Ulyster

Or, most of those bug reports are from people who never played vanilla in the first place

I tell you what, when the books are all finished and released, I really can't wait for Game of Thrones: Brotherhood to be announced.

9 hours ago, Downshift said:

That Cap ending didn't make sense to me at all. Did he just go against his nature and sit by during all the events since WWII that he knew would happen? Did he leave Bucky in Hydra custody for those 70 years and let him be tortured and kill the Starks?

I mean, he had to have, because he remained in that same timeline since he appeared back in it on that bench, so nothing he did caused a butterfly effect apparently.

Also, I thought Sharon was Peggy's niece.

It depends how they want to go about it, really. If they want to say that Cap did just wait to grow old in the 'main' timeline, and then take a walk over to the bench on the right day, then it does kinda of imply that he sat by and did nothing while all of this unfolded around him.

But if they want to say Cap came BACK to the main timeline a few days prior to handing the shield over to Sam, then they can easily say that in his new timeline, he helped to prevent all this stuff (which might be where he got that new shield in the first place, seeing as his original one was destroyed by Thanos).

I suddenly find myself concerned with how much this could end up costing 

Actual backwards compatibility as well. I wonder if it will work exactly like the PS2 and first-gen PS3s did where any previous-gen disc will work, or if it will be more like Xbox where they're constantly adding more games to the list of BC games.

13 hours ago, webhead said:

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I really feel like using the Emperor again is lame.  Like that story was resolved when Vader rose up and kill him.  I hope there's some trickery going on here and he's not REALLY back because bleh.

 

Because of the... unique way Sony built their database when the PSN was first released alongside the PS3. 

Nearly everybody else on the planet would have used a system where the first person to create an ID would have been given the (hidden) key value of 1. Then the next person would have been given 2, and so on and so on. They would have then had an additional field in the database labeled something like 'Usernames' for... well, the username of each person. This method allows everyone to be given an unchanging ID (the numerical value) that is unique to them and their account, and then a second ID that everybody sees, but can be changed as many times as needed and won't impact the account in any way, because all of the games developers would use the numerical ID to link you to any DLC you may have purchased.

Sony, on the other hand... didn't do this. The 'unique ID' that they gave everyone was literally the usernames we all chose, so every piece of DLC that we bought is directly tied to what our name is. So if you change it, as far as the game servers are concerned, you're playing on a completely different account.

The only way to fix this would be if every game made before 2018 was patched to use the 'unique ID' as a license check, and not the 'display name' (as even if you change your name, your database entry will still start with your original usename). Even IF Sony tore down the PSN and rebuilt their database in a way that actually made sense, all the games would still need to be patched to accommodate it.

"I'm tired of talking about this!*

*makes a video about it*

Gotta get dat youtube money I suppose

Edit: You know, the more I hear the people on the side of 'No! Leave it as it is!' cry about artistic vision or whatever, the more I get the impression that they feel like adding an Easy Mode will, for some reason, erase the original difficulty mode... which isn't what anyone is suggesting. I'm going to turn this on it's head now, if you feel that the Easy Mode of a game breaks the artistic vision of the game... well, you don't have to play that difficulty.

Oh, for sure. Easier difficulties would always be welcome in games. I would personally love it if more people felt like they could play the SoulsBorne games. They have some of the best character, world, and level designs I have ever seen in games, and the more people that can experience that, the better.

I must say however, that I don't think that the Souls games are really as difficult as people make them out to be. They're punishing and unforgiving, sure. But not hard. The 'difficulty' comes from having to redo an entire section again if you die. If it was checkpointed like most games are, it would be a lot easier. Most deaths come from:

a) Rushing in to a new area, yolo style

b) Getting 'greedy' with attacks and being punished for it

c) Timing a roll wrong and going off a cliff

d) Trying to rush back to where you died, thinking you have everything memorized, and being punished for it

As long as you take your time through new areas, and 'drag' enemies back to where it's empty, you shouldn't have too much of a problem (there are, of course, some exceptions to this rule). I think a lot of people have unfortunately been scared away because of the 'git gud' toxicity that comes with them, and I think a good portion of those people could probably finish the game no problem. All 3 games have tutorial areas where you can practice all the basics of the game, at a point in time where you literally have nothing to lose. 

If you beat Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on normal mode, you can beat a Souls game.

If you've beat any Devil May Cry game on normal mode (especially 3), you can beat a Souls game.

You will die more than you did in those games, but you can do it.

30 minutes ago, webhead said:

Selecting easy mode in a Souls game could be as simple as giving you extra stats and equipment to start. 

That would not work in a Souls game. You could start the game with the best gear for your preferred play-style and start at level 50, but if you don't have a head for pattern recognition, any given boss in those games will still kick your ass 7 ways from Sunday.

The only way to make the Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro games easier is to tweak the AI in some way. Someone mentioned it earlier, but slowing down their movements, increasing the time between their attack cycles, making it more obvious what's blockable and what has to be dodged, that kind of thing. Things like one-shot-kill attacks should stay in the game however, as making it more obvious when it's coming should counter them.

The downside to all of this is that it means a lot more testing and tweaking for each individual difficulty. More time and more money, and even then some people will still say it's too hard, others will say it's too easy now and they want a 3rd, 'normal' option.

11 hours ago, webhead said:

What makes sitting around listening to audio tapes fundamentally different from sitting around listening to codec conversations?  The non codec stuff is pretty much the same as any MGS game imo.

What makes reading Destiny Codex entries on a website fundamentally different to reading Destiny Codex entries in game? It breaks story immersion. You have to actively stop playing the game to search out this information to bring context to things. It also breaks your connection with the main character. The reason why plot twists and such work is because you find them out at the same time as the protagonist. But in this case, you find out all this information after Snake does because he was there when the tape was recorded. And you're listening to it while he's just stood around on Mother Base, or sat chillin' in the helicopter. Hell, I don't mind the IDEA of the tapes. If you forgot a plot point or whatever and want to go back to remind yourself about it, they're great for that. But at least have us actually THERE during the recording session. They actually do this a couple of times, when interrogating Huey, and then again with Eli, and it's MUCH more impactful as a story device. This is what the codec conversations were, and what the tapes aren't.

11 hours ago, webhead said:

 I just don't think this is bad enough that it makes the game bad.  That's all I'm saying.  It's an annoyance, but it did not impact my enjoyment of the game in any meaningful way.  To each their own but I have a hard time understanding why that would ruin anything you know?

Because it's not what the previous MGS games did. I bought this game for the classic MGS experience, and it did not deliver.

11 hours ago, webhead said:

See in my mind, this is MGS + other stuff rather than "Not MGS" as you're viewing it. 

MGS3 was MGS + other stuff, with the stamina bar, with the surgery screen, with the camo switching, with the animal trapping. And it felt great because the core gameply was unchanged. You had one goal, one villain, and the entire game was building up to you getting face to face with them for a good old fashioned showdown. MGS5 had a bunch of padded missions that were either remixes of previous missions, only with added prefixes such as [Total Stealth] or whatever, or missions that were straight up "Well, we're after Skull Face, but we don't know where he is yet, so lets just go and eliminate this random dude because somebody has paid us to do it."

12 hours ago, webhead said:

Saying it's bad "as an MGS game" is a puzzling sentiment to me.  Did you like the game?  Then it was a good MGS game in my mind. 

How much of a shitstorm would have been caused if, back when Hyrule Warriors was first released, it was announced that it was actually the next canonical entry in the Zelda universe? It was a fun game and I enjoyed it, just like many others did (Shit, you even got to play AS GANON, which was a surprising change). But enough for it to sit in the main timeline? No. Nobody would have liked that. Keep Hyrule Warriors as a spin-off, leave the mainline for the REAL Zelda games. That's how I feel about MGS5. It should have been a spin-off.

1 hour ago, webhead said:

 

That's all background though.  You don't actually NEED that to get the main story of the game.  It just adds to it. There is still a lot of weird shit going on in the foreground that tells the story of the game and it's VERY MGS-y.  I can understand your objections here but I don't think the story sucks or doesn't exist because of the stuff on the tapes...that being said maybe it's because I listened to each tape as I got it that changes my perspective?  It all kind of blends together with me so maybe when I play through it again at some point I'll have more specific thoughts.

If you only want the very basic story details, then yes, you can skip the tapes entirely. If you want things to actually make sense, you need to listen to them.

The Metal Gear Solid mainline games have always been about giving you all of the story beats - major, subtle, and otherwise - on a plate, when they would make the most impact.

1 hour ago, webhead said:

This is hard to really complain about.  Part of this is because you go back to mother base to do stuff and you want to do that here and there anyway.  It would be nice to have the option to stay in the field and do the next mission (or take several at once).  I thought at points you did actually get to do that but I can understand this complaint.  As someone who doesn't ever finish GTA campaigns or like them all that much, I'd have to disagree with calling it a shitty version of GTA.  It has its problems but I don't really see it.  I guess this really did not bother me as much as you for whatever reason.

To be fair, you don't have to go back to mother base after every mission, you can just leave the area. You DO have to get in the helicopter though to accept new missions, and to build new platforms on mother base. Most of my complaint about this issue could be fixed by just letting you select the next mission while you're on the ground, and then riding there or something. The fact that you HAVE to travel to some sort of 'mission hub' every time is why I'm calling it a shitty version of the GTA mission system.

The Metal Gear Solid mainline games have always been about letting the gameplay flow from one place to another without unnecessary interruption.

2 hours ago, webhead said:

 

I actually enjoyed this.  It's a gameplay system I tend to enjoy.  Gave me stuff to work towards (and it wasn't just plans, there were parts and shit you needed to do things for).  It's a series of fetch quests in a sense, perhaps, but it gives you some goals to go for.  I remember specifically going for the sniping tranq and then the silencer for it as soon as I could.  I liked it.  The skilled people thing didn't bother me either.  At first it was a bit much but I got the hang of it and I parachuted out a lot of people too. Especially since I took great pains to tranq people and not get alerts.  Some of this stuff you're just being nitpicky though.  It's a videogame.  THAT is why you have to do the things. I can understand that it's annoying that it takes so much effort for things though.  I found that I didn't necessarily have to go that far out of my way as I engaged with all the mechanics in the game at once as I went through the game.  It flowed pretty well for me.  I also sat there inspecting the help for an amount of time that is actually surprising to me.  I don't know why that didn't bother me.  I can completely understand why you may not love that.

I enjoy this kind of gameplay system as well. I love survival games, and I love games where you have to grind your way up a tech tree to get better stuff. It does not belong in a Metal Gear Solid mainline game though. This is why I don't like it.

Look, when Metroid Prime was first announced, I imagine a few people were concerned about it. A 2D sidescroller being turned into a FPS? That's not what Metroid is! But they kept the core gameplay faithful to the sidescrollers. You were doing the exact same things, you were looking for system upgrades, which would let you access areas you couldn't get to before, secret areas with health upgrades,etc. It still FELT like a Metroid game, just in 3D and from a first-person perspective.

If the only change in MGS5 was that it was open world, but everything else was kept the same, I would have far fewer complaints against it. But SO many things were changed, it no longer feels like a MGS game to me. There are no codec convos, there are no awesome boss fights (it has, what, 2 bosses?), certainly no interesting bosses, there is no interesting main villain, there is no interesting setting, gameplay is broken up in to chunks. If you can see past these things, if you don't see an issue in the first place, that's fine. But most of the things that I play an MGS game for are not in this game.

3 hours ago, webhead said:

Its been a while so I don't remember this.  More details in spoilers maybe?

I mean, there isn't really much more to explain. There are missions listed in the 'optional' mission list, that are actually 'mandatory'. You want more details than that? ?

2 hours ago, Psycho666Soldier said:

But the story does go somewhere...it ties right into the rest of the series.

No, it doesn't. And it only ties in at the very VERY end, but not because of anything important that happened during the game.

What happens to Sahelanthropus after Eli (Young Liquid) and the Third Child (Young Psycho Mantis) take it?

What happens to the vial of the English Voice Parasite that they take?

Nothing happens to these points. They're immediately dropped. Yes, I know the 'True' ending has both be bombed to hell and back, but you only see that if you bought the collectors edition in a video. As far as the game is concerned, it ends after Quiet says goodbye and you find out that you're not actually Big Boss which, yes, is how it ties in to the rest of the series (Venom Snake dies in Metal Gear, the Real Big Boss survives, etc).

2 hours ago, Psycho666Soldier said:

 It's not just, "get dropped in this location and linearly follow this path with the same expected enemies at the same expected turns."  You have to sneak within an open world environment, where things are moving.

No, instead you're dropped into a location and told to navigate around enemies within a preset area that follow strict and predictable patrol paths. Wait...

2 hours ago, Psycho666Soldier said:

 You have to find the bases and scout them out before you decide how to infiltrate.  You have to watch out for patrol troops and guard stations that might spot you free-wheeling in the desert.

No you don't. Of all your companions, D-Dog is the only one who is actually any good, and he let's you know if anyone is within a certain range of you (I forget the exact distance). You don't need to scout anything. Just crouch-walk your way everywhere, tranq everyone you come across and fulton them out. Easy.

2 hours ago, webhead said:

Hey whoa now.  Come on.

I'm being completely serious.

Have you played Metal Gear Survive? It's actually a solid survival game. At least it knows what it wants to be. MGS5 suffers from a major identity crisis. Is it a stealth game? Is it an action-adventure game? Is it a crafting game? It's trying to be all of these things. Here are my main issues with MGS5:

1. The story reveals:

Everyone had an issue with the hour-long codec sequences of the older games, but at least they told you the story as you were going along, filling you in on everything. You have to actively go out of your way to listen to very specific tapes if you want to be brought up to speed. Want to know who the Man On Fire is? Listen to a tape. Want to know if Eli is Venom Snakes clone? Listen to a tape. Want to know what happened to Chico and Paz? On a tape. Which ones? Fuck knows, they're in the list somewhere. Look for the yellow ones.

2. The gameplay loop:

This was very disjointing, and probably annoyed me the most. Select a mission from the list, get dropped somewhere, finish mission, get picked up, watch credits, get debriefed, repeat. It just doesn't flow at all, and it's this is which grinds my 'doesn't feel like MGS' gears the most. I can put up with having to actually search for the story. I can live with essentially having infinite ammo now thanks to the air-support. But don't split the campaign up into an extremely shitty version of the way GTA does it. Just... don't.

3. The weapon crafting/upgrading system

What? Why? Why do I have to search out certain plants to make a better tranq gun? Shit, why do I need to do this to make a tranq sniper-rifle in the first place? I also have to kidnap a certain number of skilled people, and build more Mother Base platforms so I can house these people, to level up that department in order to research this gun? Are we actually inventing these weapons? 

4. Important Side-Ops

More of a minor gripe, this. But you know the side-ops I'm talking about. The yellow ones. Side-ops are supposed to be optional, but if you want to actually finish the game, you HAVE to do the yellow side-ops. Don't put mandatory story missions in the 'optional missions' list. Dragon Age Inquisition does something similar to this as well, and it's annoying as shit.

MGS3 gets my vote for favorite game in the series. The story, setting, characters and everything about it nothing short of brilliance. The only gripe I have with the game is needing to constantly keep going in to the menu system to change camo. If they had a system in place where you automatically changed to the camo that gave you the highest stealth percentage, it would have made the game absolutely flawless.

For worst game, MGS5 takes it for me. It changed FAR too much from the Metal Gear formula where it didn't even FEEL like a Metal Gear game. It was more like if Kojima had made a Red Dead Redemption style game with a story that goes absolutely fucking nowhere. I was playing through it again recently, forcing myself to finish it just to say that I had, and I realised that I would actually rate Metal Gear Survive more than MGS5. 

13 minutes ago, webhead said:

Throwing piles of cache at developers at the expense of consumers being forced into your shitty store/client is something I am not for.

I agree, but if they want to make something of their store, this is the only option open to them at this point in time. Their store/launcher/whatever is severely lacking in features at the moment, so no one is even going to give them the time of day if they can just get War Shooter 13 on Steam, alongside all the other games they already have there. It's a gambit. They're betting that by the time the exclusivity runs out, they would have actually made something that people would habitually check to see what is currently on sale.

No one is currently saying that the Epic store is better, so I'm confused why you're using that image as some sort of trump card...

They're saying that Valve/Steam NEEDS a competitor, so can't wait until Epic gets their shit together

For healing, it's Moira for me. I do like Brigette, but I just can't get her to work as well as I'd like. My second DPS pick after Symmetra is Tracer, usually on something like Volskya Industries attack. So many people still don't realise you can get behind the defenders if you blink around the side. You CAN port there with Sym to be fair, but Tracer gives me a higher chance of survival when distracting everyone.

I still haven't got around to trying him out yet. I haven't played for a few weeks now, but I've gone hard into a Symmetra phase on ps4. She is so much more viable on console, especially when you teleport people up onto ledges. Kings Row on attack, getting people up onto the balcony behind the statue can be really effective

Thanks everyone! Yesterday was great, although the getting older part not so much (I'm now 36). Woke up this morning to find out I have been paid extra from work because of unused holiday days, so that was an unexpected bonus 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to looking at walking sticks and zimmerframes 

The Surge is actually pretty decent. It's a Souls-like that's set in a dystopian future. It's getting a sequel some time this year, apparently.

14 hours ago, Nairn Smoith said:

This is our 19th year of existence... Amazing!

Good god, now I feel old

15 minutes ago, Tassifox said:

Ironically one of them I shed that toxic shit about 3 years go. Feels great.

Oh dang. Good on you! No point keeping people like that around

Technically? I bought it on PS4 during launch, and played the expansions on there, but I also claimed it on PC when it was free a few months back