Posts by Thrik

  • What are you playing now?

    Haha yes, the ravages of life have stopped me spending as much time chatting online but it’s getting easier now some things have settled down.

    I’ve always still been here keeping things up to date behind the scenes. 😆

    Yeah it takes a lot of time, and frankly the gameplay is really repetitive. But for some reason it gets its hooks into me, it’s relaxing a bit like playing a mindless mobile game can be.

    Its also full of interesting lore (as you’d expect endless codec conversations, articles, emails, etc) and its world is really compelling and unique. I think it’s worth experiencing once even if you just push through the main story like I did at first — which still takes ages!

  • What are you playing now?

    I don’t know what it is about this damn game, but I’m now playing through Death Stranding for the third time. 😂

    My first time I just focused on the story, my second time I tried to max out all the facilities and had building/vehicle sharing disabled so it was extra isolating, and even after like 80 hours had only just reached the nuked city.

    Now I’m trying to be more balanced, where I have the sharing back on and I’m perhaps not being quite so obsessive about maxing everything out as I go along. This is also the Director’s Cut and the first time I’ve played it with 4K and HDR. So pretty.

    I am technically also playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for the second time, for the last eight months. I have been off and on with Ghost of Tsushima also.

  • Site Changes and Feedback

    Just a note that I've done some minor updates:

    1. Some headings were invisible, now they're visible.
    2. The articles sidebar used some old custom code that was a real pain to make look right on all screens (phones, tablets, desktops). I gave it a go but it still looked pretty busted on mobile. Given we don't really have many articles nowadays I've removed it for now, as there are other mechanisms such as announcements and Twitter that can be used to give a heads-up about new articles.
    3. The latest software allows our Twitter feed to be shown in the sidebar. This seemed like a nice way of filling that void for now, although if it turns out to not work so well we could put something else there like a latest activity feed.
    4. Spotlight (Our Picks) is now more condensed in the sidebar.

  • Site Changes and Feedback

    I've just made some tweaks (browser caches may need clearing) to cut down on the size of the 'Our Picks' section on the home page, hopefully it's less overwhelming. I still need to figure out the weird issues in the sidebar but it's still usable.

    I don't think the base font size or zoom has changed, but there might be a bit more padding around some of the forum titles and such. (These are changes that have been inherited from the software we use rather than something intentionally done.)

    Edit: I've also squished the header to try restore some of the space lost to the general added padding.

  • Peace in Korea.

    Quote from FMPONE

    On 27/04/2018 at 7:42 PM, FMPONE said: And all because North Korea finally built the nukes they’d been working on forever :P

    Yeah, I think that all of North Korea's bravado to deter countries from messing with it until completion of nuclear weaponry distracted people from the fact that (along with some other factors) nukes have been very effective at keeping peace in the world between major powers. It's kind of obvious now that with North Korea's status as a nuclear power established they could join the rest of the world as a good nuclear citizen. If small countries like my own can do it then why not North Korea, really?

    With that said, clearly I'm highly educated on the mechanics of nuclear proliferation and its inherent dangers, due to me being a Metal Gear Solid fan. However it does seem like it's effective at stopping the all-our wars that might otherwise erupt between militarily powerful countries. Of course, you're really playing with fire if you let every country do this hoping they'll all play by the rules.

    Man, can't we just all play video games and be happy?

  • Sea of Thieves

    I'm getting the feeling that this might be a bit of an Assassin's Creed situation, where clearly a lot of development time has been put into the technology and open world but perhaps they were hoping the gameplay would just 'fit into place' a bit more than it did. It'd be absolutely tragic if all they've achieved were to come to little because of the gameplay deficiencies. Hopefully it'll be marketed and more importantly built upon so it meets its potential — the same way AC2 brought into focus what they were trying to achieve there — and Microsoft hasn't budgeted this as a 'sink or swim' (har har) release.

  • Far Cry 5

    Unexpected that they're bundling assets from not just current and previous Far Cry games, but also Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed games! Means you can put together levels of all kinds of themes, rather than just whatever Far Cry 5's predominant theme is. Could be a great way of interesting lots of would-be level designers, especially with the progression system.

  • Sea of Thieves

    I was quite reassured by a recent article I read that indicated the game will have more structure to it than I expected. Sounds like they've more recently been focusing a lot more on quests. Nothing too in-depth in terms of story, but if there are reasonably fun structured quests combined with superb moment-to-moment gameplay it could be a blast. I friggin' hope so!

    I've always loved pirate shenanigans, still sometimes feel a bit sad that some of our own beloved MapCore members' pirate game never managed to achieve its funding targets. And there's not really much else in the genre! So I really hope Rare can get this right and show people can enjoy a bit of pirate action. Rare kind of needs the win too, having not really lived up to its legendary 90s reputation in recent years.

  • Nintendo Switch

    I got one for Christmas ? I’ve only played with Rayman Legends — which seems like an absolutely superb 2D platformer. The art is so wonderful.

    I’ve also got Mario Odyssey which I can’t wait to tuck into tonight, and Zelda which I did have on the Wii U but never completed so really looking forward to doing it handheld-style.

    So far I’m really impressed with the slick package on offer here. The Wii U was a bit ropey in terms of hardware design, UI, etc whereas this just feels modern and great. It reminds me of when Nintendo surprised everyone with the super sharp Nintendo DS Lite.

    Part of me says I shouldn’t go buy games I’ve had before like Mario Kart 8 and Skyrim... yet I want to!

  • Where'd Sprony go?

    All right everyone, I think it's fair to say that a public forum isn't the appropriate venue for discussing an internal matter.

    While I'll reaffirm FMPONE's position that there's been no ill will towards Sprony and he's very much been welcome to stay part of the staff, unfortunately there have been differing ideas on how to take the site forward and Sprony has made the decision to move on. Admittedly I didn't realise he'd made this final decision until this week following a long period of absence, which I suspect is what led to the curiosity from various people.

    I'd like to thank Sprony for all of his contributions over the years. I'm sure we'd all agree that he's been at the heart of MapCore for some time, and the community is a better place for it.

    So we should leave it at that, and if anyone wishes to discuss it further then please do so privately. I know it's 'just' an online community but please think of this like a dispute between employer and employee — it's not the kind of thing any of us should be seeking to gossip about, etc. No one side is necessarily the 'bad guy' and people's privacy should be respected.

    Hopefully we can remember that it's Christmas and we're not meant to be getting stressed out about what's meant to be a fun gaming community. Thanks all!

  • Site Changes and Feedback

    Ah right, yeah it's a fair shout. I have noticed a small increase in bots getting through since recently reviewing the anti-spam measures, one of which was switching to Google's fairly effective reCAPTCHA service. It's always a balancing act not making it too easy for bots or too hard for new members — and the fact that a lot of bots get signed up by real people for peanuts money makes it harder.

    I'd say we stick with it for now, however it's always appreciated when spam is brought to our attention through hitting the report button. People who contribute in this way may additionally be considered for helping moderate if they're interested. If it does get too much we can look at tightening things up further. It's worth noting that the forum actively rejects loads of bots so it's doing its job fairly well, but like junk mail you always get some come through.