Ravens Forums

Hey all,

Sorry for the slow response, I don't check here too often either.

I'm currently playing WoW Battle For Azeroth and have to admit I'm enjoying it a lot. I blame Las for that, I wasn't planning to go near it until he recommended it

I did dip my toes into Wow Classic too. It's enjoyable nostalgia, but it does bring home how gaming and WoW itself have moved on. I like the slower and tougher combat and gameplay, that's good, but the levelling grind, pointless to-and-fro questing and PvP issues, not so much. I've made it to level 33 on my Hunter but seem to have lost the resolve to go much further, but will see how it goes.  Legion Inc have a guild up and running on the Mograine EU (PvP) server if anyone is interested, just give me or Shi a shout.

I haven't been back to official DAOC in a very long time now. I did take a look at the Uthgard free shard a couple of years ago. They've done a pretty good job, but it's faithful to the gameplay and levelling speed of DAOC at original launch. Commendable and fun for nostalgia, but painfully slow to progress. Who really has that sort of time to invest anymore, let alone in a free shard that could get shut down at any time?

Speaking of which, poor old Wildstar got shut down last year. I think I'll keep my avatar in honour of its memory. A wasted opportunity of a game sadly.

Just a heads up on the future of this forum. This is running a very old version of SMF, which causes some security issues. I am going to try to upgrade it, but I don't think it'll solve everything and I may need to move the forum's location to a different URL. If I do I'll install a redirect so old bookmarks will still work.

Well I picked this up finally, when it was on 33% discount in the Origin Store last weekend. I'm about 25 hours in so far, so here's a few thoughts.

+ Main story line is great. It's gripping and seems paced nicely so far (some say it starts rather slow but I'm ok with that). Really enjoying the difficult choices, although it seems they are the usual faux choices without true consequences.
+ Combat is very enjoyable. I thought the lack of manual cover would be a problem, but so far it hasn't been. I'm playing Infiltrator but can't do my usual hide and snipe thing so easily, so need to be more mobile, but that's fine.
+ Loving the jump pack, even if it spooks me every time my companions use it (sounds like combat kicking off).
+ First contact with the Kett is handled really well, really tense and edgy.
+ Overall it has the right Mass Effect feel (although there's a downside to that, see below).

= Alien tech and planets are a bit too familiar. They go light years to another galaxy and it all feels the same as previous games. But I accept it must be hard to totally break out of what's expected of a ME game.
= Dialogue and voice acting is a mixed bag. Some of it is good, some of it is cringe inducing. It's certainly not to the same standard as previous ME games. New companions seem very bland compared to the compelling characters in previous games.
= Field Of View is rather strange. I'm very grateful they've put FOV adjustment in, but it's handled in such a weird way that I've yet to get it exactly how I want it.
= Character customisation is mediocre at best and feels a step backward. Worse than previous ME games (which is saying something) and certainly no match for DA:I's system on which it is supposedly based.
= Animations and expressions are still rather odd, and that's after they patched them. I often find myself thinking "what sort of expression is that". Did the devs not watch their own cut scenes and not think the same?

- The UI is a disgrace, even by the low bar set by previous ME games. It's like they've learned nothing. Some things are so obviously broken it boggles the mind how they thought it was ok. For example, if you want to buy 100 of a resource from a vendor, you can't type the number or go up in increments of 10 with shift, you have to click the arrow 100 times! FFS that's so unbelievably amateur.
- Whoever put the console key right next to the 1 key and then didn't allow you to rebind it needs a big slap. Hugely frustrating when this kicks in during frenzied combat. Amateur hour design.
- There's lots of inconsistent design. For example, the M key brings up the map (as you'd expect) but then the M key doesn't work to close it (you have to ESC twice). This is constantly irritating.
- First contact with the Angara is a truly woeful piece of storytelling and the way the core Angara missions and side quests are presented is very lazy game design. I hope it's not a sign of how the rest of the game will be.

Overall 7/10. Definitely enjoying it, but have to feel it could have been so much better. Still not tried multiplayer though as I don't want to get sidetracked just yet. In ME3 it was multiplayer that I ended up spending most time in.

Thanks for the heads up about the Greenmangaming price, I might be tempted

Oddly enough, I'm mostly interested in the multiplayer in Andromeda. I really enjoyed ME3's multiplayer and spent more time on that than the main game which I only played through once (the infamous ending has much to do with that). So I like that Andromeda's multiplayer is similar to ME3 and some reviews suggest it's even an improvement. Perhaps too early to tell. ME3's multiplayer had good longevity and people were still playing it until recently (perhaps still are).

Most of the negativity I've seen so far is about the facial animations, UI (never a Bioware strong point) and some sloppy story writing (which is rather more worrying).

Perhaps I ought to try and finish Witcher 3 first, but I'm feeling impaient too

There's some really tough decisions in the game and quite often there's no right choice. The ones I've found toughest so far, without giving any spoilers, were the Baron's missing family quest (a series of really tough decisions), Lambert's revenge quest and the business with the ghost of the jilted lover on an island.

And yeah, I'm not trying to clear every question mark on the map, although I also did most of them in Velen and almost all of them in Novigrad. But Skellige ... no way

Hey all,

Good to hear from everyone. I'm mostly playing Witcher 3 at the moment. now that I finally have a PC that can handle it. Loving it, such a stunning game. So vast too and I only have the base version, no expansions.

I still have a WoW sub active but haven't played much since Xmas due to Witcher.

Also waiting for the new Mass Effect and hoping it's as good as it sounds, but trying not to build up expectations too much.

Nice one Las, just watched a few of those vids and some useful tips. Already learned something about escort missions - the payload moves faster the more players are on it, but caps out at 3. Most escort matches it's rare to see more than one on it, but then everyone wonders why a team with Bastion (or Torbjorn) + Reinhardt + Mercy on the payload pushes through like a hot knife through butter.

The "5 biggest mistakes" highlighted in those videos was interesting, most of them you see repeated again and again and I haven't seen much change in this behaviour since launch, so it's going to be like any other objective-based PvP game, rather hit or miss from match to match. The average (random) player seems to still approach it as a death match rather than an objective-based game, run off solo, get killed, rinse and repeat.

Obviously grouping with friends helps. But even then people seem to forget about objectives in the heat of battle, stick to certain heroes even if they aren't working out too well and generally not stick together as a team that well. I'm guilty of all this too, it can be hard to keep track of everything and everyone in such a fast paced game. And it's very tempting to keep trying to make a certain hero work rather than switching. But I think sticking together should be #1 on the priority list. Most of the best teams seem to work very closely together, all watching each others backs and focusing down key targets.

Play a few games with me and I'll soon get your win/loss percentage down

That said, my win percentage on my most played hero, Lucio, is .... 52%.

But I lost quite a few matches when experimenting with other heroes. My stats in recent matches is somewhat better. But I've mostly been sticking to Player vs AI to learn the heroes and maps.

Yeah, sadly there's always those who manage to find ways to farm noops in any game, not just Blizz titles. Overwatch seems somewhat aimed at filthy casuals though, so Blizz might feel some obligation to protect the peons from becoming cannon fodder. Probably not though

I've played a fair bit of SWTOR on and off and did some raiding with a very chilled and friendly Republic guild when all the raid content was still fresh. The raids are really enjoyable, better than most MMOs actually. But sadly Bioware have neglected the raiding part of the game and it got stale with everyone just rushing through the limited choice of raids for the 1000th time, as you discovered. Most of the guild I was in got tired of this and moved on to other games.

Essentially it's always been a single player game struggling to be a MMO. The 1-50 story content is for the most part fantastic and has lots of replay value on alts. But  it only really works solo and is awkward to try and complete story quests while grouped. Pretty much all the expansion content they added 50+ can't hold a candle to the original content and has gotten more and more linear, with class and faction storylines converging into one. So, whilst the new KOTFE content is enjoyable the first time through, it's essentially identical on every class on both factions. On the upside, it cured my altoholicism

It's high time they ditched the messy F2P model (where you need a sub to make the game bearable) and moved it to a B2P model where you buy the game and any DLC you want to play and then there's no monthly fee. Then they don't need to worry about calling it a MMO anymore, it can be a single player game with a chat channel.