10
votes
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
This past weekend was LAN with the guys with the sole goal of playing Lost Ark. After a little hiccup with their release time getting pushed back 4 hours and then it taking another hour or so for the servers to actually become available, we got in. Zero complaints for a free game considering how badly launches go for other games.
Overall, it's a Wow world with Diablo 3 graphics and mobile game overabundance of things to do. Gameplay is enjoyable, classes actually feel different from one another, mobs come in strength and quantity enough to not feel like they're unnecessarily slowing progress or that they're too easy. Cooldowns are manageable without being excessive, don't-stand-in-the-fire mechanics are both legitimate and generally have enough warning that it balances between being caught in it and taking damage and able to avoid it. Minibosses take a bit of forethought to defeat sometimes, area bosses are tough and require teamwork/coordination with other people in the area. Story mission bosses feel a bit too easy. We all have three characters in the 30-ish level range, so not in endgame yet, not sure what the bosses there will be like.
The side missions are well done with all that you pick up in one area needing to be completed in another area (instead of WoW's all over the map style) and keep you progressing well and seeing most of each area without needing to explore it on your own just to see what's there. Long/annoying gopher missions are kept to a minimum. The story isn't terrible.
Random thoughts:
I have been binging Lost Ark with friends too. 56h played already. :P
Bard and Paladin are the support classes. Both have party healing. Paladin has buffs, Bard has crowd-control.
Gunlance, Scrapper, Paladin, and Artillerist (the class I'm playing) are the tankiest classes. During bossfights (even all the Guardian Raid ones so far) I usually just go into my Turret mode (which is completely immobile). It's the laziest class I have played in an MMO in a long time. Everyone else is jumping around like crazy trying to avoid and deal damage, but I just sit in my turret for the whole fight firing away, and even manage to get MVP fairly regularly too. :)
It really is. I have the game loaded onto my Gen 3 NVME SSD and it's still takes forever.
Agree about the story being good. But IMO the English voice-acting is pretty terrible overall. I downloaded the Korean VO Pack as soon as it was available, and it's much much much better.
That's not really a "mobile game" thing, since "largely unexplained, unintuitive, and unnecessarily complicated" with "tons of currencies you need to exchange" sums up Japanese/Korean MMORPGs as a whole, in my experience. I have spent almost as much time researching all the in-game systems as actually playing the game so far. But once you get a handle on all the systems, it's actually not so bad IMO. If you need any help figuring things out, feel free to ask, as I think I've got a pretty decent handle on most of them now.
p.s. If you want to get to endgame ASAP, once you reach level 50, follow this guide, which will get you into the Rohendel zone (where I just got to) as efficiently as possible to get your tier-2 armor, and unlock the Chaos Dungeons.
Nerd. Steam says I'm at 28 hours, feels like it should be more than that.
Knew they had a couple of moves that were supporter roles (the fishing friend is a Bard), but didn't know there was actual healing involved. Might take a look at running a Paladin, but I meant I'd prefer a dedicated healer/support class, à la my WoW Priest back in the day.
I started with a Gunslinger and not sure if I'll continue with the class. Cooldowns are long and constantly swapping guns when waiting on cooldowns to finish gets a bit annoying. LAN weekend was at one of the guys' house instead of mine this time and so I took my portable setup instead of bringing all my normal gear (I'd have to undo all my cable management under my desk). So my backup keyboard was present instead of my daily driver. Now that I'm back home I'll give the class another shot (pun intended) as I can program macros into this keyboard for the constant switching. Current highest level character is a Berserker and who I'm referring to as being a bit squishy for a melee toon. Last one is a Shadowhunter, but haven't played that one enough to have too much of an opinion.
One of the guy's picked an Artillerist as his second character to start and seems to like it. It was on my list to try, but didn't want to do so during the LAN so there'd be some variety. He doesn't seem to be using the turret mode all that often, but that's unsurprising for him. I'm sure I'll give the class a try soon; his main complaint was another friend's chosen class had a ton of push mechanics in their moveset and kept pushing the mobs out of the Artillerist's range.
I've just got it on a cheap Crucial SSD I use for games, everyone else in my friend group has it on their NVME drives, we've seen no difference in load times. So it's clear the storage medium isn't the bottleneck.
Does it change the voices of the random NPCs as well? That's my main in-town annoyance, just constant noise from background models that shouldn't be heard. That and alt-tabbing to google one of the million different "largely unexplained, unintuitive, and unnecessarily complicated" items while not realizing I parked my character next to an NPC that grunts and groans every 3 seconds.
Ah, my experience with them has mostly been mobile games (that are usually uninstalled within an hour of playing) as there have been very few MMORPGs as a whole to get my attention, let alone Asian ones.
Noted. I'll do so if I continue playing and the the friend that does the deep dive, min-maxing, build research can't help with whatever "What's the easiest way for me to do XYZ so I can get back to playing the damn game instead of reading how to play the damn game?" question I have.
I prefer the trinity too, with dedicated healer/support classes, but that's exceedingly rare in Action RPGs so it's understandable why it's not in this game.
Hah. I did the exact same thing. In the beta I started with a Gunslinger but it was way too annoying juggling between the different weapons, all their skill cooldowns, and dodging like crazy at the same time. Artillerist is sooooo much simpler. IMO it's only disadvantage is a lack of mobility skills, so my friends can move a hell of a lot faster through dungeons than I can even though I kill the enemies and bosses way faster than most of them.
My buddy who I have been leveling with the entire time had a whole bunch of push abilities too, but I made him switch his spec because it was driving me crazy having everything pushed out range right before my long cooldown, huge damage nukes finally landed. :P
Yes, it does. That's a major reason why I prefer the Korean VO. No more "Remember to activate your triport" every single time you port to Luterra Castle. The random characters still say the same things in Korean, but since I can't understand Korean it makes that repeated dialogue way more tolerable for some reason. :P
My roster :)
I too give my toons similar/derivative names. I'm using the same character select background as well. Does your first toon fall asleep when sitting there? My Gunslinger does.
I'm not nearly as far along as you. Only have 4 so far and only one has hit 50 (berserker), haven't really touched my Gunslinger at all since the first weekend. I started to, but just got annoyed at the mechanics while trying to write the keyboard macros to not be annoyed at the mechanics of the class and stopped. I might just move whatever in her inventory that can be put into roster storage and delete her. Although, I don't know if that moves all the other characters to the left or just opens the slot to make a new one there. I modeled my Gunslinger in that slot after my wife and that character falling asleep on that background in that slot just fits my cat nap loving wife perfectly.
Did you have trouble getting your gear level that high? My buddy that is the most proficient at these games (who I usually tag along with and ask the questions I don't want to research myself) is currently grinding after hitting a wall until he can get above ilvl 600.
I take it you're liking the game? Any complaints?
I've seen a number of people complain about story/sidequests/leveling, but I can't say I share the sentiment. Sure, the back and forth side quests when the two NPCs are 6 feet from one another is annoying, but the dialogue frequently explains why (not that it's necessarily a good reason). However, the little touches of the real world in the game have been fun to notice (since I don't just spam G). Like the port being destroyed had one of the merchant NPCs say something along the lines of needing to up security because of refugees. Glaciers melting due to pollution. Saved some people from a slave auction. And so on.
I forget the name, whatever the weekly dungeon thing is that gives you gear, is a bit annoying since I went in with a PUG and wiped and can't try again. So I guess I'll just do my dailies on the lvl 50 toon and level the other characters in the meantime.
Lol. And yes, unless I have him selected he doses off too. :P
I'm pretty sure it just opens up that slot and keeps everyone else's positions. But even if it does move everyone over one spot, or you don't like your character order, you can change that by clicking "swap spots" in the top right of the char select screen.
Not really. Following the guide I linked in the first comment, it has you island hopping for shit tons of tier 1 mats, so getting to 600 was pretty quick, with no grinding dailys required. YMMV though, since multiple failures on honing rolls can really take their toll on your mats supply. And once you get to 600, you can quickly get your 820 tier 2 armor by following the main story quest. Honing from 820 to 1100 (the next tier) is a bit of a slog though, since tier 2 mats are a lot harder to come by, and so failure rolls get incredibly painful at that point.
Yeah, I am actually surprised how much I am enjoying it, especially since ARPGs are typically not my favorite type (I prefer turn-based tactical ones).
So far, most of my complaints are pretty minor ones. E.g. I also haven't been skipping dialogue or cutscenes on my main char, but I wish there was a setting to automatically skip text dialogue like you can set for cutscenes, since my G key finger genuinely gets pretty sore after a few hours of playing my alts (who I do skip dialogue for).
And my only major complaints are all UI related. E.g. Being unable to move/scale/hide all of the UI elements really really sucks... especially since the loot drop info popup is in the absolute worst possible spot, completely covering up the holding spells meter, which results in me constantly failing the perfect spell release timing.
Edit: Latest KOR patch has update on loot drop notifications. Thank the lord. I hope it makes its way to English version soon.
Yeah, PUGs are generally pretty rough in most MMOs but in this one its especially bad since phoenix feathers are shared amongst the group, have very limited uses per run, and there are plenty of huge damage and even insta-death mechanics in many of the Guardian raids and Abyssal dungeons... so one shitty player who doesn't know the mechanics ahead of time (or doesn't read party chat for advice) can fuck it up for the entire team by dying multiple times and using up all the feathers. Thankfully I have a solid group that I can run them with though, so haven't had to deal with that.
p.s. If you want to quickly get multiple toons to lvl 50, look up the "knowledge transfer" mechanic, which you can do at your stronghold. That's how I got my entire roster to 50 so damn fast.
Yeah, I tested this last night on a different server just making characters and it just opens up the slot and you can move them around at will. So she's set for deletion (takes 24 hours to go through in case you change your mind and they have to leave the guild). I started to make a sorceress to replace her, but the ears... what the heck?
I'll send that guide to him if he's still slogging. I'm not in any rush to get to endgame, so I checked it out when you sent it, but no interest in following it just yet. My buddy has mentioned the honing failures being a pain, I can imagine as I've only just started honing my first weekly gear (ilvl 350 at the moment) and it's all successes at that point to give you a false sense of hope. The constant failures faceting is a pain though.
Same here, I'm typically a single player game or turn based tactical since that was cemented in my early days with tabletop Battletech. Haven't played a game like this since WoW and even that was, hell... a decade ago? We did Diablo 3 for awhile, but it was a disappointment compared to D2. Since then the friend group has been mostly FPS games to fill the multiplayer gap.
Yeah, same here with skipping dialogue on alts/missions I've already done. Keyboard macros help here, I have a macro key that spams G every quarter second until I release it. Saw someone mention remapping the extra buttons on their mouse as well, so I've done the same for the many extra buttons on my trackball. Mount, map, escape key, escape song, and potion all mapped on there now.
Oy! If I had more hold/timing moves on my main I'm sure that'd be a problem I'd have noticed by now as well. Human ears for the mage! Will wait for that patch before making the sorceress now so she doesn't look like some sexualized female Dobby.
I was curious how you had multiple characters with the exact same ilvl gear, guess that explains it. I don't think I even have 600 gold at the moment, but I've noticed it being more available now that I have island/daily quests access. Noted in case I want to get a character straight to the endgame. Why, did you elect to use the knowledge transfer instead of powerpasses?
https://nwtnni.github.io/facet/ + Instructions :)
Well, shit. I have a macro keyboard, and have been using it for my gunslinger (and Relic hunting)... but my dumbass never thought to use it for spamming the g key too. :P
I probably should have been clearer. I used 2 power passes, which I got from my Silver Founders Pack, then I knowledge transferred the rest. The "Powerpass available" thing on my main char is actually a bug, since it always shows that now even though I have used all my power passes.
p.s. update on the roster :)
Well look at you with your fancy schmancy tools being all helpful and junk! Thanks!
Which keyboard do you have? I have a Logitech G910 that I got for free when the RGB on my G810, that I bought used, started to go on the fritz and turned out to still be under warranty, but discontinued. So they sent me a G910 to replace it. I was not disappointed.
The powerpasses are free to anyone, not part of the founders pack, just FYI. So I'll be getting those too! Which is fine, because I won't use it on the mid-30s Artillerist and Shadowhunter since there's no point and will have three slots left. One for the post-ear-update mage, one for Paladin, and I can just spend gold on whatever I fill the last slot with.
Look at you with your progression! I logged in long enough yesterday to get the login box and do the character delete song and dance. Did it take any real effort to go from 1033 to 1036 on your main? Not sure how steep the ilvl curve gets up there since it's smooth sailing from 302-600 (with the guide).
I have an ancient Microsoft Sidewinder X6 with macro keys, which I use as my main keyboard for most games. But I primarily use my hardware programmable, one-handed, 48-key, Koolertron mechanical keyboad for MMOs and other macro heavy games.
Oh, that's cool! For some reason I assumed it was from the pack.
I haven't been focusing much on my main the last few days, since I am trying to get all my alts to 460 so they can get into Rohindel. But yes, sadly it takes a fair bit of grinding at this honing level, especially since I have exhausted all the quests that reward tier 2 mats, so I have to rely entirely on gaurdian/chaos dailys, and after those are done grind for 'chaos shards' + 'guild bloodstones' to exchange with the weekly reset merchants to get mats. And it certainly doesn't help that for even one roll at >1000 it takes a ton of mats, so even though it's still 60-70% chance to succeed, when that 30-40% failure happens it really really stings. I managed to get from 1036 to 1043 today, after about 2 hours grinding, but now I need to wait until the weekly chaos shard exchange to reset at 5am today before I can get any higher.
You really are just the best kind of nerd. Tell me you've got custom keycaps too.
I remember the X6, solid choice. I require my keyboards to have a physical knob or wheel for volume control, so I stuck with an old deep key Dell for the longest time before picking up the G810 for cheap as it has Logitech's version of the mechanical keys I prefer (brown) and just used AutoHotkey to program macros. Just use Logitech's pretty solid software and the programmable keys on the G910 now. I do have a Logitech G13 sitting on a shelf if I find a game worth sitting down and programming all they keys on it. We'll find out if Lost Ark is that game as time passes and since it uses the same software as my keyboard I can just drag and drop the macros from the saved list to the G13 when the time comes. Probably program spamming G to one of the directions on the control stick.
...thinking about it, I might dust off the G13 and put in the time now so I'm ready for a longer test drive with it over the weekend. Damn you cfabbro.
I see we're both nerds when it comes to keyboards. :P And speaking of which, I also have another you might find interetesting... a buckling-spring Unicomp PC 122, which I use for typing.
Indeed, I do. They're nothing fancy though, just a few with different colours to help me distinguish the keys.
Heh, you're welcome! ;)
I would love to get me one of those G13's... too bad they don't make them anymore. :( I was tempted to buy the Redragon clone to give it a try, but I have had bad experiences with Redragon in the past. I bought a 60% from them on a whim a few years ago, and it was absolutely terrible. The switches started failing after a few months, which is actually what prompted me to get the Unicomp.
Oooohhh, if you're going to post pornography, at least mark it NSFW. A coworker friend, now just friend I suppose since I'm still in touch and don't work there any longer, had one of those (and it's IBM OG counterpart) and it was so nice. He had an in with the owner, so got the company to buy it (and took it home with him when we were all laid off), by the time we became acquainted the company was under a private equity firm (try not to puke), the owner was out of a job, and no such luxuries would be provided. He also had an extensive calculator collection.
Still a solid customization choice. I wasn't expecting anything unsuable/crazy (even though that image is clearly just a showpiece). I plan/hope to pick up some caps for my keyboard at some point, but Romer-G caps are a little harder to come by.
I've never looked around, but I've heard of people that refurbish them. There are also a couple of others out there like the Razer mentioned in the article. I'm with you on avoiding Redragon (is it Red Dragon or Re-Dragon like they're doing a redo of a dragon). My wife bought one of their keyboards and she uses it significantly less than I use any of those I own and it's already giving her trouble.
Edit: Giggle. - Didn't realize weeklies reset on Thursdays, makes sense, so successfully completed the two abyssals with friends last night, then honed everything to +6 for that result. I really need to continue the story as I don't even have my ultimate/awakening yet.
Another useful link for you (type name in top right then click + to add new char). :)
I am also in the process of making my own custom activity tracker using google sheets, since I think I can do better than most of the others out there, but it's not ready for public release yet since I still have a bunch more features to add and scripting to do. :P
Noice, but I do like yours better.
This game would greatly benefit from a WoW Armory-style site and associated API. Or, you know, a clean interface that could just display the data/tasks clearly so I can get them out of the way and get back to actually playing the game.
Thanks! When I finish it I will let you know so you can make a copy for yourself.
Speaking of which, yesterday I managed to get the automatic Daily/Weekly reset scripts working so it no longer has to be manually done with those RESET buttons I had on the sheet. And this morning I got the Work Energy and (Stronghold) Action Energy scripts working, so those values update every 10 minutes along with the game. The timing isn't perfect, since the resets have been happening at ~5:19am instead of 5:00am when the game does resets, and the energy is off by a few minutes as well, but they're all accurate enough to still be useful for keeping tabs on everything without having to log into the game.
I still have a fair amount of work to do adding in all the Adventure Tome and Collectables data, though thankfully that's relatively easy albeit tedious work, and they won't require any scripting. The Event Calendar is what scares me most though, since there is no API and I don't know how predictable it is week to week, and month to month. There are a few Russian sites that have event calendars for their version of the game though, so I'm hoping that means it is predictable enough I can figure out if there are any patterns to it.
Here's a question: Cards
Got a good guide or something that at least makes sense? I haven't seen any good explainer on the cards specifically.
I get the first tab where you equip 6 cards, those are pretty obvious.
The second tab "books", if I read correctly, just gives you some minor stat bonuses if you complete a "book". Is a "book" just all the cards in a set on the first tab or their own specific cards?
The third tab is... Leveling up the cards? So if you have equipped a full set in the first tab they have more stat bonuses? Does the rarity of the card matter? Should I delete the common/gray cards? What's the [card sign]+# mean?
Thus far I've just been right clicking on everything to add to the cards and checking from time to time to equip a new set as I get them, but yesterday I received a "Card Catalog is Full" message and looking around all I see people say is "Just buy more slots!" with no answers as to why and every "card guide" I've found is just a guide of which set bonuses whoever is writing the article or making the video thinks is best.
Yes, AFAIK, books are all cards from the sets listed in the equip tab, but while those cards only ever appear in one equipable set they can appear in multiple books. E.g. Zenri's card is in the Romanticist equipable block on the first tab, but is also in the "Romanticist" and "You, Too?" books. And yes, once you collect all the cards in a particular book you immediately get those very minor roster bonuses listed in the "Book Collection Bonus" section, even if those cards aren't currently equipped.
NO! Don't delete duplicate cards!!!!! Duplicates are the fuel you use to "Awaken" cards, which is what upgrades their equipable set effects, and the bonuses you receive from their book sets. Notice on the equipable "Set Effect Details" and "Book Collecting Bonus", it mentions "Awakening" and says what level of Awakening in those sets are required to unlock the bonuses.
As for how that works, if you go to your Enhance tab, you can see which cards you already have duplicates for. You should see a blue 3-card icon with a + and number next to it, (e.g. My +3 Un'nil). That number is how many duplicates of that card you have already added to your collection.
And if you want to Awaken that card, you simply drag it into the Enhance Card section on the right side, spend silver and Card XP Enhancement Points (more on that after), then click "Awaken". Every Awakening level (represented by the gems on the card) requires and consumes a duplicate of that card. Each card can be Awakened 5 times, and each Awakening level costs even more duplicates. E.g. Awakening a card from lvl 0 to 1 requires one duplicate, but from lvl 1 to 2 requires two duplicates.
Card XP Enhancement Points are earned from XP card drops, which are the stackable ones you may have noticed in your inventory after finishing some quests, opening chests, or running Chaos Dungeons. E.g. Soul Leaf and Eternity Essence.
As for why you should buy more slots on your enhance page, it's because the enhance page doesn't have enough slots to contain your entire collection of cards... so if you don't add more slots then you're going to have to store any dupes you get in your inventory until you do buy more slots (or you sell/trash them, which I wouldn't recommend).
I assume deleting a card from the Enhance tab deletes it from your Equip tab, but that doesn't jive either because I have Yom the Squirrel as my last card in the Enhance tab and there is no Yom in the Equip tab (at least none showed when searching), so maybe it deletes it from Books if there (where Yom is in a few Books). Books are passive and I won't be doing any Awakening on them (I see no point in a lvl 50 awakening for +0.01% damage to [insert creature type here], just not worth the effort).
Unless I'm misunderstanding, dupes don't take up space. They just stack on top of the original card, hence the 3 card icon and + number. So deleting those would just free up one slot anyway. I was asking if I should delete the common cards at the bottom of the list. or if they're needed for something in the future or if they become a higher rarity card later? Or are they just always going to be a common card? Since I'm not seeing each card take up more than one space (I have seen screenshots/video of an older version where duplicates take up more than one space), I just can't add any more cards than the 120 I already have, which means I won't be able to add them to be equipped in the first tab and won't be added to the books tab to get the passive bonuses there.
So I guess I just need to suck it up and buy another row for the Enhance tab.
Sorry, turns out that not all cards are part of equipable sets. There is no Yom in the equip tab because he is a book set only card. But AFAIK if you delete that card from your Enhance tab that will be removing it from your collection entirely, meaning you will miss out on all the books set effects that Yom is part of... of which there are 3. I haven't actually tested that though, nor am I likely to for fear of never getting that card again. :P
And sure, the book bonuses aren't worth much on their own, but they do add up by the end, especially since they apply to even your lowest level characters. I likely won't be Awakening any of them until I am done with my equipable ones first, since the equipable set bonuses and their Awakenings definitely are worth pursuing since some of them are quite potent (e.g. the Pirate set's 100% damage to lucky monsters applies to everything in Chaos Dungeons). So sure, if you want to avoid spending any blue crystals whatsoever, you can delete all the cards that aren't in equipable sets, I suppose... but why do that? It's not like the card catalogue slots are that expensive, and even entirely F2P you should have easily earned more than enough crystals by now to unlock several new rows.
p.s. Rarity of the cards doesn't seem to matter all that much AFAIK, other than making them harder to attain. The sets with more/higher rarity cards have slightly bigger bonuses, but it's not by much. And they do cost more to Awaken the rarer they are, but that's way more of a negative than positive.
Same, even for Yom the Squirrel.
Oh really? That is interesting as I have most of the Pirate set I believe.
Yeah, it's not the cost that's really the concern (it is a bit, explained next). It's a combination of there obviously being more than 120 cards to collect (rough count of the rows you unlock say there are about 500 cards) that you're expected to get and hold onto for the passive bonuses, but not providing anything remotely close to that many storage spaces. I get having to buy/craft slots in individual/roster storage because most of the things you get that take up inventory are expendable at some point, but the cards are specifically meant not to go away. Blue crystals converted from 'Royal Crystals' are about $0.02 each, assuming the cost of the card storage rows don't increase for each row, they'll cost 30 crystals/$0.60 each to unlock and there are 39-40 (not sure if I miscounted) so it's $24 to unlock all the slots to be able to hold all the cards, which you're meant to do.
I have 500 crystals at present, so I can open slots and while I am by no means a 'whale', I have no problem spending real money on a F2P game (mostly waiting for a skin that'll make my Zerk look slutty or as my wife says 'a submissive and breed-able male'), it's just a rub for something obviously an essential part of the game to be behind a paywall and leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Haven't played enough yet to see where else the crystals are going to be practically, if not explicitly, required to progress so I'm a bit cautious to start plunking down one of the rarer currencies to have space for one of the game's essential items.
Costing more to awaken being rare makes sense as I look at my catalog and see that the vast majority of my cards are in the blue/rare category when you'd expect common cards to be, well, common.
Nowhere else that I have seen. All the blue crystal purchases I have made (other than card slots) were entirely for convenience and speeding up my progress, not for anything that was a requirement to access or use a system in the game. So far I have bought char+roster+pet inventory slots, secret shops honing mats, and a ship skin. And other than the card slots, there was no other "essential" system locked behind blue crystals that I can remember.
This is your fault.
Haha. YOU ARE WELCOME! :)
p.s. Another roster update... got to Tier 3 on Main, and Tier 2 on Bard. Everyone else is still Tier 1 but thankfully finished Rohendel. Getting them all through the story quests in that area was so bloody tedious, and I basically had every route and key press memorized by the final run. I can see why people choose to spend the 1k gold to knowledge transfer all their alts a second time in order to avoid having to do that.
Nice. My Zerk is at 520 and just got to Rohendel as I've spent an inordinate amount of time island hopping and I'm honestly tired of sailing. Currently on my Artillerist leveling him, he's 44 and just arrived in Anikka.
Something I've noticed that's kinda annoying about the Arti is the firepower meter resetting. Kill stuff, it goes up, hits the point where you can go into barrage mode, goes back to zero to go to through the levels of damage increase. I guess it's a balance thing otherwise people would just sit at level 3 all day for a natural 30% buff, but it's real annoying when I'm not in a place to use barrage (say vs trash mobs), and it disappears when I do need it.
Yeah, and the buff gets even stronger once you unlock the Firepower Enhancement class engraving. It adds -20% incoming damage and +crit rate % per level too. So use it or lose it. ;)
Yeah, jumped on that engraving as soon as I could. Learned my lesson slogging with my zerk without Mayhem. Only complaint I have with Mayhem is every non-combat or movement action (talking to an NPC, logging, having to express yourself) all take you out of Mayhem for the animation, then back into it. Wouldn't be so annoying if it didn't have the explosion/thunder sound every damn time.
From my perspective Mayhem Zerks are annoying AF too. When playing my Bard and Pally I never know when to heal/shield them!!! :P
The answer is you can always heal/shield them. It doesn't hurt in the slightest, they're capped at 25% health and all heals/shields are reduced in effectiveness (maybe just heals), so it's always appreciated as they aren't all that tanky and any HoTs will come in handy anyway.
It kinda does though, since it uses up my heals and shield abilities which have very long cooldowns, when they could have instead been saved for when other party members actually do need them or they might die. And this is only an issue at all because the UI does a terrible job of indicating Mayhem Zerker's relative status compared to the other members of the party. I.e. It's very very hard to tell if a Mayhem Zerker is at 25% health vs 15% (when they need to be shielded/healed), whereas it's a lot easier to tell if any other class is at 100% vs 25% (when they need to be shielded/healed). And when you see a party member suddenly shoot down to 25% health during a fight it's also hard not to panic as a support class, which makes PUGs with Mayhem Zerkers even more annoying too.
Ah, I was thinking along the lines of my guild-less PUG playstyle of self reliance. Outside of your guild, you should probably just consider any Mayhem Zerk as doing just fine and unless you see them caught in the wrong spot at the wrong time, likely like the rest of the party, to just ignore them as the target. Since the support classes are very nice to have, but not required for most things, each Mayhem Zerk should be acting like they don't exist and just try not to get hit and stay in the supporter's relative range for when they drop an AOE heal/shield.
Also, any Mayhem Zerk you see suddenly drop to 25% in a fight is a jerk. It's a 100% uptime buff that has zero drawbacks and turning it on does so little damage that they should only be doing so when you all load in and never turning it off. The only reason to ever turn it off is if they're about to die, completely out of healing potions, and would otherwise wipe the group because turning it off jumps their HP to 25% automatically, but they can't go back in for 30 seconds and will be useless as they no longer have damage reduction and will just be running away until the cooldown is done and they can go back to Mayhem. Sure you could drop out of Mayhem on the verge of death, get heals, fight for 30 seconds then go back in, but the perfect coordination/timing required to do that without dying is not going to happen in a PUG or most guilds I'd wager.
Unfortunately just ignoring people doesn't really work for the higher tier Guardian and Abyssal raids, since anyone that gets hit even once will often be on the verge of death afterwards no matter how tanky the class/build is (especially if they get stunned or knocked down). And all the fights are quite tricky at the higher levels to begin with, so even someone adequately prepped on the fight mechanics can still end up getting hit fairly often due to how small some of the visual cues and timing windows are.
There is also so much going on during those fights, a lot of which I am struggling to avoid myself, that watching for people being out of position or getting hit isn't easy, so the healthbars are often the only way I can actually keep track everyone's status... And Mayhem Zerkers make that even more difficult.
I really think that they need to update the UI so that Mayhem Zerkers in their stance don't show as having 25% health, but instead they should look as if they're still at 100%, but then have that percentage drop proportionally. E.g. If they have dropped to 12.5% health remaining of the 25%, then show 50% on the healthbar.
Yeah, it'd be relatively easy programmatically for the party HP to be displayed as if their new 25% max is the full HP to party members without disturbing the tripod choices that bump up damage output when the Zerk is below a certain percentage of HP.
Azul (tabletop)
I picked this up on sale at a local book store before Christmas, and finally had a chance to play it. While playing I gradually discovered the need for strategy and planning, to maximise your scoring and avoid lots of tiles on your floor. There's not a lot of player interaction, but you're sometimes in a position where you can force an opponent to pick a big stack of tiles they can't fit on their wall. I imagine this game can get pretty cutthroat for some groups.
Boyfriend Dungeon (Xbox Series S)
The premise is kinda silly. Some people can turn into weapons, others can wield these weapons fighting their way through dungeons that are manifestations of your deepest fears and insecurities. It's thus half action-RPG, half dating sim.
The combat is fine for such a short game, with each weapon offering a unique fighting style. At least one is completely broken though: With the brass knuckes you can win any combat just by spamming the heavy attack button.
The dating is pretty good too. Characters all have things going on in their own lives, giving them a bit of depth. The writing is good, and often quite funny. Despite the name of the game, not all potential dates are men; there's also a woman, a non-binary person, and a cat.
I really like the look of the game, both the dungeon crawler graphics and the visual novel artwork, including the amazing character/weapon transformation sequences.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare/Warzone (Windows)
I haven't felt the need to move on to the newer games in the franchise yet. One of my friends briefly moved on to Black Ops Cold War, but he came back after a while when the rest of us stayed.
One problem with staying with an aging multiplayer game in a franchise with yearly new games is that there are no new longer any new players joining in. The player base is going to be increasingly consisting of conservatives and weirdoes as it slowly dwindles, players who for various reasons don't want to move on to newer games in the franchise. Yes, I'm a bit of a conservative weirdo myself.
Still a fun game though! One of the better CoD games I've played, much thanks to well-designed maps and good weapon balance.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg (tabletop)
I think this is basically a deck builder? Except you don't buy cards to add to your deck, you buy tokens to add to your bag, which you draw from at random.
Really though it's about pushing your luck, and there's quite a bit of psychology involved. Is your opponent pulling ahead on the score board? Have they put their black token in their cauldron and you haven't yet? Is it only a 1-in-6 chance that you'll draw the token from your bag that causes your potion to explode in your face, making you the laughing stock of the day in the city? This is definitely the game for people who love and/or hate statistics and probability.
Spellcaster University (Linux, via Proton)
I only bought this yesterday, so I haven't played it a lot yet, but it seems promising. You're basically builidng and running off-brand Hogwarts; building new rooms, hiring teachers, sorting students into houses based on how talented and/or evil they are, sending students on dangerous quests, fighting off orc raids, things like that. There's a lot of random elements, so your university isn't always going to pan out the way you wanted to. After a student graduates, you get to know how your school helped shape their path in life. Seems like a fun little game.
Some may remember that last week I bought the season pass for The Outer Worlds. Me being me, I immediately put the game on the back burner and started playing through some other games.
That allowed me to finally finish Scenario 1 of Shining Force III and start on Scenario 2. This is something I have wanted to do for literal decades, before there was an English patch.
I also have to say that Scenario 2 is full of surprises. Scenario 1 has you constantly running at full speed since the Republic is in constant peril and there are multiple military forces to deal with. Scenario 2 is strangely laid back because you are an unwanted prince who has been told to stand back from the main action, instead looking to investigate the potential conspiracy angle that everyone thinks is bunk.
I’m most surprised by the number of small changes and improvements they’ve made since Scenario I. They have added an aura effect to magic casting as well as an animation for when each character levels up. It’s a bunch of small things that make the game feel that much more impressive.
I’ve been playing crysis 2 remastered on my series s. It’s a fun game even if it’s a bit linear, but man it’s one of the few games that really makes me feel like I’m some sort of super soldier bad ass. There’s nothing more satisfying than grabbing a ceph by the throat and throwing them against the wall to see their insides splatter like paint. I also bought cyberpunk on my series s. I’m a little annoyed it’s only 30fps, but it looks amazing upscaled to 1440p. Hopefully they can get a performance mode in on the series s.
Skyrim: I have a relatively new character I built as my first taking any sort of class approach, a sword-and-board Nord, who is being expanded into general melee, since I've got a full matched Elven set including warhammer, sword and shield, and forgot about the sword-and-board thing for a few levels. Usually when I do the story I don't finish "Discerning the Transmundane," but decided to this time, as it always bugged me to leave a story-adjacent quest dangling like that. I didn't know it was a daedric quest, and the appearance of tentacles at the door really shocked me, because I thought the game had broken. It's another interesting example of Skyrim's story tying in quests, which always felt pretty cool to me.
I finished Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood quest, which is probably my #1 questline in terms of impact, even if I hated what you have to do in it. I don't mind the random contract killing, but having to "purify" the sanctuary was rough, and it all went downhill from there. I like that it made me feel something, but I hated what it made me feel because it was an emotionally miserable experience. I started on Shivering Isles, which feels like a completely different game. It's a good harder, but hilarious and definitely a great change of pace after the Dark Brotherhood.