RDR2 is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I really liked GoW as well, but of the two I’d pick RDR2. But they are very different games.
Apologies for my tangent, figured I’d post closure for it (because there is a resolution) and bow out of the thread for now.
It is far and away my most anticipated game, but I’m holding out for it to get down to under $20.
I didn’t realize I was looking for a response like this, but this pushed me over the edge. Just bought it now, so thanks much for the nudge!
Annoyingly, the “is there any deal?” price is always a lie. It said $16 and change, but following the link it was actually $19 and change. So I just bought it from steam directly since it was on sale there for $19 and a little more change. Total $21.05 with tax. A little pricey for me, but way better than $70.
Unfortunately steam is telling me it’s 120 GB, so I think what I’m going to do instead of spending $70 on Diablo – which I was really considering – is realize my original dream of picking up a 2 TB M.2 games drive to take the pressure off my 1 TB M.2 system drive. I’ll move my steam library to the new drive and keep epic and Microsoft store games on my system drive. With a PCIe Gen 3 motherboard I can justify the currently-on-sale 970 Evo Plus for $110. My system drive is also a 970 Evo Plus (but only 1 TB) that I paid $165 for 2 years ago, so this feels like a win.
Woot! Excellent!
Yeah, it’s a very, very large game. And the open world is chock full of random encounters. So I’m not surprised. Extra HD space is always good though.
Enjoy. RDR2 is amazing. The problem for me is that there is so much to do, it’s intimidating. And if I play it for a while then take a long break then try to pick it up again, I have to relearn so much. It’s extremely deep.
But if I was going to just pick one game and play the heck out of it, that would probably be the one.
Agreed. @EllisDee, the only thing you would miss out on if you waited to get D4 are a couple of preorder cosmetic items, but whatever. They’re not that big of a deal. The game plans to add more content every three months. So who knows, if you wait a couple of years, it goes on a huge sale, and you buy it then, you’ll get a game cheaper with more stuff and fewer bugs.
Blizzard’s latest patch is nerfing a lot of classes.
Maybe it was needed but geez…this is a big swing with the nerf bat (one article linked below but you can Google for loads of articles on the subject):
I get balance is important but this is so aggressive I feel those who paid for early access were just beta testers. These changes can really affect many builds to the point people may need to restart because what they relied on is no longer there.
Too much Blizzard…too much.
(FTR: None of what they did affects my build although I am not sure I am thrilled with my build and was considering re-starting anyway…but this changes things.)
Almost every Necromancer change was a buff, so I was pleased. 
I am finding the level scaling of the game to be…annoying.
By that I mean when I am level 1 I am fighting level 1 mobs. When I am level 20 I am fighting level 20 mobs even if I am in the same place.
This is annoying. It gives combat a samey feel. You are never ahead of the curve. Part of the fun of an ARPG is building up to a powerful character that stomps low level mobs. But that never really happens here. Of course there should still be powerful enemies to fight that are a challenge and I do not think there should be any profit to running around killing low lever monsters. But I would like to see a spectrum of monster power to fight. If for some reason I take my god-tier character back to the starting city the monsters around there should be trivial to fight.
They nerfed the Druid? It was already so fucking hard to be a Druid. I finally got a build where I felt like I was able to survive. This is definitely the hardest Campaign I’ve seen (playing at the advanced level.)
Though it looks like the lightning skills got a bit of a buff and that’s the build I’ve settled on because all other builds were nearly killing me in every encounter. I couldn’t make any of the Bear skills work except Debilitating Roar. I am lightning and wind, mostly. As far as I can tell, Druid melee just doesn’t work.
I haven’t unlocked many of the other skills yet so I guess I won’t know the difference.
This is kind of eerie. I just came here to post this exact same thing and saw your post. I’m lvl 24 and hitting the same buttons the same number of times to use the same skills to kill the same enemies as I was at lvl 1. Additionally I’m not finding the loot to be compelling either. I know for many D3 was over the top with the loot piñata but I enjoyed the possibility of the chance of finding a low lvl legendary that could alter gameplay.
This is Blizzard, after all, and they did the same thing to WoW at one point. Rather than the old paradigm of having enemies that are in a specific level range in different zones, you can go anywhere and monsters are your level.
There are some things to remember though…
Monsters will scale up but not down. They’re still doing zone progression, where you may find a zone that has enemies far above you, and you will need to level up to match them. Of course, once you’re high enough the enemies will keep pace with you, but at least it’s not as bad as WoW where the scaling makes everything the same and there’s no feeling of earning the right to expand the map.
Monsters will scale level, but level isn’t everything. If you pick the right skills in your build as you advance, start equipping legendaries, and apply aspects to gear you earn from dungeons or extract from other gear, that might represent a leap that takes you beyond the enemies you fight. I’ve experienced that many times now, where the right trait changes the behavior of my skills or gives me something new that finally lets me pull way ahead. Also, I don’t know how it will be once paragon levels are factored in because I’m still a ways from that.
Finally, remember that World Tier II is a bit of a trap. If you pick that. It scales up everything dramatically but you get very little benefit. Monsters drop more gold, but not more or better items. You won’t get any better gear on Tier II than Tier I. Monsters give a small boost to XP, but only killing monsters. Quests, renown, and so on get no boost. Since everything is so much harder, you will level much more slowly and gear up slower. I have some people in my clan who are on Tier II on purpose to challenge themselves so that they’ll be more prepared for Tier III, and that’s cool. But if you do Tier II and always feel like you’re behind everything you fight, it’s because you’re basically tying one hand behind your back.
My understanding is that Druid is one of the most underwhelming classes (probably the most) at lower levels. I found it a chore and I really wanted to play one, but I just personally didn’t have anything “click” for me. Even the bear, which is supposed to be the toughest build in the game, died so much faster than the Necro and Sorc I played. The only build that worked for me was Werewolf, and it was just tolerable rather than fun.
But reportedly if you stick with it, it dominates in the end game. You just need to get high enough to really make it come into its own.
For example, you can summon a tornado that does a ton of damage but moves randomly. So it might just miss enemies. Pretty lame. By end game, you can fill the whole screen with tornadoes that hit everything at once. That’s just one anecdote I read to give an idea of what kind of scope you can expect.
I imagine the nerfs were to curb how ridiculously good it was once you get into paragon levels. As you said…
I think that’s the key, some of those other skills were just too good.
But trust me, I get what you mean. Druid really struggles and nerfing it seems like picking on the poor fat kid nobody loves. That ugly duckling does supposedly become a demigod swan eventually.
@Atamasama is making a point (if not explicitly) about an issue that cripples a lot of Blizzard games: balancing by end-game only.
World of Warcraft is notorious for this, in that the balancing (and thus the many nerfs) come in based on what certain min/maxed builds, with BiS gear, can do at end game. Who cares if it makes the class an ironclad PITA until you are max level, AND ground all the gear. After all, the attitude is often that end game is the only game, everything else is just the grind to get there.
Which is rough on Alt-a-holics like myself. And it’s because of (IMHO again) the fact that it has to be balanced for multi-player play. If it wasn’t for multiplayer, who CARES if one class is easier / more powerful than the other in D4?! But if you have to have a multiplayer or PVP option, then you have to pray to the god of game balance - which for WoW, is frustrating but understandable. For D4, it’s a deliberate choice I do not agree with even if I understand it.
One thing they’ve done to help with this, is that once you get past the campaign on one character, you can skip it on subsequent characters and just put them right at the end game. (Note that this is an option, you can choose to play other characters through the campaign if you’d like.)
Also, a lot of things you do, such as earning aspects in dungeons, or finding Altars of Lilith, they carry over across the whole account. They’re trying to cater to people who love to play lots of alts.
Me, I only plan on one alt, and so far haven’t even reached level 1 on him yet. I might just skip the campaign on him.
The rubber banding since launch has been unplayable.
I had read that - so I figured I’d give it another week before I tried to play. Get another set of rebalances and likely weekend based server issues a pass. But it’s frustrating.
Yet another reason to wait for GOTY/Complete editions to go on sale, most if not all of those sorts of issues are long since past by the time I play most games.
I’m just glad I didn’t pay extra for early access.
I have only experienced one very minor bug (clicking on a dialogue choice does not register the first time…sometimes). That’s it. No rubber banding ever.
Not saying you are wrong. Clearly you have dealt with that. But it also is not a universal problem.
Hate to pile on the complaints but I am having a hard time with my Barbarian too. It’s difficult to survive and I’m losing potions just to random trash mobs. Health Regen is hard to come by. I’ve never been that good at games, but I advanced pretty far in Diablo 3, and the Barbarian class in D3 was a tank. I am not a tank. I tried one of the dungeons, barely made it to the boss and then got flattened by the boss. But I only had three skill slots unlocked so after multiple attempts, I decided to come back later once I had a better skill set.
I did swap out my dual wield build for a two-handed bludgeoning/slashing build which seems to have helped a bit. But it would be nice if all the builds were viable.
We had one server outage for a several hours but that was it. And Spouse Weasel couldn’t start a solo character but we worked around it by creating a dummy character through my account and having him join with new character in-game. We haven’t played since official launch though.
There is still the bug reported since the first open beta where you can’t cancel a cutscene on PC by holding the Esc key. It worked in the initial closed beta but has been broken since.
My own workaround is to hold down on the B button on the Xbox controller I use for some PC games (but not Diablo IV, aside from canceling cut scenes).
That’s the only bug I’ve seen.
I have seen rubber banding a couple of times, but that’s a network issue, not a game bug. You will see that on every online game ever if there are network issues. And many times those network issues are on the client end.
And when I say “a couple of times” in D4, I mean twice. For a brief moment, no longer than 10 seconds each time.
I don’t think this is a problem with Blizzard’s servers.
As I’m leveling my Necromancer I am focusing on a build that does a lot of damage and not doing much in terms of survivability. (I plan to switch to a new Blood-based build that is very tanky once I get close to level 60.) So there have been a few health regen issues. I’ve learned to keep an eye out for weapons with “life on kill”. Those are a huge improvement for me. Hopefully you see those on Barbarians.
(Though maybe you don’t; I usually see those on scythes, which I believe is exclusive to Necros.)