I guess since I'm here again, I'll make my own Now Playing topic!

[Maniac]

so yeah, another topic that will languish forever

For the greater part of the year, as I've said elsewhere, I've been binging on Guild Wars 2. Turns out the only thing keeping me from being a filthy MMO addict is to have not have to pay monthly fees to play a decently well-crafted MMO (lol KMMOs), I suppose. I guess that's the only thing keeping me from selling my soul to FFXIV! That said, I've been on a huge off period for that game and have been filling the void left in its wake with other stuff that maybe someone here cares about!

So, current projects:

• Fallout 4 - Of course. I dunno, I actually haven't played that much Fallout 4. Still haven't beaten it, in fact. I dunno, I like it less than Fallout 3 or New Vegas, probably because Fallout 4 is essentially Fallout 3 with a couple of mods put in. Doesn't really stand out compared to either of the previous games. I liked Fallout 3 because it was so empty that it felt kinda lonely and introspective, and New Vegas for being extremely lively and having a lot of detail put into its setting, whereas Fallout 4 stands in this awkward limbo in the middle where it's not empty enough, but most of the life in the world is made up by literally nameless settlers who have nothing to say or contribute. I guess it feels kinda like Skyrim where a lot of stuff is boiled down into procedurally-generated components and left in the hands of the player as opposed to having original, detailed content (a bit more or a bit less than Skyrim in specific areas), which... honestly, is part of a trend in open world games that I really do not appreciate. I don't dislike the game, and I'm still kinda playing it every now and then, but it's kind of a bummer.
  
• Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines - Fairly well-known PC game by ex-Black Isle folks, known for being pretty open in terms of setting and objectives. Notoriously buggy, so much so that the game will not run straight after installation on Steam, you have to patch it off-site. I had been meaning to play it for a while, but I never got around to it. One of my new pals seems to be pretty into it, so I guess I'm using that as a reason to finally check it out. Haven't played too much of it, yet -- it's kinda the game I've set aside for when I'm out of my room, since my laptop can actually run it. Seems pretty interesting, though!

And of course, I tend to touch random things for, like, an hour at a time and forget about them forever afterwards.

Looking forward to with ascending degrees of hesitation: Dark Souls 3, Persona 5, Fire Emblem: Fates. All of which I'm kinda wary of -- I'm getting tired of the "DARK SOULS EVERY YEAR" thing that seems to be going on. I think they're really losing their creativity with that specific setting (dunno about Bloodborne), but that could just be that they left Dark Souls 2 to the wrong designers (hey guys, let's make 50% of the bosses clones of Artorias because everyone likes Artorias, right!?). I've long since stopped caring about the Persona games just because of how much time they require and all of the dumb high school bullshit (man, I played Persona 4 when I was 15 and I'm 22 now, let's friggin' move on), but I'm kinda curious what they can do with that franchise on an 8th gen console, since they skipped the entire 7th gen. Fire Emblem: Awakening was the worst game in that series by a decent margin and I dunno if Fates is gonna fix that (looks like it isn't!), but I guess I've invested too much time into Fire Emblem to not see if they've redeemed themselves, I dunno. Sunk costs, yay!

EDIT: Oh yeah, also I may or may not move stupid D&D **** I do or someone else in my campaign does here, too. Got only one meeting left for the semester though, and we're prolly gonna rush it since finals weeks is incoming.

[Random]

Turns out the only thing keeping me from being a filthy MMO addict is to have not have to pay monthly fees

this effectively describes my relationship with Destiny

but probably without the "decently well-crafted" element

[Youef]

I feel like DS3 looks more like Bloodborne than it does DS1 at this point.

[Maniac]

Turns out the only thing keeping me from being a filthy MMO addict is to have not have to pay monthly fees

this effectively describes my relationship with Destiny

but probably without the "decently well-crafted" element

It's probably as well-crafted as GW2 at any rate. As long as it isn't KMMO levels of shit, I suppose.

I've totally been in complete media blackout regarding both P5 and Dark Souls 3, so like, I dunno. Like, one thing I'm really cautious about with Dark Souls 3 is that it was announced this year and put up for release early next year -- who has been working on it up to this point? Bloodborne was released this year, and they had been developing DLC for Dark Souls 2 up to the end of last year as well as having allocated at least some people in doing Scholar of the First Sin. Did they have an entirely separate C-team doing it up until those other projects were finished, or is this a short development cycle? I guess they could prolly pull it off by using Scholar of the First Sin as a base, but the idea of pushing Dark Souls as a yearly thing is pretty dubious (not to mention that they have a precedent for this courtesy of Armored Core).

[Youef]

Yeah, I was also surprised with how quickly DS3 was announced. I think Miyazaki described Dark Souls 3 as the turning point of the franchise, whatever that means exactly. It doesn't seem likely that they'll make another Dark Souls game though. Maybe something with similar gameplay, but a different setting like Bloodborne. I know they want to take the whole series in some new directions at least. I also don't even think there are clear cut "A" and "B" team distinctions at From. It seems like they're just mixing and matching, since I know Tanimura is helping out with some design choices for DS3.

[ganonfloyd]

Last I checked, Miyazaki said recently this is the last Dark Souls game. Not sure if its the last "Souls" game, but I'd be okay with that; I'd like to see FromSoftware utilize their new muscle and presumably budget on some spiritual successors to Otogi or Lost Kingdoms or something since there's so much worth in those games that they could explore.

also def move d&d **** to this topic

[Maniac]

last d&d meeting of the semester. we're in a mystery thing, and we kinda fucked up, missed a lot of cues and checks and a lot of people died. in retrospect, if I stealthed and camped out in the main hall on one night like i probably should have (we were disrupted in our sleep by a red herring meant to disguise stuff actually going down later that night. i'm not very smart with mysteries lol), we could have solved it then and there. not finished yet, so i guess it's gonna be a month-long cliffhanger.

in gay elf sex stories, one of the guests murdered was an elf i spent all of my interactions with hitting on. he also died as a direct response to me pushing the party downstairs to meet up with the cleric, since all of the enemies were incorporeal specters. said cleric was downstairs on my orders, since we found a weird room i wanted someone camped in. also because most of the spells the culprit used up to that point were illusory and i thought the specters were just illusions and the sorcerer who rolled knowledge spellcraft failed a check with her 22. weeeeelp.

also the girl i have a crush on who is also in the d&d campaign was pretty exasperated with my interactions with him, so i guess there's your awkward maniac story of the day

[Ƨɒlƚy]

Why does it sound like you're the party leader?

[Maniac]

i'm not (in fact, i'm actually spying on them), but i'm the guy who questions everything out of paranoia and wrong genre savviness. like, only one other player in the team is as suspicious and inquisitive as i'd like them to be, so i generally get people to shut up, i come up with a call, and quite a few of them go with it because they're generally not making their own calls.

also, as the party rogue (read: skill mule), it's my job to do all the checks and make sure everything is in order, so i've grown used to making a jillion calls because that's my greatest utility at the moment

[Ƨɒlƚy]

Making most or all of the decisions sounds like being the party leader to me.

[Maniac]

Not really, it's just that a lot of them are very shortsighted and not meticulous with planning stuff. Actually, before the session started, we were talking about how our party would fit into the TVTropes five man band (lol) and my character was the smart guy, sooooo

Just as an example of what I mean, one of my party members yelled at me for disrupting a plan in the middle of a battle that she literally never told me about, and only well after the fact instead of saying "no, don't do that" right as I was about to do my thing, which actually severely pissed me off. That's the kind of organization I deal with.

[ganonfloyd]

just had my last session of the year too with the news that the dm is moving to california so that's cool

[Maniac]

well that ended fast

yeah, i'm the oldest of my group by a fair margin -- they're all like, 18-20, so they'll be around for a while. and i guess so will i, because i'm a bad person

[Ƨɒlƚy]

just had my last session of the year too with the news that the dm is moving to california so that's cool

sending him my way?

You beautiful person.

[Maniac]

I wonder if Undertale would have gotten this far if everyone didn't utterly fucking freak out over it winning for each round it was in. I mean, I imagine nearly everyone who is voting for it would probably vote for it anyway because they like it and all, but I wonder how many of those people would actually turn out to vote for it if they didn't get some concrete results out of doing so.

like ahriman for example