General Gaming Megathread: What are you playing?

[Makta]

After finnishing bioshock - 1 frigging sightseer objective i decided to go back to either f3/nv or Skyrim! My current F3 save is broken due to a mod and i cba to fix it.. New vevas is lacking mods but i can't figure out what i want.. So i went on with skyrim and i obviously had to restart as i allways do.. And it is kinda boring AND i'm bothered by small things i would like to fix but there are no mods for it and i can't be arsed to do it myself.

Can't wait for the next paycheck so i can play COH 2 or Metro Last light :/

 

[SnapSlav]

Picked up the full Telltale's The Walking Dead (minus the final "400 Days" DLC) when it was super cheap during the Steam Summer Sale. It didn't blow me away quite like how I was expecting it to, given all the praise the title gets showered with, but even with my disdain for the voice of Clementine, her 2 scenes at the end of the game did reduce me to tears. The game really took me back to those good old days of playing point and click adventure titles as a kid, like The Legend of Kyrandia, before I got swept up in Doom and action-heavy gaming as a whole. So it's not like I wasn't accustomed to the adventure game model, I just felt as if The Walking Dead was being given TOO MUCH praise for what it did. It was a great game, and I'm looking over to playing it again, trying different choices to see how it turns out, and it's possibly the first game in MANY years that I've played where its much-touted "tough choices" ACTUALLY WERE tough choices.

Also recently reinstalled and started playing Fallout Tactics again, much to my dual enjoyment and frustration. Since I'm a compulsive completionist and challenge seeker, those 2 aspects of my gaming personality are at odds where FOT is concerned. The completionist demands that no matter what the objective of any mission may be, even if I can afford to sneak in, do something, then sneak back out, I GOTTA kill everyone and loot everything. But challenge seeker demands that I beat it on Insane Difficulty with Tough Guy active, which means very deadly enemies with the devil's luck in getting critical attacks in half the time, and making any small mistake will likely mean repeating the entire mission all over again, because I can only save while I'm preparing between missions in a BOS bunker. I'm having a real love-hate relationship with FOT right now, because of it. I'm loving every time I beat a mission, since I typically pick them clean, but I'm hating all the failure that FOT visits me until I finally triumph. I miss games being this unforgiving. It really extends their expected duration in a satisfying way.

Also still playing DotA2, which has recently gone live and is no longer in beta any more, but what else is knew? That's one of my few constants that I can rely on.

 

[Atomkilla]

Also still playing DotA2, which has recently gone live and is no longer in beta any more, but what else is knew? That's one of my few constants that I can rely on.

Which is better, Dota2 or LoL?

I'm not a MOBA player in general, but I'm looking to unwind a bit in some multiplayer game, and most of my friends seem to be focused around LoL, whose community I abhorre. On the other hand, Dota2 wasn't quite balanced the last time I played it...

 

[Ausdoerrt]

I'm not a MOBA player in general, but I'm looking to unwind a bit in some multiplayer game, and most of my friends seem to be focused around LoL, whose community I abhorre. On the other hand, Dota2 wasn't quite balanced the last time I played it...

I think LoL is better for "casually unwinding". I also personally like the new mechanics LoL introduced which DotA lacked and DotA2 didn't introduce.

 

[Makta]

Also still playing DotA2, which has recently gone live and is no longer in beta any more, but what else is knew? That's one of my few constants that I can rely on.

Which is better, Dota2 or LoL?

I'm not a MOBA player in general, but I'm looking to unwind a bit in some multiplayer game, and most of my friends seem to be focused around LoL, whose community I abhorre. On the other hand, Dota2 wasn't quite balanced the last time I played it...

I liked HoN more at first but the playbase in that game is horrible now. lol is more casual and Dota 2 is better overall in my opinion.

 

[Atomkilla]

Well, I'm looking more for "casually unwinding", so I guess I'll download LoL soon enough. I don't like MOBA much, but I'm interested in playing some pure multiplayer escapism and I have an old account with several fine champions which I used on EU West, so it's perfect. If there are folks interested for a game now or then, send me a message.


I first need to finally solve my connection problem with my dumbfuck ISP though.

 

[SnapSlav]

Which is better, Dota2 or LoL?

I'm not a MOBA player in general, but I'm looking to unwind a bit in some multiplayer game, and most of my friends seem to be focused around LoL, whose community I abhorre. On the other hand, Dota2 wasn't quite balanced the last time I played it...

An important disclaimer is that's a whopping can of worms, so be a bit more cautious when asking such questions, in the future. You asked someone with restraint, but you never know. You could've asked one of the many ragers who'd bite you head off.

For starters, DotA2 is not a MOBA, it's an ARTS. MOBA as a genre was made up by Riot to help them pitch LoL, and calling it "a dota clone" would have just held them back. It's an important distinguishment, because MOBAs focus more on the combat, and ARTS focus on the strategy overall. Tactics matter less in Smite than they do in HoN. Similarly, counterpicks and the myriad of tricks you can employ in DotA/DotA2 don't apply to LoL in the same way. If they were the same kind of game, I could say that one is better, but they're not. They serve 2 completely different purposes.

That being said, I'd WANT to say "DotA2 is better, hands down", if not for those pesky little details I just expressed. I'm an oldschool gamer that enjoys challenge and subtle nuance and clever problem solving to overcome those challenges, and DotA2 just caters to that need like no other. The amount of detail in the game is mind-boggling, and if that wasn't enough, its one of the prettiest games around. I've seen a video "comparison" where someone posted the trailer for LoL and then the trailer for DotA2 to make the erroneous point that their graphics weren't that far off. What they failed to mention was that LoL's trailer was a pre-rendered cinematic, while DotA2's trailer was all in-game sprites captured using Source Filmmaker. Those crisp models are what you see IN GAME, at all times.

In the many "dota clones" I've hopped from, none of them felt as balanced as DotA or DotA2 did, so I'm not sure what you experienced that made you feel like DotA2 wasn't quite balanced. The one issue I can think of was that out the total hero pool of 108 (which has since grown to 112), DotA2 only covered about 60 of them back in 2011. So some heroes had an edge in DotA2 where they didn't in DotA, because their natural hero counters didn't exist. However the hero pool is now up to 102, so that's no longer an issue. The latest patch in fact seems to be the most balanced, to date, and that's compared to the most recent prior to it, which was still incredibly balanced, yet showed signs of abuseable "favoritism", not outright balance issues. The pub scene (any and all players that don't make their living off of playing the game) considers plenty heroes "OP", but that's simply their lack of understanding the finer mechanics of the game, not that the heroes in question actually ARE overpowered in the slightest.

I could go on, but that would just be deviating from your question the more I continued. Suffice it to say, DotA2 is NOT a game you play "to unwind". It gets your adrenaline pumping; it doesn't relax you. From all observations, and according to most players, if you can't stand the LoL community, you won't be able to stand the DotA2 community, either. According to statistics, 97% of players are pretty nasty, and it takes time, dedication, and effort to climb the ranks to reach the relatively enjoyable top 3%, so playing the game is an exercise in patience. I still love the game, but it's one of the few "true games", as far as I'm concerned. That is to say, it's NOT for everyone. It isn't some watered down experience that caters to as many tastes as possible, it's a targeted experience that knows what it is, and caters to a very specific audience, and if that's not you, you should probably just move along. I love to recommend the game to anyone and everyone I can, but that doesn't change that... it's not necessarily for them.

 

[Atomkilla]

Well, that's quite a lengthy comment. Guess I'll make another one here.

First of all, I personally had no idea that there are so many distinctions between Dota-inspired games (staying pc here), since, to be honest, I've never really appreciated them.

My earliest experience with DotA was many years ago, when the game was still "young", or at least, without any contenders on the yet non-existing market. I played it with my friends in various "game rooms", where you'd charge some little money for an hour of any LAN game on an awful, old, dirty machine on a keyboard which is missing keys and a mouse which has no wheel in the middle, or has at least one of the clicks wrong.
Only two games were popular - Counter Strike 1.6 (which still is), and DotA (which is played a lot lesser now).

Suffice to say that most of my experience at the time was completely awful, due to idiotic community where conflicts, sometime physical, were mandatory, and where time to hone your skills was little. (Important note is that at the time none had Internet connections back home, so there was no playing except against AI.)

That all slowly lead my to abandon DotA for good.

When there was a great resurgence of Dota-inspired games, I played LoL for a bit, but I never took it seriously. Similar thing goes for Dota2.

I've never taken those games as actual, full-grown games.

They were just tools for "unwinding" with friends over various Skype calls, games we devoted our time to, but never cared much for. They were free, with no story, no driving point aside from playing itself and not very rewarding in the end. No game over screen. Just Victory or Defeat.

Of course, it is not a nature of these games to have all those things, and no one expected that, not really - but we were used to playing such "full" games, so in the end we considered Dota-based stuff to be more or less mindless fun. With a game where you are teamed with 5 random people, majority of them being jerk-offs, there was little or no drive to have some grand strategy planned or an epic trick in anyone's sleeve. It was "kill as much as you can, don't steal and push in the end".
Nothing more.

(A mention that if there were actually 5 players who knew each other,a situation would be different...but that was rare. Immensely better, of course).

In the end, I hope you see what I'm trying to say.

I was (and am still, I suppose) plagued by an awful community which distracted me from the game(s), which in turn made me have little or no respect for their actual quality of such(I am certain there is some, but I still fail to fully appreciate it - and to be honest, am not planning to start). So I guess I'd fall in the category of people who wouldn't really fit in DOTA2, be it due to the game itself, my ignorance, or, most likely, aforementioned community which boasts some quite exotic assholes.

Not that I really fit in LoL either, but that one is more "casual", as you yourself had said, and more of my friends are playing it, as I had said.







As for the balancing issues - I did not mean about actual gameplay - I'd need to play it a lot more, get to know majority, if not all heroes, to make a comment on that one. I'm referring more to the game's stability. At the time I had crashes, long load times, main screen freezing etc.
I was still in Beta though, so that was natural, but that, combined with *guess what* still drove me away.


In the end, I thank you for your post, it was more than informative, but still firmed my stance to pick LoL as the "lesser of two evils". Don't take it personal though. It's just my opinion, which isn't saying much to begin with.

 

[SnapSlav]

In the end, I hope you see what I'm trying to say.

Well that's what I was getting at; addressing your question of whether you'd be interested in playing the game, based on what information you had provided. It doesn't matter how amazing of a game that something is, if it possesses an attribute that someone doesn't like, they just won't want to play it. For example, one of my best friends just has ZERO interest in RPGs. We did a few D&D campaigns together, but to him it was just hanging out with friends and laughing our asses off at the hilarious visuals being granted to us by one of those present (the DM), it "wasn't an RPG" for him. So, no matter how hard I've tried over the years, I CANNOT interest him in the Fallout series, no matter how amazing they are. Hell, he doesn't even want to bother with FO3, despite the fact that it's highly watered-down RPG, at best. Anyway, to bring this back to DotA, I recognized that it doesn't matter how good the game is, if something about it doesn't interest you. If you don't like ARTS or MOBA games, then I can't sell DotA2 to you. If you are too repulsed by the community to put up with them for the game's sake, it's still not for you. As much as I hate the juvenile jackasses, I'm able (if just barely) to look past them and appreciate the game itself.

As a bit of a sidenote, I always remark, in-game, that I'm blacklisting people I encounter, and many times they respond to that with indignation. Often times, they'll snort at the prospect of being blacklisted for their behavior, then say that I'm "taking this too seriously" or "calm down, it's just a game lawl!" On the contrary, I'm quite calm, and I'm enjoying the game completely. but I have a zero tolerance policy with certain calibers of players. (See my signature for yet another example of my take on "it's just a game" fallacies- I'm not blacklisting the game, I'm blacklisting people, silly trolls...) Their inability to comprehend what they're doing is pretty telling of why they're so irritating, I find. One of my favorite DotA2 players, Purge, said quite excellently that it's all about the Dunning Kruger Effect. They need to get past realizing that they suck, and until then, they'll just suck, but be convinced that it's not their fault, it's everyone else's, merely perpetuating their inability to grow and improve. Anyway, end aside.

I'd need to play it a lot more, get to know majority, if not all heroes, to make a comment on that one.

That's a "skill" I always tell players that should be their FIRST step in learning the game. Total memorization of all 112 heroes (or at least the current 102 playable) and the roles they play, all 67 craftable items and their 59 component items, every ability in the game (and there are over 500) and how ALL of them interact with each other. I always liken that "simple" knowledge base as learning the pieces in Chess and how they move; it's essential to being able to play the game. If you don't know the 4 moves a pawn can do, you can't defend against them. After learning and memorizing those hundreds of things can you then move on to learning the game mechanics and from that point on the strategy. It's incredibly involving, which is yet another reason that it's not for everyone. If memorizing 1,000 things seems daunting, then they shouldn't play the game. Anyone could ask me any question related to DotA2, and I'll probably know the answer, but that took years of practice to get there. It caters to a very small niche of gamer. It's anything BUT an inclusive title. =/

In the end, I thank you for your post, it was more than informative, but still firmed my stance to pick LoL as the "lesser of two evils". Don't take it personal though. It's just my opinion, which isn't saying much to begin with.

Like I said, I could go on... =) But it wouldn't have really made addressing your question go any quicker. I could go into my own history with the game, but I can just answer to my own knowledge of the game, instead, to explain the "why's and why not's".

 

[Ilosar]

LoL also requires memorization or things like counter-picks or specific item builds, but it's not as complex as DOTA for sure.

One thing I like about DOTA2 is that there's an in-game pool of information available, including player-made guides; what abilities to get/use, what items to buy and why, how to play the hero and what it counters, tons of extremely useful stuff for beginners. LoL gives you a small tutorial and some vague tips about her hero, the rest you gotta figure it out for yourself or visit the forums. DOTA 2 also has all 102 heroes available for free right at the start, and no nonsense like the Runes and Summoner Spell system in LoL.

On the other hand, it has mechanics I think are archaic (couriers) unfun (runes, secret shop) or gimmicky (the creep stacking ''feature''). I also think that, apart from porting the heroes to a new engine and adding spiffy new stuff, Valve really didn't work on building the actual game, merely copy-pasted Icefrog's work. I know, don't break a winning formula, but still, at least Riot built their own game from the ground up. If Valve had demanded money for DOTA 2 I'd have found it a real shame; at least it's free to play. I also like LoL's heroes more, but that may be because I've played the game more. As for the communities, both are choke full of idiotic jackasses and assorted internet tough guys, which is kinda why I play DOTA 2 against bots (no shame, at least they're somewhat competent) and stopped playing LoL. Company of Heroes 2 fills my competitive needs, doesn't rely on my team not sucking, and has a much smaller but much less toxic community.

Also, playing Dishonored's DLCs and enjoying them. Dunwall City Trials has some sweet challenges, and The Knife of Dunwall is a pretty good new adventure with enough new stuff to keep things interesting. Also trying a no-kills, no-spell playthrough of the main game, easy so far but it gets harder when Arc Pylons start entering the picture.

 

[Atomkilla]

They need to get past realizing that they suck, and until then, they'll just suck, but be convinced that it's not their fault, it's everyone else's, merely perpetuating their inability to grow and improve.

Absolutely correct, and I'd hope I could say that is obvious, but sadly, that's not the case. As evident, majority of the community absolutely isn't self-aware of their own mistakes, constantly blaming others for their failures. I suppose I could pardon some of the "kids" playing the game, but when full-grown asses start doing it, it's really irritating. I personally can ignore all the hateful comments in the chat section, the finger-pointing, trolling etc. but I cannot always ignore the fact that we have lost a game due to an awful team, or worse, an horrible individual who took pleasure in ruining everyone's experience.
I'm a "cool" player myself, can ignore majority of smart-ass individuals, but in the end, the experience is often ruined and the game loses its charm.

apart from porting the heroes to a new engine and adding spiffy new stuff, Valve really didn't work on building the actual game, merely copy-pasted Icefrog's work.

I agree with this too, but like you've said, Valve was at least honest enough to make the game free, with all heroes "unlocked", like the original.
I don't mind Riot's approach in making you slowly unlocking all the champions, it gives the game a certain drive and will to play on. Some of the things sold in LoL are quite ridiculous, it's someone's earnings, after all.




In the end, I would like to point out that this is probably the longest and most prolific DotA/LoL discussion I've ever had which hadn't gone for the worse.

 

[Walpknut]

I think I am reaching the end of Shin Megami Tensei 4, I am going through the Chaos route and shit is getting weirder by the second.

 

[Arden]

Since I was bored out of my skull and finally have fast internet access again, I started visiting neocron 2 again. It's strange, I am not actually enjoying myself there but the nostalgia is killing me

 

[Alphadrop]

Wait wait wait wait wait... wait. Neocron 2 still exists? Gotta give the community kudos for keeping it running.
Neocron was the MMO I wanted to play while still being only able to play free MMOs back in the day.

 

[aenemic]

Just finished Lonesome Road for the first time. I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. Out of the three I've played (all but OWB), it's the most atmospheric one. And it was pretty challening on Very Hard. The nuclear warheads were ridiculous though, couldn't they just have been warheads? Where the hell is the radiation and my crisp smoldered body? If that's all there is to them, then I'm not exactly sure what left the Fallout world in such a state it's currently in.

I did enjoy Ulysses and the whole backstory with the Courier though. No complaints there. Was not very fond of the ED-E stuff., but it didn't bother me THAT much. Was very fond of satchel charges and invisible Marked Men.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

So, out of boredom, desperation, disappointment with modern RPGs, and god knows what else I've decided to reinstall Bioware's original NWN. Figured I'd give the OC another shot since I never actually completed it and usually skipped to the far superior addons.

Well, I was really surprised to find myself enjoying the campaign immensely even though I expected to quit a few levels in. Now on Chapter 3 and chasing down the dirty cult and fighting ancient evils.

For all the flak the OC gets, I think it's an excellent and fun hack-and-slash RPG. And surprisingly, the story is decent and well-told if rather cliche. It does suffer from extreme MacGuffin chase and ever-shrinking areas towards the end of the game

 

[Makta]

The OC is not bad but the expansions are better.

 

[Arden]

Wait wait wait wait wait... wait. Neocron 2 still exists? Gotta give the community kudos for keeping it running.
Neocron was the MMO I wanted to play while still being only able to play free MMOs back in the day.

Yep, still on and it is free now. As far as I gathered ReaKKtor went the way of the dodo but allowed some players and gms to continue the game. It's only one server + testserver now but it still gets patches and updates. Quite cool in a speical kind of way. About 100 players on.

 

[SnapSlav]

Absolutely correct, and I'd hope I could say that is obvious, but sadly, that's not the case. As evident, majority of the community absolutely isn't self-aware of their own mistakes, constantly blaming others for their failures. I suppose I could pardon some of the "kids" playing the game, but when full-grown asses start doing it, it's really irritating.

While spectating some of the latest matches in The International 2013, I had the misfortune of being stuck in a chat channel with unrelenting trolls. Apart from the brief dismay they brought upon me (thank God for the Ignore feature) they helped me arrive at an epiphany. Not that they were the first to say certain things, but the frequency with which they bombarded me with their memetic jargon just brought me to this realization, sooner. There are always telltale signs of trolls, or potential trolls. People who will whimsically mock others with lines like "rofl, you're [mad] because we disagree with you?" or "doing that just because I [said things] you're going to do that? haha!" Lack of self-awareness is tragically not their issue, but a complete divorce from simple rational thought and a failure to understand what they're being told seem to be key qualities that lead to these miscreants forming. I can't begin to count how many trolls I'd blacklisted who came back at me with jests like "Because we disagree with your opinion?" failing to recognize that disagreement had nothing to do with the sorry spectacle they gave. Wanting nothing to do with inflammatory and provocative hate for the sake of personal amusement had nothing to do with "different opinions", after all.

So, ultimately, like the trolls that deliberately stalk the channels, the large bulk of players who have no self-awareness to take note of their own mistakes and attempt to improve themselves are entirely capable of this same flaw in reasoning. When asked not to do something, rather than realize that advice is being directed at them for the sake of their own performance (and ultimately, for the team's well being), these players will merely perceive aggression and insult. They won't understand the point being made to them. So this just led me to believe that, if there's someone who can appreciate what I say, I'm happy, but if they can't, I've found that simply to be a statistical certainty, so why even bother caring about it anymore?

After all, the next time I blacklist a disturbingly immature player and I have the decency to tell them this, they're just going to assume I'm pissed because of whatever transpired in the game, not that I'm repulsed by their detestable behavior, and it'll all be summed up in an all-too-oft-cited meme phrase of "Calm down, it's just a game." They said something that's been hammered into their being to the point of being reflexive, without even understanding what it implies, so that means they MUST be right, right? There's just no point in arguing with that...

In the end, I would like to point out that this is probably the longest and most prolific DotA/LoL discussion I've ever had which hadn't gone for the worse.

I always try to be on the side of civil discourse, no matter what the topic. I may dislike LoL, but I'll find a way around that to praise it for what it offers, just like I'll say what good I can about FO3, despite it having fallen out of favor with me for a long time. I'll just never understand what blind fanaticism can ever accomplish, though.

I also think that, apart from porting the heroes to a new engine and adding spiffy new stuff, Valve really didn't work on building the actual game, merely copy-pasted Icefrog's work. I know, don't break a winning formula, but still, at least Riot built their own game from the ground up.

But.... that was the POINT. The idea wasn't to make a new game, but to make the same game we know and love, in a new engine so it could grow with official support and not be bound by outdated programming restrictions. They did that was Counterstrike and Team Fortress, and they did it again with Defense of the Ancients. Also, bear in mind that it wasn't VALVE doing all of this. They sponsored it, and they now own the brand. But it's still all Icefrog's design and he's the game's sole developer. He has the final say in all things mechanical, in DotA2. Everything else is Valve's doing, but the game is NOT Valve's brainchild.

...

But back to the topic at hand... Still playing DotA2, The Walking Dead, and Fallout Tactics, though the awesomeness of The International 2013 has eaten up much of my gaming time, so those are largely on the backburner while I watch the pros pull plays that I could never have conjured up in my wildest dreams. ^^

 

[Ausdoerrt]

But.... that was the POINT. The idea wasn't to make a new game, but to make the same game we know and love, in a new engine so it could grow with official support and not be bound by outdated programming restrictions. They did that was Counterstrike and Team Fortress, and they did it again with Defense of the Ancients. Also, bear in mind that it wasn't VALVE doing all of this. They sponsored it, and they now own the brand. But it's still all Icefrog's design and he's the game's sole developer. He has the final say in all things mechanical, in DotA2. Everything else is Valve's doing, but the game is NOT Valve's brainchild.

Wouldn't compare it to TF, as TF2 is different enough gameplay-wise from the long-forgotten original mod.

In any case, as long as they're not charging for it, it's fine to make what is essentially a graphic/engine upgrade.