You might have noticed that I’ve mentioned TERA Online in the past. To be more precise I wanted to playtest it for a longer time after immediately liking the visual style and some of the gameplay mechanics at Gamescom 2011. I received a key for the closed beta last week but was unable to play there because I busy was otherwise - not that I regret that. After Ron told me that the open beta is this weekend I wasn’t so sure anymore. Of course it didn’t keep me from playing. Did anyone doubt that?

The Tera launcher needs some major streanlining. ~Kevin VanOrd
Also, streamlining. ~Kevin VanOrd

I don’t mind that it takes up a lot of screen estate. I mean, realistically speaking I won’t be using it for other activities than clicking the “Play” button, right?

As I’m not interested in PVP I picked a PVE server and set out on my journey. At least that’s what I thought I would do. During extensive character modification the game crashed. I sighed and tried again, because all progress was - of course - lost. Have you ever heard of auto-save, game devs? That might be a fine place to integrate it. Of course, you could also fix the bug that sends the game crashing when you extensively modify a character and enter your chosen name. This might not apply for both genders or all races, however I had said problem for both castanic¹ and high elves². I can’t tell if the problem is the same for humans³. After some time I figured out that I can enter the name first and start customizing after that to circumvent the crash.

Starting out

Starting to dig into the whole customization thing I figured one thing out fast: You may customize your characters head (hairstyle, makeup, beard, facial features) to a great extent. All that you may change about your body is the skin tone. Now, call me focused on female secondary gender features, but in a game in which you walk around in annoyingly skimpy clothing for a considerable amount of time, I’d like to actually enjoy looking at my character. Read: Either I have to endure the silly castanic running animation or put up with the high elves oversized breasts. No, playing a male character is not an option. Unless it’s a baraka .⁴

Before the whole customizing, however, you chose your class. I don’t want to be a support character because I prefer doing things solo, even in MMOs. I’m also not much for ranged classes. That meant that priest, mystic, archer and sorcerer were out. I’ve never been a fan of axes or defensive classes, so beserker and lancer were out too. I decided on slayer which is an offensive class wielding a greatsword.

Interestingly, En Masse decided to display the recommended player skill level on the class selection screen. I’m pretty sure I chose the slayer because it had 3/5 stars in contrast to the warrior with 5/5 stars. I played nearly all of my time as warrior anyway, but I’ll get to that later. After you’ve finished customization you’ll be asked wether to play the prologue or start at the Island of Dawn. At least after you’ve been forced to check out the prologue on your first character. I’m all for hands-on tutorials, but don’t get me wrong here. I’ve been so confused to suddenly find myself as a level 20 character that I checked the Internet to see why I didn’t start at level 1. Well, the prologue not only teaches you the basics of combat but also means to give some background information.

So I created another character to check if only specific classes start at level 20. And that was my high elf, which I’ve now played for several hours. She’s a warrior, dual wielding swords. I would’ve preferred daggers. After several hours of play I even got an armor that is not just a corset and panties. It’s still skimpy. She also wears combat heels. You know, for the time when you have to kick an enemy really hard. Gosh, they’re so incredibly ridiculous, it makes my head hurt everytime I see them in a video game.

I enjoy the combat. There’s not much to tell. Skills, combos, targeting via reticle, evasion, block. All in place.

What’s bad

The things I’ve mentioned above are not bad per se, however, those are things that don’t target my specific taste. That’s fine. Bad things follow in this section.

UI trouble

There’s an option to scale the UI. It does fine, except that it scales all UI elements, including the font-size. It’d be preferable to scale font-size and the size of UI elements like buttons independently. Combined with the scrubber that does that is another idiocy:

Let’s assume you have a window open and use the clickable lower right corner ⁵ to scale it:
Result: The window scales and everything within is blown up. Previously readable fonts are blown up to laughable sizes.
Expected result: The window scales and its content reflows. Font size does not change. Ever worked with CSS in web development? Then you know what it should behave like.

• It might be a nice idea to allow individual preferences for the tabs in your chat UI. However the font-size for chat should be globally adjustable.

Inconsistency

• There’s a sequence, right after the initiation into the army proper of uhm… the land starting with “V”. It’s Valkyon, I’ve checked. The audio and the subtitles don’t match up at all. This fact is made worse by the subs being on by default.
• I realize having keyboard shortcuts in dialogue is equally helpful and awkward. It’s even more awkward if you don’t use variables to read the player’s set shortcuts and use the default bindings instead. Confused much?
• On more shortcut trouble: Consistently colouring those would be preferred. Don’t colour it once and don’t another time.
• Why the hell are keyboard configurations character-specific? If I want SPACE to be my interact, then let me. Don’t make me change everything for every new character again!

Other annoyances

• Quest monster camping. TERA spawns monsters quite frequently. The condition for the orcan having the black feather (his name started with “A”…) spawning was actually his dead body disappearing. Still, there was a group of three people on my server who blocked that boss by targeting him with a ranged attack every time he spawned. Several other players were standing around cursing because those were stealing the boss every time, so no one was able to complete their quest. Considering that that group probably got the quest immediately since kills are shared within a group they were trolling. Quite successfully, I might add.
• Armor colours are only applied for a limited time. Why shouldn’t dyeing your amor be permanent? Unless you want players to pay via micro-transactions for permanent armor colours I guess.
• We’ve had several hours to be amazed by the Isle of Dawn during the introductory hours. Please refrain from making the pegasus fly all over it again and make it head straight through your Star Gate imitation.
• For heaven’s sake, make the armor preview discoverable ingame! Put it into the help section ⁶ or armor remodelers’ dialogue. I had to google for several minutes to find out that the key combination is CTRL + RIGHT CLICK.

Conclusion

It is worrying that there was so much cynicism and “been there, done that” attitude before the game has even launched. ~Bozanimal

I’ll probably not be paying for this game, though I might give it a second look during the open beta and might even write a little follow-up article. You should however checkout this blog post I came across which just happens to point out how disappointing in terms of lore and devoid of replay value TERA is.

Warning: Contains plot details for Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3. Stop reading if you want to enjoy those games without prior knowledge.

Ending the fun

By now you might’ve seen that everybody and their mum complain about ME3’s ending. That it didn’t reveal enough details. That it wasn’t sophisticated enough. That it wasn’t a perfect match as the conclusion of an epic trilogy. I’m looking at both my friends Leonhard and Thomas here.

The game basically offers three different endings with two distinct flavors. There are the options to destroy the reapers, merge organic and synthetic life and control the reapers (from best to worst) as well as a distinction if you saved or destroyed the Collector’s base in ME2.

Leonhard got the “mediocre” ending, also called “synthesis” in which organic and synthetic forms of life are merged. In his mind that was actually the best ending considering the outcome for EDI and Joker, who get to continue their relationship, and for life in general, since it seems like a great step in evolutionary terms. Too bad that Bioware doesn’t agree with this point of view. Therefore this ending isn’t considered the “best” and my friend was upset with the way Bioware handled his view of possible evolution in an imaginary scenario.

I don’t actually remember what Thomas told me about his choice for the ending but I clearly remember him being disappointed when talking to me about how meaningless your choices were. Although he used some rather ominous terms to describe his findings at that time in order not to ruin my surprise when playing.

Personally, I have not yet seen any of the endings, although my Total Military Strength is nearly enough to be able to choose the best ending when the issue arises. Right now I’ve looked up the possible outcomes and also don’t consider any option the best.

Dissolving conflict

However, I found something else rather baffling. The entire Mass Effect series is a game that - in my opinion - is very much about choice. The decisions you make define more or less the state of the galaxy which is a concept I am rather fond of. Sometimes you’d like to reverse your decisions though. I always found myself being a friendly and peacemaking person when I’m in Commander Shepard’s (lady-)boots. The universe in which I live is mostly peaceful and does not try to slaughter each other at every opportunity. I also don’t shoot every guy ¹ in the head just because I don’t agree with them. Unless there’s no other way, but many times there will be another way, for I am a charming person whose charisma has often managed to solve a situation without casualties.

So when I realized that the quarians had gone to war with the the geth and the geth were forced to accept the help of the reapers in order to survive I was displeased, but according to some research it was possible to keep them from tearing each others’ hearts out ². There was just major problem. I knew I rewrote the geth in ME2 thinking they might be allies during the fight in ME3 ³. I knew I successfully defended Tali at her trial. The only variable I had to consider was wether I solved the conflict between Tali and Legion in ME2 or sided with one of them. Unfortunately I seem to have done that and there’s no way my actions in ME3 can make up for that. So I won’t be able to prevent them from war. However I don’t want to take sides in this idiotic conflict since I have friends on both sides of the battlefield.

That means I will have to play the whole of ME2 again in order to change one tiny decision. I definitely won’t change my decision to rewrite instead of destroy the heretic geth since they are a great war asset. And judging from experience a complete run of ME2 with almost every DLC and full completion took me around 17 hrs on Insanity when trying the last time. This should be fun. Unless - and that’s the reason I have to do this crap again - I have too little paragon points again in order to stop Legion and Tali from arguing in ME2. Meh.

On the other hand I might save my the cerberus crew in ME2. Or not, since I enjoy Legion’s company during all the side missions.

This time I’ll just be throwing up some random thoughts.

• The plan for the Linux Days 2012 of Graz is final. I’ve discovered that our workshop (with small presentation) will be held before noon. How do I put this… I don’t think that’s going to improve my performance.
• I’ve recently won a competition over at one of my two preferred Xbox 360 news sources and received two games. I’ve only looked into JASF yet, not into Birds of Steel. To be honest that might take a while since I’ve now received my copy of Mass Effect 3 and ordered Deus Ex: Human Revolution really cheap.
• I’ll be starting to catch up with my reading starting from Monday and might write a review of Susan Cain’s Quiet, a book which I think I learned a lot from.
• You might find me online playing Mass Effect 3 during the next month.

But before I jump head first into ME3 I need to elaborate on my initial thoughts of JASF so I won’t forget to post them.

Before I even begin I want to clarify that I’m aware of the difference in budget to AAA dogfighter titles like the Ace Combat or H.A.W.X. franchises. So far I’ve enjoyed my trip to Genericstan as Razor, a pilot from Generic Western Coalition. I didn’t pay that much attention to the story since the presentation is occasionally kind of poor. Where triple A titles would’ve placed a nicely rendered cutscene, JASF - which I continuously want to spell JANE - strikes you with a wall-of-text. It’s not as bad as it sounds though, as the WOT will be read to you by one of the voice actors which uses this accent where I’m never sure if it just sounds cheesy to me or if it really is. Also they are angry about the aggressive force but on the first opportunity to lash out all you hear is “glorious president” this and “glorious president” that even though he gave priority to snatching the enemy’s oil fields instead of disabling their WoMD.
One thing that caught my eye was the jerky scrolling of the WOT, even though it scrolled smoothly when in auto-scroll (voice is reading) mode. I’m not quite sure about the latest games from AC and HAWX but the last ones I’ve played (Ace Combat: Fires of Liberation and H.A.W.X. 1) didn’t have in-flight loading screens when updating mission objectives. That is an immersion breaking annoyance.
There’s one more thing. I’m not sure if it’s my eyes or if it’s a bug in the game but sometimes it looks if my cockpit doesn’t have a glass dome. It seems as if my head is out in the open during flight which would be bad.

Please, let me demonstrate a part of the wrongness of Mass Effect Datapad for iOS. ¹

1. The iPad screen is huge and you are still unable to get 10 updates in there without having the user scroll? This is ridiculous. I’m reminded of Krystian’s commentary on Mass Effect 1‘s interface fails.
2. The + Button links to facebook and twitter? What for? To see more? Why do we even pull @replies without context? Where does this whole screen make any sense?
3. I especially like the “Show more” button. I haven’t tried it on the iPhone, but on the iPad it isn’t clickable. It’s simply text saying “show more” without any interaction. Great. /sarc

Notebook dump incoming. Preparing data stream…
streaming…

• Ron sent me this great video about how words can make a considerable difference depending on what exactly is said.
• There’s an adorable letter from a cool, nerdy uncle to his niece introducing her to the internet.
• A tipp on lifehacker mentions that you can click and scroll to change the volume while over the volume tray icon in Windows. Well, that’s the same for OS X. But I really miss the behaviors of GNOME in that line, because you just need to hover over the icon instead of clicking and scrolling.
• While playing Assassin’s Creed: Revelations there were a few occasions where I wasn’t quite sure why the game didn’t do what I wanted it to do. For some hints about bomb crafting this thread at GameFAQs was quite helpful.
• Pre-Purchase now: Yesterday must be one of the best headlines I’ve heard in a while. It’s from Steam’s feed.
• In another cash grab Capcom already shipped “additional content” on the disk and only sold codes to unlock the content separately. How nice of them. /sarc
• I might be visiting the Zero Waste Fest!2012 in May.

processing…

Recently I’ve read James Swallow’s Deus Ex: Icarus Effect and Nate Kenyon’s StarCraft Ghost: Spectres. Both were excellent sci-fi themed books that fit nicely to the images the video games they belong to painted. Unfortunately I was lazy enough not to read the description of the Deus Ex book before buying which led to me wondering where Adam (the most recent game’s protagonist) was. Well, the book isn’t about Adam. It’s more or less set around the events of the game. Meaning, some of it takes place before the game and some during the game as far as I understood it from not having played the game yet.

In other news the situation at our university is in total disarray right now but I’ll probably rant about that in a separate post where I need to give vent to my anger.

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Update: It seems I had a little problem with the links earlier. Sorry about that.

If you’ve never been to Tribeka while being in Graz, you’ve seriously missed something. Tribeka is the most famous brand of coffee and in-style café in Graz. It’s a meeting point for businessmen, students and hippsters alike. The cultural variety of people you’re going to meet when enjoying your hot beverage or cool juice at Tribeka alone is enough to be impressing alone, but during the day it also manages to leave an astonishing impression of open-mindedness amongst its visitors.

Graz houses three different locations of the Tribeka.

at the Grießkai

There’s one at the Grießkai, which is the bigger one of the two I’ve yet visited. It’s lower floor has quite some modern chairs and tables, as well as some high bar-like tables with the corresponding high seats. There’s a long waiting table and a glass case containing all sorts of delicious treats for a sweet tooth. Usually there’s already a line of at least two people in front of you even though the waiters and waitresses are always busy. Sometimes maybe a little busy with themselves but this is a case where I really don’t mind since I feel in this venue that behavior actually even improves the atmosphere.

The upper floor houses a lot more tables and chairs. This is - combined with the free WiFi (I’m not using that. At least not without VPN.) - one of the reasons that I’ve seen a lot of workers with laptops and tablets there. During the holidays it’s mainly a students’ meeting point since they’re not in school. Or pretty much all other days it’s a healthy variety of university students (more), business people (less) and walk-in customers. I’m rather sure I’ve also seen some designers and journalists there according to the stuff on their screens (no, I’m not gonna pretend I’m not curious).

You can get that weird feeling sitting there. This belonging and not belonging thing. When you’re among strangers and know you fit right in there. It’s definitely an in-café. So actually I’m still wondering why I get that feeling there. I’m usually far away from mainstream. Maybe it’s the fact that the personnel is around my age that makes me feel comfortable there.

near the Old University of Technology / Mandellstraße

That’s the place I visit more frequently than the first place. It’s not exactly close to my home (about 10 min with the tram) but the closest Tribeka. And since their Hot White Chocolate is mind-bogglingly delicious ¹ I can definitely imagine being there every day. I mean, I could. I think this place just isn’t as cozy as the other. There’s no second floor and the first one is very crammed with tables and seats - especially during the colder seasons. You might as well sit outside when it’s warmer or take your beverage with you but I think you’re losing a part of the style that way.

Nevertheless you may want to consider it when looking for a nice place to sit down for an hour and have a long chat with some friends, like I recently did with Pete and Matthias.

Judging from the amount of laptop users I’ve seen there I will simply assume there’s also free WiFi at the place.

the last refuge

There’s also a third venue which I haven’t visited yet. I may do that sometime in the future and update this article with my thoughts on that.

conclusion

Tribeka also has its coffee delivered to several restaurants all over Graz (e.g. the Rondo). These restaurants often display this prominently and proudly.

I might not like coffee at all but I can enjoy a great café all the same. Tribeka is part of the student culture that’s very prominent in Graz and should therefor be checked out by visitors to get a feeling for Graz’s coffee culture.

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Update: I seem to have some trouble remembering the Markdown syntax lately. This is the second post which had bad links before the update. Even worse, this article was published while it was still unfinished. I’m terribly sorry for that and pulled it. When you read this it will already be the finished version. Again, I’m terribly sorry.

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Tribeka: Graz's young coffee culture is part 6 of Cuisine Notes:

1. Rox (opening)
2. Rondo
3. Torona
4. Rox (follow-up)
5. Propeller
6. Tribeka: Graz's young coffee culture

I’ll say the following upfront: I’ve been a fan of the Propeller ever since Leonhard introduced me to it on one of my visits to Graz before I even considered studying here.

The Propeller is a restaurant whose main target group are students - a fact that can easily be guessed by its location near the Karl Franzens University. It’s not your ordinary dive bar however. The Propeller has something that quite a lot of student’s bars miss: class. Make no mistake, you’re not amongst the high society there nor are you in some elitist club. You’re in a laid back restaurant that manages to combine class, good food and a relaxing atmosphere into an ambiance that I enjoy quite a lot.

Leonhard once called it “an uptown student’s restaurant” ¹ which I think is a pretty accurate description. It’s perfectly fine to show up there with your friends, your family or your date. I can pretty much say that everyone I’ve dragged there has had a good, lasting impression.

For example when my father was in town for a weekend he had dinner with me on the first day there and was positively surprised - I get the feeling that student’s restaurants are said not to be particularly great most of the time. The second day of his visit was spent with his wife and some friends of hers eating at a hotel restaurant if I remember that correctly. According to him the food at the hotel was no match for the Propeller.

I’ve been there many, many times and there has only been one occasion when I wasn’t satisfied. While I can generally recommend their “Create your own wok” thing I’d advise you to stay off the shrimps. Not that they aren’t delicious. It’s just my humble opinion that 3 tiny shrimps for 3€ are not really a good deal.

Anyway. Most of my visits were for their excellent “Schuberpfandl”. This highly recommendable dish consists of pork fillet, Spätzle, mushrooms and cream sauce and is served in a pan. I am particularly fond of the Spätzle-cream sauce combination. Also the amount of food in the pan is exactly right for my appetite.

Recently I’ve been there with Matthias for one of their specials. The Indian weeks didn’t only sound great but also made for an astoundingly refreshing change from the dishes I usually order there.

While I had the Chicken a la Madrocas ² - marinated with a Madrocas curry spice mix and aromatic rice - Matthias ordered the Tandoori Chicken with rice. We generally agree that the rice was superb and the meat very tasty. Another thing that’s important to mention is the quite short time it took for the food to arrive - another positivum. While I didn’t find the lack of additional side dishes like vegetables or a creamy sauce that bad, Matthias seems to think that the Tandoori Chicken is not usually served this way. On the other hand we both agree again that for a theme weeks offering the whole thing was fine.

You may want to check out their website for some pictures of the location - If you’re on a device without Flash, you’re not missing anything short of an annoying animated text. I was also quite sad that the link for a newsletter is not working. When clicking I’m only presented with a blank page.

I also want to add that since the last but one time I was there they seem to have set up separate smoker and non-smoker areas which is a huge plus.

One more thing: I’ve heard a lot about their lunch buffet which seems to offer a good variety of dishes and is reasonably priced. However I’ve only once made it there in time for the buffet in a about two and a half years of studying in Graz. Unfortunately I wasn’t in the mood for something big that time and went with a salad.

Should you visit this place: Yes.

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Propeller is part 5 of Cuisine Notes:

1. Rox (opening)
2. Rondo
3. Torona
4. Rox (follow-up)
5. Propeller
6. Tribeka: Graz's young coffee culture

I’m already looking forward to this year’s Linux Days of Graz since I’ve decided that I’m going to help with the amateur course. I’ve maded that decision last year after having attended half of the course which was given by Manfred as well as Bernhard and Thomas. Since they had been talking about wanting to give a course for intermediate users as well there was lots of room for an additional presenter which would be me.

Of course, after having some slight repercussions during last year’s course (read: the Ubuntu partner repository not being enabled on a live CD and therefor not being able to install Skype for demonstration purpose) we want to make sure we have everything ready and tested twice or even thrice.

However, since my primary machine is a Macbook Air these days, I’ll have to prepare something that houses the required Ubuntu installation for the Linux Days. That basically gave me 3.5 options:

• Virtualbox (open-source, except some proprietary extensions ¹, free, preferred)
• Parallels (commercial, complex integration with OS X, 30 day trial)
• VMware Fusion (commercial, 30 day trial)
• dual booting (not in consideration, rather: use a different machine)

As you can easily see the obvious choice was Virtualbox. Usual procedure: Download, install, install extensions, mount iso, roll. Except for the “roll” part. For some reason the sane defaults didn’t do it. To enable network access I had to switch the network options from NAT to bridged to be able to get a connection.

After having solved that tiny problem I was going to test the installation. I rushed through the installer’s questions and went away from my laptop for a while only to come back seeing that I was logged out. Unfortunately that only offered one conclusion: Something bad had happened. I logged in, went to Console and found that the Macbook had restarted after a Kernel Panic. Damn.

So I had to consider the other options again. Checking the date gave me a little more time however, since the Linux Days would otherwise not be included in the 30 day trial. I’ll also try Virtualbox again without Oracle’s extensions to see if that works better.

Interestingly though Virtualbox seemed to require less resources than older versions, since the fan in my laptop wasn’t constantly running on full speed.

Have little doubt. I might not be able to guarantee that this year everything will work perfect. Nevertheless we will try to prepare everything as well as we can given that there’s work for university and us having social lives too.

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Update: Fixed typo in title

The estimated length of a game is something that can often tell you certain things about the genre of a game, at least that convention was true in the past. In the good old times of the Playstation 1 the content length could also be estimated by the amount of disks needed, but that’s another story.

Most of the time when there was a discussion about a game’s length it referred to the time needed for a full run without loitering and completion of a reasonable amount of sidequests if existing. This estimate of gameplay length was intended as a guide to guess how long they will need themselves. Of course, given the tendency that a lot of games incorporate minigames and other optional possibilities that guesstimate is rather inaccurate. There’s nothing wrong with that.

What is wrong is the tendency of artificially prolonging gameplay time via activities that the majority of players won’t find enjoyable. Often these activities feel a bit disconnected from the main gameplay and/or the plot. Some of you might argue that this is the way that subscription based games ¹ make their money. Artificially prolonging gameplay time may not be a nice tactic, but for this kind of service it’s the standard business tactic.

So, what I’m trying to say is that the artificial prolonging of gameplay time is indeed detrimental to a single player game. The more story driven it is the more this rule applies.

If you need proof for yourself you can check out Mass Effect 2 (ME2) and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (ACR). Both of those fall horribly into this trap.

ME2 has the minigame in which you are mining for minerals via launching probes onto various planets (read: pressing one button over and over again) and scanning planets for the minerals (read: moving an infuriatingly slow target reticle with the analog sticks or the mouse). Sure, the minigame isn’t necessary to advance the story, but you’ll need the upgrades for weapons, etc. in order not to die.

ACR has even two of those atrocious flaws.

The first is called “Den Defense”. It’s basically a built in tower defense minigame that does nothing in terms of plot nor is it particularly good in terms of equipment or monetary revenue. Add to that the fact that the camera angle is a pain in the arse and you have something you will want to avoid at all costs - since losing one of those minigames has annoying consequences. Furtunately Ubisoft gives you an option to avoid those nearly entirely, making them pointless in the process, as Yathzee pointed out. ²

The second flaw is “Desmond’s Journey”. Aside from the fact that this must be Ubisoft’s try to breath some personality and background into one of the most generic, bland and plain boring characters in recent gaming history the first person puzzle game sequences suck. They are counterintuitive, frustrating and incredibly clunky when compared to the main gameplay. Given that they proved to be almost unanimously hated on the Internet I’m still amazed that Ubi thought it a good idea to release additional content which prominently features the game’s worst mechanic - which would be the first person jumping/puzzling in Assassin’s Creed Revelations.

Now, I don’t say that minigames shouldn’t be done. Rather, my point is that the developer should have a clear focus of what makes the game great and how the minigames relate to that as well as how to advertise the distracting content ingame. Be aware of your strengths and don’t let the unimportant things take more time away than necessary from the core gameplay experience.

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Update: Typo correction in title

When I am craving content and narration I’m a very impatient man. I don’t have time for battles in video games that don’t serve to strenghten the plot and I don’t want to wait for an event to start or for a slot on a server to be available in an MMO. There’s something that’s bugging me when I’m in Multi Player sessions:
I feel slowed down. More so than necessary.

That’s not to say that I won’t enjoy playing a game with friends every once in a while - I do. But the more heavy on story a game is the less I’m going to enjoy playing it with friends. I’ll give you an example.

I bought Borderlands on STEAM when it was discounted from 35€ to 7,5€. I did so to play together with Ron and Manuel. Aside from the fact that that was maybe even half a year ago and I still have yet to play with the latter, I’ve completed the story once with Ron, as well as two of four DLC packs. Now did I enjoy the time? Yes and no.

Yes, because it was nice having backup in tense situations, having someone to talk to while fighting through all those hordes of enemies and sharing some of the best moments of Borderlands is an experience that shouldn’t be missed.

No, because I have a hard time waiting for my friend to finish shopping. Or re-equipping or changing his style of play - which he does far more often than I do. I’m pretty much a constant gameplay wise. I’ll choose a style that fits what I want my character to be and stick with it for the game. I particularly hate the discussions that come up when changing areas.

Are you finished yet?
No.
Why not?
Because I’m not sure which weapon to take.
Again?

Aside from me losing my patience from time to time, it was a good time. I’m also rather sure that I have my own weaknesses that I’m not aware of right now.

The bigger thing that is happening in my brain is an internal argument wether I do really enjoy this. I’m very much a Single Player person who’s sole argument for playing a game often is the story and not the gameplay. However, for such a story to have an emotional effect on you, you need to live, or at least feel the story. You have to be immersed in the fictional world presented to you. That immersion is lost when you’re on Teamspeak, Skype, Mumble (name your poison) due to the fact that the other person is generally not willing to roleplay. To cut a long story short: Someone yelling “LOL” into your ear during cutscenes may very well screw up the experience for you, depending on your own playstyle and your bullshit tollerance.

And finally: Stop messing with my targets while I’m aiming. I hate it when its weak points move due to you shooting with a rapid firing weapon.