Rotluchs

zomg ! is it overrated/overhyped by it's fans, or really THAT good ? best PC game of 2023 if not of all times if you go by accumulated ratings on metacritics, eg... ) 97/100 (critics) 9.2/10 (users) .. 814,666 all time player peak on steam ... do you have to be a D&D pro, a lover of turn based combat systems ,classic rpg genre, or fan of the BG franchise in particular in order to understand & enjoy it? what do you think? is this new ARPG 'monster' also for people who never played any of these kind of games, or at least have very little experience / playtime in these ? I'm okay with turn based combat personally, for example I enjoyed the original Fallout 1+2, and I played half thru Desperados 3 (wait! was that even turn based? I dont remember) really enjoyed it. (then I got distracted by some other games, never went back to finish it, although I sometimes thought about doing so) Also played Commandos 1+2 a bit eons ago, always only the first few missions before it got too hard/complex for me... (that one at least wasnt turn based Im pretty sure, tho you could pause it, I think) But, I never played BG1,2 or the Divinity Series ^^ - although I own most games of these, by now... Heck, I think I'll buy it anyway now, right away on steam. Now I'm curious enough to check it out and see for myself, what the fuss is all about PS: (Sorry, Blizzard, you still won't see me buying&playing D4 anytime soon.. regardless of what my experience with BG3 is gonna be) PPS: done! kept my promise before I change my mind, bought it & installing BG3 right now (man, that's a hughe DL.. more than 100 GB) PPPS: meanwhile, I already decided what character I want to roll on my first attempt : one of these small Gnomes, and going all in on this nature / ranger / animal stuff... PPPPS: also, I will try to resists and not use any re-loads on entire play thru, no matter what.. trying to resist that save scum urge, as long as possible

oopsie, got caught ;) yeah couldnt resist you found out about it pretty fast hehe.. but, dang, different time zones...

for the diablo 4 open beta, do we have to select different servers, like in D3 where there was asia, america & europe, each separated ? just wondering, if this time around there will be no boundaries... (and if, how to switch servers, if I want to try to team up, meet & greet someone from abroad..) I see I still got some of you on my battle net friend list, but also a lot of folks missing / not added yet.. PS: I see I still got my battle net tag listed in my sig, feel free to add, if you'd like to team up this weekend.. no idea if there is an automated party finder / group maker in D4, havent seen one yet, only the social panel with people from friendlist, and all players from the local instance youre in, plus an option to create a clan, but no way to look for other players / parties, other than asking in chat or local players if you run into someone.. ?

I hope you all'll like d4 and wont be disappointed, but the more info I read about it the more im afraid this game won't be for me anymore... Too much stuff to farm, too many ways to go, too many lvls to grind.. I doubt ill ever have enough time for this.. I decided to wait for the first sale and play through the main story with 1 or 2 chars.. but end game won't be for me guess im out Btw got to try out the druid up to level 5 or 6 earlier today, guess I played half an hour or so ( might have been more, time flies by) performance was good on my arc a770 which I was most worried about, in that icy starter region almost stable 60 fps on 4k with that high res pack and everything set to max, without amd fidelityfx super res 2.0 But... Camera is too close for my taste, combat hit feedback is good,just like any diablo before, Menu/button design feels a bit clunky/off imho, but that I would get used to.. but it just didn't made "click" from the very first minute, like it used to in d3, sacred, or even wolcen... Doesn't mean its because how the game has changed, maybe its the way how I have changed.. not impressed / little underwhelmed after that first hour tho.. Will see if I can make it in-game again tonight or tomorrow, see how it goes.. Im not sure what to think of it just yet.. What about you all, is it a worthy successor, or good /great / average / bad h&s arpg, in general? For some reason the game that d4 reminded me the most of so far, isnt any of the other diablo games we saw before, but a game called undecember.. no idea tho why..

Last Epoch multiplayer update has now been released, its a huge patch log this time , because they also changed a lot of other stuff, like bug fixes , skill changes, and also performance improvement, especially the latter is great, imho.. Anyone of you playing and ready to team up? ..I wonder if llama8 is still into this game.. thats mostly thanks to him, how I found out about this game years ago.. Haven't played it in a long time however, have been waiting for final release once it's out of early Access, or at least mp, which is now real and no longer a myth. Im a total noob btw, but will try out everything that has minions.. minioooons ;) Oh and gogo, ill definitely try out d4 sooner or later eventually, just not at start in june.. also because my holiday will be july/august, and I want to wait for reviews and first patches..

besides the recent release/sale on Epic Games Store, (it was steam exlusive before), it appears they are also launching it on consoles soon, March 15/16th - at least for Sony Playstation 4 and 5 : Greetings, Bob/James/Rot

wow, @Flix nice list.. will have to take a look at it if my library is missing some titles in the h&s arpg collection.. €: I see you haven't got Lost Ark, Undecember oder Torchlight:Infinite in your list, also Last Epoch isn't there.. have you ever heard of them / tried them out? where would you put them in your ranking list? btw, it appears Wolcen is now on Epic Games Store too, with a big sale, it's only ~9€ right now, but not for very long: https://store.epicgames.com/de/p/wolcen-lords-of-mayhem-e893e7 definitely worth it's money in that case. had fun with it, steam tells me I played it for 398 hours.. seems about correct. it must have earned a spot in my top10 or even top5 list of "all time favourites" when measuring in total playtime, right after Sacred,Sacred2, and Diablo3 I guess. They recently announced that Act IV is now only 'weeks' away from being released (controller support has already been implemented before that a while ago) I'm curious if the new Act will be as fun as the others, and whether I am going to like or hate the massive balancing pass that comes with it..

please, in case you care at least for a little teeny tiny bit: support my case over here on official blizz forum boards ! maybe link it somewhere on their facebook/twitter whatever channel as well, I ain't gonna make an account just for that purpose, I'm not that desperate.. but still.. anyway, here you go - just two clicks or so https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/diablo-iv-please-make-couch-co-op-happen-on-pc-too/57815 Vote for "making them couch-co-op happen on PC' too, not only consoles.." feel free to add something more as well If you like, post why you think it would be cool & aweseome nice to have it on PC too ... personally, it would not be only about saving money & space, and I see no issue why you can't connect your PC to the big screen TV these days, works flawlessly like a charm, with controllers too. I don't have 2nd PC anymore, and no console either... but a girlfriend & a little son, willing to give D4 a try in co-op just like she did with D3 for a short while at least.. but it was hell of a fun, while it lasted. D3 was the one and only 'computer' game she ever touched & that we played together (on 2 PCs, next to each other but still uncomfortable) sitting together on a couch experiencing D4 together would be awesome..

oh and regarding Diablo 4: we now have official minimum system recommendations from blizzard, released in todays most recent dev live stream: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/23916446/watch-the-latest-diablo-iv-developer-update-livestream updated beta blog: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/23916442/your-guide-to-the-diablo-iv-open-beta?blzcmp=blizzard-news

@Timotheus regarding my experience with Arc & older DX9/10 games.. oofh.. well, I'm not sure which one's of those games I played recently were still based on DX9/10 . perhaps none. I see Half Life 2 is on that slideshow chart Intel published, I could try that one out ( still installed) is that one DX9/10 still? have you seen this video ? it's pretty detailed, regarding those games they picked out to check how much they improved and if intel's claims on their slideshow chart were correct.. it at least covers CS:GO which you're interested in.. D3 I got also still installed, don't see why that should be a problem for the Arc (btw D3 runs on DX11 currently afaik, was updated somewhere in between) here's also another article, on Computerbase.de , it's a well known german computer/hardware/tech platform (reviews,tests,news & big community forum-board) it's also one of the rare sites I know that cared for a re-visit/re-test https://www.computerbase.de/2022-12/arc-a770-a750-benchmark-test/ One of the games I've checked recently, is one they have still in they list of games with 'known/unsolved problems' .. it's not DX9/10 tho: D2:Resurrected.. and, funny thing, it runs without issues here, no crashes so far, no artifacts/corruptions, none of the graphical type at least, just evil itself ;) playing it smoothly in 4K@60fps with adjusted settings, but I'm still in Act2 with a level 20 noobish pet/minion druid char (solo) other games that ran with settings between medium&ultra @ 4K 60+ fps: LastEpoch, Undecember, Torchlight:Infinite, Stray, Redout2, CoD:MWII, Grid:Legends, Forza Horizon:4&5, TheCrew2, Gotham Knights,The Settlers:New Alliances, Sims4... (etc.. will add more later maybe) the only thing I couldn't launch/start, was the latest Tech-Demo of the Unity gfx game Engine. Intel Support seems to be really trying to help, eg. I reported a graphics glitch probably related to AMD FSR in Forza Horizon 5 & Need for Speed Unbound, they were both fixed a few weeks later by driver (and maybe also game) updates.

I already had the RTX 3060 Ti before which replaced the older gtx 1050 Ti I had several years before that.. I was quite happy with the 3060 Ti, (especially since I got it for the initial "RRP" on launch day which was something like 420€ here in germany/austria for the reference design) but for some reason all those 'new' games that came out back then were disappointing, and since I wasn't playing much anway I sold it a work colleague. then came the time where I needed something new to play with, and I don't mean any specific games here, but rather the hardware itself. I'm always curious regarding new HW stuff, especially the more exotic / unique stuff, so I grabbed the Intel Arc A770 16GB LE when it came out, also for like 420€ (it's cheaper now) .. clearly, a downgrade from the rtx 3060Ti, + but still fast enough / especially if you play max 1440p / happy with stable 60fps / use current drivers : + since launch they've improved performance for older DX9 games a lot throughout various patches, it's a lot closer to a RX 6700 or rtx 3060 (non-ti) now. (and I mean, I thought at launch: so arc might be a lot slower in dx9 games? but why should I care that much, if those old games run lets say @ 300 fps or 'only' 150 fps.. like I said, my 4K monitor only does 60Hz anway, I never noticed much difference if fps was faster, best way to go with was enabling vsync ) + and with Ray Tracing on, it's even faster than comparable counterparts from AMD at least... (still slower than nvidia tho) old/initial benchmarks/reviews are non-representative now, a lot has changed. You need to look at "post-test-tests" (no idea what to call it) that use current drivers. - some things also won't change unfortunately, like the problematic physical dimensions of the card, which I only found out recently, a long time after initial purchase - it's a thing nowhere mentioned, and the usual sites doing GPU reviews also never look at it in detail: just like most cards it's 'only' dual slot, (I think with latest gen from nvidia we get to see even more triple? slot designs) okay, - but the cooler is so close to the 'pin-side' of the card facing the motherboard, it will block the next pcie slot below it, just like other cards from amd/nvidia, right, but even if you try to use a simple riser/extender cable in order to not loose that slot under the gpu, it won't fit in, the gap is too narrow - if low idle power draw is important for you, it's only possible for 1st gen Arc cards if your mainboard supports PCIe ASPM L1 power saving mode, and you need to set it in windows power plan as well accordingly - not many designs to choose from, basically only the reference design from Intel itself (which looks great imho), or one Asrock and one Acer Model. €: also need to say, there's the official Intel support community forum and they appear to really try to help and are actively working on problem solving. I had very vew crashes so far, not more than on any other card I had before (more like even less crashes with the arc than with some other amd/nvidia cards I had in the past 20 years) I encountered some gfx glitches here and there, but there was no way to verify if it was because of Arc or the game itself (it's not like you never get glitches on amd/nvidia every now and then) I'd say non-RT performance is pretty close in current games to a amd RX 6600 XT / 6700 maybe, or RTX 3060, depending on the game & and with our without RT. if a game has XeSS support btw (still rare), I always found it to perform noticeable better than FSR2 from AMD in most cases, while also XeSS results in better image quality imho. I can play most old & current games, sometimes even in 4K @ 60 fps and quite high quality settings, if it has AMD FSR or Intel XeSS.. if it hasn't, I have to drop quality or resolution to 1440p in games that are hardware hungry / are poorly optimized. feel free to ask for a specific game / benchmark if you don't find it on the net, if it's in my library I could check it out for you. I'm happy with my Intel Arc, it has little worse price-performance value compared to amd/nvidia , but it looks nice, and performance is still sufficient. And, as I said, I have a faible for newcomers,underdogs,outsiders,exotic,rare,unique stuff.. just had to have it, but ofc if you leave all that aside a RX 6700 XT might be your best choice in that price range currently

Can't wait for Diablo 4 release, open world sounds good to me, blizzard/Diablo immortal controversies don't... Mixed feelings.. afraid of getting too hyped.. but d2res on the other hand wasn't bad at all (btw currently on sale ~10-14bucks til feb27) For d4, I expect the worst but hope for the best! Definitely will try out 2nd open beta weekend if servers will let me, But not going to pre-order yet. Think its wise to wait at least a few weeks after release, both for buying but especially for taking some days off.. See first what review ratings will be like, see if/when servers will be stable without disco/endless waiting lines.. tho it can be so hard to resist, I know..... Ps: also regarding upgrading PC's I'd rather recommend waiting till it's out (more hw to choose from like perhaps amd/nvidia new middle class, see what you need from benchmarks, dropping prices hopefully, etc) Besides, we don't even have official min requ Specs from blizz .. wonder why, with open beta right around the corner... Since I upgraded recently a few months ago, I won't upgrade just for d4 personally again, but sure hope my new setup will do.. in theory it should but its quite exotic: amd 5600 + intel arc a770 LE !

It's still not been released yet (still early access/beta), But it finally got multiplayer implemented recently. and on steam you can currently apply for an open beta weekend which started today or yesterday, it's live for a few days & open for everyone to try out even if you don't own the game yet (Good chance to try it out now for free and see what's it like )

here is a short but really good review that someone did on youtube : there's nothing more to add. I don't understand it, it puzzles me a lot, and just once again, makes me feel a little sad about all this. ah whatever^^ Cya !

Hi. I don't know what to say right now, I'm kinda speechless and don't really know how I feel about this right now : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1967090/Mythos/ I was always hoping/dreaming for something like this this to happen, and it did, however in a very different and almost unpleasant way . quite different than what I wished for. Mythos was a very special game to me, almost like Sacred 1 used to be, and I was 'really sad' when these 2 were shut down back then. anyways, here's the facts: HanbitSoft Inc. (listed as both Dev & Publisher on steam), re-released Mythos on Sept.08 2022 on Steam. If you enjoyed the game nearly as much as I probably did, years ago, and always thought it would be nice to have it back, don't get thrilled just yet - this re-release comes with one or the other caveat : * this is not the original flagship version - ofc it's based on the (newer, heavily altered) korean version, similar to the one Frogster released back then in the EU (which too was an outdated/snapshot build always a few patch cycles behind the korean one as well) I got no idea if this steam release is based on one of the latest versions koreans had, or an older one.. * they patched out the entire multiplayer/online mode - it is currently SP only. however you can still see the entire chat interface ingame eg. and can only chat with yourself, if you like - unlike Last Epoch eg. which is also still SP only atm but at least has global/local chat ingame for players to interact with * the seems to be no more ingame / cash shop.. * ..and lots of items that you were able to buy/find in the korean version had a timer before they would deplete/run out; but since there is no more 'online' play they gave items timers like 'lasts 193831838183 hours' or so, which looks ridiculous/weired (maybe that's also just a string/translation error who knows) *the game is - just like the builds they were working on back then over @ Hanbit/T3Ent. in korea, - not fully translated yet.. *.. and it might never will be fully translated by them, because Hanbit/T3 has a (bad) reputation regarding re-releasing of games on steam years after they pull the plug of the original, and then leaving it in whatever state the game had been back then.. see Hellgate London on steam, according to customers/players there is a lot that they could at least try to change / fix / implement, but it seems they never did. I bought it anways, at least it was only like 8€.. I know I shoudn't have, should resist to 'support' publisher/devs which such a rep.. but come on.. it's Mythos ! Im so sorry, I just had to, see if it's real...