User comment history
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| News Comments > Out of the Blue |
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| 2. |
Re: Out of the Blue |
Apr 7, 2018, 13:59 |
MisterBenn |
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| Young me wants to give an honourable mention Rage Against the Machine's Bullet in the Head / Know Your Enemy / Wake Up ! |
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| News Comments > Evening Tech Bits |
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Re: Evening Tech Bits |
Apr 7, 2018, 13:36 |
MisterBenn |
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| Hey who was it who recommended Solus OS last week? I owe you some thanks, I'm liking it a lot on my shitty laptop. I had some teething issues getting the onboard wifi to work but I got there thanks to the internet. It's leaner and a bit faster than Mint and I prefer the look as well. Best of all it has a proper driver for my Radeon A5 mobility so Slay the Spire actually plays as though the GPU is correctly driven now. Even though it's turn based it was practically unplayable due to unresponsive controls previously. Cheers! |
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| News Comments > April Fool's 2018 Comedy Gold Roundup |
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| 3. |
Re: April Fool's 2018 Comedy Gold Roundup |
Apr 1, 2018, 12:22 |
MisterBenn |
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| Path of Exile Royale is more than a joke, it's a working Battle Royale mode and the best PvP the game has ever had. Rounds are fast and you have 100 players in a single giant instance with a closing circle in the usual way. There are some mobs to farm up that are actually dangerous, and the push for progress, items and skills is basically the PoE racing experience thrown on top. It's a blast from what I've seen and still running for the rest of the day. |
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| News Comments > Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods Revealed |
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| 6. |
Re: Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods Revealed |
Mar 5, 2018, 21:33 |
MisterBenn |
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Grim Dawn's definitely not perfect (the game engine frequently looks good but often shows its age, graphic and sound effects are really hit and miss, some skill are much less fun and interesting to use than others) but it's by far the most fun non-online "play at your own pace" ARPG to me.
And the expansion is really good. The new acts have excellent level design (although navigating in some of act 6 is a pain), and the game mechanics expanded across the board. New factions, components, augments, monster infrequents, farming spots, super bosses, and an entirely new end game itemisation because of a brand new block of Epic/Legendary/Set items from 85-100. I'm still playing regularly (at 832 hours apparently.) |
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| News Comments > Path of Exile Bestiary League Next Month |
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| 9. |
Re: Path of Exile Bestiary League Next Month |
Feb 16, 2018, 13:52 |
MisterBenn |
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It's been a couple of years since I got burned out on PoE, but I'll defend them on this. They don't just cater to the 1% of elite players, they have consistently given things to do for casual and regular players as well as the full timers. Casual players can play through the main content, which is pretty much always achievable self found with a reasonable build. I watched CobaltStreak do this as a fresh player and he had a great time. Regular players (like I was) can pool some resources, and trade into some strong pieces to hit a higher power level and conquer some late game content. Full timers and streamers can get super wealthy, afford the rarest and most expensive items out there, and take on the very hardest bosses. I think the key to enjoying Path of Exile long term is to make peace that that is how it has been built, and fight the natural urge to agonize over the bits you can't have!
I played over 3k hours back then (I never played WoW and Path of Exile was basically my equivalent culture shock at how a persistent economy and community gave games like this a crack-like additional dimension!) Also I had huge free time back then because of illness. These days I am a Grim Dawn fan. Because PoE's progress is so integrated with the trading and it constantly encourages you to farm as fast as possible to keep pace with other players. I did that to death in PoE but these days it suits me more to play at my own pace and still scratch that theory-crafting and looting itch. |
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| News Comments > New Paradox CEO |
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| 18. |
Re: New Paradox CEO |
Feb 13, 2018, 18:32 |
MisterBenn |
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It's the only Paradox game I have experience of, but Stellaris hasn't offended me with how it's been sold. The DLC is genuinely optional, and if you didn't know it existed, the base game with its 2 years of support and new features represents a perfectly reasonable proposition. The genre is notorious for being complicated to develop because there are so many interlinked features, and it's harder to reuse content from other titles than making a lot of other games. Distant Worlds had multiple expansions, at least the past 3 Civ games did, and so on.
I don't find their marketing to be deceptive either. For the base game and DLCs they live stream the game being played before it's on sale so you can see the truth of what you're getting. They release it for sale and you can buy in or walk away, I don't consider that underhand. They don't (currently) have gambling systems in their games that I know of, and they haven't stooped to packing nasty surprises in their games that you only discover when you buy it. There's a whole tier of shitty tactics that some studios use that these guys haven't resorted to at all.
As for the new guy, time will tell. From what I've seen following the Stellaris streams, Paradox have built an incredibly loyal fanbase with its own subculture (albeit with a few people exhibiting blind faith and some elitism from what I've seen.) If they are planning to step up the tactics into a more predatory area I think it's a real mistake. That goodwill takes a long time to build up and a short time to throw away if you piss everyone off. |
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| News Comments > Steam's Best of 2017 |
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| 2. |
Re: Steam's Best of 2017 |
Jan 1, 2018, 12:27 |
MisterBenn |
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Rocket League is still the bee's knees! Late night unranked is where it's at as far as I'm concerned, I tried ranked but it's way too serious for me. I'm old as fuck and highly medicated and there's no prospect of me eliminating all mistakes... I don't need teenagers crucifying me for fucking up my part in the attack! Unranked has a much better vibe, not caring about results too much, celebrating good plays and plenty of people are switched on to passing plays.
The end of 2017 was the first time I ever ended up with a backlog. I've always bought games as I've wanted them until now, even in the advent of Steam sales. I bought in to XCom 2, after a couple of weeks Divinity 2 landed and I was so blown away I had to have it. Then the Grim Dawn expansion dropped... now I'm all about Slay the Spire. Need to dedicate some time to tackle the heavyweight time vampire games! |
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| News Comments > Magic: The Gathering Arena Beta Next Month |
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| 6. |
Re: Magic: The Gathering Arena Beta Next Month |
Nov 22, 2017, 10:30 |
MisterBenn |
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I checked out one of their recent YouTube videos to see how it's shaping up. They talked about making sure the mechanics match the real game so I think that aspect will be OK. The presentation is more or less the old Duels of the Planeswalkers style, with some layout tweaks like nonlands becoming more square once they are on the battlefield. There were some new controls like manual mana tapping. When cards are tapped, they rotate about 10' clockwise and fade a bit - the comments were full of complaints about this not looking right.
I thought the original DotP games on PC were fun and great value, I bought the first few without fail. You'd get a handful of decks with quite a bit of tunability, and the AI was reasonable to play against in a lot of cases too. Once they cut off modding and the game moved towards the cash treadmill model I stopped and haven't bought in since. Inevitably this will be the same, it's going to be a full online home matching the real game isn't it? I'm guessing keeping pace with the online game is going to cost at least 95% of what Hearthstone costs... I have no interest in that as an outsider that enjoys the mechanics of the game. I'm guessing after a honeymoon period there are extremely slow rewards for playing offline... I'll keep an eye on it but I doubt I'm onboard. |
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| News Comments > Path of Exile Expansion Announced |
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Re: Path of Exile Expansion Announced |
Nov 16, 2017, 21:24 |
MisterBenn |
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| I got burned out on Path of Exile (albeit after 4000 hours) and the power creep still seems to be out of control, but man these guys are unstoppable on new content and things to do. |
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| News Comments > PUBG as a Service: No Sequel Plans |
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Re: PUBG as a Service: No Sequel Plans |
Oct 23, 2017, 10:56 |
MisterBenn |
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| I take that to mean they plan to keep the game in a continual state of maintenance for the months and years to come, releasing new content and upgrading what bits of engine they can get at along the way. I think it implies getting more money from players along the way as well, probably not by outright subscription, but more likely via selling some kind of payable updates or expansion packs. |
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| News Comments > Activision Patents Driving Microtransactions Through Matchmaking |
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Re: Activision Patents Driving Microtransactions Through Matchmaking |
Oct 18, 2017, 10:06 |
MisterBenn |
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| I think the final case is the worst. If you buy an item, you get preferential treatment and get matched in games where it counters the other players. Of course if you haven't bought microtransactions, you get the other end of that deal. These pioneers have found a way to make cosmetic microtransactions pay to win! |
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| News Comments > Rocket League Halloween Event Starts Tomorrow |
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| 2. |
Re: Rocket League Halloween Event Starts Tomorrow |
Oct 15, 2017, 21:42 |
MisterBenn |
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I'm fully hooked on this too, although I've probably hit the limit of what my ageing, medicated body can accomplish in public matches. I've learned that the best way to avoid toxicity is to play unranked during late hours... it's way more easy going there compared to the ladder and sometimes actually positive!
From what I can see, two things are happening together in this announcement. Firstly it's a variation on the limited time events they often do, except instead of straight up giving you the items, they seem to prefer the spinning lights of the loot box opener.
Secondly, it's (a temporary trial of?) a solution to the fact that everyone has stacks of crates and actually spending keys to open them is a poor value proposition. At least within a couple of weeks of a crate being newly introduced. Buying items for keys from other players is pretty much always better value than trying to get them randomly from creates. This Candy Corn thing is more or less a suggestion from the forums, that people should earn a way to open their crates, that keeps the items inside usable but soulbound to not flood the marketplace more. |
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| News Comments > Skyrim Creation Club Launches with Survival Mode |
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| 5. |
Re: Skyrim Creation Club Launches with Survival Mode |
Oct 4, 2017, 11:06 |
MisterBenn |
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If it's balanced right it's a fun way to play, at least some of the food, clothing, heat sources and magic effects have some use, where they had almost none before.
When I played with survival mods I ended up avoiding the strictest mods because they felt anti-fun very quickly... I preferred milder penalties rather than the chance of death. You could end up playing a silly game of rushing from heat source to heat source outdoors, or making a ridiculous chain of campfires so you could survive a trip up to the frozen north. And you'd get the strong feeling that the survival mode affected only you, as you were stalking a troupe of topless raiders hanging out on a glacier.
Hopefully if they've made an effort to tune it was, it will be an interesting way to play for those still into Skyrim. By being from an official source it should be highly integrated into the UI and highly compatible, which helps a lot.
What did Bethesda say about releasing mods that already exist? Clearly they have their own implementation here but survival mods have been doing exactly these things for years. |
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| News Comments > PUBG vs Fortnite |
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| 12. |
Re: New AMD Drivers Support Dual Vega GPUs |
Sep 22, 2017, 12:30 |
MisterBenn |
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Alamar wrote on Sep 22, 2017, 11:35:
Did PUBG do anything original?
There's not a lot original about the concept or game mode as you guessed. Mostly PUBG has one of the smoother engines for letting dozens of people play in a physics-simulated sandbox (even though it's still frequently rough round the edges) and a lot of the gameplay systems are smartly tuned. The way you hunt for loot, work your inventory, spot and hear opponents, try to get the jump on enemies and eventually close in for a showdown are all well tuned, and streamlined pretty well to keep things fluent. The genre naturally has a lot of general appeal, and the open ended gameplay gives huge room for variety, and lots of opportunity to hone and please that hunter's instinct! |
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| News Comments > Project CARS 2 Launch Trailer |
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| 3. |
Re: Project CARS 2 Launch Trailer |
Sep 21, 2017, 01:41 |
MisterBenn |
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| I've kept an eye on this chap, he seems like a big fan of racing and sim racing and comes across as knowing his stuff... he is rating Project Cars 2 as pretty good at this point, somewhere resembling Assetto Corsa in terms of simulation (at the general appeal end of the Racing Simulator market, rather than the most fanatical end) - and he's been playing with VR in recent videos and called it a great deal of fun. He's a pretty entertaining chap and really gets into the races! |
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| News Comments > BlizzCon Virtual Tickets |
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Re: BlizzCon Virtual Tickets |
Sep 14, 2017, 00:26 |
MisterBenn |
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| You can buy an upgrade pack for the goody bag for the virtual ticket to see the future products Blizzard has coming out... that's too many levels! |
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| News Comments > Rocket League Autumn Update This Month |
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| 4. |
Re: Rocket League Autumn Update This Month |
Sep 13, 2017, 23:02 |
MisterBenn |
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After joining the party pretty late, I am hooked on this now. Haven't felt much incentive to chase the season banner rewards though, mostly through preferring casual modes to competitive. People are reliably more easy going in Casual Standard and the most common playing standard is normally silver -> gold which is alright for me.
This week I realised how the reward level system worked and figured I could probably get the Gold one. I played about 10 games in the first session, 9 out of 10 games had continual bitching in them. One of those had a guy on my team that was spamming "Ok..." on each one of our touches that weren't a strong hit upfield. In 2 games of those 10, someone threw a protest and stopped playing properly (one opponent parked in our goal, the other defected and started playing for us while their team was winning.) Fuck that! Assuming my ranks about right I'll win 50% of the time, so I need to play about 50 more games to get the gold banner. I bet there will be non-league banners soon anyhow so I'll still be able to customise.
The patch changes look very good, I'm a bit disappointed at the aggressive standardisation of the arenas too. It's a bit of a condemnation of their like/dislike system that they can't leave the variety in and let people select a preference of what they enjoy playing. You could still enforce standard arenas and higher competitive ranks if you wanted to. At low levels the map layout has very little bearing on the result compared to the chaos of what's going on. Let people have the variety!
Regarding different physics and effects, the only aspect I think should be in is floor friction changes for rain and snow. I think wind would be more punishing than fun! A bit of extra skidding to handle would be enough to make the game feel different and people could adjust to the different styles easily enough. |
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| News Comments > Endless Space 2 Adds Free Content |
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Re: Endless Space 2 Adds Free Content |
Sep 13, 2017, 00:10 |
MisterBenn |
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Man I really want to like this game, it does many things REALLY well. The presentation style is great (although style wins out over clarity occasionally) and there are smart and wise design decisions all over the place.
I really like how tech advances give very strong benefits, including enabling complete areas of gameplay that you start without. One tech gives you access to the commodities market so you can turn your useless early luxuries into cash so you can speed build or amass strategic resources. The tech after that lets you levy a trade on everyone's use of the market so you have an extra income the entire game! Another early tech is needed to warp outside of star lanes which is the only way to spread to new clusters. Other techs are needed to specialise your planets, set up trade companaies, colonise different planets and so on. Techs really make a difference and you want them all right now, you need to look at your surroundings and really plan a tech order.
There are also communal tasks like the race to locate the academy where new heroes come from, which gets people racing to collect the reward. This game does a really good job of making you feel the competition with other players in other ways than just military. There are plenty of wise design touches like that.
And now the bad: to me this game has one of the weakest combat systems in a space 4x I've played. They've tried to do an abridged system like in Endless Space 1 but it's worse here. There's a weird system of lanes, engagement distances and combat orders that doesn't really let you control things the way you want. After you pick orders you watch the combat and it's really hard to actually tell what's happening. The cinematic looks great but tends to focus on one ship at a time so you get no situational awareness. From the design screen it's clear that long/medium/short range engagement matters, but I can't tell in combat what range the ships are. The arcs of movement are predetermined and tend to be gentle arcs that start at a distance, then you and the enemy fly close and parallel for a while. No specific way to tell the distance in real terms from what I can see. There is a plan view but that replaces the ship graphics with a collection of numberless, languageless symbols that are so abstract and esoteric that a team of cryptologists couldn't hope to understand them. I find myself just wanting a decent overhead view with health bars and a more achievable way of creating simple tactics around ranges and weapon types like in all of these games. Oh, and there's a command point system that makes your starmada engage in groups of say 6 ships at a time, which I hate because it's so gamey and arbitrary. These rules apply whether you watch the combat or not so you don't have the option of just simulating combat and just playing the game as an empire builder. |
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338 Comments. 17 pages. Viewing page 1.
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