Evening Reading: Weekend Confirmed
I think part of the phenomenon comes not from anything to do with the game but the sense of power derived from breaking the rules to put yourself in charge. It is just a game after all so the consequences are what? Nothing really. That unhooks the usual restraints and it's hard to really reestablish them in a virtual world to put things back in balance. Server tools definitely go a long way in cases where you get admins who care enough to manage things by hand. But for the vast majority of open servers across PCs and consoles the hope lies with designers finding a solution to a better self-policing community.
Here's the rest of what we were up to today:
- The Australians brought out he banhammer again, this time for Aliens vs. Predator
- Homefront isn't even out yet but there's already DLC and a sequel planned
- Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalked set to hit PSP in May for US and Eurpoe
- Brink may be delayed but it sure is looking good in these new videos
After her high-profile trial that included all kinds of accusations, American student Amanda Knox found guilty of murdering her roommate in Italy
British professional tennis player Andy Murray got dumped by his gorgeous girlfriend Kim Sears for his seven-hour-a-day PS3 habit
Okay, so the Hollywood Reporter broke down the ten most watched shows (individual episodes) since 2000. No surprise to see Friends there at the top but Joe Millionaire in thrid?
As long as we're chronicling the decade we might as well take a look at the evolution of the hipster
And since it's Friday I figure this is the perfect time for a NSFW link so hey, if you have a snugie, check out the snuggiesutra for some creative ways to put it to good use
-
jayares
replyI don't understand Mass Effect's item/weapon system. Why do weapons of the same "level" (IV, V, III, etc) have such different values? There always seems to be one gun thats better than the rest. I wish bioware made items more "important", you see tons of good shit you can't afford right at the beginning of the game and it makes your current items feel like shit yet when you finally get to them they don't feel much better either.
I love that bioware went with a main character that had a voice, they need to do that more but they need to take a tiny page out of the jrpg book and make items feel like their worth whatever they are worth.-
it's in the codex, iirc - different manufacturers, different 'quality' levels. like some guns are ferrari guns, some are toyota guns. the ferrari gun will always be pretty badass.
-
-
-
I found it to be pretty bad overall. There's a real paucity of "holy shit that's cool" weapons/items in the game. Stuff with unique models and badass looks that make you feel like a tough hombre. Instead you have a bunch of generic daggers made from a dozen different kinds of materials that each take up a slot in a backpack that fills up halfway through a dungeon.
-
I love the game, though (as a disclaimer). Just wasn't a fan of the items included. I think they need to look at how WoW starts you out with a broken spoon at the beginning of the game and then near the end you start finding flaming bastard swords that are carved from the skulls of dead gods, etc. RPGs need to have that kind of stuff in them.
-
-
-
-
-
That's a positive and negative for Borderlands. As cool as it is to find that one awesome gun that you can brag about, 99% of the time you find a weapon and it's functionally the same as the one you already have. And the drops by regular enemies are always useless, so you have to farm chests to find stuff rather than getting it by playing through the game.
-
-
I agree it's easy to tell, but the variations aren't enough to make the new weapons feel significantly, meaningfully better than what I had before.
I guess some games have constantly increasing small upgrades (WoW) while others have longer waits in between big upgrades. DA just feels like it's long waits between small upgrades, which reduces the fun, at least for someone like me. And the higher-end weapons and armor don't look significantly cooler than the ones you start out with, which is another carrot that I would like. (There are some cool late-game armors, but they're all pretty standard-looking - nothing that says I was living in a fantasy-oriented world.)-
This is all based off of my experience as a two-handed warrior, by the way; maybe there are better one-handed weapons in the game, but I played with a two-handed warrior, Shale, Morrigan, and Leilana as an archer, so I didn't upgrade weapons very often. I only upgraded Leilana's weapon once in the entire game. :(
-
I'm still using shit that has 0 +stats on it for most of my shit. I think wow spoiled me because I cant shake the feeling that I'm gimped right now (around lvl 11?) with shit gear.
I pickup ASSLOADS of gear, and ALL of it is shit, and that shit is ALSO what I'm wearing. Probably my least favorite part of DA;O -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
In retrospect the looting/item systems in BioWare games hasn't been very good in a long time. I'm trying to think of the last game that had loot that really felt like a reward. KOTOR? In Dragon Age, I could walk to Orzammar, buy a two-handed weapon from a vendor, and use it through the rest of the game because I never found anything appreciably better. Jade Empire barely had loot in it. Mass Effect suffered from the problems mentioned above.
-
It's such a hard thing to balance. Make the vendors have the best weapons and there is no incentive to explore the game to find good ones. Make the bosses drop the best weapons and people will just farm the bosses over and over. I can't think of a lot of games that have done it particularly well.
-
-
-
-
One of the reasons I still put Final Fantasy VII up on a pedestal is the Materia system. You could take any weapon and customize it to do all manner of things depending on your play style. I had one setup that let me beat that Emerald Weapon (the guy under the sea) in about 30 seconds.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The number equates to what level enemies they drop from. Bigger numbers are better for the same base item.
But like you noticed the different company's items have varying quality. The companies that have level one stuff stay crappy throughout the game relative to the companies that only have stuff that appears at 5+ or 7+. Spectre items are pretty much best in slot for their level, but there are comparable ones you can find. -
I believe the different armories are better for different things. Or its just a straight X is better than Y thing.
-
-
-
-
I thought the manufacturer hierarchy wasn't too hard to understand - the info you got on them from various sources that went your codex pretty much asplain'd it.
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
[deleted]
-
[deleted]
-
-
-
-
-
-
Yeah, the first one. He always told me to keep getting him new card dealies so he could get different gear. My best gear game after finding some card that I don't recall who the manufacturer was, but then I got gear with names like XMM2-X Shotgun
Never got any 'spectre' named gear that I can recall, and I had lots of cash.-
-
-
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
yeah i got that but I didnt know it was because i hit the 1,000,000 credit mark sweet weapons.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
IIRC, I believe the quality of a weapon/armor item is a product of both the model #, and manufacturer.
That's why a Explosionistic Face Melter IV from Jiggery Pokery Industries is not the same as a Disintegrateatron Bowel Ruiner IV from Horrid, Horrid, and Abominable LLC.
The HHA level IV weapon's stats will be better because they're a superior manufacturer than JPI.
Read your codex (if thats what its called?) a lot, there should be info about weaps/armor in there by now, the worlds backstory is really clarified alot in those info nuggets. -
-
