Month: March 2015

Pillars of Eternity and “Classic” Mechanics

by

I booted up Pillars of Eternity this past weekend, and I can tell it’s a game I’m going to enjoy… eventually.

I was instantly frustrated by character creation. Choose from a bunch of stats, hope that the “recommended” stats are actually the ones you want, try to make sense out of spell descriptions without any context whatsoever, drop your character in the game world. Hope you made the right choices because going back is going to mean fiddling with the character creator again and sitting through all of the intro stuff, making sure you run around and hit all of the boxes and conversations and whatnot again.

There are some really interesting races and story stuff hinted at here, though, so that's a plus.

I have no idea what those stats do at this juncture. Significant? No? How can I tell?

Yes, this is a classic trope of a lot of western RPGs. No, I don’t think it’s good or worthy in any way. Contextless choice is already annoying, and making those choices important and largely unchangeable is doubly so. Expecting you to know the game before you start playing it is– I’ll just say it– bad design.

The first section of a game is a tutorial anyway: why not put that before character creation? Let me get a feel for the controls, how various spells and abilities function in the actual game, and then make better-informed choices based on that. Most of the time, it’s entirely justifiable within the game’s story, and if you can make a more exciting intro sequence, possibly not even using the character(s) you’ll actually create, you can justify whatever.

I also read the type of dwarf as "Bored Dwarves" several times. I'd play a bored dwarf.

How significant is that +15? Am I going to see those enemy types? I HAVE NO IDEA.

As tempting as it would be to play a Dwarf Wizard just to annoy Bel, I'm not going to.

The addition of hover-text to show me what various keywords mean is nice, but it’s still just giving me numbers that I have no context for.

When mimicking a classic style but making it more modern, I think it’s important to look at all of the pieces of what that style does and how/why they work (or don’t!). Just doing it because of genre conventions is a good way to wind up with a very same-y sort of game. That isn’t to say that you won’t necessarily retain some of the genre conventions, because a lot of those are developed over years of iteration and provably work, or provide familiar, comfortable anchor points for your players to hook into, but keeping them without reevaluating how necessary they are to your construct tends to make things awkward.

Also, the speed is "average". That's nice to know... I think?

More numbers, zero context. Is 20-30 damage a lot? How much HP do I have? What is the significance of the defense? Am I giving up much to get the “Hobbled” effect?

The vast improvement here is that I can tell that this spell helps me hit with this spell more. It lets me pick other spells based on the targeted defense. The fact that this is a big step forward is a little sad.

I love the hover-text! I can find out what Hobbled does and… oh, it… it tells me some more contextless numbers. Bear in mind that at this point in character creation I STILL haven’t allocated stat points, so I don’t know what stat ranges even are, so there’s literally zero context for these values.

I will say that Pillars of Eternity looks fantastic, and the controls are delightful thus far. Having picked up the remakes of Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2, Pillars feels more modern and more advanced right out of the gate. I really want to be able to play it co-op, the way I played the old BG games. The UI is slick, movement and actions are responsive and feel pretty good, and the visuals are detailed without being cluttered.

I’ll eventually sit down and get into it, once I have the patience to sort through characters and replay the intro five or six times to settle on a class I like. Despite my initial frustrations, it’s absolutely looking like it’ll be a game that I’ll put some serious time into.



Source: Digital Initiative
Pillars of Eternity and “Classic” Mechanics

AggroChat #50 – Game Club 2 – Trine 2

by

Tonight was the night for our second AggroChat Game Club game review, and for those who might not remember during our first Game Club show we chose Trine 2 for the March game of the month.  Our views on the game ranged from really enjoying it, to mixed to not really liking it at all.  We talk about this exceptionally pretty game and what we liked and disliked about it.  We also delve a little bit into our April game pick, and talk about a few of the things we played this week.  It is a bit of a short show since Trine 2 itself is a bit of a limited game.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The Patreon Thing

by

AggroChat 50 – Game Club 2 – Trine 2

trine2_32bit 2015-03-27 23-40-16-99 Last night we recorded our 50th episode of AggroChat and I have to say that is a bit staggering now that I think about it.  We’ve almost recorded a full year of AggroChat, and we only “missed” a single week.  In fact now that I think about it two weeks from now will actually be our one year anniversary show.  It is insane how an entire year of recording gets away from you like that.  Things are going to be a bit strange over the next few weeks as Kodra has accepted a new job and is moving out to Seattle to join Tam and some of our other friends there.  Everyone is joking that they are trying to recruit everyone to Seattle, but honestly  the cost of living difference would be horrible coming from Tulsa.  Besides according to the New York Times we are apparently this up and coming hipster hub.  It is shocking the number of smaller game conventions that are happening in this area.

In any case this week we talked about Trine 2, an exceptionally beautiful game about a Gluttonous Warrior, a Grumpy Wizard and a Larcenous Rogue.  Honestly this is one of the shortest shows we have recorded in a long while because there just wasn’t a whole lot to talk about  in regards to Trine.  We came down on multiple sides of the game with some of us enjoying it, others not feeling much of anything about it, and still others disliking it immensely.  From that aspect I feel like the first round robin title was a success.  From the aspect of giving us a lot of material to talk about, maybe not quite so much.  We also announced our third game club title, which would be one of my picks:  Darkest Dungeon.  Since that is a game about dungeons… and mental illness I have a feeling like it is going to create a lot of stories as a result.

The Paetron Thing

Yesterday I wrote a strange piece, and among many things that folks got out of it, at least one person thought I was talking at least in some part about the current Patreon trend.  I honestly didn’t mean it to come across like that, but it is proof that we can all read the same post but take vastly different messages from it.  Patreon and I have this odd relationship, where I think it is both really awesome… and worrisome at the same time.  The awesome part is it gives people who are creating a lot of really awesome content a way to actually do that as a living, providing them a semi-regular source of income from the creation of “stuff”.  The troublesome aspect is that I seem to see people who are NOT creating much content, throwing up Patreons left and right because it seems to be the latest way to get something for nothing.  Internet celebrity is apparently now a thing worth funding?  In the case of full disclosure I back a couple of different Patreons because the people involved are creating a regular stream of content that I value, so I don’t want it to sound like I am against the concept.

Where I end up wrestling with myself is that there are times I think “man it would be nice to have my costs offset”.  Within a few seconds a little voice inside me pipes up and says that if I did advertising or a patreon or any other way of offsetting my expenses that it would somehow “cheapen” the process.  I’ve always considered my blog a labor of love, and this whole getting up every morning to write something new is something I do… because I enjoy it, not because I am trying to profit from it.  All of that said there are some very real and concrete expenses to keep it all up, and if I did not have a good paying job I would have to stop doing pretty much everything that I do.  I added up some details this morning and for hosting and domain registration alone I am paying the equivalent of a little more than $60 a month once you factor in everything.  Then you tack onto that another $150 a month for really fast internet, and various game subscriptions and you quickly get into some real money.  So while part of me thinks that I should be creating a Patreon as a sort of Tip Jar, there is another part of me that says “don’t”.

Limited Funding

Patreon is an amazing thing for those who are creating the content and actually needing the money to keep the process going.  The problem is…  I don’t need the money in the strictest sense.  My fear is that as people start popping these accounts up for the fun of it, that they will dilute the money away from the people that actually need it.  The blogging and the podcasting and the occasional streaming… are all part of my larger hobby of “gaming” and I just view all of these costs as being part of that bigger habit.  If I were to lose my job or something drastic like that, I would actually have a real need for it.  I feel like setting up a Patreon now would be akin to “crying wolf”, and asking for the goodwill of my readers and listeners before I in the strictest since needed to.  Maybe I am odd in my point of view, in that I view this relationship between reader and writer as some sort of a social contract.  I provide for you, and you give me a reason to keep making content.  But like all relationships I feel like there is always the problem that one side might end up taking advantage of the other.

Setting up a Patreon page, because it is seems to be the popular thing to do…  feels like  taking advantage of that relationship.  Because honestly I know there will be people out there who do donate because they want me to feel loved and appreciated.  I have an exceptionally warm group of readers and listeners.  I appreciate every single one of you out there, and that is a big part of the reason why I have turned down every single person wanting to place advertisements on my blog.  I don’t want to cheapen that relationship, and I don’t want to tarnish our friendship.  That is not to say that at some point the expenses of my sites will grow to a point where I simply cannot weather the entire burden myself.  But that time is not now.  Until it reaches that point then I will continue avoiding trying to “monetize” what I do for my own personal enjoyment.    I will continue also suggesting people show support for the Patreons that DO need the funding, and are providing a wealth of content as a result.



Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
The Patreon Thing

Crowd Sourced Opinion

by

Cruel Nation

This mornings post is going to be a little bit out of the ordinary, in part because I don’t really have a story to tell, and I also woke up thinking about this one.  This post is a call back to my earlier post this week called “hip to be mean” where I talk about how frustrating it is that the default reaction at times seems to be to bash ideas rather than to bolster them.  With this post I got a number of really good comments but one stuck out in my mind.  Roger from Moderate Peril wrote “Plus I truly believe that we have entered an age where the old ideologies are waning and people are just more unpleasant and self centered.”. I admit I struggled with this statement for a bit when I first read it.

I wanted to disagree with him, because I don’t want to live in a world that is growing more cruel.  However the more I think about it, the more I think he is probably right.  The social media age has not been exceptionally good on our empathy.  I feel like it has overloaded us in such a way that our only reaction is to worry about our own well being.  When you are confronted with so much “faux crisis”, it becomes sometimes hard to detect when there is something serious that you need to react to.  So when you see something… you never really know if someone is just being hyperbolic or if they really do need assistance.  I tend to favor on the side of reaching out and treating things seriously…  only to feel dumb a few minutes later when said person claims to “only be joking”.

Crowd Sourced Opinion

The other big problem I see is that we seem to indulge in a lot of crowd sourcing of our decisions.  Social media allows us to ask questions and receive answers in lightning speed.  The problem is unlike the real world you are often taking council from strangers on your personal matters.  So if you ask if you should dye your hair green, more than likely the answer will sound a little something like“hell yes! do it! do it! do it now!”  The problem is… these individuals likely know nothing of your real world situations.  You might work in an environment where dying your hair an “unnatural color” could be a fire-able offense.  I have quite literally seen that wording written into a number of contracts.  So in being urged off the ledge to make drastic changes they could be pushing you into some real life trouble.

This crowd sourcing of our thought processes leads us to this dangerous territory where the loudest and most confident opinion wins.  This “group think” leads people to drift along in someone else’s tide, because at least on some level it is simply easier than having to decide all these things for yourself.  In some ways this isn’t a bad thing… for example I have this pied piper effect of getting people to join my guilds.  I have the best intentions for every member and only want them to have a happy and safe place to spend their leisure time in games.  However if my motivations were impure I feel like I could probably bend this same behavior to my whims.  Not everyone has the purest of intentions, and sometimes people are just trying to use others to make a quick buck.

The Hive Mind

When I see a “movement” spring up on the internet, my first instinct is to react.  Moments later however there is a second instinct, that I jokingly call the “snopes instinct”, where I start to question the motivations behind it.  I’ve spent a lot of time googling various things I have read that seemed a little too perfectly aligned to be real.  Sometimes it works out that the facts in fact do align, but other times you quickly uncover the true nature of the scam.  We live in this time where the once fantastical is right at the tips of our fingers, but I feel like somewhere we have lost our natural instinct to be skeptical in regards to the things we experience.  While I would never advocate tinfoil-hattery…  I do try my best to “question everything”.  Not everything is a conspiracy, but some things may in fact be someone trying to enthrall you in a mission that you did not actually sign up for.

I’ve been told that people trust me because I am stable.  That I am the same person today, that I was yesterday and will be tomorrow.  The strange thing about that is that I am constantly changing my opinions and outlook.  Each time I take in new data I evaluate it against the data I held true before.  If the new data reveals something new, or is in some way “more true” than the old…  then I jettison the old attitude and replace it with a new, but not after serious evaluation.  Because of all of this…  it is not that I think we are getting more cruel.  I just feel like we are doing a poor job of making sure the decisions we are making, are in fact our own.  The hive mind can be a beautiful thing when you need to get something accomplished quickly… but it does a very poor job of adequately expressing your personality, hopes, dreams and aspirations.  What it does do however is an amazing job of preying on our fears.  All of this said, I firmly believe we have within us a radar for sorting out the conflicting data, and coming to a decision on our own independent of what the deafening crowd is screaming.



Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Crowd Sourced Opinion