What Video Games Have You Been Playing VII: The Real Ending is Locked Behind a Paywall

[Senethro]

I'll be honest and say that I maybe don't know what I'm doing that lets me keep up with the AI, at least on Very Hard difficulty. There are times that my research goes from +100 to +200 in the course of a decade when I wasn't aware of having done much, so maybe what I think I'm doing isn't actually what is giving me wins. Its a complicated system and feedback is obfuscated in places.

While I nearly always prioritize techs that upgrade my Mining Networks/Powerplants (and planetary capitals) over other options, I often sit on the upgrades for a very long time. I think I'm chasing down all the +3 and some of the +2 mineral slots before any Mining Network gets upgraded. Another odd habit I've taken to is the outscourcing of Unity and Science to my new colonies while the capital overbuilds on the food and energy to keep them running. I'll match the building of a Heritage site, Gene Clinic and Basic Sci to their pop development and just skip the basic tier of food/min/energy as they feel like wasted minerals to me. There is no discount for upgrading the basic tier to regular.

I also always take the Prosperity opening perk as my first non Expansion pick, even if I delay completing Prosperity until the endgame. -15% on all min costs is nuts.

 

[Lexicus]

I usually get the first perk of Discovery before going into Expansion and then Synchronicity, but I think Prosperity is probably much stronger than Synchronicity. I feel like I need to get the Discovery perks early, though, because the ones that have to do with surveying planets and discovering anomalies become totally useless once you've done some significant star chart trading.

One issue I've had is that I've been mostly playing as machine empire and there doesn't seem to be much material yet on the internet about how they're balanced and how to play them properly. Most of the info on the wiki seems to be from earlier patches, and I haven't found much discussion on the forums about playing machine empires.

Most recent game I started was as an organic species, but I got attacked by a 2300 fleet while mine is only 700 (after doing what I felt was everything possible to wring minerals and build ships). I'm going to try to use a spaceport (my level 3 ones are about 1.6k fleet power) and possibly win a battle, but we'll see how this goes. I think I was pretty close to getting a defensive pact with one neighbor when the other (ironically, an empire that I had created - the UNSC, from Halo) attacked.

 

[Kyriakos]

I wasted an hour or so in Dragonpass. Interesting, but imo it is way too much leaching off the whole 'the game happens in your mind' reality.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I've been playing a lot of Pac-Man lately. I've made it my ambition to be able to reach the kill screen. I think a perfect game might be aiming a little bit too high, but hopefully getting to the kill screen is plausibly doable.

 

[Groff]

Anyone watched Blizzcon yesterday? Starcraft 2 is going free to play, well at least the first expansion is (along with the multiplayer part of the game, which is nice). Also, a new expansion for WoW has been announced, which was expected. More importantly, they finally decided to bring back classic/vanilla servers. People have been asking for them for years.

 

[Akka]

Anyone watched Blizzcon yesterday? Starcraft 2 is going free to play, well at least the first expansion is (along with the multiplayer part of the game, which is nice). Also, a new expansion for WoW has been announced, which was expected. More importantly, they finally decided to bring back classic/vanilla servers. People have been asking for them for years.

It's funny to see that Reddit talked six times more about the Classic servers than the new expansion
It's the only thing that actually interest me, in fact, but I'm VERY wary about the "Vanilla experience" that they are talking about - it seems they won't copy-paste the game and will instead make a "remastered" version.
And considering their tinkering of the game is PRECISELY why people want Vanilla back, I'm not too keen on trusting them with tinkering it without ruining it.

 

[Ryika]

Yeah, Classic Servers was the only thing that even interested me about Blizzcon lol. Who even plays live-WoW these days? Anyway, I hope they "modernize" it in the sense that they port it to the way further developed engine they have now (which includes graphics, but also things like the modding-api) and leave gameplay as it was. Kind of like they did with Starcraft.

Not sure what they should do with the raids though, with the level of understanding of the average person today, and maybe some additional mod support, the raids will be way too easy for proper groups. Also, which patch version do we even want? BC-prepatch with semi-free equip? Hopefully not.

 

[Disgustipated]

Back to Civ6 because I'm addicted. There, I said it. I'm a civ fanatic.

 

[Synobun]

Back to Civ6 because I'm addicted. There, I said it. I'm a civ fanatic.

That's a bold claim to be making around these parts.

Oh right, video games. I replayed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Such a wonderful universe although I do dislike how the ending is set up. After 3 or 4 times of getting the "I want to be rich" ending no matter what I do I decided to google it. I found out that no matter what, if you have over a certain amount of money at game end, it railroads you into a bad, fake ending. That's lame.

This time around I actually tried the DLCs. Clear Sky was different, but good. I liked the faction system and the guide system; they're both great additions. The ending was bad.

I couldn't really stomach Call of Pripyat. Everything was changed... for the worse. Awful, awful, awful. Made it about an hour in before refusing to go any further.

I've now moved onto Dead Space. The controls for this game are infuriating.

 

[Senethro]

The whole point of the Wish Granter is that its a fake meant to lure stalkers to their doom or monolith conversion!

 

[Snerk]

Get out of here, stalker.

 

[OldBoomer]

Civ4 with the Realism Invictus mod is my usual go to, but lately I've been playing GTA V. Been enjoying some classic N64 games like Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong, Cruis'n USA etc., on an emulator as well.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I started playing Hollow Knight which I think is pretty good and I guess I recomend it
It's available on PC and Switch

 

[danjuno]

Have been playing HOI IV at least once a day since I got it in August.

 

[cardgame]

Been putting a lot of time into Warhammer II. Fantastic game once it's been modded (I have around a two dozen mods running).

 

[Groff]

Yeah, Classic Servers was the only thing that even interested me about Blizzcon lol. Who even plays live-WoW these days? Anyway, I hope they "modernize" it in the sense that they port it to the way further developed engine they have now (which includes graphics, but also things like the modding-api) and leave gameplay as it was. Kind of like they did with Starcraft.

Not sure what they should do with the raids though, with the level of understanding of the average person today, and maybe some additional mod support, the raids will be way too easy for proper groups. Also, which patch version do we even want? BC-prepatch with semi-free equip? Hopefully not.

That's basically what most of the fans don't want. They want the original experience, just the way it was. No fancy graphics, addons, etc...

It's funny to see that Reddit talked six times more about the Classic servers than the new expansion
It's the only thing that actually interest me, in fact, but I'm VERY wary about the "Vanilla experience" that they are talking about - it seems they won't copy-paste the game and will instead make a "remastered" version.
And considering their tinkering of the game is PRECISELY why people want Vanilla back, I'm not too keen on trusting them with tinkering it without ruining it.

From what I understand the big issue is they don't have the vanilla code anymore, and even if they did it would have huge issues running on current hardware and OSs. They're basically building the game from the ground up.

I'm interested to see how long will the honeymoon period last once it's released. Besides all the veterans coming back, there's going to be lots of new faces trying wow for the first time. Lot of people seem to want to relive their experience of first setting foot into this vast unknown world, sadly it's not unknown anymore and I think a lot of people are setting themselves up for a disappointment. I also think not a lot of noobs are going to stay with the game. According to data from private servers (Nostalrius iirc), less than 10% logged in after hitting max level.

Where I expect vanilla to triumph over the current live version is the community. Plain and simple that aspect is almost completely dead. That alone, at least for me, would be the best reason to play it. I doubt I will though, vanilla requires a huge time investment, which I simply don't have (remember the good old 6+ hour raids?).

Just wanted to comment on the latest expansion, as always the cinematic looks great. And as always the story sucks ass. Blizzard are so afraid of moving out of their comfort zone and doing anything else but rehashing the same story over and over again.

 

[Lexicus]

I just got Republic Commando on Steam and man this game is the [mammary glands]

 

[civvver]

I've now moved onto Dead Space. The controls for this game are infuriating.

Dead space series is awesome, but maybe try a gamepad. It is a console port.

That's basically what most of the fans don't want. They want the original experience, just the way it was. No fancy graphics, addons, etc...


From what I understand the big issue is they don't have the vanilla code anymore, and even if they did it would have huge issues running on current hardware and OSs. They're basically building the game from the ground up.

I'm interested to see how long will the honeymoon period last once it's released. Besides all the veterans coming back, there's going to be lots of new faces trying wow for the first time. Lot of people seem to want to relive their experience of first setting foot into this vast unknown world, sadly it's not unknown anymore and I think a lot of people are setting themselves up for a disappointment. I also think not a lot of noobs are going to stay with the game. According to data from private servers (Nostalrius iirc), less than 10% logged in after hitting max level.

Where I expect vanilla to triumph over the current live version is the community. Plain and simple that aspect is almost completely dead. That alone, at least for me, would be the best reason to play it. I doubt I will though, vanilla requires a huge time investment, which I simply don't have (remember the good old 6+ hour raids?).

Just wanted to comment on the latest expansion, as always the cinematic looks great. And as always the story sucks ass. Blizzard are so afraid of moving out of their comfort zone and doing anything else but rehashing the same story over and over again.

I don't think that's true being the experience fans want. Gaming has evolved, for better or worse.

I mean go back to 2004, we didn't even have smart phones. We barely texted. We used aol instant messanger a lot. No facebook. People had internet but it was like 1.5 mbps dsl mostly. Youtube hadn't even launch for god's sake! Wow wasn't just a game, it was an online social experience. There were tons of people who would log into wow just to chat in general, or talk to friends in parties. The world wasn't the full 24/7 connected world we have today so wow kind of bridged that gap.

Also games were a lot different. I don't want to say gamers today aren't patient, but, they're more like aware? Like stuff that passed the time in wow like grinding wolves for a fetch quest, that was standard fare. And it was a huge step up from old rpgs like everquest that were truly hard core. Or old crpgs like ultima and stuff like that. But still that kind of gameplay today would just be seen as tedious. I don't think it's going to fly.

Like why would I spend all this time grinding gear to go into battlegrounds and pvp when I can just fire up dota or league of legends and be on an even playing field and play an exciting match right away? Or why spend all this time trying to do some competitive raid, gearing up, beating it just to get loot drops, when now there's coop online games like overwatch or whatever?

I think people will play it out of nostalgia and then bail after a few months cus the reality is wow vanilla was very grindy by today's measures and not well balanced. There's a reason most people think burning crusade and lich king were the best.

Also I find it truly hard to believe that they don't have the code for it because there's a pirated version you can play on private servers. It runs just fine aside from a little high server load.


Edit: found an article that summarizes a lot of my concerns. https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...rcraft-classic-server-weve-got-lots-questions

 

[Groff]

Dead space series is awesome, but maybe try a gamepad. It is a console port.



I don't think that's true being the experience fans want. Gaming has evolved, for better or worse.

I mean go back to 2004, we didn't even have smart phones. We barely texted. We used aol instant messanger a lot. No facebook. People had internet but it was like 1.5 mbps dsl mostly. Youtube hadn't even launch for god's sake! Wow wasn't just a game, it was an online social experience. There were tons of people who would log into wow just to chat in general, or talk to friends in parties. The world wasn't the full 24/7 connected world we have today so wow kind of bridged that gap.

Also games were a lot different. I don't want to say gamers today aren't patient, but, they're more like aware? Like stuff that passed the time in wow like grinding wolves for a fetch quest, that was standard fare. And it was a huge step up from old rpgs like everquest that were truly hard core. Or old crpgs like ultima and stuff like that. But still that kind of gameplay today would just be seen as tedious. I don't think it's going to fly.

Like why would I spend all this time grinding gear to go into battlegrounds and pvp when I can just fire up dota or league of legends and be on an even playing field and play an exciting match right away? Or why spend all this time trying to do some competitive raid, gearing up, beating it just to get loot drops, when now there's coop online games like overwatch or whatever?

I think people will play it out of nostalgia and then bail after a few months cus the reality is wow vanilla was very grindy by today's measures and not well balanced. There's a reason most people think burning crusade and lich king were the best.

Also I find it truly hard to believe that they don't have the code for it because there's a pirated version you can play on private servers. It runs just fine aside from a little high server load.


Edit: found an article that summarizes a lot of my concerns. https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...rcraft-classic-server-weve-got-lots-questions

Believe it or not it's true. Just check out eu or us wow forums. People don't want to modernize vanilla, and for a reason. What's the point of having it in the first place then, if it's going to be the exact same thing as today's wow just on a different patch? Also keep in mind some of the quality of life improvements that Blizz added over the years actually ended up killing a large part of the game, its community. I'm especially talking about things like the Looking For Group tool, cross realm dungeons and sharding. It's quite understandable why people don't want these things.

Regarding the vanilla code, it seems I was only partially right. They do have the code in the sense that they can retrieve parts of it, but not all of it since some parts are no longer there. Makes sense, as they've been building upon the original wow code for the past 13 years.

In order to generate the server (and the client), a complex build system is being used. It is not just about generating the “WoW.exe” and “Server.exe” files. The build process takes data, models, maps, etc. created by Blizzard and also generates client and server specific files. The client only has the information it needs and the server only has the information that it needs.

This means that before re-launching vanilla realms, all of the data needed for the build processes has to be gathered in one place with the code. Not all of this information was under a version control system. In the end, whichever of these parts were lost at any point, they will have to be recreated: This is likely to take a lot of resources through a long development process.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/229859-why-blizzard-cant-build-classic-warcraft-servers-yet

Keep in mind that private servers have built their own cores, and checking the bugtracker of any private server reveals how (not) good they are. It's one thing to play on a bug infested private server where you don't pay a dime, but that kind of experience would be unacceptable on the official one's.

 

[Ryika]

That's basically what most of the fans don't want. They want the original experience, just the way it was. No fancy graphics, addons, etc...

They're not going to get the original experience either way, as they already know way too much about the game to enjoy it the way we did back then, in blissful ignorance.

But it's all about gameplay, so I don't see how a graphical update would be a negative thing. Yeah, some people will cry about it, but who cares? Will they not play the game because it doesn't like quite as terrible? I doubt it. Blizzard will likely attract the most people if they offer a decent-looking game with classic-wow gameplay. A "remastered" version similar to the Starcraft Update that they released recently.

And you might want to overthink your stance on the modding-API, as it literally allowed you to automate half of your stuff in its original form. Remember the Original HealBot Addon? That think had it's name for a reason, as it chose the appropriate spell and spell level automatically for you after clicking the icon. Only after mods actually started making use of those systems did Blizzard limit the modding-API. If you want a game withOUT fancy addons, then you should be very much in favor of them making alterations to the system.