Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Silverthrone on October 18, 2016, 11:39:37 am

Miles better than Charles, at least. Shot by one of his own officers for being real bad at the whole king business. The Norwegians has been killstealing that headshot ever since, but it seems a lot more likely that it was an internal affair.

Meh. Poland was much worse when it came to internal affairs.

The good thing with an elector monarchy is that it's at least possible to replace awful monarchs. Although that hinges on everyone being in agreement, which must have been a rare sight.

Well, I mean, you're not that far from the truth, really.The eagle is also supposed to be holding a nuke in its right beak and some sort of bizarro lovechild of the bible and the Communist Manifesto in its left, but other than that, you're about right.

I imagine the Bibilofesto screaming and begging for death, all the time. Maybe they've got one of those, in a little cage they cover with a sheat to shut it up.

The Honkening has landed in Finland.

It was inevitable.

Don't worry. There's already anti-clown patrols in Sweden, they'll likely form up right quick now that the clowning around has spread to Finland, too. A few would-be Joker's gotten their stupid red noses pounded in already, and I doubt the Finnish clown-patrols will be far behind.

Quote from: Silverthrone on October 18, 2016, 09:49:00 am

I bet that particular episode ain't in the Kreml-approved litterature.  Seriously, wings work.

Fun fact, the Polish translation of "Time of Troubles" is more akin to "GREAT SORROW" than "Time of Troubles". The Russian version seems to be somewhere in between, though, but still...

Heh, the name I learned was Den Stora Oredan, which basically means "The Great Disorder" but translates more directly to the "Great Untidiness". 

Quote from: Silverthrone on October 18, 2016, 09:49:00 am

I think they mixed him up with Erik XIV (1533-1577), who had that reddish, forked beard the Civ V imposter is sporting. Gustav was blonde and had a different beard. He was also pretty fat. It's just... Odd, which is a shame, because the rest of that leader screen is pretty neat.

Yeah, and he has an painting of Maria Theresa despite being (theoretically) like what, 200 years before? He was pretty great dude though, and, if I remember right, got killed by a Polish soldier. That feel when the greatest person your country has ever had is shot by some random dude because he was too dumb to wear armour, eh? :p

Eh, that brave little Pole earned that kill, fair and square (and I also imagine ol' Gustav was too fat to armour up properly, even if he hadn't thought that anything more than a cuirass was for sissies). Plus, pitched battle, on horseback, on a foggy battleground. That'd be how he'd want to die. Wouldn't terribly mind that, myself, if I had to choose.
I think the reason I get grumbly about that Civ V imposter is because I'm a bit of a GARS fanboy, comes with the territory. Dude was pretty great, that's for sure.

Miles better than Charles, at least. Shot by one of his own officers for being real bad at the whole king business. The Norwegians has been killstealing that headshot ever since, but it seems a lot more likely that it was an internal affair.

Finally... A worthy adversary. Hacka på!!

That said, I can't say I regret my purchase of Civ V, but I'm not very interested in second helpings. It just felt so... Baby's First 4X. "It's Streamlined! It's Simple! It's FUN!" It's just not stimulating for me. It's one of those games where you need real life friends playing it to get the most out of it, I think.

_{And they got Gustavus Adolphus wrong.}

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Being a good li'l trooper for the raid was a special kind of fun.

Yeah, haven't ever really gotten that experience in any other kind of game.

Which, if I could get that fix elsewhere I would. I'd like to enjoy that same raid experience in WoW but like, in a First Person Shooter. But the only way you really get that is by joining a wonky gaming league with strict rules. All the F2P and/or vaguely MMO-like games out now (Warframe for example) are making stabs at raid-style content but I don't think it's quite there.

For me I think the fact is, all of it requires joining a guild and getting into an online social circle and after years of MMOs, guilds, drama and time spent organizing people in the name of fun, I just don't have the interest and time. Maybe one day when I'm retired I can get back into true online gaming, and can be that person in the guild that's vastly older than everyone else. Til then I'll continue to watch what people are calling MMO games.

Yes, that kind of experience does take a lot of social commitment. I started out just waiting around for someone needing extras, but I did have to get guilded to really get anywhere. Worth it, had my fun, but don't want to do that again. Just being a meltdown bystander is pretty unpleasant, being in the thick of it, managing the effects, must be way worse.

I kinda sorta maybe-ish liked Eve Online, but the sort of commitment that game needs just ain't what I want to give. Thing is with time is that you can usually make time for something that's really, really worth it. If it's not worth stretching the time, it isn't.

MMORPGs are dead. WoW killed them.

Even what passes for a PvP MMORPG these days still requires you to spend 100 hours doing fetch quests and collecting 30 wolf assholes as a tax to get to the content.

Thing is, though, I'm not sure WoW was the game that began the long, horrid tradition of bear arses. Of course, it helped popularise it, but to its defence, most of that got toned down in Cataclysm and onwards. Somewhat, at least. Hell, WoW was pretty humane when it came out. I grumbled a lot about "sissifying" when they removed Elite mobs from the overworld, and blimey, it's was a very different game by the time for Panda.

As for the story, well... I liked it, always had a soft spot for Warcraft. I like the colourful, dorky, pretty little universe they've got. It's a bit of good old fun. I was interested enough to get a bit of engagement, certainly in vanilla and Wrath, at least. Good old Scourge. Fighting them was fun, infiltrating the Plaguelands to cross their plans was fun. I think one of the reasons why I quit was because I didn't feel like I knew or, more importantly, cared to know what was going on and who was who. I need a bit of story to feel at home in.

Then Rogue essentially turned into Ninja and I got to be one of the privileged few who had one very simple, self-involved job. Wizards had all sorts of other shit to do besides DPS and usually were the first to die when anything went wrong. Rogues? We were the ones that got to hide and save our asses, and crack-wise over the corpses of less savvy individuals. I always like saluting the rogues that survived a wipe while were were stealthing around. Until Blizzard started making it a point to have raid bosses and mobs see invis/remember their aggro so you had to wipe out along everyone else, so the fight reset cleanly.

And now, yeah. Everyone thinks the Trinity is bad to greater or lesser extents and everyone is DPS. Maybe they self heal, maybe their heals do damage. And the Trinity does kind of suck because it's hard to make a good solo game as well as MP game that relies on it. But it enforces teamwork and coordination and specialization, which I like a hell of a lot more than everyone being interchangably generic. I'm playing The Division right now with my roommate (which is basically an MMO-lite console game at its heart) and even IT has the Trinity.....but in a very generic "pick whatever skills you want and swap them around, I dunno, whatever, go fuck yourself" sort of way.

Yeah, suppose it's streamlining for it's own sake (grr grr) at work. I mean, it works. The trinity works fine. It's difficult to count on an even solo experience, but it's an MMO. Teamwork is kind of the bread and butter.
I've always loved priests in this kind of game. I love the idea of going into battle in your coat, a staff and your towering, unyielding faith as your shield and sword. Keeping everyone standing, slipping out of the jaws of death, giving that final, decisive heal before you finally succumb... Love that good shit. Holy paladins was that, too, but with armour. Hell, yes. Emphasis on "loved", I did not love it towards the end where I was expected to keep up with a cocaine-addled speedrunner tank who'd sulk and threaten to quit if you asked for a ten second mana break. Not that it mattered how you behaved at all, thanks, dungeon finder.
Healer PvP was quite fun. It was also a way to learn hatred for your fellow man. For a while, I think the game went entirely overboard for stuns and crowd control. It was as if you step out of your base and basically do nothing for ten minutes, while the ten million frost mages facerolls to your doom.

Blizzard always insisted vanilla was bad and we only liked it because of nostalgia goggles, but playing Nostalrius (a former private server that offered pure vanilla wow with no added features or alterations, rip in pizza) was the most fun I had with wow probably ever.

Going back to vanilla as an adult instead of a dipshit kid was like a completely different game.  Back then if I leveled up twice in one day I thought I was on fire.  I constantly distracted myself and blew all my gold on new random greens in the AH, switched zones all the time, frequently tried alts for ten levels or so and went back to my warlock.  I was horrible at PvP and became well-known in trade chat for bitching about how every class but mine was OP.

Playing as an adult was a completely different experience.  Undead Rogue.  I never did quests, I almost never bought anything on the AH, rolled Mining/Herbalism so I was rich as fuck and laden with twink gear I used to blitz farm mobs and level up ten times faster than anybody bothering with quests. Bought my mount as soon as I hit 40 and still had enough left over for Wirt's Third Leg and Tigerstrike Cloak.  I was on the pve server but ran around flagged all the time, murked the shit out of anyone who tried to do anything about it and camped their bodies until they logged out.

I hit 42 a few minutes before they announced blizzard was taking down the server.  I was sad.

Ach, bad luck. Still remember that first 40 ding. Off to the mount trader! "Here's all the gold I've misered and deprived together from the start, one plz!" It was juuuuust enough. It was glorious. GLORIOUS.

I'd like to try a nostalgia server sometime, but... Nah, not sure. I've got my memories, I've got my little corner of nostalgia. It gives me all I need from that experience. I'm afraid of spoiling it, it's been a decade, after all. Not to mention, I don't feel like there is much left to do. It'd just be a novelty sightseeing tour for me. Maybe, though. Maybe.

Going back as an adult would be fascinating, but again, don't want to spoil my happy little nostalgia box for it.

There was a really cool little private RP server, too. Really nice, centered entirely on RP, with additional tools, gear and nice GMs clueing in to see what they could help with. Like turning a long-term Necromancer roleplayer's character into a Lich, that kind of stuff. A bit of a gated garden, with all the downsides, but, you know... It was refreshing to be in a place where everyone was there for the RP, and it also meant less of the weird, weird shit you get on RP servers. Luvverly. I'd like to hunt down another server like it one day, but... Not sure. Not sure what else I could do with it.

As for the Green Jesus Thrall thing, I'm glad that it's over. Too late for me, but it's nice to see Legion being a determined rehab attempt.

EDIT: Oh! And they killed off Varian McMisguided Teenage Marketing. Fun. The best thing is that I kind of care. He was the king, after all. It's the first bit of lore from the game that I've cared about for quite some time. At least since they threw Gilneas under the bus because it wasn't Orcy enough. Long live Anduinus Rex, I guess. Maybe the Allies gets to win something, for a change.

I had to be that guy quite often. If I wasn't leading the raid I was Rogue Captain, and there is no greater group of "LOL DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE FIGHT WHATS MY DPS AT?" characters than Rogues. I had to have that exact conversation with several of them where I was like "Your gear is good, you know how to press the right buttons for maximum DPS, but you not paying attention is killing us because we need that DPS and you dying in the first 30 seconds is a waste of my goddamn time, and everyone else's." I remember when I first started raiding in EQ, I was _terrified_ of holding up the show. Getting lost, losing your corpse, pulling adds by mistake and wiping the raid. I lived in mortal terror of offending 39 acquaintances and strangers with my incompetence. It was clear to me from Day 1 that this was a group activity and what you did had an impact on everyone else. And I was only like 15.

So I was continually mystified why some people that came to raid in WoW like a fucking decade later didn't understand that until it literally had to be shouted at them. I had to have this actual conversation with someone:

New Raider: "Why are you all so uptight about this? Isn't this supposed to be fun?"
Me: "Raiding isn't about fun, it's about getting shit done. And if it is about fun, repeatedly failing because you don't know what you're doing isn't fun for us."

That was basically my sentiment as well, particularly when I got with the Big Boys in WoW. I was a pretty thick and awkward teen (hence the need for our little talk), but I think it worked because I was always afraid of stalling people up by a blunder from my part. One of the reasons why I tried to elbow my way into big pick-up raids was that I at some level thought that with 40 people running about, some probably bigger boobs than I was, my little boo-boos would get lost in the background. No such luck, and a good thing it was.

Raid leaders are always looking to turn pick ups into regulars. It is NOT as easy as you would assume to find someone with a) the time b) the inclination c) the gear d) the temperament and e) any basic raid experience at all.

_{"Give them to us while they are young, and they are oouurs foreveeer, hah-hah-haaah..."}

Heh, fascinating to hear. Never did much raid organisation (to a mutual sigh of relief from all involved), so I never learnt to see it from that way. I thought you could always hoover up a few extras from the street if need be. Well, I had time and made up for the lack of the rest with enthusiasm. I suppose they felt that someone who's still chipper like a puppy after seven or so wipes is worth carrying along for the calm.

I remember a couple pick ups that literally flew off the handle at the first criticism they got, and immediately left the raid without a word, because they didn't realize raid leaders and captains are watching EVERYONE's performance looking for weakness, anything that could improve the raid performance, even goddamn consumables. I'd have to regularly call out to other rogues during fights to remind them of things like "this is the part where you step back from combat" but also stuff like "Why is none of your gear enchanted?" "Why do you not have any potions?" "Why are you using that ranged weapon when this other ranged weapon has far superior stats and you're not going to be doing any shooting in this raid?"

But yeah. I remember what it's like to want to/need to cultivate players. Which isn't something I'm normally inclined to do. But when you have 23 people looking to you to make their night happen and their dreams come true...you end up doing a lot of things you didn't think you were equipped for. After running raids, it's odd how you feel weirdly qualified to work in corporate America. I'm not a "Go Team!" kind of guy, I'm usually the guy in the back going "fuck all this hoopla." Yet when it came to raid I actually, legitimately cared.

Until it all became too much, at any rate. It was weird disconnecting from raiding because for like two weeks I didn't know what to do with myself. It took readjusting to not having to give a shit about this fake thing you do 8 to 16 hours a week.

I fear I was sort of that guy, as well. Mostly because I shirked the individual grinding I could get away with, and had a pretty loose grip on stats and enchants overall. I got better at sorting my own kit out, but I could be a bit of a nightmare for a raid leader in that reguard. I was the kind of player that could forget to swap their novelty fish out of their weapon slot.

All in all, I'm glad I didn't got into full-time raid leading. It'd driven me up the walls in a day. Support your local raid leader today! Christ knows they need it.

I hadn't even considered the social aspect, somehow. You're right, that seems to be the main draw of MMOs, which is why I suppose I can't really get into them. Hell, to me, meeting new people (online or off, doesn't matter) feels like standing I'm at the edge of a cliff. That plus I'm constantly in fear of letting other people down if/when I screw something up. All of that raiding stuff sounds extremely stressful, especially considering there are other games that can give a similar sense of accomplishment or enjoyment without the risk of making things terrible for dozens of people, but probably aren't as rewarding as when you do succeed.

Oddly enough, WoW kind of helped for me in that regard. I've got similar apprehension in a lot of social encounters, but an MMO where no-one knows your name or care to remember it very long, it felt a lot more safe to try and be more social and approaching than usual. It was fun to have a (kind of) social outlet with less of the pressure. Plus, I got to practice more english, which was helpful. I wouldn't say it "cured" me, not at all, but it did make handling real life social encounters a bit less frightful.

Not to mention watching your entire night disappear because two or three people can't figure out how to not stand in the thing that kills you wears on you after a while.

Heh, that's one of my clearer MMO-memories. I was that guy, once. At some point, the raid leader pulled me aside (well, whispered me, but told me to come with him out of the raid instance for the chat, nice touch) after a wipe and said it loud and clear. Don't remember the exact terms, but the sentiment was "You're wasting people's time! Pay attention and learn the bosses!", and I managed to whimper myself a second chance. It went better, and I sat down and studied the encounters I thought I was up against in the future. I got to come with them more times, and it was nice to feel that improvement. Still don't know why he bothered. It was a pick-up job, and I was literally a guy from the street. He could've just chucked me out and gotten anyone else with a pulse. Don't remember his name, but it was a pretty cute little lesson of sorts, now that I look back.

I like Skyrim better too, but I think that's pretty close to universal. The real question is whether a person likes morrowind or skyrim better. I think morrowind had better writing, quests, plot, etc, but the combat "I stab and... my spear goes through you x50" left a lot to be desired, and installing mods for skyrim is much easier.

On the whole, Skyrim was better, and I did like it more. It just felt a bit too shallow in places, like they couldn't sort out the quirks of the leveling system and didn't have time to fill it with anything but a place holder. But Oblivion do have a special place in my heart. I do wish one could airlift the best fixes from Skyrim and slot them in an Oblivion with a level-system overhaul mod.

Of course, Skyrim is particularly fantastic if you're a real life Nord. I was worried, a lot of Norse-themed games has been rather themeparky. Skyrim did manage to make it work. It was like starring in one of the old legends yourself. Absolutely fabulous.

Meeeh. I like Skyrim better than Oblivion. Sue me.

I got into Skyrim much easier because there's less worrying about not doing things correctly. A classless system made it twenty times easier, the lack of the strength, luck, dexterity, etc stats meant I worried less about being under statted for how far I am in the game.

Then again, I might just be an idiot console peasent

Yes, quite a few Skyrim preferers still end up in court. Better be careful.