So, what're you playing?

[Tale]

I've decided to give this a go:

Mischief - random loot, fast XP progression server in EverQuest 1 - starts May 26
This video sold it to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm68QY9Kpd8

Fast XP (perhaps a couple to a few weeks to 50 for most players), random loot, everything tradeable, first month is Classic, then 2 months of Kunark, then Velious for 2-3 months, and so on. Raid mobs can drop any random loot that any equivalent level raid mobs can drop. All loot is tradeable. Raids are instanced, so you can raid whatever you want, whenever you want.  

[Falconeer]

When does it start? And I assume it'll require their actrive subscription, right?

[Surlyboi]

Just finished ME1 (FemShep is the only Shep) It was far clunkier than I remember but in the end, so worth it.

Currently working my way through the Vault of Glass as it's returned to Destiny 2

[Tale]

When does it start? And I assume it'll require their actrive subscription, right?

May 26. They only sell an "all access pass" that gives you all their games for a month, and yes you require that for the new server. Existing servers can be played free of charge.

[Falconeer]

Seriously tempted.

[Mosesandstick]

Finally finished Fallout: New Vegas and all the DLC (on my 3rd attempt at getting into the game). What a ride, and another Obsidian game I'm glad I tried to play. I might even have to give the Outer Worlds a go some day. Loads of things that I hated about the game though, not sure how much of that came from FO:3 and how much came from Obsidian. Re-reading the old thread and reddit threads was also interesting, especially when thinking about the various DLCs that people liked. They all tended to focus/emphasise a different aspect of the Fallout: New Vegas experience so people would have wildly contrasting views.

I also started and finished Katana Zero. Which is basically Hotline Miami crossed with old school Ninja Gaiden. Unlike Hotline Miami I could deal with the dying and constant attempts, and the story was pretty interesting. It was a bit annoying to reach the end of this kind of story and realise that most of it stilll hadn't been explained clearly though.

Also interesting to see the love for Sunless Seas and Skies. I stopped playing as I just couldn't deal with the tedium of travel, and while I enjoyed the writing, the style and its abstruseness wore me down.

[rattran]

Outer Worlds I played on the game pass, and still felt like it wasn't worth my time and money.

[Sky]

I was a bit worried about buying Jedi Fallen Order again on pc (I played it quite thoroughly on PS4 Pro, to completion). Shouldn't have been, it's just a fun game with lots of nice fan service. As before, I'm struck by how an implementation of platforming can really make or break a game...because I dislike platformers in general, but love this game and Dead Cells. Looks great and runs even better, thanks in part to the canyon-style level design. Doesn't even make the pc sweat, gpu fans barely lift off idle at locked 4k/60/ultra, and the hdr+ray tracing is perfect for a Star Wars game, with lots of colored lights and of course the lightsaber. Best looking lightsaber I've seen, and it feels great because it's so goddamned smooth.

I thought I was going to do a quick run-through, but last night I found myself digging out every secret, same as I did last time. Feels like I'm rushing to take it all in (and the music and pacing pushes that at times), but I'm taking it much slower and savoring the ride this time.

[Hawkbit]

Sony sent me an email last week with a two hour hold window on a ps5, and it actually came through. Installed and downloaded a few games last night. AC Valhalla looks incredible going from PS4 to ps5. System menus are snappy and the whole thing is a nice upgrade. Looks like shit on my tv stand, but knew that going in.

Now to splurge on a new ps5 specific game, there’s at least two of them. 😁

[Trippy]

Ratchet & Clank in ~3 weeks (June 11) will be the first real "made for PS5" game.

[Sir T]

Doing a nostalgia Trip at the moment and Am on Heroes of Might and Magic 5, becasue I never got much though the campaing last time. And I'm having a blast with it. The story is pretty generic but the gameplay is rock solid, and perfect for me listening to my old CDs. Of course I have to resist my usual habit of polishing my cities till the computer turns up with a massive army and wipes me out. Be aggressive T, dammit.

[rattran]

Picked up the Remastered Saints Row 3. It seems a good remaster, same uneven, annoying at parts gameplay, just prettier with even more shit thrown everywhere.

[Father mike]

I made the mistake of playing 4 before playing 3.  Without the super-powers, 3 just feels so clunky and slow, by comparison.  I'm sure it's a decent game, but I just cant get into it.  Personal failing, I'm sure.

[Sky]

That's in the plus column for me. I played a ton of 3rd, and while I liked 4, the superpowery stuff was just too over the top for me (understanding that's the point, of course).

If I didn't just get a slew of sale stuff I'd probably have picked up the remaster.

[Khaldun]

Starting ME3 now in the Legendary pack.

On a meta-gaming level, the entire sequence feels as if it is a heroic attempt to provide some semblance of a Z-axis to a game engine that was never intended to allow that.

Update: ME3 has some serious storytelling issues, actually. It's seriously frustrating in terms of where you just came off--I think the problem is partly that they loved the big "time jump" of ME2 that they decided to do it again but it's a big mistake. It's also a big mistake to pull the characters back from their previous kit and skills--it's just annoying, with no storytelling justification or logic.

I had honestly forgotten why I was so annoyed by the game starting off and now I'm remembering in a fresh way.

[Sky]

I'm just boycotting due to the directorial decisions about Miranda's ass.

[Trippy]

That's fair.

[Rasix]

Waiting to play the trilogy until son's baseball season is over. I'm sure I'll be disappointed by 3, but I'm really looking forward to 1 and 2.

Treading water in PoE (hard stuck at lvl 96), but this is the first league start character that I've stuck with. None of my rerolls have pulled me away from it. So, I just keep pumping more currency into it and it just keeps getting better. Might actually be able to kill Maven with it, as it's both tanky enough and has enough DPS. I'm still bad, so there's that.

RE7 is too scary, but I'm just about done with it. Worth a play, but the extremely limited ammo and sporadic action aren't my favorite. Starting at 4 kind of ruined the franchise for me.

[Trippy]

Village is supposedly a hybrid of 4 of 7. I.e. it has the aesthetics and first-person viewpoint of 7 but the combat is more like 4.

[Rasix]

Village is supposedly a hybrid of 4 of 7. I.e. it has the aesthetics and first-person viewpoint of 7 but the combat is more like 4.

Yah, that's a sale purchase for me or maybe a Father's day gift. Anyone here play it on a PS4?

[Khaldun]

There's a fairly large amount of Miranda's ass still on display, for anyone worried about it. Or small amount if we're talking about the muscle tissue packed into the space allotted for it. I mean, no, you don't get a blinky Renegade prompt while ogling her ass or anything but it's all on display.

I was kind of surprised on FemShepping that first off Kadenko or whatever his name is does NOT fucking take no for an answer--I did everything I could in ME1 to say 'fuck off, creep' and the game still made him my romantic interest and then second that the love scene with Garrus is charming and low-key and funny but does not have even the slightest bit of nudity or sex in it, especially compared to ManShep and Liara in ME1. I think maybe they did not want to think about what a Turian without his shirt looks like (unless I'm surprised later in ME3).

[Sir T]

What got me in ME2 is that to basically complete the conversations with the crew and NOT do the romance (at least as ManShep. I've never done a Femshep playthrough for some reason) you had to be a total shit to them. so if you weren't interested in RPing a romance with anyone or just with one person the game made you feel like a bit of a cunt who had to keep the women away with heavy artillery.

Oddly though the most real interaction for me was with an early scene where you sit down with the Doctor and have a few drinks. That felt real, 2 old friends enjoying one another's company.

[Sky]

Snagged Metro Exodus for the new ray tracing version, mostly as a rig showoff but I'm hopeful I'll enjoy the open world direction they took. Also picked up Snowrunner (gmg sale), because Mudrunner is a staple on my PS4 when I feel like a less directed experience. Then I promptly forgot about Metro and played Snowrunner until I was able to force myself to go to bed.

[Khaldun]

Well, hell if Mordin's final scene still can't get the waterworks going.

[Phildo]

Well, hell if Mordin's final scene still can't get the waterworks going.

That, more than anything else, is the one thing they got absolutely right in 3.

[Khaldun]

"Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."


Also: had a really strange sensation of dislocation watching Thane's death scene and then I suddenly realized that I had stupidly chosen him for the Vent mission in ME2 on the logic that he was an assassin etc. and could stealth it, rather than listening to the dialogue about being a tech. So that was great to see something I'd never seen before.

[Khaldun]

Don't like the early reviews on Biomutant. Enough to keep me away from it.

Think I'll do PC of Days Gone, though.

[Goumindong]

Playing a little indie 5e turn based game from half of the original duo behind Endless Legend and i love it.

edit: Solasta: Crown of the Magister

[Tale]

I've decided to give this a go:

Mischief - random loot, fast XP progression server in EverQuest 1 - starts May 26
This video sold it to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm68QY9Kpd8

Fast XP (perhaps a couple to a few weeks to 50 for most players), random loot, everything tradeable, first month is Classic, then 2 months of Kunark, then Velious for 2-3 months, and so on. Raid mobs can drop any random loot that any equivalent level raid mobs can drop. All loot is tradeable. Raids are instanced, so you can raid whatever you want, whenever you want.  

Turns out that even with fast XP, I don't have enough time in my life to play EverQuest. I've got a troll warrior to level 10 over the course of three nights, then had a night off. Other people are level 50 already. Even having a group to commit to is difficult when you have family responsibilities, so I'm sure I'd be a hopeless raider in the unlikely event I ever reached that level.

I'm annoyed that there's a RMT economy in what's called "krono", which are in-game items sold by Daybreak (EQ's owners) that entitle the bearer to a 1-month all-access pass, which makes them transferable across all Daybreak games. So you see /auctions for rare loot wanting "5kr obo" (5 krono or best offer) alongside the normal trade in the in-game platinum currency. Apparently there's a conversion rate for krono to platinum for each server that the RMT traders use. Apparently on the older servers, due to them being 21 years old and having suffered duplication bugs, one krono is worth more than 3 million plat, whereas on the new time-locked progression servers it's only at hundreds of plat.

[Sky]

The only way I would play EQ is a classic server (maybe up to kunark) with all content intact...installed on my computer, solo.

And I would actually dig that, though obv it cuts out all the raid content. Still a ton of content for the stronger solo classes.

[Cyrrex]

Playing a little indie 5e turn based game from half of the original duo behind Endless Legend and i love it.

edit: Solasta: Crown of the Magister

I played the early release a few months ago, and starting playing the full release a few days ago.  I also love it.

[Zetor]

Yea, I kickstarted Solasta way-back-when, but held off on playing it because I've been burned by bug-ridden launch-time releases of big RPGs too many times recently (hi Kingmaker, Wasteland 3, etc) and figured it may be better to wait for some patches. Are there any big issues, or is the game already polished / fun / relatively bug-free?

[Velorath]

Solasta recently got added to XGP so I might check it out at some point.

[Tale]

The only way I would play EQ is a classic server (maybe up to kunark) with all content intact...installed on my computer, solo.

And I would actually dig that, though obv it cuts out all the raid content. Still a ton of content for the stronger solo classes.

You can do that at Project 1999. Thriving oldschool EQ classic servers run strictly "as it really happened", doing Classic, then Kunark, then Velious, and no more.

Okay, so the server is not on your computer, but it's underpopulated enough for that not to matter. The community has thousands of active players, but that translates to a few hundred online at once, across all of Norrath.

The most recent P1999 server ("Green") launched in 2019 has run to this timetable:

October 2019: Launch
January 2020: Plane of Fear
April May 2020: Plane of Hate
May June 2020: Temple of Solusek Ro opens / Legacy items cease to drop
August 2020: Plane of Sky
November 2020: Ruins of Kunark
April 2021: Epics
July 2021: Scars of Velious
The above list is not exhaustive; each month will have unlocks of patches from March 1999 to December 2001.

The official "Time-Locked Progression Servers" like the one I've been posting about are Daybreak's version of this, but it's far from original-flavour EQ: Differences between Mischief and P1999/original.

[Cyrrex]

Yea, I kickstarted Solasta way-back-when, but held off on playing it because I've been burned by bug-ridden launch-time releases of big RPGs too many times recently (hi Kingmaker, Wasteland 3, etc) and figured it may be better to wait for some patches. Are there any big issues, or is the game already polished / fun / relatively bug-free?

I am sure there are some bugs for different setups, but even during early Alpha I played through it without experiencing even one significant bug.  I think they were mostly graphical in nature.

Game isn't for everyone, however.  It is a tactical 5e game first and foremost, and it only has license for the most basic 5e ruleset.  Many, many classes and sub-classes are missing, feats suck, few races, etc.  On the other hand, it puts a lie to the idea that implementing 5e rules are inherently unfun (see: BG3).