Video Games Thread, Son Of Video Games Thread

[teemo]

Started playing League of Legends yesterday and the player abuse on there is terrible. Everyone is a smurf and unfriendly. Need another online game...

[teemo]

Trying to join the Hearthstone open beta, but the "Play" button is greyed out and when I hover the pointer over it, a message comes up saying I haven't had an invitation to play.

So is this an open beta or not?

Does anyone know what's up with this?

I just went to the site to check and it let me download the game just fine :\

[Mme Erzulie]

I downloaded the game and the battle.net app or whatever it is fine.

It's when I try to actually play the game I run into trouble.

I'm on OSX, does that affect anything?

[Guest]

Started playing League of Legends yesterday and the player abuse on there is terrible. Everyone is a smurf and unfriendly. Need another online game...

bots, or dota 2. dota 2 is more challenging, but the playerbase tends to be older. preference between games is based on both game mechanics and whether you'd rather deal with raging middle schoolers (LoL) or angry feeding russians (dota 2). fortunately, russians are only in the european servers. middle schoolers are on the us servers, so choose which one you want. Of course, all of these are broad generalizations, but stereotypes tend to be based on grains of truth.

[The Anti-Targ]

A lot of these are Arena (including that one -- few of my friends want to play Conquest, so almost all my Conquest games have been alone, and I don't know the meta, nor do I know the cast all that well at this point. So I have 4 Conquest wins from 6 Conquest games, versus 55 Arena games (29 wins). Both games seem to be plagued with leavers at this level. Almost everyone on every hero is an idiot. People also like to use gimmick Arena strategies like Ares + other AOE ults, because almost no one will buy beads to counter him, even when told to do so and exactly what they do. Here's my most recent Conquest game, also Artemis: https://account.hirezstudios.com/smitegame/match-details.aspx?match=42127130 My team never says anything but I usually end up in a lane alone no matter who I play. Not because someone's jungling, usually, but because two people went mid, for some reason. Usually this is not a big detriment because my lane opponent is typically an idiot whom I can kill on demand.

I'd like to play more Conquest, but I usually prefer to play that game type with others, in any MOBA. Hit me up if you want to play; I'm Inigima in game, (Steam is the easiest way to set up games with me, if you use it: http://steamcommunity.com/id/raiser_) Like I said, I'm new to the game, but I'm substantially better than the average new player and I'm interested in learning.

I'll send you a friend request. I don't have a Steam account unfortunately. I'm level 26 (not because of skill but just the steady accumulation of XP) so if we hook up then games will be a mix of players at your level and mine. I do have a smurf account, but it's no fun taking apart inexperienced players, so I only used it once when I was going through a bad losing streak and needed a pick me up. It was also a good reassurance that I had actually improved a lot as a player, but I was just playing against people who had mostly improved more.

Artemis is a good solo, and any ranged character is a good mid. I've used Neith in mid a couple of times. Because you're normally against squishy mages, hunters with their higher base attack damage can poke mages and force them to tower hug and lose XP and GP as a result.

Experienced Ares players will get cooldown reduction, which will allow them to successfully use their ult every second go as Ares ult will cooldown faster than the beads cooldown. And people tend not to get beads and Aegis. Maegi's blessing is pretty much a go to item for me, negating a hard CC once every 30s is brilliant for pretty much any character. And it effectively means Ares is fully negated if you also have beads, or you can just forget about beads. Noobs just tend to autobuy amd go with stadnard recommended items which is always Meditation and sprint. Sprint is actually good for hunters so you can chase down retreating enemies and finish them off with basic attacks.

[Inigima]

I'll send you a friend request. I don't have a Steam account unfortunately. I'm level 26 (not because of skill but just the steady accumulation of XP) so if we hook up then games will be a mix of players at your level and mine. I do have a smurf account, but it's no fun taking apart inexperienced players, so I only used it once when I was going through a bad losing streak and needed a pick me up. It was also a good reassurance that I had actually improved a lot as a player, but I was just playing against people who had mostly improved more.

Artemis is a good solo, and any ranged character is a good mid. I've used Neith in mid a couple of times. Because you're normally against squishy mages, hunters with their higher base attack damage can poke mages and force them to tower hug and lose XP and GP as a result.

Experienced Ares players will get cooldown reduction, which will allow them to successfully use their ult every second go as Ares ult will cooldown faster than the beads cooldown. And people tend not to get beads and Aegis. Maegi's blessing is pretty much a go to item for me, negating a hard CC once every 30s is brilliant for pretty much any character. And it effectively means Ares is fully negated if you also have beads, or you can just forget about beads. Noobs just tend to autobuy amd go with stadnard recommended items which is always Meditation and sprint. Sprint is actually good for hunters so you can chase down retreating enemies and finish them off with basic attacks.

I have a friend request from someone but I have no idea who it is. Are you Enzo08?

[The Anti-Targ]

I have a friend request from someone but I have no idea who it is. Are you Enzo08?

Nope. I'm still at work so won't be sending a friend request until after you've gone to sleep tonight. I'm TheValkyrian (after the PS3 game, not one of Freya's minions).

[KiDisaster]

Started playing League of Legends yesterday and the player abuse on there is terrible. Everyone is a smurf and unfriendly. Need another online game...

The low levels of LoL are the worst due to the smurfing, as you mentioned. If you can make it through to like level 10 the amount of smurfs drops off significantly (at least it did for me) and the game becomes a lot more enjoyable. Until you start solo-queuing. Then it turns to utter, utter shit again.

I just saw earlier today that the Hearthstone beta is open now. Made me want to play a couple games but I couldn't bother. I played nothing but Hearthstone for a solid couple weeks when I got into the beta a while back and got really burnt out on it. Can't wait till they add some new cards or one of the new classes so I can jump back in.

[Inigima]

Always satisfying when you stomp so badly someone on the other team sends you a friend request. Thor wants to be buddies!

https://account.hirezstudios.com/smitegame/match-details.aspx?EUSER=&match=42488389

Anubis is hella fun and the other team was real bad. I'm friends with Bacchus, the others were randoms but team players. Also, the language filter appears to censor the word "cocky" because it contains the word "cock."

[The Anti-Targ]

Always satisfying when you stomp so badly someone on the other team sends you a friend request. Thor wants to be buddies!

https://account.hirezstudios.com/smitegame/match-details.aspx?EUSER=&match=42488389

Anubis is hella fun and the other team was real bad. I'm friends with Bacchus, the others were randoms but team players. Also, the language filter appears to censor the word "cocky" because it contains the word "cock."

A good Anubis can absolutely dominate a game. A bad Anubis will feed something terrible. I'm not quick enough with the firing of abilities for high combo damage to be good at Anubis. And I'm hopeless at aiming his ult to get more than a milisecond of contact with it on any given enemy. My son is really good with Anubis, but his go to mage is Zhong Kui.

My son is pretty expert with Bacchus, if he plays tank...err...guardian in league matches he always plays Bacchus.

Th language filter seems pretty comprehensive. The game is populated by a lot of pretty young kids so to stay onside with parents the game pretty much has to be foolproof with the naughty words, which unfortunately means some otherwise legit words will get filtered out. People can still be total arseholes in their messaging. I don;t know whether a user who is constantly reported for harrassment can eventually be banned, but it seems the reporting system doesn't do much other than drop your goodwill, which only afftects how much XP you earn per game.

[teemo]

The low levels of LoL are the worst due to the smurfing, as you mentioned. If you can make it through to like level 10 the amount of smurfs drops off significantly (at least it did for me) and the game becomes a lot more enjoyable. Until you start solo-queuing. Then it turns to utter, utter shit again.

I just saw earlier today that the Hearthstone beta is open now. Made me want to play a couple games but I couldn't bother. I played nothing but Hearthstone for a solid couple weeks when I got into the beta a while back and got really burnt out on it. Can't wait till they add some new cards or one of the new classes so I can jump back in.

Thanks for the tip. I hope it drops off soon, because I'm about done listening to people with 6 level 30 accounts calling me an idiot, noob, retard, piece of shit, etc. etc. when I started the game yesterday. I've never played an online game with such hateful players.

[karaddin]

Steer clear of HoN then, it's even worse than LoL.

Wonder how the community for heroes of the storm will end up developing, it's even more teamwork so perhaps even worse?

[Shryke]

Steer clear of HoN then, it's even worse than LoL.

Wonder how the community for heroes of the storm will end up developing, it's even more teamwork so perhaps even worse?

I think it might be pretty noob-heavy though, so they may end up as a minority, drowned out by people asking the HOTS equivalent of "Where's Mankirk's wife?".

[karaddin]

That's actually what I was thinking at first due to the simpler no complex item builds to worry about, before remembering more team work.

It actually reminds me a bit of tides of blood in that respect, I liked that back before getting into dota. Vlad in LoL is good but I miss the blood mage!

[Daeric]

Steer clear of HoN then, it's even worse than LoL.

Wonder how the community for heroes of the storm will end up developing, it's even more teamwork so perhaps even worse?

HoN is in no way worse then LoL. Dota 2, HoN and LoL for the most part are just full of people just not worth listening to in the slightest with none of them being better or worse then others.

[Fez]

I hadn't heard of the latest middle earth game, Shadows of Mordor, but it certainly seems like it could be interesting. I don't generally go for middle earth games, and the plot of this one sounds like it could be particularly stupid. But this:

Mordor is a large and open world with Arkham-style combat, but my demo with developer Monolith focused almost exclusively on Shadow of Mordor’s “nemesis system.” During your adventures, some enemies may survive encounters with you, some may flee before you can slay them, and some will probably kill you. In any case, the survivor can rise through the ranks of Mordor’s armies, recruit followers, and hold one heck of a grudge against you.

Nemeses get new names, titles, and even physical appearances. An enemy thrown into a roaring fire might have half of its face scarred the next time you meet. It’s a cool idea that builds the history between you and your foes. During the demo (a version of it shown in the video above), Talion is hunting down Ratbag, a somewhat cowardly warrior turned slaver since their previous encounter. As Ratbag prepares to kill a handful of human slaves, Talion intervenes

Sounds like it could be very interesting if its implemented properly.

IGN also has more info on Bound by Flame, and its unfortunately starting to sound a bit too much like a generic, mid-budget fantasy RPG like the so many others that I've bought and liked the first several hours before getting bored. On the other hand, the devs seem like they are clearly aware of their resource limitations, and are trying to focus on quality over quantity; so maybe they will have properly focused their efforts and put out a polished, albeit small for the genre, game.

And IGN has an interview with one of the co-founders of CD Projekt about The Witcher 3. It certainly sounds better and better, but I'm not buying the game unless I can ever bring myself to complete the second game.

On a different note, has anyone played Saints Row IV's DLC 'Enter the Dominatrix'? How is it?

[Tony Soprano]

Started playing League of Legends yesterday and the player abuse on there is terrible. Everyone is a smurf and unfriendly. Need another online game...

MOBAs tend to have really bad online communities, but some are worse than others. If you ask me, Dota 2 is more welcoming just because of the matchmaking. Your team will almost always have players that are the same skill level as yours, as will the enemy team. So the only bright side is that most people don't have any idea what they're doing either, so they can't give you shit when you somehow screw up. Oh, and there's no random cursing like in LoL.

And I think Dota 2 is just a better game overall. You also have a decent tutorial that'll teach you the basics so that you don't get a headache when you start your first game.

[Inigima]

HoN is in no way worse then LoL. Dota 2, HoN and LoL for the most part are just full of people just not worth listening to in the slightest with none of them being better or worse then others.

You're joking, right? HoN had by far the most toxic community I've ever experienced in any game. Both LoL and Dota 2 are miles better in comparison. Not perfect, of course, but it isn't even close. It wasn't helped by S2's terrible community management, nor by its racist asshole owner Maliken. In any case HoN is more or less dead in the water at this point, which is a shame because I loved its fast pace and some of its mechanical deviations from Dota.

[Alcibiades]

How is the Smite community relative to other moba games? People seemed nice when I tried it, but that was very early in beta.

[Daeric]

You're joking, right? HoN had by far the most toxic community I've ever experienced in any game. Both LoL and Dota 2 are miles better in comparison. Not perfect, of course, but it isn't even close. It wasn't helped by S2's terrible community management, nor by its racist asshole owner Maliken. In any case HoN is more or less dead in the water at this point, which is a shame because I loved its fast pace and some of its mechanical deviations from Dota.

Not joking at all, I still play all three and the community in each is just generally not worth listening to at all and while hon may not get the same number of people as the other two 100k concurrent playerbase isn't "dead in the water" its just the least popular.