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

[AdamCrock]

I believe there is only one dungeon left, the cathedral. I'm going to attempt to put a nuke inside it and blow it up without fighting the boss.

Before You do that , meet Richard aka. "The Master" - it's one of a kind experience ! He's an exile from Vault 8 (later known as Vault City) His real name was Moreau but Harold knew him by his exile surname : Grey

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Honestly I just want it to end haha. I'll watch some videos of him interacting with players on YouTube. I want to finish it for the sake of finishing it but I've had about as much enjoyment as I can get out of it. It's a game I want to finish because of the role it played in starting the franchise but in the end I don't think it's a particularly good game. And based on some other comments people have made here, it's probably not even the best example of its genre.

 

[AdamCrock]

It's cool TBH it is not the best one , but the sequel (Fallout 2) is in my opinion best Fallout game New Vegas is next on my list of best Fallout games. (seeing how the same team made it it is no wonder ) . I haven't played 4 so I wouldn't know if it's good.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Prison Architect is an amazing game though probably not in the way the creators intended it to be played

Prisoners meals are reduced to $1 per day, I feed them what appears to be cabbage soup
Prisoners have to work to earn money, which is then used to purchase goods from the prison store
I can pack them four into a 2m x3m room, one toilet, one shower between four prisoners
Armed guards set to shoot to kill
I promise to improve the prison once I have more money.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I can pack them four into a 2m x3m room, one toilet, one shower between four prisoners.

Reminds me a bit of playing the Asylum challenge in the Sims.

Actually, I have Prison Architect myself. I should try it out.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Actually, I have Prison Architect myself. I should try it out.

Highly recommended sim game
We both brought the Humble bundle but I brought mine for Prison Architect.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I tried it out. It immediately dumped me into the game and told me to build an execution chamber. Instead I open all the doors to see if the prisoners would run away but they didn't and the doors just closed up again.

While I'm here: When moving all my stuff to my new drive, all the games show up in Steam as uninstalled so I went to reinstall them. I would expect it to detect the files in my SteamApps folder and not re-download them. What did I do wrong?

 

[FriendlyFire]

I think the first mission is a tutorial and not full sandbox mode.
Prisoners will try to escape if given a clear line all the way out, just opening the cell doors will only give your prisoners access to the main common areas.

Moving steam games, you have to re-verifty the game files
https://www.cloudwards.net/how-to-move-steam-games/

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Before You do that , meet Richard aka. "The Master" - it's one of a kind experience ! He's an exile from Vault 8 (later known as Vault City) His real name was Moreau but Harold knew him by his exile surname : Grey

When I played Fallout, I managed to convince the Master to commit suicide.

 

[AdamCrock]

When I played Fallout, I managed to convince the Master to commit suicide.

Yup it is possible with speech skill, INT score of 7+ and a super-mutant autopsy holodisk from BoS scribe. You can convince him that mutants are infertile and destined for extinction when everyone is turned into a mutie

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The location shown for the Cathedral on the overworld map is almost exactly where my old apartment in Torrance was located. There's also a legit, world-class cathedral in the general area (Anaheim); I went to a Beethoven concert there recently. I still get excited when I see areas I know in media. It's a pretty new thing for me having mostly lived in rural and suburban backwaters.

Edit:

To sneak into the Cathedral/Vault, you have to be alone. If you have any companions, Lasher and the Nightkins will attack you. This is true even if you convince Lasher to give you the key card! How stupid. And people say Fallout 4 had less choices as if these kind of choices are any better.

 

[AdamCrock]

To sneak into the Cathedral/Vault, you have to be alone. If you have any companions, Lasher and the Nightkins will attack you. This is true even if you convince Lasher to give you the key card! How stupid. And people say Fallout 4 had less choices as if these kind of choices are any better.

IIRC You can dismiss them from party for a while and than hire them again, idk about dogmeant but don't worry , You can probably just shoot Your way in until You reach the nuke Go in plasma rifles blazing !!

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Because many games can be very long (my completionist Witcher 3 run clocks at 270+ hours, my last Kingmaker run was 115 hours), and having to restart because of a decision you took 50 hours ago is just absolutely terrible design.

It's especially bad when it's about decision which is by definition uninformed (as it usually happens the first time you play) and there is no way to really guess what the adequate answer ("normal" in some games is pretty easy, while in others it's pretty hard). There is also the problem with difficulty spikes (Kingmaker is a pretty good example, having to give up on a very long run because you hit one of the weird roadblock would be pretty horrible), getting used to the game so what was an adequate difficulty becomes boring, making a bad decision during the character creation that comes to haunt you a lot later, etc.

Games like that (Titan Quest comes to mind) usually introduce a respeccing mechanic for the player, which has growing (opportunity) cost. That always solved it for me.

Well I'm against the idea of RPGs even having the possibility of a "poorly designed character". By having certain builds be better than others, it doesn't allow the player to play the game the way they want to play. It pigeonholes them into the playstyles the developer thinks they should be using. And if you don't have control over your playstyle, can the game truly be called an RPG?

I am of the opinion that any character build should be viable in any game. While I don't have a problem with certain builds being more challenging than others, a player should never be completely screwed because they made a character choice the developer decided shouldn't be a good one.

Remember: the main point of a game is to have fun, not to be challenged. Dying over and over isn't fun. Neither is having to start a game over that is already too long (as most RPGs are) just to redesign your character to the specifications the developer wants you to.

The idea that the main focus of a game should be the challenge instead of having fun is a ridiculous one. If you get your fun from the challenge and spending hours working on spreadsheets and min/maxing your character, great. That's why adjustable difficulty exists. Don't knock people though for enjoying games the way they want to enjoy them. It's that kind of elitist thinking that keeps negative stereotypes of gamers from going away.

I agree that all kinds of builds should be viable, challenge shouldn't come from spreadsheeting alone but rather from intelligent AI, good mechanics, complexity, reaction time, adaptability, riddles, creative problem thinking and so forth. I don't really roll with the strawman you've created for me. In Dark Souls all builds were viable, too, and that game was hard as rocks. I also don't encourage Permadeath or having to restart because of suboptimal builds, and never have. People that do like that though, great for them. Maybe at some point I could enjoy a permadeath game, but currently that's just not the case.

Ironic you accuse me of making games unfun by imposing my opinion, while you assert that your opinion "games should be primarily fun and challenge is only for those masochists that need it" as truth. If you're having fun playing games, good for you. There's already millions of casual to difficult games on the market and the trend has been increasing for a long time. Leave me my tiny marketshare of really challenging games. It's okay if it's not the AAA titles like Skyrim, I'm not really expecting that anymore.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

IIRC You can dismiss them from party for a while and than hire them again, idk about dogmeant but don't worry , You can probably just shoot Your way in until You reach the nuke Go in plasma rifles blazing !!

I did it! I beat the game!

I talked to Lasher and convinced him to take me to the Master but he instantly turned hostile due to my companions. Dealing with the super mutants / nightkin inside the complex wasn't a problem but I did end up letting all of my companions die because I wanted to just end the game. I could have saved them the same way I cleared Mariposa base but I was out of patience. I wound up triggering the nuke without ever meeting the master and got the best ending. I just watched videos with the Master and he was a really cool villain. I think I completed less than half the content of the game and only got to Level 14 by the time I was done.

 

[Gorbles]

Not to interrupt, but I've been breaking up my monolithic spell of BL3 (while waiting for the soloable raid boss event that starts this week, woo) with an equally-unhealthy amount of Pokemon Sword. Some highlights:

• This is the first main series Pokemon game I've owned since Crystal (2nd gen; back in the early 2000s). It's amazing that even with the changing mechanics, advances in art (the whole 3D thing, too), it still feels 100% like Pokemon. Lovely.
• Love the whole concept of the Wild Area. Wild catches that scale with you, with substantial biome diversity, really makes grinding out your Pokedex less of a grind.
• Infinite Move Tutor is fantastic, makes developing your roster less tedious (and incentivises wild / evolved catches).
• Combining Poke Marts into Poke Centres is also great.
• Performance is nowhere near as bad as the online scaremongering made out. Noticeable with Y-Comm enabled while running around full pelt in the Wild Area, but that's not surprising.
• Holy cow was removing HMs a fantastic move.

 

[Commodore]

Ironic you accuse me of making games unfun by imposing my opinion, while you assert that your opinion "games should be primarily fun and challenge is only for those masochists that need it" as truth. If you're having fun playing games, good for you. There's already millions of casual to difficult games on the market and the trend has been increasing for a long time. Leave me my tiny marketshare of really challenging games. It's okay if it's not the AAA titles like Skyrim, I'm not really expecting that anymore

My point was that games don't have to be either/or. A game can be both super-challenging and a more casual experience by allowing the player to adjust the difficulty at any point. So allowing for adjustable difficulty, which is what your original complaint was, doesn't prevent you from enjoying the game the way you want to since you can just crank the difficulty up and keep it there. Not allowing adjustable difficulty though does keep the more casual players from enjoying the game and I just don't see the point of that, either from a business perspective or a gameplay one.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

My point was that games don't have to be either/or. A game can be both super-challenging and a more casual experience by allowing the player to adjust the difficulty at any point. So allowing for adjustable difficulty, which is what your original complaint was, doesn't prevent you from enjoying the game the way you want to since you can just crank the difficulty up and keep it there. Not allowing adjustable difficulty though does keep the more casual players from enjoying the game and I just don't see the point of that, either from a business perspective or a gameplay one.

That is true for some games but it is not universal. Some games work at any difficulty level, others don't. Games like Dark Souls or Chess very much demand a core gameplay loop built around gaining ever more skill in order to defeat ever greater challenges in order to reach new ones that require yet more skill. You can't really get rid of that by artificially reducing difficulty without breaking what makes them enjoyable to play. And conversely there are games where the emphasis is not on skill but on something else like creativity (minecraft comes to mind) where having a difficulty slider really does not do it any benefit for the opposite reason.

 

[Commodore]

That is true for some games but it is not universal. Some games work at any difficulty level, others don't. Games like Dark Souls or Chess very much demand a core gameplay loop built around gaining ever more skill in order to defeat ever greater challenges in order to reach new ones that require yet more skill. You can't really get rid of that by artificially reducing difficulty without breaking what makes them enjoyable to play. And conversely there are games where the emphasis is not on skill but on something else like creativity (minecraft comes to mind) where having a difficulty slider really does not do it any benefit for the opposite reason.

You can still have adjustable difficulty in those games, and one of your examples even has it already. Minecraft may not have a difficulty slider, but as I understand it (as I've never actually played it) the player can choose whether or not they want enemies like creepers to be present while they play. I would consider that adjustable difficulty.

As for Dark Souls, I also have never played it, but I think having difficulty settings wouldn't break the gameplay at all. Different people have different levels of skill, so you can still keep the core gameplay of ever increasing challenges, just make it so the scale at which those challenges increase is determined by the difficulty the player set it on.

Or you can go the route that Resident Evil 2 Remake took. That game has two difficulty systems: one the player sets and a hidden one. The hidden one tracks how well you are doing and will make small tweaks to things like enemy health and the amount of ammo you find to make things harder if you are doing well and easier if you are struggling. That way the game always feels appropriately challenging no matter your skill level.

 

[AdamCrock]

I did it! I beat the game!

I talked to Lasher and convinced him to take me to the Master but he instantly turned hostile due to my companions. Dealing with the super mutants / nightkin inside the complex wasn't a problem but I did end up letting all of my companions die because I wanted to just end the game. I could have saved them the same way I cleared Mariposa base but I was out of patience. I wound up triggering the nuke without ever meeting the master and got the best ending. I just watched videos with the Master and he was a really cool villain. I think I completed less than half the content of the game and only got to Level 14 by the time I was done.

Congratulations ! "You've saved us ! But You'll kill us. You are a hero .... and You have to leave... (...)" - Overseer

Don't let the Vault doors hit You in the ass on Your way out btw. Tell me You had the "bloody mess" perk ... , because if You had

Spoiler :

You kill the overseer in quite the spectacular fashion

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I tried it out. It immediately dumped me into the game and told me to build an execution chamber. Instead I open all the doors to see if the prisoners would run away but they didn't and the doors just closed up again.

I think the first mission is a tutorial and not full sandbox mode.
Prisoners will try to escape if given a clear line all the way out, just opening the cell doors will only give your prisoners access to the main common areas.

I played some more last night. I discovered this danger to society and put him in maximum security and locked him in his cell indefinitely.

Spoiler :