What Video Games Have You Been Playing #15: Computer not on fire yet? Better add more mods!

[Sommerswerd]

I've been meaning to ask you: do you watch a YouTube channel called LegalEagle? He's a lawyer that does all kinds of stuff like real law reviews where he gives his professional opinion on current legal cases. His best work though is his "Real Lawyer Reacts" series where he grades legal dramas for legal realism. It's good stuff.

Yes I have seen that channel. He (like most lawyers) loves My Cousin Vinnie so he had me at hello.

 

[Commodore]

Yes I have seen that channel. He (like most lawyers) loves My Cousin Vinnie so he had me at hello.

I'm not a lawyer, but I love My Cousin Vinny as well and it was his video on it that also drew me to his channel.

I love it because I'm learning more about the law while also being entertained. One of my favorites being when he said Batman could potentially get a sentence of 60 million years for his little phone hacking stunt in Dark Knight.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The Sims 2 + Windows 10 + NVIDIA are not a happy combination, but I think I've resolved most of the issues with it.

I'll be the happiest person ever if I never have to see another "The application has crashed. The application will now terminate." or this particular shade of magenta again:

Spoiler :

 

[Arakhor]

That's the same "ooh, you done goofed!" colour as in Oblivion.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

At least in TS2, it happens when the game runs out of video memory and starts dumping textures. I actually have close to six gigabytes of video memory to work with (according to dxdiag), but the game had the wrong video card listed in one of the config files. The crashes were a combination of weird issues, Windows 10's handling of standby memory and some bad custom meshes and having a certain camera modification installed.

 

[Ajidica]

I never used Requiem. SkyRe/PerMa was my go-to overhaul.

Requiem is an interesting mod, but the developers did a terrible job balancing the quests/dungeons for how difficult combat has become. Like, don't even consider going against a single Draugr until you are over level 20; even trying to cheese your way through basic bandit dungeons is hard. The result is you spent the first 40+ hours of gameplay wandering around trying to level up your combat skills oh-so-slowly without any quests to give form to your adventure.
I really need to get around to playing Skyrim with Morrowloot, where the items and enemies are deleveled. Should be what I'm looking for in Skyrim.

 

[tjs282]

Can't reply/follow-on directly from this post, where I said this:

Thinking back, I don't think I've completed most of the B-Wing Historical missions, or any of the Bonus Missions yet, either, with any of my pilot-files (I've had a go at the first couple, though, and they're really hard!)

...which is no longer true: over the past week, I've done a lot of these now as well (not cleanly by any means, but at least got the 'Mission complete' message before I got blown up -- again!).

Still haven't managed the Trench Run in the B-wing (BW 'Historical' Mission 6), though.

Spoiler And this is for why... :

The BW is heavily armed (and theoretically heavily armoured), but with either cannons and shields set on slow recharge, or cannons or shields on fast recharge, it's even more sluggish than the Y-wing under the same power settings.

(The 'Completion hints' recommend putting both cannons and shields on fast recharge for this mission -- which leaves the BW pretty much a sitting duck!)

Which is kind of a problem, since I'm being dropped into the mission with fully charged cannons but only half-charged shields (necessitating energy shifting), no wingmen (AKA decoys!), already in range of multiple turbolaser towers (manned by expert gunners: they lead their shots!), 3 TIE Fighters (i.e. 6 laser-cannons, all pointing directly at me) only a couple of klicks away, and a TIE Advanced ~10 klicks off but (also) closing fast. (TAs are insanely fast and manoeuvrable, armed with twin cannons + missiles, and shielded: killing one using a BW pretty much requires a lucky first-strike with a missile, because lasers will rarely/never be brought to bear before the damn thing has scooted out of range again).

I've only made it into the trench itself (only ~4 klicks from the start-point, and ~25 klicks from the exhaust-port) on about a third of my recent attempts, but always with shields/armour so badly shredded that I never survived very much longer than that.

 

[trader/warrior]

Playing Rimworld for the first time. Got an ok base up and running and thought I was handling stuff pretty well. After a month or so a dry thunderstorm passed by igniting some pretty massive fires all over the map, but none to close to my base so I thought it was fine.

However apparently fires can burn down steel walls (maybe a mod issue? or maybe the fire was just THAT hot, I dunno) and it burned into the endgame "ancient danger" location on the map releasing a bunch of mechanoids into the map, who are now wandering around very close to aggro range from my base. One guy accidentally walked too close and his entire leg got blown off from one hit at super long range.

I don't think I have any chance to fight those guys and having them on the map seems to prevent any other game events like traders arriving etc from happening. Thinking I might just have to break out the cheats to kill them which would be pretty lame in a first playthrough. Alternative would be intentional suicide to end the limbo-state my colony is currently in, or I guess it might be possible to just pack up and move to a different location?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I was reading a thread on Reddit and apparently in the last ~year, Bethesda pushed an update to FO4 which tanked performance across the board. In my current playthrough anytime I'm near Boston my game turns into a slideshow. That area has always had a low FPS but I didn't remember it being that bad in the past. I just chalked up the terrible performance to all the mods I am running but it turns out that no, it's actually something almost everyone on every platform is dealing with now. That sucks. They have memes about it and everything.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I was reading a thread on Reddit and apparently in the last ~year, Bethesda pushed an update to FO4 which tanked performance across the board. In my current playthrough anytime I'm near Boston my game turns into a slideshow. That area has always had a low FPS but I didn't remember it being that bad in the past. I just chalked up the terrible performance to all the mods I am running but it turns out that no, it's actually something almost everyone on every platform is dealing with now. That sucks. They have memes about it and everything.

Haven't noticed anything like that in the PC version, all i got is 2-3 min loading times when fast traveling or leaving a dungeon.

 

[Synobun]

Got to the point in Heave Ho where they introduce invisible walls. Honestly, not fun at all. Really killed the enjoyment for us.

Played Showdown from Scribblenauts. Basically a board game on the Switch. Not sure how to feel about it. Cards start mini-games which you play against other people. If you win, you move forward. The mini-games, though, range from okay to bad, and the cards tend to be heavy on the bad mini-games and light on the okay ones. The gesture mini-games aren't that fun either. There's only so much time you can spend having an imaginary wank before you're bored.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Haven't noticed anything like that in the PC version, all i got is 2-3 min loading times when fast traveling or leaving a dungeon.

People claimed this was an issue on pc as well but

My game has a 50/50 chance of failing to even load on start up.

 

[Broken_Erika]

People claimed this was an issue on pc as well but

My game has a 50/50 chance of failing to even load on start up.

Mine just crashes if the memory usage gets too high. Windows anti-memory leak function seems to think that bethesda games using large amounts of memory counts as a memory leak and immediately shuts it down if it gets too high. The only fix is to downgrade to an earlier version of windows 10, a version that is probably incompatible with my mainboard drivers.....

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Mine just crashes if the memory usage gets too high. Windows anti-memory leak function seems to think that bethesda games using large amounts of memory counts as a memory leak and immediately shuts it down if it gets too high. The only fix is to downgrade to an earlier version of windows 10, a version that is probably incompatible with my mainboard drivers.....

Wow. Just wow. I'm breathless at how stupid that is.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

What games did you play? It's not everybody's cup of tea but saying that the format is objectively bad seems pretty weird tbh.

a few of the star wars games, many simulations, all of the tutorial games, and some games that I've already played (like Skyrim), but with VR

you can tell me whatever you want, for me VR goggles are at the same level as these. it even feels similiarly clunky, with an added dash of motion sickness:

 

[yung.carl.jung]

This is why when I reach certain milestones in Skyrim (typically Extra Effect in Enchanting) I crank the difficulty up to Legendary.

I simply don't get the idea of readily-adjustable difficulty. honestly, a game where you can say: "this particular boss is too hard, make him really easy, please!" isn't even a game to me. why go out and be a hero, accept challenges, if ultimately all you need to do is go into the menu and turn the slider down in order to "win"? of course with the way difficulty works in skyrim the developers might as well have built "toggle god mode" into the actual game menu, because on lowest difficulty it's absolutely impossible to die to anyone unless you're doing it on purpose. of course unmodded skyrim is still a total joke on legendary, because you can just abuse the stupidity of the AI and never have to fight yourself. all "legendary" does is make the player character do almost no damage, whilst the NPCs oneshot you with any spell/weapon. it's even worse difficulty scaling than in Civ V imo.

I really liked the idea of choosing a difficulty at the beginning of the game then having to stick with it, what happened to that?

you're damn right about that talent, too. the whole enchantment tree in the base game is way too strong.

 

[Lexicus]

Being able to switch the difficulty in-game lets me make it a bit harder when I become too powerful. *shrugs*

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I really liked the idea of choosing a difficulty at the beginning of the game then having to stick with it, what happened to that?

Everyone is different and it's way better to give people the tools to make necessary adjustments than to force them to sink hours into a game and then have to start over. I do not understand why this is considered problematic.

 

[Ajidica]

I simply don't get the idea of readily-adjustable difficulty. honestly, a game where you can say: "this particular boss is too hard, make him really easy, please!" isn't even a game to me. why go out and be a hero, accept challenges, if ultimately all you need to do is go into the menu and turn the slider down in order to "win"?

I mean, there are any number of reasons to want to do that. Perhaps you built your character poorly and don't want to sink another 30+ hours into the game to 'do it right' (a); you got blindsided by an attack vector you weren't really aware of and don't have on hand items to fix it (b); the combat system in the game is very finicky (c); or the game isn't particularly well balanced and throws the hardest parts at you early on (d).
I also really hate boss fights in video games as 99% of them devolve into puzzle fights, dodge-or-die fights, or plinking away at HP bags.

(a) - Basically any RPG your first time through. Even simple RPGs like Skyrim have this effect. My first character ended up a bit of a mess because I wanted to combined bow, sword, and illusion magic; and then spent a lot of time playing with the crafting skills which meant the enemies were way stronger than me.
(b) - Can't remember which RPG, might have been Dragon Age Origins, where about halfway into one of the major missions I started getting a bunch of mental attacks thrown at my party. I hadn't yet encountered mental attacks in any number in the game so I hadn't been getting skills/items to deal with it. Dropped down a difficulty level for that mission so I could finish it while still having fun, and re-equipped back at the hub.
(c) - Basically any Euro-RPG such as the Gothic/Risen series where the combat is heavily timing based but the underlying mechanics aren't quite there so it just feels awkward.
(d) - I remember this clearly in Witcher 1 in the fight with the Barghest in your first area. This is a very difficult fight with basically no ability to prep ahead of time (as the game advances time significantly during a cutscene) and a bunch of enemies who can stunlock you. Unless you sink several points into your stun spell (which otherwise isn't very useful in that area) the fight it literally ragequit inducing. With the stun spell you can paralyze the Barghest and one hit kill him, winning the battle.

 

[cardgame]

Playing Rimworld for the first time. Got an ok base up and running and thought I was handling stuff pretty well. After a month or so a dry thunderstorm passed by igniting some pretty massive fires all over the map, but none to close to my base so I thought it was fine.

However apparently fires can burn down steel walls (maybe a mod issue? or maybe the fire was just THAT hot, I dunno) and it burned into the endgame "ancient danger" location on the map releasing a bunch of mechanoids into the map, who are now wandering around very close to aggro range from my base. One guy accidentally walked too close and his entire leg got blown off from one hit at super long range.

I don't think I have any chance to fight those guys and having them on the map seems to prevent any other game events like traders arriving etc from happening. Thinking I might just have to break out the cheats to kill them which would be pretty lame in a first playthrough. Alternative would be intentional suicide to end the limbo-state my colony is currently in, or I guess it might be possible to just pack up and move to a different location?

Wildfires can't melt steel beams, it was obviously an inside job by one of your colonists.