In DA2’s defence, the game went from concept to release in 16 months. With a development cycle that fast, it’s a miracle it was even playable; I wouldn’t call its rampant copy-pasting “lazy”. I’d call it many bad things, because that game had tons of problems, but that’s what happens when the beancounters have an unexpected success and want to capitalize on it yesterday.
instead of just playing the game as intended.
I feel like you just unwittingly hit on the problem many series veterans have been having.
People are approaching bosses in Elden Ring like they’re Dark Souls bosses, and in my thousands of hours across the series, the only bosses I summon help for is Sister Friede and the Demon Twins. Everyone else I was eventually able to defeat on my own, because that’s how they were balanced.
But in Elden Ring, you have the open world to grind in and Spirit Ashes and crazy weapon arts that are far beyond any that were in Dark Souls 3, and the bosses are balanced around these things. It’s harder to make a good guess at how powerful a player is at any given time in Elden Ring, so in order to counter the player’s bullshit, the bosses need bullshit of their own.
This, naturally, throws a wrench into the plans of veterans who are used to bosses that are tough but fair and approaching them in that manner. They then promptly get their shit pushed in because they aren’t using the things the encounters are balanced around having simply because they didn’t used to need them.
It makes the bosses binary. Either you get your ass kicked, or you summon help, use a Mimic Tear, and run a train on them. They’re either frustrating or boring, and fights that are frustrating or boring just aren’t fun. I’m not having fun getting comboed to death or just pelting the boss with spells while my goons beat them up.
The magic is gone. Bosses used to be the highlight of Souls games, and now I just want them to be over.
The only time it was challenging was back when AI factions had a hate boner for the player and ONLY the player. Like how they would leave their settlements undefended to march halfway across the map, through territory belonging to a faction they were at war with just to sack the player’s settlements.
Nah, Lae’zel is just horny.
It’s kinda funny how bitchy she gets if you turn her down.
I hated X because I found most of the characters sans Auron and Lulu to be incredibly obnoxious.
X-2 just made those problems worse by largely getting rid of the few characters I could tolerate, and somehow making Rikku even more annoying.
It says something about how good the combat was in those games that I managed to power my way thru X and a fair chunk of X-2 before it just got to be too much for me.
I hate X-2 with the burning fury of a thousand suns, and I’ll still praise the combat.
Thing is, all the other major manufacturers are just as bad or worse.
As a PC technician, HP still somehow has the best service and support, which speaks volumes about how bad everyone else is. Dell’s support tools are a generation behind HP’s, and Lenovo’s build quality is atrocious. Not to mention Lenovo’s technician support is so badly fragmented and poorly run, they default to having the customer send the device in for repair and avoid sending an on-site technician just so they can avoid dealing with technician support. Speaking from personal experience, getting to the right person when I have a problem or need to order additional parts is like pulling teeth, and even if I manage to reach someone, they’re usually equal parts incompetent and unhelpful.
And Apple doesn’t even want to service their stuff.
These days, you have to pick your poison.
Life is unfair…
I’ve been getting a lot of mileage from this.
Man, Camellia’s arc is a pretty twisty one, and she’s probably the most fascinating party member in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. If you’ve finished your fifth playthrough of BG3 and are hungry for a different flavor, WotR is an easy recommend.
TikTok isn’t doing anything that any other major social media company isn’t also doing. The only difference being that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, and not a US one.
Just banning one app does little to resolve the overall privacy and information nightmare that social media is.
I’ve always said that the Railjack in Warframe really deserved to be its own game instead of a shoehorned game mode.
This looks like what that idea could be. Just being able to play Sea of Thieves IN SPACE!!! is a home-run of an idea.
Their problem was they counted their chickens before they hatched. They went on a spending spree while expecting an influx of cash from the Saudi PIF. But the deal fell through and suddenly, they were short about $2 billion.
old.reddit is probably going to be on the chopping block, too. I only go for niche communities these days, but I’m gone for good once old.reddit is gone.
And yes, that’s just. Yet, the same slave going into a spree and killing everybody that crosses his path would be a terrorist.
This is something that an awful lot of people seem to miss.
Kira made it very clear that her and her fellow resistance fighters actively targeted Cardassian civilians and she never showed any remorse over doing so. Civilian casualties are inevitable in a scenario like this, but going out of your way to target them, even if they’re occupiers, is crossing a line.
I imagine this is only for consumer-grade printers. HP’s business-class devices are usually purchased under a contract.
It’s not nearly as fast-paced or mobile as Warframe, and Helldivers is much more about the chaos you cause with your buddies than grinding for gear and materials. You don’t have to worry about mods or damage types (dealing with armored enemies and fortifications is the most you’ll have to worry about), just shoot bugs/Terminators and call in an airstrike or orbital bombardment on anything guns won’t kill. I’d say it’s closer to Left4Dead than anything else.
You can drop by yourself if you want, but it is an always-online, live-service game, and the focus is on co-op.
I admit, I really preferred how Owlcat’s Pathfinder games handled this, where skill checks are automatically taken by the party member with the highest relevant skill. Say, if a Persuasion check appears in dialog, the roll is made by the character with the highest Persuasion skill, without having to swap to that character. If a Strength or Agility check appears, the character with the highest stat makes the roll automatically.
There should at least be an option for this in BG3.
shrug
I already assumed I’m being monitored on my work devices, and write my emails and chats like they’re going to be used in a deposition.
If I’m shit-talking someone, it’s in person or on my personal device.
That’s the problem the game has always had, though.
I played for a bit right as Endwalker came out. I went in blind, played consistently for two months, and by then, I had just finished the first third of Shadowbringers. In contrast, it took me a month-and-a-half to level my first WoW toon back during Wrath of the Lich King.
People may praise the story, but while there was a lot of great stuff, it just takes so loooooong to get there. They really do need to go through and prune the filler quests or boost experience gains.