Skyrim Dragonborn

I am temporarily homeless. I am without home. All of our worldly possessions were packed up and shipped off to Melbourne a few weeks ago. A city I have never seen. Well okay, I saw it once in 1995 but I think I was drunk for that entire year so it doesn’t really count. But as yet I am not in Melbourne; my wife and I are living in the little seaside town of Albany for a couple of months while she finishes off a contract for her work. We are staying in a nice little apartment on the seaside all paid for by the company dime. I have resigned from my job and now here I sit. So not only without a home, but without gainful employment. What a treat.

So I spend my time taking walks along the beach and around wind swept headlands where enormous waves from the Southern Ocean come crashing in to sweep Vietnamese fishermen off the rocks. It’s all quite exciting. The other thing that I am doing is attempting to finish off the second draft of my book as my editor is getting rather upset with me in a very American way. It’s all okay as I know just how to needle him. My preferred method is to remind him of my opposition to gay marriage. Shazam! And off he goes for some frothing at the mouth. If that fails I can always fall back on casting doubt on man-made global warming, but that’s less fun now as even he is beginning to realize that it all might have been a giant con to begin with. So I pound away at my book, and I walk around the sea, and when I’ve done enough of these I allow myself the luxury of playing Skyrim the Dragonborn expansion.

It’s really rather neat. Well, it’s neat now that I’ve worked out how to get it going. I actually adventured around the island of Solstheim for a good few hours before it finally dawned on me that maybe I was missing something. I saved miners from hordes of undead, (a quite excellent reiteration of a dragur tomb – who said that these things were boring? Not me!), pummeled the life out of ash monsters, killed hordes of little jabbering mutants and even got made their chief, saved the town’s leaders from imminent assassination, (oh yeah, spoilers), and ventured into the netherworlds by reading hideous black books with writhing tentacles spewing forth to wrap themselves around my face.

But all the while I was getting a tad frustrated by the fact that the obvious badass baddy on the island was whomever it was that had mind controlled most of the population and enlisted them to build giant phallic effigies with thrusting green neon lights. Now don’t go me wrong, I’m all for a good phallic thrusting effigy but the fact was that it was starting to gnaw on me that I was supposed to be able to do something about this. And yet, and yet. I tried many things but even killing every person in sight didn’t bring the big dark baddy out of his hidey hole. Things really got serious when my own follower disappeared. My faithful companion ended up mind enslaved. I had had serious plans for her too. Serious plans.

So I did what every player with half a brain does in these situations – I looked it up on the internet. And lo and behold it turns out that mindless cultists will attempt to kill me after I have completed the High Hothgar quest which I hadn’t bothered doing because this is my second character and I didn’t see the point. So off I went to High Hothgar and I shouted all the shouts, (thank fuck I had a few dragon souls stored away), and then whowouldathoughit, I get some bad dudes try to kill me and they leave a note. Which directed me back to the island where I had been walking around like an idiot for so long. Now I have a new follower who has some funky arse fighting moves and actually knows how to sneak. I’m in the temple and going to find the bad guy and …
Well I’m going to have to wait and see because today’s 1000 words for the book haven’t been done yet. And I don’t want to fall into the trap of spending my entire day playing video games. One does have responsibilities you know.

 

Short-cuts are Anathema to MMOs.

Nils is posting again, and he has a post today concerning the nature of MMOs and those who play them. Specifically, those who play MMOs are people who have time to dedicate to their hobby. A lot of time. Nils gives an age grouping of 10-28 year olds as being the demographic which should be targeted by game developers. After that people just don’t have enough time to invest in an MMO.

I absolutely agree with this, and the further reasoning that MMOs have gone downhill fast since game designers tried to retain players with less time on their hands. Witness the evolution of an MMO that is in actual fact a single player game with a lot of people playing it at the same time. The dungeon finder looking for group option was the first nail in the coffin for this from WoW a few years ago. A bunch of us saw the writing on the wall when that was introduced. The dumbing down of the product was not designed to attract new players; it was designed to try and keep players that were leaving due to not having the time to grind.

And it has worked – WoW’s core numbers have remained steady for the past two years. But the result has been a complete regression in MMO game design. Short-cuts in the game go directly against what an MMO is about. Time is the great leveller in playing an MMO – the more time you put in the better your character will be. This then promotes loyalty to the game, and will guard against players jumping ship from one MMO to another. All short-cuts do is weaken the ability of the game to hold players long term. And a game becomes an endless rehash of old ideas as designers struggle to put out new content that will be chewed through at a relentless pace by players addicted to the instant gratification of short-cut MMOs. Only a game like WoW has been able to stay in front of the curve, due to them having a solid background of money and staff from the glory days of that game. The ultimate example of instant gratification is the cash shop. The cash shop is the polar opposite of investing time in an MMO.

The key concept of an MMO is community, and community is formed when players must work together. Community is strengthened by players not being able to hide; if you prove yourself to be an idiot, a thief, a liar, or a troublemaker then the community will ostracise you. The option of being able to pay to have a character renamed as well as cross-realm LFG finders destroy this method of self-policing. Include time with community and you build a very strong core that players are loathe to abandon as they have so much invested in the game. Witness an event such as the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. Something similar would just not be possible in today’s world of MMOs. Which reveals the fact that nothing happening in today’s games is memorable. This is only logical, as how can something designed to be chewed through by players hooked to the instant gratification monkey be memorable?

Time invested builds community through interaction with other players which builds relationships and memories. Founded and followed on these principles an MMO can build a core strength of players with emotional attachments and investments in the game. It is difficult in today’s MMO market to think of a game which is doing just this.

 

Isabella the Lucious.

It’s been so darn quiet from my end because the MMO world is so darn uninspiring at the moment. I am playing games, but like you lot want updates on Crusader Kings 2 or the fact that Skycrack pulled me back in with its latest expansion. Bloody boring eh, what?

So I will provide you all to the link for our glorious Pathfinder tabletop campaign. I am not the DM, not me. I play the gloriously beautiful Isabella, she of the 20, yes you read that correctly, 20 Charisma. How do you get 20 charisma? Praying to the gods, my friends. It’s no coincidence that she is a cleric.

I thought of posting the link during our last play session, as the DM mentioned that his campaign notes get quite a staggering amount of hits. I had no idea. So here you go, the adventures and travails of Isabella and some other party members as well as I suppose.

Krondor – a dwarf fighter who has the unique talent of being cowardly when he should be brave and brave when he should be running away.

Seng – a monk, (we call him monky boy), who frequently wins the day for us and then we make fun of his haircut.

Elamros – an elf archer. He joined the party after we discovered that he had killed a dozen hobgoblins with head shots from his bow. Since then he hasn’t been able to hit water when falling out of a boat.

Enjoy.

Website of our adventures: http://darkelfshadow.tumblr.com/

 

Crusader Kings 2 is my Game of the Year.

I’m pretty sure the title of this post says it all. My definition of year is a bit hazy though, seeing as we’re already into February 2013. But seriously, this game is hands down the best of the bunch, and I’ve played a few. I’ve actually played quite a lot of games over the past year, I just haven’t blogged about them as there was nothing memorable to write about. They were games and I played them. So what. You have played games too, but I’m sure you’re not blathering about it for all the world to hear. Blogging about every single game you’re playing can be a little bit like those people who update Facebook at 2am saying “I can’t sleeps, whats can i do lol!!!” Like we give a shit.

But CK2 is different. Firstly it is different in the sense that it has been receiving amazing quality updates since its release. There have been three so far:

The Sword of Islam introduced Muslim rulers and their countries, and then changed all the gameplay features to make it historically accurate. That was the DLC version that you had to pay for. But a free patch also provided new countries, empires, and core gameplay changes, (claims, plots, expanded combat tactics, commander traits and cultural buildings).

Legacy of Rome did a total flesh out of the Byzantine Empire as well as introducing factions, retinues, patriarchs, and major game events that you can unlock such as healing the Great Schism.

The Republic adds playable merchant republics such as Venice, trading posts, the Doge leadership line, more events and a good tightening of the combat system. No more will just having the larger army mean you automatically win.

But more than all of this, the game rewards you for the amount of time you put into it. There is no instant gratification here. It’s a decent learning curve, and your first few games will be frustrating as rookie mistakes compound and make your life a misery. But once you get a grip on things and learn how to manipulate your dynasty and those around you, CK2 is a game that keeps on giving. If you purchased the game on release, tried it for a bit and then gave up you should give it another look. You don’t even have to purchase the DLC packs as the patches have included the core gameplay elements such as changes to combat for free. It’s now a very different game.

 

Other Games. That are not MMOs. Like Poker.

I began playing MMOs in 2007, which coincided with the time I stopped actively playing poker online. It was one or the other, I didn’t have time for both. After a long 18 months of no MMO garnering my attention I decided to dip my toe back into the floating warm waters of scum that is the world of online poker. I expected … well, I don’t really know what I expected, but I didn’t expect what I got. Limit poker was getting pretty tough back when I stopped. A lot of players had moved to no-limit, a game which I find interesting but a bit hard on the old nerves, and thus the only players left in the limit pot were the generally good ones. Which meant profits went down.

I decided to play again last week. The first question was where to play. I hadn’t done this for a while and 5 years may as well be a new bloody century when it comes to the internet. So I went back to a site that I knew, PokerStars, for no reason other than I’m fairly sure they aren’t going to steal all my monies, and I deposited a few hundred dollars. The first thing I noticed was that there were no Americans, but this was due to their online poker laws being complete tosh; the poor little dears are only allowed to play on certain sites now.

So no Americans, but lots and lots and lots of Russians. And other Eastern Europeans. And a healthy does of Chinese. And some Western Europeans thrown in for shits and giggles. And blow me away but if it wasn’t 2004 all over again – these players are mind-blowingly awful. Imagine the worst player you ever ran an instance with and now pretend that you are playing against this type of idiot for money. That’s right, you heard me. That rogue who is putting out less DPS than the healer and who runs around saying ‘lol’all the time? You’re now playing him for his money in a game of skill and he acts the same way.

What’s not to like? A certain factor of this is probably the time of year with people being on holiday and all, but still the level of ineptitude is so bad that I regularly find myself hooting with delight at their awful plays. And while I was a tad rusty to start, the old skills are coming back quickly. Even better I find myself to be a calmer and more rational person since I last played seriously. I’m much more interested in making the correct play, in playing good poker rather than trying to win money.

Fear not though, gentle readers, for I shall continue to pontificate on MMO matters. But do not be surprised if I throw the occasional poker post in as well.

 

Excluding Women is not Misogyny.

No system is perfect. But in our world everything that we have is made up of a system. At your job you work in a system. A system of management, co-workers, and processes that govern how your working day unfolds. But again, no system is perfect. There exists a certain type of human who is cynical about everything. This is not hard to do, and it’s actually fairly lazy. What they do is rail against a system by finding the system’s holes. Every system has holes. They are the vocal minority. Sometimes they have a good point. A lot of the time they don’t. It can be hard to tune out the static. They don’t go and set up their own system, that would be too easy. You know who I’m talking about, you have one at your work I am sure.

Unsub wrote an interesting post about misogyny in gaming. First of all I am not accusing unsub of being one of the types of person that I outlined above. I think that unsub’s blog has some of the best MMO writing on the internet. There is a lot in that post, a lot of links, a lot of information. It is all apparently directed into a certain theme of hatred of women. That, after all, is what misogyny means. It’s an easy generalisation to make, and easy mud to sling, and once slung it sticks pretty well.

But a certain theme I noticed is that excluding women is bad. In the comments section, Stabs wrote that he left an alliance in Eve because one of the guilds doesn’t allow women access, (although they do let in wives and girlfriends of current members). Apparently a podcaster commented that he wasn’t sure if this is sexism, (or misogyny or bigotry, pick your adjective), but Stabs sure as hell is positive that it is. The system was not perfect, so he left in protest.

So just for fun I did a little google searching this morning in the city where I live. I typed in the search term ‘women only,’ and as I did so a surprising number of hits came up. Let me share them with you:

Women only gyms: http://www.gowomensfitness.com.au/womens-fitness-wa.html There are a lot.

Women only travel tours:

http://www.inspiredtravel.com.au/section/travel_experiences/268858-women-only-tours

http://www.girlsontour.com.au/

http://www.holidaystoeurope.com.au/home/holidayideas/specialinterestholidays/women-only

http://www.adventurewomen.com/

How about some general women only groups around Perth? There can’t be that many of them, right? Because that would be sexist:

http://women.meetup.com/cities/au/perth/

There’s quite a lot on that list.

What’s the point? Men and women are different. They have different energy. They have different needs. And some of those feelings and needs can be disrupted by the energy of a member of the opposite sex. On a generalised level. My wife’s energy does not disrupt a male group. She is very aware of the energy of a group of males and can position herself without causing any problems. But she understands if they decide not to let her in:

“If they don’t let me in, then that is perfectly understandable. But they would miss out on what I could bring to the group. That’s the problem when you label yourself as this or that, you miss out on the truly great potential members of the opposite sex who can breach barriers and bring a lot to a group.”

No system is perfect. I have nothing against any of these groups listed above. They do not effect me. They work for their members for various reasons. Just as a guild in an online game has chosen to exclude most females. It works for them. Is it perfect? No, but that’s no reason to get all cynical about it.

 

One for the Year.

I’ve spent the past few weeks chilling out at a nice hotel on Lombok, looking over the Balinese Sea. So no online gaming, which kind of sums up the year for me. Sure I’ve played a bunch of games, but MMOs haven’t been among them. I didn’t invest in either SWTOR or GW2 principally because I knew that their inherent flaws wouldn’t be enough to get me over the line. It’s a big deal for me to invest the time in an MMO now. I did play around in the City of Steam alpha, (Lombok didn’t allow me to get into the Beta), which was good fun. I’m not sure that I can see myself investing in it long term though. For me an MMO has to become like a big warm security blanket. You get home after a long day at work and you can plonk yourself in front of it and immerse yourself in what you know while hanging out with other gamers whose company you like.

That last part is kind of why MMOs have died for me this year. I don’t seem to meet gamers that I like any more. Or perhaps more accurately, I don’t make the effort to meet people online because too often they turn out to be internet jerks. Whether it be on forums, chat-boards, games or whatever, the internet is now populated with the type of person whose immediate response is hostile tinged with a burning desire to say the most cutting remark in the coolest way possible. The internet was originally seen as the way to open up the solitary world of video gaming to a broad audience, but nobody really took into account the rise of the lowest common denominator. The more ways we find to communicate the less real communicating actually seems to be going on. I find no resonance with people who feel the need to tweet aspects of their apparently fascinating lives at every available moment.

Where does this leave MMOs in 2013? I’m not too sure. I will continue to offer my occasional insight into the genre, but mostly I think my attention will continue to be held by single player games. I will continue to closely monitor the unfolding mess at Pathfinder Online. It is another interesting exercise in observing obvious mistakes being ignored by the weight of social pressure. Human beings never change.

My pledge for 2013 is to be a nicer person online. I hope you all have a safe one. Thanks for hanging out this year.