User Experience Challenges

I continue to slowly prod my way through the Witcher 2. This was probably an excellent game when it came out in 2011, but it has not aged terribly well. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the ways that the original Mass Effect just felt outdated and a little cludgy. The prime example of this is that too many things are tied to left clicking on objects, and often times your intent gets lost in the shuffle. Left and right click are both attacks in this game, and when you are in combat that takes precedence over anything else as it probably should. However lighting torches, opening doors, and looting bodies are all also tied to the left click action meaning that you can’t do ANY of these things while in combat. In practice this also means that more or less items don’t show up as lootable until you have been out of combat for a bit, meaning you have to keep retracing your steps to make sure you didn’t miss something interesting.
A lot of these problems can be summed up as this game being built before we had somewhat agreed upon what the ideal user interface was for this sort of game. We had some of these same problems upon playing Tron 2.0 for the AggroChat game club because it had a bunch of non-standard controls from an era before “FPS Game Controls” had effectively been codified and universalized between all games. The thing that kills me the most is the absense of a standard “confirm” button or options for selecting dialog choices with number keys. This means I am constantly moving between keyboard and mouse in a deeply uncomfortable way. While you can hit Spacebar to loot all items, you can’t hit the space bar to accept a crafting prompt for example and have to instead hit the enter key, but not the one on the numpad.
Another oddity is that you can see all of your patterns that you can craft in the inventory system, but can’t actually do anything with them there. Instead there is a completely different UI that is accessed by holding down the control key and shown two screenshots above… then you have to click the center symbol to go into another menu with no hotkey available. From there you have to go into yet another menu for Alchemy which finally allows you to brew a potion or make a bomb. There is no reason why this functionality could not have been accessed off of the inventory screen since that is already loaded with a bunch of other information.
All of this just drives home how important user interface and user experience design is in a video game. We have evolved to the point of having a pretty standard template, and when a game doesn’t follow that logic it feels bad to play it. This is ultimately the biggest challenge about dipping too deeply into the back catalog of games that came out in the 2000-2012 era of games, because we were still sorta figuring out how these games should work on the PC without a controller. For all I know this might all go away and end up as a very smooth experience with a controller equipped, but that is not my default method of play and not something I naturally gravitate towards.
I am super thankful that by the time Witcher 3 rolled around all of these user experience problems had been ironed out. Yet again it is a scenario where I am hoping that eventually, much like they have started to do for Elder Scrolls Games… that someone will come through and do a mod that effectively recreates the first two games in the Witcher 3 engine. Erxv1 recreated the entire Witcher 1 Prologue for the Witcher 3 engine and it is available over on Nexus Mods. Unfortunately I am certain this took a massive amount of work, and came together largely because all of the needed assets were readily available in Witcher 3. It would take a lot more effort to recreate entire games, but god I would love to see it.

Chasing the Forever Game

Since this is my first week back for the New Year when I am not in “holiday mode” I am starting to think about all of the assorted topics that one does at the beginning of a new year. I’ve never been very big into making New Years Resolutions, but from time to time the construct seems interesting to me. Given this is also the beginning of a new decade it seems as though it maybe has some greater importance. What I do this year may or may not set the tone for what the rest of the decade is going to look like. As such this morning I am going to share some tweaks that I would like to make in my life for the coming year.

Give Up the Chase

In the year 2000, I got indoctrinated by one of my friends into a little game called Everquest. From that point it feels like I have been chasing the one game to rule them all, or at least the one true game to devote all of my love and attention to. This has been Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, Horizon, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Rift, Star Wars the Old Republic and countless other titles that I have placed upon the burden of being my prime source of entertainment. For the last two decades, the majority of my gaming time has been spent pouring resources and hours into a seemingly endless game hoping it would capture my attentions and hold them in perpetuity. The problem here is that it never really works out and I have had a lot of amazing “honeymoon periods” with new games, in which I will pour my heart and soul for three months before wandering off disillusioned and jaded. In the Post-MMORPG world these have been games like Destiny or Anthem or even Monster Hunter World where I kept trying to make them into something that they were not necessarily intended to be. So in this coming year and decade I hope to stop looking for this magical thing that doesn’t exist. I want to allow myself to enjoy the games while they are enjoyable and fade away without guilt when they stop being that.

Stop Leading the Masses

I have this natural instinct and desire to collect awesome people and drag them along with me in whatever I happen to be doing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it has been the source of my “gaming community” for the last two decades. However going hand in hand with the first statement, I need to stop trying to make magic happen again. Everquest and World of Warcraft were moments in history that may not ever be able to be repeated. I need to stop trying to enter each new online gaming experience and try and make it into something more than it actually is. I have this bad habit of trying to “unite the clans” and get them rallied under a single banner, and then feeling super distraught and guilty when this amalgam of all of these people that I think are awesome never quite mesh together into a larger resilient community. When we launched House Stalwart in Elder Scrolls Online we had something silly like 150 people on opening day and this was absolutely unsustainable in both just the case of human interaction or trying to make that many people exist in the same space. Then when a month later that it is down to 50 people… which is still a reasonable sized group I end up getting disappointed and frustrated that I could not somehow make everyone stick around. The binge and purge nature of new games and the guilds/clans I have built around them ends up leading to a spiral of depression and guilt that I just don’t need in my life. As a result my hope is that I can somehow stop myself from picking up that mantle of leadership in the future, because it only ends up leading to heartbreak when I can’t live up to the standards I have built up in my brain.

Play More Single Player Games

It was extremely evident when I was pulling together the list of my top games of the decade… that there are a ton of critically acclaimed games that I have never touched. Last of Us for example is by all accounts a phenomenal and game changing experience, and I have never actually played it. The reasons are many but at the end of the day I wind up getting caught up in chasing the forever game and spend all of my time in those sort of experiences rather than knocking out anything single player. I really want to somehow reverse that trend and start playing more of the games that are sitting collecting dust in my backlog that I picked up on sale at some point but never really gave the time of day. Similarly I would also like to start finishing some of the things that I started but bounced for some reason or another. Jedi Fallen Order for example is a phenomenal game experience and I have no clue at all why I stopped playing it. I need to get back in and figure out where I left off and continue the adventure. In no particular order here are some of the games that I would like to play and or finish this calendar year.
  • Last of Us
  • Jedi Fallen Order
  • Wolfenstein II: New Colossus
  • The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
  • Darksiders
  • God of War
  • Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
  • Cyberpunk
  • Dragon Age Inquisition
  • Red Dead Redemption 2
  • Sleeping Dogs
  • Uncharted (collection)
I realize that is a lot of things on that list and it doesn’t account for my whims but it is a goal. These are some things that I would love to spend more time playing.

Read More Books

Over the last two decades I have allowed myself to get out of the habit of reading for personal enjoyment. There are series that I am well hooked on that I will snatch up a new title for and read when it comes out like the Dresden novels, but the total volume of my reading is pretty limited. It is a weird sequence of circumstances and as I have moved away from consuming physical content as a whole… I never quite transitioned books in this direction. For awhile it was because I lacked what I considered a comfortable tablet to read on, and then when I did get that thing I wound up just playing mobile games on it before bed. With my recent obsession about the Witcher universe and trying to consume those novels I am almost rediscovering how enjoyable and relaxing knocking out a few chapters before sleep can be. My wife is a voracious reader and over the Christmas break she consumed over twenty novels. I am nowhere near as quick or consistent as I will always prefer game time to time with a book. That is not to say that I don’t also enjoy time with a book, and it is my goal this coming year to just keep something queued and progressing. I realize I have a lot of Witcher novels in front of me, but I would also really like to read some Brandon Sanderson because it is something I have never done. I feel like I have a hefty backlog of things I know I “should” read but never got around to. I may actually start using Good Reads as a way of tracking this, just for the sake of having something easily attached to the blog.

Take Better Care of Myself

I am a fat man and will likely always be a fat man. This is just who I am as a person and I lack the desire to change that. However I need to do something because I am currently the largest I have ever been. In many ways it is keeping me from living the sort of life that I want to live. I am not entirely sure what this is going to entail but I want to make some effort to change this. I need to sit down with my wife and make some lifestyle changes in order to support this, and as a result I am being vague for the moment because I am not entirely certain what that is going to look like. I always skimp on exercise in part because I keep trying to play forever games and keep trying to make myself available to lots of different time zones worth of friends when they are available. I need to stop this and spend more time on improving me.

Go To BlizzCon

I am not sure if this is realistic this year or not, but I would like to go to a BlizzCon. I would like to experience it in person and meet up with my various long time friends who are Blizzard devotees. This coming year seems like it is going to factor heavily into Diablo 4… the Blizzard franchise that I care the most about and as a result I think I would really like to be there. Factoring into the previous statement, I need to get to a size where air travel will not be horrible for me in order to make this even a viable option. Anaheim is a really far distance away and as a result there is no reasonable option that sees me taking a road trip to get there. So contingent on the previous statement, I would love to figure out a way to make this work in November or whenever it happens to be occurring this year.

Revive Bel Folks Stuff

Several years back I had a monthly podcast where I sat down with various friends and had a dialog about things and stuff. I greatly enjoyed this process but found the scheduling to be madness and the fact that it felt like no one was actually listening ultimately caused me to stop doing this. It never really seemed to gain any sort of traction, I guess in part because it was super niche and you either new these people I cared about or you didn’t. So one of the things I have been kicking around for awhile is trying to figure out a way to revive this. Maybe record an entire season of episodes before releasing them, making it less of a stretch of trying to figure out how to schedule them. I also think I might want to shift the format to where I ask a fixed set of questions that are of course open ended enough to allow for random discussions to happen. I am not even sure this is going to happen but I figure it is worth trying to make happen. For those curious the original run can still be found on the AggroChat site, and there are seven total episodes.

Lord of Corvo Bianco

This morning is a day of reckoning. I’ve been on vacation since the 20th of December and in that amount of time you can really screw up your sleep schedule. Though over the last few days I have made failed attempts to reintroduce getting up at a specific time, this morning and the day as a whole is going to suck. This holiday was a dual edged sword in that I spent most of it sick, but because of that I also spent most of it gaming. Over the course of this extended break I poured 80 hours worth of game time into The Witcher 3 and have reached a point where I am happy to walk away from it having seen how the main story plays out and having knocked out most of the Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine expansion content. Blood and Wine specifically was fantastic because I absolutely adore the Duchy of Toussaint. I love my Vineyard and it helped give me a sense of ownership in the setting as I explored it.
Sometimes my brain works in a specific pattern where I end up going all in on something. Anyone who has engaged me in a Destiny lore conversation will understand what I am talking about because I sometimes get obsessed with things. Right now I am decades late becoming obsessed with the world of the Witcher and as a result I have started reading the novels. I don’t read particularly quickly and I tend to read before bed and as a result a chapter or two at a time. That said I am slowly chewing my way through The Last Wish which seemingly based on the consensus of sources I found was the proper starting point to this series, and also more or less what the Netflix show has been drawing from. I’m still on the first of the short stories but probably about halfway through it at this point.
As far as Witcher 3, I have to admit it is a little depressing to be walking away from it. I mean I could keep playing it and whittling down the remaining tasks that I have or collecting the last few Gwent cards that I am missing. That said when I reach the “endgame” for a single player game it just feels hollow. I know that all of those NPCs that I love will never gain new dialog lines and will just more or less sit there as a testament to the fact that the world is forever frozen with no new adventures to be had. I may at some point start New Game Plus to see if that is any different, but really I left the game in a good spot and am more or less happy with the various conclusions. There is only one thing that I might have tweaked but it was not worth the back tracking required to change the way something played out. Also I am just going to throw this out there… but Triss is infinitely better than Yennefer. Maybe the books will change my opinion, but Triss is a delight to be around and Yen basically treats Geralt like shit all the time.
In my tradition of doing everything the wrong way… I spent yesterday trying to find the next game to play and wound up falling back into Witcher 2. There is no way I will ever be able to complete the first game because it just feels like crap, and while it was suggested that I remap everything to a controller… that isn’t how I way to play it either. I would love to see someone do a complete port of the first game to the Witcher 3 engine. In the meantime however I have watched a few Witcher 1 recap videos and more or less understand what happens. Witcher 2 is way more sluggish befitting the era in which it was released, but I do think I will be able to get used to it. The pacing is just more slow than I had expected and it is frustrating dealing with all of the invisible walls that appear to be everywhere to keep your character from getting out of bounds. I am interested however in seeing how the story plays out, so more than likely this is what I will be playing for the next bit.
The weirdest thing about all of this is that I always thought that the Witcher universe is one that I would enjoy, but for various reasons I struggled to gain purchase. In some ways it is too reliant upon the source material because it expects you also to be obsessed with things in order to actually understand what the hell is going on. I’ve talked about this before, but the game absolutely throws you down conversation trees where you are expected to know who the hell someone is and are going to be struggling to pull together context clues as you go or make a trip out to the wikipedia page in order to sort out just why the hell we know who this Regis guy is for example. That said because it draws so deep upon an existing work, it means there is an absolute wealth of interesting characters to draw upon and I chose that specific example because I love him so much.
The witcherverse is a bit of a slog to get into, but having recently been indoctrinated into the cult of the white wolf… it really is worth the effort. The truth is had I not watched the Netflix series I probably would have bounced again. That is not to say that it is required viewing, but it did give me enough of a primer to feel like I could understand at least the layout of the world and how the various kingdoms fit together. It also helped that as I dug further into the Witcher 3, there were places and events that were brought up that I saw in the series giving me a bit of a rope ladder to try and climb towards understanding. At this point… I would probably suggest just starting with the 3rd game as the first is an unplayable mess and the second seems to have some pacing and user interface issues especially in the quest advisement area. I’ve spent way too long figuring out what the hell I am supposed to be doing already and have yet to clear the first area. The third one while it absolutely drops you off a cliff and expects you to learn to swim on the way down.. it does present itself in a familiar interface that is easy for any MMORPG player or someone who has played a modern open world game to understand.

AggroChat #282 – 2019 Games of the Year Show

Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tamrielo and Thalen
It is that time again, time for another games of the year show.  As is usually the case we fire up a google form and have each member of the AggroChat cast pick their top 5 picks for the year.  This then gets collated into the final list that we talked about during the show. This time around we had thirteen different titles to talk about, with the highest voted title getting 5 different votes from staff members.  Since we have talked at length about most of these games, the resulting discussion ends up being more a trip down memory lane than a deep dive.

Topics Discussed:

  • 2019 Games of the Year Show
    • Trials of Mana
    • Anthem
    • The Outer Worlds
    • Devil May Cry 5
    • Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
    • World of Warcraft Classic
    • Greedfall
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses
    • Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
    • Jedi Fallen Order
    • Untitled Goose Game
    • Baba Is You
    • Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers
The Original Blog Post on AggroChat.com