Blog Your Current Game

[ASHES]

Been playing a lot of old Nintendo games while waiting for Mario Party Switch to arrive. Last night was Mario Kart Wii.

 

[Redress]

Still playing the hell out of Dyson Sphere Project. Amazing game. Also been playing Hades, which is a great action RPG kinda thing, but I suck at it. Also picked up the free beta of Eternal Cylinder, which is kinda like Spore, but with a plot and gorgeous graphics.

Also, if you have not gotten it, Surviving Mars will be free starting tomorrow on the Epic store. I simply cannot recommend it enough.

 

[Jredbaron96]

Managed to install a mod in Flight Simulator 2020 that let me fly an F4 Phantom.



Things are going well.

 

[Redress]

Managed to install a mod in Flight Simulator 2020 that let me fly an F4 Phantom.

View attachment 67322324

Things are going well.

I am not an expert, but something does not look right there...

 

[PoS]

Still playing the hell out of Dyson Sphere Project. Amazing game. Also been playing Hades, which is a great action RPG kinda thing, but I suck at it. Also picked up the free beta of Eternal Cylinder, which is kinda like Spore, but with a plot and gorgeous graphics.

Also, if you have not gotten it, Surviving Mars will be free starting tomorrow on the Epic store. I simply cannot recommend it enough.

I played SM for a few hours but got bored with it.

 

[Grandpappy]

Still playing Fallout 4. Current project is building out the settlement at the Nuka World Red Rocket. Thinking of trying a "for profit" type of setup.

 

[Mr Person]

This gave me a chuckle.

One of the changes in the latest ESO patch: "Cleaning a fish now sounds less obnoxious. "

 

[Mr Person]

Managed to install a mod in Flight Simulator 2020 that let me fly an F4 Phantom.

View attachment 67322324

Things are going well.

I don't think I ever managed to land a plane of any time in MS flight simulator......but I'm also talking something like 20+ years ago, when it was more primitive.

 

[ecofarm]

This video aptly describes.

 

[Mr Person]

ESO's new CP allocation system is more than a little handful. I kinda wish I'd screen-shotted my characters before, but I pretty much never pay attention to up and coming patch plans.

I feel like most characters are weaker. Maybe I just didn't re-allocate points properly. The new system looks like you probably can be more powerful in the long run, and at the very least you can target your build a lot better. The old system provided a whole lot of wider-bonuses, ie, to all direct damage you deal or protection from the same, or to all elemental and protection from. I feel like most lost more than they gained.

But, at the same time, I play ESO mostly like a single player game where there happen to be other players. I might do some group dungeons, but I have absolutely no desire to do the higher-difficulty veteran challenges or anything like it. WoW raiding burnt out that desire permanently.

 

[Grandpappy]

ESO's new CP allocation system is more than a little handful. I kinda wish I'd screen-shotted my characters before, but I pretty much never pay attention to up and coming patch plans.

I feel like most characters are weaker. Maybe I just didn't re-allocate points properly. The new system looks like you probably can be more powerful in the long run, and at the very least you can target your build a lot better. The old system provided a whole lot of wider-bonuses, ie, to all direct damage you deal or protection from the same, or to all elemental and protection from. I feel like most lost more than they gained.

But, at the same time, I play ESO mostly like a single player game where there happen to be other players. I might do some group dungeons, but I have absolutely no desire to do the higher-difficulty veteran challenges or anything like it. WoW raiding burnt out that desire permanently.

Do you have several characters or a favorite.? My main is a Nord two handed sword guy, plus built another mage with a bow and a pet guy to resemble a WOW hunter.
Haven't played in a while.

 

[Mr Person]

Do you have several characters or a favorite.? My main is a Nord two handed sword guy, plus built another mage with a pet guy to resemble a WOW hunter.
Haven't played in a while.

11 characters thus far, X of them max lvl. CP 734.

Tough call. I've always enjoyed my first character despite idiotically making him a Breton. He's a NB that uses bow for distance and dual-wield for up close. It's not optimized for PVP or any one thing (though would probably be terrible for PVP). But it's a stam build. Any number of other races would've been better. Maybe I'll use some of these extra crowns I end up with through the ESO Plus sub (which I have mainly for the crafting bag and because you get access to all existing DLC) to switch races. The magicka buffs, including racials, are wasted on him.

I was also rather partial to my Orc DK. Stam build, 2H only. I have a necro using 2H only that I'm growing more partial to. The first attack bar (not counting ultimate) for each is the full 2H skill line. The second, class stuff that generally boosts things. DK seems a bit better at DPS, necro better survivability since I've got three different heals and an armor thing slotted, the fifth being a skeletal mage.

I'm sure anyone who knows what they're doing could look at my chars and point out a million ways I could better optimize my builds.



The NB takes most things down with three attacks: snipe, immediate light shot, followed by the fighters' guild bolt skill (I forget the name. First one in the line). So when I'm running around, over half the things I kill are dead before I've closed to melee. The 2H guys just get it done more quickly after charging in: charge in (with the area damage upgrade), upper cut, immediate light attack, reverse slash if group but maybe cleave depending on how badly the mobs have been damaged.

I've got a whole bunch of other characters. A staff sorc. A 2H sorc. A 2H Templar. Others that I haven't brought up to 50: a couple wardens, another 2H stam DK for some reason (I should probably make him bow or dual wield), a magicka DK, etc.




But I just don't have the time to really play anymore. I can post here during the day because I'll leave myself logged in, take a break every 30 or 70 minutes, waste a few minutes (I type very quickly, and can read pretty damn fast if it's not important to boot), then get back to whatever it was. But something like ESO, I gotta sit there for a consistent block of time, and I just don't have that except for a bit before bed.....and that's if I don't instead spend it on some other activity....

 

[Grandpappy]

11 characters thus far, X of them max lvl. CP 734.

Tough call. I've always enjoyed my first character despite idiotically making him a Breton. He's a NB that uses bow for distance and dual-wield for up close. It's not optimized for PVP or any one thing (though would probably be terrible for PVP). But it's a stam build. Any number of other races would've been better. Maybe I'll use some of these extra crowns I end up with through the ESO Plus sub (which I have mainly for the crafting bag and because you get access to all existing DLC) to switch races. The magicka buffs, including racials, are wasted on him.

I was also rather partial to my Orc DK. Stam build, 2H only. I have a necro using 2H only that I'm growing more partial to. The first attack bar (not counting ultimate) for each is the full 2H skill line. The second, class stuff that generally boosts things. DK seems a bit better at DPS, necro better survivability since I've got three different heals and an armor thing slotted, the fifth being a skeletal mage.

I'm sure anyone who knows what they're doing could look at my chars and point out a million ways I could better optimize my builds.



The NB takes most things down with three attacks: snipe, immediate light shot, followed by the fighters' guild bolt skill (I forget the name. First one in the line). So when I'm running around, over half the things I kill are dead before I've closed to melee. The 2H guys just get it done more quickly after charging in: charge in (with the area damage upgrade), upper cut, immediate light attack, reverse slash if group but maybe cleave depending on how badly the mobs have been damaged.

I've got a whole bunch of other characters. A staff sorc. A 2H sorc. A 2H Templar. Others that I haven't brought up to 50: a couple wardens, another 2H stam DK for some reason (I should probably make him bow or dual wield), a magicka DK, etc.




But I just don't have the time to really play anymore. I can post here during the day because I'll leave myself logged in, take a break every 30 or 70 minutes, waste a few minutes (I type very quickly, and can read pretty damn fast if it's not important to boot), then get back to whatever it was. But something like ESO, I gotta sit there for a consistent block of time, and I just don't have that except for a bit before bed.....and that's if I don't instead spend it on some other activity....

Sounds like you been playing a while, Vestige.

 

[Mr Person]

This video aptly describes.

Multiplayer FPS and RTS games used to fill that niche for me, especially Quake 3 and 4. While I like NPC fights that take some planning/skill, I'm not so much a fan of having to practice a particular boss until you *get* him. Humans are unpredictable until you've played the same guy a ton. And if that guy is great he's still unpredictable and so, hopefully, are you. (Late-stage Quake 4 was great for that, though these days I almost never see any active servers if I look).

Or games like Warcraft 3 / Starcraft 2. Inspiration happens in a flash and you work out a new maneuver, in circumstances you're probably not going to see again unless the absurdly improbable happens. But you get better and better at improvising. That kind of training I like.

WoW had the dumber version of that: learning stages. It's not that you got better as a player when you finally down the raid boss. You just learned how to do your role and what happens when during the fight. DS sounds far more intelligent. But at the same time....I'm not sure I'd enjoy fighting an NPC fifty times until I memorize all the things he does, all the visual tells, and all the proper counters. I'm only getting better if I wipe new things out faster. Otherwise, I'm still just sort of memorizing stuff in a particularly challenging game.

 

[Mr Person]

Sounds like you been playing a while, Vestige.

I finally burned out on WoW somewhere around 2014...maybe 2015. A few years later my old man convinced me (while apologizing for convincing me) to try ESO. I think I've had an account since sometime in either 2018 or 2019. I kinda deserved it. I'm the one who convinced him to try WoW. Then again, that was kinda his fault for convincing me to try Zork, The Dungeon revealed, and other games in the 80s...



But I'm not jumping all the way down the rabbit hole this time.

 

[Grandpappy]

There are many ways to play Fallout 4. Stealth, letting a companion do most of the fighting, prioritizing the economy part of it, like the WoW auction house.
I just maxxed out all the weapon skills and kind of hit the bad guys head on.

 

[ecofarm]

Multiplayer FPS and RTS games used to fill that niche for me, especially Quake 3 and 4. While I like NPC fights that take some planning/skill, I'm not so much a fan of having to practice a particular boss until you *get* him. Humans are unpredictable until you've played the same guy a ton. And if that guy is great he's still unpredictable and so, hopefully, are you. (Late-stage Quake 4 was great for that, though these days I almost never see any active servers if I look).

Or games like Warcraft 3 / Starcraft 2. Inspiration happens in a flash and you work out a new maneuver, in circumstances you're probably not going to see again unless the absurdly improbable happens. But you get better and better at improvising. That kind of training I like.

WoW had the dumber version of that: learning stages. It's not that you got better as a player when you finally down the raid boss. You just learned how to do your role and what happens when during the fight. DS sounds far more intelligent. But at the same time....I'm not sure I'd enjoy fighting an NPC fifty times until I memorize all the things he does, all the visual tells, and all the proper counters. I'm only getting better if I wipe new things out faster. Otherwise, I'm still just sort of memorizing stuff in a particularly challenging game.

For the reasons you describe, it's a team game for me. Most bosses I can't solo because I'm not willing to put in the hours to learn the tells. It's PvP (strange mechanic, one invades the other's game in progress and is ignored by AI; and there's an arena), so there's that too. In DLC2, one boss is a summoned player.

 

[jmotivator]

The latest indie game I'm enjoying:

Urtuk: The Desolation

This game plays sort of like For The King but with Into the Breach tactical squad-based combat and a Darkest Dungeon art style.

I'm still on my first play through. The basic premise is you travel a semi-open word with a team of soldiers liberating towns, acquiring new troops and equipping them with gear to kill bigger and meaner monsters. Here are the bullet points:

* Great art style,low system requirements.
* Wide variety of classes, skills and "mutators" that add passive skills.
* As a Strategy Rogue-like, there is a lot of replay value.
* Terrain plays a key role in success and rewards though who can read the terrain.
* Random Terrain maps makes for very interesting combat.

I was finally sold on the game when encountered a rather large army that, in theory, I should have been defeated by. They had a few leaping/dps units which tend to be hell on your rear/reserve units. My Leader was a rear until that buffs front lines with blood magic, which costs health. Because of this he is always low on health and so a prime target for the enemy.

The enemy plan was obvious before I even started combat. They were going to jump my front line, kill my leader and take my buff ability. Because of this, I realized that there was one deployment spot that might be helpful to me. Most maps have several bungee pits that are deadly to troops that fall into them, so I stationed my leader near one of those holes, and then positioned a unit nearby with a special attack that pushed enemies.

It worked like a charm. Their leapers jumped over my front line, attacked my leader, and then I pushed the leapers into the bungee pit.

the fight suddenly became much more winnable, and I really enjoyed the fight.

I haven't unlocked any of the stuff in the game, so I can't really speak to the variety and quality of anything the unlocks add, but for now it's enough, and well worth the $20.

CAVEAT: I have yet to finish a single campaign.

 

[jmotivator]

It's becoming clear, as with all squad based games, that I might need to start over with my build concept for Urtuk

The are seemingly a bazillion considerations that I need to know beforehand to build an effective force. As it is, I managed ONE unit built somewhat decently and they kick butt, but they can't carry some of the later, high level squads I encounter solo, and the nifty skills (lift the push mechanic) are novel, but when the terrain doesn't really support it you get screwed. So a lot of time I make it through a mission just by keeping my one guy alive as he one or two-shots his way through the enemy and try desperately to keep him healed.

I came across an artifact that gave a troop equipped with it the ability to shrug off the first killing blow and fully heal. That seemed lik ethe answer until I realized that when my one superhero character died the first time is it usually because he is surrounded and being beaten down... which means in the really tough missions he was being surrounded, beat down, revived, and beat down again.

Soooooo... I need to restart the game and work on building all of my troops to be superheroes.... ish. At least, they shouldn't suck.

Some handy things I learned:

1) Ranged Troops can get a special skill that allows them to shoot "supporting fire" at targets whenever a melee unit hits. Two ranged troops, therefore, with sufficient elevation and staying in range of the front times, are absolutely devastating.

2) Tanky characters so far seem like a waste of a squad slot. There are too many ways for the enemy bypass a tank, and the taunt mechanic needs some work... but I may just be building them wrong.

3) In mission healing in this game will take a while for me to fully grasp. There doesn't appear to be any dedicated healers, healing tends to come from secondary sources like life steal or regeneration mutations. So, essentially, you will be giving lifesteal to DPS units and Regen to Tanks. But there are other units that are neither, and ways of keeping them alive are less obvious.

4) This is one of those games where you are constantly pulled between squad specialization and diversification of skills... and you get punished for all of your choices.

5) It's also one of those games that likes to lull you into thinking you have the game under control and then throw a wrinkle into a fight that makes you realize you don't know anything.

Overall it's a really fun game. It's the first game in a long time that has me fighting the urge to spend hours theory crafting.

 

[jmotivator]

Another Urtuk update:

I sat down at 10pm last night, after the family went to bed, to spend some time with the game... this alone, if you knew me, would be a good indicator that the game is a blast.

I didn't turn the game off until 2am... I made coffee at midnight to help me focus.

I'm hooked, is what I'm saying.

Rather than a full restart, I decided to backpedal a few saves until before a critical build failure on my commander so I could play through and make a better choice. Your commander, as far as I can tell, can be of any class, but the game suggests on the first play through to use the Priest... a sort of Blood Mage. Every so many levels your commander gets to choose from two random mutators, kind of like Fallout perks. I made a horrible selection with my last pick that essentially rendered the commander useless... luckily I preserved a save before that selection so I didn't lose all progress.

So today I want to talk about the units I use, and some strategies you can use if you would like to ... eh.. not so much CHEAT, as make the game less of a ball-buster. But first the units:

Priest (human): All priest spells cost health, it's important to dedicate mutations and stat points to boosting his health. I'm not sold on the Priest. Much of what the priest does can be replicated, or done better, with direct mutations. The priest heals by casting lifesteal on units but the numbers only really balance when you cast on a very high DPS unit. It has bailed me out in a few situations, but there are better mutations for lifesteal mechanic.

Hunter (human): This class is ranged with a crossbow. They can deal massive damage when the have a heigh advantage, and they have the longer firing range. Their downside is that their projectiles have a flat trajectory, so they can't fire over obstacles, and have to be right behind a melee unit in order to fire past them, negating the range advantage. They are great for hill defense.

Bounty Hunter (Bounty Hunter): In the first play through you can pick up troops from other factions, and I lucked into this guy. He is a Javelineer. Javelineers have a shorter range but can fire over obstacles. They can be just as devastating as the hunter, and are for flexible in their use/deployment. You can tuck them into hard to reach spaces that only other javelineers could reach, and it the enemy doesn't have a javelineer, you can fire the whole game unmolested.

Bounty Hunter Axe (Bounty Hunter): This guy is an alpha damage specialist, but his big hit move uses a lot of stamina... still fug gibbing dudes in 1 hit even if you have to take a turn off.

Berserker (Human): Might be my favorite class. All of the alpha potential of the BH Axe, none of the stamina drawback. His huge alpha damage is due to his main attack hitting twice.

Werebeast Big Axe (Werebeasts): Ok, I'm developing a theme here, it seems... As the name suggests, this unit is also an axe wielder. I guess I am in my "specialization phase of squad building. He has the same bonus and drawback of the BH Axe... massive alpha strike, takes a turn off for stamina.. but his attack is a leaping strike do he can traverse gaps, leap over melee lines, etc. He also has a massing HP pool and can soak up a lot of damage.

Damn.. this is getting long.. I'll write a second post on the cheaty stuff....

 

[jmotivator]

Urtuk, Continued.

OK, cheaty and non-cheaty things. First off, while you can gather a rather large army, so far I can only bring 6 units into battle.

That doesn't mean that the other troops are wasted, or simply reserve though. You can send them out on various quests to gather resources, hunt treasure or.. ahem, butcher them if you are low on supplies of meat and blood....

There are some specialized troops that join your group that have very useful skills outside of combat. Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths, for instance, can craft enchanted gear by combining a piece of gear with a mutator. If you find a nice sword that you will be using for a while, you could throw that lifesteal mutator on it and then the troop that carries the sword gets that mutator. These classes will also randomly upgrade the gear worn by your troops.

So the non-cheat I gathered from this is I would keep only a small army and numerous smiths, and don't arm the troops in reserve... if you cut down on the targets of the random upgrades, you increase the chance that the things you want upgraded get the random buff. I haven't really followed this tip yet, but my next playthrough I am going to try to keep 6 battle hardened trops and then 5+ smiths, just to see how bad ass I can pump up the gear.

The first cheat is save scumming for the purpose of Map selection. There are only a very few fixed combat maps in the game, the rest are randomly generated. If you are going into a very hard fight, that isn't one of the fixed map fights, you can reload the game before accepting the fight to cycle through maps until you find one that suits your team's strengths.

The Second cheat is also from save scumming, and probably the most unbalanced. Every so often you come across missions where you are asked to help someone... the end reward, usually, for those missions is a random troop of that faction joining your team. There is at least one mission, however, where the troop class is essentially pre-selected, rather than generated from the troops you defended. In this mission you are called to join in a fight where an enemy unit is being attacked by a large group on beasts. During that mission, the solo unit you are there to "rescue" will attack you just like the beasts, but if you kill all the beasts without killing that solo unit, he joins you. The reason this is a cheat is that the faction class is randomly chosen when you start the fight, so you can save scum the fight until you get the biggest, baddest troop that the faction has to offer.

It was save scumming that got me that bad ass Werebeast Big Axe.... and it was REALLY hard winning that fight while he was running around chopping on all my dude, but it was worth the hassle.

so yeah, save scumming FTW, I suppose.

 

[PoS]

The latest indie game I'm enjoying:

Urtuk: The Desolation

Looks very much like Darkest Dungeon (one game I couldnt finish because it was too tough lol).

 

[jmotivator]

Looks very much like Darkest Dungeon (one game I couldnt finish because it was too tough lol).

It does. The combat plays more like standard turn based, though. The majority of the game is about building units and teams that can stymie whatever the AI can throw together, and maximizing terrain to your benefit. The game is essentially traveling between points of interest that pop up on the map and killing and looting whatever is there.

So far here is only one mission that I couldn't noodle through, or required a whole different team build than I had. It involves seemingly endless waves of enemies that spawn randomly at the edges of the map intent on killing two units you have to protect. The best I managed was to pack tightly in a corner of the map so I couldn't be flanked, but they slowly whittled me down. I still have theories on how to defeat that mission, but there is no reason it should be that difficult. It is invariably more difficult by a lot than the end boss on whatever map it spawns... which shouldn't be.

If my current team has a weakness, beyond being woefully unqualified for that one rando mission, it is that I have played most of the game so far with the same 6 troops, only cycling out units when I find a better one. If they throw a wrench in the works at the end and have me field all my units then I'll have 6 godly units and a bunch of scrubs.

 

[Redress]

So I got Loop Hero Friday. Late last night I beat the first boss for the first time. I lost the first time fighting him(I traded off gear with vampirism for gear with damage all since the last few fights before the boss where with a bunch of mobs each...it came back to haunt me), and it took a few tries to even get to him, but it was worth it. Today's goal is to unlock the rogue class.

For those who have not played it yet, it is great. A cheap, terrible looking game with great gameplay. You have a hero, he walks a path around a loop(as the name suggests). You have zero control over his actions. As he beats monsters on the path, you gain better gear which you can equip him with, and terrain cards which you can use to change the map. A a pile of stones or a mountain card, and gain more max HP Add a vampire mansion and vampires will appear along part of the path. Put a village on the path and your hero will heal when going through. Add a vampire mansion next to the village and it becomes a ransacked village spawning 4 ghouls. After passing through the ransacked village 3 times(3 loops), it becomes Count's Land, healing better than the village. You want to make things tough for your hero so they get more XP, and better loot, but not so tough he dies. Play enough terrain cards and the boss spawn. Beat the boss, retreat at any time, or die, and you go back to your base, where certain resources you picked up during the run can be used to build new buildings, upgrade buildings, or craft. Incredibly simple stuff, tons of fun.

 

[jmotivator]

Urtuk End game Spoilers

So I have reached the final boss for Urtuk and now realize I have a lot of work to do.

Technically, the final fight doesn't require your whole team, but practically it does.

You see, the final fight has your typical Damage Sponge boss (he has a trait called 'The One' that grants him a flat 90% damage reduction and 180% damage bonus), and a whole mess of elite troops. I can almost wipe the board of the elites, but not without losing a few of my key DPSer that would be needed to put a dent in the boss.

The one saving grace is that all of the elites you kill in that final fight stay dead, so I think I can throw a bunch of fodder at the fight first to whittle down the elites and then go in ... Mano y Seis-o

I'm confident that without the elites I cab beat him down.

The alternative is to figure out how to race around the map stay out of range of the boss and clearing the elites which might be possible.. I really want to finish this fight with only my main team.

Oddly enough, I kept hearing that the 2 map boss was the real ball buster, but I tore through his shenanigans rather easily. Map 1 and Map 3 have been the really hard ones.

Already looking forward to expansions and new races.

In the end, the Werebeast (Axe) ended up being my best unit and it wasn't even close. He crits for roughly 3 times the average elite unit's health pool and has 4 times their health pool himself. I think if I replayed this game starting with one of the other factions I'd play Beastmen and just hire 6 of them. The game would be a cake walk.

the next closest is the Human Berserker who can be equal in alpha strikes to the Beastman, but he has nowhere near the health pool.

That being said, there are a few classes that I have yet to really build who could be simply goofy levels of power with the same level gear and mutations. One class has a skill that I didn't know you could have on a non-boss unit that give him another attack is he crits, and he has a long distance leaping attack. If you build him right he could theoretically wipe a whole map before anyone else moves.