Where the co-op at?

[TheFeniX]

Argh, lead is annoying to find or mine. I get it's likely a balancing deal, but steel/iron/anything metal can be used for buckshot. Also, my stockpile of splints is dwindling quickly.

Anyways, I just realized that since I own X-Com, I have access to the Evolve beta. Hoping to give that a shot tomorrow.

[TheFeniX]

So, Evolve looks like it's shaping up to be at best a $30 game, at worst a free mod for HL2: not the $60 price-point they plan to release it at.

Dying Light has a pre-order "bonus" that is really just them cutting out a portion of the game if you don't pre-order it. Pass.

Payday 2 is quite fun, but it really needs 4 players if you plan to do anything difficult. I'm really not down to open the game up to pubs. Hope we get our original crew back together.

Need better server hardware because 7 days is cratering my old box.

[Mr Bean]

Payday 2 is quite fun, but it really needs 4 players if you plan to do anything difficult. I'm really not down to open the game up to pubs. Hope we get our original crew back together.

Need better server hardware because 7 days is cratering my old box.

Payday 2 yes it helps to have a great crew but as long as you stay at Overkill you should be fine.
As for 7 days to die, part of Version 10 is server improvements. But Sever 10 is a bucket load of updates at this time.

[Phillip Hone]

FeniX, not to be persistent, but have you tried out DoW2 yet? If so, what did you think?

[TheFeniX]

Payday 2 yes it helps to have a great crew but as long as you stay at Overkill you should be fine.

Anything above normal tends to destroy us through sheer numbers.

As for 7 days to die, part of Version 10 is server improvements. But Sever 10 is a bucket load of updates at this time.

Yea, still don't see it running well on an 8 year old server. Hopefully, I'll have something worked out by this weekend.

FeniX, not to be persistent, but have you tried out DoW2 yet? If so, what did you think?

No. I haven't found the game on sale and I was able to buy a Payday 2 4-pack for the same price. Since two buddies should be getting back to gaming soon, I wasn't going to push K into a game we might not play a whole lot.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Payday gets a lot less challenging as you both level up and get better at the game. Depending on your playstyle, most heists can be done on Overkill with a two or three man crew. I've even two-manned Mallcrasher on Deathwish. So, don't be deterred if Normal or Hard is still challenging. You'll eventually get to the point where Hard is a joke even playing solo.

What is your usual playstyle (if you've developed one yet, that is)? Stealth crews can do a lot of stuff that a loud crew would struggle with, and vice versa.

I'm BCGaius on Steam, happy to offer pointers or help out with a heist if I'm not playing with my usual crew.

[TheFeniX]

We try and do more Stealth, but it gets rough at times what with random bullshit happening like Kyle getting handcuffed. We did a Go Bank Normal. Just went full armor, doctor bag drop so I could run ECM. I pop the ECM, Kyle gets the guard, I pop the camera, get the hostages down (because I'm Mastermind). Kyle goes to activate the pager (of which the game doesn't tell you anything about), but it still throws an alert. I don't know if it bugged out or we fucked up. By the time it does, I already have both keycards (1 down, 1 in my inventory).

So we have to go loud. We get in, Kyle is picking locks, I make sure to clear the back of police to setup the cage. So, I clear them all out, get it built, and more cops start spawning even though it's not an assault wave. 4 guys on the left roof, 3 on the right, and two snipers. While I'm killing them an assault comes, and I literally cannot kill them fast enough to stop the backlot from being a killing field. While they continually spawn and wreck my face, Kyle is dealing with shields coming in the front with backup releasing our hostages. During this whole ordeal, the AI on our team cannot stop running out into the middle of the front street to fuck around while the police AI tunnels on us like DPS in an MMO.

It was fucking ridiculous and I understand if I had let the cops pile up, but I make it a point to keep their numbers under control when there's not an assault going on.

What's also killing me is I'm spoiled by TS3 and really don't care to bother with the in-game voice-chat. Whatever, the game is still a lot of fun. But the most random of shit can screw you and the game really just kind of tosses you into the deep end. I honestly like the challenge, but I do not like a challenge when dealing with pug players because I've come to hate most of them.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

A few newbie tips: If you're getting cuffed, you're doing something wrong. Getting cuffed by a guard is like the ultimate humiliation for an experienced crew.

GO Bank is, next to Hotline Miami, probably the hardest heist on loud, and after Big Bank, the second hardest to stealth. It's a brutally punishing heist and not one I recommend people cut their teeth on.

Vlad heists are good "newbie" heists, more for loud but many can be stealthed without too much difficulty. Hector is good practice for loud play and coordinated bag-running. For new players I would recommend focusing on Four Stores, Jewelry Store, Nightclub, and Mallcrasher. The first three can be done with a hybrid stealth/loud approach that's newbie-friendly, while Mallcrasher is a straightforward loud-only. Ukrainian Job (pure stealth practice, or hybrid play), Diamond Store (hybrid) and Watchdogs (loud) if you're feeling more ambitious, and the regular Bank (plus Gold/Deposit/Pro variants) for a challenge.

If you want to practice stealth, Shadow Raid will learn you.

"Advanced" heists to be wary of (feel free to do them, just be aware that they're going to be more difficult if you don't know what you're doing) -
Armored Cars are loud only and relatively difficult.
Rats is a complex heist with a lot of stuff that's easy for newbies to fuck up.
Firestarter is fun, but newbies may find Day 2 quite hard.
All Elephant heists are stealth-focused and relatively complicated. Big Oil in particular will murder you if you don't know what you're doing.
Big Bank is very complex, but a lot of fun if you're ready to tackle something heavy duty. It's not necessarily that hard (loud, anyway), just long and... big.
GO Bank, as mentioned, is something of a troll-heist. Even my regular crew (we're all Infamous) doesn't do it unless we're trying for an achievement that requires it.

[Mr Bean]

For Payday, as someone who is just about to hit infamy 5 (IV-96) every heist has things you learn from repeated experience. Take Shadow Raid. Regardless of difficulty you should have a person killing camera guy inside first fifty seconds. Four stores there are only two places for the escape van to show up. Any Bain Bank Heist one has to watch the panic buttons. Any stealth heist, you can smash cameras to get guards to go check on them as long as the Camera guy is alive. Forty is the break even point for overkill and below in damage, forty seven for deathwish as those are the multiplication points at which you can three shot the most common enemies on those difficulties. If you don't keep holding down f on a pager the alarm is instantly raised.

Hoxhud makes everything better.
And other such lessons are gained with experience.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Hoxhud is cheating :p

[Mr Bean]

Hoxhud is cheating :p

Hoxhud is not cheating, Hoxhud is dev endorsed because for whatever reason they forgot players might want to keep track of how many bodybags they had left, if a civilian was passive or alerted and how much hp enemies have. It's all local side but hey Brother Captain, if you want to use matrix powers and a stop watch along with two extra set of hands to keep track of all the little things that hoxhud manages feel free.

Plus and I can't emphasis this enough... I don't have to hold f unlocking things.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

The legitimate HUD does tell you how many body bags you have.

Enemy HP and how many enemies are on the map and the like are clearly not intended information for the player. Dev endorsed or not, it's still cheating...

[TheFeniX]

You guys are funny. My only beef with the HUD is any AI companions show ????s when pulling a heist in stealth. Other than that, I can live with having less info.

Just did our first 2-man full stealth Jewelry run. Worked right side, saw guard. I shouted him down, answered pager. Picked the lock on window, while Kyle subdued the hooker around the side and hid her. Tied up the guy inside. Kyle's wife calls so we hang out in back room. Random dude walks in and gets tied up for his trouble. I finally get bored, burst in: shout everyone down. Kyle starts bagging big jewels while I smash cases. I start running bags due to stam upgrades. Random civvy across the street sees me. Gets shouted down and tied, then lead back to store. Run 7-8 bags, pack in in: 5 minutes (since smashing and grabbing) said and done.

Fucking. Fantastic. I send Casey my extra copy. He is downloading tonight.

And then there were three.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Very nice. The way you did it is also basically the best way to do Ukrainian Job, which is extremely similar but with 9000% more annoying Bain.

Also, make sure you join the Steam community group for the game, because you get a bunch of guns and other free shit.

[TheFeniX]

You can't not join the community. It will spam the shit out of you until you do.

Anyways, we had a couple more good runs last night. We did mostly banks and jewelry runs. We did a Go Bank and managed to get into the vault and open a few boxes before someone spotted us for no reason and was able to call the cops before I could even get out the door. Man, having 1 more to pick locks while I do nothing but keep people down (instead of picking 1 lock, checking the front, then shouting down everyone, then going back) will be nice.

One weird thing about another deposit heist. I tied up the people at the front and moved them back. The rest I shouted down, saving my ties for random people walking by, which came in handy. So, I shout everyone down again in the main room, go to pick a lock, and suddenly we get a phone call attempt, but it's one of the people right outside the vault door I just shouted down with a shotgun and about every threat increaser available. I couldn't get her back down, so I popped her with my pistol but was too late.

Is there some kind of diminishing returns on shouts? We had been at it for a long time. In fact, by the time she called the cops, we had like 2 money bags and I was just about to run (ha, walk) a gold bag out. We still made a load of money because I got the gold in before the hard motherfuckers showed up, but I guess at some-point you can't leave intimidated people alone for any length of time?

[Mr Bean]

Civilians are on a sixty second timer max with all skills maxed, thirty seconds without. You have to have someone shout them down every thirty seconds if you don't have a mastermind on your side. With control freak firing a high threat unsilenced weapon in the air does just as well.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Relying on shouts to keep civvies down can be a bit hit and miss. Better to have as much Cable Guy Ace in the crew as possible, or Winston Wolfe if you're bloodthirsty. Or, for maximum amusement, get yourself a Masterforcer with the portable saw + Control Freak, and then have them stand in the middle of the bank revving the saw in the air while all the civvies scream (and stay down).

[Mr Bean]

Relying on shouts to keep civvies down can be a bit hit and miss. Better to have as much Cable Guy Ace in the crew as possible, or Winston Wolfe if you're bloodthirsty. Or, for maximum amusement, get yourself a Masterforcer with the portable saw + Control Freak, and then have them stand in the middle of the bank revving the saw in the air while all the civvies scream (and stay down).

They fixed saws having insane levels of threat. It used to be each gunshot was a "threat" and saws had like 30 threat when revving but 50 threat when hitting something like the ground. Prior to that control freak would let a saw user down every civy into passivity by just sawing the ground as each saw tick was 50 threat.

Or in other words 1 person with control freak and a saw was like 6 people with control freak and lmgs firing in the air.

[TheHammer]

Left 4 dead 2 is great for co-op. You can jump in casual anytime and get a game, can start and have your friends join in later, or pop in and out as needed. And its definitely built around the idea of co-op because you can't solo the game and win, not the whole way through at least.

[TheFeniX]

We're getting a lot better. Stealthed a few banks and jewelry stores on hard. The main thing is getting the skills to get the job done. Now that Kyle has cable-ace as well, it's nice to just tie everyone up, move the people at the front to the back, and have enough left over in case someone walks by and spots us. Kyle convinced me to buy the courier DLC. Meh, whatever.

Left 4 dead 2 is great for co-op. You can jump in casual anytime and get a game, can start and have your friends join in later, or pop in and out as needed. And its definitely built around the idea of co-op because you can't solo the game and win, not the whole way through at least.

We have a ridiculous number of hours in L4dead 1 and 2 on 360. We even messed around for a while on PC and I enjoyed how PC players can actually put up a fight in VS. The first game is where I actually met Sorrow.

My original team all went back to CoD, so I was pugging VS games. I ran into Sorrow in one match, barked a lot of orders, yelled when people didn't listen: but we won... handily. Sorrow would admit years later he couldn't fucking stand me for the first month or so because he took enough orders when he was in the military. But he put up with it because his desire to win means more to him than his intense dislike for me.

It was a shame when Teddy Bear joined the army. He was a good guy and we wished him well. He was the 4th when we got our team name. When they added the team matchmaking into L4Dead2 I was stoked.... and then we could never get a group to play against, so we had to go back to stomping pugs. Then we locked out all the achievements and it was time to move on.

[TheFeniX]

7 Days running on my i7 is a completely different experience. Since dodging any and all pugging, I assumed the animations and lag were "it's alpha" issues. But now, rabbits and other fauna actually move normally and I can hit zombines a lot easier since, when they randomly swap directions, it registers damn near immediately. K got his rig together, so we've been playing FFXIV (meh), but I'm hoping to give 7 Days another solid go since the last update wiped out everything we had.