[RAND0M VIDE0 GAME NEW5]

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...

 

[What are you playing RIGHT NOW?]

16 hours ago, Captain Corcoran said:

Doofus!  Okay, Divinity 2 from now on!  So, I just got all my inventory squared and now I need to clean up the cast bar.

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.

[Wow classic]

4 minutes ago, Malcador said:

I was there when it was introduced. I've been playing WoW since 2005.  As I said if they had LFG without CRZ then what is the issue ?  We had rage quitters, ninja looters, unpleasant bastards back in vanilla, I personally never cared that much to go try to whip up people to blacklist them but I guess some would have if they read the forums (or listened to randos in general chat).   Have to think it was added as Blizzard saw people using addons to do the same (probably the same with a lot of things, actually).  

People talking about how good socializing was in Vanilla is really strange to me all I recall from my many PUG runs was immature jokes or just people bitching about my healing or the tank. A lot like LFG really.  Certainly never recalled instances of helping people out, other than "thotbot it <expletive>".   Maybe is just that NA players are bigger **** ?

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.

[Wow classic]

24 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Well, retail is their main version so if they get people back to play with better systems why not try.  I do miss LFG though, without CRZ I really don't see the issue as it just spares you from excessive /1 and /2 spamming.  That's nice when everyone's in Westfall or Darkshore but when it spreads out it becomes a bit more tedious.

 

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).

[Pictures of your games 12]

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

[What are you playing RIGHT NOW?]

3 hours ago, wolfrider100 said:

Been playing F.E.A.R. Platinum, more so the Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate add on's. I beat the first

Fear game but got never got around to playing the add-on's when they come out, so I'm going to do that now.

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...

[Wow classic]

15 hours ago, Malcador said:

Yep, all this nonsense about the wonder of the world and discovery, etc. is going to fade once you hit 60 and spend your days in IF or a BG queue. 

 

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...

 

[What are you playing RIGHT NOW?]

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).

[Wow classic]

2 hours ago, daven said:

I think people are being nice because they are excited about the game. Wait til everyone has wiped 50 times in Deadmines and things will change. WE actually wiped 7 times before the 3rd boss.. <_< People just kept pulling more even though we said 1-2 max. OH WELL!

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.

[Wow classic]

3 hours ago, Malcador said:

The pop culture references were always present in WoW, though.  Suppose it was made a bit worse in Cataclysm, at least for the Alliance parts of the revamp.  Will see how much people enjoy the journey when you lose a lot of direction at 30-45.    Reading comments about this on other forums people bandy about 'immersion' so much, I'd think they were talking about a Bethesda game.

Not sure what's with the excessive nice behaviour, must be some weird conformist thing where everyone has to buff everyone they can and I keep having strange people trying to offer me gear.   Definitely not the WoW community I know, hopefully it returns to normal.

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

[What are you playing RIGHT NOW?]

On 8/26/2019 at 2:48 PM, Hulk'O'Saurus said:

Well... 

I wonder how that goes with Obsidianites. 

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:

[What are you playing RIGHT NOW?]

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)

[RAND0M VIDE0 GAME NEW5]

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.

[Pictures of your games 12]

8 hours ago, sorophx said:

not on official servers, though. a Tier 4 bearer has 9900 HP, Relic Hunter Treasure Seekers have around 7500 HP. you put a good set of armor on them, and they become invincible. I have yet to encounter a boss that can kill a Hunter in full Silent Legion armor. this dungeon was very easy for me, I didn't even have to kill anyone, my thrall wiped them all out (including the bone dragon and the shaleback king). 

in my experience thralls break the game completely, even the lower tier ones (named minibosses that have 1800 HP) are so OP at the start of the game, that it made me feel like playing an NPC to someone else's hero. and then there are pets that you don't even need to capture, just find pups/cubs (greater hyenas have 8000 HP and do around 100 damage), that can rip bosses apart.

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

[Pictures of your games 12]

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:

Spoiler

Some interesting things of note: the endgame "cinematic" is...barebones. You literally walk off in the distance and then get thrown back to character creation.
Another interesting thing I noticed is that everything my character built was still there for the new character (but without anyone owning it), I'm not sure this is always the case (I was under the impression everything would get deleted) or if this is because I mucked around with Mikey's Toolbox to create multiple characters in my single player save. Either way if the intention is the create a clean save then "completing" the game doesn't appear to be the way to do it.

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.

[Pictures of your games 12]

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...

[Pictures of your games 12]

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...

Spoiler

...kind of shows where there were ideas there but they didn't manage to implement them (not yet anyway). One of the parts you should need for the keystone is not present in the Exiled Lands at all (going to assume the Mummy is supposed to drop it) but I manged to create the Keystone anyway. Given that the logical thing would have been for it to ambush me when using the Altar I guess it might not even be in the game.

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)

[Forum Comments and Issues Repository]

On 8/3/2019 at 12:38 AM, Ethics Gradient said:

It's probably not "suddenly", it's just that the previous forum software was old enough that it didn't really have any COPPA implementations.  

We've now been beamed into the far future of 2012 and forum software that tries to identify users under the age of 13 that may not legally be able to sign up.

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.

[Forum Comments and Issues Repository]

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

[RAND0M VIDE0 GAME NEW5]

So this popped up in my suggestions the other day. As you all are probably aware it has been widely reported that the UK says lootboxes are not gambling, of course the truth is a lot more nuanced and Bellular goes through the entire parliamentary hearing (of which most "journalists" read the first paragaph or so, apparently):

The TL;DR could be summed up pretty accurately as "The UK doesn't consider lootboxes gambling (by their legal definition), but the UK Gambling Commission argues they probably should be."

[RAND0M VIDE0 GAME NEW5]

6 hours ago, melkathi said:

Well, having played the backer builds, I wasn't convinced they could release in September. At least we know they are working on the project though and delays aren't them doing something else and forgetting about it - which isn't that rare with crowd funded projects.

Given how Epic basically bought them out (to the detriment of said backers) I doubt they'd be happy about not getting what they paid for...

Working on something else would be pretty ballsy, I for one, won't support them again as their word has been proven to be worth about as much as that of the average politician.

[Pictures of your games 12]

I think I stepped through a portal into some Bethesda game...

I was only going to build a small outpost to capture thralls. Got the capturing part down.

Might have slightly failed in the "small" department though...

The huge circular(-ish) roof was a nightmare to build. I still want to add a Set temple somewhere, at some point.
Open roof over the Wheel of Pain and kitchen right next door for some added persuasive powers. Can't have Keyrock claim I'm a softie again!

Since I have no real reason to start any new building projects in my single player save I've gone back to the bucket list:

• Killed the undead dragon, was a tad easier than I expected (but I expected it to be really really nasty, so there's that)
• The giant spider, on the other hand, was a lot nastier than I expected...
• Killed all the different dragon types (Red, Green and White). I mean, that's something you have to do at least once in our life, amirite?
  
  Killed the White Dragon a few times to get a head for a trophy, after a bit of Googling it turns out the White Dragon Head Trophy is not implemented yet. Whelp.

Still to go:

• Completing the Warmaker's Sanctuary dungeon and dealing with some other new bosses added in that recent update (already fought the boss birds, those are nasty as hell)
• Craft the Heart of the Sands (so I can then create the item to remove the bracelet as I have all the other parts), which means I need to get past the whiptail cats that have shredded me each time I've tried. Different approach appears to be required (might bring a thrall to deal with them, for a change, I usually don't use them, except for bearers)
• Completing the last few Journey steps ("only" 5 to go....)

[RAND0M VIDE0 GAME NEW5]

On 7/30/2019 at 1:23 AM, melkathi said:

Phoenix Point's release got pushed to December. 3. September will be the release of Backer Build 5 now.

No surprise really.

Kinda selective about which commitments they keep, aren't they? But I can't really argue against not working their staff to death either.

[What are you playing RIGHT NOW?]

Messed around some more with the Conan Exiles dedicated server. My base got to a decent size and stuff got kinda really laggy. CPU was still bored and machine wasn't OOM. Load didn't really go over 1.2 (which is still fine for a dual core, but most of the time was between 0.6 and 0.8) either either so not sure what's up with that (I'll go with "badly optimized software"). Willing to open it up if people are interested but something tells me that having multiple players might not be a good time.

In hindsight I should probably just have tried loading my single player save on the server, something tells me my archway base wouldn't go over well...

Either way, got around to cleaning up the Dockerfile and put it all on Github here, so if anyone has some beefier hardware lying around, there you go

[RAND0M VIDE0 GAME NEW5]

2 hours ago, Azdeus said:

It's quickly established that BJ is unable to control his legs properly and loads of other things that basically means his body is useless in the beginning of the game. Once he gets the powerarmour though he can move normally again, he can't walk without it. It is established in the previous game just how vital that armour is for BJ to do anything.

Storywise it might be complete and utter pooptown for what I know, I haven't played the game. But the video author both start and ends his video complaining about that powersuit.

Right, had to look that one up since I haven't played through The New Colossus yet and I'd forgotten about the suit in The New Order (worn by someone else). Still he only needs it because of an injury, not because he's just not trained well enough to do what he does.

Either way I figure that to be a minor detail (didn't even notice his focus on it, honestly), the stuff that interested me, personally was the RPG mechanics and the looter-shooter parts, well and the behaviour of the protagonists (which I, as I already mentioned, already abhorred after the announcement).

Sounds a lot like a worse Shadow Warrior 2 to me, which I also thought was pretty bland when compared to the original reboot and was ill served (imho) by similar mechanics that are apparently being introduced here. Except Lo Wang was a tad more likeable than what I've seen of these two sisters.

EDIT: in case you want a bit more of a non-funny, accurate review:

In case it matters, I'm with Lawrence on this one.