Blog Your Current Game

[jmotivator]

Ok, Dartide WILL be a great game, but this beta is becoming more beta-y than I would like.

Hopefully the mountain of server side bugs will be cleared by launch because launching in this condition will kill a game with lots of potential. The game is plagued with server crashes at the moment which are especially painful if you are in a mission when it happens. If anyone ever played WOW, maybe you can remember the weird limbo that game used to put you in when you were in an instanced dungeon on a server that was up, while the world server you were tied to was down... you knew that if you left the dungeon the game would crash so you just stayed put.

Unfortunately, in Darktide the hub server can go down and you won't know it until the mission is over and it goes to give you your rewards, at which point the game just crashes during hand-off and you lose XP and money you made in the mission.

 

[jmotivator]

Another great thing about DARKTIDE is the soundtrack. A sort of Gregorian Techno Metal that they synch seamlessly in game play with the action

 

[jmotivator]

I've hit Level 25 with my Sharpshooter and have had a chance to test run most of the weapons available to that class (which, due to the class, is most of the weapons in the game).

The thing that is most impressive about this game is that all of the weapons play very differently, and not just in a Min/Max way where there is a clear best and worst, they are all just handle differently and excel at some situations and not others resulting in every game feeling different as all of the teammates have their own play style.

For instance, many people swear by the Bolter who does very heavy damage and is still fairly accurate at medium-long range while aiming down sights. It is a good room clearer and boss weapon. I don't care for it because it has a low ammo count which leaves me fighting my teammates for limited ammo throughout the levels.

Others swear by the infantry lasrifle, which I very much liked in the early game for its long range accuracy and large ammo capacity. I still kind of like it, but the opportunities for the weapon to really shine are few and far between in most missions since they are at their most effective in long range sniper duels. I'll still carry one occasionally in the maps that have lots of open space. But since a lot of people like the gun I tend to not load it and let someone else snipe the snipers.

For me the go to weapon is the braced autorifle. It is primarily a hip-fire weapon that can be decent at long-ish range with short controlled bursts, is a great room-clearer, and is steady enough and has a narrow enough spread that at medium range you can reliably spray lead at headshot level and melt heavily armored elites. Combine that with ammo capacity rivaling the lasrifle and a nice meaty sound, and it's a winner for me! (they even threw in a little "TING!" sound like an M1 Garand when your magazine runs dry)... That said, a lot of people don't like the weapon for reasons I don't (yet?) understand. For now I'm really enjoying it.

I don't know whether or not there will be a character wipe at launch, but my money is on yes since there are so many fully decked out players already.

So in case they wipe the characters I'll show of my prize possession that I finished grinding for today...



Between the basic stats that already make it a good anti-armor weapon, and the top two bonuses, this weapon destroys bosses and I love it.

If there is a wipe I might never see a perfect weapon like it again.

 

[jmotivator]

As it's getting ready for full launch today, I just wanted to point again to how great DARKTIDE's music track is.

It's one of the few games that I play where I leave the music track on because the tracks amplify the game play. Below is a link to an opera singer who has fallen in love with the music, and I share his enthusiasm.

When you are in a mission and you hear the screams of an approaching horde and this track starts ramping up it really sets the right mood: It's equal parts bloodlust and terror.

 

[jmotivator]

I just signed up for a random mission which can do one of three things: 1) Pair you with other players who chose a random mission 2) Create a mission where any empty team spots are filled by bots or 3) drop you into the middle of a mission that is already in progress, replacing a bot that was on the team.

My random assignment was of variety #3, and when I loaded in I was the only person standing, while the rest were downed and being beaten by a horde.

 

[jmotivator]

Still playing WH40K Darktide and loving it.

But maybe I am past the honeymoon period..

After launch I have been experiencing frequent crashes to desktop during transitions from Mission to base, and vise versa. It was really confusing because the game seemed LESS stable after launch that it was immediately before launch.

I decided to spend today doing some troubleshooting, and later confirmed through other sources, that the issue is bewilderingly simple to fix, and yet has not been addressed. What happened was that the launch day patch erased the shader caching and video settings in order to trigger the autoconfigure at first launch. This is pretty standard stuff.

What went wrong is that the autoconfigure apparently is programmed to assume that you don't want your PC to do anything else other than play Darktide, so it sets the game thread count to Total Threads minus two... rather generous leaving a whole 2 threads for the rest of your system! This is probably fine if you have a single screen, and don't run multiple apps in the background, but if you have other resource hungry apps open *cough*Chrome*cough* the game ends up colliding with the rest of the apps running on your system and crashing.

To make matters worse, you can't fiddle with a games thread settings in the game, so you can only fix this at the launch window through a settings tab that, until today, I didn't even know was there.
After I dropped the game threads to Performance Corse x2, thereby leaving the efficiency cores to handle all other tasks, the game runs great and no longer crashes.

The funny thing is that the game runs BETTER on fewer cores. I got a nice bump in FPS just by lowering the core count.. I can think of a few reasons why that might be, but I can't say for sure so I won't.

Get your act together Fatshark.

Other than that, I am bewildered by the number of angry people in the Steam forums who are complaining about the non-problems in this game.

There are probably a bazillion threads now with people complaining about the "Predatory In-Game shop" preying on poor people's FOMO (I'm old enough that I had to look that up... it means "Fear of Missing Out") ... what makes these arguments so utterly nonsensical is that the in game shop is for cosmetics only. Apparently they are upset that .... nevermind, I don't understand....

 

[Mr Person]

Y'know, memories.

Was anyone else on the AWOL league? AOL's Warcraft 2 league, which started one Blizzard gave macs the TCP/IP connection possibility (but not PC. Hah!)? This was early-mid 90s...


I got up to 11th out of many thousands. You advanced half the ranks towards whom you beat. If you lost, you didn't lose rank, they just advanced. Half the people above me seemed to have quit, and half refused games out of fear of losing.

blackndorc (possible mispelling), that ****.. I could kick his ass and did and he knew it (used to be in my guild), so he didn't take games from me once he was at #3. Our games took about 3 hours - we ate the map, fighting over how we could drain each others' resources - but I had his number and he knew it. The top to (Doctor Ash (#1) and ZZ Ender (#20) hadn't played in a year or two. Others weren't on. I had a sad. Damn I was young.

Anyone in the AWOL league from decades ago?



I've never been that deep in a skill game, but I've been deeper in a MUD (Dragonrealms), which is still around and...yes... so is my character.

 

[Grandpappy]

Y'know, memories.

Was anyone else on the AWOL league? AOL's Warcraft 2 league, which started one Blizzard gave macs the TCP/IP connection possibility (but not PC. Hah!)? This was early-mid 90s...


I got up to 11th out of many thousands. You advanced half the ranks towards whom you beat. If you lost, you didn't lose rank, they just advanced. Half the people above me seemed to have quit, and half refused games out of fear of losing.

blackndorc (possible mispelling), that ****.. I could kick his ass and did and he knew it (used to be in my guild), so he didn't take games from me once he was at #3. Our games took about 3 hours - we ate the map, fighting over how we could drain each others' resources - but I had his number and he knew it. The top to (Doctor Ash (#1) and ZZ Ender (#20) hadn't played in a year or two. Others weren't on. I had a sad. Damn I was young.

Anyone in the AWOL league from decades ago?



I've never been that deep in a skill game, but I've been deeper in a MUD (Dragonrealms), which is still around and...yes... so is my character.

I actually understand that ^^^. These were the ancestors of Fantasy RPG's. I like the Elder Scrolls series myself, but have always liked Blizzard stuff, too. Was a WOW player for a few years. We actually have something in common.

 

[Mr Person]

I actually understand that ^^^. These were the ancestors of Fantasy RPG's. I like the Elder Scrolls series myself, but have always liked Blizzard stuff, too. Was a WOW player for a few years. We actually have something in common.

MUDs? Yes.

Warcraft 2 was real time strategy, though. If you want to be any good you have to have a minimum of 2 going bases with a third in progress and keep the enemy on the defensive, often with having fights at two of their bases at the same time. I became a master in the first year or two after moving just before high school, but then the parties started

 

[Mr Person]

Damn, I kinda want to delve into Dwarf Fortress. I read about the ASCII version plenty of times.

But... I'm only in act 2 of Divinity 2, and want to start a new game in both that and Divinity 1. Then Baldur's Gate 3 is going to drop. Blizzard claims Diablo IV is coming out 6/6/23, but I'm kinda meh about that. We'll see. Hack and slash is fun for a bit but it gets boring when it becomes so obviously and inescapably about hunting bigger numbers in the face of massively diminishing returns.

"Ok, but why am I doing it?"

Creativity, observation, and intelligence is rewarded to a much greater extent in stuff like Divinity. And they put a ton of effort into the story.

 

[Redress]

Damn, I kinda want to delve into Dwarf Fortress. I read about the ASCII version plenty of times.

But... I'm only in act 2 of Divinity 2, and want to start a new game in both that and Divinity 1. Then Baldur's Gate 3 is going to drop. Blizzard claims Diablo IV is coming out 6/6/23, but I'm kinda meh about that. We'll see. Hack and slash is fun for a bit but it gets boring when it becomes so obviously and inescapably about hunting bigger numbers in the face of massively diminishing returns.

"Ok, but why am I doing it?"

Creativity, observation, and intelligence is rewarded to a much greater extent in stuff like Divinity. And they put a ton of effort into the story.

You can get Baldur's Gate 3 now as early access. It is pretty good.

 

[Mr Person]

You can get Baldur's Gate 3 now as early access. It is pretty good.

True, but I generally prefer to stay away from a game until it's shipped. I'd hate to see a feature I loved stripped out - it'd probably bug me while playing the completed game - and I find bugs downright annoying. Besides, I only have 30-60 minutes a day if anything to play these days. Perhaps when kiddo is older and can be left to his own devices for longer periods...

 

[Mach]

Damn, I kinda want to delve into Dwarf Fortress. I read about the ASCII version plenty of times.

But... I'm only in act 2 of Divinity 2, and want to start a new game in both that and Divinity 1. Then Baldur's Gate 3 is going to drop. Blizzard claims Diablo IV is coming out 6/6/23, but I'm kinda meh about that. We'll see. Hack and slash is fun for a bit but it gets boring when it becomes so obviously and inescapably about hunting bigger numbers in the face of massively diminishing returns.

"Ok, but why am I doing it?"

Creativity, observation, and intelligence is rewarded to a much greater extent in stuff like Divinity. And they put a ton of effort into the story.

Yeah, I balked at Divinity early on when a friend tried to get me to play on console. I remember Divinity from back in the Ultima clone days.
Then I did a playthrough of Divinity 2 on PC and really enjoyed it. I immediately did 2 more playthroughs solo. Playing 2 mages lone-wolf was probably the most fun/easy. I did a lonewolf with 2 archers too. Divinity 2 was solid. I tried Divinity 1 and wasn't able to get hooked unfortunately.

I also don't get that excited about Diablo these days. If their class mechanics grow with effects and optimization, it can be kind of fun, but I agree sometimes it just feels like a lazy linear power scale.

Honestly I don't find I enjoy as many games these days. It reminds me of streaming..there is so much content, and so much of it is just unwatchable/playable.

I have enjoyed Terraria through the years, but recently added the Calamity Mod (Steam tmodloader), along with the Calamity music, and it really breathed some life back into it. I think I did about 14 playthroughs...all free...gaming is so strange these days. I'd spend mad-money for a good game, it's just there isn't a lot out there.
I am very discriminatory against console games/ports, and I don't like the movie-like games where you are on a linear or semi-linear ride of watching bad CGI basically of characters talking to you and each other.

Did you try angband? It's an old ASCII like Dwarf Fortress, a classic, and there are some good sprite overlays that make it a bit more engaging. I play it every now and then. The items/artifacts and trying to cover all of your resistances was pretty enjoyable. I save my game files, screw that rogue-like nonsense!

 

[Mach]

Since the last update, I started playing No Man's Sky again. I havent played this since it first came out, and now you can build a base--yipee...

But several hours into it and Im bored as ****. The grind between gathering minerals and building the base is really tedious. It's not fun like in Subnautica and nothing ever happens. Does this get any better or am I just wasting time?

Same. No Man's Sky had stuff, but not really "stuff to do". A real shame too, given the genre and initial crafting and such being fairly well done. Makes me want to make a game when so many game companies just don't get it right.
Subnautica is one of the best games of the decade IMO. And sadly I found the sequel to be frustrating and unfun. So strange how it's such a fine line between an epic game and a dud.

 

[Mr Person]

Yeah, I balked at Divinity early on when a friend tried to get me to play on console. I remember Divinity from back in the Ultima clone days.
Then I did a playthrough of Divinity 2 on PC and really enjoyed it. I immediately did 2 more playthroughs solo. Playing 2 mages lone-wolf was probably the most fun/easy. I did a lonewolf with 2 archers too. Divinity 2 was solid. I tried Divinity 1 and wasn't able to get hooked unfortunately.

I also don't get that excited about Diablo these days. If their class mechanics grow with effects and optimization, it can be kind of fun, but I agree sometimes it just feels like a lazy linear power scale.

Honestly I don't find I enjoy as many games these days. It reminds me of streaming..there is so much content, and so much of it is just unwatchable/playable.

I have enjoyed Terraria through the years, but recently added the Calamity Mod (Steam tmodloader), along with the Calamity music, and it really breathed some life back into it. I think I did about 14 playthroughs...all free...gaming is so strange these days. I'd spend mad-money for a good game, it's just there isn't a lot out there.
I am very discriminatory against console games/ports, and I don't like the movie-like games where you are on a linear or semi-linear ride of watching bad CGI basically of characters talking to you and each other.

Did you try angband? It's an old ASCII like Dwarf Fortress, a classic, and there are some good sprite overlays that make it a bit more engaging. I play it every now and then. The items/artifacts and trying to cover all of your resistances was pretty enjoyable. I save my game files, screw that rogue-like nonsense!

Never heard of Angband other than in the Silmarillion. These games sound so inviting given what I've always looked for. I need time! If my days were 28h and everyone else's were 24h...

Diablo? We'll see about 4. I'll buy it no doubt, but the ARPG thing gets boring for me. Once diminishing returns hit a point, I think "allright.. why am I doing this?"

Terraria...haven't tried

 

[PoS]

Witcher 2 EE I only played 15 minutes of Witcher 1 because I didnt like the combat, so now I decided to play the sequel and... well the combat is somewhat better so you dont have to worry about stances and such, but Im totally confused with the storyline because I didnt play the first one... duh.

I'm with a king fighting a siege and this other guy imprisons me, then he lets me go and we start talking. I had a GF and I dunno what happened to her... and... Total confusion!

 

[PoS]

OK, I stopped playing Witcher 2 EE because... I suck at RPG action games. Taking out the usual enemies was OK, but then when it came to that swamp octopus in which I had to dodge and all that, ugh.



My son told me to play High on Life. I delayed for a bit because I thought the title was stupid and it looked cartoony at first. In the end I decided to play it because I didnt have anything else to play and... Holy shit lol.

It's like Borderlands + Rick and Morty + Futurama. Too funny. Now I cant stop playing it.

 

[SayMyName]

Because of the outbreaks, the normal Christmas party was cancelled. Still, I made sure the usual presents got to everyone in the office. This one was a joy to arrange. Like me, this young lady was home sick, but how happy she was sharing all over social media this new skin I got for her favorite game, PUBG, or the new mainland version of it. Never played it, but I have watched her and many others wreck havoc on many a phone and computer screen. Must be funny seeing some character dressed up like Pikachu gunning for you in a game.

 

[Redress]

Marvel's Midnight Suns is a fascinating game. It is from Firaxis, the people behind the Xcom games, and the tactical battles play kinda like Xcom meets Slay The Spire/Monster Train. You draw cards which have a wide variety of effects, attacks, blocks, buffs, debuffs, DOTs, deck manipulation, and more. Your deck is based on the heroes you have in the group, and you use those cards to fight bad guys. It has even more tactical depth than Xcom, and the battles are a blast to puzzle your way through to a win. All this set in the Marvel universe, with lots of Marvel superheroes and villains.

And the battles are only the very beginning of gameplay. You can level up your heroes, you can upgrade and get new cards, you can get items to help you in battle, there is a crafting system, collections, you gain friendship levels with the various heroes which give passive abilities when they are in your party. And it looks great to boot, and has a pretty interesting story.

If you like tactical squad based games like Xcom, I strongly reecommend checking out some youtube videos and seeing if this might work for you. They put a ton of work into making the game good. Biggest weakness is they might have added too many systems, but that is a minor gripe.

 

[WorldWatcher]

Marvel's Midnight Suns is a fascinating game. It is from Firaxis, the people behind the Xcom games, and the tactical battles play kinda like Xcom meets Slay The Spire/Monster Train. You draw cards which have a wide variety of effects, attacks, blocks, buffs, debuffs, DOTs, deck manipulation, and more. Your deck is based on the heroes you have in the group, and you use those cards to fight bad guys. It has even more tactical depth than Xcom, and the battles are a blast to puzzle your way through to a win. All this set in the Marvel universe, with lots of Marvel superheroes and villains.

And the battles are only the very beginning of gameplay. You can level up your heroes, you can upgrade and get new cards, you can get items to help you in battle, there is a crafting system, collections, you gain friendship levels with the various heroes which give passive abilities when they are in your party. And it looks great to boot, and has a pretty interesting story.

If you like tactical squad based games like Xcom, I strongly reecommend checking out some youtube videos and seeing if this might work for you. They put a ton of work into making the game good. Biggest weakness is they might have added too many systems, but that is a minor gripe.

Christopher Odd is doing an excellent play through for that game.

WW

 

[jmotivator]

My Steam Replay of 2022 says I may have no life.

 

[ASHES]

My Steam Replay of 2022 says I may have no life.

View attachment 67429298

My steam replay is pretty weak this year. Like 3 games played for 10 hours. Been playing a lot of games on Epic, Amazon, Blizzard, EA and GoG, in addition to all the consoles. I just bought a few new games during the winter sale, so maybe my Steam replay will be a little less dusty next year. Oh well, I'll always have this:


Would be interesting to see the full Steam Replay since the beginning.

 

[jmotivator]

My steam replay is pretty weak this year. Like 3 games played for 10 hours. Been playing a lot of games on Epic, Amazon, Blizzard, EA and GoG, in addition to all the consoles. I just bought a few new games during the winter sale, so maybe my Steam replay will be a little less dusty next year. Oh well, I'll always have this:
View attachment 67429301

Would be interesting to see the full Steam Replay since the beginning.

I was a long holdout on Steam, I never bought into the whole pay-to-borrow mechanic... still don't really, but it's no doubt created a great flood of games into the market not tied to brick and mortar distribution.

Anyway...



In that 13 years I have collected 449 games... not bad for not really being down with the economic model!

When I die, I am going to pass on to some lucky person my Steam account which, by then, will probably have all the games.

And yeah, I'm not counting the other platforms, but my time with them is minimal. I think the only two games I've played this year that aren't on Steam are Diablo 3 and The Sims 4.

 

[ASHES]

I was a long holdout on Steam, I never bought into the whole pay-to-borrow mechanic... still don't really, but it's no doubt created a great flood of games into the market not tied to brick and mortar distribution.

Anyway...

View attachment 67429334

In that 13 years I have collected 449 games... not bad for not really being down with the economic model!

When I die, I am going to pass on to some lucky person my Steam account which, by then, will probably have all the games.

And yeah, I'm not counting the other platforms, but my time with them is minimal. I think the only two games I've played this year that aren't on Steam are Diablo 3 and The Sims 4.

I was a holdout as long as I could (8 days), but then they updated Counter-Strike to 1.6, which dropped WON and made Steam mandatory. In all that time I've collected 42 games. That's funny we registered at almost the same time of day though.

 

[jmotivator]

I was a holdout as long as I could (8 days), but then they updated Counter-Strike to 1.6, which dropped WON and made Steam mandatory. In all that time I've collected 42 games. That's funny we registered at almost the same time of day though.

Interestingly, I signed up on February 19th at 11pm but didn't make my first purchase until the following week.

My first ever Steam purchase was Mass Effect.