In What Electronic Entertainment Have You Been Partaking #18: Reticulating Splines

[Takhisis]

That sounds highly interesting. Well, you already have me on Discord, so ping me if needed. Depending on the scheduling I might be able to attend. Also you could recruit people from MU or our own Mafia section.

 

[Synobun]

That sounds highly interesting. Well, you already have me on Discord, so ping me if needed. Depending on the scheduling I might be able to attend. Also you could recruit people from MU or our own Mafia section.

Also, it costs money on Steam.

 

[Takhisis]

Oh! I thought it was a forum game. I'm not spending foreign currency again at the moment, because we've suffered another not-so-minor jolt to the exchange rate and the government has banned nearly all expenditure in foreign currency i.e. the banks will actually stop the transaction. I seriously feel like crying.

 

[Synobun]

Oh! I thought it was a forum game. I'm not spending foreign currency again at the moment, because we've suffered another not-so-minor jolt to the exchange rate and the government has banned nearly all expenditure in foreign currency i.e. the banks will actually stop the transaction. I seriously feel like crying.

I can actually buy it for you, presumably because of how much stronger the CAD is over the peso. Search it up and let me know if it's up your alley.

 

[Synobun]

My best friend and I are putting together an Among Us gaming group. With mics, so no tip-tapping.

I was wondering if anyone here who's on good terms with me would like to join it? Right now we're planning on playing Fridays or Saturdays at around 5 PM PST, so this might rule out any Euro people.

No solid dates as of yet, but that's the general expectation for days and time. If anyone is interested, I can invite you to a Discord server for it. I'd love to get more than 10 people total between us so that we can still play when people drop out or can't make it. Parties can be 10 people max.

@MaryKB?

 

[MaryKB]

@MaryKB?

I don't know what that game is.

 

[Synobun]

I don't know what that game is.

You could find out.

 

[Takhisis]

Ahahahahahaha! 320 attack speed with Tiny + double strike from echo sabre!! Mwahahaahaa!!! 21-1 K/D!!!! Mwahahahaaha!!!!!

 

[amadeus]

I’m not even at home, but I had this update in the can. No wars are breaking out or anything, I’m just passing up the rest of the world. I’m beefing up my allies’ economies too so the Soviet Union won’t even collapse, it’ll just fall into irrelevance.

PRESIDENT AMADEUS TO SIXTH TERM
AMADEUS 64.4 PALIN 9.7 DEAN 23.5
BUDGET SURPLUS PASSES $200B, DEFENSE SPENDING UP $50B
AYATOLLAH DEAD, SHAH RETURNS TO TEHERAN
HUSAYN OUT IN IRAQ, NEW GOV'T JOINS U.S. PACT

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@Timsup2nothin they are releasing another update for No Man's Sky which is supposed to be the first installment of another major overhaul.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The new Path of Exile DLC is way more fun than the last two. Got through Act IV over the weekend. My Shadow/Assassin is level ~40. Cyclone- Nightblade-Poison with a dagger is only just starting to come together. I started out using a bow with Caustic Arrow & Pierce, which was amazing through Acts I-III. I considered keeping the bow, but decided to stick to the plan, switched to Cyclone when it became available, and immediately became much less effective. Wasn't killing mobs nearly as fast, and suddenly had massive mana problems, to boot. Spent a bunch of Passive Points on mana regen and added poison & dagger damage, and it's beginning to perform better, but still not awesome. It took me forever to kill Malachai at the end of Act IV. I'm currently using a buckler for the defense, but I'm going to try dual-wielding a pair of daggers and see if that improves my offense. Sometimes the best defense really is a better offense.

I'm hoping this build doesn't rely on some ultra-rare piece of gear, but I suppose they all do, at some point. The odds of finding any given piece of rare gear is obviously low; the odds of finding the piece of gear you need for the build you're currently playing are probably astronomical. Of course you're supposed to make trades for that, but I like using the gear I've found myself. I'd love to find a search tool that helps you sort of reverse-engineer what kind of builds are best-suited to a given piece of rare gear. I would be okay with my first character in a new 'league' being kind of a pathfinder, accumulating a store of good gear for whatever my next character will be, but I can't yet look at a piece of gear and say "hey, this'd be good for ________." For all I know, Path of Building can do that, but that's not the most intuitive piece of software, I'm finding. Maybe I'm just dense.

 

[MaryKB]

Would anybody like to make a group to regularly play some kind of MMO, like maybe at least once a week? I think it'd be fun to create brand new characters in something and only play them together.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Microsoft have purchased Zenimax.
1 company to own them all.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Would anybody like to make a group to regularly play some kind of MMO, like maybe at least once a week? I think it'd be fun to create brand new characters in something and only play them together.

I haven't played any MMOs in a long time. I don't really know what the state of the genre is. I might be interested, depending somewhat on the game.

1. I'd been thinking about sticking my head back into Star Trek Online, but I haven't done it yet. I'd certainly join a CFC Fleet. iirc, the game accommodates multi-player pretty well; each player pilots her own ship during space encounters, and when you do "away missions" on a planet, each player plays her own character. As MMOs go, it had tremendous amounts of stuff to do - I played for about a year and there was lots of stuff I never got around to doing, including some things designed for groups. The ship missions were what made this game stand out from the MMO crowd, for me, and space combat was pretty fun and reasonably true to the source material. The ground missions were typical, MMO, click-on-the-glowey type stuff. I'm a Star Trek fan, but from what I remember, the game was casual-friendly.
   
2. Some folks here were talking about Star Wars: The Old Republic a little while ago, and I was sorta curious to try it again. I played it a teeny bit when it first launched, but that was years ago, and I never did any multiplayer. As with STO, I don't know how important it is to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy this game, but I think these games are usually designed to accommodate the casual fans who aren't already steeped in the mythology.
   
3. I'm playing Path of Exile anyway, as mentioned above. I've only ever played it solo, though, so I don't know what playing as a group entails. It isn't quite an MMO, fwiw, it's an "action RPG" like Diablo. On the plus side, there are no factions in that game, so a group can accommodate any mixture of characters and anybody can play whatever they want.

I've no idea what other games are even out there nowadays.

 

[MaryKB]

I haven't played any MMOs in a long time. I don't really know what the state of the genre is. I might be interested, depending somewhat on the game.

1. I'd been thinking about sticking my head back into Star Trek Online, but I haven't done it yet. I'd certainly join a CFC Fleet. iirc, the game accommodates multi-player pretty well; each player pilots her own ship during space encounters, and when you do "away missions" on a planet, each player plays her own character. As MMOs go, it had tremendous amounts of stuff to do - I played for about a year and there was lots of stuff I never got around to doing, including some things designed for groups. The ship missions were what made this game stand out from the MMO crowd, for me, and space combat was pretty fun and reasonably true to the source material. The ground missions were typical, MMO, click-on-the-glowey type stuff. I'm a Star Trek fan, but from what I remember, the game was casual-friendly.
   
2. Some folks here were talking about Star Wars: The Old Republic a little while ago, and I was sorta curious to try it again. I played it a teeny bit when it first launched, but that was years ago, and I never did any multiplayer. As with STO, I don't know how important it is to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy this game, but I think these games are usually designed to accommodate the casual fans who aren't already steeped in the mythology.
   
3. I'm playing Path of Exile anyway, as mentioned above. I've only ever played it solo, though, so I don't know what playing as a group entails. It isn't quite an MMO, fwiw, it's an "action RPG" like Diablo. On the plus side, there are no factions in that game, so a group can accommodate any mixture of characters and anybody can play whatever they want.

I've no idea what other games are even out there nowadays.

I would LOVE to do a group for Star Trek Online!

I played Star Wars before, it's really fun as a group because you can basically just do the legendary missions now.

Either way, I call dibs on being a healer!

 

[EgonSpengler]

IGN, 21 Sept 2020 - "Microsoft to Buy Bethesda and Parent Company ZeniMax Media"

Xbox has announced that it plans to acquire ZeniMax Media, and with it Bethesda Softworks, creators and publishers of The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, Doom, Dishonored, Quake, Starfield and more.

Announced by Head of Xbox Phil Spencer in an Xbox Wire post today, Microsoft will acquire ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion – 3 times the $2.5 billion it paid for Mojang and Minecraft in 2014 – and the formal purchase is expected to close in the second half of 2021. The deal includes ZeniMax Media as a whole, Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios.

Hrm. I guess I'm not sure what this means, from the perspective of a PC gamer who's enjoyed several of these games in the past.

 

[Takhisis]

Would anybody like to make a group to regularly play some kind of MMO, like maybe at least once a week? I think it'd be fun to create brand new characters in something and only play them together.

We already have a few off-site chat groups for people from here to play pen-and-paper games and some also play or stream vidjagames so all you have to do is find the right people. In spite of the financial difficulties discussed earlier with Synsensa I can still play quite a few games, but since I'm in another hemisphere there's always lag, which is of negligible influence in pen-and-paper games but can wreak utter havoc on videogames. Still I'm open to starting a group and seeing what can be done.

 

[EgonSpengler]

IGN, 21 Sept 2020 - "Microsoft to Buy Bethesda and Parent Company ZeniMax Media"


Hrm. I guess I'm not sure what this means, from the perspective of a PC gamer who's enjoyed several of these games in the past.

Microsoft is paying $7.5b. Some folks have noted that, by comparison, Disney bought Marvel and Lucasfilm for ~$4b each, in 2009 and 2012, respectively (otoh, Disney paid ~$71b for Fox & its affiliates last year).

 

[amadeus]

I’ve been out of the tech loop for so long I had to look up who the CEO is. I figured Steve Ballmer had left, but I had never seen the new guy.

 

[Akka]

For PC players, I don't know if it's a good news (no console exclusive) or a bad one (still more concentration of the industry, possibly less artistic freedom for several studios, more weight in the horrible "games as service" concept).