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A secret global conspiracy of game developers that control society?
August 11th 2001, 13:38 CEST by Tommy I am not sure if this deserves its own topic (<i>it does - mr0n the phantom ed</i>) but as a common lurker I didn't feel I could just drop it carte blanche into whatever topic thread was currently underway. A friend told me about this site: <a href="http://www.gameilluminati.com">http://www.gameilluminati.com</a> That is apparently a members only bulletin board. You cannot access it without a password. Apparently it is 'invitation only' for industry people. Beyond the password members enter a holy grail of mature discussions and non- flaming objective discussions about the merits of games, as debated by an elite few. Interestingly enough, this board is registered to a one George Broussard, he of 3D Realms fame. Unfortunately, I myself work for a Publisher and am hence patently evil, so will no doubt never get to feast on the intellectual riches within (it's for developers who have shipped titles only). I would be interested to know if loyal PlanetCrappers from the development side have been exposed to the joys of www.gameilluminati.com and if so, if perhaps they could 'illuminate' us on the merits of this site? Is this a joyous site, protecting true captains of the industry and allowing them a safe haven for discourse? Or is this a dangerous and subversive, insidious form of elitism that harms us all? Could www.gameilluminati.com spell the end of our honorable PlanetCrap (<i>No! Never! - mr0n the phantom ed</i>)? Will we see gamesbiz professionals flee in search of greener, safer pastures yonder? Please Comment and discuss. Me, I'm just fascinated and nosey. |
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Topic: A secret global conspiracy of game developers that control society?
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There's a stress test beta of diablo 3 happening right now for anyone that's interested. It was fairly sudden, no per-announcement or anything, just bam! Open beta. Of course, there's a beta weekend for Guild Wars 3 (for people who've ore-ordered) next weekend. Hrm… |
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Guild Was 2*. I'd imagine Guild Wars 3 is still always off from an alpha state. |
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Jamie, if you're still reading this, you totally have to go to Valve. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Finished Batman: Arkham Asylum last night. No interest in trying to get all the Riddler trophies. No idea what's next. Maybe I'll finish my first playthrough of Fez. |
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I started NG+ in Fez but didn't spend a lot of time on it as the Diablo 3 beta was this weekend. So that's what I played. I got to the 'end' with 3 classes and took the barbarian about 1/2 way. The only class I did not play was the monk. My feelings on it are mixed. It felt like the gaming equivalent of junk food and while I was playing it I felt dirty at the same time (like it was a bare skinner box). I enjoyed playing with crappers more (and felt less dirty about that) but when it got up to 3 and 4 players there are points that my computer crawled. While my GPU exceeds suggested spec, my CPU is the bare minimum. I also wish that there was a dedicated SP mode. I wanted to play a class all the way from beginning to end SP but that did not happen as I was joined or I joined others and my SP progress was otherwise wasted. If I were to get Diablo 3 I think that it mostly would be to play with crappers. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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So prototype 2 was released a few days ago, and the short of it is that is still very very good at letting you feel like a mutant badass with greatly improved combat. Unfortunately nearly every other area has taken giant steps backwards or are just plan stupid. Power use has been greatly simplified with things like musclemass/armor simply existing all the time, or getting their own button mapping, while attacks are simply tap for three hit combo or hold for a power attack. The trade off for this lack of depth is that you're now allowed to map two powers for use at a time something that helps a great deal with mixed group combat. Sadly there's little in the way of multipower combos avalible this looks to be done via triggerable QTEs instead. For example tendrils can root enemies in place and trigger a QTE useing your other power but it appears you can't just perform the move with out being prompted. What helps to really improve things is a wider variety of enemy types and tactics. Included in the mix of cannon fodder peons, hunters and BS super soldiers are large slow infected juggernauts that'll block attacks while giving you something meaty to wail on, revamped super soldiers that allow for a block/counter system, and speedy evolved that pull out some of your own claw like attacks. The stealth gameplay is a bit improved but still largely pointless outside of missions. The new sonor ability lets you see who is watching who as well as which targets are free to be stealth consumed/biobombed but when you can drop kick a helicopter why slowly move around picking people off when you don't have to? The viral detectors are still around but fill the detection meter so slowly and they have such a laughable tiny radius that there's simply NEVER a fear of setting the things off. The upgrade system has been changed away from simply buying abilites and upgrades with evolution points to a mix of leveling rewards, collection/mission rewarded mutations, and consume based ability upgrades. Locking basicly every thing behind progressing the story with the only real thing you can upgrade out of order being done by hunting around waiting for the game to feel like tagging something as having an ability upgrade. The semi dynamic-world is gone now in favor for three locked zones you progress between. This leaves jack-fucking-all to actively do with the open world gameplay. A problem that's made all the worse by any non-mission event being locked up behind the stupid radnet system. Prerelease Radnet was billed as being something 'extra' for the fans of the game that'll buy a new first run edition of the game. What it turns out to be is basicly a modified version of EA's project 10 dollar. In order to prevent a quick turn around trade-in the Radnet content is being slowly dished out over the course of 7 weeks so as of right now there's a total of 4 nonmission events avalible in the game. What's even better is that none this stuff feels like extra content at all because it directly maps challenge events that where avalible in the first game. A preception that's not much helped by the fact finishing the story unlocks platinum levels for the events (just like the first game) and they still act as player training exercises for world navigation (judgeing by the names of the latter ones efective power/equipment uses as well). Don't forget garnishes such as: Fish shaped solid waste.
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I guess that seals my decision not to play that. Pity. |
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Anyone here playing Ascension? My GC handle is The Phantom Blot. |
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Man, this place is dead. Playing Trials Evolution. On the face of it, it should be a game I hate, but I love it. Gotten the the point where I feel I have no chance of getting gold medals on tracks, but haven't hit anything I can't at least finish. Yet. blog | Twitter | The Psychology of Gaming
"It was a little hard to tell how bad I was bleeding on account of the salsa" -- Jibble |
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I painted the interior of my new garage white. It's pretty awesome. "One part disembowels me while another slowly eats its way through the gas line. As I bleed out on the floor, it reminds me that I need to buy milk." - Jibble
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I'd like to spruce up my garage, but we're figuring to leaven sooner rather than later. Hated Trials. Playing Driver SF right now. Got to level 50 in Diablo 3 and shelved it for the time being. The content and gameplay isn't that compelling to do it over and over. Unfortunate. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I picked up Bulletstorm based on some hilarious videos I saw on youtube. Then a bunch of people in IRC said it was actually a good game. And they're right. It is a good game. Well worth the $20. I picked up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West while I was out, as it was on sale for $10. Apparently that's a pretty good game too. |
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Enslaved is flawed, but I really enjoyed it. The motion capture performances, the voice acting, and the way the two main characters interact are worth $10 alone. blog | Twitter | The Psychology of Gaming
"It was a little hard to tell how bad I was bleeding on account of the salsa" -- Jibble |
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And I stalled out at level 54 in Diablo 3. Given how the auction house has robbed the game of its loot lust, I had nothing left to motivate me to play. Still put a ton of hours into it and more than got my money's worth, though. blog | Twitter | The Psychology of Gaming
"It was a little hard to tell how bad I was bleeding on account of the salsa" -- Jibble |
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I quite like Bulletstorm. Best $5 game that I ever got on a steam sale. I certainly got my money out of Diablo 3, I can't complain. I ran a Demon Hunter through to level 50 and unlocked Hell and also ran a Wizard through once to 30 or so. I just wish that the gameplay hook was there to keep going. The only hook now is to earn level to unlock skills that may or may not be awesome. The auction house has, arguably, ruined the game since I don't get loot that's worth keeping. It's all trash. Actually, it's all a spin of the slot machine. White and grays are literal trash not worth picking up. A blue is the actual vendor trash (though once in a while is valuable) and yellows have the best chance of being useful, though that is few and far between. The little status bar your character does while 'identifying' the item is Blizzards special little RNG running on their server to see if you struck it rich or not. I feel Blizzard wanted Diablo to be an MMO with a monthly sub but thought the nerd rage would have been too high, so they came away with this AH thing where they will skim money on the RMAH to make up for monthly fees. Blech. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I'm at the last chapter/mission for Driver SF story mode and I rage quit. What a bunch of bullshit. And it gets worse, I'm reading a walkthrough and there's more after the section I quit. Ugh. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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The last few missions are so great! Maybe you never learned how to drive. BUYBUYBUY
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I quit on the part where you have to take down Jerico by flipping cars at him, yet you have to dodge. It's bullshit. Twice I got turned around while I was in shift mode to flip cars at him. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I finished the Driver SF story mode. I'm giving it 3*. For $18 wasn't terrible, but it irked me a lot towards the end with that bullshit. Anyway, I'll continue to do activities and dares until I'm angry then I'll move on to something else. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I finished Bulletstorm last weekend. Good game. Well worth the $20. However, from this point forward any time I hear Jennifer Hale from now on I'm going to think about how she wants to kill my dick. :( Started playing Enslaved. Decently fun platformer. Well worth the $10. |
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How did you make it to level 54 on Diablo Jamie? I barely started again on Nightmare level and I'm already bored. I don't know what's different, I played Diablo 2 over and over. |
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What's different is that there is no carrot in front of your face to get better loot. Everything you could use/need you get from the AH. It is rare that I find a drop that is 2/3rds better than something that I have. Then the quests suck and you can't not skip them and just kill shit. The content isn't compelling enough to replay on its own, nor is it random enough to feel fresh. During the stress test weekend I wondered if the cathedral level was the same over and over, but folks said it was different, I just didn't notice. That's not great for your random levels. Then on the higher difficulties you run into shitfuckery since the only way the game gets more difficult is to spam you with mobs that are themselves spammed with abilities (one modifier on normal, 2 on nightmare, etc.). That said I did get 50+ hours or so out of it so it wasn't a waste of money, but it is a disappointment. There's probably more I'm leaving out, but that's all I could think of off the top of my head. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Oh, I will add that the carrot of leveling up and getting new abilities is there, but the shitfuckery that is the AH and hell difficulty is overpowering that at the moment. I've tried Act I pre-Skeleton King and I've died many, many times. I even spent 75k G on a crossbow that increased my damage by ~50% and while it was good for one elite I ran into, I still die a lot. Maybe I need to armor up or rethink my skills (passive and active), but it's not fun. Either that or play pubs. I have a wizard that I got to nightmare and that's fun enough so far with the leveling carrot. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I finished Bulletstorm last weekend. Good game. Well worth the $20. However, from this point forward any time I hear Jennifer Hale from now on I'm going to think about how she wants to kill my dick. :( I never picked up on that it was FemShep doing that role. It was a steal for the $5 I paid, and would have been a bargain at $20. I picked up DX:HR on a Steam sale this weekend. I know, foolish to buy so close to the summer sale, but I don't think if it will go lower than $7.50, and if it does, oh well, I'll skip a coffee (not really). I started it briefly and had some technical difficulties. The cut scenes were jerky and fiddling with some setting more or less broke the engine to the point that it looked like it was hung. It took a minute to exit. Anyway, I ended up quitting chrome to free up memory and some CPU cycles and resetting the settings to default and it performed better. There were still some jerkiness to it, though, so I wonder if I'll be able to get to the end. I'm playing on normal and trying to figure out how to play. I'm thinking stealth and takedowns, no hacking, but I won't go for the don't kill anyone cheevo cause that's bugged (AFAIK) and I don't want to get angry. Plus I killed folks in the pre-augmentation tutorial part. That said I died a few times in that part so we'll see how it goes. But at one point I did head shot 4 guys so that's a plus. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Honest to God hattrick! <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Jennifer Hale will always be Bastila Shan to me. In KOTOR she had a voice like warm honey. Only sexier. "One part disembowels me while another slowly eats its way through the gas line. As I bleed out on the floor, it reminds me that I need to buy milk." - Jibble
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I played KOTOR twice (maybe thrice) and I don't know who that is. googling that name shows me how lame star wars fandom is. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Jeremy: As Cheesy said, you still have the carrot of new abilities and bigger numbers from weapons you buy on the AH. That kept me going for a while, as did playing almost exclusively multiplayer. Almost always pickup groups, too. It can be a hassle finding a pickup game that's not just some jackass sitting idle in town, but generally that kept things interesting enough for a while. I popped the Ico/SotC remastering into my PS3 and played a bit of Ico. It doesn't look like a real PS3 game but I'm amazed at how well they worked with what they had at the time. And its design is so damn sparse. They don't tell you anything; they just dump you in and let you figure it out. It works because it's such a simple and beautiful game. blog | Twitter | The Psychology of Gaming
"It was a little hard to tell how bad I was bleeding on account of the salsa" -- Jibble |
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I tried replaying Ico a month or two ago and found that it didn't hold up so well. Too samey, too long, and just slightly too little guidance. Too much combat too, but that was a promise on release too. |
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Speaking of Jennifer Hale, I'm still slowly progressing through Mass Effect 3 and I'm starting to dislike it. The game is a lot more linear than the 2 predecessors already were. I can literally tell when this character is going to appear and that thing is going to happen. Also, some of the choices you're given aren't really fair. [spoilers] Yesterday I was given the choice between letting the quarians go extinct or letting the geth be exterminated. What? How about some choice where I get to let them both live? I ended up choosing to let the geth live and seeing the whole quarian defeat was touching, but I just didn't feel like I stood behind the choice. More like I was being tricked into choosing between two powerful scenes of genocidal destruction, wether I liked it or not. The whole thing felt really manufactured for effect. And I also read about the ending too. It makes everything I do feel even more useless. [/spoilers] She's probably had sex with like 4 different guys by now and has no idea who he is anymore, his face lost in a memory sea of dicks.
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Also, in some fit of nostalgia I fired up TekWar in Dosbox just now. It's the first game made on the Build engine that went on to power Duke3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior and it was very far ahead of its time in several aspects. Too bad I had to quit because of motion sickness. Apparently TekWar can be made to run on EDuke32 with some effort so I might look into that. She's probably had sex with like 4 different guys by now and has no idea who he is anymore, his face lost in a memory sea of dicks.
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And for a nineties C-rate tv show flashback, see a clip from the TekWar tv series. She's probably had sex with like 4 different guys by now and has no idea who he is anymore, his face lost in a memory sea of dicks.
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I remember playing TekWar back in the day. It was a pretty shitty game. The only notable thing being that you could kill pedestrians and ride the subway. |
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I loved it for the detail that made the world feel so alive. That was something unseen in those days. She's probably had sex with like 4 different guys by now and has no idea who he is anymore, his face lost in a memory sea of dicks.
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Yesterday I was given the choice between letting the quarians go extinct or letting the geth be exterminated. What? How about some choice where I get to let them both live? I ended up choosing to let the geth live and seeing the whole quarian defeat was touching, but I just didn't feel like I stood behind the choice. More like I was being tricked into choosing between two powerful scenes of genocidal destruction, wether I liked it or not. The whole thing felt really manufactured for effect. The reason you can't let BOTH live is because you fucked something up in either Mass Effect 1 or 2. I was able to not only let both sides live, but end the war. The Geth began assisting the Quarians in rebuilding their homelands, and modifying their suits to help wean them off and eventually have future Quarians live free from their space suits. tl;dr: you're playing it wrong. |
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#43473 by CheesyPoof That's not great for your random levels. Then on the higher difficulties you run into shitfuckery since the only way the game gets more difficult is to spam you with mobs that are themselves spammed with abilities (one modifier on normal, 2 on nightmare, etc.). It's not just more mods but new ones open up on higher difficulties and since they're simply thrown into the mix with the others you never really get to learn how to deal with the new ones. Life steal also gets nurfed on higher difficulties, not that it matters seeing that it appears to be competely broken anyway (I have no blinking idea why shadow power can instantly heal me to full health on one mob pack then do jack fucking shit on the next). Still the multimod shitfuckery isn't pissing me off nearly as much as the "projected'" attacks that have been there from the begining. Competely crap to give so many classes mobility skills to get the hell out of the way then turn around and decided "we don't just want people running around so if they don't do it quick enough they'll get hit anyway". My ability to kill skeleton king is competely dependant on the time of day I do it. Midday and I just can't vault out of the way of any of his heavy hitting attacks thanks to a half millisecond delay putting me in the you're getting hit anyway zone, 3am though and he's cake. Sure it does that on normal but there I could at least tank a few shots. Now it's move or die. Don't forget garnishes such as: Fish shaped solid waste.
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#43486 by Squeaky The reason you can't let BOTH live is because you fucked something up in either Mass Effect 1 or 2. I was able to not only let both sides live, but end the war. The Geth began assisting the Quarians in rebuilding their homelands, and modifying their suits to help wean them off and eventually have future Quarians live free from their space suits. tl;dr: you're playing it wrong. So because I had the heretics reprogrammed in ME2 I made the geth too strong for the quarians to survive? Well shit. She's probably had sex with like 4 different guys by now and has no idea who he is anymore, his face lost in a memory sea of dicks.
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I don't remember what the ME1+2 states needed to be able to get the happy ending were exactly, but pretty much the entirety of ME3 is like that. It feels so linear because you've already made your choices, the third game is just presenting the consequences of them. |
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Well that's retarded. You know when you do that? In the cutscene at the end of game #2. "I hope you one day decide to smarten the fuck up so I can stand to look at your posts." - gaggle
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Invulnerable minions are entirely unkitable, traps and shit don't work on them. So fucking boring when you're the squishy ranged class that relies on kiting. Ffs... |
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I'm not pleased with Diablo but I have sunk a lot of hours into it so my complaints are tiny shaking fists at this point. The game seems like a huge waste of effort even if the resulting clicky-clicky still maintains the basic fun. |
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D3 was a fun 40 odd hours of decent gameplay. Not great, but better than average. I dont see much reason to progress into the pay-to-play scenario that is inferno. |
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#43491 by gaggle Invulnerable minions are entirely unkitable, traps and shit don't work on them. So fucking boring when you're the squishy ranged class that relies on. Ffs... I'm not finding invulnerable too horible on Hell depending on what the second minion mod is. Kind of have to just keep cricleing around takeing potshots the the rare any time you can, helps a lot to have something that can fire through the minons since they'll just absorb what ever portion hit them while letting the rest pass (so opening up with High Velocity they take the brunt of it but what ever pierces still gets through). Had a nice epic one with invulnerable plagued minions (in a cave no less) died a few times but not so much the revive timer or repair costs where a problem. Damage reflection can go die in a fucking fire though. There's just no way I can get enough life on hit or leach to not just be throwing myself at them over and over again while suicideding on the stupid reflection. Don't forget garnishes such as: Fish shaped solid waste.
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Yeah its the attribute combinations that causes the real havoc. Invulnerability is just one element for a Demon Hunter that can turn things bad real fast, but there are plenty examples of combinations forming that make nigh-unkillable enemies. I do like the random attribute system though, but it shows how totally cruel real randomness can be. |
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DX:HR is a bit of a technical failure on my machine. It seems to be CPU bound and lowering the settings doesn't really help. If I bought it new I could probably suffer through it to play it, but I don't want to do that. Unfortunate. I'm still playing Diablo 3. I just hit level 60 last night and have to say that I've been enjoying the hell difficulty level the most so far. The elites/champions are challenging and I am able to handle a majority of them without dying. Whenever I run into an elite group I feel that I can die, so there is some tension there. Some combinations are stupid hard that I have to run by and skip (or quit/restart if I can't), but there are some that are stupid easy too. I have been enjoying the level up carrot and using different skills to work through the content. What really bothers me is that when I do die (which is still a fair %) the repair costs kill me. If I die once or twice to a pack on a level I can pretty much be assured that I won't make positive coin on that level when all is said and done. Unfortunate. That said at level 60 I have a small license to print gold now with Nephalem Valor (relatively speaking). I bought a cheap level 60 bow last night and after 15 minutes or so I made that back, plus some earlier repair costs. I've seen mobs drop 500+ gold. Of course you'll need all this gold on inferno (from what I've read), but since I'm on hell an a newly minted 60 it seems like a lot now. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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DXHR was a pretty awesome game. You're missing out. But you're right about the performance. It always pushed my CPU to the limit, and the CPU cooler as well. She's probably had sex with like 4 different guys by now and has no idea who he is anymore, his face lost in a memory sea of dicks.
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I played it on the 360, so I'm good. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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I'm still on DIII too. I play coop with some mates and it makes life better as we grind our way through the same act over and over. We've done a fair bit of grinding through the same crypts, highlands and manors in Act 1 and finally today had upgraded enough that we're going to proceed. Act 2 is a lot harder but it was manageable, in a way it wasn't some weeks ago when we went there for the first time. I haven't bothered theorycrafting the game to death but if you'd like to start grinding as well I can offer a few strategies that we followed that worked out alright. Too bad we're split across US/EU servers since we could've played some coop. |
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Are you on inferno? I just beat hell Diablo yesterday and got to inferno, but I'm going to take a break for a bit before continuing. Yea, too bad about the EU/US split. <Hugin_len> Basically, cheesy doesn't have awful taste in music, he's simply very white.
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Yeah this is on Inferno. Act 1 was insta-death for me at first but after some upgrades over the past weeks it's gotten easy. Well, in coop it's fine, in SP I'm still fucked against many elite packs (demon hunters don't do well when swarmed). |
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