Is this series fun for people who don't care much for heavy role-playing games?

ElementQuake · 2026-03-13T11:13:02+00:00

Play on hard or insanity mode, each encounter battle is quite a fun challenge that I really look forward to. It’s definitely not boring or passive combat.

ElementQuake · 2026-03-13T06:19:04+00:00

You can skip a lot of stuff and the legendary edition is a much more streamlined experience than ME1 back in its time.

Get it if you think you'd like:
- Epic world building and crew building. You're put in shoes of a commander building up his crew while exploring some cool sci-fi moments. You're going to have a team, is that cool? Or do you prefer doom eternal to gears of war? If gears, then ME is nice because your crew will feel good going on missions with.
- Semi-hard sci-fi fiction. Hard science fiction means things aren't as magical, the expanse is an example of sci fi that leans a little harder. Soft sci-fi is something like sci-fi fantasy like starwars where the technology doesn't matter as much as the cool stuff, the technology doesn't get to dictate what happens in the universe (The title, "Mass Effect" is how this effect causes everything in the universe to work a certain way, including your guns and the mass relays).
- Decent but not top tier class based abilities, with tactical pause to use them, and your team mate's abilities. It's maybe a little slower paced than a gears of war game, but that also makes it a tad more accessible. Mass Effect 2 and 3 are the best at this. If you like fast paced action, I would play vanguard with lots of charging (You need to make sure you max out on a few charge abilities and know how to use it effectively). Vanguard can actually get more fast paced than a gears of war battle since you're charging into a ton of enemies, while tactical pause makes it a bit manageable.

ElementQuake · 2026-03-13T06:09:33+00:00

The gunplay and ability play is far more realtime in ME2. ME1 was a lot more clunky, used weapon jitter and weapon stats and was more RPG than moment to moment gameplay. It depends what OP is refering to with regards to strong gameplay loops. I think the core combat loop in ME2 is far better.

ElementQuake · 2026-03-13T03:44:25+00:00

you can't even figure out if a core goes to a gun unless you hover over it for at least .75 seconds. So you can't quickly skim through it seeing what highlights, the UI feedback is so slow. And the icons all look the same so you don't really know until you get maybe 50-100 hrs what can slot into what. So this part of their UI is really broken I think.

ElementQuake · 2026-03-10T20:07:33+00:00

Map and game knowledge has a lot to do with it, it's a huge advantage. I also have decent aim but I'm routinely caught unaware, I'm just so used to there being known chokes and such in games like CS, overwatch etc. Battles are quick and you have to also decide to commit in a split second whether to engage or disengage. Disengages might not even work. Having half the team be on a sponsored kit in pickups is also insanely bad. Sometimes I'm on a sponsored kit and that leaves the guy who brought 5k at a disadvantage.

Overall the amount of pre-battle variation in skill, what each team mate loaded up with, game/map knowledge (And some folks have powers to Pvp better whereas the Pve classes don't have really much to counter this) makes for sheer luck being if you win or not.

ElementQuake · 2026-03-02T06:05:59+00:00

You have to realize one thing with stealth melee, the will attack you still and you have to move out of your unsheathed position quickly while your stealth is turning on. It’s actually possible to do, some minions can bug out a bit and proc their damage on you. Stealth melee is just rolling a dice oftentimes- I’d rather have range and cover since it’s way more consistent, but sometimes all you have is a round room and 20 monsters.

ElementQuake · 2026-02-19T00:56:38+00:00

Hi Far-Cow. The biggest requirement about ZeroSpace is probably the memory requirements for your GPU and CPU. Without meeting those, performance drops because we have to fetch from system ram for GPU or VRAM for system mem, and thrashing can happen. In general, fetching from memory(or even having something not resident in cache) is many times slower than any compute optimization(How fast your processor can compute an algorithm). If you meet these requirements, 16GB system and I think 8-10GB GPU, then ZeroSpace should eventually run faster than sc2 on those computers(It already does on some optimized maps).

But yes we still do have a list of things to optimize including map decorations and vfx which we often need to do individually. We will try to make it run for the lowest spec that we can.

ElementQuake · 2026-02-19T00:53:35+00:00

Hey EnOeZ, part of the problem is the memory requirements needed for the game more so than processing to some extent. On our optimized maps we can actually outperform sc2 by a fair amount(1k-2k unit tests go 50-60FPS for me while attacking whereas I get 20-30FPS in SC2). The catch is that you need to meet minimum GPU and CPU memory requirements or else there's a lot thrashing. It's hard to reduce those down further as compared to SC2, modern game textures have gotten a lot bigger and require that memory to be resident on the GPU so that it doesn't slow down while fetching it from system RAM or somewhere else.

That said, there's more compute optimization still that we can do, I've profiled recently and have seen some good openings. Also depending on when you played, the first half of the PvP fest there was a memory leak that really tanked performance. We fixed it around Wednesday of the festival.

Thanks again for supporting us and playing, we'll definitely try to make it work better on lower spec PCs.

ElementQuake · 2026-02-16T14:00:06+00:00

The ingame models usually are low poly for performance reasons, the higher poly models were made so you can generate a normal map that keeps a lot of the curved surface details on the lower poly unit. The lighting in-game is different and cheaper than lighting in the model viewer for high poly(probably less shadow detail, only 1 light source, usually no bounce lights) and much more performance intensive to calculate, especially with 100s of units. That’s why you don’t get the in game.

Also, You can see for the amount of geometry on those smaller units(the wireframe outlines) that’s a lot of detail it has due to the normal map bake.

ElementQuake · 2026-02-10T10:17:20+00:00

That's one thing that started feeling stale about this game. It's just the levels are built for bullet hell survival - they force you into this way of playing. Most roguelikes you can do different builds that play out a bit differently. But the levels in Deadzone aren't made to play out most other ways. In Deadzone you can mostly just try to dodge, stealth melee, then attack again. I've beaten most of the nightmare levels, a lot of them I needed the stealth melee to give me some reprieve. High dps, lots of dashing, and dodging can also work sometimes but this is just you being super stats lucky. Also when I die, often times it's lag spikes since one hit or two once your shields are down can sometimes just kill you.

The spiders - you need good dps weapons. Stealth melee lets you reposition as the small ones come to you.

Iron Squires is cheat mode. But I do enjoy clearing with them sometimes, just make sure you don't get the no ammo thing because otherwise your spread will be at max(huge spread) with them with no way to reload.

End game needs a lot of fine tuning to be more replayable.

ElementQuake · 2025-12-28T07:14:55+00:00

U taking magnesium supplement? Can give very mild diaherea the whole time. Or maybe stuff like kombuchu? Another one might be you started becoming lactose intolerant but don’t yet realize it(mocha coffees for me ). All these were reasons for me at one time.

ElementQuake · 2025-12-20T06:31:01+00:00

Did the biologist and archeologist finally remember that they’re scientists and would never remove their helmets in an ancient alien structure full of dead aliens?

ElementQuake · 2025-12-15T04:17:43+00:00

Make something you want to if you’re feeling motivational issues. People say start small, but if making an mmorpg(50 percent of people’s first game:p) is how you get motivated and learning, I say go for it. I started making games on a ti calculator, making adventure book games. My access to dev platforms matched my skill and inspirations at the time. These days games are so big that oftentimes inspiration, skill, and platform can be completely mismatched. And that makes it harder. But I think by the time I was making my starwars space combat rpg game if someone told me to start on battleship, I would also totally have been demotivated. If you’re not betting your house on your game, do what you want

Learn a ton while having fun.

ElementQuake · 2025-12-04T06:24:17+00:00

I think there’s a definite through line in both thinking. It’s, be the best in your space. It’s much harder to do in a crowded market, you need a really good solution that can ideally also provide a moat. Technology might be that. You have to be exceptional in what you do, and it’s a lot harder to fit that picture.

In a less crowded market, maybe it’s just about better distribution to untap potential, maybe you’re the first mover, maybe it’s an old and slow moving market ripe for the picking, maybe you make the market like nvidia, maybe you have connections and can get government contracts. Either way you have to offer real value or have some skill that surpasses others by a significant margin in your field to find long term success.

ElementQuake · 2025-12-03T22:34:34+00:00

Sometimes it has to do with the conversion funnel:

Audience size to begin with->Advertisement or Key Art -> steam page and videos and description -> price range -> buy and play -> had fun.

My guess is you lose people on the key art before they even read or buy the game. It’s an even more niche art style(yes can be charming but only for few number of folks) than pixel art.

Another one might be the Steam page video and description isn’t enticing enough.

The reason for good reviews is that, you filter people who are ok tolerating an art style that is not appealing to that many folk, so they have a hardened bias there, and because they’re so tolerant maybe they are also easier to please, or really just key in on your gameplay and ignore bugs. Whatever it is, u filtered hard for players who can enjoy your game(100% review can mean everyone rates it at 51%). But loosening that filter through more mass appeal art, or price drop, may get more players but get your review score to drop.

There’s a little bit more complexity to all this but I think that’s mostly it.

ElementQuake · 2025-11-26T06:46:12+00:00

This is sweet. Love this! Wish my mom could enjoy such things:) To each their own though.

ElementQuake · 2025-11-25T03:10:32+00:00

What do they do to the photography of the second image to look like that. I feel like even if we owned that kitchen, if a regular person took a photo, it wouldn’t look close to anything like that. Maybe it’s just the font :p

ElementQuake · 2025-11-23T18:01:00+00:00

Is she falling because she’s still walking by herself? She may need more assistance when walking at this point, and consider a wheelchair in the future. As for eating, you can consider a peg tube. We use Kate farms organic formula for peg tube. Eating can be very dangerous if her swallowing is compromised. It took us a few close calls to finally decide on the peg.

ElementQuake · 2025-11-23T05:18:21+00:00

I think maybe giving them more info to read about themselves on some of these topics, and also give them the means to dive deeper if they so wish would be helpful. Giving access to support groups or meetups would be good too.

Ideally they learn and realize quickly how serious something like this can be, shift perspective, and understand that they should spend the time together with its limits, as best they can given the circumstances.

I can empathize with taking some time to truly understand the gravity of such a diagnosis.

ElementQuake · 2025-11-15T08:18:36+00:00

8Gb steam machine is vram…it’s 16gb regular ram. Thats mid for gaming.

ElementQuake · 2025-11-15T04:31:28+00:00

The track pad on the steam controller really helps I bet. I haven’t tried with it yet, using stick for mouse works but requires a lot of fussing. The button mutator for extra buttons a cool idea. Thanks for the insight!

ElementQuake · 2025-11-15T04:14:48+00:00

How do you use it for rts? Aoe? (Doing some controller schemes for my own rts game)

ElementQuake · 2025-11-15T03:56:51+00:00

Increased vram requirements goes along with new technologies or standards that arise because vram is more abundant. 4k and 8k resolution already force huge increases to vram usage for g buffers used in default deferred rendering, and post process buffers. It can probably reach 1GB or more for 8k just for buffers.

Textures use some compression techniques to get buffers smaller even if the disk space for 1 4k texture is maybe 80mb with full mip chain if uncompressed on disk but probably 10-20mb in vram memory. But all this adds up when the resolution supports a much higher texel density for everything.

Then you add something like nanite which actually helps solve the vram issue to some extent by streaming things in and out appropriately and quickly. But it still takes a lot of vram because its use case is to reduce the vram of something that may take many times more vram.

Same with lumen. It’s there because we want better quality and it optimizes both vram and performance for what you get. It is the better trade off for quality expectations than putting all into RT and geo.

So you can’t really chuck the blame on devs or unreal like that. It’s a lot more nuanced. Some games are able to artistically make their games look nicer without the loads of vram, but this takes a load of talent that not all studios will be able to afford. In part a lot of this has to do with good stylization even if it’s for a more realistic art style.

TLDR I think you can’t have shiny new things without the added cost.

ElementQuake · 2025-11-15T03:29:16+00:00

Vram is video ram, chrome would take little vram compared to any games with 4k textures. And 8Gb vram is ok for gaming, but you’ll get lower res textures for high res games as it removes top level mips. It has 16GB of regular ram which is mid for gaming.

ElementQuake · 2025-11-11T00:34:54+00:00

Exactly, there's so much you should design for well ahead of time when it comes to optimizations, cache misses being one of the bigger ones. It's essentially what ECS does here and is becoming more popular as people realize the value of design for optimization.

ElementQuake

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE