The SAD Project – Day 6 – Slumdog Puglord

It’s Saturday, the start of the Oceanic/Asian weekend, and today’s screenshot story is about facing one’s fears… head on… only to realize with some head-scratching befuddlement that I seem to have developed thicker skin than I thought.

I basically went through the entire gamut of PUGs today – successful run, failed run, achievement run, many many wipes run, normal mode, challenge mode, watched people get kicked, got kicked twice (or at least the vote kick opened and I didn’t stick around.)

All on fractal 100.

It all started when I was idly browsing through the fractal LFGs wondering which fractal I dared to PUG today.

The first thing I saw was an offer by a guild to sell the Nightmare fractal – level 100 challenge mode for 40g, and that you could pretty much just afk at the final boss.

You know what I thought?

I thought, DAMN, that’s cheap! Just 10g to each guy. I was pretty darned tempted to just pay and get it over with. If it was a scam, welp, 40g is not very much in the larger scheme of things to lose and you could always report them as a minor consolation prize.

The fear of being scammed and the uncertainty of not actually knowing how to pay/trade for things like this was about 25% of the reason for why I finally didn’t bite. The other 75% was mainly me checking out my achievements panel and going, “ah crap…”

I got 5/7 of the standard achievements wandering into a lvl 25 Nightmare fractal by myself on the day it launched, and went “meh, I’ll wait until the PUGs know how to do a smooth run and all the video tactics and guides are out,” and never bothered to go back in again.

Ironically, I ignored fractals so long, the PUGs passed me by in skill level, so to speak.

I basically wasn’t sure if you could even earn the challenge mode achievement if you didn’t have the standard nightmare fractal achievement fully done and unlocked.

Seemed unlikely, given prior historical examples of Anet achievement coding.

Turns out that one of the T4 dailies was the Nightmare fractal, and lots of groups were starting up for it. Most of them at the time I first looked all said, “100cm food/pots/exp” though.

Bleh. Food was no problem, I carry food for raids all the time. Fractal potions are more of a pain, being an infrequent fractal flyer, but I could just take the time to prep and buy a few from the vendor.

Exp… well, ha, I watched Deroir’s nightmare cm fractal guide of a coordinated group run, and I solo’ed most of a level 25 nightmare fractal once upon a time…so… that would be a bald faced lie.

But what the hell, the new post-raids GW2 PUG atmosphere is really simple, right? Fake it till you make it.

If you can lie about legendary insights and be encouraged to do so, because you’re going to get kicked by puglords otherwise, if the veterans don’t feel like teaching or communicating because “go watch a video, go train, go make your own group to die horribly until you learn how to do it our way without error,” (hang on, how are they going to learn how to do it your way if they don’t interact with you?)  if the newbies don’t feel like communicating because the veterans are pricks anyway, what the hell, what’s the worse that can happen?

People say or think nasty things about you, and you get kicked. Oh, is that all?

So I hit the join button with the only 150 AR character I had, the necro, with the sneaky thought that I could cheat a lil and switch to parasitic contagion in an emergency to be even tankier and at least not the first guy to die.

Well, that emergency came pretty soon. There were quite a number of downs, quite a number of deaths. Still, I was holding my own on about 80% of the fractal.

Fortunately, accompanying me in terms of needing scraping off the floor was the group starter himself/herself, aka the person who made the “exp” request to begin with.

The rest of the PUG were surprisingly tolerant of much of the shambles we made, for a time. I got some invaluable firsthand experience of what the mechanics of the challenge mode consisted of, and was busy analyzing and figuring out solutions mid-combat.

The first death knell arrived during a phase when a boss split up into adds at 66% health  that had to be taken down within a time limit. It got blatantly obvious that two of us didn’t have a clue, when three people had put down personal waypoints on the minimap (which I didn’t even see) and the two of us didn’t. My little sheepdog act of following along got semi-exposed. We wiped.

In short curt sentences, the one guy I followed badly explained that the two of us needed to go east, at which point I looked at the minimap and realized there were personal waypoints set and quietly put mine on east, while the rest were busy being grumpy with the slightly more frequently dead and missing mechanics group starter (a warrior).

“at 33 clockwise” was the final cryptic phrase given before combat resumed. I dutifully went east and wailed away at my designated mob. (The warrior died.)

At 33% health, I did a best guess scenario and beelined east and “clockwise” to southeast-ish, managed to find the mob, which no one was attacking, so I guess I got it right. The four of us more or less managed to kill that boss, though two more of us died and had to be sloowly rezzed back to health (hey, at least it wasn’t just me) before it died. (The warrior was left dead and rezzed after the fight.)

The second death knell was the bullet hell rooms. Look, I’m on 250ms ping. I was pugging in NA time. NA folks consider 75ms to be “laggy.” Bullets in GW2’s bullet hell simulation are very rarely where they appear when you’re on 250ms ping. You have to be very very predictive to manage. To be very very predictive, you need the experience which I still didn’t have at that point in time. Things went as well as you might expect, which is to say, not terribly well at all. The one or two remaining guys soloed it, no doubt getting even grumpier.

We went through a number of repeated attempts on the final boss Ensolyss. I got an immense amount of practice in through that pressure cooker experience. Most of the mechanics I was getting the hang of and coping with… except for the third and final death knell.

One of Ensolyss’ attacks is him rearing up and slamming his fist into the ground to create an orange AOE circle that does damage, swiftly followed up by an expanding shockwave that knocks you back. What seems like half a second or less later, a nightmare hallucination forms above you (and each player, apparently) and slams down for massive damage in another orange circle.

I simply could not work out the PUG strategy for this. The organized group video guide said to dodge -into- the shockwave, so that you didn’t get knocked back. I did so, and was usually standing in the middle of a few orange circles for the hallucinations to wreck.

Half the time, my ping was such that I couldn’t hit the dodge key in time to dodge out and away from the hallucinations after dodging in, and the other half of the time, I ain’t had no endurance left. The cm mode damage went right -through- death shroud.

If I dodged out or tried to jump the shockwave, I’d hit the tip of the shockwave and get knocked down anyway, and being knocked down is bad news when death is about to fall on your head at any moment.

It was obvious that other classes were getting by using blocks and invulnerabilities. A necro has no blocks and invulnerabilities. It was a PUG, you can’t rely on a mesmer to distort for you or get group aegis from someone. A necro apparently had to fall back on picture perfect timing with evades and excellent endurance management (or, like in a nightmare 100cm necro solo video I watched after the fact, you do it alone and just dodge out of the -one- predictable hallucination circle, as opposed to the chaotic mess of 5 circles in a group of 5.)

So about 75% of the time, like clockwork, every time Ensolyss did that attack, I’d go down like a ton of green poison bricks.

Still, we lost the warrior first. One of the veterans was pointing out that he/she needed to -dodge- the mechanics (as we were spending half the time trying to scrape said warrior off the floor, and this tended to compound my error rate when I was trying to be too kind and get locked in a rez).

The warrior started to lag behind when restarting the fight, seeming reluctant to try again (or maybe was trying to adjust build, who knows.)

This eventually got on the nerves of another supposed veteran, who initiated a vote kick, and that was the final straw for the warrior, who then quit.

Shortly after, I succumbed to yet another one of those falling hallucinations of death, and that I saw the vote kick pop up for me as well.

I hit leave party without bothering to wait.

In retrospect, what surprises me is more of the silence and overall rudeness of the encounter. After I left without a word, I felt that I couldn’t let that be the last step of the interaction, so to speak, and sent a whisper to the person who initiated the vote kick.

It said, “no worries, I’ll leave, good luck.”

I just wanted to end on a civil note.

At any time, if any of them had said anything along the lines of, “look, this isn’t working, you’re not experienced, could you leave?” I would have.

Of course, no one is in the right on this. Should I have joined a group that said “food/pot/exp?” Probably not. I still did, though. It was one of the fastest ways to get some experience with 100cm.

Should the group starter who patently wasn’t experienced advertise for “exp?” Lol, obviously not. They still did though.

Should the other party member have initiated a vote kick on the group starter and essentially thrown a mini-coup? They still did, though.

Meh, it’s a PUG. “Ideally not supposed to happen, but still does” is like the definition of a PUG.

At some other point in time, mostly in the past, I might have been a bit upset – over how some people are treating others, over my perceived competency/reputation or lack of -, but today, I feel strangely mellow about the whole thing.

The logic goes like this: 100cm is like a mini-raid. It’s made for coordinated groups. Coordinated groups have things like communication, strategy, meta classes that synergize together.

It was a PUG. There was no communication, there was evidently some secret PUG strategy of which I at least saw how the personal waypoint system worked, and meta classes, don’t make me laugh, no chrono, no druid, no warrior (yes, we had no might worth speaking of through the multiple runs.)

And still, some guy who I will probably never see or group with again wants to be picky.

You’re a dime a dozen, buddy. We all are, when we’re slumming PUGlord style.

I will never see you again.

If we see each other again, you will probably not remember me. (-I- don’t remember your name now, just your attitude.)

If you do remember me and refuse to play with me ever again, it’s your choice to narrow down your overall options for people to play with. We all have fun in our own ways. If that pickiness involves 30 minutes of wait time while you sift through people for a specific criteria, I don’t got the patience for that anyway. Hence, I should care zero about your opinion of my competency and actually work on my own competency as evaluated by myself.

And so it goes, this new design of GW2 that makes everyone treat each other like strangers.

After I left, I pulled up the LFG, saw another three fractal 100 advertisements, and jumped into another 100cm at the last boss.

I watched someone even more rabid dog than the first veteran JUMP on a mesmer who had all signets out (not the right build, I assume) and demand kill proof by showing The Unclean title… which the mesmer actually had, hrm.

Surprisingly, they didn’t quite demand any kill proof from me – which I would not have passed – until alas, the falling hallucination of death got me.

At which point, Mr Rabid Dog started to ask, and I got out of there in a hurry with a quick “Leave Party” and nary a word. No civil ending note for this guy. I noticed that basically, incivility breeds incivility.

Mr Rabid Dog would say that I started it, by being one of those inconsiderate silent bastards who ignores “exp” demands on LFG (I don’t actually recall that particular advertisement specifically asking for kill proof until I got in, though, and I certainly had -lots- of fresh -if semi-successful- experience with Ensolyss.)

By this time, the LFG adverts had shuffled around, and I actually saw a 100 normal chievo run pop up. Oooh, this would be handy to round out my 5/7.

You know what? After cutting my teeth on challenge mode, I looked like a complete veteran in normal mode, helping to scrape 2-3 people off the floor here and there, and helping to succeed at a couple of the bullet hell phases. The falling hallucinations of death? Still got hit now and then by them, but they didn’t insta-kill me in normal mode.

That’s where the screenshot at the top of this post comes from. A successful normal mode run, in which everybody got a bunch of achievements and everyone got T4 Nightmare done.

After which, I jumped into yet another normal 100, thinking to get more practice. This one did not go well at all, and after struggling with several total party wipes at the bullet hell stage, I found my patience at PUGing finally evaporating for the day and decided to gracefully bow out with a, “don’t think this is working, thanks all” and a voluntary quit.

Meh, there’re all PUGs. PUGs are unpredictable and unreliable, it’s in the nature of a PUG. I act more selfishly when I PUG. Other people act selfishly when they PUG. You PUG. I PUG. Everybody PUGs. If you PUG, you take the bad PUGs with the good PUGs. If you hate PUGs, then well, don’t PUG.

If I really wanted 100cm done, there are ways. I could pay to be carried through. I could try my luck begging my raiding group for help. I could join an internal guild fractals group. I could start my own PUG over and over until I got lucky. I could try to solo 100cm – there are videos of it being done.

The goal today though was just to join some fractal PUGs and I went for the Nightmare fractal on a whim.

To my surprise, I learn that the rudeness of strangers doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, that I’m capable of acting in ways that others might perceive as rude and annoying and that I don’t care as much anymore, and also that the Nightmare fractal is both interesting and relatively manageable (meaning mechanics-wise, NOT “doable-in-a-PUG-wise.”)

New goals that have now formed from this random exploration: watch more nightmare fractal videos and analyze the encounter with the benefit of some experience, give soloing it a shot some day, get a warrior to 150AR (I’m so triggered by the lack of might in PUGs -and- a warrior has blocks to deal with the falling hallucinations) and test if that’s any better for 100cm than a necro.

Not bad for a couple hour’s worth of play.

NBI: Talkback Challenge #4

Joseph Skyrim’s NBI Talkback Challenge couldn’t have come at a better time.

This weekend has seen me going on a meta quest to learn about learning (this Coursera course is amazing for the vast number of links to read up on and make connections to – I’m seeing the principles apply for games, for writing, for martial arts, sports or exercise, for music, for languages, or yes, even regular school subjects or other things an adult learner might be interested to pick up.)

One of the topics that came up was the importance of mindset, as popularized by Carol Dweck.

Some people stay in a fixed mindset, that intelligence is innate, that creativity and talent are inherent and that these cannot be changed in any meaningful way. To people who were brought up with this mindset, it becomes more important to look smart, to seem competent, to hide mistakes and avoid failure in order not to feel bad and diminished in their eyes and the eyes of others. (Apparently, all it takes is a single line of the wrong type of praise to sway children in one direction or another, which ultimately all adds up to habitual patterns of behavior.)

A growth mindset, meanwhile, recognizes that people can train and practice to become smarter or perform better. This mindset looks upon “hard” things as a challenge and failure indicating that there’s always something more to learn. Valuing the process more than the end goal, holding this mindset lets you pick yourself back up again and persist in the face of obstacles – persistence, after all, being a generally more successful trait in the real world than smarts per se.

Like any other popular philosophy, it’s probably more than a bit simplified, while holding valuable grains of truth or insight.

There’s probably -some- innate differences in aptitude for various things based on our genes, but if one doesn’t practice said thing repeatedly, that innate aptitude isn’t going to be noticeable regardless.

And you probably wouldn’t want to hold a growth mindset 100% of the time blindly either, since you’ll then be forever trying to persist on both important and unimportant things. Prioritizing the things that you value and want to persist about is likely a good idea.

But in a broad general sense, it seems valuable to realize that these two mindsets exist and to recognize when it is appropriate to use either.

(If your boss has a fixed mindset, I wouldn’t suggest persisting in trying to change his or her mind about it. I’d just worry about projecting the desired image until one can find a new job with less dysfunctional people in leadership positions. That’s just me, your mileage may vary. Perhaps you’d be more interested in becoming your bosses’ boss and changing the organization that way or whatever.

Ditto trolls. You -could- persist in attempting to change their mind or perspective about something. It could equally be a waste of some of your valuable time on this earth.)

—

In that vein, examining one’s perspectives and mindsets on gaming seem valuable for understanding more about one’s relationship to games and learning.

Lust – Do you enjoy games more if they have scantily clad and “interestingly proportioned” avatars? Do you like playing as one of these avatars? Why or why not?

Considering that I can play and enjoy ASCII games, I probably don’t enjoy them “more.”

I likely would question the provenance of the game and whether it would be worth playing it if that’s -all- they had, since it would indicate a rather adolescent viewpoint at work in the creation of said game, and other design choices that might make a game more fun for me might also be missing or not shared by said creator/designer.

I don’t have issues with them including those avatars in a game though. I’m happy to have the more choice and options the merrier, and I know -some- people like ’em. If that’s also a target audience for paying the devs money, then so be it.

I can’t play scantily clad buxom D-cup yet anorexic ladies with any sense of immersion, so no, for those. Conversely, I admit to being partial to unrealistically proportioned hulk-like muscled males (scantily clad is optional, fur and bestial features is preferable,) so yes, for those.

I think, ultimately, that avatars are representational. For some people, realism or consistency in a fantasy setting or creating a persona that resembles their real world selves is important, and these players lean toward the more average-in-looks avatars. For others, they are sort of an escapist fantasy, and they go for more archetypal, exaggerated “superhero” symbols.

Playing big buff monsters is, for me, a representation of my love for melee combat, for running in there and being a sturdy protective tank, for wading in and kicking ass, of being the big supportive guy in the back of any group photo. It’s being someone I wouldn’t have much hope of being in real life, genes being what they are (eg. by and large, Asians are not known for being able to develop massive height and muscularity, as opposed to say, someone with Nordic ancestry, where they -might- have some hope.)

The virtual world enables people to walk in someone else’s shoes. May that never change.

And it’s why I’ll happily defend the right of straight white guys to play their over-sexualized female avatars, ostensibly to ogle their butts and boobs and throw on the brightest or clowniest lipstick and makeup ever. Who knows, maybe the avatar is a representation of some kind of fantasy in their heads, be it sexual or just trying to get in touch with their emotional feminine side, often repressed in real life from cultural mores. Maybe they’ll have the experience of seeing the world from a different perspective, if others treat them differently based on what their avatar projects. From that, is laid the groundwork for open-mindedness and respecting diversity, in small steps.

Gluttony – Do you have a game backlog of unfinished games but still buy new games regardless? Why or why not?

Hell, yeah. Who knows, maybe there will be a great games industry collapse and I will need new games to play on my desert island some day!

Well, seriously, I try to buy games that I’m interested in (and so much catches my interest) to support the devs who make them, so that I will never encounter that scenario.

However, since I am not a rich billionaire made out of money, I generally wait until nearer the tail end of their lifespan to buy ’em for 75% off. I’m a generalist that spreads 1-5 bucks across various games rather than pay $80 outright for one new game to specialize in.

Thus I tend to accumulate a whole boatload of unfinished games – I’ll play ’em for a couple hours to experience what it’s like, to appreciate what this one game is about, but I generally don’t have time to finish via repetition all the maps and levels of each game unless I really really like it in some way, maybe it’s the story or its design or it’s unique in some way or it’s just short enough for me to complete in a reasonable time.

I have decided that I’m okay with this. I’m not breaking the bank or my budget this way, and I’m indulging my love of games in general.

Greed – Do you enjoy hand outs in a game? Have you ever opted to NOT do an action / in game activity because the rewards were lacking? Why or why not?

It depends. If it’s a developer hand out, I assume they are giving the freebie for some kind of purpose, eg. encouraging someone to log on, celebrating an occasion or saying thank-you for something, and I’m happy to take it and appreciate it and enjoy it.

I’m less keen on player hand outs. I suppose it’s okay once or twice as a goodwill gesture, if the context is just that they’re being friendly or helpful. I do find it smothering when taken too far. If someone does everything for another person, they will never learn or go through the process, and that -journey- is the joy, not the reward at the end.

It again depends if the rewards are lacking in a particular activity. If the activity isn’t something I’m interested in to begin with, yeah, I’m liable to prioritize going somewhere more rewarding, in terms of both enjoyment and the goodies at the end. If I -want- to do that activity though, I’m still going to do it once or twice just to say that I experienced it and did it, even if I get zero or negative goodies out of it.

I’m generally a more intrinsically motivated person, so I tend to avoid games that offer external reward loot showers for doing stuff I don’t enjoy. In fact, I’m more liable to bitch and complain about “forcing players” if the game did put an exclusive desired goodie at the end of an activity I didn’t enjoy, rather than endure the activity repeatedly for the reward.

Sloth – Do you ever leech or AFK in a party? Do you discourage others from attempting things that you feel are difficult? Have you ever seen someone that needed help, but decided not to help them? Why or why not?

I wouldn’t ever intentionally leech, it’s just not me. I’m a perfectionist that needs to be effective or at least above-average in optimal to feel like I was contributing to a group. I’m a lot more likely to quit a party if I ever get pissed off at something, rather than passive-aggressively hang around trying to be annoying.

If I do go AFK, it’s a forewarn kind of thing, it’s just manners that I learned from my old games “AFK, bio” or “AFK, phone” or what have you, and only for a couple minutes and I try to minimize that whenever possible.

I hate people who are not respectful of others and decide to wander off for half an hour or more eating food, or wrangling with their kid or parent or cat that has suddenly decided something absolutely critical has come up. You’re making 4-5 other people wait for you. I understand that RL emergencies happen. Just fucking come back for a minute, apologize that you can’t continue and leave the group and let them get on with their lives with someone else. I am very likely to bail from one of these dysfunctional groups if shit like this happens.

I generally don’t discourage others from attempting difficult things. I’m fond of encouraging others to stretch themselves, in fact. However, my one exception if this difficult thing is reliant on the whole group getting it done right and I don’t have time or patience that day to make repeated attempts at it, having not joined or been forewarned that such a goal was in mind. Then I’d much rather they attempt the difficult thing on their own or with a group specifically put together to attempt it.

I’ve seen plenty of people who needed help and decided not to help them. One, they won’t learn to help themselves if they are always being helped. Two, they may not welcome the help, especially if they are the obnoxious “I play how I want” sort of person that is not open to improvement with a fixed mindset. Three, I might be on the way to doing something else, and they don’t specifically need my help, just someone to help, and someone else was already going to help them.

I generally only stop to help if no one else is there, and they genuinely look lost or in trouble, as opposed to just being lazy and expecting someone to help them as is their “entitlement.” Or if they are what I define as a “promising young newbie,” someone keen and eager to learn, asking intelligent questions, communicating in full sentences, interested in moving from beginnerhood to more understanding. Or if they try a few times on their own and fail and I realize they need some scaffolding or coaching or support in some way to grasp a concept they’re missing.

Wrath – Ever get angry at other players and yell (or TYPE IN CAPS) at them? Have you ever been so angry to stalk a person around in game and / or in the forums? Why or why not?

I do get angry at other players, though I try my best not to these days, it’s better for my own blood pressure and health to change my perspective about that person’s behavior.

I generally do not yell at anyone. The most I might do is forcefully point out a combat mechanic of some kind, if they’re being very thick about comprehension and I’m getting frustrated by the group’s overall failure and I think that grasping this basic concept might in fact improve the existing situation. I guess I get more angry about a situation or a failed fight than with any player per se.

If a player is obnoxious enough to make me angry, that person usually qualifies for an immediate block from me, probably a report to whatever game authorities they are, and possibly me leaving the group as I no longer want to succeed with that group and enable that person’s bad behavior (assuming no self-penalties for leaving the group, eg. in a PvE dungeon instance, else I usually give up success as a lost cause and work on a personal improvement goal instead with the remainder of the PvP match time.)

I really have better things to do with my life than to stalk an individual that makes me mad around the place. Exactly what would that achieve besides making me even more mad to see a person I detest MORE often? Report to someone who gets paid to look into these things, block (so I never see or hear their ugly mug again), and done. Finito. On to less bloodboiling matters.

Envy – Ever felt jealous of players who seem to be able to complete content you can’t? Do you ever suspect they are hacking or otherwise cheating? Why or why not?

Ok, I confess that jealousy and envy are fairly alien emotions to me. Perhaps I have to thank my parents and childhood for that, but I never really grew up with a sense of scarcity, of feeling that someone had stuff I wanted and couldn’t have. My mum basically taught me to “suffice” – we may not have it all, we may not even have all of what we want, but what we have is enough and can make us happy. Other people may have more things, but who knows, they may not actually be happy even if they had more things.

I only experience such feelings on super-rare occasions, such as when I failed an important language exam by the world’s most catastrophic margin while everyone else in the class was bright-eyed and cheery and in the top god-knows-how-much percentile… and I generally felt super-helpless that there was absolutely nothing I could do to improve my grade further because the exam standard was presuming a linguistic background I didn’t have (years of foundation speaking it) and no amount of effort was going to help this in the time frame I had to improve for the next one… then I felt somewhat jealous of all these other peoples’ A grades and assumption that absolutely nothing was wrong, while I had fallen through the cracks over here and no one (including the teacher, who didn’t want to make any eye contact) had a clue of how to help.

See, here is the basic thing. I generally have a growth mindset for most things, including games. (The one time I felt intense helpless jealousy, it was exactly that, I was helpless, felt utterly inadequate, and didn’t have any avenues I could think of for improvement, so the last resort was just wishing that I was somehow magically better and like everybody else.)

So perhaps this player can complete content I can’t, or plays at a much higher level than I can right now. I take it as meaning that I can improve myself to that level if I work at it. Maybe not immediately today, but eventually.

It’s hard for me to be jealous of that player, it only means that player put in a hell of a lot more time and effort playing that one game or mastering that one aspect that I either am unwilling to put in the effort right now, or haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. If I wanted to, I could work at it too. It’s just a matter of deciding if I want to invest the time to do so.

As for whether they are hacking or cheating, maybe, sometimes it’s hard to tell in certain first-person shooters whether a person just has played so often that they can do snap headshots on reflex and instinct alone, or if they have some kind of aimbot that automatically tracks for them. Still find it hard to be jealous either way though. Either the person worked hard (in which case one should respect that) or the person’s a cheater (and how one envies someone acting so low, I don’t know, they’re only cheating themselves in the end.)

Pride – Are you one of those people that demands grouping with other “elite” players? Do you kick players out of your team who you feel are under-performing? Why or why not?

I guess this one is my deadly sin. I can do a pretty good Lucifer impression.

I won’t demand an elite group, but I do -prefer- smooth runs that don’t go all pear-shaped on a regular basis. I tend to take it very personal if I keep ending up face first on the floor (I’m working on that impulse through conditioning via PvP and dungeon solos. I get it bad in PvE groups though, it’s an image thing. I feel incompetent in the eyes of others if I keep dying and no one else does, whereas if I’m alone, death means I didn’t get the right strategy yet, and in PvP, death is just a thing that happens to everyone.) That does usually mean a base level of competency and efficiency.

I don’t like dungeoning to begin with, so I’d rather things end fast and I get the shiny at the end that I wanted. I rather not have to devote 2-4 hours to a herculean epic struggle against heroic odds where I end up having to coach three other players how to play in order to get through it every time I dungeon. I don’t mind it in the initial stages of discovery of a new dungeon, where it’s all new to everybody and that’s what we do to learn as a populataion, but once it gets old, my exploration drive totally loses interest and I end up only going along due to my achievement urge.

I generally do not kick underperformers who can’t help themselves. Perhaps they’re new to the dungeon, perhaps they’re (stereotyping intensely here) someone’s healer girlfriend, perhaps they’re still struggling with MMO controls in general, or all three. I’ll get frustrated at the group’s lack of progress and repeated wiping due to one (or worse, three) part members not carrying their own weight, but it seems cruel to kick someone who is still learning and trying to get the hang of it. So I bite my tongue and coach and try to think of any and all creative non-standard strategies that might eventually let us progress and wipe along with them until we either get it or some party members run out of time to continue (thank goodness.)

I am, however, very tempted to kick (and usually -will- support kicking) an underperformer who doesn’t care that they’re underperforming and expresses they have no interest in getting better or helping the group succeed. It shows a lack of respect for the group (that they joined, duh?) If you’re running around Leeroying triggering stuff and generally not communicating or cooperating with the group, if you refuse to alter the way you play and it’s getting the group killed as a result (as opposed to playing in a nonstandard fashion and the group -still- succeeding), that kick is likely going to come. Probably not initiated from me, but I’ll say OK, if anyone else has had it with you too.

It’s very situational. Honestly, I think too many self-styled “elitists” aren’t actually that good themselves and are just pointing the finger at other people in an attempt to cover up that they’re weak players themselves. If you copy a cookie cutter build without real understanding of why someone chose those choices, you’re really not an “elite” player, you’re just using someone else’s solution that works, a cook following a recipe, a pattern-emulator.

The real question is, what can you do when the situation changes? Can you solve new challenges with the patterns you’ve learned? Can you adapt on the fly and switch your build to whatever best suits the situation? Can you work with your group to formulate than execute new strategies?

Yes, I’d much rather group with players that show through their actions that the answer is ‘yes’ to all those questions. Things die faster, the group functions more smoothly, I learn a lot from what the true elite players do.

But I really don’t sweat it if “optimal dps” is not being performed at every last second, or whatever. Did things die? Did we complete the dungeon? If so, great.

Are we still in the dungeon two hours later? Did we die a dozen times already? If so, fuck.

GW2: Ascended Cooking Recipes Data-Mined!

Pursuant with the release of news of the Rise of the Tengu expansion for Guild Wars 2, I decided that data-mining would be the next intriguing lateral progression activity to try in GW2.

While it’s a lot harder than it looks, I’m pleased to share some of the stuff that appears to be coming with the release of the new Maguuma tropical jungle zones.

Ascended Cooking will be in, letting us craft to 500. Here are two of the high-resolution food icons and recipes I managed to find:

Bowl of Chickpea Curry

Level 90

Duration: 1h

+ 100 Ferocity

+ 70 Power

Output Qty: 1

1 Bowl of Chickpea Soup

1 Jar of Red Curry Paste

1 Unidentified Orange Dye (Rare)

10 Thermocatalytic Reagents

Bowl of Lettuce and Cucumber Salad

Level 90

Duration: 1h

+100% Chance to gain swiftness on kill

+15% Damage while moving

Output Qty: 1

1  Head of Lettuce

1 Cucumber

1 Bottle of Tropical Dressing

1 Bottle of Elonian Wine

—

It’s looking pretty likely that cucumbers will be part of the new expansion and either harvestable from jungle vine nodes, or bought in bulk from karma vendors.

Can’t wait to play a Tengu myself.

Sucks about the special character slot needed though. Time to hoard more gold to convert to gems. Dungeons ahoy!

Guess it’s time to join one of those elitist dungeon guilds and grind out 10 of ’em a day.

GW2: Accessible, Approachable – Which is More Important?

Stubborn has been musing about exclusivity and accessibility in WoW, and as usual, I end up seeing parallels in the game I’m currently playing.

He says:

I can pretty definitively say that… you’ll never please all the people, simply because of the players’ feelings about two mutually exclusive desires.  Every player either wants accessibility or exclusivity, and never the twain shall meet.

Those two polar opposites exist on an axis, sure, and people can exist towards the middle of the axis, but in the end, every player will prefer one of the following two options:

A game where everyone can participate in all activities
or
A game where merit earns you special opportunities

Sure, we can have deeper conversations and talk about points at which one opposite might be more important than the other, but in each player’s heart, one eventually trumps the other, and those feelings are what drives the whinefests associated with game changes.

Finding a good balance along this spectrum seems to be something that GW2 is also feeling its way towards with each episodic Living Story update.

Every few weeks, we sway back and forth between hard, difficult challenges with exclusive rewards and accessible content that can be done by most or all, with a veritable whinefest – or more charitably speaking, bountiful feedback – about that update’s activities.

—

At heart, I’m still a City of Heroes player. The original game was a magical collection of friendly, generous souls who formed a very strong community with a forums presence to match – folks thought nothing of throwing heaps of influence at random passing newbies to help them buy their next level’s upgrades, teams formed with little to nil picking and choosing of classes or levels (thanks to sidekicking and marvelous group synergies,) and the forums was filled with many helpful people writing guides on various effective ways to play each powerset, and relatively calm and rational discussion regarding the value of each class and the game’s various quirks.

That approachability and accessibility drew me and kept me playing.

Years passed, the developer helm changed hands and with the changing of the guard, there was also a noticeable change in design philosophy. Loot happened. Ways to upgrade one’s character to higher and higher tiers of power made hoarding money and items a lot more important. Rising power levels made the concept of “team” more redundant, and more about each individual and how fast missions that made money could be completed. The introduction of raids set a minimum gear level on participation, and even led to forced grouping for a while there.

You know what? In my opinion, the community went downhill fast.

The exclusivity gave rise to elitism. People got more insular and attacked any dissenters on the forums. A subset of players were all about the speedruns and played all group content that way, with beefed out characters that could pretty much solo the entire chain of missions. To heck with the team, and it came through loud and clear in their attitudes.

There is a reason why I choose not to play World of Warcraft.

The game leans too much over to the exclusivity side of the spectrum for my tastes by making raids the primary end-game activity.

To me, accessibility means inclusiveness.

I should not have to pick and choose and reject any person who is somehow “the wrong level” or “the wrong class” or “the wrong something” for a piece of content. I should not have to look upon any player as a potential impedance to my goals (consensual PvP excepted) and feel hostile towards them.

Players should not feel left out or blocked from progress due to a particular playstyle preference (eg. group or solo, easy fun or hard fun, liking a particular class, etc.) as this discouragement tends to lead to frustration and not wanting to play the game any longer, which whittles away at the community and game population.

And it should take a reasonable amount of time (and/or RL money) to reach an even max-level playing field. New (or poor) players should not be left behind in the dust by veterans who started the MMO at the dawn of time (or rich people with more money than sense) because that again leads to rejection of disadvantaged folk and gradual erosion of the playerbase.

—

So what about Guild Wars 2?

Well, I’m still playing it.

For the most part, GW2 remains a very accessible game.

Take leveling. There are multiple ways of gaining sufficient xp to reach 80 – the PvE open world (also known as hearts, DEs and map exploration, and/or mob genocide), WvW, dungeons, and of course, crafting.

Equipping yourself as you get to 80 also has multiple options – karma vendors, cultural stuff for coin, dungeon vendors, drops from mobs, crafting it yourself or, of course, the TP. One can pick between blues, greens, yellows or even orange, depending on how affluent one is feeling, and even blues will eventually get you through the content, though greens are the best compromise in terms of stats and affordability.

Once you get to 80, there are again multiple options for “max level” gear (here defined as the orange exotic baseline.) Karma vendors, drops, the TP, crafting, dungeons, WvW, pick your poison. If one finds themselves unable to afford this just yet, level 80 greens and yellows are sufficient to get by until one can work towards this goal.

Ascended items (or the max + 1 level) are meant as a medium term goal to work towards incremental improvement of a character. Again, there are multiple options, if more limited in nature. Laurels, or faithfully completing dailies, will yield an item after 25-40 days, depending on if one supplements them with badges of honor or not. Attending guild missions, which normally span a two week period, will yield an alternate means of nabbing accessories via commendations. Completing a fractal above level 10 will allow one to work towards rings, either via a lucky drop or patiently plodding through ten character-days’ worth of fractal dailies via pristine relics.

It is not unreasonable for even a new player starting from scratch today to reach a max level baseline which is functional and accepted by a majority in a month or two, or less.

And the beauty of GW2 is that they don’t even have to hurry to get there. (With some partial exceptions, there may be some discrimination in dungeons or WvW, and the erratic difficulty level that is the seasonal content of the Living Story may be occasionally frustrating.)

Dungeons are more of a mixed bag, though that’s probably partially the attitude of players who prefer the dungeon playstyle. There seems to be a competitive subset who enjoy speedruns and very specialized builds to eke out the very last scrap of optimal – picking and choosing the appropriate tools for the job and tweaking for efficiency is naturally part of the game for them. There also seems to be another group of players who strive to be like their idols but upon failing miserably to communicate or coordinate, turn on their party to assign blame and play the discriminate-without-understanding and kick-from-party games more than actual dungeon running.

It’s still possible to get into inclusive groups who don’t play in the fashion mentioned above, don’t mind spending a little extra time -and- successfully complete dungeons, so I’d classify them as moderately accessible.

WvW is, of course, one of the more accessible player activities to get into, though one can pick one’s level of dedication to the format through joining various guilds and the resultant community that forms on each server has an impact on how approachable or elitist a server “feels.”

—

If anything, it’s the Living Story updates that are the most schizophrenic.

One previously controversial update was the Mad King’s Clock Tower, that managed to produce unintended player hostility towards players on Norn and Charr characters.

With the Queen’s Jubilee, we have the Queen’s Gauntlet, which has produced conflict between those who want to farm Deadeye Dunwell for an accelerated gold/hour rate and others who are seeking to complete other achievements. Some players are openly being nasty to others in the hope that this will leave them with a personal arena to themselves for the maximum rate of gold earning.

The champions loot update, while pleasantly rewarding the task of defeating champions across the board, has yielded the unintended ember farm – a dynamic event which produces 20-30+ champions via scaling – whose successful cycling in 5-10 minute intervals is contingent on failing the timed event. This has suddenly produced conflict between those who want the event to succeed and those who want the event to fail, with resultant nastiness across map chat (from non-well-behaved parties of either side) can be more eye searing than the slideshow framerates.

The temptation was too great. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

With some irony, I note that the Queen’s Gauntlet is not very accessible (in terms of skills/builds needed) and the ember farm more so (though there’s still calls for grouping and staff guardian preferences,) but both are yielding the same presumably undesired consequence.

An unpleasant community is not an approachable one.

Not being approachable turns people off from wanting to join in and participate in the first place.

And even if they do, thanks to dangling low hanging very desirable fruit, they’re not really enjoying the experience beyond self-centeredly staring at the shinies in their own pocket.

That focus on self tends to lead to exclusive and elitist atitudes – disregarding other people’s preferences or discarding them after using them for selfish purposes.

Which fucks up the community even further in an ever vicious cycle.

I think ArenaNet had the right idea early on in their iterative design process where they tried to make sure that all nearby players’ interests were in alignment with each other. Dynamic events were crafted so that whatever actions players took were working towards completion, and not griefable. Dynamic events are supposed to be completed for the best rewards.

Given a chance, players can and will attack each other. It takes design to create a friendly, cooperative experience where additional players are only welcomed, not looked upon with suspicion.

It’s my hope that future Living Story updates will give a lot more thought back towards their original manifesto. Enough with the individual or dissimilar goals trying to interact in the same space – save those for private instances. Craft us shared goals, provide opportunities for players to help each other, eliminate ways players can grief each other.

And give us back our social cooperative world.

GW2: No Plan on Paper Survives Contact With Players

I’m sure you were waiting for some coverage on the Aspect Arena activity. I thought I was going to write a post about it too, to round up the last part of Cutthroat Politics.

But somehow, with the last “fix” to Candidate Trials completely invalidating much of the “control” portion of the trinity once again and making dps berserker gear king once more, a lot of the fun and joy of the update has evaporated for me.

I just can’t bring myself to play Aspect Arena again. The underlying thought is, “Ok, fine, achievements all done. Time to discard bothering with everything I don’t like.”

This is actually no fault of the minigame itself per se. On paper, I appreciate it a lot more than Southsun Survival. It’s a Kiel game, team-based, three different “classes” with synergies that are meant to interact together.

The main problem is, I can’t seem to find players who want to play the game for what it is.

I took one look at the achievements for Aspect Arena and went, oh, that’s nice, no “wins” required, a lot of this can easily be done just playing the game repeatedly. At most, the only thing artificial might be you waiting a little for some guy trying to get crystal carrier to pick up the crystal -before- you stop him by killing him dead for crystal breaker, but in a CTF game, you were going to stop him dead anyway.

Except my first few forays into the game revealed either a) collusion between teams to get achievements, or b) a whole lot of individual death-matching.

I didn’t really have issues with the first. It was bound to happen. And mostly it made them easier targets and my life easier. When the loud ones started announcing achievement swaps over chat, I said nothing and alternately took advantage of most of them being gathered at one place to avoid the dogpile and run crystals for my team almost completely unmolested, or I ambled over when I was bored and ruthlessly slew the opponent who happened to be carrying the crystal AND being so nice as to stand still.

It’s also really easy for the alliance to break down as it just takes a few players interested in playing the game for what it is to STOP a colluding crystal carrier, and people start feeling like they need to retaliate. Voila, folks starting to attack and play the game once more.

The second frustrates me a lot more. I get that way even in FPS games that are ostensibly meant to be team-based and I end up seeing practically everybody just dueling it out and racking up personal kill counts. I make it a point to guard the flag (crystal) carrier for my team, hassling anyone who comes near with the intent of shooting them, throwing up stability fields, etc. Then when I run the crystal, of course, there’s no one around. If I’m lucky, there’s no one from the opposing team either.

Whatever. I took an immediately liking to the Sun aspect, probably because nearly everyone went Wind in the first few days and I found Sun a good counter. It’s also very flexible and mid-range, where I like to be. Dump the first attack on autoattack, and no matter what range you’re at, you’re machine-gunning somebody’s health off – get in closer to fry more health off as needed. Throw up Bastion to counter the inevitable attempts at knockbacks.

I don’t claim to understand many more of the other skills. I could if I wanted to, but I personally find the whole concept of Aspect Arena a little too abstract and meaningless to master since it’s only hanging around for a week or two. Also, jumping. Geographic location. Aspect skills. All previously established that the three do not mix well. Which kills a lot of the fun attempting to go vertical with the other two aspects.

So I ended up just pounding the hell out of the number 5 Sun skill, still having latency issues with precise control of when it stopped, but just doing my best to arrange very long straight routes to the cap points and trying not to over-dash off any precarious ledges to my doom.

Won some, lost some. Par for the course for a team PvP game. Got the achievements. Can’t bring myself to play much more of it. I mean, it’s basically just Capture the Flag with unfamiliar skills that do not work extremely reliably well for me. With two flags, to boot.

Two flags just means the team is diverted and splintered up even more. Yes, it makes it easy for achievement-seeking crystal carriers. I got a number of carries just going to the crystal where no one was fighting over. But it’s just not very interesting. The skills are unfamiliar, and thus things that happen may feel a little arbitrary. I could play a much faster and smoother CTF game at any time by loading up TF2.

That’s all I really want to say about Aspect Arena. I like the idea on paper. In practice, it’s not the sum of its parts for whatever reason. Mostly players playing it in unintended ways.

Which segues us back into a rant about the Candidate Trials. We finally got a dev response about T4’s “new” aka originally intended difficulty.

Honestly, if this had worked as intended from the get-go, I might not be so annoyed. It’s the whole “changing the goal posts” thing that gets to me. I spent an hour with a guildie trying to duo T4 after the patch, and it was just fairly horrific that using the same strategy that worked before, now kept failing in spectacular ways. I made a few game attempts at T3 with various pickup groups and nothing really worked.

To be really truthful, I can’t really bring myself to care that much because I already have the so-called “achievement,” and have now learned the truth of the saying “Exploit early and exploit often.” Why should I care to be inclusive and help others when plainly both ArenaNet and other players don’t give a shit? I’ll just join them and solo and feel a little more dead inside.

I would actually like to do a T4 run “properly.” As in, a group, with damage/support and built for synergies. Like this guy did in the video he posted on the forums.

But because players are now tuned towards avoid all fucking aggro at all costs as a strategy, plus seeing berserker builds manage it solo, you can expect most PUGs to be in squishy berserk gear with very little condition clears doing their best to scatter and not engage any mobs but plunderers at all.

PUGs, when in a hole, will not stop digging. They’ll just keep doing what doesn’t work and getting the same result.

I don’t have the saliva to spend to convince ’em otherwise. Nor will it actually work because PUGs by definition are not generally very well coordinated, nor can you expect gear, traits and builds to be min-maxed AND synergized with each other.

Grouping is further complicated by the system these trials are using, which makes cross-server groups not easy to form. You have to guest over to the server the instance holder will be in, as far as I know. There are only so many guest passes to use in a day.

Whatever, I’m just feeling tired now.

Which echoes some of the sentiments across the blogosphere on the latest content and the surfeit of achievements that are time-limited and adding a relentless pressure to do things the one true shopping list way.

Those who can’t “cope” are finding this manifests in the form of disinterest and boredom and being turned off from the game. They’re not as attached or invested anymore because they simply can’t keep up with every last niggling detail or have missed an update with some part of the story.

I see a mirror in this with my current reaction to WvW right now.

Tarnished Coast was paired up with Jade Quarry (T1) and Fort Aspenwood last week. Jade Quarry was, no doubt, going to spank us, but for the sake of server pride and facing a challenge after so bloody long of walkover victories, I upped my game and my WvW play time to give a good showing. It was fun, if more than a little tiring during the SEA timezone.

But when faced with unrelenting pressure, casuals eventually ask, should I even be bothering? This is becoming too “serious business” and not very fun any longer.

Tarnished Coast this week is sandwiched between Blackgate and Sanctum of Rall. The only good news is that the other two servers would much rather fight each other. We just need to pick and choose appropriate times to stay out of the way, hold out heroically, be annoying nuisances and opportunistically help 2v1 the other server.

My reaction is mostly, OK, whatever. I can’t bring myself to care. (This week, anyway.)

I’ve been getting the sense that the WvW community is ratcheting up and getting more hardcore in preparation to take on the T1 servers, and I think one unintended consequence of this is that some of the inclusivity is lost.

Some guild commanders have been going tagless – it helps control the sturdiness of their zerg group by not attracting squishy pugs (oops, were we supposed to use the word militia? Not happening these days.)

There’s been frustration expressed at certain gear or builds, but not much done to help anyone besides sit around expecting that raiders ought to put in the effort to show up appropriately geared and with consumables to match. Did I say raiders? I meant WvW zerglings.

A lot of the map sentry network has gone silent. Many of the sentries don’t seem to be around any more. Or they’ve joined the zerg. Some perhaps have “graduated” to Mumble and voice comms and being active sentries, as there are no doubt map spies crawling all over the place in T1, which makes chat channels slightly tougher to rely on.

Some of the fun seems to be gone, replaced with elitism. I don’t actually find PvP fun in and of itself. My enjoyment tends to exist in running around in a group I can rely on and a commander that is both having fun, building morale and making beautiful tactical decisions I can admire. It’s hard to find such commanders when faced with overwhelming odds – not many can handle it, and I don’t think it’s healthy for those who can to pull 16 hour days in WvW either.

And for what? The score is unlikely to change. Increasing rating just means a better chance at more weeks of unrelenting pressure. I’m already having problems keeping up with PvE updates. There’s no way I can keep up with the hardcore expectations of the solely WvW crowd so I may as well just… bow out. Let ’em laugh and scorn. Whatever. In the end, if they fail to respect the casuals, they’ll be the ones fighting oh so heroically alone.

I can’t help but wonder if those not as into achievement attainment are also getting a touch of similar malaise PvE-wise.

Screw hard. Screw difficult content. I’m ready for some easy mode fun. Here’s hoping for the next update.