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Action RPGs (aka. Min/Max Corner)

ASHES said:
This thread makes me want to go back and play Dungeon Siege again. Maybe 2 as well. Not 3. Nothing truly replaced DS for me until Torchlight 2 came out, and even then it was mostly for the QOL improvements (pets that sell loot was a big one.)
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Dungeon Siege was great, but if your experience goes anything like mine, the nostalgia wears off pretty fast. My main issue with DS on replaying it was that the controls were really bad.

I might go back and try again someday, maybe going in knowing its limitations will help, but going in cold was pretty jarring with how funky the controls were.
 
I don't have an issue with the DS controls, they're pretty basic but functional enough without getting in my way. Mouse for all inventory and movement, plus hot keys for health, mana and pick up loot.

It helps for replayability that if you play the multiplayer, there's an entirely different world with it's own storyline I found more engaging than the main quest line. Add in Legends of Aranna and there's another large world to explore. I find it much easier to go back to than something like D2.
 

A year and a half later I decided to see where this game is in development. I received a steam alert that said version 0.8.1.. something something was released so I decided to give it another try.

It is greatly improved. At least in beta most of the navigation has been "fixed" but maybe in a narrative breaking way. Essentially,now when you open the mad you can tab through all of the epochs and simply click of the way point on the map of the epoch you want, andno matter where you are, you teleport their,free of charge. THis solves the navigation nighmares I was encountering in early beta.

The Also, the story is fully in place and makes some sense. If anything it seem smore like a JRPG narrative than a western narrative.. not really my cup of tea, but good enough for a game genre where 99% of the appeal is what happens AFTER the story.

I finished the main story line nd tried some of the game+stuff and it's pretty standard... run random maps for fun and profit, with the occaisional story mission that drops you into events throughout the various epochs which, I suppose, fleshes out some of the back story, but like most ARPGs, I stopped paying attention.

Itemization is also pretty standard, not as complicated as a Grim Dawn or POE, not as simple as Vermantide. If anything, the feel the item system is closest to is Diablo II. The goal of itemization is a balance between primary damage buff stats are the usual rainbow of resitences.

It's a fun time waster, which is about all you can expect from an ARPG.

It isn't as boring as it was when I last played it, and so far my wheels have grip on the min/max hill climb... but I think I'll hit my maximum incline with a day our two. At that point 1 of two things will happen: 1) I'll unistall it because I hit my limit or 2) I'll start one of the other classes to see what it's like because I haven't have enough.

At the moment it feels like I'll go for #2, but then I haven't it the wall yet on my primary, so time will tell.
 
In the multiplayer map, go to Crystwind (the 2nd town), load up on potions, and make your way through the Krugs to the skeleton archers. Carefully pull the skeleton archers one at a time and kill them. (Restock potions as necessary, the first skeleton should drop enough gold to cover all costs). The path leads to the Fury den where you can load up on great items. Fastest way to the mid-late game!
 

You guys are going to make me install Dungeon Seige again, aren't you?
 
jmotivator said:
You guys are going to make me install Dungeon Seige again, aren't you?
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Multiplayer should still work direct IP, if you activate directplay for Windows 10. Might have to set up a DP game sometime.
 
I've been playing Fallout 4 kind of obsessively lately. It's easy to get caught up in that game. The latest big accomplishment was wiping out the Raider bad guys running Nuka-World. I left them alone for a while, but formulated a plan.
I left Dogmeat at the Red Rocket. I actually feel bad when he's hurt. Too many bad guys for him.
I don't usually wear power armor, but had a few sets stashed in my hideout (The Red Rocket Garage). Got my best gun (the Splattercannon), a few mini-nukes and pulse grenades, some backup weapons, put on the armor and started at the front entrance to Nuka-World.
Once you neutralize the first raider, all 80+ of them are hostile, so the idea is to bottleneck them and only take on a reasonable number at once. Managed to get all of them on hard difficulty setting- only died once because of blowback from one of my own grenades. Armor was junk at the the end.
Lots of good loot there, too.
Haven't been back there in a while. Hope all the traders have gotten those collars off.
 
ASHES said:
Multiplayer should still work direct IP, if you activate directplay for Windows 10. Might have to set up a DP game sometime.
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I think the more likley DP game in the future would be Valheim.
 
jmotivator said:
I think the more likley DP game in the future would be Valheim.
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Yeah I've seen people talking about that. Looks interesting, might have to give it a second look.
 
So I decided to go back to play Wolcen the last few days. I am doing training this week on some new-ish datacenter hardware and have lots of time on my hand while the instructor is working with other students.

During training I tend to jump out of WebEx and game as I wait for people to finish labs.

Anyway, Wolcen did something weird while I was gone, for an ARPG developer, anyway.

Apparently at some point the dev team did a nerf-hammer pass on apparently everything in the game. This was maybe warranted since the late game was a bit of a ball buster. But they nerfed skills, spells, bosses, minions, and gear... so, pretty much everything. But taht isn't what is weird.

When they nerfed everything they chose NOT to nerf/remove all the gear that players farmed pre-nerf-a-palooza. When I logged on I noticed that my main character had a "Legacy" tag on his account, and all of my gear had a statement, written in red, on it that said, essentially, "This gear was generated with an older version of the game and therefor may be unbalanced" and... well... boy is it ever. I'm now unkillable, it seems. I break all kinds of soft caps on damage and damage mitigation.

I kind of like it, but it may be a short revisit because I don't know if I would ever really be able to upgrade my old gear in the new system.
 
My experience with these kind of games has been mostly casual, a little Diablo 2, and Baldur's Gate 2 on GameCube, and casual ones like Dungeon Siege and Torchlight 2. Recently started playing Pillars of Eternity, and even though it's a lot steeper learning curve, and less attractive (subjective, though it certainly looks better than something like DS), I am having a lot of fun.
 
The superhero lampoon Comic The Flaming Carrot in the 1980s accurately predicted every Action RPG warrior build of the last 20 years...

 

Pillars of Eternity was great. So was Deadfire. I'm excited for Avowed, which will also be set in Eora.
 
AConcernedCitizen said:
Pillars of Eternity was great. So was Deadfire. I'm excited for Avowed, which will also be set in Eora.
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Since I wrote that post, I haven't finished Pillars yet, but I did play through Tyranny. I want to do it again though, because there are many different ways it can go, and there were mistakes made.
 
I've been spending my gaming time revisiting a bunch of Action RPGs that I played in various stages of Beta release to see how they are doing today, rework characters where need be, and generally get caught up. It's been pretty hit and miss, and here is my run down.

LAST EPOCH - This game is probably the closest you'll get to a Diablo 2 experience in a "modern" game. It's been in beta for years now, and still there. THat being said, it has come a VERY long way since I originally played it 4 (?) years ago. It is basically a completed product with a pretty large end-game. To many fellow ARPG fans, I'm pleased to say that the end game is most decidedly not Set-based grinding. I have yet to come across a set that even makes any sense!

Much like original DIablo 3, most of the set/unique gear is only conditionally useful, but is severely limited by the fact that you can't augment them, which is the name of the late game in Last Epoch. Instead, the purple gear (which has a higher drop rate) is the target in end game grinds. All Suffixes and Affixes in LE have 5 levels normally, but there is a 6th level that usually you can only get randomly in world drops. The Tier 6 of a given Affix/Suffix (A/S) is much higher bonus that can be normally acquired, and the existence of the T6 A/S is what determines the purple item color, even better that these items count as normal items, so you can add your own A/S to them to target your specific build.

The one downside to the game right now is that it is abysmally optimized. I muscle through to descent frame rates, but my system runs exceptionally hot with this game. There is no reason at all that this game should leverage so much system power, but it does. I have even limited the max FPS to 60 and the game still runs my RTX 3080 to 85°C ... in comparison, Cyberpunk 2077 barely breaks 70°C. Just weird.

WOLCEN - This game hasn't changed much since I last touched it. It's still a solid ARPG, but most of the interest in this game is in the story. The late game, post-story mode is pretty boring.

My biggest gripe about this game is that the interesting itemization Rage/Will mechanic only seems half done. While Melee only (2-H Axe & Sword, Sword+pistol), Magic only (Staff, Wand+Totem) and Ranged Physical only (Bows... where are the rifles?) work pretty well, the Rage/Mana mechanic seems to be specifically designed to support hybrid builds that alternate between rage and will... but none of them I've tried have seemed to work all that well.

WARHAMMER: CHAOSBANE - THis game is an oddball, of sorts. You pretty much start the game at end game. That isn't to say that you start fully leveled, though you level quickly, it means that most late-game grind mechanics are as available from the beginning of the game as they are at the end. You can fire the game up, run through the tutorial missions, and once dropped in the main town hub you can make your whole game about running short "relic hunt" missions that end with a large treasure chest to open. You can also (I think?) access the "Boss Rush" missions from the start too, dropping you into one of the major boss fights in the game to try and get better gear drops.

My main gripe about this game though is itemization is a bit boring and set focused. Once you grind out your desired 5-piece relic level gear set, the next step is to grind out the higher level of that gear set.

If I had to give the game bonus points for anything it would be 1) It's Warhammer 2) While the Slayer gets the inauspicious designation of this games "Spin-to-Win" build, the slayer laughs manically the whole time he is spinning which is pretty funny and 3) The DLC witch Hunter introduces a new combat mechanic that amounts to ranged "Spin-to-Win" where he spins like a normal Spin-to-Win, but with dual pistols... and he looks ridiculously undignified doing it. I'd avoid the skill on goofiness alone if it wasn't so effective....

And finally, Chaosbane tries to bring the larger than life world of Warhammer home to ARPGs with very Warhammer-ish everything, but they miss wide on the Mage gear which makes him look like varying levels of Court Jester, and some Deep booming exclamations when you cast "God" spells that are in another language but often sound like weird english phrases. Like when the Which Hunter casts a particularly effective God Spell it sounds like he shouts "EAT MY SODA!!!"
 
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