November 2024 General Gaming Discussion Thread

[ZedClampet]

I'm trying to get my girl to look at the mods for TCG Card Shop Simulator. It's a Unity game, so I sent her detailed instructions on installing BepinEx and how to proceed from there. I'd really like to get her using mods since she likes the odd little games like I do, and mods can really add a lot of value to them.

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I've started a new Astro Colony game. It's been 2 or 3 years since I last played it, and it's been updated every few weeks during that time, so it's almost like a brand new game.

 

[neogunhero]

I've started a new Astro Colony game. It's been 2 or 3 years since I last played it, and it's been updated every few weeks during that time, so it's almost like a brand new game.

This is one of my favorite things about gaming. Retuning to a game you love after years of not playing to find out it’s been improved and updated upon in so many ways. This happened to me with Teardown, loved it at launch but didn’t play for years. When I picked it back up this year, there was so many new features I was a bit overwhelmed in a good way.

 

[Zloth]

Half the game is managing the automation systems 🤣

There's no automation system to automate my automation choices! Harrumph!!

 

[red_5ive]

I just love going to Steam to look up a game that caught my attention, only to find out it's already in my library. I love - and hate - Steam sales.

 

[Colif]

 

[Johnway]

just saw the news, if you have Age of empires 2: Definitive Edition the devs have kindly offering the first 3 DLCs for free. So they are:

Dawn of the Dukes
Lords of the west
Dynasties of india

so for me 9 more campaigns. Just as i spent a year to finish the main game, i might have to jump back in and finish them.

 

[ZedClampet]

What's up with Brian? He hasn't posted in a few days.

 

[neogunhero]

The only game I’ve been playing all week is Black Ops 6 multiplayer. I would have never guessed I’d spend so much time in it. I haven’t used any XP boosters and I’m at level 26, so I’ve put in a few hours. It’s a good game to pick up and play for quick short bursts which is how I prefer to play games these days. I can even squeeze in a match or two on my lunch breaks which is helpful for relieving some midday stress.

I’ve been getting used to Omnimovement a lot more. It’s actually very fun once you get the hang of it. My current loadout is optimized for high movement speed, so every match I’m zipping around at full speed diving and sliding all over the place. I also have that one perk that gives you “tactical sprint”, meaning you can spring a little extra faster for maybe an additional 10 seconds before needing to let it cool down. It’s kind of crazy how fast things move in this game but eventually I got used to it and learned to use speed to my advantage.

One game mode that I can’t decided if I love or hate is the Face Off maps. Basically they are incredibly tiny little maps where most of the time you average about 10 seconds before dying. They’re so small you’re bound to get immediately spawn killed at least once each match. They make for some absolutely chaotic moments that make my brain hurt trying to keep up with everything, but they are also very exhausting to play. After doing one, I switch back to normal Deathmatch which has some larger maps in rotation.

I never thought I’d play so much COD, but I’m having a blast with it. I gave up on the campaign, really don’t want to do that stealth mission. So happy this came out on Game Pass.

 

[ZedClampet]

Most of the Playway developers don't give a crap. They sent me a playtest for a game that they had just listed on Steam. I played the game for several hours and wrote a very positive list of suggestions and thoughts on the game. I also listed a few bugs. It was the first post in their Steam forums. But they actually don't care. They have a list of players who tend to buy their games, and they send out playtests in hopes that they will add the game to their wishlist. It's not actually a playtest. It's marketing.

So I come back a little while later and my post is gone. There's one new post from the developer called "Suggestions and Feedback" where they claim they are very interested in hearing feedback. They did not move my post there. My post was just gone. My suggestions included things like there being no visual feedback when you press the "recruit" button, which can cause you to think it didn't do anything since it takes a minute for your new recruits to show up. You might press it several times, for instance, on your first playthrough, and this can destroy your colony when all the new people show up. Another point I made was that when you click on a building it doesn't show you if someone is assigned to it. This causes numerous problems. And colonists won't move 5 feet to get food from storage. They will only eat at the tavern. If your person who is supposed to transfer food from storage to the tavern stops working (this happened for reasons I don't understand) then people will starve to death. People wait until they are starving to go to the tavern. If there is no food there, they die almost immediately.

There were many things like this that I listed. Do they care? No, not in the least. Now that they've written their "Suggestions" post, they probably won't return to the Steam forums.

 

[Pifanjr]

I just lost a game of Hearthstone in the Tombs of Terror mode because I was forced to concede.

I was playing on Heroic mode against the Plague of Death with the anomaly that heroes are immune as long as there is a minion on the board. The twist with the Plague of Death is that, after a specific amount of your minions dying, a random deathrattle minion is summoned.

At some point, this resulted in Hakkar, the Soulflayer being summoned, which has a deathrattle that shuffles a Corrupted Blood card in the decks of both players. Corrupted Blood does 3 damage to a player when drawn and then shuffles two more Corrupted Blood cards into the deck, then you draw a new card.

The problem was that at some point, I ran out of cards. At least, out of cards that weren't Corrupted Blood. I still had minions on the board, so I was still immune because of the anomaly, so the Corrupted Blood could not actually damage me, but each turn the game would animate each Corrupted Blood in my deck, then double the amount of Corrupted Blood cards and thus the amount of time it took for me to be able to start my turn.

I gave up when there were 60 Corrupted Blood in my deck. I was on my last few cards anyway and likely wouldn't have been able to do more damage before dying and the wait was definitely not worth it.

 

[neogunhero]

Anyone else excited in the hopes that Valve will release a 20th anniversary update for Half Life 2 tomorrow?

There has been lots of rumor and speculation on what it may be. It’s all but officially confirmed, but the community is almost certain there will be some sort of anniversary update between tomorrow to next week. Tomorrow is technically the 20th anniversary date, but they may need more time.

The speculation has been all on SteamDB. That website lets you see the “builds” of each game, and while most of the time they are public for anyone to see what has been changed, the one for Half Life 2 has been set to private, though we can see when updates to the build are submitted. For comparison, the amazing Half Life 25th anniversary update last year was made in a mere three weeks. This private build branch of HL2 has been ongoing for over three whole months. The amount of time this private build has been worked on is what is causing most of the excitement and speculation. If Valve fully modernized HL1, brought in tons of QoL changes and completely fixed multiplayer all in just three weeks, then what does the three full months worth of work look like in HL2?

My current predictions are that they will combines HL2 and Episode 1+2 under one big package. Taking that a step further, I hope that Valve seamlessly combines all three so you can play the entire game under one save. I am also hoping for things like Lost Coast to be built in, as it really is a piece of Valve history. And who can forget, the Lost Coast commentary track is when we first heard the name “Gaben” (online consensus is that it comes from the TF2 commentary track, but Lost Coast was released a few weeks before TF2, however I’m unsure if the commentary tracks were added later on or included at release).

I doubt they will do a full remaster, as HL2 RTX seems to already have that covered. Highly unlikely, but it would be awesome to see Valve port HL2 to the Source 2 engine. Perhaps also unlikely, but I would love to see full workshop support in HL2. I say that is unlikely because HL1 did not include workshop support with its anniversary update last year.

This may be a hot take, but although HL1 was a huge milestone in PC gaming, I believe that most people resonated with HL2 more. Both brought new techniques and technologies we still see in games today, but HL2’s influence is more easily seen these days. From the advanced facial animations, to being fully immersed in the game without interruptions from cutscenes, HL2 really set the bar for how a game should look and play. My opinion is that Valve took everything that made HL1 great and cranked it up to 11 for the sequel.

On a more personal note, HL2 was one of the main reasons why I made a Steam account 14 years ago. At the time, Garry’s Mod machinima videos were massive online, and I wanted to make them myself. I researched how I can play the game and found out it required HL2. I eventually got my hands on the Orange Box and the rest is history from there. I believe that game singlehandedly kickstarted my PC gaming career, and to this day I still consider HL2 one of my all time favorites and one of the best games ever made. I really hope there is a major update!!

 

[McStabStab]

Just popping in to say that randomly I had an itch to play Into the Breach, so I booted it up and even though I got 100% on all the achievements I still haven't gotten victories for each squad, on each island sequence, on Hard difficulty.

That being said, I went back and beat 2, 3, and 4 island runs with the custom squad on Hard... but there's now an Unfair difficulty option. My next goal is to try and beat one run on unfair. I got to the final battle and lost in my last attempt.

Anyway, Into the Breach in my opinion is one of the greatest games of all time. I hope if you haven't played it that you give it a shot.

 

[ZedClampet]

The speculation has been all on SteamDB. That website lets you see the “builds” of each game, and while most of the time they are public for anyone to see what has been changed, the one for Half Life 2 has been set to private, though we can see when updates to the build are submitted. For comparison, the amazing Half Life 25th anniversary update last year was made in a mere three weeks. This private build branch of HL2 has been ongoing for over three whole months. The amount of time this private build has been worked on is what is causing most of the excitement and speculation. If Valve fully modernized HL1, brought in tons of QoL changes and completely fixed multiplayer all in just three weeks, then what does the three full months worth of work look like in HL2?

Valve gets the original Half-Life 2 development team back together for a huge 20th anniversary update—and the game is now free on Steam

The surprise update includes a full commentary track for the base game, significant graphical and gameplay updates, and a whole lot more.

www.pcgamer.com

And even though I never want to be "that guy", I always am. You realize that it took Valve a lot more than 3 weeks to do all that to HL1 and more than 3 months to do this to HL2? They just didn't start uploading builds until they were almost finished. It's not like they logged in and worked on the live version of the game every day (which is actually impossible). They worked on the game in the engine and then when they reached a certain point, they uploaded a build for testing.

They are like any developer. Ubisoft may not upload a build of the new AC to Steam until a week before launch. That doesn't mean it took them a week to make it.

 

[neogunhero]

Valve gets the original Half-Life 2 development team back together for a huge 20th anniversary update—and the game is now free on Steam

The surprise update includes a full commentary track for the base game, significant graphical and gameplay updates, and a whole lot more.

www.pcgamer.com

And even though I never want to be "that guy", I always am. You realize that it took Valve a lot more than 3 weeks to do all that to HL1 and more than 3 months to do this to HL2? They just didn't start uploading builds until they were almost finished. It's not like they logged in and worked on the live version of the game every day (which is actually impossible). They worked on the game in the engine and then when they reached a certain point, they uploaded a build for testing.

They are like any developer. Ubisoft may not upload a build of the new AC to Steam until a week before launch. That doesn't mean it took them a week to make it.

I honestly thought that was the way it was but you’re right. No way they could do all of that in those short amounts of times. The new documentary of Half Life 2 also confirms that. They had to have worked on the documentary alone for at least a year.

I’m gonna dive into it a bit tonight but more over the weekend. Gotta let my girlfriend play Cyberpunk later tonight🤣

 

[Johnway]

Still plodding along in POE, My explosive arrow ballista champion build is still effective, but without better gear we're reaching the point of the amount of damage it can do. Its one of those ARPG annoyances where gear is a limiting factor and with limited resources to manually craft my gear, i have little choice but pray to the gods that i get good loot instead.

On the handheld front, i've sort of found a game that i'm sort of getting stuck into: Legend of heroes: trails of cold steel

Save 50% on The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel on Steam

At Thors Military Academy, Erebonia’s best learn everything from the art of war to liberal arts. First year Rean Schwarzer learns he’s been selected to join the controversial Class VII, and they’ll need to deal with more than just class warfare--they’ll need to safeguard their country from chaos.

store.steampowered.com

It does do a few things different from your typical JRPG taking social aspects of persona and possibly later final fantasy games (combat is turn based but you can move around instead of taking turns hitting each other). But the downside is perhaps the story and characters are generic as hell and it doesn't have the best introductions as it dumps you straight into it before rewinding back to the start of the game. But there is some complexity to things etc. So will keep playing and see what happens.

Just had a look and it appears that the legend of heroes series has a long history as well. might have a few others in my collection as well...

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Been playing a lot of Against the Storm again. Theres been a DLC adding another race and a fair amount of new events and some new biomes for maps. Since I played it first almost a year go the game seems to run much more smoothly as well, but not sure if thats to do with me having put some more RAM in, wouldnt think so but you never know. Anyway, still love it and still cant put it down once I start it up. Its not a cosy city builder at all, but thats what makes it constantly engaging as there's always something you need to be tweaking or an event to deal with. All of that only ramps up as more of the mechanics come into play as you gradually ramp up the difficulty.

Also put a few hours into The Last of Us part one. Its an awesome video game, and runs very well now, I assume after a year or so of optimizing patches. My rig is mostly fairly new so it should be expected, but if anyone was maybe holding off because of reports of bad performance its a better time to jump in now.

 

[Johnway]

As i mentioned earlier before, in path of exile i got my loot box some days ago and normally i was going to save it till christmas and open it (as well as the one that normally gets given for christmas). i couldn't wait and didn't see any point (its not like its going to improve my chances etc) and what did i get? A cape. Not just any cape it becomes a magic carpet as you zoom around the map. A neat little feature and certainly better then the league one, but on the other hand, its on the ground rather then attached on my back. Meh, it was something i wanted, but if i could get a finisher effect that would be the cherry on the cake. In fact its the only reason i'm playing POE is to get a weapon effect and if i get one without grinding, i'll feel like a winner.

 

[ZedClampet]

Been playing Slay the Spire. I've made 3 runs, but they were all with different characters, so it was like making 3 first tries. I'm getting close to the second boss except with that second character. I didn't even make it to the first boss with her.

 

[Dead2009]

Been playing way too much WWE 2K24 this month, haha

 

[Pifanjr]

Been playing Slay the Spire. I've made 3 runs, but they were all with different characters, so it was like making 3 first tries. I'm getting close to the second boss except with that second character. I didn't even make it to the first boss with her.

One of the best pieces of advice I read is to focus more on defence. When trashing cards from your deck, you typically want to get rid of all of your basic attacks before getting rid of any defence cards, unless you haven't been getting any new attack cards.

 

[Zloth]

Been playing way too much WWE 2K24 this month, haha

I got 2K23 and played it just a little bit. The GUI took some getting used to. I need to get back and play it properly some time.

 

[ZedClampet]

One of the best pieces of advice I read is to focus more on defence. When trashing cards from your deck, you typically want to get rid of all of your basic attacks before getting rid of any defence cards, unless you haven't been getting any new attack cards.

I definitely agree with that advice. You get dealt a hand without decent defense cards at the wrong time, and you are going to be taking damage you can't afford.

I made it almost to the third boss on my second run with the soldier, but my last three fights were a mess. I went into them at around 15 health. I knew that I was doomed. I was too far from a camp. I got 3 pretty good cards at the end of the run, so I was happy.

 

[DXCHASE]

Did anyone here jump into Half-Life 2 after the new update and the game being free this weekend? I highly recommend picking it up.

Gabe Newell ponders the future in new Half-Life 2 documentary: 'I think that Half-Life represents a tool we have and promises made to customers'

Newell wants Valve to "capitalize on innovation and opportunities to build game experiences that haven't been involved previously."

www.pcgamer.com

The biggest thing i love about this update is that they added a "commentary mode" to the game where they added bubbles for you to click on and listen to the original Half-Life 2 crew talk about making the game. Its actually cool and something id love to see other games do. I emailed gabe like it said and told him so lol.

I say grab it, even if you dont play FPS

 

[Frindis]

Not dived into HL2 yet, but I did install it again yesterday and will be enjoying commentary mode. Too bad not many developers do this sort of thing. The commentary in both Portal 1 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut was a real joy to walk through. In HR the developers talked a lot about cut content, fun easter eggs, different visual assets and why they were used. Input from different developers and they did not always agree on things either, so you get some info about why such and such corners had to be cut or perhaps should not have been.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

One of the best pieces of advice I read is to focus more on defence. When trashing cards from your deck, you typically want to get rid of all of your basic attacks before getting rid of any defence cards, unless you haven't been getting any new attack cards.

I definitely agree with that advice. You get dealt a hand without decent defense cards at the wrong time, and you are going to be taking damage you can't afford.

I made it almost to the third boss on my second run with the soldier, but my last three fights were a mess. I went into them at around 15 health. I knew that I was doomed. I was too far from a camp. I got 3 pretty good cards at the end of the run, so I was happy.

I think thats true for Ironclad, and maybe Defect. Silent starts with better defence, and if you lose strikes from their deck or dont add any attacks youll suffer against the act one elites. Gremlin Nob as it scales damage every time you use a skill so you need to be just blasting, also Lagavulin will smash you if you dont hit hard and fast IIRC

Not sure about the fourth character Watcher, havent really played much as that character.