So, what're you playing?

[Fraeg]

I have the new Guild Wars 2 expansion, but the class changes (since I last played it in Vanilla) have changed so much that I'm lost. Also, I have no mount - there were none in game when I last played. I do have 2 of each class at 80, waiting for me to play again though.

I saw someone go flying by me riding like a physio ball thingy and that was my introduction to mounts in GW2.  Like you I have no clue at all where to start at.  Standing in Lions Arch just scratching my head.  I spent $10 bucks to buy gems to buy a bank vault spot so I could clear out my inventory and start fresh.  I have a gazillion things in my inbox.  Think I am going to play a Mesmer as to this day that is one of the coolest classes I have seen in any game.  I literally can't think of any other MMO I have played that had anything remotely like it.

[Reg]

I've gone back to SWTOR recently to check out the latest update and I find I'm the last person left in the Bat Country empire guild. I'm using that character again and would rather go somewhere less lonely. If I could preserve the guild by inviting a level 1 alt of mine to join I'd do it but I don't think I can do that.

Is anyone else interested enough to take up a space in the guild in case we want to revive it some day?

[Sky]

I'll make a note to install and log in over the weekend, for a long time I was the lone watchman 

I've been curious to check it out at 4k/60 for S&Gs.

[Sky]

Logged in with Yuggoth.

Likely going to have to drop resolution, even with enlarging the UI to 2x, there are still a bunch of elements that are miniscule at 4k :( And the game runs oddly hot just sitting in my apartment in Kaas (I forgot to vsync it so it was probably running like 200fps or some nonsense).

[eldaec]

Started playing Gloomhaven, and... yeah this should always have been a PC game.

Deliverance from bookkeeping makes an enormous difference, and the great level design really shines. At almost every point we feel completely doomed but then somehow are not doomed and it all works out be the skin of our teeth.

Also the art seems just a little less awful. Characters don't have those weird stances. Not great but not embarrassingly terrible like the board game.

[Falconeer]

Gloomhaven is in my all time Top 3 coop (video)games.

[Sky]

So it looks like ol Bot Country on swtor gon' die (if it were to depend on me taking over), because that game is living in janktown now. I spent some time over the weekend trying to deal with the 4k scaling issues and inability to run fullscreen at lower resolutions and it's just not worth my time to mess around with that game. Looking back, it has been by far the single most problematic mmo software I've encountered over the years.

[Reg]

Well, I discovered that my old level 30 imperial agent is also in Bat Country. I can just leave her there for now as the placeholder to keep Bat Country alive.  It's the 55 Juggernaut I was wanting to play with.

[Sky]

I'm kinda bummed about it, always wanted to go back and level some alts. They kept messing with crafting so that my idea of having a couple crafting mains that could boost my solo alts kept going to crap, then there was the aforementioned compatibility issues that always seemed to crop up. What a sad end to the kotor dream, took the company down with them (for all intents and purposes). EA sure knows how to destroy things.

Anyway, still playing through Cyberpunk as a cool netrunner, nice laid-back way to play (my first runthrough was all about blunt 1h/crafting, pimpcane for the entire game). Game is gorgeous and I can't wait for ray-traced lighting to be everywhere, it's just so much better (if still in its early growing pains). Reminds me of the first time I saw shaders or normal maps, just another level of verisimilitude. Beautiful mess of a game.

[rattran]

I tried to go back last year to poke around during covid boredom, but it looks like the hardware keygens got changed at some point, and the solution was to call and sit on hold to have it removed. I wasn't that interested in returning.

[Phildo]

I'm also enjoying a playthrough of Cyberpunk.  Went back to it while waiting for some TV time to play Horizon and ended up getting hooked on it.  Probably helps that I haven't played anything like it in a long time and didn't get into the hype train enough to be let down by any missed promises.  I'm just having fun driving around the city and doing mercenary shit with my best buddy Keanu Reeves.

[Reg]

I'm kind of amazed that SWTOR is that incompatible with your setup. How much time have you spent researching the problem?

[Riggswolfe]

Playing Cyberpunk as well. 1.5 brought me back to it and I've really been enjoying it. It still lacks a few things I think it should have like the gangs being factions and police that respond in an immersive way but in general it's so much better than it was at launch.

After I'm done with it I have a few single player horror games to get through. Remothered: Broken Porcelain and Remothered: Tormented Fathers among a few others. I also want to fire Crimson Spires back up and see some of the other endings. It's a bizarre hybrid of horror and VN and it was enjoyable.

[Sky]

I'm kind of amazed that SWTOR is that incompatible with your setup. How much time have you spent researching the problem?

I dunno, an hour or so? That's usually when I start getting angry about having to mess around to get something working that has previously worked fine. But honestly I then gave the game a shot, playing some with my lowbie sith to get a feel for things again and figure out if I even wanted to keep trying. And though I'm not simply a graphics whore (I played over a hundred hours of Cyberpunk at 720p when it came out), so little has been done to improve the graphics of swtor it was kind of disgraceful. Combine that with an interface problem that should not exist in 2022, yeah, nah. Not worth a second more, uninstalled and I'll finally throw out my security keygen doohickey to finalize it. RIP SWTOR, you never lived up to your promise and killed a crown jewel of rpg development. Thanks for a few begrudgingly enjoyable moments, as someone clearly not intended to be your audience from the start.

[Reg]

Sad to hear that man. Remember how excited we were back when it first came out? Except for Margalis of course. :)

I plan to finish all of the class stories to level 50 and then get at least one guy into the endgame.

[Sky]

I did 4 classes to 50 for the buffs, and several more alts into the 20s or so. Part of why I'm a bit burned out, I explored the heck out of all the early areas. I bought the collector's edition, so yeah, I was pretty hopeful that it would at least have been a good single player experience. It was, eh, ok. Another part of it is that I leveled most of my characters early on, before they loosened up some of the group-only content to allow solo players to do it; and looong before most of the QoL improvements.

Worst part is I saved a few of the storylines/classes I really wanted to savor, so...lesson learned, I guess.

[Rasix]

I think I've resubbed to SWTOR almost as many times as I did with WoW and UO. Just never clicked. Given how much I loved Mass Effect, KOTOR, etc, you'd think it'd be the perfect MMO for me. Nope. Always fizzle out around the lvl 30ish (from what I can remember) content area.

I think I'm getting toward the end of my first Elden Ring run. Still cheesing. There's a few of these later bosses (some optional) that are really going to test the ability of my character to stay at range.

[Trippy]

Lhutel the Headless or Greatshield Soldier Ashes.

[Sky]

I think I've resubbed to SWTOR almost as many times as I did with WoW and UO. Just never clicked. Given how much I loved Mass Effect, KOTOR, etc, you'd think it'd be the perfect MMO for me. Nope. Always fizzle out around the lvl 30ish (from what I can remember) content area.

Playing the assassin class really helps move through the story content at pace, being able to stealth past a lot of nonsense and also (spec'd correctly) being able to break up mob groups with a 'feign death' style ability (I played a necro in EQ).

[Reg]

I'm kinda hooked on light side Sith myself. I have a warrior, inquisitor, and agent who are all pure as the driven snow.
I seriously need at least one Dark V guy. I figure the Assassin would be a natural for that.

[schild]

Lhutel the Headless or Greatshield Soldier Ashes.

neither

just level Oleg unless you can cast mimic or have Tiche.

Oh, you were answering Rasix. You know what, my response stays the same.

[Phildo]

Cyberpunk
 ...still lacks ... police that respond in an immersive way

Maybe it's because I was never a fan of Grand Theft Auto, but I don't want this at all.  The number of times I've accidentally sideswiped a pedestrian while driving through the city is way too high to have to constantly be dodging cops while trying to get to the next mission.  Not unless they make all the cars handle like the Shion Coyote, and even then it would still be a pain.

[Khaldun]

I just do motorcycles. Dunno why anyone would drive a car in that game.

[Rendakor]

The game would be much better off without driving, period. And I don't think I've played a game that had driving and shooting where both controlled well, ever.

[Phildo]

The motorcycles mostly turn like garbage, too, though they don't fishtail as much.  I just beeline for the coyote as soon as I can afford it and that's my forever-vehicle.

[Falconeer]

It would make no sense without vehicles. Yes driving is bad in this game but it's very much optional. I am obsessed with actual driving (both in games and in real life) and yet I don't hate it here. It's not good, but it's cool to have the chance to drive around, and also much better to collect cars than mounts.

[Cyrrex]

The game would be much better off without driving, period. And I don't think I've played a game that had driving and shooting where both controlled well, ever.

Really?  I would say GTA5 did both very well.  The driving in all other GTA games was dogcrap up until 5, but 5 nailed it pretty well.

[Zetor]

I used the first bike you can get (Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X) for the entire game, it was also fairly cheap*. It has good top speed and acceleration (almost on par with the best cars) and even had decent handling (pre-1.5). If I had to use a car for taxi jobs etc, the batmobile was pretty good. OTOH when I had to do the streetrace missions where you gotta pilot a mad max murdertruck, it was a whole lot of

* fake edit: just looked it up and apparently they almost tripled its price in the 1.5 patch. ＲＩＰ

[Rendakor]

The game would be much better off without driving, period. And I don't think I've played a game that had driving and shooting where both controlled well, ever.

Really?  I would say GTA5 did both very well.  The driving in all other GTA games was dogcrap up until 5, but 5 nailed it pretty well.

I didn't like it at all with kb+m.

[Sky]

I didn't like it at all with kb+m.

I find the driving controls are weak when I use my feet to steer.

[Rendakor]

Forza Horizon is very playable with kb+m. So I'm not sure what your point is, if you're implying that I need a racing wheel setup or some shit.

[Trippy]

Forza is an exception. Most games with driving are worse on keyboard compared to a controller because of the lack of analog inputs.

[Samwise]

I played all the GTA games with KB+M on PC.  Except for the HEY COUSIN NIKO one, which is also the only one I didn't like enough to finish.   

[Cyrrex]

Forza Horizon is very playable with kb+m. So I'm not sure what your point is, if you're implying that I need a racing wheel setup or some shit.

The point is that driving in GTA5 with a controller is actually quite good.  Of course, then one could reasonably argue about the shooting mechanics...but I would say they were pretty okay with the controller, and worse case you could swap quicky over to kb+m when you get out of the car.  The overall point is that both of them control pretty well in that game.  Maybe it is unique in that context.

[Rendakor]

I tried swapping back and forth from kb+m to controller and back and it just took me out of the experience; felt way too fiddly.