March in Review

UltrViolet from Endgame Viable planted a whimsical seed when he shared his February Progression Report using a timetracking software called ManicTime.

Hmm… sounds kinda fun, I thought, and decided to give the program a spin for March as well.

The graphs are a little hard to see unless you click and expand ’em, but I’ll try to summarize in text too.

In Week 1, I was all about Minecraft, spending 16.7h that week. A hefty chunk of that was played on the weekend, with around 2-3 hours each weekday, dipping as my interest waned.

The cause of that waning interest? I started playing Grim Fandango (2.6h), having treated myself to the remastered edition as one of my anticipated games of 2015.

On replaying it, I realized that Grim Fandango’s greatest strength is in its audio – the voice actors nail their lines with perfect emotion and the music, while understated enough not to be annoying as you revisit each scene, conveys the mood to that ideal point where your imagination takes over and starts imagining what is left unsaid – the backstory, the sidelong quips that one ends up filling in.

Tim Schafer’s writing, of course, is spot on, with conversational lines speckled with humorous wordplay, but in my opinion, if the voice actors didn’t get it right, one wouldn’t want to select every option and sit through the delivery, grinning gleefully like the skulls in the game.

The remastered edition brings in mouse controls and a radial menu for commands that works decently, to the point where you don’t really notice the controls too much – which is far better than fighting the controls with every step, certainly.

You have the option of ‘tank controls’ too, aka ye olde keyboard operated style, and can even get an achievement for doing that the whole game, but I wussed out of that – it did occur to me that keyboard controls felt a little more immersive though, in that you feel like you’re moving Manny, as opposed to mouse controls where you’re clicking on the screen at one step removed and telling Manny where to go. Perhaps another time.

Guild Wars 2 stayed at a constant 6.5h on essentially standby mode, a half-hour for dailies most days with 1-2h longer spurts when I felt like Triple Trouble Wurm, or caught guild missions on Fridays.

In week 2, Grim Fandango obsession had set in.

Finished it with a further 8.8h, which kinda surprised me at how long it took, I hadn’t realized that it contained so much criss-crossing from scene to scene, looking for one item or another. Guess one blanks out the tedium in one’s memories and only remembers the stories.

Guild Wars 2 had slightly more hours of play (11.1h) this week, mostly via attending a dungeon event on Saturday, iirc, making me stay online for longer.

I started casting around for another game to play, dabbling with the Steam free weekend of X1, X2, X3, X:Rebirth type games (a spaceship trade simulator with fairly non-intuitive controls, though it gets better with the latest Rebirth edition), a bit more Minecraft and the Talos Principle (a puzzle-story game in the vein of Portal with some interesting philosophical themes about God and AI – I’d like to play it more later but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for that week.)

In Week 3, Endgame Viable again showed me the way with a casual post about how he’s started to appreciate Path of Exile as a low-energy game that can be played one-handed.

You know, I said to myself, you haven’t played PoE for a very long time and I can’t really remember why either, maybe GW2 came up with an update that tore my attention away and maybe it was my old computer blowing up and I forgot to reinstall everything that was on it.

Turns out that they were starting a new one-month league quite soon, in a few days, when I visited the website to redownload the game.

Gee, one month sounds like an interesting time period, short enough to focus on (as opposed to the usual three month leagues, which to me is like the normal game, an end point too far away to imagine, I’d probably lose interest in the game first), but long enough that it isn’t a race either (of which I would fail miserably at even being competitive.)

And they were offering cosmetic skins as prizes! That looked actually quite pretty! For tasks that almost seemed achievable by normal people as opposed to only achievable by PoE experts!

Well, ok, when your highest character ever is level 66, level 80 is a bit of a stretch. Killing a unique boss like Atziri is definitely a stretch goal, but hey, people speak of farming her as an endgame task. But 40 of 46 encounters with Tormented Spirits and Bloodlines mod magic creatures sound like one of those ‘play enough in the month to encounter them’ participation prize, ditto 18 of 21 Forsaken Masters missions.

Maybe, just maybe, I might be able to qualify for one or two shiny skins, with a super stretch goal of three or four.

Since the league hadn’t started yet, I thought I might as well get some practice in and try something I hadn’t done before (my old characters had one of those skill points completely reset things, which kinda stalled me on going further with ’em – who wants to screw up one’s build permanently when one can’t even remember much of the game, right?)

Conversation on Reddit was all about safe, easy builds for noobs who wanted to get some of the prizes. Flameblast and arc witch were some of the stuff that was mentioned, neither of which I had tried, but y’know, I had a low level witch I had been intending to make into a lightning throwing character.

Playing with Arc, it was.

She was in Standard league, so what the heck, just have fun, deck her out in some lowbie twink gear and run around. Hrm, this Lightning Tendrils gem seems new (It was. 1.3 update or some such.) DAMN, it hits 4 times and attacks super fast, with almost the same cone area as ground slam. But so so fast, look at my DPS climb.

Suffice to say that was one of the fastest characters I ever leveled, eventually slotting in Arc mid way. She was about level 55-ish when the new one-month league finally started.

10.8h of Path of Exile playtime, with an almost exponential climb in the above graph, except for Friday, which is GW2 Teq-Wurm-guild mission day. 8.7h for Guild Wars 2.

I dabbled with Assassin’s Creed (yes, I am still stuck on 1) too for 2.7h, before getting bored of the repetition for now.

In week 4, I am officially in the throes of Path of Exile obsession with 20.9h.

There are a few weekdays where I’m busy and can’t play a thing, but when I can, it’s full steam ahead in the Bloodlines/Torment league.

Having cleverly outsmarted myself by playing a lightning thrower in Standard, I want to do something else for the actual league.

I decide on another build that looks fairly noob-safe and not really reliant on much traded-for gear (since I really loathe old fashioned whisper trading – talking with people is hard, and I don’t wanna get scammed or have to deal with the potential to be scammed – and would rather play self-found if not given any kind of automation or auction house.)

The dual flame totem blood magic marauder.

I’ve always been wanting to try totems. The description of blood magic has always scared me (spend life instead of mana for skills? wouldn’t I just kill myself spamming skills?) so it seemed safer to follow a tried-and-tested build that can cope with taking that node. Marauder is a comfortable tanky class that I’ve played before with molten strike and ground slam, so I know how to level it.

The build even helpfully provides leveling skill-tree setups, so that there isn’t too much guesswork in which path to go up first.

Best laid plans and all that.

Try as I might, I just can’t get a Greater Multiple Projectiles gem to drop yet, and the only quest rewarded one is via a Merciless difficulty quest. This makes my Flame Totems somewhat wimpier, though I did manage to get my hands on Added Chaos Damage, Fire Penetration and Faster Projectiles.

Instead, I end up leveling with a Searing Bond totem as well, whose Increased Burning Damage support gem helpfully dropped for me. The scaling on this particular skill is quite nuts, being super-forgivable and packing a hefty punch with only that support gem slotted. It does around 2-3x the DPS of my as yet not yet fully upgraded flame totem.

However, I’m not quite in a fully Searing Bond build (which I peeked at and it looks quite different, utilizing Elemental Equilibrium and an ice skill to inflict more flame vulnerability) so I’m still working towards getting the Flame Totems more scary.

Dual flame totems are interesting mobile flamethrowers, but because they don’t pack too much of a punch right now, they take a while to kill mobs.

Dual searing bond totems are amusing. In the words of a Youtube PoE streamer, it is sort of like Spiderman webslinging, where you build up a web of fiery lasers that melt things, and then move yourself around pulling a line of fire across foes. It’s a little more active than flame totems in that you need to be constantly repositioning, but it’s also annoying when mobs ignore your totems because they haven’t been hurt by them yet.

I end up ad-libbing a curious mixture of the two for imo, the best of both worlds currently. I throw a flame totem down, whose flamethrower projectiles piss off any nearby mobs and encourages them to approach and kill the flame totem. Then I block the path with a searing bond totem to the side of the flame totem.

Now anything that approaches either totem ignites and gets set alight by the searing bond totem, getting constantly dps’ed. The flamethrower from the flame totem is also picking on at least one mob for extra dps.

The best part, anything that approaches me, crosses the last beam and also gets set on fire – which is something you don’t get with dual flame totems.

And if I feel like being active, I can pull the searing bond beam across anything this setup misses. If not, I just stand around and chill for a bit while the totems do the work and replace the totems as they die.

Leveling this character went a lot slower than the arc witch, but I think it’s finally coming into its own. I crossed level 55 the other day (where the arc witch was at) and am now level 60 in Act 3 Merciless, working my way towards the final Dominus.

Playing in softcore for now, since I’m an idiot that tends to die a bunch and I personally like blue over red anyway. Easier goal to possibly strive towards too.

6.4h for Guild Wars 2 that week, a pretty standard ‘waiting around’ sort of pace.

The last week of March is more like a couple of days.

I was off on Monday, which is why Path of Exile playtime resembles that of Sunday, aka insanely obsessed. 18.6 hours and rising.

I also dabbled a little with Alien: Isolation (1.7h) , which was on Steam sale last weekend. Haven’t got very far into it, but it feels a lot like a first-person survival horror rather than a first-person shooter, which has fairly faithful nods back to the original Alien. A lot of sneaking around, dark places and shadows, barely seeing an Alien (except for one part where I was too slow and it came out to kill me for taking my time. Bah.)

GW2 over two days has been 0.5h – super quick dailies and then full steam ahead into Path of Exile.

I expect that it should slow down over the next few weeks, as I’m approaching the area where leveling begins to plateau off somewhat, leaving me trying to figure out the PoE map endgame once more.

GW2: Heart of Thorns Beta Sneak Peek / Test Thingmajig Thoughts

Brought down a wyvern out of the sky with about 8 people or so.

Felt pretty good.

Oh yeah, we killed it too, but that was only a matter of time. (S’ good no time limit.)

The defiance break bar felt quite good. Seemed like it would take about 5-6 people’s coordinated cc within a fairly short (5 seconds?) period of time to successfully land.

At first there was only me and another person landing cc at most.

Then I decided that everyone else hadn’t read the skill bar for their revenants (understandable, my eyes were glazing trying to make sense of their utilities and I told myself, meh, will learn it as I level the real one when the expansion hits) and outright announced which skill to use.

It took about 5 more break bars of practice, with one or two more people catching on each time, but as the wyvern dropped to about 1/4 health, we finally managed ONE coordinated cc spike. Just the one, but it was rather satisfying to see it crash out of the sky instead of flying off and coating the platform with flame.

I figure it’ll only be a matter of time before people learn. Seems learnable. And if it doesn’t work, it’ll just take slightly longer to succeed, is all. (For this encounter, anyway.)

—

Pretty small test area for the beta, but what was there felt overall good and tight.

Masteries were there with readable tooltips.

It -did- take me a while to figure out where they put it, since I kinda skipped over the first popup tip.

Went through the hero panel with no success, becoming more and more perplexed until I finally spied the unfamiliar symbol in the lower right hand corner of my screen. Clicking on it pulled it up.

Revenant was on show with limited traits and weapons and stances (looks like the heavy armor equivalent of engineer and elementalist complexity, if you ask me, and I think it’s a class I will probably be more inclined to learn over the other two.)

Pretty wild skills overall. A ranged hammer and a mace/axe that felt melee-ish. A lot of rectangular line-shaped skills. Some kind of stored up energy system for utility skills and elites rather than the usual cooldown times. A ‘resistance’ buff that makes them ignore conditions for the duration (“Nooooo,” scream my condi PvP builds) and a lot of condition/boon manipulation possibilities, I think.

One ‘Adventure’ was on show, where you run around with a flamethrower and torch vine tendrils and try to reach bronze, silver, gold target numbers for doing it good, better, best. I managed bronze and unlocked a mastery point, so that’s one option for masteries. Seemed like a solo style scoring affair at first glance, not 100% sure. Might be a minor social issue of “you took my mob spawns!” if so.

The only thing that I wasn’t 100% impressed with was gliding.

I didn’t like the delay between leaping off something, falling screaming a certain distance before the option to “Press Space to Glide” came up. I’m not sure if it’s a ping issue (~230ms, for the record) but I fell for like several character lengths (heights) before I could press space to trigger the gliding. That feels very awkward, compared with my memory of how smooth it was in Aion.

The glider also looked remarkably lame. Like I grabbed a pink flower to fly or something – too curvy, I kinda had the expectation that gliders would be more aerodynamically streamlined with straight lines…

Once the glider had taken hold though, the actual gliding experience felt ok.

Caught an updraft once during the wyvern fight (had to get out of combat to switch weapons) and that worked as expected. Fly into it with glider, thing lifts you like an elevator (or one of those aetherblade bounce pads, but slightly slower and more controlled) and you can glide out of it as desired.

Besides that, everything else felt decent. The one event chain that was on display worked. Fight a bunch of mordrem vines and stuff. Fight a bunch more mordrem while carrying bombs to blow up something. Lazy people who refuse to carry bombs can hang way back in a separate event to snipe mobs with a seriously overpowered sniper rifle, assisting in the otherwise highly tedious killing of Mordrem husks that get in the way of the bomb carriers. Succeeding let you board choppers to take out ze wyvern.

Very little need to comment about the scenery. All well done, aesthetically spot on in the usual ArenaNet style. Jungle definitely looking to be quite vertical, did quite a bit of accidental (then purposeful) falling and getting out of the beta testing area via gravity and getting forcibly zapped back to starting point as a result. Presumably will be even MORE vertical when the real thing hits.

Can’t wait.

(In the meantime, I need to get around to a post or series of posts about what I’ve been up to the past week or so, but bah, busy busy busy.)

GW2: Recent PvP Resources

It seems like the updates to GW2 PvP to put in reward tracks and ranked/unranked matches has been overall quite healthy for the state of sPvP. Especially with the new dailies that tempt me to get a game in nearly every day, just playing on a super casual and carefree level.

I’m probably not the only one.

And with this influx of new blood, there seems to be a larger appreciative audience of people interested in learning more about GW2 PvP and how it all works, which encourages skilled players to share advice and teach others.

I haven’t watched all the videos yet on the QQmore.net website but they all look very helpful.

I was especially fond of the Mindset and Avoiding Frustration text guide because it touches on something I’m still trying to work out and get right, how to react better when one is frustrated.

I used to get frustrated very easily and become very avoidant of things that frustrate me as a result.

I’d have very high expectations (of myself or of the result that I desired) and when I didn’t get it, man, anger, frustration, bottled up tantrums, all the bad feelings I’d try not to spew out onto other people (cos I did that in my early years a couple of times and that’s not nice or mature to take it out on others), and hey, I didn’t want to be the sole target of those bad feelings either, so… easy solution: don’t do the things that cause the frustration, right?

Well… avoiding works if you don’t care enough about the activity or result either way to get worked up about it, which works for unimportant stuff but not for stuff you actually wanna do.

Turns out that reframing one’s perspective and looking for constructive solutions/goals and small improvements to cheer about can be another way to deal with frustration – that’s still a work in progress for me, but I seem to be getting better at it via the Marionette, Tequatl, Boss Blitz, Lion’s Arch sequence.

Dabbling around in sPvP has been another way for me to work on this. I generally care very little about sPvP, or my reputation, what other people think of me, or how I look or perform (self-image-wise), which makes it easier to distance myself from whether I win or lose a particular match.

All I really care about is whether I’m performing to the best of my ability on a particular chosen character, and if I can keep learning or improving and getting a smidgen better or more familiar or more comfortable with that class.

Which ironically does frustrate me from time to time when I’m not doing well, but the guide’s right, if something’s frustrating you, that’s probably because it’s a learning opportunity, because someone is playing much much better than you and can be learned from, if one can just take away one’s ego from the equation. (Frickin’ super-ping sword/dagger thieves that just zip around and pwn. *coughs*)

Another fun resource that I enjoyed watching was Phantaram teaching Sodapoppin GW2 sPvP:

I gather that these two are streamers of some importance or other. The S guy being some WoW hotshot and Phantaram being a really good GW2 sPvP tournament player of some kind, who also turns out to have the patience of a saint when coaching. Mad respect.

This is very much worth watching for anyone interested in GW2 PvP – it’s very introductory, goes through some of the most common builds of all the classes and what they’re liable to do, and really shows off to an inexperienced player the potential -depth- of GW2’s PvP – which at first feels like a whole bunch of explosive lights and colors and someone’s dead, wut, but that there’s really some sophisticated stuff going on under the hood to pull that kind of thing off.

Buttons to chain in sequence to set up some spike damage or a kill (often assisted with some crowd control) and how to counter or escape someone that’s setting up to do that to you, and so on.

How one class can counter another and vice versa, and more besides.

It’s very much a taster, but it’s a very tempting taste, and even I’m tempted to start watching more of Phantaram’s and other streamers’ videos now… except for the whole need-time-to-do-so thing. Gah.

Minecraft: Wanderlust Reloaded – Magical Castaway

As sheer serendipity would have it, an idly rolled up world to argue the merits of procedural generation yielded a seed that sent my imagination into overdrive.

One turned up on the edge of what appeared to be a modestly sized island continent surrounded by ocean, beach/desert in the vicinity and what appeared to be a jungle or tropical rainforest in the distance to explore.

Surely, this place is tailor made for a survivor-castaway scenario.

But how could I make it different from the ongoing Wanderlust Reloaded game I was playing in a relaxing learn-all-the-mods-slowly fashion?

A few ideas struck me.

I tend to be attracted to tech/modern mods and make a beeline to Tinker’s Construct and Minefactory Reloaded as a comfort zone, since those were the first few I learned in Agrarian Skies. However, setting up a factory goes rather completely against the theme and idea of a sailor or person castaway on a desert island. How would they even make a modern machine?

So, rule 1: Minimal to no tech/modern mods to be used in this particular game world.

It so happened that some initial scouting revealed the presence of some magical NPCs on the island. Perfect. The rationale then would be to use nature and magic-based mods to progress, with the explanation that the NPCs had ‘taught’ these to my castaway character.

I was also somewhat sick of the constant nightly attacks of zombies and skeletons. Wouldn’t it feel a lot more immersive and like I was really cast away on an island if the night stayed peaceful and quiet as well, rather than recapitulate the zombie apocalypse every single time the moon rose?

Setting it to peaceful mode seemed a little like cheating though.

But then really, as I thought further, maybe it would actually make progress -harder- in that I wouldn’t have an easily renewable source of string from spiders, gunpowder from creepers, rotten flesh from zombies and bones from skeletons. In fact, I wouldn’t even be able to make a mob grinder… and that started to worry me a bit.

So I concocted a little trapdoor for myself. The -island- would stay peaceful, but I’d switch it back to normal mode if I changed dimensions. Yep, Nether, Twilight Forest, a Mystcraft age, whatever.

It made a certain kind of immersive sense that I’d crash onto a deserted island, save for a few peaceful natives, learn magic in an attempt to get away, and then eventually cross over into other dimensions that would be more hazardous and filled with hostiles.

Rule 2: Play in peaceful mode on the island. Switch back to normal mode once one crosses dimensions.

I was also a little sick of the common Minecraft tactic to dig a big mineshaft or stairway to bedrock or y = 12, and then dig a whole bunch of straight line criss-crossing tunnels pulling out diamonds, redstone and other valuable bits of ore.

It’s efficient, yes, but didn’t seem terribly immersive to me.

So I came up with another crazy idea, one I’m not sure how far or long it’ll last, as I really don’t know the layout and if it’ll yield enough resources…

Rule 3: There will be minimal manual mining through stone.

The idea is that I’ll go into already exposed caves and ravines and mine the ore that’s actually visible and a block or two around those visible veins. I won’t start hand carving massive dwarf mines through perfectly solid rock with a handful of stone or iron pickaxes.

The little loophole there is ‘manual’ so that later, if I like, create a golem or something that will mine straight tunnels for me, or create some sort of super-efficient magical pickaxe, then it’ll seem a bit more consistent to the ‘realism’ of this particular world that I could then create vast caverns if I wanted to.

Rule 4: We will try to build aesthetically thematic structures consistent with a ‘magical castaway’ theme.

Cheating in decorative blocks to paint textures on say, carpenter’s blocks, is permissible, to both make life easier and make it more aesthetically-pleasing, but cheated in blocks will not be used in functional ways. The carpenter’s blocks themselves would have been made with uncheated wood resources.

Sadly, I haven’t had a lot of real life time to play this particular world, or any Minecraft, to be honest, since I’ve also been distracted by buying the remastered Grim Fandango lately, but here’s the beginning of the adventure:

Cast away on the shores of a strange island, I try to make my way inland to gather some wood. Shelter, and a signal fire is primarily on my mind. Oh, and food, and a fresh water source.

I nearly perish when unawares, I stumble into a patch of quicksand. Some frantic digging and scrabbling away at the edge of the pit saves me.

There are a number of these differently colored patches of sand around, hazards that I constantly have to keep in mind.

With some relief, early on, I find a small stream that can serve as a source of fresh water.

After chopping down some nearby trees and chipping away at a rock wall to make some primitive stone tools, I manage to put together a modest survival shelter.

It is a quiet but peaceful night on this desert island.

I cobble together a small furnace made out of rocks and begin making some charcoal out of the logs I’d chopped earlier.

Daybreak heralds the start of exploration of this island.

I urgently want to build a signal fire, in case any passing ships draw near, but I realize that I don’t have any flint-and-steel to rapidly start a fire with. So after desultorily piling some wood together, the gnawing of my stomach suggests I need to pay attention to something a little more urgent than a rescue fire.

Following the edge of the island leads me into a tropical rainforest proper.

I find a melon patch with some relief – food! – but worry about how long these wild melons would last me. I save some seeds and hastily sow them. Only the gods know how long it’ll take them to grow though.

Merry giggling catches my attention, and I discover that there are others on this island… if these strange nature spirits could be called so. A number of dryads are taking a bath in a cavern fed by seawater.

For the most part, they say nothing to me, but I notice them paying a great deal of attention to certain flowers, which seem to glow with an almost-mystical light. Surely, these flowers hold some manner of arcane secret. I begin collecting them as I travel.

As night falls near the dryads, my breath catches in my throat as I realize that these sea nymphs appear to have also been tending a magnificent reef garden filled with glowing coral, like so many ocean-flowers. The constellation-filled sky is a wondrous accompaniment.

But I cannot linger, and I turn away, heading further inland.

I come across an eerie stone circle, even spookier at night, but nothing seems to stir from it.

Nearby, I encounter my first sentient being, a human, I suppose, who dresses like a witch. She introduces herself as Shannon Spellman, but refuses to speak of anything of more substance to me, telling me that I am not yet skilled in the Art.

It seems that I may just have to learn, somehow, if I am to find a way off this island.

And then I find it. A settlement! There are beds of crops – potato and cotton and some manner of berry.

There are even grapevines strung up in trellises, an old disused smelter of some kind, and a herd of sheep wandering unfettered through it all.

To my surprise, there is only one human dwelling within this place. A man dressed in what appears to be priestly or mage-like robes. He declines to give his name, but seems open to sharing some of his crops and making small converse.

A hobgoblin is the only other creature keeping him company, wandering about crooning to itself in its hob-like manner, keeping its own counsel. I am not sure if it is merely a friend or the mage’s familiar, but I think it a question best unasked for now.

I will likely have to return to this strange pair later and see if I can befriend them further, but for now, parting as an acquaintance rather than an enemy seems wise.

I pass by caves and deep ravines, some with exposed veins of metals, which I mark for later exploration, and even a blasted wasteland which I give a wide berth to, for now.

The forest has given way to some kind of scrubland, filled with acacia trees, and red rocky soil.

And then, near dawn, a curious sight on the horizon. Is it… could it be… a castle?

As the sky brightens, I draw nearer. It seems only to be a lone tower of some kind?

It is fully daytime by the time I get up close, and its skull-like demeanor puts me off from venturing within. Perhaps another time, when I actually have armor and a weapon, and am not starving.

The scrubland dries up, becoming a desert once more, and I realize that I have almost circumnavigated the entire island.

I stumble over one noteworthy feature, a large pool of oil that has bubbled to the surface.

And am almost frozen in my tracks when I notice an alien sight, some kind of meteor that has cratered onto the boundary between shore and ocean, and whose sky stone is somehow…repelling? the seawater from itself.

I give that a wide berth for now too.

For now, it is back to my humble shelter, to figure out semi-reliable sources of food so as not to go hungry, and to prepare my signal fire.

And then, I suppose, I should attempt to learn the Art.

—

To be honest, I think this is a great seed.

I actually preliminary scouted the whole place out to get an idea of whether the rules I was planning would actually work, or no, and I think there are enough resources and interesting features on this pretty big island to manage it, more or less.

Yet, importantly, it does appear to be largely an island, rather than a continuous neverending landmass.

It’s probably a great place to have all kinds of Minecraft adventures, not just a strictly nature/magic one, so if you’re interested in playing in the same surroundings, this is Minecraft, with the Wanderlust Reloaded modpack and Biomes of Plenty world type, with the seed “Why I Explore” (without the quotes.)

Death to Chain Letters, Web Awards and Other Grumpy Hermit Musings

One random wall-of-text fact about Jeromai:

I murder chain letters. I take great delight in breaking chains that run on fear and superstition, trusting in science, RNG and the general unfairness of the universe to leave me blissfully unscathed from whatever heinous doom was supposed to fall on that most dastardly of souls, the one-who-*gasp*-broke-the-chain.

That said, a blogger friend whom I respect and enjoy reading has nominated me for a not-to-be-named-here thingummy, leaving me in the decidedly awkward position of not actually minding answering a few questions from one friend to another, while not actually wanting to perpetuate something that sends someone else’s (whom I don’t know, and know not their motives) SEO skyrocketing.

I’m also okay with the spirit of the thing, which seems to be to highlight less trafficked bloggers or friends whose words you enjoy reading and would like to hear more from, or know more about.

I just really really detest that it’s wrapped up in a) a web award format (I don’t understand the appeal of decorating one’s website with a random graphic saying that you won an award, hell, I don’t understand why people go to meaningless (as in stuff everyone can win or fake ‘excellent service’ awards a bunch of people make up to soothe their employees’ need for external validation) award ceremonies in real life either) and b) a chain letter format.

So eff that.

Format stomped on. It’s dead.

Now I’m just here to answer some questions, share a few less-known bloggers whom I enjoy reading, and then ask a few of my own, throwing open the floor to -anyone- to respond and share if they want to, whether I name you specifically or no, or whether you’re even a blogger (maybe you’re just one of my favorite commenter persons instead.)

—

I do not drink soda. (Especially not after ballooning in my youth from a daily Coca Cola habit, sorta like a Super Size Me documentary in real life.)

I don’t watch enough TV these days to have a current favorite show or a celebrity crush. I could point y’all to ancient history and recommend Babylon 5 as my favorite show of all time instead.

As for celebrity crushes, had a bunch, and they’re still mostly ancient history, given my lack of current TV or movie keeping up with, but you know, I think Holly Marie Combs playing Piper Halliwell in Charmed is pretty damn hot.

Asking me for a favorite video game character is like asking me narrow down a single favorite video game. I just can’t do it. Even on my best focused days, I’m playing GW2 and Minecraft simultaneously because each give me different experiences, both of which I enjoy and need.

As long as the video game character fits the story the game is telling, then they’re a favorite because they’re who they need to be.

Asking me for a favorite genre of music also falls in the above category. I listen to pretty much anything and everything, and I just keep what I like. Pop rock, musicals, filk, country, symphonic metal, mashups, yeah.

Sting is a perennial favorite, his repertoire is extensive and his lyricism is clever. Been listening to both the Wicked and The Last Ship soundtracks lately. (Jock the Singing Welder is a hoot.) Leslie Fish’s lyrics are either hilarious or awfully sharp or both. I guess I haven’t been listening to much country lately, but I used to enjoy Faith Hill once upon a time. Heather Dale was a really nice Celtic/folklore artist I discovered via Pandora, before they region-blocked me and much of the rest of the world (DEATH TO REGION LOCKS, eesh.) Nightwish and Poets of the Fall are awesome (is POTF considered rock, rather than metal? Who knows.)  And Norwegian Recycling is my favorite mashup artist.

Yes, I drink alcohol. Not in heavy amounts, so as not to kill my liver and kidneys and whatever. I enjoy tasting a variety and a range of good quality stuff, so I dabble with certain cocktails and go on little tasting sprees to sate my curiosity. Beyond craft beers, I ventured into absinthe for a while (really good with coffee), tasted a little sake and decided nah, dessert and ice wines I like, other wines are either too dry or too pricey for me to consider further, and I’m currently eyeing various rums and other liqueurs, but haven’t acted on the desire yet.

It’s a lot cheaper a habit to eat gourmet single-origin 70%+ chocolate (Amedei is awesome) and keep the remainder of the cash for a vast variety of games, than buy 4-5 bottles of good alcohol for a tasting party.

No beard. Scratchy both ways, I should think.

I’d pick enough money to sustain me for life, over life-long love. Not that I don’t think the latter is unimportant, but as we’re right now in the beginnings of what seems like an aging population crisis and seeing how much my family is currently spending on my seriously aged grandparents, a certain pragmatism is telling me that one would have a better time of it if one can afford to pay younger people to look after you in your old age -and- pay for medical care.

If I really loved my life-long love, I wouldn’t want them to end up trying to deal with all the problems without sufficient money.

Several years ago, if my current boss fired me, I’d probably be relieved and happy, cos I was in serious throes of burnout in a more-dysfunctional-than-normal organization.

Now, I’d probably be sad, because I’ve found a niche in a slightly less-dysfunctional-than-normal organization and am being careful about my propensity for obsession and burnout. Getting fired would mean I’d have to run the job lottery all over again and try to find/locate/create a not-so-dysfunctional space for myself /somewhere/.

I’d rather not have to do that until it becomes necessary. (Cynicism tells me it’s merely a matter of time, cos change is a constant and all it takes is a few screwed up individuals to make life difficult for everyone else in the organization.)

Did I start a blog to showcase my writing or just to vent? Both.

Why do I think you nominated me for this award?

Because you want to hear a grumpy hermit rant about death, doom and destruction to chain letters?

Because Jeromai is a weird, eccentric cipher of a person and trying to find out more about the mystery is always intriguing?

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And just when I thought I was done, another blogger friend whom I respect and enjoy reading has come up with even more questions. Dammit.

What language would I learn overnight if I could?

Um, it’s a toss up between Quenya (to speak in elvish tongues would be cool), Old English (reading and understanding Beowulf and other texts in the original language would be awesome) and contemporary Mandarin Chinese (because despite a dozen years being educated in it, I still have little to no grasp of it and it would actually be a useful ‘normal’ skill.)

Knowing how easily I get motion sick, I’m not 100% sure a full on VR experience would be great for me. But it’ll have to be whatever incarnation of Guild Wars we’re up to then, because Tyria is awesome and ArenaNet still has the best fantasy artists of our time creating that painterly otherworldly look. (also some pretty solid engineers and network people and programmers and planners for the minimal downtime, minimal lag experience.)

I honestly have no clue what I’d want to say to a dead person, let alone invite them over for tea and biscuits. If I liked what they wrote in a book or so on, their work and wisdom and knowledge exists beyond their individual lives. And they would probably be a lot less impressive in person.

(I’d also be tongue-tied and am generally not very sociable by nature, so… yeah.)

Biscuit recommendations though, the Aussies have it with Arnott’s Tim Tams.

I don’t watch Game of Thrones. Can I just have all the Houses go down in flames, along with House Atreides and House Baenre?

Justice means…

…that I just spent an hour googling up and reading philosophy to figure how to even begin scratching the surface of this question.

When I hear the word “justice,” my first impulse is to think of it in a more legal sense, which I guess, brings to mind more procedural and retributive justice systems. I’m personally a little more in favor of restorative justice than retributive, but one recognizes that all types exist in the world (including the lack of -any- justice or a perversion thereof.)

In the context of the question, it seems to be referring to distributive justice, how goods and resources should be allocated to a populace.

Which then makes me want to ask, “in a game or in real life?”

Games are a smaller, more controlled system with boundaries and rules that can be set by the designers. I’d say they should feel free to experiment with all types, and see how the populace of different games react, a sort of inadvertent social research in a way.

In real life, my belief is that justice is a human created concept. Fairness and altruism has some roots in biology, but a full on justice system seems to be the province of humanity.

Much of the world is already operating on a capitalistic, economically-driven meritocracy, which rewards people (very generally speaking) for the amount of work they do. (Definitions of ‘work’ being somewhat questionable, as some ‘work’ may simply be politicking or maneuvering oneself into a better social position for more benefits.)

Totally equal distribution of goods regardless of what people do wouldn’t work, then no one would do anything.

So I would actually put a vote in favor of a distributive justice system that attempts to counteract and balance out the meritocratic economically-based system steadily widening the rich-poor divide by distributing stuff according to needs – the rich get less (but still get something) and the poor get a little more (supported by societal contribution.)

In no way should it completely -replace- option 1 or option 2 (extremes and black-and-whites are unlikely to happen anyway). but I feel that governments and society and the community (ie. humanity as an organised group seeking the overall best for the group) should tilt a little more to option 3 so as not to leave subsets of their populace behind (where they will end up diminishing the health/wealth of the society anyway).

Yeah, uhh, sorry if you were expecting a simple answer. This is wall-of-text city. My brain just can’t pick an option without explanation or thinking deeply.

Would I accept $100 if the other person got $900? If it’s a one-off ‘free’ payment (as in, not given in terms of return salary for work done and stuff like that), then yes.

The alternative is “punishing” everyone and both not getting a cent. I’ll not cut off a hand to spite my face. Both people benefit, and I could use $100. Especially if you take the same problem and increase it in orders of magnitude, I’ll take $1,000, $10,000 and so on, even if the other guy gets the larger share.

Maybe if it were $10 or $1, then I’ll say, nah, because going without that sum isn’t too big of a deal. Chances are likely, though, most people will offer a fairly even split.

What’s probably more important is that for cases of future interaction, one notes the selfish profiteering scrooges as opposed to the equitable ones. I’d want to avoid getting into future exchanges/deals with those that reserve too large a share of the pot for themselves.

But for a one-off, seriously, I’ll take any no-strings-attached hundred bucks you wanna throw my way. 🙂

I wish I could have favorite midnight snacks. I had a really bad bout of acid reflux a couple years ago and now I obey the oft-repeated advice to stay upright for at least two hours before going to bed, cos reflux really sucks. *sighs* The perils of getting old. I’ll pretend I can, and say a couple spoonfuls of Ben and Jerries’ Chocolate Therapy ice cream. (That’s not that far off a stretch. That’s a favorite teatime or anytime snack.)

A wished-for sequel for a favorite game? Planescape: Torment. (Oh wait.) The Secret of Monkey Island (Hang on.) Guild Wars (Fuck.)

Batman: Arkham Asylum (This is not working, is it?) Defence Grid (*pulls hair out*)

Oh, ok, Grim Fandango, Heavy Rain, and The Wolf Among Us.

I has no MMO home location. I r a nomad.

Beyond a little text room on a MUD that used to be the hangout of my first hardcore guild, when I think of “home” in a game, I think of this place:

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My own blogger list, consisting of folks outside what I would term my immediate blog echo chamber (i.e. frequent posting folks who come up with ideas to bounce off, and thus get a lot of link love), but whom I’d love to read more from:

In no particular order (some came on board during NBI and some are old stalwarts whose posting rate has dropped,)

• MMOjuggler
• Saylah
• Pete from Dragonchasers
• Tesh
• Pasduil
• Stargrace
• Tipa
• Tremayne
• Spinks

No obligations. Feel free to totally pretend never to have seen this post. I’ll happily take any and all answers from my commenter literati too.

Random questions being made into a list for the hell of it:

• How much time do you spend gaming each day or each week?
• How many people do you roughly interact with while gaming, and what’s the extent of your interactions?
• What emotions do you enjoy experiencing while playing a game?
• What are some of your favorite genres/settings/worlds to read about in a book?
• Are they any different from the genres/settings/worlds you might like in a game? (Be it a computer game or a tabletop RPG.)
• What Warhammer 40k army would you choose (assuming unlimited budget)?
• ASCII art, yea or nay?
• Your favorite vegetable, and your most loathed one…
• Unlimited budget, pick one country in the world, that you haven’t been to, that you’d like to visit.
• You cannot choose a human for your next MMO character. Would you pick a tall race or a short race first? (Width or muscularity, bestial features or lack thereof is up to you.)
• Wings or no wings?

Go nuts.

Or not.

Up to you.