What are you playing, thinking, etc thread (for Nov-14 to Nov-20)

[ZedClampet]

What I'm playing:

Satisfactory: Got up early this morning and went to "work" in Satisfactory and decided I'm done with that world. I just unlocked the final two tech tiers, and in game terms they would be considered "nightmare". That sounds fun enough, but I'm going to wait for the game to launch into 1.0 before I take on those challenges. But I'm not ready to quit Satisfactory just yet, so I went to the mod launcher and looked at every single mod and downloaded about 20 more. I'm going to start a new world at a new starting location with all these mods going. Will be almost like a whole new game.

Forza Horizon 5: They are supposed to release a large patch this week covering crashes and connectivity issues. When that happens, I'll give it another try.

Solasta: I got distracted with Satisfactory and only played this about 15 minutes all last week. Hopefully my Satisfactory obsession dies down this week.

Far Cry 6: Per the launch tracker, I'm about 54 percent done, but I'm actually a lot more done than that because we've basically cleaned the map dry of enemy owned locations. We just haven't done the missions yet. Could finish it this week, but probably will be next week. My co-op partner, @GuidoTheGamer , seems to be tired of Rust (you can't really play an hour a day versus people who play all day every day--they get advanced equipment while you are running around naked) so maybe we'll get some play time this week.

 

[Colif]

Well, I dreamt I was playing Diablo 2 last night, and yet I haven't played in 2 weeks. So I guess my body is ready to return. It might have to wait a few more days as weather isn't being cooperative. Funny, I get a game I want to play and storms show up.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, I dreamt I was playing Diablo 2 last night, and yet I haven't played in 2 weeks. So I guess my body is ready to return. It might have to wait a few more days as weather isn't being cooperative. Funny, I get a game I want to play and storms show up.

I need to try those. The one time I played one of them, years ago, I was expecting it to be RTwP as opposed to "action RPG", and I kind of bounced off it. I bet I would like it now, though.

 

[Frindis]

I'm playing Forza Horizon 5 and Rust. Some tips to @GuidoTheGamer who you mentioned had some problems progressing in Rust due to players having all the sweet loot. Try to set down a base near a fishing village and fish for a while. You'll get some scrap that you can bring with you to outpost/bandit camp and then get some high-tier loot. If you really want to be defensive, you can also loot, farm animals, nodes, signs at Outpost and then use what you get to trade for high-tier loot. You could also fish at Bandit Camp and get enough scrap to buy weapons and then trade people at bandit for any type of ammo/gear you would need without ever having to fire a bullet. The last tip would be to choose a similar strat already mentioned and go on a 2X-10x server. You'll be kitted in no time

 

[Zloth]

Fixing crashes in Forza could have a couple of different meanings.

 

[Ryzengang]

Just got in my first couple of matches of Halo Infinite and got an Overkill on my second match. It is really fantastic. It remains to be seen how 343 did with the campaign, but on the multiplayer side Halo is absolutely back in a big way.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played a bit more of Warhammer 2. In the co-op campaign I'm now almost ready to make my Necrofex doomstack, I just want to transfer the existing units over to another lord first. I just defeated the Dreadfleet faction, so I'll have to wait until their Legendary Lord is available for recruiting in a couple of turns. After that, I'll be free to start killing off some annoying factions that have been patrolling the seas around my capital.

In my single player Dwarf campaign, I decided to finally attack the Lizardmen faction that was holding a bunch of cities I needed to win, including one I needed to recruit my very own Carnosaur. Now, the faction I needed to defeat was Spirit of the Jungle, a horde faction that transfers control of every city they take to a vassal faction. This vassal faction gets an increased garrison in every city to help defend them, as the horde faction has limited income and therefore can't field enough armies to defend everything. In fact, it seemed the horde faction only had one army when I attacked. The turn after I defeated this army, the entire faction was confederated by another Lizardmen faction, transferring all of the cities of the horde and vassal faction to this new faction. However, this meant that every city lost its increased garrison and the new faction had no armies nearby to defend all of this new territory, so I was able to take almost all of it in a few turns.

 

[ZedClampet]

I played a bit more of Warhammer 2. In the co-op campaign I'm now almost ready to make my Necrofex doomstack, I just want to transfer the existing units over to another lord first. I just defeated the Dreadfleet faction, so I'll have to wait until their Legendary Lord is available for recruiting in a couple of turns. After that, I'll be free to start killing off some annoying factions that have been patrolling the seas around my capital.

In my single player Dwarf campaign, I decided to finally attack the Lizardmen faction that was holding a bunch of cities I needed to win, including one I needed to recruit my very own Carnosaur. Now, the faction I needed to defeat was Spirit of the Jungle, a horde faction that transfers control of every city they take to a vassal faction. This vassal faction gets an increased garrison in every city to help defend them, as the horde faction has limited income and therefore can't field enough armies to defend everything. In fact, it seemed the horde faction only had one army when I attacked. The turn after I defeated this army, the entire faction was confederated by another Lizardmen faction, transferring all of the cities of the horde and vassal faction to this new faction. However, this meant that every city lost its increased garrison and the new faction had no armies nearby to defend all of this new territory, so I was able to take almost all of it in a few turns.

I hope they bring a real vassal system back to 3. It's too restrictive in 2. But then again, confederation is pretty easy, but it's not as financially profitable as having vassals should be. Most of the time when you confederate, you find out that they couldn't pay for their armies, and your income goes down.

 

[Pifanjr]

I hope they bring a real vassal system back to 3. It's too restrictive in 2. But then again, confederation is pretty easy, but it's not as financially profitable as having vassals should be. Most of the time when you confederate, you find out that they couldn't pay for their armies, and your income goes down.

The reason you can't pay for the armies when you confederate is because every faction gets a base income of 2500. So you'll need to have an income of around 2500 before confederation to be able to pay for the existing armies.

I've never had a vassal in Warhammer 2, but it does seem like it would be fun to be able to fight alongside another faction's units, in a more reliable way than just being allied to another faction. I've never had an ally reinforce me in a battle, nor the other way around.

 

[ZedClampet]

The reason you can't pay for the armies when you confederate is because every faction gets a base income of 2500. So you'll need to have an income of around 2500 before confederation to be able to pay for the existing armies.

No offense, but it isn't the background income. I've confederated with countries who were $10k or more in the hole. On the higher difficulties, the AI cheats an incredible amount of money in. They'll have one settlement and two or three 20 stack armies. You just have to disband them when you take over.

Creative Assembly can't make the AI any better, so each level after "Normal" the AI just cheats more.

 

[Pifanjr]

No offense, but it isn't the background income. I've confederated with countries who were $10k or more in the hole. On the higher difficulties, the AI cheats an incredible amount of money in. They'll have one settlement and two or three 20 stack armies. You just have to disband them when you take over.

Creative Assembly can't make the AI any better, so each level after "Normal" the AI just cheats more.

Oh right. I haven't played above normal difficulty yet, I'm only on my second (singe-player) campaign. I'll probably try hard for the next campaign, as so far I just snowball as soon as I manage to take out my immediate neighbours.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Just saw the Nurgle trailer for TW:W3 and I'm getting pretty excited. Chaos was my favourite MP faction until they made heavy infantry more and more useless over time making them difficult to compete with.

The Mortal Empires campaign with all the new factions is going to be huge.

 

[CANTIKSATU]

ARMA 3

 

[DXCHASE]

At the moment, Destiny 2 has been put on the back burner since its season has pretty much run its course (they are usually 3 months, this season is 6 and were about half way through). So i have been playing Outriders since they released new missions and made huge changes, HALO Infinite which just dropped along with Bright Memory Infinite

 

[mainer]

Two games currently:
Mass Effect Legendary-ME1:
I've run into a sound issue here, so I'm sort of playing & sort of trouble shooting. The problem is that all sound will just stop in the middle of combat. There's sort of a "pop or crackle", then the sound just dies. I can hit "ESC" and reload my last save, and everything works fine. To make the problem worse, it doesn't happen with every combat situation, it's just random, but it completely breaks my immersion.

Looking at the Steam Discussions & Googling the issue, I've found that it seems to be a fairly common issue with other players as well. Most seem to attribute it to a surround sound issue. I'm not sure of that myself, as I've had no other issues with the game.

It looks great and plays smoothly on the highest settings, and the photo mode is fun to use, although I may download a mod that gives a bit more control to it.

Yeah, that's right, I'm into Asari:

Solasta Crown of the Magister:
I'm loving this game. It's very old-school and many aspects are similar to the old Realms of Arkania games (which I mentioned in another post). It's not a AAA game by any means, and the interaction with NPCs is a bit limited, but there's a really nice flow to the gameplay.

Character creation is just fabulous, with so many little details to consider @ZedClampet - I spent almost 3 hours just creating 4 characters. Roll those dice!

One thing I found a bit weird, was that certain skills have absolutely no effect in gameplay:

See those little "information dots" on the lower right of some skills? They have no effect on gameplay; basically useless skills. Useless skills in an RPG are, well....useless. I find it surprising that they included them if they don't serve any purpose.

On a positive note, there is a lot of interaction between your party members, based on all your choices in character creation. Many choices and skills do make a difference in how they interact with each other as well as important NPCs

Combat is the heart of Solasta, and while the TB combat is not as refined as what Larian has done with the Divinity OS games, it's very well done. Maneuvering your characters in varied terrain, with consideration to elevation, stealth, and pushing objects or enemies is very strategic.

My current party consists of a Dwarf Cleric, Half-Elf Fighter, Halfling Rogue, and High Elf Mage:

I wanted to do a Ranger character, but none of the backgrounds really fit (backgrounds are important), except the Wander Background which is only available if you buy the Primal Calling DLC, which is disappointing to me as that $10 DLC doesn't add any game content outside of adding the Barbarian & Druid Classes, Half-Orc Ancestry, and the Wanderer Background.

Anyway, happy nearly-the-weekend gaming my friends!

 

[Pifanjr]

Just saw the Nurgle trailer for TW:W3 and I'm getting pretty excited. Chaos was my favourite MP faction until they made heavy infantry more and more useless over time making them difficult to compete with.

The Mortal Empires campaign with all the new factions is going to be huge.

The new factions look amazing, but I'm even more excited for the quality of life changes. Formations being saved across battles is going to be amazing and the minor settlement sieges look great, though I do hope they'll be able to get the AI not to derp out too much.

Character creation is just fabulous, with so many little details to consider @ZedClampet - I spent almost 3 hours just creating 4 characters. Roll those dice!

D&D does have amazing character creation. There's just so many options to consider and to choose from. I think I spend more than 3 hours on the party I made in @ZedClampet's thread about it (too lazy to link it) and I don't even own the game.

It is weird they decided to just straight up ignore a bunch of the skills though. Not sure why they decided to still include them if they don't do anything. Maybe for the people who want to reuse a character from the game in a tabletop campaign.

 

[ZedClampet]

Time for work, but here's a picture of my train station I finished up in Satisfactory this morning. It brings all the goodies I manufacture at my original steel station, which will save me a lot of time.

(Never mind the giant FicsMas present behind the beacon I'm holding. I'm currently being bombed with holiday gifts.)

 

[mainer]

It is weird they decided to just straight up ignore a bunch of the skills though. Not sure why they decided to still include them if they don't do anything. Maybe for the people who want to reuse a character from the game in a tabletop campaign.

Definitely strange. The only thing I could think of was that they had originally had plans to include gameplay elements that made use of those skill checks, but ran out of time before the final release. It would have been better just to have taken those skills out completely, but at least they had the foresight to mark them as having no affect in the game. I had to re-create a couple of characters before I actually found that out.

Speaking of Solasta, one thing I wish they would do is to give players a hotkey to minimize the UI, as well as an option to scale it down a bit. The current UI just takes up way too much space on screen. While I appreciate having all those options available, especially early in the game, having options to minimize it and/or adjust the size of it would be nice.