What game are you playing right now? #3

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polyblip:
I have liked Varric, but I find myself getting bored between the long acted-out dialogue sections that you can't really pause and the random battles that seem to be exactly the same. I'm also not *good* at combat, so the speed it happens at means that I never end up using any of my abilities (by the time I could use them, I'm either dead or the battle is over). I'll admit that's a player problem, but it does make the combat more boring/frustrating. It just gets tedious, and I haven't really made it past the first couple of joinable NPCs because of it. I do want to try again, though, as I have heard that the story and characters are really interesting. I just feel that I don't have much control: over the dialogue OR the combat -- which makes it feel more like I'm watching a movie rather than playing a game. Again, the combat part is probably my fault, and I've heard that lots of people LOVE the combat system of DAII, so I'll admit to being an anomaly there. We'll see how I feel by the end of the summer.

olimikrig: Good luck finishing up BG:EE and maybe making it through the sequel. I'll admit that I keep restarting BG (and now BG:EE) for new characters. I'm hoping that this current run I'll make it to the end. I've never actually made it to the city of BG. But I'm thinking that with a 99 ability score, the current character will keep my interest longer.

 

Can't you pause the game like in DA:O? Anyway, the combat mechanics might be great, that doesn't help if it's repititive to the point of more or less repeating the same 4-5 fights over and over again. Although quite a lot of people probably don't mind repitition that much, otherwise no online game ever would ever have been popular.

We might try to cover it with flowery role playing, but in the end we're all a bunch of power gamers

 

Yes, you can pause, but because the action happens so much faster in DAII, by the time you pause a lot has already happened. . . okay, I should have said "by the time I pause . . ." That's what I meant by my ability coming into play. By the time I remember to pause, well . . . it's pretty late. And I agree about online games and repetition. Ugh.

Ha! I tend to cover it/justify it more with my lack of ability. Although I'll admit that in BG:EE I have the difficulty set to "Normal" rather than "Core," so overall, it's been much easier than in the past, which, incidentally, might be another reason I stick with this run-through. I really wish the copying spells part wasn't part of "Normal," though. I kind of liked the possibility that the copying might fail, even with really high INT.

In honesty, I tend to play all games on the easiest setting because I DO like "flowery role playing" more than challenge (although I do like challenge some of the time), so I don't like the difficulty get in the way of the enjoyment of the story, my choices, etc.

This is another reason I tend on to dislike online games: challenge seems to be entirely reserved for groups and the people in groups tend to be a lot more competitive and demanding than I am. So that means, as a solo-er, I tend not to experience ANY challenge. Or get yelled at the few times I do try to group up, since it's not something I do regularly and thus don't have a lot of practice/skill in. But now I'm really getting off-topic (see signature).

 

Playing Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer.

Never got around to finish it before. On top of that I'm playing a Pally, a class I abandoned way back. Last time I played MotB with my dashing bard hero, I never made it past the first act.

But now with my pally I have lots of fun and the build is solid.

Not to mention the rich Characters and writing of MotB (something the OC lacked left and right) and the setting of Rashemen. This is where Minsc is from. Fanboy feels galore.

 

Gah! Now I want to play MotB!

 

Actually, I'm the same. I like some challenge, but the line between challenge and frustration is a thin one and frustration just leads to me not playing the game anymore. On the other hand, lack of challenge is generally boring.

I also play BG mostly on Normal rules, as I prefer not to have the rare spell get wasted when the 5% chance of failure rears its ugly head. Also I prefer to just have max hitpoints on my characters on level up.

There are actually mods that take care of this for me and I'd be able to play on Core rules instead, except I believe that when importing a character in BG2 the mods don't help and the hitpoint allotment gets recalculated based on some random numbers. Unless you go back to normal rules just for this, but I tend to forget that, or otherwise forget to turn it back to core rules afterwards.

Not really, as we're still talking about games

What I don't like about MMORPGs is the repetition. I got hit with that once in Diablo 2 and don't care to repeat that. For online shooters it's a bit different, but I realised a long time ago that to be good at those, you need to play a lot more than I'm willing (or able) to do now.

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I'm still playing the OC on and off (mostly off). Eventually the goal is to also get to MotB and SoZ, but that may be a while yet.

NWN2 has the things I liked about NWN (character builds, mostly), but the controls really seem to oppose me whatever I want to do in this game. Even more so than in NWN.

 

For some reason I've never actually played SoZ, though I've owned it pretty much since release.

 

There is a mod for BG1 that takes care of this. I could have sworn it was part of Ease-of-Use (succeeded by the G3 Tweaks). If it's not in G3 Tweaks, try downloading the original ease-of-use for BG1 and installing just that component.

If it's not in there, check out the BG1 place here on Sorcerer's Place. I'm positive I got it from here.

The mod modifies the 2da file to eliminate the randomness.

 

I know, I have it installed. It used to be in Ease of Use, but now it's also incorporated into the G3 tweaks.

But I'm pretty sure that even when using this mod (or at least the older EoU) that I would import a character from BGTutu (where I also used the EoU mod or something similar) and got lower hp on import. Like the game recalculates the hp on import. It may be that that's been fixed now, or that I'm remembering from olden times, but I'm sure that it works that way without mods under core rules.

 

I think what you're remembering is that the NPCs would have less than maximum HP upon joining. Jaheria in particular got low rolls.
Worse, the later you meet the NPC, the lower their maximum HP as they'll be at a higher level with lower
I actually went and manually edited the CRE files with Sword Coast Keeper (I don't think you can do this with GateKeeper) to set them to level 1 with the appropriate amount of XP so that they would level up immediately. This did mean they had too many weapon proficiencies, but given the limited number you get in BG1, it wasn't that big a deal to me.

The same happened with BG2, and I did the same with Shadowkeeper, only I think I set the max HP instead. I did it in a funny way by making them start out "wounded" so I could be reminded of what their default HP level would have been without editing.

 

No, it was definitely the PC hitpoints. I don't care about the hp of the NPCs.

 

Finished Deus Ex Human Revolution a few days ago. Enjoyed it, but the final boss battle wasn't much of a battle at all. Meh.

Now playing Torchlight 2. Having fun so far, but I'm getting so much decent loot that I almost spend as much time deciding what to equip than actually playing. I'll need to come up with a better approach - it might simply be a matter of making a quick decision and going with that (and selling the rest), because the reality is it doesn't take long before you find something better anyway.

 

Playing SubCommander.
A awesome little roguelike submarine simulator. Made by a fellow SubSimmer.
A mix between FTL and Silent Hunter. And it's great. For a game developed in his free time and just for fun it's quite addictive.
Rock Paper Shotgun had even an article on it.

Give it a try. Lates version is _23.

DL Here

 

Yeah, boss battles are kind of disappointing in HR. The endings were not that great either. Endotron 4000 - press a button for the ending you would like. Except they're all pretty much the same.

Torchlight (1) was like this too. Loot is levelled and pretty much everytime you level up the old gear becomes obsolete. The best way to get good loot is to have a character go through the game first (preferably one that isn't gear dependent) and have him pass the loot to some other first level characters so that they can have good gear as they level up.

Or is Torchlight 2 worse than 1 in this respect?

 

Never played the first game, so I can't comment. However, I will say that there is no way I am going to keep gear that new characters can use, because then not only will the new characters be choosing from what they find, they'll also have to consider what's in the shared stash. No way I'm doing that - I'd spend more time trying to decide what to equip that I'd actually spend playing. The only stuff I'm keeping are uniques and set items, and even then I'm going to have to get a mod that increases stash size.

On an unrelated note, gold in TL2 is a non-issue - I'm part way through Act 2 and I have more gold than I know what to do with.

 

It is. It's been a long time since I played D2 (and I didn't have the expansion), but from what I recall, the skill trees work somewhat differently (T2 has level requirements but no other skill pre-requisites), and it seems like there is less grinding required with TL2; I'm sure there are other minor differences, but TL2 is almost a copy of D2. I got bored with D2 before too long (mainly because I hated Act 3); I'll see how long I last with TL2.

 

Haven't played Torchlight 2, but Torchlight was a lot like Diablo 2 as well, except with more simplistic skill trees (no synergies whatsoever). Also less grinding. And it's easy to mod the game so you have more stash space and more unique drops.

Gold is only good for enchanting in TL1. And unless you mod the game, you can sink a *lot* of money into that. And even then you can still sink a lot of money into it.

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Just noticed that Xenonauts was released on GoG. Anyone try it already? I believe Darion was playing the beta as well, were there any improvements?

 

LOL

Yeah. Of the good kind too.
One of them being it laggs a bit on my legacy Rig now, meaning will have to transplant it to the more 'masculine' machine.

Wasn't like that in the beta. But wasn't as challenging either. Or complete.

But yeah. The AI is far more cunning than I thought it could be. Just last night (playing on veteran) the Aliens used suppression fire so awesomely, that I had to sacrifice one soldier in an kamikaze maneuver to draw the heat.

Other than that they, tweaked the balance a good deal, making less 'popular' weapons or sets more solid, and nerfed the more 'overkill' ones.

And it does feel more balanced in terms of power and use.

In true x-com manner i kept loosing my guys and gals left and right. 40 to 60 % in he earlier missions. My alpha team spends more time in hospitals than on the field.
Newbies lose the cool in the heat. One even went berserk and started shooting around him hitting friends and foe.

It's a new x-com. plain and simple. No hand-holding no mercy on the gamer.
(which is awesomely nice IMO. Been ages since a game made me feel so frustrated and grown-up )

And a big kudos to the Devs, who keep churning little fixes on things the players discover.

It's on GoG for twenty bucks.
It's not much if one considers that you basically get an updated x-com with editor and mod support that will keep you in missions and scenarios for the years to come.