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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • Tried posting the video this time instead of a link to the news page.

    Some welcome changes to the Lithoid species pack - tweaks to their unique origin, tweaks to Terravore to make it less fiddly. A new advanced space racism civic! (This is one of the weirder parts of talking about Stellaris.) Personally I’m a bit underwhelmed by the new portrait; It’s good art, but I really prefer more out there non-humanoid designs, which is the opposite of what they’re going for here. The quality of life changes to ascension perks and gestalt nodes are welcome as well. This kind of tidying up is why I like the whole concept of the custodian team.

    Only real negative thing here is the increase on price for some older DLCs. It’s only two dollars, and they are tweaking them to be better, but I still feel like it’s gonna cause unnecessary backlash for little gain.









  • (Screenshots taken from the Interface in Game site, here: https://interfaceingame.com/games/team-fortress-2/)

    I wanna talk about the game I’m currently absorbed with, Team Fortress 2. TF2, being rather old, allows total customization of the UI, from the HUD to the menus. The default UI is clear, but also dated in places; you can really see where they slapped on new elements that clash a bit with existing ones, like the medals on the scoreboard compared to other elements, or the loading screen for a map, which has the very old Source infobox in the bottom right, a stylized background and panel taking up most of the screen, and a well integrated but still a bit off info bar at the top that was added more recently. The most glaring example is probably the community server browser compared to the newer slide-out tabs and menus for navigating play options. If Valve was still doing major work on this game, I’d say they need a good UI unification art pass.

    When browsing TF2 custom HUDs on a site like this, there’s quite a few different styles to choose from, ranging from those that attempt to refine the vanilla HUD to those that make it something entirely different. Many competitive players prefer minimalistic HUDs that put pertinent information like health and ammo count closer to the center of the screen, so that one doesn’t need to divide their attention while fighting. Still others will pick a HUD that is a different style but still “complete” and fleshed out; even others still will fill their UI with memes (which I never understood, but to each their own).

    Sometimes you just have to appreciate the little touches, though, like the animations and presentation on a map’s video tutorial and the class select screen. It oozes a particular aesthetic that the game has deviated from, over time.



  • TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 year ago

    I’ve bought every Stellaris DLC over the years, and I’m not even a particularly avid Stellaris player (347 hours played (which while notable is peanuts compared to the superfans’ hours) and haven’t played recently). Here’s my thoughts on it:

    I buy DLCs day 1 that I am supremely interested in, and everything else I pick up on discount either during a sale or from another site (not sketchy key resellers - I use https://isthereanydeal.com/, which lists more legitimate sites). In multiplayer, all players can use the DLC the host has, so I’ve been the dedicated host for my friend group there. I don’t think the massive amount of DLCs is good, but it is at least tolerable (I liken it to a subscription model) and I enjoy how the devs share some of their insights during the development process. Despite all the flaws it has, Stellaris is a really cool sci-fi 4x game that probably has the least ridiculous learning curve compared to other Paradox strategy games.