What Are You Playing Now: The New Beginning Thread

[Raithe]

Now, I've ordered up tha tslew of replacement parts and pretty much doing the complete new PC when it all turns up in a week... And I've suddenly found it really hard to actually get any enthusiasm to play the games I'm currently doing...

It's that "better memory, graphics, cpu" expectantly waiting, and that part of my head thats saying why play anything now when it'll perform so much better in a week or two....

[Skazz]

18 hours ago, Raithe said:

Now, I've ordered up tha tslew of replacement parts and pretty much doing the complete new PC when it all turns up in a week... And I've suddenly found it really hard to actually get any enthusiasm to play the games I'm currently doing...

It's that "better memory, graphics, cpu" expectantly waiting, and that part of my head thats saying why play anything now when it'll perform so much better in a week or two....

Oh, I know this all too well. Only in my case it's more of a "why play anything now when I'll be dead in 40 years".

[melkathi]

Yeah, know that feeling.

I have been pondering who I'll leave my Steam/GOG/etc accounts to in my will

[Bokishi]

Makes sense not to play until you can experience the games properly 

[Mamoulian War]

Slowly preparing my toon for NG+ of DS2. Upgrading weapons buying new armors and spells for trophies and levelling covenants. Meanwhile, I’ve launched after more than year Cereer mode in Assetto Corsa... took me 2 and half hour to win the Vallelunga GT3 round with McLaren against Medium AI *sighs* I am soo bad again  

[Tale]

I bought Far Cry 3 on sale. So many people raved about it, but I never played it before. But I absolutely have played it before.

Climbing towers to uncover the map, hunting animals for upgrades, clearing out enemy bases for ZOC. I've played this game lots of times... I somehow managed to skip Ubisoft formula outside of Assassin's Creeds until I abandoned even that at 3. And to run into it again is kind of disappointing, because it's just so heavily present.

[Keyrock]

I decided to give LotRO a try and made a female hobbit guardian, because (sadly) I can't play an orc, I wouldn't play an elf if you put a gun to my head, humans are boring, and dwarves are cool, but I've played tons of them in other games. I only just started but it seems decent enough, better looking than I expected from a 450 year old game. The combat is your bog standard MMO combat, which is to say about as stimulating as popping a Xanax and watching the paint dry, hopefully it gets better once I have more skills to work with.

As an aside, the game plays quite well with a Steam Controller. I'm probably one of the only people on the planet that really likes the Steam Controller, I'm glad I got one when I did since it's unlikely Valve will continue to produce them.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Keyrock

[Bartimaeus]

I liked the Steam Controller a lot, except for the fact that I have smaller than average hands and the ergonomics of it are extremely off as a result, and unfortunately it becomes very painful within maybe ten minutes to keep using for my chronically pained hands. Alas.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[213374U]

I'm back to Dungeons & Dragons Online after I found out that they are giving away all adventure packs and both expansions can be purchased for less than half a month's sub stipend..

Ah, the feeling of not having the faintest idea of what I'm doing in a game where I used to run high end content.

[Humanoid]

Huh, so the Steam Controller was discontinued last year, I must have missed that news. Never held one or even looked up what made it special so that's not surprising. Then again if it wasn't for the need for analogue inputs I'd probably still be using a Sidewinder gamepad from the 90s.

Interestingly I can't seem to find confirmation of the Steam Machine/SteamOS project being officially discontinued, which makes for an interesting contrast.

[Lexx]

Steam machines flopped years ago. Will be interesting to see if the VR headset will go away as well in the sooner future. Would be interesting to know how well Alyx was selling.

[ShadySands]

13 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I decided to give LotRO a try and made a female hobbit guardian, because (sadly) I can't play an orc, I wouldn't play an elf if you put a gun to my head, humans are boring, and dwarves are cool, but I've played tons of them in other games. I only just started but it seems decent enough, better looking than I expected from a 450 year old game. The combat is your bog standard MMO combat, which is to say about as stimulating as popping a Xanax and watching the paint dry, hopefully it gets better once I have more skills to work with.

I'm having fun making my bear go bear on some orcs. Then I ran into another bear but since I'm a larger bear eating bear that bear stood no chance

[melkathi]

After grabbing a key from Oner over in the Great Game Giveaway (where you may want to drop in and see if there is anything you'd like), I started today with Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark.

I have played 1 hours and 10 minutes so far apparently. I could play more. But I want to have dinner. Definitely a very positive first impression.

 

[Keyrock]

2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Huh, so the Steam Controller was discontinued last year, I must have missed that news. Never held one or even looked up what made it special so that's not surprising. 

What makes the Steam Controller special is how LUDICROUSLY configurable it is. For games specifically designed with a gamepad in mind, an XBOX controller or dualshock is at least as good, more often than not better. However, for games not designed for gamepads, the Steam Controller is LIGHTYEARS better than any other gamepad. There are other 3rd party apps out there to translate keyboard and/or mouse inputs to a gamepad, but none of them hold a candle to the Steam Controller's config utility. It's straight up bonkers the amount of options and the level of fidelity with which you can customize your setup. Best of all, you can save and import profiles online, so chances are there's already a great config for whatever game out there and you can fine tune it to your liking.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Keyrock

[Zoraptor]

2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Interestingly I can't seem to find confirmation of the Steam Machine/SteamOS project being officially discontinued, which makes for an interesting contrast.

Steam Machines never got officially canceled as they were an 'external' project- they relied on 3rd parties making them and to all intensive porpoises they never got made in the first place. You can't cancel something you were never meant to make yourself [taps head].

The other part (SteamOS) still exists. It's not exactly mainstream given even steam's own survey has all Linuces at ~1% market share but exists as a hedge against MS going walled garden. Every once in a while there's something significant like Proton released, and there's a decent amount of work put into drivers/ vulcan etc.

[Bartimaeus]

4 hours ago, Keyrock said:

What makes the Steam Controller special is how LUDICROUSLY configurable it is. For games specifically designed with a gamepad in mind, an XBOX controller or dualshock is at least as good, more often than not better. However, for games not designed for gamepads, the Steam Controller is LIGHTYEARS better than any other gamepad. There are other 3rd party apps out there to translate keyboard and/or mouse inputs to a gamepad, but none of them hold a candle to the Steam Controller's config utility. It's straight up bonkers the amount of options and the level of fidelity with which you can customize your setup. Best of all, you can save and import profiles online, so chances are there's already a great config for whatever game out there and you can fine tune it to your liking.

I don't remember - does the Steam Controller have timing-based multi-input? e.g. if you hold down, say, left trigger for between 0.01-0.50 seconds, it'll execute one function, while if you hold down for anything past 0.5 (or some other arbitrary range), it'll do a different function? I use that with a program called Xpadder to multibind certain miscellaneous functions in games, and find that it works pretty well - IIRC, Steam Controller has modifiers (holding down one button changes the functions of others) to do a similar sort of thing, but there are different use cases.

[Keyrock]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I don't remember - does the Steam Controller have timing-based multi-input? e.g. if you hold down, say, left trigger for between 0.01-0.50 seconds, it'll execute one function, while if you hold down for anything past 0.5 (or some other arbitrary range), it'll do a different function? I use that with a program called Xpadder to multibind certain miscellaneous functions in games, and find that it works pretty well - IIRC, Steam Controller has modifiers (holding down one button changes the functions of others) to do a similar sort of thing, but there are different use cases.

I don't know about timing-based modifiers. There are a multi-button options, but I don't recall seeing a timing-based option.

There are a lot of things you can do with the Steam Controller because of the touch pads. For example, you can set up the right one to act like a mouse and you can configure mouse acceleration, haptic feedback levels, etc.

[Bokishi]

Yes the Steam Controller is a lifesaver when I play pc games on the TV. I’m not limited to only games compatible with the Xbox controller, I can play RTS and old school FPS games, or any game requiring mouse and keyboard

[Bartimaeus]

First person shooters (unless they're monstrously slow-paced) are pretty much the only game-type I won't touch with a controller. I can do singleplayer RTSes with a controller using some creative binds (not that it'll be optimal or anything, but it'll at least be playable), but not using a mouse and keyboard for a FPS literally makes me want to kill myself - I'm not kidding at all, there is nothing more depressing and defeating-feeling than trying to play a first person shooter with a controller, it is an abjectly terrible and desolate experience that has made me all but give up the genre entirely.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[LadyCrimson]

^  I think Borderlands type games are about as "shooter" as I'd get on a controller. I'm half-comfortable with that level of it by now, where you side step to adjust aim a bit, more than you "turn".  But if you then get on KB/mouse you're reminded how much more precise, faster and easier it is, how much less often you miss, etc, even with something like Borderlands.

Edited July 27, 2020 by LadyCrimson

[Oner]

After 110 hours and 4,5-ish weeks (had a vacation in-between), I'm nearing the end of Persona 4. 10/10, apart from dungeons becoming monotonous I've had a blast. Can't wait for a hopeful P5R PC release.

Started playing Your Turn To Die, a free puzzle death game. Sadly it's incomplete so far, but it's the first chapter was great.

[Wormerine]

On 7/25/2020 at 3:48 PM, Tale said:

I bought Far Cry 3 on sale. So many people raved about it, but I never played it before. But I absolutely have played it before.

Climbing towers to uncover the map, hunting animals for upgrades, clearing out enemy bases for ZOC. I've played this game lots of times...

I like Far Cry 3 though. It's definitly Ubisoft-the-game, but I thought it was one of the best versions - even Towers were fairly enjoyable, and side activities are reasonably paced. For the first island. The game lost me, when the fun villain kicks the dirt, get replaced by a boring dude in a suit, and we get to do everything once again.  Also, unlike AssCreed you actually control the character. 

[BruceVC]

On 7/26/2020 at 8:50 PM, ShadySands said:

I'm having fun making my bear go bear on some orcs. Then I ran into another bear but since I'm a larger bear eating bear that bear stood no chance

 

On 7/26/2020 at 7:04 AM, Keyrock said:

I decided to give LotRO a try and made a female hobbit guardian, because (sadly) I can't play an orc, I wouldn't play an elf if you put a gun to my head, humans are boring, and dwarves are cool, but I've played tons of them in other games. I only just started but it seems decent enough, better looking than I expected from a 450 year old game. The combat is your bog standard MMO combat, which is to say about as stimulating as popping a Xanax and watching the paint dry, hopefully it gets better once I have more skills to work with.

As an aside, the game plays quite well with a Steam Controller. I'm probably one of the only people on the planet that really likes the Steam Controller, I'm glad I got one when I did since it's unlikely Valve will continue to produce them.

Its quite a coincidence but after finishing RDR2 online I realized I miss the MMO experience and I have been seriously considering starting to play one again, Hurlshot mentioned the vastness of the LotRO and I have never played this MMO. I enjoy a large world where I can explore and maybe play on my own ...I join guilds if I make the MMO more permanent because I enjoy the social side....so I may be playing LotRO soon 

[BruceVC]

And I just finished Dishonored Death of the Outsider, I have always enjoyed the Dishonored franchise. I like the game mechanics and the narrative 

I ended killing the Outsider but I  still dont understand who he was and why he did what he did but it was a great game anyway 

[ShadySands]

Playing DDO. Finally got my warlock to 20 and then reincarnated as a wizard. My goal was to max out sorc and wiz past life feats then get back to warlocking but that's a lot of work that I'm not sure I have the patience for.