Print

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

[Culise]

I killed an enemy Long, after they killed… soooo many of my followers, either directly or as a consequence of me using them to defend me.

Spoiler: spoiler on what happens as a result (click to show/hide)

I get a letter I can use to destroy my mentor, the previous character I got from a Power victory, and win the game with a Power victory with this character instead, but I’d rather see what happens if I can make them, particularly since I can’t change my cult aspect anyway.

Now I just need to make sure I don’t lose the game to being arrested, as I have 5 corpses and I think I already have damning evidence against me.

… I may have to murder the investigator.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cultist Simulator

Every time I read "The Investigator" I'm now stuck thinking of The Expanse.

-it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out-

Doors and corners, kid. That's where they get you, even with ideas.

[SQman]

I played my first game as Pillar, on a huge 1v1 map against AI. I picked a hero with a focus on fighters. The enemy qas Idyll (a simple modded faction), and there was an independent order town.

At first I focused hard on securing whatever I could on my side of the map. I took over two villages - Earthen and Rogue. Pretty much only dwarven crossbowmen turned out to be useful from these.

I started expanding as soon as the enemy entered my side. Their doomstack was supposedly hard, but it bounced off my castle. Elite units still struggle against a deluge of archers. I pushed into the formerly neutral human castle.

The Order castle wasn't well defended because the enemy tried to invade me again, and I repelled the strike force on my way. The new castle became my new base of operations as I started taking over the middle part of the map. A secondary hero would deliver my Pillar units to the new castle and occasionally pick up resources along the way.

The enemy would consistently send three heroes - the first one was the main force, with a dangerous army thatI could still keep up with; the second hero used hit and run ractics snatching buildings when I wasn't looking, but his army was small enough for my secondary hero to take him on; the third hero was a chump with some obsidian pillars. The last guy would occasionally show up, but castle defenses were more than enough to beat him.

Despite frequent attacks, I could build up a good-sized army and deliver the final push. I took over the Idyll city and hunted down the remaining heroes with no problem. Focusing on weaker units is much more fun in this game than in Heroes, because sieging an enemy castle with a giant swarm of martial artists is so satisfying. A single peasant with a large number underneath can't compare.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hero's Hour

[Akura]

Maybe it's because the final level is a very long, which allowed me to accrue a pretty massive amount of bonus pickups. Maybe it was because the long dungeon allowed me to pick up and massively enhance a war hammer and mighty bow, as well as finding a battle axe that was already jacked up.

Either way, the final boss was goddamn easy. For a second there I thought I died, since he was dropping a massive lightning attack while I focused on madly flailing with dual-wielded war hammer and battle axe in the general vicinity of his face, but no, that's how his death plays out.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Battle Talent. The reward for beating the final boss is the ability to use mods. That's... meh.

[Iduno]

Either way, the final boss was goddamn easy.

I have heard and said this about far too many games. I understand that the further you get into a game, the harder balance gets, but you can also tell when the end-game difficulty was only tested with all/no bonuses at the end.

[AlStar]

Either way, the final boss was goddamn easy.

I have heard and said this about far too many games. I understand that the further you get into a game, the harder balance gets, but you can also tell when the end-game difficulty was only tested with all/no bonuses at the end.

This reminds me of Dungeons of Dredmor - an otherwise excellent turn-based dungeon crawler - whose final boss I describe in my Steam review as such:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dredmor himself has been balanced against the twink builds. This means that it's possible to have a character that can clear out the entire dungeon but still be unable to actually win the game. Especially classes that are forced to go toe-to-toe with the big man himself - bring massive amounts of dodge and counter or you may as well just go home.

Still a good game (at 120 hours played, I'd certainly hope so!) but it doesn't stop me from being annoyed how they balanced the last boss.

On-topic: My current captain, a Shock Trooper who likes to lead from the front lines, is currently my highest level and longest lasting captain. While working on a high-stakes, high-reward mission ($500k completion reward!) I had to cut through the sector of a faction that I'd repeatedly pissed off, to the tune of -100 reputation. Worse, this sector was also experiencing a Xeno incursion, meaning that not only was just about anything that I'd run into hostile, some would be (very!) high-tier, too.

I tried to cut through as quickly as possible, but still ended up getting intercepted by a hostile faction bounty hunter. While I was given the option to surrender my command for "a quick execution." I decided against that. Several sets of missiles and boarding parties later, and I'd won the battle. Just a couple of more AUs and I'd be out of the sector and safe...

And that's when a gigantic xeno cruiser popped out of the aether, right in front of me. They didn't even bother asking me if I'd like to go quietly, they just started shooting (and accurately, too - damn things knocked out most of my weapons in the first couple rounds of combat!) I had used up many of my crews ship-to-ship skills on the previous bounty hunter, so they were still on recharge.

(Always Sunny) So I started blasting... (/Always Sunny)

Anyway, we closed on the Xeno ship, and finally got within boarding distance. We then proceeded to kill off their crew one-by-one, over no less than half a dozen boarding combats (seriously, I lost count. Apparently every single Xeno crewmember counts as a potential combat fighter, so they're able to send virtually their entire ship against you before they run out of combat crew, unlike a human ship, which can only field its dedicated combat personnel.)

Final tally was that I killed the ship, was awarded $50k in salvage, gained 20 points in reputation with the local faction (bringing me up to a mere -80)... and had to spend most of that reward, as well as roughly two months in drydocks and the hospital, to get back up to 100%.

However, given that running into a Xeno ship has previously been a 100% death sentence, I'll take a pyrrhic victory.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Star Traders: Frontiers

[Great Order]

Scored 555m, first time breaching the 500m mark.

Pro Pinball: Timeshock!

[Akura]

Figured out how to properly powerlevel. There's a specific mob in the final dungeon that drops massive amounts of experience; its whole evolutionary line does except the golden versions which... don't.

Also recruited, in a single attempt after getting it to appear, a nice beastie largely regarded as the main character's best familiar. His name is Dean. Even before fully evolving and at low levels after, he's punching pretty well against the game's bonus bosses, doing damage comparable to Mornstar with a trick that costs less MP and has a faster casting and cooldown(but is physical instead of light). His accuracy is garbage unfortunately, but tricks don't use accuracy.

The only downside to all this is my primary healer... not doing that anymore. I don't know why, but she keeps charging in and getting knocked out. While also forgetting to heal the rest of the team.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. I wanted to be done with this game a week ago, to be honest, but then I found out about the whole bonus boss quest chain. Gotta finish that.

EDIT: Beat the Guardian of Worlds, the game's ultimate optional boss. Was fairly easy. Just the same strategy as all of the preceding bosses; send out Dean, Belly Buster, switch back to Oliver to recharge. Some of the preceding bosses gave me more trouble, particularly Candelabracadaver due to his frequent cinematic attacks.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.

[SQman]

This time I played as Delirium on a large circular map with four players, each with their territory flanked by two neutral towns. I must say I never liked Delirium all that much because their main mechanics involves turning cultists into other units, necessitating corrupting mines.

I pushed into a neutral territory early, taking the Lament town quickly. As soon as that happened, the first enemy, also Lament, tried to invade the newly conquered territory. He tried to swarm with troglodytes, but I had spells and units well suited for dealing with low tier units. Then I've decided I wouldn't take it any more and pushed towards their castle.

My hero was mainly skilled in plunder, crystal assembly, and logistics, with decent healing. I could easily build up an army of crystal automatons as I went forwards. Yes, instead of depleting my army fighting my way towards the enemy castle I actually gained power. Lament fell quickly.

My next target were the Earthen, dwarves. I never saw them field a respectable army, but even after I took over their castle they kept going after my mines. Thanks to logistics I could hunt their heroes down, but they just kept coming. They had captured a neutral town, that was apparent.

At that point I armed my hero's avatar and sent it on the search for enemies through portals. It encountered elves who somehow managed to do nothing through the entire game. Curious how they didn't even build up their army to any respectable degree. It was just a matter of coming there and exterminating the vermin.

Finally I found the village occupied by the dwarves, and delivered the final blow. I expected it to be much harder, but maybe I'm just that good.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hero's Hour

[BurnedToast]

Either way, the final boss was goddamn easy.

I have heard and said this about far too many games. I understand that the further you get into a game, the harder balance gets, but you can also tell when the end-game difficulty was only tested with all/no bonuses at the end.

The problem is people expect, and even demand... I guess, I'll call it "win-more" gameplay. When you win, you are rewarded with things that make it easier to win in the future. More money to buy items, unique artifacts that make you stronger, exp to get a higher level, or even just having more HP leftover for the next fight.  So you have a player who starts out doing well - either because he's more skilled or he gets lucky. And that slowly steamrolls into doing better and better and better. And then you have the player who's struggling, can't catch a break, he manages to avoid losing but just barely.

Now ask yourself, how do you balance the end boss?

If he's hard enough to present a challenge for the win-more player, the "barely hanging on" player just loses with no hope.

If he's easy enough that the barely hanging on player can win, the "win-more" player complains it was too easy.

If the difficulty is self-adjusting, everyone complains they can do bad on purpose to make the game easier, because humans love optimizing the fun out of games more than anything else.

There's no answer that makes everyone happy. Most games go with "easy end boss" because honestly most people are bad at video games, and even if good players complain it was too easy they still feel good that they were able to kill him so easily.

[Nighthawk]

Either way, the final boss was goddamn easy.

I have heard and said this about far too many games. I understand that the further you get into a game, the harder balance gets, but you can also tell when the end-game difficulty was only tested with all/no bonuses at the end.

The problem is people expect, and even demand... I guess, I'll call it "win-more" gameplay. When you win, you are rewarded with things that make it easier to win in the future. More money to buy items, unique artifacts that make you stronger, exp to get a higher level, or even just having more HP leftover for the next fight.  So you have a player who starts out doing well - either because he's more skilled or he gets lucky. And that slowly steamrolls into doing better and better and better. And then you have the player who's struggling, can't catch a break, he manages to avoid losing but just barely.

Now ask yourself, how do you balance the end boss?

If he's hard enough to present a challenge for the win-more player, the "barely hanging on" player just loses with no hope.

If he's easy enough that the barely hanging on player can win, the "win-more" player complains it was too easy.

If the difficulty is self-adjusting, everyone complains they can do bad on purpose to make the game easier, because humans love optimizing the fun out of games more than anything else.

There's no answer that makes everyone happy. Most games go with "easy end boss" because honestly most people are bad at video games, and even if good players complain it was too easy they still feel good that they were able to kill him so easily.

My vote goes to self-adjusting difficulty, mainly because I played through the entirety of Resident Evil 4 (original) without knowing that the difficulty changed based on my performance, and had a great experience. The game never needed to telegraph the fact that it was making slight changes to streamline my experience--it just quietly did so. When I learned that it was doing this after I finished the game, I wasn't mad; I was impressed.

If done well, self-adjusting difficulty only becomes a point of contention when people notice it, and even then, if it's well done, only unreasonable people will actually complain about it. It's impossible to please everyone, yes, but to a large extent that's only because some people are just never satisfied unless a game is perfectly tailored to their skill level and tastes. It's not even worth trying to make those folks happy.

[EuchreJack]

Self-adjusting difficulty is the way.

Give the player an option for a higher difficulty end-boss if they want one.

[Aoi]

Or just let the player tweak settings to their taste; I'm glad more games are letting you adjust things with a finer degree of granularity.

I think it was Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume that basically got everything exactly wrong-- it was a tRPG with items and characters on the map you could miss, performance-based rewards, restricted drops, RNG stats on level, accessories that give bonuses on level, exclusive content based on difficulty, inability to grind, and, ironically, Hard was actually easier if you knew what you were doing because you had the full range of mechanics to exploit.

And if you didn't know what you had to do to get all the good gear and characters, reload with bad stat gains, and suck at press-with-perfect-timing-to-combo actions, it was like getting dragged behind a truck, until the truck says 'Screw you', and backs up over you. Oh, and because it's all cumulative, it's not like you can reload to get out of the hole you're in. (Yeah, I'm still kind of resentful.)

[Great Order]

Although honestly, I prefer games where the adjustment comes from AI rather than just flat bonuses.

I'd like Skyrim more if I could set the difficulty to easy to die *and* kill, but the AI is more/less intelligent, for example. Their method of just turning the NPCs into major damage sponges that do extra damage is just boring.

[Rolan7]

For Skyrim specifically I think people recommend a mod like this.  Not sure if it was that one, or a different "deadly combat", but some people do play a kind of Skyrim where you must defend yourself like a fencer rather than chip away at each other's HP.

In general:  A thing I like about many JRPGs is the self-balancing of letting players grind if they want to.  In so many Final Fantasies you can either guess the boss's obscure weakness, have an optimally built team, or just kill cactuars for half an hour.  It's really cool actually.

I specifically bounced right off Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume and maybe I now know why.
the other extreme is Disgaea (1,2 and 5) which feel like crack to me

[hector13]

I haven’t played Fall Guys in at least a few years, played one game of solos (with my cousin).

The idea is you do four rounds of games to whittle down 40 players to 8 for the final, and the winner of that final round gets a crown.

I won the first two race rounds outright, and survived the next two games to get to the final and win it.

Then we played duos and it’s bit trickier…

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fall Guys