Author Topic: Monster Hunter  (Read 20170 times)

Spectere

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #15 on: March 14, 2018, 09:59:06 AM »
Oof. Thanks for bringing the mission thing up. I'm going to try to get a friend into it when the PC release happens, so that'll be good to know when we do that. I've been soloing on the XB1 version since I don't see the point in buying a Gold subscription for a 5 day rental so aside from the NPCs not wanting to leave me alone for five minutes I haven't run into those sort of issues.

What I don't get about the cutscenes being that bizarrely broken is that I seem to remember previous games handling them without an issue in co-op. Weird.

I'm thinking that by the time I get to tempered monsters I'll probably be close to done with the game anyway. Like I said, Tri was about a 40-50 hour game for me, and that felt about right. Then again, considering the gameplay in World feels more fluid, who knows? That figure might end up doubling.

The way you describe investigations makes it almost seem like Capcom designed them around solo play. Seems like a weird choice given what game series this is.

I'm currently using the sword and shield, but I'm thinking of swapping that out for dual daggers. I've been using hit-and-run tactics pretty heavily so far, so I think swapping would give me a decent DPS boost.
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vladgd

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #16 on: March 14, 2018, 07:25:23 PM »
I've literally played a story mission to get the cutscene, abandoned the mission so I could do it multiplayer. It's something they'll need to address whenever they make the "monster hunter world ULTIMATE" edition whenever they do that, since it seems to be how they pump those out. Not sure I have it in me to play something this taxing and time consuming every year though, or even every other year, I got other things to do than spend a month and a half each year addicted to one game.

Can't speak much on dual blades other than if you enjoy a hit and run playstyle, a lot of weapons do that, great sword and hammer come to mind as two of the best examples for that playstyle.

Sword and shield is great though, 95% of my playtime is lance, and the other two weapons I put the most time into are sns and heavy bowgun. Sword and shield feels like a goddamn racecar compared to lance, ohh no I gotta sheathe myOHH WAIT THEY SHEATHE BASICALLY INSTANTLY VROOM VROOM MOTHERFUCKER. Good at sticking to monsters like glue (a feature I enjoy about lance, more on that later) however lack of range makes hitting certain weakpoints hard, albeit this isnt an issue specific to the weapon, lance just has...fantastic reach which I do miss when trying other weapons. It's got a reputation for being a new player friendly weapon, but I honestly think it's one of the more intricate weapons in the game.

Lance doe, I gotta pimp my weapon. Out of the 14 weapons in the game, it's rank 13 in terms of use ahead of hunting horn. I don't know why it's not popular, I've probably seen less than 10 other lancers in my over 500 hunts..and it's not a bad weapon (spoilers, there are no bad weapons). It's like, you have this huge monstrosity who is 50 feet tall charging up some mega attack, all other weapons would react "ohh shit gotta get out of the way", lance just says "hold my beer" and counters that shit. This weapon don't give a fuck about no monster roar, counter, no monster beam, counter, no monster hipcheCOUNTER. It took a lot of practice, but I don't even put guard on my lance gear anymore, with proper timing you can counter the fuck out of anything and it feels great. Seeing your team mates cower in fear after a monster roars, when I'm just countering through it using it as an opportunity for more pokes, it's delicious. I always liked lance in the other games, but it feels so good in this game due to how great counter (and a broke as fuck power guard which allows 360 degree blocking with a power counter attack afterwards). You know the whole "class fantasy" you play great sword you get the biggest numbers in the game, you play hammer you bash heads and stun monsters like nobody else, you play sword and shield for one of the most versatile kits in the game, you play lance to not give any fucks about no monster attacks because you gon keep attacking while everyone else is running around dodging. Low ish damage, but your uptime is higher than any other weapon, so while they are running around doing no damage, you are poking doing damage while they aint...unless you're fighting a flyer...then yknow......yknow...bring your flashbombs...yknow...be a good hunter and bring the proper equipment for the hunt.

tldr I love lance in this game, just wish I knew why nobody else does. But hey, I'm having fun with it.

Ohh and DevilJho however you spell it is next week? So i'll defs pop back on to give that a whirl. In the meantime I'm looking for another game to play and...learning python on the side whenever I'm not lazy...I got my text editor running...and I got python working in it...and I can type things and they will work properly...so might not have got much done but I AM STARTING, might be a while before I have the attention span to put many hours into learning that at one time.

*forgot about investigations*

It's kind of a dumb system. Not a fan. Monsters leave tracks, after X amount of tracks (not listed for the player to see) you get an investigation, might be something you want, might not. They have X amount of uses then they're gone, pass or fail they will get used up. Tempered tracks give you a CHANCE to get a tempered investigation, but not guaranteed...it's kinda really horseshit since the end game augment items for the tier 8 weapons (good news, tier 6, and 7 weapons are just as viable as the tier 8, really just depends on the weapon type and or what build you're using) ONLY DROP FROM TEMPERED ELDER DRAGONS, ONLY, AND THEY ARE STUPID RARE. I think I got 5? Hammer, Lance (thank god), Greatsword (and longsword, each stone works with two weapons), Switch Axe (charge blade), and Sword and shield (and duals). I think it's a 2% or less droprate, Ive gone a week and a half only doing tempered elders and haven't seen one stone, not even a common stone, just nothing, the rng for endgame is kinda horrible. So I'm guessing here but I wanna say I've been on the tempered elder train since hour 130-140? AFIAK? With that, 5 stones in 70-80 hours...it's gross, horrible, not good. At least the tier 6-7 stones are more common, and available in tier 2 tempered investigations (elders being tier 3, little wee bop enemies like pukei pukei and tobi kadachi being tier 1), so you can always switch weapons for the augment bonuses if that's what you're feeling. Lance wise, I don't even use the highest damage lance, and that's a tier 7 weapon, not even a tier 8.

I guess since im tldring all over I'll explain augments right quick. It's a system you flat out wont see unless you put 80-120 hours into the game, but after you do t2 or t3 tempered investigations and you get lucky enough to get a drop, you got warriors and heroes streamstones. 7 stones for 14 weapons, used on t6-8 weapons. At the end of your weapon upgrade tree, end of the line for upgrades, if said weapon is tier 6, you get 3 augment slots, each requires one warriors stone and some other rare stuff. If tier 7, you get two slots, each requires TWO warriors stones. If tier 8, you get one augment slot, requires one HEROES stone. It's like the "more powerful" weapons got less aug slots, and the "less powerful" got more, which is a cool way to balance things I think. I think that covers it...

However as dumb and fucking insane as the rng is at the endgame, you can make every piece of gear in the game quite easily. Any armor or weapon doesn't really take that much work, it's augmenting the weapons which takes a shit ton of RNG, it's augmenting the armor that takes a shit ton of $$$ and spheres (do your bounties bro, you'll need spheres), it's less..but still a lot of RNG for those decorations, some of which I literally haven't seen in 200 hours of play...yeah......rng...yeah...BUT HEY, any armor or weapon I want, I either have it, or can easily get it, and that's the stuff you're looking at on your character, so I guess at least the big stuff is easy, it's the modifications that's hard.

It's dumb, but apparently it's fun enough to where I engaged with that system for over 80 hours, so credit where credit is due.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 07:42:46 PM by vladgd »

Spectere

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #17 on: March 15, 2018, 08:25:09 AM »
The way the story missions work in co-op sounds bad enough that I think they'll definitely address that in Ultimate (or, preferably, in a patch).

You're not alone when it comes to lances. One of my friends swore by them in Tri (not sure if he still uses them, but I imagine he does). I used them toward the end of my experience with Tri and enjoyed them, so I've been thinking of trying them again at some point. The game feels different enough (and it's been long enough) that I'm definitely going to fiddle around with all of the different weapon types again.

Smashing heads with the giant fucking hammer sounds pretty appealing. Might try that tonight.

I'm in that awkward position where I don't want to get too attached to this save file (because if I do buy it on console I'd get it on my PS4 rather than the system I'm considering selling) but I want to get a good idea of everything that's on offer to streamline future playthroughs a bit. On the bright side, that gives me plenty of room to fuck things up a bit since nothing is going to persist.

Investigations do sound like something that would make me switch off after a while. It's sounds a lot like primal (or even ancient) hunting in Diablo 3 seasons. When I get to the point of having zero forward progress in 4-5 hours I typically abandon that character.

That being said, the fact that they threw augments in does seem like it would ease the grind a bit. By how you describe it, it sounds like if you do a bunch of hunts you're typically going to walk away with at least some sort of stat improvement. Is that fairly accurate?

Also, insert obligatory "yay, Python!" comment here.

Edit: Ughhhh, I really hope the in-game tutorials peter off to nil very soon. I was dodging fairly flawlessly for a while when I was fighting the Great Jagras, when I--heaven forbid--mistimed ONE dodge, the unwanted tagalongs yelled "YOU NEED TO DODGE ATTACKS" with a gigantic fucking button prompt popping up in the middle of the screen. Not to mention Mr. Huntmaster yelling "HEY! OVER HERE!" when I'm trying to carve. It would have been one thing if I'd never pressed A or RT, but I was. Repeatedly.

I'll be the first to admit that MH did need a bit more instruction, but it really feels like the needle swung too far in the opposite direction.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2018, 09:00:04 PM by Spectere »
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vladgd

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #18 on: March 15, 2018, 08:56:15 PM »
Investigations do sound like something that would make me switch off after a while. It's sounds a lot like primal (or even ancient) hunting in Diablo 3 seasons. When I get to the point of having zero forward progress in 4-5 hours I typically abandon that character.

I'd say it's worse than ancient hunting (I quit before primals were introduced), I think I mentioned earlier, there are quite a few decorations I HAVE YET TO SEE IN TWO HUNDRED HOURS. The RNG is straight up horseshit, I can't defend it. HOWEVER, any piece of gear you want, you can get, so it's probably more similar to hunting zod runes or other rare runesin diablo 2, you'll probably never see them in 1000 hours of gameplay, but they theoretically exist. To note, I have probably put over 1k hours into d2, and have never seen a zod rune, or even other less rare runes like jah and a few others. So maybe...not as rare as those, but hundreds of hours to get one, yeah.

That being said, the fact that they threw augments in does seem like it would ease the grind a bit. By how you describe it, it sounds like if you do a bunch of hunts you're typically going to walk away with at least some sort of stat improvement. Is that fairly accurate?

Not exactly, you're getting monster parts and whatnot, and more rarely gems (rare crafting materials basically), but for the most part if you go "i want those gloves, or that weapon" a few runs on whatever monster it is, you'll have it. The farm isn't so much for gear since it's fairly painless to get, but the end game stuff augmentation stones and decorations is the real hell. But like if you're me, and play lance, then decide "man I kinda wanna try heavy bowgun, might craft 2-3 top end bowguns and get a set of gear to play it" you can kinda just do that, and either you already have the mats, or they won't take too long to obtain. It's real easy to switch to different sets/weapons in this game.

Also playing low rank and high rank, totally different games. Low rank is pretty linear, mostly shoehorned into story missions. High rank is where the game opens up into a more open ended experience, still story missions to do to progress, but you can kinda tackle it as you please. Post story completion (aka watch the credits) the game introduces you to the third portion which is still high rank, but tempered monsters, which has a few missions to it, before the actual end game grind starts. So you may get your fill of the game before you even hit that point, because it could be either hour 80 or hour 120 before you hit that point. I would not consider the end game RNG bullshit as a con against playing the game, mainly because it occurs so late.

Also, insert obligatory "yay, Python!" comment here.

Figured if I am to try and get myself to learn programming, it's a pretty solid first choice language. Slow goings right now though, installing a programming language was a bit more complicated than I had thought, and getting everything all set up with a text editor...it's a lot of common sense stuff that I just don't have, having never really bothered to learn before now.

Spectere

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #19 on: March 16, 2018, 10:29:36 AM »
Oh. Oooh. Yeah, rune hunting. That was...fun. I think I ended up scoring one Jah rune ever but I was never able to complete a runeword using it before I lost that save. Nothing in Diablo 3 quite lives up to that degree of RNG (at least not anymore) and, to be honest, that's probably a good thing.

Given how the weapon/armor crafting system in MH works, it still sounds like you're making forward progress even if you're not necessarily getting what you want. My late season Diablo 3 experience typically goes like this:

1) Do bounties for Horadric cache mats.
2) Do rifts.
3) Run grifts.

Between those steps, this is what usually happens:

1) The only legendaries that drop suck and/or have powers that aren't useful (or I already have).
2) The only set pieces that drop are either worse than what I have or are for a different class, or they're rings/amulets with exactly two things that need reforged off (thus making them practically useless).
3) I get a *chance* of getting a minor stat boost on my legendary gems.

So all I end up with are a bunch of crafting mats that I have no use for. Gah. Rarely I'll get enough pieces to try out another set, but nine times out of ten the thing just drops 1743 poorly rolled Tel Rasha's Relentless Pursuit pieces, and rerolling those to different pieces from that set just gives me what I already have. GAH.

At least getting to that point is generally enjoyable, though.

When I do get the game and play through it more I'll probably be able to form my own opinion and weigh in. I ended up playing enough of the XB1 version to know that I want the game, and I'm willing to wait for the PC port. I already have too many games on my plate right now, haha.

I kind of figured that early game and late game were two different beasts entirely. I just think that they went a bit too far on the railroading and tutorials to the point where I kinda want the option to stab the friendly NPCs in the throat. I've been begrudgingly accepting of it because the game definitely needed more than what it had, but ugh, I wish I had the option of tuning down some of that.

Figured if I am to try and get myself to learn programming, it's a pretty solid first choice language. Slow goings right now though, installing a programming language was a bit more complicated than I had thought, and getting everything all set up with a text editor...it's a lot of common sense stuff that I just don't have, having never really bothered to learn before now.

Yeah, it's a great language to get started with. Free, available on pretty much every platform, doesn't require compilation, etc. Most importantly, it forces you to practice proper indentation style, and that latter point will stick with you even if you move on to a different language.

Which editor did you end up going with?
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vladgd

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #20 on: March 20, 2018, 12:14:53 PM »
I think the big difference between monster hunter and diablo in the loot sense is you can do a greater rift or normal rift in a short time with speed builds (which is the majority of peoples farming), monster hunter, it's a bit longer, you fight one thing, and have a few chances to get a .0000003% drop.

I forget what season it was, I may or may not have posted it here, not even sure. But I played one season, got a crusader up to competitive grifts, then got a witchdoctor to REALLY competitive grifts (like 1-2 levels outside the top 1000), full ancients best in slot gear that really only needed minor tweeks and good rng in the rift.

Both of those took me less time than it took me to get a guard up gem in monster hunter. I think I put over 120 hours that season, I got around 201 in monster hunter. I got full best in slot ancients for my witchdoctor in that time....that guard up gem I said I got one in 200 hours...I didn't, because I don't have it...and I never will. I don't even need it, I just want it.

Yeah, it's a great language to get started with. Free, available on pretty much every platform, doesn't require compilation, etc. Most importantly, it forces you to practice proper indentation style, and that latter point will stick with you even if you move on to a different language.

Which editor did you end up going with?

Considering my knowledge is VERY DAMN NEAR non existant, I went with whats popular, sublime text. Still have no goddamn idea what I'm doing, fuddling around with hello world and whatever new people do. Managing the text editor, a shell, and an open python file I can edit, I don't really understand it. If I can have my test.py(file I use as a sandbox to type things and see if stuff works) open, and code in that, what use is sublime to me? I'm not really that far at all in this book(we're talking i open the book and invest 10 minutes into piddling with the keyboard here) and it's introducing the wild world of VARIABLES, I try that shit in sublime, errors and shit, open my test.py file in whatever generic interface that gives me, shit works fine.

I'll probably start investing more and more time as I obtain more knowledge, it kinda reminds me of working out. The first few weeks suck, you don't feel good, you're sore, and don't know what you're doing. Therefore, it's hard to get going because every time you try, it's a chore, not fun, and you don't want to do it...so you push it off a few weeks...months...years, whenever you get past that hurdle though, it's fine. I feel the same way with programming, I've invested very little time into this book and If I just worked on it two weeks ago instead of putting it off, I'd be damn near done with it by now.

I'm more or less done with monster hunter till DLC (which I'll consume in a short amount of time before shelving the game till the next farther off DLC), so I got the free time...it's just A struggle with something and get frustrated for a bit, or B find next vidya I'll sink my teeth into. I can do both, and I will do both, but I really should at least get a few chapters done in this fucker before I pop in next 100 hour jrpg I'm contemplating playing.

Dat procrastination lifestyle.

Spectere

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #21 on: March 20, 2018, 04:35:33 PM »
Yeah, that's very true. You do progress very quickly from level 1 to the beginning of the endgame in D3, and knocking a few grifts out is pretty quick.

I dunno. I guess we'll see how I feel when I actually get to that point in MHW. :) It's going to be a while before I'm really able to start, per se.

Programming.

Sublime is fantastic. I use it a ton, both at home and at work. I even ponied up the $80 for it (well, technically $60 when I bought it; the price went up within the past year).

As far as just launching Python and using a sort of sandbox within the interpreter is concerned, that's a great way to learn an interpreted language. However, when you want to write complex programs spanning multiple files, you're going to need an editor that can keep track of all the files in your project and allow you to quickly and efficiently jump between functions in the file.

For example, if you want to jump to a function called "DebugPrint" in Sublime, type CTRL-P, then "@DebugPrint" (@, then the function name). If you have multiple files open, you can type "Filename@Function" to jump to a function in an arbitrary file. Getting to know your editor can allow you to work extremely efficiently without having to hunt around for what you want. A lot of people wonder why programmers are willing to pay so much money for a good editor--that's why.

Another motivation for using a proper text editor is syntax highlighting. I'm going to use a bit of code from Doom as an example. This is what the D_ProcessEvents function looks like without syntax highlighting (note that I also enabled visible whitespace so that I can see the difference between tabs and spaces):



Everything kind of blends together. The comments (the lines starting with "//") have just as much weight as the actual source code do. This is what it looks like with syntax highlighting enabled:



Comments are dark and many elements (function return and argument types, the function name, strings, numbers, operators, etc) are all given unique colors. This seems like just window dressing, but look at what would happen if you were to remove the closing quotation mark from one of the string literals:



Yeah, one look at that and you know that you fucked something up. There's countless other features, like giving you a visual indication of paired sets of parenthesis and countless other things that I know I take for granted.

It's definitely a struggle to get started with this sort of thing. It requires an entirely different method of thinking than many things do, and it can feel like a near-vertical climb. The worst part about putting it off, however, is that the only way to really commit this stuff into memory is to keep working at it, steadily progressing.

The fact that we have to spend so much of our day adulting definitely doesn't help matters. I have a few projects that are moving forward at a glacial speed because I don't always feel like programming for 10 hours a day then going home and programming for another 6.
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vladgd

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #22 on: March 21, 2018, 07:37:42 PM »
So it's more or less the same, but packaged in such a way where it makes working with code easier to read and more efficient to work through. In all honesty, i'd probably have it figured out by now (working with sublime that is) if I just didn't procrastinate it off.

As you said, after a day of work, last thing you want to do is more work. I wanted to work on stuff monday, but...two doctors appointments plus errends...there's 10 hours of my day gone right there.

I'll get to it eventually, I'm basically dipping my toes in very slowly, but as soon as my foot is in the water, the learning should come more rapidly. It's something i've wanted to do for a long time now, and it even has the carrot on the stick of "if you learn me, I am an employable skilll..ooooo!!!!" which is a bonus, but secondary to me just wanting to learn it for the sake of learning it.

I may drag this discussion onto another thread whenever I make one, whenever I get more into this to where I have something to talk about. Could be next week...could be next month...

*edit*

another factor to me being lazy is i've been trying to be away from my pc since I know now that it's the cause of my back problems...so looking into a laptop so i can take some basic computing into the living room and a place where I have better posture.

Any recommendations? Kinda wish netbooks didn't turn into tablet's with keyboards attached to them, because I liked the small form factor they offered, but maybe with 2018 preformance that should be able to handle anything that came out pre 2010.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2018, 08:38:14 PM by vladgd »

Spectere

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #23 on: March 22, 2018, 08:40:40 AM »
Yeah, pretty much. People have written operating systems in fairly barebones text editors. The first language I put a serious effort into learning was QBasic, whose editor looked like this:


78 columns, 18 lines (a few more if you could resize or close the immediate window--I don't remember if you could or not), no syntax highlighting, and the only thing it really did for you was split subroutines and functions into a different view. Yeah, I don't really want to go back to that for any serious length of time.

Funny you mention getting a laptop. I actually have an extra laptop that I'm looking to sell. It's a nice little machine, but it became redundant faster than I had anticipated. Here are the specs:

  • Dell Inspiron 5570
  • Intel Core i7-8550U CPU
  • Integrated GPU (Intel UHD 620)
  • 8GB DDR4
  • 128GB SATA M.2 SSD + 1TB 5400RPM HDD
  • DVD+-RW drive
  • 15.6" 1080p TN LCD panel
  • Fingerprint reader (OooOooOoo!)
The display is definitely the weakest part on the system. It's fine for normal use, but I wouldn't suggest trying to do any graphics stuff on it.

Aside from that, the system is surprisingly speedy. Even under load it doesn't get stupidly hot. The CPU's base clock is 1.8GHz and can boost up to 4.0GHz on a single core, around 3.0GHz for two, and 2.4GHz for all four. The laptop is capable of maintaining 2.4GHz under heavy load for quite a while before throttling.

I'm not sure what kind of battery life you'd get running Windows. I've run Linux on it exclusively since I bought it and I've gotten around 2.5-3 hours and in my experience Windows tends to net you an extra hour or so. I ended up taking an image of the SSD before I installed Linux, so I can restore it at a moment's notice.

I paid $700 for it in mid-January, so I'm looking to get about $600 (shipped) for it. Interested?
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vladgd

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #24 on: March 26, 2018, 07:39:12 PM »
I may be, but I'll have to raincheck. Birthday + expenses = not much free money to go around for a bit.

Might want to look around, not entirely sure what I'm looking for in a portable machine.

Spectere

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #25 on: March 27, 2018, 10:02:28 AM »
Gotcha! If you opt for something a bit cheaper, here's a few tips on what to look for:

Screen resolution. Make sure you can get 1600x900 at the very least, preferably 1920x1080 or above. I tried developing on an 11" MacBook Air (1366x768) and it was pretty unpleasant. Not bad if you were doing simple stuff, I guess, but when you try to use a full IDE like Xcode it feels extremely cramped. My primary development laptops at this time are a 17" Dell Precision 7710 (3840x2160 at 150% scaling, so effectively 2560x1440) and a 13" MacBook Pro (2560x1600 native, and I'm running it at an effective resolution of 1920x1200). With the MacBook I can very comfortably have two columns of code side-by-side and the Dell can do three (that's including the UI trimming of Xcode and Visual Studio, respectively). That might sound excessive, but when you're working on more complex projects it can be a godsend.

You don't need a ridiculous processor. My MacBook runs an i5 and it's more than fine. For most development work an i3 is perfectly serviceable. Hell, up through most of 2012 I was running a vintage 2005 Pentium M with Visual Studio 2012 and while performance was nothing to write home about it was certainly usable.

Your OS doesn't matter...especially if you're sticking with Python. macOS and most Linux distributions ship with it as part of the default installation (in my Linux distro of choice, Gentoo, most of the package manager is written in Python) but, as you know, it's a quick install away in Windows. Additionally, Sublime Text is cross-platform and works equally well in all three environments. There are some technologies that only work with some operating systems. For example, if you want to target WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) with a .NET language, you're going to have to run Windows. Even so, that's not part of the meat of the language. You can still learn and be very productive with C# without having a Windows system, for example.

Memory. 8GB or bust. Don't get anything lower than 8GB. If you find a killer deal on a system that has 4GB, make sure you can upgrade it. When you start using code editors and IDEs (integrated development environments) more heavily you'll quickly find that they can be quite hungry.

Try to get an SSD. For work with Sublime and Python you can definitely make do with a standard hard drive. However, if you want to use a heavier IDE like Eclipse or Visual Studio, you'll notice a huge speed boost if you have them running from an SSD. Some IDEs are so complex that they're essentially operating systems, so giving them plenty of I/O bandwidth is going to save you a lot of headaches.

Make sure that the keyboard doesn't suck. Cheap laptops tend to have really nasty keyboards. Mushy, unresponsive keys, uncomfortable layouts, you name it. Obviously this is difficult to judge without seeing the system for yourself, but skim through some reviews to try and get an idea of what it's going to feel like before throwing down any cash.

The GPU doesn't matter...unless you're developing high-end 3D games. Intel GPUs are more than capable of slinging pixels. Most of the grunt work on my Dell's 4K display is done by an Intel HD 530 and the MacBook's "Retina" display is completely driven by the integrated Intel Iris Plus 650.

Hope this helps!
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vladgd

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #26 on: March 27, 2018, 05:21:03 PM »
I wouldn't mind being able to play older stuff on the thing, like elder scrolls and some blizzard stuff here and there, but that's not my primary want for the machine.

Not entirely sure I want to go away from windows since it's what I'm used to, and Linux seems like I would have a lot of random issues trying to get stuff to work that would just work with no fuss on windows, but I have no personal experience myself.

I think mostly I'd want something comfortable on my lap while I'm in the living room in my recliner. If I have access to it in that environment, i'd be more likely to casually code and whatnot. At least that's the theory, "if it's there I aughta use it".

Then that price point, in what I can afford, which I'm not entirely sure what I'd be willing to drop at this moment. Need to get some home budgeting down before I can nail that number.


Spectere

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #27 on: March 28, 2018, 09:40:33 AM »
The Intel GPU could probably handle stuff like that if you drop the resolution and detail settings. I didn't really do much gaming on the 5570 (and my 7710 has an AMD GPU, so I use that for games), but I was able to play Portal fairly comfortably at medium/high settings at 1080p. It stayed over 30fps, though whether or not that's acceptable is completely subjective. That's also under Linux, YMMV when it comes to Windows.

I did do one test on my 7710's Intel GPU using World of Warcraft. IIRC, it was playable with medium settings at around 900p. I tried 4K just for kicks and that went about as well as you'd expect. :P Not sure how the Iris Plus handles things--the only game I've actually played on the MacBook is Undertale. It does handle SketchUp and Slic3r (a CAD program and a slicer for my 3D printer, respectively) at native resolutions, though, so that's something.

I dunno, lately I've found that Linux works far more consistently than Windows 10. It seems as though every one of my Windows 10 installs has some sort of annoying, niggling issue, while my Linux installs--while occasionally a bit clunkier in terms of UX--just keep trucking along. Back in the Windows 7 (and even 8/8.1) days I used Windows as my primary OS. Nowadays? Not so much.

As far as comfort goes, 15.6" is a pretty nice sweet spot for most people, offering a nice balance between portability and lap usage. 17" is fantastic if you primarily use it on your lap and don't mind dealing with a bit of extra weight. 13" is definitely usable on the lap (not to mention super portable!), though that's as small as I'd recommend going. I used to have an 11" MacBook Air and that was a bit awkward to use if I didn't have a table or lap desk handy.

In terms of price, I'd say you're going to probably spend $500-1000 on something that's going to be solid and reliable. There are some available cheaper, but when you go too far under that mid-range bracket you can find yourself in a world of hurt. The motherboard and friends are generally still okay, but that's where you get mushy keyboards, terrible trackpads, unbelievably cheap, brittle plastic, unreliable chargers, unreadable screens, stuff like that. If you want a dedicated GPU for gaming, I'd aim for the $1200-$1500 price point (the higher the better, naturally, but in my experience that's the magical spot right before the prices shoot way past the $2000 mark).

tl;dr prices are definitely lower than they were, but you still get what you pay for in a lot of ways.
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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #28 on: April 02, 2018, 09:59:08 AM »
Just started up a new hunter in MH4U. Not really crazy about playing on a 3DS, but I'm curious to see if my brief experience with MHW, more significant Soulsborne experience, and the fact that I have a New 3DS now will make it a better experience.

The framerate on the N3DS is already proving to be significantly better, and being able to use ZL/ZR to pan the camera left and right (not to mention that handy C-stick) is fantastic. I didn't really have time to jump into the game proper, but I ended up getting through the intro at least.
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vladgd

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Re: Monster Hunter
« Reply #29 on: April 03, 2018, 05:42:03 PM »
I believe mh4u has more content than world (beleive it or not in the 200 or so hours I dumped into world), but I just can't deal with the horrible 3ds controls. I literally prefer it on psp, and it aint much better...

Either way community still hails it as a great game, it just suffers because of platform imo. In the 20 or so hours I played mh4u, I didn't use the analog laptop mouse nub, it's horrible, atrocious, I'd almost rather it not even be there if they aren't going to make it function half way decent. The touch pad d pad ended up being more reliable for me than the nub personally. Either way, a good holdover till you get access to world.