October 2016 – Page 2

Archon’s Forge Love

October 27, 2016 by Belghast

This morning I am going to talk a little bit about my love of the Archon’s Forge area in Destiny, and we will see where things go from there. I know I have talked a bit about this in the past, but the Archon’s Forge for me personally alone is worth the price of the expansion. You have to understand that I love milling around in patrol zones, as in that is pretty much my default “I want to play some destiny” mode because it allows me to putter around. So far my favorite patrol zone to date has been the Dreadnaught, because in many ways it felt like an old school MMO dungeon. Back in the days of Everquest and Dark Age of Camleot, dungeons were these sprawling places with no clear path that you were supposed to travel. As a result the community developed designations to break apart an otherwise huge zone into “camps”. The Dreadnaught was similar, with various sections of the map labelled as you zoned into them, with the coolest area being the Court of Oryx. This was an area where you could summon groups of Hive and Taken in the form of mini-boss fights, with the chance of there being decent rewards at the end if you were the person that summoned it. What I liked about it was the fact that three or four players who were not actively grouping, could work together on a shared objective and get pretty reasonable rewards as a result.

Archon’s Forge is very similar but also manages to work in one of my OTHER favorite areas of Destiny… the Prison of Elders. The backstory behind the area is that this is the place where the Fallen come to prove their worth in combat. We as players collect Siva offerings, that you can get by doing various things including Public Events, Patrols and occasionally off Majors. It is a random chance sort of thing, but I wound up getting one pretty quickly. From there you go into the Archon’s Forge area, and there is a terminal that you use the offering on. These come in Green, Blue and Purple varieties which denote how difficult the mobs are that are going to spawn as a result. Unlike the Court of Oryx, the Archon’s Forge actually locks down while the event is going on, so you have to be fairly quick to duck inside in time to participate. Essentially you end up fighting waves of mobs, culminating in some sort of a boss like encounter… generally centered around a major or handful of majors. The two things of note that make this extremely awesome are that first… it seems to be equally rewarding for the players just hanging out and participating and those that are actually giving up the Siva offerings. Secondly it seems to be self perpetuating, in that the encounters themselves drop a fair number of new SIVA offerings… allowing you to pretty much keep the process going indefinitely so long as you have three or four people. Essentially everyone keeps key trading, summoning the next round to keep the loot machine rolling.

The other night after the Final Fantasy XIV raid, I poked my head into Destiny and then spent the next hour and a half at the forge doing short events. What is awesome about it is that not only is this a flood of greens and blues, but I managed to pick up eight legendary engrams during that time period. Additionally I’ve gotten several pieces of armor, ghost shells, artifacts and I am pretty sure at least one of my recent guns dropped in the forge because I have no recollection of getting it otherwise. The big loot comes from killing the mini-bosses and just appears in your inventory much like the end of strike/crucible items do. My only concern is that I believe there is a limit of 20 items in the mailbox… meaning I really need to head to orbit more often while doing the forge. I am probably loosing a ton of loot as a result. I also probably should strip down myself to only the items I need to participate to create more room for said loot, and spend time between matches deconstructing greens. In any case regardless of those logistics… this is one of my favorite places to hang out because it is so simple to just hop in and start doing stuff. I SHOULD be doing strikes… and I managed to finish one of those last night that I had two quests for. The problem is right now my Destiny time is pretty sporadic, and Archon’s Forge seems to fit the perfect amount of “engagement” for me.

Issues with Quick Join

October 26, 2016 by Belghast

The last several days I have spent a good chunk of my time idling on this riverbank out in the Western Plaguelands… while often roaming around a completely different Plaguelands over in Destiny. However that is not what I am going to talk about this morning, I simply needed a screenshot to post and grabbed this one. What I am going to talk about is the 7.1 patch in World of Warcraft, or at least a small part of it. I acknowledge ahead of time that this post is probably not going to make a lot of sense to many of you, because you have to really suffer with anxiety brain to get it. Yesterday as part of 7.1 a new feature called “Quick Join” was patched into the game. To quote the page announcing this feature on the World of Warcraft site…

So whether it’s your guildmate, your Battle.net friend, or your Real ID friend, you’ll be able to find each other and take part in a variety of game aspects without the need to ask the age old questions of– “What are you doing?” “Any room in your group?” “Can my other friend join?” You’ll just be able to see all of your friends, see what they’re up to, and ask to join with just a couple of clicks. It’s so easy, a drogbar can do it!

It is hard for me to adequately explain how much anxiety this causes me. In Diablo 3 there is a similar Quick Join feature that is designed to let you easily get into games with your friends. How it works in practice is that folks randomly join into your game usually without actually talking to you first. After the generally jarring experience this causes, I wound up going into the settings and flipping myself to private so that I would not show up in the Quick Join list. My fear with the World of Warcraft feature is that it would work like this, but I guess fortunately that is not the case. What it does instead is whenever you are queued for content, you show up in the Quick Join list allowing folks to request to join your queue. From there you have to accept or deny that request, so no ninja joining. Unfortunately it still makes me deal with the guilt of turning down friends, and the possible social ramifications. What I really wanted to see was a sort of “opt out” private mode built into the system, or maybe this would have been the perfect time to roll in the much requested “Appear Offline” or “Invisible” mode to Battle.net.

Anxiety Brain

I am generally a fairly gregarious person, and I try and go out of my way to welcome folks when playing the guild cruise director role. I am also known for driving a van full of candy… that gathers people up and convinces them to join whatever guild I happen to be a part of. This is absolutely one side of me and I love being that person whenever I can. That said there is another part of me that comes out when I am overly stressed or just simply worn out from having to “act normal” at work or day to day societal constraints. This part of me just needs to duck my head into my turtle shell and hide from the world… and these are the moments when Battle.net scares the shit out of me. I love having easy access to my friends, but sometimes I cannot handle appearing to follow basic social norms. There are times I need to fade into the background and pretend that the rest of the world exists. Essentially I need my alone time, and it is important for me to recharge my batteries so I have the strength to confront those times when I need to be around others. The thought that at any moment someone could ask to join me in whatever I happen to be doing… and that there is now a system to make that easier… is completely terrifying.

Yesterday a friend who I know was not getting this equated this to “you’d rather group with strangers?” and that is not entirely it either. There are times that I queue to be an anonymous blip in someone else’s radar so I don’t have to think… or be concerned about anyone other than myself. There are times where I simply need to complete an activity, and I am not necessarily up for the burden that comes from grouping with people I know. When I group with people I care about… I feel responsible for their safety, happiness and enjoyment. Maybe this is just the gut reaction from playing tanks all of these years, but I feel like when I am in group mode I need to be fully there for the folks who are with me. Essentially I have to psyche myself up to be able to take on this mantle of responsibility and do the things I need to do to make a group happen. Having that whole thing thrust upon me, is just jarring and abrupt… and how exactly do I explain to someone who I legitimately care for… why I am going to click that deny button?

Ultimately I am going to deny a lot of group invites that happen through this system, and I apologize ahead of time. Sometimes when you say “It’s not you, It’s me” it really means “nope it is absolutely you”. However this is not one of those cases because in all seriousness there are just times when I cannot handle being a responsible adult. In theory I could start deleting people from my Battle.net friends list until I only had the people who understood exactly what this means, but that is also a bad solution. I use that thing for grouping, and especially lately I have been pinging folks to try and find a fifth for mythics or keystones. My Battle.net list is largely there for cross realm grouping options, and I shouldn’t have to give that up just because I cannot handle the thought of getting randomly grouped with people when I am not prepared for it. Of note… this isn’t even an issue yet because all last night I didn’t see a single item show up on my quick join list. That unfortunately is not the way runaway anxiety works… instead I am stuck thinking through all of the possible things that COULD go wrong… before they actually have. There are so many times I get mired in the feedback loops of “what is the worst possible thing that could happen” and I am certain this is one of them. I just find it frustrating that after all these years of asking for an invisible mode we still don’t have it. I know all of this is “all in my head” but that doesn’t necessarily make it any less valid either.

(Games) Journalism versus Enthusiast Press

October 25, 2016 by Tamrielo

I read an incredibly, incredibly petty article today. It’s written as a defensive piece that lashes out and, ironically, proves the very thing they’re railing against.

Short version, so you can skip the article if you choose: Polygon is upset because Bethesda has evidently claimed that games journalism doesn’t matter. They cite Bethsoft’s “late” review copies as an attack on reviewers and, by extension, customers. They strike back by offering the “sage” wisdom of not preordering games. It’s honestly sort of a pity that this kind of thing is coming from Polygon, because of all of the gaming media outlets out there, they’re the ones who flirt the closest with actual journalism the most. Polygon has some really excellent articles on occasion.

I have a variety of thoughts about this. First of all is the difference between “journalism” and “enthusiast press”. We have a name for news written by fans of a thing, about that thing, that is generally excited about said thing. It’s called enthusiast press, and it is what virtually every gaming media outlet actually is. Enthusiast press is fine, it’s a way of being a marketing signal boost, it’s a way of celebrating common interests, it’s great for building hype, it’s great for getting the word out about upcoming things. It is not hard-hitting journalism.

Journalism is a different thing entirely. It takes a goodly amount of training, and is genuinely very difficult. You have to extract information from potentially unwilling people, you have to know exactly how to protect your sources, you have to understand concepts like fact-checking, reduction of harm, integrity, and accountability. You also have to find a way to keep the lights on in your office WITHOUT that revenue stream being a conflict of interest. You can lament reality all you like, but that separation is absolutely vital to calling your content “journalism” and having anyone take you seriously.

I have no doubt that there are people at Polygon who understand this. It probably chafes them, I’m sure they would love to be able to do actual journalism. It chafes me, because the games industry could use some really great journalist outlets, ones that can report and make the entire industry better through transparency without pandering to major publishers or allowing themselves to be influenced or controlled by the very people they’re supposed to be reporting on. The industry could use it. Unfortunately, what’s happened instead is that the games enthusiast press has, as their relevance has shrunk, started throwing around the term “games journalism” to regain credibility, painting an illusion of separation where, realistically, none exists. In so doing, they’ve devalued the term “games journalism”.

Allow me to retell a story I heard: A group of people from games media outlets were invited to a closed-doors showing of an upcoming title. Their trips were paid for by the publisher, as were their meals and their hotels. Fairly standard practice. While viewing the game, several of these people heckled the presenter, disrupted the play session, and otherwise made big enough asses of themselves that they had to be escorted out. Their later-published reviews of their experience were, unsurprisingly, extremely negative. The publisher said nothing, simply did not bother to invite said people to another event. They quietly made a note, remembered the behavior of the hecklers, and acted accordingly.

Some of you may think you know who I’m talking about here. You probably don’t. This is a story I’ve heard retold MANY times, and the only difference is the publisher response– did they uninvite people to future events or did they grin and bear it? Otherwise the stories I’ve seen and heard are virtually identical. There’s a term for this: it’s called “biting the hand that feeds you”.

This kind of thing is *why* journalistic integrity is important, and why it’s vitally important for any kind of “honest” reporting to have that separation. Lest you think I’m absolving the publishers from this, consider: if the publisher is paying for the trip, controlling what reviewers see, and otherwise bankrolling the entire thing, how do any of us possibly think the results are unbiased? What possible value is there in paying money to show someone something and have them announce publicly that it’s awful? From a business standpoint, that’s unacceptable and expensive risk.

It’s not an unsolvable problem. If games media outlets don’t like being classed as “enthusiast press” and don’t like what they consider honest reviews to be characterized as “biting the hand that feeds them”, they can take the route of legitimate journalism. The difficulty here is that journalism in general is getting crushed out by enthusiast press which can be controlled by the things it’s reporting on. Finding a way to make money, to keep the lights on, without becoming beholden to the very people you’re trying to report on is a difficult obstacle to overcome. Not a lot of media outlets have figured it out, and I’m not limiting that to games here.

It’s a nasty problem, and it’s not one with a clear and obvious solution. Highly trained professionals with decades of experience are trying and failing to solve it. There’s no shame in being enthusiast press, because it pays the bills and keeps the lights on. It’s what a LOT of media outlets have been doing. But much like publishers can’t get both unbiased, publicly trusted mouthpieces and universally good reviews, the reporting side can’t get both the trust of journalistic integrity and the money/support from their targets.

Games reporters can accept this and either live with being enthusiast press or try to forge a path to journalistic integrity, but sniping at companies because they cast aspersions on your relevance is, well… petty.

A little privacy

October 25, 2016 by Grace

You’ve all seen me ramble about some of my social anxiety issues before, but Blizzard has brought it all back to the surface again. In patch 7.1 there’s a new Quick Join feature that allows your friends to see that you’ve joined a queue or a group finder group and easily join you. In theory this can be great. In practice I’m not sure this is something I ever want to use. I’m too timid to randomly join anybody who was starting a queue, I would rather pug than impose on my friends. Conversely, sometimes I want to pug, for the goodie bag or because I’m feeling antisocial. If a friend asks to join either I have to tell them no and feel bad, or let them join and then I’m not doing the pug I wanted to do. At least if you queue for a Call to Arms (goodie bag) it will not show you as available for Quick Join. Maybe I will start only queuing for things that are Call to Arms, honestly that’s not super different from how I play normally. Still, I will continue to shout this from the rooftops: Give us a damn invisible mode already Blizzard.

This also complicates getting mythic or M+ groups for people without a lot of friends on their list. Now any group that forms has a higher chance of filling up with friends-of-friends before strangers get a chance to sign up. This means if you have a huge friends list your chances of doing more mythics just increased, and if you have few friends it will be even harder to get a group. Just add regular mythics to LFD already Blizzard. This Quick Join tool is solving a much less pressing problem, and causing new ones.

I’ve been slowly working my way back up to a friends list with nearly 20 or so people on it, which is about 20 more people than my anxiety could handle before. If this new tool becomes a problem for me, I’m back to either purging my friends list or just running away from the game again. I get that this is not a problem that most people have, but I also know I’m not alone. It would be nice if Blizz ever once gave any indication that they acknowledged people like me exist and have valid concerns.