Any day is a TTLG coop day! (was: TTLG coop Saturdays)

[Jeshibu]

Yeah, I've mentioned Magicka before when we've been playing. Those accidental deaths are awesome.

As for dibs on the Infiltrator, go for it
I'm partial to any of the classes myself; I love the Support's slomo, healing and ammo powers, the Hacker of course gets to control a small army through the persuadotron (and drones), and the Soldier gets grenades and BIG guns.

I take it we'd prefer to play from the beginning?

Yeah, I need to actually boot it up for the first time sometime before then, so from the start would be good for me. I'll install zDaemon too.

And Jesh has D3?!
JESH! GIMME YER ID!
I've just hit and passed Paragon 600, so I might be a little overpowered, but on the flip side, it means I can level people incredibly quickly.

I don't do the seasonal thing any more though. Got bored levelling from 0 every time.

I'm Jeshibu#2162. Me and Sulphur have been leveling pretty fast normally though. The immediacy in this game is quite something. I'm playing witch doctor now, and I'm enjoying all the goofy shit you can do with that. Put spiders on things, piercing toads, zombie towers... is this the only comedy class?

[Malf]

They've all got light touches, with the Demon Hunter probably being the most grimdark, but even there, you get vicious attack ferrets.

As for levelling fast.... yeah, heh, I levelled a random dude from 1-70 in 25 minutes last night. And that was with a slow rift in the mix too. I've been playing at Torment 13, which meant Torment 6 enemies were exploding with one hit.

I'll add you tonight. I completed the last of the Darkening of Tristram event achievements last night and am at a loose end with my "Pinball of death" monk. And I'll grab your ID too iffin yer willin' Sulphur.

Of course, if you would rather not be speed-levelled, and would to prefer to level naturally learning skills and abilities as you go, just tell me to sod off

You guys playing Season or vanilla?

[Sulphur]

We're doing vanilla, and the (relatively) leisurely pace is pretty fun, gives us time to enjoy the sights, throw jars of spiders at things that also turn out to be spiders while Jesh tries to be polite about my incinerating everything with a death laser, etc.

Not sure about ploughing through the difficulty levels at length, since it goes all the way to Torment XIII and that seems like it'd be a bit of a grind, but I don't see an issue with, say, rolling another character in a different class and levelling them up for short bursts of crazy fun times. I'll message you my ID when I'm at my desktop. It's Sulphur#numbersomethingsomething.

[Malf]

Yeah, I need to try playing my Sorceress more. I was quite a fan of her vortex power and lobbing a big ball of electricity at monsters in order to amplify the power of the next attack. Archon was quite fun too.

No idea how the sets play with them either; that's where the real meat of D3 is. Sets open up completely new play-styles for the classes. And specific legendaries help as well, especially things like the Demon Hunter's Kridershot, which changes an attack that used to consume resource into one that generates resource.

My monk's current set means I never want to have too much or too little resource, I want to stand still to do maximum damage, and my blink move amplifies damage, meaning I constantly move in combat solely by teleporting everywhere then using an ability to suck enemies into punch/kick range.

Yet the previous set I had relied on spreading an effect between enemies that meant when one died, others nearby would take damage, and if THEY died, others near them would take damage, etcetera, etcetera.

Best way to get an idea of what currently works best is to right-click your portrait, show leaderboards, then look at the builds of the people currently at the top.

[Malf]

Thanks to Sulphur helping me test it this morning, the voice chat for tonight's session will be via Mumble on my Raspberry Pi server
Connection details are in The Fighting TTLGers Steam Group Announcements.

[Sulphur]

You're welcome! Pretty impressive stuff, that. Looking forward to mumbling with all of youse later on today when we (hopefully) make it reign.

[henke]

Alrightey, Mumble downloaded and set up.

[Malf]

I've got the game up and running, with the usual password, ttlg1975
Looks like the first mission is to rescue the Infiltrator. Dunno how that affects the ability to play as 4 players...

[Malf]

Jolly good fun there Sulphur, Jesh & henke.
Was a shame Satellite Reign won't play across regions, meaning Sulphur couldn't join the fun. It looks like that has a LOT of co-op potential. But we had a great time playing some mind-bending community maps in Doom via ZDaemon.

[Sulphur]

Yep, haven't pootled around in Doom in a long time, and that was some very interesting map design.

I experimented with changing some stuff on Steam and hosting for Satellite Reign - Jesh was able to connect once, but then he couldn't on a second try, and it didn't let me join any game he hosted at all. No worries though, I'll join in when you cycle over to another game later on.

[Thirith]

Glad to hear you had a good time! Did you play any Satellite Reign or just Doom?

Re: Mumble, is it worth looking into for Arma as well? I'm still hoping to talk the gang into trying out the radio mod ACRE at some point, for its fantastic locational sound and radio functionality. IMO it does add a lot to Arma, though it requires TS3.

[Malf]

Seems to work fine, although Sulphur had a weird echo thing going on. The handy thing is, because it's running on a low-power Pi, I can keep it running, even when I'm not here.
I don't know about the others, but it also added an overlay to ZDaemon while we were playing. And during set-up of the client, there's a positional audio bit. Don't think ZDaemon supported it though.

Edit: Just checking the settings, it's got an ArmA 2 plug-in for positional audio. Looks like it works for a lot of stuff actually, including L4D 1&2 and Guild Wars.

[Thirith]

That's cool to hear, and it seems there's a Mumble plugin that brings positional audio to Arma! Definitely think we should try this out next time we play the game. All in favour?

[Thirith]

I've also just seen that Mumble brings positional audio to a whole bunch of games, including the Left 4 Dead ones! I love me some positional audio in coop and am very much looking forward to trying this out - especially since it doesn't even seem to require any modding or plugins to be activated.

[Thirith]

My apologies for the third post in a row by me, but this warrants an update:

GOG is selling SWAT 4 (including the expansion)! I'll have to find out whether coop works out of the box, but this is definitely a great game for coop.

[Thirith]

Next week we're returning to Arma 2/Operation Arrowhead for the first hour, followed by some zombie coop goodness in Left 4 Dead 2. Since it looks like Mumble's the better option than Teamspeak, anyone planning to join should install it. More details to follow in a few days.

[PigLick]

I have both of those!

[Thirith]

Side note: Ghost Recon Wildlands looks like it might be cool for four-player coop. In a somewhat Ubisoft way, sure, but I'd still be up for checking that one out at some point.

[Thirith]

Saturday sees our glorious return to Chernarus and Takistan, where we will die in the mud fighting our greatest enemy: Arma's user interface. However, that's just for the first hour (more or less); afterwards we'll give Left 4 Dead 2 a try, hoping that the gods of Ping will be on our side. (Depending on how many people turn up, we'll either split into two coop groups or play in Versus mode.)

Date: Saturday, 4 February 2017
Time: 4-6pm UK time
Game: Arma 2/Operation Arrowhead and Left 4 Dead 2

Things to note:

• Bring a headset! And download Mumble! (We're giving good old Teamspeak 3 a break.)
• While we're not using any compulsory mods, client-side quality-of-life mods like sthud are allowed.
• Anyone's welcome to join, absolute beginners as well as old hands. Since Arma is a bit fickle, perhaps check out the instructions on the Steam group first or send me a PM.

I'll be online a bit before 4pm to set up the server and check who's on Steam. Hoping to see you there!


P.S.: Mumble seems to plug into L4D quite easily, allowing for... *cue celestial fanfares* ... positional audio. I'd suggest that we try this out, so I'll know which direction to expect the friendly fire from, but if it doesn't work within 1-2 minutes we'll jettison the plan. Anyway, this page explains how it's all set up - it's quite simple, unless like Muggins here you skip the instructions and forget to activate the function...

[Thirith]

Very nice session of Arma II, in spite of technical issues (apparently it's a VRAM problem that was never solved, at least not permanently). Positional audio (thanks to Mumble and mod magic) adds a lot to the game. Also: we played two missions and won both, which must be a first in the annals of TTLG playing Arma.

[Malf]

Yeah, nice to see positional audio working so well, and I'd like to try it in other games, for sure.
As for this coming Saturday (the 11th of February), I'm up for being the host, but what do we fancy?

I'd really like to continue our Satellite Reign campaign, but am conscious that it limits the number of participants to 4.

ZDaemon worked nicely last time, and we can pick co-op servers there that would support potentially many more players than just 4.

As we didn't get around to playing L4D2 at the weekend, I'm willing to give that a shot this weekend if anyone else fancies a go, but again, that tops off at 4 players in co-op unless we go for a "Versus" session, but that doesn't really work without 8 total.

The Mumble server's still up and running on my little Pi. Connection details are in the Announcements section of The Fighting TTLGers Steam Group. The list of games that support positional audio over Mumble can be found here, and if anyone has a particular pining to play one of those in co-op, pipe up here!

Interestingly, I note Minecraft supports positional audio, and there's a lot of stuff out there regarding setting up a Pi as a Minecraft server. I wouldn't be averse to buying another Pi 3 and setting up a permanent Minecraft server, or even seeing if my current Pi 3's powerful enough to run both Mumble and Minecraft. Hmmm, project!

[Thirith]

Thanks for hosting the next session, Malf! I'm not sure I'll be there on Saturday, as we've got a friend coming over from the UK, and if I am I might not be there the entire time, so I'm obviously okay letting others decide. I have some ideas and feedback, though.

• Since there are a lot of games that do four-player coop and few that allow for more players, I think it's fair that we don't pick a game for more than four every week - since we've started having someone different responsible for the Saturday session every week, this means that before long there'll be a session where we play a game that accommodates more than four. What do the others think, though?
• Talking of positional audio: if I'm not mistaken, Mumble should provide positional audio for GTA out of the box (we'd just have to deactivate in-game voice chat). That might make the game feel more fresh even for those of us who've been at it for a long time. In addition, depending on how many people are around for a game, it's always possible for a few of them to go off and play or replay a heist mission before getting together again.
• I'd be up for some Minecraft at some point; I've got it for VR but haven't played much, mainly because I don't have enough of a clue how it all works and I'm still mostly stuck in deep space thanks to Elite Dangerous. I could imagine donning the geek helmet (CHA-3) for some TTLG-flavoured crafts and mining, though.
• I'd also be up for more Satellite Reign and some ZDaemon.

[Malf]

Right, a little late with an official announcement, so without further ado...
Satellite Reign
Saturday the 11th of February
16:00-18:00 GMT

This is of course assuming that only four folk attend. If more turn up, we'll look at playing some random co-op campaign over on ZDaemon.

Voice will be on the Mumble server, with details in the Announcements tab of The Fighting TTLGers Steam group.

[Thirith]

Although I was just there for the first time, and the Support guy I was controlling had a worrisome tendency to find himself in the spotlight when infiltrating bases, I very much enjoyed the session yet again. Thanks for organising it, Malf!

I'm still a bit lost with respect to how Satellite Reign's various systems work together, so I've started playing some of the single player to get used to the game. Practice makes, well, if not perfect then at least slightly less bad!

[Malf]

I think the game really shines in co-op thanks to sensible division of tasks. I think it's actually better in co-op to be completely honest. Controlling all four at the same time can wear you down over time, but with 4 people each controlling one character, you get some nice dynamics forming. We really need some bigger guns though, 'cos beyond explosives, the Soldier doesn't really pull its weight until they're available.

Your Support agent's actually in a pretty good place at the moment, with all its core abilities available. You now have deployable ammo packs, the healing ability and the slow time button. You should go for clones with high energy and back that up with maybe the energy generator body augmentation now. Pack Mule's also really useful, but that goes for all classes to be honest.

I may load up my last single player save to get an idea of what we should be aiming for, as my team have all the research completed, all the gear bought and all the skills unlocked. They're pretty much optimised for maximum effectiveness. I just haven't done the last mission.