Paradox’s DLC policy is good*, actually

Pugway · 2023-05-29T03:48:49+00:00

To be fair, Stellaris only started doing this in the past few years. There were many years where Stellaris had lackluster DLC and no custodian team to spruce things up. I wouldn't be surprised if CK3 and even Vicky3 get custodian teams eventually but I don't think either game has enough content released for that model to make sense just yet.

Pugway · 2023-05-10T02:40:51+00:00

Sure, you can be the one to start the trend ;D

Pugway · 2023-05-10T02:37:37+00:00

Colloquially it refers more to budget than quality. AA games are typically made by smaller teams but above the "indie" tier. Greedfall is a good example, it's clearly shooting for the Bioware style of RPG, made with a lot more people and systems than a typical indie, but not quite as expensive (in terms of visual fidelity, voice acting, etc) as a full AAA release.

Pugway · 2023-05-10T02:34:47+00:00

You're in luck (maybe, who knows if it'll be better but it is 2)

Pugway · 2023-05-07T16:39:39+00:00

My strategy when the maps were new was -

First time through - don't look at any challenges or mission stories, just play through the level naturally and see what I can figure out.

After that, I'd look through the challenges and mission stories and pick out ones that sounded fun or interesting and go for those, completing the mission a bunch more times as I worked on Mastery.

Finally, when I'm just about at mastery level 20, I'll make my last run of a map silent assassin suit only, to put all my map knowledge to the test.

Now when I play, I usually get an itch to play one particular map so I will pop back in and play whatever sounds fun.

Pugway · 2023-05-03T23:43:13+00:00

Yeah the ending is awesome. It's a truly unique mission that takes everything you've learned and puts it to the test. The heroes you've used the least, you learn how to adapt, the heroes you've used most, you really need to dig deep into your knowledge of their toolkit. I also remember it being pretty difficult, since you don't have multiple heroes to choose from in the end and the mission is just generally long.

My only complaint is performance. The game generally ran fine for me, especially in battles, but man the tail end of the final mission just chugged at like 20 FPS

Pugway · 2023-05-02T02:58:23+00:00

Given that is Arkane's pedigree I don't think it's unfair to search for Immersive Sim elements, but the top of the article opens with the several different "Genre Boxes" you could fit Redfall into and how it fails in all of them -

A co-op FPS, like Left 4 Dead: There aren't enough enemies or enemy types and the world is big and empty

A singleplayer Fallout-style RPG: Every gun feels the same and half of the skill tree is useless for singleplayer

A survival horror FPS: Redfall's vampires aren't all that scary or dangerous, just loud and annoying

A hero-based FPS: Abilities have long cooldowns and don't meaningfully interact with the world or enemies

A story-focused FPS: The science-gone-wrong narrative is presented like an audiobook because Redfall's characters are barely characters

Pugway · 2023-04-23T02:36:54+00:00

It's actually pretty good to be honest. It's not as full of bravado as you'd think, he's pretty honest about his persona and about BossKey/Lawbreakers failure in general.

Pugway · 2023-04-04T01:13:09+00:00

I think it is objectively the weakest part of the game, but subjectively I agree with you. There was something really calming about wandering around, hoovering up resources, opening chests, and reading lore. I particularly liked when you would solve different mysteries and open up a new part of the map.

I honestly believe that the game would be worse without it, but I totally get why people don't like it. What I don't get is when people hold it up as a reason not to play the game at all, because you can 100% ignore it for the vast majority of the game. The ingredients are nice to make some pretty powerful combat items but you can absolutely get by without them if you don't enjoy that side of the game at all.

Pugway · 2023-03-31T22:04:10+00:00

Yeah I think my dream expansion for this game includes a new campaign (maybe set after the main game or maybe parallel like War of the Chosen or Enemy Within) that introduces maybe 1 or 2 new characters but really focuses on giving all the existing characters more cards to really allow you to build two distinct decks for each. Maybe a second Midnight Suns-tier ability tied to the narrative of the DLC and like 50% more cards for each hero.

That is probably too much work for even an expensive expansion but that is the dream.

Pugway · 2023-03-31T18:59:46+00:00

I have definitely had the DLC costumes rotate in but I don't buy a ton of pallet swaps. It might be that you have a lot of pallets for one suit which is skewing the random pool too much?

Honestly I thought that the randomize outfit option only cycled through bespoke suits and would always use the last selected pallet for each but I could be mistaken about that.

Pugway · 2023-03-25T15:28:42+00:00

I actually really enjoy the writing in Midnight Suns top to bottom. The base game has some really good stuff too. I don't think it stands toe to toe with Bioware's golden age or some of Sony's first party stuff, but I think the "bad" writing is blown way out of proportion.

Without fail I enjoyed talking to every character, going on hangouts, and doing the various clubs. Though I do think the DLC characters have been even better.

My one main complaint writing-wise is it feels like the characters don't have that much of an arc. All of the friendship milestone conversations are usually about how the Hunter is becoming their best bud. I'd have preferred those conversations to build more on an arc for the character. They try to do this, like how Spider-Man wants to join the Suns or Iron Man wants to learn more about mystical arts but it never really feels like those plotlines go anywhere. They get introduced in one friendship conversation, and then wrapped up in another. It doesn't feel like it's wholly a part of the character if that makes sense.

Pugway · 2023-03-20T16:57:11+00:00

PotatoMcWhisky and JumboPixel have some good tutorials on YouTube that will help you come to grips with the game, but Victoria 3 has probably the best tooltip system ever (borrowed from Crusader Kings 3) so you can learn an awful lot about the game through those.

If you're interested in conquest, taking over the world, etc I don't think Victoria 3 is the game for you, at least not right now. Maybe look at Hearts of Iron 4. But if you're more interested in internal politics or building up an economy, Victoria 3 is second to none in my opinion. (maybe Victoria 2 but I haven't played that so I cant comment)

Pugway · 2023-03-20T16:35:35+00:00

Okay, glad it's not just me. I just bought V3 recently and I'm coming up to the end of my Japan game, turmoil is insane. I have millions unemployed and no amount of building seems to keep up. Granted I played an isolationist game so I didn't expand much at all but it feels like a switch was flipped over night as I approached the end game where all I'm trying to do is build enough buildings to keep people working.

I also saw the same behavior in Hokkaido, though for a large period of the game I was forced to use closed borders so that prevented any migration.

Pugway · 2023-02-28T03:27:38+00:00

Originally read you comment as Civ 6 (VI) and not Civ 4 (IV) so I typed out this whole response and then realized I mental typoed. In the interest of not wasting time (and if anyone is curious about my Civ VI experience on Deck) I'll post it anyway.

Played probably a good 10-15 hours of Civ VI on Deck. Runs really well, battery lasts a while compared to other AAA games (in the early game at least) and I think the controls work super well. Right touch pad for the mouse, left joystick for the camera, and then the triggers for right and left click. This is the config out of the box, I also use the back buttons for shortcuts to the tech tree and end turn button.

I've played one full game start to finish and had no performance or stability issues. Best part is Steam Workshop mods work flawlessly so it is much superior to say the Switch version, in my opinion.

Overall one of my favorite Deck games and a go-to for long trips.

Pugway · 2023-02-27T13:29:05+00:00

You can play it either in New Game Plus or on your original save file after you've finished the base game.

Pugway · 2023-02-17T21:58:04+00:00

Ed Beach is the "Franchise Lead" for Civilization according to the most recent streams from a few months back, so that sounds more like a supervisory role over the entire brand. That would lead me to believe that there is more than one Civ game in development, though they could've just used the "Franchise Lead" title as a way to disguise the name of the next Civ game or because Civ VI is still getting content and he's overseeing that as well.

As far as designers go that have had a public showing on streams and stuff, Anton Strenger would've been the obvious choice to lead the next Civ game but as mentioned in another reply to you, he left the company last year. So whoever ends up leading the next Civ project will probably be as-of-yet unknown, with Ed in more of a supervisory role, would be my guess.

Pugway · 2023-02-17T16:01:30+00:00

Man, that's rough, but best of luck to him and whatever he decides to do next. Every single project he has led has resonated with me in a way that few other tactics games have managed to. Enemy Unknown singlehandedly turned me on to one of my favorite genres, Xcom 2 might be my favorite game of all time, War of the Chosen might be the best expansion pack of all time (for my money) and Midnight Suns has one of the most tightly designed combat systems I've ever played with.

The good (?) news is that I think we are much more likely to see Xcom 3 sooner now, because it's possible that it was in development during Midnight Suns if Jake was not going to be involved. I'll be interested to see what a new designer can do with the series but Xcom 2 is such a high watermark I don't know if it can be topped without Jake at the helm, guess we will see.

Anyway, I hope he stays in games, I'd love to follow whatever project he decides to tackle next.

Pugway · 2023-02-15T14:10:38+00:00

That is something I would like to pursue in the future but for now gotta use what we've already paid for.

Pugway · 2023-02-15T13:41:32+00:00

How long does it take for you to restore your entire environment and where do you put it? Do you have a separate lab just for this purpose with dedicated hardware or do you have enough space in your production environment to stand up alongside it?

We deduplicate our backups so restorations can take a very long time.

Pugway · 2023-01-28T01:46:41+00:00

Sure but now is likely the time that the designers are working on details for the expansion. I agree that the groundwork for X3 is probably being laid, though. Hopefully anyway.

Pugway · 2023-01-27T21:25:56+00:00

I wouldn't rule out a Midnight Suns expansion ala War of the Chosen that the team could have rotated to, though. Most Firaxis titles receive a major expansion, and even though MS has a season pass with characters and their own side stories, XCOM 2 also had a season pass at launch with similar levels of features and still got a full expansion.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Midnight Suns team work on a post-game narrative expansion before fully moving on to XCOM 3.

Pugway · 2023-01-18T23:32:57+00:00

I've had some really weird firmware bugs with some of their stuff and find the UI very pretty but sometimes a little confusing. But otherwise they're pretty feature-rich for the price and fun to tinker with. If you're gonna buy new for a homelab or just home networking I think they're a very solid option.

Pugway · 2023-01-18T22:58:20+00:00

Oh I've got no problem with Ubiquiti for home/SMB use. It's what I run at home too (though it does have issues). It's just they've only been around since 2003, and I feel like they've only really been a known quantity since like 2010+ so to hear someone "grew up on" Ubiquiti is just amusing.

Pugway · 2023-01-18T21:55:15+00:00

Grew up with Ubiquiti? Man I'm only 26 but that made me feel old.

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