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Post by mikegarrison on May 29, 2021 5:28:54 GMT -5
Gloomhaven: I was playing through scenario after scenario and just rolling right over the enemies. This current lineup I'm using seemed almost like being on easy mode.
... Wait ... oops. I was on easy mode! Yes, there was one scenario that was super-annoying (you have to protect a hostile demon for 10 rounds while other demons arrive and attack both you and the one you are protecting. It's really frustrating, because even if you try to tank for the demon you have to keep alive, the damn thing follows the monster AI which means it runs right up the enemy demons. I would have had no trouble staying alive for 10 rounds, but keeping the demon alive was impossible. I can't even heal it like I usually can do to my allies.
So, anyway, I switched to easy mode to try to play that one scenario, but then I forgot to switch back. So I played about 5 or 6 other scenarios on easy mode, and they were totally, well, "easy" is the only word.
I do have a decent team right now. My bard is 9th (the top) level, and is auto-healing my whole party every round, as well as dishing out lots of stuns and curses. I also have a doomstalker (who does massive damage to individual targets that he "dooms"), a quartermaster who is doing OK as a tanky melee fighter (because of all the heals), and an elementalist (who does ranged magic damage that is low if not boosted but respectable if you can manage creating and consuming elements). The elementalist is definitely the weakest link in this party, but I'm trying to level him up, and nobody else in my party is a magic user.
So the way magic works in Gloomhaven is that some actions create "elements". Earth/air/fire/ice/light/dark. Once created they are available for anybody to use -- so you can create elements your enemies can use, or they can create elements you can use. They then "wane" over time. If you create an element on your turn, you can't use it. You have to try to use it your next turn, and hope nobody else grabbed it. And if you don't use it your next turn, it's gone anyway. But if someone else moves before you on the same turn and creates an element then you can grab it and use it -- you don't have to wait a turn.
Example:
Turn 1: Brute has his turn, creates no elements, uses no elements Enemy has a turn, creates Earth Cragheart has a turn, uses that Earth, then creates more Earth Enemies have turns and ignore the Earth
Turn 2: Earth is now "waning". If it's not used this turn it will disappear. Cragheart goes first and uses the Earth (that he created last turn). Does not make any new Earth. ...
In general, certain elements are more often used with certain types of magic. Fire is often used to boost attacks. Air is often used to boost move. Ice is often used for stunning. Etc.
And some characters (and also some enemies) have affinities for certain elements. The Cragheart only uses and creates Earth. The Nightshroud only uses and creates Dark. The Sunkeeper pretty much exclusively uses and creates light. The Spellweaver mostly uses fire and ice, although has some spells that either use other elements or that can use any element. But the Elementalist uses all of them, and even has a general "use any element to boost any attack +1" ability. And the Brute or the Doomslayer don't use elements at all.
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Post by mikegarrison on May 29, 2021 21:17:32 GMT -5
Gloomhaven game balance issues:
1) Summons.
Many characters can summon one or two allies (who usually play by monster AI rules, so they tend to charge in an attack the nearest enemy). These summons are near-universally regarded as terrible cards to play. They are all "loss" cards, which hurt your stamina. And many summons are so weak they get killed before they do any damage. They are typically thought of more as meat shields, but in Gloomhaven you can choose to burn a card rather than take damage, so burning a card for a summon that is killed when it takes damage is not terribly great.
There are some characters who are more effective with their summons -- the summoner (obviously) has some skills that can make her summons more effective, and she has an ability to get back some loss cards, so she can sometimes call the same summon more than once. And the beast tyrant's summoned bear can usually stay alive a whole scenario. But generally summons are considered terrible, and the summoner is considered one of the weakest classes.
2) Stamina potions:
In the original game, a very cheap "minor stamina potion" allowed you to get two used card back in your hand. The meant you could play your best (non-loss) combo twice between rests. And since there are certain ways to get potions back, this could lead to this one potion being very OP. Apparently the game designer included it because he expected people were going to be using their loss cards (like summons) more than they do.
So there is a connection between the OP stamina potion and the under-powered summons. But if you don't use the summons, then the stamina potion jumps out as really OP.
-----
Which leads to nerfs. In the second edition of the game, certain cards that were really OP got nerfed. But the stamina potion ... well, it kind of got nerfed. In some non-English-language versions it got nerfed to only bring back one card instead of two. And in the expansion (Frosthaven), the stamina potion got nerfed and summons got boosted (mostly by making them non-loss). But in the official English language rules, they got nerfed and then un-nerfed. The FAQ (which is considered part of the official rules) says that the stamina potions will be nerfed to return only one card "in a future expansion", and that players "may play" with the nerf if they want to.
In the digital video game edition (the only one I play), the nerf is active and stamina potions are much less OP than the strategy guides for the board game assume.
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Post by mikegarrison on May 29, 2021 21:20:18 GMT -5
By the way, is Gloomhaven popular?
Well, the kickstarter campaign for the sequel (Frosthaven) had a goal of raising $500k. It has raised just under $13M.
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Post by mln59 on Jun 4, 2021 11:40:58 GMT -5
having a tough time motivating myself to continue dark souls. haven't played this week.
plan to put in some time this evening
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Post by Resident Bitchy Canadian Fan on Jun 4, 2021 17:52:13 GMT -5
Just finished all of the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. I’d only played the third game once (after playing the second one like 4 times) when I was 14 and always wanted to pick a different ending. Playing them all consecutively, along with playing the Citadel DLC near the end made the ending of the third game so much more emotional. I’m actually still sad about the whole story ending for the past two days 😂
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 4, 2021 19:52:36 GMT -5
I'm nearing the end of Mass Effect 1 for the Legendary Edition. I have done all the side quests and just have the endgame chain of missions. Annoyingly, BioWare stated that it would be possible to get to max level in one playthrough, but it appears that this is impossible based on what people are saying on Reddit (like it's not even close to possible without exploiting time-consuming glitches). Fortunately, they also seem to have lowered the requirement to get character import bonuses in Mass Effect 2. Before, it was necessary to be at level 60 for the maximum bonus. But people are saying that level 56 is now good enough. I'm currently at level 55 with a little less than 30,000 experience needed to get to level 56. I'm pretty confident I'll get there by the end of the game. I did this on the hardest difficulty (Insanity), and it really wasn't too bad, especially once I got the best armor, which makes it pretty difficult to die.
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Post by mln59 on Jun 5, 2021 14:43:45 GMT -5
finally beat the dragon slayer and executioner. can advance the story now
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 5, 2021 23:47:38 GMT -5
I am still really into Gloomhaven right now. Just like XCOM, these tactical turn-based games really suck me in. And Gloomhaven adds a bunch more complexity over XCOM, because of the really amazing card mechanic.
You pick two cards for your turn before you know what anybody else is going to do. Each card has a "top" and a "bottom" action. You can only play the top from one and the bottom of the other, so you have two options once you see what everyone else is doing. It's really challenging and fun. Sometimes you end up doing something completely different from what you planned to do when you selected your cards. Other times you absolutely have to play one side of one card, so you can end up wasting the other side if things don't go your way.
And then the cards are also part of the stamina system. As you use them, you "discard" them. Or sometimes "burn/lose" them. Burned cards are gone, but discarded cards can be recovered if you "rest". Except, every rest you have to lose one card. So as the scenario progresses you constantly have fewer and fewer cards to choose from. And you keep having to decide whether it is worth "burning" a card for a big effect now or waiting for later. And you know you have a good deck when every time you rest you agonize over which card to lose, because they are all really valuable.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 7, 2021 1:45:21 GMT -5
I finished Mass Effect 1 for the Legendary Edition, and it was just as great as the first time I played it. Better, really, since the gameplay is significantly improved. I also appreciated that BioWare didn't have anything ridiculous in terms of trophies. I'm a completionist by nature, but there are so many games that have a handful of trophies that take just a ridiculous amount of time or involve the need to win infuriating minigames that I just throw up my hands. The only games I actually have the platinum trophy for are Spiderman PS4, Spiderman: Miles Morales and Ghost of Tsushima. Well, with Mass Effect, all the trophies are quite achievable. And even the one for beating the game on the hardest difficulty isn't actually required to earn the platinum trophy.
I'm very much looking forward to continuing on with Mass Effect 2, which is my favorite game of the series and one of the best games ever made in my view. Its structure is different than the first game, which is sort of like the A New Hope of Mass Effect in which the world is introduced, but the story is fairly self-contained even if it's also setting up a sequel. Mass Effect 2 is kind of like a TV show that has a big ensemble cast, and it focuses on each one of them for a couple episodes during the season. The character development is really inspired, even if the main plot isn't quite as strong as the first game's was. I've also seen it compared to a heist movie where a lot of it is spent recruiting a number of specialists. And most of the game is doing exactly that, as well as doing loyalty missions for the characters in preparation for a "suicide mission," in which the entire team can die. Or everyone can live if you do it right.
Edit: Here's the "everyone dies" ending, which actually takes quite a bit of work to pull off. Some of the comments on that video are comedy gold. Actually, after reading the comments for the last 10 minutes or so, I think this might be my favorite comment section in the history of YouTube videos.
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 15, 2021 17:43:14 GMT -5
I've been playing some Factorio again. This time I'm using a suite of mods called "Bob's Mods" that add a whole bunch of complicated chemical processing to the game.
In basic Factorio you mine copper ore, iron ore, and stone. (You can also mine coal and pump oil.) You run the ores through furnaces and get copper plates, iron plates, and stone bricks. If you run the iron plates through a furnace a second time, you get steel plates. You also need to use coal with oil to make plastic.
Later you can mine uranium. In order to do that, you need sulfuric acid.
That's basically it for mining in Factorio.
With these Bob's Mods you mine iron ore, copper ore, stone, uranium, and coal, but also lead ore, tungsten ore, nickel ore, zinc ore, gold ore, etc. Many of these need to be processed using specific chemicals, which you have you build up in chemical plants. You get oxygen from water or air, you get nitrogen from air, you get hydrogen from water, you get carbon from coal, and you get sulfur as a byproduct from oil. From there you have to build all kinds of different chemical compounds. And you need to make all kinds of alloys with your raw ores, like cobalt steel and brass and bronze.
You also have a few examples of something I have long thought is most missing from basic Factorio -- alternate paths. For example, in the Bob's system you can get oxygen from electrolysis of water, or you can get it from separating it out from the air. You can get wood from trees, or from greenhouses, or from oil you can make synthetic wood. In basic Factorio, there is only one recipe for making anything, and always the exact same path to it. I've long though it would be kind of fun to deal with things like "if you don't have wood, you can substitute plastic and steel in the recipes that require wood". There are a few things like that in Bob's.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 15, 2021 23:38:35 GMT -5
I'm maybe a third of the way through Mass Effect 2, as I've recruited the initial characters and cleared the first real boss fight. I remember this being much tougher on Insanity when I first played it, but I've beaten the game enough times to know the best ways to approach these missions. I was concerned that since I was doing a fresh game without the top-level weapon and biotic power that carried me through previous runs, it would be much more difficult. But it hasn't been bad. I now have some new characters to recruit, but the game has a particularly difficult mission coming up that can start as soon as five missions after the first boss. However, it can be delayed indefinitely by simply not recruiting an eighth squadmate. So that's what I'll do until I can get the extremely good biotic power, which should take six or seven missions. At that point, I'll proceed, as that mission is where the super powerful sniper rifle is acquired.
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Post by mln59 on Jun 17, 2021 21:22:45 GMT -5
beat seath the scaleless tonight in dark souls remastered. making progress
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Post by mikegarrison on Jun 17, 2021 21:40:19 GMT -5
Here's the "everyone dies" ending, which actually takes quite a bit of work to pull off. So if you get the "everyone dies" ending and then fire up Mass Effect 3, what happens?
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 17, 2021 22:41:31 GMT -5
Here's the "everyone dies" ending, which actually takes quite a bit of work to pull off. So if you get the "everyone dies" ending and then fire up Mass Effect 3, what happens? So you can't actually import your save file from ME2 into ME3 in that case, and you'll get stuck with the canon choices and have to create a new character.
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Post by bbg95 on Jun 18, 2021 16:10:18 GMT -5
I've played some more Mass Effect 2 and have recruited the best squad mate and done her loyalty mission to unlock the best biotic power for both her and me (you're allowed to have one bonus power, which are unlocked by doing the loyalty missions, and hers is the best in the game by a wide margin in my view). At this point, I'll do a handful of smaller missions to get some more upgrades so that I'm as prepared as possible for arguably the most difficult mission in the game. I say arguably because I think that's the prevailing view among fans, but I don't think I've ever actually died during this mission. I certainly understand why it's tough, as I've had some close calls, but there are some other missions that have more aggravating sequences.
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