The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Grahf]

Pretty much the only part of that game I hated was the Meat Circus platforming. Lord.

[Brian]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was complaining about. :X

Spoiler: ShowHide

SAVE THE BUNNY!

[Anastasia]

Ducktales: Remastered

Finished! Short version: It's a good remake that could use a patch to fix annoying problems, including some design decisions. Still worth a look, 7/10.

It's fun, there's enjoyment to be had and lots of treasure to find. I wish there was a mode that took out the cutscenes and item-hunting from each level. I'd love to just play the game, not get stuck with a bunch of fetchquests and cutscenes. It felt like the game its own way in regards to delivering fun to the player.

Points for beating up that one fucking extortionist statue in the Amazon, though.

[Iron Dragoon]

Picked up FFXIV: A Realm Reborn during the Gathering. Been playing it for the last two days. So far I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. It's a vastly smoother game than the first iteration, the graphics are obviously tons better, and the classes are fun to play.

On the down side, apparently they removed some classes, so sadness there.

[DY]

I picked up FFXIV: ARR last week. Been having a blast playing so far. What server are you on Iddy?

[Iron Dragoon]

I picked up FFXIV: ARR last week. Been having a blast playing so far. What server are you on Iddy?

Exodus, I think.

[DY]

Ah, I'm on Siren. Which class are you playing? I've been leveling an archer, pretty fun so far.

[Iron Dragoon]

Ah, I'm on Siren. Which class are you playing? I've been leveling an archer, pretty fun so far.

Got a 15 Archer I just finished Pugilist 15 for Bard on, and an alt Marauder I'm getting to 15, then switching to Lancer for Dragoon.

[DY]

Nice, I'll probably be lvling a Dragoon for Bard. Any thoughts on crafting? It's a lot more involved than I thought it would be. Completely different set of gear and levels. It's unique but makes it harder to have your crafting profession be on the same level as your main class/job.

[Iron Dragoon]

Nice, I'll probably be lvling a Dragoon for Bard. Any thoughts on crafting? It's a lot more involved than I thought it would be. Completely different set of gear and levels. It's unique but makes it harder to have your crafting profession be on the same level as your main class/job.

Haven't delved too deep into crafting, but I sorta like that it's actively involved beyond 'run here, gather this, click button for production.' As for leveling it, the levequests have tradequests, which is what I'll be using and abusing for crafting XP.

[Dracos]

Brian and I were playing some Tales of Millia (Xillia), which had some ridiculous stuff like:

"It was probably Exodus, trying to kill me since I've been stopping them for 20 years." - 20 year old woman.  What, was she going around, levitated by the four as a five year old killing them?

Sponsor:"Okay, so they've changed the rules on us.  The last round is going to be a 1 on 1 deathmatch by the old king's rules, even though both groups in the final are okay and the current king Forbid this from happening again."

Millia: "Well, it's bait for me, so I'll go and let them take the shot so we can kill them all.  You guys spread out in the crowd and take out the inevitable snipers."

Announcer:"Welcome everyone to the arena, on one side we have a young woman with a sword.  On the other side a heavily armored dude carrying half his body weight in a giant canon *LIGHTNING BLAST* that apparently fires lightning before anyone even called start for the fight."

Elise: "Oh no, I'm a little girl being robbed and then kidnapped in plain sight of dozens of citizens and guards.  Nobody is doing anything.  Everyone continues to cheer."

Announcer: "Pay no attention to the people shoving their way through the crowd or the fact there's a kidnapping going on right in front of you.  Instead, eyes take center stage, as our 1 on 1 becomes a 1 on 3 as his two friends join up and both let loose with cannons!  Now we have 3 people wielding unreal technological superweapons right in front of us, flaunting our customs and just trying to murder someone right in front of us all."

Millia: *yawns*

Rest of the crew: We'll leave the kidnapping to the admitted Exodus member, and all join on the field.  4 on 3!  We're not even trying to react in any sensible pattern~.  *curbstomp*

[Dracos]

I beat the Ancient dragon on Infernal on Dragon's Crown.  I think I may be done with it aside from co-op fun.  I might still go take a swing at the demon king though.  Who knows?

Infernal is really just too hard for casual play.  Even at maxed level and cheating to have more skill points, its exhausting to keep up the level of focus it requires, and the various small annoyances of earlier parts become more dangerous ones here.  The bosses are excessively beefy, even at max level.  The reward balance feels off in it, where the amount that had to be struggled to get the same amount of high ranking gear is much more.  Sadly, I think if you play at non-infernal levels, you get less gear.  Maybe I'm wrong and that would just be a more fun way to play after taking out the ancient dragon of 'oh god that thing had a lot of hp'.

Part of this is that basically infernal becomes about stacking modifiers heavily.  Having level 70-99 gear is less important than having a set of gear that gives +20 percent each to damage versus that boss type and -% to damage taken.  Certainly, going into most infernal bosses without being willing and ready to use dodge heavily is a mistake too, which makes NPCs barely more than sentient meat-shields.  A set of level 99s didn't even last 1 minute against infernal ancient dragon.  The equipment part of the game already takes a long time without consciously balancing to put together suites of gear specific to various bosses (Basically a dragon and a demonic set is pretty much a must).

I kind of wish in game progress and the difficulty level weren't so tied together.  Labryinth of chaos has to be done on infernal with level 90+ chars to get to floor 7.  Two sets of prayers are only unlocked on beating the higher difficulties.  XP gains and level cap basically prevent progress after a bit.  I'd be down on just leveling up the monsters and continuing at the earlier levels of difficulty if that was an available option, but instead the option is: "Stop unlocking things, getting the best gear" or "Deal with the fact that certain enemies are now mini-boss fights able to do 700 damage trivially by themselves."

[Dracos]

Hmm, had a crazy co-op tales run tonight.  We ground the Xagat floodplains into a muddy mess, skipping basically a full 10ish pieces of armor and weapons forward.  Everyone has their best armor possible and are really close on weapons.

[Jason_Miao]

I've played Hawken for an evening a week for the past two weeks, mainly since I'd recently switched computers and haven't gotten around to installing UT3 so a group of us who used to LAN regularly have been playing Hawken so that I could still join in.

I could go in depth, but I think the following sums it up: "Non-pay-to-win Free-to-play No-Ammo-Count Mech-skinned CoD.  With jump jets."  Not a bad game, and the fact that I used my unupgraded starter mech to tear through a decent number of mechs that are usually unlocked at high XP levels on my second day of playing and second hour of game time implies that money+playing-since-closed-beta doesn't equal domination, as it does in other F2P games.

I still lean on the Battletech side of the scale, so it's not really the mech game I was looking for (although still fun).  But if anyone here prefers one-big-hit-box, less-think-more-dakka, and mechs, this might be your game.

[Dracos]

Beat Tales of Xillia last night.

Got a terrible grade shop it does.