That’s DND 5e for you.
The designers originally wanted people to do like 5 fights per rest, but players rightfully said that kind of sucks, and they want to use their cool powers. DND designers keep trying to make this work. It’s especially bad in video games where players hate timed quests.
If they had done something like dark souls “get from here to there on one rest” it might have worked better, but that’s a much harder game.
I tried to play it with someone I was dating. She spent like an hour in the character creation menu. Had a lot of fun making her ranger look interesting. But as soon as we got to the actual gameplay, she checked out. I think we got to the druids and she was done.
Turn based I think is kind of double edged. There’s a lot of waiting, that’s bad. But you also don’t get overwhelmed when you’re trying to figure out how to move the camera or whatever.
DND 5e is a shallow system that you have to go out of your way to make a weak character. That helps. But it also makes it kind of boring for people looking for more depth.
My old desktop couldnt update to 11. But for my newer computer, Windows recall was a deciding factor. Fuck that shit. Also fuck their “ai” nonsense.
It’s nice that it’s free and doing little to nothing contrary to my interests.
88 is an unfortunate score.
Anyway. I haven’t played the full release, but it’s been good in early access. I think it’s a little harder than the first one
Thinking about it, it seems like the kind of wacky thing that would be on par with dwarf fort. A passion project years in the making. I doubt any big studio would go for it.
Side note, I really liked how mage: the awakening 2e did paradox. You risk more for witnesses, sure. But you mostly risk paradox for making your spells more than you can safely handle. Hubris. That’s the theme of the game.
(Further minutia details: you can make small changes to your spells magnitude or subjects, and that only risks the spell failing. But bigger changes, those require you to “reach” and that can cause paradox. make a spell last two turns instead of one? -2 dice. Or, reach, and make it last the whole scene… but maybe roll for paradox. Mind2 can’t make someone hurt themselves… unless you reach. Great system. Very fiddly. Wouldn’t play well as a real time game.)
when you play competitive games you’re expressing your skill as a player in front of an audience of people.
The first part of your post makes sense, even if I don’t agree with it. But this part stands out- buying a skin isn’t a skill question. It’s just a wallet question.
Some games have stuff you can only earn via achievements or whatever. I could see being proud of, like, a skin you only get if you get 100 perfect whatevers in a row. But, like, just buying it? But I guess the audience has enough people who are impressed by that sort of thing.
spending some money on a skin isnt a big deal you’re just paying devs for the game you love.
Also not to be a negative nerd, but unless the company is very tiny the developers aren’t getting much, maybe zero, of that money. Developers get a salary. Stock options, maybe. It’s not like a tip jar. Profits typically go to the owners under capitalism, not the labor. “Buy skins to support the developers” might be indirectly true, in a limited sense, but it mostly feels like capitalist propaganda.
I feel like no one’s going to make a good Mage game unless there’s some genuine breakthroughs in AI. It’s a very open ended system, and limiting it to pre-scripted “you can use mind-2 to persuade here” or “you can telekineticly slap someone here” would suck.
Most basic game problems just go away for mages. Just starting stats mages are a whole cut above your standard RPG protagonist. Teleport anywhere. Dominate anyone. Rewind time.
I guess. I’d rather not throw away my money, even if it’s not tight. I wouldn’t feel joy about a custom skin. Every time I saw it I would be reminded that I’d wasted money.
But that’s me, not everyone.
I feel like a game in development this long is extremely unlikely to be good.
Also I’m one of the dozens of people that liked Requiem (2e) more than Masquerade. Dozens of us!
…who is paying a million dollars for a skin??
These skins have 15% returns? That seems dubious but it could be. I don’t think you can sink $300k into skins like you can vanguard, though.
Who is buying these skins. I feel like such an alien sometimes. I just can’t understand wanting to spend any money at all on a cosmetic skin
Many men are emotionally unable to accept things like this. I think the reasoning goes like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance
Facts don’t matter. There’s really nothing you can do if you’re not someone they like.
I also think about this comic a lot: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1151.html - Some people are too cowardly to grow.
Many people are illiterate. How many of them are trying to run Linux, I don’t know.
Update: installed mint. Seems work. Had a problem where it couldn’t see the HD. Had to change an option in grub
Pasting what I found online to fix it:
“”" thank you so much! what was the solution!
for anyone might read this in the future: in the bootmenu where u can select which version of linux u wanna boot u can press “e” and then u need to add intel_iommu=off at the end of the line of the “linux” row - i had some double dashes at the end for me it did the job when I add them before the double dashes.
Then I could see the harddrive and install mint mate on my old macbook air
also needed later on to set the parameter permantent by opening a terminal and used this command sudo nano /etc/default/grub
edited this line like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash intel_iommu=off” then save and exit nano and this command for updating the boot thingy
sudo update-grub “”"
So far most things have worked fine.
It’s a little annoying when steam wants to redo the vulkan compilation thing every time, but it seems to work fine if I skip that.
Modding I’m not sure how it’ll work yet. Some stuff probably just works, if it’s like “edit this file” or “replace that file” but I haven’t tried yet.
Only recommendation: some wifi cards (with certain chips, I forget which) in my experience have required me to go hunt down a driver, so check reviews for any card you’re looking at to see if people report it working out of the box.
With Linux mint, with one machine, I had to explicitly open the driver manager and tell it to use the drivers for the wifi. It wasn’t obvious but I’d read it on some random forum and remembered. Once I knew that was a thing, it was easy. Opened the driver manager, plugged in the install media (USB stick) when it asked, and then told it to use the proprietary drivers.
The writing is good.
You can do tactical turn based combat without DND, too. Divinity’s system wasn’t amazing but it was pretty good. Final Fantasy Tactics is a classic. Other games I’m blanking on right now.
I hope someone makes a total conversion that changes the rules system to something better than D&D.
Deadfire was great. Good characters, good gameplay systems.
Loved my chanter with the heaviest armor and shield that popped out summons and sang until the enemies died. Or my cipher that would disintegrate enemies.