April 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[Pifanjr]

I finished XCOM 2. I had to save in the middle of the final mission last time I played and it turned out I only needed 3 more turns to finish the game.

Spoiler: Game summary

I'm guessing the main discrepancies between my stats and the world stats are because most people play with double timer length and on higher difficulties making the campaign longer. Because I thought I was taking a long time with the campaign, but I'm still significantly below the average number of missions and I didn't ignore any of them. Though I'm pretty sure some of these averages are messed up, especially the negative ones, but some of the other ones are also significantly different than the averages I can find on older screenshots.

Next up: The Outer Worlds.

 

[BeardyHat]

I finished XCOM 2. I had to save in the middle of the final mission last time I played and it turned out I only needed 3 more turns to finish the game.

Spoiler: Game summary

I'm guessing the main discrepancies between my stats and the world stats are because most people play with double timer length and on higher difficulties making the campaign longer. Because I thought I was taking a long time with the campaign, but I'm still significantly below the average number of missions and I didn't ignore any of them. Though I'm pretty sure some of these averages are messed up, especially the negative ones, but some of the other ones are also significantly different than the averages I can find on older screenshots.

Next up: The Outer Worlds.

Nice work. As far as the extra missions and whatnot, people may be playing with the Long War mod, which draws everything out and makes it harder.

 

[BeardyHat]

Well, my wife left me...


To go on her planned trip to Italy with her sister. So I get to live the Bachelor life and stay up playing video games all night (Actually, go to bed at my normal time, because children are relentless and will get me up at 6am anyway), drinking beer (except I won't, because then I'll sleep very poorly) and cavorting (with the television).

The most unfortunate thing is that I won't be able to play anymore Lies of P. I'm 20-hours in now, but my wife wants to watch, so we've got to put it in on pause for week now. That said, my kids enjoy watching me play stuff, so I'm trying to think of something else to play with them and currently leaning towards the original Dark Souls or my friend just gave me his old PS3 and I've never played Demon's Souls before. Though I do also have my Elden Ring playthrough, but I'm finding that less enticing after Lies of P.

 

[BeardyHat]

Forgot to mention, my same buddy also gave me his old gaming laptop from 2015/6. Something like a i7-4750HQ and GTX 970m. For fun, I benchmarked it against my current laptop, a Thinkpad X1 Nano and it's about twice as fast in the graphics department, which isn't surprising, but what was surprising is that the processor in my Thinkpad is really only marginally faster, in spite of being significantly newer (11th gen vs 4th gen Intel), though the processor in mine is also a low power variant, so there's that.

https://imgur.com/a/aIf2ya1

Honestly, I'm amazed at the sheer girth of the thing and completely astonished that anyone would voluntarily carry this around for any reason, although, it's really not too bad in the weight department, being around 4.5lbs, though I think the power brick weighs as much as my Thinkpad. It also lacks one of the utmost important features of a laptop: The Clitmouse(tm); I kept reaching for it whenever I wanted to use the mouse on it and to find it not there was annoying.

 

[neogunhero]

Managed to round up a total of 8 thralls in Conan Exiles. I’ve been giving them silly names to try to distract from the fact that I had to put them through torture in order to force them to be my friend. Hybro and Darfin are my besties so far.

Not a whole lot of progress in the base building. I did get another crafting hut made and a big wooden platform to rearrange the torture wheels on. I’m not a fan of the location I choose but I have no idea how to pack up and move everything. I can cheat and give myself unlimited carry weight, but I have no idea how to pack up the thralls. I can’t seem to find an option to place thralls back in your inventory after you place them in the world.

That leads to one complaint I have, assigns thralls to tasks. You can only place a thrall at a crafting station if they are in your inventory already, which means you cannot place them in the world once before you move them. Then, once they are at a crafting station, I can’t find any option to customize them, so I have Darfari Smelter II at my furnace in plain tattered rag clothing all day long instead of a silly name with silly clothes. There is a mod for that but I haven’t taken time to look at mods yet, but the more I ask Co-Pilot for “best Conan Exiles mods” the more I realize how essential they seem.

Anyways, progress is moving along to creating my dream city. I need a more open area so I can build a large fence and gate around the town. Here’s some screenshots I took last night.

Spoiler: My Thralls and Base

 

[DXCHASE]

If you reinstalled over the existing game, try a full uninstall and then a new install. If you want to try the extra mile, use Revo Uninstaller for or after the uninstall—it's lauded for digging out remnants normal uninstalls leave behind.

If I recall correctly, you have good hardware, so shouldn't be that—but worth a look at temps and maxed-out performance levels just in case—some connector might have jiggled loose, or some paste not connecting well, or… or…

If there was a recent game or driver update, can you roll back to previous version? Or use a Restore Point for the same purpose, and turn off the relevant updates for a while.

I fixed it. It wound up being my fan settings being messed with i guess when i installed nvidias latest driver. I used DDU to erase them all and reinstalled the drivers. I got farther in the compiling shaders part, but still crashed.

Went to bios and realized my cpu fan was ramping up waaay to hard and fast for the shaders that itd cause my windows 11 insider build to crash. So it was just that really.

Put the fan on "smart mode". Still in XMP too so i thought maybe it wouldnt work, and it did. Fans didnt go into hyper overdrive and the game just started up 🤷‍♂️

 

[ZedClampet]

That said, my kids enjoy watching me play stuff.

I let my kids watch me play Resident Evil 4 when they were way too young. They were completely fascinated, although I found out later that it gave my daughter nightmares. I apologized to her when she got older, but she said she used to sneak downstairs after everyone but me was asleep and watch me play when I didn't realize she was there, so she was going to see it one way or another.

Also, you would hate my laptops. Bigger the better is my motto. Got a backpack to carry them around in. My current HP weighs an absolute crap-ton because of the 380w power pack. Doesn't bother me at all, though. I've had laptops since the mid-90s (if I remember correctly), and I've never once considered thickness or weight when making a purchase. Never even checked them before buying.

Now if I were put in charge of buying someone else or a department work laptops, then I would pay attention to those things.

 

[ZedClampet]

Managed to round up a total of 8 thralls in Conan Exiles. I’ve been giving them silly names to try to distract from the fact that I had to put them through torture in order to force them to be my friend. Hybro and Darfin are my besties so far.

Not a whole lot of progress in the base building. I did get another crafting hut made and a big wooden platform to rearrange the torture wheels on. I’m not a fan of the location I choose but I have no idea how to pack up and move everything. I can cheat and give myself unlimited carry weight, but I have no idea how to pack up the thralls. I can’t seem to find an option to place thralls back in your inventory after you place them in the world.

That leads to one complaint I have, assigns thralls to tasks. You can only place a thrall at a crafting station if they are in your inventory already, which means you cannot place them in the world once before you move them. Then, once they are at a crafting station, I can’t find any option to customize them, so I have Darfari Smelter II at my furnace in plain tattered rag clothing all day long instead of a silly name with silly clothes. There is a mod for that but I haven’t taken time to look at mods yet, but the more I ask Co-Pilot for “best Conan Exiles mods” the more I realize how essential they seem.

Anyways, progress is moving along to creating my dream city. I need a more open area so I can build a large fence and gate around the town. Here’s some screenshots I took last night.

Spoiler: My Thralls and Base

I can't make it to the location where I want my permanent base because I'm just not high enough level yet. Last attempt I made it to the alpha tiger. He killed me, but not before I managed to put a base foundation down so that he can't spawn anymore.

 

[neogunhero]

I can't make it to the location where I want my permanent base because I'm just not high enough level yet. Last attempt I made it to the alpha tiger. He killed me, but not before I managed to put a base foundation down so that he can't spawn anymore.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the map and this is just where I started the building Journey at and have expanded on it. I downloaded a mod that allows me to pick up thralls after placing them, so that mod plus cheating my carry weight will let me relocate. Right now I’m looking for a Taskmaster unless I can find a mod to break thralls faster and there doesn’t seem to be any in the beginning areas.

 

[Pifanjr]

I started The Outer Worlds today. At first I thought my PC wouldn't be able to run it because the main menu was running at single digit FPS, but luckily that cleared up after a while. It did put all of my graphics settings on Low, but once I was in the game I tried raising them and the game still ran smoothly when I put them on Ultra.

However, after walking for a minute I noticed the game wasn't loading the textures for the ground and the trees. The rocks and animals looked fine, but the ground and trees looked like they were using the most basic texture possible. I tried fiddling with the graphics settings, but that only helped for a little bit until I walked a bit further and the ground turned to mush again.

Luckily I wasn't the first person to have this problem and I eventually found a suggestion to turn off the integrated graphics card in the bios, because the game apparently messes up which graphics card it's supposed to use. I tested it and it works, though the game does now take like three minutes to start up, showing only a black screen and no music during, which is longer than it took before, so that's strange.

I played until I reached a ship and got my first level up and I must say it's really nice to play a RPG again that lets you invest points in skills. It's something I really missed in Fallout 4.

Of course I invested all my points into the sneaky archer (or rather, gunslinger) build, because there's no other way to play these games.

 

[BeardyHat]

I let my kids watch me play Resident Evil 4 when they were way too young. They were completely fascinated, although I found out later that it gave my daughter nightmares. I apologized to her when she got older, but she said she used to sneak downstairs after everyone but me was asleep and watch me play when I didn't realize she was there, so she was going to see it one way or another.

Also, you would hate my laptops. Bigger the better is my motto. Got a backpack to carry them around in. My current HP weighs an absolute crap-ton because of the 380w power pack. Doesn't bother me at all, though. I've had laptops since the mid-90s (if I remember correctly), and I've never once considered thickness or weight when making a purchase. Never even checked them before buying.

Now if I were put in charge of buying someone else or a department work laptops, then I would pay attention to those things.

The 6 year old has been totally fine with pretty much anything, but I had to stop letting the 4 year old watch Lies of P, because we were getting woke up in the night by nightmares.

The weird thing about little kids is that they seem to like horror. My oldests friends have shown him stuff like Huggy Wuggy and Sirenhead, stuff I had no idea existed, but they're all obsessed with it. He also saw Choo-Choo Charles on Steam and just keeps asking me to buy and play it.

I definitely used to be more in that camp on bigger is better. I've been using laptops since the mid 2000s and always bought gaming oriented ones, took them to school and the like, but these days, I dunno, something switched for me. The thinner and lighter the better; perhaps my emotional burden has become so great as I age, I can't stomach any more weight 😆

One thing is for sure though, I have to have Trackpoint, which means only Thinkpads for me. I use the touchpad too, but only having one method of control drives me nuts and carrying a mouse isn't ok with me, going along with having extra weight and "stuff".

 

[BeardyHat]

Being that I'm burned out on my regular hobby right now, with my short break today I decided to fire up Dishonored 2 again, thinking I'd start it over after putting it down 4 years ago. Initially, I had fun, but that rapidly changed.

Turns out, I'm not the person I used to be and I'm a bit bored with sneaking and hiding in games. I get obsessed with doing it perfectly, so it ends up being a barrage of quick save and load; even if I choose to let the cards fall as they may, it's incredibly boring to run away from Guards and hide for 5+ minutes, waiting for them to move away. Maybe I should just put it on easy and call it a day, but, well...

I switched over to Quake 2 and was much happier.

 

[neogunhero]

I switched over to Quake 2 and was much happier.

I’ve noticed the same about myself over the years. I used to love stealth games but these days I can’t stand them and any game that makes stealth optional, I’m choosing not to do it. Run-n-gun, instant gratification is more my style now, and it’s not just because that’s how the whole world is these days, I just have less time than I did before so I want to get as much enjoyment out of a game as I can. Quake 2 definitely does that for me, I can hop in a server, get a few frags, leave within 15 minutes and I’m satisfied.

 

[ZedClampet]

I started The Outer Worlds today. At first I thought my PC wouldn't be able to run it because the main menu was running at single digit FPS, but luckily that cleared up after a while. It did put all of my graphics settings on Low, but once I was in the game I tried raising them and the game still ran smoothly when I put them on Ultra.

However, after walking for a minute I noticed the game wasn't loading the textures for the ground and the trees. The rocks and animals looked fine, but the ground and trees looked like they were using the most basic texture possible. I tried fiddling with the graphics settings, but that only helped for a little bit until I walked a bit further and the ground turned to mush again.

Luckily I wasn't the first person to have this problem and I eventually found a suggestion to turn off the integrated graphics card in the bios, because the game apparently messes up which graphics card it's supposed to use. I tested it and it works, though the game does now take like three minutes to start up, showing only a black screen and no music during, which is longer than it took before, so that's strange.

I played until I reached a ship and got my first level up and I must say it's really nice to play a RPG again that lets you invest points in skills. It's something I really missed in Fallout 4.

Of course I invested all my points into the sneaky archer (or rather, gunslinger) build, because there's no other way to play these games.

Hopefully you'll like this more than I did. Not that I thought it was bad. I just didn't think it was anything special. I had expected a bit more from Obsidian.

 

[BeardyHat]

I’ve noticed the same about myself over the years. I used to love stealth games but these days I can’t stand them and any game that makes stealth optional, I’m choosing not to do it. Run-n-gun, instant gratification is more my style now, and it’s not just because that’s how the whole world is these days, I just have less time than I did before so I want to get as much enjoyment out of a game as I can. Quake 2 definitely does that for me, I can hop in a server, get a few frags, leave within 15 minutes and I’m satisfied.

Exactly.

Rarely, even if were to have the time, will I sit and game for multiple hours like I did as a kid and young person. I no longer have the patience to memorize enemy patrols and sit for minutes on end, waiting for something to happen.

All that said, I still don't mind a slow burn game. But I think there's a difference between slow burn and sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. I'll happily play Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Red Dead Redemption 2, though I still need to be in a proper mood for it.

 

[Pifanjr]

The 6 year old has been totally fine with pretty much anything, but I had to stop letting the 4 year old watch Lies of P, because we were getting woke up in the night by nightmares.

The weird thing about little kids is that they seem to like horror. My oldests friends have shown him stuff like Huggy Wuggy and Sirenhead, stuff I had no idea existed, but they're all obsessed with it. He also saw Choo-Choo Charles on Steam and just keeps asking me to buy and play it.

My kid likes scary stuff as well, but we're still fairly careful with what we play around her. I was playing XCOM 2 while she was in the room, but when it showed a close up of a Lost (basically a zombie), my wife suggested I don't play it when our kid is around. And I agreed it's better to play it safe with stuff like that, you never quite know if something will trigger a kid into having nightmares.

Hopefully you'll like this more than I did. Not that I thought it was bad. I just didn't think it was anything special. I had expected a bit more from Obsidian.

I've gotten a good first impression so far, besides the technical issues that is. I've heard other people say it was not quite as good as they hoped, so I don't expect too much, which will probably help to not get disappointed.

 

[neogunhero]

Exactly.

Rarely, even if were to have the time, will I sit and game for multiple hours like I did as a kid and young person. I no longer have the patience to memorize enemy patrols and sit for minutes on end, waiting for something to happen.

All that said, I still don't mind a slow burn game. But I think there's a difference between slow burn and sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. I'll happily play Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Red Dead Redemption 2, though I still need to be in a proper mood for it.

I agree with what you said about slow burn games. A game can be long and have lots of complex parts, but it has to be something where I can either make some form of meaningful progress or have fun with it in a quick amount of time. Cyberpunk took me 120 hours to beat, but each time I played it no matter for how long there was something for me to do.

 

[ZedClampet]

@neogunhero If you ever need a co-op buddy to gather resources for you in Conan, or wherever, let me know. I'm also okay at tagging along in dungeons. I'm pretty crap at fighting bosses or really difficult combat, though, so you might have to carry me.

 

[Zloth]

Nice work. As far as the extra missions and whatnot, people may be playing with the Long War mod, which draws everything out and makes it harder.

I played when WotC Long War wasn't done yet and my stats for the world mostly look similar. Most of the ones that don't look insane on @Pifanjr's stats.

My own stats are pretty similar to @Pifanjr, too! I lost a mission, had fewer flawless wins, finished with 1.91 left on the timer, had fewer soldiers and scientists, got to plated armor and beam weapons quite a bit faster, 9 days slower to alien encryption, 2 more radio relays built, vastly more supplies from depots (6615), vastly fewer from black market (175), more intel collected, and more intel paid to the black market. Huh, I paid 590 to the black market while you paid only 175 supplies while you paid 330 and got 968!? I guess I was buying other stuff? Or maybe it was a difficulty level thing?

 

[Brian Boru]

Well, my wife left me...

You evil sod, don't do that! My heart dropped to my heels!!

she said she used to sneak downstairs after everyone but me was asleep and watch me play when I didn't realize she was there

Stealth players are born, not made!

my laptops. Bigger the better is my motto

Friend asked for help with her 15" laptop:
Me—Ok, open the screen
She—It's already open

I'm not the person I used to be and I'm a bit bored with sneaking and hiding in games

Yep, I've found my gaming tastes changed over the decades. I had fun with Thief and Splinter Cell back whenever, but when I tried a brief revisit recently neither of them lasted an hour with me. I play stealth in shooters, but not to such extremes anymore.

I've gotten a good first impression so far

[The Outer Worlds] Recent reviews are more favorable. I'm currently installing it too, worth a look at least.

 

[ZedClampet]

Yep, I've found my gaming tastes changed over the decades. I had fun with Thief and Splinter Cell back whenever, but when I tried a brief revisit recently neither of them lasted an hour with me. I play stealth in shooters, but not to such extremes anymore.

Only time I ever do stealth is in Ubisoft games. It's a nice contained area, generally speaking, and you can get a decent overview of what is going on before you go in.

I don't even understand some stealth games. I tried to play one of the Dishonored games one day, and it started off with a stealth mission. There were like 5 people in the next room, all looking in different directions. I couldn't throw a rock or anything. I had to somehow sneak past them. I suppose I could have just parked outside and watched for 10 minutes waiting for them to move and maybe try to notice some patterns or something, but I just decided not to bother.

Same sort of thing happened in one of the Batman games. I played through the beginning and then had this mission where I was in a large area, and there were people all over the place, and I was supposed to stealth it. I'm Batman! I just want to jump out and take care of this with my fists! I tried it several times, failed each time, got overpowered and had to start over. Again, I just quit the game. Not my cup of tea.

 

[Brian Boru]

I could have just parked outside and watched for 10 minutes waiting for them to move and maybe try to notice some patterns or something

Yeah… NO!

Toughest like that I played was the excellent Commandos series ~25 years go. I really enjoyed it, but have dropped masochism as a hobby since—hence no RPG either. You had to observe for 5 minutes and then start moving your 4 individuals towards there required locations. Desperados and Shadow Tactics are more recent versions of similar gameplay.

Dishonored

I bounced off that due to the dingy depressing setting, but if it's the same one [the original
Dishonored 1] I think you got out by going overhead—but don't ask me how!

 

[ZedClampet]

Yeah… NO!

Toughest like that I played was the excellent Commandos series ~25 years go. I really enjoyed it, but have dropped masochism as a hobby since—hence no RPG either. You had to observe for 5 minutes and then start moving your 4 individuals towards there required locations. Desperados and Shadow Tactics are more recent versions of similar gameplay.



I bounced off that due to the dingy depressing setting, but if it's the same one [the original
Dishonored 1] I think you got out by going overhead—but don't ask me how!

I guess it was the first one. Not sure. I had a habit of starting with the 2nd game in a series, and I thought I'd done that with Dishonored, but you may be right.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played when WotC Long War wasn't done yet and my stats for the world mostly look similar. Most of the ones that don't look insane on @Pifanjr's stats.

I read that the highest difficulty can easily make the game last twice as long because it slows down research and healing times, so I'm guessing it's mostly from that. I also suspect that overall there's only a fairly minor percentage of players that play with Long War.

Huh, I paid 590 to the black market while you paid only 175 supplies while you paid 330 and got 968!? I guess I was buying other stuff? Or maybe it was a difficulty level thing?

I guess you weren't selling as much to the black market. I sold quite a few corpses and even a couple data pads, besides buying supplies directly for intel two or three times.

 

[Brian Boru]

@ZedClampet this might interest you and fellow muck rakers

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RspwD7uVRDE