What game are you wasting time on?

[Machocruz]

Spiderman on PS4, or Open World AAA Game: The Game, Starring Peter Parker. Not bad, just meh. Everything you expect these days and not more. Why does a waypoint need both a marker on the mini map AND an in-game beacon beaming into the sky?

Minecraft. Last time I played the Ender Dragon had just been put in the game. Game has been getting a lot of traffic recently, so I decided to see what's new. A lot, apparently. Actually requires more attention and thought than 95% of mainstream games these days. Like there is danger and stuff, and things to figure out. You can fall off a cliff and minecraft guy won't auto-grab the ledge for you. No wall hax to see if there is a creeper just outside your shelter when you walk out. I'm actually surprised sometimes what I find exploring (looking at you, Bethesda). What's that, you want a compass or map? Make them, asshole. And there's no arrows or icons on it for you to follow, scrub. Say what you will, but this is game is going down as one of the iconic video games next to SMB, WoW, Doom, Tetris, etc. And I don't have one bit of a problem with that. Terraria is better though.

 

[CruduxCruo]

Thank God for the macros

 

[Prime Junta]

I fucking did it, I managed to slog through Dragon Age: Origins all the way to the finish. Finally. I have many thoughts on the franchise now, but here are a few of the topmost ones.

Moment-to-moment gameplay-wise they all stink, one worse than the other.

I would rate DA:O the worst and DA2 the least bad in that respect. The problem with DA:O is that it's stuck in a really uncomfortable place between being an adrenaline-packed cinematic aRPG and a RTwP party-based RPG, and consequently is really bad at both. The combat is too fast to be tactical and requires too much party micro to be enjoyable as action. It's also a giant clusterfuck of bad pathfinding, bad collision-detection, and generally bad. It is also a really fucking brutally hard game, and a lot of the time it's stupid hard rather than interesting hard. The random encounters while traveling for example are entirely unnecessarily brutal; I had more trouble with them than with the freaking dragons.

As systems go, DA:O is classic cargo cult design. It's an ungodly mishmash of the worst ideas from D&D combined with the worst ideas from MMOs. It's extremely spammy. It also communicates what it does really poorly, both moment to moment and with regards to the abilities, talents, and stats, which means that playing it is a matter of guessing what shit does -- not like D&D where you can read the rules and figure it out. So yeah, moment to moment it was not fun, and the character-building wasn't that much fun too. I will grant that there were a couple of pretty good boss fights, Broodmother for example.

But... it had hella good choice and consequence, a big, sprawling story that cohered well, and kept the cookie-cutter quests down to a relatively reasonable amount. The companions were rather one-note, I don't think I really liked any of them much, and the companion relationships were rather dull as well. And I have to say the worldbuilding has grown on me, transparent as the historical precedents are, and as undeveloped as the whole Fade/darkspawn thing is in DA:O. I very much doubt I'll be returning to this one, but I'll give it an A for effort, a B- for execution.

DA2 tried to address some of the worst problems with DA:O gameplay. At times it was almost enjoyable to go charging around the battlefield as a sword-and-board fighter. The simplified mechanics worked better; it wasn't trying to be a cut-rate D&D anymore but was rather doing its own thing. I especially liked that each companion had their own talent tree. The companions were more interesting and nuanced there too, as were the relationships you could build with them. And I really liked the idea of setting it in a single city over several years. Combat encounters were even more repetitive than in DA:O but I hated them less, probably because it was clearly more enjoyable to play as an aRPG. In my opinion the only really big flaw DA2 has is the name: if it had been marketed as a full-length expansion -- Mask of the Betrayer style -- the reception would have been completely different. As a sequel to a massive sprawling AAA cRPG it is bound to disappoint. Even so I think it's my favourite of the bunch.

DA:I ... well. It's several steps back in several important ways, notably the leveled loot is disastrous and the sheer mass of unwanted cookie-cutter fetch questing it throws at you is seriously off-putting; moment-to-moment gameplay wise it's somewhat worse than DA2 but still nowhere near as bad as DA:O. Other than the game part of the game, however, it is pretty good really -- the companions are now fully-fleshed-out complex characters with their own agendas, their dialogue flows beautifully and they're really well voice acted. It also keeps one of the things DA:O did well, namely, tying all the questing together with the main plot arc. This BioWare knew how to sell -- they really managed to minimise the typical dissonance of helping little old ladies get their cats out of trees while there's an existential threat to the world. Terrible, terrible bossfights though, mountains of hitpoints to chip through while juggling counters and spamming heals and what have you.

Overall, after finally playing through the whole thing, I feel a lot more positive about the franchise than I used to. There really aren't many AAA fantasy cRPG franchises out there; in a way it's between this and the Witchers, and of course the Witchers are proudly aRPG (and IMO much more enjoyable to actually play because they don't attempt to straddle the fence and there by get their balls stuck between the pickets).

But really, it's kinda depressing that Obsidian isn't a learning animal. They could have shamelessly lifted the good ideas from the DA franchise while avoiding the really bad ones -- which they actually did, whatever you think of the Pillars games, they are way better both mechanically and in moment-to-moment gameplay. It's just a shame that they have the one-note companions and they're unable to make the questing cohere with the main story arc.

But there you are. This marathon did shift me from "good riddance BioWare" to "eh, too bad, there would've been some life in the DA franchise yet."

 

[Hyperion]

The problem with DA:O is that it's stuck in a really uncomfortable place between being an adrenaline-packed cinematic aRPG and a RTwP party-based RPG, and consequently is really bad at both. The combat is too fast to be tactical and requires too much party micro to be enjoyable as action. It's also a giant clusterfuck of bad pathfinding, bad collision-detection, and generally bad.

Oddly enough, their main inspiration for combat (and the tactics system) was Final Fantasy 12, and they managed to screw up everything Squaresoft (they became SE during development...) FF did so well. Only the tactics system was a slight refinement of Gambits, everything else took about 2 or 3 steps backwards.

It is also a really fucking brutally hard game, and a lot of the time it's stupid hard rather than interesting hard

I hope you're talking about Nightmare difficulty, because 90% of the game is faceroll nonsense full of weakling grunt enemies with 1 or 2 monsters per encounter that can (and will) devastate your party in the first 10 seconds of the fight. And the entire fight is based on who gets that disabling spell off. I think they patched it out, but Darkspawn Mages spamming Crushing Prison was the primary group wiping mechanic at game's release. The only difficulty left are the Templars in the Mage's Tower that will Mana Burn / Enchantment Burn you the instant you enter their LOS if you're a Mage. Only weakness an Arcane Warrior has, really.

Off the top of my head, the single biggest load of horseshit in the game is the Ogre fight in the burning guard tower at the slaughter of Ostagar, because you're not allowed to avoid its charge. After that, pretty much all difficulty disappears from the game unless you decide to use lots of AoE on Nightmare because of the aforementioned dogshit character pathfinding that will have Alistair walking into friendly Cone of Cold every fight.

The companions were rather one-note

"Shut the fuck up, Sten."

Sten approves (+7)

 

[octavius]

Diablo 2 is next major game on my list.

What is the preferred patch if playing it vanilla Single Player? I recall each new patch would tweak and balance things, and not always for the better.

What's the best mod for SP? Median XL? And others? Median sounds rather too fast paced for me.
Any mod that allows saving anywhere or at least save the complete game status? And to install all files to HD?

 

[CruduxCruo]

 

[Gregz]

Diablo 2 is next major game on my list.

What is the preferred patch if playing it vanilla Single Player? I recall each new patch would tweak and balance things, and not always for the better.

What's the best mod for SP? Median XL? And others? Median sounds rather too fast paced for me.
Any mod that allows saving anywhere or at least save the complete game status? And to install all files to HD?

You want Median XL 1.F9b, not the new sigma version. Patch your Diablo II client to 1.13.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/median-xl/downloads/median-xl-1f9b-latest-version

Diablo II is easy to pick up, the mod adds many things but you'll figure it out as you go. You may find yourself wanting to experiment with several builds, highly encouraged.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110818054947/http://modsbylaz.14.forumer.com/viewforum.php?f=15

You'll find this very useful

http://modsbylaz.vn.cz/

 

[Cael]

The problem with DA:O is that it's stuck in a really uncomfortable place between being an adrenaline-packed cinematic aRPG and a RTwP party-based RPG, and consequently is really bad at both. The combat is too fast to be tactical and requires too much party micro to be enjoyable as action. It's also a giant clusterfuck of bad pathfinding, bad collision-detection, and generally bad.

Oddly enough, their main inspiration for combat (and the tactics system) was Final Fantasy 12, and they managed to screw up everything Squaresoft (they became SE during development...) FF did so well. Only the tactics system was a slight refinement of Gambits, everything else took about 2 or 3 steps backwards.

It is also a really fucking brutally hard game, and a lot of the time it's stupid hard rather than interesting hard

I hope you're talking about Nightmare difficulty, because 90% of the game is faceroll nonsense full of weakling grunt enemies with 1 or 2 monsters per encounter that can (and will) devastate your party in the first 10 seconds of the fight. And the entire fight is based on who gets that disabling spell off. I think they patched it out, but Darkspawn Mages spamming Crushing Prison was the primary group wiping mechanic at game's release. The only difficulty left are the Templars in the Mage's Tower that will Mana Burn / Enchantment Burn you the instant you enter their LOS if you're a Mage. Only weakness an Arcane Warrior has, really.

Off the top of my head, the single biggest load of horseshit in the game is the Ogre fight in the burning guard tower at the slaughter of Ostagar, because you're not allowed to avoid its charge. After that, pretty much all difficulty disappears from the game unless you decide to use lots of AoE on Nightmare because of the aforementioned dogshit character pathfinding that will have Alistair walking into friendly Cone of Cold every fight.

The companions were rather one-note

"Shut the fuck up, Sten."

Sten approves (+7)

No. It was the other spell, the one that does damage over time and prevented you from healing. That is the one that fucked you up big time as it can still kill you after you won the fight.

Mana Clash was the single most broken spell ever against mages, but it is a mage spell. Yes, the Templars had their own version of it that is arguably worse because it also stuns AND dispel all magical effects on you, after which the cooldown mechanic will wreck your face as you can't bring all the spells back up even if you saved against the stun, turning your Arcane Warrior into an easy pincushion.

I never had any problem with any combat in DA:O that required micro except the big setpiece combats right at the end in the final battle for Denerim. The mess of archers and mages at the steps of the tower/prison can stunlock and blow you to hell if you are unlucky. Shattershot is broken at all hell. The editable tactics is the best part of the game as it eliminates micro, and you can faceroll any encounter with just those if you know how to work the system and how the various skills work.

The Ogre can be stopped with a shield bash, IIRC, which Alistair has, or a fireball, which your mage might have. You need something with knockdown. Same when it grabs you.

 

[Prime Junta]

The Ogre can be stopped with a shield bash, IIRC, which Alistair has, or a fireball, which your mage might have. You need something with knockdown. Same when it grabs you.

Can also be kited and chipped to death at range. Just run in a circle, yay.

Generally the game rewards strategies that I feel are pretty degenerate, like leaving the party behind a corner and pulling small groups there to whack them, potion/poultice spam, aforementioned kiting (duel with Loghain as rogue is p hilarious, yakkety sax in a circle as your Dirty Fighting cooldown expires), and so on. I also detest the aggro management mechanic.

 

[Cael]

The Ogre can be stopped with a shield bash, IIRC, which Alistair has, or a fireball, which your mage might have. You need something with knockdown. Same when it grabs you.

Can also be kited and chipped to death at range. Just run in a circle, yay.

Generally the game rewards strategies that I feel are pretty degenerate, like leaving the party behind a corner and pulling small groups there to whack them, potion/poultice spam, aforementioned kiting (duel with Loghain as rogue is p hilarious, yakkety sax in a circle as your Dirty Fighting cooldown expires), and so on. I also detest the aggro management mechanic.

Which is not what he said. He wanted to avoid the charge, not a tactic on how to kill it.

Kiting has been a thing since BG when RTwP became a thing. It is not new and to tag DAO with it is deceitful and unfair.

 

[Hyperion]

Oh, I wasn't looking for a tactic to kill it, perhaps I left out one bit of detail - I beat the game on all 4 difficulties. I was just griping about what I recall being very stupid from the last time I played it 5+ years ago.

Even on Nightmare the game wasn't particularly challenging enough that it was so tightly tuned only certain builds could beat it. I finished it pretty easily on the ps3 (so giving out directional commands wasn't easy), and facetanked most things. The Fade was really the biggest problem since I always do Mage's Tower first for the stat boosts, so I can min/max my Warden best.

I definitely recall 2h warrior sucking major bawlz tho.

 

[Darth Roxor]

lol dragon age

 

[Hyperion]

lol dragon age

It may not be particularly good, but that doesn't mean we can't have a discussion and bitch about it sucking. This is the 'dex, after all.

 

[Prime Junta]

It may not be particularly good

I beat the game on all 4 difficulties

Seven times?

 

[Hyperion]

It may not be particularly good

I beat the game on all 4 difficulties

Seven times?

Casual, Normal, Hard, and Nightmare. 4.

And it was 2008-2009, what else was there to play?

 

[Cael]

Oh, I wasn't looking for a tactic to kill it, perhaps I left out one bit of detail - I beat the game on all 4 difficulties. I was just griping about what I recall being very stupid from the last time I played it 5+ years ago.

Even on Nightmare the game wasn't particularly challenging enough that it was so tightly tuned only certain builds could beat it. I finished it pretty easily on the ps3 (so giving out directional commands wasn't easy), and facetanked most things. The Fade was really the biggest problem since I always do Mage's Tower first for the stat boosts, so I can min/max my Warden best.

I definitely recall 2h warrior sucking major bawlz tho.

It isn't a hard game. The best aspects of it was the world building, which was a good premise sadly let down by the sequels. The DLCs, though, made the game an easy romp. The items were definitely pretty criminal with its power creep.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The companions were rather one-note, I don't think I really liked any of them much

Except the dog. But then, I don't know of any game than fucks up the dog companion, if any.

Me, I'm plowing my way to S-rank the phantom pain. It's fun to break this game and have it beg for mercy. 1 mission left.

 

[Prime Junta]

One of my issues with the difficulty was the general lack of balance and the way it obfuscates the mechanics.

I beat the boss fights without much trouble, but some of the random encounters and trash mobs were much harder -- in the endgame, the Archdemon was easy, but I had to reload several times in the fight in the courtyard with the Emissaries in the back, the archers to the sides, and the mini-dragons teleporting in. Some of the random encounters while traveling, especially earlier on, were also a lot harder than any of the boss fights.

Another way it manifests is in the classes. The 2H fighters are garbage, all the staying power of a rogue and DPS of a tank -- and two of your three fighter companions are 2H fighters. Same for archery -- a bow is great as a secondary weapon in some situations, but a specialist archer is garbage -- and Leliana is a specialist archer, while you only get Zevran pretty late in the game. Wynne is the only healer companion you find, but playing without one is really hard, given the tank/DPS/support design of the game.

As to the mechanical obfuscation: the talent descriptions are completely insufficient. For example, take the absolutely awesome assassin passives. One of them says something like "gives bonus damage proportional to your Cunning." Terrific, but what is the proportion? 0.1% per point? 1%? 2%? 5%? Same for the mage-killer spell, Mana Blast or something, "does damage in proportion to the amount of mana lost." Again, what is the proportion? The only way to find out (other than reading a strategy guide) is to try it, and the only way to try it is to take the talent, and since there's no respec, no way to hire custom adventurer companions, and a very limited pool of story companions, the only way to do that is to replay. And since many of these talents are near the end of the talent trees or in specialist classes, that means replaying not just the start but a sizable chunk of the game. (And let's not even get into the sekrit spell combos.)

There are clearly people who enjoy that kind of stuff but I find it retarded. Make the mechanics robust and rich enough to support intelligent gameplay and then tell the player what they are, so they can figure out what the best ways to use them are.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The 2H fighters are garbage

Nope.

 

[Cael]

The 2H fighters are garbage

Nope.

2H fighters are the only class that cannot be knocked down. They just need a faster attack rate, which you can get by stacking a double helping of Haste on them.

EDIT: Plus the THAT Maul is the best melee weapon in the game bar none.

 

[Prime Junta]

As a postscript, I tooled around a bit as a mage and now I get why some of you are saying that nah the game isn't hard at all. 'Cuz it isn't if the Warden is a mage. Sadly both Morrigan and Wynne have rather bad spell selections to start with. It was a lot harder with a rogue Warden.

The Glyph line plus one or both of the ice and fire lines are rather amusingly OP... and it seems the specialisations (Arcane Warrior, Blood Mage) pretty much break the game. It's still a chore to play though.

 

[octavius]

Diablo 2 is next major game on my list.

What is the preferred patch if playing it vanilla Single Player? I recall each new patch would tweak and balance things, and not always for the better.

What's the best mod for SP? Median XL? And others? Median sounds rather too fast paced for me.
Any mod that allows saving anywhere or at least save the complete game status? And to install all files to HD?

You want Median XL 1.F9b, not the new sigma version. Patch your Diablo II client to 1.13.

I decided to go with vanilla Diablo 2 for now, and try Median 2 (or XL) once I reach December 2005 on my play list.
I still have only completed the game with the Barbarian and the Amazon.

I couldn't find my boxed copy of D2 which I bought with heard earned money, so I was forced to torrent it, but that at least solved the install to HD problem.
Updating to the 1.14D patch made it compatible with Win 7, and with a Glide wrapper custom built for D2 I get crisper graphics and no stretching.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

As to the mechanical obfuscation: the talent descriptions are completely insufficient. For example, take the absolutely awesome assassin passives. One of them says something like "gives bonus damage proportional to your Cunning." Terrific, but what is the proportion? 0.1% per point? 1%? 2%? 5%? Same for the mage-killer spell, Mana Blast or something, "does damage in proportion to the amount of mana lost." Again, what is the proportion? The only way to find out (other than reading a strategy guide) is to try it, and the only way to try it is to take the talent, and since there's no respec, no way to hire custom adventurer companions, and a very limited pool of story companions, the only way to do that is to replay. And since many of these talents are near the end of the talent trees or in specialist classes, that means replaying not just the start but a sizable chunk of the game. (And let's not even get into the sekrit spell combos.)

There are clearly people who enjoy that kind of stuff but I find it retarded. Make the mechanics robust and rich enough to support intelligent gameplay and then tell the player what they are, so they can figure out what the best ways to use them are.

https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4499

 

[Cael]

As a postscript, I tooled around a bit as a mage and now I get why some of you are saying that nah the game isn't hard at all. 'Cuz it isn't if the Warden is a mage. Sadly both Morrigan and Wynne have rather bad spell selections to start with. It was a lot harder with a rogue Warden.

The Glyph line plus one or both of the ice and fire lines are rather amusingly OP... and it seems the specialisations (Arcane Warrior, Blood Mage) pretty much break the game. It's still a chore to play though.

And the cunta completely ignores the fact that people finished the game playing a TWF rogue and still think the game is easy. Maybe because he is unable to understand that he is shit at games? Hmm...

 

[Prime Junta]

Maybe because he is unable to understand that he is shit at games?

:self-reflection:

I'm certainly shit at games compared to the good folks who like to do solo nightmare challenges, play competitive multiplayer, and so on. I usually play games at normal difficulty on a first playthrough. If I really like the game, I bump it up a notch for a second one, unless -- as is too often the case -- the harder difficulty just introduces more grind and more busywork.

How about you Cael? What difficulty do you usually play at when you jump into a new game?