March 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[neogunhero]

I love going through mods. I can spend huge chunks of time if the game has lots of them, like with Satisfactory and Farming Simulator.

Especially if it has an in-game mod browser, or the ability to browse Workshop and instantly add it while the game is open, that is so convenient. I've gotten so used to this convenience that sometimes I won't mod a game just because it doesn't have these features.

 

[ZedClampet]

Especially if it has an in-game mod browser, or the ability to browse Workshop and instantly add it while the game is open, that is so convenient. I've gotten so used to this convenience that sometimes I won't mod a game just because it doesn't have these features.

I'm the opposite just because the in-game browsers I've used are never as easy to use as websites. For instance, Farming Simulator has in in-game mod browser, and I used it for about 5 minutes before going back to their website.

 

[neogunhero]

I'm the opposite just because the in-game browsers I've used are never as easy to use as websites. For instance, Farming Simulator has in in-game mod browser, and I used it for about 5 minutes before going back to their website.

My experience with this has mostly been with Bethesda games, and while it's got an interface that is nowhere near perfect, it's convenient enough compared to using Nexus that I power through it. Of course you will find even more mods on dedicated sites like Nexus as their in-game mod browsers are moderated by Bethesda, but most of the basic ones I use are all there. And I've used Steam Workshop since the day it came out as I was huge into Garry's Mod back then, and that game has gone through many iterations of how you install mods, so it was amazing to have something that worked perfectly. If I'm serious about modding a game without these features, I usually find mod guides, like I did for GTA 4 and Batman Arkham Asylum. Praise the people who makes those guides, it's much easier following a simple set of instructions compared to trial and error to see what works with what.

 

[Pifanjr]

I typically don't bother with mods. There are too many mods that are unnecessary, unstable and/or unbalanced and it takes too much time to sort through them.

 

[Zloth]

For some games, like Skyrim or XCom, scrolling through the mods is at least half the fun of the game!

Hmmm, if you are scrolling through a list of mods for Doom, is that Doomdoomscrolling?

 

[ZedClampet]

lol, Guido and I are having the worst game of Total War Warhammer of our lives. We used a mod that randomized all the starting positions, and we ended up in completely brutal circumstances. It is now turn 74 and we've taken a total of 11 cities. I'm making negative money per turn, and I'm headed down, out of necessity, to a place that is in the red for me, but I have to get rid of these guys. I've got one good army and two small terrible armies that rely on the garrisons to help them defend the home province. It's a mess.

 

[ZedClampet]

The Toy Shop Simulator dev is the best developer ever.

I'm currently pretending she made that just for me. It needs to be orange, though.

 

[Colif]

At least one game on my wishlist has a release date now

 

[Pifanjr]

lol, Guido and I are having the worst game of Total War Warhammer of our lives. We used a mod that randomized all the starting positions, and we ended up in completely brutal circumstances. It is now turn 74 and we've taken a total of 11 cities. I'm making negative money per turn, and I'm headed down, out of necessity, to a place that is in the red for me, but I have to get rid of these guys. I've got one good army and two small terrible armies that rely on the garrisons to help them defend the home province. It's a mess.

That sounds like a great game of Total War: Warhammer. I think the game is most fun when you're struggling.

 

[ZedClampet]

That sounds like a great game of Total War: Warhammer. I think the game is most fun when you're struggling.

Great and worst at the same time. It can mean two different things.

 

[Zloth]

My Distant Worlds 2 run is going well. I finally ran into another empire and used the editor to take a quick peek at how everyone in the game was doing. I've got a few more planets than all of them - so (maybe) winning, but not by very much.

There's a base controlled by some rogue pirate over a planet that (I hope) is particularly great. It's listed as having a strength of 3000, so I sent a fleet of strength 3500 and another of strength 1500. Never made a dent in the thing, and several of my ships were hurt pretty bad. I warped out of there when it became clear I wouldn't be able to destroy the shields on that thing, never mind the hull.

Oh well - it's not close to any other empires, so I should be able to take it down at my leisure.

 

[BeardyHat]

Spent hours installing Battletech Advance 3062 mod for Battletech on my Deck, which included getting a tweak installed and working called Cryo utilities. Supposedly it'll offer me up some extra performance in games.

Anyway, played a mission of BTA and now I think I'll just sit quietly and stare at the wall.

I'm kind of in a weird funk today and just want to watch TV.

 

[ZedClampet]

lol we asked for it and we got it. when we were setting up our Total War game, I selected the insane option of having all the End Times events in the game. We are now at war with almost every faction and people are sending waves of late game 20 stacks at us. I just had 7 twenty stacks from the Tomb Kings enter my home province. Any other playthrough, we likely could have handled it. I'm not so sure we are going to survive this time.

 

[Colif]

This was last week.

He mentions early access and is playing the early access version of game as its restricted to the first area and will only have 4 classes. I hope full game will have more classes, or there is an expansion being made right now to add more, as the combos are what make game fun.

One scene where he was fighting a flying creature in a circular enclosure sure made me think of Last Epoch, as one of the first bosses in it is similar.

TIL the team that made Grim Dawn made TItan Quest 1. That explains a lot since they both used the same systems. Meanwhile Titan Quest 2 made by same company that now owns the Sacred franchise but didn't actually make it.

I assume dual wield will be either a skill on the skill tree or you pick another class to dual class with that can use 2 weapons, as I dislike warrior classes that can only use 2 handed weapons.

 

[ZedClampet]

Sadly, we're not going to finish, I don't think, our Total War campaign because the only reason we were playing it was because Guido was on spring break. Once we stop playing a campaign, we rarely come back to it.

I wish I could finish it in single-player. What I didn't mention before is that I had finally broken free, prior to the start of the End Times, and swept through another area of the map, so even if this group of 7 20 stacks manages to take my original capital, I have 3 more I can generate units from.

Think I'm going to start a single-player game today. Want to see if there's a mod that lets me start anywhere I want so I can try to duplicate the current game, although the people around me would be different.

 

[Johnway]

progress in Assassins creed valhalla has seemed to stalled on my part. Sure, we're making some progress slowly completing areas but i've currently in the jovik area and whilst i've done all the stuff there, i'm exploring the outside walls which is proving a lot more tedious as its expansive. I suspect i should have gone to kent or one of the smaller regions or just gone home instead of bumming around doing stuff. But not long now, maybe tomorrow we'll start a new section. Did get to go to the isle of skye and meet cassandra from previous game which is sort of a good brief encounter. Wish it looked at my previous save game file and allowed alexios to be in it, but whatever.

more ramp news and we've finished the fiery knoll a collection of tough maps. A trial by fire quite literally. We'll start with my pick of the bunch, "Barzakh", a sort of hell temple where you spend much of your time in the hell dungeons. The map stood out for several reasons, namely the excellent detailing, strong story narrative and unique elements like unique wall textures and the sacrificed pain elementals haning on chains. Make no mistake, shoot/kill them and they will spawn more lost souls. Wasn't tough apart from the penultimate room where its an open arena and there are 4 archviles and a whole load of cyberdemons. A tough combination as you're always kept on your toes and being forced out of cover into the eyes of the archviles.

but lets move on to the 2 toughest maps. The first is "Vicious unto thee". A slaughterfest map that is chock full of monsters. You'll quickly realize that there is not enough ammo to fight them head on so you'll spend much of the map running circles against the monsters and hope the cyberdemons clean them all up. In fact you'll be relying on the massive horde of cyber demons to eliminate 90% of the monsters. Only luck and save scumming did i succeed. Failing that, if you really can't take it, the mapper has kindly left a switch for you to just hit and leave.

The other map was "not so WIP anymore eh". This scores the full 6 for difficulty and length. Absolutely brutal map. its a mix of sunder/slaughterfest and really challenging. its also every bit a puzzle as it is a fight as some battles you have to understand the mechanics and strategy to succeed (and then there's the need to execute it). Although the map has 7000+ monsters it seems like i only eliminated just shy of 2000. Not sure if i missed something or the map maker was pulling a fast one to make it seem like the map was longer.

 

[Johnway]

A bit of an update on asscreed valhalla one of my challenges is to balance rocks at a certain height. So far most of them are easy peasy, but this one was rather annoying as i had to manage the iffy controls and dodge physics to succeed. Sure enough i managed to complete the challenge, but this is taking it a bit far.

 

[ZedClampet]

God I hate people. Kaiserpunk, which I'm having great fun with, is sitting at mixed reviews. The vast majority of helpful reviews are positive. Then you find a negative review and it's some clown claiming they are mining crypto in the background because his GPU got up to 77 degrees.

I'm actually beginning to think maybe Epic has the right idea. Why let imbeciles review games?

Maybe there needs to be a system where if a review gets enough downvotes that it just gets removed.

Thank the gods that this guy has his comments turned off or I would be banned right now.

 

[February's Ghost]

A bit of an update on asscreed valhalla one of my challenges is to balance rocks at a certain height. So far most of them are easy peasy, but this one was rather annoying as i had to manage the iffy controls and dodge physics to succeed. Sure enough i managed to complete the challenge, but this is taking it a bit far.

It's things like that that ruins games. I hated those things too.

I gotta say about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora though that I found you can turn a lot of the time wasting stuff off. Like they have this memory thing where you have to trace patterns in the air and it takes like 6 or 7 minutes to do. You can change it to where it's automatically done for you. You still have to push a button to start each sequence and it still takes the same amount of time, but you no longer have to do the manual tracing yourself.

A step in the right direction I think. Now just give me back five of those six minutes please?

 

[Johnway]

It's things like that that ruins games. I hated those things too.

I gotta say about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora though that I found you can turn a lot of the time wasting stuff off. Like they have this memory thing where you have to trace patterns in the air and it takes like 6 or 7 minutes to do. You can change it to where it's automatically done for you. You still have to push a button to start each sequence and it still takes the same amount of time, but you no longer have to do the manual tracing yourself.

A step in the right direction I think. Now just give me back five of those six minutes please?

I think the problem was that the controls/mechanics were just horrible. i struggled to make adjustments etc. in real life i would be more gentle in stacking the stones etc, here i mostly just slam the stones down and watching them all roll away is horrible.

there was one collectible that nearly drove me over the edge. It was collecting a tattoo or something and it would take some annoying turns or moves that made it easy for me to just slip up following.

 

[BeardyHat]

God I hate people. Kaiserpunk, which I'm having great fun with, is sitting at mixed reviews. The vast majority of helpful reviews are positive. Then you find a negative review and it's some clown claiming they are mining crypto in the background because his GPU got up to 77 degrees.

I'm actually beginning to think maybe Epic has the right idea. Why let imbeciles review games?

Maybe there needs to be a system where if a review gets enough downvotes that it just gets removed.

Thank the gods that this guy has his comments turned off or I would be banned right now.

Well it certainly couldn't be their impeccably maintained computer, that sits on a carpeted floor, that they smoke next to, which hasn't been dusted in years or repasted ever.

It's things like that that ruins games. I hated those things too.

I gotta say about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora though that I found you can turn a lot of the time wasting stuff off. Like they have this memory thing where you have to trace patterns in the air and it takes like 6 or 7 minutes to do. You can change it to where it's automatically done for you. You still have to push a button to start each sequence and it still takes the same amount of time, but you no longer have to do the manual tracing yourself.

A step in the right direction I think. Now just give me back five of those six minutes please?

Sounds like Ubisoft. If they don't waste you're time, how can they claim their game has triple digit gameplay time and thus, is a Great Value. Ubisoft is truly the Wal-Mart of games.

As quickly as it started, it stopped and I've suddenly lost interest in Transport Fever 2. Of course, I'll keep it installed on everything, because it's only a matter of time before that switch flips again and I spend another 20-hours playing it.

I'm finally putting some time into the Battletech Advanced 3062 mod for Battletech. I thought I'd be annoyed by the annoyingly long load times (which are also a feature of the original game, but worse with mods) and slow missions with their lack of saving, but you know what? I'm having fun and it's not all bad.

The loading still sucks, so I've been either looking at my phone or playing a handheld game while it loads, but once you're in a mission, it's not bad at all. With the extra drop sizes (I can currently drop 6 mechs, up from 4 in the original game), missions actually go much quicker than they do in the vanilla game, so saving isn't really even necessary. I'm sure they'll begin taking longer the harder missions I take on, but there's really no obligation for me to do those currently and I can easily save them for when I actually have time to play them.

I like a lot of the tweaks that they've made, though I can't say I understand what a lot of it means, even having played the tabletop game with this mod hewing much closer to that than the original game did, but again, I'm still having fun.

Also, my new computer cannot come fast enough. The BTA mod runs terribly on my Deck (though I still do like playing it there) and using my Surface Go 2 as my main laptop is just...not fun. It's decent enough for what it is and works great as a tablet for reading strategy guides and even some minor gaming, but it sucks for Streaming (16:10 aspect ratio versus 16:9 from my streaming computer) and it's got such a small screen, can be difficult to use due to its size and lack of being a proper, rigid laptop, plus it's slow to boot. Tracking says my computer should come Tuesday, but based on where it was last at on Saturday (One state away), I'm guessing it'll be out for delivery tomorrow.

Side note: I'm annoyed with Microsoft and Windows right now, so I'm considering trying Linux again on this new laptop. I have some qualms with Linux and supposedly the Nvidia drivers are crap, but I might just give it a go for fun. We'll see if I'm that motivated.

 

[February's Ghost]

Ubisoft is truly the Wal-Mart of games.

I wouldn't go that far. I love Ubisoft games. Avatar is, I think, the most visually stunning game I've played and it performs incredibly well. While the gameplay itself is definitely of the Ubisoft formula, it is not a bad formula, just an overused one. The problem is these are the most profitable ones for which is why we no longer see Prince of Persia or Splinter Cell regularly.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well it certainly couldn't be their impeccably maintained computer, that sits on a carpeted floor, that they smoke next to, which hasn't been dusted in years or repasted ever.

If routine maintenance is too much for them, they could try capping the framerate so that the GPU isn't at 100 percent load to feed them 140 frames per second in a city builder.

 

[Zloth]

I'm actually beginning to think maybe Epic has the right idea. Why let imbeciles review games?

Because paid reviewers only review at game release. (Well, mostly only. PC Gamer does have a section revisiting games. I don't think they get counted as official reviews, though.) On the other hand, by putting the emphasis on what the game is like at release, the system encourages game companies to make the games better on release instead of months/years later.

P.S. The review for The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk where some dork claimed the game was spyware because it included the Epic API file in the Steam release seems to be gone now. Either a ton of people down-voted it or Steam yanked it because it was flat-out libelous. Now a bunch of the down-vote reviews are complaining that the random number generator is "clearly broken." <facepalm> Well, I guess dumb reviews beat libelous ones, so that's progress?

 

[Colif]

I gotta say about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora though that I found you can turn a lot of the time wasting stuff off. Like they have this memory thing where you have to trace patterns in the air and it takes like 6 or 7 minutes to do. You can change it to where it's automatically done for you. You still have to push a button to start each sequence and it still takes the same amount of time, but you no longer have to do the manual tracing yourself.

did they fix the bug where you can't play the base game unless you owned a DLC?

The Sky Breaker must be owned and installed in order to play? :: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Player Support

Just tried to continue a saved game and got this message: "The Sky Breaker must be owned and installed in order to play." I'm playing the base game, not the DLC (don't have it) and saved during a normal base game mission. Anyone else encounter this bug and anyone know how to fix it? I'm only a...

steamcommunity.com

Ubisoft did good with that one.

I'm actually beginning to think maybe Epic has the right idea. Why let imbeciles review games?

Because paid reviewers only review at game release. (Well, mostly only. PC Gamer does have a section revisiting games. I don't think they get counted as official reviews, though.) On the other hand, by putting the emphasis on what the game is like at release, the system encourages game companies to make the games better on release instead of months/years later.

Or sneakingly enable micro transactions in patches after release. Some problems like the above one about Avatar only happen years after release as well.

Often bugs/problems in software need lots of users before they are found. So user reviews are more likely to find them than reviewers unless game is a buggy mess and its blatantly obvious.