What games are you playing and why?

Tera is an action MMO so I don't think it's for me. I'll consider trying GW2 maybe (it's something I've considered before) but if its too actiony, it also may not be for me.

 

LotRO is a social MMO. The counter side of this is that without the social experiences it doesn't work. The solo content works *if* you're doing other things, like chatting. It doesn't work if you're trying to have an insular experience, because you NEED to get help at times irrespective of your class, and you need something to keep you entertained. LotRO, otherwise, is dull, lifeless and overly big.

I liked it, sure. I put hours into it. But I can't go back.

 

OK. 10 minutes into Defiance, and I'm done with it. Hope the television show works out lol.

 

10 minutes? Ouch.

 

Maybe there are people who actually like shooters who may be more patient with it. But then again, I did put a whole lot more time (at least an hour or two) into Borderlands, so maybe not.

I just felt so... awkward in the game, and I really was not in the mood to deal with that.

 

I tried Rift in beta. It's a fine game, but it's definitely not the game for me. A large part of what I'm so tired of in MMORPGs is the theme park formula. Rift has some great multiplayer content to shake things up but it doesn't take any huge risks.

 

Well the game has changed since beta (mostly, but not completely, for the better, imho). But I get your point. I hate the terms theme park and sandbox in any case because they really say nothing about whether something is fun or not, nor are they actually opposites of each other except in certain revisionist definitions, even though that's how the term is used most often. But I don't want to restart that old argument. It just makes me cringe when I hear those terms used as if they tell everything there is to know about something.

 

Defiance? 10 minutes? really? It's a game I am really looking forward to! I played it about 5 hours when it was in alpha and I really liked it. I do not want to breach any agreement so I won't explain all the reasons I have for liking it. It's definitely on my buy-list.

 

Did I mention that I tend to not like shooters? Without getting too specific, knowing my previous experience with shooters, I didn't think it was worth investing more than that, as even with my general tendency to dislike shooters, it gave a very poor first impression. I wish I could go into specifics but with only 10 minutes of play time, there's very little I could talk about.

I'd have been wasting my time had I invested more than what I had. I wanted to see the game, and I did. It's not for me.

I am still looking forward to TESO and Wildstar though. TESO... well it's Elder Scrolls. And Wildstar just has this fantastic look to it and a sense of humor (plus it's Science Fiction).

 

I've managed to be slightly into games in the past night or so, and I've been satisfying myself with two indies.

Frozen Synapse
Okay, I was put off initially by the seemingly complex control method and the buggy tutorial, but I got through it and I've played a couple of skirmishes, and then I started the campaign. I also posted two runs to my YouTube account, which show I've got at least a basic understanding of the game. But the soundtrack is DIVINE. I've spent more time listening to it than I have playing the game!



Bleed
It's a bit frustrating, and I'm still having trouble with jumping, but I've done a few levels (and it's still running now, so I'll be doing more shortly) and it's kinda fun in its own way. And I also found the soundtrack on Bandcamp, which I just bought for $4 (it's Pay What You Want, and I paid around... two-thirds of the price of the game, I think?).

 

I, too, can now join the club of those who have finished Bleed's story mode.

Pretty good, I guess, but it seems a little unfair at times (particularly the bosses) which kinda sucks. The 'rating' system is also kinda unfriendly, as getting hit tends to knock it back down to.. uh... empty.

 

Really? I thought the bosses were the game's strong point. They all require abuse of the slowdown mechanic but once I got used to habitually slowing down time whenever they attacked the game became quite fun - particularly the boss gauntlet at the end.

 

I don't know, there's something weird about the bosses, particularly if you die. Some of the bosses suddenly become a lot easier to kill once you die, as something in their attacks changes.

The game would be a lot smoother - and perhaps easier - if the jump function actually worked well.

 

Well, this morning jumped into Rift, did my crafting dailies on my main, and then decided there was nothing else I wanted to do.

After some consideration and reading, I picked up GW2. So far I've been playing around with a Thief (forget the name of the race, but they look like ugly cats with and underbite and pompadours lol). They are like cat people from the 1950s. My character has this huge bright yellow pompadour, yet he has such a deep voice that it's off-putting. It's... different. It's something I may be able to get used to but we'll see. I think I'll need to find a guild next.

 

I appear to have spent most of today in The Secret World.

It's certainly frustrating at times, the balance/placement seems bizarre too, but when you get into a flow it's fairly good.

 

Installed Tera in steps over the weekend(working all day, also the install was cumbersome).

It's decent so far. The combat is ok and getting better as I gain level and unlock my skills, I'm playing the tank class, Lancer. The graphics is beautiful, but it lacks AA and it's noticable when looking into the distance, especially when moving. Questing however is very uninspired. Kill/fetch/fedex mainly.

It's free to play, and with a fair model where being a free player is not particularly penalized(instead you get bonuses for paying), the most restrictive part is only getting 2 character slots.

The worst part is getting it installed. This involved for me: downloading a 22 gigabyte patch, then unpacking it, and then running the launcher. You're going to need at least 45 GB free HDD space. This was a very tight squeeze on my SSD, and necessitated uninstalling several games. Also the download isn't the fastest in the world(about half what I get on steam)... but at least downloading it in browser is better than the snail-speed download you get if you try to patch with the launcher(seriously I was getting speeds I would have considered bad back when I had dialup! Single digit kB/s speeds).

 

I've been primarily playing GW2, and the search for a guild continues. I've gotten about 4 separate invites so far, 2 from a post in the forums and 2 blind invites in-game. I hate blind invites, as they almost always turn out badly. In my long history of playing MMOs, I've accepted exactly two (one was shear accident -- was in the middle of combat, when the invite window popped up and my command to attack was treated as an invite accept).

Anyway, the 2 blind invites were of course rejected immediately (the game gives no real insight into the nature of the guild sending the invite, except for the membership roster). The two from the bulletin board sounded good (or at least in the ball park), except that they were requesting that I change servers. I actually considered that until I realized that changing servers would cost actual dollars (no idea how many but too many, I'm guessing).

GW2 really doesn't make it easy to find a guild. They have no server-specific forums like 90% of the games i've played in the past, just one catch-all where your post is sure to scroll off the screen in no time. Obviously, they have no incentive for making server-specific forums because that would make it too easy to find a guild on the right server.

In spite of the problems, I am enjoying the game. My main is now a Norn Warrior (looks exactly like the stereotype of a pro wrestler -- I always suspected they were a different species). It feels odd that every time I get a weapon upgrade, my skills all change, but I'm getting the picture, and it kinda makes sense. It's just that sometimes I don't realize that I'm actually switching weapon types and it throws me off for a bit. Warriors probably have the broadest selection of weapons so that kinda makes things odd. But I'm finding that I like the Norn starting area a lot better than most of the others I've seen. Plus I hated playing a Silvari(?) necromancer so badly (everything from race to the game play to the story was just so wrong that I deleted the character outright).

I am playing around with crafting as well. I like the experimentation aspect of that, though I'm not sure yet to what extent it is used other than adding the equivalent of augments to a recipe (Augments are how you alter recipes in Rift). I cant' help but compare everything to Rift since that's what's so fresh in my mind.

I think that Questing in the game is flawed. It's good that they tried to do something different. But the implementation is such that it really isn't any better than had they used the standard implementation, since everything is on the map anyway. So they might as well have included quest arrows. So the gist of it is that they took a standard quest system and simply added an extra inconvenience to it (you have to open your map every time). The dynamic events vary a good deal, but I haven't seen anything on the scale that Rift has (granted, GW2's events have more variety, but they also are pretty mundane, for the most part). That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I just can't help but compare. Exploration seems kinda wierd in that they actually TELL you where everything is (in Rift, there was more of a sense of accomplishment for finding special locations). So you aren't so much exploring, but going down a check list.

Anyway, that's just me nitpicking. I am enjoying the game.

For the record, I'm on Northern Shiverpeaks, and my Warrior is named Farrenvar.

 

Apparently, guilds are not cross-server. I can join only as a guest, but that only lasts 24 hours (?) or something like that. I was told by BOTH guilds that I could try them as a guest, but if I wanted to join that I'd have to switch servers.