Fallout 4 – Suspense is Fun

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The worst part of a suspense movie is the silence.  You’re on edge, not trusting the tranquility.  You know something has to go wrong.  The whole edge of your seat aspect sure does get adrenaline going.  Once the surprise finally reveals itself, the rush of panic/adrenaline is what people get a kick out of.

Fallout 4, as much as it’s an action game, it’s also one of suspense.  You’re never really quite sure what’s around that corner.  In most cases it’s some interesting form of death.  Mole rats and radscorpions are a great example of that.  They can burrow and be silent, travel large distances and show up behind you in a flash.  Heck, I found a building that had bags of meat at the front door and not a sound heard in the place.  I knew instantly that I was in Super Mutant space and hoofed it out of there. There are plenty of “oh crap” moments in the game, and I know in my case, it’s the reason I keep playing.

And this brings me to Vault 81.  I won’t go into complete spoiler territory but I think this is a perfect example of the suspense/surreal aspect of the Fallout universe.  People that have played in the past know that every single vault was in reality a social experiment.  Either their water would fail, their doors had issues, psychological testing would take place or any other weird mix.    In Fallout 3, while it seemed normal, in fact the doors were never supposed to open.  The overseer changed that.

Vault 81 seems entirely normal when you visit it.  The people are normal, and I don’t mean freakishly so.  There’s a cheating couple, a drug user, kids, a doctor, cooks and a balanced overseer.  You run a few quests, get introed to the group and the entire time you’re looking at the corners for something to go wrong.  The music is even calming and quiet.  You’re always looking for something bad to happen, and it never does.  It’s like an eternal tease.

And of course, the shoe actually drops and you get to explore the “bad side” of the vault and get a new companion for your troubles.  It’s really like a mirror universe, truth be told and very surreal.  If each environment was taken on their own, then it would be easy to digest.  Taken together, it really highlights a big gap between both.

Pacing is key, and more so in suspense.  Fallout 4 is hitting the right notes for me.

Fallout 4

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So let’s forego the usual pretext and jump right into it.  Fallout 4 is great.

It’s not perfect, there are still the usual bevy of Bethesda bugs (ooh, that was nice) and the pacing/long-game has weird stretches, but the impressive majority of the game is of high quality.

The game uses the same engine as before, the same interface for lockpicking we’ve had since Oblivion, the same computer hacking password guessing mini game as well.  VATS is back, PIPBoy is near identical to before, body parts, physics, enemy types (more or less), quest volumes, hidden nooks, books and bobbleheads abound.  There’s a lot of “the same”, but when that stuff was working before, why throw it out the door (looking at you Blizzard and Ubi).

Instead, the various systems are augmented.  VATS isn’t a freeze-time attack anymore, things just move in slow-mo.  Weapon diversity is through the roof, with the additional of weapon/armor modifications.  Enemy AI is better, where they attack from multiple sides, use cover more often and hide if they can’t reach you.  It still goes full Gump from time to time but overall it feels like you’re climbing a mountain.  A dumb super mutant still hits like a freight train (or a mini-nuke train since they carry those too).  Creating a settlement seems pretty neat but even after a fair chunk of time, I’m not quite sure of the purpose – or how to get the various settlements to work together, even with the appropriate perks.

And perks are a bit of a weird one for me.  RPGs are about numbers, but the only real numbers you have control over are your items.  I honestly have no idea what a character with 3 perception looks like compared to one with 9.  I do know that they can unlock more perks, but the base stat certainly has some effect.  Perks themselves are neat-o, and it’s a novel approach to show everything under the covers from level 1. It’s a massive wall of perk options and you get to plan your way through it.  Gone are the days of hitting level 18 and realizing to get a perk you needed to start specializing at level 10.  But that’s the general feel of the game, saturate the player with information, let them make informed choices.  So while it was certainly jarring to see, it’s very welcome.  It’s a game that’s less about the now and more about the way forward.

The less obvious stuff is also quite improved.  Controls seem a lot tighter, and firing from the hip actually works now.  The music is still well above the norm and very mood appropriate.  Character animations have moved out of the uncanny valley, voice overs are delivered by humans rather than robots and the art style has moved out of the “grey, grey everywhere!” phase we’d been stuck in.  Death is everywhere this time, with a notably higher difficulty level than before.  Companions are actually useful.  Quests are multi-tiered, usually letting you move around and explore on the way to the next goal.

And I think that’s really the theme here, continuous movement forward.  The BoS motto ad victoriam is the heart of the game, ever moving forward towards the next goal, the next victory.  I am far from complete in the game but what I’ve seen so far is very impressive.   I’d be surprised if by the tail end of this I don’t end up with over 100 hours.

You’ve Increased Your Management Skills (101)

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Training is over.  Well, that part of the training is at any rate.  I’m a little split on it mind you, given that I’ve taken training that was more “advanced” than this in the past.  So I considered it as a refresher, plus the time to meet new people and share some ideas.  To further point, while I was in this course – let’s call it level 1 for lack of a better term – I was accepted into another course in March, which ostensibly we can call level 3.

I will say that I’m glad I was taking a refresher course and not a deep dive course of completely new material.  With a new government, and cabinet (because it’s 2015 is a great line), meant that I was rather busy.  The past 10 years of government have been, um, challenging.  Lots of good people were shut out of any decision making.  That’s changed overnight.  But old habits die hard and there’s still a risk-aversion attitude. I have a very just do it attitude at work, and while that’s been a double edged sword for some time, in this particular case it’s paid dividends.  Dealing with the highest level of government throughout the day is fun.  People are people after all, and this new government clearly wants to go social rather than the totalitarian viewset of the past (which as an aside, is a poor reflection on the high quality members that were present in the past).  I’m quite curious to see how the next year or so rolls out.

BlizzCon

This was the first year where it was evident I could care less what was being spouted.  You can check out MMO-Champ for a massive log of what did go down.  The highlights are: SC2’s final expansion is live today, D3 is the ugly step brother, HS is getting a new deck and mode, HotS is eating paint chips, OW’s closed beta is starting with a launch in spring, and WoW:L is still a year out.

That last one…I dunno.  The game is at 5.5M, a near 50% loss from the WoD launch. It’s still going to be 18 months between the final patch and the expansion.  And it’s not like the con didn’t talk about WoW, a lot of it was about that MMO.  But with the marketplace today, the sheer competition of everything else, it really makes you wonder what’s being smoked in those offices.  And some of the design promises just seem like a massive stretch for a 10 year old game.  After the sales pitch and delivery of WoD…I’d expect that most people have just plain ol’ given up and are ready to move on.

Wildstar

I decided to draw up another alt, this time a Stalker.  Back to my Rogue roots I guess.  Having gone through the leveling cycle a LOT, the first few zones were pretty quick runs.  The trick is to keep a 1-2 quest level buffer above your current level and simply move on when it gets easy.  More specifically, avoid quests that are tagged as tasks.  Think of it like SWTOR’s class quests being the most efficient XP route, same here.

So he’s level 30 now, has done some group content and the broad strokes of each zone.  The F2P tweaks and previous changes are obvious enough.  There are no more 5+ person quests, just 2+.  Mind you, soloing a 2 person boss is now actually hard.  The Stalker’s stealth mode is pretty sweet, making infiltration much easier.  Having a mount at level 1 is awesome.  Fast travel rocks.  Enemy HPs have been tweaked.  Quest objectives have been standardizes (very rare where you need to “farm” a quest for drops) and the social tools are super.  It really puts into contrast what was in the game at launch and what’s there today.

I will say that the burst damage appeal of the Stalker is neat, and much different than the sustain of my Esper, or the build up from my Engineer.  The downside is that if the enemy isn’t dead in 5 seconds, it turns into a slog.  When it does work, whoo is it satisfying.

The largest downside to the game right now is the lag, and not the network kind.  I’m well under 100ms ping and there is a consistent 3s lag that shows up every couple fights.  It’s much worse on weekends.  T reminds me a lot of WoW’s vanilla launch, and well, every expansion since.  It’s rather clear that the servers are unable to take the load, and it begs the question what NCsoft is going to do about it.  Always a tough question in a F2P environment.  My guess is that they are going to defer this issue for a little while.  I know I don’t care about it so much, as of today, because “war, war never changes”.

Fallout 4

So, early reviews claim this is the second coming.  I’m looking forward to the Bethesda bug-fest, combined with an amazing world and story.  I bought the game and it’s pre-loading for my play session in the evening.  Tell my wife and kids I love them, and I’ll see them in a month.

Away On Training

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This week is training week.  It’s also work-is-going-crazy week too, since a new cabinet is about to be named and that has a rather significant impact.  I’m not quite sure how I got nominated as the “he can fix it” guy, but I’m certainly the key point on a few of these things.

Ok, I’m lying.  I know exactly how I got here.

The training I’m on is about developing management skills.  One of the first topics is personality profiles, and this course focuses on the DISC model.  There’s a self-assessment as part of the course and it provides 2 results – one for “environment” and the other for “baseline”.  The former is how you are at work, the latter for general cases.

My baseline is an even D/C.  I like to analyse (duh!) and make decisions.  I’m not terribly concerned about what people think of me.

At work though, I am a solid D.  Everything else drops off the map.

So, given that I project an air of dominance, to a massive degree, I get the fun problem cases.  There’s a saying that goes “if you want something done, give it to the busy person”, so my plate seems to get bigger every year.

And while that’s manageable for pieces of time, there’s a point where the return on personal investment goes away.  There’s only so long you can juggle all those issues, manage that stress.  The whole idea of work/life balance is a very hard thing to manage when you’re tasked with making firm decisions, constantly.

So while I’ve been managing for some time and these personality profiles aren’t exactly news to me, I’m more in this for selfish reasons.  How do I personally manage all these various issues without going off the deep end.  And training, especially group training, is awesome for that.

I get to bounce ideas off other members, see their own experiences, relate to mine and work on refining my skills and style.  It isn’t so much about finding a true balance for myself, I know that isn’t possible, or even likely.  I will always be an outlier, and I’ve accepted that.  What I can do is find additional coping mechanisms, different communication tools to relate with other personality types.  Find a way to delegate some of these files, and do it in such a way that I feel comfortable having it leave my desk and that the person feels capable and supported while working on it.

I know it sounds pie in the sky, wishy-washy.  And truth be told, it is for a large part.  But when you get put into a position where people report to you, where you have authority, building a trusting relationship where all parties benefit (and you stay sane) is really the entire point.

I’ve already gotten a lot of useful info, looking forward to the remainder of the week.

Finances Are Important

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Cottage Time

After having run countless budget exercises, having met our financial advisor and talked to our broker, it looks like we’ll be moving ahead with the cottage purchase.  My wife can attest that my level of anxiety this week has been through the roof, though the last 12 hours or so have been much better.  As is clear with all of my posts, I’m a numbers guy, and I love analytics.  So when a large purchase like this comes around, not only do I get excited, I start going all over the place in terms of options/scenarios.

I remember on Sunday talking with my wife about the absolute need to take those three steps (budget, advisor, broker) in order to come to a conclusion.  I’m not buying a damn coat here, I’m buying property that I need to pay for the next 20+ years.  She isn’t as well versed in all this financial stuff as I am, which to be honest, ignorance is clearly bliss in this case.  Still, she knew it meant a lot to me and suffered through my protestations to get this going.  After it all being complete (well, the paperwork is next) she’s certainly more appreciative of the nuances within.  We spent more than a few hours looking over the budget spreadsheet, so I’m slowly converting her!

Which brings up an interesting topic, one that the advisor brings up from time to time – people do not know how to budget.  I don’t mean worry about every penny but I do mean understanding where the heck your money is going.  I don’t get how budgeting 101 isn’t mandatory in high school.  I remember helping out my brother a few years ago with his budget.  What he thought he was spending was actually less than half of what he actually was spending – and that was just fixed costs.  Brining those numbers to the front really shocks people into action.

Not everyone needs an official financial advisor, but everyone should have a friend who’s really good at accounting.  Everyone needs a budget.  There are plenty of sites for it too.  And evaluating your spending based on your budget is super important, so that you modify it as need be.  Heck, most banks will offer the service for free, then set up extra bank accounts and automated transfers between them.  As an aside, no one should ever pay banking fees – if you are, change banks.

All of that to say that a solid budget makes life so much easier, since you’d then have the basic tools to manage your money.  Heck, you might even realize that you have way more freedom than you thought.

Tablet Woes

The tablet fix still isn’t working.  I can read the device through USB but the screen (not the digitizer) will simply not work.  Next step is to try a HDMI output and see which component is faulty.  I was really hoping it was just a loose cable, but it wasn’t any of the obvious ones.  The sort of good news is that I’m realizing that I don’t need the tablet to get work done.  It’s incredibly practical, but not essential.

Wildstar Runes

By far the #1 page on my site these last few days has been my rune guide.  I’ve updated it with an example near the bottom, on an ilvl90 weapon for my engineer.  I used service tokens to re-roll the slot (all the tokens were from the daily login bonus) and it’s in pretty good shape.  It went from 315 secondary stats to 1115, plus set bonuses that come out to an extra 150 points or so.

It’s a very noticeable boost, though there’s more tweaking I need to do on other pieces.  I took my engineer to the Badlands and the 2man bosses within (bone dog and spider queen) dropped down much faster.  Even the regular enemies now fall down with a single electrocute channel.

I am surprised/disappointed as to how much runes are a major factor in end game now and as to how little NCsoft explains this to the player base.  It would be an easy argument to make that someone in fully runed ilvl60 gear would be more powerful than someone in un-runed pre-raid gear.  It’s why gating content behind ilvl is so tricky, you can’t really measure rune power with it.  And even some runes are very expensive for little benefit.  The raid level runes (ilvl 100) are cheaper than the dungeon runes (ilvl80), and by a wide margin.

I guess that’s why the guide is so popular.  People are starting to figure out how important runes are.

Rare Isn’t Always Good

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About a month ago, my youngest dropped my tablet and the screen cracked.  Then she did it again.  Truth be told, she’s dropped it more times than I could count… oddly uncoordinated child.  Anyhow, that made the device mostly unusable, since it detected touches all the time.  I did what any self-respecting IT guy would do – I went a-googling.

First hurdle, I have a TF701.  This is one of those Asus transformer tablets that works with android.  It’s a great tablet, quite powerful, good disk space, came with a keyboard that physically connected… all great.  But it was also one of those limited edition doohickeys, or at least you’d think so based on the google results.  I had replaced my wife’s Samsung screen (digitizer) a few years ago, so I knew that it was possible.  Sadly, there are no screens for sale in North America, so eBay it is!

80$ later (free shipping) and 30 days later, I received the digitizer.  No instructions, no tools.  Back to google.  I crap you not, there is 1 single video on how it’s done and it’s in Russian.  There are T700t videos, but they are not the same form factor passed step 1.  There are hidden screws (the extra tiny ones that require special tools), extra tape and removing the digitizer is a massive pain.

2 hours later, many 4 letter words later, I had the digitizer off and was ready to rebuild.  That part was faster but much less fun.  The power is back but the screen doesn’t display anything, so more troubleshooting is needed.  I know the thing works though, since the alarm went off this morning and I was unable to do anything but snooze it.  Ugh.

After 30 minutes of fiddling, I had to stop it.  I was ready to just throw it in the trash at that point.  Deep breath.  It’s going to be ok.

Engineer

My engineer has a fair bit less plat than my esper.  An order of magnitude in fact, so, time to see what I can do about that.

Making money typically comes in three main forms.  First is maxing out experience for the week, then completing quests for cash.  Each daily hub generally awards 10-15% of the bar.   So if you’re only running dailies, it’s 2-3 days’ worth to cap out.

Second is repeatedly running an expedition like M-13.  You usually end up with 1-2 purples, ok gold rewards and a token for more cash.  It takes a bit over 10 minutes to run the easy ones, so you can make a few plat an hour.  PvP is an option too, about 20g per win, though you really should be in a pre-made to make this work faster than expeditions.

Lastly is working the AH.  I have a post about that!  The real flips occur on the commodity exchange, as you can set buy and sell orders.  The problem with that system is that it’s even more based on volume than a more standard AH (buy/sell only), meaning massive price fluctuations.  I’ve had to install a mod to keep track of all the various price points and I’ll be waiting a few days to find some trends.  I think my main focus will be on Runes.  Not only the base price points but also in terms of selling completed high quality Runes as well.  There’s a noticeable markup in that field, if I can get superb components at a low enough price.

Aside from that, I’m re-learning the limitations of the engineer.  I find action combat very key heavy, almost a button masher.  Engineers don’t have much of that, what with Electrocute being a channelled ability and the rest being mostly based on cooldowns.  There’s a whole lot of waiting, then a frantic smash of many buttons, then waiting again.  It’s an odd pace and really hard to find the right rhythm.  It’ll come though.

#Wildstar – PvE Gearing Guide

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So you’re a fresh 50.   Problem is that the level 50 content is using you as a treadmill.  Wildstar is an MMORPG like the others, and getting better gear makes a world of difference.  This guide is based on the following reddit post, with my own additions.

First off, you need to know that items are clearly marked in power level, called item level (or ilvl for short).  For the most part, an increase in ilvl is an increase in power.  There are slight variations mind you, in that you want assault power for DPS and support power for Heals/Tank.  Mixing them is a bad call.

In terms of item power level, it generally goes like this (items with an * require a group to complete):

Quest Gear –> Challenge Gear  –> Expedition Gear –>  PvP Gear –> Contract Gear –> Adventure Gear –> *Dungeon Gear –> *Raid Gear

Finally, items have rune slots.  You can buy a bunch from the AH for pretty cheap.  I personally wouldn’t spend more than 10g per rune until you reach Expedition level gear. These have a dramatic impact on item power.  A fully runed item can double in power, and it doesn’t have to be expensive runes either!  See my rune guide for more info.  The general rule of thumb is “rune for groups”.

First Things First

I suggest you visit the Auction House and scan for gear upgrades.  You want to buy anything under 10g that’s also an upgrade.  This is likely to replace most of your quest gear.  Filter by item level, and sort Buy Now: Low to High.  *as of this posting, the default AH only filters up to ilvl 60.  Download the following fix to address this.  You want to filter for items above ilvl 61.

Challenge Gear (ilvl 50)

When you complete challenges in a level 50 zone, you get points that fill a progress bar (press “L” and look at the challenges tab).  The reward for completing the bar is a random item.  This should be done fairly naturally during your play.  I wouldn’t chase this gear, simply keep it in mind when playing.

Expeditions (ilvl 60)

Press N, look at the expeditions tab.  You can solo all of these at 50, though some are a bit harder than others.  There are item drops within, but what you’re looking for is 2 things.  Completing an expedition rewards Renown, used to buy PvE gear.  Getting a gold rating on each (completing all optional objectives) unlocks the ability to purchase an AMP upgrade.  Expeditions are the best way to generate money in PvE – M-13 and Infestation are my favorites.

PvP Gear (ilvl65)

Find the PvP season 2 vendor and buy whatever is an upgrade.  The PvP stat isn’t great mind you, but it’s likely better than the other gear you have so far, excepting AH gear.  Yes, this means you can skip all the gear before this.

Contracts (ilvl 57 to 80)

In the capital city you can find the contract board.  The level 2 contracts are easy enough to solo, regardless of your gear level.  The level 3 contracts are a pain, unless you find someone advertising in general (exception is the Star Comm Basin event, which is every 2 hours).  Getting to rank 5 of the contract rewards gives an ilvl80 item.  The rest are randomly selected and of lower quality.  It’ll take a couple weeks to complete a single pass through to rank 5 rewards.

Adventures (ilvl 68)

Press N, look at the adventures tab.  It takes 5 folk to complete, takes 20-45 minutes per and the loot rewards are decent enough.  Use the Glory you get as a reward to buy even more pieces from the vendor in the capital city.  Gold on everyone gets an Ability Point unlock.

Dungeons (ilvl 78)

Press N, look at the dungeons tab.  All dungeons are not created equal.  You want to be around ilvl 60 to do the basic ones.  Do not enter a dungeon unless you have put in runes inside your existing gear.  You should leave here with ilvl 80 gear on average, allowing you to enter raids.  The general consensus on difficulty is Stormtalon’s Lair (STL) –> Kel Vorath (KV) –> Skullcano –> Shield of the Sword Maiden (SSM).  Though in truth, if KV isn’t a rather easy pass, the last 2 are going to eat you up.

AMPs and Ability Point Unlocks

When you hit 50, you’re given 41 Ability Points and 47 AMPs to spread around.  Through various items, you can unlock an additional 7 Ability Points (48 total) and 10 AMPs (57 total).  There are quite a few ways to do this:

  • Complete your Path quests to the maximum level.  You’ll get 1 of each. One time only.
  • Complete every Expedition to Gold, that gives an AMP. One time only.
  • Complete every Adventure to Gold, that gives an Ability. One time only.
  • Each Dungeon has a chance to drop one or the other.
  • Complete Blighthaven or Defile to maximum rep gives 1 Ability each.  Takes about a week or so to max. One time only.
  • Complete Crimson Badlands, Malgrave, Northern Wastes or StarComm Basin for an extra AMP each, but that will take a few weeks. One time only.
  • PvP sells Ability and AMPs for Prestige.  4/5K for the first one, then 8/10K for every additional one.
  • Elder Gems sell Ability and AMPs for 300-450 each.  Unlimited.
  • Open World combat and PvP sometimes reward them as loot, though this is pretty rare
  • You can buy them on the AH, though unlikely to be cheap enough for a fresh 50.

I’d suggest you focus on Ability points first, since the tier unlocks are generally more powerful than an AMP upgrade.  Having 3 skills at T8 is a pretty big deal.

It’s So Quiet…

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This weekend was the first in some time where we didn’t have some engagement, so it was quite relaxing.  Still had some errands to do, but there’s certainly something to be said about enjoying the simple things.  The slight blip to our bliss was an unexpected offer to purchase a cottage.  My wife and I are cottage people, so by ancient rites, our children must be as well, or be cast out forever.  We knew the offer was in the works but not for a few more years.  After crunching some numbers, it looks like it’s workable today and will slack off in a couple years.  I get quite antsy when it comes to finance, and it’s not like you buy real estate on regular basis.

Oh, and Star Wars.  If you didn’t have a chance to watch the recent trailer because that cave-in kept you busy, here you go:

A few notes about the trailer:

  • Contrary to most trailers, there’s no plot given away
  • I have no idea what relation exists between the characters as there’s next to no dialogue
  • I dislike JJ’s scores but this one is Williams 100%. The tugs.
  • Han and Leia deliver some awesome lines. You realize that the characters in this movie know less about Star Wars than the audience.
  • Only 1 lens flare (red lasers)! Lots of saturation though
  • Fingers crossed on no stupid steamy sexy scenes that are jammed in for no reason. (Super 8 the exception to the JJ rule)
  • $50 bet that Chewie dies. Too bad cause he’s badass in the EU (though still dead there too).

Bang, Bang, Flop

I’ve been playing my Esper a fair chunk lately, focusing almost entirely on the Quiet Downs instance.  I think I can do it blindfolded now, with an average run time of 13:30 for gold.  I’m sitting on slightly over 2000 currency, and already have the hoverboard mount.  Not so lucky in the costume drops though…  I’ve re-runed a few things, knowing that some pieces of gear will never be updated unless I start raiding.  Quite a difference to be honest, giving me a fair chunk more power and survivability. It’s had an impact on my plat making mind you, since Quiet Downs provides no loot, outside of a bag with mostly decorations inside.  Stretching a little thing on that class, I decided to get back to my Engineer tank.

First to note, he has 5 pieces at ilvl90, so arguably better than the Esper, if you ignore the crap gear in the other slots.  Both are holding great weapons, so that certainly helps.  I’ve runed him for damage and it’s been ok so far.  His output is certainly higher than the Esper’s but his survival is in the pits.  Engineer’s are the only class that cannot self heal (outside of a T8 skill), which makes some content surprisingly difficult.

Expeditions with my Esper are usually cake walks.  Gauntlet is a good example, in particular the middle portion where you need to avoid exploding rats.  I can put on a passive heal that allows me to make mistakes during that 90s portion.  The engineer has to take that T8 skill PDU, that heals for around 4000 damage every 30 seconds.  The hits taken are between 5000 and 6000, so not exactly useful.  I missed completing Fragment Zero on gold due to 2 deaths due to combat sessions that lasted 2 minutes, since the entire zone is littered with tiny critters (quite a litteral Zerg fest).

Typical solo work isn’t bad.  The damage output is good, the defenses aren’t crippling.  The issue as I see it is that with my current ilvl, I’m just at the edge of reasonable.  I can’t see how a fresh 50 would have fun, when compared to other classes’ solo-viability. I know that giving Engineer’s a self-heal would homogenize the classes, but it would also increase the “fun” aspect of the class at lower ilevels.  And let’s be clear, a support-specced Engineer is a beast.  They hit like a mouse but take it on the chin like a champ.

So I think that’s where I’m going to end up, turning this Engineer into a tank-only monster for group content.  It’ll be a pretty big hit to his solo-ability but it’ll be a different content package than my Esper is running, which should help avoid any burnout.

MMO Gaming Gluttony

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Free health care, one of the best things about being a Canadian (they give you free maple syrup, dontchaknow).  I cut open my elbow playing hockey the other night (bunch of hosers) and after 2 days, my wife had enough of looking at it and sent me to the clinic.  Cold season is in full swing up here, lasting the traditional 11.5 months of the year, so the office was slam packed.  I put my name in the hat, got called 2.5 hours later, with a dead cell phone no less, and after less than 10 minutes of consultation, they gave me a prescription for anti-biotics.

So, the good part of this is that the doctor who saw me was upbeat after a clearly grueling day.  I guess you have to be in order to not go over the deep end…Anyhow, she looked at my elbow, made funny faces, insulted my hockey abilities (touché), googled (or webMD, who knows) the exact dosage needed and agreed I should take care of it.  She also politely explained how the pills can bring on diarrhea and I should stay away from white pants.  Noted.  Perhaps I’m just lucky in that regard but I’m batting near 50% in the serious/clown doctor business.  It doesn’t make the wait any less annoying, but you leave with a smile, so there’s that.

Well, that and not having a $1,000 bill helps too.

Options

The October/November time of the year is like Christmas for gamers.  Back when consoles were the king of the hill, you’d have near half of the games released in that part of the year – enough to get people going crazy just before Black Friday.  Now with the interwebs and Steam sales, it’s certainly less impactful but still noticeable.

There are MMO expansions afoot.  Wildstar is my drug of choice currently, but SWTOR’s early access for their expansion is out.  GW2’s expansion is this week if I recall, Overwatch Beta next week, Devilian closed beta, FF14’s patch 3.1 is soon, Neverwinter had one a few weeks back, EQ2 has a ToT expansion… just tons of options.  Consoles too mind you, with Assassin’s Creed 72 (Syndicate) coming out and Fallout 4 in a couple weeks.

I still play Black Flag from time to time, for the pirate ships.  I’m rather done with the “follow him for 5 minutes, get caught once and start all over” gameplay.  Funny how Ubisoft has taken up EA’s old mantle of worst company in the world.  I guess people need someone to dislike.

I know Bethesda, so I know Fallout 4 on release is going to be a buggy mess combined with tons of joy.  I think I’m going to wait a few weeks after release to pick it up, enough for a kitchen sink patch to be deployed. (It’s a sad statement of the gaming world, where the above previous statement can be applied to 90% of games.)

So for now, it’s Wildstar or bust.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll dip my toes back into SWTOR once the general release of KotFE comes out.  Who can say no to lightsabers?

Cash Stops Can Be Confusing

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Conversions of business models seem to be a complicated matter.  SWTORs hot bars, EQ2’s well, everything, LOTROs descent into madness – all show that it’s a hard thing to figure out how to make a buck.  I’ll give Rift and TSW a thumb’s up mind you, those were pretty good at the start.  Wildstar, while probably one of the most forgiving F2P games out there, is a true headscratcher in terms of trying to make money.  The devs are learning though, so that’s good – the Shade’s Eve fabkit is no longer single use, flair is dropping in game, so there’s some progress.

Aside from costumes, items in the cash stop are nearly all single use, single character – mounts, pets, consumables and service tokens (I’ll get to these in a minute).  I don’t mind that so much, since you want repeat purchases.  What I do mind is the price point against repeat purchases.  See, Wildstar allows you to create a lot of alts.  I think my account, since I bought a box a while back, allows for 14 characters.  Mounts and pets don’t cross the character line, so if I want the same mount I need to buy it multiple times.  At $15-$20 a purchase, I don’t see how this makes any lick of sense.  I’d gladly pay it for the entire account, for sure!  A month’s subscription cost for a mount ain’t a bad deal at all.  There are plenty of posts on reddit and on the official forums about this topic alone, I’d expect some movement eventually.  I’m in a pickle mind you, since there are limited time mounts (for Shade’s Eve and zPrix) that will go poof soon, and they are neato.

Service tokens are the solution to the game’s gold sink.  Sure, they let you teleport a 2nd time across the world but aside from leveling, I don’t know anyone who would actually use them for that purpose.   They are really meant to bypass RNGsus when re-rolling runes.  When that starts costing a plat or so per re-roll, service tokens are looking pretty tempting.  They are decently priced but nearly directly tied to power increases.  For at most 35 tokens, you can get the best rune slot setup possible, with a further max of 5 for every new piece of gear.  You still need the runes to insert, and those can’t be bought from the store, so there’s some fancy wall there.

The game also has a variant on lockboxes, with some fortune coins to gamble with.  There is so little push on this, I’m curious if people are even aware that it exists.  It’s quite different that other F2P games.

The real kicker for me though is the subscription option.  There are benefits, sure, but they are so weak I don’t see why anyone would be subbed more than a month.  Getting MORE rep or cash/credits just means you hit the cap faster.  I hit the elder gem and omnibits cap weekly already, so there isn’t exactly an incentive there.  For those that don’t, even that isn’t really motivating.  You don’t get a discount in the shop, you don’t get any NCoin either.  You actually seem to get more benefit from buying directly from the shop, in terms of that progress bar at the top, than you do from subscribing.  So, I’m not quite sure why it’s even an option.  I’d be curious as to what the beancounters are saying though.

EDIT: Syp has a post similar in tone.

I’m kinda hoping they tweak it a bit more, because the stuff in that store is making me feel like

frymoney

zPrix

Yesterday’s patch added the zPrix event to the game.  It’s a set of 3 hoverboard races, with 4 options for rewards each.  There’s also a hoverboard mount in the store (with the above issues) and it looks super cool.  That’s right, super.  The races themselves come with a teleport button to the starting line.  Each one is just around a minute, minute-and-a-half long.  You win by finishing, not by getting an amazing time.  Rewards are a title, costume pieces and housing items.  I ran all 3 on 2 characters, so the costume is fully unlocked and I have a burning wall of fire on my housing plot as well.

The races themselves are quite a lot of fun.  Trying them the 2nd time had me looking for shortcuts, or better lines through to make better time.  Quick, easy, fun.  Nothing wrong with that!

The patch also applied some changes to the Quiet Downs instance for Shade’s Eve, or at least did so for me. The starting point is random now, though the map is the same.  (For those struggling to get through the maze in time, the end goal is the ? in the middle of the map.  Just south of that is the graveyard, which is really quite easy to spot from a distance.  In that graveyard are two tombs with a wall at the back – the wall has a fence on top – the goal is behind that fence.  I’ve been unable to jump that fence so I instead take the a different path.  The right most tomb is surrounded by a gate.  One of the corner posts of that gate allows you to jump to the higher wall (east side).  I jump up there, and head north to the end point.  I can clear with about 90 seconds to spare.  Also, you can miss 2 objectives and still get a gold medal for 50 Shades, it that matters to you.)

Jack Shade has also been tweaked.  He has many more attacks, summons jabbits, has pretty nasty AE and is actually a fight I need to move around in now.  I’m hoping this was just me hitting a simple bug, but the previous fights were just DPS runs, with an interrupt every so often.  Every run ends with a loot bag, so I’m stocking up on housing decorations.

Two events at once, both are quite fun.