So MS now hopes that kids will pay $100 bucks a year to have a 10 player server in which everything is made for you. My 9 year old laughed hard at that.

Of course, that being said, I'm sure some 35 year old "adult" will happily pay this. Can't have any mean people intruding upon their delicate and fragile play time.

What's all this talk about making games? This is about making money. You think CEO's give a shit about anything but making shareholders happy and seeing profit?

Way back in the days of Quake lan parties thrown by our IT group, we stumbled upon a really cool site that had all the best game news that we wanted to know about.

Been my home page ever since. Yeah, I think maybe 17 years now... cripes I feel old.

Looks more like Gauntlet, haha.

Not having played the game for some time, I can't comment on it's current state, but I saw glaring problems from my time in beta that I voiced continuously on their boards.

1. Telegraph system is retarded. This was supposed to be their unique take on combat, and it failed miserably. Arbitrary sizes for abilities that made no sense what-so-ever (example, a melee attack having a diamond shape telegraph), and a constant, ever present mass of colored telegraphs all jumbled together in group encounters that all blended together to become basically meaningless.

2. Abilities were utterly boring. Attack, a little different attack, a still different attack, oh, and a stun. Button mashing as soon as abilties were on cooldown with basically one option for CC.

3. PvP was retarded. Combine backwards running with the entire ground covered in telegraphs, and any semblance of strategy goes out the window.

It could have been a contender if they just worked on the combat dynamics.

Pigeon wrote on Apr 12, 2015, 16:32:

Silicon Avatar wrote on Apr 12, 2015, 15:30:

Maybe I'm just not seeing where the need is, but it just seems like they're trying to make a market for something when the demand isn't there.

There isn't a need. Apple is betting on its trendiness to sell these watches to it's fanatical consumer base. In other words, people will just buy it because it's "cool".

The idea of a smart device on your wrist is pretty silly from an ergonomics standpoint. The act of holding up your arm in a horizontal position for any length of time is just absurd. Remember those old calculator watches from the 80's? Yeah, people took those off their wrist to use them.

I sure hope this fad ends quickly. I can't recall the last time I wore a watch. I don't see myself ever wearing one again in my lifetime. Apply has truly jumped the shark, imho. They should just be an industrial design company these days.

I know druid and mage do decent damage, but it just seems like priest has damage, heals, and utility. Durance just always seems to have a spell that is great for any situation.

My first char was a ranged rogue, and yeah, gibbed just about everything with an arbalest and sneak attack. I wish there was an npc rogue =(. Paladin is a bit underwhelming, but mostly I just enjoy the npc. I like her interactions and party banter.

I do not like 2h melee weapons at all. They just don't seem to be worth it. I have a superb 2h estoc that I put in Eder's hands, and the damage is barely over his superb 1h...

Cipher just seems like a superior spellcaster to mage and druid, too. The lvl 6 knockdown is crazy, and mind blades mops up. The fast casting lvl 2 stun, or even the lvl 1 knockdown are great ways to lead into an encounter. Also, you never have to worry about damaging your party with cipher spells.

On a side note, the extra damage from soul whip makes my melee cipher pretty badass, as well. Not as tough as fighter, but plenty of ways to even the playing field.

The reason I started over on Path of the Damned, was because running 2 ciphers seems like easy mode now, even on Hard difficulty. Was seeing if barbarian would work, but looks like I'm just going to go cipher again, hah.

What level is your barbarian? I tried playing one on path of the damned, and got killed on the second fight where you get ambushed by two bandits, hah!

Right now my main is a Cipher, and I love it. I am dual wielding, melee focused, with awesome spells on top. Don't know how it could get much better. Straight up fighter seems pretty awesome as well, and priest blows away druid and wizard, imho. Everything else is just flavor.

harlock wrote on Apr 3, 2015, 19:57:

Stanly Manly wrote on Apr 3, 2015, 19:29:
RE: Ciphers... The problem with the class and Mind Blades, is that most of their other spells are pretty useless. They sound good on paper, but I just didn't find them effective. I would love to use the beam type abilities, but they just never seem to line up correctly. Charms take too long to cast, and I'd rather do damage than CC. I completely agree that it's pointless to nerf it in a single player game.

this is bullshit, as in wrong - (at least on my character who has high dex - maybe thats it? for casting time or whatever), but anyways all the spells go off quick - and charm, paralyze, dominate, soul suck or whatever - all that shit works almost every time and it destroys shit.. the dude can practically solo groups of enemies at this point

now its my main character so i give him all the best magic items too.. so that may be part of it

i didnt really see a nerf coming but a few days ago i did say to someone about mind blades "it seems overpowered" ... so i guess its not just me

Hardly bullshit. Are you playing on Hard difficulty? Not saying that some people won't enjoy the dynamic of charming a mob, I'm just saying that 30+ damage to an entire group of enemies seems much better, relatively speaking. I laugh every time I stumble upon a group of wichts and wipe out all of them with one cast. Why would I waste the time casting a charm spell?

I don't use a lot of my priests abilities, either. Mostly the "pulse" heal, the knockdown trap, and blessing. Sure, his other spells come in handy now and then, but those are bread and butter spells. Just like Mind Blades is a bread and butter spell for the Cipher.

You can come down off your high horse now.

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Apr 3, 2015, 19:06:
Well, the lockpick bug will make me wait to patch, but I'm on the gog version anyway. No patch yet anyway.

Wizards become per Encounter casters at level 9+, which is a little late in my opinion. Fights are pretty short for the most part, so Chanters barely get to cast their spells, Cipher gets to mind blade/Charm a couple times, but Aloth(Wizard NPC) is basically doing all the damage and CC now at level 11. Huge swap from early levels, in a good way. His spell recast time is low enough that he puts my Rogue to shame in AoE situations.

Mind Blades probably needs to be toned down, not sure I'd bother in Obsidians' shoes for a single player game though. It's literally the best Cipher spell to cast in about 90% of situations.

I'm going to go ahead and finish the game with the release version, pretty close as it is. I did experience the Main questline bug, where OCD completionist attempts to do every faction quest bugs out a dialogue option, but I was able to edit the conversation file and proceed.

Sorry to hear so many people aren't enjoying the combat; it's definitely a pause-order happy game though.

Hmm, that is good info about Wizard getting better at 9+. I might slip Aloth back into my party then =).

RE: Ciphers... The problem with the class and Mind Blades, is that most of their other spells are pretty useless. They sound good on paper, but I just didn't find them effective. I would love to use the beam type abilities, but they just never seem to line up correctly. Charms take too long to cast, and I'd rather do damage than CC. I completely agree that it's pointless to nerf it in a single player game.

RE: Chanters... I'm playing on hard/expert, so fights are actually fairly lengthy at times, and I have found that the Chanter summons are quite nice, given the new melee engagement dynamic. They don't do so much damage, but they are free damage sponges that tie up enemies.

Wow, a nerf already? Cripes... I rerolled cipher after seeing how cool Mind Blades was, and I have always loved the big damage, slow reloading xbows like arbalests...

I like that fast melee weapons got a buff (much needed, imho), but I'm on the fence with these patch notes. Don't think I'll download it. I'd be happy with the wizard range buff, if I didn't dislike most wizard spells, haha. The only spellcaster I am keeping in my party is a priest. I like the "per encounter" abilities better in this game. Going with fighter, 2 ciphers, paladin, priest, and chanter this time around.

Ceribaen wrote on Mar 31, 2015, 13:56:

That said, I'm still having fun with it... probably going to reroll whenever some of these major items are worked out as I actually missed Eder early on somehow.

Hah, yeah I missed him too. I talked with him, but he didn't have any interest in joining my party. Maybe I chose the wrong option. I kept readying about people describing him as a super tank. I just ended up making a pair of fighters at the inn.

Dirwulf wrote on Mar 30, 2015, 20:28:
I don't think that they had someone editing the text, and if they did they did a pretty piss poor job. So many spelling mistakes and missing words.

Also, that first companion that you get, whenever I use her shove ability she's goes out of her way to get to my character and shove him to the ground? At least I'm playing a monk so she wounds me and activates my abilities lol.

This game is a bug filled mess right now, though. What happened to all the fan boys from the other POE posts?...

Hah, oh, I see now. You are either a really bad troll, or just really, really stupid. Or perhaps really, really stupid, and trying to be a really bad troll.

Either way, you should absolutely not post again. I mean, unless you enjoy people laughing at you.

I've run into some bugs and annoyances, and although a small part of me thinks they need some better QA, the rest is just overjoyed at all the amazing aspects of this game.

I am loving all the choices, side quests, extensive lore, well written dialog, party banter, and stunning backgrounds. I really enjoy the combat dynamics so far, and although I did like the BG2 combat better, the new streamlined combat in this game works quite well. I have been experimenting a lot with party composition and ability use, to some really good effect =). The main gem of this game is the amazing world and quests.

If anyone is waiting for patches and bargain bin pricing on this, you are being absolutely ridiculous. For $45 bucks, this is a hell of a game. A bug filled mess? Dear lord, could you exaggerate any more...

Wallshadows wrote on Mar 19, 2015, 18:40:
Really puts some of those star ships in to perspective though!

Yeah that was the part I liked most about it.

I haven't played a space flight game in forever though. I think the last one I tried was Descent: Freespace. They all just seem like following a blinking target indicator, then overshooting so you have to turn around, rinse, repeat...

Looks good, but not holding my breath. This is CCP we are talking about here...

I dunno about you, but that ESRB description should be rated R because it totally got me hard.

The problem I had with Wildstar wasn't the content, difficulty, classes, or any of that sort of stuff.

Put simply, the combat dynamics were just plain awful. Combat felt like spammy button mashing nonsense, and the only skills that seemed to have any strategic worth were stuns. Other than that, just mash whatever generic ability was on cooldown when it came up.

On top of that, the "telegraph" system and overdone spell effects rendered the game nearly unplayable for me. I literally could not see anything on screen except colored boxes on the ground, and shiny sparkly effects while fighting stuff in dungeons.

The pvp was just retarded, too. Spamming abilities that would cover the ground with colored boxes to the point where you could not distinguish one ability from another was absolutely dumb. Not to mention being fully mobile while casting these things pretty much turned every pvp encounter into "spray and pray".

I would love to take part of a hardcore mmorpg again, but Wildstar missed the mark bigtime with their combat system. I went back to playing Tera because I wanted good combat again (although the rest of the game kinda sucks, the combat is top notch as far as mmo's go).

Give me Tera combat with a hardcore, raid centric game like Wildstar, and I'll throw my money at it.

Ugh, I keep going back and forth about this game because I keep hearing different things about PvP. Now the word is it has actual, honest to god, open world PvP, and so I want to try it.

However, having fully switched over to Ubuntu a while back, I can't get it to run, haha. Any WINE experts out there got it working? I've tried PlayOnLinux and CrossOver, and all I get is a blank white splash screen with an "accept" and "decline" button regarding the EULA, but nothing happens when I press either, heh.

Where is the downvote option?