Wulff

Around 10 minutes I finished up the Witcher and watched the credits roll with pretty unsatisfied feelings. I'm sure everyone and their extended family have heard of the Witcher 3, widely praised as one of, if not the, best RPGs of all time, but it seems most modern Witcher fans haven't bothered playing through the first entry of the series and after having suffered through that game, I honestly can't blame them. The entire reason I even decided to give the original Witcher game a go, is because I belong to the group of people who have yet to play the third Witcher game, or the second one for that matter. I've been wanting to play it for years and now that I finally own a computer that will actually run that game, I figured it was time. I couldn't get myself to jump right into the third installment however, even though a lot of people apparently did. I had to experience the story from the very beginning and so I booted up The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and dove into it.

It's a mess. The game released back in 2007 and the visuals are most definitely a product of that time. While the game isn't offensively ugly to look at, it certainly doesn't stand out. The terrain is surprisingly detailed and the developers managed to make Vizima feel like an actual city, but the character models are very basic, which puts a damper on the combat and a lot of the dialogue. Hair physics flipping out during cutscenes, limbs stretching weirdly and mouths not really moving properly are all commonplace in the Witcher.

Speaking of the combat, it's fucking awful. I won't bother with the details of the combat system but suffice it to say that it is basic and quickly becomes very tedious. The game is bad at recognizing certain fighting stances you can take and you will only really make meaningful use out of two of them. Magic in the game is also insanely broken and enemy AI is slow and stupid, meaning you can quite literally run circles around your opponents endlessly, trivializing a lot of boss fights.

As for the story, it is pretty damn forgettable, with the most interesting twist happening in a CGI cutscene AFTER you've beaten the game. The game's quests consist mainly of kill and fetch quests, much akin to stuff you'd find in a typical MMORPG. Go to this area and kill 8 Ghouls, go to this area and collect 5 Vampire Fangs, you get the idea.The one stand out sidequest involves you having intercourse with a trio of young blonde vampires. That quest was pretty good. The main story is poorly conceptualized and as a player you have no real motivation to follow it. A character you've just met is killed and you must find and avenge him. The game also attempts to throw a romance subplot at you, but unfortunately it leaves little reason not to pick one of the options over the other, so there isn't really any real choice outside of a meta choice by the player spurred on by pure curiousity. The same goes for the choices you have to make in the main quest. You're often presented with options, but the game does such a terrible job at promoting the choices equally and it ends up not being hard at all.

Geralt himself comes off as kinda poorly written in the first Witcher game. His personality seems to swing wildly. One moment he doesn't want to get involved in the politics of the realm, the next moment he is acting as a diplomat. One moment he kindly helps the poor folk with Witcher work for no reward other a personal sense of fulfillment the next he is charging extortionist prices for very basic jobs. This isn't anything you can choose in your dialogue most of the time, I might add. Don't even get me started on the whole plotline of Geralt considering settling down with the Sorcererss Triss and the young boy Alvin who remains a constant from the beginning of the game to the end, or the fact that Alvin

It's pretty bad.

All in all the Witcher ends up a fairly bland and forgettable experience. There are some interesting ideas inside of the game, such as having to obtain knowledge about unnatural beasts in order properly harvest reagents from their bodies, not to mention fight them more efficiently and playing as a Witcher is pretty fucking cool lorewise. The ending is weird and inconclusive, the game is a slog pretty much from start to finish and the combat is frustrating. Compare it to other RPG titles released in 2007, such as the original Mass Effect, and it's not hard to see why the franchise didn't exactly take off into mainstream with the first installment, though it did do quite well for itself.

A month ago I posted in this thread complaining about the tedium of leveling in FFXIV and now I'm back to say that this game has absolutely consumed every moment of spare time I've had in the past ~5 weeks. I am positively addicted and I'm still not max level on any job yet and it doesn't even bother me anymore. When I originally started playing I was planning on rushing to endgame so I could get to play current content with my friends, but as it would turn out, the game is extremely good for playing with friends at all levels. It doesn't matter if you're level 34 and your friends are all level 70, there is still stuff you can do together.

The best way I can describe FFXIV is that, for me, it feels like the early years of World of Warcraft (Vanilla/TBC) only with many modern quality of life features as well. My rush to hit max level quickly came to a halt when I realized that rather than push through the main story quest and power-leveling, I was having more fun going off and exploring the world, poking my nose into dungeons that I didn't technically need to do in order to progress and finding random quests in the far corners of the world with really cool rewards such as pets, emotes and cosmetics. That isn't to say that the main story of the game is bad. While it starts off as generic adventuring, by the time I hit Heavensward content (50+) I was (and still am) pretty emotionally invested in the characters presented in the story and what happened to them.

Finally there is the music of FFXIV. When I was younger I don't think I truly appreciated how much a good soundtrack can improve the experience of... Well pretty much anything, but in retrospect, one of the things I'm the most nostalgic about in life is the music from all my favourite games. Luckily FFXIV totally delivers on the soundtrack department, it is fucking stellar and most of it has already found its way into my music library as permanent additions.

While there might have been some growing pains in the first week of me playing FFXIV, it has proven to be absolutely worth the initial hours of frustration and confusion. I'm sure any denizen of the internet who regularly browses any sort of video game discussion board will have seen the melancholic posts of former MMORPG fanatics, solemnly lamenting the fact that they can't seem to recapture the magic of when they first started playing their favourite MMORPG. Well I've managed it. I don't think I've been this invested in a video game since I first booted up World of Warcraft in 2006. I want to do it all.

3 hours ago, Spectre said:

Also, a recent leak just revealed ALL exotics, PvE story missions and strikes available on the full release.

Dead on arrival

Having played some more of the Destiny 2 beta, my perspective has changed a bit. There is one weapon type available for use in PvP that seems pretty obviously overpowered and it's the Hand Cannon I mentioned in my giant blog a few posts up. Its rate of fire is way too high for the amount of damage it deals per shot and it basically has no loss of accuracy while firing, it feels like McCree's revolver in OW except it deals way more damage. It seems like it's supposed to be balanced by the fact that its long-range accuracy is pretty lacking, but the playable PvP map is so small and condensed that there really isn't anything one might consider long-range. I went from topping the scoreboards every match to doing average/poorly switching from the Hand Cannon to any other weapon.

Another issue that has become glaringly obvious after playing the game a bit longer is the fact that "Power" weapon ammo management is sucking a lot more fun out of the game than anything. The Titan class gets two primary weapons and a Power weapon, which is a weapon that is very strong but has limited ammunition available. For the Titan, the options I've seen are a high-powered shotgun and a rocket launcher. I love shotguns in any video game that I play, so I went for it and while it feels very satisfying to use, it pales in comparison to the rocket launcher, that does the same damage as the shotgun close-range, but also doesn't have damage drop-off when fired from afar. There is also no friendly fire in the game, so you don't have to even think when using the rocket launcher. On top of this imbalance, you get power ammo drops from enemies so fucking rarely, that you get to maybe shoot your power weapon ~10 times during a Strike Mission.

My final complaint lies in the cooldown of your class abilities. They're PAINFULLY long. I didn't pay much attention to it in the first hour of gameplay because I was busy taking everything in, but now that I've played it some more, I've realized that your abilities take a fucking life-time to cool down and aren't even that good to begin with, so the long cooldown seems pretty unjustified and only serves to slow down the pace of the game for no reason.

I played it some hours this morning and I'll give you my take on it. This is coming from the perspective of someone who never touched the original Destiny game.

I'd like to make a note that I had zero graphical/performance issues while playing the open beta, it ran great throughout.

Starting from the very beginning you are given the choice of 3 different classes to pick: Titan, Hunter and Warlock. Distilling those 3 classes to their core essence, they are the classic Strength, Agility and Intelligence based roles. As I discovered later, all of these classes also have subclasses, which opens up the gameplay variety a fair bit. I picked the Titan class during the beta.

Right away you load into a cinematic cut-scene featuring a group of characters that I can only assume are from the original game, which I imagine would be fun for returning players to see, but as a new player I didn't care much. Bad guys known as the "Red Legion" are attacking and you and your fellow "Guardians" muster a desperate defense in order to buy the civilians under your care time to escape. Long story short, you get your ass kicked by the big bad leader of the Red Legion known as Dominus Ghaul and the player character is left for dead by the end of it. The beta then jumps you into the action by skipping you to player level 20, giving you a full set of armour and weapons and immediately allows you to matchmake with other players.
 

After playing through the tutorial and messing around with my inventory a bit, I joined up with two of my friends and proceeded to play the one and only PvE mission that is available in the open beta.

Skipping over a long-winded detailing of my experience with the PvE mission, I'll just tell you that it was honestly pretty fun. The game has your standard fare of enemy variety in the PvE mode, everything from simple grunts to more specialized and dangerous enemies, including mini-bosses and actual bosses with abilities and different phases you have to fight through. Flying through the environment using the thrusters attached to my heavy armor and blasting through the Red Legion with a high-powered shotgun was awesome. Depending on your class, you also get a range of abilities to play around with in addition to your arsenal of weapons. Playing as the Titan with the Striker subclass, I got access to a Flashbang Grenade and two different types of Barricades that you can cast anywhere you like as a means of instant cover from enemy fire. I also had enhanced melee capabilities along with an airborne combo-attack that allowed me to jump sky-high and then dive fists first into enemies. Finally there is the "Super" ability, as Destiny 2 takes a page out of the MOBA-genre's book and gives each subclass a unique ultimate-type ability that you charge up by doing stuff in combat. For the Striker this ability was "Fist of Havoc", which turns you into a head-smashing, shoulder-bashing melee god for a small time.

The PvP mode is your standard arcade-shooting experience with a Destiny 2 skin layered on top, which isn't a criticism by the way. I really liked how the PvP played out. It has all the game-modes we're used to in these kinda games like Domination and Sabotage, only with different names for some reason. It also has a competitive mode where you're down for the count and the rest of the round when you get killed, unlike the quick-play mode where you die and respawn after a short timer. I didn't play enough to really comment about balance at all, but it seems that whatever loadout your Guardian has is universal for both PvE and PvP, which worries me a little bit because unless gear stats are normalized in PvP content, that might mean that you'll see people with really high-end PvE gear absolutely dominating the PvP scene by sheer force of better weapon stats rather than player skill. I grew very fond of the my Hand Cannon when fighting other players, as it effectively 3-shot any enemy at medium-close range, which synergized nicely with my melee-focused class. Revolvers in space are always cool.

Overall, I had fun with the Destiny 2 open beta, more fun than I thought I would. That being said, I still won't be spending money on this game come release. I am unconvinced that this game is worth the $60 price tag they've thrown on it. The PvP, while fun right now, seems like something I would most likely get tired of in a few weeks at best. I've always been more of a PvE focused person and while the one mission available in the beta was really fun, it would not surprise me if the full game launched with <25 missions, which in my mind is not enough. I'm ready to be positively surprised though, if the game releases and it turns out it has like 50+ PvE missions to play, I might seriously consider buying it.

1 hour ago, DrEvilBrain said:

I too can shitpost

We're all painfully aware.

17 hours ago, Kraszu said:

I enjoy not having to march for a moment.

Hello brother, welcome to the club.

52 minutes ago, Insectan said:

Spectre you're either on Activision's payroll or you've actually suffered through the heap of garbage that was Destiny 1 for so long that it's managed to rewire the 'pain' and 'pleasure' centers in your brain to make that fucking Skinners box bearable.

Seriously. I can understand being excited for a game and wanting other people to be too, but literally every single post Spectre has made has incorporated Destiny in some manner, be it directly discussing it or linking various quotes from the fucking Destiny wiki page. Half of them read like poorly disguised advertisements and  I would be willing to believe that they were indeed a viral marketer, but this forum is so small that it wouldn't make much sense from an efficiency point of view, so I guess he's just that dedicated.

On 8/23/2017 at 6:41 PM, Moby said:

Heh, the devs of We Happy Few ran out of money so they sold themselves to Gearbox.

 

The game now costs $60 (from $30, due "price parity between PC and consoles"), has a $20 season pass with E-X-C-L-U-S-I-V-E weapon (they have no idea on what the DLCs will be about) and a $120 collector's edition that doesnt includes the game.

 

I suspect the game will be full of memes and die in about a week now that Gearbox is involved.

On 8/23/2017 at 6:41 PM, Moby said:

so they sold themselves to Gearbox.

On 8/23/2017 at 6:41 PM, Moby said:

Gearbox.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Having gotten helplessly addicted to FFXIV over the past couple of weeks, I've changed my background to something more fitting.

I've been forcing myself to play Final Fantasy XIV recently, because a fair few of the people I hang around online are playing it and I want to get in on that. Unfortunately they're all max level and unfortunately the leveling process of this game is the worst I've ever experienced in any MMO and I've played quite a few. I very much belong to the more casual side of the MMO audience, in the sense that I got my first taste of the genre with World of Warcraft and never got to experience the much more unforgiving games of the past. Since World of Warcraft, I have tangled with a multitude of different MMO's for various periods of time. Aion, Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 1 & 2, RIFT, The Old Republic, Tera and Wildstar. Out of all of those, I've never been as frustrated leveling my character as I have been in FFXIV.

It seems that in a bid to force variety upon the player, the developers of FFXIV decided to just not put enough quests into the game to actually reach max level. On top of that, the "Main Scenario Quest", which is a long-running quest that moves the story of the game and your character along, is level-gated, meaning that you could be going through it and then suddenly hit a brick wall because you're not a high enough level to accept the next part of the MSQ. So what are the alternatives? A pitiful amount of sidequests that past level 35 won't even be enough experience to push you through the MSQ. A world-quest type system called "Fates" which spawn on the map for a set period of time that unfortunately suffer from being very inefficient to do, because half of them are painfully slow to complete without other players actively helping you out. Dungeons, which will give you a very nice bonus experience ONCE per 24-hours and otherwise are alright for experience gain, but are very boring to spam continuously. Finally you have a unique leveling system called "Palace of the Dead", which is extremely powerful for experience gain theoretically, but unfortunately you have to clear it in 10-floor increments at a time and if your party wipes at any point, all progress is lost and 0 experience is gained.

On paper, I realize that it might not sound so bad, but once you hit level 45+ it starts to become truly fucking tedious and my enjoyment of the game has been very rapidly declining, to the point where I am technically only a few steps away from being able to move into the next part of the game, but I am demotivated to log on to my character, because I know that the only way forward is by subjecting myself to extreme boredom.

Last night I dreamt that I was at home relaxing. I had just gotten out of the shower and was walking around butt-naked, when I noticed this man in a red coat on the lawn. I opened a window and called out to him, I told him that he was on private property and that he had best leave now. Immediately he pulled out a device from under his coat that looked like a gun and pointed it straight fucking at me. I quickly ducked away from the window and moved into another room while this weird of feeling of dread filled my stomach, I can't really explain it, but if you've ever been in a situation where you think there is a genuine chance you might die, you'll know what I mean. So I sit tight for a few moments before I peek out of the window and I see the guy still outside with his rifle-looking item and he's walking around scanning the exterior of my house. I decide that enough is enough and scramble into my bedroom to grab my phone.

I dial 112 (Which is my country's equivalent of 911) but I get an automated message saying that the emergency service phone number has recently been changed to 115 and the line I am currently on is now for postal service complaints. So I dial 115 instead and I get an automated message stating that a strange red-coated man has been reported in my neighborhood and if I am calling about that, there is nothing to worry about unless you've made contact with the man. The message then prompted me to "Press One" if I had made contact with the red-coated man. So I press one and I get put on hold to very stereotypical and cheesy waiting music.

At this point I decide to take my fucking chances and I grab a blanket and run out of the house as fast as I can, still butt-naked, only covering myself with said blanket. I don't see the red-coated guy anywhere and I am ducking and weaving in random directions through various different gardens and brushes. I finally get to the outskirt of the city when my call to the police department goes through. I get on the line with this police officer who is talking to me in a very soft and sing-songy voice as if I was a toddler. He asks me if I am having trouble with the red-coated man and I scream at him that yes I fucking am. At that moment I spot the red-coated man out of the corner of my eye. He is marching straight towards me, raised rifle and all. As he closes the distance, I drop my phone and just charge at him. He doesn't fire at me or anything, he just walks intently towards me with a stern look on his face as I rush towards him.

Once I get right on top of him, I slap the rifle out of his hands and he just bursts into flames. Not like exploded into gibs or anything, but he just fucking caught fire. As he burned he smiled at me and gave me a nod of approval and then I woke up.

6 hours ago, d4m0 said:

Side note, if this were old spuf i'd be flaming quite a few of the posters from the last day or so because of your dumb opinions but i don't really see the point here and now. Most of the people i know are saying at least semi-intelligent things so it's whatever.

No one cares. Keep your notes to yourself in the future for the sake of the rest of us, thanks.

7 hours ago, d4m0 said:

It literally contradicted everything I was responding to. You contended that professional esports had a 'cold and calculated' approach due to sponsors -- I showed why that's bullshit -- and now you're asking me what the point of the paragraph was?

I didn't contend that. You're confusing me trying to outline more clearly what I believed Paero's point was with my own opinions. You seem to be arguing with me from a totally different base of understanding. You haven't showed why anything is bullshit, all you've done is jump down the throat of another user without reading his post properly, misrepresenting what he said in his post out of either ignorance, laziness or malice, given him unwarranted attitude for no fucking reason other than your own misplaced outrage and then continued to argue points that no one with half a brain would ever disagree on.

7 hours ago, d4m0 said:

basically you want to be able to watch an esport without the players getting any of the remuneration they deserve from being at the top of a highly competitive and incredibly skilled game

By the way, it's been several posts now and you still haven't showed us where Paero stated that he didn't want high level players to receive their "due renumeration"

7 hours ago, d4m0 said:

he hates esports and only likes watching amateur competitive players shittalking each other

incredibly lame attitude but whateve

.

Do you really think that this conclusion is an honest summary of Paero's original post. Do you really think that?

7 hours ago, d4m0 said:

I retract that word after reading this response.

You should probably retract your last four or so posts in this thread as a whole tbh.

1 minute ago, d4m0 said:

which leads back to what I said before. If high level players in an incredibly skilled game have no way of earning any remuneration for the thousands or tens of thousands of hours of practice they've put in, then what is the point of them playing in the first place? It's fun up until you're showing up to work tired or late because you had scrims the night before after hours of fundamentals training.

Competitive scenes without proper monetary support artificially limit the skill the highest level players can show, in the best case, and in the worst case they lead to high level players simply not being that high level because once you've won the highest division once or in the case of australia's team immunity for tf2 ten times, the game starts to get a bit stale and the players start leaving. Remember that these games are usually played worldwide in multiple regions as well, and without developer support for competition the highest level teams in each region don't have a chance to play each other in a fair manner.

Right, it leads back to what you said. Not what Paero said. Originally you concluded that Paero quote "wanted to be able to watch an esport without the players getting any of the remuneration they deserve from being at the top of a highly competitive and incredibly skilled game" unquote. I ask again, at what point did he say that? You seem to be reaching conclusions that simply does not exist in his original post and rather you are extrapolating meaning from his words that isn't there.

Posing the question of why high level players should even bother playing the game if they can't make a living out of it seems incredibly redundant. Anyone with the slightest bit of common sense would be able to conclude that they shouldn't. If there is not enough money to go around within a competitive scene of any given game, then it would be a disastrous financial decision for anyone to try to make a living off of it. If you start letting a game you love and the time you dedicate to playing and improving at it influence your daily life, such as the example you give with showing up for work late or tired, then you're a fucking idiot. Nothing more to it and I am not sure what argument you're trying to establish with that example.

As for your point about competitive scenes without proper monetary support artificially limiting the highest skill limit that players are able to show, I agree.

I don't agree completely, but I agree to an extent. Will you concede that it isn't necessarily a problem for all competitive games? Are you of the belief that if there isn't enough money in the competitive scene of a game to incentivize players going at it as a full-time job and pushing themselves to limits they would not be able to while also maintaining an education or a job outside of playing the game, then the game is not worth the time or the effort? What do you think of the idea of letting a game run its natural course and not trying to keep it alive by pumping money into it? Do you think that no one should ever bother playing games competitively because it might die out after some time and in that case the time investment is not worth it? Do you think that games that develop regional communities independent of each other are worse than games that incorporate everyone internationally?

2 minutes ago, d4m0 said:

High level players for any game have a genuine love and deep investment to the game, otherwise they wouldn't have put in the time to be high level, so that can be discarded entirely. Players express their passion after winning any tournament. In fact, any corporate sponsors for games where players react like robots after winning thousands or millions of dollars would probably find themselves rethinking their investment at some point -- if the players don't care, who will?

I'm not even sure what the point of this paragraph is. Please elaborate on why stating facts that no one has disagreed with was necessary.

2 minutes ago, d4m0 said:

This bit actually says something relevant but it's not accurate for all games. All csgo tournaments are hosted by private companies (either third party organisers like ESL or Valve themselves for the Majors) and they're perfectly happy to encourage a bit of shittalking. They went through a phase where they thought they might have a chance at becoming a family show but that's laughable in a game about planting bombs and killing terrorists so it became a massive meme.

This sentence might hold some truth for league or dota but pretty much no other game.

I never stated it was accurate for all games, it was an unspecified example I propped up in order to make Paero's original point more clear. You're arguing points that no one ever contested.

24 minutes ago, d4m0 said:

And don't insult my reading comprehension, it's probably a lot better than yours.

Keyword being 'probably'.

11 hours ago, d4m0 said:

he hates esports and only likes watching amateur competitive players shittalking each other

incredibly lame attitude but whatever

But that's not what he said at all. While his post might be in need of a few commas, less brackets and some proof-reading, it is not even close to being incoherent enough that anyone with the most rudimentary level of reading comprehension would conclude what you have in the quoted text. In fact you seem to be entirely mistaken in your understanding of what he wrote. Did you perhaps not read the post in its entirety?

Paero doesn't want to see "amateur" competitive players shittalking each other. He wants to see players (of all skill levels) that have a genuine love and deep investment in the game express their passion on the stage as they win or lose, rather than the cold and corporate approach you can find within tournaments that are funded and hosted entirely by private companies, who care more about maintaining their family friendly public image, than they do the game for which they're hosting the tournament. He is saying that he believes, that having competitive communities grow around a game is more rewarding as both a player and a viewer, compared to games that were made from the ground up with esports in mind, because those games have a tendency to sometimes feel soulless and corporate in their approach.

He does so as a counterpoint to the idea that Nintendo should "invest" in the competitive scene of Smash Brothers. He admits that he is not a big fan of that game himself, but that he sees merit in having a game where the community dictates the pace of what is going on, rather than having big brother corporate logo hovering over the scene constantly, making sure that no one says or does something out of line.

To him that means seeing one of his favourite players beating a fierce rival and getting excited about it. Getting up from his chair, fist-pumping the air, hollering in excitement and perhaps even giving his opponent a smartass comment to really keep that rivalry going. He's not saying that's how it "should be", he's saying that's how he personally prefers it.  You present his argument as if he is only interested in the "shittalking" and as if he doesn't think players should receive their due dilligence for their achievements. Where did he ever state that? Please point that part out to me.

I personally think it's pretty lame to viciously attack someone's opinions without even having the common courtesy to read and understand their post, but hey, that's also just my opinion.

Hello?

What the fuck is happening.

2 hours ago, Moby said:

 

Look, I'm all up for fanservice in games, but for me there are two kinds: passive and crippling.

 

Passive: Fanservice is there and gets used now and then, but the game isnt built around it, it just adds that something to the game. If you took away the fanservice, you would still have a solid game. Ex.: Bayonetta, Nier Automata, Earth Defense Force

 

Crippling: Fanservice is the entire game, every second of it is just an excuse to show women with breasts bigger than their heads, jiggling with the smallest breeze like they are made out of water balloons, bras dont exist, clothes are either super revealing or so skintight that a simple T-shirt looks like it has boob pockets, every animation is made to show boobs or panties. Take away the fanservice, you will have a mediocre/average game that does nothing special and would be forgotten right after release. Ex: Senran Kagura, every 'Sakura something' game

But that's the thing, Senran Kagura doesn't fall into either of those two categories in my opinion. I can totally understand why most people probably would be averse to playing Senran Kagura, because it definitely has got a lot of fanservice. That being said, if you were to remove the fanservice, the game would still be an extremely solid 3rd person beat 'em up. I think it's unfair to say that Senran Kagura would be a mediocre at best game if you took away the fanservice. That's pretty much the one thing that makes it stand out, the fact that you buy an anime tiddy game expecting to get some anime tiddy and then you end up with gameplay that is really fun, together with a well thought out character progression system. Out of curiousity, have you played Estival Versus? This isn't me trying to call you out or anything, it's just that what you're describing Senran Kagura as sounds a lot like myself before I played the games.

Shinovi Versus, but I've finished that now and I am onwards to Estival Versus.

Senran Kagura is unironically a really fun game.

12 hours ago, Rynjin said:

 

I feel like you would have hated my guts if we ever played together because my standard loadout was the 870 with slugs and the Carl Gustav.

Can't fault players for abusing imbalance overlooked by the developer, even if it does make me want to rip my hair out. While the Carl Gustav frustrated me, I had 3 platinum stars with the VSS Vintorez, you know that that little foldable and suppressed sniper rifle that had the capacity to fire subsonic rounds full auto?

This fucking thing

That was most definitely up there on the tier list of busted weapons, because it had the same qualities as the AN-94 (Lethal at long range as well as being an effective weapon in close-quarters), only this thing also had a powerful scope allowing for more precision sniping, while still being able to cut a swathe through like 6 guys with one magazine because it's hip-fire spread was just non-existent and its rounds killed with 1 shot to the head and 2 to anywhere else. Combined with the fact that this was a weapon useable by the Recon class (so you had access all the special equipment in the game like C4, Claymore mines and those fucking little sensor balls that you could toss and spot enemies on the map automatically), it basically meant that you could quite easily make a loadout that could do pretty much everything. Kill at range, compete with assault rifles and submachine guns up close, take out vehicles, support for your team, blow up buildings and blow up objectives on Rush. Thanks DICE.

Point is I abused broken shit as well, so I can't really judge anyone.

I'm almost three weeks late to the party, but I wanted to chime in and say that I also believe that Bad Company 2 was one of the best multiplayer games ever produced and I probably the Battlefield game I put the most hours into online, except for possibly Battlefield 2, not entirely sure. That game was absolutely stellar on release and it had sound design that to this day has yet to be matched as far as I am concerned. It looked great, it sounded great and it played great. It did unfortunately have some balance issues and I had my fair share of frustrations during the ~300 hours I played the multiplayer. The M2 Carl Gustav was absolutely the most unfun thing in the entire game to play against. It might be true that the weapon has anti-personnel properties in real life, but the kill-radius on the blast from that thing was fucking absurd. You could get caught on the edge of the blast and still go from 100 to 0. Thankfully it was nerfed eventually. Then there was the AN-94 assault rifle, which true to real life had the ability to fire two-round bursts in such rapid succession, that the recoil from the second round fired could barely be felt by the wielder, meaning that it was essentially an extremely potent double-tap weapon with a very good rate of fire. This becomes a problem when the weapon is more accurate at range than every single bolt-action rifle in the game, will kill you in a single tap because technically it hits you with two bullets and also has close-combat prowess when switched to full auto. It was basically the perfect weapon at all ranges, for all situations. Speaking of shit that would kill you with deadeye accuracy from across the map that really shouldn't, who could forget the shotgun slug customization option. For some reason, DICE thought it would be a great idea to make the slugs have 0 damage drop-off at range, which meant so long as you hit your target, you could blast a guy from full health to dead from across the map with a single shotgun tap.

Anyway, that was a years frustrations of playing that game bubbling to the surface. Out of over 100 weapons, the game had like 5 or 6 that were an issue balance wise, it was honestly pretty impressive for the most part and they managed to strike a rare balance between infantry and armour. Great fucking game, shame the multiplayer community is hanging on by a thread at this point.