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 ZergSmasher wrote:
I've been playing a lot of Hearthstone lately. My Murloc Paladin deck has proven to be surprisingly effective.

It's always fun when that Murloc Knight summons another Murloc Knight

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I've been playing a lot of Hearthstone lately. My Murloc Paladin deck has proven to be surprisingly effective.

It's always fun when that Murloc Knight summons another Murloc Knight

Exalted for truth. You ain't kidding. I run one copy of Blessing of Kings in the deck, it works great on a Murloc Tidecaller that is already pumped a bit. I recently put a Knife Juggler in as well.

Watching water freeze in Minecraft.

Making ice spires is surprisingly involved, what with world height limits and all.

Still playing Battlefront a lot on PS4. Still have a lot of fun with it.

Pre ordering Deserts of Kharak this week which will give me some massive RTS games to play through. I've realised I never finished the last mission in Homeworld (at the time my PC couldn't keep up with the massive amount of ships), and I never got very far into Homeworld 2 (I could never get my head around the difficulty scaling, because I didn't realise how it worked). Hopefully Deserts keeps me occupied until they fix formations in Homeworld, then I can move onto that and keep going through the games.

Also picked my Vita back up. After hearing that Odin Sphere is getting a remastered release on Vita, I'm continuing on my way through Muramasa and Dragons Crown in anticipation.

Decided to install Company of Heroes, the free games I got this weekend weren't all that great or haven't aged well at all.

Took the last bit of Christmas money I had and picked up a Vita and a 16gig card, and bought P4G with the Essentials Sale.

Goddamn Junes jingle is now stuck in my head.

I also bought FF: Tactics and Chrono Trigger, only to now realize that was probably a mistake, as War of the Lions is apparently the better version and I've learned that Chrono Trigger has some terrible slowdowns. Good thing they were both pretty cheap.

I've spent the last hour trying to do a single solitary challenge map in Batman: Arkham Knight.

It's the 'Quarantine' map as Robin. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why I am failing so completely and totally at this one single solitary map

 Compel wrote:
I've spent the last hour trying to do a single solitary challenge map in Batman: Arkham Knight.

It's the 'Quarantine' map as Robin. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why I am failing so completely and totally at this one single solitary map

Is it one of those ones with the funny conditions like 'do not get hit at all' or 'sabotage X guys before attacking'? That could be why,

On an unrelated note, has anyone here played the game Dragon's Dogma? I'm looking up picking it up as I like the look of the combat and class system, and the boss battles look nice and epic, just wondering if anyone can recommend (or otherwise) the game? It seems to be almost too good to be true, with the combat style of Dark Souls without the hair-tearing difficulty of Dark Souls, with an awesomely variable class system on top and the classic, party-based combat that seems a bit more actiony than Dragon Age.

Started playing Dragon Age: Origins. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm excited to get further into it. However, I'm having a little bit of trouble with the Tower of Ishal. (I know, it's so early in the game) It's mostly because my party refuses to do their right job, IE mage tries to tank, Alistair is sitting in the corner crying wolf, etc. I suppose I should fiddle with their tactic settings or something, to fix it, but for now I'm stumped.

I also just got Town of Salem and TT Simulator, so I'm excited to try those out.

Nah, that's the weird thing, it's 'just' a standard 4 round challenge. Albeit, a rather difficult one.

But I've done difficult challenges before, quite often rather successfully, this one is just kicking my butt, however. I can quite regularly get through Rounds 1 and 2 without getting any hits, Round 3 maybe a quarter of a time I manage to take no damage.

Round 4 just blats me every time. - 2 stun sticks, 2 rifles, 2 medics, 2 shields, 2 knifes, 2 normal dudes and 2 brutes.
It just slaughters me.

I'm starting to think Robin is just a little bit rubbish...

Heard there was a mod called Island in Chaos for Just Cause 2. From what I've heard, the mod basically makes everyone a bloodthirsty maniac with drivers ramming each other, and open gunfights between civilians and Panau military. Since Panau is known for being one of the largest world maps in video game history, I thought I'd take a road trip with the mod installed, so I can look at the lovely sights and idly drive around while the world burns around me.

Tried the Last Stand mode in Dawn of War II: Retribution... had a blast! Kept dying... but so fun! I played as the Imperial Guard commander. After 1 match I tried the skirmish/multiplayer mode to try playing as the Imperial Guard... plenty fun to be had there too!

 djphranq wrote:
Tried the Last Stand mode in Dawn of War II: Retribution... had a blast! Kept dying... but so fun! I played as the Imperial Guard commander. After 1 match I tried the skirmish/multiplayer mode to try playing as the Imperial Guard... plenty fun to be had there too!

I love Last Stand. I went ahead and bought the Tau Commander for it; he is fun!

 Soladrin wrote:
Huh, I actually liked Vash back in cataclysm days. It's better then fething pandas.

It's clearly ridiculous to play furry animal-men. No one would ever consider doing that. It's fortunate that Blizzard realised that and never implemented Worgen and Tauren, for the backlash would surely be extreme.

forsaken > everything else tbh

I've been playing quite a lot of Borderlands 2 lately, as well as some more Battlefield 4 as usual

Having a blast messing around in Null in Eve, thinking about starting my second account up again and starting a third account because null PI.

Female Human Thighs >>>>> Female Human ...its a miracle of science.

...

Tried Pet Battles for the first time in WoW... its Pokemon Yellow all over again... please little Zergling... don't break my heart like Squirtle did.

That's where I left that game.

Pokémon in WoW + Nerfed Hunters = no more interest in playing.

Didn't get Cataclysm, stopped playing, found other things to do for less money.

Nerfed Hunters? I played a retribution paladin from BC through Cataclysm. Is there a class that's been nerfed to uselessness for no reason any more than retribution paladins? The only patch I enjoyed playing was one in WotLK where we became absolute beasts, and the forums overflowed with mages and death knights raging and demanding nerfs. In typical paladin style the nerfs were quick to come and swiftly put us back down to 'worst of the worst' where we apparently belonged.

I eventually got sick of Blizzard's adhd approach to retri paladin balance and abandoned it.

Blizzard's "radically reinvent half of the classes" approach for each expansion does get a bit tedious. I've been running a Mistweaver Monk as my main (though mostly doing solo stuff with it). And it's an overly complicated moving parts class (you have to use certain abilities to generate chi so that you can use certain other abilities to spend chi so that you'll have enough stacks of mana tea when you start to run out of mana in the middle of a long fight...) whose primary reward is the ability to fistweave (i.e. heal your party by beating up mobs).

So Blizzard nerfed fistweaving in WoD, and is apparently completely removing it in the upcoming expansion.

There were a number of other changes introduced during the lead-up to WoD (my favorite was suddenly struggling to heal with my monk - which I was leveling up when the pre-WoD patch went live that heavily nerfed healing, and being told by WoD beta participants that everything was fine because our role now revolved around the "multi-strike" stat - which, of course, could not be found on any of the gear that I was using to level up because it didn't exist until WoD; oh, and I also enjoyed the bit when I noticed that the same patch gave me an ability that tweaked healing spheres at a level before mistweavers actually started generating healing spheres - yes, the Blizzard devs know *exactly* what they're doing...), but fist-weaving was a "mist-weaver" exclusive thing (none of the other healing jobs are exclusively melee-focused for damage generation) so the changes to it got the most attention.

Speaking of things WoD nerfed, Atonement healing on Disc priests. I loved running my 'loomed up Disc priest through LFG as she levelled, simultaneously topping both the healing and DPS charts, and some successful raid guilds used it as a valid healing tactic.

The removal of Atonement's 'smart heal' that could keep tanks alive and implementation as a random heal that wouldn't care about healing the most damaged player in range really killed the idea. It was a perfectly valid way of separating Discipline and Holy, and really gave a Discipline a reason for existing as well as a playstyle that wasn't "spam healing spells until the group kills itself and vote-kicks you".

 Avatar 720 wrote:
implementation as a random heal that wouldn't care about healing the most damaged player in range really killed the idea

Because everyone loved that the Mistweavers had multiple healing abilities that targeted completely random players...



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Currently replaying Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Eliza Cassan is in the background interviewing noted philanthropist Hugh Darrow about how his Panchea project will combat global warming by adjusting the ocean temperatures.


Heh heh heh...

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Nerfed Hunters? I played a retribution paladin from BC through Cataclysm. Is there a class that's been nerfed to uselessness for no reason any more than retribution paladins? The only patch I enjoyed playing was one in WotLK where we became absolute beasts, and the forums overflowed with mages and death knights raging and demanding nerfs. In typical paladin style the nerfs were quick to come and swiftly put us back down to 'worst of the worst' where we apparently belonged.

I eventually got sick of Blizzard's adhd approach to retri paladin balance and abandoned it.

Hunters just as I left were to get their pet at level 1, so from then on they never learned to kite properly. Just send in the pet to tank, whether it was suitable or not, and range attack like a less effective caster. Ammo bags were basically made worthless as all a hunter had to carry was a single arrow/shot and got infinite uses out of it, annoying everyone who took Engineering or Leatherwork as a skill because no-one wanted crafted shot any more and no-one wanted shot bags or quivers any more. Lost a lot of the strategy of playing a hunter right there.

Before I left you could tell a true hunter from a Huntard in the newbie areas as the true hunters would ensure they were at max range by walking forward and back until they had got a clean shot at the edge of range, would turn around and run away as soon as they had shot, then jumped, turned in mid-air to shoot again, and repeated the process - or would fire through a tree and run around the same tree to keep the creatures from getting to them firing as they could.

The Huntards, however, walked up to the mob, fired once, then had to revert to getting out their little axe and beating it on the head until it died. A hunter could complete the entire area without taking damage, the huntards had to heal several times.

Now however, almost every hunter just send out the pet and stays at range. When they first encounter a mob [or boss] that can take out the pet and still have enough to take out the hunter after, they don't know what to do. [unless you went through the entire process pre-nerf and already had the knowledge.]

But yes, I agree that blizzard's response to complaints is as twisted as the complaints themselves. "That character class is making way more money than me, I demand you reduce their earnings to a level lower than mine!" rather than "That class is showing that my class is at a disadvantage, can you please make my class more equal." and they carry out a nerf campaign. Try that with the boss at work and see where it gets you!

Wow, elitist much dude? That kind of attitude is a good reason to not discuss things with people who play WoW habitually....

The more casual gamers end up playing the game, the more they cater to them. Why wouldn't they? Blizzard is a business. Not to mention the fact that there *are* new people starting up the game and what kind of donkey-cave do you have to be to judge someone who just started playing the game (as a hunter, or anything) against your own elitist standards?

As the expansions have piled on and the levels have gotten ever higher, little esoteric bits of classes have been clipped off to keep things streamlined and sensible to play. I've played the alternative, where everything was left how it lay. Everquest was *not* friendly to new players, and it was *not* fun trying to figure out WTF to do. Spending hard earned money on an entire line of effectively useless spells because they were nerfed and then forgotten, without so much as a change in tooltip... Sure hunters lost ammo bags, big flippin deal. And the whole 'get to range and wiggle back and forth thing', really? Seriously, that's how you mark a good player? Because if you're so good and awesome would you really need to do the wiggling to know you were at the right range? I shudder how long it might take you to go about your day with all of that wasted time.

Besides the fact that hunters had melee abilities for a reason, hell it's even becoming a spec in Legion. I may come back just to try it out.

I'll give you that hunters were always in a weird place, having a somewhat higher skill cap than some other classes usually meant that the best players could do stupid things with them as the devs had to keep the class good enough for less experienced handlers... but man that's some hardcore complaining.

I, for one, love the streamlining of everything. I leveled my hunter and warrior 85-100 after a long break recently and I had as much fun with them as I ever did. The warrior especially. Stance dancing was an art, and when I had more time to play it was...acceptable... but I can tell you that I did not miss it a single bit catching up to 100.

I finished the last of the 'Arkham Episodes' tonight in Arkham Knight.

It's kinda sad really. They're a really neat concept and could have genuinely worked as an idea - A little like how Bioware do their dlc's.

Instead, only one, "Batgirl: A Matter of Family" is a decent length (I completed it in just over 2 hours). If they had made that one 30 minutes to an hour longer and actually fleshed out the other ones, it would have been something impressive. I still have most of 'A season of Infamy' to go though. - Despite those missions being rather short, at least there's a bunch of them to play.

I dunno, I should love Arkham Knight, I'm even one of the fortunate few that never had any problems with it on PC. And yet, everything in it has this tinge of disappointment and being a little bit poo.

I've always found the "They're a business, why shouldn't they cater to the most people that play?" argument to be interesting.

It makes perfect sense, and is perfectly defensible. But at the same time, what about the argument that games are a form of art, and should be considered something to be crafted to as high a standard as possible.

Movies took that turn, as did cars and a lot of other consumer products- Some of the people who made those objects decided that they should be 'more' than just their base components, that the companies should stand for more (even if it's just a marketing ploy)- what about video games?

Well isn't WoW still on top of the market as far as those things go? Not to mention the ridiculously awesome progression in how immersive and downright fun their quests have gotten. Come WoD, no longer am I going to town, finding a quest, running out to the field to kill some wolves, coming back...rinse repeat all the way to cap when you replace wolves with dragon people or..whatever... oh no.. No no.. I get to follow thrall and basically the whole Justice League of Alliance and Horde VIPS smashing through battle lines, blowing up the dark portal and doing espionage behind enemy lines. Hell, I think back in Pandaria even there was a sweet quest series that involved gunning down a bunch of enemies on a heavy aircraft gun before rappelling into their midst to dispatch even more.

Just because WoW is easier for new players to play now, that doesn't mean it's lost *anything* in terms of production value or innovation. The points we were discussing that were lost before were more akin to outdated legacy/relics from previous MMOs before they learned to do things in a way that I would argue is better. If some minor loss of nuance and largely superfluous items/slots/abilities brings the way for streamlined gameplay with a larger player base (because more accessible/user friendly/easier to play)...I won't be complaining. Or well, I dunno if the player base is really larger per se, but I think it's larger for the changes than it would be without them.

Granted, this perspective is how I feel now. If you asked me several years ago back in college when I could play a lot (and still was playing, really didn't stick it out long this last time at all) to talk about the same stuff.. dunno, could have given you a different answer.

Anvildude wrote:
I've always found the "They're a business, why shouldn't they cater to the most people that play?" argument to be interesting.

It makes perfect sense, and is perfectly defensible. But at the same time, what about the argument that games are a form of art, and should be considered something to be crafted to as high a standard as possible.

Movies took that turn, as did cars and a lot of other consumer products- Some of the people who made those objects decided that they should be 'more' than just their base components, that the companies should stand for more (even if it's just a marketing ploy)- what about video games?

The greatest English playwright in all of history wrote plays that were designed to fill the cheap seats.

The point of "art" isn't to show how your tastes are superior or more refined than those of everyone else. The point of art is to create something that speaks to people about the human condition. And there's nothing that says that's incompatible with mass appeal.

Started a Blood Elf Pally just to get something going for when I bring my warrior to 100 and reserve him mostly for raiding on weekends (he is at 90 right now).

 djphranq wrote:
Started a Blood Elf Pally just to get something going for when I bring my warrior to 100 and reserve him mostly for raiding on weekends (he is at 90 right now).

Blood Elf Paladin? He? This is madness!