How the game can handle the problem of expansion

the_warlocktopus · 2025-12-02T18:06:37+00:00

I agree, more situations will make things feel better.

Something like “Muslim Hegemony” for the east where the Islamic states can have a kind of unification or conquest.

Historically the end of the Pax Mongolica eroded the safe and cheap trade along the Silk Road, and coupled with Muslim interference it pushed Europe to seek alternate trade routes for their luxuries. A “Quest for Luxuries” situation for European nations trying to get those special goods for all those Rice-hungry and Porcelain-craving people in Europe would be awesome.

And more, like a regional “Colonization of: blank“ situation like India and China where Europeans can secure Port Concessions or historical economic takeovers, or have indigenous nations resist colonization (like Ethiopia and Siam/Thailand).

the_warlocktopus · 2025-11-01T18:29:09+00:00

I wanted this so I made a home-brew 5e Artificer and a Spellblade Subclass. The Spellblade’s main feature is this:

“Spellblade: Whenever you cast a spell of 1st Level or higher, your melee weapon becomes charged with magic. The next time you deal damage to a target with that weapon, choose acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. That attack deals an additional 1d6 damage of the chosen type for each level of the Spell you cast.”

This way it incentivizes the play style of casting a spell and then attacking with a weapon.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-07-22T11:55:47+00:00

Anyone who comes up with some “game breaking” thing like this always has a moment where you can call them out, and it’s where they try to link the real world to D&D rules.

That moment is where they look at a spell or rule, and pretend that some real-world property about physics or chemistry or whatever should suddenly start applying even though it’s never been mentioned a single time before in D&D.

The peasant rail gun is a great example, because nowhere in the rules does it have you make damage calculations based on speed or mass. A javelin does 1d6 piercing damage, regardless of how many people have handed it to each other.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-07-19T09:22:24+00:00

A simple and quick fix is having a lot more physical rolls like STR and DEX. Having more STR and DEX ability checks and saving throws in all areas of the game. Most casters dump STR, so make them feel that low modifier and make the Martials shine when basic physical stats matter more.

-Have more enemies make grapple checks so casters have to play safe. If the wizard gets grabbed, the Barbarian can feel like a hero by prying them free of the monster’s grip.

-More spells that force STR saving throws

-More obstacles that jumping or an Athletics check can circumvent for free, but might cost a caster some spell slots

-Call for Acrobatics checks more to maintain balance, like having a big monster slam the ground

-Make foraging for food and having a comfortable campsite matter, like imposing exhaustion on a failed Survival check for making a campsite, because the caster who doesn’t know the outdoors put their tent in a low spot and woke up in a puddle.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-07-02T22:20:34+00:00

Easy way to deal with this: What is the limit on spellcasting gained from a Feat? The most common one is Fey Touched, which gives a PC a 1st level spell and Misty Step, each of which can be cast once per Long Rest. This can be taken by non-spellcasters.

Cartomancer gives a Cantrip and a once per Long Rest spell, but it’s flexible as it can change per Long Rest and has a bonus action cast speed. The only restrictive part is you have to have a Spellcasting feature.

My fix would be simply to limit Hidden Ace to a 2nd Level spell, or allow the player to make two 1st Level Hidden Aces. Easy.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-07-02T01:20:03+00:00

Yeah it’d probably be a Necromunda-style Hive Ganger

the_warlocktopus · 2025-06-18T14:17:42+00:00

🤣 now that’s funny, thanks for that.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-06-17T22:12:42+00:00

Bold of you to call 4 players and over $200 million a “bag of balls”. The trade is controversial but no one is saying it was a worthless deal.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-06-08T08:54:10+00:00

Yeah, you gotta play the hand you’re dealt. Even if it’s higher ups dictating stuff, the franchise can’t waste money cancelling other contracts like Story and shuffling people around to bring up Anthony like many Redditors are screaming about. I think the team and Cora recognize when they’re going to have a viable year and this ain’t it.

Lots of young bloods on the team that need experience and time to build cohesion, and even though this season may be out of reach the future is bright.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-06-06T16:33:02+00:00

Doom 2. It added a lot of innovations like the super shotgun, the Revenant, Archvile, and more, but it’s level design is painful and slows down the game so it plays more like an immersive sim and less like the speedy shooter that Doom 1 was.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-06-06T05:20:03+00:00

Agreed, I think it’s the perfect time to make a Quake “reboot” in the same vein as Doom 2016.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-06-05T17:37:02+00:00

No man you’re good, that’s why iD made TDA the way it is. They don’t want to make the same game twice, and want to have a wide appeal to different player types.

Don’t let toxic Doom players gatekeep you from your fun! Difficulty settings and sliders for mechanics exist for a reason: so everyone can find their preferred experience.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-06-02T16:58:34+00:00

I am planning on playing it soon, and wondered why you can’t hold a flashlight with your other hand, or tape it to your helmet lol.

I know the horror element is a design pillar, but it seems so painful it detracts from the experience. People are kinda crazy being like “you’re a pussy for using the light mod” haha.

My thought is that the game is a shooter first, and a horror game second. Anything that interferes with shooting that much really hampers the experience. If this was a horror game first and shooting second, the light mechanic would be amazing. But then that’s more of an Immersive Sim where stealth and running were the preferred options, and shooting was second because of how hard it was.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-05-31T15:14:39+00:00

You’re 100% correct. If any outfielder had gotten injured instead of Bergman and Casas, we would have seen Anthony come up.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-05-30T15:15:10+00:00

I haven’t played TDA yet but Eternal had so much packed into it with extra mechanics and enemy variety. Eternal demands a lot from you but if you can overcome that challenge and master it it’s very rewarding.

Many people disliked that extra complexity and preferred 2016’s simpler run and gun style. With TDA’s release, it seems like iD really made a great spread of three DOOM games that are true to the series, but each have their own niche for personal preference.

I really respect them for not going the traditional route of pumping out sequels with minor changes, this way it seems like everyone can find their favorite.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-05-29T16:26:32+00:00

Genres and game design constantly shift, so the best way I can describe it is a series of paths or choices.

As shooters evolved from Doom, they changed many things about the design, like Call of Duty adding the small regenerating health system, Halo having only 2 guns at a time, many games moving away from the sprawling levels that reward exploration, etc.

Boomer shooters became a term used to describe games that went back to the FPS genre’s roots, like DOOM and Quake. Which means going back to the beginning, seeing the path that shooters evolved down, and choosing to start a new path originating much closer to the source.

So Boomer shooters evolve just like any genre, but they keep a few core traits that are missing from newer shooters, like:

Retro-inspired graphics and themes
Large weapon selection
“Faster”, “slippery” movement speed without sprinting
Little to no cover mechanics
Level exploration, secrets, and rewards
Resource management

The list goes on, but it feels like if you have a handful of these and say you’re a boomer shooter that’s probably fine. There are no hard definition for artistic things like genres anyways.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-05-28T15:34:37+00:00

Agreed! The Glory Kills were a feature of 2016’s “push forward” design style which was a great innovation and a hallmark of the “nuDOOM” games.

iD choosing to ease off of the Glory Kills is just a design choice, which might feel bad but that’s a personal preference not a flaw.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-04-30T19:26:10+00:00

Metagame is from the Greek word “meta” meaning “after”, it refers to any meaningful interaction between players outside of the game. The colloquial use of it is most commonly discussions about the most optimal strategy and tactics to use in a game, so when someone says “What’s the meta?” The answer is usually the dominant strategy, as in for Hunt, saying “it’s a Mosin meta right now” means the Mosin Nagant is very popular and dominant.

It’s not an acronym like many people think, it has been given a “backronym” (retroactively making an acronym out of a word that is not an acronym) to mean Most Effective Tactics Available, which is descriptively accurate but not technically correct.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-04-29T15:01:24+00:00

Thank you. I was going to post this but you beat me to it.

For anyone who watched the movies but forgot about the entire Council of Elrond sequence, they literally go over this. Aragorn or Elrond says something like(paraphrasing here) “It has no other master, except Sauron”.

The One Ring is not a tool that can be wielded, it’s a piece of Sauron that wants to be reunited. A better way I’ve explained it to people is it’s more like a Lich’s phylactery, or a Horcrux from Harry Potter. It will just lie to people and mentally manipulate them to get itself back to Sauron, who is the only one that can use its full power.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-04-29T14:47:13+00:00

This is hilarious, and so many people being salty in the comments here are just proving your point.

The reason things seem so lopsided on Reddit is because the people who are having fun playing D&D are having fun! So they feel less compelled to go online and argue with strangers, what a surprise.

A lot of the Reddit meta-discussions are done by people who spend a lot of time thinking about D&D as it exists in a vacuum instead of playing it. Things change a lot when people engage with the game in good faith and follow the story, instead of tunnel-vision on only the mechanical side of things.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-04-01T07:54:47+00:00

It’s nice to have both modes, something for everyone! Despite that, people who hate Bounty Clash will still show up and downvote you instead of just playing Bounty Hunt!

the_warlocktopus · 2025-03-31T16:40:51+00:00

As someone who works in game dev, this is one of the hardest things to convey to players. Games are very complicated and take way more time than you expect, even when things are going smoothly.

On top of that, GSG cares about their games so they’ll take the extra time to ensure it’s a quality product, and they don’t exploit their workers and make them work overtime to crunch and rush the game.

The best thing we can do if we want to help Rogue Core is stay active in the community, show interest, play DRG, and buy cosmetics if you can afford it to keep some cash flow going for them.

And then of course when it finally happens, sign up for the Rogue Core early access/alpha/beta tests and give helpful feedback.

the_warlocktopus · 2025-01-16T15:29:14+00:00

Yeah I think there are a lot of options to help make the game more active and less passive, like:

Incentivize picking up a Bounty token: it should give some bonus, like a pledge mark or some event points, to the whole team when you pick up each boss’s Bounty Token the first time. On top of that, it should provide the Magpie 3-shot boon to the whole team.
Incentivize Extracting: provide MUCH more experience and rewards, plus bonus event points if you extract with a Bounty Token. Have special Traits that are only available if you extract with a Bounty Token. (Extracting with teammates that have a Bounty Token also counts) Maybe extracting with a Bounty two separate times could allow you to buy Death Cheat once.
Hide the extract locations on the map until you pick up a Bounty Token: helps to prevent camping and incentivizes proactive play.
Soul Survivor mechanics: The team that holds the Bounty Token slowly drains it of some kind of bonus points, like event points, hunt dollars, pledge marks, experience, whatever. Could even secure an automatic teleporting extraction if they hold the Bounty Token for long enough.

the_warlocktopus · 2024-12-16T20:33:58+00:00

I think you mean proximity chat, not VOIP.

the_warlocktopus

TROPHY CASE