Geez. I dunno what is up with me. Feeling vaguely groggy, lethargic, sorta kinda tired, pooped, mild stomach upset, and all around not-quite-depressed-but-not-really-happy either.
I slept through most of my off day yesterday. I do hope I am not coming down with not-quite-appropriately-named swine flu. :( No fever yet, but the thought of a new flu pandemic ala 1918 with no symptoms until a week later scares the crap outta me.
As spontaneous and effort-intensive as the anniversary event was, I found it a bit of a repetitive drag. It's fun to take down AVs and things when there are only a few of you in the zone, but lag kills any semblance of enjoyment when everyone dogpiles in. I got a couple of easy badges and free merits, so okay, not too shabby, but after killing your fifth Kronos Titan and 7th Lattice and 3rd Lord Recluse, the all too obvious fourth wall sets in and asks, exactly what is the explanation for what I am doing, besides an invisible GM spawning stuff randomly on us to kill?
Not to make "yet another farm thread" in my blogpost, but I have been finding it difficult of late to get onto a big fun team. Of course, this is 80% my fault because I have not set up a LFG flag, and I'm scared of answering 'lf ae team' broadcast calls for fear it is a farm in disguise, and I have not even bothered saying anything on a global channel because I haven't quite figured out what I want to do, if I have time to do it, and am vaguely scared of rejection. (Though not quite as bad as Luminara, perhaps.)
It's also true that by the time I hear one of these calls to team, I am already halfway into a solo MA arc and reluctant to get out and quit. Or have been faceplanted 5 times and getting dangerously close to the "ragequit the entire client" level.
One thing I -would- like to do is get a big group together to run each other's mission arcs. The problem with this, is that by the time I get around to thinking this is a good idea, and that there are enough people on a global channel to ask, it is touching 1am and I feel like collapsing into bed instead.
A shorter version of this is the slightly more selfish self-promotion. While I don't think I have the gall to grab an entire team and then yank them through my arc sight unseen, I do think that if I simply asked for volunteer playtesters on globals, I would get enough to walk them through my arc.
And that's 7 ratings just like that, if I'm lucky. If I'm very cunning, I will play my dark defender so that I pretty much kill my mobs' tohit so it will look very very scary but no one will die, and in case some moron wanders away from my debuff zone, there is my recharge-slotted howling twilight to save them a tedious trip from the hospital and extra sulking.
The only thing I'm slightly nervous about this is the face-to-face dissection/review of my arc. I think I would be okay reading about it from afar, as long as it's not a Venture-kind of review, but I don't exactly know how to react to face-to-face comments from strangers.
I tried this out with 3 people the last time. One went after the fact, "Heh. I think I quite liked that." Ok.... not exactly stellar praise, but at least he kinda liked it. Of course, it was revealed through a bit more talk that he completely missed the point of the destructible objects (he thought they contained Rikti brains, and needed to be destroyed, thus suggested to make them a required objective.)
Me, I just wanted them around for flavor, to show that the Architect had indeed ripped out Rikti brains to stuff into his Titans (to confirm that was why the Titans were Talking: Like This.) And since not everyone might have a character inclined to mass object destruction, I left it optional as to whether they should go boom or no. (Not to mention, the rogue Rikti patrol occasionally stumbles onto them, and has this fun spontaneous battle with Malta - great for environmental flavor, not so great if it's a required objective.)
However, this was a little heavy to explain there and then, so I just said, "thanks, will consider it." Felt like a blatant lie, though.
Another guy just 5-starred in silence. Ok. Hope you enjoyed it, and it wasn't from peer pressure or anything. Don't wanna make you feel uncomfy that way, even though I do want the ratings like everyone else, and wouldn't mind a bit of group psychology helping the ratings along. *silent guilty twitch*
Last guy was OOC: commenting on practically everything. I found this the most helpful of the lot, as he found one or two typos, which I was very happy to find and fix. He mentioned that my custom group Titan spawns were missing the Titan suffix, I let one or two of those go by, but as he kept going on and on about it, I had to mention the character limit which stopped me from adding those, and then he went, "Oh, alright." Felt weird though, like I had to defend myself, but I didn't really want to sound defensive, because I hate people who get all defensive when criticised myself.
He was also unclear on a story detail, which in retrospect, is slightly vague. I'm not sure that it is 100% mission critical storyline myself. However, in order to fix this, I pretty much have to retype huge chunks of my mission text, and I'm not really keen on editing the arc if it's something that only 1% of people will notice. After all, even the dev content and dev's choice arcs look worse with typos and plot inconsistencies. I'm happy enough to settle for 95% decent, and fix the 5% uncertainty with a sequel later on...
So again, I just said, thanks, and will consider how I can best fix that... lying through my teeth, pretty much, because I didn't really feel like fixing it, because I don't really think it is a show-stopping problem, unless the next 15 of 20 people that play my arc all point it out and ask about it.
Yeah. The lying through my teeth part is what kills me. I know the criticism is meant with good intentions. I welcome it. I think it is valuable feedback to see how different people perceive my arc. It gives me a baseline to work with for the future.
I'm pretty much there with story edits though. I've given my story a few passes on my own during Test phase, and tightened up most of the loose jointed bits. I'm tired of the damn story. Cos this isn't a heavy story/drama arc to begin with. I'm saving those for when we are actually able to make proper branched choices through MA.
It's just all an excuse for a fun romp through big groups of enemies to destroy an extreme robot mm I thought would be hilariously cool to watch unfold robots - but also conceivably give the player(s) a fighting chance to defeat it, hence the Vanguard allies, and a story reason for the Vanguard to be involved, mostly because I think Talsorian blades are the coolest thing ever, and making them green lets me link a recognizable in-game faction in players' minds, unsoweiter.
I'm happy to finish up with the difficulty balancing and final polish stage, and then call it "done."
So it's really hard to NOT explain all this in one great wall-o-text gush of defensive reaction when some well-meaning bastard decides that something else, like story inconsistency, is most important to him. I know that's not appropriate. But what is?
Do I say, "thank you, will take that feedback into consideration" politely, all the while meaning to toss it out of the window at the first opportunity? It does feel a teensy bit hypocritical to do that. I do appreciate the observation being made.
It just may not be my highest priority to drop everything to please your one single mind, so your comment will be noted, filed away and stored in deep freeze to see if there are enough voices to thaw it out and have a relook. But saying that honestly, is also just asking for a long drawn out argument/discussion too. :)
So the other possibility involves a bit more work, but I could start posting to all the mutual-trade arc threads and ask individuals to go through my arc, scoring ratings slowly but surely. The benefit is that I get some focused arc goals to go through as well. The downside is I kinda need TIME to play some of these long arcs - which is probably why so few long arcs can get rated. And this involves soloing mostly. Kinda boring.
It's really tough finding teams that are on the same page now, though. Even in my little playtest group, there was one guy who was going through the story and writing with a fine tooth comb, one silent guy who I'm not sure what he was looking for, and the one mad scrapper who was pretty much charging past everything in the search for great scads of action. How the heck do I play an arc with a full group if we end up charging at full tilt into spawns?
I can see why people end up joining farms, just for teamed action. I would too, if I weren't so strongly opposed to the principle of it.
The other thing keeping me occupied is the thought that I should buy the Superbooster Magic pack, and start work on the music video project that I have been neglecting for ages. I do want to do it, but this is a colossal project, involving many many parts and pieces to be put together. That's a lot of time to spend.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Inveterate Generalist
Killing time as my Thinking Rock downloads and lunch hour rolls around. I need a quick David Allen-style Collect/Process/Organize/Next Action/DO phase runthrough rather desperately - room in shambles, feeling adrift at work, and even my leisure activities (a ton of books) are stacked against one wall, still in their brand new plastic wrappings and carrier bags.
Pft.
I've also come to the conclusion that I'm an inveterate generalist.
It started hitting me subconsciously when I attended a talk by some Nobel Prize laureate, Sir Tim Hunt, who happened to be in Singapore and gave a little presentation on "Getting In and Out of Mitosis." Oh, he was quite an entertaining speaker in his own right, and he had some wonderful stepping stone slides to get a general audience tuned into the nitty gritty...
But as per normal, about 30-45 mins into the talk, my attention span started slipping when he started delving into the historical progress of various scientific labs working on various biochemicals - named in godawful scientist/engineer idiosyncratic fashion (eg. PP22A, PP2B, Cyclin (because the guy used to enjoy cycling at the time), and various other more horrifically obscure arrangements of letters and numbers that only made sense to the one guy working on the stuff.)
And of course, to make matters worse, since every lab names things differently - what ultimately could be the same chemical might be called different names, so you'd have to waste even more time trying to figure out if they were really the same thing or not.
All this to find the precise chemicals used in a minute pathway in a teensy cell, that ultimately controls whether it divides or not.
Yes. I do appreciate that it is rather important. From a far away distance, I do rather admire how fascinatingly complex these living processes inside cells are. Since I do like mapping and exploration and other related things, I can intellectually appreciate that it is rather fun and satisfying to draw up a beautiful biochemical pathway map, figuring out what inhibits this and that and so on. And the fact that there are people out there who would devote an entire lifetime to this awes me.
Not to mention, SCARES me. 3 months to conduct a rigorous experiment that checks on the presence of one chemical. Another 6 months to repeatedly try some other experiment that may or may not work. Even more time to write a paper about it and document the process. And practically two years of one's life are spent just puzzling out a teeny tiny detail.
When I realized this was the real life of a "scientist", somewhen during a half-term internship at a Berkeley lab, I got myself out of academia and research really quick.
Not that it is bad, per se. I admire people who can do that. Delve deep down into the details and get so reductionist and dedicate a lifetime to such focus. It actually amazes me that there are so many people to be found doing that.
For the talk was packed - huge droves of people arrived who seemed to know each other, and I suspected that most of them were from labs in the Biopolis (where the talk was held), researchers, postdocs, students and what not. Yes, quite a bunch of them were China or India expats too. I just got this uncomfortable creepy feeling up my spine that I was very out of place, squashed between all these specialists in their ivory towers.
For me, I find my propensities lie elsewhere.
Instead of diving deep to look at a single tree, and the leaf on that tree, and the plant cells in that leaf, and the organelles of that cell, and the chemicals in those organelles... I'm much more of a "oh, there's the tree, and I know there's things called leaves/plant cells/organelles in there, and oh lookie, if you zoom out, this whole tree is a humongous forest, and there's other stuff in it, like animals, ain't it cool to see how they interact? Geez, I'm tired of the forest now, I heard there are things called biomes and the forest is one of them, what about the others - HEY, there's rivers and mountains and other things here, coolbeans..."
Cos the world (and the universe) is just awesome.
Now how this applies to what I'm doing, I'm not quite sure. My job is a bit of a holding pattern, I do teach the same old shtuff every year, though I try and spin it about, refine it constantly and develop new classes. My R&D work is a lot of random hopping through the net on various topics, seeing what other people have done and trying to put it together in a clever manner. The subject matter is surely more varied than Biochemical HSD231-31-A-2, and I get to see new exhibitions on different things every year. Not perfect, but that's how it is.
In game-related news, I'm thinking it may be time to put down ATITD for good because of this. I've sampled most of the ideas behind the game. I don't have patience to develop 'mastery' of many things - especially not through a repetitive grind or simply waiting for time to pass. Even craftsmen have to practice and that's repetitious and time-consuming even if the activity is very intellectual.
What I need to do is have a final weekend when I consume all the stuff I've already produced, so as not to waste already expended effort. And then that'll probably be it. Think my account expires May 15, so I still have a little bit more time. Last call for gemcutting, if someone is still interested in trying that out. :P
One other thing that I half feel like doing is mapping ATITD's various systems into categories. For some, like charcoal making and barley growing, the minigame is about adjusting timers/bars. Gemcutting and blacksmithing on an anvil are 3D manipulation tasks, and so on. Might do it before I lose login access so I can record pics for posterity.
In replacement, there is CoX, which has regained new life. LOTRO and GW are still on the radar. I'm half tempted to try out soloing in DDO again now that it's gotten doable. I could do a trial of Eve. Mess about with Kongregate. And let's not look at my pile of singleplayer games yet. Har.
Ah me. What a hopeless jack-of-all-trades I am.
Pft.
I've also come to the conclusion that I'm an inveterate generalist.
It started hitting me subconsciously when I attended a talk by some Nobel Prize laureate, Sir Tim Hunt, who happened to be in Singapore and gave a little presentation on "Getting In and Out of Mitosis." Oh, he was quite an entertaining speaker in his own right, and he had some wonderful stepping stone slides to get a general audience tuned into the nitty gritty...
But as per normal, about 30-45 mins into the talk, my attention span started slipping when he started delving into the historical progress of various scientific labs working on various biochemicals - named in godawful scientist/engineer idiosyncratic fashion (eg. PP22A, PP2B, Cyclin (because the guy used to enjoy cycling at the time), and various other more horrifically obscure arrangements of letters and numbers that only made sense to the one guy working on the stuff.)
And of course, to make matters worse, since every lab names things differently - what ultimately could be the same chemical might be called different names, so you'd have to waste even more time trying to figure out if they were really the same thing or not.
All this to find the precise chemicals used in a minute pathway in a teensy cell, that ultimately controls whether it divides or not.
Yes. I do appreciate that it is rather important. From a far away distance, I do rather admire how fascinatingly complex these living processes inside cells are. Since I do like mapping and exploration and other related things, I can intellectually appreciate that it is rather fun and satisfying to draw up a beautiful biochemical pathway map, figuring out what inhibits this and that and so on. And the fact that there are people out there who would devote an entire lifetime to this awes me.
Not to mention, SCARES me. 3 months to conduct a rigorous experiment that checks on the presence of one chemical. Another 6 months to repeatedly try some other experiment that may or may not work. Even more time to write a paper about it and document the process. And practically two years of one's life are spent just puzzling out a teeny tiny detail.
When I realized this was the real life of a "scientist", somewhen during a half-term internship at a Berkeley lab, I got myself out of academia and research really quick.
Not that it is bad, per se. I admire people who can do that. Delve deep down into the details and get so reductionist and dedicate a lifetime to such focus. It actually amazes me that there are so many people to be found doing that.
For the talk was packed - huge droves of people arrived who seemed to know each other, and I suspected that most of them were from labs in the Biopolis (where the talk was held), researchers, postdocs, students and what not. Yes, quite a bunch of them were China or India expats too. I just got this uncomfortable creepy feeling up my spine that I was very out of place, squashed between all these specialists in their ivory towers.
For me, I find my propensities lie elsewhere.
Instead of diving deep to look at a single tree, and the leaf on that tree, and the plant cells in that leaf, and the organelles of that cell, and the chemicals in those organelles... I'm much more of a "oh, there's the tree, and I know there's things called leaves/plant cells/organelles in there, and oh lookie, if you zoom out, this whole tree is a humongous forest, and there's other stuff in it, like animals, ain't it cool to see how they interact? Geez, I'm tired of the forest now, I heard there are things called biomes and the forest is one of them, what about the others - HEY, there's rivers and mountains and other things here, coolbeans..."
Cos the world (and the universe) is just awesome.
Now how this applies to what I'm doing, I'm not quite sure. My job is a bit of a holding pattern, I do teach the same old shtuff every year, though I try and spin it about, refine it constantly and develop new classes. My R&D work is a lot of random hopping through the net on various topics, seeing what other people have done and trying to put it together in a clever manner. The subject matter is surely more varied than Biochemical HSD231-31-A-2, and I get to see new exhibitions on different things every year. Not perfect, but that's how it is.
In game-related news, I'm thinking it may be time to put down ATITD for good because of this. I've sampled most of the ideas behind the game. I don't have patience to develop 'mastery' of many things - especially not through a repetitive grind or simply waiting for time to pass. Even craftsmen have to practice and that's repetitious and time-consuming even if the activity is very intellectual.
What I need to do is have a final weekend when I consume all the stuff I've already produced, so as not to waste already expended effort. And then that'll probably be it. Think my account expires May 15, so I still have a little bit more time. Last call for gemcutting, if someone is still interested in trying that out. :P
One other thing that I half feel like doing is mapping ATITD's various systems into categories. For some, like charcoal making and barley growing, the minigame is about adjusting timers/bars. Gemcutting and blacksmithing on an anvil are 3D manipulation tasks, and so on. Might do it before I lose login access so I can record pics for posterity.
In replacement, there is CoX, which has regained new life. LOTRO and GW are still on the radar. I'm half tempted to try out soloing in DDO again now that it's gotten doable. I could do a trial of Eve. Mess about with Kongregate. And let's not look at my pile of singleplayer games yet. Har.
Ah me. What a hopeless jack-of-all-trades I am.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
DoW 2: The Second Chance
The next day, I decide to do it properly. Erase all my assumptions on what DoW 2 should be, on how an RTS should play, and read every single word of the tutorial like I was a noob.
In the first singleplayer mission cum tutorial, I'm only given two squads to manage.
Ignoring the unhappy voice in my gut that says "I don't really like to micromanage individual squads and why can't I clump crap up?" I press on dutifully. I learn how to right-click move. And left-click attack-move. Ok, that much is still standard.
I learn how to throw a frag grenade to take out clumps of enemies, and clear enemies out of cover/buildings. Alright. I had earlier assumed it just to be one of those castable 'spell' things units get. Seems there is some tactical function to these devices, which are limited use, and can only be renewed by clicking on 'supplies' which are found dotted about the map in strategic locations or dropped by enemies killed.
I learn about the use of cover for my own squads. Now this is new. It reminds me of Company of Heroes on steroids. In that world war II game, there was some tactical benefit to using cover. In this game, hiding behind heavy cover (green shield) meant your armored marines are almost practically invincible and can shoot stuff with impunity. Light cover (yellow shield) gives less bonus, but still a noticable one.
Now that I was actually paying attention, my tutorial game went from charging around straight ahead, letting the computer path for me, to actually staring at the map, looking for opportunities for cover. And then I had to use the squad hotkeys to say, ok, squad 1, go here and hide behind this rock. Squad 2, go here behind this barbed wire fence. Basically, I started leapfrogging the two squads from cover to cover, while they flanked numerous orcs and shot the greenskins to hell.
Hey, this is pretty cool after all. The next few missions introduced one or two other squads, like a squad of stealth-using scouts and jumppack-using assault marines. The campaign turned out very story-oriented, and focused on upgrading your limited squads with wargear and levels in an RPG-esque fashion. You're limited to four squads deploying at a time, so you have to pick the weapons/squad types you want to use. A very tactical sort of thing.
I settled on making my Force Commander an invincible melee tank. The plan worked out well, as missions went by, he turned into the point man bullet sponge.
Behind him came my tricked out Devastator heavy weapons squad - the uber put-tons-of-bullets-into-the-air ranged decimators. Slow to get anywhere, but once they set up, look out. I was also amused to see that a mechanic known as 'suppression' was in play. Too many bullets fired at you from certain units (like my Devastators), and your unit freezes and moves very very very very SLOWLY.
(In retrospect, I suspect this is why a good part of my tyranid game turned out slow as molasses. I didn't use any cover whatsoever. And simply marched my swarms straight into hails of bullets, and they got suppressed. I just happened to have a lot more swarms than there were space marine squads firing, so they were overwhelmed in the end.)
The utility part of my team came in the form of the scout squad. Normally, space marine scouts are pretty boring. Wannabe space marine recruits. The writer had cleverly given this scout squad some personality by writing in a veteran Space Marine sergeant as the leader/teacher of the recruits. This grizzled eyepatch veteran was so likable, I found myself accommodating a stealth unit (which I do not normally use) and learning how best to apply one. I did like snipers, so I gave the sergeant a sniper rifle, and used the squad as a important unit killer, cum sneaky demolitions squad (when you need a building with a sentry sporting a heavy weapon blown up). It helped a lot that the game maps made it almost essential to have such tactical options at one's beck and call.
The last squad originally was the simple Tactical marines squad as ranged support, frag/melta bomb holder for clumps of enemies/vehicles respectively. But after picking up an assault squad, plus Terminator armor to equip them with, I swapped them for teleporting heavy armor melee tanks that do a horrible number on vehicles/buildings and infantry too.
I can see a few other ways to play the campaign. To my regret, I can't field a dreadnought with my gruesome team. The dreadnought is upgradable too to be a melee or ranged specialist. The scout team can actually hold flamers and shotguns if you upgrade them the right way. The terminator armor can actually land on both the assault marines (melee), the devastor marines (ranged) and even the force commander (for ultra invincibility, presumably. Except my commander already seemed invincible enough by boosting his hitpoints.)
To me, the Dawn of War II singleplayer campaign is a lot more faithful to the tabletop version of the game. The focus on tactics, on cover and suppression mechanics and so on. It's enjoyable once you get used to it.
However, I think in their haste to make a nice singleplayer campaign focused on the Space Marines, they may have fubared the multiplayer aspect.
The campaign WORKS because the maps are nicely designed to complement this focus on tactical choice, and the enemies are all placed. I can see a future Eldar or Imperial Guard or Chaos campaign working well in similar vein. I'm not sure how much tactical choice Orcs or Tyranids have, but presumably Orcs could use tactics, they're humanoids after all... The tyranids though... Maybe if you presume the Hive Mind was clever enough...
I think it ruins the feel to have shooty tyranids hiding behind cover though. I did see some 'burrowing' options for tyranids to simulate vanishing into foliage with camouflage and so on, but I'm not sure how it would play out in a campaign. Stealth strikes from a lictor would work. A Carnifex would charge straight ahead as a tank. To have hormagaunts and termagaunts move in squad-like fashion wouldn't be very true to cannon though. Tyranids don't do squad-based combat very well. They zerg, dammit. They zerg with cunning and stealth, but they zerg.
The multiplayer maps are also rather boring. A lot of resource nodes to walk around and capture. No important placed buildings to decimate like in the campaign - except the base. I can forsee a lot of dancing around resource points and skirmishing, to no real conclusion.
I hear the balance between races also is exceedingly broken. Perhaps it's because of how the players are using them - I'm willing to wager the majority of people will just rush in a style they are accustomed to. Perhaps the balance really is broken too.
For a singleplayer game with a nice campaign story, it's not half bad though. I've been staying up late nights just to get "one more mission" under my belt. So that's testament enough.
In the first singleplayer mission cum tutorial, I'm only given two squads to manage.
Ignoring the unhappy voice in my gut that says "I don't really like to micromanage individual squads and why can't I clump crap up?" I press on dutifully. I learn how to right-click move. And left-click attack-move. Ok, that much is still standard.
I learn how to throw a frag grenade to take out clumps of enemies, and clear enemies out of cover/buildings. Alright. I had earlier assumed it just to be one of those castable 'spell' things units get. Seems there is some tactical function to these devices, which are limited use, and can only be renewed by clicking on 'supplies' which are found dotted about the map in strategic locations or dropped by enemies killed.
I learn about the use of cover for my own squads. Now this is new. It reminds me of Company of Heroes on steroids. In that world war II game, there was some tactical benefit to using cover. In this game, hiding behind heavy cover (green shield) meant your armored marines are almost practically invincible and can shoot stuff with impunity. Light cover (yellow shield) gives less bonus, but still a noticable one.
Now that I was actually paying attention, my tutorial game went from charging around straight ahead, letting the computer path for me, to actually staring at the map, looking for opportunities for cover. And then I had to use the squad hotkeys to say, ok, squad 1, go here and hide behind this rock. Squad 2, go here behind this barbed wire fence. Basically, I started leapfrogging the two squads from cover to cover, while they flanked numerous orcs and shot the greenskins to hell.
Hey, this is pretty cool after all. The next few missions introduced one or two other squads, like a squad of stealth-using scouts and jumppack-using assault marines. The campaign turned out very story-oriented, and focused on upgrading your limited squads with wargear and levels in an RPG-esque fashion. You're limited to four squads deploying at a time, so you have to pick the weapons/squad types you want to use. A very tactical sort of thing.
I settled on making my Force Commander an invincible melee tank. The plan worked out well, as missions went by, he turned into the point man bullet sponge.
Behind him came my tricked out Devastator heavy weapons squad - the uber put-tons-of-bullets-into-the-air ranged decimators. Slow to get anywhere, but once they set up, look out. I was also amused to see that a mechanic known as 'suppression' was in play. Too many bullets fired at you from certain units (like my Devastators), and your unit freezes and moves very very very very SLOWLY.
(In retrospect, I suspect this is why a good part of my tyranid game turned out slow as molasses. I didn't use any cover whatsoever. And simply marched my swarms straight into hails of bullets, and they got suppressed. I just happened to have a lot more swarms than there were space marine squads firing, so they were overwhelmed in the end.)
The utility part of my team came in the form of the scout squad. Normally, space marine scouts are pretty boring. Wannabe space marine recruits. The writer had cleverly given this scout squad some personality by writing in a veteran Space Marine sergeant as the leader/teacher of the recruits. This grizzled eyepatch veteran was so likable, I found myself accommodating a stealth unit (which I do not normally use) and learning how best to apply one. I did like snipers, so I gave the sergeant a sniper rifle, and used the squad as a important unit killer, cum sneaky demolitions squad (when you need a building with a sentry sporting a heavy weapon blown up). It helped a lot that the game maps made it almost essential to have such tactical options at one's beck and call.
The last squad originally was the simple Tactical marines squad as ranged support, frag/melta bomb holder for clumps of enemies/vehicles respectively. But after picking up an assault squad, plus Terminator armor to equip them with, I swapped them for teleporting heavy armor melee tanks that do a horrible number on vehicles/buildings and infantry too.
I can see a few other ways to play the campaign. To my regret, I can't field a dreadnought with my gruesome team. The dreadnought is upgradable too to be a melee or ranged specialist. The scout team can actually hold flamers and shotguns if you upgrade them the right way. The terminator armor can actually land on both the assault marines (melee), the devastor marines (ranged) and even the force commander (for ultra invincibility, presumably. Except my commander already seemed invincible enough by boosting his hitpoints.)
To me, the Dawn of War II singleplayer campaign is a lot more faithful to the tabletop version of the game. The focus on tactics, on cover and suppression mechanics and so on. It's enjoyable once you get used to it.
However, I think in their haste to make a nice singleplayer campaign focused on the Space Marines, they may have fubared the multiplayer aspect.
The campaign WORKS because the maps are nicely designed to complement this focus on tactical choice, and the enemies are all placed. I can see a future Eldar or Imperial Guard or Chaos campaign working well in similar vein. I'm not sure how much tactical choice Orcs or Tyranids have, but presumably Orcs could use tactics, they're humanoids after all... The tyranids though... Maybe if you presume the Hive Mind was clever enough...
I think it ruins the feel to have shooty tyranids hiding behind cover though. I did see some 'burrowing' options for tyranids to simulate vanishing into foliage with camouflage and so on, but I'm not sure how it would play out in a campaign. Stealth strikes from a lictor would work. A Carnifex would charge straight ahead as a tank. To have hormagaunts and termagaunts move in squad-like fashion wouldn't be very true to cannon though. Tyranids don't do squad-based combat very well. They zerg, dammit. They zerg with cunning and stealth, but they zerg.
The multiplayer maps are also rather boring. A lot of resource nodes to walk around and capture. No important placed buildings to decimate like in the campaign - except the base. I can forsee a lot of dancing around resource points and skirmishing, to no real conclusion.
I hear the balance between races also is exceedingly broken. Perhaps it's because of how the players are using them - I'm willing to wager the majority of people will just rush in a style they are accustomed to. Perhaps the balance really is broken too.
For a singleplayer game with a nice campaign story, it's not half bad though. I've been staying up late nights just to get "one more mission" under my belt. So that's testament enough.
DoW 2: The Slow Start
I believe I mentioned earlier that my first encounter with Dawn of War II was not exactly smooth, with lots of double-DRM installation drama.
Neither was my first impression of the game, starting out from scratch. Y'see, I had been reading lots of WH40K novels, about Imperial Guard vs Chaos, and had developed a hankering for seeing some of this urban combat in virtual flesh, so to speak.
Dawn of War I sated a little bit of this need. I just threw up a me vs computer multiplayer skirmish, put up a city map, and played the Imperial Guard vs some really stupid Chaos - which turned into me massing lots of shooty soldiers, a couple of shooty tanks and artillery and then mowing everything down ala clumped up Terran battlecruisers in Starcraft.
But it was kinda too easy. So I jacked up the computer's AI and made it a smaller map. In between me setting up my third listening post and one or two heavy bolter defences, my three tiny little groups of soldiers got swarmed by a Chaos Sorceror hero that wouldn't ever die, packs of Chaos Space Marines, and then to rub it in that the computer either cheats or multitasks really really fast, swarms of Pink Daemons that teleported in to destroy my buildings and a couple spidery Defiler machines to wipe up the few survivors who had figuratively pissed in their pants and were dashing away, morale broken, babbling to the Emperor to give them a quick death.
Hrmph. So much for DoW I.
Rushes are all very well, but kinda boring. I don't really know what I play an RTS for, but I do know it's not really to learn how to memorize hotkey sequences and how to click things the fastest and micromanage units with superfast reaction times.
(I'm already kinda out of the competitive age bracket for Starcraft-like RTSes, as I learned after watching a video games documentary set in Starcraft-crazy Korea, so why be so competitive when there's always someone better, ready to topple you from your throne?)
The itch still hadn't been scratched enough. Exceedingly curious as to what new stuff Dawn of War II offered, I finally picked up the game and installed it.
First flaw in my plan: DoW II hasn't got any playable Imperial Guard or Chaos factions yet. Darn.
So the next best thing, hey, DoW II has tyranids. Something the first game's engine just couldn't support. I know, I know, yapped the eager kid in me, I gotta play the alien zerg and swarm me some pathetic space marines.
It took a bit of fancy doing, but I set me up a multiplayer game vs the computer. One thing I did like was the custom paint jobs on the various units. Very faithful to canon. Most of the standard Space Marine Chapters were there. And I was thrilled to see that the Tyranid skins matched the paint jobs of the tabletop game over the years.
There was Hive Fleet Leviathan: when I first started looking at the hobby, the tyranids were purple carapace with bone colored claws. The later years brought other weird color combinations, and I was amused to see that they had named them different Hive Fleets. Hive Fleet Behemoth was colored turquoise carapace and red claws, after the Battle for Maccrage box set. Looked good. Also felt 'fluffy' in terms of background.
I went for the traditional purple/white color combi. After all, that's the color used in the campaign and the color I grew up expecting tyranids to be. :)
Game starts.
Almost immediately, the UI throws me off. It's different. Disturbingly different. Buttons for move/attack and so on are squished into a tiny corner. There are some kind of squad buttons down one side of my screen.
I know there are no builder units nor any real buildings to set up intellectually, but actually encountering it left me feeling empty. My tyranid hive (all 3 buildings worth) was set up in one corner of the map, and the space marine opponents were in the other corner. Clicking on the hive revealed upgrade options if I captured enough resource points as currency.
Ok. Capture resource points. Guess that's my next step. I build one or two tyranid zerg-y things (gaunts, they're called) and send them off to the nearest resource node.
WTF.
They're SLOW. Like molasses SLOW. Like wading through City of Heroes tar patch or quicksand or rooted slow.
Hello, I thought this was an RTS. Fast moving units, no? *uncomfortable eyebrow twitch* There is the impulse to hammer a few more times with the right mouse button to see if the little critters got the message to move over. Feels weird. Tyranids should be fast swarmy things... No wonder some people felt Dawn of War II was a letdown...
Long story short, I very SLOWLY capture a bunch of resource points, and click random upgrades. Very SLOWLY making more units higher up the tech tree. I don't see an opponent at all for the greater part of 5-10 minutes. By the time I see some space marine scouts, I have blanketed half of the map or more with my captured resource points, and am probably in the equivalent of tier 2, while they are in tier 1.
So my tyranid swarm very SLOWLY makes its way over to pwn the space marine reconnaissance force and deny them resources, while another branch of my army very SLOWLY sweeps up the remaining resource points.
I run into determined resistance at the second to last resource point. The space marines have set up some kind of heavy bolter (perhaps part of their base) which is very effective in turning my hitherto uber-claw-things into organic paste. We bog down into a stalemate there, but resource victory is on my side.
Since simple rushing seemed to be breaking down as a strategy there, I started looking for other buttons to click, and discovered that I could place one or two hive 'beacons' that reinforced and healed my squads. Oh cool. With 'healers' on my side, I push in deeper, and very SLOWLY, annihilate the space marines.
Blah. Some victory. Felt like fighting uphill through mushy snow with a waterfall cascading on top of me.
The singleplayer campaign didn't make that great a first impression either. I started with some kind of cinematic tutorial mission, which I simply played through, and kept forgetting to read the popup tip boxes, and won. Somehow.
Then I realized I had kind of defeated the purpose of the tutorial by not paying any attention to what had changed in Dawn of War II.
Hmm. Oops.
Neither was my first impression of the game, starting out from scratch. Y'see, I had been reading lots of WH40K novels, about Imperial Guard vs Chaos, and had developed a hankering for seeing some of this urban combat in virtual flesh, so to speak.
Dawn of War I sated a little bit of this need. I just threw up a me vs computer multiplayer skirmish, put up a city map, and played the Imperial Guard vs some really stupid Chaos - which turned into me massing lots of shooty soldiers, a couple of shooty tanks and artillery and then mowing everything down ala clumped up Terran battlecruisers in Starcraft.
But it was kinda too easy. So I jacked up the computer's AI and made it a smaller map. In between me setting up my third listening post and one or two heavy bolter defences, my three tiny little groups of soldiers got swarmed by a Chaos Sorceror hero that wouldn't ever die, packs of Chaos Space Marines, and then to rub it in that the computer either cheats or multitasks really really fast, swarms of Pink Daemons that teleported in to destroy my buildings and a couple spidery Defiler machines to wipe up the few survivors who had figuratively pissed in their pants and were dashing away, morale broken, babbling to the Emperor to give them a quick death.
Hrmph. So much for DoW I.
Rushes are all very well, but kinda boring. I don't really know what I play an RTS for, but I do know it's not really to learn how to memorize hotkey sequences and how to click things the fastest and micromanage units with superfast reaction times.
(I'm already kinda out of the competitive age bracket for Starcraft-like RTSes, as I learned after watching a video games documentary set in Starcraft-crazy Korea, so why be so competitive when there's always someone better, ready to topple you from your throne?)
The itch still hadn't been scratched enough. Exceedingly curious as to what new stuff Dawn of War II offered, I finally picked up the game and installed it.
First flaw in my plan: DoW II hasn't got any playable Imperial Guard or Chaos factions yet. Darn.
So the next best thing, hey, DoW II has tyranids. Something the first game's engine just couldn't support. I know, I know, yapped the eager kid in me, I gotta play the alien zerg and swarm me some pathetic space marines.
It took a bit of fancy doing, but I set me up a multiplayer game vs the computer. One thing I did like was the custom paint jobs on the various units. Very faithful to canon. Most of the standard Space Marine Chapters were there. And I was thrilled to see that the Tyranid skins matched the paint jobs of the tabletop game over the years.
There was Hive Fleet Leviathan: when I first started looking at the hobby, the tyranids were purple carapace with bone colored claws. The later years brought other weird color combinations, and I was amused to see that they had named them different Hive Fleets. Hive Fleet Behemoth was colored turquoise carapace and red claws, after the Battle for Maccrage box set. Looked good. Also felt 'fluffy' in terms of background.
I went for the traditional purple/white color combi. After all, that's the color used in the campaign and the color I grew up expecting tyranids to be. :)
Game starts.
Almost immediately, the UI throws me off. It's different. Disturbingly different. Buttons for move/attack and so on are squished into a tiny corner. There are some kind of squad buttons down one side of my screen.
I know there are no builder units nor any real buildings to set up intellectually, but actually encountering it left me feeling empty. My tyranid hive (all 3 buildings worth) was set up in one corner of the map, and the space marine opponents were in the other corner. Clicking on the hive revealed upgrade options if I captured enough resource points as currency.
Ok. Capture resource points. Guess that's my next step. I build one or two tyranid zerg-y things (gaunts, they're called) and send them off to the nearest resource node.
WTF.
They're SLOW. Like molasses SLOW. Like wading through City of Heroes tar patch or quicksand or rooted slow.
Hello, I thought this was an RTS. Fast moving units, no? *uncomfortable eyebrow twitch* There is the impulse to hammer a few more times with the right mouse button to see if the little critters got the message to move over. Feels weird. Tyranids should be fast swarmy things... No wonder some people felt Dawn of War II was a letdown...
Long story short, I very SLOWLY capture a bunch of resource points, and click random upgrades. Very SLOWLY making more units higher up the tech tree. I don't see an opponent at all for the greater part of 5-10 minutes. By the time I see some space marine scouts, I have blanketed half of the map or more with my captured resource points, and am probably in the equivalent of tier 2, while they are in tier 1.
So my tyranid swarm very SLOWLY makes its way over to pwn the space marine reconnaissance force and deny them resources, while another branch of my army very SLOWLY sweeps up the remaining resource points.
I run into determined resistance at the second to last resource point. The space marines have set up some kind of heavy bolter (perhaps part of their base) which is very effective in turning my hitherto uber-claw-things into organic paste. We bog down into a stalemate there, but resource victory is on my side.
Since simple rushing seemed to be breaking down as a strategy there, I started looking for other buttons to click, and discovered that I could place one or two hive 'beacons' that reinforced and healed my squads. Oh cool. With 'healers' on my side, I push in deeper, and very SLOWLY, annihilate the space marines.
Blah. Some victory. Felt like fighting uphill through mushy snow with a waterfall cascading on top of me.
The singleplayer campaign didn't make that great a first impression either. I started with some kind of cinematic tutorial mission, which I simply played through, and kept forgetting to read the popup tip boxes, and won. Somehow.
Then I realized I had kind of defeated the purpose of the tutorial by not paying any attention to what had changed in Dawn of War II.
Hmm. Oops.
Holding Pattern
I'm not sure if it's just because of an extremely busy week in real life, or if I'm finally tiring of A Tale in the Desert. Possibly it's both.
I've been logging in less into ATITD, and I'm not the only one. In a sort of vicious cycle, the less people log into the game, the less interesting it becomes. One of the hardcore builders of my hardcore guild has let his account lapse, for 4 days unpaid now. This is quite a blow to us, figuratively speaking, because he's the one with access to a private gold mine and he did most of the fast building/teching for us.
It's not the end of the world, of course. The rest of the hardcore guild is still there, if slightly inactive. The defacto 'guild master' of the guild logs in uber-regularly, and has subsumed a whole new batch of 3-5 ATITD newbies, so our community is still fairly vibrant.
Part of it is because most of my activity has been in a holding pattern. I'm at that stage where nearly anything meaningful takes a significant investment of at least an hour or more - and I don't have an hour to spare, or see the need to chase empty titles and goalposts spun out of thin air without any purposeful motivation behind it.
The only thing I do when I log on is...
Try and gather food for the sheep (chariot ride to khmun, 2 stops, eat a grilled pepper for extra strength, grab 2000 onions from my warehouse, make a guilty memo to refill it on a weekend, and repeat chariot ride/burn travel time to get home and distribute into pens.)
Oh, and cull the damn sheep who have bred like rabbits. (Pick up extra sheep one at a time, place them into my culling pen, make a guilty memo that I should just slaughter them directly in my pens instead of harboring a superstition that it makes them breed slower, since I already have a problem keeping up, take a peek at the leather in my culling pen which is pushing 900+, and go wow.)
Try and gather food for the camels (harvest 100 grass from each greenhouse, hope there's enough grass left in there to dry into straw, dry 2000 grass, wait/twiddle thumbs/or raid warehouse for leftover straw, burn more travel time to hop to my navigation point, run up north to my camel pen, dump straw into camel pen, cull extra camels who have whacked all my straw in a hurry, check the condition of the camels "They are looking pretty thin", think guiltily to myself that I can't really keep up with this stupid camel pen in the middle of nowhere, and do I really need all this fucking leather (another 800+), get honey from nearby warehouse to feed to camel, make guilty memo that the honey supply is running low, and burn more travel time to go back home.)
Check my grove of 7 Indonesian Bee Hives and Citrus Trees to see what kinds of citrus have grown, harvest fruit and aromatic honey, and cull random trees hoping to get new citrus fruits, make guilty memo that this may not be the most efficient way of getting new fruits without understanding anything behind it, put fruit and aromatic honey into warehouse.)
Stare at empty beetle terrariums and 700 beetles in the inventory and make guilty memo that I need to grow cabbage to rear them some more. Do absolutely nothing.
By the time I'm done, I'm surrounded by guilty memos, the water mine standing still remains standing still, and I can't bring myself to even tend the grape vines anymore (even though I really should, says guilty memo number #423).
And I chicken out and log off.
Then I start to wonder if I should just quit and abandon everything, another homestead lost to the desert sands of time and another enterprising citizen of Egypt to salvage...
...or maybe it's just the sheep and camels in the way and I should take some steps to stop their incessant breeding and constant necessity to feed them.
I could just slaughter all but one breeding pair, and then keep the animals separated. One single pair shouldn't be that hard to feed. When I want leather again, I just need to let them mingle and voila, I will have my leather plantation in a couple days or less.
I -am- still curious about them beetles. I'm proud to announce that on my fourth or fifth beetle submitted, I have finally WON a damn level 1 certificate. It was a clean beetle that did it. So it seems I have sussed out what the people of Egypt prefer, clean patterns.
One guilty memo is that I forgot to salvage the beetle during the time allowed, so by now, someone has probably scavenged my materials. I'll have to go find the mats again when I build my next beetle statue.
Problem is, beetle breeding takes a lot of logging in at irregular intervals. These buggers can breed quickly in 20-60 minutes if the 'genetics' are quite close, I've noticed. And if they are more distant in terms of color and pattern, they can take upwards of 5-8 hours to start getting to know each other. (Once they do, the population explodes like cockroaches again.)
I'm fine with doing that on the weekends. Weekdays are tougher to manage.
I still have a whole arena of glassblowing I haven't fiddled with yet. If I could find the time.
I need marble for some stuff. But marble requires quarrying with people. And I hate finding groups in any MMO. I could always use the nice established trading post of The Goods, of course.
I guess it's just a matter of breaking out of an established comfortable habit, that is the real issue.
Especially with the added distractions of just not bothering about it and fiddling with City of Heroes, and my new singleplayer craze, Dawn of War II. (More on those in a separate post.)
I've been logging in less into ATITD, and I'm not the only one. In a sort of vicious cycle, the less people log into the game, the less interesting it becomes. One of the hardcore builders of my hardcore guild has let his account lapse, for 4 days unpaid now. This is quite a blow to us, figuratively speaking, because he's the one with access to a private gold mine and he did most of the fast building/teching for us.
It's not the end of the world, of course. The rest of the hardcore guild is still there, if slightly inactive. The defacto 'guild master' of the guild logs in uber-regularly, and has subsumed a whole new batch of 3-5 ATITD newbies, so our community is still fairly vibrant.
Part of it is because most of my activity has been in a holding pattern. I'm at that stage where nearly anything meaningful takes a significant investment of at least an hour or more - and I don't have an hour to spare, or see the need to chase empty titles and goalposts spun out of thin air without any purposeful motivation behind it.
The only thing I do when I log on is...
Try and gather food for the sheep (chariot ride to khmun, 2 stops, eat a grilled pepper for extra strength, grab 2000 onions from my warehouse, make a guilty memo to refill it on a weekend, and repeat chariot ride/burn travel time to get home and distribute into pens.)
Oh, and cull the damn sheep who have bred like rabbits. (Pick up extra sheep one at a time, place them into my culling pen, make a guilty memo that I should just slaughter them directly in my pens instead of harboring a superstition that it makes them breed slower, since I already have a problem keeping up, take a peek at the leather in my culling pen which is pushing 900+, and go wow.)
Try and gather food for the camels (harvest 100 grass from each greenhouse, hope there's enough grass left in there to dry into straw, dry 2000 grass, wait/twiddle thumbs/or raid warehouse for leftover straw, burn more travel time to hop to my navigation point, run up north to my camel pen, dump straw into camel pen, cull extra camels who have whacked all my straw in a hurry, check the condition of the camels "They are looking pretty thin", think guiltily to myself that I can't really keep up with this stupid camel pen in the middle of nowhere, and do I really need all this fucking leather (another 800+), get honey from nearby warehouse to feed to camel, make guilty memo that the honey supply is running low, and burn more travel time to go back home.)
Check my grove of 7 Indonesian Bee Hives and Citrus Trees to see what kinds of citrus have grown, harvest fruit and aromatic honey, and cull random trees hoping to get new citrus fruits, make guilty memo that this may not be the most efficient way of getting new fruits without understanding anything behind it, put fruit and aromatic honey into warehouse.)
Stare at empty beetle terrariums and 700 beetles in the inventory and make guilty memo that I need to grow cabbage to rear them some more. Do absolutely nothing.
By the time I'm done, I'm surrounded by guilty memos, the water mine standing still remains standing still, and I can't bring myself to even tend the grape vines anymore (even though I really should, says guilty memo number #423).
And I chicken out and log off.
Then I start to wonder if I should just quit and abandon everything, another homestead lost to the desert sands of time and another enterprising citizen of Egypt to salvage...
...or maybe it's just the sheep and camels in the way and I should take some steps to stop their incessant breeding and constant necessity to feed them.
I could just slaughter all but one breeding pair, and then keep the animals separated. One single pair shouldn't be that hard to feed. When I want leather again, I just need to let them mingle and voila, I will have my leather plantation in a couple days or less.
I -am- still curious about them beetles. I'm proud to announce that on my fourth or fifth beetle submitted, I have finally WON a damn level 1 certificate. It was a clean beetle that did it. So it seems I have sussed out what the people of Egypt prefer, clean patterns.
One guilty memo is that I forgot to salvage the beetle during the time allowed, so by now, someone has probably scavenged my materials. I'll have to go find the mats again when I build my next beetle statue.
Problem is, beetle breeding takes a lot of logging in at irregular intervals. These buggers can breed quickly in 20-60 minutes if the 'genetics' are quite close, I've noticed. And if they are more distant in terms of color and pattern, they can take upwards of 5-8 hours to start getting to know each other. (Once they do, the population explodes like cockroaches again.)
I'm fine with doing that on the weekends. Weekdays are tougher to manage.
I still have a whole arena of glassblowing I haven't fiddled with yet. If I could find the time.
I need marble for some stuff. But marble requires quarrying with people. And I hate finding groups in any MMO. I could always use the nice established trading post of The Goods, of course.
I guess it's just a matter of breaking out of an established comfortable habit, that is the real issue.
Especially with the added distractions of just not bothering about it and fiddling with City of Heroes, and my new singleplayer craze, Dawn of War II. (More on those in a separate post.)
Monday, April 20, 2009
English Writing Test
Feels odd. Now that I pretty much have an idea for what I want to do for my first arc, it's so tough to log in and get started on the actual process of writing it.
Part of the problem is not knowing where to start first. There are so many blank spaces, which do I fill up first? Should I scribble them as a rough draft, or go for a polished finished product from the start? What if I run out of space and have to trim? Maybe I should be terse from the very beginning (and then it starts to feel like an old English comprehension 'summary' exercise: Reduce this paragraph to 100 words or less.)
I mean, I know intellectually that this is going to go through a number of drafts to firm up. Getting Draft #0 (I like to call it that because Draft #1 implies too much pressure for my liking) out shouldn't be such an effort.
Composing on the UI is a bit of pain. So why not compose outside of it? I try downloading a template to use in Word, but I find the template too broad when you're not familiar with mission structure in the first place. I try the offline Mission Arc Planner, which looks pretty neat, but runs into areas where it feels kinda crippling to not have the popup helptext and automatic access to the boss types to scan through.
It feels weird to compose in-game though. Shouldn't I be...playing? Rather than writing?
I could play. But I also kinda want this arc done before anyone else gets a similar idea.
Is it worth it to end up spending 8 hours or more of one's precious recreation time creating content though?
I mean, MA is so powerful there's already so much damned content that it doesn't really matter if one more or less person writes one more arc. But it's an arc that -I- kinda wanted to get done. For myself, if no one else. Except that if I'm going to put in the effort to write something, I may as well write it to a quality that other people will like too. Or hope that they will like.
Then I look at the amount of work that polishing every single mission in this damn arc entails, and I go, rrrrrargh, what did I put myself in for?
Part of the problem is not knowing where to start first. There are so many blank spaces, which do I fill up first? Should I scribble them as a rough draft, or go for a polished finished product from the start? What if I run out of space and have to trim? Maybe I should be terse from the very beginning (and then it starts to feel like an old English comprehension 'summary' exercise: Reduce this paragraph to 100 words or less.)
I mean, I know intellectually that this is going to go through a number of drafts to firm up. Getting Draft #0 (I like to call it that because Draft #1 implies too much pressure for my liking) out shouldn't be such an effort.
Composing on the UI is a bit of pain. So why not compose outside of it? I try downloading a template to use in Word, but I find the template too broad when you're not familiar with mission structure in the first place. I try the offline Mission Arc Planner, which looks pretty neat, but runs into areas where it feels kinda crippling to not have the popup helptext and automatic access to the boss types to scan through.
It feels weird to compose in-game though. Shouldn't I be...playing? Rather than writing?
I could play. But I also kinda want this arc done before anyone else gets a similar idea.
Is it worth it to end up spending 8 hours or more of one's precious recreation time creating content though?
I mean, MA is so powerful there's already so much damned content that it doesn't really matter if one more or less person writes one more arc. But it's an arc that -I- kinda wanted to get done. For myself, if no one else. Except that if I'm going to put in the effort to write something, I may as well write it to a quality that other people will like too. Or hope that they will like.
Then I look at the amount of work that polishing every single mission in this damn arc entails, and I go, rrrrrargh, what did I put myself in for?
Friday, April 17, 2009
Free Publicity
I've been just looking through the MA forum, picking out people who ask for plays on their arcs, and playing through/writing reviews. Nobody noticed much until someone I gave a 1-star to decided to kick a fuss in the Generel Discussion.
How in the world do you "hold a thread hostage"?
I have no idea. Someone asked for feedback on their arc. I played it, sent them a tell saying I 1-starred it, read the forum for why, and I'm willing to replay and rerate over my previous rating if they tweak the enemy group.
For someone with a global of @Prankstress, this person sure takes things seriously. If you can't take criticism, don't ask for it. If you ask for it, be ready for what you get.
It's all amusing, really. It's like free publicity for my reviews. Suddenly, out of the blue, I get a PM from someone asking me to give feedback to their arc. Gosh, are you sure you want that? What if I 1-star it, and then hold your arc hostage? Heehee. :-O
Kind of used to this kind of hysterical reaction from people, but still don't understand the mindset behind it.
How in the world do you "hold a thread hostage"?
I have no idea. Someone asked for feedback on their arc. I played it, sent them a tell saying I 1-starred it, read the forum for why, and I'm willing to replay and rerate over my previous rating if they tweak the enemy group.
For someone with a global of @Prankstress, this person sure takes things seriously. If you can't take criticism, don't ask for it. If you ask for it, be ready for what you get.
It's all amusing, really. It's like free publicity for my reviews. Suddenly, out of the blue, I get a PM from someone asking me to give feedback to their arc. Gosh, are you sure you want that? What if I 1-star it, and then hold your arc hostage? Heehee. :-O
Kind of used to this kind of hysterical reaction from people, but still don't understand the mindset behind it.
MA-R: Signal to Noise
Rating: ***** (Highly recommended)
TLDR: Good plot, plot twist, apt custom mobs, thought-provoking, creepy; 3rd mission a bit lengthy, can be obscure
Subjective Play Experience:
This arc is very worth trying, even if you don't plan on going for the solution prize. Since giving away spoilers is a no-no, I will just describe my impressions.
Although there is no explanation of what is happening, it isn't just a "stuff happens" plot. Playing through it, I can tell a lot of thought and planning has gone into crafting this gem. It's very polished; I can't really see any obvious flaws.
Actually, even not knowing what is going on and taking the ending as is, offers a nice, creepy chill. While not marketed as Horror, there is horror in this arc -- not a blood and gory horror, but a kafkaesque one.
This story arc was designed to be a puzzle, so some people might find it too obscure for their liking. The third mission is a bit lengthy but nothing that isn't found in a normal CoX mission, and the missions that follow are more rewarding. The mobs in the fourth mission were rather amusing, as are the objectives in the fourth and last mission.
TLDR: Good plot, plot twist, apt custom mobs, thought-provoking, creepy; 3rd mission a bit lengthy, can be obscure
Subjective Play Experience:
This arc is very worth trying, even if you don't plan on going for the solution prize. Since giving away spoilers is a no-no, I will just describe my impressions.
Although there is no explanation of what is happening, it isn't just a "stuff happens" plot. Playing through it, I can tell a lot of thought and planning has gone into crafting this gem. It's very polished; I can't really see any obvious flaws.
Actually, even not knowing what is going on and taking the ending as is, offers a nice, creepy chill. While not marketed as Horror, there is horror in this arc -- not a blood and gory horror, but a kafkaesque one.
This story arc was designed to be a puzzle, so some people might find it too obscure for their liking. The third mission is a bit lengthy but nothing that isn't found in a normal CoX mission, and the missions that follow are more rewarding. The mobs in the fourth mission were rather amusing, as are the objectives in the fourth and last mission.
MA-R: Rites of the Maenads
Rating: **** (Recommended. A strong 4)
TLDR: Well-researched, high-quality. Standard fare, no surprises. Good for lower-levelled, xping play. Adult themes presented subtly.
Subjective Play Experience:
This is a high-quality arc, of the type of standard you see in the better canon story arcs. If it was a canon arc, it won't look out of place at all in Cimerora. Writing shows that the author has done some research into the Maenads.
Two Maenads have been kidnapped, and your job is to rescue them. This is standard CoH fare packaged in a solid story. Unfortunately, being the standard fare, nothing makes it outstanding from other high-quality arcs. It is something for low-levelled character to play through for xp, and I will be keeping this arc in my collection for that purpose.
Given that the topic is Maenads, there are adult themes present in the arc, but they are subtly presented.
Suggestions for Improvement:
- Ally in first mission a bit overwhelming. Consider downgrade in status or powers.
Spelling errors and comments:
- "you weild the power of the gods" -> "you wield the power of the gods"
TLDR: Well-researched, high-quality. Standard fare, no surprises. Good for lower-levelled, xping play. Adult themes presented subtly.
Subjective Play Experience:
This is a high-quality arc, of the type of standard you see in the better canon story arcs. If it was a canon arc, it won't look out of place at all in Cimerora. Writing shows that the author has done some research into the Maenads.
Two Maenads have been kidnapped, and your job is to rescue them. This is standard CoH fare packaged in a solid story. Unfortunately, being the standard fare, nothing makes it outstanding from other high-quality arcs. It is something for low-levelled character to play through for xp, and I will be keeping this arc in my collection for that purpose.
Given that the topic is Maenads, there are adult themes present in the arc, but they are subtly presented.
Suggestions for Improvement:
- Ally in first mission a bit overwhelming. Consider downgrade in status or powers.
Spelling errors and comments:
- "you weild the power of the gods" -> "you wield the power of the gods"
MA-R: Out for Blood
Rating: * (Absolutely won't recommend as it is)
TLDR: NB: Did not finish 1st mission. Detailed clues, intruiging mystery; compulsory Captain Mako fight in first mission of a "solo-friendly" arc
Subjective Play Experience:
Freem, why are you so mean? Ok, here's the deal: there's a difference between a soloable arc and a solo-friendly arc. If the arc bills itself as solo-friendly, I expect to go in and have some relaxed fun. This was not the case. As with other low ratings, I'm willing to replay and rerate if the author wants to tweak their arc.
Started the mission; interesting. An item was stolen, and I was asked to go to the last-known hideout of the suspect to investigate. The contact suggested that I help whatever Arachnos personnel there, and discouraged confrontation.
Off I went, to the hideout, fighting some Arachnos and picking up clues along the way. The clues were intruiging. There seemed to be no connection between them, and nothing to suggest nefarious plans or world domination. What was going on?
After I clicked the last clue, I found instructions to head to the exit. "Probably a boss fight," I thought, walking over to the exit. The way was clear, but since spawn points cannot be controlled, I checked in the side room and found...
Captain Mako.
What? I have to fight Captain Mako? What's wrong with Captain Mako, some people may ask. Everything -- he's my patron after all, so I know him rather well. Various thoughts went through my mind. Should I go pack up my empty tray with inspirations? Pick up shivans? Should I just give up? Should I restart with another toon (what's going to appear in the next few missions eh). The itchy need to achieve and take down Mako warred with the frustration of seeing too many gratituous AVs/EBs in too many storyarcs warred with the curiosity to find out the story.
I gave it a half-hearted try as is, then stopped. What was the point? I could kill Mako if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. I wanted a story, not a down-graded AV sneakily thrown into my face right from the beginning. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. It was as if I had unwrapped a christmas present that promised a toy, and found a pirahna in it that bit me instead.
Suggestions for Improvement:
- If a "solo-friendly" arc is desired, go through the arc and remove the roadblocks. Otherwise label the arc clearly and state the presence of AVs and EBs.
Spelling errors and other comments:
- Mission 1 introduction: passtime -> past-time, or pastime
- Little know of... -> Few know (Little is not used to describe the quantity of countable objects, i.e. people)
TLDR: NB: Did not finish 1st mission. Detailed clues, intruiging mystery; compulsory Captain Mako fight in first mission of a "solo-friendly" arc
Subjective Play Experience:
Freem, why are you so mean? Ok, here's the deal: there's a difference between a soloable arc and a solo-friendly arc. If the arc bills itself as solo-friendly, I expect to go in and have some relaxed fun. This was not the case. As with other low ratings, I'm willing to replay and rerate if the author wants to tweak their arc.
Started the mission; interesting. An item was stolen, and I was asked to go to the last-known hideout of the suspect to investigate. The contact suggested that I help whatever Arachnos personnel there, and discouraged confrontation.
Off I went, to the hideout, fighting some Arachnos and picking up clues along the way. The clues were intruiging. There seemed to be no connection between them, and nothing to suggest nefarious plans or world domination. What was going on?
After I clicked the last clue, I found instructions to head to the exit. "Probably a boss fight," I thought, walking over to the exit. The way was clear, but since spawn points cannot be controlled, I checked in the side room and found...
Captain Mako.
What? I have to fight Captain Mako? What's wrong with Captain Mako, some people may ask. Everything -- he's my patron after all, so I know him rather well. Various thoughts went through my mind. Should I go pack up my empty tray with inspirations? Pick up shivans? Should I just give up? Should I restart with another toon (what's going to appear in the next few missions eh). The itchy need to achieve and take down Mako warred with the frustration of seeing too many gratituous AVs/EBs in too many storyarcs warred with the curiosity to find out the story.
I gave it a half-hearted try as is, then stopped. What was the point? I could kill Mako if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. I wanted a story, not a down-graded AV sneakily thrown into my face right from the beginning. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. It was as if I had unwrapped a christmas present that promised a toy, and found a pirahna in it that bit me instead.
Suggestions for Improvement:
- If a "solo-friendly" arc is desired, go through the arc and remove the roadblocks. Otherwise label the arc clearly and state the presence of AVs and EBs.
Spelling errors and other comments:
- Mission 1 introduction: passtime -> past-time, or pastime
- Little know of... -> Few know (Little is not used to describe the quantity of countable objects, i.e. people)
MA-R: Deliver us from Good
Rating: ** (Won't recommend as it is now)
TLDR: NB: Did not finish 1st mission. Good idea, could have been 5-stars; Bad execution, spelling errors, mez-protected minions, repetitive enemies
Subjective Play Experience:
It's a pity I have to give this 2 stars, because I can see the potential for a 5 star lurking in the concept. The devil is in the details. For the concept, I give it 2 stars rather than 1 star. I'm willing to replay and rerate if the enemy group is tweaked, but as it stands it's too much a chore to get through even the first mission.
I didn't finish the first mission. It was not fun at all, so I stopped. To be fair, I don't think the author was aware of what he was doing: in modelling the group after sewers team, he filled it with scrappers and blasters, with the exact same powersets selected, Enter my dominator with my weaksauce holds. Whoa, all the blaster minions with defiance were still shooting with no interruption...it took too much effort to hold the scrappers (on the bright side, you could immob and knockup). Meanwhile, the martial arts scrappers would pop me with crane kick and crippling axe kick for 300+ hp each. Domination up mean I stomped them. Domination down meant they stomped me.
This might be an acceptable state of affairs if there was something to distract from the tedium and irritation, but after the 2-3 spawns, I realised that the "heroes" in the sewers were just being repeated over and over again. The exact same heroes in every spawn. And there was the entire sewers to clear. I gave up at that point.
Suggestions for Improvement:
- Say no to rampant mez-protected minions.
- If there is space in the file, make more enemy groups and fill the map with a variety of costumed heroes, so one doesn't have to fight the same hero group over and over again. It's immersion breaking.
Spelling errors and other comments:
- 1st mission introduction: Arahnos -> Arachnos
- 1st mission introduction: misplaced fullstop after the 2nd paragraph
TLDR: NB: Did not finish 1st mission. Good idea, could have been 5-stars; Bad execution, spelling errors, mez-protected minions, repetitive enemies
Subjective Play Experience:
It's a pity I have to give this 2 stars, because I can see the potential for a 5 star lurking in the concept. The devil is in the details. For the concept, I give it 2 stars rather than 1 star. I'm willing to replay and rerate if the enemy group is tweaked, but as it stands it's too much a chore to get through even the first mission.
I didn't finish the first mission. It was not fun at all, so I stopped. To be fair, I don't think the author was aware of what he was doing: in modelling the group after sewers team, he filled it with scrappers and blasters, with the exact same powersets selected, Enter my dominator with my weaksauce holds. Whoa, all the blaster minions with defiance were still shooting with no interruption...it took too much effort to hold the scrappers (on the bright side, you could immob and knockup). Meanwhile, the martial arts scrappers would pop me with crane kick and crippling axe kick for 300+ hp each. Domination up mean I stomped them. Domination down meant they stomped me.
This might be an acceptable state of affairs if there was something to distract from the tedium and irritation, but after the 2-3 spawns, I realised that the "heroes" in the sewers were just being repeated over and over again. The exact same heroes in every spawn. And there was the entire sewers to clear. I gave up at that point.
Suggestions for Improvement:
- Say no to rampant mez-protected minions.
- If there is space in the file, make more enemy groups and fill the map with a variety of costumed heroes, so one doesn't have to fight the same hero group over and over again. It's immersion breaking.
Spelling errors and other comments:
- 1st mission introduction: Arahnos -> Arachnos
- 1st mission introduction: misplaced fullstop after the 2nd paragraph
MA-R: Why Do Bad Girls Like Bad Boys?
Rating: **** (Probably recommend, but it's a weak 4.)
TLDR: Entertaining contact dialogue, plot twist; play with a male character or it won't make sense, misogynistic, may not be to everyone's taste, not-canonical, plot continuity/morality problems
Subjective Play Experience:
This is a story-arc you have to play with a male character, or it won't make sense. Make that a heterosexual bar-hopping macho male character. All the dialogue in the story is written as if the character is one.
The premise of the story-arc is simple, yet rather amusing in a "heh" manner, which is to help Latin Lava deal with his two girlfriends. There is a good plot twist at the end.
The story can be tightened up a bit. As it is it drags on after a while. A simple joke/idea does not need a long delivery. Once the point is belaboured, it loses its amusement factor. A four mission arc would be better - short and sweet.
Some people may not like the whole storyarc for its misogynistic factor.
The contact dialogue is entertaining, well-characterized. Lava really came alive to me. The amusing introduction dialogues, the way he talked, acted, his concerns, and even his behaviour at the end. Well done on that!
The other good thing about this arc, is that the enemies in it are all sane. No random AVs and EBs popping out of the woodwork (believe me I am tired of seeing EBs and AVs), just bosses from two of the tougher factions in the blueside. There was no reason why the girlfriends should be EBs, so they weren't. There is one EB in the last mission but I don't mind one EB.
Flaws. Other than the constraint on play character, the most glaring flaw in the arc is the very strong dictation factor. Text in the missions, especially the entrance pop-ups, tell the player what he is thinking, desiring, and what the player did. For example, one particular glaring sentence was "I hope he can still take me to that local hotspot he was talking about. You enter the store with joy in your heart.". For this player, I simply couldn't fathom the idea of going some bar with Lava and letting him throw women at me.
The other glaring flaw is the paper thin characterization of the Lava's girlfriends. I couldn't tell them apart and they had no personalities other than screaming insults at my character's supposed masculinity, then yelling how much they hated me (or Lava, or men in general). There's the title to explain that I guess: men like Lava attract women like his girlfriends.
A more minor point are problems with continuity and morality. The arc is rated for neutral, so it's strange for the girlfriends and Lava to end up in prison. How is a villain going to hand them over the the police? Then there's the part where you are fighting the girlfriends with dozens of their minions all over Skyway, when they were supposed to be in custody. Maybe some text to talk about a jail breakout?
Suggestions for Improvement:
- Cut down on the dictation factor for the character
- Tighten plot and story flow
- Give girlfriends more personality
TLDR: Entertaining contact dialogue, plot twist; play with a male character or it won't make sense, misogynistic, may not be to everyone's taste, not-canonical, plot continuity/morality problems
Subjective Play Experience:
This is a story-arc you have to play with a male character, or it won't make sense. Make that a heterosexual bar-hopping macho male character. All the dialogue in the story is written as if the character is one.
The premise of the story-arc is simple, yet rather amusing in a "heh" manner, which is to help Latin Lava deal with his two girlfriends. There is a good plot twist at the end.
The story can be tightened up a bit. As it is it drags on after a while. A simple joke/idea does not need a long delivery. Once the point is belaboured, it loses its amusement factor. A four mission arc would be better - short and sweet.
Some people may not like the whole storyarc for its misogynistic factor.
The contact dialogue is entertaining, well-characterized. Lava really came alive to me. The amusing introduction dialogues, the way he talked, acted, his concerns, and even his behaviour at the end. Well done on that!
The other good thing about this arc, is that the enemies in it are all sane. No random AVs and EBs popping out of the woodwork (believe me I am tired of seeing EBs and AVs), just bosses from two of the tougher factions in the blueside. There was no reason why the girlfriends should be EBs, so they weren't. There is one EB in the last mission but I don't mind one EB.
Flaws. Other than the constraint on play character, the most glaring flaw in the arc is the very strong dictation factor. Text in the missions, especially the entrance pop-ups, tell the player what he is thinking, desiring, and what the player did. For example, one particular glaring sentence was "I hope he can still take me to that local hotspot he was talking about. You enter the store with joy in your heart.". For this player, I simply couldn't fathom the idea of going some bar with Lava and letting him throw women at me.
The other glaring flaw is the paper thin characterization of the Lava's girlfriends. I couldn't tell them apart and they had no personalities other than screaming insults at my character's supposed masculinity, then yelling how much they hated me (or Lava, or men in general). There's the title to explain that I guess: men like Lava attract women like his girlfriends.
A more minor point are problems with continuity and morality. The arc is rated for neutral, so it's strange for the girlfriends and Lava to end up in prison. How is a villain going to hand them over the the police? Then there's the part where you are fighting the girlfriends with dozens of their minions all over Skyway, when they were supposed to be in custody. Maybe some text to talk about a jail breakout?
Suggestions for Improvement:
- Cut down on the dictation factor for the character
- Tighten plot and story flow
- Give girlfriends more personality
MA-R: Have you ever been to band camp?
Rating: ** (Probably won't recommend to friends)
TLDR: Potential not developed, anti-climatic ending. Unwarranted number of EBs.
Subjective play experience:
Writing this review is rather hard. This arc and I definitely got off on a wrong footing, and there seem to me altogether too many EBs in it that exist for the sake of just existing. Why an EB instead of a boss, and why three, four versions of that EB, when one would do? Redundancy. On the other hand, I don't deny that I found some of the fights enjoyable in a technically challenging manner. Then there's the fact that there's a lot of potential in this storyarc, but it was not developed, leaving me walking away with a "all that trouble and that's it?" feeling. I wavered between a 2-star and a 3-star, but ultimately gave it a 2-star, because it just didn't fufill the promise of horror or shock.
Started out with a level 40 Bane at difficulty level 3 hoping to get some xp. Immediately I hit a roadblock in the form of the boss. Granted, the boss wasn't compulsory in the first mission, but why put it there if it's not meant to be defeated? And I wondered what I would meet with after this, if I couldn't even beat the boss in the first mission.
The problem was, I was getting one-shot (or two-shot, but it was so fast it might as well be one-shot) the moment I performed Executor's strike. After two times of this, I dropped my difficulty to heroic and restarted. Two-shot again. Perhaps it was my internet connection, I thought, since my ping was going south of 1000ms. Decided to give it a break.
The next day, I tried again. I decided to raise the difficulty back to 3, going for the ranged approach. (Why? My take is that in heroic, everything is downgraded to the point when you cannot judge the actual difficulty of the arc.)
I couldn't drop the boss; every time I got him wounded, he would self-heal. (I've soloed Back Alley Brawler EB on same difficulty using this method, so it felt a bit...ugh) Then there was the mob flying around and aggroing other stuff. I decided to eat a big purple and go up to melee. Bad move. Almost immediately, he one shot me with Jacob's Ladder, for ~1400hp (I had about 900hp). Must be Build Up?
I was getting irked at this point, and was ready to dump the arc and give it a 1 star. But I really wanted to give this a fair spin. Pulled out my level 50 dominator who was reasonably IO'd out and restarted the storyarc (level difficulty 4). The first time I found him, he found me since he was stealthed and I couldn't see him. Okaaaay...back from hospital, eat an insight. Hit the boss. To my surprise, I couldn't hold him. Not with domination up and hasten on, not with Singularity helping out. No go. Singularity got too close to him and was one-shot (or two-shot)! On the other hand, there were so many holds stacked on him that he couldn't move around (gravity holds slow movement), and since he only had melee attacks I just had to keep smacking him from range until he dropped.
After this, it was beat up 3 EBs. On the way, there were various mobs that were supposed to be horror-themed. Somehow I didn't feel any. Clickable objectives tell me I had found some "really messed-up stuff". My reaction was "huh? stuff? what stuff?" Mobs talked about breeding and hitting little girls. Umm...ok. Maybe the visceral kind of horror just doesn't work with me. That would be part of a subjective play experience.
Anyway, on to the 3 EBs. I normally don't mind fighting multiple versions of something, but I don't know why they had to be EBs. There were around 2-3 plant/storm lieutenants with each EB (plant/thorn dom), leaving me busy juggling holds. The fights were actually rather enjoyable in the technical manner, if you go for that type of thing, with lots of phase shifting, elevator hoping, and the inevitable hospital.
Time to find out what's going on, right? Wrong. The next mission was to blow up the place. "What!?" "Huh?" Off I went, into the mission, and saw a bunch of EBs again. Not much of a reason why they were there...they just were. On the bright side, they weren't compulsory. On the brighter side, they were easy to kill, so I just killed them for the heck of it, because there wasn't much else going for the story or the horror factor.
And that was the anti-climatic ending.
Suggestions for improvement:
- Tone down the boss in the first mission. Players will be turned off if they hit something that hard in the very first mission.
- Either change the EBs into bosses, or just have one EB instead of three.
- No background or information on the mobs in the first and last mission. Especially the EBs in the last mission, which seem to just pop out of nowhere. Consider changing them into bosses instead.
TLDR: Potential not developed, anti-climatic ending. Unwarranted number of EBs.
Subjective play experience:
Writing this review is rather hard. This arc and I definitely got off on a wrong footing, and there seem to me altogether too many EBs in it that exist for the sake of just existing. Why an EB instead of a boss, and why three, four versions of that EB, when one would do? Redundancy. On the other hand, I don't deny that I found some of the fights enjoyable in a technically challenging manner. Then there's the fact that there's a lot of potential in this storyarc, but it was not developed, leaving me walking away with a "all that trouble and that's it?" feeling. I wavered between a 2-star and a 3-star, but ultimately gave it a 2-star, because it just didn't fufill the promise of horror or shock.
Started out with a level 40 Bane at difficulty level 3 hoping to get some xp. Immediately I hit a roadblock in the form of the boss. Granted, the boss wasn't compulsory in the first mission, but why put it there if it's not meant to be defeated? And I wondered what I would meet with after this, if I couldn't even beat the boss in the first mission.
The problem was, I was getting one-shot (or two-shot, but it was so fast it might as well be one-shot) the moment I performed Executor's strike. After two times of this, I dropped my difficulty to heroic and restarted. Two-shot again. Perhaps it was my internet connection, I thought, since my ping was going south of 1000ms. Decided to give it a break.
The next day, I tried again. I decided to raise the difficulty back to 3, going for the ranged approach. (Why? My take is that in heroic, everything is downgraded to the point when you cannot judge the actual difficulty of the arc.)
I couldn't drop the boss; every time I got him wounded, he would self-heal. (I've soloed Back Alley Brawler EB on same difficulty using this method, so it felt a bit...ugh) Then there was the mob flying around and aggroing other stuff. I decided to eat a big purple and go up to melee. Bad move. Almost immediately, he one shot me with Jacob's Ladder, for ~1400hp (I had about 900hp). Must be Build Up?
I was getting irked at this point, and was ready to dump the arc and give it a 1 star. But I really wanted to give this a fair spin. Pulled out my level 50 dominator who was reasonably IO'd out and restarted the storyarc (level difficulty 4). The first time I found him, he found me since he was stealthed and I couldn't see him. Okaaaay...back from hospital, eat an insight. Hit the boss. To my surprise, I couldn't hold him. Not with domination up and hasten on, not with Singularity helping out. No go. Singularity got too close to him and was one-shot (or two-shot)! On the other hand, there were so many holds stacked on him that he couldn't move around (gravity holds slow movement), and since he only had melee attacks I just had to keep smacking him from range until he dropped.
After this, it was beat up 3 EBs. On the way, there were various mobs that were supposed to be horror-themed. Somehow I didn't feel any. Clickable objectives tell me I had found some "really messed-up stuff". My reaction was "huh? stuff? what stuff?" Mobs talked about breeding and hitting little girls. Umm...ok. Maybe the visceral kind of horror just doesn't work with me. That would be part of a subjective play experience.
Anyway, on to the 3 EBs. I normally don't mind fighting multiple versions of something, but I don't know why they had to be EBs. There were around 2-3 plant/storm lieutenants with each EB (plant/thorn dom), leaving me busy juggling holds. The fights were actually rather enjoyable in the technical manner, if you go for that type of thing, with lots of phase shifting, elevator hoping, and the inevitable hospital.
Time to find out what's going on, right? Wrong. The next mission was to blow up the place. "What!?" "Huh?" Off I went, into the mission, and saw a bunch of EBs again. Not much of a reason why they were there...they just were. On the bright side, they weren't compulsory. On the brighter side, they were easy to kill, so I just killed them for the heck of it, because there wasn't much else going for the story or the horror factor.
And that was the anti-climatic ending.
Suggestions for improvement:
- Tone down the boss in the first mission. Players will be turned off if they hit something that hard in the very first mission.
- Either change the EBs into bosses, or just have one EB instead of three.
- No background or information on the mobs in the first and last mission. Especially the EBs in the last mission, which seem to just pop out of nowhere. Consider changing them into bosses instead.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
MA-R: Grim Riddles
Rating: ***** (Will recommend)
TLDR version: Unique usage of game engine. Not to everyone's taste. Immersive.
Subjective Play Experience:
Some policemen have been kidnapped, and to save their lives, I had to solve riddles.
This isn't for everyone. This isn't a fighting arc. I was hoping to level my scrapper on it, but I didn't get much xp or tickets. What this arc is, is a unique use of the MA engine, and a strangely immersive battle of wits against a well-characterized antagonist.
The moment I read the riddle, the answer popped into my head. I was wondering what "defeat the answer" meant but after jumping around the mission a little, I had a good idea. All that remained to do was to defeat the mob that was named after the answer. Easy.
The next mission was harder. Once again, I had a vague idea and looked at what mobs there were. It didn't make sense. Did I miss something? I read through the riddle again. Oh, I thought, got it. Killed the mob, finished the mission.
The fourth mission was a surprise. Huh? What? What kind of riddle is that. I went around the mission, but none of the answers made sense. Time was running out. In order not to give anything away, I'll just say that solving this one involves a bit of metagaming - knowing how the Mission Architect works. It was good though. Immersive. I felt like I was really up against a evil, insane "Joker", who just wanted to win.
And the villain gave exactly the response he was supposed to. Screaming, angered, telling me I was cheating.
Time to take down the villain. It was not difficult, with the number of allies I'd gathered by the time I reached him. But it was satisfying. Very satisfying, after he made me run around and around on large maps, wasting the time of my lowbie's jetpack!
Finally, the souvenir. Awwwww... the souvenir is just so touching. *blows nose*
To find out what it is, you'll have to play yourself.
Suggestions for improvement:
The second map was a bit difficult to navigate around if you don't have vertical travelling powers.
Minor typo list and comments:
* A bit strange when the boss says "Well played" when he is defeated, when I expect him to be screaming with rage.
TLDR version: Unique usage of game engine. Not to everyone's taste. Immersive.
Subjective Play Experience:
Some policemen have been kidnapped, and to save their lives, I had to solve riddles.
This isn't for everyone. This isn't a fighting arc. I was hoping to level my scrapper on it, but I didn't get much xp or tickets. What this arc is, is a unique use of the MA engine, and a strangely immersive battle of wits against a well-characterized antagonist.
The moment I read the riddle, the answer popped into my head. I was wondering what "defeat the answer" meant but after jumping around the mission a little, I had a good idea. All that remained to do was to defeat the mob that was named after the answer. Easy.
The next mission was harder. Once again, I had a vague idea and looked at what mobs there were. It didn't make sense. Did I miss something? I read through the riddle again. Oh, I thought, got it. Killed the mob, finished the mission.
The fourth mission was a surprise. Huh? What? What kind of riddle is that. I went around the mission, but none of the answers made sense. Time was running out. In order not to give anything away, I'll just say that solving this one involves a bit of metagaming - knowing how the Mission Architect works. It was good though. Immersive. I felt like I was really up against a evil, insane "Joker", who just wanted to win.
And the villain gave exactly the response he was supposed to. Screaming, angered, telling me I was cheating.
Time to take down the villain. It was not difficult, with the number of allies I'd gathered by the time I reached him. But it was satisfying. Very satisfying, after he made me run around and around on large maps, wasting the time of my lowbie's jetpack!
Finally, the souvenir. Awwwww... the souvenir is just so touching. *blows nose*
To find out what it is, you'll have to play yourself.
Suggestions for improvement:
The second map was a bit difficult to navigate around if you don't have vertical travelling powers.
Minor typo list and comments:
* A bit strange when the boss says "Well played" when he is defeated, when I expect him to be screaming with rage.
MA-R: The Hellish Crusaders
Rating: *** (Might recommend to friends)
TLDR version: Interesting concept but not developed. Repetitive missions of kill EB/AV. Nice final map. Effort put into grammar.
Subjective Play Experience:
I got curious in the first mission upon seeing the new group fighting with the CoT. Returned to the contact, who explained what the group was. Nice idea, I thought, completely different from what I had expected. I looked forward to discovering more.
To my disappointment, the next two missions were almost identical. Even the motivation speech of the EBs seeemed to be cut and paste. At first, I enjoyed playing around with the minions/lts, seeing what powers they had. The custom group is well-created, with different mobs with different purposes/powers. Got tired and stealthed past most of the groups to the EBs.
The two EBs varied in annoy-factor, with the second a lot more annoying because it fled midway when I was interrupted by its ambush, but on the whole it was mostly a matter of slowly grinding them down.
Final (fourth) mission was -- alas -- a rehash of the last two. Still no information about what the group was doing, except something like "take over CoT territory and raise the dead". Now I had to kill the two EBs all over again. Happily, they were spawned close to each other opposite a bridge, so I just confused the first, shoved it over to the second, let it beat up the second for a while, then confuse the second to beat up the first. Then...Whoa! The second EB self-rezzed. I stumbled away stunned, applied a dose of aid self and came back to kill it again.
After that, I was rather eager for this mission to end, so I stealthed around and found the downgraded-AV-now-EB. Curses! Purple triangles. First, I cleared out the surrounding mobs by confusing the EB (eek, that EB hit that minion for 1500hp). Fine, I thought, this calls for a shivan. Enter rental shivan and miscellaneous powers. I chased EB around the room until it died...Uhoh...it self-rezzed! Fortunately, mission was completed, so I clicked out.
Back in the MA building, I looked through the souvenir. Short and sweet, just like the missions. They weren't bad missions. I'd probably have enjoyed them more if I was a scrapper or in a big team, but fighting 5 EBs by myself (three instances being repeats of two EB) and a PTOD-EB in the space of four missions, with no additional story elements to spice it up felt tedious.
Suggestions for improvement:
More flavour text would be nice. Background, history, plans of the group. Their interaction with the CoT.
Minor typo list and comments:
* Introduction to mission #2, "researches" -> "researchers"
* Introduction to mission #4, "the last you two you encountered" -> "the last two you encountered"
* Dark armour AV self-rez after defeat. Intended?
TLDR version: Interesting concept but not developed. Repetitive missions of kill EB/AV. Nice final map. Effort put into grammar.
Subjective Play Experience:
I got curious in the first mission upon seeing the new group fighting with the CoT. Returned to the contact, who explained what the group was. Nice idea, I thought, completely different from what I had expected. I looked forward to discovering more.
To my disappointment, the next two missions were almost identical. Even the motivation speech of the EBs seeemed to be cut and paste. At first, I enjoyed playing around with the minions/lts, seeing what powers they had. The custom group is well-created, with different mobs with different purposes/powers. Got tired and stealthed past most of the groups to the EBs.
The two EBs varied in annoy-factor, with the second a lot more annoying because it fled midway when I was interrupted by its ambush, but on the whole it was mostly a matter of slowly grinding them down.
Final (fourth) mission was -- alas -- a rehash of the last two. Still no information about what the group was doing, except something like "take over CoT territory and raise the dead". Now I had to kill the two EBs all over again. Happily, they were spawned close to each other opposite a bridge, so I just confused the first, shoved it over to the second, let it beat up the second for a while, then confuse the second to beat up the first. Then...Whoa! The second EB self-rezzed. I stumbled away stunned, applied a dose of aid self and came back to kill it again.
After that, I was rather eager for this mission to end, so I stealthed around and found the downgraded-AV-now-EB. Curses! Purple triangles. First, I cleared out the surrounding mobs by confusing the EB (eek, that EB hit that minion for 1500hp). Fine, I thought, this calls for a shivan. Enter rental shivan and miscellaneous powers. I chased EB around the room until it died...Uhoh...it self-rezzed! Fortunately, mission was completed, so I clicked out.
Back in the MA building, I looked through the souvenir. Short and sweet, just like the missions. They weren't bad missions. I'd probably have enjoyed them more if I was a scrapper or in a big team, but fighting 5 EBs by myself (three instances being repeats of two EB) and a PTOD-EB in the space of four missions, with no additional story elements to spice it up felt tedious.
Suggestions for improvement:
More flavour text would be nice. Background, history, plans of the group. Their interaction with the CoT.
Minor typo list and comments:
* Introduction to mission #2, "researches" -> "researchers"
* Introduction to mission #4, "the last you two you encountered" -> "the last two you encountered"
* Dark armour AV self-rez after defeat. Intended?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
DoW 2: DRM Drama
Hmm. I may have just figured out why Dawn of War 2 plunged in price so rapidly... kinda the same way why Age of Conan is now selling at Tec-Drome for $29.90, perhaps.
I put in my DVD to install it, ran setup.exe.
First thing that popped up onto my screen was a little memo detailing the entire 7-step process of installation.
1) This installation will install some third-party components
2) This installation will install Steam (you will need a Steam account)
3) ...
Blah blah blah.
Kudos for informing me BEFORE the installation started and detailing exactly what was involved. Minus marks for this not being clear on the box on the onset. I did note before purchase a sentence in red that said "Internet Connection Required" but I had assumed this just meant connecting to some server and verifying the activation code.
After some squinting, I note some fine print disclaimers about a Games for Windows - LIVE system requirements and a "You must activate this product via the Internet by registering for a Steam account and accepting the SSA."
No wonder there is DRM drama burninating up the intarwebs.
On my part, since I am a Steam sellout, I admit to being quite calm about the sudden unexpected news that I must activate my code via Steam.
I generally trust Steam, though I hope I never have to contact their customer service as I hear it sucks very badly. This does remind me that I need to make some backups of my Steam folder really soon, however.
One thing that I'm NOT happy with the Steam installation is the retarded assumption of Steam that everything must be installed in the same drive as Steam is on. My C: drive is pushing 15 gigs after I did some heavy deletion... meanwhile, my D: drive is twiddling its thumbs with 334 gigs with only a few singleplayer games and ATITD installed.
(I need to take a tip from the forums and make a copy of Steam in my other drive. Apparently it'll work. Maybe.)
The other thing that I find extremely ridiculous is the necessity for a SECOND registration at Games for Windows LIVE. Apparently because GFWL offers matchmaking capabilities that Steam doesn't.
So apparently now I need a SECOND GFWL account in order for me to play DoW 2?
W. T. F.
Of course, because I am a corporate sellout and a popular games bandwagon whore, I did already play two games that used a GFWL account, so if I can -remember- the damn account name, it should go relatively smoothly too.
As much as I detest the name Securom and all the bad karma of its history, I did also bow down under its yoke for certain games like Bioshock, (and perhaps Spore eventually as well,) and no doubt I have some other game that sneakily installed it without my knowledge under the radar...
...and though I haven't seriously played a non-Steam FPS in ages, since Call of Duty 4, I am aware that I have Punkbuster services active and alive and sucking up a couple Ks of memory every single time I start up my computer because I'm too lazy to uninstall it, and then be forced to reinstall it the moment I decide I want to play an FPS that DEMANDS it.
Disgusting.
And I'm not sure if I'm referring to the corporations, the world, or myself.
I put in my DVD to install it, ran setup.exe.
First thing that popped up onto my screen was a little memo detailing the entire 7-step process of installation.
1) This installation will install some third-party components
2) This installation will install Steam (you will need a Steam account)
3) ...
Blah blah blah.
Kudos for informing me BEFORE the installation started and detailing exactly what was involved. Minus marks for this not being clear on the box on the onset. I did note before purchase a sentence in red that said "Internet Connection Required" but I had assumed this just meant connecting to some server and verifying the activation code.
After some squinting, I note some fine print disclaimers about a Games for Windows - LIVE system requirements and a "You must activate this product via the Internet by registering for a Steam account and accepting the SSA."
No wonder there is DRM drama burninating up the intarwebs.
On my part, since I am a Steam sellout, I admit to being quite calm about the sudden unexpected news that I must activate my code via Steam.
I generally trust Steam, though I hope I never have to contact their customer service as I hear it sucks very badly. This does remind me that I need to make some backups of my Steam folder really soon, however.
One thing that I'm NOT happy with the Steam installation is the retarded assumption of Steam that everything must be installed in the same drive as Steam is on. My C: drive is pushing 15 gigs after I did some heavy deletion... meanwhile, my D: drive is twiddling its thumbs with 334 gigs with only a few singleplayer games and ATITD installed.
(I need to take a tip from the forums and make a copy of Steam in my other drive. Apparently it'll work. Maybe.)
The other thing that I find extremely ridiculous is the necessity for a SECOND registration at Games for Windows LIVE. Apparently because GFWL offers matchmaking capabilities that Steam doesn't.
So apparently now I need a SECOND GFWL account in order for me to play DoW 2?
W. T. F.
Of course, because I am a corporate sellout and a popular games bandwagon whore, I did already play two games that used a GFWL account, so if I can -remember- the damn account name, it should go relatively smoothly too.
As much as I detest the name Securom and all the bad karma of its history, I did also bow down under its yoke for certain games like Bioshock, (and perhaps Spore eventually as well,) and no doubt I have some other game that sneakily installed it without my knowledge under the radar...
...and though I haven't seriously played a non-Steam FPS in ages, since Call of Duty 4, I am aware that I have Punkbuster services active and alive and sucking up a couple Ks of memory every single time I start up my computer because I'm too lazy to uninstall it, and then be forced to reinstall it the moment I decide I want to play an FPS that DEMANDS it.
Disgusting.
And I'm not sure if I'm referring to the corporations, the world, or myself.
Monday, April 13, 2009
LOTRO Lightsabres
Now he drew it out. It shone pale and dim before his eyes. 'So it is an elvish blade, too,' he thought; 'and goblins are not very near, and yet not far enough.'
It is a property of Bilbo's and Frodo's blade that all seem to know. Sting glows blue when orcs are near.
Where this is actually illustrated in the text, I know not. Perhaps it was popularized by the movie trilogy. But LOTRO has included its own little nod to its roots, as I suddenly noticed midway through a regular "kill 24 drakes" collector quest.
Here's my sword. It's just some regular, non-legendary, two-hander I picked up from some quest in Angmar that I was using because it was a bit faster than a higher dps hammer, and the race of Men just look better fighting with a sword than a honking hammer.
Note the purple racial bonus.
This is my badly dressed character (I can't exactly afford color-matching dyes, y'know? And so much for cosmetic clothes on top of oogly armor when the clothes are just as oogly and cost a bomb to craft - I'm wearing free "marketing bonus" clothing) fighting an ordinary wolf, with the unassuming two-hander.
This is me midway through my twentieth drake kill (out of 24!) when I suddenly realize something's kinda... different. And kinda cool. In a fanboi kinda way.
Here's a story some LOTRO player, Stormwaltz, shared on the f13.net forums, that I found while searching for the relevant book quote:
True story:
I was in Gamil Filik (Silvertine) knocking off a couple of quests. I'd killed everything near me and had stopped to rearrange my inventory when I noticed my staff glowing. I spun around, but the closest goblin was at least fifty feet away.
I had just enough time to think "Well what--?" before the Moria Sneak dropped out of stealth and stuck a knife in my side.
Sadly for the goblin, my lynx was stealthed behind him. Between her ambush and my dropping Light of the Rising Dawn, he didn't last long.
Neat immersion trick for an understated kind of MMO.
Gaming Schedules
It's interesting how various games cross-fertilize each other: both in the actual designers' minds, and in one's own personal perspective.
I mentioned earlier how playing Warhammer Online, with its slow nickel-and-diming attacks made LOTRO suddenly feel very fast in combat resolution.
Playing Age of Conan, with its glorious scenery, has enlightened me to the fact that both LOTRO and GW have fabulous scenery - except that I tend to look at the latter two zoomed out for a more tactical sense, versus AoC's more visceral near-first-person combat view and larger avatar, which made the scenery more emotionally intense.
Getting accustomed to ATITD's runspeed has now made me perceive LOTRO on horseback as pretty damn quick. (Unless they really did speed up running in LOTRO, I think it's just a perspective issue.)
The tragedy of cross fertilization is, of course, that I end up dabbling in every game and master of none.
This is all very well for the Explorer side of me, but the Achiever part can sometimes get a little onery about being a jack-of-all. So the random thought has come upon me that perhaps I should instill a little structure into my gaming, in a vein similar to Van Hemlock and his Guild Wars Tuesdays and City of Villains Monday Nights or whatever the day really was.
On the one hand, I know I'm really more of a spontaneous sort, and I'm likely to play whatever I feel like playing on that night. And best laid plans don't go very far if there's a sudden maintenance at the timeslot I'm all hyped up to play some MMO.
I just sort of wonder what it'll feel like to have a regular gaming schedule. Would it be limiting in a chaffing sense, or provide a sense of achievement focus in its limitation?
Plus points going for it: My recent trip to Sim Lim and Steam forays have brought me an onslaught of singleplayer games I want to at least try out - if not complete.
I decided to futureproof myself and laid in a stock of one more copy of the Guild Wars trilogy (yay for hero-stacking with no monthly subscription) and got a Nightfall preorder pack bundled into the bargain as a bonus for my main account (must be clearing ancient stock).
I also picked up another Nintendo DS lite on the cheap, just as the 'newer' "improved" model (pro: ever-so-minutely bigger screen => minus: smaller buttons, shorter battery life, more expensive cos it's new => lame: toy camera with resolution worse than a webcam) was due to hit the stores.
Mostly because my old one has a nonfunctional L button, making it impossible to play many of the games I want to play. I asked around about repairs, and they told me they'd have to take it to a 'technician' and it would cost 1/5th the price of a new DS. Sure, y'right. No wonder the warranty is only 3 months. Anyhow, I rummaged around a hardware shop and managed to find one tiny screwdriver box with a head that appeared to fit the proprietary screw involved. So now I can indulge in a little do-it-yourself messing about. In the worse case scenario, I fubar the old one, and I still have a functional new one - which came bundled with screen protector, and casing for less than the price of the one I bought with practically nothing one year ago.
Dayum.
Welp, that's how these technology gizmos go. I looked at the price of my graphics card, and it's now $100 cheaper. Then again, I did enjoy it for the better part of a year (or at least six months?) already.
I am learning, at any rate, to hold off on singleplayer games. These depreciate in value nicely. I just picked up Dawn of War 2 today for 10 bucks less than the original new price. I'm still leaving Spore, Dead Space, GtA 4, and a couple others to slowly simmer down.
The tricky thing with a gaming schedule is ATITD, to be honest. Because there are systems in that game which require upkeep - hence, regular daily logging on and some maintenance. It's no worse than other games like all those pet simulators and what-not
I suppose I could give myself an hour of ATITD every day, and then devote the rest of the night to another MMO. Be it CoX, LOTRO or GW. Or a singleplayer game. Meh. I can never decide on one. It's a bit of a pity because a lot of it requires some focused thought, whether I'm planning a CoX build, or a GW one, or just trying to remember what the heck I'm carrying and what my next quest is in LOTRO...
It just seems like a waste of time planning when I know my attention will just rabbit away when I feel like it.
*grumbles* (but not very seriously)
I mentioned earlier how playing Warhammer Online, with its slow nickel-and-diming attacks made LOTRO suddenly feel very fast in combat resolution.
Playing Age of Conan, with its glorious scenery, has enlightened me to the fact that both LOTRO and GW have fabulous scenery - except that I tend to look at the latter two zoomed out for a more tactical sense, versus AoC's more visceral near-first-person combat view and larger avatar, which made the scenery more emotionally intense.
Getting accustomed to ATITD's runspeed has now made me perceive LOTRO on horseback as pretty damn quick. (Unless they really did speed up running in LOTRO, I think it's just a perspective issue.)
The tragedy of cross fertilization is, of course, that I end up dabbling in every game and master of none.
This is all very well for the Explorer side of me, but the Achiever part can sometimes get a little onery about being a jack-of-all. So the random thought has come upon me that perhaps I should instill a little structure into my gaming, in a vein similar to Van Hemlock and his Guild Wars Tuesdays and City of Villains Monday Nights or whatever the day really was.
On the one hand, I know I'm really more of a spontaneous sort, and I'm likely to play whatever I feel like playing on that night. And best laid plans don't go very far if there's a sudden maintenance at the timeslot I'm all hyped up to play some MMO.
I just sort of wonder what it'll feel like to have a regular gaming schedule. Would it be limiting in a chaffing sense, or provide a sense of achievement focus in its limitation?
Plus points going for it: My recent trip to Sim Lim and Steam forays have brought me an onslaught of singleplayer games I want to at least try out - if not complete.
I decided to futureproof myself and laid in a stock of one more copy of the Guild Wars trilogy (yay for hero-stacking with no monthly subscription) and got a Nightfall preorder pack bundled into the bargain as a bonus for my main account (must be clearing ancient stock).
I also picked up another Nintendo DS lite on the cheap, just as the 'newer' "improved" model (pro: ever-so-minutely bigger screen => minus: smaller buttons, shorter battery life, more expensive cos it's new => lame: toy camera with resolution worse than a webcam) was due to hit the stores.
Mostly because my old one has a nonfunctional L button, making it impossible to play many of the games I want to play. I asked around about repairs, and they told me they'd have to take it to a 'technician' and it would cost 1/5th the price of a new DS. Sure, y'right. No wonder the warranty is only 3 months. Anyhow, I rummaged around a hardware shop and managed to find one tiny screwdriver box with a head that appeared to fit the proprietary screw involved. So now I can indulge in a little do-it-yourself messing about. In the worse case scenario, I fubar the old one, and I still have a functional new one - which came bundled with screen protector, and casing for less than the price of the one I bought with practically nothing one year ago.
Dayum.
Welp, that's how these technology gizmos go. I looked at the price of my graphics card, and it's now $100 cheaper. Then again, I did enjoy it for the better part of a year (or at least six months?) already.
I am learning, at any rate, to hold off on singleplayer games. These depreciate in value nicely. I just picked up Dawn of War 2 today for 10 bucks less than the original new price. I'm still leaving Spore, Dead Space, GtA 4, and a couple others to slowly simmer down.
The tricky thing with a gaming schedule is ATITD, to be honest. Because there are systems in that game which require upkeep - hence, regular daily logging on and some maintenance. It's no worse than other games like all those pet simulators and what-not
I suppose I could give myself an hour of ATITD every day, and then devote the rest of the night to another MMO. Be it CoX, LOTRO or GW. Or a singleplayer game. Meh. I can never decide on one. It's a bit of a pity because a lot of it requires some focused thought, whether I'm planning a CoX build, or a GW one, or just trying to remember what the heck I'm carrying and what my next quest is in LOTRO...
It just seems like a waste of time planning when I know my attention will just rabbit away when I feel like it.
*grumbles* (but not very seriously)
One Thing Warhammer Online Did Right
Separate Oceanic server downtimes.
Just miffed because I managed to log into CoX about 1 minute before getting forcibly disconnected from the server. Enough time to see that one arc had made it into Hall of Fame status, and that Footsteps Initiative was back and republished and hitting 999+ votes.
Then pow, disconnected from server.
*rolls eyes* Ah well, I only have about a half dozen other things to do. *logs onto LOTRO*
Just miffed because I managed to log into CoX about 1 minute before getting forcibly disconnected from the server. Enough time to see that one arc had made it into Hall of Fame status, and that Footsteps Initiative was back and republished and hitting 999+ votes.
Then pow, disconnected from server.
*rolls eyes* Ah well, I only have about a half dozen other things to do. *logs onto LOTRO*
Whole World. Same Playground
Today I went to hell and tried a self-proclaimed "Farming Map for Solo Players."
I have to admit it was ingenious. And also kind of fun. In a "I just rampaged through this and it was gloriously easy" kind of way.
They'd given the player two Elite Boss allies, with buffs/heals/controls. The mobs were gimped little melee'rs. 300 tickets in a quick play through without really trying, on unyielding cos I'm too lazy to change my difficulty level.
I also admit to feeling slightly guilty and reported it as a farm mission for the heck of it to see what the GMs would do, if anything.
It makes me wonder how to police such a system, and where to draw the line. Especially since I seem to straddle the line quite well.
See, I'm an elitist snob who likes story content, especially when solo, but I'm also not against efficiency-ing the hell out of a build and I can turn my literary mind off and enjoy the Pavlovian ring of achievement bars topping off, with the rush of pure unadulterated adrenaline combat effects chaos.
Top Ten, who is unabashedly full of the latter hardcore sort of player who loves to farm and hit level 50 and pvp and make uber-elite builds and break the banks on their influence in order to get "l33t purplez, lol", has conveniently forgotten to kick me out so I can lurk and overhear their conversations (such as it is) like a social anthropologist.
They're giggling like schoolchildren, playing their 'pie' farming maps over and over, and raking in the dough and tickets, looking forward to the prices plunging on the market (because of heaps of tickets, and lots of rolls) before the prices rise (in general due to mudflation/farming?).
A couple of them are taking their maxed out builds through 'challenge' maps, going through crazy achievement hoops.
One guy, who fancies himself a writer, but talks in all smallcase and makes heaps of typos and grammar errors most of the time, and is generally incoherent and lost in his own lil world ALL of the time, is happily crafting his Great American Mission Arc, then getting anyone dumb/nice/generous/gullible enough to play it.
And who's to really say that the way they are enjoying the game is wrong?
They are having fun. They are enjoying themselves. They're doing some fiendishly clever things in their own way to tweak these maps and missions to their end goals. And they are all paying their subscription money.
Must we really sit down and have a cadre of GMs run the banstick on any mission called a 'farm?' Or are they just waiting for someone to have an issue with it, and report it before banning? (User-policed content is so prone to having someone not happy with ANYTHING.) What's the difference between a player-created farm map, and the ones they are ALREADY using to play the game their way? (Especially since dev response time is so slow to address farm maps.)
I suppose the issue is, and I'm grasping and trying to work it out here, that we're all playing in the same playground. The economy level is being set by the farmers. And CoX is undergoing insane mudflation on the hero side (and villain-side is kinda abandoned). Casuals don't really have a hope of getting inventions at the 'farm' prices unless they abandon their preferred playstyle and sit in a farm. Therein lies the rub and the place where you just got 'your playstyle' into 'my sandbox' and why some people start complaining.
Does MA help? It gives casuals a second place to obtain a chance at inventions. Except the hardcore farmers drive the prices, and soon the devs will have to adjust prices upward in order to match.
Of course, you still don't need inventions to play the regular game. MA? Also optional. Hell, it seems like everything has become also optional in the wake of inventions and MA and pvp. You don't have to participate if you don't like it... but what is left of the original game, and how many people are going to be left - or are they all already playing in their own sandboxes anyway?
Does MA just make it more obvious that there are soloists, there are groupists, there are story-hounds, there are RP'ers, there are challenge-seekers, there are max-efficiency builders, pvp'ers, farmers, badgers, achievements whores and more?
Should a game revel in this difference and let them split apart into their own private little sandbox infinite worlds - making it a not-quite-MMO, or try to course-correct and push them together (at the risk of making nobody happy)?
I mean, every MMO has this mix. Hell, every game. Look at the RTS or FPS maps, or the RPG mods. Some are hardcore 'challenge' mods, some are total conversions for story/neat tricks, some are 'easy pharm 4 achievements' or what not. It's just not quite as obvious, perhaps, as MA is now demonstrating?
Does it behoove the player themselves to pick and choose the ones they like, and to personalize the game their way? Or do the devs have to police it to maintain a certain level of 'quality' or 'balance' or 'fun' (however you define it) to their game? And just where is that line?
What if, in the effort to stop the farmers, the devs do something to impede the limitless creativity and potential that is MA?
(See maps becoming 'timed' for example. Or 'one play' only.)
Does it really matter if players just keep shooting through the levels hitting 50, one character after another? Sooner or later, they're just gonna get bored, right? Or run out of character slots and pay moar for them, and that only helps the bottom line KPI at the end of the dev day.
Can't force a playstyle down a player's throat. Some days, you just don't want to do a long extended narrative arc. Maybe you just want to get a low-brow humor laugh and pwn something. Or get to a certain level for some power. Or accumulate a special inventions set you're looking forward to. Or farm some badges for your scoresheet.
Is there a way to celebrate it all, and maybe classify and categorize so that people can find what they want? Or do we let it all mix together in a big scrimmage and see what the -whole- CoX community thinks, do story arcs with content win (and is this for solo, or groups?) or big badass custom enemy challenge battles, or easy phat pharm missions, or what?
I have many questions. No answers. :/
I have to admit it was ingenious. And also kind of fun. In a "I just rampaged through this and it was gloriously easy" kind of way.
They'd given the player two Elite Boss allies, with buffs/heals/controls. The mobs were gimped little melee'rs. 300 tickets in a quick play through without really trying, on unyielding cos I'm too lazy to change my difficulty level.
I also admit to feeling slightly guilty and reported it as a farm mission for the heck of it to see what the GMs would do, if anything.
It makes me wonder how to police such a system, and where to draw the line. Especially since I seem to straddle the line quite well.
See, I'm an elitist snob who likes story content, especially when solo, but I'm also not against efficiency-ing the hell out of a build and I can turn my literary mind off and enjoy the Pavlovian ring of achievement bars topping off, with the rush of pure unadulterated adrenaline combat effects chaos.
Top Ten, who is unabashedly full of the latter hardcore sort of player who loves to farm and hit level 50 and pvp and make uber-elite builds and break the banks on their influence in order to get "l33t purplez, lol", has conveniently forgotten to kick me out so I can lurk and overhear their conversations (such as it is) like a social anthropologist.
They're giggling like schoolchildren, playing their 'pie' farming maps over and over, and raking in the dough and tickets, looking forward to the prices plunging on the market (because of heaps of tickets, and lots of rolls) before the prices rise (in general due to mudflation/farming?).
A couple of them are taking their maxed out builds through 'challenge' maps, going through crazy achievement hoops.
One guy, who fancies himself a writer, but talks in all smallcase and makes heaps of typos and grammar errors most of the time, and is generally incoherent and lost in his own lil world ALL of the time, is happily crafting his Great American Mission Arc, then getting anyone dumb/nice/generous/gullible enough to play it.
And who's to really say that the way they are enjoying the game is wrong?
They are having fun. They are enjoying themselves. They're doing some fiendishly clever things in their own way to tweak these maps and missions to their end goals. And they are all paying their subscription money.
Must we really sit down and have a cadre of GMs run the banstick on any mission called a 'farm?' Or are they just waiting for someone to have an issue with it, and report it before banning? (User-policed content is so prone to having someone not happy with ANYTHING.) What's the difference between a player-created farm map, and the ones they are ALREADY using to play the game their way? (Especially since dev response time is so slow to address farm maps.)
I suppose the issue is, and I'm grasping and trying to work it out here, that we're all playing in the same playground. The economy level is being set by the farmers. And CoX is undergoing insane mudflation on the hero side (and villain-side is kinda abandoned). Casuals don't really have a hope of getting inventions at the 'farm' prices unless they abandon their preferred playstyle and sit in a farm. Therein lies the rub and the place where you just got 'your playstyle' into 'my sandbox' and why some people start complaining.
Does MA help? It gives casuals a second place to obtain a chance at inventions. Except the hardcore farmers drive the prices, and soon the devs will have to adjust prices upward in order to match.
Of course, you still don't need inventions to play the regular game. MA? Also optional. Hell, it seems like everything has become also optional in the wake of inventions and MA and pvp. You don't have to participate if you don't like it... but what is left of the original game, and how many people are going to be left - or are they all already playing in their own sandboxes anyway?
Does MA just make it more obvious that there are soloists, there are groupists, there are story-hounds, there are RP'ers, there are challenge-seekers, there are max-efficiency builders, pvp'ers, farmers, badgers, achievements whores and more?
Should a game revel in this difference and let them split apart into their own private little sandbox infinite worlds - making it a not-quite-MMO, or try to course-correct and push them together (at the risk of making nobody happy)?
I mean, every MMO has this mix. Hell, every game. Look at the RTS or FPS maps, or the RPG mods. Some are hardcore 'challenge' mods, some are total conversions for story/neat tricks, some are 'easy pharm 4 achievements' or what not. It's just not quite as obvious, perhaps, as MA is now demonstrating?
Does it behoove the player themselves to pick and choose the ones they like, and to personalize the game their way? Or do the devs have to police it to maintain a certain level of 'quality' or 'balance' or 'fun' (however you define it) to their game? And just where is that line?
What if, in the effort to stop the farmers, the devs do something to impede the limitless creativity and potential that is MA?
(See maps becoming 'timed' for example. Or 'one play' only.)
Does it really matter if players just keep shooting through the levels hitting 50, one character after another? Sooner or later, they're just gonna get bored, right? Or run out of character slots and pay moar for them, and that only helps the bottom line KPI at the end of the dev day.
Can't force a playstyle down a player's throat. Some days, you just don't want to do a long extended narrative arc. Maybe you just want to get a low-brow humor laugh and pwn something. Or get to a certain level for some power. Or accumulate a special inventions set you're looking forward to. Or farm some badges for your scoresheet.
Is there a way to celebrate it all, and maybe classify and categorize so that people can find what they want? Or do we let it all mix together in a big scrimmage and see what the -whole- CoX community thinks, do story arcs with content win (and is this for solo, or groups?) or big badass custom enemy challenge battles, or easy phat pharm missions, or what?
I have many questions. No answers. :/
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Never Seeing It All
I've read a number of posts on the CoH forums remarking that the Mission Architect system is giving their obsessive completionist selves fits of existential crisis.
Apparently, the infinite potential for content has sledgehammered them with the realization that they are never going to be able to experience it all the content, get all the badges, and what not, on one uber-perfect character.
On the one hand, I welcome this and am quite comfortable at the thought.
In City of Heroes, I have never missed the insanely tedious-to-obtain badges that require camping overnight in a farm mission or bathing in lava with some kind of macro on. I'm quite comfortable with a sandbox choice of content, since I had pretty much exhausted existing content and was feeling quite bored with the same-old.
(If I'd really want to be honest about it, I don't think I've seen every last bit of old content. The problem is that many of them are hard to get to/experience/full of tedium, so I refuse to try it / do it again.)
In ATITD, contrary to a number of the hardcore folk and some ill-informed but perhaps obsessive personality newbies, I do not find it necessary to do everything nor do I wish to race to pass Tests with immense levels of grind. I have a goal to, in time, try out all the various subsystems of the game, as well as putter around quietly in a nostalgic social environment. I'm content to patiently wait for good opportunities, because it all ends up in the same place at the end.
In Guild Wars, the demarcation seems quite clear. I'd like to finish the story missions at some point - though I have infinite patience because there's no subscription, I can go back to it any point I like. The dungeons and other things are there to amuse me. There's no way I'm doing some of the more hardcore titles and grindy achievements, period. No existential crisis there either.
Yet I find I face a similar issue with LOTRO.
It's silly of me, but there's this underlying desire to try and do and see all the story solo, with backup crafter alts. Which is, to be honest, patently impossible. Turbine caters to both group and solo players, so there are places where I'll never see the content except in a group, which I'm not willing to cultivate as LOTRO is my secondary backup MMO.
I suppose part of it is the arbitrary small limitations on inventory/storage space and quest log. My bags are filled to the brim, I'm reluctant to throw away a lot of the stuff in there, in the event I might need it later (yet ironically, there is no later, because I don't want to play with my bags filled up.)
I have a horrible packrat tendency. At least in CoX, I can make the inventions and chuck them into bins to be kept. In Guild Wars, I can rationalize that many of the items are worthless if they aren't max level, and will probably drop again (I do still have an inventory problem there.) In ATITD, it's just a matter of how many bricks I want to make to have endless series of chests. (Ah, except I have a plague of beetles problem still.)
I'm tempted to do a massive spring cleaning of my LOTRO main character and sell everything, delete everything on the quest log and start anew.
Logically speaking, it should all re-accumulate.
Emotionally, it is difficult and sparks off a mild existential crisis.
How strange the vagaries of our personalities.
Apparently, the infinite potential for content has sledgehammered them with the realization that they are never going to be able to experience it all the content, get all the badges, and what not, on one uber-perfect character.
On the one hand, I welcome this and am quite comfortable at the thought.
In City of Heroes, I have never missed the insanely tedious-to-obtain badges that require camping overnight in a farm mission or bathing in lava with some kind of macro on. I'm quite comfortable with a sandbox choice of content, since I had pretty much exhausted existing content and was feeling quite bored with the same-old.
(If I'd really want to be honest about it, I don't think I've seen every last bit of old content. The problem is that many of them are hard to get to/experience/full of tedium, so I refuse to try it / do it again.)
In ATITD, contrary to a number of the hardcore folk and some ill-informed but perhaps obsessive personality newbies, I do not find it necessary to do everything nor do I wish to race to pass Tests with immense levels of grind. I have a goal to, in time, try out all the various subsystems of the game, as well as putter around quietly in a nostalgic social environment. I'm content to patiently wait for good opportunities, because it all ends up in the same place at the end.
In Guild Wars, the demarcation seems quite clear. I'd like to finish the story missions at some point - though I have infinite patience because there's no subscription, I can go back to it any point I like. The dungeons and other things are there to amuse me. There's no way I'm doing some of the more hardcore titles and grindy achievements, period. No existential crisis there either.
Yet I find I face a similar issue with LOTRO.
It's silly of me, but there's this underlying desire to try and do and see all the story solo, with backup crafter alts. Which is, to be honest, patently impossible. Turbine caters to both group and solo players, so there are places where I'll never see the content except in a group, which I'm not willing to cultivate as LOTRO is my secondary backup MMO.
I suppose part of it is the arbitrary small limitations on inventory/storage space and quest log. My bags are filled to the brim, I'm reluctant to throw away a lot of the stuff in there, in the event I might need it later (yet ironically, there is no later, because I don't want to play with my bags filled up.)
I have a horrible packrat tendency. At least in CoX, I can make the inventions and chuck them into bins to be kept. In Guild Wars, I can rationalize that many of the items are worthless if they aren't max level, and will probably drop again (I do still have an inventory problem there.) In ATITD, it's just a matter of how many bricks I want to make to have endless series of chests. (Ah, except I have a plague of beetles problem still.)
I'm tempted to do a massive spring cleaning of my LOTRO main character and sell everything, delete everything on the quest log and start anew.
Logically speaking, it should all re-accumulate.
Emotionally, it is difficult and sparks off a mild existential crisis.
How strange the vagaries of our personalities.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Ain't Seen These Before
The last time I took a City of Heroes screenshot was in May-June 2008.
Nearly one year later, I have the urge to hit print screen once more.
This game lends itself to brilliant action shots by pure happenstance. In these two cases though, my poor hero looks a little worse for wear, but he's ok! He's /SR! It's just a flesh wound!
The new scourge of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles - custom MM enemies...
But damn, does it look cool. Like being caught in some evil stormtrooper crossfire.
And it totally didn't sting because just like stormtroopers, they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
New Demons on the Oranbegan Block
I have decided to start small. In lieu of any semblance of plot, I just decided to putz around in the character creator and do what I do best. Put together ugly monster costumes. Except now they get to be part of a generic group, instead of an individual hero/villain.
I have no idea how many custom enemies I can have saved, locally or otherwise. But my guess is somewhere in the 250s or unlimited. Which works for me at present.
Took them for a little test spin in a SMALL map. I hate big maps.
It's kinda cool to have your own custom designed costumes facing you off. Hell, who am I kidding... it is VERY cool to have them ragdoll and thud at your feet.
I seriously think I want to stick to minions, lieutenants and bosses. An elite boss usage should be very very rare. I'm so sick of getting pwned by elite bosses, be it in MA or regular content. And with one of those creeps around, it means that you have to put in uber allies to balance it off, and it's still a hard sell.
One thing which strikes me is that MA may very well be suited to episodic content. Especially if your local storage is pretty much unlimited. Then you could design your own arcs, and maybe for your friends / adoring public, and then switch them around as 'published.'
Make a name fer yerself, and before you know it, HoF or Dev Choice.
Heh. But that is far in the future yet. I broke down again trying to type descriptions into blank boxes in my test mission. I have a problem with filling descriptions into blank boxes.
I need a story. I need a plan. :/
Nearly one year later, I have the urge to hit print screen once more.
This game lends itself to brilliant action shots by pure happenstance. In these two cases though, my poor hero looks a little worse for wear, but he's ok! He's /SR! It's just a flesh wound!
The new scourge of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles - custom MM enemies...But damn, does it look cool. Like being caught in some evil stormtrooper crossfire.
And it totally didn't sting because just like stormtroopers, they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
New Demons on the Oranbegan BlockI have decided to start small. In lieu of any semblance of plot, I just decided to putz around in the character creator and do what I do best. Put together ugly monster costumes. Except now they get to be part of a generic group, instead of an individual hero/villain.
I have no idea how many custom enemies I can have saved, locally or otherwise. But my guess is somewhere in the 250s or unlimited. Which works for me at present.
Took them for a little test spin in a SMALL map. I hate big maps.
It's kinda cool to have your own custom designed costumes facing you off. Hell, who am I kidding... it is VERY cool to have them ragdoll and thud at your feet.
I seriously think I want to stick to minions, lieutenants and bosses. An elite boss usage should be very very rare. I'm so sick of getting pwned by elite bosses, be it in MA or regular content. And with one of those creeps around, it means that you have to put in uber allies to balance it off, and it's still a hard sell.
One thing which strikes me is that MA may very well be suited to episodic content. Especially if your local storage is pretty much unlimited. Then you could design your own arcs, and maybe for your friends / adoring public, and then switch them around as 'published.'
Make a name fer yerself, and before you know it, HoF or Dev Choice.
Heh. But that is far in the future yet. I broke down again trying to type descriptions into blank boxes in my test mission. I have a problem with filling descriptions into blank boxes.
I need a story. I need a plan. :/
Random Things I Have Learned Since MA
Kill the MM first.
ATITD can actually fit on my second monitor, and function like the MUD could, while CoX is running with no lag.
Except one loses all will to play EITHER game when thusly split-attention'ed.
I must rethink my dual-boxing dreams.
If I see a Elite Boss stuck in a spawn with another Elite Boss, on my solo mission...
...I will quit the MA arc, right now.
Especially if one of the Elite Bosses have a tank powerset.
Especially especially if they have a tank powerset with an unstoppable type of power.
Bringing a character with an unstoppable type of power to playtest these MA missions is an especially good idea.
I have lost count of the number of times I have triggered Elude.
95% of the player population have been spoiled by the Autocorrect function of Microsoft Word.
Using spellcheck or grammar check is a dying art. I blame composing on the UI, and settling for good enough.
Using the Shift key appropriately is also one of those lost arts.
Yet the global creativity unleashed by the costume creator tied into making custom enemy groups with custom powersets is awe-inspiring to behold.
Playtesting before publishing also seems to be an obsolete skill.
95% of the player population have lower standards of quality than I do.
I never Elude when I should. And I like to Elude when I don't have to.
MA truly gives an excellent way to make Inventions and build efficiency important to those who desire it, yet optional to those who desire otherwise.
Presumably, this will self-select over time, with interest groups clumping up. Story hounds. Invincible scrapper challenges. Soloists. Group "Task Forces". Etc.
I would think PUG grouping has taken a tremendous hit in the wake of MA. I, a soloist, have taken to hiding so that I can browse and play in peace. Tons of people are creating missions and don't want to be interrupted. And when I did join a PUG to decimate an entire outdoor group of crazed with the dark/ tank leading in and me spinning around to demolish everything as his right hand scrapper, I found it quite boring and running on automatic.
Even the worst MA missions contain surprises. If ugly ones.
I can't wait for more upgraded nuances to this Mission Architect system to get rid of some of the clunky areas.
WoTC has decided to nerf the selling of all their digital PDFs - yep, D&D classics and all.
Like that is going to stop the piracy of their products any.
It is a good thing that I have all the D&D stuff I ever wanted already bought and tucked away safely into multiple drives and backup DVDs, way before Hasbro and Wizards took over TSR.
Sifting through RPGnow to look at the indie products can give some interesting name ideas for CoX custom enemies, what with all the prestige classes and all.
I haven't popped this many inspirations on my scrapper since... Never.
Why do people like to make their bosses have colossal hitpoints?
Mind dominator bosses are not funny against /SR.
Between patrol XP and MA reviewing, I am level 41 without even realizing it. This is as it should be.
Why do people still insist on "Defeat All" missions after being warned not to in the helpfiles?
Oh yes, corollary. People don't read.
Why do people still insist on "Defeat All" missions after giving a mind dominator boss with colossal hp the ability to revive instantly on defeat?
I need a good story idea.
When in doubt, a multiple luck shield saves the day.
Remembering to turn toggles on is important.
Version 2 of the MA system really needs a way to selectively control the hitpoints and powers of the enemies.
Hunting for the last remaining spawns still suck.
ATITD can actually fit on my second monitor, and function like the MUD could, while CoX is running with no lag.
Except one loses all will to play EITHER game when thusly split-attention'ed.
I must rethink my dual-boxing dreams.
If I see a Elite Boss stuck in a spawn with another Elite Boss, on my solo mission...
...I will quit the MA arc, right now.
Especially if one of the Elite Bosses have a tank powerset.
Especially especially if they have a tank powerset with an unstoppable type of power.
Bringing a character with an unstoppable type of power to playtest these MA missions is an especially good idea.
I have lost count of the number of times I have triggered Elude.
95% of the player population have been spoiled by the Autocorrect function of Microsoft Word.
Using spellcheck or grammar check is a dying art. I blame composing on the UI, and settling for good enough.
Using the Shift key appropriately is also one of those lost arts.
Yet the global creativity unleashed by the costume creator tied into making custom enemy groups with custom powersets is awe-inspiring to behold.
Playtesting before publishing also seems to be an obsolete skill.
95% of the player population have lower standards of quality than I do.
I never Elude when I should. And I like to Elude when I don't have to.
MA truly gives an excellent way to make Inventions and build efficiency important to those who desire it, yet optional to those who desire otherwise.
Presumably, this will self-select over time, with interest groups clumping up. Story hounds. Invincible scrapper challenges. Soloists. Group "Task Forces". Etc.
I would think PUG grouping has taken a tremendous hit in the wake of MA. I, a soloist, have taken to hiding so that I can browse and play in peace. Tons of people are creating missions and don't want to be interrupted. And when I did join a PUG to decimate an entire outdoor group of crazed with the dark/ tank leading in and me spinning around to demolish everything as his right hand scrapper, I found it quite boring and running on automatic.
Even the worst MA missions contain surprises. If ugly ones.
I can't wait for more upgraded nuances to this Mission Architect system to get rid of some of the clunky areas.
WoTC has decided to nerf the selling of all their digital PDFs - yep, D&D classics and all.
Like that is going to stop the piracy of their products any.
It is a good thing that I have all the D&D stuff I ever wanted already bought and tucked away safely into multiple drives and backup DVDs, way before Hasbro and Wizards took over TSR.
Sifting through RPGnow to look at the indie products can give some interesting name ideas for CoX custom enemies, what with all the prestige classes and all.
I haven't popped this many inspirations on my scrapper since... Never.
Why do people like to make their bosses have colossal hitpoints?
Mind dominator bosses are not funny against /SR.
Between patrol XP and MA reviewing, I am level 41 without even realizing it. This is as it should be.
Why do people still insist on "Defeat All" missions after being warned not to in the helpfiles?
Oh yes, corollary. People don't read.
Why do people still insist on "Defeat All" missions after giving a mind dominator boss with colossal hp the ability to revive instantly on defeat?
I need a good story idea.
When in doubt, a multiple luck shield saves the day.
Remembering to turn toggles on is important.
Version 2 of the MA system really needs a way to selectively control the hitpoints and powers of the enemies.
Hunting for the last remaining spawns still suck.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Rising Fuel Costs
Dear gods... Having just received my pay for this month, and my increment burning a hole in my pocket reminding me that I haven't gotten a lot of books I wanted from Amazon, I went internet shopping.
Then I nearly fainted at checkout looking at the shipping charges. It added up to nearly $60 USD.
For a moment, I thought I had puzzled Amazon's checkout system by including books and dvds in the same order, so I played around removing quantities here and there and the shipping cost remained steadfastly high, only dropping by a couple bucks here and there.
Puzzled myself, I went to check the shipping rates FAQ, and found out that per item, they would be charging $5 USD for shipment. Which sounded kinda reasonable, since I last recalled the per item charge for book and dvd at around $5.99 and #3.99 respectively.
Put together though, it was slightly hard to swallow that I would be paying ninety Singapore bucks for the books to fly over to me.
I waffled over it for a while, before resigning myself to the fact that books in Singapore cost pretty much $16-18 at secondhand bookstores for mass market paperback stuff, and at regular 'higher-class' bookstores like PageOne, Borders and Kinokuniya, nonfiction stuff like I was buying would hit the $31-40+ range anyhow.
Then there was the hassle of having to try and locate a non-dog-eared dusty copy shoved up on some shelf and having to go down to the bookstore to talk to people or place a special order, versus getting my esoteric interest stuff shipped direct to my doorstep.
It's kinda disgusting though, when you contrast the fact that my next planned Steam purchase is going to set me back less than the cost of shipping. Granted, I'm buying some really old, heavily discounted games like Sacred and Disciples which I've been intending to play but never got around to, but still. :/
In retrospect, $10-$15 USD a month per MMO habit seems like a tiny drop in a vast ocean.
(Of course, I am not factoring in the price of electricity to power the computer, nor the cost of the computer in the first place - but I didn't factor in cost of electricity to read the books either, and my admittedly expensive computer has lasted two years and still going (*touch wood*), defraying the cost per month.)
It's been a while since I've splurged though, and whatever is the point of slogging through month after month of work without treating myself now and again?
Then I nearly fainted at checkout looking at the shipping charges. It added up to nearly $60 USD.
For a moment, I thought I had puzzled Amazon's checkout system by including books and dvds in the same order, so I played around removing quantities here and there and the shipping cost remained steadfastly high, only dropping by a couple bucks here and there.
Puzzled myself, I went to check the shipping rates FAQ, and found out that per item, they would be charging $5 USD for shipment. Which sounded kinda reasonable, since I last recalled the per item charge for book and dvd at around $5.99 and #3.99 respectively.
Put together though, it was slightly hard to swallow that I would be paying ninety Singapore bucks for the books to fly over to me.
I waffled over it for a while, before resigning myself to the fact that books in Singapore cost pretty much $16-18 at secondhand bookstores for mass market paperback stuff, and at regular 'higher-class' bookstores like PageOne, Borders and Kinokuniya, nonfiction stuff like I was buying would hit the $31-40+ range anyhow.
Then there was the hassle of having to try and locate a non-dog-eared dusty copy shoved up on some shelf and having to go down to the bookstore to talk to people or place a special order, versus getting my esoteric interest stuff shipped direct to my doorstep.
It's kinda disgusting though, when you contrast the fact that my next planned Steam purchase is going to set me back less than the cost of shipping. Granted, I'm buying some really old, heavily discounted games like Sacred and Disciples which I've been intending to play but never got around to, but still. :/
In retrospect, $10-$15 USD a month per MMO habit seems like a tiny drop in a vast ocean.
(Of course, I am not factoring in the price of electricity to power the computer, nor the cost of the computer in the first place - but I didn't factor in cost of electricity to read the books either, and my admittedly expensive computer has lasted two years and still going (*touch wood*), defraying the cost per month.)
It's been a while since I've splurged though, and whatever is the point of slogging through month after month of work without treating myself now and again?
MA: Not That Easy...
Couldn't sleep. Kept having mission ideas. So I loaded up CoX and tried out the mission editor for the first time. Wowzers. I like the UI. I like the potential I see in it. But my brain exploded facing it, because my idea was just the stillborn ghost of an idea, not one all nicely detailed out with a plan and all.
Definitely a "in the future" thing for me. I'm glad that other people seem to have gotten a decent handle on it, because I like more original content.
I got an invite to some random PUG. It was kinda ironic, because two of the members were rather down on the MA, one saying to wait until the bugs get ironed out first, and the other saying that they tried three of the missions and found them designed to be impossible.
Curiously enough, these two were defenders. One a bubbler/psi and the other a dark/dark.
Hmm.
I was rather enjoying most of the missions I tried with a claws/sr scrapper.
Admittedly, /sr means I get hit by those weirdo custom enemies less than 50% of the time, and I did my share of inspiration defence spamming from time to time - not to mention, hit elude.
Makes you wonder what the creators tested with.
I need to try a few of the dev choice arcs on Sejanna. See just how 'impossible' they are. At a reasonable difficulty, of course. Maybe the middle one. The scrapper goes for unyielding and likes it, cos of the many many mobs when solo (and it was crazy fun when fighting robot mms who summon their drones to shoot too), but I have more middling dreams for a decent defender.
Somehow, I think an ff/psi def is a little screwed, except maybe on heroic, or invention'ed up and powers chosen to solo. But then, soloing using a group powerset means only half an archetype at work, after all.
I saw an elite boss in MA with purple triangles though. Not thrilled. Musta been a downgraded AV. Grr.
Definitely a "in the future" thing for me. I'm glad that other people seem to have gotten a decent handle on it, because I like more original content.
I got an invite to some random PUG. It was kinda ironic, because two of the members were rather down on the MA, one saying to wait until the bugs get ironed out first, and the other saying that they tried three of the missions and found them designed to be impossible.
Curiously enough, these two were defenders. One a bubbler/psi and the other a dark/dark.
Hmm.
I was rather enjoying most of the missions I tried with a claws/sr scrapper.
Admittedly, /sr means I get hit by those weirdo custom enemies less than 50% of the time, and I did my share of inspiration defence spamming from time to time - not to mention, hit elude.
Makes you wonder what the creators tested with.
I need to try a few of the dev choice arcs on Sejanna. See just how 'impossible' they are. At a reasonable difficulty, of course. Maybe the middle one. The scrapper goes for unyielding and likes it, cos of the many many mobs when solo (and it was crazy fun when fighting robot mms who summon their drones to shoot too), but I have more middling dreams for a decent defender.
Somehow, I think an ff/psi def is a little screwed, except maybe on heroic, or invention'ed up and powers chosen to solo. But then, soloing using a group powerset means only half an archetype at work, after all.
I saw an elite boss in MA with purple triangles though. Not thrilled. Musta been a downgraded AV. Grr.
MA: Kung-Fu Fighting
I have a ratings dilemma with this.
It's not original. It's not long. It's not some extended arc that someone has lavished a lot of attention on.
But I played it twice. And I'm probably going to keep playing it every time I feel like a short and sweet comedic romp with a fitting soundtrack.
Cos it's just...fun. Especially with a few MP3s of Kung-Fu Fighting playing in the background. Hoo-Ah! Har! I gotta run my Master Sing Song and his Kung-Fu Fighting minions through this at some point.
Custom enemies rock. And I absolutely broke down in tears (of laughter) on seeing the Big Boss. (Slightly marred by not having an original description.) But hilarious.
I settled on a 4. Trying to preserve my 5s for perfect missions, of whatever length. Still a few things that could be polished in this mission, after all.
It's not original. It's not long. It's not some extended arc that someone has lavished a lot of attention on.
But I played it twice. And I'm probably going to keep playing it every time I feel like a short and sweet comedic romp with a fitting soundtrack.
Cos it's just...fun. Especially with a few MP3s of Kung-Fu Fighting playing in the background. Hoo-Ah! Har! I gotta run my Master Sing Song and his Kung-Fu Fighting minions through this at some point.
Custom enemies rock. And I absolutely broke down in tears (of laughter) on seeing the Big Boss. (Slightly marred by not having an original description.) But hilarious.
I settled on a 4. Trying to preserve my 5s for perfect missions, of whatever length. Still a few things that could be polished in this mission, after all.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
MA: Opera of the Abyss
Architect is out on the Live servers, so I have returned from my enforced 4+ month's isolation to try CoX out once more.
First thing that hits me is how pretty it all is. (So ATITD isn't the model of a graphics intensive client.)
And that I need to get the upcoming Super Booster pack quite badly because all those magic robes and gowns are something that I would really want for my next music video, I had been at a loss as to how to simulate old time Venician fashion with existing NPCs. :)
And while I was at it, I want the cyborg pack and the valkyrie looks kinda cool if slightly skimpy - maybe the teleport to mission power makes up for it, not sure. Damn, but their microtransaction scheme is working! Anyhow, that's for later. I still have until Apr 14 or so to consider the state of me sanity.
So anyhow, I log in, collect some ancient badges, get some ancient contacts talking to me, score umpteen times over on my one Day Job badge since my scrapper has been buried at the train station for 120 days or so, and make my way over to Architect Entertainment.
I managed to find my way down to the consoles, no trouble, and all the people hovering in front of the panels gave away the controls. The UI for browsing missions looks quite decent. All the dev's choice stuff and 5 star things turned up in front, and one can dig through the others if one were in the mood for potential horrible writing.
As usual, I found my share of "look, free architect badge missions! max everything out here!1!1!!!4lol" missions, in my trawl through the nether regions, but that's only to be expected.
I thought I'd try out one of the dev's choice first. The writing quality all looked quite good. I picked one that looked soloable and threw me back into the past, aka Opera of the Abyss.
First impression, neat, a map that actually fitted, I was able to immerse myself into the mission, surprising Legacy Chain and clicking and destroying objectives that actually looked like actual objectives (not clicking on a crate and seeing -you destroy cardboard boxes- for example).
Then I got grumpy.
Because the boss that I was supposed to defeat (says so on my mission objective), decided to take off on a 50% hp trigger and run. Ok, my scrapper only has one bloody knockdown. Good thing it's ranged. Bad news is that this is a basement map with so many corners and line of sight issues. I get to use it twice, chasing the NPC valiantly.
Ok, fine. I'd resigned myself to being an incompetent fool and braced to "RP" a tongue-lashing from the contact or a 'failure' style mission goal.
Instead, I find myself with the "Defeat Boss" objective erased from my mission objectives, and the mission hanging around in limbo. Huh? I walk around aimlessly on a small empty map for a bit, walk outside to see the Mission Architect building, the contact still tells me "GO! Destroy the Funkily-Named Machine!"
Hello, it's destroyed. The clue I've gotten. But that stupid Arab got away. No tongue-lashing? I'm hanging around in limbo here... *twiddle twiddle* Save vs loss of immersion: failed. Score one for bug or untested combination of events or lack of support of mission editor to handle an escaped boss.
I don't know which it is, but it makes me grumpy because shouldn't the first thing you should test the crap out of is the two possibilities when you have a running boss? Get away or death. Are you assuming that everyone is so uber leet they will destroy the boss before he runs, or has some kind of hold?
So anyhow, I am forced to quit the entire storyline (because I can't find a way to complete or restart a single mission) and take the arc again. (What a goddamn masochist.)
This time, I find the spawns in completely different places which are less immersive (oh, score one for the retarded dynamic spawn placement of CoX). The bugger of a boss surprises me around a corner, and the next thing I know, I'm held.
WTF?!?! I'm playing a major defence scrapper here, why am I held? And slept. Of course I die horribly because I have no break frees in my tray. I'm still fuming over idiots who make nasty hold-equipped bosses, wondering about how squishies handle it, when the second piece clicks into place.
Hang on, I'm a bloody scrapper. Don't I have effective mez immunity thanks to my class? I look around for practiced brawler, and it's there in my tray, and it looks greyed out and fired, since I put it on auto-fire. I obviously don't have the status buff icon anymore since I got slept and killed. And I still don't know what the heck happened.
Now I'm very grumpy. And it's just mission 1.
Anyhow, I go to the hospital and come back, eat a strong luck for good measure and descend on them like a wrathful harpy, hell hath no fury and what not. Now that I am aware of the boss' annoying tendency post-mortem, as it were, I spam my knockdown - he still breaks line of sight fairly easily, and I only manage it in the nick of time. He's got the door open when I hit my spin attack, and just as he's leaving, my attack hits and drops the rest of his hp. He falls down dead.
We now pause for 15 seconds with no objective change happening, and I'm about to fume again, wondering if it was too close and if an open door by an escaping NPC means that the objective was cancelled anyway. Finally, it clicks into place after a long wait - I suppose there was some kind of timed check involved, and the mission eventually realized hey, the boss ain't here anymore, where's he, oh he's dead after all, and checked the victory condition. Or it was lag. Who knows.
Second mission, I read the contact's speech. "So you managed to destroy the machine, but not before the NPC stole the plans? I doubt he has gone too far back into the past."
Err...continuity check. I killed this guy, right? You told me to defeat him. He's down. On the ground. Yes, I know you said his body got pulled back in time or what not. If I defeated him, surely I could search the bastard before his body got pulled back in time? It's reading like you wanted him to run, so you may as well have just made a victory condition for him running away, and we would have all been very happy the first time around.
*grumble*
"You and Nikola Tesla must hurry there at once at put a stop to the NPC."
(sic) With only the name of the NPC changed on purpose because I refuse to type his long bloody name. I'm happy to see that the grammatical inconsistencies of the standard developer content continue in our developer's choice missions made by other players. This in a mission whom the creator emphasizes as a "heavy story" arc.
*growl*
Mission 2. I step in. I'm supposed to join forces with Nikola Tesla. I'm paused at the door because I'm typing this blog.
By the time I get to scrolling through targets, I notice that the machine objective is at a surprisingly amount of low hp left. Huh?
There's damage ticks scrolling over the machine and the two Rikti near it. For 41 damage a piece. Huh?
Oh wait. Is that Nikola Tesla I see, cowering in the face of the two Rikti, with a major lightning field toggle on him?
*LOL*
BOOM, goes the machine objective. While I'm laughing my ass off, the two Rikti fall over and die.
Gee, I think you're doing fine, Mr Tesla. Why don't you just continue without me and keep cowering at the Rikti? My inferiority complex is acting up cos your lightning field is more uber than some of my attacks... :P
I'm heartily tempted to let him solo everything, except it's Rikti, and I get vanguard merits, so I do need to at least touch some of the NPCs...
Problem number 2 turns up after we trash the spawn at the bottom of the next ramp. Mr Tesla gets stuck. He's trying to go up the ramp where I'm standing, typing into the other screen, like a fly bumping into a window. So I go down the ramp. But there's a big fat broken machine in the way. And now he's bumping in the other direction.
Just when I think I have to leave Mr Uber behind, he finally gets it into his head to fly UP a little, before going forward, and comes to join me.
Out of curiosity, I check his bio. The world knows Dr. Nikola Tesla as the miracle inventor of the radio, alternating current electricity, (and I'm just about thinking, not bad, he's quoting nearly the exact same speech our science educators use for our Tesla Coil demonstration, I read this...) and of course the Telsa Coil. Nikola Telsa is less well known for his secret adventures, blah blah blah.
*sigh*
Adventurer's Log, entry number AE6. Found a number of interesting and well-written clues strewn around the lab. Nikola Tesla continues to pwn entire spawns with his 53 damage a tick lightning field and his 406 damage electrical bolts. Feeling unnecessary.
Adventurer's Log, entry number AE7. Found the coolest looking mystical cauldron as an objective. Also found Rikti gathered around it with mystical green glows. What the heck? I thought Rikti don't use magic? While I'm standing around trying to figure it out, our darling Nikola Tesla blows up the cauldron in my face and kills the Rikti, and the other spawn nearby for good measure, then runs off chasing a Rikti monkey into another spawn to slaughter. I'm tempted to just keep hiding in his lightning field.
I finally find the relevant cauldron clue in my immense list of random clues. It speaks of defeating Circle of Thorn gathered around the mystic cauldron. I guess Icon's had run out of mystic robes (all packaged for Super Booster II maybe) and had a special on Rikti Halloween costumes.
Adventurer's Log, entry number AE8. Found Dr Creed. Let the two labcoats duke it out with each other while I destroyed a mystical cauldron like a good minion. Finally found someone Nikola Tesla would die to. Scared to repeat mission over, so I hit Dr Creed and turned his aggro away in three hits and defeated him. He said very satisfactory evil genius-losing things. Still puzzled about the aggro loss because the two of them were duking it out for 200-400 hp blasts, and I was only hitting for 100-220 hp.
Adventurer's Log, entry number AE9. Nikola Tesla pwned the unpronounceable custom named NPC.
Mission 3 introduction. Found 3 typos. a '/', a 'to in' and a '&'
I see the timestream is indeed becoming very fragile.
Adventure's Log, entry number AE10. Miss Nikola Tesla. Not used to fighting own battles. Met first custom enemies, Derivatives that look like yellow zombies. Very cool. Very well done. Almost a shame to kill them. Endless potential of AE to be very interesting very obvious here.
Still not sure why Rikti are all over the place. Except for free vanguard merits. Except that I'm back in time. So I'm actually helping out in the first Rikti War, and earning futuremerits for the second invasion? Cos every Rikti I defeat now, is one less that will attack much much later? Do not envy the Vanguard clerks their tally.
Sidelong possibly long-ago still-existing bug note: Global channel went on the fritz. One tab switched global channels oddly. Bright side, more than 5 global channels is pretty darned awesome. Could join the new VirtueAE channel without losing any of my old ones. Dark side, it switched back to the Guardian channel in my tab by itself until I noticed. Hrmph.
Adventurer's Log AE11. Getting tired of fighting Rikti. This map is very big. Hunting for glowies is boring. I am either losing my touch and sense of aggro radius, or these things are very close together, because I'm triggering two spawns at a time very regularly. This leads to many adds because of all the comm officer portals. It might be my unyielding setting. Good thing I am a scrapper.
Done. New and final mission. Happy to be fighting Derivatives at last. Custom enemies are cool. Also happy to be an /SR scrapper, because the few hits that seeped through look like they hurt.
Adventurer's Log AE12. Found Nikola Tesla kneeling down with hands behind head, with no one around him. Again.
Surely there's a way to introduce a mission ally that doesn't involve them getting waylaid by the enemies in the mission? Maybe not. :/
He is pwning all these poor zombies with cute red shoulder capes. Again. Let's hope the Phantom puts up more of a fight at the end.
Hitting severe inventory issues with salvage and recipes. Again. Damn MMO inventory management minigame.
I must admit that having an elite boss NPC around and watching him kill things, while helping out occasionally, is immensely more entertaining than having to nickle and dime every last minion and lieutenant to death myself. Like your very own pet uber-UBER-voltaic sentinel.
Am now trailing a 3 NPC army. This is fun. The end battle is made of win. Especially because the custom enemies have a mass trigger aggro, so all of them who could see us swarmed us, aka half the room. At last a big brawl, with the allies to help out and see to completion.
I must say ending with a bang does help the ratings, because I was grumbling along with about a 4, and am now feeling warm and fuzzy enough with adrenaline to maybe consider a five star rating.
Still, I think I must maintain a little bit of my high quality standard and save 5 for something I really consider fantastic.
So I will need to shift down my scale to something much more fair. This will be worth a 4, an arc that is well-put together with decent custom enemies and a good story, but flawed with a couple bugs and typos.
A 5 will be flawless excellence on the par of the awe-inspiring like Aralcox's videos.
3 will then become an average decent arc that doesn't break down and die and halfway, and is completable. Aka most of the normal content are somewhere between a 3 and 4. Awesome 5 is for arcs like the secret of Ghost Widow stuff.
Not sure about 1 and 2. I need to read up and see whether these mean bad/poor, or if one or two stars is valuable and means fair/decent. Won't rate anything below 3 yet then, it's 3-5 or naught for now.
One thing good going for this. I can certainly make content last a lot longer by having stuff be somewhat different and getting to rate and evaluate it. Critiques and reviews take up a lot more time than just mindlessly plowing through the same-old, same-old masses of enemies and grinding out xp.
First thing that hits me is how pretty it all is. (So ATITD isn't the model of a graphics intensive client.)
And that I need to get the upcoming Super Booster pack quite badly because all those magic robes and gowns are something that I would really want for my next music video, I had been at a loss as to how to simulate old time Venician fashion with existing NPCs. :)
And while I was at it, I want the cyborg pack and the valkyrie looks kinda cool if slightly skimpy - maybe the teleport to mission power makes up for it, not sure. Damn, but their microtransaction scheme is working! Anyhow, that's for later. I still have until Apr 14 or so to consider the state of me sanity.
So anyhow, I log in, collect some ancient badges, get some ancient contacts talking to me, score umpteen times over on my one Day Job badge since my scrapper has been buried at the train station for 120 days or so, and make my way over to Architect Entertainment.
I managed to find my way down to the consoles, no trouble, and all the people hovering in front of the panels gave away the controls. The UI for browsing missions looks quite decent. All the dev's choice stuff and 5 star things turned up in front, and one can dig through the others if one were in the mood for potential horrible writing.
As usual, I found my share of "look, free architect badge missions! max everything out here!1!1!!!4lol" missions, in my trawl through the nether regions, but that's only to be expected.
I thought I'd try out one of the dev's choice first. The writing quality all looked quite good. I picked one that looked soloable and threw me back into the past, aka Opera of the Abyss.
First impression, neat, a map that actually fitted, I was able to immerse myself into the mission, surprising Legacy Chain and clicking and destroying objectives that actually looked like actual objectives (not clicking on a crate and seeing -you destroy cardboard boxes- for example).
Then I got grumpy.
Because the boss that I was supposed to defeat (says so on my mission objective), decided to take off on a 50% hp trigger and run. Ok, my scrapper only has one bloody knockdown. Good thing it's ranged. Bad news is that this is a basement map with so many corners and line of sight issues. I get to use it twice, chasing the NPC valiantly.
Ok, fine. I'd resigned myself to being an incompetent fool and braced to "RP" a tongue-lashing from the contact or a 'failure' style mission goal.
Instead, I find myself with the "Defeat Boss" objective erased from my mission objectives, and the mission hanging around in limbo. Huh? I walk around aimlessly on a small empty map for a bit, walk outside to see the Mission Architect building, the contact still tells me "GO! Destroy the Funkily-Named Machine!"
Hello, it's destroyed. The clue I've gotten. But that stupid Arab got away. No tongue-lashing? I'm hanging around in limbo here... *twiddle twiddle* Save vs loss of immersion: failed. Score one for bug or untested combination of events or lack of support of mission editor to handle an escaped boss.
I don't know which it is, but it makes me grumpy because shouldn't the first thing you should test the crap out of is the two possibilities when you have a running boss? Get away or death. Are you assuming that everyone is so uber leet they will destroy the boss before he runs, or has some kind of hold?
So anyhow, I am forced to quit the entire storyline (because I can't find a way to complete or restart a single mission) and take the arc again. (What a goddamn masochist.)
This time, I find the spawns in completely different places which are less immersive (oh, score one for the retarded dynamic spawn placement of CoX). The bugger of a boss surprises me around a corner, and the next thing I know, I'm held.
WTF?!?! I'm playing a major defence scrapper here, why am I held? And slept. Of course I die horribly because I have no break frees in my tray. I'm still fuming over idiots who make nasty hold-equipped bosses, wondering about how squishies handle it, when the second piece clicks into place.
Hang on, I'm a bloody scrapper. Don't I have effective mez immunity thanks to my class? I look around for practiced brawler, and it's there in my tray, and it looks greyed out and fired, since I put it on auto-fire. I obviously don't have the status buff icon anymore since I got slept and killed. And I still don't know what the heck happened.
Now I'm very grumpy. And it's just mission 1.
Anyhow, I go to the hospital and come back, eat a strong luck for good measure and descend on them like a wrathful harpy, hell hath no fury and what not. Now that I am aware of the boss' annoying tendency post-mortem, as it were, I spam my knockdown - he still breaks line of sight fairly easily, and I only manage it in the nick of time. He's got the door open when I hit my spin attack, and just as he's leaving, my attack hits and drops the rest of his hp. He falls down dead.
We now pause for 15 seconds with no objective change happening, and I'm about to fume again, wondering if it was too close and if an open door by an escaping NPC means that the objective was cancelled anyway. Finally, it clicks into place after a long wait - I suppose there was some kind of timed check involved, and the mission eventually realized hey, the boss ain't here anymore, where's he, oh he's dead after all, and checked the victory condition. Or it was lag. Who knows.
Second mission, I read the contact's speech. "So you managed to destroy the machine, but not before the NPC stole the plans? I doubt he has gone too far back into the past."
Err...continuity check. I killed this guy, right? You told me to defeat him. He's down. On the ground. Yes, I know you said his body got pulled back in time or what not. If I defeated him, surely I could search the bastard before his body got pulled back in time? It's reading like you wanted him to run, so you may as well have just made a victory condition for him running away, and we would have all been very happy the first time around.
*grumble*
"You and Nikola Tesla must hurry there at once at put a stop to the NPC."
(sic) With only the name of the NPC changed on purpose because I refuse to type his long bloody name. I'm happy to see that the grammatical inconsistencies of the standard developer content continue in our developer's choice missions made by other players. This in a mission whom the creator emphasizes as a "heavy story" arc.
*growl*
Mission 2. I step in. I'm supposed to join forces with Nikola Tesla. I'm paused at the door because I'm typing this blog.
By the time I get to scrolling through targets, I notice that the machine objective is at a surprisingly amount of low hp left. Huh?
There's damage ticks scrolling over the machine and the two Rikti near it. For 41 damage a piece. Huh?
Oh wait. Is that Nikola Tesla I see, cowering in the face of the two Rikti, with a major lightning field toggle on him?
*LOL*
BOOM, goes the machine objective. While I'm laughing my ass off, the two Rikti fall over and die.
Gee, I think you're doing fine, Mr Tesla. Why don't you just continue without me and keep cowering at the Rikti? My inferiority complex is acting up cos your lightning field is more uber than some of my attacks... :P
I'm heartily tempted to let him solo everything, except it's Rikti, and I get vanguard merits, so I do need to at least touch some of the NPCs...
Problem number 2 turns up after we trash the spawn at the bottom of the next ramp. Mr Tesla gets stuck. He's trying to go up the ramp where I'm standing, typing into the other screen, like a fly bumping into a window. So I go down the ramp. But there's a big fat broken machine in the way. And now he's bumping in the other direction.
Just when I think I have to leave Mr Uber behind, he finally gets it into his head to fly UP a little, before going forward, and comes to join me.
Out of curiosity, I check his bio. The world knows Dr. Nikola Tesla as the miracle inventor of the radio, alternating current electricity, (and I'm just about thinking, not bad, he's quoting nearly the exact same speech our science educators use for our Tesla Coil demonstration, I read this...) and of course the Telsa Coil. Nikola Telsa is less well known for his secret adventures, blah blah blah.
*sigh*
Adventurer's Log, entry number AE6. Found a number of interesting and well-written clues strewn around the lab. Nikola Tesla continues to pwn entire spawns with his 53 damage a tick lightning field and his 406 damage electrical bolts. Feeling unnecessary.
Adventurer's Log, entry number AE7. Found the coolest looking mystical cauldron as an objective. Also found Rikti gathered around it with mystical green glows. What the heck? I thought Rikti don't use magic? While I'm standing around trying to figure it out, our darling Nikola Tesla blows up the cauldron in my face and kills the Rikti, and the other spawn nearby for good measure, then runs off chasing a Rikti monkey into another spawn to slaughter. I'm tempted to just keep hiding in his lightning field.
I finally find the relevant cauldron clue in my immense list of random clues. It speaks of defeating Circle of Thorn gathered around the mystic cauldron. I guess Icon's had run out of mystic robes (all packaged for Super Booster II maybe) and had a special on Rikti Halloween costumes.
Adventurer's Log, entry number AE8. Found Dr Creed. Let the two labcoats duke it out with each other while I destroyed a mystical cauldron like a good minion. Finally found someone Nikola Tesla would die to. Scared to repeat mission over, so I hit Dr Creed and turned his aggro away in three hits and defeated him. He said very satisfactory evil genius-losing things. Still puzzled about the aggro loss because the two of them were duking it out for 200-400 hp blasts, and I was only hitting for 100-220 hp.
Adventurer's Log, entry number AE9. Nikola Tesla pwned the unpronounceable custom named NPC.
Mission 3 introduction. Found 3 typos. a '/', a 'to in' and a '&'
I see the timestream is indeed becoming very fragile.
Adventure's Log, entry number AE10. Miss Nikola Tesla. Not used to fighting own battles. Met first custom enemies, Derivatives that look like yellow zombies. Very cool. Very well done. Almost a shame to kill them. Endless potential of AE to be very interesting very obvious here.
Still not sure why Rikti are all over the place. Except for free vanguard merits. Except that I'm back in time. So I'm actually helping out in the first Rikti War, and earning futuremerits for the second invasion? Cos every Rikti I defeat now, is one less that will attack much much later? Do not envy the Vanguard clerks their tally.
Sidelong possibly long-ago still-existing bug note: Global channel went on the fritz. One tab switched global channels oddly. Bright side, more than 5 global channels is pretty darned awesome. Could join the new VirtueAE channel without losing any of my old ones. Dark side, it switched back to the Guardian channel in my tab by itself until I noticed. Hrmph.
Adventurer's Log AE11. Getting tired of fighting Rikti. This map is very big. Hunting for glowies is boring. I am either losing my touch and sense of aggro radius, or these things are very close together, because I'm triggering two spawns at a time very regularly. This leads to many adds because of all the comm officer portals. It might be my unyielding setting. Good thing I am a scrapper.
Done. New and final mission. Happy to be fighting Derivatives at last. Custom enemies are cool. Also happy to be an /SR scrapper, because the few hits that seeped through look like they hurt.
Adventurer's Log AE12. Found Nikola Tesla kneeling down with hands behind head, with no one around him. Again.
Surely there's a way to introduce a mission ally that doesn't involve them getting waylaid by the enemies in the mission? Maybe not. :/
He is pwning all these poor zombies with cute red shoulder capes. Again. Let's hope the Phantom puts up more of a fight at the end.
Hitting severe inventory issues with salvage and recipes. Again. Damn MMO inventory management minigame.
I must admit that having an elite boss NPC around and watching him kill things, while helping out occasionally, is immensely more entertaining than having to nickle and dime every last minion and lieutenant to death myself. Like your very own pet uber-UBER-voltaic sentinel.
Am now trailing a 3 NPC army. This is fun. The end battle is made of win. Especially because the custom enemies have a mass trigger aggro, so all of them who could see us swarmed us, aka half the room. At last a big brawl, with the allies to help out and see to completion.
I must say ending with a bang does help the ratings, because I was grumbling along with about a 4, and am now feeling warm and fuzzy enough with adrenaline to maybe consider a five star rating.
Still, I think I must maintain a little bit of my high quality standard and save 5 for something I really consider fantastic.
So I will need to shift down my scale to something much more fair. This will be worth a 4, an arc that is well-put together with decent custom enemies and a good story, but flawed with a couple bugs and typos.
A 5 will be flawless excellence on the par of the awe-inspiring like Aralcox's videos.
3 will then become an average decent arc that doesn't break down and die and halfway, and is completable. Aka most of the normal content are somewhere between a 3 and 4. Awesome 5 is for arcs like the secret of Ghost Widow stuff.
Not sure about 1 and 2. I need to read up and see whether these mean bad/poor, or if one or two stars is valuable and means fair/decent. Won't rate anything below 3 yet then, it's 3-5 or naught for now.
One thing good going for this. I can certainly make content last a lot longer by having stuff be somewhat different and getting to rate and evaluate it. Critiques and reviews take up a lot more time than just mindlessly plowing through the same-old, same-old masses of enemies and grinding out xp.