March 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[Pifanjr]

if you have WOTC expansion you can set up timers to be longer. Failing that, the True concealment mod sets it so that the timer doesn't start until you break cover or fire the first shot. So you could potentially scout a bit or get closer to objectives before you go loud.

That said, i played Xcom2 standard, with and without the timer mod and with the time extension and its fairly doable not at any point did i feel like i didn't have enough time. You get use to moving quickly, but then again i saved scum so yeah...

when i played Xcom2 i went slightly crazy modding cosmetics. one mod i would recommend the Gotcha Again! mod for QOL stuff. although it conflicts with the perfect info mod apparently.

I don't have the DLC so I can't change the timers without a mod, but so far they haven't been a problem.

The Gotcha Again! mod looks very nice though. I've already had problems with not being sure if I would be able to hit an enemy after moving, so I've subscribed to it.

XCOM2 is one of mine and my wife's favorites. We have over 400-hours in it, having completed several Commander-Ironman runs. There are a heap of mods I would recommend, but going through all 56 of them might be a bit much... But I'd definitely recommend the one to disable timers while your team is concealed; to me, that just makes sense. Another I recall off the top of my head is Aiming Angles, which guarantees critical hits if you're flanking, though it does the same for the enemy, so be careful.

Honestly, I recommend pushing through pretty much no matter what happens. The game is pretty completeable even if you lose a whole bunch of soldiers, as long as you have a solid rotation of them being trained; I'd recommend an A and a B team at the very least. Also WotC is required, as it just balances the game so well and while the Chosen do tend to be tough, some of the weapons and upgrades you get off them will give you a dramatic power boost.

It seems War of the Chosen is €40 right now, but the lowest it's been ist €2.79, so I guess I'll just hope it'll be on sale again sometime soon.

I'm a bit conflicted on doing an iron-man run. I loved doing iron-man for the first XCOM game, but I had a lot of time to game then, so losing all my progress wasn't that big of a deal. Nowadays I'm lucky if I can play like 5 missions a week.

 

[Zloth]

I played more X4 and played some Endless Space 2, now that they've patched up a lot of stuff. Naturally, I did something wrong in ES2 and wasted 30+ turns right at the start of the game, so I'll want to restart tonight, but it's fun to be back.

I still haven't had a friendly fire kill.

I interpret that as "you can't kill Guido, even when his back is turned."

I'll have to see how much the mission timers will be a problem for me. I've already lost a soldier because I rushed ahead a bit too much, assuming all the enemies were dead, so I'll have to be a bit more careful next time.

I'm thinkin' you need to re-load saves more. Don't let people tell you how to play! (Well - maybe let the developers make some strong suggestions...)

The big problem with no timers is that you can turtle up and make the game easy-but-boring. Put all but one soldier on overwatch, then move that one soldier forward a few spaces for one action, then go overwatch with that solider as well. Next turn, do the same but with another soldier. Keep doing that over and over, trying to make sure only one spawn of critters wakes up at a time. You'll murder them. Or you'll fall asleep. Possibly both.

When I played and got wiped, I would re-load from the very opening move and treat the level as a puzzle. Knowing what I know now (which won't be every spawn, and I think some spawns wander), how do I get through to the objective without getting wiped? I did a lot of re-loading at first (especially in my first play-through), but I eventually got to a point where I never needed to re-load.

Mods I loved...
Free camera rotation, pose sets, show health as numbers (not needed early on), more hair colors, but mostly voice packs:

• Ash from Evil Dead
• EDI from Mass Effect if you get a robot soldier
• Tiny Tina from Borderlands
• Minsc from Baldur's Gate 1 and 2
• Schwarzenegger from various movies
• Duke Nuke'm
• Various Saints Row voices for the Boss. (Laura Bailey for the win. That's a WotC mod, but the voice clips video is funny, though not safe for work.)

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm back to arguing with the developer of Big Ambitions. It's a retail tycoon game, and my character hasn't left his apartment in a month because they reduced the business turnover rate, and there are no empty locations to rent. Every day I just click on the fridge to eat something and then click on the bed to sleep for 24 hours. I then check the business news to see if a location has become available, none ever do, so I go back to clicking on the fridge and the bed.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm thinkin' you need to re-load saves more. Don't let people tell you how to play! (Well - maybe let the developers make some strong suggestions...)

The big problem with no timers is that you can turtle up and make the game easy-but-boring. Put all but one soldier on overwatch, then move that one soldier forward a few spaces for one action, then go overwatch with that solider as well. Next turn, do the same but with another soldier. Keep doing that over and over, trying to make sure only one spawn of critters wakes up at a time. You'll murder them. Or you'll fall asleep. Possibly both.

When I played and got wiped, I would re-load from the very opening move and treat the level as a puzzle. Knowing what I know now (which won't be every spawn, and I think some spawns wander), how do I get through to the objective without getting wiped? I did a lot of re-loading at first (especially in my first play-through), but I eventually got to a point where I never needed to re-load.

Mods I loved...
Free camera rotation, pose sets, show health as numbers (not needed early on), more hair colors, but mostly voice packs:

• Ash from Evil Dead
• EDI from Mass Effect if you get a robot soldier
• Tiny Tina from Borderlands
• Minsc from Baldur's Gate 1 and 2
• Schwarzenegger from various movies
• Duke Nuke'm
• Various Saints Row voices for the Boss. (Laura Bailey for the win. That's a WotC mod, but the voice clips video is funny, though not safe for work.)

I'll probably also stick with reloading missions from the beginning if I get wiped. I just might make exceptions for particularly tricky missions. I'll also stick with the timers for now, since I don't really have time to play each mission super slow.

I appreciate the mod suggestions, but frankly I do not care about what my soldiers look like.

 

[Pifanjr]

Apparently the Gotcha Again! mod is only available on the Steam workshop and I'm playing on Epic (because they gave away the game for free). The older version of the mod is on Nexus, but the game crashed at startup with it enabled, so I guess I have to make do without.

I also discovered I didn't have a save from the beginning of the mission I failed last time, the last save was from after the previous mission. So I loaded that one and when I got the same event, it was an entirely different mission. It was still a struggle due to the same enemy type that made me fail the previous mission, so I ended up just reloading the autosave a couple of times until I finished the mission. I didn't really have time to start from the very beginning and I didn't want to just fail it because it was for a Dark Event.

 

[ZedClampet]

I played more X4 and played some Endless Space 2, now that they've patched up a lot of stuff. Naturally, I did something wrong in ES2 and wasted 30+ turns right at the start of the game, so I'll want to restart tonight, but it's fun to be back.


I interpret that as "you can't kill Guido, even when his back is turned."


I'm thinkin' you need to re-load saves more. Don't let people tell you how to play! (Well - maybe let the developers make some strong suggestions...)

The big problem with no timers is that you can turtle up and make the game easy-but-boring. Put all but one soldier on overwatch, then move that one soldier forward a few spaces for one action, then go overwatch with that solider as well. Next turn, do the same but with another soldier. Keep doing that over and over, trying to make sure only one spawn of critters wakes up at a time. You'll murder them. Or you'll fall asleep. Possibly both.

If you can stand to play that way, then play that way. It's not really a problem unless you play that way and don't enjoy it. I wouldn't ruin the fun of all the players who don't like timed missions just because a few people make untimed missions boring slogs.

Personally, I'm a fast player. Never failed a timed mission and usually had plenty of time left, but I played the non-timed missions the same way.

@Pifanjr save scumming is a fun way to play. I played once with and once without, and I actually enjoyed save scumming more because it made the missions feel more like puzzles, and it was fun to adjust my play to what I knew was coming.

One thing that's fun about not scum-saving is that it's actually possible to lose the game. Probable, actually, for a lot of people.

Also, the problem you are running into with the mod only being on Steam is one reason developers don't always use Steam workshop. If it's important to you, you might be able to download the mod tools and update the older mod from Nexus yourself.

By the way, Guido and I are both good at Xcom, so we got Jagged Edge 3, which is a co-op Xcom-like, and we got wiped almost immediately. I had to completely change my style to match his, which was difficult.

 

[Frindis]

I tried out Dragon's Dogma again and currently enjoying the ride. I don't think I'll manage to complete it before Dragon's Dogma 2 releases next week but at least I'll know more about how the game works. Playing as a mage now and when DD2 releases I will be playing sorcerer.

 

[neogunhero]

It'll be a huge upgrade. Am I reading right that you're coming from a 1600x? Last August I went from a 2600X to a 5600 (Non-X, as I had no intention to OC) and the upgrade was pretty substantial; I did a video card upgrade first and then later the CPU and that made a big difference, especially since I was then able to enable XMP.

Yeah, going from a 1600X to 5700X and effectively increasing my RAM speed to 2666mh to 3200mh and enabling XMP. I’m very excited and will be testing a lot of games when I get it tomorrow.

I also got me some really nice thermal paste for the first time ever. I got a 3g tube of Arctic MX-4, not the latest but I figured it will be significantly better than the thermal paste included with CPUs that I’ve always used. My 1600X rarely even hits 55c, and with this really nice thermal paste and the 5700X consuming less power, my chip will be nice and cool. I decided against getting a new air cooler, mine still works just fine, and according to a Tom’s Hardware article, their most recommend CPU air cooler is only like $35-40 on Amazon so I can pick that up whenever my current one bites the dust (kind of a pun?).

I also have enough thermal paste to redo my graphics card, but no thermal pads. Would you guys recommend me attempting to reapply thermal paste to my GPU? I’ve never done it before so it will require some research first. I’ve had my RTX 2060 for maybe 5 years now, but I haven’t seen it go up too high in temps before.

 

[Johnway]

Apparently the Gotcha Again! mod is only available on the Steam workshop and I'm playing on Epic (because they gave away the game for free). The older version of the mod is on Nexus, but the game crashed at startup with it enabled, so I guess I have to make do without.

I also discovered I didn't have a save from the beginning of the mission I failed last time, the last save was from after the previous mission. So I loaded that one and when I got the same event, it was an entirely different mission. It was still a struggle due to the same enemy type that made me fail the previous mission, so I ended up just reloading the autosave a couple of times until I finished the mission. I didn't really have time to start from the very beginning and I didn't want to just fail it because it was for a Dark Event.

Shame. If it helps, you can buy xcom2 collection for less then 6 quid if it helps:

Buy XCOM® 2 Collection from the Humble Store

Use of this product requires agreement to the following third party end user license agreement: http://www.take2games.com/eula/ XCOM 2:Aliens rule Earth, promising a brilliant future for mankind while secretly hiding a sinister agenda. As the leader of a guerrilla force facing impossible odds...

www.humblebundle.com

 

[ZedClampet]

Valve banned someone I was arguing with for repeated name-calling. I didn't know they did that. Sucks because I was winning the argument. On the other hand, I now get the last word in hahaha

 

[Pifanjr]

@Pifanjr save scumming is a fun way to play. I played once with and once without, and I actually enjoyed save scumming more because it made the missions feel more like puzzles, and it was fun to adjust my play to what I knew was coming.

One thing that's fun about not scum-saving is that it's actually possible to lose the game. Probable, actually, for a lot of people.

Well, there's save scumming and there's save scumming. There's save scumming to avoid wiping an entire team and there's save scumming to get a flawless rating on every mission. I like solving puzzles, but with the amount of hidden information and RNG in XCOM 2 it can feel like it's more trial and error/luck than puzzle-solving skills and I'll have to be careful not to burn myself out replaying the same mission, which was a problem I ran into with XCOM: Chimera Squad.

Also, the problem you are running into with the mod only being on Steam is one reason developers don't always use Steam workshop. If it's important to you, you might be able to download the mod tools and update the older mod from Nexus yourself.

By the way, Guido and I are both good at Xcom, so we got Jagged Edge 3, which is a co-op Xcom-like, and we got wiped almost immediately. I had to completely change my style to match his, which was difficult.

I did see that the Gotcha Again! source code is on GitHub, but I honestly don't really have time to mess around with that. It took me about 20 minutes fiddling around with Vortex and Nexus and trying to get the game to start this morning, out of the 30 minutes I had planned, which was already pushing it a bit in regards to when I should start working. Luckily we're not particularly busy at the moment.

I'd love to play an XCOM-like co-op, but I don't think I could get my wife to play that with me. The closest I'll get is playing Baldur's Gate 3 in co-op, but for some reason you can't play split-screen with K+M and a controller, you need two controllers. So we'll need to wait until my birthday so I can get a second controller.

Shame. If it helps, you can buy xcom2 collection for less then 6 quid if it helps:

Buy XCOM® 2 Collection from the Humble Store

Use of this product requires agreement to the following third party end user license agreement: http://www.take2games.com/eula/ XCOM 2:Aliens rule Earth, promising a brilliant future for mankind while secretly hiding a sinister agenda. As the leader of a guerrilla force facing impossible odds...

www.humblebundle.com

Thanks, that's a great deal. Unfortunately we're really tight on money right now, so I can't justify it at the moment.

 

[BeardyHat]

Yeah, going from a 1600X to 5700X and effectively increasing my RAM speed to 2666mh to 3200mh and enabling XMP. I’m very excited and will be testing a lot of games when I get it tomorrow.

I also got me some really nice thermal paste for the first time ever. I got a 3g tube of Arctic MX-4, not the latest but I figured it will be significantly better than the thermal paste included with CPUs that I’ve always used. My 1600X rarely even hits 55c, and with this really nice thermal paste and the 5700X consuming less power, my chip will be nice and cool. I decided against getting a new air cooler, mine still works just fine, and according to a Tom’s Hardware article, their most recommend CPU air cooler is only like $35-40 on Amazon so I can pick that up whenever my current one bites the dust (kind of a pun?).

I also have enough thermal paste to redo my graphics card, but no thermal pads. Would you guys recommend me attempting to reapply thermal paste to my GPU? I’ve never done it before so it will require some research first. I’ve had my RTX 2060 for maybe 5 years now, but I haven’t seen it go up too high in temps before.

Honestly, I wouldn't sweat the GPU, especially if temps are in normal range. I have repasted GPU's in the past and it takes a bit more effort than a CPU, but that's about all. I'd instead make sure your case is well dusted, cables routed well for airflow and fans clear of debris.

I just kept my old CPU cooler for the new 5600, myself. It was the stock cooler for the 2600X, which was a slightly taller tower, so I repasted it with the rest of the Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut I had (Which is good stuff. Saw a 10-15* decrease on my Deck) and haven't had any issues after running with it for the last 7 months or so. I figure a stock cooler is generally engineered for the chip it's packaged with and the old stock one should perform a little better on the new chip due to lower thermals of the new chip.

 

[BeardyHat]

Well, there's save scumming and there's save scumming. There's save scumming to avoid wiping an entire team and there's save scumming to get a flawless rating on every mission. I like solving puzzles, but with the amount of hidden information and RNG in XCOM 2 it can feel like it's more trial and error/luck than puzzle-solving skills and I'll have to be careful not to burn myself out replaying the same mission, which was a problem I ran into with XCOM: Chimera Squad.

Honestly, I wouldn't sweat it much. The only time I ever restart my Ironman runs are when we lose a person on the first mission and I'm talking dead, not simply injured.

XCOM2 is actually pretty forgiving on that front and yes, you will sometimes lose a person to RNG, but you're more likely to doom your mission due to bad positioning and lack of careful play, even then you can generally afford to lose quite a few people and missions before you really get to a fail state.

Which is kind of funny to me, if you look at my stats on the pictures I posted before, you'll see they're way worse than the "Global" statistics. When I posted that to reddit many years ago, people were generally surprised that we kept pushing and ended-up completing the game. People seem to get caught in this mentality (and it applies to all things, based on my other hobbies) that you need to do something perfectly or have the best or be the best to even make it worth trying and then won't push through adversity, when if you just persist, you'll see that it's actually no problem at all.

I'd love to play an XCOM-like co-op, but I don't think I could get my wife to play that with me. The closest I'll get is playing Baldur's Gate 3 in co-op, but for some reason you can't play split-screen with K+M and a controller, you need two controllers. So we'll need to wait until my birthday so I can get a second controller.

My wife is a consummate puzzle solver and not really a gamer, but she loves SciFi and was intrigued by XCOM when she first saw it. So we ended-up sitting on the couch together and walking through our moves and deciding what would be best to do and when. It's sort-of funny, actually, because she tempers my "Charge in and try and kill everything" and I temper her, "Take the utmost caution and few to no chances." together we made a good team for XCOM2.

As for the random limitations on co-op when it comes to PC: That **** drives me nuts. My kids like to play Minecraft, which for whatever reason on PC flatout does not allow split-screen coop. It'll do it on any console, even an underpowered Switch, but damned if Microsoft will let you on PC; very unfortunate, because I'd love to play with my kids, but instead I'll have to buy another copy when I'm able to and possibly even a third, so that myself and the two boys can play at the same time, on different PCs.

 

[Johnway]

My wife is a consummate puzzle solver and not really a gamer, but she loves SciFi and was intrigued by XCOM when she first saw it. So we ended-up sitting on the couch together and walking through our moves and deciding what would be best to do and when. It's sort-of funny, actually, because she tempers my "Charge in and try and kill everything" and I temper her, "Take the utmost caution and few to no chances." together we made a good team for XCOM2.

What were her thoughts on the RNG in that game? We know that xcom2 enemies and players alike could make truly legendary misses with those stats.

That said, installing the perfect stats mod usually clears that up.

Speaking of mods i went crazy with the cosmetics stuff up to a point as i soon realized that downloads and disk space started to balloon in size and i had to call it quits. But again, the modding community did not (and still does not) disappoint.


Speaking of games, assassins creed odyssey - level 62, medusa slain and several cyclops kills later i'm almost finished travelling around the islands. i sort out the minotaur and its back to the main land and complete the main story line proper.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

@neogunhero If your temps are under control and the fan isnt loud enough to bother you no need to repaste. If it is then look around Youtube for a video of a tear down of your card first, or some review sites do a picture teardown in reviews. Its not hard, as BeardyHat said. Just check out before hand if yours has any quirks or extra cables between PCB and cooler. If you do it, I recommend spreading the goop with an old credit card before attaching the cooler, it doesnt usually tighten so neat as a CPU cooler because you cant do it exactly on opposite diagonals so the spread might be a little less even without some help.

Xcom 2 is great, should really try out the Long War mod one day, Too many games that deserve a replay and not enough time. Good place to be really

Currently still playing Balatro, beaten most decks on white stake, few on red, cant seem to get a green stake one through yet. Probably be playing this on and off for a long time. Its a bit easier than Slay the Spire for me at least, but it touches the same monkey buttons in my brain.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, there's save scumming and there's save scumming. There's save scumming to avoid wiping an entire team and there's save scumming to get a flawless rating on every mission. I like solving puzzles, but with the amount of hidden information and RNG in XCOM 2 it can feel like it's more trial and error/luck than puzzle-solving skills and I'll have to be careful not to burn myself out replaying the same mission, which was a problem I ran into with XCOM: Chimera Squad.



I did see that the Gotcha Again! source code is on GitHub, but I honestly don't really have time to mess around with that. It took me about 20 minutes fiddling around with Vortex and Nexus and trying to get the game to start this morning, out of the 30 minutes I had planned, which was already pushing it a bit in regards to when I should start working. Luckily we're not particularly busy at the moment.

I'd love to play an XCOM-like co-op, but I don't think I could get my wife to play that with me. The closest I'll get is playing Baldur's Gate 3 in co-op, but for some reason you can't play split-screen with K+M and a controller, you need two controllers. So we'll need to wait until my birthday so I can get a second controller.



Thanks, that's a great deal. Unfortunately we're really tight on money right now, so I can't justify it at the moment.

I never really considered XCOM to require much in the way of luck or extra good RNG. Maybe my strategy was accidentally a good one (because I didn't put much thought into it). I just ended each turn in as good a cover as I could find as close to the enemy as I could get, and if I had the chance, I put people in overwatch. Always concentrated on shooting the highest percentage shots available to me unless there was a good reason not to, like getting rid of someone who could take one of my people out on their next turn.

I don't remember a lot of things though. I finished the game 3 days after it launched and haven't been back, although I've thought about playing it again numerous times.

 

[ZedClampet]

I did really poorly at games today. REALLY bad. Can't tell you how many times I accidentally killed myself in Helldivers 2, and I lost my inventory multiple times in Enshrouded. The only thing I don't like about Enshrouded is that you drop stuff from your backpack when you die, and at least half the time it's unrecoverable because of where you died.

 

[Brian Boru]

@Zloth Hey Mon, wotcha doin' in my game?

 

[Pifanjr]

I never really considered XCOM to require much in the way of luck or extra good RNG. Maybe my strategy was accidentally a good one (because I didn't put much thought into it). I just ended each turn in as good a cover as I could find as close to the enemy as I could get, and if I had the chance, I put people in overwatch. Always concentrated on shooting the highest percentage shots available to me unless there was a good reason not to, like getting rid of someone who could take one of my people out on their next turn.

I don't remember a lot of things though. I finished the game 3 days after it launched and haven't been back, although I've thought about playing it again numerous times.

In the first XCOM game you didn't need much luck if you played it slow, with a lot of overwatch. With the timers in XCOM 2 I find myself more often triggering multiple groups of enemies or more enemies are added as reinforcements, which means more chances for me to screw up placement, which is the most common way for me to lose soldiers.

I do think it'll be a bit easier from here on out though. My main difficulty was the teleporting enemy I encountered, which ignored overwatch and kept flanking my units until I came up with a better strategy (mainly making sure all other enemies were taken care of before fighting it).

Honestly, I wouldn't sweat it much. The only time I ever restart my Ironman runs are when we lose a person on the first mission and I'm talking dead, not simply injured.

XCOM2 is actually pretty forgiving on that front and yes, you will sometimes lose a person to RNG, but you're more likely to doom your mission due to bad positioning and lack of careful play, even then you can generally afford to lose quite a few people and missions before you really get to a fail state.

Which is kind of funny to me, if you look at my stats on the pictures I posted before, you'll see they're way worse than the "Global" statistics. When I posted that to reddit many years ago, people were generally surprised that we kept pushing and ended-up completing the game. People seem to get caught in this mentality (and it applies to all things, based on my other hobbies) that you need to do something perfectly or have the best or be the best to even make it worth trying and then won't push through adversity, when if you just persist, you'll see that it's actually no problem at all.

Maybe I'll try doing it in ironman mode from now on, but keep a save just in case I don't feel like starting all over again.

As for the random limitations on co-op when it comes to PC: That **** drives me nuts. My kids like to play Minecraft, which for whatever reason on PC flatout does not allow split-screen coop. It'll do it on any console, even an underpowered Switch, but damned if Microsoft will let you on PC; very unfortunate, because I'd love to play with my kids, but instead I'll have to buy another copy when I'm able to and possibly even a third, so that myself and the two boys can play at the same time, on different PCs.

It's also annoying with Baldur's Gate 3 because I can't imagine a controller to work anywhere as good as a mouse + keyboard for controlling the game.

 

[neogunhero]

Well I did it! I installed my Ryzen 5700X last night and got everything running.

The hardest part of the installation process was removing and then reinstalling the CPU air cooler. It’s a DeepCool brand, not sure which model, but it’s a got a very tall metal heat sink. I think I might has installed the fan backwards since I had to unclip it from the heat sink and didn’t remember which way it goes when I put it back on, my new CPU is idling around 45c and getting up to 58c in games which is slightly higher than my last CPU.

I did some benchmarks in Far Cry 6 and Cyberpunk before and after the swap. To be fair, the benchmark results were decent on the old cpu but one thing it didn’t capture was how much stutter, slowdown and frame drops I normally experience while actually playing. The average FPS did go up in Far Cry 6 from 58fps to 86fps. While the numbers seem good, it doesn’t reflect my actual experience on the old chip. FC6, and really most Ubisoft games, are very CPU heavy. My 1600X couldn’t get an average of 58fps on ultra settings RTX off during normal gameplay, it would constantly stutter and drop frames. I had to play on medium settings just to have a decent experience. The same can be said on Cyberpunk, the initial benchmark gave me an average FPS of 56, but it doesn’t reflect the actual gameplay experience.

So when I was done testing everything, I decided to actually play some games. Far Cry 6 on ultra settings RTX off with Vsync on gave me buttery smooth 60fps constantly, no stutters, no frame drops, nothing. On my old chip I couldn’t enter the biggest city without my frames dropping to like 20fps. Now it still holds at 60fps no matter where I am in the game.

Overall I’m very happy and glad it feels a lot smoother. Just need to double check the fan and make sure it’s actually blowing the correct direction lol

 

[BeardyHat]

What were her thoughts on the RNG in that game? We know that xcom2 enemies and players alike could make truly legendary misses with those stats.

That said, installing the perfect stats mod usually clears that up.

Speaking of mods i went crazy with the cosmetics stuff up to a point as i soon realized that downloads and disk space started to balloon in size and i had to call it quits. But again, the modding community did not (and still does not) disappoint.

Didn't really bother her or myself. Percentages are just that, a 95% chance to hit still has that 5% chance to miss! Plus I do know that the game has a lot of hidden modifiers in the background; if I recall, you get like a 5% bonus to hit if you've missed your last shot and other little variables like that.

I play a lot of dice games though, so variability and RNG never bothered me much, it's just how it is. In the game I played last week, I had to roll 90 dice at once.

Maybe I'll try doing it in ironman mode from now on, but keep a save just in case I don't feel like starting all over again.



It's also annoying with Baldur's Gate 3 because I can't imagine a controller to work anywhere as good as a mouse + keyboard for controlling the game.

Don't let me talk you into it if it's not your bag. That said, Ironman just works very well for XCOM, which I don't find to be the case in very many games.

I haven't played BG3, but you might be surprised. A controller works exceptionally well in Dvinity: Original Sin 2. I played probably a vast majority of that game with a controller on my couch and it worked very well; now if only Larian could get their inventory management in order, but maybe I should just restart that game rather than go back to a several year old save...

 

[Pifanjr]

I play a lot of dice games though, so variability and RNG never bothered me much, it's just how it is. In the game I played last week, I had to roll 90 dice at once.

What game was that? I've heard that in Shadowrun it's not unusual to roll 20 dice, which I thought was ridiculous, let alone 90!

 

[BeardyHat]

What game was that? I've heard that in Shadowrun it's not unusual to roll 20 dice, which I thought was ridiculous, let alone 90!

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar

It's not a usual occurrence, but it happens. At least this time it was in Tabletop Sim, which makes it easier; trying to roll so many in real life, whether you're doing them all at once or in stages is...a lot.

 

[ZedClampet]

Okay, I won't be able to describe this as funny as it was, but I'm playing a female character in Helldivers 2, and I was using my stratagem machine gun. Ammo is scarce, so I always just fire in bursts. But as we were finishing up a defense mission, this huge parade of enemies arrived and were headed straight for me. I had just reloaded the machine gun, and I just opened up and fired non-stop, and after a few seconds of this, while still firing, my character started laughing...and laughing...and laughing, and it made Guido and I both start laughing.

I played much better today, although I did get my first friendly fire kill. We're playing on Hard, which is the highest difficulty we've unlocked. but really is the middle difficulty. There are 4 more after this. But I don't know if I can go any higher with just the two of us playing. We played defense missions all day with 2 of us guarding 4 lanes. It wasn't too bad, but I can get overwhelmed.

After 17 hours, we've not failed a mission except for one that was bugged and wouldn't let us get on the extraction ship.

 

[Zloth]

I appreciate the mod suggestions, but frankly I do not care about what my soldiers look like.

No no no no! Those are mostly VOICE packs!