The Game Venting Thread

[Kapol]

As a bit of an update to the last vent: I decided to give up for the night. Relaxed, and went back today to try again. Managed to beat it on the first time. I think getting that frustrated made it harder than anything. Still, the boss has some BS attacks. You know it's bad when the 'final form' is actually the easiest by far.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I made quite a bold post (I actually never post anything provocative, so this IS bold to me) on my Facebook which I expect might piss off a few of my 'friends' who I used to play WoW with.

"The challenge with guilds in MMOs is that you hope that the company you keep are more interested in the social connections than their own personal and shallow progression at the game".

This is a provocative way of me saying in my opinion; what you achieve in a game is worthless. The emotion you experience doing is has worth. The social connections you build have eternal worth. But you getting better gear and seeing bigger numbers means nothing.

One can wonder about the sort of person that has a need to want to prove themselves to be the best at a game, at the expense of any social links they might have. But to wonder, would be being judgemental. And that itself isn't healthy. Some case, might be ironic.

I was reflecting today on that thought, and I had an overwhelming urge to get this opinion out there. I've been burnt by players being self-centric with their gaming aspirations in social gaming. I forgive them. But the hurt has been done.

[AdmiralMemo]

It's the competitive nature of some people. Some people just aren't smart enough to rein it in when it starts interfering in other aspects of life.

[Geoff_B]

Actually that was partly the reason why I quite WoW. The guild I joined had the usual "friendly, social" line and for a long while I pretty much got on with everyone there. Then raiding started. At which point it all became about gear and stats. And the times they had scheduled for raiding were times I could not make. I could make it if they delayed by 15-30 minutes but nope. I asked them repeatedly to hold on until I was able to get there but no avail. Then I was told I wasn't at the right gear level for later raids (eg icecrown citadel). I pressed on for a bit but quite shortly afterwards and I've never looked back.

Bottom line - if a guild describes itself as friendly, casual and social it's a lie.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Every guild describes itself as casual and social.
-
It used to hurt me being in a guild and have players I got along with leaving because they wanted more.
It's their game.
It's their time.
And they hurt me.
They wanted to play a game that happens to have real people instead of interacting with people they built a relationship with.

I had guilds die because players wanted more. They wanted more numbers and they really didn't care about the people they'd trample to get it. Sure there's a friend's list, but it's like saying "yeah, I want to join this other group of friends IRL. You can still text me so it's fine. It's my life, you shouldn't be so self-centred and not think about my point of view".

You're playing a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. If you want to care only about numbers, go play a Single player game. The MULTIPLAYER bit isn't there for you to boast. It's there for you to ENJOY the social experiences the game has to offer.

Why has it taken like 8 years for my straw to snap and for me to go: "HANG ON. THIS IS BULLSHIT. DON'T YOU DARE THINK IT'S FINE TO GUILD HOP FOR THE SAKE OF IMPROVING YOUR WORTHLESS MMO CAREER". Tolerance can only stretch so far.
-
I enjoy Strife. I don't enjoy certain players. I don't enjoy not being able to deal with these people too.

[MotorWaffle]

Thank God for the GTS in Pokemon X and Y because if I was trying to get a complete pokedex and actually had to get all these "Friend Safari" exclusive bastards the game's way, then my cookies would be well and truly frosted.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Shame when it comes to exclusive Legendaries... it's kinda annoying.
At least my Wonderlocke playthroughs give me a potentially infinite supply of Xerneas to trade with.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Whoever was the designer in Dark Souls that thought that having the 'Cursed' status ailment have half the build-up meter compared to every other status ailment, that when you gain the status you instantly die, then having that status stay after you when you die and respawn, then deciding that the little bastards who give you that aliment will be located just before a hard boss and one of the hardest areas of the game, while not making it clear or obvious that those said bastards can curse you, then deciding when you're cursed you cannot restore humanity (thus must play solo), then also making it so anything in the game basically one-shots you, and then make the only item than can cure you ridiculously expensive at that point in the game...whoever though that was a good design, seriously...screw you.


But you know what? It may have taken me several hours to beat the Gaping Dragon and then slowly, while dying A LOT, make my way though Blightown, but I did it. I got out the other end and managed to cure myself. After admittedly checking a wiki to work out who actually sold the item that could cure me.

This is not an indication of how difficult Dark Souls is, this is actually an indication of how badly designed it is in some parts. Having that sort of status aliment so easily inflicted and having such penalties is one thing, but to not even explain how bad it is just really bad design. Because like many things in Dark Souls, it fails to mention that curse is a really bad thing until you've got it. Sure, stab them in the back if they rush into a room and get sideswiped by an enemy, because they can spot their mistake and try a gain; even if it means they lose a lot of souls. But to effectively handicap the player to the extent where they might be better off starting a new game is just inexcusably bad design.

I'm not complaining about the difficulty of the game, because I actually enjoy the challenge. What I'm complaining about is how something that is badly designed in the game (which there are a few) is simply passed of as "It's part of the difficulty". No, it's not difficult because it was designed well, it's arbitrarily difficult because it was designed poorly.

[Kapol]

Watching Adam play Dead Space reminded me of one of the most painful gaming moments I had. I was playing through Dead Space 2 on Hardcore mode. The mode where you only get 3 saves and it's the hardest difficulty. Though I was on the 360 version where you could get a 'checkpoint' at the end of the first disk, as the game only sends you back to the second disks beginning if you're there.

I'd beaten the game 3 or 4 times in a row at that point, and I was breezing through the game. I got to chapter 9-10 without dying, saving, or having any real issues. Only to real the point where you have to turn off the gravity in the crypt... and finding out the game was bugged. There was no way to turn off the gravity. And that's the only way forward. I saved and reloaded. Didn't help. I wanted to just bash my head against the wall. I'd been playing for hours, and playing really well I feel. I was going to get the last achievement to get 100% on the game. And then to be stopped by something as BS as a glitch? I ended up selling the game the next day because I was on such tilt.

[Kapol]

I'm playing through Earthbound for the first time, and I gotta say that I like it a lot. But it has some of the JRPG buttons that get me really annoyed. So let's start. This is a rant, so I'm going to collapse it.

Click to Expand

Enemies that make more of themselves always make me mad. Because if you don't kill them quickly, you now have to kill -another- one that can make another one that can make another one, etc. It just gets really annoying really quickly. This seems really common in Earthbound. Similarly, enemies that give your entire party a status ailment. Bonus points if that ailment makes it harder to actually hit your opponent. Then, of course, there's the enemies that do both... so much tilting. I had an fight starting with one blob end with five of them since I was never able to actually hit one due to a party-wide status ailment that I was hit with early on. The only way to heal it was by using the 'magic' in the game.

Said magic is also low in supply, and there aren't many ways to restore it besides finding a random fairy out and about. When you're heading to a boss and the enemies eat up all your magic, that's a problem. Bringing back dead allies also isn't something you can do without items for a long while. The cheap ones barely restore HP, and the expensive ones are hugely expensive. The good one costs $1700+. Compare that to the most expensive weapon/armor I've run into, which is $600.

To really show how annoying this is: The part I got stuck at with the burping slimes had me start at $4,000 in the bank. That's all the money I made from battles from when I started up til that point, minus what I spent in equipment. By the time I finished, I had almost $17,000.

There's also a 'one way to beat the boss' situation. If you don't use Fly Honey on one boss in particular, beating him is incredibly difficult. You have to do 650 points of damage in one turn. The game doesn't tell you that he recovers though, and I did about 2000 damage to him total before he killed me.

The only other major complaint I can think of off hand is the fact that you don't find out what items do until you have them. It tells you about equipment, but stuff like restore x health isn't told to you directly. So if you're in a shop and don't know what stuff does, you can either not buy it, or you can take a risk of spending money on something you won't use.

I do like the game. But man, it has some really bad things in it.

EDIT: Also, no fast-travel system, or way to move around the world faster. At least any that's been explained.

[AdmiralMemo]

I'm pretty sure you get to travel in the Runaway Five Bus at some point.

[Timelady]

Jsyk, you can also get dead allies restored at any hospital you might find in town. Just talk to the lady at the desk and pay out a set amount of gold, I forget what.

And yeah, my party slept a looooooot to restore hp/mp when I played this XD

[Geoff_B]

I played Shadows of Mordor. I got angry at it. I uninstalled it.

My first ragequit for quite some time.

[Mara Kalat]

I played Shadows of Mordor. I got angry at it. I uninstalled it.

My first ragequit for quite some time.

I've primarily heard good things about it, what caused you to ragequit?

Mara.

[Geoff_B]

I was finding it incredibly difficult to make any real progress. I'd start from a forge tower, jump down, encounter a pair of orcs, attack them. They'd then summon every other orc in Mordor. Once I'd got rid of them (possibly at 50% health) I'd head towards the mission I was planning to do, walk into more orcs, attempt to sneak past, get seen and attacked by them and a load of others - including a captain who just happened to be around and maybe a few archers, get cut to ribbons despite my best efforts, which made the captain stronger. Back to the forge tower, rinse and repeat.

This article has some points which seem to mirror my experience.

[Mara Kalat]

Yeah, the lack of a difficulty setting (...or difficulty curve for the free roaming stuff from the sound of it) is a definite step backwards.

Mara.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Can someone give me an incentive to play Diablo 3 besides making bigger numbers?

I can play it when I am playing it. I just find it hard to make myself want to play it.

[ch3m1kal]

Do you enjoy playing Diablo 3?
If yes, you should play it. If not, stop playing it and maybe go play Torchlight or Path of Exile, they're arguably better games anyway.

The only fun part of D3 for me is leveling new characters with friends. I can't stand endlessly grinding for loot though so endgame stuff is completely lost on me.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I get enjoyment when I am playing it. It's just mustering the enthusiasm to play it.

Same with Torchlight 2. Completed it twice. Need mods to make it interesting... but it means not accessing the class gear I've gained.

Path of Exile enraged me at the final boss. In addition to lack of Check Points and the servers having the power to boot you off.

[Geoff_B]

Five words:

Assassin's Creed Unity Minimum Specs

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

WTF, 50GB hard drive space.
6GB RAM.

Usually, the big HD eaters are MMOs.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Yeah, AC games are always horrendous for PC requirements. I say it again- Ubisoft hates PC gamers.

[Mara Kalat]

Yeah, AC games are always horrendous for PC requirements. I say it again- Ubisoft hates PC gamers.

I'm not sure it's hate, just... a complete lack of understanding.
Otherwise uPlay would be better, wouldn't it?

Mara.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Whilst I'll admit that the bulk of my information on this subject (aside from years of personal experience getting frustrated as Assassin's Creed reqs), it seems to me that Ubisoft basically think all PC gamers are filthy pirates and they only reluctantly release games on PC at all. They are utterly unwilling to allocate the resources to optimise their games for PC or to turn uPlay into a system people actually want to use- I get the impression they'd honestly rather people gave up and bought a console instead, in spite of how entirely stupid that logic is. Hell, they aren't even releasing AC:Rogue for PC.

[empath]

Yeah, AC games are always horrendous for PC requirements. I say it again- Ubisoft hates PC gamers.

Not deliberate malevolence, just casual indifference and contempt - they can't be bothered optimizing the code for their 'port'.

Last time I saw a game that too that much HD space, it was the shovelsabre er "Ultimate Sith Edition" of The Force Unleashed for the PC - that was horribly shoved over from its console code (I swear they just took every last line of PS3/X360 code, just wrapped it inside a proprietary emulator and then wedged the whole thing on DVD-ROMs.)