#Thess plays TOR

[thessalian]

Thess vs Cancellation

So I finally did it. I finally canceled my TOR account.

I just can’t do it anymore. I just can’t. I don’t play it. I am fed up with spending nearly £10 per month on a game I don’t enjoy, I don’t play and which has nothing for me.

That’s not to say that Port Knowhere is done as a RP group, though. I’m shunting the entire thing onto Roll20. I am already paying for Roll20 for the Cupcake Coterie bunch, and at least three of us are on Roll20 already, so all I need to do is start another game and we’re golden.

So tonight is the last night we’re going to be holding Port Knowhere sessions in the TOR game. I have dithered long enough. It’s done. If you want screencaps of the guild ship, get them now. I’m hitting /gdisband at the end of next week. I don’t want it sitting there, taunting me. I want it done.

So we’re in game tonight, but after that, it’s all about Roll20.

You were a good game once, TOR. But I’ve hit my limit.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Abandoned Games

Today is my first Star Wars RP without the actual game running in the background and the freedom is fucking amazing. I’ve committed us to at least following up until the death of Valkorion but after that, I can do whatever the fuck I want to this story. There were so many things that needed to be reset or removed to actually make it into Star Wars again, at least in my opinion. We did not need the Alliance. We did not need the Eternal Fleet - dear GODS did we not need the Eternal Fleet. No one should have that level of game-changer unless they’re an antagonist to defeat; if you have that level of firepower, nothing’s a challenge anymore and you can just keep throwing ships at a problem until it goes away. Nope.

The only issue I now have is that now I have to have to draw RPG maps for three games a fortnight. Ah well. It will be worth it.

The other thing I’m having issue with at the moment is Overwatch. Look, when Overwatch started, it was a fun little game. Arguably better than TF2 because ... well, more variety of characters with a wider array of abilities, better graphics, tighter-focus maps with actual meaning to the greater story, an actual story, funky new outfits that still didn’t interfere with character identification in the field, and a marketing campaign to make gods weep.

And then they started the current level meta-tweaking.

So Lucio’s heal is increased but his range has reduced to ten fucking feet? Really? Sombra’s only getting the barest tweaks (and no, turning down the volume on her announcement when she breaks stealth is not fucking enough so shut up), Ana’s damage output has been nerfed to fuck, Roadhog’s hook got nerfed somewhat, although his gun’s arguably more powerful now (but the POINT of a fucking Roadhog is to hook people out of a firing line! Upping his hook cooldown? Really?)... Then there’s the changes to Bastion, which for awhile made him basically unkillable. And don’t even get me fucking started on what they did to D.Va. And on top of this meta-shake that registers on the fucking Richter scale, they’re adding in a new character?

But the reasoning for all these changes is pretty simple: Competitive.

I see what they’re doing, I see why and I basically understand it. Once Overwatch got popular, Blizzard had to decide on a target audience. It couldn’t have both. If it kept things at the original level of play, Competitive players complained because it didn’t have the challenge level they wanted and made games hard to actually win if people knew what they were doing. But if it ramped up the difficulty and constantly shook the meta to make play a hair-trigger challenge, it would alienate the casual player base who just like it better than TF2 and really just want to play a fun game with friends.

Competitive gets more press, so...

Seriously, I’m aware that Blizzard wants to get Overwatch into the realm of E-Sports, really put it on the map as a competitive game. And it makes sense from a business perspective, after a certain point. Competitive does get more press, if just in YouTube streams and the like. Competitive anything makes news more than “I just had a good time with this game”. News gets the game out there in more widely-viewed media. Publicity sells games.

That doesn’t mean that my reasonable-but-not-god-tier ass is going anywhere near the game anytime soon. Look, I signed onto this back in the day to play something fun with friends, not beat my head against a wall fighting not only the enemy team but my own fucking mechanics.

I’ve been on TSW lately, for the most part ... but I’ve also poked GW2 again last night. One thing I did notice is that that guy Thackeray? The Seraph you meet early on? That’s Theron Shan’s voice actor right there. I swear, there’s no getting away from those people. (Then again, TOR voices include Hawke, Shepard, Varric, Fenris, Anders, Cullen - so both Anderses, basically - Dagna and Kristen fucking Geary, amongst others, so there’s not really going to be any getting away from the voices no matter what I do. Man, voice acting’s a small community...)

[thessalian]

Thess vs Spending Money

Sooooooo I have a laptop now. Or I will on Tuesday. It’s a fairly powerful little beast and will be great for hanging out on the sofa watching Netflix and still talking to people. And probably *some* games. Not many. Most of them require a terrible lot of graphics card. Still, SOFA VEGGING WITH LAPTOP AND WRITING AT COFFEE SHOPS. Not a bad price on eBay either, not for an i7 laptop.

Also, I usually dread dealing with customer service. But this time, it actually worked out. When I have a big grocery order, I usually have it delivered through Sainsburys. Thing is, I got a text today say that the order I placed was having to be cancelled owing to ‘technical difficulties’. So I called to make absolutely sure I knew what was going on and it turns out that basically their entire system, nationwide, crashed last night. So no one could pack the groceries. So no Saturday delivery. You apparently cannot put all that detail into a text and most people don’t want the technological yammering anyway so...

Anyway, they gave me £20 off my order for the inconvenience and It’ll be at my house late Monday night (because of course by then all the Sunday slots were full) and I do at least have enough food in the house. Not the snack-things I wanted, but that’s what the corner shops are for. And the guy was nice about everything so I actually completed the survey after the call so they’d know that Mr Scottish Guy I Talked To was a really helpful dude.

So it has been a shopping kind of day and I haven’t even bundled out of my bathrobe. The rest of today is largely going to be TSW-related. And TOR Shenanigans, though I do kind of wonder why I bother. I mean, I’ve put so much fucking work into the guild ship and everything and it’d be a shame to just drop it but... Dude. The things they are doing to that game are unconscionable. I feel really grubby giving them my money for the one thing I do in that game, for the sole reason that they haven’t fucked it up yet, unlike damn near everything else. I have some ideas but once I bring our guild plot out of KOTFE, I have no the fuck idea where I can go with the actual story. Iokath? What the fuck would our people be doing on Iokath? There aren’t any people on Iokath.

I guess I could divorce us from the in-game plot completely at that point. I just hate being isolated not only from the rest of the server, but the actual game world as well. That’s when you just go, “Why am I not taking the cheaper virtual tabletop option, again?” But we’ll see. I do at least have an event planned tonight.

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Grindstone

Well, today’s boding well for 2017. ...She said, sarcastically.

First thing is the Southern rail strike - there’s going to be a week-long full stop to all services on the line, starting on the 9th. This has been going on for months, and apparently there’s a lot of politics involved - literally, because Southern’s whole financial model is so unconditionally fucked that fares go directly to the government, not the people who run the train line. Which means that all this strike action is keeping the union pulling in a nice whopping paycheque while strikers aren’t getting paid and people can’t get to work ... and the taxpayer’s footing the bill for it all. But leaving aside the wider financial implications here, the fact is that I am one of the many, many people who rely on Southern as one of my routes home. The rest of the routes are going to end up crowded to fuck and the ASLEF people are actively advising people to not travel that week. Um ... hi? Working people? With jobs? That we need to get to? The whole problem with how this whole chunk of country runs is that the transport companies can basically hold the entire country hostage by grinding it to a halt because no one can get to where they need to go, and almost no one can afford to live within walking distance of their workplace.

Anyway, on top of that bit of fun, which shows no signs of ending, we have the fact that Head Consultant’s tacking on an extra theatre list on Thursdays starting next month. He’s actually starting it the week I’m booked off on holiday, so that’s going to leave the other two to handle it. The two who managed to sit on a message from a patient who’s coming in for a follow-up on Thursday and needed some literature that no one had sent to him before he arrived. This is not going to be fun, and I am no longer going to have time to cover for my slow and lazy colleagues anymore. I barely do now, to be fair. Either way, it’s going to get hellacious next month, particularly with a new practice manager coming in (or whatever delays we’re going to have between current practice manager leaving and new practice manager turning up).

However, sometimes hard work pays off and is actually worth it. My tiny TOR guild just unlocked the crew deck of our guild ship - which, given that we’ve also unlocked the hangar deck and one of the hangar bays already, is pretty impressive, considering how few of us there are. Basically we’ve largely been playing the GTN and crafting our collective asses off for this, and it’s paying off. I look at our not-so-little crew deck lounge area and I am just so proud of us all. Moments like that make it all worthwhile, when you can see the results of all the thankless grinding.

...I just wish there were more moments like that in my actual paying job...

[thessalian]

Thess vs Video Game Romance

Random Googling to identify a place name in Horizon Zero Dawn that I’d tripped over but couldn’t pinpoint to a location ended with me tripping over something that I really didn’t expect. I mean, I probably should have expected the thing, but I did not expect the thing.

Basically, for some reason, asking where “the Cut” is in HZD will get related queries about romances in this game, and more to the point, complaints about there not being any. I also found a top ten list of games that people wish had romances in them, HZD being one of them. Other items on that list included “remaster Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout 3 to let us have romances”, Final Fantasy XIV, Monster Hunter World (”Because we’re allowed to have a house; why not a spouse?” was the theory) ... and fucking Dark Souls - something about, “Why not a tiny bit of light to shine in the darkness of the world?”

How about because “that’s not the point”?

Now, I like a good video game romance as much as the next person. This is a lot of why I play Bioware games. But let’s be fair here: the romance - not just a particular romance, but the entire concept of romance - needs to fit into the game’s structure from both the narrative and gameplay perspectives, or it’s just going to feel shoehorned in and distract from the game’s themes. Some games just aren’t built to have a romance in them. Does that leave the option for fanfic romance later? Yes. Yes, it does. Like, @galleywinter has an entire fic series sort of thing that covers exactly that, in an AU sort of way. That’s pretty awesome, as it goes - means that the NPC is developed enough to want to have an IC relationship with and that there’s scope within the game to make a character with thoughts and feelings rather than just an avatar to hit things and get loot. But trying to shoehorn an in-game romance like that into the structure of a MMO like World of Warcraft? Nope. The only MMO I’ve seen that’s successfully done in-game NPC romance is, again, Bioware - with Star Wars: The Old Republic. And even that’s kind of kept off to the side somewhat, and is a lot to do with Bioware’s attempt at keeping the single-player experience and the multiplayer experience very separate. TOR has you there for your character’s story, whichever one you happen to be playing at the time (at least until the Makeb thing and beyond broke off from the “each class gets its own story” thing the game had going on). That works ... moderately.

By ‘the structure of the game’, what I mean is ... well, companions. Bioware games have you taking at least one companion around. TOR gives you one. Mass Effect gives you two. Dragon Age? Three. Thus it’s pretty easy to have your NPC love interest tagging along with you, which is what you want when you’re in love, right? Skyrim and Fallout 4 also have that, with Skyrim having the added advantage of “You have a house and if your spouse isn’t the adventuring type, they can stay home and you can come back to them to tell stories of what you’ve been up to and just Be With Your Partner”. That works fine. The thing is, the game’s mechanics and world set-up allow for that. A lot of the other games ... not so much.

Horizon Zero Dawn, for instance. Aloy is a Seeker. She hasn’t considered herself to have a permanent home since the Hero’s Journey thing kicked off in usual Dead Mentor style with the mess at the Proving. She’s been nominally alone for most of her life and she’s pretty clearly still not sure whether to trust people being nice to her. Flirtation is not something she necessarily recognises and it’s clear from when Erend does it that she’s just like, “What the fuck?” and it takes awhile to get past that. That’s character stuff, but there’s also logistical issues. Without a permanent living space, she doesn’t have anyplace for a spouse to just ... stay. And having an AI companion following her around would get really problematic for some of the stealth stuff that people enjoy in this game because either the companion’s AI would have to be incredibly good (which ... we just aren’t there yet) or the enemies’ AI would have to be programmed not to notice your companion, like in TLOU1. So it’s theoretically possible, but awkward and would distract from that feeling of quiet discovery that makes this game what it is. (Plus if you went for Varl, you’d have issues where you’re going into ancient ruins all the time and he’d be exiled for that.)

Do I support writing fanfic of Aloy figuring out romance with whichever NPC a player chooses? Hell yes. Do I support it being crammed into the actual game? Hell no.

Final Fantasy XIV ... it’s a MMO. I’ve already discussed why that kind of thing doesn’t normally work in MMOs. Plus there are too many NPCs, no voiced PC dialogue, and too much else to do without having to stop mid-quest to head wherever in the world your NPC crush is. If they’re not doing something rash, getting possessed and/or getting themselves killed, anyway. Again, I totally get it and at least one of my Warriors of Light had quite the crush on Thancred (largely while he was still being voiced by Taliesin Jaffe). But I can write that quite happily, if I want to, without actually having it acted out for me by little computer avatars.

Dark Souls ... I mean, come on, don’t even start. There’s hardly any human beings in that game. And one female-presenting ... being ... deciding to not kill you does not a romance make. Unless someone’s seriously suggesting shoehorning in a love interest from ... like, where? You’re an undead deciding the fate of the world; where the hell does getting smoochy with someone come in? “Let’s have a bit of light in the darkness of that world” my arse; I don’t even play Dark Souls and I know that’s not the point. Same situation as Horizon Zero Dawn, really - why do we need romance when there’s so much else to do and explore? When are we going to find time for it in between hunts? Is it supposed to happen during the hunting and exploration and awe-inspiring discoveries? Isn’t that going to break the ‘contemplative solitude’ mood that adds to this game’s richness and depth?

There’s an issue, I think, where the line between “a game should be accessible to everyone” and “a game needs to appeal to everyone” has been either erased or is so mobile that it becomes just a lump of, “a game should be accessible to me personally, all the time, and cater to my every whim”. I would personally love to play Dark Souls for the whole “the world tells the story” bit but I know that the mechanics would piss me off and the lack of a story mode is a deal-breaker for me from a health perspective as much as anything else. It’s FromSoftware’s prerogative to refuse to add a story mode. I may complain, but that’s on a sheer accessibility level.

The other place I may complain - and even then only a little - is when a game that does allow romances doesn’t allow the romance I would personally like. That’s only a minor annoyance, though, because romance is part of the structure of the narrative and the gameplay, and there’s this character that matches up perfectly with my own and the game says I can’t romance them. But again, that’s what fanfic’s for, and the only reason I sulk a little is that feeling of, “I can romance someone else but it’s just not the same”.

What I won’t do is demand that the structure and narrative mood of a game be substantially altered to shoehorn in a romance that I can create far, far better in fanfic. Not everything needs to happen on the screen. Video games are supposed to fire the imagination, not take its place. If you want your character to have any romance, with any NPC in any video game ever? That is exactly what fanfic’s for. And no writer, no matter how good a writer they are, will ever tailor romantic dialogue so exactly to your tastes as you will. So instead of demanding they try ... do so yourself. Or play a game whose structure allows romance.

Basically there’s a difference between demanding concessions for the disabled and demanding unnecessary shoehorned narrative elements because of personal preference. Honestly, things like that fall under the “Be careful what you wish for” category for me - I understand why they’re asking, to a point, but I think what they’d get if their dreams of romances in these games came true would probably be far less satisfying than they think for those specific games that weren’t designed to fit romance into their themes, plot and mechanics. It’s fair if all they want is a dating sim, but there are some perfectly good dating sims with combat! That’s kind of what Bioware does now (sorry, guys, but it’s true).

[thessalian]

Thess vs Group Content

I’ve been watching MMO filk-parody stuff on YouTube today. Since it’s been a reminiscence-themed week, it seems only fitting that today be devoted to reminiscing about MMO dungeon stuff.

I think the one I still remember best, admittedly, was the time my dinky-ass White Mage finished off that one stupid demon wall in Amdapor Keep. I mean, I say ‘dinky-ass’ in the sense that I played a lalafell, since I was pretty well-geared at the time, but ... well, you know. Lalafell with the height slider down to its fullest extent. Jallira the lalafell was as tiny as every other version of that character. Small and red-haired and unbelievably adorable.

Anyway, we’d hit that stupid demon-wall at Amdapor Keep and our DPS was ... erm ... well, it was unfortunate that we had melee DPS almost entirely, because that knockback the wall does is a bitch and if you’re not positioned just right, it’ll punt you right into the Murder Hole on either side of the room. Which is what happened - both to the DPS and then, eventually, the tank as well. At which point I thought to myself, “I’m not going through this again; we are not wiping this”. The wall had maybe 1/6 of its health left, my damage rating as White Mage was negligible... The only thing I had going for me was that my heal numbers were excellent, I knew the enemy’s attack patterns and given my HoT numbers, it was almost impossible for me to die. So while the DPS are going, “Sorry. Wipe!”, I was turning around to @true0neutral (who was in group with me, though I don’t remember whether tank or DPS) and saying, “I am not going through this again; we are not wiping this fight!”. And, with liberal application of the few damage spells in a WHM’s arsenal, managed to finish the damn thing off.

As I recall, that entire group barring @true0neutral was made of absolute stupid and I was well within my rights to kill a giantic demon wall out of pure spite.

Unfortunately, healers do not always prosper when trying to tackle a boss alone. This I learned to my intense dismay in The Secret World, particularly that time when the group I called the Motley (comprised of @true0neutral, @fauxfire76, @generalmaximus (haven’t seen you around much, man; how’re you doing?), and @maitai-ippai (similarly haven’t seen you around in awhile) tried Nightmare Mode Hell Raised and managed to make it as far as the final boss - the Machine Tyrant. I honestly qualify that entire nightmare of a ... did we spend like an hour trying to get past that fight? Felt like at least that long ... anyway, I’m pretty sure trying to survive that fight and keep everyone else alive is why I’m so good at dodge-rolling in GW2 these days. I mean, we did eventually give up on that one entirely because it just got too frustrating (especially for @generalmaximus, who was tanking for us) but I recall there being screenshots of me being the last meep standing, running for my life as the Machine Tyrant chased me around, mostly because it goes against my nature to just stand there and let something cream me.

I admit, mostly I remember in generalities. I remember the tank in TSW that said “What’s a builder?” and obliged @fauxfire76 to pick up his tank build mid-dungeon to get us through it despite wanting to go DPS that time around. I recall the first time I hit Lost City of Amdapor as healer and when we got to Diabolos and his stupid-ass door mechanics, having the tank say, “Screw the doors; we just burn him”, obliging me to heal through the insane damage and debuffs (and finding out how good being a bubble-healer can actually be, which is why I tended to go Selene rather than Eos when I hit Astrologian). I recall Ops in TOR - I didn’t get to play DPS much once I had my Consular levelled and could reclaim the mantle of Healbabe (no matter how much I wanted to just wreck shit up, but never mind), but when I did get to bring my Saboteur Smuggler out to play, I recall basically being added to the guild lexicon so that “to pull a Mychae” meant “to instantly attract every trash mob on a pull no matter how good the tank is because your AoE damage numbers are that fucking insane”.

Mostly I remember learning to tank. I was sure I was going to be shit at tanking. I was not shit at tanking. This is kind of gratifying. Of course, GW2 doesn’t really have that kind of role, so that’s a bit of a shame, but hey. I mean, I’d maybe ponder WoW again if I ... y’know, had a job to ensure I could keep my sub up (not to mention afford the expansions I missed), and if the concept of keeping up with that much fucking lore didn’t scare me rigid, and if I had a guild that would be patient with me, and...

Yeah, no, no more WoW for me.

Anyway, there’s my little MMO reminiscence, at least in terms of group content. Whether this stuff is something you shared with me or it just sparks off memories of your own MMO experiences, hope it brought a smile.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Accidental Spoilers

The problem with playing many many video games is that the more you play, the more fucked up you get in terms of character voices.

Guild Wars 2, for example. I play two human characters and because TOR, my brain immediately goes to the Risha place. Trying to play through the Sylvari storyline? Because Dragon Age, I’m being accompanied by Niall and we’re hunting Fenris, and because TSW I’m taking orders from Geary. (At least I can deal with the voice for that one - it’s Shepard. I can be a PC with a Shepard-voice.) For the first thirty or so levels, I’m getting orders from Theron Shan. Again. I can’t deal with Zojja very easily because I keep getting Tallis flashbacks. And Tybalt--

...wait...

Well.

I think I just spoiled myself for the Heart of Thorns expansion. And I think I need to go and throw something at a fucking wall. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? AAAAAAGH! I played GW2 because I didn’t really want my emotions appealed to!

...Also ... wait. That’s Orsino?!? Jim Ward’s got raaaaaaange.

(Why, yes, this is a whole hell of a lot easier than actually discussing the state of affairs in my general life right now. I may do that later, but I will probably just deflect instead because I am an idiot.)

[thessalian]

Thess vs Playthroughs

Okay, now that I’ve been all deep and philosophical and shit, I’m going to go play another playthrough of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Not specifically because I want to for the story, but for the gameplay. It strikes me as a little sad that I would play a fucking Bioware game for a thing that’s not the story, but hey.

I can console myself that I’m playing for the NPCs too, I guess. I just finished my Astrid!Herald Solasmance playthrough (that did not go well) and now I’m debating whether to continue the magicking with Lira!Herald Cullenmancer or have another Molly!Herald playthrough so that I can romance Sera.

Lira romancing Sera would be funny but so OOC I can’t stand it. Lira likes her military-ish guys (TOR-version married a military surgeon, TSW-version dates an ex-marine). Besides, elven mage + Cullen always makes sense to me because my first DA:O playthrough was a Surana and ... yeah, the crush thing.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Declines

I think the worst feeling in the whole world is missing something that no longer exists, or has degenerated into something far less ... just less than it used to be.

Reading how TOR is having to do a massive server merge right now is saddening, despite the fact that I would not go back to that game unless you paid me to do so, instead of obliging me to pay to get anything like a full gaming experience. Particularly given the nature of some of the merges, not to mention the language being used in the ‘road map’ thing they’re posting. Merge servers if you have to, Bioware, but don’t say it’s to make it easier to play with friends. Friends are already on the same server. What you’re doing is trying to make PUG queues actually contain enough people to get a decent Op or FP run, and I doubt it’s going to work. The ‘rewards’ on offer are not enough to tempt me back, and I don’t know if that game will see the end of 2018. I kind of hope it doesn’t. It’s kind of sad to see it limping along like this, with the mediocre story with the contrived ‘shock value’ crap and how it seems less and less ‘Star Wars’ every day.

Then there’s SWL, which is also haemorrhaging players. And that’s not even taking into account the people who log in for their dungeon keys and then log out again to play something else, which I know for a fact happens. I’ve been keeping up with this a little less than I have TOR stuff, mostly because it’s depressing (I was in the closed beta and had to stop playing because the reticle targeting system they insisted on throwing in to ‘make combat more exciting’ gives me a rampant migraine), but reading through the patch notes, most of what I’m seeing is, “Fixed this issue, fixed that issue, fixed this problem, whoops here have another bug fix”. I’m all for fixing bugs, but the fact that there are so many bugs that need fixing indicates a distinct lack of time and effort put into coding the things in the first place. Then again, I guess that just follows the current pattern. Whether or not the combat system is something one can deal with (and it’s a dealbreaker for me on health issues alone), the fact remains that they’re still using the same engine and most of the same code, having made just enough tweaks and overlays to the existing game to bend it into a new shape whether or not it fits, and worried about all the shit that might go wrong later. It makes the entire game one continuous open beta, and yet another reason why if they do manage to get new story content out, I’ll be watching it on YouTube.

I’m not saying my current MMO is perfect. Nothing in this world is. I know that. Just ... these things were better, once. I have a distinct mistrust of certain types of language, and in both cases, all of the language they’re using in their promotional material is just a little too ... manic and zealous in their “we’re doing this for YOU!” sentiments to be trusted, particularly when examination of the facts behind the bumph don’t quite add up. Telling us that the server merges are entirely for our benefit because “PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS!” doesn’t ring as true as, “We know you’re having problems finding PUGs so we’re merging the servers”. One indicates that no one is listening to the players but they really want to look like they are. The other indicates that they are actually listening and want to fix the issues.

...The problem is that then there’s a precedent set, and you have to fix the other stuff. Maybe that means you have to re-examine letting people base the entire storyline off an old RP campaign, and thus ending up making the NPCs the stars of the show way more often than the player character gets to be. Maybe that means you have to actually recode your game from the ground up to make it be the ARG you want it to be instead of lazily slapping new code on top of old code and an older graphics engine. Maybe that just means realising that you are never, ever going to make as much money as WoW and you maybe need to stop putting the quest to outdo WoW ahead of the needs of the players you actually have.

Because seriously, nothing is going to outdo WoW at this point. Those who are playing World of Warcraft and have been for any length of time are way too invested to turn back now, because Blizzard has built up to that. Thing is, one of these days, Blizzard is going to write the World of Warcraft into a corner. Some might argue that they already have, from what I’m hearing. One day - not any day soon, I don’t imagine, but one day - World of Warcraft will shut its doors. Probably. Maybe. Nothing lasts forever, anyway.

If / when that day comes, though ... something is going to have to come along to take its place at the top of the heap. I think the ones with the best chance of being that new ruler, so to speak, are the ones who build up their following now, and show their players the respect and entertainment they deserve, instead of microtransacting them to death to no appreciable benefit to the player. It’ll be a game that’s already built trust, respect, and a small but vocally pleased following. It could be ESO, in part because name recognition ... but then again, Skyrim so oversaturated the market that it might be detrimental instead of helpful, particularly given that people aren’t overly happy with Bethesda at this point anyway over the whole deal with the Fallout 4 mod shop thing. It could be Guild Wars 2, which has been quietly ambling along doing its own thing and not completely shafting its player base with micropayments while still having micropayments to offset the supposedly detrimental “buy-to-play” thing. Hell, they’ve had at least two expansions so far; they can’t be doing that badly. I doubt it’ll be FFXIV, or whatever comes after FFXIV - although at least FFXIV has more longevity than its predecessor ever had. Thing is, Final Fantasy MMOs tends to draw a more ... serious-minded crowd, I guess you could say? Yes, there’s scope for faffing about, but mostly it’s dungeons every few levels and those dungeons are serious business with serious mechanics, whereas in most games you can theoretically get by without doing a dungeon, ever.

Not that I’m in any hurry for WoW to go away. I don’t play but I know people who do, and they’re still having fun. Thing is, not everyone does play. I guess I just think other MMOs ought to consider that maybe it would be better to try to entice those who aren’t interested in WoW, or who sometimes need a secondary MMO for then they’re burned out on WoW, than to try to outdo them financially. They’ll never make as much money as WoW is doing right now. Just ... as long as you’re making at least some profit, shouldn’t that be enough? Again, it’s the issue where if a game hasn’t made ALL THE MONEY, it is considered a failure. Apparently this is a prevalent viewpoint in the industry, and it kind of needs to stop. Like with movies, sometimes there’ll be blockbusters, and sometimes there’ll just be popcorn. Not every game can be a blockbuster. People don’t work that way when it comes to their entertainment media. Just ... right now, the strain being placed on game devs to make every game a blockbuster is taking away from their ability to build on the games that actually were blockbusters. Bioware’s particularly bad about this these days, but Ubisoft has its own issues in that regard. In both cases, they’ve crammed in mechanics and modes that no one asked for and just cluttered up an otherwise good game (multiplayer in Mass Effect? Eh, I can take or leave it. Multiplayer in Dragon Age? Four player co-op in Assassin’s Creed? Not so much. And don’t even get me started on the issues with trying to maintain focus and pacing in a linear story when dealing with an open-world sandbox map because ‘everything is sandbox now’ without giving a single thought to how the setting and map should guide and serve the narrative and you can’t exactly maintain a sense of urgency about the end of the fucking world if you can put it off for several weeks to go on a full completionist ‘let’s gather every mosaic piece’ binge).

Basically, everyone needs to accept that video games are art, like books and movies - just a bit more so, because it’s an active intake rather than a passive one, thus more audience investment if that investment is going to happen. Game devs need to focus on the audience’s emotional investment, not their financial one, if they want to produce something that’s actually any good. I’d really rather they prefer that they try to produce something good than something that’s just ‘marketable’.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Narrative Set-Up

So I don’t even play TOR anymore - hell, I didn’t even play Iokath - and yet I have feelings about the whole ‘traitor on Iokath’ thing. I keep up sometimes. Kind of hard not to, given my lifetime MMO progression, my Tumblr dash and my Enjin wall. So before I go try to grind levels and ventures in the game that, while occasionally utterly fucking incomprehensible, at least doesn’t pull this shit on me (like, the last traitors we had in FFXIV were ‘possessed by someone’ or ‘pretty obviously shifty with comprehensible ulterior motive’ and I can work with that)...

Spoilers under cut. Despite the fact that I think everyone on my Tumblr who cares, knows.

Theron Shan. What the FUCK.

Look, for Dark Siders it makes sense. But for Light Siders? All of his talking about being a benevolent dictator ... the last time I checked, we didn’t actually get the tiniest bit of say in the day-to-day running of anything. If ‘the Alliance was rotting from within’, why did we not ICly get the option to stop it? This is the game blaming the player for things it fucking well failed to include, and I am not. Fucking. Having it.

And this, “I had hoped for peace but war just continued so I’ll get you out of the way and it’ll all stop” bullshit? Point one: THEY STARTED IT. We keep fighting because people. Keep. ATTACKING US. And if we’re Light Side, they’re not doing it because they hate our oppressive regime; they’re doing it because we have the biggest guns and they want to take those guns away from us so that we don’t have an advantage in the wars they want to start. If the Eternal Fleet goes bye-bye, all that’s going to happen is that Republic and Empire are going to regroup to go at each other again, and pirates are going to end up all over the fucking place to steal from rebuilding efforts and set up their own little versions of Hutt space until someone bigger comes and clears them out. So ... yet more war.

Summary: We’re being blamed by a NPC who has up until this point been a reasonable person, and who is also ignoring the long-term picture for the most reactionary short-term view imaginable, for things we weren’t allowed to even know about in game, much less try to fix by any means but those Uprising things. This ... makes no sense. This is lazy. And this is, to me, further proof that they are predominantly writing this for a Dark Side character. Honestly, I’ve always had a feeling that this was a Sith Warrior plot with Jedi Knight as a secondary. Now they’ve apparently stopped pretending that the Republic actually matters all that much.

And don’t even get me started on, “You know I love you ... but this is bigger than us”. You are not allowed to say that when it’s bookended by “Mwahahaha” dialogue, okay? If you love someone, you try to talk them out of whatever it is you think they’re doing wrong. If you’re afraid they’ll talk you out of it, maybe your idea isn’t as good as you think it is, or you need to stand by your convictions. Do not kill people because you are apparently easily led.

The only thing - the absolute ONLY THING - I can think of that makes Theron Shan doing this shit make any sense at all beyond triple-agent (which would be cheap as fuck retcon handwavey bullshit for which I have no respect) or brainwashing (ditto) is that he’s wrecked over what he did on Ziost. Because let’s face it - he handled Ziost badly. Shit was going down and what did he do? Sent a secret Jedi strike force. Who then proceeded to get possessed and killed or ... well, frankly eaten along with the rest of the planet. Although you’d think that that particular brand of bullshit would have reminded him that maybe that’s what happens when you pull stupid reactionary shit without telling anyone.

Also, can we talk about the “I’ve been planning this since you killed Valkorion” line? Theron tells a Light Side Commander that he’d been hoping they’d make a difference but they didn’t so he’s killing them now. How the hell much chance did any Commander have to change anything immediately after killing Valkorion? I imagine, given the whole ‘literally ripped a Force entity out of their head’ thing, they spent at least three days in medbay on significant painkillers with the migraine from hell - particularly if they were a Force-user, since Valkorion screamed every Force-user in the galaxy into at least a pretty major headache when he kicked it. Bioware, seriously, at least give us a reasonable turning point, some in-story impetus for this shit, before you have characters turn on us.

So, summary: This is bullshit. Taken from a completely analytical perspective, this is bullshit and Bioware pulling the “shock twist to keep people interested” gambit. In terms of “people we trusted pulling really ridiculous shit”, I’m going to have to break it down a little because frankly that is EVERY Bioware game. But ... okay, the ones that went more or less completely barmy and did something that had really painful consequences. Saren made sense, was well set up and beautifully written, and made one of the most sympathetic antagonists I’ve ever seen. Loghain had some issues, but those issues were well-documented, well-demonstrated and while I don’t agree with what he did afterwards, I see the reasoning behind abandoning Cailan at Ostagar. Zevran ... well, that depends on your choices. (I don’t count Morrigan; what she was asking for was not at any point particularly painful, though that only comes out like two games later.) Anders? You could see the logical progression from “I have made this place a sanctum of healing and salvation; why do you threaten it?” to “There can be no peace”. Isabela ... is Isabela. We know this. Blackwall / Reinier - we all saw that shit coming when he kept stumbling over “I am pretending to be a Warden ‘cos I don’t know shit about Wardens” so we can hardly complain about that. Iron Bull ... well, come on, if you pick that choice, he’s Ben-Hassrath and you more or less ordered him to put the Qun ahead of friendship; when the Qun wants you dead, and you’re staring at the axe of a remorseful Bull, you brought that shit on yourself. Solas ... okay, not so entirely sure why he’s so bent on this particular course of action, but none of this beggars belief. And let’s not even start me talking about the glorious Face Heel Turn that was ‘Master Li’ in Jade Empire. Each and every one of these was well-foreshadowed and set up on a foundation of possibility that you look back on and go, “Oh, yeah, I can see that...” This, though? This, as far as I can see, came out of fucking nowhere. And the fact that they had to come up with bullshit non-answers for a Commander’s entirely reasonable questions just proves they didn’t set up a damn thing to act as foundation and support structure for this asinine decision.

The worst part is they fucking planned this. Apparently if you killed Arcann, you get a lot of dialogue from Valkorion about one of your people being a traitor. A lot of people are saying that they had a different traitor in mind and that information leaked so they decided to change it last minute ... but this belies that. Besides, I don’t imagine we’re going to see changes to their stupid idea of who the traitor is now that this has leaked, since the spoilers are coming out of datamining. Someone actually sat down and said, “We’re going to make Theron Shan the traitor! Won’t that be shocking?” and surprisingly, no one said, “What’ll be shocking is if our player base doesn’t lynch us for this”.

Bioware, you are phoning it in. This is why I have not bought Andromeda. I know it’s different teams (probably, unless the rumours are true about them having pulled all the good writers off TOR to patch Andromeda together) but I do not trust you to give me what I want for my money anymore. You are constantly leaning on your “Now With CLASSIC BIOWARE STORYTELLING” reputation, so ... why not try actually doing some? Resting on your laurels just ends up with crushed laurels under your lazy arse.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Level Boost

On the one hand, I don’t know how I feel about being able to pay to level up as far as Stormblood content. This is mostly because I don’t want people taking advantage - and by ‘taking advantage’, I mean ‘buy a story skip and level boost to 60 because they figure “how hard can it be?” and then blunder into dungeons as a level 60 tank or healer with no concept of what they’re doing and end up making dungeons a living nightmare as a result’.

It’s gonna happen. I know it is. But I do see some significant benefits to it, more now that I’ve actually finished the ARR content. And that reason is alts.

Because dear. Fucking. GODS does some of this get insane.

We had the Steps of Faith fight. Everyone ignored the mechanics. Fucking EVERYONE. I mean, I tried, but then people were unable to stay within my heal range and line of sight, so I tried to move eeeeeeever so slightly and STOMP - I get stepped on by a dragon. Oopsie. Some of the fights were tap-dancing nightmares. I’m still never going to forget being obliged to SOLO-HEAL the fucking Chrysalis and ending up with three wipes, two of which happened because no one had the good sense to limit break the tear, one of which was me having to solo-heal the bitch with one of the tanks being made of tinfoil. Some of these I can see doing again with a good group (honestly, once we had a group that knew what they were doing, Aurum Vale was a bit insane but not as bad as some). Some of them just noooooope.

And while tying story progress to dungeons is a questionable thing in my view (I admit I liked how TOR and TSW handled it; generally adjacent to but partly separate from the main flow of the story so you could, with the exception of in things like Dread Fortress and Dread Palace, continue on without ever having touched it and not lose too much), there’s only one thing worse:

The cutscenes.

Seriously, there’s a limit beyond which a cutscene should not extend. There should at least be something to break up the whole thing. I know Final Fantasy’s like that, but really, we’re escaping a city on the brink of riot. I kind of expect Hawke fleeing Kirkwall, not “Oh, what an exciting action sequence; I wish I’d been playing it”. And after you’ve spent weeks beating your head against the wall that is that fucking patch story and all you want is to get to Ishgard so you can continue leveling your job class because you’re already three levels above recommended level for where you are and you want your new stance / spell / whatever but can’t have it because you have to get to Ishgard first... The last thing you want to do is sit there and watch a thing. But you don’t want to skip either because it’s the culmination of all the bullshit that’s been flung at you while you were screaming at people to get on with the betrayal already; we have places to be.

So I level boosted my Mych’qote to level 60 Bard, and she can start Stormblood whenever she likes. She won’t, though. I’m going to spend time on her Zen crafting and leveling her in Machinist and Red Mage until the one who actually EARNED the Stormblood content gets there. Lira is my main and always will be. It used to be that Mychaes were my mains. I guess healbabe is in my blood now. Anyway, the point is that I only want to do that content once ... but the one who is doing that content is the one I consider my ‘real’ character.

Speaking of, level 31 Astrologian is mine. I notice the jobs that were introduced in Heavensward seem a lot more mechanics-heavy than a lot of the others. Still, nothing I can’t handle (which makes me think I could handle the weird-ass SWL weapon mechanics if I could play it without a two-week migraine, woe). White Mage is still my go-to, but I do love my Scholar and Astrologian might be fun. Also I’ve figured out the best rotations for Red Mage and in general am having fun.

Now if only people would appreciate me more. One of our DPS was really nice about the tank / heals combo that was me and @true0neutral last night; I mean, he died the once (that’s @true0neutral, not the DPS) but that’s because there’s this one pull that always ends up with the tank leaving line of sight and if that happens for a little too long on a pull that size, accidents happen. I think I know how to avoid that again but ... anyway, I rezzed him pretty fast and that was the end of that.

By the way, trying to avoid thinking about work right now.

[thessalian]

Thess vs GMing

Yes, I know I already run a weekly TOR group.

Just ... I started watching Critical Role. Just one episode in and all my yen to run tabletop came back. So many, many games I’d like to run, that I’ve always wanted to run but never had the group. New WoD Changeling. Shadowrun. Old, d10 edition 7th Sea (but I could probably manage with the d20 if I could find the rules, but I have all the d10 books and I am not wasting all the money I spent on them not to mention the effort I took hauling them literally all the way across London for the best part of a year before I moved closer). Or possibly, when I get a better handle on it, the HIPPIE RP I’m trying to cobble together. (Trust me; very different feel from WoD and Dresden Files.) Hell, I could even learn D&D proper if I could ever decide on a version.

But I don’t have a group.

But maybe if I finally set up the webcam or got onto voice chat with a good group (maybe both) ... I wouldn’t have to.

Seriously, would anyone I know be interested in this? I mean, the idea of @true0neutral playing a dwarven rigger terrifies the shit out of me, but that’s what makes it SO MUCH FUN.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Tough Choices

Okay, I am going to have a long one about this, because it is something that Bioware needs to take to heart. It has been trying different variations on the same theme because of one success and they seem to have missed the point - the thing that made that one success actually successful.

Look. Here’s the thing. If you actually want to make a player character choose between two companions, knowing that one of them will die ... make it matter to the player character. To demonstrate how to do that, I will use the one example wherein Bioware actually did it right, and compare it to the places they didn’t.

Because we all know what that was, right? Mass Effect 1. Ashley, or Kaidan?

Here’s why that worked:

By the point in Mass Effect 1 wherein we had to decide who to go back for, we’d had a full game wherein we were ICly and OOCly attached to these two, and there was just about enough hope that we could save both of them that the first playthrough was a fucking gut-wrench. And it never got any easier. Were you the pragmatic type who didn’t necessarily go back for an individual companion but went for the bomb? If so, how hard a time did you have picking who was going to back up the team on the bomb? Either way, you spent the whole game knowing that one of those two wasn’t coming out alive, and you bonded with them anyway, both as yourself playing the game, and as Shepard.

Compare and contrast with Dragon Age: Inquisition. Hell, we have an issue right from the start where it’s a toss-up as to who actually goes along on the trip through the Fade anyway. But either way, these are people you’ve never met. If it’s Stroud who accompanies Hawke ... it’s this nonentity of a Warden who more or less lucked out and got away. If it’s Alistair ... the only difference is that he’s less ‘nonentity’ and more ‘bastard son of the last King and companion to the Hero of Ferelden’. That’s what you-as-Inquisitor know, anyway. But the divide is there - ICly, maybe you’re going to save a Warden because the Wardens need rebuilding, or maybe you’re going to save Hawke because Varric would fall apart if anything happened to this person he’d sworn to keep out of this Inquisition nugshit and the nonentity wasn’t about to pull the Wardens together anyway ... but OOCly you’re sitting there with characters you got attached to on two different levels and deciding which to send to the chopping block - the guy you probably romanced at least once as another character ... or the character who, not so long ago, was an extension of you. Wrenching OOCly ... but ICly, Hawke is just ‘the Champion of Kirkwall and Varric’s friend’.

Don’t even get me started on TOR’s Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion. Unless you were playing one of two very specific classes, you spent all of a one-hour mission with each of the companions you had to choose between, and anyone else was going to have a basic reaction of, “Wait, why do I care, again?” Bioware was at that point relying entirely on the fact that most players would have tried several class stories and thus have an attachment to both. The problem with that is that appealing entirely to the OOC attachment without trying to shore it up with an equal or at least similar IC attachment completely destroys immersion. It did it in DA:I. It did it in TOR. ICly I’m supposed to care but don’t have reasons to in the same way as I do OOC; OOCly I care but for all the wrong reasons in terms of the actual story campaign.

So effectively, they’re focusing on the player rather than the character. It’s really starting to show, now. Which is funny to complain about as a bad thing, but in terms of actual story, it’s a death knell. “People love these characters; we’ll make them choose! It worked great in Mass Effect!” Except our characters loved Kaidan and Ashley. Our characters barely knew Stroud, Alistair or Hawke. They knew even less about Vette and Torian, who were selected apparently at random from a cast of dozens. Seriously, if TOR had really wanted to make it a situation, they should have picked ones who’ve been with us from the beginning. Lana and Theron, for instance. Yeah, they’d have to do without one of them in story campaign later, but it would fucking matter. And if we’d had some missions with Hawke or Stroud or Alistair, somehow - some way to get attached to them ICly before facing that choice - it would have mattered a lot more.

I’ve more or less given up on TOR being immersive. They’re focused way too hard on the player experience, however hamfisted they’re being about it, and way too little on any kind of story ... probably because of the massive corner they’ve written themselves into. Dragon Age? Inquisition tried, but was a little bit shaky on some parts in terms of the whole ‘immersion’ thing (because honestly, who did the Hissing Wastes for a full-on completionist thing and didn’t think, “Why the fuck am I doing this?”; the quasi-open world set-up did that game no favours, and I can think of at least five ways it could have been improved to make full completion ... not necessary but beneficial ... from a story perspective but never mind). I have the fear for Mass Effect: Andromeda; I really do. It looks fantastic, but I haven’t heard anything about the story and Bioware’s track record is getting shakier all the time.

For me, Bioware has ceased to be interchangeable with ‘great story and writing’. That is a fucking tragedy.

(Also yes I should be working but fuck it, I have busted my ass most of the week doing three people’s jobs and I DESERVE A BREAK.)

[thessalian]

Thess vs Too Many Games

I’m still in the middle of a DA:I playthrough (I am avoiding that stupid freezy-room in Jaws of Hakkon, tyvm). I have Dishonored 2 to play. I really should be grinding more Heroics in TOR, or run some FPs or something ‘cos we need the mats for unlocking the guild ship. TSW is feeling neglected (though honestly I think I’m largely waiting for new content at this point, even if I do have a Lumi to level but honestly I dunno if I wanna do the Beaumont boss fight AGAIN...)

...but godsfuckingdamnit now I want to play Mass Effect again.

Mostly for the insane amounts of fun I might have liveblogging the adventures of Meep!Shep. And possibly Srina!Shep, my first attempt at playing Infiltrator. Hey, might up my Widowmaker game.

And then of course I wonder what Srina Hawke or Srinaqusitor would be like and GODSDAMNIT I HAVE OTHER GAMES! I swear I need some kind of rota. I could start with the Saturday Shenanigans at Port Knowhere and sort of squeeze in the near-daily Overwatchery and go from there. Or maybe just resolve not to start anything new until I’ve finished the game I am currently on, get through that stupid freezy-room in Jaws of Hakkon and then bulldoze through Descent, ROFLstomp endgame and then go through Trespasser with my poor doomed Solasmancer, and THEN decide what next.

I’m just having Mass Effect feels. Not Andromeda feels (honestly I don’t care that much) but ShepFeels. *sigh* But DISHONORED 2 DAMNIT.

Eh, never mind. First thing I do when I get home is put that platinum-tier dualsaber that fell out of a crate the other day onto the GTN. At last check it was going for, like, 24mil or something and if I can sell it for at or around that price we could actually unlock the second room on the crew deck. Never mind the various gold-tier items. Hey, we don’t have enough people or interest in the game in general to go tackling Commanders. We unlock how we can.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Surveys

So SWTOR’s community management team sent me an email saying, “TAKE A SURVEY!” I imagine I am not alone in this. I debated not doing it at first, but... Yeah, no, since when have I ever kept my mouth shut about things that annoy me?

Most of it was “How likely are you to do this New Thing?” and “How much would you say This Thing has contributed to how you feel about playing?” Buuuuuut there were a couple of points wherein I had cause to rue the word limit in their text boxes.

They asked if I would recommend this game to family and friends, and why I gave that answer. “Be specific”, they said. Yeah, I ranked it at 0 and my reasoning went:

The story has effectively written the characters into a corner, gearing by RNG is not a way I can entice my raid-minded friends into the game, and overall there are far better MMOs out there.

And then there was “How can we improve the game for you?” My response:

A return to class-based stories focused on the player characters instead of the backstory of Villain of the Week. Drop the RNG gearing and the reliance on the RNG in general (Cartel Crates etc). New missions, operations and flashpoints instead of recycling old ones and throwing together frenetic Uprisings.

I would have gone on but there was a 400 word limit on that particular text box. Probably for good reasons.

Basically, the only reason I still like this game is for the RP I have set up. I have put a lot of work into making it the best I possibly can. But I don’t like the fact that it’s entirely possible to buy a RNG-based Cartel Crate only to end up with ANOTHER RNG-tied crate inside it. I don’t like gearing by RNG. I do not think it is ‘exciting’. There is no ‘thrill of the chase’. It’s ridiculous, and would only make sense if there was actually a shiny new op to gear for. But instead we have Uprisings, which are shorter, heavily unstructured Flashpoints.

Yeah, so I don’t expect them to pay even the remotest bit of attention to this but daaaaaaaayum did it feel good to vent that to their little box of smug.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Patch Day

It was totally Patch Day today. Overwatch got patched, TOR got patched...

Overwatch getting patched meant one thing to me: THE RETURN OF TANKSBANE.

And HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.

Took me a little while to get used to the flying shield but when I did ... heeeeeeheeheeheehee.

Having all your turrets available at once is a fucking GODSEND.

I managed to nuke a Reaper with the extended range on my hand laser. That was pretty awesome.

And that shield generator turns the second point capping on Volskaya (and, by extension, probably Hanamura) from “fucking difficult to cap” to “beating your head against a brick wall for five minutes with no appreciable benefit”. We just kept turning them back and back and back...

TANKSBANE LIVES AGAIN! AND TANKSBANE KICKS ASS!

I also actually got a PotG as D.Va. Look, this is rare for me these days, okay? Mostly because I now often play with @hyperewok1 and he plays Bastion and Pharah for the most part and he plays them fucking well so I generally resign myself to knowing that he’s gettin’ the POTGs. Buuuut I did manage to clear the payload on Hollywood with a well-aimed self-destructing mech and then shoot that obnoxious Symmetra in the head and that earned me POTG so there am I happy.

Aaaaaand there was some Mercy play, which I’ll do more often when playing with my guys. (Love my guys, really. They at least try to protect me. @miaaoi always remembers to shield me when he’s on Zarya, and @true0neutral always make sure to know where I am and angles his shield accordingly if at all possible.) No POTGs, but I did get a couple of highlights ... one a Lifesaver for saving my guys by shooting the enemy Reinhardt in the back before he could follow up on his Earthshatter. That was priceless.

But yeah, TOR has also patched, for those who are distracted and might want to remember to patch before Saturday’s Shenanigans (so @generalmaximus and possibly @fauxfire76). Just ... also be warned that it’s snowball season and rakghoul resurgence so there’s going to be snowflakes and plague everywhere.