[unofficial weekender] *insert funny topic here*

[grantinvanman 9326xp 2]

A classic book from my latest nostalgia binge-buying, the 1989 White Dwarf Compendium. Pristine condition! And it has the classic deodorant bottle into a speeder article from Rick Priestley!

[sundancer 44304xp 1]

niiice

[limburger 22392xp 1]

that was when GW was still kind of cool and hadn’t killed the imagination of its customers …

//

I really should not have started playing Diablo 4.
I know … I’m kind of late to that party, but it’s currently ‘free’ on Xbox Gamepass … so I thought I’d give it a wirl.
And that’s two days of hobby potential gone.

Let’s see if I can salvage something for my hobby in the next few days, because this ain’t what I had planned … but it sure is what I expected it to be like.

[sundancer 44304xp 0]

Lucky me that dungeon grinding like diabolo and WoW never really got me.

If there was another Fallout or Elder Scrolls, I might be in trouble.

[limburger 22392xp 0]

It kind of does and it kind of does not.

I tried Diablo 2 … and gave up somewhere in the 3rd act?

Diablo 3 ? I think I’ve completed that one. The story / quests were interesting enough for me to keep going.

Diablo 4 ? I’m still in Act 1 and bored … but for some reason I’m still playing.
However I doubt I’ll finish it, because there’s no real sense of pace or progress.

I’d say one of the reasons this game is tricky to stop playing is that there is no real ‘end’ to a quest. You get a *ding* popup ‘quest completed’ or ‘dungeon cleared’ and live goes on. Nothing of consequence is happening. I’m still slaughtering monsters with the occasional big bullet sponge ‘mini boss’ type.

The in-engine cut scenes are awful. Voice acting is great, but the characters just stand around waving their arms about.

/weird … it feels like I wrote this once before. Deja vu ?

I’d say the big problem for any ‘open world’ game is that too often there’s too much busy work in between the actual story telling. I ain’t got time for busy work.

[pagan8th 14050xp 0]

I played Diablo and Diablo 2 in the olden days on PC.

Diablo 3 I bought on console when it was discounted and had some fun with that. On the rare occasions I play it now (when I’m bored and only got a small amount of time spare) it’s just one of the timed dungeons.

Diablo 4 got some bad reviews and I couldn’t see any significant difference between 3 and 4.

[jeffersonpowers]

@pagan8th @grantinvanman

I’ve been pestering Crooked Dice to do a Marion and a Willie Scott for some time now — it’s surprisingly hard to find ’30s characters that aren’t holding weapons (although Marion should definitely be armed with a frying pan).

• This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by jeffersonpowers.

[limburger 22392xp 0]

the big negative about Diablo 4 ?
needing to be on-line …

the game starts … needst to connect to server

you want to play ? … you are assigned a queue … and once you’re in you can play.

I’m sooo glad I got this game ‘free’.

Still not sure why I keep playing … here I am, thinking I’d play a bit after the YellowBelly stream ends.

I think I need to uninstall this thing. I’m not having any real fun to be honest. Every quest is a glorified fetch/kill quest.
Go there, kill that thing and return here for a ‘reward’.

oh … did I mention it’s got one of these infernal Battlepass things and fake coin to buy?

Diablo 3 was bad when they tried that sh!t .. but at least they dropped the nonsense when it was released on pc or after the first patch (not sure, but there was definitely similar controversy back then).

Diablo 4 shows that they didn’t learn a thing. All they did was reintroduce the same sh!tty systems in a more nefarious way.

Heck … now that I write this I think I am going to uninstall it. Maybe I get some real time to set up my hobby space instead.

[grantinvanman]

Canada is now at war.

• This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by grantinvanman. Reason: Donald

[sundancer 44304xp 1]

[Copied from the old thread]

I find that I can sometimes renew my enthusiasm for a long-delayed Kickstarter game, if the miniatures and/or other shiny bits remind me why I wanted it in the first place. However, I have sold on more than my fair share of crowdfunded games that ended up disappointing, to the point that I’m pretty much done with crowdfunding, except in extraordinary circumstances. I am finding that I would rather wait until I can read some reviews before I buy into a new game, and I have enough to do that FOMO isn’t really a factor for me. I’m at the point where I’ll risk missing out on a good game if it means I didn’t back a crappy one.

@jeffersonpowers  not spending money on crowdfunding and putting it into “known good stuff” feels like the way to go. Either the crowdfunding is successful and comes to stores than you can join in at that point or it’s a “KS exclusive” which is IMHO not worth it anyway for games because where is the point when nobody can join in later?

[pagan8th]

When I backed Mythic Battles Pantheon I believe it was kickstarter exclusive. I backed it because I wanted the miniatures for a planned Greek campaign. Used some for that purpose and may do again this year.

Kickstarters for me now have to be UK based. An exception would be pdf only as I don’t have to pay stupid shipping prices.

• This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by pagan8th.

[grantinvanman 9326xp 0]

Honestly, Battletech feels like that for me. Nostalgia from my high school years; the original BT; then nothing until I came on BoW and the CGL rage thread – which ironically reignited my nostalgia. Now I have a MOUNTAIN of BT, which is … meh. At best.

 

[jeffersonpowers 611xp 2]

That brings up another huge problem with the Kickstarter business model — crowdfunding campaigns usually want you to buy the game AND a bunch of expansions all at once. This encourages overspending, and if you don’t end up liking the game you’re stuck with all that extra stuff. When you’re buying at retail, you can pick up the base game, try it for a bit, and then buy expansions later if you like the game enough.

[limburger 22392xp 0]

And when the game is good once it hits retail there’s often nothing more for you to buy.

This (IMHO) also hurts the chances of the games surviving in retail as the majority of the potential audience likely got all of their stuff during the crowdfunding campaign itself.

//—

I’ve uninstalled Diablo 4, because I was playing the thing on auto-pilot. I think I’m getting better at recognising when I’m merely addicted to watching numbers go up instead of having fun interacting with the game itself. I’m not sure if that makes sense to anyone, but it kind of does for me.

Anyone else getting sick of the endless grinding for progress in games ?
I want to experience the world and story.
I don’t want to do the same boring type of quest over and over again because the actual quest lines require me to be at a specific level in order to stand a chance of surviving.

Meanwhile I loved doing the various mini quests and cyber psycho takedowns in Cyberpunk 2077 because it felt like part of the world building and they were short enough to have something to do when I didn’t have a lot of time to play.

 

[pagan8th 14050xp 0]

Grind is so common in games. Whether it’s looking for crafting materials, or weapons, or armour, or whatever.

It’s worse in ‘open world’ games which I translate as ‘lots of random quests that involve wandering all over the map and killing enemies, harvesting resources… etc.’

I know that a ‘story’ can only be really experienced the once (although there can be alternate endings), but there’s a satisfaction to completing the game.

Complete a diablo game and you start again with levelled up enemies and better loot. The story cutscenes get skipped the second time around.

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