October 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[Pifanjr]

I played a bit more Minecraft with the Craftoria modpack yesterday. I advanced a bunch into the Occultism mod, so now I can get 3 ingots out of every ore I mine.

Occultism is probably the cheapest and arguably the easiest method to turn ore into multiple ingots, but it's definitely not the most straightforward. Most mods just require you to mine a lot to make a couple of machines that are typically just a single block, Occultism requires a whole bunch of different steps to create several summoning circles that take up a 7x7 area each.

Kind of did that most of the way, Ironclad is at 8 with Silent and Defect at 5. Ive been playing it since it released on Switch, usually end up getting into it for a while when I fly somewhere. Gets harder to get back into every time because I always dip back in at wherever I got to before but Ive usually forgotten most of the things that got me there.

I think a big part of why I'm struggling as much with Slay the Spire as I am is because I don't put any effort into learning which enemies I can expect. I just kind of hope I luck into an overpowered deck that can sweep anything.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I think a big part of why I'm struggling as much with Slay the Spire as I am is because I don't put any effort into learning which enemies I can expect. I just kind of hope I luck into an overpowered deck that can sweep anything.

If you want to win you do really have to consider how you are at least going to beat the upcoming minibosses and bosses. That can be cards, relics or even potions can help out a lot. Planning the route through each level is really important too. The more mini bosses the more relics and rare cards you can get to strengthen your deck, but if you bite off too much you just die instead. I am not very good at judging any of this, but its fun to try.

I think the game works on a lot of levels, its still fun as a casual player. But if you really want to go ham and try and really figure out the mathematics of the whole thing then it rewards that as well.

 

[neogunhero]

That's interesting - I would expect it to have some issues with games and updates. Copilot is probably going to try to work with most common/popular answers, which might not make sense anymore if a patch changed the balance. Though it should work a lot better for a game that comes out and barely gets patched.

Exactly, a game like Minecraft isn’t going to change up its main mechanics significantly. Once they add a crafting recipe to the game, it’s probably going to stay the same forever. And like you said, Minecraft barely gets updated, maybe one or two major content updates a year, so Copilot is useful in a game like that. I wouldn’t use it for a brand new game or one that doesn’t have much info online.

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We finally repopulated our village. At first the villagers didn’t want to breed, but when we got on last night they were freaking all over the place. There was even a foursome in a dark alleyway at one point that spawned two babies. We ended up having to build a new house and put 8 new beds in it. I’m hoping over time these villagers will eventually stumble onto a workbench then fall into the role of it. Our main goal is to have a cartographer so we can get a woodland mansion map, but haven’t had success getting one yet. So we first started from having maybe 5 villagers, down to just one, now we’re at a good 10 or so. Who knew that bread makes people so horny.

They have been getting annoying though. We have a little pond in the middle of the village that the babies kept getting into. We had to build a fence all around it, but they were still finding ways to get into the water with no way back out. We had to clean up the dirt around the pond so there’s no chance of them getting in. It doesn’t look great, and there was no negative effect of them being in the water, it’s just annoying when a group of them all decided to want to swim at the same time when you’re trying to level them up. Eventually we’ll come up with a better solution but for now this will have to work. Our village is essentially on an island, so they have no escape. I want to have as many villagers as possible to make the place alive so I built a giant wheat farm, that way we can have unlimited freaky bread.

 

[Colif]

I still don't trust ai to get a better answer than I can find myself.
Phone updated it ai earlier, one day I might use it. Ai is useful for tasks that as yet i don't need.
Chatgpt used to make documents for me but they removed that function so it is useless to me now. It's almost as useless as the keyboard on my phone is at guessing what word I want.
Sorry, have to use phone and it is driving me mad. Pc fan broke, hope to get replacement tomorrow.

 

[Pifanjr]

Haven’t played anything besides Minecraft these past few days. I’ve been using the updated Copilot app on my phone and it’s been super helpful. The new update makes the results show up almost instantly, so whenever I need help making something or how to do something, I’ve been resorting to grabbing my phone and asking it. I’ve learned so much about the game using Copilot it’s become integral to me whenever we play now.

Right now our main focus is repopulating our village. I think there were a few dark spots that were spawning mobs, which then went and killed all of our villagers. I had to build a boat and find a village a few minutes away, then made a contraption to get the villagers on the boat to be brought back to my village. At first I dug a massive pit with a long tunnel that lead to the water, but the villagers were being extra stubborn and not wanting to get pushed down the tunnel. I could get them into the pit easily, but now down to the water. So I filled the thing with water, used the tunnel to make a little river, so now I can easily push a villager into the pit, get them on a boat then transport them. I have to make sure to close the tunnel so they don’t escape.


So far we’ve brought back three villagers and are trying to breed them. Copilot says to feed them a ton of bread, which we have but they aren’t in the mood to do anything. Maybe because they have just been kidnapped from their homes, separated from their families, then forced to live on an island that is inescapable, that could be a reason. Maybe over time they will be in the mood to do it, but for now they are kind of running around like they’re scared of us.

My villagers were wiped out as well. I wish there was a way to spawn new villagers without kidnapping them from other villages. A non-creative mode way that is, as I can (and will) just switch modes for a second to spawn a couple of villagers myself and work from there.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Finishing up POE2 still, starting to flag and dip into other stuff. Going to try and finish up some short games. Played a bit of Hard Reset Redux, seems like a good shooter so far, weapons are a bit wishy washy, but seems thats maybe deliberate as there are a lot of environmental traps to lure mobs into and set off.

Also made another start on Roadwarden for something more calming. its a text adventure, intriguing world, sort of fantasy post apocalyptic. Seems like I should be taking notes as it has text inputs in some conversations and locations.

 

[Colif]

Realises poe2 isn't path of exile 2.
Since its not out yet

 

[Frindis]

Does anyone crave some washing this weekend? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/PowerWash_Simulator/

 

[Johnway]

not much to report on my side tbh. Still playing yakuza 4 and on the second act. Still blasting through the historical battles in Age of empires 2 we're down to the last 6 now thankfully, most are quick and i can blast through them, but there have been one or 2 that have been stressfully difficult. But can't be another week or 2 before AOE2 is finished in my book. Not going to get the DLC as i've had my fill.

Still messing around with Ultimate doom builder and messing around with 3d floors and maybe will look into coloured lights, windows and perhaps teleporters.

 

[neogunhero]

My villagers were wiped out as well. I wish there was a way to spawn new villagers without kidnapping them from other villages. A non-creative mode way that is, as I can (and will) just switch modes for a second to spawn a couple of villagers myself and work from there.

Same here, it’s quite tedious to repopulate your base. It sucks if you are far from another village too. The nearest village I could find after climbing to the top of a mountain is about a 3 minute boat ride from our base. Not that far but still tedious having to go that far. On top of that, the river nearby doesn’t give you a straight shot to the village, so I had to make a canal through a bit of the land. My brain didn’t predicted how Minecraft water psychics would work in this situation so the water got really wonky in the canal. If you go too fast, you get submerged then kicked out of the boat, but if you take it slow enough you can make it without too much hassle.

On top of all these slight obstacles was the act of getting a villager onto the boat to transport. I built a massive pit to push the villagers into that lead to the water. That didn’t work well, the villagers would keep running in the opposite direction of the way I wanted them to go. So I then built a smaller river into the village that lead into the larger river, but that proved even harder to get to work right. I then found out it’s easiest to just ride your boat on land for a while with the villager in the boat instead of trying to get them into the pit. As soon as we had two villagers at our base, repopulating was easy once we had the bread to do it.

 

[Zloth]

Realises poe2 isn't path of exile 2.

I've done that in reverse so many times!! It's worse than when Two Worlds 2 came out at about the same time as The Witcher 2.

 

[BeardyHat]

Peglin is good.

It's an excellent game for dumb people like me that haven't ever made it super far in Slay the Spire. The randomness really makes things much simpler and you still need some cleverness in picking balls and artifacts that will work well together, but I've actually been able to fully complete 3 runs in the 6-hours I've been playing.

Also been playing KOTOR2 on the side when I'm up for mostly talking/reading. I'm playing on an Android handheld and I love the fact that with Android you can heavily mod the game just as you would on PC; I haven't any idea if these mods have come into play during my playthrough at the moment, but still, it's neat.

I keep thinking I want to play other stuff and firing-up different games, but I ultimately keep coming back to these two.

 

[Colif]

I've done that in reverse so many times!! It's worse than when Two Worlds 2 came out at about the same time as The Witcher 2.

Too many games, not enough initials.
Lots of examples

 

[neogunhero]

Minecraft Minecraft and more Minecraft.

We currently have TOO many villagers now. It’s actually getting so annoying when 8 of them all want to crowd in the crafting room together. We had to build some new buildings to spread out the crafting stations so they weren’t all congregating right where we need to be. I built a nice little lean-to shed to put a few crafting benches which helped a lot. My girlfriend also build a cool restaurant hut thing in the middle of the town square and put all the smokers there so now we have a dedicated chef station.

I took a ton of screenies but forgot to upload them somewhere I can access. I’m very happy with how our village looks. We built onto of an already existing one in the middle of a spruce forest so we tried to keep the same general aesthetic of spruce wood, cobblestone and stone bricks. It looks like it could be in a game like Oblivion which is exactly what we were going for. I’ll have to post them tonight.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played more Minecraft as well. I stumbled upon my first trial dungeon while digging around for amethyst. Luckily I found some handheld missiles, which made quick work of all of the skeletons, while the zombies were easy enough to kill with a sword. Sadly the loot was not particularly interesting either.

I did find a lot of ores and a massive underground lava lake, which I almost immediately accidentally fell into. Luckily I could quickly switch to creative mode and fly back up, because I really did not want to lose all of the stuff I had just collected.

Right when I had to leave to pick up my kid from school did I find a massive amethyst cluster, which will unlock a bunch more useful stuff. Among which a hearthstone that will let me teleport back home, saving me a lot of walking.

 

[Voidstatee]

I am playing multiplayer of a boomer shooter game called Gore Special Edition released in 2007 for free it's abandonware now but it's still active, you could check on youtube there are recent gameplay video clips

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Random thought.

As Ive understood it, most indie games have a much spikier sales chart over their lifetime than most big AAAs. Mostly due to the lack of big marketing budget meaning they spike in sales as and when they release new free updates or get word of mouth from other places over time. I wonder whether devs like Remedy, who havent seemed concerned when games like Control and Alan Wake 2 havent set the world alight sales wise on release, are taking a longer view on this. Could the strategy be that if a game that becomes known in the community as something of a classic, then it develops a much longer tail sales wise? If so that would seem like a much more sustainable way of doing things than releasing a new one every other year and exploiting (as Bobby Kotick put it) the franchise until its dry. Its probably not as profitable in the short term, I suspect thats where the rub is.

 

[Colif]

Well, you will be remembered for releasing a small amount of amazing games as opposed to using the shotgun approach and releasing endless drivel. You will be remembered for doing good and not being like everyone else.
People might not assume that every game you release will suck. Unlike most games companies.
Trying to make classics is a valiant ideal. I can bet that none of the next 10 planned AC games will be classics. Guess it depends if you see a future you will be in, as to what you try to make.

I wish all companies had the same aims. Right now they just want to be the next Fork knife

I hear that they going to relaunch Concord. They mistakenly believe it's price was the problem. No, it's wings were on fire... free beta had less interest already. It never took off. It exploded at take off. It's hardly my fault that they named game after a disaster. Concord 2 might reach the channel. Burial at sea is best for it.

The sunk cost must be huge if they refuse to give up. I wonder when the movie was being made lol. How much did studio cost to buy? They already spent 400 million + cost of studio.

20k likes... time for my acceptance speech? 😀

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Well, you will be remembered for releasing a small amount of amazing games as opposed to using the shotgun approach and releasing endless drivel. You will be remembered for doing good and not being like everyone else.
People might not assume that every game you release will suck. Unlike most games companies.
Trying to make classics is a valiant ideal. I can bet that none of the next 10 planned AC games will be classics. Guess it depends if you see a future you will be in, as to what you try to make.

I wish all companies had the same aims. Right now they just want to be the next Fork knife

Thinking about it a bit more making classics is not necessarily possible and probably a bad word to use here. Remedy havent made all classics by any stretch. Alan Wake didnt really live up to expectations at the time, nor did Quantum Break. But somehow they arent universally hated and different enough to other stuff that they had a bit of a cult following. They made games they wanted to make, and didnt try and follow trends. A big factor seems to be they are mostly owned by people who work there, so they dont have investors with no stake outside of making money off their shares breathing down their necks all the time.

Maybe its better to say that they try and make interesting games, and if they take their time and make them well they dont really miss totally, even if they dont break out as best sellers. FromSoft has done their own thing in the last 15 years as well. Until Elden Ring they didnt have a huge breakout in sales, although they werent exactly niche. But they still havent really compromised their design principles, they made the market come to them. They are also a small cog in the machine of their main owner and not publicly traded. Is there a theme here ?

Ive been reading the story of Blizzard by Jason Schreier which is really interesting. They were only independent for 3 years in the beginning before being bought, but until the latter part of Activisions ownership when Michael Morhaime left they did something very similar and because they were successful for so long they could tell executives to leave them be. Theyd proven several times that if they released a perfectly polished quality game everything else would take car of itself. That fell apart for a lot of reasons, but partly because Bobby K couldnt understand why they werent releasing a new game every year like Activision did with COD.

Not to say that exploiting franchises hasnt worked, EA has the sports game which people will buy anyway, COD is obviously huge still and UBIsofts games have been massively popular. The problem for them maybe comes when the market starts to get fatigued with it they dont really have a back up plan. Keeping income steady and regular looks great for investors but it seems to me theres only so long before that falls off the end of the runway. True to say they almost certainly made a ton more money than Remedy or From over the years following that method, and maybe its only a matter of time before Remedy of Froms games suffer the same problem, although they arent at the same level financially. They also show signs that theyre able to noticeably evolve their games into other areas.

Anyway if anyone made it through that waffle congrats!

Concord was ridiculous all in all for a lot of reasons. Sony had 12 live service games in the works, how many of those will become anything?

 

[Colif]

Most of the people who made diablo 2 were gone by time d3 was released. Hence the auction house in base game, it was single player wow. D4 isn't an improvement.

That is first expansion pack for a Diablo game that I haven't rushed to buy.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Diablo isnt really my thing, played a bit of 1 and a bit more of 2 but was never in love with it. The book said that 3 improved a lot with the Reaper of Souls expansion and when they removed the auction house, but at release it was criticized by players. Seems it sold pretty well though and D4 has not exactly bombed sales wise so they probably arent going to worry about it too much.

I vaguely remember people complaining about the more cartoonish style in 3, and the auction house being a problem back then but thats about all.

 

[Colif]

I liked diablo when you could play off-line single player. Diablo 4 isn't that so it isn't for me.

 

[Zloth]

Wow. Did you know that owl bears can jump really high?? I do. Now.

`scuse me while I go take a long rest to try and heal the one swipe I took.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Wow. Did you know that owl bears can jump really high?? I do. Now.

`scuse me while I go take a long rest to try and heal the one swipe I took.

Solasta? Edit, oops totally forgot you were playing B3. Look after that little one, you hear?

I liked diablo when you could play off-line single player. Diablo 4 isn't that so it isn't for me.

Yea thats fair I guess. I only played D2 offline, but I remember a friend of mine was really into the online. Maybe thats where the longevity was, apparently there were still 10k plus playing D2 daily after 10 years before D3 came out. D3 was an always online game when that really wasnt common, so I guess technically they were innovating

 

[Colif]

D3 you could play alone if you wanted to, even if it was online. I forgot that. D4 is only multi player so unless you play on the release servers, there is always someone around. Some story areas are grouped instances and obviously dungeons are as well. But for the most part it's multi player