I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

[Badfinger]

Diablo's a really good game.

 

Who wants to play Diablo this weekend, everyone?

[eot]

I really want to do an 8-player hardcore Normal-Hell playthrough like the old days (if you die you're out). Hard to get people together though and I suppose most of you are NA.

[Twig]

I wouldn't play D2 because that interface ugh and I wouldn't play D3 because I don't want to buy the expansion and I wouldn't play D1 because I don't have it.

 

so what i'm sayin' is not me sry ):

[Gaizokubanou]

Yeah I'm NA Eastern time zone

 

 

I wouldn't play D2 because that interface ugh and I wouldn't play D3 because I don't want to buy the expansion and I wouldn't play D1 because I don't have it.

 

so what i'm sayin' is not me sry ):

 

Gah I would have bought you one if I wasn't such a poor fucktard right now : /

 

Expansion was really good until I let my near gambling addiction level addiction drive me insane.

[Badfinger]

The expansion was very good. Great, even. I'm not saying you should spend the money, I'm saying it's worth the money I spent and even justified the money I spent on the original game.

[Trip Hazard]

We should all play Path of Exile instead, as we've all got it and it's good

[Twig]

I don't like Path of Exile at all. It is visually unattractive and the skill graph is dumb as heck.

 

Also I know the expansion is good. Also every time I see people playing it I'm like man I want to play this. But I know realistically I'll only play hardcore and then I'll stop after a couple characters die and then I'll be out. I'm not the normal consumer for this kind of game.

[Badfinger]

Part of me would agree objectively that PoE is "good" and part of me wants to argue about it. When I wanted to Diable and didn't want to spend any money I tried it, and I bounced off of it pretty hard. The skill thingie makes my eyes cross.

[Dewar]

We should all play Path of Exile instead, as we've all got it and it's good

 

I never made it out of the first zone in that. I'm not sure why.

[Jutranjo]

Path of Exile's pretty great! We could do a group of up to 6 people in it.

[eot]

I wouldn't play D2 because that interface ugh and I wouldn't play D3 because I don't want to buy the expansion and I wouldn't play D1 because I don't have it.

 

so what i'm sayin' is not me sry ):

The interface? I think it's quite similar to modern games in the genre, except that there's a bit more inventory management and you can only have two active skills. I don't find the latter to be a big problem though, kinda like it actually. It means they don't have to introduce a ton of skills with cooldowns.

Oh man, just visualising the game in my head makes me want to go play it. I did two playthroughs last year and it was a ton of fun. The thing that bothers me with the game now though is that BNet is a really bad experience if you're playing solo, because they put in lots of anti-botting stuff that just hurts regular players. On the other hand, playing offline it's really hard to not cheat. I don't have time to farm for runes for example, at the same time duping them ruins the fun.

[Twig]

Yes, I do not like the interface. It is old and awkward to worm through for anyone who doesn't immediately know where everything is because they've been playing for centuries.

 

That's not even getting into how ugly the game is in general!

[eot]

NUMPAD_6

!Did that go over your head?

That was really lame.

Fair enough, I don't have any perspective on the game anymore. I do like the way it looks though. And that music

[Twig]

The music is really good!

 

The core gameplay loop is solid, but I jsut can't be bothered to put up with the stuff I don't like anymore.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I eventually gave up and skimmed the trash mob discussion, but it's weird that people are mostly looking at the actual enemies rather than the game mechanics (not genre) as the problem. If the gameplay isn't intrinsically engaging, then you'll probably get trash mobs because there's no reason to do the fights apart from the extrinsic reward of loot, experience etc.

 

Old Final Fantasy games are the perfect example of this, as Twig and others have pointed out. But the Mario RPG games are a good counter point, where the timing of button presses is important for fights. You can reduce the damage you take by reading enemy tells and pressing buttons at the right times, likewise you can increase your damage with the same. Even on trivial weak fights, it can both give you the satisfaction of performing well and is important so you don't get worn down before the important fights.

 

Likewise if an FPS is full of bullet sponges and no headshot mechanic, you absolutely have trash mobs. The little skill required to aim at the creature is minimal and negligible (compared to other FPS games at least) so you're not really going to care about them and you're just fighting trash.

 

Also I don't normally use the word trash or mob at all so this was a weird post. If you want to read it in my native tongue, replace trash with rubbish and mob with monster.

[Mawd]

Personally I'd consider a game like Bullet  Storm to consist mainly of shooting through trash that sometimes win by attrition or environmental dynamics.. Then again years of mostly playing multiplayer fps has coloured my vision on what makes for challenging enemies in fps.

 

In other news I'm enjoying the new 2.0 expansion to Path of Exile a whole lot. Which is funny since its fairly easy to build yourself to a point that practically any enemy bar some (usually specific to your build's weakness) is trash.

But that progression does take some to a whole bunch of hours invested to get to that point.

[JonCole]

Bulletstorm is a perfect example (for me) of mechanics trumping the "trash mob" concept in the way that SMB suggests, because the rhythmic combo system really makes every encounter an interesting puzzle to solve. It's not about the challenge of shooting, it's about the challenge of chaining the combos and moving through the environment like you would in a game like Bayonetta or DMC.

[Mawd]

While I probably don't remember enough of Bulletstorm's enemy variants to argue against equivocating its personal score/combo system to DMC or Bayonetta style games I think that while DMC might have trashy marionettes it also throws in mobs that significantly force you to alter your positioning and tactics either because of an aoe, overshield, or some kind of hit and run ability. 

In all three games the player chases a personal score using tactics that they have chosen but aren't there many more sources of combo interrupts generated by the mechanics in DMC and Bayonetta than Bulletstorm? Well even as I type that I think this opinion is likely inaccurate but does represent my feelings at this time at least.

 

Anyway as I said earlier I'll happily play games that involve wading through trash. Of games that chase skill ranks like Heavenly Sword, God of War, DMC, etc. some of my favourite moments still involve the arenas where your only job is to kill as many 'basic' mobs as cool and as fast as you can.

 

As for rpgs where you walk into a linen closet and come across two skeletons that have half a broom and four copper between them I'm rather mercurial as to whether I'll be frustrated or if I'll invent a backstory about two desperate people who hid and died in a linen closet.

The 'trash' I've been most annoyed with lately are the packs of wolves or dogs I stumble into every few yards in The Witcher 3

[Jutranjo]

Path of Exile's endgame is making your character kill trash as fast as possible with the least risk. But you can still roll up areas via the map system that will murder you. The trash wins semi often but it wins by one shotting you. 

 

The 2.0 release is pretty great, they finally got rid of desync. And I'm fighting rooster demons in a fighting arena now!

 

If anyone wants to add me, my character's name is CinfridReaver.

[Trip Hazard]

Will do! I only have a level ~30 Witch 'cos I've not played in a while, but with the expansion just having come out, I really want to get back into it.

 

I've mainly prioritised Ice magic and I think my Witch is fairly formidable, but she probably isn't. Good thing it's almost impossible to make a useless build for playing through Normal mode, huh?

[Badfinger]

Where did this Rocket League game come from? I'd never heard of it, and now it feels like it's all over the place.

[Brett E]

I didn't hear anything about it before it came out but I think it being on PS Plus was probably a smart move, that gave it a certain amount of guaranteed publicity and it seems to have gained momentum.

[Mawd]

I think I might be in love with Dirty Bomb.

[Griddlelol]

Where did this Rocket League game come from? I'd never heard of it, and now it feels like it's all over the place.

 

It's weirdly fun. I'm awful at it, but it's a fantastic game to play for 20 minutes or so. PS+ really helped it gain momentum. 

[Azniac]

Where did this Rocket League game come from? I'd never heard of it, and now it feels like it's all over the place.

 

I came here to see if anyone was talking about this. I picked it up last night on Steam. I'm not particularly great at it, but it's been a blast so far. I wouldn't think a game like this would be something I was into, but apparently it is.