What are you playing at the moment?

coldvvvave 2020-12-21 09:09:52 UTC #6731

I got tired of Cyberpunk 2077 very quickly so I got back to Tarkov. The I remembered that I was bored of it too so I wiped my account, reset everything to zero - skills, trader rep, hideout and even examined items. Boy did I forgot how screwed I was in the same position back in January when I first started playing. Basically with lvl 1 traders and no flea market you just can’t consistently run even budget gear which mean avoiding PvP completely. Going into a raid mid-wipe with no armor and a pistol or an SKS with bad ammo… it’s pure misery especially for new people who don’t know the basics, maps and loot locations very well yet, it’s a real trial by fire for new people. ‘Thankfully’ in time I have become a walking encyclopedia of bullet types and average market costs of loot items, not to mention I have sufficient knowledge of maps and my favorite map (Reserve military base) is chock full of good stuff if you know where to look even without the keys. I had about 2 mils worth of ‘found in raid’ gear in my stash before I managed to get level 10 which unlocks the flea market. Immediately sold AESA (700k) and some less expensive stuff. Ok now I have some money and I can afford good ammo and lvl4 armor, but no access to modded guns (getting weapon mods is way too overpriced on flea market, thankfully often people sell found in raid mid-tier weapons looted from raiders) and with low recoil control skill I’m probably stuck with SKS w/ BP ammo for a while and it honestly sucks. Only positive in starting playing late in the wipe is - most hideout related stuff is relatively cheap.

A small highlight in this miserable times (and in the game) was going into a raid with a pistol and one mag of ammo, no armor no nothing to complete a quest on Customs where you have to go into dorms (highly contested location) and open room 206. That’s it don’t even have to survive after that. I went there and then I realized I forgot the keys. Killed two bots and grabbed an AK74 with worst ammo possible and a flashbang grenade. On my way to the exit I walked past new gas station and towards the scav checkpoint, saw a body in the grass and heard a faint sound. Clearly someone was in a small shack near the concrete wall. I peeked into a window and saw something. Threw a flashbang and aimed at the door, immediately a PMC ran out of there. I think he got partially flashed because he ran into a wall but when I started spraying him with AK he returned fire, maybe shooting towards the sound. One mag point blank wasn’t enough so I pulled out the pistol and eventually got the headshot while the guy was trying to one tap me with little success. Turned out he had a tricked out AK74N with best ammo, a lvl5 vest I partially damaged and lvl 4 helmet with faceshield but it was not active for some reason. Clearly he panicked hard and flashbang really did its thing. I got out without problems and sold everything but the ammo and some mods.

PS. Back in January I got a standard edition and I later upgraded to EOD when it was on sale. I must say that bigger stash and Gamma container (9 slots instead of 4) really makes life much easier early on. Can’t say it’s pay to win per se but… man it wasn’t fun to run a 4 slot container it was not enough for keys+meds, I even threw (insured) keys away a few times to open up some space. I had to fast-grind to Epsilon (8 slots) back in January but it was not easy. There is also a 6 slot container you can just buy with ingame money (you CAN NOT buy ingame money from developers, just in case) but it’s not worth it. With Gamma (9 slots) I can bring meds, a couple of keys or a keyholder and even have a slot or two for a valuable item which means I can get a small profit even if I die (most likely all my low tier gear will return with insurance).

PS2. Oh and almost forgot I decided to never do scav runs. For no reason. just to see if I can. Turned out that I can.

Sarfrin 2020-12-21 10:04:59 UTC #6732

Given that I live in the UK, simulated getting drunk and punching somebody sounds very attractive, especially if one of the opponents looks like a government minister.

icemann 2020-12-22 03:03:13 UTC #6733

Treat skills exactly like in Fallout New Vegas. Every skill has a use, their more for building the type of character you want. Some also affect dialog choices (like in New Vegas). I would recommend at the very least dabbling in decking related skills, so that you can do some hacking. The general jist though is to pick a class and generally try to level up skills related to that class.

Quickness has a few effects - Firstly it gives a bonus to hit and dodge chance, and it sets the base maximum all skills that inherit from it are able to max at. So the higher your quickness the higher the skills underneath it (like a tree kinda). Ranged combat is only for increasing hit chance with ranged weapons and setting a further base maximum with any ranged weapon based skills underneath that (pistol, smg, shotgun and rifle).

How do those interact with each other?

Some skills directly interact as mentioned above. Others do not at all. All have a place and a use. Note that if you get cyber augments then that reduces your essence (or life force) which directly affects how much spell casting that your able to do. Makes sense from a logical perspective as your having parts of your body removed and replaced with robotics, so there would be less of “you” left afterward.

Is there any advantage to going for a pistol, given than an SMG is probably more powerful and has a longer range? No idea.

Well it’s subjective really as depends on play style. At higher levels (of skill)) you get free reloads, can do more damage, can disarm opponents etc. I personally Go pistol in most play throughs, but it’s completely up to you. There is no one “correct weapon” to go with. Play the way you want. This is an RPG afterall :).

As for best range though - Rifles have the best range.

Did I just make a totally gimped build?

No such thing in this game. In the first Shadowrun Returns game, it required a heavy amount of Matrix / cyberspace action, so not investing in that gimped you. Not the case in this one, or Hong Kong.

Extra note as you mentioned it later, AP or action points you can’t change or improve on via skill points. Your fixed at 2, until you level up to a certain point after which you’ll gain a 3rd AP to use. After that you get no more.

BillButNotBen 2020-12-22 09:22:43 UTC #6734

Cheers.

I’m kinda working it out. Still think the UI is horribly unituitive though (not only for skills, but for lots of other things). Or maybe it’s just not explained. I wonder if it was explained in the first game.

So, for example, if I boosted Quickness to 10, but didn’t boost Ranged or Pistol at all, would I be accurate with a pistol, or would that just raise my potential to be accurate?
Would Quickness 10 be better or worse than Quickness 5 + Ranged 5?
It seems like Pistol doesn’t increase accuracy, but increases chance for critical hits and unlocks perks. Maybe.

I want to go for a Quickness based Street Samurai with lots of cyberware, so I’m not really going to go after any of the magic or rigger stuff.
That said, I’m not sure how much other characters in the party can be used to overcome barriers. For example, in the intro mission one of the characters is a Decker and can be used for hacking and Matrix stuff. But that character doesn’t stay with you so at the moment I have a party with only really combat/magic.
But if I recruit a Decker at some point, can I use them whenever I need to hack something or do something in the Matrix? Or do I need the main character to have those skills as well?

Enjoying it so far, although the first real missions have been ‘switch 3 switches’ which the game itself tells you is boring, and ‘explore a hotel where each floor seems pretty samey’. So those haven’t been super exciting or varied.

The basic combat seems more interesting than something like Baldur’s Gate, but I’m a bit worried that all the perks are going to mainly amount to small percentage boosts, so it’s going to get samey after a while.

Any idea how to give equipment to another character? I thought I could put it in the store in the safehouse, but since I can’t control the other characters there’s no way to get them to pick it up.

Still… the game lets me have an Ares Predator… which is kinda a childhood dream. Can’t complain about that.

icemann 2020-12-22 12:35:42 UTC #6735

**So, for example, if I boosted Quickness to 10, but didn’t boost Ranged or Pistol at all, would I be accurate with a pistol, or would that just raise my potential to be accurate? **
Would Quickness 10 be better or worse than Quickness 5 + Ranged 5?

As there is no accuracy stat, this is me going from what I’ve seen across the 3 Shadowrun Returns games - Quickness 10 I believe would = the same accuracy boost as 5 in quickness 5 in ranged. And yes it’s more the potential to be accurate. I’m not sure on the pistol skill. That may improve accuracy further again or crits with pistols only. It may play a factor in how much damage done per shot as well (up to the max damage of the weapon). How far along in pistol skill you could go, would be determined by how high quickness and ranged are, and also sometimes racial max’s plays into it. Like intelligence and strength have a maximum (in red) they can’t go beyond based on the race you select.

The only spells worth going for is healing and maybe armor, as that does prove useful in the late game, when battles become more difficult. Completely optional to go, but it helps.

**I’m not sure how much other characters in the party can be used to overcome barriers. For example, in the intro mission one of the characters is a Decker and can be used for hacking and Matrix stuff. But that character doesn’t stay with you so at the moment I have a party with only really combat/magic. **
But if I recruit a Decker at some point, can I use them whenever I need to hack something or do something in the Matrix? Or do I need the main character to have those skills as well?

Some characters are mission specific, though that’s more in Dead Man’s Switch (the first SRR game). If I remember right, in both Dragonfall and Hong Kong you can use the same characters if you so choose to once you have access to the permanent party members. So if you level up a party member to be really good at something (eg hacking) then yes I believe you could use them for that whenever you take them along.

Some of the weapon based ones do special stuff like disarm, do a triple or double shot etc etc. Etiquette’s (which you gain more of via charisma skill I think) plays purely into dialogue. So if your looking for more dialog options, that is 1 path you could go.

There is no way to exchange items between party members annoyingly. If there was an item stash you had access to, whilst having them with you, then that’d be the way I think, but I don’t recall any such situations in the game.

sonson 2020-12-22 17:54:17 UTC #6736

I think Gears of War is the most stupid franchise ever made. I dont mean that in a pejorative sense because I dont think it has any intellectual aspirations whatever. Its literally just what it is, it is purely entirely its essence, by design and nothing else. People with big fucking guns kill monsters. It’s like someone played Space Crusade and has since devoted their life and tens of millions of pounds to create a room within a social and cultural vacuum to recreate that in high definition multiple times over without ever even stumbling on any other form of cultural pollination, self actualisation or subtext even by accident, in any form. Its timeless. As a cultural artefact it has as much to say about the context in which Gears 5 was made in 2019 as the original Gears did when it was made, which is to say, nothing.

The reason for this preamble is because I recently played Gears Tactics and had a great time with it, but I have nothing to say about it, besides that it is exactly what it is. If you want to enjoy a peerless display of little men and women smashing into, blowing up and shooting things, from distance or right in their faces, well…that’s what tactics is all about. Every single one of its systems is about facilitating fireworks of viscera. Your actions are limited but if you plan how best to use them If you’re really good at it you can kill dudes in one turn just for fucking days, man. If you dont plan very well then all the endless conveyor belt of things you are meant to kill will instead kill you very quickly.

That’s what it is. If you like the sound of That, it is the most filtered percolated variation of That in the world.

The End.

ToomuchFluffy 2020-12-23 06:43:21 UTC #6737

I think it’s possible to assign items from the stash at the start of missions, so shouldn’t it be possible to send items to the stash and then just redistribute? Embarassingly my memory of all of this is quite vague.

icemann 2020-12-23 07:22:14 UTC #6738

My knowledge on this one is down to knowing how the level editor works (since I’ve been working on a System Shock UGC for it for several years on and off).

If you have a stash present whilst you have party members with you, then yes you can transfer items. If you go to a vendor and buy items, whilst having said party members with you that is another way.

Just tested in-game - Confirmed. If there is a stash you have access to whilst your party members are with you, you need to place the item in the stash, then switch active party member (in stash screen) to the member you want to transfer to, then get them to pick it up. Also confirmed on when speaking to vendors, this acts as a stash screen as well.

Internet 2020-12-23 11:20:39 UTC #6739

It absolutely is possible to make a gimped build in Shadowrun Returns or any other game where a class is mostly dependent on one stat. A low CH shaman, or a low INT mage is going to be pretty useless. Etiquettes are another example of even application. It’s also possible to build OP builds, like the dual bot wielding Rigger. Generally characters / classes are designed to do one thing, and if you go against it you’re in trouble.

That said, I do appreciate the first, like Dragonfall, and love Hong Kong.

Naramsin 2020-12-23 11:56:37 UTC #6740

Before diving into CP2077 I gave Horiozn: Zero Dawn a go and I wasn’t liking it.

I mean I think I watched a lot of LP’s of it when it came out on PS4 so I roughly remebers where the story goes but playing it was not very pleasent experience. After initial tutorial I was thrown into another prolonged tutorial and being bombarded with quest out of every MMO starting area: collect 3 things from these robots, deliver beads to this woman, a robot run away with my spear, can you get it back. Meh, lost interest immediately, also I’m RDR2 kind of guy, I love how everything in RDR2 is slow and animated withut a care for HZD snapines, icons etc.

Also with Mandalorian series finished I bought SW:Squadrons on steam sale, time to dust of my flight stick.

icemann 2020-12-23 12:06:08 UTC #6741

Definitely. I’ve always gone combat hacker so never seen it. The only time you can have really crazy builds is on the fan levels stuff where some allow you to import characters, which combined with the further karma points can result is super buffed up characters than be multi-purpose (eg hackers that really kick ass in combat). Not something I’ve been able to do in any of the main games, except for maybe Hong Kong since that + it’s free expansion results in super high level characters. Though in the case of that, the difficult was ramped up bigtime towards the end to compensate.

sonson 2020-12-23 12:59:37 UTC #6742

I once wasted 50 hours of my life doing a solo run through of a high Dex rogue in Dragon Age Origins. After a certain point of pumping only dex your dodge becomes so high you can’t be hit by anything that isn’t magic. After that point if you focus on crits youre basically a shadow that kills things by touching them

BillButNotBen 2020-12-23 13:09:43 UTC #6743

I was mainly worried about picking a weapon specialization so early. Because I’ve played RPGs before where some weapons are either rubbish, or just really rare.
Also, in most computer games Pistols are rapidly superceded by SMGs, so even the most upgraded pistol becomes a rubbish choice. The main advantage of a Pistol probably being that it’d be easier to carry and hide, but that’s something that’s rarely modeled in computer games.

LexW 2020-12-23 13:20:13 UTC #6744

I definitely agree with the former, though I think it does occasionally indulge in caveman-style “philosophy” of a “This man am PRESIDENT but he am BAD MAN!” or “Government covered in fascist iconography and propaganda am ACTUALLY FASCIST!? Me am surprised and appalled!”, but yeah it’s um, I think calling it primary-school level would be insulting to primary school kids. It’s all “MUSCLE MAN/WOMAN AM SMASH BADDIES!!!”.

Clearly whoever created it thought Warhammer 40K was ridiculously effete and intellectual, and needed more steroids and NFL players. Though I won’t lie, I fucking love the NFL player dude and never tire of his dumb wisecracks.

Gears Tactics is absolutely great. I rate it over XCOM 1/2 at this point because it actually recognises what’s fun/interesting about that kind of game, and what’s a bunch of a stupid wank that’s only in the game because the game that inspired it had it, making an analysis Firaxis had historically been unwilling to (though Chimera kind of does).

sonson 2020-12-23 14:59:46 UTC #6745

Yeah I was trying to explain how its simplicity is integral to the game being great but I guess going a bit deeper I love how the classes are…well just exactly what you think they are, but they are exactly what you think they are.

Its not like in Xcom 2 where they’re kind of interchangeable up until they become overpowered. In Tactics the man dressed like a
American Football player whose every voice response is SHOUTING charges over things and stabs them and has a shouting attack, as like his base.

And theres so much variety but it’s so intuitive, like every class has 4 sub classes all of which make sense and are useful. I had one Scout who was all about recon, and she was great at running long distances undetected and flanking. I had another Scout who wasnt but she was the bomb specialist and she was great at blowing things up with bombs etc.

Also just that the best way to extend your turn is to kill things, and the way to lose is to get stuck because you havent prioritised killing things. None of the Xcom farting around trying to slowly bait things out etc. Like it’s honestly a masterpiece of using an albeit incredibly simple theme to create a piece of real elegance without losing any tactical integrity, and when the various pieces fall into play it’s just * chef’s kiss *. Even when Its not your turn! The little click of overwatch arcs being triggered followed by rifle cracks and machine gun bursts, the kinetic pleasure of grunts falling back or to their knees in the metal storm, the drama of clips running dry as some of the horde somehow still break through, phwoar.

The Boss Fights are shite mind

coldvvvave 2020-12-23 19:14:37 UTC #6746

As soon as I started playing Tarkov again… The Wipe actually happened, almost immediately. Or rather it’s tomorrow. Last one was in spring, I think. I’m freaking ready. It’s a good time to jump in for people who bought the game but didn’t get into it because they were dying constantly shot from across the map by people with FLIR’d up M1A-s (thank god devs more or less fixed that, FLIR’s are not as popular nowadays). Everyone will be running around with bad gear for a while. And there were some changes to smooth out the beginning. Expansion to my lsecond least favorite map (Woods). I’m optimistic, surprisingly.

Det.Bullock 2020-12-24 13:32:34 UTC #6747

I’ve triggered an ending for Hollow Knight.
Too many late game bosses and challenges were just a bit too close to NES sidescroller territory so I just ended it there and got the most basic ending.
I don’t exclude getting back to it some time in the future but I think I’ll leave it here for now.

LTK 2020-12-25 14:31:54 UTC #6748

I’ve been playing Below for a bit, starting on Explore mode since that’s what people recommended, but after a few hours I started over on Survival because Explore is kind of a half-baked easy mode. It removes the hunger and thirst meters (but not cold) but leaves all the food sources in the game, cluttering up your inventory with useless things for no reason. In Survival mode, hunger and thirst still don’t seem to do anything other than kill you when they deplete, but their requirements are reasonable and their inclusion makes a lot more sense given how much food you find.

I suspect that they’ve made some adjustments to the difficulty: the criticisms that I remember people making is that it’s too dark, traps are hard to see and kill you instantly, and you respawn all the way back at the beginning if you don’t invest one of your resources in a respawn point. But, you have both torches and a lantern available as light sources, the latter highlights traps in red, and there are only two types of those (so far) so even without the highlight they’re extremely easy to spot. Plus, enemies can trigger them, which lets you turn them into an asset.

The enemies themselves are pretty basic and, I must say, kind of uninspired. But they drop fuel for your lantern, which doubles as a ‘bonfire’ upgrade material, keys to open doors with, and something else I haven’t discovered yet, and I really like that mechanic. The stuff is easy enough to gather since every enemy so far dies in two hits, and there are enough of them that you can increase your reserve even with your lantern continuously burning.

So either Below isn’t nearly as difficult as everyone says or it’s been toned down since. Regardless, Survival mode definitely seems like the superior experience to me.

Edit: I stand corrected! Got killed by a third type of trap and promptly got sent back to square one: fresh off the boat with nothing but the sword and shield I started with. I guess that bonfire upgrade didn’t do the thing I thought it did.

Internet 2020-12-26 17:30:06 UTC #6749

I just beat Donut County, and I was a little disappointed. The writing was serviceable; that sort of flat affect that many indie properties have worked fairly well with the colorful animals. The graphics and music were well done.

However, the gameplay was a bit disappointing. The biggest problem was a lack of challenge. It was a series of arenas with very little puzzle solving involved; you move around one small area, stuff happens, you beat the level. That’s a real shame, because I’ve seen this mechanic better done in other games. A little more exploration, some better and more complex puzzles, and some much, much larger levels would have made this game shine.

As it stands, it was diverting but I doubt I’ll ever install it again.

BillButNotBen 2020-12-27 08:13:07 UTC #6750

Got a new gamepad for xmas and wanted to test it out, but didn’t really have any good games to try it on… so I went back to Superflight for a few minutes to test it… and then spent the entire evening trying to zip through rock arches and dive through small spaces at high speed.
Still a surprisingly addictive game, once you get past the stage of smashing head first into the rock the first 20 times.

I should probably try it in something like Assassin’s Creed 2, but I couldn’t be bothered with trying to remember all the bloody controls, or Elite Dangerous, but I couldn’t be bothered with booting it up.

I wonder if I can get the PC to recognize the gyro controls? That would be cool, but probably highly inefficient, for Superflight.

Also playing Just Dance 2020 on the switch with the kids… but hopefully no-one saw that.
I did one 2-player dance where I actually won! Only to realize I hadn’t pressed a button and that the computer had been playing Player 2 all along. doh.

PS/ Also at work and will be for the next few days, but RPS is down and most websites have no content so be warned that I may post pointless crap here if I get very bored. Even more pointless than the crap I usually post.