Flak cannon all the way, but I spent many days in high school instagibbing my friends so the shock rifle does hold a special place in my heart.

The way the first paragraph is written made me think this is a garbage AI article, but I guess it was a joke. I hate this future.

I’m with you, I’m having a blast, but I think the reactions are because of the idea that it would be a Skyrim type game and… It’s not really even trying to be that. Like you said, it’s an ARPG, the roleplaying is basically just dialogue and most of the game is really well done exploration and combat.

Yeah, I was watching Potato McWhiskey and this is his take. They have metrics that show most people don’t actually finish a game and that indicates a pretty big flaw in game design.

One interesting thing the devs brought up was the ability to pivot from one civ to another based on new information. Like if you discover your continent is mostly plains and horses, then maybe your next iteration looks more like the Mongols, with bonuses to cavalry. If your early conquest didn’t go off, maybe you pivot to a more science or culture oriented civ.

I don’t hate these ideas, it just depends on how it actually feels in game.

It’s subjective. Easy builds can be super fun. Especially if you earned it by getting some gear. It’s also an accessibility issue. Not everyone is 25 years old with lightning reflexes (or, conversely, not everyone has 20 years of history with the genre).

Anyway, my point was only that if you’re bored with being OP, try something different. If you think you’re invincible but killing things is a slog, maybe shift your gear to be more offensive etc. The way these games work, difficulty is entirely up to you.

I enjoyed D3 and D4, I think they both do difficulty well (at this point, D3 was stupid at launch). In both there are now hundreds of fine grained tiers you can shift up or down to find the right difficulty for your gear/build/skill.

That said, holding down a button to win is more of a build issue unless you’re running embarrassingly low difficulty. There will always be easy builds and more challenging, technical, timing based builds. Finding a fun build is part of the fun of ARPGs.

I feel guilty about it, but I appreciate the monthly pass. I played EUIV for exactly one month, at a total cost of like $7 (got the base game for free at some point) with all the bells and whistles. It seemed like a good compromise because you’d have to pay it for years at this point to cover the DLC out right, but it is a disgusting level of rent seeking behavior.

Now it bothers me that I’d need to put another $7-$10 into the machine to access those saves, but not as much as if I’d throw down hundreds of dollars on it to own the content for a 10 year old game.

I have a few hundred, but 5500? Sheeeit. The game is definitely evergreen though.

Can’t wait for the expansion, 10/21. I’ve been putting off a new play through for it, and Wube always puts in so much polish (as the FFFs show).

Perfect headline.

Already happens on streaming, at least with TV. Watched a few episodes of House a while back and they changed the great Massive Attack theme to some generic sound-alike. Honestly put me off a rewatch more than some of the other parts of the show that didn’t age well.

I think there are some exceptions. Like Kitfox publishing Dwarf Fortress. Taking weird little indies and giving them an art / usability budget to become more accessible and, in turn, make the OG devs a bunch of money. Nobody loses.

Seriously. I remember first getting into Deity and realizing it’s basically just exploiting intimate knowledge of how the AI works. The actual max difficulty is Prince, where the AI doesn’t get bonuses, and it’s so terrible at actually pursuing an agenda it’s not very challenging.

I am a bit hopeful that VII’s decoupling leaders and civs will force the AI to be a bit more generally good. At least make it so you don’t know exactly what sort of tactics to use from the first turn you meet it.

The most recent Hitman games are best in class. Three games worth of levels, rogue-like mode to string them together randomly with random objectives if doing the story again isn’t your thing.

I’m excited to see what IO does with the James Bond franchise too. Even if it’s just a reskinned Hitman, it’d be worth it.

That trackpad was a game changer for playing KB+M games with a controller, but to be honest sometimes I really miss the right joystick. The trackpad can fake it, but it’s not the same.

If they ever do another standalone controller I’d want it to be like a screen-less Deck. Both joysticks and trackpads and a couple more grips.

Surprised to see the opinions on V/VI not being as good. I’ve played every interation of this game and they all brought something to the table. VI and the districting gameplay added a lot to the game. One unit per tile in V also made combat more tactical than doom stacking around.

The big thing I’d like in a new one is less cheaty AI. It’s just so boring that winning on Deity is basically exploiting AI foibles instead of… you know, building a stronger nation on an even keel. At the highest difficulty AI should get no bonuses but still be really good at playing the game.

It’s easier to release tools for a map based game with no real story. Devs have tools to create content, of course, but making something (tools, APIs) safe and logical enough for the public to consume is a task that can easily get backburnered on the way to release.

Sims 3 was my favorite for the open world and freelance jobs too. Was nice to be able to secure an income without disappearing off the map for 8 hours a day. Was surprised 4 didn’t follow through on that as much but I only played it a little.

My wife plays Sims with cheats all the time and I get that it becomes a fancy interactive dollhouse in that case, but to me the game is all about that progression from bachelor in a one room box to old family man in a mansion.

That review is bullshit. It’s not going to tax your machine, but that’s a good thing. The unit type thing is also missing that not the entire game takes place on the battlefield, there’s multiple layers to it and you almost never win through pure domination.

EDIT: Also, ground vehicles? This is Dune, you can’t cross sand in a vehicle, and they couldn’t go up cliffs. No, instead you airdrop, which is way more flexible.

Yeah, you’re totally right. I’ve leaned into the “rather chill than sweat” gaming camp in the last few years. It’s nice to play games that are friendly and non-violent. SDV and Talos Principle 2 have been my gotos recently.