Hey all! Another weekly thread is here.

This time I am also hoping for some feedback!

If anyone has any ideas for more weekly thread topics you would like to see, go ahead an leave a comment below!

  • Nia@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Planning on playing through Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 for the first time this week. Know almost nothing about the game, nothing about DnD rulesets, just diving directly in because a partner very highly recommended them.

    Edit: Ended up buying Baldur’s Gate 3 and getting into it instead, looks like I’m gonna be playing it in 3 > 1 > 2 order. As a side note, performance was way better on Vulkan than Directx11 for me, despite common advice being to use Directx11 on Linux for the game.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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      1 year ago

      They are absolutely lovely, though undeniably very old school. BG1 is more action-adventurey with a bigger emphasis on exploration, BG2 is very story-heavy. They have aged remarkably well, considering they’re over 20 years old. The handpainted backgrounds still look pretty.

      With potential increased interest due to BG3, I wonder if it would be an idea to create a community for the classic Baldur’s Gates 🤔

      • kd637_mi@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        I’d like that, or a classic CRPG community with a certain timeframe. Two of my favourite games now are the original Fallouts after playing them for the first time only a few years ago. I’d love to see more of the games from that era.

        • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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          1 year ago

          I have actually pondered a “classic gaming” or “old school games” type community for these types of (primarily) PC games from the era up to maybe 2010.

          Retro Gaming communities typically focus more on old console and/or arcade type stuff.

            • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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              1 year ago

              What would be a good name for it? Sadly I don’t think I have it in me to moderate, so I hesitate to create it myself.

              • kd637_mi@lemmy.sdf.org
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                1 year ago

                Haha yeah same here. I guess we sit back and hope someone else takes up the mantle.

                As for names, I’m not sure. There’s already some retro/vintage PC communities on SDF but they are more hardware focused. Old PC Games? Retro PC Games? The Beforetime? No idea.

                • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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                  1 year ago

                  Also, what would be the appropriate cutoff for the timeframe? I just threw 2010 out there, but maybe even slightly later? What is a good milestone to cut off at? I was thinking starting at 1993 with the release of Doom.

                  • kd637_mi@lemmy.sdf.org
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                    1 year ago

                    Doom seems like a solid start, it was revolutionary. You could also push it to 1990. As for an end date I’d have to think about that. 2000 or 2003 gives a 10 year range with a lot of influential releases, but might be a bit limited. If you did 2013 that’s a 20 year range, but it could also be a shifting time frame where it is for games of a certain age. If it was 10 years or older games then it would start with an end date of 2013 and the range would expand every year. The issue with that is it would lose focus on older games eventually.

    • ampersandrew@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I just started Baldur’s Gate recently and beat it minutes ago. It’s not the first D&D game I’ve played before, but I’m far from well-versed in it. I had to Google “THAC0” a couple of times to understand what the game was trying to tell me, as well as understanding certain status effects. There’s a presupposition of knowledge that the game has with its players, but it’s still fairly okay at initiating people to D&D.

      • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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        1 year ago

        THAC0 is… yeah. I guess the systems take some getting used to. And it gets a little more complicated at higher levels with different layers of protective spells and counter-spells.

        Are you planning on playing the second as well?

    • kd637_mi@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I’m playing through Baldur’s gate 1 atm as well. I tried it and didn’t enjoy it back in the early 2000s but now I’m digging it. I still don’t like real time with pauses combat, but I can forgive it with the party size. I do wish there were other ways around things than combat most of the time though, but early DnD was primarily a dungeon crawler so that’s fine.