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STEAM | June 2015 - Wait for the Steam Sale Thread You Bastards!

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Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Whatever this chat game is...

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W

WinterDemons

Member
Turfster said:
Voyage to Farland keys now available.
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Goodbye Desura~ Also, won something on stream! \( ^ o ^ )/

ModBot said:
Instructions for participants:
I am giving away a Steam key. To enter this giveaway, send a PM to ModBot with any subject line. In the body, copy and paste the entire line from the message below containing the game you want to enter for. Confused? Watch this GIF tutorial or ask for help.

ModBot Basics:
- This giveaway has a manual blocklist. The giver has identified members who abuse giveaways and restricted them from participating.
- I really appreciate thank you messages, but please send them to me (WinterDemons, not ModBot!) via PM instead of in thread.
- Do not trade keys you win off-site to enrich yourself. Don't try to claim games you have no interest in collecting or playing. Don't claim games to give them to friends off-site.
- If the key is already taken you will not receive a reply. Replies may take a minute or two.

Rules for this Giveaway:
- If you are a lurker you are not eligible for this giveaway. You need five or more posts in either the current Steam thread or the previous one to be eligible
- Poke Turfster
- This giveaway is a raffle. The winners will be selected by random draw 3 hours after the draw was created. Any games not claimed after that point will be given away first come first serve.


Voyage to Farland -- MB-D52D450791532B47 - Taken by crazyrabbits. 9 entrants total.


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S

Shantom

Member
LurkerPrime said:
Are you having fun with Massive Chalice?

The pitch - Crusader Kings meets XCOM - sounded good enough, but Double Fine's (nonexistant) strategy game pedigree mixed with the footage I've seen leaves me unconvinced of its greatness. The whole thing looked a little simple and monotonous, really.
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It's very, very similar to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. You've got an unfamiliar enemy attacking territories, that become unusable once you've failed to push back three assaults on that territory, you've got the ability to research new tech based on the enemy's abilities once you've killed so much of a specific unit, you've got extreme fog of war, small squads, and permadeath which makes you very wary in battle etc.

It's all decently implemented though, so if you like the newer XCOM games it's worth a look.

Then there's the dynasty side of the game. It's a good idea, and it does help to spruce the game up, but it's not implemented as well as I'd like. If you marry two characters, then all their children will be the same class but I'd like a little bit of randomness here. Since you mentioned CK2, I should note that there are events in the game, similar to those in CK2, where there'll be some marriage problems or similar, and you'll have to make a ruling. It seems pretty random to me what will happen, and since these events tend to tie up some of your heroes for years, they're understandably sparse. This means they don't feel like an important part of the game, and there appears to be no method to force things like this to happen.

My main problems with the game is that they namedropped four series in the kickstarter - XCOM, Fire Emblem, FFT and ASOIAF but they've only really followed through on XCOM. The fog of war and lack of support conversations (which really hurts the marriage side of the game, as the characters have no personality) means it shares little with FE, while the same lack of scripted content means it can't compare to the depth of FFT or ASOIAF.

Another area where it falls down in comparison to FFT and FE is map design, as there's no terrain or verticality to introduce extra strategy. Having said that, MC's maps are far better than the dull squares found in games like HoMM and King's Bounty.

I've complained a fair bit in this post, but the actual core of the game is good, and the bits outside of battle are interesting enough, even if I don't think there's enough things happening there. I'm still enjoying it, and it's bug free so far which is a big relief compared to Enemy Unkown.

Edit: I should also mention the enemy gimmicks. Pretty much every enemy type I've encountered so far can take away some element of your character which I find pretty cool. There's Seeds, who drain your HP, Lapses who take away your XP when they damage you, Ruptures who explode and poison the ground, causing your armour to lose effectiveness, and Wrinklers who age your characters 5 years on damage, which is especially neat IMO.
 
L

LurkerPrime

Member
Shantom said:
It's very, very similar to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. You've got an unfamiliar enemy attacking territories, that become unusable once you've failed to push back three assaults on that territory, you've got the ability to research new tech based on the enemy's abilities once you've killed so much of a specific unit, you've got extreme fog of war, small squads, and permadeath which makes you very wary in battle etc.

It's all decently implemented though, so if you like the newer XCOM games it's worth a look.

Then there's the dynasty side of the game. It's a good idea, and it does help to spruce the game up, but it's not implemented as well as I'd like. If you marry two characters, then all their children will be the same class but I'd like a little bit of randomness here. Since you mentioned CK2, I should note that there are events in the game, similar to those in CK2, where there'll be some marriage problems or similar, and you'll have to make a ruling. It seems pretty random to me what will happen, and since these events tend to tie up some of your heroes for years, they're understandably sparse. This means they don't feel like an important part of the game, and there appears to be no method to force things like this to happen.

My main problems with the game is that they namedropped four series in the kickstarter - XCOM, Fire Emblem, FFT and ASOIAF but they've only really followed through on XCOM. The fog of war and lack of support conversations (which really hurts the marriage side of the game, as the characters have no personality) means it shares little with FE, while the same lack of scripted content means it can't compare to the depth of FFT or ASOIAF.

Another area where it falls down in comparison to FFT and FE is map design, as there's no terrain or verticality to introduce extra strategy. Having said that, MC's maps are far better than the dull squares found in games like HoMM and King's Bounty.

I've complained a fair bit in this post, but the actual core of the game is good, and the bits outside of battle are interesting enough, even if I don't think there's enough things happening there. I'm still enjoying it, and it's bug free so far which is a big relief compared to Enemy Unkown.

Edit: I should also mention the enemy gimmicks. Pretty much every enemy type I've encountered so far can take away some element of your character which I find pretty cool. There's Seeds, who drain your HP, Lapses who take away your XP when they damage you, Ruptures who explode and poison the ground, causing your armour to lose effectiveness, and Wrinklers who age your characters 5 years on damage, which is especially neat IMO.
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Interesting. Thanks for the impressions.

I'm most curious if Double Fine will make an expansion pack or something for MC. It seems ripe for some extra polish, to flesh out the lacking inspirations you mention. In particular (from the Quick Look I saw) I feel like adding some more character-specific interations would do a lot to flesh out the game; it's something that Crusader Kings 2 does exceptionally well.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Shantom said:
I'm having the exact same problem. I went into one mission having to use 80% bowmen, and then the mission directly after I had all shadowjacks. I've started again (on normal iron instead of hard iron) to try and fix this. The game saw fit to give me zero hunters initially, so I'm still a bit screwed.
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yeah i'm just playing it on normal, have been doing self-enforced ironman mode but having that problem a lot

i feel like this game has a huge issue in how it presents information to you in the base management portion of the game

like, i wanted to put this infertile person as a scribe and couldn't find them because the "infertile" thing is only highlighted when you're matching ppl up and looking up the information of everyone one by one is awfully tedious

same with tracking how your soldier breeding is going, you don't have a section in the menu that tells you "breeding shadowjacks/hunters/etc." which would make it really easy to figure out who you want to put in charge of a house without having to check them all one by one. like just on the side of the screen, real easy. like, the timeline thing on the top is hilariously dumb, like every milestone has like 6 more milestones inside it, it's so bad...

it's not like i'm losing the game because at this difficulty you can manage but because of how cumbersome the interface is i just literally don't pay attention to half the eugenics mechanics thing. no idea when it's best to have your people marry or fight or become scribes, and i never bother with the traits/etc. if all the kids of my country are born with lazy eyes then well, kinda gross, but we'll manage

similarly with like specific equipment. like i bought some health things that give ppl 20% more health but they have to be equipped individually.

well fuck that lol

LurkerPrime said:
Are you having fun with Massive Chalice?

The pitch - Crusader Kings meets XCOM - sounded good enough, but Double Fine's (nonexistant) strategy game pedigree mixed with the footage I've seen leaves me unconvinced of its greatness. The whole thing looked a little simple and monotonous, really.
Click to expand...
hm, kinda, but not entirely

i really like the combat, the main character classes are very distinct and the subclasses are also pretty fun. i found my favorites pretty quick and i'm always trying to have more of those but it's kind of cool to be forced to constantly try out new stuff. all classes have fun abilities to use, specially alchemists, and there's a bit of environmental interaction as well, which is fun.

enemy variety is also pretty good, most of the enemy types have nice unique things about them and they never feel cheap or frustrating, although i wish you could see their movement and attack range when hovering them like you'd do in fire emblem.

overall the combat is really fun, it's a bit repetitive in the same way xcom's was, while the levels and enemies are randomized, having your goal always be "kill all the monsters" makes it lose excitement after the 20th battle.

the base management stuff is pretty poor imo, the interface is full of transition animations that feel like they're constantly wasting your time and you have to go through them for everything since there's zero information given to you from the worldmap. marrying ppl is also not very interesting since ppl are constantly dying so at least i found myself just not caring much about this side of the game entirely and not giving it much thought. you can't even do much here, you choose out of a few choices and hit wait, and there's very little incentive to be too thoughtful about things since it's so difficult to track

overall i think the game has potential, the combat just deserves a better game.

considering the base management part is a good 50% of your time spent in the game you might not find it worth it

i'm having fun so far, but kind of wishing i had the videocard to play xcom instead

but tbh if i had a videocard i'd play eternity so fuck all these xcom games lol

edit: btw the art and music of the game is fantastic. i barely get to see the art since i've toned down the resolution so that the game looks like a blurry (but playable) mess to me, but it has a lot of style, and the music is amazing. the presentation of the game is really good and i enjoy it a lot

i really think double fine has a really good game idea but should've worked a whole lot more on ux and should've fleshened out the base management a lot more. if they do a fair bit of patching/dlc it might turn out to be a pretty great game, actually. but yeah the base management is pretty shit
 
S

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
Nabs said:
New Steam Beta started:

Big Picture
Enabled new community and profile features. Market, game hubs, workshop, and inventory are now available natively in Big Picture mode.
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This is a pretty big step forward for Big Picture mode. It seems pretty likely that achievement pages will eventually get the same treatment which makes me happy. Very nice and clean here:

steam1beqjx.jpg


steam204pjf.jpg


steam3mpo89.jpg


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F

freshVeggie

Member
MMBosstones86 said:
what? What just happened?

What did I win?
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Haha! I have no clue really. But you did something! Probably Hotline Miami 2 maybe Valve sub. Dunno.

You'll get a key in your "Other" folder at Twitch sometime after the stream ends. Check sometime later.

EDIT: So it is the Valve sub. Nice boss! You'll be able to play Half-Life 3 for free on your kids graduation once the game comes out! :p
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Stallion Free said:
This is a pretty big step forward for Big Picture mode. It seems pretty likely that achievement pages will eventually get the same treatment which makes me happy. Very nice and clean here:
Click to expand...
yeah, big picture mode is actually very pretty to look at

wish the store looked more like that

freshVeggie said:
aaaand it's over

Another night, another loss
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gotta go hit the bottle

actually not i have an important meeting in the morning

but u should
 
M

Maniac

Banned
iosefe said:
i think what you got was the Powerup Reward Pro thing
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Oh, I asked and that there Lenard guy said it was a Steam thing.

I don't even know what a powerup... Thing pro thing is. ;_;

edit: He said I got ze Steam thang. Eheheheheh, I just came in multiple ways. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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