I've been intrigued by this for a long time but am very put off by the developers' stupidity in not bothering to include ranked matchmaking. "New players can go fuck themselves" is not a great mantra for building a community.
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The STEAM Sales and Releases Thread
- Thread starter Hobo Elf
- Start date
PrettyDeadman
Guest
They do have a match-making system based on player skill I believe. It works by default. The more players playing at the moment, the less skill difference there will be in a match.
Beowulf
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Well, the matchmaking prioritises full servers over ELO matching, and in the recent patch they decreased matchmaking timer to 90s so you will be matched with people with bigger experience in the game from time to time.
But then again, now might be the best time to get into the game - the recent sale and Halloween event basically doubled the playerbase so there is an influx of new players and the matchmaking can give better pairing.
Huh. Last I checked a few months ago, it was just their old system of "under level 10" and "everyone above L10 thrown together completely at random".
Good info, thanks friends.
Good info, thanks friends.
PrettyDeadman
Guest
If you can play at eu server - you can play with us (trio).
Dexter
Arcane
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Tried some of the Halloween Sale Demos, I'm guessing most of these are older and not time limited:
Man of Medan: Seems like an interactive movie with Dialogue choices. Every character seems to take every small comment you make personally. Good graphical presentation and character modelling though, faces and environments look near lifelike. Hard to tell anything from the "Demo" since it's over before it even begins, barely get to walk around a small boat and press A button to interact with a bunch of stuff.
Metamorphosis: Very weird shit playing with perspective, scale, pictures changing as you get closer and stuff. Your character gradually turns into a bug at the beginning of the game. Not exactly "spooky", more strange/bizarre like a Cronenberg movie. It quickly becomes a giant environmental puzzle and you can press TAB to check the Overview for a "map" on where you might want to traverse. Although it's over before you can really get into it properly.
Crying Suns: Pixel Sci-Fi Tactical RTwP combat game. You are woken up as the clone of an Admiral on the Outer Rim of the Galaxy on board the space Battleship Gehenna, because something went wrong and your ship AI can't establish communication with the capital of your Star Empire anymore. You set out on a Quest to find out what happened 20 years ago and get closer to the Empire and meet and tactically fight all sorts of obstacles along the way while scavenging for resources, hiring better officers, looking out for special opportunities or quests and improving your flagship. You jump from system to system and planet to planet and respond to Events as they happen. You're being pursued like in FTL and only have a specific amount of time in a system, so there's no backtracking. When you engage in combat you put up your Fighter Squadrons against the Enemies and need to destroy the Hull of their main ship to win. This seemed the most promising from the stuff I tried and the Demo itself is already rather extensive.
Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story: Big Tiddy Animu Girls in a Cyberpunk setting. Sidescrolling Adventure with Ghostly apparitions you have to evade and stuff. It's a bit simplistic and gets boring with a lot of backtracking and items only appearing upon completing previous events.
Little Misfortune: Cute and Creepy game about a little girl going on an Adventure, Psychotic stuff is happening around her and you can sprinkle Glitter to make it all better. Ostensibly about C&C, but the Demo ends after only a short introduction, so hard to tell. It's mostly a Controller Adventure game instead of Mouse Point & Click, you can move left and right on a single plane and interact with stuff using A, Sprinkle with Y and Sprint with the Right Trigger.
The Letter: A Girly Horror VN with some Branching choices and the few times you can interact being Quicktime events - the less said about it, the better.
Man of Medan: Seems like an interactive movie with Dialogue choices. Every character seems to take every small comment you make personally. Good graphical presentation and character modelling though, faces and environments look near lifelike. Hard to tell anything from the "Demo" since it's over before it even begins, barely get to walk around a small boat and press A button to interact with a bunch of stuff.
Metamorphosis: Very weird shit playing with perspective, scale, pictures changing as you get closer and stuff. Your character gradually turns into a bug at the beginning of the game. Not exactly "spooky", more strange/bizarre like a Cronenberg movie. It quickly becomes a giant environmental puzzle and you can press TAB to check the Overview for a "map" on where you might want to traverse. Although it's over before you can really get into it properly.
Crying Suns: Pixel Sci-Fi Tactical RTwP combat game. You are woken up as the clone of an Admiral on the Outer Rim of the Galaxy on board the space Battleship Gehenna, because something went wrong and your ship AI can't establish communication with the capital of your Star Empire anymore. You set out on a Quest to find out what happened 20 years ago and get closer to the Empire and meet and tactically fight all sorts of obstacles along the way while scavenging for resources, hiring better officers, looking out for special opportunities or quests and improving your flagship. You jump from system to system and planet to planet and respond to Events as they happen. You're being pursued like in FTL and only have a specific amount of time in a system, so there's no backtracking. When you engage in combat you put up your Fighter Squadrons against the Enemies and need to destroy the Hull of their main ship to win. This seemed the most promising from the stuff I tried and the Demo itself is already rather extensive.
Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story: Big Tiddy Animu Girls in a Cyberpunk setting. Sidescrolling Adventure with Ghostly apparitions you have to evade and stuff. It's a bit simplistic and gets boring with a lot of backtracking and items only appearing upon completing previous events.
Little Misfortune: Cute and Creepy game about a little girl going on an Adventure, Psychotic stuff is happening around her and you can sprinkle Glitter to make it all better. Ostensibly about C&C, but the Demo ends after only a short introduction, so hard to tell. It's mostly a Controller Adventure game instead of Mouse Point & Click, you can move left and right on a single plane and interact with stuff using A, Sprinkle with Y and Sprint with the Right Trigger.
The Letter: A Girly Horror VN with some Branching choices and the few times you can interact being Quicktime events - the less said about it, the better.
Dexter
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- Jul 29, 2011
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For some reason, Steam notified me that Lust Epidemic is on sale now, even though it shows "excluded by preferences" on the page. I went to check out the discussions, and this is the top thread.
The replies made me laugh, though. This isn't the kind of responses I expect on Steam forums in the current year.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1008020/discussions/0/2659872073616047398/
Comrade Goby
Magister
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Harthwain
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Game of Thrones (the boardgame) got digital version:
Fury of Dracula is supposed to release this month (mid-November) as well, after some delay (apparently they didn't make it for the Halloween):
I guess they are making digital editions because coronavirus makes it infeasible to play the physical versions?
It's a shame Fury of Dracula looks ugly as hell. Not only because they are using the art from 3rd/4th edition (I preferred 2nd edition looks), but also because of how they handled 3D art (colors on the map are super dark, unlike in the boardgame, and the map itself being in 3D doesn't really bring anything to the table, so to speak).
Game of Thrones was handled much better in the visual department (both the map and the art are in 2D, with only some elements being in 3D. The end result is very solid).
Fury of Dracula is supposed to release this month (mid-November) as well, after some delay (apparently they didn't make it for the Halloween):
I guess they are making digital editions because coronavirus makes it infeasible to play the physical versions?
It's a shame Fury of Dracula looks ugly as hell. Not only because they are using the art from 3rd/4th edition (I preferred 2nd edition looks), but also because of how they handled 3D art (colors on the map are super dark, unlike in the boardgame, and the map itself being in 3D doesn't really bring anything to the table, so to speak).
Game of Thrones was handled much better in the visual department (both the map and the art are in 2D, with only some elements being in 3D. The end result is very solid).
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Any good?
Baron Dupek
Arcane
Harthwain
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At their core both boardgames are good.
Some issues with A Game of Thrones: The Board Game:
- There are some bugs (mostly minor inconsistencies with the rules).
- Turns don't have a timer per action. Timer is for "total time" (and it can be as low as 1 hour or as high as 7 days), so a match can take forever if someone goes AFK, because it will take up to an hour for the game to boot that player. Less depending on how much time he spent deciding what to do.
To give you a picture: at turn 4 all players had roughly 44 minutes left on their individual clocks, so it was 4 minutes per turn for everyone. Then Martell had to go AFK for 15 minutes (but came back) and he was down to 29 minutes, meaning less time for the less of the game. So if everybody takes 4 minutes per turn and game has 10 turns, then - ideally - you should be done with the game in 40 minutes. Probably more like 45.
- The AI allows you to play the game solo and replaces people who leave, but it's obviously not the same level as playing against real people.
- Price-wise digital version is quite cheap, compared to physical edition and offers a lot of content than the base version of the game (it's essentially the base game + A Clash of Kings expansion rolled into one).
- The challenges are a nice addition. Just a bunch of scenarios with extra conditions, which are supposed to be "a campaign" loosely based on the books (starting from Tywin giving Starks a bloody nose up to Theon trying to prove his worth. I am being opaque here on purpose, in case someone didn't read the books or watched the TV show). Some of the challenges are really difficult. Took me ~26 hours to beat them all. Then I took some more time to get all the achievements (which is rare for me).
- I didn't see any official Discord group for people to set up games with people who are somewhat reliable players (or maybe I just missed it), so finding proper (not random) people could be an issue. Supposedly they have some "Asmodee Buddy system" to be able to set up friends-specific games, but I it looks like setting up a regular game (password protected, of course) is much better way - and quicker - to do it. And finding quick matches is not a bother at all. I found full game literally right away when I was in the middle of typing this post and we played the game no problem. But that depends entirely on what kind of strangers you run into. I have been lucky so far.
Not much I can say about Fury of Dracula. Other than it looks ugly and seems to be bug-free (unless I missed something from the videos I watched already). But if you can stomach that, I think you should be happy. People who own the boardgame and were included in the beta said it really cuts down the time needed to make moves/actions.
Zombra One word of warning - on the release day it will only be possible to play 1v1 (one player controlling Dracula versus one player controlling all Hunters). Proper (1v2/3/4) mode will be implemented later on. No idea if the asynchronous play is possible. Best ask that on Steam forum in the FAQ thread. Developer team member seems to be willing to answer questions to people.
Bah, no asynchronous play at launch 
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Wow. It's already out? I was expecting this thing next year. This is a nice surprise.
Looks like it is pretty long in development.
Dexter
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Ezeekiel
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AS series is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I'll wait for some reviews... Had some bad experiences with their last alien shooter 2 rerereremix or whatever it was. They abandoned it while it still had game-breaking technical issues.
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