tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80112709947100959152024-02-20T02:28:17.426-08:00A Rev's Life ...Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-1435591720321348442010-08-20T23:34:00.000-07:002010-08-21T00:39:00.599-07:00Wow ... it's been a long time since I posted last. And there's been a lot to talk about. Here goes:<br /><br />---<br /><br />Gaming drought has come and gone, and come and gone again since last time. I've played a lot of games since then and am currently back to somewhat of a drought, but not quite.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Here's an update on what I mentioned last post. I'm going to go point form for easier reading.<br /><ul><li>Bad Company 2: Pretty much abandoned this game, as I have no desire to gain the unlocks and the players in general are fucking morons. Inferno and I teamed up a little but he died, a LOT. I don't think he was getting to into it, but he was also experiencing a lot of lag from his wireless connection. Maybe when he gets his hardline installed we'll spark BC2 back up.</li><li>Shattered Horizon is DEAD. There is never more than 10-15 people playing SH any time I've logged in. And usually I get 2 rounds before people start leaving. Maybe once the hard copies come out in Europe there will be more people.</li><li>Red Dead Redemption: War and I got one ONE NIGHT of MP out of RDR. The MP is so utterly simplified compared to the SP that it's pathetic. It becomes either Deathmatch style games or grinding gang hideouts in co-op OVER AND OVER. Totally a let down. The SP was top notch, just the MP was boring.</li><li>GTA4 DLC: Bought and played through both The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony. TBOGT was much better, IMO. TLAD was good for gunfights, but the story and characters were so generic it was super dull. TBOGT was more over the top and the characters were very believable. I never did any of the extra stuff in either cause it wasn't too interesting. Plot missions almost entirely.</li><li>Lord of the Rings Online: I haven't played this in months, probably from shortly after last post. I never got into my Captain, even after giving him a somewhat solid go. Mostly due to the fact that I was bored and lonely in LotRO. I didn't see Inferno at all, and no one from War Seekers was interested. There's barely any people in the lower zones, and even region chat is near dead unless you're in Bree. Also the upcoming F2P changes to LotRO have put me off putting in any time, for fear it will be all for nothing later on.<br /></li></ul>---<br /><br />In new games I DLed a pirated copy of Starcraft 2, just so I could see the story and watch the cool cinematics. But to my dismay, there are only 4 cinematics, and I saw all but 1 before the game was even out. They use in-game cinematics more than anything, and they aren't anywhere near as interesting. Also the plot is thin, and not all that interesting.<br /><br />Overall, I'd never purchase SC2, especially since it plays almost EXACTLY as SC1 which came out 12 years ago. And I was never interesting in SC1 that much when it came out, so SC2 doesn't do anything for me either. Dawn of War 1 and 2 are far better RTS games, IMO. World in Conflict is another RTS/RTT game that blows the standard SC RTS formula out of the water, IMO. Base building and resource gathering is fucking stupid timesinks. The fighting should be all I'm worried about, not boring, slow gameplay from 12 years ago.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I also picked up a bunch of XBox Live! Arcade games for my 360, and have played a bunch of them. The best one by far is Monday Night Combat. Kind of a 3rd person shooter mix of Team Fortress 2, DOTA and any tower defense game. It's really fun. And the humour in it is great. It's kind of like BloodBowl in it's delivery as well. Awesome fun. The online MP is lots of fun, but I'm not too sure it's worth the XBox Live! monthly cost at all. I might get a Live! gamecard to add some time to my account, but I doubt I'm ever going to subscribe to Live! Gold ever again, especially since I have to phone Microsoft to cancel the recurring subscription now. Used to be able to click an option on the Live! account page, but that's been disabled for all but US players. Fucking stupid.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In guild news, we're all split up now and it sucks.<br /><br />A few people are in EQ2 now. I tried to play the trial again (for like the 5th time) but the game is SO BAD I just can't make myself play for more than a couple hours. The GFX are terrible, the animations are FUCKING BRUTAL, and the landscapes are utterly devoid of life, IMO. It's one of the worst MMOs I've ever played and I have no idea how people defend it. Sure, it probably has a lot of content, but the core gameplay and visuals are terrible. If they reskinned EQ2 and redid all the animations it would probably be really good. But it seems SOE developed the game engine first, the quests second, and the art and animations dead last. I always thought that LotRO animations were kinda bad, but EQ2 is so bad it makes LotRO seem like a dream.<br /><br />War and Bel are still plugging away in Aion, which has the new 2.0 update apparently. Bel is saying it's like a new game, but since I got so burned by the game at the start and the utter grind in the higher levels, I'm totally not interested. Maybe if I have some gaming drought in the future and want to waste 15 bucks to see how it is, I'll resub. Also, there were major server mergers so now there are like 4-5 servers instead of 12 or something. Elyos are dominant on all but 1 so there's major QQ all around now. /facepalm @ NCSoft<br /><br />A few people, not sure how many, are back in WAR, but I think they aren't that active. WAR doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and there's like 4 servers now, so the population is almost nil. My Chosen was cool and all, but the game wasn't near what I wanted, especially looking back at it now, and I bet it's still as buggy/laggy as hell.<br /><br />Most of the guild is waiting on Guild Wars 2 and The Old Republic, still. Since both are due sometime next year (possibly 2012, IMO), there's little reason to get hyped, at least as I see it. Aion burned us all so bad, we've become cynical towards MMOs for the most part.<br /><br />War and I both tried out All Points Bulletin, and while we sung it's praises at the beginning, the rose coloured glasses soon came off and we found out how fucking repetitive it got. No one but 1 guildie picked it up, and now in recent news RealTime Worlds, the developer of APB, is going bankrupt, after wasting near $100 million on APB. It's going to be the new Tabula Rasa/SWG NGE MMO fiasco that everyone will point to and say, "Whatever you do, don't do what they did." Seriously bad news, especially since that $100 million could have been used to make so many good games otherwise.<br /><br />---<br /><br />And lastly in gaming news, I've started playing Champions Online. It was really a shot in the dark, since I had only heard bad things about CO, especially compared to City of Heroes. But since War and his wife were playing, I figured I'd try the demo on Steam and give it a shot. I have to say I've been happily surprised at CO and can actually see playing it for a decent amount of time. Sure I've been in CO long enough to see the flaws people have talked about, but the base game is sound, IMO. <br /><ul><li>Combat is thoroughly enjoyable, sometimes completely awesome at times. </li><li>YOU CAN THROW CARS! Yes! Finally a Superhero MMO that lets me do what I've always wanted since Freedom Force.<br /></li><li>The graphics are top notch, especially compared to CoH, and the graphic novel look I was so hesitant about back when CO came out actually works very well, IMO. <br /></li><li>The character creation is epic, better than CoH and STO, I think. <br /></li><li>The open frameworks for characters mean no classes like CoH, which is something I ADORE, and takes me back to my SWG days. <br /></li><li>The community is for the most part really awesome, and chats a bunch in /zone so I always have the semblance of people around me, a nice change from the loneliness of LotRO.</li><li>There are PvP instances, joinable from anywhere, and one of them has ZOMBIES! Yes!<br /></li><li>And the levelling speed is much better than CoH, so I'm not grinding like hell just to get a level, even in the early teens. I think CO can be an MMO where I actually hit the level cap for once, something I haven't done since I hit the skill cap in SWG back in 2003!</li></ul>All in all, CO has been a nice change of pace in MMOs for me, and kind of a throwback to my fun days in CoH, minus the bad stuff like grinding. If I could find a cool RP guild to join in CO I'd be set. War and his wife don't play anymore, I think, so there's no War Seekers to join up with. But since the CO community is rather good natured, I'm sure I could meet some cool people to RP with.<br /><br />---<br /><br />As for Farscape, I watched all of it, including the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries finale. It's become my favourite sci-fi show ever now. Crichton is by far my favourite character. He's so awesome. And Aeryn (Claudia Black) is so DAMN HOT it hurts. *droooool*<br /><br />In other TV, most of my shows are over for the season, but True Blood is on. And it's getting good again, aside from the fallback to soft core porny scenes recently. Aside from that, the plot is getting really interesting. And Eric is by far my favourite character in True Blood. Viking Vampire from Sweden? Hell yes!<br /><br />---<br /><br />In tabletop, we had 1 intro session of Nihil's game, in which he got VERY annoyed with the one guy, and that's it. Pretty much no gaming in over 3 months. It fucking sucks.<br /><br />I've done a bunch of work on my Mass Effect game, basically writing out the entire plot of the campaign and fleshing out the details of the first mission.<br /><br />I've also picked up the Mutants and Masterminds books, based on the d20 system. Mostly because of Champions, and I've watched all my superhero movies over the last couple months. Though it's like DnD 3.5, it's different enough that I like it, especially for something like a Superhero game. I'm going to run it as a filler game, if I ever can, so that we have a fallback option if our main game is out for a night. Since it's d20, it's super easy to play and familiar enough for everyone that playing should be a painless affair.<br /><br />---<br /><br />And I haven't been keeping up with my reading, AT ALL. It sucks, but with all the games I've been playing and my odd schedule at work now, I just haven't had the time to get into them. Maybe in a month or so when things settle down.<br /><br />---<br /><br />That's it for now. See you next time!<br /><br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-30252972697717724452010-04-30T18:30:00.000-07:002010-04-30T20:52:49.550-07:00Complain about the rain and you'll end up with a drought.As the title suggests, I'm kind of in a gaming drought ATM. I had a few games to play, but it has quickly whittled down to 1.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Mass Effect 2 was a great game while it lasted. The main complaint I have is the stupid scanning mechanic for minerals. Had they just had minerals in the missions you had to get it would have been a lot better. The sense of exploration was missing in this one as there were only a scant number of exploration missions, and they were all quick affairs on tiny, though very atmospheric maps.<br /><br />Mass Effect 2 did nail down the maps though. Every location feels different for the most part, there isn't the recycled feeling of ME1. And some of the maps have intense background shots.<br /><br />The characters were interesting, though I found that the familiar faces from ME1 were my favourites. Maybe it's cause they are the most developed, and maybe it's because they are more good aligned. The mercenary style characters in ME2 are not all that interesting, really. I had no real connection with them, aside from Zaeed, who unfortunately doesn't have near enough screen time, as he's part of a DLC pack.<br /><br />And I was a little annoyed at the major nerf to Biotics in ME2, as my character in ME1 was an Adept. But it did make the fights more challenging, instead of what they devolved to in the later stages of ME1: "Fire Singularity, watch enemies float around helplessly, kill them like fish in a barrel". Though Shockwave did become kind of cheap in a similar manner later on.<br /><br />But all in all, ME2 was an epic sci-fi game. It got me all stoked to run a Mass Effect tabletop game using GURPS with the guys. I'll talk about that later.<br /><br />---<br /><br />As for Bad Company 2, I've kind of become disillusioned with it. Simply put, the playerbase has NO FUCKING IDEA how to play as a team, and it just irritates me to no end. When my team does nothing but snipe, or run around all solo, and we lose because of it, it maddens me. I simply don't have the will to submit myself to it anymore. I'd actually rather play CoD4, where it's fine if people do that.<br /><br />Also, I doubt that Kofi will get a new PC anytime soon, as he's got a new car in mind, so he's out. Inferno would probably be interested, but our corresponding spare time is next to nil ATM, so there's no reason. And Warmachine from my guild hasn't played in weeks. Maybe for the same reasons as me. Maybe because it took him 1 day of lots of playtime to get all the Assault unlocks. Yeah ... super easy.<br /><br />I think it took me one evening to get most of the Medic unlocks. And most of that was about 3 rounds with a really good squad. Compared to 2142, it's fucking simple.<br /><br />Oh well, BC2 might be better later on, when the CoD style morons go play MW2's Stimulus Package expansion or the next best thing. Maybe then the remaining players will be true Battlefield fans.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Hopefully, the upcoming Firepower Pack for Shattered Horizon will coax some more people back to the game. SH is much more interesting, though I'm worried that the new weapons will unbalance the game a little. Even if it's a little unbalanced though, the better players, 3D fighting and space locale will keep me entertained.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In the guild, nothing new has come up at all. People are still checking in to see what everyone is playing, hoping that there's /something/ that could bring us all back together.<br /><br />Guild Wars 2 has piqued a lot of our interests. Their design blogs are very interesting and give us hope that ArenaNet is working to make a great MMO.<br /><br />Of course people are still waiting on The Old Republic. Though TOR isn't slated to be out until spring 2011, so we've got a long wait. Personally, I don't want to get all hyped up for it, as it will just let me down in the end if I do. I just want the game to be challenging, have interesting classes (namely the Imperial Agent!), and have an interesting enough story that I might want to play it again with an alt. <br /><br />Bioware does seem to have one good design philosophy in mind that I like: Multiple heroes beating on one enemy is NOT heroic at all. They are going for the City of Heroes method of 1 hero vs. multiple enemy mobs. And that excites me. I would love it if TOR had CoX style combat, as it was some of the best combat I've had in an MMO. Adds weren't death, and when the fight was over, you felt like you kicked some ass for real. Sounds very cool. But again, trying to not get my hopes up.<br /><br />---<br /><br />One game that Warmachine and I are both looking at is Red Dead Redemption for the XBox 360. He's already pre-ordered it, but I will probably get it too. It looks to be Rockstar's version of GTA, but set in the Old West. The big feature that War and I like is the online multiplayer where you can just roam around the world together, or separately. It has deathmatch and other "traditional" multiplayer aspects, but the free roam part sounds the most cool. I will probably renew my Live! Gold account for 1 month at least so that War and I can team up a bit. <br /><br />But, if it's anything like GTA4 online MP, I doubt it will hook me for too long. I figure that War and I can get some cool MP out of it for a month or so before the repetitive nature rears its ugly head, and we see how MMO-lite it is. <br /><br />Hopefully the SP will be good enough on it's own to make the game worth it.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I /might/ get the two DLC packs for GTA4 before that though. This gaming drought has me looking hard for options, and /supposedly/, both DLC packs are good enough to be games on their own. I can get them via the Live! Marketplace and use 4GB of my 360's drive, or I can spend like $3-5 more and get them on a disc that uses no space. Hmmm ... I wonder which one I will get? DURR! Stupid MS online pricing.<br /><br />The DLC for GTA4 can also get me into the mood for RDR, and get me used to the controller again. As well, I can lend it to Inferno or Nihil, who both own GTA4 as well.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Well, the gaming drought has also got me to play a LOT more Lord of the Rings Online too. I was playing somewhat with Inferno, but since his schedule and mine haven't worked out for a while, I've been playing solo. First I did some low level deeds to get my traits up higher, but earned no XP in the process, as they were all grey to me. I did get some XP from Shire quests for the Innocence trait, but it wasn't even 1/4th a level for 75 quests.<br /><br />After fooling around with that for a long time, I've decided that I need to play my Captain solo instead, so that I can give the game a serious go. Only playing with Inferno means 1-2 nights a month, maybe, and there's no need to pay 15 bucks a month for that. That's almost as bad as my 2 years of XBox Live! for $120 (60/yr) with 4 times played online, all within the first month.<br /><br />So, if I find I have enough fun playing my Captain solo, I'm going to stick with LotRO for a while. I might get a 3 month sub as it works out to the normal cost for 2. $9.99 / month is a lot better if I'm not playing a ton, than 15 bucks.<br /><br />I might try and get into a guild in LotRO too, or see if any of the War Seekers are interested in joining me. Cause if I have some peeps to chat with while I solo, it's just that much more likely that I will stick around. Plus, I might be able to find some RPers that I like to RP with, and maybe for once get interested in fantasy RP. I've really found it hard in the past.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In TV I've been trying to keep up with my shows, but sometimes I forget. None of them are really gripping me that much right now, so it's hard to remember. Also when they keep having 1-2 week hiatuses all the fucking time.<br /><br />Nihil did get me to give an old sci-fi show a chance though. He said that Farscape was the best sci-fi show ever, and it's his favourite. I watched a couple episodes on the Net, and I remembered seeing parts of the show years ago on TV, but it never caught my eye. Now after watching the first 6 episodes of season 1, I'm in. The sets and costumes aren't super high tech, but the characters are interesting and the show is engaging. I love Crichton, and even Rigel is getting interesting, especially for a puppet. Though all the puppets are Henson production ones, so they are top quality. Farscape is also helpful in giving me ideas for the Mass Effect game I want to run.<br /><br />I want to watch more episodes, but at 4 seasons and 20+ shows per season, all 45+ mins in length, there's a lot to watch. Inferno also lent me Burn Notice and told me I HAVE to watch it, even though I was adamant I don't have the time.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In tabletop we've wrapped up Inferno's Cyberpunk game, and we all survived to our amazement. Best part was my character got a crotch rocket style motorcycle and that's something he'd most definitely want. Our one gaming buddy seemed a bit put off that we weren't playing all friendly near the end, but he has no clue how to play Cyberpunk. There's no "we share the loot equally" in Cyberpunk. It's usually a "You're lucky I don't shoot you and take your share of the loot" type of thing.<br /><br />Since Nihil hasn't got completely prepared to run his Urban Fantasy game yet, we dove into a short session of Cthulhu run by Blake. But our one buddy I mentioned above also has no idea how to play a mystery game. He kept playing it like a game, not like his actual character would. It was very annoying to Nihil apparently.<br /><br />Inferno, Nihil and I joked the other weekend how it would be awesome if we could ditch that guy and pick up another buddy of ours. But there's no easy way to do that, and he'd never leave willingly. He probably feels like it's "his group" too, even though it's been Inferno, Blake and myself for the vast majority of it. Nihil was around in the beginning too, it's just he didn't live here for the DnD years.<br /><br />Nihil's game should hopefully be pretty cool, and I really like my character, even though I pretty much stole him from Shale in Dragon Age. He's also a mix of Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek, maybe a little of Arnie's Terminator from the movies as well. Pretty much he's a sentient stone golem, who's trying to figure out the world around him, and how "fleshies" think. That's his name for mortals. Kind of like HK-47 in Knights of the Old Republic. I even drew a picture of him, and used a pic of Hellboy as the outline, tracing a lot of the original. See? I'm stealing from everyone.<br /><br />---<br /><br />After trying to work out how I wanted to do my Mass Effect game, I started with the Star Wars d20 system. It has the epic, cinematic feel to the game and I wanted the players to feel like they were part of something bigger that themselves.<br /><br />But after working out races, which I didn't like how they had to have negative modifiers to balance positive ones, I went on to classes. And there was when I quickly realized that converting d20 to Mass Effect was way too much work. Just trying to figure out what to give the classes for saving throw bonuses, and feats was mind boggling. <br /><br />Then trying to figure out how Biotics should work, and if they were balanced vs. everyone else was just tedious. As soon as I wound up trying to playtest a combat scenario and realized how much math I'd have to check, I figured GURPS was the far better choice.<br /><br />So I naturally went on the Steve Jackson website and checked the GURPS forums for a Mass Effect thread. Low and behold I found a 17+ page one, with lots of Biotics conversions, races, armour and guns already worked out. After looking at what other people had done, it was a few hours and I had all the races, weapons, and armour worked out. A couple more and Biotics was mostly done too, though it proved to be very costly in character points.<br /><br />I've tried to get the guys interested in it, but since I'm the only one who's played Mass Effect 1, let alone 2, they didn't seem super keen. Our one gaming buddy, the powergamer one, did seem somewhat more interested when I talked to him after the session. He said he loves Sci-fi more than fantasy, so he's more like me. I think the rest of the group are more fantasy lovers than sci-fi fans.<br /><br />One thing that is great about Mass Effect is all the lore that is already laid out from the two games, and it's all readily available from the web. The Mass Effect wikia is a great resource, and it allows the other guys to peruse the background story at any time. It also doesn't require me to type up much of anything, and it is somewhat simplified, as compared to something like Star Wars which has over 50 alien races in the Alien Anthology alone.<br /><br />Star Wars doesn't work as a gaming setting unless everyone has a similar background knowledge of the world. I tried running a Star Wars game before and it ended up like Cyberpunk, but in Star Wars. And anytime I mentioned something like "rodian", "sullustan", "astromech droid", "Z-95 headhunter", "code cylinder" or whatnot, they all looked at me confused. Then I had to describe what it was, try and remember a movie appearance of the aforementioned thing, and continue. It was really jarring. If the group was all big Star Wars fans, I'd probably not have any issues.<br /><br />Another big problem with Star Wars is that /everyone/ is going to want to be a Jedi, or Force user, so it just doesn't work out well.<br /><br />---<br /><br />And lastly, I have finally finished some more of the Gaunt's Ghosts books I have. I got the first book of the 4 part omnibook done, and I have to say it was a fucking good read. Really need to get reading more, but I have so many things I want to do, and it's not like they are going anywhere. They are especially good for when I have PC troubles, or have a gaming drought, like recently.<br /><br />---<br /><br />So there you have it. Another update. Hope you enjoyed it.<br /><br />Thanks for reading,<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-55982841937675465222010-04-02T18:37:00.000-07:002010-04-02T22:01:57.637-07:00OMNOM! That's was good.Well, consider my plate cleared for the moment. After the glut of gaming options a scant month ago, I'm now down to two games.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I'm going to try and streamline this so I don't ramble on like I normally do. Mostly cause I'm doing this rather late, and don't want to be typing forever.<br /><br />First off, I /finally/ finished Dragon Age. This was in the most part due to a week's holidays I recently had, which gave me a lot of time to hammer out the end half of the game. Dragon Age was one of the best games I've played in a long time, with a few minor annoyances, but all in all it was great. Although, like most Bioware RPGS, it has the beginning, a totally open 2nd act where the bulk of the gameplay time comes from, and a tight and focused 3rd act and conclusion. I'm kind of getting bored of this type of RPG setup, as the game gives you all this wide open space to do whatever you want, then when you finally get back to the story, you're back on rails and stuck there. <br /><br />I'd much rather have wider open acts that all have side stuff to do until right up to the end. Dragon Age was just like Fallout 3 and Oblivion for me. Spend countless hours doing everything I could find after the story is set, then get back to the main quest and finish the game off in a few hours. It's the side quests that make up the bulk of the time to finish the game. If I just did the main quest chain in rapid fire succession, I'm sure I could wrap the game in no time. Where's the fun in that?<br /><br />Sure, games like Call of Duty 4 or Bad Company 2 have quick, epic singleplayer campaigns. But the games are sold for the multiplayer component first and foremost, games like Dragon Age have no multiplayer. They should be a better campaign design than simply designing the game to get players to replay it with a different characters. Sure, the origin stories in Dragon Age will be different, but I can bet the game is near the exact same with another character, so what's the point? I'd rather have a battle simulator that I could replay with different characters, so that I could see the other classes, try out different group setups, and use different tactics. Maybe have all the boss fights be replayable, or have free re-specs of characters. Borderlands actually has this, which I was unaware of until recently, and it is an awesome design. <br /><br />For the cost of less than the money you get for vendoring a gun, you can completely re-spec your character. No worries about gimping yourself, nor about trying out different builds. You don't have to spend the countless hours replaying the game again, just to see how the end fight would be. Easy. Why can't RPGs be the same way?<br /><br />Anyways, I went off on a tangent, exactly as I hoped not to, so I'll get back on track. Dragon Age = good. Replayability though, is not quite there I think. Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 were the same though, so I'm not sure it's just a Dragon Age thing.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Shattered Horizon has pretty much died now. It really took off after the free weekend, but since Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has come out, SH has gone to 1-2 populated servers in the evenings, one of which is usually in Europe. SH simply doesn't have enough for the CoD style FPS fans out there, where BC2 has it in spades.<br /><br />Sorry SH, it was a good run. :(<br /><br />---<br /><br />Speaking of Bad Company 2, I finally picked it up, after beating Dragon Age, as Kofi already had it and I wanted an FPS to play since SH was dead. Unfortunately, Kofi's PC isn't up to snuff so we can't play together, but I've had fun playing on my own. Definitely not as fun as with Kofi, and the players of BC2 are most definitely not up to par compared to the BF2142 days.<br /><br />Simply put, there is a very small minority (maybe 2-5%, IMO) of the BC2 players that actually know how to work as a team, or even in squads. CoD style FPSes are all about the individual player, not the team, so everyone does whatever they want. Back in 2142 players would actually work as a squad, and were usually complete strangers. Now in BC2, I can almost never even get a rez, or a healthkit, as every damn player is either Assault or a Recon (sniper). And god help you if the other team has even 1 squad that actually works as a team, cause then you're pretty much destined to lose. It's kind of saddening.<br /><br />Hopefully though, Kofi will be able to upgrade his PC, as he said he's figured out he's got more money than he thought. Then we can actually work as a team. Kofi is /really good/ at working as a team, mostly cause his online gaming has pretty much been him and RL friends teaming up for YEARS. That's just how he games, and that's why they almost always win.<br /><br />BC2 did have an awesome story, pretty standard fare, but coupled with the epic in-game combat, explosions, and destructible /everything/, it was a hell of a ride.<br /><br />BC2 has taken over SH as my FPS game currently. It's also my filler game too, since it's "hop on and play", and doesn't require more than 15 mins or so per round.<br /><br />---<br /><br />My other game is Mass Effect 2. Yes, I finally opened the package and started playing the game. :P<br /><br />I have noticed a few things so far that irk me, like the modified classes, no inventory, and reduced RPG aspects of the game. It feels more like a semi-TPS game now, like Gears of War, than the RPG I loved so much. The characters are still very cool and the story has me going, but so far, it's not hooked me like the first one, or anywhere near like Dragon Age did.<br /><br />We'll see how it pans out, as I've only got a little into it so far. I'll update you on it when I've got some more hours in, or when I finish it. Whichever comes before my next update, I guess.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In guild news, pretty much everything has fizzled. Allods has lost almost all it's following, even the vocal Keen from Keen and Graev has put it aside for WoW (that's saying a lot). Star Trek Online is maybe played by 1 guildie, if that. Guild Wars seems to have been abandoned again, though any of us could rejoin later, so that's not a total loss. The few that were playing Global Agenda have left it, and all that's been talked about on the boards is chit chat and "what SP game are you playing?" type questions.<br /><br />Hopefully something comes around to get us all back together again. Probably won't be until Star Wars: The Old Republic though. And that's like 1+ yrs at least. Sigh ...<br /><br />---<br /><br />Oh, in unexpected news I picked up a deal on Lord of the Rings Online the other day. They had a PAX East sale and had the base game + all expansions + 1 month of gametime for only $9.99! Since this can be applied to an existing account I simply couldn't resist. Even if it only grabs me for a month again, that's still less than if I had simply resubbed to my old account. And now I can try out all the expansion features as well. Double win!<br /><br />Oh, and I'm sure Inferno will be super happy about it as well. Though his internet has been shit for a while so he doesn't play much. Should be resolved in the next month or so though. Cools. :D<br /><br />---<br /><br />In tabletop, we're /just/ wrapping up Inferno's Cyberpunk game. It's looking like we'll actually succeed even though I figured we'd TPK (Total Party Kill) on this last part. I actually got some bonus character points at the end of the session for great roleplaying and thinking on my feet. I have to say I did do a pretty bang up job. I figured my character was completely dead at one point, as I was alone vs. one NPC and my guy has shit for gun skills. Put it this way, he missed shooting a guy in the head at like 3 ft away. /facepalm. Yeah, he's the techie guy, not a combat character.<br /><br />BUT ... due to his better than average Fast Talk skill and some quick thinking on my part, I got him out of a MAJOR jam with the NPC and the Police afterward. It was pretty effing sweet.<br /><br />Up next on the agenda, and I'm totally stoked about this, is Nihil's Urban Fantasy game. He still hasn't typed up all the world info and stuff to email it to us, but we spent the one night making characters and running them by him as Blake had to cancel. I think Nihil is worried about how things might turn out, as he hasn't put concrete rules on character creation, also cause it's his first time GMing GURPS. He's GMed a lot of other games, plenty more XP (lol!) than me, but he's not 100% familiar with GURPS. I think I'm going to have to help him out a little, as I've GMed GURPS the most I think. Maybe Inferno has more XP with GMing GURPS, I dunno. Both of us are very good though, so Nihil should be fine. Blake is well informed on the system too.<br /><br />Anyways, my character for his game is a Stone Golem. I pretty much ripped off Shale in Dragon Age initially, but I would really like to grow him into something more my own. I might throw some more Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation in him, as it's more what I was aiming at. More clueless non-human being than callous, uncaring machine creature. Shale is cool, but he's more of a non-good aligned creature than my guy is going to be. Especially since we're all supposed to be good types and we work for what is essentially a government organization to protect the people from the scary, supernatural shit they have no idea about. Very BPRD.<br /><br />Oh, and my guy is called Jasperoid Slate. Both are types of metamorphic rock. I think it's kinda cool. Not sure if I'm going to go by "Jasper", or "Slate".<br /><br />Hopefully it'll be fun, we'll see.<br /><br />---<br /><br />And TV has been pretty quiet, but that's not that unusual for this time of year (2 week hiatuses all the time).<br /><br />---<br /><br />That's about it. I'm sure something will come up soon enough. <br /><br />Till then my friends!<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-82460301663122311392010-03-02T19:11:00.001-08:002010-03-02T20:36:41.972-08:00Holy shit ... could I try and add more to my plate? I don't think it's overflowing enough.It hasn't been that long but a lot has happened since last entry so I needed to share.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In the "too many games to play" category, I'm still behind the 8 ball. I finished Torchlight, which was pretty satisfying. It really doesn't end, as there is an "endless dungeon" with level scaled mobs, but the main plot is over so I had no desire to continue.<br /><br />It was pretty awesome, though the difficulty once I hit the last few levels jumped astronomically and everything seemed to be able to 1-3 shot me. It was rather frustrating. I had to go "super cheese mode" and spam my AoE fireball arrow ability to just nuke everything. Lots of the time I did it from range when I couldn't even see the enemies cause of the fog of war.<br /><br />The last boss fight was ridiculous as well. He took me a good 5-10 mins to beat, and I died at least a dozen times before I found a kind of cheap way to beat him. And then it was still a slog. Pretty cool boss though.<br /><br />After finishing Torchlight I've moved on to Dragon Age, and for the most part I've been good, but lately I've been slipping again. Shattered Horizon had a free update and now there are 4 more maps (8 total). The new maps are awesome. I especially like the giant destroyed satellite dish and the huge mass driver. Both are epic. One new map is cool, but causes a lot of performance issues with people due to the lighting effects. Hopefully they find a way to optimize it.<br /><br />Shattered Horizon has become an awesome filler game now, as it's easier to find a populated server, and rounds don't take that long. Plus, it's not nade/tube spam like CoD4, or effing chopper/airstrike spam. I hate that. A lot more tactics and skill in SH compared to CoD4.<br /><br />I was thinking about getting Bayonetta for my 360, but I've decided against it, mostly due to financial reasons. I've been spending too much on gaming, and I need to reign it in a little. Aliens vs. Predator for PC is another game I was thinking about getting for the SP. But I might just try and pir8 it from a torrent instead. I know, I know ... it's bad. :(<br /><br />---<br /><br />As for Dragon Age, I've got a ways into it, but not as far as I'd hoped after the amount of time I've played. I think I'm just shy of 60 hrs and it doesn't feel like I'm anywhere near the end. Perhaps it's because I die a lot when fights go bad, especially on the Hard setting, so I end up playing the same thing over multiple times until I beat it. It's a total throwback to old school games, but I like that. New games are so fucking easy it's not fun, and they are over so quickly (I'm looking at YOU, CoD: MW series) that they aren't worth the effort. Even in a good game like Borderlands it got stupid easy near the end I was headshotting/insta-killing the enemies it became retarded.<br /><br />Gimme old school games like X-COM: UFO Defense any day. You always felt like you were in danger and could lose your entire squad at any time in X-COM. That's what made it great. The actual fear of losing/dying. New games don't have that at all. Bioshock is a prime example, as the enemies don't even regain their health when you die, so all you do is rez in the chamber, run back and finish them off. Stupid ...<br /><br />Anyways, DAO is really feeling like a mini-MMO to me, so it's pretty cool. I just wish it was MP like NWN2, so that I could duo with Inferno or something. The gameplay is effing sweet, and I love a lot of the abilities in it. I wish that DnD 3.5 was more like DAO, cause then I could see playing it more. Sadly, DnD 3.5 is pretty broken, IMO. More on that later.<br /><br />So, now I'm trying to finish DAO, but it seems I can never find the urge to play it, as I know it's going to take me a few hours at least. And I always start playing games way too late in the evening so I don't want to stay up that late when I work in the morning. Thus, rounds of SH or internet surfing usually occur.<br /><br />I have an unopened copy of Mass Effect 2 for my XBox 360 sitting on my TV stand too. I used XMas gift cards to get it, so I'm not worried about playing it yet. But, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 drops today and after watching the vids of it, Kofi and I are stoked. It looks like an awesome replacement for our old teamups in Battlefield 2142. Hopefully, this time with far less server issues and login problems.<br /><br />Oh ... jesus. I totally forgot about all the MMO stuff, and the games with my guildies from Aion. Next section.<br /><br />---<br /><br />So, after Aion has left almost everyone from War Seekers down, and we're all looking for new games to play in the meantime (ie. while we wait for Star Wars: The Old Republic :P), we've been posting about stuff on our forums. This has led to people getting pulled in many different directions. Namely, me.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">First</span>, my one guildie mentioned Global Agenda. It's an FPS like game that mixes Team Fortress and Tribes with a sub fee part called Conquest. It's alliances (made of a bunch of agencies/guilds) at war with other alliances. And they take control of areas of the planet that are a hex map. It's kind of hard to summarize quickly, but suffice to say, it's like EVE PvP but in an FPS, and without the insane death penalty. Really cool sounding. Some players have said it's not ready for a sub fee (it's free right now while the devs tweak it), and it gets repetitive. But I'd kinda like another FPS, as I'm a BOOM! Headshot! nut, and I love games that are hop on and play. Also, it would be hella cool to team up with the guildies playing it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Second</span>, myself and 2 other guildies caught Allods Online through Keen and Graev's blog and were following it, as I mentioned last post. All seemed well up until the last stage of the Closed Beta. The company added a debuff upon death that stacks up to 4 times, and cripples your ability to fight even with 1 debuff. Then they made it last 50 MINUTES! at level 40, and is only removable with a Cash Shop (CS) item, Perfume, or by paying a lot of gold to an NPC. Also, the debuff applies during PvP. And Perfume gives you a huge HP buff. So they made it MANDATORY for PvP and most likely PvE.<br /><br />THEN .... (WTF? there's MORE????) the publishers made the CS prices INSANE! Like 20 bucks for a bag that is 6 slots bigger. And $1.35 per hour of Perfume! Not to mention 6000 dollars for a max level rune for your gear. People went RABID.<br /><br />Allods has lost all the following it had, and even though the publisher is talking about changing the CS prices this week, most people won't play it on principle now. Plus, the next patch coming from the Russian developers pushes the death debuff up to 2 HOURS at level 40.<br /><br />Retarded ...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Third</span>, we all discussed Star Trek Online at length, and most people decided it just wasn't something they were interested in. A few people picked it up, but I don't think they are still playing. Especially since Cryptic/Atari decided to try and pull a fast one on their subscribers.<br /><br />They put the game up for 10 bucks off on the Atari site, plus added an ADDITIONAL 60 DAYS of playtime. Current players were OUTRAGED, as the game hasn't even hit it's first 30 and new buyers could get the game plus 90 days for less. Then Cryptic (or Atari, we really don't know) decided to try and cover the whole thing up by removing all posts to it, and changing their site. The people who did buy the game aren't getting the additional 60 days and CS reps tell them they are basically SOL. WTF? Cryptic/Atari have seemingly pulled an NGE, but with customer service instead. It's really going to hurt STO and their bottom line.<br /><br />People think they did this as fiscal year end is at the end of the month, and they want to look good. Sadly, this will most likely have the exact opposite effect and almost kill STO.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">And Last</span>, after a bit of talking, myself and 2 of my guildies are giving Guild Wars a try. Though I think they are going to be a lot more hardcore than me, as I just don't have the time for GW, and I doubt I could keep up with their levelling pace anyways.<br /><br />---<br /><br />About the tabletop gaming, we've been playing Inferno's Cyberpunk game, using the GURPS system, for a few sessions now. I think it's been at least 5-6 as I've spent points and still have almost 19. But then I've been at every session and everyone else has missed at least one session.<br /><br />The game has been cool, but our one gaming buddy is playing his random/impulsive self again and just getting into gunfights cause he's bored. It has REALLY annoyed the entire group so far, and the rest of us have discussed it at length. But it's cause he is really only familiar with the usual junior/high school DnD gaming sessions of, "There's bad guys. You kill them and take their stuff." He's not that into the mystery plot of the Cyberpunk game, and can't seem to keep his RPing in-line with his character. ie. he does things his character would most definitely NOT do.<br /><br />Other than that, the game's been fun, and a very nice change of pace from standard fantasy trope. It seems the core 4 of us, Inferno, myself, Blake and Nihil (our other buddy), are all fed up with fantasy gaming in general and want to try out some new stuff. Nihil is thinking about GMing a fantasy/mystery game, similar to the Dresden Files novels. It would be kind of an urban fantasy game, with the PCs all being a part of a government agency, similar to the BPRD in Hellboy.<br /><br />He hasn't specified anything though, but I'd really like to get a chance to play it. Nihil is really good at GMing, it's just he always runs out of steam/has RL issues/thinks he's doing it wrong, so games get abandoned. Hopefully, he can keep things going so we can try it a little. At least for a 6-10 session mini-campaign. I think I've been the only person in our group to GM consecutively for several months. My Warhammer fantasy game in GURPS was really fun, and the guys did seem to enjoy themselves a lot. Kinda makes me proud that one of our best gaming campaigns in recent years has been mine.<br /><br />Blake has also expressed a desire to finish off our old Brightstone DnD 3.5 game, just to get some completion to the game. It was left off at a bad point so it would be nice to end it properly. And I really don't care about losing my characters anymore, so the next part which is supposedly a really deadly trap infested dungeon is fine by me.<br /><br />Blake also wants to run a mini-campaign in a swashbuckling, pirate DnD gameworld. He was thinking about limiting the allowed material to the core 3 books too, so that we can avoid all the powergaming and "rules creep". He also thought of a Rifts style game, using the GURPS or BRP systems, would be cool too. Since Blake is a really good GM, and has had YEARS of GMing experience, I'm up for anything he runs. He's expressed interest in GMing a lot of different games, actually. Probably cause he's used to GMing a lot.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Another thing I've got on my agenda is more Warhammer 40k books. I picked up another 2 omnibuses, so I've got something like 3500 pages left to read again. I still haven't touched 2 of the omnis from the first batch.<br /><br />Ooops ...<br /><br />---<br /><br />As for TV, I've got about 3 episodes of Smallville to watch still, and Legend of the Seeker and Big Bang Theory when they air. Also, I picked up the full series of Black Lagoon, an anime I DLed a few years back and liked, so I'm working my way through that too.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-1957133986436261892010-01-27T17:00:00.001-08:002010-01-27T17:01:57.903-08:00Too many games ... and more stuff.I seem to find myself in a quandary right now. I have so many good games I want to play, and more coming out soon/already released, that I can't play them all. I want to finish them, but it seems I can't devote enough time to any of them to progress very far. So I'm left with a bunch of games that are half finished, which I'll probably never play again. It's so damn frustrating.<br /><br />The biggest issue that's come up is that I want to get Mass Effect 2, now that it's out, but I had to stop myself cause I still haven't finished Dragon Age. Yes, Dragon Age, the game that /everyone else/ has finished already, some more than once. And it's not like I don't really enjoy Dragon Age either, the times I have played usually wind up with me being up way too late and having to work in the morning. Perhaps that's it, I dunno. Maybe I'm subconsciously worried I will get too absorbed in any of my games that I keep myself from playing them, and end up spending my time reading blogs/forums on the Net or watching a movie.<br /><br />Maybe also it's that when I do read a blog/forum, or watch a movie, it's a short/defined amount of time. I know if I watch a movie it will be over in 2 hrs so I can go do something else, or go to sleep. If I get gaming I lose track of time and end up being on the PC for longer than I wanted.<br /><br />I do enjoy FPS games due to their short round length. I can frag a bunch and in a short time I've got my fix and can move on to something else. City of Heroes was nice when I played it cause I could hop on and do a couple missions in a half hour or so. It's not like I got a lot of a level in that time, but I could accomplish /something/. Playing Dragon Age I don't really like stopping until the story has progressed an chapter or so. Same when reading.<br /><br />Guess I just wish that games would come in more small, defined "chunks" so I could game a little and feel like I did something, and not have to devote a few hours to gaming in a night. I never really liked instances in WoW, or any other MMO for that matter, as they all seemed to require at least a couple hours and I don't like being that restricted.<br /><br />Maybe I'm just getting older and feel my time is more precious. Or maybe I just need to focus on one game at a time until completion, thus sparing me the hell of choosing which one to play. Though I do like having options, at least some quick options.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Also, I'm not sure I really want to play LotRO anymore. I know it hasn't even been a full month yet, but the game is just not attracting me enough to play it. And if I'm not playing it at least once a week, I'm not paying the subscription fee.<br /><br />I know Inferno wants to duo with me more, as he's bugged me on more than one occasion. But I just don't have the stomach for gaming "marathons" as he likes to play. He can sit and play for 4-5 hrs /easy/, while I'm bored after a couple hours, and wind up theorycrafting stuff on the Net. Or reading forums.<br /><br />I still don't understand him being so obsessive over MMOs, especially when he has /so many/ awesome games he hasn't played. He still hasn't played Half Life 2 for god's sake! Or FEAR 1! Or Fallout 3, or Assassin's Creed 1, or Batman: Arkham Asylum, or Mass Effect 1! The list goes on. About the only games he plays are real time/turn based strategy (he loves the Total War series, in all it's incarnations), or an MMO. Only if he's subbed to one, cause he says he feels the need to, since he's paying for it. Which is the stupidest reason I've ever heard. You don't feel the need to watch TV all the time cause you pay for it, or talk on your phone continuously cause you pay for it, so why should an MMO be different. Especially when you pay a hell of a lot less than the aforementioned two, and even less than normal since he's got the $9.99/mnth plan for LotRO. /facepalm<br /><br />---<br /><br />In Aion, I'm still not playing but it seems like more and more of the people in my legion have left due to burnout, so now there are the scant core people (most of the leaders) and all new people. Many of whom are from other legions that fell apart. Once people have seen how repetitive Aion can get in the post-35 levels, they tend to leave. And since the PvP in Aion seems pretty lacking, population and rewards wise, there's not really an endgame to speak of. Aside from grinding NPC guards or doing the Dredgion battleground instance /over and over again/.<br /><br />I'm really glad that I left the game when I did, cause I think I'd want to shoot myself if I had stuck around. Especially if I had grinded to 50. Oh god ... that would have been hours/days of my life I'd never get back for sure.<br /><br />I try to keep in touch a little on the legion forums though, cause the people are still a cool bunch. But since there's no real options on the horizon until Star Wars: The Old Republic launches sometime in 2011, I doubt I'll get to game with them soon.<br /><br />---<br /><br />One of the things I posted in the legion forums was about Star Trek Online, as I managed to snag an open beta key. Thank god for subbing to MMORPG.com news and a fast email checking widget. I got one of the keys and eventually DLed the client. And after seeing the open beta, up to Lt. Commander 1 (level 11), I'm not going to play it anytime soon. It was a cool side adventure, but STO really needs some more polish, lag fixes/server stability, and a real /reason to grind/. Cause even though you do missions in STO, they are about as interesting as the random ones in City of Heroes. Only less fun cause they take a hell of a lot longer for less XP.<br /><br />An in CoH, I could get cool powers and fly around and stuff. In STO I get some kind of weird sci-fi/Trek hybrid game, where nothing makes sense in a Trek setting. If the game was /real Trek/, there would be mostly humans crewing the ships (as Starfleet is like 98% humans), the uniforms would be standard, and everyone would use phaser pistols/rifles.<br /><br />In STO, humans are an miniscule minority amongst players and NPCs. And people are using weird cannon disruptors and abilities like Gravity Well and Tectonic Shift and shit. Tachyon beam drains other ship's shields? I can scramble the enemies' sensors so they shoot each other? I can use my tricorder to AoE knockdown the enemies on the ground, also taking away their personal shields? WTF?!<br /><br />It all reminds me far too much of Star Wars Galaxies, pre-CU/NGE. SWG was a cool game, but it was only Star Wars in name, with some settings and characters thrown in to appease the fanboys. It never played like true SW, nor was it true to the IP in gear/items. STO is /exactly the same/. It's just a sci-fi MMO with some Trek tidbits thrown in for colour.<br /><br />The massive instancing is also not to my taste, as it leaves the gameworld feeling completely disconnected, and doesn't allow for completely random exploration. You can't just wander around on Vulcan, you have to be in an instance to go there. And then the mission areas are pretty small. Not cool at all for an IP that's all about exploring the unknown.<br /><br />But my biggest gripe with the game is that it's sooooooooooo repetitive, even at the low levels. Almost every mission is "Oh no, Nausicaans/Klingons/Gorn/Orions are attacking these miners/scientists/freighters, we must stop them!" And then you fly/run around and kill the enemies, whilst stopping every so often to hit F to scan/activate/analyze some glowy object. That's the basis of the entire game.<br /><br />The only cool parts in the 11 levels I played were the continuing story with a Vulcan ambassador being one of Species 8472, and the fleet actions, where you do a mini raid with other players. Though the fleet actions had bad aggro so the first person to get close got focused on my every enemy ship, often dying very rapidly. This would sometimes continue on to the next player.<br /><br />The coolest part of the fleet actions was when I got my Science ship and could use Scramble Sensors on a blob of enemy ships to make them start killing each other. They never usually killed each other, but their lack of firing on any of my fleet made it super easy for us to focus fire on them instead and wipe them out quickly.<br /><br />Pretty much I can see STO going the way of Tabula Rasa quite quickly. It probably won't shut down, as the Trek fanatics will support it, but I can see a huge drop in subscriptions after a month or two. There's nothing to do in STO, really. You can't even just visit most places as it starts an instance for everything.<br /><br />Basically, it was cool to try STO and get some nice screenshots out of it, but I don't think I'll ever pay to play it.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I haven't mentioned it before, but I've also been beta testing another MMO, this one a free to play (f2p) model one. I never figured I'd try a f2p MMO, especially since most are so utterly terrible and grindy, but after reading a bunch about it on Keen and Graev's blog, I figured I should give it a shot. Also cause Dungeons and Dragons Online recently went to a f2p model and has been doing a hell of a lot better as a result, and I was somewhat impressed with DDO.<br /><br />Allods Online is made by a Russian company, who's most recent NA game was Heroes of Might and Magic V, IIRC. I think I played III or IV, but this gave me some hope it wasn't going to be complete shit. I was really surprised.<br /><br />Allods is actually really well done, and the amount of polish on it is rivalling Aion or WoW. Probably because it's been out in Russia for almost a year, IIRC, so like Aion, they've had a lot of time to work the kinks out. The CB here was mostly for localization.<br /><br />Other than the somewhat harsh attribute system (f-ing up your attributes can completely GIMP you), and the overall WoW cartoon like graphics, I really like the game. The world is seemless, aside from usign things like teleporters/scrolls or the ships between allods (floating islands in a sea of magic). The combat system is a little rough at the low levels, but picks up quite well around level 9-10, and the game is designed around PVP!<br /><br />That's got to be the biggest reason I have actually played the CB so far. I would like to see how the PvP works out, especially their end game, the Astral Ships. Astral Ships are crafted by the players (usually a guild of players), and crewed by multiple people. Kinda like people originally wanted STO to be. Each player mans a station, and there are spots for a lot of players per ship. When you venture out, you are flagged for PvP and can be attacked by anyone, IIRC, so same side ganking can occur. You use your ship to fight raid boss style mobs in the magic sea, or find undiscovered allods. If you land on one, it creates an instance for just your ship crew, and you can go explore the allod and find new monsters/etc. Apparently these mobs will have better loot, and be tougher of course, but the loot can be stolen out of your treasure room by other crews if they attack you while heading back to port.<br /><br />Allods is a cool naval game/fantasy MMO that looks to make PvP a cool priority. I'm not exactly sure on how the item store will work, since most of the stuff I have seen won't garner them a ton of revenue, but it looks to be only cosmetic/helpful stuff, no game breaking gear or XP scrolls.<br /><br />I haven't managed to get very far in Allods though, and the CB is ending in about a week. But, the OB will carry over to launch so I think I can try more then, especially since my CB character will be wiped, so there's not a ton of incentive to put a lot of work into levelling him.<br /><br />Another thing that is nice about Allods is that since it's f2p, it doesn't matter how little I play it. It will never cost me a monthly fee. Pretty sweet, if you ask me.<br /><br />---<br /><br />That seems to be all of it. Until next time, kiddos.<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-79222319921038700532010-01-15T16:21:00.000-08:002010-01-15T17:26:57.177-08:00LotRO, Dragon Age and moreHey again. Since my departure from Aion I've had to find other games to keep me busy. Not that I played a ton of Aion, nor was it the only game I played, but it still was a large portion of my gaming time each week.<br /><br />Since Inferno is still plugging away in Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO), I figured I would try and pick it up again. I really didn't leave it before because of any serious negative aspects, it was more because Inferno and I were duoing when we played and our playtimes stopped matching up. After playing Aion for 5 beta weekends, open beta and 3 months of live, LotRO is like a whole new game to me. It was amazing how much more immersive Middle Earth is compared to Atreia. There are no loading screens in LotRO, aside from buildings, and the view distance is huge. Zones are wide and open, so there's less of the "on the rails" feel of Aion.<br /><br />I found it interesting that I spent a lot of my time after coming back to LotRO either, crafting or gathering crafting materials. Since I needed a refresher on the skills/UI, I decided to up my weaponsmithing skill on my Captain and took it easy. It was a completely different feel than Aion.<br /><br />In Aion, everything felt like "rush, rush, rush", and the world felt so disconnected, especially since the zones had no real connection to each other. Travelling in Aion was always by teleportation/scroll when changing zones, so everything felt like it's own little space. I couldn't tell you how the zones lay out on a map, even though the in-game map shows it. There's no point to it, as /no one/ runs to the portal to change zones. You /always/ port between. It's just faster. And that was one of the problems in Aion. Everything is focused on doing things the fastest, most efficient way possible. ie. solo grinding.<br /><br />LotRO, on the other hand, has so many actual roleplayers on my server, and a lot of players with maxed characters, that the people all take things slow and enjoy the ride. People are really helpful, and take the time to do things other than level. It's really nice. I actually met a couple of brand new players in the Barrow Downs and we went and did some small group content. I have stumbled into more than a couple RP events in Breeland, it's crazy. Aion never had any RP aside from ERP/emo/drama crap in Pandemonium.<br /><br />My biggest problem with LotRO is that so far, it's been /waaaaay/ too easy. I've been trying to do all the old quests I had in my journal, but since they changed the level curve since I left last time, all my quests are 3-4 lvls below me. I would like to see the stories/lore that unfold in the quest arcs, but I don't think I can enjoy killing low level mobs for much longer. I'm going to have to go find a quest hub with level appropriate quests and stick to them instead. Only do the Book quests if they are lower lvl than me.<br /><br />Another problem I have with LotRO is that I don't play anywhere near as much as I did in Aion, and since it's easy to level in comparison, people can outlevel me quickly. The two aforementioned new players are 7+ levels higher than me, and that was after a few days of me not playing. Since so much of LotRO is based on quests, grinding doesn't work to level, so teaming with them doesn't work.<br /><br />Also, since Inferno is also playing, he's got on my case a little to team up with our old characters. He's got a lvl 40 Champion that he plays on his own, while our duo characters are lvl 25 and 26. We teamed up for a bit with my Captain and his Loremaster, as I thought that my Captain would be a better duo member. I can heal and buff, plus DPS a little, much more handy than just tanking on my Guardian. Especially since his Loremaster has little in the way of heals, mostly CC and DPS. But I think the best bet at this point is to stick with the Guardian to duo with him and keep my Captain to solo with. I don't want to have a Guardian to solo with if I feel like, and I doubt we'll get to team up that much.<br /><br />I'm also amazed at how little I notice the poor quality graphics in LotRO (compared to Aion). Since the game has very pretty environments, and a very good sense of immersion I forget what I am looking at and get sucked in to the gameworld. I do notice some of the improvements Aion had are missing in LotRO, but that's more aesthetics than anything.<br /><br />We'll see how LotRO goes though. I might just stick it out for a couple months, and leave to play other games. Even now I have other games that are taking up more time per week than an MMO. Not a good sign.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Another game I have been playing a LOT of is Shattered Horizon. It's an FPS in space so there is true 3D gameplay and some cool physics effects. The game is a lot more twitch and strategy compared to something like Call of Duty 4. CoD4 is all about complete chaos for the most part, and shit blowing up everywhere (nades, tubes, airstrikes, choppers, claymores, etc.). On the flipside, SH is about using strategy and flanking to outmaneuver your opponents and take control points (or just kill them :P). Since the maps are truely 3D, you get some awesome flanking going on.<br /><br />Biggest gripe with SH is that it didn't get busy until it was $5 on Steam for a 1-day XMas sale. Now most of the players are noobs, so trying to get them to think outside of the "CoD4 box" is sometimes frustrating. But I have met a lot of cool players from before the game was busy. One actually added me to his Steam friends, mostly to join whatever server I'm on (I'm guessing). It's cool though, as the ones I've met are the top ranked players in the game. The one that friended me is #1! Pretty cool that they want to hang with the guy who's only slightly better than average. I'm much better with the tactics than with the actual twitch. I think my reflexes are getting worse with age. Not quite the FPS pro I once was (kinda :P).<br /><br />---<br /><br />Another game I've been playing is Torchlight. Since it was only 20 bucks on Steam, I figured WTH and got it. I also had the benefit of trying the demo and I really liked it. It's totally like Diablo I & II, and has a ton of polish on it. I really like it, but since it's SP only and the storyline is kinda weak, I really only get into it once and a while. Much better as a filler game, rather than a primary game.<br /><br />---<br /><br />The big game I got is Dragon Age: Origins. I was initially super hyped about the game (as it was supposedly the "spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate"), then after it was released and I read reviews of it (all positive, btw) I was a little skeptical. I don't really understand why I was, maybe perhaps it was because I was still playing Aion, and DA:O takes a lot of time to finish, plus is very addictive (according to many), so I was probably worried it would kill my desire to play Aion. Borderlands almost did that to me, but I finished it after 30+ hrs.<br /><br />Since getting DA:O, I've played it a lot, then left it alone for like a week, and picked it back up here and there. Now that I've got a ways further into the story, and my party is really starting to develop, it's totally hooked me. I can get stuck thinking about it when I'm not playing. The dialogue is top notch, and the characters are interesting. Though I would like to have met the damn healer NPC by now, as Hard mode is punishing as Hell and a lack of true healing makes the fights pretty effing hairy.<br /><br />I can totally see myself playing DA:O again, with a completely different class/race and party composition. It'd be nice to see the asshole side of conversations instead of the good side like I almost always end up playing.<br /><br />DA:O is a nice blend of MMO/RPG and I think it works /really well/. The only thing that is missing is being able to co-op it, or play on private custom servers/worlds. We'll see how this goes. I'd kinda like to finish my first paythrough off soon-ish as there are some more cool games coming down the pipeline that I want to try out.<br /><br />- Mass Effect 2 is out soon, so I want to see the continual story of Commander Shepard. I think I'll get it for 360 to enjoy the big screen, and continue my character from before.<br />- I'd still like to try Assassin's Creed 2 as well for 360. The first one was pretty cool.<br />- Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is due out in March and looks to be my own long awaited replacement for Battlefield 2142. It has dedicated server support for PC and lots of cool upgrades. Kofi and I are going to play this a lot, I just know it.<br />- Star Trek Online is due out in a month or so, and even though I know that it's not going to be all that shit hot, I want to try it out and see for myself. The ship combat might be enough to keep me around while they make the rest of the game shine.<br /><br />I'm sure there are other games I'm missing, but suffice to say, I think I will have a busy gaming schedule ahead of me for the next few months.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I think that's it for now.<br />Later folks.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-20423185061923078762009-12-26T18:58:00.000-08:002009-12-26T19:49:21.536-08:00Aion: Oh, what a shiny empty gameFrom the title, you can probably guess that my time with Aion is over. My sub still has a few days left, but even with the current double XP weekends, I can't get motivated to play. I'll login, look at some stuff on the Broker, check my active quests (or lack thereof), check LFG, and then logout.<br /><br />At the point my Chanter is at, there's little/no solo quests available. What ones there are give minimal XP, and only contribute to about 1/4 of a level. Solo grinding 3/4ths of a level (~ 29.5 MILLION XP! at level 37) is not something I want to do. What does that leave me?<br /><br />Group grinding in elite areas, over and over. Until I hit level 40 that is, so that I can grind in the Steel Rake instance /over and over again/. Which, by the way, is a 4-6 hour long instance. Ugh ...<br /><br />After doing Fire Temple about a dozen times, I'd had enough of it. We must have killed the one mini-boss Rotan 10 times and he dropped no gear at all. Most times there wasn't even kinah. That's just crappy game design. At least for a Western audience.<br /><br />Another issue with Aion is that my levelling has never been constant, nor have I kept up with guildies. So the ones I did match up with in FT, all out levelled me, or quit playing. So I've been stuck in a seeming level void in the guild, with either 40+'s doing Steel Rake (the core guildies, as I call them) and some low 30's and below (alts and new recruits). There are some near close guildies, who will probably catch me with the Double XP weekends, but we are missing the one key component of the group: a Tank. It seems that no one wants to play a Templar anymore. Our highest level Temp, one of the core guildies, stopped playing his Temp and switched to a Spiritmaster (mostly to play with his gf). The other Temps either have quit/disappeared, or are never online when I am. There is a complete lack of Temps in my level range, so even if we got guildies in a group, we're still PuG-ing for a Tank. And since Tanks are a key component in group content, winding up with a bad one (high chance when PuG-ing) can become a horrible experience.<br /><br />Another major gripe I have with Aion is the PvP is crap, overall. I know I've talked about some of the great PvP on my blog already, but that was before, when the server was more populated, and I was still in the honeymoon phase. After seeing some more fort fights, and especially upper Abyss forts, I've decided that they are garbage. There's simply no reason to PvP in the Abyss. You're better off killing guard NPCs in the Abyss for your Abyss Points (AP) to get gear. And when people hit high rank, they stop going to the Abyss since one death will cost them tons of AP. It's a pretty stupid mechanic, really. In WAR there was no penalty for dying in PvP, so people PvPed all the time. In Aion, the Abyss has pretty much become a ghost town, as everyone is PvEing, or you see groups of 40-50's ganking solo 30's fighting Abyss mobs. <br /><br />Rifting has become the same thing. All I see are over 40's rifting into Beluslan and Morheim and killing low levels PvEing. It's stupid. I'm okay with the occasional gank, mind you. But when all the bored 40+ players have nothing better to do but gank lower level players over and over, there's something wrong. WAR was much better for PVP in this regard, as PvE areas were safe, but the RvR lakes were tiered so higher tier'd players couldn't gank you. Plus WAR's system of bolstering lower level players to within 3 levels of the tier cap made running into a higher level opponent in the RvR lakes not an instant death.<br /><br />Also, Aion is missing the PvP from level 1 that WAR has, as well as instanced battlegrounds (ala WoW and WAR) so that you can break up the monotony. All there is to do is grind crappy PvE over and over. Rifting isn't always viable (as it's random) and fort fights are only during scheduled times, as well as only random forts go vulnerable during these times. Many days nothing goes vulnerable. At least in WAR you could try for a fort at any time of day, as long as you had the manpower.<br /><br />Aion also lacks real benefits to taking forts. The victors get some kinah every day, IIRC, as well as AP and medals to get Abyss gear. Your side gets access to the fort instance, really only good for some AP and XP (drops suck), and a minor reduction in NPC vendor costs. In WAR, your side got all kinds of bonuses for locking down a tier, as well as lots of XP/Renown/Influence for taking a fort. You could get a gold bag from the fort take, giving great gear, or max out your influence to get awesome influence gear. More Renown also led to Renown pts for abilites. There were /rewards/, unlike Aion's weird "let's PvP for some stupid reason, cause it's actually less rewards than just PvEing instead." /facepalm<br /><br />I dunno, maybe I'm just bitter that Aion was touted as some great PvP game and has wound up as a crappy, grindy PvE game. I can simply look at a lot of my guildies overall kills, and most of them haven't broken 100. We had a Cleric who hadn't got any kills in 37 levels until we formed a guild group to fight off some rifting Elyos. That's pathetic. I have 400+ kills in 37 levels in comparison, and I haven't killed anyone in almost a month. I think I had the Mauler achievement in WAR (kill 100 players in PvP) by level 10.<br /><br />Simply put, Aion's PvP is shit. There's the odd glimmer of fun in a sea of mediocrity. Kinda like EVE's PvP.<br /><br />I'm really going to miss my guildies, as they were the reason I stuck with Aion so long. But it's only the core guildies that have really stuck with the game, everyone else has quit. War Seekers has become a guild of all new people (low levels) or displaced people from other guilds. It's not quite the same. I've had fun with some of the new people (on my alt) but I doubt they will stick around for long. The 35+ game is the make it or break it part of Aion. If you can adjust to the grind and enjoy it, you stick around. If you're like everyone else and want your games to be FUN, then you find something else to play.<br /><br />So long Aion. If you get your shit together and decide to become less grind, more PvP gimme a call. But I doubt you'll do that. Korean developers and all. *points at Lineage 2*Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-11353673545006399072009-10-19T00:43:00.001-07:002009-10-19T01:31:55.013-07:00Hey, just felt like posting something about Aion again. Especially since my server went down and I really wanted to hit level 30. Also, I had some interesting experiences this weekend and felt like sharing them.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Fortress Fights<br /><br />I've been able to get in on a few fort fights so far, and even though they are pretty laggy, they have been lots of fun. The best was when our fort was under attack, and the Elyos (our enemies) had managed to break down the door and start attacking the fort lord NPC. Our guild leader, who was leading our alliance (raid group), got us to take one of the artifacts around the fort and activated it. It gave all the Asmodians (our side) a buff that absorbed 5000 damage for 15 mins. We were able to rush back into the fort and drive out the Elyos easily.<br /><br />Then it seemed to be small skirmishes for the artifacts for about 30-40 mins. And of course, when we got all cocky and figured they'd given up, a Balaur Dreadgion came in. The Balaur are the NPC faction in the PvPvE of Aion. They attack who's in the lead, so we became the targets. The Dreadgion is a spaceship of sorts that looks like a Dragon and teleports mass amounts of lvl 40 Elite Balaur footsoldiers down to the fort to attack it. They aren't the usual AI either, and expertly took out our healers, and anyone low on HP. They took the fort back from us.<br /><br />It sucked, but was an interesting fight nonetheless, as no one on the server had to deal with the Dreadgion before.<br /><br />Today, although I missed it, we lost our other fort to the zerg guild on the Elyos side. The Asmos put up a good fight, but ultimately, we didn't have the manpower.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Rifting PvP<br /><br />There are rifts (portals) that pop up every so often in the Asmo and Elyos PvE areas. These lead one way (Asmo -> Elyos, or vice versa) and allow one side to raid the other's PvE zone. We had some Elyos come in through a rift today and harass us in my levelling area. My guildie Setz and I were trying to grind out some XP, and got caught in a Elyos attack. He went down, but with the help of a couple Clerics, I took out the 3 Elyos that killed him.<br /><br />After recouping and tossing some group invites to random people in the area, we rolled out and took the fight to the Elyos. Setz and I found them again, and lead the charge. There were some deaths, as the Elyos were greater in number than us, but the call went out over the region chat, and suddenly we had lots of allies. It was about even on both sides, but we forced them back and ran them down and killed them all.<br /><br />But they had a group kisk (rez stone) set up in the area, so we ran into them again. We took out the same ones again, on our way back. Finally we saw them coming out of one spot, and I saw the kisk. I ran in and beat the hell outta it, only stopping to heal myself a little. I managed to destroy the kisk, and we mopped up the Elyos left. <br /><br />The best part was that since I killed the 3 initial Elyos, they seemed to /really hate me/. I found I was being pulled out of the pack of us almost all the time, and many times I had more than one of them beating on me. At one point in the beginning fights, I had 5 of them trying to kill me, but since I was healing and getting heals from a Cleric in our group, I was fine. They literally beat on me for like 2 mins straight. Until they realized they should kill my companions, and then it was a done deal.<br /><br />Another great part was that they were all higher level than me, some also being higher Abyss rank than me. Yet we dropped them. Setz mentioned that the one Gladiator they had was bad, since he had 5-6 levels on Setz, yet Setz was still beating the hell outta him.<br /><br />It was a great battle overall, and I really enjoyed the PvP. It was also great that our side was working as a team, even though we didn't know each other at all. Realm pride is always good to see.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Instances<br /><br />Sky Temple:<br /><br />I got to run a couple of them today, and they were fun.<br /><br />First off, we had a higher level guildie, Dis, run us through an attunement quest so we could all go do the Fire Temple instance later on. Dis is a Chanter like me, yet he did pretty good at tanking the Elites in the instance.<br /><br />We had to get 3 keys from 3 bosses in 3 different instances. All the instances were floating platforms, with tons of mobs on them. Luckily, our other high lvl guildies gave us the exact way to go, more or less. We had 1 wipe in total, and it was the really tricky part, so it wasn't that bad.<br /><br />The uneven levels of the group made XP kinda off for everyone though. Dis got almost nothing. I was the next highest level, and I got a lot of good XP. Over 1/3rd a level. The other people got either low XP, or almost nothing. It was weird. <br /><br />The instances were cool looking, and the elite mobs were hella tough. More than once we were all scared shitless. +4 level Elites and all. But we triumphed and got our keys for Fire Temple.<br /><br />I was pretty much a healer for the whole thing, as Dis had to tank and heal himself. I healed the Glad in our group, and helped DPS if we had only 1 mob. It was cool, but it got pretty tiring after a while. I have 1 heal so it was a lot of the same button mashing.<br /><br />Fire Temple:<br /><br />I got invited to run this by our highest level guildies. They roll as a group all the time, so it was a little daunting to go with them, especially since they've run FT so many times, and I'm a total noob at it.<br /><br />I knew that with their 6-7+ lvls on me I would get little to no XP, but I wanted to see the instance and finish up a quest there that would give me 630,000+ XP and a new chest piece.<br /><br />OMFG! What a nightmare of a run it was. The guys said it was their worst run EVER.<br /><br />We died so many times it was sick. We got adds and shit all the time. I got 1 shotted by 2 bosses cause the guys forgot about the AoEs when the boss' health is low. Shit like that. And it took us like 1hr and 40 mins. Normally these guys do it in less than 30. Yeah ... we sucked.<br /><br />We basically chalked it up to mass fatigue on everyone's part, and bad luck. I really hope it wasn't me. I only kinda figured out how I should fight in FT about 2/3rd through. Since I was a healer in Sky Temple, I tended to fall back on that role. But with our Cleric there I should have been up front DPSing, especially since my attacks all debuff the mobs. It would have helped kill things faster. I changed to that approach later on, and it worked better, but still had to back up heal in bad situations. I talked with my one guildie War, who I think is one of the coolest people in the guild, after the instance and he told me my 2nd approach was better. He said most Chanters only heal in "shit hits the fan" situations. Next time I'll do that.<br /><br />The worst part of the whole thing is all the deaths I had ended up costing me a TON of kinah to reverse. I lost a whack of XP straight up, but to recover the rest I had to pay over 70,000 kinah. I had already spent a whack today on expanding my warehouse space (bank space) and training up my Harvesting skill to Rank 3 (allows your skill to go above 199, to a max of 299). Hopefully, I can make a ton of kinah before I hit 31 so I can afford all my skillbooks. Otherwise I'm gonna be screwed.<br /><br />Was still fun to do a run with the guys and get some guildie bonding in. I even learned to blame our problems on Septera, our one guildie. Apparently, he's blamed for everything. :P<br /><br />---<br /><br />All in all, it was a very eventful weekend of Aion. Makes me wish I could have more weekends off from work. Damnit!<br /><br />Until next time,<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-19783340888551320682009-10-13T13:33:00.000-07:002009-10-13T15:58:13.654-07:00Again, neglect. I'm sorry, yadda yadda. On with the show!<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">MMO Land</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">WAR:</span><br /><br />I stopped playing this entirely. Doing scenarios over and over with the idiots on Iron Rock was too much. It got boring and annoying all too quickly. My home server of Phoenix Throne is dead, pretty much. Tier 3 is a ghosttown, and the only people you do see are ones grinding like mad to hit T4. Bleh ...<br /><br />Doubt I'll ever go back to WAR, but it was fun for a while. I'm betting there will be server merges in the near future anyways, as the game is dying.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">EVE:</span><br /><br />Same as last time. Haven't reactivated and I don't really see a reason why. Perhaps when I'm out of games and bored out of my mind I might go back for a while.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">AION:</span><br /><br />This is my new MMO home. Yes, the problems from last post are still there, but I finally got to see the Abyss and it's great. PvEing with the threat of getting ganked is hella fun, especially since once you're hit by an enemy player, if you die, there's no death penalty (unlike PvE deaths). You will lose some Abyss Points (and possibly a Rank if you're just over), but it's easily regained by a few kills or even some mob grinding in the Abyss.<br /><br />The Grindâ„¢ is definitely still there, and it's worse later on in levels. But since I played City of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies, I'm kinda used to it. Not being able to level every day is perfectly fine with me (compared to many of the ex-WoWers). It just makes dinging that next level all the more sweeter.<br /><br />I've found myself a home as well with some ex-WAR players from Phoenix Throne. I'm now a member of the War Seekers. I wasn't sure on this at first, as my experiences with most MMOs have been solo or in very small guilds. But it's been a nice change, and listening to some of the stupid comments in guild chat/Ventrilo is great. Sometimes I just sit in the Vent channel and listen to the chat while grinding solo. Helps me not feel so alone, like I did when I played WoW.<br /><br />Also, I made a friend of one of my fellow ex-WAR players back in the Aion Closed Beta. She and I duoed a bit over a beta weekend, and kept in contact a little since then. I suggested I might join the Seekers, as running solo in the Abyss is just asking to get ganked. All of a sudden she joined them before I even did, and said I should. She's referred to me as her "good friend" and "buddy", though I really don't know her that well. Seems kinda strange, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It's nice to have people to chat with in an MMO again.<br /><br />One funny thing about the Seekers is that there are a ton of super tall people in it. I'm the tallest at 6'7", but one guy is 6'6", another is 6'5", and there are like 5 other people who are over 6ft. It's crazy. Makes me think we need to have a RL guild meetup (would never happen but would be cool) and freak the hell out of people as a gang of crazy tall folk. It'd be awesome.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Other Games</span></span><br /><br />Well, Kofi's PC died so we're stuck in our Dawn of War 2 campaign. It really sucks since we've only got 1 mission left. Not sure what we'll play when that's over though.<br /><br />Inferno and I have played a little of NWN2 since last time, but we're still not done. We've hit level 16 (my Bard is 15 cause of a racial level), so we're getting close to the cap of 20. We had one awesome setback so far, which I totally knew was coming having played the game before. We ran into the Red Dragon in the mountains and tried to kill her. It went not so well at all. I think we got her down to 80% of her Hitpoints before we all died. Mostly from her Fire Breath. I told Inferno that we just need some Fire Immunity spells cast on us and we could probably kill her easily.<br /><br />Inferno and I have also got our buddies into playing a game I got off of Xbox Live Arcade. It's called Castle Crashers and it's a cheap button masher/RPG sidescroller game. It's campy and silly as hell, but it's loads of fun. It's been a nice way to spend tabletop nights when the whole group can't be there, so we can still hang out. Left4Dead has been fun too, but it's only 2 player on the same screen.<br /><br />I bought and finished Batman: Arkham Asylum a while back too. That was a fun game, but it got a bit over the top a few times in fights, and the Detective mode is definitely something that should have been tweaked. You end up playing the entire game in it, so it's like you're constantly walking around with X-Ray Vision. Seemed a little silly, and it also makes everything shaded blue so you don't see the cool lighting and textures. They should have made it a non-combat mode or tweaked it somehow to be less effective.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I also picked up the DLC for Fallout 3 a while back too. It lets you level up past 20, and continue the story, but so far I've barely fiddled with it. Sadly, I think it's going to be something I just wasted money on. Maybe when I'm bored I can come back to it, but with the fall/winter lineup of games coming out, plus Aion, I doubt I'll be back to this in a while.<br /><br />I pretty much gave up on the Witcher. It's not my style, even though it's an RPG. It's too unfocused as an RPG, and not that interesting, really. The darker tones is cool, but Geralt isn't an interesting character and compared to something like NWN2, the characters are really dull.<br /><br />I have gone back to the Sims 3 now, mostly cause of Inferno playing it again. Seeing what he's done and wanting to try some new stuff out made me boot it back up. I really dig some of the new stuff you can do, and I think I'm having more fun with the new character I made, than the version of me I started with. Still, it gets pretty boring after a while and once you fulfill their lifetime wishes it seems like there's not much point. Maybe playing the next generation of the family would be interesting, I dunno.<br /><br />And lastly, I've been playing more Call of Duty 4 lately. Mostly to give me that adrenaline PvP fix since WAR is gone, and also cause it's something I can boot up whenever and play for a half hour. I like that. Works as a stress reliever as well.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aside note:</span><br /><br />I mentioned Zon last time and DOTA, and how I don't play with them. Well now apparently, Kofi doesn't either. Zon and the guys have moved from DOTA to Heroes of Newearth (HON), which is basically an actual developed version of DOTA, rather than a Warcraft 3 mod. Kofi said he doesn't like it very much at all, and the graphics give him eyestrain. Zon is annoyed, of course, but with Kofi's PC out of commission for the time being, he really can't complain.<br /><br />I've thought about mentioning Aion to Kofi, but I'm not sure about him as he has this silly "no playing online games with peeps I don't know" policy. I don't know how well he'd fit in with the Seekers, as we're mostly older folks, and he's still in his early 20s. I dunno, might tell him about it, probably won't though.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">TV</span></span><br /><br />Season 2 of True Blood is over, and it was pretty cool. Kinda ended a bit weak, but overall was entertaining. Watched the 3rd season premiere of Big Bang Theory and wasn't all too impressed, actually. There's a few more episodes I need to watch, but so far I'm not feeling it this season. And apparently there's 3 episodes of Smallville I need to watch too. But it's getting hard to watch Smallville now. Lex Luthor was a much better villain than Doomsday was, and the show seems to be in a bit of a rut. We'll see how it pans out though.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tabletop</span></span><br /><br />Well, summer hiatus is over and we're back. Though we've only been able to have one session so far as it's near the end of the campaign and we've decided to only continue if everyone can make it. The one session was cool, and the guys really seemed to like their new magical items they all found. I tailored each one to the players, so that they could get the most use out of them. Random items is cool sometimes, but since my game is low magic, random just doesn't work.<br /><br />I've been pushing to start Inferno's Cyberpunk game, as I really want to play again, and I had an better idea for a character than the one I mentioned last time. I took my initial character and tweaked him to be a bit more gritty, and suit the game better.<br /><br />My new character is from another culture (we've dubbed them the War culture until we come up with a name) and was a security officer for a wealthy clan on the War homeworld. I haven't nailed down the details yet, but the story I'm thinking of going with is that there was an assassination attempt on his clan leaders and he was caught in the firefight that ensued. Many of the clan leaders were killed and he witnessed horrific things in the firefight. He also lost his eyes in the fight and had to have them replaced with cybernetic eyes. But they are the low grade ones so his eyes look like a Terminators (the endoskeleton's eyes).<br /><br />He also developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the the ordeal and had to have therapy to deal with it. He's been unable to properly cope and began retreating into Virtual Reality (VR) to escape. It's developed into an addiction. He eventually became so addicted he stole money from his clan to pay for it. He was found out and he fled to the Cyber planet to hide. Now he works odd jobs to make money to get the next VR program to get his fix. He has to watch out for his old employers though, as they are trying to track him down (he has the Enemy disadvantage).<br /><br />It's been cool developing his PTSD in GURPS. I gave him Post Combat Shakes, so he has to make a Fright Check after combat, with a penalty if it was really extreme. Flashbacks, so he get distracted in stressful situations, but still knows what he is seeing isn't real. And Nightmares are self explanatory. He should be a cool character to play, as I get to futz around being the crazy one in the group for once.<br /><br />---<br /><br />That's about it for now. Until next time.<br /><br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-6328498123353354862009-08-23T11:33:00.000-07:002009-08-23T13:29:04.576-07:00Sorry, I've been neglecting this again. For some reason I can't keep up with my updates. But I guess this way I at least always have something new to talk about.<br /><br />On with the show then!<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">MMO Land</span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">WAR:</span><br /><br />Well, since last time WAR has been kind of a back and forth thing for me. Since I've been really casual playing it, and mostly sticking to scenarios, it's been hard to play on my server. Now that I hit T3, scenarios will sometimes not pop at all for over and hour. And since the PvE is mind numbingly dull to me now, I just sit around. Well, needless to say, after I stand around doing nothing for a while, I just end up logging out instead.<br /><br />It sucks, cause PT is actually a great server, especially since almost everyone has decent names and the "l33t sp33k" is almost nonexistent. But the activity, especially on Destruction side, has diminished quite a bit. Mostly because of Aion and general frustration, but I will mention that later.<br /><br />So, after hearing about the populations of other servers, I rolled a Choppa on Iron Rock instead to get my bit of MMO PvP. The scenarios are almost non-stop on IR, but the community is horried. I'm not too concerned though, as WAR has become a side thing now. I play it like I would an FPS, an hour here or there, and that's it. Really should un-sub though, as the little I play isn't worth the $15 USD I have to pay. But then again, it's a drop in the bucket compared to other things I spend money on, like eating out at work.<br /><br />Mythic seems to be getting better about balancing, and bug fixing, but the recent patch apparently created a whack of bugs where it was supposed to improve performance. Lawl. Hopefully they get it fixed, cause they tweaked the end game and forts so they aren't as bad anymore. Not that I have seen either, but they at least sound more appealing now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">EVE:</span><br /><br />I cancelled my sub since last time. I finally got my Orca and almost completely fitted her (aside from rigs), but I didn't use her for anything. I just completely lost all desire to play after I got her. I figured I needed another goal to strive for, so I thought a Tech 2 Battleship, or Marauder, would be a good choice. Since the Paladin (Amarr version) is one of the best I thought of getting one, until I looked at how much it cost. Just the ship is over 1 BILLION credits! It would take me over 50 hrs of mission running to afford to just buy the ship, let alone the fittings. That doesn't seem too bad, until you look at the gametime card values.<br /><br />In EVE, it's legal to trade a gametime card (GTC) to another player (in game) for credits. There are actually in-game items that represent the GTCs, so normal trade can occur. You can put them on the market and everything. A GTC only costs about $35 USD and I can get 600 million credits for one, or more. So less than 2 hrs of work nets me what would take me probably 30+ hrs of missioning in game (I can make about 20 million credits/hr). Seems like the balance is way off. I could pick up an hour or two of overtime at work and pay for the ship instead of grinding it out in-game over what would probably be more than a couple weeks of playing? Where's the incentive to play then?<br /><br />Seeing that and realizing that all the time I spend in-game could be more efficiently used by working a little bit of overtime instead, made me un-sub. If my time is better spent not playing the game, then there's no reason to pay the sub.<br /><br />Also, I just recently read about some console FPS that CCP is making that will be the ground combat part of EVE. Taking over some enemy's planet will have to be done via people in the console game. Sounds stupid, IMO. Obviously CCP has no idea what the FPS console crowd is like. They are almost the polar opposite of EVE players. EVE players tend to be 25-28, intelligent, and make good money, where console players are usually immature, vulgar, teenagers and frat boys. There's not going to be much to unite the two groups to work together.<br /><br />They really need to make it a PC game as well, to at least get the regular EVE players to play it as well. I mean, they already have a PC that can play EVE, so they should be able to play the FPS, right?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">AION:</span><br /><br />I have been able to play 5 weekend Closed Beta events for Aion, since I got the pre-order just after the last entry. All I gotta say is, I'm still not 100% sure.<br /><br />Pros:<br /><ul><li>Runs perfectly, unlike WAR.</li><li>Anime style is not that bad, and the graphics are amazing.</li><li>Combat is visceral, and abilities have awesome effects.</li><li>There is an actual death penalty, though small. Makes people play smarter which I like.</li><li>Character customization is good.</li><li>There is a PvP focus, moreso than PvE.</li><li>Flying is cool, especially learning to glide to evade/catch enemies.<br /></li></ul><br />Cons:<br /><ul><li>GRIND. I can feel the grind already and I don't like it. At least WAR has all kinds of advancement so I can do different things to forget the grind. Aion's PvE is grindy, even at low levels.</li><li>Portals. I originally saw this as a plus, but after seeing how even a few lvls difference works in PvP, I hate this. Someone 3+ lvls above you will almost always kill you, no matter what. It's not even close. At least WAR's bolster buffs in RvR areas make it more balanced, and there disparate levels aren't as problematic.</li><li>Character customization is good, but you can't /really/ make a completely different character. They are all still mildly close to anime style. I like the brutality of the Orcs and Goblins in WAR. There's no way to make an Aion character look anything near like them.</li><li>After 5 weekends, I still didn't get to see the Abyss or the PvP in it, so I'm going in blind. Don't like that at all, especially since it will take me a month of playing at least to get to 25, I'm guessing.</li><li>Very low amount of gear variation, it seems. There seems to be a pattern to the gear progression that is exceedingly boring. NPC gear -> white dropped gear -> green gear = 2 lvl higher NPC gear -> repeat. So you would basically go from named white gear to green and back from each level. And the minor variations on the stats in the stuff sucks. +5 to parry or +5 to block? When your Block and Parry are like 600+, 5 more pts is stupid low.</li><li>Quests are exceedingly BORING. Moreso than WoW's cause at least in WoW there were so many you didn't see the same thing over and over.</li></ul>So I dunno about Aion. I think it's going to be a game where I see how the first month of release goes, maybe the 2nd month. But if it gets to be like the Beta where the high lvl enemy players just camp our levelling zones cause they're bored from hitting the cap in 2 weeks, I won't play.<br /><br />And I never really got to interact with the PT people from WAR either, aside from one weekend, so I don't know if that will really affect my sticking with Aion at all.<br /><br />I guess the "new MMO smell" part has worn off now, and I see it for what it is.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Other Games</span></span><br /><br />Dawn of War 2 co-op with Kofi has been a blast. He finally picked it up cause they had a sale on Steam. Inferno also got it. Kofi and I played a whack of missions over the span of 3-4 nights, and are a ways through the game. It's been tons of fun to play, and the loot you get is really cool. I'm loving the RPG aspects of the game. The story is really cool so far too.<br /><br />Overall the game is just very well done. I can't believe how good it is. Inferno has been playing it a lot on his nights off (graveyard shifts ATM), and he's been getting different stuff than us. Plus he uses the sniper guy and Kofi and I never use him. Also, Kofi and I have done so well that we have got more deployments per day so we've done more in fewer of the game's storyline days than Inferno.<br /><br />It's been a great co-op game to play. Inferno and I are continuing our NWN2 co-op game, and after seeing my Evocation Sorcerer play out, I've switched him out for a Bard instead. I have a character levelling/equipping module, so making a new character of equal level and gear is easy. The Sorcerer wasn't very good at doing anything but tossing some damage spells around, which at higher level isn't all that great. Plus, with the aggro mechanics of NWN2, he invariably gets attacked by like 3-4 enemies and dies cause of his minimal AC and HPs.<br /><br />The Bard, on the other hand, is super useful in our party, especially with his Inspirational buffs. He can boost the party's AC, damage and to hit rolls, healing, skills, or disrupt enemy spellcasters. He also has debuffs for enemies, invisibility, haste, confusion and a whack of cool spells. And the best is his super high Use Magic Device, so he can use magical items meant for specific races/alignments, etc. Or cast spells from scrolls, wands, etc. He's awesome. <br /><br />Plus, I love the swashbucking voice I gave him. When Inferno is dicking around talking to NPCs or something, trying to figure out what we should do, I use the quick voice commands to say things like "Yes", "No", "That's a bad idea", or whatnot. I know Inferno gets a kick out of it sometimes.<br /><br />My friend lent me her PS2 after watching me play some Aion, mainly cause I think she wanted to see if I would like some of her Japanese RPG games. I played the one game a little when she was over a couple times, but I really couldn't get into it. The other ones weren't for me either. I find the dialogue just plain bad, and the whole plot leaves me wanting. For the most part her PS2 just sat there untouched. I gave it back to her a week ago or so. <br /><br />Comparing her JRPG games to Western RPGs just shows how terrible they are. Maybe it's the translations, I dunno. But listening to Khelgar and Grobnar in NWN2 is a hell of a lot more entertaining than any of the dialogue in her JRPGs. She's played Mass Effect too, so I don't know why she likes the JRPGs. Must be the art style, since she's an anime fan and she draws anime style art.<br /><br />Haven't really touched Sims 3 at all since last time. I dunno what it is about it, but it hasn't quite drawn me in like Sims 2. Even though there's a lot more you can do with Sims 3.<br /><br />I watched Reign of Fire last night, so I wanted to boot up Fallout 3 and play it again with an evil, melee focused character. But after getting through the intro Vault part, I had little desire to play. The melee part of Fallout seems off, as most of the attacks don't feel like they are actually doing anything. The sounds don't sync up well, the other character doesn't react properly and it generally feels fake, moreso than the gun fights. The only time the melee part works is in VATS when you hit someone and they die, cause then their corpse has ragdoll physics applied and they move accordingly.<br /><br />We'll see though, I might still dick around with Fallout 3 a little, or I might boot up my old savegame and go see what other stuff I can find in the Wastes.<br /><br />As for the Witcher, I played some more of it, but it's still not pulling me in. The quests are very poorly laid out, they have minimal information so sometimes you have no idea how to complete them (ie. you have to beat someone in a drinking game to get them to talk, or show them a specific item, but neither are easy dialogue choices), and the items in the game are completely disinteresting. I have no care about what I loot from bodies cause it's invariably crap, and for some reason I can't carry more than a couple weapons at a time, even to sell them.<br /><br />I dunno, I started looking at a walkthrough to play the Witcher and was almost following it verbatim. That's never a good sign that I'll keep playing a game. Usually I just learn the cheats and skip through to see the story so I can never play the game again. Except the Witcher won't work that way.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aside note about Games</span></span><br /><br />I mentioned last entry how I got Warcraft 3 and the expansion to play the Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) mod with Kofi and his friends. I also mentioned how I didn't like it. Well, the one day Kofi and I were using the Ventrilo server his friends and him use, so we could talk while playing Dawn of War 2 co-op. Kofi's buddy, who I shall now refer to as Zon, came on and hopped into the channel we were in (seperate so we wouldn't disturb the others) to chat with us. He asked what we were doing, and then proceeded to give me shit about only playing DOTA with them a couple times. I pretty much ignored him, also cause we were in the middle of a game, and I couldn't hear him properly.<br /><br />I think he is pissed, as I won't play DOTA with them. But what he doesn't realize is he's a huge asshole sometimes, and is super conceited as well, and I just don't want to deal with people like that. The one game we played of DOTA, at the end you can see how many "clicks per second" everyone has. He tried, albeit sarcastically, to not say I suck cause my CPS was really low. He said the better players have higher CPS, of course cause his is the highest. What a fucker. He only one tried to help me out, but for the most part gave me shit for being a poor player. Wow ... I've played the game twice and you expect me to be good already? Fuck off.<br /><br />Also, I don't really like playing DOTA as Real Time Strategy games are pretty low on my list of favourite genres. I actually figured out a list of genres and rated them from my most to least favourites:<br /><ol><li>FPS</li><li>RPG</li><li>MMO</li><li>Arcade (Mario, GTA, Assassin's Creed)<br /></li><li>Racing</li><li>Turn Based Strategy (X-COM, Master of Orion 2)<br /></li><li>Real Time Tactical (Dawn of War 2, World In Conflict)<br /></li><li>Simulation</li><li>Real Time Strategy</li><li>Adventure</li><li>Casual / Indie</li><li>Family<br /></li><li>Sports</li></ol>Hell, I dunno what category something like Tetris falls under, but I'd play that over an RTS anytime. RTSes are simply who can click faster and who's memorized the build trees. It's not strategy at all. Chess is strategy. Chess where you have like 2 secs to move your piece is closer to what RTS games are.<br /><br />And this brings me to Starcraft 2. After seeing the gameplay vids and stuff, I have zero interest in actually playing the game. It looks like the same thing that came out in 1998(!), just with improved graphics. I'd just like to see the cutscences and CGI bits. The actual gameplay doesn't excite me at all. Rehashing gameplay from 11 years ago is pretty weaksauce, especially for a studio like Blizzard with their insane profits. Even FPSes have got a lot better in 11 years, with cover mechanics, slow-mo, better storytelling, shooting through walls, destructible terrain, etc. RTS games are the same shit that's been out since Red Alert 1!<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">TV</span></span><br /><br />I've been watching a lot of TV since last time. I watched all of Better off Ted, a sitcom about a manager in a big corporation. It's actually pretty decent, not laugh out loud good, but entertaining.<br /><br />I watched all of Legend of the Seeker season 1 as well. It's based off the Terry Goodkind novels, and is a fucking good show, amazingly. I figured it would end up being kinda meh, but they did an awesome job on costumes, sets, etc. And it's filmed in New Zealand so the outdoor shots are wicked. Sam Raimi, director of Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Spider Man 1-3, is directing this as well, as he did Xena back in the day. He's doing an awesome job. Can't recommend the show enough. Even women will like it as the love interest part is very well done. And guys love drooling over Brigit Regan, who plays the female lead Kahlen Amnell (sp?). She's HAWT. *drool*<br /><br />I've also got to watch True Blood season 2 now that it's started back up. So fucking good, and I'm loving Eric Northman. Big Viking vampire? Hells yeah. Plus he's a Swedish actor so props for the motherland.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gaming</span></span><br /><br />We've taking a summer hiatus for a while, as Blake is gone for work and his character is pretty integral to the party. Also, cause I think we could finish the module if he wasn't here and that's unfair to him.<br /><br />Inferno was thinking about running a Cyberpunk game, using GURPS 4th Edition, in our shared Space gameworld. I've made a character already, after watching TRON the other night. I tried to make a character no one has played before, but it's hard to come up with differing character concepts for Cyberpunk. There really only are a few different types. Our buddy was thinking of an idea as well, but his sounds cooler than mine. His was a guy who is an actual alien species, living on the Tech homeworld. There are a couple alien species in the shared gamespace but we haven't written any specifics for them. I think he could easily be a genetic bioroid instead, just with a weird appearance. Like an aquatic looking humanoid for a mostly water covered planet. Something weird like that.<br /><br />My guy in comparison is normal. Just a teenager who's brilliant, but gets himself into trouble cause of his habits. He can hack computers, write software, build gadgets, etc. but is a chickenshit when it comes to combat. He's more of the support character, with a little side of innocence so the whole group doesn't feel like a collection of down and out cynical lone wolfs like it usually ends up.<br /><br />We'll see how gaming goes later on when Blake is back. Cause once my campaign module is done, I'm not GMing for a while. It's been far too long since I got to play a /good game/. I've only got to play f-ing DnD for the last 3 years, gimme a chance to play some GURPS, and not be the GM.<br /><br />---<br /><br />That seems to be all of it. Take care folks, and see you in a month or so I guess.<br /><br />o7<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-39810684079986769142009-06-15T17:49:00.000-07:002009-06-15T19:21:00.465-07:00Wow ... sorry about forgetting to post here in a few months. Always seem to get distracted when I want to type something up.<br /><br />That said, we've got a lot to talk about, so on with it.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">MMO Land</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">WAR:</span><br /><br />Okay, I've played a lot since last post, and it's been lots of fun. I ended up rolling Destruction on the Phoenix Throne RP server (PT), and transferring my Order characters to the core server they set as the other option. I have never touched my Order guys since though, as I have no patience for Core server asshattery. Realistically, I should have just transferred my Order guys to PT so I could play with my friend. But I really wanted to be the underdog side on PT, so I went Destro. And lo and behold, Destro all of a sudden became the big side and started wiping the floor with Order. I think cause a few of my old server's guilds re-rolled, and that the Destro players on PT already were better players overall for having been the underdogs for so long.<br /><br />Anyways, I tried the other classes and really fell in love with the Greenskins (orcs and goblins), mostly cause of the ridiculous quests and such. Plus, they have good classes overall, something that the High Elves don't. My main Order chars were both High Elf classes and were really gimpy. After a lot of alting around to figure out what I wanted to play, I started really going with my Goblin Shaman (healer/DPS). I like the class, but unfortunately, if I wasn't soloing, I was expected to be healing all the time, and I find that /utterly boring/. And being focused on by the enemies isn't something I enjoy.<br /><br />So eventually, I end up playing a Chosen (Chaos tank). Strangely enough, it's been the class I've totally fell in love with, but was one I had absolutely no interest in playing before. After looking into the class mechanics and abilities, I found it was almost the mirror of my Elven Swordmaster, but with a different class mechanic. Both are good as anti-magic tanks. But the Chosen's auras are a hell of a lot better, and way easier to use, than the Swordmaster's Balance mechanic.<br /><br />After playing a lot of T1 RvR with my Chosen, I was sold. I'm almost into T3 with him, and it's been a blast. I definitely love being hard to kill, and fucking with the Order backlines. The auras are great cause they help my teammates but also fuck up the enemy. My aura that drops resistances is great, cause it makes any of my teammates attacks that do elemental/spiritual/corporeal damage to be almost unresistable. I've found that the Order players don't pick up on it right away, but after a while they realize that I'm a major threat and start to focus on trying to kill me. It also helps that I'm better than average at playing my class, so when we play Order noobs, we take them to the cleaners. I've had more than a few scenarios where I don't die /at all/. And get in the top 3 for kills and damage, as a /tank class/ with a /sword and shield/. I don't even use a 2hander. It's fucked up.<br /><br />All in all, my Chosen is a blast to play. And he looks pretty badass too. Really enjoy it.<br /><br />There seems to be one problem though. All my alt-ing and casual play with my characters means I level pretty slow, and I'm still a hell of a ways away from max level and end game. I'm sure if I added up all the time I've played, across all my characters, I'd be at max level already.<br /><br />But there's another problem: The end game SUCKS.<br /><br />I've watched videos of WAR's endgame city seiges, and they are fucking retarded. Especially for a game designed around MASSIVE PvP battles. The city seiges work this way: Once one side has taken the Tier 4 zones required, they can assault the enemy's fortresses. Forts are like the regular RvR Keeps, only bigger. Major problem is the lag that is inevitable when there's all the people required to take a fort.<br /><br />Okay, say the forts go down. Now the players can attack the enemy's city. Which ends up being an instanced Public Quest (PQ) that has both sides fighting in it. WTF? :S<br /><br />Yes, you heard me right. The end game in a PvP game is contested PvE with the opposing side. Of course you can kill the enemy players, but if they complete the PQ you lose the instance. If enough of the instances are won by the attackers, the city is considered "sacked" and the defenders lose access to some of the PvE instances in it. Wait ... WTF???<br /><br />Again, makes no sense.<br /><br />And the stupidest part of the city instances is that they are only 48 vs. 48, and yet they still lag to shit, and quite frequently crash, so the attackers get kicked back out of the city. Plus, the attackers only have 2 hrs to sack the city before it resets and they have to take the forts again. Totally retarded.<br /><br />So basically, with the end game being completely borked at this point, I've been in no real rush to get there. For the most part, I only play my characters a little, usually trying to get into as many scenarios as possible to level. It's much more interesting than PvE or RvR at this point. PQs are cool for the lewts, as they are quite often better than the RvR gear I could get at the same point. But if I get max influence in the RvR lakes, I can get really nice gear. Problem is it requires me to be almost max level for the tier, with a renown rank (PvP level) of almost the same. I managed to get all the Tier 1 rewards for my Chosen, but that was because Tier 1 (T1) RvR is the best. Limited crowd control, all open field combat, and no Keeps to lag things out.<br /><br />Another problem with the higher tier RvR is that people tend to roll in MASS zergs, so it's laggy as hell, and not much of a fight at all. You're either steamrolling the enemy, or being steamrolled yourself. And the steamrollees tend to stop fighting and go elsewhere to PvE or capture Battlefield Objectives (BOs) to get renown points and avoid the zergs.<br /><br />It's silly. I'm much more inclined to play small scale battles or scenarios (instanced 12 vs. 12), cause it's more interesting, and my contribution to the fight is appreciable. In a zerg, if you take me out there's no way of noticing I'm not there. And steamrolling people is no fun. I'd much rather be the underdog.<br /><br />So what does all this mean?<br /><br />It means I'll probably keep playing WAR casually on my Chosen, doing scenarios and whatnot until I hit max rank, and then maybe re-roll or quit. It's seems to be the same with every MMO I've played. I can never hit max level cause I usually get bored of the game by then.<br /><br />We'll see how WAR pans out though. If the new Land of the Dead expansion is good it might actually make me keep playing. But there's another MMO that has caught my attention as of late that could change that.<br /><br />And with that I'll segway into talking about ...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">AION:</span><br /><br />Aion is a PvP focused MMO from NCSoft, the makers of Lineage 2 and others. They are a Korean company, so obviously, Aion has the total anime feel to it.<br /><br />Since this post looks like it's going to get lengthy /already/, I'm going to pre-empt myself and start making things brief.<br /><br />About Aion:<br /><ol><li>Already had been out in Korea for almost a year, so it's got a lot of the bugs out. (WAR by comparison is buggy as hell sometimes)</li><li>No PvP off the bat like WAR. Must be level 25 to enter the Abyss, a massive PvP zone.</li><li>Runs /perfectly/ with 100+ people on screen at once. Minimal lag.</li><li>You can go through portals to the enemy's PvE zones and gank them. Portals are on a timer, and retaliation is very likely. This is an iffy for me, as trying to level while getting ganked is ghey to the max. Depending on the death penalty for this, I'm not sure if it's good or bad.<br /></li><li>Uses the Crytek engine (as in the engine used in Crysis), so the graphics are VERY impressive</li><li>Has the anime style to it, so I'm not as impressed as I would normally be (anime is not really my thing)</li><li>BUT ... the character customization is far beyond any other MMO (except maybe CoX), and one can actually make characters that aren't as metrosexual as they usually are in Asian games</li><li>There's flying in the game. But it's on a timer (which you can buff) and only in certain zones. The Abyss allows flying everywhere.</li><li>There are fortresses like Keeps in WAR that players can take to give buffs to their side/debuffs to the enemy</li><li>There is a 3rd PvE faction that will attack either side, and are there to mess with things. Overall a better idea so one sided servers don't happen, ie. WoW and WAR</li><li>Combat is slower and a bit more tactical. There are attack chains, and combos, so it's not button mashing.</li><li>But needing to rest between fights is there, so some grindiness might be there.</li><li>Normally all Asian MMOs are grindy as hell, but NCSoft North America is changing the game to be more Western friendly (WoW-esque) and make quests available to level to max level.</li><li>There are a couple instanced dungeons they are going to implement. One is PvE only, the other is like a contested PvE instance. You race to beat the end boss and fight off the other players at the same time.</li><li>There are duels so players can practice their PvP skills in downtime.</li><li>There are 4 starting class types (mage, rogue, cleric, tank) which branch at lvl 10 to 2 each. 8 classes overall.</li><li>Game is in closed beta in NA and will be open beta in Aug, prob released in Sept.<br /></li><li>Might be a bit behind the curve for updates, as the Korean's will get the new patches, and NA will have to wait to get them localized.</li></ol>Overall, it looks like an Asian game I might actually like for once. Lineage 2 was so ghey it hurt. And the macro/bots/farmers were rampant, even in the open beta.<br /><br />Basically, after discussing it with my fellow WAR players on PT via our forums, I'm going to have a looksee at Aion when it does the open beta. I'm sure at that point I'll know whether or not I'll be into it. Right now it sounds good, but in practice it could not be appealing at all. If WAR doesn't pan out, Aion might be my next MMO. Especially since /a lot/ of my server mates are thinking about dropping WAR for Aion when it comes out. PT might end up like my last server after that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">EVE:</span><br /><ol><li>Haven't played too much since last post. Been training a lot of skills.</li><li>Moved to a new mission hub, and even though it's a lot busier, it's a much better location to sell all the lewts I get from missioning.</li><li>Training for a capital ship, the Orca. I've surprisingly earned almost all the money I need before the training is done. Something I've never done before. And I need 600+ million to get the Orca and all the mods I need.</li><li>Orca might end up being my "mobile base" so I can use it to go exploring Wormholes and other exploration content without having to worry about going back to get a different ship.</li><li>Kofi wants to go fight some people in 0.0 space cause I showed him a really cool video of 2 players doing it with new alts. Only thing is we can lose our implants if we get podded, or end up pissing off some /very powerful/ people. Could be exceedingly problematic if we want to join a player corp later, or form our own (war declarations on us).</li></ol>Mostly, EVE has been a side thing if I get the mood for some sci-fi or casual play. It's great cause I can do missions and chat via MSN and stuff at the same time.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Other games</span><br /><br />I've been playing some of the Sims 3 lately too, as well as Dawn of War 2 (mostly vs. the AI in MP). Both are great, but it seems like I have too many games to play at this point and it's impossible to get anywhere with them. Usually most nights consist of me playing one game only, so most games I have only get one night a week at most. Hard to progress, for sure.<br /><br />I also picked up Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne expansion off the Blizzard site just so I could play the DOTA mod with Kofi and his buddies. I've played a little with them and some on my own (vs. the AI), but I'm terrible at it. Mostly cause it's twitchy, like an RTS in a way, and I hate that. Also, you have to memorize the item builds (like build trees in a regular RTS) and I hate that too. Rote memorization and fast reflexes don't equate to strategy to me, at all. World in Conflict was a much better RTS game, IMO. Hence why I've bugged Kofi to get DOW2 so we can co-op the SP part, or even team up vs. the AI on a MP map.<br /><br />Still haven't played the Witcher since last time. Really need to get back to it. CoD4 has fallen to the wayside, mostly cause it's kind of repetitive after a while. And I've hit rank 55 so there's no more character growth. Inferno has been bugging me to play NWN2 again, mostly cause neither of us play CoD4 anymore and we don't have any other co-op options. He's been playing co-op games with his girlfriend all the time when he's at her place, so I guess he's used to it now.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">TV</span></span><br /><br />Fuck. They didn't pick up Terminator for next season, and it ended on a total WTF moment. So it's all up in the air. Sucks. Hopefully they do a mini-movie thing to tie loose ends up or something. Such a shame.<br /><br />Smallville was really good, and a lot better with the Superman/Doomsday plot lines. Gonna be interesting to see what comes up next season.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gaming</span></span><br /><br />Shockingly, especially to me, is that we are /still playing my game/. It's been like months, though probably only 10-11 sessions or so cause of cancellations, but it's been cool. The DnD guy is actually seeming to enjoy the story and RPing. Since his character isn't the best in combat (he's pretty much a "johnny one spell"), he's been really enjoying the out of combat stuff. So are the other guys. And what's awesome is that they haven't even finished the first module of this 3 module series. So if I eventually wanted to run all of it, I could. Pretty sweet.<br /><br />Though after the first module is done, I would really like to get a chance to play again. Especially something with guns and explosions. Inferno's space marine campaign would really hit the spot. I've been reading a whack of Warhammer 40k novels and now I'm hankering for some space marine combat. Would be extra awesome if we could have chainswords. That would rock. Nothing better than eviscerating your enemies with a chainsword and spraying blood everywhere. *evil grin*<br /><br />---<br /><br />But that's it. Thanks for reading. Hopefully I'll update this sooner, especially since typing this much is a real strain and takes so damn long.<br /><br />Cheers folks!Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-38811090985976184782009-03-25T17:37:00.000-07:002009-03-25T19:01:38.643-07:00Holy fuck, I totally forgot about <span style="font-weight: bold;">Fallout 3</span>!<br /><br />I bought the game even though I had the feeling it was Oblivion with guns. Sadly, it is. But they didn't use the stupid levelling system Oblivion had, and went with a standard "put your skill points where you want" type of system. Basically, they fixed one of the major complaints I had with Oblivion.<br /><br />The VATS system is great for targeting, though I'm much more accurate than my character, so it was kind of useless to me. Most of the times I used it was when I walked around a corner and wanted to blow the head off of an enemy with my combat shotgun. Otherwise I just used the standard FPS targeting.<br /><br />The ability to pickpocket an enemy and drop a live grenade to kill them is hilarious when you first do it, but when you find that that's the most efficient use of your ammo it loses it's charm fast. If I threw grenades at the same enemy, it might take 2 or 3, but one in the pocket kills any humanoid enemy instantly.<br /><br />The lockpicking mini-game is the same stupid shit as Oblivion, though this time if my skill isn't high enough I can't even try. It was one of the easiest mini-games I've ever seen.<br /><br />The hacking mini-game on the other hand is the most fucking frustrating thing ever. I would have been fine if they had simply required a certain level to hack the computer instead. The mini-game is more a frustration than anything.<br /><br />The AI is still as stupid as Oblivion, the graphics all have that bump mapped shine to them (which makes everything look like plastic), and the environments get very repetitive after a while.<br /><br />"Ooooh ... more subways!"<br />"Another cavern. Yay!"<br />"Ruined office building. I've never seen this before!"<br /><br />You get the idea.<br /><br />The setting is a lot better than Oblivion for sure. The foul language, morally repugnant bits of plot and such make the setting very real. And the open world to explore is super cool. The only problem is when you realize everything you see is the same 3-4 tilesets, in different patterns, there's no real incentive to explore. I basically skipped most of the north half of the map, and a lot of the ruins of Washington, DC. cause I realized it was all the same. And finding more of the same guns and ammo wasn't all too thrilling. At least in Oblivion, there were some cool, unique magical weapons and items you could find. In Fallout, there are some unique guns, but they are just a little bit better than the standard guns.<br /><br />Also, I managed to hit the level cap of 20 far too easily, and had every weapon I could think of at my disposal. Money became completely trivial, ammo was plentiful, and I had almost all the combat skills (including the sneaky thief and conversation skills) near maximum. There wasn't anything I couldn't do. About the only thing that became a problem was the stupid random enemies that I'd run into while wandering the Wastelands. Because of my level (since they used the same dumbass mechanic from Oblivion) the only enemies that would spawn were mutated grizzly bears. And they don't drop ammo. So they simply became a drain on my ammo supply. The meat they dropped was near worthless. I began to use the fast travel option to get anywhere because it was the only way to avoid the fucking bears.<br /><br />The story is not bad, but like Oblivion, it's not great either. I did the first part (cause you have to), and then wandered around until I was near max level. Only then did I do the rest of it. I spent about 30 hrs on the intro and wandering around. After I followed the main quest exclusively, it was only another 10 hrs. And the intro is less than an hour, easy. So the main story is just like Oblivion. Over before you know it, if you don't do side stuff.<br /><br />And the biggest kicker is the ending. No matter your choice at the end, you can't continue the game. At least Oblivion let the player keep going, so they could do all the little things they missed. Fallout doesn't have that option at all. Unless you download a 3rd party mod. Ghey ...<br /><br />Really, if I were to recommend Fallout 3, I'd tell people to borrow it from someone else. Or maybe rent it. Though that doesn't work if you really want to explore a lot. It's not worth it to buy at full price. Maybe when it's on sale.<br /><br />It's a good game, not great, but it's a lot like Oblivion. And that's not something I look for in a game.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Just double checking this I realized how much I sound like Yahtzee from <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation">Zero Punctuation</a>. But maybe that's cause I just watched like 5 of his videos. :PRev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-196980504481978652009-03-23T23:21:00.000-07:002009-03-24T00:42:01.683-07:00Again, I've been neglecting this blog, and I am sorry. On with the updates!<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MMO Land:</span><br /><br />War:<br /><br />This has been quite a dilemma since last post. The lag/desynch problems I was experiencing persisted, and basically made the game completely unplayable. After a lot of frustration, and every possible fix I could think of, I had to cancel my account. It expired at the beginning of Feb.<br /><br />It really sucked cause I was enjoying the game a lot, and what's worse is that I was finally catching up to my old gaming buddy who lives in another province. He was playing Destruction side, so we'd be enemies, but I was hoping to fight him sometime.<br /><br />I even tried sending some emails to my ISP, thinking that their packet shaping system was screwing up the game. They said it wasn't, but I was hesitant to believe them. The thread I started on WarhammerAlliance.com (the forums I was using as a primary source, as there were no official forums at that point) eventually became one of the top watched threads. There were a lot of other people, especially fellow customers of my ISP, who were experiencing the same issues. We all ended up unsubscribing from WAR due to the lag/desync.<br /><br />Well, they recently put out a 10 day trial for the game, after the 1.2 patch, and still being curious about the game, I DLed it to check if the problem was still there. And *poof*, it's now gone. There must have been some weird code that didn't like packet shaping or something, cause it runs great, just like it did before the Xmas patches.<br /><br />So I got to play a little on the trial servers, try out the new Choppa class (the class I wanted to play from the get go, but was cut before launch), see the new improvements, and had a lot of fun. I'm going to reactivate my old account here soon, and start playing again.<br /><br />My only issue now is that my old server has become very sparsely populated (aside from Tier 4), so I don't know if I want to go back there. Also, the Order side is now dominating in RvR, as the Destro side has lost players. It was the other way around when I was playing. The other RP server apparently has a much higher population, though it too is imbalanced towards the Order side.<br /><br />I'm torn what to do now. Should I delete my Order chars on Ostermark and roll Destro instead to be the underdog, and be able to chat with my friend as well? Or should I roll Destro on the other server, so I can keep my Order chars on Ostermark, and be the underdog side on a higher pop server? If I roll Destro on the other server, my friend has his Order chars there, so I won't be able to play with him there either. And there's only 2 RP servers. I'm not too sure I could ever handle the stupid names on a Core server. The only one I saw that was stupid, yet a little clever was the Choppa named "GetToThe". Lawlz. :P<br /><br />EVE:<br /><br />Well, EVE has had a major expansion, and has brought a lot of new stuff to the table. There are more exploration sites now (something I dabbled with, but ultimately ignored as the mechanics were mind numbing), wormholes, Sleeper NPCs, Tech 3 ships, and new graphical goodies.<br /><br />Wormholes are the biggest thing, as they are the main part of the expansion. They lead to unknown space (2500 new systems, to be precise), which have the Sleeper NPCs. The wormhole space systems are the source of all the components for the new Tech 3 ships, as well as routes between parts of the EVE galaxy, and are completely lawless (giving players another place to PvP).<br /><br />The new scanning mechanics for exploration are /so much better/ it's crazy. The old mechanic was:<br /><ol><li>Drop a probe to see if something was in the system.</li><li>Wait</li><li>Get a hit. Drop probes at all the planets, making sure they didn't overlap improperly.</li><li>Wait.</li><li>Get a hit. Drop a smaller probe near the site to narrow down the location.</li><li>Wait.</li><li>Repeat from 5. with smaller probes until the site is found.</li><li>Warp to the site.</li></ol>See the biggest problem with the old mechanic was the waiting between steps. And if you didn't have a CovertOps ship, with the best modules and rigs, PLUS all the required skills in Exploration, you had to wait anywhere up to 10 mins. Talk about BORING. Most people who did it before either watched TV or read a book while doing so. It was tedious.<br /><br />The new mechanic is fast, doesn't require a hell of a lot of skills (kind of a kick in the pants for us highly skilled explorers), and is far more interactive. You have to manually position the probes using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateration">trilateration</a> to determine the exact position of the site in 3 dimensions. It's cool, but sometimes a little hard. After some practice it's a lot quicker to find a site. With the new changes and my skills, my scan time has gone from 200+ secs to 5 secs. Talk about fast. I can now find a wormhole in less than 10 mins.<br /><br />The Sleeper NPCs are a lot different than the usual NPCs in EVE. They are based more on PvP fittings, and tactics than the dumb normal NPCs. See, in most missions, a lone pilot can take on 10+ ships at once, often times multiple larger ships than his own. In a PvP encounter he would be killed almost instantly. And since the focus of EVE is PvP in some fashion, the Devs decided to make the Sleepers different. It also allows people to use PvP fitted ships to fight them, as wormhole space is lawless anyways, so they could end up fighting players at some point. And fitting for PvE and then getting into PvP usually ends in a quick death.<br /><br />The Sleepers are tough as they tank all kinds of damage equally, will shoot at your drones, can remote repair each other, scramble or webify you and do stupid high damage. They sound more than a little overpowered, and to a certain extent they are, but they are also designed to make people use teamwork to fight them, also useful if they happen to engage in PvP. See how the logic flows?<br /><br />Well, Kofi has got quite excited about wormholes (WHs) as he sees it as a group activity we can do with his other friend who plays EVE. He really wants us to have something to play together, as that's how he enjoys his gaming the most; playing with RL friends. <br /><br />There seems to be a snag though, as I found out recently. I've soloed the easier Sleeper sites in my Battlecruiser, and based on the loot and salvage I've got, we'd be better off running level 4 missions in high-security space (where we can't get shot) than doing WH space. I spent over a couple hours finding one WH and doing a couple sites in it (mostly cause I had to fly all over looting the wrecks. Stupid slow battlecruiser >:| ), and I made almost nothing compared to a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">lvl</span> 4 mission I could have finished in less than an hour. Including looting and salvaging the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">lvl</span> 4. So, I don't really know if we should bother. Especially since we could either end up trapped in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">WH</span> system, forcing us to self-destruct (losing our ships and clones in the process) or get caught in some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">PvP</span> and die that way. My <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Battlecruiser</span> is quite expensive, as it's rigged and all, so losing it is not something that will be easy on the wallet.<br /><br />Overall, I don't know what we should do in EVE. After doing some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">WH</span> space, I think we should just stick with our status <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">quo</span> for now, which means soloing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">lvl</span> 4s. And that doesn't work with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Kofi's</span> plan to game together at all.<br /><br />Really, I don't know if I'll stick around with EVE after the next while. I might keep my account training, as the money isn't really a big deal. I have a lot of other things I want to skill up, especially the non-combat stuff. I don't know why, but it could always be useful later on.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Other games:</span><br /><br />I <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">DLed</span> a copy of Call of Duty: World at War and Inferno and I got to play it through co-op. That was pretty cool, even though the missions seemed very disjointed, and there wasn't really a plot (other than it was WW2).<br /><br />Playing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">CoD</span> again got me itching to play some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">CoD</span>4, so I bought it from Steam. Since I got it, I've easily played over 28 hrs of it. It's become my new way to blow off some steam if I'm bored. Inferno has also picked up a copy and we play it together a lot. We don't always play on the same team though. We just auto-assign ourselves and see which teams we're on. It's more fun that way. We're good enough sports that we congratulate each other when one of us kills the other.<br /><br />I also <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">DLed</span> a copy of FEAR 2 and played through the SP campaign. I played on Hard, but aside from a couple really hard parts, the game was too easy. Ammo was overabundant and most of the time I had max health packs. It's only when I got super cocky that I usually died. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">gameplay</span> wasn't anywhere near as polished as the original, but that's also cause the 2<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">nd</span> was a cross-platform game. <br /><br />The story was much cooler in the 2<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">nd</span> one though, and the creepy parts were a lot better. The ending is right fucked up of course, but a little more disturbing that I had anticipated. Overall a good SP game, but weak as hell MP.<br /><br />Inferno and I haven't touched <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">NWN</span>2 at all in a while, so I don't know if we'll finish it. Once we leave something this long we usually never go back to it. Plus, whenever Inferno has a spare night off, he usually goes over to his girlfriend's place. Not that I blame him, it's just we have little spare time that coincides, so <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">CoD</span>4 is a much easier alternative.<br /><br />I picked up a copy of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Witcher</span> from Steam as well, and have played the first part of that. I left it alone for quite a while though, so I really can't remember much of the quests and story so far. It's a really cool <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">RPG</span> game, though the sex plots are stupid as hell, and really only pander to the stereotypical sex-starved nerdy guys. But they are still a bit of a turn on. :P<br /><br />I also want to get Dawn of War 2 from Steam as well, so I can play co-op with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Kofi</span> (if I can convince him <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">WHs</span> are not for us in EVE) and possibly play vs. my old gaming buddy who also plays WAR. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">DoW</span>2 is more of a real-time tactical game mixed with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">RPG</span> elements than a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">RTS</span> game, but that's okay with me. I've always disliked the base building parts of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">RTSes</span> anyways.<br /><br />I also played Dead Rising some more on my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">XBox</span> 360 and beat it. It was a lot of fun near the end, and quite hard as well. I'd have to say it was one of the better games I've played for my 360.<br /><br />---<br /><br />TV:<br /><br />I've completely stopped watching Heroes at this point. It's become so fucking stupid. The characters switch alliances so god damn much it's ridiculous. And the show never seems to get anything accomplished until the last 5-10 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">mins</span> of an episode. <br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Smallville</span> has been pretty cool, except for the resurgence of Lana, but that's okay as she's effectively been written off the show at this point. They can finally develop the Clark/Lois relationship like they should.<br /><br />Terminator has been really good as well. It was a little disjointed this season, but has picked up the pace more in recent episodes. I'm really wondering how it's going to work out.<br /><br />And <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Battlestar</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Galactica</span> is finally over. The ending was a little too long IMO, and really was a let down in some parts. There were some great bits, but overall it didn't end with a bang like I thought it would. I actually ended up seeing the 2<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">nd</span> half of the 2hr finale first, and watched the 1st half the next day. But it still didn't make much difference.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In gaming, I've been able to run my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">GURPS</span> Fantasy Horror game a lot more since last post, and it's been great. I've used some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Warhammer</span> Fantasy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">RPG</span> modules as the basis of the campaign, so the prep work has been minimal. And the group has /really/ got into some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">roleplaying</span>. There was one session recently where no combat occurred /at all/, and it was still fun. Quite cool. It seems we've got back to more of the gaming style we had in the past.<br /><br />Unfortunately, Blake's 2<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">nd</span> child was born a couple weeks ago, so he's been unable to play. As well, the one guy is out of town working for the next month or two, so we're down 2 players. Hopefully, we can play at Blake's house and he can still join in. Cause I don't know if the 3 remaining players will work for the campaign.<br /><br />---<br /><br />And that's it. I'm sure there's more to tell, but I can't think of anything, and my hands /really hurt/.<br /><br />See you all later! o/Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-83049142724263838092009-01-06T19:03:00.003-08:002009-03-23T23:04:45.233-07:00Jesus ... I haven't written in here in /ages/. I laughed when I read what I wrote back in Sept. So much has changed since then. Games wise, of course.<br /><br />---<br /><br />MMOs:<br /><br />WAR:<br />The funny thing is I broke down and bought WAR just after that last post, and I'm still playing it. I haven't been playing it like I used to play MMOs. It's usually an hour or two, here or there. Since I started, the game has improved quite a bit, though I seem to have this annoying lag since the last patch, and random desynch issues. Aside from the network issues, the game has been a lot more stable since I started.<br /><br />They've added a lot of features that I was highly impressed by, but that could be cause the game was pretty buggy before and there was a lot of polish needed. Things added that really should have been there from the beginning, as any AAA title would have.<br /><br />For the most part, I've stuck around cause the PvE isn't that bad (along the same lines as WoW), the animations are pretty good (aside from a few horrendous ones), and I like PvP in WAR (for the most part).<br /><br />The PvP is actually fun, and the best part is it's accessible from any level. And the instanced battles ("scenarios"), are available from anywhere in your current zone, provided you haven't outlevelled the zone range. There are the Realm vs. Realm (RvR) lakes where you can PvP over battlefield objectives (BOs) and Keeps. They are meant to be the focus of the game, as they affect the tiers above them, leading to tier 4 which can allow one side to sack the opponent's home city.<br /><br />It all sounds ridiculously cool in theory, but after actually participating in a Keep siege in Tier 2, I can say I don't see why people do the open RvR stuff at all. It's basically who can bring the bigger zerg, and the Keep fights become a meat grinder as the only way to the 2nd level is up a narrow ramp. The defenders can rain down on the attackers and since there is collision of players, their tanks can stand at the top of the ramp and keep people from getting through. All while running at like < 5 fps. Oh .. did I mention there is the Keep Lord NPC on the 2nd floor too, who's a Lord class NPC. Thus he dishes out stupid DPS and has insane HPs. Yeah ... not all that well designed at all.<br /><br />The RvR in Tier 1 is the best there is, cause it's only over BOs, and they are simply guarded by a Champion class NPC and some regular mobs. Also, it's all open field, so there is actual room to maneuver and flank the opponents. So much more fun.<br /><br />At least the scenarios are entertaining, and an easy way to get some XP and PvP in. Basically, I'm using WAR to be a PvE game sometimes, but a mostly to get my PvP fix. I don't play FEAR anymore (cause no one else does), and I don't have any other good games for PvP. <br /><br />What it comes down to ultimately is that I'll probably play WAR casually (like I am right now) until I hit the level cap (or close to) and then quit. Unless they can give me more incentive to do RvR, or at least make Keep fights interesting and fun, I don't see any reason to do it.<br /><br />EVE:<br /><br />Again, like I called it, I stopped playing EVE since the last post, and have recently got an itch to play it. I re-subbed a while back and kept my skills training, mostly cause they changed how the system works so you can't set a skill to keep training while your account is inactive. I lost a couple months, but that's not a big deal. I've got about 28 million skillpoints, so I'm far ahead of the curve.<br /><br />I don't know if I'll really get back into EVE at all. It will probably be a side game I play from time to time to do something different. Since the PvE is boring as hell, and the PvP has stupid death penalties I don't see this ever becoming my main MMO.<br /><br />---<br /><br />TV:<br /><br />Smallville has been not bad this season, surprising since Michael Rosenbaum (aka. Lex Luther) left the show. He was one of my favourite characters, and a Superman staple, so seeing how they were going to adjust the show was interesting. Best part though has to be the writing off of Lana Lang. I never liked the actress (she looks like she's still 15, WTF?!) and I always found Lois to be more interesting. Finally, they are developing the Clark-Lois-Superman love triangle.<br /><br />Hereos has been meh, for the most part. Not sure why I keep watching it. Maybe cause I hope it will get good for a change.<br /><br />Terminator was good this season as well. Not too much that was new, but I like where they are going. And I have to say, Brian Austin Green plays his role very well. Never thought I'd say that about a former 90210 cast member.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Inferno and I finally beat Act 1 of Neverwinter Nights 2 the other night. I've swapped my character once already cause Rangers suck in NWN2. Now I'm playing a sorcerer and it's far cooler. Mega damage spells FTW! Though I've got to be continuously aware of friendly fire with the difficulty setting we're playing on.<br /><br />I haven't played anything co-op with Kofi in forever. The only thing we got some co-op with was Left4Dead, and that was a single session. He's played it /a lot/ with his other buddies and really enjoyed it. I played through solo and found it cool, but ultimately, too short. Even co-op play all the way through really doesn't make up for the price of the game. It should have been cheaper, or had more than 4 chapters. I beat all the chapters in about an hour each. 4 hrs of playtime is not work 50 bucks, no matter how you slice it.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Tabletop:<br /><br />GAMING DRAMA!!!!<br /><br />It's silly, but our group has devolved into infighting about gaming as of late. Me, Inferno, Blake and our buddy who moved back to town are all for GURPS, and the other 3 guys are really only wanting to play DnD. It's like War of the Gaming Systems.<br /><br />It's pretty stupid, really. We've played DnD for like 3 years, they should be at least okay with playing some GURPS for a little bit. Basically, I have to run my Horror/Fantasy game for GURPS next cause it's the only game that we can share common ground on. The DnD guys don't really like anything other than fantasy, and the GURPS guys like all kinds of gaming.<br /><br />Like in my stupid long phone conversation with Blake not too long ago, I said that the DnD guys are so adamant over playing only DnD cause I think it's all they've ever experienced. They've probably only played hack 'n slash DnD in it's varying incarnations over the years so they don't understand where me and the GURPS guys are coming from. We're all more Narrativist gamers, so plot is the primary part of the game. To the DnD guys, it's a game first and foremost, plot is cool, but can be secondary a lot of the time.<br /><br />It will be interesting to see how things pan out after this. Cause Blake surprised both me and Inferno when he said if they won't play GURPS, we'll play without them. We didn't think he would ever be like that, but I think he's got as fed up as we have with DnD. It's just taken a bit longer to show.<br /><br />---<br /><br />That's it. I'm done. Blake's phonecall in the middle of this post drained me of a lot of my effort to type. Guess I got a lot of my frustrations out while talking to him, so I didn't need to type as much. Plus, it totally threw me off track so I can't remember half of what I was going to post. :P<br /><br />Later all,<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-19270387994454780882008-09-30T17:01:00.003-07:002009-04-11T19:04:44.037-07:00Another shortened version, I hope. It really makes things easier for the both of us.<br /><br />---<br /><br />MMO News:<br /><br />Let's start with WAR:<br /><br />It's now out, and has been for a while now. I'm actually not too sure when it came out. Anyways, I've been interested as of late how exactly it works, and how it plays. Not really enough to want to actually purchase the game to see, but curious.<br /><br />I watched a Q&A video today that was far too long, but informative nonetheless. It answered some of my questions on how exactly some of their designs work. But ultimately, my real questions are "does the game look good?" and "is it fun to play? RvR/PvE or otherwise?".<br /><br />I doubt I can figure out those questions without seeing the game first hand. I'm hoping Kofi's friend Exizon buys the game so I can ask him what he thinks.<br /><br />EVE:<br /><br /><br />I've slowed down in my playtimes with EVE again, but that seems to be the natural cycle I have with the game. I'm currently training my skills in Pulse Lasers so I can use the fancy Tech 2 guns and laser crystals. Also, it helps my DPS and optimal range immensely. BUT ... it takes a hell of a long time. Like 60+ days of RL time.<br /><br />Thus, I have a long time to wait, and I still haven't got my standings high enough to get access to the Amarr level 4 agent. So I can't even get to the major ISK making stuffs to get my wallet back up into the 200+ million mark where I'd like it.<br /><br />Exploration also hasn't hooked me that much, but I've been busy with other games and stuffs recently.<br /><br />I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of EVE soon enough. Just a small respite right now.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In TV:<br /><br />Surprisingly, the new season of Smallville is pretty good. I really enjoyed the first two episodes and am looking forward to next episode.<br /><br />Terminator has been great as usual. Though I don't really like the lead singer from Garbage as a character. She seems rather boring, even though I'm sure that's the way her character should act.<br /><br />BSG hasn't started yet, so no idea how that will go.<br /><br />Heroes is just a huge ball plot twists this season. It's like the writers decided to throw everything but the kitchen sink into this season. Too many things going on, too many characters. My friend Blake said it will probably go the same way as Lost. Gets too complicated and tangential eventually, ratings slip, and they finally wise up and clean up their act, too late of course. Hiro is obviously the only interesting character now. I think he's /everyone's/ favourite character.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Inferno is finally back from his trip so I think we might try and finish Gears of War tonight. We're pretty close to the end, and he's starving for some PC gaming after his trip, so hopefully we can wrap it up. I think I might suggest some Sins of a Solar Empire after this. Or switch back to our NWN2 game in progress.<br /><br />World in Conflict:<br />Kofi keeps pushing to play this if there's /any/ time we are both free. I am pretty much done with the game. It's fun, but we always end up with retarded teammates or one sided battles. Neither are fun. And there's only so much of the same thing /over and over/ that I can stand. At least games like FEAR or Call of Duty 4 give me the adrenaline rush to wash over the repetitive nature of the game. WiC is pretty much the same each time we play it.<br /><br />FEAR: Perseus Mandate has got a bit more attention from me, but I've got to the same point as the original, where you fight more horror enemies than soldiers, and that bores the hell outta me. The soldier fights are the fun part. The horror stuff is supposed to be there to scare you, not be a combat element. That's boring. Almost done it I think. But I'm pretty sure it will end without explaining much of the story to me at all.<br /><br />Dawn of War, Guild Wars and the others haven't seen the light of day in a long time. I should really get to playing the SP parts of WiC and DoW though. They actually have some fun parts in them. And a bit of plot to keep me interested.<br /><br />But the major reason I haven't played much of the usuals lately is cause I bought The Force Unleashed the other day. I wanted a bit of Sci-Fi and a got a huge helping. TFU got my inner Star Wars nerd all fired up again. Even though a lot of the combat is repetitive and sometimes very annoying, the story parts kept me hooked. They were the primary reason I played the game. It took me a bit longer than expected to beat the game, mostly cause of a few tedious fights. The Star Destroyer, one fight in the Death Star, the Emperor, Darth Vader, etc. After figuring out the way to beat them, a couple were so easy it was stupid. I beat the one Vader fight in almost a minute.<br /><br />Overall, it was cool, the GFX were nice and the combat was hectic. Just like I wanted.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Spore:<br />I laugh at the restrictive DRM (Digital Rights Management) that EA chose to put on Spore. Not only has it made Spore get a overall review of 1 star on Amazon.com, but it's made the game #1 on the torrent sites. WTF were you thinking EA? It just makes people DL it when you're gonna fuck legitimate users over to stop a few pirates.<br /><br />And what's worse, the game is supposedly really easy, and the pre-space age part takes like 2-4 hrs. It's all tutorial stuff for the space game. WTH didn't they market it as a space game then? All they talked about was creature creation, yet it encompasses the first 2 stages of the game that are over in the matter of an hour? Ghey ....<br /><br />It's really disappointed Inferno though. He was sooooo looking forward to Spore, I think too much. He's much more of a strategy/tactical gamer, but Spore is far more a casual gamers game. And Inferno can spend waaaaay too much time playing in one go. He's far worse than me. I'm perpetually on my PC, but that's surfing, chatting, blogging ;), gaming or watching TV/movies. All he does on his is play games. It's kinda sad.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Tabletop:<br />We've taken to playing an old Gary Gygax module from AD&D the one guy has started. We're using DnD 3.5 so I'm not sure if things are scaled properly, especially since we fought an Ogre at level 1, and just recently 20+ hobgoblins in one encounter.<br /><br />It's been okay, moreso for the fact that we're all playing non-traditional characters/classes. Both me and the one guy are playing non-standard classes, the fighter type is now a Barbarian/Fighter/Rogue, and we don't technically have a primary healer type. My character kind of fills that role, but he can also dish out the pain. It's sweet.<br /><br />Inferno hasn't got a chance to play as he's been away, but I don't think he's all that interested. The sessions so far have been pretty ridiculous, IC and OOC, so it's definitely not a kind of game Inferno, Blake and I would usually enjoy. But it's stupid fun nonetheless, and a night when the guys can get out and do their own thing (almost all of them are married/in a relationship).<br /><br />I thought about a Star Wars d20 game, made for beginning Jedi at Luke's Academy set in the era after Return of the Jedi, but I'm not sure. Blake said he'd rather play a traditional Star Wars game, a la the Rebels, than Jedi. I figured it would be better to keep that kind of game with my Space GURPS game. It's set up as a rebellion, so I really would rather not run two games in the same vein.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Done for now! Laters all.<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-42460409156030029272008-09-07T14:30:00.003-07:002009-04-11T19:04:07.968-07:00Okay ... I'm going to try and condense my thoughts a little this time. Typing up an epic just doesn't sound fun right now.<br /><br />---<br /><br />MMO News:<br /><br />LotRO -> Still haven't touched. Probably never will again.<br /><br />CoX -> Haven't even thought about it since I last quit. Even after seeing the Dark Knight. Imagine that.<br /><br />EVE -> Somehow I'm hooked again. Kofi is still training, and playing the odd time, but mostly doesn't touch it. I got another co-worker hooked /somehow/. He going to sub after his trial. I guess the screenies I uploaded to Facebook and the odd talk about it at work got him interested. That, and he's got a pretty bad case of WoW burnout. Even Wrath of the Lich King doesn't get him all excited.<br /><br />I'm mostly hooked cause I have people to chat with and team up with. It's nice. Solo MMOing just isn't my thing as much now.<br /><br />WAR -> It comes out this month, and I really have zero interest in playing it. I love the Warhammer universe (mostly the 40k stuff), but this looks like WoW 2.0, with shittier PvE and GFX that don't even compare to LotRO. Nevermind comparing it to the GFX in EVE. I saw some screenshots and they looked so bland. Boo-urns for making a game that can run on /anyone's/ PC. Give me some eye-candy, yo!<br /><br />---<br /><br />TV:<br /><br />What TV? It's summer!<br /><br />Though the new seasons of BSG and Terminator are getting me excited. Hope they are good.<br />*crosses fingers*<br /><br />---<br /><br />Videogames:<br /><br />Gears of War -> Inferno and I have co-op'd this almost to the end. It's been loads of fun. I doubt I would say that if I was playing it on a 360. I hate controllers for FPS games.<br /><br />Guild Wars -> Haven't touched this since last time. The story is weak, and without henchmen I die too much. Quests are simple "kill X" and "fetch Y". Lame. Maybe if Inferno and I played together. But I'd rather play NWN2 for that. Better plot.<br /><br />World in Conflict -> Managed a couple more missions in the SP. Played mostly MP with Kofi. He bought a copy for his brother and his buddy (who I also know, semi-well), so the four of us can play together. We got schooled last night, but that was cause the other team was stacked and we had some epic n00bs on our team.<br /><br />Dawn of War -> Sadly, Kofi and I haven't played this at all since I got World in Conflict. I still like it, but in a different way than WiC. Base building is a bit more tedious, but then we aren't relying on other people on our team. WiC can be a huge frustration if our team is epic fail. I also haven't done more than 1 mission in the SP. Probably should give it another shot.<br /><br />NWN2 -> Inferno and I haven't got far, but our schedules haven't worked out the last while, and he's been spending time with the girlfriend. I won't give him a hard time for that.<br /><br />FEAR Perseus Mandate -> Since I really felt in the mood for a FPS game, I reinstalled this to give it another shot. I cranked it to Hard, so it's actually a challenge. But only cause the enemies do more DMG. They are still kinda stupid. After playing the best players out there in the original FEAR, AI just doesn't compare. I really miss playing FEAR, but sadly, no one plays it anymore. I was thinking Call of Duty 4 could possibly fill this niche, but I'd have to get a legitimate copy to play online.<br /><br />All the other games like Freelancer, Sins of a Solar Empire, STALKER and Crysis still sit there. I can't be arsed to finish STALKER or Crysis. They both lost me for different reasons. Freelancer got boring the minute I earned a huge armoured transport that could 1 shot small pirate ships. And they couldn't even dent my shields. Sins I never really got into. Maybe if I played it MP with Inferno like we did with Master of Orion 2. That would be kinda cool, I think. Perhaps after we wrap up Gears.<br /><br />---<br /><br />New Games:<br /><br />Spore came out today, and I was thinking about getting it. But I got bored with the creature creator after like 4 hours, so how much is the game going to appeal to me? It looks like it's pretty simple, and once you get to the galactic stage, it makes it look like the game is more of a sandbox than anything. Screw around, do fun stuff for a bit, then stop playing.<br /><br />I already mentioned Warhammer Online.<br /><br />The only other game that looks cool is the Force Unleashed, and that still looks a bit arcadey to me. The stormtroopers are firing like mad, but your guy never gets hit? And he can toss shit everywhere, destroying stuff in it's path? Is this like a god-mode game or something? :S<br /><br />Fallout 3 might be okay, but it looks like Oblivion in a post apocalyptic setting. They even had the same NPC face on some guy in the trailers. WTF? Lazy much, Bethesda? On the fence with this one.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Tabletop:<br /><br />Nothing since the last entry, mostly cause field season is still going, so my friends are all out of town. We're trying to set up a schedule for the Fall/Winter to get things done, so hopefully that helps. Missing people will be run by other players and so forth. Blake and I are both getting a little tired of all the half-finished shit we've got going.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Personal:<br /><br />I got heat exhaustion a while back, so it wasn't fun. It took me about a week to get back to 100% again. Mostly my appetite. I don't know why. It was one of the worst experiences in my life. I don't recommend it.<br /><br />---<br /><br />And that's it. Hope it was brief enough! o/<br /><br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-24877383735533578612008-08-12T16:40:00.003-07:002009-04-11T19:11:34.690-07:00It's been just over a month, so let's get with the regularly scheduled updateâ„¢!<br /><br />---<br /><br />MMO News:<br /><br />Inferno and I have cancelled our LotRO accounts and both haven't touched the game in a while. We weren't really playing it, so it wasn't a big loss.<br /><br />CoX actually kept me interested for a while this time. I almost played the entire 45 days of my reactivation. The double XP weekend really helped me get past the mid-late teen blues, when the game really gets grindy. I even got interested in my character, and wrote up a big bio and stuff. But ultimately, it all came down to fellow players again.<br /><br />My old SG mates never chat in the OOC channel, or at least don't when I'm around. I never see the people I used to chat with the most, and I didn't get to RP at all. Even the fairly busy SG I thought about joining (I snuck into their OOC channel), ended up being kind of quiet in the end. They also had some rules I wasn't too sure of. Things like uniforms, with specific colours. Plus, the more structured, military feel of the SG didn't really feel like my character. It could be cool, I dunno. If I end up bored again, and try out CoX, I might give them a serious try.<br /><br />As for EVE, I wanted to try the 14 day "come back special" promotion, but the fine print forgot to mention how long your account has to be expired. So I couldn't take advantage of it. But I ended up re-subbing anyways, as I was in a Sci-Fi mood (see further down).<br /><br />I started doing some more of the Exploration content in EVE, just for something different. It's a lot more chance based, and the payoffs are variable (a little too much, IMO), but it's a lot easier for me to do, time-wise. If I have some time to kill I can go search for a hidden site, and while I'm searching (ie. waiting for the probes to analyze) I can chat, go grab a snack, etc. There's a lot more freedom than the level 4 missions. If I had something like Angels Extravaganza as a mission, it takes somewhere near 3 hours to kill the NPCs, and loot/salvage the wrecks. It's quite epic.<br /><br />It gives you a pretty regular payout (bounties and agent rewards wise), so it's a lot more dependable for making credits. It also gives you standing bonuses, which help open more agents up and lower taxes for refining, but the time sink is pretty big.<br /><br />I also moved from my regular missioning system, which I've been at for a long while now, as I noticed that it was getting a lot more crowded recently. All I seem to see undocking/docking and flying to gates are multiples of the uber mission running ship, the Caldari Navy Raven. Another noticeable effect of the higher population is the lag has actually become a bit of a problem.<br /><br />But the real kicker was that ninja-salvagers have moved into the system. For those who don't know, ninja-salvager is a profession in EVE where players use scan probes to find other players doing missions (killing NPCs). They then warp into these mission pockets and begin "stealing" the salvage from the NPC shipwrecks. Now, they aren't technically stealing, as salvage has been declared "free for all" by the developers, but a lot of the mission runners feel it is.<br /><br />Personally, I think it's a valid tactic. But that doesn't mean I want to have them in my mission pocket stealing my salvage. Some of the missions drop salvage that's more valuable then the bounties and agent rewards combined.<br /><br />So, I decided to do what I had been contemplating for a very long time .... move to the far side of the EVE galaxy. I'm now in a backwater system in the lowest populated region of space. And it is glorious! There's maybe 5 people in most systems, some have 10 or more, and still others have NONE! There's absolutely no lag whatsoever, and the system I am going to make my home (eventually), has a sweet level 4 agent in it with the highest possible quality (it effects payouts, etc.).<br /><br />Now all I have to do is grind a little and get myself high enough standings to use that agent. It seemed like I had a hard road ahead of me at first. But after a few missions, I don't think it will actually take that long.<br /><br />Another benefit of the area I am in, is that there's seemingly no one looking for Exploration sites. The Caldari area was normally wiped clean pretty quick, so now I will have a much easier time finding sites to do when I just want to take it easy.<br /><br />Kofi, my co-worker, has actually expressed interest in getting a mining barge now. He and I are thinking of teaming up, so that if I find any hidden asteroids, he can mine them out, and I can haul the ore for him. The hidden stuff is pretty sweet, and would help a lot for making ammo and whatever else we might need.<br /><br />And the biggest bonus to EVE is that a long time acquaintance of mine, from my NPC corp, invited me to "her" private chat channel, where a lot of our former corp mates hang out. Many have moved on to their own little corps, big corps, or even 0.0 space ones. But we've all got the Science and Trade Institute as our starter corp in common. It was nice as the people aren't complete n00bs, so they won't barrage me with idiotic questions, and the chat is generally mature. Sometimes the NPC corp chat is like Barrens chat in WoW. And if you don't know what that is, count yourself lucky.<br /><br />So EVE is actually keeping me a little entertained for once. Perhaps I'll actually stick around for more than a month or two.<br /><br />---<br /><br />TV:<br /><br />I DLed the 4 seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise as I was a big fan of the first two seasons, and I wanted to see the episodes I missed. I've been watching a lot of them, as it's been crazy hot here lately, so it's hard to do much else.<br /><br />I really don't mind the opening song, and I was actually starting to like it. But for some stupid reason they altered it for the 3rd and 4th season and it's sounds retarded.<br /><br />Aside from that, it's been really cool to watch, and it has got me into a MAJOR sci-fi mood lately. Hence the EVE, and other stuff I'll mention later. I haven't finished the series yet, but I'm about 1/2 way through the 4th season. The 3rd season really wasn't the best, and I can see why it started to lose viewers. They took it away from the "tried and true" Star Trek system of one-shot episodes with a little bit of continuing storylines. And they went a little too overboard with the time-travel and "temporal cold war" shit.<br /><br />The 4th season seems like it's back to the basics again, and I'm enjoying it much more. Don't really want it to end, but c'est la vie.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Videogames:<br /><br />Okay, I went stupid a little, and got a few games a while ago, and now it's biting me in the ass. I have no time to play them all, especially with the Enterprise watching and bits of EVE playing.<br /><br />First, I purchased Dawn of War and the two expansions, Winter Assault and Dark Crusade. I got it cause Kofi bought it, and it was dirt cheap on Steam. It's a Warhammer 40k RTS but with slightly different systems. There are squads of units instead of single ones, and you can reinforce the squad while they are out doing stuff. You also don't have traditional resource gathering like other RTSes, instead you have to control and upgrade Control Points and Relics. They give you requisition that you use to get more units and upgrade them. You still build a traditional base and all, it's just you don't have the standard resource collection units.<br /><br />I really like the game, and love the 40k style. The chainsaw-swords of the Marines, the war cry of the Orcs, etc. They are all priceless. And the animations for kills are bloody as hell. I love the bodies littering the battlefields. Kofi and I just play vs the AI, as he's a much better RTS player than me, and we want to remain friends. :P We've got pretty good at beating the AI, and actually managed a 2 vs. 2 on Hard. Some of the armies are just overpowered though, so we tend to not use them, and keep the AI from using them. Overall, it's been hella fun, and we are eagerly anticipating the sequel, Dawn of War 2.<br /><br />Second I got Guild Wars and it's one expansion, Factions, in a boxed set for cheap. I really kind of wish I hadn't now, as I don't think I'll really keep playing it. It seems like I /need/ a group to play, at least with the character I have. And for some reason I can't seem to find the NPC henchmen to accompany me. The graphics are good, but not stellar like I seemed to remember them. And the missions aren't all that interesting.<br /><br />It's not a huge concern anyways. It was cheap, and it costs me nothing monthly, so it can sit there all it wants.<br /><br />The third game I got was World In Conflict. This has taken over Dawn of War's spot as the MP game that Kofi and I play. It's also an RTS, but not traditional either. You don't build bases at all, and have points for units that get airdropped in. And when the units die, you slowly get back the points they are worth. If the units manage to survive a while and rack up kills, they actually get better. It's pretty cool.<br /><br />The best part though is the Tactical Aids. You get TA points for capturing/fortifying strategic points and for kills as well. The TA points can be used for anything from Aerial Recon, to Air dropped units, to artillery strikes, napalm strikes, and even up to tactical nukes. Yes ... NUKES!<br /><br />It's really fucking sweet, actually. The Tactical Aids blow the shit outta the landscape and make the game that much more enjoyable. The graphics are amazing, and the sounds are great too. Being able to hide infantry in the forest and buildings, and being able to zoom down to see them shooting out of the windows and stuff is awesome. And this is just the MP part.<br /><br />I've played a bit of the SP part of the game, and it's epic. The mission briefing cutscenes are voiced by Alec Baldwin, and the storyline is actually really cool. It's based on the same premise as the movie "Red Dawn", and written by a guy who co-wrote some novels with Tom Clancy. I'm really enjoying it, but sadly, it seems I have little time to devote to playing the SP. I've only done a mission here and there. Never more than one at a time.<br /><br />It will eventually get done though. And I'm sure it will rock. The intro gives me goosebumps too. Just like Battlefield 2142 used to do. Love it.<br /><br />As I mentioned before, Inferno and I were contemplating playing the campaign of NWN2 together. I actually got him to do it, and we've managed to get some of the first act done. We haven't been able to play it much, but at least we have something else instead of LotRO.<br /><br />I also DLed the PC version of Gears of War to play co-op with Inferno if he wants. I'm not sure I really like the controls and all, but it's a shooter we can both play. We both enjoy blowing off some steam in FPS games. Should be cool too.<br /><br />I still have some SP games kicking around as well, but I doubt I'll ever get back to them. They didn't manage to keep me hooked, so I doubt they will bring me back.<br /><br />---<br /><br />As for Inferno, he's got heavily into Bloodlines, and is almost finished the game. It seems like he's had some rough spots though, as his character is more the social vampire, and mine was simply a thug. The game is far more focused on combat near the end than a normal Vampire the Masquerade tabletop game would be, so I think he's a little gimped. But I'm sure he'll pull through and beat it. Hopefully it doesn't stay unfinished like Kane and Lynch and Jade Empire are for him. He's pretty much given up trying to beat either one of those.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In tabletop, we've barely had any sessions this summer. Far fewer than the last summer, and when we have got together, it's been for DnD. >:(<br /><br />I actually mentioned to Inferno that I'd rather not play DnD with our group at all, and wait until our old gaming buddy moves back here to get a good group together. He was just like Inferno, me and our one buddy who normally GMs (which I will now on call "Blake" for clarity sake). The four of us had an awesome Cyberpunk game going a few years back, and we all seem to have the same ideas about gaming. Blake and I have had conversations about Narrativist vs. Gamist styles of RPG games before, and we are on the same page in that we enjoy the Narrativist style more. It's more about the characters, the plot, and RPing to us that it is about mechanics and leveling up or whatnot.<br /><br />Inferno and I are thinking we should get the two of us, Blake and our other buddy together (when he moves back) and have a GURPS gaming group. And just leave the other 4 people we game with to play DnD on their own. I'm sure Blake wouldn't want to exclude them, and would still play DnD with them, but I really wouldn't care. They aren't the same style of gamers as us, and they /all/ seem to only want to play DnD. Three of the 4 of them are starting up DnD campaigns. The only reason the 4th isn't is it's because that's the girl gamer, and she has no idea how to GM. The one guy's cousin is starting some other DnD game as well that a bunch of them are playing. The lot of them are just retarded for this archaic, meaningless game system. It's fucking stupid and just annoys me to no end.<br /><br />Mainly because I have great campaigns for GURPS that I seem to get one session starting, and then they get left my the wayside when we go back to DnD. Months down the road we might continue my game for a session, only to leave it for DnD again. I really have lost any interest in GMing when all my games are broken up into single sessions, months apart. I can't get any momentum going to get the players involved, and I lose track of details and ideas I had to continue the game.<br /><br />About the only game I'd be willing to GM at any point is the Werewolf game I ran for Inferno and Blake. I really like the storyteller rules system for the World of Darkness, and Blake and Inferno are both good at actually "playing" their characters, rather than just using them as a bunch of stats.<br /><br />I was supposed to GM my GURPS Space game tonight, but I was tired when I woke up this morning, and just thought "fuck it". They're not going to appreciate what I'm trying to do, and we're just going to leave the game for DnD next time anyways. I'm also not looking forward to any of the next sessions as they are ALL going to be DnD.<br /><br />Here's a breakdown of the DnD games these idiots have going:<br /><br />Blake:<br />- two games, based on a party split in two (not bad, but he uses published adventures, so they tend to feel out of place), he has taken over this one from a previous GM that moved away<br />- one game based on a Maritime setting (pirates, ships, etc.) (might be cool, but is still DnD)<br /><br />The others:<br />- one post-apocalyptic game, where the "good races" are the outsiders, and orcs, demons, undead are the powers that be (sounds cool, but the GM makes everything combat related and almost kills the entire party off each time)<br />- Undermountain (one guy's cousin, using a published adventure. Undermountain is a epic dungeon crawl, so chance of RP is slim to none. Better off playing Diablo.)<br />- the Underdark (never seen this one in action, fortunately. GM is all over the place as a player, so who knows how he GMs)<br />- some published adventure (same GM as Underdark, who knows how this will be)<br /><br />I really think we need to break up our group at this point. Any game that has all of us as players/GM becomes almost impossible to continue as we're relying on /seven/ of us to get together at the same time. We used to have enough trouble with 4 people.<br /><br />Perhaps if our buddy moves back here we can break the group up into DnD and non-DnD people, and go our separate ways. I'm sure there will be some dismay over it, but they have to face the facts that we simply have become too big of a group to handle. And personally, I don't want to GM a game with 6 players. It becomes stupid to try and keep things balanced and keep everyone involved.<br /><br />But enough of tabletop, it's melting my brain.<br /><br />---<br /><br />That seems about it for now. Sorry for the MASSIVE post, but I had a lot to say this time.<br /><br />Hopefully next time it won't be so verbose. ;)<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-14466983929496195202008-07-04T18:06:00.003-07:002009-03-23T23:04:45.411-07:00Here again with his monthly update of news you really couldn't care less about it's the Rev! :P<br /><br />---<br /><br />Rather than talk about EVE specifically, I'll just start with my MMO news, or "blues" to be more precise.<br /><br />I haven't touched EVE since last post. I'm training Amarr Battleship to lvl 5, and it's 34+ days or something. Still 12 days left I believe. Though I did get a promo email about re-activating my account for 14 days for free. At least it read as 14 days free. Maybe it's only if I reactivate, then I get 45 days instead of the usual 30.<br /><br />Pfft. If it's the latter, I think I'll pass. Even though the new expansion "Empryean Age" is out and the Factional Warfare (FW) I longed for is a part of it, I really don't have a desire to play. Maybe cause I saw the way EVE PvP really is when I was in Red vs. Blue (time consuming for a few fleeting moments of fun). Maybe cause the FW PvP doesn't do anything, even though you can "capture" systems for your faction. Or maybe cause I keep reading about how the Gallente faction is using Nanohacs to speed-tank and basically make themselves nigh-invulnerable. Nano ships are the current Flavour of the Month (FOTM) for PvPers who want use near broken game mechanics to ensure they never die, and therefore, never lose their precious ships. It's caused the EVE forums to break out in "Nanos are ghey", "Nerf Nanos" and "Nanos are overpowered" type of posts all over the place.<br /><br />Perhaps the CCP Devs will finally step in and balance Nanos with everything else. It's been long enough, and has caused enough frustration as did all the previously broken FOTM setups.<br /><br />In other MMO news, Inferno and I haven't played LotRO at all in a very long time. He's stopped playing his higher level Champion as he's hit all group only quests, and can't even solo them being much higher level.<br /><br />I haven't played at all since we both logged in, so I cancelled my account the other day. I'm not paying for something I'm never using.<br /><br />Also, I went and re-subbed to City of Heroes the other week. But this time it was kind of a mistake, as I thought there was a code I could use to get 14 days free, then your account would be billed. I thought it was for old subscribers to be able to come back and see what's new. But it was actually 14 days free on top of your normal monthly sub. So I ended up paying for another month. And what's even more annoying, is that the guy I got the code from got 14 days free added to his account. He was just some guy posting on the MMORPG.com forums. I see he's put up free codes for people to use almost every day. The bastard must have /months/ of free time added to his account, all by not giving people the straight facts.<br /><br />Aside from that, CoX is fun, but I've hit the spot I always seem to hit when I come back. And that's the fact that I get lonely. Even though I'm in a channel with like 6 people, no one talks. It's ghey to the max. I've tried to start some conversations but they seem to quickly go nowhere. I'm not sure if people are all soloing, and are busy fighting mobs. Or are busy RPing. Either way, they're not talking. No one seems to even mention that they are logging off. I go check sometimes, and 3+ people have left, without a word. It seems like a very weird group, and not at all the same as I remembered it.<br /><br />I even contemplated taking my alts and trying to find an active RP group so that I had people to talk to. Maybe I could get interested in the game again. Who knows. It would at least make the game more interesting than soloing all the time, seeing the same content I have done time and time again.<br /><br />I dunno. Whatever way it goes, I cancelled my account to CoX as well. I haven't really played it that much in the last week or so anyways, so I'm not sure if I'll really miss it.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I haven't watched TV since the finales of Smallville and Battlestar. Both were letdowns, IMO. Smallville moreso than Battlestar.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I finished GTA IV a while ago, after 60+ hours or something like that. Took me about as long as San Andreas, but I think I liked GTA IV better. The action was more gritty, and the whole environment was more alive. San Andreas is a slightly better sandbox but GTA IV had far better characters, animations, environment, story and gameplay. It sucks that I've finished it, but that was an eventuality anyways.<br /><br />I've tried the multiplayer, and it was fun, but I just don't see the overall appeal to it. Some of the people are downright ignorant, or just plain retards. The one guy saying it was the white man's duty to report any "niggers" was one asshole that soured the whole experience for me.<br /><br />Oh well, I've got Live! Gold now, so if I happen to have a cool MP game I want to try with the few people I know on XBox, I can. It's not that expensive, and it's better to have when I need it, than not.<br /><br />I've thought about getting some new 360 games, but I can't seem to find anything that I'd really enjoy. Gears of War might be interesting to play Co-op with Inferno, but then there's the PC version of it.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Speaking of Inferno, he's been the odd one lately. Not really playing his PC or anything, and not doing much in particular. I haven't been able to hang out with him as much recently as our schedules are completely opposite for the time being. Perhaps that's it. Though these last couple days he's been seeing this new girl so his mood seems to be picking up.<br /><br />Maybe it's just the heat this last week. It's been 30C or close to for the last while, and our house is like a sauna. I've been forced to move my PC to the basement just to not get heatstroke, and have something to occupy my time (the basement's pretty empty otherwise).<br /><br />---<br /><br />And lastly in tabletop news our group has barely managed to get together in a long time. I think we had 2 sessions since last post, and both were very short. We've fallen back to DnD for the time being, as my one friend who was GMing wanted to wrap up the scenarios he had left in mid adventure.<br /><br />We've done the one scenario and actually should have all died, but he fudged the rolls (we all know he did) and we finished the last big boss. We thought it was actually just some side enemy, but it turned out it was the true "end boss". We totally didn't see it coming, and it made the whole scenario somewhat anti-climactic.<br /><br />Oh well, at least that part is over.<br /><br />We did the first half of the 2nd scenario the other night, and it was kind of fun. Even though there was minimal fighting, and mostly RPed the whole time. I got to play the Lawful Good guardsman who does his duty to help the rest of the party. He's a throwaway NPC for now (ie. a "Redshirt" from Star Trek), but he's been pretty fun to play. I got to harass the PCs and basically call them thugs and scum. It was great and the DM seemed quite amused at it. He's the one who suggested the character to me.<br /><br />It should be interesting to see how combat goes with this character, as he's basically a Tank, and has huge Armour Class (AC). He can even pump up his AC at the cost of hitting stuff (ie. by dropping his attack bonus). Should make him very hard to hit. Kind of what the party needs when the only other fighter type is Inferno's Ranger who does lots of damage, but can't take a beating at all.<br /><br />I think my one problem with our buddy DMing is that he tends to use published scenarios. It was great for Cyberpunk cause he tied the whole scenario into our existing storylines and character backgrounds. But the DnD modules have never seemed to be based around us. They always feel like random adventures thrown at us. <br /><br />---<br /><br />In a personal side note to tabletop, I've started a Werewolf: the Forsaken game for just me, Inferno and our one buddy who DMs the DnD games. The three of us have been gaming together the longest, so I figured a setting where we get to play the Narrativist type of game we all enjoy would be cool. Also, the three of us seem to be the ones that are the most available, so this gives us something to play if the rest of the group isn't around.<br /><br />As well, after watching the Diablo 3 trailers and looking at the concept art, I've started working on a horror-themed fantasy game, set in my own gameworld I developed a few years ago, using the GURPS ruleset. I figured it would be a cool way to introduce GURPS to the ones in our group who haven't tried it, and I know now that Fantasy is the preferred genre for at least 2 of the other guys. <br /><br />The horror element is my way of having a slightly different tone than our current DnD games, and I'd also like to get more into non-combat stuff and roleplaying. Investigating strange occurrences in a horror setting should be an easy way to facilitate that. Plus, I'd like to use a lot of undead and the like, so horror just fits better.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Also in tabletop, our one friend told us that that girl who had joined us and seemed to be looking is now a couple with our one tabletop buddy (who we haven't seen in weeks). He thought it was kind of funny. I'm also amused to think of what it's going to be like when we're all gaming together again. Or if she's going to not come now because they're dating. Or not come now cause she's got what she was looking for, ie. a guy. Or as me and two of the other guys said, her "backup guy". It's kind of what she did with our other DnD buddy, who moved away. Hopefully that's not going to happen again.<br /><br />Should be an interesting time once everyone is back together though. I'll keep you updated. :P<br /><br />---<br /><br />That seems to be about it. Hopefully I'll update this earlier than next month. Makes it easier for you to read, and easier for me cause I don't have to type so much.<br /><br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-59451530183401364682008-06-05T22:05:00.003-07:002009-04-11T18:54:53.202-07:00Almost a month again, time for an update.<br /><br />---<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 ...<br /><br />---<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />---<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Hell, today I was so bored I contemplated doing some housecleaning to pass the time. Fucking stupid, ain't it?<br /><br />---<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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<br /><br />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<br /><br />---<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />---<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Set someone on fire, then drain their life, making you stronger? Yes, please! :D<br /><br />---<br /><br />That's it for now, I guess.<br /><br />Later all.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-78793713761869822652008-05-08T13:11:00.003-07:002009-04-11T19:00:05.412-07:00Since it's been a month or so, I figured an update was due.<br /><br />I'm not sure if there's really anything really new to tell, more just updates to what's been going on.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In EVE, I haven't played since whenever it was. A couple months ago? I can't really remember. I have had the urge to play it a little, probably because I'm in a Sci-Fi mood, and I read the EVE-O forums almost daily. A lot of the posts are elitist garbage which really piss me off, but there are a lot of really good posts, and interesting tidbits hidden under all the e-peen waving.<br /><br />Red versus Blue is /dead/. The Blue killboards haven't been updated in almost a month, and the Blue forums haven't been posted on in almost as long. Red still seems to have a handful of peeps mostly ganking in low-sec. Probably to find someone to fight.<br /><br />I mostly haven't resubbed to EVE because Inferno and I are still playing Lord of the Rings Online. I don't think I can realistically devote myself to two MMOs at once. One of them invariably falls to the side.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) has been pretty good so far. But it seems like they have been losing focus this season. I really can't see what they are trying to portray. The plot seems a little too convoluted. Especially the whole Baltar arc.<br /><br />I also DLed the entire mini-season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I was expecting it to suck ass when I saw the commercials for it on TV, but I had heard that it was pretty good, so I figured why not. Holy shit ... it's /good/. And the little things they put in for the fans are awesome. Like one episode when they showed the future war and there were Terminators with rubber skin (aka. the "600 series" that Kyle refers to in the original movie). I really liked the whole show, plus Summer Glau (the actress who played River Tam in Firefly/Serenity) plays the role as a Terminator so well it's creepy.<br /><br />Smallville has let me down a few times this last bit, but it somehow redeems itself every few episodes. I figure the team of writers for the show are mostly idiots, but there are the few who actually can write. It's the episodes that they write that are the ones I love. Plus, the show seems to be moving more towards Metropolis and the whole Lois/Clark relationship and away from the teenager Lana/Clark one. Lana isn't an interesting character at all, IMO. She's way too weak and looks like a high school girl. Lois is much more interesting and far more attractive. Plus, the actress, Erica Durance, is from Alberta. Woot!<br /><br />---<br /><br />Freelancer hasn't really got any attention in a long while. Mostly since Inferno and I started playing LotRO. I managed to make a huge pile of credits one day by trading stuff between the two star systems. Now my guy has a huge armed transport ship and I can make like 600,000 credits in about 20 minutes of semi-AFK playing. The best missions Inferno can do are like 25,000 credits and take him almost the same amount of time. He's said he can't play with me anymore, cause my ship is way too tough. But he doesn't get that it's not a combat ship. Sure it has like 6 turrets, but they can't hit shit, and the thing handles like a pig. Plus, I can't take it into any of the hazardous areas (wastelands, asteroid fields, debris fields, etc.) as it's too big and will only get fucked by all the things hitting it.<br /><br />I might play it a little more when I have some free time and Inferno isn't around. If we both have free time, it's pretty much playing LotRO.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I haven't played STALKER at all in a while. I got my old savegame off the old PC (it's now the extra one running as our Freelancer server), but I couldn't get back into it. It will probably be something I'll play when I run out of better stuff.<br /><br />Crysis just pisses me off though. It's gone from this cool shooter where you could pick how you wanted to tackle the obstacles (stealth, run-n-gun, avoid altogether, etc.) to a linear run of the mill FPS. The storyline isn't interesting in the slightest, and is pretty easy to figure out. The levels have become boring, and the weapons stupid. It's like the first half of the game was revolutionary, and the second half was ripped from DOOM or Quake. Fucking ghey. :P<br /><br />---<br /><br />After talking to Inferno about LotRO and our duoing, I've got him to improve a little bit. Especially with the healing me part. We've managed to tackle things quite easily now, and he seems to understand how to better play his class. Plus, we've got high enough that the specialization of the classes is more defined. My Guardian is getting better at Tanking, can take more hits, wear heavier armour, etc. Inferno's Loremaster is getting awesome at the DPS and crowd control. Especially the latter.<br /><br />I've actually not played my Captain at all since we've got our Elves to Bree (where the Capt was). I've done some gathering of resources, but I haven't done any quests with him at all. He's actually almost the lowest level character I have.<br /><br />I pretty much only play LotRO when Inferno and I can play. If I'm online when he's not around it's to craft stuff or check the Auction House. We've been good about not playing our Elves unless the both of us are on. He has a Champion that's higher level than all our characters, but he mostly goes around gathering minerals/hides/etc. and doing the generic "Kill X" quests. He can't tackle the group ones at all, and I've told Inferno not to do them. I want the content to be fresh for both of us. At least the story arc stuff. That's by far the best part of the game.<br /><br />---<br /><br />One thing that sucks though, is that when I cancelled my account, I didn't get the free month for signing up Inferno with the game. It's not a huge deal though. One extra month isn't all that important.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In tabletop, it seems like the girl we've been gaming with is "looking". It's been pretty obvious a few times that we've been playing. Like her always sitting near me, or moving to sit near me to "let someone else get around the table". It seems she shifted her focus onto our other tabletop buddy for a bit. It even seems to spill over into the game, where she comes across as playing favourites. Worrying about "buffing" the guy over someone else, etc. It's kind of funny actually.<br />It's also come to light why she's playing with us now, as opposed to when our other buddy was around. And that's cause they had some weird relationship/not-relationship going for quite a while. He pursued her, she rebuffed him, but once he started dating someone else, she'd be all over him, usually ruining his new relationship in the process. Then the whole situation would repeat itself. Kinda fucked up, actually.<br /><br />I had contemplated asking her out, but that might be too weird, as we game together, and I have no idea if she'd start the same shit with me as she did to our buddy. Plus, she seems a little on the "not-so-clean" side and I'm a neat freak. That's a pretty big sticking point with me, so I'm not sure if I could get around it.<br /><br />Oh well, c'est la vie.<br /><br />Aside from the romancing :P , we've left the one game mid battle. We can't seem to get everyone together to finish it, but the first chance we get we'll finish it off. Just to make things easier.<br /><br />So, in the interim, I'm going to be running my Space game. The PCs are going to be rebel fighters vs. the "evil" corporation that's taken over the planet they live on. So far, the three PCs sound pretty interesting. Especially Inferno's character. The college student who's trying to take down the corporation in secret. Sending out pamphlets, printing an illegal paper, broadcasting a pirate radio show, etc. He even has started to work on making explosives. Inferno took disadvantages like Fanantacism, Overconfidence, etc. All around he seems like a good character with an interesting personality. The other two guys are a black marketeer who fronts as a legitimate importer/exporter, and an almost out of work mechanic who refuses to wear one of them damn "blue jumpsuits".<br /><br />Overall the guys made some nice characters and I can see how our RL beliefs (ie. anti-corporate leanings) are spilling into the game. It's going to be an interesting game, that's for sure.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Lastly, I picked up Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) the other day and have been playing it in my spare time. It's pretty fricking sweet, but I doubt I need to tell you all about it. Not quite the 10/10 that some of the game review sites have posted, but still one of the best games I've played in a long time.<br /><br />---<br /><br />That's it for now. I'm off to finish some chores and get into a little GTA IV action.<br /><br />Peace,<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-12271277878605773602008-04-07T11:50:00.003-07:002009-04-11T19:02:32.325-07:00Okay, an update to all the things I mentioned last time:<br /><br />---<br /><br />In EVE, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">RvB</span> seems to be suffering from /major/ inactivity right now. The last couple of weeks the number of kills has dropped significantly. Where one day would see anywhere up to 30 ships killed/lost per side, now there are max 7 per day. Most days it's like 4-5. That's pretty terrible considering that this is in multiple timezones.<br /><br />Oh well, it was a good idea while it lasted. Farewell <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">RvB</span>. o/<br /><br />I've also got the urge to play EVE a little more recently, and I don't know why. Possibly because I am severely low on games right now. Could also be linked to my co-worker Satan playing again, and some problems I've had with Lord of the Rings Online.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">DLed</span> the premiere of Season 4 for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Battlestar</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Galactica</span> and watched it the other day. Man, that show is good. But it pisses me off when they end with a cliffhanger and "To Be Continued ...". <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Smallville</span> did that all the time and maybe that's why I don't get all excited about watching it anymore.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Played Freelancer a little with Inferno the other day, but we didn't get that far, and we ended up getting wasted by some INSANE pirate <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">NPCs</span>. Missions that make us take out pirate bases are no good. Period. Even with our new upgraded ships.<br /><br />I think we have to go back to doing missions around our levels and slowly make money that way. We got cocky and thought we could make the big money fast (money is tied to what level you are in Freelancer), but we were wrong.<br /><br />Still fun though. I just wish that we could play whenever, like an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">MMO</span>, so that we could level up when both of us can't necessarily play. Inferno is on graveyards ATM, so we don't have much in the way of mutual free time.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Played a little of STALKER but I've left it alone for a while, mainly cause I'm annoyed that I lost my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">savegame</span>. I might try and get it off my old <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">harddrive</span> just so that I can skip all this earlier stuff. Plus, I had some sweet unique weapons that I'd found, and I really miss them.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Crysis</span> also got a little time the other day too. I still had my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">savegame</span> so it was pretty easy jumping back into it. But I got to the point that my one <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">roomie</span> had mentioned, and the game pissed me off. I really don't have a desire to play it right now. Maybe later I will. Who knows.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I've played Lord of the Rings Online (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">LotRO</span>) the most in the last couple weeks. But that's still not saying much. My Captain is still only level 14, and my Guardian is around 12. Inferno and I played a Guardian/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Loremaster</span> duo for most of the time I played <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">LotRO</span> in the last while. But I seem to get easily annoyed at Inferno when we play <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">MMOs</span>. He just doesn't seem to grasp the complexities of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">MMOs</span>, and ends up playing them by hitting the same 3-4 buttons all the time.<br /><br />It annoys me more with our duo in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">LotRO</span> cause he is supposed to be "backing me up" with situational healing, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">mezzes</span> and damage. But he seems only to do the damage, so I get fucked if we aggro more than one mob. I checked what skills <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Loremasters</span> get for his level and he has /never/ used the healing ability on me, nor can I recall him ever using it on himself. He is a rather poor <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">MMO</span> player, basically.<br /><br />It's sad to say, but I actually didn't enjoy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">duoing</span> with him for a good chunk of our time, and I was hoping that he wouldn't upgrade to a paying account. So far, he hasn't bought the game, and his trial has been over for 3-4 days now. He seemed mostly annoyed that his monster character (creeps, as they are called in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">LotRO</span>) can't fight 1 vs. 1 with a good guy player (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">freep</span>). He played more of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">PvMP</span> (player vs. monster player) side of things in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">LotRO</span> than he did the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">PvE</span> side. Hopefully the imbalance in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">PvMP</span> system will keep him from subscribing. I really don't enjoy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">duoing</span> with him in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">MMOs</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">WoW</span> was the same when we played it, too.<br /><br />We have had lots of fun playing co-op in non-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">MMO</span> games though. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Neverwinter</span> Nights and the expansions, Ghost Recon, Rune, Aliens vs. Predator, Sacred, Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, Freelancer and probably some others I can't remember. Maybe because those ones aren't too complex, or maybe it's just cause he understood them better.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I've also become somewhat disillusioned with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">LotRO</span> as of late. I had lots of fun at the beginning but now it seems like it's gone. Perhaps because I played with Inferno, or maybe because I tried playing other classes and found them lacking, as well as repeating the same content with them (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">ie</span>. boring myself in the process). I don't know.<br /><br />I think if I go back to my Captain and stick with just him for now, I might actually enjoy my time in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">LotRO</span>. If not, I already cancelled my subscription so I won't be charged for another month. I think I still have like almost 2 1/2 weeks left, so I should be able to figure out if I want to keep playing by then.<br /><br />---<br /><br />As for tabletop, our friend has decided to run a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">DnD</span> game in a maritime setting. Ships, pirates, etc. There's no cannons, and gunpowder, but that's okay as people have fireballs and other spells. Our friend is probably the best GM in our group so it's always a pleasure to game with him. He's already made the game interesting a little, and I'm really getting into my character.<br /><br />I've decided to go a completely different route this time and play a "face" character. The face is the character who acts as the party's diplomat, leader (sometimes), etc. He is the one who does all the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">NPC</span> interaction, which lets me get more <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">RPing</span> time. All of my old characters have been quiet, in the back ones. None of them have been face characters. It's been pretty interesting so far. The only downside is that I've taken a level of Rogue to start, as it gives me more <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">skillpoints</span>, better weapon proficiencies, sneak attack damage, and allows me to eventually take a prestige class that looked cool. The Scarlet Corsair, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">ie</span>. a terrifying pirate! It's a really cool prestige class, and I felt my character would be a really cool pirate. Mostly because after the level of Rogue I'm going all Warlock (which are feared <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">spellcasters</span> in the public eye), and he will have max ranks in Intimidate. It's going to be great.<br /><br />But ... it seems we're going back to our old campaign for the next while, just so we can finish off our one story arc. I really don't want to, but the other guys all do. I think we'll probably leave that campaign altogether once the arc is done, as we'll probably all be around level 15-16 by then, and that's when everything starts to get ridiculous.<br /><br />Also, we have a girl in our tabletop group now. This is the first time I've ever gamed with a girl, but she's pretty cool, and doesn't seem to have much difficulty with the system or setting so far. Plus, she is friends with many of our tabletop buddies as they all worked together over the years. I think our one friend's wife, who is also friends with the new girl, didn't approve of us letting her play. We're corrupting her I guess, bringing her over to the "Geek side". :P<br /><br />---<br /><br />That about covers it all for now.<br /><br />Take it easy,<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-54291456598508132322008-03-25T17:55:00.003-07:002009-04-11T19:01:26.962-07:00Well, there's been some new stuff since last entry, so I'd better fill you in.<br /><br />---<br /><br />In EVE, I haven't played since the last post, and it seems the Red vs. Blue idea is falling apart. Or at least, having some serious troubles. Blue seems to attract all the third party war declarations and they continuously have troubles with teaming, AFKers, and general lack of drive to fight. It was the same when I was playing, but now it seems worse. Plus, I doubt the Blue pilots really like going to look for fights with Reds, only to get ganked by a blob of third party enemies.<br /><br />I don't think Kofi is even playing right now, as he hasn't mentioned it at all. And he keeps trying to get me to play Team Fortress 2 with him.<br /><br />Oh well, maybe I can leave EVE alone for a while. Let CCP have the time to actually fix/add some stuff to the game.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I finished season 3 of Battlestar Galactica a while ago too. Can't wait until season 4 starts up in April. It's sooo good.<br /><br />I finally got Inferno to watch the start of season 1 too. He seemed to really enjoy it, but was saying how he doesn't want to watch it now cause "it'll be all bad". I think he's referring to knowing who one of the Cylons are. But it wasn't like he got a spoiler or anything. It was revealed in the episode we watched.<br /><br />Whatever.<br /><br />It also got me wanting to play a space game again, so I re-installed Freelancer, again. Lost my ID code so I had to make a new character on Inferno's server, but I managed to get higher than we had got in less time. Helps that I know the best trade route in the starter system.<br /><br />---<br /><br />The reason I had to re-install Freelancer is cause I upgraded my computer, /again/. This time I got a quad core CPU, 4GB of RAM, an 8800GT card, a 500GB hard drive and a new motherboard and DVD burner. The whole rig is fucking sweet, and it can run everything I have at max resolution with all the settings maxed. Except for Crysis, of course. But I haven't even re-installed that yet. Don't know if I will either. It wasn't all that great, story-wise. Gameplay was cool, and graphics were top notch. But the story was the same old shit. I just couldn't get through it.<br /><br />Right now I only have a few games installed. And I'm really only playing a couple. I had to backup all my Steam games (Half-Life 2, TF2, Portal, etc.) as well as STALKER and Sins of a Solar Empire. They are the only games I have installed. And I'm only really playing STALKER, once and a while. It didn't save my game when I backed it up, so I've had to start all over again. And it's kind of pissed me off.<br /><br />Aside from those, I also have Lord of the Rings Online installed. o.O<br /><br />---<br /><br />I'm sure you're wondering what possessed me to do that, but I was curious about the game for a while. Mostly from getting the emails about getting it for cheap every so often. So I DLed the trial, hoping it would give me my needed little fix, and let me go after the 7 days were up. Sadly, it didn't work and I bought the game.<br /><br />BUT ... it only cost me $9.99, so it's not a bad deal. And I'm sure I'll get more fun out of my first month than I ever would with EVE Online. Having an actual avatar to look at really makes me enjoy an MMO. I can actually get immersed in the world and lose myself a little. I haven't really played it much since I paid for it, but that's okay. I plan on being more casual with it, so that I don't get burned out, and also so I can keep balance in my life. I don't want to slip back into the WoW days when I did nothing else with my free time.<br /><br />I even gave Inferno a trial key, but I think that's a bad idea. He's got the worst addiction to video games I've ever seen. He did /absolutely nothing/ the other day but play UFO: Aftermath all day. <span style="font-weight: bold;">All day</span>.<br /><br />---<br /><br />As for the tabletop front, we've moved towards GURPS for the most part now, as our one friend is the minority now. We did play a huge all-day session on Good Friday to wrap up the one DnD campaign, but that was because our GM was back in town for the weekend, and we needed to finish things off. It's not good to leave a game hanging in the middle of an adventure/battle/etc. People forget what's happening and it almost never gets resolved.<br /><br />Hopefully we can convince the remaining two guys to game more often with the 4 of us left. The one guy is ridiculously busy and the other guy doesn't want to play anything other than DnD for some odd reason. Roleplaying is roleplaying, no matter the game system. Learning a different system is sometimes fun, and a change in setting is always a breath of fresh air. One can only stand so much Fantasy.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Well, that seems like about all of it.<br /><br />Until next time,<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-66272911608601376382008-03-05T08:04:00.003-08:002009-03-23T23:04:45.728-07:00<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">From last entry:</span><br /><br />Kofi and I actually got into Blue and have managed to be a part of some PvP fights. Or should I say, We've managed to get blown out of the sky numerous times while doing absolutely nothing significant to the enemy.</blockquote></div><br />I've tried PvPing a little with Kofi in EVE, and it's become pretty frustrating, to say the least. We haven't managed to do /anything/. I've got in a few 1 vs. 1 fights (all consentual, of course) and have won more than I lost. But they were all vs. people more noobish than me. Or at least, more noobish in skillpoints than my alt.<br /><br />Kofi, our friend and I decided to try getting our main characters into Blue instead. They are an Alliance now, so we could make our own corporation and join the alliance. If we want to leave, the corp just leaves, thus making it quite easy and limiting the corp hopping trail left in one's employment history.<br /><br />I know some of you might stop there, and think that this all sounds a bit too much like real life. Corps, employment history, etc. And that's cause EVE is like that. You're never the lone hero, or a big name. You're usually just another cog in the machine. Which personally, I don't really like. I play solo 99% of the time, so having to team with others, or take orders from the CEO of a corp is not something I'd enjoy. <br /><br />But, back to the topic of the Red vs. Blue PvP. The other guys want to get our mains into the fights. Then we'd have the ability to use bigger ships, and have better skills to fight and fit modules. But after seeing the PvP in EVE, I'm not sure I really enjoy it that much. I like more adrenaline in my gaming. And EVE is more tactical, slow paced combat.<br /><br />There's another major reason I've given up on EVE PvP. Check the next part.<br /><br />So, my account expires in a week or so, and I'm not going to renew it. I haven't even seen Kofi online for over a week. And now that our one co-worker got a transfer, both Kofi and I have to share the same job. That is, if I'm not working , he is. Our shifts look like they will rarely overlap at all now, thus our online time will probably not overlap either. And our other friend in EVE is always busy with the girlfriend, so I doubt he'll be playing much either. Plus, he's perpetually broke. :P<br /><br />---<br /><br />In non-gaming related news, I've started watching the new Battlestar Galactica series (BSG). I DLed the first season off a torrent, watched it, then ran out and bought the first two seasons on DVD. It's that good.<br /><br />If there was a recovery group for BSG addicts, I should be in it. It's fucking great, I can barely stop watching it.<br /><br />It's also got me thinking about space dogfights, playing X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter (XvT) back in the day, Star Wars (in general), and sci-fi to the extreme. After watching BSG, remembering how much fun XvT was, I had to let EVE go. There's no comparison.<br /><br />BSG has got me wanting to run my space game for our tabletop group as well. But Inferno and I have to sit down with our one friend and come up with a setting we can all agree on. We want to run different campaigns in the same gameworld, allowing us to build upon it and make a cohesive setting the players can feel like they are a part of. Last night before our tabletop game, we got into a big discussion about the space game, and our tabletop gaming in general. I think it surprised our one tabletop buddy, as I think he didn't realize how much we all don't like the DnD d20 system, and how much we've disliked the rotating GM idea.<br /><br />It's nice to see he's come around a little, as he's now the minority in the group that likes playing DnD. He seemed to have a lot of fun RPing in last night's session too (which I GMed, BTW ;) ), and maybe we can make him more comfortable playing GURPS in general.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I've also re-installed Freelancer and DLed a mod that adds like 100+ ships and 50+ planets to the game. There are ships from BSG, Star Wars, Babylon 5 (I think) and a lot of the ones that were NPC only in the normal game. Both Inferno and our roomie installed it as well, so maybe we can have some co-op gaming there as well. Though our roomie seems like he's one of those people who doesn't like playing a game normally. He wants to start at a higher level, instead of working our way up. He's also DLed walkthroughs of most games and beats them that way.<br /><br />He's basically one of those gamers that cheats his way through just to feel godlike or something. Challenge is not something he seems willing to confront. A good example is our Call of Duty 4 (CoD4) deathmatches.<br /><br />He formatted his PC a while ago, so he lost his account in CoD4. So we played the other night and he was level 1 again. Inferno and I were lvls 14 and 15, respectively. It goes to level 55. But our roomie got frustrated that we were beating him, and that he didn't have access to all the better weapons. So he logged off, hacked his account, and came back as a lvl 55. He then used a setup of the best weapon with a silencer, double firing rate, and silent movement, so he could fill us with rounds and run all over the place making no sound.<br /><br />But what was funny is that he still didn't manage to beat either of us. And when he would die, I'd just go pick up his weapon and use it to kill him some more. It was funny, but it made him upset again, and he logged off. He really doesn't take losing well, /at all/. It's kind of ridiculous considering that it was a computer game too. <br /><br />---<br /><br />I tried that Sins of a Solar Empire too. It's pretty sweet, though a little slow for my current mood. I tried a couple games, but after 4+ hours I was nowhere near winning, and I had to go to sleep. It looks like a good game Inferno and I could play co-op vs. the AI, like we used to do in Master of Orion 2 and 3.<br /><br />It also looks exceedingly nice on my new <span style="font-weight: bold;">24" widescreen LCD monitor</span>! :D My old monitor was /really dark/, and so I figured it was time to get a new one. Why not one of the biggest and best while I'm at it? :P<br /><br />I even have my XBox 360 hooked up to it, so I can play in HD goodness. My 360 games look sooooo much crisper now on it. I really wish I had bought it earlier. Some games, like Assassin's Creed, I can finally read the fucking text. Before I had to pretty much guess what it said. It was that blurry.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I might try out Lord of the Rings Online sometime here as well. I got a offer via email that would let me get the game for $9.99. It's pretty hard to say no to that, especially since the game wasn't bad, and my one tabletop friend plays it. Plus, he's moving 785km (490 mi) away, so I'm not going to see him anytime soon. Kind of sucks too, as he was the best GM we've had in a while (minus me, of course :P).<br /><br />LotRO has voice chat too, so we could even just chat over the Net. I guess we could just use Teamspeak or Ventrilo instead, but this kills two birds with one stone.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I think that's it for now. Sorry about the semi-rambling in this one. I'm not fully awake (haven't eaten yet), so I kind of lost focus there.<br /><br />Hopefully more coherent next time,<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-73054384686496229822008-02-12T19:45:00.003-08:002009-03-23T23:04:45.761-07:00<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">From last entry:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">As for MMO-Land, EVE seemed to be okay for a while, and I even trained up an alt for the Red vs. Blue PvP, but I'm really doubting whether I want to actually join them. EVE combat is kind of slow (read: fucking slow), so I can't see how the PvP is going to be better. Sure, there's real loss when you die, but the Red vs. Blue PvP is all in cheap ships as to make it light on the wallet. Thus, it becomes almost trivial to die. So with the loss of a real penalty, and slow combat, there doesn't seem like a lot of reason to do it in the first place. Plus, I can't seem to coordinate any time to play with Kofi, as our schedules have been almost completely opposite lately.</span></blockquote>So ...<br /><br />Kofi and I actually got into Blue and have managed to be a part of some PvP fights. Or should I say, We've managed to get blown out of the sky numerous times while doing absolutely nothing significant to the enemy.<br /><br />Sigh. :(<br /><br />We've been completely ineffectual in every encounter, mostly due to numbers/ship types and the fact that our alts have fucking pathetic skills. There was only 1 time when I felt like I actually contributed, when I was warp scrambling a battleship, but I ran out of energy and he got away. Had I fit the proper scrambler, I could have helped take him down.<br /><br />I've changed my ship setup a little, but it hasn't helped at all. I really can't do much other than warp scram, and as soon as I get targeted I end up dead in seconds. It doesn't matter what I do, I die very, very quickly.<br /><br />So, I figured I need to train up more skills, and possibly move into a bigger ship. And then I looked at the time it would take me just to train /some/ of the gunnery skills I have on my main character. 69 days or something stupid. And that's with training a bunch of Learning skills to speed things up. It doesn't make me want to continue actually. I'd much prefer to go play something else if it's going to take that long. And it's not like the PvP in EVE is even all that fun. It's /really slow/ and can take /hours/ of waiting, jumping, planning, teamwork, etc., just to get those few kills.<br /><br />Comparing it to all the other games I've PvPed in, it's far too slow for my tastes. It was fun for a while, but we have no real chance and it shows. Blue is especially full of lower skillpoint chars and complete noobs, so we keep getting our asses handed to us. I checked the killboards and after the skilled Euro players left the other day, Blue didn't score a single kill in over /5 hours/. The North American players are so useless, it hurts.<br /><br />Kofi and I only have one other option, and that is to bring in our main characters instead. But that opens up a whole other can of worms, especially since we use those chars in PVE to supply money for the PVP alts. If they are in Blue, we can't simply go mission. The only way is to make jump clones (ie. extra bodies you can jump to once every 24 hours), but then we are still in Blue when we are missioning, and are therefore vulnerable to attack by anyone at war with us.<br /><br />We could just train up our alts, but I'm not going to wait another 6-10 months to get to where I'm at with my main. Plus, like I said, the PvP just doesn't feel like what I'm looking for.<br /><br />Goodbye /again/, EVE? It's been ... "meh"? :S<br />---<br /><br />As for other games, I think I might pick up a copy of Sins of a Solar Empire instead, as it's a melding of RTS and turn based strategy games, and is a space game I can replace EVE with. It has got a lot of good reviews, and Tycho from Penny Arcade can't stop raving about it. It's a lot slower paced than regular RTS games, and it has many of the aspects of turn based strategy games that I like.<br /><br />If that doesn't work, I might get STALKER or something else. I'm sure there's something out there I can find to pass the time. Inferno and I actually started playing NWN2 co-op, but I think we need to start over. He's kind of fucked up his character and I think I might try a different class instead of Cleric. But he's going on a shirt holiday here soon, so the likelihood of us continuing that game anytime soon is pretty slim.<br /><br />Oh well ...<br /><br />---<br /><br />That's it for now, I guess.<br />Later all. o/<br /><br /><br /></div>Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8011270994710095915.post-1633988217444862922008-02-06T21:28:00.003-08:002009-03-23T23:04:45.802-07:00Ugh ....<br /><br />I'm bored. Soooo bored. :(<br /><br />It seems my PC gaming has pretty much run dry and the 360 has absolutely nothing either. There are a couple games I've contemplated for both, but none of them get me excited.<br /><br />I'm sure it's not helping that there's /absolutely nothing/ decent on TV anymore since the writers are still on strike. I really miss Heroes and Smallville. They weren't excellent, but they were at least entertaining.<br /><br />Right now I've got nothing to do with my spare time. I'll break it down for you.<br /><br />PC:<br />- Call of Duty 4 (the roomies and I never seem to have time for this anymore, sadly. And 3 person deathmatches get a little repetitive after a while.)<br />- Crysis (half through, can't bring myself to play. So mediocre/obvious in story.)<br />- FEAR: Perseus Mandate (SP is so boring compared to MP. Graphics seem weak too, and story hasn't engaged me at all. Sadly no one plays the original MP anymore.)<br />- FF vs. TTR (basically shelved this one. No challenge as I can min/max and make unkillable heroes. Weak Nazi era heroes just piss me off)<br />- Jade Empire (got a copy of this and found it lacking severely. Controls are shit, camera sucks, and story is "meh". GFX aren't shit hot either, and areas are very linear.)<br />- NWN2: MotB (waiting to see if Inferno and I will play through both NWN2 and this co-op. I've finished the original campaign, but playing co-op might be fun.)<br />- Rainbow Six: Vegas (also got a copy of this, and found it okay, but not something I really feel like playing right now. Too slow, and I dislike the controls. The cover elements in Mass Effect were better, IMO. Roomies want to play it co-op, but we never have time anymore, so it looks like this won't do it either.)<br /><br />360:<br />- Skate (it's been fun, but it's got to the point where it's become too repetitive. Maybe if I could play MP on Live it would be more fun. Also, the insane tricks required for some of the challenges are ridiculous.)<br />- rest are finished and/or don't have any replayability<br /><br />As for MMO-Land, EVE seemed to be okay for a while, and I even trained up an alt for the Red vs. Blue PvP, but I'm really doubting whether I want to actually join them. EVE combat is kind of slow (read: fucking slow), so I can't see how the PvP is going to be better. Sure, there's real loss when you die, but the Red vs. Blue PvP is all in cheap ships as to make it light on the wallet. Thus, it becomes almost trivial to die. So with the loss of a real penalty, and slow combat, there doesn't seem like a lot of reason to do it in the first place. Plus, I can't seem to coordinate any time to play with Kofi, as our schedules have been almost completely opposite lately.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Speaking of work, looks like I'm going to end up on graveyard shifts for at least a week. I'm hoping that's it, as I really like working days now, and the guys on nights are fucking annoying. A couple of them are okay, but the majority of them are idiots. Plus, it's just them to talk to, and I like dealing with customers, seeing Kofi and my other work friends, chatting with the lovely ladies, etc. About the only two things going for nights are a $2/hr higher wage and the fact that it's more casual. But the tradeoff is I lose any semblance of a fucking life. Sucks ....<br /><br />---<br /><br />Le sigh.<br /><br />I really need a break right now. Holidays or something.<br />The Rev.Rev Mr Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02581706958261657610noreply@blogger.com0