So If I Wasn't Clear

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I un-subbed from SWTOR today.  They allow for a rather large section to say why you quit, so I pretty much put this blog post in there.  I then checked the main forums and half the general channel is about people quitting, not really a good sign.  So much potential, so much wasted.  I really hope they can do something in the next 4 months before Guild Wars 2 (for PvP), Tera (different PvE) and The Secret World (open world) come out.  Heck, I’m sure people will drop for Diablo 3 when it comes out.

I’ll check back in a few months, maybe there will still be a game then.

I still have 50 days left in Rift.  Going to try that out again, there’s some decent new stuff in there.

Star Wars

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So we’re a couple days shy of the 2 month mark and here’s my opinion.

TOR launched 2 months early, at the very least.  The first month had so many crashes, exploit and bugs that they patched once or twice a week to address it.  We’re at the 2 month mark, and there’s a patch every week still.  When Rift launched, it was nearly bug free and they worked on major things, like a group finder and guild stuff, plus content.  SW came out to compete with WoW and Rift, two fully functioning MMOs, with a wiffle bat.

What does TOR do right?  The single player aspect.  Leveling from 1-49 is a pretty cool journey.  It can get repetitive at times, but so do most games.  I enjoyed it tremendously the first time through.  The settings made sense, travel was long to give a sense of scope and you had well spread out enemies.  It’s a single player game with minimal replay (since there are no side-quests) and that’s worth your money.

What it does wrong is everything else.  I leveled another character to 50 and skipped all the dialogue since 99% of it was the same as the first time through.  My 3rd char is 30 now and I’m bored to tears of the questing, flying, zoning garbage that breaks up the MMO aspect.  You feel like you’re alone for ever.

So let’s do a feature comparison.  If you were in an MMO, you left that one to come try this one right?  So you left stuff to try new stuff.

PvP

This is a strong point for WoW, though Rift has some decent elements to it. There is a PvP stat that completely unbalances PvP in all 3 games though it’s being addressed in Rift.  TOR has massive exploits and a RNG system where once a week, you have a 25% chance of getting PvP gear.  Massive exploits too, you can max your PvP level fairly easily by Googling.

PvE

WoW has this down pat.  Rift has some balance issues for raids but the open world content is great.  Rift battles are amazing and you can do pretty much what you want, when you want.  I like it.  ToR has flashpoints that have a 25% chance of rewarding you at the end – and their loot tables are fixed.  Each takes 90mins to 2 hours to complete, many are bugged.  It’s better to run raids, as each boss has a 75% chance of dropping something you can use.  You need gloves?  There’s only one way to get gloves.  Rift and WoW both have LFG tools.  TOR is 2 months old and you can still wait an hour or more spamming LFG.

Money

This is a bit tougher to measure.  WoW has many methods to make cash, AH, dailies, raids whatever.  It let’s you buy flavor items (pets, mounts) and power (enchants, gems).  You need it certainly but not a whole lot.  Rift is close to WoW in this regard, though overall there’s less to buy.  TOR’s only expenditure right now is re-specing your talents (100-400K per shot).  The AH doesn’t work, dailies give 13K per (4 you can do alone), crafting is useless and your best bet is running a level 30 dungeon for money.  My 2 50s are millionaires, many times over with nothing to do.

Meta game

This is the part where you look at the systems.  WoW and Rift both have balanced stats.  You know what’s good, it’s somewhat simple to move things around to get stronger.  TOR opted for a modding strategy, where you move slots of gear within gear.  Sadly, these slots were designed by a drunk monkey where the 2 stats that are most prominent are the least wanted by any class (accuracy and haste).  The core issue here is that 2 of the 4 main classes are resource dependent and that resource regenerates at different rates. Both need to be above 60% at all times, making for somewhat static playstyles.  Making them attack faster, depletes their resources faster.  That makes them change their rotation to regenerate power instead of playing the game.  So what’s happening in game is that everyone is buying 3 particular items, breaking them down and using them to power the rest of their gear.  Every DPS and Healer (80% of the population) is doing this.  That’s bad planning.

Crafting has no use past level 49.  Do a single daily and the rewards outstrip any thing you can possibly craft.  Ship combat is an on-rails shooter.  I can play those for free.

Conclusion

The game from 1-49 is great and if you’re looking to try that out, then it’s worth the free month.  It looks and feels Star Wars (as long as you’re not a Sniper/Gunslinger).  Playing through once is fun.

If you want to play with other people, find another game.  If you want an MMO with PvP, wait a few months for them to fix the exploits and PvP stat.  If you want PvE in your MMO, wait until they put in a LFG tool and fix their item drops.  If you want to craft, find another game.  If you want to socialize/collect, find another game.  If you like alts, find another game.

TOR is not an MMO.  It’s a single player game that lets you talk to other people.

 

EDIT: I wanted to add a link to a population measuring tool.  TORStatus does a decent job, considering.  A 5% drop over last week.  Let’s say they have 1.5 million paying players (they said 1.7 were playing, most paying).  5% is 75,000 players or about 1.2 million dollars a month.

Drive

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Valentine’s Day means the wife gets to pick a movie.  Her choices boiled down to Drive and Ides of March – Ryan Gosling thing much?  Anyways, we end up with Drive and I can’t complain.  He’s a solid actor.

It has been a while since I’ve seen such a movie.  Inception was the last one, where the character are the story.  See, in most movies the plot is king and the characters just move it along.  You could replace any one of them with a different character and the plot would likely keep moving as is.  Think of any Michael Bay movie.

So back to Drive.  The characters don’t say a whole lot in speech but pounds in maneurisms.  A raised eyebrow, slumping shoulders, big eyes, the whole package from everyone.  Ryan Gosling is really good.  So is everyone else actually, barring perhaps Christina Hendricks in a limited role.  Certainly, there are twists but they aren’t huge.

Car chases are calculated affairs, heck the first one is 100% from inside the car viewpoint.  It’s such a smart take on chases.  One particular crash has a 270 degree swerve and they catch the other car flipping, through the rear view, over one character’s shoulder.  That was spectacular in it’s execution, not in the fact that the car didn’t flip over 10 times.

The music is pure 80’s and used superbly.  Silence is actually silence and the tense scenes have the right feeling.  I am looking for the soundtrack.  The director of photography and the lightning guy should get medals.  It’s like watching a movie of slowly moving pictures.  Nearly every scene is framed and the character’s mood changes as the lightning does.  It’s a different twist.

Finally, the violent scenes.  Compared to other films where they fill in gaps where the writer took a coffee break, here they are plainly insane and jarring.  When it happens you’re blown back at the sheer violence involved, especially from the characters that are involved.  It really raises the stakes and further pushes the characters along.  Even the ending is appropriate.

And you never learn his name.

Giftedness

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Wikipedia has a decent article on the subject.  The topic comes to mind after reading Ender’s Game, where the main character is quite obviously gifted at at the same time, ostracized for it.  The gift is personal, the hindrance social.  People, especially kids, hate different.  Survival instinct.

I remember quite a few elements from my childhood after being identified.  First, I hated the idea of being alone, though in retrospect I’ve always been.  My parents wanted to put me in a better program at school and I purposely dropped my grades to avoid it.  That didn’t work and they moved me anyway.  I remember being in math class and understanding the solutions without understanding the methods.  The teacher would explain the problems for 30 minutes then give the class 15 minutes to complete them.  I usually just skimmed through and wrote answers.  My high school teachers really hated me for it since they thought I cheated.  I had to write out the solution long-form, which to be honest, I had trouble with.

You know that feeling when you know something is just right but you can’t say why?  I have had that my entire life, like the details don’t matter, just the big picture.

My social disabilities however have pushed me to focus on the details in order to better relate to people.  If I can do something really well but can’t explain how, that pisses people off since I seem high and mighty.  In fact I don’t know the answer off hand and it takes time to figure it out.  So flip that and I spend more time explaining why than actually doing.  The social disability is actually an intellectual hindrance but my only method of coping.

Back on point.  My wife recently asked me if I considered myself or the people I went to school with gifted.  In all honesty, I can only think of a handful of people I would call truly gifted, myself included, but nearly all of my social circle has an above average intellect and desire to perform.  People who work hard and succeed at it.  I don’t have particular regrets about life as most of it was out of my control but I do realize, as I get older, that I could have achieved more if I was given the chance/support to do so.  I don’t forgive people for their ignorance but I understand it.  It also tempers my judgment with my daughter and will help me frame options for her in the future.

As rambling as this post might seem, there’s a catharsis inherent to the process.  Let’s just say that if you want to have kids, it’s not a 5 year job, it’s a lifetime job and a calling.  My respect for those parents who truly want the best for their children is endless and society’s future is dependent on that particular gene overtaking the “have babies because you should” social stigma.

Gaming better than Art?

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I read an interesting article that proposed that Video Games were superior to Art in that they require a social aspect to conquer/appreciate while being consumed.  The gist is that movies and books are isolated experiences, where you could just as easily do they in a black box and get the same value where a video game usually requires thoughtful approach, group strategy and provides a longer term return on investment.

While I agree with the statement I think that both have diverging interests.  I read a LOT and I talk about it a lot.  It’s also socially acceptable to read and often a measure of intelligence (though reading Cosmo would be the opposite I think).  Regardless, books and art are about interpretation and self-reflection.  You can share ideas with the author and other readers, help frame your own ideas and questions and usually by the end of a good book, your perception of your reality has changed.  Maybe you appreciate music more, maybe you think government is inherently evil.  Whatever it is, you change.  Art is meant to change people and that change typically permeates the rest of your life.  Art is also different for different people.  For example, read Orwell’s 1984 and then see how that changes your impression of the outside world.

Games are primarily meant to provide puzzles and then appropriate rewards for solving them in the way the programmers intended.  A bug in a game is when you try a different way to solve something than was intended.  You don’t share a new idea about how terrorists are very good at blowing up buildings or how that giant horse is blocking your path.  You are presented with a problem, a visible goal and the tools to get there.  At the end of the game, you’re better at those puzzles, you’re not necessarily able to map those skills to the outside world.  Though games provide a social outlet, it also removes the non-verbal social aspects and the subtleties that make for great interactions.  People who excel at World of Warcraft gain organizational skills and twitch skills but translating that into real-world equivalents is quite difficult.

If I were to compare Video Games, I would do so versus mental sports such as Chess or Go and a little bit towards physical sports for the adrenal rush you get.  The goal is to repeat an activity until you excel at that activity and some tangential benefit comes from it.

I read/watch movies to enrich myself and explore other ideas.  I play games to perfect minute analytic skills and keep mentally sharp.  With separate goals, it becomes easier to enjoy both while not competing between them.

Feb 8th

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So  it was 2 days ago and I’m late.  Too bad.  Bell had a mental health day and I thought it was a good idea.  Two particular items were of interest and you can watch them online.

First is the Talk on Suicide special.  Some good stuff here and it’s nice to see people talk about it.  Too often people don’t talk and it’s the lack of information and acceptance that builds bigotry.  Sort of like gays while I was growing up.  People didn’t talk about it and it was taboo.  Now we can understand it a bit more, even though some might not accept it, they understand it.

Second is Michael Landsberg’s Depression and Sports.  Clara Hughes, Stephane Richer and Daryl Strawberry are in it as well.  This is more about showing that even elite athletes have “normal” problems than anything else and you truly feel for their situations.  It’s really good.

It’s not an easy road and there are very few people available to help you since they don’t understand the mechanics.  It’s the “suck it up” mentality really.  Well, life isn’t what it was 20 years ago.  People weren’t half a million in debt just to put a roof over their head.  People didn’t have huge hospital bills.  Life was physically harder back in the day but it’s mentally harder now.   People understand a broken leg, they do not understand a broken mind.  The more we talk, the better for everyone.

Mass Effect

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I really liked the original Mass Effect.  I played through 3 times.  It was, in my opinion, the best game BioWare has ever made.  Sure the elevators were slow and the Mako was stupid but the rest was extremely well polished.  Mass Effect 2 simplified a lot of the RPG elements (inventory, weapons, abilities) and focused more on the story.  It ended in both triumph (group combat) and stupidity (human/reaper hybrid) so I ranked it a bit below the first one.

Now the 3rd Mass Effect game is on its way (March 4th) and after the crap-fest that was Dragon Age 2, BW has decided to try a different model on their game.  There are 3 game options.  One is RPG heavy with challenging combat, one is story heavy with little to no RPG elements and the last is combat, where the dialogue choices are all taken and combat is really hard.  I am curious as to what the majority will play.  For me it’s the RPG side.  I felt way more connected to Sheppard in the first game than in the 2nd, even though the scope was larger in the second.

Anyhow, I decided to replay both games to get a save ready for the 3rd.  My original plays were on the 360 (which I’ve pretty much retired) and finding the original for the PS3 is next to impossible.  So I got it on Steam.  Now, the 3rd is only available on Origin (EA’s online store) so I’ll have to transfer some stuff but the game plays pretty well and the loading times are really short.  It’s nice to see a PC interface too as the console version was buggy for me, unless you wanted to play it as a shooter.

So the goal over the next few weeks is to complete both games, then use those saves for the 3rd.  Should be fun!

Ender's Game

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I’ve wanted to for some time now and finally got around to reading Ender’s Game (or the first Mega Man).  The basic idea is that gifted children are recruited to participate in a war simulation room, the thought being that children make better killers than adults simply because they have yet to build any social stigmas.  Instincts are self-preservation after all.

This actually got me thinking a bit further along.  No one joins the military in active service in their 30s but people can swap careers from sales to nursing at that point without issue.  Our social dilemma that requires us to be empathic towards another in case we meet them again triumphs.  Not to mention that after your first funeral in your late teens, your grasp of death is more solid.

When you’re a kid playing cops and robbers, when you shout “bang” the guy is dead until he gets up.  When you do that with a real gun, they don’t get up.  It’s an interesting hard-wired mode where ideas and concepts have yet to be grounded in reality, where actions and consequences are not yet linked.

Back to the book.  The core tenet is that the above statement is factually incorrect.  A gifted child is able to correlate action and consequence, with the given data set.  Where a “regular” kid would have A leads to B, a “gifted” child would see A leads to B, B leads to C and maybe D leads to E afterwards.  I say this from experience in that the amount of information one has to compile, analyse and act upon is staggering.  I don’t think I was a kid for much of a time, certainly never a teenager.  I’ve always been thinking in “adult” terms where the lack of experience simply left me with variables to experiment with.

Aside from the fact that the book deals with complex issues in a rather simple format, it allows all people some insight into the mindset of a gifted child, however neurotic or foreign it might seem.

SWTOR Sales

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DarthHater was part of the quarter sales call for EA (shareholders can call in I guess).  They say that 2 million copies sold, 40% through their online service.  That seems reasonable.  In today’s age of PCs, people don’t go to stores to buy software as much. Steam is awesome.  Origin… has work to do.

The really interesting part is that they have 1.7 subscribers (either trial period or currently paying) and 1 million concurrently.  They go on to say that most (emphasis theirs) are paying.  That’s as low as 51%.  If after a month SW lost only 15% of their subs, that’s impressive.  After playing the game I would say that the number is wrong as the servers have way less people than when the game launched and the first two weeks.  I was running some PvP last night with 50s and I saw the same groups, over and over again.

Oh ya, the average session was 4 hours at a time.  I know I put in close to that time for the first 2 weeks but now the sessions are an hour or two before bed.  4 hours doesn’t say how much per week though, explaining why there are still plenty of players below 50.  Heck, I would say the majority are under 50.  Just goes to show how hardcore some of the other players are to keep that 4 hour playtime as an average.

I don’t want to be more negative but the real challenge is keeping those players past the 3 months mark.  Rift took a beating from it I’m sure (they have a 20 level F2P option now) and I honestly believe Rift is a better game.