September 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

[Brian Boru]

Falcon is pretty funny in this 13m Gameranx video

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_j-T7rUVE8

 

[Zloth]

Kenshi didn't seem all that unpolished to me, and I expect it's been improved since I played it. The graphics ARE low fidelity for sure, but that's obvious in the screenshots. As its Store page makes very clear, you start off weak and will need to run from many, many things at the start of the game. Also, the world is HUGE!

I quit the game when the crafting recipes required some items that were guarded by critters that were too much for my little group. Still, I had almost 40 hours of fun getting to that point. Somebody who likes the game more could easily get hundreds if not thousands of hours out of it by building settlements and starting up a tribe.

But let's talk about me!!

I'm still pretty early in the new game I started up. I've got a "base" (read: shack with a teleporter and a landing pad next to it) and I've only seen a dozen or so planets. I briefly got over 1 million credits, but quickly spent down to 600k. I was exploring a toxic planet when I found a wrecked starship. I've seen these before - they have their engines broken and many of the slots for inventory items and upgrades are broken, too, but you can get one for free. Being early in the game still, means I can only have one ship, so my current ship vanishes if I claim this ship I found - I would need to fix it just to take off again.

But this ship was GREAT! Most of its slots were broken but, since I was still using the starting ship, it had as many working slots as my current ship. What's more, while the engines were broken, the items needed to fix it were things I had... back at my base, in another solar system.

One annoyance in No Man's Sky is that there's no way to just mark a location as a waypoint so you can come back to it later. However, it is a game that lets you have lots of bases and, being a new player, I wasn't remotely close to the limit. So, I built a base! I also managed to scrounge up enough junk around the location to build a teleporter and a little power generator to keep it running. Then, I simply walked through the teleporter to my own base, got the stuff I needed, came back, saved the game, and fixed the ship!

But just the engines, guns, and shields. All the slots with dark red backgrounds and "!" icons are broken slots that I can't use until I get some stuff to fix them up. I've already done a few, but it's going to take time to get them all.

 

[Pifanjr]

I decided to play some Rimworld, as it's probably the closest thing to Kenshi that I own. My main gripe with Rimworld is that the game throws a lot of combat encounters at you, but the combat itself is too much tedious micromanagement. So I decided to use a story teller that limits the world to mostly medieval tech and started as a neolithic tribe. I'm hoping combat will be a bit less boring if it isn't just two groups of people shooting guns at each other until one of them is dead.

Kenshi didn't seem all that unpolished to me, and I expect it's been improved since I played it. The graphics ARE low fidelity for sure, but that's obvious in the screenshots. As its Store page makes very clear, you start off weak and will need to run from many, many things at the start of the game. Also, the world is HUGE!

I quit the game when the crafting recipes required some items that were guarded by critters that were too much for my little group. Still, I had almost 40 hours of fun getting to that point. Somebody who likes the game more could easily get hundreds if not thousands of hours out of it by building settlements and starting up a tribe.

Thanks! I've added it to my wishlist.

But let's talk about me!!

I'm still pretty early in the new game I started up. I've got a "base" (read: shack with a teleporter and a landing pad next to it) and I've only seen a dozen or so planets. I briefly got over 1 million credits, but quickly spent down to 600k. I was exploring a toxic planet when I found a wrecked starship. I've seen these before - they have their engines broken and many of the slots for inventory items and upgrades are broken, too, but you can get one for free. Being early in the game still, means I can only have one ship, so my current ship vanishes if I claim this ship I found - I would need to fix it just to take off again.

But this ship was GREAT! Most of its slots were broken but, since I was still using the starting ship, it had as many working slots as my current ship. What's more, while the engines were broken, the items needed to fix it were things I had... back at my base, in another solar system.

One annoyance in No Man's Sky is that there's no way to just mark a location as a waypoint so you can come back to it later. However, it is a game that lets you have lots of bases and, being a new player, I wasn't remotely close to the limit. So, I built a base! I also managed to scrounge up enough junk around the location to build a teleporter and a little power generator to keep it running. Then, I simply walked through the teleporter to my own base, got the stuff I needed, came back, saved the game, and fixed the ship!

But just the engines, guns, and shields. All the slots with dark red backgrounds and "!" icons are broken slots that I can't use until I get some stuff to fix them up. I've already done a few, but it's going to take time to get them all.

No Man's Sky is already on my wishlist as well, exactly because of this kind of stuff of being able to stumble upon awesome things while exploring and slowly upgrading your stuff.

 

[Brian Boru]

No Man's Sky

Sound's like most of the play is on planets' surface, is that right? I like the sound of NMS as long as there isn't much space time.

Testament to how much devs have improved it since launch:

 

[ZedClampet]

Kenshi didn't seem all that unpolished to me, and I expect it's been improved since I played it. The graphics ARE low fidelity for sure, but that's obvious in the screenshots. As its Store page makes very clear, you start off weak and will need to run from many, many things at the start of the game. Also, the world is HUGE!

I quit the game when the crafting recipes required some items that were guarded by critters that were too much for my little group. Still, I had almost 40 hours of fun getting to that point. Somebody who likes the game more could easily get hundreds if not thousands of hours out of it by building settlements and starting up a tribe.

But let's talk about me!!

I'm still pretty early in the new game I started up. I've got a "base" (read: shack with a teleporter and a landing pad next to it) and I've only seen a dozen or so planets. I briefly got over 1 million credits, but quickly spent down to 600k. I was exploring a toxic planet when I found a wrecked starship. I've seen these before - they have their engines broken and many of the slots for inventory items and upgrades are broken, too, but you can get one for free. Being early in the game still, means I can only have one ship, so my current ship vanishes if I claim this ship I found - I would need to fix it just to take off again.

But this ship was GREAT! Most of its slots were broken but, since I was still using the starting ship, it had as many working slots as my current ship. What's more, while the engines were broken, the items needed to fix it were things I had... back at my base, in another solar system.

One annoyance in No Man's Sky is that there's no way to just mark a location as a waypoint so you can come back to it later. However, it is a game that lets you have lots of bases and, being a new player, I wasn't remotely close to the limit. So, I built a base! I also managed to scrounge up enough junk around the location to build a teleporter and a little power generator to keep it running. Then, I simply walked through the teleporter to my own base, got the stuff I needed, came back, saved the game, and fixed the ship!

But just the engines, guns, and shields. All the slots with dark red backgrounds and "!" icons are broken slots that I can't use until I get some stuff to fix them up. I've already done a few, but it's going to take time to get them all.

Crap. Now you have me wanting to play NMS again. I love that game. I'm not starting over, though, unless I'm forced to. I've got my multi-million dollar microchip business set up exactly right, and I don't want to have to do that again.

Others won't see the joy in this, but one of my favorite things to do in NMS is to just hang out in space stations and watch for interesting ships to come in so I can make an offer on them.

Speaking of the ship you found, it doesn't look overly valuable as a sale item, but it sure is nice to get a free ship. And if you move it somewhere else, a new one will pop up every so often. Depending on what level it is, it may or may not be worth your time to continuously fix these up and sell them, but it can be a decent starter income.

You know there's a website that gives the coordinates of all the cool ships people have found, but if you just started a new game, it will be awhile before you can travel through portals. Or, if you are like me, you'll get distracted for 200 hours doing random things and never get to travel through portals at all.

@Brian Boru you don't spend all that much time in space, really, but it doesn't seem like your type of game to me, at least not the way I play it. I would describe it as an exploration and survival sandbox with an emphasis on base building. There is a main questline, though. I don't know. Maybe @Zloth would describe the game differently. I probably didn't even play it right There are a lot of things you can decide to concentrate on that can eat a lot of time.

There are a lot of cool/funny things to do. Like at one point you have the option of taking over a space colony. Well, I won't spoil anything, but the people there are pretty funny.

 

[Brian Boru]

it doesn't seem like your type of game

Oh you could be right, I don't know myself either
But it is open world, first person, single player, procedural gen—so potential huge replay value—and should work on my current PC.

I can pick it up whenever it goes 90% off in a few years, without losing much apart from time if it isn't my thing.

 

[DXCHASE]

I feel like a dummy atm

I fell for a steam hack. A friend of mine messaged me about a csgo tourny and i totally thought he was real and clicked on it and it was a fake message using my friends name. So my account did that to about 4-6 people before i caught it and changed my password, authenticator etc. etc.

But still, i fell for it. Just got done with my apology tour to the friends that got messages.

This is the hack in question:

Beware This Steam Tournament Scam From Your "Friend"

A common Steam scam comes from a compromised friend's account and asks you to help out with a tournament. Here's how it works, and how to stay safe.

www.makeuseof.com

EDIT: Upon further inspection, ive noticed that im missing some skins and boxes from my CS:GO account. When i logged into the game i heard the default music playing so i new right away somethin was wrong. I went to my trade history and sure enough whoever was in my account had traded boxes and some skins to 1 account. I filed a report and all (the account was private, level 1, vac banned etc.) so im sure i will get them back but it is a bummer.

 

[Zloth]

Crap. Now you have me wanting to play NMS again. I love that game. I'm not starting over, though, unless I'm forced to. I've got my multi-million dollar microchip business set up exactly right, and I don't want to have to do that again.

You definitely don't! As long as you remember how to get around, you'll be good.

Others won't see the joy in this, but one of my favorite things to do in NMS is to just hang out in space stations and watch for interesting ships to come in so I can make an offer on them.

Been there, done that - works even better in your freighter. Sometimes I won't even be thinking of buying, I just want to see how many slots it has.

Speaking of the ship you found, it doesn't look overly valuable as a sale item, but it sure is nice to get a free ship. And if you move it somewhere else, a new one will pop up every so often. Depending on what level it is, it may or may not be worth your time to continuously fix these up and sell them, but it can be a decent starter income.

It's very nice not to be in the starter ship!

You know there's a website that gives the coordinates of all the cool ships people have found, but if you just started a new game, it will be awhile before you can travel through portals. Or, if you are like me, you'll get distracted for 200 hours doing random things and never get to travel through portals at all.

Not too long of a while - there's already been mention of glyphs, but I haven't gotten any yet. (And, of course, I could always load my other save and go wherever.)

The game sure is strange about a few things. Strange in ways that make the game more fun, but they aren't intuitive at all. To get to another star system, you need to use your warp drive - possibly a special warp drive for certain types of stars. All very normal. However, if you've got two bases with teleporters at each, going from one base to another will bring your ship along with you. It doesn't matter how far away it is, what the star type is, or even what galaxy it's in! When I claimed that broken ship, I probably could have stepped through my teleporter and the ship would have shown up on the launchpad at my base, even though the ship couldn't fly in space at all!

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued my Rimworld game today. So far I'm enjoying the slow pace of starting as a neolithic tribe, though I'm starting to enter the medieval era as I just unlocked smithing. Now I can make plate armour for everyone, which will make me feel a lot safer. Together with the assault rifle I got for delivering 11 tribal kilts I should be able to hold out against any attack for the foreseeable future.

One problem I had was that I didn't have access to refrigeration, so my food kept spoiling. Luckily I got a small group of ducks who joined my tribe, which started producing fertilised eggs. I haven't had egg-laying livestock before, so I didn't realise that if you have a stack of fertilised eggs they all hatch at the same time. Imagine my surprise when my kitchen was suddenly filled with 31 ducklings.

Another problem I'm still working on is that all of my lights and coolers are wood powered, so I keep having to keep an eye on my wood supplies to make sure I don't run out. I just made a chemfuel farm so I can use that as light fuel instead, but I have no idea how much I'll need, so I'll see how that goes.

The last problem is that none of my people has a social skill higher than 1, so I can't really convince prisoners to join my tribe (luckily they can still be of use as guinea pigs to train my doctors). I'm reliant on random events for new people and so far I've only got three new ones, of which one turned out to be a traitor.
Another downside is that people keep getting into fights with each other because they're socially inept, but at least it gives them some melee experience (plus more experience for my doctors).

 

[ZedClampet]

Enjoying Banished, but I've discovered a lot of ways that more recent games have improved on the Banished formula. No worries, though, because there are a lot of mods that have improved things like the UI

*********

Crew Motorfest is so good. Just the racing game I was needing right now.

**********

For reasons I don't know, my vision problems have been improving quite a bit lately, and after @Pifanjr 's comment above, it has me itching to try Rimworld again. I also found an HD graphics mod for Rimworld that might just help me out too. The first time I tried to play the game didn't work out too well because of my vision issues and the kind of washed out graphics in the game.

 

[Brian Boru]

Rimworld … starting to enter the medieval era … with the assault rifle I got

ok…

kitchen was suddenly filled with 31 ducklings

All right!

socially inept … gives them some melee experience (plus more experience for my doctors)

Uncle, uncle! You've convinced me, I must have another look at this game I had it marked 'Ignore' on Steam for some reason.

Hoody blell, it's got 97-98% on Steam!
Oh dear, not Patient-friendly [despite the doctor buffs you mentioned] for a 5yo game—never been below $20 for base, and is $100 tops with the expansions.

How important are the 3 expansions? Biotech, Royalty, Ideology.

15,000 mods, procedural gen, runs on potato… hmm yeah, this could work!

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

The new Cyberpunk expansion sounds like they nailed it. I thought the base game was pretty good as is, so its on the list for another go. Once I've done with Baldurs Gate 3, Armored Core 6, Lies of P and everything else in 2029.

 

[ZedClampet]

Started Rimworld, immediately ran into a known bug in the tutorial where you are supposed to change your crop to rice, but the game never accepts that you did it, thus essentially bringing your tutorial to an end. Not only did I select rice, I waited until it was all planted to see if the tutorial would notice, but it never did. Then I looked it up and discovered it's a common bug, so time wasted...

I probably don't really need a tutorial anyway. Will just have to wander around menus a little bit.

 

[Pifanjr]

Hoody blell, it's got 97-98% on Steam!
Oh dear, not Patient-friendly [despite the doctor buffs you mentioned] for a 5yo game—never been below $20 for base, and is $100 tops with the expansions.

How important are the 3 expansions? Biotech, Royalty, IIdeology.

I don't own the expansions, exactly because they've never been discounted by much. So far I don't feel like I've been missing out on much, especially with the amount of mods available.

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh dear, not Patient-friendly [despite the doctor buffs you mentioned] for a 5yo game—never been below $20 for base, and is $100 tops with the expansions.

It was in early access for 5 years before 2018 (one of the first ea games; it was called something else initially) and never went on sale the entire time. They don't like sales much, but they don't have to. They've had over 1400 reviews in the last 30 days. When you consider that it's been on Steam for 10 years, that's darn impressive.

 

[Brian Boru]

Fortnite: Parents in US offered refunds for game purchases

Fortnite: Parents in US offered refunds for game purchases

Millions in compensation will be paid out after the game tricked players into making unintended purchases.

www.bbc.com

 

[ZedClampet]

Fortnite: Parents in US offered refunds for game purchases

Fortnite: Parents in US offered refunds for game purchases

Millions in compensation will be paid out after the game tricked players into making unintended purchases.

www.bbc.com

I imagine this was mostly incompetence and carelessness rather than intentional wrong-doing.

I also wonder about parents who might register an account and then let their children play on it, and parents who lie about their child's age so that they won't be bothered to enter their approval at possible age gates. I imagine there are/were a lot more kids playing than anyone knows. Of course, in those cases it would be the parents' problem for skirting the whole age process, but they can ask for refunds too under the "anyone who accidentally purchased" provision.

Based only on what I've read, though, the whole purchasing system was a little on the sleazy side and could have fooled a lot of adults, too.

 

[Zloth]

I ran into a bug in No Man's Sky, too, though I thought it was just a change to the game in the years I was gone.

On each planet there are floating robot camera things called sentinels. I picked up something the sentinels didn't want me taking, so they attacked. They aren't terribly strong, so I just blasted them - which raised the alert level. I remember how that plays out: every time you finish them off, the alert level goes up and an even stronger force shows up. However, you if you can hide from them, they'll give up and go away.

At first, I took to the skies. Sentinel ships immediately showed up, and they were harder to deal with than the robots, so I landed again.

So, I found a cave and dove in, then ran around underground for a while so I couldn't be seen from the cave entrance. They didn't give up. One of them eventually found me, so I blasted it and ran to another part of the cave. They still kept searching for me. Eventually, another made it underground and was coming for me. It seems the old hide-out tactic doesn't work anymore. Rather than spending the rest of the game holed up, shooting the occasional sentinel that bumbled into the cave system, I went to re-load my old save.

Uhoh. When I got out of my ship, it saved automatically. Am I doomed? There was an auto-save from when I had gotten into the cave, so maybe I can go even deeper into the cave system and come out somewhere far away? I tried it.... and the sentinels immediately gave up and left.

It seems that the 'hunt you forever' thing is some sort of bug. I don't know if it happens all the time, but it's happened both times I picked a fight with the sentinels so far. It's not too bad as all I need to do is get into a cave (or dig out my own with my trusty digger gun), drop a save beacon, use it, and immediately re-load. It's a frightening thing for a new player, though!

 

[ZedClampet]

It seems that the 'hunt you forever' thing is some sort of bug. I don't know if it happens all the time, but it's happened both times I picked a fight with the sentinels so far. It's not too bad as all I need to do is get into a cave (or dig out my own with my trusty digger gun), drop a save beacon, use it, and immediately re-load. It's a frightening thing for a new player, though!

Overall, I could live without the sentinels and usually pick planets where they aren't very aggressive to put bases on. The "high activity", or whatever they're called, places would be miserable with this bug.

****

The Mall Craze dev removed the demo and then launched the demo as the early access version of the game I was interested in the game, but he doesn't have any of the management features in yet, so I'm going to wait and see if he makes any progress. From our conversation the other day before launch, I'm not exactly filled with confidence that he's going to finish the game.

 

[ZedClampet]

Almost every single non-violent (or mostly non-violent) game that I play has at least a few people who post about how much fun adding a ton of violence to the game would be. Can't you people just go play one of the tens of thousands of games that are violence-oriented?

Satisfactory is constantly getting requests from Factorio fans to add alien invasions, for instance.

 

[Zloth]

Satisfactory is constantly getting requests from Factorio fans to add alien invasions, for instance.

That's what turned me off from Factorio!

 

[Colif]

Pile up got a patch... so i was playing it and trying to work out what all the noise was... my GPU fans were running really fast which I thought was odd.

Turns out patch had set default res to 8k... no wonder GPU was having fun. Setting its resolution to something more sane results in a quiet PC.

 

[Pifanjr]

I think something that Bethesda games and Spore have in common is that they both have game mechanics which are very simple compared to games that focus on those mechanics, yet the overall experience is more than the sum of its parts.

Perhaps it's also why the metaverse idea seemed interesting. Even if the games that supported it were simpler than similar games, just having a sense of shared progress between them adds something special.

 

[ZedClampet]

Based on the new trailer for Timberborn, the beavers are Irish. This is a little odd since if there have never been beavers in Ireland except perhaps in a zoo. Somehow having an Irish voice actor for the beavers does seem natural, though.

Timberborn is only updated once or twice a year, and the content of those updates are based on upvoting suggestions on their website. Hopefully, though it isn't mentioned anywhere, the developers have their own plans in addition to what is suggested by players. I love the game, but my expectations for the future are pretty low given this process and how slow the devs are. It's a good game as is, anyway.

I've never played the second faction, so I'm going to start a new game and see what they are like.

******

Meanwhile, Kingdoms Reborn has had a major update brining in some nice changes including advanced versions of a lot of buildings. I've started a new game, but haven't gotten to that part yet. I've selected a hard starting position and getting everything up and running has been a fun challenge.

 

[ZedClampet]

I think something that Bethesda games and Spore have in common is that they both have game mechanics which are very simple compared to games that focus on those mechanics, yet the overall experience is more than the sum of its parts.

Perhaps it's also why the metaverse idea seemed interesting. Even if the games that supported it were simpler than similar games, just having a sense of shared progress between them adds something special.

The metaverse is going to happen. The idea preceded the tech, the need, the desire, and, honestly, a viable idea of what the metaverse would be and why anyone would want to use it. The only people who wanted a metaverse were the people who were trying to make a metaverse, and they didn't even know what they were making or why anyone would want to be there. The whole thing was as stable and substantial as a puff of smoke.

Meh, I just deleted a bunch of text, but the problem with the metaverse idea was that there was nothing of substance to do, and the whole thing was cheap looking and uninviting. Make something extraordinary and people will use it.