🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2/1/2017 7:44 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> * Star Wars The Old Republic (new)
> So I hereby name Star Wars The Old Republic the best MMORPG I've ever
> played.
>
> Which, grandiose as it sounds is nonetheless damning it with faint
> praise, because in the end SW:TOR is still an MMORPG, and I've yet to
> find one that's ever been worth the price of admission (well, maybe
> the late and lamented Ultima Online, and only because it was so novel
> at the time). Of course, I also say this as somebody who is far more
> interested in a strong single-player game than somebody who has much
> interest in a multiplayer game, which is a facet most MMORPGs sadly
> lack. SW:TOR, however, has a surprisingly strong single-player
> component... for an MMORPG.

SW:TOR I'd rate a bit above average, but not anywhere near best.

> Although the game lacks in traditional methods of grind, it does find
> another way of artificially padding out the game's length: it couples
> its huge maps with an extremely slow movement rate. 95% of my time was
> spent walking slowly from one quest point to the next, something not
> helped by the tremendous number of monsters scattered across the level
> (the game does have quick travel points, but they are too far apart to
> make much difference) . Traversing the levels was tedious and boring.
> Had the game cut its maps down to 1/4 the size I would have enjoyed
> the experience far more.

Of the couple months I played (non-consecutively), this is why I almost 
immediately subbed, as you can traverse about 2x as fast.

> The game also featured guilds, crafting, strongholds and all the usual
> MMORPG nonsense.

The crafting nonsense is pretty much what killed it for me.  Well, two 
other reasons:  I liked playing sith better, they seemed to have a far 
better story but I found my mood actually darkening and becoming 
irritable.  That and the usual 'can't log off right now/have to be on at 
this time.' stuff, I don't want a game telling me when I have to/can 
play (pretty much same reason I stopped with SW:HotG).

 > These are all available to F2P players, although the
> best parts of those features are reserved to paying customers. The
> only one I found marginally interesting were the "Space Missions",
> which were an extremely simplistic space-shooter that nonetheless
> offered a fun alternative to the usual on-foot questing; alas,
> non-paying customers like myself were limited to only three battles
> per week. It still wasn't enough to make me want to shell out any
> cash. Actually, none of the premium features seemed worth the price of
> admission; none of them really added or improved the core gameplay,
> they just made them slightly less annoying.

The solo space missions are pretty nice, the main reason I keep thinking 
of going back.  There's also two side PVP space missions at higher level 
too, but I found those a bit confusing and not fun.

> Still, I did stay with the game for a full month, even though it was
> sometimes only by sheer strength of will that I returned. That's more
> time than I ever spent with World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars, or D&D
> Online, or Conan, or Elder Scrolls or any of the other MMORPGs. That
> might be partly due to the fact that it was a Star Wars game, but as
> much because it was the most single-player friendly MMORPG I've
> played, so kudos to Bioware for their effort. It still isn't enough to
> make me want to keep playing, much less pay for the damn thing.
>

Er what?  No CoX?  Well, yeah, none of those other ones were terribly 
good in my opinion either, but then MMO...  EQ in the olden days used to 
be pretty amazing too, but that age is long gone, as is the opportunity 
to try CoX.

Now to what I played:

---------------------------

* Dark Souls II (new, PC):  I read a lot of reviews that said if you had 
played DS there was no reason to play II, but it's been a couple years, 
and the hankering was still there.  And it was on sale on Steam.  I've 
been playing it non-stop since the beginning of the month, so obviously 
it's quite playable and different enough to keep me interested.

I quickly succumbed to walkthroughs and spoilers after having a very 
difficult time with my sorcerer with the first areas and boss and not 
finding any more sorceries than the one I started with... at which 
point, I found that wasn't the first boss, but more like the fourth, and 
that the covenant I'd joined was for people who wanted the game to be 
more challenging and made all the mobs about 2x as hard.  I started up 
two more characters - a quality (physical) and a paladin 
(heavy/str/faith) and decided to switch between them every time I lost 
my souls.  My str/faith is doing best so far, is farthest in the game 
and highest level, oddly I only use the healing spells (don't really 
need much faith), and don't even use a lightning (faith) weapon, as a 
straight str one does more damage.

Even with all the spoilers, there's a lot of questionable information 
out there, and frequently am finding out things I could've/should've 
done differently, that may have messed me up, and followed builds and 
weapon upgrades that seem far from optimal at the point in the game I'm 
at.

I'm also finding there's far more people playing this game still than I 
would've thought, and quite a lot more than there was when I played DS a 
couple years ago.  I like to help people (as you help them so you help 
yourself) and put down my summon sign often, and frequently get 
summoned.  Unfortunately the opposite doesn't seem to be true, and when 
looking for help rarely find it except for from the NPC summons.  Also 
the Bell area for PVP is extremely active... I was just trying to get 
through it to get the bosses, but even though it's extremely short to 
get to the bosses I was getting killed almost every time by invaders.

---------------------------

* Disney Infinity (2.0?) (Xbox 360, new):  Got this for my son, I 
haven't played it much yet, but had to a bit to get it set up for him 
(downloading patches is a pain on the Xbox as I have to be logged in, 
the children can't dl patches).  I ended up playing it more than him so 
far.  Not all that much, maybe 4 hours total.  I'd rather be playing DS, 
but give the kid a chance to play some of the Lego games I have on my 
PC.  It think it's a bit too advanced for him yet too, it has too many 
text bubbles, and he's not a good reader yet.  The set we got was Star 
Wars with Anakin & Ashoka, and I like SW, so there's that too.  I did 
one of the races, and found that a bit uninspired though, it's just a 
time trial, you aren't racing against anyone, you have to 'drift' to 
fill your turbo, and drifting consists of holding both buttons down and 
not having much control of your vehicle - mostly just drifting in the 
same direction you were going.  It took me about 7 tries to get through 
the time trial, and that seems to be all there is to raceing...

---------------------------

* Android:  I'm just going to lump this all in here, I'm still looking 
for something to do on my walks, and still been very bad about taking 
them.  I picked up Talisman as I like the board game, and it's a 
faithful computer version, but it's very poorly optimized on the phone, 
and runs like a slide show.  Waiting for the AI opponents is also a 
major bore because of that.  Star Wars Force Arena - billed as a turn 
based game, but seems more real time 3rd party view, not what I was 
looking for.  Star Traders RPG, seems a bit like the old elite, but I've 
just done a quest or two so far and haven't got in any battles to see 
how it goes yet.

- Justisaur