Tripod’s “Head of Zombie”

I’m just an old crone in the woods
Mixing my magic potions
Living alone here in the woods
Ninety years, ninety years,
Scraping by on berries and tree sap
Sunken eyes deep in my weathered face
My scraggly hair-like dry white hair
I’m raving to myself
To the few teeth I have left

And I have such…
…a smokin’ body…
…a full and youthful rack…
…the ass of a gym instructor…

My neck is a portal,
between good storytelling…
…and no sense at all.

I am a zombie shambling through
a dark and abandoned building
Horrors I’m told have ravaged me
Jerking and spasming
Seven years I’ve rotted in the waste
My family held out hopes I was alive
And now my son has found me here,
He raises up his knife…
as the tears stream down his face…

And I have such
a smokin’ body
my breasts are both intact
I’m dressed as a nurse-themed stripper

My neck is a portal,
between narrative logic…
…and no sense at all.

Head of zombie,
Body of hottie
Head of orc queen,
Body of hottie
Head of space fish,
Body of hottie

I’m a cartoon aardvark
In a pixelated magical kingdom
Gathering sparkling pumpkins
On rainbow skates
It’s also the case that
I’m stacked like a swimsuit model

My neck is a portal
between good storytelling
…and no sense at all!

 

Edit: Lyrics fixed, courtesy of Joseph Skyrim!

GW2: 1st Quarter NCsoft Earnings Call

And this is the reason we had 30 days of item sales in March.

The good news is that it has rather solidly and effectively masked the quote unquote “not as expected performance of HoT” – meaning presumably that other than the initial surge, few people were convinced or tempted to buy the expansion later in the following quarter. I figure that means the GW2 veterans picked it up the first quarter it launched, but subsequently, casual players of GW2 or hardcore players from other games were -not- tempted into following suit.

It’s good that the strength of the gem store and gem to gold currency exchange is such that it can provide a Hail Mary last resort to save an ailing quarter. Cos the last thing we need is NCsoft feeling that their investors are asking too many questions about why this title exists in their portfolio, while showing insignificant profit.

I admit to being very curious as to the lesson they apparently learned. 

Is it that they shouldn’t crank difficulty across the board too high, or try to institute too much grind in order to encourage retention?

Or over-focus on the hardcore subset at the expense of leaving the other subsets feeling unheard? Or focus overmuch on Achievers, while forgetting the other subtypes that also play their game?

Maybe they’ve decided that promising the moon in their marketing and under-delivering is a sure way of shooting themselves in the foot, a la O’Brien’s new resolution to deliver actual tangible results for players to judge?

Or that by opening up developer communication channels and inviting civil player discussion and feedback, they might be able to stave off much of the knee-jerk controversy and backlash that follows any sudden surprise change a vocal enough group of players -really- don’t like?

Is it that they’ve decided too concentrated maps and focused metas are no good and they should focus on quantity and more spread out maps like core Tyria?

Is it that they should cater to the seemingly unending call for more 5 man group content at an easy to moderate difficulty level not too far removed from present day dungeons and fractals?

(Mind you, I don’t personally agree with all of the above, especially the latter two, beyond the desire to have more oldstyle exploration and discovery and lore in the maps, but they seem to be somewhat common sentiments.)

Or maybe they took home a completely bizarre unimaginable-to-me lesson learned instead. Like, “raids were the most well-received and regularly played feature of Heart of Thorns! Let’s not bother making open world maps and make our next expansion a whole boxful of raids!”

Who knows.

Hopefully we’ll see more stability in the second quarter and decent enough gem store revenue post-mea culpa patch to take us to Living Story 3, presumably arriving in the 3rd quarter.

Time will tell as to what that lesson learned was.

Game Triage

I’m with Liore and Belghast. Hype cycles are whooshing right over my head. And I don’t know what to blog about. So I go silent for a couple days, which sometimes turns into weeks.

Here’s the main problem:

Too many games. Not enough time.

I suppose one personal habit of mine that has already gotten entrenched is a deep resistance to buying most games on launch day. Or indeed, during the hype cycle when most people are talking about it.

The habit started when I skipped a year or two when I was schooling overseas, or unemployed and conserving money, and ever since then, I’ve been busy playing catch-up.

I don’t regret a thing.

I’m part of the long tail, I get my games cheaper, I still get a very similar experience for most things that ain’t reliant on launch day crowds, and I wasn’t much of a must-do-the-same-thing-as-my-friends-at-the-same-time person to begin with.

It’s a rare game that I buy full price – I must really love it – and often I see it going for much cheaper later, and it rubs in the lesson that I paid a premium for experiencing it at a critical time.

Hell, I have ‘old’ games I want to play again, and I don’t know when I’ll get around to them.

I haven’t quite crossed 1.5 years in Stardew Valley yet, I don’t think. One week I was playing it, and then I wasn’t.

I kinda want to play Don’t Starve again. I bought the latest tropical island DLC thing sight unseen and -haven’t- got around to even seeing any of its content.

I listened to Peter Hollens sing Skyrim and suddenly I want to start another game from scratch, for reals this time, a full second playthrough, and maybe play a different combat style and oh, actually try the DLC? Did I ever buy it when it went on Steam sale? I can’t remember.

Who am I kidding?

Path of Exile lies fallow once more, because Minecraft shoved it aside last week.

I raid now, in GW2, two weeknights of five. Three left.

I took up a real world art class Sunday morning, cos it grew increasingly obvious to me that I needed some form of tangible creative expression. Fills a spiritual, meditative hole. But it does mean that half a weekend is gone where gaming is concerned.

Half of a Saturday is on standby for work or real-life pursuits (eg. family outings) or game community ’emergencies’ (I’m gonna want to play WvW resets if the game mode ever takes off again; the raid group may need to assemble.)

3 weeknights. 1 weekend. (Minus the hour per day finishing GW2 dailies, cos that’s non-negotiable.)

I sit around with a to-do / bucket list, and I have to admit that the most pressing priority for the use of said 3 + 1 isn’t a game, old or new.

I have many epub books and digital magazines left completely unread. I picked up a Netflix subscription when it went global this year (and thus, available in my country.)

There’s also around two decades of accumulated clutter I’ve been trying to divest myself of, and it mostly means taking the time to digitize the stuff I can’t bear to throw away without saving it somehow.

I got started on the project early this year, set an ideal completion date of July, promptly got sidetrekked for two months with GW2 raiding, and really ought to get back to it now that things have stabilized to a place of relative contentment in Tyria… before the Living Story picks up and completely derails the best laid plans.

Between that, Minecraft, the blog and GW2, I am spread completely thin. (And it’s not like the blog is getting that much attention these days either.)

I suspect I’m not the only one with similar issues.

Interesting times we live in now, where our attention and focus has become such a commodity.

Overwatch Beta: First Impressions

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

WTF.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.

Ok, I know this is obviously a bot game vs AI, but….

WTF.

I have shit accuracy. I am a total noob. I’m not familiar with the map at all.

How the hell does this happen?

Then I went to play an actual game with players.

First round: Went via some side route or other (as inferred from seeing other players charge up a central path toward the objective.)

Managed to be fast enough to overtake the objective by a half metre, set up in an unobtrusive corner slightly behind the presumable viewpoint of the opposing team staring straight ahead at the spawn objective.

They had no chance at all.

First round won.

Second round: One or two opposing team players switched to Reinhardt. The frontal barrier shield puzzled me a bit and I spent a little way too long a time dicking around out of turret form trying to reposition and figure out how to get around behind them and failing and totally ignoring the team fight and objective, while the opposing team sat on it.

Second round lost.

Final round: Decided not to play Reinhardt’s game any longer. Remembered during trying out all the heroes’ skills on the practice map that the frontal shield only has 2000 health. Turreted up a nice long distance away, held down the left mouse button while aiming in the general vicinity of the big blue glowing rectangle thing sitting on the spawn.

Another Bastion on my team did the same thing. Two Reinhardts on the opposing team = no more shield, then dead.

Our team moved in onto the capture point. I de-turreted and went around the sides again, looking for a nice angle on a completely unfamiliar map. Found a cute side room whose only entry seemed to be nearer our team than theirs. Had a decent enough side view of the capture point. Finished off about 3-4 people that were dumb enough to move into my sight line aka on the capture point, while the other five members of my team destroyed those that didn’t dare get on said capture point for obvious reasons.

After that game, I uninstalled Overwatch.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s got that super well-polished Blizzard look all over it.

I was deeply impressed by the very guided tutorial, which really assumes the person playing it is completely new to FPSes and may need some adjustment time with getting familiar with the controls and so on.

After that, you get to play around in a little private Practice Range map to shoot bots (literally robots) and have friendly bots to test out all your skills on. You learn about Hero Swapping and have all the time in the world to try out every Hero’s skill in blissful peace and quiet.

(Albeit, the map closed on me once because I stayed too long, and I had to start it again.)

This is worlds apart from trying to learn MOBA hero skills from either watching a video or having to be in a serious business game lasting 45 minutes where your teammates will rip you apart for being noobtastic.

Then you can ramp up to something less potentially hostile and 100% cooperative by going up as a player team against a set of bots, or Practice vs AI.

Which I think it is a GREAT idea… except a little HAHAHAHAHAHAHA WTF HAHAHAHA in practice. See above.

I suppose they were easy bots or something. Who knows. I was yolo solo-queuing by just hitting the Practice vs AI button.

After which, I presume it’s vs other players time, and/or ramping up AI difficulty in some way that wasn’t obvious on first glance.

Given how lethal every hero appears to be capable of being, I suppose Blizzard decided to err on the side of generosity by ramping up the chance that everyone will get at least partial “wins” by scoring some kills here and there, even if their team loses.

However, this may be at odds with the snowball mechanic of MOBAs or some such. Apparently, it’s less fun to be on the losing team’s side because you end up with one or two men down, and promptly keep losing from being outgunned and outflanked or whatever.

I dunno. I was busy playing Bastion.

Now, I’m -sure- Bastion has counters, as more skilled players would tell you. I’ve been a TF engineer, my turret and I have been outplayed countless times by skillful medics.

Apparently the Widowmaker can snipe Bastion to death from really far away (presuming not noob player with good aim), Genji can reflect a Bastion to autokill themselves (counter = recognize a Genji and don’t freaking shoot until the skill is over), etc.

I’ve been on the receiving end of a Reinhardt charge and pinned against the wall and shotgunned to death (during the lost round in which my positioning was very very bad.) Not fun.

I hear Roadhog can do a Pudge and meathook a turreted Bastion into his waiting arms of insta-death.

Is it going to take a little while for newbie players to realize this? Yep.

Is it still going to be possible for a thinking Bastion or Torbjorn to outwit many of the casual players out there? I’m guessing, YEP.

Is Blizzard going to nerf Bastion a teeny bit more because it seems quite ludicrously OP compared to other heroes? A qualified maybe-yep.

(I heard some guy on Reddit went up against a pre-made team of 4 Bastions and 2 Reinhardts. I laughed my ass off on reading that team composition.)

Is Bastion still going to be playable and enjoyable post-nerf? Is it possible to learn a bunch of other heroes to counter Bastion? Is it still going to be possible to play and position Bastion skillfully to out-counter the counterers? Probably all of the above, yep.

But you know, I realize that I don’t have the patience nor the time for it, personally.

It feels a little like I’ve done this before, with Team Fortress, and TF has a bit more of that jump-in, jump-out, soloqueue, play your own minigame fun, as opposed to the small team, very objective-focused, MOBA-like teamfight style of Overwatch, where team synergies are likely what you’d want to focus on at higher levels of play.

If you had a team of friends to get together and knock out a few rounds while voice coordinated, sure, yeah, it’s probably a little more fun like that. (Then again, MANY other games would be a little more fun like that.)

I’m especially NOT paying $40 USD or more for the privilege of jumping in to casual play a few rounds here and there for kicks.

$20 USD, maybe. I’d buy it if/when it ever goes on half-price or free to play.

I mean, TF2 is free to play. Dota 2 is free to play. League of Legends is free to play. That’s their competition right there.

It’s a little bit of a shame because the polish could knock your socks off, the heroes all feel pretty unique and cute; if you were a play-all-the-things player, you’d have a really fun learning curve mastering each hero; many of the heroes all feel like they’ve stolen a little bit from MOBAs or other FPSes here and there (a pudge meathook, an enigma black hole pull, dwarf turret playbook is nearly a dead ringer for the TF engineer, etc.) and it’ll be interesting to see how players put them together in new and surprising ways…

… but um… there’s probably still a few more balancing passes and iterations to go in order to make sure that a few heroes aren’t overwhelmingly favored over everything else…

…and ultimately, it’s me. I’m playing too many other games, most of them free or already with initial outlays paid for, to have 1-3 hours a night to commit to Overwatch. So… why should I pay $40 USD for a game I have no time to play just yet?

Does not compute.

I’d give one thing to Blizzard though. They got me to download the Battle.net Launcher. It is a super-slick well-polished affair like pretty much all their other games. Which are conveniently displayed in super-slick fashion in a vertical row screaming “Play Me For Free” or “Try It For Free.”

I already downloaded Diablo 3 to give it a spin. Cute. Also another thing I actually have no time to sit through a long story for, but maaaybe, if it ever goes on 50% sale ever ever again.

I have been waiting for a cheaper Starcraft 2 for eons. All three of the chapters are finally out now. Some kind of battlechest bundle can’t be much farther away. Maybe 2017 or 2018… In the meantime, I could actually ‘try it for free.’

No doubt, I will take Heroes of the Storm out for a free spin too at some point.

(Already messed around with Hearthstone on the Android phone. Meh. It’s a card game. It makes money off selling the promise of power/options in card packs. Standard schtick.)

So the only thing I probably WILL be keeping for now is the launcher and the Battle.net account. The rest can wait for another day, far far ahead in the future. That’s probably already a win in Blizzard’s book.

Minecraft: Regrowth – Couple Steps Forward, Couple Steps Back

I’m not sure what possessed me, but I spent most of the last few nights making the second level of my to-be modern farm looking pretty:

The stairs down, courtesy of stone bricks stairs and stone brick slabs.

The second floor with 12 crop beds in various stages of complete.

The stairs leading down to the next floor, which has barely been dug out yet.

It took a frightening amount of time to decide on nice textures. As in, practically the whole night and then some.

The Chisel mod for Minecraft allows you to make common items like dirt and cobblestone and stone into other blocks with a vast array of textures.

There was a lot of stopping and starting and test-laying of “hrm, is this pretty?” blocks in a row, before I settled on Compressed Cobble-Dirt for the square frame marking the growing areas, and filling in the extra perimeter space with Polished Stone Bricks, lighter in color than regular Stone Bricks.

I actually hit a small watery alcove to the outside in the far corner, and decided not to brick it up entirely. Going to lay in some clear glass eventually and have a window that will let me see if it’s day or night.

The sprinkler system isn’t all the way in yet, but I extended the water tank into this layer and I -think- it will work.

But then again, what do I know?

My old growing hall has finally hit a snag. Apparently, there is a limit to the horizontal distance that water will travel down these irrigation channels.

I painstakingly made Osmium Seeds the other night, which will eventually produce a metal I need for progressing further into the Mekanism mod. Only to discover that my sprinklers, well, aren’t sprinkling well.

The last sprinkler has a tendency to dry up and not sprinkle. That’s the sprinkler that’s supposed to speed the growth of the Osmium crop.

To make matters worse, checking on the water tank outside revealed that the water was getting sucked out faster than the one poor pump could replace.

I tried a stopgap measure of stacking the wooden tank blocks up to make a bigger water tank, and replacing the piping with a Mekanism pipe with better flow rate (all the better to drown you with, my dear):

I seem to have made matters worse. The water just whooshes out of the water tank now.

Apparently growing some 50+ crop types with two sprinklers per crop goes through a high water volume. Who’d have thunk?

I am now debating with myself if it’s worth making a few more pumps to see if I can refill the water tank fast enough.

The alternative is figuring out whatever clever means of redstone or Buildcraft programming is available in this mod to shut the irrigation channel valve periodically, say, whenever the water tank is empty, so that the pump can fill it, and to open the valve to activate the sprinkler system when the tank is full.

Or it could make my head hurt and I’d say fuck it and use the manual route of accomplishing the same thing. Which is to just flip the lever that is currently next to the irrigation channel valve on and off, whenever I walk by or want to regrow some crops after harvesting. (After all, it is a bit of a waste to have it always-on when I barely harvest any crops most of the time.)

Either way, it’s still not going to solve the issue of reach, though.

So the other solution is to make a secondary water tank somewhere in the middle of the growing hall, and maybe install a pump system to fill -that- tank up. Maybe that’ll take some of the pressure off.

Who knows. The only thing I do know is that it’s going to take more than one night to resolve.

The really casual bee breeding continues. I extended out the platform to accommodate more Apiaries.

After perplexing myself with one too many hybrid bees, I managed to force myself to sit (or fast-forward) through a few longwinded Youtube tutorial videos.

While I still don’t really have a clue as to the more industrial, automated parts of bee breeding yet, my take home was that if I was going to climb up to more sophisticated bees, I was going to need some hives producing pure stocks of the lower-rung bees.

So that’s what I’ve been trying to do. For every variant of bee currently in my possession, trying to force them to breed true to each other. And then using a few of those spare bees in crossbreeding attempts to get them to the next rung of bee tiers.

It is still not terribly easy going.

Mostly because Princesses and Queens are limited, I think. As far as I can figure out, you have to pull these breeder bees from wild hives, and I’ve depleted every wild hive in a fairly large radius around my base already.

If I want a pure breeding stock of one line, that’s one Princess/Queen dedicated to the job. That means no more Princess/Queen to crossbreed into another line.

Then I have to breed/mutate a new Princess/Queen up to the same level in order to crossbreed beyond…

…unless I’m missing something. Which I could very well be.

Oh well, live and learn.