Yes and I appreciate that.
Which is unsurprising, given how ingrained it is in culture and media. Whenever someone is playing a tabletop game in some show, it’s like 90% chance gonna be dnd. Then for most it likely was their first tabletop game, and I find that people stick to the first thing they know.
Funnily enough, there’s some cultural variation here - in Japan it’s Call of C’thulu, and in Southern America it’s apparently(?!) Vampire the Masquerade!
D&D’s dominance (and 5e especially) is somewhat self-replicating. TTRPG groups are hard enough to find, so typically you’ll end up with the game that everyone is already playing. And since everyone’s already playing it, it’s the system people start with, and convincing people to change from a system to an entirely new one isn’t super easy, even if 5e isn’t perfect (and it’s not).
In Germany it’s Shadowrun, and in Spain it’s pretty wildly varied with D&D only picking up as of relatively recently. It really differs from country to country.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1134554809119289395/1142472597167161344/ca6a52fdcb0cfd6ee60287e4c0c59f89.png
I’m about to do the funniest thing
I do wonder how true this is - I imagine it’s absolutely the case with plenty of groups, but I’ve also had the exact opposite reaction with my own group, although there’s definitely a few that are sort of… fearful? or otherwise intimidated at the thought of running something not 5e
I generally find it’s a “you run it, they will come” kind of thing
Well, currently I am still in the second level, so I haven’t gotten past the demo yet, now have managed to build my gord as big. So far atleast, insanity seems to be dealt with easily enough by just sending my folks to the meadery to get soused, health is recovered by having them take a bath.
I’ll try to update more as I progress further, level 2 ends with encountering that Horror that needs to be dealt with. Back in the demo I just gave him a child-sacrifice to let me pass, as I believe taking him on in a fight could be rather detrimental.
I’ve been strongly considering going for another playthrough. Does it still hold up well? I recently dabbled in Tiberium Wars again after who knows how many years and the AI in that game has completely broken down to the point that cheese strats are mandatory even on easy mode in some missions (not to mention that they managed to make GDI base defense turrets completely useless because their auto engage range is lower than their real range so unless you actively manage them nonstop they will get ezclapped by rocket infantry).
yeah they did a pvp balance thing, possibly several and… totally screwed up the flow of the actual campaign. Changes without thought strike again.
I’ve only progressed through the Chinese campaign on hard so far, aswell as the first mission of the GLA. I’d say it still holds up pretty well, and thankfully it only takes a small edit of the options.ini file to be able to play the game in 4k. It still looks okay for a game from 2003.
As for the AI, I’d say it mostly leaves you to your own devices , but the last Chinese mission is absolute bonkers. Barely any supplies to be found and if you let your income rise past 5k, you get Scud Stormed. I managed to get around the money-gap by overtaking a GLA base to my right, so that I had both Chinese and GLA stuff at my disposal and used hackers and black markets.
The problem lies in that you often get attacked by Scud launchers and rocket buggies, the latter outrange your gatling guns. I ended up having to hold the line for a good while with Overlords with Speaker towers, and some with gatling guns. Those nuclear upgrades really help them out too.
As for Tiberium Wars, I feel your pain there. GDI atleast is still manageable on hard, but the NOD campaign gets absolutely bonkers. Especially once the Scrin are introduced. I still have nightmares about that mission where you have to steal the nukes from GDI. And NOD’s final mission… HOOO BOY. That one is for the masochists among us.
Yeah I read up on it and it’s wild to me that that’s the state they decided to leave the game in. I assume the expansion is more polished since iirc it came after this pvp patch but like . … i wanted to play and enjoy the base game mannnn
If only barely. NOD absolutely loves sending a swarm of stealth tanks directly into your frontal lobe before you even get a chance to set up any basic defenses and good god are those things powerful.
That’s rad, glad to hear it. May give it a go sometime soon. Not surprised there’s a few absolute bastards of missions in the lot, that matches my ancient childhood memories of playing these games well enough.
Croatia mission I presume, the one where you have to juggle power until the MCV gets there? Yeah, stealth tanks really do hurt there. Meanwhile there’s an absolute lunatic out there speedrunning it all:
Bingo. I ultimately just cheesed it by leaving the mission on the bit where you have to save that MCV, because apparently that fries the AI’s brain a bit, and instead I cleared out the infantry base in the south-west and did some damage to the land vehicle base north-east before I went and retrieved the MCV to clean up.
It’s been a while for me too, but I remember leaving the infantry turrets unpowered most of the time and putting infantry in it’s stead, since GDI’s guys can dig those small bunkers. Usually three or four or so at each entrance, which most of the time managed to shoot even NOD’s Black Hand infantry before they could torch your bunkers. This left me able to leave the tank and air turrets permanently powered.
For the rest I think I did it same way as you, deal with the infantry base first before bringing that MCV back home.
This just became my go-to in general once I looked up why the GDI infantry turrets felt so bad. Anything beats a turret that needs to be babysat to actually fire at enemies well within its range.
iirc I kinda just gave up on the GDI campaign in the last mission though, though since then I’ve learned that I may have been doing myself more harm than good by trying to get around the busted AI by playing on easy, as I understand it the easy AI is apparently even more aggressive than hard AI when it feels like it.
Truly that game finished on one of the patches of, perhaps, all time.
Same guy, the speedrun lunatic. There’s one where he did it even -faster- by getting the liquid Tiberium bomb and dropping it on a patch of tiberium right between nod and scrin, which ended up rekking the both of them. That was absolutely insane.
Also forums, if I want to reply to Dekarn more often than once, just let me do so 
The concept of speedrunning RTS games is as alien as it is fascinating.
rlly impressive though
Just had a vs A.I. co-op match in HotS with two bots. TWO.
They’re always ETC and Jaina. I don’t know why. Some of them I’ve seen multiple times (same name) and some I can just tell because they’re mediocre level and have the default icon. And, as I said, always those two characters.
I know, I know, ‘dead game’ so why be mad? It’s still annoying, though. I don’t know if Unranked PVP (rather than quickmatch, where I still ran into some) is any better? I’d definitely have to Git Gud, though heh.
Rematched the spider matriach and stood victorious.
Someone’s beaten all campaigns without losing a single unit or structure if you want some true madlad skills