Thursday, June 5, 2008

Almost a month again, time for an update.

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I did eventually break down and reactivate my EVE account. I needed something that I could play on my own, and needed a little Sci-Fi fix. Needless to say, it didn't last long. I gave myself the goal to earn enough ISK (credits) to get an Abaddon battleship, mostly cause it's cool looking, and also because I wanted to try out laser weapons and armour tanking.

Well, my skills are almost maxed for those things, yet they both seem sub-optimal compared to my Raven battleship. It uses cruise missiles and shield tanking, and both seem to work so much better than the Abaddon. The cruise missiles use no energy to fire, so I have all my capacitor to use for shield recharging. The shields recharge on their own, so the booster isn't always needed. Plus, a little waiting between fights allows the shields to fully recharge, as well as my capacitor (energy). Plus, the missiles can be swapped for any of the 4 damage types (EM, Thermal, Explosive and Kinetic), and can fire the maximum range the Raven can target.

The Abaddon, on the other hand, only does EM and Thermal damage from the Laser cannons, the armour doesn't regenerate on it's own, and the range on the cannons is far shorter than the max targeting range. Plus, I have to swap out crystals to modify range and damage while the NPCs are flying towards me. As well, tracking speed is a factor too. So fast moving ships are harder to hit. With the missiles, they hit based on a certain signature radius (ship size), so smaller ships take less damage. But they still take damage. My lasers couldn't even hit the NPCs once they got within 7km. It sucked.

I tried the Abaddon in one mission where the NPCs deal EM and Thermal damage. Those are the two weakest resistances for shields, and the highest for armour. Hence, why I wanted to get the Abaddon. But the NPCs just swarmed me, and I couldn't hit them. At least with my Raven, I could pop them at 90km, long before most could even fire back.

All in all, the Abaddon was a utter letdown. It's probably a hell of a ship for PvP, or as a single role ship (DPS or Tank, not both), but for the NPC missions I run, it's sub-par compared to my Raven.

And since I never really had a goal after the Abaddon (which I managed to get rather quickly), I've got nothing left to do in EVE. So I cancelled my account again. This time it was like 2 weeks, tops. Oh well ...

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Smallville and Battlestar haven't really been too big. The season finale of Smallville wasn't all that exciting, and kind of a weak cliffhanger. I guess I've come to expect that nothing will get resolved in the finale, so it doesn't have the tension that it should.

Battlestar hasn't been on for a couple weeks, I think. Either way, it's not all that interesting either. They'd better ramp it up here soon, or they're going to wind up ending the series with a whimper, not a bang.

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None of my other PC games have got nay attention since I bought GTA IV. It's been sooo much fun, but sadly, the ride is coming to and end soon. I know I'm almost done, and that bums me out, hard.

I have nothing else to play after I finish GTA IV. No PC games I really feel like playing. And no 360 games worth getting. I really don't know what to do. The other day I was so bored I ended up reading my World of Darkness tabletop RPG books for fun. It's not like we'll probably ever play it again, but it was cool to think about.

Hell, today I was so bored I contemplated doing some housecleaning to pass the time. Fucking stupid, ain't it?

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As for LotRO, I think Inferno and I have managed to play together about 5-6 hours in the last month. That's it. It's pretty stupid. I don't know why I still have my account at all, since that's the only time I ever play it. Inferno still plays his higher level Champion though, probably because he's got nothing better to play.

Luckily though, I did eventually get a free month from Inferno signing up, so now my account is paid until July something. Not like I'll play, but at least I'm not paying.

I actually reinstalled Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN2) the other day just to see if I could get Inferno to make that our co-op game instead of LotRO. It's got a better story, better NPCs, just as good graphics, and we don't have to play with other people. The henchmen NPCs make up your party. It's much better than having to go LFG just to finish a quest. I think we've got to the point where our duoing won't always suffice. And dying for my character is a exceedingly costly setback.

As well, I've lost interest in LotRO, story wise and gameplay wise. We've done too many "Kill X" quests and dropped enough bears, boars, wolves, spiders, brigands and undead to make me sick. Pretty much every enemy we've fought has been one of those. New mobs just don't appear in LotRO. It seems like everything is just a higher level version of the same old thing.

We'll see though. I don't know how much longer Inferno will play his Champion if I'm not around. Plus, I got him to finally start playing Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines the other day. He really liked it before, but his old PC kept locking up when he tried playing it. Now it runs fine, so hopefully he'll get "sucked" into that instead. Pardon the pun. :P

I can probably get him playing Half Life 2 and the Episode for them, as well as some other games I have. He doesn't need a life sucking MMO to play. He's bad enough with the games you can pause and save anytime. :P

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And in tabletop, we've /finally/ moved on from DnD back to GURPS. I think my prodding Inferno and our other longtime RPG buddy has helped the switch, plus the fact that we've had to find other options as the entire DnD group of players hasn't been able to get together for a long time. We've left a few DnD adventures (in different campaigns) in the middle, so we need to wrap them up at some point. But for now, I'm GMing a Sci-Fi game in GURPS.

It's my version of the Rebels from Star Wars. Only this one starts on a frontier planet, and is /really small/. More like insurgents or terrorists than a military force fighting the established government. It seems like the group is really liking the game so far, and they've all come up with some good characters. I had to make an NPC for the girl, as she was leaving for a holiday and not familiar with GURPS, but she likes the NPC anyways, and will probably play her when she comes back.

The only snag is the one guy who doesn't want to play anything but DnD. But it seems the rants Inferno, our longtime RPG buddy, and I wrote in emails to the group has made him realize that this will probably be the only RPing he'll get. Otherwise he'll have to wait until we get some time later on to wrap up the DnD games.

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I also DLed the 4 edition of DnD off the Net, and it's not even out yet. The PDFs I have are from the printers or something. They have the colour gradients on the top and marks where to crop the pages. Pretty silly, actually.

But it seems like Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has gone even further to make DnD like a video game with this version. It seems like everything is streamlined even more, something I thought near impossible with 3.5 DnD. Even though the podcast I listened to of the guys from Penny Arcade and PvP playing it sounded like a normal DnD game, it looks to make things even more simple. And personally, I like more complexity and freedom in my RPG systems. GURPS is exactly that. You have the freedom to make whatever character you want. The only limit is the character points you're given to make them. I love it.

Suffice to say, it sounds like no one in the group is interested in trying 4e DnD. That kind of sucks in a way though. I really would like to play their new version of a Warlock. You can take Thievery skills (lock picking, disabling traps) and have some cool spells/powers. More like the WoW Warlock than the 3.5 DnD one.

Set someone on fire, then drain their life, making you stronger? Yes, please! :D

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That's it for now, I guess.

Later all.