figmentPez
Staff member
I imagine that the $5-off your first purchase of $30 or more is influencing the sale prices as well.
Games on SALE!
- Thread starter figmentPez
- Start date
It's got a few winners:
X-Com 2 for 75% off (14.99)
Life in Strange 2 for 3.99 (good price for first episode)
X-Com 2 for 75% off (14.99)
Life in Strange 2 for 3.99 (good price for first episode)
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, I meant more along the lines of, nothing on there I'm interested in that isn't already in my library (and if it's already in my library, that means it's already gone below the $20/66% threshold on a previous sale)
If I don't check it out, it'll become the new Discord FOTM. If I do, I'll be the only one here playing. Damned if I do, damned if I don't
Just my luck this is the week my nights off were split and I'm working Wednesday.
We're literally talking about people who are in discord. You're the one who came to PUBG a year after we stopped playing it.
Empyrion was killed due to dropping below that critical player threshold where people come back in to see what other people have been up to while they are gone.
—Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Empyrion was killed by them deciding to skip experimental branch and go straight to "stable" with a buggy, broken, unplayable alpha 9. It's better now, but the people are gone.
That certainly didn’t help. The current system of inventory management is a logistical unintuitive nightmare. If you compartmentalize your storage to keep your mats sorted, then processing everything becomes a switchboard mess of constantly changing input and output containers, but keeping everything in one giant container limits the number of different mats you can reserve and the logistics system will blindly mess up your order of things (plus it is significantly less explosion-resistant).
Heck, even making the fuel-up rounds gets annoying because you have to wade through menus to keep connecting/disconnecting your inventory to what you’re trying to fuel.
—Patrick
Heck, even making the fuel-up rounds gets annoying because you have to wade through menus to keep connecting/disconnecting your inventory to what you’re trying to fuel.
—Patrick
Empyrion was fun to play when I was learning all the game mechanics and ins and outs.
Once you had those figured out, it was quickly evident that there was no point in playing at all in the long term because it was severely unbalanced.
I don't mind the hours I spent learning the game. It was fun. But there's no mid-to-late game at all because:
1) You can't park in PVP space. No matter how you design your base, it's easy to take.
2) You can't park in PVE space, because then the only thing to do is mine. And it doesn't take long to have mined so much crap that there's nothing else to do.
That leaves the end game as basically:
Park in PVE space, design fighter craft, and arrange to dogfight them with other players to see whose is better. Which could have been made much more fun without all of the resource gathering and crafting bait and switch at the early-to-mid games. And if I just want to dogfight, there are much better games for the purpose.
Once you had those figured out, it was quickly evident that there was no point in playing at all in the long term because it was severely unbalanced.
I don't mind the hours I spent learning the game. It was fun. But there's no mid-to-late game at all because:
1) You can't park in PVP space. No matter how you design your base, it's easy to take.
2) You can't park in PVE space, because then the only thing to do is mine. And it doesn't take long to have mined so much crap that there's nothing else to do.
That leaves the end game as basically:
Park in PVE space, design fighter craft, and arrange to dogfight them with other players to see whose is better. Which could have been made much more fun without all of the resource gathering and crafting bait and switch at the early-to-mid games. And if I just want to dogfight, there are much better games for the purpose.
GasBandit
Staff member
The "endgame" is to build a PvP base and try to defend it, to hold territory for bragging rights. No base is unassailable, but some bases are harder than others. It took two teams of experienced PVP players hours to take a base I'd made that I didn't even defend (granted they had to fight each OTHER over the base, too, because they both wanted the plunder/bragging rights) and had no offline protection.
There's definitely a lot broken in the meta, though.
Assuming players both attacking and defending, the only weapons that count for anything are homing missiles. Really, everything else is just there to either distract the enemy's turrets or maybe deal bonus damage if the other guy stands still long enough.
CVs are OP because they handle like fighters. The only reason SVs have a role at all is because CVs are nerfed in atmosphere, and HVs likewise because they get homing missile turrets in atmo and CVs don't.
There's no diminishing returns or tradeoffs in any aspect of design. You have to have as many (fill in the blanks) as the game will let you have on every single ship or structure, or you lose. The answer is always more. You have to have enough armor to soak a billion damage from any direction, you have to have all the weapons, and you have to have as many thrusters and RCS as it takes to move all of it like it weighs nothing. There's no decisions to be made other than cosmetic ones.
Being able to encase thrusters entirely in armor and still have them work is bullshit.
Lagshots are bullshit, but Eleon cannot figure out netcode to save their lives, so they're a fact of life, which means you've gotta build whitespaced armor to deal with them. Some people say this makes lagshots happen more frequently, but I was getting lagshot before I knew whitespaces in armor was even a thing, so I don't buy it.
Anything that doesn't conform to the meta 1000% stands no chance at all. And that's the real problem. Most "lore" or "RP" ships (IE, "I built the ship from PopularSciFiFranchiseHere! Isn't it cool?") are completely unviable in pvp.
But this isn't a discussion for the "Games on Sale" thread I guess
This month on Twitch, they're giving away Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn + 30 days. For anybody who wants to try it out...
Eh... I own Civ 6 and can barely muster any interest in playing it. They made a fundamental change to it's gameplay design (you MUST expand very quickly now, as opposed to being able to be fast and spread or small and advanced) and it's just not as fun as Civ 5 was.
I haven't played since the Civ I days, so I'm out of the loop.
That's good to know, I was considering giving it a try.
Dave
Staff member
I read reviews and then tried a pirated copy. But I didn't like it so I never bought it. I think I played maybe two games.
Frankly I've never really gotten into a Civ game after IV. I dislike the inability to stack units. I also disliked the city-state thing from V. VI just never appealed to me.
Frankly I've never really gotten into a Civ game after IV. I dislike the inability to stack units. I also disliked the city-state thing from V. VI just never appealed to me.
I loved Civ IV the most.
Didn't care for V, for some reason.
But I've played the HELL out of VI (though admittedly, I was severely depressed for several weeks, which shot up my game time).
I keep waiting for the first expansion to go on a decent sale, but I follow @GasBandit's buying practice: less that $20 or 75%, whichever is cheaper. Though in this case, I keep waiting for it to drop below $10.
Didn't care for V, for some reason.
But I've played the HELL out of VI (though admittedly, I was severely depressed for several weeks, which shot up my game time).
I keep waiting for the first expansion to go on a decent sale, but I follow @GasBandit's buying practice: less that $20 or 75%, whichever is cheaper. Though in this case, I keep waiting for it to drop below $10.
I think either 2 or 5 is my most played one. But I never really got into 6, either. The only somewhat decent strategy except "go as wise as possible" was nerfed out, and I haven't really gone back since. I'm a tech-turtler at heart.
Haven't played either of the expansions, to be fair, they might change the game up.
Haven't played either of the expansions, to be fair, they might change the game up.
Really, the best thing about V was that it gave you a multitude of ways to win the game, so you had a ton of ways to win the game. With 6, it's basically kill everyone or survive long enough to get a science victory, which still involves a fair bit of time just building units to watch your borders.
I've got a couple hundred hours in 5 and achieved several different victories, so I'd recommend it. Also, there are lot of pretty good mods, including A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones full conversion mods.
I rather like the Mass Effect races mod. Partly because most of them are a tad overpowered.
Yes those are also good.
That's what I thought at first too, but then I actually tried Civ 4, and loved it. It's viscerally satisfying to out-manage other players or the AI.
Though I might be losing my patience for this kind of thing as I get older. I've been trying to get into games like Crusader Kings, Stellaris, etc, and I can't even get through the tutorials.
All this talk of Civilization got me to break down and buy Rise & Fall.
I then proceeded to play it all day yesterday. Like, I mean, literally all day.
I then proceeded to play it all day yesterday. Like, I mean, literally all day.
Crusader Kings II has the least helpful tutorial I've seen. It's just like, "First, do this", and you're like, "Okay, how?" and the game's like "FUCK YOU FIGURE IT OUT!" Then it punches you in the dick, goes through your wallet, and takes your bogo froyo coupon to the mall in your car, landing you a ticket for speeding, a ticket for restless driving, and a citation for double-parking in the handicapped spaces.