Good timing! Show finished just as my painting adventures came to a close.
Thoughts on the topics above:
Why preorders suckI started a
thread on this very subject over on the Squad's Squawkbox forum, but I'll reiterate what I said here -- it's pretty much in line with what you said on the 'cast, in fact.
If a game is likely to be difficult to find shortly after release -- niche JRPGs, say, which as you may know are my bread and butter these days -- I'll preorder it so I can have a reasonably priced copy on release day, even if I'm unlikely to get to play it for a few months or even years in some cases. This hasn't helped with my Pile of Shame, but it
has helped me build up an enviable library of sometimes quite rare games, and a collection that will keep me busy probably for several years yet, given that there are still some
PS2 games among it.
If a game is the latest and greatest triple-A release that is holding content to ransom unless I preorder -- hello, Alien Isolation -- then fuck that noise; I'm not supporting it. Not that I play many triple-A games these days anyway, but preorder bonuses -- particularly retailer-exclusive ones -- can eat a bag of dicks.
Man, MOBAs are popularPlayed DotA2 a bit with friends because we wanted something to play together -- and, given the lack of specifically five-player games out there, it seemed like a good choice.
Did not get it. I can sort of see where the appeal comes from -- similar to a fighting game, it's about mastering a character, but there's also the element of knowing how that character fits into a
team as well -- but it wasn't for me. It's one of those games where I feel like someone who knows it well will utterly crush and dominate newbies. That's not at all a bad thing in a competitive game -- skill and training have to count for something, after all! -- but it makes the learning curve almost inaccessibly steep at times.
I didn't like it, but I get why other people do. I do wish, however, that other companies would stop trying to jump on the bandwagon. EA doesn't need to make a MOBA. We don't need a The Witcher MOBA. I would rather have played a Transformers MMO than another MOBA. DotA and LoL have that market stitched up; it seems silly for people to even try and compete. Defeatist? Perhaps, but I'd rather companies worked on interesting new things than trying to get a piece of the pie that is popular at the moment. (See:
all fucking mobile games, ever)
Is Elder Scrolls Online already fading?I'd almost forgotten that this existed. As someone bored to tears by the mainline Elder Scrolls games, I figure an MMO incarnation would put me into a full-on coma. Although that said, I always felt that the format of past Elder Scrolls games would have been ideal for adaptation into an MMO -- everything I hear about it, though, suggests to me that they've gone about it in pretty much the worst way possible. No thank you.
Is it better than Final Fantasy XIV?No MMO has
ever enraptured me as much as Final Fantasy XIV -- not even WoW, which I played for a significant amount of time.
I love it. And AJ's right -- it's great because it feels like a Final Fantasy game first and foremost, particularly during the unfolding main scenario. At endgame it becomes somewhat more traditionally MMO -- there's a lot of grinding to get better equipment, for example, but each new patch adds a significant number of alternative means of getting gear -- but the way the main story continues in an episodic manner with each major update, along with the entertaining sidequests (some of which are more fondly regarded by players than the main scenario), keeps things consistently interesting.
It's a game that I'm still enjoying and learning new things about, even after having played since last August. It's a wonderful feeling to master a difficult fight or dungeon. It's satisfying to reach the endpoint of a long-running questline. And Eorzea is a world I just love spending time in. I've spent so long running around those areas that it's a second home now; my character an extension of myself despite looking nothing like me and, indeed, being the opposite gender.
AJ, for what it's worth, your average four-player dungeon in FFXIV takes about half an hour. The two eight-player dungeons at the end of the main scenario take about an hour tops, and likewise for the two 24-player Crystal Tower raids. Even the super-hardcore eight-player endgame raid The Binding Coil of Bahamut is split into small, manageable sections of no more than about half an hour each rather than being something that takes all evening.
And yeah; when you both come back online after your summer of shenanigans (what's the timeframe for when you'll have some time to sit back and relax?), give me a shout and I will happily help you out with your dungeons. I'd really like to play more with you guys -- you should both at least try to get to the end of the main story, which is absolutely spectacular.