What are you playing?

[robot zombie]

This, its a little bit what GTA also has. Yes, stuff can fly in weird directions, who cares

GTA would be the other game I'd mention when it comes to that style of emergence. Though more earlier editions than later. Later games still have a lot of sandbox elements, but in terms of missions/controls/general interactions, a lot more is higher complexity than it used to be and thus more predetermined. They've added so much polish with the world and animations... and so much they want you to specifically see/do in every mission that the experience can become rather sneakily linear for long stretches of play. You start to get locked into how they want you to experience things... this is where all of the open-world games out there bug me. So obsessed with hype. They show you the thing. You buy it. You do the thing. This is not emergent gameplay. It's a linear story game with an overworld and some modules. Every feature and extra complexity takes up more space in the sandbox. There is a balancing act, but with the things publishers want to market to players, there is no room for the game and player behavior to really breathe outside of specified confines.

I've never really been sure what Bethesda wanted its players to experience. I think as a whole, Bethesda itself doesn't know, either. And that's what made the games good. They added a bunch of different sources of potential outcomes... all of this random stuff that can happen in random places, but never went and did the final polishing and directing, so the behavior actually is highly variable. So many random things can just line-up. As much as Bethesda NEEDS to step it up majorly in the polishing department, I think all of their contemporaries need to think a little more about what it actually means to let the player steer the experience. I don't think they understand that it's not simply about providing set choices and paths for the player to then discern, with cues leading in. Bethesda has actually never been great at that. Sometimes it's about giving them no path. It's about the overall sense of predictability. When the choices and outcomes available are too curated, you lose the sense of mystery in all of the action. You always know what and how the game decides for you. However, nobody EVER knows what and how a *Bethesda* game decides for you. It's such a ridiculous thing to say, but their basic, sloppy-ass games feel more alive than a lot of the big open-worlds coming out now. And I think a lot of it really is just down to the fact that they do leave you a bigger sandbox. The game is okay with you breaking it, if you are. You can actually try to defy the game, and there's a good chance you'll succeed. You don't always even know when it's throwing you a curve ball, when it's curving on itself, or you are curving it, but that's part of what makes it feel more like a living thing with a personality.


I think the first studio to figure out what I'm getting at revolutionizes the genre again. Right now, they're kinda headed in the opposite direction, on this truncating path to further refining all of the things we all already know always happen in every open-world game. I dunno. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of Starfield. I don't have the highest of hopes but we shall see.

 

[R-T-B]

Timberborn. I am now partial to beavers. They seem more fit for the earth than humans...

 

[SN2716057]

Arma 3

War is hell

Instructions were in Spanish...

 

[garrick]

Playing SGW sniper ghost warrior,contracts 2.If you like fast action . this is it baby, good graphics.
I give it around 80.

 

[Splinterdog]

My usual starting position in Grid Autosport

 

[Ruru]

Still working on FF X-2. The grandpa was way easier than I thought, beat him at first try.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

PUBG Mobile emulated on PC. Still haven't found a Battle Royale to compete. Only just found out that PUBG PC is free, have yet to try it.

 

[Cvrk]

The nicest person in Elden Ring is this turtle. Calm and soothing voice ready to tell you everything.
They do have a thing about turtles in this game.

 

[INSTG8R]

Enjoying my latest "toy" purchase, my wheel rig. But just doing nice chill driving. I was playing ATS but I've now moved back to ETS 2, started fresh and just purchased my first truck and the disappointing paint option that is pretty obvious...

 

[robot zombie]

This ghoul dunked so hard he got stuck to the ceiling. Dude was probably a menace on the court of this trailer park, back when people lived in it! The impulse was so strong, it was the last remaining part of his mind to tower over the utter mind-annahilation of feralization. Even as a feral ghoul, the man never forgot his footwork. This game is deep man, check it out!

What a magnificent moment to have frozen in time, to be observed as one observes a statue. It really is such a graceful pose - what poise and fitness this fine ghoul has! Is that "Swan Lake" I hear?

He's... uninteractable. Technically speaking, he does not exist. I can't even grab him in the console. "Ghouls: The Ballet" is just a glitch in the matrix. And honestly, it's probably my fault that a couple of them behave like this at this location. But if that's the case, I am only that much more proud to see it. I would have to concede that my modding work is done, as I can do no better.

I do now wonder how feasible it would be to have radiant spawns of ghouls performing ballet scenes before attacking, however... I must contemplate this for many long nights. Imagine - as the fog of the radstorm swoops in to obscure all but an arm's-length view, you begin to hear the faint cries of several ghouls off in the distance, inching closer with each cry. It is becoming hard to count how many there may be, and echoes obscure the exact position and dimensions of the mob. This could be bad. All that you see is a chaotic impression of a sea of tree silhouettes, vanishing quickly into the fog through the narrow radius of your headlamp's dim beam. Intermittent flashes of radioactive cloud-to-cloud lightning bring the reality of this ghastly arena closer to the foreground of your mind with each unholy thunderclap of rolling toxicity. And wait, is that... ...the theme for The Nutcracker?

I dunno... maybe there's like... a lab somewhere that produced a bunch of funny drugs for crowd control, that are now in the environment. This is Fallout. You already have Hallucigen in this very game, a facility where they developed a bunch of 'non-lethal' tools for just that. Why can't people in this game believe that there are dancing ghouls out there when actually they are regular ghouls who want your limbs, and you are just high on dumdum gas that's been swept up in the same weather patterns carrying fallout from The Glowing Sea across the whole Commonwealth of Boston? Can we pass by travelers swearing by their recent encounters? Maybe there's a guy who spawns at one of the many overworld radiant spawns for NPCs, and he tells different stories of them. You hear whispers about them in towns. Maybe what those people don't understand (but you can learn,) is that there's a region downwind that's just fucked by stupid gas, once stored in a grossly incompetent manner by a shitty arms contractor from prewar times - trying like everyone else in the lore to quickly win bids to make the most money on the war. I think I have all I need. This practically canon now. I think they must have meant for me to piece this together. I just invented a whole unique biome for the worldspace based on ghouls doing ballet. Worldspaces need a variety of biomes with depth in their distinguishing characteristics to really have staying power as worlds in anyone's minds. At least put it in a terminal, Bethesda. You're welcome. I'm doing the real work here

Everything I say about this game inevitably turns into a full critique lol

This premise is totally absurd, but I feel like the way I propose integrating it would actually work better than it sounds like it should. I just wish they had more things on that level of world-tethering. Part of what makes the games cool is that they actually don't hold your hand THAT much. There are super-simple paths to go through all of the big stuff - it's all laid out for you. But there is also nothing stopping you from ignoring all of that. But at the same time, there's not a lot like what I described up there - stuff incentivizing you in any particular direction, down on that ground level of exploration. I've seen a few posters touch on something like this being what stopped them from getting into the game from the start - the got bored meandering in different directions. I think it's somewhere in the whole 'uncovering' aspect of exploration. It's about the why of what you find yourself wanting to do with that freedom. That's the difference between hollow world experience and not for me.

What I'm trying to say is that good, convincing world elements in these games are more about buildup and integration than necessarily the theming consistency. At least IMO. I think this is where Bethesda most fucks up Fallout, to be totally honest. They min-max it, with most of the weight on the latter. It's that simple in the end. From the beginning it has been a world with room to make any number of things interesting, and I think Bethesda agrees with that. But they only get on a superficial level. It's something *like* the original ideas for approaching the delivery of things, without ever embodying the spirit of it fully. They get so caught up with making it look and feel like a Fallout game that their worlds end up lacking the gut biomes that would make that more of a playable reality. The originals were so good on integrating world elements with the subplots and different NPCs... and there was so little to guide any of it. Now, that makes it inaccessible, but somehow it was possible for people to get into those worlds by including those aspects. So much work goes into dressing these things up like Fallout games. They're thorough in their portrayal of everything, down to minutia. Part of this I think is just because it lets them recycle a lot of assets from game to game. But another part of it, to me, is this obsession with the aesthetic of their Fallout brand. It's not enough!

Cyberpunk suffered for the same reason. Look at the world. It's INCREDIBLE to look at. You know it took a lot of work to make it so intricately authentic everywhere you go and everywhere you look. And yet, a common complaint was not feeling a connection to the world... it felt dead, empty. Plenty of things to do in it, when you really lay it all out. But there's nothing really to uncover behind this masterpiece of a sci-fi cityscape. You tour the obvious attractions but exploring the world is not exactly an ever-evolving experience. I mean, yeah man, it is "Cyberpunk" to the max but what's that ultimately worth in XP when you're left with less story and game to tie into it all?

 

[Courier 6]

This ghoul dunked so hard he got stuck to the ceiling. Dude was probably a menace on the court of this trailer park, back when people lived in it! The impulse was so strong, it was the last remaining part of his mind to tower over the utter mind-annahilation of feralization. Even as a feral ghoul, the man never forgot his footwork. This game is deep man, check it out!
View attachment 247116
What a magnificent moment to have frozen in time, to be observed as one observes a statue. It really is such a graceful pose - what poise and fitness this fine ghoul has! Is that "Swan Lake" I hear?

He's... uninteractable. Technically speaking, he does not exist. I can't even grab him in the console. "Ghouls: The Ballet" is just a glitch in the matrix. And honestly, it's probably my fault that a couple of them behave like this at this location. But if that's the case, I am only that much more proud to see it. I would have to concede that my modding work is done, as I can do no better.

I do now wonder how feasible it would be to have radiant spawns of ghouls performing ballet scenes before attacking, however... I must contemplate this for many long nights. Imagine - as the fog of the radstorm swoops in to obscure all but an arm's-length view, you begin to hear the faint cries of several ghouls off in the distance, inching closer with each cry. It is becoming hard to count how many there may be, and echoes obscure the exact position and dimensions of the mob. This could be bad. All that you see is a chaotic impression of a sea of tree silhouettes, vanishing quickly into the fog through the narrow radius of your headlamp's dim beam. Intermittent flashes of radioactive cloud-to-cloud lightning bring the reality of this ghastly arena closer to the foreground of your mind with each unholy thunderclap of rolling toxicity. And wait, is that... ...the theme for The Nutcracker?

I dunno... maybe there's like... a lab somewhere that produced a bunch of funny drugs for crowd control, that are now in the environment. This is Fallout. You already have Hallucigen in this very game, a facility where they developed a bunch of 'non-lethal' tools for just that. Why can't people in this game believe that there are dancing ghouls out there when actually they are regular ghouls who want your limbs, and you are just high on dumdum gas that's been swept up in the same weather patterns carrying fallout from The Glowing Sea across the whole Commonwealth of Boston? Can we pass by travelers swearing by their recent encounters? Maybe there's a guy who spawns at one of the many overworld radiant spawns for NPCs, and he tells different stories of them. You hear whispers about them in towns. Maybe what those people don't understand (but you can learn,) is that there's a region downwind that's just fucked by stupid gas, once stored in a grossly incompetent manner by a shitty arms contractor from prewar times - trying like everyone else in the lore to quickly win bids to make the most money on the war. I think I have all I need. This practically canon now. I think they must have meant for me to piece this together. I just invented a whole unique biome for the worldspace based on ghouls doing ballet. Worldspaces need a variety of biomes with depth in their distinguishing characteristics to really have staying power as worlds in anyone's minds. At least put it in a terminal, Bethesda. You're welcome. I'm doing the real work here

Everything I say about this game inevitably turns into a full critique lol

This premise is totally absurd, but I feel like the way I propose integrating it would actually work better than it sounds like it should. I just wish they had more things on that level of world-tethering. Part of what makes the games cool is that they actually don't hold your hand THAT much. There are super-simple paths to go through all of the big stuff - it's all laid out for you. But there is also nothing stopping you from ignoring all of that. But at the same time, there's not a lot like what I described up there - stuff incentivizing you in any particular direction, down on that ground level of exploration. I've seen a few posters touch on something like this being what stopped them from getting into the game from the start - the got bored meandering in different directions. I think it's somewhere in the whole 'uncovering' aspect of exploration. It's about the why of what you find yourself wanting to do with that freedom. That's the difference between hollow world experience and not for me.

What I'm trying to say is that good, convincing world elements in these games are more about buildup and integration than necessarily the theming consistency. At least IMO. I think this is where Bethesda most fucks up Fallout, to be totally honest. They min-max it, with most of the weight on the latter. It's that simple in the end. From the beginning it has been a world with room to make any number of things interesting, and I think Bethesda agrees with that. But they only get on a superficial level. It's something *like* the original ideas for approaching the delivery of things, without ever embodying the spirit of it fully. They get so caught up with making it look and feel like a Fallout game that their worlds end up lacking the gut biomes that would make that more of a playable reality. The originals were so good on integrating world elements with the subplots and different NPCs... and there was so little to guide any of it. Now, that makes it inaccessible, but somehow it was possible for people to get into those worlds by including those aspects. So much work goes into dressing these things up like Fallout games. They're thorough in their portrayal of everything, down to minutia. Part of this I think is just because it lets them recycle a lot of assets from game to game. But another part of it, to me, is this obsession with the aesthetic of their Fallout brand. It's not enough!

Cyberpunk suffered for the same reason. Look at the world. It's INCREDIBLE to look at. You know it took a lot of work to make it so intricately authentic everywhere you go and everywhere you look. And yet, a common complaint was not feeling a connection to the world... it felt dead, empty. Plenty of things to do in it, when you really lay it all out. But there's nothing really to uncover behind this masterpiece of a sci-fi cityscape. You tour the obvious attractions but exploring the world is not exactly an ever-evolving experience. I mean, yeah man, it is "Cyberpunk" to the max but what's that ultimately worth in XP when you're left with less story and game to tie into it all?

is that at jamaica plain or close to fort hagen? looks familiar lol

 

[robot zombie]

is that at jamaica plain or close to fort hagen? looks familiar lol

Hahaha, no, actually The ghouls at the plain are a lil goofy for me as well, but this is Fiddler's Green Trailer Estates. I was getting ready to get Winlock and Barnes for Big Mac and it was on the way.

 

[Courier 6]

Hahaha, no, actually The ghouls at the plain are a lil goofy for me as well, but this is Fiddler's Green Trailer Estates. I was getting ready to get Winlock and Barnes for Big Mac and it was on the way.

ah yes, very close to fort hagen lol

 

[robot zombie]

ah yes, very close to fort hagen lol

Hah, I guess it is fairly close. I was still stuck on JP. I try to avoid that place unless I'm going in, because more than once I've somehow managed to make every ghoul in there charge me after alerting one or two from the road next to it. *shudders* God forbid a deathclaw spawns in the spot by the intersection leading up when you're headed south. I've only had it happen once... and I managed to get all of the gunners and mutants from that dump at the end of that intersecting road working me over from afar while I was dancing with this friggin deathclaw and simultaneously realizing all of the ghouls from JP are also awake. Little red dots everywhere. Never again. Next time I want an experience like that, I can just jump into the pit of Dunwich Borers. At least then I can have a cool knife that I will never use.

 

[freeagent]

Right now I have BeamNG, Crysis, CP77, FC5, FH 5, GTA V, and RDR2 installed. I usually play Forza for a half hour or so an evening, and dabble with the other ones on the weekend. Really glad I got my new GPU, I was playing on a 980 Classified.. it was "ok" but I kinda knew what I was missing

But honestly.. I play Mario Kart on my phone the most lol.. My PC is downstairs, and I have to spend time with the family upstairs..

 

[Courier 6]

Hah, I guess it is fairly close. I was still stuck on JP. I try to avoid that place unless I'm going in, because more than once I've somehow managed to make every ghoul in there charge me after alerting one or two from the road next to it. *shudders* God forbid a deathclaw spawns in the spot by the intersection leading up when you're headed south. I've only had it happen once... and I managed to get all of the gunners and mutants from that dump at the end of that intersecting road working me over from afar while I was dancing with this friggin deathclaw and simultaneously realizing all of the ghouls from JP are also awake. Little red dots everywhere. Never again. Next time I want an experience like that, I can just jump into the pit of Dunwich Borers. At least then I can have a cool knife that I will never use.

I have my X-01 fully upgraded, tytanium plates and for weight, gaus rifle, guardians sniper, high power shotgun, 556, double shot laser rifle, etc, no worries going in, I just mow them down LOL

 

[robot zombie]

I have my X-01 fully upgraded, tytanium plates and for weight, gaus rifle, guardians sniper, high power shotgun, 556, double shot laser rifle, etc, no worries going in, I just mow them down LOL

Ahhh, I see how you roll lol. TBH I have seldom used power armor and in over 2000 hours logged in this game, I gotta concede... it's fully out of spite for them handing it to you right away. I said "Nuh uh, I'm gonna suffer on hard with my shitty pipe guns and sciencey gimp suit."

Honestly I think I just find myself out there too early. I'll generally be makin that trek ~level 11 to get the luck and agility bobbleheads out by spectacle island. Just as soon as I have the Overseer's Guardian and a few perks. I'm not farming legendaries yet. But I actually don't farm them at all, it's modded to spawn more legendary foes sooner. And then every steamer trunk has one as well. Why use tedious exploits in a fully moddable single-player, yanno?

So I'll play with all kinds of legendaries across a playthrough. Often, the placed ones are boring by comparison. My favorite is when the game blesses me with a never ending double barrel. There is a narrow range of lower-mid levels where you can get that to spawn.

All of the guns are buffed on damage, enemies are tough. It's all quick kill/quick death. I've got AWKCR/AE so I can ham-out on my armor rating pretty easily, but I just use it to do what I want with aesthetic. Though even with higher armor than would normally be possible, you can easily be crushed in my game. This was my answer to the creeping bullet sponge thing. I did the power fantasy thing for years, especially with Skyrim... so many ways to manhandle the crap out of everything. But now I kinda like more tension. I can't even survive and really fight while actively taking damage because of the screen blur. Can't charge in with lots of enemies. Gotta be kitted just right and use your weapons well. I blame a few hundred hours of Metro Exodus, with several ranger hardcore runs. I've never been scared to fight anything in Fallout 4, but with it set up this way, I do feel that tension sometimes. Bigger rewards for bigger challenges. Lotsa legendaries to grab and use, but you're gonna need em.

 

[purplekaycee]

God of war.

 

[The red spirit]

GTA San Andreas Definitive. It really got slammed at release, but the longer I play it, the more I realize how much better than og it is. So many little things got fixed in it.

 

[r9]

God of war.

That game has such nice graphics and such a smooth animations.
Really well polished work.

 

[Courier 6]

Ahhh, I see how you roll lol. TBH I have seldom used power armor and in over 2000 hours logged in this game, I gotta concede... it's fully out of spite for them handing it to you right away. I said "Nuh uh, I'm gonna suffer on hard with my shitty pipe guns and sciencey gimp suit."

Honestly I think I just find myself out there too early. I'll generally be makin that trek ~level 11 to get the luck and agility bobbleheads out by spectacle island. Just as soon as I have the Overseer's Guardian and a few perks. I'm not farming legendaries yet. But I actually don't farm them at all, it's modded to spawn more legendary foes sooner. And then every steamer trunk has one as well. Why use tedious exploits in a fully moddable single-player, yanno?

So I'll play with all kinds of legendaries across a playthrough. Often, the placed ones are boring by comparison. My favorite is when the game blesses me with a never ending double barrel. There is a narrow range of lower-mid levels where you can get that to spawn.

All of the guns are buffed on damage, enemies are tough. It's all quick kill/quick death. I've got AWKCR/AE so I can ham-out on my armor rating pretty easily, but I just use it to do what I want with aesthetic. Though even with higher armor than would normally be possible, you can easily be crushed in my game. This was my answer to the creeping bullet sponge thing. I did the power fantasy thing for years, especially with Skyrim... so many ways to manhandle the crap out of everything. But now I kinda like more tension. I can't even survive and really fight while actively taking damage because of the screen blur. Can't charge in with lots of enemies. Gotta be kitted just right and use your weapons well. I blame a few hundred hours of Metro Exodus, with several ranger hardcore runs. I've never been scared to fight anything in Fallout 4, but with it set up this way, I do feel that tension sometimes. Bigger rewards for bigger challenges. Lotsa legendaries to grab and use, but you're gonna need em.

I don´t have any mods on my game, just all the DLCs, and I don´t cheat either, I just take stuff as it comes, I´m level 87, some weapons I leave behind if they are not interesting to me, I´ll do the survivor later, I want to play fallout 3 too, but right now I got no dineros lol, have lots of fun

 

[Hyderz]

Im glad i've put some investment into gun/armor mod + science

Gun Modding is fun and currently this is my fav weapon, can easily immobilize mobs

 

[EntropyZ]

Have you heard of the award-winning MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV, that includes a free trial up to Level 60 and it's first expansion "Heavensward"? In which you play as "John Final Fantasy" or the Warrior of Light and mess up some dudes that wear creepy robes...

Yeah, I renewed my sub again after taking my third break since the pandemic, it's been a long road, but I've started an alternate character or two and gone through the main story up to the last expansion 4 times without buying a story skip, just to see how fast I can speedrun it. It is crazy. The game is mechanically unsound in a few areas, especially textures and balance issues in current PVP, other than a few minor annoyances. It is a damn good time and totally worth the play time, not even counting the subscription. Anyway, here's a few err... "gposes" I did to remind myself of the memories I made over the few years I've been playing.

The game literally kept me away from playing anything else in my Steam library. If you spend logging in each day as a ritual, even despite work or school, you've been called out. You're addicted.

 

[Courier 6]

Im glad i've put some investment into gun/armor mod + science

Gun Modding is fun and currently this is my fav weapon, can easily immobilize mobs
View attachment 247553

I don´t have an especific favorite, but 3 of my favorites, explosive gaus rifle and the penetrating one that ignores 30% of armor and energy strengt, the explosive single barrel shotgun, they hit hard man!

 

[Ruru]

Played some FF VII Remake as I still haven't played it much yet, just played the Sector 5 reactor part. It's a shitty port, I must say. Normally runs with stable 60fps but I had totally random weird slowdowns (and it's installed on a SSD).