Video Games

[FSBlueApocalypse]

I think people who bitch about the cheap shot deaths don't take advantage of the online functions of the game. You can check notes left by other players and they can give you a good idea of what is coming up next.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Yahtzee's reports on that was "I came to a message from another playing saying 'watch out for the pit trap' right in front of the pit trap.  Alas, the messages are limited to a selection of words so I couldn't write a reply saying 'no shit Sherlock!'"

[kiri2tsubasa]

Gotten mixed statements about the Demon/Dark Souls series.  Some have said it's legitimately challenging and others have said the challenge comes in the form of cheap shot deaths there's no way you could be reasonably expected to see coming, making the game mostly trial and error.

Their is a lot of what I would call "Bullshit Difficulty" in the game.  For example, the only way to hurt ghosts are to use a specific charm, however you best e using range weapons or you will be raped by their extendable arm/scythes.  If you die, you are down those charms and the ghosts respawn.

[kiri2tsubasa]

I think people who bitch about the cheap shot deaths don't take advantage of the online functions of the game. You can check notes left by other players and they can give you a good idea of what is coming up next.

Really, all I ever see are posts such as "Praise the Sun", "Fatty Ahead" (Legitimate one as it goes with the ones that can one-shot you), and "Great View".  So, mostly they are ones that are either pointless, or right before something to the point were I would say 'No shit Sherlock'.

[Virgil0211]

You know one of the things that ticks me off in MMO's and fighting games? The complaint that something is 'cheap' because they don't know how to counter it or aren't willing to learn how. In MvC3, you will hear someone complain within 3 games if you decide to use sentinel. This is because he hits hard and has a long range heavy attack that can cancel into the crouched version of the same attack. While many know the way to get around this is to block, time your jumps, or hit back with your own ranged after the second hit, there are quite a few others who will let themselves get pummeled repeatedly until they lose, then send you an angry voice message screaming about how he's going to report you for 'cheating'. In SWtOR, I got an angry message from a guy who was ticked off that I took him out in "3 shots" (it was actually closer to 10, but hey, guess it doesn't count if he was attacking the guy I was covering and didn't notice). This was at long range, I was a sniper and he was a melee class. As the old saying goes, never bring a knife to a gun fight.

That's not to say there are never balance issues. In MvC3, certain characters could pull off infinite combos while in X-factor. In SWtOR, lvl 50 characters with high level PVP armor have a significant advantage over even other lvl 50 characters with standard equipment. These things are getting attention (like in MvC3 ultimate and the next patch for SWtOR), but not everything that beats you is indicative of a flaw in the game no matter how frustrating it may be.

Okay, rant over. =P

On another note, do we have any Eve Online players here? What's your opinion of the game?

Also, are there any SWtOR players here, or anyone familiar with the 'slicing nerf' that recently occurred? I thought that would be interesting to discuss as it has a bit to do with economics.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I've been playing ToR, recently hit level 40 and completed chapter 2 of the Jedi Knight storyline.

The good: The story really is very engaging and I love how your character isn't a wooden observer in this game unlike so many other MMO's and I hope more will follow suit.  The transition from WoW to this game is utterly seamless as it only improves what needed improve and left alone what was working fine.

The bad: No dungeon finder is just unacceptable after how well it worked in WoW so we can look foreward to run after run going down in flames because healers are always played by people with cereal box connections.
The main storyline is awesome but the side storylines are a tad stock and the gameplay and atmosphere is starting to get a tad repetative.  Story wise, this is basically KoToR3 which isn't a bad thing but it makes me wonder if it would have been better as a one player game.  I probably won't buy another month, just enjoy the experience for what it's worth and move on.
I've also found combat to be a tad unresponsive and from what I can tell, it's because parrying actually interrupts the animation for other attacks, making them fail to fire off which is quite irritating and I hope will be fixed.

[evensgrey]

Well, yes, ToR is going to have the KoToR3 storyline (or at least it damn well better) since it IS KoToR3, or at least what they decided to turn KoToR3 into when they apparently realized that there's rather a nice revenue stream in the monthly subscription games.

A lot of reviews I've seen of ToR complain about the game seeming rather linear and repetitious for an MMORPG, but that may be the result of it being relatively new and having (currently) quite limited content compared to others (WoW has had 3 expansions, the last one radically redesigning half the gameworld, and look at all the damn expansions for the likes of Guild Wars and Everquest, and particularly how small Everquest was when it furst came out compared to now).

You can certainly go the other way, too.  The next WoW expansion looks like a damn JOKE at this point, since it's being developed out of something that was a throw-away joke in one of the RTS games.  (I'm also not too pleased with the simplifications that are rumored to be coming, either.)

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I really tire of people who go on about "OMG!! PANDAS ARE TEH KIDDEH!!!".

WoW has already had gnomes, goblins, aliens and cow people.  Why do they get a free pass?

And talent trees aren't being simplified.  They're just being made so all the choices are debatable.  The trees right now offer the choice of gimped or not gimped which really isn't a choice at all.

The other thing I really like that I hope other MMO's are going to take note of, they're working on giving you stuff to do BETWEEN raiding and PvP because let's be honest, that's been overlooked by pretty much every MMO out there.  At max level, you can raid and you can PvP but when you're not doing either of those things, it's a complete snore.

[MrBogosity]

Is there still pretty much the epidemic I remember where programmers, apparently unable to create proper AI to make the game challenging, resort to letting the computer players cheat?

[VectorM]

Well I am no programmer, or a modder, but pretty much every game out there cheats to increase the difficulty. Sometimes it's the old "They do 90000 damage and you do -100", and other times they just plain wallhack you.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Is there still pretty much the epidemic I remember where programmers, apparently unable to create proper AI to make the game challenging, resort to letting the computer players cheat?

Depends on the game.

Mario Kart and many other racing games are still horribly guilty of this with catch up mechanics that are just beyond unfair.


World of Warcraft on the other hand has actually been creative in how they use mob AI.  Most boss fights require you to study the enemy and learn how to counter his attacks.  The first few times, you ARE going to lose because you don't know what to do.  So the fights in that are a problem solving puzzle in a way.


I'm told that Demon Souls relies on you having to pick your battles and manage what little resources you have VERY carefully.  Also it takes a more realistic approach to weapons and armor.  They're actually heavy and weigh you down.  When you swing, it actually takes a fair amount of effort on your character's part.

[MrBogosity]

Mario Kart and many other racing games are still horribly guilty of this with catch up mechanics that are just beyond unfair.

I've noticed that. Even when you dump another player into the water they pop out immediately and catch back up to you, whereas you have to go through a few second delay.

Good to hear it's not ubiquitous, though. I remember the X-Windows version of Backgammon and how the program weighed the dice in favor of the computer player.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

I remember playing Blitz: The League on my PS2 and that had to be the worst case of Rubberband AI I've ever seen. Once you made it to Division 1, it was ridiculous. I would be up by three or four touchdowns when the 4th quarter started and then lose by 20.

[AnCap Dave]

Rubberband AI was also an issue in Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast.

Whenever you played as Tails, your levels would consist of you racing Sonic throughout the levels. If you got way farther than he did, Sonic would automatically be teleported close to where you are. That being said though, you still could crush Sonic in these races.

[Virgil0211]

I've been playing ToR, recently hit level 40 and completed chapter 2 of the Jedi Knight storyline.

The good: The story really is very engaging and I love how your character isn't a wooden observer in this game unlike so many other MMO's and I hope more will follow suit.  The transition from WoW to this game is utterly seamless as it only improves what needed improve and left alone what was working fine.

The bad: No dungeon finder is just unacceptable after how well it worked in WoW so we can look foreward to run after run going down in flames because healers are always played by people with cereal box connections.
The main storyline is awesome but the side storylines are a tad stock and the gameplay and atmosphere is starting to get a tad repetative.  Story wise, this is basically KoToR3 which isn't a bad thing but it makes me wonder if it would have been better as a one player game.  I probably won't buy another month, just enjoy the experience for what it's worth and move on.
I've also found combat to be a tad unresponsive and from what I can tell, it's because parrying actually interrupts the animation for other attacks, making them fail to fire off which is quite irritating and I hope will be fixed.

That's too bad. I was hoping I'd be able to group up with others playing the game as well. What server are you on, btw? (I'm mainly on Nadd's Sarcoghagus, though I sometimes play on Bondar Crystal.)

Personally, I love the atmosphere and gameplay, but that may just be the KoTOR fanboy in me. I got almost 3-4 years out of KoTOR 2 and 1 respectively, and I still play them every now and then (though not to the extent I did before), so I may be a bit biased. :-P The main complaints I've heard from my ex-WoW friends has been the lack of add-ons and the ability to make macros. I haven't really found the combat unresponsive except when I start experiencing a bit of server lag. Then again, my only MMO before this one was Star Wars Galaxies, and that didn't start trying to emulate the WoW model until a couple of years before it died, and I quit shortly into that time period.

That brings me to my main complaint with the game- the space combat element. I understand what they were going for, but I really missed the dogfighting and free-roam space element of SWG. I was hoping they'd have something like that in this game. What they did wasn't bad, but it's not what I was looking for as far as a space combat element. I hope that they'll add something like that in a later expansion. Otherwise, I may not get too involved in the space combat. :-P

I really tire of people who go on about "OMG!! PANDAS ARE TEH KIDDEH!!!".

WoW has already had gnomes, goblins, aliens and cow people.  Why do they get a free pass?

The complaints I've heard mainly have to do with the 'feel' of the expansion. Things like Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King felt like they were big, important events that would shape the world of the game. They had a weight to them. Now, that may just be how they're being presented, but let's take a look at the trailers for Lich King, Cataclysm, and then Pandaara.

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The third doesn't carry the same 'weight' of the previous two, and even feels a bit slapped together. It has the feel of being more like a content update patch than an expansion. The Panda thing is just the catalyst leading some people to think that Blizzard isn't taking WoW as seriously as they were before (which isn't necessarily horrible, as WoW is almost 8 years old and they may be planning to phase it out in favor of WoW 2 in the near future). It certainly doesn't help that one can easily be reminded of 'Kung Fu Panda' by the expansion, either. :-P

(Disclaimer: I'm not actually a WoW player, haven't touched the game in my life. Just relaying what I heard from friends who DO play WoW.)

And talent trees aren't being simplified.  They're just being made so all the choices are debatable.  The trees right now offer the choice of gimped or not gimped which really isn't a choice at all.

Huh. Funny... I had this weird impulse to track down and kill John Smedley just then.

[spoiler]Smedley was the head of SoE when they made Star Wars Galaxies, and one of the guys behind the sweeping changes made to the game that drove away quite a few subscribers in the name of simplifying the game and making all potential 'talent trees' equal, including Jedi. This ended up taking SWG from the sandbox-style MMO where one could mix and match talents as they pleased to more of a clumsy WoW clone. Those who had gone through the somewhat arduous process of becoming a Jedi felt like they'd been robbed, as the process took several months of effort. It was such a big deal that the first one to complete the process didn't do so until several months after the game came out, and it was even considered newsworthy by some. After becoming a Jedi, one was then exposed to the possibility of permadeath. If you were killed by a Bounty Hunter (other player characters who had chosen that skill tree), your character wouldn't come back. You also had to convert experience from other skills into Jedi experience, which meant that Jedi skills grew more slowly. It was supposed to be a system where a great deal of effort was rewarded appropriately. After the changes, Jedi were a class you could choose from the beginning and no more powerful than any other class. The most the Jedi players from before got in return was a unique robe with some stat buffs that were soon outdone by loot from the next expansion. That, and the crafting system was effectively spoiled, the cybernetics system was scuttled soon after it was announced, the ability to take a non-combat role and still effectively lead a 'second life' in the game was removed entirely, and so forth. So, I guess I'm saying that the claim that a company wants to 'simplify' their game still carries a bit of that conditioning for me, that sense of dread that said simplification will end up destroying the game I've grown attached to. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. :-P[/spoiler]

The other thing I really like that I hope other MMO's are going to take note of, they're working on giving you stuff to do BETWEEN raiding and PvP because let's be honest, that's been overlooked by pretty much every MMO out there.  At max level, you can raid and you can PvP but when you're not doing either of those things, it's a complete snore.

You talking about WoW or SWtOR? I'm afraid my experience with MMORPGs is a bit too limited to know what you're referring to.

Speaking of which, I really hope other game companies take note of the full voice-acting in SWtOR. It makes the main storyline more interesting and gives even the more mundane side quests a bit of weight.

On that note, I don't get this mentality that either WoW or SWtOR has to win over the other. I'd prefer that they both stay competitive with each other, give each other some incentive to improve.