Video Games

Iduno · Post by **Iduno** » Tue Feb 27, 2018 7:36 pm

Stahlseele wrote: The Battletech Game looks . . i'll be honest with you, i do not like the deviations from the TT Rules, but otherwise it looks pretty good as of right now.

I was recently discussing the mechanics of Battletech with someone. They're clunky, huge, and old. That's terrible, but it also fits with a game where you're piloting an upright tank which is clunky, huge, and old.

The PC game looks like they're trying to streamline things, which makes the mechanics less terrible, but also less fitting for the system. No idea if it will be better or worse, but it will be different.

At least Battletech grognards aren't the grognardiest grognards who ever grognarded. I'm sure they'll accept the changes with grace.

Also, so far, Wasteland 2 has been pretty good for a retro-clone. And some of the major bugs have been fixed in the Director's Cut (items that add to your max water don't get reset, so they actually do something theoretically useful).

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Feb 27, 2018 8:45 pm

I do not understand the fucking need to fucking streamline the fucking rules for a game played on a fucking computer that will fucking take care of that for you.
Streamlining them for the TT game where you have to do it all by hand / in your head is fine, but THIS just irks me to no end!

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Tue Feb 27, 2018 10:50 pm

Computers can help a bit with complex rules but they're by no means a panacea. UIs are generally good at telling you what your odds of hitting are during your current turn but are shit terrible at telling you what conditions will be like a turn or two from now after people have taken their hypothetical moves. That means if your game isn't streamlined enough you're liable to create a situation where people who don't look at .dat files or take ranks in Obscure Forum Lore are prone to getting roflstomped by people who learn the rules back to front. That's because the former group struggle to make accurate forecasts of future battlefield conditions while the latter absolutely can and will napkin math their way to victory.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:03 pm

Stahlseele wrote:I do not understand the fucking need to fucking streamline the fucking rules for a game played on a fucking computer that will fucking take care of that for you.
Streamlining them for the TT game where you have to do it all by hand / in your head is fine, but THIS just irks me to no end!

Whipstitch wrote:Computers can help a bit with complex rules but they're by no means a panacea. UIs are generally good at telling you what your odds of hitting are during your current turn but are shit terrible at telling you what conditions will be like a turn or two from now after people have taken their hypothetical moves. That means if your game isn't streamlined enough you're liable to create a situation where people who don't look at .dat files or take ranks in Obscure Forum Lore are prone to getting roflstomped by people who learn the rules back to front. That's because the former group struggle to make accurate forecasts of future battlefield conditions while the latter absolutely can and will napkin math their way to victory.

The word you're looking for is CASUALIZATION. *Angry Grognard noises*

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Feb 27, 2018 11:17 pm

You need to understand the game's rules in order to be able use them as part of your decision-making. This is true whether or not the application of those rules is done by hand or by machine. Computers raise the upper limit on complexity, because there are tasks which are easy to understand but tedious to do, but the limit's still there. If the player can't turn the rules over in his head, he can't predict what the rules will say about the outcome of his actions, which means he may as well not be making decisions because it's all just noise to him anyway.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 1:21 am

The biggest advantage of computers is that they know the rules and help keep you from inadvertently cheating so at least some of your ignorant flailing can eventually count as learning-by-doing. That doesn't mean you can play the game well without learning the rules though, it just means that you can play the game very, very poorly for a long time before moving onto some other game you suck at.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:00 am

I still remember the time before video games were dessicated all over the internet, and having plenty of fun. Other people too or the gaming industry would've kinda collapsed.

When you played Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter or Age of Empires or Warcraft or Chrono Trigger or GBA Fire Emblem or the first Final Fantasies or the first Pokemons, did you know all the exact charts and formulas? Or did you go around trying out stuff and improvising?

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 4:21 am

The downside to that era was being stuck for weeks or even months on a puzzle in a game because there was no resources to WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO HERE?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 4:32 am

All I'm saying is that there's a middle ground between "Too simple to be interesting" and "Too fussy to be worth playing" and you can't ignore that and set every minutiae dial to 11 just because you're designing the game for a PC. People can and do declare bullshit on games when they're insufficiently transparent.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 4:45 am

Well I see what you're saying Whipstitch since theres a few games I admit I'm guilty of grabbing a guide while its installing because what the actual fuck do I do. But growing up in the pre gamefaqs era of having no idea how to get past something.

Example that sticks with me is Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, me and a friend were playing that and to get past a puzzle this guy wanted the know the name of some book. We could not find any way to get the answer, rubbed every object in our inventory against everything, tried backtracking. Eventually said fuck it and quit. We ended up coming back probably 2 years later and bumblefucking face first into the solution when we hit that puzzle again. (Tell the guy, I don't know, then ask the parrot).

Stonekeep was another game that left me stumped for weeks back then.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 6:17 am

Kim Hyung Tae is known for greased up girl designs and has a new online game coming out with nice 2D slippery girl animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ72-AqLxXU

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 8:59 am

Whipstitch wrote:All I'm saying is that there's a middle ground between "Too simple to be interesting" and "Too fussy to be worth playing" and you can't ignore that and set every minutiae dial to 11 just because you're designing the game for a PC. People can and do declare bullshit on games when they're insufficiently transparent.

Yet something like Dominions is a pretty popular game in this very forum despite being filled with opaque fiddly mechanics everywhere combined with unclear patch notes (non-humanoids now get different chances for each body part being hit. Who is affected and how? Snakes have higher chance of being hit in the head, that's all the specifics we get).

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:43 pm

maglag wrote:
Whipstitch wrote:All I'm saying is that there's a middle ground between "Too simple to be interesting" and "Too fussy to be worth playing" and you can't ignore that and set every minutiae dial to 11 just because you're designing the game for a PC. People can and do declare bullshit on games when they're insufficiently transparent.
Yet something like Dominions is a pretty popular game in this very forum despite being filled with opaque fiddly mechanics everywhere combined with unclear patch notes (non-humanoids now get different chances for each body part being hit. Who is affected and how? Snakes have higher chance of being hit in the head, that's all the specifics we get).

This is a niche forum for a niche hobby. I would never take anyone or anything I find here as representative of anything.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Feb 28, 2018 6:15 pm

Ironically, Dominions is a labor of love and a textbook example of a niche game for people who enjoy "desiccating" games on the internet. If you want to run off Joe Gamer, by all means, emulate Dominions!

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:26 am

So anyone else here plays Fire Emblem Heroes? It's the mobile free version of the classic Fire emblem franchise, and after one year I find myself still playing it so it's doing something right.

It also has quite a bit of fanservice, in particular considering it's a Nintendo game.

Fjorm, who can be unlocked as gold version in a easy main story map.

Fjorm having an orgasm dropping below half HP.

Basic gameplay is turn based strategy where you build a team of four heroes and go against enemy parties in different scenarios in grid maps. There's a color-based paper-rock-scissors gameplay so you can't just blindly charge forward. As you level up there's also quite a lot of passive abilities and specials which further increase the tactical complexity. Still things are set up so that each battle takes only a few minutes in average.

Now the main difference from the original series is that they removed all battle RNG. All attacks automatically hit, and some special abilities that normally would trigger randomly instead trigger after you attack/get attacked X times instead, which allows you to plan ahead. Like it may be better to allow an enemy to strike you first to charge your special which will allow for a powerful counter attack.

Gaius is too cool for shirts.

The main way to collect heroes is in the classic japanese roullete system where you spend orbs to get some random dude/gal. You can save some for summoning 5 in a row and you can also aim for certain colors for betting in the respective colored stones, although which stones appear in each summoning round is also randomized. There's also constantly "summoning focus" events that increase the odds for certain heroes. First hit is free! Also every time you don't get a gold (rarest) unit, the chance for you to roll one increases, stacking up to 100%. And I must say, out of the rares I got so far, only one could really be called trash tier. Balance is not perfect, some rares are just super good, but almost every rare has a spot in some valid team. And actually some of the game's missions consist of fighting multiple battles in a row where you must switch teams every battle and can't re-use any, so having extras helps. Oh, and certain heroes can be unlocked by beating certain maps. Some can only be unlocked by beating certain daily missions.

Manaketes at least have a valid excuse to go around battle half-naked since they fight by transforming into huge dragons.

You collect orbs for completing story and daily missions (daily ones change constantly whetever you complete them or not). There's also your usual freebie gift per day. Most missions consume stamina to play which recharges over time or can be fully restored with special pots or orbs, but with 99 max and recharging at the rate of 1 per 5 minutes I never find myself at a lack, and have an huge stockpile of stamina pots if I ever had the urge to spend the whole day playing or something.

Inigo has the dance support ability that allows an ally to act again

The only battles that don't consume stamina are arena battles that instead demand dueling swords (get 3 free every day, don't stack, can be recharged with another item) where you fight teams created by other players but controlled by the AI. Instead of orbs they mostly reward feathers which are mostly used to upgrade a lv20 hero's rarity, reseting them to level 1 but increasing their growth rates and unlocking their higher level skills (they retain their old skills too).

At least they remembered that female frontline warriors in Fire Emblem actually pack reasonable armor.

Speaking of customization, each unit has their own skills and normally you can only choose the order they learn them, but eventually they added three other options: 1) sacred seals that each unit can equip one and be freely changed between units; 2) upgrading your unit's main weapon with one of several special options and 3) grabbing up to three from another of your unit's skills by sacrificing them.

Poor Amelia didn't get the memo about reasonable female armor however. And she's supposed to be an armored unit, extra defense but can only move one square per turn due to the weight of her suit.
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Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:25 am

Stahlseele wrote:I do not understand the fucking need to fucking streamline the fucking rules for a game played on a fucking computer that will fucking take care of that for you.
Streamlining them for the TT game where you have to do it all by hand / in your head is fine, but THIS just irks me to no end!

What 'streamlining' are you thinking of? Mostly they're tweaking some numbers so some weapons (particularly the AC/2 and AC/5) are less obviously bad.

Also, two, consider who's at the helm- Jordan Weissman gives zero shits about the catalyst and fan pro garbage that accumulated over the years, and probably little about the late era FASA stuff. He's taking the basics and what he learned doing various computer versions of BT/MW/MechCommander for FASA interactive and Microsoft. A lot of what latecomers think of 'real battletech' means fuck all to him and the Such and Such Sourcebooks might as we'll be kindling.

Iduno · Post by **Iduno** » Fri Mar 02, 2018 6:29 pm

maglag wrote:So anyone else here plays Fire Emblem Heroes? It's the mobile free version of the classic Fire emblem franchise, and after one year I find myself still playing it so it's doing something right.

It sounds like the mobile Final Fantasy game. How does it compare? Everything there was geared towards post-game, but the game was long and boring enough (even by the standards of Final Fantasy) that I couldn't be bothered to get very far before uninstalling.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sat Mar 03, 2018 1:52 am

Iduno wrote:
maglag wrote:So anyone else here plays Fire Emblem Heroes? It's the mobile free version of the classic Fire emblem franchise, and after one year I find myself still playing it so it's doing something right.
It sounds like the mobile Final Fantasy game. How does it compare? Everything there was geared towards post-game, but the game was long and boring enough (even by the standards of Final Fantasy) that I couldn't be bothered to get very far before uninstalling.

Hmm, which (free) mobile final fantasy game? There seems to be at least two relatively popular right now, Mobius and Dimension II (and I remember some cheap money grab a few years ago that was just a mindless clickfest).

Anyway I haven't personally played any of those, but from what I've seen FEH compares quite positively:
-Grid-based tactical gameplay instead of simple turn-based "everybody stands on their side trading blows". In particular FEH units can counter-attack units with the same range (which for attacking is either adjacent or two squares away, no exceptions), so the gameplay never allows you to just turn your brain off. You need to always plan how to best attack your enemies while making sure you won't be taking more damage in return. Some skills can even allow to counter-attack any opponent regardless of range or deny counter attacks altogether.

-FEH does have a big endgame focus yes, but there's plenty for lower level players too. Most missions have lower level versions (in particular main story missions can be completed with a 30ish level party when the max is 40) and even the Arena allows you to pick between easy/medium/hard opponents, meaning you face either a lower level/same level/pimped out team of your rank, although of course you get less rewards for going easier. Anyway grinding a full team to 40 isn't that hard either, but the FEH late-late game wants you to have multiple 40 level teams so you'll always have an incentive to go back and train lower level dudes. Or you can throw certain gems at them to level them whitout battle if you're in a hurry.

-The meta is quite interesting and keeps one trying new combinations. For example besides colors (and some units are colorless too), units can also be either infantry (moves 2 squares), cavalry (moves 3 squares, but slowed/blocked by ditches/forests), fliers (moves 2 squares ignoring most terrain) and armored (only 1 square movement, greater defense stats) plus have different types of weapons. Then there's a bunch of different skills that directly interact with that, like all archers (which are always colorless) deal big extra damage against fliers, then there's anti-cavalry and anti-infantry and anti-armored weapons, which means you want a varied team, but then there's also skills that give great buffs to your team members of a certain type meaning a full flier/cavalry/armored can also be viable. And then there's chain challenges where you fight multiple battles in a row whitout a chance to recover in between so suddenly having a healer is quite useful.

-Instead of fancy 3D models, FEH mostly sports lots of cute colourful 2D "chibi" sprites besides the more detailed character arts I posted and that are reserved for combat shots and character portraits, which personally helps keep the game fresh. It never gets old for me seeing the little soldiers chopping at each other, with special triggers getting special sprite animations to go along it.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Mar 05, 2018 5:30 am

I didn’t get giant titty woman so I stopped playing

Iduno · Post by **Iduno** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 9:56 pm

I picked up Shadow of Mordor recently, which is a pretty good uruk murdering game.

Bad: It's a weird combination of sandbox and plot that gets annoying if you're trying to accomplish specific goals (first, you'll need to complete this plot point to get that power, but you have to unlock this other thing first). However, I get the feeling that if you have goals other than "stab that uruk boss over there in the head until he dies" you're playing the game wrong. The weapon upgrade system doesn't feel rewarding after the halfway-point of the game.

Good: Jump off tower, shoot a few uruk in the face with your elf bow because you're possessed by an elf ghost, then fight the rest, climb back up the tower before the back-up arrives, and do it again. Weapon-specific missions with different goals like sword (murder 50 uruk in the arena before they murder you), dagger (murder 20 uruk without being seen), and bow (shoot 20 uruk in the face before they shoot you in the face or your bullet-time wears off).

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:47 am

Slay the Spire is pretty fun. It's enough to scratch my occasional deck building itch, which is nice since Hearthstone and Shadowverse can go fuck themselves.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Tue Mar 13, 2018 3:46 am

Vermintide 2 jack dropped today. Got the first one back during Humble Monthly and loved it. Pondering getting the sequel but this time I don't have friends that are getting, just a brother I am no longer on speaking terms has it.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Wed Mar 14, 2018 12:37 pm

Anyone who hasn't played Space Funeral should do so whenever they have a couple hours spare.

(caveat: this is in part because it's only like an hour long)

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Mar 16, 2018 2:48 am

I got to the boss fight relevant to Leg Horse's backstory in mildly spoiler-y ways, and then the game crashed. I'm pretty sure that's not the intended experience.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Fri Mar 16, 2018 7:34 pm

Can confirm it isn't. Don't know enough to think what the problem is since once all the "proper" fonts were installed my Windows 10 machine handled it just fine.