August 2015 - Dragonchasers

Here’s why Destiny’s The Taken King expansion can’t get here soon enough

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Nimgimli

When Destiny came out last September I picked it up on the PS4 and had a grand old time leveling my Hunter from 1 to 20. Then I hit the Light system.

For those who don’t play, you level 1-20 in Destiny like you do in any MMO; gaining experience from killing baddies and finishing quests. Once you hit level 20 a new system, the Light system, kicks in. Basically it’s like hitting cap in an MMO and having your gear score on display. Different bits of gear, starting at 20, have a light attribute, and the more Light you have equipped, the higher your displayed level is.

I played for a couple of weeks after hitting 20 and I think I made 2 levels in that time, finishing at level 22. I mostly play solo and so mostly counted on random drops and I just wasn’t lucky. So I felt like I wasn’t making any progress and drifted away.

A few weeks ago I bought a copy of Destiny for the Xbox One and have once again been enjoying leveling a Titan from 1 to 20. But things were different with this character. First of all, he got some “Strange Coins” (a special type of currency) in the (in-game) mail; some kind of promotion from Bungie I guess. I was able to spend those to get a level 20 gold (Legendary) helmet that had a high Light attribute. As soon as I clicked over to level 20, I donned this helmet and my level jumped to 22.

Then a few hours later I was cheesing some Bounty Quests by picking on really low level bad guys. I was doing a level 3 mission (at level 22) and a random mob dropped a “blue” item (item rarity in Destiny goes white – green – blue – purple – gold) that has a pretty large light level. I put that on and I was level 24.

So over the course of a couple hours I made more progress than I made in a few weeks on my PS4 character, and the difference was the Random Number Generator. I mean seriously, the mission I was doing was so easy I was punching everything to death rather than shooting stuff, and I got a bit of gear worth 2 levels. I didn’t feel in any way like I ‘earned’ that gear or those levels.

OTOH on the PS4 I felt like I couldn’t make any progress at all, because I was less lucky there. I actually logged in my PS4 character because I figured he too had Strange Coins waiting in the mail. And he did, but the Vendor didn’t have anything he could both afford and could use. So again, the RNG foiled me.

The good news is we’re a few weeks from The Taken King, where the level cap will be raised to 40 and you’ll level up to it the old fashioned way, gaining experience from quests and killing mobs. They’ve also promised tweaks to the random stuff so you’re more likely to get gear you can use. The Light system will still determine your power, but as you get higher levels you’ll get access to higher level gear with more light. At least that’s how I understand it.

A week in WoW

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Nimgimli

I’ve been back in WoW for a week now (though I’m still playing other games too). In that time my level 8 Rogue has gotten to level 23, which means I’ve done Elwynn Forest, Westfall and Redridge.

On one level I’m enjoying the new questlines in these zones. If you haven’t played in many years (like I hadn’t), so far there’s basically been one solid quest line in Westfall and Redridge (I’d done parts of Elwynn years back when I created this character so I kind of re-entered it mid-way through so I’m not sure how much it has changed). A lot of secondary quests have been removed but each zone now tells a little story. A cheesy story, I’ll grant you, but they lead you through the zone along a clear path and at the end all your quests are finished, nice and tidy, and you’re ready for the next zone.

While these quest lines are fun, they make the game even more into a themepark. You take a quest and it leads to the next quest and the next. You might get ‘kill ten rats’ sidequests but you complete them more or less naturally in the course of doing the ‘main’ quest. If you’re not doing dungeon runs (and I’m not) it’s all pretty linear. Whether that’s good or bad depends on how much you like wandering about. Of course I could bounce around and go quest in other low-level zones if I really wanted to change things up.

The overall result, to me, is that WoW feels like a game now, and I remember in the past it feeling like a place. It all feels much sillier, too. There are people riding motorcycles, for one thing. As Bhagpuss talked about the other day, the quests riff off of popular culture. Westfall apparently spoofs CSI, which I didn’t really pick up on since I’ve never watched CSI. But Redridge spoofs Rambo and even though I’ve never seen Rambo-the-movie I’ve certainly seen Rambo-the-character with his red headband, so I got what they were going for there. It all starts feeling pretty modern. Then add in a lot of fart and poop jokes (at least more than I remember) and it starts to feel like it’s aimed at kids, too. Any sense of being in a kind of pseudo-medieval world is long gone. This is a video game, for sure.

That’s not bad, it’s just different. The Azeroth that was my home away from home for a time many years ago is gone. It took a period of adjustment to get past that, but once I did I was OK with it and I’m trying to appreciate this new Azeroth on its own terms.

What I’m really struggling with is the pace of combat. I’ve played too many faster-paced MMOs lately, I guess. My rogue is hoarse from saying “I don’t have enough energy” since I’ve become un-accustomed to letting auto-attack run on its own while I wait for resource meters to refill. I also get a lot of “It’s too far away” messages even though I feel like I have my face pressed against the mob. It’s taking real willpower for me to chill out and let my guy fight on his own while I wait impatiently for the opportunity to DO something.

At the same time, let’s talk about easy mode. I finally died once at level 20 but it was kind of a trap and kind of a bad decision on my part. You have to get a key from a stump in the midst of a pack of sleeping wargs, and I stealthed in and grabbed it. When I grabbed it, stealth broke, the wargs woke up and killed me almost instantly. Aside from this one event I’ve never been close to dying, and some named mods seem to have a self-destruct mechanism, they die so incredibly quickly.

At level 20 I got to learn a riding skill and basic mounts are stupid cheap. 9 silver, maybe? Put it this way, I bought 3 of them just to have some variety. A far cry from the days of scrimping and saving to get a mount! Having a mount is pretty handy though my goodness do these models look terrible when riding. My rogue looks like he’s cut from plywood when he’s on his horse, the model is so stiff and upright. Maybe some day Blizzard can find the time and money to redo the riding animations.

On the other hand, if you want a bag, forget it. I looked on the auction house and bags beyond 8 slots are super expensive for a new character. Like hundreds of gold, when I have 6 gold! Balancing that out is that there are flight paths EVERYWHERE so it’s easy to recall or fly somewhere to sell your junk loot.

I also got my first set of spiky shoulder armor, so now my rogue looks like a proper WoW character. 🙂

I don’t see myself sticking with WoW for very much longer. It’s been fun seeing how they’ve redone the low level zones, but not really fun enough to spend $15/month to play. I’m a solo player so I won’t be doing dungeons or anything which means most of what I’m paying for I won’t use. There are enough decent F2P games to scratch my solo MMO player itch. That’s not a fault of WoW’s though; that’s just who I am.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Posted on August 14, 2015August 14, 2015 by Nimgimli

Last night I finished Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into this experience and in case you’re in the same boat I wanted to describe what it is. This isn’t a review or anything, it’s an explanation.

So here goes. Start with a well-produced radio drama performed by top notch voice actors. Now slice it up so that each scene is in a separate audio file. Now delete a random 1/3 of these files. Take the remaining files and scatter them around a well rendered 3D model of a small English village. Add an amazing soundtrack, and finally set the player free to roam around this village finding these snippets and let them piece together the story for themselves.

And that’s pretty much Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. There’re no puzzles and there is certainly no combat. It’s all about exploring a village completely devoid of human life and uncovering bits of the story. You’ll get these by finding radios, telephones, and light-based vignettes like this one:

I started off really enjoying this game. (Is it even a game? That’s a discussion for another time.) Then I got a little bit bored/frustrated. There’s no in-game map or compass and I guess I have a poor sense of direction because I kept winding up back at the same place, finding no new story elements. There are in-world maps like you’d find in a nature park or trail system, complete with You Are Here indicators and those do help, but wandering around an empty village could only hold by attention for so long.

The only thing moving in this world are insects and a wisp-thing. Or a ball of light. Or something. You decide when you play what this is. I have my own opinions. Anyway eventually I realized that this ball of light would actually guide me to new locations and once I figured that out my enjoyment of the game came back.

So you wander through this world following, in retrospect, a general path and as you do you encounter the shadows of several people. The story being told is 1 part science fiction dealing with what happened to everyone, and one part soap opera. And you just experience it. You can activate radios and phones, open doors and ‘open’ the vignettes and (aside from moving and looking) that’s all the interactivity here.

The biggest gripe I (and seemingly everyone else) had is the movement speed. You walk pretty slowly. If you hold R2 you can ‘run’ slightly less slowly. I think the slow movement was a design decision based on giving you time to ruminate on what you just saw but still there are times when it gets pretty frustrating. You need to embrace your quiet, contemplative self and just try to go with it.

So should you get Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture? That depends on if you enjoy radio dramas and exploring. If you do this game will be right up your alley. I’m glad I played it though it’s pretty short for a $20 game. (Six hours maybe? If you’re really into exploring you can probably stretch that some.) If money is tight I might suggest waiting for a sale.

Also, and this is a vague spoiler, but if you like your stories to end nice and neatly with all questions answered and all plot lines resolved, be warned that Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture does not tell that kind of story. There’re a lot of questions that you’ll have to come up with your own answers to based on interpreting what you’ve seen. I loved that aspect but I know some folks prefer a nicely wrapped up tale.

Back to WoW?! WTF?

Posted on August 9, 2015 by Nimgimli

Last night I logged into World of Warcraft for the first time since 2011 (according to my account page).

Was it all the excitement around the new expansion that made me do it? Nope. I paid no attention to the expansion announcement. I know it’s called Legions and saw some squeeing on Twitter about a Demonhunter class and that’s the extent of my knowledge of the expansion. It was in fact beer that caused me to log in.

See Lola and I go hiking on Saturday and yesterday saw a particularly long and tiring hike as well as a couple of shorter walks (the weather was damned near perfect yesterday). By the time we were finished for the day it was 5:30 or so and I had a powerful thirst so I cracked a beer and it was gone in minutes, so I had another. Angela was taking a late afternoon nap so Lola and I continued relaxing on the couch and in due time a 3rd beer was open. I wasn’t up for any gaming so fired up Hulu and noticed they had a Gaming section. Curious I poked my head in there and they had this documentary about World of Warcraft called Looking For Group.

And in the course of watching (and having a 4th beer) I was overcome with a wave of nostalgia. I paused the show and ran upstairs to start downloading WoW “just in case.” About half-way through the show Angela woke up and I stopped so we could have dinner but as soon as that was done I was back to watching. And when it was over I ran upstairs and logged in.

I could, and did, log in with sub-20 characters for free, but noticed I had mail that I couldn’t open, being a freebie character. I also noticed that the character models didn’t seem like the ‘new’ models I’d heard about (though it turns out they are). One thing led to another and I remembered something about Blizzard reclaiming names and to save my names I had to log in my characters (again: 4 beers…in the bright light of morning I’m pretty sure this has all already happened) so I said to heck with it and subscribed for a month, and as long as I was subscribing (and with a vague hope it’d improve the character models) I’d better buy the latest expansion because I want it all! So there went $55.

Then I spent an hour or so logging into every character across the dozen or so servers I have characters on. Because saving our characters that we’ll probably never play is IMPORTANT!

I didn’t actually PLAY the game at all, but walking through Stormwind did feel pretty good in that ‘scratch the nostalgia itch’ way. At least it did until I saw all the changes. I’d forgotten about the cataclysm and that the Azeroth I remembered and at one time loved was gone forever. I was also dismayed to see that (as far as I can tell) the friends lists have been wiped in favor of friending via the battle.net accounts so even if any members of my old guild happen to still be playing, I’d never know it.

It’s true what they say: even in video games you can’t go home again.

So this morning I’m sitting here with a slight headache and a big old truckload of buyer’s remorse. It’s not the first time alcohol has lead me to make bad buying decisions but I hope it’s the last. Of course in the grand scheme of the universe $55 isn’t going to break me.

But now I have a month of time on my account. I can’t decide if I want to play (and potentially ruin all my good memories of the game) or just eat it as a bad decision. I did prod Angela at one time with “You should come play WoW with me” (As an EQ 2 fangirl she’s never played much WoW) and she actually said “Maybe I will.” If she does maybe we’ll roll a couple of panda people or something, and see where that takes us.

Dear Game Developers: Please don’t turn me into an executioner

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Nimgimli

I finished The Order: 1886 last night. For the most parted I didn’t like it, but I wanted to talk today about one part that I truly hated.

I can’t really avoid spoilers so if for some reason you plan on playing this game (and I would not recommend it) you might want to skip this post.

To establish a baseline, The Order: 1886 is roughly 50% shooter, 50% Quick Time Events. (If you’re not familiar with that term, think Dragon’s Lair. In other words, segments of the game have you press a specific button in response to on-screen prompts. “Press X now or fail.”)

The ending is one big cut-scene and QTE. At the end of the game Grayson, the character you play as, has been betrayed by a trusted colleague. You’ve gone through a long series of QTE events and now your former colleague, now opponent, is prone on the floor, bleeding, helpless and defeated. Now you have to assassinate him.

Push the Square Button to cock your pistol. Now press R2 to shoot your helpless foe in the head.

Your other option is to quit the game and never finish it. You can’t decide to let him live, maybe see if you can find some solution that lets the two of you go forward. Assassinate him or quit. Those are your options.

Dear Ready At Dawn: That’s a fucked up thing to make your players do and you’ve dropped to one of my least favorite studios because of it.

Now granted you kill a LOT of people up to this point, often (in my opinion) unnecessarily. The main character is pretty much a butcher and a sociopath to begin with. I was already pretty unhappy to be ‘living in his skin’ so to speak. Having the character kill his helpless foe in this way does fit in with his behavior up to this point. You’re playing a complete asshole in this game. I’m not upset so much with the fact that Grayson killed this person, but that I had to pull the trigger. If it had been a non-interactive cut scene (and there are MANY of those in The Order: 1886) I would’ve thought “Yup, Grayson is a sadistic bastard right up to the end. May he burn in hell.”

But making me do it made me feel like shit about myself. I’m kind of disappointed that I didn’t pop out the disk and snap it in half at that point in the game, in fact, but the finish line was so close that my desire for closure overcame common decency.

On the one hand I know it’s silly to feel so strongly about this because “it’s only a game” but I feel like sometimes that doesn’t matter. The Order is a dead-serious game with realistic graphics. There’s no whimsy here. I suppose on some level Ready At Dawn succeeded because it DID matter to me. I was invested enough in the world for it to matter. Plenty of people cry during sad movies even though the people in them are fictitious; fiction can influence our emotions, and that’s what happened to me in The Order. So kudos to Ready At Dawn for making me feel, but screw you guys for making me feel like shit.