Game: What game are you currently playing??

[shinta|hikari]

Sorry for the double post, but no one has been posting for a while so I guess it should be okay to bump this.

I am now near the end of my second play through in Dark Souls 2. I have been facerolling the bosses except for the Lost Sinner and his two pyro asses. That was the best boss fight I had in this game. It required skill, timing, and luck to achieve victory. It wasn't a battle of patience, but a battle of speed, probably the only fight in the game like that. Take note that I never summon other players. I soloed the entire game. In NG+, I am using an ultra greatsword using 2 hands. It feels different from my shield and axe build before, but has tons more DPS.

Now they are going to nerf some bosses and enemies, which kinda pisses me off. I don't like it for 3 reasons. First, the bosses they are nerfing are already easy. I killed one of them without even realizing it was a boss until the text "VICTORY ACHIEVED" displayed on screen. Apparently, I killed the boss accidentally along with his minions. Second, I don't like it how I slaved through some fights, but now people are going to easily get past them. Third, it is unfair to those who will no longer be able to feel the sense of achievement after a truly grueling battle (and dying 10x).

[Buffalobiian]

Been playing all of BF4, Titanfall and Diablo 3 this last week.

Titanfall's pretty good, a mix of mech warrior + unreal tournament in COD-style. I don't think I'll like it as much as BF4 just because it's so quick that it can be mind-numbing / automatic.

D3 is pretty fun, but just seems to be so heavily reliant on gear that it feels like I don't make too much of a difference. With good gear I'll own, and without I'll struggle. That's... essentially how I find the game. A spell that dashes you out of combat helps with the struggling.

[oyabun]

Buff ping me if you are playing Titanfall!

[shinta|hikari]

What class do you use for Diablo 3?

The range classes feel a bit more skill dependent. The melee ones require you to be tough enough to exchange blows with the enemy, making it really feel gear reliant.

[Buffalobiian]

What class do you use for Diablo 3?

The range classes feel a bit more skill dependent. The melee ones require you to be tough enough to exchange blows with the enemy, making it really feel gear reliant.

I'm currently using a lvl68 Monk. I've also started a Witch Doctor and a Crusader that I use to play with friends. I agree about the toughness assessment. I've sacrificed damage and instead built my monk to 3-4 million toughness instead.

[Penner]

Got back into Diablo with a friend when "Patch/Loot 2.0" was released before RoS, and since then I've pretty much been playing Diablo3 all day every day lol (except for when i watch some tv/anime series etc)

Only playing on Hardcore mode, got all classes to 70 and currently at Paragon 248.

[KrayZ33]

its annoying to play d3 if you have problems finding the right items/upgrades

if your character/equipment is the same at the end of a day - you can't help it but feel as if you just wasted your time, because its not like the gameplay itself is a lot of fun

and now, you can't farm for different characters because of loot 2.0

[Penner]

and now, you can't farm for different characters because of loot 2.0

Yeah, thats one of the only things that annoys me with the new system, but you can "sort of" farm stuff for you other chars by speedrunning with your main char and collecting mats for legendary crating, and gathering horadric caches, then opening the caches on the char you want items for.

Saving up the Blood Shards you get and spending em with the char you want stuff for works aswell.

It's still pretty annoying tho lol

[Assertn]

Man I quit playing diablo like a year and a half ago and I have no idea what any of these things are that you guys are talking about.

[shinta|hikari]

Same here.

[Animeniax]

Still playing BF4... lvl 103 now. There are so many assignments to complete that forces you to try new classes and weapons, so it keeps things interesting and challenging and sometimes frustrating.

Also playing through Silent Hill Downpour a second time. It's a lot more fun playing the second time because you're not as scared so you pick up on things you missed the first time. I recommend it for horror game fans, though it's clunky and also frustrating to play at times.

[Buffalobiian]

Still playing BF4... lvl 103 now. There are so many assignments to complete that forces you to try new classes and weapons, so it keeps things interesting and challenging and sometimes frustrating.

I rely on a friend to motivate me into completing assignments.. or new guns that have good stats. I'm all about efficiency when it comes to FPS, so I tend to find something that works well and just stick with it. It happens in life as well (especially with cooking meals).

I should start playing BF4 again actually. Titanfall really isn't as fun as what I had expected. The speed and chaotic nature of it means I can't really predict what will result from my actions. I can't execute wall-runs with exact accuracy, so half the time I run up the wall or jump at a ledge not knowing whether I'll make it up there or not. In general it's a whole lot off "I'll do this and see where it gets me", which doesn't feel rewarding. I also don't play defensively or smart enough to make Titans useful. I pretty much call it in to run around while I try killing other pilots.

[Animeniax]

I rely on a friend to motivate me into completing assignments.. or new guns that have good stats. I'm all about efficiency when it comes to FPS, so I tend to find something that works well and just stick with it. It happens in life as well (especially with cooking meals).

I like the challenge of the assignments, and I've always been someone who likes to complete things and mark them completed. The minor satisfaction of checking off an assignment is worth the damage to my KDR and win %. I also like trying new weapons to find a favorite, or proving to myself I can do well with some crappy gun, especially new ones with no upgrades. Getting kills with iron sights and no barrel enhancements takes some skill.

I finished Silent Hill Downpour a second time but on hard difficulty, which is still pretty easy. The game is very frustrating and the computer cheats, but still a worthwhile game, though I almost smashed a PS3 controller out of anger at this game.

[shinta|hikari]

It was pretty easy but frustrating and unfair enough for you to have almost smashed your controller?

[Animeniax]

It was pretty easy but frustrating and unfair enough for you to have almost smashed your controller?

Yeah, even on hard difficulty it's easy to defeat all of the monsters and even the boss. It's frustrating because the boss randomly hammerfists you as you run across catwalks, and no matter what is going on (even if you shoot him to stun him or if he's busy forming trash balls to hurl at you) he will stop whatever he's doing in an instant and land the hammerfist and hurt you bad.

Also, the controls are wonky and you get stuck on corners and stuff in the environment that make no sense, allowing monsters to hit you or throwing off your timing for critical moves. My reasoning is that if your controller inputs don't matter, then the controller is unnecessary and therefore worthy of destruction. Dumb I know, and I regret it every time, until the next time the game pisses me off and I throw my controller.

[shinta|hikari]

If the hammerfisting frustrates you because you get hit hard, then it isn't pretty easy, right?

Pretty easy means you had an easy time finishing it, never getting frustrated, at cheap bosses or wonky controls, since both of those affect the difficulty of the game.

For example, cheap ambushes and wonky controls/camera/hitboxes are part of Dark Souls' difficulty. They might not be intentional, but it still does not change the fact that it makes the game more difficult to finish.

[Animeniax]

No, it frustrates me because there's no defense against it and it defies all rules of the game, as I mentioned.

It is an easy game once you learn how things work. All the monsters attack the same or are avoidable (you can run away from them and they won't follow and it doesn't hurt or help your stats), and the puzzles are straightforward. The random hammerfist attacks kill you in two hits, requiring you to replay 15 minutes of the game to get back to the boss, and as I said, they are not defensible and even contradict anything else going on at the time.

I'm fine making controls wonky to add difficulty, such as in this game the wonkiness is how they portray the fear and stress you feel as the character in this nightmare world. But in SHD, the wonkiness is from poorly coded gameplay and environment. Getting stuck on table corners and not being able to reliably go up and down ladders is just shitty programming.

[shinta|hikari]

I guess you are defining difficulty as excluding any unintentional factors or things that you do not believe to be consistent with the rest of the game. I understand that, but that is a very customized understanding of difficulty.

[Animeniax]

Well in most games difficulty comes from number, toughness, and abilities of your enemies. Difficulty can also come from watering down the player character's abilities. Difficulty should not come from randomly getting stuck on objects in the environment or not being able to move (both of which happen in this game through what can only be described as glitches, not gameplay). It also should not come from abilities for which there is no defense.

I guess you could call his hammerfists an "ability" except that there's no defense for them and he can unleash them any time he wants, including while you're shooting him (which normally disrupts his attack and occupies him for a few seconds) and while he's doing other things (giving you the sense that you have time to move to evade his next attack). He shouldn't be able to cast a spell and mid-casting stop and hammerfist you. He also shouldn't be able to recover so quickly from being shot to hammerfist you, as at other times shooting him gives you more time to act. I also got hammerfisted twice in a row in 5 seconds, and considering your character can't move or do anything while you recover from each hit, and that you die from 2 such attacks even if you have 100% health, it's a pretty shitty way to make a game "difficult."

[shinta|hikari]

I can sort of agree with you on the unintended stuff like glitches or bugs, but the cheap boss attack is definitely part of the difficulty. It was intentionally done like that to make it harder for players. It might not be the most elegant way to do it, but it made the game more difficult than it would have been without it.