Skray

Skray , 9 months ago

Disgusting? It's a few slices of ham and cheese. It's basic, but you find ham and cheese to be disgusting?

Skray , 9 months ago

They largely are. $70 is becoming the new price point for a new game.

Skray , 11 months ago

2 definitely shows the issue of EA wanting to push the game out in 1.5 years. Many cut corners and a lack of assets with the repetitive maps.
I think it's the weakest entry in the Dragon Age series, and a lot of it's negative reception was because it failed to live up to expectations of DAO.

If Dragon Age 2 wasn't a Dragon Age game, it wouldn't have gotten the poor reviews it got. As a standalone game it's actually not bad.

I always recommend playing it, as it directly leads into the story of Inquisition and it has some great characters in it.

Skray , 11 months ago

The DLC in all the games are fairly important depending on the DLC/expansion, and there can be a lot of it. DA2 and DAI both integrate well into the story while DAO was kind of built around the idea of side-story mini-adventures so there's a lot more of them.

DAO Primary story DLC: Warden's Keep, Stone Prisoner, Return to Ostagar add side quests to the main game and are solid to play.

DAO Standalone campaigns: Leliana's Song is a prequel focusing on the Leliana party member (you'll meet her pretty early in DAO although she is missable), Darkspawn Chronicles is an alternate history and not needed although fun, Golems of Amgarrak is a short post-story adventure that's not that important, Witch Hunt is a post-game story around Morrigan that's actually pretty important.

Awakening is a full-length expansion and absolutely worth playing, some of the characters you meet here tie into DA2.

DA2: All DLC integrates with the main story and can be played at any time. Legacy is a very important DLC that directly ties into Dragon Age Inquisition.

DAI: All 3 story DLC are fantastic, Jaws of Hakkon, The Descent and Trespasser.
Jaws and Descent are played during the main story as side quests, and Descent has some major lore implications for the world and raises some serious questions about the past and the potential future. Trespasser is a post-game story that directly leads into DA4: Dreadwolf when it comes out.

Also not sure if Gamepass supports this, but you can import your saves forward. For Dragon Age Inquisition you will need to use Dragon Age Keep to recreate your choices to import them into your world state.

Skray , 11 months ago

That would require every player even new ones to make very complex loot filters and understand what loot is valuable and not to automate it.

Every item in PoE that is automatically picked up doesn't take up inventory space (Metamorph organs, Expedition fragments, Sulphite, Azurite). The concept is that players make an active decision of what they're picking up and that they're aware of what they have because they made an active decision to pick it up.
It doesn't take control of their inventory away from the players.

It also feeds into the dopamine loop, when you get an exciting drop you see it on the ground it doesn't automatically just get sucked into your inventory.

Skray , 11 months ago

I think in general people do. The concern is that the devs will be splitting their focus and their team between two games, and it potentially splits the playerbase and the economy.

There are some concerns that this means PoE1's issues won't be addressed as well. PoE2 was made to solve many of the problems that PoE1 has, and they continued to develop the game beyond that scope to the point it became it's own product and changed too much of PoE, and because PoE2 is such a significantly different game, it risks alienating their existing playerbase, so they are now preserving PoE1's gameplay, while making the changes they wanted to make for PoE2 which should attract more players.

But that now means that those solutions that were developed to fix PoE1's problems are now only in PoE2 and tied to an overall total rework of the game built around those solutions and how they change the game. Things like how the skill gem system works to be more simple, mana reservation no longer existing, etc.

Ultimately it's no different than having WoW and WoW classic. Just hopefully they'll have a large enough playerbase between both games to justify maintaining both. Their idea of staggering releases does mean that many players will likely swap between the two though and play both.

They did answer in a Q&A later on at Exilecon that the games run the same engine and things can be ported between the games, if there is content that's popular in PoE2 they may release it in PoE1 and vice-versa. The only real thing that cannot be ported is the character animations.
This does also mean that since purchases are shared, MTX have to be made multiple times for the 7 PoE1 character models and for the 12 PoE2 character models.

tl;dr If you like the existing PoE1 gameplay, PoE1 will continue to exist largely as it is now. If you like PoE2 more, then you will have that. And if you like both you can continue to play both and there will be more overall content to play between the two with the staggered releases.

Skray , 11 months ago

I heard a streamer describe it as while PoE2 looks harder combat-wise, there is a lot less hidden mandatory knowledge and building so it's more approachable.

PoE2 has more punishing mechanics, combat is more active and you need to dodge enemy attacks, and bosses reset HP if you die. But you don't have the same checklist of things you need to be viable, and there's less focus on knowing the mathed out optimal setups since support gems are now focused on changing skill behavior rather than providing multiplicative damage boosts.

Skray , 11 months ago

It depends on how it's enforced.

Where I live they ended cash bail for any non-felony offense and it's led to repeat offenders being picked up, released and they'd offend again, where they get picked up and then released again.

It's a complex issue, many of these people need mental health help, and putting them in jail isn't the solution, but allowing them to continue to walk free when they're known re-offenders isn't helping either.

Skray , 11 months ago

If someone asked me what games I thought would get remastered next I never would've guessed Tomba.

I played on PS and I don't think I've seen anyone really mention it since then.

Skray , 11 months ago

Might as well open a Roth IRA and start contributing to an index fund like VTI or VOO.

Long term stable growth and tax beneficial. The earlier you start saving for retirement the better, compound growth is very powerful.

Skray , 11 months ago

And we thought bots and karma farming were bad before.

Skray , 11 months ago

Fandom acquired Gamepedia a few years ago.

This was a big thing with the WoWwiki, they were on Fandom with WoWwiki and moved to Gamepedia with WoWpedia to get away from Fandom, and then Gamepedia got bought out so they ended up where they started.

Seems now the only options are Fandom, Fextralife or self-hosted.

Skray , 11 months ago

Personally I'd love a visual remaster for Brave Fencer Musashi.

Skray , 11 months ago

Given CDPRs track record with the deep Witcher series discounts I'd expect a complete 2077 edition for cheap in a few years.

Skray , 11 months ago

You might enjoy Control.

It's by the same devs as Alan Wake and has an Alan Wake tie in DLC since they take place in the same universe. It's fairly linear with some optional side missions. The setting is similar to SCP if you're familiar with that. You're in an office building dedicated to an organization that contains extra-dimensional threats and there's been a breach that has to be contained.
Story is pretty straight forward but there are some humorous notes and videos you can find that help explain the primary story and some of the objects that are being contained in the bureau.

Skray , 11 months ago

Survivor games which are very similar to roguelites can also be an option. Vampire Survivors being the big one. Runs are up to 30 minutes long with permanent unlocks in the form of characters and new power ups or boosts.

Skray , 1 year ago

I would third control. I picked it up from the Humble female protagonist bundle and it was fantastic, loved everything about it.
Once you unlock all the powers the combat and exploration really open up, and the game still has a significant bit of story left giving you time to have some fun with them.

Also loved the environmental lore, all the notes and the vids with Dr. Darling are great. Highly recommend the game.

Skray , 1 year ago

I don't think reddit will die, but they definitely hurt themselves. The fediverse grew by leaps and bounds over the past week, reddit drove so much traffic to their potential competitors. Then when the 3rd party apps die, they'll lose some more.

Reddit is gambling on gaining enough revenue from pushing people on 3rd party apps to 1st party that it makes up for the loss of users overall.

People on reddit say "Why do we care about 3rd party apps, it's such a small section of the userbase" But apparently reddit cares enough about that small section of the userbase that they need to push them to their own app.