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Like Its The End

May 26, 2017 by Belghast

I am going through this really odd period with World of Warcraft. My friend Grace and I had a conversation last night… and it feels like it is the end of an expansion. I guess at this point in the last several expansions the game has been thoroughly in maintenance mode, and we were waiting with baited breath to see if someone announced anything about the expansion. However in this case there is apparently still a good deal of content left to be released. We’ve been told that we would be going to Argus, and the Tomb of Sargeras raid has not even opened… so there are still big things looming on the horizon. However the way I am approaching the game right now very much feels like what I do at the end of an expansion. I am doing all manner of superfluous things that bring my pleasure. For example during the Warlords of Draenor expansion you could not get me into Tanaan Jungle on a regular basis. Once I got my flight… I disappeared from the zone almost entirely. However lately I have been roaming around out there doing all manner of random stuff and attempting to farm Apexis Crystals. Its like I suddenly decided that I really would like to get that Fel Raven mount that is available from there. I’ve also started doing a bunch of achievements… which is odd because generally speaking I am not an achievement driven person… at least not unless there is a mount or pet associated with it.

While I was roaming around Tanaan Jungle I suddenly decided that I wanted to kill the rares that I somehow missed along the way. That lead to me getting the Jungle Hunter achievement for killing 25 different rares. Then something inside of me was like… why stop there… and I looked up what the achievement was for killing everything. Last night I sorted out how to get the last couple I was missing and wound up completing the Jungle Stalker achievement for killing all 60 different named rare mobs in Tanaan Jungle. What is so weird about this is the fact that there is absolutely nothing in it for me… no title, no mount, no pet… none of the things I normally chase after. I just suddenly decided I wanted to do it… and then did it because it was something that existed. Now part of me wants to go around killing all of the named rare mobs in all of the different zones of Warlords… and then maybe Pandaria as well. Ultimately I have zero clue why this is suddenly compelling to me… because there are lots more productive uses of my time. However World of Warcraft, especially running around older content is sort of the pinnacle of “comfort gaming”. I have also been running a lot of older raids attempting to complete various cosmetic sets… that I will honestly probably never wear. There is just something enjoyable at this very moment about checking things off of a list.

I often times have some of the most fun in World of Warcraft when the game is in the lull state at the end of an expansion. I am in no rush to complete anything and not attempting to keep up with anyone else that happens to be progressing faster than I am. I only casually care about raiding, or I have already completed the raid content and shift into a sort of permanently piddling mode of play. Whatever the case it feels like I have generated this artificial bubble of lull, to where things really are not effecting me in any serious way. Sure I am actually raiding again… but doing so in a super casual manner and largely doing content that folks have on farm just for the sake of hanging out with my raider friends. Even though I know in the back of my head that we are going to continue getting a drip of content for awhile now… I am largely okay pretending it is the end. I seem to be able to play more freely and pull random goals out of the air and work towards them. While it would be awesome to get some dungeoning in every now and then… I am happy with not feeling like I am letting someone down by not grinding seriously towards some long term objective. I realize that as soon as Stormblood launches… I will be back in the rat race and trying to make sure I am as well geared as possible to be able to tackle all of the new content. However for the moment I am enjoying this enhanced state of chill.

Book Challenge #91: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

May 24, 2017 by Grace

I’ve been reading at what feels like a pretty good pace, and so it is challenge time once again! This is #91 on the list, The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury published in 1951.

This is the second book in a row that made me wonder how the heck it ended up on this list. Unlike the last one, this one isn’t mediocre or out-of-genre. It just isn’t a novel. The Illustrated Man is a collection of short stories, tied together loosely through the construct of the titular illustrated man, whose moving tattoos tell stories that play out every night. The illustrated man concept is a neat wrapper, but it didn’t fit all that well with the general theme of space stories over most of the book. Overall it was enjoyable, but this book feels weird to have on this list. Although now I’m really interested in a “top 100 sci-fi short story collections” list because I would read the hell out of that.

Since it is a collection it is a bit difficult to pin down any general thoughts on this one. I enjoy Bradbury’s style and there’s some nice thought-provoking tales in here. Some of the writing feels dated at times, and occasionally suffers from the curse of “this feels really cliched now but it probably wasn’t as much of a cliche when it was written”. Many of the stories are also very grim, so much so that this collection could instead be called “Many new and awful ways to die in space.” Even when the content is harsh the stories are usually thoughtful, and often contain a humanity that often gets lost in short fiction like this. Too many times short stories can be more about the twist or “aha!” moment than about characters or places, but some of these stories combat that nicely. One of my favorites from this collection is about a family where the father is a spacer and the mother acts like he is already dead to shield herself from what she believes is his inevitable death out in the stars. There’s still a twist but by the time you get there you at least understand a bit about this family and how they survive with each other.

TL;DR: A nice collection of Bradbury’s short stories, in which many people die in space.

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

Rating: 4/5 stars

Verdict: I’d recommend it if you like Bradbury or sci-fi in general from that era. With lots of stories you will likely find something to enjoy.

Next up: The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock

Destiny 2 Feels

May 19, 2017 by Belghast

So yesterday was the big reveal of Destiny 2 gameplay and I have to say I am not disappointed in the least. In fact at this very moment I am feeling inordinate amounts of Destiny love. There were a few things that were released that gave me all the feels. The first is the “Story of Zavala” trailer of sorts that tells the tale of how he came from being a corpse somewhere in the cosmodrome to being the leader of the Vanguard. Unfortunately I have not seen this trailer released separately so you have to catch it about 14 mins into the video that I linked… which is the entire Destiny 2 reveal stream dumped to YouTube. In that trailer you see a young Amanda Holliday getting her first look at a starship, so that in itself was completely priceless. The second cavalcade of feels comes from the gameplay reveal trailer… which appears to be cut from what is going to be one of the intro cinematics showing how the tower falls. There is a moment in the trailer for each class where they get to shine… and I absolutely got all the feels when I saw Zavala call everyone to him and raise a Titan bubble. There are similar badass moments where Ikora Rey Nova Bombs a Cabal transport, and Cayde-6 Golden Gun’s three Cabal troopers.

Destiny 2 is a tale of starting over after a monumental fall from grace, which in itself is probably the best way of dealing with a power reset scenario. Having spent the last week playing through the Fallen Empire storyline in Star Wars the Old Republic… I absolute approve of the notion that sometimes you need to shuffle the deck to freshen up the game. What I like the most about what I saw though is that everything looked and felt like it was still Destiny… just with the Destiny-ness sliders moved all the way to eleven. They reveal that we are going to four new places… but in part I am hoping that given time we will also revisit areas that we have been to before. The maps themselves are supposedly more open world style, or at least the one that was showed reminded me of something on the scale of the Hinterlands from Dragon Age: Inquisition with lots of active hotspots to go explore and find adventures. This is definitely playing to my core desires as a player, but I am also hoping that it still has directed story missions for the folks like Tamrielo who tend to bounce super hard from “now go explore” setups in games.

It sounds like all of the things that made Destiny awesome are coming back, but that they are adding a whole layer of new stuff on top. To be truthful if you look at my characters stats… I have spent a significant number more hours doing patrol missions than literally anything else in the game. Just as a reference according to my Profile on Bungie.net… on my Titan I have played a grand total of 14 days 15 hours… and of that time 7 days 4 hours was in Patrol mode. So giving me a big open world to roam in is absolutely going to serve my interests. However it sounds like the strikes and raids and crucible modes are all coming back with a vengeance with brand new concepts being introduced. It also seems like some of the specs are being tweaked… and I am not sure if each class is getting a wholly new sub class or if we are just losing one and gaining one. Titans for example I know have a Void class that revolves around wielding a shield like Captain America. Warlocks have a new sub class that gives them flaming angel wings and lets them wield a giant flaming sword. So I am not sure if those are in additional to the subs we already have… or if those are now replacing the Defender Titan and Sunsinger Warlock. I mean I am hoping we get something new… but Defender was absolutely one of those sub classes that was super niche and extremely hard to complete “kill with elemental abilities” sort of bounties.

The biggest news from yesterday is that the PC client would be going through Battle.net… which is curiously being referred to as Battle.net and not the Blizzard Launcher. I said before that I would likely never stop calling it Battle.net, and I am guessing maybe they have rethought that branding decision… now that a non-Blizzard game is going to be using that infrastructure. This decision has a lot of positives and as far as I am concerned fairly few negatives. I’ve spent over a decade now cultivating a community inside of the Blizzard franchise games, and knowing that I can carry that ready made community into Destiny is going to be a huge bonus for me. What Bungie is getting from PSN and XBL is an account system that takes care of all of the day to day friend maintenance and messaging functionality and lets them just connect up a game to it. I mean the option that we all probably through they would be taking was to integrate this game with Steam completely, and rely on steam users for profiles. However to be honest, Blizzard does a far better job of policing its own network than Steam does, because quite frankly it is not in the interest of Valve to clamp down too harshly. The only negative here about any of this is that it sounds like the PC client will not be available on day one… and will instead be a console launch only. Ultimately I was going to buy this on PS4 and PC anyways… so this is not a huge deal for me… however it is going to suck for anyone who wants to hold out for the PC.

My dream that is likely to go unrealized is that I could have a single set of character spread across all of the platforms. I am perfectly okay with purchasing a PC client, PS4 client, and Xbox One client… and not necessarily being able to cross play between them. However I would love if my characters which are attached to my Bungie account carried over and worked on each platform. Let me play with my PC friends, PS4 friends and Xbox friends with the characters I have spent so much time building. I mean I managed to get my Xbox One character up to 370 light… but that feels pittiful compared to my stable of three 400 light characters on the PS4 side, each with access to a vault full of awesome stuff. Compared to the 14 days on PSN… I have only played 21 hours of the Xbox One gameplay because not having all of my toys was always a major set back. Since the characters are bound to the Bungie account… they could absolutely make this thing happen. They just need the will to do so. So I have hopes and dreams… but I am fully expecting them to get dashed in the long run. At this point however I am just riding the hype train and so freaking ready for this game to come out.

Level Scaling Tech

May 11, 2017 by Belghast

I am in this place with SWTOR Knights of the Fallen Empire where I am honestly not sure what more I can say without my blog turning into a massive spoiler fest. There are a lot of events going on and many of them have surprised me. This is a little shocking given that I consume a lot of gaming media and that KotFE has been technically out since October 2015. I am not sure if I purposefully ignored SWTOR articles… or if I just didn’t come across that many. Whatever the case essentially everything from Shadows of Revan onward has been a completely new story experience for me without me knowing any of the elements ahead of time. So while I recognized characters like Theron Shan or Lana Beniko… I knew nothing about them going into this recent binge of playing the game. We’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but returning to an MMO and seeing years worth of content laid out in front of you is a pretty great thing. Especially in a situation like SWTOR where they have a reasonable level scaling system.

Yesterday Syp posted something over on his personal blog Bio Break talking about level scaling systems. His specific discussion centered around whether or not level scaling systems were good for games, which was brought on by his recent journeys in LOTRO. Over time my own feelings about the systems have changed. You can scan through the backlog of this blog and find me talking about Mentoring systems, where games allow high level player A to drop down to the level of player B and run content with them. This seemed to me like the most elegant solution to the problem of being able to run content with your friends. That was until I encountered Guild Wars 2, and the fact that no matter where you go your character is scaled down to the level of the world. The concept of evergreen content is a big one for me… because I like when a game expands over time rather than contracts. While Guild Wars 2 is not the best example of this… because of the fact that there is plenty of content that you will never be able to play again in that game… it did make me appreciate level scaling as a replacement for mentoring.

The only problem there is that when the world is constantly the same level as you, it robs you of one of the quintessential MMO experiences of leveling up and becoming more powerful. The world always feels the same to you, because you are functionally always the same relative ability levels to it as you level. In situations like that the levels themselves feel like a completely extraneous concept. Why even have a number that goes up if the world is always going to be functionally the same difficulty. When we started playing Final Fantasy XIV they had an extremely elegant solution for this in the form of their dungeon finder. Each dungeon had a functional level range from the moment you first were able to zone in… to the moment that it considered was the upper bound of levels. So if the average mob level in an area was 35, then functionally the maximum level the game would allow you to be was 40, scaling everyone over that level down to that point. The only negative here is that this ONLY applies to dungeons, and in truth it would have been interesting to see this same sort of system just work out in the world as a whole.

That I guess is functionally what is going on in Star Wars the Old Republic, and I am loving it. Each piece of content be it planet, flashpoint, or something else… has a functional level range attached to it. Once again it is functionally along the lines of being five or so levels over whatever the maximum level of encounter for that area. Then the game rewards you as though you were fighting something your own level in terms of both experience and loot drops. This means that you can go anywhere and do anything without feeling like you are getting nothing from it. At launch this was absolutely a problem with SWTOR and it was extremely easy to out level an area, and reach a point where the experience gain was no longer worth the time you spent on a planet. This was especially true as I remember on Tatooine which in itself was a huge planet with lots of side content. By the time I “did everything” I ended up several levels ahead of the curve and functionally kept getting more and more over-leveled as I went through the rest of the planets.

Now there is a certain measure of freedom in being able to just go and do the content without having to worry about level… and in many cases gear. While leveling my Imperial Agent, there were a few points where I went 10 levels without upgrading any of my gear… and really did not notice a significant amount of power drop off. Then again I did exit the class storyline at level 58… so there was some significant over-leveling going on there that might have been easing the transition. The thing with this system is however that while you are gaining power and you FEEL powerful… there is never a point where you are just waltzing through field of enemies gently tapping them and watching them explode. When you run someone through a low level dungeon in World of Warcraft for example on your level capped main… you can functionally breathe on mobs and they impale themselves in a shower of loot. SWTOR feels like a happy medium, of letting your power level increase without completely trivializing the game. Sure most of the time I am not actually afraid of death, but I still feel heroic doing content… because I am having to use my abilities to take things down rather than a single auto swing. As a result I have somewhat shifted my focus from user driven mentoring systems… to seeing more games adopt this sort of level scaling. The best part about Legion honestly was the way that content has scaled to the player while leveling through it, and if only Blizzard had applied this tech to the world as a whole… it would be a much more enjoyable experience. I like knowing that I can revisit those areas that I enjoyed so much in the past, and still having an interesting time.