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Finished The Witcher 3 the other day (105 hours total). Now I'm playing Hand of Fate. Surprisingly very enjoyable.

Shogun 2 Total War. Playing pretty aggressively and expanding rapidly as the Takeda Clan (the Red guys with good cavalry - my favourite clan).

-I took North Shinano, then marched south and conquered the Hojo.

-I subjugated a couple of the minor Clans east of me and made them Vassals, then mopped up the Imagawa to my south west after the Oda brought them to their knees.

-I allied with the Oda to secure my southern borders (the Oda have a huge empire and appear to hold Kyoto).

-Then the Uesugi began attacking my vassals to my east, so I conquered them and now I hold a lot of territory east of Shinano (the lands formerly belonging to my vassals Yamanouchi and Ogigayatsu, and the Uesugi).

-But now the Date are attacking me, so I'm having to push all the way east to the end of Japan.

-I managed to bottleneck and massacre a huge Date army of mainly Samurai by having my Daimyo Takeda Shingen hold a bridge east of Shinano with huge masses of yari and bow ashigaru.

-Now the way is clear to advance east. But now the Honma are gobbling up Date territory. I've allied with the Honma for now to delay hostilities, but eventually I'll need to deal with them before I push West to take Kyoto from the Oda. Still, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on the Honma's Gold Mine island.

-Just when I defeat one threat, another pops up that needs exterminating, like a never ending game of whackamole. My Noteworthiness or Imperium whatsit is getting very high now so very soon the clans to the West (Oda and Hatakeyama) will become hostile.

@SCE: You need to be careful with realm divide. There was a whole thread made on dakka about shogun 2's realm divide. It's that freaking bad. Basically all your enemies ally together against you so if you don't think you can handle that yet then be careful. Use diplomacy to kiss some major *** and make good on alliances. Either way every turn the allies and neutral parties you have get more and more hostile to you so be careful. I get the feeling even vassals turn on you at that point if possible.

Fired up Starbound this weekend for the first time in ages. Put a lot of hours in and having fun.

But Terraria gets a massive update today so will probably be playing that again now.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Shogun 2 Total War. Playing pretty aggressively and expanding rapidly as the Takeda Clan (the Red guys with good cavalry - my favourite clan).

-I took North Shinano, then marched south and conquered the Hojo.

-I subjugated a couple of the minor Clans east of me and made them Vassals, then mopped up the Imagawa to my south west after the Oda brought them to their knees.

-I allied with the Oda to secure my southern borders (the Oda have a huge empire and appear to hold Kyoto).

-Then the Uesugi began attacking my vassals to my east, so I conquered them and now I hold a lot of territory east of Shinano (the lands formerly belonging to my vassals Yamanouchi and Ogigayatsu, and the Uesugi).

-But now the Date are attacking me, so I'm having to push all the way east to the end of Japan.

-I managed to bottleneck and massacre a huge Date army of mainly Samurai by having my Daimyo Takeda Shingen hold a bridge east of Shinano with huge masses of yari and bow ashigaru.

-Now the way is clear to advance east. But now the Honma are gobbling up Date territory. I've allied with the Honma for now to delay hostilities, but eventually I'll need to deal with them before I push West to take Kyoto from the Oda. Still, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on the Honma's Gold Mine island.

-Just when I defeat one threat, another pops up that needs exterminating, like a never ending game of whackamole. My Noteworthiness or Imperium whatsit is getting very high now so very soon the clans to the West (Oda and Hatakeyama) will become hostile.

I usually play as Uesugi your historical mortal enemies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
@SCE: You need to be careful with realm divide. There was a whole thread made on dakka about shogun 2's realm divide. It's that freaking bad. Basically all your enemies ally together against you so if you don't think you can handle that yet then be careful. Use diplomacy to kiss some major *** and make good on alliances. Either way every turn the allies and neutral parties you have get more and more hostile to you so be careful. I get the feeling even vassals turn on you at that point if possible.

Yeah I don't like the realm divide because even your allies and vassals seem to turn on you no matter what you do. I think it should be handled that everyone picks a side rather than everyone turning against you.

Ok so apparently i just beat xcom: enemy within on impossible ironman which is quite the feat considering how few people beat impossible difficulty or classic/impossible on ironman mode. To do a successful ironman run is quite hard to say the least. Oh and tell those xcom 2 devs that impossible ironman being canon for xcom 2 isn't true (or at least not a small percentage of the time). Like all xcom campaigns once you have full titan armor, some firestorms, vets and full plasma weapons then you become seriously hard to stop esp. with multiple upgrades on everything. I became somewhat reckless even for the past few days (in real life) when playing that game.

So to sum up everything i beat impossible ironman, the xcom 2 devs are making up excuses and i now need something else to play.

I've been slowly plugging away at Mount and Blade. There's a Game of Thrones mod I plan to play after conquering Calradia. I should also start my annual Mass Effect playthrough at some point too.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Ok so apparently i just beat xcom: enemy within on impossible ironman which is quite the feat considering how few people beat impossible difficulty or classic/impossible on ironman mode. To do a successful ironman run is quite hard to say the least. Oh and tell those xcom 2 devs that impossible ironman being canon for xcom 2 isn't true (or at least not a small percentage of the time). Like all xcom campaigns once you have full titan armor, some firestorms, vets and full plasma weapons then you become seriously hard to stop esp. with multiple upgrades on everything. I became somewhat reckless even for the past few days (in real life) when playing that game.

So to sum up everything i beat impossible ironman, the xcom 2 devs are making up excuses and i now need something else to play.

Congrats to you! I'm still trying to beat it on easy.

Started into Dragon Age 3 there. Im struggling with it so far tbh, lots of dinky, uninteresting side quests so far, the characters are no where near as compelling or interesting as DA1 and the whole closing rifts things is fairly tedious. Does it get better?

 Ratius wrote:
Started into Dragon Age 3 there. Im struggling with it so far tbh, lots of dinky, uninteresting side quests so far, the characters are no where near as compelling or interesting as DA1 and the whole closing rifts things is fairly tedious. Does it get better?

Wait, Origins had characters? I think you'll find it had cardboard cutouts with stickers labelled personality on them.

Meh, I thoroughly enjoyed Morrigan, Alistair et al. Even Leliana had this quirky weirdness going on. So far this has none of their appeal.

Hey Carlos, are you talking about Clash of Kings? That mod adds a ton of stuff, but isn't entirely accurate. It's missing a few things, but overall is pretty good. I personally find it a lot harder than vanilla as well.

 2BlackJack1 wrote:
Hey Carlos, are you talking about Clash of Kings? That mod adds a ton of stuff, but isn't entirely accurate. It's missing a few things, but overall is pretty good. I personally find it a lot harder than vanilla as well.

I think this might be directed at SkavenLord

 Ratius wrote:
Meh, I thoroughly enjoyed Morrigan, Alistair et al. Even Leliana had this quirky weirdness going on. So far this has none of their appeal.

All the sprites in DA:O were essentially defined by a personality trait, IMO.

I honestly prefer DA2 for characters, and DA:O for story+Gameplay.

Inquisition is a combination of both of those, aside from when it feths itself...

Playing some more Fallout NV. This game just seems so much better than Fallout 3

It is, IMO.

As an overall product, I'd agree.

But for an RPG, I'd disagree. Far too linear.

Than FO3? This was a game made start to finish in a mere 13 months (most games get 2-3 years), and managed a less linear storyline than FO3. And it was damned interesting too. And the chracter writing was much better too, I actually got invested with the characters, unlike 3.

Spoilers:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Than FO3? This was a game made start to finish in a mere 13 months (most games get 2-3 years), and managed a less linear storyline than FO3. And it was damned interesting too. And the chracter writing was much better too, I actually got invested with the characters, unlike 3.

Spoilers:

Spoiler:

With 3, it's "This is your dad, you care about him because he is your dad. He has died, feel sad because he is your dad." NV on the other hand, I actually cried when E-DE sacrificed himself, and he's a robot that doesn't even have true AI. And there were multiple ways to complete almost every quest as well.

The issue with NV is that you're forced on this major questline as it locks out the majority of the quests, short of powerlevelling or capfarming.

It took me 4 hours to complete the main questline for NV and get bored.


As for characters, the characters in NV have [i]less[/u] personality than FO3. How many characters in NV aren't defined by a trait? The guy who shot you in the suit was defined by his lust for money. Caesar's personality was his lust for power. Mr House, his lust for control. So on, and so forth.

In FO3, the characters had flaws. Apart from Megaton. The scientists were too altruistic. The corporations were trying to advance technology, but were shackled by greed. Most people haven't interacted with the majority of characters in FO3. Outside of the main quest, there are tonnes of characters who are actually interesting. Like the Ghoul family in the DLC.

Actually, there was one character in NV who had an ounce of personality! The comedian in the strip.

Yeah, my bad. I don't know where I got you from, sorry.

I've gone back to M2 total war, and forgot how incredibly annoying it is to play any of the central European factions in the global campaign. Playing as Denmark, I've been in a position to neutralise the HRE, England, and Scotland for many turns, but none of them has set a single toe out of line with the Pope yet, and are all on decent terms with him, so my axes are tied. Meanwhile, the HRE keeps threatening me with attacks if I don't pay them, and marching stacks through my land towards my settlements.

Can I do anything to stop them without declaring war? No. If I do declare war, can I pursue it? No. Can the HRE? Yes, because the Pope hugely favours AI factions. What's the end result? HRE and its friends throw armies at me until they get bored and offer a ceasefire, and I can't do gak back until I get catapults/trebuchets and can besiege, assault, and capture settlements in the same turn.

You still get crapped on reputation-wise just for resisting and fighting only when attacked, and reputation only really matters for players, so it's a real lose/lose situation until someone gets excommunicated.

Tried playing TF2, but the game keeps stuttering and lagging. Anyone know any way to fix this? I heard certain launch options worked, but the ones I've tried haven't worked so far.

World of Warships is now in Open Beta...

The things I have already seen ...

Warships stopping to shoot because they think it's more accurate that way.

Warships camping behind an island, moving forward, shooting, and then "reversing" back behind the island.

Battleships, the ones supposed to hit the damage to protect their team mates, running away as soon as someone hits them once.

And the chat...

Starting in on Pillars of Eternity, which I got during the Steam Summer Sale, while giving TW3 breaks for a bit (I often work from home, so needed a game I could play in 10-minute stretches).

PoE is like a Baldur's Gate upgrade, with the same real-time-but-turn-based combat mechanics, a mechanics systems modeled after d20, and a so-far grim fantasy world. Really enjoying the quests and the gameplay, though some fights are just... brutally unfair.

 Psienesis wrote:
Starting in on Pillars of Eternity, which I got during the Steam Summer Sale, while giving TW3 breaks for a bit (I often work from home, so needed a game I could play in 10-minute stretches).

PoE is like a Baldur's Gate upgrade, with the same real-time-but-turn-based combat mechanics, a mechanics systems modeled after d20, and a so-far grim fantasy world. Really enjoying the quests and the gameplay, though some fights are just... brutally unfair.

They're really not unfair.

Baldur's Gate and IWD literally have starter bosses that can wipe PARTIES with ease.

IWD in particular, wear you start with a max of D10 health on characters pits you against enemies with shortbows which do 1d8. And you, at best, have chainmail. And the system for damage is clunky af. It's sort of a reverse of modern DnD, in that the lower your armour class, the better your defense.

As much as I want to fall in love with PoE, it's not the spiritual successor that it needs to be. As someone who played, and still plays the old DnD games, Pillars is way too easy. I'm playing it on hard, Trial of Iron, and have blasted my way through it with no effort.

 thedarkavenger wrote:


IWD in particular, wear you start with a max of D10 health on characters pits you against enemies with shortbows which do 1d8. And you, at best, have chainmail. And the system for damage is clunky af. It's sort of a reverse of modern DnD, in that the lower your armour class, the better your defense.
.

That's D&D 2nd edition (and probably first too). Baldut's Gate also uses the same rules. I remember as a kid being very confused with how the heavier lookign armor made the numbers go down instead of up.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Starting in on Pillars of Eternity, which I got during the Steam Summer Sale, while giving TW3 breaks for a bit (I often work from home, so needed a game I could play in 10-minute stretches).

PoE is like a Baldur's Gate upgrade, with the same real-time-but-turn-based combat mechanics, a mechanics systems modeled after d20, and a so-far grim fantasy world. Really enjoying the quests and the gameplay, though some fights are just... brutally unfair.

They're really not unfair.

Baldur's Gate and IWD literally have starter bosses that can wipe PARTIES with ease.

IWD in particular, wear you start with a max of D10 health on characters pits you against enemies with shortbows which do 1d8. And you, at best, have chainmail. And the system for damage is clunky af. It's sort of a reverse of modern DnD, in that the lower your armour class, the better your defense.

As much as I want to fall in love with PoE, it's not the spiritual successor that it needs to be. As someone who played, and still plays the old DnD games, Pillars is way too easy. I'm playing it on hard, Trial of Iron, and have blasted my way through it with no effort.

Started playing Baldur's Gate 1 recently... My party was wiped by the first bear I wandered across ...my player character (Ranger/Archer) and Imoen (thief). And I'm playing on Normal difficulty...

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Than FO3? This was a game made start to finish in a mere 13 months (most games get 2-3 years), and managed a less linear storyline than FO3. And it was damned interesting too. And the chracter writing was much better too, I actually got invested with the characters, unlike 3.

Spoilers:

Spoiler:

With 3, it's "This is your dad, you care about him because he is your dad. He has died, feel sad because he is your dad." NV on the other hand, I actually cried when E-DE sacrificed himself, and he's a robot that doesn't even have true AI. And there were multiple ways to complete almost every quest as well.

The issue with NV is that you're forced on this major questline as it locks out the majority of the quests, short of powerlevelling or capfarming.

It took me 4 hours to complete the main questline for NV and get bored.



As for characters, the characters in NV have [i]less[/u] personality than FO3. How many characters in NV aren't defined by a trait? The guy who shot you in the suit was defined by his lust for money. Caesar's personality was his lust for power. Mr House, his lust for control. So on, and so forth.

In FO3, the characters had flaws. Apart from Megaton. The scientists were too altruistic. The corporations were trying to advance technology, but were shackled by greed. Most people haven't interacted with the majority of characters in FO3. Outside of the main quest, there are tonnes of characters who are actually interesting. Like the Ghoul family in the DLC.

Actually, there was one character in NV who had an ounce of personality! The comedian in the strip.

Meh, I don't get that. New vegas' world brought me in, while in 3 I found the world dull and uninteresting. Now I will admit I have played mutch more of New Vegas than 3, so that colours my opinion somewhat, but that's what I found. Take the metro series for example, an extremely linear FPS which had a much more interesting world and story than FO:3. And I rather liked the NV characters, they were grey. There were no good or bad guys. They all had their good and their bad.

Well... bears are godless killing machines so could you really expect to just roflstomp one?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Starting in on Pillars of Eternity, which I got during the Steam Summer Sale, while giving TW3 breaks for a bit (I often work from home, so needed a game I could play in 10-minute stretches).

PoE is like a Baldur's Gate upgrade, with the same real-time-but-turn-based combat mechanics, a mechanics systems modeled after d20, and a so-far grim fantasy world. Really enjoying the quests and the gameplay, though some fights are just... brutally unfair.

They're really not unfair.

Baldur's Gate and IWD literally have starter bosses that can wipe PARTIES with ease.

IWD in particular, wear you start with a max of D10 health on characters pits you against enemies with shortbows which do 1d8. And you, at best, have chainmail. And the system for damage is clunky af. It's sort of a reverse of modern DnD, in that the lower your armour class, the better your defense.

As much as I want to fall in love with PoE, it's not the spiritual successor that it needs to be. As someone who played, and still plays the old DnD games, Pillars is way too easy. I'm playing it on hard, Trial of Iron, and have blasted my way through it with no effort.

Started playing Baldur's Gate 1 recently... My party was wiped by the first bear I wandered across ...my player character (Ranger/Archer) and Imoen (thief). And I'm playing on Normal difficulty...

It's not just bears. I remember at one point, due to my party setup. (PC was a low level inquisitor and Imoen was useless) I hit an unwinnable miniboss in Friendly Arm Inn. This was required to progress the story. Due to playing it as I felt the character would, and NOT hiring the random 2 evil dudes in the middle of nowhere, I got punished.

In IWD, the first mob can literally one shot any non-tank character.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:


IWD in particular, wear you start with a max of D10 health on characters pits you against enemies with shortbows which do 1d8. And you, at best, have chainmail. And the system for damage is clunky af. It's sort of a reverse of modern DnD, in that the lower your armour class, the better your defense.
.

That's D&D 2nd edition (and probably first too). Baldut's Gate also uses the same rules. I remember as a kid being very confused with how the heavier lookign armor made the numbers go down instead of up.

I knew of that, and it was also badly implemented. Forcing attacks to use the D20 roll system keeps faithful, but it's clunky as anything.

 GrimDork wrote:
Well... bears are godless killing machines so could you really expect to just roflstomp one?

LOL, have an excerpt. I really loved reading that. Gotta love Stephen Colbert