#ironmanmode

[patchoulism]

been at a book fair and bought only 1 (one) book #selfrestraint #zen #ironmanmode

[mrxakadan]

𝑴𝑬𝑹𝑹𝒀 𝑪𝑯𝑹𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑴𝑨𝑺 #everyone what a crazy year of ups and downs, hope everyone is having a lovely time and getting to spend some time with loved ones. 💕 will be on streaming again really soon. . . . #rebuild #achievement #dansgimp #grinding #scape #update #runelite #Jagex #osrscommunity #levelingup #levels #GIMPGRIND #GIMP #OSRS #runescape #streamer #twitchstream #streamingsoon #oldschoolrunescapemobile #oldschoolrunescape #runescapegains #groupironman #groupiron #ironmanmode #youtube #followformore (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmlIHP-Sepy/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mattgambler]

Phoenix Point and why I want it to live

No TLDR this time. I said in the past that I could write pages over pages about this. I guess its time to see how many pages we are actually talking about here. Phoenix Point is currently rather mediocre. From the soundtrack to the many bugs and rather rough implementations, the missing features that were envisioned in the kickstarter campaign, the 5 scheduled DLCS, the epic store exclusivity, the inferior graphical polish in comparison to Firaxis’ XCOM reboot, the inferior complexity in comparison to Longwar, probably even the inferior Idontknow in comparison to the very first XCOM games from way back when, I didnt play those. If you are looking for something to hate in this game, you dont have to look too hard, there is something here for everyone. The reason Ive been a determined defender of Phoenix Point is not simply because I have a different taste in games than the mainstream however, but because I feel there is a way deeper underlying problem at work here. I’ll come back to that later. Btw starting now, when I say XCOM, I mean Firaxis’ XCOM. Personally I want more games like XCOM. More games like Battlebrothers, Mordheim: City of the Damned, Invisible Inc, hell, even Bloodbowl, even though I dont dig the sports angle. Games with permadeath, nameable characters, dynamic overworld systems and missions and situations that are created ideally by circumstance, not by simply playing mission 1, then mission 2, until you reach what the devs decided to be the last one they would make for the game. I thoroughly enjoy that concept of progression and many turnbased strategy titles just dont do it for me because they are too linear, even when they are otherwise nicely crafted experiences. Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest is a nice example of this, the game looks nice, sounds nice and is very well made, but it lacks the one thing I enjoy most in all the games I mentioned earlier. Along comes Phoenix Point and the moment I look at this game I know that it is all about scratching that specific itch. Not only that, it also brings with it a variety of creative features to even improve the established turnbased squad tactics formula. I didnt lie when I said I think that it is in many ways better than XCOM. Just that... WHAT?!?! ...the overall game doesnt compare well if we look at the sum of their parts at the moment. YOU CANT BE SERIOUS!!!!! About Phoenix Point being better in many ways? Sure, let me make a list. 1) Aiming In XCOM you aim, you have an x% chance to hit, you either hit or you dont. While widely accepted because of the quality of the overall games, its a pretty simple system that becomes especially frustrating when your guns model on screen is touching the enemies forehead and you still manage to miss. Or when a flashbanged and suppressed sectoid crits you in full cover after rolling a natural 20. In Phoenix Point bullets get simulated and trace a path from the barrel of your gun to a target that they then either hit or miss. Smaller enemies in Phoenix Point are hard to hit not because the game designers arbitrarily decided so, but because smaller enemies are simply smaller. In comparison, in XCOM you roll dice. 2) Modular enemies Similar to Battlebrothers, Phoenix Point has you encounter the same brigand thug (crabmen) over and over again. The enemy itself doesnt matter as much, its more about the number of different variations you can encounter. Brigant thugs can come equipped with simple helmets and/or armor as well as different weapons that have different abilities. They also have different faces on top of that. They are by far not the only enemy in the game, but even if they were, by the time you encounter the exact same thug a second time you wont be able to tell anymore because you have seen so many others inbetween. The same goes for most enemies in Battlebrothers (with a few exceptions), it becomes way more about your opponents equipment than about his actual type or class. Phoenix Point goes for the very same approach, but falls short because of  a variety of reasons. To name just one, the first time you encounter New Jericho as a faction, you fight four New Jericho soldiers and all four of them have the same armor, the same weapon and even the same face. To hammer it home the mission also always takes place on a variation of the exact same map. It is an absolute travesty. The ambition is there and in random encounters on the map you can see where it is supposed to go, with every enemy type in the game being designed in a way that allows for as many variations as the devs can think of, from paralysis tentacles and bloodsucking arms to mist generators and everything inbetween. The possibilities are endless and from the standard crab to the giant bosses every enemy is designed with this modularity in mind. In XCOM in comparison, you have a variety of different enemies, but for the entirety of the first month (what is that, 3-7 missions?) you only fight the sectoid. Or maybe the drone too, I havent played vanilla in forever. Longwar tries to spice that up by using preexisting models and assigning new abilities to them, making some models bigger and giving others new abilities, but at the end of the day the sectoid looks the way the sectoid looks. I love what it looks like btw. But modular enemies are decidedly cooler. 3) Scale In XCOM you control 4, later up to 6 soldiers at the same time. In Longwar it goes up to 8, or 12 in that one mission. In Phoenix Point you start out the same way, but to my knowledge you can bring as many soldiers to any mission as you can get there via aircraft. Meaning that as soon as you get a second manticore you can theoretically have up to 12 soldiers in a mission, or 18 with a third. Naturally you would probably want to split your forces instead and be in 3 places at the same time (and you can), but this sort of thing being possible, both the 18 soldiers in one mission as well as the 3 different squads doing missions in 3 different places of the planet, is something XCOM simply does not offer.  4) Other features Be it vehicles, giant enemies, diplomacy or the amount of control you get on the overworld map, Phoenix Point does (or attempts to do) a huge number of things that in XCOM are simply nonexistant. In XCOM you dont get to decide were to fly, missions are simply spawned in popup fashion, the skyranger is on autopilot, “diplomacy” is managed by talking to top secret bald guy representing the council and by sometimes fulfilling a councilrequest. The only opposing faction apart from the aliens is EXALT which can be regarded as more of a separate mission type with human enemies and not really as a faction that contributes in any diplomatic way. Dont get me wrong, I dont think XCOM needs diplomacy in order to be good. XCOM is already good, fantastic in fact. But if we compare based on features alone and not the quality of their implementation, then Phoenix Point is doing A LOT of things that XCOM never even touched. This is in no way me trying to trash XCOM. I love XCOM, especially Longwar. However for the sake of an at least somewhat fair comparison the only games we should compare Phoenix Point to at this Point are XCOM Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, both at launch. Bringing Longwar into the mix is something I do for the sake of providing a third angle, not because I am blind to the fact of how ludacris it would be to compare a newly launched game with an extensive overhaul mod that was in the making for years after the vanilla game and even its expansion were already released. As I was saying, along comes Phoenix Point doing all those very ambitious things. And it gets DESTROYED. To quote Beaglerush, the probably best known XCOM streamer out there: “But honestly, for anyone with experience in the XCOM genre, anyone who likes XCOM games, and anyone particularly who likes XCOM games at a harder difficulty or likes to obviously, like, play well, I do not think it is possible to enjoy this game unless you are getting a big paycheck and you are a good actor.” To be clear, I didnt watch the entire footage that made him come to that conclusion and I dont want to comment too much on what “playing well” means, but i have played Longwar on the highest difficulty in ironmanmode for 2000 hours (without beating it, but also always with Training Roulette active) and I have beaten XCOM 2 on highest difficulty in ironman mode. I do consider Longwar as one of my favourite games of all time and I do consider myself as someone who has experience with the genre, likes games and likes to play them “well”, or at least on highest difficulty. I dont agree with Beagle (duh), but I can of course see where he might be coming from. In its current state Phoenix Point is not finished. Playable, but even for an early access game its still pretty rough, with many mechanics not or only sometimes working (leanout, aim and aimsnapping, end turn, details, you get the point), features missing, performance issues, lackluster soldier customization, lackluster diplomacy options, a rather simple skilltree, questionable balance, etc. Don’t look at me like that, if I wanted to I could jump that hatetrain any time! But if I was to do that, where would that leave us? The XCOM genre, as Beagle calls it, is a niche genre at the best of times. Not only regarding the playerbase but also regarding game developers willing to invest time and money into creating something new. Xenonauts 2 is a year or more behind its originally panned release date with not much news to speak of, Terra Invicta is a distant memory of a game that will maybe one day still be released and Im still waiting for the XCOM 3 announcement and who knows if it will even come. Especially after we, the players, completely demolish Phoenix Point to the point where I would just cancel the 5 planned DLCS right now if I was in charge of the devteam. The main reason I defended Phoenix Point was not because of what the game currently is but because of what the game could be after 5 more DLCs. Ive played every backerbuild of the game and statements like “the game is still what it was 2 years ago” are simply and factually false. Especially between backerbuild 4 and 5 there was a huge jump in quality and between 5 and the release version that same jump has ocurred again - with an entire game that is now playable and completable. Yes, it could have more voiced lines instead of text, yes, it doesnt have the sexy “alerted sectoid” animation sequence when you run into a new enemy pod (pods dont exist in PP but you get me) and sure, the epic exclusive sucks I guess and I dont care much for the soundtrack. But after Backerbuild 5, who knows where the game will be after the next DLC? And the next? If you compare XCOM Enemy Unknown with XCOM Enemy Within, the difference was breathtaking. And here we have a game that has so much work already done, so many assets created, so much code already in place, and we, the players, punch them in the face and shout “NOT GOOD ENOUGH!”. You wanna go back to the drawing board, have somebody else start fresh on something that could be better in a year or two if we are lucky? Ive been looking for a game like XCOM for literally years. Battle Brothers was the closest I found. Tens, if not hundreds of others inbetween failed hard, from “Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus” to “Legends: Viking” to “Wildermyth” and basically everything inbetween. And here we have a game that seems to have the right idea, the right amount of ambition and a good amount of the work already done and we are bitchslapping them left and right just so we can go back to getting hyped about the next mediocre linear story experience. Sure, them releasing already is a shame. But if I was the one to decide, I would give them the same amount of money again and triple it and tell them to finish the job instead of spitting in their face when they come to us and lowkey tell us that they ran out of money. And I would send them flowers and tell them that Im sorry. Anybody can polish a game with extra cash, but getting the core idea right is something that even Firaxis almost failed to do with XCOM 2, as far as Im concerned. I said earlier, that there was a deeper underlying problem here and that I would come back to it and here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Modernday gamers are an ungrateful, hateful bunch of whiny spoiled brats, who think they are entitled to only the best of the best while in fact they “deserve” nothing. The entire concept of a kickstarter campaign is that you provide funds and trust so a bunch of people can try to realize their vision. If you dont like the outcome, then that doesnt mean they betrayed you, it means you have poor judgement. Notice how I say judgement and not taste. You dont have poor judgement because you dont like the outcome, but because you gave them money in the first place. I should maybe add at this point that my anger is mostly directed towards the public reaction and the phoenix point subreddit and not towards my own viewership. (hello) Phoenix Point is not the first game that has had me feel like the entire gaming landscape is slowly spiraling out of control. 5 years ago I thought quality means sales. At this point Im worried that a high marketing budget means sales. And I dread the possibility that 5 years from now I might be convinced that a high marketing budget means quality. Some of the best games this year were literally destroyed by players. Artifact wasn’t only boykotted, but actively brutalized, with people at some point purposefully streaming porn and torture under the Artifact tag on Twitch. Pathologic 2 had the devteam almost go bankrupt after poor sales and unfavourable reviews by people that barely grasped the basics of the game. All the while people feed money to the ginormous immortal that is Magic The Gathering and praise Hideo Kojima for his “unique vision” for Death Stranding. I didnt play Death Stranding and Magic can be pretty fun, but does nobody see the smothering double standards in play here? Im not saying that Phoenix Point has no problems right now in terms of quality. Some of the issues player encounter are in fact inexcusable, at least longterm. But XCOM 2 also had a bumpy launch with long loading times and tons of bugs and then they were fixed and today there are people that think XCOM 2 is better than Longwar. Incomprehensible to me how anyone could think that, but time and some postlaunch fixes did clearly change peoples minds. I think the main reason Phoenix Point got so much hate on launch in comparison to XCOM 2 (which also released 3 DLCs ,or was it more) is because its drastically different and more ambitious in many ways, not because it is half as bad as people make it out to be. XCOM is just like Phoenix Point, just dumbed down I guess. Kappa. (I hate it when people use the term “dumbed down”. This is a joke. Ffs why do I have to explain this)

[blog-angelvalentin]

Bike ride (pace speed) and sit/down/stay training mixed in with Vicente. This dog is a lot more work than I could’ve imagined. Not giving up yet but my patience is on E right now. Adjustment time. #puppytraining #ironmanmode#stamina #patience #consistence #miamishores

[onewaymyw4y]

#IronManMode

[nancylikeasir]

Runescape Ironman (HC Ironman) mode, or "Why Jagex shouldn't expect me to buy anything of theirs any time soon"

Anyone who watched today's Runescape BTS will know that Ironman mode, an idea for a little fun time between peeps to do on their own as a little side thing, has been officially made into a game.

And I'm here to show my completely unbiased opinion as to why this is a terrible idea.

For those who don't know, an Ironman character is where you do not participate with other players; instead, anything and everything you use must be received from quests, skilling, crafting, monster drops, etc. No trading, just you and your countless hours of bibblety-booping around Geilinscape. Jagex, being the smart people they are, decided "Oh, hey! You know that self-imposed challenge players love doing? Let's add that~!"

The first point that needs to be made is that not everyone is willing to make another email account to make another character, but this time officially make it so you can't communicate with other people or trade anything. With their new "You need to have a character bound to an email account or to a facebook" system they implemented who knows how long ago, it's not as simple as "Make a character, give it a name, bam, you're done". Maybe if they use that manner of system to allow people who do NOT have a bajillion email accounts for all their survey-taking and whatnot a chance to go Ironman, then maybe I could see the reasoning behind it.

The second point is that it's a different account entirely. In this week's BTS the commentator said that Ironman characters would still be able to participate in PvP such as Castle Wars and whatnot. That is to say, you will be able to participate in them as though you had a normal account, sans the ability to get combat experience. If you cannot yet see the problem, maybe I need to point it out further.

Different account = You are not a member unless you make yourself a member. Hence, you will be paying for a service that is already limited for the game mode you are playing. Hopefully you will already see the problem here.

The third point I feel needs mentioning is that you can play on "Ultimate Ironman" on old school. If it wasn't bad enough that the Grand Exchange doesn't exist on RS07, if it wasn't bad enough that you had to purchase another member's account to even PLAY on Ironman mode for the 'full experience', and if it wasn't bad enough that RS07 puts your skills back down to 1, here's what happens:

1. You need to have a member's account to play it. Otherwise you can do the 'free trial' bullshit they do to loosen up your wallet from your pants so you'll be willing to buy a new member's account just to play freaking ironman mode.

2. You do not keep ANY of your items.

3. You do NOT get a bank.

If anyone were really that keen on wasting their money for Ironman, go ahead, spend all the time you like shelling out $10 bills to the company. In the meantime, this is pretty much just a nail in the coffin for me. From setting up systems that are designed to waste as much money as you can muster to dealing with an abhorrid control on economy (YES, I believe the trade limits were a good thing!), I feel that Jagex is pushing themselves down the Sisyphus slope instead of up at this point. They're taking the comments of people who have paid for their membership and making them a reality.

If there's anything to walk away from this with, it's that self-imposed challenges are self-imposed for a reason. It'd be as though Mojang put through a mode where you limit just how much you can carry and instate a backpack system so you can manage.

...Actually, it's worse. It'd be as though Mojang changed it so you could have only one world, couldn't delete it, and when you died you had the option to delete your account.

[mrxakadan]

𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝟗𝟓 𝐌 𝐞𝐱𝐩 📈 #stonks ...not great by any means but this account is 8️⃣ months old and having to restart due to being kicked from my group, it's been an up and down adventure. Still loving the grind and well on my way to smash out 2K total. . . . #rebuild #achievement #dansgimp #grinding #scape #update #runelite #Jagex #osrscommunity #levelingup #levels #GIMPGRIND #GIMP #OSRS #runescape #streamer #twitchstream #streamingsoon #oldschoolrunescapemobile #oldschoolrunescape #runescapegains #groupironman #groupiron #ironmanmode #youtube #followformore (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmQgOJvh3lo/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mrxakadan]

𝙁𝙪𝙡𝙡 𝙂𝙊𝙇𝘿 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙚 💛 oh man ✨️1️⃣2️⃣K STARDUST was painfully slow to get. Smashing mining at the dog 🐕 park every evening for the last week to get it done really helped. 😀 This will help me finish up the 9️⃣9️⃣ mining ⛏️ grind with an additional 2.5% exp boost over 90-99 through the outfit !! . SWIPE LEFT to check out the pleb blue 💙. . . . #rebuild #achievement #dansgimp #grinding #scape #update #runelite #Jagex #osrscommunity #levelingup #levels #GIMPGRIND #GIMP #OSRS #runescape #streamer #twitchstream #streamingsoon #oldschoolrunescapemobile #oldschoolrunescape #runescapegains #groupironman #groupiron #ironmanmode #youtube #followformore (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmNF0ljyaFR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mrxakadan]

𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 ✨️📈 thanks @oldschool.runescape saved me some grinding hours. Also big shoutout to @osrselderw for the info. You guys can always findout more on the latest OSRS post on their website. Happy 😊 scapin' . . . . #rebuild #achievement #dansgimp #grinding #scape #update #runelite #Jagex #osrscommunity #levelingup #levels #GIMPGRIND #GIMP #OSRS #runescape #streamer #twitchstream #streamingsoon #oldschoolrunescapemobile #oldschoolrunescape #runescapegains #groupironman #groupiron #ironmanmode #youtube #followformore (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClzMxt2B6yC/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mrxakadan]

🤷🏼‍♂️ . . . . #barrows #barrowsbrother #RNJESUS #GIMPGRIND #GIMP #OSRS #runescape #streamer #twitchstream #barrows #barrowsbrothers #oldschoolrunescapemobile #oldschoolrunescape #runescapegains #groupironman #ironmemedan #ironmanmode #youtube #followformore (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ__DYkF4hc/?utm_medium=tumblr

[mrxakadan]

𝐅𝐞𝐰 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 BIG OSRS STREAM TOMORROW make sure you tune in. . Make sure you chuck us a follow on twitch: ⬇️ https://twitch.tv/mrxakadan . . . . #gains #levelup #agility #RNJESUS #GIMPGRIND #GIMP #OSRS #runescape #streamer #twitchstream #barrows #barrowsbrothers #oldschoolrunescapemobile #oldschoolrunescape #runescapegains #groupironman #ironmemedan #ironmanmode #youtube #followformore (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZzTuispBti/?utm_medium=tumblr

[mrxakadan]

ℙ𝕆𝔾 👨🏼‍🌾🌱 FARMING PET at 𝐋𝐕𝐋 7️⃣7️⃣ . . Don't forget to follow me on socials 🐦: Twitter.com/osrs_mrxakadan . . . #Farmingpet #farming #PET #tangleroot #GIMPGRIND #GIMP #OSRS #runescape #streamer #twitchstream #barrows #barrowsbrothers #oldschoolrunescapemobile #oldschoolrunescape #runescapegains #groupironman #ironmemedan #ironmanmode #youtube #followformore (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZt20c8l1dy/?utm_medium=tumblr

[mrxakadan]

What a night❕😁 Amazing stream with the boys aka the A-TEAM keeping me company. Smashed some 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬 got some levels, did my very first ever 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐫𝐮𝐧 and ended the night with some 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐮𝐥𝐭 💪🏼 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐃𝐀 𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐒 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 . . . . #GIMPGRIND #GIMP #OSRS #runescape #streamer #twitchstream #barrows #barrowsbrothers #oldschoolrunescapemobile #oldschoolrunescape #runescapegains #groupironman #ironmemedan #ironmanmode #youtube #followformore (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZmZ-SaJM6m/?utm_medium=tumblr

[mrxakadan]

9️⃣7️⃣/9️⃣9️⃣🔥 #FIREMAKING Not far off now boys and girls. Been a bit of a long grind between working, pratcing LMS pking and skilling. If anyone is free for 99 I should be able to get it sometime next week let me know. Small party nothing crazy. Just would be nice to have people at a 99 for once. . . . . . . #ironman #ironmanmode #runescape #oldschoolrs #2007osrs #gaming #ironmanseries #youtubevideo #uploads #gamer #osrsgamer #instascape #followformore #twitch #getit https://www.instagram.com/p/CBiKIc4AuKG/?igshid=1ra8ux8nszvbi

[mrxakadan]

Slowly making progress on the ironman inbetween working, socializing, pking and PVM it's been a busy couple of weeks. . So keen to get the ironman 99 fming so I can start the series back up and provide some more content. Hopefully some more videos soon. . . . #ironman #ironmanmode #runescape #oldschoolrs #2007osrs #gaming #ironmanseries #youtubevideo #uploads #gamer #osrsgamer #instascape #followformore #twitch #getit https://www.instagram.com/p/CA6526AAdrh/?igshid=x4d3id8rohoi

[mrxakadan]

9️⃣0️⃣🔥 on #thaironchef ⛑ . . . #ironman #ironmanmode #runescape #oldschoolrs #2007osrs #gaming #ironmanseries #youtubevideo #uploads #gamer #osrsgamer #instascape #followformore #twitch #getit (at Adelaide, South Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CAqzytJAInB/?igshid=9eitl0mcejda