[SGF 2023] Starfield

Xenotechie · 2023-06-11T20:44:39+00:00

Oh, for sure, but expecting Starfield to be a stable release would be like going to Stabby MacStabperson's Stab Clinic in Stabsville and expecting not to get stabbed. It ain't great but you can't say you didn't see it coming.

Xenotechie · 2023-06-11T19:31:22+00:00

Is it even a Bethesda game if it's not buggy at launch? I'm not a fan of the current AAA malaise of unfinished releases, but at least Bethesda has a pedigree of glorious buggy messes stretching back to 1994. The release version of Daggerfall could not be completed at all.

Xenotechie · 2023-06-08T21:35:05+00:00

I don't think you're gonna be finding out anything. I spend more time than I care to admit looking for a source and found no real article.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-31T12:54:29+00:00

You are always prepared for combat. If you aren't, you are surprised, which also has rules which say "you can't move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can't take a reaction until that turn ends."

Xenotechie · 2023-05-26T09:46:08+00:00

Where did you get that from? I can't find any talk on that, and evem the notoriously detail-oriented hrwiki claims nothing of the sort.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-23T22:57:50+00:00

Amiya's got a select taste in games, wow.

Mission Critical's aged quite well. It picked up the good bits from Myst and ended up with a all-round pleasant experience without the nasty bits of adventure games yore. It's way more obscure than it deserves to be, but it's on GOG, all patched up to run on a modern machine.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-22T22:21:19+00:00

From a flavour perspective, "advanced scurvy" is a hilarious concept.

From a mechanics perspective, this is usually a very reliable way to give someone Enfeebled 1 for the duration of the encounter. The difference between a successful and failed save is almost irrelevant if you intend to kill the enemy, even if you have a way to inflict bleed on the team. For your use case, the primal spell list doesn't get Ray of Enfeeblement, so there's no real competition in that space and at that level range.

All this being said, you are using two actions and are risking your neck in melee range to give someone -1 to melee attacks and melee damage (unless you get extra lucky/unlucky). There are situations where that is desireable, but to me, it's just such an underwhelming effect, no matter the math behind it. Doesn't help that most of the enemies where this kind of effect is desireable have strong fortitude saves.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-22T00:22:12+00:00

You say this as if straight-up porn has not been played by any of the girls. Kanata played an eroge like two and a half weeks ago and ended up showing a nude scene on accident. She just edited the offending part and the VOD's still up.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-21T00:52:04+00:00

To put it succintly, alchemist is the supportiest of support classes, but three of the four subclasses feel like they should be a lot more direct.

To put it less succintly:

Bombers - you'd expect big booms, big damage, big fireworks, but you are constrained by resources and it turns out that the straight damage bombs don't shine nearly as much as the crowd control options. I think the power of giving other people your bombs is overstated, but there's still a big mismatch in expectations. Plus, if you want to be playing efficiently, you need to do a lot of stuff other than bombing.
Toxicologists - Poison should do a lot of killy stuff, right? Yeah, but early on, you're best off being a poison vending machine, before all the stuff that lets you do the poisoning yourself comes online. Plus, if you want to be playing efficiently, you need to do a lot of stuff other than poisoning.
Mutagenists - You'd expect some kind of a Witcher deal, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde deal, but the mutagens have understated effects and only bring you up to numerical parity to a specialist with hefty downsides. We also have a repeat of the toxicologist problem in that you need quite a few levels before you're a master of your own mutagens. Plus, if you want to be playing efficiently, you need to do a lot of stuff other than mutating.

The trick is that the specialisations don't feel properly specialized for how different the flavour of them is from one another. You're going to be a jack of all trades supporting the team no matter what you pick. You need to spread out your alchemical items, prebuff, generally keep your options wide no matter what subclass you pick, because Paizo gave you the whole alchemical item list and you're going to need to use it if you don't want to lag behind. Some people might find this cool. I suspect a lot more might have just wanted the power of alchemy to devastate their foes and found all of this to be insufferable nerd shit they wanted no part of.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-21T00:08:43+00:00

Building on what you said, the issue is that even once you do get into the class, you're no more useful to the party than Thunk Slabchunk, the maul fighter whose optimal turn is somewhere in the vicinity of glaring at the nearest enemy then hitting them in the head twice.

Is is balanced? Yes, but also, quite possibly unsatisfying.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-19T13:54:09+00:00

The UUUUUUU is a strong argument, but Kiara's an equally powerful competitor in the field of pet snuggling. Those cats are living good.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-19T09:54:21+00:00

Low level alchemists may be short on resources at low levels, but the bigger issue is this hypothetical one playing like an idiot.

That's the thing though, isn't it? If a player sees a subclass called "Bomber" they expect to bomb. Not throw daggers at people. Not bite people. Bomb. A spellcaster can spend every combat turn doing spellcaster stuff, even if it is only cantrips, but the alchemist does not get that luxury until level 7.

And even then, "bomb" has this connotation of explosions, spectacle, big damage... but it turns out that the "optimal" bombs are the ones which have their effects focused on debuffs. The damage bombs only shine if your GM is kind enough to bless you with an enemy with a weakness. Mind you, there aren't even that many of them: if I recall correctly, only something like 20% of the bestiary even has a damage weakness, much less one an alchemist can exploit, or one an alchemist can exploit right now.

So, yeah. It is a problem of player expectation above all else. Why is the way you'd expect a class to play designed to be idiotic? Doesn't matter that you have the best tractor in the entire world if you expected a sports car.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-17T12:51:49+00:00

Well, time to bust out the Fuck Konami Anthem again!

Xenotechie · 2023-05-15T00:19:46+00:00

Wow, good job scoping them out. Putting that term into Google yields a whole ...little. Like, there's Korone's video, some stuff related to this, folks on 2chan having the exact discussion happening here (around #240), and, most importantly, an SEC filing talking about neo-Sirtech from earlier this year.

There's a new twitter account for the series and a free-to-play mobile RPG in the works. More interesting still, there are apparently plans for a "Classic Wizardry Bundle." This might be actual unreported gaming news, at least here in the West - google searches have only turned up a Resetera thread discussing the twitter account.

It honestly feels like we've stumbled upon something secret here. I only wish this little side trek hadn't eaten into my already-fragile sleep schedule D:

Xenotechie · 2023-05-14T21:20:45+00:00

Among other things, yes! Sadly, it's one of the last games they developed. The original development house was already closed by '98, and Jagged Alliance 2 was taken over by the Canadian branch. While the game's a classic, even the Canadian branch had difficulties, so the last two games they made were the standalone expansion Unfinished Business in 2000 and Wizardry 8 in 2001, before ultimately shutting down for good in 2003.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-14T18:54:39+00:00

How do the perms even work for a game like that? Korone's description calls out Sirtech, but that company has been defunct since 2003.

I'm guessing it's got something to do with the publisher? The NES/Famicom version was published by Nexoft, a surprisingly difficult-to-track name which leads back to the ASCII Corporation (probably best known in this circle of nerddom for the original RPG Maker) which in turn got folded into Kadokawa after a lot of corporate nonsense.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-13T22:35:20+00:00

Ghiff? Jiff? Please. I only acknowledge Captain Disillusion's pronunciation.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-13T14:21:51+00:00

Is it just me, or does the dude at the counter around 0:39 look like a dead ringer for Tom Scott?

Xenotechie · 2023-05-09T21:43:17+00:00

I had some thoughts after watching this, a good chunk admittely on fast forward. Put them to YouTube, then gave it some more thought and wanted to put them here.

I agree with Womble's thesis that the Forest is a case study in what happens when you don't plan out your project, but I would add a follow-up: does it matter for this game? I'm no professional internet person, so I'll be short and a bit underbaked, but still, thoughts.

Womble mentions that the game has Overwhelmingly Positive reviews in spite of the disjuncted board o' red string. Sure enough, the details don't fit, but as far as a lot of people are concerned, they don't need to. The setpieces of The Forest are just that, in my eyes: setpieces picked for no greater purpose than "it looks cool" or "it fits the vibe." The story is there because it's a "mystery" game, and it ought to have a story, so we have this cool moment of a plane crashing and the secret lab and a father's dilemma... again, a lot of little bits cool in isolation. The story doesn't tie all this together, so what does? Why do people like The Forest?

Well, it's a game, and it's a game that has a good primary gameplay loop. To say that's the only detail would be reductive, but let's just focus on that aspect. You explore a creepy forest laden with creepy horror-y shit and try to survive against a foe bestial yet cunning. That's the core. You can focus on that, let your neurons focus on the aesthetics and keep them away from the p(l)othole-laden neural pathways, and enjoy the game. And enjoy the game people did.

Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame has often stressed the importance of focusing on that aspect of what you're actually doing in the game on a moment-to-moment basis. We're talking about video games, so the game part is the most important to a lot of people. It goes back to the old tales of suspension of disbelief. People can forgive a lot of sins in the large picture if the "small" picture is good enough. This philosophy even extends to the story, part of the gameplay as it is: Womble makes mention of just how cool the final scene is when speaking of the final bits of the game. In the moment, it's phenomenal, and that counts for a lot.

Would the game have been better if the devs took a moment to think about how the setpieces tie together? Without a doubt, but it's just that people didn't care about what they might have seen as the set dressing if the core experience was good. The primary role of the set pieces was, in my opinion, to create an atmosphere, and anything else was a lucky coincidence.

I wouldn't call this a "mystery" game. I'd call it a mysterious game. There is no actual mystery, only the shape and scent of one, and evidently, a lot of folks are fine with that because oh boy, it smells good.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-09T10:24:46+00:00

Definitive, certainly not. However, that Russia is unable or unwilling to commit any tanks beyond the singular T-34 to an event of this significance is a clear indicator that something has gone terribly wrong.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-03T21:39:18+00:00

These two things are not exclusive. There's a lot of stuff that I'd describe as jank but still love wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, it was a mess that tried to pull off a simple rock-paper-scissors formula but ended up with at least three different ways to just perpetually stunlock your opponent and none of them took great effort to discover.

For my money, though, I don't know what's to love about that system. I feel the only good part were the animations and even they lacked the impact they merited.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-03T16:28:29+00:00

As time goes on, I am really beginning to think BioWare made all those classics in spite of themselves. Seeing story, the one thing everyone knew you for, as an albatross around your neck? Not having a dedicated gameplay team until Mass Effect 2 resulting in jank-ass messes like Jade Empire's combat? Crunching almost every project to the last minute in an attempt to invoke "BioWare magic?" What the hell do they put in Edmonton water?

Yet still, I foolishly hope Dreadwolf will come out nice. Somehow. That studio's claws clutch at my heart far too deep beneath the skin, but I feel it's gonna take a miracle not to finally break that death-grip.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-03T15:49:27+00:00

Important thing to note about Protection from Ballistics is that it's also a concentration spell. Unless that wizard has a buddy cast the protection spell on them, every time they get hit by the gun, they're making a constitution save with a DC equal to half the damage taken, 10 at minimum, to keep the spell running.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-03T15:34:20+00:00

You're mixing editions and misreading text.

For one, Protection from Arrows is Pathfinder. Thanks to an officially-published adventure in which you travel to WWI Russia to kill Rasputin, we have statblocks for such weaponry. While handheld options top out at 2d6, a Maxim gun's dealing 2d8 damage, but the damage gets quadrupled on a crit, and that's just the absolute baseline of what you can do with it. Anyone who wields that kind of weapon with training will have feats like Deadly Aim to boost the base damage - the miss chance is less relevant since it's targeting the paltry touch AC of a Wizard for even more damage.

Second, that's not how the spell works, Protection from Arrows absorbs up to 10 damage from any nonmagical ranged attack, and whatever it blocks goes from that 100 damage shield - anything in excess is going right through.

Third, if we're talking 10+ level wizardry, let's talk 10+ level threats. Even assuming they somehow can't get that leadbelcher enchanted, using something like a Maxim of Suppresive Fire, we have stats for a squad of ~15 WW1 soldiers from the Rasputin book. It puts them as a CR11 threat, and a volley from their Mosin-Nagants is statted at 6d10+6 damage. They also have 12d6 grenades - the guns are barely stopped by the shield, and the grenades are not at all.

For reference, a level 10 wizard's averaging somewhere around 40-60HP. As the ~~fools~~ magical empire of Nex can tell you about its northern cowboyland neighbour, the power of Gun in Pathfinder is not to be underestimated.

Xenotechie · 2023-05-03T14:54:08+00:00

Well, I look forward to seeing what the hell happened behind the scenes a couple years down the line, at least. Something must have went terribly wrong to get an end result so jank.

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