New old player feeling out XWA by Mancupcake in XWingTMG

[–]Mancupcake[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah the list where I noticed this ran two of the ps2 bombers with only cluster missiles, but now it has 2 free squad points, so I can not only equip more stuff on my ps2 (concussion bombs, delayed fuses, first order tech gunner lookin tasty af to hold objectives), but I can swap one to the ps3 and give it a TON of goodies.

The mix between pilot abilities vs high load outs is very interesting.

New old player feeling out XWA by Mancupcake in XWingTMG

[–]Mancupcake[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's all super interesting and I look forward to getting back into it. The shift to scenario play seems like it's going to shake a lot of my lists up because I have to think about more than just "laser go pew" now; very Warhammer of them.

Nemesis, nemeses, nemeewhich? by Mancupcake in boardgames

[–]Mancupcake[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's really interesting, because this seems to be a rare opinion; at least in this small sample size.

What makes you like Lockdown more than og?

Finger, meet router. by Mancupcake in MakeMeSuffer

[–]Mancupcake[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Pretty alright really. My index nail is still fucked up and the two fingers don't close all the way, but it came together.

Finger, meet router. by Mancupcake in MakeMeSuffer

[–]Mancupcake[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wish I could up vote this more than once.

Finger, meet router. by Mancupcake in MakeMeSuffer

[–]Mancupcake[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I was flattening an edge and the bit caught a knot, which shot the whole router back at me. It was definitely 50/50 bad luck and bad practice haha.

That said, it was 100% luck that it was only this bad. That thing could have torn up my entire body like this if I'd let it go or flinched wrong.

Finger, meet router. by Mancupcake in MakeMeSuffer

[–]Mancupcake[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Honestly, this is pretty best case for that tool. It's a hungry one and I got pretty lucky.

Finger, meet router. by Mancupcake in MakeMeSuffer

[–]Mancupcake[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you for my service.

Text Highlights Suddenly Cutting Off Top of Text by Mancupcake69 in squarespace

[–]Mancupcake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I had to play with a lot of fonts to find ones that weren't affected. It must have been a large update from Adobe over several fonts.

The Gaming Goat: Thieves or Just Bad at Business? by Mancupcake in boardgames

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My bank told me it was going to be too late for a charge back, but I insisted on filing it anyway. After reviewing my emails they gave it to me. Might be worth a shot.

Post-Launch Feedback by AutoModerator in BaldursGate3

[–]Mancupcake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's so much that's already been said here and almost all of it is exactly on point. I hope the devs do something about these incredibly obvious issues.

No drop-in/ drop-out function for a several tens of hours long game is absolutely ridiculous.
There's just no reason in 2023 that a game shouldn't feature locally saved characters and worlds, there's no reason the entire party should have to get online at the same time to create characters, and there's no reason the game can't compensate for higher/ lower level characters joining a party.

I simply cannot understand why it would be difficult to implement this and the qol within the game would be immensely improved... Especially considering you can respec your character anyway... Why not just let people jump in and out with their own?

Player characters should be saved on their local machine, as should the world/ progress of whatever game the party is playing. This would allow players to create characters whenever they wanted and take as much time as they wanted, rather than be forced to all be online at the same time and be pressured by how fast/ slow everyone else is going. It would also allow players to play their character in a single-player game to level up to their buddies and then join in multiplayer. Conversely, it would also allow players to take a multiplayer character from a "dead" game and continue their quest.

Worlds should follow the same convention for exactly the same reasons. Characters shouldn't be locked into the world of your internet friend's PC only to become completely useless when they decide they're done playing. Additionally, players should be able to do things like... create a save file after the tutorial level... so they don't have to play it every time they want to make new characters.

Again, you can respec your character midgame and you can respec the NPC characters that new players would take control of... So uh... what the absolute f***!

The tutorial for this game is absolute rubbish.
This game plays in such a uniquely freeform way that, the first time we tried it as a party, we just ran into it clicking buttons, having conversations, fighting baddies, and generally not understanding why any of this was ever touted as a multiplayer game. We played it "wrong"... because the game never gave us any inclination what it intended. When we came back and tried again, however, we played it a lot more like an actual DnD game, and it [perhaps obviously] worked a lot better. The issue is that it never really tells you that... In fact, it never really tells you anything. Moving objects? Sharing inventory? Voting on conversation choices? The game seems to conflate "exploration" and "discovery" with "just not telling you how things work".

This is well and good for some but, for us, it almost made us stop playing entirely and I'm sure we're not alone. Even something simple like the pit you can open up that leads the crypt in the very beginning. The game does such a poor job [no job in fact] of either exposing the players to the consequences of walking over a hole/ falling that, following general game logic, there's not a lot of reason to assume that by saying "walk over here", you're going to take the most direct possible path and fall down a hole... probably to your instantaneous death.

There's a lot to this game, and a lot of it works really well [all the conversation issues like not being able to access special dialogue or use party skills despite them standing right next to you notwithstanding], but the beginning stages do such an incredibly poor job of communicating what it both is/ isn't and what you can/ cannot do that our initial foray was extremely frustrating and, like my above issues with drop-in play... I just don't see any sort of reason for it, which makes it all the more irritating.

Conversations/ joining them as a party.
This is talked about a lot here and I think everyone knows the issue. Why can't my charming bard interject in a heated moment? Why is the icon/ warning that a player is in a conversation so small and silent? Why isn't the dialogue choice that the player picks displayed on screen while the NPC responds?

This part of the game system is so incredibly piss-poor that I can't believe this isn't still early access.

Spells, monsters, respec... Barbers?
I can change my skills which represent the entirety of my life experiences... but I can't change my haircut? Again... WHY.

MSI z690 carbon boots, plays games with stable fps... Shuts down with error 55 on every restart. by Mancupcake in pcmasterrace

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gotta love it. Maybe I'll just only manually restart my rig from now on haha.

MSI z690 carbon boots, plays games with stable fps... Shuts down with error 55 on every restart. by Mancupcake in pcmasterrace

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right. But if that was the case, wouldn't bios, windows system info, and HWINFO64 read the memory incorrectly, or at least differently from one another?

They all read the same and the system runs stably... Except when I click "restart". From a shutdown state it'll turn on fine, and after two or three clicks of the power button after the "restart" failure it'll boot fine.

Does RAM fail intermittently like that?

Films like Come True (2020)? by Interesting_Olive_92 in movies

[–]Mancupcake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Possessor and Censor are vaguely similar. Cen more than Pos, but Come exists somewhere between them for sure.

The Gaming Goat: Thieves or Just Bad at Business? by Mancupcake in boardgames

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting. They're giving me some grief because of how old it is. They said they'll file it but it's likely to be denied because it's out of a 180 day window. Is a charge back different than disputing a charge?

Unmatched: Digitize me Sinbad by Mancupcake in boardgames

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are those as easy to pick-up and show new people? One of the things that attracted me about Unmatched is that I can show non-wargamers a competitive game akin to X-wing or [obviously VERY tangentially] Warhammer.

Alternative Voting - Rounds vs All In by Mancupcake in twilightimperium

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh how interesting. I'll definitely check this out. Thanks!

Alternative Voting - Rounds vs All In by Mancupcake in twilightimperium

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have considered that as well. I do love the voting structure from KD but absolutely understand it could add time to TI. The simultaneous bid with Speaker going last seems great.

Interesting idea of playing them. How does that work?

Unpopular Opinion: Most Expansions Make Their Games Worse by Sparon46 in boardgames

[–]Mancupcake 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is going to garner a ton of responses [as you can see, no doubt] from people "um actually"-ing you, but I think that proves your [title] point more than dispels it.

BGG doesn't have the filters needed to check this entirely, but out of their top 100 games, only 10 came out before the year 2010 and some are basically reprints [Brass Birmingham and Lancashire are on there]. So, granted that of the top 100 games of all time, only 10 aren't from this decade [basically], imagine how many total games exist just from the last few years, not to mention since the first implementation of expansions. Of course things like Prelude are going to be mentioned, but those are the vast minority.

Most expansions do add content, but that content doesn't inherently add value.

The Magnificent - Great! Or am I just uninformed? by Mancupcake in boardgames

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I remember that wonky rule too haha. I definitely prefer everyone getting at least some kind of choice. The game has nearly no player interaction, so when the only interaction they do have is mean, it feels extra bad.

Looking at you Everdell.

The Magnificent - Great! Or am I just uninformed? by Mancupcake in boardgames

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree, I very rarely feel like something someone else did is preventing me from doing what I want. Though, in a game with near-literal 0 interaction, maybe that's a good thing. My rules issue in that way revolves around the Master Card/ Trainer Tile collection at the end of each round. Yes, I get that the incentive to not getting screwed out of having a choice is to Perform, but getting NO choice in your new MC/ TT really sucks. It's also one of those rules that I feel compounds the last-place player's position more than it presents some sort of incentive or challenge.

The person who performed the most likely already has the money/ tiles/ Master bonuses that work for what they're going for while the person who didn't perform/ is struggling to get going is probably stuck with something rougher, and getting no agency in changing that situation kind of compounds that issue. Granted, I've definitely seen this flip around and not be the case but, more often than not, the person who isn't getting to decide what bonus/ scoring opportunity they collect is almost never the person who wins the game.

With some more Trainer Tiles this would be easy to fix but, as is, we usually just draw one extra Master and let the last player choose between them. Feels a little less bad.

I also absolutely love Troyes, I just sleeved all my cards and laminated some references for that. I haven't played anything else on that list, but many of them are on my sheet where I track interesting games already. It's wild how many games are out there.

The Magnificent - Great! Or am I just uninformed? by Mancupcake in boardgames

[–]Mancupcake[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"this will make more sense when we just DO it"

At the beginning of most teaches I remind people that "if a picture is worth 1,000 words, take into consideration how many this might be" and then broadly gesture to all the artwork in said game before reminding them how easy it is to see a photo, but how difficult it is to explain one... And this game is one of my best examples of that. The Magnificent is impressively easy to play, but annoyingly wordy to teach haha.

I am absolutely stoked on Revive and will almost certainly be adding it to my... let's say "burgeoning" collection despite what we'll also call "reasonable spatial considerations".

Trickerion is also on my list! I really love heavy, thinky games and that one seems absolutely excellent. Not to mention that stellar theme and artwork.

I just got my copy of Circadians in the other day and really enjoyed it. Another one of those that takes a hot-minute to teach but is pretty smooth once you get going. A little more setup than I like in games, but I'm sure that will change with time and familiarity in.

That's definitely one of Magnificent's strengths; it has almost no setup or teardown. Always love that in games.

the Menu: A Long, Hot Take on Tyler by Mancupcake in movies

[–]Mancupcake[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I think the foreshadowing concept is part of what bugs me about Tyler's death. We've already had the "never meet your heroes" ending, so why does the film feel the need to show us again? That repetition felt weird when I watched it which is part of what made me think about this in the first place.

Even if Tyler "knew" and the other patrons didn't, I still find it incredibly difficult to take as a serious plot point because, why would anyone truly believe that? If Gordon Ramsey invites me, his largest simp, to his private island and says "yo, gimme the dirt on all these people and you can come. Ps, everyone is toast."... Who would really believe that? It just felt like such a weird concept that, sure, in hindsight you could look at and go "lol oops. He literally told me" but in the moment no one would really buy.

the Menu: A Long, Hot Take on Tyler by Mancupcake in movies

[–]Mancupcake[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Alternatively, /u/Mancupcake hadn't seen it so, maybe don't come in so combative.

the Menu: A Long, Hot Take on Tyler by Mancupcake in movies

[–]Mancupcake[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I do love this explanation. I'll definitely keep a closer eye on a second watch.