watcha playin'

[Spectere]

Funny, getting through pandas having ignored it prior, only took like 5-6 hours through 2 zones to get from 85-90.

Sounds like they nerfed the experience requirements quite a bit, then. I'd heard they were scaling the raw numbers back but it sounds like they just outright cut a lot of the grind out. This is a good thing. I loved the MoP story the first time through. I liked it significantly less when I was trying to go through it on toons that weren't heroic DS geared blood DKs. Even my half-heroic DS geared priest got trucked by pretty much everybody, which I thought was a little dumb. Getting through the later zones on my quest-geared shaman was just aggravating. I haven't bothered to fully level another character through those areas, but I might do so now to get to the good stuff.

As for WoD, I loved every minute of the questing. My blood DK is 100 now and I still intend to go through and finish the Nagrand quest line because it's so damn good. I love the way they implemented garrisons (now that they actually work, that is), though I can't help but wonder what's going to happen when them when the next expansion comes out.

More than anything else, I like how our characters are finally getting the recognition they deserve after all of their heroics over the years. Definitely a nice touch.

[vladgd]

I managed to hit 100, dabbled in fury for like a day...and fuck that, prot is the only warrior spec. Not even gladiator prot, but defensive stance prot. However, I have only tanked with warrior, and afiak, paladins have it easier with the aoe tanking...and I have a fairly high level paladin (87)...so...I may see about leveling that paladin to 100 and seeing what class I prefer tanking with.

It's a pretty nice expansion, I didn't even expect to hit the level cap, let alone do instances. I mean, the last instance I did before draenor was in...litch king...

[Spectere]

Yeah, pallies do generally have an easier time holding AoE threat. It definitely feels like druids passed them up when it comes to snap AoE threat thanks to the mangle buffs in MoP and WoD, but in my experience as a healer (as well as tanking with bears on my blood DK) pallies have a much easier higher chance of actually surviving the experience.

Now if you weren't a filthy Alliance dog I'd love to run some dungeons with you. :p  I think my highest Alliance toon is around 75 and I generally focus on my Horde characters first, so...yeah.

[vladgd]

remember bro, I AM OG HORDE



I cancelled my account anyway. I like the game, and I may resub, but life stuff is eating at my drive to play.

[Spectere]

Noice. I'm glad you rolled troll, too; they just don't get the respect they deserve, mon (though they did seem to get a bit of a popularity spike because TECHNICOLOR BEARS).

Let me know if you resub after everything simmers down a bit. Maybe by then I'll have an Alliance 100 (I do want to level a warlock, so maybe I'll just roll one on my Alliance server and use my 90 boost on him/her).

[Sneaky]

FAR


CRY

4

get it. The graphics are tits tastic. Can't wait to get into it, I've played about 3 hours, completed Act I. GREAT game. If you liked 3, you'll love this.

[Spectere]

I'm a bit more ambivalent about FC4 honestly. It just sort of feels like a reskin to me and most of the issues from FC3 are still present in FC4, not to mention a number of technical issues.

The stuttering on the PC port is just inexcusable. I'm running it on an i7-3770 with a GeForce GTX 680 and an SSD (Samsung 840 EVO on 6Gb/s SATA) and when I'm moving I get noticeable stuttering. It's not just me, either. People have run it on systems that make mine look like garbage and ran into the same issue. It feels minor at first, but it really started to get annoying after a while, and when it starts happening in the middle of firefights it gets seriously irritating. That didn't happen nearly as much on FC3. The graphics engine itself seems to be well-optimized. I average 60fps with occasional dips down to 50fps on my 680 with it set to Very High, but it feels like there's something wrong with how it loads content.

Beyond that, the key issues are still there. I cannot understand for the life of me why the E key is used to do just about everything, not to mention why you have to hold everything for a second for any actions to happen. Trying to loot or skin corpses near a vehicle (which happens quite often) is as annoying as it was in FC3. Deus Ex: Human Revolution had the same problem and people complained about it then, too.

The heal system is really awful and has gotten me killed. If you end up catching on fire (which only requires you to be kinda sorta close to flames, not even touching them) it will cause you to burn until you put out the flames and will do serious damage, obviously. Here's the problem. When you start taking ticking fire damage, the game prompts you to press the heal key to heal. So you hit it (sorry, you have to bloody HOLD it, because the game needs to make sure you're serious about not dying) and it uses a syringe. Your health shoots up, then proceeds to tick down again because YOU'RE STILL ON FIRE. The game expects you to wait an addition second and wait for the "press heal to put out fire" prompt to come up, after which you have to hold down the button to pat yourself out, THEN you have to hold the button to heal yourself back up. That might not be so bad by itself, but odds are you're on fire because someone tossed a Molotov cocktail in your general direction, so you also have to contend with bullets flying in your general direction while this is happening. This is such an egregious design flaw that I really don't understand how it even made it through the design phase, let alone making it all the way through development and into the actual game.

Also, when you start capturing outposts after Act 1 I've had two occasions within an hour where the outpost that I just left would immediately come under attack the second I drove past the border of it (we're talking within 200 feet of the gates here). It's really irritating. The best part is that it causes the game to bug out so hard due to the player's proximity that I can actually see enemies spawning in thin air outside of the outpost. While it does make the world feel a bit "dynamic" (I guess) it is equal parts annoying. I want to get out there and explore, I don't want to fucking babysit the outposts. It makes me wonder how the Golden Path managed to make it without me all of that time if I have to keep defending them from mean old Pagan Min and his group of hooligans. I see it as little more than a way of artificially extending gameplay. If it didn't happen as often it wouldn't be so bad, but twice in an hour? Come on.

That said, the gunplay feels good, like you'd expect from a Far Cry game. The AI's relative dumbness makes stealth both viable and amusing (i.e. "how many times is this guy going to chase this rock?"). I'm not too crazy about the lack of attachments for most weapons, though. That part feels like it was cut back way too much from Far Cry 3. It seems like they're trying to railroad you into picking people off with bows, but I'd rather use a sniper rifle with a suppressor (which you can get as a "signature" weapon unlock, so at least I can eventually go down that route). The double skin bonus for clean animal kills is excellent, and actually does give you a reason to use a bow.

Also, elephants. Motherfucking elephants. Nature's badasses. I can't see many people not taking the riding perk.

Pagan Min is awesome. I'm not really sure whether who I like better, him or Vaas. The other characters are either a bit more stock or inconsistent. The protagonist, for one, can't seem to decide what he wants to do. "I want to help." "I'm just here to spread my mother's ashes." Which is it, Ajay? Jason from FC3 became a battle-hardened warrior fast enough for me to get plot whiplash, but at least I don't recall him ever screaming "HOLY SHIT A CROCODILE" after I viciously murdered a few dozen of them.

The graphics are quite good. Even at Very High (which is the highest that my card can handle and maintain 60fps 95% of the time) it's a treat and it only gets better when you push it to Ultra and NVIDIA (the highest setting, which uses NVIDIA-specific features). The fur and hair rendering in particular is very impressive, and dem mountains. I'm planning to upgrade to a GTX 980 within the next month or two and when I do I look forward to cranking up the settings.

Oh yeah, the game also has honey badgers. Mean little fuckers. Damn nature, you scary.

[vladgd]

I am interested in some farcry 4, but it wasn't that long ago that i played through farcry 3...then even more recent is blood dragon. I think i'll give it some time before i dive in.

I don't even think I want to play any videogames because there is only ONE VIDEOGAME I GIVE A DAMN ABOUT!



I honestly expected another alpha game, or a darkstalkers game before seeing a direct sequel, but it looks impressive. I just pray to fighting game jesus that it isn't a flop like street fighter x tekken. Funny how much stuff I can gather from that gameplay that joe schmo doesn't even see, like the guard crush system being brought back.

3 characters I want to see return. E Honda, Gen, Urien. I know for sure gen isn't going to make it back because he's not popular enough, but Honda or Urien might make the cut.

Anyway, im going to take a cryo sleep till this bad boy comes out.

[Spectere]

The more I play Far Cry 4 the less I like it. It just feels so damn grindy. :\ The crafting was a bit nonsensical in Far Cry 3, but it's nonsensical, boring, and tedious in FC4.

Every time I've quit playing I've never felt satisfied with my play session. I generally quit because I just can't stand playing it anymore. As outwardly cynical as I tend to be, it's still very rare that I have that much of an aversion towards something. It's very unfortunate, because I went in wanting to really like that game. The opening was so strong, but it just seemed to fall flat on its face for me after act 1.

[Sneaky]

I experienced what you mentioned earlier about the outpost bitching about being attacked literally 100 yards from it, that was a little ridiculous. The crafting I enjoy more because it seems easier to kill the correct animals to get what you need rather than needing the same skin for different items and having to choose.  The syringe crafting was definitely dumbed down, and I'm not sure I like how the skill trees branch out, some of the progressions don't make sense to me and I feel like I need to spend points on skills I won't use in order to get the one I want.

I don't really experience the graphical stuttering, and run it on High all around except for shadows and some other things i turned to medium that don't affect the overall look of the game. I do overclock my 550ti though, but it runs fine.

[Spectere]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of how they increased the level of consolization that they did. There's way too much reliance on wheels in that game. Trying to configure which weapon corresponds to which numerical slot is a nightmare, and the fact that the sidearm is bound to 2 consistently fucks me up. I also hate how I wind up consistently wasting syringes when I just try to craft them to save a bit of bag space. Definite downgrade from FC3, IMO.

Also, please note that I don't mean "consolization" to be completely negative. That's pretty much mandatory when it comes to porting a game to a console or allowing gamers to use a controller on a PC game. I don't dislike it in principal. What I do dislike is when game developers try to adapt the same principals to fit a keyboard and mouse setup. It's like those twits at Microsoft that figured people would love navigating a touch screen interface with a keyboard and mouse.

The stuttering was reduced drastically with Monday's patch, I noticed. It's still noticeable to me, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. It's definitely not an issue with graphics, it seems to be an issue with the game loading content. None of the components of my system are under any stress when it happens (CPU use stays constant, GPU is maintaining a solid 60+ fps, SSD activity isn't spiking), it just sorta happened periodically as I moved around.

Last time I played I did end up slamming fur up to "simulate" just to check out the NVIDIA GameWorks fur simulation. Good freaking lord, it's amazing how far we've come. My card handled it fairly well, but I noticed some fairly odd behavior. For some reason looking straight at an animal with simulated fur wouldn't tank my framerate at all, but the second I looked away my framerate would drop to 30fps. It was kind of a random thing. Not sure if I was looking in the direction of some distant critters or what, but it happened consistently enough that I had to drop it to just "on." The god rays implementation was also very nice, but my card had a really hard time even holding 60 with it on, unfortunately, even at the lowest setting.

[vladgd]

With the end of the year, people are talking about the games they played, and it reminded me of something. Obviously I've been playing games this year, but in terms of games that came out in 2014, feels like I didn't play a lot. I couldn't make a top 10 because I haven't played 10 new games, unless you count expansions/addons/dlc...even then I don't think I hit 10 games. What 2014 games did I play, and what did I enjoy the most this year?

-mario golf world tour
-diablo 3 reaper of souls
-warlords of draenor
-ultra street fighter 4
-civilization beyond earth
-legend of grimrock 2

I kind of enjoyed all of them to be honest. Favorite out of that list is easily diablo 3 reaper of souls, I put the most time into it, and it turned an awful game into a fantastic game that I still look forward to seeing new content for. Blizzard did a fantastic job of analyzing the problems with the original game, and implementing features to make the item hunt great.

Warlords of draenor was enjoyable, first time I got a wow character to level cap since...lich king. I got what I wanted out of the game and have since stopped playing, but I had a great time with it.

Mario golf was pretty fun, I just haven't been in the mood to get some multiplayer going on with an irl friend who also has it. Still, feels like an improved version of the gamecube game on the go, with online play and dlc courses from the n64 game.

Civ beyond earth seems to be a bit disappointing right now, but I did enjoy what I have played of it. Currently waiting for firaxis to do what they do, release an expansion and make everything better. Don't get me wrong, the current game is good, it just has some issues.

Ultra street fighter 4...is what it is, another balance update, few new characters, some new features. I could probably write a huge essay of the things I like and dislike about it, but i'll keep it short since this is a small place and nobody here cares about the genre. My characters, gen, bison, e honda, chun. My main out of the 4 is e honda, and he's like a bottom 3 character now, and that sucks. Chun, and bison are great now, and some of the stupid nerfs gen got during ultra...got reverted a few weeks ago, so gen while still good after nerfs, is a bit better now. I don't really think I could not like usf4 even if all my characters got nerfed into the ground, id find another one, or do what i do and still play e honda regardless.

Figure I would leave what I am currently playing for last, and that's grimrock 2. I beat the first grimrock this october, and I was motivated to play that game by grimrock 2's release. I recently started playing grimrock 2 about a week ago, and it's like grimrock 1...but...better...and it's really REALLY friggin good. Go buy it and play it right now, or look up videos on what it's about, basically a grid based first person rpg dungeon crawler along the lines of old pc games like dungeon master. Plus like it's a fantasy setting, but you don't have super generic fantasy races or even ways to mix class and race. You have human, minotaur, lizardman, insectoid, and ratling. No stupid elves in this game, or no played out dwarves either. My current party is a FRONTLINE mage insectoid named JUDGE MATHIS. A frontline lizardman barbarian named KEITH DAVID. The back row is an insectoid melee fighter...BACK ROW, MELEE FIGHTER. Final character is an insectoid alchemist that also acts as another mage. So like im running 3 bugs and a lizard, the bugs are mages at that, I have a frontline spellcaster(rocks heavy armor, and a shield, but no melee attacks beacuse MAGIC CASTIN), and a backline melee fighter(skill to melee attack from back row, lower health for more energy to do melee special attacks)...and it's viable and I am playing through the game fine. I just don't see that happening in many games. I think it's really cool that my stupid unorthodox party can be totally viable, and not even just "viable" but totally pretty good. If we want to judge progress as getting the 4 orb things to get to the final boss, I got 3 so far, so I feel im a decent way through the game now. It's a good ride so far!

[Sneaky]

So I opened up my WoW account.......again.. pretty sure you're all familiar with the addiction/back and forth relationship with the game at this point. Haven't upgraded yet, won't until i bring my new main up to cap. Started a Worgen Hunter. Most of my mid/end game experience has been with rogues, wanted to try a different class for once. Really enjoying it so far, easy to level by myself with the help of a friendly animal.

[vladgd]

Really depends on the nature of the word addiction. Do I keep coming back to it? Yes. Am I addicted to it? No.

I bought the expansion, had my fill, then left. I enjoyed it, played it to the level cap, diddled around for a bit after that, and I had no more desire to play.

[Spectere]

Yeah, I'd classify "addiction" as being incapable of getting through the day without playing. It sounds like you have the same relationship with WoW as I do with EVE Online. :x

As far as le thread goes, I've been playing through the Mass Effect series, starting with the first one. I started going through ME2 a while back, but since I didn't have my completed ME save file I wasn't able to pull any of my stuff over (which was a surprisingly big detriment to my experience). I ended up picking up ME3 for $5 during Origin's Christmas sale, so I figured now was as good of a time as any. I'm at the point now where I just saved Liara, though I've dumped a significant amount of time into side quests. Also, is it just me, or is the quest to retrieve Wrex's family armor disproportionately difficult?

Aside from that, I've been playing Elite: Dangerous. It's pretty awesome.