*WARNING: Inbound defense of a digital miracle that I have and will continue to spend at least half my gaming time on for the forSEAable future*

You guys like Euro Truck Simulator 2 don't you? It's about taking shit to different places and getting paid. Except in this there are other truckers and they can fuck you up and steal your shit or you can do that to them. And it's full of Rare-ass-whimsy.

And it's got problems. And the stuff you can buy is too expensive. And they should have cut the grind to a quarter of what it is. And the most interesting islands are crying out for a fun raid like activity. And getting people to join an in-progress game is messed up right now.

And it's amazing. It looks amazing. The weather, wave and lighting effects are through the fucking roof.

And don't spend 60 USD/100 AUD on it. What MP games are worth that? THAT is nonsense. But you can sign up for game pass and play for 14 days free and see if you are as READY FOR THIS SHIT as I was (Probably the MS plan all along).

You could also join a crew that has convinced another two crews to join them on a boat and get drunk in the game which, combined with your real life alcoholism gives you nausea like it's the Rift dev kit 1 all over again. And then you can convince them to wear the shortest of pants and strike fear into an ocean of unsuspecting future friends. You can steal a chicken off a guy with a southern accent and then spend the next two hours harassing him with taunts of how you murdered his chicken bride. You can be chased by a ship of Chinese lads, and escape by driving past a boat of racist Australians, profiting from their enmity by being able to escape and sell you miserable amount of treasure that will pay for 1/70th of the fancy green sails you want.

Ok it's still pretty fucked but it is unique and their dedication to horizontal upgrades may cripple them in many ways, but I belive it's definitely the right choice in an OCEAN of games that do the numbers go up bullshit with wanton mediocrity and hopefully they can bring it home.

It's also a game I can play with my 8 year old Daughter and 61 year old dad or internet strangers or alone and it's all fun.

Digital Fucking Miracle.

Tipsy McStagger wrote on Apr 6, 2018, 12:49:
This is a great move to hook people for 100$ of DLCS...

You're thinking, how could that possibly be tru....

6 years of post release support, that represents more than 100 dollars of value. I cannot imagine many people have ever bought everything, and if they had they did it over a period of time informed by what they were getting by what they had received in the past. Most the DLC features go into the base game already along with ongoing optimisations and fixes. It’s all optional and regularly on steep discount with only the most recent DLC hard to get on the cheap.

The music/art picks can go eat a dick. Which is sad as the music is great and the sprites helpful. But the big portion of that DLC is quality shit you can get after you’ve broken your teeth on the meat of the main game, which is more than fully featured.

The free to play model probably is the way to go for them, but as an earned strategy they have already done the work for.

The bandwagon on criticising the DLC policy is so out of whack. Grab the free fucking game and enjoy the shit out of it (if you are happy to sink a few dozen hours into failing and learning, PCMR oldschool style)) and ignore the DLC you pagan filth.

My anus is still sore after Star Control 3.

I hope this game (And the toys for bob one, if it ever happens) work out but I wouldn't put any money on it. I will await the reviews and quicklooks/streams.

The pickle they are in, and I think the DLC model is awesome (Except hiding music and sprites in separate purchases, but just ignore them) Is that CK2 after 5-6 years or whatever is so content and feature rich that no new release could compare. And the current engine is more than capable of rendering everything nicely. It's almost like World of Warcraft, there is almost no way a sequel could exist and look good compared to the previous entry. I think Payday 2 and Eurotruck 2 will have this same problem.

For anyone thinking about it, the vanilla game is amazing without any additional DLC. See if you like playing the christian "crusader" kings of Europe and after that, if you sink 50 hours in and want more, wait for a 66% off DLC sale (Which happens 6 times a year) and go for the Viking DLC and Charlegmagne DLC which give you earlier start points and I can personally vouch for them as being worth dozens or hundreds of hours of value each. Want a different culture and playstyle? Islamic, Jewish, Italian republics, Byzantine, Indian and other DLC exists. But each one is good for hundreds of hours of fun.

Timmeh wrote on Apr 5, 2018, 09:15:

Numinar wrote on Apr 4, 2018, 23:36:
Free speech is super important but if I wan't to read the Brietbart comments section I'll go there, I don't need it in my games.

If they ban casual swearing then I'm fucked though. How can I expect to be murdered and murder repeatedly without a few f and c bombs?

Nobody needs to be called a variant of "homosexual black person" though, not even homosexual black people if they dared to identify as such online. Not the way these pricks say it. Come on. The ToS of this very site would cover this kind of behavior, something similar should be enforced in games.

You would be surprised to learn that nearly all of what you think is bretbart ... which I assume you are racially profiling to mean white males using the offensive language is actually black males and or actual people of the sexually diverse nature.

They also love spewing the N word like it was the word "the".

I don't know who the people on shitty online forums are other than that they are shitty people based on their words (I doubt black people are cheering on cops murdering them or calling for their deportation to Liberia). In open game chat I can make a pretty good guess based on accent and intent and they are rarely PoC.

I'd just want some common sense shit, like the ToS on this forum, enforced. I know the world is full of shitty people, but they tend to get asked to leave/thrown out of the places I go in real life if they start violently spewing their bullshit. Should be the same in my online spaces.

It's so good. I've never been great at it but taking my ancestral Irish backwater into attempted imperial greatness never gets old.

Free speech is super important but if I wan't to read the Brietbart comments section I'll go there, I don't need it in my games.

If they ban casual swearing then I'm fucked though. How can I expect to be murdered and murder repeatedly without a few f and c bombs?

Nobody needs to be called a variant of "homosexual black person" though, not even homosexual black people if they dared to identify as such online. Not the way these pricks say it. Come on. The ToS of this very site would cover this kind of behavior, something similar should be enforced in games.

That second one isn’t a change, but a good UI tweak.

Found a whole beach full of unguarded treasure the other day from someone that had obviously wrecked and needed to recover their ship to reclaim it all. I got most of it before I saw the tall sails on the other side of the island, shat myself and escaped with multiple gunshot wounds. Good piratey times!

Acleacius wrote on Apr 4, 2018, 09:07:
I liked TWoM but hate the fact they call the player a murderer if you kill the invaders (pillagers, rapists and murderers by day) at night. You can stop a rape, you can kill snipers murdering innocents but go to their base and kill them? Well your a murderer. No thanks FU!

All killing is murder. Try not to take it so hard. It’s certainly the kind of thing that you would need a jury to acquit you of and since it’s a war zone with a non functioning justice system you are going to have to wear it for a while.

I found the game made me too uncomfortable, in a similar way to papers please, to get hooked on it. But I think that is entirely the point. If you are ever in a situation where you are justifying killing people in their sleep/at their homes then good. You should feel uncomfortable, even if intellectually you know they are child murdering rapists.

Unrepentant justified killing is the root of massacres and war crimes.

I love the idea of Dwarf Fortress, but all it's visually bearable heirs never bite with me. This, Rimworld, Oxygen not included. All seem super well made with nice UI and graphics but the AI is so fucking stupid it takes me out of it. Character flaws are awesome but when they cannot make simple decisions on their own it makes me rage quit.

warmbluelasers wrote on Apr 1, 2018, 20:58:

Jerykk wrote on Apr 1, 2018, 19:13:
The only thing I dislike about FC5 are the actual skills/abilities/passives that you unlock. Most of them just aren't very interesting. Many just increase your ammo capacity or make some minor changes to weapon handling. Those should be weapon upgrades, not things you spend skill points on. AC:O had a similar issue. It seems that Ubisoft just isn't very good at making interesting skill trees.

I agree. I think they're comfortable with keeping mass-market appeal with bland perks. I do miss my Owl/Drone from Primal/Wildlands though.

It's a difficult balancing act, and AC:O which I love played it very safe and it sounds like FC5 did as well. But I think the idea is don't hide the best traversal and fun gameplay mechanics behind hours of grinding. That said games have done this well in the past, but it's not trivial.

AC:O kind of walked back the initial approach of having set levels for areas and enemies in later patches because everyone was over-leveling it (But you also don't want to force people to do sidequests). Previous AC games have jumped around from zelda style gear progression, RPG lite stuff and just giving you the full toolset from the get go with maybe some weapons to buy as you go. Witcher 3 was better for this stuff but that was also their 3rd attempt at that style of loot and progression, or 5th if you take into account the re-balance stuff the first two Witcher games got.

Now Steamworld Dig 2, that game gets progression right! Without making the gameplay before the upgrades suck you feel like a digging jetpacking god by the end. But it's been a while since I've seen it done super well in a big AAA game. Maybe Saints Row 4 with the traversal Stuff, or Far Cry 3.

Really liking not have to worry about that shit in Sea of Thieves, and to an extent Breath of the Wild, but a nice power climb fantasy is fun as well.

I wish some of these backseat game designers would start making/modding games and get into these big studios and do it perfectly like they make out they could.

Mr. Tact wrote on Mar 31, 2018, 20:16:

Numinar wrote on Mar 31, 2018, 19:30:
But they eventually get REAL nasty, and almost act like a timer as the big fuckers will soak up lasers and bullets for days. Setting that wall up with trains that resupply repair and rearming robots might make it maintenance free in terms of your time (the most precious of resources) but as with resource and water distribution funding those just right settings for your preferred style can be a challenge. I’m all about that rail world preset and variants of it which neuters the critters somewhat.

*meh*

In the end game, when power is a total non-issue due to you having either nuclear power or large fields of solar panels and you have sufficiently researched your laser upgrades it is just a matter of taking the time to setup the defenses.

I have a map which traveling east to west takes a Locomotive without cargo cars and using rocket fuel a five full minutes to cross on a nearly straight path, some minor kinks but nothing worth mentioning. The map is at least as tall as it wide. And I have that entire area walled off and covered with enough laser turrets that I rarely even see damage alerts. And even when I do, I tend to ignore it since I have the entire wall covered with roboport construction zones. Each roboport having 25 robots, walls, lasers, power poles, and 100 repair packs. It has been literally 100s of hours of game play since the last time something was actually destroyed.

That is next level madness. Love it but I've never developed the skills or maybe stayed on a map long enough to get to that stage. I usually rocket and then start again!

Mr. Tact wrote on Mar 31, 2018, 17:29:
Personally, I've played long games both with and without enemies. Go with whichever option sounds better to you. If you do play with them, I suggest configuring the game with a large starting area to give you some breathing room at the start of the game. Don't delay your turret research too long...

There is also a toggle to stop them re-colonising areas you have cleared, or at least a preset that does this. Push them back far enough from your base and they won’t attack/evolve much at all.

I like the game without but it feels pretty epic when you go full trump and wall off a continent with 200 turrets and 3 square deep concrete. But they eventually get REAL nasty, and almost act like a timer as the big fuckers will soak up lasers and bullets for days. Setting that wall up with trains that resupply repair and rearming robots might make it maintenance free in terms of your time (the most precious of resources) but as with resource and water distribution funding those just right settings for your preferred style can be a challenge. I’m all about that rail world preset and variants of it which neuters the critters somewhat.

jdreyer wrote on Mar 31, 2018, 01:01:
I'm Factorio-curious, but not at $20. Sounds like I'll miss this one, like RimWorld.

I feel like I wasted $20 on Rimworld after getting caught up in the hype on this very board.

Factorio is something very, very different. I would even say better but that is a little unfair, I'm sure some people have 200 hours on Rimworld and love it like I love Factorio. It's worth an hour or two of your labour for sure. I guess if you are earning developing world wages it might not be worth it. It's cheaper than a bottle of cheap scotch in my part of the world and a lot more fun.

Mr. Tact wrote on Mar 30, 2018, 21:40:
Factorio might technically be an "Early Access" game, but in reality it has been a great, playable game for two years at least, and probably longer. I spent 800+ hours on the base game before even trying any of the extensive mods supported by the large and active community.

Yeah the core of the game has been worth putting hundreds of hours into since ancient times. Everything since has been gravy.

I love untangling peoples crappy train systems on online servers. It's good fun working out how the robot trains think and what kind of shit fucks them up and getting the signals all set nice.

It's worth ten times that price, and the devs are very good at keeping each release stable and optimised. But everyone should get it at 20 if they think there is even a small chance you will like it.

Dash wrote on Mar 29, 2018, 04:17:

jdreyer wrote on Mar 29, 2018, 00:59:
NMS turned out pretty well in the end, so maybe there's hope?

But look how much backlash and BS it had to go through to get to that point, from what was initially promised.

The problem isn't the devs. It's the suits at the Publisher who want it now now now.

Personally, I'm perfectly fine with a game getting delayed a few months to have it be an enjoyable experience. If NMS was pushed back an additional 6 months, woulda been ok with that. If SoT was pushed back so they could have added.. you know... content and more than a pretty pirate-themed sandbox, I'd be fine with that too.

Conversely, I flipped a lid when the System Shock reboot was pushed back, but more because that kickstarter decided to go off in its own direction..

Point is, they need to stop rushing these games out. Either throw more people at it if you're that deadset on a deadline, or push it back a quarter or two. There's more than enough games out, and pushing out a pretty piece of garbage is only going to raise the ire against you in the end.

Every delay costs money. Devs need to eat and pay rent, even if their pride in the project drives them to do untold hours of unpaid overtime. It's all well and good hating on publishers and there are plenty of reasons to, but when devs go back for their second or third extra money/time request I'm sure the people who guarantee the bank-loan or will have to show some kind of revenue in their performance review probably have good reason to get cynical and demand the developers stick to a date they promised which is still often months/years after the original target.

I'm still loving it! But it can take multiple attempts to find a decent crew that uses mics and are not idiots. Once you find one you are set for hours of hijinks though.

Also the games do not always fill up properly. One game might have ships all over the place to tangle with, make friends with or sink. And other times you wont see another sail for hours. Beta didn't have this issue (At least on the days I played) and it needs to get better as the game needs the tension of high seas PvP to give the often banal quests some decent context.

Drop screw, spill beer and short out something on the MB but it still works but you are forever worried that any crashing is related.

Or go way back, and tell your mate to put his CRT to the highest refresh possible because it's better then it blows up and smells like burnt fish.

So much fun!

I got my last PC built from parts I chose and I didn't open it for 2 years. I can see inside and there was no dust so didn't feel the need. Thing just wont quit. I'll wait till I start getting subpar frames and think about OC and screwing around then. Friends make fun of me for wasting all that money on cooling but they don't understand, this is Australia! it needs to warm the house in winter and not melt in summer. Very important.

The nearest decent Gyoza place is 1.5 hours away in the middle of a shitty city with shitty parking.

This post has made it super tempting. 4x6 gyoza and a few litres of Asahi would make for an awesome Wednesday afternoon.

Bard wrote on Mar 26, 2018, 11:10:
There's really one thing I want to know.

What was the disinformation?

Should be easy enough to supply the actual posts - because in my experience Russia has been publicising information from Wikileaks documentation - which has a 100% correct 100% of the time track record - through things like RT.

I'd like to know if we're seeing those sort of things - which would be rightly dubbed information, or if we're seeing nonsense - which would be disinformation.

Right now I've been seeing all sorts of claims, but I've yet to see examples of the actual posts.

I sure HAVE seen misinformation during the election - but from a PR company Hillary's camp hired that did a very poor job covering their tracks (buying up lapsed domains, failing to successfully anonymise the domain transfers, creating junk fed clickbait sites, then publicising attack stuff against Trump that was literally fake news that somehow got trended in Facebook despite Alexa showing the sites had zero traffic...)

Latest Sam Harris interview is with Christian Picciolini, a former neo-nazi that helps families who fear their kid will be the next Dylann Roof. Worked with one girl who was radicalized by by a Russian pretending to be a US citizen, tracked him down, worked out what fancy St Petersburg University he went to and when he joined the FSB (He got sloppy and used a username connected to his former life). He gave this info to the FBI before the election but joked they were all too busy reading Hillary's emails. This kind of thing, at a large scale, is what the Russian investigation has uncovered among other forms of misinfo and hyperbole to arc up a willing audience.

It's not that we should trust the CIA or FBI without question, they are propblematic organisations with a lot of blood on their hands (Coups, kill lists, terrorism, agent provocateurs, wars and suppression of activists etc) but not everyone there is evil and not every report is written with an agenda. Just as RT doesn't have to lie, but be selective like Brietbart, the alphabet agencies do not have to make up anything about Russia.

Their shadow war doctrine is real and being used everywhere. Trolls are cheap and the damage they do is substantial, if hard to quantify. It's a shitty country with a shitty economy considering it's inherited the lions share of one of the worlds greatest land empires, with untold wealth and arable land there for exploitation if it wasn't such an autocratic shithole. Supporting Antifa, alt-right and other extreme causes is a cheap way to get a few shots in on their betters and make our Democracies appear as full of shit as theirs without starting a war that they would lose badly or destroy the world in the process. A good way to keep the Russian populous compliant is to paint the beacons of democracy as fractured, poverty ridden and on the verge of a civil war. Gets everybody onboard the whole captured state train and fucking like it.

That said giving them sanctions for it is a bit rich when every other country does it in one form or another, even if you grant that the excesses of the Cold war and the actions of our Cuban loyalist proxies are a thing of the past. We can at least say it's been a while since the west has shot down an airliner or annexed chunks of their neighbors. But the ongoing foreign adventurism, despite it's 0% chance of creating the loyal puppet states it intended and doing a good job of erasing whatever advantage in capital we have certainly cedes the moral high-ground to classic amoral strongmen like Putin.