I mod a worryingly growing list of communities. Ask away if you have any questions or issues with any of the communities.

I also run the hobby and nerd interest website scratch-that.org.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I would say to go and check out independent local game stores. It’s not uncommon for people to run 3D printing as a side hustle, and game stores tend to have boards where people put up flyers or cards.

    You want resin for 28mm characters. FDM, the alternative leaves noticeable printlines and not what you want if you’re paying for a mini.

    In U.S. pricing, I’ve found these individual print people charging $1-3 USD for a human 28mm figure. Part of the idea is paying less than it costs to buy figures out of the box.


  • The expectation that it was an open world modern style Fallout game does seem to be a theme among people who didn’t like it. That wasn’t helped by pre-release marketing that emphasized it came from the studio that made New Vegas (despite the writers and game leads all being different).

    I went in to the game without expectations and found the structure of the game closer to a classic BioWare RPG. Rather than a single huge open world it was a series of curated hubs to travel between. At those hubs there was space to explore but it was more limited and curated than a full open world. The more curated approach meant that the game could be designed with certain builds in mind since players would interact with certain areas coming from known directions, allowing alternate routes or quest solutions for different builds to be placed.

    Accepting it as a hub based RPG that leaned into a specialized build made the game click for me.


  • Setting aside prices, I’ve seen an unexpected amount of sourness directed at the first game. While the first game wasn’t a greatest of all time RPG and had flaws, I found it overall enjoyable enough and it was clearly a project with some passion that I didn’t regret sinking time into it.

    I expect similar of the sequel, with hopefully improvements based on feedback from the first game. I plan to have fun with the game, and it is a bit tiring to see things like the pricing prompting people to badmouth the game itself when they are separate things.

    Am I going to pay $80? No. No I’m not. This is a single player RPG though. There’s no FOMO of getting left behind on the multiplayer unlocks or the lore of a new season. It’s a singleplayer game. Put it on the wishlist and buy it on a sale. Simple as.




  • The last Black Ops I cared about was 2. I could almost feel the developers of that one screaming that they wanted to break out of the COD mold. It actually had a lot of cool, if underbaked ideas. There were the sidemissions where you commanded an NPC squad ala Brothers In Arms, there were the pre-mission loadouts where after beating a mission set in the past you could go back and load up with future guns, there were multiple endings driven by choices in the missions.

    There was a lot of stuff going on in that game which if it had been given a longer development cycle than the COD treadmill, and more freedom to stray from COD mainstays could have been something interesting. All of the above features could have really been pushed and refined beyond the small implimentation they ended up as. BO2 also tied the setting back to the cold war era roots, which makes it far more interesting that the cutout metal angular girder future design that is just the most generic looking thing ever. Call Of Duty Advanced Warfare was forgotten for a reason and it’s disappointing that Black Ops ended up eating all its aesthetics.

    None of this matter of course, since no matter how many story trailers they release or how much people like me talk about what could make single player good, in the end the series is kept alive by tweaked out multiplayer addicts so I suppose it is all just a waste of time to think about.









  • I feel like Wasteland 3 improved on your complaints specifically, and in general it was a lot more tightened up. WL2 while good just sort of seemed to go on and on and on, especially when you go to LA and essentially have to start over. The game world was just too big, and much of it pointless.

    WL3 presents the central conflict right from the start, which is a faction based dispute. Dealing with it involves radiating from the central location and then going back to it. It builds more faction investment by creating ongoing interactions with them, and quest choices will affect standing with factions which have tangible effects in the game world (certain vendors will or won’t trade with you, certain factions will staff your HQ, different factions get equipment based on quest choices, and certain endings and location outcomes vary). I think this helped make it feel like less of a drag than WL2’s mystery which was sort of vague and didn’t really involve much back and forth with the player until the end.

    WL3’s combat is a lot snappier. In WL2 assault rifles were overpowered so much that combat was just sort of a lot of midrange shooting. WL3 arguably overcorrected by making assault rifles possibly the worst weapon type, pushing to have run’n’gun SMG or shotgun party members, 1 or 2 snipers per party, and specialists like leaders, hackers, and medics playing important varied roles.

    WL3 uses talking heads for important characters, and they convey a lot more personality. With recruitable special NPCs there is actual voiced party banter, and special NPCs have their own loyalities which can make them leave a party under extreme circumstances. Non recruitable major NPCs also have more memorable personalities, and given that many of them represent factions you have to decide which ones to make friends and which enemies, which can be tough to call if you are playing blind.




  • Fallout 1: If you play it going in blind and don’t look up help, a first playthrough can be stressful early on if you don’t know how much progress you are making on the time limited main quest.

    Kenshi: The game doesn’t have quests or main goals, so it is up to the player to figure out what they want and how to get it. Certain game areas are lethally dangerous, factions can be angered if you don’t figure out their customs, and even in less lethal areas being beaten and crippled by bandits is a real problem.





  • Deep Rock Galactic.

    There is a huge amount of loadout progression for each class, and a seemingly infinite amount of cosmetics to acquire. While there are only a limited number of mission types, the randomized nature of the level population and all of the various modifiers and enemy types that have been added keeps the game fresh. The game is entirely co-op with no PVP element, which keeps the tone more focused on helping other players instead of ever seeing them as competition.