The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Brian]

Instead of getting into that with you, I'm now trying to remember what other games had childhood arcs.

[Brian]

Playing Deponia.  It's an old-school point-and-click adventure game with really large characters, modern dialog, and so forth.

The main problem I have with it is that everyone -- absolutely everyone -- treats the protagonist like crap.  They give him a hard time about everything, he's got no respect, no one trusts him, and most people aren't willing to help him out.

Also, he deserves all of that.  He's a total loser, basically starting the game by trashing his ex-girlfriend's house (where he effectively crashes on the couch, because he's too lazy to work), being mocked by his 'friend', and then becoming a huge buttmonkey/pratfall.

I guess I'm supposed to be amused at his suffering, but it's really hard to get into a game when the main character is so utterly un-likable.

[Grahf]

Bought Dead or Alive 5 ... what. Don't look at me like that, I actually like it as a fighting game!

Anyways, the system is much, much different from the last one I played, which was three. Not so much so to be unrecognizable, but still quite jarring nonetheless.

Story is roughly as incoherent as ever though....

[Kt3]

Instead of getting into that with you, I'm now trying to remember what other games had childhood arcs.

In addition to what was said already?  Breath of Fire 2, um... wow, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

[Brian]

I dunno.  It's hard to count BoF2 when you compare it to the much more extensive arc of BoF3.  But I'm not really pulling out any other examples, either.

[Kt3]

Maybe, just maybe you could count Final Fantasy Tactics?  Although it's less "childhood" and more late teenage years.  But in a way it kind of fits.  It's an arc about a formative time in life where an unfortunate event happens, that springsloads the main plot.

[Anastasia]

Sorta. I couldn't think of any other childhood arcs when I thought about it.

[Dracos]

Hum.

Been playing Borderlands 2.  Damn it's a big game.  I think the drop rate math is bad though.  Or ...at least it doesn't map with how I play?

It's been made more MMOish in the drop math.  Most of the legendaries are actually tied to drop from specific bosses or shoot the moon odds on the jackpot (I got one, in maybe a thousand or so pulls over the game so far?)

An average playthrough of the game feels like it is going to see maybe 2-3 legendaries, total.  One of those being a quest given one.  Some lucky players may see between 4-8.  Some unlucky players may see just the quest given one.

On Borderlands 1, even if a lot of them weren't necessarily the one you wanted to use, an average playthrough saw maybe a dozen.  Before the nerfing of new haven, you could usually get 1 or 2 just opening the chests a few times in a row.  This was good because any given legendary has a small 4-8 level range of usefulness at best before the dramatically growing stats of weapons makes it vendor trash.

The math, if anything, is harsher in BL2.  Weapon level moved from being maybe 50 percent to being more like 75 percent of whether a weapon was even worth looking at.  Usually if it isn't your current high level, the answer is 'no, it isn't'.

Legendaries in BL1 could show up anywhere.  Powerful enemies, big chests, vendors, quests.

In BL2, they show up almost universally from boss drops.  These drop rates are low, and worse pretty much require quitting the game to reset the boss for another run (Well, they may refresh after a while, but for any of them near a warp/reload point, this has been the case).  How low?

I did runs of the boss in the Wildlife area that takes about 10-15 minutes to run to on saturday.  About 10 runs and no legendary drops.  Really lame.  But how bad is it really?

Last night I did Hunter Helquist runs for the Bee legendary.  Got one.  In about 100 kills of him.  I got to the point that I could kill him every 50 seconds, gaining a level and finishing up both the 'blow a guy up past his shields in 1 shot' and 'kill an unaware dude' challenges.  Was/is continuing to collect them to pass on to the multiplayer co-op games where we wouldn't want to stop and murder a mini-boss that many times.

But even so...that's just simply not good.   In borderlands 1, I just would spin up new characters all the time to do duo co-ops with people.  We would get cool weapons and things and it'd be no big thing.  Sure, I'd sometimes upgrade us at very end game, but generally it would be things we had already found.  What it seems to mean is in BL2, on average only one person will have a cool legendary to play with during their runthrough.   Instead of them being freely shared resources, it'll be an enormous 'Well, one person gets to have the cool gun' moment anytime they show up.  If they show up.

We'd do reruns of things looking for super gear in BL1, but the end result was usually a pile of cool gear options.  Now it might be...1 green.

Sure, in single player I can 'fuck you' game and have the slots generate some legendaries after enough boss kills, but I shouldn't 'want' to do so.  It's a lack that just wasn't there in the original Borderlands and I don't think it is bettered for it.

Really hoping someone manages a rebalancing odds mod.  Something like say 1 in 2 for boss fights would do wonders given how in an average run you would only fight them twice without farming.  That way I don't feel so encouraged to send items from one character to the next, or Dupe to get around the fact that the one time that item dropped might be the only time it occurs in a hundred attempts or more.

Hey, maybe they can add instanced loot too :P  Though i think that problem is only excaberated by the fact that if a blue or purple drops, there might be only 1 of them that showed up in the 3-4 hours that the group played, and only one person in the set will get it.  Yay that encourages sharing doesn't it!

[Brian]

I think MP is supposed to seriously bump up the drop quality.  I'm not certain, but maybe in the ideal 4 player game, legendary drop chance is reasonable?

[Dracos]

Well, our own experiments in that regard haven't been particularly encouraging.  It's been said that way, but I think the actual element in play is drop quantity.  Since a boss will drop more items in multiplayer, the odds are inherently better that one of them will be good.

Or at least that is the story I've heard said.  General premise folks have given is that the effect of more players hasn't been very noticiable for rare drops.

I will give the context that singleplayer, it's actually fairly common for a badass/superbadass level enemy to drop only a single green for getting killed.  Not a lot of opportunity.  I think these generally dropped more items on multiplayer.

[Anastasia]

Tales of Graces f: Up to the Seaside Cavern. I'm playing slowly, doing a lot of weapon/armor dualizing and bumping up the stampbook. The game's fun except during boss fights. So far those degenerate into attack->guard to full CC->repeat with an occasional dodge thrown in. I'm told this clears up later, but right now longer fights tend to drag. Doubly so when you have a short party. I suppose it adds a layer of tactics to battles, but at the same time I feel the enforced pauses disrupt the fast-paced flow of the battle system.

Anyway, speaking of dualizing, I'm up to a longsword+13, leather armor+11 and so on. It's a lot of effort, but heavy dualizing is providing distinct benefits. So is stamp collecting and requests. The entire game feels structured around 'do something, get some sort of reward, repeat'. Most RPGs tend to do this by the basic nature of the games, but ToGf goes all in here. Something's always improving - the Eleth Mixer, your level, your weapons/armor, your stamp card, your title level or a new title showing up and items coming out of your Mixer. This game strikes me as a plot wrapped around constantly distracting you with other things to do. It would seem like a shame to play it at anything but a crawl, doing everything you can as far as you can.

Gonna rack up over 100 hours on this, calling it now.

[Brian]

The game's fun except during boss fights. So far those degenerate into attack->guard to full CC->repeat with an occasional dodge thrown in. I'm told this clears up later, but right now longer fights tend to drag.

Nnnnnnnot really, in my experience.  They just get more brutal.  The fights are a bit more fun if you turn down the difficulty for the bosses, because then you can play around a bit more.

Anyway, speaking of dualizing, I'm up to a longsword+13, leather armor+11 and so on.

Those cap at 99.  It starts to get prohibitively expensive after a while, though.  At some point you will find special materials that can be dualized with weapons to turn them into different weapons.  Leveling the base weapons gives you an enhanced benefit, because the new weapon doesn't inherit the full weapon's upgrade cost.

It's a lot of effort, but heavy dualizing is providing distinct benefits.

That's about 40% of the game.

So is stamp collecting and requests.

And that's another 40%.

Gonna rack up over 100 hours on this, calling it now.

I think Drac and I got around ... 140ish?  Maybe more?  Probably around 40% of that time seriously was in dualizing menus.

[Dracos]

I still would say you're probably doing something a bit wrong if you're finding significant pauses in your activity in battle.  It could be you're still early but:

If you block at the right time for enemies, you get a big boost in CC.  Same with Dodging.  Since dodge countering tends to produce more CC than it costs, as well as give you an unblocked opening for attacking, this usually is where the offense pauses briefly.  The guard can also be part of an attack combination by charging your next attack.  I dunno, maybe it's my memory of later with lots of CC up abilities.

I'll agree with not taking the bosses at super high difficulty.  They're generally a ridiculous spike and on chaos, sometimes they just simply cast way too fast.

[Grahf]

Because I figured it was time to tackle the backlog on a thing that I'm actually compelled to play a little more often I started Fallout 3 yesterday.

After some initial meandering around, encounters with various things that I probably shouldn't be fighting judging by how fast they murder my face right off I seem to have finally found a bit of a groove I've settled into. I think that by complete accident I completed the Operation Anchorage DLC, so now I'm just a ninja. With an electric sword.

I think this'll work out alright, unless you're anyone I want to murder, then it won't work out alright at all.

[Brian]

If you finished anchorage, you'll also have power armor.  The stuff you get from the DLC room is bugged/broken, incidentally, and never runs out of durability.  So ... you won't need to replace your armor.  Ever. :p

I finished the FO3 GotY edition about a year ago; except for the alien abduction bit, it was great!