Chief Goblin & Sole Author

Content Creators: Please Teach Me How to Learn

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Nimgimli

OK I’m not sure if what I’m about to say makes any sense or if it is a real thing, but I want to talk about gaming content online and specifically “How To” style gaming content.

Does anyone else think we need more posts/videos teaching us how to get good at the games we play? And since I’m not sure I phrased that well, let me go into more detail on what I mean. Take as an example a game where you need a “build” for your character. I’m using that as an example because it is something I’m in the midst of with Guild Wars 2. (The header image is the “build” interface for my current GW 2 character.) I could easily google Guild Wars 2 guilds and find a pattern to copy and then my character would, I assume, be much more effective than it currently is, and there is a lot of value in that. But personally, what I would rather find is content that tells me what goes into creating a build. Give me the tools that I can use to put together my own build. Even if it turns out to be the same build everyone else is using, I still think it would be more rewarding to figure it out myself.

I do find some content like this, most often in videos. Probably because YouTubers (apparently?) get paid based on the length of time you watch their video, so they tend to go into a little more detail on why they did something, just to extend the length of the video. (Is my cynicism showing?) This is how I came up with my Fallout 76 build. It isn’t super unique but I did put it together myself. But I’d like to see this kind of content for more games!

An event that got me thinking about this is the Guild Wars 2 interaction I had with the puzzle expert. This person didn’t just say “Go here, now go there. Then go there.” Instead they gave me tools, from where to look (“Remember to watch your character’s feet…all that matters is where their feet land.”) to mechanically how to make the jumps (“Hold down the right mouse button, then when you hit your left button your character starts to move. Then use your other hand just to do the jump.”) and lots more besides. How to exploit glitches in the game’s geometry and things like that. The next time I played I was using these new skills not just to do puzzles but in general to navigate difficult terrain in a more fluid way.

Another inspiration for this post is a loose conversation we’ve been having on Mastodon about what kind of mouse we use for MMOs and how we set up our bindings. No one is saying “Here, use THESE bindings” but instead it’s more a collection of tips that work for each of us, or mice that seem to work well.

So I want to find the equivalent of that kind of knowledge for other aspects of this and other games. Not just walkthroughs, but real how-tos. Instructional content that give us the tools we need to blaze our own path, rather than just to follow the same path everyone else took.

Does this even make sense? If so, is this something anyone else would be interested in? Or does this kind of content already exist and I’m just missing it. I’d love to hear what others think about this because, again, I’m not even sure if I’m making sense at this point!! 🙂 For some reason it’s a hard thing for me to articulate, but I’m wondering if this is a niche some clever content creator could fill to expand their audience.

Social Anxiety & MP Gaming

Posted on August 3, 2024 by Nimgimli

So I’ve been playing a good bit of Guild Wars lately. My new character has about 24 hours under their belt and is level 60-ish. For most of that time I’ve been doing what I normally do: treating a MP game as if it were single player, albeit with more interesting NPC AI. (In other words, I treat other players as NPCs basically.)

I have pretty severe social anxiety which gets worse and worse the older I get. I’ve worked from home for 12 or 13 years now and since I work full time and my partner doesn’t, she is who runs the errands and goes shopping and stuff. I can go weeks without leaving the apartment complex and days without talking to anyone other than her and people at work. And the thing is, I’m pretty happy like this. Most people tend to bother me (or at least that’s what I tell myself) so I’m pretty happy being left alone, as a general rule.

I actually enjoy playing games with others as long as I don’t have to talk. That’s part of why I stuck with Fallout 76 so long. LOTS of public events but hardly anyone uses voice chat and there is no text chat. So virtually all communication is done via emotes.

So anyway Guild Wars 2, being a PC game, of course has text chat though maybe because I’m in the beginner areas, I don’t really see it used much. Once in a while someone shouts out some coded message about a train that I assume is telling everyone to come join a group to steamroll world bosses and such, but I don’t understand the lingo and anyway I’ve been too focused on the story for now to pay much attention.

Thursday night I found myself waiting for a mob to spawn with another character and we started to chat a bit while we waited. This was a MUCH higher level character and when they learned I was newly returned to Guild Wars 2 they started showing me their mounts and stuff, then asked me if I’d done any of the puzzles. While I’ve heard of the puzzles I didn’t know much about them and said as much. This person then took me under their wing and for the next hour, at least, they showed me a couple of puzzles, gave me a ton of tips on how movement and jumping works in GW2, rezzed me when I fell and teleported me along when I started getting frustrated. It was a lovely time and at some point they followed me and said they’d say “Hi” the next time they saw me. I followed them back, making us “Friends.”

I was so happy when I logged off. I’d actually had a conversation with someone I didn’t know, and had really enjoyed it.

Friday was the first day in a week I didn’t log into Guild Wars 2. Just didn’t feel like it, I told myself. But I knew the truth. I was really anxious that my new ‘friend’ would be online and would say “Hi” and possibly even want to show me more puzzles. Or just to talk, who knows? The possibility just caused my anxiety to go through the roof. As much as I’d enjoyed the hour I spent with them, I was anxious to get on with the story. But I also didn’t want to say “No thanks” to someone offering to teach me things. It seemed rude. So my solution was “Just don’t log in.”

Ridiculous, right? First of all I’m sure this person has much better things to do than drop everything and teach me how to jump around in the game. Second, I’m sure anyone would understand if I said “Thank you so much, but I’d really like to focus on the story tonight.” I feel like I should be more worried about “Will this person actually ever say hello” rather than “Oh, too much human contact… do not want.”

And this isn’t a one-time thing for me. Often when I get excited about an online game I decide “I need to find a guild to join.” Once I do, I stop playing because I don’t want to have to say “Hello” or “Goodbye” or in general talk to anyone. Heck I do the same thing on consoles, often toggling my account to show as offline so no one asks me to do anything. Even though on the rare instances where I DO join someone else in a game, I generally have a great time.

Anyway, back to the current situation and Guild Wars 2…

Eventually, quite late, I did finally log in and this person wasn’t even online, so how I would’ve handled it remains a mystery. But I’m really disappointed with myself for taking such a positive interaction and managing to turn it into a source of stress and worry. Not really sure how to “fix” this but my gut says “Just get out there and force yourself to talk to people more.” would be a good place to start. When I was younger I was VERY social and was out at clubs and bars all the time. Knew folk every where I went. Spent a few years as a bartender, spending hours chatting with the regulars while serving drinks. Then I was a magazine writer who was constantly going places and interviewing people, or spending all day on the phone chatting. And I LOVED that job.

So I know this isn’t, y’know, genetic. This is learned behavior. Or un-learned behavior, as the case may be. Maybe by kind of putting this out on the Internet it’ll give me an incentive to put my money where my mouth is and actually force myself to interact with people.

A Fallout 76 Milestone: Season Level 150!

Posted on August 2, 2024 by Nimgimli

I did it! I actually did it. I made it to level 150 in the current Fallout 76 season. Since the middle of June I’ve been logging in every day without fail to do the daily and weekly tasks, and for the first part of the season (eg levels 1-100) I spent a couple hours each week grinding out exp by buffing the heck out of my Intelligence and XP Bonuses and beating the hell out of level 100 Super Mutants in West Tek.

As of this afternoon I’m at level 150 with 2,450 tickets saved up. I need 850 perk points to level up the Legendary Stat Perks I’m using to level 5. There’s a repeatable Season Pass item that gives 25 perk points for 75 tickets. Which means… I can’t quite get there. If my math is right I should be able to trade in tickets for 800 Perk Points.

Hold on a moment while I go do that…

…and done. I have 123 Perk Points left over (I had some in reserve) and need to get to 150 to max my last stat Legendary Perk card. I can keep earning season levels and with them, tickets. So unless Bethesda suddenly announces the season is ending this weekend, I should finish maxing out that perk in the next couple weeks.

So here are my Special stats when I logged in today:

My SPECIAL stats at the start of the day:
STR 27
PER 34
END 8
CHR 18
INT 27
AGI 31
LCK 27 — SPECIAL stats before I started spending

And my allocated SPECIAL points and the perks I’ve been using:

Special Points Allocated:
STR 8
PER 15
END 3
CHR 6
INT 9
AGI 15
LCK 14 — And here are my SPECIAL points and perks before I began.

Then I went off to buy and spend Perk Points and now here’re my allocated SPECIAL points and perks:

SPECIAL allocation after spending tickets:
STR 12
PER 15
END 3
CHR 6
INT 13
AGI 15
LCK 15 — Allocated SPECIAL points and Perks after the spend

And finally my current SPECIAL points. I have a few temporary buffs going but nothing crazy. As long as I keep my health low via being radiated this is about where I’ll be:

SPECIAL stats after spending:
STR 37
PER 39
END 10
CHR 23
INT 40
AGI 26
LCK 33 — SPECIAL stats with mutation buff, perk buffs and a few food/drink buffs

I have more Intelligence than I really need for Perk Cards, but every point of Intelligence = 2 or 3% more experience gained, which is why I have that all buffed up. I’d love to do something more interesting than GOOD WITH SALT in Luck but then my food spoils so quickly. We’ll see, though.

Anyway, I’m pretty proud of this accomplishment not because it was hard, but because it required persistence, and I struggle with being persistent about projects like this. It is very, very common for me to get bored or distracted and just drift away but this time, at least, I stuck with it.

So the questions now are: will Fallout 76 continue to hold my attention now that I’m more or less maxed out on progress? I can continue to farm gear and hunt for god rolls and such but progression will be subtle from this point out, unless I’m missing something. I do have to admit that for the past few weeks I’ve been logging in JUST to do the dailies and weeklies and not really playing any more than that as, yes I’ll admit it, getting to 150 was feeling like a chore or a commitment rather than something to do for fun.

But now that I am there, I’m glad I made it. I think I’ll get that last legendary maxed and then maybe give the game a rest until the big update and the new season starts in September. But we’ll see!

More MMO RP (?) Nostalgia

Posted on August 1, 2024 by Nimgimli

I found another bit of scribbling from the olden days of MMOing. This one is based on WoW and looks like it was written in 2012.

I have NO idea where I was going with this. Once again, unedited and unfiltered and un-good, here’s a story about Traellan who I guess was a paladin?

Traellan never knew what hit him. One moment he was strolling along through the canal district, the next something darted from an alleyway and knocked him flat on his back. Instinct took over and he rolled to his feet, reaching for the power of the Light with his mind, and for a dagger with his hand. Turning to his assailant, he was startled to find it was a young boy, his eyes wide with terror. Seeing the armor, the boy flew to Traellan, grabbed his weaponless hand and started tugging at it, making a sound like “Muh muh muh…”

“Calm down, lad! What’s the problem?” Traellan didn’t let go of his power. Clearly this boy was frightened out of his wits. “Take a deep breath lad and tell me what’s wrong.”

The boy bobbed his head, and finally got his lungs full of air, then blurted “A MONSTER!”

“Monster? Where?” Trae hadn’t heard any alarm from the guards.

“It came from the canals….it was the canal monster I think!”

The canal monster. Traellan had heard tales of this beast. A huge crocolisk that inhabited the canals. Some said it was an escaped pet that had grown fat on the detritus thrown into the canals by the residents of Stormwind. Others tell a more sinister tale: that it was intentionally bred by the Forsaken to be large and vicious, and loosed in the canals to feed on innocent flesh. Harmless pet or feral beast? Trae couldn’t take any chances.

“Show me!” he barked at the boy, who nodded. He seemed to take some comfort in the hammer that Trae now held at the ready. On the way back to the place where he’d spotted the monster, he recovered a fishing pole, a pouch of various baubles and flies, and an empty bucket.

“Dropped these.” he said, blushing. “Was fishin when I saw it. Here’s the spot.”

The dock was quiet now, but indeed there was a wet trail leading from the canals and up the road in a direction opposite the one the boy had taken.

“Well it didn’t chase you, lad. That’s a good sign I guess. You better head home until we know what’s lurking about.” Trae said, patting the boy on his head and giving him a gentle push to get him moving.

Once he was satisfied the boy wasn’t going to follow him, Traellan started following the wet trail. The streets were deserted, either due to good fortune or panic, but he hadn’t heard much in the way of shouting, so he hoped it was the former. He frowned when he saw the trail lead into the Pig & Whistle, thinking of how much torment the creature might cause in a closed in area. No time for stealth! Traellan broke into a lumbering run, his hammer held two-fisted in front of him. He burst into the ‘Whistle, bellowing a war cry and…and there was Zyneth. In an instance Traellan took in her bedraggled state and the fact that she was wounded. She must’ve been fighting the creature in the canals!

He ran to her side, standing in front of her protectively in spite of the fact that he knew she could squash him like a bug if she wanted to. He scanned the Whistle, his eyes growing accustomed to the gloom. A few patrons, leaning on the bar, looked at him and rolled their eyes, then went back to their ale.

Confused, he turned back toward Zyneth. “Where is it!?” he demanded, battle rage filling him with adrenaline.

Traellan continued to spin back and forth, searching for the Canal Monster. Then Zyneth said something about the horde attacking Stormwind again.

“The Horde!? The Horde AND the Canal Monster both attacking at once! This cannot be a coincidence!”

But Zyneth, being wiser than he, revealed her cunning plan. She meant to turn the Horde into crocolisk food. In other words, her plan was to turn their two foes against each other. Brilliant!

He turned to face her. “How are we going to do this?”

For the first time he noticed the fishhook in her eyebrow. He winced in sympathy, then before Zyneth could react he reached out and gave it a tug, meaning to pull the shaft through the wound in the same way one would remove an arrow.

“Ouch!” The unexpected sting caught Zyneth off-guard, and she pushed Traellan away. It wasn’t a particularly hard push for Zyneth, but she was much stronger than Trae, and he stumbled backwards. One boot hit a bit of slimy canal kelp on the floor, and his foot slipped out from under him. He pinwheeled his arms trying to maintain his balance, which unfortunately meant he was pinwheeling his great hammer as well. Losing his battle with equilibrium, he fell backwards across a table. Each of its legs gave way in a different direction as the table collapsed, sending chairs skittering across the floor. The table top hit the floor, then Trae’s armored back hit the table top, shattering place settings and flattening forks.

At the same time, the heavy head of the hammer came down on the next table over. Two of its legs gave out, and the table tipped to one side. All the contents of the table slid off and on to Trae’s chest. This included several small bowls of spices and a rather large pottery jar filled with a tomato sauce that was a popular topping for the chopped coyote steak sandwiches that the Pig & Whistle was famous for. The jar cracked open, covering the front of Trae’s armor with the sauce.

Without pause Trae leapt back to his feet, then let go with a tremendous sneeze from the spices he’d inhaled. He whirled, looking for the horde, looking for the canal monster, but finding only a sea of surprised and angry faces turned towards him from the direction of the bar.

“Of course they’re angry! They have every right to be, having their day disturbed by both the horde and the canal monster.” he thought to himself. Heedless of the red rivulets of sauce running down his chest, he approached the bar, leaving yet another trail across the tavern floor.

And that is where it just stops. If I remember correctly there is, or was, a giant crocodile MOB that spawned infrequently in the canals of Stormwind. Does anyone else remember that?

July 2024

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Nimgimli

July was the month I finally broke free of my Fallout 76 obsession! I mean, yes I’m still playing Fallout 76 but I’ve been playing other things, too.

I also bought a new gaming PC this month. I justified the purchase thusly: By buying a new gaming PC, I could re-purpose my older gaming PC into a new work PC. My current work PC is my even older gaming PC. It’s like 12 years old and getting super slow. (My official work machine, provided by my company’s IT dept, is gathering dust somewhere…thing is a total potato and so locked down I can’t install any of my tools on it.) The out-going PC I was using for work is old enough that the video card had a DVI port on it, and the disks were all HDDs. But the end result in terms of gaming is I went from an RTX 2070 that was OK at playing modern games on medium settings to an RTX 4070 that so far has been able to handle high or very high settings on the stuff I’ve tried it on. It probably helps that I am pushing a 1440P monitor with it rather than 4K.

But anyway, playing PC games on the widescreen monitor with high/very high settings and HDR and suddenly PC gaming is very appealing again!

Playing

Fallout 76 — As mentioned, still playing but I backed off quite a bit after my character crossed level 300 (and thus unlocked the final Legendary Slot perk) and I hit level 100 in the Season Pass. That is significant because up to level 100 you can ‘grind’ the season pass via a repeatable task to earn character experience. After 100 you just have a fixed number of daily and weekly tasks that will advance the season pass. Once I get to 150 (very soon — I’m at 145ish now) I can buy a bunch of perk points and level up my Legendary Perks and that will pretty much be the end of my character progression. From then on it’ll all be about chasing great gear, or just (gasp!) playing to have fun.

The pic at the top of this post is the new “survival tent” I got from the Season Pass. This is a Fallout 1st item, but they are SO handy. You can plunk it down almost anywhere and it gives you access to inventory, a bed to rest in, a couple of crafting benches (food and tinker) and a SPECIAL board so you can change your stats. I love this thing…though I’d love it more if it wasn’t so ugly!

My alt at Fasnacht. She is wearing a robot mask and carrying a mini-gun. Behind her the robots are lined up and ready for the parade — My alt all dressed up for Fasnacht. Just waiting around with her minigun BFF while the robots get ready to march in their parade

Guild Wars 2 — So how did I end up here? It started while watching Dusty Monk’s new YouTube channel where he was talking about the new World of Warcraft patch and how he is excited to be getting back into WoW. That inspired me to try to go back to WoW which just didn’t work. But in the midst of talking about that, some other friends were talking about an upcoming Guild Wars 2 expansion so I jumped over to try Guild Wars 2 for the umpteenth time.

It’s only been a few days but so far it is sticking. I (of course) made a new character and they’re level 50 after less than a week of playing. (I have something like 8 characters…one is level 80 but got there almost purely via daily login rewards rather than from being played. Another is level 54 and that character actually got played once upon a time. All the others never made it out of their 20s before I drifted away.) I’m mostly focusing on the story missions and events that pop up here and there. Something in my gaming brain has changed. I’m becoming less of a ‘game grazer’ and more likely to get stuck on a particular game for a good long time. My plan is to just move through 10 years of Guild Wars 2 content in order, but we’ll see how it goes.

A hidden underground grove in Guild Wars 2 — Note to self: Figure out how to fit wide-screen images into blog posts.
Also I’m loving exploring Tyria! Look at this enchanting place?

The First Descendant — Before Guild Wars 2 hooked me, I was enjoying this free to play looter shooter. The core game is running around shooting and looting tons of stuff (surprise!) while doing some pretty basic missions. The meta game feels a lot like Warframe in that you level up both your characters and your weapon proficiency which unlocks slots to add mods to. People say the cash shop is predatory. I bought a Battle Pass for $10 just for grins but otherwise I haven’t spent anything, so the cash shop, so far, hasn’t bothered me much. It’s also worth mentioning there’s a lot of fan service in the character models. Skin tight outfits with plenty of peek-a-boo holes barely covering some unrealistically proportioned bodies. Oh, one more thing I enjoy: cross save/cross progression across PC, Xbox and PS5. I still WANT to play this but between Fallout 76 Daily Tasks and being hooked on GW2, there just hasn’t been enough time.

Once Human — This survivalbox MMO is proving to be pretty popular in the circles I visit. I like it but I am confused about how the Seasons work and how big a setback that will feel like. Because of this I haven’t really cut loose in it. It is definitely on my ‘things to circle back to’ list, though.

Diablo IV — I FINALLY finished the campaign, using a character I started last season that is now over on the Eternal Realm or whatever it is called. Now I guess when the new season starts on August 6th I can see if I find the post-campaign game to be more interesting. Because honestly I found the campaign all pretty boring in terms of gameplay, I’m hoping once you hop off that treadmill and just do what seems fun, it’ll all be more interesting.

Random shot from Diablo IV showing a couple of characters standing around doing nothing — This is the only Diablo IV screenshot I have and I think I maybe hit the screenshot button by accident or something 🙂

Watching

My Lady Jane (Amazon Prime) — We loved this. It’s an alternate (and much less grim) history of Lady Jane Grey, one in which there’s a tinge of magic in the world in the form of Ethians (spelling?): people who can shape-shift from human to an animal form. It’s based on a novel I haven’t read. The TV adaptation includes a salty narrator and a bunch of modern cover songs. It was a really unique show and I hope we get a second season!

WondLa (Apple TV) — This is a short animated series that felt like Horizon Zero Dawn meets Fallout meets Disney. Eva is a girl raised by a robot mom in an underground bunker. She heads to the surface to find other humans and to her surprise, the world has been drastically changed and is full of alien life. It was fun and kind of sweet. Not great but I think it was 7 episodes of 20 minutes or so, so it didn’t overstay its welcome.

We watched a lot of other stuff but nothing that stuck in my head so I guess none of it was that great! 🙂

Reading

Nothing. Well, I’ve been reading a lot of news lately. Trying to stay informed without depressing myself, which let me tell you is like walking a tightrope! But it’s still too hot to hang out with the doggo outside and get much reading done. Maybe in September or October I can get back to reading.

And that’s July, all wrapped up in a neat bundle. We’re halfway through the summer, thanks goodness. Not that August is any cooler but at least the days are getting shorter which means we have a little more shade during our after-work walk. Until fall comes we’ll just keep taking it one day at a time, I guess. Hope wherever you are it is cooler (though that probably requires being in the southern hemisphere, so basically Naithin) and that you’re having a great summer!

A Bit of Nostalgia From the Early Days of MMOs

Posted on July 18, 2024 by Nimgimli

I bought a new PC this week, so I’m cleaning out the hard drive of my old system, figuring out what I want to archive, what needs to be moved to the new machine, and what can just be deleted. I found a file called sig.txt and assumed it was going to be a signature file for email or something.

But nope, it was a character introduction I’d written in the way back times. The timestamp on the file says 2014 but since it appears to be an intro for my Dark Age of Camelot character I’m guessing it was written somewhere around the launch window of that game, which was 2001.

It isn’t good by any stretch, but dang I had kind of forgotten that I used to goof around trying to write fiction, if you can call a character into fiction.

Anyway before I lose it to a hard drive failure or something, I figured I’d archive it to the blog. So here it is, completely un-edited. I don’t even know what it was for… some role playing guild intro post or something, probably.

Sadly, I no longer seem to have any of my old screenshots from those days and it feels cruddy to ‘borrow’ one so… just imagine low res polygonal vikings and you’ll have the right mental image!

——————————

Was it an innate sense of duty that lead me to take up sword in defense of our realm? Sadly I say nay. T’was fish guts that made me do it.

How so? Ma and da were hard working fisherfolk and mind, fishing be honorable work. When’s the last time ye fought a battle with an empty belly? A hard task, no? We all need to eat.

But me, I just couldn’t warm to that life. I tried but oh, how I hated
it. I’d run off to watch the guards in town as they strode about . Soon enough they got to know me, and they’d show me a trick or two, me with a stick that served as me sword then. I’d come home and my da would holler at me “Where ya been Sig? There be a catch needs attending to.” And I’d cry out “Da, I don’t want ta clean fish, I want ta slay a dragon!”

As I grew taller, I spent more and more time hanging about the guards, and even grow brave enough to approach the Dreng who came and went. One day, a soldier gave me a cast-off sword. It was a weapon worthy of slaughtering chickens, perhaps, but it were mine! And I learnt quick from them guards how ta wield it. And I liked the feel of the sword in me palm. Oh yes, very much.

Da says, “Sig, there’s nets to be mended, put down that pig sticker and get up yer needle and twine.” Uppity lad, I says “Da, I got no time for mending. Somewhere there be a dragon needs slayin! I need ta go and find it!”

Finally, on the day I first realized that the itching on me chin were due to the fact I was startin ta grow whiskers, my da took me aside and he says, “Sigrund, I like the life of a fisherman. But that don’t mean you need to like it as well. I’ve seen you hanging about with the Dreng and those are the times ye look happiest. When you be gutting fish, tis like your heart has gone missing. Go and chase your dragons, son. Go and make your ma and me proud.”

And so I went. I trained with the town guard a bit but fact is, Vasudheim was feeling mighty small, especially when I’d overhear some freemen coming in from Auditlen or Hagerfel, or even as far off as Huginfel. I heard rumors of a place called Askheim overtaken by evil beings. Inside, a spark had taken hold, and the Dreng and the stories fed it, and I knew it were time for me to go out in the world and make my way. Talk of battles with elves and Arthur’s clan riled my blood, while right there at home in Vasudheim purses started to go missing and doors started being bolted at night.

At times it seemed all of Midgard was being torn assunder and needed mending.

So now, my sword be my needle, and honor be my twine, and I’m doing my best to mend our beloved realm. Valhalla awaits at the end of this road, I know. But that’s not for a while. There be much work to do first. I am proud to be a Warrior of Midgard.