Weekly gaming hangouts

[Dracos]

Heh, I've done a lot of runs of Borderlands 1, but I find it mostly a more accessible game without cheating.  Even though I think they patched it to try and reduce drop rates (Assholes).  The thing with BL1 is that Siren is way better than every other class, and post level 50, things are more scaled against that.

I've beaten Borderlands 2 both solo and in a campaign, but had less draw on it.  It has serious drop rate problems without screwing with it, though most of the characters are pretty good (Even if Mechromancer trumps).  I suppose I wouldn't mind a regular campaign run :)  We can do a half hour or hour a week.

[Jason_Miao]

I'm...not really up for 4X but maybe that's because I've never encountered a non-slooooow one.  Ideal game length really for a hangout is something that can be grabbed in 30-60 minute chunks.

Is it necessarily the timespan, or is it that multiplayer 4x games tend to have one player who takes an hour to micromanage his empire?

If the later is the issue, then SR doesn't have that problem since it's an RTS multiplayer.  Sure, everyone has the option to micromanage each planet, but it's not really a good idea.

If it's the former, SR is a bit less appealing.  My general time to beat 3 medium AI non-cheating computer players in a 150 system map (default setting) is about 3 hours.  I'm not actually good at the game, and I've been given to understand that the usual average time is much less, but it's still not something that's done in 1/2 hour.

One could speed up the simulation speed up to 10x, but that's not really going to shorten any time while people are still figuring out playstyles.

I've got the Dawn of War series, I've yet to try :)  RTS.

I have the original Dawn of War + the two expansions (not the last Battle Sisters one).  I didn't mention it because I didn't think anyone else would still want to play it. :)  IIRC, that permits up to 8 players, depending on the map.

[Dracos]

Well, occassional runs of 2-4 hour play is fine, but I think those would have to be weekend bits.  Planning on 3 hours either pushes it real early or cuts the east coasters completely out.    I'm thinking of trying to get a few that can fit for sort of short pick up and play sessions.

Old games seem like a good choice to bring up for ideas, I mean the goal is hangout :P  And it means if someone doesn't own it, they can get it for 5-10 bucks.

[Merc]

Installing dungeon defenders.  I have terraria.  It didn't click much at all single player...maybe it might multiplayer.

Unless we also have something we can speak over and just chat while we do stuff, multiplayer Terrarria probably won't click either.

I've got the Dawn of War series, I've yet to try :)  RTS.
Torchlight 2?  Think that supports 4 players.
Monaco is 4 player, but also terrible to my recollection.

I have these, though not tried aaaaany of them, so I'd have no clue what I'm doing even with multiplayer. I'd still be up for them if others were.

And somewhere I got some piratey old games and other things I could dig up.  We could also be all retro and get SNES network multiplayer going.

Or say... http://bombermine.com/#/  we could play some crazy bomberman thing :)

These would be awesome =)

Without FPS we're pretty blocked on player count usually, but it all depends if more than four usually want in

Nothing wrong with any weekly gaming selection being FPS, just that I wouldn't participate because I get nauseous playing first person games, or even just watching them.

Anyhow, put down some ideas.  Trying to exxxxpand the hangout box.  Hey merc, you had some ideas on board games, mind making a post on ideas there?

Was referring to places like www.boardgamearena.com which I mentioned a while back in the Online Gaming thread.

Also some others:
http://www.boiteajeux.net/
http://isotropic.org/
http://www.yucata.de/en

Can just pick a game and play a while. :p

Some game suggestions that might be fun to try as a group:

• Libertalia - Pirate themed deduction game, 2-6 players. Players select a card per round, depending on the card ranking you get your pick of treasure or leave junk for others.
• Dixit - Also a deduction game, but more whimsical flavored, for 3 to 6 players. A 'czar' type person plays a card with some keyword/phrase, everyone else plays cards that try to evoke same keyword/phrase. People get points based on guesses of what card belonged to the czar at end of round.
• Race for the Galaxy - Build space empires from cards, get points depending on what cards your board consists of, interaction between players depends on being able to use actions taken from other players. 2-4 players.
• Can't Stop - Iddy would love this (probably not). It's a game about pushing your luck, where rolling dice you try to advance on a grid and reach the top before other players do. It's a pretty quick game. 2-4 players.
• Takenoko - Panda eats garden, gardener grows garden. Players try to direct the two and build garden to get points off garden layout, panda's eating, or gardening done. 2-4 players.

There are tons of other games, but those are some of the simpler/quicker games I can think of with online free counterparts. There's some others like Ticket to Ride on Steam as well.

Lastly, there's some virtual tabletops with modules of games, like Vassal Engine or Zun Tzu. I don't have any experience with either of these, but you can do some other games there if someone finds something they'd be interested in from their module list. I'd love to play games of Chaos in the Old World, Pandemic, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Dominion (I'll be honest, I -hate- the official online version of this game, so if the virtual tabletop is any good...), Endeavor, etc.

Okay, I think I've done enough of an info dump on board games online. =p

[Jason_Miao]

Hmm...I *think* SR also had the feature where people could leave ongoing matches and the AI would take over, or join in and take control of an AI-controlled empire.  If so, you could just have ongoing games where SR members swap in and out as schedule permits, which could be interesting in itself.  I'll check around to see how that actually works.

DoW has the interesting multiplayer feature that the player only needs the expansion with the race one wants to play.  So, if you only want to play the the brave-and-highly-killable Imperial Guard, you only need Winter Assault and don't need the main DoW game.  The flexibility of not having to make sure every client has the same expansion setup is nice if people need to get copies since they're not constrained to buy every related product.

However, IIRC, the game was setup so that multiplayer must go through gamespy, and to my knowledge, that has shut down.  I don't know if any workarounds are available.

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Found the answer to both:
SR does have drop-in/drop-out capability for multiplayer, which means that people can leave early and join late without messing up games.  When players aren't around, the AI takes over.   

http://forums.blind-mind.com/index.php?topic=2005.msg13785#msg13785

Multiplayer games are also saveable (http://forums.blind-mind.com/index.php?topic=3263.msg24917#msg24917) but honestly, seems to have much less potential for fun than just hot-swapping random Soulriders members into random empires.  It gets rid of elaborate scheduling complications - if you need to leave in an hour minutes, or you're going to be 20 minutes late, no worries; it won't hold up the game.

Since the original DOW supports LAN play, people have used Hamachi to get it working.  I read somewhere that this requires that everyone have a fast internet connection, so it doesn't lag horribly.

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/29770/direct-ip-multiplayer

[Dracos]

Does anyone else have Star Ruler?

Looked it up on Steam and it's 15, not quite sure I'm up for buying that at the moment, unless several people would want to rock.

Hmm, we'll have to experiment with DoW at some point.  might be a couple of weeks before that's ready to get proposed as something we know can work :)

Gonna suggest Bombermine for this coming week.  Folks, group behind something so we can focus on trying to get something specific going? :3  This includes SNES/Emulation stuff.  I'm down with it, just need to know what to try out and make sure works before the gameday :P