marelooke
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Posts posted by marelooke
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On 6/27/2020 at 6:28 PM, Lexx said:
Finished the FFXIV Shadowbringer storyline with my Gunbreaker. The last section had some super boring walk-around-some-more moments, but the actual ending was fantastic. Very well done, especially for an MMO.
Honestly, I find this game to be a quite pleasant experience all around. You don't really have to grind super hard, you can switch your character class at any time, the characters are likable (except for Lyse, god I hate her), and the story / quest design is mostly well done. The other people in the raids, etc. are usually not toxic either, even if you f- up a bit, which is also something I don't really know from other games.
Will probably start with the post-Shadowbringer content now. 20 quests have been released already, and the next batch will arrive in the new patch next month.
I'll be interested to hear your opinion on the post-patches once you get through them
Also, in case you haven't already, I'd suggest trying some of the newer raids and alliance raids, I enjoyed the entire Alma raid chain that starts in Kugane (the story of that raid, far less so) and they are really quite a bit harder than the early stuff (Crystal Tower, which I'd hope you've finished before starting Shadowbringers
). The Ghost Ship one from the Sea of Clouds has some interesting fights as well.
The Eden's Verse raids are also pretty good once you get to the end of the final patch (not sure if you can even start that quest chain before you make it past the final patch). Gotta say though, Shadowbringers really cranked up the difficulty noticeably for levelling characters, both for the dungeons, as well as for the raids.
Still have to try my hand at the Copied Factory (aka "the Nier raid"), watched a guide and ho-boy, is there a lot to take in...
As for me, well, mostly beein playing FF XIV with a dash of Conan Exiles. In FF XIV I've been unlocking and completing older raids, dungeons and other stuff I'd missed while levelling. I've also finished my first Anima weapon.
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Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is 85% off
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11 hours ago, Sarex said:
They expected the big streamers they bought to translate in to views for other streamers on their platform. They wanted a fast buy in to the market. I would have gone for the mid sized streamers, but who can say if that would even work...
Sounds like they're throwing in the towel rather quickly to me. And this certainly won't help perception next time they launch a new, or competing platform to something, either. Ask Google about that one...
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1 hour ago, Humanoid said:
Part of it is just dumb (bad) luck I suppose in that I played a rogue - because I always play a rogue - but the FF14 rogue is particularly bad for this. At least, so I was told, because I barely touched any other class making it hard to compare. I did try a bit of Samurai towards the end but I was already well on the way to burnout at that stage. It did seem a fair bit simpler though and I'd probably go that way should I return to the game in the future.
That said, the most complex rotation I've ever had the misfortune to try was the WoD-era Demonology Warlock. I tried it in a raid once and gave up after a single boss. It was a humiliatingly bad display, and I've played just about every spec of every class over the years. Except mage, for some reason the mage is the one class I've never played seriously.
EDIT: Oh right, just remembered that the actual class is Ninja, I think.
Rogue turns into Ninja at lvl30 (like most base classes specialize into something else at 30), so either is correct as far as I am concerned.
Didn't play during WoD, but I remember kitty Druid being extremely hard to play well during Wrath of the Lich King, there was even an add-on that was borderline required for most "mere mortals" to get anything resembling decent performance out of it.
Mage in current day WoW isn't fun, not glass, and not a cannon either. Then again, "not fun" is my opinion on WoW in general nowadays. I guess I really miss how you had to be on top of your positioning in "old" WoW, whereas now you can pretty much cast everything on the move. FF XIV really does bring some of that back, come to think of it.
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On 6/24/2020 at 12:52 AM, Tale said:
I'm onto Stormblood in Final Fantasy XIV. I enjoyed Heavensward a good deal.
The main downside of HW was Alphinaud, in my opinion. It's rather clear that SE was trying to figure out storytelling, throughout the base game and the first expansion you can really feel how your character really doesn't have much in the way of personality and just does as (s)he is told, and in HW it's mostly Alphinaud bossing you around, very little of what you do feels as if you have any say in it. I find that gets a lot less pronounced starting with Stormblood, and with Shadowbringers especially my Warrior of Light actually seems like a person of her own.
While obviously you don't have much of a choice in anything that happens, you don't *feel* it as keenly (except where SE breaks the 4th wall and pokes fun at the Warrior of Light for being unable to say "no", and silently nodding all the time). I think that the fact that you're just swept up in events, makes it far less obvious, since well, events are kinda out of your hands, and it clearly works a lot better that way.
On 6/24/2020 at 6:12 AM, Lexx said:Funny, I'm still with FFXIV as well. I never got into MMOs, because their mechanics bore me after 2 to 3 weeks at max, but this game... Man, the story has some real heights. Started Shadowbringers two days ago and IT'S SO GOOD. It looks great, it's fresh, it's theme is mostly new to me, etc. etc.
Stormblood had some good moments, but generally wasn't as good as Heavensward imo, especially Lyse is so god damn annoying, I hate her so much and was happy whenever she was not around ...... but Shadowbringers so far is simply blowing it away.
What sucks a bit is that since I've hit level 70, the bonus experience was disabled, so now I stopped outleveling the quest requirements and have to do some grind. Also switched from Archer/Bard to Gunbreaker, so now I'm a super cool heroic dude with a knife that has a gun build into it.
The transformation of into Lyse was kinda unnecessary, the events leading up to it also were rather...meh. Might be different for other starting locations, but Yda and Papalymo were my introductions to the Scions, having started in Gridania. Not being able to deal with
SpoilerIlberd (and friends)
in a satisfactory manner to wrap up Heavensward kinda sucked as well. That said, I did enjoy Lord Hien and the entire steppe section. Though it becomes abundantly clear there that the player race is just window dressing since it's almost never even acknowledged (I play Xaela and one of the party said something along "Never had much contact with Xaela, don't know much of their culture", I was like "Dude, I'm right here!".
That made it all the more surprising when during one of the Beast Tribe quests my WoL was referred to as "You, with the horns!", but that was only one of a very few times race got acknowledged.
On 6/24/2020 at 8:37 AM, Humanoid said:Gotta admit I crashed out of FF14 towards the latter stages of Heavensward. Thinking it was probably a mistake to not take a break after finishing the base game, but then that's the nature of subscription games and trying to maximise the value of sunk costs. In the end I lost out on the price of Shadowbringers because I paid for it but never got near its content. The other factor I suppose was that the complexity of basic gameplay was going a bit beyond what I'd like, especially with Australia-Japan latency, just executing my basic rotation became the biggest demotivator by the end of my time with the game. Related to that, the inability to bind commands to the mousewheel really sucks.
In some theoretical future, the biggest motivator to revisiting the game might be if they add local servers. It was, after all, what brought me back to WoW after a 2.5 break way back when WoD released. Not that the reunion was particularly long-lasting, mind you. But they've offered a couple of week-long passes to revisit the game in the ~9 months since I left and I haven't bitten yet.
Heh, due to how "slow" the game already is (slow tick-rate, very long global cooldown) I imagined it'd be easier to play with higher latency. Shows what I know...
For me (but I don't have high ping...) pulling off rotations feels easier than in most other games (eg. WoW) since there's an actual skill queue, so you can "pre-load" your next skill. Hell, "slide casting" is even built into the engine (it allows you to either pre-cast, or even move during the last ~15% of a cast), unlike in other MMOs where it's more a property of latency, and thus variable. The very long global cooldown also helps with this, at least until you get to the point where oGCD, off-global cooldown, skills become fairly commonplace (Stormblood, for most classes, iirc).
The game also has a rather slow tick-rate, so if you're used to other MMOs where you can maximise efficiency by "standing in the circle" until the very last second: you'll die. It's something I've had to unlearn. It's just how the game is designed (also, dying to stuff you clearly were no longer standing in, and not just on your screen, either...yay, dem slow ticks)
And indeed, rotations can get quite complex, depending on the class, but most of the ones I got to a high level have 3 action bars worth of skills, most of which at least see situational use.
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For those we have lost.
For those we can yet save.
(Shadowbringers ending spoilers)Spoiler
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Tried to play Metro Exocus, tried, because it was barely playable at the graphical settings I wanted. Not entirely sure which part is the bottleneck, CPU or GPU though given that the base platform is still an i7 930 the answer is probably just "Yes".
Oddly enough I played through the first region before on this PC and somehow managed...
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Metro: Exodus, on Gog, because it's finally available there and was 50% off.
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Well, haven't posted in a while, didn't stop me from taking screenshots, so there might be a few FF XIV dumps coming up, since last post covered Heavensward and I've since kinda finished the main storyline
Some random atmospheric screenshots:
SpoilerTramping through Dravania
Just the Scions, chillin'
"Whatever..."
The game clearly took a lot of inspiration from EverQuest 2 (or the original, but never played, so can't tell), which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as EQ2 is still the gold standard I measure other RPGs by (prior to it being sold to some Chinese company that is just squeezing the game until it dies, anyway).
Potential Heavensward spoilers:
SpoilerA duel for the ages
Hraesvelgr, one of the seven Great Wyrms
Come at us, bro! (spoiler: they did, in fact, come at us
)
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On 5/27/2020 at 4:24 PM, Tale said:
Final Fantasy XIV, the MMO, was free on PS4 recently. And it was lots of fun for a few days. Until the story completely failed to present a hook after like a dozen hours and I looked stuff up and saw there was nothing cool to look forward to in abilities. At that point it just started feeling like every other MMORPG I played and got tired of. It's cool to have the Final Fantasy brand, but sucks that it has none of the Final Fantasy coolness and power fantasy. As a Thaumaturge, all I have to look forward to is eventually getting Flare. Limit Breaks can only be used in parties.
I have precisely 0 interest in spending dozens upon dozens of hours doing nothing but a blizzard/fire juggle. Thunder, my favorite of the three common FF spells, has been turned into a dot.
As to the story failing to hook, the entire story so far has been about a criminal gang out in the desert who aren't even worth giving names. I'm level 30 with a 50 cap and I've seen one cutscene of some Empire I know nothing about doing nothing I care about.
So I bought Astroneer and I'm exploring space. And it is good to explore space.
It's odd that they'd cut you off around lvl30, that's a lull in the story iirc. But as been mentioned before, ARR (aka "the base game") is a bit "meh" in the storytelling department, there's loads of set up for later though. As to who the bad guys are...well, I'm still wondering that after having finished the game (well, up to the current patch, I mean, MMOs and all). Things aren't as black and white as they are presented, which is a nice change of pace, honestly.
It is one of the things I rather like about the game, many events that appear random, have consequences down the road, and not just within the same expansion, sometimes things show up again many expansions later. To me this signifies they *know* where the story is going and they work their way there. Which is entirely unlike most other MMOs out there (excepting possibly LotRO)
Another thing I enjoy is how you just start as some random adventurer, sure you're "touched" by Hydaelyn, but even that is not exactly uncommon, so while it makes you somewhat special it doesn't exactly elevate your character to the level of "teh chosen one!1!1!" since there's dozens with the same gift. This of course shows in the early game, which is somewhat slow and makes you do rookie adventurer stuff, learn about the world, its politics, and you train in your chosen profession (class) and all that rot.
That said, there's enough tropes there as well and the storytelling in the base game is, as mentioned...questionable at times (as is all the backtracking, it gets better, I promise, though it never goes away entirely), but once you scratch past the surface the story can be surprisingly good (even some things that made me roll my eyes so hard I think I saw my brain turned out well when seen through to their conclusion). As to the Garlean Empire, I thought that was recapped, but if not then watching a recap video of the FF XIV 1.0 events might be in order (I'm *sure* it gets recapped later though as there's a dungeon devoted to it where you get to visit the Agrius and Midgardsormr's corpse)
But the game really picks up steam with Heavensward (as mentioned by Oner), though the post-ARR and pre-HW quest patches can be...really tedious, depending on your inclination. I'm glad I played through them, but I can see why many choose to skip them (missing out on all the HW setup that happens in them, which is unfortunate)
Also, as far as I'm aware SE is reworking the base game (delayed due to human malware), cutting down on some of the backtracking and removing some of the filler fluff. However, they will also make the entire Crystal Tower raid mandatory (since it's a really important story arc for Shadowbringers, did I already mention how they set things up multiple expansions in advance?
)
On 5/28/2020 at 1:08 PM, Oner said:Guild Wars 2 has a decent story once you reach the first expansion and the subsequent living story episodes. FF14 is praised for the story of the first, but especially the second xpac. Friends of mine have been praising Blade and Soul's story, though I haven't played it. I've heard good things about LOTRO too from the forumites here.
But yeah, there's not a lot to pick from if you want an MMO with worthwhile storytelling, I'm still convinced that any story you do in an MMO, no matter how good, would be a lot better as a singleplayer game.Guild Wars 2's story went down the drain after the last expansion (which I thought was pretty bad in general), and due to the negative reception of HoT they never really finished the entire Mordremoth storyline (which was pretty good imho). The fact that their entire writing team (and most, if not all, of the senior devs) has quit multiple time since then didn't exaclty help matters if you ask me.
Anyway, personally still playing FF XIV (all but in name quit GW2 at this point), my Dragoon made it to lvl80 and I'm rather close with my Astrologian (healer) too. I said I'd do a write up once I got to 80 but you'll have to wait a little longer on my ramblings
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11 hours ago, the_dog_days said:
But that's not a Mordheim pic.
Ah yes, I should get back to Mordheim too. The drawback of already WFH fulltime prior to this pandemic is that it didn't get me any extra free time
11 hours ago, Keyrock said:I gotta go back to Conan Exiles at some point. Marelooke, how much more content is there now?
Hmm, I think you stopped playing around the time the Warmaker's dungeon was released, so off the top of my head:
- Warmaker's Sanctum
- The brewery dungeon (haven't done that one myself yet)
- Thrall rework (they level up now, old thralls are stuck though)
- Combat rework (worse for single player, imho, but ymmv)
- Mounts & mounted combat were added
- New pets (like Yetis etc)
- bunch of new legendary weapons and crafting tools and new bosses
- A lot of the major enemy bases were also overhauled, the two that come to mind are the two big pirate bases (the ship and the coastal one)
Various bugfixes and stuff and a few DLC (but that's mostly armor and building pieces). They also added some references to YouTubers (eg. Neebs gaming)
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This thread's missing a little something, something...
The sandstorm stays impressive...
Been mostly just hammering away at the pyramid, of and on. Now that thralls level up I should probably start training some and take on that new dungeon...
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1 hour ago, Hawke64 said:
Spoilers for NieR 1.
NieR: Gestalt/Replicant did the erase-your-save-for-the-best-ending thing first. So it was not as impactful for me in NieR: Automata.
I suppose, NieR 1 better subverted the hero's journey trope (not sure, if Automata tried to do so) and subsequent "playthroughs" (technically, it was one playthrough, but some parts were awfully similar) were less irritating, due to the fact that enemies and especially bosses did not scale, so by the third run, it required 2-3 minutes to deal with each one and move on. Also not being forced to play as a support character was great (I do strongly dislike 9S).
I was nowhere near the end though... unfortunately.
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On 3/30/2020 at 8:22 AM, Skarpen said:
Nier:Automata fans should be pleased that the first installment Nier:Replicant will be released on PC
If the port is of the same level of quality as Nier: Automata I think I'll pass.
Yes, I'm still bitter about it deciding my savegame was not worthy enough to be kept around.
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20 hours ago, Keyrock said:
Rise is better and Shadow is much better. Shadow is a legit good game IMHO. The reboot series becomes more actual Tomb Raider and less Geara of Lara as it progresses. For example, the sequels have actual tombs to raid. Heck, Shadow even has a couple that aren't completely insultingly easy. Still too easy for my tastes, but better than the Baby's First Platforming Puzzle crap that passes for challenge tombs in the first reboot game.
Still, barring the tombs, I found Rise to be the better of the series, certainly when it came to portraying Lara, and just storytelling in general.
Reboot and Shadow appear to have been written by the same people, Rise feels like a (and, imho, better) different team.
Let the Rise people do the writing and the other folks do the tomb designing and I'll be a happy camper.
(still gotta finish Shadow, the story was so cringe, even compared to reboot, that I just parked it)
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The gang, assembled (well, missing Alphinaud)
Mom always causing some heartache...
Heavensward spoilers (including the post-release patches)
SpoilerFlying a dragon straight into a city of dragon hunters. Check.
Come at me bro!
Light vs. dark
I've been told we can't have a full-size Midgardsormr to ride into battle. #sadpanda
Downtime for the hero, shocking!
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Mostly Final Fantasy XIV Online. Still leveling, story took a pretty dark turn between "vanilla" and "Heavensward" though it appears they're squandering the potential of that plot direction. Oh well, can't say I'm entirely surprised.
Voice actors changed with the first expansion as well, gotta say that for most I'm afraid I don't consider it an improvement (or at least jarring enough that it irks me still even though I'm in the "post Heavensward expansion patches" stage), exception being Alphinaud, whose new voice actor (or direction, at least) is a pretty big improvement. Here's to hoping they don't switch voice actors each expansion, though... I should note I did enjoy the main story of the expansion with the Dragonsong war.
I'll probably do a more comprehensive writeup on my opinions on the game once I complete the story.
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45 minutes ago, Tale said:
MO: Astray
It's on sale on Steam this week and the user reviews were pretty great. I see where they're coming from. It's like a sci-fi horror puzzle platformer where you play an adorably cute blob. Which is just kind of weird until you realize your adorably cute blob can latch itself onto the heads of the zombies and monsters and pilot them.
The cuteness just exists to soften the edge of the gruesome.
Also it's fun.
So it's a Headcrab simulator? Cool!
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45 minutes ago, Oner said:
You definitely played the wrong ports then.
Dark Souls and Nier Automata
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9 hours ago, algroth said:
Not sure if this has been shared yet, but Horizon Zero Dawn is coming to PC in Summer 2020 apparently.
Could be interesting, assuming the port doesn't suck. Since I can't name more than a single port I've played from recent years that didn't it's a wait-and-see for sure.
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Warhammer sale on Gog, this means you heathens who still haven't played Mordheim: City of the Damned can now make up for your sins for cheap!
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Conan Exiles is getting an expansion, sounds like there might be a new map, so that's exciting news since, well, I kinda know the current one by now
Maybe we'll get some technical improvements too (server software is not particularly high quality, it leaks memory as if it were a sieve)
https://twinfinite.net/2020/03/conan-exiles-expansion-dune/
Oh yes, also Conan Exiles-style Dune survival game, but we already knew that one was in the works.
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2 hours ago, 213374U said:
Baldur's Gate in name only!Er, I mean... this looks nothing like the previous games in the saga. Which is to be expected because those were made twenty years ago, by a completely different group of people and, more importantly, attempts to revive the genre or make spiritual successors have been met with mixed results, at best.
It's entirely possible that this game will be bad on its own merits. But complaining because it's not an upgraded IE game strikes me as unreasonable. Unlike Oblivion With Guns, no "proper" sequel to ToB has ever been in the works that was cancelled to make way for it. The series was dead before Larian took it over.
Here's hoping it won't suck, and also that Minsc will remain petrified.
No, the complaints are that it is called Baldur's Gate 3. Unless they continue the saga (which I would doubt, and honestly, if anybody does it's almost bound to end badly) it's capitalising on nostalgia and the reputation of those who went before instead of earning their own place (and while Larian has made some decent games they have not made it anywhere near "old Bioware" level). Had they called it "Baldur's Gate: Whatever" people would be (slightly) less annoyed (I know I would be).
While there are plenty of series that have a very loose connection between different "numbered releases" (so to speak) Baldur's Gate wasn't one of them. It was very explicitly the story of the Bhaalspawn. Hell, the titular city didn't even feature in the second game, and their only real connection was the PC...
Neverwinter Nights would have been a better pick (and given the clunkiness of both NWN1 and 2, a better fit for Larian too, at least at this point in time), since the only real connection between the two games was the location and they already played differently enough from each other (and much closer to what BG3 looks like) that it wouldn't have been as much of a stretch, either.
Alas, Neverwinter Nights doesn't exactly have the cult status the BG-series has so it's much less profitable to make a "NWN3" than a "BG3" from WotC perspective.
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1 hour ago, mkreku said:
Some leaked screenshots:
https://wccftech.com/baldurs-gate-3-screenshots-leaked-ahead-of-the-gameplay-reveal/
Looks great, to be honest.
Looks like an upgraded Neverwinter Nights based on the other screenshots (especially the one with the elevation difference with the archer). This might, or might not, be bad in itself, but it definitely would be bad for a game that calls itself Baldur's Gate 3. Should've just called it NWN3, honestly, and I doubt anybody would've cared.
In other words just capitalising on the cult status of Baldur's Gate, kind of expected from WotC, but disappointing from Larian.
We'll see how it turns out, I'm betting on severely disappointing for Baldur's Gate fans, but since we're a minority nowadays it will just end up like Fallout 3 where the media and masses will just eat it up anyway.
). The Ghost Ship one from the Sea of Clouds has some interesting fights as well.
Pictures of your games, lucky #13
in Computer and Console
Posted · Edited by marelooke
I enjoy how the entire squad shows up in instance cut scenes, like here, at the start of one of the Crystal Tower alliance raids (24man raids)
Alexander...one of the raids with a rather interesting backstory (the giant robot is the raid, as in, his inside)
Everyone's favourite character (after Alphinaud
), in one of my favourite locations: the steppes.
One of the few MMOs where the player character actually has downtime and socializes with the people around her, like here, on the steppes...
Even time for some song and dance!
Or just chillin' with the homies
NPCs actually do useful stuff when you're not around...
...like saving your life, from a distance (and looking cool while doing it)
Bucket list: duel on the hand of a giant statue? Check!
Meet Tiamat ... (poor girl
)
Was I the only one whose first thought was "Alistair Grout"?
