cobysev
@cobysev@lemmy.world
- Comment on Play classic WoW offline on the deck with NPC players 1 week ago:
A lot of open-world games give an “endless world” vibe, even if the game itself has a finite plot.
For example, games like Ghost Recon: Wildlands and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, the entire Just Cause franchise, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Tom Clancy’s The Division 1 and 2, etc. are all games that let you continue to explore the game and do whatever you want, even after the main plot has been completed.
My friends and I like to fool around in the Ghost Recon and Division games, even though we beat them ages ago. It’s fun to just explore and cause mayhem and destruction, fighting infinite waves of baddies. And there’s not much grinding required because we leveled while playing through the main story. As long as the world is immersive and you can find stuff to do, you could practically play forever.
Actually, a great example of this would be Enshrouded. It’s an open-world crafting/base-building game, but it’s set in a medieval fantasy world, so there are quests to accomplish, lore to discover, and gear/weapons to acquire, build, and level. And when you’re bored of that, you can just settle down and build your own fantasy city. And it’s all single-player, unless you want to invite friends into your game. Or you can make your session public and let strangers check out your game. You can lock down their access so they can’t destroy anything you’ve built or take any of your resources. Then you guys can quest together or build epic castles or villages or Hobbit homes together.
A similar game that just released is Windrose. It’s the same base-building/questing concept as Enshrouded except instead of medieval fantasy, it’s theme is pirates in the Caribbean in the 1700s. You get to build and sail ships in this game, and even duel against other ships!
- Comment on Play classic WoW offline on the deck with NPC players 2 weeks ago:
Heck yeah! It was pretty much the only way I could play RuneScape.
- Comment on Play classic WoW offline on the deck with NPC players 2 weeks ago:
Other people were the one thing I hated about MMOs. I just want to enjoy a massive fantasy world with no definitive end to it. But people kept being… well… people. Every time I had to deal with others, the immersion was broken. Most people were there to play the game, not appreciate it.
Even on RPG servers, it was hard to find anyone who wanted to explore the world and enjoy the setting. Everyone wanted shortcuts to fly through quests, dungeons, raids, etc. as quickly as they could. They just wanted to level up fast and min/max their stats, weapons, and armor build. People would genuinely get mad at me if I didn’t play a certain way, or understand how a boss fight works, even though it’s my first time in that dungeon. I’d need to do online research before entering a raid or dungeon with a party, and that just ruins the enjoyment of discovering a new challenge.
Even “newbie-friendly” guilds, which claimed to be more immersive and helpful for exploring and leveling, would either require regular engagement with scheduled guild activities to stay a member, or they would be dead, with almost no one online to play with at any given time.
And that’s just allies. If you’re playing a game with PvP, then you had to worry about being ganked out in the open. I could be out soloing a quest and suddenly a player just attacks out of the blue. Now it’s a game of survival and I’m already at a disadvantage. It’s either fight a losing battle or hope to run and hide.
Screw people. I prefer playing solo in MMOs. Just leave me alone to enjoy the game at my own pace.
- Comment on Science-centric streaming service Curiosity Stream is an AI-licensing firm now 5 months ago:
Ah dammit… Curiosity Stream was the only streaming service I’m still actually paying for. I dumped everything else for raising prices and enshittifying their services.
- Comment on 8 months ago:
Sounds like the author of this article didn’t understand the gameplay mechanics. It’s supposed to be a slow stealth game that requires patience and strategy and avoiding threats, not an action FPS game where you run through and shoot everyone you encounter.
The camouflage mechanic he mentions, almost as an aside, is crucial to sneaking through levels. Moving from tall grass to fallen leaves to swampland can drastically change your camouflage level, requiring you to quickly optimize for the environment or be detected. You need to pay attention to your surroundings and be very methodical in your approach, or risk being detected easily.
I’ve played for 40 minutes and I’m still in the intro area. Granted, part of that is due to another common trope of Hideo Kojima games: lots of cutscenes and story-heavy exposition.
But just learning how to sneak around and avoid detection takes time and patience. The first guard I encountered, I had to sit still for maybe 5 minutes and watch him slowly patrol around the small area, so I could figure out his patterns and approach him… and he still detected me when I got too close! Moving makes too much noise, so you need to wait for your target to approach you before going after them. It’s a process, and if you don’t have the patience to sit and wait for opportunities to present themselves, then this game is probably not for you.
Nostalgia does help with gameplay like this. Metal Gear Solid 3 is my favorite of the MGS series, and I am thoroughly enjoying playing its remake with modern controls and graphics. Going back and playing the original game can be difficult after getting used to today’s modern controls in games, but this remake includes both classic and modern controls, so you choose how you want to play.
Also, this game just dropped yesterday for advanced release. That’s hardly enough time to play through it and write a decent review. This article must’ve been written in a rush, which may contribute to the author’s poor experience.
I actually write reviews for video games and post them to !games@lemmy.world. Just as a hobby. You can check my account’s post history to see them all, or go to my blog where I’m archiving them (This link). I’m excited to write one for Metal Gear Solid ∆: Snake Eater. But I need to play a bit more of the game before I feel I can give a proper review, so keep an eye out for a new post in the coming week or two.
- Comment on Somebody has turned a daft English cheese rolling festival into an even dafter free Steam game 8 months ago:
Cheese Rolling on Steam. Saved you a click.
- Comment on [Discussion] How is your Steam Deck's battery holding up? 1 year ago:
I’m getting a new OLED Steam Deck in the mail within the next hour or so, so I’m glad to hear its battery is handing well.
I have an original LCD Steam Deck from their initial announcement of the device, which is still showing 100% battery health. The battery doesn’t last very long unplugged, though. I’ve had to make sure I have a charging cable everywhere I go. So I’m looking forward to the longer lifespan of the new Steam Deck.
- Comment on Microsoft is quietly installing the Copilot app on Windows PCs 2 years ago:
My parents told me about a time when people were scared they would get spied on if they had a phone in the house. And this it talking about a rotary land line…
For the record, old phone lines were always connected. You’d pick up the receiver and just ask the operator to connect you to a line, no pressing buttons or turning a dial or anything. Sometimes you could pick up the receiver and hear phone conversations your neighbors are having because a neighborhood might all be connected through the same switchboard. It was super easy to eavesdrop on your neighbors through the phones.
Rotary phones gave you an independent line, and allowed you to manually connect to another line instead of asking an operator to do it for you, but the mentality stuck for a while. Some people continued to be paranoid that someone might be listening to them through their phone.
- Comment on Microsoft is quietly installing the Copilot app on Windows PCs 2 years ago:
Quietly installing? Heck, I keep getting notifications asking me to try out Copilot’s functions on my PC. I finally turned off all notifications about it today.
- Comment on So uhh.. how often should I be washing me towels? 2 years ago:
When I was a kid, it was one and done. I grabbed a clean towel from the bathroom closet every day. Even though I was clean coming out of the shower, I also knew that showering loosens dead skin cells, which I was rubbing all over the towel. Over time, those skin cells would decompose, giving off a musty smell. I learned that from my dad, who almost never changed his towel. Ick. It made me extra paranoid about reusing them, so I swapped towels daily.
When I became an adult and had to do my own laundry, I realized just how miserable it was trying to wash 7 towels every week. (Why did my mother let me use so many towels as a kid?!) So I started reusing them. I used a towel for a week before throwing it in the laundry.
Now, I’m recently retired in my late 30s and shower every 2-3 days (or anytime I leave the house). Since I’m not showering as frequently, I will reuse a towel for about 2-3 weeks before replacing it. If I go to dry off after a shower and the towel smells a bit musty, I’ll toss it on the floor and grab a fresh towel instead. I think I’m on week 4 with my current towel, but it still smells clean, so I’m not too worried about getting a few more showers out of it.