What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims

[LibraryOgre]

New thread, same as the old thread.

And, like the top of the sixth thread five and a half months ago, I'm playing Wrath of the Righteous. Still. I'm really making a go of finishing it, i swear, but they DO hate people without touch spells in this game, don't they?

[The Glyphstone]

I noted that very quickly in my playthrough so far. They also hate people who don't have Displacement effects on them, between the sky high ACs and ludicrous attack boni. I do wish I could figure out how aggro works - having frontline tanks is useless when they can't even block corridors to keep the casters safe.

[Cygnia]

Hubby is playing Chicken Police right now. I'm trying to finish up Talos Principle before I try it.

[halfeye]

Mainly go on KGS, I have also been playing some spider solitaire just before bed, that tends to go badly for my bedtime.

[zlefin]

There's so much (well justified) salt on the path of exile forums; it's quite dramatic. I'm kind of enjoying reading it just for the drama.


I played monsters den: godfall for awhile; it's nice. I'd say not quite as good as monsters den: chronicles, but still pretty good. The core gameplay is very similar. It has a lot of additions and some new content, but as a 'game' the balance and some design choices make it slightly less fun I think. For instance, due to the way setting your party works, it's not generally worth it to identify what the dungeon is like and then send a party that'll be good for that environment. Instead I mostly just set one party and get through everything with that. You don't start with the slots to level multiple parties at start, so by the time you can afford more, you'd have to level them up quite a bit for them to be useful.

[Rynjin]

There's so much (well justified) salt on the path of exile forums; it's quite dramatic. I'm kind of enjoying reading it just for the drama.

What's the salt about? I was considering trying to play that again this season.

[Anteros]

New thread, same as the old thread.

And, like the top of the sixth thread five and a half months ago, I'm playing Wrath of the Righteous. Still. I'm really making a go of finishing it, i swear, but they DO hate people without touch spells in this game, don't they?

I'm doing OK without them in my current core difficulty run, but I am playing pretty optimized. At least as far as I'm able within my own abilities and not looking up guides. It's not hard to be rocking 40+ to hit and ac in early chapter 3 even with something simple like a base paladin. I did level Woljif as a vivisectionist instead of rogue though. Being able to put self buffs on party members is completely broken.

I noted that very quickly in my playthrough so far. They also hate people who don't have Displacement effects on them, between the sky high ACs and ludicrous attack boni. I do wish I could figure out how aggro works - having frontline tanks is useless when they can't even block corridors to keep the casters safe.

My experience is that there's no such thing as aggro for ranged attacks but melee will tend to attack whatever is closest. I tend to play harder battles in turn based mode though so I have a bit more control.

[NRSASD]

Hubby is playing Chicken Police right now. I'm trying to finish up Talos Principle before I try it.

Ooooo enjoy the Talos Principle! It’s a good time and a lot of fun.

[MCerberus]

When I get home I'm going to download Saints- *looks at reviews*
Immortal Empires it is. Dwarf time. THEY HAVE WRONGED US

[Anonymouswizard]

On Saints Row 2, started the second Brotherhood mission, and died five times. The game just has enemies approach from pretty much every angle, and health regeneration takes much longer to kick in than the later games. It's a shame, because I really like the game, but some of the early missions can be unbearable.

I do see why SR3 toned down the seriousness, the Boss has no real sense of restraint in this game. But at the same time the more grounded gangs and selfish main character make it compelling. Plus the clothing is much better done, even if I'm currently just wearing a tube top to show off my character's tattoos.

...okay, the Deckers and Morningstar would probably have worked in a serious plot, the latter takes the place of Ultron as the people pulling the strings behind these other gangs, and the Deckers become cybercrime specialists you have to draw out into the open. It's just the Luchadores who are a bit silly.

[Cygnia]

Ooooo enjoy the Talos Principle! It’s a good time and a lot of fun.

I've only a few of the red sigils (and 2 stars) left to get -- unfortunately, the puzzles they're behind have those bloody proximity mines that I just can't seem to move fast enough to maneuver around them in time (yes, I'm using the shift button to sprint and no, none of these are puzzles I can parkour my way into solving).

[NRSASD]

I've only a few of the red sigils (and 2 stars) left to get -- unfortunately, the puzzles they're behind have those bloody proximity mines that I just can't seem to move fast enough to maneuver around them in time (yes, I'm using the shift button to sprint and no, none of these are puzzles I can parkour my way into solving).

Have you figured out the fun interactions with boxes and proximity mines?

Spoiler: Spoilerific Secret Mine Technique

Show

You can place the box on top the mine and ride it!

[MCerberus]

*tries to download Immortal Empires patch*
steam is down
WRONGED US

well I did get in and it is beautiful

[Cygnia]

That, I was able to figure out (eventually). But, alas, for these particular puzzles, that trick is no-go

Spoiler: Puzzles left

Show

Egyptian Arcade
Whole Lotta Jammin'
Higher Ground

These three have me showin' my age in terms of reaction time. Even when I use jammers where they're supposed to be used, I just can't seem to sprint fast enough to avoid the damn mines!

Seven Doors of Recording
Criss-Cross Conundrum Advanced

These 2 involves recording me -- I'm just damn lazy and was hoping to solve those earlier puzzles first.

(and one more on either C6 or C7, plus the star in Seven Doors)

Technically, I've the tower and all the white sigils save one to solve as well -- and the 30th star.

LOVED being able to parkour my way into solving Labrynith though.

[zlefin]

What's the salt about? I was considering trying to play that again this season.

There's a number of things. The biggest being that they reduced item drops to a fifth or something of what they were before; and didn't put it in the patch notes; only mentioning it later when the community noticed drops were horribly horribly off.

Some lesser bugs, like crashing bugs, a few temporarily broken subsystems; in and of themselves not too bad, but it compounds the annoyance. These at least are getting fixed in the hotfixes fairly well; but you only got one first impression, and it really annoyed a lot of people.

They made archnemesis stuff standard for all rares, in all the different subsystems like delve, incursion, etc; it's possible to get several archnemesis mods on one rare foe at higher levels. They've been toning it back somewhat, but not nearly as much as they should have based on the complaints I've seen. Complaints like: some taking 10+ minutes to kill; some being tougher than Sirus/other end game foes. Some instakilling you from a screen away even with full health and heavy defense spec. Some regenerating faster than you could possibly hurt them. Many of them giving barely anything for how tough they are.

Much harder to maintain maps, especially with any kind of boosts to the map. Numerous top streamers noting they don't get much running 6 man teams with maximally juiced maps and tons of MF. Many streamers simply stopped because it wasn't worth it or they were losing resources with each run, or not gaining enoguh to make it worthwhile.

Poor communication by GGG that only partly responds to complaints, and doesn't really address the obvious problem that people pointed to. Insensitivity; like a post that barely acknowledges the complaints with some weak glaringly inadequate fixes and ends with an ad for some of their mtx or somesuch. The lead of the game seems to be doubling down on the things people are most annoyed by.

The main mechanic of the new league having almost no drops most of the time. Most say it's simply not worth doing until very very late mapping stage.

Some people are also upset over a major change to the economy; something about divine orbs and exalted orbs switching purposes or something, that massively decreased the value of the stuff some people had collected in their standard accounts.

Harvest gutted to the point where it often drops nothing at all; and it may take several sets of plants to get a single craft. Some other harvest changes as well I think that removed some options people liked.

[Drasius]

There's a number of things. The biggest being that they reduced item drops to a fifth or something of what they were before; and didn't put it in the patch notes; only mentioning it later when the community noticed drops were horribly horribly off.

Some lesser bugs, like crashing bugs, a few temporarily broken subsystems; in and of themselves not too bad, but it compounds the annoyance. These at least are getting fixed in the hotfixes fairly well; but you only got one first impression, and it really annoyed a lot of people.

They made archnemesis stuff standard for all rares, in all the different subsystems like delve, incursion, etc; it's possible to get several archnemesis mods on one rare foe at higher levels. They've been toning it back somewhat, but not nearly as much as they should have based on the complaints I've seen. Complaints like: some taking 10+ minutes to kill; some being tougher than Sirus/other end game foes. Some instakilling you from a screen away even with full health and heavy defense spec. Some regenerating faster than you could possibly hurt them. Many of them giving barely anything for how tough they are.

Much harder to maintain maps, especially with any kind of boosts to the map. Numerous top streamers noting they don't get much running 6 man teams with maximally juiced maps and tons of MF. Many streamers simply stopped because it wasn't worth it or they were losing resources with each run, or not gaining enoguh to make it worthwhile.

Poor communication by GGG that only partly responds to complaints, and doesn't really address the obvious problem that people pointed to. Insensitivity; like a post that barely acknowledges the complaints with some weak glaringly inadequate fixes and ends with an ad for some of their mtx or somesuch. The lead of the game seems to be doubling down on the things people are most annoyed by.

The main mechanic of the new league having almost no drops most of the time. Most say it's simply not worth doing until very very late mapping stage.

Some people are also upset over a major change to the economy; something about divine orbs and exalted orbs switching purposes or something, that massively decreased the value of the stuff some people had collected in their standard accounts.

Harvest gutted to the point where it often drops nothing at all; and it may take several sets of plants to get a single craft. Some other harvest changes as well I think that removed some options people liked.

Pretty good summary.

It amuses me that the streamers and ZoomZoom players are now finding out what it's like to play PoE as a casual for the last 10 leagues or so, and it turns out they don't like it.

[Rynjin]

Ah.

Bad time to give it a try then, I take it.

Well, there's always PoE 2?

[Anteros]

I don't play POE anymore so I've got no dog in the race, but in general when devs cave to whining by the vocal parts of the community it almost always makes the end product much worse. Lower drop rates aren't necessarily a bad thing, at least for the parts of the community that enjoy things about the game besides the endgame grind. When things are harder to get, it makes it more special when you do get it.

Dunno, I could be completely wrong, but just because the community is whining doesn't automatically make something bad. I've seen too many communities go through this and absolutely ruin the games in question when the devs finally caved.

[Rynjin]

Maybe projecting an experience that isn't relevant here, but low drop rates were a big part of why Diablo 3 sucked ass on launch, so I typically assume if that specifically is being complained about it's legit. The low drop rates there didn't make drops feel special, it just made the game feel hella grindier and unfun.

[Anteros]

Maybe projecting an experience that isn't relevant here, but low drop rates were a big part of why Diablo 3 sucked ass on launch, so I typically assume if that specifically is being complained about it's legit. The low drop rates there didn't make drops feel special, it just made the game feel hella grindier and unfun.

Well, I played Diablo 3 several years after release, but none of the drops in it ever felt special regardless.

I'm probably not the target audience for these games though. I typically play the campaign and maybe a tiny bit of post-game and then never touch them again. I'm definitely not the player that's running the same post-game maps thousands of times to farm stuff, so I'm not nearly as affected by these types of changes.

[Cazero]

So, you can't play Immortal Empires in singleplayer at all without also buying TWarhammer 1 and 2, but in multiplayer it only restricts your LL selection to TWarhammer 3 and free DLCs?

[WritersBlock]

Decided to try out Terraria. Got lucky with a weapon drop (legendary tentacle spike weapon with 22 base damage) early. And this is definitely a game where inventory management puzzles are a thing.

[factotum]

I do see why SR3 toned down the seriousness, the Boss has no real sense of restraint in this game. But at the same time the more grounded gangs and selfish main character make it compelling. Plus the clothing is much better done, even if I'm currently just wearing a tube top to show off my character's tattoos.

SR2 always struck me as having a bit of a split personality. On the one hand you had a game where there were side missions where you had to spray poop on houses to lower property values or run naked through the city scaring as many people as possible, and on the other one of the main missions has you put the gang boss's girlfriend in the boot of a car which he then unknowingly runs over with a monster truck, the implication being she gets crushed to death. It was like that one mission in GTA: San Andreas where you had to drown the manager of a rapper so your friend could get further in his music career--I never liked having to do that because the ends most definitely did not justify the means.

[Zombimode]

So, you can't play Immortal Empires in singleplayer at all without also buying TWarhammer 1 and 2, but in multiplayer it only restricts your LL selection to TWarhammer 3 and free DLCs?

Yes. That is not a surprise, isn't it?


I'm still on Elex 2 which means I still have some time on deciding which faction to pick first for Immortal Empires.
I was going with Belegar, but considering the sorry state of K8P making that race does not seem worthwhile atm.
Instead I'm leaning into Reikland. In the current state of Immortal Empires, the Empire seems to be threatned by multiple enemies, from the outside and from within. Usualy leading to the Empires destruction with no player involvement. This seem to be a good time for a "save the Empire" style campaign :-)

[GloatingSwine]

So, you can't play Immortal Empires in singleplayer at all without also buying TWarhammer 1 and 2, but in multiplayer it only restricts your LL selection to TWarhammer 3 and free DLCs?

Yeah. Mortal/Immortal Empires was always the combined campaign for owning all of the games. The big change for 3 is that in a multiplayer game only the host needs to own the previous games.

I'm going to wait for Bretonnia now until they get a little more attention, since they've been left with the slowest cav in the game now which is just morally wrong. I've started a playthrough as Drycha, it's going pretty much as expected but it's not quite as easy to manage diplomacy as it used to be because you get less friend points for beating up Vlad than you used to for Mannfred. Zhufbar hate me because I sold some settlements to Stirland, who they are at war with for no sane reason.

Will either do Katarin or Ku'gath next I reckon.

[Rynjin]

It's a little annoying they didn't figure out some way to patch that material into 3 because between 1, 2, and 3 you're looking at like 200 gigs lol.

[GloatingSwine]

It's a little annoying they didn't figure out some way to patch that material into 3 because between 1, 2, and 3 you're looking at like 200 gigs lol.

It is in 3?

You don't need 1 or 2 installed, you just need to own them all on the same store. In fact the IE patch made Warhammer 3 about 20GB smaller (and improved performance a good bit, but not up to Three Kingdoms/Troy level).

Like that's how Mortal Empires worked as well, you didn't need 1 installed for that.

[Rynjin]

Ah, I assumed the reason you needed 1 and 2 for 3 was the same as needing 1 for Mortal Empires in 2 and you had to have both installed.

Edit: Apparently I'm completely misremembering needing to have 1 installed for 2. Not sure why I was so sure about that.

How do they check that you own both other games? If you're multiplatform (eg you own 1/2 on Steam and 3 via Game Pass) are you SOL or do they have some kind of account signup and verification I'm forgetting about?

[Drasius]

Ah.

Bad time to give it a try then, I take it.

If you're new, you won't really be missing anything since you have no baseline for what it used to be, and if we're honest, your first league you're going to be learning how to play, making a bunch of mistakes, figuring out how everything works and won't be getting any good drops anyway. If your goal is to simply finish the campaign, you can do that in maybe 10-20 hours with terrible gear and no idea on how to play. If your goal is to see most of the story or even just some of the endgame bosses, it'll likely take you quite a while, probably in the hundreds of hours as a minimum.

Well, there's always PoE 2?

Not really? PoE2 is basically the same game, but with a different campaign (the campaign is effectively the tutorial). It's also highly speculated that everything that they're doing now to PoE 1 is to prep the playerbase for the massive slowdown that PoE2 is going to be. Needless to say, this has also copped a significant amount of flak from the playerbase.

I don't play POE anymore so I've got no dog in the race, but in general when devs cave to whining by the vocal parts of the community it almost always makes the end product much worse. Lower drop rates aren't necessarily a bad thing, at least for the parts of the community that enjoy things about the game besides the endgame grind. When things are harder to get, it makes it more special when you do get it.

Dunno, I could be completely wrong, but just because the community is whining doesn't automatically make something bad. I've seen too many communities go through this and absolutely ruin the games in question when the devs finally caved.

Loot was cut by *roughly* 90% virtually across the board, with only Heist, Expedition and to a lesser extent, Delve and Blight seemingly unaffected. I like to level criticism over entitled players whining about PoE as much or more than the next person, but in this case, it's probably at least a little justified. Now, don't get me wrong, they've been showering us with stuff for *years* with obscene drop rate multipliers for league content, and it should certainly have been looked at, but making significant reductions in player power, significant increases to monster power *and* only handing out ~10% of the lot you were all at the same time is not the way to get the community on board with your ideas/vision for the game.

They just (like, 2 hours ago at time of posting) released a statement about walking back some of the changes, but they did so in exactly the way the community predicted and in doing so, have managed to make most people even more upset.

[Zombimode]

How do they check that you own both other games? If you're multiplatform (eg you own 1/2 on Steam and 3 via Game Pass) are you SOL or do they have some kind of account signup and verification I'm forgetting about?

Simple. Multiplattform is not supported.

But that has been the case for Mortal Empires as well, so no suprise there, really.