Anyone attending PAX Unplugged this weekend?
This is my first PAX Unplugged, and I just moved to Philly. Would be awesome to say hello to some of you at the event!
This is my first PAX Unplugged, and I just moved to Philly. Would be awesome to say hello to some of you at the event!
Set your Wayback machine to the early 2000s, and you'll find me in hog heaven, building and racing old muscle cars from a catalogue of real world parts that interacted as they would in real life. EA released this game as a racing MMO, but I spent most of my time treating it as a single player game, building my hot rods and racing against the computer.
In 2003, they pulled the plug. Since then, nothing has come close. There are mechanic simulators, but you don't get to drive the cars when you finish them. Then there are the racing games, but none of those have the.level of detail in the build and tuning portion that MCO did. In MCO, you needed to actually build your engine in a way that the parts would work well with each other in order to get the best performance. It wasn't simply an upgrade chain, as you could easily spend ten grand on parts and come out with a 200hp brick.
Most recently, my search has led me to a.game called Revhead from Australia. It scratches a LOT of the itch, but it's still missing a lot of the stuff I miss from MCO. You can build cars with parts and race.them, but the build still feels like a more money=more power equation instead of an exercise in research and testing to figure out the perfect recipe for my particular driving style.
Am I chasing a pipe dream in the hopes that there is a.modern equivalent for that old gem?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
As title says, once Valve announced the OLED deck, I saw the refurbished originals go on a deep discount and figured it was time to buy in. So I ordered a refurb 512GB and I’m so excited for it to arrive! Been in a gaming rut for a long time now and, having never been a PC gamer, I’m look forward to checking out a bunch of games I’ve never played before.
What tips do you have for a first time Deck owner?
Any essential games I should be sure to get?
And finally, is it possible to get games I own on the Epic Games Store (I collected all their free games over the years) or Xbox Game Pass PC games on my Steam Deck?
So, I have my group of IRL friends, and we have a Discord, as I'm sure many people do. I spend a lot of time there, and we've all played games online together since we were in middle school.
Well, now that we're all in our mid to late 20s, real life has caught up with most of us. Scheduling is hard, having free time is hard, having energy is hard, and now we've all found our genres we like, which all adds up to none of us ever playing much together anymore. I'm sure many of you can relate.
I ventured out into LFG groups trying to find a community. I'm not into competitive games, I prefer more cooperative and casual experiences (Satisfactory, NMS, and Snowrunner are my big 3 at the moment). That makes finding a group difficult as is. Finding a group that is primarily my age is harder. But nonetheless I persevered.
I've tried a number at this point, and it's always one of a handful of issues.
The group is hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of members big. Everyone gets swept in the masses and there's little individuality. These usually also have problems 2 and 3 due to their size.
There's just blatant -obias in the chats. Incels, toxic masculinity, racism disguised as "humor."
Supposedly I'm in a group of people who are 21+, but the maturity level might as well be a 14+ server.
At this point I feel like I'm losing my mind, that I'm being gaslit by the online Discord community. There is no way I should be feeling "too old" for this kind of thing, I'm only 26!
Hello Tildes community,
I am soon going to DM my second ever mini-session for a small group of fairly new players. I'd like to send the group into a haunted tavern that has an unusually intelligent mimic in the basement that has been eating tourists that pass through, leaving behind undead creatures throughout the basement.
My primary goal with this is to help the players (most pretty new) understand how to conserve their magic instead of firing it all off in each battle, so I wanted to prevent them from long resting. I figure I could magically lock them inside when they arrive, and then let them learn that if they should rest, previously killed undead creatures (like Minotaur Skeleton or zombies) resurrect after about an hour.
I am looking for two pieces of advice. First, I'd like to know good creatures to put into the dungeon that would provide a challenge, but not be too devastating. I looked at Wraith, for example, but a Wraith could easily one-shot any of the casters in the group and instantly kill them, which isn't fun. What should I be using instead? Remember that each individual fight doesn't need to be too hard, I just want the group to start feeling the strain of resources getting exhausted.
Secondly, the primary DM (who I am running a single session for) has said I can level up the party to 6 during the dungeon. Does this essentially heal the whole party and refresh their spell slots, ala most RPG games? I'm a bit confused how this part would work, tbh.
Thanks for your help, and big thanks to everyone who answered my last question about a Kobold Brewery. It was a blast, and the party loved it, particularly some of the traps that y'all came up with. By the time the party escaped, the entire brewery was on fire, which was amazing.
Appreciate your help!
Hello all,
So I built a new rig with some of the great CPU bundle deals that came along recently, and now I'm enjoying Cyberpunk with the absolutely glorious pathtracing+DLSS combo - thoroughly enjoying it. I've been customizing a lot of the keybindings to my exact preferences by editing the InputUserMappings.xml and UserSettings.json files and have been able to figure everything out except one.
I have installed a number of mods, one of which allows me to customize the first person driving camera to be much better for my setup. One thing I cannot change, however, is radio volume while I'm in the car.
So, I was wondering if it's possible to make a new keybinding that changes the CarRadioVolume setting in UserSettings.json up and down. Ideally, I'd bind it to my mousewheel so it would be like having a volume knob while I'm driving around. There are also some keybinds located in this same file, but they are a different type of value (a name) whereas the CarRadioVolume is an int value. I have not seen any other settings that are of the type I'm trying to make: a keybind that changes an int value up and down. If I did, I'd just try and copy that.
So, as someone very unfamiliar with programming, I was wondering if this is even possible to make a keybind for this without making a mod/extra script to do it? Or does the game's engine/logic have to already have this type of keybind built into it in order to edit it? Thanks in advance for any info!
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I like the idea of MOBAs, and sometimes contemplate learning one. Not to be really good -- just enough to have fun as a lower-class player. It sounds attractive as something that might occupy my brain for a few hours, but I wouldn't wanna treat it like a career without pay, like I used to work on my chess (with serious courses, studying books, etc).
So my question it, is that something that can or should be done? And what game would be best?[1]
[1] As long as it is not an FPS.
I live in a pretty compact house, and have my work office upstairs in a corner of one of my kids bedrooms.
Obviously, gaming in there after they are asleep is a no go! Our one tv is usually given over to my wife on evenings I break out the Steam Deck - which has been my first foray back into gaming since having kids and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
However, I'm interested if anyone has found a neat solution to use it in e.g. desktop mode without a conventional monitor or TV to dock with, that I could break out quickly on a breakfast bar and then stow easily.
I'm envisaging some kinda of Frankensteined cheap laptop shell housing to contain the screen and keyboard-
Steam Deck -> USB C Dock -> HDMI out to laptop screen and USB out to keyboard.
Anyone familiar with something resembling this kind of setup, or something similar?
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The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Recently I've been really nostalgic for really simple, daily turn-based games. Not sure how many people here may have played Empire, but this is what I'm talking about. I very fondly remember dialing in (with a modem) to 4-5 different Unix based BBSes just to play Empire every day. Each day your turn may take 10 minutes. This is the key thing I am nostalgic about...really low time investment every single day, but in a game with lot's of other players.
Other games that I really enjoyed back then were the BBS "door games" like Tradewars. Tradewars can still be played via telnetting into various BBSes that people are keeping up and running.
So, now that I've set the scene, what are the really simple games out there that you may play that are daily turn-based?
Second question, what would people think about a web based version of Empire? I'm thinking of building it, if I don't find the existence of it somewhere already. I think it would be really cool to have someone drop by the web site, click play, and have them thrown into a map with other players (up to 30 per a map or so).
Buy 2 get 1 free right now in stores and online until the 11th. Anyone pick up anything from here? I got these with 2 free.
I've been trying, without success, to find a good video game that is in the D&D/Pathfinder type genre, but without mature content. Some very light profanity would be OK. I really want to avoid games that objectify females, which, unfortunately, a lot of games in this genre does. Preferably something that can be played solo, even if that's in a multi-player environment. I'm good with new games, old games, indy games, high priced games, whatever. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I am referring to the entire game's soundtrack. Not just any individual song, unless that one song is so good it makes the whole game and soundtrack.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
For the first time in my adult life I actually have some real discretionary money, and the one personal purchase I've wanted to make for a long time is a VR rig. I was hoping for input I can be pretty sure isn't tainted by capitalism/ads.
Cost-vs-value will matter a lot, but the actual cost isn't too big a concern anymore. Budget up to maybe $3-4K if it's really worth the money.
And to note, I already have a pretty gnarly personal computer that is more than capable of running VR games (Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core / RTX 3090 / 32GB DDR4) -- I just need the rig.
Artificer school is rough. You have to learn so many ways to manipulate magic forces and try to shove it all into small items. Sometimes it doesn't work as well as hoped. Even if every student gives it their best effort, someone has to be the worst passing student in the class.
In my campaigns, I try to explore this concept by adding niche items or items of student project quality. Often times these items end up adding quite a bit of fun to the lower levels before access to "real" magic items is available.
I would love to throw this idea out to the world and maybe get a bigger collection of these items for all of the Tildes DMs to use in their campaigns if they fit in the setting.
What tools do you use to make maps for your table?
I've tried looking and I have found a few decent generators, but I'm really looking for a making tool I already have a general layout in my head of what the city/region/continent but I can't draw for shit, and I want to find a tool that makes this easy? Makes it look nice, makes it easy to add points of interest and features, etc.
What do you use?
Edit: for clarification, this is for city/region maps, not battlemaps.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I just got my Spider-Man 2 Platinum trophy and was looking through my trophy list, I wonder how many people will also obsessively chase the 100% or Platinum trophy and under what conditions.
My personal favorite 100% achievements recently and why:
Slay the Spire - I dumped almost 500 hours in this game and finally got Eternal One last year, it was an incredible journey and I definitely feel myself getting better as I play
God of War Ragnorak - I'm a lifelong God of War fan since the originals and getting through this game was definitely a journey. Finishing the final final boss was incredibly satisfying
Resident Evil 4 Remake - Another one of my personal favorite games of all time, I grinded a week for 50 hours to grab this over about 4 or 5 playthroughs
Spider-Man 2 - My fastest platinum, not too difficult but very satisfying (I do love Spider-man though lol)
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Let me start by saying I really enjoyed playing the Mass Effect games. They are awesome.
I found the plot, though, incoherent. Especially in ME3. I don't mind small conveniences like "good thing this random teleporter beam designed to suck up corpses has easy entrée to the reaper's command center," because it's a game.
But how on earth did Cerberus amass seemingly billions of elite special operations forces with nobody noticing? What do you mean the secret weapon against the reapers has been improved each cycle by people who didn't know what it was supposed to do? How could that possibly result in a functional device?
It's clear, I think, that this wasn't necessarily the direction the first game was going. Cerberus was the subject of a side quest, but nothing more. The authors of the lore seemed to be taking great pains to ensure everything was logical, based on the in-universe rules they had established.
...and then ME2 kicks off and the series is almost as much about Cerberus, from this point on, as it is about the reapers.
What did you think about how the plot unrolled?
(You may also wish to read this series of essays. It's about 18 billion words long, though - fair warning. https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792)
What are all of your pet cards/hidden gems for your magic decks? a few of my favorites are pull from eternity, divine presence, and eye of singularity
I got Skyrim on PC, which means that I can really MOD now. However, a lot of the MODs are about making things more difficult, complex, or realistic, appealing to very "pro" players. That is not my case. I just wanna do Skyrim the "right way", but without the cruft of a 2011 game. What are some MODs that make the game more manageable and lively?
And yes I'm playing this instead of Starfield :P
What did you play? What did you buy? Who did you meet? How did you get there? Where did you stay? What shenanigans did you get up to? Tell us all about it!
Do you play Magic: the Gathering? What decks have you been playing/building recently and for which format?
Here's a first world problem: I work remote and sometimes I get bored during meetings. Wondering if you guys had any game recommendations for games I can play on a second monitor or something while I kill boredom in my meetings. Mouse only is probably the biggest requirement, and also something more "turn based" so if I need to I can still pay attention to the parts that I need to.
Some of my recommendations:
Slay the Spire (+ Downfall) - I "beat" all of it (A20H for all characters) so I wanted to take a break, but I loved it.
Monster Train - I didn't get into it as much as StS tbh, it's fineeee but not my personal favorite
Super Auto Pets - I'm not really an Autobattler kinda guy but the slow pace and the rotating sets make this game kinda perfect for what I'm looking for!
Brotato - I've been playing mouse only, but can't really stop it in the middle of an intense run tbh.
Steam or Android games if possible!
At the moment I've been having fun with the beginner Gunwing preset (flying mutant with dual revolvers) but I'm curious as to what other people have had fun with!
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
The new Forza Motorsport has released to the masses as of today, and has been available to those who paid extra for premium upgrades and the like for about a week. I got it via Xbox Gamepass and played about an hour of it this morning, and so far it feels like a nice return to form for the series, which hasn't seen a new non-Horizon edition since Forza Motorsport 7 in 2017.
That game had some baggage with the card system/gambling mechanics, and I'm glad to see none of that thus far in the new Forza Motorsport - which, you may have noticed, has dropped the number. There's a feeling that Microsoft/Turn 10 may be aiming to make this something of a long-term platform play rather than just another game in the series.
I'm enjoying it so far, and after playing Forza Horizon 4 and 5 a lot since FM7 came out, I'm glad to have the return to more traditional circuit racing, and absolutely do not miss the supremely annoying voiced characters from those games.
The thing I most immediately noticed upon playing the game (besides the graphics, which are a real showcase for the Xbox Series X or a sufficiently beefy PC) is the new upgrade/tuning system, which requires you to actually spend time driving a specific car in order to unlock the various upgrade parts for it. You earn car points for doing things like clean racing and fast lap times, which you can then spend on upgrade parts between races. The game keeps calling those CP, which makes me think that nobody at Turn 10 has spent any time on the internet. An unfortunate acronym...
I'm curious to know what everyone's opinion on this game is. I know a lot of the audience is turned off by the more sim-like/boring nature of the Forza Motorsport games versus the arcade fantasy for the Horizon games, but I'm very much on the FM side of that divide.
Tildetablers,
What board games, card games and whatnot have you been playing this week? Don't be shy, share those sessions!
For me it was a single game of Western Legends with expansions. I've played this game, sans expansions, a couple of times and have never really been blown way, but the expansion certainly helped and I enjoyed it a whole lot more.
The game sets you as a character in the wild west. It's a bit of a sandbox game: there are a bunch of things you can do and you have freedom moving around and doing them. You can hustle cattle, play poker, buy upgrades, prospect for gold, fight, steal, &c. You basically earn points by doing each of these things and working your way up various tracks to earn legendary points which are victory points.
The expansions added a whole frontier area to explore and added story cards, which are basically thematic events that give you goals to claim. I feel like extra board and story cards really improved the experience and immersion and it was much more enjoyable this time around. We also played two characters each, which may also have helped, as this made it possible to explore different strategies at the same time.
I'm still not massively impressed with the game, but I don't think I'll disappointed if it's suggested now. If I were forced to rate it I'd probably give it a 1.8/π.
So, everyone, what have you played this week? What did you think? What are you hoping to play next?
Hello all and welcome to the weekend! We made it. Or if your weekend doesn't begin until later, you'll make it yet!
Let's talk cozy games! You know the ones I'm talking about, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon. Games we used to call something else before the collective zeitgeist of the Internet decided to lump them all together under (which I'm personally fine with, I mean what do you call Animal Crossing anyway?)
In a stark contrast to my younger and more vulnerable years, I've become much more of "casual" gamer, and I find myself enjoying shorter bouts of play rather than becoming engrossed in the same world or story for hours on end. Games like Animal Crossing are perfect for this, in that I can just pick it up, talk to some villagers and go fishing or whatever, and put it down whenever I please. Not just that though, but I just absolutely love the warm and well, cozy vibe games like these offer. I've best heard them described as a warm mug of tea by a window as it rains outside.
Enough about me, let's talk about you! What "cozy" games do you enjoy? Feel free to lump them all together, who cares, it doesn't matter! We are all cozy games on this day.
What game mechanic, boss or puzzle in a game got you to give up?
For me it was a drivers license test in Gran Tourismo 2 on the Playstation. I was so into racing sims that I had a decent steering wheel and pedals set (like $80 in 1999). I even found a better coffee table to more comfortably fit it all. I had so many hours into GT1, various NASCAR entries, MOTO Racer, various Need For Speed games, etc.
GT2 had a system where you had to upgrade your license to unlock more tracks. There was one where you had like 15 or 20 seconds to slolem through a course and then do it in reverse. After hours almost every night for a month straight of getting to within .5 seconds of qualifying for the license to unlock more tracks I just couldn't anymore. I gave up racing/car sims for nearly 15 years until XBox heavily pushed Forza Horizon and I gave it a try.
It certainly didn't help that I had just recently been scarred from being stuck in a similar system in X-Wing vs TIE. There was a training mission where you had to take your X-Wing through a course with barrel rolls before you unlocked something (another ship or more dangerous missions?) that I was stuck on. After like 6 weeks of getting within a second or less to completion I finally found a cheatcode to bypass it. By then the damage to my enjoyment of the game had been done and I never did finish that game.
There's a popular trend on Reddit at the moment that they're struggling to engage with. The idea is that someone will post the question
"Ask me anything about my world"
And this does two things. It gives them an opportunity to show off their setting, and more importantly it gives them a prompt. Someone may ask a question you don't have an answer to, so you're supposed to come up with one. Doing this enough will help you flesh out your world in ways you may not have considered on your own.
I think the reason this is failing on Reddit is because there are a dozen people jumping on the bandwagon and filling the RPG subs with spam, which is causing other members to lash out at them out of fatigue.
I think we here on Tildes could probably handle it a little better, and it would be better served as a single thread. Top level comments are for asking questions, and then anyone is welcome to reply to those with their answers. By sharing the same pool of questions this will allow us to compare and contrast our worlds with our friends here and maybe help spur on the creative juices.
Completely ignoring gameplay, which game do you think has the most amazing graphics? Which game do you look at and it makes you question how far technology has come? Or maybe which game has such effective art direction it completely sucks you in?
For me, it's Horizon Forbidden West. I just went back to the DLC after taking a break from it. I forgot just how good it looks! I swear it looks like every grain of sand is modeled, and the character models are insane.
Now the topic may be inflammatory, so let me walk it back and say "in some cases" - let me explain;
Just got me this gamepad and I absolutely adore it - for folks not wanting to click on a link, think of it as a fancy SNES pad.
I got it as a fightpad and for that it is marvelous - and while I have no intentions of playing a 3d action game with it, I booted up some 2d indies and platformers to take it for a spin ... and realized that apparently, 6 buttons + dpad just aren't enough anymore.
Since when do you need to have a light and hard attack as separate buttons? And need an analogue stick on top of the dpad to navigate through inventory? The amount of "simple" games needing to use all the buttons on the modern controller - without a viable alternative - is ridiculous.
Yes, there are some workarounds but just wanted to vent.
I'm installing some random titles from my backlog (I have 800+ on my backlog through bundle deals, giveaways, etc.) and it's a crapshoot, not in my favor.
Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.
Edit: Yes I realize the modern controller is standardized to the "two sticks + pad + 4 face buttons + 4 shoulder buttons" design; what I'm saying is that while for some game that design is essential, a lot of other games use up all the buttons without a baked-in viable alternative, or worse yet, use buttons for the sake of using buttons!
So I recently tried to replay Prototype on PC, only to learn that it's essentially incompatible with modern hardware and crashes instantly past the main menu.
I've tried searching other posts on other sites and most people recommend super hero games and Infamous. Well, I don't have a PS, so Infamous is off the table, and super hero games really are not the same. Call me immature, but if I can't massacre civilians in my power fantasy game, it's not really like Prototype.
I've seen pretty much all the AAA games of past and present that get recommended, but I'm wondering if there are any Indie games that aren't at the forefront that I've missed.
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The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.
/co inspect. This command will allow you to see block changes from the last 14 days so that you can hopefully resolve land disputes without admin/moderator intervention.TREASURE HUNT! message in chat and a 10 minute race for an elytra or netherite loot begins.What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Do you have a campaign setting that you've created? Whether you've actually played games set in it or it just lives in your head, what is it?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Minor Starfield lore spoiler's ahead
Originally written for /r/games, but the last discussion thread of Starfield in that place saw many user who said they personally like the game downvoted and replied to by mentally-questionable individuals that said not-so-nice things.
As I pass 170 hours in Bethesda newest, hottest, controversial game. I am happy because it is just as fun as I had hoped it to be.
Yet as I explore the cities it has to offer there is always a small detail that I keep failing to ignore (whenever I'm not busy thinking of new ship designs that is).
So say the slender being that has been tasked with creating an army to defend a galactic spanning government of countless worlds. At this point Montgomery, Zhukov, MacArthur, Jodl, or any-other-WW2-command-figure-of-your-choosing are rolling on the ground clapping each other's backs laughing their socks off. Because 1.2 million is an absolutely puny and pathetic number of troops for a galactic war.
I'm no Star Wars deep lore fan, I understand that fans and later authors has since tried to 'fix it' by making the Clone War more that just the clones. And yet those 1.2M clones was all there was when episode 2 released to theatres.
Most Sci-fi writings has similar a problem with scaling to their subject. It is not news. It even has a tv tropes page (the page is more about distances, but it's in the same ballpark).
So where does Starfield go wrong in this? The ships are puny. The wars and the numbers stated are puny.
Certainty more ways than one, but the one that I wish to focus on is this: where the hell are all the people?
A brief summary of the lore. Humanity has invented FTL and has seemingly solved all energy problems. They had to evacuate Earth, but this was successful and so the starfield should be absolutely teeming with tens of billions of human souls spreading to all corners of the galaxy and its many already habitable worlds.
And yet, Starfield feels so barren. I see no grand interstellar civilizations. Only dirt huts on a hill surrounded by walls that support barely a thousand people. Yet this dirt hill is supposed to be a capital or an interstellar superpower. Heck, they are even scared shitless of their own fauna.
The opposites capital is no dirt hill, yet still smaller than a modern earth country town.
And it's not like the main population centers are just outside player-accessible areas. All the NPCs ever talk about are Akila, New Atlantis, and Neon. These tiny puny cities.
It doesn't feel like the evacuation of Earth was a success. It feels like it was a catastrophe, and all that remains are scattered remnants playing civilization.
And yet... The Starfield is actually lively, just not where it should be. There is a scale imbalance, because spread across nearly every world in the settled systems are countless research stations, outposts, deserted or populated, you name it.
Yes, those procedually-generated buildings that spawn nearly everywhere you land in the settled systems.
Where did these come from? Surely the UC couldn't have built them. Manning just the ones that I have come across in my playthrough would empty New Atlantis 10 times over!
Bethesda built their open-world game style upon Fallout and Elder Scrolls. For both it makes sense that the worlds are sparely populated. One being post-apocalyptic wasteland, and the other a medieval society.
But now they have built something in a completely different realm. But they way in which Bethesda built the scale at which the game is presented remains the same.
So why did they go with this approach? I don't know. Maybe they just like making "small" worlds and didn't want to fit the new universe. Maybe the idea of 'climbing any mountain you can see' is a very hard rule and they didn't want to limit player movement in metropolises, that would undoubtedly be unfeasible to make fully traversable.
But lets pretend they actually tried. And perhaps it can be done without really changing how the game is designed or played.
A Microsoft executive plays the game as it's nearing launch. He feels there is something missing with the scale of the Starfield universe.
So he does the only rational thing he can think of and storms into the street and picks the first rando he can find, puts the Bethesda crown upon his head, and orders him to fix Starfield's problem of scale.
The exec is later found to be mentally ill and fired, but it does not matter for I am now king of Bethesda and my words are design directives.
The simple solution that requires no real work but some change in lore. New Atlantis is no longer a capital, just a administrative and diplomatic outpost. Akila is now just a small border city. The real population centers are now on entirely different worlds. Inaccessible to the player.
Why can't players go there? Well it shouldn't take much suspension of disbelief to acknowledge that governments might not want any random idiot, in a flying hunk of metal capable of tearing space-time at it seams, to go anywhere near their main population centers without considerable control.
NPCs should no longer talk of sprawling New Atlantis, Neon, or Akila, but rather these other places that you can see on the map but are not allowed to go to.
The population planets are now accessible, but restricted in where you can land freely. On the map it should show big cities. And just like how you cannot land in water, you can neither land anywhere in cities or its surroundings.
Just like with New Atlantis and Akila, you can land at a designated spot. The difference is when you look into the horizon, because rather than a procedurally generated landscape you will instead see a sprawling metropolis that tells you "Yes here! Here are all the people!".
The other change would be that, unlike the landscape, if you try to go beyond the player-area of the city you will hit a wall. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
New Atlantis and Akila can stay, but like the other solution they would change status.
All in all the scale issue is no big problem and the game is fine as it is. This was just something that has been on mind for some time and I wanted to put it to writing. So do you agree that Starfield has a scale problem? If yes, how would you fix it? Or maybe I missed some crucial info-dump and the entire premise of this writing is wrong?
I had been waiting for this game since 2012, when it was first announced. I bought it day one, without reading any reviews, and it was an instant refund for me.
Now that update 2.0 supposedly makes the game better, I'm thinking of giving it another shot. Has anyone tried this update? What do you think about it?
Examples I know are goat simulator and Untitled Goose and Who's Your Daddy
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Personally I would love a remake of Eternal Darkness or Jet Force Gemini.
Hey Tabletidlers,
Another week and another opportunity to share what you've been playing.
For me I was able to finally play the Zombie Apocalypse map for Age of Steam. This map sees you delivering goods (cubes) around a map of Michigan as usual, but whilst dealing with the map evolving due to a horde of zombies. The zombies move in a deterministic manner, so it's possible to plan ahead, but towns or cities the zombies reach are razed, which converts them to a colourless city and removes any cubes upon them. The zombies also add a cost to building track and add a cost to delivering cubes, unless you take the Military Caboose action, which replaces the normal Locamotive spot. Very enjoyable map and the random starting location for the seed zombies means it'll play very differently, I imagine, each game.
So, don't be shy, share what you've managed to get played this week.