I guess it’s only been a few days, but I feel like I’ve been chasing my tail in circles trying to figure out a way to track the time I spend playing games in a way that Krikket and Naithan do. I feel like I’ve spent more time futzing around with quantifying my gaming than I have actually gaming.
Kevin Brill’s TempusGameIt is excellent if you’re primarily a PC gamer who focuses on Steam games, but it currently seems to have trouble when a game is being launched from an alternate service like Amazon Games or Xbox Game Pass. I’ve made Kevin aware of this and I’m sure he’ll sort it out but for now given that a lot of my PC games come from Game Pass it is missing a lot of my sessions. (Tempus is free and Kevin is building it in his spare time so bless him for giving us such a great system for Steam and other ‘traditional’ PC launcher games!)
I started looking for alternatives but either they were subscription based (and I don’t care enough to spend money every month to do this) or they were open source products that worked but had interfaces that only a tinkerer could love. ActivityWatch is a good example. It DOES work but I couldn’t find an easy/apparent way to tell it not to track when I was using a browser or discord or something, which meant I had to do some heavily filtering since I’m on this system for 8 hours a day for work. If I was in a tinkering mood I’m jump in and figure this out but I just want something that works.
I am still using Playnite which I LOVE as a launcher and a choice paralysis breaker. It does do tracking with an add-on that gives me a rough idea of what I’ve been playing most frequently, at least. The image at the top of this post is a Gantt chart showing what I’ve been playing. In the app I can roll over those boxes and see how long each session was but I can’t seem to find a way to total them up. [If this was a “live” view of the data you’d see most of the sessions are like 10 minutes long.. I’ve been kind of distracted by all of this. I boot a game, play for a few, then quit to see what data I got.]
And then there’s the question of console games, which I also play. Playnite at least shows I’ve played console games. The 3rd item down, Fallout 76, is the Xbox version. But it doesn’t show time played, and of course none of the PC-based general purpose time trackers will be able to see how long I spent on consoles, so I’m never going to have an accurate figure.
I don’t even know why I WANT this info! I just got it stuck in my craw that I wanted to put charts and graphs in my monthly recap because they look cool!! But at this point it’s all kind of becoming a drag. What I need is Raptr! Whatever happened to Raptr??! But really the chart up there is a good refresher of what I played (which apparently is a LOT of different stuff lately.. won’t fit all of that in the recap.)
Anyway… I’ve been trying to keep to writing at least 2 blog posts/week but I’ve been spending so much time on tracking software (and streaming software, but that’s a different post) that I have hardly been playing any games, so I have nothing else to talk about!!!
A while back I got it in my head to start tracking what games I’m playing in a more structured way. Part of this is maybe FOMO from reading posts where folks have nice neat charts of what they played and how much time they spent in each game. The other reason is to try to stop “losing” games. I’m not sure if I’m unique in this but sometimes I’ll be enjoying a game a lot but then get distracted and then get distracted some more and then even more distracted and I suddenly realize I haven’t played that great game in 3 months and now I forget what I was doing in it.
Anyway I went searching for a tool. The first thing I tried was Kevin Brill’s TempusGameit which worked really well for doing the time tracking. This is, as far as I am aware, a 1 person operation that Kevin works on in his free time and it is pretty incredible how well it works. My only slight gripe with it is that I THINK it keeps my machine awake if I don’t remember to shut it down. It’s not a big enough gripe that I’ve even mentioned this to Kevin though. Generally it’s a solid system if you just want to track time played.
However after using it for a while I realized I wanted more than just time tracking. I wanted a way to browse my library of games. I won’t claim I spent a lot of time looking because I remembered just such a product that I’d tried in the past, Playnite. Playnite is an open source video game library manager and supports a bunch of modules built by the community to add various functionalities.
The first, and scariest, thing you have to do when getting Playnite up and running is sign into your various gaming service accounts using it. I almost bounced off it right there but after doing some minor research it seemed like it was a ‘big enough’ product that if there were security issues around this people would’ve made a stink about it. Plus the fact that I have 2FA on everything helps, too. Playnite says it doesn’t store anything on a server anywhere. You don’t create an account on the Playnite site or anything like that.
Once you have logged into your accounts you run an update on your library and Playnite goes out to Steam, Epic, Amazon, Xbox, PSN (some of these require installing additional modules) etc etc and pulls in a list of all the games you own, then it pulls in meta data for them including cover art and so forth. You can even install extensions that will launch games for Geforce Now or Microsoft’s XCloud. Playnite also pulls in existing playtime data. Here’re my overall statistics:
That Total Play Time stat of 12,080 hours is rather sobering…
There is one big drawback to using Playnite and that is you need to launch your games from Playnite in order for it to track them (this is mostly important for games that I don’t play through one of the big gaming services — Guild Wars 2 for example — since these games don’t have playtime data coming in via a 3rd party service). I quickly stopped seeing this as a drawback once I embraced Playnite as a universal launcher for all my games, but it is still worth noting.
There’s a ton of features here and a ton of plugins to add even more and I’m still learning about the system, but before I finish up I wanted to share one tool I use a lot, and that is “Pick a Random Game.” When the choice paralysis hits I use this to decide what to play. It uses whatever current library filters are in place, which for me is usually “Installed Games” and it picks a game from that list. Most people are probably adult enough to choose what they want to play for themselves, but I often am not!! I use the Random Game feature frequently. 🙂
So, yeah, so far I’ve been pretty happy with Playnite, though I’m still trying to find a plugin that will give me “# of hours played in a specific time period” which is really what I wanted in the first place. I’m sure it exists and I think an extension called Game Activity will do it if I figure out the right buttons to push and levers to pull, but I haven’t managed that yet. But I just find it ironic because TempusGameit does that right out of the box and that’s what I initially set out to discover! Maybe I should just run both!
This weekend there’s an open beta (details on getting into it in that link) running for New World: Aeternum, which is a kind of re-launch of New World. To be honest it’s all a little confusing to me but as best I can tell, owners of the PC version who have not purchased the expansion can access the early areas of Aeternum for free. Owners of New World and the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion (currently $30 on Steam) get the whole Aeternum kit & kaboodle for free. It sounds like your existing characters carry over but I may be mis-understanding that. On console, of course, it’s a new game with a full new game cost ($60) which honestly feels a bit steep to me, but then there’s no subscription or anything so maybe I’m just getting cheap in my old age. There is cross-play but not cross-progression, so if you decide to buy on console and PC you’ll have 2 separate accounts, which is unfortunate and odd since you will be playing with folks from other platforms.
This is what quest dialog’s look like. Just to be clear that’s me facing the camera
I’ve played New World on PC, but not the expansion, and not for a long while and if I understand it things have changed quite a bit. So I decided to try out the Open Beta and chose to do it on Xbox.
I was, honestly, pleasantly surprised. The game played nicely with a controller; for me it was arguably more fun than when I used to use mouse and keyboard. When you create a character you pick an archetype which seems to just set your starting equipment. I picked one that uses a big-assed sword and a blunderbuss and that was quite an enjoyable combo. The intro is quite a bit different; a lot more cinematic and it feels more like an RPG than a straight-up MMO. But in the open beta at least you could definitely see that it was an MMO because the world was PACKED full of people to the point where doing quests was a challenge since mobs were dying as fast as they were spawning. And the chat was totally toxic; first order of business was to mute all the channels.
Apparently surviving that shipwreck wasn’t all that hard; I’m not exactly the sole survivor!
The basic game loop was what I remember: gather materials, craft a skinning knife, hunt boars, make food. Same first steps as it used to be. Then hunt zombies. Your character levels up but so do your weapon skills. All of this will be very familiar if you played the original game. I don’t know if the strong guild-based gameplay is still there, where a realm will hold territory and have to level up crafting stations and such. I’d need to research that since it was one of the reasons I quit playing as a primarily solo adventurer. But Amazon is billing this as a game you can play solo so maybe that stuff is gone?
Honestly I didn’t spend a huge amount of time playing. I installed the beta to re-assure myself this wasn’t a game I needed to pay attention to, but that backfired and I actually find myself having fun and thinking maybe I will pick it up, or if I go PC pick up the expansion. I’ll probably play again later in the weekend once the initial mob moves on so it isn’t quite so crowded. Heck maybe I should install the PC Open Beta while I’m at it and see how that feels. $30 for the expansion is a lot better than $60 for the whole game on Xbox or PS5!
But yeah, if you’re curious I’d say check out the beta, which is why I’m chucking this rough-draft of a blog post out into the world. I want it out asap so folks still have time to try it.
I DID play in the closed alpha on Xbox and that was pretty horrible (I was under NDA so didn’t say anything) but they’ve made a LOT of improvements since then, which is quite encouraging. And as I mentioned I found combat using the controller was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to playing more at some point.
As you probably are aware, earlier this week Sony announced the Playstation 5 Pro, coming this November for $700. It is supposed to come with a 45% boost in graphics prowess, and twice the storage space of a PS5, as I understand it. I’m going to be honest, I didn’t even watch the announcement video as lately I haven’t been using the PS5 much. There’s no reason for me to invest in a PS5 Pro unless it was so cheap as to be trivial, which was never going to be.
In reaction to the announcement, most console gamers fall into one of two camps. Either they shrug and say “That’s kind of pricey, not really for me.” or they say “Take my money, Sony!” Both completely legit reactions. But then there’s a group that just seems ANGRY that this device exists, and those are the people that kind of mystify me.
Right now the Digital PS5 (the Pro has no optical drive) is $450 with 1 TB of storage. Adding a 2nd TB will cost about $100 so figure $550 for parity with the PS5 Pro. That means you’re paying $150 extra for the added horsepower which doesn’t seem that bad to me if Playstation is your primary gaming platform and you’re a serious gamer. If you use your Playstation for several hours every day and really want the best graphics and framerates for the gaming library you already own, PS5 Pro is probably a good investment.
And if you’re that person, that Playstation enthusisast, then you are who Sony is making this console for. As far as I am aware the standard PS5 is not going away. If I’m wrong about that it kind of invalidates this entire post, because then Sony would be really pressuring people to spend the extra money.
I don’t even think the cost is so crazy. $700 gets you a whole second machine that has an almost 50% GPU power increase and an extra 1 TB of storage. You can trade in or sell your old PS5. The Internet says the trade-in value of a PS5 varies between $160 and $300 depending on condition, so let’s just say you can trade the old machine in for $200. So now you’re spending $500 for a graphics update and a TB of storage space. PC gamers are maybe thinking “That’s not so bad.” if they’ve shopped for a new GPU lately.
I am certainly not arguing that everyone should upgrade or that the machine is for everyone. I just think there is a market for it and that Sony isn’t crazy for releasing it.
But getting back to this anger thing, what is it about game consoles that people feel like they should expect to own the best versions? You can go down to Best Buy tomorrow and spend $5000 on an 8K TV if you want to. Does that make anyone angry? It shows the same shows that the rest of us are watching on our $500-$1500 TVs, in the same way that the PS5 Pro plays the same games that the PS5 does. Similarly, you can spend thousands on a home stereo system, or you can spend a few hundred dollars. Both play the same music. Most of us go towards the cheaper of all these options but real enthusiasts are willing to spend for top of the line. You can say the same for many things: phones, laptops, appliances.
I dunno, maybe there are people out there that do get angry that high tech toilets — unaffordable to many of us — exist, leaving the rest of us to poop in basic porcelain bowls!
I just find it all rather amusing. If I was still hard core into Playstation gaming I might try to get a PS5 Pro, but having just spent 3 PS5 Pros worth of $$ on a PC, I’m just not in that market anymore. But is $700 so crazy? When the PS5 first came out and were impossible to get, they were selling on eBay for that much and I assume SOMEONE was buying them. So there’s a market for this stuff. I’m not that market. Chances are you aren’t that market either, and chances are you really don’t care. But this fringe element who is ANGRY at Sony for daring to put out a console that is ‘too expensive’ just seems weird to me.
I’m not sure if I’ve even talked about it on the blog but I’ve been having a go with Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition, which is I guess some kind of re-master. I’ve never really gotten into Borderlands games, partly because they seem mostly intended for co-op play and partly because the Gearbox sense of humor isn’t really my thing. But after spending a few weeks primarily playing MMOs I was just in the mood for something kind of mindless that involved shooting stuff and I had BL:GotY in my Steam library so I picked that. I know someone who works at Gearbox so I always feel a slight tingle of guilt over not playing their games!
I made it about 14 hours in, and got level 24 or so, and into the 4th area, but I think I may be done. I mean, it did exactly what I was looking for: gave me lots of baddies to shoot without having to go research anything about builds or look anything up. OK I lie, I was struggling to find one hidden item and I looked THAT up, but basically it was just ‘boot up and play’ for a dozen hours.
To be clear this is a lot longer than I’ve played any of the Borderlands games and I’ve at least tried almost all of them (maybe not the Pre-Sequel one) so that’s a win, and I’m not quitting out of any real disappointment with the game. I’m just a little bored. And again, I think that wouldn’t be an issue if I was playing with others.
One of my issues is that the 4th area looks pretty much like the first and second and third areas, and the mobs seem about the same too, just higher level. I guess Pandora is mostly one big biome. I would’ve appreciated a little more variety, but then you have to remember that the game originally came out in 2009. Simpler times back then, eh?
But my bigger issue is the game doesn’t run very well. This version wasn’t developed by Gearbox so I’m not blaming them, but my layman’s sense is that today’s machines are just too fast for the game’s engine. It isn’t that the framerate drops; it’s more like the interface can’t keep up. For instance scrolling through inventory (done via the scroll wheel) is a real struggle. I have to be careful not to turn the wheel too quickly or everything freaks out. Speaking of turning, if I turn my character too quickly the world kind of jitters a bit (though again framerate doesn’t fluctuate) which can make me a tad woozy. There’s also some little UI annoyances like bits that seem like they can be clicked on, but in fact you need to use the keyboard to interact with them:
It looks like I can click OK here, right? But no. I have to hit the Enter key. Not a big deal but just an example of the un-even UI
None of this is a deal breaker and if I didn’t have a zillion other games I’m itching to play I might stick with it for a little longer, but at this point I feel like I’ve seen what the game has to offer me, and I’ve had some fun playing, but now it is time to move on without discovering if Mordecai and Deathwing find that pesky vault. I might come back to it at some point, or more likely give Borderlands 2 another shot just to see what it offers. I have Borderlands 3 on the PS5 but have barely played it. Think I bought it on some super sale. And of course now we know Borderlands 4 is coming. Damn, that’s a lot of Borderlands-ing…
This is kind of a sh*tpost, I’ll admit, but I’m just kind of amazed by what is going on with Game Pass this week.
They’ve added 3 games in 3 days and I imagine for a lot of folks there’s nothing of note here, or maybe one of the three is of some interest, but for me? It’s like someone at Microsoft looked over my shoulder and said “He’s focusing too much on the games he’s playing… let’s tempt the heck out of him.”
Now I haven’t played ANY of these games yet but I really want to play all three. They are:
Star Trucker — Think of this like Euro Truck Simulator, only in space. There was a demo of it during one of the Steam Next Fest events and I tried it then and really had a good time with it. Mind you this isn’t game of the year material… but it was just fun. Assuming I’m remembering right, anyway. I’ll know more when I play it!
Age of Mythology: Retold — Folks of a certain age will remember Age of Mythology. It was basically Age of Empires with a fantasy twist in that various gods manifested in the game with their special powers. I’m not sure if this is a straight-up re-release with better graphics or if there’s new content, but I’m looking forward to finding out!
Expeditions: A MudRunner Game — Around this time last year I was devoting a significant amount of my gaming time to Snowrunner, the prior game in this series. This one seems like it may have a little more ‘game’ to it in that it has various goals beyond basically “Haul something from here to there.” but if it is half as much fun (to me!) as Snowrunner I’m in deep trouble and may as well uninstall all the MMOs I’ve been trying to juggle.
And that’s it. That’s the post. 3 games in 3 days and I REALLY want to play them all. I doubt any of these will be super popular and probably I’m in a very small group in being excited for all three of them but… thanks Xbox, for all the interesting games this week!
I have to admit I’ve not really been playing World of Warcraft as much as I had anticipated, but I do pop in now and then. I’m not sure why I don’t play more. There’s nothing about it that bothers me or anything. I mean partially it is just due to playing so many games at once, but it’s partially that it hasn’t REALLY grabbed me yet. I am not playing through The War Within since I don’t have a level 70 character. I’m playing the last expansion, Dragonflight.
So far it has been a pretty chill experience, and maybe that is actually part of the issue? When I log in I play for a while and then I tend to get a little sleepy and so I log out. Mind you recently almost everything can make me feel a little sleepy (I need to talk to my doc about tweaking my meds so I’m not borderline narcoleptic). I started out doing every quest I saw but then decided instead to focus on the main questline to see how far that would take me and to see what it will unlock.
I have the new (?) dragon flight system that gives you skills to boost speed and height and a stamina bar. That’s pretty fun. And of course the area is new to me, though I’m not sure I appreciate it as much as some might. It is clearly intended to nudge you towards using the new flight tools since there’s a lot of vertical movement, but it’s also your typical fire and brimstone type biome. All lava and barren rock. At least the part I’m in now is. I honestly tend not to use mounts in games too often; I kind of like running around taking my time. And while I think you CAN get anywhere in this area by running to it, you’d spend a LOT of time circling spires looking for staircases.
I also don’t have any history with the characters so even though they talk about the years we’ve spent fighting side by side, I have no idea who they are. Without any context it’s a little hard to care about them.
I feel like a lot of this comes down to me becoming refamiliarized with the game and the lore to some extent. This should get better as I build some history with the NPCs I’m interacting with. There is nothing in the plot or the gameplay that I can point to and say “I’m not playing because I don’t like THIS.” It is all fine. It’s just not super compelling yet.
Huh, I didn’t intend to write such a ‘down on WoW’ post. OK not ‘down’ on it but maybe apathetic? Anyway, in fact I wanted to write this post because of something I really did enjoy! I did my first Dungeon yesterday using the new “Dungeon Diving with NPCs” system (not the actual name) that I think was added with Dragonflight? It was Neltharus, a Dragonflight dungeon, anyway. This NPC was loitering about outside the dungeon and offered to help. I said “OK let’s go” and the game asked me what role I was going to fill. I said DPS and bam, there I was inside with 4 NPC companions including a tank, a healer. a DPS and honestly not sure what the last was. Support? I dunno. [I of course forgot to take any screenshots.]
You can choose to lead the party or you can ask an NPC to lead. I did the latter and Captain Garrick, one of the NPCs and someone I know from Exile’s Reach, bellows “I’ll keep you safe” and takes off running. I have to say it was really just like playing with a PUG but without any attitude. Garrick ran from boss to boss. I struggled to keep up and follow everything that was happening, so just like playing with people! I felt awkward and dumb but I kept reminding myself “these are NPCs, they don’t care” and that was pretty nice. And at any time I could click a button to take back the lead and everyone would stop and wait for as long as I needed. No judgement from the NPCs!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE! this system. I let the NPC lead this time, but I might go back and do it again with me leading. The fight wasn’t really challenging at all but I definitely need practice with targeting and resource management and getting back the knack of watching the enemy, the party, and my own skill bars all at once. Being able to practice this without worrying that I’m irritating other people is amazing. And my assumption is that if I was playing with a friend, we could do the same thing and just get 3 NPC companions? I am not 100% sure on that, but Gwyn in case you are reading and are thinking of going back to play with Glo! (Though my understanding is this system only works on some of the newer dungeons.)
I know it’s a little weird to choose to play an MMO and then be delighted that I don’t have to play with other people, but that’s me in a nutshell. FF XIV has a similar system and I remember loving it there, too. I like being able to actually take my time and look around and appreciate the work that goes into these dungeons!
Got this 2-handed mace — they call it a mace, I’d call it a maul — as a drop during my first visit to a dungeon
For my trouble of doing the dungeon I got a couple of nice gear upgrades, so it was worth it from that point of view too. I’m looking forward to doing more of these and generally it made me excited to get through this content and into The War Within where I know they’ve really leaned into this system.
Meanwhile I hit level 25 with my new character, putting her at the same level as my once-upon-a-time level-capped pre-smush characters.
So I continue to push forward. Once I get these dragons sorted I look forward to going to fight the mole men or whomever lives in the bowels of the world in The War Within!
Today is the last day of the current Fallout 76 Season which started back in June. (I think it was June 12th.) Tomorrow we all start back at 0 (after re-downloading the entire game this patch — the devs are trying to make the client smaller which is requiring a complete re-download). I haven’t watched any data mining videos this time out so I’m not sure what is in store for the new season.
To recap how season progression works (or at least, how it worked this season) in Fallout 76, you gain season experience by doing various daily and weekly tasks, and you earn 25 “Season Tickets” per season level. Every few levels from 0 to 100 a new page of prizes unlocks and you purchase whatever looks interesting with these tickets. Level 100 is considered “Complete” and then you get into “Bonus Levels.” Nothing more unlocks until level 150 when you get a selection of purchasable “consumable” style items, and you can buy these over and over as long as you have the tickets. These are things like Atoms (for the cash shop), Lunchboxes (which offer buffs when consumed) and Perk Points (used to level up Legendary Perks).
I was determined to get to level 150 and spend my tickets on Perk Points to level up those Legendary Perks and I did it. (That’s the final page of the season pass at the top of this post.) In fact yesterday I hit level 200. I’m past where all the Legendary Perks that I use are maxed and I have tickets to spare. Trying to decide what to spend them on. I could bank Perk Points in case I decide to switch my Legendary Perk cards, or I could spend these tickets on one of my alts. But 200 seems like a good stopping point so I am NOT logging into Fallout 76 today, for the first time since June.
I have some personal struggles around becoming obsessive about things and chasing these season levels has become something of an obsession. For the past month or so I’ve never really played Fallout 76 for fun. I’d just to log in, do the Daily & Weekly Tasks as efficiently & quickly as possible so as to max that Season level, then I’d go play something else for enjoyment. That’s how I ‘broke’ Fallout 76 for myself. On the one hand there’s a certain level of satisfaction in having hit this goal but on the other hand… why?
My character now is so OP that not much in the game makes me break a sweat. There’s group content I can’t solo because it requires doing several things at once, but in terms of combat only the world bosses that result from dropping nukes even offer a challenge. Bethesda says they are aware of this and they intend to add more challenging content soon.
But even without challenging enemies I could be playing for fun. Doing quests and content I haven’t done, trying new builds, or working on my CAMP to make it cool. But by forcing myself to do those tasks every time I log in, Fallout 76 has become just another chore for me to do every day, and I’m really sad about that.
This next season I’ll be aiming to hit 100, at most, and that only if there’s something really interesting on the level 100 unlock page. And I know that hitting 100 is pretty easy, if I could hit 200 this time, so I won’t sweat missing days now and then.
There’s also a new crafting system to explore and I’m going to burn through a TON of Legendary Items I have been saving which is going to empty my stash and my backpack so I won’t have to deal with being over-encumbered all the time.
Basically the promise I am making to myself is that, for this coming season, I’ll play Fallout 76 for the fun, not for the metrics or the challenge of hitting some arbitrary number.
OK OK, total clickbait title. I am so very, very far from completing all the content available for Guild Wars 2 and even if/when I do that, can one ever really beat an MMO?
So here’s what really happened. In a convulsion of actual humanity, someone at my company decided to close our offices at 1 PM on Friday in celebration of the 3-day weekend. And against all odds I was actually free by 1:30 or so (usually there’s 1 tryhard somewhere in the company that insists on continuing to work and who needs support). That meant I had a few hours to myself with no chores to do and no obligations to partner or doggo, which doesn’t happen too often. And I had one mission left in the “My Story” part of Guild Wars 2 which, I THINK, was the ‘end’ of the tale when the game launched.
It’s fortunate I had those hours too, because it was a LONG mission; it took about 90 minutes start to finish. I’m not sure what would have happened if I’d been forced to stop part-way through but I’m hoping it would have ‘checkpointed’ my progress so I wouldn’t have had to start all over again when I came back. So was it worth doing?
In terms of story and characters, yeah it was. I’ve grown fond of this band of leaders of the world’s different factions. The story itself was fine but for me it was the characters that I really enjoyed. Even the ancillary characters who’re hanging around in the background can be amusing to watch and listen to.
Her: So tough guy: How’d a high profile swashbuckler like you get into the Order of Whispers? Him: I’m good at what they do. I may not fit their recruiting profile, but I get results. Him: What’s your excuse? A vivacious lass like you joined the uptight and straight-laced vigil? Her: Ha! That makes two of us that “don’t fit the profile.” Let’s have a drink and see what else we have in common.
In terms of rewards, well I got a level 80 Exotic helm, something I’d been about to buy off the trading post, so yeah definitely worth it for the rewards.
In terms of gameplay it was kind of a mixed bag. The straight-up battles were fun but there was a bit too much ‘gimmick’ fighting in it for my tastes. I don’t want to get into spoilers but it was one of those cases where you, the player, has to do several things at once while your ‘allies’ stand around and watch you. I get why they do this: so you can be the Big Damned Hero, but logically it bugs me. Like we’re saving the world, maybe get off your lazy butts and help!? 🙂
But I was really glad to finish, 12 years after buying the game. In terms of hours spent on this character, it was around 55 but of course I was doing a lot of stuff besides story missions.
So what’s next? Living World Season 1, which I almost immediately dove into. Haven’t got far yet but the bump in challenge is pretty welcome. From the very start the fights have been more interesting and there’s this little side story where one of your companions is being followed around by a baby creature and it is just so darned adorable. I hope nothing happens to it!
What I’m wrestling with now is whether to push on with my current character or try a different profession for a while. There’s a LOT of content yet to do and while I like my Warrior well enough maybe there’s a profession I’d like even more. Still pondering this…
It seems a little odd to do a monthly recap this month. Traditionally I’ve been doing those mostly as a reminder to future me as to what I was playing when. This month it’s all there in the posts I’ve already written. Also, ironically enough, I didn’t do as much gaming as I generally do because I spent so much time writing posts! I’m a pretty quick ‘rough draft’ writer but I make a ton of typos and errors and tend to spend a lot of time re-reading & re-writing, plus cropping and resizing screenshots, doing the SEO work and all that. And I STILL always find several mistakes after posting!!
So having blogged every day this month, will I continue? No, not daily. It’s just a bit too much for me. But my “whenever I feel like it” approach isn’t working either. I have gotten faster over the course of the month and the amount of mental effort it takes to write a post is much lower now than it was on August 1st, just demonstrating once again that the brain is a muscle. Writing a lot makes writing faster and easier…what a revelation! 🙂 I think I want to commit to a minimum of two posts a week and kind of hope for at least 3. But two seems like an easily achievable goal that won’t stress me out.
The reason I did Naaagust rather than Blaugust is because I generally HATE commitments. The running joke that I wasn’t in fact doing Blaugust but just happened to be posting every day gave me a mental escape hatch where I could stop any time I wanted to without feeling like I’d failed. Yes my brain is easily tricked, even when it is me doing the tricking.
Anyway, on to the traditional recap.
Playing
Fallout 76 — I’ve once again ‘broken’ a game for myself and this time it is Fallout 76. I so hyper-focused on advancing the Seasons that it became one more chore to do every day, like feeding the dog. I did it, but I did it as quickly as possible then shut the game down. I dabbled a bit with playing on PC which was fun for a few nights but then I started to think about duplicating the hundreds (over 500 in fact) of hours I’d devoted to the Xbox version and decided that life is too short to do all that over again. So Fallout 76 is kind of in a holding pattern until then next update drops (and the next season starts) in a few days. Sadly the big new feature for this update is delayed a bit, but we’ll get the new Legendary Crafting system which should be interesting. Just a matter of if it is “good interesting” or “bad interesting.” 🙂 I SHOULD hit level 200 in the current season before it ends, but I will NOT be stressing over the seasons stuff the next time around. I want the game to be fun again!
Oh I almost forgot, just this past Thursday I encountered a Legendary Treasure Hunter; a mob I’ve never seen before. I guess it must be from some event. It was on my private server so wasn’t something triggered by another player. I’ll have to do some research. [Fallout 76 is just not a game that screenshots well, sorry!]
These mole-miner Legendary Treasure Hunter was a new find for me this past week.
Diablo IV — This is a weird one. Every time I play my seasonal character I enjoy myself, and on the new PC I’m pretty dumbfounded by the spectacle of it all, particularly when I’m wearing headphones and it is at night and dark and no one else is around. It’s great! But… I just don’t boot it up very often and I am not sure why. Maybe it is as simple as having too many different gaming irons in the playtime fire and preferring to play games that friends are playing. I don’t play WITH friends but just talking on the socials about playing the same game as them is enjoyable.
Guild Wars 2 — This journey has been pretty well-documented this month, and I don’t plan to stop any time soon. This is probably the most fun I’ve ever had playing Guild Wars 2. I don’t think it is that the game has changed so much as that I have changed. I don’t question it too much, I just enjoy the ride.
Been taking my first steps into the Guild Wars 2 fashion scene, which of course is the true endgame! 🙂
World of Warcraft — I STILL can’t believe I’m back in WoW, but so far, at least, I’m having fun, but I’m not like ‘over the moon’ having fun. It helps that I skipped so many expansions so that in a lot of ways it feels like a new game. I think I need to stop doing every quest I see and get the story moving. My new character is something like level 21 now. We’ll see if it still gets listed in the September recap!
I guess that’s it then. You know me, always playing the newest games! LOL
Watching
Time Bandits (Apple TV) — We thought this was really cute. I guess folks were mad because it wasn’t a sequel to the original movie or something? I wasn’t really paying attention when it came out. But THIS Time Bandits is about a little kid, Kevin, who is a complete history nerd that falls in with a group of misfits who call themselves bandits but rarely manage to steal anything. Wherever in time they go, Kevin tends to be the smartest one in the room but he manages NOT to be obnoxious. We thought it was often funny and often sweet.
A Discovery of Witches (Netflix) — This is an urban fantasy series in the ‘sexy vampires’ genre. PartPurple loves this stuff and I usually only tolerate it, but for some reason this one is grabbing me. Maybe I’m just getting sappy in my old age. I’m not sure I would actually recommend it, though. This time out we have witches, vampires and demons living among us and they all hate each other. But our beautiful young witch main character falls in love with a 1500 year old vampire, upsetting all the other various creatures. We’re not too far into it but it’s OK so far. This one originally aired on AMC in the US.
Rent-A-Girlfriend (Crunchyroll) — I reviewed this one. Spoiler: I really enjoyed it!
Recovery of an MMO Junkie (Crunchyroll) — I reviewed this one too! Spoiler again: I really enjoyed it, too. Enough so that I’ve watched it twice now.
I KNOW we watched some other stuff but whatever it was left such a light impression on my brain that I’ve forgotten what it was!
Reading
Still nothing, really. Every so often I pick up The Tower of Swallows, book 4 in The Witcher series but you know, I’ve resisted admitting this to myself but I’m just not actually liking these books that much. I enjoy The Witcher games and The Witcher Netflix series but something about the pacing or the manner of storytelling in the novels isn’t super satisfying to me. There’s just one more after this so I’ll probably push through, but these are books that I WANT to like more than I ACTUALLY like. So make of that what you will.
And that’s Naaagust in the can! One more month of hellish summer and then maybe things will start to cool a bit. We did have a freakishly cool week this month which was just enough to get us all hopefully, then the brutal heat rolled back in. That’s just life in eastern North Carolina, I guess.
Now let’s see if I can post at least twice a week during the next month!
