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Post by buhwhyen on Mar 27, 2010 15:25:51 GMT -5
So Jon and I tried playing DnD online (ddo) the other day because early last year it became free to play. In the Korean style of free to play, you can pay real money to unlock new classes/races/more character slots/some other things. But in game you get "favor" points for completing quests mostly. Favor points allow you to unlock most of the things that would otherwise require you to pay money for (except 1 race/class - warforged and monk). The game itself is based on dnd 3.5, but it doesn't mirror the game completely (obviously because its not turn based). There's a full listing of differences listed on the wiki. I guess the big thing to realize is that all the classes are playable. For the most part, each class has its own benefits and downsides, but for example wizards aren't just flat out better than sorcs. As far as game play goes, I don't think the game is fun to solo, or even easy to solo, though they did add in that option. Loot is also based on difficultly level you play at, so solo'ing has it's disadvantages. Early on, at least, you really just need 1 other person and the game is pretty easy. System requirements for the game are low. It runs well on my laptop, the bigger problem is the servers, since the game is free to play, there's always a possibility of server lagging and or overfilling. Though I haven't run into this problem yet, my ping was ~100-150 the other day but it didn't cause any problems. You need to register for the game separately from the client download. But all they require is a name, DoB, and email, though they don't even verify your email. You can have 2 characters per account (unless you pay to get more character slots), though there's nothing stopping you from creating another free account. However...since the game is free to play, character names are a bitch. Pretty much all common names, and most uncommon names are taken (they only require first names, surnames are optional. So potential available names don't include surnames). Overall, I think the game is pretty good. Particularly for a game that's free to play, and almost everything can be unlocked by just playing the game. There's also supposedly more content being developed that include a new area and new classes/races. ddowiki.com/page/PnP_differenceswww.ddo.comddowiki.com/
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Post by feedback on Mar 31, 2010 2:14:30 GMT -5
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is on sale via a promo code from PAX East in the EA Store. I bought a physical copy for $32.72 including shipping and tax. Code is: PAXEAST842 if anyone else is interested. I'm not sure when it expires so I suggest acting soon if you're interested.
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Post by feedback on Apr 1, 2010 20:44:04 GMT -5
Borderlands is 50% off on steam's weekend sale. $24.99 for a single copy and $74.98 for a 4 pack. If we're interested in trying this game now would be the time. Lemme know if anyone is interested.
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Post by feedback on Apr 22, 2010 1:39:58 GMT -5
www.mektek.net/index.php?ind=news&op=news_show_single&ide=1143Mektek finally got the go ahead for the free Mech 4 release. Launch date TBD, but should hopefully be sometime in the coming week or so. Also 3.1 was recently released which is an update to the current mekpak. Beta for 4.0 should be starting sometime soon as well. Good day for mech fans.
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Post by feedback on Apr 22, 2010 19:56:50 GMT -5
Also the new DLC for L4D2 is out as well. Lots of choices for games this week.
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Post by buhwhyen on Apr 23, 2010 12:25:17 GMT -5
www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?Product_ID=65548Interesting. It says on the gamestop website that if you pre order starcraft 2, you get an invite to the beta...While supplies last, but...that's actually pretty appealing. I think I'll be looking into this more. EDIT: You need to put down $5 for the game, $10 for the collector's edition. And you can't cancel the pre-order once you get the beta key. If you buy it online, they email you the beta key, if you buy it in store it's on your receipt. I pre-ordered a copy today. Lotta games all at once, sc2 beta, l4d2 dlc, mech warrior, and ssf4 next week.
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Post by Pikachu on Apr 24, 2010 15:34:49 GMT -5
Yes, the influx of games is insanely overwhelming.
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Post by buhwhyen on Jun 28, 2010 2:29:18 GMT -5
Some AI wars stuff off the wiki. Important note about the dyson sphere: "If you then try to take that planet for yourself, watch out -- the dyson sphere will not look kindly on this betrayal, and will produce an accelerated stream of dyson gatlings that are hostile only to you, until it has taken the planet back away from you. It will then resume being friendly with you. Thus if you absolutely have to capture the planet in order to (for instance) capture a fabricator or broken golem that is on it, you can do so without the repercussions being permanent. " IE, we should take that golem on the dyson sphere planet, then blow up the orbital command. Other stuff * Orbital Mass Drivers -Advanced weapon sends projectiles stripped from an iron asteroid to deal heavy damage to starships and golems. * Core Warhead Interceptors -Advanced weapon insta-kills warheads (which explode without doing any damage or incurring any AI Progress increase). arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_The_Zenith_Remnant
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Post by feedback on Jul 3, 2010 4:57:24 GMT -5
Sold. Disregard this post.
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Post by buhwhyen on Jul 3, 2010 6:29:14 GMT -5
So some random stuff that needs to be mentioned about AI wars.
Money in this game is different than in most other rts games. It works something like each crystal/metal node gives you income/unit time (seconds?), in any case its 12 (crystal/metal) per unit time. Similarly, orbital command stations give crystal/metal per unit time. This is what your income is based off of.
When you build something, obviously you pay as you go in this game. So each building or unit you make has a cost in terms of crystal/metal per unit time.
What does this mean? It means that if your stored crystal/metal (money) is going up then you could be producing more than you already are. Producing meaning building more ships or structures. So if you have 300k metal in the bank, you can have a seriously negative "balance" of income compared to your income.
So if I'm telling you to spend your money, I'm really saying build more space docks/starship constructors/turrets/mines/engineers. Because your economy can support more than what you're doing. If you tell me that you've maxed out on ships and can't build anymore then all I have to say is: Then why aren't you doing anything with them?
If you have a lot of ships, attack, take another planet, help someone defend theirs. Try not to think of only yourself. Just as you get help when you need it, you also need to help other people. You DO NOT have to wait for someone to help you attack if you think you can take the planet yourself. Nor do you have to wait for someone to tell you what to do, I think everyone has a reasonable idea of what they can/can't take on their own.
If you have 300k metal but under 5k crystal, then build some crystal manufactories. That's what they're there for. Use them. I had 20 metal and 20 crystal manufactories for balancing my money when I was building a ton of turrets/mines/forcefields (which are crystal heavy) and replenishing bombers (metal heavy). Keep in mind these give you +8 metal and -12 crystal? Or something along those lines. That means they're inherently inefficient. So use them only as you need them.
=> too much crystal -> metal manufactory => too much metal -> crystal manufactory
The game also automatically toggles your manufactories on/off to help you not ruin your economy. YOu can disable this by building a structure to turn this off, under the control tab of your builder.
You can also toggle them on and off manually as you need, just be sure to not have both on at the same time or I will pretend to not know you.
Random shit -If you need help, ask. I doubt anyone is really watching all places on the map and keeping track of every attack. Please do not wait till you've lost your planet to say something. -When in doubt just do what you think is right (this is probably a bad idea to say this, but whatever). If you're doing something hella dumb, someone will say something...probably. If you really don't know just ask or propose an idea. -No one expects you to be omni potent, but I like to think that you can do more than watch your ships build and wait for someone to tell you what to do. -Not only 1-2 people need to build defense for everyone. Similarly, everyone should contribute to planets that are choke points/hold points where we will no longer progress beyond that planet.
********************* Some, NH, deeper thinking ********************* If you have an imbalanced economy you can do some stuff other than build manufactories to balance out your resources. This is something that I do, but not necessarily that you have to or even should do as an alternative to manufactories.
In earlier stages of the game, say if you have a lot more crystal than metal. Then it becomes difficult to build a lot of bombers. So instead skew your composition of ships more towards fighters/frigates. And focus on not just blindly running at every guard post and using the frigate range to your advantage and kill use your fighters to kill anything that comes close to your frigates. This army composition (frigate centric) is actually stupidly cost-effective because you're really just replenishing fighters cause your frigates shouldn't be taking a lot of damage.
This also leads into semi-early dreadnaughts. Which are good, or something. Dreadnaughts can essentially replace a large number of bombers because their range and damage output is really good. Granted you will be killing stuff a lot slower, but it also means that you don't have to rush in to kill off guard posts, you can kill off lightning turrets and other heavy damage dealing turrets (heavy beam cannons anyone?) without taking any losses.
Being crystal heavy also has the advantage of making it a lot easie to build static defense (turrets/mines) which are ALL crystal heavy with the exception of the heavy beam cannon, which are just plain expensive.
On the other hand, if you're metal heavy then you can basically go the completely opposite route. You instead are frigate light, and go bomber/fighter heavy. The advantage to this composition is that you are a LOT LOT LOT more mobile. Frigates among are the slowest moving ships in the game, only faster than tanks? In any case, you deal a lot of damage up close with this composition, but you also take a lot of damage because you get outranged by just about everything under the sun.
This composition can also similarly lead to early starships but rather than dreadnaughts you tend to go the flaship/zenith/spire starship route. Personally I've come to like these a lot less mostly because of the nerf to the attack boosting (this change was completely warranted, though). They also have mediocre range themselves, 7800 for all 3, I think. Less than frigates by 2200, which is a considerable amount.
Obviously it's a pain to build turrets/mines when you're starving for crystal.
This composition does tons of damage, but takes a lot of damage as well. You'll lose huge chunks of your army, but you'll clear out planets a lot faster as well. I like this composition less because I like not constantly having to rebuild the majority of my fleet after every attack, but it does work pretty well.
Ideally you'd want a relatively even split of crystal to metal, but slightly more crystal heavy because you want a little extra for mine/forcefields/turrets. Since the ships that die the most are 1) fighters 2) bombers 3) frigates You should be mostly rebuilding fighters/bombers when you attack. If you aren't, then you're probably not grouping up your units properly when you're attacking.
Ideally you want a good number of frigates and bombers and a large number of fighters to just soak damage. Starships tend to be much less effective until you have a good fleet to support them, so I generally don't even bother with them till i get most of my mark 3s built up and have a fleet of over 1k ships. Before that point, you run a really serious risk of losing them in battles because there aren't enough other targets (ships) to soak damage for them. And frankly, losing a single dreadnaught or flagship is equivalent to ~50 bombers/frigates. So in terms of cost effectiveness, if you lose a single dreadnaught/flagship, you were probably better off not having them in the first place and instead having 50 more bombers/frigates.
So your basic options are: 1) Use manufactories to balance/skew your resources so you get the ship composition you want. 2) Don't use manufactories and build your ship composition to match your available resources. 3) Stock pile resources and bitch about it.
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Post by feedback on Jul 4, 2010 9:02:18 GMT -5
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Post by feedback on Sept 23, 2010 20:09:07 GMT -5
Another Serious Sam HD weekend steam sale. All 4 games both old and new for $10. Once again considering it, but probably won't move on it unless other people are interested.
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Post by buhwhyen on Oct 1, 2010 22:28:38 GMT -5
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Post by dyuman on Oct 12, 2010 23:39:49 GMT -5
Looks like 1,300 gets you a very solid machine, and 1,024 for a decent one. The biggest problem with Dell is that they charge tax + shipping.
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Post by Pikachu on Oct 27, 2010 21:58:42 GMT -5
Just as an FYI for everyone - I haven't come across a full bundle for Rock Band 3 yet. The only bundle I've seen is with a keyboard, and PS3 sold out faster than XBox 360. If anyone needs to buy pieces for the game, I'd suggest waiting for the bundle to be released... or try to get non-pro instruments piecemeal by purchasing Rock Band 1 stuff off Amazon.
The good guitar is coming out next month, actually, so there isn't much to do with Pro Guitar right now. On the other hand, with the new cymbal set (not the one I own), one can play Pro Drums right now. Of course, the keyboard allows for Pro mode built in.
Old songs do not have Pro Mode capability. I was disappointed but not surprised, given the licensing issues that can come up with altering old songs. On this note, while you can import RB1 and RB2 songs, we have lost some songs along the way off RB2 in the transition (with the lost RB1 songs still lost). RB3 cannot have Anyway You Want It, Spoonman, Give it Away, and Let There Be Rock ported from RB2. It also seems like Hier Kommt Alex is also gone, which does irk me a bit since I had it as DLC. Otherwise, I will miss Journey, but at least I have Don't Stop Believing.
EDIT - Man, it costs $9.99 to export RB2 to RB3. That's more than RB1 export. HOWEVER, my RB1 exports do show up in RB3, so it looks like this is to cover all subsequent licensing extensions.
Bands from RB2 can also be ported. I haven't done this yet, actually, but I think I will be starting clean for RB3. However, if I were to project for RB4, I'd elect for continuity since you can now develop goals and track your profile on rockband.com.
The lack of a clean and comprehensive bundle is a little irritating for me, since I was ready to just get a full set of new shit - pro guitar, drums, and keyboard. Looks like it won't happen, and I question the wisdom of not having this immediately. OTOH, the rumor mill says it's out by Black Friday. Being impatient, I'll just pick my stuff up as it is released.
The game itself is very polished. The menus work quite differently from RB2, but they allow for a dynamic system where people can jump in and out of songs seamlessly, as well as jumping online to play with others. Quickplay now allows for band progress, which finally allows for people to earn shit without going into a tour mode. Touring still exists, of course, but is less cumbersome (not that the original was even that bad) and has other incentives to play.
OTHER EDIT - There is a mode for all instruments, where no singer is necessary and I think some instruments are doubled up on. Also, songs now support multiple singers (something developed for Beatles Rock Band) should you choose. It is possible to have up to 7 players - 4 instruments and 3 singers. It'd be crazy to see a Pro mode band FC a song.
I haven't played through all the songs, but the difficulty is similar to what I experienced going from Guitar Hero II to the third installment - the relativity of difficulty has increased. I've seen this trend in DLC, but it seems like a clear difference in RB3. For some of the songs, I'd mentally attach a +1 to its tier to judge its difficulty, especially in the lower tiers. This does not mean there are no easy songs to learn from, but rather, the scale to judge one's progress on has changed. I think this is a natural symptom of music games as they are long lived. DDR and Beatmania had the same thing happen.
You definitely will need to use the newer guitars to auto-sync the game to your TV. The feel, by default settings, were off on my TV. Any guitar made after RB2 can do this.
For those getting into things fresh (either Chip, Dyuman, Craig... not that he reads this), I'd suggest buying RB2 for the songs if you want a larger library. I actually have not ported my RB2 songs yet since I haven't gotten around to it, but it sounds like you need to port your own disc, whereas RB1 just asked for a purchased code that does not track the disc. I see RB2 for $20, which is pretty good for 80 or so songs. Then again, I did get RB2 for $20 when it was released thanks to Jay, who is good for something NH.
Umm, in short, buy this. Fuck Guitar Hero and fuck Activision, nh.
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