What are you playing right now?

[Mamoulian War]

Few more hours into Europa Universalis 2. This time much more action involved Zimbabwe/Mutapa have decided to declare war on me again, so my retaliation was powerful and deciding. After few years, I was able to Annex Zimbabwe and with it, their golden mine. Now the ducats are flowing

 

You can find more about latest Xhosa adventures >here< :D

[GhostofAnakin]

Inspect them during the match and you'll see.

 

I'm too busy getting my ass kicked to have time to click on someone.

 

Speaking of the Iron Banner, it sucks that the reputation with the faction resets each week.  I'm finally up to a decent rep with them that I can buy good gear when I gather more Legendary marks.  Problem is by the time I get enough Legendary marks, the week will be up and I won't be at enough rep with them to buy them.

[GhostofAnakin]

Yeah, so apparently the Iron Banner stuff gets reset tonight at 1 pm PST.  So much for trying to finish up that stuff.

 

I'll probably play one match of PvP per day to get the 15 Legendary marks, but that's about it.  It takes way too long to go up in reputation among the MP-centric factions.

[Katphood]

Just started playing Bloodborne for the first time. Haven't beaten the first Boos yet but I am already impressed by the game. A very very entertaining experience. I also love the art style and the graphics.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Cat Food

[Majek]

GhostofAnakin iron banner is actually a random event. Only Bungie knows when it happens, so yeah you have to do all of its **** when it's there. And well Crucible and Vanguard gear available for legendary marks is decent enough to survive in Destiny without other factions gear.

 

Cat Food, just a tip, once you meet the first boss you can level up in the Hunter's dream, if you didn't know that. So if you have trouble level up and there is a reason why there so much Oil and Molotovs given to you at the start of the game.

[Katphood]

Cat Food, just a tip, once you meet the first boss you can level up in the Hunter's dream, if you didn't know that. So if you have trouble level up and there is a reason why there so much Oil and Molotovs given to you at the start of the game.

Thanks! I just reached the first boss today and got killed. I noticed her standing there when I was back!

One thing I would like to know though, and this might sound stupid, but what does the game mean with 'Awaken Anew'? Some items have that in the description and I haven't tried it yet since I don't know what it does.

 

Overall I am enjoying the hell out of this game. Never played any of the Dark Souls games but I did spend some 60 hours on Demon's Souls back in 2009. I feel that Demon's Souls had more depth when it comes to weapon/character customization but what makes Bloodborne awesome is the environmental story telling. It's simple yet so compelling because it is done right with care and attention.

[Majek]

Wow you made the perfect jump between games IMO, since Bloodborne is the first game after Demon's souls that has the same atmosphere, Dark Souls games were different. Anyway.

Awaken anew just means teleport back to the last lamp you touched.  The difference is that Bold Hunter mark ( the yellow consumable) lets you keep all of the souls erm blood echoes :D you gathered and the Hunter mark doesn't. Basically the same mechanic in all "souls" games. THough if you have blood stain on the ground, you can use normal HUnter mark and it won't affect it, so you can pick it up later.

[GhostofAnakin]

Playing in the regular Crucible versus low level opponents is so much less frustrating than going up against all those Level 40+ players in the Iron Banner.  My team won all 3 matches today, earning me 35 Legendary marks (one was worth 15 for some reason, the other two 10).  I finished at the top of the scoreboard 2 out of the 3 matches.  Finished 2nd in the other one.

[Keyrock]

My first captain Madame Lucinda has continued to survive in Sunless Sea and I've explored a decent chunk of the map.  Of course, I had mostly been playing it safe early on, but ever since I bought my new house and made a will to make sure it gets passed on to me heir, I've been taking a few more risks while away from Fallen London.  A couple voyages ago I though about retiring her since I was starting to get desperately low on money and supplies, but that situation has improved significantly after a couple fairly lucrative voyages, so I'm going to keep going for a while longer while the winds of fortune are blowing in my direction.

[Katphood]

I play Okami HD on the PS3 whenever I am not playing Bloodborne. Man, Okami is the very definition of an underrated gem. Such gorgeous visuals and interesting characters. It is also pretty long, after 15 hours or so you get the feeling that you have just barely managed to scratch the surface. Highly recommend!

[GhostofAnakin]

More Destiny.

 

The Taken on Venus are the hardest of the bunch, largely because they shoot those three exploding balls of light at you even when you kill them.  Although the ones on the Cosmodrome can be annoying when they put up their force field.

 

I can't find a good legendary (purple) helmet.  I have one, but my Light level has gone up a lot since I got it, and now I have a blue helmet that's got better stats.  I need, I believe, 120 Legendary marks to buy one from the Warlock leader.  I'm currently sitting at 75.

[marelooke]

Got stuck on some battle in D:OS for now (the two headed fire dude with the icon that keeps reviving his cronies). The main issue being that I'm basically three manning him since my pyro/geo-mancer only has offensive Pyromancy spells, and tossing fire at fire elementals seems to be kinda counter productive (who could have guessed ). Finding some offensive Geomancy spell would probably solve all my issues with that fight. But the entire random finding of spells and stuff is kinda...meh. Also kinda annoying that enemies keep going for my wizards, I could take the stench skill but I had the bright idea to make my wizard the high charisma character... oh well...

 

 

So playing more Warframe. Saryn Prime has been out for a bit now and Saryn has been my favourite frame for quite a while (apparently with 18% of my time spent with her, though I think those stats are only accurate since they revisited the Star Chart a bit over a year ago). Kind of a shame that there's so much whining about her skill rework (which I quite liked, barring for the fact that they decreased the survivability of the non-Prime Warframe which sucks since she has a lot of melee abilities...). (for the uninitiated "Primes" are "improved" versions of the "normal" versions that are, theoretically, harder to get, in the beginning they just had a different focus, now they are just plain upgrades to the normal version)

 

Trying to get my reputation up with a few other Syndicates now (which should bring me in the positive with 4 (out of 6) of them, will be a fun balancing game then to keep them all happy-ish afterwards...

 

Also trying to get my hands on the Ivara Warframe (got 2 out of 4 parts now), I'm slowly getting better at those Spy missions, just need a bit of luck with the drops now...

 

Kind of curious about the new patch that should drop soon (today? Wednesday is usually patch-day...), especially the Sabotage mission rework.

[Raithe]

Trying to get back into a Pillars of Eternity run.

 

Managed to get to Cead Nua, but I seem to only be able to play short burst of it at a time. Not sinking chunky game time in like I did when I first sat down to it.

[WDeranged]

Trying to get back into a Pillars of Eternity run.

 

Managed to get to Cead Nua, but I seem to only be able to play short burst of it at a time. Not sinking chunky game time in like I did when I first sat down to it.

 

Pillars of Eternity is a strange one.  I almost don't remember playing it and yet I've got fond memories of it, like taking Aloth to get his personalities examined and Durance's general spite and lechery.

[Hurlshort]

I'm loving the Story time mode in Pillars, I was able to clear out the Caed Nua dungeon in an hour instead of a week.  

[Gfted1]

I'm torn on Story Time. On one hand it provides me the motivation to finally get around to installing the game but on the other hand I'm a story-lite kind of person and really enjoy the combat in games over story. This mode doesn't do anything to improve that front for me since the combat hasn't changed, just been greatly reduced. Meh, Ill just wait another 6-12 months until all the bugs and spontaneous class/rules changes play out.

[Rosbjerg]

Trying to get back into a Pillars of Eternity run.

 

Managed to get to Cead Nua, but I seem to only be able to play short burst of it at a time. Not sinking chunky game time in like I did when I first sat down to it.

 

I couldn't get past Caed Nua for 2 runs now.. then I switched to a Bleak Walker Paladin (was playing Cipher) and now I'm loving it.

You might simply be playing in a style that's not working for you?

[Gromnir]

am playing a potd run o' poe.  we stopped playing poe before wm1 were released.  we resumed once wm2 were available.  we wanted to give the poe expansion a fair shake, and we didn't think that were possible if we played the two halves many months apart. 

 

poe is a good game for Gromnir, but we sympathize with those less cheerful 'bout embracing their inner ocd.  fight dragons in bg2 were, 'less you managed to cheese 'em with a dozen traps or a chromatic orb exploit, a protracted sequence essential orders to your party.  we typical had bg2 dragon battles set to pause on spell cast.  that meant that we effective were pausing every half-second or so.   Gromnir liked bg2 dragon battles.  people liked bg2 dragon battles, and lich battles, and opponent adventurer battles, but the thing is that while there were more such complex battles in bg2 compared to bg1, the bg2 battles that required considerable attention were typically punctuation rather than every word o' the bg2 story.  we could fight a half-dozen trash mobs in bg2 before sudden finding us faced with a dragon.

 

... 

 

almost every poe trash mob has us micromanaging at a level similar to bg2 dragon battles.  yeah, am actual impressed by a few o' the new wm battles-- they challenge our established tactics. even so, poe, particularly on potd, can become an endurance challenge.  in the future, when we play poe, we likely will drop the difficulty as our most recent potd run is becoming exhausting.

 

as an aside, am happy we waited to play wm.  the first "wilderness" maps that is available in wm 1 is saturated with grindtastic combats that ain't particular clever.  the end location o' wm 1 is fantastic, but am suspecting that we woulda' been disappointed with wm if we had only had wm1 available to us.  wm 2 has less 'o the seeming filler nonsense... though am not sure why developers keep needing learn this lesson.  regardless o' people says 10 or  15 years removed, the stuff folks liked most in totsc when it were released were durlag's tower... and bg2 were best when it offered larger set-pieces such as cult of the eyeless and de'arnise keep.  am wishing developers would learn.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited March 2, 2016 by Gromnir

[Hurlshort]

I absolutely love the lore, characters, setting, artwork, and story of PoE.  My choices in dialogue are amazing, I often wonder if I should try a different character just to unlock new options, and I love the skill checks.

 

That being said, I hate the combat and I'm happy to skim through it on story mode.  No micromanagement makes me happy.  I'd probably be happy with the combat if it was a smaller party and there wasn't so much of it.  I enjoyed my 3 person group in the first dungeon, but it became a grind quickly after that.

[Lexx]

Turn based combat and less of these fillers and I probably would still play PoE.

[Hurlshort]

Turn based combat and less of these fillers and I probably would still play PoE.

 

It's also fairly overwhelming that there are soooo many skills, spells, and abilities.  I have no idea how most of them work, everything happens too fast, and it is too much to keep track of.  If it is turn based I have time to contemplate and would actually think about how they are being used.

[DreamWayfarer]

I quite like combat in PoE. I've never played BG or any other old-school CRPGs, but from what I've heard, I prefer the way PoE combat plays.

 

The incredible number of ability sinergies and potential builds, the process of learning how to use the tools at your disposal to fight different types of foes, the complex yet balanced rule system, all those things are what I want in a RPG.

 

Still, I understand where some who dislike the game are coming from. It is hard to learn, punishing to new players, and demands a lot of micro-managing. Not only that, but the game does a very poor job of explaining its rules.

 

I play on the hardest difficulty without minmaxing, and for me the game is quite challenging, even if I've been on the builds forum long enough to know the weird way speed bonuses work and be able to tell if two effects stack or not.

 

I have no idea how someone could call it easy, and am happy the folks of Obsidian added Story-Time mode for those who are less willing than I to invest their time into learning how to play more effectively. After all, the goal is having fun, isn't it?

Edited March 2, 2016 by DreamWayfarer

[ShadySands]

I'm also not a fan of the combat, before I would just cheat but now I use storytime mode and cheat

 

It's also weird to me how much I am bothered by the major (major to me, anyway) class changes they make to the game. I shouldn't really care but I feel so negative about it for some reason.

 

I dunno, but I'm finally making progress in my new playthrough

[DreamWayfarer]

It's also weird to me how much I am bothered by the major (major to me, anyway) class changes they make to the game. I shouldn't really care but I feel so negative about it for some reason.

 

I've never felt the class changes were major. They mostly buffed underwelming abilities and nerfed things commonly seem as OP, with a few overreactions that got mostly fixed later, like the major cipher nerf that was shortly followed by a major cipher buff.

[Raithe]

Decided to have a wander back and re-try Deus Ex: HR the Director's Cut.

 

That balance of questing to see what's new while half-remembering what was in it the first time around...