So I spent 2 fruitless hours googling random computer support websites and browsing through Logitech's Tech Support site, downloading and reinstalling their profiler/drivers, downloading a calibration clearing executable which didn't find anything to repair and resigning myself to spending another $40 to get a new USB gamepad at some point in the future - what, visit Tec-Drome this month? AGAIN?
I should have just looked up Youtube right at the start.
Power to the people and all that. And yay for amateur hobbyists with much better grasp of the problem than lowly paid outsourced service staff.
30 mins later (so I missed the screw under the sticker for a while and failed to read the comments,) the gamepad is now reporting a perfect calibration in the Logitech Profiler.
Hope the performance stays consistent in the games too.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Random Sampling
Too many games, not enough time.
I'm starting to wonder idly if I should just give up CoX. The forum boards have gotten a lot more hostile. The point of the game itself has started to puzzle me. I've seen most of the dev made content, thank you. I could see it any time I want to with Ouroboros and earn some merits to boot. Leveling requires a goalpost though, so it seems to natural to want a decent rate of xp gain => hence street sweeping or cranking through missions quickly. Then there's inventions loot.
Sorry, loot encourages farming. Why wouldn't it? In order to craft the loot, I need salvage. Either I farm for the specific salvage myself, or I have to buy it from the auction house and that requires money, which again has to be farmed or a player-desired item farmed/obtained with purpose exchanged on the auction house for said currency. Or I buy the crafted loot directly using the same means.
Now we have a schizophrenic war against farming in the MA, which basically leaves ill-feeling all around and takes away some of the joy of discovering fun new stories/content.
On a more personal note, my MM hit level 32, got all his powers, and promptly had all his SOs turn red the next level with not enough set IOs built to replace them. Lost interest in trying to grind for a rare salvage drop or pay 2mil for them, 540 tickets isn't so bad but I'm still grumpy about using MA for the moment and basically lost all avenues of perceived progress.
Yeah, I could buy SOs, or spend some time buying/building/collecting common IOs, but what's the point? Then I would end up just meandering my way to level 50 and starting over or stuck in the leet set IO grind. Part of what I like to do is cheapo-slot at 30-something so that I can enjoy the next 20 levels with some nifty set bonuses and procs along with Frankenslot benefits.
But the market was a little crazy at the point I wanted to do it, so I kinda lost interest.
As of right now, I'm basically shuffling some alts around for Day Job progress while keeping an eye on developer attitude/progress. If it gets to the point where I don't feel happy supporting the game anymore, then it does seem pointless to keep hanging on. I live in eternal hope though.
I'd really like to mess around with LOTRO more. There's a whole expansion's worth of content I'm missing. The finding the time issue makes me boggle.
On a lighter note, I managed to snatch an hour in the morning before work to give FFXI another try. I got my slightly-malfunctioning gamepad hooked up and configured. The game plays MUCH better using a device it was designed for. Felt a lot more natural, though I still had problems with an inverted camera, and halfway through the game the movement controller started to make my character spin around in circles. Something's a little wonky about my USB connection or my drivers, I think, this isn't the only game that the gamepad has been bugging out on.
Managed to run around lost inside the Zeruhn Mines for a while, killing a couple things, regretting I didn't buy a map of the mines, and then picking the wrong mob to go and kill. Oh no, I con'ed the mob. I considered it good. It was a decent match. Problem was, the moment I hit it, the mob next to it decided it was going to help.
Eeep.
That was new. The newbie mobs were just wandering around passively before. Obviously, I knew I'll eventually run into aggressive mobs, but I wasn't quite expecting an in-between 'assist friends' type.
In traditional MMO style, a newbie character is not a match at all versus two of a "decent match." I watched my hp plunge steadily, trying vainly to back away, but it was a little too late. Died and ended up back in town. On the bright side, I didn't have to wander around lost and mapless in brown cave tunnels any longer.
Since the death must have lost me 10% of my xp (though at lvl 4, 1400xp is the total xp to next level, so 10% is nothing as yet,) I decided to play it safe and wander out to the 'safe' outside-city-gate area to molest some lower-con mobs for 2/3 the xp of a fair match.
Two notable revelations occurred. One, I figured out how to ACTIVATE a temporary xp boost ring I had obtained, and assumed was in play (it wasn't.) Only works once every 16 hours though, but it was quite a handy boost all the same.
Two, I noticed a targetable "field manual" book floating in the same area. What the heck? Approaching it revealed it to be an automated quest giver of a sort. You could ask it for an individual mission of kill X creatures for a little bonus xp and some tokens that let you buy spell buffs - again, this was on a timer though. Or you could pay some other token and go for an Elite Training mission. The warnings sounded suspiciously like a party-required sort of thing, so I wussed out even attempting to trade any tokens just to see what would happen.
S' weird, but I am finding this process of discovery remarkably fun. Someday, it will no longer be new and the mindset might just be let's PL through this nasty boring area, but this is new and so much more challenging than WoW's linear railroad. At the turtle pace I'm going, it might be a while before I get to grips with the new system, and I'm kinda okay with that.
Maybe all this suggests is that I shouldn't bother with serious play of any MMO, or any game, any longer. :)
My last two recent visits to Tec-Drome, an impromptu tour of License2Play's last hour sale and constant weekly haunting of Steam have netted me a LOT of singleplayer wannaplays, since I seem chronically incapable of ignoring a discount on a game I was interested in anyway.
Got to find the time to mess around with those too.
Saints Row 2 was the last singleplayer PC game I tried. Installed it real quick since it was bought at the last hour expo sale and wanted to test out if I got jipped buying it for $30. Went fine. Another Steam-required installation, but went without a hitch. GtA-type game, looks fun, the customization of the character's face was mindblowing (Oblivion or Mass Effect-ish, to the extent you're 100% sure you just made someone ugly as hell cos you can't resist pulling sliders and warping the face to the point where whatever you do still leaves you with a niggling disturbing not-quite-humanly-achievable look).
My gamepad bugged out again on this game halfway through. Driving a car with a keyboard does NOT replicate the appropriate GtA effect. Very annoying.
Wish I knew what was wrong. Every time I do the "Test" configs, everything works fine.
The one game I do seem to be making significant progress on is the other 'on sale' game I bought for the PSP. Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. Despite the PSP's battery life of 3-4 hours play, all my commuting and waiting downtime has now been put to good use. Great game, makes me want to play FF7 and FF8 again in an attempt to actually play 'em to completion. (Nooo, not more games on the 'to play' list!)
Heh. I suppose it's a good kind of dilemma, as long as I don't put too much value in actually finishing/completing/achievement-hardcoring any of them.
I'm starting to wonder idly if I should just give up CoX. The forum boards have gotten a lot more hostile. The point of the game itself has started to puzzle me. I've seen most of the dev made content, thank you. I could see it any time I want to with Ouroboros and earn some merits to boot. Leveling requires a goalpost though, so it seems to natural to want a decent rate of xp gain => hence street sweeping or cranking through missions quickly. Then there's inventions loot.
Sorry, loot encourages farming. Why wouldn't it? In order to craft the loot, I need salvage. Either I farm for the specific salvage myself, or I have to buy it from the auction house and that requires money, which again has to be farmed or a player-desired item farmed/obtained with purpose exchanged on the auction house for said currency. Or I buy the crafted loot directly using the same means.
Now we have a schizophrenic war against farming in the MA, which basically leaves ill-feeling all around and takes away some of the joy of discovering fun new stories/content.
On a more personal note, my MM hit level 32, got all his powers, and promptly had all his SOs turn red the next level with not enough set IOs built to replace them. Lost interest in trying to grind for a rare salvage drop or pay 2mil for them, 540 tickets isn't so bad but I'm still grumpy about using MA for the moment and basically lost all avenues of perceived progress.
Yeah, I could buy SOs, or spend some time buying/building/collecting common IOs, but what's the point? Then I would end up just meandering my way to level 50 and starting over or stuck in the leet set IO grind. Part of what I like to do is cheapo-slot at 30-something so that I can enjoy the next 20 levels with some nifty set bonuses and procs along with Frankenslot benefits.
But the market was a little crazy at the point I wanted to do it, so I kinda lost interest.
As of right now, I'm basically shuffling some alts around for Day Job progress while keeping an eye on developer attitude/progress. If it gets to the point where I don't feel happy supporting the game anymore, then it does seem pointless to keep hanging on. I live in eternal hope though.
I'd really like to mess around with LOTRO more. There's a whole expansion's worth of content I'm missing. The finding the time issue makes me boggle.
On a lighter note, I managed to snatch an hour in the morning before work to give FFXI another try. I got my slightly-malfunctioning gamepad hooked up and configured. The game plays MUCH better using a device it was designed for. Felt a lot more natural, though I still had problems with an inverted camera, and halfway through the game the movement controller started to make my character spin around in circles. Something's a little wonky about my USB connection or my drivers, I think, this isn't the only game that the gamepad has been bugging out on.
Managed to run around lost inside the Zeruhn Mines for a while, killing a couple things, regretting I didn't buy a map of the mines, and then picking the wrong mob to go and kill. Oh no, I con'ed the mob. I considered it good. It was a decent match. Problem was, the moment I hit it, the mob next to it decided it was going to help.
Eeep.
That was new. The newbie mobs were just wandering around passively before. Obviously, I knew I'll eventually run into aggressive mobs, but I wasn't quite expecting an in-between 'assist friends' type.
In traditional MMO style, a newbie character is not a match at all versus two of a "decent match." I watched my hp plunge steadily, trying vainly to back away, but it was a little too late. Died and ended up back in town. On the bright side, I didn't have to wander around lost and mapless in brown cave tunnels any longer.
Since the death must have lost me 10% of my xp (though at lvl 4, 1400xp is the total xp to next level, so 10% is nothing as yet,) I decided to play it safe and wander out to the 'safe' outside-city-gate area to molest some lower-con mobs for 2/3 the xp of a fair match.
Two notable revelations occurred. One, I figured out how to ACTIVATE a temporary xp boost ring I had obtained, and assumed was in play (it wasn't.) Only works once every 16 hours though, but it was quite a handy boost all the same.
Two, I noticed a targetable "field manual" book floating in the same area. What the heck? Approaching it revealed it to be an automated quest giver of a sort. You could ask it for an individual mission of kill X creatures for a little bonus xp and some tokens that let you buy spell buffs - again, this was on a timer though. Or you could pay some other token and go for an Elite Training mission. The warnings sounded suspiciously like a party-required sort of thing, so I wussed out even attempting to trade any tokens just to see what would happen.
S' weird, but I am finding this process of discovery remarkably fun. Someday, it will no longer be new and the mindset might just be let's PL through this nasty boring area, but this is new and so much more challenging than WoW's linear railroad. At the turtle pace I'm going, it might be a while before I get to grips with the new system, and I'm kinda okay with that.
Maybe all this suggests is that I shouldn't bother with serious play of any MMO, or any game, any longer. :)
My last two recent visits to Tec-Drome, an impromptu tour of License2Play's last hour sale and constant weekly haunting of Steam have netted me a LOT of singleplayer wannaplays, since I seem chronically incapable of ignoring a discount on a game I was interested in anyway.
Got to find the time to mess around with those too.
Saints Row 2 was the last singleplayer PC game I tried. Installed it real quick since it was bought at the last hour expo sale and wanted to test out if I got jipped buying it for $30. Went fine. Another Steam-required installation, but went without a hitch. GtA-type game, looks fun, the customization of the character's face was mindblowing (Oblivion or Mass Effect-ish, to the extent you're 100% sure you just made someone ugly as hell cos you can't resist pulling sliders and warping the face to the point where whatever you do still leaves you with a niggling disturbing not-quite-humanly-achievable look).
My gamepad bugged out again on this game halfway through. Driving a car with a keyboard does NOT replicate the appropriate GtA effect. Very annoying.
Wish I knew what was wrong. Every time I do the "Test" configs, everything works fine.
The one game I do seem to be making significant progress on is the other 'on sale' game I bought for the PSP. Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. Despite the PSP's battery life of 3-4 hours play, all my commuting and waiting downtime has now been put to good use. Great game, makes me want to play FF7 and FF8 again in an attempt to actually play 'em to completion. (Nooo, not more games on the 'to play' list!)
Heh. I suppose it's a good kind of dilemma, as long as I don't put too much value in actually finishing/completing/achievement-hardcoring any of them.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Too Late to Start?
I've been idly googling this phrase in relation to certain MMOs, wondering about the factors that are implicit in those four words. In no particular order, here they are:
1) Concerns about server populations
Games that are out too long tend to have very little people around the starter areas, and be top heavy around the endgame level range. This affects people who like a bustling feeling of people around them, as well as social or achievement-oriented folk who have the following...
2) Concerns about getting groups within a reasonable timeframe
Again, some people are very social and like to spend their playtime with other people. Many other folks are achievement-oriented, and like to be able to level with efficiency => if the game is structured so that grouping is more efficient or worse, the ONLY efficient/effective way to level, they need a critical mass of people around for play or they will get frustrated and quit with "nothing else they could do."
These two concerns also affect FPSes. FPSes past their prime are notorious for having only a few servers, that may not be optimal play experiences because of bad ping, or the same faces over and over again, and such.
3) Concerns about "catching up" or being competitive, or on a level playing field
This affects the achievers, in two different arenas - PvE and PvP, depending on interests. Some games put the 'real game' endgame far far away and some folks don't like the busywork in between blocking the way to what their friends are currently doing. Some games have the older vets in crazy stat gear that just blows away mobs that newer folk would have trouble with (equating into a rich/poor divide that makes people frustrated at potentially never becoming one of the 'haves') or worse, blows away the noobs themselves in PvP (being a punching bag with no chance of winning would not make someone stay in a game for long).
Of course, these are theoretical worst case scenarios. Most actual PvP MMOs, even in things like Lineage 2 and Eve have 'teamwork' > gear/time invested being a factor in winning, but certainly the perception of something being important is important too.
---
This topic has been on my mind since I have chosen to embark on a Final Fantasy XI adventure. A SEVEN-year old MMO. Sheesh, it's nearly as old as RoD.
Yes, I have branched out into other MMOs before. ATITD was cute because it basically reset the game and put everyone on a level playing field. Guild Wars puts the artificial ceiling so low that one could bump into it in a few days and then realize there's still a whole world to explore/learn/grind progress bars with. But other games are a bit more traditional...
Ultimately, I think it boils down to what one wishes to do/achieve in the game.
Be it RoD, WoW, LOTRO, FFXI or EQ2: if you're hoping to hit level cap and then proceed on to a linear raiding game within a decent span of time (or whatever the game's 'endgame' consists of) - one had better pick a game/server with fast leveling, containing decent populations to group for xp and of course, raid with, and it would be easier if you schmoozed around a bit and found some friends who already have an established network to ease you into things.
That's what a number of people do, I'm finding. Especially for games like Eve Online.
Personally, I can't seem to get into endgame play anymore. It's a killing time cycle. I would rather stop and go play something else.
So whyever do I play these games? Well, to see new content. To learn new systems inherent in a new game. To level at a decent pace and make my character more powerful, so as to do the above two, while enjoying the immersion into a world and the actual visceral combat effects if they are nice.
I'm kinda meandering to the conclusion that for me, it's not too late to start any game, as long as I accept that I'm not going to play it in an achiever 'got to get to endgame' manner, spend most of the time by myself soloing and learning the game at my own pace (not lectured to or dependent on or responsible for anyone else) and stop when I have grokked the system and gotten bored of the repetition.
I may never see the group-required content for any multiplayer game. Little sad, but that's how it is. As long as I'm fine with that, I'm good for a trial of any game.
In time, I do believe companies will move away from that because I don't think my cohort is that rare - we might end up the supporting influx of cash factor for an old game, and most old games try to ease the leveling/catch up curve, mostly by making it soloable, maybe with NPC help.
Oh well. Lofty thoughts. Mostly to replace being unable to play. Anything. Heh. I have been stuck solidly in the real world due to more pressing matters than waffling around lost in a virtual environment. And the little time I had at home, has been spent collapsed on the bed in a dead tired dreamless sleep.
Pfft. Not looking better until Mon/Tue either. Guess starting a game that requires lots of offline reading would be handy at this point. *chuckles*
1) Concerns about server populations
Games that are out too long tend to have very little people around the starter areas, and be top heavy around the endgame level range. This affects people who like a bustling feeling of people around them, as well as social or achievement-oriented folk who have the following...
2) Concerns about getting groups within a reasonable timeframe
Again, some people are very social and like to spend their playtime with other people. Many other folks are achievement-oriented, and like to be able to level with efficiency => if the game is structured so that grouping is more efficient or worse, the ONLY efficient/effective way to level, they need a critical mass of people around for play or they will get frustrated and quit with "nothing else they could do."
These two concerns also affect FPSes. FPSes past their prime are notorious for having only a few servers, that may not be optimal play experiences because of bad ping, or the same faces over and over again, and such.
3) Concerns about "catching up" or being competitive, or on a level playing field
This affects the achievers, in two different arenas - PvE and PvP, depending on interests. Some games put the 'real game' endgame far far away and some folks don't like the busywork in between blocking the way to what their friends are currently doing. Some games have the older vets in crazy stat gear that just blows away mobs that newer folk would have trouble with (equating into a rich/poor divide that makes people frustrated at potentially never becoming one of the 'haves') or worse, blows away the noobs themselves in PvP (being a punching bag with no chance of winning would not make someone stay in a game for long).
Of course, these are theoretical worst case scenarios. Most actual PvP MMOs, even in things like Lineage 2 and Eve have 'teamwork' > gear/time invested being a factor in winning, but certainly the perception of something being important is important too.
---
This topic has been on my mind since I have chosen to embark on a Final Fantasy XI adventure. A SEVEN-year old MMO. Sheesh, it's nearly as old as RoD.
Yes, I have branched out into other MMOs before. ATITD was cute because it basically reset the game and put everyone on a level playing field. Guild Wars puts the artificial ceiling so low that one could bump into it in a few days and then realize there's still a whole world to explore/learn/grind progress bars with. But other games are a bit more traditional...
Ultimately, I think it boils down to what one wishes to do/achieve in the game.
Be it RoD, WoW, LOTRO, FFXI or EQ2: if you're hoping to hit level cap and then proceed on to a linear raiding game within a decent span of time (or whatever the game's 'endgame' consists of) - one had better pick a game/server with fast leveling, containing decent populations to group for xp and of course, raid with, and it would be easier if you schmoozed around a bit and found some friends who already have an established network to ease you into things.
That's what a number of people do, I'm finding. Especially for games like Eve Online.
Personally, I can't seem to get into endgame play anymore. It's a killing time cycle. I would rather stop and go play something else.
So whyever do I play these games? Well, to see new content. To learn new systems inherent in a new game. To level at a decent pace and make my character more powerful, so as to do the above two, while enjoying the immersion into a world and the actual visceral combat effects if they are nice.
I'm kinda meandering to the conclusion that for me, it's not too late to start any game, as long as I accept that I'm not going to play it in an achiever 'got to get to endgame' manner, spend most of the time by myself soloing and learning the game at my own pace (not lectured to or dependent on or responsible for anyone else) and stop when I have grokked the system and gotten bored of the repetition.
I may never see the group-required content for any multiplayer game. Little sad, but that's how it is. As long as I'm fine with that, I'm good for a trial of any game.
In time, I do believe companies will move away from that because I don't think my cohort is that rare - we might end up the supporting influx of cash factor for an old game, and most old games try to ease the leveling/catch up curve, mostly by making it soloable, maybe with NPC help.
Oh well. Lofty thoughts. Mostly to replace being unable to play. Anything. Heh. I have been stuck solidly in the real world due to more pressing matters than waffling around lost in a virtual environment. And the little time I had at home, has been spent collapsed on the bed in a dead tired dreamless sleep.
Pfft. Not looking better until Mon/Tue either. Guess starting a game that requires lots of offline reading would be handy at this point. *chuckles*
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Oldschool Learning Curve
Managed to get the last copy of FFXI at Tec-Drome for a much more reasonable $40.
Installation went fine, registration was a bitch. Had to make several different usernames/accounts/ids/passwords for using the PlayOnline service, a mail account/password, some other member thing that I have no clue what relationship it had to do with the game, register a contentID for making -one- character, finally allowing me to create a single character with which to play FFXI.
It was a tough start. Seeing as it first started in 2002, this MMO is definitely in the EQ oldschool classification. My n00b character got plunked headfirst into a town which belonged to the nation I chose with nary a tutorial.
Resolution was a eye-watering 640x480 stretched out onto my 22" monitor. I had neglected to plug in my gamepad, so I was stuck trying to work out esoteric keyboard commands with only the help of a quickstart guide. And no, WASD did not work on the default config. That was "config 2" according to the quickstart guide... except I still have no clue how to enable config 2 two hours later.
Mouselook was inverted, making it horrifically disorienting. There were a ton of NPCs around me, which I couldn't seem to talk to.
With some patience and careful application of japanese RPG gamepad logic, I eventually figured out basic commands like targeting the NPC, hitting enter to begin dialogue; moving around; and finding a basic interaction menu. Each success was a massive accomplishment.
Random chatting with nearby NPCs eventually got me on track to finding an NPC with the newbie tutorial program. Except he was off by the West Gate and I was somewhere at the North Gate. Enter more desperate Quickstart Guide reading in an attempt to find the map key (it was a typed command, /map - *sigh*).
Some oldschool jogging through a couple of city areas later, (You think Ogrimmar is big? *snorts*) the helpful NPC told me a couple useful things, patted me on the back and sent me out the gate to go fight some monsters.
Cue another miniature learning journey trying to work out how to wear my sword (Oh, inventory is ctrl+I and equipment is ctrl+e) and attack monster. (Target, hit enter, select Attack, hit enter, let auto-attack work its magic, scroll randomly through blank job abilities wondering which level gets me a couple skills, etc.)
The grind wasn't too bad actually. Even CoX makes you hit a couple dozen monsters to get to the next level. It took me a loooong time to find the magic sequence of keys that actually showed me my status and xp-to-next-level though.
Soon, I was level 4, being warned by helpful NPC that any death from now on would yield 10% xp penalty and possible deleveling (*gulp* oldschool, right...) and my two next tasks were to go wander to a faraway area to kill one monster and pick up an item to deliver to someone, except we're talking about crossing several areas each direction.
Eep. My eyes were watering at the horrible resolution anyhow, so I logged out, thinking I would try and look up any possibility of increasing screen resolution. Out of curiosity, I tried PlayOnline's FAQ service, and sure enough, the answer was there. There was a config program that could be activated out-of-game. Eureka!
Seeing the game again in proper 1650x1050 pixel resolution did wonders for my morale.
I gamely took off in an attempt to finish the second task and ended up wandering around lost in a series of mines trying to find a mine overseer to pick up said item from. One was surrounded by a great many passive but optimal-con monsters, so one was very tempted to sidetrek and kill 'em. Ended up logging out cos of lack of time.
But wow... Talk about oldschool. This one quest is turning into an epic journey.
And I foresee some crunchy reading of game guides and manuals in the near future.
Still, I suppose if I don't treat it like a job and stay far away from being hardcore, it might be an interesting sort of adventure/experience for a couple months.
Installation went fine, registration was a bitch. Had to make several different usernames/accounts/ids/passwords for using the PlayOnline service, a mail account/password, some other member thing that I have no clue what relationship it had to do with the game, register a contentID for making -one- character, finally allowing me to create a single character with which to play FFXI.
It was a tough start. Seeing as it first started in 2002, this MMO is definitely in the EQ oldschool classification. My n00b character got plunked headfirst into a town which belonged to the nation I chose with nary a tutorial.
Resolution was a eye-watering 640x480 stretched out onto my 22" monitor. I had neglected to plug in my gamepad, so I was stuck trying to work out esoteric keyboard commands with only the help of a quickstart guide. And no, WASD did not work on the default config. That was "config 2" according to the quickstart guide... except I still have no clue how to enable config 2 two hours later.
Mouselook was inverted, making it horrifically disorienting. There were a ton of NPCs around me, which I couldn't seem to talk to.
With some patience and careful application of japanese RPG gamepad logic, I eventually figured out basic commands like targeting the NPC, hitting enter to begin dialogue; moving around; and finding a basic interaction menu. Each success was a massive accomplishment.
Random chatting with nearby NPCs eventually got me on track to finding an NPC with the newbie tutorial program. Except he was off by the West Gate and I was somewhere at the North Gate. Enter more desperate Quickstart Guide reading in an attempt to find the map key (it was a typed command, /map - *sigh*).
Some oldschool jogging through a couple of city areas later, (You think Ogrimmar is big? *snorts*) the helpful NPC told me a couple useful things, patted me on the back and sent me out the gate to go fight some monsters.
Cue another miniature learning journey trying to work out how to wear my sword (Oh, inventory is ctrl+I and equipment is ctrl+e) and attack monster. (Target, hit enter, select Attack, hit enter, let auto-attack work its magic, scroll randomly through blank job abilities wondering which level gets me a couple skills, etc.)
The grind wasn't too bad actually. Even CoX makes you hit a couple dozen monsters to get to the next level. It took me a loooong time to find the magic sequence of keys that actually showed me my status and xp-to-next-level though.
Soon, I was level 4, being warned by helpful NPC that any death from now on would yield 10% xp penalty and possible deleveling (*gulp* oldschool, right...) and my two next tasks were to go wander to a faraway area to kill one monster and pick up an item to deliver to someone, except we're talking about crossing several areas each direction.
Eep. My eyes were watering at the horrible resolution anyhow, so I logged out, thinking I would try and look up any possibility of increasing screen resolution. Out of curiosity, I tried PlayOnline's FAQ service, and sure enough, the answer was there. There was a config program that could be activated out-of-game. Eureka!
Seeing the game again in proper 1650x1050 pixel resolution did wonders for my morale.
I gamely took off in an attempt to finish the second task and ended up wandering around lost in a series of mines trying to find a mine overseer to pick up said item from. One was surrounded by a great many passive but optimal-con monsters, so one was very tempted to sidetrek and kill 'em. Ended up logging out cos of lack of time.
But wow... Talk about oldschool. This one quest is turning into an epic journey.
And I foresee some crunchy reading of game guides and manuals in the near future.
Still, I suppose if I don't treat it like a job and stay far away from being hardcore, it might be an interesting sort of adventure/experience for a couple months.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
License2Splurge
My mum went shopping for a laptop today.
This was mostly inspired by my sudden sense of ennui with MMOs and surge of enthusiasm in organizing rooms in the house that had gone to the dogs for nigh unto five years (practically all of them.)
My dad had set up shop in my hobby nook, with an obsolete six-year old computer which my mum was also using. This made it impossible for me to clean out the hobby nook ever since we moved into this house, and after more than three years of dust accumulation, enough was enough.
(The darnest thing was, my dad also has his own computer in his room, but the ancient scanner has no drivers for Windows Vista, and hence had to be connected to this obsolete heap of junk in my way.)
I offered to buy them all NEW computers/scanners so that this rotten heap that not even a charity would want could be removed from my organizational path.
As usual, my miserly dad refused and retreated with this obsolete garbage into his room - after also digging out my four year old PDA that has not worked for two years from the trash bin.
(This really boggles me because it was my PDA, bought with my money, and I had a problem parting with it once it stopped working, hence my hanging onto it for two years. But I finally decided that it was just taking up space and was irreparable, having tried my very bestest to open it up, dedust, check connections, and even called the company to find out that it would cost me a good half of my original price to ATTEMPT a repair. But nooo, my dad couldn't bear parting with something electronically shiny so he fished it out of the trash bin, inclusive of the four screws at the very bottom of the bin, that I had removed in my last ditch attempt to CPR it before giving up.)
And no, he was not able to repair it either. When I said, ok, you have tried to repair it and failed, can we throw it away now? He shook his head and said, um, maybe later.
I swear we have a psychological problem here.
(Me, I have inherited genes from both sides because I tend to attach obsessively for years like my dad, then go into a cleaning frenzy like my mum. Oh dear.)
Anyhow, happily, both heaps of junk are now out of my way and in the garbage dump my dad calls a room.
This means my mum is without a surfing net and watching youtube videos device. So we finally got around to looking for one of the cheap netbook-y things we had said we wanted to get for her for ages.
License2play was on its last day, and last hour when we finally arrived at Suntec.
Course this meant we got some fairly good deals. Got a better laptop than the one we were eyeing, and I scooped up two random games - Saints Row for $30 (next stall had the same game for $50, go figure) and FF7: Crisis Core for the PSP (which makes it the first legitimate game disc I have bought for this portable *coughs* Then again, I've only played two rhythm games and an unobtainable japanese version of Sakura Taisen on it too... *hem* I am more of a DS fanatic.)
And here is where I learned why playing MapleStory or any other such Asian microtransaction MMOs is really NOT a good idea. Playing it seriously, hardcore-style, anyway.
They were running a charity auction of virtual weapons at chest-vibrating decibel strengths.
At first, I had just thought it was the standard desperate vendors attempt to auction off Samsung TVs, Fuji cameras and y'know, electronics like that because the price ranges were One thousand, One thousand and one, One thousand and two, etc. Then a pause. Then something else selling for $3000+. Then $5000 and what not.
Out of curiosity, I kept looking at the stage, wondering what the heck the product was. All I saw were a bunch of people holding video cameras. Didn't seem like any of them were auctioning any of those cameras off.
Then I spotted the white screen at their back. In the centre of the white screen, was a small pixelated image of a blue dragon-like claw.
I saw some numbers of stats besides it. +13 str or whatever. A couple of those. And this bugger sold for $6400+.
*faints*
I'm not sure I have the words for this.
Yeeesss, it is for charity. It is all for a good cause in the end. Yes, someone could just sit down and write a $10k check for charity without even getting anything in return but warm, fuzzy feelings. Yes, some people do earn $10k a month or more, so six thousand to charity is not a huge burden.
But come on, there has to be a certain amount of ego-strutting, e-penii waving and the whole Asian "face" thing going on, surely?
One uber massively rare-as-heck virtual weapon bought for six thousand doozies to wave around, brag about, risk theft of, and perhaps resale to someone else for a higher profit.
It rather boggles the mind about the economies going on in these Asian microtransaction games.
And yes, I have no idea why my latest urge is to go take Final Fantasy XI for a test drive, except that I went to listen to the Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy music concert and got all stirred up by an FMV on the big screen.
Objectively, I know it's heavily reliant on groups (though I hear it's getting better, and I was pleased to see that one class I wanted to play is actually capable of soloing from lvl 1-75.)
Objectively, I know it is a huge grindfest and there are probably Japanese and Chinese farmers grinding their hearts out for the 'gil' currency which I am not even going to compete in the slightest for.
Objectively, I refuse to participate in any big raid mobs, especially NOT raid mobs that take 11 hours to run and made international news.
I'm just kinda curious to take it as far as I can take it, solo. I don't mind some repetitive battles as long as the combat is fun. I'm rather inspired to see how their quests are structured, because they apparently tell some nifty stories with FMV cutscenes - which is something no other MMO does as yet.
Basically, I feel like playing FFXI like how an ultra-casual WoW player takes their MMO, never reaching max level.
If I had the slightest interest in the WoW lore, land or combat mechanics, I would have done the same thing and said no to the raid game. Alas, I just couldn't take the simplistic railroading and gather X items from Y mobs with a Z% chance quests after too long.
But FFXI looks different enough to at least give it a shot. I can't believe it's selling for $90 with all expansions bundled together though. It's a 7-year old MMO. Guild Wars bundles its trilogy for $70 and no subscription fee. *boggles*
Gonna have to KIV it and see if I can get a cheaper deal at some point. *twiddle dee, twiddle dum*
This was mostly inspired by my sudden sense of ennui with MMOs and surge of enthusiasm in organizing rooms in the house that had gone to the dogs for nigh unto five years (practically all of them.)
My dad had set up shop in my hobby nook, with an obsolete six-year old computer which my mum was also using. This made it impossible for me to clean out the hobby nook ever since we moved into this house, and after more than three years of dust accumulation, enough was enough.
(The darnest thing was, my dad also has his own computer in his room, but the ancient scanner has no drivers for Windows Vista, and hence had to be connected to this obsolete heap of junk in my way.)
I offered to buy them all NEW computers/scanners so that this rotten heap that not even a charity would want could be removed from my organizational path.
As usual, my miserly dad refused and retreated with this obsolete garbage into his room - after also digging out my four year old PDA that has not worked for two years from the trash bin.
(This really boggles me because it was my PDA, bought with my money, and I had a problem parting with it once it stopped working, hence my hanging onto it for two years. But I finally decided that it was just taking up space and was irreparable, having tried my very bestest to open it up, dedust, check connections, and even called the company to find out that it would cost me a good half of my original price to ATTEMPT a repair. But nooo, my dad couldn't bear parting with something electronically shiny so he fished it out of the trash bin, inclusive of the four screws at the very bottom of the bin, that I had removed in my last ditch attempt to CPR it before giving up.)
And no, he was not able to repair it either. When I said, ok, you have tried to repair it and failed, can we throw it away now? He shook his head and said, um, maybe later.
I swear we have a psychological problem here.
(Me, I have inherited genes from both sides because I tend to attach obsessively for years like my dad, then go into a cleaning frenzy like my mum. Oh dear.)
Anyhow, happily, both heaps of junk are now out of my way and in the garbage dump my dad calls a room.
This means my mum is without a surfing net and watching youtube videos device. So we finally got around to looking for one of the cheap netbook-y things we had said we wanted to get for her for ages.
License2play was on its last day, and last hour when we finally arrived at Suntec.
Course this meant we got some fairly good deals. Got a better laptop than the one we were eyeing, and I scooped up two random games - Saints Row for $30 (next stall had the same game for $50, go figure) and FF7: Crisis Core for the PSP (which makes it the first legitimate game disc I have bought for this portable *coughs* Then again, I've only played two rhythm games and an unobtainable japanese version of Sakura Taisen on it too... *hem* I am more of a DS fanatic.)
And here is where I learned why playing MapleStory or any other such Asian microtransaction MMOs is really NOT a good idea. Playing it seriously, hardcore-style, anyway.
They were running a charity auction of virtual weapons at chest-vibrating decibel strengths.
At first, I had just thought it was the standard desperate vendors attempt to auction off Samsung TVs, Fuji cameras and y'know, electronics like that because the price ranges were One thousand, One thousand and one, One thousand and two, etc. Then a pause. Then something else selling for $3000+. Then $5000 and what not.
Out of curiosity, I kept looking at the stage, wondering what the heck the product was. All I saw were a bunch of people holding video cameras. Didn't seem like any of them were auctioning any of those cameras off.
Then I spotted the white screen at their back. In the centre of the white screen, was a small pixelated image of a blue dragon-like claw.
I saw some numbers of stats besides it. +13 str or whatever. A couple of those. And this bugger sold for $6400+.
*faints*
I'm not sure I have the words for this.
Yeeesss, it is for charity. It is all for a good cause in the end. Yes, someone could just sit down and write a $10k check for charity without even getting anything in return but warm, fuzzy feelings. Yes, some people do earn $10k a month or more, so six thousand to charity is not a huge burden.
But come on, there has to be a certain amount of ego-strutting, e-penii waving and the whole Asian "face" thing going on, surely?
One uber massively rare-as-heck virtual weapon bought for six thousand doozies to wave around, brag about, risk theft of, and perhaps resale to someone else for a higher profit.
It rather boggles the mind about the economies going on in these Asian microtransaction games.
And yes, I have no idea why my latest urge is to go take Final Fantasy XI for a test drive, except that I went to listen to the Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy music concert and got all stirred up by an FMV on the big screen.
Objectively, I know it's heavily reliant on groups (though I hear it's getting better, and I was pleased to see that one class I wanted to play is actually capable of soloing from lvl 1-75.)
Objectively, I know it is a huge grindfest and there are probably Japanese and Chinese farmers grinding their hearts out for the 'gil' currency which I am not even going to compete in the slightest for.
Objectively, I refuse to participate in any big raid mobs, especially NOT raid mobs that take 11 hours to run and made international news.
I'm just kinda curious to take it as far as I can take it, solo. I don't mind some repetitive battles as long as the combat is fun. I'm rather inspired to see how their quests are structured, because they apparently tell some nifty stories with FMV cutscenes - which is something no other MMO does as yet.
Basically, I feel like playing FFXI like how an ultra-casual WoW player takes their MMO, never reaching max level.
If I had the slightest interest in the WoW lore, land or combat mechanics, I would have done the same thing and said no to the raid game. Alas, I just couldn't take the simplistic railroading and gather X items from Y mobs with a Z% chance quests after too long.
But FFXI looks different enough to at least give it a shot. I can't believe it's selling for $90 with all expansions bundled together though. It's a 7-year old MMO. Guild Wars bundles its trilogy for $70 and no subscription fee. *boggles*
Gonna have to KIV it and see if I can get a cheaper deal at some point. *twiddle dee, twiddle dum*
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Lost in What-Translation?
So we've all heard of Engrish and Chinglish and other variations thereof.
Those wiki articles link to some websites sporting photos of signs and menus that are always fun to read. Yep, they're funny, and yeah, it's a lost in translation thing so it's not -mean- laughter or anything, it's just a perfectly understandable language mastery barrier. My Mandarin, after all, is spoken at a broken, barely grammatical, kindergarten level if I can pronounce the words at all.
(It helps too if you can actually read the Chinese characters so you can figure out what they're really trying to say or sell. Takes me a while, if at all, but I can generally figure out the food menu items via Cantonese and giggle at the weird Westerner choking at the offerings.)
But this is the first time... in homey Singapore too, that I have found something that sounds rather inedible in BOTH languages.
Seriously, what the hell.
I've heard of "Three Cup" chicken or "San bei ji" - which is intriguing and makes you want to find out more about how they named it (after the three cups of stuff they throw into the sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce and sumfing else I forget)... and tastes really good, if oily.
Who in their right minds wants to eat "Funny Taste" chicken? Or "guai wei" ji pieces?
It's not like you even have an ounce of fermented beancurd or beanpaste in the stuff (which makes a damn good sauce too, btw.) It's just some regular soy/vinegar/sesame oil dressing with a bit of Sichuan pepper anyhow.
Apparently it's some ancient traditional dish from the Sichuan province and it really is named 'strange taste chicken' or 'guai wei ji.' Must be some novice cook who couldn't think of a better name when he concocted it.
But really, if the Chinese - who eat practically anything and even call frog a kind of chicken - think it tastes strange... Doesn't really give ya a lot of confidence chomping it if you couldn't see the ingredient list, eh?
Those wiki articles link to some websites sporting photos of signs and menus that are always fun to read. Yep, they're funny, and yeah, it's a lost in translation thing so it's not -mean- laughter or anything, it's just a perfectly understandable language mastery barrier. My Mandarin, after all, is spoken at a broken, barely grammatical, kindergarten level if I can pronounce the words at all.
(It helps too if you can actually read the Chinese characters so you can figure out what they're really trying to say or sell. Takes me a while, if at all, but I can generally figure out the food menu items via Cantonese and giggle at the weird Westerner choking at the offerings.)
But this is the first time... in homey Singapore too, that I have found something that sounds rather inedible in BOTH languages.
Seriously, what the hell.
I've heard of "Three Cup" chicken or "San bei ji" - which is intriguing and makes you want to find out more about how they named it (after the three cups of stuff they throw into the sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce and sumfing else I forget)... and tastes really good, if oily.
Who in their right minds wants to eat "Funny Taste" chicken? Or "guai wei" ji pieces?
It's not like you even have an ounce of fermented beancurd or beanpaste in the stuff (which makes a damn good sauce too, btw.) It's just some regular soy/vinegar/sesame oil dressing with a bit of Sichuan pepper anyhow.
Apparently it's some ancient traditional dish from the Sichuan province and it really is named 'strange taste chicken' or 'guai wei ji.' Must be some novice cook who couldn't think of a better name when he concocted it.
But really, if the Chinese - who eat practically anything and even call frog a kind of chicken - think it tastes strange... Doesn't really give ya a lot of confidence chomping it if you couldn't see the ingredient list, eh?
Monday, May 18, 2009
Poly-Everything
Read a piece on Massively about poly-gamers and mono-gamers.
I am, of course, sadly or otherwise, squarely in the poly-gamer category. One look at my Steam games list answers that question, let alone all the MMO and other singleplayer game titles I've tried.
(But never completed.)
So it's a character flaw. Or strength. Or trait.
I keep getting these heaps of ideas about stuff I should/could be doing next. Sometimes I even write them down. Almost anything that stimulates my interest fires up my enthusiasm. For about a day.
And then the flighty butterfly of a mind ends up stalling habitually when the opportunity actually rolls around to GET SOMETHING DONE. It ends up going to sleep instead.
I have no clue why I find it so difficult to just pick something up and go. To just start. Why is there such a high activation energy?
Perhaps I'm anticipating how long the whole process will take, and how complicated all the substeps are... leading to a "can't swallow the elephant" stall.
In theory, I know all the steps. Break up the elephant into small pieces. Do one thing at a time. Just focus on the next damn action and nothing else.
So damn hard in practice. There are a bazillion and one next damn actions on a googol of various projects bouncing around in my head - or it sure seems like it. There are also so many hours in a day and so many minutes in an hour. One does not appear to fit into the other, and my brain freezes and wants to take a nap instead.
Counterproductive as hell, but every time I consider doing something else, I just get more and more sleepy.
Blah.
I am, of course, sadly or otherwise, squarely in the poly-gamer category. One look at my Steam games list answers that question, let alone all the MMO and other singleplayer game titles I've tried.
(But never completed.)
So it's a character flaw. Or strength. Or trait.
I keep getting these heaps of ideas about stuff I should/could be doing next. Sometimes I even write them down. Almost anything that stimulates my interest fires up my enthusiasm. For about a day.
And then the flighty butterfly of a mind ends up stalling habitually when the opportunity actually rolls around to GET SOMETHING DONE. It ends up going to sleep instead.
I have no clue why I find it so difficult to just pick something up and go. To just start. Why is there such a high activation energy?
Perhaps I'm anticipating how long the whole process will take, and how complicated all the substeps are... leading to a "can't swallow the elephant" stall.
In theory, I know all the steps. Break up the elephant into small pieces. Do one thing at a time. Just focus on the next damn action and nothing else.
So damn hard in practice. There are a bazillion and one next damn actions on a googol of various projects bouncing around in my head - or it sure seems like it. There are also so many hours in a day and so many minutes in an hour. One does not appear to fit into the other, and my brain freezes and wants to take a nap instead.
Counterproductive as hell, but every time I consider doing something else, I just get more and more sleepy.
Blah.
Google Gathering
My wayward Amazon parcel has finally arrived, the second half of a delivery ordered more than a month ago, about two weeks after the first half landed on my doorstep.
In it, was a small pocket-sized book entitled "Technique for Producing Ideas" by James Webb Young. Apparently an advertising classic.
I swallowed its contents over dinner. Really thin book. Hadn't wanted to buy it for ages because it was so thin and wouldn't last, but thought what the heck last month - it was part of a massive drive to self-improve and do serious career-minded and futurelife thoughts.
Essentially, the message was that there was a technique for idea production that could be broken down into five stages.
(Obviously it is not the -only- technique, I own another very good book by Holly Lisle naming about 36 mechanisms/tricks for coming up with ideas for story plots - mostly relying on questions to logically explore/keywords and other trigger mechanisms to spark ideas.)
An idea was defined as a new combination of old elements. Decent enough, it's part of some kind of creativity definition or other somewhere.
And the five stages were the gathering of specific material (related to the purpose of the idea) and general material (general knowledge for fueling the idea fire), serious thinking and pondering all these collected elements, letting it go completely to wait for the magical "falling into place," experiencing the "eureka" moment of idea generation, and finally honing and refining the baby idea to workability.
Well, it may not work for everybody, not all of the time, but certainly enough people have come up with an idea with such a method that it's not 100% wrong either. It's a little too mystical for me personally, though I appreciate long walks through nature and taking showers and having random lightbulb "dings" when on the toilet just like anyone else.
Still, I did take away one thought that I found very important. Most people, me included, simply don't do enough of the first gathering stage. Or the "collection" phase in David Allen terms. I'm seeing this commonality across many of the mind training or organization stuff I'm reading.
One really needs to put in the tough physical/mental effort to collect stuff. Research what other people have said. Or pick up all the items and put it into one place. Have a handle on one's objectives/purpose and store all the facts in an accessible location. If you don't know all this at the start, no wonder one's mind still remains steadfastly foggy while trying to "have a good idea."
A related comment was that of gathering general knowledge. Of reading voraciously and being interested in many things.
It struck me that in this internet day and age, we are actually both ridiculously empowered by having the world wide web at our fingertips, and yet rarely choose to explore it, being spoiled with search engines like Google.
Maybe it's just me.
I find my habit is just to keep visiting regularly the same old sites, check on the same old RSS feeds for any updates, and leave Google as the gatekeeper of the outside world. When I need an immediate answer, I type in the magic keywords, and voila, badabing badaboom, the relevant hits appear. Maybe I just read the relevant entry in wikipedia.
It's kinda sad. I recall not too long ago, when the internet was still new and there wasn't too much information and too precise search engines, that one could go idly exploring and bouncing from site to site on hyperlinks, trawling this immense resource sea with a non-too-specific net.
Now my habit has degenerated into, "Ok, check Google for the answer to this question, and stop. Use Google again for answer to next question, and stop again."
When I was young, I used to read encyclopedias. Talk about the maximum gathering of general knowledge. Libraries of physical books meant that even though you roughly had an aim, walking towards a specific Dewey Decimal number, any book title that caught your eye was fair game, and hey, a discovery of a new Dewey Decimal number containing subjects that interested you was made, just like that.
Perhaps Google or any other search engine is not to blame. Despite its precision, nothing stops me from typing in random keywords and going off on a happy coincidental journey across the internet.
Maybe it's just the lack of time in adult life to bounce randomly through many links, or the fossilization of one's interests so that one thinks nothing else is that relevant, or just a damn bad habit to NOT explore new topics in favor of doing the same old thing over and over.
Whatever it is, it makes me sad. It also makes me think I need to go and wander the new Da Vinci exhibition at the centre at some point. Part of the problem is that my work life is now being trailed by very needy newbie colleagues, mundane and mainstream in their minds, hoping for social company, and this makes solo thinking and musing VERY challenging to say the least.
In it, was a small pocket-sized book entitled "Technique for Producing Ideas" by James Webb Young. Apparently an advertising classic.
I swallowed its contents over dinner. Really thin book. Hadn't wanted to buy it for ages because it was so thin and wouldn't last, but thought what the heck last month - it was part of a massive drive to self-improve and do serious career-minded and futurelife thoughts.
Essentially, the message was that there was a technique for idea production that could be broken down into five stages.
(Obviously it is not the -only- technique, I own another very good book by Holly Lisle naming about 36 mechanisms/tricks for coming up with ideas for story plots - mostly relying on questions to logically explore/keywords and other trigger mechanisms to spark ideas.)
An idea was defined as a new combination of old elements. Decent enough, it's part of some kind of creativity definition or other somewhere.
And the five stages were the gathering of specific material (related to the purpose of the idea) and general material (general knowledge for fueling the idea fire), serious thinking and pondering all these collected elements, letting it go completely to wait for the magical "falling into place," experiencing the "eureka" moment of idea generation, and finally honing and refining the baby idea to workability.
Well, it may not work for everybody, not all of the time, but certainly enough people have come up with an idea with such a method that it's not 100% wrong either. It's a little too mystical for me personally, though I appreciate long walks through nature and taking showers and having random lightbulb "dings" when on the toilet just like anyone else.
Still, I did take away one thought that I found very important. Most people, me included, simply don't do enough of the first gathering stage. Or the "collection" phase in David Allen terms. I'm seeing this commonality across many of the mind training or organization stuff I'm reading.
One really needs to put in the tough physical/mental effort to collect stuff. Research what other people have said. Or pick up all the items and put it into one place. Have a handle on one's objectives/purpose and store all the facts in an accessible location. If you don't know all this at the start, no wonder one's mind still remains steadfastly foggy while trying to "have a good idea."
A related comment was that of gathering general knowledge. Of reading voraciously and being interested in many things.
It struck me that in this internet day and age, we are actually both ridiculously empowered by having the world wide web at our fingertips, and yet rarely choose to explore it, being spoiled with search engines like Google.
Maybe it's just me.
I find my habit is just to keep visiting regularly the same old sites, check on the same old RSS feeds for any updates, and leave Google as the gatekeeper of the outside world. When I need an immediate answer, I type in the magic keywords, and voila, badabing badaboom, the relevant hits appear. Maybe I just read the relevant entry in wikipedia.
It's kinda sad. I recall not too long ago, when the internet was still new and there wasn't too much information and too precise search engines, that one could go idly exploring and bouncing from site to site on hyperlinks, trawling this immense resource sea with a non-too-specific net.
Now my habit has degenerated into, "Ok, check Google for the answer to this question, and stop. Use Google again for answer to next question, and stop again."
When I was young, I used to read encyclopedias. Talk about the maximum gathering of general knowledge. Libraries of physical books meant that even though you roughly had an aim, walking towards a specific Dewey Decimal number, any book title that caught your eye was fair game, and hey, a discovery of a new Dewey Decimal number containing subjects that interested you was made, just like that.
Perhaps Google or any other search engine is not to blame. Despite its precision, nothing stops me from typing in random keywords and going off on a happy coincidental journey across the internet.
Maybe it's just the lack of time in adult life to bounce randomly through many links, or the fossilization of one's interests so that one thinks nothing else is that relevant, or just a damn bad habit to NOT explore new topics in favor of doing the same old thing over and over.
Whatever it is, it makes me sad. It also makes me think I need to go and wander the new Da Vinci exhibition at the centre at some point. Part of the problem is that my work life is now being trailed by very needy newbie colleagues, mundane and mainstream in their minds, hoping for social company, and this makes solo thinking and musing VERY challenging to say the least.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Master of Multiples
I'm trying to treat this Sunday as "Should-Do" Sunday, where I'm attempting to crank through as many things I wanted/intended/felt obliged to do instead of staring mindlessly at an MMO client for X number of hours, staring with rising blood tension at MMO forums and RSS reader for another Y number of hours and finishing up with sleeping like the dead for the remaining Z number of hours + a few extra for good measure.
Well, seeing as I slept at 6am last "night" and only woke at 2pm, I failed miserably on the sleeping part of the equation.
However, I did try and get some of my planned game purchases bought and installed and activated (now that everyone and their mothers' PC games come with serial code activations).
After waffling around for the longest time, I got off my ass, logged into the NCsoft store and bought my Mac pack for Valkyrie wings (the mission teleport can't hurt), and picked up an Architect edition for a month's extra game time and a slightly cheaper Magic booster - making my account now enabled to create the costumes I wanted for my foggy-in-the-future music video starring lots of Carnies.
However, the greed involved in trying to buy another Architect Edition in order to get a cyborg booster backfired somewhat, as it turns out I can only apply ONE AE code to one account.
Blah. So now I have submitted a ticket to tell them either enable it manually or cancel my transaction.
If it does turn out that it's truly unrefundable, I'm gonna be mildly unhappy and either have a code to give away to someone to start a new account, or I might end up among the crummy dual-account "farmers" if I decide maintaining a second account to CoX is worth it. Not super keen on it though.
The only dual-account that I wanted was Guild Wars. Since the box was languishing beside my chair since my last last visit to Tec-Drome, and May is the month of the free Xunlai storage pane, I decided to move my booty and take advantage of being logged into PlayNC anyway to install that code. Now my 6 heroes plan is slowly grinding towards accomplishment.
More and more, I'm tempted to give up on LOTRO. The only thing stopping me is not having seen an inch of Moria yet. Why the heck did I put up for the Moria download if I'm not going to at least set foot in the place once, eh?
Then again, I have just realized that I have effectively given up Warhammer and ATITD for now, so that saves me subscription fees to these two games for now, leaving LOTRO quite maintainable.
I'm occasionally tempted to take a relook at Warhammer, but I fear the Oceanic server is more deserted than the US ones - Asians and Aussies lose interest in games pretty damn quickly and critical mass can flow away just like that.
Oh well. I have plenty of singleplayer games that I would like to work on. Steam offers are bloody good, and I was still working my way through a cheesy little game called Ghost Master.
Ancient but good games like Universe at War, Sacred and Jagged Alliance are waiting for me to try them out. I also grabbed Full Spectrum Warrior from Tec-Drome yesterday.
Chronicles of Riddick awaits a second play through. I'm replaying the first Escape campaign before going into the apparently-not-that-good-but-decent second Dark Athena campaign. I heartily recommend the first story btw. If I clear up my room enough this week, I might be able to locate Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay of 2004 fame, which probably can withstand a second installation with the same serial code... (*hint* *hint* Where'd my Bioshock DVD go? :P)
Fallout 3 has been languishing. The news of the DLC that Fallout sports is VERY tempting. However, it is linked to this godawful Microsoft Windows Live network that requires you to buy Microsoft Points (TM) with one's credit card before you can buy the DLC. This is annoying. I hate made up currency for no damn reason.
It's sorta leading me towards this dystopian sort of future where you end up giving one's alliances to a set of multi-national corporations, working for them and earning tokens for their special currency, only valid and reclaimable for their Corporate products of food and luxuries and whatnot.
That's all very well for creating ideas for my fictional world, but blah to seeing it start now in real life.
Well, seeing as I slept at 6am last "night" and only woke at 2pm, I failed miserably on the sleeping part of the equation.
However, I did try and get some of my planned game purchases bought and installed and activated (now that everyone and their mothers' PC games come with serial code activations).
After waffling around for the longest time, I got off my ass, logged into the NCsoft store and bought my Mac pack for Valkyrie wings (the mission teleport can't hurt), and picked up an Architect edition for a month's extra game time and a slightly cheaper Magic booster - making my account now enabled to create the costumes I wanted for my foggy-in-the-future music video starring lots of Carnies.
However, the greed involved in trying to buy another Architect Edition in order to get a cyborg booster backfired somewhat, as it turns out I can only apply ONE AE code to one account.
Blah. So now I have submitted a ticket to tell them either enable it manually or cancel my transaction.
If it does turn out that it's truly unrefundable, I'm gonna be mildly unhappy and either have a code to give away to someone to start a new account, or I might end up among the crummy dual-account "farmers" if I decide maintaining a second account to CoX is worth it. Not super keen on it though.
The only dual-account that I wanted was Guild Wars. Since the box was languishing beside my chair since my last last visit to Tec-Drome, and May is the month of the free Xunlai storage pane, I decided to move my booty and take advantage of being logged into PlayNC anyway to install that code. Now my 6 heroes plan is slowly grinding towards accomplishment.
More and more, I'm tempted to give up on LOTRO. The only thing stopping me is not having seen an inch of Moria yet. Why the heck did I put up for the Moria download if I'm not going to at least set foot in the place once, eh?
Then again, I have just realized that I have effectively given up Warhammer and ATITD for now, so that saves me subscription fees to these two games for now, leaving LOTRO quite maintainable.
I'm occasionally tempted to take a relook at Warhammer, but I fear the Oceanic server is more deserted than the US ones - Asians and Aussies lose interest in games pretty damn quickly and critical mass can flow away just like that.
Oh well. I have plenty of singleplayer games that I would like to work on. Steam offers are bloody good, and I was still working my way through a cheesy little game called Ghost Master.
Ancient but good games like Universe at War, Sacred and Jagged Alliance are waiting for me to try them out. I also grabbed Full Spectrum Warrior from Tec-Drome yesterday.
Chronicles of Riddick awaits a second play through. I'm replaying the first Escape campaign before going into the apparently-not-that-good-but-decent second Dark Athena campaign. I heartily recommend the first story btw. If I clear up my room enough this week, I might be able to locate Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay of 2004 fame, which probably can withstand a second installation with the same serial code... (*hint* *hint* Where'd my Bioshock DVD go? :P)
Fallout 3 has been languishing. The news of the DLC that Fallout sports is VERY tempting. However, it is linked to this godawful Microsoft Windows Live network that requires you to buy Microsoft Points (TM) with one's credit card before you can buy the DLC. This is annoying. I hate made up currency for no damn reason.
It's sorta leading me towards this dystopian sort of future where you end up giving one's alliances to a set of multi-national corporations, working for them and earning tokens for their special currency, only valid and reclaimable for their Corporate products of food and luxuries and whatnot.
That's all very well for creating ideas for my fictional world, but blah to seeing it start now in real life.
Contacting Pluto...
Single player games are accumulating a very bad habit. Copy protection that requires an internet connection to activate. Not only is this annoying in that you may not be able to play the game years from now (fortunately, the pace of gaming makes it unlikely that you -would- want to revisit the game, but sucks for abandonware twenty years from now)...
...you'd think that you want your activation server to be flawless and actually WORK when someone tries to activate their code.
Time-consumingly lengthy as Dawn of War II's installation was, it didn't trip up at any step. (Yay for Steam.)
Minus points for Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena which yielded my very first activation code error. After typing in my serial number, it tried to contact the internet - I allowed it to do so via Zonealarm - and it proceeded to freeze at "contacting server..." for an alarmingly long minute or two that seemed to suggest it was trying to talk to a server in oh.. Finland or Iceland or maybe the Moon or Pluto.
Some "tages" protection system. Grrr.
Two minutes later, it returned an error message. Unable to finish activation. Double grrr.
Having actually anticipated the possibility, the programmers had added a html method of sending some obscure activation code to the server and getting some weird hash back in return...
...Except that after I clicked the button to send said obscure encrypted activation code, the server, after that eons long pause we have come to know and love, returned me an empty html page.
*rolls eyes*
Before spewing bile down tech support forums, I try the initial activation process one more time, and it decides to magically respond and verify that I am a legitimate user and can play the game.
This is very very FOUL DRM on Atari's part. I suspect not even the Spore installation will be as bad.
Talk about spoiling the mood for a really great game. I remember Escape from Butcher Bay being phenomenal, and I had been raring up to replay that campaign (included in this Dark Athena bundle) and try out the next segment of story.
Well, hopefully the DRM hijinks are over for this game. Luckily I don't think I am switching anything major (like CPU and mobo) in my computer for a year yet (if it doesn't smoke and steam) but this DRM crap is going to get very troublesome in the future.
Almost makes one want to take one's risks with the pirates and possibly trojan/virus infested crack files. *grumbles*
Almost.
Not quite at the throwing objects and invective at expensive monitor screen yet... but close.
...you'd think that you want your activation server to be flawless and actually WORK when someone tries to activate their code.
Time-consumingly lengthy as Dawn of War II's installation was, it didn't trip up at any step. (Yay for Steam.)
Minus points for Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena which yielded my very first activation code error. After typing in my serial number, it tried to contact the internet - I allowed it to do so via Zonealarm - and it proceeded to freeze at "contacting server..." for an alarmingly long minute or two that seemed to suggest it was trying to talk to a server in oh.. Finland or Iceland or maybe the Moon or Pluto.
Some "tages" protection system. Grrr.
Two minutes later, it returned an error message. Unable to finish activation. Double grrr.
Having actually anticipated the possibility, the programmers had added a html method of sending some obscure activation code to the server and getting some weird hash back in return...
...Except that after I clicked the button to send said obscure encrypted activation code, the server, after that eons long pause we have come to know and love, returned me an empty html page.
*rolls eyes*
Before spewing bile down tech support forums, I try the initial activation process one more time, and it decides to magically respond and verify that I am a legitimate user and can play the game.
This is very very FOUL DRM on Atari's part. I suspect not even the Spore installation will be as bad.
Talk about spoiling the mood for a really great game. I remember Escape from Butcher Bay being phenomenal, and I had been raring up to replay that campaign (included in this Dark Athena bundle) and try out the next segment of story.
Well, hopefully the DRM hijinks are over for this game. Luckily I don't think I am switching anything major (like CPU and mobo) in my computer for a year yet (if it doesn't smoke and steam) but this DRM crap is going to get very troublesome in the future.
Almost makes one want to take one's risks with the pirates and possibly trojan/virus infested crack files. *grumbles*
Almost.
Not quite at the throwing objects and invective at expensive monitor screen yet... but close.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Casual Hardcore
Ah, the two words that perplex all attempts to define it. In this case, I'm referring to my current game purchasing dilemma.
As usual, I am a Steam sellout, so when I see the Season 2 of Sam & Max is on 50% offer, I am highly inclined towards getting it. And maybe that will make me move forward on the remaining Sam & Max games of Season 1, since I was purposefully not-playing them in an attempt to "make them last." Weird, yeah, but true.
Now the weekend deal puts up Call of Duty: World at War at a cheaper, but not must-buy-or-forever-regret-not-getting-the-deal sort of price. I enjoyed Call of Duty 4, but this sequel is slightly more maligned. I also am not 100% sure that I am up for playing an FPS, I haven't played one in forever. Yet I do feel a temptation to visit the World War II setting and experience some immersive scripting and action sequences. The problem is, I'm not sure how long I will savor these action sequences before the gameplay boils down to a "run and gun" "duck and cover" FPS-type playstyle and starts to bore me.
Getting Spore is on the radar. I'm not 100% enthused about the million and one add-on packs that are based on a microtransaction model that nickel and dime you to the point of footing out a lot more moolah... Neither am I enthused about the lack of any crunchy gameplay as it has been seriously dumbed down to a casual pick-up-intuitive-for-primary-school-kids sort of model. I am, however, quite tempted by the creation options and potential for machinima - though the social network options are really not for me in particular.
On reading about Spore, curiosity is again sparked by Sims 2. (And Sims 3 is apparently being released this June too.) I tried a Sims game once. I can't remember if it was the first or the second. It seemed quite simplistic, and the 'mainstreamness' of it was off-putting. Just couldn't quite put a huge value factor on watching one's toy doll 'experience' the great mundanity of Life - eat food, go to toilet, meet dates, go to school, go to work, have woohoo and little kiddies, rinse and repeat. *blink*
The expansion packs however sound like they spice up the basic game a little more, allowing you to customize how you might like life - with hobbies, pets, nightlife or whatever. Of course, I'm not thrilled by the microtransaction model here EITHER.
I suppose I could pirate the game if I wanted, but I admit to being a bit of a stick in the mud with PC games now. Become a habit to buy my games honestly. That said, if I were paying full price for a game, I'd expect it to be bloody good. Indie and cheap games on sale are a different matter.
But maybe these Sim-type games are too damn casual for me. Too "mainstream." I have more hardcore gamer tastes. Except maybe not, because I'm not playing FPSes by the dozen, am I? I'm not a story adventure gamer. I don't play the great mother of all MMOs, aka WoW. What the heck do I play?
Grim n' gritty story/action games? Some genre. As much as I want to pick up Dark Athena and finish Fallout 3 and Dawn of War 2, surely that's not the only thing I could and should be playing...
As usual, I am a Steam sellout, so when I see the Season 2 of Sam & Max is on 50% offer, I am highly inclined towards getting it. And maybe that will make me move forward on the remaining Sam & Max games of Season 1, since I was purposefully not-playing them in an attempt to "make them last." Weird, yeah, but true.
Now the weekend deal puts up Call of Duty: World at War at a cheaper, but not must-buy-or-forever-regret-not-getting-the-deal sort of price. I enjoyed Call of Duty 4, but this sequel is slightly more maligned. I also am not 100% sure that I am up for playing an FPS, I haven't played one in forever. Yet I do feel a temptation to visit the World War II setting and experience some immersive scripting and action sequences. The problem is, I'm not sure how long I will savor these action sequences before the gameplay boils down to a "run and gun" "duck and cover" FPS-type playstyle and starts to bore me.
Getting Spore is on the radar. I'm not 100% enthused about the million and one add-on packs that are based on a microtransaction model that nickel and dime you to the point of footing out a lot more moolah... Neither am I enthused about the lack of any crunchy gameplay as it has been seriously dumbed down to a casual pick-up-intuitive-for-primary-school-kids sort of model. I am, however, quite tempted by the creation options and potential for machinima - though the social network options are really not for me in particular.
On reading about Spore, curiosity is again sparked by Sims 2. (And Sims 3 is apparently being released this June too.) I tried a Sims game once. I can't remember if it was the first or the second. It seemed quite simplistic, and the 'mainstreamness' of it was off-putting. Just couldn't quite put a huge value factor on watching one's toy doll 'experience' the great mundanity of Life - eat food, go to toilet, meet dates, go to school, go to work, have woohoo and little kiddies, rinse and repeat. *blink*
The expansion packs however sound like they spice up the basic game a little more, allowing you to customize how you might like life - with hobbies, pets, nightlife or whatever. Of course, I'm not thrilled by the microtransaction model here EITHER.
I suppose I could pirate the game if I wanted, but I admit to being a bit of a stick in the mud with PC games now. Become a habit to buy my games honestly. That said, if I were paying full price for a game, I'd expect it to be bloody good. Indie and cheap games on sale are a different matter.
But maybe these Sim-type games are too damn casual for me. Too "mainstream." I have more hardcore gamer tastes. Except maybe not, because I'm not playing FPSes by the dozen, am I? I'm not a story adventure gamer. I don't play the great mother of all MMOs, aka WoW. What the heck do I play?
Grim n' gritty story/action games? Some genre. As much as I want to pick up Dark Athena and finish Fallout 3 and Dawn of War 2, surely that's not the only thing I could and should be playing...
Friday, May 15, 2009
The Many Faces of Spore
I'm doomed.
The Media Lab at my place has installed Spore, and I just got a rare chance to take it for a little test run this morning.
Normally, said lab is locked up and away for fear that our unworthy selves will either make off with loads of expensive computer parts or maybe play games all day (yeah, like it's different from people sneakily watching Youtube the whole day.)
I don't think it's likely that I will have too much more opportunity to mess with it in the lab during work, but it does look valuable enough and relevant enough for certain aspects of biology and natural selection/evolution shtuff to consider for use in some of our lessons. It's going to take a bit of fast talking to ally up and network such things into being, but me being me, I'd like to have lots more experience with said teaching tool before I start talking out of my ass.
Which kinda means... I gotta buy and play Spore. At home. DRM-issues not withstanding.
Sighs. Ok, it's not really that much of a burden. What I saw of the creature creator was immensely fun. Very much like the flexibility of City of Heroes' character creator, except for more cartoony cutesy creatures. I can definitely forsee a few enjoyable hours or ten lost in an attempt to be uniquely artistic or just a fan attempt at copying something dragon-y, or spike-y or game-y, etc.
The Cell Stage has the addictive quality of a Flash Game of eat or be eaten. Eventually, it might grow tiresome, but it has a couple hours potential replay value trying out herbivore, carnivore and omnivore strategies.
The Creature? Stage started slowing down a little. My creature had somehow through its choices in the Cell Stage ended up a wussy little herbivore, and its special ability picked up was something called "Siren Song." Despite managing to beat the head in of one teeny creature that was smaller than me, practically everything else was much bigger and in self-defense I had to try and lull them with Siren Song and make nice and "sing" to them to be successful.
Not wanting to fight the vagaries of evolution, I went with it, singing nest after nest of creatures into submission, and of course, my next allowable evolution was something beak-like that allowed Level 4 Sing instead of Level 1 or 2 Sing. (Oh great, a songbird for eternity.)
I managed to get through about two somewhat-boring generations of this, opening up a couple more peace-making options like "dance" and something called "pose" which I have no clue what it did, because I had to stop and race off to other work duties.
Still, there has to be another couple hours of gameplay worth exploring in here. The total peace route, the beat-em-all-up violent way and a mix of the two.
So I've more or less convinced myself that Spore is worth getting. The question is, at what price, and when?
Because I googled Spore and found that Maxis/EA has done the whole "Sims" thing with their Spore franchise. Game, bits and pieces of the game, some add-ons, expansion, the works.
I do not just want the cheapo Creature Creator for $9.99 USD. I know I definitely want to try the other stages, both for work and play reasons.
So I must get the basic Spore package at the very least.
However, in their infinite greed of moneymaking, Maxis/EA has released something known as the Spore: Creepy and Cute Parts Pack for an additional price. The stuff inside is -probably- not worth the price they are charging for it, but then again, if I can get Tec-Drome to bundle it more cheaply, being able to have more costume, er, 'parts' options is never a bad thing as City of Heroes demonstrates.
To make matters worse, I have found out that they are also releasing on June 23rd, the Spore expansion: Galactic Adventures - an MMO-gameplay lookalike where your Spore creatures get to beam down to different planets, click on exclamation marks and do quests to spice up the much-maligned Space Stage gameplay. (I bet they were planning this all along, that is why the 4X stage felt like it was missing something to people.) They are also offering user-created content, aka you get to do quests other people make. (And I'm sure we know how that's going to turn out a la MA system, multiplied by a factor of young kiddies plus extra-annonymity.)
So no, it seems rather unlikely that I would be willing to just buy Galactic Adventures just like that. Unless I turn into a rabid fan of Spore and then regret not getting it, and then have to rush down and put down extra $$$ to pick it up a month or two later.
However, the very fact that such an expansion is going to exist makes me question whether I really need to get Spore NOW now.
Because if I could hold out and wait, and wait, and wait for August to December or even next year... you know what's going to release, right? Spore: The Platinum Pack! Where all this crap gets bundled in and sold at a bargain price as a last ditch attempt to attract cheapskate late-adopters like me and get one last money spike on the graphs.
Truth to tell, I regret being an early adopter of games like Neverwinter Nights and Fear. Yes, I sort of enjoyed the original game, I raced to pick up the first expansion - which I sorta neglected to install for a while - and before I knew it the SECOND expansion had turned up, then a THIRD, and I got myself confused as to which was which and may have bought one or two extra copies or missed one - and then the salt to the wound was that they release the platinum pack that has it all bundled later.
*grumble*
If it were just me, playing it personally, I'd probably be content to wait it out. Of course, I'd have to fight off the slight addiction that says I gotta play it now cos I just tried it this morning (lots of other games to distract me if I really focus).
With the extra rationalization that I just might be able to use this for work, my willpower is eroding mightily quickly.
I'm still not pleased about the DRM. It may just end up locked for good in my desktop with my laptop being unable to have a copy of it for work purposes, but at least I'll have the playthrough experience and be able to identify usable portions as an educational tool.
Now this coming end May is actually going to be fairly busy, so I'm not sure if I have the time to design new lessons. Then again, I have a course in June that just might benefit from this. In June, I also have to organize and prepare for other things that suck away available time. Yet if I don't start now, the time will never be found because things always expand to fill up all available space...
Pfft. To buy or not to buy. And when.
The Media Lab at my place has installed Spore, and I just got a rare chance to take it for a little test run this morning.
Normally, said lab is locked up and away for fear that our unworthy selves will either make off with loads of expensive computer parts or maybe play games all day (yeah, like it's different from people sneakily watching Youtube the whole day.)
I don't think it's likely that I will have too much more opportunity to mess with it in the lab during work, but it does look valuable enough and relevant enough for certain aspects of biology and natural selection/evolution shtuff to consider for use in some of our lessons. It's going to take a bit of fast talking to ally up and network such things into being, but me being me, I'd like to have lots more experience with said teaching tool before I start talking out of my ass.
Which kinda means... I gotta buy and play Spore. At home. DRM-issues not withstanding.
Sighs. Ok, it's not really that much of a burden. What I saw of the creature creator was immensely fun. Very much like the flexibility of City of Heroes' character creator, except for more cartoony cutesy creatures. I can definitely forsee a few enjoyable hours or ten lost in an attempt to be uniquely artistic or just a fan attempt at copying something dragon-y, or spike-y or game-y, etc.
The Cell Stage has the addictive quality of a Flash Game of eat or be eaten. Eventually, it might grow tiresome, but it has a couple hours potential replay value trying out herbivore, carnivore and omnivore strategies.
The Creature? Stage started slowing down a little. My creature had somehow through its choices in the Cell Stage ended up a wussy little herbivore, and its special ability picked up was something called "Siren Song." Despite managing to beat the head in of one teeny creature that was smaller than me, practically everything else was much bigger and in self-defense I had to try and lull them with Siren Song and make nice and "sing" to them to be successful.
Not wanting to fight the vagaries of evolution, I went with it, singing nest after nest of creatures into submission, and of course, my next allowable evolution was something beak-like that allowed Level 4 Sing instead of Level 1 or 2 Sing. (Oh great, a songbird for eternity.)
I managed to get through about two somewhat-boring generations of this, opening up a couple more peace-making options like "dance" and something called "pose" which I have no clue what it did, because I had to stop and race off to other work duties.
Still, there has to be another couple hours of gameplay worth exploring in here. The total peace route, the beat-em-all-up violent way and a mix of the two.
So I've more or less convinced myself that Spore is worth getting. The question is, at what price, and when?
Because I googled Spore and found that Maxis/EA has done the whole "Sims" thing with their Spore franchise. Game, bits and pieces of the game, some add-ons, expansion, the works.
I do not just want the cheapo Creature Creator for $9.99 USD. I know I definitely want to try the other stages, both for work and play reasons.
So I must get the basic Spore package at the very least.
However, in their infinite greed of moneymaking, Maxis/EA has released something known as the Spore: Creepy and Cute Parts Pack for an additional price. The stuff inside is -probably- not worth the price they are charging for it, but then again, if I can get Tec-Drome to bundle it more cheaply, being able to have more costume, er, 'parts' options is never a bad thing as City of Heroes demonstrates.
To make matters worse, I have found out that they are also releasing on June 23rd, the Spore expansion: Galactic Adventures - an MMO-gameplay lookalike where your Spore creatures get to beam down to different planets, click on exclamation marks and do quests to spice up the much-maligned Space Stage gameplay. (I bet they were planning this all along, that is why the 4X stage felt like it was missing something to people.) They are also offering user-created content, aka you get to do quests other people make. (And I'm sure we know how that's going to turn out a la MA system, multiplied by a factor of young kiddies plus extra-annonymity.)
So no, it seems rather unlikely that I would be willing to just buy Galactic Adventures just like that. Unless I turn into a rabid fan of Spore and then regret not getting it, and then have to rush down and put down extra $$$ to pick it up a month or two later.
However, the very fact that such an expansion is going to exist makes me question whether I really need to get Spore NOW now.
Because if I could hold out and wait, and wait, and wait for August to December or even next year... you know what's going to release, right? Spore: The Platinum Pack! Where all this crap gets bundled in and sold at a bargain price as a last ditch attempt to attract cheapskate late-adopters like me and get one last money spike on the graphs.
Truth to tell, I regret being an early adopter of games like Neverwinter Nights and Fear. Yes, I sort of enjoyed the original game, I raced to pick up the first expansion - which I sorta neglected to install for a while - and before I knew it the SECOND expansion had turned up, then a THIRD, and I got myself confused as to which was which and may have bought one or two extra copies or missed one - and then the salt to the wound was that they release the platinum pack that has it all bundled later.
*grumble*
If it were just me, playing it personally, I'd probably be content to wait it out. Of course, I'd have to fight off the slight addiction that says I gotta play it now cos I just tried it this morning (lots of other games to distract me if I really focus).
With the extra rationalization that I just might be able to use this for work, my willpower is eroding mightily quickly.
I'm still not pleased about the DRM. It may just end up locked for good in my desktop with my laptop being unable to have a copy of it for work purposes, but at least I'll have the playthrough experience and be able to identify usable portions as an educational tool.
Now this coming end May is actually going to be fairly busy, so I'm not sure if I have the time to design new lessons. Then again, I have a course in June that just might benefit from this. In June, I also have to organize and prepare for other things that suck away available time. Yet if I don't start now, the time will never be found because things always expand to fill up all available space...
Pfft. To buy or not to buy. And when.
Everything Goes Better With...
Stamina.
Caved in the night before last. After hitting level 31, tried out the second build option and gave up repair and travel powers to fit in stamina.
As much as I miss being able to zap my Assault Bot from red health to full in a couple of seconds, there's now less chance of said bot hitting the red zone because I can actually bear to stop every 3 minutes and rebubble.
Previously, I had been trying to get by without the bubbles 80% of the time because it would consume every last drop of my endurance and/or necessitate me turning off assault, tactics and dispersion bubble.
I can also afford to shoot my pulse rifle more often, and even fire my Nemesis staff with more regularity - which does spectacular things to my burst damage capacity.
Haven't teamed yet with this new +Stamina build, but judging from my prior experience where I was basically hovering at 10-20% endurance throughout a TF from triage bubbling just the brutes and corrs (screw the mms unless there was something in their face hitting them that very instant, they got bodyguard and pets, wot?)... it's got to be better.
So much for stamina being unnecessary for robot/ff.
Looks like my hunch that people without Stamina just aren't doing as much as they could be with Stamina is right.
Caved in the night before last. After hitting level 31, tried out the second build option and gave up repair and travel powers to fit in stamina.
As much as I miss being able to zap my Assault Bot from red health to full in a couple of seconds, there's now less chance of said bot hitting the red zone because I can actually bear to stop every 3 minutes and rebubble.
Previously, I had been trying to get by without the bubbles 80% of the time because it would consume every last drop of my endurance and/or necessitate me turning off assault, tactics and dispersion bubble.
I can also afford to shoot my pulse rifle more often, and even fire my Nemesis staff with more regularity - which does spectacular things to my burst damage capacity.
Haven't teamed yet with this new +Stamina build, but judging from my prior experience where I was basically hovering at 10-20% endurance throughout a TF from triage bubbling just the brutes and corrs (screw the mms unless there was something in their face hitting them that very instant, they got bodyguard and pets, wot?)... it's got to be better.
So much for stamina being unnecessary for robot/ff.
Looks like my hunch that people without Stamina just aren't doing as much as they could be with Stamina is right.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Pylon Soloing: Epic Fail
I read about using pylon soloing as a gauge of DPS in the controller and scrapper forums, and thought I'd have a go at it. Amongst all my toons, I should have one that could solo a pylon, right?
Wrong.
Ice/SS Tanker
The tanker had the least problem with the pylon. "Least problem" means that he had no problem surviving the pylon. I even gathered a little pile of grey-con Nemesis to for endurance recharge. However, I couldn't dent the pylon. This means that my DPS < 127.8125 -- even with Rage double or triple stacked! Arch/Ice Blaster
Well, if a tanker can't do it, let's use a blaster. Using a corner of a building to for retreat if I need to Aid Self, I tried shooting the pylon down. The corner too far off though, and hiding behind the corner lowered DPS drastically. Switch on epic armour, which was a great help (having lethal defense), and went ahead, hoping use Aid Self fast enough. Boom boom, ow -- run behind the corner -- run back out -- boom, boom. After two rounds, I died.
Mind/Storm Controller
Ok, let's try debuffs. Charge in with hurricane. Boom boom boom. Hmmm...you'd think that I wasn't putting any debuffs on the pylon at all. Aid self completely could not keep up, and the knockdown was a real bitch. I died.
AR/Traps Corrupter
I thought I'd try my corrupter with nearly capped S/L defense. To his credit, he survived far longer than any of the squishies. The problem was that I couldn't concentrate on blasting the pylon. Although it didn't hit me, it hit acid mortar and force field generator, and I had to heal them or refresh them. Perhaps some kind of tactics where I stood opposite them? No time to try it out. A corrupter with capped defense still has low hitpoints. Two consecutive hits from the pylon killed me (whereas the tanker had no such problem, with huge hitpoints)
Grav/Fire Dominator
No go, really. The KB was a non-problem because of domination, but after it chewed up Singularity Aid Self just couldn't keep up. Even Aid self on something with a ton of recharge.
Dark/Electric Defender
Thought I'd give this a spin. On the bright side, it was simply in no danger of dying at all. The damage from the pylon at each blast dropped dramatically, although it was hitting at almost every round, as if my to-hit debuffs weren't there at all. I guess the Pylon is resistant to to-hit debuffs. The kb was a bitch, again... and I didn't have enough DPS between bouncing on the ground and healing to hurt the pylon. Not that I would have had enough, with just charge bolts and lightning bolt as my single target attacks. But there were "good periods" when the pylon's hitpoints started to dip downwards.
Kin/Rad Defender
I wondered if the correct choice is then a Kin/Rad defender. Since to-hit debuffs seem to be heavily resisted but -dam not, why not get something with -dam and more damage? It was more risky, but with the -dam and huge healing, she wasn't at risk of dying. She wasn't at risk of killing the pylon only. Fulcrum shift doesn't really do a good job of buffing from a single target. On the other hand, I might want to try it again with a few grey mobs (riki monkeys?) pulled to fuel FS.
Ill/Emp Controller
On the bright side, there was almost no risk for this guy. On the dim side, his team-support build meant there wasn't much he could do except heal phantasm and throw phantom army at the pylon. Nothing much happened. When phantom army was up the pylon hp started to hover downwards (or is that my imagination). When phantom army was down the pylon hp healed up again.
So...I'm not sure how people do it.
On the controller forums, a fire/rad did it in 5:35, a fire/kin did it in 4:51, someone's fire/kin and ill/storm did it, and a plant/rad did it in 15:35. Many scrappers have done it on the scrapper forums.
I'm wondering, do I need a magical powerset combo, or just be purpled and IOed up the wazoo? I know that Mind/storms and Ill/Emps have soloed AVs. /Traps corrupters have as well, though it was a fire/traps. (Solo meaning no inspirations and shivans)
Or is there some trick to it? Or some build magic?
Wrong.
Ice/SS Tanker
The tanker had the least problem with the pylon. "Least problem" means that he had no problem surviving the pylon. I even gathered a little pile of grey-con Nemesis to for endurance recharge. However, I couldn't dent the pylon. This means that my DPS < 127.8125 -- even with Rage double or triple stacked! Arch/Ice Blaster
Well, if a tanker can't do it, let's use a blaster. Using a corner of a building to for retreat if I need to Aid Self, I tried shooting the pylon down. The corner too far off though, and hiding behind the corner lowered DPS drastically. Switch on epic armour, which was a great help (having lethal defense), and went ahead, hoping use Aid Self fast enough. Boom boom, ow -- run behind the corner -- run back out -- boom, boom. After two rounds, I died.
Mind/Storm Controller
Ok, let's try debuffs. Charge in with hurricane. Boom boom boom. Hmmm...you'd think that I wasn't putting any debuffs on the pylon at all. Aid self completely could not keep up, and the knockdown was a real bitch. I died.
AR/Traps Corrupter
I thought I'd try my corrupter with nearly capped S/L defense. To his credit, he survived far longer than any of the squishies. The problem was that I couldn't concentrate on blasting the pylon. Although it didn't hit me, it hit acid mortar and force field generator, and I had to heal them or refresh them. Perhaps some kind of tactics where I stood opposite them? No time to try it out. A corrupter with capped defense still has low hitpoints. Two consecutive hits from the pylon killed me (whereas the tanker had no such problem, with huge hitpoints)
Grav/Fire Dominator
No go, really. The KB was a non-problem because of domination, but after it chewed up Singularity Aid Self just couldn't keep up. Even Aid self on something with a ton of recharge.
Dark/Electric Defender
Thought I'd give this a spin. On the bright side, it was simply in no danger of dying at all. The damage from the pylon at each blast dropped dramatically, although it was hitting at almost every round, as if my to-hit debuffs weren't there at all. I guess the Pylon is resistant to to-hit debuffs. The kb was a bitch, again... and I didn't have enough DPS between bouncing on the ground and healing to hurt the pylon. Not that I would have had enough, with just charge bolts and lightning bolt as my single target attacks. But there were "good periods" when the pylon's hitpoints started to dip downwards.
Kin/Rad Defender
I wondered if the correct choice is then a Kin/Rad defender. Since to-hit debuffs seem to be heavily resisted but -dam not, why not get something with -dam and more damage? It was more risky, but with the -dam and huge healing, she wasn't at risk of dying. She wasn't at risk of killing the pylon only. Fulcrum shift doesn't really do a good job of buffing from a single target. On the other hand, I might want to try it again with a few grey mobs (riki monkeys?) pulled to fuel FS.
Ill/Emp Controller
On the bright side, there was almost no risk for this guy. On the dim side, his team-support build meant there wasn't much he could do except heal phantasm and throw phantom army at the pylon. Nothing much happened. When phantom army was up the pylon hp started to hover downwards (or is that my imagination). When phantom army was down the pylon hp healed up again.
So...I'm not sure how people do it.
On the controller forums, a fire/rad did it in 5:35, a fire/kin did it in 4:51, someone's fire/kin and ill/storm did it, and a plant/rad did it in 15:35. Many scrappers have done it on the scrapper forums.
I'm wondering, do I need a magical powerset combo, or just be purpled and IOed up the wazoo? I know that Mind/storms and Ill/Emps have soloed AVs. /Traps corrupters have as well, though it was a fire/traps. (Solo meaning no inspirations and shivans)
Or is there some trick to it? Or some build magic?
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Crabs in a Pot
While looking up "schadenfreude" on wikipedia in an attempt to see if that was what I was feeling, I came across this amusing, if not exactly researched definition of "crab mentality."
This is slightly closer, but not quite it either.
See, it's not schadenfreude, I'm not taking delight in another's suffering. Quite the opposite, I'm actually feeling physical pain and possibly risking rising blood pressure (even though normally my blood pressure is steady as a placid pond) at reading about other people taking delight in another's suffering.
Crab mentality defines the morass of rubbish and shitstorm in the wake of Positron's announcements, all threads regarding the subject of farms and MA abuse shoveled into two official threads, on which people highly polarized and passionate + people who are just trolling or making an offhand thoughtless comment now and then are quarreling about.
And like one of the crabs in the abovementioned pot, I just seem rather unwilling to let the damn thing go.
Why?
I don't really know why. Maybe it's lost potential. Maybe it's just grumpy dissatisfaction with how people quash other people who don't fit in their nice neat playstyles and lump them all into a nebulous "them" to be feared and hated and fought.
And this "people" includes players and Positron.
I've pretty much settled down into a resigned "let's forget the MA for now" atittude, and am out to explore I13's merits by visiting and revisiting story arcs - especially villainside - that I haven't played, or played and forgot by virtue of being a dominator that gets crushed by purple triangles.
Staying redside and exploring brutes, doms, Arachnos soldiers and Widows and the odd mm and corruptor I wanted to make... along with street sweeping, story arcs, Ouroboros and TFs, can probably last me until this whole Going Rogue shebang, which again, I like the potential of, and can smell branching dialogue and moral choice systems falling into place.
Yet unlike the arenas and PvP zones, of which I can take them or leave them, and don't really care either way what the hell happens inside them... I find I do care a lot about the way MA is going.
Because to me, MA is user-created content, which means flexibility and choice. It was marketed as flexibility and choice and the freedom to go from 1-50 away from dev content as well as a creation system.
It doesn't really matter if during the Rikti Comm Farm period, 95% of my playstyle fell directly into the devs' dream playstyle - some honest, naive player meandering his/her way through thousands of story arcs written for players by players, avoiding storyless maps strewn with enemies.
I somehow feel obliged to defend and state the existence of that other 5% of me that lies to grind and street sweep and min-max and seek high efficiency, as well as the other players for whom "fun" does not lie in reading a wall of text.
And I find it extremely ridiculous that non-exploitative arcs are getting swept up in the frenzy to ban all farm-like objects in the MA. If there are no clear guidelines to follow, wtf is CS using as a judgement call? Their "hunches?" CS is one of the lowest paid, thankless jobs in the industry. AoC had a GM that cybersexed with a player. WoW had a GM who left a "press this button to kill anything" T-shirt with a player. For every CS rep who has a clue, there are equally others who do not. Is this the quality filter user-created arcs are going through? Random spotchecks?
It's the principle of it that's getting me mad. If I were a selfish pragmatic bastard, I could shrug, continue to make my maps which would probably not ring one single alarm bell, publish and unpublish as I feel like it, continue playing how I like, and if I got stomped on, that would be the point I make a fuss and quit, I suppose.
In the same way, I could shrug that my dominator is okay, he does decent amounts of damage, and as long as I eat a luck shield, I can kill EBs, so WAI, cry moar about PToDs.
But I can't. Cos it's the principle of it. I can't quite get to a more rational reason than that. Because I don't want to look like a selfish, arrogant, self-serving jerkwad that only has himself as the centre of the universe would be part of that principle, yes. And because the system just doesn't work if only some outliers are profiteering (yay, perma-doms) as contrasted with overhauling something so that all benefit (yay, I15 dom buff.)
Granted, exploits are exploits. Stuff that is broken is broken. When it's borked, it's borked. So fix it. I'm not saying don't fix it - unlike some in the camp who are just crying that their favorite toy got taken away, disgust at them polarizes some people even further.
But what the hell is with trying to rely on some kind of honour system, unclear guidelines, inconsistent after-the-fact enforcement of retroactive punitive action?
THIS drives me insane. I don't know why, but it DOES. Bat-frothingly, mad-dog-rabidly insane. Maybe because it's as effective (in my opinion) as trying to bail water out of the Titanic with a cheesecloth.
The story arc people are just going to (some smugly and self-righeously, irritating, but what can you do, story elitists are like the PvE version of stereotypical PvPers - some do exist and are jerks and give the playstyle a bad name) continue what they are doing.
The farmers are either going to leave the AE or continue what they are doing until your threatened punishment catches up with them, if ever. Arcs continue being banned randomly for remotedly resembling a farm or making someone somewhere unhappy. And the CS team gets bogged down in an overload of petitions, complaints, re-petitions, re-complaints, appeals and judgement calls.
And then you have the middle of the range who vacillate between the options, some more fearful and paranoid than others, others more complacent until it happens to them.
Life goes on, with a lot of bad feelings stirred up.
May as well NOT have tried to bail water with a cheesecloth. What the heck were you trying to achieve in the first place? Don't know, we aren't being told. *rolls eyes*
If "bad blood" was the answer, it was a pretty darned good attempt. Total failure at anything else, though.
I can't quite seem to get over this. Rationally, it's bad for my blood pressure and nobody else's. Rationally, I am well aware that people make mistakes. And that it's unrealistic to have expectations of perfection (or even acting like how you'd like them to act) from anything or anybody. (Never mind that this assumption was one of the critical flaws in the mess...)
Rationally, I know that some people cannot find it in themselves to apologize or smooth bad feelings over. Rationally, it is making a mountain out of a molehill of disappointed expectations.
I remember reading somewhere that guilt is anger focused in on oneself for not having met some kind of expectation. It's not really guilt. Maybe a slight bit of guilt for giving in to a Rikti Comm Farm, but on the other hand, it was rather instructive to see how the other half flies so to speak. Many of these people talking on high horses have never experienced a farm, fer example. I like to think it made me more open-minded.
I can't for the life of me recall what term was used for anger focused outward at other people for not having met an expectation. Was it frustration? Yeah, I'm suppose I'm somewhat frustrated. I expected this MA system to go as smoothly as promised, and to be as open and flexible as its potential implied - not to end up closed and restrictive as an overreaction against farming.
Especially since I have grown to accept farmers as part and parcel of the landscape of CoX. As long as they afford me the right to give them zero response when they send me a tell asking "farm or fill?", I'm quite happy to let them friggin' be. They play multiple accounts, they pay for the game to remain alive, they're bloody happy doing the same thing over and over again to create more supply and influence.
Yes, there will be mudflation of influence due to farming - but the reverse bid AH lets anyone siphon off a portion of whatever the current value of influence is with a bit of luck and strategy. The only thing you have to come to terms with is that your character build will never sport as many purples and desirable recipes as their characters because you're not spending every waking hour of your game farming. Well, duh.
Irrationally, I'm worrying away at this issue like a dog worries a bone. Mostly in the hope that the devs will respond and something else constructive gets done. Perhaps it is misplaced hope and misplaced trust. Perhaps I should just stop caring and giving a damn. That's sorta like a double tragedy though.
Some closure seems to be lacking. Are all the bans done? Judging from the one CS reply from a GM, not yet. They don't have any guidelines to go by either. Any revelation about these new badges that will point player behavior towards more constructive, non-badge-farming ways? Not yet.
*snorts*
Meanwhile, I shall watch with a certain amount of jilted schadenfreude as the news begins to spread about this fiasco through the blogosphere. They're starting to talk about it now - May 6 through May 12, I've seen the articles all declaiming the obvious failure of user-created content. I can only grin wryly. There was so much hope. All come to this. Not exactly to naught, but to this.
This is slightly closer, but not quite it either.
See, it's not schadenfreude, I'm not taking delight in another's suffering. Quite the opposite, I'm actually feeling physical pain and possibly risking rising blood pressure (even though normally my blood pressure is steady as a placid pond) at reading about other people taking delight in another's suffering.
Crab mentality defines the morass of rubbish and shitstorm in the wake of Positron's announcements, all threads regarding the subject of farms and MA abuse shoveled into two official threads, on which people highly polarized and passionate + people who are just trolling or making an offhand thoughtless comment now and then are quarreling about.
And like one of the crabs in the abovementioned pot, I just seem rather unwilling to let the damn thing go.
Why?
I don't really know why. Maybe it's lost potential. Maybe it's just grumpy dissatisfaction with how people quash other people who don't fit in their nice neat playstyles and lump them all into a nebulous "them" to be feared and hated and fought.
And this "people" includes players and Positron.
I've pretty much settled down into a resigned "let's forget the MA for now" atittude, and am out to explore I13's merits by visiting and revisiting story arcs - especially villainside - that I haven't played, or played and forgot by virtue of being a dominator that gets crushed by purple triangles.
Staying redside and exploring brutes, doms, Arachnos soldiers and Widows and the odd mm and corruptor I wanted to make... along with street sweeping, story arcs, Ouroboros and TFs, can probably last me until this whole Going Rogue shebang, which again, I like the potential of, and can smell branching dialogue and moral choice systems falling into place.
Yet unlike the arenas and PvP zones, of which I can take them or leave them, and don't really care either way what the hell happens inside them... I find I do care a lot about the way MA is going.
Because to me, MA is user-created content, which means flexibility and choice. It was marketed as flexibility and choice and the freedom to go from 1-50 away from dev content as well as a creation system.
It doesn't really matter if during the Rikti Comm Farm period, 95% of my playstyle fell directly into the devs' dream playstyle - some honest, naive player meandering his/her way through thousands of story arcs written for players by players, avoiding storyless maps strewn with enemies.
I somehow feel obliged to defend and state the existence of that other 5% of me that lies to grind and street sweep and min-max and seek high efficiency, as well as the other players for whom "fun" does not lie in reading a wall of text.
And I find it extremely ridiculous that non-exploitative arcs are getting swept up in the frenzy to ban all farm-like objects in the MA. If there are no clear guidelines to follow, wtf is CS using as a judgement call? Their "hunches?" CS is one of the lowest paid, thankless jobs in the industry. AoC had a GM that cybersexed with a player. WoW had a GM who left a "press this button to kill anything" T-shirt with a player. For every CS rep who has a clue, there are equally others who do not. Is this the quality filter user-created arcs are going through? Random spotchecks?
It's the principle of it that's getting me mad. If I were a selfish pragmatic bastard, I could shrug, continue to make my maps which would probably not ring one single alarm bell, publish and unpublish as I feel like it, continue playing how I like, and if I got stomped on, that would be the point I make a fuss and quit, I suppose.
In the same way, I could shrug that my dominator is okay, he does decent amounts of damage, and as long as I eat a luck shield, I can kill EBs, so WAI, cry moar about PToDs.
But I can't. Cos it's the principle of it. I can't quite get to a more rational reason than that. Because I don't want to look like a selfish, arrogant, self-serving jerkwad that only has himself as the centre of the universe would be part of that principle, yes. And because the system just doesn't work if only some outliers are profiteering (yay, perma-doms) as contrasted with overhauling something so that all benefit (yay, I15 dom buff.)
Granted, exploits are exploits. Stuff that is broken is broken. When it's borked, it's borked. So fix it. I'm not saying don't fix it - unlike some in the camp who are just crying that their favorite toy got taken away, disgust at them polarizes some people even further.
But what the hell is with trying to rely on some kind of honour system, unclear guidelines, inconsistent after-the-fact enforcement of retroactive punitive action?
THIS drives me insane. I don't know why, but it DOES. Bat-frothingly, mad-dog-rabidly insane. Maybe because it's as effective (in my opinion) as trying to bail water out of the Titanic with a cheesecloth.
The story arc people are just going to (some smugly and self-righeously, irritating, but what can you do, story elitists are like the PvE version of stereotypical PvPers - some do exist and are jerks and give the playstyle a bad name) continue what they are doing.
The farmers are either going to leave the AE or continue what they are doing until your threatened punishment catches up with them, if ever. Arcs continue being banned randomly for remotedly resembling a farm or making someone somewhere unhappy. And the CS team gets bogged down in an overload of petitions, complaints, re-petitions, re-complaints, appeals and judgement calls.
And then you have the middle of the range who vacillate between the options, some more fearful and paranoid than others, others more complacent until it happens to them.
Life goes on, with a lot of bad feelings stirred up.
May as well NOT have tried to bail water with a cheesecloth. What the heck were you trying to achieve in the first place? Don't know, we aren't being told. *rolls eyes*
If "bad blood" was the answer, it was a pretty darned good attempt. Total failure at anything else, though.
I can't quite seem to get over this. Rationally, it's bad for my blood pressure and nobody else's. Rationally, I am well aware that people make mistakes. And that it's unrealistic to have expectations of perfection (or even acting like how you'd like them to act) from anything or anybody. (Never mind that this assumption was one of the critical flaws in the mess...)
Rationally, I know that some people cannot find it in themselves to apologize or smooth bad feelings over. Rationally, it is making a mountain out of a molehill of disappointed expectations.
I remember reading somewhere that guilt is anger focused in on oneself for not having met some kind of expectation. It's not really guilt. Maybe a slight bit of guilt for giving in to a Rikti Comm Farm, but on the other hand, it was rather instructive to see how the other half flies so to speak. Many of these people talking on high horses have never experienced a farm, fer example. I like to think it made me more open-minded.
I can't for the life of me recall what term was used for anger focused outward at other people for not having met an expectation. Was it frustration? Yeah, I'm suppose I'm somewhat frustrated. I expected this MA system to go as smoothly as promised, and to be as open and flexible as its potential implied - not to end up closed and restrictive as an overreaction against farming.
Especially since I have grown to accept farmers as part and parcel of the landscape of CoX. As long as they afford me the right to give them zero response when they send me a tell asking "farm or fill?", I'm quite happy to let them friggin' be. They play multiple accounts, they pay for the game to remain alive, they're bloody happy doing the same thing over and over again to create more supply and influence.
Yes, there will be mudflation of influence due to farming - but the reverse bid AH lets anyone siphon off a portion of whatever the current value of influence is with a bit of luck and strategy. The only thing you have to come to terms with is that your character build will never sport as many purples and desirable recipes as their characters because you're not spending every waking hour of your game farming. Well, duh.
Irrationally, I'm worrying away at this issue like a dog worries a bone. Mostly in the hope that the devs will respond and something else constructive gets done. Perhaps it is misplaced hope and misplaced trust. Perhaps I should just stop caring and giving a damn. That's sorta like a double tragedy though.
Some closure seems to be lacking. Are all the bans done? Judging from the one CS reply from a GM, not yet. They don't have any guidelines to go by either. Any revelation about these new badges that will point player behavior towards more constructive, non-badge-farming ways? Not yet.
*snorts*
Meanwhile, I shall watch with a certain amount of jilted schadenfreude as the news begins to spread about this fiasco through the blogosphere. They're starting to talk about it now - May 6 through May 12, I've seen the articles all declaiming the obvious failure of user-created content. I can only grin wryly. There was so much hope. All come to this. Not exactly to naught, but to this.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Epic Woes
I've got a case of the Epic Woes. I have two epics, the Warshade and the Bane, both sitting around 40.
Warshade first.
First of all, I thought I'd check out an interestingly named story-arc, which I will call "Bob". Bob promised me a lot of entertainment in the form of pop references to psychology. Seeing that nobody has played it yet, I thought I'd try it.
Enter into the mission. Ahm. Hmm. Dual blades and empathy minions. They were really doing a lot of damage, so I had to turtle in Black Dwarf. Except that even in Black Dwarf, they were tearing me a new one. Every time I injured one, the others would heal it up. I could stun them in human form, but even one left standing tore me to shreds. I was baffled. Why was my Dwarf dying so quickly? Did I miss some kind of change to Black Dwarf resists?
Finally, I gave up and decided to ahead and try Footsteps Initiative again. Oh. Black Dwarf was fine after all, I was barely touched by the Circle of Thorn, at the same difficulty setting. Then I got to the boss. Dangnabit. Human/Nova meant getting spammed with controls and a quick trip to the hospital. Dwarf doesn't have enough damage to take it down. There's the new Mire, but I was running out of endurance so quickly with no appreciable improvement in damage from miring a single boss. So there I was, smashing and smashing, popping blues now and then, until I ran out and the boss barely had a nick in him. No mobs left in the mission to make more fluffies. Fine. I gave up.
A solo warshade is tedious, boring and ineffective. If only I had a team. Somewhere.
Then you get the opposite situation with the Bane. This guy is like a stalker. Perfectly fine, more or less, in a solo mission. Plays like a stealthed blapper.
But there are so many frustrating things about it. First of all, all its melee attacks are long recharging and endurance intensive. Even with two SOs of recharge in each attack, they just don't come back fast enough for me to form a proper attack chain, meaning lots of standing around. Then, they cost so much endurance that even with all that standing around, any period of fighting means I have to keep eating blue pills. Oh, and they're squishy.
...Which becomes a problem when teamed, when you have to stand in the middle of flying AoEs and lots of loose aggro doing these huge melee attacks, with mediocre melee defense (all the while running out of endurance because there are so many mobs to kill).
I think heavy IOing will improve both of them greatly. But I don't see why "epic AT" should mean "epic IOing".
Maybe I should only play the Warshade in a team setting, and just turn the Bane into a Crab (I hate crab legs).
Warshade first.
First of all, I thought I'd check out an interestingly named story-arc, which I will call "Bob". Bob promised me a lot of entertainment in the form of pop references to psychology. Seeing that nobody has played it yet, I thought I'd try it.
Enter into the mission. Ahm. Hmm. Dual blades and empathy minions. They were really doing a lot of damage, so I had to turtle in Black Dwarf. Except that even in Black Dwarf, they were tearing me a new one. Every time I injured one, the others would heal it up. I could stun them in human form, but even one left standing tore me to shreds. I was baffled. Why was my Dwarf dying so quickly? Did I miss some kind of change to Black Dwarf resists?
Finally, I gave up and decided to ahead and try Footsteps Initiative again. Oh. Black Dwarf was fine after all, I was barely touched by the Circle of Thorn, at the same difficulty setting. Then I got to the boss. Dangnabit. Human/Nova meant getting spammed with controls and a quick trip to the hospital. Dwarf doesn't have enough damage to take it down. There's the new Mire, but I was running out of endurance so quickly with no appreciable improvement in damage from miring a single boss. So there I was, smashing and smashing, popping blues now and then, until I ran out and the boss barely had a nick in him. No mobs left in the mission to make more fluffies. Fine. I gave up.
A solo warshade is tedious, boring and ineffective. If only I had a team. Somewhere.
Then you get the opposite situation with the Bane. This guy is like a stalker. Perfectly fine, more or less, in a solo mission. Plays like a stealthed blapper.
But there are so many frustrating things about it. First of all, all its melee attacks are long recharging and endurance intensive. Even with two SOs of recharge in each attack, they just don't come back fast enough for me to form a proper attack chain, meaning lots of standing around. Then, they cost so much endurance that even with all that standing around, any period of fighting means I have to keep eating blue pills. Oh, and they're squishy.
...Which becomes a problem when teamed, when you have to stand in the middle of flying AoEs and lots of loose aggro doing these huge melee attacks, with mediocre melee defense (all the while running out of endurance because there are so many mobs to kill).
I think heavy IOing will improve both of them greatly. But I don't see why "epic AT" should mean "epic IOing".
Maybe I should only play the Warshade in a team setting, and just turn the Bane into a Crab (I hate crab legs).
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Pandora's Box Reopened
I can't help it. I went back to the solo Rikti farm. This time, it's less about xp and more about the tickets.
Why? It was coming close to SO time, and I needed influence and perhaps IOs since the 65 ticket bronze reward rolls were there.
Those ticket rolls get addictive fast. I've never actually had so many melee recipes drop for me before. Neither have I seen the villain market doing so well. The secret I was chasing to get rich in the market is of course, lowbie procs.
I did give myself seed money of 1 mil influence from BJ, using the market and a lvl 11 curtail speed recipe no one in their right minds would want. It was quite fun actually, buying up all the 7 other recipes for cheap, and then putting mine up, and badabing, 1 mil transferred with care.
(Mostly because I'm too lazy to arbitrage salvage and craft IO recipes for that seed money and wait. I hate waiting. I'll leave that niche for someone else to profit from.)
That damn Rikti farm had made me about 4000 tickets, and running a bunch of arcs had given me another 2500 more. I sat down to roll up some melee IOs for my franken-slotting, when steadfast protection: kb protect and so on jumped into my inventory out of the blue.
"...!"
My impulse was to hoard, at first. But then I told myself pointedly, this is redside, where your two current projects are brutes with inbuilt kb protection, and getting knocked on one's behind has never really bothered me - even on a squishy like Sejanna or Black Jeremiah.
While I could always run endless repeat missions on BJ, so I would never be starved of influence, why not try taking advantage of all the farmers feeling rich right now, and IO'ing out their PL'ed builds?
Besides, I've never held more than 9-10 mil on one character (except for the herding tank Invictus who has 30mil) so a little market action seemed like a fun activity to try.
So I started rolling up several hundreds of pool A recipes, and got about 5 steadfast and karma procs (hooray for being at the magic level range, everyone else is PLing right past it), which I put up at the going rates of several million. I sold off one recipe cheaply in order to get the vendor fee, but it's all tradeoffs, no?
I figure I'm making moderate amounts of inf off those who arbitrage the crafted ones off to even richer folk who dump 10-20mil just to get a crafted IO to save them time. (Maybe they are the ones paying $6.99 for a billion inf or whatever.)
And so big fish eat smaller fish, who eat tinier fish. And I seem to have inadverdently joined as an amateur small fry.
At least for a little while, until they nerf these damn comm officers.
Why? It was coming close to SO time, and I needed influence and perhaps IOs since the 65 ticket bronze reward rolls were there.
Those ticket rolls get addictive fast. I've never actually had so many melee recipes drop for me before. Neither have I seen the villain market doing so well. The secret I was chasing to get rich in the market is of course, lowbie procs.
I did give myself seed money of 1 mil influence from BJ, using the market and a lvl 11 curtail speed recipe no one in their right minds would want. It was quite fun actually, buying up all the 7 other recipes for cheap, and then putting mine up, and badabing, 1 mil transferred with care.
(Mostly because I'm too lazy to arbitrage salvage and craft IO recipes for that seed money and wait. I hate waiting. I'll leave that niche for someone else to profit from.)
That damn Rikti farm had made me about 4000 tickets, and running a bunch of arcs had given me another 2500 more. I sat down to roll up some melee IOs for my franken-slotting, when steadfast protection: kb protect and so on jumped into my inventory out of the blue.
"...!"
My impulse was to hoard, at first. But then I told myself pointedly, this is redside, where your two current projects are brutes with inbuilt kb protection, and getting knocked on one's behind has never really bothered me - even on a squishy like Sejanna or Black Jeremiah.
While I could always run endless repeat missions on BJ, so I would never be starved of influence, why not try taking advantage of all the farmers feeling rich right now, and IO'ing out their PL'ed builds?
Besides, I've never held more than 9-10 mil on one character (except for the herding tank Invictus who has 30mil) so a little market action seemed like a fun activity to try.
So I started rolling up several hundreds of pool A recipes, and got about 5 steadfast and karma procs (hooray for being at the magic level range, everyone else is PLing right past it), which I put up at the going rates of several million. I sold off one recipe cheaply in order to get the vendor fee, but it's all tradeoffs, no?
I figure I'm making moderate amounts of inf off those who arbitrage the crafted ones off to even richer folk who dump 10-20mil just to get a crafted IO to save them time. (Maybe they are the ones paying $6.99 for a billion inf or whatever.)
And so big fish eat smaller fish, who eat tinier fish. And I seem to have inadverdently joined as an amateur small fry.
At least for a little while, until they nerf these damn comm officers.
Dr Horrible: The CoX sequel
To make up for sullying my hands with a Rikti Comm Officer farm (well-written and designed, though it was,) I have been trawling through the MA looking for villainous story arcs.
To my surprise, I've found two others that are fantastic and 5-star worthy. (Dirk's Ravens and All in The Family, if you must know.) Seems there's something about the villainous tag, and timed mission approximation of choice/freewill.
But anyhow, my third run has found something that may get removed quite quickly as being a copyright violation. So play it fast!
The Saga of a Woman Scorned, by @Destiny-Morna. It covers the ex-Mrs Dr. Horrible's revenge on her ex. Starts off with a 'song' by the contact, and I see Johnny Snow references in the first mission.
Haven't played it to completion yet, but better mention it before it gets the banstick. :)
To my surprise, I've found two others that are fantastic and 5-star worthy. (Dirk's Ravens and All in The Family, if you must know.) Seems there's something about the villainous tag, and timed mission approximation of choice/freewill.
But anyhow, my third run has found something that may get removed quite quickly as being a copyright violation. So play it fast!
The Saga of a Woman Scorned, by @Destiny-Morna. It covers the ex-Mrs Dr. Horrible's revenge on her ex. Starts off with a 'song' by the contact, and I see Johnny Snow references in the first mission.
Haven't played it to completion yet, but better mention it before it gets the banstick. :)
Monday, May 04, 2009
Pandora's Box
Five years into CoX's anniversary date, I have done the unthinkable. I have walked into a 'farm.'
And quite admired it, if not 'enjoyed' it.
How did the personal slippery slope happen? Well, it starts with my DB brute sucking fumes on endurance before stamina, making him unenjoyable to have to heave air between every spawn => fueling a growing desire to hit level 20 and stamina.
As usual, regular contacts with story arc missions intersperse a great deal of needless bouncing from place to place - here I am in Cap, and some idiot wants me to go all the way to Port Oakes, and then report back to him in Cap, and "Oh, by the way, the next mission door is in Mercy Island. Sorry, I know you're too low level for an Ouroboros portal still, but I gotta rub it in, and use up your temp travel power, y'know!"
This disrupts my personal sense / inbuilt 'clock' of xp efficiency. And like any good brute, I start eyeing the even-con street spawns which are conveniently placed a lot nearer each other, with lots of versimilitude and immersion as they scream in terror or fury as I jump into them and disrupt their protest/evil ritual/funky mechanical communion, etc.
This is all very well and fun, but I still run into the sucking fumes on end problem - coupled with the depressing fact that some idiot halved debt in missions, essentially penalizing dying when street sweeping (and I do die, thanks to the lack of end problem, plus not matured defences.)
It also strikes me that certain mob factions give more xp than others. (Nothing new, right?)
We have also established from long long ago that outdoor maps have more highly packed dense spawns and cut down travel time between spawn encounters because you simply aren't running into potted plant traps and dead ends placed for the hell of it, not to mention cave walls.
It then occurs to me: Well, MA is there. Why don't I look up a faction that is easy to kill for my level range (because we've also established that higher level ranges are buffer to take account for increasing hero powers) and gives higher than normal xp? On an outdoor map?
Said faction happens to be Longbow, and Longbow Nullifiers in particular, by virtue of them being lieutenants. Solo, on rugged, and voila, look, I have forced many lts to spawn, plus a few stray 3 minion groups.
I find such a map, on a brightly lit Atlas Park, and I rather enjoy the simulation of me being a villain deep striking into City Hall territory and wreaking havoc. EXCEPT the illusion is brutally stomped into the ground by the terrible borken "B movie" Inglish the hero bosses are using. "ITS $NAME. GET THAM!" "i need halp" "i sense a darkness over Paragon..."
Before I know it, I'm in tears from too much laughter, the fourth wall smashed to rubble, and I can only just enjoy my xp and ticket count going up.
Somewhere through my second run through of this, my soul is shuddering and it occurs to me that I could do a perfectly more straight-faced immersive version of this. Set up patrols, ambushes, boss spawns, destructible objects, depending on what the map allows, and create the sense of a mayhem mission in MA. (Conveniently, the xp rate is also just as good, of course...If not better, the achievement-efficiency seeker whispers inside me.)
After all, what is the difference between running around and resetting a portal corp dimensional anchor mission and flamebroiling heaps of warwolves/council, etc. and whatever MA generates... except possibly a question of scale?
So then I wonder what the Rikti Comm farms are like, from a technical perspective. How do they set up these spawns? Is it just a question of them throwing in that one mob into a custom group or what?
And what the hell, we all know the Comm Officers are due for a nerf, so I decide to take a solo visit to the highest starred (999+ !) meow farms to check things out.
See, that's the other thing I don't like about farms. Putting up with other people. Dealing with the idiots who take shortcuts as due proccess. Being thrown into an online version of Progress Quest (whatever you do, your numbers are going up, afk or not as you please.)
The allure of being able to attain a high xp efficiency rate alone, when I choose, is a darkly attractive thing indeed. After all, I am happily guilty of venturing solo into repetitive PvP zone missions to farm Arachnos/Longbow maps because the xp/time ratio skyrockets. I have done the same thing for Borea missions until I can't stand it any more. (Fortunately, my tolerance for repetition is generally quite low and I start seeking novelty.)
So I was quite pleasantly surprised to see good grammar in this Rikti farm (You're pretending to fight off a simulated Rikti Comm Officer invasion) and a fiendish cleverness in providing passive allies that don't fight, but generate the big forcefield. Stack a bunch of them together, and voila, soft capped defence. Couple that with the Rikti Comm Officers, which are patently giving way too much xp because they're almost double that of Longbow Nullifiers...
Phew. Impressive. In an evil kind of way.
I can see why some people have decided to exploit the hell out of this before it gets nerfed. Not even I can resist one playthrough in order not to 'waste' the ticket bonus at mission complete.
It also makes me uncomfortable/sad/puzzled too. All at the same time. Because how are the devs supposed to 'fix'/nerf this without stomping on the wonderful options that MA provides?
If you limit the number of allies following you around, or force them to be participants that can die - that ruins other perfectly good mission arcs that I've played. Speeding Through Time makes use of heaps of NPC kins to hilarious fire impy effect, which do take away from xp. Others need passive NPCs set on follow for storyline reasons, and so on. (Though perhaps you can have their powers not affect the PC, then.)
Forcing all custom groups to include minion, lts and bosses would be also quite bad, I think. The joy of custom groups is to be able to control spawn sizes and so on, and setting it all to the standard dynamic spawn rate makes it very vanilla. (It also ruins my own arc somewhat, so I wouldn't be too pleased with that either.)
Of course, that's not going to stop the farmers either. They are going to find the next loophole, the next mob that gives more xp, the next advanced goal or blend of custom/standard mobs that gives the next highest xp/time rate.
So where exactly do we draw the line?
How far do we stomp on general creativity and limit the overall novelty in the MA, in order to try and retard the progress of the efficiency experts and achievement-seekers for whom finding such maximal xp/time spots IS the game?
An RPG is inherently repetitive. It is about killing lots of enemies in order to get lots of xp in order to gain lots of levels and moar funky powers/loot/gear/ULTIMATE COSMIC POWAH.
To disguise it, we use words and storytelling to create the illusion that you're another person doing something heroic/villainous/adventurous, etc.
(And if you're really lucky, more than the illusion of choice but actual tactical / moral choice too.)
Such trappings make things fun for the average player. (Or if I'm not average, then a subset of players who play these things then. It is the novelty of the 'content' and the 'story' that makes them keep coming back, otherwise it gets too 'repetitive', goes the complaint.)
MA's originality and customizable options keep that repetitiveness at bay.
But will it end up getting crippled because of the OTHER subset of players, who are perfectly willing to put up with repetitiveness for a sense of achievement/progress in their numbers and colored bars?
And what about players who straddle both playstyles? Do they lose out completely if both sides get nerfed/fixed? Will they get more frustrated and quit if both playstyles are retarded to the point of gimpiness... or will they gorge themselves to the point of gluttony given what they want, and then grow bored and quit, saying there's nothing else but the same old thing to do?
(Even WITH the presence of options, they may not be smart/clever enough to switch, because they only see the big numbers and like status quo - Even with so many farms out there, only one or two gets played over and over, I hear. It's a safe, established 'brand.')
Puzzles with no easy answers.
And quite admired it, if not 'enjoyed' it.
How did the personal slippery slope happen? Well, it starts with my DB brute sucking fumes on endurance before stamina, making him unenjoyable to have to heave air between every spawn => fueling a growing desire to hit level 20 and stamina.
As usual, regular contacts with story arc missions intersperse a great deal of needless bouncing from place to place - here I am in Cap, and some idiot wants me to go all the way to Port Oakes, and then report back to him in Cap, and "Oh, by the way, the next mission door is in Mercy Island. Sorry, I know you're too low level for an Ouroboros portal still, but I gotta rub it in, and use up your temp travel power, y'know!"
This disrupts my personal sense / inbuilt 'clock' of xp efficiency. And like any good brute, I start eyeing the even-con street spawns which are conveniently placed a lot nearer each other, with lots of versimilitude and immersion as they scream in terror or fury as I jump into them and disrupt their protest/evil ritual/funky mechanical communion, etc.
This is all very well and fun, but I still run into the sucking fumes on end problem - coupled with the depressing fact that some idiot halved debt in missions, essentially penalizing dying when street sweeping (and I do die, thanks to the lack of end problem, plus not matured defences.)
It also strikes me that certain mob factions give more xp than others. (Nothing new, right?)
We have also established from long long ago that outdoor maps have more highly packed dense spawns and cut down travel time between spawn encounters because you simply aren't running into potted plant traps and dead ends placed for the hell of it, not to mention cave walls.
It then occurs to me: Well, MA is there. Why don't I look up a faction that is easy to kill for my level range (because we've also established that higher level ranges are buffer to take account for increasing hero powers) and gives higher than normal xp? On an outdoor map?
Said faction happens to be Longbow, and Longbow Nullifiers in particular, by virtue of them being lieutenants. Solo, on rugged, and voila, look, I have forced many lts to spawn, plus a few stray 3 minion groups.
I find such a map, on a brightly lit Atlas Park, and I rather enjoy the simulation of me being a villain deep striking into City Hall territory and wreaking havoc. EXCEPT the illusion is brutally stomped into the ground by the terrible borken "B movie" Inglish the hero bosses are using. "ITS $NAME. GET THAM!" "i need halp" "i sense a darkness over Paragon..."
Before I know it, I'm in tears from too much laughter, the fourth wall smashed to rubble, and I can only just enjoy my xp and ticket count going up.
Somewhere through my second run through of this, my soul is shuddering and it occurs to me that I could do a perfectly more straight-faced immersive version of this. Set up patrols, ambushes, boss spawns, destructible objects, depending on what the map allows, and create the sense of a mayhem mission in MA. (Conveniently, the xp rate is also just as good, of course...If not better, the achievement-efficiency seeker whispers inside me.)
After all, what is the difference between running around and resetting a portal corp dimensional anchor mission and flamebroiling heaps of warwolves/council, etc. and whatever MA generates... except possibly a question of scale?
So then I wonder what the Rikti Comm farms are like, from a technical perspective. How do they set up these spawns? Is it just a question of them throwing in that one mob into a custom group or what?
And what the hell, we all know the Comm Officers are due for a nerf, so I decide to take a solo visit to the highest starred (999+ !) meow farms to check things out.
See, that's the other thing I don't like about farms. Putting up with other people. Dealing with the idiots who take shortcuts as due proccess. Being thrown into an online version of Progress Quest (whatever you do, your numbers are going up, afk or not as you please.)
The allure of being able to attain a high xp efficiency rate alone, when I choose, is a darkly attractive thing indeed. After all, I am happily guilty of venturing solo into repetitive PvP zone missions to farm Arachnos/Longbow maps because the xp/time ratio skyrockets. I have done the same thing for Borea missions until I can't stand it any more. (Fortunately, my tolerance for repetition is generally quite low and I start seeking novelty.)
So I was quite pleasantly surprised to see good grammar in this Rikti farm (You're pretending to fight off a simulated Rikti Comm Officer invasion) and a fiendish cleverness in providing passive allies that don't fight, but generate the big forcefield. Stack a bunch of them together, and voila, soft capped defence. Couple that with the Rikti Comm Officers, which are patently giving way too much xp because they're almost double that of Longbow Nullifiers...
Phew. Impressive. In an evil kind of way.
I can see why some people have decided to exploit the hell out of this before it gets nerfed. Not even I can resist one playthrough in order not to 'waste' the ticket bonus at mission complete.
It also makes me uncomfortable/sad/puzzled too. All at the same time. Because how are the devs supposed to 'fix'/nerf this without stomping on the wonderful options that MA provides?
If you limit the number of allies following you around, or force them to be participants that can die - that ruins other perfectly good mission arcs that I've played. Speeding Through Time makes use of heaps of NPC kins to hilarious fire impy effect, which do take away from xp. Others need passive NPCs set on follow for storyline reasons, and so on. (Though perhaps you can have their powers not affect the PC, then.)
Forcing all custom groups to include minion, lts and bosses would be also quite bad, I think. The joy of custom groups is to be able to control spawn sizes and so on, and setting it all to the standard dynamic spawn rate makes it very vanilla. (It also ruins my own arc somewhat, so I wouldn't be too pleased with that either.)
Of course, that's not going to stop the farmers either. They are going to find the next loophole, the next mob that gives more xp, the next advanced goal or blend of custom/standard mobs that gives the next highest xp/time rate.
So where exactly do we draw the line?
How far do we stomp on general creativity and limit the overall novelty in the MA, in order to try and retard the progress of the efficiency experts and achievement-seekers for whom finding such maximal xp/time spots IS the game?
An RPG is inherently repetitive. It is about killing lots of enemies in order to get lots of xp in order to gain lots of levels and moar funky powers/loot/gear/ULTIMATE COSMIC POWAH.
To disguise it, we use words and storytelling to create the illusion that you're another person doing something heroic/villainous/adventurous, etc.
(And if you're really lucky, more than the illusion of choice but actual tactical / moral choice too.)
Such trappings make things fun for the average player. (Or if I'm not average, then a subset of players who play these things then. It is the novelty of the 'content' and the 'story' that makes them keep coming back, otherwise it gets too 'repetitive', goes the complaint.)
MA's originality and customizable options keep that repetitiveness at bay.
But will it end up getting crippled because of the OTHER subset of players, who are perfectly willing to put up with repetitiveness for a sense of achievement/progress in their numbers and colored bars?
And what about players who straddle both playstyles? Do they lose out completely if both sides get nerfed/fixed? Will they get more frustrated and quit if both playstyles are retarded to the point of gimpiness... or will they gorge themselves to the point of gluttony given what they want, and then grow bored and quit, saying there's nothing else but the same old thing to do?
(Even WITH the presence of options, they may not be smart/clever enough to switch, because they only see the big numbers and like status quo - Even with so many farms out there, only one or two gets played over and over, I hear. It's a safe, established 'brand.')
Puzzles with no easy answers.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Brawl, Brute, Brawl
I'm convinced now.
So Injunction, the DM/WP brute had brawl on auto and was basically living up to the stereotypical buzzsaw build reputation, right?
I got the funky idea of making a walking advertisement for my arc, and one of the few enemies with names short enough and unique enough in look was the Ares Class Titan.
Besides, dual talsorian blades are freaking cool, and I'd not leveled a DB before. The downer was that I'd have to be SR to match (which confuses me now and again because I think I'm playing Stormscar and have ranged claws.)
The other reason why I got the idea was because I was logging in some lowbie villains and remembered the Gentlemen of Malta villaingroup still exists. Thought it would be hilarious to have the Ares Class Titan as part of that illustrious cohort.
So anyhow, I'm thinking DB is so fast, almost claws-like, perhaps I can just take lots of attacks and forget brawl on auto.
For 13 levels, I struggle with an end bar that plummets after every spawn, even though all attacks are slotted with 1-2 end and only 1 acc. DOs too. I end up pacing around, telling myself I need stamina plus whatever else funky +recovery thing SRs have, really really BADLY.
Turn on brawl to add to more end troubles? Seemed unthinkable, right?
Midway clearing one outdoor misison full of longbow, I say, what the heck, I want to see the brawl kick animation and kick some red and white capes.
Suddenly, I notice I'm cutting down enemies so fast I have half-bars of endurance left because my fury has gone up from half-bar to nearly full.
Dayum.
Puts brawl on auto permanently, and makes a bind for practiced brawler. This is going to get tricky if I forget to punch it...
So Injunction, the DM/WP brute had brawl on auto and was basically living up to the stereotypical buzzsaw build reputation, right?
I got the funky idea of making a walking advertisement for my arc, and one of the few enemies with names short enough and unique enough in look was the Ares Class Titan.
Besides, dual talsorian blades are freaking cool, and I'd not leveled a DB before. The downer was that I'd have to be SR to match (which confuses me now and again because I think I'm playing Stormscar and have ranged claws.)
The other reason why I got the idea was because I was logging in some lowbie villains and remembered the Gentlemen of Malta villaingroup still exists. Thought it would be hilarious to have the Ares Class Titan as part of that illustrious cohort.
So anyhow, I'm thinking DB is so fast, almost claws-like, perhaps I can just take lots of attacks and forget brawl on auto.
For 13 levels, I struggle with an end bar that plummets after every spawn, even though all attacks are slotted with 1-2 end and only 1 acc. DOs too. I end up pacing around, telling myself I need stamina plus whatever else funky +recovery thing SRs have, really really BADLY.
Turn on brawl to add to more end troubles? Seemed unthinkable, right?
Midway clearing one outdoor misison full of longbow, I say, what the heck, I want to see the brawl kick animation and kick some red and white capes.
Suddenly, I notice I'm cutting down enemies so fast I have half-bars of endurance left because my fury has gone up from half-bar to nearly full.
Dayum.
Puts brawl on auto permanently, and makes a bind for practiced brawler. This is going to get tricky if I forget to punch it...