Dr Wookie
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Posts posted by Dr Wookie
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This article does a good job expressing my fears about closed system VR:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/07/just-how-open-is-the-future-of-pc-virtual-reality/
I am really worried that headset exclusive games will so divide the market that it will fail. Also starting to look more at SteamVR as opposed to Oculus.
I'm pretty sure that Oculus is funding some games so I would think the results would be exclusives.
The one game I can think of right now with Oculus branding on its official page is Elite Dangerous. However, Frontier have said that they are interested in supporting all types of new tech, having integrated OR and TrackIR support early in the alphas. Furthermore, they have said that they are not supporting any further oculus SDKs until the official release of CV1. So I don't think partnership necessitates exclusivity.
Recently I heard in the Bombcast or Beastcast the opinion that VR has a real shot this time purely because very large corporations have a lot invested in its success. I agree to an extent, especially if the target markets don't overlap too severely. Oculus seems more aimed at home use, but the space requirements of the Vive seem to restrict who can use it, and the quality seems higher too.
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I liked the boarding gameplay, and the effect of the quantum drive. However, the scale is pretty disappointing, since they got 3 planets in the 3 million or so metre distance from the station to the derelict; I've taken longer domestic flights in the US!
I agree that the social module is pretty, but seems very sterile when deserted. Maybe it will liven up when it goes online.
Animation and frame rate were still prophetic, but can be fixed. I'm still looking forward to Squadron 42... I'm not sur if they are not showing it because of spoilers or what.
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Executive producer Michael Brookes said at the time of the Kickstarter that he thought the price for lifetime expansion pass was far too low; now i's nearly 4 times higher
! I can see why you might have had a niggle, but really you got it cheap -
Wookiee, if I bought the expansion pass before launch, did that include this new expansion or just the wings/powerplay/ships patches?
You get Horizons and every other expansion
! This year's updates have been free for everyone -
Hmm, 40 pounds eh? I dunno...
If it helps, that 40 pounds is for a year of updates, rather than just planetary landings. The base game covers this year's content (Core release, community goals, wings, powerplay, CQC, and one other release TBA). However, the game will be updated for people without the expansion, to keep the universes the same. Anyone who buys Horizons new will also get access to this year's stuff. You could wait a whole year before buying and still get access to the Cobra Mk IV
FD streamed a Q&A earlier this afternoon, probably will be archived on Twitch, but here are the highlights that I can remember
-- There are different types of buggy with various degrees of specialisation; every ship can fit the Scarab shown in the video, but not every ship can fit every buggy
-- Gravity varies hugely between planets, and this will affect both the buggy and ships; as the ship slows down, the more a new flight model kicks in, with smaller ships handling gravity better
-- buggies have thrusters on each wheel, to enable jumps, but also to thrust down so that they can stick to low gravity worlds without floating off
-- you will have to buy a docking module and a buggy in order to use one
-- we will be able to land on planets throughout the galaxy, although some will be restricted for reasons that will become clear later on
-- a new enemy type will be controlling drones from within a tower/bunker thingy; rather than killing the drones, it may be better to kill the controller
-- Another update for the new season will involve loot and crafting
-- The Cobra Mk IV has some improvements over the Mk III, such as better weapon placement and an extra hardpoint, but will also have compromises so that the game is not unbalanced. Access to the Mk IV does not mean that you automatically get one; you still need to buy one in game. This Friday's peek of the week will show the Mk IV. They don't yet know if Mk III skins will be shared with Mk IV
One of the avantages to giving FD a truly silly amount of money in the Kickstarter is that I get free expansions for life. The lifetime pass is back on sale for considerably more than before,so there would have to be many years' worth of content to be worth it now. Having said that, FD have said they have plays for 10 years.
EDIT: Ars Technica has the 1.5 update tentatively called Ships, which brings the total ship count to 30
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FUCK YEAH!
Elite: Dangrerous Horizons announced at Gamescom!! This is a series of expansions starting with the first stage of Planetary Landings this year
First stage of planetary landings has airless worlds, with starports, crashed ships, hidden bases, mineral deposits and more. You can explore by ship or by rover (which is very small and hard for ships to lock onto). Go in quiet or guns blazing.
Full announcement here: https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/247
People can preorder from the store, and lifetime expansion pass is available again for a while.
Oh yeah, people who join the expansion in the first year will get access to Cobra Mk 4
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CQC has been released on the Xbone preview programme; I don't have it, but anyone who does can join in now
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zRFfKiIyrw
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This one's a bit different, the intro to Rocksmith. I think it sets the tone really well for the "game"; I've been learning guitar for just over 18 months now. I love the way the tune starts off really simple, but ends up pretty badass, reflecting how the game starts off with you playing only a few notes in a song, but eventually do the whole thing.
Heh, I just found out that Rocksmith 2014 includes it as a reward for finishing all the missions... I might have to give that a go
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There's been a bit more news in the run up to Games-com. The next update will include 3 new flyable ships, the Condor in CQC, the Imperial Eagle, and this Federal Assault Ship
. There will be new longer distance missions, transporting stuff for tens or hundreds of light years, legal salvage missions, and longer term massacre missions with higher kill counts.
There will be an extra level of intensity for resource extraction sites, and nav beacons will be a lot more dangerous if security has been compromised.
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I got distracted from the Witcher for a couple of months, so I decided to start again, having got to Novigrad last time. I'm having a great time with Axii, punching above my weight by getting enemies that are too powerful for me to fight each other
. I'm back in Velen, just secured a lamp. -
I think that the main delay in Star Citizen is due to Chris Roberts' insistence for insanely high graphical "fidelity"; he wants extremely high poly count models and high resolution textures. These are all very expensive in terms of time and cost of creation, of inflating the game to ginormous proportions, and of graphical performance. It's his vision, but I think it very unwise to invest so much time and money into something that most people will only see for a tiny fraction of the play time, if at all (unless they go around with their nose pressed to the wall).pkirkner that sounds like a sound assessment. I have a question since you are much more well versed in this genre... Does Elite Dangerous' release affect your view on Star Citizen at all? For genre newbie like me (only played X3), release of Elite Dangerous seems like damning proof against RSI's management because Elite kept their vision (still for a genre newb like me, a grand vision) in check and got a fully functioning game out while with RSI the thing just looks impossibly feature bloated. Or does the fact that Elite Dangerous got made with much lower budget give you hope for RSI?
The Order 1886 looks absolutely stunning, but was received pretty badly, possibly due to an unwise portion of the budget being spent on graphics. In this respect, the delay is good for Star Citizen, because it will be only become cheaper to make and run these extreme graphics.
Elite Dangerous has a mostly procedurally generated Milky Way galaxy, with some 150,000 star systems added in by hand based on real stars. It is far from finished (Frontier revealed recently that they have a 10 year plan for development, and no aspect of the game is considered final), but all additions can be made in universe, and Frontier have been very good at making in-game events, announcements etc. when each new feature is added. They were able to release an unfinished base game and add morecontent in a series of free updates (with paid expansions planned for eg planetary landings).
Since Star Citizen has gone for a more hand-crafted approach (although it will also use procedural generation in many areas), the world will take a very long time to build, and they release stuff before it all comes together as a series of modules.
Unfortunately, the dogfight/ racing module (Arena Commander) is mediocre at best, although it looks really pretty on a high end card: someone calculated an average of just 225 concurrent players since the last public patch was released (out of >900,000 backers).
The first person shooter module is supposed to be out in a few weeks (but they also said that at PAX in March). I hope that this is better recieved than Arena Commander, or CIG may run out of backers to fund the game.
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I have a burning question about both the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series: how scary and gory are they?
I'm a big fan of the type of games these two are, but I'm slightly put off as they seem quite creepy and I wasn't sure how much gore/blood they show. It's be a shame for me to purchase them and not feel like playing them if they creep/gross me out too much.
It really depends on whether you're more bothered about what you actually see or what that implies. As said above, neither game is particularly gory, and the blood in Danganronpa is hot pink.
However, the whole premise of the Danganronpa series is that you are stuck in a situation where the only way to leave is to murder one of your classmates and get away with it after a trial; if the murderer is found then they will be executed. All the while, you are working together with these people looking for a way out, and getting to know them. I got invested in the characters, making me almost constantly anxious between murders, and I seemed pretty adept in the early game of choosing to hang out with murderers or victims
! Hope and despair are very important themes in both Danganronpa games, making them very intense.Zero Escape doesn't require death to progress, and it might even be possible to get everyone out. There are situations where death is inevitable, but most have been surprises so far. As a result there has been no pervading sense of dread for me, but more shocks.
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Cecking in for a Vita update, and my time has been heavily visal novelly / rpg-ish so far!
I've completed Danganronpa 1 and 2, and really enjoyed them. They have strong and consistent stories, albeit very odd, memorable characters, and deceptively good sound design.
I've also been playing Zero Escape: virtue's Last reward, and been having fun with that too. This is more puzzly than Danganronpa, and has more meaningful choices to be made; as a result, the game includes a narrative map of all of the branches, allowing you to retrace your steps to wherever. I've died once, and been trapped forever. In my current playthrough, I thought I was doing really well, but there are only 3 of us left! I'm happy to try different sets of puzzle rooms in various branches, but I'm not sure I like the idea of doing the same puzzle multiple times.
I've made a fair amount of progress in Persona 4; I think I've rescued 4 people now. I've not played it in a while, but I think it will be easy to go back to.
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There's a substantial grey market where players are selling ships to other players, sometimes at a profit (another thing that makes me uneasy about this particular method of financing). Here's a fairly old, but interesting Eurogamer article:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-10-08-inside-star-citizens-grey-market
Derek Smart is on the rampage again, asking CR to step down, or he will instigate an audit (or something). The guy has made some good points, but that all seems drowned in a whole ocean of crazy! http://massivelyop.com/2015/07/17/derek-smart-has-fresh-demands-for-star-citizen-threatens-to-take-drama-to-the-new-york-times/
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So there's been quite a lot of stuff going on in ED, even in my absence
!---There was Lavecon, where Frontier introduced the Imperial Eagle variant, and revealed that there was a 10 year plan for development, with no aspect of the game regarded as finished. There's a thread on the forums here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=165775
---The PC version now has the advanced controller option, which I've been having fun with; this allows mapping to multiple buttons, so for me X + down on d-pad lowers cargo bay, B + down engages FSD, and Y +down targets nearest hostile. As a result, I can do a heck of a lot more with the pad, making keyboard only necessary for typing!
--- FD have archived a Twitch stream that shows of some of the ships, weapons, and maps from CQC championships
http://www.twitch.tv/elitedangerous/v/7695514
I had trouble viewing it on my phone and ipad, but it was fine on my desktop. They don't show any opponents, but tour two maps in a Condor and an Eagle.
I was originally skeptical about CQC, but then someone reminded me that it will be fairly similar to alpha 2.0, where we first got multiplayer, and that was very fun. Here are some highlights from the video
-- Can use Condor, Eagle, and SIdewinder ships, start in Condor. Condors are super agile, SIdewinders are (relative) tanks, while Eagles are damage dealers; mixed teams tend to do better than teams with the same ship
-- CQC has team deathmatch, capture the flag, and free for all modes, with a decent number of maps. They show off two of the maps available when it hits the xbox preview program, more will come later
-- There are some extra weapons that were in alpha / beta but removed from the main game such as the overcharge laser that does more damage, but generates more heat too, making it possible to badly overheat
-- there are arena powerups for speed. shields, stealth and damage (possibly more)
-- PC and Mac will get CQC as soon as possible after the final release on Xbox
-- Up to 4 v 4, where you and your mates can stay together
-- can play together even if thousands of lightyears apart in game
-- Could be a good intro to new players who build up skills in a consequence free environment, then go out into the big bad universe in one of the ships they should already be used to
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I just got this game, and am really enjoying it. After a lucky search hit, I got a couple of clips that pretty explicitly explain what happened, and have watched considerably less than half of the clips. I like the structure with having only the first five videos showing up, so we have to be inventive. I also like the occasional sirens and lights reflected in the screen.
Here's what I have (major spoilers obviously)
There are two twins Hannah and Eve. Simon was married to Hannah, but was seeing Eve (who wore a blonde wig to look different from Hannah). He made them both "unique" mirrors; unfortunately, he gave the second mirror to Hannah, who was using the wig to pretend to be Eve; he had given Hannah her mirror already. Hannah smashed the mirror, and accidentally cut Simon's throat with a piece. They hide the body in the cellar, and use the watch to make it look like hannah had an alibi fir when it happened.
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Woah!
ED launched in early access on XBox One today on the Xbox One Game Preview service for a special price of $30.99. I think this is the debut for this service.
Xbox one also has exclusive first access to the newly announced CQC mode, which is coming to PC and Mac later this year.
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I just snagged Sir You Are Being Hunted for $1.99
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Frontier stopped discussing gameplay ideas with the DDF when the alphas started, with the exception of a few minor topics here and there. As far as I know, no-one outside of Frontier knows anything.Wookiee, can you provide any insight as to what the inner circle is targeting next?
PS: Is it just me or is everyone else getting constant "wedding ship celebration!" chatter in supercruise?
Edit: Common suggestions on the forums - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=]
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There is a proposal that was made to the design discussion forum, and now resides in the public archive, that I think is more what you want. It specifies different tiers of NPCs, with Tier 1 being long term fixtures such as heads of state, Tier 2 being persistent NPCs that you interact with, and Tier 3 being randomly generated for a single journey. Tier 2 NPCS could be named contacts such as black market dealers that are specific to a given player, or could be promoted from Tier 3 after an encounter or bulletin board mission. Adding these Tier 2 NPCs would add the kind of personal continuity you're after I think.No it isn't. Those aren't quest lines. In other words, if I'm a dude who just likes flying a spaceship and finding the best prices for things and don't look at the job board, that affects me 0% except if commodity prices change. It could all happen and I would potentially never be aware of it. That system is explicitly opt-in, as are all the gameplay systems in Elite except being interdicted. I'm, spitballing here, talking about having done something and then you get a message from an NPC or when you go to the job board there's a different subsection with something specific that's a new chain or type of things to do that reflects an actual mission or haul you did. I played for hours before I realized I had gone from being near Federation systems to Empire systems or whatever.
I am trying to tread carefully here, as I'm probably dangerously close to "this isn't that game" territory or the dreaded "you don't like what this game is". I feel like it could be and isn't, and I thought powerplay would push some options in that direction and just feels like it's another thing to haul around but this time it's to a specific place.
There's a LOT of stuff in the DDF that has not yet been implemented, and the development of wings, community goals and Powerplay was hidden from the DDF. These persistent NPCs are likely to be in progress, and I reckon we'll see them around the same time as passenger missions; ideas for these were also discussed with the DDF, and are not simply cargo transport of people, but could involve passengers making requests mid journey, being intercepted by police, potential hijackings etc.. We can only hope that they come out eventually, and are not abandoned, but I believe that they will.
I've mothballed my python for a while, and have gone back to an asp, which carries just under half the stuff, but has twice the jump range when fully loaded. This is so I can delve a bit more into Powerplay, where (for my power at least) a lot of time is spent hurtling between far flung systems.
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From my initial powerplay testing, I can see a nearly passive way of building rank while doing a large rare good trade route if you have the cargo space; simply collect powerplay intel cannisters from potential new target systems that have rare goods to trade. When you fill up with cannisters, drop them off at the home system (ideally, make the home system part of your rare trade circuit route). I'm thinking about getting a Lakon Type 7 or 9 to eventually do that. You do get paid every week once you start climbing the ranks, making it a good supplemental income and you will get access to the specialist equipment associated with the power.
The fastest way to get rank is to actively undermine other powers by going to their systems and interdicting/destroying their power-associated ships (15 merits a kill), but you will build bounties on your head that way that will have to be paid off. Not recommended for the penniless or commanders that want to stay in good terms with the entire galaxy. Although if you do it in an anarchy system, the damage may just be limited to the target's associated superpower. I need to try and undermine the pirate faction and see if that comes without any loss of reputation (it might be a net gain).
Anyone know of an anarchy system controlled by the pirate-associated power? Perfect test site.
Ooh I like that plan... Rid the skies of pirate filth!
My current internet connection is way slower than I'm used to... Solo only for me at the moment!
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I see Powerplay as something for established players who want to spend some of their hard-earned credits on power and influence in the Galaxy rather than another way for up and coming players to make money. I see plenty of people on the forums moaning that it isn't profitable but maybe they are missing the point. You get 100 cr per merit, as well as some sum each week depending on your rank.
I've gone with the utopian hippy / crazy cult leader to test it out, which has social and combat tasks as well as a recurring monthly community goal. He also has the simplest play because of his restricted CC.
I've been playing around with mining in a high intensity RES in my python, which was kinda fun aft working out drones
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I booted up Elite after the powerplay update and the loan will now go up to 2.5 million but I can only get the buy back on my Python down to 2.9 million so I'm still screwed. So I guess I'm done, oh well
How much cash do you have? If it's 400 k or more you should be fine, right? You could sell the python, and build up again
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If you do it before 1.3 hits, you'll have to search USS s in the suggested system and find either your target or a clue that points to another system. After 1.3, you could see them in supercruise, meaning that you would need an interdictor to pull them into real space. It could be a pretty tough fightI tossed away my mining lasers for a set of cannons and jumped into a war zone for a mission last night. I had a lot of fun and really felt like I was giving my stick a good workout. I even got to use my practiced "boost, go silent, eject heat sink, and pray" technique to actual effect.
Now my next Imperial advancement mission is an assassination. I have no idea how to even go about doing that type of mission, and most of the info I can find out there about it is from last year. Is most of that advice still good, or has the assassination process changed over the last six months?
The Witcher 3: What Geralt Wants
in Video Gaming
Posted
I'm back to where I was before, story wise although this time I completed more quests, and have a complete set of Griffin gear rather than my level 4 tat
! I'm a little bit ahead now, having tracked some treasure through a sewer to a boat.
I made a brief trip to Skellige to try my hand at some of the lower level quests I had picked up... It is so gorgeously rugged and bleak! I mostly ride around rather than fast travel, and love the various cloppy noises on the different surfaces.