Saints Row The Third, Rocksmith, Skyrim, Just Dance, Expectation Station, Your Emails and more!
This week Julian, Lara, Elysium and Allen talk about how they manage their expectations before big games come out.
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Tech Thing Daily
Game Thing Daily
Good Old Games
Rocksmith
Saints Row The Third
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Skyrim Mod Thread
Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks
Believe It or Not - Greatest American Hero - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gre... - 18:31
Main menu - Saints Row: The Third - http://www.saintsrow.com/ - 31:36
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Professionally offended. Does not understand jokes. Needs a man to explain them to me.
What? You laugh because you know they'd never look at it unless someone mentioned it to them directly? That's why I'm laughing. See, I'm laughing...
Backloggery
When you enter a dungeon for the first time it will be permanently locked to a specific level based on your current character level. If you leave, level, and come back the enemies will still be the same level they were before. However, every dungeon has a predefined level range, so if you enter somewhere intended for a higher-level character it will be locked to the low end of that range, but it might still be too tough for you at your current level.
By "cockroaches" I assume you're talking about Chaurus? No level matching there, they're just really tough enemies.
To clarify how the level matching works, when you're level 40 you're not going to be getting your butt kicked by level 40 Skeevers. Individual enemy types have their own predefined level range. What the level matching does mean is that you'll start running into tougher types of enemies. For example, once you level up a bit you'll one-shot any regular Draugr you encounter, but you'll start seeing a lot more Draugr Scourges, Wights, and Death Overlords.
It could be worse—muttonchop could be right too.
I've already played the heck out of Braid on console, but otherwise thumbs up all around!
https://juv3nal.neocities.org/
spider_j wrote:I had noises about that! Cheers, juv3nal!
See I told them Braid was a bad choice! Ok, for a different reason, sure, but still.
The thing about smart people is they seem like crazy people to dumb people -- Thing I saw on the Internet
Congrats, juv3nal!
Gravey, I'm never sure, on a scale of 1-10, just how serious you are when you post. – Minarchist
Believe it or not, it's just you...
Steam | Battle.Net | PSN
I sang the George Constanza answering machine song.
Gravey, I'm never sure, on a scale of 1-10, just how serious you are when you post. – Minarchist
Guess that means I'll have to pick something. Mwahaha!
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman
I should mention (since they came up) I've also played Bastion on the xbox and World of Goo on my phone.
https://juv3nal.neocities.org/
spider_j wrote:I had noises about that! Cheers, juv3nal!
I hope Juv3nal likes Men of War!
imbiginjapan on Vanquish:The difficulty is punishing but it knows enough to punish me while wearing stiletto heels and a push up bra, so I forgive it.
I hope juv3nal likes ... nevermind, Dark Souls isn't on Steam.
Steam: [GWJ]MeatMan | "Now I know where to go if I have a hankering for testicles." –Higgledy
Same here. I never actually heard the original before.
You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work
when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything
productive for the rest of the day.
Steam - Denikker
I would have loved to hear you guys making fun of my steam list.
Plants Versus Zombies, Half Life (and all the expansion packs) and Windosill.
That's it.
If I'd won you probably would have ended up buying me the complete Popcap library, or a bunch of games my PC wouldn't be able to play (it can barely handle Minecraft with all video settings dialed down to minimum and only if I turn the sound off)
Congrats to Juv3nal.
Jonman Wrote:
Yes, you can cancel Darksiders, but only by using your Sony Golds. Which, while pretty good, aren't a patch on Zelda.
I'm A Steam Curator!
So that means I'm basically playing the game wrong because I didn't enter all the caves before I started leveling.
Well, something to remember for my next playthrough.
2 points:
1) There's no reason for a large spitting bug to cause this much trouble for someone who's killing dragons.
2) Adding a prefix to the same enemy and making him harder is the same as just leveling up the easy enemy as far as I'm concerned, particularly if you don't see the easy enemy anymore.
To me, an EXP based game should mean that once you get to a high enough level you should basically be able to one-shot everything. Kind of like the hobbits in the ending of the Lord of the Rings books. I've faced the fires of mount doom. A handful of bullies with sticks shouldn't concern me, the bullies shouldn't be larger and have harder sticks just because I stopped off to clear the barrow wights before I went to mount doom.
If I can't break the game, it's not a real RPG.
Jonman Wrote:
Yes, you can cancel Darksiders, but only by using your Sony Golds. Which, while pretty good, aren't a patch on Zelda.
I'm A Steam Curator!
The Skyrim levelling works I think. Not all mobs level, there is variety in encounters. Some are stronger, some are weakers. By the time you hit higher levels you also have the advantage of all the perks you've chosen along the way, resulting in more than enough one-shotting whether your path be might, stealth or magic. Its not as if all I run into at Level 40 is just the top of the line versions of each monster tree, you see lower levels ones too. The levelling keeps it interesting, and personally I like that the scalability keeps encounters fresh so that a quest I chose not to do earlier is still interesting when I decide to weave it into my storyline.At lvl 40, my character is generally a walking killing machine, yet I end up finding good solid encounters too.
I see your point about dragon hunters having trouble with giant centipedes, but... its plausible enough to rationalize that an expert in one thing, might not have the tools or knowledge to deal with a different enounter. Even the lowliest scorpion, spider, bee or swarm of ants can take down a human in the right circumstances.. despite our ability to take down much bigger things. See, rationalization can easily bolster the sense of disbelief. No problem at all.
DoubtingThomas, with your strong views on levelled lists, I do have one piece of advice...Never play Dead Island. Its a great game I think, but the auto levelling of the mobs is so obvious, it would drive you crazy. It might even blind you with its brightness within each and every encounter, because you can see the enemies level above their heads.... levelling along with you. Actually, that would probably result in a fun post to read by you.
My problem with the Skyrim autoleveling is simple: After 40 hours of the game bears shouldn't still be harder to kill than dragons.
How did I live before digital distribution of old, cheap games?
MilkmanDanimal wrote:You did live before digital distribution of old, cheap games. Now you just play games.
Is that auto levelling or is it that they set the difficulty too low for the dragon encounters. I would say it is the latter. My impression was that from the first dragon encounter, they could have been more epic in nature.
I stopped having trouble with bears ages ago, so maybe its your build or your strategy.
(I mean this in jest)
Skyrim is definitely an interesting gaming experience to reflect on. I mean, I've been hooked on it and devouring its content, but I keep having this feeling, right or wrong, where I kinda remember Oblivion leaving more ways to approach a particular goal within in a quest line. This engine is better, the world maybe more detailed/realized, but something that I enjoyed about Oblvion seems missing. I keep thinking that each individual quest is a bit more on a straight and narrow path. Oblivion had good little stories within its miscellaneous quests, and some of that seems missing. I think an example of this might be in the Brotherhood (assassin) quests. In Oblvion, there were kills that you had to do achieve in a certain way. I think there was even one where you had to sneak in and drop a mounted animal head off the wall onto a target, or something like that. Skyrim in its equivalent questline hints of this need for special kills in quest descriptions, but almost invariably it says something like "you can perform this kill by any means." which was an easy out.
I enjoy Skyrim, but as with other Bethesda games, I hope it succeeds in providing an upgraded tool and platform for folks to mod and extend. I'd be particularly curious to see if folks can take the Radiant Story telling component and build that out into new meaningful ways to affect the game world.
Obviously they are dragon bears. Dragon Bears > Dragons.
I need an "I'm with Dyni" t-shirt. -- Localgod54
Shamus Young had an insightful take on Oblivion's levelling that I pretty much agreed with.
Good news! You can break this game. You can easily get your character to a point where you can one-shot most enemies, especially if you invest some time with smithing and enchanting.
It could be worse—muttonchop could be right too.
That's how I'm going to have to play it, I think. I just finished the Mages College quest, and
Bottom line, the game a) heavily favors sneaky archers (which is a boring way to play a game like this IMHO) and b) punishes you for doing anything, because the rest of the game gets harder every time you kill anything. It's kind of like a passive aggressive Demon Souls.
Jonman Wrote:
Yes, you can cancel Darksiders, but only by using your Sony Golds. Which, while pretty good, aren't a patch on Zelda.
I'm A Steam Curator!
a) is definitely true, stealthy archers are really powerful in this game
As for your second point, this really isn't true. Things definitely get easier as you level. For one, pretty much everything in this game has a maximum level so as you level up a lot of enemies will start to get really easy. Bears are terrifying early on, but after I levelled a bit I was one-shotting them with a one-handed axe. Some enemies, like Draugr, will level with you a lot more than others, but as you gain more perks and better gear they'll get easier too.
It could be worse—muttonchop could be right too.
Making the game more favourable to sneaky archers has been a huge draw for me, since that's the way I love to play IMNSHO. However, I wouldn't say Skyrim unfairly favours sneaky archers since I'm also swording-and-boarding like nobody's business, the first time I've ever delved into melee combat in TES, and it's just as powerful and satisfying.
Gravey, I'm never sure, on a scale of 1-10, just how serious you are when you post. – Minarchist
Congrats to Juv3nal. I'm listening to this episode a little late, and I know you guys mentioned this in the show but I couldn't help but think,
Wait!!!! Don't buy that game now, it's going to be like $2 in the next steam sale....as you picked out each game. I've been so trained by Steam sales that actual buying a game on Steam for full price just seems so odd, I didn't even know some of those games cost so much. It was still a lot of fun to hear you guys go through his list and just pick out games through, rather than just picking from a wishlist.
Just popping in to say another thanks for the games. Also, pychonauts is awesome. I don't know if it's a steam daily deal or was earlier, but even if it hasn't been, it's probably pretty cheap and totally worth it. The gap between the cutscene versus in-game resolution is a bit jarring (but comes with the territory with an older game, I guess) and the camera leaves a bit to be desired, but generally really great: as in I would say it's the greatest thing Double Fine have done and probably ranks second (grim fandango, for those keeping score) for greatest thing Tim Schafer has been involved with counting his lucasarts stuff.
https://juv3nal.neocities.org/
spider_j wrote:I had noises about that! Cheers, juv3nal!
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