Author Archives: Asmiroth

Social Break Ups

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I had another post up about a recent Kotaku article about D&D. It’s a really good example of platforming a very divisive topic that even those moderately supporting the concept will have trouble jumping on board with. It reminds me of an old SNL sketch.

I won’t comment much further on it, except to highlight that these types of topics that focus on gatekeeping are emblematic of the similarities between the far right and left, and why those in the middle lack a whole bunch of empathy for either.

Instead, I want to lightly touch on the fun divides that this pandemic has brought about. It’s really quite fascinating. Social media gives zero opportunity for any actual discourse or debate – everything is a sound clip or 140 characters. Long form constructs, such as blogs, are still pretty much 1 way conversations. A comment reply is rarely as long as the originating post. Video formats give you the non-verbal aspects, but actually finding them is like a needle in a galaxy hard.

What we get instead are opinions caked in more opinions. Relationships with seemingly reasonable people all of a sudden take a very quick turn into something else. Anti-vaccine is a deal breaker for me, full stop. Luckily we’ve only had 1 family in all our contacts that went over that deep end, enough to move to Mexico. It’s the more minute items. Any attempt to have a conversation about the topic was quickly directed to Facebook research and hidden agendas. Pretty hard to have a relationship there.

The trucker protest in Ottawa is making national news. What was originally a relatable event to protest the restrictions for cross-border truckers (which affects less than 10% of all of them, is required in the US as well, and has had no real impact on supply chains) devolved into a more anarchist bent. They wanted to reverse election results (sound familiar?) and replace the Governor General. Well, they got rid of one leader, just not the one they expected. But the message now has been warped to something else, and seen replication in other parts of the world. This is going to be an interesting social marker in our country for some time, where the fors and againsts have a wide gulf and no true path to reconcile.

It doesn’t help that the Liberals and Conservatives are both using this as a wedge issue. Nearly half of folks are empathetic to the issue, but 2/3rds are against the actions. That’s a heck of an us vs. them conversation.

What will be interesting is how this particular model is applied in future protests, by other organizations. There are numerous examples of first nation protests having nowhere near the impact of these protests and them being broken up quickly and railed against. This particular event is showing a new method of causing disruptions and what society seems to be willing to tolerate. And how conversations about new protests approaches develop. Is the method of protest debatable, or the actual topic itself?

It’s an interesting time, with some very complex answers. And it would appear that few want to find a way to mend bridges, simply build more chasms.

The Challenge of Being For Something

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Back to politicking for a bit. There’s a simple matter that it take little effort to critique and a ton of effort to lead. Quick sound bites and headlines are the meat of an opposition, and the ‘easy’ method is simply to simply focus on the negative. The hard part is to actually propose an alternative, because if it was easy, it would have already been done.

I’ll pick on politics here because it’s the the most prominent example that most everyone can see. A person will have an idea, then people will think of every reason why it won’t work. These are often very, very minority views on a topic, which is the purpose of democracies after all, to give a voice to as many as possible. But there’s a difference between a voice and actual power. If 99 people agree, and 1 person dissents, then odds are that 1 person is just going to have to live with it.

There are a lot of things my wife and I don’t agree on. I don’t just pack up my bags, or stage a protest when that happens. I find a compromise, or in some cases one of us simply ‘wins’.

In Canada, the Conservatives (right-leaning) booted their ‘socially centrist’ leader and now need to find their 3rd leader in 2 years. The why of the boot is interesting, primarily due to him being elected as leader as a ‘socially right’ and then swapping platforms to an actually electable one. The challenge with the “right” is that they just can’t seem to get any messaging out that isn’t offensive to wide swaths of the population. If your platform is only targeting the older white CIS male, I got news for ya, that’s not a demographic that is growing.

Now we get to take the popcorn out and see who tried to take the reigns of a party that can’t figure out its own identity. Are they going to take someone with zero experience leading but oodles of biting sound clips (Pierre Poilievre)? Are they going to go with someone who’s only platform is pro-life (Leslyn Lewis)? Will they take a “red” center-leaning candidate (Peter McKay)? Will they even bother trying to please the fringe, or just focus on what’s in the majority’s interest? Or will they shift further to the right and give up the middle? Or maybe, in the weirdest of spots, simply split up to avoid distractions?

One things for sure, people will have plenty to complain about.

Blasphemous – Take 2

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I took a run through this game on the Switch in the fall, posted my thoughts, and it’s been a bit like that hum of a song that gets stuck in your head. I took another stroll through recently. My first run was about 45hrs total, this recent one was just around 20hrs. The “boss walls” just weren’t there this time, with more than a few that I took out on the first attempt. And yet…

There have been 3 DLCs for the game, most recently in December. The first (Dawn of Sorrows) was what I like to consider the kitchen sink patch – lots of quality of life changes, new bosses, and NG+. The second (Strife and Ruin) was a tie in with Bloodstained for some challenging timed platforming runs and a boss rush mode. The final one (Wounds of Eventide) adds some new zones, equipment, skills, and a new ending to better set up the sequel. I didn’t have access to this last DLC when I had my first play.

WoE adds a new zone that is like that Mario Kart race where you’re going backwards on a highway. Everything until that point is pretty good, and then the rules change a bit and it’s super hard mode. I died more getting to the boss of this zone than I did at the boss. The DLC also brings two bosses, the one at the end of that hard zone (a giant snake, which is an awesome fight) and then one in a secret chamber in your main hub. I tried that boss at various points, and it required a specific set up of skills, including one that provided invulnerability for most of her 3rd phase. It felt amazing taking her down.

And the story extension is also worth noting. The penultimate boss gets her own story arc, which adds a needed extension to the lore to the game. It was somewhat cryptic as to what the “Miracle” actually was, and the curtains are revealed. Blasphemous is a weird game, in that the story itself is a significant draw, but is a right mess to understand the messaging throughout. It was super satisfying to come out the end.

Now the reason this game has stuck so much is because of another game – Metroid Dread -which I played just before the holidays (~8hrs for 100%). I think one of the interesting bits in a metroidvania is the choice to player engagement. Dread does nothing to change the combat mechanics from start to end. You get a gun, you get missiles, and you get a parry. What you get to change things up is movement skills – dash, run, spin (borderline fly). This makes traversing the game not only faster but safer – and honestly super smooth. There’s no story to the game aside from 3 key points (the start, 75% point, and final boss) which means exploration for exploration’s sake. There’s only 1 ending – which is crazy in the genre today. The challenge comes in two flavors – memorizing boss patterns (every boss can be cleared without taking a hit) and the EMMI robots. EMMI robots feel like an RNG element, and any RNG that 1-shots you is not fun. Once they are cleared, the game becomes so much more fun.

Dread being the grandchild of the genre really accentuates how much the cousins have taken over. Playing through it I couldn’t help but think “Blasphemous did this better” or “Bloodstained was more engaging”, or “insert other metroidvania”. I’m not saying Dread is bad, far from it, but it’s not great. The only risk it takes is to add an insta-kill mechanic. Look at what Ori gave us? Hollow Knight? Guacamelee? This cycles back to a previous post where indie/small developers are taking core concepts and making magic from them. For all the garbage we get in the AAA space, and we gamers love to complain, there is still a massive amount of awesome and fun out there to find.

Death’s Door

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I picked this up during the Switch holiday sale. It’s an odd game, with a mix of quite a few genres. Isometric combat, heavy use of dodge and small health pools (Dark Souls-ish), and a bit of the Zelda model of getting new toys to unlock new areas.

I think the Zelda comparison is better than Metroidvania, in that backtracking is entirely optional here, where in the other genre its required. There are reasons to backtrack, as collecting everything gets you the “true” ending, which can only be completed after you’ve done the main campaign. I think that’s a better model than forcing you to collect doodads and secrets before the last boss – again because this is more Zelda and Metroid.

The art style is solid, the controls are simple yet responsive, and the enemy variety is more than sufficient to require you to think on your toes. There are also plenty of environmental hazards, so that positioning is more important than pretty much anything else. It’s a game where you will die, a lot, and it never truly feels punishing. Which gets me to the level design point.

The game tends to focus on three level designs. The first (Cemetery) is a sprawling mess of being lost. There’s no map, no indicator of where to go and what to do, so you’re just going to explore until you figure it out. This is a problem after the first 2 bosses, as there’s no good indicator of what comes next. Less a fan of this.

The second is the loop forward. This is where there’s a single path that is barred at multiple stages, and you take “off ramps” of challenges to unlock the next gate. When you die (you will, many times), the path forward is shorter. This model is up there with Metroidvania, where new shortcuts are established as you go forward. This creates a high tempo gameplay, which is where the game really shines.

The third is the cloverleaf. This is where there’s a hub and you take leaf paths out, complete tasks that increase a counter in order to get to the next area. You’ll have to visit the leaves multiple times as each path unlocks more on another leaf. This is the Zelda model of dungeon design where it’s frankly more of a puzzle.

Bosses are an interesting bit. It’s pattern-based, and success is based more on flawless execution than much else. There are very few bosses, which is really quite fine by me. And each has a particular quirk that you need to discover to find success. The Frog King for example… if you don’t figure it out, then the floor will give way and the battle is over. Thankfully the pace of the battles is super quick, and you always feel like you’re progressing.

This is one of those more quirky games that doesn’t fit in a mold so well. That is was developed by a team of 2 people is simply bonkers. I’m certainly not done with studio games, but someone needs to take a serious look at how creativity works when we’re getting a dozen+ quality games a year from extremely small groups.

Well worth the purchase.

Politicking

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This is a tad off topic for the blog, but quite on topic for the times. Today is an interesting vote for leadership in one of the two primary parties in Canada.

Background

Canada has a parliamentary system, which means that we elect individuals that are registered with a party, and that party elects their own leader. The party that can collect the most votes, either on their own or as a group, forms government. There are dozens of countries with this system. Those of that were/are in the Commonwealth only have a few parties. Others often have 6+. The advantage of this system is that it generally offers more representation because it’s near impossible to have an outright majority, and the governing party is based on compromise. In a 2 party parliament, you often get massive and ever increasing political swings. I won’t get into Republics too much, but just say that they have historically proven to be the least effective method of governing due to the concentration of power and corruption in a single role. It’s simply impossible for a single person to represent millions, so they don’t.

How we got here

Anyhow, that’s not the point of this post. It is about a fracture in Canadian politics. We have 5 main parties here, though only 2 have ever managed at the federal level. Liberals are center-left, Conservatives are right, NDP are left, Bloq Quebequois are centre left (they are a provincial party, which is another topic), and then the Green (they are as you can guess). The Liberal party has been around since the start of this country, generally hovering near the center with a traditionally socially-left/financial-right structure. The Conservatives are different. They were a founding party (center-right) which was all but abolished in the 2003 following some atrocious financial reforms (they lost 151 seats, which was more than half of the total amount of seats in Parliament). They merged at that point with the Reform party, which was a full-right leaning party. This effectively unified the right, and provided them a new party that governed for a long period of time. The lack of social media meant that the fringe elements could be controlled somewhat.

In 2015, the Conservatives were in the election and launched a “barbaric practices” hotline to call in if you saw people doing things “un-Canadian”. This wasn’t the only event, but the culmination of multiple culturally divisive efforts by the party that culminated with them losing 60 seats and the Liberals claiming 148. That was a very large swing. The Conservatives realized that the fringe elements were taking more air and spend efforts to squash them. (As an aside, the leader Stephen Harper, was a staunch delegator at the start of his term, and by the end became autocratic trying to control all these elements. It’s truly fascinating.) There was a leadership vote following the election and the one of the more populist members split to form the People’s Party of Canada (PPC). Conceptually, this is a libertarian party, but in factual matters is built entirely on fringe/conspiracy elements.

The Conservatives have been unable to make inroads across Canada since, as the core of the country is socially liberal and financially conservative, with the social part having more weight. Plus, the US President was a massive red flag here where people associated the Conservatives with the Republican party (e.g. they are against everything nearly everything, want to help business, don’t believe in the environment or health care, and have no systems to help individuals.) In 2020 they elected a new leader (Erin O’Toole) who was put in on a “true blue” platform, meaning the right/right of the spectrum. The 2021 elections came, the leader moved towards center (which was smart) and they still lost seats. The party split became more evident and the fringe elements wanted him gone the next week. The last 6 months have been primarily about Conservative infighting, and today is an early vote on their leadership. It would seem that 30% of the party willing to vote to let him go. That is a substantial group.

The repurcussions

A party that is not united cannot unite a country, that’s a simple fact. The last 6 months have amplified a fundamental challenge in any party that dominates a spectrum, there are simply too many voices to please at all times. Party loyalty is not a given fact anymore (at least in Canada) and that assuming the middle will stick with you is no longer the case.

This party leadership vote has one of 4 possible outcomes.

  1. O’Toole wins and stays. The factionists accept the outcome and the party finally unifies and accepts that the centre is the way forward.
  2. O’Toole wins and stays. The factionists do not accept the outcome and continue to sow discord within the party, or create a new one.
  3. O’Toole loses. A new party election comes along and the party moves solidly to the right. That leaves the center wide open for the Liberals.
  4. O’Toole loses. A new party election comes along and the party as a whole agrees that the middle is the way forward.

I won’t weigh the odds of this coming to fruition, but it would be a longshot to say that any fringe element will be happy with any outcome here (that is the fundamental aspect of a fringe element, the unwillingness to accept any view but your own). If O’Toole leaves, then they have no leader for a year and need to fight for relevance in that election, then somehow sell the fringe to the rest of Canada. The center can’t be happy either, as they just want this in the rearview and get back to being a federally relevant party.

This is one of those events where it appears that everyone loses, no matter the outcome. Quite curious as to how this all plays out.

Obduction Review

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From the makers of Myst and Riven comes a puzzle game with full world exploration and the same fundamental head on keyboard obtuse puzzles. Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoy puzzle games, virtual or real.

A good puzzle is framed through acts. There’s a discovery phase where things are new and you’re trying to figure out the angles to the puzzle. A familiarity phase, where you think things are under control. There’s the sudden hurdle or difficulty spike, where what you thought you knew gets twisted. Then there’s the resolution, and you move onto the next puzzle. Odds are that new puzzle uses some knowledge from the previous. Even if you have all that, the actual puzzle mechanics need some fluidity.

Obduction follows this approach of acts. The world gets progressively bigger as you go, and a numeric system (on 4s) is seen throughout. The puzzles start off simple enough, and then evolve into some rather significant backtracking / multiple environment affairs.

Myst and Riven were known for some rather obtuse puzzles that were predicated on finding some obscure detail. Obduction has a lot of that, where even finding the puzzles is its own exercise. It then reaches a point where they fall into what I like to call meta-puzzles, where the solution to a given puzzle is predicated on some piece in an area that seems completely unrelated. These puzzles can work, but only if the linkages are obvious once started, and the path between the areas is relatively simple to cross.

Where Obduction stumbles, and stumbles tremendously is in the travel time portion. The way the game is built, there are virtual “zones” that take time to load. Crossing certain thresholds means the game simply stops to load, then 3s later, it moves again. These aren’t frequent for the majority of the game. Except 2 particular puzzles, which are frustratingly long due to the load times. The Maze in particular took over 30 minutes when the solution was evident from the start, yet the tools were lacking. What I saw instead was the following screen, multiple times.

I would be remiss not to mention the sci-fi story that keeps this going. If you read all the notes, listen to all the bits, and put it together that is. The ending has two options, though you are more than likely to get the bad one if you play it straight (and the ability to save is oddly hard to find). The core concept is that an alien tree sprouts seeds that travel the galaxy and once they land, they transport the immediate vicinity to another location. Humans and 3 other races have found a way to talk to each other through the seeds and are trying to work out what to do next. You end up landing there just as conflict is hitting full pitch. The concept itself is actually quite good, if somewhat similar to the Myst book travel model.

I won’t shy away that this game had some incredibly frustrating bits to it, where I just gave up and resorted to an online guide. And even when I did get the solution, I realized there wasn’t much chance I was every going to divine it on my own. I completed the Witness without help, so there’s something to be said about the level of obtuse/inferred I can stomach.

Still, it’s not like there’s an abundance of puzzle games out there and Obduction has many of the qualities I’d hope to see in one. I’d recommend it on sale (~$10), but not much beyond that price. It’s brushes on the edge of tedium a tad too often, but has some striking visuals and some rather interesting new ideas along the way. I enjoyed it more than not, which I suppose is a recommendation after all.

Microsoft to Buy Activision-Blizzard

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I don’t think anyone had this on their “weird stuff in 2022” bingo card. It feels more like a parachute plan for Bobby Kotick than much else, as he’ll be there for the purchase and get a crazy cut of the deal before heading into the sunset. Impressive how there are no meaningful consequences for the top.

I am not super in to this deal, for a multitude of reasons.

  • Microsoft has been on a crazy buying spree. $7B for Bethesda was a crazy purchase. Nearly $70B for this is just a stupid amount of money that few people who already make less than 6 figures will ever see. Except for perhaps Tencent and Roblox, no one else has that kind of dough.
  • I have a very strong dislike of monopolies. Very. And Microsoft makes all their money from it. Their business arm stifles innovation, until someone else starts stealing market share. Then they pull a Facebook and just steal the technology putting the other company under.
  • The terms of this purchase will be interesting to see. Console exclusivity + PC access are massive red flags to Sony’s Playstation – and Nintendo to some degree. 2 years ago the best exclusives were PS–only. Don’t think that will be the case moving forward.
  • In the somewhat good news department, Microsoft doesn’t seem to stick their fingers in the purchases too much. They have yet to pull an EA where they buy a company only to close it a year later.
  • Also good news is that Microsoft is somewhat “head above water” when it comes to malpractice on the games side of things. Now, their playerbase is right up there with LoL in terms of scum of the planet, but that’s really what happens when all you have to offer are FPS games.
  • This won’t fix anything in regards to Activision Blizzard culture for a long time. It will probably make it worse given that Microsoft lawyers are many notches better than people expect. All those lawsuits and unionization efforts… I would be quite surprised if that situation got any better.

Put another way, if Activision Blizzard hadn’t shot itself in the foot a dozen times and was a flaming wreck, would this purchase be seen as a positive? Like if it happened 2 years ago, what would people think of it then?

Microsoft is not some saviour here. There was some blood in the water, and the purchase price was certainly 30% off or more from what it would have been prior to the pandemic and crisis. This is a money making machine that needed a leadership change. I’d be baffled if Tencent hadn’t made a similar offer.

Here’s hoping that this ends up positive for the people working at the company as much as it can for gamers. I’m not holding my breath.

Belated New Year

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I’m still around. We’ve been in lockdown for some weeks now, expect a few more before the curve starts dropping again. In my city, they check wastewater which gives a sort of 1 week or so window into what’s coming. Right now, we’re on the downslope. We had 3x the cases (while they were still measuring) but only half of the hospitalizations, which is really quite good. This version was less severe, both in the virus itself and the fact that over 90% of the city is vaccinated. The province though… that’s another story. The hospitalizatio – curve is still going up, and it’s already double the April/May peak. So clearly my city is doing a hell of a lot better than others. That said, if this is becomes endemic (like the winter flu), there’s no way for our hospitals to take anything close to this load. Something’s gotta give. Our joint mental health kinda depends on it.

FF14

So apparently they are going to start selling the game again later this month, which is an odd thing given that queues are still around. Last week I was still seeing 2,000 person queues on Cactuar. Last night it was 700, which was a very odd thing… perhaps due to the server reset on Tuesday. It’s better, certainly, but I can’t see any new player wanting to spend an hour+ per day just trying to login. And new NA servers won’t be around until August. I guess we’ll see.

At last pass I had completed the MSQ with my WHM. Since then I’ve leveled all my gatherers to 90, and my retainers just hit 80. Hopefully that will work itself out. I’ve also leveled my crafters…which let me tell you is a very expensive undertaking.

I followed this guide to do so and the total cost from 1-80 was about 5m gil. That’s with server hoping to get better prices elsewhere, which probably saved me close to 2m gil. The good news is that a significant portion of this time is spent in the Firmament, where crafting gives you lottery tickets. Some of the items you can win are worth 100k to 500k each, which kept me going for some time. Still, it’s very expensive.

The journey from 80-90 is pretty simple and figuring out what items sells for which craft is a hell of a dance. I would need to juggle some crazy spreadsheets to sort it all out. Some things that were worth a lot last week have nosedived to 10% of their value. It’s still a fun mini-game.

Also have spent some time leveling a Reaper. This is how melee classes should behave in a game full of AE attacks. Mobility as a melee has always been a pain in my butt, and this class just shines at it. Now, the downside of leveling any job in FF14 is that you’re going to see a lot of the same content, and dungeon queues past 80 are not pleasant for DPS. Bozja still gives a stupid amount of exp, but prevents from queuing in other content. I’ll figure something out.

Winter Game Sales

I didn’t pick up much else. Disco Elysium is still only a few hours in. Cyberpunk 2077 was ok. Wildermyth is a lot of fun on the story aspect, but the difficulty spikes aren’t super pleasant. Death’s Door is a pleasant surprise, great art and controls. The level design is hit or miss to my tastes but it is consistent. Risk of Rain 2 I picked up for like $2, which I may have overpaid for. I don’t mind rogue-likes, truly, but I need a progression system of something other than player skill. Hades has simply spoiled me.

Fitness

I hurt my arm/elbow last spring and it never seemed to get much better. It stopped me from lifting any serious weights, which in the middle of a pandemic with no physical activity, well that didn’t do well for the brainpan. I’ve started up again, trying to fit it in my lunch breaks. So far, so good. Hopefully hockey will open up again and I can get exercise some demons on the ice.

Blog

I should be back to some semblance of “normal” posting schedule. Let’s see how that goes about…

FF14 MSQ Complete

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The thing I did here that I regret is that I had marathon sessions through, rather than taking more time to better absorb all the amazing the MSQ actually delivers. This is entirely due to the absolutely stupid queue lengths near peak times. Logging on at 10am means instant queues. Logging on in the evening is a 4hr queue. (Side note, this means that our guild is pretty much meaningless right now.)

I don’t plan on any spoilers here, though I suppose there may be a slip up here and there. I played through as a White Mage.

I mentioned this in my prior FF14 post, in that Endwalker is simply more FF14. You will get dungeons at the required levels, you will get trials at the required levels. You’ll have 6 zones to explore. You get “free” gear at 89, and piles of non-jewelry while leveling. The are maybe a dozen combat quests all the way through, though there are some solo duties to get through. Mechanically, there are no surprises here, which is frigging amazing.

I’ve yet to poke around with the Sage or Reaper. I don’t know how popular they are going to be long term; I certainly do see a bunch of reapers in my group content. None of my trials ever had a Sage, though as a healer that’s not really indicative. I will say that there is a substantial amount of content that requires massive healing output, which really plays to the WHM strengths. Also, Warriors are apparently immortal now. The fights do not necessarily add crazy new mechanics, but do require much more visual awareness of the boss rather than simply avoiding the fire. Most bosses have multiple tells that allow you to avoid major damage, some effects which will stack and probably cause wipes.

The art and music are the best FF has ever been. I don’t know what type of drugs they give the art team, but each environment is distinct and feels meaningful. The last 2 zones in particular are just spectacular to see.

The story… well you’ve read more than enough on it from multiple sources. I enjoyed it thoroughly, for multiple reasons. It’s a rare event where a story is able to both open and close threads that were spun nearly a decade ago. And the big bad here follows in the themes of Final Fantasy through and through. This is clearly a capstone story, as the end of the last zone until the credits is just chocked full of call backs and closure. I’m sure I’ll have some things to nit pick eventually but for now it’s about absorbing what was there. I don’t think it’s possible to enjoy this story without having played at least Shadowbringers, which is a hell of a time investment for anyone coming into FF14 cold.

I guess the real question here is “was it fun?” Without reservation. And technically, I’ve just dipped my toe in the ocean of content that’s here. Best of luck with those queues.

EGS Free Game – Control

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Epic Games has had free games every day for the holiday break. Today’s game is Control.

It is one of the best games I have ever played, with tons of secrets and interesting lore, combined with superb controls and an amazing throw mechanic that is hard to describe other than visceral. Plus, it helps that the game looks simply amazing on any setup you can run.

Anyways, this is a really short post to simply state you should absolutely pick this up if you don’t already have it, and the $10 coupon on EGS would be well spent on the Foundation DLC.