What video games have you been playing V: the return of the subtitle

[Antilogic]

Has Darkest Dungeons fixed its annoying habit of not providing you enough information to figure out if you keep getting cut to pieces because you are bad and the game (and should feel bad) or you are just not approaching a situation the right way?

I mean, in XCOM I can generally figure out where I went wrong (not building enough satellites, taking too long to get laser/plasma guns) but with DD I always just feel like I get screwed by the RNG and an unclear turn order.

No, there's not an explicit turn order, but I've gotten pretty good at predicting it based on the speed stats. Generally, high speed first, ties are a coin flip.

The critical hits are still brutal. I lost two veterans to a back-to-back criticals and blight.

 

[Takhisis]

Given that Fallout 4 is "next gen", have Bethesda finally managed to make interiors and exteriors exist in the same universe yet? I'm a bit fed up of "windows" in buildings that don't actually work.

(I guess this is more of an Elder Scrolls problem as, for Fallout 3 at least, they just didn't bother with even pretending to have windows for the most part, but as the first Bethesda game on the new hardware I was just wondering.)

Interiors and exteriors? I remember that, all the way back in the original Fallout, you could simply shoot in and out through the windows. That's how I got the super-mutants in the Necropolis watershed.

 

[Synobun]

They are adding two new classes in a big patch coming in early March. I am starting a new file then.

Ooo, okay. I'll probably hold out until then. Thanks for letting me know!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Interiors and exteriors? I remember that, all the way back in the original Fallout, you could simply shoot in and out through the windows. That's how I got the super-mutants in the Necropolis watershed.

Yeah, in FO4, the game treats most large (and a surprising amount of small) buildings as separate areas that trigger a load screen. In essence, this segregates the buildings from the rest of the world and you can't shoot into or out of them. In practice though, this has never bothered me though the constant loading does.

 

[Civ'ed]

playing a lot of civilization recently.

 

[gay_Aleks]

but are you playing the right one (i.e, 4)?

 

[Snerk]

Civ:SoD is not the right civ.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I don't think that Civ: One Unit Per Tile, Even Despite Each Tile Is About 20 Miles is any better.

 

[EgonSpengler]

It is kind of hard to believe that Civ V chose a pseudo-tactical combat system for their strategy game. I enjoy the shift from strategic to tactical in the Total War games; I'm not sure why Civ couldn't have done something like that. Maybe they were scared of looking too much like a Total War game?

Personally I found Civ IV all but unplayable in the late game. If I couldn't stealth my way to a peaceful victory, I just quit whenever a late-game war started. Usually I knew by then whether I was going to win or lose anyway, so it wasn't totally spirit-crushing.

Anyway, building composite armies of different types of units has to be a priority for Civ VI, in my book. Military technologies that allow for mixed-unit armies should be added to the tech tree, so developing your military requires some thought and planning, and isn't just something the player waves off with a "yadda yadda" and the "upgrade unit" button, and so every army isn't always the same. The programming may or may not be challenging, I wouldn't know, but conceptually, a better system than Civ IV's & Civ V's could be drawn up in an afternoon, with a whiteboard and some sandwiches.

 

[gay_Aleks]

hopefully not too complicated

when i play Civ i dont want to feel planning each war as if its RoN

 

[warpus]

Late game civ has always sucked, it's basically you going through the motions to finish what you started because you put so many hours into it so why not..

 

[gay_Aleks]

you could always just build up a giant riflemen stack and go for domination

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The big problem with Civ has always been the AI and Firais' inability to make the game challenging without huge bonuses at higher difficulties. Nowhere is that more noticeable (and detrimental to fun) than in warfare. Civ V wanted to fix the annoying and (to any human player simply unaffordable) SoD and instead introduced the Carpet of Doom which is even more annoying if you send scouts and missionaries through a friendly civ's territory and can't move anywhere.
I hope Civ 6 (which will almost certainly be announced within six weeks from now and published this October) will find a decent compromise and make the AI competent at warfare without the huge numerical advantage.

Late game civ has always sucked, it's basically you going through the motions to finish what you started because you put so many hours into it so why not..

That can be said about any 4-X game. It seems to be a problem that is inherent in the genre.

 

[EgonSpengler]

hopefully not too complicated

when i play Civ i dont want to feel planning each war as if its RoN

Heh. Right. Imagine a version of Civ where each historical era is it's own "Cross of Iron"-style wargame. A single playthrough would take two years.

No, I'm thinking of things like the Egyptian chariots vs the Hittite chariots at the Battle of Kadesh. The Hittite chariots were designed to carry a sword-and-shield warrior or two, who would ride into battle and dismount to fight. The Egyptian chariots used a flexible hitch and a single axle, which allowed an archer to ride it and fire on the move.

Later, the Mongols implemented a series of things that enabled them to fire bows from horseback and rumble all the way to Poland: Stirrups; twice-curved bows made from multiple materials; and a faster shooting style that they could do with either hand. The European armies never implemented the Mongolian style of horseback archery, partly because their own advances in firearms made bows obsolete anyway, so they just skipped it (maybe not deliberately, the way a player of a wargame would, but that's how it worked out).

 

[EgonSpengler]

Late game civ has always sucked, it's basically you going through the motions to finish what you started because you put so many hours into it so why not..

I thought some of the late game in Civ IV was good. Spinning off colonies, for instance. Some of the streamlining and simplifying they did in Civ V was disappointing for me. Corporations was a good idea, but maybe needed another development cycle to really shine; simply dropping them from the game wasn't the answer I was looking for.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

It is kind of hard to believe that Civ V chose a pseudo-tactical combat system for their strategy game. I enjoy the shift from strategic to tactical in the Total War games; I'm not sure why Civ couldn't have done something like that. Maybe they were scared of looking too much like a Total War game?

Personally I found Civ IV all but unplayable in the late game. If I couldn't stealth my way to a peaceful victory, I just quit whenever a late-game war started. Usually I knew by then whether I was going to win or lose anyway, so it wasn't totally spirit-crushing.

Anyway, building composite armies of different types of units has to be a priority for Civ VI, in my book. Military technologies that allow for mixed-unit armies should be added to the tech tree, so developing your military requires some thought and planning, and isn't just something the player waves off with a "yadda yadda" and the "upgrade unit" button, and so every army isn't always the same. The programming may or may not be challenging, I wouldn't know, but conceptually, a better system than Civ IV's & Civ V's could be drawn up in an afternoon, with a whiteboard and some sandwiches.

I favor a system like in Endless Legend/Endless Space. Stacks, but each stack can only hold a certain number of units, and there are technologies that let you increase the number. That's a good balance of both I think, because stack size is limited maneuvering around the map still matters, while also not flooding your screen and jamming up the works. Would also allow for what you said, stacks can gain bonuses or maybe even maluses depending on their composition... pick complementary compositions and you get a bonus, pick compositions that don't work together and you get a malus.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I thought some of the late game in Civ IV was good. Spinning off colonies, for instance. Some of the streamlining and simplifying they did in Civ V was disappointing for me. Corporations was a good idea, but maybe needed another development cycle to really shine; simply dropping them from the game wasn't the answer I was looking for.

Maybe I wasn't doing it correctly, but I always thought that the necessary outlay in gold to spread a corporation to a new city made it not worth doing for the most part. For the corporations that provided a resource or food or some other immediate benefit to the host city it made sense, but from a purely financial point of view the fact that it would take 50 to 100 turns to even break even on your initial outlay made it kind of pointless to try and grow a vast corporate empire. No point at all to spread to other civ's cities (where the outlay was even greater if I remember correctly).

Very different game, but I've also (slightly) got back into GTA V recently and it has exactly the same problem when you buy businesses. When you have to play for something like 100 game WEEKS to recoup your initial outlay, and you can't even re-sell the business, what's the point? It's not like I'm going to pump hundreds of hours into the game just to break even on my business interests.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I favor a system like in Endless Legend/Endless Space. Stacks, but each stack can only hold a certain number of units, and there are technologies that let you increase the number. That's a good balance of both I think, because stack size is limited maneuvering around the map still matters, while also not flooding your screen and jamming up the works. Would also allow for what you said, stacks can gain bonuses or maybe even maluses depending on their composition... pick complementary compositions and you get a bonus, pick compositions that don't work together and you get a malus.

Sounds good to me. I suppose it's possible the Civ V developers worked on ideas like these and encountered some roadblock that we haven't yet. Like I say, I know nothing about the scripting challenges any of this stuff may present.

Maybe I wasn't doing it correctly, but I always thought that the necessary outlay in gold to spread a corporation to a new city made it not worth doing for the most part. For the corporations that provided a resource or food or some other immediate benefit to the host city it made sense, but from a purely financial point of view the fact that it would take 50 to 100 turns to even break even on your initial outlay made it kind of pointless to try and grow a vast corporate empire. No point at all to spread to other civ's cities (where the outlay was even greater if I remember correctly).

It's been forever since I played Civ IV. I can't really remember what my beef with corporations was, I only remember that it was a nice idea that wasn't quite "there" yet. Maybe I had the same problem you did.

 

[Zack]

Destiny, Madden, Mass Effect 3. Every time I return to Mass Effect, I'm struck by how amazing and wonderful (and unique) the games are.

 

[Commodore]

Destiny, Madden, Mass Effect 3. Every time I return to Mass Effect, I'm struck by how amazing and wonderful (and unique) the games are.

I know right? Ever since I started playing through the Mass Effect series, I have been comparing every game I play to it, even if it is a completely different genre. And more often than not, I find myself saying "this game's good, but it's no Mass Effect".

I'm actually pretty excited to see what they do with Mass Effect: Andromeda.