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Archives for March 2019

New Zealand’s Darkest Day

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Prime Minister Jacinda Adern has rightly called yesterday (15th March, 2019) ‘New Zealand’s Darkest Day’. Covering real world news is not something I intend to do normally, but this is so incredibly far from normal.

If you’ve not yet heard, Christchurch, one of the most beautiful cities in New Zealand was subject to a terror attack at the hands of a small number of white supremacists. At this time, there are 49 confirmed deaths with 48 more critically injured in hospital. Children are among this number. By far, the worst our country has ever seen.

For updated details, NZ Herald and Stuff are doing their best to keep up with it. So I’ll keep this short.

This act of violence was horrific in every sense. It was cold, calculated and utterly born of a place of hate. It was evil. It was terrorism. Jacinda Adern took a strong stance and called it what it was with no beating around the bush, so while I do not agree with all she does, in this she has my utmost respect and support.

The values that lead these white supremacists to this action are so foreign to NZ as a culture it is a type of shellshock that the nation is experiencing in even trying to fathom how we got here, to the first day in our history of being at high terror alert. At having to warn Muslim people to stay away from their places of worship and prayer lest there be more attacks planned.

There is nothing I or anyone else can say to make this right for those most directly affected, but nonetheless know that all the love and support I can muster goes with you. This is true, too, for those who were separated from their children or parents today due to the city going into lockdown while IEDs in cars were found and disarmed, while we couldn’t be certain there were no remaining active shooters.

To the members of my team based in Christchurch, who called reporting the gunfire they could hear (their office being no more than a 5 minute walk from the Hagley Park Mosque), without yet knowing what was going on — your assistance and calm in locking down the site and keeping everyone there safe makes you heroes in my eyes.

Yesterday was a horrific day, and tomorrow is going to be one of reckoning. In one sense, because the confirmed shooter is in custody and due to appear in court tomorrow, sure. In another because of the resurfaced trauma just barely put to bed after the loss of life and homes in the Christchurch Earthquakes.

Victim Support New Zealand — whom you should reach out to should you get a sense of those feelings returning — has also setup a ‘Give a little’ page for anyone who would like to donate to support those most directly impacted. It was sitting just under $NZ400,000 when I was last able to load the page but the demand to donate is rendering the site difficult to use at the time of writing.

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Epic Store Claims Another Exclusive

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I actually had a post drafted on the Epic Store going back to the Metro: Exodus debacle. I ultimately decided to let it go and delete the post. I can (I suppose) live a little longer without Satisfactory, Hades, Metro, etc in my life if I need to.

Today’s announcement comes in the form of Phoenix Point — a game from Julian Gollop, designer of the original X-COM games — announcing the increasingly typical year-long exclusivity deal with the Epic Store.

Metro caught a lot of heat for their last minute switch-out after being available on Steam for preorder for quite some time. They at least honoured the preorders of those who had dropped money on the Steam edition, though.

Phoenix Point while not carrying with it the same proximity to launch is a worse situation in my view. It is a crowd-funded project that literally would not exist, or would at least not be as far along as it is today, without the money it took from its backers. Money taken with the explicit promise of supporting: Good Old Games, Steam, and via Steam Play — Linux.1

Why Be Mad About This?

A legitimate question. There are some things to like about Epic. Not least of all an introduction of an additional competitor for Steam. This should be a good thing for Developers and Consumers both.

But it isn’t — not yet. There has been zero expressed interest in winning the battlefield for consumer consideration or loyalty. No desire to bring people over by carrot — by fostering goodwill through a better service that treats their favourite developers more fairly as a point of differentiation.

That would be compelling for a goodly number of people. But not enough? OK, I can see that. How about providing more competitive pricing than Steam, yet still seeing a larger sum in developer pockets?

Those are some examples of good ways to compete which would have seen an organic user-base growth and positive word of mouth. Instead of trying this first, the stick was brought out first.

The stick of third-party exclusives being introduced to the PC-realm. Want to play this title you’re reeeally excited about? Excellent. Buy it from us because you have no choice. We offered more Fortnite-money than any right-minded developer could say no to, and bought their exclusivity.

Steam isn’t blameless here, the impression I’m getting from their relative silence on the matter is one of overwhelming confidence that Epic is a fad that warrants no response and will just sort of go back to playing with toys in the corner shortly.

I probably prefer this over starting an all out exclusivity war. Steam for all it’s many faults, including the handling (or rather, lack of handling) the curation of content on its service, has been a relatively benevolent digital storefront. Developers were free to sell anywhere else they chose alongside Steam, even allowing generation of Steam keys for the purpose of selling elsewhere.

If Steam’s ‘response’ ends up being a harsh curtailing of these options due to having to participate in the buying-exclusivity game? Well, there aren’t any potential good outcomes for a Consumer in this scenario.2

Hopefully Tomorrow Brings Better News

Because the email with this news was certainly not a great start to this one!

Still, there are some silver linings. For me only the first — ability to refund — matters. I just can’t get my head around supporting the introduction of third-party exclusives to PC, no matter how much I otherwise want the title in question.

For you (if you were also a Phoenix Point backer), some of the others might be of interest:

  • Refunds are available for the next 28 or so days, via this link.
  • If you accept the new terms and stick with it, you’ll get Year 1 DLC on Epic.
  • You will also get a choice of Steam/GoG key when they release a year post-Epic-release.
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Making it Official: Anthem on Hold

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Warning: Some elements of the negativity drive might be spinning up in this one.

In case it wasn’t clear — I’ve put Anthem to one side for the moment. This started out in a fairly happy and OK space. The revised expectations I put on the game during the second demo weekend were all met if not actually exceeded.

And despite my warning at the top of this post, I’m not yet ready to make any dramatic style, ‘I’m done forever!’ type statements. I may not even be done for long. But without any doubt, for the moment at least, I am done.

I was near to just letting that fact slide until I was ready to revisit (likely in April after the alternate player progression, new stronghold and some other fun bits were added.)

Then this tweet happened:

There are two more in the thread, one which indicates they believe they can take ‘Months’ to fix this.

Rather innocuous sounding if unaware of the context, I know. You may recall Isey’s post from a couple of days back urging BioWare to claim and own the increase to the loot drops people were seeing. Isey warned of the anger that would stem from taking this away a second time.

Prophecy fulfilled.

The video is well worth a watch for a summary of the reactions at the moment and the camps forming around the change.

I get what BioWare is after. They are making an effort to chase down a long tail of play through masterwork and legendary scarcity. They are following a philosophy of, ‘People will stay longer if there are still gear optimisations left to be made.’

What they’re perhaps not understanding yet, is that even with their loot improvements — their loot game simply isn’t strong or engaging enough to have that effect yet. Scarcity plus relatively uninspiring loot is becoming a player-churn driver rather than they player-retention driver they hoped for.

Once you’re decked out in ‘Somewhat OK’ masterworks in the Javelins you personally care about, the shine wanes fairly quickly. What should be the best part of a loot game — the refinement and optimisation of your build — is entirely missing or is too dispiriting to try chasing after for very long.

This could potentially be addressed in a number of ways, and a raw increase in the number of drops exchanged for your time invested is possibly the bluntest instrument in the toolbox. I acknowledge that. But it’s also the only one BioWare has right now.

They can clearly switch it up quite quickly, something that would not be true of introducing alternate, more delicate, options such as a reforging ability1 or adding more diversity to the masterwork/legendary effects and items pool.

But… Chad’s response really got under my skin in this instance. I’m not even 100% sure I can adequately articulate why, either, other than to say it is some awful mix of condescension while also being completely tone-deaf. There is a lack of empathy or understanding there so complete it makes me not want to hear from Chad again. Certainly he should refrain from tweeting again on issues like this, and possibly it should be reconsidered whether he is the right person for ‘Head of Live Service’.

*sigh* I’m a bit surprised at how much this tweet chain resonated and in such a negative way with me. Text is a poor communicator of ideas at times, and I’ve been trying to keep myself open to this fact. Interpretation of the emotive content (or lack thereof) is always going to be subjective at best. I acknowledge that. And yet I feel it so completely with this I know I’m going to be hard-pressed to be convinced.

Like I said earlier, I’ll be back to check on progress again. I’m not ‘done’ done, I’m not even ready to take the game off my ‘interested’ list. There are plenty of distractions (too many, in fact!) here now or coming soon. All the while though, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for a strong April and May in Anthem-land!

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What A Difference No SQ’s Make

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*cracks knuckles* Alright, training. I’m down. What will we learn today?

The Main Story Quest of Final Fantasy XIV might not be the best thing ever at the lower levels — but removing the most onerous of the prototypical MMORPG side quests the game is guilty of possessing makes a huge difference for the better. The ability to skip all side-quests comes primarily through a buff that all new characters receive which increases XP gained from all sources by 100% until you reach level 60.

I don’t know if this XP buff ends the moment you get one Job to 60 or whether it is job-independent, but I have a fair while before working that out becomes a concern.

Ah yes, the intensive training necessary to instill the knowledge: Fire bad.

As I was playing through today though, it put me in mind of a post of Syp’s I read earlier in the day asking the question, ‘How could World of Warcraft win me back?’

One thing Syp sees as a potential to draw him back is for Blizzard to have a change of heart over the artificial grinds they introduce. More recently with the allied races and over and over again with flight.

I’m with him on this being a positive change, but it wouldn’t be enough to bring me back right now. But then Syp touched the need to change up the story beats to remove the tedium that BFA has introduced.

The final round of training: Can I make it down this path? Alive?

This second point hardly even registered for me on the first read through of the post, so thoroughly have I divorced the concept of ‘WoW’ from ‘Story’. I keep across the major beats most of the time, but long past are the times I felt any kind of investment in the lore or story.

I don’t know that WoW can ‘fix’ that for me now. I feel like it would almost need a fresh start. And it is this, I think, that Final Fantasy XIV offers me above all else. The MSQ at the point I’m up to isn’t really any better, story or mechanically speaking. But it is without the ‘Grind’ (with capital ‘G’).

In the span of just a couple of hours play, I made meaningful progress in level and story. I’m level 20 as an Archer now and closing in on being able to join one of the game’s Grand Companies. This will allow me to get my Chocobo mount. *squee* or rather, *kwee!* 😀

The character and lighting detail is actually really impressive. (Click to see!) Also? Soon I’ll have one of these for this character! Yiss! 😀
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Transition from Social to Solo

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I promise! After this one, I shall give break from looking at the changes we (or at least, I) see over time as a gamer, or the types of change we may strive for. But after this one — which leans more toward the former type.

Potentially the start of my interest in blogging?

From the time I had my first dial-up modem — a 14.4k V.32 device — and learnt the borders of my computer went beyond the boundaries of my home I was enthralled by the social potential. There was FidoNet and BlueWave which fulfilled much of it, but even within the realm of gaming the time spent simply sitting and chatting rivaled the time spent actively playing.

This continued being true when making the jump into the realm of MMO’s with Asheron’s Call beta somewhere in ’98, ahead of it’s ’99 release.

The social element, the weaving of multiple tell streams, guild chat and fellowship (party) chat in amongst actively playing and contributing XP to the group I was in was the strongest part of the game and kept me going for years.

Meeting new people was not only something I was open to, it was cherished. I don’t know that ‘PUG’ even existed as a term then and if it did, it certainly didn’t carry the same negative connotations that it does today.

Start of the Shift

This openness and attitude carried on beyond my time with Asheron’s Call, I know that much, but it seemed more difficult to pinpoint where it started to fade.

Image source: Engadget

My first thought was that it was with the introduction of the Dungeon Finder in WoW, but I actually don’t think so.

Thinking about it, I can see there was a step before that — where ironically finding what I perhaps thought I wanted led to closing down on other people. You see, I found a static guild that persisted from game to game.

We were open to recruiting new members and bringing people into the fold, but without a doubt it was a start of becoming more insular in nature. An impression of ‘not needing’ people outside the guild.

Global / Regional channels were turned off or at least put into secondary tabs and the ratio of time spent between playing and talking swung hugely to the playing side.

Technology through to Today

That isn’t to say that Dungeon Finder and other technology changes didn’t play a role, as they most certainly did.

Cross-realm play was great from a queue-time perspective, but it further distanced me from any sense of wider-game community. The chance of running into someone again was near enough nil that investing in whatever group you wound up with didn’t seem to hold any value.

Which I suppose more or less carries through to today. The guild is (mostly) gone, but there are a small set of friends that form my core group of people to play with. When we raid, we find a group to join as a group.

Outside of this, though? If we’re not in the same game at the same time?

Then I tend to go solo in most games. There is an odd mix of feelings of anxiousness over not wanting to risk being a burden to someone else but equally as strong, not wanting to risk someone else being a burden to me. I value going at my own pace — be that fast or slow — over the social element I once enjoyed so much.

Outside the gaming space this is far less true. I mean, Hi. Case in point. But also quite happy to jump on a Discord or Twitter or whatever else and talk.

I suspect it also has something to do with gaming time coming at a premium these days and feeling a need to maximise value from it — whatever the definition of ‘value’ might happen to be moment to moment.

I’m unsure how much I can — or possibly even want — to change this. Anthem was a nice departure from this norm though, where playing as a public group didn’t threaten either side of my worries. Still — there was a lack of meaningful interaction and that meant the other people there were just incidental.

Is this just what gaming is now? Does anyone still play with the openness I (we?) once had to new people?

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