Citizen Sleeper Thoughts

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Good Morning Friends! I am dragging this morning because it is amazing just how far out of whack your sleep schedule can get during a three-day weekend. This weekend was a weird one because Friday and Saturday morning were devoted to trying to get an ending in Citizen Sleeper because we were planning on recording a “gameclub” style show on that game on Saturday night. Then the discussion was so compelling and I realized that I missed key elements of the game… which lead me Sunday morning to play the entire damned game from scratch. I’ve not finished the game a second time and I have to say, it is very much an experience worth having. The show we recorded should be considered a full spoiler experience, but this morning I am going to do my best to entice you in a spoiler-lite manner.

The world of Citizen Sleeper is that of a late capitalism dystopia similar to those familiar in the “mega-corporation” cyberpunk genre. In the future, truly sentient Artificial A.I. is outlawed, but there are ways to skirt the boundary and that is the emulation of a human brain. You play a “sleeper” or a robot frame that has the partial consciousness of a human brain being emulated on it and effectively sold into slavery… so that the original human can live a marginally happier life. The problem is that you escaped the bondage of the Essen-Arp corporation, but due to “planned obsolescence”, if you do not receive your regular dosage of stabilizer, your body will break down and die.

Mechanically Citizen Sleeper is a pen and paper roleplaying game lovingly presented as a single-player digital adventure. Essentially you have two resources Condition which determines how close to death you are, and Energy which is the equivalent of how well fed you are for lack of a better explanation. The game is divided into turns or “cycles” and at the beginning of each cycle, it takes two segments of energy to get up and move again. Upon the start of a new cycle, a number of D6 dice are rolled and that represents the scores that you can spend during that cycle on taking actions. As your condition depletes, it also reduces the total dice pool that you have available to you. Your character’s perks determine what bonuses you might have for any given action.

The game thrusts you into a world of poverty and stress, and the need to keep working to try and figure out a way to survive. You are cracked out of a cargo pod and given a place to stay, but not out of some sense of generosity. Turns out the person who finds you and gives you a place to sleep… needs you to help pay off debt and as a result asks you to get up and work almost immediately. So you spend the first few rounds rotating between the empty container you are sleeping in and the salvage yard as you encounter your first “clock”. “A Debt Called in” represents an 8 turn clock that starts counting down giving you that many turns to successfully pay off that debt before failing the action. These are essentially the actions that drive the course of the game as you are put under the gun to be able to take certain actions within a certain timeframe.

What sets this game apart from so many other games in the cyberpunk genre, is it is not hopeless. Sure this world is a bit of a shithole and you are encountering so many people living in abject poverty, but there are ways that you can make almost every life that you encounter better. The game is very “read-y” as Kodra called it on the show and there is copious amounts of text to sift through, but it is exceptionally well written and gives you a feeling for what these characters are like. The combination of artwork, narrative prose, and superb audio design come together to create what feels like the living breathing world of Erlin’s Eye, a space station that kicked the corporate overlords off of it and turned it into a haven for outcasts.

I have to admit I was not entirely certain about this game at first. It took me a number of turns before I really got into the flow of the experience. After that, I fell deeply into the “just one more turn” problem that you have with 4X games and maybe was up far later that first night than I had intended to be. It is a game with a large number of possible endings and as far as I can tell there is no real loss condition. Having played through it twice now, I am pretty happy with my choices in both cases and the remaining four achievements that I do not have… I am happy enough knowing they exist but not experiencing those specific endings. If you have a fondness for pen and paper roleplaying at all or the larger cyberpunk genre, then I suggest you give the game a closer look. Personally, I know that I will be watching anything that Jump Over The Age games creates from now on.

AggroChat #390 – The Citizen Sleeper Show

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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Tonight we sit down to record the first “Aggrochat Game Club show”-like experience that we have done in a really long time.  A few weeks back a copy of Citizen Sleeper showed up in our steam libraries courtesy of Tam, and after several played it…  we set forth to eventually have a single show where we talked about it at length.  The major benefit of this is that for the most part, it is a relatively short game, and also has a wide myriad of possible outcomes.  This led to some interestingly varied experiences including one where Bel just played the game wrong entirely and made it out on the other side with a good ending.  This is a full spoiler show about Citizen Sleeper so I highly suggest if you have not played the game…  that you might do so and come back later.

Topics Discussed

  • Citizen Sleeper

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Earnest Money and Orichalcum

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Well, friends… I did it. I put my money on the line for a house in the lottery. On Cactuar, there were a number of homes that opened up in pretty much all of the housing districts yesterday. I’ve always been partial to The Mist housing area because I have also been partial to Limsa Lominsa. It is the town I started the game in and was the location of our first Free Company house. After scoping out a number of plots during the downtime when the lottery system was offline, I found one that I think is my favorite, and yesterday I put down my almost 4 million Gil in earnest money. At that point it told me I was the fifth bid on the property so here is hoping that my “Bel Luck” pays off. I am not super hopeful to be honest because I have chased a house at this point for quite a long time. Maybe having housing would make me want to be more active in the game again? I am not sure but it would at least mean I was logging in every week to visit the home and do some nonsense to make sure I did not lose it.

In another of my gaming crushes, there was a significant patch released yesterday in New World that added in PVP Arenas… which I do not give a shit about in the least. However, there were also a large number of interesting changes made, not the least of which was adding more tier 4 and 5 nodes in the world for crafters to harvest. The most immediate and stark change is that apparently by default the map is no longer flood filled with the color of the faction that holds it, and in order to return this functionality it seems you have to toggle on the filter for “faction influence” each time you log into the game. Another really interesting thing that went in is that there are now faction-wide benefits for holding territory. Here is a full list of the benefit given to a faction for holding a given location.

  • Brightwood: Camping no longer costs resources.
  • Cutlass Keys: Increases global gathering luck by 10%.
  • Ebonscale Reach: Decreases the cost of items in the faction store by 5%.
  • Everfall: Increases the amount of Azoth Salt gained by 10%.
  • First Light: Increases global refining yield by 10%.
  • Monarch Bluffs: Increases all experience gains by 5%.
  • Mourningdale: Increase the gearscore ceiling of crafting by 5. The maximum gearscore you can roll is still 600.
  • Reekwater: Increases the amount of PvP Experience gained by 5%.
  • Restless Shores: All fast travel is now free.
  • Weaver’s Fen: Decreases global tax values by 10%.
  • Windsward: Increases the chance that a consumable isn’t consumed on use by 10%.

So currently on Valhalla the Syndicate holds four territories and is given the benefit of free fast travel, a 10% reduction in all tax values, 5% increase in PVP experience gained, and creating a camp no longer requires any resources. Covenant holds six territories and would get 5% discount on faction store, 10% increase in azoth salt gained, 10% increase in global refining yield, 5% experience bonus, gearscore crafting increase by 5 levels, and 10% chance on not consuming a consumable. Then Marauders hold a single territory and get global luck increased by 10%. I think this does some interesting things because it makes terrorises that were otherwise worthless… like Restless Shores and Cutlass Keys exceptionally valuable because of the bonus they grant to your faction. With the ease of travel, it also makes moving around way easier than it once was essentially making ANY crafting hub viable.

The change I appreciate the most however is all of the new nodes opening up around the world. I harvested more Orichalcum yesterday than I probably have in the first few months of playing the game. There is also a side benefit of having a new PVP chase in the rewards track that is taking folks out of the world and focusing them on PVP. This means there is significantly less contention for resources as a result and it is probably a good time to be working on leveling skills. I’ve been stockpiling resources a bit of late because I know that very soon they are going to open up a double experience period which will make finishing off some of my skills significantly cheaper.

I think my next target for skills is Engineering which is currently level 188. I want to craft an Axe of the Abyss, which has improved significantly from the last time I looked at it. I have pretty much all of the materials needed to craft one ratholed in the various storage chests around the world. For the few missing components like Embossed Wrapping, I put in a buy order for 50g and had it filled quickly. I’ve been harvesting a ton of resources because it is very fruitful to grind out those aptitude caches each day. I am really enjoying my time spent in the game and while I wish I had a stable group to run expeditions with, I am content to push up my crafting while also collecting gypsum and slowly working on my expertise.

Lastly a final thought. Recently I have been having this inexplicable desire to poke my head into The Division 2. In theory, I should be amped for all of the things going on in Destiny 2, but the removal of further content really burned me on that game. I would however really like to have some sort of a shooter in my rotation, which sent me down the path of never really having given Division 2 a fair shake. I never even hit the level cap, and at some point, I should probably remedy that. Between Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, New World, and now adding Division 2 to the mix… I am going to be busy.

Aetherblades and Jade Heroics

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Last night I finished up the second part of Living World Season 1. I enjoyed it mostly, but there is still this part where you are dumped into Bloodtide Coast and told to fill a bar. I am fairly certain that this is bugged because it took me somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 events to fill the said bar. Other folks were in chat talking about it as well, so I am hoping that some sort of patch drops to resolve this for the rest of the folks who will likely experience it on the weekend. [Edit] – It appears the patch that dropped while I was doing Tequatl last night addressed this. As far as the actual content… it was a bit shallow. This part seemed much faster than the first drop. Essentially you have some content in Lion’s Arch, followed by some running around and finding a bunch of people, then the Bloodtide Coast sequence, and finally a big set piece instance. If my recollection of part one is correct we got two different set piece instances, but I am guessing they wanted to limit this story arc to only involving Kas and Jory.

The other piece that I was not quite prepared for was the fact that I had already experienced this “dungeon”. I had heard along the way that a lot of the fractals were based on instances from Living World Season 1, but I was not exactly prepared for them to just exactly be those same instances. As a result, completing this area felt probably shorter than it actually was, because I had done it a few times now as a fractal. I guess I did not make that connection quite so succinctly during the first part, though I had also completed that instance as a fractal. All of that said I am still very happy to now have access to this, and I think it is pretty great that we seem to be getting a 20 slot bag for completing each step in this chain. I am wondering if this occurs only the first time you complete it, or if all characters that you run through this sequence are now going to end up fully equipped in bags as a result.

In other news, I have finished my process of leveling every profession in Guild Wars 2 to 80. Most of them, however… are in no condition to actually play. At this point, I feel pretty confident about Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger, and Engineer. All four of those are fairly well geared and have a reasonable build. My Mesmer is getting pretty close but I still feel like I need to do some tweaking. Thief is the one that I finished leveling the last and is a complete mess as is Elementalist. Revenant could be played in a pinch but really I need to get some elite specializations unlocked to make that a more enjoyable experience. I am not sure WHY I decided I wanted one of each, but it is a thing that I have completed nonetheless. Ultimately I am probably going to start doing map completion work on them while I sort out how best to play them.

Right now I am devoting my time to getting Dragonhunter unlocked for my little Asura Guardian. This is likely going to be the next character that I “figure out” and get some viable gear and a build that is enjoyable. Essentially I am abusing my addiction to World vs World to unlock Elite Specializations on the various alts that are still in progress being figured out. Heart of Thorns is my least favorite of the content drops and as a result, are the Hero Points that I am least interested in chasing. So every time I get a Skirmish Chest I am spending it on Testimonies of Jade Heroics, which I then spend at the Heroics Notary for Notarized Scrolls of Maguuma Heroics. Over time this allows me to unlock elite specializations on characters that I am not really actively playing. It might seem cheesy but it is all part of my process and I am very thankful that the game gives me an easy way to work on my alts… while not actively playing them.