December 2023 General Discussion Thread

[ZedClampet]

The Forest Giant in Lethal Company is still an OP nightmare even though they nerfed it just a tad. You can't get away from it. All you can hope is that you are close enough to either the facility or, preferably, the ship when it see you that you can make it there before it catches you. Guido and Elly May don't see it that way. Here's an example of how this works for us:

Guido is at the main facility exit on the other side of the chasm. Elly May is at the secondary exit in the chasm. I've already crossed the bridge over the chasm to head to the ship. Two Forest Giants show up, but seem confused because there are three of us. They both head into the chasm toward Elly May. I turn back around and go to the ship, but Guido chases the forest giants into the chasm, wanting to go through the secondary exit to recover a treasure called "the device".

Guido leads the giants on a short chase and tells Elly May to make a run for it. She does, but after Guido is forced to go into the facility, the giants turn and chase Elly May, who is still in the chasm. She has two choices. She can delay death by crossing the narrow bridge back to the main entrance, or she can die trying to make it back to the ship. Guido tells her to take the bridge and they will tag team them and make it back to the ship after he gets the device. She ignores him, runs for the ship and gets killed.

Guido now emerges with the device, but he knows he's dead without another player to distract the giants.

Guido, "Dad, whatcha doing?"

Me, "Not leaving the ship. We'd both die, and that would be the end of the run."

Guido, "Alright."

Guido dies and I pull the lever to take off. The game awards me with the "Laziest Employee" award.

Me. "I may be the laziest, but I'm still alive."

Guido, who has respawned on the ship, says rather comically. "That's usually the way it works."

Me, defensive. "I was there. I saw the Forest Giants. How many days do you, Elly May and her friend make it when you play without me?"

Silence from Guido.

I mean, there's no doubt that both of them are far more skilled than I am, but I like to think my strategy and decision making help a little, too.

 

[Brian Boru]

both of them are far more skilled than I am

I remember we had an arg a conversation about this a couple of years ago

You were saying Guido would zap the pair of us in a KnoxOutVille minute in any shooting encounter—which no doubt he would in a QuixDraw McGraw encounter.

But I made the case that skill also includes…

strategy and decision making

…so it's nice to see you've gradually come around

 

[ZedClampet]

I remember we had an arg a conversation about this a couple of years ago

You were saying Guido would zap the pair of us in a KnoxOutVille minute in any shooting encounter—which no doubt he would in a QuixDraw McGraw encounter.

But I made the case that skill also includes…



…so it's nice to see you've gradually come around

Oh, no. He would kill you before you realized you had spawned. He would then give you five minutes to get ready and kill you again before you even saw him. His strategy in shooters is fantastic. This is not a shooter. The flaw in his strategy in Lethal Company is simply his belief that everyone else can also do the things he does. If I were as good as him, I would have gone back for him when he needed an extra person to distract the forest giants.

If you ever really want to see what happens when you go up against him, just let me know. I can arrange a little PvP session, both of us against him.

 

[ZedClampet]

The problem @Brian Boru (and I'm talking about myself here, too. I'm not trying to insult you) is that you play Far Cry 5 and your strategies work and you rarely ever die, and that gives you confidence. Let me assure you that there is no difficulty in Far Cry games that comes even close to representing real players. That's why so many people like multiplayer games.

The descriptions of your deaths in the post above? It's not just Guido who would do that to you. Many people would. If you don't believe me, download a popular free PvP game like Counter Strike and see for yourself. Just go in, do your best, and see what happens. Don't worry, they'll team you up with other noobs. So no problems, right?

And when you are done, think about the fact that Guido always comes out of those matches with the most kills, and he might also be in your noob queue with you because he only plays a few matches every few months.

How do I know you aren't super good? Because I know how old you are, for one thing. Imagine a person your age playing someone in basketball who is both 18 and also very good at basketball. Things are not going to go well for you.

 

[ZedClampet]

I DID IT!​

That was my tutorial fish catch. It cracked me up because the game was so dramatic about it. It's not exactly like standing on the pier next to a 12 foot bull shark. This is more like going to your friend's house and picking up one of their goldfish while they yell, "Put it back! Put it back! It can't breathe!"

 

[ZedClampet]

Going to try Skull and Bones tomorrow in the closed beta.

 

[D10S]

Alan Wake II can now be bought for 26eur with discount and coupon, downloading already.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

The Epic store deals are amazing with the coupon on top, I'm almost tempted to buy something else on there.

 

[D10S]

The servers are crap tho, expect first AWII screenies early next year lol

 

[Pifanjr]

I took over for my wife in a game of Fortnite yesterday with three of her friends and it's such a different experience playing with people who are good at the game and know how to communicate. While I was running around trying to gather some weapons and ammo I hear them through my headphones casually mentioning eliminating entire squads (and then a string of expletives when their ammo ran out).

I ended the game crawling in storm while they finished off the last person. I got 1 kill and 4 assists while one of them got 15 kills by themselves.

The problem @Brian Boru (and I'm talking about myself here, too. I'm not trying to insult you) is that you play Far Cry 5 and your strategies work and you rarely ever die, and that gives you confidence. Let me assure you that there is no difficulty in Far Cry games that comes even close to representing real players. That's why so many people like multiplayer games.

The descriptions of your deaths in the post above? It's not just Guido who would do that to you. Many people would. If you don't believe me, download a popular free PvP game like Counter Strike and see for yourself. Just go in, do your best, and see what happens. Don't worry, they'll team you up with other noobs. So no problems, right?

And when you are done, think about the fact that Guido always comes out of those matches with the most kills, and he might also be in your noob queue with you because he only plays a few matches every few months.

How do I know you aren't super good? Because I know how old you are, for one thing. Imagine a person your age playing someone in basketball who is both 18 and also very good at basketball. Things are not going to go well for you.

I once encountered a level 100 player in a Battlefield game and decided to try to kill him. I think I died a dozen times before I managed to kill him once. Most of the deaths I hadn't even seen him before being killed.

I can usually punch above my skill level a bit by being more tactical and strategic, but that only helps so much against people who are significantly more skilled, let alone those that are smart enough not to fall for the same trick twice.

 

[ZedClampet]

I took over for my wife in a game of Fortnite yesterday with three of her friends and it's such a different experience playing with people who are good at the game and know how to communicate. While I was running around trying to gather some weapons and ammo I hear them through my headphones casually mentioning eliminating entire squads (and then a string of expletives when their ammo ran out).

I ended the game crawling in storm while they finished off the last person. I got 1 kill and 4 assists while one of them got 15 kills by themselves.



I once encountered a level 100 player in a Battlefield game and decided to try to kill him. I think I died a dozen times before I managed to kill him once. Most of the deaths I hadn't even seen him before being killed.

I can usually punch above my skill level a bit by being more tactical and strategic, but that only helps so much against people who are significantly more skilled, let alone those that are smart enough not to fall for the same trick twice.

Yeah, and you have a bell curve. Most of the players will be average or below average, but there's a percentage of players (which probably varies from person to person) who someone my age just can't compete with strictly due to age differences (There have always been people I couldn't deal with. I mean an additional group that I can't deal with just because of my age), and the older you get, the higher that percentage becomes until even average players are becoming a nuisance.

That mostly just goes for shooters, though, which require lightning reaction times and visual processing. Maybe fast-paced RTS games would be in there too. Hand-to-hand combat like in Chivalry and racing games are a lot better. Age doesn't really seem to factor in as much if at all. These games don't require as much quickness and, generally speaking, require more strategy. I can hold my own against pretty much most people I've come across in a game like For Honor or Vermintide, and regularly beat good players who are using wheel setups in racing games with my controller. But I have fully given up on PvP shooters, My reaction time and visual processing are just not close to what they used to be. Unfortunately, this has bled into regular shooters, too. There's no way I could solo the Remnant games, for instance. Ten years ago? Maybe. Twenty years ago? Probably. Thirty years ago? Absolutely. Fortunately, most games, like the Far Cry games or Fallout games, are a ton easier than Remnant, so I can still play those without a problem, and something like Dark Souls is okay since it's more about learning patterns and rhythm than about reflexes. Would I be better at Dark Souls if I were younger? Sure, but it's still doable.

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh, and Guido? He was basically born with a mouse in his hand. I've never cared if my kids experienced violence in video games (and it didn't seem to hurt them any), so Guido was playing Wizard101 at age 3 and instantly took to the mouse. By age 4 he was playing things like the old Doom games (because he saw me playing them). At around age 6, we were evenly matched in Minecraft when we fought each other with bows. By the time he was 7 or 8 and I was in my late 40s, he was obviously better than me, but I could still hold my own a bit. By age 9, it was no contest.

All that was pretty humbling. And he's gotten vastly better through the years and is probably at the peak of his game right now, while I've gotten incrementally worse. Something like Far Cry or Resident Evil simply provide him with no challenge regardless of the difficulty. I watched him stream RE8 on "Village of Shadows" difficulty (harder than Hardcore). It was the first time I'd seen him play when I wasn't also playing, so I could really concentrate on what he was doing, and I was literally awestruck. His reflexes and aim are to the point where he has to be close to triggering anti-cheat software in multiplayer games.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Just picked up Aliens: Dark Descent and Vagrus Riven Realms. Probably could have waited for the full Winter Sale but its a good discount anyway.

I've been toying with Vagrus for ages, looks really neat if you like that kind of thing. War Tales is good but isnt really calling me back, so maybe this will.

 

[D10S]

Just picked up Aliens: Dark Descent and Vagrus Riven Realms. Probably could have waited for the full Winter Sale but its a good discount anyway.

I've been toying with Vagrus for ages, looks really neat if you like that kind of thing. War Tales is good but isnt really calling me back, so maybe this will.

reviews say it's a cracking game, post screenies and impressions.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'm getting towards the end of Alan Wake 2, so it'll be after that but definitely will. Someone else around here was playing it a while ago, can't remember who.

 

[Brian Boru]

Someone else around here was playing it

@Sarafan

 

[ZedClampet]

There doesn't appear to be an NDA for the Skull and Bones closed beta, so here goes...

I'm completely shocked. After all the years of development hell, this game is a ton of fun. We just had a blast. It's like the best of Black Flag (and no follow quests). Can't wait for release.

 

[ZedClampet]

So PvP was apparently turned off during the open beta. The first thing I did when I left the safe zone was to open fire on this guy in a much bigger ship than mine (I thought maybe this was like other games I've played, and maybe I could disable and steal the ship), but I didn't seem to do any damage to him. I honestly just thought he had a very well-armored ship that my starter ship wasn't effective on. He just ignored me, and I got distracted with other things and didn't shoot at any other humans until Guido left the team so we could 1v1. We couldn't damage each other. It will be interesting to see how the dynamics change when PvP is turned on. Personally, the fact that no one was trying to attack other players actually put me in a sort of optimistic and happy mood. I didn't know they were all playing nice by force.

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued my Stellaris game as a genocidal machine consciousness, but it's not going nearly as well as the last game. I encountered two other races, one of which was considerably weaker than me, so I thought that I could finally start my extermination campaign. However, they turned out to be a vassal of the other empire that borders me that is about as strong as me and I didn't really want to get into a two-front war with only 2 fleets, which is all I can afford at the moment.

So I started focusing on improving my infrastructure to support more fleets, when a giant spectral alien showed up and started destroying all of my starbases. I tried destroying it, but instead lost both my fleets. So now I have to wait until I've rebuilt about 8 starbases, all of the mining and research stations and both of my fleets.

 

[neogunhero]

Far Cry 6 is on Game Pass now. I was a bit hesitant to try, since about a month or two ago when I got a free month of Ubisoft+, my save wasn’t there at all. I decided to download it and was going to start from scratch, but miraculously my saves were there again. Exact same Ubisoft account, I have no idea how it just appeared. So I played a ton of that this weekend, played some DOOM, and It Takes Two.

Far Cry 6 is great to just get lost in. I’m a good 30-40% done with the story so I’m at a spot where I can just wander around and explore. I will never get tired of wingsuiting everywhere I can. Far Cry 6 has a genuinely beautiful world, which I think a lot of Far Cry haters always overlook. Sure the game is mostly the same from all other previous installments, but it’s still fun and great to explore 😊

DOOM turned 30 about a week or two ago and out of curiosity I checked out the Steam page and was very surprised to see in 2020 Bethesda gave it a major QoL update along the lines of the Quake 2 update earlier this year. I was never big into the original DOOM games, I prefer the full 3D environments of games like Quake and Unreal. Either way I am playing it fully through for the first time, I’m almost done with the original 3 episodes and the biggest surprise to me is how short the game is. Sure there are tons of addons and mods to play, such as John Romero’s SIGIL, but the base game is incredibly short! Either way I’ve been having a blast and glad it runs without any fuss with this new update.

Speaking of old shooters, I’m playing more of Slayers X on Game Pass. I understand the style and humor but that doesn’t mean it’s constant your mom jokes and turd jokes aren’t annoying. I decided to give it another go after finding out it’s only about 4 hours long and boy it’s a blast. It’s still giving me a headache at times but the game is so fun and unique I want to keep playing. I found a rat and kept hitting E over and over to hear about 10 minutes worth of unique rat dialogue one-liners.

It Takes Two has been kicking our butts. There are some moments that can be genuinely difficult, like the airplane mission. My GF had to hand me over her controller so I could fly the dang thing. All these years of Battelfield has gotten me good at flying planes and heli in games. It’s very fun and we’ve been trying to find all of the mini games.

 

[Johnway]

Still playing Path of Exile and i've reached the end game on friday. now i begin the mapping phase and i think that playing as a minion build has reached its peak performance and i find it... lacking. For the story and early mapping enemies just melted, now the boot is on the other foot and the enemies can crush me in a single blow. That said, i'm lacking defenses and i do have 10 upgrade points that i need to spend. only problem is according to the guide most of the points don't do much. I was hoping for more health etc but alas the rest go to dubious stuff.

The other problem are the challenges. I can get the maybe 3-5 relatively easy (either it needs some grinding or luck) i currently have 11, so i should be able to get the 16 i need. But to get to 24 or 26 is going to be a tall order. i'm hoping to get another character built and seeing if i can get further.

 

[Zloth]

Solasta's Palace of Ice is starting to show some bugginess.

Some human bandit used a power called 'brand' that stuck a light spell on my monk, making it so she couldn't hide or otherwise run off into the dark. The time limit expired on it long ago and the effects wore off, but the game is still showing a little light above her head and giving her partial lighting. Arg.

There was a battle last night where I was trying to save an old guy. I was pretty sure where he was, so I went straight to that spot, got into the battle, and the old guy just stood there in his little building while we all battled outside. All the NPCs outside just stood around, too, while big demons showed up and ran/flew past them. That's NOT normal for this game! When the battle finished, the old guy was suddenly dead!?

I loaded a save from earlier and, instead of going straight to the battle, I went and spoke to somebody first to get a hint about where the old guy was trapped, then went on in. This time, there was no old guy in the building at all! The NPCs just kept doing their idle chatter through the battle as before. When the battle finished, POOF! The old guy appeared. I got an achievement for keeping him alive through a battle he wasn't even present for.

The DLC I'm playing showed up in May of this year and the developers moved on to their next game just a month or two later, so this one got a lot less post-release love than the other stuff.

... but the base game is incredibly short!

Well, first you need to clear out the level, and then you need to go and rapid-press space while you hug every single wall in the level....

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued my Stellaris game as a genocidal machine consciousness, but it's not going nearly as well as the last game. I encountered two other races, one of which was considerably weaker than me, so I thought that I could finally start my extermination campaign. However, they turned out to be a vassal of the other empire that borders me that is about as strong as me and I didn't really want to get into a two-front war with only 2 fleets, which is all I can afford at the moment.

So I started focusing on improving my infrastructure to support more fleets, when a giant spectral alien showed up and started destroying all of my starbases. I tried destroying it, but instead lost both my fleets. So now I have to wait until I've rebuilt about 8 starbases, all of the mining and research stations and both of my fleets.

I finally decided I was ready and declared war on my neighbours, only to get my ass handed to me. Apparently the auto-generated ship designs suck and most of my fleet was destroyed. I read up a bit on how to make a proper ship build, rebuilt my fleets and eventually managed to fight them back, but I still lost a planet when I got forced into a 10 year truce.

The giant spectral alien also came back and went on another rampage through my empire in the middle of the war, so that was a major headache as well. The only good thing to come from the truce is that I could get my entire fleet in one place and kill the damn thing. I still lost another sector, because after the alien destroyed its starbase my neighbour build a new one before I did and I can't stop him because of the damn truce.

 

[neogunhero]

Well, first you need to clear out the level, and then you need to go and rapid-press space while you hug every single wall in the level....

That’s pretty evident when I’m missing more than half of the secrets in most levels

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh, my gosh. So The Weed Shop 3 Christmas stuff...There are large teddy bears that follow you around, hopping up and down, and talking incessantly until you beat them to death with a dildo, and then, not long afterward, more show up. They drop candy cane blunts. There's also a stoner Santa you are trying to collect candy cane weed for. Not sure what the prize is, and I'm not likely to find out because I've moved on to other games at this point.