Diminishing Returns

by

Good Morning Folks! Two days ago Sony unveiled its technical presentation for the upcoming release of the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro, and it has not been well received by the gaming populace and media. Largely the key sticking point seems to be the price point of $700 for the digital-only version, which becomes around $850 by the time you add in the optional disc drive attachment and vertical stand. That is starting to get into gaming computer territory when it comes to pricing and seems to be out of band with the current pricing for all other consoles on the market. You can pick up a PS5 Slim, which is capable of playing all of the same games currently for $440, making this product almost double the price given that the slim model I just priced comes with the disc drive.

The key complaint that I have seen about the digital-only focus, is that it essentially locks players into always paying the highest possible price for a given game. Sony is notoriously stingy when it comes to sales. Just a quick example Spider-Man 2 at this point is a year old roughly and you can pick it up pretty reliably for $50 new in disc form if not cheaper whereas on the Sony store, this is still a $70 title. Console players already pay a roughly $10 premium over PC Gamers for their titles, so I get why folks would want to buy the disc version of games so they can get a bit of a price break. There is also the fear of digital titles disappearing, for example, the ill-fated Concord recently was removed from players’ inventories, and I remember something similar happening with the Scott Pilgrim game during the PS3 era that if you did not have it downloaded it just poofed from your library without a refund.

All of that said… I think something else is at work here. Right now the most popular console of this generation is the Nintendo Switch with some 143 Million units sold. This is compared to the PS5 which currently just crossed 60 million units. The Nintendo Switch has arguably the worst hardware and output quality of ANY console on the market currently. However, its focus on having really fun gameplay and bringing interesting experiences to the players has made it a bit of a media darling. Almost everyone owns a Switch regardless of where they land on the Xbox vs PS5 vs PC tribal debate. The games that it plays well, it plays really well and as a result, it becomes this amazing Swiss army knife of a device that you can take with you or dock to get maximum usability. Basically, my theory is that players care way more about the gameplay than they do about graphical fidelity.

We’ve been in this cycle for decades of hardware manufacturers telling us that we want the new hotness just on the horizon. 4k was the big thing, now it is high refresh and 8k resolutions, but the truth is… I don’t think most gamers really care about these things that much. I bought into 4k gaming pretty early on with a 1080 Ti and later “downgraded” to 144 hz 1440p displays because it fit what I actually wanted a bit better. Similarly, the above image is pulled from the Steam Hardware Survey and shows that the “average gamer” is still playing games in 1080p. While the most popular video card right now is the RTX 3060, most of the games that are being played don’t actually even support Raytracing. The cycle of constant hardware sales has been more about padding corporate bottom lines and fueling AI and Crypto growth, and less about what the players really wanted.

I think the biggest “L” of the Sony Presentation is that they didn’t really bring out any jaw-dropping definitive proof of what players would be getting for that hefty price tag. Instead of showing new games that can only really be achieved because of the technology of that upgraded console… they showed a bunch of older titles with marginal improvements. During the presentation, they stated that 2/3rds of all PlayStation gamers choose to play games in performance mode, rather than in fidelity mode. That feels extremely damning proof that players mostly care about the gameplay rather than the pretty graphics, because in truth… the graphics have been “good enough” since we got to the 1080p era. Basically, I feel like we have entered this era of diminishing returns, where the amount of extra money you pour into an experience is not equivalent to the extra amount of enjoyment that you gain from it.

I feel like another example of function over form, is the general popularity of the Steam Deck. This is effectively a gaming PC that runs at Nintendo Switch resolutions. The Steam Deck reportedly hit 3 million units sold in 2023, which is somewhat impressive considering how strained the available units were through the end of that year. Essentially the Steam Deck provides the performance of a budget laptop with integrated graphics, and folks are eating it up. It feels like it is way more about the polished nature of the Linux Steam OS distribution and the “consolification” of the entire PC Gaming ecosystem, than anything related to performance. There is also a massive amount of fun to be had in games that run at relatively low resolutions and with relatively few bells and whistles. Not to mention how much of a Console Emulation powerhouse the platform has become.

I also think there is a certain amount of hubris at play for Sony. They have been able to successfully raise the price of the PlayStation 5 in the Japanese market three times. This is the first time we are seeing what is an equivalent price hike hitting the North American and European markets. With the 60 million units sold of PS5, I feel like maybe Sony has been believing their own hype a bit recently. I am not sure if the negative reaction from the North American market will make any real changes. This combined with the colossal failure of Concord recently, should be a few shots across the bow that maybe players are not just going to take things as status quo anymore. It feels like a weird gamble considering during the presentation they stated that only around 15% of the total PlayStation 4 installed user base was on the Pro model during that generation. Maybe this console really is only for the bleeding-edge gamers who have to have the best of everything. However, I figured those users would have long since migrated to the PC platform where they can easily pour money into performance.

All of this said… I am clearly not the target demographic for this device. I spent 99.9% of my gaming time on the PC either on my gaming desktop or my gaming laptop. While I have a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox Series X… they both spend more time collecting dust than they do actually serving as a gaming device. Most of the folks that I knew who were big into the PlayStation 4 Pro, were Destiny players… and when the PC Version of that game was released the majority of those migrated there for better performance. I am sure folks will buy this thing, but I am not sure how many will be actual players and how many will be scalpers trying to make a profit. Time will tell how this shakes out in the long run, but for the moment… I am seeing nothing but hatred about this announcement in my social feeds. I really do think we have reached a point where graphically things are “good enough” and instead folks would rather see a focus on gameplay than on shinier baubles. Of course… I might be entirely clueless here.

Accidental Free Company

by

So it is no longer morning… but also feels really weird not to start a post with “Morning Folks”. I am still on the mend and struggling a bit, and Covid brain fog claimed me this morning and kept me from making a post. Instead, I thought I would do a bit of storytime because I find this funny. Shortly after the release of Dawntrail, my friend Ace and I started baby characters on the Kraken Dynamis Server. The new Path of Exile League came out which caused me to want to take a break, but at some point, I am sure we will return and pick up where we left off at the end of Heavensward. It was a heck of a lot of fun, and weirdly… it was weirdly enjoyable to actually be playing on a server where everyone was newbies either by new accounts or by fresh transfers.

Moments after logging into my character for the very first time on that server, I got an invite to sign a Free Company Charter. I thought sure… I have been that person trying to get my guild started before and would help out with this process. I half assumed that the moment it got started, I would get kicked out… but that was not what happened. Instead, I was promoted to an officer and later drug Ace into the madness just for funsies. We did not really have any plans to make a Free Company for our shenanigans, but having a few genuine new players around was rather charming. Based on our interactions… it was VERY clear we were the wizened elders of this group, but it was still fun to hang out while we were pushing the content through its paces.

We got busy doing other things, some of them on our mains… others in other games. The thing is, I kept logging in periodically when I thought about it to do the daily MGP grind just to get a reasonable base of currency built up on that character. While I was not actively playing, I was actively checking in on how things were going. There were a lot of fresh recruits that eventually left the Free Company leaving us down to just me and Ace who were logging in regularly, and then a trio including the originator of the FC that had not logged in within two months. I didn’t think much about this because Free Companies come and go in membership. Even our primary Greysky Armada goes through large blocks of time when Sol is pretty much the only person reliably logging in.

Late last week I logged in and saw a message that I had been promoted to the leader of the Free Company. So I guess I have now inherited Darkwraith… a super edgy named FC to keep up and running. I made a few tweaks… firstly I renamed the primary role to Leader, because “Master” squicks me out something fierce. I went with a Leader > Officer > Veteran > Memeber > Recruit naming scheme for the ranks because it felt less awkward and also sort of clearly delineated what each role was for. The only other thing that I am contemplating is shifting the Allegiance from Order of the Twin Adder to Maelstrom… because who the fuck ever wants to be part of team piss yellow? Mostly I plan on keeping the lights on and even inviting anyone else who wants to play on Dynamis. This is still 100% an alt project that I am never going to give my full attention to, but it is weird how this FC that I didn’t even intend on joining fell into my lap.

I am not going to lie… there is at least a large chunk of me that wants to rename this to something involving “Robosquids” given that Free Company renaming is a thing you can do easily. I am pretty sure the original owner of the Free Company is “gonezo”, given that he largely popped over to the server to get housing… and has also long since had that demolished. So at this point, the Free Company is essentially what we make of it. If you have alts on Kraken hit me up, because apparently, I lead a Free Company now. I have another group of friends who randomly ended up on the server so I might snag them to at least get the guild leveling at a decent pace.

World Boss and Meta Add-On

by

Good Morning Friends. Zone Meta Events are the secret sauce of what makes Guild Wars 2 amazing. For the uninitiated, a “Meta” in Guild Wars 2 language is a zone-wide event that takes place on a reoccurring timer. Some of these are straightforward single-shot world bosses, and others are complicated if/then/else chains that start with minor escort events and end up in giant 80+ player raid fights. The popularity of specific zones is often determined by how popular the metas associated with them are. That said… pretty much EVERY zone has at least some player population wanting to complete the meta at any given moment. For example, this is Queensdale this morning at 6:30 am… with folks waiting on the spawn of Shadow Behemoth. We wrecked the World Boss in what felt like record time… all during non-primetime hours.

I’ve personally always struggled with keeping track of what was going on at any given time. For example, you can type “/wiki et” in the game and it will pop open the event tracker page… which does a reasonable attempt at laying this data out but also… causes my eyeballs to fuzz out and my mind to go blank. It seemed a bit mad to try and figure out what I was going to do in a given evening, with the amount of playtime that I had in front of me. This meant that most of the time… I participated in the meta events that I happened to accidentally stumble into rather than approaching any of them with a sense of purpose. I had tried a few plugins for BlishHUD in the hopes of helping me keep track of this nonsense, but honestly, it always felt a bit too cumbersome, and as a result… I defaulted to just roaming aimlessly or following the World Boss train when I could hop on board knowing for example that Tequatl always spawns at server reset.

Over the weekend, I stumbled onto a better solution. I was setting up ArcDPS again, and I went through the process of setting up the Addon Loader Nexus as it supposedly handles some of the problems with ArcDPS on the release of major patches. Nexus works very similarly to BlishHUD and offers the ability to hot load addons into the game while it is running and similarly comes with a library of addons you can install quickly from within the UI. One of these is called World Bosses by Sognus and for me at least it has been a game changer. Essentially it puts little clocks for lack of a better term over the top of the world map zones that contain popular metas, and at any given time you can see what phase that meta is in and what phase is coming next. For example, I blew up a chunk of my screen in the above image showing that Dragon Stand was just about to start a fresh meta train, which would of course be the ideal time to join that map.

What is even better about this is that after playing with this for a bit, it becomes trivial to see the natural synergy between different meta events and how you can easily hop from one to the next one without much forethought. For example, in the above image, the Aetherblade Assault is just about to start in Seitung Province, and then when it is wrapping up… The New Kaineng City Blackout should be starting… and then as it is wrapping up you can pop over and pick up the Echovald Forest Gang War event. Similarly this weekend I rode from Dragon Stand to Chalk Gerent to Octovine without missing a beat, just rolling from one event to the next and racking up the sweet sweet loot. I used to think that either people joined specific Commanders exclusively, or just had some vague sense of precognition about these things… but with this addon, it becomes super easy to follow the meta train.

If you are curious I would check out this general video about Nexus, as it can install a lot more add-ons other than the World Boss one that I am specifically talking about. I am also a huge fan of BlishHUD for marker packs that help with world completion, jumping puzzles, and getting various achievement collections completed like all of the nonsense associated with the SkyScales. Thankfully the two addon loaders play nicely together, and each of them seems to do something slightly different than the other one. There are a few add-ons that can be found on both of them… for example, Regions of Tyria a dumb addon that I enjoy greatly that announces the name of every area when you enter it, exists on both platforms. Add-ons and Guild Wars 2 are a massive rabbit hole, but the World Bosses tool seems well worth diving into because it gives me a level of confidence at being able to join in various Metas that I have not had before now.

Zone Metas are legitimately the best part of Guild Wars 2, and being able to participate in them more predictably is pretty freaking amazing. Sure I might not be in the mood every night to gather together with eighty strangers and mash buttons to take down a big bad, but when I am… this just works so much better. It makes me realize how important add-ons have been to my enjoyment of various MMORPG tropes throughout the years. Generally speaking, they just take information that already exists and present it in a more digestible format that my ADHD-addled brain can consume. While I have completely eschewed them in Final Fantasy XIV, I do get why players use them because I have always found having an interface that I can more directly control key to my enjoyment in games like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2.

Anyways! I hope this is helpful to someone out there. If you ever want to do Meta nonsense, hit me up in game.

A Jumbled Mess

by

Good Morning Folks. I hope that I am coming out of the worst parts of Covid hell. Today is the first day I am going to attempt to put in a full day’s work. What is so fucked about this illness is how wildly it impacts different people. Essentially my wife brought this home to me from her workplace and for her it just seemed like a generic cold with touches of allergies. For me… it started out that way but then essentially knocked me on my ass. I’ve spent so much time coughing that my entire torso feels like it is bruised. Each day has gotten a little better, but it was yesterday and today that I actually started to really begin to feel better. My focus has been scattered as hell, even seeing me attempt to revitalize the Engineer that I worked on unlocking Mechanist with but did nothing afterward.

I honestly had a pretty freaking great day in Guild Wars 2 and I will probably talk more about some revelations that I made yesterday in a longer form post tomorrow. However, I essentially figured out how to make the whole meta-train click. Yesterday I managed to catch Dragon Stand, Chalk Gerent, Auric Basic, Aetherblade Assault, Kaineng City Blackout, and then Echovald Gang War back to back. I could have ridden the train for as long as I would have liked, arriving in the zone just as the next event was ramping up, but I needed a break after that much excitement. That is the big thing I am noticing right now is I can only handle so much focused activity before I get drained. Essentially I will share these dark secrets tomorrow, but if this works as well as I think it does it will absolutely breathe new life into the game for me.

I am continuing to make slow progress in World of Warcraft as I push through The War Within on my Pandaria Remix Dark Iron Dwarf. If nothing else it has given me quite possibly my new favorite transmog. I’ve started the second zone which is considerably cooler than the first one was. I dig the Dwarven-adjacent storyline of the Earthen and this is legitimately quite possibly the best World of Warcraft has been in years. The problem is… it is still World of Warcraft. It lives in this sort of messy middle-ground between Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2 for me. The combat is nowhere near as tightly structured as FFXIV and at the same time does not feel as fluid and fast-paced as Guild Wars 2… so it just sort of feels loose and messy all the time. It does not help that they removed Titanic Throw which was easily my favorite ability from Dragonflight. I miss having something as good as the Paladin shield throw, and I absolutely feel like I need it when moving around the tightly packed corridors to group everything up.

Since I cannot seem to be pinned down to focusing on any one thing… I of course went off and created a new Ruthless character in Path of Exile. A lot of the streamers have been exploring Ruthless mode, which of course made me interested again given that the Settlers town gives you easier access to gear than normal in this mode. I rolled a Duelist with the purpose of going Bleed Gladiator and am mostly just running around with splitting steel and the only two supports that I have found to this point which is Added Cold Damage and Chance to Poison. Not a combination I would ever use together… but when you are limited in your options you use whatever you can get. Add to this some bleed chance that I am getting from the passive tree… I can mostly zip around pretty well in Act III.

What is most interesting about this game mode is the way that it makes re-evaluate items that you might have considered trash drops previously. It isn’t like I have never used a Tear of Purity before, especially if it drops while I am leveling, but I also would not have considered it godly. However, in Ruthless, a game mode where you are unlikely to see access to Purity of Elements or any other auras save for Vitality/Clarity/Precision… this is a game changer. I got this from my very first shipment of goods and it has made all the difference in the world for me given that I now have a decent amount of elemental resistances while leveling and the ability to just entirely avoid all elemental ailments. On top of that, it is a needed source of life and intelligence. So I get why folks enjoy this mode because it makes you really scrutinize the drops to see if you can squeeze any benefit out of them. If normal Path of Exile is well constructed Magic The Gathering… Ruthless is trying to play with the old-school starter deck and nothing else.

I also spent a bit of time this weekend working on my home in Final Fantasy XIV. I raided the private room from our Free Company house and started migrating some of my miniatures over on the shelves behind the counter and vendors. I also brought over my Ahriman furniture set that I picked up from my retainers years ago. I am kind of going for a storefront/showroom vibe for the upstairs and then will build out the downstairs to be more of a bedroom/readyroom thing. If nothing else the home looks a little less barren. If you are on Cactuar, feel free to pop by Ward 28 Plot 3 and sign my guestbook. I will continue to tinker with things because I figure this is going to be a long project, not something I finish in a weekend.

Lastly, while I am squirreling out of control… I am starting to look forward to the Cycle restart in Last Epoch on the 19th. I did not really play that heavily when this cycle started, and will probably come back and start something fresh again. Likely going to spin off the type of character that I was playing in this cycle and see if I can build it a bit better. I really like Warpath and the Spin to Win gameplay style, and more specifically I liked the dual wield torch/smite sword thing. Largely I like this build because it works perfectly fine without the right gear and just gets better as you add the key pieces to it. However, I could throw a last-minute monkey wrench in the system and play a Necromancer again because it has been a while since I have done that. Whatever the case I am looking forward to having the mental bandwidth to give this game some devoted time again.

Basically, I am still spinning out of control right now, but I am hoping as I continue to mend I will be able to focus on individual things a bit better in the coming weeks.