The Myth of Melee

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If the Legion invasions have taught me anything, it’s that melee is an ever-aging design mechanic.  Aside from an MMO, what multiplayer game has anyone playing melee combat in open spaces?  (Slight side note, why do bosses give such big chunks of XP and nothing when dead?  It means you’re safer tagging and hiding.)

Whether it’s indicative or not for Legion bosses going forward, invasions are incredibly anti-melee.  There are rings of death everywhere, and most have range issues, so that you need to run away from the boss for periods of time.  I’ve done it on my Monk, Hunter, Warlock, DK, Druid, and Shaman now and woo-boy does it suck with a DK (monk at least has some self-healing).

Wildstar has very few massive AE attacks, and those that do exist impact ranged as much as melee.  Honestly, it sucks evenly for everyone.  FF14 takes a similar approach, where attacks are either cone based (tank dancers) or massive AE that fill the screen.  Why does WoW still focus on AE mechanics that are within 20 yards?

Hell, more importantly, why do melee attacks have such a small range/hit box?  Positioning, I can get that.  Anyone can face the cone behind a boss.  But short-ranged AE attacks, or AE pulses that require 2-3x more time for melee to get out of, and that you deal zero damage… that’s just punishment.  Playing recently makes me remember why I shelved all my melee players – my Rogue in particular, due to the dumbness of the melee penalty.  Did I mention that bosses are bigger, hit boxes are smaller, so that you can barely see what’s going on?

You can certainly make an argument that it makes thematic sense to have melee combat.  You could also make the argument that spell casting loses accuracy/power the farther away you are from the target.  Yet the mechanical implementation is where the trouble begins.  Other games are able to find a viable balance, where the benefits of range are offset by the sacrifice of cast time (FF14 in particular with a 2.5s GCD).  It certainly was that way in vanilla – even the hybrid tax made sense in terms of time investment. (Makes no sense today, since you can level an alt in a couple days).

But over time the ranged folk were upset they were losing uptime due to mobile mechanics and class homogenization starting taking hold.  There’s honestly very little difference between the classes now, you press 1, 2, 3 then 2 again.  It’s just that some of the classes are going to eat dirt way more often.

Demon Hunters seem to exemplify that to me.  They are highly focused on movement, almost like an early apology for what’s coming.

Perhaps it’s more that I’ve been playing games where there was a balance between melee and range, and that the lack of it in WoW is so jarring.  Maybe it’s expectations that with a new expansion that rejigs many mechanics is somehow not fixing one of the key gripes since the game launched 12 years ago.  Hell, maybe I’m just too old for this.

Either way, looks like I’ll be benching my melee squad.

Summer’s Over

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Alive and well, thank you.  As in the last couple posts, we bought a cottage on a lake/river and have spent the majority of the summer on its shores.  Canadiana.

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Spent the summer with a small boat to fish, as fishing is extremely fun for me (so much so, that an MMO has to have fishing for me to be hooked).  Sadly, there were issues with the motor and my last week of vacation wasn’t all that much fun being land-bound.  So we bought a new (used) boat.  A Legend Excalibur 18, with a 115ETEC motor.  We pick it up on Friday, but here’s a pick of the current model.  It’s a good compromise for me wanting to fish, and my wife wanting to cruise/pull things.

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Health

Cottage country and exercise don’t usually go hand-in-hand.  Still, I made due with a pair of adjustable free weights (up to 50lbs each) as much as a I could.  When I was home, I continued to use the barbell and StrongLifts 5×5 program.  Squats are 240, Bench is 175, Rows are 160, Press is 130, Deadlifts are 260.  Accessories are good too, with a 25lbs chinup/dip going, 250lbs shrug and 95lbs curl.  I still have progress on a few of the movements, but not that much before having to swap programs.  Maybe another 2 months worth, as it’s about 90 minutes of work due to the rests between sets.

Also, I really like beer.  Like is probably not the correct word.  I had too much over the summer (I always do) and am a few lbs heavier now than in June.  I can get rid of that in the next couple months anyhow, and be close to ideal weight for the holidays.

Gaming

The cottage doesn’t have high-speed internet, so what gaming I had was board-based, or an emulation on my tablet.  In the few spots I did have at home, I gave the Batman Arkham Knight a try.  It’s better than the previous ones, certainly, but the batmobile/tank is off-putting.  I gave up on the Division pretty quickly, as the end game is non-existent.  It’s worse than when D3 originally launched and Inferno mode required perfect stats.  At least there you could game the AH and it was a PvE game.  Division requires the same perfect stats but you need to be in a PvP zone to get them.  Surround by demi-gods with nothing to do other than ruin your farm because they already have the gear.  Too bad, because the game from 1-30 was great.

I have recently installed another game though.

WoW and Legion

I have no shame in admitting I reinstalled WoW.  You can buy time with gold, and I had more than enough gold to last a year+.  I also purchased Legion, because I have spare money to burn (not really with a cottage/boat).  Where WoD was a baby-bathwater exercise after Pandaria, Legion is taking a different approach, with multiple game paths and simplified builds.  My monk in WoD (remember, they came out in Pandaria) had 3 bars of skills – now he has 5 buttons.  My Hunter is down to 4 skills.  It makes for a clean interface.  There are interactions (procs) between skills, so yeah, you could mash 4 buttons, or learn to read the patterns and do more.  The whole easy to learn/difficult to master portion I guess.

Demon Hunters are ok.  I’ve mained a Rogue and a Monk, so  I have certain expectations.  DH don’t feel as smooth as either of them, more of the clunkyness of a DK waiting for rune procs way back when.  They feel more powerful mind you.  Time will tell.

The invasions going on now until launch are a neat way to level alts.  Heirlooms have been streamlined into a separate interface and I already had the level 90 variants.  An extra 8k gold to get them to work until level 100 (cloth ones) and send the alts to invasions.  The extra 45% is noticeable.  Clearing one invasion gives about 75% of a level (from 90 beyond), and there are 6 that spawn every 2 hours.  Each takes about 30 minutes or so to clear.  And each gives 2 loot boxes that provide level appropriate gear.  My hunter went from 90-100 in 3 days and has ilvl700 gear.  That’s the gear required to to heroic raiding.

Long story short, it’s fun enough for now and doesn’t have any monthly costs for the foreseeable future.

 

Back to the ARPG

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I like Dark Souls, I just don’t have the fortitude to learn how to play it.  Quite simply, my days are extraordinarily draining of late.  After work (where I’m doing 5 jobs for another 2 weeks), eating, playing and putting the kids to bed, then exercise, I have very little brain juice left.  Dark Souls requires a lot from the player and I just do not have that to give right now.  Maybe in a month or so.

Hack n Slash

That said, I’ve gone back to some ARPG staples.  D3 is off the list since I played the crap out of season 4, and season 5 isn’t really a season.  Path of Exile is on the list to go back to, but I wanted to give Grim Dawn another shot.  One of those few “kickstarter-like” projects that actually released something of quality.  I picked it up before the full launch and there have been some QoL/balance tweaks since.  I like the build diversity without the complexity of PoE.  Plus the game isn’t as dark, so I can see what the heck is going on.

Tap Tap FarAway Kingdom

Version 2 was released.  I wrote some more about it.  The long tail was (getting to floor 3000) was put in the realm of achievable with the most recent patch.  Before the path, it was about a day’s worth of effort to get to 2700.  Now I can get it done in an hour.  I find the game strikes the right balance between strategy, gameplay, passive play and reward.  Plus it’s the only tapping game that doesn’t make my battery drain within an hour.

Exermecise

Still running Strong Lifts, though I’ve modified it slightly to include some ICF accessories.  My problem with SL is that it is too short and lacks isolation.  I fully realize that as a novice lifter, compounds are required for foundation work, but there are specific items I need to have in the program.  ICF is too long, somewhere between 60 and 120 minutes, depending on how you get your supersets integrated.  I do not have anywhere close to that amount of time – that program is for people who are dedicated and working out is their primary hobby.

So a small modification with a couple accessories is what I’m doing now.  The linear progress is a good feeling and I’ve reached the point where there’s some decent effort involved in the movements.  I had opted to take a low starting weight in order to focus on form for the first few weeks.  That had be plateau at a given weight.  Moving into the heavier stuff has caused the numbers on the scale to drop consistently.  I’m just a few shy of the target weight, so a few more weeks of cutting before maintenance begins.

It is surreal the effect of working out has on my stress levels.  All the above may be gobbledygook to some, but the net effect is that pushing and pulling heavy things unleashes a torrent of hormones that drastically improve my mood.  I have missed this tremendously.

Dark Souls

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Outside of gaming, my wrist still hurts and I’m off for a referral.  Physio hasn’t done much, unfortunately, though the last round found a good taping job that relieves the pain temporarily.  Basically, any pressure against the palm with the wrist at a non-neutral angle, causes spikes of pain.  Sleeping was uncomfortable, cutting veggies too.  Exercise is an odd one, as nearly all exercises should be done in a neutral grip, if done correctly. Upright rows, and twist grips (like a clean and jerk) simply can’t be done, nor can pushups.  But I can do a squat, deadlift, press, bench, pull up, chin up, bar curls and dozens more.  I guess it’s one way to make sure my form is perfect. Oh, and there’s something to be said about linear gains in exercise.  Supremely motivating.

Inside of gaming, I’ve put the Division on hold for a bit.  I’ve tried a bit of the Dark Zone and it’s like a dumbed down version of the 1-30 content.  It feels like a meat grinder, with the only goal being to collect more numbers, to grind more meat.  I realize that’s the entire point of “end-game” content, it’s just that there’s no strategy to it.  Point and shoot and that’s it.  The hard mode missions are neat though.  It’s just that I recently played all of them, and I can do with a break.

That brings me to Dark Souls.

The Heck Man?

My experience with DS starts with the NES.  Seriously.  I played Battletoads, TMNT, Ninja Gaiden, Punch Out, Ghouls and Goblins, Contra, and Castlevania.  I have played against the RNG of gaming, and I have played within the crazyness of pathing of the AI.  I was raised in the fires of a Game Over screen.  Clearing the Ninja Gaiden remake is the only recent high bar I can compare to… and that was nearly 10 years ago.

DS follows that thought process and applies a bit of an open-game mindset.  I like the concept of respawning enemies when you save.  I like that enemies have patterns that you can learn to exploit.  I like the complexity of the stats, and the interactions between items.  The feeling of being the little guy against a mosh pit of enemies.  I like that when you die, you can get the lost souls back, and that any gear you did acquire stays with you.

My only gripe is in the controls.  It took me an hour to break the instinct of pressing X to attack.  So much so that I had to swap out what X did and put in an item I couldn’t use to avoid drinking all my potions.  Rolling to avoid damage is inconsistent, along with the collision detection.  A roll that works the first time, you may completely miss the 2nd time.  Attacking is similar, where the lock-on doesn’t always register due to movement.  Enemies hit you with an unknown hit box, making it really hard to figure out if you actually evaded correctly, or if they missed you my an imaginary pixel.  Or that you can’t interrupt an attack (at least I haven’t figure out how to on anything other than a grunt).

I tried the first boss about a dozen times.  I was trying to figure out his attack patterns, and found that rolling in was more effective then out, for most attacks anyways.  When he transforms into that purple snake thing, the camera angle is so poor that I have no idea what he’s doing unless I’m so far out of range that I can’t attack.  It just turned into “dodge in, attack 3x, dodge out, circle strafe”.  And that strategy has worked wonders on anything since then that takes more than 5 hits to kill.

I clearly still have a learning curve to get through, in particular in learning how to be more aggressive when I get the patterns down.  The controls are slower and less responsive than I’d like, so that’s a big part of it.  I think it may have more to do with unlearning 30 years of gaming.

Still, it’s a fun game.  One where you feel yourself progressing, and there’s minimal AI cheating (mimics aside, those bums).  It’s not often I play a game where I learn something brand new, and I’m quite glad this one offers it.

Forbidden Desert

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A the Geek Market a few weeks ago, I picked up Forbidden Desert.  I played once with my 5 year old that week, then again last night with the 3 & 5 year olds.  They were not the same experience.

The game is based on Forbidden Island and follows a similar structure.  There are 24 cards set up in a grid, with the center piece missing, acting as a sand storm.  The goal of the game is to find 4 missing pieces of a ship and reach the landing pad to escape.  To find a piece, you need to uncover 2 indicator cards and find their intersection, then go and get the piece.  Each turn allows you to take 4 actions, move or dig the sand, and most character can only move north/south or east/west, and 2 levels of sand means you can’t cross but have to dig through.  There are tunnels spread about that can speed play, and you do unearth various gizmos to help clear sand, protect from the sun or zoom around.  After the 4 turns, you flip over storm cards, and that’s where it gets rough.

The cards move the eye of the storm around the board, and based on that movement, more sand shows up.  There are a few cards that increase the storm force, thereby requiring you to pick up even more sand cards.  Finally, there’s the sun card, which drains your water (effectively hit points).  Too much sand and you die.  Not any water and you die.  RNG can be a pain here.

The first game was, or felt, like an even spread of storm cards.  It was manageable and fun.  We barely escaped mind you, but the idea that there was some level of control was key.  We needed to refresh our water supplies and working together made it happen.

The second game had horrible RNG.  Within the first 2 rounds, the storm had picked up 4 notches and I was down to my last hit point.  I tried to get my character to water, but the storm cards had put so much sand on the board it just wasn’t possible to move there.  My 5 year old had her turn and pulled out two more sun cards, which wiped 2 of us off the game.

I’m thinking back to Pandemic, which also has RNG, but thankfully places the bad cards in an “even” spread.  Back to back epidemics can (will) kill you in the mid game, so a decent spread is very good.

The next run through Forbidden Desert, I will be splitting up the storm pile and distributing the storm/sun cards evenly between the piles, my guess 4 piles should do.  Then I’ll shuffle each pile and stack them up.  While it’s certainly possible to have back to back poor pulls, it should be an extremely rare occurrence to pull up 3 in a row.  Random within limits, because really, who gives a crap about pure RNG except when it’s in your favor?

 

The Division at 30

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I hit level 30 over the weekend and the game took an odd turn for me.

Each sub-zone has one group mission, and on the penultimate one I was teamed up with 2 folks who were level 30 and had a high gear score (or it appeared high).  Yes, this game has a gear score, easy to identify with other players.  They were both near 150, which is the average item level across all pieces.  I was having a tough slog through the zone, taking quite a few hits to take an enemy down.  15K per headshot, which I thought was pretty decent – at least in the solo play.  These 2 guys didn’t even both hiding, they just ran through the entire zone, a clip dropping an entire room.  My first thought was that they had hacked the game.

And then I hit level 30.  I crafted some level 89 gear and went to do the last mission.  In it, I got a new sniper (marksman) rifle and was now doing almost 60K per headshot.  My mine skill was clearing out any solo mission in a single hit.  In the space of 30 minutes, I had quadrupled in power.  The sad part is the difference in power between me at 29 and 30 was about the same as the difference between me at 30 and those 2 guys at 150+ gear score.

Now, I’m all used to power curves.  Diablo 3 has one of the worst I’ve ever seen.  Most MMOs have bad ones as well, though dying while leveling is a rare enough occurrence these days.  The Division just takes it to a level I’m not used to.  It feels like I’m using cheat codes.

But, this is only related to the “normal” level gameplay.  I haven’t done any Dark Zone content, nor any challenging/hard missions.  I’m fairly confident a level of challenge exists within that space.  Perhaps this is like SWTOR, where once you hit level cap, they provide you with a set of epic gear to take on the “now relevant” content.  It does make all the solo-content essentially irrelevant to complete (aside from credits I guess).

So now, I’m looking for some builds and better understanding of stats in the end game.  From what I can see so far, having scavenging up to 99% has a dramatic effect on drops, though getting it to 100% causes a bug to make it worthless.  Crit chance has no impact on head shots.  Weapon Damage has diminishing returns, Skill Power affects pretty much anything you do, and there’s a bear minimum level of hit points you need to survive a sniper shot.  In a game where defence means little (from what numbers I’ve seen), optimizing offence seems to be relegated to a very small set of stats.  Curious as to the long tail in this game.

I’ll give it another week or so, to see where things fall into place.  Afterwards I think I’ll give Dark Souls 3 a try.  We’re a month in, someone is bound to have a 50% off sale right?

Self-Motivation

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Duke of O has an interesting comment that bears some expansion.  How to get self-motivated.

I think it’s fair to say that I’m an outlier when it comes to motivation.  My wife thinks it’s borderline OCD, though in fairness it has more to do with anxiety & stress management.  At work, I take spontaneous decisions multiple times per day.  Each one is based on the available facts, my memory, expert advice, and finally the analysis of the long-view.  Most people can understand everything but the long-view.

Sure, a decision today has an immediate impact, but what about a few weeks from now, or a few years?  How does it impact me, the people close to me, and the people outside my circle?  How does it impact other decisions?  These are all items that go through my head and are incredibly hard to shake.  I’ll give an example, home renos.

For a long while we wanted to knock down a wall and open up the kitchen.  Sounds simple enough.  After I looked at all the details it actually turned into a whole floor reno.  I needed to re-arrange the kitchen cabinets, get a new counter, open up another wall to run pipes & electricity, move some switches, re-enforce an adjoining wall, change the flooring in the kitchen and remainder of the floor to match, which also joined into a bathroom…it was never ending.  What seemed like a simple job turned into a 6 week reno.  None of it was surprising, as I had thought it all out, but it took time.

How does this link to self-motivation?  I think long term and I think in terms of return on investment.  I worked for about 4 months on a particular work project from my basement. I spent a few weeks at the cottage too, working at odd hours to get it done.  I knew that if I crammed as much work as possible into the right time space, I could get double that in free time later in the day.  I made sure that the environment was conducive to that as well, so I eliminated any distractions.  I basically set up the perfect environment for me to succeed, removing any excuses.

Same goes for exercise.  I just don’t have time to physically travel to and from the gym.  The closest one is about 5 minutes away.  Including the driving, changing, and shower, I lose at least 30 minutes of my day.  And that’s not counting the waiting for a machine/weight to free up.  What would take me 60-90 minutes in a gym, I can get done in 45 at home.  That’s massively motivating.  The equipment I have, and the setup I have, make it extremely easy to get going, listen to music or a movie, and get the workout done.   I’ve removed all excuses from the equation, with the exception of “I’m too tired”.

And that’s the hardest one because it’s often true.  So I use various applications to keep me honest.  My wife uses social groups.  Getting a notification on the phone/tablet that it’s time to workout is motivating.  Seeing the progress between workouts is even more motivating.

Self-motivation is like a chemical reaction.  You need the right conditions and the right ingredients to get it going.  And once it starts, it’s usually quite hard to stop.

New Gear

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I’d been thinking about it for a few weeks now and when that happens, it usually follows with about 20 hours of homework for options.  It doesn’t matter what it is that I have my mind on, I am thorough.  This time it was replacing my home gym equipment.

Swapping from this

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It was far from useless, in fact I was using it every other day for quite a while.  It just limited my movements and isolated muscle groups.  Even though I was getting better at the exercises on the machine I felt I was losing in regular day to day activities.  Compound exercises are the way to go, and you need free-weights.  So I’m selling the above and swapping to the below.

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That’s a power rack and bench I got from Treadmill Express.  Buying fitness equipment in Canada is not the easiest…holy cow.  There are at least 10x the providers in the states and usually the shipping is included.  Anyhow, I bought on Sunday, it shipped out on Monday and was at my door Tuesday.  That’s impressive.

I spent about 2 hours Wednesday putting it all together.  That was a workout in itself.  Now I need to go and get an Olympic weight bar and some plates to complete the gear swap.  That’s also something that’s not the easiest to come by, since you know, shipping 300+ lbs isn’t cheap.  Thankfully there’s a store in town I can get a set for a good enough deal.  Then I can enjoy squats, lunges, benches and lifts galore.  And unless my math is wonky, all for under $1000.  That’s about 15 months of a gym membership.  Or half a gaming PC, hah!

That should set me up for this weekend and getting really into the stronglifts 5×5 program.  I’m much to rusty to lift anything more complicated.  It’ll be sore but it’ll be fun.

Wrist Issues

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I’ve been going to physio for a few weeks now, with a pain in the lower left part of the palm of my right hand.  It’s been nagging me for a few months, enough that push ups are too painful.  Anyhoot, a fair chunk of exercises and massages and treatment with basically more pain.

Last night I had a 2nd consult, from someone with a bit more experience with hand injuries.  It is difficult to describe the level of pain felt when he started some movements with my hand.  Sort of like stubbing all your toes at once and the body simply goes numb except for that single part flaring like fire.  He found some other issues at play and now I have a taped up wrist and a new set of exercises to do.  Apparently I have a month of rehab at least, then it may end up with surgery.  I am not looking forward to that possibility.

The worst part is that I play hockey and the injury is on the hand that does most of the work. And some of the exercises I do are limited by the movements of the wrist.  I’m told that as long as I have the tape, I should be able to keep doing what I was doing… but I’m now consciously aware of the issue more so than just living with the pain.  Ah well, cardio doesn’t really require the hands so maybe I’ll swap to that for a while.

I did order some gym equipment… and I think it’s being delivered today.  That should be interesting.

Books

I’ve read a fair chunk of Hugo books lately, though the most challenging was the Rama series.  I really like Clarke’s style of sci-fi, a real knack for the future.  The first book is exactly this, an exploration into a new world, with great pace.  A solid pitch.

The next 3 novels in that series were not really from Clarke but from Gentry Lee.  They go back to the same spaceships and focuses more on the people than the science.  Gentry Lee is not a very good “people” writer.  It is littered with tropes and needless sexual descriptions.  It’s got to be every 40 pages that the characters are getting it on.  The science and underlying ideas are solid enough, minus the last 20 pages or so.

spoiler.  If your main character has spent 60 years cheating and avoiding death, yearning to stay with their family, I am not certain that they would have a sudden change of heart and just accept they are going to die in 10 hours, when a perfectly viable solution is available.  end spoiler

The first book was done in 2 days.  The last 3 took me nearly a week each because it was so hard to get into it.  Then again, I guess it’s like asking someone to take up Michelangelo’s chisel and make another David.

The Division

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So I’ve been playing this one off-and-on for a bit now.  I’m not terribly far through, level 21 of 30.  I guess that’s about 70% of the map, based on what I’m able to see.  I’ve absolutely zero experience in the DarkZone (DZ) since that opens up in a level.  It’s a weird game.

The most obvious of all elements is that it’s mostly single player.  Aside from the shared hubs and the missions (that you can solo if you want), I never see anyone else in the game.  It’s quite jarring to be playing alone, having no help, then getting into a mission and having someone heal you.  I quite like the group aspect, I just wish there was more of it.  Maybe that comes later?

The RPG aspect is cool enough.  Gear drops with a multitude of stats, though only 3 really count (DPS, health and skills) in large portions.  Items have talents, there are mods for gear and skills, and there’s a fair amount of customization through talents.  I’m not certain the balance is appropriate mind you.  An even spread of stats doesn’t give much benefit compared to a high investment in DPS.  Even if you were to stack everything into health, you’d still get mowed down.  I do like that you can re-roll stats on gear (a tech room upgrade).  It allows me to keep the same stat balance, while getting general secondary stat boosts.

Guns.  There are many guns.  Machine guns, assault rifles, marksman rifles, uzis… you name it.  There’s a generic DPS stat on them, though it still requires you to pay attention to the other stats – namely rate of fire.  I have one rifle that allows me to unload an entire clip while aiming.  It does half the damage per shot of my other rifle, but shoots about 4x as fast.  Had I only looked at the damage stat, I would have been mighty peeved (I was on an earlier comparison). Mods on guns help tweak a few settings, thought it’s the talents that have most merit.  Kills that refresh skill cooldowns, or health on kill, or group stuns… all of it matters.  It’s different to have a game provide you with so much choice while leveling, but it’s refreshing.

The actual missions are all very similar.  Free some hostages, take down a bad guy, break up a deal, power up some towers.  All of them (minus investigation ones) require you to mow down a bunch of cookie cutter bad guys.  The controls are responsive, and the enemy AI isn’t dumb as dirt, so there’s some fun when they throw everything your way.

Group missions are different.  They usually cover big expanses of land, which only a few narrow hallways.  This allows for fairly large firefights.  The flamethrower and machine gun enemies are a right pain.  Solid team work, with a couple folk set to heal makes a big difference.  Bosses aren’t bullet sponges, and flanking is certainly required to make work.  Tight controls and the ability to perform quick headshots help a ton.

Overall it’s a good game.  I’m not terribly sold on the longevity, as I expect perhaps another 4-5 hours to complete the main portion of the quests.  The exploration part doesn’t hit any particular nerve and the grind for more stats died in my MMO raiding days.  Plus, it’s sunny and warm outside, after an un-ending winter.