GAMING THREAD aka holy fuck, l.a. noire = ^_^

[Static]

I used to play the shit out of the original BF:1942 but havent really played any of the others since.  I am seriously considering picking up BF:3 though.  If I do, I will be down for some MP with you guys.

Dude, it's awesome.  I haven't played Battlefield MP before, I had BC2 but never delved into multiplayer because I hated deathmatch and assumed most of the games would be that.  But this is truly awesome, I've had some super clutch firefights on some of the maps and there are so many tight spaces that quickly turn into kill zones which really emphasize the importance of capturing certain objectives.   Get it and come play with us!

I play more conquest than Rush, though that's just because I generally play with a few guys, but I love how much of an intense clusterfuck Rush can turn into.

Zero, I added you.

[r00]

Just got my invite for SW:The Old Republic beta.  May have to check this out.  Anyone else been playing it?

[individualzero]

I got into the full-access beta in mid-August and have been hooked ever since. Fucking fantastic game. It doesn't push the envelope, but it did what WoW did almost a decade ago: take what the modern MMO formula did right and do it better (adding full voice acting and a comprehensive story help liven things up a lot, too).

To be honest, it reminds me more of a more-polished, more-complete Rift than WoW, although players of either game should feel right at home.

If you need help with any of the flashpoints or quests, let me know... although unfortunately, I don't know if I can access the same beta servers as weekend access invitees get? I'm on the Darth Malak server as-is and I'm trying out the Imperial Agent this build.

[individualzero]

Zero, I added you.

Did you get my invite? I checked Origin but it claimed I had no new requests, so I sent you one instead.

[Static]

Did you get my invite? I checked Origin but it claimed I had no new requests, so I sent you one instead.

I got your origin invite and added you, I sent you an invite via battlelog but it says it's still pending.  Check your updates in battelog.  Come join the Teamwork platoon, good bunch of guys, nobody takes anything too seriously and obviously, lots of teamwork.  We have a TS channel also.

[r00]

Thanks for the info, zero.  Turtle and I used to play Star Wars Galaxies a lot with PIG and it was mucho fun for about 6 months, then it started to dry out.  The one thing that makes me know ToR will be good is Bioware!  I'll let you know if/when I jump on there.

Right now though, you guys are really making me want to run out and get BF3!  Static, being around 7 hours ahead of me, when does your platoon usually run? 

[Static]

Thanks for the info, zero.  Turtle and I used to play Star Wars Galaxies a lot with PIG and it was mucho fun for about 6 months, then it started to dry out.  The one thing that makes me know ToR will be good is Bioware!  I'll let you know if/when I jump on there.

Right now though, you guys are really making me want to run out and get BF3!  Static, being around 7 hours ahead of me, when does your platoon usually run?

From about 7pm GMT to about 1am GMT you'll find guys around and on TS, the last weekend throughout the day we were all around.

[Goose]

Picked up Bastion when it was on a Steam sale a couple weeks ago, haven't had the chance to play it until now.  Bloody awesome game.  To me, it feels like an amazingly well-executed combination of Secret of Mana for tha SNES and Diablo, with absolutely breathtaking artwork and a very solid play style.  My only complaint is that the hammer doesn't have any pushback on it, which makes it quite hard to use without getting your ass handed to you.  It doesn't make sense that you can hit a dude in the face with a 20-lb sledge and he doesn't stop just a little.  But that's such a minor complaint, and I've found other weapons that work great.  I think I got about half-way through in a 2.5 hour session last night (first time I've had to sit down and get some serious game on in months!).

Also grabbed the latest Humble bundle.  Voxatron looks interesting, but a combo of that, The Binding of Isaac, Blocks That Matter and Gish all for dirt cheap is way too hard to pass up.

[sin]

Skyrim is in the mail.  I've heard good things.

[individualzero]

Interesting...

Just a heads up: MMORPG.com is giving away 24,000+ more beta keys to TOR for free. If you wanted to try the game, now is a good time.
http://www.mmorpg.com/giveaways.cfm/offer/304/Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-Beta-Key-Handout.html

[doom]

SKYWARD SWORD 

[boofu]

MOTHAFUCKIN SKYRIM OOOOOOOOOOOOOH YEAH CAN YOU DIG IT

[individualzero]

Now that TOR's NDA is officially lifted, I can speak more freely about the game. Not that I didn't before, but at least I can post a hands-on preview now:

The Nutshell:
Star Wars: The Old Republic is not a sandbox MMO. Players and even the developers have carefully phrased its sales pitch as a "theme park" MMO: there's a lot of rides and games, but all the rides are on rails and the games reward you depending on how YOU tackle them. Is this a good or bad thing? Well, the answer depends:

*If you were looking for SW:Galaxies 2, this is not the game for you.
*If you were looking for a WoW clone, this is not the game for you.
*If you were looking for a substantial revamp of the modern MMO formula, or a solid Star Wars MMO, this is your dream game.

DISCLAIMER: This is a hands-on preview of the BETA PHASE of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Many of these statements, for better or for worse, could be found untrue upon the launch build of the game, as there is a difference between the final beta phase and the launch build. This thread may be updated as more thoughts come to me.

The Good...
PvP: As much as I may bitch about PvP in TOR, my hat is off to Bioware/Mythic for developing a mostly solid, albeit slightly flawed PvP system; crowd control is broken in this build and you'll stand there lookin' pretty for most of the match if you make yourself a target. Where PvP DOES shine is its variety. Just to start, the game has a lot of ways to PvP...
-Huttball: Also known as "Space Soccer," Huttball holds true to the testament that in space, no one can hear you scream as you ragequit and throw your monitor into orbit. This is essentially One-Flag Capture the Flag, except you can throw the 'flag' (as long as you "don't kick the ball. Hutts don't have feet!" Clever girl, Bioware...) and lop the heads off of your enemies who attempt to run the ball into your court. It's kind of like inverted soccer: instead of kicking the ball, you throw it. Exactly like real-life soccer, your aim is to carry the ball (which somehow you can still attack while huddling the ball like your life depended on it -- because it does) into the enemy court while you're fighting off hordes of sweaty foreign people.
-The Voidstar: An Assault & Protect/Attack & Defend game mode with two rounds where the opposing factions must play attacker or defender against the enemy. This scenario has you planting (or defusing) bombs, slicing (or protecting) consoles, and tackling a variety of objectives to breach into the core of the Void Star to retrieve an arming code for a deadly weapon. It's my least preferred of the three scenarios but is still fun, and still rewarding.
-Battle for Alderaan: Three-point [West<-MID->East] King of the Hill where you must hold enough turrets and kill enough players to do damage to the enemy battleship and opposing force. Not only does this give you a fantastic chance to yell "YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP!" when you lose, it encourages good team play rather than roflstomping the enemy team.
-Open World Type A: One of the PvP lakes in the game is sort of like a giant match of King of the Hill; it has defense turrets and traps and is a valuable resource to your faction if you hold it. However, it can be attacked at any time and will fall if overran, surrendering it to whichever faction had the moxy to go all Interstellar William Wallace on Space England.
-Open World Type B: Free-For-All PvP lakes on Tattooine allow you to wade through hordes of dead player bodies to access rare vendors that sell special social and PvP items and gear. However, you can also waste the vendor before, during, or after accessing their goods. If you're able to smoke some players and reach the vendor in time, great rewards await you.. and then you can chop the guy in half so other players can't get a hold of those sweet, sweet rares.
-Dueling: Whip out the rulers, kiddos! Dueling is exactly what you think it is: type /duel and you can challenge anyone, anywhere, at any time to a non-fatal 1v1 match. Dueling is a fun time waster that lets you prove that his Schwartz was not as big as yours, and that you handle it better. [Team Dueling would be nice, but maybe they'll implement that later.]
-Healing is not OP in this game. Pocket healers are practically useless because heals take longer to cast and do less overall: they are a supplement rather than a crutch.
-Most of the issues are related to class balance and broken crowd control, and I hear they intend to address these problems.

TOR is Fully Voiced: While the dialogue wheel is always limited to three choices (and some of them are VERY black and white/good or evil) and the voiced line is sometimes a bit different from the text choice, I have to say that giving everybody and everything (as in, 'conversations' happen with objects-- you click an item and it lets you make choices from the options wheel) a voice or an option makes the game extremely immersing. It just doesn't feel like a grind when everything is so... interactive.

Crafting Isn't A Huge Chore: Crew Skills let you not only send your companions to harvest from component nodules, but you can send one or all of your companions to tackle a crafting-based mission or develop a new item for you. At the cost of cold, hard credits, this can net you rare components and morality points towards your Light Side or Dark Side scores (don't worry, they warn you which is which before you send off your companion). They can also fail you, at which point you show off your pimp hand.

The Companion System is Extensive: those companions I mentioned? They're voiced. They're interactive. You can develop strong bonds and friendships, even engage in romance with the appropriate companion (sorry, no Wookiee love stories here). Companion conversations can give you experience, morality points, and advance your story and give you interesting side-tasks. You also can impress or upset your companion with dialogue choices, earning affection points and levels.

The Social System: Grouping up lets you earn Social Points (everybody gets a batch of points at each conversation; winning the conversation 'leadership roll' nets you the most "SoXP"), which build up into Levels; Social Levels give you access to normally inaccessible, purchased, Social Items, which are pretty much fantastic non-combat items and equipment that let you look really ballin' or perform special emotes and interactions with the world.

Choices Are Immersive: With Light and Dark Side points and personal story choices having an impact on the rollercoaster you're riding, everything you do has gravity. Did you help that homeless Sith cross the street? BAM, your kindnes changed him and he shows up at a crucial moment to help you out. Good deeds pay off... and overtly 'noisy' or 'evil' deeds can get you in trouble. Killing a gang leader can cause his replacement to want to tackle you. Sparing him can mean the leader comes back for you later...

That PUG Scrub Disconnected? Bring a Companion!: While not as smart or as effective in filling the role as a player, if you're in the middle of a flashpoint/dungeon/heroic quest and your 4th disconnects or what have you, you can replace them with your NPC Companion. It's been proven that you can use them to complete most heroics and FPs in the place of a player. Can't fill your last two slots? Your duo or your and your PUG buddy are no longer boned. Handy!

The Bad...
*Difficulty Level: Speaking of rides, the difficulty scale is kind of on a rollercoaster. It was too easy at lower levels, but then the hardcore PvE players who purposely break the game with ridiculous builds meant to dominate went "AW DUDE, THIS IS TOO EASY. UP THE DIFFICULTY." The devs did. [Fun fact: A developer was later quoted as saying "Yeah guys sorry we kinda overdid the difficulty. Just a pinch."] Mind, these players had only played up into the teens/twenties, which is where the game starts to pick up the pace in terms of actually being challenging. I used to feel heroic, only having to stop to catch my breath against high-difficulty mobs who required thinking, and now I walk away with low health after every fight instead of every few fights because their HP was increased as well as their damage output and ability variants.

Combat Fluidity: A global cooldown, queued attacks, slow recharge on my heavy hitters... combat is fun, revamped, and reactive, but it can also be slow and frustrating at the lower levels. What is this, 2004?

Full Voiceovers Could Slow Down Content Production: I have no proof to back this, but I can only imagine that unless they've got a steady stream of content to pour in or already ready to throw in there, the fact that ALL NPCs and PCs speak and respond and react in conversations and EVERY quest giver, EVERY important NPC and even some VENDORS have full-fledged conversations, new contents are probably going to trickle in slowly or come in large chunks.

The Group/Party/Team Cap is FOUR: Raid/Operations are capped in the dozens. Your team? ... well, you guys are capped at 4. At any time. Evne in PvP.

A Subscription Fee... and no Lifetime Options: If I'm going to have to pay for the game I love, at least give me lifetime options. Most games have SOME free-to-play variant and I was disappointed that TOR was not one of them. I don't mind supporting my favorite game, and TOR is one of the few games actually worth subscribing to, but I hope they give us payment options aside from bulk discounts for paying for more months at a time.

And the Fugly:
*Shoddy character creator: It does its job, but that's about all it does. For a game that encourages feeling iconic and touts its superior levels of freedom, this is a huge achilles' heel and fun crusher those of us who care about customization.
-No sliders; as you only get preset faces, color me surprised  It's chock full of choices and unlike other MMOs that have preset facial shapes and features, there is more than one 'good' face preset. This is still disappointing, as even RIFT had facial feature sliders that let you diversify your character.
-Limited accessories and additions; most of the hairstyles seem pretty specific. There's only one type of each accessory and scar. Want the same scar on the OTHER side of your face? LOL, GOOD LUCK.
-No appearance slots for your appearance items, yet...

The Devs Aren't Listening To Testers: A lot of beta testers have voiced a lot of complaints. Every single one of the Bad & Fugly things I've mentioned? Was brought up around or before the testing phase I got into (August 2011). Most of the things they have provided are, at best, distractions from the fact that they aren't addressing the issues we've listed. Sometimes, they make them worse. It makes me wonder if they're giving us the biggest Christmas present ever by launching with a better build.

Quirks and Oddities:
Minor things that made me raise a brow--
-Powertechs (Tank/DPS Advanced Class for the Bounty Hunter) don't get a blaster carbine like Boba Fett. They get... one pistol. I think this must have been how Will Smith's character in M.I.B. felt when he got the Noisy Cricket: it looks silly, you feel silly, but you still pack a wallop. It's just kind of a deceptively wimpy-looking wallop.
-Melee Jedi don't do the damage you'd think they do. Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors have weak class mechanics that are severely limiting and whatever they can do, the mage-tanks (Sith Inquisitors/Jedi Consular's Assassin and Shadow ACs, respectively) do everything they do and more. Ditto for the ranged tanks. The melee tanks are just... almost inoperable in PvP and inadequate in PvE; they lack crowd control, efficient ways to close the gap between their ranged opponents -- who do have multiple crowd control methods and movement debilitating abilities -- and virtually no solid ways to defend themselves besides active defenses on extremely long cooldowns.
-For that matter, lightsabers don't do the damage they should be doing. I'm not asking for visual representations of violence ("HEY MA, LOOK AT ME GO FULL-BLOWN TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE ON THIS GUY'S FACE!"), but recognition that lightsabers are the deadliest weapon in the Star Wars universe would be nice. They do piss-poor damage until you really get up there in levels, talents and gear, and that doesn't sit well with me.
-The 'caster' ACs for the Force-based Jedi and Sith (respectively, the Jedi Consular's "Sage" AC and the Sith Inquisitor's "Sorceror" AC) get one lightsaber attack.... and it's utterly useless. Even in the Extended Universe, I can't think of a single iconic character who strictly used the force didn't use his or her lightsaber to some extent. I feel like I may as well put on a robe and carry a long, staff-like weapon that doesn't do anything and stare at a cast bar -- wait, I already am... FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU--
-Cyborgs are a race like the near-humans, not a way to accessorize humans and other races. ...Wat?
-Quests are called Quests rather than Missions. Maybe it's just me, but this is annoying to me; Han Solo didn't take QUESTS, Han took MISSIONS.
-No player bounties. I feel more like Dog the Bounty Hunter than Boba Fett.
-No truly inhuman racs. I understand that this is because each class had to have a human-y voice, but it's still disappointing when you look back at Galaxies.

The Final Verdict
If the TOR developers will address what we testers have laid out on the list of things that REALLY need attention, well... the game is already solid. Most issues are minor or can be easily resolved. It isn't the game for everyone, because it DOES NOT REVOLUTIONIZE THE MARKET. It did what WoW did almost a decade ago: it takes what every other MMO of the generation has done and does it better, and dares to do things that other MMOs wouldn't or couldn't. TOR dared to dream, and what came of it is a gorgeous, solid revamp of the modern MMORPG formula. However, it doesn't offer much to players who were expecting a sandbox title or to players who wanted to think outside the box. It is, however, a very accessible title that has plenty to do and a lot of variety; if TOR is a game you've been aching to try for these reasons, then you'll be very pleased with the results. If you were on the edge about preordering to begin with or were waiting for a free trial, biding your time may be your best bet.









With all this said, the Great Big Test is coming this weekend (all players who signed up to beta test PRIOR to November 11th, 2011 have acquired access to a temporary, three-day test starting on the weekend of the 25th of November).

If you signed up for it or have prior/current testing experience, tell me what you think! Do you agree? Do you disagree? What's on your mind?

[boofu]

STILL PLAYING MOTHERFUCKIN SKYRIM OOOOH YEAH

[Aaron]

My Roommate got into the D3 Beta. And I didn't. I fucking hate my roommate.


Playing wow. However, with the new expansion coming... I find it looks less enjoyable then ever... The new talent tree is a joke. I almost don't think they care any more... The lack of any real end game content makes me lol. Also, I dislike Pandas... (Just saying)