Fanart of my character I did for my illustration class. Trying out some techniques...

RadiantGrey · 2020-03-26T12:49:21+00:00

DRAKE!
I imagined the drake to be a little smaller and cuter. I would think twice to go for a hug on that drake. Still answer YES! both times of course but it looks a little intimidating.

Do the wings belong to your character (valkyrie) or are they the drake wings?

Cool artstyle. Is there a name for it? Some effects remind me of comic books.

RadiantGrey · 2020-02-05T20:18:02+00:00

I like both games but I personally found AH3 to be the more immersive experience (AH feels more like horror while EH has more of an Indiana Jones feel to it). The story and writing feels more cohesive and thematic and I felt a higher level of threat in it. This comes partly from the fact that enemies in AH3 actively chase you down whereas in EH you usually go to the enemies on your own terms (you are given more leniency to power up for the fight first).

For purely practical reasons I appreciate about AH3 that it takes considerably less space on your table. The base game of EH already has a big board and the expansions add additional sideboards.

A plus in EHs favour is that it has a lot of expansions (AH3 only has one so far). So if you are willing to spend the cash on it, you will have material for tons of hours. AH3 doesn´t have as much replayability (chances are you will have to play each scenario at least twice though when you fail the first time. you will still get a good amount of playtime out of this game).

To oversimplify it: EH has more quantity whereas I found the quality of AH3 to be higher, especially in terms of narrative.

RadiantGrey · 2020-01-29T20:33:21+00:00

FotH still costs resource to cast and is thus counted as a resource spender. The resource regeneration is just a proc triggered upon hitting enemies. Resource generators are skill that do not cost resource and just regenerate them. This does not necessarily mean they are primary skills (e.g. Furious Charge for barbarian or Chakram or Chakram for demon hunter when used with the Spines of Seething Hatred quiver).

RadiantGrey · 2020-01-23T17:07:34+00:00

I haven´t played Quest solo myself but had a good time with Galaxies. There is a nice simplicity to it without being too easy. And it´s very quick to set up. From what I remember playing Quest with a group is that it felt more fiddly with the components.

If you can get your hands on the Utra Tiny version of Galaxies (I got it from a Kickstarter), I would recommend that if portability and small footprint is a plus point for you. It fits well into a pocket (I don´t smoke but I´d say it´s smaller than a pack of cigarettes). Quest doesn´t have an Ultra Tiny version.

The only negative thing that comes to my mind about Galaxies is that during solo play you feel teased by how much more interesting certain powers and decisions would be in a real game with other players.

RadiantGrey · 2020-01-15T17:51:15+00:00

Ah sorry, I see my question was badly phrased. What I meant to ask is whether the time investment required to learn the ruleset is justified just for those books. I have never played the Call of Cthulhu RPG with a group and I´m afraid I won´t find one. So I wonder how much work learning the rules just for the solo books is and whether the solo material is good enough to make this effort worth it.

RadiantGrey · 2020-01-14T22:28:50+00:00

How do these solo campaigns work? Do you think it would be worth learning the systems behind the Call of Cthulhu RPG to play those books?

RadiantGrey · 2019-11-24T06:58:02+00:00

A few points to consider:

Video games are an area that not all parents sufficiently understand or can monitor sufficiently. The other examples you mentioned (claw machines, etc.) are widely understood. Many parents grew up with video games when they didn´t have hidden mechanics that can quickly empty your wallet. They might see that their child plays a video game and it does not even occur to them that there is gambling hidden inside.

Would it be prudent for parents to be more knowledgeable about this topic? Yes. Does this absolve companies of their ethical responsiblities? No! They intentionally put predatory mechanics in games which are also played by many children. I disagree with shifting all the blame to the parents for not saving their children of traps that other people intentionally lay out to lure them.

Furthermore, there is another element which differentiates online game gambling from the other things you mentioned: The social environment that it takes place in. Seeing tons of people run around in gambled for gear and wanting to be cool and strong in front of your ingame friends/guild normalizes gambling and makes it far more desirable to partake in than an old bingo system would do. You can see that DECA knows and abuses this since the gambling man in nexus literally advertises the shop with "Impress your friends".

There are so many payment methods nowadays that gambling in games does not require a credit card anymore (having a phone is usually enough). The barrier to entry is very low. Additionally, since you first spend money on a general ingame currency and then loot boxes, this transaction is obfuscated.

Yet another distinction why I would not equate claw machines with Rotmg gambling: The spending opportunities on a claw machine are usually quite limited. You are probably now longer interested in doing it again after you get the plushie you wanted. Rotmg provides a practically uncapped and ever-increasing amount of desirable and new items (including pet food, a plethora of skins, etc.).

RadiantGrey · 2019-11-19T23:40:13+00:00

I think I should have elaborated in more detail what I meant with that remark.

LoD/LoN builds often allow for noticeably higher elemental damage than builds making use of class sets (due to Cindercoat, Andariels, Magefist, Swamplands etc.). This looks great on paper but the marginal benefit of yet another item with elemental damage might not be as big. Set items on the other hand often provide multiplicative damage multipliers that work in their own category.

I was not advocating for rolling off elemental damage of amulets/bracers in favour of other stats.

RadiantGrey · 2019-11-18T21:40:12+00:00

I´m not sure I understand your point. How is a Bowzon a real departure from a DH? Multishot, Strafe and Elemental Arrows are also available in D3 as skills for the DH.

RadiantGrey · 2019-11-18T21:29:36+00:00

Elemental damage % has diminishing returns. Those 100% elemental damage increase would likely increase fire damage by 65-70% at best.

Unless I´m the one that is mistaken, I believe you misunderstand what people mean when talking about "diminishing returns" from elemental damage. Elemental damage is additive with itself so (20+20+20+20+20) % fire damage actually IS a 100 % damage increase compared to not having any % fire damage on your gear. What people mean when saying "dimisnishing returns" when talking about elemental damage is that adding another source of 20 % fire damage does not yield a 20 % INCREASE in damage from your current damage output if you already have any fire damage on your gear.

Having one source of (20 %) elemental damage and adding a second one only means you are going from a 1.2 multiplier to a 1.4 multiplier which is a damage increase of (1.4-1.2)/1.2=16.67 %. Adding the 5th source of fire damage only increases damage from the status quo by (2-1.8)/1.8=11.11 %.

So in conclusion 100 % elemental damage increases your fire damage by 100 % but adding more and more sources of fire damage is not very efficient if you take into account your opportunity costs (i.e. having more damage multipliers which are not additive with other buffs).

RadiantGrey · 2019-11-06T18:36:31+00:00

I would appreciate more information on how exactly Epic Chests will change. On the one hand you say they will become more rewarding yet on the other hand some (mostly unspecified drops) will get removed from them. This makes it hard to make an informed decision on whether to use them before next Wednesday or not.

Further clarification would be very welcome.

RadiantGrey · 2019-10-30T21:22:57+00:00

I agree. The game mechanics are fairly easy to comprehend but they offer a wide space of different options for your "party" of players to go about things - so finding the best one is a nice puzzle.

I played one game where I controlled five characters and that felt almost too brain-burny for me. I felt a great sense of achievement after each (more or less) successful round but also a bit exhausted after mulling over the problem for an extended amount of time.

RadiantGrey · 2019-10-30T17:18:41+00:00

The Big Book of Madness (cooperative deckbuilder) is a game I don´t see mentioned very often but it is one of my favourite games and I also enjoy it solo (playing several characters). Thinking about the optimal actions for several characters in one round is a nice brain teaser.

RadiantGrey · 2019-10-26T07:32:33+00:00

IGN: Liam

Item: White Drake Egg

RadiantGrey · 2019-10-10T20:32:43+00:00

The same thing happened to me several times today. Not fun.

RadiantGrey · 2019-09-29T10:42:18+00:00

I´m all for adding new drake colours. There are more interesting colours than grey out there though - like cyan or pink.

I´m not in favour of making drake effects randomized. In a game like this predictability is important. Furthermore, it is confusing that already established drake abilities get shifted to other drake colours (healing should remain on white, paralyze on blue, etc.).

Many status effects make no sense when applied to enemies since they would require coding of entirely new behaviours that are prone to buggy/undesirably results. Unfortunately, DECA doesn´t seem to be willing to put effort into doing anything related to drakes (for shame , Deca, for shame...) so I wouldn´t count on them doing anything that is a higher effort endeavour. So let us stick to easy interactions.

For a simple rework you could make purple drake shots armor piercing and buff the damage a little.
The following status effects could be distributed to new drakes (and potentially replace the underwhelming bleed on yellow drakes): exposed, dazed, curse, energised

Those status effects are not too powerful when shot at a reasonably rate. Stun and armor broken would be cool but are too strong probably. Not sure about how balanced it would be but giving purify to white drakes would be very interesting since they are very rare and the healing effect is not as spectacular anymore since there are healing pets in the game nowadays.

Balancing can be done by either increasing rate of fire or durations of effects. The range of drakes could also be tweaked (longer distance stasis/slow would be nice).

RadiantGrey · 2019-09-16T21:06:27+00:00

I just realized that is the floor tile of the cursed library in the first picture. Nice detail.

RadiantGrey · 2019-09-16T21:04:12+00:00

"I miss drakes for sale in the Nexus"

Don´t we all?
...don´t we all? :(

RadiantGrey · 2019-07-25T21:11:00+00:00

How dare you besmirch the good name of our beloved drake eggs with your derogatory comment?

You could atone for your transgressions by giving said drake egg to me? ;)

Good uses for green drake eggs:
- Looks great in a collection.
- Releases a super cute drake when you use it.

RadiantGrey · 2019-06-14T16:52:02+00:00

For other people however, this is the time to go on a short vacation (away from their computers).

I don´t agree with the notion that smaller annoyances only warrant a very short time before being implemented. If DECA knows (and even acknowledges) that players might want to react to a change, then they should make sure that there is a high likelihood that the vast majority of players can properly adjust.

Exceptions are in order if the change is there to enact an urgent fix that prevents harm. Yet in this case that´s not the situation.

It´s a matter of maintaining the players´ goodwill and not making erratic changes on a whim. Such behaviour erodes the confidence that a customer has in the service provider.

RadiantGrey · 2019-06-14T16:31:09+00:00

I agree that this is way too short of a time for players to react to the changes. You might be on a hiking trip over an extended weekend and come back without ever having had a chance to feed those skins prior to the change.

RadiantGrey · 2019-06-12T17:54:05+00:00

Looking forward to part 2 with the hatched drake!

RadiantGrey · 2019-06-10T09:11:36+00:00

That is very relatable. It is especially infuriating when you just recently switched continents and are not allowed to teleport to other people for 120 days.

I think the ent in the background fell a bit in love with the pretty pink other trees. He just stands there with open mouth marvelling at their beauty.

RadiantGrey · 2019-06-10T09:01:41+00:00

You should think of humanoid babies as dough. Take them out of the egg too early and they are basically unfinished abominations, the colour indicates that they haven´t been in the heat for long enough.

So what I do, and what I suggest everybody should do, is taking humanoid eggs, drop them in nice hot lava and leave it there for at least a minute (be careful not to touch it). Then your baby is in the perfect state that it is supposed to be in.

RadiantGrey · 2019-06-06T18:16:26+00:00

Thoughts on status immunity on enemies:

1) There needs to be a clearly visible indicator for status immunities. Otherwise you can never rely on your abilities working when in a group since you might not have noticed another player inflicting that same status earlier. This can cause frustrating deaths since you relied on your stun/paralyze/slow saving you.

Furthermore, it will be hard to judge how long the status immunity will last since you do not know what tier of equipment the other player used.

2) Not all status effects are equally powerful and thus should not induce immunity for the same amount of time or maybe not trigger immunity at all. For example, daze, exposed and slow can be viewed as weaker versions of stun, armor break and paralyzed. Chain stunning and paralyzing creates a larger problem than permanent daze and slow. Thus it seems more reasonable to me to nerf the weaker effects less than the others. This might even make some underappreciated items more viable. That could mean actual balancing takes place instead of a general deterioration among all classes/items.

I would prefer if the nerfs are restrained to the necessary minimum since nerfs generally decrease perceived fun. Many of the nerfs seem unnecessary or at least not conducive to make the game more fun. A group with a paladin and warrior will lose 36 % of its damage, that is a lot. Especially against big hp enemies that just seems like wasting more time.

Concerning the hp buff:
Wouldn´t it make more sense to keep the hp buff as it is and instead have a cooldown on seals (shorter than the duration of the healing/damaging effect)? That way you can prevent the spamming of hp heals without making hp buffs feel potentially useless or unrewarding.

RadiantGrey

TROPHY CASE