What Video Games Have You Been Playing VI: Because There Are No Elections In Video Games

[Zkribbler]

I am playing CivIV BTS at the Noble level as the Arabs. I'm doing well.
First to music so I got a Great Artist.
First to liberalism, so I got a free tech.
First to economics si I got a Great Merchant.
First around the world, so I got +1 sea movement.
And I'm almost first to physics so I'll get a Great Scientist.

 

[Commodore]

The prices increases for all the new units though, just getting ridiclous

Yeah Games Workshop seems to really have it in for you Aussies. When I started looking at the prices for my army, I didn't realize I had their site set to AUD instead of USD and the prices were through the roof. Once I switched it over to USD there was a significant drop in price that did not correlate with current exchange rates. So for some reason GW really jacks up the prices for Australia. The prices don't really seem to have gone up all that much for the US though. I remember paying about $40 for a Leman Russ tank about 10 years ago, and now it's only up to I think $47.50. So not too terrible of an increase in the past ten years.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Finally figured out why fallout 4 kept crashing, not that it really matters since my computer can only run it at 6-10 FPS. In combat it runs usually around 1-3 FPS. I call it the Fallout 4 Slideshow. Would this performance qualify it as a "Picture Game"?

 

[Arakhor]

If your normal rate is 5-10 FPS, how on earth do you ever even get close to combat??

 

[Broken_Erika]

Staring at the ground gets me up to 15FPS. Interestingly, running at either lowest or highest graphics settings makes no difference in framerate what-so-ever. I get exactly the same framerates regardless of settings...

 

[Synobun]

If your normal rate is 5-10 FPS, how on earth do you ever even get close to combat??

Spite.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Fallout Shelters is the best freemium Android game I've played. It's very enjoyable and doesn't trap you in a pay-to-win/pay-to-play scenario.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Staring at the ground gets me up to 15FPS. Interestingly, running at either lowest or highest graphics settings makes no difference in framerate what-so-ever. I get exactly the same framerates regardless of settings...

Use the low res texture pack mod to make the game run much smoother.
I ran it fine on my 6 year old desktop with that mod.

Might be the CPU that is the bottleneck for the game if you shuffer from Low FPS

 

[EgonSpengler]

Staring at the ground gets me up to 15FPS. Interestingly, running at either lowest or highest graphics settings makes no difference in framerate what-so-ever. I get exactly the same framerates regardless of settings...

Lowering Shadow Quality and Shadow Distance solved the framerate problem I was having in the downtown outdoor areas.

 

[Broken_Erika]

This laptop has a strange video setup. AMD stopped supporting the integrated Graphics chip and the particular setup i have (Radeon HD8650G+ Radeon HD8970M) doersn't have very good driver support. The HD8650 has the last driver released for it (feb 2016) while the dedicated HD8970m's latest driver that works is from July 2014. The only other driver that i can find for this system is the original MSI driver package from 2013. Also this laptop is apparently incapable of running windows 10 without crashing every 15 minutes, again i figure it's because of the video drivers. Other than that its a good laptop, AMD A10-5750M, 16GB Ram, dual 750gb hard drives, soundblaster cinema, it's just ther friggin video setup that kills it(or was killed by AMD when the decided to stop supporting the 8650's)Next machine i get will be a desktop.

 

[cardgame]

FWIW my 2013 R9 290 is still getting driver updates, so I wouldn't be harsh on AMD there, while Nvidia actively and intentionally killed its older GPU performance (7xx series) with drivers and hairworks™

 

[Birdjaguar]

...Next machine i get will be a desktop.

For the win!

 

[Groff]

Has anyone tried Divinity Original Sin 2? It's been out for a few days, and all the reviews and comments I've come across have been very positive. I was thinking of giving it a shot today, maybe.

Also have any of you played it's predecessor and the first one in the series Divine Divinity? The name is just but the game was actually pretty decent. It's a hack'n'slash rpg game (unlike the new DOS2 which is tactical turn based combat) and I've never beaten it but always thought it had a really good setting and amazing soundtrack.

 

[Akka]

Playing it right now (yes, as in "at the same moment I'm typing this post", I was browsing while the game was loading ^^).
It's pretty good, but it's really hair-pullingly hard and unfair in fights (I'm dreading each battle and I'm playing in Classic - do NOT attempt Tactician unless you really know what you're doing), and the hack'n'slash roots are visible through the idiotic stat inflation and shower of items (which are really the two things which I count as heavy downside of the game).

Writing is top-notch, maps are huge and there is a real ability to chose what you want to do (very few to no invincible NPC, missable opportunities, sidequests integrated in the world instead of forced way, etc.).
If they could make the fighting and the gearing RPG as much as the rest of the game, it would be near-perfect.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Has anyone tried Divinity Original Sin 2? It's been out for a few days, and all the reviews and comments I've come across have been very positive. I was thinking of giving it a shot today, maybe.

Also have any of you played it's predecessor and the first one in the series Divine Divinity? The name is just but the game was actually pretty decent. It's a hack'n'slash rpg game (unlike the new DOS2 which is tactical turn based combat) and I've never beaten it but always thought it had a really good setting and amazing soundtrack.

I just got it, and as I've said in the thread about the game I still can't decide on my PC. I think I'll go with a Conjurer Fane, but I still have to think about it. The first Original Sin was awesome and what Dragon Age should have become. Never played pre-Original Sin Divinity games and thought of them as mediocre or actually-pretty-good-but-not-worth-my-time Diablo clones.
Fun fact: Before Divine Divinity was released the publisher was very successful with Sudden Strike and the marketing department concluded that games with alliterative names sell better. So, whatever the project was called before, it now had to be Divine Divinity to capitalize on the easily-manipulated-by-names-market.


On a side note, I just love that Larian made such a great game with the first Original Sin. They didn't just make a great game, they took part in reinvigorating a classic genre and put their own spin on it. Pillars of Eternity was also great, but somehow stayed too close to the Baldurs Gate formula. Larian improved it with an awesome combat system and still the game feels more like an old school RPG without the old school annoyances. It's probably relevant that the music reminded me of Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger.
It's underdog stories like Larian and CD Projekt that give me hope for the video game industry amidst all the short sighted DLC and microtransaction nonsense that destroyed the Deus Ex and Mass Effect franchises. There are already worthy successor in case Bioware (or EA) and Square Enix destroy themselves.

 

[civvver]

I have played divine divinity a bit, but it's just not as good as diablo or newer hack and slashes like torchlight 2 or titan quest or grim dawn.

 

[Groff]

Well I just died 2 minutes into my first playthrough. Stole a book in the first room and tried to talk my way out of it after they caught me. The game looks really beautiful, can't wait to die play more.

 

[cardgame]

@Groff reminds me of Morrowind

 

[Ajidica]

Spend most of the weekend playing Divinity Original Sin 2. It is a good game but really needs some heavy patching to iron out the combat.
Graphics? Good.
Loot? Good.
Skills? Good.
Writing/Quests? Both good, with some problems in signposting.
Combat? Well.......

The big thing in Divinity is manipulating the environment to abuse environmental effects, like puddles you can electrify or oil slicks to set on fire. The first game was all about laying down a barrage of spells and abilities to cripple your enemies. Because that could get abusive very fast, Divinity 2 changed it up so that before you do health damage you have to get through either physical armor or magic armor. Furthermore, melee/magic statuses (like crippled or burning) are automatically resisted so long as the respective physical/magic armor is up. The result is that parties are now best when they focus almost solely on one damage type - physical or magic. If your swordsman is whacking on an enemy and stripped his physical armor and the enemy is close to death, you can't have your mage quick blast him with their wand as that will damage their magic armor first. Magical damage on weapons -and especially arrows- is sort of gimped because you are never doing enough magical damage with weapons to get through the magic armor so the magical effects never start applying. This is really bad for magic arrows -which are a big part of the combat unless you are packing some dedicated magical artillery- as none of their bonus effects (like charm or curse) will trigger as the arrow itself does damage to physical armor while magical effect gets stopped by the magic armor.
So far annoying, but it gets worse.
Enemies -even on normal/classic have obscene magic/physical armor, especially creatures. Human enemies tend to have a clear preference for one or the other so there are some interesting tactical decisions at least. Creatures have obscene pools of both, making combat pretty difficult. The enemies also have vastly improve battlefield mobility abilities from last game so trying to maintain a coherent battle line with mages in the back falls apart almost immediately. I slightly gimped my party because I didn't distribute stats and abilities well, but I'm having to lower the difficulty occasionally to easy. There are also fewer trash mobs to fight, which means it is harder to tell if you have a bad party set up/tactics or the battle is supposed to be difficult. Fewer trash mobs also means fewer areas to grind.

There are also other minor annoyances, such as your inventory getting filled with junk, and there being no indications ghosts are present (you have a pretty important "see ghosts" ability) so you are constantly spamming the ability everywhere you go. A pale light green cloud or something could be handy to let you know "hey, there is a thing here. might want to use your ability". (Or they can just have it constantly on as there is no resource cost to using it.)

tl;dr: Good game with the potential to be an outstanding game if the devs do some pretty heavy patching. Given their post-release support for Divinity 1 and the very impressive Enhanced Edition, I'm confident the devs will do a good job. Otherwise, wait for a sale.

 

[REDY]

I have played divine divinity a bit, but it's just not as good as diablo or newer hack and slashes like torchlight 2 or titan quest or grim dawn.

Divine divinity is not just hack and slash. It allows much better role play gaming. There are various options how to solve some quests, lot of quests require careful reading, talking or puzzle solving. World is not procedurally genered but carefully man-made. Its like comparing HL to Call of duty. Both are excellent 1st person shooters but they want to achieve quite different things.

Divinity II and divinity origin sin 1(2) are very different games from the first game, so its pretty possible that you will enjoy gameplay of its successors even when you did not like DD.