What Are You Playing 8 (2023 Reboot)

[tyckspoon]

Oh, WARS! This last playthrough was AMAZING for wars. I never declare war, but I had it declared on me like five times. EACH TIME, Victoria was one of two people declaring war on me. However, since I was pretty much North and South America (and, later, Australia and a smidge of the Middle East), they never did anything. I ended the war by sailing a couple Frigates over (and, later, battleships) and shelling London a few times. Then they'd ask for peace.

I swear, Victoria just wanted to give me money. I lost more units to barbarians than I did in wartime.

This is usually how war works for me in 4X games too - military gameplay is usually kind of obnoxious to manage, so I default to peaceful plans and push science/religion/culture kind of stuff. Then one of the warmonger leader types declares or I hit the 'they're too far ahead, try to war them to slow them down' triggers. At which point I demonstrate to the AI that just because I haven't been fighting doesn't mean I -can't- fight them. Proceed to destroy half their army, take three or four cities/planets/colonies/whatever from them, claim all of their transferrable currency in the following peace settlement, and get back to what I was doing before.

[LibraryOgre]

Victoria: You've ignored our warnings, so we must declare war.
Me: What warnings? The last time we talked was when you asked for peace after the last time you attacked me for no reason.

[Erloas]

Switched my BATTLETECH install from the Extended mod to BATTLETECH Advanced 3062. First mission I tried to go on I was hiding in a forest, got set on fire, and had the mech's ammo bins explode due to heat checks while trying to walk out of the fire. Gonna take a bit to get used to caring about all the actual tabletop rules again.

I've never checked out the mods for the Battletech games but I love Battletech. Assuming I ever get around to actually playing a game again... Which mods do you recommend? I'm also assuming this is HBS's Battletech, rather than MW5 or any of the various fan made "whole games that are actually a mod of some entirely unrelated game"

I never declare war, but I had it declared on me like five times. EACH TIME, Victoria was one of two people declaring war on me.

A lot of the leader traits mean they do that thing even when it doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Anonymouswizard]

Minor hottake/nitpick continuation on the Cyberpunk theme: I think they should have doubled down on the corpo pillar on the balance of things, instead of the streets and desert pillars. That's what makes the genre fun IMO.

Shadowrun, for example gets that right pretty spot on.

Eh, I'm fine with the street stuff, and the badlands haven't appeared since the prologue. Plus the main plot so far has leaned pretty heavy into the corporate stuff, not with them as a backer though. Maybe that'll change coming up.

Street Kid is IMO the best background because that's the part of Cyberpunk I like, but it definitely would have been nice to expand the Corpo background to be equal to the others. A sort of "the system is great because I can exploit it for my own gain" storyline to balance out the "the sytem sucks, the man keeps everyone down" and "what system? Freeedoooooom!!!" story aspects.

I'm enjoying playing as a Nomad,it feels like the background where V would have invested most in the Tech stat.


Anyway, completed the Arasaka heist and

Spoiler

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noooooooo! Jackie was like the one character thile story had bothered to give any development to, and he's already dead. The game really could have done with some more sidequests in the first act, as Misty and Vik just haven't had the screen time to slot into Jackie's narrative role as the game wants them to.

Especially as the next scene is David Bowie beating up V from within their own mind for some reason. I get the feeling that the main story here is going to be a little rushed, they could certainly have done a much better job at actually setting up the Relic.

[MCerberus]

I think in the long run cyberpunk hits the Neon Colossus well enough on all three backgrounds, and thus fitting comfortably into where the genre needs to go.

Although I really don't know what to make of that one ending considering all of that though.

[tyckspoon]

I've never checked out the mods for the Battletech games but I love Battletech. Assuming I ever get around to actually playing a game again... Which mods do you recommend? I'm also assuming this is HBS's Battletech, rather than MW5 or any of the various fan made "whole games that are actually a mod of some entirely unrelated game"

HBS, yeah. The all-caps is actually the official branding of the game which distinguishes it from BattleTech (the tabletop game) and other assorted related products.

There are a ..looott.. of potential mods - I was previously using 'BattleTech Extended 3025 Commander Edition' (usually abbreviated as BEX 3025 or BEX 3025 CE) which is a rollup/compilation including a number of other submods. For the most part it functions as a content pack on the main game - adds a lot of new mechs, extends the star map, allows you to advance the timeline so you can see level 2/clantech upgrades if you want to, adds some more Flashpoints - and adds a lot of optional tweaks to the game to increase difficulty/tone down certain overly-powerful strategies in the main game/make it operate a little bit more like the tabletop rules. For the most part it's a fairly smooth transition from the vanilla+DLC game and you can pick and choose what parts of the extra rules you want to use on a pretty granular level. Played a couple career campaigns with that - it's nice if you just want 'The game, but with More Stuff (and maybe 'called headshot Marauders don't rule every engagement.')

The one I switched to, Battletech Advanced 3062 (abbreviated BTA3062) is more of a full overhaul that tries to bring in as much of the wild world of tabletop stuff as it can. You can add vehicles and battle armor squads to your drops, all of the internal structure parts are represented on the mech and can be damaged, you can get fire/smoke/minelayer/artillery rounds for your missile launchers, it uses the progressive shutdown/ammo explosion rolls for going over heat instead of base games 'does nothing and then does internal structure damage' application of heat, you can call in off-board artillery strikes and airstrikes to support yourself.. it's kinda wild. Takes forever to load tho.

[Eldan]

I think in the long run cyberpunk hits the Neon Colossus well enough on all three backgrounds, and thus fitting comfortably into where the genre needs to go.

Although I really don't know what to make of that one ending considering all of that though.

Which one, specifically?

[MCerberus]

Which one, specifically?

Spoiler

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The one where you never leave the rooftop and Silverhand is just SO PSYCHED to talk you into it once it's brought up

[Bohandas]

And after some time with the demo, it's somewhat less great than I thought. The interface is really clunky, there's a tremendous amount of information to deal with that's hard to sort through, and it's really hard to understand how to make progress. Probably not going to spend more time with this.

Yeah, the tutorial needs to be expanded. Hopefully that will be one of the things added in the full release.

[NRSASD]

I’m playing WarTales! It’s an adventuring company rpg, kind of a “Xcom but Mount and Blade” so far. Tremendous fun, but I don’t know if my sleep schedule can survive a “one more turn” kinda game. Played some co-op too, and my friend and I spent the evening hiding in the woods, wanted by the law for threatening old men and stealing things like there’s no tomorrow.

It’s extremely good if a bit janky.

[Ignimortis]

So what I'm getting from other people is that Cyberpunk is a game that stuffers from it scope? Sounds about right, but man is this atmosphere awesome.

It's a game that is diminished by several design choices by the devs.
1)The first part of the game is unpleasantly short, because the story keeps rushing you to "get this heist done with so we can let you loose into a Keanu-populated world!". I'd rather have a larger first act, maybe with access to some more parts of the city and side jobs that aren't exactly hinging on your current main quest progression for presentation. And that would've been a nice opportunity to flesh out the non-Keanu characters more. Jackie, Misty, Victor, a couple of fixers like Wakako. In short, that part of the game that's skipped over in a cutscene summing up your last six months after your intro? Probably should've been something you've played through.

2) The approach to loot and levelling. While I understand why CDPR did it (it's easy and it keeps the player entertained, plus they have experience with that model from W2 and W3), I also think that a truly immersive game should endeavour to keep loot and progression more similar to Deus Ex or New Vegas, where most if not all weapons are viable, and the game in general doesn't attempt to simulate an MMO with enemies having explicit levels, and two identical gangers don't have a massive difference in how hard it is to kill them. My most recent playthrough was on a modded game that removes enemy level scaling and makes the player scale much less also, and it's been by far the most entertaining the game got, as you no longer die in a single shot from a high-level pistol shot, nor can tank several low-level sniper rounds head on.

3) The thematics, as summed up below.

why am I, as a Cyberpunk, constantly getting missions from cops to beat up small-time street gangsters?

Because for some reason, the new theme for Cyberpunk is "you can't win, even if your "win" would be just getting to survive and stay who you are. The best you can do is either submit to the system or die on your own terms". That can be readily traced through both 2077 and Edgerunners, and it is kind of weird, because, well, the seminal works of the genre actually let the heroes have their wins and achieve something against the system. The newest Cyberpunk content seems to focus a lot on how you can't change anything.

It's something Shadowrun used to get right, with runners making all sorts of massive waves in the world. Not sure how the current lore stacks up...

[MCerberus]

Because for some reason, the new theme for Cyberpunk is "you can't win, even if your "win" would be just getting to survive and stay who you are. The best you can do is either submit to the system or die on your own terms". That can be readily traced through both 2077 and Edgerunners, and it is kind of weird, because, well, the seminal works of the genre actually let the heroes have their wins and achieve something against the system. The newest Cyberpunk content seems to focus a lot on how you can't change anything.

It's something Shadowrun used to get right, with runners making all sorts of massive waves in the world. Not sure how the current lore stacks up...

Spoiler: ending discussions

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I'd say that the Aldacados and Johnny takes over V endings don't qualify under that assessment. In the first one, the AI collective was wrong once and looks to be not at all sure how much time V has left. He's going to die, and likely knows the cause but has at least some matter of time left and rides off into the desert. Then in the latter Johnny is actually free from the hate and trauma that lead his life towards destruction the first time and actually has a blank slate.

I mean that said of the original works that originated cyberpunk popularly the happiest ending was Do Androids... and that's not exactly the sunniest future. Usually we get something between Brazil and I have no mouth. That's just sort of expected. Although you're probably right in that the dour endings seem to be an unnecessary inclusion some times.

[warty goblin]

If you look at cyberpunk as more or less warnings about a digitized hellscape without privacy or autonomy under hegemonic and unaccountable corporate control that... that kind of happened. Maybe we just didn't earn cyberpunk with happy endings.

[SerTabris]

Cyberpunk 2077 is really good when you're doing the properly written quests, but the side stuff (NCPD dispatch, the odd jobs for fixers) is a lot more bland (and will likely lead to you being horribly OP for the main stuff).

Also be warned, most vehicles handle like ass even fully patched, get a motorbike.

I'm most of the way through the game, and I've been generally just doing the main quests, character quests, and a few others that look interesting. Fortunately, the interface separates those out pretty well for the most part, though I did check a guide to see where the quests that introduce some of the other romance options were (since though I wasn't actually going to romance a male character, I figured those would also be some of the more properly written ones, which was correct).

As other people have mentioned, the NCPD stuff is thematically kind of nonsensical for a cyberpunk setting, but it doesn't even really fit with the dialogue about the police in the main story parts of this game, ignoring any outside context. I tend to try roleplaying it anyway by looking at what the NCPD claims is a 'crime' and making my own decisions, though sometimes whoever's there turns hostile just by walking up to them so it doesn't really work (except for a self-defense excuse for doing it for the experience points). Some of the fixer missions I don't really want to do much either, but in that case as well as the NCPD ones I usually just decide not to. Overall I'd say that while I don't particularly get much out of it being open-world, it doesn't harm it that much once it's clear which parts are the ones with actual writing.

As for the vehicles, I don't know why every fixer is also a pushy used car salesperson. I bought one to see if the starting car was just bad or if it was the game as a whole, and it seemed to be about half and half. Ironically, I'd also been playing a demo for an indie PC game called Lake, a sort of slice-of-life thing where you drive a mail truck in the 1980s. I bring this up because the mail truck handles better than most cars in this game. Perhaps that's an appropriate statement about corporations in the setting making junk because they can get away with it, but it still doesn't feel great.

Overall, though, I've found the writing in the main quests and important sidequests to be good, and more inclusive than I'd expected from what I knew of the Witcher games (while I'd heard some good things about CDPR overall, it was more mixed there, and my willingness to play male protagonists is too low to have actually played a Witcher game myself). I did think that some of the way the romances worked might have been fairly unclear if I hadn't looked it up. In particular, I did the romance-path dialogue with Panam (since while I know she's straight, my character doesn't) and I'm not sure if I would have ever known what went wrong without outside information. It's realistic that that happens sometimes, sure, but in a game I feel like there should at least be a hint somewhere. On the other hand, Judy Alvarez being a lesbian is very obvious, in a way that I thought was pretty realistic and fitting. River I could definitely tell was interested, which helped me not get surprised unlike a couple of other games (yes, Kaidan, I'm glaring at you). Though given that Panam and Judy are introduced in main quests and River and Kerry aren't, there's definitely a plot-relevance gap between female and male LIs. It's probably the biggest one I've seen since the original Life is Strange.

So what I'm getting from other people is that Cyberpunk is a game that stuffers from it scope? Sounds about right, but man is this atmosphere awesome.

It does hit a bugbear for me though, and that's timed dialogue choices that don't give me enough time to read them.

I don't think I remember this about the dialogue? Maybe you can turn it off in the options; I know I would have done that pretty early if possible.

The Dragon Age fan in me insists that if you're not playing the first two on PC you're not doing it right.

I'm one of the people who started and became a fan of the series on console (PS3, even), and think it's a perfectly fine experience there. For me, somewhat better, but that's because I have a lot more experience with gamepad controls for third-person RPGs of that style.

[Cespenar]

It's a fairly cool detective system too, you gather information by looking at stuff and talking to people, then piece the evidence together in your mind palace to reach a conclusion. The system takes a minute to grok, but it combines player deduction with game guidance pretty effectively. It's a very talky game, but because it's a detective game the talking isn't an interminable pause in the action so much as it is the action. Also it's fairly sprightly in delivery, and doesn't beat around the bush endlessly, which always helps.

Also the entire game is level based and us supposed to run like 12 hours. What a marvelous length and structure.

The earlier sherlock holmes games use the same brainstorming method too, IIRC. They are also worth playing and quite underrated.

They also didn't tell you if you got the right person or not, which I'd found quite funny.

[Anonymouswizard]

As far as I can tell so far the only vehicle worth using in Cyberpunk is

Spoiler

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Jackie's Arch

, which I got for free right at the beginning of Act 2.

[MCerberus]

I always used the Batmobile.

[Buufreak]

Also, I wish Civ6 let me change default set-up. I am always going to be on Chieftain, usually playing a Huge Continents map.

I tend to like the earth map, but I hate it on civ 6 because somehow I always spawn in the exact same spot. Doesn't matter how much I shuffle settings, seed, anything.

Meanwhile, just finished khddd, in my recent quest to getting my wife to understand the plot of this series. Just need to watch back cover and we are off to 3.

[LibraryOgre]

I realize that main characters are outliers, but have you considered that, in Dragon Age, you meet at least two abominations who are bound to non-evil spirits? Both Wynne (DAO) and Anders (DA2) are bound to "good" spirits.

[Lord Raziere]

I realize that main characters are outliers, but have you considered that, in Dragon Age, you meet at least two abominations who are bound to non-evil spirits? Both Wynne (DAO) and Anders (DA2) are bound to "good" spirits.

Yup.

which means there is some proof that the Fade can be good, to some subjective extent.

its just there isn't any clear solution to how you'd go about changing it so that more good spirits show up as opposed to bad ones you normally see. the question is just left unasked and unanswered for the sake of maintaining the setting which is "normal fantasy but darker, edgier and slightly lower powered to some extent".

of course according to Solas "good/evil" are not necessarily good classifications for them and that "aggressive/non-aggressive" is more accurate. non-aggressive spirits tend to not care about the physical world and don't want to go there so, the sample may just be biased to all the spirits that want to go to the human world. and that good spirits of things like Wisdom and Purpose can be twisted into Pride and Desire depending on whom the spirit encounters, indeed according to the Dragon age wiki:

There are numerous ways for a spirit to become a demon:

The spirit can already embody something mortals would perceive as a vice or an ambiguous concept. (Ex: Torpor, Choice)
The spirit can reflect or imitate human perversions of a virtue, or possess a mortal with distorted values. (Ex: Allure, Vengeance)
The spirit can oversimplify the application or fulfillment of its virtue. (Ex: Compassion)
The spirit gains ego, ambition, longing, or a thirst for power. (Ex: Nightmare)
The spirit can be driven insane by outside forces, particularly manifesting into the real world prematurely or against its will. (Ex: Rift demons)
The spirit can be denied its original purpose, particularly through blood magic binding (Ex: Wisdom).

These are by no means the only methods that a spirit can transform into a demon, but are the methods which are confirmed or demonstrated within canon.

so while its possible for a spirit to be "good", there are many ways for that goodness to be twisted and distorted, make their goodness seemingly fragile.

[Zevox]

I realize that main characters are outliers, but have you considered that, in Dragon Age, you meet at least two abominations who are bound to non-evil spirits? Both Wynne (DAO) and Anders (DA2) are bound to "good" spirits.

That's also the whole premise of the "Spirit Healer" specialization, which any Mage PC can take as well in Origins and 2.

Anyway, I have gotten started. Picked Dragon Age 2, both because I consider it my favorite, and because I think I recall the finer details of it less than I do those of Origins. Doing a mage character since that's always been my favorite class, and I decided to model her after Dorothea Arnault from FE: Three Houses, since she seems like she'd be just the right combination of friendly and sarcastic, with very situational moments of being more aggressive, which is how I like to go with DA2's dialogue system. I was actually surprised by how closely I could make the character look like her, the game happens to have a nearly spot-on hair style and color; and while the British accent is different, the voice actress is even kind of close otherwise. Lucked out there.

The game is definitely rougher visually than I remembered - more so that Arkham Asylum, I'd say. Though interestingly it does handle the animations for most things better than Arkham Asylum; while I can still tell it wasn't done with motion capture, it's a lot smoother and much less distractingly unnatural, particularly when characters want to gesture in conversations. And gameplay-wise, eh... honestly, I can't even blame my issues there on the game itself, it's mostly that my own tastes have moved away from this over time. When playing it I just keep feeling like it could be so much better if it weren't trying to be this weird in-between of action game and turn-based game, and just picked one and went with it. Basically my interest in/tolerance for real-time with pause gameplay has declined sharply over the years. I've turned the difficulty down from what I used to do (hard to normal; might even drop it further depending on how things go) as well, just because with this gameplay style, the notion of it being any level of challenging just isn't appealing to me anymore. I'll just enjoy watching things explode when I get into fights instead, and mostly be here for the story.

Speaking of, not far in, but it is nice to see these characters again. Always like Aveline and Varric, and I'm looking forward to meeting back up with most of the rest. And Carver... damn it little brother, I want to like you, but you're just so abrasive all of the time, it makes it hard. (Also the whole "knowing you leave at the halfway point anyway" part.) I can't help but wonder though, based on the opening, if they'd originally intended Hawke to be the lead character for the third game as well? Else why have Cassandra looking for them, and Varric saying they're the "only one who can put [the Chantry/world] back together again"? Hawke was there when things blew up and the Mage-Templar war started and was involved in trying to keep things from spiraling out of control, but they're otherwise no one particularly special as far as things go. Well, besides just being a [powerful mage/skilled warrior or rogue] in general. Just seems like that would explain the whole idea behind that framing device, and could be something they considered because having Shepard as the recurring lead character was working well in Mass Effect, but then backed off on after seeing so many complaints about being locked into playing a human in DA2.

[LibraryOgre]

Random thought:

One thing I highly disliked in BG2EE was the presentation of wild mages; their "The Red Wizards don't know how our magic works" schtick seems to fit far better with sorcerers.

[GloatingSwine]

I realize that main characters are outliers, but have you considered that, in Dragon Age, you meet at least two abominations who are bound to non-evil spirits? Both Wynne (DAO) and Anders (DA2) are bound to "good" spirits.

Eh, Anders is bound to a fade spirit who was good until he was bound to Anders and the writers threw Anders the combination idiot/extremist ball that every character in DA2 was contractually required to spend 25% of the game holding.

[AlanBruce]

I just got The Last of Us Part 2.

I know what the story is about- I am aware of the controversy upon its release.

What I wasn’t aware of was that they held a Spring Sale abd slashed the price down to $9.99, so might as well add it to the library, since I already own Part 1.

[LibraryOgre]

So, my D&D game cancelled tonight. We're going to be playing Shadows of a Dragon Queen, and I've been having trouble settling on a game, so I'm gonna download the GBC and play Champions of Krynn, which I have never played.

Human Knight
Qualinesti Ranger/Mage (White)
Qualinesti Ranger/Cleric (Majere)
Dwarf Fighter/Cleric (Reorx)
Silvanesti Mage (red)/Cleric (Shinare)
Kender Cleric/Thief (Mishakal)

Might switch Majere and Mishakal... the bonus healing will be nominally useful throughout, but I can see the turning bonus on the cleric of Majere running out of steam at high levels.

[SerTabris]

Random thought:

One thing I highly disliked in BG2EE was the presentation of wild mages; their "The Red Wizards don't know how our magic works" schtick seems to fit far better with sorcerers.

I feel like part of this is probably that 2E wild mages were a kind of wizard, since 2E didn't even have sorcerers. On the other hand, BG added sorcerers anyway, so I agree that moving it to sorcerers would make sense. Maybe they didn't want to introduce a sorcerer that early (since Neera can join pretty early on in BG1) so that new players wouldn't have the chance to make her terrible with a few bad spell picks.

[Cygnia]

Gave up on Ceville as it kept crashing on me, got a refund from Steam on it. Finished Myst...


...I appreciate its role in puzzle games, but it really was draining to keep going back and forth everywhere.

Dabbling in Cat Goes Fishing. It's adorable. You're a cat who goes fishing. Mind you, casting a rod is about as annoying in the game as it is for me in real life.

[Ignimortis]

Spoiler: ending discussions

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I'd say that the Aldacados and Johnny takes over V endings don't qualify under that assessment. In the first one, the AI collective was wrong once and looks to be not at all sure how much time V has left. He's going to die, and likely knows the cause but has at least some matter of time left and rides off into the desert. Then in the latter Johnny is actually free from the hate and trauma that lead his life towards destruction the first time and actually has a blank slate.

I mean that said of the original works that originated cyberpunk popularly the happiest ending was Do Androids... and that's not exactly the sunniest future. Usually we get something between Brazil and I have no mouth. That's just sort of expected. Although you're probably right in that the dour endings seem to be an unnecessary inclusion some times.

Spoiler: 2077 endings

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Well, in both of these, V dies. Maybe V lives for a year instead of a few weeks, but they die anyway, without really having made any impact. Looking forward to see whether the DLC actually introduces "the golden ending" or keeps everything as it is.

As for dour endings in the genre, Neuromancer ended on a major note, as did Count Zero and MLO, and Snow Crash. Sure, people died, the general effect of the ending might have not been all positive (considering Case basically let AIs rule the Matrix now), but the protagonists generally got what they were promised and more. Snow Crash in particular ended with the heroes basically saving the world. Even back in the 80s and the 90s, cyberpunk was not as devoid of hope as it usually is today, and considering it always was a rather dark and unhappy genre, that's saying something.

If you look at cyberpunk as more or less warnings about a digitized hellscape without privacy or autonomy under hegemonic and unaccountable corporate control that... that kind of happened. Maybe we just didn't earn cyberpunk with happy endings.

The funny thing is, a lot of early cyberpunk fiction did not do that. The surveillance panopticon is a fixture of later works, and also of other genres entirely (since the 1940s at the very least), but not for 80s cyberpunk, which mostly used the dissolution of state power into private hands, extreme class inequality and unchecked violence resulting from the two as the main points for the earlier settings.

As far as I can tell so far the only vehicle worth using in Cyberpunk is

Spoiler

Show

Jackie's Arch

, which I got for free right at the beginning of Act 2.

It really is. Generally, the car handling is too poor to go fast and feel good inside city limits, and outside of the city, most fast cars don't do well off-road, while good off-road cars are no faster than a decent bike. Bikes allow you to weave through traffic way more easily, handle with more precision, and generally have enough speed that they feel pretty fast.

[Rynjin]

Cyberpunk in the 80s depicted a bleak, dark future that there was still hope to avoid, allowing for more of an upbeat tone.

Now, largely, it is a bleak, dark reality that has already come to pass.

[Bohandas]

And after some time with the demo, it's somewhat less great than I thought. The interface is really clunky, there's a tremendous amount of information to deal with that's hard to sort through, and it's really hard to understand how to make progress. Probably not going to spend more time with this.

Also, the game gets easier and simpler if you reduce the map size. Having easily beaten the game several times on a 24x24 map, I bumped it back up to the default 52x52 map today and after 12 hours I still couldn't win on the big map