Tali'Thread vas Clan Zorah nar BSN 6.0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eI2Dec3rRM

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtjkqrvUg_4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irMPqha2YtQ

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63dlMjRL2HY

[Dragaros]

If this is true:

*happy dance*

Seriously, I've spent the last 19 years wishing every RPG I've played was as good as Baldur's Gate and BG2. BG2 is my absolute favorite game.

I know a lot of people who will be overjoyed if this proves to be real.

[magnuskn]

Well, I'm into my second game of TW: Three Kingdoms by now, with Kong Rong. I kinda stumbled into it, since I just wanted to look at his starting position and campaign mechanic and ended up enjoying playing so much that I just kept on. 110 turns into the game I'm at the point where different kingdoms have formed and, since the "governor" heroes cannot declare themselves emperor and also Dong Zhuo survived past turn ten, there are now *five* big realms. I got to take out one of them to declare as emperor myself. Yuan Shao is the nearest, but he is the only guy who is still allied with me and a lot of my economy is also predicated on him staying friendly as long as possible (Kong Rong is a merchant lord and gets huge trade bonuses compared to other characters). Guess I gotta go for Sun Jian, which is a bit ironic, given that I played him the last time around. ^^

The trick for a good start with Kong Rong is, btw, to cut off Liu Bei's expansion in the south immediately, i.e. take the city south of you before he can. After that you got the entire northern east coast of China, south of the Yellow River, at your disposal for your self. Keep on the good side of Yuan Shao, though.

[Mazder]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtjkqrvUg_4

After watching this video, even if it is speculation/lies, makes me kinda interested.
A Reboot back to my favourite CoD game style and characters (Captain Price FTW!) with extra care put into graphical design, sound design and story design is a win in my book.
Now I just hope it doesn't cost £80...

[Raga]

I'm replaying BG1 at the moment (yea, yea, every time I try to play PoE I just end up playing BG instead) and it's been 3000 years since I played anything that wasn't a mage. My canon guy is a mage so I usually just replay him.

I opted for druid, which historically is my favorite class, and have reconfirmed that druids are the bees' knees.

Crazy good offensive spellcasting. Crazy good personal buffing and shape-shifting that makes them decent to good front line guys. Good healing. The best at conjuring. Decent crowd control. Decent party buffing.

The only things they suck at is removal of negative spell effects from the party or defense against specific magical attacks. If you get hit with panic or hold person or something, they mostly just have to cast generic dispel magic and hope that it takes. But that's so situational it can mostly be countered strategically with gear and consumables.

Casting in the squishy backranks only to shapeshift into a werewolf and eat the face of the guy who thinks he's going to disrupt the "squishy" backranks is always satisfying.

Plus you can talk to animals. Best class.

I just finished the Aec'Letec fight which is arguably the hardest in the series and this fight is way, way easier with a spare druid instead of a spare mage. A mage is rigid in what they can do, but the druid can run around and fill in a role wherever there's a hole be it healer, front line fighter, summoner or whatever.

[Raga]

What would you say is the definition of beating a hard fight in a game via "cheesy" methods? I see this come up all the time (especially in dick measuring isometric RPG conversations).

Is metagaming always cheese? For instance, hoarding some consumable the entire game that you know will have outsize usefulness in a particular fight and then spamming the consumable.

Is bottlenecking enemies in doorways and narrow passages cheesy?

Is heal spamming (via rest, potions or whatever) cheesy?

My definition of cheese is really permissive. Basically if you aren't exploiting an actual bug, an obvious gap in AI, or using game editing tools of some kind, it's not cheese.

Specific examples:

Saving all your wands of summoning for the final boss in BG1 and swarming Sarevok with umpteen trash enemies while shooting him full of arrows/magic missiles: not cheese.

Casting cloudkill on the dragon Firkraag while he's still hidden by fog of war and waiting out of sight while he slowly poisons to death: cheesy. This is a product of his AI being too stupid to move or search for things he can't see.

One I use incessantly is bottlenecking enemies and so I usually rail against games that have doors that magically close behind you for *reasons.* It always comes off cheap and lazy to me. The Dragon Age series is an egregious offender in this category.

Another one I use a lot is climbing up on something enemies can't climb and pelting them with ranged attacks.

[Vol]

I would say that so long as you win the fight within the spirit of the game design, it's not cheesy. Because the developers could have very easily made tactics, such as using chokepoints, or powerful consumables, or heal spamming, not work if they wanted to. But breaking AI scripting, exploiting geometry in an unsporting way, that is cheese. Case in point, I'm literally watching a Dead Space 2 "No hit" run on Zealot difficulty, and nothing he's doing to utterly destroy enemies is cheesy, because it's all intended use of the tools you're given in an efficient way.

Whereas there is a very good Total War player who's used the tactic of sending out a single hero unit to strafe back and forth until an enemy has exhausted their entire supply of arrows/javelins pointlessly, since they're not scripted to handle such a situation. That's cheese. Though I heard 3K has actually fixed that, and they'll hard prioritize targets.

RPGs though, they have so many permutations of skills and items that you can make a case that a clearly unintended outcome is cheese. Dark Souls, you can stack buffs and items and magic and critical attacks in such a way to one shot bosses. I wouldn't call that cheese. But performing a specific series of action to lock up the AI scripting so it doesn't move while you wail on it, clearly. In isometrics, it's the same idea, no? The point is to demonstrate the effectiveness of your team and resource usage, if you're not doing that, you're cheesing. And if you're manifesting unsporting outcomes with the tools you do have, such that you've not demonstrated skill or strategy, then that is too.

Consumable hoarding: Not cheese
Bottlenecking: Not cheese
Heal spamming: Not cheese
Wand of summoning: Having not beaten it, that sounds debatable, since the boss scripting might not have target priority selection
Dragon thing: Cheese

[Sinekein]

Most of the time it's indeed some form of dick-measuring - "I did not need to use this strategy therefore you are a worst player than me for using it". It's basically a way for people who like self-imposed challenges to feel smugly superior to the plebs.

In all the ME3 runs I did, I eventually resorted to a default strategy that can be described as "cheesy" - Adept with maxed out powers and combos damage going with Kaidan and Javik as mates, Infiltrator with the Wraith or Black Widow, Engineer with always 2 or 3 pets to distract enemies (without counting Tali's and EDI's), Soldier in constant bullet-time effect, Novacharge Vanguard of course...all abuse Shepard's power (depending of his class). But that's the point, you're Shepard, you're supposed to be insanely powerful. If you want to play as Shepard with only a trusty Phalanx and no powers that's on you, that does not invalidate the way I play.

However, if some games purposefully make some usual strategies impossible to use, then I don't think they should be hated for embracing "fake difficulty". Unless they are poorly designed, it just means they promote other solutions to pass various trials.

That's why my favorites are the games that give self-imposed challenges as in-game options, like Fire Emblem or XCOM. Which means that once you have picked your difficulty, then all legal methods are fair game.

Note that self-imposed challengers are not always negative and dismissive of other players. I love reading about people who found crazier and crazier ways to beat Final Fantasy X, culminating in the NSGNSNCNONENNENBB challenge (No Sphere Grid - so no stat gains - No Summons - which can grow without the Sphere Grid and become ungodly powerful on their own - No Overdrive - especially no Rikku's Alchemy which if well-known can offer an insane variety of bonuses - No Escape - so you HAVE to beat every enemy you encounter, which becomes harder and harder as the game progresses - No No-Encounter - an ability that would make No Escape pointless - No BlitsBall - which means no upgrading Wakka's weapon and overdrive) that requires insane persistence and challenge (and was I think successfully completed by 1 person on Earth).

But it's built as a community giving itself harder and harder challenges to see where it can go, it's not a way to tell "normal people" that they played FFX the wrong way, or that I should be ashamed for having fully-equipped Wakka and Rikku in my main team. So there's nothing wrong with it.

[TheodoricFriede]

If its in the base game, it's not 'cheese'.

As far as I'm concerned any and all strategies are viable up to and including exploits and unpatched bugs.

[Alienmorph]

Honestly I would argue that anything that isn't straight up cheating or breaking the rules (assuming there's a distinction between the two) should be allowed. Especially in challenging games or challenging situations within a specific game. Figuring out a strategy that works for you is part of the fun in those cases. Can be a bit different in multiplayer, but if you're not taking the fun away from anyone else, just do whatever works, I'd say.

[Raga]

Wand of summoning: Having not beaten it, that sounds debatable, since the boss scripting might not have target priority selection
Dragon thing: Cheese

It doesn't but the AI is so hardcore stupid in BG that you either have to install mods or actively handicap yourself to make up the difference for targeting. Enemies will just mindlessly attack whatever happens to be the first thing they see and once it's dead move on to the next closest thing. There are a few very rare exceptions such as with some teleporting or invisible creatures which will try to sneak and attack your backranks. The only time a non teleporter/invisible enemy prioritizes a target other than whoever he saw first is A) if that character runs away long enough or B) some melee character next to him deals him a tremendous amount of damage.

So I could forego the summoning thing and instead cast Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on my front line guy. This spell makes you completely invulnerable to damage but also renders you completely unable to do anything but stand there. But same effect. Enemy will just keep mindlessly attacking even though he's dealing no damage. Or I can just dump an inordinate number of armor class improving spells and gear on one guy and make him nigh impregnable and send him in first and the enemy will attack him. Or I could summon a strong summons and put it at the head of my party so it soaks damage in a traditional tank sense.

And I don't mean "send him in first" in a sense of "you go in and the rest of us will be in after 10 seconds." I mean we all go in but he is the guy I send through the door first. And why wouldn't I send the dude with the tower shield or whatever in through the door first?

The only way for the AI to not mindlessly target the thing most to your advantage for it to target would require you to intentionally send squishy people forward first or just forgo buffing and so on. Are you required to *accommodate* crappy AI for it to not be cheese?

Another more modern example:

Enemies in Andromeda will just stand around picking their noses if you snipe them from far enough away: cheese

Enemies will stupidly take cover in ways where they are still totally in line of fire. Are you supposed to forego shooting them because their AI had them crouch beside the barrel instead of behind it?

However, if some games purposefully make some usual strategies impossible to use, then I don't think they should be hated for embracing "fake difficulty". Unless they are poorly designed, it just means they promote other solutions to pass various trials.

I don't mind this always. It depends on the game. In something like, say, God of War it makes sense to force the player into arena style combat. You are Kratos. You are supposed to run in and go full berserker on things. It makes 0 sense to use it over and over in an RPG which is supposed to have a range of tactical options. A few situations to keep the players on their toes? Sure. But mobs dropping in from the sky over and over like in DA2 while doors magically close? This is devs being lazy. It's them forcing you into intentionally weak positions over and over so they don't have to make the enemies AI any good or bother ever having to script fights with non-standard scripts.

@ general conversation

Now that I think about it, this is probably my underlying problem with POE. It feels to me like the bulk of decisions in the gameplay of the game were made by first asking "how can we make cheese impossible here?" That's what would preclude 12 year old me from beating it. 12 year me beat BG1, but I totally used cheese.

[Azint]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV0H1bIa_kY

There he is.

[Sinekein]

Honestly I would argue that anything that isn't straight up cheating or breaking the rules (assuming there's a distinction between the two) should be allowed. Especially in challenging games or challenging situations within a specific game. Figuring out a strategy that works for you is part of the fun in those cases.

Especially since "challenging runs" often boil down to using a specific set of skills that are relevant to the situation - the catch usually being that they are "less obvious", or a bit more difficult to use than average. But they still are abused.

Like, you can reasonably clear Fire Emblem games on default difficulty without using dancers/singers. On Lunatic, you have to abuse dancers/singers to win without casualties. As such you can consider dancers/singers as a cheesing tool because watching Lunatic playthroughs very often boils down to seeing an overpowered Lord/Tactician clearing entire armies with Olivia, Azura or whoever is the resident refresher supporting him/her.

[TheodoricFriede]

There he is.

Shang Tsung is fine. Id prefer he stayed dead, but hes fine.

I couldn't give two shits about Nightwolf and Sindel. And frankly there isn't a single guest character they could have that would be as cool as most Mortal Kombat characters.

Ash would have done it, but hes more or less confirmed to not be happening.

[Dragaros]

There he is.

YOUR SOUL IS MINE

Glorious.

And Spawn officially confirmed.

[Dragaros]

What would you say is the definition of beating a hard fight in a game via "cheesy" methods? I see this come up all the time (especially in dick measuring isometric RPG conversations).

I'd pretty much agree with Alienmorph.

I actually have a history of trying to make easy fights harder for the sake of more enjoyment. There's a lot of otherwise great boss fights out there that are partially or totally soured by low difficulty; they have great cinematic feel, high emotional stakes, fun gameplay, narrative drama, the works, but little or no challenge, and thus the sense of accomplishment or plot relevance is diminished. (Or sometimes the accompanying soundtrack or backdrop is so epic one plays more defensively and prolongs the battle so you can savor the moment) I'll try going in with low health, or no items, or weaker gear, or make sure not to grind and get too much EXP. Its rare I encounter a fight so difficult I need to resort to "cheesy" methods.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmyiPVOih8g

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6spG2bEy8

…Paper Mario with bugs?

[Raga]

Well, upon beating Baldur's Gate, I decided to play Icewind Dale 2 because it's the only Infinity Engine game I haven't played 7,634 times. However, it's also the only one with no Enhanced Edition and it apparently really, *really* hates Windows 10. It took like two hours but I finally got the stupid thing running with no atrocious visual problems.

I don't actually remember much about the game so I'm practically going into it like it's a new game.

[Rune]

-

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz9RSM620wE

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUEW5U43E0k

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jir4uWN45-8

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnETwPJ5Cys

"Nintendo has released the version 3.1.0 update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which adds Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit compatibility and more. The Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit is compatible with limited, timed, and offline battles, and allows players to enjoy a front-row seat at CPU bouts with the freedom to look around and enjoy the view. It supports dozens of stages, and players can also battle the CPU as P1. Get the full patch notes and overview video below."

https://gematsu.com/2019/05/super-smash ... patibility

[magnuskn]

So, that Kong Rong campaign didn't end well. The problem was Liu Bei, who confederated Sun Jians giant realm very soon after the five kingdoms came to be, suddenly owning about 60% of the campaign map. I tried loading saves to find another solution, but if I went for Sun Jian (whose capital was very vulnerable), then suddenly I had to fight corruption like hell, had revolutions going on very soon and was out of money, without a good recourse to remedy the situation. So, I started over as Liu Bei, to prevent that guy getting his way. :p

[Someone With Mass]

Devil May Cry 5 is 34% off on Steam. Would anyone here recommend getting it?

[Vol]

Yes. Is good, so I hear.

[Dragaros]

Devil May Cry 5 is 34% off on Steam. Would anyone here recommend getting it?

100% yes. Its a love letter to the entire DMC series, an apology for that failed reboot attempt from 2013, and a fun game all on its own even if you have no history or emotional attachment with the franchise's story or characters. (But if you do, its even more rewarding, especially if DMC3 was your jam)

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fI0p4dSKlQ

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axrdqpvpaP8

[TheodoricFriede]

Anyone want to make some wild E3 (or road to E3) predictions? Here's some crazy shit that is exceedingly unlikely, but I have a gut feeling on.

- Rocksteady's new game revealed. Its a Mortal Kombat Action/Adventure.
- New Smash Brothers character includes first playable Indie character. Character will be from Undertale/Deltarune.
- Ash is indeed one of the DLC characters in MK11. At least one of his moves involves running people over in that Death Car from Army of Darkness.
- Okami 2 or Dragons Dogma 2.
- Microsoft officially goes 3rd Party. ( Still makes a premium box and a digital only/streaming box.)
- Paper Mario returns in some form (new game/remake/remaster) as an RPG. Will be a Mario Maker 2 skin.
- Splatoon spinoff.

Anyone else want to play?

[Mazder]

Maybe some news on Pokemon Sword and Shield from nintendo, maybe a reveal/intro trailer.
Other than that I really don't know.

[TheodoricFriede]

Maybe some news on Pokemon Sword and Shield from nintendo, maybe a reveal/intro trailer.
Other than that I really don't know.

...Ok. so Maybe you didn't understand the 'rules'.

Obviously there is going to be news of the biggest Nintendo release this year. Thats like guessing Ubisoft will talk about an Assassins Creed game.

I'm looking for wild unlikely scenario that you have a gut feeling about and can gloat about getting right later.

[Someone With Mass]

More Borderlands 3 stuff, which I'd imagine would be followed by another Randy Pitchford controversy/shitfit.

[TheodoricFriede]

People... What part of wildly unlikely is so hard to understand?

[TTTX]

Knights of the republic remastered made by BW getting confirmed at E3.

That's good enough for you Theo?

[TheodoricFriede]

Knights of the republic remastered made by BW getting confirmed at E3.

That's good enough for you Theo?

That closer to what I mean, sure.

[Azint]

Half-Life 3.

[TheodoricFriede]

Half-Life 3.

And you have a gut feeling on that one, do you?

[Someone With Mass]

Oh, okay. That Final Fantasy 7 remake showing up, gameplay and all.

[TheodoricFriede]

Oh, okay. That Final Fantasy 7 remake showing up, gameplay and all.

There! See? That's an actual answer.

Now if it shows up you get to gloat!

[Alienmorph]

Anyone want to make some wild E3 (or road to E3) predictions? Here's some crazy shit that is exceedingly unlikely, but I have a gut feeling on.

...

Anyone else want to play?

Okay, let's see...

Capcom is going to announce a bunch of stuff nobody thought might be coming, like a new Marvel v Capcom (which after MvC:I is thought to be a dead series) or a new Dino Crisis. Possibly a tease to the next Resident Evil... but thatis not really a crazy prediction;

Next SuperSmash Brothers DLC character IS from an indie title, but is NOT from Undertale/Deltarune because that's the one everyone's expecting. Maybe thei're going to pick something like the main character from Binding of Isaac or Hollow Knight instead. Basically everything that got a Switch release if fair game. Alternatively some popular videogame character from Japan, like Hatsune Miku, to take the piss at western censorship;

Microsoft announces that Halo Infinite is both a reboot and a live service version of the original Halo, because the reception of Halo5 was so abysmal they don't wanna continue that storyline. A Steam version of the Gears of War games is also announced;

Valve comes up with something truly mind-blowing, to give the proverbial middle-finger to the Epic Games Store, instead of sitting on their pile of money and do nothing like usual;

BioWare shows the first gameplay snippetts of DragonAge4 and announces Mass Effect4. And I mean ME4, not Andromeda2 or something;

[Mazder]

...Ok. so Maybe you didn't understand the 'rules'.

Obviously there is going to be news of the biggest Nintendo release this year. Thats like guessing Ubisoft will talk about an Assassins Creed game.

I'm looking for wild unlikely scenario that you have a gut feeling about and can gloat about getting right later.

Oh, then my answer is changed to "Gaming becoming affordable"/Steam's VR becomes the cheapest and best and sets VR to be more than a gimmick.

Other than that I don't feel like gloating over E3, it's too depressing.