What Video Games Have You Been Playing #12: Rage Quit - ain't my thing

[PhroX]

Those builds should do well. I'll stick with melee, though. Who are you in game?

My account name is PhroXenGold. My character names are usually the wonderfully inventive PXG<league><ascendancy> (so I guess my starter this time will be PXGBlightNecro) so I actually have some idea what the hell they are on those occasional times I want to play on standard - when I first played, I tried to give all my characters kinda roleplaying type names, but ended up just getting confused as to who was who. I'm a SSF player though, so I'm not going to be taking part in any social stuff in the game...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

"Cheating"/"Savescumming" has an odd place in gaming. It's rarely used in a way that lets the user improve, but it is an extremely powerful tool if you use it in a deliberate effort to improve.

You can create scenarios and practice them, repeatedly, until you have the reaction down. I did that in Rimworld to handle the hardest difficulty raids (now called "merciless", was "extreme" at the time). I'd load just before raid generated, then micromanage it. Just winning wasn't good enough, I did those fights over and over until I could win not only w/o taking damage, but in most cases without even the chance of taking damage.

Similar can be done with Civ. Set a point, then try different decisions and see what kinds of results you get, repeatedly. Find out the most effective choice and why.

I haven't done this in a long time in Civ, because Civ 5/6 on deity just aren't the threats the Civ 4 deity AI was. I only won Civ 4 deity sometimes, despite that I had the most knowledge of that game by far compared to the newer ones.

Note that similar technique to the above is done by speedrunners of various games, using save state practice. "Ironman" modes can be good proving rounds, but if you want to drill to improve at a particular skill you really want to repeatedly practice that skill, take breaks, then come back and do the same thing. That's also how I beat all the B levels in Celeste recently, just have to find all the junk I need to unlock the C stuff.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@Lexicus, how is KSP going?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I misread this and thought you were asking again why someone would want to cheat. I reread when I went to comment and you clearly weren't saying that but I'm going to rant at you like you did anyways -

Because that's how some of us have fun! It's really frustrating when I run into people irl that don't like something that I like and they spend a lot of effort explaining why I'm wrong like it flipping matters. In general, the kind of people who want to drag someone for enjoying something or for enjoying the same thing but in a different way or for different reasons are the worst.***


*** This does not apply to Star Wars because clearly you are wrong

Don't @ me, I'm a hypocrite

"STOP LIKING WHAT I DISLIKE" is a real thing, I know, and it's asinine

Hey Hobbs, how do you like your steak done?

*smug smile as I prepare a scathing deconstruction of your genetic inferiority*

this is a good post, but beyond it there are dark secrets that shan't be spoken about..

"Cheating"/"Savescumming" has an odd place in gaming. It's rarely used in a way that lets the user improve, but it is an extremely powerful tool if you use it in a deliberate effort to improve.

You can create scenarios and practice them, repeatedly, until you have the reaction down. I did that in Rimworld to handle the hardest difficulty raids (now called "merciless", was "extreme" at the time). I'd load just before raid generated, then micromanage it. Just winning wasn't good enough, I did those fights over and over until I could win not only w/o taking damage, but in most cases without even the chance of taking damage.

Similar can be done with Civ. Set a point, then try different decisions and see what kinds of results you get, repeatedly. Find out the most effective choice and why.

I haven't done this in a long time in Civ, because Civ 5/6 on deity just aren't the threats the Civ 4 deity AI was. I only won Civ 4 deity sometimes, despite that I had the most knowledge of that game by far compared to the newer ones.

Note that similar technique to the above is done by speedrunners of various games, using save state practice. "Ironman" modes can be good proving rounds, but if you want to drill to improve at a particular skill you really want to repeatedly practice that skill, take breaks, then come back and do the same thing. That's also how I beat all the B levels in Celeste recently, just have to find all the junk I need to unlock the C stuff.

I savescum all the time. matter of fact I savescum so much that I made a freakin mod that made it impossible to savescum. I scummed meself.

I think this happened to multiple artists; Beiber was the main one, but also Pitbull (perhaps Pitbull was first?) - additionally Taylor Swift's people held an online contest and the internet did its thing and voted to the top a school for the deaf. T-swizzle cancelled even though the school for the deaf was actually extremely excited and not trolled at all. Kinda sucky for those deaf students, but she also donated $50k or something to the school as a consolation?

makes you despise t. swizzle even more

 

[Lexicus]

@Lexicus, how is KSP going?

Well enough! I haven't been playing it too heavily, and so far I've just done the tutorial missions. I tried the sandbox mode and was lost because there were too many options, so I think I'm going to run through the tutorial missions until I am satisfied that I'm good at doing all the things, before starting a legit Career Mode game (I'm assuming Career Mode provides you with some structure, missions, a progression - is that right?)

Last night I made a successful (training mission) landing on the Mun, but it was very poorly executed with lots of wasted fuel and motion. I have actually become pretty adept at RCS maneuvering but keeping track of all the stuff on the Mun descent was a lot more difficult than maneuvering in orbit.

 

[Senethro]

Well enough! I haven't been playing it too heavily, and so far I've just done the tutorial missions. I tried the sandbox mode and was lost because there were too many options, so I think I'm going to run through the tutorial missions until I am satisfied that I'm good at doing all the things, before starting a legit Career Mode game (I'm assuming Career Mode provides you with some structure, missions, a progression - is that right?)

Last night I made a successful (training mission) landing on the Mun, but it was very poorly executed with lots of wasted fuel and motion. I have actually become pretty adept at RCS maneuvering but keeping track of all the stuff on the Mun descent was a lot more difficult than maneuvering in orbit.

You might even be better off having a halfway house game that uses the Science mode (whatever its called) where science generated from missions is the only currency you need worry about. If you can design a probe that can land on a Joolian moon and a manned mission able to return from Duna then you would most certainly be ready for a career mode.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Well enough! I haven't been playing it too heavily, and so far I've just done the tutorial missions. I tried the sandbox mode and was lost because there were too many options, so I think I'm going to run through the tutorial missions until I am satisfied that I'm good at doing all the things, before starting a legit Career Mode game (I'm assuming Career Mode provides you with some structure, missions, a progression - is that right?)

Last night I made a successful (training mission) landing on the Mun, but it was very poorly executed with lots of wasted fuel and motion. I have actually become pretty adept at RCS maneuvering but keeping track of all the stuff on the Mun descent was a lot more difficult than maneuvering in orbit.

The campaign does give you a variety of missions to choose from. The problem is that they can get repetitive and the game doesn't give you enough science to really advance at a decent clip without moving on to bigger, grander missions that you may not be ready for or interested in. The career mode starts with limited funds and parts and you have to take contracts to get money and take along various science parts to pull back data that unlocks research for parts. Where the problems with research arise is that once you've gotten some data, the value of repeat data effectively drops to 0. And unmanned probes will only give you a fraction of the total value of the data - to get maximum value, you have to send manned missions to physically bring back the data for some reason.

I like having to take contracts for money and it leads to interesting missions where you chain a bunch of contracts together to accomplish together. But they can get repetitive.

 

[Birdjaguar]

My account name is PhroXenGold. My character names are usually the wonderfully inventive PXG<league><ascendancy> (so I guess my starter this time will be PXGBlightNecro) so I actually have some idea what the hell they are on those occasional times I want to play on standard - when I first played, I tried to give all my characters kinda roleplaying type names, but ended up just getting confused as to who was who. I'm a SSF player though, so I'm not going to be taking part in any social stuff in the game...

Thanks. I'll look for you though.

You can find me as Eight_Gates (my go to character in Standard)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I savescum all the time. matter of fact I savescum so much that I made a freakin mod that made it impossible to savescum. I scummed meself.

Despite that it's one of the strongest tools for drilling player improvement, my impression is that this is rarely the way in which savescumming is actually used. Most players will just make a save or backup save, do something, then reload if they don't like the results.

So it's the kind of awkward interaction where it can either hinder one's improvement at a game or assist in drastically improving it, just depending how the player uses the tool.

How much one cares about improvement vs just playing at a certain level and enjoying the game like that is a factor too. Quite a few of the Polycast regulars & guests, past & present, got to ~monarch-emperor (depending on civ game) and just stopped improving from there, even over 1000+ hours. Basically the same player at one point vs 2 years later. But they still have fun. I prefer different patterns, so my personal approach has always been different to that.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

In Minecraft, I have the Ice and Fire mod. It took a while to get enough rabbit foots, but I tamed a hippogryph!

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

^Awesome! That really must have taken quite a while to tame that animal.

 

[Synobun]

I tried out 911 Operator. Basically This Is The Police except entirely focused on the dispatch aspect of the game instead of the politics/story.

It had great potential but severely requires quality of life improvements. As-is, it's just a slog with unchanging gameplay beyond raising death counts.

So now I'm finally playing FEAR 2. I only ever played the first. The framework of its story is good but it has somewhat poor execution. Gameplay is linear and fun, however, so no huge complaints from me.

 

[cardgame]

F.E.A.R. is still one of the GOAT fps games in my opinion, desperately want a remaster for modern resolutions and improved graphics (although the graphics do still hold up fantastically well, imo, for a 2005 game)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

^Awesome! That really must have taken quite a while to tame that animal.

I had to get a bunch of rabbit feet first. Then I had to go find one and then follow it around until it came to the ground and then feed it the rabbit feet. I'd already brought a saddle and armour with me so I was able to just fly it home.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I tried out 911 Simulator. Basically This Is The Police except entirely focused on the dispatch aspect of the game instead of the politics/story.

For a second I thought this was a game about crashing planes into buildings....

 

[Synobun]

For a second I thought this was a game about crashing planes into buildings....

No, that's Just Cause.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I once installed the Island in Chaos mod in Just Cause 2. Planes were crashing all over the place.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I got all the non-difficulty related trophies in the Left Behind DLC for The Last of Us. I also beat the main game on hard mode but didn't get the optional conversation trophy because of a bug. I'm playing it again now on Easy to snatch that trophy.

I really want to play the hardest two difficulties but I can't bring myself to do it because of how skimpy they get with items. Scrounging, collecting and crafting are big parts of this game and highly enjoyable but on higher difficulties they remove almost all the items you can scrounge for, in addition to additional/harder enemies. I don't mind the harder enemies and to an extent I'm fine having limited inventories but given how sparse the base game is with items, the higher difficulties basically take everything away which makes it a lot less fun. Like, I like searching old drawers and hidden rooms for stuff and it's frustrating to spend a lot of time scrounging only to come back empty-handed. Sure, that makes the game harder but also significantly less fun. Also, I thought my last play through was on survivor (second highest) difficulty but it turns out it was only on hard, which I had previously beaten. I don't think I want to play survivor difficulty but I kind of do. Ground difficulty (the hardest) removes almost all items and takes away your ability to hear enemies through walls which I really don't want to experience. But I kind of do.

 

[Ajidica]

After a friend mentioned it was a free iPad app, I've been reliving my middle school years and been messing around on Runescape. (Don't judge!)

 

[AdamCrock]

Just finished "Shadowrun : Dragonfall" and got my hands on "Hong Kong" immediately - story so far is amazing ! Characters are top notch too. Not a games for people who don't like reading though.