What are you playing now?

[marelooke]

 

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 ).

Edited July 23, 2015 by marelooke

[Tale]

Completed Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Can't recommend it.

 

Started up The Swapper. Most definitely can!

[Malcador]

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

[Keyrock]

I bought my 3rd transport, another Split Caiman, and my 2nd station, a Scruffin Farm, in X3: Albion Prelude.  I still make money faster doing manual trading runs myself than my station and secondary transport make, but the money they make requires zero time investment from me, it's just a nice half a million credits I can deposit into my account every now and then basically for free (well, it's basically free money from now on, now that the profits from the station have covered the cost of the station and the transport).  The amount of "free" money will accelerate now that I throw in that 3rd transport and the Scruffin Farm into the mix.  I got a nice location for the farm, it's in a sector with 2 Massom Mills (they use scruffin as a resource) and no other Scruffin Farms within 2 sectors, so I have basically no competition.  The only down side is that the nearest Power Plant (Scruffin Farms only need energy cells as a resource) is 2 sectors away, but that's not too bad.  Once I get the Scruffin Farm fully into production and scatter some Navigation Relay Satellites around neighboring sectors (the satellites act as your "eyes" in a sector so that you can see prices while you aren't there physically, this helps my hired pilot find the best places to sell products and buy resources efficiently) I'm off to Paranid space so that I can do some trading and run some missions for them to start raising my rep with them, since they're the ones I'll be buying warships from in the not too distant future.  Paranid are super xenophobic, so getting any work done with them is going to be really tough sledding at first and it will take a good long while until they trust me enough to sell me a heavy fighter or a corvette, let alone a capital ship.  It's worth it though since their warships not only look awesome, but they're top notch performance wise (outside of OTAS ships).

[marelooke]

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.

Edited July 23, 2015 by marelooke

[Keyrock]

Ooh ooh ohh!  The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna released today.  I may have to take a few days off from my galactic trading empire building in X3, or at least cut down the time a bit as I go puzzling again.  

 

/rubs hands together

[majestic]

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

 

The dungeons that came out after 5.2 were tuned down back to WotLK difficulty levels, but I'm pretty certain that if you could actually take The Stonecore heroic and somehow paste it into TBC it would come out squarely on top in terms of 5-man difficulty. Compared to that instances like the Shadow Labyrinth heroic seemed to be downright, uhm, reasonable.

Edited July 23, 2015 by majestic

[Majek]

I'm trying to play some more of D:original sin. I never really got into it becuse i played everything else at that time. Maybe i should go and finish Wasteland 2 as well, before both EE/GOTY editions arrive this year ( i think).

[Malcador]

The dungeons that came out after 5.2 were tuned down back to WotLK difficulty levels, but I'm pretty certain that if you could actually take The Stonecore heroic and somehow paste it into TBC it would come out squarely on top in terms of 5-man difficulty. Compared to that instances like the Shadow Labyrinth heroic seemed to be downright, uhm, reasonable.

Ahh ok, I see. Well that is a shame, stupid Wrath babies.

[GhostofAnakin]

The levels in Killzone: Shadowfall are longer and more involved than in CoD Ghosts.  It's kind of highlighting something that bothered me about Ghosts, but couldn't quite put my finger on.  Chapter length was incredibly short.

[HoonDing]

It's funny, Sacred 1/2 Seraphim almost looks exactly like Thor's sister Angela.

 

[Humanoid]

 

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

 

The dungeons that came out after 5.2 were tuned down back to WotLK difficulty levels, but I'm pretty certain that if you could actually take The Stonecore heroic and somehow paste it into TBC it would come out squarely on top in terms of 5-man difficulty. Compared to that instances like the Shadow Labyrinth heroic seemed to be downright, uhm, reasonable.

 

 

On reflection that's probably true overall. One thing I forget when comparing is that people tended to just pick and choose the few easiest dungeons and do them over and over again, while in subsequent expansions to get the 'full' reward required queuing up for a random one using the group finder (even when doing so with a fully pre-made group, as I do 90% of the time). Heroic Shattered Halls for example I may have only done a couple of times along the journey, while doing Mechanar and Slave Pens dozens of times.

 

That said, my personal experience doesn't make for a fair comparison really because I went into BC as a "retired" raider, very close to quitting the game after getting a full time job and not having any access to raid gear, and tackled the heroic dungeons with that in mind. I had raided with an American guild in vanilla which disbanded shortly before the expansion launch, and I'd joined/co-founded a joke guild with a few friends, with the idea of "hey let's check out what's new in BC before we quit for good". It's by accident that the guild turned into a real raiding guild and we ended up with a creditable top-10 server progression by the end of the expansion despite giving away a half-year head start. By contrast then, every expansion since I've come into I've been able to outgear the dungeons extremely quickly and therefore don't really have a genuine gauge of their difficulty save for perhaps during the first couple of weeks.

 

The other thing is that I tend to lump BC in with vanilla as "old WoW" and everything after that as "new WoW". I just don't really think of old WoW much when making comparisons because mechanically it was the dark ages where balance was never a concern, and developers had no problem having some specs do literally half the damage of others, enrage timers were not a thing, and you could stack as many tanks and healers as you liked.

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm having FPS overload.  It was a drag getting through CoD Ghosts, and while I'm having a bit more fun with Killzone:Shadowfall, I'm still not completely engrossed in it.

 

I need to go back to RPGs after I finish my playthrough.

[Keyrock]

I started playing The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna.  I freakin' loved the base game and I'm loving this one so far.  Not much to differentiate it from the base game yet, which isn't surprising; I wouldn't expect them to break out new mechanics right off the bat, but hopefully there are some new mechanics.  I will say that the puzzle difficulty right off the bat is significantly more difficult that the early puzzles in the base game, which, again, I would expect, as this is an expansion, so anyone playing is expected to have played the base game and thus is familiar with the existing mechanics and at least some of the tricks and strategies developed while playing the base game.  So far the interactions with the terminals have been rather amusing and even more interesting than in the base game, there was even a Zork-like minigame I got to play in a terminal (I hope there are more).  Hopefully, later on I'll run into some RUTHLESSLY difficult puzzles.  Some of the star puzzles in the base game were fiendishly tricky, hopefully they upped their game even further and made some star puzzles downright diabolical. 

[Tale]

Finished Swapper, on to Bastion.

 

I never did finish Bastion back when I played it on PC, so here's to hoping I have better luck this time.

[Malcador]

In between healing idiots in WoW, have an urge to play a Mechwarrior game - have MW4 Mercs, so I am trying to get that working in Win 8 as well as returning to MWO.

[majestic]

The other thing is that I tend to lump BC in with vanilla as "old WoW" and everything after that as "new WoW". I just don't really think of old WoW much when making comparisons because mechanically it was the dark ages where balance was never a concern, and developers had no problem having some specs do literally half the damage of others, enrage timers were not a thing, and you could stack as many tanks and healers as you liked.

 

 

Yeah, part of Classic WOW & TBC's difficulty came from having to fight the game as well as the enemies, especially with regards to tanking and keeping aggro and having to have a certain setup to get through the fights, or fights being unreasonably hard with certain setups or specs being completely worthless.

 

Maybe it was the sense of being new and all, but the WoW still was more "fun" back then - before I completely burned out on it during Firelands in Cataclysm where they gameplay was the reason for the game being hard, rather than the game & class mechanics. *shrug*

Edited July 24, 2015 by majestic

[Malcador]

Eh, doing stuff back in vanilla an TBC wasn't that bad. I miss the old talent trees, was nice to get a mix of Holy/Prot as a Paladin and be solid in PvP (1.9 PvP was the best ever - my taking on 2 warriors and winning was the highlight of my WoW career). They certainly did improve things at least for ferals and Paladins (though that skillet has changed so freaking much over the years). It was fun to need CC in dungeons and raids, much so so that the Timewalking (where you go back to lvl 70, 80 or 90 dungeons as 100s) results in wipes as people don't CC, they overpull and so on.

[Keyrock]

I scooped up Cradle a "sci-fi" exploration quest" (their words, not mine).  I'm not sure what to say about this game.  45 minutes in and I still have very little idea of anything.  So, there is zero hand holding in this game.  You wake up in a yurt, presumably somewhere in Mongolia.  There is a mechanical woman on a table but she's not functioning.  There are tons of objects to interact with and pictures to look at and newspaper clippings to read.  From what I can gather this is taking place in the not too distant future and there was (is?) some kind of virus.  I think this virus was killing off humans and they figured out a way to transfer their consciousness into machines...  maybe.  I can go outside but I haven't yet, I've mostly been checking out the yurt.  This is one of those games where they plop you somewhere, tell you nothing about what you're supposed to be doing, and let you figure everything out completely on your own, which is completely fine with me.  I don't know what to think of the game yet, but I'm definitely interested to play some more.  Next step is to go outside, I guess.

[ManifestedISO]

I'm having a bit more fun with Killzone:Shadowfall, I'm still not completely engrossed in it.

 

I need to go back to RPGs after I finish my playthrough.

 

I made it to the 'green swimming level', as I recall, back when the game launched, and made an honest attempt to restart last month. It didn't work out. 

 

I'm enjoying Knights II now more than ever before. KotOR, I mean, the one with D&D laser swords and killer audio design. 

[Agiel]

I scooped up Cradle a "sci-fi" exploration quest" (their words, not mine).  I'm not sure what to say about this game.  45 minutes in and I still have very little idea of anything.  So, there is zero hand holding in this game.  You wake up in a yurt, presumably somewhere in Mongolia.  There is a mechanical woman on a table but she's not functioning.  There are tons of objects to interact with and pictures to look at and newspaper clippings to read.  From what I can gather this is taking place in the not too distant future and there was (is?) some kind of virus.  I think this virus was killing off humans and they figured out a way to transfer their consciousness into machines...  maybe.  I can go outside but I haven't yet, I've mostly been checking out the yurt.  This is one of those games where they plop you somewhere, tell you nothing about what you're supposed to be doing, and let you figure everything out completely on your own, which is completely fine with me.  I don't know what to think of the game yet, but I'm definitely interested to play some more.  Next step is to go outside, I guess.

 

Picked it up as well. Spent about an hour in the first task of making breakfast for an eagle since it's as if the task given to you assumed that you the player have lived in a Mongolian Yurt your entire life. Went crazy trying to figure out where the mortar and pestle that was needed to grind up the ginger was as although I had a general idea of what they looked like, I didn't know where some Mongolians living on the steppes kept them (on top of the crockery).

 

Although the game has the kind of adventure game designer logic that aggravates me, otherwise having a good time. Am probably about half-way through the game if the level select screen is anything to go by, and the fiction of that world is certainly drawing me in.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Agiel

[LavenderGooms]

I picked up the Horse Lords DLC for CK2 and am looking forwarding to jamming on that

 

I was eyeing Running With Rifles, has anyone seen or heard anything about that one?

[Humanoid]

 

The other thing is that I tend to lump BC in with vanilla as "old WoW" and everything after that as "new WoW". I just don't really think of old WoW much when making comparisons because mechanically it was the dark ages where balance was never a concern, and developers had no problem having some specs do literally half the damage of others, enrage timers were not a thing, and you could stack as many tanks and healers as you liked.

 

 

Yeah, part of Classic WOW & TBC's difficulty came from having to fight the game as well as the enemies, especially with regards to tanking and keeping aggro and having to have a certain setup to get through the fights, or fights being unreasonably hard with certain setups or specs being completely worthless.

 

Maybe it was the sense of being new and all, but the WoW still was more "fun" back then - before I completely burned out on it during Firelands in Cataclysm where they gameplay was the reason for the game being hard, rather than the game & class mechanics. *shrug*

 

 

I burned out in Dragon Soul, which was a shockingly bad raid, but I'd already been planning an exit strategy since the start of Cataclysm anyway, giving up any formal leadership roles and whatnot. Didn't mind Firelands, wasn't a terrible place in itself, but it really needed its companion raid not to be cancelled. (Abyssal Maw was supposed to be a concurrent raid, at only 7 bosses, Firelands wasn't enough to stand on itself)

 

The guild had already downsized from a 25-person raiding guild to a 2x10s schedule, so we didn't see the really hard stuff, ended up 6/7 and 7/8 heroic in the last two raid dungeons. My subscription expired literally the day we got the Spine of Deathwing kill.

[Cantousent]

I also quit playing during Firelands, and that after about half of the bosses.  I liked feeling like I was useful and, as a healer, I was never sidelined during raids, but I also felt like the game itself had taken a life of its own.  I think the idea of making raids less excruciating by doling out some of the great gear for 10 man raids.  After that, it was a lot harder to get larger raids going.  Really, ever since I left WoW, having completed WotLK *before* they tweaked it down, the early Cataclysm raids, and about half of the Firelands, I don't even look at MMORPGs anymore.  I did play a tiny bit of the Old Republic, but I just can't get into the grinding anymore.  I'm not even sure I remember the WoW experience very well, it's been long enough.

[Mamoulian War]

I caved in and bought Lords of Xulima on GOG sale. I have to say, that the game and especialy boss fights are pretty challenging, especially, if you do not go the min/max route. The writing is pretty cheesy, but that does not damge the game.

 

The two things I do not like with this game is that the fights are sometimes very very random and after playing 30 hours the combat starts get little to repetitive. It does not hinder my enjoyement of tbe game yet, but we'll see how it feels after 10 more hours )

 

In the end, I would still recommend this game, especially, if you are not affraid of having little bit more of challenge )

 

7/10 from me.