Normal is definitely not the difficulty to play Rage 2 on if you want to not just dome people in the head with an AR all the time. Abilities become much more key on from Hard onward.
Same thing with the cooldowns. You're only limited to a long cooldown if you don't invest in your abilities at all. If you explore the world and invest into them things can get pretty wild. I still behind where Jeff is in the QL story wise. Yet with just 2 abilities (out of 4) Shatter and Slam; they are both now at base on 15 sec cooldowns with 2 uses on Shatter; that's an ability every 5 seconds already, that are infinitely useful on Hard compared to just trying to shoot a whole camp of armored guys that do more dmg to you, Shatter now has AoE and Slam now pulls in enemies to epicenter and has a way bigger area too. That's not counting your sprint dashes, or the constant use of Overdrive, which by the way has skills to further reduce ability cooldowns while in overdrive, exactly what Ben was asking for ^.^
I am basically always using something constantly to quickly clear groups of tougher enemies that otherwise would have taken like 10x longer just trying to shoot them one by one into their armor etc.
To Jeff's question: Playing this on Hard atm and I can say that armor absolutely matters, and using shatter, that by the way can be reduced to a base 15sec cool down with 2 stored uses, makes a world of difference already. Otherwise you'll be pinking away at their armor for a while and a half with that AR. And because you have other abilities to use, I find myself not noticing the cooldowns anyway as something is always getting activated.
So if you don't want to just play it by pointing and shooting an assault rifle while being in little to no danger, I do highly suggest not playing this game on normal.
What is actually ticking me off about the game atm is the driving is clearly made for controller and the mouse aim keeps getting dragged with your car turning making it very jarring and uncomfortable to drive while looking around with the mouse aim as it now essentially your arrow keys also control your look, and its never a good idea to double up like that on the camera.
@escapee: If you had indeed a problem occur somewhere along your connection to specific League servers it's not such a surprising thing, simply because you would then be taking a different route through the WTF proxies, it's essentially solving a temporary path issue problem just by that nature of a simple proxy; that could in the same way be solved by simply using a proxy yourself too, what they do is just auto selecting one for you. There are just many proxy services around, or just free proxies, it's just not doing any gaming optimization magic is what im saying and aside from temporary line issues that are rare occurrences these days most everyone is already using a near optimal path 99.99...% of the time. Like you said in your case you already were on one up to that point all that time until something happened to some node along the way (something that also btw gets resolved by IP routing protocols themselves over time) and were able to get back to your previously expected latency's. And indeed like you've already mentioned it's just a series of proxies, that in those rare occurrences will not use a specific faulty node, since they are simply elsewhere along the path between you and where you're connecting to.
I guess what I am saying is that you are right on the money in your assessment of it's usefulness and I was a little trite and snippy in the reply, my bad, the follies of falling back to knee jerk internet communication without properly reading and getting into details. Sorry.
Unfortunately the service was primarily selling the "lower pings" fable to everyone regardless of situation last time I've checked (saw an ad), and people will see a lower ping in game every time due to the games latency/ping numbers only ever hitting the proxy and not the full path (since that's how proxies work by their very nature).
@escapee: The thing is because it's using proxies, the game is reporting the ping to the proxy not to your pc, making it look smaller, since it's not the real ping.
WTFast has been around since the early World of Warcraft days in one itteration or another and has never seriously taken off.
Because it's essentially the "gamer" equivalent of get a bigger dick pills scam, that stays afloat because there is a sucker born every minute.
PS: A lot of the questions Vinny has about what happened to missing characters is answered either in the Krypt or through the VS. interactions between characters at match start.
Sekiro gets into the bigger/wilder bosses a bit more as the game progresses. That said all my favorite fights were still against similar humanoid enemies, every time.
Dragonrot advances when you die die. And it only temporarily stops npc side story progression until cured, it does not kill them (the two early npc's that do die, do so naturally in any case and that is what threw people for a loop in regards to this)
Also I will be super interested to her Vinny's experience with the main boss of the area he just got to.
Because that is where, up to that point I was still in the exact same mindset as Vinny when it came to boss fights, chipping them out over time, (especially since the dream sequence boss encouraged that approach directly).
But at the top of that tower is where I had to break away from that "chip down" mentality as the primary means of fighting in Sekiro, (not completely, but significantly so). Because moving away and giving that boss space he starts to chip you back very quickly. Where as as soon as I became aggressive in my attack, hugging his face and forcing out parries, suddenly the fight went from a long drawn out grueling slog to over in almost a blink of an eye. It seemed clearly designed to punish my dart in'n'out playstyle vs. tough enemies, and was at the same time clearly made to be very vulnerable to the in his face aggressive strike+parry pressure.
In a way that was my Sekiro "oh" moment. That was also the final push to start breaking those ingrained DS series habits.
@knoxt: I think part of the issue is the lack of incentive for doing that. In Titanfall you wallrun so you don't get destroyed by the people who do, in Anthem you hover aimlessly in the air shooting fish in a barrel and rarely come even close to going down. It's like playing a fighting or RTS game against meh AI - you CAN learn to do more complex things, but what's really the point when you can just meander about and win just as easily?
This only applies if you plan on sticking it out in Normal difficulty forever. Which is not where the endgame or the cool gear is, and not really what persistent people are playing on an ongoing basis. If you try standing still or just hovering in Grandmaster1 (ie what is being played currently to grind gear because next tiers are too steep a jump and dont offer enough incentives) you will get torn up in a second or two even as the tanky class with decent gear; mobility and being able to chain attacks and dodges and quick burst of flight becomes very mandatory.
Chances are if you were not able to get into the previous Metro games you are not gonna find your ground in Metro Exodus either imo.
It's very much a very slow, deliberate, soak in the atmosphere and the world kind of game, so kind of yes regarding Dan's dislike of gasmask it is one of the tools to building that (and tension), it's the same reason they take so much pain to render such shitty and run down environments and objects with such incredible detail, every bit of dirt, smear, chip, irregularity, cracking paint, rust, bent metal, cracked glass, worn clothes builds that, makes it feel more tangible, less bland common and videogamey stuff we've all seen hundreds of times before. It's all these little things (and others) that give it it's unique "feel" and atmosphere people talk about.
As for @vinny 's question on the last beastcast of opinions from people who are into the series I can say for myself that I am absolutely loving it. I think I've spent more time just exploring and listening to character conversations then in active combat (about halfway through atm), and most time in stealth and exploring. And the artistic themes of broken down Russian cobbled together junk with that graphical fidelity is incredible if you stop to look at it (im playing on PC on max settings) the train engine alone if you look at it outside is just mmmua! There are a plethora of instances where if you just stop and take your time you will get to hear extra interactions between characters you would never otherwise hear too.
Also yes playing it in Russian all the conversations and the nuances of speech are much better done then the English VO and dialogue from the same scenes that I have seen on streams. Which is a bit of a shame because I know a lot of people are not going to be playing it like that and even if they will play it like that will not be able to appreciate it quite the same, not knowing the language obviously. (and im not a fan of the English dialogue either it seems like something passably done on a budget)
The weapon upgrades and appropriate weapon use quickly becomes important. For example I have very little difficulty dealing with monsters (who are more resistant to regular old bullets) The silent ball bearing gun at full pump will for example one shot most things out of stealth (so will daggers), and a double barreled clean shotgun will do just so when getting swarmed in the thick of it. And having a well put together clean AR with a good stock and barrel and scope will make quick optimal work of human engagements. And a few other usefully things and tools here and there (like cans or molotovs) as well as suit upgrades.
Metro is kind of what it is, it's definitely not for everybody, if it was it wouldn't be Metro. (don't take that as a blanket criticism excuse however). And well I'm just really really enjoying it!
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