Unjustified Greed - Grind, or Buy

So I just wanted to make a slightly more articulate addendum to this video I just posted (warning for coarse language):



The Source Crystal currency in Injustice 2 is the real-money "premium" currency. Thankfully I've not found a way to spend them on the RNG loot crates called Mother Boxes (at least on PC, maybe you can buy them on consoles?), but they are still the only guaranteed method for obtaining shaders and "premier" shaders (which completely reskin the character into someone else, such as turning Superman into Bizarro). Shaders may be randomly obtained from Mother Boxes, key word being "random" (getting sick of "random" appearing so often in games), so it's grind or buy.

That aside, you can also spend large amounts of Source Crystals to instantly level up characters, a "feature" that only exists because they decided to make it so characters have levels instead of just being as they are. This "feature" only exists to encourage players to spend money in order to save time, time which is only being saved because the game was designed to make you grind instead of just being playable. Characters also have equipment, which is levelled, and of varying appearance. So another "feature" is being able to spend Source Crystals to either level up your gear (because it has stat boosts, obviously), or to change its appearance to that of another piece of gear, to get the look you desire.

Cost of levelling or morphing gear is unknown to me since I've not even wanted to know. Cost of a "common" shader is 4000 crystals; Cost of a "rare" is 5000; Cost of the "premier" shaders is 6000 crystals. Levelling a new character to 20 costs 10,000 crystals. As I mentioned in the video, these two Multiverse events combined award 1000 crystals. Crystals are also awarded from the story mode, the first time you play it, as well as levelling up your account ranking. I currently am at account level 72, and have just under 18,000 crystals, my intent being to unlock the remaining premier shaders with them.

I would like to emphasise the word "unlock" from that last sentence - because of course this content is already in the game, so that I have the data available if I encounter someone online who is using a shader I don't have unlocked, obviously. So I already have them, I'm just not permitted to use them, because I'm supposed to pay more money to unlock something in a game I already paid for. Yes they could eventually be obtained without paying extra, but the sheer random nature of loot boxes means it could take an unreasonable amount of time, which is ignoring the fact that it is already unreasonable to manipulate random drop rates to encourage players to buy instead of play.

If you can't encourage people to keep playing your game without random loot drops and fishing for microtransaction payoffs, maybe you shouldn't be making games. Well, I guess it makes money and who cares about customer satisfaction? My general point was that this Multiverse offering does not constitute generosity, given how often it would need to be available to unlock content through play rather than microtransactions. I'm not the first to make any of these points, I don't want to have to point this stuff out in the first place.

The Disappointment Will Be Live

So in addition to my last post from whenever ago, I'm now also on Twitch since I've just been put on the NBN and have slightly better internet. A bit more slightly than I approve of, especially since it's more slight than the first few days of my new connection. I guess I'm just supposed to put up with it?

Anyway, nothing much on my Twitch channel just yet, a few archived Fallout 4 streams, playing "survival" difficulty. I should post here more often, I could use it as a reference point for further discussion outside of the stream-of-consciousness of my videos/streams. I'll get around to doing a full length playthrough of the Mortal Kombat X story sometime soon, but I don't have a schedule so my unpredictable mood guides me.

See you around, maybe?

Shameless Self-promotion Ahead

Hey all you people who aren't reading this: I'm on YouTube now.

Yeah it's not that exciting, but if I get about 9,500 more views I can apply for AdSense revenue on my crappy videos of me sucking at games and complaining about it.

What more could you want?

Well, not so well

I think I can quite clearly sum up my preferred classification of humanity in one word:

Extinct.

MMMKAY

So, hello there. It's been a while. Not much has happened. Stuff and things, sleep, wake, eat, drink, be miserable because tomorrow's a lie.

Anyway, news, for anyone who gives a crap: I'm out of Marvel Heroes. Done. Developer can go bankrupt for all I care. They were insulting and condescending to a large portion of their consumer base (which I feel included myself) and so I'm done with their garbage. I could complain more but I don't wanna. Two months so far but should continue forever.

So, what has filled my time since then? Nothing that might be a improvement to my situation, of course. That would make too much sense. No, first it was a trip back to old faithful Fallout: New Vegas. One of my favourite games, ever. I've even considered a piece about how it's so much better than Fallout 3 that would've gone quite well if I'd worked it into talking about the Fallout 4 announcement when that happened. But of course, I'm behind, it's no longer relevant and nobody cares, at least until the game comes out.

But, I did pick up a couple of new games recently (although there are some slightly older games that I bought around Christmas that I've yet to play), one of which was Batman: Arkham Knight. Yeah... I haven't played it yet, waiting for a patch that is supposed to make the PC version not suck everything, ever.

The other might be gleaned (if you've somehow got insight into the twisted workings of my mind) from the joke title of this entry. No? OK, it's Mortal Kombat X. This one at least does work, because I only bought it after I saw reviews mentioning that it had finally been patched to "playable" status. And to their credit, they seem to have gotten on top if things over at wherever they've farmed out the PC port. Only took them a couple of months post-release. Kind of disturbing that it should be pretty much expected these days.

Anyway, what should be more disturbing is all the violence in MKX but I'm evil and jaded so it's just more of the same. Steam is telling me I've clocked 279 hours (as of this writing) in game so far in the six or so weeks I've had it. Have I mastered it in that time? Of course not, I've only just finished sampling all the characters and unlocking all their "kombat[sic] kard[sic]" backgrounds, borders and icons. Twenty-nine characters, three variations each, fifty wins with each variation...

Do NOT get this game. All right, you can get it if you want, but beware. You will NOT want this on PC, simply because the population of players online is limited (especially here in Australia) and those you come across will likely be better than you, will have no sympathy for beginners, or lag, and you will NOT have fun. On consoles you still likely won't have fun, but at least you'll find more people to play against.

Offline, the computer cheats. Its AI is set to either "do nothing" or "cheat". You pretty much only get somewhere when it's letting you win. That said, play on easy and try the story mode for fun. Or if for some reason you're interested in the story but don't want to play it (?) then just watch it on YouTube.

If you're a competitive pro-type, you've probably already played it, or decided to play something else, so what are you doing here reading my advice for? You don't play games for fun or entertainment, you play them to win at something. Sad really, but lucrative seeing as how there have been some big tournaments involving MKX recently, with more to come.

Otherwise, nothing. Same as it ever was, sky is blue, there's water at the bottom of the ocean, time to retire, I think.

MEH - a Mass Effect retrospective (I couldn't think of a better title that also included the initials "ME")

So it's that long awaited thingy I was going to write about the Mass Effect series, and it's going to be a disappointment... I think that was meant to be a joke about the reaction to Mass Effect 3. It's not going to be detailed or well researched since I'm barely mustering the effort to do anything these days, but it will be done. Also not going to bother recapping story or anything like that, too much effort.

EFFECT THE FIRST

Mass Effect was at the time something quite different from what I'd played before. Not wholly unfamiliar, but it was not the kind of game I'd been playing. In retrospect it's rather like a throwback to old 80's and early 90's types of role-playing computer games: epic story, underdog hero, gear progression, lots (and lots) of talking (but now fully voiced like living in the future). Oddly enough, while I think there is merit in older RPG styles and implementations, I must be getting old because Mass Effect now just feels so bloated.

Most of it is busy work - the story itself is fairly long and the side stuff usually quite short, but all that side questing feels necessary since you need the XP otherwise you'll have a hard time getting through the story since you'll not be a high level. Example: early part of the story where you get to choose which mission you take, well to me the obvious first choice was to go get Liara (daughter of early confirmed villain Beneziah). However, after going through all the stupid crap to actually rescue Liara you then have what I guess amounts to a boss fight against some mercs led by a Krogan who will kick all manner of excretions out of you unless you've levelled up sufficiently (or put it on the lowest difficulty setting, which is another nuisance these days where it seems like you (I) need to play in the lowest difficulty for it to be fun; like "easy" = fun, "normal" = hard).

So the game can really drag on which kind of sucks, since a lot of the side stuff is where the fun actually is - exploring a planet's surface in the Mako, scouting uncharted worlds for resources and information; not always essential to the plot, which is why it's fun, but when you must to do it to level up, well it becomes a chore rather than an indulgence.

I didn't mind the gearing up, or even the skill selection since it allowed you to play a certain way and support strengths/weaknesses with gear and squadmates. But again, when you must do this, it gets annoying. Combat was... well it was there, at least. About the only thing that made it interesting to me was that guns never run out of ammo, they just heat up, so it was a different kind of weapon control rather than just "empty the mag". They killed that for the sequels, but at least they also streamlined the combat ("streamlined" doesn't necessarily mean "improved").

Oh yes, the talking. So. Much. Talking. Again, the number of options available in dialogue (also reduced in the sequels) would not normally bother me if it weren't for the fact that most of it is irrelevant. There's such a simplistic karma system (and it's not alone) that you'll stick to the "Paragon/Renegade" choices to ensure that there's a point to your even bothering to talk in the first place. At least the streamlining of the dialogue for the sequels works, since it was unlikely they were going to make that many variables be accounted for in character interactions.

In sum: fun at the time. Now I'd like the notion of replaying it, but not the reality.

ME TOO

Well they kill you in the opening sequence, that was unexpected (unless you watched all the promotional material, I guess).

The story here seems so much more focused, not so much in a good way, because it makes you and all your actions seem smaller. Hell, the environments feel smaller (most of them actually are, too). The importance of your mission is relentlessly hammered into you, yet the game and it's world (well, galaxy) seem so much smaller than in the first game. I'm not quite sure how this happened, maybe it's just because you spend less time on the Citadel and interacting with the Council than in the first, coupled with the smaller environments.

Pretty much no gear progression here, there are slightly better versions of each weapon type that you can purchase going through the game, but they're not so spectacular that it matters. Your own progression matters a little more because of this, despite the reduced number of skills and that all active powers now share a cooldown rather than have their own. This I think was supposed to make you rely more on your squad, since they introduced power combos here, but they didn't really get that right until ME3. So combat is a lot more cover-based action shooter than the first, even though the first was still technically a third-person cover based shooter as well.

They did make your class selection more significant for combat though, with each class getting a unique power that was supposed to define them and their playstyle. So you cloak your sniper, or warp your Vanguard into your enemy's face before shotgunning them into oblivion. It worked better than class distinction in the first game, but was again something that was more refined in ME3.

A little less conversation, a little more shooting people in the face. The Paragon/Renegade system got an upgrade with the "interrupts" that can occur during dialogue. They were heavily scripted, usually it was one or the other, not many places where you could use either one, and those situations usually presented the interrupt that tied with your preceding dialogue choices (the immediately preceding choices, it wasn't so sophisticated as to recognise your entire persona, but given that you would be going all good or all bad for the most part, it doesn't really matter). Generally, the Renegade options were more fun and entertaining, even if it does reveal your inner sociopath.

And the tedious resource collection that was essential for upgrading the ship which was essential for not letting all of your crew members die during the final mission. The crew loyalty missions were fine, there was character development and backstory contained within them. But instead of exploring worlds for fun and seeing what was there, you're firing probes at them to get minerals. NOT ENOUGH MINERALS! It's like playing Starcraft again...

ME2 really focused on the one mission that is stated from the beginning, the only reason the game is as long as it is, is because of recruiting your team and then gaining their loyalty. The actual "story" is really short this time around, and with a larger cast of characters, the world feels smaller? It's strange, but BioWare accomplished it here.

In sum: more "fun" to replay, but damn does it take a long time to make sure no one dies in the final mission.

MASSIVELY EFFECTING

I actually like Mass Effect 3 a lot more than my original review would let on. Probably because, more than the previous two, it actually made me feel something. Or maybe it just happened to come along when I was suffering emotional instability. The Paragon/Renegade thing is so far streamlined in this game that there aren't really any "neutral" responses any more. But beyond that, this time around being a Renegade actually feels like you're the bad guy. All Renegade decisions (and Renegade decisions inherited from the previous games) feel like the wrong choice. Sure the game still lets you go on after doing it, but instead of making you feel like a badass or even just a likeable dick, now you feel like a supervillain, abandoning many to die, condemning species to extinction, classy stuff.

Needless to say, this did not aid my mental state. On the other hand, being the good guy felt overwhelming emotionally as well, but at least I wasn't sacrificing all my friends to a damn near impossible to see "greater good". So, it actually feels like your choices matter in this game, until you get to the ending, which is why everyone hated it. The two complaints about the ending that I usually see are that it was perfunctory, which was addressed (somewhat) by the "Extended Cut" free DLC; and that after three games worth of stuff, everything came down to the "war assets" counter in the third game and a simple dialogue choice of which ending you'd like. Without enough war assets then you don't get to choose the ending, but you'd have to speed-run the game to not accumulate enough, especially after the Extended Cut reduced the required amount for maximum readiness.

But everything, story-wise, up to the ending was, as stated above, massively effecting, at least to me. Game-wise, well...

Combat was more finely tuned here but still much like ME2 in style. Powers still share a cooldown but now your weapons (or lack of) affect cooldown reduction, meaning you can play more powers-based classes (tech, biotic) more effectively on your own, and the return of weapon mods means you can just run around with a pistol boosting your powers, or armed to the teeth with high-powered guns and forget about powers altogether. I'd not recommend the second approach though, since you need to be in cover quite a lot otherwise you die a lot. Higher difficulties are actually easier with powers rather than guns, at least for me.

As mentioned in my first review though, combat it really just filler for continuing the cut-scenes or getting to new conversations. The fact that you can win a fight, nay, you must win a fight in order to witness a cut-scene where you get the crap kicked out of you is really galling.

Interactions are a hell of a lot more limited, there don't seem to be as many "interrupts" as before, and not quite as many charm/intimidate dialogue choices. They also seem to be tied to the generic "reputation" counter rather than the specific Paragon/Renegade meters, meaning that for the most part, you can play either way you want in a single play-through if the mood takes you. I was attempting such with my recent play-through, but haven't mustered the will to keep playing it, which leads me to...

TRILOGICALLY

There are so few real variations between character interactions that you end up replaying really long games to see minor differences or hear a few different lines of dialogue. The series, as a whole, is a real slog to replay, I'm surprised I managed it as many times as I have, but most of that has not been recent, so it's probably a combination of personal issues as well.

The music was great across the series, interesting to hear the progression there (I'm fairly certain they all had the same composer).

The scale of the games went up and down, ME3 really did manage to get back to a real sense of significance and large scale impact.

The characters were always a high point, well written, well acted, fun to have around and chat with.

One place they really botched it was with the Reapers and their origin. Apparently there were different ideas but then certain people left the company so they came up with something else, which happened to be quite stupid. Original ideas aside, with what was included with the Leviathan DLC for ME3 you could of still made it somewhat logical: instead of them being machines created by the apex of biological evolution to prevent the loss of lesser "thrall/tribute" species to their own machines which, surprise, then turned on their own creators to prevent them being destroyed by machines (and the Reapers are too dumb to realise that they turned on their own creators and thus actually failed their task but they think it's OK because they've preserved every species they've harvested)  - just make it so that they were just trying to preserve those species from natural attrition, and the machines had the insight that they should "preserve" their creators as well, just in case.

But no - "hmm, these organics keep getting destroyed by their own machines, let's make some machines to destroy them first, but preserve their genetic code, and hope that those machines don't then do what we seem to think all machines do, which is to turn on their creators and destroy them". My way is using the exact same setup and framework, yet manages to be infinitely less stupid. Hell, even if it were just a rip-off of the Borg where they were using other organisms to further improve themselves it would've been less stupid.

So yes, I'd prefer not to have to sit through another "machines will destroy us all" story, they are mostly garbage, pandering to people with technophobia, in a computer game... I'm all ironied out.

Overall, everything is still a straight line and it gets more noticeable every time I play it. I mean, I'll play new ones if/when they make them, but I don't know if they'll generate the same enthusiasm for replay like they did originally.

TACKY

The multiplayer for ME3 was alright I guess. Could be fun, short-form so not necessarily a huge time investment. Bastard hard sometimes though. And tying it to the single-player war readiness thing was kind of annoying, but it does mean that I've got so many assets available that I don't need to do the small side missions any more.

But EA will pull the servers soon enough and you'll never be able to play it again, who knows, that may inadvertently pull the authentication servers and you won't be able to play the game at all. And I bet even after that, EA will still leave the ME trilogy available for purchase through their crappy Origin shop.

A SHORT AND DISAPPOINTING ENDING

That was it, you waited two and a half years for it. Enjoy.

You will be upgraded!

Whether you like it or not.

Obviously Microsoft is no longer intending to support Windows 8 since it has gone and downloaded 8.1 even though I repeatedly told it not to. Once it had, I repeatedly told it not to install, until today, when postponing installation longer than 4 hours was not permitted. So far it has not demonstrated the same screw-up that it did with my laptop (disabling the display when idle and not being able to re-enable without hard reset) but it did already confuse me with it's stupid audio problem: at first sound wasn't working, then it kind of was, but apparently now 5.1 surround sound means "front, centre and side" as opposed to "front, centre and rear".

So now I'm running a 7.1 surround setup without side speakers, because apparently that's how things work now...

Tech industry needs to die...

And why am I still seeing Asian dating ads on my front page?

Horror by the wayside

So I missed Halloween. Or didn't miss it as the case may be. Depends on context I suppose. Nothin' doin'. Still around, site wasn't blocked in retaliation for my snipe at the government, but since almost no one read my post, I guess they didn't care. Or they didn't care anyway. Or they didn't see it.

Damn I hate thinking, why can't some of you do more thinking so I don't have to?

Anyway, no plans made, for anyone who cares. Plenty of free time so perhaps I might actually do that Mass Effect series thingy. If so I can't guarantee that I'll get around to replaying the games prior to doing a recap/review.

Think more, have fun and stop killing each other. Seriously, you need to be better human beings, or the species is doomed.

Fascism, Australia welcomes you

So I've heard about something that passed with way less fanfare than should have accompanied a change of this magnitude.

The National Security Amendments Bill (No. 1)  is now a thing here in Oz permitting practically unrestricted monitoring of Australian internet activity by ASIO & ASIS (hi guys).

Don't you just love a government that decides that "these are the rights you are entitled to as a citizen of this nation unless we determine otherwise on a whim" and claims it's in the name of "national security".

Uh... are we under threat? I'm pretty sure we're more of a threat to ourselves than from faceless foreign stereotypes, we voted for this stupid government after all (well, I didn't but a vast majority of shiftless morons in this country did). If our neighbours are pissed at us, maybe stop being a dick? Or is that what scares you? Corruption from within!

Seems kind of plausible, but not in the way that you think.

If I had more inclination and know-how I'd throw some stupid image meme thing together with a picture of a cruise ship and the caption "STOP THE BOAT PEOPLE!" because that's what retards need to convince them to maybe try thinking at least a little.

Don't worry, the world won't end. It will take more than that. But don't let other people take credit for it because they were "watching out for us".

"Game" Theory

First off, yes I'm still here for those of you who read this (hi Mum).

Second, why am I seeing Asian dating ads on my page?

Third, I'll preface this brief entry with the announcement that I am clearly insane, because I still play Marvel Heroes.

But this has led me to have an interesting thought about the nonsense of random drops and clickfests. Go back far enough and a "game" was not much more than a mildly amusing teaching tool. Well to some it was serious business and still is in some cases, but they were designed to teach a skill outside of the application of that skill. Like chess, it was designed to teach battle tactics, without the noise and bloodshed and pressure of a real battle situation.

There, victory could be earned. By out-thinking your opponent, or even just knowing them well enough to gauge their tactics, you could win. And that's about it. Of course these days there are tournaments with prizes and such, way back when it was created, maybe a display of skill meant a promotion, so there probably was a tangible reward for playing.

Now take the ARPG. For the most part, "rewards" are simply things that you can use in the game that enable you to keep playing, making your character more powerful or durable so that you can be better at the game and get more stuff. Except usually all that stuff is randomly assigned. Most frequently it's just equipment that has a random chance of dropping and has a bunch of randomly rolled affixes on it. And all it does is let you keep playing the game.

OK, fine, it's somewhat endless and mindless so you can use it as entertainment... which means it's not really rewarding you, as it is enticing you to keep playing, for whatever reason (money usually). This is nothing new or controversial, I'm hardly the first to say it. But if it isn't really rewarding play, then it's not really great entertainment. If it's not trying to teach a skill, it's not really a game.

If anything, you could suggest that because all things will eventually drop, that it rewards and/or teaches patience. I don't think something that teaches patience should be so fast-paced. I don't think that something trying to teach patience should induce RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

I get that the frustration it causes can be seen as an attempt to encourage patience. I don't think that you should get paid for it.


So yes, I'm still embittered and full of hate, but maybe I'll be trying to share more of it with you in the near future, aren't you excited? I had an idea a while back to do a more proper review of Mass Effect 3 and couple it with a sort of retrospective of the series, and the original idea was to do this around the first anniversary of its release. Then at the first anniversary of my first review. Then at the second anniversary of its release.

Well it's coming up on the second anniversary of my original review, so look forward to that being postponed as well.