I think they are the Stalker enemies. The ones that turn invisible. Getting lost in the forest and coming across one or two turns the game into the most thrilling battle of pure instinct, and reactions as I frantically survey the dark trees around me for a glimpse of odd refraction. You feel like you are being hunted, but you know you can take them down if you keep your wits about you and react quickly. It's so much fun and I often run aimlessly into the forest just to get lost and hope I run into some. That's my favourite part of the game, that and the story in the latter stages is really interesting.

So basically long-story short I've started bounty hunting. Got a few normal bounties and decided to go for a special bounty (or whatever they're called) and noticed a guy called the wolf man, some grizzled mountain man. And naturally, as a grizzled mountain man myself, I decided he would be my bounty... Mountain man rivalry etc.

So I head over and after a quick battle with some wolves (which he seems to summon as expected according to his description), I spot my target and manage to shoot him in the leg as I'm crossing an icy lake. All the while I'm distracted by yet more wolves, so I'm frantically trying to get back on my horse, fend off the wolves and keep an eye on my wounded target who is now firing back at me and running across the ice.

However a fucking BEAR comes tearing out of the woods and starts attacking the wolves, then basically savages Wolf man to death.

I understand the wolves were probably summoned by him, but was the bear just a stroke of luck? A random spawn? If so, that's some incredible emergent gameplay. But, I'm just wondering for anyone who has done that mission before, was the bear supposed to spawn or what?

Either way it was incredible that (in my story) this savage mountain man is killed by nature's tooth and claw.

----

On a side note, my second special bounty was against some child-killing arsonist who I already decided I wasn't going to take alive (because y'know, fuck him!) - so I ended up in a massive shoot out with him and the gang he was hiding with..... and guess how I killed him? I accidentally shot a lantern and the evil arsonist burned to death!

Please tell me that wasn't scripted either? It just felt like both those bounties died in a really ironic way. Wolf man killed by a bear and arsonist killed by fire.

Henlo!

It has been a while since i have been so vitriolically aligned towards a target, but these days the new exciting gameplay choices provided to us by the AMAZING ECOSYSTEM team does inspire me to do my best to actually help.

https://i.redd.it/ylpdkbssxsz71.gif

The next quadrant will bring EVEN MORE exciting choices and will diversify the gameplay experience of many other professions.

HAULING WILL BE OVER....HAULED!

All Freighters will get a new module, L.O.A.D. (Large Object Assistant Depositron).

Whenever you load or unload anything into the Freighter, it will take 2 minutes for each 10.000m3 to move the shipment to the ship cargo.

Also, loading or unloading will make it so that 10% of the items will be lost (the dock workers steal, you see).

For 20 years it really felt unrealistic that you could load and unload in an instant so we think this is a change that will bring EVE Hauling closer to reality!

https://i.redd.it/qx4erifrysz71.gif

REACTIONS WILL BE IMPROVED!

Given Reactions are done by smart people, we wish EVE to make people smarter. This is why, WE NOW HAVE A NEW CHEMISTRY CAPCHA!

If you want to do any REACTIONS you will need to take a CHEMISTRY TEST before being authorized to proceed. Failure to provide an answer to one of the random 10.000 chemistry questions in the test will destroy the reaction materials BUT you get to try again next time!

Again, SHIT HAPPENS in real life, and we want EVE to simulate what would happen if a random neckbeard would try to work in a real life chemistry lab!

https://i.redd.it/ar9tntgwzsz71.gif

SHIP DRIVING LICENCES

Finally, we will really make EVE a safe environment by making sure to eliminate all space accidents. The number of BUMPS that happen daily and the ships that are damaged by it is staggering.

We are now introducing the Ship Honorable Inspection Token (S.H.I.T.) which will allow players to undock. Us (CCP) giving a S.H.I.T. to you (the player) is easy, all you have to do is send a picture of your ID, proving you are over 18, and 10 euros and we will unlock THIS AMAZING FUNCTIONALITY for your account.

Again, no player will be able to undock without a S.H.I.T. license on his account, but 10 euro and a quick email later, you can be on your way.

https://i.redd.it/ytref29g1tz71.gif

Fuck your timesinks, ECOSYSTEM team!

I and a couple buddies were taking on a hammerhead bounty contract. We had 3 fighters, two single seaters and the third with me in the gunner’s turret. Towards the end of the fight one of our buddies crashes into us, blowing up there ship and destroying our left wing and thruster. It sends us into an extremely fast spin and knocks us out so our third ship finishes off the contract and jumps to the closest port to grab a larger ship to give us a ride back, leaving us alone. Upon slowing our roll and waking up I see a couple red markers pop up on my hud, we’re got pirates heading our way and we’re sitting ducks. While my pilot is finishing getting the roll under control I defend ourselves and we jump to the nearest station just in time. Without the left thruster we use our RCS thrusters to strafe the next 10km into the station for repairs. All in all, it was an amazing unplanned fight for our lives.

Ok, so this has so far only happened to me once and it has been several weeks of playing since without another similar experience but I just wanted to share my favorite moment so far in Odyssey.

A few weeks back there was a GC that involved ground combat. I was in one of the high...danger? difficulty? I forgot how they are rated but the harder ground conflict zone. I had done a couple and was enjoying the fairly relaxing pace of it all and then as I'm jumping up onto a staircase I see it, a man with a hat. None of the NPCs I had seen have hats and so upon closer inspection I realize that this is in fact a real human player in the same conflict zone as me and even better he is fighting for the same side. So I start jumping and crouching and dancing all around to get his attention and eventually it was reciprocated.

Contact had been established.

So now that he is paying attention I send him a message asking if he wants to party up and he agrees so we join a team and as we are finishing the fight we spot ANOTHER commander fighting for the same side and after dancing around to get his attention too he joins the team as well. As it happened I had a Krait II in the station where I had flown into the conflict zone on a drop ship so after we win the fight we all meet back up at the station, collect our bounties and jump in the old Krait. Fucking sweet. We decide to fly back to the same conflict zone but this time in the ship with an SRV and a ship.

So we are flying back over to the planet with the conflict zone and I see two players in FDLs near its orbit. Kinda assume they're doing some ganking and as we near the planet one of them starts an interdiction... now I know the standard protocol is to submit and jump to another system but I also have two new friends onboard and we all want to be on that planet, so I decide I'm gonna play the interdiction game.

As the interdiction is happening I'm thinking...oh man this may have been the wrong move but, with the encouragement from the boys in the ship I manage to win. We escape the interdiction and continue boldly towards our destination. Fuck yes, we bad motherfuckers.

But then the other FDL goes for an interdiction attempt. I think, I won before I can win again. So instead of submitting I again decide to play but this time we are so close to the planet that we both end up "hitting" the planet and are no longer in supercuise. The Krait I fly is armed and well shielded but it's no match for a well outfitted PV

>Update 07/13
>
>Optimize your payouts! Sometimes it is not worth throwing in heaps of alts, and only keeping 1 slider in the site. Count how many people are going to get paid out, and decide if it is worth putting in an alt or not. There are times when you will tank your own payout. Image below : https://i.imgur.com/SpnsRiR.png

>
>Update - 06/29
>
>I've placed some feedback I've recieved from multiple sources below this guide. I'm not going to change the guide itself too much, but I strongly recommend you read the last part of this guide called "Feedback" - This will go over some of the updates and extra methods I've learnt about doing this. You can then take that information and apply it to this guide.

This guide is going to cover the art of Krab Sliding/Seagulling. We're going to go in-depth into how this works. As CCP has declared that this is not an exploit, it is only fair that people know how to engage in this exciting method of earning ISK. No longer do you need to rat in supers, undock large mining fleets, or secure and lockdown a C5 Wormhole for what is pretty much chump change.

This style of gameplay uses the mechanics of the Observatory Flashpoints in Pochven. Don't worry, you won't lose standings to either Edencom / Trigs.

TL;DR Version

1. Get into Pochven
2. Find Observation Flashpoint (Dreadsite)
3. Get in site, run off, cloak if needed.
4. Burn off
5. When safe, jettison something. Rep it. Pick it back up.
6. Don't go beyond 10,000km. Cloak up
7. wait for "Augmented Narodnya dedication is affirmed. Zimitra siege deployment underway." message - *NOTE* - This doesn't always show. Check DSCAN from time to time. If the trig dread is there, the message didn't display. This happens when the site is run quickly.
8. uncloak
9. get paid
10. repeat.

Full version

Observatory Flashpoints (Dreadsites)

These sites are the ultimate PVE ISK maker in-game right now, and 3 of them spawn in Pochven at any given time. CCP Recently removed the standings requirements for 24 out of 27 of these systems. Fleets tend to run these quite often, and on these sites, there are 2 rooms.

Getting into Pochven and finding the Observatory Flashpoints

1. Go to Jita, and buy 1x "Cladistic-5 'Krai Perun' Filament" - They cost only about 2m ISK each, so don't worry.
2. Grab your ship (Fits below) and Form a fleet with yourself.
3. Put the filament in your cargo, and undoc

Seeing a jumptown post in this sub, a reminder of the most cool times this game has known comes from emergent gameplay, makes me wonder if a reward system would be an innovative way to push for that kind of stuff and turn this game in the real star citizen simulator its meant to be.

So what about : An org (so possibly one solo player) can create an event beacon, and do whatever they want. Port olisar blockade, a parade of naked men with Pico plushies in the streets of lorville, some solo dude playing his guitar on his mic in grimhex bar, a race event around new babbage, a party in a constellation phenix, you name it. Other players outside of the org have the possibility to "like" the event via the beacon, giving the org points to spend in a special reward shop (cosmetics, or even usefull stuffs?).

Cig can then have a look at most liked events of the week, send a journalist to reach out for the org and report about them in a gazette, etc...

Is that a good idea ? What would be the downsides ? I'm curious about your opinions.

Alpha

I played one of the alphas, and was thoroughly impressed by the game. The sense of danger, the fact that you had to use proximity voice comms to communicate intent to others nearby who also was sizing you up because you were both potentially threats to each other. I didn't know anyone before playing the game, but I talk and communicate with people as a part of the gameplay.

It was like Rust in the early game, and then turned into roleplaying just existing in a dangerous world. People would kill you for stuff, but you could be tactical and choose to engage or run away. I didn't experience any early game hunting by others, but I did hear about the issue at some point. I went down to the shore areas and started making sure the new players were safe for a bit. Roleplayed the new player police, told them they were safe. At some point it didn't matter if there was a group of griefers, I would just use crappier gear and fight them and hold them off for a bit, until the little turtle made it to a safer zone.

I joined a company, which was super easy to do despite not knowing anyone in the game. The proximity voice chat and communication in the game was top notch. We had a fort, stockpiled our stuff. Was wary venturing a certain direction because there was a hostile company in a fort that way. There be danger. We had a few scraps against them, but mostly we were concentrating on just living.

I think I had one group that hunted me down because I ventured alone. From then, I had to weigh the risk of venturing alone and it's convenience, or sticking with the company. It was alpha so I mostly just ventured out alone and explored the world, but if the game persisted like this, I would have the security of finding that home and fort, and potentially defending it. There were better forts in more dangerous and higher level areas, with better resources, but you had to fight for them.

This Beta

I managed to play the beta for a bit. None of this exists any more, apparently. It appears there is little motivation for a player killing you. They get nothing, other than causing you a bit of inconvenience. There is some territory control. There is some weird global buff meta-game based on the territory you control. The fort game seems to have sort of been kept around, but seems to serve little purpose. There is instanced housing in the game now. The systems both became more numerous, but seemingly more mundane.

It's now mostly about fighting computer controlled

Tl;dr: I would like to see war gameplay shift from massive battles to personal conflicts, and utilize a style similar to the last of us, with impactful, sometimes sickeningly visceral combat akin to real war. I'm also kind of high and ramble (a lot)

I'm writing on a phone, so I'm sorry for the errors and formatting.

To me, it seems like the future of war games should allow for some of the emergent gameplay we see in open world sandbox/survival type games. Let me clarify, because that's a ton of keywords. Open world style games like mgsv, and sandbox/survival type games like tlou 1&2. There are much better examples of the former, but tlou is more on rails style sandbox gameplay. But the actual combat is more why I use the game as an example. That game plays like a horror game where every bit of damage is super important. Every time you make sound, it has to be deliberate and thought out. You may feel like you have an advantage one minute, only to be totally overwhelmed, out of ammo, and running away to hide the next. That is the type of gameplay war games should have in my opinion.

Shifting topic because I'm high and rambling and just want to get down some of these points.

Emergent gameplay found in online games like battlefield and cod is probably the closest besides the mil-sim genre that games have come to showing off war and the horrors that come with. Most recently bf1 and v have had pretty good examples of this with their "campaigns" as well as the online modes. I haven't played much cod so I can't comment much on the current games. But the super soldier formula is tired by now, and it's often been done to death by games that look like rambo tropes on crack. Now even serious takes come off hollow in this formula (recent bf campaigns, the codww2 that was free for a bit). Shoot some "enemies", duck down when the screen turns red, and you can patch that health back up ad nauseam.

In games like tlou2, every encounter with an enemy is tense and meaningful. Your blood starts pumping and you question your actions more when you can see the struggle in your victim's eyes and hear the choked off pleading for breath, squeaking out of their mouths.

In future releases featuring war, I would like to see a transition to this style of fewer, more personal conflicts rather than the entire war at huge scale with supersoldiers mowing down squads of faceless enemies. I want to get to know a small group of guys, and experience a select few uncut moments of

I just finished Pathologic 2 for the first time and besides being a gloriously anxious wreck and blown away by how over-all beautiful the game was, I was struck by how many moments that were moving or terrifying or changed the entire course of my game only occurred because of RNG or total coincidence.

The big one for me was the final night. An absolutely obsessive amount of shmowder hoarding meant that The Pest's big moment on Day 10 had led to Artemy no-selling it and running around like the Anti-Plague Father Christmas, but also doing almost nothing else, including 'Getting anything from the Hospital fund so he doesn't die' or 'sleeping'. Typical Pathologic stuff. By day 11 we were just powering through to the end, burned through literally everything in his bag besides some marbles and a needle and he probably would have eaten those too if the the day lasted a little longer. Finally, it's dark. It's raining. Sleep is now non-negotiable, so we duck into the Stillwater only because it's the closest place with a bed. Maybe we can get his head down for an hour and head back out.

The Bachelor is, surprisingly, in residence that night, standing at his window, watching the rain. I stop and open the map to see what's left to do...and there's nothing. Everything that can be done is done. It's 11:55 on Day 11 and Artemy can rest. There's nothing to do but stand there in silence with the other doctor, looking at the town as the clock chimes midnight like it’s the universe’s most melancholy happy New Years, and the plague ends.

It was the absolute perfect ending to the last real day of the game and only happened because the exhaustion meter was maxed out. So now I'm curious, what are some ways Pathologic/ Pathologic 2 told its own story in your games?

I have a somewhat specific niche that I've been looking to fill. I'm very fond of games whose complex, often simulationist mechanics naturally generate emergent gameplay. I especially enjoy it if these games have some unpolished rough edges that can be exploited or yield unexpected results. I want to recapture the way videogames felt when I was a kid, where I never quite knew what was going to happen next or what the game would allow me to get away with.

Oblivion and to a lesser extent Morrowind are my golden examples. Highly exploitable spellcrafting systems allow the player to break the game very easily, but never in a way that feels un-fun or removes all challenge. Oblivion's interacting systems of factions, dispositions, NPC schedules and needs, etc, makes the game feel like it's always reacting to you, but also gives the impression that the world exists beyond the player character. A combination of scripted and procedural elements strike a balance between feeling too straightforward or too random. Additionally, all these elements are implemented just poorly enough, and interact with each other just enough, to add an exciting level of jank that makes it feel like anything could happen next. Throw mods into the mix and you've got my ideal for what I'm looking for.

Other games that kind of give the feel I'm looking for:

• Heat Signature, Prey, and Dishonored for their Immersive Sim elements

• Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress for their procedural content and their ability to generate interesting characters who interact in unexpected ways.

• STALKER series for its open world, janky mechanics, and the random encounters with NPCs making the world feel bigger than the player, although often there was little reactivity with these NPCs, giving the player few meaningful choices for interacting with them.

• Starbound and Terraria for the procedural exploration, though interactions with NPCs are bare bones and impersonal.

Thanks for reading all that! Any suggestions?

First off, I haven't finished the game yet, I shelved it for a while to see how they add to it, but I LOVED what I played. But one of the weird things to me that I noticed while playing is that it's very clear the atmosphere in their game (while amazing from other factors) is totally lacking in a simple way that GTA 5 does very well: tons of voice lines from random pedestrians on the streets, and basic behaviors for them other than "omg violence, better crouch and hold hands over head no matter what." And this is weird to me because many devs in previews and interviews talked about how they wanted to model their vision for how the game would feel based on GTA's model of "open world, interact with it however you want." One of the great charms of GTA 5 is that so many npc's are doing actual activities that you can watch or interrupt or even interact with. They golf, they weightlift, they ride bikes, they suntan themselves. And they have so many random voice lines while they do it that make them feel real and immersive and believable, like actual denizens of a city.

I understand from many signs that the game was not satisfyingly "ready" when it was forced to launch by corporate heads, but do you guys think that the devs would actually have meant to give some behaviors and activities to npc's, or just keep them extremely basic and only have storytelling through hand-made side quests? The reason I ask is I saw many devs in the previews and press events before the game launched talk about how their philosophy is NOT to design anything for story which is procedurally generated, and only handcraft everything. Multiple devs, multiple times, took a stance against doing anything procedural in design choices. So it made it sound like they don't believe in that design choice that Rockstar does, and they only wish to take the time to develop side-storytelling and ambience through the specific side quests they litter through the city and game.

So there's lots of reasons why The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is amazing, but one thing I think that keeps amazing me is how the physics system allows you to constantly come up with new and fascinating ways to solve problems. Even in ways the developers didn't intend, the toolbox is there to let you come up with fun and creative solutions to problems, whether it's freezing an object and changing it's momentum, abusing magnetism to kill enemies, throwing metal objects at something to attract lightning, causing a fire to create an updraft, etc.

I'm curious if there's any other games that have physics based systems that give you freedom in how you use it. There's lots of physics based games like Portal that have very specific types of solutions but I want something that really lets you be creative and come up with your own way of doing things and using the game mechanics to your advantage. Does anything else like this exist? (Does not need to be anything like Zelda gameplay wise)

I was recently doing a small graphical tweak of my game when I ended up going down a rabbit hole of iteration and feedback, ending up with a totally new hidden mechanic and a great example of turning something simple into emergent gameplay that creates a higher skill ceiling. So I decided to write a blog post walking through the steps I took and how it all came together. Here it is:

https://refreshertowel.games/2021/04/07/paying-attention-to-detail/

I was running around in my venerable, roughly 2 year old starter boat I dubbed the "Red Stallion" putting out fires and rushing folks to the hospital. I had recently purchased my second base, so my operational radius had expanded quite a lot. With that comes a lot more fuel usage.

So I found myself parked near my new base which is a small island with an airfield on it, and not enough fuel to get the next random mission done: a long towing job in rough seas at night. No dock, no waterside fuel station near my boat to top off from before heading out.

So I decided to make a tracked amphibious refueling vehicle in my new hangar solely for the purpose of going out and fueling up the boat.

The hastily thrown together proof of concept worked great and got the job done. That inspired me and gave me the motivation to go far beyond proof of concept later on in a different save. I've gone down the rabbit hole in creative mode and spent countless hours perfecting my first general purpose tracked amphibious vehicle. And it's been fun. It engages the mind. The sense of accomplishment is good when it all comes together. And yet, at the same time, you're never quite done.

There's always a way you can continue to improve your craft: weight reduction, more optimized usage of space, enhanced fuel efficiency, more capabilities, more user friendliness, different variants for different applications, aesthetics and paint jobs, lore, commercials / advertising media, peer review, etc.

For me, it's sort of the equivalent of getting lost doing side missions in Skyrim, except that the missions aren't scripted, instead they're mostly emergent. This gameplay has me addicted.

I like the idea of Crusader Kings, namely the freedom to do whatever and the crazy scenarios that arise as a result, but it's much too hardcore for me. I'm looking for a much more casual alternative to Crusader Kings that will still give me the freedom and crazy scenarios of Crusaders Kings. Thanks for the help guys.

Was replaying Half-Life Episode 2 on Hard at the house in the woods where enemy hunts you down, auto-save left me with 30 health.

To survive the onslaught with only 30 health I actually had to take out gravity gun and assemble a defensive barricade system in the basement to direct the enemy to only be able to go through one entrance that was half barricaded.

This felt so much better than other other defensive situations in Half-life 2 because it was not a forced pre-scripted defend location mission!It was great because it was emergent: I was left in an open-area and decided the best way to survive was to get to the basement make some barricades and wait to ambush the enemies as they searched for me. Could have just as easily gone to the roof and take potshots at the enemies instead.

What other shooters capture this Emergent DEFENSIVE aspect? (I know all the far-cry etc are great with emergent OFFENSIVE gameplay)