TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Tag: Lord of the Rings Online

  • Gaming at 4K update: Star Trek Online Still On Top

    Since I got my 4K TV/monitor, I’ve been experimenting with games that can run at 4K resolution (3840×2160@30 Hz in my case). As I noted in my last post, Star Trek Online works very well at 4K. I’ve continued to play STO at 4K and couldn’t be more impressed. It looks good at that resolution (though the textures are still crap, but that is the case with almost all games – I’m looking at you, Dragon Age series), and plays smoothly, despite the 30 Hz update rate. So STO is a clear win at 4K.

    I played a bit of Saints Row IV at 4K last night and it mostly worked. It struggled a little bit, but was playable at 4K. The only bummer was the very visible tearing, because I didn’t turn vsync on. I didn’t bother with vsync, because I could see from the tearing that it was having trouble keeping up. So I turned the game back down to 1080p and it worked great. I suppose if my computer were a little faster, Saints Row IV might be a good experience at 4K resolution.

    I’m continuing to run LOTRO at 1080p resolution, because of the distracting visible artifacts at 4K, and I find 1080p mostly OK despite all the pixels being doubled in both axes.

    In short, we have a big winner at 4K in Star Trek Online, and we have a pretty good candidate if your machine is great in Saints Row IV. So cheers to 4K monitors!

  • Gaming at 4K: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

    Since Amazon had the Seiki 39″ 4K TV for a great price last week, I picked it up in the hopes of gaming at 4K. I have a reasonably decent PC with an NVidia 670 that can drive 4K monitors, so that part worked well, but there are some issues.

    The monitor itself is a great piece of equipment. It is very vivid, with amazingly deep blacks (like almost no backlight bleedthrough). The color is pretty off, but with some calibration on my PC, it looks good. The downside of 4K is that it can only be driven at 30Hz over HDMI. There are some higher end 4K monitors with DisplayPort that may be able to do 60Hz, but they are much more expensive. Having a 3840×2160 desktop is so amazingly spectacular that I was, and still am, tempted to bring it into work so I can be more productive there. And with my first gaming experience with the monitor, that thought was reinforced. Since I spent the weekend mostly doing things around the house, I haven’t done an exhaustive survey of games on the 4K monitor, but I’ll share what I learned.

    The first game I tried was Lord of the Rings Online, which can drive the monitor at native resolution and at 30Hz. The problem was that there was some odd and very distracting smearing during movement, particularly on grass and flowers and such. It was so distracting that I couldn’t stand it, so I switched back to 1920×1080 at 60Hz. Sadly, this is lower than the 2560×1440 resolution of my previous monitor, so I was losing out a bit. And since the lower resolution was at such a large size now (39″ vs. 27″), it looked muddy and unappealing. At that point, I was ready to declare failure and bring the thing into work.

    Then I tried Sins of a Solar Empire, which won’t even try 4K resolution, so I gave that up, just reinforcing my plan to ditch the monitor at work.

    I tried Skyrim on a lark, and it looked amazing! It played like crap, but it looked fantastic at 4K. For some reason, though, the game was super sluggish and annoying. Again, my though was that I was not going to continue using the monitor for gaming.

    Finally, I tried Star Trek Online, and it was perfect at 4K. It looked great, and it played just like before. I tried both space and ground scenarios and it looked amazing. I presume the newer graphics engine in STO vs. LOTRO made the difference, but clearly MMORPGs can run perfectly well at 4K and 30Hz. That convinced me that maybe I need to rethink my plans for the monitor.

    Last night, I played more LOTRO as I am trying to get my poor Rune Keeper through Lothlorien and on to higher levels. Again, it was only at 1920×1080 on this large monitor, but I quickly came to like it. Sure, it is lower resolution that I used to play at, but it now filled my vision, so was more immersive.

    In short, gaming isn’t quite ready for 4K, but if you get a good enough deal on a 4K monitor, it is a nifty thing.

    I will post pictures and screen shots when I get a chance.

  • My Love/Hate Relationship with Borderlands 2

    Having played and thoroughly enjoyed Borderlands 2 when it first came out, I bought the Season Pass, but let the game languish as I played a few other games, had health issues that totally ruined my gaming ability for a while, and kept up with my Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and Star Trek Online (STO) playing.

    A few days ago, however, while waiting for the new STO and LOTRO updates coming this week, I jumped back in to play the Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep DLC. In this DLC, you and your NPC friends from the original Borderlands are playing a dice-based RPG similar to, but not infringing on the copyright of, Dungeons and Dragons. Of course, that means the player gets put into this fantasy world. And while you still have all your guns and grenades and powers, the enemies are using swords and arrows, though with deadly precision.

    The area in the DLC is quite challenging because of the various monster types. Some, like tree-based creatures are easy – just use fire, as are knights and others that fire works on. The damn skeletons are the problem. They are immune to nearly everything other than explosive damage and I just don’t have a good, accurate gun that deals explosive damage. But it’s a puzzle set for us by the developer to figure out how to overcome some of these tough enemies.

    That leads to my problem with the game. When you die, you reappear at a nearby respawn point, which is fine. But if you need to quit the game because it is way past bedtime, I will have to restart the area and all the monsters will have respawned. This concern was so great that I was trying to rush through a quest last night before bed, yet kept making mistakes and dying. I never did succeed, so I went to bed furious!

    Now, in the calm of morning, I can dispassionately look back at the game and not be quite so mad at it. Last night, I was sure I was going to drop the game again and go on to other games I’ve been waiting to play. Especially with the new STO and LOTRO content plus my PS4 will arrive on Friday, I’ll have plenty to do. But now that I’m not as furious, I will perhaps give Borderlands 2 another shot. When I’m calm and collected and have time to finish…

  • Two #LOTRO Videos: Mounted Minstrel and Michel Delving Horse Race

    I took two videos in LOTRO recently and thought I would share them.

    The first is very short. I was experimenting with NVidia’s ShadowPlay in LOTRO and happened to turn it on just as a not very bright mounted orc started attacking me. I’m posting this to show how dangerous a mounted Minstrel can be. I was able to take the enemy down in seconds even from a full stop, though he was higher level than my Mini. I’m really liking the Minstrel class for combination of damage and healing, though when I managed to get a bunch of enemies attacking at once, he died. However, he was able to take down the Craban Master Warband near Garsfeld solo, even though it’s a small fellowship one.

    The other video is the horse race near Michel Delving. This run got my Hunter enough Fall Festival Tokens that he could buy the Spooky Caparison of the Bat to decorate his War Steed.

     

  • On the Importance of Game Controller Support

    I was somewhat out of gaming action for medical reasons for more than a month. During that time, I was pretty much unable to use keyboard and mouse to play games. I was, however, able to use my Xbox 360 controller for Windows to play games that supported it. And that led me to discover how poor the support for game controllers is in many of the games I enjoy.

    One of my favorite games, Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), doesn’t support game controllers, so I was out of LOTRO for a month or so. Sure, I logged in occasionally to check mail, but couldn’t play it even a little bit. But TallGuy, you say, MMOs and controllers don’t mix. Well, there you’re wrong.

    My other favorite MMO, Star Trek Online (STO), has native support for game controllers. Even more importantly, it has a fully programmable binding mechanism that lets me customize button combinations, so I can use the triggers as modifiers (think Shift or Control) for the few face buttons. Therefore, I can easily get to 2 rows of the skill bar without touching a keyboard or mouse. I can fly my ship or move my captain with one stick, move the camera with the other, crouch, run, shoot, and do pretty much everything I need with an Xbox controller.

    Games like Diablo III and Torchlight II didn’t support the game controller, of course. But the PS3 version of Diablo III shows that it is entirely possible to convert a clicky game into a controller game. The PS3 version is great – my wife and I have lots of fun playing it. She’s a wizard, so can nuke the enemies from a distance, while I’m a healing tank (monk) to take the pressure off her. And a lot less chance of getting carpal tunnel on the PS3 version.

    Very sadly, Sins of a Solar Empire can’t be played with a game controller. Nothing would have been better than to conquer the Sins universe many times during my convalescence, but it was not to be.

    A thoughtful friend gave me a nifty game, Evoland. It is pretty cool and supports game controllers very well. If you want to experience the evolution of RPGs over many years, give it a shot. I spent a good few hours with it.

    The laptop computer I was using wasn’t overly great (thanks to HP for abandoning it and not releasing modern drivers, since it is an i7 quad core with an AMD 6770 GPU), so it can’t run graphics intensive games like Skyrim or Borderlands 2 or Batman Arkham City well, so I didn’t use those, even though they work with game controllers.

    Instead, I gave up on the PC and finished Halo 4 on Xbox 360 and then finished Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood on the PS3. I enjoyed both, but I especially loved AssCreed because of exploring Rome and its historical buildings.

    So, my point is that PC games should have better game controller support. Keyboards are fiddly and not appropriate for all games (sure, for a shooter, I’d prefer keyboard and mouse any day), and there may be people that have some limitations or are bedridden that would be better off with a controller.

  • Thirst for Power LOTRO kinship website removed

    I’ve taken down the Thirst for Power website for lack of use. All it seemed to get were spam posts advertising fake designer bags.

    Since the kinship is similarly a ghost town, I don’t think anyone but me will miss it.

  • My fourth character through Great River discovers new quest line in #LOTRO

    What the heck?!? My Lore Master, who is a completionist and has done pretty much every solo and most small fellowship quests in LOTRO, didn’t see it. My Hunter and Warden also went through Great River, but were rushing to Rohan and didn’t do all the quests, so they didn’t see it either.

    Last night, after my wimpy Minstrel became Friend of the Eagles (if you’ve done the quests, you know what I mean), he was given a letter that recalled him to Stangard to start a whole quest line, involving Sithric, treason in the Eorlsmead Tower, and more. I was utterly shocked that I’d never seen this quest before, but I was wondering what that tower was there for. Admittedly, my Lore Master ran through Great River right when it came out, so perhaps the quest line wasn’t in place yet, but I was floored!

    Of course, it was given to me at the secret place where the eagles were based, which apparently everyone must know about, because I was sent there originally by a guy at the camp north of the Cuthstan, then a guard from Stangard came to deliver a letter while I was in the cave rescuing an eagle. So that’s a little silly – the secret is out…

    This new (to me) quest line is good – I enjoyed it and I especially enjoyed putting Sithric in his place. I am at a loss about the tower, though. I showed there was treason there, so I expected to be sent by Stanric to clear it out or at least set them straight, but nothing of the sort happened. Maybe I missed that too?

    Finally, a question: My Minstrel seems pretty wimpy for level 74. His Will is good, and Fate is OK, but his morale is only about 4,000. That’s even less than my Lore Master was at that level by quite a bit. Before I go off deeding to get Vitality traits, I wonder what a level 74 Mini’s morale should be? Please either tweet to me or use the contact page (you don’t need to put in a real email address).

  • The slow, sad death of a LOTRO kinship

    My LOTRO kinship, Thirst for Power, has had a long, interesting lifespan with serious ups and downs, and is now down for the count. I am the only regular player that has been on for weeks. Sure there are one or two others that leave alts in the kinship, but no playtime logged except for me.

    I was recruited into T4P when my Lore-Master was still hanging around Combe and Staddle by a very nice guy who helped me a lot, but declared he had an addition to the game and quit cold turkey, never to be seen again. I met a number of friends in the kinship and we played together for years. Some were a little flaky and jumped out of the kinship, then back in, the back out, etc. A core group of us played through thick and thin, building our characters as we went. Then there was a mass exodus fromT4P to another kinship whose name I forget. Almost all of us went, because it was a big, happening kinship with a charismatic, fun leader and a diverse set of players.

    Meanwhile, the old T4P leader had been offline for so long that the game offered leadership to one of my buddies who left one alt in T4P. I put an alt there, so I was 2nd in command. And then our new kinship’s leader decided he was bored of the game and disbanded the kinship. So it was lucky that we could fall back to T4P. We rebuilt T4P with most of the old members and many new ones and had great times in Dunland and the end game instances around Isengard.

    Then came Great River. We all raced through Great River and started doing the Limlight Gorge stuff, when many of our top-level members decided it got boring and simply stopped logging in. We survived with just a few members until Rohan came along and added great new content, but the damage was done. With just a few of us, we weren’t able to get groups together to do the end-game instances. Finally, my last friend in the kinship decided she needed a more active place and jumped to the kinship of one of the other ones that was in T4P when I first joined and was with us for a long time, but eventually left to join a raiding kinship. I have recruited a few people into the kinship, but they see how dead it is and either stop logging in or just leave.

    T4P has maxed out lifespan and a nice kin house, so I will likely keep it with some lowbie alt running it, but I may look into joining active kinships for my characters when they get near 85. My LM, who is 85, would be a good choice, but nobody wants a lousy LM in the end game instances and raids. I’m working on getting my Hunter, Warden, and Minstrel to 85, because at least they will be needed by others. In the meanwhile, T4P is a member of an alliance, so I can help others and join groups fairly easily.

    But it is a shame to see Thirst for Power fade away.

  • LOTRO: Snowbourne Mounted Daily

    Today’s mounted daily mission video (and this is the last for a while, so you can relax and stop being bored by me) is the one given at Snowbourne, a large city in the south west of the playable area of Eastern Rohan. This is my favorite of the mounted missions because we need to kill more enemies (16 vs. 6 or 10 in the others) and the enemies are a little wimpier, so I can often kill them in one shot, which makes a wimpy Lore Master feel kinda studly. The video is less than 3 minutes.

     

  • LOTRO: Eaworth Mounted Daily

    Like the daily mounted mission from Harwick, this mission involves taking on mounted enemies while being on your war-steed. In this case, however, some of the enemies have about 5 times the morale (hit points) as the normal ones here and in Harwick. In this playthrough, I avoided those guys, but I’ve had to fight them in the past and they take a while sometimes to kill (and once, I think 2 of them ganged up on me and defeated me). The video is a little more stuttery than I’m used to, and I wonder if having FRAPS capturing the action slowed the game a little. It did smooth out, but the game was a little jerky at the first encounter, and I think that is visible in the movie. This was a quick mission and took less than 2 minutes.