What are you playing right now

[Orogun01]

I'm wrapping up with the sidequest from White March, particularly that one overpowered boss fight they threw in  there to remind me what I hate about old CRPGs.

How come they have the notion to include gimmicks like colorblind mode for what is likely a minority of player but don't have the forethought to add an autosave before combat so I don't have to listen to the same dialogue options every time I attempt to survive a broken boss fight? I guess the rest of us should just wait until seething rage is declared a disability. 

[Fenixp]

Well the reason why I do not like skill based stuff, is not because it sucks, but because the balance of the stuff and grinding tends to break the game much more than xp grind. The thing, which I love most is XP based adventures with tiered level caps. This allows very challenging encounters even in middle of the game. We are playing that way our Rise of the Runelords AP in PFRPG tabletop. And I love it.

Oh it's something different entirely for pen and paper. Keeping track of a dozen or so of skills for each character would be insane.

 

Renown Explorers is pretty damn fun.  They really hit on something with the combat system and the mood balance system.  There is quite a bit of strategic depth to encounters in trying to manipulate the overall mood of the battle to gain advantages and make your better abilities more effective.

Renowned Explorers is great - funny, reasonably well written and mechanically interesting. I'd still wish they would experiment with something a little different than abilities decreasing a bar which turns enemies to defeated when it empties, but at least they're trying -something- that's not just "Shoot people until they're dead." Oh and playing the game feels great, even when you're a total scumbag.

[Gorth]

...and finished the hm dread palace run. those guys made it look easy, carrying this old body along with them. back to look at gearing. never thought i should see day, but i replaced all my unlettered mods with 'b' mods to inflate hitpoints. people agreed i wouldn't survive my first nim encounter without that. having a blast in the game at the moment

[ShadySands]

I've been playing SWTOR off and on since beta and I've still never managed to do an operation

 

A guild I was in ran one, Eternity Vault I think, once and we never made it past the first boss

[GhostofAnakin]

I wanted to throw some thoughts down as I've put in about 13 hours into Skyrim SE now.  I will say, having not played the original game for quite a long time, I forgot how much I enjoyed the exploration in this game.  Instead of the Civ games being just 1 more turn, this game for me is just see what's over the horizon or in that tower, but then that tower turns into an underground den of evil I feel the need to clean out and then end up turning off the game an hour later.

 

I will say the idea of the caves being linear and always having a quick shortcut back can be weird to think about, but some of these caves can get quite extensive and I know I wouldn't really enjoy my time sprinting all the way back through an empty cave after spending 15-20 minutes getting to the end.  I know it may seem weird for a shortcut, but I'm kind of glad it's there.

 

For me, I always compare it to the Witcher 3, due to size and scope and I love the W3, but I will say that while the W3 beats Skyrim on quite a few components, I actually enjoy the exploration in Skyrim much more.  I think Bethesda's exploration/mapping/compass at the top is kind of nice.  In W3, I always was just checking my map for the next checkmark, but with Skyrim, I can freely explore and see what might be coming.  I realize that's my opinion, but in an open world, with the amount of time I have to game, I'd rather spend more time running around than checking my map.  

 

I will say the combat feels cluncky as it did and I enjoy W3's "actiony" combat much more, but then again, Skyrim was released 5 years ago and while I don't see their combat changing unless they change their engine, we'll see.  I will say though that I enjoy the Elder Scrolls worlds by Bethesda much more than their Fallout worlds, but I side more towards Fantasy than apoc/end of world scenarios.

 

Skyrim looks decent enough with the upgrades in the SE and I'm enjoying some mods, but honestly, so far, just having a good time so far and can see myself rummaging through dungeons and skooma dens for quite a while longer in the near future.

 

Side note disclosure.  I did not beat Skyrim back in the day, however spent around 40 hours with a character exploring on a vanilla game without mods.

 

Can't you turn off the mini map in the W3 option menu?  I personally like it, because I suck and like my hand held when I travel.  But if it's a distraction, I'm pretty sure you can either turn it off or minimize it.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I wanted to throw some thoughts down as I've put in about 13 hours into Skyrim SE now.  I will say, having not played the original game for quite a long time, I forgot how much I enjoyed the exploration in this game.  Instead of the Civ games being just 1 more turn, this game for me is just see what's over the horizon or in that tower, but then that tower turns into an underground den of evil I feel the need to clean out and then end up turning off the game an hour later.

 

I will say the idea of the caves being linear and always having a quick shortcut back can be weird to think about, but some of these caves can get quite extensive and I know I wouldn't really enjoy my time sprinting all the way back through an empty cave after spending 15-20 minutes getting to the end.  I know it may seem weird for a shortcut, but I'm kind of glad it's there.

 

For me, I always compare it to the Witcher 3, due to size and scope and I love the W3, but I will say that while the W3 beats Skyrim on quite a few components, I actually enjoy the exploration in Skyrim much more.  I think Bethesda's exploration/mapping/compass at the top is kind of nice.  In W3, I always was just checking my map for the next checkmark, but with Skyrim, I can freely explore and see what might be coming.  I realize that's my opinion, but in an open world, with the amount of time I have to game, I'd rather spend more time running around than checking my map.  

 

I will say the combat feels cluncky as it did and I enjoy W3's "actiony" combat much more, but then again, Skyrim was released 5 years ago and while I don't see their combat changing unless they change their engine, we'll see.  I will say though that I enjoy the Elder Scrolls worlds by Bethesda much more than their Fallout worlds, but I side more towards Fantasy than apoc/end of world scenarios.

 

Skyrim looks decent enough with the upgrades in the SE and I'm enjoying some mods, but honestly, so far, just having a good time so far and can see myself rummaging through dungeons and skooma dens for quite a while longer in the near future.

 

Side note disclosure.  I did not beat Skyrim back in the day, however spent around 40 hours with a character exploring on a vanilla game without mods.

Yeah, the exploration aspect of Skyrim was by far its strongest asset. It really felt like you were there, in those chilly forests, by them hills and brooks. I can imagine that the exploration got even stronger with a graphics update. In Fallout IV, I felt more like I was in Bioshock 3 or  something. F:NV was more exciting to explore.

Edited November 3, 2016 by IndiraLightfoot

[Fenixp]

Can't you turn off the mini map in the W3 option menu?  I personally like it, because I suck and like my hand held when I travel.  But if it's a distraction, I'm pretty sure you can either turn it off or minimize it.

You can, and it plays horribly. The game massively leans on its objective markers - nobody ever describes you way anywhere, there are no road signs to speak of, and when you finally arrive to a destination, there's no height indicator in the main map, you can only see those on minimap.

 

That said, you can download Friendly HUD mod, enable 3D objective markers and disable minimap. The mod actually allowed me to get rid of pretty much all UI - combat-related information only appears when I draw a sword and 3D objective markers only appear when I enter Witcher senses mode, so like 90% of the game I spend with no UI whatsoever. It's great. (Incidentally, the mod also allows you to enable something akin to the Skyrim's compass on top of the screen)

Edited November 3, 2016 by Fenixp

[GhostofAnakin]

I thought you could also make the mini-map smaller, even if you don't want to do away with it completely?  I've never tried as I stick with the defaults, but I could have sworn I saw in a tutorial that you can shrink down how much of your screen the mini-map takes up.

[Humanoid]

Yeah, done with WoW. My daily world quest reward was trash, my weekly Mythic reward chest was trash, the weekly World Boss gave me 20 gold and for my bonus loot roll coin that cost 1000 gold, it gave me another 20 gold. Then I did a Mythic dungeon and got two pieces of loot that were trash that I couldn't even trade away to any of my group mates because it was trash for them too. The reward to disappointment ratio this expansion is way off. I basically outgeared the baseline content I usually enjoy with randomly upgraded world quest gear in the first month and now I only have hardcore content left to do. It's a bit unfortunate that the world quest system that was supposed to make sure this expansion wouldn't be Raid or Die ended up trivialising everything except the super hardcore content that I have no interest in.

 

I'm disappointed with the way loot is handled too, with the biggest sign something's off being that a legendary dropped and instead of being happy or excited, I was disappointed because it was a bad item. And now that I have that bad item, I'm no longer eligible for the bad-luck protection system that would have increased my chances of getting a useful one.

 

(It's the druid chestpiece that meaninglessly increases my range by 5%, and increases my passive self-healing. Sure, on its own you'd take it as it's better than nothing, but if you can only have one, then you'd want one that actually improved your performance in your actual role, that being damage. On top of that, the stat combination on it is basically the worst possible for me. It'd be fantastic if I ever tanked on my druid, but I've done that exactly once in 11 years.)

 

On a less negative note, I'm reasonably positive about Karazhan and what it might mean for future content development. It's actually kind of broken in that the rewards for doing it are out of kilter relative to its difficulty but that's something that can be adjusted via hotfix (in its current state, either the loot quality is too low or the difficulty is too high for the intended audience)

 

Emerald Nightmare is hastily put-together filler content, and so is the Trial of Valor raid that will open next week, but I'm far happier with the current difficulty curve in Legion than I was with WoD's messy interleaved difficulties. That will keep me raiding a bit longer, but we'll only see if I'm in it for the long haul after the release of the first real raid at the turn of the year.

Edited November 4, 2016 by Humanoid

[Katphood]

Played some Headquarters mode in Modern Warfare Remastered  multiplayer. It's pretty awesome since:

 

a.friendly fire is on

b.rounds are short

c.you only have one life

 

It has a whole lot more camping but each round can be pretty tense and exciting even though they sometimes last less then 30 seconds. 

Edited November 4, 2016 by Katphood

[Fenixp]

I thought you could also make the mini-map smaller, even if you don't want to do away with it completely?  I've never tried as I stick with the defaults, but I could have sworn I saw in a tutorial that you can shrink down how much of your screen the mini-map takes up.

You can. It goes from "Ridiculously huge" to "Only takes 1/4th of the screen now"

[Gfted1]

Stellaris. I'm really in over my head wrt trying to keep track of everything but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. I just got my blood punched out by some aliens that destroyed my mighty 4 corvette fleet and promptly bumrushed my first off world settlement Sirius Prime. I still have no idea of what to be researching/building/updating/etc. and I just pick stuff at random that sounds good.

[Raithe]

Got talked into checking out the browser game Fallen London.  By the same folks who did Sunless Sea. It has that amusing, mildly addictive writing to its gameplay.

[HoonDing]

INstalled a companion dialogue mod or somesuch, now Lydia is as chatty as Mjoll.

Also installed a citizen AI mod, it's like a wholly different game now.

[WDeranged]

INstalled a companion dialogue mod or somesuch, now Lydia is as chatty as Mjoll.

 

Also installed a citizen AI mod, it's like a wholly different game now.

 

So mods actually did fix it? 

[GhostofAnakin]

 

I thought you could also make the mini-map smaller, even if you don't want to do away with it completely?  I've never tried as I stick with the defaults, but I could have sworn I saw in a tutorial that you can shrink down how much of your screen the mini-map takes up.

You can. It goes from "Ridiculously huge" to "Only takes 1/4th of the screen now"

 

 

You PC folks must have got the shaft.  On my PS4, the mini map on default setting only takes up less than a quarter of my big screen TV.  I'd assume that means it would be even smaller if I changed the settings to reduce it.

[Fenixp]

You PC folks must have got the shaft.  On my PS4, the mini map on default setting only takes up less than a quarter of my big screen TV.  I'd assume that means it would be even smaller if I changed the settings to reduce it.

Nah, the minimap itself is rather small, but there's also the distance indicator and time indicator that for some reason goes with it. Additionally I'm rather anal about unnecessary UI elements.

 

Also installed a citizen AI mod, it's like a wholly different game now.

This one? Does it really make such a difference? Edited November 5, 2016 by Fenixp

[Malcador]

On to ME2. Wow this tedious.

[Fenixp]

On to ME2. Wow this tedious.

It gets a lot less tedious from there. Wait, you're talking about Mass Effect right?

[Malcador]

Yeah. I have played it before. It is interesting how jarring I find it going to ME2 right after ME.

 

Do notice load times are long, even on my SSD. Worth checkig if the SSD is at fault.

[Tale]

Tedious is my biggest complaint about ME1, not ME2. Have I mentioned just how much I hate the Mako today? We're talking the ending of Old Yeller at this point, and I'm not entirely sure that the frothing beast that needs to be put down isn't me.

 

Anyway, Corpse Party seems to pick up in Chapter 3. Of 5. To such a degree that Chapter 3 is when they finally have the opening credits. This seems like a weird decision.

[Labadal]

Oxenfree. I don't know about this one. I want to know what happens, but I am bored at the same time.

[Malcador]

Tedious is my biggest complaint about ME1, not ME2. Have I mentioned just how much I hate the Mako today? We're talking the ending of Old Yeller at this point, and I'm not entirely sure that the frothing beast that needs to be put down isn't me.

 

Anyway, Corpse Party seems to pick up in Chapter 3. Of 5. To such a degree that Chapter 3 is when they finally have the opening credits. This seems like a weird decision.

Well, didn't say ME lacked tedium. But just seems like ME2 has too much stripped off, and the zones are too much of a box. Am doing a crap playthrough where I will make Garrus, Miranda and Mordin loyal (plan to kill him in 3) and just have everyone else die as much as I can. May put the old games down for a bit, and browse my GOG collection for something to try - Starpoint Gemini 2 is looking tempting

[Fenixp]

Yeah, I actually thought you meant ME1 was tedious, not ME2. I found the original Mass Effect... Not that great, because it was neither here nor there - it had both bad RPG and TPS mechanics, leading to a game which would be entirely meh without its world and characters. ME2 finally decided that yes, third person shooter was the way Bioware wanted to go, and felt a lot better for it.

[sorophx]

Tedious is my biggest complaint about ME1, not ME2. Have I mentioned just how much I hate the Mako today?

amen