So, my contract ended 2 months ago, and I'm still paying the £40 a month because I'm unsure what to do.
I'd quite like a new fancy phone, but I can't see anything overly appealing. After spending hours looking at new phones and what they can do i'm none the wiser, and quite confused.
Until now every phone i've had has been a clear upgrade, but I can't see one now. Maybe it's because the "upgrades" are mostly touchscreen and I can't see why that's worth it.
I've been looking at the HTC Hero, the iPhone and the Pre Palm. Unless I was just looking at the wrong picture, I was instantly put off the Pre Palm due to the keys it had, I've had a look at Blackberrys before, and those small qwerty keyboards seem horrible, maybe i've just got fat thumbs but I could never use them.
While I don't use the camera loads on my phone I do listen to music with it. I'm under the impression you're best using iTunes for music on an iPhone, which I'd never do. But I also like the option of using the camera, so going from a nice 5 megapixel camera to a 3, or to one without a flash just seems like a downgrade.
It seems internet is a major selling point, but I don't know if it's just because of the network i'm on, or if the N95 isn't great at it, but I've always been disappointed with the internet. Either things don't load fast enough, or they don't load at all. I've got a YouTube application on there, and it'll lose connection half the time when trying to load videos, and half the time it does load videos the sound and picture are out, sometimes by 2 or 3 seconds.
Addons seem to also be a major selling point, which is why the HTC and iPhone make a shortlist, since Nokia's Ovi service is reportedly rubbish, and I have no idea what you'd get on a Samsung or any of the "what's that called again?" instantly unrecognisable makes.
After being disappointed by the camera and music options from HTC and iPhone I did have a quick look at Nokia and Samsung, and couldn't see any vast improvements. While a better camera would be nice, the one on the Nokia is good enough for me, and to be honest the camera on the N73 I had was quite good as well, but the N95 one lets me get bigger pictures at the same quality, which is great for when I'm going to crop the edges. True I can get more space on the phone, but unless I decide to put my entire music collection on the thing, 8gig is enough, although putting my entire music collection on the thing is appealing.
So it does appear to me that my options of phone I have to choose to keep the same music and camera quality I already have (slight improvement) or have access to some cool gadgets. And while I do like cool gadgets I can't seem many of them being cool enough for the cash.
If I stick with my current phone, I can probably get a contract for around £10 / £15 a month to bail on when something ground breaking comes along, or get some sort of £30 a month contract, put that sim in my phone then sell the new phone and get an instant £200 / £300. All of which sounds alot better than keeping the shiny £300 and wishing I still had my Nokia to take photos.
I'm probably just being thick, but how can the camera on a phone be such a low priority? Two years after getting my phone it's still practically the best you can get. You might argue that I should have a seperate camera, or a seperate MP3 player, or a seperate laptop for internet...
While it does seem to me that the HTC Hero is the best choice for me if I do go that route, I can't decide if the additional benefits out weigh the losing of the camera in flash situations, and the fact I'd be tied to an 18 month contract for probably around £30 / £35...
Monday, 12 October 2009
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Holiday
So, it's been a month since I last posted (1 day off a month exactly) and I went on Holiday for 2 weeks.
The flight there was ok, the Seat wasn't as bad as say a Bus or a Train, so I had some room. I tried to watch a film but the picture cut out half way through, so i've got to watch the film some other time already knowing the first half... Kept myself busy but was a bit bored.
Orlando was great, not sure what else to say really! Went to lots of theme parks, and despite people's comments of "There is too much to do in 1 trip" we pretty much did it all. Went to all 4 Disney parks, both the Universal ones, Sea World, Busch Gardens and Wet and Wild. Went on a large amount of rollercoasters, got wet on alot of Rapids and Log flumes, and saw a whole host of 3D shows, even ones called 4D but I didn't find they moved through time apart from the normal linear way.
If I had to make some highlights of stuff, rides specifically I'd do it like this (in no particular order)
The flight there was ok, the Seat wasn't as bad as say a Bus or a Train, so I had some room. I tried to watch a film but the picture cut out half way through, so i've got to watch the film some other time already knowing the first half... Kept myself busy but was a bit bored.
Orlando was great, not sure what else to say really! Went to lots of theme parks, and despite people's comments of "There is too much to do in 1 trip" we pretty much did it all. Went to all 4 Disney parks, both the Universal ones, Sea World, Busch Gardens and Wet and Wild. Went on a large amount of rollercoasters, got wet on alot of Rapids and Log flumes, and saw a whole host of 3D shows, even ones called 4D but I didn't find they moved through time apart from the normal linear way.
If I had to make some highlights of stuff, rides specifically I'd do it like this (in no particular order)
- Haunted House at Disney Magic Kingdom, done really well and thought it was great.
- Kracken at Sea World, brilliant rollercoaster.
- Bilge Rat Barges at Islands of Adventure, Best Rapids i've ever been on.
- Spiderman at Islands of Adventure, 3D Ride, which was great.
- Fireworks at Disney Epcot, best fireworks I saw all holiday.
- Fantasmic (or something like that...) at Disney Hollywood Studios, brilliant show
- Tower of Terror at Disney Hollywood Studios, looks good, and it's better than it looks.
- The Mummy Ride at Universal Studios, great.
And that's just off the top of my head.
I found a Dickies shop and spent around £100 in there, and also bought a whole host of Tshirts from places, nothing with say Mickey Mouse on it, but stuff like the Punisher. So I now have a load more clothes to wear which is always good.
I had a great time and would go again, although I'd rather go somewhere else since I'd like to go somewhere new rather than the same places i've already been :p
Catherine has decided she'll go on Holiday with her best friend next year, so I have the option of saving the same amount I have been for this holiday, for another one in 2 years, and if I do save at the same rate I'd have around £7000, but no doubt some of that will go on long weekends away, and more importantly a new shiny really good PC.
Monday, 7 September 2009
Customer Service
So, i've never really gone on holiday since I was a kid, never been overly bothered, or had lots of cash (mostly since Cash goes on stuff and drinking). But on friday i'm off to Orlando, and there's something I couldn't help but notice something that kept repeating.
First off, my girlfriend is a Vegatarian, so wanted to make sure the meal she'd get wasn't meat. The travel agents said we needed to talk to the airline direct (can do it online, doesn't have to be phone) to sort that out. Next cos i'm like 6 foot 5, wanted to see about getting a good seat, possibly with more leg room, possibly an aisle seat or something; need to talk to the airline direct... Wanted to see about booking a lounge, and you guessed it, the travel agency couldn't sort that out either.
I've found over the years, that it's cheaper to be on Contract, not just cos I want a nice phone rather than a cheap one, but not living with my girlfriend can mean alot of text messages, it's also nice to have the option of using my phone whenever I want, instead of worrying if i've got any cash on it. Especially when you consider these numbers where you can reverse charges or whatever and you're talking like £4 for the initial connection...
Anyway, with being on contract I find the best thing to do is cancel the contract when it's up, and move to another company. For example my last phone was a Nokia N73 (or something like that...) with Vodafone, the Nokia N95 8gig came out, and I wanted to get one and thankfully my Vodafone contract was up. Vodafone said I'd need to pay over £200 to get the N95 on a new contract, 3 on the other hand gave me the phone for free for a £33 a month contract. Why stay with the current company of offers to entice new customers are better? And that's for every company, I moved to Vodafone cos their new offer was better than renewing at whatever company I was with before.
Anyway, when I tried to cancel my contract with Vodafone I was told I needed to phone a number, and they even said I needed to send in written notification, signed. Today I went into the 3 shop to ask how my phone would be in America, they've given me a number to phone...
The point obviously it seems is that these places are shops, once they've sold me their phones or holidays they couldn't care less. Sure there might be a call centre somewhere that could care, but I hate talking on the phone, especially when I might get someone with an accent I don't understand.
When I've bought some clothes, further customer service probably doesn't need to be given, unless I need to take it back or something, and that's fine. But it's especially annoying with say a phone where i've signed up to an 18 month contract and 5 minutes later my only help with any problems is a machine on the phone where i've got to guess which button to press in many cases where the last option isn't a "Talk to someone" one.
How hard would it be to have some people available who know what's going on?
First off, my girlfriend is a Vegatarian, so wanted to make sure the meal she'd get wasn't meat. The travel agents said we needed to talk to the airline direct (can do it online, doesn't have to be phone) to sort that out. Next cos i'm like 6 foot 5, wanted to see about getting a good seat, possibly with more leg room, possibly an aisle seat or something; need to talk to the airline direct... Wanted to see about booking a lounge, and you guessed it, the travel agency couldn't sort that out either.
I've found over the years, that it's cheaper to be on Contract, not just cos I want a nice phone rather than a cheap one, but not living with my girlfriend can mean alot of text messages, it's also nice to have the option of using my phone whenever I want, instead of worrying if i've got any cash on it. Especially when you consider these numbers where you can reverse charges or whatever and you're talking like £4 for the initial connection...
Anyway, with being on contract I find the best thing to do is cancel the contract when it's up, and move to another company. For example my last phone was a Nokia N73 (or something like that...) with Vodafone, the Nokia N95 8gig came out, and I wanted to get one and thankfully my Vodafone contract was up. Vodafone said I'd need to pay over £200 to get the N95 on a new contract, 3 on the other hand gave me the phone for free for a £33 a month contract. Why stay with the current company of offers to entice new customers are better? And that's for every company, I moved to Vodafone cos their new offer was better than renewing at whatever company I was with before.
Anyway, when I tried to cancel my contract with Vodafone I was told I needed to phone a number, and they even said I needed to send in written notification, signed. Today I went into the 3 shop to ask how my phone would be in America, they've given me a number to phone...
The point obviously it seems is that these places are shops, once they've sold me their phones or holidays they couldn't care less. Sure there might be a call centre somewhere that could care, but I hate talking on the phone, especially when I might get someone with an accent I don't understand.
When I've bought some clothes, further customer service probably doesn't need to be given, unless I need to take it back or something, and that's fine. But it's especially annoying with say a phone where i've signed up to an 18 month contract and 5 minutes later my only help with any problems is a machine on the phone where i've got to guess which button to press in many cases where the last option isn't a "Talk to someone" one.
How hard would it be to have some people available who know what's going on?
Monday, 24 August 2009
MMO and Levels
I was going to post about this in an earlier post, but I decided to put it seperatly. Looking at how leveling and end game are so different. But I don't know why?
The standard RPG format is that you start off weak, and build up abilities. You can compare this to say a Racing game where you upgrade your vehicle as you advance through the game, or a FPS where you might get better weapons.
Maybe it's just because I mostly play RPGs, but I feel this is the genre that is hit most by this. Consider some RPGs you might have played, possibly the central character is some farm boy with no skills, and by the end of the game he's a power house. This seems like a large leap from say a book you might read, where the central character might take years or even decades to get his skills and abilities that high. In a film you tend not to have those years, but there still might be the impression of a long time.
In a game the entire game might seem to take a week? Maybe a month? And by the end of it, as well as doing a thousand times more damage, you can also survive a thousand times more damage.
The game is balanced around what your level is, or might be, and what abilities you might have. Sometimes a random villager will give you a run for your money at level 1 and level 30 depending on when you meet them. Elite guards could have 10 health, or a million, depending on how far through your quest you are.
Alot of this hasn't sat well with me. If I was the bad guy or whatever I'd just keep the guards with a million health and get rid of the rest, I'd own any level 1 guy trying to level up.
This annoyance is further brought forward by games where you're *not* a useless nobody at the beginning. Take for example KOTOR2 where you were a Jedi General in the War however many years ago, why do I lack the skills and feats to kill anything other than low level rubbish? It's even worse in KOTOR where you can end the game with no where near all the Force Powers you wanted, and wondering how that makes sense in the game.
An RPG is about the story, possibly you can ignore the entire levelling thing, and it might make sense to get more powerful. But with an MMO there is no story as such, fair enough The Old Republic they'rebanging on about might have alot of story and infact an arch for your character to work through, but the point is if there is *any* end game, it's just that end game. You'll want to be top level to do it, you might even need to be top level. If the leveling process takes you 2 months, you either need to level again, or you'll end up spending more than 2 months at top level, at that stage the leveling process is just to get you used to the game.
I think about world of warcraft. Would it be such a bad thing if you could start at max level? (or assume there is no level system, you start with everything) true you might get confused by the large amount of abilities you have, but is there any need to go through the leveling process apart from to learn what abilities are good? Imagine if every zone, instance and quest in the entire game was for top level people, wouldn't that have been a more enjoyable game? I think most people who enjoy leveling enjoy it because they get the lore out of the game and get to explore, why can't you do that at max level, assuming everything is tailored to you being max level?
There should be a learning curve to a game, but I haven't played an FPS (although I haven't played many anyway) where after doing your mission you feel the need to kill everything to squeeze the last bit of XP or whatever out of the level to give you a better chance in the next.
Thats when extra characters come into the mix, I've done zones in WoW often enough that alot of leveling is just a boring grind, I don't need to read the quest text, or learn anything the NPCs tell me because i've been there before, gone is the exploring as well. And i'm someone who likes reading the story in quest text and exploring, but the fact there is a leveling system means I have to repeat everything just to get to the end game.
If I were to make an MMO I wouldn't bother at all with a level system, or if I did the levels would be so close together that a good skilled low level player could kill a top level player who wasn't that skilled.
Think of any MMO you might have played, and think how much of the world they've devoted to leveling, zones and instances you visit once and move on. If there were maybe 10 levels to a character, each unlocking some new skills, and not more powerful ones, just different ones that allow for more complex rotations, or even different playstyles. Possibly any talent trees would be already filled in for you, in WoW terms you could get asked if you want your paladin to heal, tank or dps, and the talent tree would be filled in. Obviously you could change it if you wanted to.
While I might be remembering incorrectly, at level 60 in WoW your choices involved Strat/Scholo/DM/BRS. Forgetting the idea you needed 39 friends to do MC. There were basically 4 instances, with some PVP choices, but people still played them over and over.
I also know alot of MMOs fail due to a lack of end game. When you're charging £10 a month or whatever for people to just play the game, they'll stop playing if after leveling there is nothing to do, or very little to do. And they'll go do something else and forget about it, even if you do add more content, people probably won't bother coming back.
With The Old Republic I am quite worried at the fact that end game and leveling will be entirely different, and alot of the content will be with leveling.
Leveling in an MMO is like a single player RPG, after paying a subscription to get to the end game, there better be something that makes it worth while.
The standard RPG format is that you start off weak, and build up abilities. You can compare this to say a Racing game where you upgrade your vehicle as you advance through the game, or a FPS where you might get better weapons.
Maybe it's just because I mostly play RPGs, but I feel this is the genre that is hit most by this. Consider some RPGs you might have played, possibly the central character is some farm boy with no skills, and by the end of the game he's a power house. This seems like a large leap from say a book you might read, where the central character might take years or even decades to get his skills and abilities that high. In a film you tend not to have those years, but there still might be the impression of a long time.
In a game the entire game might seem to take a week? Maybe a month? And by the end of it, as well as doing a thousand times more damage, you can also survive a thousand times more damage.
The game is balanced around what your level is, or might be, and what abilities you might have. Sometimes a random villager will give you a run for your money at level 1 and level 30 depending on when you meet them. Elite guards could have 10 health, or a million, depending on how far through your quest you are.
Alot of this hasn't sat well with me. If I was the bad guy or whatever I'd just keep the guards with a million health and get rid of the rest, I'd own any level 1 guy trying to level up.
This annoyance is further brought forward by games where you're *not* a useless nobody at the beginning. Take for example KOTOR2 where you were a Jedi General in the War however many years ago, why do I lack the skills and feats to kill anything other than low level rubbish? It's even worse in KOTOR where you can end the game with no where near all the Force Powers you wanted, and wondering how that makes sense in the game.
An RPG is about the story, possibly you can ignore the entire levelling thing, and it might make sense to get more powerful. But with an MMO there is no story as such, fair enough The Old Republic they'rebanging on about might have alot of story and infact an arch for your character to work through, but the point is if there is *any* end game, it's just that end game. You'll want to be top level to do it, you might even need to be top level. If the leveling process takes you 2 months, you either need to level again, or you'll end up spending more than 2 months at top level, at that stage the leveling process is just to get you used to the game.
I think about world of warcraft. Would it be such a bad thing if you could start at max level? (or assume there is no level system, you start with everything) true you might get confused by the large amount of abilities you have, but is there any need to go through the leveling process apart from to learn what abilities are good? Imagine if every zone, instance and quest in the entire game was for top level people, wouldn't that have been a more enjoyable game? I think most people who enjoy leveling enjoy it because they get the lore out of the game and get to explore, why can't you do that at max level, assuming everything is tailored to you being max level?
There should be a learning curve to a game, but I haven't played an FPS (although I haven't played many anyway) where after doing your mission you feel the need to kill everything to squeeze the last bit of XP or whatever out of the level to give you a better chance in the next.
Thats when extra characters come into the mix, I've done zones in WoW often enough that alot of leveling is just a boring grind, I don't need to read the quest text, or learn anything the NPCs tell me because i've been there before, gone is the exploring as well. And i'm someone who likes reading the story in quest text and exploring, but the fact there is a leveling system means I have to repeat everything just to get to the end game.
If I were to make an MMO I wouldn't bother at all with a level system, or if I did the levels would be so close together that a good skilled low level player could kill a top level player who wasn't that skilled.
Think of any MMO you might have played, and think how much of the world they've devoted to leveling, zones and instances you visit once and move on. If there were maybe 10 levels to a character, each unlocking some new skills, and not more powerful ones, just different ones that allow for more complex rotations, or even different playstyles. Possibly any talent trees would be already filled in for you, in WoW terms you could get asked if you want your paladin to heal, tank or dps, and the talent tree would be filled in. Obviously you could change it if you wanted to.
While I might be remembering incorrectly, at level 60 in WoW your choices involved Strat/Scholo/DM/BRS. Forgetting the idea you needed 39 friends to do MC. There were basically 4 instances, with some PVP choices, but people still played them over and over.
I also know alot of MMOs fail due to a lack of end game. When you're charging £10 a month or whatever for people to just play the game, they'll stop playing if after leveling there is nothing to do, or very little to do. And they'll go do something else and forget about it, even if you do add more content, people probably won't bother coming back.
With The Old Republic I am quite worried at the fact that end game and leveling will be entirely different, and alot of the content will be with leveling.
Leveling in an MMO is like a single player RPG, after paying a subscription to get to the end game, there better be something that makes it worth while.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
The Old Republic, better than the new republic
So I ended up playing KOTOR2 on my Laptop, and I haven't logged into WoW for at least a month and a half, maybe as long as 3 months. I do miss WoW, but that's because it kept me occupied, true L4D and TF2 are great, but after playing one for 6/7 hours none stop I think the next day "Hmmm... lets play something else?" this is especially true of L4D where I find i've exhausted the single player options (no way can I do Expert on single player) and don't want to play with random people. TF2 is fine with random people, but I can't play it every night.
Fair enough, I might just need to get some new games, but KOTOR2 needs playing so I played it. Played it all the way to the end infact, but haven't killed the last boss yet. I've tried about 5 times, and failed horribly each time. Phase two screws me every time, I read a guide that suggests Force Wave but they always resist it, I've read you should run away, I might try that yet. I do think the game is beatable with the set up i've got, even if i've annoyed myself in a couple of ways, mainly the skills, and the bloody named crystal, which I forgot to update at all during the game, and even took out of my lightsabre for being poor.
So, i'm playing through the game again. This time I started with a wopping 16 Int, and boosted my Con from 14 to 16 on the first two upgrades. True my Strength is 10 and my Dexterity is 12, but it's not overly important.
Last time I played through as a Good Woman, this time i'm going for Evil Woman. Of the "No Armour" force powers i've always been more impressed with the light side ones. This is because they're buffs, bosses seemily resist most powers you throw at them (to stop them being a walkover I suspect) and on normal people i'm happy to use other powers. So this time i'm planning on using Armour. I can upgrade my armour to resist alot of Energy damage, and I can try and get as close to 100% resist on it with other items and stuff. I'm loving the idea of entering the final fight (maybe even recording it) and simply laughing at Lightsabre "damage" doing nothing. And for all these upgrades to armour you need it to be armour, not "robes" and not "Light Armour" either, since they sometimes allow force powers.
The High Int is because I want the good upgrades, and I want to be able to do stuff. With a charater build in mind you can seperate Force Powers and Feats into 3 catagories.
1) There are a number that are vastly important for the build. Like Flurry
2) There are a number that are quite nice, but you can probably live without them.
3) Some of them will be useless.
Unfortunatly letting the game "Auto Level" a character it picks alot of the useless stuff, especially in feats. Fair enough, you could say no feat is "useless" but someone can happily end up with Flurry, Power Attack and Crit Strike. While they're no doubt rubbish, you'll probably pick which you want to use, and spam that, i'm unsure at what point you'll be in a fight an think "I always Flurry, I love Flurry, but i'm glad I have Power Attack for this 1 time".
As such, in my mind as long as you actually level (IE, don't get stuck in the game) then the actual number of Feats and Force Powers you get means nothing. If class A gives you 15 Feats by level 30 and class B gives you 30, if you only have 10 feats in catagory 1 (must have) and catagory 2 has maybe another 10, chances are you'll take class A based on that, simply for other reasons.
Unique powers are given to each class, unfortunately I have no idea what they are, I gather a Weapon Master gets some sort of damage reduction, but searching on the Internet gave me some idea, but not alot. If Damage reduction is your thing (I'm hoping the Sith equivilent gets it as well) then no matter how many times you level a Watchman, you'll still be missing out on this extra reduction.
Skills, while the same is try for Skills as it is for Feats and Force Powers, it's a bigger gap. For making things, breaking into things, disarming things, etc, you'll usually want a higher score. True with 2 skills leveled you can still complete the game, you'll miss out on alot, especially alot of gear. Without Computer Skills and Repair you'll be lagging behind alot, and without Security you'll be missing out on alot of free stuff. Maybe it's just the way I am, but switching to another character everytime there is a door annoys me, I want to be able to do it. Especially when i'm stuck taking other people, or can't take the people with the skills I need.
Upgrading items is similar, I think you can use someone elses skills to make stuff, but switching characters, getting them to make stuff, then going back to the ship you put it in stuff you're allies are using is annoying. Even more annoying if you want to try and upgrade everyones armour and you're either running back and forth because you forgot one of your allies can't use armour and that upgrade you made doesn't fit in Robes. Or get everyone naked and try and sort it out at the desk, then get them all back equipped... Nightmare.
A much easier option is to just do everything yourself on the Work desk in your Ship, you can upgrade everything everyone is wearing from there as well. But to do that you need the skills on your character.
Anyway, thats why I started with 16 Int, no doubt I'll not increase that, and look to increase other stats (with using Armour, I'm unsure if increasing Dex is a good idea. Maybe I should increase Strength). I've gone with the Con because I want more life, but more importantly, I don't want to miss out on Implants. If I get an implant that increases another stat by 3, then it's exactly the same as having less 3 con and 3 more in that stat, apart from the health.
Anyway, one thing that I realised when looking at this, was how starting decisions can screw an entire game against you, and chances are you'll never know you're screwing yourself for a while. When I last played it was around level 10 before I found out the number of componants you get from dismantling things is based on your Repair, shortly after dismantling all my none needed gear, I was short of Componants to build anything for a while. I took the feat to get Repair as a class skill, then levelled nothing but that until it was max. This ment instead of having 4 skills on max level, they were all over the place... Which is always annoying when you're 2 points short of getting a level 5 upgrade instead of a level 4 one...
The end game is different to the rest of the game. Even if you consider that the end game is 2 fights. Maybe it's just from playing WoW alot, but are most RPGs like this? You work your way through the game and some combination of attacks, items, bonuses whatever work really well. Then you hit the last boss, and he does something different, or something doesn't work, and you find something along the lines of "Wow, lowering my defense for power attack means they kill me instantly" which leads to "I wish I could level 6 times more to get Flurry". While that example goes against my "Useful Feats" argument, since you'd auto have both, I hope you see my point. The game doesn't allow you to change feats, powers and skills just before the final fight. You've screwed yourself at some point by taking the wrong thing, but the important part is, that you didn't know it was the wrong thing until right at the end, because until then it was the right thing.
One of the first times I played KOTOR I took alot of the force powers that do damage. Whether we're talking Choke, Lightning, or whatever, and would happily jump into a room and force power to death everything. I find myself at the fight at the end and the boss just goes "Saved" to everything taking practically no damage. Damn, I didn't realise I had to read every force power and try and pick out the ones that are good when resisted, I thought any of them might be cool... Fair enough with say Choke, I wouldn't expect a final boss fight to be me throwing a choke and sabring them to death while helpless... but I had hoped the power would actually work...
Makes me wonder alot about SWTOR, obviously the end game is going to be different to the rest of it. But how much is going to be 10 people crowded around a Sith all of them smacking him with Lightsabres for 10 minutes until he dies? I doubt they'd do that... but what else will they do? Keep groups small? But its an MMO... Give each player someone else to fight? Sounds good...
I do worry though, will there be a point while leveling that you can screw yourself for the end game... I hope not.
Just as a side note, I've played the "New Order" games, I think they're called that... set after the films, where you use the mouse to actually move the lightsabre. When I was talking to a mate he mentioned that he'd played KOTOR, and it took about 10 minutes to figure out he wasn't talking about KOTOR, although he still says "Jedi Knights of the Old Republic" even though it's not the old republic...
Fair enough, I might just need to get some new games, but KOTOR2 needs playing so I played it. Played it all the way to the end infact, but haven't killed the last boss yet. I've tried about 5 times, and failed horribly each time. Phase two screws me every time, I read a guide that suggests Force Wave but they always resist it, I've read you should run away, I might try that yet. I do think the game is beatable with the set up i've got, even if i've annoyed myself in a couple of ways, mainly the skills, and the bloody named crystal, which I forgot to update at all during the game, and even took out of my lightsabre for being poor.
So, i'm playing through the game again. This time I started with a wopping 16 Int, and boosted my Con from 14 to 16 on the first two upgrades. True my Strength is 10 and my Dexterity is 12, but it's not overly important.
Last time I played through as a Good Woman, this time i'm going for Evil Woman. Of the "No Armour" force powers i've always been more impressed with the light side ones. This is because they're buffs, bosses seemily resist most powers you throw at them (to stop them being a walkover I suspect) and on normal people i'm happy to use other powers. So this time i'm planning on using Armour. I can upgrade my armour to resist alot of Energy damage, and I can try and get as close to 100% resist on it with other items and stuff. I'm loving the idea of entering the final fight (maybe even recording it) and simply laughing at Lightsabre "damage" doing nothing. And for all these upgrades to armour you need it to be armour, not "robes" and not "Light Armour" either, since they sometimes allow force powers.
The High Int is because I want the good upgrades, and I want to be able to do stuff. With a charater build in mind you can seperate Force Powers and Feats into 3 catagories.
1) There are a number that are vastly important for the build. Like Flurry
2) There are a number that are quite nice, but you can probably live without them.
3) Some of them will be useless.
Unfortunatly letting the game "Auto Level" a character it picks alot of the useless stuff, especially in feats. Fair enough, you could say no feat is "useless" but someone can happily end up with Flurry, Power Attack and Crit Strike. While they're no doubt rubbish, you'll probably pick which you want to use, and spam that, i'm unsure at what point you'll be in a fight an think "I always Flurry, I love Flurry, but i'm glad I have Power Attack for this 1 time".
As such, in my mind as long as you actually level (IE, don't get stuck in the game) then the actual number of Feats and Force Powers you get means nothing. If class A gives you 15 Feats by level 30 and class B gives you 30, if you only have 10 feats in catagory 1 (must have) and catagory 2 has maybe another 10, chances are you'll take class A based on that, simply for other reasons.
Unique powers are given to each class, unfortunately I have no idea what they are, I gather a Weapon Master gets some sort of damage reduction, but searching on the Internet gave me some idea, but not alot. If Damage reduction is your thing (I'm hoping the Sith equivilent gets it as well) then no matter how many times you level a Watchman, you'll still be missing out on this extra reduction.
Skills, while the same is try for Skills as it is for Feats and Force Powers, it's a bigger gap. For making things, breaking into things, disarming things, etc, you'll usually want a higher score. True with 2 skills leveled you can still complete the game, you'll miss out on alot, especially alot of gear. Without Computer Skills and Repair you'll be lagging behind alot, and without Security you'll be missing out on alot of free stuff. Maybe it's just the way I am, but switching to another character everytime there is a door annoys me, I want to be able to do it. Especially when i'm stuck taking other people, or can't take the people with the skills I need.
Upgrading items is similar, I think you can use someone elses skills to make stuff, but switching characters, getting them to make stuff, then going back to the ship you put it in stuff you're allies are using is annoying. Even more annoying if you want to try and upgrade everyones armour and you're either running back and forth because you forgot one of your allies can't use armour and that upgrade you made doesn't fit in Robes. Or get everyone naked and try and sort it out at the desk, then get them all back equipped... Nightmare.
A much easier option is to just do everything yourself on the Work desk in your Ship, you can upgrade everything everyone is wearing from there as well. But to do that you need the skills on your character.
Anyway, thats why I started with 16 Int, no doubt I'll not increase that, and look to increase other stats (with using Armour, I'm unsure if increasing Dex is a good idea. Maybe I should increase Strength). I've gone with the Con because I want more life, but more importantly, I don't want to miss out on Implants. If I get an implant that increases another stat by 3, then it's exactly the same as having less 3 con and 3 more in that stat, apart from the health.
Anyway, one thing that I realised when looking at this, was how starting decisions can screw an entire game against you, and chances are you'll never know you're screwing yourself for a while. When I last played it was around level 10 before I found out the number of componants you get from dismantling things is based on your Repair, shortly after dismantling all my none needed gear, I was short of Componants to build anything for a while. I took the feat to get Repair as a class skill, then levelled nothing but that until it was max. This ment instead of having 4 skills on max level, they were all over the place... Which is always annoying when you're 2 points short of getting a level 5 upgrade instead of a level 4 one...
The end game is different to the rest of the game. Even if you consider that the end game is 2 fights. Maybe it's just from playing WoW alot, but are most RPGs like this? You work your way through the game and some combination of attacks, items, bonuses whatever work really well. Then you hit the last boss, and he does something different, or something doesn't work, and you find something along the lines of "Wow, lowering my defense for power attack means they kill me instantly" which leads to "I wish I could level 6 times more to get Flurry". While that example goes against my "Useful Feats" argument, since you'd auto have both, I hope you see my point. The game doesn't allow you to change feats, powers and skills just before the final fight. You've screwed yourself at some point by taking the wrong thing, but the important part is, that you didn't know it was the wrong thing until right at the end, because until then it was the right thing.
One of the first times I played KOTOR I took alot of the force powers that do damage. Whether we're talking Choke, Lightning, or whatever, and would happily jump into a room and force power to death everything. I find myself at the fight at the end and the boss just goes "Saved" to everything taking practically no damage. Damn, I didn't realise I had to read every force power and try and pick out the ones that are good when resisted, I thought any of them might be cool... Fair enough with say Choke, I wouldn't expect a final boss fight to be me throwing a choke and sabring them to death while helpless... but I had hoped the power would actually work...
Makes me wonder alot about SWTOR, obviously the end game is going to be different to the rest of it. But how much is going to be 10 people crowded around a Sith all of them smacking him with Lightsabres for 10 minutes until he dies? I doubt they'd do that... but what else will they do? Keep groups small? But its an MMO... Give each player someone else to fight? Sounds good...
I do worry though, will there be a point while leveling that you can screw yourself for the end game... I hope not.
Just as a side note, I've played the "New Order" games, I think they're called that... set after the films, where you use the mouse to actually move the lightsabre. When I was talking to a mate he mentioned that he'd played KOTOR, and it took about 10 minutes to figure out he wasn't talking about KOTOR, although he still says "Jedi Knights of the Old Republic" even though it's not the old republic...
Engineer Update - Speculation
Since no one's currently reading this, it might be a bit pointless posting some ideas on what could be in the Engineer update. The further question is why bother posting anything? No doubt at some point I'll be so impressed with my blog that I'll happily share it with others, probably someone will post something on a forum and I'll be happy to reply "Heres a link to my thoughts on my Blog" and it'll go from there.
Chances are though, that anyone reading this will be looking through back posts because they like my blog so much they like the idea of reading older posts. Anyone reading this who doesn't play TF2 won't care, and anyone who does play TF2 will no doubt not read this until the Engineer update is out. As such I don't feel the need (or the desire) to spend hours thinking of solid ideas and balancing them, but will just post random thoughts. Hey it's my blog, all I seem to post are random thoughts so tough.
I've not been playing TF2 from the start, infact i've only been playing the game long enough to have had 1 update happen (Spy and Sniper), not including small patches that change things slightly, I mean updated weapons and such. And as such I'll probably look at those first.
Spy
Not really played Spy an awful lot, not that I really suck, but I am bad.
Anyway, his upgraded weapon allows a Spy to play as Sniper, instead of throwing random bullets. The Cloak and Dagger allows a spy to slowly work towards any target unseen, and the Dead Ringer allows you to let them think you're dead just before you kill them.
All these things strike me as being options to change your play style. Yes you still Cloak and Disguise, but the cloak you have changes how well and fast you can advance, and how useful it is in combat. And the gun gives you the option of shooting someone for a headshot when a Backstab might be tricky.
I have just realised that I shouldn't go through every class, nor am I going to delete whats above.
Anyway, it seems to me alot of the updates want to change the class, give it another option of playing. A sniper plays very differently depending on if he's using a Bow or a Rifle. A pyro plays differently depending on any of his unlockables. Scout as well. I'm not sure about Heavy and Medic though, they seem to play exactly the same...
So lets guess that the Engineer is gonna stay as someone who builds things, but something about their playstyle will change.
The most obvious thing to say is that they'll get different sentries. While similar to a Heavy their shotgun isn't used very often, so that might change, as might the pistol.
Scatter Bomb
So first idea, replace the Shotgun/Pistol for a Scatter Bomb. Throw the bomb, and it bounces similar to a Demoman's primary weapon, then when it goes off it throws a number of bombs around, then they explode.
The reasons for this are two fold, first when you're advancing it helps against other Engineers. And when you're defending it stops people jumping back and forth around corners to take out your sentry.
Possibly have it use Metal, maybe a fixed rate, or maybe depending on how much metal you have. Or simply a 1 shot. Hell, maybe an idea is that it costs 100 metal to make, and you can stock pile them or something, maybe even for other people to pick up?
Beacon
Maybe i'm just having Demoman like ideas, which is strange since I think i've played a Demoman for like 4 minutes.
Put the Beacon somewhere, and my thoughts are a few what the beacon might do.
I like the idea of trying to get an engineer a bit more offensive.
Power Armour gives you "armour" which is effectivily more health, maybe it stops push backs, maybe it lets you use a bigger gun.
This is quite a poor idea though, simply because it just seems to make you a heavy, but it shouldn't just make you a heavy if you want that play a heavy.
Sentries
So, I'm sure everyone who's thought about this topic at all will have loads of ideas for how to have an alternate sentry, thankfully I haven't read any of them, so it's all my ideas!
Sniper Sentry - This sentry has no maximum distance, or if it does it's a long way. The sniper sentry gets automatic headshots on anyone it shoots at. This will obviously need a much longer aim time than the current sentry, and possibly is dependant on the distance of the person, but it shouldn't kill automatically at blank range. Maybe even give it a minimum range. The idea with this is that you can hold long distance choke holds, but not short range ones. A minimum range makes it even easier for a spy to take it out, and with the aim time it might never be able to shoot a Scout maybe?
Flame Sentry - Simple enough, it sets people on Fire. Why is that better than a normal sentry in anyway? Maybe the flame deflects bullets and/or rockets? Maybe the fire can't be healed? Maybe it even sets Ubers on fire?
Decoy Sentry - Looks like a sentry, maybe you can pick the level, maybe you can pretend to hit it to increase the level. It moves and beeps and looks just like a sentry! But it doesn't actually fire anything. Obviously this might be a poor replacement for an actual sentry, maybe it replaces a dispenser? Or the Teleporter? Whatever might make it more appealing for people to actually use and balanced. The key point however is that when it is destroyed it explodes, and I mean it really explodes. As such it might only have a handful of health. It should also explode the very instant a Spy puts a sapper on it.
Grenade Sentry - While you might think this is a suggestion for a sentry that fires grenades, it's not. It's an actual grenade, maybe it costs 200 metal, or maybe it costs like 60 so you can do it a few times. You throw the grenade and as it flys through the air it fires on the enemy. Maybe it fires a bit at them all, maybe it focuses on the closest target. I'd like to also think when it hits the ground it carries on firing from there. Maybe it's not got an awful lot of bullets in there...
Drop and Go Sentry - The Sentry is cheaper, and builds faster. Hitting it won't make it build any faster, and you can't upgrade the thing, but you can replenish ammo. Maybe it doesn't do the damage of a level 1 turrent, it probably wont, might even do like 25% of the damage. The important thing is that you can drop several of them. I'd love no limit, but that seems open to abuse, either it'll do so little damage its a waste of time, or you'll stay at the final point in control or something and build 200 of them.
Anyway, that's my ideas! While i've no doubt none of it will be remotely like the unlockables an Engineer gets, I'm happy to have posted!
Chances are though, that anyone reading this will be looking through back posts because they like my blog so much they like the idea of reading older posts. Anyone reading this who doesn't play TF2 won't care, and anyone who does play TF2 will no doubt not read this until the Engineer update is out. As such I don't feel the need (or the desire) to spend hours thinking of solid ideas and balancing them, but will just post random thoughts. Hey it's my blog, all I seem to post are random thoughts so tough.
I've not been playing TF2 from the start, infact i've only been playing the game long enough to have had 1 update happen (Spy and Sniper), not including small patches that change things slightly, I mean updated weapons and such. And as such I'll probably look at those first.
Spy
Not really played Spy an awful lot, not that I really suck, but I am bad.
Anyway, his upgraded weapon allows a Spy to play as Sniper, instead of throwing random bullets. The Cloak and Dagger allows a spy to slowly work towards any target unseen, and the Dead Ringer allows you to let them think you're dead just before you kill them.
All these things strike me as being options to change your play style. Yes you still Cloak and Disguise, but the cloak you have changes how well and fast you can advance, and how useful it is in combat. And the gun gives you the option of shooting someone for a headshot when a Backstab might be tricky.
I have just realised that I shouldn't go through every class, nor am I going to delete whats above.
Anyway, it seems to me alot of the updates want to change the class, give it another option of playing. A sniper plays very differently depending on if he's using a Bow or a Rifle. A pyro plays differently depending on any of his unlockables. Scout as well. I'm not sure about Heavy and Medic though, they seem to play exactly the same...
So lets guess that the Engineer is gonna stay as someone who builds things, but something about their playstyle will change.
The most obvious thing to say is that they'll get different sentries. While similar to a Heavy their shotgun isn't used very often, so that might change, as might the pistol.
Scatter Bomb
So first idea, replace the Shotgun/Pistol for a Scatter Bomb. Throw the bomb, and it bounces similar to a Demoman's primary weapon, then when it goes off it throws a number of bombs around, then they explode.
The reasons for this are two fold, first when you're advancing it helps against other Engineers. And when you're defending it stops people jumping back and forth around corners to take out your sentry.
Possibly have it use Metal, maybe a fixed rate, or maybe depending on how much metal you have. Or simply a 1 shot. Hell, maybe an idea is that it costs 100 metal to make, and you can stock pile them or something, maybe even for other people to pick up?
Beacon
Maybe i'm just having Demoman like ideas, which is strange since I think i've played a Demoman for like 4 minutes.
Put the Beacon somewhere, and my thoughts are a few what the beacon might do.
- When an enemy team member approaches it announces (text and/or voice) something along the lines of "Scout Approaching!"
- It has a "field" of a certain size that stops Spys Cloaking or Disguising near it.
- It an enemy team member gets too close, it explodes.
- Prevents a capture on a point, either until its destroyed, or a timer or something.
I like the idea of trying to get an engineer a bit more offensive.
Power Armour gives you "armour" which is effectivily more health, maybe it stops push backs, maybe it lets you use a bigger gun.
This is quite a poor idea though, simply because it just seems to make you a heavy, but it shouldn't just make you a heavy if you want that play a heavy.
Sentries
So, I'm sure everyone who's thought about this topic at all will have loads of ideas for how to have an alternate sentry, thankfully I haven't read any of them, so it's all my ideas!
Sniper Sentry - This sentry has no maximum distance, or if it does it's a long way. The sniper sentry gets automatic headshots on anyone it shoots at. This will obviously need a much longer aim time than the current sentry, and possibly is dependant on the distance of the person, but it shouldn't kill automatically at blank range. Maybe even give it a minimum range. The idea with this is that you can hold long distance choke holds, but not short range ones. A minimum range makes it even easier for a spy to take it out, and with the aim time it might never be able to shoot a Scout maybe?
Flame Sentry - Simple enough, it sets people on Fire. Why is that better than a normal sentry in anyway? Maybe the flame deflects bullets and/or rockets? Maybe the fire can't be healed? Maybe it even sets Ubers on fire?
Decoy Sentry - Looks like a sentry, maybe you can pick the level, maybe you can pretend to hit it to increase the level. It moves and beeps and looks just like a sentry! But it doesn't actually fire anything. Obviously this might be a poor replacement for an actual sentry, maybe it replaces a dispenser? Or the Teleporter? Whatever might make it more appealing for people to actually use and balanced. The key point however is that when it is destroyed it explodes, and I mean it really explodes. As such it might only have a handful of health. It should also explode the very instant a Spy puts a sapper on it.
Grenade Sentry - While you might think this is a suggestion for a sentry that fires grenades, it's not. It's an actual grenade, maybe it costs 200 metal, or maybe it costs like 60 so you can do it a few times. You throw the grenade and as it flys through the air it fires on the enemy. Maybe it fires a bit at them all, maybe it focuses on the closest target. I'd like to also think when it hits the ground it carries on firing from there. Maybe it's not got an awful lot of bullets in there...
Drop and Go Sentry - The Sentry is cheaper, and builds faster. Hitting it won't make it build any faster, and you can't upgrade the thing, but you can replenish ammo. Maybe it doesn't do the damage of a level 1 turrent, it probably wont, might even do like 25% of the damage. The important thing is that you can drop several of them. I'd love no limit, but that seems open to abuse, either it'll do so little damage its a waste of time, or you'll stay at the final point in control or something and build 200 of them.
Anyway, that's my ideas! While i've no doubt none of it will be remotely like the unlockables an Engineer gets, I'm happy to have posted!
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Sniper Upgrades
Wow, nearly the end of August and i've only done 1 other post this month, and that was at the start. Well, I keep doing other stuff like watching TV programs, or actually playing games.
So, I'll post here since it's midnight and I can't be bothered doing much else.
A week or two ago I went on TF2, where i've got most of the unlockable upgrades, infact all of them apart from the alternate healing gun for the Medic. So I went on, and I put back a load of weapons to what they originally where, not all of them, but alot of them.
For the scout specifically that i've posted about, I put all 3 items back to the original, although I do keep switching to the FaN and back simply because I can't choose. Double jumping and using a Pistol is winning it for me, so I'll mourn the loss of a stun, but nevermind!
Sniper has always been one of my favorite classes, I think on played it's 3rd, but it was second just after Pyro for a long time, and has been bumped down to 3 because of me playing pretty much nothing apart from the Engineer. There isn't a situation I don't think "Playing an Engineer would be good here" and end up switching, even when I have trouble killing as a Heavy, I can kill people with an Engineers shotgun and rack up the points.
Sniper Rifle / Bow
This choice still fills me with confusion, i've come across alot of people who'll happily be vocal on the fact that one of them is a "noob" weapon. The confusion comes two fold, first is the fact that it seems to be around 50/50 over which is the actual "noob" weapon, I hear just as many people suggest that the Bow is for Pros as I hear say the Rifle is for Pros.
The second comes from the fact I can sometimes have trouble with what people are classing as a "noob" weapon. Fair enough when you're in a situation where 1 weapon is far inferior to another, the inferior weapon might be something a "noob" picks because they don't know better, or because it has some flashing lights on or whatever... Where as, people will happily complain that the Pyro is a "noob" class because any idiot can play it, especially if this "noob" has just killed 5 people, and even more especially if the person complaining is a spy. If a Pyro is that good, why not play a pyro yourself?
So maybe the Rifle is the "noob" weapon in respect that its worse and only idiots will pick it, and the Bow is the "noob" weapon because it's easy to do well with. Or visa versa, or even more likely, people just like to complain.
Similar to how in Arena I can hear (read) at any given point something along the lines of "You're playing badly" whether its because i'm not moving from our spawn point, or i've made a bad tactical choice, been outplayed, or i'm simply clueless. These comments usually come from people who died before me, which gives me pause.
My girlfriend phoned me while I was playing once, just before the game started (Nucleus) so I switched to Heavy and talked to her while I just stood there with my gun spinning ready to fire. Some guy complains at me that I'm not being helpful because i'm not moving, which is all well and good, but I was killing 4/5 people a game. Especially in Nucleus people are always running by your starting point, and you'll always get spys and scouts thinking it's funny to kill an AFK player with a Taunt. And I think it's funny when you shoot them in the face while they're half way through their taunt realising their mistake...
While I run off on a tangent, it's mostly because I feel I need to point out that I have no idea in the Rifle/Bow choice which one i'm "supposed" to take, although I feel it's probably the bow.
Anyway when I first got the Bow I couldn't hit anything, the arching took alot of time to get used to, but I think i've got it. Although maybe I haven't got it because I find aiming with the sniper rifle alot easier, I can also stalk targets alot easier with it since I don't have to mess about unholding an arrow. I also find it much easier to kill people without the sniper scope when they're running at me than I can with the Bow, since people often dodge the bow more I suppose.
Either weapon I think is very much about person preference, and mine is definetly with the Sniper Rifle, but I'd suggest to anyone to try both.
Machine Gun / Shield / Jarate
The main annoying thing about these upgrades is that they'd be far better if they replaced the melee weapon than the Machine Gun.
Lets face it, the Shield which stops a backstab is only useful against a Spy, and the Jarate is mostly useful to stopping a Spy from going into stealth, so what we're talking about is replacements to kill spys or stop spys killing you.
If i've used a Jarate on a Spy, or he's just broke my shield, the only way to kil him is to melee him, which can be quite tricky, a good spy player probably has more melee practice than a good sniper, if you only had your machine gun...
Anyway, I often find myself using the Shield, because I'm looking down a scope and can't turn around every 2 seconds to check for a spy, so the shield helps alot. Often I try and leg it from a spy because I don't have my machine gun. Although it helps alot that I also headshot team mates just incase they're spys.
So overall I quite like the Sniper update, added stuff that's very nice choices, not automatic upgrades, I would say more, but I can't think of more to say!
So, I'll post here since it's midnight and I can't be bothered doing much else.
A week or two ago I went on TF2, where i've got most of the unlockable upgrades, infact all of them apart from the alternate healing gun for the Medic. So I went on, and I put back a load of weapons to what they originally where, not all of them, but alot of them.
For the scout specifically that i've posted about, I put all 3 items back to the original, although I do keep switching to the FaN and back simply because I can't choose. Double jumping and using a Pistol is winning it for me, so I'll mourn the loss of a stun, but nevermind!
Sniper has always been one of my favorite classes, I think on played it's 3rd, but it was second just after Pyro for a long time, and has been bumped down to 3 because of me playing pretty much nothing apart from the Engineer. There isn't a situation I don't think "Playing an Engineer would be good here" and end up switching, even when I have trouble killing as a Heavy, I can kill people with an Engineers shotgun and rack up the points.
Sniper Rifle / Bow
This choice still fills me with confusion, i've come across alot of people who'll happily be vocal on the fact that one of them is a "noob" weapon. The confusion comes two fold, first is the fact that it seems to be around 50/50 over which is the actual "noob" weapon, I hear just as many people suggest that the Bow is for Pros as I hear say the Rifle is for Pros.
The second comes from the fact I can sometimes have trouble with what people are classing as a "noob" weapon. Fair enough when you're in a situation where 1 weapon is far inferior to another, the inferior weapon might be something a "noob" picks because they don't know better, or because it has some flashing lights on or whatever... Where as, people will happily complain that the Pyro is a "noob" class because any idiot can play it, especially if this "noob" has just killed 5 people, and even more especially if the person complaining is a spy. If a Pyro is that good, why not play a pyro yourself?
So maybe the Rifle is the "noob" weapon in respect that its worse and only idiots will pick it, and the Bow is the "noob" weapon because it's easy to do well with. Or visa versa, or even more likely, people just like to complain.
Similar to how in Arena I can hear (read) at any given point something along the lines of "You're playing badly" whether its because i'm not moving from our spawn point, or i've made a bad tactical choice, been outplayed, or i'm simply clueless. These comments usually come from people who died before me, which gives me pause.
My girlfriend phoned me while I was playing once, just before the game started (Nucleus) so I switched to Heavy and talked to her while I just stood there with my gun spinning ready to fire. Some guy complains at me that I'm not being helpful because i'm not moving, which is all well and good, but I was killing 4/5 people a game. Especially in Nucleus people are always running by your starting point, and you'll always get spys and scouts thinking it's funny to kill an AFK player with a Taunt. And I think it's funny when you shoot them in the face while they're half way through their taunt realising their mistake...
While I run off on a tangent, it's mostly because I feel I need to point out that I have no idea in the Rifle/Bow choice which one i'm "supposed" to take, although I feel it's probably the bow.
Anyway when I first got the Bow I couldn't hit anything, the arching took alot of time to get used to, but I think i've got it. Although maybe I haven't got it because I find aiming with the sniper rifle alot easier, I can also stalk targets alot easier with it since I don't have to mess about unholding an arrow. I also find it much easier to kill people without the sniper scope when they're running at me than I can with the Bow, since people often dodge the bow more I suppose.
Either weapon I think is very much about person preference, and mine is definetly with the Sniper Rifle, but I'd suggest to anyone to try both.
Machine Gun / Shield / Jarate
The main annoying thing about these upgrades is that they'd be far better if they replaced the melee weapon than the Machine Gun.
Lets face it, the Shield which stops a backstab is only useful against a Spy, and the Jarate is mostly useful to stopping a Spy from going into stealth, so what we're talking about is replacements to kill spys or stop spys killing you.
If i've used a Jarate on a Spy, or he's just broke my shield, the only way to kil him is to melee him, which can be quite tricky, a good spy player probably has more melee practice than a good sniper, if you only had your machine gun...
Anyway, I often find myself using the Shield, because I'm looking down a scope and can't turn around every 2 seconds to check for a spy, so the shield helps alot. Often I try and leg it from a spy because I don't have my machine gun. Although it helps alot that I also headshot team mates just incase they're spys.
So overall I quite like the Sniper update, added stuff that's very nice choices, not automatic upgrades, I would say more, but I can't think of more to say!
Monday, 3 August 2009
LAN <> Console gaming.
So next weekend my mate's wife is away for the weekend. What better infact than to get us round, play some games and have a drink?
Well, for a start I love LANs, it's the main reason I have a Laptop instead of a Desktop. They're a good laugh and I love them.
But, this won't be a LAN, people won't be bring PCs, what we'll end up doing is playing on an XBox, and what better to play than Halo 3?
Well, after playing CoD4 I kinda started to like First Person Shooters, i'd gone off them somewhat after Goldeneye (not because of Goldeneye) when I started to move into PC gaming instead of Console Gaming. Playing Doom and Quake and I got bored easily, the basis of the game being to get the best gun and run around with your finger on the trigger. I tried a few different FPS games on the PC, but wasn't impressed with many of them. CoD4 on the other hand seemed to involve skill and tactics behind learning how to strafe, and I really liked it.
I bought TF2 and L4D (on the same day infact) and have never looked back at these older games.
Then I started going to my friends house, and we'd occasionally play on the Xbox, and it seemed all the stuff was just like the old games I remember. On top of this, I'd been playing with a mouse so often, that I became extremely annoyed with the joypad, it's a bugger to aim with after you've used the precise mouse.
I've never played Halo3, but I'll not like the aiming (since it's not on the PC) and no doubt it'll be picking up a machine gun and firing lots. No doubt it'll be like playing a Heavy on TF2, who runs like a scout, doesn't have a medic, and doesn't need to worry about spys, and no doubt it'll be as appealing as a version of TF2 where everyone is playing that.
I think i'll take my laptop anywhere, after a couple of hours I could play TF2 or whatever, assuming of course I can connect to his network. Console heavy people tend not to be overly helpful with connecting to their network...
Well, for a start I love LANs, it's the main reason I have a Laptop instead of a Desktop. They're a good laugh and I love them.
But, this won't be a LAN, people won't be bring PCs, what we'll end up doing is playing on an XBox, and what better to play than Halo 3?
Well, after playing CoD4 I kinda started to like First Person Shooters, i'd gone off them somewhat after Goldeneye (not because of Goldeneye) when I started to move into PC gaming instead of Console Gaming. Playing Doom and Quake and I got bored easily, the basis of the game being to get the best gun and run around with your finger on the trigger. I tried a few different FPS games on the PC, but wasn't impressed with many of them. CoD4 on the other hand seemed to involve skill and tactics behind learning how to strafe, and I really liked it.
I bought TF2 and L4D (on the same day infact) and have never looked back at these older games.
Then I started going to my friends house, and we'd occasionally play on the Xbox, and it seemed all the stuff was just like the old games I remember. On top of this, I'd been playing with a mouse so often, that I became extremely annoyed with the joypad, it's a bugger to aim with after you've used the precise mouse.
I've never played Halo3, but I'll not like the aiming (since it's not on the PC) and no doubt it'll be picking up a machine gun and firing lots. No doubt it'll be like playing a Heavy on TF2, who runs like a scout, doesn't have a medic, and doesn't need to worry about spys, and no doubt it'll be as appealing as a version of TF2 where everyone is playing that.
I think i'll take my laptop anywhere, after a couple of hours I could play TF2 or whatever, assuming of course I can connect to his network. Console heavy people tend not to be overly helpful with connecting to their network...
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
MMO = Group play!
Decided to play Kotor2 on my laptop instead of my netbook (since it doesn't work) and also decided to take another look at the SWTOR forums. I'm really looking forward to SWTOR and i'm always interested in new information about the game.
I stumbled onto a forum post about Solo vs Group play, and about rewards for Casual vs Hardcore.
One thing that's always annoyed me about World of Warcraft, was the point to get all the good stuff you had to raid, you can't get any of it solo. If a PC game comes out without a single player mode, there will be people that complain, but it's just accepted in WoW. Hell, I play Team Fortress 2 a fair bit, but I don't have to organise a group of 25 people together to start at 7:30pm, I can just jump in, even considering Pick Up Groups in WoW, it's alot easier to play Team Fortress 2.
But why should you be forced to Raid to get the best rewards, and maybe "rewards" is gear, titles, achievements, whatever. In the forum post I was reading it was taken as a given, no one seemed to argue it, which annoyed me. At what point does doing something as a group mean you should be awared more than doing it solo?
You can go with a couple of arguements, which don't make sense to me, like "An MMO is about playing in a group, if you don't want to play in a group go play a single player game", you mean, a single player game that doesn't cost me £9 a month? Which I can play whenever I want instead of the preset times made by the guild? While I never got to top level, I played Tabula Rasa for a while, and I loved the fact I could Solo instances, or I could get people to come for a laugh and group play, it was great, what was wrong with that?
"It's harder to organise a group of people than it is to just do something yourself" so, if I played with 10 friends on a game (and I'd imagine 10 is a high number for real friends) I can't do 25 man raids, unless I get other people involved, once other people are involved raids might very well happen when i'm busy doing something else. So I then either have to accept I can't raid Ulduar or whatever each week, or join another guild, leaving my 10 friends behind... Yes it's harder to organise something with a group than to play solo, so what? A reward system shouldn't be based on how easy it is to get people together for something.
One of the main problems I think (not played many other MMO games) is that WoW is raid based. There isn't a Solo option, which means that people see what you can do like dailies, which are easy, then they seem to assume that any solo content would be easy. Why would it be impossible to tune encounters so they work for solo players? Then tune it so it scales somewhat with the number of people? Even if you have preset: 1, 5, 10, 15, 20.
Which opens up the further problem. In WoW currently you can do content 10 man or 25 man, and you get better rewards in 25 man. Why is this? When there are 3 healers and 2 tanks, it can be a push and errors made can screw you, if there are 8 healers and 3 tanks, there is a greater margin of error, and with a better reward why not?
I'd be interested to hear an arguement on why 25 man raiding should give better rewards than 10 man, unless that arguement is "Because the 25 man content is tuned to be harder" at which point you could just tune them so they're just as difficult and offer the same rewards surely? The main reason you wouldn't do that is to stop people doing the content twice a week, which is hardly a huge thing I think... but currently you're just rewarding people for being in a bigger guild.
I'm hoping SWTOR has a good end game, i'm still unsure how they're pushing story and the story will be better than WoW end game, which has been good since Burning Crusade I think. Fair enough leveling might be alot more story driven, but anyone who's spent alot of time on an MMO will be mostly looking at the end game. Either way, I'm hoping there are lots of options for Solo End Game, which won't leave me behind gear wise, why should I have worse gear because I would quite fancy playing Wednesday instead of Thursday this week?
I stumbled onto a forum post about Solo vs Group play, and about rewards for Casual vs Hardcore.
One thing that's always annoyed me about World of Warcraft, was the point to get all the good stuff you had to raid, you can't get any of it solo. If a PC game comes out without a single player mode, there will be people that complain, but it's just accepted in WoW. Hell, I play Team Fortress 2 a fair bit, but I don't have to organise a group of 25 people together to start at 7:30pm, I can just jump in, even considering Pick Up Groups in WoW, it's alot easier to play Team Fortress 2.
But why should you be forced to Raid to get the best rewards, and maybe "rewards" is gear, titles, achievements, whatever. In the forum post I was reading it was taken as a given, no one seemed to argue it, which annoyed me. At what point does doing something as a group mean you should be awared more than doing it solo?
You can go with a couple of arguements, which don't make sense to me, like "An MMO is about playing in a group, if you don't want to play in a group go play a single player game", you mean, a single player game that doesn't cost me £9 a month? Which I can play whenever I want instead of the preset times made by the guild? While I never got to top level, I played Tabula Rasa for a while, and I loved the fact I could Solo instances, or I could get people to come for a laugh and group play, it was great, what was wrong with that?
"It's harder to organise a group of people than it is to just do something yourself" so, if I played with 10 friends on a game (and I'd imagine 10 is a high number for real friends) I can't do 25 man raids, unless I get other people involved, once other people are involved raids might very well happen when i'm busy doing something else. So I then either have to accept I can't raid Ulduar or whatever each week, or join another guild, leaving my 10 friends behind... Yes it's harder to organise something with a group than to play solo, so what? A reward system shouldn't be based on how easy it is to get people together for something.
One of the main problems I think (not played many other MMO games) is that WoW is raid based. There isn't a Solo option, which means that people see what you can do like dailies, which are easy, then they seem to assume that any solo content would be easy. Why would it be impossible to tune encounters so they work for solo players? Then tune it so it scales somewhat with the number of people? Even if you have preset: 1, 5, 10, 15, 20.
Which opens up the further problem. In WoW currently you can do content 10 man or 25 man, and you get better rewards in 25 man. Why is this? When there are 3 healers and 2 tanks, it can be a push and errors made can screw you, if there are 8 healers and 3 tanks, there is a greater margin of error, and with a better reward why not?
I'd be interested to hear an arguement on why 25 man raiding should give better rewards than 10 man, unless that arguement is "Because the 25 man content is tuned to be harder" at which point you could just tune them so they're just as difficult and offer the same rewards surely? The main reason you wouldn't do that is to stop people doing the content twice a week, which is hardly a huge thing I think... but currently you're just rewarding people for being in a bigger guild.
I'm hoping SWTOR has a good end game, i'm still unsure how they're pushing story and the story will be better than WoW end game, which has been good since Burning Crusade I think. Fair enough leveling might be alot more story driven, but anyone who's spent alot of time on an MMO will be mostly looking at the end game. Either way, I'm hoping there are lots of options for Solo End Game, which won't leave me behind gear wise, why should I have worse gear because I would quite fancy playing Wednesday instead of Thursday this week?
Sunday, 26 July 2009
D&D I'm playing a Rogue!
I'll be leaving the house soon to go play D&D, i'm slightly annoyed it won't let me use "&" in a tag, so i've stuck with the DD tag.
I usually end up playing a rogue, this is because I like stealing stuff, and I like being a sneaky bastard. The party i'm in includes 2 rangers and a warlord, the warlord is the only one who can't stealth, which kinda sucks. I'm a human as well, so when we hit the first dungeon and it was an actual dungeon I was a bit disappointed. As the only human, i'm the only one who needs light which kinda sucks for a character I envisioned living on the streets, not running through a crypt.
I'm multiclassed as a Ranger, but I think i'll change that when I hit level 2 to a Warlock, get some ranged power behind me.
I'm loving 4th Edition, and it seems alot better than 3rd, especially since I get some cards to play with. And being a CCG player, I like cards to play with :p
My party doesn't tend to like it when I run away. Hell, if I can't backstab something, I run away, whats wrong with that?
I usually end up playing a rogue, this is because I like stealing stuff, and I like being a sneaky bastard. The party i'm in includes 2 rangers and a warlord, the warlord is the only one who can't stealth, which kinda sucks. I'm a human as well, so when we hit the first dungeon and it was an actual dungeon I was a bit disappointed. As the only human, i'm the only one who needs light which kinda sucks for a character I envisioned living on the streets, not running through a crypt.
I'm multiclassed as a Ranger, but I think i'll change that when I hit level 2 to a Warlock, get some ranged power behind me.
I'm loving 4th Edition, and it seems alot better than 3rd, especially since I get some cards to play with. And being a CCG player, I like cards to play with :p
My party doesn't tend to like it when I run away. Hell, if I can't backstab something, I run away, whats wrong with that?
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