The Gaming Den

1.) have you looked at the galaxy generation screen?
There should be a slider there that lets you chose how many connections each system has.

2.) Prepare to unlearn everything you learn right now with the coming big update. Again.

3.) Never play with fanatic anything as your species beliefs. Aside from xenophobe maybe, because that lets you go full fanatic purifiers.

If you are not hunting for achievements, take a look at the steam workspace and the mods in there are just short of insane in some cases.

Stellaris is the most beautifull 4x space game available right now.
It has its drawbacks, but then, what doesn't nowadays?

First, Crusader Kings in space was already a thing, you can have gay clone sex in it, making it far better sci-fi than Stellaris.

Second, Stellaris feels super-unfinished. The only things that really make it stand out for me are the music (which you can download and play over any game) and the 'going to war for specific goals' system, which I think is my favorite ever. Crusader Kings 2 will nickle-and dime me for upgrades until the end of time, but at least it felt like a complete game when I bought the first part.

I would have a look at Endless Space 2, see if that scratches your Space-4X itch any better.

Iduno wrote: Even if I figure out how to play, should I? I guess that's my real question. Is the game worth the effort of learning, or should I got pick up something like Master of Orion or Alpha Centauri instead?

Despite the difficulty of the complex systems, Stellaris is actually a simple game. You build an economy, use it to build armies and fleets, then attack. There is very little in the way of tactics or variety.

MOO2 and Alpha Centauri have aged very well. Considering how cheap they are these days, both are worth it.

Endless Space 2 is goddamn gorgeous, and it comes with the bonus that each race plays pretty differently, so there is a fair amount to discover. Like Stellaris, you build an economy and then attack, but there are some tactics.

The Season 15 conquests for d3 are bogus. That is all.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:The Season 15 conquests for d3 are bogus. That is all.

Do you mean they're bad in general, or they're bad relative to "things that are part of a game that's bad by the standards of Blizzard games made in the 21st century"? It's apparently better than it was at launch, but the skeleton of a shitty game intended to suck money out of your wallet can only be bent so far. Hopefully Blizzard will learn from their mistake, but also hopefully Sony learned from their CD DRM issues, and hopefully EA learned from literally everything they've ever done.


Also, K, that's like the 3rd time in a month Endless Space has been recommended to me. I guess I should get around to looking into it.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:The Season 15 conquests for d3 are bogus. That is all.

If you're into this kind of game I'd recommend Grim Dawn. It goes on sale for ~$7 pretty frequently and the Xpac goes for ~$15 (adds 2 new classes and a new act) and rumors of another expanion coming out.

Game play likes Titan Quest (lot of the devs are ex Titan Quest guys) with a setting that feels like a cross between WHF grimdark and Lovecraftian horror.

Iduno wrote:
Do you mean they're bad in general, or they're bad relative to "things that are part of a game that's bad by the standards of Blizzard games made in the 21st century"? It's apparently better than it was at launch, but the skeleton of a shitty game intended to suck money out of your wallet can only be bent so far. Hopefully Blizzard will learn from their mistake, but also hopefully Sony learned from their CD DRM issues, and hopefully EA learned from literally everything they've ever done....

The second one is probably more accurate. But mostly I meant they were things I traditionally have trouble with, and unlike most people I don't have my 4 stash tabs from seasonal achievements. I didn't play it until Reaper of Souls, I can say since then the game has improved slightly in several ways.

But yeah, I did the easy conquest (Greater Rift 45 with no set items equipped), but the others are things I traditionally struggle with. I've never gotten the 50 million gold streak before (usually I peter out at 30-40, even in the recommended maps and recommended equipment/builds), I struggle with speed (boss rush and sprinter), and the less said about Masters of the Universe, the better ("master 8 set dungeons" my Aunt Fanny).

Pariah Dog: I might give that a try. Never played Titan Quest but for $7 I'll give it a try. (Or not, I tend to forget 99% of the things I want to try, scatterbrained I guess).

If you haven't played Titan Quest, but you like Diablo II, play Titan Quest. Full stop.
Notice I said 'if you like Diablo II'. TQ is great! But the systems involved are much less forgiving than Diablo III's. Skill point allocation is a serious question, rune socketing is a semi-permanent proposition, uniques are rare. Don't be surprised if you end up feeling the need to roll a new character because you've painted yourself into a corner.

Sounds similar to Path of Exile so far. Which is pretty decent for a free game (you don't pay to win, you pay to get cosmetic items).

I really enjoyed the Median XL mod for Diablo 2. It fully replaces all skills and items in the game, and adds in a ton of new content including dozens of endgame quests / dungeons / bosses that are often very challenging but are also extremely rewarding - think Diablo 2's Pandemonium events, but much more of them. The mod's supposed to have a big update coming soon, so I'll probably play it again when that happens.

TQ was great (aside from the molasses like starting pace). It was like Age of Mythology and Diablo fucked and had an awesome baby.

TQ and Grim Dawn take an unique approach to classes. Both games you start as a level 1 mook with nothing other than "stab in face with piddly weapon" Once you gain your first level you pick a mastery from a list. Once you hit another level (early on like 8 or 10) you pick a second from the same list and those two masteries determine your class.

Grim Dawn is a bit more forgiving on letting you undo mistakes with a trainer available early on to let you unspend points (at a rising cost) and a few times throughout the story quests you can get stat reset potions as well as at endgame. TQ eventually added the unspeccer in its first addon (a second add-on came out that added Vikingland as a new act but that was MANY years later after THQNordic bought it back)

Titan Quest is quietly one of my all-time "What if?" games. It's transparently a Diablo Heartbreaker and it has a number of good things going for it in terms of gameplay and mechanics but apparently there was a big snafu where they went through more than one art director and had disputes with the publisher over how gritty/dark the game should be. So in the end you have the mechanics of a really good game in place but the presentation comes off as competent but kinda generic. When God Of War was a big hit mid-production apparently several of the staffers heartily shouted "I told you people can handle snake tits!" but by then they had already wasted an ungodly amount of development time and changing horses midstream again sounded like some Daikatana shit instead of a good idea. They still sold a million copies, but sometimes I wonder what could have been.

Okay, if there are snake tits I'm definitely in. Scaley boobs do things to me, despite (or maybe because of) the failure of biology.

Snake tits can improve a lot of things. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go lie in the sun definitely do human things with my human arms and legs.

strangely my favorite snek tits are quite flat chested

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Okay, if there are snake tits I'm definitely in. Scaley boobs do things to me, despite (or maybe because of) the failure of biology.

Koumei wrote:Snake tits can improve a lot of things. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go lie in the sun definitely do human things with my human arms and legs.

There's an Australia joke in there somewhere.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Okay, if there are snake tits I'm definitely in. Scaley boobs do things to me, despite (or maybe because of) the failure of biology.

Anyway onto the discussion of Diablo-ish games, here'd be my suggestions:

1. I echo the recommendation of Grim Dawn. I like that the story is a bit more about the world than a lot of the others. A proper setting, and not just a series of themed maps. Additionally the classes are a bit more interesting and feel more like they fit in their setting: you choose one at level 2, then another at level 10 and that combines to give you a multiclass title. So you could be a Commando (Soldier/Demolitionist) or a Witch Hunter (Occultist/Night Blade). So that's fun.

2. Torchlight 2, specifically with the Synergies mod. On its own, it's mostly a bit on the easy side, and also not that user-friendly (basically can't re-spec, and the game focuses a lot on putting more ranks in old abilities than unlocking new ones). With Synergies you can re-spec practically at will (it costs a flat amount of gold and like all of these games you end up basically in the Wish economy), there are more classes (the Necromancer is a lot of fun for just running through an area, letting your various summons and pets rampage across the enemies that were about to attack you, sitting down to eat a snack while you watch them, then letting them have a rest while you take care of the loot), putting a lot more enemies (and elite enemies) in the game, and just... more STUFF. As well as a much bigger end game. Also the classes are tinkered with such that new skills unlock earlier but it takes longer for them to allow extra ranks. Of the core classes, my favourite is probably Engineer but they're all fun.

That said, much as I hated Diablo 2, the Median XL mod looks pretty cool.

Grim Dawn looks neato, does every class have unique resource mechanics or is it all MP or what

Time to get a Switch:
https://twitter.com/senran_kaguraPR/sta ... 5295974401

If you like Diabloesque games, you could give WH40K Inquisitor - Martyr a look see . .
That is what turned me off the game <.<

OgreBattle wrote:Grim Dawn looks neato, does every class have unique resource mechanics or is it all MP or what

Its all MP as you mentioned previously you start the game as a mook with a club. You pick 2 masteries (one at level 2 and the other at level 10) and those form your classes.

https://grimcalc.com/ shows you the list.


Pricetag has turned me off 40K:IM Stahl.

@Pariah Dog
Looking at it i can understand that very well . .
50 Bucks for that? Ugh x.x

Grim Dawn looks alright, but perhaps a little more complex than I was wanting.

Yeah, I will say that D3 is probably the most user-friendly of the bunch. Not just on difficulty (although for the majority of it I would say that is true - after playing T2 Synergies I felt over-levelled for it), but just quality of life things like "You don't need to figure out where you're putting individual stat increases, it just scales with level by class then you add gear bonuses", the ease of redoing your skills (and the fact that again, you're not just sinking more points into existing things, you just pick a skill, then pick a rune to augment it) and so on.

It does involve more "looking at the things happening on the screen rather than focusing on your bars and cooldowns" than all the others though (arguably a good thing), with the various elite/boss effects being actual battlefield hazards to avoid.