New Computer, Need Game Suggestions

[Diamond Spear]

So my wife convinced my to buy our first Apple computer and now I need some suggestions for games. I like FPS, MMO (as long as they have a good PvE component), RPG and Action/Adventure as well as things like World of Tanks. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks. 
 

System Specs: 

 

3.7 GHz 6-core 9th generation Intel Core i5 processor. 
 

Turbo Boost up to 4.6 GHz. 
 

8GB 2666Mhz DDR4 memory, configurable up to 64GB. 

 

Radeon Pro Vega 48 with 8GB of HBM2 memory. 
 

Retina 5k 5120-by-2880 P3 display. 
 

 

[ScottishFox]

I would recommend more RAM (16GB), but if you're talking games:

 

Witcher 3,

Pillars of Eternity 1,

Divinity Original Sin 2,

 

If you get through those:

Divinity Original Sin 1 is pretty good.

Pillars of Eternity 2 is not bad.

 

Elder Scrolls Online has released a ton of content recently.

[death tribble]

World of Warships

[Diamond Spear]

17 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

I would recommend more RAM (16GB), but if you're talking games:

 

Witcher 3,

Pillars of Eternity 1,

Divinity Original Sin 2,

 

If you get through those:

Divinity Original Sin 1 is pretty good.

Pillars of Eternity 2 is not bad.

 

Elder Scrolls Online has released a ton of content recently.

More RAM shouldn’t be a problem since I can  (and most likely will) configure it up to 64GB. 

[Diamond Spear]

14 minutes ago, death tribble said:

World of Warships

Has it improved in the last couple of years? I played around with it some a few years ago but between terrible teammates and invisible destroyers I got frustrated with it. 

[death tribble]

I follow The Mighty Jingles and see the replays he features. There are less terrible players than i World of Tanks.

[Pattern Ghost]

For MMOs, the bigger names are all on OS X:

 

World of Warcraft: Lots of PVE content, last expansion was a hot mess, next expansion compressing levels and speeding up leveling, promising fixes to some game systems. Next expansion, Shadowlands, promised by 12/31, but rumored not out until 2021. Buy to play, plus subscription. Can buy game time / cash shop tokens with in game gold.

 

Elder Scrolls Online: If you like Elder Scrolls franchise, might be worth checking out. It's buy to play with an optional subscription. On sale on Steam right now. Seems to be in a good place at the moment, but I haven't looked in at it for a while.

 

Guild Wars 2: Good casual PVE game, with optional PVP. The base game is now free, with the expansions costing extra. No subscription.

 

Final Fantasy XIV: Lauded for its stories. Mac client said to be a bit iffy, but not sure what its current state is. You should check on that before taking the plunge. Buy to play plus subscription. Box cost is reasonable. Free trial up to level 30 or 35, so you can test out the client.

 

Some smaller and/or older games:

 

Dungeons and Dragons Online has great PVE dungeon quests. Well, I like them anyway. You can buy content as you would D&D modules. They kind of lost me when they raised the level cap and added new systems that invalidated all of the below 20 content, which was copious. Good community. Well worth dinking around with the free version, because even the free content is fun. It's free to play base content, buy to play adventures, with an optional subscription. Has some paid expansions.

 

Lord of the Rings Online, another Turbine game with the same payment model as DDO. Pretty decent, too. I don't like their freemium model as much, though.

 

 

 

 

[IndianaJoe3]

As a side note, you can still use Boot Camp to dual-boot and run Windows games.

[Scott Ruggels]

Warthunder (free to play). for WW2 Ships Planes and Tanks all in the same environment sometimes.

I tend to play Team based shooters like Arma III, Post Scriptium< and Hell Let Loose', YMMV

[Lee]

15 minutes ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

As a side note, you can still use Boot Camp to dual-boot and run Windows games.

 

Also, most will run quite well in a Parallels virtual machine--I've run several Windows only games that way.

[Chris Goodwin]

You should also get Tabletop Simulator, so that you can play Hero online...  

[Shoug]

Prey is one of the best science fiction shooters I've ever played. It's single player and story driven.

Mordhau is basically a Medeival FPS. It's a first person melee fighting system and it's incredibly fun, but with a steep learning curve and a high skill ceiling. 

 

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Warthunder (free to play). for WW2 Ships Planes and Tanks all in the same environment sometimes.

I tend to play Team based shooters like Arma III, Post Scriptium< and Hell Let Loose', YMMV

If you like team shooters, I have to suggest my all time favorite one: Natural Selection 2. It's an asymmetrical team shooter built with the skeleton of an RTS. The map is riddled with resource nodes and base locations, just like your basic RTS like Starcraft, and teams wrestle for control of the map. It's a massive bout of minmaxing: You want to minimize your opponent's information, control of tactical positions, and resource income, all whilst maximizing your own. Then it has fairly tradition RTS tech trees, but the difference is that you actually get to play with the tech that your team researches as one of the units. You see, 1 player on either team has stepped into the Command Chair. They get a top down overlook on the map, and their vision is limited to what can be seen by their units, most of which are controlled by actual players.
 

The Marine team plays much like counter strike. Tradition shooter controls, you start with an assault rifle and tech into things like shotguns (which offer the best burst damage but are difficult to hit with), flamethrowers (which disable structures and are easy to aim), and eventually massive railgun wielding exosuits. The other team, the *aliens*, are almost entirely melee. They have extreme mobility options and can deal massive amounts of damage at close range.

It's really hard to get the whole concept across in a single post, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's by far my favorite game in existence, I consider it a masterpiece. 

Disclaimer: NS2 is also a brutally difficult game with one of the steepest learning curves and highest skill caps I've ever seen in any game before. The community is very active, but it's a lot of diehard fans who haven't stopped playing since 2013, and they can be so extremely skilled that new players have virtually 0 chance of ever killing them. They can also at times be quit toxic, because they have settled into their smaller end-of-life community for the game, and so frequently expect excellence. If they say "concede, people" probably concede (at least early on before you've got a sense of the game and can see the hail marry plays that might be possible, then play to the bitter end all you want).
 

[tkdguy]

1 hour ago, Chris Goodwin said:

You should also get Tabletop Simulator, so that you can play Hero online...  

 

Or any type of rpg, for that matter. I am trying to get a MERP game together, and I will look for players soon.

[Lord Liaden]

To keep it within the family, you might take a look at Champions Online.

[Pattern Ghost]

Champions Online doesn't have an OS X client.

[Bazza]

1 hour ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Champions Online doesn't have an OS X client.

 

So no online champions then. 

[Bazza]

You should be able to find some worthwhile games through the Mac App Store. 

[Lord Liaden]

Could someone please explain to this computer illiterate why "no OS X client" is a deal-breaker?

[Pattern Ghost]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

Could someone please explain to this computer illiterate why "no OS X client" is a deal-breaker?

 

On 4/8/2020 at 10:39 AM, Diamond Spear said:

So my wife convinced my to buy our first Apple computer

 

It's the wife's fault.

 

Of course, he could run Windows either by buying a copy and dual booting it with Bootcamp or by other means, but he didn't mention if he wanted to fiddle with any of that. So, maybe not a deal-breaker, but I assumed he was looking for games that can run on OS X natively.

 

The reason I mentioned it is because if you search for "Mac MMORPGs" or "OS X MMORPGs," Google will return all of the Cryptic games, but they dropped their support a while back.

[Diamond Spear]

10 hours ago, Shoug said:

Prey is one of the best science fiction shooters I've ever played. It's single player and story driven.

Mordhau is basically a Medeival FPS. It's a first person melee fighting system and it's incredibly fun, but with a steep learning curve and a high skill ceiling. 

 

If you like team shooters, I have to suggest my all time favorite one: Natural Selection 2. It's an asymmetrical team shooter built with the skeleton of an RTS. The map is riddled with resource nodes and base locations, just like your basic RTS like Starcraft, and teams wrestle for control of the map. It's a massive bout of minmaxing: You want to minimize your opponent's information, control of tactical positions, and resource income, all whilst maximizing your own. Then it has fairly tradition RTS tech trees, but the difference is that you actually get to play with the tech that your team researches as one of the units. You see, 1 player on either team has stepped into the Command Chair. They get a top down overlook on the map, and their vision is limited to what can be seen by their units, most of which are controlled by actual players.
 

The Marine team plays much like counter strike. Tradition shooter controls, you start with an assault rifle and tech into things like shotguns (which offer the best burst damage but are difficult to hit with), flamethrowers (which disable structures and are easy to aim), and eventually massive railgun wielding exosuits. The other team, the *aliens*, are almost entirely melee. They have extreme mobility options and can deal massive amounts of damage at close range.

It's really hard to get the whole concept across in a single post, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's by far my favorite game in existence, I consider it a masterpiece. 

Disclaimer: NS2 is also a brutally difficult game with one of the steepest learning curves and highest skill caps I've ever seen in any game before. The community is very active, but it's a lot of diehard fans who haven't stopped playing since 2013, and they can be so extremely skilled that new players have virtually 0 chance of ever killing them. They can also at times be quit toxic, because they have settled into their smaller end-of-life community for the game, and so frequently expect excellence. If they say "concede, people" probably concede (at least early on before you've got a sense of the game and can see the hail marry plays that might be possible, then play to the bitter end all you want).
 

I’ve heard good things about Prey.
 

Natural Selection 2 sounds like an awesome game that I will never play. 😀. I don’t have time like I used to (so steep learning curves suck) and I no longer have the patience to deal with experienced players who think newbies should just go away so they can get back to playing “real” players. 

[Diamond Spear]

1 hour ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

 

It's the wife's fault.

 

Of course, he could run Windows either by buying a copy and dual booting it with Bootcamp or by other means, but he didn't mention if he wanted to fiddle with any of that. So, maybe not a deal-breaker, but I assumed he was looking for games that can run on OS X natively.

 

The reason I mentioned it is because if you search for "Mac MMORPGs" or "OS X MMORPGs," Google will return all of the Cryptic games, but they dropped their support a while back.

Yup not interested in dual-booting at the moment. And it really is the wife’s fault; she’s been after me for a decade to get an Apple and I finally got tired enough of Windows being stupidly finicky and unstable if you looked at it wrong to give in. Also: Hoo boy! are Apple computers expensive!  

[Diamond Spear]

13 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

You should also get Tabletop Simulator, so that you can play Hero online...  

It’s finding and keeping a consistent group that always seems to be the problem... but maybe. 

[Mightybec]

I like Steam Games, like Rimworld, Cities Skylines, Factorio and such.

[pinecone]

I've been playing the heck out of Stellaris, but I don't know if Apple boxes can do that...it's on Steam, so easy to check it out.

[Shoug]

12 hours ago, Diamond Spear said:

I’ve heard good things about Prey.
 

Natural Selection 2 sounds like an awesome game that I will never play. 😀. I don’t have time like I used to (so steep learning curves suck) and I no longer have the patience to deal with experienced players who think newbies should just go away so they can get back to playing “real” players. 

I totally understand, which is why I posted the disclaimer. I used to balk at these type of games too, games with absurd learning curves, games with toxic communities. Then I found my self sucked into 4 of them over the course of a few years. Quantum Redshift and Windlands, which are both racing games (Windlands is also an exploration game, however) where the beginner can't avoid smashing his face into walls none stop the whole time they're playing, and the master can achieve unbelievable heights of speed and fluidity. In Natural Selection 2, if you don't know the "hidden" movement controls of Skulk, the baseline alien unit, you won't be able to kill even a single marine. On top of that, to be effective strategically and tactically, you have to know the maps inside and out (literally you have to know about the air duct systems which skulks can use to quickly bypass certain parts of the map), and you have to know all the rooms of the map by name. It's a game that simply cannot be played without voice chat. It's absurd.

That being said, it has produced some of the most intense and rewarding gaming experiences that I've ever had. Things like having your back against the wall for an hour before turning everything around and winning the match. Things like calling clutch shots for your team and they actually listen and the stratagem actually works and you're just sitting there feeling like a fucking genius. Great game.