marelooke
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Posts posted by marelooke
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Who likes announcements of announcements? You know you love 'em, don't try to front.
After Mafia 2 I'm not sure I can even be bothered to care about Mafia 3 in the slightest.
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Cataclysm was the peak of difficulty ? I had thought TBC was in terms of how hard the Heroics were. Granted I quit Cataclysm before 5.2 even dropped so I am missing out on stuff.
Hopefully Thrall dies next expansion
I think most people forgot how hard heroics were in TBC due to having run them millions of times after they acquired rather high level raid gear.
So, today I ran into something that kinda shows why I think EQ2 is so cool. I was flying around the Great Divide when I spotted a quest marker. I kinda thought I had done most quests in this area before I quit playing four years ago, so I went to check it out. Turns out it was a Fae trying to figure out how flying works (Fae in EQ2 have always had slowfall but can't actually *fly*), suffice to say, I, being a Fae, was intrigued. Long story short (and lots of running back and forth later) my Fae can now actually fly! BOO-YEAH!!!
As for the reasoning behind it all (gotta make sure stuff makes sense lore wise):
The Fae used to be able to fly, but then were blessed by Tunare, the goddess of Growth, resulting in them growing larger (and becoming sentient), but due to this growth their wings could no longer sustain flight and the Fae lost the blessing of Xegony, the goddess of Flight. The questchain basically has you appease Xegony who then allows you to shrink so you can fly again.
All of the above also applies to the Arasai (= evil Fae), afaik, but my Arasai assassin isn't exactly at a level to be able to fly yet.
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Actually enjoying EverQuest 2 quite a bit again. I'm one of those people that always logs off in his character's house so when I loaded the game I was immediately greeted by lots of curio of past exploits, stuff like this sets this game squarely above pretty much every other MMO out there. Of course, not everbody cares about such things, but me, I do, a lot (I also always kept my Tier-gear sets in WoW, for example, even long before you could use them as appearance gear)
It's a bit hard to get around without a guild (at least when you're used to having a guild at your disposal) and the same goes for crafting, but figuring out stuff and running into the familiar is good fun, for now at least.
EQ2 has quite a few problems though (a terrible graphics engine, extreme top-heavyness, lack of participation of players outside of their guilds and the fact that SOE made the stupid decision to "borrow" some of WoW's worst ideas instead of focusing on what sets their game apart of the competition, which imho is: the ability to really discover things that most people have forgotten about or that just aren't obvious as there's no big ass quest marker to point you the way).
There's also talk about cross-server dungeons, which, imho, is a terrible idea (I attribute much of WoW's decline to the cross-realm group finder and the resulting death of realm-communities, combined with a focus on making everything easily accessible to everyone, because, yeah, you can't have hard dungeons if you plop a bunch of random people together in a group, that would only lead to frustration*...)
* Blizzard actually tried this with Mists of Pandaria (iirc), the resulting backlash was...well, lots of people quit then. Because the general way groups went was: group enters heroic dungeon, group wipes once, tank says "FU BUNCH OF NOOBS!" and drops group, group falls apart, everybody gets to join the group finder for 2 hours again (not making this number up, it really was that bad for DPS) to find a new group, except for the tank, who is locked out from grouping for 20min (as "punishment" for dropping group), but instantly has a new group after those 20minutes...
Net result is that heroics were nerfed into the ground, so the only way to find challenge in the game is to raid (actually raid, not raid finder, which is snoreworthily easy), which takes a lot of time and commitment...
Cataclysm was actually the peak of WoW dungeon difficulty, and MoP actually went to the other extreme as a result, dungeons were the easiest they'd ever been. WoD dungeon difficulty is somewhere in between, but they've messed it up in a completely different way - there's no longer any incentive to do them because the loot is hopelessly outdated and you can get better stuff easily from solo outdoor content. This was once again an overadjustment, previous expansions had the opposite problem where people felt obliged to run old dungeons that had long been trivial for them to acquire special currencies.
Apologies, I mixed up Cataclysm and MoP when it came to dungeon difficulty, you were right of course, though I'm not sure if dungeons were any more difficult in Cataclysm than they were in TBC, they likely just appeared as such because people were no longer used to a challenge (and especially: actually having to work together with strangers, the main appeal of MMOs for me!). The reason I think this might be the case is that we generally had little trouble with Cataclysm heroics in guild groups but struggled with PUGs. Unfortunately I was rather new in that guild at the time (since my previous one got bored out during the latter stages of WotLK) and as such was sentenced to PUG on a very regular basis, which lead to no end of frustration (due to tanks ragequitting all. the. goddamn. time.)
You're conflating two separate things with the cross-server thing though. Cross-realm groups in themselves I consider a boon, I can get friends from off-server together to do stuff, that's nothing but positive. The group finder functionality, on the other hand, achieves the opposite of that: everyone you find with it is essentially anonymous, someone you will never meet again, and it kills the social aspect of the game. That said, I'm probably not the best judge of what impact it's had in general because I've been part of the same guild since 2007, a guild I effectively co-founded with people I've played with since 2005, so there's no real need or want to use the tool.
A large part of the problem is that WoW just has too many servers relative to its subscriber base, a relic of its heyday when it had close to double its current population. A significant number of people are stranded on these servers, not wanting to pay the fee to transfer to somewhere more populated, and therefore have no option but to use these tools to be able to do any sort of multiplayer content. There's been a sort of band-aid fix applied where realms are "connected", that is, having groups of two or three servers linked so the outdoor zones are shared between them. I suspect they went this route largely for PR reasons, the headlines would look really, really bad if they merged and/or shut down servers like SWTOR did: headlines like "Blizzard closes down HALF of all servers!" would get the suits a bit antsy.
I don't think so, I was specifically talking about cross-server dungeons as I have no experience with the "full" cross-realm thing since MoP was the final drop for me and I called it quits on WoW (for the second time, not that I had anything left there anyway, since whatever was left of my guild had much shriveled up and died by that time). As far as I'm aware there are no plans for cross-server support that goes further than dungeons in EQ2, not that it would matter very much since there is only one EU English server anyway and tossing the French or German speakers onto that same one isn't going to benefit anyone (though the whining about non-English in General chat would probably make things seem more lively
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But who else could write gems like this?
As someone who likes the folks she passes in the street to chatter a bit, I've always considered Beth's writing to be right on target. Most casual conversation does tend to be trite and repetitive. Anything too insightful, witty, or generally memorable would stick out in a way that street conversations that you're going to overhear over and over again shouldn't. In my opinion whether writing is "good" or not depends on its purpose, and the sorts of things you overhear in Beth games are exactly the sorts of things I'd expect to overhear if I lived in Tamriel.
I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I ... what, too soon?
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KOTOR 2 gets workshop support, Linux, etc.
So now we can play a half finished game in 4K resolution and others fixing up the rush job is now easier!
Yes, I'm still bitter about all the missed potential.
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Actually enjoying EverQuest 2 quite a bit again. I'm one of those people that always logs off in his character's house so when I loaded the game I was immediately greeted by lots of curio of past exploits, stuff like this sets this game squarely above pretty much every other MMO out there. Of course, not everbody cares about such things, but me, I do, a lot (I also always kept my Tier-gear sets in WoW, for example, even long before you could use them as appearance gear)
It's a bit hard to get around without a guild (at least when you're used to having a guild at your disposal) and the same goes for crafting, but figuring out stuff and running into the familiar is good fun, for now at least.
EQ2 has quite a few problems though (a terrible graphics engine, extreme top-heavyness, lack of participation of players outside of their guilds and the fact that SOE made the stupid decision to "borrow" some of WoW's worst ideas instead of focusing on what sets their game apart of the competition, which imho is: the ability to really discover things that most people have forgotten about or that just aren't obvious as there's no big ass quest marker to point you the way).
There's also talk about cross-server dungeons, which, imho, is a terrible idea (I attribute much of WoW's decline to the cross-realm group finder and the resulting death of realm-communities, combined with a focus on making everything easily accessible to everyone, because, yeah, you can't have hard dungeons if you plop a bunch of random people together in a group, that would only lead to frustration*...)
* Blizzard actually tried this with Mists of Pandaria (iirc), the resulting backlash was...well, lots of people quit then. Because the general way groups went was: group enters heroic dungeon, group wipes once, tank says "FU BUNCH OF NOOBS!" and drops group, group falls apart, everybody gets to join the group finder for 2 hours again (not making this number up, it really was that bad for DPS) to find a new group, except for the tank, who is locked out from grouping for 20min (as "punishment" for dropping group), but instantly has a new group after those 20minutes...
Net result is that heroics were nerfed into the ground, so the only way to find challenge in the game is to raid (actually raid, not raid finder, which is snoreworthily easy), which takes a lot of time and commitment...
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Mommy, is that an angel?
Yeah, so I've been away from this game for a while...
After all this time I'd still consider this the best (non-sandbox) MMO I've played.
EDIT: btw, I'm on Splitpaw-EU and I'm sure you can figure out my character name from the screenshots
Any EQ2 players feel free to poke me if I'm on (might need to pok regularly tho, I think my chat settings are still a bit off) -
Finally made it to chapter 2 in The Witcher 2 (only took me 4 years...), the definitely improved combat (and general movement) compared to release though I still prefer Witcher 1's combat.
Inbetween I've also been working on my backlog of games I backed on Kickstarter but didn't get around to really spend time with, first up was Unrest. It is RPG-ish game set bleak India-inspired universe and it's all about choice en consequence of your (= the player's) actions. It's actually one of the first games with C&C where I really wonder what would happen if I'd handle certain situations differently and since it's a very short game (assuming you only play through once, my first playthrough was ~2hours, but I might have rushed things a bit to see how things would turn out...)
For those who don't know you play through different "chapters" with various characters (sometimes on opposing sides of the central divide), the actions of each of them influence the fate of the nation, though what's best for the nation isn't necessarily best for that specific character... There is no combat to speak of, pretty much everything happens through dialogue. I'd say it's definitely worth picking up in a sale if you like a good interactive story with C&C though the ending exposition could have been better (eg. the fates of the different characters you get to play are mostly not touched on, which makes sense given who some of them are, but not everybody will like this)
I somehow also manged to get a craving for EQ2 (which I quit playing around 2011-ish, I think), seems it's now run as some F2P thing. Going to be interesting if any of the new stuff is actually any good or the whole game has devolved into the usual F2P nickel-and-diming... Guess I'll find out once the download finishes
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apparently, the multiplayer portion will be free forever
Not bad for EA, and a good move for those who enjoy the DA:I multiplayer aspect. But that move also makes me believe that it´s not a very successful aspect of the game. I tried it, and it came across as a useless tacked on mode, one i certainly don´t enjoy or need.
Wouldn't surprise me. Personally I didn't even try it, just like I ignored it in ME3, my stance on it is that they could have used the money wasted on those multiplayer modes to give the single player campaign some much needed extra love in both games.
Because, seriously, who bought ME3 or DA:I for the multiplayer? Nobody *I* know for sure... (though my sister did enjoy ME3 MP, pretty sure she'd have gladly traded it for a better SP experience)
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For those of you who have played and beaten Dragon Age: Inquisition, what class were you playing as and how did you like it?
Duel-wielding rogue the first time, mage the second. I hated the first, enjoyed the second. Combat, IMO, doesn't favor duel-wielding rogues. Whereas if you specialize as a Knight-Enchanter, you can take on dragons all by yourself.
I was doing it the other way around (Knight-Enchanter Mage first, dual wield rogue second). I did find playing a mage more enjoyable in DA:I than in DA2 at least, whereas in the second game I just quit the mage and rerolled a dual wield rogue to get through the game I stuck with the mage in DA:I.
I mostly started the new playthrough to see if I'd notice any differences with my new graphics card on the Nvidia recommended settings, not sure if I'd want to go through the entire game a second time. Either way I upgraded from a GTX460 to a GTX970 btw, didn't notice that much difference so far, game does seem to run smoother (no more occasional stuttering so far) and loading times seem shorter (but I reserve judgement on that until I try to load Hinterlands for the first time) other than that it looks mostly the same, I think I'll try and up some more settings beyond what Nvidia recommends.
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Dunno, standard price for AAA *PC* titles here has been 50euros (or the pre-euro equivalent) for as long back as I can remember (which would be dating back to the Tomb Raider/Dungeon Keeper times, which were 2000BF at launch, which is ~50euro). Console games have always been more expensive, for some unfathomable reason*
I checked Amazon and the PC version is up for 50€ on pre-order. Big AAA game tend to be 60€ on Steam.. is that where you're getting that price from?
Yeah, Steam is kinda rubbing F4 in my face all the damn time, hadn't really checked other retailers yet (shame on me, I know)...
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we were on dial up (using a phone to dial up an internet provider, and not like ADSL or 4G) or scumming the uni connection
those were the days... of spending an entire week to download a 300 MB torrent. don't miss them one bit
All you youngin's are showing your age with not knowing Derek Smart. He was a huge figure of controversy back in the day. Bigger than Peter Molyneaux.
Why, I remember when Peter was seen as a visionary, rather than someone who sees visions
I almost spilled my tea just now.
Bittorrent is a product of this millennium though
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Finished Revelations 2, got the "good" ending. Might go through again to get the other one. Also did some raid mode stuff, but that seems to just be run-and-gun so, meh (though that time I ran out of ammo was kinda fun).
Went back to an ancient Skyrim playthrough, still have 2 achievements I'm missing (one of which due to a bug...), going to try to get those. The first minigame was upgrading the gazillion mods though
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Is there any way to make Geralt move a bit more fluently? Right now it feels like he's skidding all over the place. From the little bit I've played so far this isn't much of an issue in combat, but out of combat movement feels terribly unresponsive (and I thought TW2 was bad, this is much much worse)
What system are you playing on? I never noticed an issue with movement in the PS4 version. The only slight "herky-jerky" moments I noticed were when in tight spaces (like a scaffold) and you accidentally shift him from walking to running, or running to walking. He sort of does this stutter-step.
Yeah, hardware's gonna be the problem, shame, seemed to perform pretty well at first sight, but looks like I'll need to upgrade ~20fps isn't really playable. Bah
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Is there any way to make Geralt move a bit more fluently? Right now it feels like he's skidding all over the place. From the little bit I've played so far this isn't much of an issue in combat, but out of combat movement feels terribly unresponsive (and I thought TW2 was bad, this is much much worse)
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Neither of these warrant a day one purchase as far as I'm concerned based on the things we've seen so far. So the only date I care about is the date they go on sale for a reasonable price.
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He's already confirmed he won't be at the panel.
Source: https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/615752320324755456
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Are you referring to the "Pantaloons Enigma" (and if so, what makes it a Fallout easter egg?) or is there something else that crosses the entire saga?
Spoiler: (No really!)
Because when you complete it, you get an iron golem like armor with a flame thrower and a rocket launcher, and energy minigun.
Phew, I was almost afraid I missed out on something, but yeah, I can see how that could give a Fallout vibe (I gave mine to Jaheira btw, bit of a shame you only get to play with it for relatively short amount of time)
I'm kinda putting of the RE: Revelations 2 bossfight and have gone back to an old Skyrim playthrough (I also played some PoE and DoS). I seem to have a really hard time sticking with one game and finishing it lately...
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Just finished BG:EE (second time I've finished BG ever...yay!). Now to move on to BG2:EE and hopefully actually complete it (or even get any amount into it, which I've never done before...it just doesn't seem to catch me.)
BG series has the most insane Fallout easter egg... but you must start it in BG1 to complete it in BG2/Throne of Bhaal.
I wonder if the BG:EE team has done any updates to that; or did they even know about it?
Are you referring to the "Pantaloons Enigma" (and if so, what makes it a Fallout easter egg?) or is there something else that crosses the entire saga?
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A pity, I was hoping for a BG3 announcement.
From Beamdog?
Yeah, I don't see who else will realistically do it?
They seem to have the IP around the Forgotten Realms from a development perspective so it should be feasible?
Yeah, but can they make combat as fun with whatever the latest version of D&D is? I seriously doubt they'll be allowed to use 2nd edition for a new game, and then there's the risk that they'll start fiddling with things *they* consider to have been "bad" in BG2 (on top of whatever changes were made to the ruleset already) and we'll end up with another PoE... (looks like a duck, squawks like a duck, but swims like something else entirely)
I wish they'd just leave BG be, the studio that made it is gone, the talent that made it is scattered to the wind and the saga was complete. If they want to make a BG-style game set in the Forgotten Realms, I'm all for it, there's a definite lack of *good* RtwP games that have been coming out. (there's SitS, which I really should get around to, dunno of any others really)
Give them a chance to prove they can do it. But don't abuse our dreams by piggybacking on BG, they'll more than likely just be crushed once more anyway (not to mention that the backlash should they fail to deliver would be beyond epic...).
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Squeeeee!!
Though...
"an all new dungeon built from the worst things that live in the imagination of Chris Avellone"
also kinda scares me...
EDIT: Colin coming aboard is also way cool, of course
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They put up with it because the balance from the $7 (or whatever it now is) licensing fee is getting a below cost/ below effective cost console. If you buy a console and then only buy second hand rather than new software for it they don't get that licensing fee and you don't pay it anyway. The console is- essentially- an equivalent to selling an automatic fly spray dispenser below actual cost because once sold the person is likely to buy lots of refill cylinders for it. Though the console can also do other non essential value added stuff too, as MS rather overemphasised during their initial on3 presentations.
Which is why they do their best to try and kill the second hand market any way they can get away with, these tricks don't affect PC gamers much since you either buy new at release or dirt-cheap in a Steam/Gog/wherever sale.
PC does have similar (in effect/ result) practices which are put up with too- CPU throttling and even turning cores off, video card rebranding so the 8800 exists in four different 'generations' and the like, large profit margins for premium cards etc. They're different economic models since PC has no central authority to charge license money*, they want to fit budget, medium and high range product ranges in to maximise coverage and profits and they'll massage their product lines to achieve that, if necessary.
The CPU core thing actually had a practical reason: it allowed them to sell off CPUs with botched cores (by disabling them), which apparently happened a lot in the early days (dunno about nowadays though). People with such a CPU could sometimes re-enable these cores and sometimes they worked fine, though just as often they would kill system stability.
Also different models are pretty likely to have other differences besides the lowered clock speed (otherwise simply overclocking would get you a much more expensive card for free and you'd bet that information would spread like wildfire
), like slower ram or narrower buses or what-have-you.If they felt they could license graphics cards- and they'll likely try at some stage- via a below cost sale and periodic fee they would do so. Fortunately that is practical anathema at present.
I doubt that'll be any time soon as the logistics/administration would likely be nightmarish...
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As someone who never played the originals I get a bit of a M&M X: Legacy (should really finish that one...) vibe from the descriptions in that video.
Not sure why he doesn't compare the viewpoint to Legend of Grimrock or M&M X which I'd assume the target audience would be familiar with (even though the gameplay of the former is decidedly different, being real time and all)
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Isn't 60 euros the standard price for the console version of a videogame? Why would they ask for less?
Dunno, standard price for AAA *PC* titles here has been 50euros (or the pre-euro equivalent) for as long back as I can remember (which would be dating back to the Tomb Raider/Dungeon Keeper times, which were 2000BF at launch, which is ~50euro). Console games have always been more expensive, for some unfathomable reason*
But hey, if they can find enough idiots to pay that price instead of waiting for a sale and playing the like 300 other games they own in the meantime, all the more power to them...
*well the reasons are quite clear, though why people put up with it is beyond me.
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Dragon Age: Inquisition
in Computer and Console
Posted
Bit of a shame one does not learn more of Skyhold's history, given what Morrigan mentions about the location. Then again, many of the areas are left seriously under-explored, which is a real shame. I know that for some locations it'd have been somewhat unfair given that what you learn would have been highly dependant on who you bring along, but I'd rather have had them use a more fixed party composition than settle for just not letting your learn anything interesting...