Have you been spending hours trying to pass a level? Or maybe you are completely addicted to a newly bought game. Do you have a question about a game or would like to share something else? In the Weekly Discussion Thread, you can do it all!
Please don’t forget to use the spoiler tag as soon as you start talking about a storyline.
Man I want to love PoE but it seems like you can’t enjoy the game after a certain point (not even close to endgame) without following a build guide which I really dislike doing.
Well, until you start understanding the game mechanics, you can follow a build guide.
I do not, and I roll my own builds, and I will say they are generally quite successful. I can get ideas from guides, or other builds on poe.ninja, but then I still research and adjust to my liking, budget, and playstyle.
Rolling a build is more than half of the game for me, and I spend a lot of time tuning and testing.
So yeah I’d say there are several layers to playing PoE:
Playing the campaign and a few maps casually without looking something up. It is still a great experience to discover things and the complexity at your own pace. You won’t get to do the true endgame though, but it is an experience you can have only once, so I would personally recommend to go through it and see how you like it.
Go with a well described build by someone else. You can reach the endgame, learn how the game works, how the mechanics work, how the market works, how farming works, and lots more things.
Start rolling your own build. It’s like switching games at this point, theorycrafting a build is the true game, and POE is just a frontend for testing your build. And it feels awesome when you succeed and complete something you can call your own and see it do well. And it is iterative, you learn how building a character works so that you can do even cooler things next time.
And also do achievent/challenge hunting.
I’ve only followed a build once. And it was fun. Then I rolled my own, and it was more fun for different reasons.
But definitely needs a lot of time investment long term. It should probably take a couple of years for you to be able to claim you know what you are doing. But thankfully, the game respects you and does not demand your immediate time investment. You can play at you own pace. I have work and family, I play for a couple of hours every few days mostly. And it is fine. No one is pressuring me with daily quests and shit like that. I play because I feel like playing. I pause and play other games no problem, depending on my mood. It’s great.
Gta online, v rising, planetside. Picked up atomicrops on my switch again and I’ve miraculously made it past year one given the face I have no idea what I’m doing
Just finished Pentiment. It was a wonderful, miserable experience. Don’t know how people can stomach multiple playthroughs.
Also just finished Doom Eternal. Mixed feelings overall but I like the idea of the counter-heavy combat system. I just wish they dialed back the number of mechanics a bit.
My current addiction is Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I was skeptical at first but man do I love the immersion in this game. The minigames like alchemy and lockpicking are fun and engaging. The combat is kind of Mordhau-lite which means it requires more thought than just spamming attack. The dialogue is surprisingly funny at times, the story interesting enough, and the voice acting is solid. And I like how the quests aren’t all simply “go to the marker”–you have to actually follow clues and pay attention.
I bought Alan Wake 2 literally a day before the sale, not thinking it would go on sale. And now I’m waiting for a patch anyway because some lighting bugs were introduced in the last patch. Oops. Kinda sucks but I’m still very excited to play it!
I just finished Yakuza 3. I have loved 0, 1, and 2. 3 was tough simply due to the lack of music cues. There is so much time spent listening to “ambient_beach.mp3” or “bustling_small_city.ogg” that it was getting tedious. The story is great and it shows off a side of Kiryu that hadn’t been developed and was great fun to see. The gameplay was so-so. Stiff and of the era. I’m currently taking a short break before I dig into Y4. I’m really excited to get up to LaD and that game style, but I am enjoying the story to get there.
I like how the moment-to-moment is still strategic and tense, but its not as brutal as something like tarkov. (By default when you die, you keep what you went in with)
Just finished Signalis, got the “Promise” ending. Feel pretty empty after that, it’s such a good game and is further proof that games don’t have to have incredible graphical fidelity or huge teams to be fantastic and look great.
I wanted to play Star Wars Rebellion, but my copy is doing a thing where all the icons in-game are upside down. Apparently it’s a known issue running the game on newer OS (How? WHY?!) but until it’s fixed I can’t really play.
I’ve been playing Call Of Duty 2 as part of taking notes about the roots of the series. Not sure if there’s enough meat for a proper essay but I will see.
I really can’t wait for Christmas break to immerse myself in something. Maybe Deus Ex.
Kinda in between games, I’m currently playing genshin/star rail as fillers while I decide on something better to play. Occasionally I play pandemic legacy season 0 on tabletop simulator and it’s a blast! Always love some pandemic legacy
Good old modded Terraria once again. Thorium + Overhaul + Eternity mode with a friend is pretty fun. Turns out Thorium’s sword sheaths are fucking cracked with Overhaul’s sword changes. I one-shot several bosses and had to stop using them lol.
My other friends started playing RLCraft recently, which has got me in the mood to play a hardcore Minecraft modpack. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble finding any that aren’t either complete BS (my issue with RLCraft) or feel incredibly unfinished (like RotN, where over half the guide book entities are placeholder text and the wiki link on the main page leads to a dead wiki).
I’ve been playing Marvel Midnight Suns since buying it during a sale and man I cannot believe I missed this game around release, it’s incredible!
I’m not very familiar with marvel outside of the older cartoons and some of the MCU, so I find myself very surprised to find myself really enjoying the non-avengers cast here.
I had never even heard of Magik before this game, and I didn’t know Blade was marvel. Also I love this version of ghost rider. The skull helmet is badass.
In any case I’m shocked at how well the cross between XCOM and a deck builder plays, every character feels distinct from each other while the decks can be customized to lean into different parts of their kit. (Except for Deadpool. I can’t seem to make his kit work very well )
The story is pretty meh though I love hanging out with the large cast between missions. It can feel pretty disjointed though, especially with the dlc missions sprinkled in.
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