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One of the things I have learned over the nearly ten years of doing this thing… is occasionally you need to see your own words reflected back at you through the eyes of another player for something to finally click into place.  Yesterday my good friend Pete left a comment on my blog and I had one of those moments of clarity.  So for reference the comment was specifically about the statement I made about having trouble engaging with a more traditional MMORPG.

I recently re-subbed to FF XIV; in my case I was so lost I rolled yet another alt to start over. Annndddd I’m really struggling to engage for that same “been playing quasi-MMOs too much” reason. I just feel like the time-invest:reward ratio is off now. Maybe it’s because I started fresh, or maybe I’ve just moved past MMOs. Of course knowing I’m all-in on Anthem in a couple of weeks is also kind of coloring all my gaming experiences now. Everything is just to ‘tide me over’ until Anthem comes.

Ultimately I think the key problem I have been having is that what I am looking for doesn’t quite exist yet.  I’ve gotten used to the rhythm of the quasi-MMO/MMO-lite style games where you get some sort of bit of your cortex lighting up every few minutes as something happens that is interesting and exciting.  This could be an engram drop or a really freaking sweet headshot…  or getting to use your super or favorite grenades…  but something cool is constantly happening.  In a traditional MMORPG it just feels sluggish by comparison with nothing really exciting happening unless you are in a dungeon…  and even then loot has been so sanitized and normalized that nothing really exciting ever drops anymore.  Gone are the days of hoping that one item you had been seeking drops…  and replaced is the item level 300 version of the same item you have been since since item level 100 just scaled up.

Everything feels like what we used to refer to as a “stat stick”, aka those boring trinkets that had a lot of stats on them but didn’t do anything to change the gameplay.  In a MMO-Lite like Destiny, each time I pick up a new weapon it feels like an interesting and unique experience and having that one magically rare “god roll” feels so much better than the slightly less perfect versions I have littering my vault.  In Anthem… each weapon and ability load out felt vastly different than the other options…  so Venom Darts felt significantly different from Pulse Blast for example.  Items in a traditional MMORPG don’t do this… because they are trying desperately not to upset the balance of how each class relates to every other class.  As a result you get the same item over and over scaled up for level as not to upset the apple cart.

Then there is the action aspect that I find myself craving…  in an MMORPG the skill component tends to be either mashing your buttons with Dance Dance Revolution style perfect timing, or your ability to react to things happening quickly, or in the case of Final Fantasy XIV…  execute a choreographed dance perfectly.  Please note I am not discounting the amount of skill that any of those things take, because I have done them all in one form or another but never at the level of polish that the hardcorest of hardcore raiders do.  However this just feels fundamentally different than lining up that perfect headshot or timing a grenade just right as the enemy is running down a hallway and you wind up sweeping that entire group.  That is just a level of interaction that you don’t really get in fantasy games…  and I think is in part why I have been enjoying Assassin’s Creed Origins so much because it gives me some aspects of that.

The more Actiony Fantasy games comes close, but never quite work in the same way that a Destiny, Division, Warframe or Anthem do.  Probably the closest that exists is Skyforge, but while the combat feels great…  the overarching flow of that game is somewhat incomprehensible and it is also “very free to play”.  Neverwinter has a lot of the same traits…  and it can be super enjoyable but it is almost too MMO at times…  and again suffers from the “very free to play” hurdle as well.  I feel like I should take a moment to explain what I mean by that.  Free to play games tend to do a bunch of things to confuse the user and drive them towards buying their way out of holes…  so they give you very limited inventory or in the case of Neverwinter spend lots of time deluging you in complete useless shit that you will loot and fill up that inventory space.  They also have tons of competing currencies that have no direct exchange rate that largely just give me a headache thinking about them.  If I can manage to keep my head down and focus on the quest at hand I can enjoy these games for a period of time…  but again the gear all has the problem of feeling like the exact same item regurgitated over and over with higher stats.

Elder Scrolls Online is a phenomenal MMORPG that wants to be action oriented… and while yes you are constantly swinging your sword with your mouse button in place of hitting an ability with the number 2 to spam it…  it also doesn’t feel very far removed from the traditional formula.  Hitting an ability doesn’t feel exciting in the game and instead just feels like hotbar combat filtered through a different lens.  I continue to play that game for its expansive and wonderful story and my love of the Elder Scrolls setting, but it failed at providing a more action oriented alternative to the MMORPG because in many ways it feels like they didn’t go far enough.  I love the fact that we are limited to a specific number of abilities, but most of those abilities don’t feel powerful enough and can be spammed…  which sorta destroys that feeling of having an exciting moment driven through gameplay.

The game that comes the closest to nailing the Fantasy MMO-Lite is Monster Hunter World.  So many of the elements feel spot on, but it is absolutely NOT trying to be this game and it shows.  Grouping still feels awful even though at least on the PC it is driven by Steam Communities instead of a Clan that requires people to have joined the same session to invite folks into.  It is also very limited in focus… it is about hunting big monsters and if you want to do something other than that the game really doesn’t offer much in the way of opportunities.  There is no “strike” or “dungeon” construct and there are very few activities that offer an opportunity to just hang out and chill, as everything is laser focused on taking down big boss monsters.  However it does nail down the perfect crafting system for one of these MMO Lites or “collect a bunch of monster bits” and then have some NPC make your gear from it.

The challenge is still that no one has quite created a version of the Destiny model that works for Fantasy games.  “For Honor” tried to create a version of melee combat that does things to require skill…  but it feels confusing and obtuse with its rock paper scissors inspired system of defending and attacking.  In a perfect world…  someone would take the world of Anthem… the activities of Destiny… the combat of Monster Hunter World… and package them all together in one MMO-Lite that gives me my fantasy fix.  However for the moments developers all seem to be chasing that looter shooter niche…  which is great…  but sometimes I don’t want to shoot but instead hit people with a sword.  Sure I know that Warframe has that ability but it is still a Sci-Fantasy game…  and I still have issues with the fucked up perspective of the characters in that title and the inability to zoom out further.  What I ultimately want is a game that no one has built yet.

I have a fairly truncated morning because I need to be into work pretty early this morning.  As a result I probably should have made a blog post last night…  but it was a weird evening.  I found it difficult to get into the right mindset to make a post, and since I don’t have a lot to talk about this morning I thought I would share pictures of something that makes me extremely happy.  Now if you follow me over on twitter you have already seen these images.  Over the weekend I made a trip to a local flea market that has a booth set up by someone who makes these awesome geeky plastic canvas creations.

Prior to last weekend I had the Deathly Hallows sign, the Ewok and the Nintendo Controller as well as a Tardis keychain that I wear on my lanyard (not pictured).  This weekend I sorta cherry picked over some of my favorites from the rest of what they were offering.  So I added a Deathstar and Boba Fett to the Star Wars Collection, and picked up Bullet Bill and a Boo from some of the Super Mario Bros themed ones they had.  Finally I picked up a bagged set of Zelda stuff…  including Link, the Tri-Force and a Bomb

The last time I was there I did not see the Mana Symbols from Magic the Gathering…  so I absolutely had to pick up my favorites to represent my Golgari pride and my love of all things Green and Black.  After putting these all up in my cube… I realized I had a bunch more space available so at some point I will make another trip back to add a few more to the wall.  I have this metal bar that runs the entire length of my office and I sorta want it completely covered in these creations.  The sad part is the person doesn’t have an Etsy or anything of the sort listed in the Flea Market booth or I would absolutely advertise the heck out of it.  Whatever the case they make me extremely happy and tomorrow I promise I will return with a more proper blog post.

Given that it is a Friday and the first of February… I thought I would spend this morning talking about a few experiments that I did during January.  First up is the EufyCam E that I was given a copy of to review by Anker.  When I posted the review I said I would provide updates talking about how well it has generally worked, and I figured now might be a reasonable time for one of those.  I have used this WAY more than I expected to use it, in part because it is constantly alerting me when any motion has been detected at my front door.  Because I also use a TicWatch I will get a little buzz buzz buzz on my wrist and see that the EufyCam has detected activity.  At which point I flip open the app and see a stream of video similar to the still that I snagged above.  Do you know how much it improves my day when I see my neighborhood cat friends have decided at random to come visit during the day?  In fact as I am typing this my wrist has buzzed to let me know that this exact same cat is outside wanting attention…  which is adorable because he likes to kinda jump up and head butt your hand.

Without the Eufycam I never would have noticed that I had this visitor one morning either.  At first when I viewed it on my mobile device since I tend to just watch a postage stamp sized preview… I thought to myself “well that is a chubby cat I have never seen before”.  It was only later when I watched it full screen that I noticed….  oh that is a Raccoon.  This makes an awful lot of sense because last year we had something trying to tear into one of our plastic chests in the backyard, and I guess I always assumed it was a squirrel…  but knowing how tricksy Raccoons could be I would not be surprised if it was this little guy.  Also weirdly we have had a flock of birds just sorta randomly land on the porch…  I am guessing gobbling up the excess catfood that I gave the buzz buzz cat above.  Regardless…  all of these little breaks in the day when I have animals on the security camera make me very happy.

The other really useful thing that I did not think about with this camera is since my wife and I right now have staggered schedules…  she often times gets home before me but immediately goes out for a walk.  The camera gives me a time when she left the house so I know approximately how long it will be before she gets back.  Lately I have been using this arcane knowledge to time a cup of coffee so that it is ready for her to come in from the freezing cold.  Other times I just use this as a way of determining when is a good time to start dinner so that it is ready when she gets back also.  There is of course the ubiquitous use of determining when a package has arrived, but weirdly…  I am way more jazzed about the random animal friends.  I’ve not actually had an occasion of a solicitor since I installed the cam, but I did freak out the outdoor cat one day when I used the “talk through” feature to say hello.  All in all I am super happy with how well the setup has been working, and when it is more widely available on the market I want to see what it would take to add a few more cameras.

Another experiment that seems to be working is the whole “kick all products off to a twitter list” thing that I did shortly after the New Year (January 4th to be specific).  Originally this list was called Brands, because that was my original usage…  to cleanse my twitter feed of all spammy brand related information.  Recently however I have renamed it to “DistanceFollow” because that is effectively what I am doing…  following a user but putting some distance between them and my day to day twitter usage.  So there are a few things that have come about as a result of this.  Firstly this combined with turning off the retweets of a few accounts has made my twitter experience way more enjoyable.  I actually enjoy popping in to read twitter because it feels more like it used to…  me checking in on what my friends were doing throughout the day.  While I don’t have near as much time to check in as I once did, that actually makes this feel better because I am not having to wade through a bunch of promotional junk to see updates that I might actually care about.

The second part about this is…  I am way more likely to “try out” following someone by throwing them in the Distance Follow list because I expect it to be spammy and if I happen to decide that I really want to follow them more closely…  I will actually do a proper follow.  This is effectively what I tried to do with the whole Timeline 2.0 initiative a few years back… but I was going about it the wrong way.  In that I was trying to create a special bubble that only had the people I cared about interacting with…  but in this I’ve started weeding my ACTUAL follows and making it represent that core group of people that I care about.  I am sure I will continue to prune… because once that process starts it gets a lot easier.

Another part that has helped this process is that I have been spending significantly more time on MMORPG.Social and Mastodon by nature is not a network that seems to give a fuck at all about follow numbers.  I have tried throughout the years not to care about this…  but still did to some extent in spite of not wanting to?  There are a lot of people that I never unfollowed just because they happened to be following me back.  Hanging out on the Fediverse and the fact that being mutuals isn’t really that bit of a deal there…  is starting to remove my giving a fuck about it on twitter.  As a result you can look at my Analytics and see that I have been slowly hemorrhaging followers for awhile now…  and I am okay with this.  I’ve come to accept that I do not have enough time in my life to hang out with every cool person I meet, and have also come to the realization that not everyone is going to like me…  and that is okay.

Social Media has always set up this weird dynamic giving you a false sense of connection when often times…  you are just an assemblage of pixels that occasionally says something funny to the person on the other side of the connection.  I’m wired weird where I tend to actually care about a lot of the people that I interact with.  The problem with that however is that there is no way I can keep that many people in my head at all times…  and then I feel like shit when I realize that it has been three months since I last had a conversation with some random person in my feed.  So as a result I am trying to care less about the minutiae and beat myself up less about not caring enough.  I have a circle of friends that widens and shrinks organically… and I am generally going to try real hard to be okay with that fact.

In the meantime however… looking forward to playing some more Anthem this weekend!

I’m struggling a bit this morning to pull together a blog post.  In theory I think I am fighting a cold or something because the last several days I have just felt lousy.  Last night for example I really wanted to pop into some Destiny 2 and do the weekly tasks that are set in front of me on a brand new day.  However I roamed around the tower a bit before logging out for the evening because I could not seem to focus enough to actually do something as intensive as playing a guardian.  I didn’t really play much last week either, so I have not been helping push the clan level up and for that I feel bad.  I have so many things that I need and want to get accomplished but have just been lacking the drive to actually do them.  The quest for the Last World exotic went in yesterday but after looking what all is involved…  I am really not looking forward to more crucible grinding.  I had to do plenty of that already for the Malfeasance quest line that I have yet to actually finish.

What I ultimately spent my night doing instead was working on the Blue Mage some more.  There are probably more productive ways to go about this process, but what I wound up doing was spent some time in Coerthas before eventually settling into Outer La Noscea grinding the 41-44 Goblin camps.  I managed to get Blue up to 37 so the progress was moving pretty well, but solo grinding largely involved controlling the camp spawns since I was many times the only person out there.  It reminded me a lot of the way that we used to play in Everquest, where you would work your way into an area and then try and hold that position while avoiding getting overrun as too many things spawned in at the same time.  There were a few moments where things got a little dicey if I had two bombs and two goblins on me at the same time, but all in all I reached a comfortable pace and thanks to Sticky Tongue I could yoink mobs over to my perch of relative safety.

The biggest challenge however is that 1000 Needles has started to miss a significant amount lately.  I am guessing its the fact that I have been hitting higher level mobs than my own level, but whatever the case it occasionally makes things a little questionable.  At this point I should probably be able to solo Haukke Manor just fine, but all of the remaining abilities that I can pick up are going to require some significant shenanigans to collect.  For similar reasons to why I didn’t play Destiny 2 last night…  I just did not have it in me to attempt soloing a dungeon.

What I ultimately want to be playing however…  is more Anthem.  So I am guessing that the Demo did it’s trick of embedding that world deep into my psyche.  This weekend we are supposedly getting access again and I am looking forward to it.  I am hoping the various connection issues are resolved and I can spend some time playing with friends and doing missions together.  I am also hoping they maybe give us a bit more of a drip feed of content…  at least more than the one strike mission.  Regardless I am looking forward to suiting up again because it feels like it is going to be a game that latches hold of me pretty tight.  Ashgar introduced us to the FashionLancers reddit, which I am finding super interesting… but also realizing that I didn’t do anywhere near what I could have with the cosmetic system.  Here is hoping we get a newer build this weekend and with it a bunch of the issue have been put on ice.