Video Games

[RandomCasualty2]

This is why people put you on ignore.

Uh... why? Based on what you said you either:

A. Don't know how to play the game you're complaining about and are talking out of your ass.

B. Don't find the existing options given to you in game to be sufficient and want something that does more for you.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed B, but maybe I guess I should have went with A.

[Crissa]

Right. Arguing points not in evidence, sir. Why are you so pepped up about the 'skill' of this game, specifically?

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty2]

Right. Arguing points not in evidence, sir.

If you're going to complain about something, at least learn the basic mechanics first.

Why are you so pepped up about the 'skill' of this game, specifically?

Because it's a fun game to play and there are so few RTS games like it. Most of the stuff that's produced in the RTS genre is forgettable garbage that's forgotten in under a year. Starcraft and its sequel are pretty much the pinnacle of competitive RTS.

[Zinegata]

it's generally agreed the only viable solo Hell build is the skelly-using Necro with Corpse Explosion

Hammerdin is a perfectly viable solo Hell build. And there are a few others that can squeak by with difficulty, like Meteorb.

For Necros I mean.

[Crissa]

Right, I have no reason to listen to you anymore here, RC. You're being an ass for 'missing' something, after a total time playing of less than an hour, not counting the cutscenes, and watching play for only a couple hours more.

Of course, I should be a total expert at all the game's buttons and commands after downloading it and playing for a few minutes.

Or not. Because I'm human, and you're what's known as an asshole.

-Crissa

PS: Notice, he never once pointed out the different move options - which are, by the way 'A - Attack, kill things on movement path' and 'M - Move' and 'Hold - fire at things in range' There's also 'P - Patrol' but functionally, all these commands do the same thing: The unit heads towards the way point and shoots things that shoot at them. Patrol and Attack they will fire first instead of only responding to fire. The Attack option seems to act slightly different in Normal from Hard; they chase more in Hard than Normal.

But you still end up with units not shooting even though the units given the same command are standing back to back with them.

Which really ruins the whole idea of 'strategy' of the game if it's all 'actions per minute'.

[Zinegata]

Crissa, all RC is saying is that SC leans much more to twitch and manual control. It's part of the design.

If that's not your cup of tea, it's not your cup of tea.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Okay, so I was playing D2, and got to the Summoner.

I got killed in one hit by some sort of stray lightning bolt. (!)

That.. was less than cool in my opinion . Especially since I've been getting tons of elec resist stuff and selling them .

[Zinegata]

I hope you weren't on hardocre mode then. But otherwise, Death is real cheap in D2.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Naw, I knew better than to jump to Hardcore mode on my first go.

Death is cheap, but that dying in one hit before I even had the summoner on the screen concerns me. According to various guides I read, I'm WAY overleveled for the area.

[Zinegata]

The range for Lightning Damage is always 1 to X. For example, for an average damage of 50, the range for lightning damage is 1 to 100.

Needless to say, sometimes the dice Goddess is fickle and hits you with something all the way to the maximum. Other times, it hits you with a 1 and you think you evaded the spell entirely.

Also, you might have been hit twice by the lightning (or multiple times) if you were walking towards the summoner. Walk around him, not towards him.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I was on the narrow path that lead to the platform the summoner was on, which doesn't give me a lot of room to maneuver. I'm only assuming that the summoner hit me because my quest updated to kill him, he actually wasn't on the screen yet.

[Roy]

Picked up a DSi XL and DQ9 today. Any suggestions on min-maxing your characters in the game? My friends have indicated that buffed-up melee classes are the way to go, but I'm interested to know how the folks here are playing through the game.

This is an easy one to answer.

First, yes melee characters are going to do more damage than magic. It's not nearly as bad as in earlier DQ games, as 1: Magic does more damage in DQ9, particularly with good Magical Might and the possibility of 'Haywire' spells which are basically critical hits for mages. 2: Enemies are on average, less resistant to magic and elemental weaknesses both occur at all, and are common. Even post game stuff often has an elemental weakness of some kind. 3: New (better) spells are added, which do more damage.

Now the downsides:

Earlier games had large groups of enemies. So throwing down a Firebane, or Infernmost was a valid life choice. DQ9 does not have very large groups. Even if you do encounter 4 enemies at a time, they are likely to be in two separate groups of two. And you learn new spells a lot slower. For example, this is a Mage's spell progression:

Frizz - N/A -2 MP- Singes 1 enemy around 15 pts. of damage.
Acceleratle - 4 -4 MP- Raises agility of all comrades.
Crack - 6 -3 MP- Pierces 1 enemy around 30 pts. of damage.
Sap - 7 -4 MP- Lowers defense of 1 enemy.
Evac - 8 -3 MP- Teleports out of a dungeon.
Bang - 11 -5 MP- Hits all enemies around 25 pts. of damage.
Safe Passage - 13 -2 MP- Can travel through any terrain without damage.
Crackle - 16 -8 MP- Pierces a group around 50 pts. of damage.
Fuddle - 19 -5 MP- May confuse a group.
Bounce - 21 -4 MP- Barrier that reflects all spells back at the enemy.
Kasap - 25 -8 MP- Lowers defense of a group of enemies.
Boom - 28 -10 MP- Hits all enemies around 60 pts. of damage.
Frizzle- 30 -6 MP- Hits 1 enemy with a fireball around 80 pts. of damage.
Oomph - 33 -8 MP- Raises attack of 1 comrade.
Kacrack - 40 -24 MP- Hits all enemies around 92 pts. of damage.
Blunt - 42 -8 MP- Lowers attack of 1 enemy.
Kaboom - 47 -28 MP- Hits all enemies around 140 pts. of damage.
Kafrizz - 53 -18 MP- Hits 1 enemy with fire around 190 pts. of damage.
Kafrizzle - 64 -45 MP- Hits 1 enemy with fire around 292 pts. of damage.
Kacrackle - 68 -50 MP- Hits all enemies around 185 pts. of damage.

Note the heavily delayed spell progression compared to earlier games. And this is a real and meaningful distinction, as you will finish the game at the same level you'd finish another DQ game (40ish) and not around 70 or so, to actually have the uber spells. That only happens post game.

Now, here is how you succeed at DQ9.

The class change system. You will get access to it early. Use it early, use it often. When you change classes you keep your progression in that class, so if say you're a level 15 Minstrel, switch to a (level 1) Warrior and don't like it you can switch back to being a level 15 Minstrel.

Changing classes resets your stats. So you would go from level 15 Minstrel stats, to level 1 Warrior stats. And if you level up to 15, you'll have level 15 Warrior stats. These are preset, not random. Stat seeds ONLY apply to the class you use them on. So save them for whatever your end class will be.

Changing classes makes you lose access to any spells that class had. So if you're a Priest, and you switch to a Martial Artist no spells for you. However you DO keep skills. This is important, and is critical to any optimization approach. This applies both to weapon skills, and to class skills. As such classes heavy on skills, but not so good on spells or other inherent benefits are just stopping points for the benefits. You'll want to be say... a Martial Artist because you can get various useful skills from the focus tree. Along with stat boosts. Which are permanent and stack. So if a class gives +20 Agility, and later gives +40 Agility you get +60 Agility. Forever. Even if you later change classes. Get enough passive stat bonuses and you can be a level 1 character who can beat the final boss or worse. Specifically, and regardless of what you actually intend to do with your characters you want everyone to do the following:

Martial Artist: Either long enough for Psyche Up, or to max Focus for the stats.

Thief: Long enough for Half Inch (steal). You can come back later for the rest if you care.

Paladin: Max their class skill tree. MASSIVE HP and Defense boosts. You WILL need this post game. Full stop. Even if you don't care about post game, Paladin is the cornerstone of most optimized strategies, so you'll do it anyways.

Warrior: More HP, Str, Def, etc. Not as important as Paladin. Don't bother with the last skill but everything up until that is good.

Ranger: Vanish saves you the trouble of buying 99 Holy Waters all the time. This WILL matter later. Can be worth maxing if you care about Deftness. Deftness boosts steal and critical hit rates. Rangers are better thieves than thieves, keep this in mind.

Gladiator: Feel the Burn is made of Win and Awesome, covered in Epicness and topped with hardcore icing. You. Want. Feel. The. Burn. The stuff leading up to it is pretty damn sweet also.

Armamentalist: Everyone shouldn't need this. But one person should. Armamentalist or 'Red Mage' gives you Fource skills. Fource skills basically allow you to abuse those common elemental weaknesses I told you about with melee attacks. Need I say more?

Oh and you should probably have one caster, who has maxed out Mage and Priest skills then heads into Sage. Doing that means much more Magical Might and Magical Mending, and a better spell list. Because Priests don't get Kazing. Or double cast. So they're your healer and support guy.

Forebearance + Magic Mirror + Reverse Cycle owns just about anything that can't erase your buffs, even post game.

Is there a more specific answer you are looking for?

[Awkward Map]

Really specific, helpful information.

Well, damn.

How much of the postgame have you done, Roy? I started beating the grottos, but it wasn't too appealing. I felt like I would have to grind a lot to get the better grottos and then grind more to get better classes for beating them.

[Roy]

Really specific, helpful information.

Well, damn.

How much of the postgame have you done, Roy? I started beating the grottos, but it wasn't too appealing. I felt like I would have to grind a lot to get the better grottos and then grind more to get better classes for beating them.

Enough to encounter the third highest rank of random monster. I don't have any Legacy boss maps, as I haven't been to any events in my area.

It actually doesn't take very much grinding.

It goes something like this:

Beat normal game.
Talk to King of Stornway, get level 20 something map.
Beat level 20 something map, get level 30 something map.
Repeat, gaining about 10 map levels each time, higher level chests, and higher end random grotto bosses. Likely run into a MKS map or three along the way. Which makes leveling trivially easy (I got 20 levels, and wasn't going at all out of my way to kill MKS). Note that MKSs only give HALF as much XP as PKJs, which are even better if you can get them. and MKS give triple the XP of LMSs who in turn give 10 times the XP of normal Metal Slimes.

Leveling is super easy in this game because of metal slime class monsters being easier to kill than ever, and the higher end ones only appear in grottos with any regularity (MKS) or at all (PKJ).

You can seriously take one character, at level 1 with the passive stat boosts from other classes, go into a Grotto, and kill a MKS and gain around 25 levels on the spot. And then you do it again and gain 10 more. And then you gain 3 levels/2 kills all the way to 99. If you bring the whole party it will take 4 times longer but is still amazingly fast.

Which reminds me. I mentioned classes. I did not mention weapons.

Spears/axes: Both of these are important because they have a crit or miss skill at 58 points. While you can easily kill normal Metal Slimes with Metal Slash, and Liquid Metal Slimes in about the same average time with Metal Slash for Metal King Slimes and Platinum King Jewels these are your only viable option. Note that unless your current class can use axes or spears, you need 100 points to equip that type of weapon as any class. The main difference between the two is that Axes give you Help Splitter. Which is an attack + Sap (the attack might also be a little stronger, I don't remember). This is useful vs bosses. Spear gives you Multithrust, which isn't as good as Falcon Slash + (Uber) Falcon Sword but isn't that far behind. Mostly though Multithrust is good because I've heard (and I have not personally tested) that most, if not all metal slime type creatures are not immune to instant death. The Demon Spear has a 1/8 chance to instant kill. Multithrust hits 4 times. So on average you can expect similar results to crit or miss skills. Except that it's 4 MP instead of 8, the attacks can hit multiple metal slimes (and even kill several at once), but the attacks will sometimes miss or do 0 damage.

Shields: Everyone has at least... I think it's 52 points in shield. If their end class can't use shields, you need 100. Someone should have 100 regardless. Block chance DOES matter a great deal in this game, and the shield skills are very useful. Remember that Forebearance + Magic Mirror + Reverse Cycle combo? Well the first one is a Paladin skill (one guess as to why it's the cornerstone of most optimized strategies). The second is a shield skill. It reflects any reflectable spell that hits you. Which is to say, almost all of them. The third...

Fans: Fans are a great defensive weapon. Reverse Cycle is an early skill. It reflects breath weapons. And what's more I think it does so at 400% strength. So your tank uses Forebearance, with Magic Mirror active and Reverse Cycle. If a physical attack is aimed at any member of the party, it hits the Forebearance user instead. If that attack is a critical hit, it hits the Forebearance user instead*. If the enemy casts a spell, it hits the Forebearance user instead. Now here's where it gets really awesome.

If the enemy casts a group spell, and you're using this combo it hits your tank four times, who reflects it four times.

If the enemy uses a breath weapon, it hits your tank four times, who reflects it four times... for four times normal damage each.

See where this is going yet?

Obviously using Forebearance vs group spells or breath weapons without the requisite counter move will not end well for your tank. Just Multiheal until you're set up. Keep in mind the 'removes all buffs' move DOES remove all of these effects.

* - Maxing Shield skills on any character lets you take a quest that once completed basically gives you a Heavy Fort item. But you only get one. Even if you max Shield skills on more characters. However since the Forebearance tank is taking hits for everyone it makes your whole party immune to critical hits.

Swords: Swords are pretty sweet actually. Early game you get Metal Slash for Metal Slime hunting, you get Dragon Slash which will save you a lot of pain, Miracle Slash which is a decent enough skill, and the core of any melee DPS strategy. Falcon Slash. You're going to want this. Ideally maxed. That way you can switch jobs into something like... a Mage, and level easily using your weapon to rack up skill points. For that matter, maxing one weapon ASAP should be your main priority as it makes class changing a lot easier. Though you will probably have to class change, a little to rack up the spare skill points.

[Awkward Map]

Oh wow, that defense combo is amazing.

On metal slimes etc: I'm not sure why they were made so much easier than in previous games. Not only are they more easily killed with all the awesome abilities, but they don't run away nearly as much as in previous games. Like, in DW III I remember specifically needing to one turn the metal slimes and metababbles before they got a chance to run. In comparison, early on even when fighting metal slimes they stuck around for one turn to attack or cast kafrizz or whatever. It makes leveling classes pretty easy though, as you said.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

The range for Lightning Damage is always 1 to X. For example, for an average damage of 50, the range for lightning damage is 1 to 100.

Needless to say, sometimes the dice Goddess is fickle and hits you with something all the way to the maximum. Other times, it hits you with a 1 and you think you evaded the spell entirely.

Also, you might have been hit twice by the lightning (or multiple times) if you were walking towards the summoner. Walk around him, not towards him.

Update:

It seemed to be ice instead of lightning as it slowed me down. After 4-5 deaths, I figured a trick out.

First, I drew all his minions away and slaughtered them. Then I put on all my resist gear, and used ctrl to run onto his platform while drinking potions. I then dropped a TP, entered, then went back to the platform. All my minions and my merc was there on the platform and the summoner died before I could even do anything. Which is why I like a necro so far, manage your minions well enough and you don't really have to do much.

[Maxus]

So, I've been playing Tales of the Abyss.

It's somehow not hitting all my buttons like Symphonia did, but it's not bad.

Notes so far:

-Battle system's interesting. It actually ties in a lot of the phlebtonium. Use a magic attack, and it leaves a magic residue behind. If it's strong enough, someone else can use it to augment one of their own attacks. In the game cutscenes and knocking around, they talk about this residue anyway.

-The characters are...entertaining enough. And the characterization is handled well. I haven't seen a game that would make you miss NPCs when they die before. Also, the party mage is a riot. He's very, very good at winding people up.

[Psychic Robot]

I haven't seen a game that would make you miss NPCs when they die before.

Have you tried Dragon Age? I will admit that I became emotionally attached to some of the characters, to the point when I was appalled when someone I know made a dwarf main character who had sex with an NPC.

[Maxus]

I haven't seen a game that would make you miss NPCs when they die before.

Have you tried Dragon Age? I will admit that I became emotionally attached to some of the characters, to the point when I was appalled when someone I know made a dwarf main character who had sex with an NPC.

I haven't.

This isn't quite like that, though. It's sort of a Dresden-esque thing. In the third Dresden book, it talks about how this holy knight guy really is a good guy. And then the rest of the book, you keep seeing how awesome he is.

Tales of the Abyss...there's a rivalry between two research institutes--both institute's heads were at the same university, but with different professors. The rivalry stems from that, and it shows. These are some cool old people. They bicker a lot when they're around each other, but they still get the job done.

You're told an emperor is a very fair ruler. And when you meet him, it turns out 'fair' is something of an understatement.

Edit: The NPCs hold up to what we're told well. One of the party members knows that emperor from when they were kids. He predicts the emperor's reaction to some of what's happened. And that's how it happens. The story doesn't add drama or adversity for the sake of boning the PCs or making everything all GrimDark.

And I just realized why I like that. One of my old DMs liked to make what he called a 'latent hopelessness', and would purposely bone PCs for working inside the system.

[Zinegata]

The range for Lightning Damage is always 1 to X. For example, for an average damage of 50, the range for lightning damage is 1 to 100.

Needless to say, sometimes the dice Goddess is fickle and hits you with something all the way to the maximum. Other times, it hits you with a 1 and you think you evaded the spell entirely.

Also, you might have been hit twice by the lightning (or multiple times) if you were walking towards the summoner. Walk around him, not towards him.

Update:

It seemed to be ice instead of lightning as it slowed me down. After 4-5 deaths, I figured a trick out.

First, I drew all his minions away and slaughtered them. Then I put on all my resist gear, and used ctrl to run onto his platform while drinking potions. I then dropped a TP, entered, then went back to the platform. All my minions and my merc was there on the platform and the summoner died before I could even do anything. Which is why I like a necro so far, manage your minions well enough and you don't really have to do much.

Well, prepare for Duriel because he's one annoying boss

[Crissa]

DQ 9 is really boring. As Roy described, you can play it all grindy, because there's nothing but more grinding to open yourself up to.

Following the main storyline, make sure to kill everything when you're marching to a boss, else you won't have the levels to kill it. I've accidentally shown up to bosses that'll one-shot me. Not cool.

There's no NPCs to pick up. Make sure to equip your crew well once you get them... After that, just give them what you find and alchemize whatever you find - don't go searching for things, it's not needed. As long as everyone is about on the same page per defenses, you're okay.

Magic characters with wands are not terribly useless. And I've found that if you save our MP for bosses or when you don't have a boss waiting, magic can just plain shorten battles, even if your melee character can one-shot things with crits, the magic character can use the right spell (automatically! They know more about the enemies than you do.)

But aside from that, I'm a bit underwhelmed. It's a pretty game, but your crew is downright character-free. They added multi-player play at the expense of having the 'team' be just another piece of equipment you wear. I don't know even why you have them.

-Crissa

[Awkward Map]

I liked that monsters were visible on the main map. I honestly used that to avoid most combat. Boss battles were challenging, sure -- but I didn't lose them except for two.

The ability to set tactics for the team was pretty appreciated. As Crissa said, if you set your mage to 'show no mercy' for instance they will target the creature's weaknesses and casts appropriate group / single target spells. Any battle that wasn't a boss battle was fought with the whole party set to show no mercy which made even those encounters pretty breezy.

I didn't really like that they changed the goddess of previous games into 'The Almighty'. It sort of feels unnecessary and like they could have told the same story using her. I guess this is kind of a moot complaint to anyone new to Dragon Quest.

The structure of the game was kind of formulaic. First you are searching for certain stuff, so there's your reason to adventure. Then you are searching for some other stuff, so hey go adventure some more. I don't really want to include spoilers, but some of the adventures that are had while the searching is going on are quite fun.

Come on - the Wight Knight? I freaking laughed when I saw that.

[Crissa]

I do like that the puns aren't part of the stories, but the flavor. It's made really well. Monsters you're running from - some run away, some charge, some home in on you. Spouse likes that alot. But like I said, I totally walked into Knight (for instance) as level 4 party, and I hadn't dodged fights. Squish.

It's also remarkably resilient to you figuring out puzzles early or late and just skipping parts and going straight for the baddie. You can, however, end up hitting bosses in the wrong sequence, and they're different difficulties (I've done that, too.)

Also, you can't use my name as a name of a character in the game. I lost count of how many names I tried before it let me have a name.

-Crissa

[Roy]

Oh wow, that defense combo is amazing.

On metal slimes etc: I'm not sure why they were made so much easier than in previous games. Not only are they more easily killed with all the awesome abilities, but they don't run away nearly as much as in previous games. Like, in DW III I remember specifically needing to one turn the metal slimes and metababbles before they got a chance to run. In comparison, early on even when fighting metal slimes they stuck around for one turn to attack or cast kafrizz or whatever. It makes leveling classes pretty easy though, as you said.

I think it's pretty obvious why. You'll be doing a lot more leveling. In DQ3 you get to level 40, or 50 and that's it. There's post game stuff, but stat growth slows to near nothing past level 45 so grinding LMS won't really help you.

In DQ9 you'll have your main class at that point... and multiple other classes with some level investment for more skill points to get more skills and stat bonuses. The game expects you to have around 400 skill points per character by the final boss. Which is actually pretty easy since XP per level scales up until about mid 30s so getting the first few dozen levels is easy and skill points are static based on level... so you go 1-x and get y skill points, then do it for another class and get y skill points again... It only takes a small fraction of the effort that leveling up the first time does. Especially since you'll have better gear. And then postgame you'll do a lot more grinding. Legacy bosses are meant to be a challenge from anywhere from > 1,000 skill point characters at high levels at level 1, to completely maxed out, multiple revocation (as in, leveled from 1-99 again) characters for level 99 Legacy bosses.

In order for this to be remotely feasible, you can't have normal metal slimes fleeing 3/8th of the time and LMS fleeing 5/8th of the time (and higher end slimes running even more). That's a non starter.

[Prak]

Also, Starcraft 2 I'm impressed with so far. Trying the Single Player Campaign again on hard.

I played through the campaign on hard the first time, with the exceptions of two missions; the last level and the protoss mission that's basically the same as the last level. I just did not have the patience to grind through all those zerg on hard.

Incidentally, if you want to play a round sometime, I'm Gelare.678

so, I don't keep up on games really, wings of liberty is just playing as Terrans, right?

when are the zerg going to be playable