legend

Just now, stepee said:

 

Holy fuck. 96 with 36 reviews. Did Zelda legit get competition???

Yeah this actually has a shot of winning GOTY at this rate, and to take down the best Zelda ever made in the same year would really be something.

Still not a ton of reviews, so it could go down, but it's sitting at 2nd highest rated game of all time on opencritic now.

9 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I’m trying to temper my expectations or like realize that maybe the game’s charm won’t last through 100 hours, but I’m just in act 1 and I am getting the feeling that this is one of the best games I have ever and will ever play. 

I'm 50 hours in and still on act one! (well maybe more like 45 because I started a coop campaign with a friend too)

1 hour ago, stepee said:

My early impression, not having much experience in the genre, is that it’s like a mix of Warcraft 2 and Kings Quest 5 put together in a package similar to KOTOR. It might work for me, though the combat is a bit of a sore point (I don’t like tbs style where you can only move a certain amount etc during combat), but it is very obviously something more action only oriented players will just not enjoy.

KOTOR was made by Bioware not long after they made the original Baldur's Gate games and KOTOR also used DnD rules (the SW version of them). So yes, KOTOR is a very good analogy!

23 minutes ago, Biggie said:

Just wait. Everyone on BG3’s dick E right now will be jumping ship to Starfield once it releases. 

What does "jumping ship" mean? Play the game? I mean, yeah, gamers usually play multiple games.

Will declare Starfield to be better and the GOTY? lol. lmao even.

(Also, FTFY)

Nvidia game ready drivers finally released I guess. 

16 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Hey so asking for a friend, can two people create custom characters and play coop together? On the same PC coop and/or on different PCs( each with their own copy in online coop)?

Yes to all. However, the campaign and those custom characters will be owned by one of the players's PC. You can't independently level a character and then come back. I.e., it's not like Diablo where you each have separate save files and drop in.

Furthermore, I believe you cannot swap out custom characters for NPC party members. If you make a game with multiple custom characters, they always must be in the party.

2 minutes ago, best3444 said:

I refuse to play inferior games with low budgets. 

Think you might be begging the question there, chief  

5 minutes ago, atom631 said:

and speaking of Gale. Im getting fucking sick of sacrificing gear to him, but its great having a wizard in the party. I have him cast grease and then use Shadowheart to throw a fireball. Works amazing for crowd control. 

18 hours ago, stepee said:

I liked that I could relate to Cloud being a sexy bad boy the women can’t keeps their hands off of 

Cloud at the Honey Bee in FF7R is one of the greatest scenes that has graced any RPG ever.

8 hours ago, atom631 said:

 

how do i get my bonus to attack up higher? is that just through levelling? or is there specific gear i should look out for? 

Both  When you level, you can choose feats that impact your attack modifier, or you can just choose a plain ability score improvement and increase the associated stat. E.g., for ranged, you want a high Dex state. A note: every even state value increases your modifer. So at 10, you get a +0 modifier. At 12, you get a +1, etc. Odd numbered stats are worthless. However, sometimes you can have an odd number stat that you then increase to an even number with a feat that gives a +1 to it, or a items that give a +1 to. And you can get additional weapons/items that add to the modifer.

Beyond that, as you level your proficiency bonus increases which *also* adds to your attack modifier and as long as you're proficient with the weapon you add your proficiency bonus.

8 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

You know, unless I'm playing a joke character or something I almost always choose human. I continually hear about how boring it is, but to me all the other races tend to be boring -- mainly because they're like "basically human, but with this really limited culture" or "basically human, but weirdly obsessed with some vice or virtue and the entire race is basically a hivemind with how similar they are." And then they're almost always ugly as shit.

 

But for joke characters, they're gold mines! Fuckin' stupid tiny races, frog-faced githyanki, the colloidal silver drinking drow, the "we're just humans but we live forever" elves, all such simplistic and boring concepts to me, but great for doing real dumb stuff.

To me, if you can see a character and reliably guess anything about its attitude based on its race alone, that's weak as hell. If you see a human, what can you guess about them based on race alone? Fuckin' nothing! You have no idea what you're in for! You can't even guess general interests. At best you might guess something real vague like "probably curious." The other races obviously aren't full of clones and aren't completely identical, but I feel like only one or two should really have widespread and common traits like "arrogant twats," rather than many of them having such predictable features. With one or two races that makes them interesting because it's kind of an alien concept, but if it's all the other races then it's just kinda weird?

My man, it's DnD. Role play your race however you want. The other races give you different aesthetics you can vibe into however you want. DnD Is actively encouraging this more dynamic race RP with every iteration too.

34 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Id actually prefer a real set. We don’t use technology in our games. Pen and paper only.

Real dice are fun, but when you always play with remotely with friends from around the country, it's not very practical!

I also think DnD beyond is a net win because doing the crunch manually get's rough, and having a system account for all your skills when it determines the bonuses etc streamlines the game and let's you focus on the part of the game matters. Of course I would say that because one of the very reasons I'm a computer scientist is because I feel like there is no reason to do mundane work when I can make a computer do it for me!  

I do, however, have aspirations to make a dice recognition system over a dice tray and integrate it with DnD Beyond so I can roll real dice and have it do the bonus calculation. That would be my ideal.

16 minutes ago, atom631 said:

 

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I think my next steps in the main questline are to head out to the Tower. One option was to travel via the Underdark, which I had planned to do bc Im a drow. But I have this other quest to find the Creche, but it looks like thats via the mountain pass, which i think is the other option to getting to the tower (but i think when i tried to get to the quest it told me i was underlevelled for the next area). 

 

i did realize i missed a whole area to the south with the bog and the hag. Im doing that now and @legend - good call, i actually left most of the goblins in the camp alone bc I was able to walk in like i owned the place. although they are very upset with me now. maybe ill go finish them all off. 

Yeah, that's basically what I did. I exited the camp when they went hostile and came back later from my own vantage so I could have a better approaching to take them all down. It's a ton of experience and there are a ton of camping supplies.

16 minutes ago, atom631 said:

Also - rerolled my Drow Ranger. I hastily picked some things, but now that im understanding this better, i feel they were bad choices. I originally was going for like a beastmaster specialization, but i find using the animal companion a PITA and  not very useful other than to maybe pull agro. So I wound up not using them, which was wasting the class. So I gave him more of a focus on movement/stealth and ranged attacks. He hits like a truck, but i picked up the feat  "Sharpshooter" which i think gave me -5 to attack roll but +10 to damage. It seemed like it was a net +5 to damage, but i think its causing me to miss shots. does anyone know if there is a limit on the amount of times you can respec? 

I don't think there is a limit, just a cost for each time.

Sharpshooter is fucking amazing as a feat, but you simply must get your bonus to attack up higher to make it worthwhile. A good ranger build can pull like +15 to the attack at which point taking sharp shooter is very wortwhile. But early levels it's not so great.

If you do play real DnD and use DnDBeyond.com, you can get BG3 dice and character sheets:

6 hours ago, Bacon said:

I feel like turning off karmic dice has improved dice rolls. I've seen far more critical success.

Blaming the RNG is a right of passage for every DnD player.

Actually, at least I thought they confirmed Gaia would be part of it, but I'm having a hard time finding a source for that now, so it's possible I made it up  

13 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Yeah, I'm with you - I'm enjoying the show but a lot will depend on how the whole story ends. With regard to the laws of robotics, beyond Demerzel, robots haven't really come up, so have they been playing fast and loose with the laws? I could be forgetting.

Thus far just Demerzel, but she's absolutely not following the laws. Or at least it would have to be a huge stretch to justify how. The show runners said there is a reason for that so I'm giving them the room to show me what they got, but we'll see.

Beyond that though, I believe they confirmed Gaia is going to be part of the show and 

4 hours ago, atom631 said:

the more I play, the more im getting the hang of it and the more im loving it. I had sex with an alien and recruited a dog to my camp. GOTY! 

 

@legend im confused by this tho

 

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im pretty sure ive done just about everything in this area. I recruited all party members. fought the fake paladins. killed the knolls and got the bottle out of the chest with the monster in it. I know I have a few more spots on the map i need to checkout….

 

but im only like level 4.4. I still need over 2000xp to get to level 5 and everything ive read seems to suggest I shouldve easily hit 5 by now. I feel like I missed a massive quest somehow. 

Have you tried killing more goblins?  

5 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

But they are enhanced!  

I've played the enhanced -- it doesn't change the issues that @best3444 will hate  

2 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I played Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, but, like, mostly to do stupid shit. Never really got too crazy deep into them because me and my friend would just do the absolute stupidest shit in co-op.

Pretty sure this was the game's whole MO  

28 minutes ago, best3444 said:

I played and beat DA:O...

 

Maybe there is hope for me just yet! @legend makes great points. 

If you liked DA:O, I think there is a decent chance you'll like this. Perhaps the biggest deviation is DA:O was pseduo turn based, where "turns" happen but it all plays out in real time with the ability to pause. In this, it pauses for every character to make a decision (and then you watch in realtime the often hilarious aftermath like giant explosions yeeting people off cliffs) But yeah, start on easy. There's not a lot of instruction about the complex rules of DnD 5e, and the combat is hard when you don't understand them.

23 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I honestly don't know how well they hold up, but Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 are typically dirt cheap and doesn't even take a potato to run it... like.. a stem of a potato will probably do just fine.

I would similarly say there is no chance in hell @best3444 will like the originals. Ancient graphics with small people and a far more convoluted version of DnD (good luck understanding THAC0 as a newbie) with even worse interfaces to explain how it works.

13 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Yes, it would absolutely be a mistake for you to buy this game as this is ABSOLUTELY NOT an "entry-level" game in this genre.

 

If you're really interested in trying this genre, then I suggest starting with one of the Shadowrun Trilogy titles (Shadowrun Returns/Shadowrun: Dragonfall/Shadowrun: Hong Kong) as they're less complex, but still provide a very good entry point.

Shadowrun is an excellent series, but there is no way in hell @best3444 will like it. It's all text -- no voices -- with "small people" as Kyle would put it, no spectacle, and very simple (though artistically pleasing) graphics.

BG3 on easy is honestly his best shot at any of these games because it's possible the only game of this kind with high production values in story telling, well rendered fully voiced characters, over-the-shoulder perspective, spectacle, and lots of humor.

1 minute ago, best3444 said:

Boy, these impressions really spark an interest. If I never played a single game in this genre, would this be a mistake to buy?

 

I'm hyped reading through all this shit.

Doesn't hurt to give it a shot, but I would start it on easy mode if you do. As others have mentioned, if you don't know DnD rules, there's a lot to learn, and if you've never played a game like this before it will be an even steeper ramp. Then, if you are feeling it and are finding it too easy, bump the difficulty up.

Also, maybe play with a controller.

I think it's pretty clear that this and TotK are going to be the big contenders for GotY in most venues, and I want to point out to the game industry that these are some of the most system driven games in this history of games and they have no microtransactions.

9 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

I actually really enjoyed last week's episode, while they've done a lot of story shuffling adapting the book, the plotlines they are making do generally adhere to what happens in the book. This episode felt fun and had some energy to it - a lot of cool sci fi tech on screen as well, which was cool.

 

@legend, you watching?

I am indeed. I'm enjoying this show, but where I land is probably going to depend on how the whole story ends. There are so many deviations, and that's fine if it still captures the ideas of the books, but I still can't tell if they'll do that!  

The one I'm most nervous about is how they're going to handle the laws of robotics. Those laws are so fucking important to grander theme of the books and every time someone adapts them to a show or move, they tend to shit all over them not getting the point that the laws were never flawed (when there were problems they were problems in execution, not in principle): they were Asimov's axioms for all morality and absolutely necessary mechanisms for robotics that results in the salvation of humanity. So far, the show is playing really loose with them, and seemingly ignoring them entirely. If they don't have some good reason for that and recover the theme I'm going to be really pissed!

1 hour ago, Bacon said:

tl;dr My brain is broken and doesn't know how to have fun and is too worried about everything ending perfectly. Looking forward to playing more later.

You should probably avoid Disco Elysium in that case  

There was a moment in that game where I had prepared and buffed myself so much to succeed and yet still made an awful roll and failed. Yet, the failure outcome was on of my favorite most memorable moments in the game! But you will fail in that game a lot and if you have trouble with that it would probably be your worst nightmare.