What video/computer game are you currently playing?

[AAFitz]

Anyone play clash of clans here?

I know its on the ridiculous side, but I need a trustworthy clan member or two.

Its for a good cause. I can explain by pm if interested.

Thanks

[BigBallinStalin]

I need some advice on the next Xbox game I should play. I'm limited to the following:

Fallout 3 (and then Fallout New Vegas)
Skyrim
Mass Effect (the entire series)

I've played just the "escape from the tunnel" missions in Fallout 3. I've played a lot of Skyrim, but havent finished. I've completed Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, but haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet.

If someone has a much stronger game that I should be playing, please let me know, but I'm really choosing between these three "worlds" (for lack of a better term).

Play Fallout 3, but rely only on melee or unarmed. It makes it a lot more fun.

[tkr4lf]

I need some advice on the next Xbox game I should play. I'm limited to the following:

Fallout 3 (and then Fallout New Vegas)
Skyrim
Mass Effect (the entire series)

I've played just the "escape from the tunnel" missions in Fallout 3. I've played a lot of Skyrim, but havent finished. I've completed Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, but haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet.

If someone has a much stronger game that I should be playing, please let me know, but I'm really choosing between these three "worlds" (for lack of a better term).

Play Fallout 3, but rely only on melee or unarmed. It makes it a lot more fun.

Melee plus explosives makes for a fun playthrough. Lob some grenades when you first see them, then bumrush them with a baseball bat to clean up!

[betiko]

I Just started playing mortal kombat X on ios. Anybody?

[muy_thaiguy]

I need some advice on the next Xbox game I should play. I'm limited to the following:

Fallout 3 (and then Fallout New Vegas)
Skyrim
Mass Effect (the entire series)

I've played just the "escape from the tunnel" missions in Fallout 3. I've played a lot of Skyrim, but havent finished. I've completed Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, but haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet.

If someone has a much stronger game that I should be playing, please let me know, but I'm really choosing between these three "worlds" (for lack of a better term).

Play Fallout 3, but rely only on melee or unarmed. It makes it a lot more fun.

Melee plus explosives makes for a fun playthrough. Lob some grenades when you first see them, then bumrush them with a baseball bat to clean up!

ME3 multiplayer, you can Krogan headbutt everything!

Though I would not recommend headbutting boss enemies. Why? Find out for yourself.

[tkr4lf]

I still need to get around to ME3. Actually, I still need to finish ME2. I got around halfway through and haven't played it since.

I haven't been playing anything here lately. Too freaking busy with work and side work. Being an adult sucks.

[DoomYoshi]

The New Humble Bundle is a Might and Magic Pack. You probably already own a few, but remember you can gift away steam keys you don't need.

EDIT: Nevermind, most of the games don't run through Steam but instead run through U-Plague. Best to pass on this one, unless you are a convicted felon.

[AndyDufresne]

I use to play so much HOMM 2, a fair amount of 3 and 4. I think I stopped then...

I'm still playing Cities Skylines, Pillars of Eternity. I heard This War of Mine just came out with an update, so I might give that a play too again.


--Andy

[muy_thaiguy]

Well, Steam/Valve's "Pay for Mods" lasted all of a couple of days before they reverted back to only free mods. Though it seems some damage has already been done with several mod authors taking down their mods and doing elsewhere.

[macbone]

It was a bit crazy there for a while. It would have worked better if Valve had approached the modding community openly and explained what they wanted to do. I love Morrowind to pieces in large part because of the vast amount of mods out there, and I'd like to see good modders rewarded for their efforts, but Steam and Bethesda came off looking greedy and exploitative with their 75% share of the price.

If they reintroduced it with a pay-what-you-want model with a minimum price of $0, that would be interesting. The 25% cut to modders sounded low, but that's apparently similar to what other content creators get. Still, it would be nice to see the modders get a larger percentage of the proceeds.

[tkr4lf]

It was a bit crazy there for a while. It would have worked better if Valve had approached the modding community openly and explained what they wanted to do. I love Morrowind to pieces in large part because of the vast amount of mods out there, and I'd like to see good modders rewarded for their efforts, but Steam and Bethesda came off looking greedy and exploitative with their 75% share of the price.

If they reintroduced it with a pay-what-you-want model with a minimum price of $0, that would be interesting. The 25% cut to modders sounded low, but that's apparently similar to what other content creators get. Still, it would be nice to see the modders get a larger percentage of the proceeds.

They should get at least half. Yes, Bethesda is responsible for making the games, and Steam is responsible for hosting (or whatever) the game, so they deserve their share, but its the modders doing all the work, sometimes years and years worth, so they should be fairly compensated. 25% just doesn't sound very fair for the amount and quality of work they do.

[TheProwler]

They should get at least half. Yes, Bethesda is responsible for making the games, and Steam is responsible for hosting (or whatever) the game, so they deserve their share, but its the modders doing all the work, sometimes years and years worth, so they should be fairly compensated. 25% just doesn't sound very fair for the amount and quality of work they do.

I respectfully disagree. The platform that Bethesda created is based on over a decade of work by teams of developers and other IT and IS professionals. No matter how much work a modder does, it pales in comparison to the work that was performed by Bethesda.

Now if Bethesda started to charge $500 for the development kit, then I would agree that taking 75% is too much. But that is not the case.

Bethesda provides a development/modding tool included with the game. A game that Bethesda made very popular (in other words, Bethesda is providing a guaranteed audience for mods). And then they are going to allow modders to sell their work and keep 25% of the proceeds? That sounds like a great deal for the modders. I'd consider developing some mods if it meant I could make some money at it.

[muy_thaiguy]

Well, finally getting somewhere with upgrading weapons and equipment in ME3. About the only "quick" way to get the stuff, is to buy a ton of Arsenal Packs (for weapons) and pray you get what you want.

Still waiting on getting the freaking Typhoon Assault Rifle. Or at least upgrade some of the other good weapons I have. Took over 2 years to get my Claymore up.

Hopefully ME4 has a different way of getting weapons and other such things, as this "random chance" BS through the "store" really kind of sucks.

[pancakemix]

Well, finally getting somewhere with upgrading weapons and equipment in ME3. About the only "quick" way to get the stuff, is to buy a ton of Arsenal Packs (for weapons) and pray you get what you want.

Still waiting on getting the freaking Typhoon Assault Rifle. Or at least upgrade some of the other good weapons I have. Took over 2 years to get my Claymore up.

Hopefully ME4 has a different way of getting weapons and other such things, as this "random chance" BS through the "store" really kind of sucks.

That's not terribly different from any game with microtransactions, honestly. Hearthstone comes to mind as a game with a similar model. It's been a while since I played ME3 multiplayer though, so I don't remember how it deals with any duplicates you receive.

[muy_thaiguy]

Well, finally getting somewhere with upgrading weapons and equipment in ME3. About the only "quick" way to get the stuff, is to buy a ton of Arsenal Packs (for weapons) and pray you get what you want.

Still waiting on getting the freaking Typhoon Assault Rifle. Or at least upgrade some of the other good weapons I have. Took over 2 years to get my Claymore up.

Hopefully ME4 has a different way of getting weapons and other such things, as this "random chance" BS through the "store" really kind of sucks.

That's not terribly different from any game with microtransactions, honestly. Hearthstone comes to mind as a game with a similar model. It's been a while since I played ME3 multiplayer though, so I don't remember how it deals with any duplicates you receive.

Well, what really gets me, is that I have been playing this game since shortly after it came out, and I see newcomers have weapons like the Typhoon and I have yet to get it.
"Duplicates" are either weapon/equipment upgrades, filling out consumables, or character cards that either unlock things like armor color stuff and/or gives you extra XP.

[tkr4lf]

They should get at least half. Yes, Bethesda is responsible for making the games, and Steam is responsible for hosting (or whatever) the game, so they deserve their share, but its the modders doing all the work, sometimes years and years worth, so they should be fairly compensated. 25% just doesn't sound very fair for the amount and quality of work they do.

I respectfully disagree. The platform that Bethesda created is based on over a decade of work by teams of developers and other IT and IS professionals. No matter how much work a modder does, it pales in comparison to the work that was performed by Bethesda.

You have a good point, in that they're responsible for the platform and construction kit, and that those represent untold man-hours.

For the most part, I agree with the second sentence as well. The vast majority of mods take no where near as long to complete as Bethesda has dumped into the game, but, there are a tiny minority of mods that do indeed take years and years to work on and finish completely. Just to use one example, have you ever heard of Tamriel Rebuilt for Morrowind?

If not, well, in a nutshell, it's a landmass addition that adds in the rest of the Morrowind province, basically all of the mainland Morrowind. The original game takes place on Vvardenfell, which is just the island out in the middle, leaving out somewhere around 2/3rds of the province. So this team of (ever-changing) modders has been working on this project for years already, and still has 3-4 more areas to release. Plus they still aren't truly done with all the stuff they have released, since they still have to go back and create quests for all the new locations. The earliest releases have some quests already, even some faction quests (fighters, thieves, mages, Telvanni), but other than that, it's really only good for exploring and seeing what the rest of Morrowind looks like, which is cool enough by itself. But they're going to go back and create all new quests and whole questlines and tie all the different regions together in a way that makes sense? They're going to (presumably) detail all of the great houses and make it possible to join them and work for them, etc. (as opposed to the 3 out of 5 you get in the base game)? That's dedication, and it's impressive.

Anyway, the point is that sometimes these teams of modders do just as much work as the original developers did with the game, maybe even more.

Now if Bethesda started to charge $500 for the development kit, then I would agree that taking 75% is too much. But that is not the case.

Bethesda provides a development/modding tool included with the game. A game that Bethesda made very popular (in other words, Bethesda is providing a guaranteed audience for mods). And then they are going to allow modders to sell their work and keep 25% of the proceeds? That sounds like a great deal for the modders. I'd consider developing some mods if it meant I could make some money at it.

The main problem I have with the whole "Bethesda made the games and made them popular" argument is that these games rely heavily on modding as a selling point. Sure, they have the xbox only crowds that will play the games no matter what, but I think the PC crowd makes up the majority of their players, and the fact that you can mod the hell out of anything in the game is a huge selling point.

I'm going to use Morrowind as an example again. Morrowind always was and will be a great game, but it had some pretty huge and glaring weaknesses. It had some nasty bugs that would break your entire game and force you to start over completely, it had some pretty basic graphics, even for the time and the combat was and is pretty boring. If not for mods, would people still be playing Morrowind (and some of them religiously) today? I kind of doubt it.


Either way, my original comment is more of a "perfect world" type scenario. In a perfect world, they should/would get paid more for doing what they do. But in this world that we live in, yes, I agree that it's amazing that they're even getting 25%, and think they should be pretty happy about it, since they're not likely to get more.

[waauw]

definitely something to add to your to do-list

[muy_thaiguy]

To touch on my earlier frustration with the ME3 multiplayer store, I just bought about 10 Arsenal Packs (supposedly have a higher chance of unlocking and upgrading rare weapons), and only 1 card (out of about 50 cards) was an actual weapon. The rest were almost all character cards (unlocks "customization" and XP, the former of which is only aesthetics while the latter is useless if all your characters are at level 20). The one weapon card was for the Lancer assault rifle. I now have a Lancer 2 assault rifle. And still no typhoon.

[AndyDufresne]

This weekend or next I'll probably play the final act of Broken Age:




--Andy

[rishaed]

Xcom :Long War... the game is frustratingly hard.

[TheProwler]

I finished Darksiders a few weeks ago....it was pretty good.

I just finished Dragon Age 2 a few days ago. It wasn't as difficult as Origins, but I still enjoyed it. I liked the story and I felt like I got to know some of the characters pretty well.

Now I started Guacamelee! which is an action platformer. It's fun, but just a distraction until I start another "bigger" game. Not sure what's next...so many to choose from!

[AndyDufresne]

I've been playing Marvelous Miss Take. Picked it up from Humble's sale for like $6, and it was worth it. A nice fun little diversion for random short gameplaying.

I've also got my eye on Galactic Civ 3 -- once it comes down in price. And toward the early part of June I'll play Massive Chalice, a tactical turn based squad combat and overworld strategy game.


--Andy

[DoomYoshi]

I've been playing Marvelous Miss Take. Picked it up from Humble's sale for like $6, and it was worth it. A nice fun little diversion for random short gameplaying.

I've also got my eye on Galactic Civ 3 -- once it comes down in price. And toward the early part of June I'll play Massive Chalice, a tactical turn based squad combat and overworld strategy game.


--Andy

Funny enough I was looking for a new 4X space game not too long ago. If it came out 8 months earlier, I probably would have bought it at full price. Now, I will wait 3-4 years until I find it for a dollar.

[AndyDufresne]

For those of you with XBox One and "Games with Gold," Massive Chalice, a turn based strategy game similar XCom and a few other games, is going to be released on Monday -- and you get it as part of that Games with Gold subscription. Check it out if you haven't thought about picking it up.

It is also released for PC, Mac, and Linux as well on Monday for $20.00 though I think there might be an introductory sale.




--Andy

[AndyDufresne]

Played a little bit of Massive Chalice, and I am digging it so far.


--Andy