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Any gamers around here?

Started by Agramon, June 21, 2013, 02:55:17 AM

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the_antithesis

Where are you playing City of Heroes at? Last I heard it was shut down.

Hydra009

#4111
Quote from: the_antithesis on May 18, 2023, 01:47:29 AMWhere are you playing City of Heroes at? Last I heard it was shut down.
On one of the more popular private servers, I'd rather not be specific for the moment.

You're right that it was shut down, but some guy had been running a private server for years on the down low, which came as a great shock to people who missed the game terribly and were looking for a way to revive it.

After community let's say "discussions", he agreed to release the code into the internet, where it proliferated.

Several servers have popped up, with a couple even continuing updates and quality-of-life fixes (what mine does) and one notably going all out and giving players unusually powerful builds and customization options (a veritable Circe's island of delights)

Such private servers operate completely free of charge - only asking for donations to pay for server costs, which are normally met swiftly, after which they refuse any additional donations for the rest of the month.

Hydra009


This game is going to be sooo freakin' good when it finally comes out! (small studio, so be patient)

Blackleaf


We got a nice beefy trailer for Spider-Man 2 recently. Looks very promising. Movement and combat both look very different. Was wondering how they'd justify having two playable Spider-Men. I love how these games have the villains interact. Their goals clashing or lining up. Leads to some interesting situations, like Spider-Man trying to defend one from killing another.

I wonder how they'll work Eddy Brock into the story, since Peter quit The Daily Bugle. Then again, his employer in the first game is kinda...behind bars. So maybe he went back? Or maybe Brock starts working for Jameson and he gets on the bad side of Black Spider-Man. Not Miles. The other one. lol
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Mr.Obvious

My brother got me elden ring.

Both frustrating and fun.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Hydra009

#4115

Now I'm getting nostalgic.  This game was good, damned good.  Zeke was my boy!  He was such a adorable little face-stomper.


Hydra009

Hey hey hey people!  It took some doing, but I successfully reinstalled Rise of Legends!


And it's really something.  I forgot how zoomed-in games were back then.  Also, the DaVinci faction is ludicrously OP in skirmish mode.  You can (and should) spam trade caravans to the point where you can purchase half the map in short order.  And with those purchases come cities, powerful forts, and sweet, sweet minerals and even more gold.  It's a feedback loop of purchasing and exploiting resources.

And the prototypes!  You can build research labs which can then be upgraded to basically Wonders.  Completing those upgrades gives huge amounts of research points (which improve borders, healing, purchasing, etc) and prototypes (which either give your units a flat buff for the rest of the game or instantly give you some badass boss-tier unit.  A lot of the time, it's actually a pretty tough choice)

The only downside is that the throngs of soldiers this faction pushes out are very difficult to micromanage.  If you can do more than just a basic attack-move command, you're doing more than me.  But when I'm producing uber-upgraded units and the AI is not, it's not much of a fight.

Hydra009

#4117
In an article that I'm slowly figuring out was actually an advertisement, it says that Baldar's Gate 3 is so good that other game studios shouldn't try to replicate their success because it was a long effort with lots of people and smaller studios without those resources to draw upon would fail if they tried.

There's a pretty amusing bullet point for the alleged success:

* Long development cycle (6 years)
* Previous successful games (lol, I'd imagine that helps)
* Successful Early Access period lasting three years that provided Larian with community feedback, bug hunting, and cash flow (listening to the community, what an idea!  Did you hear that, Bioware and/or Blizzard?)
* 400 developers (unusually large team)
* D&D license (very popular)

The jokes practically write themselves and the gentle (or not so gentle) admonishments to other studios are wise advise.  A games studio should:
A) have a solid gameplan from the beginning
B) actually allocate the appropriate resources to make it happen (no minimum viable product here!)
C) listen to the community and actually give them what they want (do you guys have phones???)

I have to wait to upgrade my comp before I can hope to give this game a try, but the it seems to have a very good reception and it looks right up my alley, so this apparent success is a pleasant surprise.

Unbeliever

I found a great game at the play store called Physics Balls.  It's like a pinball game on steroids! Very addicting,  keeps me busy for hours while I listen to science or religion vids on YouTube. 🤪
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Hydra009

#4119
I just watched a retrospective on RTS and it was interesting to say the least.

The groundwork was laid out in the 80s, but the 90s witnessed an explosion of RTS - Dune, Warcraft, and Command and Conquer stand out as the classic RTS games.  Then you have new takes on the genre in 2000 - fully historical in Age of Empires and Total War, a strong emphasis on tactics with Company of Heroes and Dawn of War, strategic-zoom slugfests like Supreme Commander, even some card-based RTS games like Battleforge, and last but definitely not least, the scifi epic that is Homeworld,

But since then, the genre's been in a bit of a rut.  Of course, new games have come out - Total War is still going strong, Age of Empires is still kicking, there's a new Dune RTS for the first time in forever, there will even be a new Company of Heroes and a Homeworld title soon.

But the genre's popularity has declined quite a bit since its late 90, early 2000 heyday.  Perhaps it's due to the genre's reliance on the keyboard/mouse combo, effectively shutting console and mobile gamers out of the genre.  Perhaps it's due to a small resurgence of turn-based strategy games on PC, particularly Civ-like games and grand strategy games like Hearts of Iron or Stellaris.  The elephant in the room is the explosion of popularity of action-adventure and shooter genres since the early 2000s, which now consistently dominate the market.

I hope the new batch of releases help renew interest in the RTS genre.  For The Homeworld!

Blackleaf

#4120

Why developers hate games like Baldur's Gate 3: They make their money-grabbing, cheaply made, barely working games look as low quality as they actually are. Many games these days are made to squeeze as much money out of players as they can, charging full price on top of expecting players to pay much more extra for battle passes, skins, and other bullshit. They actively avoid what they call "overdelivering," because they don't want to increase industry standards. I'm glad that BG3 has had a great amount of success, and I hope people continue to vote with their wallets so these garbage live-service games become a thing of the past.


Part 2. Video games are the only products that are released with the expectation of being broken on release, with the promise of fixing it later. And of course Baldur's Gate 3 should set new standards. That's what breeds innovation. It forces others to adapt or be left in the dust. When an awesome movie is released, you don't see other movie studios saying, "Whoa! Hold on! Don't expect this kind of quality to be the new norm! This is just an anomaly! Movies are too expensive to make these days, so please forgive us if our movies aren't up to your standards when they release in theaters! We'll fix it with the Director's Cut!"
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Hydra009

Quote from: Blackleaf on August 12, 2023, 01:25:46 AMMovies are too expensive to make these days, so please forgive us if our movies aren't up to your standards when they release in theaters! We'll fix it with the Director's Cut!"
To be fair, that would be an upgrade over the current way of doing things, where stinkers are stinkers forever.  The only exception that comes to mind is the Sonic movie, which made a significant positive change due to customer input - worked the SFX team super hard to get a good release, and then shuttered tbe animation studio.  Really bad when the video game industry has better customer service.

Shiranu

"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Blackleaf

Quote from: Shiranu on August 12, 2023, 11:13:04 PMI'm addicted to BG3 :(.

Don't look in the Steam discussion board. It's depressing. lol

I've been enjoying the game a lot too, but for some reason, my clothes disappeared without a trace. And since you only wear them at night in your camp, I didn't notice until hours later. No idea what happened.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Hydra009

Quote from: Blackleaf on August 14, 2023, 01:16:09 PMDon't look in the Steam discussion board. It's depressing. lol
Why not?
<-- regularly uses Steam reviews/discussions to guage a game's current state