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Pandabeer wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Total Warhammer as Empire.
First time playing it.

Some things I noticed
- the load times are really long

They're the only games I've bothered setting up a secondary Steam library up on my SSD for. I was at 4-5 minutes to load into a campaign and over a minute to load into a battle. I'm fairly patient but that was absurd. Now it's about 20 seconds to load into a campaign and about 5 to load into a battle.

Well that's just horrible programming then. If they are going to design the game in such a way that it takes ages to load on a type of disk most people have, they should have the decency to put SSD under recommended requirements.

Yeah. My PC specs are enough to run it at Ultra, but load times are just horrendous. I looked around and the basic recommendation was they should be on an SSD to reduce the load times. If anything, they should be putting SSD in the recommended specs, but that will probably still scare enough people off that they don't want to do it.

SSDs aren't that expensive anymore. They're at a price point that anyone who uses his PC for more than just Office and checking their Facebook (so everyone who still uses desktops for the extra power they offer over laptops really) would be crazy not to get one. It just makes the computer so much snappier. No more minutes of waiting before you can actually use windows after booting, shorter loading times in games, etc.

They're not expensive, but I don't think they're that common. The load time sare so horrendous that playing TW Warhammer without one is a pretty bad end user experience. That they're not putting them in the recommended specs tells me that the gathered system data from Steam is telling them while they're not expensive, they're still not common. So I'd guess they're waiting for SSDs to get more common before putting them in them recommended specs. TW games are just going to get slower and slower loading times as they get bigger and more detailed, so putting SSD in there will happen. Not to mention size - TW games are big, like 40gb+ big. SSDs aren't yet all that big, and while average SSDs will fit a TW game, they will consume a large portion of it. Both TW Warhammers together for Mortal Empires is 70gb (that's if you also want TW Warhammer 1 installed to play its campaign too). A 256gb SSD will lose about 40% of it's space to the games.

Most likely just a matter of timing in regards to sales.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Playing Kingdom Come Deliverance, early game is rough, but it gets better.

Getting any glitches? Watched Skallagrim's video on it and that game seems like a fountain of bugs.

Yes, plenty, nothing gamebreaking, but I might wait for a patch now.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Playing Kingdom Come Deliverance, early game is rough, but it gets better.

Getting any glitches? Watched Skallagrim's video on it and that game seems like a fountain of bugs.

Yes, plenty, nothing gamebreaking, but I might wait for a patch now.

Thats what I did.

Been playing a slow Campaign in Mortal Empires as Archaon. Trying to get an elite Horde on each Continent before I burn it all down.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Playing Kingdom Come Deliverance, early game is rough, but it gets better.

Getting any glitches? Watched Skallagrim's video on it and that game seems like a fountain of bugs.

Yes, plenty, nothing gamebreaking, but I might wait for a patch now.

I had a beneficial glitch. I did a save before trying to pick a lock on a door but then had to quit. Load it back up later and I was on the other side of the locked door and could just open it from there and knock out the poor fool in the house

Still totally hooked on Fortnite, save the world (not battle royale). My non-gamer fiance is more hooked than me though, but we end up playing all night rather than watching TV. Our DVR is nearly full, we haven't watched any TV in like 3-4 weeks.

So beat the empire campaign. Trying VC counts now, because their mechanics looked interesting.

I'm really liking how CA tried to make each faction feel unique by giving them each a different set of mechanics in an attempt to mimic the table top game. That's a nice touch.

However, playing VC makes it apparent how broken the auto resolve system is. I could completely outnumber the enemy and be close to victory on the battlescape, but autoresolve will tell me I have a 0% chance of victory.
Apparently this is because ranged and artillery units are heavily favored in autoresolve because its assumed that they will use all of their ammunition and the other side will just sit there and take it, and also zombies count negatively towards your own score. VC do not have ranged units (which is pretty faithful), but they do have zombies.
Of course, this means you can trick the AI into suiciding into your superior force, as the AI uses the auto resolve check to determine matchups.
It also means you will always be fighting the battles personally, as you can't rely on auto resolve. So gone is the strategy of getting two doom stacks and auto-winning the game, which is how I won the last one. Seriously, two Empire stacks with Franz and loaded up with halberds, reknowns artillery, cav and greatswords vs Archaon and Lord Change = easy win. On normal that is.

Also, VC buildings are bloody expensive. I guess its to balance the fact that their units are so cheap and easy to recruit. Technically you don't need military buildings as you can just use famous battle sites, but I like to have them to access hero units and raised dead cost more dark magic than just recruiting them, unless you have a general specced for that.

I picked up Dying Light for cheap on Friday. Lots of fun parkouring around and bashing zombie head with a claw hammer.

Pretty great visuals, decent voice acting, suitably cartoonishly evil big bad guy. I can see myself putting a lot of miles in Harran.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
So beat the empire campaign. Trying VC counts now, because their mechanics looked interesting.

I'm really liking how CA tried to make each faction feel unique by giving them each a different set of mechanics in an attempt to mimic the table top game. That's a nice touch.

However, playing VC makes it apparent how broken the auto resolve system is. I could completely outnumber the enemy and be close to victory on the battlescape, but autoresolve will tell me I have a 0% chance of victory.
Apparently this is because ranged and artillery units are heavily favored in autoresolve because its assumed that they will use all of their ammunition and the other side will just sit there and take it, and also zombies count negatively towards your own score. VC do not have ranged units (which is pretty faithful), but they do have zombies.
Of course, this means you can trick the AI into suiciding into your superior force, as the AI uses the auto resolve check to determine matchups.
It also means you will always be fighting the battles personally, as you can't rely on auto resolve. So gone is the strategy of getting two doom stacks and auto-winning the game, which is how I won the last one. Seriously, two Empire stacks with Franz and loaded up with halberds, reknowns artillery, cav and greatswords vs Archaon and Lord Change = easy win. On normal that is.

Also, VC buildings are bloody expensive. I guess its to balance the fact that their units are so cheap and easy to recruit. Technically you don't need military buildings as you can just use famous battle sites, but I like to have them to access hero units and raised dead cost more dark magic than just recruiting them, unless you have a general specced for that.

Normal is easy. Like, literally. 'Easy' in TWH is the difficulty previous TW games would call 'Easy'.

I never play on less than Hard.

Been playing Dynasty Warriors 9. As you may have heard, it's Open World this time around.

On the one hand, I miss the old scenario maps. On the other, it's kind of nice to look at the big map of ancient China, and see where all the action is focused for the current missions in comparison to where the previous missions took place. If you're curious where Luoyang and Chibi are in relation to each other, you can check the map. And you can ride from one to the other. It helps put things in perspective as the action shifts from one part of China to another.

On the downside, most of the criticisms are fairly accurate. You're given a grappling hook, which is kind of nice. The problem is that it allows you to bypass just about *everything*. And it's quick. Watchtowers have a ladder that you're supposed to climb to reach the top. Or you can walk up to the tower and use your grappling hook, which will get you to the top faster than the ladder. City sieges usually (though not always) have a siege tower and a battering ram that allow you to get past the locked gates and into the city. Or you can walk up to the wall and use your grappling hook. And so on (it should be noted that sometimes the tower and/or ram aren't part of the assault, and you're forced to use the grappling hook to finish the mission; there doesn't seem to be any particular rhyme or reason as to why they're in some assaults, and not others). Also, the lack of mission maps means that in most fights, you can bypass the blocks of enemy troops (and sometimes there can be a lot of them) and make a bee-line for the mission's target officer(s). Defeat them, and the enemy troops run away.

On the positive side, the Open World introduces a concept called the "Front Line". The map is filled with cities, villages, encampments, and bases. All of them belong to one side or the other (or a third side - bandits). Defeat enough enemy troops and officers, and the location becomes controlled by your side. But you can't just run up to any old location. The location has to be along the "Front Line" (identified on the map by all of the crossed swords symbols). There the spots in between the two sides, and those are the only locations with troops. Locations back behind the Front Lines don't have troops occupying them, which means that there's no one to defeat, which means that you can't take control of it. Cities, villages, and encampments are the primary locations to contest over. But there are usually a few small bases located on the road between each of those (with anywhere from between one to four squads of troops). Taking a location on the Front Line pushes the Front Line back to the next location along the road or roads connected to that location. So with some patience, you can quite literally take over all of China.

Also note that the whole thing is dynamic even without player interference. It is possible for NPCs to move the Front Line as well. They're not as good at it as the player is. But they can do it. Areas behind the Front Line will send squads up to support the Front Line conflict spots. Additionally, roving squads with minor named officers will pick spots to assist with. With a little bit of luck, one side or the other will win the battle in a Front Line location, and cause the Front Line to shift.

All in all, it's a pretty cool system.

Also, the Front Line system plays into making things a bit easier for you. Each Chapter section has one overarching mission that needs to be completed to advance the storyline. Each Chapter Section also has a series of side missions. Completing the side missions will make the final mission of the section a little easier by reducing the level of the enemy troops and officers there (additionally, they'll clue you in to important things going on that might be a bit in the background compared to the main focus). Further, capturing the important base locations adjacent to the where a mission takes place will also reduce the levels of the troops and officers by a small amount. So understanding the system can help you out if you're having trouble.

At the start of the game, you can only play as the leader of one of the three factions - Cao Cao, Sun Jian, or Liu Bei. Additional characters are unlocked by playing through the game's chapters (characters in the same faction as your current character are unlocked at the end of the chapter sections they first appear in; characters in the other factions are unlocked at the end of the full chapters). If you want to play Wei, but want to play as, say, Xiahou Doun instead of Cao Cao, then you can switch to him after the first fifteen or so minutes (about how long it takes you to unlock him and another Wei character). Unfortunately, chapters within a particular faction tend to play identically regardless of which specific character you're playing. Initially, you can only play new characters in the chapter that they're first available in. But after you've reached a new chapter while playing a specific character, you can always go back and play that chapter with that character. When a character leaves the story (usually because they died), a short video epilogue is played, and you're unable to use that character to play through any further new chapters (you can use "completed" characters in what's called "Free Mode" in any unlocked chapters including ones they don't normally appear in, though events don't play in that mode)

I've finished Cao Cao's storyline, and am currently working to finish the rest of the chapters as Sima Yi. Once I finish the whole thing, I'll go back and play the Wu and Shu storylines. Additionally, there are a several unaligned characters (Dong Zhou, Lu Bu, the leader of the Yellow Turbans, and some others) that have their own stories.

I'm playing on the PS4. I've heard complaints about low frame rates, though if that's an issue I haven't really noticed it. I've heard that the PC release is pretty bad, though.

Huh. Open-world Dynasty Warriors. That's interesting.

Are there, like, day/night cycles, where there's more or less activity? Is there an economy system, or markets or whatever to do when you're not actively fighting?


Also, when do you think they're finally going to make an Arthurian Warriors game?

Haven't heard anything about Arthurian, but they did make a Hundred Years War game - Bladestorm.

These days, though, aside from the required Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors repeats (and the mash-ups like Warriors Orochi and Warriors All-Stars), they do licensed stuff. Gundam (though it's been a while since the last one), Berserk, Legend of Zelda, Attack on Titan (haven't played it, but apparently it's a bit unusual for a musou game given that you're going after powerful titans instead of hordes of random mooks), among many others.

There is a day/night cycle in DW9, though I'm not sure if it has any effect on the game aside from changing the amount of light. There are civilians in the cities and towns. But they don't move. You can talk to a few of them in each city (helpfully identified on the mini-map) to get a sense of the mood in China during that particular chapter.

The civilians disappear when there's fighting at their location, and only come out after the fighting is over.

Is it normal for the Von Carstein AI to do absolutely nothing? It doesn't take territories, it doesn't expand, all it does it sit in West Sylvania with like 2 vargheists and bats.
I eventually got tired of dealing with such dead weight (heh) and confederated them so I can give West Sylvania commandments and get access to a legendary lord.

Playing FE Fates. Because that game drags on and on and the waifu dynamic is a train wreck you can’t look away from.

Decided to pick up NieR: Automata.

Now, if you were to ask me to describe the game, I'd have to say.. it's an experience..?

Fun game so far, but so.. different from what I usually play.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Is it normal for the Von Carstein AI to do absolutely nothing? It doesn't take territories, it doesn't expand, all it does it sit in West Sylvania with like 2 vargheists and bats.
I eventually got tired of dealing with such dead weight (heh) and confederated them so I can give West Sylvania commandments and get access to a legendary lord.

Yes this is quite common, the other scenario is that they simply steamroll everything and everyone and spread like a horde of unwanted relatives come Christmas. But that has for the most happend to me when I have played as Clan Mors or the Last Defenders

I'm curious about Nier as well. It looks neat, but brawlers are definitely not what I usually play.

It's not a brawler though, at least not a Street Fighter game.

It's a third person fighter, but with elements of a side-scroller, top-down bullet hell and RPG mechanics thrown in on top of it.

Fallout: New Vegas

Street Fighter is a Fighting Game. A Brawler is like Bayonetta, or in a lot of ways the Dynasty Warriors series. Brawlers are PvE, and focused on lots of combos and action. Like, the old Ninja Gaiden games were Brawlers, as is Shiv. They're very often side-scrollers.

Last game I played was Civilization V.

I used to be a warmonger who would invade during the medieval era, but I have since changed my ways and now establish peaceful trade routes with all the other civilizations.
As a result...

I have lots of money

(still struggle with managing happiness though)

 SirStudent wrote:
Last game I played was Civilization V.

I used to be a warmonger who would invade during the medieval era, but I have since changed my ways and now establish peaceful trade routes with all the other civilizations.
As a result...

I have lots of money

(still struggle with managing happiness though)

My favourite game of Civ was one where I ended up in a cold war, of sorts, with Greece. That is until I launched a mass nuclear strike against them using my nuclear submarines hiding throughout the oceans and under the icecaps (it helps when you control all the sources of Uranium). The resulting population loss and fallout affecting their major cities and surrounding tiles tanked their economy, making them easy pickings after a few turns letting them hemorrhage money.

Second place goes to a game of Civ 2 where I encountered a civilization still using spears when I had modern firearms. That was the game where my civilization was a communist totalitarian regime with all the cities under martial law.

I'm playing Civ VI right now myself. First time playing since Civ 4.

I went for the difficulty that's one less than the standard difficulty, because I've got no idea how, well, anything works...

I'm kinda near the end of my 10 person game now and it looks like the only one that's really ended up being particularly strong is Trajan, who is apparently 50% of the way to a science victory, with me, Saladin and him being the last ones left in the 'information' era.

I'm kinda curious about the science one, is it entirely possible say, that Trajan could just end up jumping forward on all the projects and like, finishing in a couple of turns?

Sea of Thieves beta at the moment. At least until this stress test is over in the morning. Got a full crew running a Galleon, plundering poor fools. It is a ton of fun. I highly suggest it.

Anvildude wrote:
I'm curious about Nier as well. It looks neat, but brawlers are definitely not what I usually play.

Nier is a lot of different game types. It goes from God of War Combo Brawler to side scrolling beat em up to flying bullet hell game to open world adventure all within about 5 minutes of play. It happens very regularly in this game. The changes of perspective and how seamless they are really makes the game interesting and keeps you on your toes. I highly recommend it. The story is very good but be warned, you have to beat it 3 times to get the full story because of the different characters and their endings. Those are just the main endings. You can get far more in the game. Some silly and others really interesting.

It is an amazing game that deserves all of the praise it gets.

Original Star Wars Battlefront on XBOX nearly day for 10 fringin years.....oh my

I finished that Civ 6 game. Turns out I was on Warlord difficulty.

I've got to say, overall, yeah, it was kinda boring. I mean, I played hours and hours of it over the week, but still yeah, kinda boring.

Playing an old version of FIFA to reminisce about when my team was personable and fun.

 BrookM wrote:
Decided to pick up NieR: Automata.

Now, if you were to ask me to describe the game, I'd have to say.. it's an experience..?

Fun game so far, but so.. different from what I usually play.

Come for the booty, stay for the engaging story and the tears and the cries of "how can a game about machines be so human!"

Aaaaaand back to Victoria II

I'm playing the "DOWNLOAD THE 10.SOMETHING GB DOWNLOAD FOR RAINBOW SIX"!

Playing Hunt: Showdown.

FPS Battle Royale type game, with zombies of various size, toughness and abilities, bounties for boss creatures(which is the main objective of the game), set in vaguely Western/Bayou locales. A little rough around the edges, as its still in Early Access but still fun. It has everything that I wanted PUBG to have, such as choices of equipment loadouts to start the game, experience/skills for your Bounty Hunter, and much more interesting level design. Even when I get killed early into a match, its still pretty rewarding if you had killed a decent number of zombies or other bounty hunters, as you get money and xp for those to spend on actual items to use, instead of just a vest or new socks, etc.

Battle Royale type games seem like they are a dime a dozen and are to 2017/2018 what Open World sandbox games were to the previous years, imo. Most of them are pretty questionable quality, or just tacked onto another game, but this game was built from the ground up to be a solid and uniquely atmospheric contender in its respective genre.

If you're into these types of games, I recommend this one, but would advise waiting until general release.