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Thanksgiving Recap

November 27, 2015 by Belghast

Largely Charming

I just had an awesome breakfast of tiny triangle shaped pancakes, with a couple of sausage patties… and finished my cup of coffee so I think maybe just possibly I am ready to exist in the world today. Hopefully all of my American readers had an awesome Thanksgiving, that had minimal if any awkwardness. For the rest of my readers in other parts of the world… I hope you had a good normal ordinary Thursday and are having an awesome Friday right now as well. American holidays have to be really bizarre for anyone living in the rest of the country, because we get so hyped about them… and also dominate large swaths of the internet. For me I had a really charming Thanksgiving but one that lasted quite a bit longer than normal. Several weeks ago we technically had our first Thanksgiving with my wife’s father. Traditionally we have a dual Thanksgiving and Christmas celebration on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, because they head down south for the winter immediately following. For whatever reason they wanted to get an early start, so we had it several weeks ago.

Then this week we started our official festivities on Wednesday night around 7 pm. I’ve been without grandparents for a few years now, and there was this period where most of us simply did not know what to do for the holidays without that glue to hold the family together. That said lately there has been much effort in trying to make it work again. When my Grandfather on my Dad’s side passed away, my Aunt ended up with the house, and she has done this amazing job of renovating it to make it feel modern and cozy again. While Grandfather didn’t really like change much, I feel like Grandma would have loved it and even more than that she would be tickled pink that we were still all pulling together for Christmas and Thanksgiving in their home. The end result are these adorably charming meals that we have with my folks, my aunt and her husband, and my cousins. It always has this feel like we are going away to a cabin or something like that, when I know it really isn’t the case at all. I am really happy that at least a bit of normality has returned to the traditions on that side. On my Mother’s side however things are still sorting themselves out.

The Important Meal

Then yesterday during the noon meal, we met with the family on my Wife’s mothers side. This was a considerably larger group of people, and anytime there are large gatherings my anxiety starts going into overtime. It was however really charming as well, and the food… was amazing. I am really particular about food… and generally speaking I do not like spiral sliced hams, because in my experience they tend to be on the dry side. Whatever they did to the spiral sliced ham they had… it ended up juicy and moist and amazing. From all accounts… all they did was “follow the directions” so maybe that has been the problem all along? Similarly they said they followed the directions on the Turkey and it wound up amazingly juicy as well. I am guessing they may just have some magic touch because seriously… everything we ate yesterday was phenomenal. One thing I do find funny is how recipes that started out on the back of packages… have become Thanksgiving staples. The meal isn’t complete without Green Bean Casserole for example… and we had the cheesy sour cream potato bake thing too that also started on the back of some product package. It makes me wonder how many of these dishes have been marketed to us as simply a way to sell their product in an otherwise slow period of the year.

Another big discussion from yesterday was the whole stores opening on Thanksgiving day bit. One of the questions my wife and I had was that most of the stores didn’t open until that evening. There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth on social media about this practice of opening on Thanksgiving day hurting families. However what we wondered was… is it regional which meal of the day is important? Growing up the only important meal on Thanksgiving is the noon meal, and dinner generally speaking is “fend for yourself” from leftovers. This was the way in both sides of my family, and the same for all sides of my wife’s split family. So obviously in our region the important meal is Lunch, which makes me wonder… are there some regions where the important meal is the evening meal? The other side line discussion was how everyone seems to be concerned about big box stores opening on Thanksgiving… but no one was ever really been concerned about the Walgreens of the world, the Restaurants and the Convenience stores. Those have always been open on Thanksgiving, and none of those folks have ever gotten to spend the holidays with their family. Similarly my nephew has to bail early as he is a Police officer and was just about to work a shift.

Limited Awkwardness

The thing I am most thankful of this year is the fact that I did not have to suffer through any cringe worthy borderline racist or sexist conversations! Everyone was happy and healthy and seemingly stable… and we had a nice meal with some nice conversation all around. There were absolutely zero occurrences of verbal sparring about this sports team or this product being better than another one. We simply had a nice meal, and got lots of hugs from people we don’t see as often as we would like. Once again there wre promises to get together more often, and I really hope we can follow through with them. On the earliest thanksgiving we did make plans to meet up for dinner once a month on the first Friday of the month. I think maybe we are going to make that one happen this year, because we have a timeline to follow. The others… I hope we can sort something out because it is sad that most of the family lives within an hour of each other, but we only ever see them at Thanksgiving and Christmas. All in all it was a pretty great year, and I am hoping that each of you had a similarly great Thanksgiving. My thoughts go out to the folks who are working retail today, and I am hoping you all stay safe and sane.. are getting hazard pay… and didn’t forget to pack your riot gear.

Positivity, Cynicism and Thankfulness

November 26, 2015 by Belghast

On Thankfulness

One of the problems with depression is that your brain lies to you. It tells you that things are going horribly, that no one likes you… and that ultimately you are a failure in everything you do. It is because of these lies that I find it extremely important to give myself a reality check every now and then, and really appreciate how lucky and blessed I really am. The Thanksgiving holiday has become my favorite over the years, and the reasoning behind that… is pretty simple. It cuts through all the pretense, and is just a holiday about sharing a meal and some conversation with your family. Granted my particular view of Thanksgiving may be dictated by the fact that we never host… but for us at least it is showing up someplace with a few dishes of food in hand… and then sitting down to have a lovely meal with folks that you don’t see as often as you might like. There are lots of times I wish we could convince our family to treat Christmas as Thanksgiving 2.0… because for me at least it is the getting together part that is the important bits… not necessarily the often times awkward gift exchange.

Thanksgiving is also a great time to sit down and review the past year. I could look at this year as nothing special, but in reality I was surrounded by my support network of friends and managed to continue releasing daily blog posts and weekly podcasts without missing a beat. That seems like a pretty great thing to be thankful for. More importantly I am thankful for my friends. There are so many of you that I talk to on a daily basis, and you are always there to offer a word of support or sometimes a much needed bringing down to earth. I am also extremely thankful for my amazing wife… who helps to center me… and keep me from going off the deep end sometimes. I’m also thankful for my very excellent work family, because they too make the daily grind thing much easier. I’ve been lucky to be under the same boss now for four or five years of my going on eight years at my current job… and I have to say he makes it enjoyable. I am also thankful to this blog and its readers, because whether or not you realize it… this daily writing routine and the interactions I have with you all about said writing is therapeutic. There is something about reconciling my thoughts and putting it onto paper, that helps organize my cluttered mind, and I thank you all for joining in the journey with me.

On Positivity

I’ve always thought that Thanksgiving made a much better day for reflection and resolutions than New Years. For me at least it has taken on this meaning of looking back at the things you did well, the things you didn’t do quite so well… and the things you would want to change. I am not exactly sure when I set down the path I am currently on, but it has at least been a year now since I started purposefully trying to cut as much negativity as I could from my life. I was tired of feeling bitter and frustrated with the world, and I set down a path of “fake it until you make it”. As goofy as that phrase sounds… it really does work because as time has gone on… I’ve myself become a much more positive person in my interactions with people… and in return my outlook on the world. I am a happier person today than I was a few years ago, and my hope is that I will be a happier person still in the coming year. It isn’t like I have some gauge to measure happiness by, but I know at least that I have less days where I am struggling to drag myself out of bed and confront the day.

I will likely always have the darkness of depression hanging over me, but I am getting better at simply not listening to the little voice in my head that is constantly replaying all of the things that are wrong with me. I doubt I will ever shut that off, but I’ve started to develop better coping mechanisms for blocking it out. I want to be someone that makes the lives of those around me better, not someone who brings others down. So even if that is just a brief message somewhere in the social media sphere, I want to leave a positive effect on those I interact with. I am never going to be a full on Pollyanna, because I am just too jaded for that to ever work… but I do want to be someone who is actively making things better rather than consistently making them worse. While what I do is not really important in the grand scheme of things, it is my hope that at least it is a legacy of good… not one of suffering.

On Cynicism

By all accounts I was an almost painfully happy child, and based on all of the photos I have seen… I am willing to accept that at face value. Something happened along the way however to turn me into a fairly bitter, jaded and cynical person. I am good at what I do, because I plan for failure… because I don’t just accept it as a possibility… I expect it to happen. So being an eternal pessimist has been great for a career in software development… but pretty horrible for my outlook on the world. While I am not a doomsday prepper by any means, my mind just naturally works along the lines of preparing for the worst possible thing to happen in every single interaction. I can tell you the constant battling of my brain is tiresome when you take this instinct and mix it with the depression. My brain can make some pretty insane leaps, as failure to shake someones hand… ends up leading to me being out cold and hungry on the streets. There is a whole irrational segment of my mind that is constantly churning out doomsday scenarios out of average every day occurrences. Maybe I simply took my Eagle Scout training a little to seriously, with the whole “Be Prepared” motto.

Now all of these instincts that I am talking about are pretty deep rooted, but it doesn’t mean I think they are good things. It is my hope over the next year to work towards being less cynical. I write about video games, not industrial accidents. I should have more child like joy about the things I am doing, rather talking about how this or that is a portent of a big coming failure. I am tired of seeing the bad in my hobby, and I am tired of feeling like everything is going to shit… and quickly. I mean the world around us does a pretty good job of eternally bumming me out on a regular basis, I really don’t need my hobby to do it as well. So along with the methodology of faking it until I make it… I am going to try applying that positivity more thoroughly and hopefully root out some of my cynicism towards everything. I want the coming year to be an awesome one, and I want to spend more time enjoying the awesome things around me… rather than worrying about the things that aren’t. I can’t say that I think it will be easy, but I think it will be good in the long run for my own mental health and happiness.

In closing… I hope each of you has your own personal day of reflection upon all the ways you are lucky in your life, and all of the things you would strive to change. I hope you enjoy your time with family and friends, and enjoy the ritual of sharing a good meal. Thanksgiving is this day that has a special meaning for me, and it is my hope that it develops a special meaning for each of you. May you have a very Happy Thanksgiving, and even if you are not celebrating it… may your day be excellent as well.

PvP and Accessibility

November 25, 2015 by Tamrielo

I’ve been dabbling in PvP games recently– Battlefront a few weekends back, FFXIV’s Lords of Verminion, a bit of Starcraft. I even jumped back into Tribes to check it out, since I remember loving that game.

Of these, one has decent matchmaking, and one is too young to have enough data for good matchmaking. It’s an interesting problem with PvP design in general– for the vast majority of people, it’s only really fun if the sides are even, and otherwise it’s miserable. Furthermore, the speed at which players quit if they’re losing is a lot faster than if they’re bored of winning, so you quickly get into impenetrable situations where any sense of stratified play is eliminated. There’s no space for new players to learn how to play the game, and advanced players benefit from stomping new players.

At the same time, a lot of PvP games (especially MMOs) try to blur the line between levels of player skill, making each match a crapshoot as to whether it will be a close, fun match or a total blowout. It tends to make PvP feel more random and less “balanced”, which doesn’t satisfy PvP players, and it frustrates players who dabble in the gametype because it feels punitive and random compared to the rest of the game.

As a recent example for me, I’ve noticed that the Lords of Verminion metagame has, broadly, three tiers of players. There are the low tier players, who are trying new strategies and testing out minions against players (because the AI, even at its hardest, isn’t that challenging outside of some of the pre-scripted challenges), who tend to lose most of their games against other players (owing at least partly to a lack of rare minions). There are the mid-tier players, who are what I was running into a few days ago, who supplant skill with rare and overly powerful minions. Then there are the high-tier players, who are using no more than three or four different minions (a couple of which are rare), all generally with the same special ability, but are adept at using it and reacting to the other player’s moves. They tend to beat the mid-tier players who just use rare minions, because they’re better at the game and know which rare minions are the best and which more common minions can beat them. Unfortunately, I’m paired with all of the different tiers of players essentially at random, and the lower-tier players tend to stop playing after two or three matches. They tend to be the best and most even games for me, because I also lack rare minions, though I can occasionally beat a mid-tier player, though high tier players are both better than I am and have better minions. As a result, after a scant handful of games the only players remaining on the field for me are the ones I’m at a stark minion disadvantage against.

In a similar vein, Starcraft divides its players up by “leagues”, from bronze all the way up to platinum, diamond, and master. Every game you play adjusts your overall ranking, so that you’re more or less always being paired with players of your skill level. Starcraft’s downside is that even the very lowest tiers of play require knowledge of the game that’s hard to get without exposing yourself to other players. Other players, especially in PvP games, tend to be abrasive and combative– League of Legends is a prime example of a game that’s been fighting this for years with mixed results. Even in the usually surprisingly positive FFXIV community, I had a person (who was the top-ranked player in my server’s tournament last I checked) tell me to “just quit, you’re not good” in our match. It’s a bad environment to learn in, and worse if you have both opponents AND teammates to interfere (again: see League).

Solutions to this are interesting. In the MMO space, the number of players who actually actively participate in PvP is vanishingly small in most games– depending on the game it sits anywhere from as low as 2% to as high as 35%, but it’s always a minority of players. It’s a relatively inexpensive source of content, which is why you see it as much as you do, but supporting teaching systems (which would be significantly more expensive) are vanishingly rare.

Here’s the thing that frustrates me. PvP is fun. Probably a majority of my readership just read that and winced, or outright said to the screen “no, it’s not!”, but I assure you it is. Mariokart is a fun game. Smash Bros is a fun game. Lots of board and card games are fun, and they’re PvP. Bar Trivia is PvP. It’s possible to have fun in PvP in a video game, and I’d be honestly surprised to run into someone who’s played games for a long time who hasn’t had fun with PvP somewhere in there. It’s just that when you’re playing Mariokart with friends on the couch, you’re (probably) not dicks to each other, and you can make adjustments for slight skill differences to make it fun for everyone. No one wins if someone just slams everyone else and smack talks about it, and if someone does that, they’re probably not getting invited to the next game night.

Despite this, PvP in online games continues to be inaccessible for all but the most devoted. It’s something I think about a lot, because I think there’s a niche for a game that teaches PvP skills in a friendly, accessible way without being frustrating or leaving a huge skill gap between players who have just played the campaign and some “vs AI” matches and players who have played against other players. There’s got to be a way to pull it off.

In the meantime, though, I’d also like to see games lean on more serious PvE on a wider variety of levels for its challenge. Diablo 3 does this rather well, and while that game isn’t my cup of tea I think it’s a good example of a game with basically no PvP that’s still compelling over long periods. I’ve talked before about wanting an MMO with a legitimately scary world, too.

We’ve Got Cows

November 25, 2015 by Belghast

Another Realm

I have briefly talked about this in the past, but I’ve lived in this strange place when it comes to World of Warcraft. Sure I played lots of Alliance because that was where most of my characters that I cared about existed… but I’ve always been one to bridge the gap. It was thanks to my involvement in the Argent Dawn server forums, and the later unofficial server forums that I created and hosted that I got to know tons of people on that side of the fence. For years I said I would level something on Horde to play with my “other” set of friends, but that never really panned out. During Wrath I ended up pushing a Deathknight to 80, but unfortunately the account it is on… is not the account I play most of the time. When it was announced that Scryers would be merging into Argent Dawn… I went somewhat crazy and created a full account worth of Horde characters because quite honestly… I had no clue how the merger would work. I did not know if all of the sudden there would just be this one amalgam server… and we would have 22 characters on it. The end result however is that both Argent Dawn and Scryers exist as distinct worlds… but everything from guilds to the zones themselves spans across the two realms allowing me to officially guild up with my old school Horde friends.

This has allowed me to do some utter madness… and ultimately have both a Horde and Alliance version of every single character. The big problem came with the fact that I had one of each on the Alliance that I did not want to lose access to. So now after some juggling Argent Dawn has become the server I play Alliance on and Scryers the server I play exclusively Horde. The only challenge is the fact that I had nothing leveled on Scryers, whereas on Argent Dawn as you can see above all but two of my characters are over level 90, and even then the lowest is 53 which is still a significant amount of levels. Prior to this week on Scryers I had managed to get an Orc Deathknight to 60, and a Tauren Paladin and Blood Elf Warrior to around 20. With the announcement of Legion came the pre-order process, which I went ahead and did giving me a boost to level 100. I was extremely torn on this one… do I take the boost and potentially get to do some stuff with my friends now… or do I level it the old fashioned way. Having not seen much of the Horde content, I actually do want to level there eventually.

Moo-Cow-Adin

Essentially I arrived at a thought process that is level the Blood Elf Warrior and Orc Deathknight legitimately… but boost the Tauren Paladin giving me access to do “big kid things” right away. I largely went with the Paladin because I really do enjoy both Protection and Retribution, but more importantly it gives me a character that I can in theory fill three different roles on. While I don’t really like healing as a Paladin, I have done it in the past and in a pinch I could do it again. I am however completely comfortable doing LFR and the likes as a Retribution Paladin allowing me to hopefully gear up both my Retribution set and eventually get a Protection set. The problem is… I knew if I was ever going to play the character for real I had to look cool doing it. This means I had to find something that I could enjoy to transmog into for the time being. My go to set for Paladins is the Tier 6 Lightbringer set, because it is relatively easy to farm. So last night I set off to go do Black Temple, Mount Hyjal, and finally Sunwell.

I am convinced that the game goes out of its way to screw with players trying to farm a full set of gear in a single attempt. It seems like there is always a single piece of gear that refuses to drop… and generally speaking it has been the helm token for me off Archimonde. This is extra insulting because as far as a raid goes… I HATE running Mount Hyjal. This is namely because you are a slave to the timers… and it seems to take significantly longer than most any other raid due to this aspect. Namely it is the Horde section of that raid that drives me insane… because I tend to play Melee focused characters, which makes knocking Gargoyles and Frost Wyrms out of the air a major pain in the ass. All told I was pretty happy with the results, and the only piece I did not manage to get were the legs from the Illidari Council fight… because for some reason it glitched and only gave me two pieces of loot including a single leg token. I have zero problem farming Black Temple to get the legs, and in the meantime I got a drop from Sunwell that will fill in well enough for the time being. At some point I need to get a better weapon, but for the moment I am rocking the big damned glowy orange axe from Black Temple, which makes me happy enough.

Onwards to Tanaan

My guild suggested that I spend some time digging into Tanaan Jungle to get some upgrades from the 640 set they start you out in after being boosted. I also really want to start the Legendary Ring quest, which I just picked up last night. From there I plan on throwing myself at the LFR and seeing if I can get some decent upgrades, and hoping to complete the ring quest along the way. It is really my hope that they upped the drop chances of those items out of Highmaul that are needed for the ring, because otherwise… this is going to be a thoroughly frustrating experience. I remember how long it took to get those on Belghast when we were actively raiding every week. In any case I seem to have sorted out how to actually play a Paladin again, and gearing my Moocow is pretty much my side gig from this point onwards. It is my hope to be able to get geared enough to actually join in some of the reindeer games happening on this side of the server. The only footnote there is that I really need not to raid actively, and I am hoping that won’t be a problem.

For a period of time I was really damned happy playing both Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft. I enjoyed the mix of the two games because they both scratched a distinct itch. World of Warcraft is this really enjoyable experience when played casually. I enjoy doing older content for transmog bits, or casually leveling alts… but when I was raiding both Warcraft and FFXIV… the differences just started frustrating me. Ultimately I prefer the FFXIV raid game better, because it feels like the boss encounters are simply messaged better. Granted if they just added telegraphs with clearly identified edges of effects like they have in both Wildstar and FFXIV it would go a long way to my enjoyment. Ultimately I think I simply got burnt out by trying to raid two different games at the same time… and ultimately ended up choosing the one that was causing me less frustration. So now… I am hoping to go back to playing both games casually… and in theory maybe starting to raid once again in FFXIV. We have started doing this Saturday thing again, where we do older content and it was a lot of fun this week. My hope this will ease me into doing more content in that game as well, and in the mean time I am planning on diving into LFR on the Paladin in WoW. Granted I won’t be doing any of it tonight… because this is the first of our Thanksgivings, and I also need to stage a proper Thanksgiving post for tomorrow.