Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Delta Foxtrot]

What the shit you playing Soldier of Fortune as a wee boy for? That game was ultra-super-violent! :O

That game was gory to the point of being childish. A perfect fit

And also not very good.

My nostalgia disagrees. It had throwing knives, a good train level and a microwave gun. That can't not be good. Rubbish end boss though.

[hector13]

I think I just remember the boss. Running around that pit thing.

I'm sure there was a pit thing.

Clearly I don't remember it that well heh.

[StupidElves]

I've got a pretty big pet peeve that I didn't realize I had until recently when I decided to play XCOM 2 on the hardest difficulty.

Fake difficulty. Things like buffing up enemy HP and messing with the chance to hit and everything, adding more of the buffed enemies. Giving your soldiers debuffs. That's not real difficulty. I want the AI to be smarter when I play the game harder, not just be the same with so many buffs you will die.

[Shadowlord]

Who decides what's "fake" difficulty? Why is that "fake?" You told the game to be more difficult, did you not? Making a smarter AI is far more difficult than just tweaking some numbers.

That said, while I haven't played xcom2, I wasn't fond of the way difficulty worked in [xcom 1] either. It didn't make it more fun or challenging - just more punishing. Perhaps I was missing something, but I didn't see any way to improve my gameplay in the first mission (which I lost on both impossible and long war for lack of full cover, iirc).

[StupidElves]

Well, in UFO Defense Force and Terrors From the Deep, the way difficulty worked was that it did two things. It would either increase how smart they were, or it would increase how quickly the aliens advanced with what alien types were introduced.

That is my standard for increasing difficulty in turn based strategy games. You have to be smart to get through that.

[Parsely]

Well, in UFO Defense Force and Terrors From the Deep, the way difficulty worked was that it did two things. It would either increase how smart they were, or it would increase how quickly the aliens advanced with what alien types were introduced.

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Difficulty_Levels

It does make the aliens advance their tech quicker, but mostly it just adds more enemies and gives them better stats.

[Rolan7]

To be fair I think they did have an intelligence-like stat, which just controlled how long they remembered the location of XCOM soldiers they spotted.  Kinda weird since at turn 20 I think they charged at XCOM anyway... theoretically.

[Arbinire]

I've got a pretty big pet peeve that I didn't realize I had until recently when I decided to play XCOM 2 on the hardest difficulty.

Fake difficulty. Things like buffing up enemy HP and messing with the chance to hit and everything, adding more of the buffed enemies. Giving your soldiers debuffs. That's not real difficulty. I want the AI to be smarter when I play the game harder, not just be the same with so many buffs you will die.

Similar peeve and I agree that a lot of what is deemed as difficulty these days really isn't.  I have had this argument about Dark Souls being a difficult game.  It's a punishing game but not a difficult one.  Once you have the patterns down it's a cakewalk, since nothing in the game learns and adapts to you(besides other players).  Of course usually expressing as much is usually met with the typical "git gud" comments.

I guess difficulty really is subjective though

[Boltgun]

I've got a pretty big pet peeve that I didn't realize I had until recently when I decided to play XCOM 2 on the hardest difficulty.

Fake difficulty. Things like buffing up enemy HP and messing with the chance to hit and everything, adding more of the buffed enemies. Giving your soldiers debuffs. That's not real difficulty. I want the AI to be smarter when I play the game harder, not just be the same with so many buffs you will die.

Similar peeve and I agree that a lot of what is deemed as difficulty these days really isn't.  I have had this argument about Dark Souls being a difficult game.  It's a punishing game but not a difficult one.  Once you have the patterns down it's a cakewalk, since nothing in the game learns and adapts to you(besides other players).  Of course usually expressing as much is usually met with the typical "git gud" comments.

I guess difficulty really is subjective though

That's what happens on games that are hard early. It gets easier because you learn them and most often games do not actually have a difficult end game, ending with a feeling of winning half way through.

I have the same feeling with Monster Hunter, even if it throw you difficult dragons at the end.

[itisnotlogical]

A peeve of mine that I've found in XCOM is enemies having abilities that have no compare in your own arsenal. The Heavy's Holo-Targeting is equatable to Mind Meld, in a very loose sense, but the Thin Men's poison spit is a huge pile of bullshit. Basically infinite range, AOE, damage over multiple turns, and always hits, like a grenade or rocket. It might be coincidence, but it also seems to cause panic sometimes in my experience.

[Sirbug]

A peeve of mine that I've found in XCOM is enemies having abilities that have no compare in your own arsenal. The Heavy's Holo-Targeting is equatable to Mind Meld, in a very loose sense, but the Thin Men's poison spit is a huge pile of bullshit. Basically infinite range, AOE, damage over multiple turns, and always hits, like a grenade or rocket. It might be coincidence, but it also seems to cause panic sometimes in my experience.

It doesn't necessary cause panic (But being damaged often causes panic). That said, there's nothing wrong with it (It also can be countered by equipping medkit) but it made me think about different kind of crap Xcom pulled. NPCs always throwing always accurate grenades if they can hit more then one NPC and never throw it at a single target (Except for Elite Mecs who seem to enjoy blowing up my cover just because)
That's not really the kind of tactic I want from games.

[itisnotlogical]

Interchangeable game experiences

I really hate to rag on Skyrim, because there are things I like about it and I have fun playing it, but it also annoys the shit out of me in a lot of ways.

On my old Morrowind main, a Warrior-esque custom class, I would never imagine using magic. It was slow, one spell tended to use all my Magicka, and by the time I'd cast a spell and it was a success and it hit them, I could have just hit them with my sword a lot of times and been done with it. Because I had picked a Warrior, and if I wanted to use magic then I would have to spend the time and money to git gud.

In Skyrim, my character is every class all at once. I can use magic well enough that it doesn't matter. I'm good enough at thieving to get past any lock. I can trade blows with anything of a similar level. I'm a good enough archer that I could snipe if I wanted to. I've never had to rethink my strategy in a Skyrim encounter because I was lacking a particular skill. Every Skyrim character is a seven-way multiclassed jack of all trades because there's no reason not to be, and if I wanted to "theme" my character I'd just be disadvantaging myself for no reason.

[Shadowlord]

Everyone in (at least unmodded) Skyrim can pick the hardest locks with no skill or perks, and most of the higher level vanilla spells are useless or suicidal or both.

But even in Morrowind I was a spellsword-alchemist-enchanter, and the only reason I didn't pick locks was because it was easier to magic them open, and possible to max the required magic skill easily and quickly with no consequences if it wasn't a skill that could level you up (minor or major iirc).

[Rolan7]

Hrm, it might be complicated...  I felt like magic suffered a major across-the-board debuff in Skyrim.  Destruction magic in particular.  So yeah, literally any player character can throw a stream of fire, but it does almost literally nothing.  Enchanting is easily the most useful mage skill, along with a weaponskill (especially archery, since the primary enemy *fly*), smithing, and alchemy.

Whereas in Oblivion magic was just very good.  And if you completed the (long time-consuming) mage guild quests, it became freakin broken.

And in Morrowind the indefinite-stat loop with potions...  Rewards those who know what to do.
I was going to link that classic Morrowind speedrun, but couldn't find it.  Got a bunch of glitch-runs instead.

[Shadowlord]

There's a site which curates speedruns, I believe, it you can find it.