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ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

Nikanuur

Arbiter
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Joined
Mar 1, 2021
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Ngranek
You seem to have very contrasted views on both games. May i ask you why?

...by far the worst offender, is how enemy humans can actively block hits while you can't. You can only execute timed ripostes, but you CAN'T actually BLOCK. It's pants-on-head retarded.
...Niggas can just fire their ranged weapons into your face at point blank and you can do absolutely nothing about it.
...Enemy attack animations are wildly unpredictable and give you a minimal window of opportunity for a riposte, and if you miss it, you typically die.
...exploration is simply unfun and unrewarding, and the entire world feels like set up by AI.
...For starters, it blows my mind that they decided to recycle so much of the old map and then do absolutely nothing with most of the cool old locations. They are either inaccessible or missing any content, or straight up removed from the game. The top examples here are the old ...NPCs no longer give you ANY directions, and you HAVE to rely on quest markers to do any shit. Some people will say that was also true in E1, but I had them disabled from start to finish back there.
....Loot placement makes no sense and you will find chili growing in the arctic or alium Dark Elex (tm) that landed on the planet a week ago in pre-apocalypse caches.
....There is simply no point to the exploration. There are no cool places to go to, and no cool things to find in them.

And that's just a part of it. The fact that it's blatantly unfinished and also a complete mess from a technical standpoint is only a cherry on top. Whatever good parts it has (and it does have them) just can't outweigh the problems.
I seldom agree with you, but I have always respected you for being able to differentiate between feelings and facts.
However this time, I can't help but to wonder, what's gotten into your head.
I reacted to the same stuff from you in Elex 2 thread, and I will say it once more:
You just lost it this time. By writing poorly biased, and half outright-lying nonsense.
 

Darth Roxor

Rattus Iratus
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,879,037
Location
Djibouti
You seem to have very contrasted views on both games. May i ask you why?

...by far the worst offender, is how enemy humans can actively block hits while you can't. You can only execute timed ripostes, but you CAN'T actually BLOCK. It's pants-on-head retarded.
...Niggas can just fire their ranged weapons into your face at point blank and you can do absolutely nothing about it.
...Enemy attack animations are wildly unpredictable and give you a minimal window of opportunity for a riposte, and if you miss it, you typically die.
...exploration is simply unfun and unrewarding, and the entire world feels like set up by AI.
...For starters, it blows my mind that they decided to recycle so much of the old map and then do absolutely nothing with most of the cool old locations. They are either inaccessible or missing any content, or straight up removed from the game. The top examples here are the old ...NPCs no longer give you ANY directions, and you HAVE to rely on quest markers to do any shit. Some people will say that was also true in E1, but I had them disabled from start to finish back there.
....Loot placement makes no sense and you will find chili growing in the arctic or alium Dark Elex (tm) that landed on the planet a week ago in pre-apocalypse caches.
....There is simply no point to the exploration. There are no cool places to go to, and no cool things to find in them.

And that's just a part of it. The fact that it's blatantly unfinished and also a complete mess from a technical standpoint is only a cherry on top. Whatever good parts it has (and it does have them) just can't outweigh the problems.
I seldom agree with you, but I have always respected you for being able to differentiate between feelings and facts.
However this time, I can't help but to wonder, what's gotten into your head.
I reacted to the same stuff from you in Elex 2 thread, and I will say it once more:
You just lost it this time. By writing poorly biased, and half outright-lying nonsense.
point out which part is false so i can obliterate you
 

Latelistener

Arcane
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
2,623
If you only disliked Risen 2 in last 5-10 hours, then it's a good game overall, right? I pretty much dislike every single PB game in their last 5-10 hours. :lol:

I checked what Outward is in Mortismal channel. It's a survival and resource management game. Want none of that shit. Not saying it's a bad genre, just no for me.
And no, i'll not playing as a rodent. And that game is stealth game anyway. Again, nothing to do with PB jank.
Well, I never had that kind of animosity toward their endgames. Risen 2 just sort of loses its steam even before the "classic" PB endgame.

Outward has some survival and resource management elements, but it's an open world exploration game at its core, same as Ghost of a Tale. Just like PB games. It depends on what exactly do you want from them.
 

Nikanuur

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Mar 1, 2021
Messages
1,758
Location
Ngranek
You seem to have very contrasted views on both games. May i ask you why?

...by far the worst offender, is how enemy humans can actively block hits while you can't. You can only execute timed ripostes, but you CAN'T actually BLOCK. It's pants-on-head retarded.
...Niggas can just fire their ranged weapons into your face at point blank and you can do absolutely nothing about it.
...Enemy attack animations are wildly unpredictable and give you a minimal window of opportunity for a riposte, and if you miss it, you typically die.
...exploration is simply unfun and unrewarding, and the entire world feels like set up by AI.
...For starters, it blows my mind that they decided to recycle so much of the old map and then do absolutely nothing with most of the cool old locations. They are either inaccessible or missing any content, or straight up removed from the game. The top examples here are the old ...NPCs no longer give you ANY directions, and you HAVE to rely on quest markers to do any shit. Some people will say that was also true in E1, but I had them disabled from start to finish back there.
....Loot placement makes no sense and you will find chili growing in the arctic or alium Dark Elex (tm) that landed on the planet a week ago in pre-apocalypse caches.
....There is simply no point to the exploration. There are no cool places to go to, and no cool things to find in them.

And that's just a part of it. The fact that it's blatantly unfinished and also a complete mess from a technical standpoint is only a cherry on top. Whatever good parts it has (and it does have them) just can't outweigh the problems.
I seldom agree with you, but I have always respected you for being able to differentiate between feelings and facts.
However this time, I can't help but to wonder, what's gotten into your head.
I reacted to the same stuff from you in Elex 2 thread, and I will say it once more:
You just lost it this time. By writing poorly biased, and half outright-lying nonsense.
point out which part is false so i can obliterate you
All of them. Obliterate away. I just wanted to show other people that there are some who think on the contrary.
Kill me, and thousands will step up and raise the weapon of hope and a good mood in my stead. Long live the republic!
Oh, wait, wrong cultural reference.
Man, it's all so blurry this time of the year.
 

Darth Roxor

Rattus Iratus
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,879,037
Location
Djibouti
All of them.

i accept your surrender

now bend over

and as a bonus just for you, here's one of my favourite screenshots from the game:

202203151241081.jpg
 
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Nikanuur

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Mar 1, 2021
Messages
1,758
Location
Ngranek
i accept your surrender

now bend over

and as a bonus just for you, here's one of my favourite screenshots from the game...
Thank you for taking the bait, as probably any arrogant Sith sympathisant would.

Yeah, apparently a new meta of objectiveness in judging games has arisen: a game with a legendary weapon on top of a skyscraper together with a piece of lore parchment is non-existent, bad exploration. Or wait, was it first bad and then non-existent? Hmm, what a puzzle.
I believe it was the latter and then the former, because if you first need to search for a way to the top, solve the architectonic puzzle, so to speak, it makes you feel bad if you are Darth Roxor. And if Darth Roxor feels bad, nothing exists. Yeah, that must be it. Because there are moments like this strewn all over Elex 2. Now, it finally makes sense.

The other stuff is surely similarly thoughtful. Unpredictable patterns! Who would've thought that using reflexes in action combat—as opposed to learning simple patterns—was bad combat? Probably people who are staff on RPG forums. Phew, it's good that I am not one of them then, I guess.

What have we next? Ah, a recycled map without anything new.
Hmm, Berserks live in a different town. Check. We play only partially in the 'old Elex's world', check. There are buildings, forests, encampments, forts, metro stations, alien infestations, and much more that were never seen in Elex. Wait, now I remembered that every faction lives in a different place now, hmm. That's strange; it doesn't add up because DR acts as if he knows his shit. Maybe, we should believe him over what we see on the screen?

I probably won't continue. What a clown you can be, Darth Roxor.
 

VerSacrum

Educated
Joined
Aug 19, 2023
Messages
280
Location
Switzerland
Mind you, i actually enjoyed Risen 2.
Risen 2 is actually a good game. It may be considered a bad sequel, but is generally very fun.
The first half is fun, it's a traditional open-world-ish PB fare.
But it cut out pretty much all of the traditional PB mechanics. No crime and punishment system, all NPC's are unkillable/lootable, zones rather than properly connected world etc.

Genuinely cannot understand Risen 2 apologists.
 

Darth Roxor

Rattus Iratus
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,879,037
Location
Djibouti
i accept your surrender

now bend over

and as a bonus just for you, here's one of my favourite screenshots from the game...
Thank you for taking the bait, as probably any arrogant Sith sympathisant would.

Yeah, apparently a new meta of objectiveness in judging games has arisen: a game with a legendary weapon on top of a skyscraper together with a piece of lore parchment is non-existent, bad exploration. Or wait, was it first bad and then non-existent? Hmm, what a puzzle.
I believe it was the latter and then the former, because if you first need to search for a way to the top, solve the architectonic puzzle, so to speak, it makes you feel bad if you are Darth Roxor. And if Darth Roxor feels bad, nothing exists. Yeah, that must be it. Because there are moments like this strewn all over Elex 2. Now, it finally makes sense.

The other stuff is surely similarly thoughtful. Unpredictable patterns! Who would've thought that using reflexes in action combat—as opposed to learning simple patterns—was bad combat? Probably people who are staff on RPG forums. Phew, it's good that I am not one of them then, I guess.

What have we next? Ah, a recycled map without anything new.
Hmm, Berserks live in a different town. Check. We play only partially in the 'old Elex's world', check. There are buildings, forests, encampments, forts, metro stations, alien infestations, and much more that were never seen in Elex. Wait, now I remembered that every faction lives in a different place now, hmm. That's strange; it doesn't add up because DR acts as if he knows his shit. Maybe, we should believe him over what we see on the screen?

I probably won't continue. What a clown you can be, Darth Roxor.
71HAhD9h1xL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,955
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
Most of Rox' points are about as sharp and punchy as a soft tennis ball. Just incoherent, emotional foam. Plus many of them are true for E1 too.

Hey Rox, how about "artificial difficulty" and "bad design", you got those too?
 

Zlaja

Arcane
Joined
Aug 17, 2006
Messages
6,111
Location
Swedex
Most of Rox' points are about as sharp and punchy as a soft tennis ball. Just incoherent, emotional foam

Same can be said for your take on Risen 3. Let's recap:

the most tired, phoned-in, lethargic, disinterested RPG I've ever played and not just by PB. It's so soulless and by-the-numbers if it came out today ppl would totally believe it was made whole cloth by AI

Sounds like "emotional foam" to me.
 
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cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,955
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.

Sounds like "emotional foam" to me.
Tru.

And if I was immortal I'd enjoy writing a wall-o-text rigorous analysis that nobody would read about why R3 is a turd. Alas, life has only limited number of hours and by this point I'm starting to feel every single one of them.
 

Sweeper

Arcane
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Messages
3,667
I just spent the last 15 minutes trying to land perfectly on the towers at the Great Lift to get the 10 arrow quivers.
You barely have enough jetpack fuel to make the jump, and due to the way the roof of the tower is sloped you have to land perfectly.
It doesn't happen often anymore, but I still surprise myself with my autism sometimes.
 

behold_a_man

Educated
Joined
Nov 26, 2022
Messages
221
After finishing Elex, I noticed the exploration had several problems that earlier Piranha's games didn't suffer from, mostly related to how big the world was.
1) Lack of proper directions when getting quests, which seems to be a multifaceted issue:
a) People can refer me to large areas rather than a precise place thanks to their inability to name landmarks:​
Mad_Bob_Factory.png
He did mean the Old Factory, but he could have meant wind turbines just as well.
Mad_Bob_location.png
The idea that folk from Magalan didn't give names to places other than cities (and the Valley of the Damned) they knew to simplify traveling is odd, especially given its vastness. For some reason, barely anyone gave me directions referring to converters or other spectacular places.​
b) People sometimes omitted directions from their quests; examples:​
Radok being somewhere around the Domed City when doing a quest for Paige. It is a significant problem, as half of Abessa lies around the dome.​
Barin in the Duras's quest—here specifically, I don't think I should expect a Barbarian to send me the coordinates to my adjutor.​
c) I can't ask people where someone (or something) is, even when it should make sense. For example, when elexetor Rapox was seen asking about me around the dome and I am tasked with murdering him, why can't I ask anyone about his whereabouts?​
2) There is only a single custom marker. It is infuriating, as I often found locations I couldn't enter (poison, radiation, lack of ammunition, and so on), locks I couldn't pick, or people that could be important later (Radok is a prime example). How am I supposed to trace back my steps? Tinkering with map screenshots? Even if they had problems with implementing them, they could've just marked (statically) the last location each NPC was last seen. Or create a chronological journal like in Morrowind so that I could guess where I was when I did something.
3) Certain items were hard to spot. When I had to find X plants of type Y, I could be sure there are exactly X plants of type Y in the entire game. The most insufferable instance of this problem was
Locations_plants.png

Description that fits to half the game map? Checked.
Cabbage.png

Soul.png

A special plant that looks like a regular plant but is unique? Also checked.
I'm fairly certain this quest was made with a quest marker in mind, even when the description does not indicate it.
. Sure, it was possible to alleviate this issue with sunglasses, but I had to come back to some location - and was it something entertaining? Not exactly, as
4) The enemies respawn everywhere, which became frustrating with the amount of backtracking thanks to inaccurate directions and imperfect exploration (without sunglasses). It's nice that some humans and robots weren't coming back from a grave (except for some Albs in Xacor, I think?), and even nicer that I could make animals friendly with a proper perk. Mutants, however, were never friendly.

I don't think Piranhas knew when (and how much) they wanted the player to rely on technology (quest markers, custom markers, sunglasses) and when on given directions, hence bastardized, unsatisfying scaffolding of exploration with the use of technology.


I liked the Four Houses puzzle. Each clue consisted of information about the puzzle's solution and a picture of the location of the next clue (or the first clue in case of the last clue—they were circular). The clues weren't blocking (the solution could be bruteforced), but the puzzle's complexity became lower with each found clue. The seminal part of the puzzle was to figure out each location depicted and potentially the location where a solution could be used. It's the first time I saw in-game pictures used to create a puzzle in an RPG in a proper way—forcing the player to think about the game's world.

Other than that, I think the fun parts and the suffering parts of this game are pretty well documented in this thread. Proper branching of some quests was a pleasant surprise from Piranhas; Jax was a great protagonist with his unparalleled professionalism; the "morality" system might be the best such univariate system I ever saw, evaluating the actions by how logical they were rather than by being "good" or "conformist". The character progression felt like Heaviside step function; moving from not being able to kill pretty much anything to setting the world ablaze was a matter of several hours (as expected from a German game, it took me 88 hours to finish it). Economy wasn't a part of the challenge, as I spent most of what I earned on ammunition and still could buy everything I wanted. Itemization was excellent as usual—unique items were usually best in their category for the entire game. I disliked scattered journals; it might make sense once or twice in a game, not fifteen.
 

Haplo

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
6,559
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I agree with most, but the itemization being good.
Uniques mostly feel like sidegrades, rather then upgrades, that serve uncommon stat spreads (except for a best in class plasma rifle, I guess). And usually doesn't really feel earned, but rather randomly found.
High quality equipment, especially armor, is locked behind late game faction quests. Which is the Piranha way, I guess -but IMO the quality gap between faction exclusive swords, hammers and armor, versus normal ones, is way too big.
 

behold_a_man

Educated
Joined
Nov 26, 2022
Messages
221
And usually doesn't really feel earned, but rather randomly found.
I think it's an offspring of:
  1. The jetpack allowing to bypass monsters guarding treasures—like The Mortal Beam (the best laser rifle in the game) lying behind some nasty ?Troll? in Ignadon.
  2. Piranha unwilling (as ever) to create fully-fledged dungeons—here at least there were the company premises in western Edan.
I don't think there was a simple solution to this problem (especially with their new respawn policy, which would certainly sour long dungeons).

Uniques mostly feel like sidegrades
Now that I looked at the rest of the table here
https://elex.fandom.com/wiki/Weapon
You're right, I used primarily a laser rifle with a plasma rifle and expected this observation to hold for other weaponry.
 

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