Blaugust Returns, Day 1

I originally started this blog on the first day of Blaugust last year, so I suppose it’s somewhat fitting that I return to it on the first day of Blaugust. I’m not really certain why, but I just haven’t felt much inspiration to write in recent months. Time for a fresh start though, and to see if I can keep things going this time around. We shall see.

What are you hoping to get out of Blaugust this year?

Belghast posted that question as a writing prompt for the first day of Blaugust, and it seems like a good question for me to answer. What am I hoping to get out of this? I’m certainly not it for the phat stacks of blog cash. I have a day job that works just fine for me; this will only ever be a hobby. I think I mostly want to blog as a way to think about my ideas and get them out into a more concrete form.

That’s why I blog (when I do), but why Blaugust in particular? I’ve found that I tend to work best with concrete goals. That’s one of the reasons that I’m a big fan of in-game achievements; they provide me suggested goals to work towards which give me sufficient structure that I’m not just flailing around wondering what to do. Blaugust serves a similar purpose, setting a goal of one blog per day for a month. I’ve done it once, but this time I’d also like to try and use that month to come up with some ongoing structure to keep me going. One of my friends had a few suggestions for ongoing features I could write each of which could run for a year or more if done on a weekly basis. I may try to do one or more of those and see how that goes.

In any case, Blaugust has come and the challenge has begun. Let’s do this.

Daily Chores

I hate dailies. My tolerance for the extends exactly as far as is required for me to access whatever content I’d like to get into and basically no further. It’s the fastest way for me to burn out on a game. The obligation to log in every day and do [whatever] loses me instantly.

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At the same time, I understand the need to pace out progression in some sane way. FFXIV has a great system in its daily leve allowances, and I wish that would extend to other things. Let me run a week’s worth of expert roulette on Saturday, rather than needing to log in every single day to max out my currency income.

I haven’t logged in much to FFXIV this week because I’d been grinding every day to reach i170 on my Summoner. I know I can get higher than that, but it’s just not enticing to me. I’ve come to lack the overriding desire to make all of my numbers as high as possible, I’m more than happy with “high enough”, because there’s other stuff I want to do. I appreciate how lightweight the Law grind was in FF, especially right after the levelling process, but I’m not terribly motivated to jump right back into it to chase the gear treadmill a little further, especially because I know my current state is sufficient for what I’m doing and, furthermore, the investment required to move forward to the current “best” tier will drop here relatively shortly. I’ve chased the cutting edge of content before, and I don’t have the interest in doing it again that would motivate me to grind dungeons until I achieve the absolute best [numbers] I possibly can.

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What motivates me is interesting new stuff to do. I am, at my core, an Explorer-type, though I don’t fall into the category of Explorer that people tend to think of. Wandering around geography isn’t interesting to me; I want to explore the story and the gameworld and see how everything plays out. I don’t care about finding the secret hidden treasure chest in a cave on a mountainside, but I will jump through nearly any hoops to get all of the possible endings to something. I’ve only played one Kingdom Hearts game, but I did get the ‘true’ ending for it, and I played through enough Chrono Trigger to see every way that game ends (it’s a lot).

Exploration for its own sake doesn’t interest me– I want something to find. In the same vein, progression for its own sake rarely excites me: I want to be progressing in order to see something I haven’t previously seen. It’s something I miss from older MMOs– current games want to make sure you don’t miss anything, so there’s rarely anything to find by wandering off the beaten path. You might get some cool screenshots or something (which other people really love, and I appreciate, but don’t care to chase after for myself), but by and large you’re not going to find anything meaningful at the top of that mountain if the game didn’t expressly tell you to go there.

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It was my biggest disappointment with Wildstar– for all it claimed to encourage exploration, I still felt like it was taking me on hikes along well-trodden paths, not rewarding me for forging across the wilderness. The coolest part of the Explorer subclass was finding hidden quest areas that weren’t apparent to other people, but they felt thin; I didn’t really find exciting stuff in there, just a challenge and maybe a single quick quest. It wasn’t the life-changing revolution that was expected.

That being said, I continue to feel like we’re on the cusp of a big sea change in MMOs, but of the various directions it could go, I’m not sure yet which one I think is likely. I hope we get away from games and back towards experiences that feel like worlds. I find I miss the sense of being a denizen of a vast digital world, versus a player in a multiplayer game. The difference is, as always, progression. In worlds, you can make progress in a variety of ways and they’ll all benefit you. In games, if you’re not spending your time progressing in one of a relatively set number of ways, you’re kind of wasting your time. I miss feeling like I could spend my time doing whatever and still be productive.



Source: Digital Initiative
Daily Chores

Blaugust Games of Week – Week 1

Pre-emptive Thank You

Yesterday I freaked a lot of people out by calling it the Blaugust Eve.  As I have explained on twitter, I was accounting for my amazing time travelling Aussie and Kiwi friends for whom… right now IS the start of Blaugust.  For the rest of us at the time of posting this we have a little more wiggle room before the festivities kick off.  I have to say last year was an insane ride for me, as much as it was for the contestants.  The intent was to run everything through the Blaugust Nook but that didn’t exactly happen, and it quite literally made my life hell.  I ended up spending a couple of hours a day trying to sort out who posted what when and in what time zone they were posting from…  and then the people who posted after midnight in their own time zone…  only served to add to the complication.  There were numerous times I tried to track down people on twitter or IM to ask if they meant X post to be on Y day or not.

This year it seems like most everyone has registered on the Nook which is going to help, but what is going to be even more important is advertising your daily posts there with the day number you are intending it to be.  On your side that is a small amount of work, but on my side that is saving me literally hours of scouring… and is hopefully going to allow me to actually read blogs during the course of the event.  As soon as things start I have to flip into book keeper mode, and while I might be “reading” posts I was not necessarily enjoying them last year because of all of the technical foibles.  So I am thanking you ahead of time for complying with the list of rules, because it is going to make my life not horrible over the next thirty one days.  I’ve been a fan of Anook for awhile, so much so apparently that yesterday someone thought I worked for them.  I just think they do a great job of giving me guild forum like functionality but also giving the ability to interact with other gamers.  I am amped this year about them sponsoring the Community Award, and we will ultimately sort out the specifics of that as the event goes on.

Games of the Week – Week 1

Yesterday we launched the writing prompts forum, and I thought it was pretty amazing that Void spent a good chunk of the day yesterday populating it with a bunch of ideas.  I plan on adding a new writing prompt to this post every day during the course of this event, but I wanted to go a little bit further.  Nothing makes more interesting posts than exploring a new game, or revisiting one that you have been fond of in the past.  As such I plan on highlighting three free to play games a week, with an attempt to mix up the styles a bit.  My hope is that if you are lacking inspiration, you can download and install one of these games and find plenty of things to write about.  Lets get on with the games!

Dirty Bomb – Nexon/Splash Damage

dirtybomb This is a game I played a bit in beta but have not really played much after it officially launched, and I am actually looking forward to playing it some more.  I have long been a huge fan of games by Splash Damage, and I spent many an hour playing Wolfenstein Enemy Territory.  Hell I even joined a competitive clan while playing it, but never really did much more than scrimmage other teams.  Splash Damage creates a shooter quite unlike anyone else makes, and they tend to focus on these complex objectives that require multiple classes of players to complete them.  I always focused on the “Engineer” archetype because it made the game play more enjoyable for me as it gave me a higher purpose.  I am not big into “death matching” but I loved rushing headlong into a firefight trying to stay alive long enough to build a bridge or repair a tank.  This game is the logical extension of Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, Quake Wars Enemy Territory and even to some extent the critical failure Brink.  I think I am one of the few people out there that wholeheartedly enjoyed Brink, and lately I have been feeling the itch to play some FPS action… and Dirty Bomb seems like it is going to fit that bill perfectly.

Download From SteamDownload From Nexon

Everquest II – Daybreak Games

EQ2_000008 I will always hold a special place in my heart for Norrath, the setting of the Everquest universe.  When World of Warcraft launched I was torn because part of me wanted to be playing Everquest II.  Instead I went where the bulk of my friends went, but continued to periodically visit the setting of EQ2 throughout the years.  It has some of the best world building I have seen in any game, and the scope of the zones just feel so massive compared to almost anything else on the market.  They innovated in so many ways, and had so many rich systems like one of the best Mentoring systems out there for the time.  As the years have ticked by the game has felt more and more like a dated relic, however there is a simple nostalgic charm to it that I still find appealing.  They seem to be banking on taking this nostalgia to market, as they have opened a time locked progression server allowing players to go back and experience the world as it was during the early days.  This is making me seriously consider re-rolling and starting fresh on this new server, but I have had so many other competing goals that I just have not done it yet.  My goal is this week to roll a character and check it out, but unfortunately that means I am going to have to buy a new character slot on my already loaded account.  If you are looking for a world loaded with inspiration… this is a good place to start.

Download From SteamDownload from Daybreak

Marvel Heroes 2015 – Gazillion

MH_SCREEN_042314_013 Another game that I really enjoy but find myself not playing a lot of right now is Marvel Heroes.  This game provides Diablo II style game play, with a rich class based system in the form of all of the different heroes that you can play.  One of the coolest features of this game is the way that the you pick your first hero to level.  The game allows you to play a long list of champions to level 10, and then you get to unlock one of them and take it all the way to level 60.  This gives you plenty of time to get a feel for how they each play and their different abilities.  I personally tend to be a Captain America player, but there are heroes that fit just about any imagined play style.  The other thing that I really appreciate is the way that for the most part, the game gives me a pathway to unlock the things that I might want without hiding it behind an overly painful grind.  Champions are purchased with Eternity Splinters which drop fairly frequently while doing content in the world.  One of the complaints I have seen from friends is that the game play is extremely easy, and this is absolutely the case while you are playing on normal mode.  However after defeating the main storyline you can ratchet up the difficulty  much in the same way as you can in Diablo 3.  This is absolutely a really fun game and the freemium nature is not egregious in any fashion, so if you want some old school Diablo game play with MOBA inspired style character design…  you might check this one out.

Download From SteamDownload From Gazillion

Daily Prompt

Since I more or less posted a series of games that I have some connection to, or would like to have a better connection with.  The writing prompt for the day is somewhat connected to that.

What game that you are not playing, do you still have a deeply nostalgic connection to and why?

Let us hear what game you keep returning to even if you aren’t really actively playing it… or likely will never play it with quite the same fervor.  For me personally that game is absolutely Everquest II, and I still hold a torch for it even though at this moment I have not really played it over the course of the last two years.



Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Blaugust Games of Week – Week 1

Tam Tries: SAO RE: Hollow Fragment (PS4)

Good translation makes a huge difference. Honestly, it can make or break the experience, and it’s genuinely hard to do.

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I picked up Hollow Fragment a few months back on the Vita. It was a really, really interesting game mechanically set in a world that I find really compelling. I can’t talk much about the story because if you haven’t seen any of SAO it drops enormous spoilers within the first five minutes or so of the game, but the game’s concept is a sort of extended “what-if” sequence, which is really interesting and something I haven’t seen in game tie-ins.

I put a solid 15-20 hours into the game before quitting– as much as I loved the gameplay, the translation for the Vita version was atrocious, so much so that I didn’t really have a clear picture as to what I was doing wrong in particular sections nor did I have any idea what was happening in the story. I was fighting exceptionally difficult enemies and dying frequently, and didn’t have a lot of intelligible feedback on what I could do to improve. At the same time, the dialogue was garbled to the point of being incomprehensible, so I could get a vague emotional tone but very little else. It made it difficult to figure out where to go and what to do.

Don't do this.

Don’t do this.

Loading up the new (retranslated) PS4 version was stark. I had a clear picture of what was going on almost immediately, and I suddenly understood how a bunch of game mechanics worked before even leaving the tutorial. One of the big things that the retranslated version did was clarify how the game is structured. There are two separate areas that you can progress through, and it wasn’t clear to me which the right one was. On the Vita, I had this helpful hint:

“For ready players, advance through floors of Aincrad. If still collecting loot and exp, try the Hollow Area.”

Based on that, I jumped into the Hollow Area straightaway. Why not collect loot and exp until I feel “ready”? The PS4 version translates that line a little differently:

“If you’re still getting used to the game, try some of the early floors of Aincrad. If you’re an advanced player and want to test your skill and get rewarded with loot and lots of exp, try the Hollow Area.”

SLIGHTLY different. It explained why I was getting pummeled in my entire Vita playthrough– I was basically trying to advance through the special advanced bonus dungeon right from the start. This playthrough, I started playing through the ‘appropriate’ sections first, and wound up basically crushing my way through the first few sections, largely thanks to the skills I’d honed fighting things way out of my weight class on the Vita.

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What I’ve discovered is that the game is much, much more nuanced than I’d realized, mechanically. I can’t talk much about the story, but it does a really good job of interspersing the ensemble cast and keeping all of the characters at the forefront (which the show didn’t do quite as much) and keeping the story relevant– there are a ton of events that occur in between going out and beating up monsters, but you can spend quite a bit of time just doing that if you like, and you have a ton of characters you can level up.

Because the game drops you in the middle of the action, you start at a pretty advanced level with quite a few skills and resources– it’s a little odd to start a game at level 97, but it works pretty well in this context. You’ve got enough abilities to start to make things interesting and you can slowly explore them, but because you’re so overleveled for the starting point (a thematic staple of the series), you can ease into things. It also doesn’t waste any time with introducing things you’ve already covered in the series– the only catch-up it does is letting you know how the game diverges. This probably isn’t great for anyone who hasn’t seen the series, but it’s kind of an obscure title to pick up if you haven’t watched Sword Art Online. Cutting to the chase as far as establishing story and characters lets them get detailed and personal with interactions very quickly, as well as occasionally very silly.

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Overall, I’m having a lot of fun with it, especially with a translation that lets me make sense of the story. Because the game’s story diverges hugely from a major plot point in the series, I’m interested to see where they go with things. I like the idea of the game building out into conceptual space rather than simply retreading the ground covered by the series, and I’d like to see more of that in game tie-ins. It makes me think of KOTOR, which created a whole new space for Star Wars that’s proven to be incredibly fertile ground.



Source: Digital Initiative
Tam Tries: SAO RE: Hollow Fragment (PS4)