Hawt Crinos wolf!
Seriusly. Just to run around for a while and look hawt. I think that would be worth a month's subscription or so.
Especially if Blizzard's animations are their usual smooth deal and all. And I would totally (to paraphrase someone I heard online) "piss my pants and then run to my chest of drawers, open them and piss on all of the trousers therein" if I could change between wolf form, and back to bipedal on command.
Cow-cats. Pft. Cow-bears. Bleh. Elf-cats and elf-bears? Bah. It's WOLF (hem, worgen?) all the way.
---
I hope their version of the Shattering goes a lot better than RoD's did though.
On the one hand, it looks good on paper. On the other hand, people can find relearning things very difficult and change threatening. Of course, Blizzard is paid loads more money to do good stuff, so if they manage to make their lowbie zones all spiffy and refurbished like their greatly praised Death Knight zones, they may be onto a winner.
And I might just sign up to experience WoW 2.0 After Cataclysm - at least for a month, before I get bored at the endless rat race and leave with lots of kewl wolf pics.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Possibly Caring Far Too Much
Today, I seem to have hit my limit. I am entering a Zen state of "So be it." I can't fix all the flaws in a multitude of systems single-handedly. I am tired of people who cannot articulate what they need precisely. And if stuff fails, well, I am not my work, and there are always competitors to work for.
I'm tired. Piss poor, dog shit-on tired. I think I need to just sleep and not care so fucking much.
*sighs*
Who am I fooling? There's no change in something that is entrenched. I would like to see positive change, but we could be just going around in circles like a lil hamster, and even the lil hamster is having more fun.
I guess we have to wait and see. Again. I need to remind myself to have some fun again.
I'm tired. Piss poor, dog shit-on tired. I think I need to just sleep and not care so fucking much.
*sighs*
Who am I fooling? There's no change in something that is entrenched. I would like to see positive change, but we could be just going around in circles like a lil hamster, and even the lil hamster is having more fun.
I guess we have to wait and see. Again. I need to remind myself to have some fun again.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thanks for Incompetency
Too bad I don't use tags in these posts. This one has to be labeled a rant.
It's not directed at anyone in specific. It's just a whole accumulation of straws on camel backs plus 6 massive things I have to get done on a Sunday in order to meet weekday deadlines because OTHER people have not been doing what they really ought to be doing.
So I'm having a bit of a full blown INTP/INTJ gripe at many many balls that have been dropped and never picked up by anyone... and here I am, with my OCDness and perfectionist sense of responsbility, knowing full well that if I don't pick up the fucking balls, no one else will.
Here I am, trying to delegate to others to help me out here, and it either comes back completed retarded and incompetent, or it doesn't come back at all (so what was the damned point again?)
Alright. I am being unfair. A few things come back that are helpful. Other things come back that are helpful, but not quite relevant to my immediate deadlines. Many operational things are in fact, in operation, and running really smoothly. This will be good a couple weeks from now once the immediate deadlines are cleared.
But the stuff I really need is all in a giant unusuable jumble that I have to compile anyway. Mostly due to prior incompetents being in charge of the stuff I need now.
So I am in a nice bleak happy Pit of INTP Despair/Fury/Self-Satisfaction nursing two quotes to my breast:
I need to frame these somewhere, I think. Just my lil way of getting back at an incompetent world. :/
It's not directed at anyone in specific. It's just a whole accumulation of straws on camel backs plus 6 massive things I have to get done on a Sunday in order to meet weekday deadlines because OTHER people have not been doing what they really ought to be doing.
So I'm having a bit of a full blown INTP/INTJ gripe at many many balls that have been dropped and never picked up by anyone... and here I am, with my OCDness and perfectionist sense of responsbility, knowing full well that if I don't pick up the fucking balls, no one else will.
Here I am, trying to delegate to others to help me out here, and it either comes back completed retarded and incompetent, or it doesn't come back at all (so what was the damned point again?)
Alright. I am being unfair. A few things come back that are helpful. Other things come back that are helpful, but not quite relevant to my immediate deadlines. Many operational things are in fact, in operation, and running really smoothly. This will be good a couple weeks from now once the immediate deadlines are cleared.
But the stuff I really need is all in a giant unusuable jumble that I have to compile anyway. Mostly due to prior incompetents being in charge of the stuff I need now.
So I am in a nice bleak happy Pit of INTP Despair/Fury/Self-Satisfaction nursing two quotes to my breast:
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. - Albert Einstein
Whenever two or more are responsible for something, usually nobody is. - David Allen
I need to frame these somewhere, I think. Just my lil way of getting back at an incompetent world. :/
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Caring Zen Master
That's the dilemma that is currently facing me. I've gone off middling apathetic cruise control straight off the tracks into the Pits of Caring Possibly Too Much.
I feel a certain Juliana tension that I haven't been feeling since the MUD days where one was butting heads against Imms who were quite comfortable with status quo, thank you, there's no need to change anything.
In this case though, jumping ship off to another game is not the optimal strategy because there is a fair chance of changing -some- things. Kinda like CoX. You might be able to persuade the new devs (not Statesman, *shudder*) to go for what the players want, though it would be a long time in the planning and implementation and such, and the players might get bored and jump ship anyways even though you're finally putting the game 'aright' with powers customization and loot and neat new stuff like Mission Architect.
I'm afraid to hold too tightly to hope, but without hope things will get better, there's no motivation to do anything... whereas I am quite enjoying this sudden burst of enthusiasm and energy and Getting Things Done zest that has resurged in me. Except that I'm just a little bit wary that I might get high blood pressure and get a heart attack by age 35 as a result. Lol.
So on the weekends, I'm sitting down reading translations of the Tao Te Ching, and attempting to regain calm spirituality and tranquility.
It's not working out so well.
It's partially my OCDness. I tend to hang onto things tightly with my mind like a bulldog that's not letting go of ze ankle, regardless of whether its tasty flesh and bone he's gnawing, or a mouthful of old steenky cheese sock, until he's bitten through it and/or strangled it, thank you.
So all of the random thought-balls of stuff orbit around like that Osmos game, and frequently bounce into my head whenever they feel like it. I end up scribbling down the thoughts madly in an attempt to bring GTD and mind-like-water into my system, but the existing 'wrongness' throws me off for a little happy mini-rantfest.
Which brings me to the second thing. There's stuff that's inherently WRONG. There's no argument for it working, so let's not change what ain't broke. It's BROKE. It's WRONG. It's in people's way. It NEEDS fixing. It drives me NUTS to see it WRONG. There's always some kind of solution, y'know. Yes, sometimes there's no money to fix it properly, fair enuff. There's sometimes cheap but effective fixes if one thought about it or got creative - certain American institutions are pretty good at those sorts of innovative things. Sometimes it just takes a heck load of THOUGHT and EFFORT but no one is willing to invest the time to do the hard work crunch.
For quite a long while, I have to admit that I was guilty of the same thing. Too much thought and effort, not enough authority to put changes/fixes through, too many other things that had to be done and were in my job description, and I wasn't getting paid enough to fix the other things that were someone else's bloody responsibility.
So now it's suddenly become my bloody responsibility, I'm holding a broken carcass of a thing that may have worked once but died and rotted due to neglect and apathy, and I can't get my bulldog mind to "drop it, Spike, NO! Bad dog, drop it!" for the weekend. Meanwhile Spike is whining that it is WRONG that this thing is on the lawn, in his territory and it needs fixing NOW.
Face it, most of me is inclined to listen to Spike. Wrong things need complaining about and then fixing. That's how things get done. That's how the world gets made a lil better a small step at a time. It's like our old DNA lab technician whose mind was made in a way that he couldn't stand to see messes, it had to be straightened up and cleaned and organized in a neat pleasing arrangement - and it made him a BLOODY GOOD lab technican whose lab was pristine and shiny. Well, Spike (my mind) likes the world (or at least, my part of it) to work pristine and shiny. That's just how things are and who I am, and I'm not particularly keen on changing my personality. That's how I like my image of self to be.
It's keeping me up a lot though. Like when I rejoined ATITD and stayed up nearly 24 hours and barely got 4 hours of sleep the next day because my mind just kept bouncing around and wouldn't let me sleep anyway, so I might as well keep playing. Now my mind is working overtime on weekends and I'm not getting paid a dime for this, but it is exciting and fun and a game I'm quite focused on playing.
New systems. New mechanics. Stuff that is WRONG. Needs fixing. How to fix it. Need to think. Brainstorm. Design. Guess. Hope for serendipity. Random ideas. Evaluate. Discard. Visual think. Iterate. Propose. Re-design. On and on. My mind is screamingly happy. My body is going, omg, how long can you keep this up without overdosing on caffeine or turning to an alcohol dependency, oh wow, the brain says I should feel excited, I actually am, but can the heart take it, hope so.
And the leisure part of my brain is hopping up and down screaming in a tiny little corner of a furiously churning machine, trying to be heard over the noise of grinding cogs, "Oi, don't you think you should be playing some games or doing something to relax and recharge for the next week?!"
And the rest of my brain is going, "Whazzat? No time to stop. Lotsa deadlines. Lotsa wrong things. There's lotsa people counting on me to fix them all in as short a time as possible."
And my ego is egging it on, in a very similar way to RoD, "lol, show those other folks just how it's done. Just how fast you can do it. They think answering 3-4 trivia questions correctly is good? 5-10 glory is great? Well, their jaws is gonna drop when the master typer and trivia king of them all wipes up all 30 of 36 questions. Hoo-ahh! N00bs!"
Not that I'm particularly keen about this part of the ego. And I'm valiantly re-engaging with Tao to dampen this part of it down. But this ego is part of me, and it's something that I gotta deal with. Can be a weakness, can be a strength. Elitism was just a part of my upbringing for good or for ill, alas. I'm aware of it. I try to channel it and harness its energy towards good things like high quality standards, and away from bad ones like selfish arrogance and procrastination.
Welp, that's my 'me' challenge.
The last part of the equation is other people. Like always. I'm suddenly surrounded by a lot less fun and easy-going, and a lot more tense, uptight, defensive, threatened people and politics. It's really easy to get swept up in the general morass of bad feeling.
I gotta stay cool. I gotta be Zen. Calm and unruffled, flexible yet unyielding, like water or tall grass, that is the key.
Easier said than done. :)
It's too easy to be Flame and overreact with zero tact. Conversely, we also do not want to be a pliant, silent victim of a bully - and boy, are a lot of people bullies. If you don't show that you ain't a victim, and fast, they're gonna sit on you, y'know? But you don't want to push back to the point that you become the bully.
Assertive, not aggressive.
Take a page from the martial arts. Avoid the attack, place yourself in a position to harness their charging energy and let them twist themselves into an off-balance position.
Nice ideals, but really, really, easier said than done. Especially when you have lots of people displaying the wrong behaviors and being bad role models all around you.
How am I going to attain Dalai Llama oneness in all of this? Dunno. But I gotta try.
(No, wait. Yoda says there is no try. It is do, or do not.)
So I gotta do. I gotta be.
(But actually, I think that is flawed. Tao encompasses both do and do not. So I gotta find the balance in between.)
Think G'kar. Warrior and monk. Maybe I should rewatch a bunch of Babylon 5 this weekend.
I feel a certain Juliana tension that I haven't been feeling since the MUD days where one was butting heads against Imms who were quite comfortable with status quo, thank you, there's no need to change anything.
In this case though, jumping ship off to another game is not the optimal strategy because there is a fair chance of changing -some- things. Kinda like CoX. You might be able to persuade the new devs (not Statesman, *shudder*) to go for what the players want, though it would be a long time in the planning and implementation and such, and the players might get bored and jump ship anyways even though you're finally putting the game 'aright' with powers customization and loot and neat new stuff like Mission Architect.
I'm afraid to hold too tightly to hope, but without hope things will get better, there's no motivation to do anything... whereas I am quite enjoying this sudden burst of enthusiasm and energy and Getting Things Done zest that has resurged in me. Except that I'm just a little bit wary that I might get high blood pressure and get a heart attack by age 35 as a result. Lol.
So on the weekends, I'm sitting down reading translations of the Tao Te Ching, and attempting to regain calm spirituality and tranquility.
It's not working out so well.
It's partially my OCDness. I tend to hang onto things tightly with my mind like a bulldog that's not letting go of ze ankle, regardless of whether its tasty flesh and bone he's gnawing, or a mouthful of old steenky cheese sock, until he's bitten through it and/or strangled it, thank you.
So all of the random thought-balls of stuff orbit around like that Osmos game, and frequently bounce into my head whenever they feel like it. I end up scribbling down the thoughts madly in an attempt to bring GTD and mind-like-water into my system, but the existing 'wrongness' throws me off for a little happy mini-rantfest.
Which brings me to the second thing. There's stuff that's inherently WRONG. There's no argument for it working, so let's not change what ain't broke. It's BROKE. It's WRONG. It's in people's way. It NEEDS fixing. It drives me NUTS to see it WRONG. There's always some kind of solution, y'know. Yes, sometimes there's no money to fix it properly, fair enuff. There's sometimes cheap but effective fixes if one thought about it or got creative - certain American institutions are pretty good at those sorts of innovative things. Sometimes it just takes a heck load of THOUGHT and EFFORT but no one is willing to invest the time to do the hard work crunch.
For quite a long while, I have to admit that I was guilty of the same thing. Too much thought and effort, not enough authority to put changes/fixes through, too many other things that had to be done and were in my job description, and I wasn't getting paid enough to fix the other things that were someone else's bloody responsibility.
So now it's suddenly become my bloody responsibility, I'm holding a broken carcass of a thing that may have worked once but died and rotted due to neglect and apathy, and I can't get my bulldog mind to "drop it, Spike, NO! Bad dog, drop it!" for the weekend. Meanwhile Spike is whining that it is WRONG that this thing is on the lawn, in his territory and it needs fixing NOW.
Face it, most of me is inclined to listen to Spike. Wrong things need complaining about and then fixing. That's how things get done. That's how the world gets made a lil better a small step at a time. It's like our old DNA lab technician whose mind was made in a way that he couldn't stand to see messes, it had to be straightened up and cleaned and organized in a neat pleasing arrangement - and it made him a BLOODY GOOD lab technican whose lab was pristine and shiny. Well, Spike (my mind) likes the world (or at least, my part of it) to work pristine and shiny. That's just how things are and who I am, and I'm not particularly keen on changing my personality. That's how I like my image of self to be.
It's keeping me up a lot though. Like when I rejoined ATITD and stayed up nearly 24 hours and barely got 4 hours of sleep the next day because my mind just kept bouncing around and wouldn't let me sleep anyway, so I might as well keep playing. Now my mind is working overtime on weekends and I'm not getting paid a dime for this, but it is exciting and fun and a game I'm quite focused on playing.
New systems. New mechanics. Stuff that is WRONG. Needs fixing. How to fix it. Need to think. Brainstorm. Design. Guess. Hope for serendipity. Random ideas. Evaluate. Discard. Visual think. Iterate. Propose. Re-design. On and on. My mind is screamingly happy. My body is going, omg, how long can you keep this up without overdosing on caffeine or turning to an alcohol dependency, oh wow, the brain says I should feel excited, I actually am, but can the heart take it, hope so.
And the leisure part of my brain is hopping up and down screaming in a tiny little corner of a furiously churning machine, trying to be heard over the noise of grinding cogs, "Oi, don't you think you should be playing some games or doing something to relax and recharge for the next week?!"
And the rest of my brain is going, "Whazzat? No time to stop. Lotsa deadlines. Lotsa wrong things. There's lotsa people counting on me to fix them all in as short a time as possible."
And my ego is egging it on, in a very similar way to RoD, "lol, show those other folks just how it's done. Just how fast you can do it. They think answering 3-4 trivia questions correctly is good? 5-10 glory is great? Well, their jaws is gonna drop when the master typer and trivia king of them all wipes up all 30 of 36 questions. Hoo-ahh! N00bs!"
Not that I'm particularly keen about this part of the ego. And I'm valiantly re-engaging with Tao to dampen this part of it down. But this ego is part of me, and it's something that I gotta deal with. Can be a weakness, can be a strength. Elitism was just a part of my upbringing for good or for ill, alas. I'm aware of it. I try to channel it and harness its energy towards good things like high quality standards, and away from bad ones like selfish arrogance and procrastination.
Welp, that's my 'me' challenge.
The last part of the equation is other people. Like always. I'm suddenly surrounded by a lot less fun and easy-going, and a lot more tense, uptight, defensive, threatened people and politics. It's really easy to get swept up in the general morass of bad feeling.
I gotta stay cool. I gotta be Zen. Calm and unruffled, flexible yet unyielding, like water or tall grass, that is the key.
Easier said than done. :)
It's too easy to be Flame and overreact with zero tact. Conversely, we also do not want to be a pliant, silent victim of a bully - and boy, are a lot of people bullies. If you don't show that you ain't a victim, and fast, they're gonna sit on you, y'know? But you don't want to push back to the point that you become the bully.
Assertive, not aggressive.
Take a page from the martial arts. Avoid the attack, place yourself in a position to harness their charging energy and let them twist themselves into an off-balance position.
Nice ideals, but really, really, easier said than done. Especially when you have lots of people displaying the wrong behaviors and being bad role models all around you.
How am I going to attain Dalai Llama oneness in all of this? Dunno. But I gotta try.
(No, wait. Yoda says there is no try. It is do, or do not.)
So I gotta do. I gotta be.
(But actually, I think that is flawed. Tao encompasses both do and do not. So I gotta find the balance in between.)
Think G'kar. Warrior and monk. Maybe I should rewatch a bunch of Babylon 5 this weekend.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Offline MMO
In my weekly perusing of the Steam store, I started reading more closely PlayFirst's slightly discounted offerings. While Emerald City Confidential sounds like an interesting story/adventure game that I might just pick up (probably try the demo first), I can't help but shudder when I look at Wandering Willows.
Is it just me or does it sound like an offline MMO?
For girls, too.
Errands to do for people. *ticks the 'has quests' box*
Stuff to gather, grow and harvest, and then sewing, flower arrangements and cooking. *ticks the 'has crafting' (skewed for girls) box*
Can control your looks and make clothing for yourself to put on. *ticks 'has customization' box*
Animal companion that 'charms' other animals you might wander across, and they might drop an egg that hatches yet another animal companion once 'charmed...' (I dunno, I'd need to see the actual mechanic to see if there's a green bar that goes down piecemeal based on your pet's charm attack and the other guy's charm resistance... but...) *shrugs and ticks the 'has combat' (kinda) box*
Goal of the game? Do quests, er, errands for people (162 of 'em, was it?) until you collect all the shtuff needed to repair your balloon and reach win state. You can also get medals for complete collections of shtuff. *ticks 'tickles the achievement and collection urges and turns them into full-on OCD' box*
I guess the only differences are no obvious levels (maybe the pets have levels?) and no socialization possible with actual people.
Pointless grind with no one to see or talk to or blissful personal haven or both?
Dunno. For some reason it makes me cringe.
Is it just me or does it sound like an offline MMO?
For girls, too.
Errands to do for people. *ticks the 'has quests' box*
Stuff to gather, grow and harvest, and then sewing, flower arrangements and cooking. *ticks the 'has crafting' (skewed for girls) box*
Can control your looks and make clothing for yourself to put on. *ticks 'has customization' box*
Animal companion that 'charms' other animals you might wander across, and they might drop an egg that hatches yet another animal companion once 'charmed...' (I dunno, I'd need to see the actual mechanic to see if there's a green bar that goes down piecemeal based on your pet's charm attack and the other guy's charm resistance... but...) *shrugs and ticks the 'has combat' (kinda) box*
Goal of the game? Do quests, er, errands for people (162 of 'em, was it?) until you collect all the shtuff needed to repair your balloon and reach win state. You can also get medals for complete collections of shtuff. *ticks 'tickles the achievement and collection urges and turns them into full-on OCD' box*
I guess the only differences are no obvious levels (maybe the pets have levels?) and no socialization possible with actual people.
Pointless grind with no one to see or talk to or blissful personal haven or both?
Dunno. For some reason it makes me cringe.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Cruising
It's an odd sort of dry spell.
RL work has been quite busy. Ironically, I am tromping up and down the garden a lot this month, leading teeny tiny very cute kiddies around, and watching them melt in the hot tropical sun.
You can tell the spoiled ones who have spent the better part of their lives in an air-conditioned climate because in 5 minutes, they turn beet red, and the rest only start the whining about heat half an hour into the tour. Mwahahaha.
I'm hoping that I will lose a couple of kilograms from this constant exercise. And get fit(ter) in the bargain.
Sword (wooden) swinging is cruising along too. I apparently have a hip-turning problem, ie. I don't. All golf and baseball bat analogies are unfortunately lost on me. I have no idea how to turn my hips, what it feels like or looks like. Dogs and other canids don't turn their hips, and my early years were not spent clambering around like a monkey or karaoke dancing but emulating and playing at being a werewolf going on fours. (So you can tell the nerds early. *hem*)
I keep wishing I had the time to go back to the martial arts shop and pick up more things, or even to sit down and practice a bit, but time is at a premium and sword swinging doesn't rate that highly, alas.
It's a teensy ironic because you can observe how different people learn in the class. I'm sort of a book learner. I need to see the move done many times over, preferably read it and slowly practice it from a book, and go very very slow when actually doing it, making sure I get each basic form right. Once I get the fundamentals down, and I've actually constructed the concept of the move in my head and can visualize it well, my execution improves and I can ramp up the speed from there, assured that I understood the foundations of the move.
This goes VERY badly against someone who just keeps doing the move (in a mishmash or otherwise) and who waits for the instructor to correct them. (But who might have narrowly missed beating my head in as a result.)
Most of the people at this class are quite mature and generally know how to speed up and down their movements to match. It's just one guy who really has no sense of personal responsibility who mildly annoys me. Young arrogant twerp who likes to play with his metal sword (disregarding safety and getting sharp tongued reprimands from the instructor as a result). He attends two lessons a week, as compared to our novice one, and likes to show off, is VERY fast and aggressive, but doesn't know how to slow his pace to teach.
In a Tao sense, it makes sense for him to be present in the class. He has to learn how to attain control, whereas we get a sense of danger, thrill and learn how to react to fast speed attacks. But he's still ever so slightly scary and annoying. Pft.
Not doing too much with ATITD. Cruising there too. I made a whole bunch of glass. Which I then promptly ruined with an attempt to learn glassblowing. It is an infuriating system. I licked the control/UI aspect by rekeying everything. But I still can't predict how the glass will sag and how to repair sags, and it is also very lag sensitive.
I find thistles and beer quite fun. In the sense of intellectual haha-not-everyone-can-do-it sense of fun. It's a challenge to play with the spreadsheet, follow some hunches and try and follow logical loops to a desired result. And because of this challenge, few people want to attempt it either, so it becomes a valued commodity.
Played the beer and pretzels game of World of Goo for about 30mins last night. Got past the Tower of Goo and Chain points and went into Chapter 2.
Oddly enough, I found the other levels much easier than Tower of Goo. I have no tower building ability. I keep wanting to save all my gooballs, so I build really thin, structurally unsound towers, and the minute all the gooballs crawl up, it becomes top heavy and tilts over.
Irritating.
I finally bit the bullet, gave up OCDness, and extended really wide flaring bases and did a pyramidal structure up to the top. *sighs*
RL work has been quite busy. Ironically, I am tromping up and down the garden a lot this month, leading teeny tiny very cute kiddies around, and watching them melt in the hot tropical sun.
You can tell the spoiled ones who have spent the better part of their lives in an air-conditioned climate because in 5 minutes, they turn beet red, and the rest only start the whining about heat half an hour into the tour. Mwahahaha.
I'm hoping that I will lose a couple of kilograms from this constant exercise. And get fit(ter) in the bargain.
Sword (wooden) swinging is cruising along too. I apparently have a hip-turning problem, ie. I don't. All golf and baseball bat analogies are unfortunately lost on me. I have no idea how to turn my hips, what it feels like or looks like. Dogs and other canids don't turn their hips, and my early years were not spent clambering around like a monkey or karaoke dancing but emulating and playing at being a werewolf going on fours. (So you can tell the nerds early. *hem*)
I keep wishing I had the time to go back to the martial arts shop and pick up more things, or even to sit down and practice a bit, but time is at a premium and sword swinging doesn't rate that highly, alas.
It's a teensy ironic because you can observe how different people learn in the class. I'm sort of a book learner. I need to see the move done many times over, preferably read it and slowly practice it from a book, and go very very slow when actually doing it, making sure I get each basic form right. Once I get the fundamentals down, and I've actually constructed the concept of the move in my head and can visualize it well, my execution improves and I can ramp up the speed from there, assured that I understood the foundations of the move.
This goes VERY badly against someone who just keeps doing the move (in a mishmash or otherwise) and who waits for the instructor to correct them. (But who might have narrowly missed beating my head in as a result.)
Most of the people at this class are quite mature and generally know how to speed up and down their movements to match. It's just one guy who really has no sense of personal responsibility who mildly annoys me. Young arrogant twerp who likes to play with his metal sword (disregarding safety and getting sharp tongued reprimands from the instructor as a result). He attends two lessons a week, as compared to our novice one, and likes to show off, is VERY fast and aggressive, but doesn't know how to slow his pace to teach.
In a Tao sense, it makes sense for him to be present in the class. He has to learn how to attain control, whereas we get a sense of danger, thrill and learn how to react to fast speed attacks. But he's still ever so slightly scary and annoying. Pft.
Not doing too much with ATITD. Cruising there too. I made a whole bunch of glass. Which I then promptly ruined with an attempt to learn glassblowing. It is an infuriating system. I licked the control/UI aspect by rekeying everything. But I still can't predict how the glass will sag and how to repair sags, and it is also very lag sensitive.
I find thistles and beer quite fun. In the sense of intellectual haha-not-everyone-can-do-it sense of fun. It's a challenge to play with the spreadsheet, follow some hunches and try and follow logical loops to a desired result. And because of this challenge, few people want to attempt it either, so it becomes a valued commodity.
Played the beer and pretzels game of World of Goo for about 30mins last night. Got past the Tower of Goo and Chain points and went into Chapter 2.
Oddly enough, I found the other levels much easier than Tower of Goo. I have no tower building ability. I keep wanting to save all my gooballs, so I build really thin, structurally unsound towers, and the minute all the gooballs crawl up, it becomes top heavy and tilts over.
Irritating.
I finally bit the bullet, gave up OCDness, and extended really wide flaring bases and did a pyramidal structure up to the top. *sighs*
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Childhood Dreams
This is crazy cool. Winds of Orbis, they call it. Uses both the Wii Nunchuks and the DDR dance pad to great effect. Virtual reality is getting closer step by step, and I'm not even 40 yet, yay!
The story of how I found this is also sorta serendipital. (I don't want to say serendipitous, even though I do know how to spell it, because it's not completely so, just partial.)
I was reading a Last Lecture transcript by Randy Pausch, about achieving childhood dreams, and he kept mentioning the ETC at Carnegie Mellon.
This sounded very familiar because I had been previously reading about the New Media major in NUS where computer science and game design and journalism and academic critique kinda meshed together. (Also semi-mourning the fact that such a major didn't exist ten years ago where I would have been first at the door. A masters in the field is kinda intimidating, to say the least, since I have no damn experience, just lots of interest.)
So I looked up the website, where most of the student projects looked like student projects, stillborn with high hopes, and a few of them were really impressive. Like Winds of Orbis.
And the reason why I started with the Last Lecture transcript in the first place?
Our new Education Programmes director sent it to us in an email, using an inspirational quote about a brick wall.
(He's from Carnegie Mellon, y'see. Does peer-to-peer network computer science-y research stuff. Also a Rafflesian. I have high hopes. Again.)
Oh, and the quote?
I feel like framing it.
Actually, there's a lot of great quotes in this transcript I feel like framing.
But this one really sings to me. I see it a lot in ATITD. There are a lot of systems that are 'brick walls.' Too tough for most people to figure out. A lot of them don't want to bother. They say, "Oh, I don't even try." "It's too complicated." "I don't do those."
Yeah, it takes some effort to figure them out. There's some intellectual effort, or a lot of skill and practice, or just a clever way of figuring out how to game it.
But once you can do them, you are suddenly more valuable than the other people. And the system works to your advantage to keep the other guys out and your value in.
Quite a lot of RL works that way too, I find.
The only thing somewhat depressing about the whole inspirational dreams talk is that I don't really remember what my own childhood dreams were anymore.
I wanted to be a scientist. Working in a lab. That one I remember. Been there, done that. Actual research turned out a lot more boring and not for me than I had imagined. Going back to the enthusiastic edutaining science of my youth and being a 'scientist' in the eyes of hundreds of kiddies out there was a lot more like it.
Achieved. Still achieving. Quite happy about it. Next?
I wanted to write this great fantasy novel and become the next Neil Gaiman sort of person.
Okaay. So we're not quite there yet on the fame, but I'm not sure I want the fame and the touring and the attention part of it. I'm not even sure I want the published part of the equation either, cos that's like an entire icky industry of self-promotion and book signings to navigate.
The cat lady author part has to wait until I can even own a cat without inducing my family's ire. That means either move out, or wait for them to leave this world. Not that I'm in a real hurry about it. My room is not even cat-friendly with the mess underfoot, let alone the entire house.
The writing part has been partially experienced in my crazy Nanowrimo month. While quite an intense rush, and some bits of it were really lurking in my subconscious waiting for release, I'm no longer sure there's much of an actual book or story left anymore.
I figure I might do Nanowrimo again this year and see. So. Project: Novel - not quite achieved. Working on it. Waffling on the actual desire.
I wanted to work at a game company and contribute somehow to making a great game.
Not achieved. Not quite sure how to get an 'in.' Patiently waiting for the industry to pick up in Singapore. Keeping my fingers crossed that in the next 5-10 years, education and technology and the Science Centre will get mixed up with gaming at some point, and the right opportunity will come along. (I don't particularly want to join a dot-com-like startup now and be laid off six months down the road with no game, ya know.) I think it's creeping there.
The interest in games in Singapore is a surprising groundswell in the younger generation. The three new educators we hired are all quite game savvy. Two of them do the whole WoW guild raid thing, and yesh, one of them is a grrl. So yeah, I think it is totally getting there. Eventually.
I mean, you have internet Flash games, and mobile phone games (and everyone and their dog has a mobile in Singapore), there are three kinds of consoles being sold in the mainstream department stores with family games and exercise games and yeah, even FPSes and RPGs, and there are games you can play on the telly or sitting on Singapore Airlines, we have a Computer Expo practically every quarter, and even the World Cyber Games and professional gaming are picking up on a local interest front... it is SO getting to the point of mainstream acceptance.
Alright. So other than those three big ones, I don't think I have any more that I can remember. Maybe something about cooking and eating. But I'm not interested in doing that professionally, and I do lots of dream fulfillment on the visiting restaurants and eating score, and I cook what I want to eat from time to time, and the Asian Food Channel is fun to watch.
I have wishes for my hobbies, but that's not quite on the same scale as childhood dreams.
Leaves me with a slightly deflated "Huh, is that it?" sort of feeling.
So much for an imaginative childhood.
Oh. Oh wait. Ah yes...
...I also dreamed about being an X-man, a ninja turtle, and an all-powerful god being that was captain of his very own starship that could cross the universe in the blink of an eye and had lots of fantastic adventures.
Hmm. Somehow I think those are ever so teensy bit harder to achieve unless I can find a radiation source that works like the movies advertise.
I was never a realist in my childhood, I guess. *wry grin*
The story of how I found this is also sorta serendipital. (I don't want to say serendipitous, even though I do know how to spell it, because it's not completely so, just partial.)
I was reading a Last Lecture transcript by Randy Pausch, about achieving childhood dreams, and he kept mentioning the ETC at Carnegie Mellon.
This sounded very familiar because I had been previously reading about the New Media major in NUS where computer science and game design and journalism and academic critique kinda meshed together. (Also semi-mourning the fact that such a major didn't exist ten years ago where I would have been first at the door. A masters in the field is kinda intimidating, to say the least, since I have no damn experience, just lots of interest.)
So I looked up the website, where most of the student projects looked like student projects, stillborn with high hopes, and a few of them were really impressive. Like Winds of Orbis.
And the reason why I started with the Last Lecture transcript in the first place?
Our new Education Programmes director sent it to us in an email, using an inspirational quote about a brick wall.
(He's from Carnegie Mellon, y'see. Does peer-to-peer network computer science-y research stuff. Also a Rafflesian. I have high hopes. Again.)
Oh, and the quote?
But remember, the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the other people.
I feel like framing it.
Actually, there's a lot of great quotes in this transcript I feel like framing.
But this one really sings to me. I see it a lot in ATITD. There are a lot of systems that are 'brick walls.' Too tough for most people to figure out. A lot of them don't want to bother. They say, "Oh, I don't even try." "It's too complicated." "I don't do those."
Yeah, it takes some effort to figure them out. There's some intellectual effort, or a lot of skill and practice, or just a clever way of figuring out how to game it.
But once you can do them, you are suddenly more valuable than the other people. And the system works to your advantage to keep the other guys out and your value in.
Quite a lot of RL works that way too, I find.
The only thing somewhat depressing about the whole inspirational dreams talk is that I don't really remember what my own childhood dreams were anymore.
I wanted to be a scientist. Working in a lab. That one I remember. Been there, done that. Actual research turned out a lot more boring and not for me than I had imagined. Going back to the enthusiastic edutaining science of my youth and being a 'scientist' in the eyes of hundreds of kiddies out there was a lot more like it.
Achieved. Still achieving. Quite happy about it. Next?
I wanted to write this great fantasy novel and become the next Neil Gaiman sort of person.
Okaay. So we're not quite there yet on the fame, but I'm not sure I want the fame and the touring and the attention part of it. I'm not even sure I want the published part of the equation either, cos that's like an entire icky industry of self-promotion and book signings to navigate.
The cat lady author part has to wait until I can even own a cat without inducing my family's ire. That means either move out, or wait for them to leave this world. Not that I'm in a real hurry about it. My room is not even cat-friendly with the mess underfoot, let alone the entire house.
The writing part has been partially experienced in my crazy Nanowrimo month. While quite an intense rush, and some bits of it were really lurking in my subconscious waiting for release, I'm no longer sure there's much of an actual book or story left anymore.
I figure I might do Nanowrimo again this year and see. So. Project: Novel - not quite achieved. Working on it. Waffling on the actual desire.
I wanted to work at a game company and contribute somehow to making a great game.
Not achieved. Not quite sure how to get an 'in.' Patiently waiting for the industry to pick up in Singapore. Keeping my fingers crossed that in the next 5-10 years, education and technology and the Science Centre will get mixed up with gaming at some point, and the right opportunity will come along. (I don't particularly want to join a dot-com-like startup now and be laid off six months down the road with no game, ya know.) I think it's creeping there.
The interest in games in Singapore is a surprising groundswell in the younger generation. The three new educators we hired are all quite game savvy. Two of them do the whole WoW guild raid thing, and yesh, one of them is a grrl. So yeah, I think it is totally getting there. Eventually.
I mean, you have internet Flash games, and mobile phone games (and everyone and their dog has a mobile in Singapore), there are three kinds of consoles being sold in the mainstream department stores with family games and exercise games and yeah, even FPSes and RPGs, and there are games you can play on the telly or sitting on Singapore Airlines, we have a Computer Expo practically every quarter, and even the World Cyber Games and professional gaming are picking up on a local interest front... it is SO getting to the point of mainstream acceptance.
Alright. So other than those three big ones, I don't think I have any more that I can remember. Maybe something about cooking and eating. But I'm not interested in doing that professionally, and I do lots of dream fulfillment on the visiting restaurants and eating score, and I cook what I want to eat from time to time, and the Asian Food Channel is fun to watch.
I have wishes for my hobbies, but that's not quite on the same scale as childhood dreams.
Leaves me with a slightly deflated "Huh, is that it?" sort of feeling.
So much for an imaginative childhood.
Oh. Oh wait. Ah yes...
...I also dreamed about being an X-man, a ninja turtle, and an all-powerful god being that was captain of his very own starship that could cross the universe in the blink of an eye and had lots of fantastic adventures.
Hmm. Somehow I think those are ever so teensy bit harder to achieve unless I can find a radiation source that works like the movies advertise.
I was never a realist in my childhood, I guess. *wry grin*
Sunday, August 02, 2009
The Mindful Design of Everything Things
Human beings are strange creatures, aren't they? So easily manipulated in their behavior by the simplest of UI adjustments or by the virtue of having something pop up directly in their face or just being there.
If a person wants to remember their keys or an important file in the morning, they make sure they put it along the path they take to work, preferably at hanging at eye level right at the front door, or where they can trip and fall over it and thus remember it exists.
In the same way, a lot of my burnout factor was simply due to the fact that my compound and all the crap in it was -there.- Seven sheep farms eat a lot of onions. Everytime I logged on, it meant culling the sheep, and then there was an obligation to grow enough onions to keep them up.
I could have just separated them to stop the breeding, or culled them all to stop, but the farms were -there-, seemed like a waste to stop.
Then there was my "sekrit" camel pen. Because camels are distributed on a highest straw in the region basis, putting my camel pen somewhere accessible would mean me competing with my own guild. So I came up with the half-baked n00b idea of sticking it somewhere totally ulu to win my own camel.
It didn't work for a long time. Then came the fateful day when everyone else had gotten all the camels they wanted, and mine was the highest straw. A camel suddenly turned up when I checked it. Oh, hey, I get the chance to try out this ATITD system after all.
Except it turns out that I had to load in 2000+ straw every DAY to keep the camels happy, because there was only me to cull the camels and I could only check every 1-2 days. Leaving the camels to breed like bunnies and eat up all the straw, versus a guild full of people who would check every 8 hours or less.
So I ended up spending an hour every day turning into some kind of heroic straw hauler. First, spend 30 mins by guild's ten greenhouses, harvesting enough grass for approximately 4000-6000 straw, that had to be dryed out on 20 drying racks. Ostensibly feed all the guild's four camel pens, while sneaking out 1000-2000 straw for my own pen.
The 2000 straw had to be carried with gimpy str, so I normally had to go eat a grilled pepper or cooked food for extra stats. Then burn travel time to zap as close to the camel pen as possible, run another 5 minutes to it, dump in the straw, cull the camels *click click click*, feed honey to the camels for camel milk, and zap back home.
Did I mention this was a daily chore? Plus the sheep that needed attention?
God knows why I did that. I had these Herculean dreams of being known as the leatherwoman, I suppose. To produce the same amount of leather as whole guilds were, so I could...oh, I dunno, offer it to them as gifts to curry favor?
And mostly because they were there and in my face. Log on, see 7 pens, click on them for lack of anything better to do. Oops, they need onions. *Begin automatic onion harvest/run routine* Aha, sheep remind me of camels. *Begin automatic camel tending run*
By the time I hit home two hours later, there were the Indonesian Bee Hives and citrus trees to manage. Since my lil grove was there.
And then the three colorful beetle terrariums were in my face taunting me. *Begin cabbage growing/hauling routine* *Begin beetle sorting/culling routine*
Harvests were only 18-23 cabbages per, so it again took quite a while to build up enough cabbages. And since they were -there- and needed checking every 8 hours or so, or they would grow uncontrollably and eat up all my hard grown cabbages, I ended up sneaking an ATITD visit every morning before work, and lugged my laptop to work to steal in at midday.
I have a lot more freedom of mind now that I am a homeless hobo. Sure, there's a lot of sheep and camel pens and rabbits and cobras and ants and silkworms and chickens in the guild. But if I don't tend them, someone else will. So I get to pick and choose which I feel like doing.
I also hope to play a little more strategically this time around. If I try to do everything at once, I end up obsessively logged for 12 hours, pulling all-nighters. Not good.
So. One self-selected goal at a time. Mindfully putting only one task in front of me to focus on, even before I log on.
Think that's the way to stretch the ATITD game. Less good for the subscription dollars, I suppose, but ah, what's $20. Less than half the price of a singleplayer PC game that I may play for two days out of a month.
If a person wants to remember their keys or an important file in the morning, they make sure they put it along the path they take to work, preferably at hanging at eye level right at the front door, or where they can trip and fall over it and thus remember it exists.
In the same way, a lot of my burnout factor was simply due to the fact that my compound and all the crap in it was -there.- Seven sheep farms eat a lot of onions. Everytime I logged on, it meant culling the sheep, and then there was an obligation to grow enough onions to keep them up.
I could have just separated them to stop the breeding, or culled them all to stop, but the farms were -there-, seemed like a waste to stop.
Then there was my "sekrit" camel pen. Because camels are distributed on a highest straw in the region basis, putting my camel pen somewhere accessible would mean me competing with my own guild. So I came up with the half-baked n00b idea of sticking it somewhere totally ulu to win my own camel.
It didn't work for a long time. Then came the fateful day when everyone else had gotten all the camels they wanted, and mine was the highest straw. A camel suddenly turned up when I checked it. Oh, hey, I get the chance to try out this ATITD system after all.
Except it turns out that I had to load in 2000+ straw every DAY to keep the camels happy, because there was only me to cull the camels and I could only check every 1-2 days. Leaving the camels to breed like bunnies and eat up all the straw, versus a guild full of people who would check every 8 hours or less.
So I ended up spending an hour every day turning into some kind of heroic straw hauler. First, spend 30 mins by guild's ten greenhouses, harvesting enough grass for approximately 4000-6000 straw, that had to be dryed out on 20 drying racks. Ostensibly feed all the guild's four camel pens, while sneaking out 1000-2000 straw for my own pen.
The 2000 straw had to be carried with gimpy str, so I normally had to go eat a grilled pepper or cooked food for extra stats. Then burn travel time to zap as close to the camel pen as possible, run another 5 minutes to it, dump in the straw, cull the camels *click click click*, feed honey to the camels for camel milk, and zap back home.
Did I mention this was a daily chore? Plus the sheep that needed attention?
God knows why I did that. I had these Herculean dreams of being known as the leatherwoman, I suppose. To produce the same amount of leather as whole guilds were, so I could...oh, I dunno, offer it to them as gifts to curry favor?
And mostly because they were there and in my face. Log on, see 7 pens, click on them for lack of anything better to do. Oops, they need onions. *Begin automatic onion harvest/run routine* Aha, sheep remind me of camels. *Begin automatic camel tending run*
By the time I hit home two hours later, there were the Indonesian Bee Hives and citrus trees to manage. Since my lil grove was there.
And then the three colorful beetle terrariums were in my face taunting me. *Begin cabbage growing/hauling routine* *Begin beetle sorting/culling routine*
Harvests were only 18-23 cabbages per, so it again took quite a while to build up enough cabbages. And since they were -there- and needed checking every 8 hours or so, or they would grow uncontrollably and eat up all my hard grown cabbages, I ended up sneaking an ATITD visit every morning before work, and lugged my laptop to work to steal in at midday.
I have a lot more freedom of mind now that I am a homeless hobo. Sure, there's a lot of sheep and camel pens and rabbits and cobras and ants and silkworms and chickens in the guild. But if I don't tend them, someone else will. So I get to pick and choose which I feel like doing.
I also hope to play a little more strategically this time around. If I try to do everything at once, I end up obsessively logged for 12 hours, pulling all-nighters. Not good.
So. One self-selected goal at a time. Mindfully putting only one task in front of me to focus on, even before I log on.
Think that's the way to stretch the ATITD game. Less good for the subscription dollars, I suppose, but ah, what's $20. Less than half the price of a singleplayer PC game that I may play for two days out of a month.
A Tale of Two Ratings
Popular, mainstream, easy and utilized?
Or challenging, in the 'spirit' of things, and correspondingly rarely ever seen.
I could be describing the player ratings of the Mission Architect system of CoX, or the tendency of Thought puzzles in ATITD, any commercial computer game out there, and probably lots more.
This struck me as I decided to spend a part of my weekend catching up on the principles (and corresponding level gain, goal ahchievement click) of several Thought puzzles.
I have no desire to chase the harder Test pass, so I'm going for the easier Principles pass which just requires me to play and -solve- three recently awarded puzzles for each.
The good news about being away for weeks and months is that many people have been busy constructing all these puzzles, so all I need to do now is find them and play 'em.
On my list are Pathmakers (a game where you create a closed circuit by following a number of rules for where a line may bend or not), the Bijou (an intriguing way to practice gem cutting without wasting gems - a virtual gem is provided and you have to obtain a depicted goal), the Venery (a storytelling clue/treasure hunt where one moves from hidden station to station) and the Hexaglyphs (not tried it yet, looks like some spatial puzzle.) Along the way, progress is made towards two other Tests/principles, that of Reason (solving Thought puzzles) and the Critic (passing judgements and ratings.)
In a sense, it is ironic that there are Tests that coax players into participating in the puzzles and rating other people. It suggests that without them, people would not bother to travel the long distances otherwise or waste the time solving them. Contrast that with the in-your-face UI popup of the Mission Architect, where it has become second nature to rate 'stars' for a mission.
I also detect a high reluctance in myself to wander far off the beaten path. I am focused on just getting my principle pass. I am not interested in wasting time exploring across the countryside for 2 hours when the same goal can be done in 15 mins elsewhere. No doubt, I am in the majority here, as people have learned to stick their Thought Puzzles within stone's throw of each chariot stop.
And if the Thought Puzzle is too hard, I whimper and start looking for another equally eligible puzzle.
Guess this is the destination versus journey focus at work. I don't find many of these Thought puzzles fun. I'm just doing them because they are easy levels. I would be interested in Veneries and Bijous for their own sake in the future, but Pathmakers - eew.
Or challenging, in the 'spirit' of things, and correspondingly rarely ever seen.
I could be describing the player ratings of the Mission Architect system of CoX, or the tendency of Thought puzzles in ATITD, any commercial computer game out there, and probably lots more.
This struck me as I decided to spend a part of my weekend catching up on the principles (and corresponding level gain, goal ahchievement click) of several Thought puzzles.
I have no desire to chase the harder Test pass, so I'm going for the easier Principles pass which just requires me to play and -solve- three recently awarded puzzles for each.
The good news about being away for weeks and months is that many people have been busy constructing all these puzzles, so all I need to do now is find them and play 'em.
On my list are Pathmakers (a game where you create a closed circuit by following a number of rules for where a line may bend or not), the Bijou (an intriguing way to practice gem cutting without wasting gems - a virtual gem is provided and you have to obtain a depicted goal), the Venery (a storytelling clue/treasure hunt where one moves from hidden station to station) and the Hexaglyphs (not tried it yet, looks like some spatial puzzle.) Along the way, progress is made towards two other Tests/principles, that of Reason (solving Thought puzzles) and the Critic (passing judgements and ratings.)
In a sense, it is ironic that there are Tests that coax players into participating in the puzzles and rating other people. It suggests that without them, people would not bother to travel the long distances otherwise or waste the time solving them. Contrast that with the in-your-face UI popup of the Mission Architect, where it has become second nature to rate 'stars' for a mission.
I also detect a high reluctance in myself to wander far off the beaten path. I am focused on just getting my principle pass. I am not interested in wasting time exploring across the countryside for 2 hours when the same goal can be done in 15 mins elsewhere. No doubt, I am in the majority here, as people have learned to stick their Thought Puzzles within stone's throw of each chariot stop.
And if the Thought Puzzle is too hard, I whimper and start looking for another equally eligible puzzle.
Guess this is the destination versus journey focus at work. I don't find many of these Thought puzzles fun. I'm just doing them because they are easy levels. I would be interested in Veneries and Bijous for their own sake in the future, but Pathmakers - eew.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
KAGEY
So is it kindness, altruism, guilt, or enlightened self-interest? Or Yes to all of the above?
It's really hard to quantify some of the social transactions / interactions that take place in ATITD.
The majority of the people living in the game seem inclined to cooperation for the most part, with a couple of competitive exceptions who will nickel and dime others for every interaction.
The latest social interaction that is puzzling me since my return to the game is the chance coincidence of the organizer of a Vigil being (possibly) the main pillager/looter/salvager of my abandoned compound.
Said organizer is also the co-head of a bunch of guilds in the Queen's Retreat region, which I've never had much opportunity to interact with, since they live on the other side of town, so to speak.
Evidently she had some guilty feelings on my return, because she chatted me to fess up to grabbing the compound. I basically told her no biggy, because in truth, I don't have a major problem with personal in-game property collections anymore, but let's face it, I did have quite a LOT of stuff with value in the entire compound, 3+ months of hoarding can accumulate a lot - though it is probably more valuable to someone with a competitive instinct and better organizational skills than I.
So I'm sure there's some debt feelings on their part because let's face it again, unreasonable greedy grasping people who don't know how to cooperate would NOT last long in ATITD. They feel like they owe me, and want to help me rebuild in order to clear the debt, kinda.
Except that I have fiendishly refused to accept a simple rebuilt compound in kind, shrugging it off as nothing. And in the course of the conversation, we also found that I had a talent/liking for a particular chore (barley growing), which she was desperately in need of, for her own goals.
I also let her know that I was looking for a Vigil. And oh, it turns out that she is organizing one practically every week. And that a number of my hoarded stuff has been added to her Vigil stocks. (So theoretically speaking, I have virtually donated to the Vigil.)
Practically speaking though, I am penniless and destitute in personal property. There is nothing of my own I can offer up to the Vigil.
On the other hand, I have access rights to the stores of a very well stocked guild and the GM doesn't mind me borrowing stuff - maybe they know I'll replace it and stuffs eventually. I have that sort of mindset anyway.
Then there was the offer out of the blue halfway through the Vigil from the lady who swept up my compound. To go join the Vigil. Obviously, she knows I don't bloody have anything of my own. So she starts dragging stuff out of her guild's Vigil stockpile warehouses and dumping them on me.
When she has to go, she tells the other guildie in charge of the Vigil fire to supply me with stuff out of their warehouse.
Erm, wow. Strictly speaking, that's not exactly necessary, it's like free charity, blah blah blah. Someone with a lot more money-minded transaction mind would NOT be happy about it.
On the other hand, it's not kosher for me to just suck up someone's resources without attempting to even the score. So for the two hours I'm sitting at the vigil, I bring some barley growing ingredients and produce 650 barley, which I just pop onto the nice lady as a return gesture too.
It probably doesn't make up for all the Vigil materials, but I'm planning to grow more for 'em, and also perhaps wiggle my way into their guild too. Sorta mutually beneficial, in a sense.
Nor am I a cad, so I'm certainly going to help them stock up for their next Vigil in return too.
And they also benefit by inviting me into this Vigil, because I can provide rescue resources from my own humongous guild with lasseiz-faire guild leader. The bigger the Vigil grows, the more they benefit because they have made more sacs than I have.
Of course, I fully intend to RETURN the resources to my own guild over the next couple days-weeks, whatever I borrow, that is. So all I'm doing is tying myself down to the social networks in the game even further, because I'm not going to quit until I reach a certain breakeven point in return for all the kindness initially shown to me, right?
(Despite all my helpless claims of inadverdent RL issues getting in the way - btw, the only one who's questioned me so far on what happened is only one competitive-minded guy who was inconvenienced in Test passing with my and another guy's quitting, the other guy quit first btw.. and he stopped being pushy when I said RL - the truth about me quitting was because I was fucking bored out of my skull due to the pace of change in the game, and the chores to accumulate stuff singlehandedly was driving me nuts.)
So yeah, I don't know how to classify the behavior currently being shown to me. In one sense, I would empathize with the aggressive competitive-minded guy because rational behavior is ruthless. It makes logical sense. But it doesn't build any long term bonds/feelings of debt & recipocration either.
Whereas acts of random hard-to-measure kindness are a different kettle of fish.
I now have a bazillion goals of things to do to repay such and such person or organization, or make friends with so-and-so, instead of feeling unwanted and unwelcome because I am not carrying my own weight with personally generated stuff.
Hmm. Wonder if this is the story of the human race in microcosm yet again.
It's really hard to quantify some of the social transactions / interactions that take place in ATITD.
The majority of the people living in the game seem inclined to cooperation for the most part, with a couple of competitive exceptions who will nickel and dime others for every interaction.
The latest social interaction that is puzzling me since my return to the game is the chance coincidence of the organizer of a Vigil being (possibly) the main pillager/looter/salvager of my abandoned compound.
Said organizer is also the co-head of a bunch of guilds in the Queen's Retreat region, which I've never had much opportunity to interact with, since they live on the other side of town, so to speak.
Evidently she had some guilty feelings on my return, because she chatted me to fess up to grabbing the compound. I basically told her no biggy, because in truth, I don't have a major problem with personal in-game property collections anymore, but let's face it, I did have quite a LOT of stuff with value in the entire compound, 3+ months of hoarding can accumulate a lot - though it is probably more valuable to someone with a competitive instinct and better organizational skills than I.
So I'm sure there's some debt feelings on their part because let's face it again, unreasonable greedy grasping people who don't know how to cooperate would NOT last long in ATITD. They feel like they owe me, and want to help me rebuild in order to clear the debt, kinda.
Except that I have fiendishly refused to accept a simple rebuilt compound in kind, shrugging it off as nothing. And in the course of the conversation, we also found that I had a talent/liking for a particular chore (barley growing), which she was desperately in need of, for her own goals.
I also let her know that I was looking for a Vigil. And oh, it turns out that she is organizing one practically every week. And that a number of my hoarded stuff has been added to her Vigil stocks. (So theoretically speaking, I have virtually donated to the Vigil.)
Practically speaking though, I am penniless and destitute in personal property. There is nothing of my own I can offer up to the Vigil.
On the other hand, I have access rights to the stores of a very well stocked guild and the GM doesn't mind me borrowing stuff - maybe they know I'll replace it and stuffs eventually. I have that sort of mindset anyway.
Then there was the offer out of the blue halfway through the Vigil from the lady who swept up my compound. To go join the Vigil. Obviously, she knows I don't bloody have anything of my own. So she starts dragging stuff out of her guild's Vigil stockpile warehouses and dumping them on me.
When she has to go, she tells the other guildie in charge of the Vigil fire to supply me with stuff out of their warehouse.
Erm, wow. Strictly speaking, that's not exactly necessary, it's like free charity, blah blah blah. Someone with a lot more money-minded transaction mind would NOT be happy about it.
On the other hand, it's not kosher for me to just suck up someone's resources without attempting to even the score. So for the two hours I'm sitting at the vigil, I bring some barley growing ingredients and produce 650 barley, which I just pop onto the nice lady as a return gesture too.
It probably doesn't make up for all the Vigil materials, but I'm planning to grow more for 'em, and also perhaps wiggle my way into their guild too. Sorta mutually beneficial, in a sense.
Nor am I a cad, so I'm certainly going to help them stock up for their next Vigil in return too.
And they also benefit by inviting me into this Vigil, because I can provide rescue resources from my own humongous guild with lasseiz-faire guild leader. The bigger the Vigil grows, the more they benefit because they have made more sacs than I have.
Of course, I fully intend to RETURN the resources to my own guild over the next couple days-weeks, whatever I borrow, that is. So all I'm doing is tying myself down to the social networks in the game even further, because I'm not going to quit until I reach a certain breakeven point in return for all the kindness initially shown to me, right?
(Despite all my helpless claims of inadverdent RL issues getting in the way - btw, the only one who's questioned me so far on what happened is only one competitive-minded guy who was inconvenienced in Test passing with my and another guy's quitting, the other guy quit first btw.. and he stopped being pushy when I said RL - the truth about me quitting was because I was fucking bored out of my skull due to the pace of change in the game, and the chores to accumulate stuff singlehandedly was driving me nuts.)
So yeah, I don't know how to classify the behavior currently being shown to me. In one sense, I would empathize with the aggressive competitive-minded guy because rational behavior is ruthless. It makes logical sense. But it doesn't build any long term bonds/feelings of debt & recipocration either.
Whereas acts of random hard-to-measure kindness are a different kettle of fish.
I now have a bazillion goals of things to do to repay such and such person or organization, or make friends with so-and-so, instead of feeling unwanted and unwelcome because I am not carrying my own weight with personally generated stuff.
Hmm. Wonder if this is the story of the human race in microcosm yet again.