What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims

[PhoenixPhyre]

I nearly got booted from my first run of the second-to-last ARR dungeon because I was watching the cutscenes and at one point fell behind due to missing the thing that lets you get in the walker things.

That's the WORST experience I had, but the general lack of patience and "speedrun mentality" is omnipresent in dungeons. The Dungeon Roulette is a genuinely awful addition to the game because it makes people feel obligated to get randomly placed in dungeons they have zero interest in and ruin new player experiences as a result.

That had to have been a long long time ago...because those have been mandatory cutscenes for a darn long time. And then a year or so ago they got completely revamped.

I've seen "must pull" a couple times. Out of the 7 years or so I've been playing it. Generally everyone waits for cutscenes no problems. Or if they don't, it's because they got in the zone and weren't paying attention.

Only exception has been Syrcus Tower when it's on moogle tomestones. Partly because that's the go to "get it done quick" one.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, I've tried to play FFXIV many a time over the years. The first time was when Heavensward was about to come out, the last time was around when Shadowbringers came out.

[MCerberus]

It must have been some luck then but I mostly ran white mage in dungeons ARR + HW and especially towards the end (the most recent xpack launch) it was a swarm of tanks that say 'w2w' then nothing unless it's a complaint about being too slow, dps pulling more mobs, and... actually the healers were pretty cool when I was tanking, telling me if I'm being stressful or boring but going along with the tank's chosen pace.

It's especially bad compared to boss duties where people would excuse wipes and calmly try to explain... whatever madness goes on on King Mog - hard. (the mentors still got grumpy on extremes though)

[Resileaf]

It's a huge meme in FFXIV that mentors are anything but mentors and are just wearing the crown to get rewards.

[Cygnia]

Still getting used to Hades. Having a controller hooked up to the PC is much better than keyboard henpicking.

I got the most important achievement.

Spoiler: Said achievement

Show

I petted Cerberus 10 times

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Spoiler: Said achievement

Show

I petted Cerberus 10 times

I am pleased to report that most of the games I’ve played recently had something similar, including Strange Horticulture, Midnight Suns and I think ESO added an achievement fairly recently too.

[Razade]

Still working my way through One Piece Odyssey. It breaks up my game time routine enough that I can't devote a whole lot of time to it. I want to hear the voice acting, and the characters are very chatty even outside of cut scenes but it makes it impossible to listen to a podcast or show while I'm decomp'ing for the evening so it just keeps me anxious and it's hard to focus. In the last dungeon though and not likely to try and 100% the game after I get to the end credits. The game got a lot more fun when I put random battles on two times speed and let the game automate it, and faster too, but that's not what I want out of a JRPG. One Piece does pretty much all the heavy lifting for the game, which is both a plus and minus, I just wish the JRPG elements were a little stronger. The game has a lot to work with, and it just doesn't try to use anything it introduces that'd make for an otherwise stellar JRPG. I'll be back to Chained Echoes once I'm done, and then Tactics Ogre or the new Fire Emblem...probably the latter.

[SerTabris]

It must have been some luck then but I mostly ran white mage in dungeons ARR + HW and especially towards the end (the most recent xpack launch) it was a swarm of tanks that say 'w2w' then nothing unless it's a complaint about being too slow, dps pulling more mobs, and... actually the healers were pretty cool when I was tanking, telling me if I'm being stressful or boring but going along with the tank's chosen pace.

It's especially bad compared to boss duties where people would excuse wipes and calmly try to explain... whatever madness goes on on King Mog - hard. (the mentors still got grumpy on extremes though)

I feel like some of this might depend on what world or at least data center you're on. I haven't had any problems like this on Crystal, anyway.

[Gnoman]

The timing mentioned may also be when a lot of players were switching from World of Warcraft to FFXIV - those two games have a very different approach to how content is handled.

[Razade]

Finished One Piece Odyssey, figured I had another day or two with it but the end dungeon isn't very long and the final fight was one of the easier boss fights in the game. All in all, it was a good One Piece story, probably would have enjoyed it more if it were just a movie or mini-series but it's the medium it was in. The game had some really good ideas going for it with the multiple stages you fight on and the rock/paper/scissors aspect could have been interesting but they sadly did nothing with it. Combat, and just the game in general, was pretty slow to start but once they started handing out attacks that could hit every enemy across the entire combat board it got pretty easy. The last few boss fights, not including the final one, felt like random encounters with how quickly I moved through them. The game also heaped you with items for cooking and they were better than any kind of item you'd otherwise find. Popping them felt like cheating, with how easy they made things. Not unhappy I got the game, unlikely to go back and 100% it with all the other games I've got, not likely to pick up the DLC I know is coming either unless it's really interesting.

[LibraryOgre]

Tried to play a little New Vegas, but got sick of the crashes. So, I went back to Skyrim. Strangely, I'm using a lot more archery this time. Not a full-on stealth archer, and I'm still heavily into Conjuration, but a lot more archery

[Triaxx]

Archery with a conjured Tank is a lot of fun.

[Taevyr]

I had a lot of fun with an illusion/conjuration/archery "build". Really fun to turn half a stronghold against itself, conjure a few atronachs in the middle, and just shoot whomever remains outside of the pandemonium that ensues.

[Lord Raziere]

played more FF14, got Pugilist to Monk and made good progress on my Rogue. Monk seems to be this rotational combo-centric fast attack kind of class that feels good to just beat everything up with. Rogue on the other hand felt real repetitive early on and is kind of weird? most of its class features are things with long cooldowns and only useful in certain situations, with only three bread and butter abilities that I use consistently, the throwing dagger ability shows its use in dungeons but I can't properly assess the usefulness of stealth and trick attack until I play more solo where I can really make use of stealthing around at slow movement and doing a sneak attack, and between black mage, monk and rogue, monks seems the most fun to me so far? though I have yet to try arcanist, archer or marauder.

[Rynjin]

Rogue is literally not a real class until you rank up to Ninja, at which point it probably has the most variation in play of every class in the game.

[PhoenixPhyre]

played more FF14, got Pugilist to Monk and made good progress on my Rogue. Monk seems to be this rotational combo-centric fast attack kind of class that feels good to just beat everything up with. Rogue on the other hand felt real repetitive early on and is kind of weird? most of its class features are things with long cooldowns and only useful in certain situations, with only three bread and butter abilities that I use consistently, the throwing dagger ability shows its use in dungeons but I can't properly assess the usefulness of stealth and trick attack until I play more solo where I can really make use of stealthing around at slow movement and doing a sneak attack, and between black mage, monk and rogue, monks seems the most fun to me so far? though I have yet to try arcanist, archer or marauder.

Rogue is kinda in a weird state, in that most of its "goodness" only comes when it becomes a Ninja at 30 (mudras, mostly). So yeah, rogues are kinda weird at early stages.

Monk is weird that it's one of the "smoothest" leveling--its core kit comes on really early and is basically additive. Personally I dislike monk because of how busy it is. But that's a pure taste thing.

Marauder is a tank, so it plays like a tank. Arcanist has some weirdness and what seems like a very sparse kit early on. But it scales into summoner and scholar[1] fairly well, with summoner being basically arcanist++.

Archer is kinda odd, really heavy in OGCD and proc-based abilities, combined (later) with a song rotation.

[1] the only class in the game where you can do 2 different jobs. Leveling up one will level up the other as well, but post 50 they use different gear and one's a healer and the other a magical DPS.

[Spore]

played more FF14, got Pugilist to Monk and made good progress on my Rogue. Monk seems to be this rotational combo-centric fast attack kind of class that feels good to just beat everything up with. Rogue on the other hand felt real repetitive early on and is kind of weird? most of its class features are things with long cooldowns and only useful in certain situations, with only three bread and butter abilities that I use consistently, the throwing dagger ability shows its use in dungeons but I can't properly assess the usefulness of stealth and trick attack until I play more solo where I can really make use of stealthing around at slow movement and doing a sneak attack, and between black mage, monk and rogue, monks seems the most fun to me so far? though I have yet to try arcanist, archer or marauder.

Take my advice, pick monk and a healer or tank of your choice for the main story and focus on the story. Most classes are really weird or bad on low levels because the balancing is at 90.

Also some classes have an excellent levelling experience (Marauder/Warrior, Pugilist/Monk are two of them) and some are extremely wonky (Arcanist/Summoner is kinda weird, because they have to lock off the cool summons due to story reasons, Rogue/Ninja is a broken mess below 50).

If you want a cool caster, you can try Red Mage once you reach Lv 50. It is a fun and unique caster and once you get a hang of it, the basic rotation stays the same, but becomes cooler with more flashy finishers.

[Rynjin]

That last point is worth noting about Red Mage: it looks flashy but you literally just mash the same buttons in the same order for every fight from when you pick the class up until you get bored of playing it.

[Anonymouswizard]

Managed to do Kaneshiro's palace in one run, followed up by immediately sending the calling card and fighting the boss. Which, weirdly for a third boss in a MegaTen game, wasn't even slightly difficult. The first phase had it's worst attack avoidable by sacrificing an item I wasn't going to us anyway, and the second phase outright tells you how to beat it. Thankfully it did Almighty damage, because otherwise the Null-Phys Persona I spent most of the fight using would have trivialised it.

[Razade]

Managed to do Kaneshiro's palace in one run, followed up by immediately sending the calling card and fighting the boss. Which, weirdly for a third boss in a MegaTen game, wasn't even slightly difficult. The first phase had it's worst attack avoidable by sacrificing an item I wasn't going to us anyway, and the second phase outright tells you how to beat it. Thankfully it did Almighty damage, because otherwise the Null-Phys Persona I spent most of the fight using would have trivialised it.

They make up for the third palace with the fifth palace boss fight.

[Gnoman]

[1] the only class in the game where you can do 2 different jobs. Leveling up one will level up the other as well, but post 50 they use different gear and one's a healer and the other a magical DPS.

This, incidentally, makes Arcanist a pretty good starting class. Healers are always in much lower supply than DPS classes for group content, so being able to just leap over to Scholar can make mandatory dungeons and bosses much more pleasant.

[Rynjin]

Finished Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Besides a few minor annoyances (mainly that two of the late game bosses, one of whom is the final boss, just aren't super fun), it was a very nice experience. Gorgeous to look at and fun to play, with just enough bite to the combat to keep me engaged without ever really becoming frustrating (except for the third to last boss, who is just tedious).

Highly recommend to anyone who's in the mood for a cute action RPG in the vein of Zelda meets Jak and Daxter (in terms of gameplay).

[Lord Raziere]

Take my advice-

*scrubbed* That and I've already unlocked Ninja class since I last posted and wanted to do so from the beginning. Its probably going to be complicated but sometimes I want something weird and complicated to figure out and make work. Monk seems like a simpler thing to use whenever I need to fallback on it though.

[DigoDragon]

Finished a game of MoO4, winning by council vote. My total votes... 666. Everyone watching in the stream had a good laugh.

I should get back into Skyrim and finish the main quest in the Legacy of the Dragonborn mod.

[Anonymouswizard]

They make up for the third palace with the fifth palace boss fight.

Hopefully this won't be like Shadow Kanji where everybody says it's hard but I passed it on my first try with basic buffing mechanics.

[Cespenar]

Trying out Pentiment at last, and it's mostly as people said. Not too heavy on the gameplay, but very packed on all the other aspects. There's so much care on the characters, plot, research, art, etc. that it makes up for its railroads, walking sim parts, etc.

[Eldan]

Yeah, this really is one of the most love it or hate it kind of games I've seen in years. Most people online seem to find it boring, and not even really a game, worse even than most walking sims. I find it extremely engaging, even if the pacing is quite slow and I played it in relatively short sessions.

Also definitely a game I need to either replay or watch someone else play, because just from watching someone else play the first day or so, there's tons of content you might not find, and you can only spend time with a limited set of the characters, but they all have relationships with each other and their own secrets.

[tyckspoon]

Hopefully this won't be like Shadow Kanji where everybody says it's hard but I passed it on my first try with basic buffing mechanics.

Fifth palace would be.. oh, yes, that.

Spoiler

Show

So the boss summons multiple waves of minibosses that you fought throughout the dungeon. They're all timed - you have to take them out in like three or four rounds each or the main boss does an enrage move and autowipes you - and they all rotate various different weaknesses and immunities, which can render the majority of your party useless for that wave and leave you with basically just Joker trying to handle all of the damage output requirements. It can be really nasty if you don't know what you need going into it, especially if you haven't completed enough of the Confidant that teaches you how to swap team members mid battle or are missing good users for all the elements among Joker's Persona collection.

.. I spoiled the fight beforehand and just nuked the crud out of most of it using one of the overpowered DLC personas >.>

[Form]

I've recently started Persona 5 Royal myself and I'm about 3 hours in, but I still haven't really played the game. It feels like there's a fair amount of gratuitous dialogue in the first part? I'm hoping it'll pull me in more later. And I wish they hadn't prioritized aesthetics over functionality when designing the UI. Everything looks so... jagged and spiky. I'm almost afraid to look at the menus out of fear of putting out an eye.

Also, Shadow Kamoshida, would it kill you to put on some pants!?

[Rynjin]

I've recently started Persona 5 Royal myself and I'm about 3 hours in, but I still haven't really played the game. It feels like there's a fair amount of gratuitous dialogue in the first part?

Welcome to JRPGs, where the gameplay only exists as a vehicle to shuffle you from cutscene to cutscene.

If they put just like 20% more effort and budget into the Persona anime I wouldn't be surprised if they could completely replace the games as the primary medium.