Justin258

I think this video is worth watching

Basically, this guy plays a demo of a game where all of the NPCs are driven by AI's and they respond to things he says to them.

How do I feel about this? Well, if every NPC in Starfield had some sort of massive LLM hanging around that they could draw character traits from, it sure would make that world a little more lively and interesting. Generally speaking, we've gotten pretty good at procedurally generating worlds and somewhat OK at generating interesting things to fill them with, if we could procedurally generate cities and fill them with characters we could make something pretty interesting. Of course it won't be a replacement for hand-crafted stories and characters, procedurally generated worlds have already proven that they cannot be as good as hand-crafted ones, but it could still be a useful tool.

Another game worth considering is an early access game called Shadows of Doubt, a 3D world that generates crime scenes for you to investigate as a private investigator. I don't know exactly how AI driven it is, but it does randomly generate individual characters that all have roles to play in its world.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/986130/Shadows_of_Doubt/

Asking people to mark their spoilers for Quake II is something that got a chuckle out of me.

I have been playing the PC version of this off and on, between games and while shooting the shit on Discord. I had a lot of fun with the original campaign, but I think Quake 64 is kinda meh and I'm really not keen on the original two expansions. Machine Games made Call of the Machine, though, which I haven't yet played but which I hear is good. Still, I'd tell you that the original game is the star of the show here by far.

One of the things that has ensured my continued fun even when Quake 2 is at its worst is the quick menu "Compass" tool. I like old school shooter level design when it feels clever and fun and does a good job of leading you along. I don't think I like it so much when I get stuck pixel hunting for something I missed, or when the game has no map and I can't remember how I got here because I was busy murdering things. The Compass tool ensured I never spent all that long wondering where I should go. As a side effect, I didn't find all that many secrets while playing, but that's more a problem with self-control than with the game - taking a few minutes to look around can be good for you. Still, I never really got all that bored or annoyed with the game...

...with one exception. There's a fast melee enemy type that takes a lot of bullets and deals a lot of damage. It can jump and slam the ground next to you in an AOE and frequently I felt like there was nothing I could do about it except reload and dump more lead into those guys. Maybe I just suck at Quake 2, but these guys became my immediate priority over all other enemies in the game whenever they appeared, and this jump-slam AOE attack is by far the most annoying thing to deal with in any of the games.

I would tell you that framerate is very important, and that having everything on every device run at 60FPS should be a goal that developers and publishers alike should strive for. Personally, I can play and enjoy a game running at 30FPS, but it's always a jarring transition and I never appreciate it. I would rather play at 60+ all the time, every time, and that framerate is a major reason I keep my PC somewhat up to date.

...but here's the thing. Most people don't notice. Over the past few years a lot of console games have had pretty good 60FPS modes and I bet that did "convert" some people to the 60FPS fandom, and some of those people might go on to get into PC gaming just to keep 60FPS in every game. But the vast majority of people who wanted to play Starfield at 60FPS are going to grumble, maybe rage online a bit, then download and play Starfield for a hundred hours on their Xbox.

This isn't just about optimization, either. 60FPS costs more resources. As in, the Xbox Series X and PS5 have a limited amount of resources that any given game can draw on. You can use those resources more efficiently only to an extent. At the end of the day some games have too much going on or are too complex to run at 60FPS on those consoles. At that point, you either sacrifice something significant to the game or you cut down to the 30FPS cap that most people are going to be fine with.

Also, when I say "too much going on" and "too complex", I'm not just talking about graphics and resolution. Sure, you can cut down resolutions and graphical effects and such and make a game run better, but again, sometimes there's stuff going on under the hood that you just don't think about. Baldur's Gate 3's Act 3 is a prime example - the city doesn't look any better than the previous two acts, but there are many, many more moving parts. There are so many items, NPCs, and such that have a physical presence in the world, and that adds a lot to the resource cost for that game in a way Larian's engine doesn't seem to be very good at handling.

And, again, most people who play games on console have proven time and time and time again that even in the presence of 60FPS games, they'll go buy games with 30FPS caps and barely even notice. On the PS2, Jak 3 was a 60FPS game. So was Ratchet and Clank. Yet Grand Theft Auto sold a zillion copies. On the 360, Call of Duty was a 60FPS game, but Halo 3 still sold a zillion copies, along with a bunch of other games. The comparison to 60 has always been there on consoles and it's always been a good selling point but it has never once knee-capped a game's sales. On the other hand, visual splendor can move copies of games and get people to really pay attention. Think about Star Wars 1313 and how bummed people were that it got canceled. It looked like "Star Wars but Uncharted" as far as gameplay goes but visually it was amazing for the time.

We won't see 30FPS games disappear in favor of 60FPS ones until one of two things happens - the hardware far outpaces what developers can actually do with it, or until consumers stop buying 30FPS games altogether and vocally announce that they're doing this because of 30FPS caps. It doesn't seem like either of these are going to happen anytime soon.

Larian's previous game, Divinity: Original Sin 2, was also like this. There's a lot of variation in how things can go depending on what you do and how you do it. You can't even take all of the characters with you in one playthrough - you pick three other characters in the first act and that's your party for the game, if you want to know the other three character's stories you have to do another playthrough and pick up the other three characters.

In fact, I cannot stress enough how much Baldur's Gate 3 feels like a successor to DOS2 with a DND ruleset than a sequel to the original games. I don't present this as a bad thing, I think DOS2 is great and I think the original games are also great, but if you're ever looking for a similar game, DOS2 is going to scratch this itch more than the original games will.

Inventory management remains my biggest gripe with both this game and DOS2. More complex games in this genre have had vastly easier to manage inventories than BG3. Even the original games had easier inventory management than this one and those came out in 1998/2000. You could remove potion making and all of the associated ingredients and change almost nothing about the game. You might argue that would change something about the game's balance, but I would argue that I have made a handful of health potions and a few potions of speed and nothing else, I can't see it changing that much. Combine that with clearly marking what is vendor trash and what isn't and this game's inventory woes would be cut down significantly.

I started to write another bit about how grid inventories suck but realized that I actually wrote that bit in this thread two pages ago, refer to that for thoughts on the other thing I think they should have done for inventory purposes.

Everything else about this game... OK, Act 3 performance is still not great but everything other than those two things is golden. It's all great stuff. I'm sure I could nitpick here and there - I think Act 2 is weirdly paced and Ketheric Thorm's VA seems like he's supposed to be a lot hammier but actually he's just really flat and quiet for some reason - but these are minor gripes. I'm thrilled this game is having such a great reception and I think it really deserves it.

I just hope at least some of the people who love this go and play some of the other games in this genre. BG3 isn't the only game of this caliber under the term "CRPG", except in terms of budget and production value. Don't stop here. There's so much else to explore.

This seems like it would be a cool side mode in an actual full F-Zero game.

I'm not an F-Zero fan, but I am a Metroid fan, and I imagine if I were an F-Zero fan, right now I would feel a lot like I did when Federation Force was announced. Just a complete misunderstanding of what people are actually looking for.

@brian_:Are you always creating a new character for mechanical reasons? There's a guy named Withers who can respec you entirely for a hundred gold as many times as you want, he hangs around camp and everything. If you're just looking to try out a different class, you can just talk to that guy without restarting the game. If you're always looking for reactions to your race, background, etc., yeah, you have to restart everytime for that.

Where are you stuck at? I can only think of one place in the game that you can't fast travel out of and you're definitely not there yet. I could be wrong because I didn't spend much time fast traveling, except to camp for spell refresh.

As far as party comp, the guy I mentioned above, Withers, can re-do everything related to class and you can also "hire" new characters from him that don't have any story relevance.

I would avoid going through the Mountain Pass or proceeding to Act 2 in any other way until you're at least level 6.

If you're level 4 as a Bard, you probably have already picked a subclass. How are you trying to play them and what subclass did you pick? You can pick College of Valour and get free access to medium armor and shield proficiencies, which can give you a bonus to AC and make you more survivable. Also, at level 4 you can pick level 2 spells, which will allow you to pick Cloud of Daggers, which does decent damage and is also a great spell for chokepoints. Also, do you have access to Bless or Bane on any character? Blessing all four of your party members before a fight can give you a good leg-up for the first few turns, it gives you a bonus to attack rolls (attack roll = do you hit or miss the enemy, if your attack roll is higher than their AC you hit) and saving throws (does that spell effect hurt you or not) while Bane lowers the enemy's attack rolls and saving throws.

I've seen some discussion that BG3 is a good "first CRPG" and I think that's true to an extent, but unlike Pillars of Eternity/Pathfinder, it provides very little in the way of difficulty customization and provides no story mode (where you can't die). It also does very little to explain the DND 5E rules that it's based on.

As a final note, is Karmic Dice turned on? Karmic Dice was a somewhat controversial addition to the game. Basically, it says that if you've lost a bunch of dice rolls in a row, the next few dice rolls are going to lean in your favor with some background math. Which is great, but the opposite is also true - if you pass a bunch in a row, the game tilts things against you. I turned this off and didn't miss it at all, but if you have it turned on it might be screwing you over? Just a thought.

I hope I've helped at least a little. If I haven't, there's no shame in looking up help for these games, I was stubborn and played the older games on Core Rules over the past few years and spent a lot of time crawling around Wikis and twenty year old forums trying to find help.

Nintendo standardized the ABXY layout on the SNES and then the Sega Dreamcast switched around the A/B and the X/Y. In order to fix this, you need to go back in time and convince whoever designed the original Xbox controller to keep the Nintendo layout and not the Dreamcast layout and then all will be good.

...for me personally, I don't seem to have much trouble adapting to Switch games. However, when I plug my Switch controller into my PC and try to play games with it, I get mixed up pretty bad, and I don't know why this is. I only did that a few times before deciding that the Switch Pro controller really should stay with the Switch, even though I like how that controller feels in my hand a lot.

I'm getting close to, but not knocking on the door of, the end of the game. I'm playing a Half-Drow Rogue/Fighter. I'm a level 5 Rogue and the rest of my levels went into Fighter. I'm focusing on dual-wielding (one of my weapons is a shortsword that does life-stealing, the other is Phalar Aluve), I have an extra Bonus Action, I have two attacks, and I have Uncanny Evasion turned on pretty much all the time. And it's great in terms of single-target damage output, especially if I get a sneak attack off. I also have a crossbow and a lot of arrows for when things are far away or I'm looking for some kind of effect. I have 19 dex, decent constitution, decent charisma, and no strength.

I've mostly tried to be the "good guy" while also stealing stuff here and there.

I'd like to play through this game again a year or two from now, or whenever Larian finishes patching it up and after they do their inevitable Enhanced Edition or whatever. I'm not sure what I'll do then but right now I think the idea of playing it with a Paladin/Sorcerer sounds interesting. 2 levels of Fighter for Action Surge, extra health, and innate armor abilities, plus 5 of Paladin, plus five of Sorcerer could be really cool, at least it could be in my head.

I've never really been big on single-classing, I like my characters to be able to do multiple things well.

EDIT: I quoted the wrong guy, I meant to quote @brian_ because he asked what classes people were playing.

While I'm editing, I wanted to note... it seems like there's a lot of reaction to people playing a full-blooded Drow, but zero reaction to people playing a Half-Drow. This doesn't bother me, but I guess people just aren't as inherently suspicious of Half-Drow and can somehow tell that my character isn't 100% Drow? Also I threw Minthara off a cliff before realizing she could be a party member so maybe she would have had something to say about it.

I played hundreds of hours of Skyrim and loved it, regardless of its issues. I like space-y stuff. I found Fallout 4's shooting actually satisfying and its weapon crafting really cool, though I think its world is incredibly boring and its writing execrable in a way that none of their previous games were. Building a base on a remote planet I discovered sounds and then building and customizing my own spaceships on that planet sounds like my fucking jam. I am pumped to play Starfield...

...as soon as I finish Baldur's Gate 3.

There's something about Skyrim's atmosphere and world that will always draw me to it. No, its writing isn't great. Its combat is bad, though playing that game on a higher difficulty did give me a new appreciation for it a few years ago. But exploring that world, out in the middle of nowhere, in the cold and loneliness, while Jeremy Soule's soundtrack plays in the background, is one of my fondest gaming memories. It eventually did get old, after years and years and hundreds of hours across my original Xbox 360 version, the PC version, and the Switch version I bought and played here and there.

None of that is particularly relevant to the discussion at hand, but I think it's pretty relevant to why I feel pretty excited to play Starfield, and I feel like putting it out there because otherwise this thread seems like it will be chock full of people with a rather dim view of Skyrim.

I don't think so. I think Microsoft saw that Baldur's Gate 3 had 800,000 concurrent players on Steam and someone very, very high up in the company said "we need this game on our system while it's still relevant".

I'd also assume that Microsoft and Larian are going to try to patch this functionality back into the Series S. They may or may not succeed on that, we may never hear about it again if they don't succeed, but I bet they'll try.