sclpls

Welcome to the drunksty daily challenge, where I commit several obvious errors at 1-4. http://www.twitch.tv/sclpls/b/483441726

You guys need any meds?

In Eldritch when you kill monsters they will respawn if you loot their corpses. While I didn't find that to be an especially interesting mechanic in Eldritch, I could see something like that totally being interesting in a different context. Like, what if desecrating corpses meant you would later be haunted by ghosts?

In this chronology we wish you a Happy Dishonored Year of Luigi!

The XCOM expansion turned out really interesting. I think a lot of people maybe expected Firaxis to go back and "fix the game" (whatever that might mean to someone). Instead, they just enhanced what was interesting about the original game. It's not the sort of expansion that will win over people that were disappointed by the original game, but for the rest of us it makes a game we enjoyed exciting again. I keep going back to David's opening comment about how the game doesn't push him to switch up his tactical style once he settles into something, and that is an interesting open question about game design. As the episode progressed it became clear that the three of you were playing very different tactical games, and it is a remarkable thing that the game can support all of that and more. There is an argument to be made that a game that supports lots of different play styles is preferable to one that forces your hand. This will inevitably come as a disappointment to people that felt that playing the game successfully meant keeping everyone on overwatch all the time. No question, this expansion isn't going to push you to try anything else if you keep doing that. On the other hand, people that like playing the game a different way aren't punished for it either, that more highly kinetic play style totally works provide you do some reasonable risk mitigation. I've also seen people play the game on impossible ironman and barely ever use overwatch to great success, so anyone that seems to believe there is a single optimal way to play the game is probably not considering all the other options available. The 2nd wave options really bring this all together. That came out before the expansion, but the expansion really enhances their capacity to produce more varied games that are much less predictable. It used to be there was a common consensus that playing classic ironman was the "correct" game play experience. That's a much more strained argument at this point, and the game is better for it. The game design at this point is really about letting a player play the game in whatever way she sees fit, and while that isn't the only model for good game design, I have a hard time finding any fault with that approach.

Another unfortunate casualty of the XCOM expansion.

The commentary about the RPS article is all too familiar and depressing. Also, apparently having comic books as your inspiration for an art style should be regarded as sufficient justification for hyper-sexualized female characters. Telltale take note!

I was cool with Valkyria Chronicles until the level where you have to fight a giant tank. It was a situation where I understood intellectually what I needed to do, but there were so many points where it was possible to screw up the fight and lose, and it is a long mission, and you would have to start over from the beginning. So I gave up on it at that point, and that mission will live on in my mind as what not to do if you're a developer making a tactics game.

Having enemies wake up after you knock them out strikes me as problematic for two different reasons. One is a issue of credulousness, a person that gets knocked out would stay knocked out for the length of time that your typical stealth mission goes on for. If guards start waking up five minutes later I feel like that would feel more game-y (my opinion, anyway). Another more serious problem is you would have to reconfigure the entire economy of resources in these games. Typically you have really limited resources in these games (in the original Thief you could only acquire items in between missions, for example), and guards that return to their routes could make what is an already challenging and difficult game potentially produce unwinnable scenarios. As you say, there are probably some cool escape scenarios that could involve reviving guards, but I think it would have to be in a game that has substantively very different game mechanics from the stealth games that do exist. Dishonored is probably the closest along these lines where some of the powers are constantly reusable after a certain amount of time... if that system were pushed further I could see that working.

My average is about $30k

Congrats on defeating Olmec!

Cool, thanks for the advice! Maybe I'll try and dive into this during the long holiday weekend.

This was a fun seed! http://www.twitch.tv/sclpls/b/482726316

Okay, so what's the best way to learn EU IV? Please tell me its not the tutorial the game comes with...

5 acts in total

Had a pretty good run today that should have been better. I was all prepped to get to the city of gold, and then everything went awful in a moment's notice. http://www.twitch.tv/sclpls/b/481971928

EU IV is half off on Steam right now! I finally picked it up...

Yeah, I haven't tried it for EW, but in the original game I found normal to be too easy, and classic was extremely challenging but doable. I assume the same is true for the expansion, although I am having a rougher time of it compared to the original on classic.

Something is wrong with my OBS settings and the video settings keep being screwed up. Gonna try and fix it today, but who knows. Anyway I tried to kill the shopkeepers at the black market, and the last one got me.

Yeah, this episode cemented what a great podcast this is. I've never actually played any of Craig Hubbard's games, but I still really enjoyed listening to it all the same. That's not always the case with interview type shows. Steve's enthusiasm really comes through though so that goes a long way I think. I'm also glad that this episode reminded me about Betrayer, which looks really cool!

Yeah, Kentucky Route Zero and Blendo Games are definitely onto some next-level shit.

Is it particularly hot in the studio?

If you want to make sure one of the developers sees your feedback I would think posting in the DF forums would be the way to go. I'm sure they check the Steam forums too, but probably not as frequently.

Yeah, that is my position as well. I'm glad Early Access exists, I just wish Valve handled it a little differently.

I played a bunch of Blizzard RTSs back in the day, but pretty much as soon as the genre was made up of more than like one or two titles I left Blizzard behind. I never really felt like their designs were that amazing, and I often regarded the critical acclaim they received as weird and cult-like. I'm also not convinced that this studio is ready to get back to their strategy roots, as was asserted on this episode (and from my perspective it sure sounds like you guys got hoodwinked by the spectacle of Blizzcon!). That being said, I am weirdly interested in HotS. I am definitely the sort of person intrigued by the idea of a Lords Management that's strategically interesting without necessarily placing the same kind of demand on a player that a DOTA or a LoL might. I also find that there are Starcraft characters added to the mix to be really appealing. Not because I have any attachment to the characters, but just because I appreciate the absurdity this will generate, and it is a breath of fresh air from ultra conservative traditional fantasy fare that characterizes the genre. My guess is as good as anyone else's about how likely Blizzard is to succeed at creating a more inclusive Lords Management, but I sure do hope they succeed. In other news, I still find this forum's autocorrect to be obnoxious.