The rant-a-lot-Sundaily

[Grisu]

Haven't seen a daily in ages - what's up, fellow forumites?

RL: Was at work from 8.45 a.m. till 7.45 p.m. without a break, although work on Sundays is defined as "work on request" - i.e. if there are emergencies, I have to go to the hospital from my home place. Recent changes in health politics lead to the above result though. Once I got back home at 8 p.m., my official cell phone rang and a therapeutic residential facility called that they were going to commit a 13 year old teenager with police force because he pushed a carer - mind you: by "push" I mean like a non-violent push...way to fill up empty beds in psychiatry! (Not that we have any...we're up to 15 on the emergency ward instead of the 8 we usually treat and people have to sleep on the floor) So there goes the weekend with my family. Still waiting for the call that the 13yr old arrived at the hospital. :coffee:

D2: Haven't played much lately - the last time was 2 weeks ago with the Green and Gold tourney character. Lost my interest for the time being though and changed back to D3 after a big hiatus from D3. I really enjoy it at the moment though

 

[Espr]

The path of a medical professional is fraught with peril. *sagenod*

Hope things calm down for you though.

For me the day is mostly shaded by the utter lack of smokes, and how very aware my brain is of that fact. Been distracting myself with some LK running.

As to D3, how are you finding the new changes? I was rather put off by a fair bit of things I was hearing in the early days of D3, but enough people have been changing their opinions vocally since the recent big changes (and the expac), that I've added it to the reconsider list. I'd be interested to hear your opinion of the state of the game atm.

 

[Drystan]

The forums have been slower as of late. Many of the oldy spammers have decided to take a break, and the old traditions don't come up as often.
Long day, Grisu. :/ Hope you get some time to relax and spend your time with family.

RL: Still on holiday, and caught up with an old friend and a few people near the beach. Took a dog for a walk (so cute!) And just taking it easy really.
Again, not sure where I'm heading, but turns out, neither do the people that I caught up with. It seems to be the norm in most cases.

D2: Nope. But soon.

OVG: About an hour of Enemy Territory before bed.

 

[CorruptedMollusk]

A daily!!!

OVG: About an hour of Enemy Territory before bed.

That is the one game i can't get to work right on my Macbook; theres a graphics setting somewhere I can't get right. I wore that game out for a lot of years. Top three game of all time for me, and it was free to boot. Maybe I'll try to fire it up later if I feel like playing with settings.

Sorry to hear the medical field is a right mess Grisu. Hope you get some family time in.

RL: Fired up the grill for the first time this year. Couple of steaks and a salad for me and the gf. Other than that watch a hockey game.

D2: Some Pindle and I'm nearly done with 1 of my many frenzy barbs I'm currently playing, so I might finish him off.

Have a great day SPF,

CM

OVG: Maybe play around with a game on my phone for a few minutes, but likely not. Or the aforementioned mess with ET settings if I feel the urge.

 

[endlesscircuit]

RL: About to go on a whirlwind tour of some graduate programs, trying to decide where to go for my PhD (in philosophy). Already have a fairly good sense of where I want to go, but visiting a variety of places to try to meet more people and get a broader sense of things. (Plus I hate where I'm getting my MPhil this year, so I need to be really sure about the PhD...)

D2: Working on an untwinked trapper, about to rescue NM Cain. Other than that have been working on leveling my Barb at Pindle/Trav.

OVG: Played 2048 a bit, don't really see why people think it's addictive.

 

[thefranklin]

RL: Work and Kids.

D2: On hiatus.

D3: Addicted again. I can't speak to the state of the game (w/o the expansion) but I can state that they might be quick to fix things soon again. And now for a rant of my own :0 (About something way less important)

This feels like it will be a lot of people's last hurrah and if it is a failure, the user base will probably plummet significantly. Removing the AH took out the only "social" like aspect. There is now zero interaction with other people except for the 3 in the game you joined. Now, you could argue the AH had no interaction, but it gave you a reason to fire up D3 at lunch at work to check on prices, or a place to hang out in between games or while waiting for a buddy to log on. Now what can you do?

The new loot system is different, parts of it are better and parts of it are worse. With only 4 primary stats, you might not be able to make a "godly" character until you find great uniques. The ability to change a stat will be very helpful here because it will be much easier to find items with 3 acceptable stats and change the other one. The 2 secondary stats that roll are limited to gold find (worthless), pick-up radius (basically worthless), xp bonus per monster kill (basically worthless), +health per potion (basically worthless, although it is helpful), and single resist (worthless, except amazing for monks). Why they don't put useful secondary stats of: movement speed, non-primary stat (would add armor/res all/ dodge), armor (no way to stack this, it's values are half of what res all will give you as a primary), area damage (whatever this is supposed to do), resource cost reduction (now we are talking), cooldown reduction (why this has to be primary...), etc. While on the subject of resource cost/cooldown reductions, apparently they are multiplicative. For example, 5% reduction on four items gives you a 18.5% reduction and not 20% reduction. So stacking these reductions may be unhelpful past a certain point, especially with unique items that have large reduction values to certain skills or elements. I have read conflicting reports that the damage % bonuses are added the same way and that they are summed, so hopefully they stack multiplicatively, too.

And another annoying pain in my side is their stupid "% damage" mod on weapons. I have a weapon that started as 150 dps, with added cold damage has 1250 dps, and a mod of "+6% weapon damage." Not only is it stupid that the affix range is 5-8% when it used to be 25-50, but it only applies to the base physical damage of the weapon. So in total, it adds 9 dps for a total of 1259. It is a waste of time for me to even read that mod, let alone the server space it must take up to have that, since apparently that is a problem and why they have to reduce monster densities after buffing them. They are trying to fix the damage elements to make sense in the game, but it has been out for 2 years now and still isn't well thought out. Me and the other dumb people at my office could draw it out on a whiteboard in an hour, and I bet some of you smarter folks could do it in even less time!

And speaking of buffing something and then nerfing it, look at the monks "dropping bells" skill. Went from 400% to 950% to 550% or something in the last three patches. Hurray for having it together!

I apologize after the fact if you read all of that nonsense. back to work for me!

 

[Espr]

Thanks for the info. It's helpful for me to determine whether or not to gamble on the purchase. It sounds like that unless some friends want to get into the game the answer is no, given that I've got plenty of options in D2, TL2 and PoE to get that ARPG fix.

 

[Grape]

RL: Some lazy reading for an up coming exam today. I have to read a lot more during the few up coming days. Right now I'm listening to radio, there's ice hockey match going on. Cheering for my home town team in the national league play-offs :balloons:

D2: yes a lot during the last weekend and now while listening to game I'm playing too. It's raining HRs today. In less than 50 Travi runs I found Lo+Ber. Switched to LK at that point and again less in 50 runs I got Sur. I'm quite certain I've never found three high runes in ~one hour. Some shiny new runewords in the making right now...

OVG: nah, I don't play anything else really