marelooke

I'm not too far in (somewhere in the second major area, the Waterworks), unlike Legend of Grimrock you play as only one character. You have an exoskeleton that you wear which specializes in certain areas (tech, combat, tankyness. The choice is permanent too, fwiw) but as far as I can tell it doesn't lock you out of anything, relying entirely on gadgets if you're not tech specced appears like it would just be inefficient. Weapons are a mix of melee and ranged so far, haven't bothered with the ranged weapons yet so can't say anything about those, except that they require ammo. And then there's "gadgets" that sort of act like slottable spells since you can swap them in and out and they use a regenerating resource (stamina), these range from damage abilities to shields and there might be others as well. So far I've run into box pushing puzzles and timed button press puzzles and the pressure plate puzzles, so kinda Grimrock like. There's also pits to fall in (which I haven't, wonder if there's things below like there was in Grimrock, hmmmm) There are various upgrade trees that I haven't really looked at so far as I'm trying to figure out my playstyle. But so far it feels very much like steampunk Legends of Grimrock 1. Which is good, I feel, as my Grimrock 2 playthrough kinda fizzled out.

Been playing some Vaporum, feels like the first Grimrock, but steampunk, so far. Also got Elite: Dangerous because it was on sale and I got curious. Game insists on ignoring my keyboard settings and instead setting the layout based on my locale (which I verified by changing my locale, and I don't even have the layout it insists on installed). Not sure if I can be bothered dealing with that level of wilful incompetence so I might just refund it (which would be my first refund ever on Steam). Game is complex enough that having to deal with the keyboard mapping not matching my keyboard is not something I care to deal with (tutorial was interesting...) and messing up my locale settings because of this isn't something I fancy dealing with either. How hard is it to just use the system keyboard layout. Ugh.

I doubt it will destroy Steam, despite you wishing it so. It will, however impact other digital storefronts as well if this is upheld.

Never owned a console, never been good playing most things with controllers either (might be some correlation there) and MS thankfully releases through the Windows Store as well so the few games I care about (aka Forza) I can get that way as well nowadays. Even better now that some things have been coming to Steam as well, because, honestly, the Windows Store isn't exactly good.

It apparently also retroactively turns GTA V into a always-online game, even for the single player. This is supposedly a bug. Also appears to make the game unplayable on Linux through Proton at this time.

Yes, yes it is. My Witcher 3 playthrough has been dragging on since its release. Not sure why but it doesn't seem to drive me forward. When I do play it it's a case of "Whoa, is it that late already?" but once I quit the game I feel no urge to pick it up again. Kinda weird. Anyway, so far I've only ever had to do sections as Ciri, which wasn't bad at all, and none of those have been particularly long.

Hmm.. (gets interesting around halfway), or you can just read the Polygon article. The parts about technical issues are rather interesting as the game is supposed to be out rather soon...

Dragon Knight Saga was pretty fun. Don't remember the inventory being that much of a pain though. Of course, it's been a while since that was released, wonder if they're every going to finish up that story someday. But I guess they're too busy messing with cult classics to care anymore.

Hmm, must've been the realm, honestly. I've only really had one negative experience pre-LFG and that was some troll in Uldum. The reason I remember was because, well, it was like the only time. People throwing tantrums etc happened, but nothing eggregious, certainly not people randomly dropping groups. There were no blacklists (that I'm aware off), if players were big enough pricks people would just remember (and as long as one person in the party remembered, well that was usually that). I do remember people stating that Horde attracted a more mature audience early on, so that might have been a factor (cannot confirm nor deny whether that was true as I only made an alliance character on that same realm well into WotLK and by then that definitely no longer was the case) Btw, wasn't there a LFG? Just not an automated one? Or was that a TBC addition? In which case I might be talking about the wrong thing here, I abhorr the automated matchmaking thing (even if not cross realm), being able to advertise for a group without having to stick to one spot is definitely a good thing though.

It's mostly a social thing, honestly. I guess it's hard to grasp the impact it's introduction had if you weren't there when it was introduced. It's also hard to explain when you were there though I gave it a shot earlier in this thread, I believe. But one of the major disadvantages (aside from socializing) was realm reputation, if you were a jerk you'd just not be able to get into groups before long, so communities washed themselves of undesirables quite quickly. With a LFG you just get lumped in with randoms and if the Realm's local jerk joins you're stuck with him (or her). Conversely a good reputation would often just get you invited spontaneously. LFG also promotes group dropping as soon as something doesn't go perfectly, as you'd just queue again (especially if tank/healer) and you'd have a new group before long. Without LFG people are a lot more likely to actually help less experienced party members are finding replacements is a huge pain. This results in a lot less toxicity and people actually learning the ropes. Not to mention that some really get a reputation for mentoring (still miss ya, you shaman that patiently tought me the ropes during all those vanilla dungeon runs) It's kinda like being able to enter a dungeon immediately without having to actually walk there, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but these waits allowed for a whole lot of social interaction and community building (and fun and not-so-fun memories, the corpse run at Blackrock mountain was brutal, and people regularly got lost...). Note that I'm one of those people who is really, really, really, anxious to group up in games until I'm really, really, really, sure I know what I'm doing (which is a hard place to get to without actually, you know, doing it), so one would reasonably expect I'd be all for LFG. I am not (anymore).

Hmm, something seems off here, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

Were the expansions fixed in the Platinum collection? If I'm not mistaken they were standalone expansions and were not brought up to the same engine patch level as the base game, resulting in serious issues on newer systems. If they were sorted out I might be tempted to buy that game again so I can play the expansions without fear (no pun intended) of my PC locking up...

Your fault for picking the inferior faction Anyway, Inside Gaming actually got a reply from Blizzard on the topic of WoW classic, nothing really mind blowing there, but here anyway. Summary of couple of points I thought might be interesting: they try to not launch too many servers at once since realm community was important so they'd rather not have empty realms down the line. They do have spare capacity though that they will (and are) using to make sure there are always realms without queues available for new players that join. To me that seems to indicate they expect a sizeable community to stick around with classic. they'll roll out "new" features in the same order they were released (more details in the video) they'll decide based on the community response on how to proceed after they're done with "vanilla". Personally I suspect "adding" TBC might be likely (since that expansion was WoW's high water mark and I'm sure some of the "pro" raiders of today would want to experience the pain that was Sunwell Plateau) *or* they could decide to continue classic down a more "hardcore" path and have a "soft reboot" of the game in an alternate timeline. Realistically I'd expect that either as a continuation of vanilla or after TBC (*if* that is in the cards at all). Given the reception of the latest expansion and the ever decreasing playerbase (WoW even lost their number one spot to Final Fantasy based on leaked numbers) this might be a great opportunity for Blizzard to avoid some of the mistakes they made with "regular" WoW, and make new ones instead Assuming the popularity of classic holds up, of course...

Well, Warframe released a new, err, Warframe, so messing around with that. Also played around a (very little) bit with the Wasteland 3 alpha, combat has a very XCOM feel to it, not yet sure if I dig it. I should note that many things were locked (like skills etc) and that it definitely will need quite the optimization pass before release (which is sort of to be expected with an alpha).

I'm not so sure, from talking to guildies in Guild Wars 2 quite a few people are tired of trash being just inconsequential filler fluff between bosses, and not posing any challenge at all. And quite a few people would enjoy "pulling" as a tank to be an art again, not to mention that less AOE spam and more CC weren't exactly considered bad things either (each class having ridiculous amounts of very effective AoE was a WotLK addition, if I remember correctly). So some more focus back on environmental awareness and actually playing as a team (CC/aggro mechanics) definitely resonated by younger gamers. (on that note, it's slightly ironic that when I started playing WoW I was the youngster of the guild and now I'm pretty much the oldest, heh) So yeah, while classic WoW might be missing quite a few things that younger gamers might find desirable I think that the lack of challenge or a meaningful leveling experience offered by (most) current MMOs is definitely something that's being felt, and not only by us old-farts that were around "back in the days" and are suffering a severe about of nostalgia now. Personally I'm trying to stay the hell away from classic as I kinda do have a tad more responsibilities now so getting ridiculously addicted again is probably a bad idea. But I find it interesting how well it is doing, even with younger gamers. Maybe Blizzard and/or other MMO devs will revisit some of the "streamlining" they've been doing over the years if the success of classic holds up. One can only hope.

Buffing random people was pretty common during TBC, at least on my realm (Wildhammer-EU), as was conjuring water for thirsty Paladins

Well, given that it's one of the games I regularly play a session of I figured I might as well share whatever I was running when I last logged out:

I am not building a new base in Conan Exiles. And I can stop whenever I want! (also, I mean, only, Destiny 2 since the current event allows me to rather quickly catch up gearwise with my characters)

Halo Infinite will deliver an "AAA player investment experience", which, as far as I can tell is MS-speak for "a sense of pride an accomplishment". Guess selling people subscription services wasn't enough for Microsoft after all.

You play on official? Not sure if I could stand that given my building urges... I just dabbled on official to compare it to the latency on my own server. Bearers do less damage than fighters though (didn't use to, but they got the nerfbat to the face once word about that got out), not sure whether their armour values got reduced, if they were then that extra HP might not count for as much (and even a naked NPC has some armour as that's what the multipliers work with). Generally speaking Thralls are the answer to every problem, if you can get them to actually fight as the AI is derpy as all hell. Haven't bothered with pets (got one from the cave my base is pretty much on top of), but they generally don't have a lot of armour and judging from what I've seen their AI is generally even worse than Thrall AI, so a Thrall with decent equipment will always outperform them (ofc, they're probably great early game, before you get access to all the good stuff), especially against armoured targets, I would imagine (so most humanoids). Might go back and see how a Thrall fares against the Arena Champion. Fwiw, I was using a T3 Sepermeru (Relic Hunter) Thrall in full Silent Legion with the Doom hammer (and then the Worldbreaker, once that dropped). The Named minibosses that can be enthralled are considered T4 Thralls btw and, if not counting Purge thralls, they have the best stats for their faction (crafters craft faster, use less resources, and often get special recipes. Eg. white/black dye for Purge Alchemist) Still, kinda proud of myself that I cleared most everything (until this dungeon), without using Thralls (eh, I did skip the dagger boss in the Dagon dungeon, that guy was just ridiculous). Wouldn't recommend it though and I might go back and see how much pain I could've saved myself by using a Thrall

Say "Hi" to the Avatar of Derketo: Sepermeru for scale: Bye bye *blows kiss* So long suckers, I'm outta here! (I did make a backup of my save before doing that) I don't think talking about the "Leave the Exiles Lands" step is spoilers necessarily, but just in case: There's supposedly a major update coming out in September, curious what that's going to be. I'd mostly love more areas to explore but that seems unlikely as the devs have said the current map is already pushing the limits of the Unreal Engine. Only thing I still have to do now is the climbing up high achievement. I'll probably see if I can't just climb the Volcano for that one.

Fighting this boss without cheese is a pretty sure-fire way to get killed. One hit takes off around 40% of my health as her attacks ignore armor entirely... This also means that having a thrall fight her is a really bad idea as she'd just rip through them. Nothing that can't be fixed with a little bit of stun-locking though (and running around like a headless chicken to heal up/refill stamina ;)) And this is how most of the dungeon actually went: get boss to engage my thrall, stand back and shoot healing arrows (or Snake arrows if not dealing with undead), the Arena Champion is the only boss I actually fought myself... Exit Warmaker And got me a new sweet set of armour for a Thrall (over 1000 armour on this one ...) Not sure but they might have overdone it on the items in this dungeon, aside from the recipes for the armour (which is really expensive, but hell, it's probably the best heavy armour in the game) I also got "The Worldbreaker" (what's in a name...) a warhammer that ignores all armour. It made my thrall just rip through these bosses like no-one's business since most of them have relatively low HP but massive amounts of armour...

Getting very, very close now... And yes, I did use the Wiki for this one, still took me quite a while, not because I missed so many places (I didn't, unfortunately I also didn't count them but it was well under 20, which isn't bad on a total of 237) but well, finding which markers you missed on such a large map was slow (didn't help that since the last major Windows update the game has started randomly freezing on alt-tabbing...) The ending... So that leaves the new dungeon and Avatar summoning. Since I know the altar gets destroyed in the ritual I'll just build a new one (ooooh, smells like a building project!) and sacrifice some more of those fools that dare stand against my mightthe will of Set. (oh yes, there's still that one achievement, ignoring the multiplayer-only one, to get up really really high, figure that means either building a humongous tower or climbing the volcano)

Well, the date of birth only suddenly got requested months after the forum upgrade, so I'm not sure the forum upgrade can be fingered as the cause. MIght have been some legal dude from MS stumbling over the forums and noticing it so some setting got changed, or somesuch. I'm also not sure what personally identifiable information a forum would collect that would require COPPA compliance (the Google tracking stuff, maybe), but ianal (nor a US citizen, for that matter), so I'll just roll with it. Suddenly asking for it with no explanation is annoying though and might be a GDPR violation (the no explanation part). Either way, if Obsidian needs my real date of birth it's probably in my backer profile, no need for the forum to have it.

What's up with the forum suddenly requiring my birth date?