Executor Akamia

Support role, usually as the medic if it's a class-based FPS like Team Fortress 2. In games like Halo where combat roles aren't so clear-cut, I like to try to be a sniper, but failing that, I just go and pick up a mid-range weapon if I don't start with one and just try not to die while taking everyone else down.

So, I've been thinking. I need some more friends who play this game. Conquering the stars alone can be, well, lonely, even for a machine intelligence such as myself. @UleTheVee owns the game. This I know for a fact. However, he has never played to my knowledge, and even if he has, he's always been a bit skittish when it comes to playing these types of games with me. I wanna know who else plays, though. Maybe we could arrange a thing. I have almost all the DLC; the only ones I'm missing are Leviathans, Distant Stars, and MegaCorp. I tend to play mod-free, but if we can all agree on maybe a small set of mods, then everything should be fine there. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Anyone else play?

Alright, feel free to ask me questions here!

Thank you!

Juuuust like AlphaStar in StarCraft II. The only reason it had any success is because it was impossibly fast at microing Blink Stalkers, and the only matchup it knows anything about is Protoss VS Protoss. It also only knows one map. It wasn't even that good under those conditions; whenever the human player did something it never fought before, it crumbled.

One Decisive Battle animation coming right up! Disclaimer: Not actual game footage.

Mega Man Zero series. Zero is the main protagonist, his combat system is a lot more fluid than it ever was in the X series, and it's got my favorite final boss of all time: Omega.

Oh, I'll be going back to SC2 once I have a better computer for it. Assuming Blizzard survives until then, of course. 😛

I seem to have forgotten to introduce myself. In fairness, I was pretty much a lurker at best when I joined. This guy over here (@UleTheVee) dragged me in at the time, and for a while I really didn't have much to say. Haha... Anyway! I'm Akamia. Like most of you, I'm a gamer. My favorite genre is real-time strategy. My favorite game for the moment is Stellaris, a 4X real-time strategy game; think Civilization in space. I also really love robots, to the point that I all but completely exclusively play Machine Intelligence empires in Stellaris, and play as robotic characters in other games whenever the opportunity presents itself. Other games I greatly enjoy are the MechWarrior series, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mega Man, Halo, StarCraft, and some assortment of fighting games. I'm a Mega Man main in Super Smash Bros., though I have yet to own a Switch for Ultimate. Whenever I'm not playing games, I also listen to music. Mostly video game soundtracks, but I have other things in my library as well. I'm currently learning how to play piano, and I sometimes build robots with LEGO Mindstorms. One project I want to eventually work on is a functioning replica of the Protoss Dragoon from StarCraft made entirely out of LEGO. Getting the electronics for that will be pretty expensive, however... It's sort of a bucket list thing. Looking forward to discussing stuff!

Banned because... uh... Stuff!

Stellaris Doing a single-player Driven Assimilators playthrough. Surrounded by Fanatical Purifiers and a Devouring Swarm, and my only ally, some Determined Exterminators across the galaxy, are almost removed from the game. It's not going well for me. 😂

MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries. To a lesser extent, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. I also played Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles to death as a kid. Still tied for second favorite Sonic game with Sonic CD, beaten by Sonic Mania (Plus).

I dunno if I agree with that. For some of them, replaying them after you've experienced them at least once already can wake you up to some very clever foreshadowing. Or you can do what Ule does when we play on stream and deliberately select wrong answers (some of them hilariously obvious, some of them not) in those multiple-choice sections that come up now and then that you didn't do during the original playthrough for the sole purpose of seeing what happens.

For me, it depends on the genre to a degree. I don't mind stat boosts with no increase to intelligence in FPS games that have specific structure to their campaigns – which would be most of them, like Halo for example. For more free-form games like various RTS or 4X games such as Stellaris and Civilization, that actually gets me really annoyed. Even StarCraft II has this problem to an extent; the AI players aren't particularly smarter, they're just faster. The stat boosts don't come into play, thankfully, unless the AI is specifically set to have one of like 3 or 4 cheats. Then again, video game AI still has a long way to go, and even third-party AI such as AlphaStar in StarCraft II can be exploited. Watch that thing micro Stalkers like a fucking god one game – to the point that it can even kill a unit comp that normally hard-counters Blink Stalkers – then completely crumble when the human player does something it's not used to fighting the next game.

It is. If you play Survival mode, anyway, which is all I ever play in that game. Creative is another matter entirely.

Of the ones I've played, Minecraft is my favorite. Admittedly, I haven't played many. My brother bought me a few others over the years, but I haven't felt sufficiently motivated to try them the way I did Minecraft. If I ever get around to playing it, maybe Rust, but I dunno. I'm not sure if Rust has a "Hardcore" (or similar) mode or not.

I think I'll pass, thanks. It's just not a game for me. I was unable to enjoy World of Warcraft for similar reasons. The gameplay was nothing new for me; I've played several clones, including Star Wars: The Old Republic. But the setting... Even the most sci-fi thing about the game, the Draenei, weren't enough to keep me going there.

I don't really think of it that way, to be honest. It's kind of apples to oranges as far as I'm concerned. If I wanted a somewhat fair comparison, I'd pick a Fallout game from 3 onward. In fact, I have played a Fallout game before and enjoyed it. Still haven't finished, but I might pick it back up again sometime soon.

That sentence was doctored, and you know it. 😶 I was talking about Fortnite when I mentioned Minecraft. I mean, it's true I'd rather play Minecraft over Skyrim, but that wasn't the context. It's very difficult to sell me on fantasy settings. Not impossible, just extremely hard. It can be argued that MC is a fantasy setting, but it's not nearly as in-your-face about it, and there are many ways to reskin it so that it's less apparent.

You’re goddamned right.

If I tried to list them all, I'd be here all night, honestly. Instead, I'll list maybe 5. Fortnite Apex Legends The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 Admittedly, that last one is pretty niche; it only really applies among RTS players like myself. Anyway, I've never played any of these. All of them have been wildly popular with people at one point or another. I still get people recommending I play KOTOR, even after I tell them I tried KOTOR II and got bored pretty early on before stopping. I may eventually cave and go for it one day. But I've more or less been avoiding the first three like the plague, mostly because I'm kinda sick of hearing about them. Though in Apex's case, I just don't want anything to do with EA games anymore. I'm not entirely sure I'd buy Titanfall 3 if it comes out, in spite of my weakness for giant robots that compelled me to buy the first two. Skyrim, I just don't care for the setting at all. Fortnite... Well, nothing about it really attracts me to it. It just comes across to me as completely and utterly uninteresting; I'd rather play Minecraft.

I'd say Stellaris, which is a grand strategy game I've been playing for the last few weeks, but honestly, the difficulty is mostly artificial in that game. AI empires are dumb as rocks, but fast as Sonic the Hedgehog on a good day, and difficulty settings don't really improve their intelligence at all; they just give them bonuses that more easily compensate for their stupidity. Human players are the real threats, though for obvious reasons, they aren't a factor in single-player mode. Honestly, I think in general terms, the Halo series has done a good job about this. I mean, I never noticed the AI getting smarter there either, but in the FPS genre, this matters less. The higher difficulty you play, the more you get punished for being out of position. This doesn't fully translate to the multiplayer, as human players are less predictable than AI under most circumstances and most multiplayer maps aren't structured in the same way campaign maps are, but you will definitely learn to appreciate cover after it has kept you from getting your face blown off by a deadeye Jackal sniper or three.

I think this is a worthwhile point to consider. It reminds me of people who play buster-only runs of Mega Man games, or Nuzlockes in Pokémon. The achievements of people who succeed these are not undermined by the presence of Special Weapons or the ability to keep your mons even if they faint, respectively. These self-imposed challenges are not denied, discouraged, or encouraged by the game itself. People just... do them. However, most of these games don't have an "easy" mode. Or any other mode beyond the default, for that matter. Mega Man 2 had a "Normal" mode that was only put into the international release, but the only difficulty in the original Rockman 2 was the Hard one. To the best of my knowledge, mainstream Pokémon games have never had difficulty settings.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords. I actually got bored really early on. Couldn't make myself continue. That was the end of it. Never even bothered playing the first one. I might revisit it one day, though, give it a second chance. Maybe play the original as well. Dunno. Oh, and the original StarCraft as well. The UI frustrated me and, for some reason, it had the same mouselag issue I had with the second game. Tolerable in the second game due to the UI being less of a headache, but with the UI of the original, it was utterly unbearable.

Eeyup-yup. I'mma be there.