What Video Game Are You Currently Playing?

[snapshot]

Finished The Warmind Campaign and I've been doing Bounties, Alerts and Nightfall strikes and those sorts of things to finish some quests, I really like how the missions and major areas are structured instead of randomly generated like they were in WF, Lost Sectors were fun although they were a walk in the park dungeon crawls, still got a bunch more quests to do before I fully unlock all planets.

Edited February 15, 2020 by sluggard

[ReaperAA]

35 minutes ago, seed said:

You have a list on my channel ;).

 

Well I haven't checked your Blood list yet, but have you played The Way of Ira. I haven't played it, but I know that it is a recently released mod. I read some comments on Duke4 that it is really great episodic mappack.

[seed]

Just now, ReaperAA said:

Well I haven't checked your Blood list yet, but have you played The Way of Ira. I haven't played it, but I know that it is a recently released mod. I read some comments on Duke4 that it is really great episodic mappack.

 

No, I did plan on getting to it but haven't managed since I've been flooded with work.

[Toilet_Wine_Connoisseur]

Working on my first play-through of Fallout 2 after really going back the first Fallout after almost said they are better than the Bethesda era (and for the most part they are much better)

[Nine Inch Heels]

All of the doomy stuff aside, I still have one of my "FFVFJFs" going that I spend like half an hour on here and there.

 

For those unfamiliar with the term, FFVFJF means "Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta". The way this works is that you generate a list of four random jobs, one from each crystal, and once you made it to the first crystal, you need to assign the job you "rolled" to all of your characters (freelancers are not allowed in your party once you have obtained jobs!). From there on out, for each crystal you get your hands on, you must assign another job you rolled to at least one character in your party, so that once you have all 4 crystals, you have one job for each party member respectively. Party members may not use abilities from other jobs, they need to make the most out of the one single job they have access to. The goal for a "job fiesta" is usually only to beat exdeath, so you can employ a slightly "speedrun-ish" doctrine and skip sidequests that don't benefit you in any way (like unlocking summons, if you have no summoner to begin with).

 

If you want to give this a try for yourself, you can use the generator right here: https://ffv.thinknathan.ca/

 

Be warned, though. Depending on what you get, the game might be harder or somewhat grind intensive during some stages. I've learned this the hard way when I rolled blue mage, time mage, bard, and alchemist. The powerlevel of this party is potentially insane, thanks to chemist (OP, but it's the last job I got my hands on) and both mages I have access to practically all the buffs, many of which are cast on the entire party, too (neat), but having to play like half the game without a reliable healer is a bit tricky, never mind the lack of "affordable damage", so I had to do some grinding to get past the early stages where the blue mages were borderline useless. Other than that, I'm enjoying it a lot. Good reason to revisit this old game, and experience it in a different way.

[Hypnotik]

After years of playing Fallout: New Vegas without DLC, I finally decided to get all the DLC, and I must say, I am far from disappointed.

I'm actually disappointed that I didn't get them sooner!   +10 years later I get the DLC lmao. 

[Doomsday]

Well GTA San Andreas, Red Dead Redemption 2, Half-Life 2. And I think that's it to be honest?

[Gokuma]

Hexen

[Chopkinsca]

I finished replaying DROD: The City Beneath yesterday. I breezed through it easier than the first few times I played it. A lot of puzzle nuances must have stayed in my head. I'm not sure if I'll go back and work on mastering Journey to Rooted Hold, or restart The Second Sky. Probably both.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Decided to get back into Minecraft. Been putting it off lately and playing the hell out of Skyrim (SE). But now I am back underground with my favourite Iron pickaxe!

[Megalyth]

Making some Jetpack levels with the boy. It's fascinating to watch a young mind's ideas about level construction take shape. Maybe we'll put together an episode for your enjoyment.

[magicsofa]

3 hours ago, Megalyth said:

Making some Jetpack levels with the boy. It's fascinating to watch a young mind's ideas about level construction take shape. Maybe we'll put together an episode for your enjoyment.

Yes please!!! I love Jetpack! A couple years back ago I made two sets of levels... and they are sort of obnoxious lol.

[Phobus]

My goal to beat 100 games and DLC I've not already beaten this year is looking... Unlikely. I'm ~16.4% of the way through the year and only 9% through my goal. I've just beaten Forza Horizon 3: Hot Wheels, which I stretched out a little to get the maximum points in the Hub and get more rewards if I play another Forza game (not unlikely, but not this year). Great fun, focused more on outright speed and stunts, although as was the case with the main game and Blizzard Mountain, the championships sort of dragged after a while.

 

Having beaten that, I've got two games front-and-centre of my attention. on the NES Classic Mini, I've got the original The Legend of Zelda, which I've bumbled around in for a bit last week, found a couple of dungeons (not the first one, yet) and got a couple of power ups and progression items through sheer exploration. I've since looked up the manual and seen it actually gives you loads of information and tells you pretty much exactly how to beat the first dungeon and gives you plenty to go on for the second. It also contains an incomplete map that I'm sure will be pretty useful. It's not exactly what I was expecting, having already beaten A Link to the Past on the SNES Classic Mini, but it having less in-game guidance and questing makes sense considering the hardware. The relative length and complexity of the NES game is still rather impressive and combat, whilst simpler than I'm used to, is still good enough and enjoyable.

 

The game I've put more time into is Rage 2, which was a Christmas gift through Steam. It's the first game I've had to run at 1080p rather than 4k on my machine, so I guess I know what I'll be doing with my Doom Eternal pre-order when I can play that! Rage 2 starts out like it'll be very story-driven and have quick progression... Then you get dumped in an open-world wasteland where you can basically go anywhere you like and find stuff. There are objectives (and "story" objectives are highlighted), but there's no urgency or progression gating, and difficulty seems pretty arbitrarily distributed. On the plus side, gun play and movement (especially with a few Ark powerups) are awesomely enjoyable and bode well for Doom Eternal. On the downside, the open world design is nice to look at, but just sparsely populated and poorly utilised. It genuinely feels like there was no creative direction for level design or whatever. All of the explosions, magenta and quirkiness does erase the "drab brown" issue that the original Rage has, but that game drove you a lot better and was a much more cohesive story and playing experience. It feels rather "Ubisoft", in the "open world for the sake of having one" sense. I'll play through it for a few reasons, and I intend to get as close to 100% as possible (I won't bother with achievements or DLC, though), but I'll be doing it in a rush a I want to replay Doom 2016 after, before Eternal lands.

[diosoth]

Skyrim LE. Because even with my new video card I don't think SE will run on this PC.

 

While I find it better than Oblivion in a lot of ways- and out of the box it looks nicer than Oblivion's default graphics- the variation in locations is much less. It's mostly "forest", "mountain", "frozen forest" or "frozen mountain" with the occasional cave, run or whatever to break it up. Oblivion has a better variety of landscapes and the Oblivion gate segments to keep it from becoming bland. Entering the soul cairn during Dawnguard was the first major change of scenery.

 

It feels like a game that needs fewer mods than Oblivion did... "fewer". You will still need the bugfix mods(the unofficial patches are essential) and all that and probably a body replacer(not essential, however) but the only overhaul mod I really used was an experience point add-on. I didn't need something like OOO to make things playable.

 

You aren't bound to a class anymore, letting you level all your skills, and enemy scaling is nowhere near as bad as Oblivion. but the removal of the acrobatics perk means you can only walk, run or jump the same the entire game and removing underwater combat was a massive step backwards(and I'm not sure if any mods really fixed that either). I don't get as many crashes as I did in Oblivion though.

 

Marriage is a weird system because none of the candidates are characters you will spend time with or even have much of a personality. Put on an amulet and that's it. Serana is the only one you will ever spend that time with, yet despite her getting flirty they opted to not make her a candidate for some very weird excuses that feel like they didn't have time to code "vampire marriage" or something. But the entire game and the DLCs all show signs of being massively rushed with modders adding in that content that was clearly never finished or fixing dumb decisions. No surprise the Serana marriage mod is very popular- and she's flagged essential so you'll want her as a follower regardless. You also need a mod to not makes the Blades angry at you if you don't kill Paarthurnax, and one so animals don't report crimes.

 

It's also a shorter game as a lot of the major quest lines can be beaten fairly quickly. If you stuck to official content you can run out of stuff to do fast. They also seemed to balance the game to "evil" characters in a bad way- they almost favor you siding with the Stormcloaks(Todd Howard had to be talked into letting you join the Imperial side late in development) with much of the civil war stuff getting cut for time. You can kill the Dark Brotherhood but it's rushed and I can't buy that killing 5 members ended the entire group(hell, I think at least 2 characters from the DB quest don't show up if you take the "hero" route- definitely ONE doesn't as children can't be killed). The similar quest for the Thieves Guild was cut out(a mod adds it but it's a bit unfinished). Most of the shrine quests require you to be a despicable killer to complete them properly(there are mods to give alternate choices for most of them), as opposed to Oblivion where only one really forced that to be the case(which also had an alternate choice mod).

 

Enchanting is a backwards system from what Oblivion had too. Oblivion based your eligible perks on magic learned, here you have to destroy existing equipment to "learn" the perks and a lot of things from Oblivion are missing. Even at a skill level of 100 you can only boost to 2 perks per item. I'm using mods to up that to 8 per and one that adds a lot of extra in-game items with unique enchantments to extend the pool(along with the unlimited rings mod- as with Oblivion I assume my character is hooking them onto equipment or whatever). Even so, despite being able to have a 100% resistance to magic or elements, there's no damage resist perk as Oblivion had so I can't just put all my damage resist onto rings and wear whatever armor from mods I like, I have to rely on armor for that protection.

 

Overall I'd say it does plenty good, yet needs mods to be better than what you'd pay for at retail, but takes a few pointless steps back from its predecessor and would have had a huge benefit from another year of development because a gimmick release date wasn't worth losing a lot of content for. Just a shame that with Bethesda's current state and Fallout 76 being garbage that they keep trying to maintain despite the negative press(which seems to be a new controversy every 1-2 weeks), I question whether or not TESVI will even come out or be any good if it does.

[seed]

7 hours ago, diosoth said:

It's also a shorter game as a lot of the major quest lines can be beaten fairly quickly. If you stuck to official content you can run out of stuff to do fast. They also seemed to balance the game to "evil" characters in a bad way- they almost favor you siding with the Stormcloaks(Todd Howard had to be talked into letting you join the Imperial side late in development) with much of the civil war stuff getting cut for time. You can kill the Dark Brotherhood but it's rushed and I can't buy that killing 5 members ended the entire group(hell, I think at least 2 characters from the DB quest don't show up if you take the "hero" route- definitely ONE doesn't as children can't be killed). The similar quest for the Thieves Guild was cut out(a mod adds it but it's a bit unfinished). Most of the shrine quests require you to be a despicable killer to complete them properly(there are mods to give alternate choices for most of them), as opposed to Oblivion where only one really forced that to be the case(which also had an alternate choice mod).

 

This is something that kinda bothered me after a while as well, Skyrim seems to give the player less freedoom, or rather, the illusion of free choice. The DB quest is the best example of this. You can destroy them, but it is utterly pathetic how easy and short it is, literally talk to a guard to give you a password and kaboom, enter the sanctuary and kill them... seriously?

 

Not just that, but you get no alternative questline, no new possibilities, no meaningful changes whatsoever, killing them simply means cutting yourself from an organization with no consequences, but no benefits either, and the reward you get is lame. It's like what, less than 10K gold or something like that? You're better off not going down that road, they might give you the illusion that you have a choice there, but you do not. No wonder they never make it obvious in any way that you can kill Astrid in the cabin...

 

Regarding the civil war and the Imperials, yea, the former was cut down due to time constrains, but for the latter it kinda shows someone hates them - there is also a cut quest from Boethia where you were tasked with assassinating Elisif. But both factions suck anyway imo, the civil war questline is one I've only completed once and never afterwards. Also the Nords can go jump in a volcano for all I care with their "SkYrIm bElOnGs tO tHe nOrDs" nonsense - the Snow Elves would like a word with you. Also speaking of cut content, I wish the wouldn't have removed the Windhelm arena, a mod restores it and it reveals it was essentially finished and complete, apart from some bugs.

 

8 hours ago, diosoth said:

It feels like a game that needs fewer mods than Oblivion did... "fewer"

 

Yeap, once you start using mods or stick purely to the base game you do notice that for such a big world there's isn't quite that much to do in it. The main quest is also very short so if you complete only that... that's like what, 30 hours of content or so depending on whether you have some previous knowledge?

 

If you do explore everything there certainly is quite a bit more to it, at least for the next 100+ hours or so, completing all quests, that sort of thing. But even so, there is content I never thought should have been DLC to begin with. Dawnguard and especially Heartfire for instance. Now about Dawnguard, that's more related to vampire abilities and the werewolf perk tree, which I always considered a must in the base game but they chose to add that in DLC instead... Dawnguard also went through a noticeably more rushed testing phase as well, because it has many major issues, one even related to stability which I have no idea if it was ever fixed in SE. Apparently not completing that journal quest in Soul Cairn will cause the game to randomly crash afterwards, something obscure must be going on there... Some quests are also glitched, notably Vingalmo's questline about gifting others with vampirism, which should not be repeatable but it is, and the people cannot be infected again, obviously... A lot of new gear also has the wrong attributes...

 

This is not surprising though, Bethesda games have always been notoriously glitchy, and to a good extent that is certainly understandable because they're rich in content and you can do a lot of things with them, but this also makes unofficial patches a must... and using mods is also a huge headache... god damn it... A while ago I wanted to replay the game, and went as far as redownloading it, installing NMM, LOOT, and then I suddenly canned the whole thing because I could absolutely NOT be arsed to deal with mod conflicts, load orders, bashed/merged patches, and so and so on. I've had enough :( . So I uninstalled everything in a moment... I'd love to go back to it but mods are pretty much essential...

 

8 hours ago, diosoth said:

You also need a mod to not makes the Blades angry at you if you don't kill Paarthurnax, and one so animals don't report crimes.

 

I hate the Blades for this BS. It's the main reason why I never joined them, they're full of crap, and joining them isn't even that beneficial... I can live without them mighty fine thank you.

 

8 hours ago, diosoth said:

You aren't bound to a class anymore, letting you level all your skills, and enemy scaling is nowhere near as bad as Oblivion. but the removal of the acrobatics perk means you can only walk, run or jump the same the entire game and removing underwater combat was a massive step backwards(and I'm not sure if any mods really fixed that either). I don't get as many crashes as I did in Oblivion though.

 

I've always had mixed feeling about this, because a "class-less" system can also lead to instances where you master nothing, or everything. And in its current states it does seem to encourage mastering everything, because if you decide to master only a few things such as magic abilities you will reach your can very soon, and no longer be able to level up. Leveling up all the combat abilities means you're gonna reach level 40 or so I think? To go beyond that you have to start investing into other abilities, which is BS. It's the one and only thing I've hated about the leveling system.

 

Overall I think it greatly improved over its predecessors, but it definitely has its flaws. I can only hope TES VI will be better and remedy these issues, but with all the backlash Bethesda received for the dumb mistakes they've done in the last couple of years... I'm not so sure about that anymore. I'm not sure they still have it in them, considering the comedy of failure that F76 was, and how divisive Fallout 4 was among the fans.

[MFG38]

Playing Beautiful Desolation at the moment. I backed the game on Kickstarter and got the game basically for free as a result. The core gameplay is largely similar to the devs' last two games, STASIS and CAYNE - isometric point-and-click type of stuff - but the game's strengths lie in its presentation. The visuals are stunning, the world is intriguing, the characters even more so, and the music... Goddamn. Mick Gordon delivers once again.

[diosoth]

I feel Skyrim's biggest flaw is the devs spent far too much time on tiny nuances and pop culture reference easter eggs to the point that the major content suffered for it, and a lot of the tiny things went nowhere because those weren't finished either.

 

Wiping out the DB should have been a lengthy fight with a lot of their members. Joining them has its own weird issues since DB assassins will randomly try to kill you before you do the initial quest- so they're perfectly willing to ignore a paid, unfinished contract on your life because you killed some random person in a shack when they told you to? And their random hitmen also stop bugging you when you kill 4 other people. On the plus side if you do kill them you still get access to the shout in their sanctuary. I'd suggest the similar mod for the Thieves guild if you want the skeleton key without joining them though.

 

Mod-wise I'd suggest the Dragonborn Gallery, which gives you something to do with all that stuff aside from sticking it in a chest or selling it. There''s also Legends Of Hyrule which scatters Zelda stuff all around- kind of meta now that Skyrim Switch has Zelda content in an official capacity. Mods to restore cut content or one that pads out Solstheim with all the locations that were in Bloodmoon add something extra to do. There are lengthy quest mods to add in Bruma and other Cyrodiil locations I want to try at some point. There are also mods to give "good" characters options for most daedric shrine quests so you don't have to kill a friend or become a cannibal or whatever. There are plenty of DLC-scale free mods for the game I haven't yet looked into.

 

Honestly I feel TES would be mediocre and forgettable if not for the modding communities- or barely playable thanks to the bugs that the modders fix. Oblivion save files become corrupted without a user-made tool to clean them. Daggerfall is finally in a playable state(before Oblivion they tried to treat these games as tabletop RPGs with a first person perspective and at times it gets annoying) thanks to the Unity port.

[Avoozl]

The only downside with the later games is that modders can't bring back particular cut content which needs to be hardcoded into the engine in order for it to work, you can't being back cut skills, attributes, weapons types for a few examples. For the most part the more vanilla features there is the more modding possibilities there is.

 

I am thankful for projects such as Open Morrowind and Daggerfall Unity which will focus on making it possible to expand further on those earlier TES games.

[magicsofa]

I'm currently playing The Incredible Machine 2, yet another game I couldn't beat when I was dumber younger. I actually completed all the puzzles this time and starting making a few of my own serious puzzles, rather than just throwing as many explosives and springboards as I could on the screen and seeing what happens...

[MrDeAD1313]

Doom Eternal and it's friggin great!

[Swordofdanu]

Doom Eternal, D64 & La Mulana. I had La Mulana on the Wii but the re-release has given me a chance to finish it. 

[The Doommer]

Doom Eternal baby!

 

And yes, Doom is Eternal.

[Doom_Dude]

Doom Eternal and No Man's Sky.

[seed]

On 3/3/2020 at 2:08 AM, diosoth said:

Wiping out the DB should have been a lengthy fight with a lot of their members. Joining them has its own weird issues since DB assassins will randomly try to kill you before you do the initial quest- so they're perfectly willing to ignore a paid, unfinished contract on your life because you killed some random person in a shack when they told you to? And their random hitmen also stop bugging you when you kill 4 other people. On the plus side if you do kill them you still get access to the shout in their sanctuary.

 

I'm only now noticing this, heh, what the lack of quoting can do I guess.

 

I wholly agree that the wiping of the DB should've been a lengthy questline, maybe not on part with joining them, but definitely NOT a simple "yo, go here and kill them youself. Oh and this is their password", where you'd first have to discover who the members are. Some have argued that you don't have the means to know who their leader is either, but that's highly debatable - the letters carried by the random assassins are all signed by Astrid, implying she's someone with authority and power. But you definitely do not know who the members are, or how many of them exist to begin with.

 

As about them forgiving you after killing the old hag, well, that kinda fixes itself in the shack I guess. I mean you can even kill all of them, so... And the hitmen ceasing to hunt you down is only to be expected after joining the faction, it would be ridiculous to still see that happening afterwards.

 

On 3/3/2020 at 2:08 AM, diosoth said:

I'd suggest the similar mod for the Thieves guild if you want the skeleton key without joining them though.

 

Tbh it makes sense to have such unique items exclusive to the factions, so I can't argue that not joining them locks you out from these benefits. If you could get them anyway, what's the point of joining to begin with, just to become Guild Master?

 

Also, GM. The issue there is that the leadership quest is locked behind another series of quests you need to complete before unlocking it. This is kinda stupid since Bryjolf makes it clear that you're now the leader at the end of the questline - only to realize a series of quests need to be completed first. This confused me in my early playthroughs, making me think it's completely borked, but it's not, just casually locked behind another questline.

 

On 3/3/2020 at 2:08 AM, diosoth said:

Mod-wise I'd suggest the Dragonborn Gallery, which gives you something to do with all that stuff aside from sticking it in a chest or selling it. There''s also Legends Of Hyrule which scatters Zelda stuff all around- kind of meta now that Skyrim Switch has Zelda content in an official capacity. Mods to restore cut content or one that pads out Solstheim with all the locations that were in Bloodmoon add something extra to do. There are lengthy quest mods to add in Bruma and other Cyrodiil locations I want to try at some point. There are also mods to give "good" characters options for most daedric shrine quests so you don't have to kill a friend or become a cannibal or whatever. There are plenty of DLC-scale free mods for the game I haven't yet looked into.

 

Yeah, there's a wealth of content out there, some of which being even DLC sized, such as Falskaar, which was a pretty big thing a few years ago. They're all neat additions to the game to do even more, but I never played these myself as I just didn't really feel the need for it. Some restored content mods would be nice though since quite a bit of content was cut from the game from one reason or another.

 

As for the Daedric quests, hm. Some alternatives would be cool, but they wouldn't work out for all. I can't imagine doing "nice" things for someone like Molag, Mehrunes, or Vaermina lol. That would be watering down the experience, and I'm honestly not fond of such actions in this context. Then again, that applies to some of the Daedra, not all - I can see this work for Mora, Sanguine, and whatnot.

 

On 3/3/2020 at 2:08 AM, diosoth said:

Honestly I feel TES would be mediocre and forgettable if not for the modding communities- or barely playable thanks to the bugs that the modders fix. Oblivion save files become corrupted without a user-made tool to clean them. Daggerfall is finally in a playable state(before Oblivion they tried to treat these games as tabletop RPGs with a first person perspective and at times it gets annoying) thanks to the Unity port.

 

Again, let's not miss the point here with bug-fixing. A company has finite resources, fully fixing something like Skyrim, Oblivion, or Morrowind would mean A LOT of time, effort, and especially funds, this ain't something they can "just do", so it's bound to see modders show up with Unofficial Patches eventually to fix the remaining bugs after support ends.

 

As about the amount of content itself... well, with all the DLC I can't honestly say there's not enough content to see, because there is. Do I think some of it should've been part of the base game, such as certain abilities introduced by Dawnguard? Yeah, absolutely. What I feel is kinda lacking in terms of content is more in line with armors, weapons, items, enemies/creatures, spells, shouts (Skyrim), etc. rather than locations and quests, there's plenty of that in the games. This is why mods such as Immersive Creatures, Weapons, Armors, AI overhauls such as Revenge of the Enemies, Deadly Dragons, and so and so on became indispensable for me at the time - and they most definitely still are, but again, I am too fucking sick of the compatibility and load order BS so I can't be bothered with them again...

 

I really hope the process will become easier and less frustrating in the future games. But until then, here's hoping Bethesda can still make good games, because after the PR disaster and F76 I have no idea what to think anymore. Time will tell I guess.

[Avoozl]

Honestly I would say that the first two Doom's are eternal because of how long people are still playing these games along with the mod ability and tons of content already available and still coming, I feel 1 and 2 will possibly outlive the later Doom games.

[snapshot]

I am re-visiting CV Lords of Shadow 2, in many ways I think Eternal resembles this game, what with the resource management, dashing and the platforming among some other mechanics, even the story is a kind of a tie-in to older Castlevania titles, although the sequel was received less favorably.

 

I also think the LOS series does a better job at hiding the platforming bits and making them blend well with the environments than Eternal, while keeping them easy to spot and challenging. this is either some sort of weird coincidence or I must be going completely mad lol! but lets not derail this thread.

 

Besides that I've been bouncing between cs and destiny 2 for my daily mp dose.

Edited March 23, 2020 by sluggard

[Dr. Toboggan]

Doom Blood and Quake per usual... But also just picked up Morrowind having never played an Elder Scrolls game. Feels like I’m bout to open up a whole can of worms 

[diosoth]

I'm on my second playthrough of Skyrim, as some mods benefit more from a fresh start than being installed mid-point and some things I wanted to do differently.

 

Even with unofficial patches though the sheer number of bugs is almost infuriating. Various home bugs have popped up this time that didn't show the first(and I suspect an adoption expansion mod broke them), meaning I'm using the console to upgrade houses because buying things doesn't work right. T feel if they spent more initial dev time making things work(sorry, Todd, "it just works" isn't being honest with us) these bugs would not be here. That time went into minute side quests, easter eggs, books you'll probably never read... they focused on world building but not making sure the world works properly. Even bugs supposedly fixed by the unofficial patches still affect me.

 

Mod authors also get this and I suspect some of them aren't beta testing their content. I know guaranteeing full mod compatibility is impossible but too many mods failed to work right, and I'm positive that LOOT is doing more to break things than to make sure things work. I can go through comments on the Nexus and see others having the same issues with those mods. I wanted to try the Dragonborn alternate ending mod but over 50% of the comments are about how buggy it is. I only had to deal with one Oblivion mod that had such issues. I suspect random mod incompatibility is also what breaks the unofficial patches.

 

The lack of underwater combat, the backwards magic & enchanting systems(taking apart existing equipment to "learn" the enchantments is worse than Oblivion relying on learned magic as a lot of enchantments are harder to find in the wild- still have yet to find a Soul Trap weapon at level 70 this time) and the useless state of dual-wielding also annoy me(2 swords are useless, and healing spell OR shield is a hard choice). It's a game I like, but I feel I only like it because of the amount of mods available, and only just enough to having to fight through the bugs. Plus the whole "we focused on making you play a selfish, evil character with few good choices" is an insult that's asking for yet more mods to fix. I REFUSE to join the Thieves Guild or DB just to get certain needed items or whatever! As with Oblivion, if I stuck to the base game I'd get bored with it quickly and at the base level I like Oblivion more. I'm also tired of "lore" as Bethesda retcons things frequently, 90% of a game's plot gets watered down into a few mentions in the next game, and at this rate with TES6 apparently not even being worked on, I doubt it's happening at all. I can't even imagine how they'll work around explaining the civil war without either ignoring it or ticking off 50% of the fans- and if they're just going to canonize stuff then there's no point in having choices.

[CyberDreams]

Doom 64 on XB1. Far Cry 2 via XB1 (still playing that game). Borderlands GOTY Enhanced Edition via XB1 and some Doom WADS on PC. I haven't tried Doom Eternal yet as i have too many games to play the way it is. Probably after i finish Far Cry 2 which should be soon than i'll play it. I stopped playing Far Cry 2 for about a month so now i'm behind in my gaming lol. I also mess with Doom and Doom II on XB1 sometimes as well. So i have quite a bit on my plate.

 

I've switched to playing a lot of games on my console as its somewhat easier for me but i still play Doom once in a while on my PC. Even though i don't mind playing Doom with a controller i do miss the finer/tighter control of the mouse/keyboard once in a while haha ;)

[seed]

9 hours ago, diosoth said:

I'm on my second playthrough of Skyrim, as some mods benefit more from a fresh start than being installed mid-point and some things I wanted to do differently.

 

Even with unofficial patches though the sheer number of bugs is almost infuriating. Various home bugs have popped up this time that didn't show the first(and I suspect an adoption expansion mod broke them), meaning I'm using the console to upgrade houses because buying things doesn't work right. T feel if they spent more initial dev time making things work(sorry, Todd, "it just works" isn't being honest with us) these bugs would not be here. That time went into minute side quests, easter eggs, books you'll probably never read... they focused on world building but not making sure the world works properly. Even bugs supposedly fixed by the unofficial patches still affect me.

 

Mod authors also get this and I suspect some of them aren't beta testing their content. I know guaranteeing full mod compatibility is impossible but too many mods failed to work right, and I'm positive that LOOT is doing more to break things than to make sure things work. I can go through comments on the Nexus and see others having the same issues with those mods. I wanted to try the Dragonborn alternate ending mod but over 50% of the comments are about how buggy it is. I only had to deal with one Oblivion mod that had such issues. I suspect random mod incompatibility is also what breaks the unofficial patches.

 

If it's issues that were supposedly fixed, then that sounds like mods conflicting with each other. It is entirely possible for mods to rely on different behavior and if another mod alters that, things can get ugly. This is why bashed and merge patches are a necessity sometimes. I never had any use for merged patches since the mods I used didn't conflict or interfere with each other, but I needed a bashed patch because most of my mods altered the leveled list in the world and I would sometimes not see the new items and equipment either in the world, or NPCs carrying them.

 

Load order tool are great though, but keep in mind that they aren't perfect, it's impossible for such a tool to perfectly arrange everything, which is why you sometimes need to manually adjust things after using them. That, at least, is better than CTDs... in my last playthrough I experienced this very frequently, likely caused by a mod conflict, but I could never troubleshoot it. Ugh, this is why I just cannot be arsed to revisit these games, because I NEED mods, but I'm simultaneously tired of troubleshooting every goddamned error, CTD, or mod conflict. The fact that some mods do not bother to provide a list of mods that are compatible (or not) and are safe to be used with each other is even worse, good luck with that...

 

9 hours ago, diosoth said:

The lack of underwater combat, the backwards magic & enchanting systems(taking apart existing equipment to "learn" the enchantments is worse than Oblivion relying on learned magic as a lot of enchantments are harder to find in the wild- still have yet to find a Soul Trap weapon at level 70 this time) and the useless state of dual-wielding also annoy me(2 swords are useless, and healing spell OR shield is a hard choice).

 

Something's definitely not right there, Soul Trap was among the first spells I learned in my playthroughs, along with Resist Fire/Frost, Fortify Enchanting, Alchemy, and Sneak. The more rare spells for me were Fortify Smithing, Unarmed Combat, and Resist Magick, but definitely not soul trap. Sounds like an user error to me since you do use mods, likely something going bonkers in the leveled lists. Bashed patches could help.

 

I've also never found dual-wielding weak or useless, in fact all my characters were insanely OP with that. Dragons? Pff, 3 dual-wield power attacks at level 70 and they're gone, that's just how OP I was - I did say AI overhauls were a must for me later in the game, even on Master. Legendary can go fuck itself because that's just cheap - all it does is doubling the health and damage output of the enemies, which can have ludicrous results. Also, cheap.

 

What I never bothered with was Block though. It's just too impractical and slow from my experience. As a result, I would sometimes just max it out with console commands and call it a day - and even then, I would do that just for the sake of more leveling and perks, that I would still not invest into blocking :v . One-handed with a spell, bows, or just spells was my go-to choice. My cost reduction equipment was also essentially god mode - I could cast Master level spells for essentially... 0 magicka cost. Not kidding and the way I achieved this was 100% legit, no cheating or anything. My Fortify Smithing potions were equally ludicrous - up to 147% !

 

9 hours ago, diosoth said:

Plus the whole "we focused on making you play a selfish, evil character with few good choices" is an insult that's asking for yet more mods to fix. I REFUSE to join the Thieves Guild or DB just to get certain needed items or whatever! As with Oblivion, if I stuck to the base game I'd get bored with it quickly and at the base level I like Oblivion more. I'm also tired of "lore" as Bethesda retcons things frequently, 90% of a game's plot gets watered down into a few mentions in the next game, and at this rate with TES6 apparently not even being worked on, I doubt it's happening at all. I can't even imagine how they'll work around explaining the civil war without either ignoring it or ticking off 50% of the fans- and if they're just going to canonize stuff then there's no point in having choices.

 

Eh, I'm completely fine with that honestly :D , these kinds of characters fit my personality after all, so... - what? I never said I was very pleasant under the hood!

 

And again, the factions need to have their benefits, so that sounds more like a "you" problem vs objectively wrong by design. If you don't encourage the player to join them because they have nothing to offer, why bother to begin with? Might as well just not make them. It's only natural to lock yourself away from their benefits if you refuse to join them.

 

TES VI is still worked on, though, but yeah not coming very soon. If that gives them more time to make the experience better, I'm okay with it. As long as that will actually be the case...

 

The Civil War is interesting though, but ultimately any choice they make WILL upset the fans, there's no way around it since choices have consequences. It's virtually impossible to please everyone in these situations, and when you try to do that, you end up pleasing none. I'm equally interested in seeing whether the Dark Brotherhood still survives in TES VI, but Skyrim was pretty clear that it wanted the DB to join them - and Titus Mede II actually not getting assassinated in TES VI would be a bomb, that's too big a thing to not be acknowledged in that game. Still, whether the DB survives afterwards or are eventually wiped out forever remains to be seen.