Posts made by Thenomain

I edit my stuff twelve times in a row because I don't revise in my head before posting.

@Lithium

Let me correct for pedants. Instead of min-max, imagine I said "functional character who doesn't suck out of the box". M&M2 suffers the problem of most d20 games of too much going on. You need to be pretty dedicated to understanding the whole of the system before making some fairly basic choices. From what I can tell, this barrier to entry is higher than many other RPGs, and the need to see numeric and systematic interactions between powers, abilities, and tweaks is akin to min-maxing capabilities. Which I do not have.

@BigDaddyAmin said:

Kind of like how WoD: Paris by Night is a lot different than WoD: Hoboken by Night, huh?

I was thinking more like the difference between a pessimist and a pragmatist.

Mind you, I understand your viewpoint. I was sick of Deadpool before someone decided to make a serious (heavy on the sarcasm quotes around "serious") Deadpool movie. I was fueled by the indignant nerd rage over his characterization in that Wolverine movie.

But you know, I try to be adult enough to let people enjoy what they enjoy, even if it's a childish power-fantasy. I'll try not to whip out my "lol I have a real life"-sized dick when someone starts talking about the next godawful comic book franchise, or sportsball game oh my god my fantasy league player just scored three yards on a rush, or whatever turns you specifically on, because from a certain point of view quite a lot of things turn out to be very much like quite a lot of other things.

Mostly because I used to be that person, and in hindsight that person was a self-righteous asshole.

That's you right now.

Enjoy your wife's tits.

As a more productive aside, I've been having an ongoing discussion about Hearthstone (I generally also hate CCGs) and how Blizzard has a talent for distilling things that other people have done, for longer and possibly better, and make these things their own. After playing a bit of Hearthstone, I can't deny that it's The Warcraft CCG. I played a bit of the tabletop Warcraft card game and that didn't have that undeniable identity; it was kind of fun, but it was more interpretive than definitive.

And that kind of discussion can be interesting, whether you're talking about computer games, card games, moments in world history, or differences in similar species of tree. (Fern v. Pine, fight!)

@BigDaddyAmin said:

I don't see much difference between Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Fallout 4 that really makes it worth it.

Very possibly because you're dead inside. I see endless differences between these three games.

What did he code? Because I at least never head of him.

I too was happy to be playing FO:Sims, but when I decided to get back on the roller coaster it drifted. In FO:NV, when I decided to take a game break that was at my pacing, and when I was ready I got grabbed and spun though the whirlwind tale of a thousand shards of post-apocalypse.

Both Mass Effect 2 and 3 have DLCs portraying an entirely different game, which is awesome in itself. Dragon Age: Origins has one of these too, only it's called Dragon Age: Awakening.

Fallout 4 desperately needs this, or something resembling a complete story, even if it's separate from ether main story. When I replay FO4, I will focus on story only and see how it flows.

Well if you have it, play it. I didn't finish Skyrim because of the same reasons of the directionlessness that people have been saying about FO4, but I finished it because I am invested in the game's world. I may or may not be playing it again.

Fallout 3 is an open-world game, but it ends. Fallout: New Vegas is an open-world game, but it has direction and pacing and writing and it ends a hell of a lot stronger than most any other game I've played in recent memory.

Fallout 4 seems like a number of smaller games with a loose goal. But screw that goal if you want to play Fallout: The Sims, and by the time you get to the main city you're pretty unrestricted as to where you can survive, unlike FO:NV which if you tried to wander off said, "Hahahahahaha did you want to not be dead because too bad, now you're dead!"

That is, in FO4 and FO:NV, it's open-world but you are directed. FO4 pushes a moral urgency on you from word go (which is fine) then doesn't give a damn about that urgency until a mid-game boss-fight and the end.

Someone once complained in my presence that Fallout was a bad game because your stats dictate your combat skill. Had they not been a terrible troll who would say things like that just to say them, I would have said, "It's an RPG. This is what RPGs do." They force you to act within a series of rules and roles, and this is something that Fallout 4 mainly fails to do.

Incidentally, other little things I liked better in FO:NV, besides a story: Wear and tear on things. Power was explained or nonexistent (screw you working terminals and elevators and lights for no reason, not to mention ever-burning candles). The radiation system (the new one su-uuuuuucks). I think I preferred how rare finding a safe place to sleep was, and in fact scarcity exists barely at all in FO4. I want to like that we have a solid history that leads up to the Fallout world but why was everyone in 2077 still in 1950s styles?

I feel like Fallout 4 had a ton of creativity poured into it but it didn't go far enough. It's the usual list of Super Mutants, Ghouls, and Brotherhood of Steel. This is partially also a complaint of FO3, but they had a chance to branch out here ... and missed.

I liked the game. I liked it a lot. Just ... I don't want this to be what people think Fallout is at its best. It's not.

Continued, now that time has passed:

I hope there is some kind of ending in a DLC that is more than a nod that you finished what you were told to do from the start of the game because once you're done, that's it, you get a 'you're done' screen and you are dumped back into the game. Like Skyrim, I had no real direction, and the game was so prone to being open-world that it missed giving out the directions. The direction that I wanted to take, the faction I wanted to push into the limelight, was not an option which is ironic since it's the first faction that you are introduced to, the Minutemen.

Otherwise, I can't say that the game has an ending. It tries to have a story, and the story has a definitive moment where it could end (even after being forced into one of three factions I don't really care about), but it doesn't. It even gives you the illusion of post-ending denouement, with missions for that faction based upon the ending, but they don't seem to go anywhere. I've played an extra ten or so hours past the ending and nothing gets resolved. Nothing.

Fallout 4 falls flat in so many ways. I enjoy the game play, but not the game itself. I will try for a Complete Asshole run, but I can tell you right now that I refuse to help the Minutemen any more than I have to, and their greedy surprise-mission bullshit. I am not the only goddamn Minuteman; why can I not delegate?

@Jennkryst said:

KP bloat

Every game needs to prepare for this. If you don't, you will have it. If you do, you will have it but you'll have an idea of what to do about it. Tabletop games deal with it by upping the stakes, for example.

This is not to open up this discussion (again), but to stress that if this is one main reason you're looking for a new game, address it in the game's design.

@WTFE

So now, a literal shrug.

@Coin said

Specter was a classic Bond flick, still too attached to Bond's history to really be fun for me. I didn't like Skyfall, though. If you liked Skyfall and Quantum of Solace, you will probably like Specter.

Review violates the Five Second rule.

@Sessurea said:

@Cobaltasaurus said:

Nuku does come around every so often to talk about Ponyfinder. He (?) has been fairly successful with it.

Boy was I surprised to discover that's not some kind of Brony dating site.

Maybe it is. Nerds Find Other Nerds Through Kickstarter? I'm now waiting for this news headline.

I will play on an M&M 2 game if someone promises to make my character for me. I do not understand the system one whit. The basics are clear, but there are expectations of minmaxing that are not evident in the rulebook.

I've also been reading too many web comics that subvert the superhero/hero trope, from "Superbitch" to "Cucumber Quest" to "Strong Female Protagonist". I find the power fantasy to be the least interesting part of someone with powers beyond mankind's ken which ... you know, maybe I shouldn't be allowed to play on a superhero game of any sort.

@WTFE said:

I like to troll.

We know you do, babydoll. We know you do.

HOLY SHIT! CONTEXT CHANGES OVER TIME?! WHO KNEW!

(Things I love: pretending to freak the fuck out.)

@Coin said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@Coin said:

This is true--in Asia.

It's true in a lot of Native American tribes in America as well. My first job out of college was in a Res town and, even having lived in the West all my life, I was surprised by how often it popped up in art and older drawings (there was a fairly big 'whirling log' style one on a bridge in town). I got used to it (the context is so very clearly divorced from anything related to Nazism), and I now just find it depressing how thoroughly it was co-opted.

Even if it were public knowledge that this particular symbol was part of Native American symbology, it would get buried handily under the more common, archetypical, sanitized shit like feather headdresses and arrows and shit.

Did you know that "gay" really means happy? Any non-definitive use of it is based on culture and therefore nobody else is allowed to get upset by its use and blah blah blare barf garble blee.

@WTFE knew what would happen when he posted that, and should be snickering instead of being indignant about cultural differences.

His taking things too seriously makes me RL happy. Well, it doesn't but I want to be thread appropriate. I'm kind of snickering at him over it, so that counts?

What does make me happy is that this Christmas season has been very easy-going. No real stress for me, and that is a step up, so it's a happy thing.

@AmishRakeFight

I'm surprised we don't get more NYC games. If someone gets it vaguely wrong, we think of NYC to be more or less like Metropolis anyhow. If we removed Superman from it, then bam, done.

This is not true for most other locations. Without staff pushing flavor and setting (normally that staff is build staff), it all becomes a generalized thought of a city anyhow, and if that city is Metropolis then there's little harm done.

So then either all lives matter, no lives matter, or the truth is somewhere in between.

When the truth is "somewhere in-between", just how far can we go deciding which ones matter and which ones don't. Just how far can we go deciding who gets to decide. Just how far can we go deciding the criteria.

I have RL anger toward this kind of discussion because in recent culture it becomes a contest into the bottomless pit of self-deluded solipsism. "No, you're being selfish, I'm fighting for a cause." It's like the difference between terrorists and freedom-fighters. In both cases, the lives of people just trying to get by are utterly and truly fucked.

And that's where socioeconomic elitists come in when having a discussion about things that generally piss you off.

And that kind of egotism generally pisses me off.

edit: I think the term I'm looking for, that I hate, is Straw Man.

@Coin

Since when did any lives matter?