Health Update – Pushing and Pulling da Heavy Tings

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Aside from family, work and gaming, I also play hockey.  I find that sports are a great stress relief, whether it’s competitive or just pickup.  But 5 years on since my first daughter was born, I was feeling a little pudgy.  Apparently, beer gives you a belly.  I think they should have a warning on the label.

6 weeks ago I started getting back into an exercise routine.  Nothing too fancy, just some dumbbells, a pull-up bar (or rather a pull down bar) and a yoga mat.  I live in Canada.  Running works for about 4 months of the year and who runs in the dark?  I had previously done the original P90X routine before I had kids and that was quite an effective exercise routine.  You’ll lose weight and built some muscle for sure, but you’ll never be as big as the guys on the TV doing high intensity workouts.  Tony H is a great instructor and has a good rapport with the other folks in the video.  If you’re going to pop in a DVD every day for 3 months, you don’t want them to be annoying.

Later on, I tried the Insanity workout, which is borderline stupid if you ask me.  It is a pure cardio exercise, with a large helping of plyometrics.  It’s not possible to do the routine completely, and on schedule unless you are already fairly close to fitness.  I mean, the people on the video can’t even complete them without dropping.  Shaun T is an ok instructor but the people in the video are the type you’d want to punch in the face.  Tonya in particular.

I’ve tried the Jillian Michaels stuff my sister had passed me.  The Ripped in 30 is the better of the bunch and a decent way to start a program.  The pace is solid, but the workouts are very repetitive.  Plus, she’s all hell annoying.

So I went back looking and found the P90X3 program.  Yes, a 3rd one.  Actually, the 2nd one was the sequel with some new workouts but this one is a different beast.  It’s 90X in 30 minutes.  Imagine taking a 1 hour workout, rests and all, and then crushing it down to 30 minutes.  There’s one workout, The Challenge, where my sheet afterwards indicated I did about 200 pushups and nearly 100 pullups in 30 minutes – including warmup time.  Nutbar.  But the results are great and the relationship between Tony and the workout folks is even better than in the first set.

Exercise doesn’t mean much if you’re not eating well.  A recent article stated that obese Americans outnumber overweight.  The only way to put on weight is to eat more calories than you burn and that can be an extremely easy thing to do.  The bad news is that in North America, most foods are empty calories due to the abundance of corn and artificial filler in everything we eat.  The good news is that I have a rather severe intolerance to animal fat and artificial preservatives (specifically nitrates), better news is that my wife is intolerant to corn.  I am absolutely incapable of eating fast food and most food in a restaurant doesn’t jive.  My shopping is on the outside of a grocery store, rarely in the aisles aside from some cereal, pasta and baking goods.  So calorie management is pretty easy for me, aside from the beer.  I will say that the food portion of weight management is the hardest part.  Exercise is easy, you only do it 30-60 minutes a day.  Food is around you 24/7.  Its own long topic…

Finally, I being a tech guy, I have a few gadgets to help out.  A FitBit One to measure steps taken and sleep (which the wife has appropriated), an Amiigo for workout tracking (with so-so results so far) and a smart scale that measured weight, BMI, body fat and water ratio.   Well, that scale took a data dump.  One day I was 270, the other 190, the next I was weightless.  So we bought a FitBit Aria, which works with the FitBit app (score) and on wifi.  Well, let me tell you that this scale is something else altogether to setup.  First, it only works in an 802b network.  You know, the one that’s been out the door for 10 years?  Plus the security only works with WEP/WPA.  In a day and age of “push to connect” this is like an ancient relic.  It took me 3 hours to complete the setup, searching the bowels of the interwebs.  I had to reset nearly ever setting on the router to get it to work, and now I need to reconfigure all my other appliances to connect back.  Well, the good news is that it works at least… but for $150, I would recommend everyone stay away until it undergoes a big engineering redesign.

That really long post to say that I’m down over half my weight goal so far.  My eldest daughter is interested in fitness (always a plus) and I’m slowly pulling my wife into a more active lifestyle, given the ease of tools and quite obvious results.  Results are certainly motivating and since I’ve past the 1 month mark, I’m in more of a habit than anything else now.  And once you’re in that groove, you start looking forward to the next time.

What’s an Expansion worth?

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FF14’s expansion Heavensward is $40.  Warlords was $60, though it included a “free” level 90, which is $60 after the fact (though really, that’s what, 20 hours of gameplay at most nowdays?).  Most expansions runs between $30 and $60, depending on what’s in it.  Even more so when you think about if the game is F2P or subscription based.  Some don’t even charge for expansions – Neverwinter & EvE come to mind.

GW2 is 2 years old and aside from that first box price, I’d wager the majority haven’t dropped more than $20 in all that time.  $50 is absolutely reasonable for an expansion, if you know what’s in it.  And I guess that’s the rub.  Asking for money on faith is always a hard bargain to make.  Certainly with mixed messages and a rather poor PR department.  NCSoft barely has any PR, though I guess it’s better than having Smed going off on some tangent.12:00

I really think this is just a storm in a teacup.  By the time the expansion rolls around, everyone will go back on their “don’t buy it” mantra and scoop it up on release.

Let’s face it, MMO gamers are always looking for the next shiny thing and no matter how much they complain, it’s still going to sell to the active playerbase.

It is popcorn-worthy to see the frothing mind you.

Back Online

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The last couple weeks I’ve just had drained batteries.  Completely kaput.  I took this week off, mostly unplugged and slept what seemed to be a dozen+ hours per day. Typically when I take time off work, I still have some contact.  I’ll check mail a few times a day, maybe take a call or two to sort things out.  This week I let my BlackBerry drop dead and just disconnected.  I think that’s honestly the first time I’ve done that in 10 years, at least in a situation where the was a signal possible.

E3

I did keep up with the news somewhat mind you.  E3 came and went, and there really wasn’t much to talk about.  If you love sequel-itis, then hey, they’ve got you covered.  More Battlefront (with an amazing deluxe package that gives you a damage boost on normal packages), Fallout 4 has a date and an iOS app, Uncharted has a sequel, FF7 is coming back (curious how that will work out), SWTOR has a neat expansion/reboot…It’s not bad news so much.  I think devs have finally figured out how to use the consoles properly now, so the games are looking pretty amazing.

Anyone taking bets on when The Last Guardian will actually come out?

Steam Sale

There was a lot of stuff on sale, holy bajeebers!  I picked up Ori and the Blind Forest, which is a cool game in the metroidvania style.  With amazing art and music.  Superb game actually, great throwback to a fun game style.

The rest of the stuff I either already had or it didn’t interest me much.  Stick of Truth I did pick up, for something like $10, so that will fill some dead time eventually.  Arkham Knight isn’t on sale but apparently it’s the best of the series.  Winter sale I guess…

Marvel Heroes

2 year anniversary on a super cool ARPG.  Syp has posted a fair bit on it and it’s well worth your dollars.  I think they have a really great cash stop mechanic, though I’m curious as to how much is left in the Marvel vaults for them to release as playable characters.

I picked up Doom with some Eternity Crystal (the droppable F2P currency) and I am quite impressed.  He has great lines, looks cool and his moves are all pretty signature.  Due to some other characters being at 60 (including Cyclops) I was able to get him to level 60 in about 2 days of sporadic playtime.  Then with a bunch of lucky drops, kitted him out for some solid damage potential.  I also took the time to level up Squirrel Girl.  She’s awesome!

Wildstar

I had mentioned before how I wanted to get back into this game.  Well, I subbed up this week and patched my way in.  I had posted about what I thought was missing from the game, and I am rather happy to say that most of that downside list has been addressed.   There’s a lot of casual/daily content now at 50, shiphands, adventures, dungeons, plot dungeons, battleplots, battlegrounds and 4 main daily hubs.  Raids have been dropped to 20 players, itemization has been tweaked so it isn’t as crazy.  Lot of classes have been balanced as well (notoriously the warrior).

There are people playing, I see them all over the place.  That said, it need more people STAT.  It’s great that it’s going F2P in the fall but there needs to be something in there now to get more people playing.  I’m a bit reminded of what happened to SWTOR in this case, where the game dropped subs like the servers were on fire. It was a 90% server merge after all.  When F2P hit, the game took a few months but picked up a ton of steam and now there’s players everywhere.  Wildstar needs that player boost.  It’s a quality MMO.

FF14

Expansion hit a few days ago.  I have an old account I played with for a couple months, and I was impressed with what was there.  I dropped out however, due to real life taking almost all my free time.  I’m curious to see what’s about mind you so I wanted to get back into the game.

Let me say that Square Enix has some of the absolute worst infrastructure/support services on the planet.  It’s is almost absurd.  Trying to log in, my typical passwords aren’t working.  Ok, now I get locked out for some reason, though no idea how long I’m locked out.  I try again in 10 minutes, same message.  A quick search tells me it’s a 30 minute lockout, and extended by some magical number everytime you retry and the lockout is still in effect.

Fine, let’s try a password reset.  Ok, none of my security answers are working.  Maybe it’s the case of the answers.  Nope… not that either.  Ok, maybe I have a token attached to the account (there’s a field there but it doesn’t tell me if I have one).  I check my mail and it looks like I tried to attach one, but there’s no success message.  Fine, let’s try it out.  The app won’t work on my iPod and won’t work on my Android tablet.  It will work on my wife’s.  Super.  Put in the data to restore it, invalid key data.  Arghhhh!!!

I end up on the support site, submitting a ticket.  Interestingly enough, it asks me for the same security questions as before to submit but doesn’t give me any errors when I put in the answers I thought were correct.  I haven’t received any notice it was sent, or that there was an error.  Just an on-screen message that it may take some time.

So at this point, I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do.  Calling them is apparently a 2 hour wait and since they are only open during “business hours”, I’m not quite sure what that will accomplish other than a massive long distance charge on my phone.

/amazing.

Queue the Pitchforks!

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Say what you will about Metacritic but it usually captures the gist of a game’s media impact.  It is rare that a game has extremely varied review scores, especially across the top 10 or so review companies.  Maybe +/- 10, with an odd outlier.

So, Metacritic is giving Heroes of the Storm an 86.  For comparison’s sake, LoL got a 78 and DOTA2 got a 90.  Smite has an 83 and Infinite Crisis has a 66.  Based on my extremely limited experience with the fold, that sort of lines up (LoL should be higher mind you, but still behind DOTA2).

IGN, the fine purveyor of fanboi tears, has opted to give HotS a 6.5.  It is the lowest score by 15 points.

The review itself makes a few valid points.  That the game is expensive and time consuming to play at an elite level is just trollbait mind you.  The map balance and focus on secondary objectives over competitive play is a consistent comment.  KTR put it well, it’s competitive PvE, which is certainly a different flavor of MOBA.

Still, it takes some pretty big kahunas to hand out a 6.5.  Especially for a site that is so drastically liberal with it’s score (WoD got a 9).  And you know, tied at the damn hip with it’s Hearthstone reporting.

So I think I’ll sit back and enjoy the flames.  This should be fun.

Prison Gaming

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Az has a neat little question about, what games would you bring with you to prison.

First

The first one was this: you’re going to jail for ten years, but it’s a minimum security prison that will allow you to take one offline game (any DLC included) with you. But that will be the only game you get for those ten years. Which game do you pick?

I’d want something with a lot of replay and depth.  It’d be a tossup between Civilization 4 and XCOM (the first one from the 90s).  I have quite literally put in hundreds of hours into each of them and could easily do so again.  Mind you, Crusader Kings 2 is probably up there.

I do like Rohan’s bit on Neverwinter Nights, or at least some game that provides the option to mod away with in-game tools.

Second

The second scenario is similar, but this time it’s life in prison. For some insane reason, the Warden will allow you to take any three games and allow an internet connection. The parameters did not specify whether future DLC or microtransactions will be free for you, but let’s assume you can make enough money stamping licence plates to cover, say, $30/month. Which games do you pick?

I know this sounds corny, but cribbage, scrabble or chess.  You can play these games at a table, certainly, but the online aspect gets you the world to play with.  These are games that at 50+ years old and given my age, I’d need them to last another 60-70.  There isn’t a game today that would come close to lasting that long.

I realize it’s a hypothetical situation, more about paring down what we consider quality over quantity.  It’s still a rigged question though, since video games themselves have only been around for 30 years, online for about 15.  Still a fun question to ponder about.

When Not To Ask For A Pre-order

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First question:  Do I think Fallout 4 looks promising?  It’s just an engine demo, whoopee. The idea of a Fallout 4 does give me tingles though.

Second question: Am I going to pre-order?  Hell no.  I don’t do pre-orders for one, regardless of how awesome something is.  I certainly won’t do it for a game without a release date. Or a feature list.  Or actual gameplay video.  Or a preview.  Or some peer-review. Or some actual incentive.

I’m actually surprised at the audacity/brass tackle that Bethesda has here.  And hats off to Green Man Gaming to give a DISCOUNT on a pre-order for a game without a release date!

This is more like a kickstarter without the kickstarter, for a major gaming company.  It’s like if Ubisoft asked for pre-orders for the next Assassin’s Creed, without knowing anything about it. And then finding out along the way that the things that made you happy about the game were being removed.  And that it was full of bugs because they had to ship on time or issue refunds.  Oh hey, that actually did happen!

Who am I kidding.  People are still going to pre-order.  I’ll just sit by with some popcorn.

Spring Cleaning

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Good news, the new laptop is in.  Just shy of 5 weeks from when I ordered it, which still astounds me for 2015.  Same brand as last time (Sager) so it looks very similar, though noticeably lighter.  Mind you, gaming laptops are anything but light.  Win 8.1 came with and if not for that x.1 item I would have installed Win7 instead.  It’s a serviceable OS.  The setup was remarkably quick too.  And this from the guy who remembers installing Win 3.1 and has been custom building rig since the early 90s.  Anyone remember the install time for Win 98 or XP?  You could spend hours just to get access to the internet, then the patches would take up an entire day.  Now the long part is reinstalling the core services.  Right now that’s Chrome (IE is somehow worse in W8 than 7), Steam, Marvel Heroes and the Blizzard launcher.  I’ll get the rest of the apps back on in due time, though it’s going to take ~150gig or so through the pipe to get there.

A funny story.  I have a particular background that I’ve been using on my PCs for a few years, one particular of my daughter.  I wanted to use it again and went to my backup storage and couldn’t find it, even though I had spent a day or so backing up the old rig.  Turns out I missed some files and this generated an opportunity to clean up some video/pictures I had kept for 5 years.  About 100 gigs worth actually, nearly 1000 pictures and 500 videos.  I am a bad curator but took the time to label/categorize what I could.  Now the better half will do the necessary triage and we’ll back up the backup.

I’m not a big picture fan, more of a store it in my head kind of guy.  That said, going through these things was a nice trip down memory lane.  Sometimes I lose focus on priorities with work asking for a bit too much and these sort of events really help to remind me of what I’m really working for.

Stress Relief

I’ve mentioned in the past how gaming is a massive stress relief for me.  It provides me with a challenge and I input a solution to reach a goal.  I think I get more fun out of planning the solution than I do of executing it, outside of the actual endorphins for goal completion.  A tablet is an OK gaming device but the game selection is lacking compared to the PC, as are the interface options.  So yeah, PC gaming is scratching a heck of an itch.

Physical activity, in particular hockey, is my other stress relief.  I play less in the summer, once a week instead of 3, so I need to supplement that somewhat.  Back into the home gym for a few weeks now, something I haven’t been able to truly get a grasp on since my first daughter was born 5 years ago.  Oh, spurts here and there but nothing long lasting.  I’m about 6 weeks in now and I sleep better, which is great.  Then all the other health benefits, the use of a new notch on the belt and if this keeps up, I’ll need to take in some of my clothes.

The month of May has been an interesting one.  Feels like I’m getting out of an old rut and into a new stride.  Spring cleaning I guess.

#TapTitans – Gaming Milestones are Good

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I mentioned in a previous post that I was trying two similar incremental games, Tap Titans and Tap Tap Infinity.  The former was more active, in that you needed to be playing the game to make progress, while the latter had off-line progress.  This situation actually brings to the front a few particularities I hadn’t noticed at first glance.

Both game’s progress is gated on acquiring heroes.  TTI has 21 of them, each 5 levels apart, combat wise.  From the start until you get the last one is maybe 4-5 runs.  From that point, completely linear progress.

TT has 42 heroes and they are not level based, instead you need the gold to buy them.  The last one, the Dark Lord, comes in around level 1800.  Along the way there are multiple “walls”, where progress just halts completely and you need to restart, once or twice to get by it.  When a wall is 2 hours in of furious tapping, it gets draining.  Especially without any off-line progress.

Both games have hero buffs at specific levels.  TTI is levels 10, 25, 50, 75 and maybe 100 (some only have 3, others 5).  TT has them at 10, 25, 50, 100, 200, 400 and 800.  These buffs may only buff the actual hero or they may buff the team or the tapper (you).  Hitting one of these hero milestones has a pretty big effect on the game.  30% more damage is noticeable.  Where TT differs again, is that you can reset (“evolve”) your hero at level 1000, which resets all the milestones but gives a boost to hero DPS.  Knowing when this is the right thing to do in order to get over a wall, and when a reset actually sets you back is pretty important. I messed up a couple times and it messed up entire runs.

So looking at this, both games have very similar models it’s just that TT’s is stretched over a longer play time (days vs hours), which allows for some more variance in the small details.  When a wall in TTI is only a few minutes versus 4-5 runs in TT, you really don’t have time to think about strategy.

Game Altering Milestones

TTI has 2 particular notable altering events.  First is a spell called Wormhole, which allows you to start at a later level once you restart.  This is useful since the lower levels really don’t offer anything close to the rewards of the later ones, so skipping the boring parts = good.  Second is a spell called Boss Rush, where you only fight bosses for a period of time.  This flies you through the content, if you can keep up with the difficulty, saving you an hour or more at the later point of the game.  Given that the starter portion of the game has a lower reward structure, you certainly want to get through it as quick as possible.

TT has similar items but more around the point of time and walls.  There’s an auto-tapping skill in the game that will get you through 95% of the content at later levels but you need to upgrade some items to get that skill.  It takes about 15 seconds per 10 levels and I can zoom through to level 2000 right now.  It physically saves me an hour+ of tapping.  MASSIVE quality of life boon.  Then there’s an item that more or less makes it rain money all the time (well, a combination of 2) and money is used to get through walls.  Finally, another skill allows you to dramatically increase your tapping damage (2000% or more) for an extended period of time, again used to get through walls. Now if the game can implement some sort of boss rush mode…

Taking the time to move away from simple DPS increases and focus on game altering abilities is a nice twist to keep things interesting.  Again though the difference is in when you get these abilities and TT is still at the days mark while TTI is in the hours region.

Other Games

I think the best games have these types of milestones available as goals.  I rather dislike the achievement hunter mentality that seems to be everywhere now.  While it certainly triggers the OCD in every gamer, it becomes a game in itself and detracts from the game.  What’s the point of hunting the 1000th bear other than some imaginary point with no in-game bearing?

But a solid milestone, like completing an obstacle course and unlocking a new fast travel method, is a very neat incentive.  One the one hand it asks you to practically master one method in order to gain another, but in most cases it deprecates the portion of the game that is meant as a barrier for play.  And amazing design will take into account these milestones for even more challenges.

Black Flag had this and was oddly enough the best part of the game.  That pirate ship was chocked full of its own mini progress and ever increasing challenges.  Once you were able to start capturing some ports and getting the next tier of upgrade, the game just started opening up.  Then the game sent out pirate hunters and multi-ship fleets after you.  The game got progressively more and more complex, based on each milestone.  And it was mostly optional when you looked at the core game.  Ironically, Ubisoft didn’t seem to grasp this concept as AC5 was a rather large step backwards.

Moving away from the linear path of recent years and giving some enticement to get off the beaten path is a good thing.  Making sure that those side-roads have quality is just as important.  It really makes you appreciate the good games even more.

#Wildstar – Free for All

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Interestingly enough, two of my most popular posts are my Wildstar Esper guides, which still get daily hits.  And, for good or bad, they don’t require much in terms of an update.

So good news (finally), Wildstar is going Free to Play.  And the GW2 free to play model minus the box price – I guess just like Rift.  Apparently, in the 24 hours since the announcement was made, it was the highest uptick in the Reddit sub-site in nearly a year, which is great news.

I will be honest here, the $15 fee wasn’t a dealbreaker for me.  I was going to re-sub next month when I got the new laptop anyways.  I had left the game due to rather significant balance issues around the elder game (max level content).  I really enjoyed nearly everything about the leveling game, including the dungeons.  When I hit 50 though… that was bad.  Gold medal runs were the only type of dungeon run, so 90% of them failed after the first death.  World bosses took forever to kill/spawn.  Raids were 40 people and if 2 people messed up, it was a wipe.  It was like a gentle curve from 1-50, then a massive gap until you were raid running and spending a dozen hours a week doing so.

Since then, there have been about a half dozen content patches.  More zones, more dungeons, a “fill” of that content gap, 20 man raids, pets, costumes and a crafting reset.  The majority of the folk leading the game for all those years in dev have moved on, and the folks who are there now are drinking a whole different type of kool-aid.  Heck the F2P conversion is going to add even more wanted features, like a full AMP unlock for everyone (no more farming dozens of hours).

That said those who are playing now are going to be in for an interesting ride.  Where SWTOR’s swap put a rather massive gate on top end dungeons/raids, this is not the case for Wildstar.  It’s more like TERA, Aion and Rift.  I wouldn’t say it’s a drastic shift, given that the past 4 patches have been all about making the game more accessible and less HARCORDE!!1!  If that’s the reason people are playing today, get ready for a rather large resource shift from super elite raids to a more simplified version.  Dollars to donuts, they put in a 2 tier raiding system.

There are quite a few posts on the matter…with all sorts of opinions on this value of this message.  Most though agree that this is a good step, even if they don’t plan on taking advantage of it.  I know I am and my gut tells me this is going to be good news long term for the game.

Stuck on the Ground

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With no horse in the race, I find the WoW news about maintaining a lack of flight quite fascinating.  As always, stories.

I had a subscription for the first month or so of WoD.  It took a “normal” amount of time to get to cap, at least compared to MoP.  Which was near double or triple of the Cataclysm trainwreck.  Once I did hit the cap, I decided to bring a couple more alts to 100.  Did I mention that I was able to get one to 99 without ever moving past the garrison quests? Mounts were superfluous.  And zone design didn’t exactly necessitate any mounts either since the quests were usually a few feet away from a quest giver.  Long gone are the days of getting a quest on one side of the map and going to the other (which ironically, Cata had in spades).  I’m struggling to think of a single occurrence of character death while leveling, outside of the elite/rare kills I attempted solo.  There was never any real threat.  To get around the world was about hoping on a flight path and alt-tabbing until I got there, which in some cases was extremely long.

Once I did hit cap, I was mostly pet/mount hunting.  All of that was in the old content, because WoD held little appeal outside of the 7 day gronn mount spawn. My Boots quest in EQ has killed any desire to spawn camp.  Anyways, I have 6 alts who were at level 85/90 who could easily farm old content.  Zul was the only daily for the 2 mounts, which I never got after months of farming.  I got the Bird mount in Terrok pretty quick, which left mostly raid farming for the rest.  The cycle usually went MC, BWL, Kara, SSC, TK and then AQ.  Every single one of them was reached through flight, aiming the mouse and alt-tabbing until I got there.  I tried flight paths, which all landed next to the raid (MC, BWL and SSC excepted) and all were slower than aiming my dragon and going afk.  Not just a little slower either, a lot.  I don’t think I would have even bothered with half of it if it wasn’t for the fast travel.  So yeah, it was more about convenience than anything else.

Having flight while leveling made things extremely trivial.  Not so much in that it bypassed content (it did) but that it highlighted bad design decisions.  Dropping in, picking up 2 packages and then leaving isn’t super smart.  Neither is farming a drop for 20 minutes.  I think Wildstar’s approach here was better, where various actions provided progress on a bar.  Kill a lot of small things, a few big things, collect some items, destroy others.  Zones had some rough spots to run through, where you needed to pay attention.  You still had some boring taxi travel BUT each zone had 1 large teleporter or some kind to help with fast travel between the actual zones.

All that said, I think it speaks volumes that a company that hit the 10m mark, lost ~3m subs, put in a legit gold selling program (and will sell top-end gear for said gold) doesn’t think flight is worth the hassle.  WoW is the most accessible it has ever been, the absolute least social version ever and flight for some people is a hill to die on.  Such an interesting read to see people’s reactions (Wilhelm has a good collection of them).