What are you playing?

[Ilya]

How many of you have fond memories of beer and soda-fueled marathon pen-and-paper D&D sessions that ran for days on end? I don't, actually -- the longest I ever played nonstop was 13 hours. And the screenshot below is certainly not mine -- but is impressive. If you are not familiar with what is where on a DDO screen, look for words "Completion time" next to the portrait in bottom right corner. It helps if yuo view the image at full size:

http://www.lostguild.com/ddo/supershroud/final.jpg

[Fazor]

That's . . . impressive? Does that mean a straight-play through? Or could they maybe have taken a break(s) but remained logged in? When I used to run raids in World of Warcraft, we had some that probably took 16 hours or more, but in Warcraft, there were certain dungeons that only reset once a week (or some every three days, etc). So you could log out for the night, then come back the next day and more or less pick up where you left off.

[Doodler]

How many of you have fond memories of beer and soda-fueled marathon pen-and-paper D&D sessions that ran for days on end? I don't, actually -- the longest I ever played nonstop was 13 hours. And the screenshot below is certainly not mine -- but is impressive. If you are not familiar with what is where on a DDO screen, look for words "Completion time" next to the portrait in bottom right corner. It helps if yuo view the image at full size:

http://www.lostguild.com/ddo/supershroud/final.jpg

Not D&D, but Shadowrun. Weekend runs in high school, many fond memories.


And Moose, you've created an addict. I've been up late pulling down mods for Oblivion the last couple nights. The companions are excellent, something I was dearly missing on my first run through.

[Ilya]

That's . . . impressive? Does that mean a straight-play through? Or could they maybe have taken a break(s) but remained logged in? When I used to run raids in World of Warcraft, we had some that probably took 16 hours or more, but in Warcraft, there were certain dungeons that only reset once a week (or some every three days, etc). So you could log out for the night, then come back the next day and more or less pick up where you left off.

In DDO that's not possible. They HAD to do it straight through.

[Fazor]

In DDO that's not possible. They HAD to do it straight through.

Ouch. I can't even stay awake for more than about 18 hours straight anymore.

[Moose]

And Moose, you've created an addict. I've been up late pulling down mods for Oblivion the last couple nights. The companions are excellent, something I was dearly missing on my first run through.

Yeah, sorry about that. *chuckle* I know the feeling. I'm currently using about 5 gigs of mods, and I consider most of them essential to my enjoyment of the game.

If I may ask, what kind of character are you playing?

[Doodler]

Yeah, sorry about that. *chuckle* I know the feeling. I'm currently using about 5 gigs of mods, and I consider most of them essential to my enjoyment of the game.

If I may ask, what kind of character are you playing?

Imperial Crusader, which for some reason, I managed to work into the spitting image of Taylor Lautner (using the game's built in character customization, which is pretty horrible, so this was no easy feat). I tend to do pretty well with Paladin class character types. Even though Oblivion gives anyone access to healing abilities, I stuck to my guns. I balanced his development with enough Agility/Security to crack Very Hard locks consistently (even though my reflexes are horrible and I burn through lockpicks like water in a desert) Running with a fully head-to-toe enchanted set of Ebony armor with assorted Health and Magicka bonuses and a Draemora Claymore with a +25 Fire damage enchant. Has the nice effect of sending some enemies flying on a kill strike.

[Moose]

Pity. The four very best expansion mods are mage-oriented. If you ever go mage or fighter-mage, look up Midas Magic, Origin of the Mage's Guild (Rare now, let me know if you can't find it), The Lost Spires, and Frostcrag Reborn (if you have the DLC.)

Unique Landscapes and Better Cities is worth using, too, if you haven't checked them out yet.

[Fazor]

I installed DDO last night and played for a bit, but the control seemed very clunky. I think the problem is that it's not as much of an "auto attack" type UI, such as Warcraft or . . . anything like warcraft . . . which would actually be more fun, probably, if it ran even anything close to okay on my laptop. But it doesn't. I found even something simple such as climbing a ladder usually resulted in wild veering left and right, running into walls, and otherwise not climbing the ladder. And fighting moving enemies? Ugh. But my controls were lagged, and I don't know if that's the game's poor UI, or (much more likely) the games performance on my underpowered laptop.

[HenrikOlsen]

I found the controls highly irritating until I caught on to what to do: hold down the right mouse button at all times.
That makes the mouse control heading and wasd control movement as the gods intended.
I think you can set a "keep attacking" mode, but haven't felt a need for it since I got used to the permanent right-mouse hold.

[Fazor]

I found the controls highly irritating until I caught on to what to do: hold down the right mouse button at all times.
That makes the mouse control heading and wasd control movement as the gods intended.
I think you can set a "keep attacking" mode, but haven't felt a need for it since I got used to the permanent right-mouse hold.

Yes, I hold the mouse button. That's pretty much how WoW does it (though it's more overheadish) and Age of Conan. It's not the control scheme thats the probelm, it's that even tapping A or D, or slightly moving the mouse results in a brief pause of nothing, then a huuuuge over turn. It's like the input-handling code gets lagged because the game is bogging down and it results in an over-reporting of input (ie, a small correction in heading results in a big correction)

[HenrikOlsen]

Ok, that sounds like a graphics lag problem.
Probably not readily fixable.
I assume you tried running it with every graphics setting dialed all the way down and it's still doing it.

[Fazor]

Ok, that sounds like a graphics lag problem.
Probably not readily fixable.
I assume you tried running it with every graphics setting dialed all the way down and it's still doing it.

Yeah. When I have some time I may see if there's any further tweaks I can do to help things, but this is a 3-4 year old $500 best buy laptop . . . not a whole lotta umph under the hood.

[Fazor]

Just an update on DDO: I was able to tweak the settings a little further, and also found part of the problem was the input sensitivity settings for the mouse and more so the keyboard turning. I played a good while last night, whilst watching the Indians' game. Made it to level 2 as a tempest ranger. I have no idea on what to spend action points on though.

[grant hutchison]

If you want something to bring you into FPS's from puzzle-solvers, Half Life 2 is quite good for that, imo.

Thanks for this recommendation.
So recently I've been playing "Why won't Half Life 2 run on my machine?"
(The problem's solved now. It's certainly a pretty thing, though I'm struggling with the keyboard controls at present.)

Grant Hutchison

[Ilya]

Just an update on DDO: I was able to tweak the settings a little further, and also found part of the problem was the input sensitivity settings for the mouse and more so the keyboard turning. I played a good while last night, whilst watching the Indians' game. Made it to level 2 as a tempest ranger. I have no idea on what to spend action points on though.

Fire and acid resistance, first priority.

If you tell me what you already spent actions points on and what enhancements you have, I may be able to suggest more.

But you can probably find all the answers on forums.ddo.com

[Solfe]

Ugh... I lost my battle with game addiction. I joined back up with Simuntronics Gemstones IV. Text based mud... addictive and expensive.

[Fazor]

I picked up FIFA10 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for 360 over the weekend. Am happy with both -- I initially stayed away from Battlefield because I already play Modern Warfare 2 online, and thought it'd just be more of the same. The feel, however, is sufficiently different to offer two different online experiences. Both are good.

I've played EA's Fifa games for years; the purchase was more a result of it being soccer season, so I'm currently in the mood to play. And when I can't round up people to play outside, at least now I can virtually play. :-P Fifa has been very frustrating, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. I lost every single exhibition match I played, then I decided to go ahead and start a season. I lost the first 4 exhibition matches of that season, the first match of the regular season, then finally got a draw in the second match. I finally won my first game after that, but then went on to lose my 4th match. Needless to say, my manager rating is pretty terrible. But at least I'm losing games 1-0 or 2-1 now, instead of 2-0 or 3-0. :-P

[HenrikOlsen]

A bit mixed what I play at the moment, just starting X³: Terran Conflict and recently wasted several entire days on AI War: Fleet Command, both bought cheap through Steam.

[Spoons]

Thanks to our good friend slang I am now hooked on Bubble Spinner, though I keep panicking when someone comes up to my desk with work. Still got to improve my score, only around 600 or so.

I'm picking up a copy of Red Dead Redemption for the XBox 360 after work today. Looks like a pretty cool game. I might try it out tonight if I get time.

[Fazor]

I'm picking up a copy of Red Dead Redemption for the XBox 360 after work today. Looks like a pretty cool game. I might try it out tonight if I get time.

Tell me how it is! I've been going back and forth over buying it since it came out Tuesday. Last night I was all set to go pick it up (and a bottle of Jim Beam--liquor store is right by the game store), but at the last minute decided I don't really need an expensive game and liquor. Well, I get home and fire up Battlefield BC2, and I see my best friend is online. When I went to check to see if he was in Bad Company, he was playing 'Red Dead'!

But I haven't gotten to talk to him yet to see how he likes it.

[Spoons]

I'm just having a go now. Well, taking a quick break to get a drink. Oh, how I wish I had some bourbon to go with this game right now!

I really like the game so far - it's got a good mixture of missions, general direction/structure to the story (from the few hours I've played so far anyway) while still being extremely fluid and open, and one very cool bonus to it - the mini-games! I don't usually get over excited about mini-games as they're often pretty average, but it's got a really good hunting setup (shoot any birds, coyotes, deer, rabbits, snakes, whatever you can find really) where you build up your marksman skills, which will improve your "crunch-time" shooting, where everything slows down.

Hey, if you're sitting on the couch with your lady or just feeling a little soft you can even go picking flowers as part of your survival skills. How dandy!

If you can spare the coin I'd grab it. Well, I did, so that goes without saying.

Whenever I get a game like this, which you could use as a brilliant time-sink, I always con myself by saying, "Oh, I'll be so busy playing that I'll save money on booze" but here I am, wishing I had some hard liquor sol I can have a drinking comp with my character.

[Fazor]

Did you play the first one? I enjoyed it, though it was rather short as I recall. And not all that "open world", for an open world game. The kicker for me is the inclusion of multiplayer -- I love being able to play with other people. At least, when it's done well.

Whenever I get a game like this, which you could use as a brilliant time-sink, I always con myself by saying, "Oh, I'll be so busy playing that I'll save money on booze" but here I am, wishing I had some hard liquor sol I can have a drinking comp with my character.

I have to get some for tonight, 'caus the Crew play. Can't watch sports without a drink! (okay, so I often watch sports without a drink. But still.) I do enjoy a drink when I'm playing video games too. Sure made hours-long Warcraft raids more fun.

[Spoons]

Did you play the first one? I enjoyed it, though it was rather short as I recall. And not all that "open world", for an open world game. The kicker for me is the inclusion of multiplayer -- I love being able to play with other people. At least, when it's done well.

Red Dead Revolver? I hadn't played that previous one before, no. Could you skin animals in that one? Such an awesome feature, I reckon. This one seems quite open world to me so far.

I have to get some for tonight, 'caus the Crew play. Can't watch sports without a drink! (okay, so I often watch sports without a drink. But still.) I do enjoy a drink when I'm playing video games too. Sure made hours-long Warcraft raids more fun.

Well, so, it's better to consider that a rule that you're breaking sometimes by not drinking. You'd never have to justify breaking a rule to not drink, and since the rule is still to drink during sports then you don't have to justify that either.

I've still got to work on convincing a few of the other Band of Whippets boys I play XBox Live with to get it, then I can really test out the multiplayer. I'll poke around with that a little more next week, I think, once I've done a bit more of the story mode.

I hope the story mode isn't too short... judging by GTA IV (I hope that's reasonable) you should be able to get quite a bit out of it, depending how clinical you choose to be.

I prefer to wade through games like this, and with all the hunting stuff you can mess around with there'll be plenty of drunken hours wiled away, I'm guessing.

[Parrothead]

Pulled out my old Sega Genesis console the other weekend, have played some short games of NHL Hockey, Super Street Fighter II, volleyball, Bill Walsh's College Football, World Series baseball and World Cup Rugby '95. Oh yeah Sonic the Hedgehog II, too.

Non video, Skittle Bowl and Rebound.

[Fazor]

Thanks in part to Spoons here (and my best friend's review) picked up 'Red Dead: Redemption'. Grand Theft Auto in the old west in a stetson. So, in a word, 'Awesome'. I'd still be playing it, but Tara woke up from her nap and wanted to watch tv.

[TJMac]

Guild Wars, have been for 2 years now. Any other Guild Wars players here on BAUT?

My main character is Xavia Mindwalker, I'm an officer in the guild The Dragons of Middle Earth [TDME].

Ive been playing GW for over 4 years now. I will not even admit to the amount of time spent.

I play multiple characters, depending on what my guild is up to, but Morainne Lan is the one I am on the most. Yep, Im one of those guys who plays female characters. Officer in [WARS] guild.

[Fazor]

I thought I'd revive this thread since, as I mentioned in the StarCraft 2 thread that I had purchased Fallout 3 (not related in any way, so I forget how it came up). Since it got some good comments I picked up a used copy after work. I played it a bit (probably more than a bit; lose track of time!) last night and so far I'm enjoying it. Bethesda does an awesome job on these types of games.

Per my usual tradition, I took the instruction booklet with me to work today so I could read through it, and maybe pick up some things I missed. And as per tradition, now I can't wait to get home to play it some more! We go to dinner with my parents and my brother's family on Fridays, so won't be home until late; but I don't have anything pressing to do in the morning, which means I can grab some good beer and stay up all night playing. Of course, at my 'advanced age' of 28, I can't really stay up all night playing games like I used to; so it really means staying up 'til 1 or 2. But good 'nuff!

[HenrikOlsen]

At 44 I still occasionally forget the time and notice I should stop playing because the sun's getting up.

Currently mainly X³:TC, Dragon Age: Origins and Overlord.

[Fazor]

I played DA:O and loved it -- though never got any of the expansions (trade-in value was too high so used it to help me get Fifa 10, or Dead Space, forget which).