Quote from: Reckall on October 19, 2021, 10:55:49 AM
American Truck Simulator. Yup, it is as addictive as they say and no one can explain why.

The simulator games have gotten completely out of hand. I saw an ad on Steam for Lawn Mowing Simulator.

What the fuck.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on October 19, 2021, 11:50:37 AM

Quote from: Reckall on October 19, 2021, 10:55:49 AM
American Truck Simulator. Yup, it is as addictive as they say and no one can explain why.

The simulator games have gotten completely out of hand. I saw an ad on Steam for Lawn Mowing Simulator.

What the fuck.

There is a Tank Repair Simulator too.

The only explanation I can give for the success of the "Truck" simulators is not an explanation at all but a remembrance: back in the early '80s, "Truckin'" for Intellivision was the unexpected success story. I and my best friend competed on it all day long (you could play on a split screen). So, there must be something intangible that makes them compelling (the Mod scene is comparable to a flight sim, and some hardcore gamers have thousands of dollar invested in driving gear, super performing graphic cards and three monitors included).

I hear that there is a market for farming simulators too, but I'm not interested.

I've kinda fallen for Dungeon Encounters by Square Enix.  I'm playing it on my Switch during lunch breaks at work.  It's a very minimalist dungeon crawl game.

You literally move the party along a mapped dungeon grid and all the encounters are already laid out for you.  You can check out anything ahead of time so it becomes more a strategy game than RPG.  If you see Encounter Black 07, you can look in your log and see that that encounter is Skeletons and Wild Boar and then prep your party to fight that.  White Encounter 03, well you know that's a healing shrine.

It's definitely not for everyone, but it's pretty novel and at the moment fairly relaxing to play.

After the debacle of putting "diversity" into Battlefield 5 - where you could be a black female German (you can't be a Nazi because...) or randomly be Asian and fighting for the Germans...

there was hope that Battlefield 2042 would just be a clean game, were you could ideally make your own toon and have at it. But no... now you have to play one of their Specialists... and this rankled people a bit. But whatever. They they had to announce that "for the first time in BF - Non-Binary characters in Battlefield!"

Queue the wet fart noise.

Sounds like Dice and EA have not learned their lesson.

Quote from: tenbones on October 27, 2021, 02:27:25 PM
After the debacle of putting "diversity" into Battlefield 5 - where you could be a black female German (you can't be a Nazi because...) or randomly be Asian and fighting for the Germans...

there was hope that Battlefield 2042 would just be a clean game, were you could ideally make your own toon and have at it. But no... now you have to play one of their Specialists... and this rankled people a bit. But whatever. They they had to announce that "for the first time in BF - Non-Binary characters in Battlefield!"

Queue the wet fart noise.

Sounds like Dice and EA have not learned their lesson.

Why should they? If the whales pony up the cash, they won't care.

It's the same reason EA keeps releasing sports games that are actually sub-par compared to prior ones, despite minor advancements in graphics. People keep giving them money!

Battlefield V did not earn them the money they needed.

BF2042 was admittedly their attempt to reclaim their lost audience. There is a massive level of skepticism about the franchise after BFV. Remember that these guys depend on players engaging in the game for maximum playtime because while they do have microtransactions for skins, if the playerbase bails like they did in BFV, they lose valuable dev-time because EA then will demand that DICE put out another edition of the game pre-emptively which starts the deathspiral.

This kind of virtue signaling is for people that are not long-term players *typically*. They're people that play, if at all, for a bit then move on to other things once the novelty has worn off. The highly competitive long-term players form the backbone of the franchise. They're the ones that love to talk theory, strategy etc. on forums, they're the ones that keep the community alive.

The "whales" are a bit of a misnomer since the monetization of BF while present is relatively low compared to other games. They've fucked themselves in the ass on this. Sure it'll come out but there will be less people buying this game than they expected. Then you'll see the casual fucks, bail... then the damage will be seen clear as day.

Meanwhile Battlefield 4 is still going strong...

Quote from: tenbones on October 27, 2021, 02:27:25 PM
After the debacle of putting "diversity" into Battlefield 5 - where you could be a black female German (you can't be a Nazi because...) or randomly be Asian and fighting for the Germans...

I guess no one pointed out how the Japanese fought alongside the Allies in WWI... Or it wouldn't have mattered anyway

Quote from: Reckall on October 19, 2021, 12:18:53 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on October 19, 2021, 11:50:37 AM

Quote from: Reckall on October 19, 2021, 10:55:49 AM
American Truck Simulator. Yup, it is as addictive as they say and no one can explain why.

The simulator games have gotten completely out of hand. I saw an ad on Steam for Lawn Mowing Simulator.

What the fuck.

There is a Tank Repair Simulator too.

The only explanation I can give for the success of the "Truck" simulators is not an explanation at all but a remembrance: back in the early '80s, "Truckin'" for Intellivision was the unexpected success story. I and my best friend competed on it all day long (you could play on a split screen). So, there must be something intangible that makes them compelling (the Mod scene is comparable to a flight sim, and some hardcore gamers have thousands of dollar invested in driving gear, super performing graphic cards and three monitors included).

I hear that there is a market for farming simulators too, but I'm not interested.

Yet no one is producing combat flight simulators or whatnot to the same degree as in the 1990s...

I think that the "study sim" is relatively dead aside from Prepar3d, Microsoft Flight Sim and DCSWorld while Am Truck Sim and the like are thriving because of the difference in the amount of time necessary to dedicate to it.  You can hop into Truck Sim and be going in 10 minutes.  For the A-10C in DCS World, any of the addon aircraft in Prepared/ MS Flight Sim, or the Falcon BMS F-16, you'll need to practice and use checklists just to start the engines, turn on the avionics, and align the INS - a process which requires ~ 10 minutes just to align the INS units.

I tried playing Red Embrace: Hollywood as an alternative to Paradox's VTM-based shovelware, and I managed to finish one route before losing interest. It's an interactive romance novel with only very loose influence from Troika's Bloodlines, so it didn't really appeal to me. (The same dev is making a new game called Red Embrace: Paradisus, which advertises itself as an isometric RPG but it's pretty casual and doesn't have a combat system. No surprise there.)

It's not Troika, and it's woke (instead of "male" or "female" the game lets you select your pronouns from he/him, she/her, and they/them, but to cut through the bullshit you're an uke/bottom because it's a yaoi game), but it's not the complete mess of bloated obstructive lore and pretentious nonsense that Paradox's games are. While playing thru REH I didn't need a fucking glossary to understand the plot, which was a nice touch. There's only four made up jargons in the game: the names of the three vampires houses (they're the equivalent of the bloodlines in the Troika game), which are just Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin by different names so I won't bother to give their names here, and "strix" (the Latin word for witch/owl according to wiktionary) which is inexplicably used as a name for a person with really tasty blood who gets readily addicted to the sensation of vampire bites.

I didn't connect emotionally with the game so I was just constantly bored during my playthrough and expecting it to get interesting, but nothing interesting happened. What were supposed to be very emotional scenes (like being stuck in a burning building or going on a vision quest) fell flat for me. I don't know if that was just because I didn't connect or because of the general burnout I've been suffering for the last few years, but in any case the game just didn't leave an impression on me.

Aside from that, I'm waiting for the release of Nighthawks which was originally pitched as a VTM game to Paradox before the author was rejected and decided to make an original setting. I've talked to the dev a few times on discord and he seems like a fun guy. He's critical of Paradox.

Just now? Ziggurat 2, a bit like the original Hexen but more structured. I tried to rid the Storm Slum of evil vermin but those pesky Carrots got the better of me. I kid you not.

Quote from: Reckall on October 19, 2021, 12:18:53 PMI hear that there is a market for farming simulators too, but I'm not interested.

Farming Simulator 22 is coming out next week. So now is a good time to jump onboard.

Looking forward to Elden Ring, Dragons Dogma 2, Crimson Desert.

I just started playing Final Fantasy 14 after fleeing the dumpster fire that is current World of Warcraft. So far I am really enjoying myself and wondering why, as a former weeaboo, that I never got into this mmo before.

The Yakuza series...  all of 'em in fact.  All the Government mandated lockdown nonsense at least gave me oodles of time to sink in knocking them off
at last, and i don't regret a minute of it.

Those Truck Simulator games ARE oddly addictive... and i'm unnerved by how much time i've wasted on Train Simulator. 

Warhammer Total War series took a predictable 2000 hours out of my life... adding to the total i'd already wasted on the tabletop and FRPG versions.

Apart from that...

Stardew Valley, Baldur's Gate and (actual) Mahjong games are pretty much all i've been playing during the past several months.

I've been playing a ton of Conan Exiles lately and it's bloody fantastic. I resisted for a long time because I can't commit to an online game with clans and PvP raids and stuff. I just don't have the time. But...I've found that if you run your own server and play solo or with a couple friends and it's an amazing experience.

Pros
- True to the source material. I haven't read a lot of Howard, but the game fits exactly with what I have read. It's a dangerous world and you are encouraged to play like a sonofabitch reaver, thief, raider, etc.
- You can build a castle or house or whatever you like. That's a game unto itself
- Good mix of open world with scattered set pieces. Play at your own pace.
- Excellent and evocative graphics, voices, and music. It is a joy to explore the world
- Compelling story that you can progress at whatever pace you want
- Deep crafting system with tons of lore buried in descriptions of stuff you find. The writing is excellent. A two paragraph description of some random item you find evokes all kinds of lore and mystery. In most other games, this would be a throwaway blurb.
- Capture NPCs and make them your thralls! Bludgeon them into unconsciousness and drag them back to your Wheel of Pain to break their will.
- Many "problematic" aspects a.k.a. true to source material giving no fucks about what anyone thinks. Slavery, nudity, crucifixion, cannibalism, etc. My current character worships a god that requires ritual cannibalism, so I subsist off ritually purified human flesh.
- Active community and some really neat and deep mods

Cons
- AI is a bit janky
- Some clipping bugs
- Combat is not as deep or varied as it could have been.
- Crafting is a little complex and it's easy to forget recipes
- You need a few mods to really open the game up