What games are you playing now?

Of course there is. Full stop the ship then press E on the keyboard to leave the wheel and go dive. Won't work if you're currently in combat.

Don't grind. Follow quests that aren't radiant (yellow quest marks and not from boards).
 
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I turned off all the markers so I can just explore. I have no marks on my map, which is lots of fun. I have little question marks in some areas, but there is a ton of stuff that doesn't show unless you send out the bird. I'm playing an assassin build mostly, so I sneak and slay all the time :) I find that combat at my level is perfect and that combat one level above me is doable, but barely.

I'm mildly surprised that there wasn't constant bitching about the 1000% level scaling that this game adheres to. I almost never find gear that is above my level even if I sneak into an area for levels 34-38. I tested that last night by hitting the Aphrodite temple for those levels and finding the same 3 coins and my current level of gear.

So, skip the board that Barnabus mentions? Are all of those radiant and skip-able? I notice I have a couple bounties for level 25+. Hope I don't run into those guys on the sea. They'd sink me for sure.
 
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Yup, ignore bounties and other "quests" from boards. If you picked some by mistake from a bystander NPC, it's easy to know which one is that - all are timed in the journal (in most cases you have 24 hours to solve it otherwise it's gone). So ignore those and let them expire.
I wish there was a mod to disable that crap, sadly there is none.
 
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The nexus has about 11 mods in total for this. Most of those were booby mods but ACO is kinda ugly anyway so I didn't worry about body mods. Others were basically cheats, but I just went with good 'ol MrAntiFun for infinite hull damage tweak. That's all I've really been interested in so far. I'll do as little ship stuff as I can get away with unless I start running out of resources or if the rewards contain one of the rare ores.

Okay, don't want to derail the thread, so if I talk ACO anymore I'll start a thread.
 
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What game is ACO - od or or ?

It's Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Ubisoft's attempt at stealing a bit of the disgruntled ex-Bioware market while cashing in on the RPG fad by mildly adding a few random RPG elements to the tired old Assassin's Creed formula.
 
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It's Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Ubisoft's attempt at stealing a bit of the disgruntled ex-Bioware market while cashing in on the RPG fad by mildly adding a few random RPG elements to the tired old Assassin's Creed formula.
Have to give them credit it worked & revived the old stale formula of the Assassin Creed games. The closest comparison I can make would be Witcher III, but actually open world.
 
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Also I'm playing Tropico 6 and the Kaiserreich mod for HOI 4. Neither are RPGs.
 
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Have to give them credit it worked & revived the old stale formula of the Assassin Creed games. The closest comparison I can make would be Witcher III, but actually open world.

Yes it certainly worked for many people that like that kind of thing. I did some research on it and even its own wiki kinda-mocks its claim of being a "full-RPG":

The game features RPG elements, including dialogue options, branching quests, multiple possible endings, romance options, and the ability to select between a male or female protagonist. Reportedly, the game is a "full RPG," and will push the franchise into this genre. Both Alexios and Kassandra follow the same story. Romance options remain the same regardless of the character chosen.[1] Interactions with NPCs can have consequences, either short or long term, in regards to the story. Choices are said to "add up." Relationships with NPCs don't always change, and there is no binary divide in regards to interaction—lying to an NPC isn't necessarily a "bad" choice, and vice versa. By extension, there is no "right" way to play the game in regards to character choice.[5]

And you'll notice it doesn't mention either character creation nor much in the way of skill checks, attributes and all the other cool stuff you get in RPGs so I looked further into that & no, there's no character creation. You build your character as you go using just a skill tree and loot. The skill tree is minimal at best and you can zoom around all available skill trees, of which there are three and presumably become expert at everything/most if you play for long enough. The loot follows the diablo formula with epic, legendary and all that colour coded stuff, but it's a lot lighter in quantity that most aRPGs that use Diablo style loot.

I don't know if the wiki is right here, but I interpreted this sentence to mean it has a pay-to-win option for lazy rich people:

Skill points are earned every time the player conducts a microtransaction or gains 1000 XP. In turn, the points are used to unlock skills, which are either passive in nature or require a command prompt to be activated.[1]

The wiki also agrees that the game world is very MMO inspired:

The world is divided into a number of zones divided by level (similar to an MMO), but level scaling features to a point. For instance, if a player starts at a level 2 zone, then returns after having reached level 20, the enemies there will be scaled up to be 2-3 below the player's character.

The weapon choices themselves are quite unvaried and there's not much to loot/character variety beyond swords, bows and spears, which is obviously a dilemma issue when dealing with a historical setting. Likewise enemy variety is mostly human, which is a shame when you consider the rich variety of monsters available to Greek myth.

This all might sound like I'm slagging it off, but I'm not, I'm just repoting back on my reserach on the things that interest me. Quite obviously the above is more than enough for some people. I'm also aware that the 'open world' descriptor seems to have it's own fanbase regardless of actual content, and this game certainly is a game that lets you lope about at your own leisure, which I'm sure many people here will savour.

From my point of view I just find it amusing how companies like Bioware, over time, kinda diluted and altered the expectations for RPGs to the point where a game such as this can exist with such ease of prescence and automatic fanbase while Bioware itself can't even compete in that space, a space which seems so incredibly easy to occupy.
 
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From my point of view I just find it amusing how companies like Bioware, over time, kinda diluted and altered the expectations for RPGs to the point where a game such as this can exist with such ease of prescence and automatic fanbase while Bioware itself can't even compete in that space, a space which seems so incredibly easy to occupy.

RPG-lite have always been popular, Diablo series sold more copies then BioWare games back in the late 90s/early 2000s and nothing changed since then. The studio who did Diablo (Blizzard) is responsible for MMOs becoming mainstream with WoW which borrowed a lots from Diablo.

When people say "it's MMO-like", in the end it just mean it's Diablo-like (color coded loot, zone levels, quest icons, simple skill trees, etc).

The only change since back then is that gamers now wants a TV/Movie-like feels on top of their Diablo gameplay. That's where ACO and Ubisoft succeeded while BioWare get crucified the moment they try to do it.

Maybe you should wonder why "Assassin's Creed fans" had no issue with total gameplay overhaul of their beloved franchise while "Bioware fans" get pissed the moment something coming from the studio isn't same old same old despite complaining all the time they only do same old same old.
 
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LOL no.
Bioware got crucified for releasing tired faces and degeneric human bodies game with retarded sidekicks' AI and mmolike tasks that randomly spawn collectibles on the map instead of making proper quests.
Ubisoft got praised for replacing 30ish hours long environment puzzlers with an epic openworld RPG you can't complete in a few afternoons.

RPG lite or not, to me at least, doesn't matter as long as it's fun, as long as it's not annoying grind the player to death and as long as it's - singleplayer.
I've had a fair share of fun with Diablo in ancient past. Today, after so many rich and different new designs, I'd most probably refund it.
 
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A few weeks ago I got stuck in Great Gaias and, while waiting for a suggestion as to what to do at a certain place, I started playing To Light: Ex Umbra. Once I got some help, I went back to Great Gaias, but then I found a safe place to stop for a while and went back to Ex Umbra. It's a bit lighter of a game, quite similar to Great Gaias but just not as deep, at least from what I've been able to explore so far. I plan on finishing this one, then making my way back to the Great Gaias and finally concluding that masterpiece!
 
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A few weeks ago I got stuck in Great Gaias and, while waiting for a suggestion as to what to do at a certain place, I started playing To Light: Ex Umbra.

Are these crpgs, @Carnifex;? I've not heard of either of these, but I don't do strategy and tactics games, so maybe they're in that genre. If rpgs are they on Steam?
 
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RPG-lite have always been popular, Diablo series sold more copies then BioWare games back in the late 90s/early 2000s and nothing changed since then. The studio who did Diablo (Blizzard) is responsible for MMOs becoming mainstream with WoW which borrowed a lots from Diablo.

When people say "it's MMO-like", in the end it just mean it's Diablo-like (color coded loot, zone levels, quest icons, simple skill trees, etc).

The only change since back then is that gamers now wants a TV/Movie-like feels on top of their Diablo gameplay. That's where ACO and Ubisoft succeeded while BioWare get crucified the moment they try to do it.

Maybe you should wonder why "Assassin's Creed fans" had no issue with total gameplay overhaul of their beloved franchise while "Bioware fans" get pissed the moment something coming from the studio isn't same old same old despite complaining all the time they only do same old same old.

Somewhat agreeing with joxer here, but starting from your last paragraph & working backwards, what you have here is you unknowingly clarifying my point. Yes, Bioware fans have been getting progressively more… upset? for want of a better word? … with each successive release. But this is because their games have a standard of sorts to adhere to, a standard which they progressively diluted over time and with each release. Fans were upset because their games kept getting more and more RPGlite.

Assassins' Creed on the other hand is coming from the other direction. Assassins Creed has always been considered lite, regardless of genre, if it even has a genre with which to maintain any kind of standard. Assassin's Creed has always just sort of 'existed' in the slipstream of AAA gaming releases, never upsetting anyone but never enthralling anyone. Nothing interesting releasing this month? Oh well, might as well wander around the latest Ass Creed for a bit while I wait for something more meaty. Fans of the series aren't complaining because the Ass Creed series is finally making their games more complex. In the lightest possible way, of course.

Do you see the salient point here. One is becoming less complex and people are complaining, one is becoming more complex and no-one is complaining.

Going onto Diablo and WoW, they were considered light version of what an RPG should be. But they still had character creation. They still had limits to what character could choose to do based on the chosen character. They still had loot which could radically alter both your play-style and build. They still had a huge interest in enemy variety.

And also where I tend to agree with joxer is that the main difference in the community Blizzard's games generate is between those who like to grind and those who don't. I enjoy the overall gameplay loop of a Diablo-like, I just get instantly bored and develop a huge sense of pointlessness as soon as the game suggests I could benefit more from grinding. Like that time I kept running back and forth on one road during FableTLC & found myself at level 20 without actually having done literally anything in the game.

I thought you made an excellent reply, don't get me wrong & it's certainly true that lighter RPGs are more numerically popular, I just get the feeling you're drawing your conclusions from a very skewed angle. There's nothing inherently wrong with lite RPGs, it's just been traditional that the main RPG forums tend to not cover them much, because the forums were only available on PCs, and so attracted mainly PC gamers, and the main forums all started around the turn of the century, at a time before consoles became the main platform for RPGs and at a time when the D&D/Gurps licences were widely used, and when games started to actually look as nice as the game setting demanded.

It was all these people, pretty much neglected for a decade, which fuelled the Kickstarter revolution. In the mean time, sure, a lot of people will have been satisfied with the conversion to console gaming, many of the old fans gave up the ghost years ago and left, or even died of old age or whatever & for a long while the only life on the forums was pretty much sitting around and arguing about the RPGness of each successive console release, which now results in the main forum divisions not being whether you like grinding or not, but whether you mostly prefer console releases to PC releases and all the gameplay implications that comes with either choice.

You'll notice that even with Diablo discussions the conversation is usally about game mechanics, such as loot tables, class issues with combat balance and the like, just as with most PC games the conversation is uaually about which class is most OP or fun and which in-gmae choices provide the most XP or rewards and which weapons are underrepresentated and which spells are rediculous or game-hampering etc etc. With console RPGs the conversation is usually everything except game mechanics & it's this core difference in the conversation that results in so much confusion for specialist sites.

You know, someone asks what the character builds are in XYZ console release & the fan of that game instantly feels intimidated, because it dosn't even have any, & so the conversation instantly becomes a very defensive one "It doesn't need character builds" or "It doesn't have much but IT HAS ENOUGH FOR ME" or "Let me tell you about this cool nude mod instead" etc etc. It's hard to have a like-for-like conversation because the conversations are completely different. Diablo was at least the same conversation.
 
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Well AC:OD definitely suffers from level scaling. Every piece of loot is scaled to be within 1-5 levels of your character. I'm not sure if there is much hand-placed loot at all and you wouldn't be able to use something nice even if you found it. It would make combat trivial.

As far as whether it is a crpg or not is a useless debate. Each person has a different criteria for arriving at the answer. It does have a form of character growth in that you have skills that increase your power. It also has inventory manipulation, exploration, crafting, hidden areas, fast travel, horseback riding, ship improvement-combat-travel, etc. Many, many elements that are found in all other crpgs. It may not have a particular person's favorite element common in crpgs, but it has "enough".

It is missing one of my favorites: rolling up a character. I hate playing a specific person but this makes sense as far as the story goes.
 
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Both Great Gaias and To Light: Ex Umbra are available on steam, and are quite similar to jrpg's from the eighties/nineties. By that I mean both are excellent and well worth playing!
 
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Somewhat agreeing with joxer here, but starting from your last paragraph & working backwards, what you have here is you unknowingly clarifying my point. Yes, Bioware fans have been getting progressively more… upset? for want of a better word? … with each successive release. But this is because their games have a standard of sorts to adhere to, a standard which they progressively diluted over time and with each release. Fans were upset because their games kept getting more and more RPGlite.

You claim BioWare is in part responsible for the RPG decline. I'm saying their wasn't a decline. The main market for RPGs have always been RPG-lite. They have sold more copies than other type of RPGs for 20+ years now.

Just like BioWare's diluted games, since the 2007, sold a lot more than their pre-ME games did.

The fans of ME+ era fans, i.e. the BioWare fans who still buy BioWare games, don't care about diluted gameplay outside the amount of dialogue choices they see. In fact, DAI and MEA had more RPGness than DA2 and ME3 did gameplay-wise so the hate these games received can't be because of diluted gameplay.

The BioWare fans you are thinking off stopped buying BioWare games 10+ years ago. They aren't fans anymore.
 
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I'm still slooooowly making my way through Deadfire, which I'm enjoying. I've been basically living in hotels away from my PC for work reasons though, so the playthrough is taking forever.

I've taken a cheap laptop away with me this time and fired up Avernum: Escape from the Pit on hard. It's the one game I thought could reliably work on a toaster :). Great fun. Definitely the best of the Spiderweb games that I've played. It will be keeping me company for a while…
 
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Playing Grimshade, which is still going fine and quite enjoyable though the game has it's design flaws.

Now and then continuing Vision 2, a German Advertisement Game from the LBS Bank.

And tomorrow I'll also start playing Pathway. Though I will start slow as I want to finish Grimshade and the review first before I start focusing on it.
 
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I finished my Skyrim character story, so now the question is what to play next.

  • I (re)installed VtM:Bloodlines, I actually never finished it (like stopped right before the annoying part at the end).
  • I got Pathfinder: Kingmaker to finish, but I believe there is still one more DLC coming.
  • I want to replay Deadfire in TB, but I'm waiting for the next patch before really starting it.
  • I started Grim Dawn before jumping to Skyrim, but I'm not really in the mood for that type of game.

and I feel like I need something fresh…
 
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