So, Vampyr is getting decent reviews. Doesn't appear to be a great game, but one that might fix the Vampire itch while still providing a solid story.

Anyone picked it up?

 

Picking it up when I get paid next week. Actually been something I was keen on since announcement day.

 

Man, the world of Dragon Quest XI looks gorgeous, but I really can't fucking stand the Toriyama character art style...

 

Its probably gonna be a game I wait for a Steam Sale on despite my desire for a solid vampire game. Really wish we could get a nother Vampire: The Masquerade game.

 

It does look like they're beginning to move away from it a little though. The chars look slightly less same-facey, and the eyes/eyebrows aren't being exagerrated as much.

I'm mostly disappointed with the lack of innovation in the battle system. DQ's standard turn-based menu system is fine for nostalgia wank, and I still occasionally enjoy it... it's just a bit boring as modern turn-based systems go. A gimmick or two would be nice.

 

I'm firmly in your camp. I think turn-based is absolutely nostalgia wank and just boring - unfortunately, when you try to innovate (think XIII), you get bitching the other way. Complain about XIII all you want, to this day it has one of the most enjoyable battle systems I've ever used in a JRPG.

DQ I think is there for pure nostalgia-wank. I'm hoping going forward they innovate more with FF.

 

Do any of you play mobile games?

I picked up a game last year-Clash Royale.

I don't play any other games(PC/Mobile/Console) (too busy).

 

As far as Vampyr goes, I've watched a let's play of the first hour or so, and it looks decent, but not £50 worth of decent. I mean, I wasn't going to get it at the moment anyway, because I'm conserving funds and have a stupid amount of unplayed games already, but even so. FWIW, the people doing the let's play spent a lot of the time poking fun at the narrative choices, but ultimately concluded by saying it was fun and they'd probably do some more on it.

 

So basically, a decent game for a company that has never produced an an action rpg on this level that should be worth 30 bucks but not a triple a or game of the year contender by any means? Expect better in the future?

 

so, I don't know how many people here played the original Guild Wars back when it was one of the kings of MMO, but it's experiencing something like renaissance. Not something that will restore it to its former glory, but more people than it has been having in the last few years. As an aside, one of the best parts about this was that there was virtually no chance of server shutdown as long as ArenaNet was in business, seeing as 1) server costs for the game were so low that it was negligible for the studio and 2) there are some things in GW2 you can unlock with GW1 Hall of Monument collections/quests/etc. Here's a quote from ANETs technical director:

I feel like this is due to one thing only: a handful of updates beginning last month by members of the ArenaNet team who were fond of GW1, working on it on their own time! Since that month they've done a lot, the least of which is a monster bot ban (even if that fucked with the economy, heh), but also includes:

Note!: All of these are the first updates since some server maintenance in summer of 2016!

- true windowed full screen support
- almost every server migrated to the US from Frankfurt
- alt-tab stutter-desync-hanging problems, especially helped by memory and throttling when the game is in the background
- graphic persistence after alt tab
- adding two-factor authentication (this one backfired a bit, but it's the thought)
- fixed almost all glaring CTD problems that have persisted for a few years after cessation of official support. The game is beautifully more optimized now
- a huge amount of server maintenance and optimization after years
- monstrously faster loading screens
- camera rotation, zoom, etc increased
- adding complete field of view tweaking and vastly improved mouse/camera rotation sensitivity
- graphics improved: skybox draw distance doubled, ground textures and overworld texture draw distance enhanced even farther, resolution doubled, ultra shadows, 8x AA added, 16x anistropic filtering added (OG was 2x), level of detail automatically selected, LOD conserved when zooming out.

not to mention some quality of life things like chat timestamps, saved PMs despite server switches, a chat log history that has been doubled in size, plus finally being able to suppress bot accounts from whispering you, or anyone who isn't a friend, guildmate, or party member


It's fucking beautiful you guys. A dead game (maybe a few thousand players at the moment) having life exhaled into it. There's even a thread on the guild wars 1 reddit, full of suggestions, almost each and every one being given a possible/not possible. I have no illusions that the game will get back to its hey-day, or even remotely close, but this is fucking awesome. A lot of the guild wars community. The active community even managed to pass a kickstarter that will send cupcakes to members of ArenaNet, specifically tailored to the savior mods which was at $1500 (https://www.gofundme.com/guildwarscupcakes). I've never really seen anything like this, and it's incredible to be a part of.

For those interested here is a spreadsheet of all supported updates combined with dev comments on feasibility. One of the major ones being asked around the ArenaNet offices are the viability of introducing more deals for the quadrology of Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North. They should be horrendously cheap at this point.

the above mentioned spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nfH2XMpU3Pq6vUX_HR5ss1Mr4VIdk69MMGyBae9wRic/edit#gid=0

anyway, it was almost a moment of physical pleasure typing that and thinking of the new updates. The game had updates! actual updates! graphical updates for the first time since 2012! Please forgive my Nerdgasm, but god fucking damn! The 3 devs are doing this ON THEIR OWN TIME! FOR FREE! The subreddit went from needing about 3 weeks to fill out the front page to the new posts page being fulled within a day.

anyway, forgive my gushing. I just had to share it in case there were Guild Wars 1 players here who might want to nostalgia their way back onto the server. Or just for fans of gaming in general be able to look at an MMO being resuscitated - even if it is liable to be temporary.

Goddamn some examples:

Old 1: https://i.imgur.com/KwFhIiY.jpg

New 1: https://i.imgur.com/ia9f6IA.jpg

 

Nice to see another MMO being kept alive by love of the players.

I'm gonna assume that it got a bit of a bump in players this year. Mostly because it's been one of the absolute worst years for MMOs in recent history, and players are flocking back to older games just so thst they have something to play.

This year damn near every MMO player has gone back to playing some MMO from their gaming history because there simply isn't anything good to play. Most have gone back to WoW, some gave BDO another shot, Archeage, Runescape, Guild Wars, Tera, you name it... People are going back to them. A couple of friends and I even fucked around with LotRO again for a while just for shits and giggles. For the most part I went back to playing SWGEmu, which was a blast of nostalgia for a game I loved.

I'm honestly stoked that some effort is being put into Guild Wars in order to keep it alive.

 

To this day Wildstar is one of my favourite MMOs ever. It never got the player base to get proper story/technical support, but no other MMORPG ever felt as amazing as the combat and movement did in that game. The style was superb too. Sad it was so unpopular - and admittedly, super buggy.

There really aren't any slick new MMORPGs on the horizon. I saw a Korean one coming that looked really good (Lost Ark), but that's about it afaik.

 

Probably a few smaller ones with under 50 players, and a couple of larger ones with over 100. I'm also kinda surprised they still have official servers up.

Everybody has that one MMO that was the absolute best.

I think I remember Wildstar having a really poor launch and just never quite picking up too much momentum from there. Though I know a few people who really loved it.

I've been following Lost Ark more than any of the other upcoming MMO's. Absolutely stunning, pvp looks fun as hell, and fairly interesting classes. Oh, and their dungeons look like a ton of fun - Shrinking Potion Dungeon

 

Octopath Traveller seems to be exactly what I'm hoping for. Only downside is blinding levels of bloom, but the artwork is gorgeous and the pop-up book 2.5D is lush. Kinda like Bravely Default meets Golden Sun meets ME2 level characterisation.

 

For MMOs, anyone take a look at Camelot Unchained?

Done by sams people who did Dark age of Camelot

 

The lighting looks really pretty to me.

 

I always end up going back to RS. Always. Been in that pretty hard for the last 6 months after like a 3 yr break