Bay 12 Games Forum

The son of a former dictator is more or less winning by the preview of the results of the voter turnout today.

Tiruin, if she's still around I would argue would feel the same.

Single-person 'slingshot' teleporters can be used by the next man, I suppose, and could send groups of people one by one to other planets.

But then again, having 'infinite' resources means that there would be little demand for 'trade', which would mean Earth as we know it would collapse.

Earth would then try to capitalize on cheap FTL tech for transport, and limit its usage significantly to prevent other people from leaving the planet and ergo Earth losing power.

Earth, if it cannot figure out how to source resources from other planets, slightly alters their stance because it also means that there is no way to bring earth-like technology over to the other planets, unless it was as compact as an adult human's organic bodymass. They will massively limit the number of items to send over, perhaps even outlaw it.

Humans on the other side would have to figure out technology again, without the ability to craft raw materials. This would set a disparity where planets will generally be of a lower tech than the earth.

Secretly, Earth still tries to develop FTL-Slingshot drives for transport ships, so they can subjugate the 'alien' worlds and exploit their resources.

I know there's a lot of hype and love for Elden Ring, though I guess we'll just have to see how history treats it.

Quote from: Trapezohedron on March 16, 2022, 07:21:47 pm

I do worry if people start complaining that the next fromsoft game is not as open world as this, but those games were enjoyable experiences on their own with proper pacing.

To be perfectly honest, I think that, whether it's a financial success or failure, this is the end of the Dark Souls formula that FromSoft is famous for. This is the peak. FromSoft has finally fulfilled the artistic vision that it has been working on for... how many years now? The only place that FS has to go is laterally, that is, with a new IP and new ideas and a new formula. To start from scratch. Trying to iterate on Elden Ring any further would just be an artistic waste, because there's nowhere else to go.

Of course, there might be some DLC's for it down the line, but ultimately FS has to move on. It has to do something new.

That it does. Unfortunately, FromSoftware isn't specifically known for anything else other than Dark Souls after making it big.

Armored Core still remains niche, among their numerous, numerous experiments with only cult followings. Can one snatch the sun yet again and ensure continued existence?

Quote from: Frumple on March 16, 2022, 11:50:25 am

Wait, how have they not done summons before? I know for a fact there's npc summons in earlier fromsoft games -- not as free form or nearly as varied (for all everything except a handful aren't that impressive) as in elden ring, but they absolutely were there.

Summons in From Soft games have always been human/player models. They've always had a significant amount of damage reduction to survive boss fights, to compensate for the fact they're not going to avoid most boss attacks the way the player will. But their damage has always been additive to the fight rather than multiplicative.

In Elden Ring, you have summons that are multiple units, fly, crawl, teleport...up until the Mimic Tear I would have called summons "useful but not necessary and certainly not OP." Even a +8 Special Class Birb summon I was using would get downed in the first 30 seconds, get posture broken while flapping around in the air and squashed.

I forget what dual boss fight I was doing last night....but my Mimic Tear killed the boss they were fighting while I still had 30% of the life bar left on mine. Because I had to avoid and dodge while the Mimic Tear will just face tank a god-tier attack and keep swinging.

So what's not new is AI summons to distract the boss....what's different is how many of them there can be, how durable they can be and how much damage they can add to the fight for you. A Mimic Tear has the same loadout as your character, so if you're facing a boss already weak to bleed....now you have 2x as much bleed and bleed is already hella strong. So the boss just liquefies.

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First off, the game is quite possibly too big for its own good.

Agreed. I came to this a while ago. Yeah, it's great running around in a From Soft "World." But because of how From Soft does itemization, as a player you feel compelled to check every nook and cranny to make sure you didn't miss something really note worthy, because From does that all the time. Except in Elden Ring, about 50% of what you'll find isn't unique or note worthy. Opening a chest to find Mushroom x8 really makes you question if it's worth your time to check everything. "Oh, Smithing Stone 4 x3? Nice....except I've been able to buy those from the vendor for the last 20 hours."

And if you're not getting an interesting or unique item, at least there's the setting and lore to make it worth it....right? Except many of the PoIs are duplicated (that shack model gets used I don't know how many times, 20?), and there aren't those interesting and subtle details to make it stand out. The only thing that makes "The Artist's Shack" different from every other shack is the name and the fact there's a painting there, nothing else. The only thing that makes the Stormfoot Catacombs different from the Murkwater Catacombs is the actual layout, mobs and bosses. There's nothing else contextual to differentiate them the way, say, the Undead Settlement is thematically and contextually different than Anor Londo. You get "enough" of that in the bigger areas like the Carian Manor and the Legacy dungeons, but you'll spend far, far less time dealing with those than the rest of the open world unless you skip the majority of it.

Likewise.....fuck Treasure Scarabs without any actual treasure. They should just get rid of the Red and Blue Scarabs. Because you hear that noise and you go "Oh I have to go make sure that isn't an item I'm missing." So you spend 20 minutes figuring out how to get down that cliff, or to the other side of that wall...and find out it's a Scarab that refills your Estus which you don't need. BOO. Give them a different sound or just get rid of them. It makes me, again, think there's something worth looking for out there when it 100% is not.

I also agree the game wasn't intended to be a 100% complete playthrough.....but that's like putting cocaine in front of an addict and saying "you're only intended to do a couple bumps." But then at least 1/3rd of that cocaine turns out to be baking powder. I don't know if quantity is a good defense for a lack of balance and meaningfulness but different gamers are going to see that differently.

Elden Ring will be my GoTY barring something truly amazing happening. I'm leaning toward a 9/10. No "thing" is truly flawless. In the world of marketing though, it's the closest to a 10/10 of any game I've played in recent years. But I can't really give it a 10/10 because yeah, there are short comings that you only feel after about 100 hours. Is it even reasonable to dock points when it takes you that long to see the forest for the trees? Different folks are going to have different opinions on that.

I arrived at the same conclusions honestly. It's a great game, close to a masterpiece, but the new features (esp. open world) they added also serve to detract to it.

I do worry if people start complaining that the next fromsoft game is not as open world as this, but those games were enjoyable experiences on their own with proper pacing.

To be perfectly fair, Summons occupy their own slot, so if you can chance on AI sunbro summons, that's basically 2 dogpiling against an enemy now.

Not to mention that the variety gives you between 1-5 summoned entities to play with, and that just breaks the boss AI... which they naturally address with mid-late game bullshit AoE.

So far, it's a fun game and I'm enjoying every minute of my time, but I also have to acknowledge all the same that linear map design, or at least scaling the map down to DaS1 levels would greatly benefit this game's progression.

Part of enjoying Elden Ring is just to learn how to enjoy the hilariously overpowered effects that you can get, e.g. cold ash bleed weapons, etc.

Honestly, this feels as much a megamix as Etrian Odyssey Nexus did. Unfortunately, it may have set a bar FromSoft may not be able to overcome in their next game.

Finally set up a router+modem combo instead of using the default Comcast one which means Comcast will no longer be ripping us off (on that particular thing). Took me about ten years (largely because its actually my parent's internet) but its done.

Might be wise to replace the DVR box too, since the one we got is kind of a piece of shit and that *also* costs money.

This has been a very productive last week.

If I recall, Comcast charges for you having their AWG routers, right? Some 5 or 10 USD? It was that way with Spectrum, but yes, that charge adds up over the years, so congrats on finally ditching it. It helps that almost *any* router out there is better than the default Comcast one because they can project signals farther, and usually are easier in setting up port forwarding should you need it.

Quote from: EuchreJack on February 23, 2022, 12:01:43 am

Quote from: LordBaal on February 22, 2022, 08:23:52 pm

Guys, just got confirmation that itisnotlogical died on past January 25th. His name was Alex and he went peacefully in his mother arms.

His fortress finally crumbed, but never to oblivion. I'm sorry if anyone else was close to him here.

Do we have a page or something to memorialize those whom have passed on? If not, maybe we should?

A friend of him called MadHatter from a channel called Retro Game Champion in Discord will make a stream in his honor and trying to rise some funds for Alex mom. He wrote me:
"For sure. She seems super nice but is devastated, both mentally and financially. I'm going to do a memorial stream and try to raise some money for her soon"
Asked him to tell me about it and will publish it here or if anyone is interested just go to that channel and write him up saying you come from the Dwarf Fortress forum.

Reading that itisnotlogical passed away yanked me back into this forum; I haven't interacted with them much back when I was still active here, but yes, I came back to offer my condolences. It is not much, but it won't be the same knowing an active forum member has passed away.