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Frustrated so far.

Started by houtex, December 21, 2012, 06:29:06 AM

houtex

First off, I apologize for this.  It's a little... ok, a lot, whiny.  I have nowhere else to say these things, I fear, except here, with you guys and gals, who might sympathize with me... or tell me I'm a crybaby and man up.  Either way, that's cool, I just need to speak, and here I am.  Sorry in advance, and also thanks muchly.
---
I am so frustrated.  I feel like Wheatley after the first couple of experiments stop making him have O faces.  I have no game, and I must vent.

DCUO: May need to revisit, but I'm not liking having to wear the gear to use it/get better gear.  Superman doesn't have to wear gear.  Perhaps I'm misremembering.  But it just wasn't all that good an experience for me, and I want to say a lot of it is the goofy way the gear is done.  That, and damn, those bad guys have a helluva target agro...

CO: I can't stand it.  The interface is... passable.  Barely.  I finally got it figured out to be like CoH as much as possible, so it was tolerable overall.  Figured out the gear when I rolled my second character, a Hybrid, and allowed her to be railed into the <10 level missions.  Gear everywhere with those missions, levelled up quickly, it was... ok.  BUT, trying to make a Brawling Humiliator, or just a sweeper in general... nope, game won't let you.  You MUST run missions, near as I can tell, to acquire the gear needed to level up.  I got exactly ONE drop in an hour of street fighting.  ONE.  And it wasn't like I wasn't beatin' the bad guys as quickly as the Hybrid, nope, that Tank was pummelin' them. And I leveled something like 3 times in the space of the amount of time I played with the Tank... I got 0 levels outta him for an hour?  I don't WANT to run missions for gear or levelling.  And it exactly mirrored my previous experience before I rerolled BH CO style the first time.  The final straw, though?  I can't hold down the space bar and jump around like a pogo stick.  Instead I have to tap tap tap the space bar to get the jumping I need... and worse, Follow is turned off by the Jump being turned on!?  WHO WRITES THIS CRAP!?  I'm done with that game.  Ugh.

TSW: 7. Freakin'. Hours.  Finally, FINALLY got it installed and tried it out.  Waited another 20 minutes for all the cutscenes to end to get to the 'how does it work' part.  (I hope that can be skipped later on if I re-roll... Ugh.)  And WHAT in the heck do I find but that, inherently, this 'new' game has NO MOUSELOOK TOGGLE?!  What in the living frack is WRONG with the UI designers?  I mean, seriously, I'm supposed to hold down a key or get an Xbox 360 controller to play this stupid thing?!

Hell to the no.  I sent a bug report stating such, that I won't even play it without something that should be an inherent function in 3d immersive games.  I expect their email in 2 years maybe.  Or never.  I also put up a nicer message to the forums saying "uh. hey.  Maybe I missed the toggle..." but then looking for 'mouselook' shows that nope, I didn't, that they're using Autohotkey, which... well, I'm not gonna do.

So.  I am truly without a game.  I knew I would be, as CoH has spoiled me for the very interface alone, but not only that, it's awesome playstyle.  I'm so sad now.  :(

/You guys with the 'home server' option, hurry the heck up, I wanna beta, and I really could care less if NCSoft comes after me for playing a solo instance in the sanctitiy of my own damn house.

Omni-Nogard

Quote from: houtex on December 21, 2012, 06:29:06 AM

DCUO: May need to revisit, but I'm not liking having to wear the gear to use it/get better gear.  Superman doesn't have to wear gear.  Perhaps I'm misremembering.  But it just wasn't all that good an experience for me, and I want to say a lot of it is the goofy way the gear is done.  That, and damn, those bad guys have a helluva target agro...


CO: I can't stand it.  The interface is... passable.  Barely.  I finally got it figured out to be like CoH as much as possible, so it was tolerable overall.  Figured out the gear when I rolled my second character, a Hybrid, and allowed her to be railed into the <10 level missions.  Gear everywhere with those missions, levelled up quickly, it was... ok.  BUT, trying to make a Brawling Humiliator, or just a sweeper in general... nope, game won't let you.  You MUST run missions, near as I can tell, to acquire the gear needed to level up.  I got exactly ONE drop in an hour of street fighting.  ONE.  And it wasn't like I wasn't beatin' the bad guys as quickly as the Hybrid, nope, that Tank was pummelin' them. And I leveled something like 3 times in the space of the amount of time I played with the Tank... I got 0 levels outta him for an hour?  I don't WANT to run missions for gear or levelling.  And it exactly mirrored my previous experience before I rerolled BH CO style the first time.  I'm done with that game.  Ugh.

TSW: 7. Freakin'. Hours.  Finally, FINALLY got it installed and tried it out.  Waited another 20 minutes for all the cutscenes to end to get to the 'how does it work' part.  (I hope that can be skipped later on if I re-roll... Ugh.)  And WHAT in the heck do I find but that, inherently, this 'new' game has NO MOUSELOOK TOGGLE?!  What in the living frack is WRONG with the UI designers?  I mean, seriously, I'm supposed to hold down a key or get an Xbox 360 controller to play this stupid thing?!

DCUO: Got it on my PS3 and barely touch it. It was 'fun' to get to 40 one time but there's nothing at 40 i want to do. Hate making new toons there since you HAVE to do the tut. and that blows.

CO: Lifetimer, Still Regret that. CO is not a bad game but i just cant get into it anymore, back in the late beta/headstart i had fun with power armor but when that was nerfed AND the mobs BUFFED i quit and only vist every few months to see if its better, only 4 toons one for each year, one 40 others below 15.

TSW: Tried it on my current PC and it Blue-screened upon logging in 3 times, may give it another try after i get my new PC within a day or two.

Electric-Knight

Haha, I haven't even bothered trying anything else yet (and don't really have any plans to so far).

We played CoH for a reason (actually, many reasons).

Honestly, I think perhaps giving some older proven games may be a better idea than any of these newer ones right now. And I say that for a few reasons. First of all, for the depth of additions, tweaks, options, fixes (never mind content-wise). Then, also for the proven factor. If I were to head to one of the older mmorpgs in existence, I can head into it knowing pretty much what to expect (from other people's information, if nothing else).

Sure, the new games may be shinier and still have that new car smell and the mystery of whether or not this one may be a new, great thing... But, let's face it... It's pretty easy to see that none of those are your next big thing, we're CoH players, we don't need the brand new shiny... Again, we're CoH players, we want the options of a mature game.

All that being said... I don't even know what ones of the older games I might even want to try...

I've been considering giving LOTRO a looksee. I had played it very briefly in its beta... I'm a huge Tolkein fan... it was very beautiful, but the actual gameplay and mechanics were a bore to me (classes, gear, loot... BLECH). Still, it could be a great world to sit, emote and role-play (for me).

Funny enough, STO could be the one newish game I could see giving a whirl. Fantastical Scifi setting... a bit of room to do some role-playing and gawking around in the famous ST universe. However, my brief stint of playing that beta left me rather unimpressed with the actual gameplay (so, probably not).

I don't know... some Ultima Online maybe? I never liked EQ, back in the day... and it is just the basis for WoW... I'm not interested in either of those, really. I never tried DAoC... or Anarchy Online. Obviously, these are older... and likely look pretty poorly.

Maybe try the SWG Emu? (www.swgemu.com)
It's far from finished, but, as I understand it, there is plenty to log into and experience and hopefully enjoy. I know I loved that game back in its day. It's very UI friendly, expansive and wonderful for exploration plus its skill system is greatly open and versatile.

Just babbling in the event that something I say might somehow benefit you or, at the very least, make ya feel a bit better about it all (misery loves company!).
;)
--
"Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever."
- Baron Munchausen

http://www.pauldamonthomas.com/

Tenzhi

Quote from: houtex on December 21, 2012, 06:29:06 AM
DCUO: May need to revisit, but I'm not liking having to wear the gear to use it/get better gear.  Superman doesn't have to wear gear.  Perhaps I'm misremembering.  But it just wasn't all that good an experience for me, and I want to say a lot of it is the goofy way the gear is done.  That, and damn, those bad guys have a helluva target agro...

You can lock your appearance quite easily.  And selectively, if you so choose.  You can also change your appearance on the fly between that of any costume pieces you've ever acquired/equipped.
When you insult someone by calling them a "pig" or a "dog" you aren't maligning pigs and dogs everywhere.  The same is true of any term used as an insult.

Victoria Victrix

*HUGS* houtex tight.

I know, I know, oh how I know.  To add insult to injury of the 5 nights I tried to log into CO, 3 of them I couldn't get in because of my crap connection.  I mean, what the hey?  Don't they allow for people with dicey net?  I mean, jeezus cluny frog on a pogo stick, way up into the teen issues on CoX you could still play on dialup.

I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Globetrotter

"So.  I am truly without a game.  I knew I would be, as CoH has spoiled me for the very interface alone, but not only that, it's awesome playstyle.  I'm so sad now."

I can't even bring myself to play anything. I might be still in denial .... 
Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo.

FatherXmas

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 21, 2012, 12:44:43 PM
*HUGS* houtex tight.

I know, I know, oh how I know.  To add insult to injury of the 5 nights I tried to log into CO, 3 of them I couldn't get in because of my crap connection.  I mean, what the hey?  Don't they allow for people with dicey net?  I mean, jeezus cluny frog on a pogo stick, way up into the teen issues on CoX you could still play on dialup.
I could still played CoX until it's dying day on dial-up.  Patches and Issues were very problematic toward the end and teaming or participating in large events were impossible (I played elsewhere to participate in the Immortal Game) but soloing was still very possible.
Tempus unum hominem manet

Twitter - AtomicSamuraiRobot@NukeSamuraiBot

Risha

I can't tell you how many games I've downloaded (HOURS), and didn't stay in 10 minutes.  I am not great with computers, and I should be writing, not playing (WHERE'S MY ONE MISSION, COH BREAK?!).  I have torchlight ii, rift, DCU and aion on the computer now.  I sort of like making pretty people in aion, and I think I might get out of the first zone after a while, if I go back, absolutely NO giving dough to NCSoft.  Torchlight is coming off, like WOW, CO, some others I don't recall. DCU was okay but the movement is wearing, the camera goes all over.

The real problem I have is with movement.  COH was, really, my only mmog and I didn't realize how easily it was to move.  Left arrow key and you turn left, you don't run left and have to zigzag, you don't have to mess with the mouse camera.  I think Aion is the only other one that does this without changing buttons or working into the menus...

Today I put scenes up on Pinterest and nearly wept.  All of my books since I started playing had characters I made in COH for myself and editors.

And yeah, I'm late on deadline, and I should be promoting the novella and book that came out this week, so I guess I'd better get out of here.  I need to put a lock on these forums.
Robin D. Owens

Writer of Fantasy and Fantasy Romance

cptbarcode

Quote from: houtex on December 21, 2012, 06:29:06 AM
TSW: 7. Freakin'. Hours.  Finally, FINALLY got it installed and tried it out.  Waited another 20 minutes for all the cutscenes to end to get to the 'how does it work' part.  (I hope that can be skipped later on if I re-roll... Ugh.)  And WHAT in the heck do I find but that, inherently, this 'new' game has NO MOUSELOOK TOGGLE?!  What in the living frack is WRONG with the UI designers?  I mean, seriously, I'm supposed to hold down a key or get an Xbox 360 controller to play this stupid thing?!

Actually, there is a toggle that separates mouse movement from character movement: T. And until I discovered how to turn that feature _off_ (because, you know, T for TargetNearest was one of my oldest COH binds, and I accidently hit it a lot at first) I found it very frustrating. Because I don't happen to like mouselook. I like using the mouse to steer my character unless I'm taking screenshots. But aside from the occasional slip-of-the-pinkie that hits CAPSLOCK instead of TAB, which causes Vista to have a seizure, I'm finding it very playable.

Skipping the cutscenes on character creation? That, now, doesn't happen. Every character, as far as I know, gets their faction's view of every cutscene and can't opt out. But with only 3 slots, that isn't expected to happen much, rightly or wrongly.

WolfSoul

Let's see. Got the news the Friday I came home from the hospital (back surgery.)  I was so devastated I couldn't even log into COH. So I tried STO, played that probably the whole month I was healing. I haven't touched it since I've been back to work. I liked the immersion and the ground missions, but the space battles are a complete PITA, especially in regards to targeting and turning your ship.

I tried the 3 day free trial of Secret World, before they announced the F2P. I thought the story is good and it looks nice, but the controls are just, I don't know, not right. Like DCUO the "hand blast" abilities had no range. (Can you tell I played mostly blasters? lol) What is it with these games that have Blasting abilities that only work in melee range?

I also tried Everquest 2 for one day. I think D&D online is better, but I'm not playing that anymore either. It just doesn't draw me in.

Recently, I tried SWTOR and I find the story interesting and immersive and I like that when you talk to a contact there is actual voice-over on it. I haven't been on in two weeks, though.

I used to log into COH every day, even if it was just for an hour.

Oh, but I do hightly recommend Wizard101 and Pirate101. Yes, they are family titles and may seem a bit "Kidsy" but they really do have a great storyline and are lots of fun and easy to play.

TL;DR

I tried other games and still really miss COH!



houtex

Quote from: cptbarcode on December 21, 2012, 10:29:57 PM
Actually, there is a toggle that separates mouse movement from character movement: T. And until I discovered how to turn that feature _off_ (because, you know, T for TargetNearest was one of my oldest COH binds, and I accidently hit it a lot at first) I found it very frustrating. Because I don't happen to like mouselook. I like using the mouse to steer my character unless I'm taking screenshots. But aside from the occasional slip-of-the-pinkie that hits CAPSLOCK instead of TAB, which causes Vista to have a seizure, I'm finding it very playable.

Skipping the cutscenes on character creation? That, now, doesn't happen. Every character, as far as I know, gets their faction's view of every cutscene and can't opt out. But with only 3 slots, that isn't expected to happen much, rightly or wrongly.


Yeah, I got told in the TSW forums that T was the thing... so it's labeled (and also acts a) little different.  With that, I may can try to see how it works otherwise.  I've already remapped it to the middle mouse click, which is where I had it in CoH.  Worked ok.

Gettin' a WHOLE lot of lag, in that other players don't show up... and then POP there they are.  o.0

Got into the first mission(?) and it felt very L4D to me.

Weird game.  But at least the mouselook issue is solved.  I'mma give it another chance, but... Meh.  Not feelin' it.

And to all: Thanks.  Y'all are the bestest.

TheDemonHunter

Quote from: WolfSoul on December 22, 2012, 12:43:42 AM
I tried the 3 day free trial of Secret World, before they announced the F2P. I thought the story is good and it looks nice, but the controls are just, I don't know, not right. Like DCUO the "hand blast" abilities had no range. (Can you tell I played mostly blasters? lol) What is it with these games that have Blasting abilities that only work in melee range?

In my experience, Hand Blasters are the ultimate Blapper weapon for DCUO. Once you level up through the skills in Hand Blasters, you'll have an array of melee and ranged attacks to work with, mostly for single targets.  I use them on my main for DCUO. Hand Blast/Sorcery/Acrobatics DPS has given Demon Hunter life in yet another game. He's now level 30 (that's the level cap) with a Combat Rating of 66, done almost entirely solo, as I haven't even set foot in a single raid yet.

Trust me, Hand Blasters aren't the most powerful weapon, but they're far from worthless or purely based in melee. Skip the melee attacks (left side of the tree) if you want to go purely ranged. The morse code-esque mouse clicks to combo your weapon attacks are the most irksome thing for me at this point, but I've gotten better with them.

Your choice of powers will go a long way to determining what kinds of attacks you'll have. Figuring out which powers to chain together with your weapon attacks will go a long way in determining how effective you'll be. Using Sorcery, I have 2 actual single target blasts in my tray at all times, separate from my weapon attacks. Depending on what powers you've chosen, YMMV.
"In my dreams, devil, I soar through a far finer world than this. I dine and dance among graceful goddesses on the other side of the universe, and share home and hearth with heroes. In reality, here -- now -- I'm just another man, in a role I was never meant to play...."

NecrotechMaster

the only MMO ive really tried since coh has gone down was fallen earth since its f2p on steam, its not too bad of a game, but god does it get retardedly slow for what we are used to

on curious thing i was looking at when i was browsing steams f2p games section was there was this one called dragon quest, which is a nexon game, but it seems really odd cause they have special "jump start" things happen where you can register a character and basically get that character bumped up to lvl 45 and given a set of uber lvl 40 armor.  i havent tried it because A) its a nexon game so its likely riddled with microtransaction stuff to do anything, and B) why in the world would they essentially be giving away lvl 45 characters for free unless the level cap was insanely high to begin with?

ive played a couple dozen other games on steam lately but not MMOs

Tenzhi

Quote from: WolfSoul on December 22, 2012, 12:43:42 AM
Like DCUO the "hand blast" abilities had no range. (Can you tell I played mostly blasters? lol) What is it with these games that have Blasting abilities that only work in melee range?

All the weapon abilities in DCUO have melee and ranged attacks.  Hand blast starts out with beams and a charged shot for its ranged attacks.
When you insult someone by calling them a "pig" or a "dog" you aren't maligning pigs and dogs everywhere.  The same is true of any term used as an insult.

Mister Bison

Quote from: Tenzhi on December 22, 2012, 07:19:14 AM
All the weapon abilities in DCUO have melee and ranged attacks.  Hand blast starts out with beams and a charged shot for its ranged attacks.
What he means is that the range is lackluster.

Furthermore, you're right, the sorcery ones have no melee attack at all (well, except the supernatural ones)
Yeeessss....

Tenzhi

Quote from: Mister Bison on December 22, 2012, 12:35:06 PM
What he means is that the range is lackluster.

The range seems about on par with what my non-Range-Boost blasters were typically blasting from.  It's certainly not merely the stated "melee range".

QuoteFurthermore, you're right, the sorcery ones have no melee attack at all (well, except the supernatural ones)

That sounds like a comment related to Champions rather than DCUO.
When you insult someone by calling them a "pig" or a "dog" you aren't maligning pigs and dogs everywhere.  The same is true of any term used as an insult.

Dollhouse

Quote from: NecrotechMaster on December 22, 2012, 05:37:30 AM
the only MMO ive really tried since coh has gone down was fallen earth since its f2p on steam, its not too bad of a game, but god does it get retardedly slow for what we are used to.

I played FE from beta up to about three months after the acquisition by Gamers First. Until TSW, it was hands down the most immersive MMO I've ever played (and yes, that includes my beloved CoH). The developers did a brilliant job with the game's atmosphere, plus it had one of my MMO holy grails: reticule targeting. I loved that game.

Alas, by the time I gave up on it, they still hadn't resolved the many technical bugs and glitches that arose when the game was ported over to G1's very different server architecture. It was horribly laggy, for one...and there were other glitches that were just not getting fixed. The G1 people and remaining Icarus devs were doing their best...but it was apparently a very small staff. I gave up because it was just too frustrating to have the constant technical glitches always knocking me out of immersion. I'd have gone back to have a look...but I've gotten pretty seriously into TSW.

TSW has become my main game. It's immersion heaven for this roleplayer, and the setting is the setting of my dreams. Okay, of those scary dreams you wake up from in a cold sweat...but you get my point. Brilliant atmosphere, the best writing (and cutscenes) in the MMO genre, and the technical and gameplay elements are acceptable at worst and sometimes downright good.

TSW lacks the smooth movement and "kinetic immersion" of CoH...but so does every other MMO; nothing ever came close to City in that area. It played more like a single-player game in that regard. Also hasn't got the content of CoH, obviously. No 6-month-old game could hope to approach the content level of a game over 8 years old.  They are releasing new content at an almost unheard-of pace for an MMO, though...and the quality is staying high.

All-in-all, I'm very happy in TSW. It took a new computer to be able to play it properly (which I needed anyway, as my lappy bit the dust). It is indeed a very resource-heavy game, partly because it's graphically rich, partly because Funcom suck mightily at making their code efficient.

There's a CoH refugee global chat channel that I forget the details of (I don't use global chat in games...). There's a pretty good sized CoH refugee community there, in fact (I've seen a "Marcus 'States' Cole" character that I just didn't have the heart to report for copyright infringement). If any of y'all are playing, friend "StraightRed" and look me up. I rolled on Arcadia (RP server), but you can friend and play with  anyone on any shard.

GamingGlen

DCUO: I can't even get out of the tutorial before I can't stand the game. I uninstalled the game.

CO: characters look like they're sagging/limp; just too cartoony at times.  Since the recent change to starter area my level 5 doesn't know where to go. I died several times to much higher level street toughs, in the "newbie" area. The game doesn't grab me, either.  I love the Champions RPG, but CO is not that (yeah, I know that going in, just emphasing).

STO: was burning out COX when trying to cram playtime in before the end, so I went to STO for a month. That was quite fun for awhile and I still log into it about once a day. I love the DOFF (Duty Officer) assignments as a mini-game; and from the forums it seems to be a favorite for a lot of players.  Burned myself out with my Klingon faction captain in daily ship combat missions and haven't really gotten back  into it.  It will be screenshots from that game plus COX character screenshot pasted into them if I work on another comic/story - if only there were more city-type landscapes to use.  It suffers from the "planet = one terrain" feature.

SWTOR: I was quite put out losing my ship for my smuggler character; zone chatter seemed to indicate I'll get it back about level 10 (or when I can leave the newbie planet I'm guessing). But, I got bored at level 7.  Exited the game and the computer crashed so hard I had to pull the plug for a cold reboot, and that caused CHKDISK to run at start up.  Later started a jedi, with a "cattleprod-looking" lightsabre (sorry, TRAINING light sabre), stopped at level 3. Again, exiting out caused the major crash and CHKDISK again. I uninstalled the game.

TSW: I despise dark-themes.  I read about it any way, and didn't like the factions. Everything about the story and background of this game .. is not for me.

DDO: I like this game, but it's not solo-friendly. PUG teams speed through the dungeons so fast I don't even see most of the mobs. I got my ranger to level 7 and stopped playing.  I played with my tabletop group, but that didn't last long (some started speeding through places, too, which ruined it for the rest of us).  I love the trap detecting, tumbling, climbing, swimming (even tho I suck at the swimming, like IRL) parts of the game.

LOTRO: meh.  Not sure what else I can say about it.

Vanguard: Our group played it for a few months when it first came out, I stuck with it the longest. Went back when it became f2p and didn't stay long. I had been everywhere in the game (creating songs as a bard was fun, especially with invisibility and speed components), didn't like redoing the same raid/missions over and over which most of the other players were doing. I also have issues with the non-instancing of the major dungeons. I don't mind the openness of the first few missions of a series, but the last mission should be an instance IMO.  I mean, how can we have the "one <artifact> that will save the world" when we see another group ahead of us with the same thing and about to "save the world" themselves?  What are we doing here? :D


I think a lot of it is that I'm tired of doing the same MMO stuff for quests.  "Here, <Dr. blah blah> forgot his medicine, go run these pills to him up in the hills." .. and meanwhile some collector wants pelts from a certain animal (a disguised "hunt 10 rabbits" quest).  *yawn*  And you find level 2 rabbits, level 3 rabbits, level 4 rabbits.... really?  Do any of them have fangs?   All of them?  No wonder we don't see any wolves. :D   *yawn*

These days I play CIV 5, and yell at the screen about the cheating AI.

crayehal

#18
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 21, 2012, 12:44:43 PM
Don't they allow for people with dicey net?  I mean, jeezus cluny frog on a pogo stick, way up into the teen issues on CoX you could still play on dialup.
I was laggy in CO too.  To test it, I ran both DCU and CO at the same time.  DCU had no lag as I was flying around the city and attacking random mobs.  When I switched to CO, I kept rubberbanding.  The fix for me was to enable proxy for US servers in the launcher settings.
Quote from: Risha on December 21, 2012, 09:34:22 PM
DCU was okay but the movement is wearing, the camera goes all over.
DCU was made for a controller and gimped keyboard/mouse users.  What worked for me was to lower mouse sensitivity.  Move the slider all the way to the left and then try the mouse.  Move the slider to the right till you get a pan you like.  However, the attacks are mapped to left and right click, so if you attack, you may end up moving the mouse.  Go to the Key bind tab and move the attacks to a key on the keyboard and clear the attacks mapped to the mouse.  Hope that helps.

houtex

Ok, just had to come back to say:  TSW?  Pay me to play it and I might.  Otherwise... nope!  Rant ensues:

Once the 'mouselook' (which it isn't, it's a target mode, offset, and weird.) was shown to me, and I fixed it for my use, I got to playin' TSW and...

Well, there's a whole lot of waiting for the maps to load, waiting for things to load up from the hard drive to show (there's lots of nekkid people for a while... then poof, clothes, for example.) and generally a great deal of hard drive testing... aka thrashing.  And jerkiness to go with that.

Very annoying.

Now, I did make two characters.  The Dragon chick I made was a blade (and then later added a hammer) melee, and that was really good.  The blade's second power allows a heal tick which is very nice indeed.  Didn't die once.  The character itself was enjoyable.

The other one was a Templar, and he was an elemental ranged.  And I found you do the same missions no matter what after picking the powers.  Oookkayy... Fine...

Picking ranged is frankly stupid.  Had I known that, I would have picked blade again.  Or maybe claws or hammer.  But in no way should anyone pick ranged, because you cannot run away fast enough to get out of melee range of the zombies.  Ranged may have use later, but not there.

Somehow, I found a blade for him... and that helped a TON.  Got the heal tick, very nice.  And then I got to where I could pick another power.. oh, I want pistols.  Pistol/blade character sounds nice.

So... it lets me pick a pistol *power*... and slot it on the keys... but I have no pistol.  So.. the power is off.  Until I get a pistol.  And then the blade or elemental powers have to be given up to accomodate the pistol.  WHY DID YOU LET ME DO THAT, STUPID GAME?!

That was the last straw, what with the huge install, local system lag, rubberbanding, fading in/out of things and oh by the way, the mission stalled because I had no idea how to 'go find people to learn about the fog'.  o.0  Oh, yeah, and you can't do a true windowed mode, and they don't allow for a lowering of the system's video demands to a low enough level.  So this is yet another game which would require a large upgrade in both video and cpu, which really means, new computer.

I 'get' what they're trying to do, and I will say this: They're trying too hard.  Nifty ideas, and I kinda like some of them, but overall, this is just painful, and I'm done.

So I'm back to "No game for houtex."  And... It may be for the best.  I need to go shopping for presents and fix my motorcycle and stuff.  I can use the extra minutes.

/Sorry for the rantage.