Video game spotlight thread
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What I mean is, if you go to the area where the encounter is going to happen, the captain in question is not there. They get teleported in for the event.
... WTF? So the orcs are realistically simulated, except for the fact that they occasionally teleport?
See, that I did not know and would not have guessed because it's so against every other design "thinking" of the game. (And I'm used to, you know, good games like Skyrim and STALKER where if an NPC needs to be somewhere he has to walk at a normal pace. Because, you know, those games are FUCKING CHEAP!)
In any case, I doubt that makes anything any easier because those red markers are inevitably atop keeps with 3 other orcs in them. Like I said, I explored every orc in the game's location.
Yeah, spying on them in their camps is worthless, and I agree that that's dumb. But it might help you find some captains who are weak against arrows, and then you can murder them and escape before being located. A few can even be instagibbed from stealth.
I did stealth kill one.
My "reward" was the 2 chiefs that started chasing me afterward got increased in power. So even when I do things right in this game, I'm doing things wrong.
You're very much running a geurilla operation in this game.
Except I get punished for doing that!!!!! I've freed a billion slaves, and my reward is jack shit, because I'm "capped" by the number of orc chiefs I've killed. Like I said above, I can't even fucking GRIND in my game.
Guerilla action like killing 4 mooks and fleeing? Great! The mooks respawn, and fleeing makes any chiefs in the area stronger. Even if they never even landed a hit on me. The only "guerilla action" that progresses the game anywhere is killing chiefs, and I can't do that and attempting to do it leaves me worse-off than before.
I'm sorry, again, that explanation is bullshit: this game is simply badly designed.
Oh btw, what's with the whole plants thing? It's cool that they heal you and all, but you regen anyway?
It's a dumb collectible. In a dumb game. With dumb designers. Who love quick time events. And everybody who told me, "hey if you loved the Batman: Arkham games, you'll love Shadow or Mordor!" is a fucking liar.
Or maybe they actually meant, "you'll love the Arkham games SO MUCH MORE after playing this shitpile called 'Shadow or Mordor' that tried to implement the Arkham formula and fucked it up to a legendary degree!"
Goddamned, Arkham Origins was dull as watching paint dry, but at least it didn't fuck up the formula.
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Except I get punished for doing that!!!!! I've freed a billion slaves, and my reward is jack shit, because I'm "capped" by the number of orc chiefs I've killed. Like I said above, I can't even fucking GRIND in my game.
Guerilla action like killing 4 mooks and fleeing? Great! The mooks respawn, and fleeing makes any chiefs in the area stronger. Even if they never even landed a hit on me. The only "guerilla action" that progresses the game anywhere is killing chiefs, and I can't do that and attempting to do it leaves me worse-off than before.
I get what you're saying for the rest of this post, but this part is wrong. Sure, lets say a captain or even a warchief goes up a power point or two. That doesn't change the difficulty much. I think I've seen one at 23 before, but that mostly just means they drop better runes. Killing one at the cost of another gaining a level is fine. Numbers are the main thing. 3 strong captains are easier to deal with than 10 weak ones.
If you're successfully learning captain weaknesses and can effectively take out the ones vulnerable to stealth and arrows, the rest will have less allies to group up with. Don't worry about them getting stronger when it happens, run!
The only time I was stuck was right before taking out the fourth warchief, and that was brutal. Took me a couple days. In a way, I applaud this game for making dying possibly more punishing than if it was permanent.
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Fuck. Maybe I'll give this shitty game another try, but it really is a piece of shit. We're long past the point where it's "enjoyable" but maybe we can get to the "I don't feel like I completely wasted $50 on this bullshit" stage.
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maybe we can get to the "I don't feel like I completely wasted $50 on this bullshit" stage.
Probably. I finished off the warchiefs and it gave me the quest to go after their leader. I thought, "wait, this isn't the glowy-eye dude!" and thought it felt like a really disappointing ending to a game that was far too short.
Then the second area opened up, and I found out I was halfway. This is the part where they go from 'u weeeeeek nooooooooooooob, have some more grimdark' to being nearly a demigod. It's almost a different game.
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Does it ever get fun instead of tedious?
EDIT: for the record, it says I'm "19%" through right now, whatever the fuck that means. Since the orc chiefs are literally infinite, and I could go backwards any time I die, I'm not sure how that's calculated.
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You mean like when you ride a graug into an enemy camp, have it eat 20 weaklings, jump off, double wraith-blast a few times, and then take control of an army of orcs? I rather enjoyed that part.
As for the completion rate, that's just about quests and sidequests. Warchiefs can even get replaced without you failing to progress.
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Ok I tried this game again.
I went to one of the red markers to interrupt some chief's feast. I got killed once because the camera was stuck behind a rock wall and I couldn't see shit. I did the idiot quick time event to come back to life, then the game interrupted by combat rhythm by OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE moving my camera, putting up the caption "fear of caragors" (huh!?), and showing some random orc running in some random location for some random reason. Then I died for real.
THIS GAME IS A BROKEN PIECE OF SHIT.
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You mean like when you ride a graug into an enemy camp, have it eat 20 weaklings, jump off, double wraith-blast a few times, and then take control of an army of orcs? I rather enjoyed that part.
Right except for what would really happen is you're on the back of the graug, then the camera gets stuck in a rock so you can't see shit and the enemies kill you with special attacks, then the game introduces 3 chief simultaneously which takes about 2 minutes of constant bad taunts, then a mysterious caption would appear saying something like "Rainstorms in France!" and your camera would go all the way across the map, in fact the camera would go so far away from your character that it was actually looking at Batman in a different universe, and you'd die.
If you like this game, you're an idiot.
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I did the idiot quick time event to come back to life
Half the captains later on don't even let you do that. They just kill you. I haven't had camera issues like that and would just call it bad luck, but the caragor thing is even worse luck. It means that some captain was wandering a trail that just happened to be close enough to you while a random band of roving caragors happened past.
The bad luck there is almost beautiful.
Interestingly, fear of caragors is one of the most helpful things in the game. You can get a captain to simply flee without fighting, chase him down, and interrogate/kill him. They will flat-out refuse to fight back, but likely run to areas with allies, so it isn't always easy.
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I haven't had camera issues like that
The camera in this game has been broken from the start.
and would just call it bad luck,
It's not bad luck, it's SHITTY GAME DESIGN BY A DUMBSHIT DESIGNER WHO DIDN'T BOTHER TO TEST IF THE CAMERA ACTUALLY FUCKING WORKED! There's no luck involved here.
but the caragor thing is even worse luck. It means that some captain was wandering a trail that just happened to be close enough to you while a random band of roving caragors happened past.
And the game showed me it... why!? You know, the game could have just NOT interrupted gameplay to show me this pointless thing that happened, for all I know, 37 miles away. It's almost as if this game was badly designed!
The bad luck there is almost beautiful.
All of the things I experienced were 100% in the control of the game engine at all time. There's no "luck" involved.
BTW I just tried another orc. I found a red marker. I was careful to use my binocs to ensure no other orcs were around. Ok. I triggered the quest. It says some jerk is setting up an ambush and I can kill him, ok. It's him, and about 4 mooks.
I go in, fight the guy, get him to almost dead (green health bar), and then what happens? Suddenly OUT OF NOWHERE, another orc chief shows up, fires flaming exploding(?) arrows, setting me and the first chief on fire. Whee.
Just when I want to, you know, REACT to this event in some way, the game once again YANKS AWAY my camera to show the new orc chief who gives me a shitty taunt that takes just long enough that I've lost every single iota of situational awareness I once had.
BUT OH WAIT. Now the game YANKS AWAY my camera again to tell me the first orc I was fighting has a "fear of fire" and he starts fleeing. But that doesn't matter, because the fire arrow orc now blows me up with another explosive arrow and I'm dead again. With no quick time event, even. So now all the ranks are filled in and now I have spend another 30 minutes to free 100 new slaves to get intel on them.
EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ORC CHIEF ENCOUNTER GOES EXACTLY LIKE THESE ONES.
This is not bad luck, this is "bad game".
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:words:
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The camera in this game has been broken from the start.
Hmm, okay then.
And the game showed me it... why!? You know, the game could have just NOT interrupted gameplay to show me this pointless thing that happened, for all I know, 37 miles away. It's almost as if this game was badly designed!
It shows you important things within your current sight range, because things like this let you kill someone off even more easily than what you're currently doing. Which means faster progress.
All of the things I experienced were 100% in the control of the game engine at all time. There's no "luck" involved.
You jumping into a spot where the camera got stuck is mostly the game engine. A random captain walking past and a caragor walking past are random. The engine did not specifically make that happen to ruin your day.
As for this new story:
It says some jerk is setting up an ambush and I can kill him
Means he wants to kill some stronger captain and gain ranks. This should worry you straight away. There will be at least one other captain.
fires flaming exploding(?) arrows, setting me and the first chief on fire. Whee.
I've only encountered one of these, and they are stupid and op and I hate them.
Maybe you should go back to killing them in their camps and running? At least then they won't surprise you?
Honestly, the RNG is apparently mistreating you badly. Which is very frustrating. It only acted that way to me a few times.
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It shows you important things within your current sight range, because things like this let you kill someone off even more easily than what you're currently doing. Which means faster progress.
No. Interrupting the pace of combat and fucking with my situational awareness does not help me progress faster. Especially when it's showing me something entirely irrelevant to my current objective.
You jumping into a spot where the camera got stuck is mostly the game engine. A random captain walking past and a caragor walking past are random. The engine did not specifically make that happen to ruin your day.
Right; but the engine could not show me these things. And then it would not ruin my day. It doesn't have to interrupt my gameplay for pointless shit. It could just... not do that?
Honestly, the RNG is apparently mistreating you badly. Which is very frustrating. It only acted that way to me a few times.
Yes, but what you're not understanding is: THAT MAKES IT A SHITTY FUCKING GAME DESIGNED BY RETARDS.
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Yes, but what you're not understanding is: THAT MAKES IT A SHITTY FUCKING GAME DESIGNED BY RETARDS.
I assume, then, that you aren't into ARPGs? (To avoid misunderstanding, things like D2 and PoE)
It may just not be your thing :/. All I know is, I didn't have anywhere near the trouble you're having. It happened a couple of times, but nothing like consistently.
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I assume, then, that you aren't into ARPGs?
I don't even know what an ARPG is.
You mean "action RPG?" I... guess Mordor is kind of one of those kind of? Maybe? That's stretching the definition though. It's more in the Batman: Arkham genre of "open world brawler".
It may just not be your thing :/. All I know is, I didn't have anywhere near the trouble you're having. It happened a couple of times, but nothing like consistently.
The game designers could have made it so this shit doesn't happen, is my exact complaint. They didn't, and therefore it's a shitty game.
ONCE MORE SINCE YOU DON'T SEEM TO GET IT: nothing that's happened in my game is outside the control of the game engine. NOTHING.
If I'm having a bad experience, the fact that having a bad experience is even possible makes it a bad game.
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I don't even know what an ARPG is.
I assume, then, that you aren't into ARPGs? (To avoid misunderstanding, things like D2 and PoE)
Yes, an action RPG. Things like Diablo. Games where the RNG can result in 10 uber-god-demon-slayer-lords appearing from nowhere and eating your face.
I'm not calling Shadow of Mordor one of them, but the problem you have with this game is a standard characteristic of that genre.
Personally, I like brutal failure states. I like to beat things that seem impossible. It makes success feel better. But I know it isn't for everyone. I'm not saying full on battletoads-level hard (and that's a game that's technically fair :/), though I've beaten one of those (an accomplishment, even while cheating for infinite lives). I've beaten a number of obscure games you haven't heard of and wouldn't care about (I mean come on, some were WC3 maps...) with some friends, that we all assumed were impossible for months.
But Mordor isn't that bad. It has some of that sometimes. I really just think it isn't your thing. And that's fine. Now you know. Sucks that you had to pay $40 to find out, though.
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If I'm having a bad experience, the fact that having a bad experience is even possible makes it a bad game.
Stop playing games that randomly distribute enemies and randomly trigger events.
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Personally, I like brutal failure states.
I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST DIFFICULT GAMES. I don't like cheap games. This game is cheap.
I like to beat things that seem impossible. It makes success feel better.
Right; impossible is good. This is just IRRITATING. There's a difference.
But I know it isn't for everyone. I'm not saying full on battletoads-level hard (and that's a game that's technically fair :/), though I've beaten one of those (an accomplishment, even while cheating for infinite lives). I've beaten a number of obscure games you haven't heard of and wouldn't care about (I mean come on, some were WC3 maps...) with some friends, that we all assumed were impossible for months.
I beat FUCKING WIZARDRY 8.
But Mordor isn't that bad.
Yes, it is. I'm playing it right now, desperately trying to get any value out of my wasted money. So don't lie to me when you know I have the game running right now on my other monitor.
I will hand you this: it's probably not supposed to be this bad. But since the designers never did anything to prevent this situation, this is the situation I'm in.
Stop playing games that randomly distribute enemies and randomly trigger events.
I have nothing against randomness in game. I am against games that don't do anything to prevent situations where it's impossible to progress.
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I am against games that don't do anything to prevent situations where it's impossible to progress.
One way you might be able to progress: artifacts and such give those non-skill upgrade points, which aren't capped like skill points afaik. They make a huge difference. My friend swears by arrows. If you were to get a couple levels of focus and a few levels of max arrows, you can probably be fairly devastating. There aren't many captains that arrows kill instantly, but you could still take a few down safely.
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Eh fuck it. It's a bad game, I'm not playing it anymore.
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Maybe I'll give this shitty game another try, but it really is a piece of shit.
Is it possible you accidentally started your game on "suicidal" difficulty?
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@blakeyrat Speaking of Batman, did you ever play Blackgate? (Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate for the full title). It's really a side-scrolling Metroid-like game, but I thought it was fun.
The Steam version will probably end up on sale during the upcoming Holiday sale too.
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Hmm, you saying that reminds me of one of my favorite games, which is sort of a castlevania clone... (Sort of because the first game was, but now you don't use a whip, and the things you deal with are rather different.)
It stopped working on W8.1, sadly (I do blame them, but it's not like they still update it, so :/)... I may make a proper post of it here at some point.
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@aliceif said:
Stop playing games that randomly distribute enemies and randomly trigger events.
I have nothing against randomness in game. I am against games that don't do anything to prevent situations where it's impossible to progress.
I enjoy them, something like FTL where I can get hammered to pieces in the first sector (out of 8) makes it much more fun when a combination of luck and skill gets me through.
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Winning due to luck is not satisfying in any way.
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In a game like FTL, luck is having the game not spontaneously murder you. Luck is never how you win.
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I played FTL for a while and never ever won. The chances of winning are so slim I got bored and haven't touched it again. That entire game is one evil sadistic PRNG.
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That's why I enjoyed it. I think I've beaten the game maybe 3 times ever? What I really like is that when things start to fail, they seem to catastrophically fail and you can just see yourself losing in like 15 seconds from now.
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I played FTL for a while and never ever won.
it's hard. i've done it, but it's not easy.
That entire game is one evil sadistic PRNG.
aye. it is.
What I really like is that when things start to fail, they seem to catastrophically fail
yep. when things go bad they go bad fast!
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That entire game is one evil sadistic PRNG.
What I really like is that when things start to fail, they seem to catastrophically fail and you can just see yourself losing in like 15 seconds from now.
In other words, Blakey needs to avoid it like the plague. And it would be in everyone's best interest if he did so, because then no one would have to deal with him calling it badly designed.
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In other words, Blakey needs to avoid it like the plague.
dunno. i've seen his lets plays of other games.... that one would be hilarious!
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He decided that since the RNG in Mordor lets you get mobbed by 3 captains at once, and that it happened to him fairly frequently, and the game did nothing to stop it, it's badly designed. Therefore, FTL is far more dangerous, because the RNG can pretty much kill you instantly, forcing you to start over from scratch.
(Interestingly, in that game, leveling a few captains means they'll murder eachother and let in more low-level ones, which means you actually have to deal with about the same level of enemies no matter what)
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In a game like FTL, luck is having the game not spontaneously murder you. Luck is never how you win.
Bullshit.
Surviving to the boss is easily done by a skilled player, regardless of bad luck along the way. (Ok, it's not like 100% of the time, but easily 95% of the time. If you make it past the first 3-4 combat bits without too much damage, you're golden to the boss.)
The only luck involved is, will you get to the final boss with all the weapons/equipment/personnel needed to defeat it? And that's a complete crap-shoot. If you didn't get the right drops and/or visit the right shops, you're just fucked.
FTL is a terrible game also. There's no sense of accomplishment. It's just, "ok, maybe 1-in-20 runs the game will spawn enough essential equipment in my path. Whee. How fun."
I might as well just roll a pair of dice and arbitrarily declare that double-6 equals "win", anything else equals "lose" and it takes me about 20-25 minutes for each roll. You can get the entire FTL experience that way for much less money.
EDIT: the real problem is that somewhere up in FTL is hidden a really good game. Doing the damage control stuff when your ship is damaged is genuinely pretty fun to learn. But once you learn it it kind of "caps" pretty early and you get as good at it as the game lets you.
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I might as well just roll a pair of dice and arbitrarily declare that double-6 equals "win", anything else equals "lose" and it takes me about 20-25 minutes for each roll. You can get the entire FTL experience that way for much less money.
Confounding factors: Humble bundles, expensive dice.
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Surviving to the boss is easily done by a skilled player, regardless of bad luck along the way. (Ok, it's not like 100% of the time, but easily 95% of the time. If you make it past the first 3-4 combat bits without too much damage, you're golden to the boss.)
The only luck involved is, will you get to the final boss with all the weapons/equipment/personnel needed to defeat it? And that's a complete crap-shoot. If you didn't get the right drops and/or visit the right shops, you're just fucked.
So luck may randomly kill you, like I said, but winning is more skill than luck, like I said, except apparently when it is about luck? I don't get where you're disagreeing with me, but it doesn't make much sense.
In any case, my point in saying what you seem to be trying to pull apart for some reason was that you most likely don't like FTL. Which you apparently agree with as well?
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Winning due to luck is not satisfying in any way.
Yes it is
Surviving an encounter in FTL (an utterly fantastic game btw ;) ) by a single hit point because the enemy's final missile happened to miss rather than hit is a huge rush.
Recently in Mass Effect 3 (Insane DIfficulty) I almost died when an enemy mech launched an insta kill missile at me in the open... until my NPC buddy ran into it's path and took the hit, leaving me a chance to get back to cover and kill the mech. Pure luck, and really fucking fun.
Losing by luck can also be fun. Another game I've recently been playing is Far Cry 4, I was sniping an enemy base from a hilltop, when a pig runs past... chased by a tiger, that proceeded to ruin my shit, whereupon I fell down the hill and got gunned down by the now alerted enemy base's troops. Lost my shit laughing
If you can't enjoy stuff like that in gaming, I pity you.
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In a game like FTL, luck is having the game not spontaneously murder you. Luck is never how you win.
I played FTL for a while and never ever won. The chances of winning are so slim I got bored and haven't touched it again. That entire game is one evil sadistic PRNG.
Hey, whoah, FTL can very occasionally kill you in sector 1 but apart from that you can generally overcome whatever it throws at you. Just takes practice to learn all the systems, all the tactics, and get good at micromanaging the ship's crew, power and oxygen!
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I haven't played it since right after it was released, probably close to two years ago now, so maybe it's been updated to be a little less brutal.
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So luck may randomly kill you, like I said, but winning is more skill than luck, like I said, except apparently when it is about luck? I don't get where you're disagreeing with me, but it doesn't make much sense.
What I'm saying is there's two things here:
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surviving to the boss
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being able to defeat the boss
The first, anybody who's learned the game can do 95% of the time. (Disclaimer to idiots: that number is made-up.) The latter can only happen if the random number generator is on your side during the playthrough and happens, maybe, 5-10% of the time.
Thus, something like 85-90% of the time, when you lose the game, it's purely because the RNG hates you and it would have been impossible to win anyway.
You know what Solitaire does right and FTL does wrong? Every deal in Solitaire is winnable. In FTL, something like 80% of deals are not winnable. That's not a fun video game.
Losing by luck can also be fun. Another game I've recently been playing is Far Cry 4, I was sniping an enemy base from a hilltop, when a pig runs past... chased by a tiger, that proceeded to ruin my shit, whereupon I fell down the hill and got gunned down by the now alerted enemy base's troops. Lost my shit laughing
I'm perfectly ok with stuff like that. You have to remember, one of my favorite games EVER is STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, which is the game Ubisoft completely ripped-off when they made Far Cry 2, 3 & 4. (And in fact, that exact scenario has happened to me in STALKER, except it was psuedo-dogs instead of pigs and tigers.)
As long as the pig and tiger didn't teleport there from nowhere, and the game didn't yank your camera control away from your character while you were being attacked 4 times in a row. It sounds significantly more fun than anything in Shadow of Mordor.
Hey, whoah, FTL can very occasionally kill you in sector 1 but apart from that you can generally overcome whatever it throws at you. Just takes practice to learn all the systems, all the tactics, and get good at micromanaging the ship's crew, power and oxygen!
Right... except the end-boss. The end-boss plays by a totally different set of rules.
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You know what Solitaire does right and FTL does wrong? Every deal in Solitaire is winnable.
What solitaire do you play?
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Every deal in Solitaire is winnable. In FTL, something like 80% of deals are not winnable.
That just ain't so. If you have a cloak OR a drone system and some decent weapons by the time you get to the boss, you CAN win. And it's very rare I get through 8 sectors without a cloak OR drone, I usually see multiples of both.Better players than me win consistently on hard mode (I'm on about easy/medium here).
Feel free to hate but the game IS NOT unwinnable 80%/the majority of the time, that's just a lie.
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Well then maybe like in Mordor, the game is the greatest bestest thing ever and I'm just "unlucky". Whatever. The point is:
It is not fun to play.
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The point is:
It is not fun to play.
For you. Stop ignoring the experience of others, you obnoxious white male.
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Yep, not all Solitaire games are winnable.
Same with Freecell. (Although, Freecell has a higher winnable-to-unwinnable-games ratio than Solitaire)
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Yep, not all Solitaire games are winnable.
I capitalized the S to indicate I was talking about Windows Solitaire, which (correctly) only deals winable games. You should have known this via telepathy.
It is true that in real life Klondike solitaire, not every deal is winnable.
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I capitalized the S to indicate I was talking about Windows Solitaire, which (correctly) only deals winable games.
The other place this comes up is Minesweeper. I took a liking to Mines-Perfect, which has a few options for giving you games that are guranteed to be winnable without guessing. This avoids the frustrating situation of getting 99% of the board solved and winding up with a 50/50 shot of winning.My favorite mode is to turn on Murphy's mode -- if you guess and you don't have to guess, it will move the mines so you lose.
I'm not necessarily opposed to randomness... but for some reason, I find its manifestation in Minesweeper very frustrating.
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Mines-Perfect
Murphy's [Law] mode
I know what I'm doing next time I'm on hold.
probably forgetting about this until right after I get off the phone
