Gaming General Chat Thread

[ch3m1kal]

Hmm if you've been in there for that long you should be near the end of that section.

You go to a snowy mountain area after that.

I really wish that game did a better job at explaining its ridiculously impenetrable crafting and combo mechanics. I never really got the hang of it.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Magic & Mayhem has the best magic system of any game ever.
If that got remade I would probably pee blood in extreme excitement.
It's my own personal Final Fantasy 7.

[Kapol]

Well, I finally beat Cook, Serve, Delicious.

[unpronounceable]

I recently found a cool website for steam data: http://steamspy.com/

Not every game is on there, it looks like some devs/publishers would prefer to not have their sales data public, but it's pretty interesting to see exactly how much some games sell.

Going forwards, I'm going to try prioritizing games that have sold few copies. For example, Trace Vector deserves more than ~6.5k owners. I really liked it, and I'm more than willing to gush about the design if you want to hear.

[Kapol]

Telltale is making an episodic (I assume) choice-based game of a new series for them. Can you guess what it is? No peaking now.

It's Minecraft. Yes really.

Wat

[SAJewers]

Anyone remember this game?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/

[ANeMzero]

Well, I finally beat Cook, Serve, Delicious.

Just in time for them to announce a sequel.

[Omega Lairon]

I get this thing, primarily with my brother who's god-awful at any/every video game ever made, wherein I'll watch him play for a while, get frustrated at the lack of progress, and play the game for myself to prove how much better I am than him at it.

So... iHorner was playing Chroma Squad recently... (and yes, I know that streaming a game publicly and playing it privately are entirely different beasts)

Anyways, It was fun times, but I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to that game just yet. So I started fresh, just doing a "for funsies" casual run, where my team is a reasonable approximation of Teen Girl Squad.

So here's my problem: TGS has 4 members, Chroma Squad is teams of 5. Now there's a whole bunch of supporting characters I *could* use - I've sorta narrowed it down to Thomas (which works real well, being that there's an alien actor ready to go), Tompkins, or one of the Gregs.

Suggestions? Ideas?

I would also value input on other stuff like what to name the mecha (currently "Arrow'd Guy"). The only thing I've really got locked in is the "transformation shout" - i.e: "SOOOO GOOOOOOD!!!"

[unpronounceable]

Is there a way you could do Sir Hotbod Handsomeface?

[Kapol]

Why did I decide it'd be a good idea to get/play Alien: Isolation? And WHY does my stupid brain make me play it on hard? I don't like playing hide-and-go-seek with a creature that has a second mouth that'll eat my face.

Just in time for them to announce a sequel.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. No. Nopers. Nope.

[Kapol]

So the guy who makes Five Nights At Freddy's decided to say "screw waiting until Halloween" and released FNAF4 today.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I thought it was out in August.

[Kapol]

Last I knew, it was supposed to be released on Halloween of this year. Edit: Alright, it was pushed forward to August 8th, and Halloween will be when free, special DLC comes out. Fair play. Still, Scott doesn't seem to like waiting.

[Phailhammer]

He really doesn't. XD

I just hope he's coping with the expectations everyone has the series and the negative opinions a lot of people have about it.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

He gave Alpah versions to two Youtubers and they're currently shitting themselves over the jumpscares.
I must admit the atmosphere as a viewer seems more intense. You move from point to point, where you have a long period of looking at the floor.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I'm playing Skyforge. It's in open beta, and it's effectively a released game despite the Beta tag. Apparently progress won't be wiped either.

It's F2P with subscriptiony-type system that gives benefits. But you can buy sub time in in game currency.

Feels like Global Agenda meets DCUO. Which is nice. Too early to say if it's fun. But it's been fine so far. My only gripe is that the game doesn't tell you that you have to turn the globe to see more.

The aesthetics seem strange. It's like I'm playing a poor person's Mass Effect meets with a rich person's Tera.

The talent tree looks interesting. It seems like they looked at Path of Exile and thought "man, that's an awesome system! But, it's really overwhelming for new players..." So their solution is that the talent tree gets a bit more complex the more you unlock. Yay.

There's Vindictus vibe to it too. As in you have your main hub. Then you scoot off to small areas for objectives. None of this faffy open worldness. Which can be nice. A lot of MMOs kill themselves by having large open worlds with shallow content in it. Tera is an example of being exhausting to exist in.


(PS. BOINGY!)

[Kapol]

Just finished the second season of The Walking Dead by Telltale. I think I'm losing love for the series now that the "Telltale magic" has been spoiled for me. I'm about to rant about it, but if you want to avoid having it even potentially ruined for you (what Telltale does, not the game), don't read into the collapse.

Click to Expand

The thing I loved about the first Walking Dead was it felt like that your choices had actual meaning. The problem is, it only felt that way. Since playing through the first a second time, I've found that Telltale's magic is much like that of Disney Land. They keep you focus on the interesting parts in front of you. They make sure you don't think about the fact you're actually just on a ride.

And that's what Telltale games are, a ride. You can't really change the outcome. Not in any meaningful way. It doesn't matter how hard you work, or what you say, the path always stays the same. But they manage to trick you into thinking you can. Mentioning a choice every now and then. Allowing you to slightly effect the outcome. But, in the end, it doesn't change what happens.

Mechanically, it makes sense. They don't have the budget of Mass Effect. Nor the ability to keep track of what would be an absurd amount of branching paths required to make every decision truly count. But still... how little your choices affect the game really made it much harder for me to get sucked in. The big choices had much less of an impact on me because I knew that, in the end, they were meaningless.

Do I blame Telltale for doing it that way? No. Like a movie or Didny Lan, they have to fake as much as they can to make it enjoyable. It's just made it tougher for me to get into them.

TL;DR: Don't replay Telltale games. I'll talk about the Walking Dead's second season when I've processed it a bit.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Last night I had a dream, and it heavily inspired an idea for a Game Mechanic/Aesthetic.

Necromancer Support. Takes bits of the enemy and uses them to mend their allies. Can even be corpses! Perhaps do a switch-a-roo.

Main Tank broke his arm? Switch his arm with the enemy's. Tank has good arm, and enemy now has a broken one!

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Finished playing Dragon Age Inquisition DLC: Trespasser.

Sole gameplay I don't think it's worth £12. But story-wise it's worth it.

I do feel exhausted from the game now.

They've built up a Villain who you will be reluctant to fight. Makes you wonder how the eff they'll pull off Dr4gon 4ge

[mtvcdm]

I appear to have reached a point in a Facebook game called Galacticos Football where my regular money (as opposed to my Nice Things Money) is only good for one thing: signing players to my team that I then immediately send to my reserves squad, where they will languish and never get activated to play again because I have better players and knew that when I signed them. (There is no contract length; you have someone forever once you sign them, unless you sell them to raise money to get someone else.)

I imagine that there's some sort of ethical dilemma about giving a guy $200 million and then immediately telling him to go sit in the corner for sucky players and stay there forever. I also imagine that there's an ethical issue about doing this to many, many players at the same time, as I have not yet discovered an upper limit to the players I can have in my reserves.

I intend to think this ethical quandary over while I attempt to buy every player in the game for this purpose.

When you give me video game money, I will be a cruel man is my point.

[SixFootTurkey]

I'll take a $200M salary to not have to play a single game any day.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I think there isn't an ethical issue.
It's just how is the money then spent.
If they spend that money on killing their soul, then perhaps it's kinder to fire them.

[mtvcdm]

Well, it's video game money. Really it only has value to me. There's nothing in the game THEY get to spend it on. I have money, I give it to them and then it goes POOF in their hands.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Then it doesn't matter.

[SixFootTurkey]

In a real world scenario, your habit would be known and players who didn't want to take that risk would refuse to sign with you. I don't see an ethical dilemma here, merely a system that doesn't quite go deep enough.