I don’t know about nowadays, but back in 2007 when I got bored with Runescape I switched to Guild Wars. Great MMO. Kind of dead playerwise now, but the servers are still up and it is soloable.
Recovered my account a couple years ago with support and providing my og serials. Can’t believe it worked but it punched me in the face nostalgia-wise when I got into it.
I still remember hanging out in a few of them around this time of year when stuff was decked out Halloween themed. Never did beat the expansions. Crazy how little detail the game seems to have by today’s standards 🤣
Guild wars 2 is a very good game, but very different than guild wars 1.
They both avoid the endless gear and level grind, but gw2 is generally easier and less tactical. You can solo most of it. Builds are a little more limited, but it’s also harder to make a useless character.
They addressed the most common problems with early mmos: other players are never a bad thing. there’s no kill stealing. If you’re doing some event to fight off demons that have invaded the town, and other people show up, the game silently scales up a to accommodate more players, and everyone gets credit. it’s great.
I really like it. I don’t play it every day, but I go back to it all the time.
Yeah it does a lot of stuff very good. The only thing I miss is something like chasing WoW raids drops. In GW2 you’re almost always working on crafting/mysticforge/achievements instead. I play a lot though don’t get me wrong :P
Well…except the next installations of Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Let’s be honest, that’s what Microsoft were really buying, and neither are anywhere near a release.
Judging by how Starfield turned out, will missing either of those games (which are almost certainly going to be using the same incredibly outdated engine) be much of a loss?
For those of us that miss the lore and story/atmosphere of this games, absolutely.
Don’t get me wrong, Starfield has made me truly worried about the next installment, and I truly believe that milking Skyrim has ultimately left Bethesda in a position where open world gaming just leapfrogged them. The likes of TOTK and Elden Ring have absolutely shattered what they can show to deliver in a supposedly improved generation.
All I can hope is that Bethesda really look at the feedback they received, and take the time to make the necessary changes to their engine. That alone might be enough to at least give a retro feel to the games. I’ll still eagerly await them, but my hopes for them being GOTY are long gone.
The engine isn’t why Starfield sucks. Sure, the constant loading isn’t great but it isn’t the reason there’s nothing fun or interesting to do. It’s also a solvable issue, but they haven’t made the investments they need in the engine.
Starfield is just soulless. The characters are boring, the stories aren’t interesting and don’t let the player choose fun options. The universe is static and nothing matters. There’s just no reason to be involved in the world, so there’s no reason to want to be in it.
They could fix this. I’d say the way they need to go to do so is to stop targeting literally every player. They need to figure out who they’re making the game for and target them. I’m a big sci-fi fan, and I like older Bethesda games. I should have been an easy target for Starfield, but I hated it, not because of the engine but because the stories, characters, and universe weren’t engaging. The engine is an easy target to complain about, but it isn’t what’s holding them back. Indie games can do more with worse engines.
The engine really isn’t suited for the kind of game Starfield wants to be, so it really works against it. But you’re right, even if it were a new shiny engine with the same writing and characters, it would still suck. Likewise, if it had the same creaky engine but actual good stories and characters the constant loading would be easier to overlook. It just has the worst of both worlds.
Bethesda’s game design is just too old. Playing Starfield felt like playing an RPG from a decade ago. Bethesda just got complacent from back when they were one of the only companies that could seriously do an open-world RPG, now we have CD Projekt-Red and FromSoftware with wildly different, significantly more innovative gameplay experiences. Hell, even other AAA devs like Capcom have been able to outperform in the open world space, Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a ton of fun.
No, sadly I think the design is too new. Morrowind was 22 years ago. It is the direction I’d like to see them go again. A complex world that feels lived in, and actually gives players options to play how they want and figure things out for themselves. The newer boring “design for everyone” approach sucks. There’s no soul and nothing interesting.
FromSoft is somewhat notoriously old-school. Their game design has directly evolved from their older games. Look at King’s Field and then look at Dark Souls. There’s so much similarity. Yeah, ER is more cleaned up with a fuck-ton more money and technology available, but it’s essentially the same design.
Obviously Balder’s Gate 3 is just an evolution of classic RPG design, and it did very well. I’d argue CDPR also has taken classic RPG inspiration more than modern ones. A modern RPG design wouldn’t do half the stuff Cyberpunk did, because it’s not targeting everyone (and no one).
Modern AAA design doesn’t pick a target. Their target is everyone and everything, so they do nothing well. Classic design is knowing who your game is for and making a game for them and not anyone else. Bethesda is doing the former.
Holy fuck gamers really do have the worst memories. Cyberpunk is still a shit game after 4 fucking years of patches. CDPR has like 5 titles and one of them is pretty good. FromSoftware has a legacy of bangers a mile long. These 2 companies aren’t even in the same wheelhouse.
Cyberpunk is very much not a shit game, it’s a pretty good RPG with a great variety of character builds and fantastic writing. The devs did an absurd amount of work in order to make the gameplay significantly more fun. I’d also make the argument that Witcher 2 is a really good game, and is what popularized the series enough for Witcher 3 to be such a colossally known hit. The two companies make very different RPGs to one another, for sure, but you’re just being a contrarian if you think the pedigree of the two companies is vastly different.
but you’re just being a contrarian if you think the pedigree of the two companies is vastly different.
Even if we ignore all the other bootlicking and fanboying in the above comment, this statement alone is completely absurd. FromSoftware has developed over 50 games and CDPR has…4? Maybe 10 if you count mobile trash? By the year 2000 FromSoftware had released more successful games than CDPR has released total, good or bad, to date.
It’s no wonder that cyberpunk is such a piece of garbage really when you realize every other game CDPR ever developed has “the witcher” somewhere in the title.
Corporate greed has killed all of my favorite mmos, and every new mmo that comes out is further down the spiral.
So I decided to make my own damn game, a mashup of my top 5 favorite defunct mmos. Base gameplay/progression/dynamic events from Tabula Rasa, Star Wars Galaxies crafting/building, Firefall jumping/gliding/thumping, the mechs from Exteel, and the territory control map from Planetside 1.
It’s 100% a shameless asset flip, and currently jank af, but pretty fun at the moment.
I am blissfully unaware of the differences, and since I’m playing the steam deck on my TV the only HDMI cable I rummaged around for and found in our pile of obsolete cables is doing the job.
Not really. It isn’t as good as Far Harbor aeven though the world building is better and more interesting. Of course it’s way worse than Dragonborn. But it’s definitely better than Nuka World and Automaton. And also better than the Pitt and Mothership Zeta even though it’s difficult to make comparisons with Fallout 3
First off: cables don’t have version numbers. The host and the client have ports that adhere to a certain spec and the HDMI foundation made that very unclear by incorporating 2.0b into 2.1 and now not every 2.1 port supports the same things. Cables are defined by their max bandwidth, i.e. high speed, ultra high speed or high speed with ethernet. You might see marketers saying something is a 2.1 cable, that just means it is capable of supporting some or all of the 2.1 spec.
Second: the only reason to get new HDMI cables, like you said, is if you currently have a very old one and have devices that actually make use of the bandwidth. And I’ll tell you right now, most of the high speed cables will do just fine. It’s when you start doing 8k120 with HDR and VRR with eARC you’ll need heftier cables. The only external devices to support that, though, are either supplied with cables because their makers don’t want you bottlenecking your device, or they are PCs.
Third: the only reason HDMI is even a thing is because this joint venture behind it successfully lobbied their inferior product to TV manufacturers. DisplayPort has always been and will always be the better interface for video.
Yes, and this is unironically a problem. I am frankly happy to see this push just so I don't have to find out that the video issue I've been troubleshooting for the last 2 hours was due to a cable that's marked the same as any other cable happens to have half the bandwidth as some other arbitrary one.
While I almost completely agree with you, never underestimate the power of using the right tool for the right job. HDMI is actually far more resilient to signal corruption in my experience than display port since it implements TMDS and the cables are more commonly well shielded since they expect them to be used in device dense environments, which isn’t really applicable to anyone familiar with technology (don’t group up your cables next to something with significant RF noise/leaks, duh.) but does matter for the end user use case these see. The fees hdmi charge are a scam though fr and we could ask better from the industry.
Mostly unable to make use of certain features. Say your display supports 4k @ 120Hz. If you have an improper cable you might be able to get 4k30 or 4k60, but not 4k120.
I’ve come to the point where at least some people come to me for advice on buying electronics.
Girl friend asked me for a TV to connect with her PlayStation, not that expensive, 4K/60 and low input delay for casual gaming, and it should last for at least 10 years and should be cheap. Long story short, I got her a 4K/60fps TV with a gaming mode that has like 2~3ms delay for € 550. It‘s a dumb Philips TV running Linux, so no google play and you can remove all spyware. It has apps, but she got the PS to do all of this anyway.
Huh, that’s interesting. I would have thought that a TV running Linux would be called ‘smart’.
I’m with you though, it’s better to be more ‘modular’ and have your playback device- be it PlayStation, media server, heck even television receiver, seperate from the display itself.
Yeah i think that tv is still a smart tv just not an android based smart tv (or it might still be Android since that is also very Linux like, especially when you remove Google services)
If you’re not excited about Brighter shores then I really don’t know, for some reason no one else has ever tried to make the same type of game (aside from Genfanad and Titanreach, both of which have shut down quickly after release)
You could check out Project: Gorgon, it’s something of a mix between Runescape’s multitude of slow-to-level, interconnected skills on one character and a more typical MMO with distinct classes, buildcrafting and group content. It has a free demo on Steam. All of that said it’s only vaguely similar, and I wouldn’t mention it if there was anything closer to OSRS.
This is going to be a weird suggestion but, if you like the pvm aspect of killing bosses to get powerful loot and take on more difficult challenges, you should play Remnant 2.
It’s a souls like shooter about exploring a few different worlds searching for new gear so you can make better builds, loot is not randomized so there is a clear BiS for your build.
I stopped playing due to all their stupid additions all the time. Like the sailing/whatever skills they want to add, it’s all bullshit and copium by and for adults wanting new stuff. Their “democratic” voting is an absolute joke; “oh it didn’t pass? let’s just poll it again with slight changes”. That’s a cheap and dirty way of pushing their own agenda.
I did the maths some time ago, a subscription to 1 Runescape character is 20 times more expensive than a WoW character.
does them adding new content somehow detract from your ability to do whatever it was you liked to do before said content was added?
“I hate that expansions are provided at no additional cost, and also it costs too much” is kinda one of the wildest takes on the game I’ve ever heard ngl
I don’t understand your last paragraph unless there’s some weird regional pricing going on. It’s $13.99 USD for a month of Runescape membership vs $14.99 USD for a month of WoW membership
Basically every Oblivion DLC that was not Shivering Isles (and MAYBE Heroes of The Nine or whatever) was god awful. And Fallout 3 (aside from the last two hours of the story DLC) was only really tolerated because it was mostly sold as a season pass. Operation Anchorage was a cool novelty that made stealth trivial and the rest… existed.
I would argue that all the fo3 and oblivion DLC were decent. Some obviously better than others, but they weren’t just soulless cash grabs. They had effort go into them, and were fairly new into the DLC space so some trial and error is to be expected. They had a pretty good amount of content for the price relative to the base game, compared to the starfield DLC/ current AAA norms.
Orrery: A few spells and a player house with a fetch quest attached
Wizard’s Tower: a mage player house with a few spells and a fetch quest
Thieves Den: A few spells and items and a very small dungeon
Mehrunes’ Razor: Decent sized dungeon to get a dagger
Vile Lair: A few spells, a player house, and a fetch quest
Spell Tomes: Literally just spells
Fighter’s Stronghold: A short dungeon and, you got it, another player house
Then we have Knights of the Nine (really mediocre) and Shivering Isle (arguably the best DLC Bethesda ever made)
Oh. And…
MOTHA FUGGING HORSE ARMOR!!!
People tend to be more favorable to Fallout 3’s DLC than I am (most are incredibly tiny dungeons but with a new tileset). I suspect in large part because Operation Anchorage channeled how amazing storming the memorial was in the base game and… I genuinely don’t know why people are so obsessed with flipping The Pitt. And Broken Steel itself was one of the worse examples of “We’ll finish the game later” of the era… and I played ALL the Blizzard games.
To me, it wasn’t so much about each DLC making a huge impact or the story being amazing. It was more about already playing the game to death and then gaining access to more content to explore. Kind of like eating a delicious cake, still being hungry, and then finding another slice of that cake that was sitting out all day.
I think the only game you mentioned on that list which is actually open world might be Final Fantasy. None of the other games are open world.
Open world games are The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, Conan Exiles, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Forza Horizon, Shadow of the Colossus, Eden Ring, Insomniac’s Spiderman.
Some of these have unique traversal mechanics, some of these use only generic kinds, such as walking.
Oh how I wish those TV manufacturers would get rid of HDMI and replace it with DisplyPort. HDMI mafia does not allow opensource implementations of HDMI specification and so not all latest features of it can be supported by graphics card drivers on GNU/Linux. Death to HDMI!
I’m not sure what you mean by “low effort”? OSRS is an incredibly good game and keeps getting new content all the time. I’m happy to pay 15$ a month since we get a free update every wednesday. Sometimes it’s just some hotfix , other times it’s a whole new boss or continent. We had an new part of the map just last week.
Yes there is bot, but I never felt like it impacted my gameplay other than lowering the price of some items. The team is also doing a lot to ban them, it’s getting much better.
The community is booming. If you look around on YouTube, there’s a lot of content creators doing awesome thing on OSRS: custom game mode, weird twist on existing challenges, documentary, etc.
Honestly, I think we are currently in the golden age of Old school RuneScape, and if you feel like the game is bad or low effort, it might not be for you, which is fine, but the game itself is not the issue.
I hope you find some other game to give you what you had with RuneScape back in the days !
For the last bit hoping they’ll find something like what RS used to be, they won’t. That type of game can’t really exist anymore. (It obviously could make money, looking at OSRS’s player base, but it would never get the funding it needs.) The best options are OSRS (or RS3, which has pros and cons with OSRS and doesn’t deserve all the hate), potentially https://www.polygon.com/24099403/runescape-andrew-gower-brighter-shores-new-mmo in the future (developed by one of the brothers who created RS), or playing a modern MMO.
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