Multiplayer Conundrum

Multiplayer Conundrum

Last night was a really weird night for me, where I spent a significant amount of time doing things OTHER than playing games.  I logged into Final Fantasy XIV pretty early but had the very annoying fight that I had been struggling with the night before ahead of me.  So I found myself alt tabbed out of Parsec and doing other things…  like watching a whole bunch of videos on YouTube.  Yesterday was one of those days where everything was stacked together so tightly that I felt like I was jumping from meeting to meeting without any real pauses between… and before I knew it was 5:30 and I felt like I had accomplished nothing.

Multiplayer Conundrum

When I got home I fixed us some dinner and largely went into a vegetative state, and part of this was avoiding actually doing the thing that I logged into Final Fantasy XIV to do that night.  On some level I think I just couldn’t handle the failure that was inevitably going to happen.  However around 9 ish I finally started working on the quest and sure enough I failed the first attempt.  However on the second try I made it through to the Y’shtola phase…  which honestly seemed really hard to fail.  It was an interesting encounter but way the hell to long, and the margins for failure were way the hell to slim for a story quest.  I am however up to patch 4.5 which I believe is still the latest story content patch, and will likely begin that tonight.

The other day Pentapod/Dominoposted a twitter poll of sorts asking players why they prefer to play otherwise multiplayer games solo.  This is a bit of a loaded topic and I chimed into the thread with my own thoughts but never quite made them in a blog format.  The above twitter post includes the follow up that shows that the vast majority of the reasoning behind why…  is issues of player toxicity.  For me personally it is a bit more nuanced than that but toxicity is definitely a huge problem that keeps me away from any game where voice chat with strangers is forced or at least heavily suggested.

For me the issue comes from something that I have noticed over the years and have talked a bit about on this blog.  The more responsibility I have thrust upon me in the real world…  the less I want to be entangled with it in the virtual world.  When I was working thankless dead end jobs, I looked to World of Warcraft, the House Stalwart Guild and the then Duranub Raiding Company raid to provide me structure in my life and give me some semblance of control.  However as I moved jobs and arrived at a place where I was deeply appreciated… and as a result given more and more responsibility…  I found myself withdrawing significantly from guild leadership and even recently from raiding at all.

When I group with other players I feel responsible for not only myself but for the enjoyment of others.  I am just wired that way and I think it is in part why I have always leaned on tanking classes as my window into the virtual world.  However since January of last year I have had fifteen human beings relying on me every single day for their survival and job satisfaction at work…  I just cannot handle going home at night and taking on that responsibility for putting myself out there to organize things.  As a result I have found myself spending almost all of my time playing solo in MMORPGs or playing some truly single player gaming experience.  I traded that responsibility for others that I used to cherish in games…  for applying those same guild and raid leader skills to the workplace.

The end result however is frustrating because I have found myself withdrawing from even what I would consider the safest of places and instead erecting mental blocks against those activities that thrust me in with a bunch of other players.  I’ve found it extremely difficult to bring myself to queue as my Warrior main in FFXIV because I am just not sure if I can deal with having to feel responsible for the success or failure of an encounter.  The time-shift for the Seattle crew has also harmed this a bit, but there is a significant gathering of East and Central players in the Final Fantasy XIV free company that would be more than willing to do anything I ever wanted to do with me.

At some point I have to rip the band-aid off and get back into the swing of things.  However there are so many nights like last night where I allow myself to find alternate diversions.  I am looking forward to Anthem as some what of a clean start.  However I spent almost all of my time in the demo playing alone, either doing missions solo or roaming around aimlessly in free play.  However on the Anthem front… reminder that you can begin loading the game through Origin at Noon Central today.

 

Puppet Strings

Puppet Strings

Yesterday was not an amazing day, but there are times you figure someone is out there pulling your puppet strings.  When I left the house I had intended to go get donuts for my team and then head into the office. However I failed to grab the drink I made for myself…  so I had on my brain that I needed to get a drink.  Where do I usually do that… QuikTrip, however for some reason I auto piloted my way to the busiest QuikTrip in town that I never go to in the morning because it has a ton of High School kids hanging out there.  So I go inside and get a drink and am maybe away from my car for five minutes… and when I come back out…  I insert the key into the ignition and nothing.  No sign of any electrical at all… and to make it worse the key will not remove from the ignition.

After doing some googling I realize that if the battery is completely dead the ignition sometimes holds onto the key for some reason as there is a servo that holds it in place.  Now something of note…  I’ve gone through three batteries in a little over six months.  The first battery made some semblance of sense because I figure it was the original to the vehicle.  The second battery…  well maybe it was just a lemon and it was under warranty so while it was a hassle and stranded me at this exact same QuikTrip in 20 degree weather…  it was on a weekend and manageable.  The third battery however…  we are getting into “there has to be a larger cause” territory.  Each time I have had the vehicle in the shop the electrical system tested out fine.

Yesterday instead of bringing it to the same place that I got all of the batteries swapped at… I brought it to the dealership hoping that maybe just maybe they would have more Chevy specific diagnostic information.  The best that they could come up with is that the battery cables were garaged on the end that connects to the vehicle not the battery.  So they swapped those out and swapped the battery that was not toast and I was on my way by mid day.   However it pretty much killed all of the first part of my day and nothing says fun like trying to attend conference calls from a busy car dealership lobby.

I am really hoping when I go out to turn my vehicle on this morning that everything just works.  They think they found the source of the problems but at this point I am just paranoid.  When I said that sometimes a puppet master is out there pulling the strings…  what I meant by that is had I not caught this in the morning I would have instead caught it after about 5:30 at night…  while my vehicle was in a downtown parking garage without an easy way to load it up and tow it.  We would have likely had to push it down and out of the garage to be able to tow it at all given there isn’t enough height clearance for a tow truck to get in there and back out with a vehicle on the trailer.

Puppet Strings

As far as gaming goes…  I made an attempt at the quest I had been stalled out in Final Fantasy XIV but however didn’t realize there was just about to be a server reset.  As such I made it through the first part of the fight… only to find out there is a whole OTHER part of the fight where I play as Y’shtola.  The server rebooted and killed my connection shortly after starting that… which means I am going to have to restart the entire freaking quest line when I get back.  Were this another game I would have just tossed it in the bin and walked away from it, but I know I HAVE to get through this stupid quest to be able to participate in the upcoming expansion.  This is a dumb quest and Square should feel bad for putting something this painfully long in the MSQ.

Instead I finally landed on playing some Grim Dawn which I still think is probably my favorite Diablo 2 style game out there.  The story is nonsense and the questing system is obtuse… so quite honestly I just keep pushing forward until I get to the next rift which unlocks access to that region from the central hub.  Along the way I appear to be completing some quests as I take down monsters marked with a star over their head.  It is a mechanically fun game, but I can’t say any of the gearing options feel really inspired to me.  Sure it is sorta cool that you can have a gun, but I still wind up running around with a big two handed weapon, since my attack of choice is a big overhead smash that sends a shockwave along the ground.

Here is hoping that today is less messed up and that nothing out of the ordinary occurs.  It is also my hope that tonight I can return to that quest line and finally beat the damned thing so I can move on with my life.  Final Fantasy XIV is not really endearing itself to me right now, but I want to finish the story that I have missed.

Puppet Strings

Puppet Strings

Yesterday was not an amazing day, but there are times you figure someone is out there pulling your puppet strings.  When I left the house I had intended to go get donuts for my team and then head into the office. However I failed to grab the drink I made for myself…  so I had on my brain that I needed to get a drink.  Where do I usually do that… QuikTrip, however for some reason I auto piloted my way to the busiest QuikTrip in town that I never go to in the morning because it has a ton of High School kids hanging out there.  So I go inside and get a drink and am maybe away from my car for five minutes… and when I come back out…  I insert the key into the ignition and nothing.  No sign of any electrical at all… and to make it worse the key will not remove from the ignition.

After doing some googling I realize that if the battery is completely dead the ignition sometimes holds onto the key for some reason as there is a servo that holds it in place.  Now something of note…  I’ve gone through three batteries in a little over six months.  The first battery made some semblance of sense because I figure it was the original to the vehicle.  The second battery…  well maybe it was just a lemon and it was under warranty so while it was a hassle and stranded me at this exact same QuikTrip in 20 degree weather…  it was on a weekend and manageable.  The third battery however…  we are getting into “there has to be a larger cause” territory.  Each time I have had the vehicle in the shop the electrical system tested out fine.

Yesterday instead of bringing it to the same place that I got all of the batteries swapped at… I brought it to the dealership hoping that maybe just maybe they would have more Chevy specific diagnostic information.  The best that they could come up with is that the battery cables were garaged on the end that connects to the vehicle not the battery.  So they swapped those out and swapped the battery that was not toast and I was on my way by mid day.   However it pretty much killed all of the first part of my day and nothing says fun like trying to attend conference calls from a busy car dealership lobby.

I am really hoping when I go out to turn my vehicle on this morning that everything just works.  They think they found the source of the problems but at this point I am just paranoid.  When I said that sometimes a puppet master is out there pulling the strings…  what I meant by that is had I not caught this in the morning I would have instead caught it after about 5:30 at night…  while my vehicle was in a downtown parking garage without an easy way to load it up and tow it.  We would have likely had to push it down and out of the garage to be able to tow it at all given there isn’t enough height clearance for a tow truck to get in there and back out with a vehicle on the trailer.

Puppet Strings

As far as gaming goes…  I made an attempt at the quest I had been stalled out in Final Fantasy XIV but however didn’t realize there was just about to be a server reset.  As such I made it through the first part of the fight… only to find out there is a whole OTHER part of the fight where I play as Y’shtola.  The server rebooted and killed my connection shortly after starting that… which means I am going to have to restart the entire freaking quest line when I get back.  Were this another game I would have just tossed it in the bin and walked away from it, but I know I HAVE to get through this stupid quest to be able to participate in the upcoming expansion.  This is a dumb quest and Square should feel bad for putting something this painfully long in the MSQ.

Instead I finally landed on playing some Grim Dawn which I still think is probably my favorite Diablo 2 style game out there.  The story is nonsense and the questing system is obtuse… so quite honestly I just keep pushing forward until I get to the next rift which unlocks access to that region from the central hub.  Along the way I appear to be completing some quests as I take down monsters marked with a star over their head.  It is a mechanically fun game, but I can’t say any of the gearing options feel really inspired to me.  Sure it is sorta cool that you can have a gun, but I still wind up running around with a big two handed weapon, since my attack of choice is a big overhead smash that sends a shockwave along the ground.

Here is hoping that today is less messed up and that nothing out of the ordinary occurs.  It is also my hope that tonight I can return to that quest line and finally beat the damned thing so I can move on with my life.  Final Fantasy XIV is not really endearing itself to me right now, but I want to finish the story that I have missed.

The Will of the Moon

The Will of the Moon

This weekend was largely about me trying to recuperate from whatever crud I had on Friday.  I’m feeling better as a whole but still not feeling 100%.  I’ve referred to this weekend as a name brand beta, because when a company throws a special test that most of the world seems to be invited to it definitely comes off as more marketing ploy than actual test of the game infrastructure.  Overall the game performed flawlessly other than an apparent known memory leak bug, that I never quite encountered because I didn’t play longer than the requisite two or three hours that it takes to encounter it.  The missions that I ran were rather enjoyable, and I fully expect to at a minimum play through the story content and unlock all of that.  I make no guarantees about how long it will take me given that it took me a good two years before I reached maximum level in the original game.

I still question how well the game fits my play style, but at the moment I am looking at it for a purely single player experience given that I know going into it that none of the other AggroChat crew will be playing it.  They all for the most part bounced off of the original Division, and primarily for the bleak story beats.  I think the fact that we were effectively working for the various communities that we discover makes the flow of the story feel better.  However as Kodra pointed out on the podcast, it does leave us a question of why exactly we are still an agent if there is no organizational structure left?  I mostly view that trope as the lone lawman in the wild frontier sort of approach.  I will say the game improved massively after I turned off the HDR, given that I was only able to SEE the HDR effect upstairs in my office and not while playing remotely through parsec…  and as such it made everything extremely washed out and hard to pick out details.

The Will of the Moon

The game I spent the majority of Saturday playing was Assassin’s Creed Origins and I have reached a point where I am staring down the barrel of the ending.  However I am extremely frustrated by what appears to be the ending that is unfolding in front of me.  Now I have said for some time that my opinion is that when this game was originally planned the ultimately design was that you could play it as Bayek or as Aya since the two characters at least on some level are interchangeable and have the same reasons for engaging in the main story plot.  For sake of budget I assume they cut one character so that they would not have to animate two copies of everything, but the problem with this is…  that every time you are forced to play Aya it is like stepping foot into a level one character.

What I mean by that is through the course of the game you make a lot of stylistic decisions about what weapons you want to use and what talent points to sink into.  Then each time you are throw into playing Aya you are forced to return back to the character that lacks the ability to customize anything.  So spoilers time…  but I just went through a sequence where it appears that I am saying goodbye to my character Bayek…  aka the one that I have spent the last 40 levels customizing to be exactly the way I want him to be…  and being forced to do the ending of the game with Aya the level 1 blank slate.  This makes me really not want to do any of the ending and just call it good enough… returning to playing through the fun part of the game which is doing random quests out in the world.  Maybe this isn’t exactly what is about to happen… but it certainly seems like I am just about to be forced into beating the game as a proxy.  Please note… I like Aya as a character and would have been fine playing her…  if I could actually control what sort of gear and talents she had.

The Will of the Moon

Lastly I spent some time playing Final Fantasy XIV this weekend and accomplished two things.  Firstly I managed to get my Blue Mage to 50…  which means I now need to find a party of blue mages to go collect the rest of the spells I have available to me given that everything else seems to come from a dungeon or trial.  I spent the podcast grinding out mobs in Northern Thanalan and managed to push across the line solo.  I also managed to get through The Burn which served as a bit of a roadblock since the final boss of that dungeon appears to be a PUG destroyer.  I’ve now moved the quest line along to where I am failing miserably at a fight that is about four times longer than it really needs to be.  Actually I have only failed it the one time and it was mostly because I didn’t catch on what was going on fast enough.  I opted to play through the mission as a warrior instead of a samurai, but that also meant that I was not prepared for a burn phase, because I assumed I was simply trying to out survive the encounter.

I will likely poke my head back in again tonight and give it another shot.  I think I am probably nearing the bridge between 4.4 and 4.5 and as such getting closer and closer to being able to understand what the hell is going on.