do is put a dagger in the heart of the "steal everything, sell everything" mentality. There should be a basic economic system whereby you can sell five mugs in any given village for a fair price but if you try to sell 50 then understandably you're going to get an extremely shitty price for them. God forbid you try to sell the Jarl's every knife, fork and plate, the shopkeeper should tell you to fuck off, since he'd obviously go out of business if he wasted all his capital on 1000 potatoes when there are only 4 people in the town and potato harvest season is about to start.

Devs should just pull the plug on stupid levels of inventory. Carrying around five suits of armour is just fucking nonsensical, as is leaving a bunch of naked corpses in your wake.

Actually it's more logical that they'd want the potatoes. What never made sense to me in fantasy games is how the merchants turn over the fifty magic swords you sell for a king's ransom when you're the only person in the game world that uses magic swords.

Post: #2278

(05-14-2017 12:06 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  

(05-11-2017 10:11 PM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  ...
One thing these games need to do is put a dagger in the heart of the "steal everything, sell everything" mentality. There should be a basic economic system whereby you can sell five mugs in any given village for a fair price but if you try to sell 50 then understandably you're going to get an extremely shitty price for them. God forbid you try to sell the Jarl's every knife, fork and plate, the shopkeeper should tell you to fuck off, since he'd obviously go out of business if he wasted all his capital on 1000 potatoes when there are only 4 people in the town and potato harvest season is about to start.
...

Actually it's more logical that they'd want the potatoes. What never made sense to me in fantasy games is how the merchants turn over the fifty magic swords you sell for a king's ransom when you're the only person in the game world that uses magic swords.

Yeah. In Skyrim after I made my 100th dagger w/banish Daedra I'm sitting there thinking "how many people actually run into Daedra and for how many of them would a (chance to do x) dagger be the difference between life and death? How many of those folk would be able to afford several thousand gold for such a dagger?"

The fix would have been simple. Make it so that applying the same enchantment yields progressively lower advances in enchanting to the point that it's useless. Alternately they could have set up quests where you could simply contract yourself to a local lord dealing with undead issues (for example) to build him 100 turn undead swords for $x with the option to build the swords from scratch for more money or use a cache of existing swords for a lesser $x reward. That kind of thing would actually make sense in the context of the game and achieve the outcome without utterly destroying the suspension of disbelief by having you doing stupid stuff like quick-travelling to every merchant in the land flogging off useless magical daggers for top dollar.

Personally I would love to have the option to contract some in-game character to fence merchandise for me, since it would make far more sense to have that sort of thing handled by a pro who in theory sells it all to the correct people throughout the lands and takes a cut. They could also give you info on big-ticket items in neighbouring areas that they'd passed through. You could have different characters that took a higher cut but who dealt in stolen items as well as legitimate ones. Those characters could even be robbed at a percentile chance (and you have to go kill the bandits and get your stuff back) or if you again didn't want the hassle then you could put a guard or two on the payroll.

But I guess the guys making these games are high in the autism/sperg ratio since they seem to gear these games towards antisocial micromanagement rather than advance the concept of being part of a world full of people and business opportunities where time itself is a relevant overhead.

Post: #2279

(05-14-2017 09:58 PM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  But I guess the guys making these games are high in the autism/sperg ratio since they seem to gear these games towards antisocial micromanagement rather than advance the concept of being part of a world full of people and business opportunities where time itself is a relevant overhead.

I don't think its any sperginess on the part of the game designers, more that its a response to market incentive. I see two main things that have fucked RPGs in this regard:

1. World of Warcraft. Blizzard made billions of dollars on mindless repetitive tasks with variable rewards. Every other game afterwards tried to replicate their secret sauce. That's why Skyrim has mining nodes, procedural quests, achievements, etc.

2. Voice acting. While it takes a tiny amount of memory to store dialogue clips, you can't get around the basic need to hire voice actors. If you wanted a game with really complex NPC interaction, that means you need lots and lots of different voice actors reading thousands and thousands of lines, and people expect full voice acting now. Elder Scrolls games up to and including Morrowind had tons of dialogue, but it was all text. Once you got to Oblivion when they decided they needed all voice acting, then you get every villager in town with the exact same voice telling you the exact same set of five rumors. Skyrim got better just by having a larger span of actors and lines, but still there's a reason "I used to be a <blank>, but then I took an arrow to the knee" turned into a meme.

This hits open world games like Elder Scrolls a lot more compared to more story driven games. With a story driven game you don't get quite the same exponential growth of potential conversations.

Post: #2280

I was never a big fan of the Dark Souls (and Demon's Souls and Bloodborne) games - mostly because I frankly suck at them and after being stuck at a boss fight for 10-15 attempts I quit in frustration and never went back. The one I got furthest in was Dark Souls 1, where I probably made it to around the half way mark or slightly further.

Well, "souls-like" is turning into a genre and while Lords of the Fallen wasn't great, there's been a lot of positive talk about the second attempt - The Surge, heavy melee combat in a nightmarish sci-fi factory setting - from those developers, which was released here three hours ago. These first few hours have definitely been great. It's supposedly a 20-40+ hours game with multiple NG+ options.

Post: #2281

Anyone know a good simply made game with poker, hold' em and and baccarat? Something akin to these flash card games you get with Windows. I want to learn to play these games.

Post: #2282

(05-16-2017 01:50 PM)sterling_archer Wrote:  Anyone know a good simply made game with poker, hold' em and and baccarat? Something akin to these flash card games you get with Windows. I want to learn to play these games.

Best I can suggest to you is tabletop sim

Post: #2283

This one: http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160...Simulator/ ?

Looks cool, have you tried it?

Post: #2284

(05-16-2017 01:50 PM)sterling_archer Wrote:  Anyone know a good simply made game with poker, hold' em and and baccarat? Something akin to these flash card games you get with Windows. I want to learn to play these games.

Go to a casino on a low day and/or time and ask them how to play. 9/10 they will teach you how with no problems.

Post: #2285

(05-16-2017 02:15 PM)sterling_archer Wrote:  This one: http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160...Simulator/ ?

Looks cool, have you tried it?

Yep, mostly use it for D&D, but have used it for many games. There's usually servers running poker and other games.

Post: #2286

Destiny 2 reveal live stream right now. Find it on YouTube or Twitch.

Post: #2287

I am playing Texas Hold em 3D. Simple game, using it single player to get ready for the flash miniclip (or similar) online poker games and later, real life.

Post: #2288

It was a pretty comprehensive one hour Destiny 2 reveal event, with quite a lot of gameplay footage shown and talk about the new features and locations.

Here's the official trailer.

Post: #2289

Exciting trailer:

Post: #2290

Theres 50 - 66% off the call of duty franchise on Steam this weekend. Thought I'd pick one up...but which one? What's the best COD game?

Post: #2291

I haven't played much of advanced warfare, black ops 3 or infinite warfare but I thoroughly enjoyed COD:4 and Black Ops 1.

I can understand if they might look a bit dated now.

A lot of people didn't like Ghosts but I did, mostly because it wasn't attached to the rest of the series in terms of storyline.

Post: #2292

Been enjoying Stellaris lately. Still has a long way to go but it's addictive, for some reason. I think I might enjoy making civilizations more than playing the game actually.

Cities Skylines came out with a DLC/Update the other day. Might try making a city for a couple hours before realizing I suck and shelving the game out of frustration again.

Post: #2293

I figured this probably belonged here:

http://www.platige.com/en/page/839-The_W...On_Netflix

Netflix bringing Witcher to life.

Post: #2294

I'm nervous for the Witcher series. If done properly it could rival Game of Thrones. I don't want to get my hopes up too high though.

Post: #2295

Adaptations have a big chance of going wrong and a small chance of being successful. Game Of Thrones is the exception among the rule. It's probably the only series that hasn't disappointed me yet. Vikings had good chances, too, but I never could go over "muh strong womyn", shitty ahistorical customs, kitsch, plotholes and illogical motivation of characters. And even GOT has "those kind of moments". Brienne beating up the hound, yeah sure, Sam getting laid as a reward and so on. I'm sure Sapkowski will take care of it, from what I' know he isn't inclined to make compromises at all.

From what I've learned, the guys being responsible for the CGI Intros of of TW1-3 will be responsible for the series. I have high hopes.

If you haven't read the books yet, do it! Start with "The Last Wish". I'm just a few chapters in but am already completely hooked. Best decision I've made lately.

Post: #2296

I'm almost done with 100% on Grand Theft Auto 3, I forgot how hard the missions were in the 3D era GTA's. This will be the second GTA game I get 100% on.

Recently, I've been starting the story mode of Injustice 2 from Netherrealm Studios. I almost want to say in the Injustice series, Superman did nothing wrong.

Post: #2297

(05-20-2017 11:21 AM)Enoch Wrote:  I figured this probably belonged here:

http://www.platige.com/en/page/839-The_W...On_Netflix

Netflix bringing Witcher to life.

Yeah, watch for those tanker trucks full of estrogen pulling into the studio.

By episode 3 Geralt will be taking it in the ass with a strap-on.

Post: #2298

(05-14-2017 06:02 AM)MikeS Wrote:  

(05-14-2017 05:46 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  There is talk about releasing Morrowind in Oblivion or even Skyrim engine. But game I most interested in would be remastering of the Undying.

Those are never ending projects, aren't they? First it was Morrowind in Oblivion years ago, then Morrowind and Oblivion in the Skyrim engine. I've seen demo footage but I always got the impression that none of those projects ever moved out of the alpha testing stage?

There's a group of fans who are remaking Morrowind and Oblivion in the Skyrim engine as Skywind and Skyblivion. They got the idea from Morroblivion, which initially required you to own a copy of the original Morrowind and its expansions so it could extract the models and textures from the Morrowind data files and convert them to the Oblivion format. Bethesda got pissed off and clamped down on discussion of Morroblivion, so a lot of the big modding sites banned discussion.

Morroblivion later relaunched using fan-made models and textures instead of the original Morrowind ones.

Post: #2299

There is already movie called "Hexer" and a TV series Hexer based on Sapkowski's work. Difference between those two is that movie came out first and was critically panned and they released tv series, which is just a longer version of movie cut into episodes.

Sapkowski was extremely displeased with the move/tv series. That is the reason why we haven't seen proper Witcher adaptation on TV/cinema, as producers are little weary after the Hexer fiasco.

P.S. If you want to read Witcher books, you can start with the Saga novels by following this order:

Blood of Elves
Time of Contempt
Baptism of Fire
The Tower of Swallows
Lady of the Lake

Post: #2300

(05-21-2017 12:30 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(05-20-2017 11:21 AM)Enoch Wrote:  I figured this probably belonged here:

http://www.platige.com/en/page/839-The_W...On_Netflix

Netflix bringing Witcher to life.

Yeah, watch for those tanker trucks full of estrogen pulling into the studio.

By episode 3 Geralt will be taking it in the ass with a strap-on.

I'll be furious if they feminize Geralt.