what ya doing, since ur not playin H&H(atm)

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

My usual routine of dodging hundreds of bullets.

[Amanda44]

Typical! A whole day off work and server down again

Looks like an hour on Salem - thats all i can manage before getting bored to tears! - then, if server not back up, i guess its gonna have to be rl - not been able to find another game i can really get into. As i didn't have that problem before hnh, i guess this game is pretty special even with all its flaws.

[Jackard]

back to Guild Wars 2 for me. =)

yup

[Dixie]

i'm not so much into Diabolo - would more love a Fallout HnH style

Diablo II is one of my favorite games of all time. Especially speed running it with friends. I love how fast everything is. Its like a well oiled machine. No lag whatsoever - how refreshing!

As for a Fallout HnH style do you mean classic Fallout 1&2? If so you should try Fonline: 2238. It is an MMO, never any lag, has tons of crafting, professions, quests [some necessary to aquire certain skills], an arena where players do battle, big town control battles between factions, special encounters, special high risk/high reward locations, and of course the whole classic fallout character development or S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system with the many skills and perks. My favorite part is planning out a character build to accomplish certain tasks, level him or her up to max level [in fonline it is 24], then from then on I have that specialized alt I can use for whatever task I designed him for. You can have as many alts as you wish and you can even dual log with them without any special hacks or software. Dual logging was legalized after the last wipe or two, not sure when. The world normally wipes about every 4 months. The game has been in open public beta development for about 4 years now IIRC. If anyone wants to try it out and wants an experienced player's help getting started let me know.

Oh and it is a survival type game but instead of permadeath you just have endless deaths and respawning in random places all over the map and lose all your shit you had on you. There are ways to preserve a personal cache of supplies though and horde money [caps] and gear. Just build yourself a tent camp. Only you can see its location on the map. In no time you'll be able to afford your own cave lair which you could add friends to via it's base computer. And it comes with some lockers, a crafting bench, and a moonshine still [necessary for making flamethrower fuel]. Later when you are rich you can build actual bases of various sizes. When you are low level you die ALOT. But its no big deal since you dont have anything of real value for quite a while anyway. And most things you get from stealing and murdering NPCs or players anyway. This is a total hardcore PVP game in case you havent figured that out yet. But sometimes you can meet and befriend other players. There are guarded 'safe' towns for player trading and other services, as well as unguarded lawless towns where you can ambush people and steal all their shit if you want.

Oh also one more important difference between fonline and HnH. Stuff on ground doesnt disappear. It will stay there forever untill another player picks it up. So you can hide your shit behind various objects or scenery and come back later for it till you have your own tent or base. Conversely you can snoop around places you think would make good hiding places and try to find other player's secret stashes. Beats the hell out of shoveling shit to make your first caps . Oh with the exception of random encounter maps. Anything on the ground in a random map will naturally be gone forever once you leave it. But you can call backup into a random world map square if you and your backup both have radios and have the same channel set. Incidentally this also allows for a common exploit of certain large NPC gangs typically encountered in certain areas. Groups of experienced players will hunt these encounters and using radios invite each other into them. This is what fonline players mean when they say they are 'farming' Its a fun and faster way to build a horde of high end weapons and armor to reapair and use or sell.

[borka]

@Dixie

Thanx for giving an overview for those that don't know it!

As an long time member of NMA, DaC, VoTF i know it since first plannings. Sadly the active playerbase is even lower than HnH most of times... (>http://www.riget.info/fonline/playerStats.php)

[Dixie]

My pleasure Borka. Good to meet a fellow classic Fallout addict. I've lurked the No Mutants Allowed and Duck and Cover sites for years though I don't really get active in those forums. It's more like newspapers for me. I just go there to read up on the latest post-apocalyptic genre gossip and activity. I got i bit more active in the Fonline: 2238 forum but then our faction got it's own forum so that is where the bulk of my postings ended up. I'm an admin there: Dogs of War.

Yeah the reduced player base as I see it is a result of two things. First of all the devs went a little too far with their 'tweaks' to the game and pissed a lot of people off. A few years ago they started experimenting with cool down times for resource gathering and crafting and decided to nerf a few things. Then it seemed like with each wipe they just kept screwing around with the system even more even though it was already fine back in the beginning. Though to be fair, they've done a great job with all the new content they've added over the years. I just don't see why new content has to come with drastic changes to the game mechanics.

The second reason is because they've been delaying their 4 month cycle of wipes. It was much longer than 4 months before the last wipe and now its been over four months since then. Time flies in fonline, the rebuilding period after a wipe is only like a week for the major factions, maybe a few weeks for average factions to get back to their former glory, and for the rest of the players a month should be more than enough time to become quite rich.

From the second month to the fourth it is wars, missions and general shenanigans between top level characters until they get bored and all drift away from fonline. It starts to get old before four months for anyone who started from day 1 of the wipe. Maybe long before that. But a lot of players need a little more time because they come in late and it is definitely harder to achieve max level late in the game when everyone is already max level and you are easy prey. So the four month cycle was meant to give those late players a chance. But honestly if the cycle were shorter those players would have more of a chance because they could get in on the next cycle sooner. And the veteran players wouldn't get so bored and leave the game. But not only did they not shorten the wipe cycle they made it longer! That is the primary reason so many long time players have quit. But many will come back as soon as they hear there is another wipe coming.

If I was in charge of development I would reduce the four month cycle to 2 months and make it a count down to doomsday from day one after each wipe. So then it is a race against the clock to build your characters and bases and be prepared for the final battle [pre-wipe madness]. From playing fonline for years I can say that is the only way to maintain the huge player base it once had.

[dagrimreefah]

...

Interesting.

[Oddity]

If I was in charge of development I would reduce the four month cycle to 2 months and make it a count down to doomsday from day one after each wipe. So then it is a race against the clock to build your characters and bases and be prepared for the final battle [pre-wipe madness]. From playing fonline for years I can say that is the only way to maintain the huge player base it once had.

I remember when jorb said:

A permanent cycle of death and rebirth would fit the game's theme very well. I've considered implementing a natural cycle of Great Sunderings -- complete map and character reset -- which could only be prevented through massive, epic level, rituals of world rejuvenation, which anyone would then be free to assist in, or work to prevent. That would be pretty cool, but it's far off. I agree with the people who have been pushing for a character reset in that, with the completion of the major roads between the settlements, and the near closing of the frontiers, map development has stagnated somewhat. The initial land rush of a few weeks ago was a lot of fun to watch, and It'd be great if those experiences could be integrated into the backbone of the game, rather than being one off events. It might conflict too much with people's ambitions to create lasting values to be doable, but at least we'd be creating a very unique game environment.

I wish they could work on this game