Time to Loot Journal: May 2020

New Zealand has seen at least the promise of a return to normalcy this month. We’ve run a consecutive streak of 9 days with no new cases. There is in fact only 1 active known case in the country. While there is still an acknowledgement that the risk of silent spread remains present — as the days roll by with the test numbers still high, we’re seeing higher confidence in allowing people to return to their places of work.

I spent last week actually in the office and it was fantastic. Honestly not something I thought I would say. Given we still had quite a number of restrictions in play — only half of any given team in during the week rotating which half each week and unable to make use of face-to-face meeting rooms for example — I was very skeptical. Didn’t see much value in taking on the commute vs. just continuing to work from home. But I’m so glad I tried it anyway. I noted last month the whole situation was starting to get to me a little and this small shift seemed to be a very much needed breath of fresh air.

In the realm of games by the stats the month has been dominated by WoW. But mentally — particularly over the last week or two — it has been dominated by Cities: Skylines. To such an extent when I looked at my ManicTime stats and saw how much time WoW had I did a double take. I might even have exclaimed out loud, ‘No way!’

But I’m getting ahead of myself there.

There are now not one, but two blogger game series underway.

‘Long Live the Queen!’ Civilisation VI succession game is steaming along. At the time of putting this post together, we’re up to turn 170 with Rakuno about to kick-off his set of turns.

The second is new this month. It’s a play-along of ‘To the Moon’. It’s just kicked-off in earnest now, with people playing through Act 1 from yesterday. I posted the questions today (available within the play-along page) and the first wave of thoughts should be up around the end of the coming week!

I cannot wait to discuss with others what they think of the game as it unfolds. If you would like to join — it’s really simple. Just do! :)

All the details are on the linked page, but even if you end up running ‘late’ don’t worry about it. Let me know when you manage to get your posts up and I’ll add them in to the answers section to share with everyone.

The only thing I’d be cautious of is, if you can, don’t post early. There are still many amongst us in the play-along group who have never played To the Moon before. So if we can give them some assurance that there won’t be spoilers up before we reach the target post dates I’m sure that would be appreciated. :)

Gaming Goals

May’s Goals

• Setup the Civilisation Blogger Succession Game page
  On which I will endeavour to keep it updated with all the turn posts and a brief summary of actions for each as we go. My aim is to have this setup either by the time the turns come around to me again or at the very least before I pass the turns on again to Rakuno.
• ???
  ?????

I definitely achieved the first goal there. Here’s the evidence. I’m sometimes a day or two behind updating it with no entries into the series — but mostly keeping on top of it!

For the second… well; I had an idea it might be to get Pathfinder Parts 1 and 2 in WoW, and earn back my wings (again). But at the time I really wasn’t feeling it and thought making it an explicit goal might actually damper my enthusiasm even further rather than stoke the coals.

No idea if that would’ve been true or not, but in the end I got there. Before the rep buff went away as well, fortunately. I knocked off the zones largely in order of their release — first Nazjatar, then Mechagon.

June’s Goals

• Build a Blogger Community City in Cities: Skylines
  It wasn’t the intention or goal with this goal — but this would sort of form the third pillar in my community gaming. The Succession Game is asynchronous co-operative play with other members of the community. To the Moon steps back from being multiplayer to any degree, dropping even the asynchronous component but will (hopefully) generate quite a nice shared experience and discussion for us. This one would be ‘just me’. No sharing of save-games. No questions for anyone. Just a fun, solo project that I can talk about and share.
  
  The basic idea will be to name districts and possibly key landmarks after various bloggers (and/or their blogs) and attempt to theme the area in some way to match.
  
  More than that… I’m not really sure yet. I’ll work it out as I go along. I do know that I also want to try something a bit more ambitious. Maybe a huge custom map of some sort with some terrain features to navigate. I dunno!

Annnd I think I might make that my sole goal this month. Other than of course keeping both the Civilisation VI Succession Game and the To the Moon Play-Along endeavours alive too! :)

Games Played in May

I feel like it would be remiss of me to not at least mention the likely dozens of hours I’ve been watching Cities: Skylines being played by people who have mastered the game to such an extent that they may well have ascended to another plane of existence. My current favourite being T4rget’s in-progress season 2 ‘Design and Manage’ series.

I’ve learnt a lot from watching how he does things without relying on mods. Not that mods are bad! I love mods. I do just feel I have a lot of room to learn the fundamentals still before throwing (too many) of those capabilities in over the top.

What else… Oh yeah, Grand Theft Auto V saw the dust being blown off it a little. With it being free earlier in the month via the Epic Games Store, I had a couple of friends keen to try out the online mode. It didn’t last us very long, as you can see. Hackers are still running rampant, years later. And it seem amazingly awkward to get into the ‘good’ co-operative content for the game. Bit of a shame, because I can certainly see the potential.

Remnant saw another go round too, for the latest DLC. I… don’t regret buying it… exactly. But it wasn’t great. I hope Gunfire Games can find their way with this title again. If they can secure the budget for a big, no holds barred sequel — it could be amazing. I’m just not sure they’re ever going to be given that with such middling reception on most of their games. And being fair — it’s likely deserved. Still… One can dream.

Across all that? 119.4 hours of gaming. That’s kind of a lot! Third highest since I started recording last March. Basically second equal. (#1 September 2019 – 143.8 hours, #2 January 2020 – 120.6 hours.) Hard to say how much of it is lock-down related and how much of it is simply being in WoW again. I think likely both facts contributed.

The Blog

18 posts published this month, down 12 from last month. But given last month was Blapril this is not surprising. 18 posts is still a relatively high post-count month for me; and was bolstered by the fact Blapril carried on through the first full week of May, too.

Most Viewed Posts

1. Deep Rock Galactic: The Solo Experience
2. Transport Fever: Things I Wish I Knew When I Started
3. Succession Games / Humble Choice: May 2019
4. Your Invite To the Moon (Play-Along)
5. Fixing the Comments by Removing ‘Luv

Third place was a bit interesting. It’s a page rather than a post. Not really being a big user of pages typically, this is a new incident. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to include it or not, so ended up splitting the difference and referencing it while also noting the ‘post’ that would have been 3rd place had I not. ;)

Deep Rock Galactic: The Solo Experience shot to the top of the list this month though, despite being posted back in… *checks* …April. Deep Rock Galactic 1.0 launched recently, so not too surprising. Lots of people wanting to know how it plays. (Spoiler: It’s quite good. I rather enjoyed it.)