Video Games

[Count Arioch the 28th]

So anyway, I recommend Bone Spear. You don't need a lot of points in it (though if you can pick up a wand that boosts it just for this fight, that helps), you just need to stay away from Diablo so you can dodge his attacks reliably while hitting him often enough that his out-of-combat regeneration doesn't kick in.

Well, I get one respec, I might adjust my necro to have some more offensive spells. And if that doesn't work, I'm hacking to have max resists and block and beating him to death with my stick .

[DragonChild]

That's an interesting comment. I haven't played League of Legends much, but my understanding is that the game's primary goal is to accumulate power (mostly in the form of XP and gold) faster than the enemy team so you get a snowballing advantage and murder them. That's what the game is about.

Oh no no no no. I have absolutely no problem with the IN-GAME stuff. I'm talking about REAL money. Like united states dollars. The problem is, you have a "Summoner level" tied to your account. As you play games, your summoner level goes up, giving you access to a WoW-style talent system. In addition, every game you win gives you IP, that you can spend on runes that give you a flat power-up (but you can only equip so many, based on your summoner level). Runes can't be changed before character select, unless you buy "rune pages", with actual money. In addition, you can buy champions with actual money or IP.

So no, I have no problem with the grinding in the game, that's the game. But the matchmaking system is kinda godawful, in that me, at summoner level 18, have been up against people who are summoner level 30 - usually one every game. These people seriously start with huge tat boost, just because they've played longer, and spent real money.

THAT part is utterly stupid, and removes any "competitiveness" in the game.

[Manxome]

Oh. That seems more like play time=power, though I'm aware you can buy off some (but not, I think, all) of the play time requirements with real money.

But it's a free game funded with microtransactions, what did you expect?

As for the matchmaking, I believe it's based on the system's (hidden) estimate of your skill level as a player, based on what games you've won and lost, not your summoner level (though the two should be correlated, since higher summoner level implies greater experience and provides bonuses that should improve your win rate). I won a bunch of games in a row when I started, and now I'm typically matched in games where I have the lowest summoner level of all the participating players, but I'm now winning about 50%, so I think the matchmaking system is doing pretty well.

I haven't been randomly matched against people 12 levels higher than me, though. I don't know if the system just thinks there's a big disparity in your skill levels or if it's having trouble finding enough players near your level to fill a game (it relaxes the matchmaking requirements the longer you're waiting in the pool).

[DragonChild]

But it's a free game funded with microtransactions, what did you expect?

Well, the designers even claim they don't want money=power, but they're clearly lying, or they're incompetent. Either/or.

As for the matchmaking, I believe it's based on the system's (hidden) estimate of your skill level as a player, based on what games you've won and lost, not your summoner level (though the two should be correlated, since higher summoner level implies greater experience and provides bonuses that should improve your win rate).

This is true. I'm not great at the game, but I'm rather good. And I've played a lot of group matches with a full team of friends (and if you have a full team, it counts you as even higher level). So I've got the advantage of decent skill, combined with the boost of "plays with friends who know how to work as a team". As-is, I suspect it's got a bit elevated view of my skills. There's also the problem that getting to level 20 is a HUGE boost, as that's when you get the end-talent for a mastery tree (which can be +5% damage done or -4% damage taken, not a small bonus!), a second quintesence (the best runes), and the ability to purchase tier 3 runes, which are really awesome. So until I actually hit that level 20, I'm at a pretty severe disadvantage. I don't mind losing to people who are better than me, but losing because someone just-plain has a stronger hero is no fun.

This system also makes it extremely difficult to play with friends, or get new people into the game. All of the problems of matchmaking, combined with all of the problems of MMO grinding.

[Manxome]

+5% damage done still sounds a lot smaller than, say, the advantage you'd get from your champion being one experience level higher than your opponent, or having one more relatively-inexpensive item. So I'm not sure that's "HUGE" compared to the in-game rewards for playing better, though I realize that even a small advantage can snowball pretty rapidly. At present, I'm fiddling with runes that give bonuses on the order of a tenth of a percent.

And they do restrict "ranked games" to only max-level summoners.

But, no, I'm not very fond of the concept of some players having inherent bonuses, either. The system kind of gives the impression that the designers tacked it on due to pressure from marketers wanting to have something to sell...

[DragonChild]

+5% damage done still sounds a lot smaller than, say, the advantage you'd get from your champion being one experience level higher than your opponent, or having one more relatively-inexpensive item. So I'm not sure that's "HUGE" compared to the in-game rewards for playing better, though I realize that even a small advantage can snowball pretty rapidly. At present, I'm fiddling with runes that give bonuses on the order of a tenth of a percent.

That's just a +5% from going from the mastery at level 20, though. This isn't counting buying runes. Which, for me, is looking to be something along the lines of +68-125 HP, +9 magic resist, +9 armor. In addition to the -4% damage taken. For a tank character, that's really huge.

[cthulhu]

So why would you play league of legends then when Heros of Newerth is like, right there?

Borderlands is a shit diablo clone with guns that I regret paying for. It was okay co-op with 3 mates though were we ran out like retards, but Alien Swarm gives the same co-op experince for like 1/700th of the price.

If you're going to play it, play the sniper character which is powerful and has actual skill elements - the brick is meh, the soldier is terrible and the lilith one is just retarded, super OP but all you do is run up to people while holding down Mouse 1 and they melt.

[Orion]

I don't buy the $ argument. Level disparity is a much bigger problem, cash does very little in my opinion.

Many or most of the best heroes are cheap though. I've never bought a hero that cost more than 1350 IP, and it's quite possible to get stellar options for every role.

Main tank? Amumu, or for the adventurous Alistar

Physical Carry? Tristana is *completely free*. Sivir is IMHO underrated.

Nuke mage? I love Nunu to death but if you find him to wonky you cannot doubt Annie.

Healbot? Soraka and Janna are both very very cheap.

Playing 3v3 (where tank/damage hybrids run the show)? Singed and Mundo.

I admit I'm pissed about the huge price for rune pages, but I don't yet own enough runes to need more than the free 2. (I'm level 22). Also, if you're fast, I'm 99% sure you can indeed edit runes during champ select.

EDIT: I was wrong. The new interface won't let you.

[Orion]

Dragonchild, here's a tip for dealing with your Rune woes: lower-tier runes are almost as good.

Seriously, tier 1s are more than half as good as tier 3s, and tier 2s are like 3/4s as good. Go ahead and buy runes now, don't wait to hit 20. Now I know you're gonna say that that wastes IP in the long run, but it doesn't have to thanks to the Rune Combiner. You can combine 5 tier 1 runes into a random tier 2, and 5 tier 2s into a random tier 3. The interesting thing about this is that the cheapest runes on a given tier will actually cost *less* than 1/5th of the average rune for the next tier.

For Example: Tier 1 runes cost 15/30/60. Tier 2 cost 80/165/320. So for 75, you can get a random tier 2 rune that probably cost twice that much. Admittedly, some of those will end up being retarded runes like crit damage or scaling attack power, but on the whole you get most of your investment back when you cash out your lower-tier runes.

In particular, mp5 runes are on the cheapest pricepoint and a book full of even low-tier mp5 runes will make your game MUCH less frustrating. Your only other options are mres and armor, I think.

Oh, and if you're REALLY committed, there is (as of 2 weeks ago anyway) nothing preventing you from equipping tier 3s you got by combining tier 2s even before level 20. So once you've filled your runebook with tier 2s you could sink more IP into buying combine bait. Not that I would bother. The store interface is too deeply painful for that.

[DragonChild]

So why would you play league of legends then when Heros of Newerth is like, right there?

It's free, it's what my friends play, from what I've heard it's a significantly less poisonous community (I don't enjoy being called names while playing), and from what I've heard HoN has kept more stupid stuff just because DOTA did it than LoL did (like killing your own minions).

I don't buy the $ argument. Level disparity is a much bigger problem, cash does very little in my opinion.

Yeah, but you can spend money to level faster. Whihc is still money=power, even if it's not direct.

Many or most of the best heroes are cheap though.

Largely kinda/sorta agreed. I'm doing quite well with Shen, Tristana, Rammus, and Heimdinger (although I mostly play Shen). I'm thinking of picked up Singed and Kayle, and neither are too expensive, luckily. It's just sorta a pain that I can't test Singed out until he goes free, which is who knows when. My girlfriend got burned pretty hard on some champion purchases which just wern't what she was expecting.

Dragonchild, here's a tip for dealing with your Rune woes: lower-tier runes are almost as good.

Yeah, I've got a book of mostly-full tier 1s - I think I have my tier 1 quint, and 5x tier 1s for each slot. I stopped buying them around level 15, IIRC, so I could afford all my tier 3's for two different heroes if possible. The group I play with sometimes features an amumu and cho'gath, which makes Shen redundant - so I need to be able to get a non-tank.

In particular, mp5 runes are on the cheapest pricepoint and a book full of even low-tier mp5 runes will make your game MUCH less frustrating. Your only other options are mres and armor, I think.

I'm not sure the mp5 runes are going to be so useful on Shen. But yeah, I've got MR and armor runes.

Honestly, most of this was just venting in frustration after being put up against players who had way outleveled me, and going 2-8 over the week.

[Orion]

I promise you will not be disappointed in Singed, unless you expect him to initiate 5v5 teamfights as well as Shen or Amumu. He's my main.
EDIT: Oh and OrionJA is my username.

[DragonChild]

Do you have any suggestions for runes for Singed? For Shen and Rammus (who I barely play anymore), I'm going to get:

Quint: Health (flat)
Red: Health (scaling)
Yellow: Armor (3x flat 6x scaling)
Blue: Magic Resist (3x flat 6x scaling)

Which is at level 30, mind. It seems like for a Singed build, some of those might transfer over nicely, but it also looks like I might have to ditch some of the runes for mana regen ones, so I can keep the poison trail up.

[Orion]

Runes for Singed:

The only Singed build I actually have experience with is:

Quints: Gp10
Marks: MPen
Seals: Scaling MP5
Glyphs: flat Mres.

That's not what I'd call an optimal build, but it happens to be what I owned and could afford. Now for my dream build:

Health quints seem like they'd be really good, Singed is already a monster in level 1 teamfights. You might consider +movespeed quints also. Singed is really dependant on being faster than his enemies, so he can poison kite or run you down to fling. I usually do fine with boots of swiftness and maybe force of nature or the utility talents.

Armor and Mres runes should be perfectly fine, especially since his passive gives extra health (25% of mana goes to health, if you didn't know). His spells are potent enough that mpen and AP could also work.

H'okay, Singed's mana. I'm currently using mp5 runes, but you probably don't really need them. His poison trail costs the same mana across all levels, so it gets less and less of a big deal. His passive encourages you to build mana items (like rod of ages) so at high levels you don't care about mana. That said, you early game needs something. You have a few options though:

--Utility talents. The mp5 talents there is pretty good
--Meki Pendant. Not ideal for your build, but you could build it into a Deathfire if you're not the main tank.
--be careful with your mana. Poison Trail can be turned on and immediately off to create a mini-cloud that lingers for a while last-hitting things. If you don't harass too much or have to escape too many ganks you should probably be okay. Rush catalyst, which you were probably doing anyway.

[DragonChild]

Singoriffic

Yeah, the more I read different guides about Singed, the more I see that he can be a pretty nasty DPSer - the AP ratios on his abilities are scarily good. So I'm definately thinking I'm going to be going with two rune pages for him. One he can probablly share with Shen, when the group needs a second TOUGH tank (when he's paired with Galio or Taric, for example) and the other for when I just want to kill some fools while being super-tough (when he's paired with Amumu or Cho'gath).

For the second, I'm thinking...
Q: Move Speed
R: Magic Penetration
B: Flat magic resistance
Y: Flat MP5 or flat mana?

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Diablo 2 observations: I was a moron for not putting points into Revive at level 30. That spell is pretty damn awesome. It definitely adds even more punch to my army.

[Koumei]

Okay, it's no secret that I love Nippon Ichi and their games and feel that it would not be excessive to make them the ruling party of this country. But it seems they love me too.

Criminal Girls is a game by N1 (with a 4% chance of getting released in the States and a -80% chance of getting released in Australia) where you are a female prison warden (of Hell) who has to rehabilitate seven (see: deadly sins) young women who sinned in their lives. By spanking them.

Also it has a dungeoncrawl RPG element to it.

I hope I'm gainfully employed when this comes out so I can order a Japanese PSP and copy of this game. Sure, I'll even get other games (all the other N1 ones for PSP) but really, it's like they made the game for me!

[Crissa]

Has it been noted that Blizzard is selling their games without CD-locking now? If you've got an old CD, you can sign up on Battle.net and download a cracked version of their game. Or you can just buy it and download it.

-Crissa

[Meikle641]

Mega Man: Day in the Limelight

[Lago PARANOIA]

Super Castlevania rocks so motherfucking hard.

I love the music in that game. It's so classic .midi that it hurts. Bloody Tears and Submerged City are probably my favorite tracks in that game.

Rondo of Blood was all right. It didn't have that climactic 'feel' of the other Castlevanias... like the game just suddenly upped and stopped. It's probably because of the final level, which is short and relies more on trickery than grueling combat.

I also don't know why everyone says that Dracula in that game was the hardest of the series. He's not. He's extremely easy to cheese with axes and telegraphs his attacks like crazy. Also if you abuse the crouching trick he loses a lot of his insta-death threat.

[Meikle641]

Super Castlevania 4 you mean, or a different one? 'cause 4 was a fucking masterpiece.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's the one I mean.

I mean, it's not a totally perfect game. There are some unfair elements to the game (like those fucking spinning platforms in level 4) and some of the gimmicks are really distracting like the rotating room and the chandelier jump. Also the bosses are really easy compared to the rest of the series except for a couple of outliers. And the game is about one or two levels too long for a straight playthrough but two or three levels too short to really appreciate the password system unless you're a beginner or something.

But those are honestly minor complaints. The game rules. I mean, I also love the hell out of Symphony of the Night, maybe even more than SCIV, but the latter is easier to pick up and play, you know?

[Meikle641]

As fun as SC4 is, I think it's a fucking cheater. Those platforms are a perfect example: a few times I simply *walked over them* and they flipped, rather than after a jump. I think there's a few bullshit little glitches like that which make it artificially difficult.

That said, I love the game. I wanna get another SNES so I can play it again. The treasury stage is pretty cool looking...

[Lago PARANOIA]

Is it just me, or is the original Super Mario Bros. RPG just not as good as the spinoffs?

I'm not saying that it's bad or even just decent, it's just that every other Mario RPG seems superior to it. Except for maybe Partners in Time.

[Maxus]

I've been replaying Metroid Prime 2 on the Gamecube.

It's amazing how easy the game is now. When I first played it, I thought it was the hardest of the Prime games. A lot harder than Metroid Prime 1.

In retrospect, this was due entirely to me wanting to conserve (read: not use, in practical terms) the ammo they gave me. Turns out the game is a -lot- easier if you go at everything with overwhelming force.

Those devil-spawned lizards in the swamp levels? I used to panic when one got near me, and immediately try for distance. They take a lot of killing, too.

...Unless you use the Dark Beam's charged shot. Then they're pretty easy.

Ingsmashers? Power bomb them.

With a little attention to detail, Dark Aether becomes a cakewalk. The safe points can be energized with enemies near them, saving you the trouble of beating them down the hard way.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

More diablo 2 thoughts:

Nightmare Diablo was easier than Normal Diablo. The nightmare HP boost to skeletons kept them from getting killed in the first fire nova cast.

Hell Difficulty is lame. I'm good, my skeletons are hanging in, my merc has died more time in the first 2 quests of act 1 in Hell difficulty than he did through Nightmare and Normal combined.