Video Games

[DSMatticus]

Recharging anything raises your enchant, so if you have Azura's Star (and if you don't, go get it. Go get it right now) you should make a weapon of soul trap then go beat up things that will fill azura's star, then recharge the weapon with those.

For more levelling, put a staff in the other hand and use that, saving the weapon for finishing blows/whenever you need to recharge. Using staffs raises your enchant, too.

Edit: Removed incredibly minor spoiler concerning Azura's star quest. Just incase.

[hyzmarca]

The very moment that someone hacks the DRM out of that game, there will be much rejoicing. But I don't know if there is even that much interest in doing it right now, because the game was released in a very clearly unfinished state.

-Username17

A quick search shows that it's already been done by a release group called SKIDROW.

[DSMatticus]

SKIDROW cracked Ubi's DRM for the first few games that used it after a few weeks, and ever since then it's just been building on that initial template to crack the new games. Ubi's DRM is pretty much dead and useless at this point. Their insistence on using it despite this is a pretty big fuck you to everybody. They can make a tentative argument for stopping day zero piracy, but if that's what they wanted to do they could drop the DRM a week (or month) after release. I bought AC2 when it was like 12 dollars during a steam sale, and that's my plan for any other Ubi game worth buying.

[Kaelik]

You are completely wrong about using staves. I had one item to craft to reach 88, and killed 14 people with a fireball staff. Then I crafted something and had 88, because it didn't move at fucking all in all my kills.

[DSMatticus]

Well, fuck, you're right. I thought I had seen that confirmed somewhere, and now cannot find any mention of it anywhere at all, so apparently I was hallucinating. Soul trap recharging with Azura's Star works, though.

[PhoneLobster]

I have felt vaguely disappointing with Skyrim.

I was trying to work out why.

I mean it COULD be all the god damn greyish whitish blah stylings. (did they HAVE to pick Skyrim?). But probably not.

It COULD be the poorly ported over console interface they stupidly saddled PC gamers with. And it IS clunky and jarring and has some serious WTF moments. But probably not.

And it COULD be that the story line was pretty much unengaging (if not outright alienating at times) and yawn worthy when it wasn't. But probably not.

It COULD be that crafting and enchanting is more complex, more integral and yet ALSO seemingly kinda boring, lacking in interesting options and not altogether important at the same time. Which is a fairly impressive combo of WTF. But probably not, I mean, optional for those interested, whatever, hey.

And then I realized. There doesn't seem to be a fly spell. Again. Indeed the spell list is, um... kinda short. Also the custom spell maker seems to be missing with no sign of turning up.

Oblivion kinda started screwing the mage feature list over. Skyrim seems to be doing so... hm... more. And that annoys me. I mean seriously WTF, we can't FLY damnit? All those expensive graphics and we still can't fly like we used to?.

I'm calling this symptomatic of the vague cloud of mild dismay that hangs over this game, franchise and developer. Interesting and engaging features are missing in some cases for no apparent reason.

Ultimately I'm pretty sure a lot of the things the game is telling me amount to saying "You will be a murdering knife hobo who doesn't bother with the complex and yet largely unimpressive and emasculated magic spells and crafting crap, and you will psychotically rob and murder everyone in revenge for their quests and story lines pissing you off so much."

No but really. Shoot Lightning, Shoot fire, shoot ice. And that may as well be IT for a wizard. And really we couldn't FLY while spewing out those elements? (and what happened to acid? Elder scrolls used to have...)

Damnit. I remember when you used to be able to climb walls with thieves and own your own private sea ship.

I hate to stick on this fly thing... but it SEEMS that they even removed feather fall magic so... just... god damn it...

[name_here]

There's no Fly spell because if one existed you could fly over the walls and avoid the loading screens and end up in a twisted netherworld where all the geometry is present but none of the creatures or triggers or items are around and none of the loading screens will trigger because they're also not set. Because they just can't load every NPC and item at once and need to do so when you go through city gates.

That is the actual reason. The fancy graphics and complicated (which is admittedly not the same as good) AI routines and massive world cannot coexist with flying spells.

[Stahlseele]

http://mwomercs.com/news/2011/11/28-cry ... ior-online
i am not sure how to feel about this . .

[Juton]

What gets me about Skyrim after playing through Dark Souls is how limited Skyrim's combat system is. You have an attack button, if you hold that button you do a strong attack, that's it. Now in Skyrim combat is less frequent than in Dark Souls, which is a good thing because it's not any fun, it's little better than just clicking an enemy to death. Yet somehow combat is better in Skyrim than Oblivion.

[Juton]

http://mwomercs.com/news/2011/11/28-cry ... ior-online
i am not sure how to feel about this . .

I don't know about the crytek engine, but they do mention that you can customize your mech, which is a very good thing. I thought it was pretty unlikely that they'd include a feature like that, because then designs will gravitate towards a optimal points.

[sabs]

I just really like the Warhammer. There's just something about having 2 PPC's instead of arms that make me happy. Even if it is a really bad mech otherwise.

[Stahlseele]

The Warhammer, even the most basic one, is a really nice mech, if you get rid of the MG's and the small lasers and replace those with heat sinks and/or Armor.
Then it is a beast to go up against.
Will stay cool, even if you constantly fire the PPC's. Will stay cooler with the SRM6 and the 2 remaining Medium Lasers AND one PPC.
That's one of the reasons why the unseen are held in such high regard.
Aside from just looking good, they work good too, or are easy to make work.

And right now, i am not convinced that the Unseen are going to be in, no matter what was in the Video . .

As for customizing . . it HAS to be in, to make it a real Mech-Game. That's the ONLY thing MWLL is lacking right now . .
But it's missing for a good reason . . because it would fucking BREAK the game . . And i am very afraid of this being even more true in the MWO Game . .

[Kaelik]

Alternatively PL, you would hate skyrim anyway, because you are a whiny bitch who hates every game you've ever played, and looks for reasons to hate everything.

Yes, not having levitate sucks.

Yes, the reason is because in Morrowind it broke any semblance of game because it negated 90% of all enemies.

But really PL, you think if there was a levitate you'd like the game? Don't kid yourself, your post would be identical, except you'd be complaining about how fly negates 90% of enemies and ruins the game, instead of how it doesn't exist.

You have never liked a game in your life, except possibly when you were a teenager with low standards and heaping nostalgia to convince you that you did. Why do you think that would change if you could fly?

[Doom]

Yeah, as much as Fly is cool, it would force the designers to warp everything in the game around it in order for this one spell not to break the game, above and beyond any programming issues.

[hyzmarca]

kyrim is not a competitive game. It does not need to be balanced. If players don't like a cheesy tactic then they will not use that cheesy tactic.

Cheesy tactics are only a problem for single player sandbox games if NPCs use them

[Kaelik]

If you could bypass the entire world of mountains and things, and fly above every enemy, the vast majority of whom are melee, you would not enjoy the game. The game would be terrible to anyone who played that way.

People would still play that way, because it is objectively more powerful.

If there was a perk in the one handed tree, available from level 1, that gave you +infinity damage and made your attack and AoE with long range, people would take it, and then they would complain about how the game is shit because combat is too fucking easy, but they would also take the perk. Because welcome to the world of people.

It makes sense to not allow something that completely negates the challenge of a game, because some people will take it, and enjoy the game less.

[PhoneLobster]

Two things about Fly.

1) No bypassing enemies and terrain is NOT a problem and it was not a problem for Morrowind. Fly effects were in fact INTEGRAL to various key obstacles and events. That is a retarded excuse and if it worked would be an excuse that would apply to D&D. Flying is fun, flying is powerful, but seriously, you might as well say the same about ranged attacks.

2) Fly and loading screens/engine excuses is a retarded excuse. As a Computer Scientist let me assure you you are wrong if you think it is somehow physically impossible to program an engine that can handle something as simple as flight. Failing anything else, again, it's been done before. But also, it's actually not nearly that big of a deal even WITH the outdated loading screen limitations Skyrim is inexplicably saddled with.

Basically. I see two fan boy level excuses here. You should be ashamed of yourselves spouting that sort of masturbatory praise of a small failure in game design on the gaming den.

[PhoneLobster]

Alternatively PL, you would hate skyrim anyway

Ooh, I missed this.

I'm not sure yet, but I predict you are wrong.

Because I predict that when I play the improved version of what Skyrim has devolved into, a rather limited scripted action mini-sandbox adventure, rather than an Elder Scrolls style RPG, I will actually REALLY like it.

Because I'm fairly sure that the new Assassins Creed game is going to be awesome (once the delayed PC release arrives, AGAIN).

But Skyrim isn't trying to be Morrowind or Daggerfall, it is trying to be Assassins Creed. And that's a pity, because Bethesda appears to suck at writing Assassins Creed. While Assassins Creed is really a pretty damn good game.

I don't expect the fan boy sheep of the world to agree with me on the failure of Skyrim. Yet. But it seems that after years of praise the internet has finally quietly admitted to itself in it's dark corners that Oblivion was a step backwards, and there are already small corners of resistance against the mindless inarticulate praise for Skyrim. It will have a shorter shelf life of being invulnerable to critical analysis, and I hope by the NEXT even MORE dumbed down elder scrolls title perhaps THEN the fan base will be sufficiently jaded to actually admit the franchise has been going to shit since the dumbing down for console retards that happened in Oblivion.

[DSMatticus]

1) No bypassing enemies and terrain is NOT a problem and it was not a problem for Morrowind.

Levitate/fly was a pretty easy way to win everything. Flying was ridiculous. Those are the easiest two effects to give up. The only actual spell effect I genuinely miss is command. And I miss enchantments of paralyze, too.

Simplification != bad unless you simplify by jettisoning parts of the game. The fact that they don't have "burden" is pretty meaningless because paralyze still exists. The fact that frenzy/fear/rally humanoid/creature have been combined is also pretty fine, because that was just an annoying segregation that meant I had to have two spells to do the same thing.

Featherfall is now basically a shout; you turn ethereal using the shout, and you take no falling damage, except it has more uses instead of being a random thing you use occasionally.

There are also spell effects the previous games just did not have, like warding, slow time, and a lot of other random crap from the dragon shouts.

2) Fly and loading screens/engine excuses is a retarded excuse. As a Computer Scientist let me assure you you are wrong if you think it is somehow physically impossible to program an engine that can handle something as simple as flight. Failing anything else, again, it's been done before. But also, it's actually not nearly that big of a deal even WITH the outdated loading screen limitations Skyrim is inexplicably saddled with.

It's not actually a computer design limitation, it's a game design limitation. The main point was setting it up so certain areas were safe from monsters, I suspect. But yeah, it's not actually much of a concern. The actual concern is that as you fly up things will look progressively shittier and graphics will get progressively more demanding and the demands for world space increase substantially because now you have three axes of travel instead of two and every elderscrolls game in existence has already had the problem of handling world state for these ginormous things they create (save game bloat, woo!).

And it just lets you obsolete entire challenges in a very unfun way.

Now, as for Skyrim; yeah. It has a lot of unlived up to potential. So did Morrowind and Oblivion. Vanilla Oblivion was fucking terrible and just pissed me off. Vanilla Skyrim is better than that, and vanilla Morrowind was probably the best. But every single one of those games was made by the fact that it had a creation kit. And Skyrim is going to be providing the best creation kit framework; the skeleton they provided (all that radiant crap they went on and on about) for random quests/NPC's is looking really good. They did a relatively shitty job of making it interesting, sadly, but that's a content problem, not a function problem.

[Daiba]

I don't expect the fan boy sheep of the world to agree with me on the failure of Skyrim.

I loved the hell out of Morrowind, but I believe you. I think consolitis has done huge amounts of damage. There are games that are suitable for consoles and there are those that are not. Trying to cram the latter into the very limited console format just doesn't work. Just look at all the incredibly shitty inventory systems cropping up everywhere these days. Why do I have to scroll through huge lists of items? I have a mouse! Give me a grid where I can see most of my stuff all at once, like in the old days. Morrowind's inventory and menu system wasn't the best, but Skyrim's is objectively worse.

On another note, Bethesda really needs to work on their physics models. Playing their games always feels like piloting a clockwork mannequin over piles of sand. Someone needs to combine an awesome sandbox game like Morrowind with the dynamic and immersive combat feel of Dark Messiah.

[name_here]

So, I'm trying to get Assassin's Creed 1 running on my 64-bit Windows 7 machine but so far the most I've managed to do is get the updater thingy to appear, inform me that the game is up to date, and then immediately close and fail to actually launch the game. Trying to launch the executables directly does nothing. Any idea what the problem is?

[Kaelik]

1) Yes, flying was actually the reason that you could play Morrowind without any fucking challenge at all, well, one of the reasons. I suppose soul trap glitch also counts, but I consider that basically just using the console commands, but in game. D&D is exempt from this problem because D&D doesn't have to render and construct an entire forest you will fly over and never interact with ever.

2) Now, Skyrim actually could have flight in a way that really wouldn't be a problem, it could be a channeled spell, which would mean you couldn't fly forever while doing stuff, but you could fly to navigate and do things. That would be cool.

3) Morrowind was definitely the best one. Oblivion was definitely worse. I think skyrim might be better than Oblivion, but I'm not sure. The leveling system isn't retarded and unplayable without modding, and the world is better constructed. Could go either way there.

4) Interface is fucking horrifyingly terrible shitastic horror. That pisses me the mother fuck off. When I heard they were revamping the interface, I was happy, then they did it, and I fucking hated it, because they made it worse.

[PhoneLobster]

Levitate/fly was a pretty easy way to win everything.

No. It wasn't.

Flying over long distances in morrowind was objectively less of an "auto win" than using silt striders.

Flying in combat might let you fly over and ignore melee monsters, even plink them if you had to. But why the fuck not? because if you seriously tell me you need to remove Flight from the game because it autowins against mindless giant crabs and their brethren (with the additional conditions that you have ranged attacks, are in a large open space, they don't have laser eye beams, blah blah) then you just said we should remove flight from D&D. Indeed you just told us that the 4E strategy of "it's hard lets remove it!" is awesome and again the intellectual dissonance required to argue that flight should be removed from the elder scroll games to force you to melee giant crabs on this forum must be FUCKING HUGE.

Simplification != bad unless you simplify by jettisoning parts of the game.

Like all the Flight, Levitation and Jump only accessible areas from the morrowind games. And Climb accessible areas from Daggerfall. And all the strategies and fun and graphical appeal of flight.

It's not actually a computer design limitation, it's a game design limitation. The main point was setting it up so certain areas were safe from monsters, I suspect.

How do villages, camps and other non-combat NPC sites in the wilderness work then? Mind blown!

No but really? "They were so incompetent that after five years of development they couldn't stop monsters wandering randomly into towns and decimating the local populace without putting a loading screen in between!". THAT is an excuse now? REALLY?

And you know, that isn't even an excuse. There is absolutely NO REASON you can't have loading screen fire walled towns AND flight. I mean it's STUPID but you totally can have both.

The actual concern is that as you fly up things will look progressively shittier and graphics will get progressively more demanding and the demands for world space increase substantially because now you have three axes of travel instead of two

Again, as a computer scientist that is NOT actually a technical limitation of how computer graphics actually work. That may well be a limitation of how their shitty outdated CONSOLE engine works but even then they had FIVE YEARS and massive resources to fix and or replace it.

and every elderscrolls game in existence has already had the problem of handling world state for these ginormous things they create (save game bloat, woo!).

Moore's law has outpaced us massively. NOT AN ISSUE. Except maybe because of shitty outdated consoles, but even then, no really, even those have far outpaced the "limitation" you are wringing your hands over on behalf of a game that is just yet another "less features for more money!" modern hack job.

And it just lets you obsolete entire challenges in a very unfun way.

What? Really? Less fun that going through the two or three step process of hitching a ride on that fucking boring guy's horse cart?

the skeleton they provided (all that radiant crap they went on and on about) for random quests/NPC's is looking really good. They did a relatively shitty job of making it interesting, sadly, but that's a content problem, not a function problem.

Perhaps mods will save the day. Perhaps. But considering the professional flag ship product is... vaguely disappointing, I'm not holding my breath.

And it sure as hell isn't an argument for the game being good or the removal of features, as exemplified by the removal of flight, being a good thing.

[DSMatticus]

What the fuck are you talking about? The challenge we're referring to that flight overcomes is not "walking around." The challenge we're referring to is, for example, "Umbra, the super badass." Who you can pwn by not being within reach of his crazy sword arm. Or is Umbra one of those mindless mud crabs you don't give a shit about?

Also, this isn't D&D. You don't play a cosmos-travelling super wizard. Much like D&D, hitting things with swords is supposed to be a thing your PC can feel good doing the entire game. D&D failed in that regard because it tried to keep "hitting things with swords" and "cosmos-travelling super wizards" at the same time. Elderscroll RPG's fail just as hard if they maintain that "hitting things with swords" and "cosmos-travelling super wizards" are things you can have going on at the same time. Bringing magic down in line with melee is a pretty damn reasonable thing to do for a game with a heavy focus on up close and personal melee combat. Or else you're telling people they're a chump for picking up a sword.

Not that Skyrim doesn't already have tons of balance issues. Enchanting/smithing are basically mid-to-late game win buttons. But at least getting in a swordfight with Umbra using your super-smithed super-enchanted sword of doom is more interesting than flying around him taking potshots.

Depressing note: Umbra isn't in Skyrim, is it?

[hyzmarca]

1) Yes, flying was actually the reason that you could play Morrowind without any fucking challenge at all, well, one of the reasons. I suppose soul trap glitch also counts, but I consider that basically just using the console commands, but in game. D&D is exempt from this problem because D&D doesn't have to render and construct an entire forest you will fly over and never interact with ever.

You're forgetting things like the alchemy exploit, 100% Chameleon, and the Boots of Blinding Speed + Magika Resist.

Levitation is objectively less broken than all of those things. At early levels its total crap because it reduces your speed drastically. It's so crap that a ranged or touch levitate 1 is a much better debuff than paralyze.