Quote from: Shiranu on September 18, 2022, 07:41:37 AMIt's nearly 7 in the morning.

I've spent the last 6 hours playing War Thunder's tank mode, non-stop.

Oh fuck, what have I done... but my god, when you pull of a good maneuver and catch the enemy by surprise? The satisfaction...

Hey, I remember playing this game several months ago in the aircraft mode. Some survey site was willing to pay me $12 to win a certain amount of battles in the game (I can't remember the exact number). It was hard (I died quite a few times. Really frustrating), but I was able to do it and get my $12 reward.

I stopped playing it after that. Good game and all, but not exactly my cup of tea. Maybe I'll give it another shot one day.

Quote from: Shiranu on September 18, 2022, 07:41:37 AMIt's nearly 7 in the morning.

I've spent the last 6 hours playing War Thunder's tank mode, non-stop.

Oh fuck, what have I done... but my god, when you pull of a good maneuver and catch the enemy by surprise? The satisfaction...

I know that feeling. My favorite thing in World of Tanks was using a Cruiser Mk III to blow the crap out of enemy T-18 tank destroyers (which normally dominated at that tier).  Once, I even shot and damaged their barrel.  Their panic was hilarious.

Quote from: nuclear on September 18, 2022, 01:36:51 PMHey, I remember playing this game several months ago in the aircraft mode. Some survey site was willing to pay me $12 to win a certain amount of battles in the game (I can't remember the exact number). It was hard (I died quite a few times. Really frustrating), but I was able to do it and get my $12 reward.

I stopped playing it after that. Good game and all, but not exactly my cup of tea. Maybe I'll give it another shot one day.

I don't enjoy the planes at all, tbh - but the tank warfare is a little more fun. It's... probably still only like a 6.5/10 for me though, I'm just prone to binging "meh" games lol.

Quote from: Hydra009 on September 18, 2022, 03:19:57 PMI know that feeling. My favorite thing in World of Tanks was using a Cruiser Mk III to blow the crap out of enemy T-18 tank destroyers (which normally dominated at that tier).  Once, I even shot and damaged their barrel.  Their panic was hilarious.

That different damage models on the tanks is by-far amongst biggest selling point for the game; the fact that knowledge of the layout of your opponent and your own tank matters is pretty cool to me.

Now, if team-mates would use comms and help me split heavily front-armored tanks and get around them instead of just holding W in a straight line at them... that would be nice.

I considered myself lucky if they didn't literally shoot me in the back, block my shots, and/or unexpectedly and terrifyingly jack-in-the-box the instant they see the enemy.

They also tended to type "wwwwwwww" in the chat box instead of driving forwards by holding the w key.  Finally, autorun is a thing so I don't understand why they have to mess around with the w key at all.  Especially since other buttons (like zooming or using your gear) are kinda important, too.

In World of Tanks, there was an famous map (we're talking de_dust famous) called Malinovka (affectionately known as Campinovka for obvious reasons) where each team starts near a convenient trench with some cover with a giant flat no-man's land in between.  I'll let you take a guess as to what gameplay that lends itself to.

There's also a narrow river path to the side along with rolling hills.  The smart move is to take to the hills and attempt to outflank the enemy.  Instead, large numbers of both teams decided to charge straight into the teeth of the enemy and are always quite surprised when the whole enemy team fills them full of holes.  If you've ever seen the DS9 Episode "Rocks and Shoals", it's pretty much exactly like that.

The winning team is decided solely by the number of dum-dums on your team and nothing else.  You can be the most skilled or least skilled player in the world and it won't matter.  All that matters is whether or not you're a dum-dum or surrounded by dum-dums.

Noticed the same thing on CoD back in the day - people literally just run into the same corner someone is camping... over, and over, and over... and then complain that they are camping.

I mean... you have flash bangs, stun grenades, smoke bombs, incendiary bombs, UAVs and other kill streaks to flush him out... but yeah, just keep walking right infront of where he is looking, I'm sure that's not a problem. Same with the tanks - literally a thousand things you could do other than just do exactly what they want you to.

(Actually, now that I say this - this applies to a large percentage of games that get criticized I think; people think you can just hold W, go Rambo and ez win, then get pissed off when it doesn't work)

Oh, man. I spent the entire weekend with my Pi 4 with Retropie loaded on it trying to get the Intellivision Flashback controllers to work with the Ultimate PC Interface. Let me tell you, this ain't easy. I never got it to work with my old Windows laptop. But now, at about midnight on Sunday, I finally got it to work. Now I can play Bomb Squad properly.

Quote from: Shiranu on September 18, 2022, 10:34:16 PM(Actually, now that I say this - this applies to a large percentage of games that get criticized I think; people think you can just hold W, go Rambo and ez win, then get pissed off when it doesn't work)

A lot of games, especially single-player games, do allow for Rambo techniques to work and work well.  Doom and Halo come readily to mind.

In stark contrast, multiplayer games generally do not allow you to shrug off bullets, flail wildly, and then score a ton of kills.  Cause if they did, the other guy would be doing that to you as well and to the best of my knowledge, there is no Rambo VS Rambo game on the market.  Hero shooters are probably the closest to that, though.

Some of my favorite games are multiplayer bot stomps (World of Warships ftw) simply because both teams are technically-speaking evenly matched, but human cunning and ingenuity *coughexploitscough* normally win the day.  True, it's less competitive, but it's also less frustrating and rage-inducing.  And it lets you try out new techniques in the field without worrying about sabotaging your team's chances.  That nice difficulty sweet spot between too easy and too difficult.

Trying CP2077 with mods, see how much better it goes - anime got me inspired to give it another go.

My character looking like a true choom of NC.

*Happiness intensifies*

Let's talk Meta.  Metagaming broadly refers to a player using knowledge from outside the game to make decisions in the game, but here I want to use this term more narrowly to refer to gravitating towards playstyles that are efficient in the gameworld over playstlyes you might naturally prefer (players are mostly inadvertently, though sometimes deliberately, deciding on a character's course of action based on how the game's abstract mechanics will affect the outcome, which is a form of metagaming)

Skyrim is a perfect example.  You're a stealth archer because everyone's a stealth archer because that's what instakills enemies and gives you both the element of surprise and basically zero risk in any fight.  And that's because Skyrim's devs (intentionally or not) made this playstyle so powerful that even people who go out of their way to try other playstyles, like 2-handed + heavy armor frequently get sucked into the ubiquitous stealth archer build.

World of Warcraft is another great example.  Your character, based on your class selection, is very likely to get pigeon-holed into a specific role with specific talent choices and specific gear.  If you don't do it yourself, rest assured that other people will try very hard to corral you into a specific role.

In amazing games, there are multiple viable paths to victory and you either don't necessarily have to play a certain way or there are at least several playstyles that are roughly equally likely to lead to victory.  KotoR is a great example.  You can be a great warrior or wizard or even a glorified mechanic and not only still win, but it's fairly difficult to determine which one is more effective than the others.  MTG has this built in, with aggro decks, control decks, and combo decks locked in a permanent struggle for dominance.  No meta dominates for long.

In crap games, you are going to play in one way only - the way the dev decided you would play.  You are not only going to use certain moves at certain times, you're going to do it in exactly the right sequence with exactly the right talent tree and exactly the right items OR ELSE.

So the next game you play, ask yourself if you're playing the way you're playing because that's how you want to play or if that's how someone else decided you'd be playing that way.

I've been thinking about how The Elder Scrolls VI might balance things so that stealth archers weren't so OP, but I'm a bit apprehensive about how Bethesda would handle that issue. If you nerf Archery or Sneak, then that's no fun, and you kinda defeat the design philosophy of the games, where everything is skill you improve by using the skill. But I could think of a few things that might make things better, without nerfing any skills. Mainly by improving the AI.

In vanilla Skyrim, if you shoot an enemy, they'll search for you for about ten seconds, then give up and go back to what they were doing. If NPCs reacted more intelligently, it would prevent archers from wiping out entire bandit camps without resistance, and also make things more fun with a bit of challenge. Say you fire and miss, and your arrow gets stuck on a wall. NPCs investigate and make the intelligent decision to move in the opposite direction of the wall. If you evade detection by hiding somewhere or circling around, they'll have to give up eventually, but they should be on high alert for a considerable amount of time. If there's a whole group of enemies, maybe one turns to another and says, "Go tell the boss. There's someone out there." The second NPC turns and enters their lair. If you don't stop them, then entering the interior will make things harder for you, as every NPC is on guard and looking for you. On the other hand, maybe you shoot one bandit and their corpse is discovered by another. He realizes he's all alone, so he makes a run for it, fearing the unknown threat.

Once the enemy eventually gives up looking for you, they shouldn't just return to their normal activities. They should still be on edge. Perhaps taking cover inside or organizing a patrol around the perimeter. Only if you return several in-game hours later, with no further detection from the group, should they return to their normal behaviors.

Now, while I say I don't want skills to be nerfed, I can't help but admit that Sneak at higher levels just reaches a ridiculous level of efficiency, where you basically become invisible to NPCs, even when they're looking right at you. I think this could be balanced in a way that makes the game a bit more realistic, while also more engaging. Implement disguises into stealth. If you're dressed like the enemy, then your Sneak skill could determine how close you can get to an enemy without them realizing something is off, as well as how long you can be around them. As an expert, maybe you can even go up and talk to the grunts, and they just assume you're a new guy they haven't met before. You sneak through the enemy base, you pick them off one by one, but you're caught as you're walking away from a corpse. Using your Speech skill (which is hopefully actually useful in this game), you attempt to convince them that you just found the body like that, already dead.

Additionally, light levels should play a greater role in detection than it currently does. Even at higher levels, sneaking in broad daylight should be a challenge. But if you use the darkness to your advantage, then you can be invisible. They could implement options to put out light sources to make things easier for you. Maybe you have a bow with a water element enchantment, and you use it to put out torches. Maybe you're an expert in Illusion, and you cast a spell that surrounds the area in darkness, making it so that candle light can't illuminate anything further than two feet away from it.

Sins 2 is coming!


This is the sequel to one of my favorite games, Sins of a Solar Empire!

I don't think many people here have played it so I'll give you the quick summary:  You play as a mighty space empire (with a sinful past) trying to defeat both other factions (and even subfactions).  You do this by colonizing planets, building mighty fleets, and warping very close to planets to duke it out in their gravity wells, conquering all that remains.  Depending on your faction, you might rely heavily on industry and commerce, the ability to warp spacetime to outmaneuver your opponent, or godlike psychic powers.

The game was great, but it suffered from a few flaws.  Players were relegated to skirmish mode only, no campaign and no progression between matches.  Amazing but painfully scant lore.  Lots of useless (or very situational) research and buildings.  Poorly balanced factions (TEC is easy mode).  Frustrating RNG system (artifacts can be either very fun if lucky or very frustrating if unlucky).  Very long, dragging games, often with increasing levels of input lag.  PIRATES.

Fortunately, mods solved a lot of these flaws as well as offered a lot of new factions, research, abilities, and planets.  And while I have mixed feelings about this, the most popular mods ditch the game's setting entirely and use the game engine to play Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, etc instead.  Though I maintain that Maelstrom is the best mod out there, and while it stretches the lore, it's not an impossibility.

The new game is going to be mostly like the old game, albeit with a fresh coat of paint and some new features.  Planets will no longer be disappointingly stationary, and will instead orbit their stars in real time.  Factions will be more asymmetrical, so git gud.  Multiplayer is getting more love, which is always nice to see.  Aside from that, not much is known at this time.

Okay, folk. My obsession with the Mattel Intellivision has led me down a rabbit hole of homebrewed titles. Most of them are nice, but not very impressive, I guess. Mostly arcade translation that were never done back in the day, like Moon Patrol and a better version of Donkey Kong. Stuff like that. Nothing wrong with it, but it hardly has the depth of the strategy-based titles.

Then I found The Sorrow of Gadhlan' Thur.


Jesus H I J and K Christ.

This could almost pass for an NES game. The Intellivision had power, but I doubted it had the ability to do stuff like this. A full metroidvania on a console from 1979.

The thing that bothers me is I'm not sure it is running on Intellivision hardware. Let me explain. Atari 2600 homebrews have gotten equally impressive, but that's mostly because the games run on a microcontroller in the cartridge. Maybe I'm being picky, but it feels like cheating to me. Not that games back in the day didn't have extra hardware in the cart. USCF Chess on the Intellivision had extra RAM, for example. There must be something in the cart because there's a save function. So, save function aside, if this runs on a stock Intellivision, I'll be surprised.

Quote from: Hydra009 on October 28, 2022, 11:26:48 PMSins 2 is coming!

This is the sequel to one of my favorite games, Sins of a Solar Empire!

Definitely keeping an eye on it, played the first a little bit and love the genre. Looking forward to reviews to decide if I want get it.


---------------------------------------------------------------------

Been playing a LOT of Dark Souls 3 lately, probably about 14 hours in the last 3-4 days.

I... was not even remotely good at it the last few times I've tried, but now it's just coming so easily. If I can beat Dark Souls 3, I want to finally play 1 & 2, beat 3 again, and beat Sekiro and Elden Ring.

Just everything about Miyazaki's world is... *chef's kiss*