Star Wars Existential

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I’ve been pretty firm in my overall dislike of the direction take in The Last Jedi.  It would be fair to say that the general mood isn’t positive either.  Got me thinking.

Religion

Star Wars is a religion.  No question there.  Prior to Disney, there was an agreed upon canon.  A set of rules and history that people flocked towards.  Knight of the Old Republic was the foundation for light/dark, how the various empires built the galaxy, how lightsabers were made… everything.  The defining moment was the Battle of Yavin (destruction of first Death Star) – commonly referred to as BBY or ABY.  Think about that for a second… we use BC/AD for our dates.  Lord of the ring uses Ages.  Star Wars is big enough, and complex enough, that the dates are referred to by a specific defining event.

ABY brought episodes 5/6 and a significant part of the expanded universe.  Mara Jade, Thrawn, Yuuzhan Vong, Jacen Solo… all come after the movies.  Even the stories prior to the movies pretty much dictated how Vader came to be.  Sure, there were details in the films that didn’t align (the hatred of sand) – but the 3 storylines were written 20 years before the movies were made.

People celebrated Star Wars (May the 4th).  They spent 40 years dressing up as them.  Not only consuming the product but building upon it.  Nearly all of it had the Lucasfilm sign of approval too, which was notoriously hard to get.

Then Disney bought it all and torched it.  Significant parts of the expanded universe is now referred to as Legends.  I was somewhat cautious of this, since that lore had a significant impact on the story telling.   Maybe they wanted more freedom to explore certain characters.

The Films

The Force Awakens was a remake of episode 4, with all the telltale signs of a JJ Abrams mystery box.  Rey’s heritage, how with no practice she beat a force user who was trained since birth, who Snoke was, how this new empire established itself so quickly.  Plenty of promise for future development (if heavy handed).

Rogue One was an interstitial story – we knew how it ended but not so much how it began (in this new storyline).  It was a pretty good story.  The investment people had in these characters were more archtetypes of the SW cannon.  All of them are dead, and no one has ever referred to a single one of them since.  Remember the BBY/ABY item, the most important event in all of Star Wars?  The film explains how that was setup, then never heard of again.

Last Jedi’s goal was to subvert the established lore.  Where the two previous items stretched the imagination, it was still close enough.  The stories hit the right notes.  You could suspend disbelief with the promise of future explanations.  (There’s a LOST analogy here).  This movie instead took the baseline rules of the most foundational items and broke them.  People can now use the Force across a galaxy.  The Jedi code for harmony is wrong.  Luke, who managed to convert Darth Vader, was willing to kill his young nephew for the potential of the dark side. That lightspeed can be tracked.  That any ship can be turned into a super weapon.  Each of these items breaks the previous movies.  Why shoot missiles in the Death Star when a Corellian Crusier can just lightspeed and crash into it to destroy it?

Han Solo story.  If this wasn’t a Star Wars movie, it would have had much more praise.  Square peg, round hole.

Impacts

It is an existential crisis for the Star Wars fans.  They have spent years living in that world.  Finding the links between one story and another.  Seeing characters come and go.  Finding more minute details of a given world that adds life to that world space.

Disney underestimated what Star Wars meant to people, they saw it just as a pre-built story foundation.  They did it with Marvel to great success.  But Marvel was never about world building – it was about characters with a specific powerset and attitude.  Not like we had Wolverine giving hugs and shooting lasers from his toes.  In Star Wars the characters are simply agents to the world.  Tatooine is a much a character as Leia.  The Battle at Hoth is arguably more important that the death of Luke’s aunt & uncle.  There are hundreds of those events.  Many of it thrown aside and directly conflicting with what happened before.

This is a lore reset event.  If somehow LotR was reset and Sauron could teleport anywhere, and Frodo could kill Orcs with his eyes, you’d see the same reaction from fans.  Disney has to build an entire world, a new history, a new set of rules, a new set of characters to move forward from this.  Then it needs to convince the fan base that this will stick and be worth the investment.

Or, they could simply disown the attempt made here and move back towards the established rule sets.  Seems to be a whole lot more money to be made there.

Tangents to Others

Change is certainly difficult.  Massive change typically has massive repercussions.  There are enough religious and political upheavals to illustrate this point quite well. When we’re talking about fictional stories, then we need to look at things that are simply massive in scale.

Lord of the Rings has a rather tight grip on it’s lore.  The Hobbit was an atrocious series of movies, but was not a large afront to the lore.

Star Trek has about 23 days worth of TV shows and Movies to go through… before you talk about any written media.  Even with an entire reboot of the timeline, the foundational lore of the series stayed the same.  There are 2 stories that did not follow this model – Speed Limit and Threshold – both of which have been disowned.  It follows true.

Even Game of Thrones has a set of rules that need to be followed, and it would be hard to argue that the extension through the TV series broke that many rules (except maybe time travel to cross large distances on foot in less than a day).

And World of Warcraft comes to mind here.  The time travel in WoD has been practically erased (Yrel who?).  The rather ridiculous character arcs and “morally grey” characters in BfA feel like sand in your teeth.  Seems they are trying to address that in 8.1 – we’ll see how that turns out.

Point is, when you have a very large audience and a very complicated lore foundation, it is not possible to please everyone.  People are willing to accept bits of change, but not large swathes that go counter to years of previous effort.  Even less so when you’re impacting the stories that the fans themselves have developed.  People become fans because they see themselves in that world.  When they stop seeing that, well, there’s not much world left.

Doing It Over Again

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The first time I played Monster Hunter: World on PS4, I reached the Tempered Kirin fight, which had a requirement of hunter rank(HR) 49.  It was a fair chunk of time invested.

On the PC, I’m currently HR 23 which isn’t exactly reflective of the middle point of the game.  In fact, I’ve killed every single target but the two who were not in the PS4 version when I stopped (Deviljo & Lunastra).  Now it’s about taking on monsters to fill out specific armor/weapon sets.  So I guess you could say I’ve killed half the monsters that I did last time.  Now it’s about putting my head down and running investigations on repeat.

One of the neat things about RPGs is the player flexibility when it comes to power progression.  MH:W is a prime example, where all power increases are based on player choices.  If I took off my armor, I would be as powerful as a level 1 character.  Every weapon, armor, charm, decoration has a direct impact on power.  Every temporary buff (potion or food) has a direct impact.  And it’s time/effort to unlock those various pieces.  Not like all of a sudden you get that 1 unlock and game transforms – it’s a slow and steady build.

Example.  I had forgotten about Power/Armorcharms.  There are two items you can buy that sit in your inventory and provide passive boosts to DEF and ATK.  You can boost this effect through crafting by combining a drop from Bazelgeuse.  Then buy the base items again.  The progression goes 0/0 –> 12/6 –> 18/9 –> 30/15.  To compare, one piece of rank 5 armor has ~40DEF.  Rank 7 has ~70DEF.  So when you first get this piece, well it’s a near 20% boost of power.  As you get much stronger, the effect is still there but the overall impact is lesser.  To compare again, a large food buff is 15ATK, but goes away when you faint. Every bit helps.

In Practice

Great games operate on the concepts of gradual improvements, and a world that grows with you.  There are times where it’s fun to just faceroll through an event, but people typically play for the challenge.  MH:W has ever increasingly dangerous enemies that you can tackle, either through pure skill (bit of luck too), or through investment in power levels.  I’m sure I could kill Teostra in beginner gear… it would just take 50 minutes to do and a whole lot of attempts.

In my journey so far, Diablos was the one that gave me the most headaches.  I was trying to learn to guard point (use shield to be invulnerable) and it really wasn’t working for me.  I’m sure I tried that quest a dozen times until I got the timing just right.  Well, I needed to capture the bugger for a quest and ended up fighting him in the Arena the other night.  He died in 4 minutes.

Rank 8 weapon and  Rank 7 armor, all the canteen items unlocked, a Palico with rank 8 gear and a maxed Palarang.  I put on the Vitality Mantle (prevents some damage) and went to town.  Running up walls and crashing down to mount him for massive damage.  Dodging at the right time.  Using Guard Points on every charge.  I felt like one of those instructional YouTube videos on how to play the game.  With a Charge Blade and long windups, you really need to have some luck on your side for a couple of the swings.  Felt super easy.

That was the last arena battle in normal mode.  I’ve done nearly every optional quest available, but one hidden part of the game is the need to capture monsters and fight them in the arena.  I have most of them for High Rank mode… now to get 1 or 2 more.  If it goes anything like Diablos, it should be fairly smooth sailing.

If.

WoW Sub Numbers

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It has been many a year since WoW published subscription numbers – pretty much this time in 2015.  Since then we’ve had nothing but speculation, mostly from 3rd party sites.  It would be fair to say that the general trend has been downwards.  This is entirely subjective, based on the number of people present in any given area – or simply the number of large scale world quests available.  Dips and spikes.

WoW did let us know how many copies of BfA sold initially – 3.4 million.  The wording here is a bit suspect, as it’s unrealistic that this would be the total number of sales on day one so much as by day one.  It would be fair to argue that this number would encompass both those who were actively playing in Legion, those who stayed after the free weekend in July, and those curious about the traditional WoW expansion fever.  I was in the 2nd category.  I am certain there is a long tail when it comes to expansion purchases, but a tiny fraction of those on “day 1”.

A recent tweet from the makers of WeakAuras intimates that the subscription numbers are a tad different.

It’s an interesting bit of “news” in that it can’t really be substantiated, right?  Does it align with subjective viewpoints?  Sure.  Is it mathematically accurate?  Not so sure about that.  Is it possible Blizz exposed data that it shouldn’t have?  Yeah, 100% on that front.

 

I barely squeezed out a month out this expansion.  But that’s my experience.  Plenty of folk still having fun.  And without substantiated numbers from Blizz, human nature is to always trend towards the less pleasant of all rumors.    Doubtful that will make a difference though – they are still making money hand over fist.

End Curve

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Where the true journey begins.

Xeno’Jiva is down, which effectively marks the transition from story game (and High Rank) to end game.  From the start until this point, there was mostly linear progress.  I am now in the horizontal progress phase.  What I mean by that is that I never felt the need to hunt a specific monster for a rare drop.  I just kept plugging away at the Assigned (story) quests until I got here.  It’s provided me with a rank 5 (of 8) weapon, which has been quite enough for most cases.  I’ve also acquired a fair chunk of armor upgrade, making earlier battles a lot easier.

What’s next is the question.

Breadth & Depth

In terms of weapons, I need to fan out with a few more Charge Blades that address specific monster weaknesses.  The one I have now is focused on Blast damage (build up for an explosion), but it would be extremely practical for a set of water/fire/ice/dragon weapons to dramatically speed up specialized farming.

Some high level theories on damage.  Some weapons provide innate elemental damage.  That listed damage coverts ~10% per attack (depending on weapon speed).  So if a weapon lists something like 500 normal, 250 elemental, then on a monster weak to that element, you will be doing 50% more damage per attack.  In practice most weapons have a 25% bonus through elemental damage.  This can be further boosted through weapon enchantments (gems) up to their cap.  That cap depends on the base damage… more complicated than need be so here’s a link to explain it.

This is all discounting the fact that some weapons are just plain better on some enemies than others.  The Charge Blade (Hammer and Greatsword are similar) are skill-based weapons that require very good positioning.  Something like Dual Blade or Sword and Shield can be much more mobile.  Some enemies spend way too long in the air, or have some seriously deadly AE attacks, making ranged weapons a better alternative.

A Good Defense

At the base, everyone needs armor.  It has a linear relationship to the amount of damage you take.  High rank gear makes a tremendous different when it comes to a generic armor set.

Yet similar to weapons, armors have elemental resistances.  Something like Teostra who is pure fire, would be best served by fire resistance.  It’s entirely possible to find a piece of gear with amazing armor stat but resistances that make you into a wet tissue.  Fighting Kirin without Lightning resistance is key to a bad time.

I will say that elemental resistances are the safety net of battles.  If you are significantly overpowering your target, then it doesn’t matter that much.  If something like Teostra is taking half your life with a single swing… then get some fire resistance and see a world of difference.

Putting it into Practice

Bazelgeuse.  I need his horns.  I wasn’t too flustered with him in the past as a dual blade user – easy to get in and out.  Charge Blade is more of a challenge since you can get move locked and then he decides to blow up everything around him.

This particular mission decided to have Deviljo show up.  For those unawares, he randomly spawns in HR zones and is top of the food chain.  He will attack anything, and doesn’t give up chase.  I didn’t realize he was in this zone until he roared (stunned me), which gave Bazel ample time to finish his dive bomb and wipe me out.

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He is massive.  He’s even deadlier when he has a monster in his jaws.

My second death was also due to that bugger shoulder checking me into the wall, then body slamming Bazel on my body.  Ok, enough.  I knew I had Bazel on the ropes, he took a nap and I put a barrel bomb to get things going again.  Deviljo was far away, so I figure to finish it off with a mount.

Sure enough, as I’m in the middle of the final swing of the mount attack, Deviljo shows up.  Maybe I lucked out, maybe it’s the code, but he didn’t attack me while mounted.  He did however attack me when I dismounted and couldn’t move.  3rd faint and will need to give it another shot.

So now the journey begins to round out the gear set.  Less large jumps in power and more about targeting specific builds for specific monsters.  Make a goal and work back from there.  Fun times.

Hype for Diablo

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Or not.  The Diablo panel is on the main stage right after the opening ceremony, which is usually reserved for ultra amazing news.  From Blizz.

BlizzCon 2018 is almost here and we’ve seen a lot of rumors flying around about our plans for Diablo at the show. These are very exciting times—we currently have multiple teams working on different Diablo projects and we can’t wait to tell you all about them . . . when the time is right.

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We know what many of you are hoping for and we can only say that “good things come to those who wait,” but evil things often take longer. We appreciate your patience as our teams work tirelessly to create nightmarish experiences worthy of the Lord of Terror.

While we won’t be ready to announce all of our projects, we do intend to share some Diablo-related news with you at the show.

November 2 will be an especially diabolical date—not only is it the first day of BlizzCon, it’s also when Diablo III arrives on the Nintendo Switch. If you’re planning to pick up the game (the digital download will be available starting at midnight on launch day) and are joining us in Anaheim, be sure to bring your console. We’d love to slay some demons with you on the show floor.

Again, we want to thank you for your patience and support. We are eternally grateful to you and the millions of other Diablo fans around the world whose passion for this franchise inspires us and keeps our fires burning.

We’ll see you in hell . . . and at BlizzCon!

There are two ways to read this.

Downplay the Hype

Blizzard is aware of the hype for a Diablo 4 announcement and are attempting to temper expectations.  I can’t think of anyone who wants to spend an hour listening to Diablo 3 on the Switch.  Realistically, there’s no way that Blizzard would announce a new title in 45 minutes and then not have any reasonable follow up sessions.

The ol’ Switcheroo

That was a bad pun… but it could be that they are throwing water on the flames to only throw gas back on it during Blizzcon.  That would require significant META thinking, which honestly… no.  Blizzard can’t go a week without leaking a new Overwatch character, or HotS option through seedy internet means.  The Diablo team  is the least subtle of the bunch.  Really feels like the no-BS dev stream.

Other Options

Thinking about this a bit more, I find that Blizzard is oddly quiet regarding the mobile app space.  Hearthstone is manageable.  The WoW mobile app seems designed by a slow witted chimp.  Diablo, Overwatch, HotS all have zero presence.  Could D3 work with mobile controls?  There are certainly other ARPGs that make it work, and it’s not like D3 has that many buttons to press.

Even a large stretch, Diablo has enough lore built in to make some sort of large media push – maybe a Netflix series – some sort of animated one.  I can’t really see them financing a movie.  There are likely still fresh scars around the Warcraft movie.

Blizzard rarely initiates anything – they react.  Torchlight Frontiers is out next year… so maybe they are trying to get in front of that message.  Hard to argue that D3 isn’t the most accessible ARPG on the market now.  PoE seems to require a degree in spacial physics, and Grim Dawn lacks an effective end-game.  Be curious to see how that turns out.

 

High Times

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Pretty good odds you’re aware that Canada legalized marijuana (cannabis/weed) on Wednesday.  This was an election promise from 2 years ago, and more like 10 years in the making.  Holland was the first country, and there are certainly many states/provinces globally that have also taken this change to heart.  Still, there are about 40 million people here, so it would be fair to say that we’re the largest group globally with this new law.

I won’t argue the merits of taking drugs.  I won’t bother discussing the various strains with all level of THC.  Or the empirical data supporting medicinal use.  There are more than enough posts/blogs/studies/evaluations/theses on this to blind a man.

From a personal lens, this has nearly zero impact.  I don’t use it, and have no plans to use it.  There’s already plenty of it to go around.  Walking pretty much anywhere downtown, you’d get a whiff of it.  It was always going to be part of the “drugs are bad, mmkay” talk with the kids.  People still can’t smoke in cars, or in non-smoking areas (99% of buildings).  Can’t show up to work blazed.

Big scope it’s going to take a long time to figure out.  Sure, it probably will mean cleaner strains (no fentanyl) for those that go through official supply lines.  More variety.  The price point will need to be tweaked to offset organized crime supply lines – just like contraband cigarettes.  The changes to society are going to take quite a few years to sort out.  We’re a large (physically) country, with different cultures from coast to coast – hard to say how NL will cope with this as compared to BC, which was practically legal there anyhow.

There will be the negative voices on this as well.  There always are for any change.  Think about the children! they will scream.  Of course think of the children.  Who doesn’t?  It’s not like this is saying “give $20 weed-infused gummy bears on Hallowe’en”.   Who would even think of actually giving that away, or what parent would accept gummies in a ziplock for their kid?  And if they did, do you think now those kids are in danger?

There are plenty of cautions to this change, lessons to be applied from other areas, and tweaks that will be made along the way.  Nothing is ever perfect.  But damn if this isn’t something interesting to talk about that doesn’t feel like a Twilight Zone episode.

Relative Time

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Einstein was right.

There’s an interesting argument to be had around the duration of an activity in relation to another.  The old “holding a burning pot vs a loved one” argument. Mega Man’s 25 screens/level format feels just the right length of engagement, while the time spent travelling between one location and another in Pillars of Eternity can feel like years.  Clearly, it’s based on subjective pleasure of an activity.  More than that, it often relates to player engagement.

Menial tasks are not engaging.  Very few people find pleasure from the act of cleaning a garage, though the end result is certainly pleasant and cathartic.  Games that focus on the menial busywork lose my attention quickly.  I certainly don’t mind fiddling with details, but those details need purpose and impact.  Back to PoE2 for a second.  I’m still stuck in the first part of the game because travel takes so damn long and does nothing for the game.  I’ve never had a random event, a ship battle, and only seen 2 isles to explore – all without combat.  Why pad on 2-3 minutes of non-interactive and repetitive gameplay?  Spider-Man has a ton of travel, but the act of travelling is chocked full of random events and interactive gameplay.  You learn the ability to fast travel long before you’ve completed the checklist of random events.

The disengagement from WoW relates strongly to this as well.  World Quests are even more menial than in Legion.  Dungeons (non-M+) could have been mistaken for MoP dungeons in many cases.  The world and story items are excellent, but they lack replayability.  I truthfully miss Suramar’s evolving story, or the Withered dungeon, or the Mage Tower.

MH:W’s missions are generally time-based – 50 minutes a shot.  Sometimes less if you’re on an investigation.  50 minutes that cannot be paused I may add.  When you start off the game and learning the ropes, very few battles go over 20 minutes.  As you progress, the larger enemies start taking a lot longer.  Either due to them having larger HP pools, or due to the combat mechanics requiring more patience.

Example is a recent Lavasioth fight.  30 minutes to hunt, and I wanted to actually capture it for the collection.  Capturing and fighting all monsters in the Arena unlocks extra gear bits.  He’s a bit of a bugger as his armor gets more resistant over time, until he goes back in the magma.  He also has a tremendously powerful fireball attack, so positioning is key.  Throw in a roaming Rathalos and you have a potent mix for long fights.  I ended the fight with about 2 minutes to spare.  Dung pods would have helped with the Rathalos.  Making the fight go faster still requires a better weapon (such as water-based), and overall better skill with using the weapon.  Considering I’ve just completed Nergigante, I need a whole lot more drops to widen my weapon arsenal.

Still, if I were to randomly capture 5 minutes of that fight, it would likely include a whole pile of dodging, rolling, striking, healing, and getting thrown around.  It would be more hectic than practiced, that’s for sure.  But every piece of that would be engaging to me.  Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly menial tasks in MH:W- like killing 8 Girros or some such.  But they are so rare, that they feel like reprieve from the walking death machines on other quests.

MH:W doesn’t do bite-size gaming well, since you can’t really leave a quest mid-point without losing all the previous progress.  It doesn’t try to.  It does moment to moment gaming very well, so that you don’t see the time go by.  Better than a whole pile of other games I’ve played in recent years.  I often find myself losing track of time, thinking I’m a minute away from my goal.  Then the dreaded “one more turn” thought comes in, and there goes 15 more minutes.  That’s an oddly good feeling to have – wish it applied to more things in life.

 

Learning Through Plateaus

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Starts and stops along the way.

I’m a firm believer in the learn/apply/learn model.  You find this model primarily in sports, where there are study sessions, followed by practice, then by games, then repeat.  You rarely find this model in actual schools, which is somewhat ironic.  Schools instead focus on the learn/learn/learn model, with very few instances of practical application, except for one large one at the end of the term.  That final exam rarely has anything to do with much more than ensuring you memorized a textbook.

The flipside is the apply/apply/apply model, where you just brute force your way through a problem.  Sure, this can work if your problem is large hamburger, but there has got to be a cleaner way to finish a plate!  Not to mention the inherent danger of trying something without any concept as to how it works.  How many folks do you know that have electrocuted themselves trying to do some “small repair”?

Outside of fringe cases, you need time to learn, and time to put that study into practice, then learn from that practice.  Without taking the time for that last step is where people hit plateaus.  A plateau in the sense of lack of further progress, where you simply stall moving forward.  In nearly all cases it’s a lack of study of the problem and solutions that holds a person back.

When I initially picked up the guitar, my hands were simply incapable of forming an F bar.  I was twisting my wrist and stretching my fingers, and generally swearing to some old god that I could make this work.  It was a week plus trying to get that thing to work.  I did some reading/watching and found a similar cord that didn’t require a bar, and bob’s your uncle, it works.  It’s not to say that I stopped practicing a bar chord, just that I moved on from that particular plateau onto the next.  A bar B is next.

Nergigante

Of course a game!

The first time I met this guy on PS4, I spent the better part of a week taking him down solo.  I knew his patterns, but there was a particular set of moves that I simply could not avoid – the dive bomb, and front smash/throw (after being hit).  Near constant instant-KO.  With time, I figured out the i-frame dive, which makes you invulnerable to damage.  The catch here, is that you need to have your weapons sheathed.  With Dual Blades, this is a quick animation.

This is not a quick animation with the Charge Blade.  I’m sure I saw grass grow the number of times I tried this.  I failed this quest a half dozen times trying to make the old process work again here.  I tried tweaking my positioning, reading the shade of black on the spikes to predict it… it just wasn’t coming together.  Then I decided to take a small breather than think a bit more.  Brain fart enough, the Charge Blade comes with a shield.

Sure enough, blocking the damage for all his attacks deals minimal damage, and provided a single opening for a SAED.  So for the first 80% of the fight, it was more or less attacking until I was SAED-ready, then waiting to block an attack, then countering with a massive strike.  First attempt failed at the 90% mark, the dive bomb still one shot me and I guess it’s related to the angle of attack.  Second attempt I didn’t faint once.

The old set of tricks were not going to work here, no matter how hard-headed I was to make them fit.  I thought I knew enough, but was clearly proven wrong.  It’s interesting to look back on my mental process for this plateau.  Certainly could have saved some headaches by taking more time to think, than do.  At least I didn’t blow a week like last time, so some bit of progress.

Striking the Mountain

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He’s a zone unto himself.

MHW has 3 phases.  Low Rank (LR), High Rank (HR), and Tempered (T).  Each tends to focus on an Elder Dragon – some mean buggers.  Low Rank is all about Zora Magdaros.

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That’s a walking mountain

The missions with Zora are not at all like other hunts.  They start off on his (it’s?) back where you need to destroy 3 cores that do fire damage.  You also have the option of fighting Nergigante – but that is seriously a bad idea.  While roaming on his back, you can mine a few ore spots, for much needed material to craft some decent gear. The next part varies but the repeatable version includes you shooting canons, a dragonator (a giant spike), and ballistae for about 10 minutes until he finally drops.  The only difficulty here is not dying to the magmacore fire attacks.

If you luck out, you can do this quest 2 more times after the first, and that should give you at least 1 HR piece of Zora armor.  Which is a significant boost.

From here you reach the first major interlude.  The goal of which is to enter HR areas and find some Rathian clues.  Just regular exploring will work, but you’ll need to spend a lot of time doing it.  You can boost this by completing some rank 6 quests.  I’m at this spot now.

If I recall, the game then takes a more open approach following this step.  You’ll get a bunch of optional quests, but the main one will be about finding the 3 elder dragons, killing Nergigante (super death mode), killing the 3 elders, then finally Xeno’jiva.  From that point forward you’ll have access to Tempered monsters.

On paper, I’m about 75% of the way there since I have 7 monster kill quests to go.  In reality… not so much since I’ll need to improve my gear to take on those 7 monsters.

Guard Point

My previous playthrough was focused on Dual Blades.  It was extremely visceral and had little to do with thinking.  Sure, there was a skill ceiling higher than just mashing buttons – but mashing buttons was so fulfilling!  That generated a lot of hard walls to climb.  Anjanath, Pink Rathian, Nergigante… those buggers were death incarnate.  I had to really learn the game mechanics to get past them – in particular monster weaknesses, attack patterns, and the i-frame dodge.  That last one is extremely useful for Nergigante’s attacks that can/will 1-shot you.  If your weapon is sheathed, and you dodge, you’ll actually throw yourself to the ground and be immune to damage for about a second.  Given you need to sheath, it’s not something you can quickly react to.

The Charge Blade has that dodge as well as a thing called Guard Point.  I’m pretty sure the Sword & Shield have this too.  The thing here is that you have 3 particular movements that present your shield in front of you, and if the monster hits that shield they take damage and you take none.  It took a while for me to learn the timing of this, and Diablos is the best one to try this with first.

When I figured out how to properly use Guard Point, my gameplay changed.  I tend to be somewhat conservative, looking for an opening, and then striking.  Effective use of Guard Points means I can go all out, and counter 90% of physical attacks.  And with a boosted shield, I can do even more damage, countered with an immediate SAED.

It took a while to figure out the timing, but wow, does it ever make combat more engaging.

 

Choose Your Own Adventure

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Or non-linear growth.

I’d say schools are the best and worst examples of this.  The basic concept of moving up a grade is linear, and you’ll find enough teachers unwilling to stray from the A–>B–>C learning concepts.  But you will always find at least one in your life (hopefully more) that goes so far outside of bounds that you come out of that class with a deeper appreciation of everything.  (My personal feelings about teachers could fill a novel.)  Your abilities in one area are rarely held back by those in another.  They may have dependencies, or benefits mind you.

I’m a decent hockey player, it’s the sport I spent the most time playing.  But I also played nearly every other sport possible, and I’m above average in most.  I don’t really get by on the physical side, but on the mental one.  You would be surprised to learn how most sports operate on the same concepts – in particular group play.  Seeing the play happen before it does, and then anticipating the next step.  That mental cross link is the key.

We see it in nearly all games.  If you’ve played one tab-target MMO, you likely have all the basic skills required for another.  Sure, you’ll eventually learn the specifics of that other game, the nuances that make it, well, it.  Even some more basic elements, like not standing in fire, that translates to nearly every other game as well.  Now the mechanics of how that fire is created, spread, and your movement abilities are game specific, but the concept of GTFO is the same.

Then you have skills that have very little overlap.  I play a bit of guitar, and it has very little in common with other skills.  Physically, I need to contort my wrist/hands into odd positions.  Mentally I need to recall sets of notes, large structures, timing, and then the actual song.  It’s a performance skill, meaning 99% practice, 1% actual presentation.  And that 1% requires a level of confidence that can be hard to find.  But when you try a bit, and you fail, and you succeed, you start to see how it fits into other abilities.  Many songs are built on the same set of cords or transitions, so it’s less about memorizing the notes but the overall pattern.  The rhythm in music is fundamentally based on heart beats, which many athletes are conscious about while active.  The fine motor movement on the strings is similar to typing, or a heavy APM game like SC2.  Even the wrist movements are quite similar to just good knife technique in the kitchen.

MH:W is making me think of all this due to the 14 weapon types.  Conceptually they fit one of 3 molds – attack, defense, range.  Mechanically, they are all quite different.  If you use a long sword like you use dual blades, you’re gonna have a bad time, mmkay.  But they do share something in common, they are all rhythm based.  A charge blade is more akin to a waltz, where large sweeping and deliberate movements are key.  Sword and shield feels like you are waiting for the bass to drop (defend), then go all out.  The glaive is more like prancing in an instrumental ballet.  Each weapon has a best suited monster to fight, where their own rhythm impacts its pairing.  Rather than thinking the entire game needs to be learned from scratch, you can take previous experience in many fields and apply it here with great effect.

I am continually fascinated at how all my learning can be applied to other fields, and that there’s never really a feeling of time lost.  Something as simple as making a puzzle forces you to look at the big picture before making sense of the details.  Breadth of experience and understanding how to tap into that skill set… that’s the key to versatility and adaptability.  Depth of experience certainly has it’s uses (e.g. get a certified electrician) but in the wide majority of cases it’s better to expand one’s knowledge rather than perfect it.