Borderlands

I've been playing a bit of Borderlands, enough to get 2 characters up to about L15 or so, and 2 more started up past the tutorial.

However as it's supposed to be a multiplayer game and I haven't done any multiplayer on it yet, the game is starting to wear thin. It doesn't really seem to have a lot of... replay value - the replays I am doing with the 3rd and 4th characters are really tedious.

My current opinions on weapon types:

Assault Rifle - it has a decent rof, accuracy and damage, and you can carry enough ammo.

SMG - basically it does everything the assault rifle does, except it burns through ammo faster (more expensive), you can't carry enough ammo to feed it for a whole mission, it has less accuracy, less damage, and less range. I dont understand why so many SMGs have a 2.4x or higher zoom on them.

Repeater - not too bad if you can find a decent damage per shot one. Often they're more accurate than an SMG and have rofs ranging from slower than assault rifles to faster than an SMG.

Launcher - pretty good but the ammo seems a bit hard to come by still at my level.

Sniper Rifle - things zigzag so much at range, its really only good for a surprise shot, unless you know how to lead a target that is intentionally zigzagging to avoid a sniper rifle.

Revolver - these are pretty good damage but are horrendously slow - its kind of like the sniper rifle except close range. And eventually you meet foes that you require some serious damage to dent, especially if they're still a level higher than you.

Cheers for now
Upsen.

Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures

After the Mafia Wars stuff, I decided to check this facebook game out instead:

Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures

Hopefully this wont be plagued by all the problems in Mafia Wars. Also there is less to do in this game so it wont become half as addictive.

Why are all these games time limited in such a way that you always have to check back on it?

Upsen.


Edit at 9:30am - Reading deeper, the game doesn't let you keep the character - it automatically retires after 11 levels, and you get to give ONE of your items to your next generation character created. So much for sense of progression and accomplishment.

Also you can't give any of the cool stuff you find to your friends, even if you can't use it. You have to sell it to the npc store for 10% of the actual value. WTF.

I've already stopped playing it.

Mafia Wars (Spamfia Wars)

This pretty truncated screen is what I get when I try to look at my character sheet (profile page)

Here's the good parts:

• Not much in this game requires you to be constantly in front of the computer so you can easily get up and walk away from it to do other stuff.
• You can play with your facebook friends.
• You play a mafia boss, and keep track of various stats - mafia hits, money laundering, wars with other mafia players, rosters of other players on your team etc. It's a nice little playground if if you like the theme.
• Also, you can level up almost indefinitely if you are good at min/maxing. You get points to do stuff. If you level up, you get a refill of your points. You can get into the position where you can reach the next level up before you finish spending all your points! So, I managed to crank myself a few hundred levels within a month, finishing scenarios that have taken other people a year to do. It did take me a 2nd character to figure out how to do it, and I abandoned my 1st one.

Here's the bad parts:

• There is always some timer about to refresh in a few minutes, so you are ALWAYS on the game.
• You have to add enough 'friends' to your Facebook account to reach the maximum number of 501 players in your Mafia - otherwise you are meat for other 501-mafia players. (though in the long run it doesn't matter if people attack you, looking at it from a stats perspective)
• 501+ Facebook members make for a lot of spam on your Facebook account. Most serious players with large mafias create a fake Facebook account and play the game using that, to avoid the spam on their real facebook account.
• You don't currently get to choose your character class - they have 3 classes available but they only let you start as a Maniac. Mogul class is gimped and Fearless class is overpowered due to a ridiculously overpowered Top-Mafia bonus for Fearless.
• You can't restart a new character if you are unhappy with your current character. It takes removing Mafia Wars from your account and waiting 90 days for the data to expire before you can create another character. You can however, create another facebook profile and play a new character from there. (which probably breaks a load of Facebook Terms Of Service agreements.)
• The game is incredibly buggy and they keep changing the rules, since they know the rules are broken.
• They don't compensate if rules change. (such as fighting stamina: it used to cost 1 point, then was changed to 2 points for a long time, and then changed back to 1 point - anyone who put points into stamina at the 2-point rate lost out and were never given back the difference.)
• Not everyone is actually playing the same game. some people get Properties to manage, others get Rackets (scams that cost points to buy) and there are a set of achievements that are based on Properties that Rackets people will never get.
• There are some RTM (Real Money Trade) elements to the game and a RTM player will always beat a free player.

Something went bugged and I got a zillion free electric carving knives

Anyways thats just the tip of the iceberg on this one, but I dont think I will write too much about it. It is an annoyance to me right now since the latest updates have broken the game interface and I can't use the skillpoint distribution screen. (Makes levelling up a little difficult doesn't it)

Oh well. Back to Lord of the Rings Online. :D

Allen.

Lord of the Rings: Mirkwood

The new update is out for LOTRO. Handy that, since I just hit Level 60 with my guardian character. Now I'll be able to slag my way up to Level 65 while I get in good with the Elves of Mirkwood.

One of the new options available is a set of shared bank slots - no more mailing fees between characters. Very convenient.

One interesting change I saw when I logged in was in crafting - my armoursmith character's recipes no longer required animal pelts, instead using another measure of metal ore. What gives with that? Learning to work hides cost me a pretty penny (plus much time gaining reputation points to access superior workbenches) - and now its out of the equation? Why even bother having the Tailor skill alongside the Metalsmithing skill in the Armourer profession any more? We could replace it with something more useful, like Scholar to research armouring techniques (and give us the ability to craft our own bonus-to-crit items, haha)


Another thing changed - all of my -incoming damages skills and items have been converted into +defense, which technically is -damage. I guess they wanted to consolidate the stat instead of having to work with 2 separate systems.

Upsen.

LOTRO Quickslotting

The default keys in LOTRO I found hard to use, so I remapped most of it. Now i can run around and target anything, choosing enemy, players, NPCs, and objects in the games with the touch of one key for each type. Best of it being for the mining - I can ride up to a mining node, press 4 buttons, and queue up getting off the horse, target the node, mine the node, and get back up on the horse. I suppose I could write a game alias/macro in the system they provide, but this is as far as I've gone so far and its not too bad.

I also mapped all the quickslots to easier to reach keys like the function keys and the numpad - I have my guardian reactive parry chains going up the numpad so I can see the branching paths more clearly. I wish I did that earlier for some of my other games, it probably would have saved a lot of carpal tunnel grief. Eg, Num0-1-4-7 is a parry bleed chain, Num0-2-5 is a parry stun chain, and I can easily change my mind about which chain to continue on before I get to the home row of the numpad. (Num0-2-5-7 when I get the skill "To The King". Basically I can put the reactive charts here onto the numpad.)

The 2-key combos are generally things I will just click on instead of trying to find the 2-key combo.

This keymapping is always a work in progress

This is what it used to look like, but too many parry chain 2-key combos

Upsen.

Lord of the Rings Online

Back a couple of years ago, I used to play Lord of the Rings Online. I got fairly far into the game, even picked up on some crafting and stuff. I can't even remember why I stopped playing, though it has to be some sort of disinterest, or something else caught my eye. Anyways, I was L49 of a possible 50 when I stopped playing, and an up and coming armour smith.

I picked it up again in the past week, since I have a lifetime subscription to the game, and found that many things had changed. So changed, in fact, that I had to start a new character from the ground up in order to relearn what all of my character's special buttons were. By about L20 (roughly the course of the week) I had figured out enough to get going again on my main.

On my main guardian character, I was basically levelled to 50 right away on killing a single foe. I guess there were some xp changes, since I remember being a distance away from L50.

Also, I started armoring again with the load of stuff I still had stashed away. The game's made a lot of changes to the armourer profession and it looks like I have a bunch of recipes that are marked as (OLD). Apparently it's a lot easier now, with 'crests' that are basically for levelling up, and don't require any leather like the armors. You can only make a certain number of crests per time period though. Now I have to find out what all the L50-60 stuff is about.

Anyways, more as I figure it out.

Upsen.

Gundam on the PS3

This trailer looked absolutely beautiful. A friend linked it to me and it was really impressive. Especially since PS3 games are not region-coded, something I just learned about today.

Releases on Sept 3 in Japan.