Lurker's Lair

First topic message reminder :

A long time tradition in the original Elder Scrolls forum kept alive by The Hall of Torque through the years.  Don't lurk, post!

smells like a new forum lurk

Yeah, that's a problem with a lot of those " strategy " types of freemium games. There's gonna be something that completely breaks all sense of any perceived balance and screws over the vast majority of the playerbase.

One game I play has a few OP units, combined with the fact that the AI cheats. For example, if you see the enemy warlord is this particular guy, just give up right off. You automatically can't win because he's too damn OP and his 1st available ability can effectively create and insant, invincible bunker setup that you simply can't get through and that will either take all your attention while he nukes you, or you ignore it to stop his nuking units while it whittles you away turn after turn, or worst case, he has his nukers behind the damn thing.

And of course, that warlord is a premium currency one you buy. Go figure.

* lurk *

It's been a while so I might as well

lurk

Purchased FFXVI so... 
lurks

I guess it's not really news anymore, but Guild Wars 2 will be getting a fourth expansion. The dragons are gone, now we're getting... an invasion from Mordor? Oblivion? Oh right - the Mists. I better read up on this before I make a pre-purchase. Anyway GW2 is not done yet.

Obscure lurk

I plan on getting it, but I'm just curious about the weapon master thing. I hope they adjust traits or something to compensate for the lack of new specs. Otherwise, using the extra weapons won't really be worthwhile.

* lurk *

After completing Jagged Alliance 3 for the first time I just started playing Baldur's Gate 3. The intro video to this game is truly epic. 
I'll get back to actually playing now with my newly created Tiefling bard, Tiff.

I saw the first part of a playthrough of it, it certainly looks impressive, especially the cutscenes. Char creation and the gameplay look good as well. Except the dice throws, that just throws me off a bit because they break immersion. I'm not into Dungeons and Dragons stuff myself and I know nothing of the lore, but I'll certainly follow your playthrough thread. I'll be playing JA3 myself though, I had tons of fun with its predecessors and this third one should be good too. Cheers!

dicey lurk

A group of friends and I play D&D on a weekly basis, using a custom campaign and some variations to rules to make things more fun.

Incidentally, one of the players there has a tiefling bard. He's not the one to watch out for. It's our dwarf fighter that's the bad news. If he wants something, anything between him and it is in for a very bad day. No matter how tough it seems, no matter how impossible things appear, he'll find some way to absolutely destroy whatever obstacle it is.

My own char, a high elf paladin, is almost boring by comparison. She's just on a romance quest.

* lurk *

We've escaped the nautiloid and thus the prologue is done. How do you like my Tiff so far? If you look really closely, you'll notice he's quite an odd character - in a very specific way.

He does look odd, that's for sure. Other than the business end of a broom under his nose, the tribal face decorations, the tiefling horns, the otherwise gender-neutral looks and the gaudy wardrobe I have no idea what specifics you're alluding to. I think LadyM will like his looks though.

In other news, I'm close to buying parts for a new PC. My current one is almost 12 years old, and the graphics card it was upgraded with is not much short of a decade old, so running BG3 with it is out of the question and it's high time I bought something new, before prices go up again because of some world crisis or another. Only the SSD I added is relatively recent, and my Windows installation is on it so it'll save me buying another copy. It's a wonder I've still been able to play games with it, even recent ones.

upgrade lurk

When I first started playing I noticed his body shape was that of a female - breasts and wide hips. Makes Tiff a hermaphrodite - which should be rather unique. I've no idea why the game did that. Might be that I first picked female and switched to male before completing the char creation - I don't know. 

* Unique lurk *

Making progress in TotK is still going slow as usual. I got most of the armors now though.

* lurk *

I'm on my new PC now. I spent Saturday afternoon sticking the hardware together, and today I took care of the software installation after buying a cheap Windows 11 key online, so I didn't have to use my old Windows key. Only after checking if the store was trustworthy of course. I only need to port a bunch of files over from the old rig, like music, pictures and savegame files and whatnot, and of course install some more games, and I'm set. I got a key for Bethesda's new game Starfield for free with my graphics card, it will be playable from next Friday. And I also bought Baldur's Gate 3 so I can play that as well. I'm finally up to date again! 

brand new rig lurk

I've been busy in GW2 playing the new expansion's stuff and working towards masteries. There's a lot pro/con things with how they changed some things. Hopefully they'll smoothe it all out soon.

* lurk *

That new GW2 expansion didn't appeal to me enough to make a purchase, actually I'm not playing the game at all right now. As soon as I have everything I need from my old PC ported over to my new one, I'll be playing BG3 and other new games I got recently.

anticipating lurk

I like it, but more for the stuff we still don't have quite yet. Then again, I'm a veteran from the early days in GW1, so I'm kinda always in favor of more stuff in GW2, unless they get to where they just ruin everything. As long as I still have fun and all, I don't intend on stopping playing it. I got some friends I hang around with in-game during a particular meta and we goof around waiting for things to happen.

* lurk *

Well, I did install GW2 again on my new PC just in case I want to have a look and maybe play a bit, but my priorities right now are on other games. I just made a new char in BG3 and I'll show some screenshots in a minute.

char creation lurk

I know how it is. I was on a Thief binge for a while recently. I just felt the urge to get back into that and do things. I've also got TotK to finish with still. I haven't touched Sims 3 in ages now and I still have a project I'm working on there. It's just an issue of time and all.

* lurk *

Suddenly I'm very busy again playing games. I got Starfield Premium Edition along with my new video card, and one of the perks is early access to the game. I got in yesterday, and since it's a Bethesda game much like their previous games as far as gameplay goes, the learning curve is pretty flat. So the other games will have to wait, I'm doing Starfield first. It does look great on my new rig, check out my screenshots in the "Other Video Games" section here.

another char creation lurk

Progress in SotO has been slow, but I'm getting there. I kinda like being able to use the skyscale as a combat mount, just not the way you aim the fireballs. A lot of people don't like action camera style stuff, and that's what it uses.

I'm close to the end of the story for what's currently available. I'm not in any real rush to finish yet though.

* lurk *

Starfield has had lots of just criticism, but thank goodness for modders. As usual with Bethesda games the gameplay will be much improved because of them (I'm sure Bethesda were counting on it, actually) and even in this first week since release loads of useful or even just cosmetic mods have been released. I linked a video in my Starfield thread that showcases some of them.

modders' lurk

I dunno if it's because of the weather changing or what, but I've had a Hell of a week sleep-wise. Hopefully it gets better soon.

* lurk *

Is anyone else getting those captchas? I had a hell of a time trying to fix my screenshot posts, with every other edit being messed up by the captcha popping up and ruining the screenshot code somehow, costing me ten times as much time to simply post my images. The makers of this forum software should be aware there are more modern ways than captchas to keep spammers and fake posters out. This is just horrible.

bad programming lurk

I see those rarely. 

* They're a mystery lurk *

I didn't even know we still had those here.

I've seen some that were damn near impossible to do. Not just text, but picture ones too. Fortunately, the picture ones aren't as bad, but still.

The ones I deal with regularly are on Gaia, and maybe 1 outta 20 will require any attention, the rest simply need you to just click the box and that's it.

When I looked at the forum of a game I used to play, it would make one come up for almost everything, even just using the search feature. Sometimes it'd take me longer to get through that crap than it would if I just manually looked through the sections, defeating the purpose.

* lurk *