Hanneth wrote on Oct 11, 2018, 12:28:
Big difference between WOW and this trailer! WOW uses completely different models in their trailers than in game.
This was using almost all in game footage. Logo, transitions and music probably being the only things done in post.
It is true that the game will not look like this when it comes out, but thats only because it will look slightly better. They are still working on the hair technology. They showed off the clothing improvements they just completed in the last week with cloth simulation.
They don't use higher polygon models, or textures for the cutscenes. Chris has even said that most cinematics you can break out of cinematic mode and watch from your character's perspective, where you can walk around.

Mr. Tact wrote on Oct 11, 2018, 11:42:
Really? I mean it was a quality trailer, they did a good job. But looking at the trailer and hoping the game would be anywhere close to what you see is like watching one of the WoW trailers and thinking WoW would be like that. It just isn't so.

Why are we working on 'hair technology' when what people backed originally was something that was sitting inside a cockpit shooting stuff? My head should be inside a helmet, I don't need hair!

jdreyer wrote on Jul 19, 2018, 16:41:

Cutter wrote on Jul 19, 2018, 11:48:

Drazula wrote on Jul 19, 2018, 11:30:
Extreme left and extreme right are both nuts. Most of us live in the middle and are capable of seeing both sides of most issues.

Thank you. The lack of common sense and flexibility in both those groups will be the undoing of us all.

When one side suggests Italian for dinner, and the other side suggests anthrax and tire irons, how do you find common ground?

Burritos?

HorrorScope wrote on Jul 11, 2018, 11:31:

Rigs wrote on Jul 11, 2018, 10:32:
It looks like a really cheap Destiny ripoff. So, instead of every MMORPG trying to rip on WOW, now they're going for Destiny. Wonderful. Just what everyone wanted.

=-Rigs-=

It looks like that, but perhaps it could be more fun with more gear and content? The places where I feel Destiny lacks. To me it isn't always about the gfx. But this probably sucks there to, just saying, it could look lesser but still be better in overall gameplay.

The original Defiance game was actually entertaining to me, story was cohesive and tied in with the show as it was airing.

Destiny, you just sort of pop in and pop out of things through the game lobby (err Director) and spend half the time staring at your ship as a loading screen. Defiance at least had the standard mmo feel to it.

Haven't tried this yet, and have no time or desire to really though especially given initial reviews.

Creston wrote on Jun 17, 2018, 14:46:
So I picked up Elder Scrolls Online, because a buddy at work was going to play it, and he convinced me to get it so we could team up.

So far, not really impressed with it. At all.

Let me get the good things out of the way :

- There are some really good quests in it, and from what I hear, by and large it has just solid questing. I've done a few duds, but there have been three just really really good ones, and several good quests, where I was genuinely wanting to see what was going to happen. (I've only been playing for about a day or so.)

- Huge world, with interesting places to visit. They also avoided the Oblivion syndrome, where literally every four feet there's a fucking dungeon or something. While the maps aren't empty, they also don't feel way too full.

- Everything is voice acted by mostly decent/good VAs.
- Massive amounts of crafting options.
- Large amounts of customization and build options.

The bad :

- The graphics. The design of the world is pretty enough, but everything just kinda looks like I imagine Guild Wars 2 looked if you turned everything to low. I've only seen Summerset so far, so maybe somewhere else it'll look better. But it's kinda disappointing.

- The performance. For a game that looks this mediocre, it runs like a 2-legged dog. I've had areas where my FPS drops down into the low 30s on 1080p with a 1070ti... I mean... what? The Witcher 3 looks five times better than your game, and my FPS there never drops below 70.

- Why is the main quest on Summerset not giving me ANYTHING? No XP, no money, nothing. I spent like an hour on a quest yesterday, and at the end the "Queen's Agent" who has been ordering me around is just like "Okay, meet me in this forest there!" and just walks off.

HOW ABOUT PAYING A MOTHERFUCKER?? I mean, we do the mission because "it's the main quest", but why on earth would my character bother to do this? I get NOTHING for it. Why do I give a rat's ass about why the Altmer are racist pieces of shit??

The ugly:

- The combat. Dear God is it boring. But the fact that it's boring is really not even the worst part. No, the worst part is the respawn rates. You literally have no time to examine anything anywhere, because if you do, the shit you just killed will just respawn, and you get to kill it again. I killed a boss at the end of a quest, and while I was looking around the area that I'd killed him in, he just got the fuck back up and I had to kill him again like 40 seconds later.

Note, none of this is really difficult. Because of the "Scale Everything Everywhere", there is no challenge to anything. You can go anywhere and safely assume that whatever is there, you'll be able to kill it. So it's just a boring repetition of skill, light attack, animation cancel skill, light attack, animation cancel skill, thing dies, on to the next. Repeated endlessly.

You also really don't get any more powerful, really. For 11 levels I've been pumping all my ability points into Magicka. My total Magicka has gone up by ~ 1100. The least powerful spell I have costs ~ 2900 Magicka to cast. So yay, by level 30 I'll be able to cast ONE MORE SPELL before running out of Magicka.

The "The Developers Fucking Hate You and Wish You To Die:

- The crafting bag. Look, I get it. You want people to pay money every month. Even though we've already paid money to buy the fucking game in the first place, and Guild Wars 2 was able to exist off this model for what, six years now? without any issues whatsoever.

But without paying, you do not get access to the crafting bag, ie, an infinite amount of stash space to store crafting materials. How big a problem is that?

Well, the 'loot' that drops in this game is 99% crafting materials. And there are HUNDREDS of materials. Your backpack space is 60 slots. Each material takes up a slot. See where I'm going with this?

So then I figure, okay, I'll stash it in the bank. My bank has 60 slots.

Also, half of the other loot you find has literally NO value. None. Weapons, armors, rings, whatever, a merchant will pay you NO money for them. What.The.Fuck? It took me an entire day of playing to get 2000 gold, which I needed to buy 10 more slots in my backpack...


So if you were on the ropes, or maybe thinking "I'll play this to tide me over until TES6!", don't. I genuinely am pissed that I spent 40 bucks on this. I also no longer talk to the guy at work who convinced me to fucking buy it.

So, I play ESO on PC/NA... one thing I can tell you from my own experience when I started playing in Morrowind... they made a terrible decision and decided to drop players into the newest chapter.

There's an actual story that starts from the base game and runs through Summerset. If you haven't totally given up on the game yet, go back to your faction's starting area and start the main quest and faction quests from there. The new player experience is SIGNIFICANTLY better.

Regarding looks and performance, I play on a five year old PC, so I've used addons and reduced settings and while it doesn't look as good as FFXIV, I wouldn't say it looks bad. And get fairly consistent 60fps outside of raids.

Regarding craft bag, yes that tiny bit of inventory management is their entire hook to get you to keep subscribing. I mean sure, you get access to all the DLC expansions too but really that inventory management is the heroin for their subscription model.

As far as getting more powerful, that comes from the new abilities and passives you get as you level up (also, higher level equipment has better stats). They actually battle level you from level 1 so that anyone can participate in any overland content from day one.

Regarding equipment, yeah most of it is decon bait... and then the craft materials can be used to sell to other players.

The reddit isn't half bad for the game, and there's a ton of guilds out there that are quite helpful (and even zone chats when not doing the usual politics BS).

Overall, the game is far from perfect, and definitely is edging on the slightly too much monetization pitfall. But it's a solid classic mmo.

This comment was edited on Jun 19, 2018, 00:04.

KezClone wrote on Jun 13, 2018, 19:09:
I liked Defiance the game quite a bit. It was as described below--pretty good to really good but lacked a longterm hook.

Agreed, I pretty much played it in sync with the show's season. And dropped it once the show stopped for a season. Shooters aren't really my thing, but for some reason I really enjoy mmo shooters in short bursts and Defiance scratched that itch well at the times I played it.

It started to suffer though from Trion's typical over the top attempts at monetization though near the end of the TV show run as I recall.

Think that they need to start separating changes for console and PC... Because destroying Ana's grenade is going to make her basically useless for anyone who isn't using third party hardware to play m/kb on console.

loomy wrote on Dec 5, 2016, 17:27:

descender wrote on Dec 5, 2016, 13:18:
In my myriad discussions with people about Westworld, I find that the people who find it boring or confusing generally didn't understand the underlying complexity of the questions the show was posing and took the entire thing at face value.

I figured out most of it early, and that was it. the show kept secrets, but was not subtle. I will not spoil anything by speaking further. maybe I'm just a prodigy guys

See. I think that's the thing though, the show has its secrets but it also provides a lot of clues -- so if you figure them out early, good for you... but if you didn't you go 'OOOOOH, that's what that meant'.
To me that's good writing. I don't want twists to be out of nowhere with absolutely no setup. You should be able to go back and connect the dots (which means some people will get them ahead of time too).

And besides, even if you do figure out the twists early, the show is still enjoyable for the aforementioned moral quandaries that they deal with. And I still think they're still leading us down the garden path on a few details that will be dealt with in season 2.

If this update gets average match times to 20 minutes or less, I'm definitely back to trying it. As I understand it's been improved a bit, but when I was playing last you were looking at 45 minutes or so as a 'commitment' if you didn't want to leave mid-match. Just can't do that anymore unfortunately.

Though the 'flow' they talk about looks like they've borrowed heavily from Overwatch.
Definitely felt a lot more constrained previously. And lots of downtime walking back into lanes if you died.

Picked up on the weekend for PS4 when it was on sale.
So far having fun with the campaign, haven't touched MP yet... not even sure if I will.

Is it just me, or is THQ Nordic just buying up a ton of IP with the sole intention to do nothing with it outside of license it to someone else hoping to cash in on nostalgia?

Osc8r wrote on Oct 20, 2016, 19:13:

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Oct 19, 2016, 21:16:
Hrm, this game looks so gorgeous, and I got like $250 worth of Paragon Points with my video card, perhaps I should try it.

Anybody actually play this game, with an opinion based on actual game time?

It's graphics are amazing....

Sadly nothing else stands out. It feels like a MOBA designed specifically for console players and people who have never played a MOBA before.

But if you've got some free points to spend why not?
It's free, and i got a few weeks of playtime out of it.

How did the changes go to reduce match times? That was my primary dislike of it... games regularly were 30-45min plus

Quboid wrote on Oct 4, 2016, 11:53:
I doubt most developers could give many refunds as the E.A. money would have been spent. Valve wouldn't be thrilled to make up the shortfall.

Perhaps a partial refund. You (the customer) gets the usual 14 days / 2 hours for a full refund, after that you can get 50% back until 14 days after the full release. If Valve refund their 30%, the developer is only on the hook for 20% of the E.A. retail price.

Under this system, maybe the 20% could go into a holding account, paid to the developer only 14 days after launch. This would ensure the money is there to be refunded and give the developer a reason to finish version 1.0 of a game, rather than make unobtainable promises.

Defining a release version isn't easy but there needs to be some point at which the developer says "this is our implementation of what we promised; we might patch it, we might expand it, but this, now, is what we are putting our reputation on as a product we think is worth your time and money".

Holding some funds in escrow might actually be a way to force developers towards 'finishing' a game. Then again it might just mean that they'll release it in an unfinished state sooner to get access to those funds. It'd be a fine line to avoid abuse.

Because really, what's the difference between an unfinished 'released' game that gets regular dev support vs an unfinished EA game that still gets regular dev support?

Other than in the former case, the devs seem to get some positive karma for 'supporting their game', while in the latter case the devs seem to get negative karma for 'squandering their EA money'

Prez wrote on Sep 30, 2016, 12:15:
I'm not a big fan of Pitchford, but I am interested in Battleborn. Much more so than Overwatch because of Battleborn's coop and campaign. To me it's pretty foolish to not go F2P with the community dwindling as it is. Certainly a large price cut is in order at the very least.

I completely meant to but forgot to get around to it, but they were available in a recent Humble Bundle. So they have attempted the low price route at least once.

Mordecai Walfish wrote on Sep 23, 2016, 06:21:

theglaze wrote on Sep 22, 2016, 19:49:

Mordecai Walfish wrote on Sep 22, 2016, 17:50:

theglaze wrote on Sep 22, 2016, 16:08:
now I have to pay almost as much to open a crate which awards like a slot machine

That's the thing though.. you don't "have" to pay for anything. Your fixation on cosmetic modifications to a car that will only be seen for a couple seconds at the end of a game by anyone, is simply a choice. Some people focus on the gameplay mechanics and simply playing better, others want to "pimp their ride". If the latter crowd is funding the release of free content for people who are just interested in playing the game, I think it's a successful model for everyone involved.

Of course, the game is still fun even if all the cars were the same. However, dont just disregard the cosmetic side of the game, and their encouragement to the player to consume, manage inventory, and trade-up

The new crate system is based on a gambling model, and it's not compatible with the Steam Marketplace. I can't pick the car decal I want for my $2 ride, I'll have to feed the slot machine $1.25 each time.

Psyonix has done some things right, such as no functional advantage to mods to the car and not segregating the community from modes and arenas.

But forcing its players to gamble to win the next tier of cosmetic items? I find that disappointing.

Good luck on the slots, everyone!

I don't agree with calling it gambling, which seems to be the catchword for this type of system since the CS:GO debacle.

It's like putting a quarter into one of those plastic bubble toy dispensers. Would you also consider that "gambling"? Are parents irresponsible for allowing their kids to take part in such a thing? Of course not. It's just a random reward/prize system. You may not get the one you wanted specifically, but it's up to you whether it's worth your time and money to try and do so. Gambling implies, to me, that you are wagering money to try and make more money from it. IMO not the same as this.

There is a term for it though...
Gacha / Gasha / Gashapon.

http://www.serkantoto.com/2012/02/21/gacha-social-games/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon

theglaze wrote on Sep 22, 2016, 19:49:

Mordecai Walfish wrote on Sep 22, 2016, 17:50:

theglaze wrote on Sep 22, 2016, 16:08:
now I have to pay almost as much to open a crate which awards like a slot machine

That's the thing though.. you don't "have" to pay for anything. Your fixation on cosmetic modifications to a car that will only be seen for a couple seconds at the end of a game by anyone, is simply a choice. Some people focus on the gameplay mechanics and simply playing better, others want to "pimp their ride". If the latter crowd is funding the release of free content for people who are just interested in playing the game, I think it's a successful model for everyone involved.

Of course, the game is still fun even if all the cars were the same. However, dont just disregard the cosmetic side of the game, and their encouragement to the player to consume, manage inventory, and trade-up

The new crate system is based on a gambling model, and it's not compatible with the Steam Marketplace. I can't pick the car decal I want for my $2 ride, I'll have to feed the slot machine $1.25 each time.

Psyonix has done some things right, such as no functional advantage to mods to the car and not segregating the community from modes and arenas.

But forcing its players to gamble to win the next tier of cosmetic items? I find that disappointing.

Good luck on the slots, everyone!

Gacha seems to be the 'new' way to fund freemium games. At least in the few mobile games that I've enjoyed recently as well. On the bright side, they tend to be a lot more playable as a free player... on the downside a heck of a lot more frustrating if you want to give your money to the dev for their time and get something specific in return.

But whales will whale right? and we free players thank them for that!

Ravor wrote on Sep 15, 2016, 20:48:
I kickstarted it and have access, but I don't want to ruin it by playing it in early access.

With that being said, if it's anything like Divinity Original Sin, then it'll be amazing. The first one was easily one of the best games I've played.

Here's a question about D:OS... I started playing it, but lost my free time for a bit and when I regained picked up other games.
One of which being Pillars. I was loving it and working through the story, right up until I hit level cap and still had about 1/3 of the game left. Then it became a slog and I never really got to finishing it. I mean there was still fights that were challenging, but the sheer amount of menial stuff in between was what slowed it down because those never gave any benefit anymore.

Is there a point where you outlevel/stop progressing in D:OS before the end of the story?

Because I feel like that's my biggest trap when it comes to CRPGS anymore. Probably too corrupted by the MMO treadmill, because I don't remember having an issue with it before I got sucked into that world way back with Asheron's Call (and I even managed to finish NWN2, and DA:O when they released!)

I haven't had a chance to try Battleborn yet, meant to grab it through the recent Humble Bundle but kept getting distracted.

Paragon is a MOBA, but it's from a third person perspective - so it does play out a bit like a shooter. So maybe a more rigid and longer playing Monday Night Fight?
I'm just not a fan of the match lengths, but otherwise I've enjoyed it.

Not actually familiar with Lawbreakers

OldDirtyEwok wrote on Aug 16, 2016, 11:40:

Beamer wrote on Aug 16, 2016, 10:55:
I really struggle to distinguish between Battleborn, Paragon, Lawbreakers, and Overwatch.

While they're certainly different in tone, art style, gsameplay, and arguably genre (with this being a MOBA?), they still appear to be competing for the exact same customer.

In some ways it feels like the late 90s, when a fall preview edition of CGW or PCG would have 25 different FPS games in it. Times have changed, though. These are all multiplayer focused games, looking to take players for 60-600 hours, meaning they don't have time to play other games (unlike in the late 90s, where you could probably play 10-30 in that amount of time.)

That's pretty much how Counterstrike changed the industry, too. It took us from playing tons of games repeatedly to one game exclusively (other games took steps towards that, but we didn't really have the internet to support it.) In order for a game to survive like that, it needs a critical mass, and to this day I still think there's really only room for one game to hit critical mass, a few games to circle around limply, and everything else dying a swift and forgotten death.

Overwatch and Lawbreakers are first person shooters, Battleborn and Paragon are MOBAs. I've tried the last 2 and i didn't really them, I even think Paragon is terrible. Definitely not games for FPS fans so no, I don't think they are competing for the same customers but if they are it's a big mistake.

I've been playing Paragon on PS4 since it was included with PS Plus this month. Tried the open beta weekend earlier too.

It's an alright shooter, the 'moba' aspect to me almost is a detriment since it forces game lengths to be 30-45 minutes (unless you get matched against a real team, in which case you're surrendering shortly after the 20 minute mark)

I wish that they did have a game mode that averaged 20-30 minutes to play out.

MattyC wrote on May 20, 2016, 07:51:

Grumpy Sod wrote on May 20, 2016, 07:30:

PHJF wrote on May 19, 2016, 19:40:
Wait, the English also use dumbass DST?

Yup, but to be confusing, we call our summer time BST (British Summer Time) while in the US you use the 'ST' suffix for Standard Time, right?

DST or daylight saving time. We don't trust you guys with any meaningful system of measure. Sumbag limey's exporting your imperial system of measure all over the world then saying, "WOAH, what are you doing using that junk?!?" and your entire currency system was clearly maintained by some sort of warlock until the 70s! /s

Really though it is just DST.

But in terms of the time zone code, it's actually EDT (as an example, Eastern Daylight Time) vs EST (Eastern Standard Time)...

So yes... EDT is the eastern time zone equivalent to BST, which are both implementations of DST and the changeovers are about a week or two apart now thanks to changes in the US during the Dubya era.

Jivaro wrote on May 12, 2016, 21:28:

Sepharo wrote on May 12, 2016, 20:41:

Ceribaen wrote on May 12, 2016, 20:34:
Just basically like Destiny pvp

Are you sure you were playing Overwatch?

Umm...Destiny? Really? I mean, they are both shooters....but the similarities end right there. Literally.

Was there another beta you were playing perhaps?

Nah it was Overwatch, but honestly I don't play many shooters to begin with and this was only the second one I played on console.

But it was very bog standard compared to the shooters I've played on PC too.

Characters I tried the most:
Roadhog -- basically seemed like what you wanted to do was run around and grab people with the chain to pull them in and nail them with shotgun. Basically a 1,2, kill combo.
Symmetra -- Pre shield people and lay down your turrets around choke points while waiting for your ultimate to come up so you can set down teleporter near the objective.
Mercy -- Run around and shoot your own teammates to heal them or buff their damage while trying to stay out of sight because your silhouette is very unique and the sniper characters are just going to oneshot you if you're in the open.
Yoga dude -- Again, try to get your heals off and occasionally do some damage, and try to stay out of sight because you're getting oneshot.
Music dude -- Use the speed chant to get into the action on respawns, use the heal chant otherwise.

And you're right in retrospect Destiny was probably a less than apt comparison. But I hadn't played anything recently I could compare to otherwise.