Sidetrek: Progress Quest

Wow, there’s nothing like studying game psychology when you *hem* “play games” like these. www.progressquest.com

So you’ve heard of these games before. Essentially, they play themselves and you just see pretty numbers. It’s good for a laugh. So I’m bored this afternoon and I decide to go download it and run it and take a look see.

Pre-progress quest, you get to pick your race, class and stats. I am ashamed to report that I actually spent about a hundred clicks or so on the Roll button until I got my bright red Total of: 81 for all stats, instead of settling for an average or the low end of 50. Why? Why did I do this? I don’t know. It’s like an inbuilt, innate, thing from playing too many RPGs – max stats means more success, must must have 18s. (Or whatever the max is.)

Is it because I want to be uber? This is unabashed min-maxing. My Bartle Achiever tendencies are showing.

The only thing that stops me from calculating stats and probabilities and trying to see what number affects what, if at all, is that I hate math. If I were a numbers freak, I’d be just like many many CoH players (mostly guys, I suspect, with engineering/comp sci tendencies) who are sitting on the test server with a stopwatch collecting data.

So anyway I get my total of 81 points, and I’m still not happy that my stats are all 15 and below. Where are my max 18s? (Isn’t this pathetic? It doesn’t make a difference at all, it’s a self-playing progress quest, sheesh. Intellectually I know it’s fairy moonshine, but I’m trained/brainwashed/conditioned to desire them emotionally.)

It starts up. The prologue is a little thumb-tapping boring. (Man, what am I saying, this whole thing is supposed to be ridiculous, but I can’t wait for it to get to the “meat” of the game. Errr…*thwaps self in forehead a little*)

Then the killing starts. Ahem, the “executing of <insert random monster name here>” and a churning progress bar.

You know what, here is where I discover something deeply disturbing in myself. I barely pay any attention to what equipment or spells/powers I have, it doesn’t really rattle me when it upgrades or doesn’t. I wonder if others get a “thrill” or a “buzz” out of seeing their sharp (pointy) sticks jump up to something kewl?

But you know what is giving me an awful buzz? This tingling down my spine that makes me wanna set us up the laptop, rush to zmud and scream, NOOOOOO, not my characters, not my THINGS (I don’t care about phat loot, but I just want THINGS)…

My goodness, I am actually thrilled by seeing this scavenger loot show up in “my” inventory. I’m collecting “green slime samples” and “camel humps” and “multicell dendrites” and “eagle scout merit badges” and various other sundry things, and yeesh, it’s making me happy to “have” this junk. I don’t quite understand why I’m so impressed by things which are basically a text list of odd objects. I don’t even have to “identify” it to see its stats to be happy.

In this respect, I am completely unlike a dedicated Achiever. Judging from my observation of those found in RoD, they are completely unimpressed by any “stuff” that doesn’t aid or improve them in some way (read: adds little numbers to their stats.)

Me, I just like curiously named junk. I am an unabashed Explorer, of the sub-family Collector, species Pack Ratus. :( Oh dear.

It makes me sad that I automatically sell this stuff for gold to buy phat eq loot. An unlimited encumbrance would make me totally happy as I accumulate 34134 uruk boots and 12123 Gilded Arrows of Suffering and so on. :/

And watching this also reminds me of the RPG fondness for prefixes and adjectives. “Greater” something. “Lesser something.” And normal “something.” Right away, you’ve made three monsters for the price of one.

Add on things like “fire,” “shadow,” “water,” “elemental,” “earth,” “spirit,” “ghostly,” “demonic,” “angelic,” (I will stop listing words now) and you’ve quadradecadrupled whatever your noun was. :P

Insert new list of random nouns here. I keep thinking “pirate” and the worst thing is, you get good ideas from such things – hence why I like seventh sanctum and their random generators so much. I want to play an elemental pirate!

Before you know it, I’m gonna end up rolling up a storm/energy or something with an eyepatch and a hat. Oh dear. Or a ghost or shadow pirate, storm/dark.

Yarr, Kosh Mk IV the Land Squid Ur-Paladin is level 2. Anyone want to buy some 3 rotgrub egg sacs?

P.S. You know what is scary? I found two gamefaqs for Progress Quest. There were people bored enough to watch/decode/reverse engineer it to find out what impact strength would have, and so on. And here’s an interesting satire on the multiplayer game one – if you Ctrl-B to “Brag” about your accomplishment, your rating actually plummets online. Fitting. Oddly fitting.

P.P.S. Posting this one day late. Was at work - this is what happens when you block off yahoo email, blogger, ftp and any semblance of communication with the outside world. One ends up looking for weird things to do. Oh, and the fun part, I level up even when I'm not even at the computer. (And thus actually engaged in earning a salary / doing productive stuff.) Today Kosh hit level 7 by the time I came back to my desk! Woot! (*thwaps self for being a moron*)