Monday, June 11, 2007

Back and forth, back and forth.

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EVE has lost me again. My RL friend Kofi is still interested in it, and my co-worker Satan is playing, but I just can't get back into it, despite what I said last post.

Aside from the bit about Trading and the handy little app I found, it's got worse overall. Missions in EVE aren't anywhere near fun for me anymore, the few people I knew in my noob corp aren't on when I am (cause I'm back on days at work), and the lag seems worse than before. Even though I'm in a region of space that's only mildly populated, it's still slow to load some stuff.

I even sent an email to Kofi how I'm quitting EVE /again/. But this time it's different. Satan said he'll probably quit too, for good this time most likely, as he's now done almost everything possible that a single player can accomplish. He's got the best battleship he can get, the best mining ship, TONS of money (almost 10x what I have), and has done almost all the missions in the game. Really, there's not much left for him that he hasn't already seen. Aside from 0.0 space and PvP, but that's not really his playstyle. He's much more of a PvE player.

As for me, I feel the same, it's just that I have a much lower tolerance for grinding than Satan has. I could get a battleship and do level 4 missions, but that requires me to grind level 3 missions to get enough ISK to buy, insure and equip the thing. So, something like 150 million ISK altogether. Right now, I have 65 million. There's no way I'm going to grind for months for just a battleship, especially one I could never afford to lose.

In other areas, I've mostly trained my skills up to level 4s, and thus don't have much else to look forward to. Level 5 skills only give a 2%-5% boost (most times) and take anywhere from a week minimum, to over 30 days to train. Not worth it at all, IMO.

I know I said I was looking forward to their next patch, but I'm not anymore. After doing missions again, I can't see how doing them cooperatively with Kofi is going to make them any less tedious or repetitive. The exploration part might be interesting, but looking at the way CCP has done their PvE content in the past, it's not going to be anything spectacular. They really have no idea how to make decent PvE content at all. It's quite ridiculous how EVE won the Best PvE award in MMORPG.com's reader's choice awards. EVE fanbois making multiple accounts to pad the votes FTL.

So, with EVE going to be out of the picture soon enough (the 24th), what am I going to keep myself busy with? (Not like EVE was keeping me busy, mind you. I'd played about 5 hours in the last week, tops. )

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Another note is that I finally fixed my second PC (it was the motherboard as I thought), and my RL friend Inferno couldn't be happier. He was over and played FEAR for a few hours at least. Meanwhile I was having issues with my PC, as the stupid IRQ settings got fucked up again. I fixed it the next day by disabling the on-board ethernet, and putting in a PCI one I had kicking around.

I also got a new set of headphones, some Zalman Theatre 6 Surround Sound ones. Yes, I said surround sound headphones. How does that work, exactly? They have 6 speakers in them.

No, seriously.

They're pretty cool, as I can actually hear things in surround sound. I watched Serenity on DVD the other night, just to see how they sounded, and I was so amazed I watched the entire movie. Stayed up waaay too late, of course.

I tried them in FEAR, but they sound kind of odd for some reason. Almost muffled in a way. Perhaps it's the way EAX and FEAR work, as GTA San Andreas was fine. The thunder in the rainstorms in San Andreas is hella cool too.

I need to boot up BF2142 to see how they work with it. Apparently it's got true surround sound or something, as there was a pamphlet in the box about it. I might be able to actually turn on voice communication too, and not crash to desktop. Maybe then, I'll get invites to, and be accepted to, squads more often. Even though the radial comm menu in BF2142 is really good, it doesn't cover everything. Voice comms give you the extra edge.

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Back to my gaming:

As EVE is out, I've come to the conclusion that I don't have much at all in terms of gaming choices right now. EVE was acting as a kind of filler, and with it going, it's taking some stuff with it.

I tried the EQ2 trial the other day too, as I was looking for a new MMO (just for something truly "new" that I could play and explore), but it only lasted me about 6 hours before I uninstalled it. I've tried the EQ2 trial now three times, and each time it's failed to hook me in. The first time it was marred by technical difficulties, but these last two times there were none at all. The base gameplay just wasn't interesting enough.

The Burning Crusade and WoW is out, for sure, as I can't stand that game anymore. It's still a good PvE centered/gear grinding MMO, but it has /nothing/ to keep me interested. And almost everything else to drive me away.

City of Heroes is okay every once and a while, but I find if I try to play it for extended periods, or multiple days in a row, I get bored fast. And since there's only Scrappers that I really enjoy playing, I'm /very limited/ in my choice of new characters. Plus, I played the best single target scrapper in the game already, DM/Regen, so it's spoiled the rest of them. My new Claws/Regen is cool, but without the -ACC that DM has, I'm dying a /lot/ more, and fights are far harder than I'm used to. Slower too.

Claws has the "cool factor" but it's very weak DPS wise, and a lot of LT and Boss mobs are resistant to it. They take much longer.

But not quite as long as my Rad/Rad Defender though. I really want to play him, and see the later powers. But solo he's like a snail. Claws is godlike compared to him. So that leaves teaming with him. But so many of the CoX playerbase are /idiots/ that I can barely stand to team with him. And they always rush, rush, rush, so there's very little to absolutely zero interaction. Almost as if they were NPCs. If I get him into my old supergroup I might be okay, as I can team up with my SG mates. But that all depends on their levels, and such. He wouldn't be much use as a sidekick, as his Enhancements aren't very good, and he's not fully slotted, so that leaves Reverse Sidekicking and teaming at my level range. RSKing is only good for the higher level person if they just want to RP and earn some Influence. I think it burns off XP debt too, but at double the rate. After that it turns to pure Inf gain. I'm not sure if anyone in my old SG needs that, as they are mostly higher level characters. Hopefully there's some alts in there around my range.

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Okay, away from CoX, and back to the problem at hand. What to do about my gaming needs.

My singleplayer games are completely worn out. San Andreas isn't interesting other than to fuck around in. Need for Speed Most Wanted is pretty much dead to me, as it's too repetitive, and the later races are stupid hard. FEAR is /always good/, but only for short stints. Never more than an hour at a time. X3 never hooked me in the first place. It has some great features, but some really bad ways of implementing them. Especially the UI. Plus, it's already started to feel like a grinding game, and I've barely put 5-6 hours into it.

Let's see, what else?

Battlefield 2142 isn't all that appealing anymore either, as I stated before. Maybe if I can get Kofi to play it some more, it'll regain it's appeal. But as an FPS it loses points, especially when I have FEAR as an alternative. The only thing left is Neverwinter Nights 2, but I've already finished that once. And it's exceedingly linear. So there's literally no reason to replay it again, aside from getting another character to level 19-20. And that doesn't appeal to me at all. If the toolset was a bit simpler to use, like NWN 1's toolset, I'd fiddle with it and maybe make some of my own modules. Or play other people's. But because it's a lot harder to use, there's a lot fewer people using it to make modules, and most of them have gone back to NWN 1.

And that's it. All the SP/non-MMO games I have.

I've been thinking about getting some games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich, FEAR Extraction Point, Hitman Blood Money, Dark Messiah, etc. But none of them get me excited at all. FF vs. TTR might, but it's so old I can't find it in the city, and it has Starforce copy protection (a horrible copy protection company that's been blacklisted by gamers worldwide). I can't even really think of a good game that I'm looking forward to.

Let me try: (maybe this will give me some hope for the future. I really need it )
  • Spore (coming out in 2008 )
  • Bioshock (worried about how Bethesda fucked up Oblivion and how that same might happen with this)
  • Left4Dead (looks awesome, especially the fact that it's CO-OP multiplay. No idea when it comes out )
  • Hellgate: London (could be good, but looks a little too Diablo-esque)
  • Crysis (looks amazing, will probably need a new compy to play it)
  • Grand Theft Auto 4 (no idea on release date, again)
  • Tabula Rasa (still on the fence, could be good, could be mindlessly boring)
That's it. That's all I could think of, and find on the Net. Most of these games have no "fixed" release date, they're all still in development. And that sucks. Cause it means I'm going to most likely be bored out of my fucking skull for a long time, until some of these games come out.

Boooo ....

The only thing I can think of to "stem the tide", is to get Lord of the Rings Online. It was a decent game, and I enjoyed some of it. And I figure it could keep me occupied for a month or two. That's a month or two less time waiting for the games I truly want to play. But that might also be a bad idea. Who knows what playing LotRO could do to me. I might get even /more/ bored, or it might make me like I was when I played WoW. Don't want to go there again.

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That's it, I guess. I suppose I should go off and play some games, but I don't think I will. Maybe I'll just make some food, watch TV, or pop another DVD into my computer and listen to it in SURROUND SOUND with my headphones.

Later all,
The Rev.