SamKD

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Posts posted by SamKD

  2. Posted

    On 12/13/2017 at 7:08 PM, juv3nal said:

     

    I'm with you on the other stuff, but I've never had a problem with this. You put out your request early in the day and then check it again late in the day and it's fine? I mean I am probably near the limit cap on friends so that might have something to do with it. The problem with the quarry is the whole acting of asking for help is so tedious when you have a long friend list. It's three taps to send one request, and takes easily around 5 minutes to get through the whole list (which if you don't know who's going to decide that's a day they're not playing, you want to do just to make sure you're covered). But yeah, basically I have been able to visit the quarry for like at least a week consecutively. It's just a hassle is all. The easy solve there would be "ask for help from all your friends" as a single button press, but I guess that runs counter to them wanting you to pay leaf tickets to get in.

    I guess I sort of misunderstood the mechanic and assumed that the 'help' recruited only lasted for the 3-hour cycle whatever bonus item is up.  Now that I know it's just a daily thing I'll do as you say and request a bunch of help in the morning and wait til the unique-item of the season is there (candy-canes right now).

     

    But you're absolutely right.  Things need to be streamlined in this game.  Actually, considering the number of button presses to turn in a request, I'm half surprised we don't have a "move to this map" confirmation pop up. So. Many. Pop ups.

    Current sequence for turning in a quest:

    Click on friend> go through dialog> choose turn in request> confirm turn in request>  dialog> press ok for rewards> dialog> wait for friend points to apply.

    There's _at least_ two steps in here that can be cut down.

     

    I played the GC animal crossing such a long time ago, and I didn't really dedicate a lot of time to it... is this historically just how we should expect the game going forward?  If so, I think I'm going to forget about it sooner than later.  If there is room for it to more closely emulate whatever was great about the previous games, I'm all for that. but as-is, it's pretty dang flawed, and slow.

     

    Oh, and as a side note, I think this kinda doesn't teach the right lessons about money management? I mean, you get a car upgrade, and it just slaps you with a "loan."  I know the old games also had a system like this for upgrading your home...I dunno...I was just thinking that if this is going to be marketed toward kids (it's cute characters and animals, let's not ignore that this is clearly either 1) marketed towards children, or 2) marketed towards those nostalgic) that maybe they could include some small system for interest?  Maybe it could be a teachable moment in a game that there are consequences for taking on tons of debt and/or paying for things you can't afford?  Maybe that's my own jaded view that our education system as it is currently doesn't do enough to teach personal finance...

    Perhaps this game could be better if it had a Hat-Economy situation vis a vis other online transactional nonsense.  I don't want it to sound like I want it to become a super-micro-transaction hell, but...maybe?

  3. Posted

    After playing for a bit, here's my $0.02 on things that need to be changed.

     

    • Some sort of interaction between friends besides kudos and market place things.  Perhaps fishing/bug hunting competitions?  The quarry thing is very gimmicky and the timing of it never works out to have 5 people help you at any one time.  It's a system flawed by the way everyone has a unique playing pattern throughout their day.
    • Make items sortable.
    • Make items for the friend's marketplace searchable.
    • Items on sale by NPCs (clothes and furniture) needs to be more than 3 at a time.  I believe the reason people stick with these games is for the personalization of your character and your space.  They don't offer a high level of personalization soon enough to really keep some players engaged.
    • Mini-games would be nice.  Something besides waiting for the fish to bite or the bugs to be in range.

  5. Posted

    On 9/8/2017 at 0:08 PM, tabacco said:

    By the way, the Sapphire layers pretty well with the two Freedom cards. They both also earn Ultimate Rewards points which are combinable. One gives 1.5/dollar on everything and the other gives 5/dollar but on quarterly rotating categories. Neither has an annual fee, so they're easy to keep around. I think both also come with a modest sign-up bonus.

    I would LOVE to get the freedom cards, but as it is, I'm about to sign up for the second southwest card for the 120k total points and companion pass.  I figure that will pay for a trip to LV or Austin sometime soon.  I do regret that I think I've messed up the timing, and the companion pass (once I get it) would only be valid to Dec. 31st this year.

     

    It's really a shame that the 5/24 rule is such a pain to work around...

  6. Posted

    Chris mentioned on a recent cast that he was very into keeping up personal finance, points, miles, credit cards, etc.  I've just in the last year gotten really into this as well, and after hearing that Chris was into it I thought I'd make a forum thread about it for any other interested people.  

     

    For me it started when I got the Chase Sapphire Reserve card that came with a sign-up bonus of 100,000 points after spending a minimum amount over a certain time period.  Basically I fulfilled the offer minimum by installing some hardwood floors.  That in turn paid for roundtrip tickets to Peru and back in first class ~ all for the equivalent of about $350 each way.  

     

    It's a pretty neat hobby that actually helps you in the long run.  I highly recommend checking it out.  If anyone else has recommendations for news sites and blogs to follow regarding this, please feel free to include them!

  7. Posted

    added the two of you. I've already reached 70 with two necromancers.  they seem like a good mix of different classes. plus some interesting gameplay gimicks.  currently running the set that takes advantage of a bunch of status effects to gradually multiply the damage.

  8. Posted

    4 hours ago, Gorbles said:

    I was getting reasonable performance on my aging setup (i5-3570k, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, GeForce 660 Ti); performance naturally degrading with map size / turns played / units in-play. Map size and AI player count is the biggest hit as end-of-turn calculations start dragging on turn time more than it does general (frame) performance.

     

    I put another 8GB in and swapped up for a GeForce 1070 and I'm getting 50+ at most stages of most games for the average map size. Game is still CPU-bound though, but now my rig is CPU-bound (it wasn't before), which is an interesting benchmark to run from.

     

    tl:dr; go for as much RAM as you can feasibly slot into your motherboard. It's the cheapest component and it gives your OS a lot of space to sit back and think if you've got a few things running at once. After that, if your GPU is within a reasonable generational gap (900-series for example), look at the CPU. Relative strength of the model within the generation is better than going up a generation at this point (i.e. my 3570K is top-end of its generation for the i5 chip, sitting below the custom i7 chips of the third generation Intels. It beats out most lower-end chips for the next three generations).

     

    EDIT

    Ten years on web forums and I still suck at tl;drs.

    Thanks! this really helps with considering what I should get.  I was worried I'd need to buy a monster of a machine, but hearing that a lower processor with slightly higher RAM and a 1070 GPU will work well makes things easier to tell where I should aim my price point.  Thanks for the advice.

  9. Posted

    Does anyone have any recommendations for a PC that would be able to handle the maximum load of this game without making a whole ton of fan noise? my 2013 mac mini chugs at 14fps and the fan is super loud trying to run this.  Not sure I'm ready to drop $2k on a machine at the moment, but if there's anything out there that people recommend I'm willing to take a look.

  11. Posted

    12 hours ago, Tanukitsune said:

    My armor is maxed and not Lynels aren't as scary?

     

    I reached a mission I just can't beat...

      Reveal hidden contents

    I have to take an ice block to the other side of the dessert, but... it obviously melts.

    You're supposed to use stasis, I assume, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

    Maybe if I have an ice rod on my back the ice won't melt? I tried waiting for the night, but either I didn't wait enough or it doesn't work.

     

    I did so much today I don't know what else I can do tomorrow, specially if I can't get all the shrines. :wacko:

    Spoiler

    I just rushed to the end trying to avoid the "hot" spots of enemies.  Also, I think it melts slower in the shade?  I got it on the first try, so I don't know if I'm lucky, or I just 100% internalized the game by the time I encountered that mission.  As a heads up, I started the mission as early I was able to.  I got to the place WAY too early, so I just waited around until she hopped out of bed to give me the ice.

     

  12. Posted

    14 hours ago, Jake said:

     

    I was worried that claiming towers would make the game feel smaller but it's made things feel bigger! I'm noticing so many more weird pockets and folds in the world than I noticed in my hours of trekking around claiming towers. My adventures are getting smaller in scale and it's great. This game!

    So I haven't had this feeling since Assassin's Creed 2 (I only played the first one maybe a year or two after playing 2, and I still think 2 was the best in the series).  When you opened up the viewpoints of the cities in AC2 everything felt a lot more explorable.  I suppose there's the argument to be made that getting lost is its own virtue, but I never felt this way.  Having access to a map allowed me to orient myself and say, "Oh, huh, so that's how it's places in relation to XYZ other place I've been."

     

    The feeling is the same in BotW.  I too left vast areas of the map unexplored for a long time, and I too left Eldin alone for a long time (I knew that the threat of being on fire was pretty heavy).  But once I got the entire map open, I could look and survey it.  Say, "Oh, hey, this piece of topography looks interesting, I'll go check that out."

     

    Spoiler

    The best example of the map making the vastness set in so far has been looking for the Leviathan skeletons.  I alluded in an earlier post that I think I found a skeleton of the wind fish from Link's awakening.  At one horse stable/inn there were a group of NPC's talking about Leviathans, and how they wanted "drawings."  

    As an aside, apparently even though everyone in this game can recognize a sheika slate, they still think that you draw everything instead of taking a photo.  What would the real world be like if we went through a nuclear war, and then the one guy with an ipad was king...but just spent his time taking photos and then claiming to be a master artist?  

    To get back on track, you have to go around taking photos of these big skeletons.  Among those are the wind-fish looking skeleton in the Gerudo region, a Dodongo skeleton, and then one I don't recognize....  The first two can be found by looking at the map.  A little difficult to find, but it so cool to actually get there and see them.  The last skeleton, as one of the NPC's speculates, is in a cave.  Because of that, I spent two hours exploring the mountains to find potential openings for caves - at least an opening large enough for a huge beast.  Won't spoil it past there, but studying the landscape and the map made that a great quest, and made the game feel even more vast.

     

  15. Posted

    15 hours ago, miffy495 said:

     

    There's a lot of weird references to Link's Awakening in this game, considering it was all a dream. Mabe village exists in actual Hyrule now (even if it is only ruins)? Tarin mountain? Tal Tal Heights? Weird.

     

    yeah, there's plenty of coastal areas that are named after LA characters and places.  Love it.  Makes me want LA to fall on yet another 4th timeline where we don't have to deal with the messiness that the OoT conspiracy theorists have constructed.  

     

    On that note, while not seeing a human-form Gannon is kinda disappointing (his presence adds both personal and conceptual intrigue) I guess it does make it that much simpler in a mechanically complex game.  My mind now goes to the whole game dev tychoon sliders where they brought the story slider way down to fill in mechanics to the max.

     

     

  16. Posted

    throwing another wrench in this:

    Spoiler

    there's a whale skeleton in the desert...but I think it also has a wing-like appendage. Wind Fish died???  Discounting it potentially being the wind fish, a whale skeleton in the desert would imply the area was covered in water.

     

    I'm beginning to think that this game is set SOOOO far in the future that every permutation of the zelda timeline has occurred, but it doesn't matter since this is the end of it all.

    Kinda like how Dune was set so far in the future that anything we could recognize as familiar to our own world is similar but not exact (by this I'm thinking of their religion of Zensunni).

  17. Posted

    4 hours ago, eRonin said:
    As @BigJKO said in my chat; this is truly the Wii U's swan song, because my Wii U will melt by the time I finish the game.

     

    Well this makes me feel better about getting the switch then.  After hearing all this stuff about the speedrunning community is running the WiiU version because of loading times, I've been wondering about my purchase choice.  That said, I feel pretty solid about getting the switch since it has so much future potential; and I'm also looking forward to yooka-lailee coming out next month.

     

    RE: Fresh/Saltwater Zora vis a vis Ruto....isn't it plausible that the freshwater Zora evolved to Ruto, and the saltwater just peace'd-out in WW? with the land being covered in salt water, obviously it makes it tough for freshwater Zora, and the saltwater Zora just may have been chillin' out somewhere below the sea that wasn't necessarily anywhere around where Link would be able to explore.

  21. Posted

    34 minutes ago, dartmonkey said:

    metroiding the series

    not sure what that means? I'm not familiar with the metroid series, so some clarification would be appreciated.

     

    Otherwise I'm very excited for this installation.  not sure why people keep saying this is a break from formula....because it's open world?  I remember as a kid feeling that OoT is large enough to feel open world.  Did people get spoiled with the map size of other games?

     

  24. Posted

    7 hours ago, BigJKO said:

    Mine is 5184-1587-4357

     

    I'm super bummed you don't have an option to Toad Rally against your friends list. The friends list is now basically just a shitty leaderboard..

    You can compete against friends!  I just tried to beat you on the castle level.  I lost pretty badly...I don't have a grip on the timing quite yet.  I think if it chooses a level your friends have already done, it preferentially puts them on the list of competitors.