Attributing the Normal to the Abnormal
I caught myself doing this earlier today. I was, as is frankly often the case, torn between which game to actually launch and play a bit of. The main ones under consideration being more Mount & Blade II (I did in fact jump in for some more after the last post on it, despite wanting to wait out the daily patch cycle), Hitman 2 and Deep Rock Galactic.
Oh, and then — Terraria.
Now, I know, Terraria is a bit of a random addition to the current mix. It came up because I bought it for the Switch to give my son another building game to play. I didn’t really feel like buying Minecraft again, I’d just bought it for him on the PS4.
And the whole reason this was necessary is that I made a deal with my brother for Final Fantasy VII Remake — we made this deal for Final Fantasy XV, too — that if he bought the game, he could borrow my Playstation and play it first. We agreed to this for FFVII Remake prior to the lockdown, and little did we know when we made the deal what was coming or that we’d be living together1 when it came out!
It’s probably also worth noting; at the time the deal was made no-one had much interest in playing on the PS4. Of course; now everyone wants it. Even my wife had been playing FFX HD on it in her screentime over this enforced break. So! All this to say, I bought Terraria to replace Minecraft for my youngest son (the eldest has his own PC), and I’m contemplating… sigh …Rebuying FFX/X-2 HD bundle on the Switch for my wife to make a start on FFX-2.
My brother is playing FFVII Remake seated behind me as I type this right now. It is a challenge not to just sit and watch!
Anyway; like I said — I was sitting, thinking about whether I wanted to play M&B2, Hitman 2, Deep Rock Galactic or… Terraria.2 Then I started wondering whether I just might want to buy something new. And not just ‘wondering’ if I’m being honest, but rather ‘actively wanting to’.
Not from any dissatisfaction with the options in front of me. I’ve actually played all of them over the course of the day. 3 Loved my time with all of them. Could happily play more of any of them.
But still there was a sense of restlessness. A general… ‘Malaise’ is too strong; but the right concept.
I was reflecting on this while thinking of what to write tonight, and I had started down the path of blaming it on the COVID-19 lockdown. But you may have gathered if you’ve been here for any length of time; that this trouble with just locking myself down with a certain title is nothing new to me.
But still there was this natural inclination to place the blame at something external to myself. To blame the normal on the abnormal. If ‘blame’ is even the right word. I vacillate on that point. Either way though, I’ve looked to borrow ways and means of better extracting value from my video games in the past and there has been some success. Because truth be told — it isn’t all that long ago where after feeling this today, I absolutely would have been actively looking for something to buy and play already.
Instead of that, I jumped back into what I had. Deep Rock Galactic in this particular instance, and started working toward the goals I’d set myself. I’d already blown past Gunner to 15; but I had made no effort toward the other classes to 5 yet.
I set myself that task for the additional perk points I would receive from completing the ‘all classes to 5′ milestone; but I’m additionally glad I did it now since it offered a lot of insight into how specifically the other class’ main functions work. In particular the scout which I’ve always seen as being a bit of a… a selfish class. It has high personal mobility, but nothing to help the team get around. Compare that to the driller which literally moves the earth to create passages for the others. Or the gunner who can setup hydraulic ziplines everyone can jump on. Or the engineer who burps out goo which then solidifies into platforms.
The scout has infinite usage (albeit on a brief cooldown) on a personal zipline.
Every class has an additional support ability too; but in order to wrap this up before Christmas, I won’t dig into the detail of those just yet. I’ll save that for another post!
What I learnt though, is that the scout can reduce the consumption of these mobility resources for the entire team by their ability. The driller’s fuel and the gunner’s hydraulic ziplines are a very limited resource. The Engineer’s goo does have a limit; but relatively speaking, a much higher one. Therefore of the consumable mobility tools, the platforms are the ‘cheapest’ to expend.
But one platform on its own is rarely enough. Unless you have a scout. Then- with one well placed shot of platform-goo, a scout can fling themselves up there and get the resource in question without requiring a more permanent path to be drilled or zipline to be placed.
So! I feel I must now apologise to all the Deep Rock Galactic scout mains out there that I’ve been silently judging all this time! ;D
This was a post for Blapril 2020, the annual blogging event (albeit usually as Blaugust), brought forward to help bring a sense of community during the challenging time of COVID-19. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year round!
