What games are you currently playing?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I'm just mostly attending to main story missions for my second playthrough of DX:HR.

I thought I'd let the desk jockey cop not lose his job this time around, so I snuck into the police base via the roof. Not going through him obviously means and cop there that sees you will take you down. So some air duct, air duct, knock outs and an airduct later I complete my objective without being seen by anyone but the prisoners. And I escaped through the sewers.

There really isn't a "can't do" in these missions, though you can make it hard on you if you really want to.

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Well I boned myself in FF4: The After Years by mistaking the Green Tail for the Red, so now when I get to ??? the trail collector will give me the EXP Band V2 instead of Rare Items V2 -_-'


Guess I'll have to do a completionist playthrough another time. It's for the better though I guess, as there are a LOT of characters to play with in the final chapter and some of the scenes can vary wildly according to who's in your pt.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Getting my face beat in on Street Fighter III 3rd Strike. I dunno who the charge characters are in this one, so I'm playing Elena for now.

I like the basketball parry mini game, its more helpful for practicing that than the tutorial mode has been.

[Armando]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I dunno who the charge characters are in this one, so I'm playing Elena for now.

Remi and Urien. I don't know if 3rd Strike Online has been rebalanced, but Elena was pretty low tier. It's a shame, because I liked her as a character.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

On fighting games: Balance is theory, tiers aren't facts -Destructoid

Interesting read regarding tiers and 3rd strike. Funny be brings up Ken, because I've been avoiding using him in any game he appears in these days.

And yeah, Remy seems a bit more close to Guile in his charge move set, so there's someone I can feel more familiar with while working on Elena.

[Armando]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

On fighting games: Balance is theory, tiers aren't facts -Destructoid

]The arguments he chooses seem rather weak. He argues there aren't enough data points (people) to generate accurate tier lists but then goes on to say to go with your personal experience. That's the most biased and skewed way to evaluate anything, and you're going with only one data point - yourself. Plus, if you're not reasonably experienced and skilled, your perception may be so far off the mark that it's completely invalid. It's also odd to say that tier lists aren't scientifically generated data (they may as well be, since they're statistics derived from tournament results) and then go and advocate to use personal experience to decide. In practice you need both.

He did have some valid points mixed in (e.g. don't take tier lists as the absolute truth, tier lists are influenced by current trends and generate trends of their own, tier lists can be regional) but overall I feel they were lost among the weak main point he was trying to make.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Can it really be argued that people that play games competitively or even co-operatively don't take a "monkey see/monkey do" approach, though? Those that adhere to the tier lists without question tend to make an argument for efficiency, but they're never showing their experience when they do.

Anyone can play Ken effectively, but therein lies the problem - it doesn't take a lot to be good at Ken just like it doesn't take a lot to be good at Samurai in FFXI aside from gear.

But with Remy/Guile, you're taking on a whole new philosophy from most shotos characters. Your projectiles are more of a defensive or setup tactic than they are an offensive move. You're going to be more mindful of which normals have high priority and zoning. You're mostly playing a defensive game with Guile, Charlie or Remy.

Dubbing these characters low-tier would be a mistake, though, as they're pretty dangerous in the right hands and can destroy those who pick a character just because the EVO guys are playing them. Even the EVO guys know to mix things up and that's why you can see them using Guile to take down someone that whores Fei Long.

[Armando]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Can it really be argued that people that play games competitively or even co-operatively don't take a "monkey see/monkey do" approach, though?

There's nothing wrong with "monkey see/monkey do" in itself. Anyone who wants to improve will do so much more quickly by observing better players and imitating their good behaviors than trying to figure out what works and what doesn't on his/her own. The tier list is a useful tool for beginners because it's often much easier to learn general gameplay with a good character and then move on to a low tier character than to pick a low tier character while you're still learning and bang your head against the wall in frustration.

Monkey see/monkey do is only a problem when that's the only thing someone does. If you can't think for yourself not only are you always going to be behind the curve, people will see your patterns and exploit them.

Dubbing these characters low-tier would be a mistake, though, as they're pretty dangerous in the right hands and can destroy those who pick a character just because the EVO guys are playing them. Even the EVO guys know to mix things up and that's why you can see them using Guile to take down someone that whores Fei Long.

If Guile/Remy consistently places low in tournaments, Guile/Remy is low tier. That's how tier lists work. Low tier characters can still (and often do) have good match-ups against high-tier characters - the problem is they don't have enough good match-ups, or have too many really bad match-ups. Anyone that thinks a low tier character will never beat a high tier character is deluded or doesn't really understand that tier lists are more an indication of average performance than absolute performance.

[Kailea]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

glad I play for fun.... because this tier stuff sounds silly ;p

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

.If Guile/Remy consistently places low in tournaments, Guile/Remy is low tier. That's how tier lists work. Low tier characters can still (and often do) have good match-ups against high-tier characters - the problem is they don't have enough good match-ups, or have too many really bad match-ups. Anyone that thinks a low tier character will never beat a high tier character is deluded or doesn't really understand that tier lists are more an indication of average performance than absolute performance.

Again, regions show the discrepancies in tiers quite clearly. You play FFXI, you see these differences every day between Japanese and American players. You go from one server to another and again there are also differences - there's a reason people get nervous about server merges, its culture clash all over again. This is just the nature of games that have social elements to them and fighters are no different.

And like so much of MMOs or fighting games, while data is gathered with good intentions, its also used by the faux elite player to lord over the intermediate and beginner player. Some people just can't feel good about themselves until they've convinced other players that Shoto X or Generic Popular Melee Class Y is "the way" to play the game.

Which is all I end up seeing a tier list as - some jackass telling me how to play the game. I'm not picking up SSFIIIOE with visions of cometing in Evo here, just for some semi-competitive fun.

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Downloading Bloodrayne: Betrayal now, I'm hoping its as Metroidvania-ish as it looks, though even if its not its a WayForward game so I doubt it will disappoint.

[Armando]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Again, regions show the discrepancies in tiers quite clearly

That doesn't mean they're completely different. There are discrepancies, but it's rare for the differences to be huge (e.g. high tiers in US being low tiers in Japan or vice-versa.)

If someone wants to just play the game without regard for tiers, more power to him. That doesn't mean tiers are some made-up religion used by elite players to indoctrinate noobs. Like parsers and any other form of statistics, they can reveal interesting info or be horribly misconstrued.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I believe I covered that, though. More often than not on forums, they're misconstrued. With fighters, its not like how it used to be where you had small groups of friends in the arcade finding a character to master and playing each other, coming over to each other's homes to do some more fighting games and back to the arcades the next day.

Going to the Evo forums is just like going to BG - a handful of well-meaning people buried in bullshit. That's the catch of being the center of a community and it sadly makes you a less reputable source for all those jackasses that come out to troll and epeen. If you go to Capcom-Unity, Guard Impact or more specific forums you're more likely to learn something.

Its much harder to get great data when all your opponents are on the internet, though. You have no way of knowing if they play on D-Pad or Arcade stick or something programmable even, then there's the lag, netcode and all this other stuff. You really can only get worthwhile data locally still.


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Back to Bloodrayne: Betrayal. More Castlevania than Metroid, though she has the wall jumps and platforming of Alucard and Samus, Rayne is more hack'n'slash oriented. It score/stage based 2D Devil May Cry meets Castlevania than a Metroidvania.

Its pretty amazing so far, so I'm not disppointed for the lack of Metroid elements, particularly given this time in October WayForward has Aliens: Infestation on the DS and that is Metroid-y.

[Raydeus]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Playing Dead Island (even though I still haven't finished DXHR ) and enjoying every minute of it.

If there is one thing that bugs me though it is the respawn mechanics/times for zombies (and items.) Not only do they respawn in the exact same places doing the exact same things, but the fact that many things you do are reset without even being 20m away can be an immersion killer. So I'd definitely hope following a bit more on the L4D inspiration they can add a patch later on to randomize things a bit. After all that worked awesomely for adding quite a lot of replayability to L4D.


Other than that the game is unexpectedly solid so far, and the focus on melee and character development is a very, very welcomed change to the formula.



PS > Dead Island 2 (or an expansion pack), in a city setting with Mirror's Edge acrobatics and more developed melee combat added to the wish list.

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

If there is one thing that bugs me though it is the respawn mechanics/times for zombies (and items.) Not only do they respawn in the exact same places doing the exact same things, but the fact that many things you do are reset without even being 20m away can be an immersion killer. So I'd definitely hope following a bit more on the L4D inspiration they can add a patch later on to randomize things a bit. After all that worked awesomely for adding quite a lot of replayability to L4D.

I don't think this is the sort of thing you can just "patch in". L4D manages such a fluid level of spawn control because the internal game Director AI is built specifically to handle it in a seamless and quasi-random way.


Icemage

[Armando]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I don't think this is the sort of thing you can just "patch in". L4D manages such a fluid level of spawn control because the internal game Director AI is built specifically to handle it in a seamless and quasi-random way.

This. If you start a map using the console, you can turn on sv_cheats and use all sorts of cheat commands. One of them lets you see what the Director is up to. It's pretty entertaining and interesting. The Director has cooldown timers for special infected (queueing them if there are already 2 up), a cooldown timer for hordes, a maximum number of wandering zombies, and all sorts of conditionals (e.g. it won't spawn more zombies after a tank spawns.) It also makes sure the zombies spawn outside of your field vision.

Sounds like the sort of thing you really have to plan for from the very beginning.