New & Upcoming game discussion.

[IskatuMesk]

Time to start buying hard drives, I reckon.

[mark_009_vn]

50 GB is considerable for those with limited means to transfer data away (if they don't want to delete stuff).

That's...... haft my hard drive......

[Ricky_Honejasi]

That's...... haft my hard drive......

Half of it? Then odds are your computer is WAY too slow for Tera anyway. Presuming it even runs between 1-3 FPS.

EDIT : Also to Mesk, which Tera server you are currently playing? Odds are I didn't pick the same server for my first try around.

In addition, as a healer I died twice in the tutorial areas. I did get way too much aggro on myself with spamming my offensive spells in both cases. One of those cases includes the time with tons of NPCs on that big boss.

[IskatuMesk]

lol @ dying in prelude

We're playing on Dragonfall. I'm Broseidon.

[mark_009_vn]

That's...... haft my hard drive......

Half of it? Then odds are your computer is WAY too slow for Tera anyway. Presuming it even runs between 1-3 FPS.

Well, it's a computer built upon the 2007 era, 2.6 Ghz Duo Core, 1 Gig of RAM, and a HD4650 whose ATI driver is so wretched that I can't play certain games with AA on or certain games at all. Yeah, I know, it's ancient, but at least in theory it could run Crysis with 25 FPS.

[IskatuMesk]

I frapsed Crysis @ 30fps on high settings on a 9800 pro. Tera is more cpu demanding than video, though. I suspect it will murder your computer.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Seems Diablo III's open beta (anyone with an account allowed) is also on the same open beta period as Tera. Although they announced it like April 19 (too suddenly, especially for 4 days period) so I am not surprised it passed under my radar until I heard some random chat speaking about it.

EDIT : Downloaded it and tried to log in ... they set their player cap so low that it is difficult to manage to get in at this time. It sure doesn't give a good impression off the start.

EDIT 2 : Well, oops, seems there was already a Diablo 3 thread.

[IskatuMesk]

lol @ Diablo 3.

With HKS and I near the cap of the OBT (and the preorder headstart, for that matter), we're already getting mad at the stupid limitations of said cap. We hardly even play and we're basically going to sit on the sidelines or mindlessly farm SM for level 60 pocket change for a long time at this rate. Also, as Ricky knows, there's a stupid superimposed limit on some servers right now and he couldn't even make a character on our server. Also can only make 1 character per server until release I think (or at least headstart). Dumb.

Well, fair enough, because my CTS is pretty much at the limit of my pain tolerance right now.

We were actually able to 2man the level 27 instance and I would bet we could probably 2man future instances. The last boss killed us once but it was mostly because he underestimated how retardedly hard the boss' adds hit for, but since they move so stupidly slowly he just kited them until I cleaned them up. I've got a recording of it I'll throw up sometime.

I experimented with a controller in Tera to try to alleviate my wrist pain. While more comfortable, I found it very, very hard to play the game nearly as well as mouse/keyboard. Since I had to go through so many button combos, actively manage both control sticks... it was very much more demanding and problematic then something like Viking or God of War. I think a melee class would be more viable though, since an archer readily has to use Z in camera to aim your shit properly.

Any games coming up worth thinking about looking into? Honestly I'm not too concerned about Guild Wars 2 until I hear about an open beta. I may not even bother with the game otherwise unless there's a trial of some kind. I liked Guild Wars 1 and all, but for a lot of reasons that don't pass into GW2. Nothing on steam's upcoming seems at all interesting. I won't be touching SoaSE: Rebellion on behalf that the majority of it is a fucking copy-paste of the original game and apparently they aren't fixing the innumerable shortcomings of the game, which I had bought in the first place exclusively for mod work that is since over. Seeing a dev claim on their forum that the maximum limit of Titans was hardcoded alone pissed me off for hideous programming ethics and they simply don't deserve any more of my money.

With upcomings out of consideration, my thoughts turn to older games on my LP list. I'm most curious to see how Armies of Exigo turns out. I'm pretty early into it. It's the same developer that was responsible for HoMM6. I've since learned that the developer "cannot sustain itself", and allegedly a member of their team stated that Ubisoft had axed their development halfway through HoMM6 and forced them to finish the game on the spot and release, then gutted the developer as much as they could. Since they are a Hungarian developer and the game was almost completely under everyone's radar due to homm5's overall failure, the only ones to really suffer from this are those who purchased the game and are getting the shit-end of the stick with patches.

Armies of Exigo was published by EA, though, a whole other ball of dicks. This game is dated 2004, with very indie-like graphics and sounds except for the music which seems decent. I thought it was sprite-based, but it's actually 3d. The voice acting is all very poorly dubbed by a skeletal team, but the gameplay has potential. The campaign has actually eaten me a few times in the early missions, but I suspect they are using very cheesy "difficulty" mechanics to achieve this. I won't say it's terrible or good until I finish the entire campaign, but it's definitely, so far, a step above the C&C series.

Any and all comparisons of Armies of Exigo to Starcraft would have to have been founded exclusively on the retardedly incorrect wikipedia article. This game is one of the furthest RTS' from starcraft you could play. Units have veterancy, the stats are wc3-like, third resource, etc. It reminds me more of a Spellforce without squads or heroes.

So far, my experiences with the game are fairly positive. Except for the 100% reproducable crash on the intro cinematic. That was... not cool. At all. Very EA-like.

[UntamedLoli]

Thanks for pre-ordering TERA!

As part of your pre-order perks, you can start playing TERA before everyone else as part of TERA's Head Start event, starting April 28 at 12:00 PM PDT! The Head Start event will lead directly into launch on May 1.

Everyone knows that MMOs are more fun with friends, so we're letting you bring along three friends on your head start journey.

With the codes below, not only will your friends be able to try out TERA all weekend for free, but they can also carry over their characters to the full version of TERA should they choose to buy it!

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Personally, I am willing to have one of those keys if Mesk or you are willing.

[IskatuMesk]

Should have posted this a while ago. Anyways, HKS and I 2manned the entire SM (level 27) instance without much issues. Died once on the boss due to the adds and ranged attack but once HKS understood what to do it was reasonably easy. I recorded this kill to give an idea what this looked like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geTR53KYEnQ

[Hercanic]

50gb is like throwing a ferret down a volcano. I go through 50gb like I go through altar boys.

Unless you have a SSD, which aside from price-per-GB are holy-crap-awesome.

Any games coming up worth thinking about looking into? Honestly I'm not too concerned about Guild Wars 2 until I hear about an open beta. I may not even bother with the game otherwise unless there's a trial of some kind. I liked Guild Wars 1 and all, but for a lot of reasons that don't pass into GW2.

Wife and I are looking forward to GW2. I particulary like the exclusion of dedicated healers, as the necessity of what amounts to babysitters in challenging content strikes me as so very far astray from the main gameplay experience (you know, what everyone else is actively engaged in -- killin' shit). I always felt healers were intrinsically unrewarded. You kill something, you gain direct, tangible positive feedback in the form of loot and experience. What do you get for successfully keeping people healed? You avoided consequence, the negative feedback of dying (and an angry team). By extension, you get loot and experience because your party was able to progress, but it's a step removed and therefore that much less satisfying. Healing as a mechanic among many other options is fine, but when your entire gameplay experience centers around watching your party's health bars, you might as well be playing some other game. Combine this limited subtype of gameplay, whose poor general appeal results in a small population of players willing to fulfill the role, with an absolute requirement to have one in your team, and you've got a recipe for bad experiences. Either your party can't find a healer, wasting potential game time, or people feel compelled to play a role not because they legitimately enjoy it but rather because they must in order to meet demand and find groups quickly.

With upcomings out of consideration, my thoughts turn to older games on my LP list. I'm most curious to see how Armies of Exigo turns out. I'm pretty early into it. It's the same developer that was responsible for HoMM6. I've since learned that the developer "cannot sustain itself", and allegedly a member of their team stated that Ubisoft had axed their development halfway through HoMM6 and forced them to finish the game on the spot and release, then gutted the developer as much as they could. Since they are a Hungarian developer and the game was almost completely under everyone's radar due to homm5's overall failure, the only ones to really suffer from this are those who purchased the game and are getting the shit-end of the stick with patches.

Armies of Exigo was published by EA, though, a whole other ball of dicks. This game is dated 2004, with very indie-like graphics and sounds except for the music which seems decent. I thought it was sprite-based, but it's actually 3d. The voice acting is all very poorly dubbed by a skeletal team, but the gameplay has potential. The campaign has actually eaten me a few times in the early missions, but I suspect they are using very cheesy "difficulty" mechanics to achieve this. I won't say it's terrible or good until I finish the entire campaign, but it's definitely, so far, a step above the C&C series.

Any and all comparisons of Armies of Exigo to Starcraft would have to have been founded exclusively on the retardedly incorrect wikipedia article. This game is one of the furthest RTS' from starcraft you could play. Units have veterancy, the stats are wc3-like, third resource, etc. It reminds me more of a Spellforce without squads or heroes.

So far, my experiences with the game are fairly positive. Except for the 100% reproducable crash on the intro cinematic. That was... not cool. At all. Very EA-like.

Ah, Armies of Exigo. I bought that many years ago and enjoyed it. Although not without its faults, it's a solid experience. The underground mechanic felt underdeveloped, to be honest, and aiming those trans-level spells was disjointing. I like to compare Exigo's bare underground to D&D's Dragonshard underground. In Exigo, you use the underground for backdooring and to find extra resource nodes. In Dragonshard, it's almost an entirely new experience, where you traverse a dungeon filled with traps, neutral monsters, treasure, and special usable items. Basically in Dragonshard, your primary resource, dragonshard crystals, are harvested above ground, while your secondary resource, gold, is found below ground. There are certainly pros and cons to this style of gameplay, as it presents much more to manage, but the biggest difference between the two games' approach to multilevel gameplay is in Exigo you can actually forget it's even there and go entire matches without ever utilizing it, whereas in Dragonshard it felt connected and relevant to the entire game.

[IskatuMesk]

Dragonshard? I've not heard of this. Is it also an RTS?

I'm at like mission 12 or 13 in Armies of Exigo right now (on hard ofc) and I have to say, this game has surprised me.

Discounting the utter nonsense that the game is anything like Starcraft, it speaks of much potential that was lost being under the EA logo. I suspect if the Hungarian company responsible for this game (and Heroes 6 before they got gutted) had avoided these shit publishers this game would have seriously hurt Starcraft 2's otherwise totally uncontested entry into the market. There's a lot of ideas, UI elements, and other things that feel very modern, things that even sc2 and other casual RTS' still lack. Of course, it's very rushed and rough around the edges, but I feel this game was basically the alpha of something that could have been tremendous.

Exigo's weakest point above and beyond is the sound work. It's all around terrible. The voice acting is dubbed, the SFX are very poor, and the music is uninspired and poorly balanced. The graphics are reasonable for a 2004 game - I thought/had hoped it was sprite-based but it's actually 3d. It's like a mix of Warcraft 3 and Spellforce. I love that they avoided overly fucking the proportions on everything and I find the game far easier to read than Warcraft 3. The particles are lacking but the terrain overall is more appealing than a lot of, say, Starcraft 2 or Dawn of War 1/2, even though it lacks any real old generation features like bump mapping or blending.

The campaign feels a bit unbalanced difficulty-wise but has done some things extremely uncanny of modern RTS games, like multi-base play, allies, and multiple enemies. It really feels like the developers wanted to do more with this game, but EA is about as good as a publisher as jumping into an open goatse hole and hoping not to end up inside gfraizer's office. Yuck. Why would they go with EA? And then ubisoft? They signed their own destruction, which aptly came. Poor bastards.

Exigo is the first RTS I've played in what seems like forever where I actually feel like I'm having fun. The underground mechanic is definitely underdeveloped and underutilized (I wholly expected the Beast guys to just build shit down there and attack you all over a la nydus worms, but they don't). But on the other hand, the computer AI is leagues head of Starcraft 2 in so many different ways.

/edit

Also, in regards to your talk about healers in MMO's and such;

When I first started WoW it was my first real major foray into MMO's except for private L2 servers. In L2 I never felt the whole "tank, healer, dps" kind of deal. I was, am, and always will be a solo player. So I've always played DPS. But I ended up both tanking and healing in WoW in separate periods. Tanking because warriors were pigeonholed into tanking and healing because shamans were pigeonholed into healing (even though I was Enhancement and DPS geared).

I tanked trivial instances like BRD in early vanilla and healed a pro-level WSG premade long before cross-realm play showed up. So, my experiences are very vintage now.

I didn't like the responsibility of tanking because I always felt I was very bad at it. I didn't understand the game itself very well, so maybe now I could more responsibly do it, but a bad tank is the worst curse in WoW. If your tank is an idiot or screws up someone almost always dies. I don't like the psychological pressure of that responsibility because I expect the best out of the important people and, simply put, I failed my own expectations too many times and have no intentions of putting myself in that spot again.

When I was healing I was doing so under the premise that if I got gear through pvp (my gear was awful) I would probably be straight out dps in this group. But since I wasn't geared, my only value laid in A.) my skill, which means nearly nothing in WoW group pvp, and B.) my ability to heal. So I followed HWL geared warriors and warlocks and kept them alive until my mana ran out then clubbed someone until I died. It worked very well.

But never did I felt that I was escaping some kind of responsibility or trying to not piss people off. It felt more like I was just biding my time until I became more valuable. This is the thing about WoW - gear >>>> skill in almost all PvP circumstances, especially in groups. Only when the gear is relatively equal does skill matter more. At least in vanilla. In modern pvp it's all about flipping coins because resilience and ridiculous number crunching guts the game of any real tactical depth. But the general rule is, if he's in greens and you're in purples, he's dead. Good-bye. The exceptions occur if you're some kind of braindead retard or a bot (WoW's battlegrounds are 50% bots nowadays, I know from experience), but in most circumstances gear wins out.

I never did real healing in PvE that I can recall, at least not in recent times. Not only because of the things you speak about, the responsibility, but always because I felt like my energy was best spent punching shit. Now, at the end of my time in WoW and nearly having my legendary daggers to complete my colossal set of oranges, I still don't feel like I've accomplished anything by playing MMO's. At all.

I liked Guild Wars 1 because it had strategic depth to it with heroes. Customizing heroes, their skills and gear, added a level of depth to the game I've never encountered before. It was very much unlike something like NWN or other, single player RPG's, it was something very unique. Of course, the AI had a lot of drawbacks (HKS will call it "micro-intensive", especially in regards to, ironically, how the AI heals/handles buffs), but GW1 had a lot of values in it I simply will never get in another game I play. Unfortunately, it had a lot of bads, too, like the necessity to farm like crazy to get anything money or looks-wise. I'm a huge fan of customization, and GW1 really held me back with that kind of time barrier. In WoW it's more like, "You can solo it, you've got to figure out how".

Or, in my case, "you can solo it but you can't because you're a cripple and your hands are mangled beyond repair".

GW2 offers none of these things to me because I'm a non-social player, I've no interest in PvP'ing ever again, and there's no heroes from what I understand. If I buy GW2, it will be for the solo experience.

Currently, I'm playing Tera, and for the first time since classic WoW I've actually rolled a healer and follow HKS around like a lost puppy. At least the healer I picked (The Mystic) is perfectly capable of dealing hilarious amounts of damage, handling mana, and otherwise being useful when HKS isn't retarded and eats some huge amount of damage. In fact, I was able to solo MULTIPLE groups of trash in a dungeon my level all at once, something I haven't figured out quite how to do as other classes yet (at least not with the relative confidence I had during this). Bosses would be a different matter, but I'd wager that, like several other classes, Mystics can probably solo dungeons. Now this character is just an alt and my main is still a dps, but still.

The whole mechanic of dungeons, raids, and "farming" bosses for loot comes off as irreversibly shallow to me. But that's what MMO's are built on, and that's why I will never truly get into them.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

And so, the Path of Exile (a Diablo-like game) is being to be in open beta during this weekend. You can pre-download the client there. It should vaguely take 4 GB of space.

When the game will be released, it will be free. It will have microtransactions for stuff (usually cosmetic) that don't have character bonuses and such.

From what I remember, some claim it to be a harder Diablo-like game, captures better the old Diablo feel and all.

[IskatuMesk]

The graphics and such of PoE are leagues beyond Diablo 3, like 4-5 generations ahead of it. But the rest of the game is pretty early in last I checked.