[X3N0-Life-Form]

PvP balance in MMOs is always a finicky thing, due to the variety of available builds, people with a lot of dedication to math out the most optimal builds or find the newest exploits. Neverwinter is no exception to that rule, and each Module (basically big patches with new content) comes with it's own new set of problems, some of which get adressed after release, others only get fixed when a new module comes around (and others are never fixed).

So with every new Module, balance tend to be a bit fragile early on, then stabilize a bit which every new patch. Yesterday, they flat out broke it.
I mean it, it's gone, thrown out the window and scattered to the winds.

Basically, they made a few changes to resistance from player damage, which is now additive accross the board instead of multiplicative. This means that players with high-end PvP gear + high level flavour-of-the-month armor enchantement can get close to the 80% damage reduction cap (this includes squishy classes). Now you might think "that's OK, the game has a stat called Armor Penetration, which is meant to compensate for such insane values", except that players also now have a flat armor penetration resistance from other players, which requires stacking obscene amounts of armor penetration to overcome.

Also, with PvP crit damage reduction being added on top of the regular PvP damage reduction, landing a crit on a high-geared player means you will do less damage than landing a regular attack. Except for Rogues who have access to piercing damage that ignores all this, of course.


I haven't had the chance to test how bad it is in person yet, but even if only the best-in-slot or close to best-in-slot players are unkillable, that's gonna get old real quick...

EDIT - max DR is 80%, not 100%, silly me

[JerichoDeath]

PvP crit damage reduction

This might be one of the dumbest protection stats I've ever heard of...

---

Anyway, I'm playing VoidExpanse, and that guy who referred to it as the offspring of Eve Online and SPAZ was completely right... although, the Galaxy Map is considerably smaller.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

"One of the dumbest protection stats", you don't say. To be fair, there's kind of a contrived reason for that, most people in that game had been trying to crank up the crit severity as high as possible for a long, long time. Critical hits not going as high in PvP compared to PvE as been a thing for a little while apparently.

People on the forums are unsure whether this is due to simple, not-thinking-this-through stupidity, or a programming error, but the fact is that tenacity, the resist-effect-of-other-players stat, is applied twice in the case of critical strikes. Critical severity is naturally at a value of 75% increased damage from your normal attack, so, if I'm understanding all this correctly my mid-tier character with 42% damage reduction receives 100*0.58*1.75*0.58 = 58.87% of base damage vs crits and 58% of base damage from regular attacks (not taking standard damage reduction from armor class & defence into account). Yeah, really....

Overall, this patch is mind boggingly dumb. Tanks are basically unkillable kings of the battlefield right now: clerics & paladins can self heal and guardian fighters have high single target damage while already having mechanics that punish their attackers (in addition to the campaign passive everyone has access that procs after 20 attacks). I would need to almost triple my current armor penetration stat for it to have any kind of effect against other players.

----

Anyway, I'm mostly playing Neverwinter these days, modding bits of Freespace whenever I feel like it, sometimes having a game of DotA, but without my usual teammates, it's kinda stale.

[NGTM-1R]

Oh christ I still haven't posted that thing.

Friends. Making me help them move. Blah.

[Turambar]

Got to Witcher 2 Chapter 3, Henselt is dead, as the assassins planned, and Geralt pursues Letho to Loc Muinne.

[deathfun]

That annoying Steam Cookie Clicking Robot Game
STEAL SAAAALE

[Kobrar44]

So I played some hammerwatch with friends and it was super-boring, maybe just because the survival moda and hero defense are so bad. Playing M.A.X.R over internet now and it's cool. I can't understand how can you remake the game but preserve the horrible UI tho.

[Black_Yoshi1230]

Tried out the 1.4 Demo of Another Metroid 2 Remake. I'm gonna need another controller.

If you're not at the Tower, don't read it:

Spoiler:

HOLY **** THAT ESCAPE.

[Klaustrophobia]

I just bought an assload of new songs for rocksmith ($100 worth) during the 40% sale.  Also got all the borderlands 2 dlc (by buying the whole game again because for some stupid reason that's always cheaper).  I was about to buy the pre-sequel also, but the reviews were pretty bad, and all had the theme of "just go play 2's DLC."

[NGTM-1R]

Wings of Dawn.

Surprisingly, it's pretty much taking me out back to the woodshed and shooting me.

[wardog300k]

I'm currently playing FreeSpace Editor(FRED) and FreeSpace 2

[JerichoDeath]

Alien Isolation

This game knows tension...
(and wow, is the optimization amazing. I don't even meet min specs, and I can run the game on ultra for some settings)

[headdie]

WoT and Valkyria Chronicles which I picked up off the steam sale

[TwentyPercentCooler]

http://imgur.com/a/Wy9Lh#0

Someone bought me the Flaming Cliffs 3 pack for DCS World and I've been enjoying myself quite a bit.

[NGTM-1R]

With pencil and paper, like some kind of goddamn barbarian, Rogue Trader.

[deathspeed]

I picked up Just Cause 1 & 2, Goat Simulator, and Wolfentstein: The New Order from Steam, so probably one of those next.

[Jeff Vader]

I picked up Just Cause 1 & 2, Goat Simulator, and Wolfentstein: The New Order from Steam, so probably one of those next.

JC2 is fun.

I won Witcher 3 from some raffle and gave it test run. I may need new hardware before continuing.

[Klaustrophobia]

I hardly know where to begin with all the new games I have.  I don't even want to know what the grand total came to.  I had a large backlog already. >.<

[Dark Hunter]

Finally decided to try out Dark Souls II.

I'm a big fan of the first game, and the things I'd heard about the second made me averse to trying it, thinking that I would just be endlessly disappointed.

Well, I would guess I'm about halfway through the game at this point, and it's fun. Not as deep or engaging as the first game, but still fun.

It does seem to be a whole hell of a lot easier though. That might be because I've played the first game and therefore know how to play a Dark Souls game... but a large number of bosses seemed to go down in one try, and that doesn't seem very Dark Souls to me. The levels also seem smaller and more linear... which is ironic, considering how hard this game is trying to present an "open world" experience.

[crizza]

Playing H1Z1 with some friends...While we search for hours for a car on a PVE server, the first time I spawned on a PvP I found one after five minutes and a second one shortly there after...