Quote from: rytrasmi on December 08, 2021, 01:22:42 PM
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

  I played this at early release, and picked it up again a year and a half ago.  I enjoyed it a lot, and it is MUCH better now than it was at release.  The group I played with, we mostly played on public servers, from the full pvp servers (the people who play online survival games are a special sort of toxic) to more reserved servers where folks were a bit more like reasonable people, and we largely had a great deal of fun, even on the more toxic servers (dodging autists who hunt you like wolves and work around the clock to find and destroy a base can be a whole lot of fun, so long as you adjust expectation).  I was genuinely shocked at just how "howard" a version of the game was.  I have not played in a while, as I was a little bummed by how insanely powerful some of the combat thralls had become (seeing some of them in a fight makes you wonder how in the hell you could ever talk them into being your lackey).  I am sure the group I play with will rotate back around to it again though.   Any mods you like?  We played primarily on console before, but everyone also has gaming PCs and have considered taking the fight to PC where mods can adjust the experience considerably.   

I've got two new games to play.

One is GTFO, which looks neat... co-op survival. I like the theme.

The other is Metal Wolf Chaos. Yeah. Because the President should have his own personal mecha

Quote from: oggsmash on December 15, 2021, 12:28:49 PM
I have not played in a while, as I was a little bummed by how insanely powerful some of the combat thralls had become (seeing some of them in a fight makes you wonder how in the hell you could ever talk them into being your lackey).  I am sure the group I play with will rotate back around to it again though.   Any mods you like?  We played primarily on console before, but everyone also has gaming PCs and have considered taking the fight to PC where mods can adjust the experience considerably.

Yeah, the combat thralls are totally OP. That said, we have 2 regular players, so tough thralls are essential, as I think the bosses were not designed to be killed by only 2 players. They still manage to get killed though.

Mods we use are: No building placement limits, 3rd person camera zoom limit increase, and one called Pythagoras which just adds some building pieces. The first two are pretty nice QoL, so you don't have to muck around with the sometimes odd limits on where you can build. Zooming out really far is really pretty if your rig can handle it and the vanilla zoom was too tight.

Quote from: rytrasmi on December 16, 2021, 12:02:11 AM

Quote from: oggsmash on December 15, 2021, 12:28:49 PM
I have not played in a while, as I was a little bummed by how insanely powerful some of the combat thralls had become (seeing some of them in a fight makes you wonder how in the hell you could ever talk them into being your lackey).  I am sure the group I play with will rotate back around to it again though.   Any mods you like?  We played primarily on console before, but everyone also has gaming PCs and have considered taking the fight to PC where mods can adjust the experience considerably.

Yeah, the combat thralls are totally OP. That said, we have 2 regular players, so tough thralls are essential, as I think the bosses were not designed to be killed by only 2 players. They still manage to get killed though.

Mods we use are: No building placement limits, 3rd person camera zoom limit increase, and one called Pythagoras which just adds some building pieces. The first two are pretty nice QoL, so you don't have to muck around with the sometimes odd limits on where you can build. Zooming out really far is really pretty if your rig can handle it and the vanilla zoom was too tight.

  I know we could take most of the bosses with two people (after some fun times experimenting), but the bosses got a considerable ramp up, and I think part of it was because the thralls got ramped up.  So it has turned into an awkward scenario where a solo player has no chance at all of beating any bosses (I used to be able to solo world bosses, and even after they beefed them up, when I had the time/food/healing and gear, I could still pull it off, but it was a ton harder after they beefed them and the thralls) without thralls, but the thralls are so insane, it sort of looks as if maybe some of the thralls should be named Conan. 

   I hope they can find a bit of balance there somewhere, I know when we got a few combat thralls, after beating bosses with 2-3 players consistently, the experience was completely different, we became healbots for the tier 4 Cimmerian Berserkers (or maybe barely healing if you had the named Berserker, I forget her name) and it was not the same.  For PvP...fighting a Tier 4 geared thrall....well....good luck.

Quote from: rytrasmi on December 08, 2021, 01:22:42 PM
I've been playing a ton of Conan Exiles lately and it's bloody fantastic.

I played this game a year or so ago when it was free on Playstation. It was fun but I found it a bit repetitive having the grind dungeons multiple times to get enough parts to build a dagger that's only slightly better than a normal metal one. Looking at it now, I see that it has a large number of very expensive DLCs, totally $130!  Are these DLCs worth that much money? Has the game changed much in the last year?

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 15, 2021, 12:45:46 PM
The other is Metal Wolf Chaos. Yeah. Because the President should have his own personal mecha

Wow that brings back memories. One of my players had that wayyyyyy back and played it through to the end. Pretty fun game really.

Lets see.
Dropped Neverwinter Online after yet more system changes AND deleting over seven adventure areas and a chunk of the story.
Got back into Champions Online and been enjoying it still as its suffered the least changes.
And just a few months ago took a peak finally at Star Trek Online. Seems fun so far though very confusing as so little of the system is fully explained, or explained at all in a rare few cases. Also everything is exponentially more expensive there. 30$ for just ONE ship. Some of the packs can cost upwards of 150$ to 200$! Still, its playable on a free account if all you are interested is playing through the story. Which is so far fairly long.

PC side been poking once again at FURA and trying to finally finish my old Darkness Gathering pt 1 module conversion.
Mostly finished the Keep part of building to scale the Keep on the Borderlands map in Minecraft.
Stalled on playing through the original Knights of the old Republic for the moment after realizing had botched an encounter with no easy way to backtrack.

Been playing Street Fighter 5 continuously for practice, just finished the Castlevania Advance collection, am gaming regularly in City of Heroes with friends (hit level 50 last week or so), looking forward to King of Fighters 15 (my boy K9999/Krohnen is back!!!!) and just got the Legacy of Kain collection off GOG so will be playing Blood Omen to show the wife.

EDIT: Also forgot to mention I also play a lot of Gundam Battle Operation 2

Quote from: Gog to Magog on January 06, 2022, 08:46:40 AMam gaming regularly in City of Heroes with friends (hit level 50 last week or so),

Which City of Heroes server? Theres apparently more than one now. But so far no private server pack.

I play on Champions with a few friends. The followup as it were to Cryptic's CoH.

Quote from: Omega on January 12, 2022, 02:11:48 PM

Quote from: Gog to Magog on January 06, 2022, 08:46:40 AMam gaming regularly in City of Heroes with friends (hit level 50 last week or so),

Which City of Heroes server? Theres apparently more than one now. But so far no private server pack.

I play on Champions with a few friends. The followup as it were to Cryptic's CoH.

I play on Homecoming's Reunion server

Also wanted to add to my current gaming list that I've now picked up SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash on Switch. Amazing classic game.

Just got The Ascent on Steam.

Twin stick shooter, with Diablo style loot and upgrades. I'm having fun with it. The control are a little janky, and I really hate it when abilities are set to the stick "click" buttons.
Cover is a joke. Trying to shoot from cover just makes you a sitting duck for melee opponents.
But the rest of the gameplay is good, and the music and ambiance are exellent. The music is a ripoff reminiscent of Blade Runner.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 03, 2022, 05:53:19 AM
Just got The Ascent on Steam.

Twin stick shooter, with Diablo style loot and upgrades. I'm having fun with it. The control are a little janky, and I really hate it when abilities are set to the stick "click" buttons.
Cover is a joke. Trying to shoot from cover just makes you a sitting duck for melee opponents.
But the rest of the gameplay is good, and the music and ambiance are exellent. The music is a ripoff reminiscent of Blade Runner.

I finished this game a few months ago. TONS OF FUN. I'm looking forward to getting anything from this small studio. Such a solid immersive game and the story is excellent.

Currently I'm playing - Back4Blood and Elden Ring which I just started.

Lately been playing Warframe. Best Free to Play video game I've ever played. Kicks the crap out of Destiny 2.

I started playing Dying Light 2. It's a weird case. Even though it is almost exactly the same game, mechanics wise, it is worse than the first game in every respect; the map is worse, the setting is worse, the zombies are worse, and the story is worse. Even considering how non-existent the original story was.

They added a new branching path system for the quests, but they force you to make choices without knowing enough information. For example, I agreed to help this woman named Sophie only to find out in the very next cut scene that she's been lying to me the whole time and she doesn't even have the ability to help me, which is the whole reason I'm helping her in the first place. Now she's ordering me to murder 30 people who I now know are completely innocent. Plus because the game only allows one save, I can't even go back and pick the other side. I can either murder 30 people or start the game over from the beginning.

Did/do you like FTL?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1226510/Trigon_Space_Story/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=a-ab207-02207-2201-b410007c

Free demo. I liked what I saw. I'll probably buy the full game when it's released in a few days.