Video Games: The long wait until Fall games come out

[karaddin]

Edit: on rereading, we are mostly saying the same things.

League of Legends was my introduction to the genre, and I've played since season 1. I also played Heroes of Newerth, badly, and then Dota 2. I have some 400 hours of Dota 2 logged, not sure about the others. (Didn't play Dota 1.)

The quality of community varies widely between games and even over time in the same game. League used to have a far more toxic community than it does now. Riot has invested a good deal of money and time in improving it, for the simple reason that a toxic community stops playing and therefore stops spending money. You definitely still run into dicks, but they are fewer in number than they used to be and generally less abrasive.

I haven't played HoN in a while, but when I played, it had the single most toxic community of any game I've ever played. This was not helped by S2's poor community management and the comically poor example set by Riot employees, most famously company president Maliken's penchant for racial epithets in-game. One of the earliest games I ever played pre-dated matchmaking and was billed as a newbie game; our team's Predator, clearly new, died a couple of times and our teammate spammed, nonstop for 20 minutes, "PRED LEAVE." It was a playground for a bunch of terribly, terribly angry children.

Dota 2 has mostly been pretty good. I'm not sure why -- maybe their reporting system is working, although it doesn't seem like it should be. But I also play with far fewer matchmade people than I ever did in HoN. Maybe it's because the game is tied to your Steam account. Who knows. I still run into jerks occasionally but it's uncommon.

Yeah my view is probably skewed by having played more HoN than the other two, but I'd describe it exactly the same way as you did - the single most toxic community of any game I've played. Regardless of which of them you are talking about though, even if the politeness in LoL and Dota2 is better than HoN, they all seem to be infused with more anger than the average game, and less acceptance that part of playing a game involves losing. It's like every game is the final of the international with huge stakes...I just don't get it, and it makes it intimidating trying to play the odd game when you've been out of it for a while.

Speaking of high stakes and The International, holy shit how bad must that Orange team member feel, denies the Rosh aegis which would have gone on the carry, carry gets picked at the start of the next team fight and they probably would have won the fight if he had the aegis...instead they go on to lose the game shortly after. Essentially lost $400k with one click.

[KiDisaster]

Speaking of high stakes and The International, holy shit how bad must that Orange team member feel, denies the Rosh aegis which would have gone on the carry, carry gets picked at the start of the next team fight and they probably would have won the fight if he had the aegis...instead they go on to lose the game shortly after. Essentially lost $400k with one click.

Yeah, that must have been pretty devastating. The International was fantastic though, best e-sports event I've ever watched. That final game was just incredible, even though I wanted Na'Vi to win it. I already can't wait for next year. At least there's the LoL World Championship coming up next month, I hope they'll step their game up after seeing TI3. Riot certainly has the budget to top it if they really want to. I don't think it's going to be anywhere near as interesting though, it's pretty much guaranteed that the Korean teams will run away with it. Maybe C9 can put a dent in them though, they apparently use the Korean style of play and it's worked well for them so far. The other NA teams can't touch them.

[karaddin]

Yeah, that must have been pretty devastating. The International was fantastic though, best e-sports event I've ever watched. That final game was just incredible, even though I wanted to Na'Vi to win it. I already can't wait for next year. At least there's the LoL World Championship coming up next month, I hope they'll step their game up after seeing TI3. Riot certainly has the budget to top it if they really want to. I don't think it's going to be anywhere near as interesting though, it's pretty much guaranteed that the Korean teams will run away with it. Maybe C9 can put a dent in them though, they apparently use the Korean style of play and it's worked well for them so far. The other NA teams can't touch them.

I have to go back and watch the final game, I was stuck in training so I just had the live score board up. If I was at work as normal I would have just had it on :P

[Werthead]

XCOM: Enemy Within will be arriving on 13 November.

It's a broad-based 'upgrade' to the original game, a bit like some of the recent Civ expansions. The game's structure and story remains the same, but there are 47 (!) new maps including several much-requested farm layouts. The game monitors which maps spawn for which missions and will adjust them to keep fresh maps in rotation. There are new weapons including flamethrowers and two new soldier types: MECs are soldiers who get to wear mech-style exoskeletons and G-mods are genetically-enhanced troopers. Both are recruitable through a new resource called 'Meld', which is recovered from canisters on combat missions. However, the Meld resource will self-destruct, forcing players to take more risks if they want to get them. The enemy also get MEC technology, resulting in 'Mechtoids', Sectoids in mech-suits. There's also another alien type that will appear in the game. 'Melded' units will apparently have a risk of going rogue under alien influence, hence the title.

Your base gets both G-labs and MEC-labs to convert the new soldiers. The game will also be more moddable, with elements previously locked in the Unreal Engine files now moved to the .ini files where modders can tweak them better. However, Firaxis have ruled out both randomly-generated maps and total conversions, saying that the game isn't set up for them.

There will also be as-yet-unspecified changes to the global warfare game and other changes the team are not yet ready to talk about.

In a final twist, the game will adjust the voices of your soldiers to match their nationality: soldiers who are French, Italian, German, Spanish or Polish may speak or exclaim things in their natural language. Firaxis admitted that they had no new VO budget for the game, so they've done this by using their existing translations and bleeding them into the English version of the game (hence no Japanese or Chinese voices). This means that everyone else will still speak in American accents.

[Werthead]

A space combat sim set in the EVE universe, Valkyrie, is in development for next year. It's going to be optimised for use with the Oculus Rift and looks impressive.

[TheEvilKing]

In more "I don't understand why anyone plays CoD anymore" news, here's the latest BF3 Paracel Storm video.

It looks incredible, though possibly too air/vehicle heavy.

edit: The ship crashing at the end apparently occurs mid-round, not at the end in a cinematic, changing the spawn point (possibly?) and reportedly allowing you to man the AA guns there.

Looks cool, I've been patiently waiting for them to start making boats good and it looks like the next Battlefield will be just the ticket.

[Alcibiades]

Diablo 3 expansion announced. Apparently they're working to reduce the amount of loot drops as well, and make what does drop more relevant to your character. I may give the game another go when this expansion comes out. Blizzard has lost a lot of it's luster for me. I never did get the Starcraft II expansion.

[KiDisaster]

I'll just stick to Torchlight 2 and Path of Exile for my lootfest needs. Diablo 3 was such a letdown.

[Merentha]

XCOM: Enemy Within will be arriving on 13 November.

If this includes a few class rebalances, I'll be ecstatic. Some of those choices are just no-brainers, and other skills could be very useful but just aren't. Some of the mods make for much more interesting choices on level-up, and others would, if it were possible to do so. Still, if it is really like the CIv-style expansions, it should be excellent.

edit: And if, for the love of god, they can smooth out the difficulty curve I will be thrilled. As-is, the game is hardest in the first few months and then turns into a victory lap for the last several. I'd love to feel a relentless pressure constantly building in the game, forcing you to try to activate the ending before you're overwhelmed, instead of just going whenever you feel like it.

edit2:

Cloaking gene mods. Ghost armor already broke the game, getting it earlier, even with some downsides, should make the game easier. Here's hoping the endgame gets really punishing, in a "literally every enemy is a Sectopod or Ethereal" way. Failing that, your dudes need less health.

edit3: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/21/xcom-enemy-within-announced-tons-of-details Yeah, reading this, all of my skill imbalance questions look totally answered. Squadsight nerfed, covering fire buffed (you now fire before your enemy does!) and up close and personal changed to that it might be worthwhile over lightning reflexes. Awesome.

[Shryke]

Diablo 3 expansion announced. Apparently they're working to reduce the amount of loot drops as well, and make what does drop more relevant to your character. I may give the game another go when this expansion comes out. Blizzard has lost a lot of it's luster for me. I never did get the Starcraft II expansion.

D3 expansion looks awesome.

Though frankly, I most looking forward to seeing the sales numbers.

[Sad King Billy]

D3 expansion looks awesome.

Though frankly, I most looking forward to seeing the sales numbers.

Wait, what? Why? That doesn't make any sense to me? Why are the sales more important than the product you're interested in?

[Alcibiades]

Will Blizzard put those numbers out? I expect they'll sell a lot directly through their digital service. That's how I intend to get it.

[Shryke]

Wait, what? Why? That doesn't make any sense to me? Why are the sales more important than the product you're interested in?

Cause it'll finally put to bed the debate on D3's customer retention. One way or the other.

Will Blizzard put those numbers out? I expect they'll sell a lot directly through their digital service. That's how I intend to get it.

They always have.

[Fiddler]

Imagine the frustration for computer users.

Goddamn consoles ruining control schemes for ages now.

lol

I understand in most cases, but this one is different. This is the developers stupidity, considering there are "buttons" not used on the controller that things could be mapped to.

Still loving the game itself. I like the way side missions happen. There is something to be said for just overhearing a conversation and doing something rather than haveing to talk to the person and then go on the mission.

I am finding that my emotional response to in game stuff is very enjoyable. When Sheppard finally told Liara that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her I was pumped. Even though I was the one that made that choice it was odd that I was so invested in it.

Great game so far, IMO, but I must say that I find myself playing the multi player all the time. I love the unlockable stuff and I am having a ball playing the horde mode stuff.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte]

I was looking for a game to tide me over until Rome II (out two weeks from today) and The Bureau was looking promising, despite all of its problems. The reception so far has been fairly unexcited, though how much of that is down to the game's development or down to people wanting XCOM 2 (which, incidentally, we may be getting some more news about tomorrow) rather than the game itself is unclear. A lot of people are saying it's actually a perfectly serviceable game and an okay spin-off from the series as long as you approach it in that spirit.

That said, I think I'll be waiting for both this and Space Hulk to go down in price and I have about 30 unplayed games on my Steam list that need to be dealt with first.

Hey man how do u find space for so many games on steam?? I have around 15 and 100+ gb of my hdd is already over

See i have 1.5TB space in total but hard disks are divided into 350 gb Hdd instead of like one 750 gb hdd. So can i merge 2 hdd's into one large hdd for gaming??

[karaddin]

Hey man how do u find space for so many games on steam?? I have around 15 and 100+ gb of my hdd is already over

See i have 1.5TB space in total but hard disks are divided into 350 gb Hdd instead of like one 750 gb hdd. So can i merge 2 hdd's into one large hdd for gaming??

More/bigger hard drives. Steam actually allows you to split storage over multiple drives now just through the settings IIRC, prior to that you had to do it via symbolic linking (I think. Fucked if I can remember which it was, I've only had to do it for Civ5 since I did everything I could to try speed up load times by sticking it on my SSD).

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte]

:( i transferred my steam games to an empty 350 hdd cause i thought steam only stores games in the SteamApps folder which is in a particular drive.

Karaddin please tell me how to store games in multiple drives man.

[karaddin]

I'm at work so no idea, I thought it had been added just under the settings though. To do it via the linking just google something like "Move steam game to another drive" and follow the instructions, might need to play around with search terms.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte]

Kk ill look into it thanks :)

[My Bear so Fair]

Has anyone played the new Splinter Cell?