Bored Druid ThreadFollow

What about coffee, is coffee good as well? :3

Couldn't live without it.
It's not fun though, when you spill a whole cup of coffee on your lap at the beginning of a day at work and no chance of changing those pants.

I made a post on the o-broads about priest stuff, then realized I also wanted to reply to a different post, well 2 other ones.

So I ended up making 3 posts, in a row.

You should always use a coaster.

lol, thanks Horse.

Also, w00t Sparkle Magic! Our furthest progressed raid group got heroic Nef down earlier this week, and heroic Al'akir tonight! So now we're ranked first Horde side and 3rd on the server overall. So stoked for them!

No, he raids with me in our once a week raid. =x We were at 10/12 before the raid group disbanded, although Popina is personally at 11/12. His DK is 10/12 as well. With the new group though, we're going to start working on a couple heroic modes in addition to finishing up normal modes for the tier. His lock that he takes to a once a week alt run is 12/12 though.

I downloaded a GPU emulator--going to see if I can get Rift to run on my laptop by forcing my CPU to handle that aspect...

Probably still won't be able to run it on anything but low, but since they now have the free trial available, I figured it was worth the attempt.

Until I can order a rig, I'm gaming on my laptop. It's decently powerful, but the integrated chipset doesn't have hardware T&L built in (which is all I need to emulate--the chipset will do the rest).

If things go well, I'd wager I'll see low teen FPS on low settings. Really, I'm just bored and watch to check the game out, even though I know it'll run like crap. :P

Also, I lol'd.

The fact that Rift's code isn't already as horribly disfigured as WoW's is presents reason enough for me to prefer it, without knowing anything about its story (which is the reason I always preferred WoW... and now one of the reasons I don't want to play it).

That and the fact that the dev team for WoW seem so stuck in stupid ideas that they aren't willing to make the proper compromises necessary for the health of the games' people. To be fair, I might not be so irritated if I didn't have a Mage main... Once you get down to the core of that class, everything just seems broken now. They are building the code off of design premises that are impossible to implement with the current state of the code, combustion and ignite being perfect examples.

And instead of accepting that it's never going to work (which they've PUBLICALLY STATED) due to their base code and taking the class in a new direction that would actually work, they insist on just keeping to this path. And it essentially means that the entire Fire tree, which is STILL the only viable raiding option, is horribly RNG-based and has wild damage fluctuations. And the actual rotation is such that you can actually lose large portions of damage just to coding issues, because the game won't recognize your spells.

I'm sure this is true of other classes, too, I just don't have as intimate knowledge of those.

This very well might be the future of Rift, but right now it's early enough that these kinds of issues are VERY unlikely. And if they've learned anything from a game like WoW, they've planned ahead to limit the amount of unnecessary code layering they do. If we're lucky, they'll actually never try to implement impossible codes in the first place (refusing to settle for "good enough" mechanics).

...And this post turned into a rant we didn't need on the BDT, sorry. >.<

To be fair, I think a lot of this has to do with WoW really being one of the most innovative MMOs--comparing Cata to Vanilla is crazy. I don't blame them for having coding problems, I blame them for pretending they don't. I just hope that newer MMOs have seen how lack of code planning for the future is dangerous.

[EDIT]

I'll add that I'll probably be back in WoW soon--but it's purely in a "I need something to do until I get my new rig" capacity.

Edited, Jun 10th 2011 2:04pm by idiggory

FFVIII was a disappointment for me. :/

The game was fine, but that's about the best I can say. The story was ridiculously hard to follow, and I really disliked the draw system. Combine that with the augment system, and the fact that enemies leveled up with you...

You were actively discouraged from actually partaking in battles, and also had the ability to (quite-easily) make yourself super-powered. And it isn't even an exploit, it's part of the actual game.

I usually play all my games like a TCer. Being forced to not maximize my characters to maintain a good difficulty keeps things from being fun just as much as being way OP does. :(

[EDIT]

I still haven't actually beaten FFIX. I've tried to do so a ton, but it just hasn't clicked with me. I haven't been able to like any character but Vivi, and the story was kinda meh. I WOULD like to really try to do so eventually though. Maybe once I get a handheld...

Edited, Jun 10th 2011 2:21pm by idiggory

Ugh the thing I hated about the draw system was getting stocked up initially. You get out into the game, and the first thing you do is spend like 2 hours building up your reserves of spells. I almost put the game back down at that point. It's so much better once you get the GF refine-magic abilities, and can just farm items instead, or play cards.

I liked the junction system, and rather enjoyed trying to optimize different characters in different ways in early/mid game. But yeah, the fact you can have like 5k HP on 3 characters on the first disk is rather dumb.



I <3 Vivi. So cute and pitiful, yet resilient; you just want to hug him. He's one of my all time favorite FF characters.

Edited, Jun 10th 2011 11:38am by someproteinguy

I could probably say something good and bad about most of the FF series I've played. In the end they're still the measuring stick I hold other RPGs up to. In general I liked the ones with a more open character development, since it meant I could dig myself into a bit of a hole, and added to the number of times I could replay the game.

VII - Loved the manteria system. Hated that there were so many characters (did we really need 8/9 of them for 3 active slots?) and the graphics bugged me. I hated that really polygon-looking phase even at the time.

Tactics - The game idea itself was loads of fun. I loved the storyline. But hated how so many of the end fights seemed to involve either stacking classes, or using the OP characters the game gave you instead of the ones you spent all that time developing.

VIII - Loved the junction system, but hated draw. Think I did this one already... :S

IX - Liked the chocobo digging game. Hated the fact the characters were too rigid in their development and that Vivi seemed to need to be paired with Stiener. I had trouble really getting into this one.

X - Liked the character development system, but hated the fact you never really got a world to explore. I liked playing with Kimahri's development, but it kind of sucked the others were pretty rigid in how they were set up. Glad they finally started putting more of an end-game in this one.

X-2 - The main storyline was way to simplistic and fast; especially if you don't realize you need to explore the whole world in Ch1 or a bunch of stuff is locked out. Character development was rigid and rather predictable. But the end game dungeon was challenging at least.

XII - Loved the open character development. Gambits were a nice touch. I found the story intriguing. The fact you (or at least I) never really used your summon monster things kind of threw me. This one was a long one though, I think it took me 70+ hours the first time, and the battles got really repetitive at that point.

I played the first and second one, and the tactics game on the gameboy. Still don't have a PS3. Not much strong to say about the first two, but the laws on the gameboy tactics game tended to **** me off a lot.

Edited, Jun 10th 2011 12:41pm by someproteinguy

GRRRR. I just got off the phone with Netflix, after they billed me for starting my free trial on the PS3 (having been using my brother's or sister's account up till now).

When I registered, I used my parents' address (as I do for all billing accounts, since my current address changes every year for the same reason). Guess my brother did the same thing, since he was in grad school when he opened it.

And, it also turns out, you are limited to one trial per address. Except that it doesn't bother to tell you that. So when you click the button that says "Start Free Trial" and it then tells you that you won't be billed for a month, it's LYING.

Granted, it's only $8. But it's just the principal of the thing. It's definitely not too much to ask, imo, that the registration system informs you if you are ineligible for a trial. ESPECIALLY when you aren't expecting to be billed for a month.