ESO: Outta Vvardenfell

August 25, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

I’ve done pretty much everything I can do in Vvardenfell at my low level, so I figure it’s off to the rest of the world. I think the place to be would be the starter zone for the Ebonheart Pact. Which would probably be the province with Ebonheart, which is Stonefalls. Conveniently that’s just across the sea a bit, although it doesn’t matter because there’s a wayshrine in Davon’s Watch. Being one of the zone hubs, there’s a ton of fresh quests waiting. One is pretty insistent – I need to see some guy RIGHT NOW. So, off I go, and what do I get, but being knocked out and sacrificed, and sent to Coldharbor. Which is basically Hell I guess. Not quite what I had in mind. Fortunately, this seems to be a rookie quest, so it’s easy (and I guess all my stuff I was carrying got sent to hell with me, so that was helpful). Break out of hell, no sweat.

But then we end up in some weird place, not Davon’s Watch, or even Stonefalls. Turns out someone found a girl falling from the sky (just like my Japanese animes), into the ocean. Fortunately, all that heavy armor floats, and they were able to fish me out. Unfortunately, there was a massive hurricane, so the ship that rescued me got shipwrecked itself. Now we’re at some place called Khenarthi’s Roost, which is an independent island the Dominion is trying to court. All the way down at the south end of the map. Some friendly Khajit tells me to blend in.

I’m sure my Bouyant Armiger and Ashlander gear fits in well with the Dominion guys. Maybe I should change that…

Well, I just hope they don’t recognize that tattoo as relating to Vivec. But whatever. I guess this is the Dominion player newb zone. Perhaps the game thought that, since this is a Bosmer character, it should go to the Dominion zone. Or maybe the allegiance one picks during character creation doesn’t matter. Anywho, I do all the quests, save the island, and end up helping the enemy get a new port island. I’m sure Vivec is proud of me.

That eventually getting done, I go back to Stonefalls to get on with what I was doing. Somehow end up going to Orsinium, but again I go back; I guess that’s DLC stuff that I don’t want to deal with right now. There’s an invasion of Stonefalls by…someone, I don’t know if it’s the Dominion or the Covenant. But they’re fighting the guys that gave me a quest, so they’re my enemy too. I save Davon’s Watch, by letting some guy defy his ancestors and summon an ancient monstrosity that’s totally not going to bite us in the butt any time in the near future, I’m sure.

Then I find another quest marker, and it’s some person that tells me they’re the ones that fished me out of the water. I guess if I wasn’t trying to confuse the game by going against the racial allegiances, they would have, after I escaped Coldharbor. They then send me to what is the Ebonheart Pact newb island. I’m now 31, so I’m sure I won’t be overleveled for that either.

Replaying Games

August 23, 2019TheRoyalFamily 2 Comments

Kim of Later Levels made a post a few days ago (that I just got to reading yesterday) about immediately replaying games. They were mostly talking about what would induce one to replay games, but the question was asked: do you ever replay games immediately after playing them?

For me, the answer is yes, I’ve done that before more than once. But that doesn’t make for much of a blog post (commenting on days old posts seems pretty useless, at least to me). So I got to thinking: which games have I done this with? What do they have in common? Why play them over again so soon, when I always have a backlog of other games to get to (indeed, I often will not finish a game, to move on to the next new game!)?

So, these are some/most of the games that I remember giving another go right after finishing them the first time:

Fallout: New Vegas
Pokemon Blue/Red
Gothic 3
Deus Ex
Morrowind
Oblivion
Skyrim
Star Trek Online (going to count making a new character as starting over)

Looking on it, all of these have this in common: they have different possible play styles that you can choose, some right from the beginning. Even if they have the same overall story, or even the same exact story experience, every time, the way you interact with the game can be different each time. Also, the games were very compelling for one reason or another, that kept me wanting more. Sometimes you can get a completely different story, so it’s like a sequel or add-on instead of the same game; but in the end, a game’s a game, and play matters: playing ranged one time, and melee the next, can create almost a completely new game.

But story is also important, at least the story in my head. In STO, the story for a faction character is exactly the same every single time you do it (ignoring missions that have been modified or removed), but for me, each character’s story is different. While there is more possible variation in a TES game, or Fallout, the story beats, the dialog choices, the quests and missions, they’re all the same every time you play the same faction; but I can fill in the blanks, fill in motivation and reactions and stuff. But I guess that’s its own sort of game, too.

Timelines In MMO’s (and Other RPG’s)

August 22, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

I was reading a reddit thread earlier, about a recent (in-character) blog post for Star Trek Online. Most of the thread was grousing (yet again) about the official timeline for the game: everything in the game takes place in the years 2409 and 2410. And the year isn’t over yet.

Now, said thread has the author of the post (a fan, not a dev) in there to justify said timeline. Basically, all that stuff happens quickly, and in rapid succession. And I can see how that could theoretically be justified.

But really, I think it’s a big stretch, especially since these things don’t take place in a vacuum. Part of the whole “RPG” thing is “role-playing,” ie, taking a role. The PC is a Character, after all. And while all the stuff in STO could, in theory, possibly take place in two years – two TV seasons, in other words – that would only really work with an established crew with an established captain. But that’s the trouble – in STO, no matter which faction you pick, you start out as a lowly junior officer, and end up as a full admiral (or its equivalent) well before even getting to the real “big damn hero” stuff.

The reddit thread offers some alternative timelines. One would be to have time in-game roughly match real life time. That’s how the shows worked. And it would at least be slightly sensible to take at least several years to build up rank. It’s still way too damn fast – even Kirk took about a decade as Captain to rank up – but at least it’s not crazy. Another option would be for each in-game “season” (major content patch) to equate to a year. This is also how the shows worked, although each show only had one season per year, so both are viable. This is better for the rank progression issue – we’re at something like season 18 or 19 I think, which makes for a much more sensible career path, even for a “saves the galaxy multiple times” hero.

(My own personal headcanon is that one’s career – and the events in the game – take place over at least a couple of decades, at least on the Federation side of things. Klingons can justify all this based on merit – this is the stuff songs are sung about, after all; and the Romulans can as well, as they’re basically the Rebel Alliance, promoting anybody to high rank as long as they stay alive and are successful. But Starfleet is pretty much a traditional, modern, bureaucratic military-complex, and while heroes get noticed (and thus placed first in line for promotions), there is still a process to all this. Hell, even in the US Civil War, brilliant officers still took the whole war to get from low to high rank.)

All that brought on the thought: what about other games? Especially MMO’s. From the games I’ve played, time doesn’t really seem to pass. I mean, some have day-night cycles, and some have seasonal events. But time doesn’t seem to pass in-character, for the most part, besides the occasional time-skip (like Dragon Age 2). When you have quests you can do in any order, especially sequence ones that can be interwoven (or, heaven forfend, out of order!), that makes trouble for setting up a timeline.

Let’s take Granblue Fantasy, for example. In a recent interview Director Fukuhara said that all the events were canon, but that they really didn’t think about where they fall in relation to each other (and the main story) – the players are all over the place in terms of what they’ve played (and I figure most are relatively low-level, and thus not as far along in the story), so making an extended timeline (a la Radiant Historia) is not something they’re terrible interested in. Of course, they’ve had six summer events now, and we can guess the game is five or so years along. And some events have characters that can only be present at certain times in the main story (like the recent Fastiva event…). I have my ideas, but that’s all they are – ideas.

But I was thinking about this in terms of, say, the Elder Scrolls games (including Elder Scrolls Online). We can guess what year they take place in (I think they’re actually explicitly stated somewhere, actually, even in-game) – or rather, the year they start. But how long do they take? In these sorts of games, you can’t even decide which events are canon, since there is the element of player choice, let alone what order events take place in, let alone when the events take place. (It was worst with Skyrim, which is perhaps at least part of why ESO takes place an age before any of the other games.)

Maybe I’m just being too big of a giant nerd about this.

Sometimes, Playing With Others Is Fun

August 21, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

Well, when you put it that way, how can I resist?

I was playing ESO last night, doing what I could to finish off Vvardenfell. I had a few delves left, and some dungeons and world bosses. I have to say, I really dislike when they put this kind of hard stuff on a completion tracker; it kinda makes me feel compelled to actually do the content. So off I go to the public dungeons.

The thing with the public dungeons is that they’re supposed to be done by a group. If you’re a big enough hero, I think you can solo them, but little lvl 20’s me ain’t that. But I could try. So I did. Didn’t get very far before some fellow came up to me to group with me. Seeing his much higher level, I agreed – always good to be carried. He was also more informed than I – he was looking for the skill shards, which I hadn’t even thought about being in this place.

And so it went. The first dungeon was also populated by other groups, so it was an easy time. Even the supposed hard boss was a breeze, to the point that I almost didn’t get there in time to get credit. We decided to do the other dungeon in the area. That one was a whole lot less populated – I think we only saw one other group, at the end. Going through that as a pair, when it was meant for parties, wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t too difficult either. And the end boss for that dungeon was pretty cool – not a big monster, but more a boss gauntlet, getting more hectic each time.

So, while I usually fly solo, joining up with this one dude was pretty cool too. 8/10, would team in the future. Now, to find randoms to do the world boss with…

I Have Actually Been Playing Games, Too

August 18, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

My last few posts have only been about games in the abstract. But I have really been playing video games, honest! A few hours a day, in fact! Just, most of the screenshots of the games I’ve been playing are on my pc, instead of my school computer where I blog from most of the time. And I haven’t been playing Steam games, either, which means no cloud storage.

The game that’s been taking most of my time is ESO. I’m really liking (so far) how much the game experience is like a proper Elder Scrolls game. And the writing isn’t so terrible either. When I first heard of the game, and how they were doing the alliance system, and being in 2E without any reason, and how the UI looked a lot like the default Skyrim UI, and all that, I was a big hater, I admit. I am not a huge fan of Skyrim (it took me 200+ hours to figure that out…), mostly because everything was even more casualized and consolized than Oblivion, and ESO looked like more of the same.

This seems like it would be uncomfortable to walk on.

Glad to find out it’s not, really. It’s a proper action MMO that just happens to be in the Elder Scrolls universe. While I don’t think it’s the best that could have been done, it is competent. And I do miss some of the detail that gets lost when greatly increasing the playable area (all the towns on Vvardenfell, for example, are much smaller than they are in Morrowind, and the buildings that are in both games are smaller, too). But taking all that into account, it’s good enough. Good enough to subscribe to.

As for my actual progress, I’ve gotten up to 20 or 21. Haven’t gotten any of the crafting up very high; I’m wondering if it’s worth keeping all of those green and blue equips for Research, or just Deconstructing them to get the crafting xp. I’m mostly doing this without guides, since (so far) it’s easy enough. Going through the main Morrowind story (this is the weakest writing so far; as per usual with TES games, the strength in writing is in the small details, not the big picture or grand events), since I guess that’s what I get for starting on that expansion. I have no idea what the actual main story is, or how to start it.

As an aside, I wish the earbuds I’m using (because I generally play in the dark of the morning, and my roommates want to sleep then for some reason) had markers for L and R. It’s always a mystery until I get in-game.

WoW Classic and Me

August 15, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

Now that Elsweyr and Shadowbringers hype has died down, it’s time for the elephant in the room to come back: WoW Classic. Most of the blogs I read are all up in this; somehow, I got in with the MMO crowd, and this is naturally the next big huge deal-thing. So, what am I going to do?

Nothing with this game, at least.

I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade (or at least the two or three of you that read this). If you are excited for this, that’s great. I’ve been hearing that WoW has been getting kinda stale recently, and this might just be the shot in the arm it needs.

I think that last sentence gave it all away though. “I’ve been hearing.” I’m just not into this game. I never was. I liked Warcraft II well enough, but Warcraft III left me a bit cold. I just never really got into the world of Warcraft, and never cared about the lore. When WoW came out, I was just starting off in college. I didn’t have time for that sort of game, and I certainly didn’t have the money for it if I had. (Nor did I likely have a PC that could run it – my parents got me a $400 eMachines PC for my birthday that year, and it could barely run CoD – the first one, when my roommate was playing CoD2. Yah.) I had friends that got into it, but it was never for me.

And once I actually did have the ability to play it (years later), it just wasn’t the sort of thing that appealed to me, aesthetically. I like cartoony stuff, just not that particular style. So, unlike FFXIV or ESO, which drew me in, in part, by the art, WoW continues to repel me.

Then, there’s the whole going-back-to-how-it-was thing about Classic. I decided, after playing games like WoW, that I wasn’t going to play any more like that, unless they were quite appealing in other areas. That was years ago, and WoW might very well be a game now I might have wanted to try, if it wasn’t for the art (I mean, I am playing FFXIV). But Classic is a game I really don’t want to play. And I have no nostalgia for those times in the game, so there’s nothing for me to go back to. Again, not to say anything against those that like it. I am personally looking forward to reading all the responses to this “new” thing. I might not understand some of it, but that’s fine – part of why I got into this blogging community (such as I have) was to get these different perspectives on these different games that I don’t play.

Newbtacular Progress: ESO and FFXIV

August 14, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

I finally got out of the babby tutorial in FFXIV: I hit 30 on my main job, so I got to go to the summer event. This was my immediate main goal for the game (I wanted my happi, and I got it), so good for me. Wasn’t really prepared for the summer event, even though I was the correct level: two of the events were for cooking and fishing jobs, which I haven’t even started.

Luckily for me, the obstacle course gives out rewards too (including what you need for the happi). Was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Fell off the first part a dozen times; switching to a controller for these parts wasn’t helpful. Eventually I figured out that the jump is fixed; once I got that down, the jumping portions were simple (not running off a platform after I landed…that’s another story).

Getting to 30 also meant (for me at least) joining one of the great companies; basically joining a faction. Funny how all these militias are courting the great hero (You), but once you actually join, it’s bottom rank, just like every other recruit. My character happened to join the Immortal Flames (I think that’s what they’re called; definitely something about Flame in there); considering how she started out in that city, and became a hero for some reason, you’d think the sultana (or the general) would fast-track my character’s rank a few levels; at least start as an officer, for heaven’s sake! But no, Private, Third Class Toubii it is.

In ESO, I also made some progress. Not nearly as much, though. There, my character (also Toubii, I think; I was going for Tobi, but that was taken, as was Tobii; Tobiii seemed a bit much) is still just some nameless scrub, out making a name for herself. Or at least money, and something to stave off boredom. Anyone asks her to do any little thing, she does it. Find your kid? Sure. Kill a high-ranking official in her office? Why not? It’s all the same to her. Doesn’t seem to level very fast, though. I’m only at lvl 14 I think, with 4’s in all the main armory professions.

Speaking of crafting, those buggers did it: they got me to sub. I needed that crafting bag. Money doesn’t come fast, at least at the babby levels I’m at, and you need a lot to expand your bank and inventory. And crafting materials are what take up most your space. But the crafting bag, which you can only get by subbing, fits everything you could want to craft with. So nice to not have to play the inventory management game, when I’m still trying to find out what’s actually worth anything.

And, I’m still in Vvardenfel. Haven’t even gone very far up the west coast (went all the way up the east side though. Turns out I did finish the Telvani questline. That was actually really compelling, though I don’t think it really fits the setting (letting an Argonian rise up in rank from slave to an actual member of the House? Really?).

One problem I really have with the game is stealth. There have already been several stealth areas, but the game does stealth poorly. It looks like objects don’t actually conceal you like you’d think; there are only a few objects that you can hide in, not behind. That makes sneaking around very difficult. Also, it seems the NPC line of sight is funky, if not broken; you don’t know when they’re going to detect you. And, as far as I can tell, you get no backstab/stealth crit bonus, so no assassinations. It’s an MMO, so I’m not expecting it to behave like an action game (like, say, Morrowind…), but when the game tries to play like it is, but doesn’t allow it, that’s a bit discouraging.

He’ll certainly fare better than the last NPC adventurers we encountered there…

A Quick Thought: Starting a New MMO

August 13, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

There’s one big problem with starting a (relatively) long-standing MMO, that’s been properly doing it’s thing – early group content. Trouble is, early group content is pretty easy to get past, and then never do it again, unless there’s some unique/attractive gear. As I’ve been going through FFXIV, I finally reached the point a day or two ago where I had to do group content to advance. And you unlock more and more stuff in quick succession, it seems. So, I’ve been having this sort of thing in my screen a lot:

I don’t know how to fix this. Maybe keep adding good things to the loot pools. At least in this game, you could add good-looking gear, so people can use it as glamours. Or have huge XP boosts, I don’t know.

It doesn’t help that I picked DPS instead of tank or healer. At least this class is pretty brain-dead, because I’m a simple sort, not very quick. And DPS is a dime a dozen, so no one blames me, or remembers me when I suck.

It’s Still Sunday In Alaska…

August 12, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

Hard to write about upcoming news for the day, when it comes out after midnight…Anyways, finally there’s the news of the new event + banner for Dragalia Lost. And hoo boy, folks are upset.

The event itself was pretty much a known entity, since it got datamined earlier. Typical facility event, though it looks like this time the facility boosts bow and dagger units, instead of elemental units. Certainly this is an attempt to pull these weapons out of the gutter, but it’s going to take a lot more than a damage boost to fix them (that will help, since part of the problem is low dps in a dps game, but it’s not enough).

But what has people mad is the units. Reddit, gays, and girls are mad that ‘all’ the units are again girls; and one of them is Cleo, who just got an alt (even though it’s a main-character limited after the event that heavily featured her, so it doesn’t really count). ‘All’ because, again, a guy got a summer alt too – and it’s Luca, who finally gets his first alt after almost a year. But only SSR’s count, I suppose, and Luca, like Ranzal, is only SR. People also seem to be mad about Siren getting an alt, even though she was the last dragon released. And /drag/ is mad because, like usual, they’re assuming that every unit is bad, even when it’s clear they’re not (like, Verica is a very good healer, she just isn’t necessary in the content she’s made for, so thus she SUCKS).

As for me, they’re not limited, so I’m not rolling. Yet again. Feels good being a savechad. Anniversary, here I come! Nor am I upset about the units. I look forward to Halloween Cleo, Thanksgiving Cleo, and Hanukkah Cleo.

FFXIV: Your Clothes Are Incompatible With This Pick…

August 11, 2019TheRoyalFamily Leave a comment

I know, I know, a very original observation. But I think this is the first game that has different clothes entirely between battle and crafting/gathering. I mean, it makes a certain degree of sense – they are completely different tasks. You don’t need a lot of armor to go mining, generally speaking. But I’d’ve expected to be prevented from equipping the intended tool, not to equip my tool, and then all of a sudden be denuded. Apparently, “All classes” doesn’t actually mean “all”. Would really have been nice to have been informed about that beforehand.

This might be the first MMO I’ve seen that adds some sort of shoe as underwear.

As can be seen, I decided to go with miner for my first non-combat class. I’ve always favored mining to other forms of gathering in games like this. Even though it usually amounts to the same action, there’s definitely a different feeling to it, just from the animations and sounds and such. And while this might be the least engaging form of mining I’ve seen in pretty much any game that has it, I still find it strangely compelling. Until late last play session, my miner job was leveled higher than my combat job.

But, as I want to actually do the summer event before it goes away, I got back to my main job. As everyone says that the MSQ is the best way to advance, I got back to that, too. I didn’t get very far (judging from a guide I read, I’m actually quite behind where I should be, based on level), but somehow this low-level sprout is the hero of the city. Having been spoiled a bit on the story, I guess that makes sense – merely “hero of the city” is small potatoes compared to where this bun is going.

One thing I have found quite annoying is that you can take some quests, but not be able to turn them in, because the level requirements at either end are different. I took one quest at lvl 15 or 16, and couldn’t turn it in until 19. That makes no sense. And it’s not like the xp gained for completion makes up for that.