Moonshine Mansion – Page 60

D3: The Benefits of Friends

February 1, 2016 by Grace

Time for an update on my D3 Season 5 progress. I feel like I’ve been flying though things this season.
1.   Hit level 70 on Friday night. Done!
2.   Complete the Seasonal Journey for the pet by the end of the weekend. Done!
3.   Reach solo greater rift 50. (My best last season was 45). At 46 now.
4.   Reach paragon level 400. (Last season I hit around 350). Done!
5.   Complete greater rift 30 with 2, 3, and 4 players. Done!
6.   Bonus goals: Reach level 70 on a hardcore wizard or complete at least one set dungeon on a witchdoctor. Still waiting on this one. I should really level a gem of ease I guess.

As you can see, I’m quite close to being finished with my goals, and we’re only a couple weeks into the season. How did this happen? I have been playing about the same amount I did last season. The big difference this time around is that I’ve spent a lot more time grouped up with friends. Even though grouping up can be a bit more stressful for me, the benefits are pretty obvious. The drops are better, everything goes much faster, and I can tackle higher difficulties than I could on my own.

This isn’t really new information. I’ve always known that grouping up in this game is way more lucrative. This is the first time I’ve had enough experience with it to really appreciate it though. As someone who still prefers playing solo it is a little overwhelming. And now we get to my next issue: the seasonal journey. Last season I got through the Champion rank, and last night I achieved this again for season 5. There are some parts that expressly have to be done solo, but I found that many of the goals were met easily during passive group play. I’m not sure whether to feel happy that I didn’t have to worry about them, or to feel robbed of any feeling of accomplishment. For now I think I’ll err on the side of being happy, because some of the upcoming goals are still going to be a real struggle for me.

You see I’ve decided to try to go for the extra stash tab you can unlock this season. It is locked up near the end of the season’s journey, behind things like “complete 2 conquests” and “solo greater rift level 60”, the kind of stuff I never even wanted to attempt in previous seasons. To be honest, I don’t really want to attempt it now. Trying to meet these goals feels way beyond my normal relaxed playstyle for D3. I’m afraid I might never be able to complete this, certainly not without help. I am nervous that I might not have a chance to knock out some goals that would be easier in a group before my friends lose interest in the game and move on. Mostly I feel resentful that something as desirable and useful as an extra stash tab is locked so high up the seasonal ladder.

I understand that a lot of people who play this game are more hardcore than me, but I always liked that in previous seasons the rewards for completing the higher levels of the journey were all cosmetic. You could push yourself as far as you wanted to but also feel comfortable stopping when you’ve had enough without feeling like you were missing out on something important. I’ve been playing Diablo 3 semi-regularly since it launched and have never even come close to achieving most of the things that are required to unlock the stash tab this season. Maybe that means I’m a terrible player and I’m ok with that because I’ve enjoyed the hell out of all the time I’ve spent with this game. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that pushing myself past my comfort zone to try to get some more room to throw my excess legendaries doesn’t end up souring this season for me. Hopefully I’ll still have good friends around for a while to help me along the way.

Costumes, Costs, and Consistency

January 27, 2016 by Grace

I had an interesting conversation with some folks last week that started because of the cost to swap specs in the current WoW: Legion alpha build. It got me thinking about the various costs and restrictions associated with the activities I enjoy in MMOs, how they differ between games, and which ones really rub me the wrong way.

For example, I love the cosmetic system in WildStar. It is flexible enough to let you unlock the appearance of almost any item in the game regardless of whether you can equip it or not. The costs come from unlocking more outfit or item appearance slots, and purchasing and applying dyes. It mostly feels fair because it is a somewhat rare event to make a whole new outfit. Once you have one put together you can swap to it at any time for no cost. It does highlight a major inconsistency though. Item appearances get unlocked across your entire account, but dyes do not. The system that seemed so flexible and amazing on your main suddenly feels unnecessarily restrictive on your alt. Somehow having one part of the system account-wide while the other is not feels worse than restricting the whole thing. The overall system feels unfair because the restrictions are not consistent.

This brings me to the upcoming changes to WoW’s transmog system. The announcement at Blizzcon touted account-wide transmog, and that got me really excited! As people asked for clarifications and folks got their hands on the alpha they discovered the restrictions. Sure, unlocks are account-wide. And they are going a bit above and beyond by unlocking the appearances of quest rewards for all the quests your characters have completed. The big caveat is that for item drops you can only unlock the appearance of gear that is appropriate for your class/armor type. This severely limits the usefulness of an account-wide transmog system, and potentially really frustrates RP-ers who routinely equip multiple different armor types to achieve a particular look for their characters. The excitement of account-wide transmog feels suddenly hollow if I still need to run an old raid on a character of every armor type to unlock all the appearances I want.

Now this is the part where some folks might speak up about all the potential reason why the system is good this way. I just really want to highlight the huge inconsistency in how the rules are applied, and that is what makes it feel so frustrating and unfair to me. Here is an example. Say I have a pally (plate wearer) and a druid (leather wearer). To get full use of the transmog system I have to collect appearances separately on each. Meanwhile, my buddy with a rogue and druid (both leather wearers) only has to run something once to unlock items that can be shared with both of their characters. It is this situation that puts the lie to claims that the limitations are good for the “prestige” of earning an appearance, or that it encourages replayability or generates content. When two players experience vastly different restrictions just because of the classes they happen to play, that’s simply not fair and it makes me just angry enough to rant about it here on my blog for a few minutes.

There have been hints that the dye system in WildStar may indeed eventually become account-wide. I am not nearly so hopefully about that sort of change for WoW’s transmog system. It is funny how restrictions on a non-vital system like cosmetic wardrobes can still generate really strong feelings from the player base. Mostly, I just wish that the devs would try to make sure everyone has a level playing field.

That Feeling of Missing Out

January 22, 2016 by Grace

When you play with a group of friends sometimes the stars align and you all get excited about one game that everyone enjoys. Most of the time, though, everyone is checking out multiple different games, and occasionally tries to gather everyone to try something they thought was fun.

I’m in this situation now where most of my friends are playing Warframe together. They certainly seem to be enjoying themselves, and what little of the game I’ve poked at looked ok to me. Meanwhile I’m still excited about Diablo 3 season 5. This puts me in a tricky position. Do I drop D3 for a while and play with them? Or do I keep playing the game I’m excited about, but miss out on fun times with my friends? I’ve seen this pattern happen often enough to know that it probably won’t be too long before some or all of them get distracted by other games and drift off to do their own thing for a while, so it makes sense to try to hop on the bandwagon and play together when everyone is in the same place. From what I’ve played last weekend I enjoyed Warframe fine, but it didn’t exactly grab me and pull me in. The allure is more about playing with friends than playing that particular game.

It doesn’t help that my introverted nature makes group play a weird thing for me. I crave it, I really do want to hang out with friends and spend time together. However, it also tires me out much more quickly than playing alone, and I often get that urge to “hide” in solo games for a while if I overdo it. In a weird way MMOs are actually good for me because there’s often solo tasks like farming supplies that need to be done, and group activities like raiding are usually scheduled just a couple times a week. Games, even ones like D3, that are “better” or more rewarding if you are always grouped are the ones that tend to burn me out more quickly unless I am good about enforcing some “me time”.

Anyway I’m still torn between playing with my friends and playing the game I want to play. The biggest time this happened to me was with WildStar, when I watched people go back to WoW or other MMOs and I stayed behind with the game I loved. I don’t regret that at all, but it is still sad to see your friends having fun times without you and hard to seek out new social circles. Maybe this weekend I’ll give Warframe another shot and try out its group play. But I still want to make D3 my focus until I meet more of my goals for the season.

Season 5: Record Burnout?

January 19, 2016 by Grace

Maybe the title is a little hyperbolic, but I guess time will tell. I had a blast on Friday night. I logged into Diablo 3 and voice chat a little before the season start time and got a group of 4 friends together. We had a few minutes of annoyance when the season began, creating or rebirth-ing characters was very slow and booted us from the game. Fortunately this only cost us about 5 minutes or so. After that we were up and running.

We decided to do bounties together to level. The first few levels where we didn’t have full skills and such were a little slow, but after that we were flying. Over the course of the evening we had a couple people tag in and out of our party, and after about 5 hours it was down to just me and one other friend. I absolutely wanted to get to 70 on the first night, and I’m happy to say that I made it easily. Then, because we had momentum going, we worked on a few of the seasonal achievements to unlock our free class sets. It took me 2 tries to get the level 20 greater rift done because my gear was so bad, but eventually I got it and headed to bed with my 6-piece set bonus in place.

I think that amount of focused play combined with actually playing with other people the whole time did burn me out a bit. For the rest of the weekend I found myself avoiding D3 or setting my status to “busy” so I could unwind alone for a bit. It isn’t that I’m burned out on the game, more that my introverted nature means I need solo time to recharge. I did make some good progress though. I’m now sitting around paragon level 180, and have completed the seasonal journey and received my cute new pet. I’m going to keep putting some time in and hunt for the items I still need to complete my build. Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to really push greater rifts.

The leveling this season felt a little faster than normal for me, probably because I spent the whole time grouped up. Even more than that though, the gearing has felt super fast since you get handed a full set almost immediately. Looking through my bags, I still don’t have a full 6 piece of any other set yet, so in a previous season I’d still be hunting for that and probably struggling a bit. Instead I’m comfortably running on T7 and can pay more attention to things like leveling up my legendary gems instead of stressing about getting a set finished. I’m missing 3-4 items still for my build, but they are more helpful than critical so I don’t feel broken without them. I expect to get a huge boost to survivability once I finally get everything in place.

So how am I doing on my goals for this season so far?

Hit level 70 on Friday night. Done!
Complete the Seasonal Journey for the pet by the end of the weekend. Done!
Reach solo greater rift 50. (My best last season was 45). At 34 so far and there’s plenty of time!
Reach paragon level 400. (Last season I hit around 350). 180 and counting
Complete greater rift 30 with 2, 3, and 4 players. I want to do this soon while people are still active.
Bonus goals: Reach level 70 on a hardcore wizard or complete at least one set dungeon on a witchdoctor. I made a witchdoctor but I don’t want to level her until I’ve completed most of my other goals.

I think I’ve learned that I need to pace myself on group play. A few hours a week is fun but too much makes me want to delete my battlenet friends list and hide. I am making great progress toward my seasonal goals though, and had a lot of fun playing with folks this weekend. Next time around I just need to avoid 10 straight hours of group play…