June 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

[Pifanjr]

I played some more Minecraft and finally got an automated ore generator set up. However, it turns out it's pretty slow, even powered by three lasers, and it uses quite a lot of power. I've added a second power generator, but that's only barely enough to keep everything running. I could add a third, but I'd rather automate the fuel input before adding more power generators.

However, to automate stuff, I need more resources. The magic chicken mod I've mentioned before adds chickens that lay redstone, iron and gold, among other things, but I hadn't had any success crossbreeding chickens to get new types. However, looking at the recipe for crossbreeding again I noticed it involves a specific breeder block, which I had somehow missed before. After building three of them and shoving a bunch of chickens inside with their favourite aphrodisiac (wheat seeds), I quickly got myself a bunch of new chicken types.

Since chickens don't need any input to generate resources and the mod adds a cheap block that automatically gathers everything they create, this will make a great, cheap source of some of the most important resources I'll need.

 

[Brian Boru]

Well de-amm-umm—best kill ever? … this is worth 20 seconds of your time:

View: https://youtu.be/dxMm7qd5u64?t=282

 

[ZedClampet]

Watched the Xbox showcase. I only read about the Playstation one, but it's clear that Xbox is winning.

Watching the Starfield show now. Looks very good. Looks like there is just a ton of content.

 

[Pifanjr]

Watched the Xbox showcase. I only read about the Playstation one, but it's clear that Xbox is winning.

Watching the Starfield show now. Looks very good. Looks like there is just a ton of content.

The Starfied showcase was amazing. The only thing that was disappointing for me were the facial animations, which still have that very distinct Bethesda look.

 

[Ryzengang]

I've been a Starfield skeptic for awhile now, but that showing was outstanding. The shooting looks surprisingly good and fluid. The game looks really promising.

 

[DXCHASE]

I've been a Starfield skeptic for awhile now, but that showing was outstanding. The shooting looks surprisingly good and fluid. The game looks really promising.

Im actually on the other side, i was a skeptic, now a little more so. It looks like its going to be a bugfest it has so much going on. While it showcased all the different things youll be able to do on a planet and in sapce, i feel like theres going to be certain areas of this game that are going to be lacking because they put so much effort into another area. Also was not impressed with the gunplay, it seemed pretty flat. Exploration, space shooting looked good and thats probably the bigger focus of this game, but that brings me back to my other point.

It looked beautiful no doubt too but i feel like its going too be trying to do way too much for it to come out as a solid launched game.

 

[Johnway]

honestly not been paying attention to starfield tbh. I'll wait for the reviews to come out and read those. being a bethesda game i suspect there might be some sort of GOTY or expansions galore. So i can wait.

As for gamingwise, i'm just going through my indie list to remove a couple of the games from the list. Can't say i'm exactly motivated to play anything indie atm. I think the paradox of choice and commitment to play indie stuff for a bit might be the cause. i'll probably look at one more before calling it and play something more AAA. I have a feeling to play anno for some reason...

 

[ZedClampet]

There wasn't a single game I was interested in in the whole 2023 PC Gaming show. You know me. The odds of that happening are astronomically low.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played a bit more Minecraft today. My magic chicken farm has been relocated underground to free up some space in my base. The drops are automatically collected into a chest on the surface, which is very convenient.

To get to the next tier of chickens, such as for diamond and obsidian, I need a Nether Quartz Chicken, which can allegedly only be found in a Nether Fortress, which are fairly rare spawns.

Luckily it's fairly easy to search the Nether when you have a jetpack. Unluckily, I quickly discovered I was woefully undergeared to explore inside and I had to keep running away. My armour is based on utility more than defense, specifically a 75% boost to speed (which, to be fair, does work pretty well to keep me alive) and I've only used a basic bronze sword so far.

Considering I have the speed to stay out of reach of any monster fairly easily, especially with the jetpack, I decided a ranged weapon would be most useful. If I can kill enemies before they can reach me I could keep my armour (and speed boost).
So I built an air-pressure based minigun. The magic chicken farm provided almost all of the resources, which was convenient. I was a bit worried it wouldn't be very effective considering it was quite easy to make, but once I returned to the Nether Fortress it made quick work of everything but a boss monster.

Sadly I couldn't locate a Nether Quartz Chicken anywhere. I did loot several chests with some interesting stuff in them, among which a backpack that significantly expands my available inventory.

I considered cheating a Nether Quartz Chicken, but decided against it because I think it'll make the game too easy. The chicken farm I have now is already far more effective in generating resources than any alternative I have and it doesn't even need any type of maintenance.

 

[Brian Boru]

2023 PC Gaming show

Couple of RTSs wishlisted.

DORF has a major Red Alert 2 vibe—I had it wishlisted from earlier—and Stormgate is by devs from Blizzard's War/Starcraft teams. Stormgate may be too tactics oriented for my taste, but DORF and Tempest Rising are the 2 future ones I'm most interested in seeing what they do with the genre.

 

[ZedClampet]

Couple of RTSs wishlisted.

DORF has a major Red Alert 2 vibe—I had it wishlisted from earlier—and Stormgate is by devs from Blizzard's War/Starcraft teams. Stormgate may be too tactics oriented for my taste, but DORF and Tempest Rising are the 2 future ones I'm most interested in seeing what they do with the genre.

There was one survival game that it's possible I could come around to, but the trailer basically showed nothing.

 

[Sarafan]

As you may know, I like to play a few games simultaneously. This lowers the possibility that I'll get bored with one title. While playing Diablo 4, I also decided to start Elden Ring on NG+. I use Rivers of Blood katana build and I'm shocked how easy the game is. I'm still in the beginning of NG+, but I expected that the difficulty will be comparable or only slightly lower than in the beginning of a standard game. Apparently I was wrong. I keep slicing through bosses at monstrous rate. I hope it'll get harder as I progress through, but at this moment I'm quite disappointed. I have 140 level though, so maybe the developers didn't expect that players will get so high in the first playthrough. I admit that I've done quite a lot of farming in the standard game, so probably this profits now.

Also I decided to check Heroes of Might & Magic 3 HD Edition. The game was heavily criticized for being a money grab from Ubisoft, but I personally thing it doesn't deserve for such harsh ratings. All of the game assets were remade in HD and the overall graphics quality is a lot better than in Heroes 3 Complete with HD mod. Also the modded game suffers from tiny assets when playing in 1080p. This is not the case for the HD Edition. The only major problem is the lack of expansion packs and gameplay improvements they introduce. If someone wants to play the campaigns from original game though, HD Edition is the way to go.

As for Starfield, there's no way I'm paying that much for heavily bugged game. I'll wait until they fix the unreleased yet game... Or for a sale... Or preferably for both...

 

[ZedClampet]

As for Starfield, there's no way I'm paying that much for heavily bugged game. I'll wait until they fix the unreleased yet game... Or for a sale... Or preferably for both...

According to an article yesterday, Xbox has all its QA people playing the game, and it's going to be releasing in a much different state than past Bethesda games. It was specifically delayed to take care of this.

 

[Pifanjr]

I spend far too much time playing Minecraft instead of working this morning, but I finally have a centralized storage system. No more rummaging through a dozen chests, I can just dump it all at the nearest terminal.

I still have to incorporate the output of the chicken farm and the potato farm and then redo the setup of all my machines so they output into the centralized storage as well. Also automate the input of the power generators. Plenty left to do, but being able to craft with every resource in one place should make it a bit easier.

According to an article yesterday, Xbox has all its QA people playing the game, and it's going to be releasing in a much different state than past Bethesda games. It was specifically delayed to take care of this.

It'll be a moderately bugged game at most. Hopefully.

 

[DXCHASE]

According to an article yesterday, Xbox has all its QA people playing the game, and it's going to be releasing in a much different state than past Bethesda games. It was specifically delayed to take care of this.

As much as i hope this comes true, i never really want any game to come out buggy, im just not going to invest any confidence in something like this until its actually out, esp when its already been stated to be locked at 30fps on consoles.

 

[ZedClampet]

As much as i hope this comes true, i never really want any game to come out buggy, im just not going to invest any confidence in something like this until its actually out, esp when its already been stated to be locked at 30fps on consoles.

It's definitely going to be called "unoptimized" by a lot of people. Almost everything is. But the good news is that on PC you can drop your graphics settings. I would assume that Xbox will be set to Ultra or near Ultra.

The thing is that console is used to 30 fps, so if the choice is higher graphics setting and lower fps versus the opposite, they probably go with the higher graphics setting.

But you are hardly alone in your skepticism/cynicism. That's the predominant attitude among gamers for sure. We've been burned too much to be any other way.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

As you may know, I like to play a few games simultaneously. This lowers the possibility that I'll get bored with one title. While playing Diablo 4, I also decided to start Elden Ring on NG+. I use Rivers of Blood katana build and I'm shocked how easy the game is. I'm still in the beginning of NG+, but I expected that the difficulty will be comparable or only slightly lower than in the beginning of a standard game. Apparently I was wrong. I keep slicing through bosses at monstrous rate. I hope it'll get harder as I progress through, but at this moment I'm quite disappointed. I have 140 level though, so maybe the developers didn't expect that players will get so high in the first playthrough. I admit that I've done quite a lot of farming in the standard game, so probably this profits now.

Also I decided to check Heroes of Might & Magic 3 HD Edition. The game was heavily criticized for being a money grab from Ubisoft, but I personally thing it doesn't deserve for such harsh ratings. All of the game assets were remade in HD and the overall graphics quality is a lot better than in Heroes 3 Complete with HD mod. Also the modded game suffers from tiny assets when playing in 1080p. This is not the case for the HD Edition. The only major problem is the lack of expansion packs and gameplay improvements they introduce. If someone wants to play the campaigns from original game though, HD Edition is the way to go.

As for Starfield, there's no way I'm paying that much for heavily bugged game. I'll wait until they fix the unreleased yet game... Or for a sale... Or preferably for both...

By the time I finished with Elden Ring I think I was level 137 and I didnt grind at all, so I dont think youre over levelled. I just think they intended New Game plus to be a bit of a cakewalk. Its also surprising just how much better you get at dealing with the early bosses when the later ones are way way harder.

According to an article yesterday, Xbox has all its QA people playing the game, and it's going to be releasing in a much different state than past Bethesda games. It was
specifically delayed to take care of this.

I'll believe it when I see it. I probably wont be on the hype train day one. The more content a developer tries to make out a game has, the less content I am with it

Those minimum requirements are no joke. Fairly modern 6/12 CPU and a Radeon 5700. Sounds like its gonna be a slideshow even at low settings going by that.

 

[ZedClampet]

By the time I finished with Elden Ring I think I was level 137 and I didnt grind at all, so I dont think youre over levelled. I just think they intended New Game plus to be a bit of a cakewalk. Its also surprising just how much better you get at dealing with the early bosses when the later ones are way way harder.

I'll believe it when I see it. I probably wont be on the hype train day one. The more content a developer tries to make out a game has, the less content I am with it

Those minimum requirements are no joke. Fairly modern 6/12 CPU and a Radeon 5700. Sounds like its gonna be a slideshow even at low settings going by that.

Oh, it's going to be challenging to run, but I don't consider that a bad thing. Given the scale and the procedural generation on a planetary scale (and much more complex with better graphics than No Man's Sky), and throw in massive cities, which by themselves would be difficult to run, and this game is pushing the envelope in a big way. I like that.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Oh, it's going to be challenging to run, but I don't consider that a bad thing. Given the scale and the procedural generation on a planetary scale (and much more complex with better graphics than No Man's Sky), and throw in massive cities, which by themselves would be difficult to run, and this game is pushing the envelope in a big way. I like that.

The video makes the shooting look like a bit of a step up and the space flight stuff looks cool. I hope its really good, I just have my doubts it'll be 100% for me. My experience with Bethesda games is that they make big beautiful worlds with gameplay thats functional but not really very exciting. I didnt play Fallout 4 though, so that's based off FO3, Oblivion and Skyrim.

I wonder if its actually using all of those CPU threads? I seem to remember Creation engine being bit locked down to a single main thread and this is probably built off of that.

 

[Zloth]

There's already mention of a story DLC for Starfield called "Shattered Space." If you're likely to play through just one time and you want it all, you're going to need to wait for all of it to appear anyway.

No gaming at all from me the past few days. I caught COVID (somehow!?) and it knocked me down for a few days.

 

[ZedClampet]

I wonder if its actually using all of those CPU threads? I seem to remember Creation engine being bit locked down to a single main thread and this is probably built off of that.

Surely they've come around by now.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Surely they've come around by now.

Hopefully, it looks great apart from the facial animations.

 

[Sarafan]

According to an article yesterday, Xbox has all its QA people playing the game, and it's going to be releasing in a much different state than past Bethesda games. It was specifically delayed to take care of this.

That would be great, but we should treat such info with a grain of salt given the state of past Bethesda games on their release dates.

I would assume that Xbox will be set to Ultra or near Ultra.

It isn't in the case of 99% AAA games. I'd expect an equivalent of Medium and High mix on Xbox, maybe with High dominating. Ultra would probably burn the console. But that doesn't mean it won't look very good. Besides differences between Ultra and High/Very High are barely noticeable in most PC games.

I wonder if its actually using all of those CPU threads?

Nope or at least not fully. I bet that the game will make 30-40% load per thread at max. Probably the game engine could be forced to work even on 4 core CPUs when utilizing their possibilities to maximum. The thing is no one optimizes games this way because it's costly and doesn't pay off. I haven't seen a game that fully utilizes CPUs for a very long time (except for some Denuvo locked titles at moments).

Surely they've come around by now.

I wouldn't be so sure. Even Fallout 76 was 60 FPS locked at first because they haven't solved the problem with buggy physics known from Skyrim times. I'm afraid there will be a lot of optimization problems with the game. But even despite that it'll rock.

 

[Zloth]

XBox put in all that QA time? Excellent! Then the developers will know exactly what bugs the players are talking about when they complain about them!

 

[MysticalChaos]

Random thought: there's now more games than is possible for the human brain to keep up with