Hmm something something muddled mixed drink pun.

Well I'm just happy to see Auralnauts posted here. I have no doubt that The Book of Ice Cream will continue to be better than its source material.

My wife and I are quite excited for this. Playing the first game together was one of the earliest parts of our relationship.

Came to say the same thing!

My Dad and I just (impulse?) bought Deep Rock Galactic for some coop action but haven't had a chance to play yet. I'm sure we'll find it engaging enough but I don't know how grindy the equipment unlocks might be. I'm worried they'll be like Vermintide, which I loved for gameplay but the intentionally slow loot system bounced me as well. It took so long just to try out the various character play styles that you'd already seen the whole damn game five times over. I shouldn't have to play five levels over multiple hours just to side-grade a weapon or two!

I desperately wanted a mode or a mod that changed the grind ratio so that you mostly play each map once, occasionally backtracking, and the loot from each level would allow decent character/equipment progress by the end of the campaign. And even though I want it for gameplay reasons, I think it would actually match the pace of the narrative!

I forget if I looked into mods for Vermintide but I assumed the loot was determined serverside and any such mod wouldn't be possible.

Yep! I haven't snagged the free games every single week but there was only one time the phone number 2FA was "required" (so I passed) but it has been gone ever since.

After the first ten seconds I thought "ooh, 1st person Helldivers with dinosaurs" but after finishing the video, it did seem really basic. Definitely needs more time to cook.

Maybe Fraggin means that the fun is reliant on community made games and mods which are free and therefore suffer in quality and longevity?

I'm not directing this at you, silvaril, or demanding an answer btw, mostly just wondering aloud.

What I'm curious about are all the mechanics surrounding multiplayer. How are offline players handled? How do they make moment-to-moment gameplay fun between players? What systems exist to help a majority of players feel they were integral to winning? What systems exist to keep all players aware of the larger struggle?

The developers, and their marketing, should put more effort into highlighting what is different and cool. I see the words regarding multiplayer but it's just words so far. All the visuals and videos I've seen (not gone looking, just a couple) are all bog-standard RTS. I know how to build stuff and balance resources and expand. Show me how it works with 5000 players. Show me how it's exciting. Show me how players with 2hrs/day won't just be resource generators for kids with 12hrs/day that get to do the real fighting.

Are there any summaries of the MMO aspects? I did a little reading and watched some of a forum video regarding game start in Beta but it didn't give any hints at multiplayer aspects. I worry that the effort of building and polishing an RTS may have dominated the developer's attention and the MMO parts will be basic/poor/untested.

I'm also curious. I guess we'll find out next month. This is one of those gameplay designs that has been tried a few notable times in the past but perhaps not very well? It's never hit moderate success at any rate. There are probably a ton of mobile games I've never heard of that tried it too, maybe some of them figured out some secret ingredients.

Agreed. After it was obvious that it wasn't the next big online shooter I assumed they would let it die out, but they stayed invested. It's weird but I actually like seeing it pop up in news a few times a year even though I never played. Just kind of silently cheering that a community is still going.

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 21, 2019, 22:15:
How exactly is that in any way a bad thing? This mechanic is LITERALLY the only reason a WD swarm build can exist (and does not exist in Path of Exiles) because you can stack crit-damage and weapon damage as well as minion damage boosts (which stack on stacked stacks) ON YOUR MINIONS while you support them from the back

Also what you describe is not how D3 works at all which is even funnier really. Entire builds are defined by legendary and set buffs, Kanai cube and what you equip. Those differences are not 3% on an obscure stat, they are 12000% on set linked skill triggers. And can make an enormous difference. A single set item can literally change your entire build from barely making it on Hard to easy cruising on t10

Regarding D3, maybe not any more, but I'm fairly certain that was how D3 worked at least for the first year or so. Your skills damage was linked to weapon DPS. Finding a normal-ass sword shouldn't boost my Fireball damage just because I used to wield a staff. It made investing in Fireball less rewarding because its effectiveness was strongly tied to something unrelated. I won't ever get to care about interesting Witch Doctor builds because the main gameplay loop is less fun for me.

A different mechanic that I was also talking about, which I find un-fun in a similar way to the above, is one where you play for awhile and acquire a point of some sort that you invest but all the investment options are boring +% increases. When you look at it from the perspective of max-level builds, sure they add up and you can get cool builds, but I don't find it fun during all the hours getting to that level. I don't find nudging one of my numbers slightly to be a fun reward.

Thanks for responding, everyone! The mechanic of finding and socketing skills does sound cool, especially with ability to do combinations. I've been looking for another game for my Dad and me to play together and while I've wanted to avoid that particularly addictive gameplay loop, we did play the absolute shit out of Diablo 2 back in the day. Maybe it's time to take a hit of the hard stuff once again...

The real money auction house was of course terrible, but the primary mechanic in D3 that I couldn't stand was how they linked weapon damage and skill damage. Get a better weapons, suddenly your magic spell is also more powerful. Acquiring new skills was much less fun, character builds felt limp, and looting new weapons was also less fun.

It made it like those RPGs (mostly MMOs?) where the skill tree is almost entirely "+2% obscure stat" so the sense of progress just go blegh.

And speaking of games like that, Path of Exile was like that at launch, right? Can anyone playing say if that changed much? I wanted to play it some but seeing that massive upgrade tree where each unlock was a tiny percent bump rather than new abilities or added mechanics turned me off quickly.

I enjoy(ed) Sunless Sea but stopped in the middle of my first decent run, mostly due to the slog. The pacing is great for atmosphere but hurts the fun factor for me. After seeing a good chunk of the world I was excited to try different story choices but knowing I would have to do so much slow boating around in between made me despair. I saw faster boats for sale and the inheritance/legacy/newgame+ mechanics but they seemed too far out of reach to be useful.

Has any of that been streamlined?

I don't own MHW and have only played a few hours of a previous title, but I'm pretty sure the movement speed and stamina mechanics aren't dumb gameplay mistakes. My understanding is that they allow/demand a more thoughtful pace that rewards planning and detail.

Not being able to rebind keys is pretty rough though.

No kidding. I mean, I'm still interested because the gameplay looks like expanded FTL, but the blatant copying of style and feel seems to hard to get over.

Glad I watched the trailer and skimmed the blurb, I thought it was just a remaster and was mildly interested. But with the new camera and engine, this sounds great! I never finished Nemesis but getting chased by him in 1st person also sounds scary fun.

Agreed, I've been interested in the game since launch and the non-upgradeable Starter Edition bothered me every time I looked.

I'm glad the game is maintaining or growing its player base though, just to preserve the interesting mechanics. I was worried it would disappear and we'd have to wait a decade for someone to try again. I do wish it had a better publisher...