What Video Games have you been playing #13 Now with CGA graphics!

[Takhisis]

Nah. I don't even have the mod.

Yet.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Are you trying to imply something?

 

[Takhisis]

*evilgrin.jpg*

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

So along with my two cockatrices (which I got from rotten eggs), I decided to go on a mining trip. I was doing a bit of boring old branch mining before I broke into a cave. Yay!

So I'd gotten down near lava level. I decided to put my two friends into golden lassos and safely tucked them away in my backpack to keep them out of trouble. But I was so focused on mining out a vein of valuable gemstone ore that I didn't notice the creeper sneaking up on me.

Oh shi—

I don't know what mod did this, but the creeper exploded into confetti.

EDIT: A quick google search brings up the aptly-named Creeper Confetti. I don't remember installing this.

 

[Lexicus]

So, I do like Stardew Valley overall but I don't like the daily schedule and all that. Is Minecraft worth looking into? I'm pretty sure it has a day-night cycle but it doesn't force you to sleep at night right?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What do you mean about the daily schedule?

 

[Lexicus]

What do you mean about the daily schedule?

The game starts each day at 6am, stores and such generally open at 9am, characters have "schedules" so that they do certain things at different times of day. The days don't unfold in real time, obviously, IIRC an in-game hour is about five minutes of real time or something like that, and you have to go to your house at night to sleep or you pass out at 2am and it costs some money (similar to blacking out in Pokemon when your last one faints).

I like to grind a lot and then enjoy the unbalanced fruits of my grinding (whether that's leveling-up, or just the loot, or both) but Stardew Valley doesn't really let you do that.

 

[Akka]

So, I do like Stardew Valley overall but I don't like the daily schedule and all that. Is Minecraft worth looking into? I'm pretty sure it has a day-night cycle but it doesn't force you to sleep at night right?

The latest builds have implemented ghosts, which are extremely annoying flying mob that spawn if you don't sleep enough. But if you lock your version to a previous one (1.12 ? 1.18 ?), you don't have to endure them and you don't need to sleep (you need to eat though, but that actually gives a point to all the food production systems).

You'll get all the farming/grinding you want from Minecraft, if only to gather resources, but the main points still are exploration and, well, building whatever strikes your fancy. If you need context it might be lacking (no real NPC, no set tasks) but if you want to let your creativity get wild, there is basically nothing better ever created in the game world.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The game starts each day at 6am, stores and such generally open at 9am, characters have "schedules" so that they do certain things at different times of day. The days don't unfold in real time, obviously, IIRC an in-game hour is about five minutes of real time or something like that, and you have to go to your house at night to sleep or you pass out at 2am and it costs some money (similar to blacking out in Pokemon when your last one faints).

I like to grind a lot and then enjoy the unbalanced fruits of my grinding (whether that's leveling-up, or just the loot, or both) but Stardew Valley doesn't really let you do that.

Ahh, gotcha. That's exactly how things work in Harvest Moon. The one big difference is probably (I haven't played Stardew Valley so can't be sure) is that your character can't really level up and get better. You can grind to find materials to make better tools, but you don't get better at a base-level at anything you do, which kind of sucks. Past games always had trinkets you could find that would give you more stamina and such but the version of the game I'm currently playing doesn't even have that. And it can get super stressful to have to grind through a ton of chores every day in the strict time limit, that's why on my current play through I deliberately did not built out my farm to the same extent as all my previous games. This means I can get all my chores done by noon and then go and do the other things that the game offers like courting a girlfriend and traveling to exotic locations. I have less money in this play through but still more than enough to do/buy all the things I want and have a lot more in-game friends and have been able to focus on winning the various festivals by fertilizing my crops and caring for my smaller flock of animals.

 

[Lexicus]

Ahh, gotcha. That's exactly how things work in Harvest Moon. The one big difference is probably (I haven't played Stardew Valley so can't be sure) is that your character can't really level up and get better. You can grind to find materials to make better tools, but you don't get better at a base-level at anything you do, which kind of sucks.

In Stardew Valley leveling up your skills, I think, only decreases the energy cost of actions associated with that skill. To increase productivity properly you need to visit the blacksmith to upgrade your tools (with more powerful materials requiring deeper penetration of the Mines). On a side note it really bothers me that gold tools are considered stronger than steel tools by the game.

And it can get super stressful to have to grind through a ton of chores every day in the strict time limit, that's why on my current play through I deliberately did not built out my farm to the same extent as all my previous games. This means I can get all my chores done by noon and then go and do the other things that the game offers like courting a girlfriend and traveling to exotic locations. I have less money in this play through but still more than enough to do/buy all the things I want and have a lot more in-game friends and have been able to focus on winning the various festivals by fertilizing my crops and caring for my smaller flock of animals.

Yeah it's really annoying when I forget to water my crops and have to do it in the dark.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Something that pisses me off about the version of Harvest Moon that I'm playing is that upgraded tools take more energy to use than normal tools. It makes sense when you are holding the action button to do a powered-up move - for example, when swinging the hoe, if you hold the action button it will plow many plots of dirt rather than a single plot. What doesn't make sense is when you are not using the power-up move and it still takes more energy than a normal tool. So if I just want to plow a single tile of land, doing it with the upgraded tools use more energy than the regular tools even though you're using them in the exact same way. There's also no in-between powered-up setting for upgraded tools. So each upgrade to the hoe will be able to plow more squares than the last, but the upgraded tools can only do either a single tile or all the tiles, not any of the in-between states from lesser-upgraded tools. It might seem a bit of an esoteric thing to complain about, but I regularly have crop fields which require a scythe to harvest next to ones that are picked instead. If I'm not super careful, I can wind up destroying the hand-picked crops on accident while harvesting the scythed-crops due to the area of effect being quite large. I can get around this with careful planning (i.e. keeping different types of crops widely separated) but things I can't get around are smashing rocks or cutting up branches, which can only be done one at a time and will exhaust you faster if you use the upgraded tools. And I don't want to have to build multiple tool sets and lug them around because resources and inventory slots are finite.


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The Pokemon community was extra cringy this weekend. Nintendo did a 24 hour stream of the new Sword and Shield games and it consisted of hours and hours of a camera staring at an empty forest and people waiting for new Pokemon to walk by. This generated a ton of super cringy, super stupid memes. I mean I don't want to dampen anyone's enthusiasm but it was just all too much for a crappy livestream that for all intents and purposes was a waste of time. Oooh, they revealved a new variant of Ponyta that looks like a MLP character. *yawn* Meanwhile, the game's graphics are still pretty pathetic for a console title, they are missing a huge chunk of Pokemon in this game (they can't even be traded in - this version is the first to not have a national dex), the mechanics have not moved forward one bit, interactions with wild Pokemon look like the dumbest possible version of what you would expect and the Dynamax mechanic is lame. Like nothing about these games interest me and a lot of people are upset with them, but the hardcore fanbois are going to continue to float the series which badly needs some reform.

It's like how people continue to buy broken COD games and other FPS's that are bogged down by microtransactions except I actually care about Pokemon.

 

[Lexicus]

It might seem a bit of an esoteric thing to complain about,

Not even a little bit, that would annoy me so much that I probably would not even want to play that game anymore.

The upgraded watering can in Stardew Valley lets you water more tiles (basic 1x1, upgraded 1x3 etc) but I don't think it costs more energy to use it that way (though it does use up more water, which you have to refill in a body of water).

The Pokemon community was extra cringy this weekend. Nintendo did a 24 hour stream of the new Sword and Shield games and it consisted of hours and hours of a camera staring at an empty forest and people waiting for new Pokemon to walk by. This generated a ton of super cringy, super stupid memes. I mean I don't want to dampen anyone's enthusiasm but it was just all too much for a crappy livestream that for all intents and purposes was a waste of time. Oooh, they revealved a new variant of Ponyta that looks like a MLP character. *yawn* Meanwhile, the game's graphics are still pretty pathetic for a console title, they are missing a huge chunk of Pokemon in this game (they can't even be traded in - this version is the first to not have a national dex), the mechanics have not moved forward one bit, interactions with wild Pokemon look like the dumbest possible version of what you would expect and the Dynamax mechanic is lame. Like nothing about these games interest me and a lot of people are upset with them, but the hardcore fanbois are going to continue to float the series which badly needs some reform.

I'm still training my pokemon in SoulSilver to be level 70 so that Lugia will fit in my party (gonna catch it to replace my current tank, Espeon).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have a love/hate thing going with Ultra Moon right now. I am pretty turned off by how the core mechanics (grinding to level up for battles and collecting Pokemon) actively work against each other. I mostly enjoy collecting, but it's gotten to the point where I'm switching out my party members so much to evolve and grow my collection that I don't have much of a core team for battling and I'm too weak to continue advancing in the game without spending a lot more time grinding for levels. This game has a ton of quality of life improvements over previous iterations but the core game mechanics feel pretty stale and old and the animations for most of the attacks might as well be from the Game Boy and that's unacceptable for a game of this generation. Sword and Shield still has those crappy animations and they kept the Pokemon models from the 3DS which is especially pathetic given their stated reason for not including all the Pokemon is that they 'didn't have the resources to redo all the models', even though sleuths have conclusively proven they didn't redo any of the models.

 

[Lexicus]

I have a love/hate thing going with Ultra Moon right now. I am pretty turned off by how the core mechanics (grinding to level up for battles and collecting Pokemon) actively work against each other. I mostly enjoy collecting, but it's gotten to the point where I'm switching out my party members so much to evolve and grow my collection that I don't have much of a core team for battling and I'm too weak to continue advancing in the game without spending a lot more time grinding for levels. This game has a ton of quality of life improvements over previous iterations but the core game mechanics feel pretty stale and old and the animations for most of the attacks might as well be from the Game Boy and that's unacceptable for a game of this generation. Sword and Shield still has those crappy animations and they kept the Pokemon models from the 3DS which is especially pathetic given their stated reason for not including all the Pokemon is that they 'didn't have the resources to redo all the models', even though sleuths have conclusively proven they didn't redo any of the models.

It sounds like BS to me. But if you think about it it's always been like this; they split the pokemon up between two versions to make people spend more money and it's just gotten worse from there.

I have been thinking mostly idly about getting into the competitive battling scene but there is just too much to learn. I want to get into earlier-gen metas (1, 2, and 3 mostly) but most battle simulators don't seem to let you filter stuff by generation and that's really annoying. What I would really like is to get into the current-generation meta and just be "that guy" whose gimmick is using all earlier-gen pokemon but that seems to be a pretty big handicap that would limit my team comp a lot.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

So, I do like Stardew Valley overall but I don't like the daily schedule and all that. Is Minecraft worth looking into? I'm pretty sure it has a day-night cycle but it doesn't force you to sleep at night right?

Yeah, but hundreds of monsters come out at night so you want to stay inside. Or get good armour.

If you don't mind modpacks, I've heard good things about Farming Valley and Life in the Village.

 

[Lexicus]

Yeah, but hundreds of monsters come out at night so you want to stay inside. Or get good armour.

There is a real-time clock of some kind right? Is it actually in real time or is in-game time a lot faster than real time? How quickly can you actually get stuff up and running to realistically get what you need to fight monsters at night (I assume it is longer than one in-game day)?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It's faster than real-time, but if you have cheats enabled you can just use "set time 1." Or freeze the time.

Usually, the first day only gives you enough time to build a quick dirt house before the monsters start coming out. But you can build a wooden/stone sword pretty early if you want to try fighting them instead.

 

[Lexicus]

Usually, the first day only gives you enough time to build a quick dirt house before the monsters start coming out. But you can build a wooden/stone sword pretty early if you want to try fighting them instead.

I think I may just have to get the game. I'm intrigued. And I've HOI4ed myself out for the next little while, and I'm not quite ready to return to Skyrim, and I've been thinking about Minecraft for a while....

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It sounds like BS to me. But if you think about it it's always been like this; they split the pokemon up between two versions to make people spend more money and it's just gotten worse from there.

I have been thinking mostly idly about getting into the competitive battling scene but there is just too much to learn. I want to get into earlier-gen metas (1, 2, and 3 mostly) but most battle simulators don't seem to let you filter stuff by generation and that's really annoying. What I would really like is to get into the current-generation meta and just be "that guy" whose gimmick is using all earlier-gen pokemon but that seems to be a pretty big handicap that would limit my team comp a lot.

One post by @TheMeInTeam on competitive battles was enough to completely turn me off on it. Not only is it way too complicated for me to want to get into it, the games themselves hide all of the pertinent information you need to train and build a good competitive team. I don't like that you have to rely on external websites to figure out what is going on inside your game. Plus, I played a couple of online battles and found out firsthand that constant switching out of Pokemon is expected, even required behavior for competitive battles and I can't get into that at all. It slows everything down to a crawl and disrupts the entire flow of the battle and it's obnoxious and not fun. I have no idea why people would find that fun, much less laud a battle system which requires it.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't like that you have to rely on external websites to figure out what is going on inside your game.

As a person who plays Paradox games I am used to this lol

Plus, I played a couple of online battles and found out firsthand that constant switching out of Pokemon is expected, even required behavior for competitive battles and I can't get into that at all. It slows everything down to a crawl and disrupts the entire flow of the battle and it's obnoxious and not fun. I have no idea why people would find that fun, much less laud a battle system which requires it.

Yeah, I'm kinda the same way, I like the idea of getting into it but the actual competitive metagame is full of stuff that I don't really like, aesthetically or whatever. Like a metagame that revolves around setting up stat boosts and switching pokemon in and out is just not that appealing to me, which is why I'm into the idea of earlier-generation metagames which seem to revolve around switching less (like IIRC Baton Pass was introduced in Gen 2 which means Gen 1 must have less switching).