I feel a little conflicted about the timers this far. In general, I'm very much "anti-timers", since I like to play slowly and meticously, without ever feeling that I have to rush and possibly miss some interesting stuff.

However, in this game I can honestly say that I haven't felt much timer-pressure, certainly nothing that has prevented me from exploring/adventuring in any way. If anything they have added a little bit of extra spice to "Kingdom Management" when my advisors have been busy and I have been forced to prioritize a Problem over an Opportunity.

I agree, there have been many times in the game when I just wished that the ordinary sheets with character-info, inventory, Linzi's Journal and the map would have one extra tab with "Kingdom-info".

Where you quickly and without loading could see all Opportunities & Problems in progress, get info on the results of your advisors efforts etc. etc. It wouldn't even need to be interactive, just function as a quick reminder of all that's going on and new stuff that you might be inclined to deal with.

For me, that alone would be a huge time-saver.

If well done I think timers are a good thing; i thought the ones in xcom were quite reasonable but didn't add too much value since they rarely made me hurry. I haven't played this game so won't comment here but to be outright negative of timers well…. they can add a lot …

Yeah, as I've said before I feel the timers are huge incline in this game and for future CRPGs. They are lenient enough in this game but still give you something to think about it, which adds a bit of choice and consequence to the gameplay itself (do I rest here and hunt? Should bring rations. Have to find these trolls before they invade my capital, let's go hunting ASAP!, etc.). Yet they are well lenient enough so you're not rushing the game by any means.

Don't have a mod but there are plenty cheat trainers that disable/stall timers.:)

I even created one that allows me to finish advisor quests in one day.

Link me such cheat please.

I don't need a cheat to solve quests in one day. I need a cheat that will remove reallife job deadlines from top of my head where if I miss any there'll be consequences in form of waterboarding or breaking fingers. Have enough of that bullshit at work.

Well if your willing to pay a one time fee to support a site I love here's the best one.

Link - https://www.cheathappens.com/69059-P…gmaker-trainer

Of course free trainers are available but they don't get updated as fast.

Link - https://mrantifun.net/index.php?thre…trainer.17593/

Heh, just noticed that steam-reviews have tipped over into "Mostly Positive", I think that's the first time I've seen that since release. I guess it's the "1.1-effect."

Steam reviews and aggregate scores, in general, are next to worthless, though.

For whatever reason, our culture has decided that if you don't like a game - it means it's a 0/10 and what other people think or might enjoy is irrelevant. It's essential that you try to destroy it - and especially if it's done by people you don't like for whatever reason.

It's become a thing where people gang up and promote an agenda - and the actual game and what it's like seems almost utterly irrelevant.

Not sure exactly when it happened - or maybe it was always like that and I'm just misremembering.

But I'm almost certain I used to be able to "estimate" how good something was, in most cases, by checking out aggregate user scores.

These days - all my favorite games tend to rank "Mixed" - because hundreds or thousands of people are fighting against each other with absurd 0/10 and 10/10 ratings, which tend to average out over time.

To make matters worse, some games are exempt from this trend - because they have a low profile - or haven't managed to insult or ingratiate sufficiently. So, they actually get honest and useful reviews from most people :)

But it's hard to know when such a thing is the case.

It's a stellar game, no doubt, but it should have stayed in the cooker for at least another two to three months. I think the back-end sales on this will make up for the initial poor launch, and the developers will hopefully chalk up the knowledge and use it for their next projects.

Can't agree.
Steam reviews allow thumb up, thumb down or "undecided". There is no x/10. Just bad, average and good.

In my case thumb down goes for horrors like pisspoor keyboard+mouse on PC.
In your case of course it won't be like that, it'll be thumbup. But the game's audience numbers pro and contra mushrooms will decide if mushroomsonly garbage deserves only "extatic" reviews.

What's also good is Steam allowing you to change reaction. So if a mushroomsonly crap added k+m controls in some future, of course I'll either put it to not thumbed or thumb up.
I guess the patch had a similar effect.

Logically, the Steam system translates directly to the 0/10 and 10/10 issue I'm talking about.

It's actually worse than Metacritic - because you can't see what the critics are saying, and there's no room for nuance.

So, you don't have the SLIGHTEST chance of estimating whether Mixed really means Mixed - or if it's just a bunch of people essentially rating it 0/10 or 10/10 in order to promote their agenda.

That's the problem.

Obviously, you can go read the reviews if you really want to shock yourself with the level of ignorance people are putting on display - and the kind of misinformation campaigns are being run, willingly or otherwise.

At least for aggregate scores this could easily be improved by not using the mean, but the median for the aggregate score.

It then wouldn't matter if a rating has a 0 or 1. (As long as fewer that 50% of the scores are greater than 0.)
The intermediate scores where the scorer actually ponders pros and cons would get more weight.

Your logic, not mine.
You can write a review on Steam and not put thumbs. But those votes also matter. And in your logic, 5/10 is nonexisting.

True enough. But, overall, I think we need to seriously reconsider how we rate entertainment in the future.

Well, if we actually care about what other people think.

For my part, I've never actually used reviews much as fuel for my decisions. I mostly read them for entertainment and to see what other people think. I rarely get swayed.

I do sometimes worry because I know suits like to reward high scores - and some games deserve much more than they get, and same is true in reverse.

Well, there's logic and there's joxer logic ;)

Misuse of the term "hotfix", which is intended for a patch that fixes a specific issue. This is clearly just a patch update.

Well this developer calls the small patch's Hotfix and the large 9GB one a patch.

Still your correct just wanted to add this to clarify why.:)

Yeah unfortunately many somewhat good games have higher ratings than really good ones (at least in my opinion) for a number of reasons. Smaller games that are decent often get a thumbs up, even if you actually read the steam reviews, the reviewers are often saying the game is simply solid. Whereas many games with wider audiences get tanked for a variety of reasons, such as not having widescreen support, or not have implemented some feature or another, or not having ideal framerates on someone's rig. Generally the bigger the company making the game the more chance that they have a mixed review, and it often doesn't have anything to do with the gameplay of the game in question.

That's already in the game. When you're exploring the world map, you'll see the Kingdom icon in the bottom right corner. You can click that and send advisors to do events, etc.. Usually I click it when there's a red (!) to see what's going on and make any changes if I need. Just keep in mind you can't do certain Projects like ranking up advisors unless you're in the capital itself.

I think his point was that he wants something like this without loading time.
Additionally you can only access it from the world map, not when exploring the maps themselves.