#it also means one of our players silly characters from our first quest is constantly brought up later | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

like-twilight · 4 years

Text

The Last of Us 2 thoughts eyyy longgg and spoilers

This is my opinion before hearing anybody else’s opinion about it.

I only want to discuss the story as it is the only thing I can really speak of since I didn’t play it for myself. All I can say is I wish I could’ve and I’ll always regret not being able to because I really wish that could’ve been my experience as it was with the first game that I could play myself. It’s also probably noteworthy that the first game was the first video game I’ve played in my life so I’m probably biased.

So I’ll go all over the place because why not.

The false advertisement is extremely scummy and I don’t really know what to do with it, I blame it all on the No Spoilers Culture we currently have going. I don’t think anybody would’ve watched any of the promotional stuff a better marketing team could’ve put together and said “ah you can’t see old Joel in action, I bet he dies early in the game, I won’t fucking play this”. There was plenty of buzz around the game and there was no reason whatsoever to falsely market it. That part’s bullshit and I condemn the company for this.

From the story side though, Joel dying was honestly not that huge of a surprise or shock to me. TLOU is a game that has you watch a kid die in the first section of it then does more than enough to establish itself as a game without taboos. Now whether that’s something you like or not is not important, what cannot be said about the game is that it didn’t establish itself as a game that would do this.

I also think arguments like “Joel wouldn’t go out like a bitch” are silly. The beginning told me Joel, the badass and smart survivor he is, was very quick to adjust back to a small town life with a now pretty much surrogate daughter. I’m not saying that excuses the unceremonious death but to me Joel is not a gun-blazing badass hero, not even an anti-hero. He’s just a dude. He got overpowered and then he died.

See this is where the game could never win. If you leave Joel alive and he’s in the story then it’s just a repetition of the first game. If you leave him alive but he’s not in the game much then you underutilise him and people miss him. Also if you leave him alive then people will just say you’re a little bitch because it’s fanservice that Joel is technically invincible because he’s the face of the game. But if he dies, people riot. The creators couldn’t win either way and so I’m glad they made up their mind and stuck to it. It’s also very useful to get people talking.

Before I tie that into the rest of the story, I also have to mention that one of the few things I heard about the game was the expression “torture porn” and maybe I’m just desansitised but I didn’t feel like it was that overwhelming or unjustified. I didn’t watch too much of the promotional material but I saw what I think was the gameplay reveal where the devs said in this game enemies would call each other by name when you kill someone or they find someone dead. And I think that’s a neat detail but I think it also has a lot to do with what the game is... about.

That the hundreds of faceless people you slaughter during the game all have a video game or more worth of story behind them. They are people with their own twenty plus years of survival in a world gone to hell whose story ends the way Joel’s did. By meeting a person who just... wins the fight over them.

So that the deaths are really personal and intimate in that way feels justified. You also have this crazy technology that allows them to animate people very realistically. This is the last big game for the PS4 and they really just brought the technology to its limits, I feel. For them to then say “oh a sledgehammer to the face doesn’t look that bad” or “we just won’t add more types of weapons and have one type of death animation just cause we don’t want to overdo it” is just. It’s not gonna happen.

I never felt like those were glorified, I think they all added to that feeling that bubbled to the surface towards the end of Ellie’s first stretch of the story where I just couldn’t stop shaking my head, going Ellie... Ellie, what are you doing, look at yourself... look at what you’re doing. So to me that wasn’t really an issue.

I can imagine some people, maybe even most people would play the first stretch of the game in revenge mode. You know, let’s get this bitch. But in the same time, I also couldn’t really deny that Abby was like... kinda right to want revenge. I’m not saying I’m glad she killed Joel I’m just saying she had a reason to. (On that sidenote, Abby being that surgeon’s daughter did nothing to enhance this feeling. I could’ve imagined Abby in a settlement much like Jacksonville where they’re all hopeful because they found a surgeon who’s leading research about the cordyceps, maybe he’s a super good leader, inspires the Fireflies to keep up their spirits, all that. Maybe Abby’s group could’ve been his super close-knit group of soldiers taking care of him and running errands for him, even then the rage would’ve been justified.

I get they wanted to draw the parallel between Joel-Ellie, surgeon-Abby, dad-daughter relationships but that added nothing to the story for me. It didn’t take anything away either, I just kinda rolled my eyes like okay, whatever.)

So when Ellie was on her revenge quest, I liked that she and Dina were in Tommy’s footsteps, I thought that was a nice touch and kinda foreshadowed another section of the story where we would meet up with Tommy eventually.

Now, Dina and Jesse, I found nothing wrong with Dina or her being pregnant (except that it reminded me of Aniara and I hate that movie with my whole being). I thought it was a good enough source of conflict and I really liked Jesse being around. When he shows up and they’re just saying they’ll get Tommy and then get the fuck outta there you can already tell Ellie is obsessed but you’re still holding out hope that Dina will be enough to get her mind off of it but she’s just too far gone.

So the shift to Abby and the scars.

Jacksepticeye said it while he was playing that Abby’s part should’ve been like a DLC or something but I honestly don’t agree. I mean I don’t disagree but I think it worked the way it was. I definitely think most problems people have with this switch that doesn’t stem from the fact that people disliked Abby or that they can’t admit to themselves that they were caught off guard by the changed narrative style, could’ve been solved with different pacing. Now I don’t know if they would’ve had to constantly switch between Ellie and Abby for it to work or figure some other way out because I’m no expert but still.

I liked the beginning when it switched to Abby, the whole atmosphere was so eerie like you could tell they were on a collision course and it was going to get ugly. Maybe something like that could’ve worked but it could’ve just been either too suspenseful and tense the whole way through that it draws the attention from the gameplay or it would’ve been even more on the nose than it already was with the parallels between Abby’s group and Ellie’s group.

Now I honestly really liked that Abby’s story was so different because when she returns to the stadium, the part of her story that involved Joel is over. She got her revenge then she goes on with her life. She had a life before Joel entered it, she has one after she killed him. And it just so happens to be a good opportunity for the game to showcase some of the shit that goes on outside of what we’ve known so far and what Ellie knows.

I didn’t mind the religious aspect, I think it makes sense, like enough time passed since the apocalypse that the then grown up generation is distant enough from their old lives, and the generations after them are growing up in the ruins of the old society, that a messiah figure like that lady could emerge. That it just had to be transphobic and shit sucks of course and I do understand the frustration with it. I can imagine better writers coming up with a way to make the Scars despicable without them having our current society’s problems. They could still have the trans and the Asian characters still of course, but without them having to face the struggles trans characters do in our current world.

So that Abby only realises Ellie’s just one step behind her when she still has the climax of her individual story to get through was just. To me it worked so well. Like here we play as Ellie for half the game, this girl is consumed with rage and then Abby’s just fucking off and doing something entirely different because that’s... how little... it affected her. Or at least she personally got her closure and is ready to move on.

I personally liked the conflicts she had in her group, it was believable, it felt reasonable for the kind of life they lived. Of course we already spent one full game with Ellie so Abby was never going to catch up, but if you’re thinking like me then by less than half of Abby’s story you already don’t want Ellie to kill her.

The confrontation in the theatre was messy but since it’s not the end of the story I sort of don’t mind. I know some people don’t like how Jesse died or how little time we have to process certain deaths and story beats and of course it can just be bad pacing but that was again something that to me just brought the player’s world on the same level as an NPC’s world. That for one enhanced the experience for me.

Okay. Let’s talk about the last part that starts with Dina almost dying at Abby’s hands, especially after she says “good” when Ellie tells her she’s pregnant. Of course there’s the callback to dead Mel. But I liked that Lev was there and his presence sort of switched Abby’s role. Up to that point Abby had been Ellie. But then when she has Lev, and she acknowledges him as “her people”, she becomes Joel. And then she becomes a better version of him. Or at least a version of Joel that has mercy.

And you’d think being this close to losing Dina is where Ellie would snap back to it. And she does, for a while.

Here’s when I admit the pacing definitely needed some work regardless of anything. Up until that point we go through three days, albeit twice, but three days. Then suddenly we’re nine plus months later and the setting is different and we don’t get enough time here before Tommy shows up with the end of the story...rope... we got cut in half in the theatre.

I’ll take some time here to genuinely express my what the fuck at Tommy here.

My memory is a little fuzzy here but wasn’t Tommy on board with returning to Jacksonville when they return to the theatre? I actually just checked, Tommy says “they got what they deserved” to which Ellie says “but she (Abby) gets to live” and Tommy says “yeah”. And then when he visits Ellie and Dina suddenly he’s a dick about it saying Ellie made a promise? Is that something that was supposed to happen off-screen or a plot hole? Did that conversation in the theatre have more versions they went through and the wrong reaction got included? Maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention but it felt out of the blue for me and I can safely say that’s the character moment I’m disappointed in the most, especially because we never see Tommy again.

One could argue that the choppiness of time is supposed to symbolise the dissociation and out-of-body experience you can have when you’re living with trauma but I truly just have it down to bad pacing here. I get that they wanted to show the baby but I truly believe with enough polishing they could’ve come up with a scenario that works better and flows better.

I truly could’ve had Ellie maybe leave with Dina and Tommy and then have her turn back before they leave Seattle and then they have the conversation with Dina and then Ellie starts tracking Abby. Here we could’ve had more of what was in the beginning of the story, sort of switching between the two, maybe slightly altered gameplay, etc. Even though the last level as Ellie was really cool and once again I liked how we just barely got a glimpse of how other people live, you know. Those prisoners in those cells have a hell of a 25 years behind them and being freed by this stranger might be the best thing that will have ever happened to them, but to Ellie they’re just a background noise to her mission.

I truly liked those parts.

I could imagine Ellie being kidnapped similarly to Abby but they are treated differently and somehow still end up escaping together, maybe even helping each other the way Ellie almost did with cutting Abby down and letting her get Lev to the boat. And then you’d have Ellie still be consumed by her rage.

The whole time I wanted her so much to just scream everything at Abby. Because look, life for these people is a whole ass trauma. Some people like Dina might handle it differently, or it’s easier with a community around you, but Ellie’s life has been very strange, with her immunity, with the realisation that Joel killed and lied for her, all that. She would need a fucking good therapist. I wanted that catharsis, for her to scream at Abby, to sob until she can’t even breathe, for Abby to do the same, except she realises she got her closure while Ellie never did, and then maybe for Abby to give some sort of... forgiveness to Ellie. For her life not having meant anything in the end.

I don’t know, I wanted that for her.

If there never is a last fight, if Ellie never so much as punches Abby, that would’ve been fine for me.

Two more things that I liked were that Ellie actually started down a path of forgiveness before Joel died. You know, when we see the scene where Ellie tells Joel off you’re like “oh that’s the last thing she said to him, no wonder she feels so guilty” and then you realise, oh no wait, they were actually eventually going to be alright. They just never got the time. To me that hit so much, that was a good scene.

The other thing I liked is Dina leaving. Once again this could’ve been something like, Ellie goes back to Jacksonville and there they tell her Dina left or sum shit idk how that could’ve worked, I’m just saying that losing that farm life didn’t really make me feel anything because we didn’t get the time to grow attached to it.

So Dina leaves, and suddenly you’re back in the room with Sam in the first game when this bitten boy asks Ellie what she’s most afraid of, and she says she’s scared of ending up alone. And this immune girl Joel killed and lied and died for, eventually ends up alone.

So I understand that a lot of TLOU’s fanbase that belongs to a marginalised group, especially those part of the LGBT+ community would be hurt by this ending. By this interpretation. The LGBT+ community, as far as I know, at least a huge part of it, seeks to heal. We use fiction as escapism in a way people who don’t know, who can’t know our struggles will never be able to sympathise with. And as such, we as a community in a large part, have moved on from stories of pain. Not necessarily in that we turn a blind eye on it or anything, but I think it’s a mostly universally agreed thing that after so much suffering we’re ready to see ourselves, and people like us end up happy. And as such the demand from this community towards creators have shifted to not necessarily fully happy endings, but some sort of relief. And as such, this ending is cruel.

It is heartbreaking. My heart breaks for Ellie because I can practically feel the weight in my chest that she carries around when she walks away. She lost everything and she never got the closure. She never got that relief and neither did we.

Once again, if you personally have a problem with this ending and it ruined the game for you, I understand it completely. That’s your own experience with the story, and even though I feel much of the same things, I’m once again left here thinking this is the way the creators wanted to do this and that they did it like this makes sense. It makes sense for the story, the characters, it just does. If it had happened differently in a way that also makes sense, I would not think “oh this should’ve had a heartbreaking ending, this is bullshit” but I do think the ending makes sense.

Overall, I’m pretty much pleased with most everything, except fuck false advertising, fuck Tommy, and fuck uhhh, I’m pretty sure I mentioned something else too. Oh yeah, pacing. Jack actually offered a really great alternative to the beginning, where the museum scene of Ellie’s birthday should’ve been the first scene, and then you could’ve had Ellie wake up four years later at the end of the countdown. That Joel told Tommy about the hospital could’ve been implied through dialogue and interactions.

I also don’t think Joseph Anderson’s theory is hurt by this, he said personal decisions and morality aside, the Fireflies were fucking idiots and they couldn’t have come up with a cure even if they had given Ellie the chance to say yes, because of how unprofessional they’d been and how much they rushed into the surgery. Just because Abby’s dad was a good dude and a good surgeon doesn’t mean shit when you’re dealing with something you’ve not seen before, such as Ellie’s immunity. And I think knowing that wouldn’t have mattered to Ellie either to change her mind about forgiving Joel. And this is what I’ve always said. Like the Fireflies or not, believe in them or not, taking a choice like this away from Ellie because you can’t stand losing your daughter again (and that is why Joel kills the Fireflies, not because he shares Joseph’s opinion) is objectively wrong and borders on the same obsession we see consume Ellie. Joel is just as unhinged by that point as Ellie is, he’s just more... mature about it, I guess.

That could’ve been even more painful, sort of, to not have Abby be the surgeon’s daughter but just for her and her group believe in this doctor that might just be talking out of his ass so much that them avenging his death sets off this terrible cycle of vengeance. I think that could’Ve been very “gritty” and shit, that would’ve hurt because it’s even more pointless. People killing over lost hope.

So, pacing, Tommy, false advertising, bad points, everything else, yeah alright. 7/10 sounds good to me. I will play this one day >)

#the last of us spoilers #tlou2 #tlou 2 #tlou 2 spoilers #the last of us 2

13 notes · View notes

cadykeus-clay · 4 years

Note

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WILDEMOUNT BASTARD

HEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHEEE :3 thank u for asking,,,, (under a cut because I , uh. Well. I said infodump and it sure is one)

so, his name is nissyras, nissy to his …. peers? friends is too strong of a word for most of the people he associates with. he’s an echo knight drow from den tasithar (the same den as that guy that fjord bullied in jail) and that means he’s a Spoiled Brat. He’s an absolute bitch and an idiot and expects people to make room for him because that’s how he’s lived his whole life and he does Not know how to handle being in a place that doesn’t automatically know he’s a revered, chosen soul.

But, you know, if his life was so cushy and dandy in the Dynasty, why’d he leave? Well, he had severe younger sibling syndrome, with his older sister Leth being a dunamancy prodigy and really good at den politics and nissy having 9 wisdom and 5 charisma (including his racial charisma bonus) and being pretty damn bad at both of those. He was also considered the scourge of the family because he refused to get into a politically beneficial arranged marriage, instead having a bunch of couple month flings (which is basically a one night stand for elves with multiple lifetimes) with people from all over Rosohna, and not all even from den or den-adjacent families. people who would never get consecuted.

One such fling was a common drow girl, Mavryen, but then months turned into five years (which again, not that long for immortal elves but substantially longer than any of nissy’s other relationships). They decided to elope to the greying wildlands, to get away from the pressures of the dynasty and the hierarchy of dens that kept trying to pull them apart. Nissy and Mavy fled one night, and spent about two months travelling, eventually ending up in Uthodern.

There, Mavy laid eyes on a dwarf woman and realized for the first time in her life what attraction actually felt like, and immediately walked out of the elopement. She left Nissy positively heartbroken. And in a huge predicament, because there’s absolutely No Way for him to go home now without being shamed for lifetimes.

Not to worry though, he has a brilliant plan. Go on a couple adventures, get roughed up, maybe a cool face scar or two, and THEN go home, in glory, with battle trophies to prove himself a skilled dunemantic fighter to rival his sister AND with a story to tell about the beast that tragically killed his dear Mavy, which he then tracked down and destroyed in a heartbroken rage.

Slight problem though, Nissy is a slut, and he’s already got a new boyfriend, Zier.

Pros of Zier: also a drow, also a noble, very hot.

Cons of Zier: raised to believe that selfishness and mistrust are the most important virtues, because that’s how you survive, can’t stand Nissy, Nissy can’t stand him, both too stubborn to dump each other, both secretly cheating on each other with their fellow party mate, Nakoria.

So this is where the module picks up, and boy howdy it has been a RIDE. we picked a module about a mysterious disease spreading through the Greying Wildlands that we have to dungeon crawl to find the cure for (ironic timing, we know). The terrible trio (Nissy, Zier, and Nakoria) are constantly trying to puppy dog eye their way into just Getting things and wouldn’t ya know it! It doesn’t work! And then they cry about it to each other, while the rest of the party slowly plots their demise.

For the most part, Nissy’s had a fine time. Like, it’s upsetting that he has to stay in lodgings that don’t even have a cook, and the frogs in the caves were easily bribed with food so he didn’t even get a cool fight or anything. The creepy cave dwarf was not intimidated by him, and then she went down really easy so he didn’t even get to be majestic in battle with her. But at least he convinced the party to put her into the 10 foot deep hole trap that she had left for them as retribution. Also, the pay for these quests is Paltry, and now they’re on a BOAT instead of an airship to travel to Eiselcross and it’s honestly pitiful. At least he’s not actively getting beat up by the other party members like Zier is, because Zier’s an idiot who doesn’t know how to shut his beautiful hot lips.

But you know, adventuring is rugged sometimes. He’ll deal with it. And he’s helping to save people which, he does recognize at its core is a good thing. And he’d do it even without the reward. But there is a reward, and he will be getting it at the end of this, because he’s been through A Lot of inconvenience with absolutely no gore or glory to show for it.

So silly me, the player, thinks we are just gonna play the module as written. But then last session, our wonderful amazing DM sends me a private message right before we close. Nissy has gotten a sending from Leth, his sister, begging him to come home for her wedding in two months. And let me tell you, i was NOT expecting them to pull backstories out and it blew my tits clear off and i am THINKING ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Because now the stakes are SO much higher for nissy, he can’t come home to his sister being married (or worse, for her wedding, although it’ll kill him not be there) without Mavy and no good explanation. So he’s about to get SO much more reckless and at level 2, having rolled dookie shit on my hit dice, we may just be looking at my Second PC character death in what was supposed to be a fun chill campaign (I also died and came back as a revenant in humblewoods, the cute woodland animals module sdhfsdfudsf)

Anyways thank u for asking about my boy i hate him so much it’s great

#asks #if ur in this campaign with me don't read the last 2 paragraphs theres secrets inthere

3 notes · View notes

xmimiteh · 6 years

Text

How to RP with Mimi

As I am putting myself as a roleplayer more and more out there and I even started to make some connections (yay, me!), I wanted to reblog a text I wrote a while ago about what to expect from me in roleplaying and what to do and not do. I altered it a little, so it is basically not the same text, but ... more or less. My “Dos and Don’ts” do not change that much anymore. I am probably to old for that by now.

Whenever you see me with the RP tag before my name, I am free to approach in RP. Maybe I am questing, maybe I am running, but I am always in for RP as long as this is marked before my name.

Also: If you want to look into Mimi’s Wiki, you are going to find it >here<. But it is still a work in progress. More detailed information is under the cut, because it is a rather lengthy text.

European Timezone: During the week usually from 8 pm to 11 pm (CEST) - on the weekend and holidays more flexible and erratic. Of course, if you are from another timezone, feel free to approach me if my time schedule fits in any way. This is just a heads up, when I am usually active - not a “I only want to play with Europeans”. I play with everyone.

I might reblog or repost the following text from time to time, because this is really important to me when going into RP.

It is important to find people who click with you and who accept your do’s and don’ts. But first you have to voice those. As I have been burned the past years, because people did not respect my limits, from now on I want to be really transparent in this. So in the end nobody can say: “I did not know that.” Now you know!

I have been avoiding RP for more or less over a year (with little exceptions), because people violated those things and with “violated” I mean even though I told them all this they acted as if they did not know it or as if it was not important. As I am a very harmony-driven person and I do not want to cause stress I tend to compromise - even though I do not want to compromise. But I this is about change, because it is not healthy.

So … you do not have to read all of these. I marked the important passages with “bold” and the rest there is mostly for explanation if you are interested in it. Maybe it is helpful for some who want to RP with me. It is an easy way to know what to expect and what not to expect. It saves a lot of trouble for both sides.

Dos and Don’ts

Just jump into RP with me if you want to RP with me! Please do not send me an OOC tell beforehand asking whether I want to RP or not. If there is the RP tag in my name, I am ready to RP. I get nervous when you send me an OOC tell about that. Just approach me in character and everything is fine. Please no “Do you want to RP?”. If there is a tag, I want to. If you ask me beforehand, I might and probably will say “no”. If you give me the opportunity I might shy away. Just jumping into RP with me even works when there is no RP tag. Do not worry whether I want to RP or not, just do it.

I am a casual roleplayer. This means for me I enjoy roleplaying a lot. I usually do not roleplay on a daily basis. It might happen from time to time, but do not expect me to. There may be longer times when I do not feel like roleplaying or rather go into a dungeon or make my hunts or just do silly stuff or screenshots etc. This has nothing to do with you. This is me. My daily roleplaying times are over more or less. Also I like to play PvE and PvP a lot. As my time is limited (I have got a full time job, I am married and I also play other games) I have to balance all of this. Please keep this in mind. RP is not my main priority and this is nothing personal. Do not make it into something personal. It is not. Plain and simple.

OOC communication is important, but I do like to keep it as little as possible. If there is an OOC problem, then … sure, send me a tell. Good RP needs good OOC communication, but not constantly. I do not like to talk about our RP (if there is no need to), I want to RP. Usually talking and planning what our character might do takes a lot of fun out of the RP for me. Just play it. Do not talk about it. I love the uncertainty and vagueness of not knowing where the RP is heading and people tend telling too many things they plan on doing.Please do not take surprises away from me. But /tell me if there is any ooc problem we need to discuss.

I am a non-native roleplayer. Please always keep in mind: English is not my native language. This might lead to misunderstandings or me taking a bit longer to answer. Also I am very self-conscious about my English and usually this leads to me being not happy with my writing style as I am a professional writer in my mother language. Thus I am very aware of these things and might be little bit touchy about it. I know my flaws and that I might construct absurd sentences or use the same words too often. I try to do it otherwise, but… it happens.

There is one thing I really do not like: RP appointments or RP by schedule. Sometimes there is no way around it and if I need to coordinate with a group or so, then it is totally okay. Do not get me wrong: I make appointments and I attend to them. But I had many a RP burn-out, because of RP appointments. They exhaust me way quicker than they used to thanks to absurd expectations of my guild members when I was guild leader of an RP guild and also because of emotional abusive rp relationships. So I try to stay away from them in the future even more. For me the ideal situation is: 75% open RP, 15% events, 10% appointments. These are no fixed numbers - just an approximation. I prefer open world RP and I like my RP being spontaneous und surprising.

I am an introvert (OOC). This means I usually do not do small talk. It drains me. There are only a few people who do not drain me and it is no problem if you are not one of those people. It has nothing to do with you. If I play with you I like you. This also does not mean I do not like to talk and it does not mean I do not like people. Quite the contrary. There are times when I am rambling on and on, sure. But this is not the default. Please never ever ask me “how are you doing”. I really hate that question. If there is something you want to discuss, sure thing, shoot. You can be very frank and direct with me and do not need to make any small talk before that. I even appreciate it if you get straight to the point. I do not enjoy OOC small talk. IC small talk is a completely different thing on the other hand - yes, I am weird like that.

I like to play in /say per default. Please no RP per default in /party or /tell. Because of past bad experience I try to keep as little RP in /party and /tell as possible, because it can be abused too easily. I want the possibility of people spontaneously joining our RP. Sometimes there is no way around /party and /tell. So I do not mind the occassional RP in /party or /tell or you whispering me IC in /tell if your characters whispers to mine. But if your RP needs to be per default in /party or /tell then there is a big chance you are looking for something completely different than me and please look somewhere else for it. Save us both the time.

Because of said bad experiences I am very cautious if people get too clingy. I am no one’s possession and no one has exclusive rights to RP with me - even if our characters are in a relationship! This is so important and I cannot stress this enough! If I ever feel like I get isolated OOC or someone gets too clingy or possessive, we have a problem and I plan on solving this by radically dropping said RP. This is nothing I ever want to go through again. Been there, endured that. Never again! This is a real trigger to me and freaks me out completely. So, no exclusive RP!

I am no plot player. I am a character focused player with a main interest in IC conflict and spontaneous RP and I like deep immersion. I enjoy slice of life and well paced character drama without any planned plot. There have been plenty of people who said: “No, but my plots are different! You have to try!” No. Sadly, 99% they were not different. Not at all.If character play leads to a plot, it is okay. But do not expect me to play accordingly to any script or follow any plot. I am still going to play my character no matter the plot. Best RP for me develops in a dynamic between two or more characters. My ideal plot arises out of the character interactions - completely unplanned and spontaneous. This is not how most people in rp communities seem to define plot, so I distance myself from that term very much. For me plot is a stage for character interactions. Not vice versa.

My characters are not always likeable and they are far from perfect. They are going to do stupid things. They are going to be a douchebag. And they are more often wrong than not. I like the conflict and the interactions arising out of this and the dynamic this creates. Please do not make this into something personal OOC. I like to play a flawed character and I love IC conflict and this is why most of my characters are quarrelsome or prejudiced. I am not my character so if they insult or provoke your character this is character play - not me being mean to you as a player.

I prefer roleplaying in the game. I used to play a lot of forum RP, but my main focus has always been in game. RP outside of the game can be a nice addition, but it should not be the focus to me. Especially as I do not like playing in multiple timelines. I prefer roleplaying in “real-time” - meaning: a day in RL is a day in the game. I do not see this too strictly and usually try to leave exact time measurements out of roleplaying and keep it as vague as possible. Better leave concrete times out of RP. Also I love RP letters, but since Mimi is illiterate and the game does not encourage sending letters to non-friends this might tend to become difficult. But if you want, send me an IC letter on tumblr and tag me. This might also be interesting when engaging with other characters of mine. Or whisper me in game, so we can put each other on the friend list and you can send me IC letters.

Do not force me to praise your RP. I am no cheerleader. I have been in several RP relationships in which I had to say after each RP session every single time how great it was. And no, it was not always great. And you know what? That is okay! Nobody plays perfect everyday. Yes, sometimes I might be bored, but that is okay, too. Praising someone’s RP everytime devalues that praise. I want to preserve the value of a compliment by not overusing it. Not every RP has to be awesome and extraordinary everyday and that is fine! People who feel like RP always has to be extraordinary, probably do not click with me, because that is not how I work. I cannot keep up to that standard, because I suck sometimes. It puts such a big pressure into roleplaying and this takes the fun out of it for me.

I like to describe my preferred RP with tv shows. As I love those and regularly watch them this is also something I like to go for and I think it is a good orientation for other people what to expect and what not. So here are the series I like to go for with my RP: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Dawson’s Creek, Babylon 5, Fringe. I also adore the character drama of Game of Thrones and though some nudity is okay this is a series I like to mention because of the character drama and the intense interaction, not because of the smut! This is why GoT will not get a bold name so people will not get the wrong idea. Though R rating is okay I am not here for the smut. Usually I like to fade to black unless it is important for character development. Yet most of the time it is going to be PG-13. As I am German and feel more comfortable with our rating system, if you know what FSK16 means you probably got it right.

I am not going to discuss any of my RP preferences. I do not force people in playing with me and if you like any of the things I just said I do not like - more power to you. I do not want to stop you from playing these things. But please without me. I have been a roleplayer now for about more than 25 years and I am very conscious about what I like and what I do not like and with what I got problems. All the times I deviated from my preferences and agreed to a compromise have been a disaster for me. I am rather tolerant and I do not interfere with other people’s RP as long as they do not force anything onto me I do not like. In this I try to be honest, polite, but firm and outspoken. I will never RP police you on the things above as long as you do not force them onto me. Live and let live. If you like those things above, but want to play with me nevertheless and do not impose them on me, be my guest and approach me. But please do not try to convince me of the things I do not like. It never worked. Really. Never. I tried. Honestly. More than once. So no discussion. Sorry.

Advice cut in short: Give me freedom and I am a truly loyal and dependable player. Lock me in a cage and I will fly away as soon as I get the chance to - even if I have to blast open the cage door.

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with anyone in the FF14 community. Actually these are things I have encountered before entering FF14 and because of these bad experiences I try to be super cautious and have been staying out of RP for a long, long time. By making these caveats public I am trying to protect myself and just trying to be honest and fair about it all. There is nothing worse for fun in RP than wrong expectations of your RP partner.

I hope this does not sound too intimidating. I also do not want to sound too complicated, but I just want to be very transparent on how I like to play. So if you ever see me and the RP in front of my name, just open the RP fire and I am going to respond. If I ever do not respond, feel free to send me a tell, because then I might have overlooked it or maybe was afk.

#Final Fantasy 14 #FF14 #X'mimiteh Lhim #How to RP with Mimi #Mimi Meta RP

3 notes · View notes

gamerszone2019-blog · 5 years

Text

Why You Might Want To Play Borderlands 3 More Than Once

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/why-you-might-want-to-play-borderlands-3-more-than-once/

Why You Might Want To Play Borderlands 3 More Than Once

All four playable Vault Hunters in Borderlands 3 bring their own distinct flavor to the game, and not just in terms of their unique skill trees. In comparison to the Vault Hunters in previous games, Borderlands 3’s Zane, Moze, Amara, and FL4K talk a lot, constantly speaking their minds and responding to NPCs during conversations. Your choice of Vault Hunter won’t impact the final outcome of the main story at all, but it will influence how you perceive certain events and understand the relationships of specific characters–encouraging you to play through Borderlands 3’s campaign more than once.

“We wanted to make sure that if people said, ‘I want to play through this game all over again with a different character,’ that they would then feel rewarded,” co-lead writer Sam Winkler said in an interview with GameSpot. “Not just in terms of different mechanics but also a slightly different interpretation of some of the stories.” The emphasis on Sirens in Borderlands 3’s plot means Amara has a vested interest in the story’s events, for instance, and FL4K–a nonbinary AI–explores their growing sexual attraction to Ellie by flirting with her every chance they have.

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Click To Unmute

Borderlands 3 – Breaking Down FL4K’s Skill Tree

Size:

Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

Having played as all four of the Vault Hunters now, I love how much each one changes how many of the interactions go. Previous Vault Hunters have rarely felt like carbon copies of each other–their unique abilities mean each one handles in a distinct way. But within their respective stories, each one typically reacts to every event in a similar way to their teammates. There’s no new insight playing as Brick instead of Mordecai or Maya instead of Zer0. So it’s a nice change of pace in Borderlands 3, and I’m already eager to see how each Vault Hunter uniquely responds to the streamer-like banter and violent habits of the Calypso Twins–especially Tyreen, a Siren whose curse-like Phase Leech ability and horrifying backstory (if true) write her as somewhat of a tragic figure.

To also encourage replayability, several side quests in Borderlands 3 contain choices, allowing you to impact the game in different ways. Don’t expect world-changing events but, for example, you can influence how certain characters will appear depending on what you do. In Borderlands 3’s prologue, for instance, Claptrap loses his antenna, and–for the rest of the game–he’ll just wear whatever you decide to give him as a replacement. “Maybe it’s a tin foil hat, or a human arm, or something else,” Winkler said.

Aside from the more vocal protagonists and additional agency in how certain side quests conclude, the story of Borderlands 3 is fundamentally the same character-driven tale of crass humor, murderous mayhem, and silly puns that defined Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and Tales from the Borderlands. Almost every major character from the previous four games returns in this newest installment, though many have changed in the seven in-game years since the events of Borderlands 2. Because there’s been so much history in the franchise, Gearbox wanted to avoid making any of the previously established characters–such as Tiny Tina, Sir Hammerlock, or Ellie–into playable Vault Hunters. It was important that players were forced to use characters who had never interacted with Pandora and its inhabitants before so the story would then have to reintroduce the franchise’s lore, helping out series newcomers.

“There’s that wonderful cadence of Borderlands where the previous rounds of Vault Hunters become characters in the world, and that allows you the opportunity to learn more about them and where they’re from,” co-lead writer Danny Homan said. “But as a result, with Borderlands 3, you need a new generation of Vault Hunters because you need to see an old world through a new perspective. It’s so useful when you have a new cast who have just made their way to Pandora and they’re asking all the [expositional] questions that the players may be asking, like, ‘What the heck is a Vault? What am I doing here? Who is Lilith? Why is this robot trying to insult me and also give me stuff?'”

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Click To Unmute

Borderlands 3 Gun Manufacturers Explained

Size:

Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

“We never want Borderlands 3 to feel like you have to know everything about the franchise in order to understand why a character is important,” Winkler added. “We want it to be accessible to both new and old players.” Not every bit of information in regards to past events could be fit into Borderlands 3’s early chapters though. As a result, Borderlands 2–which hasn’t seen a story expansion since 2013’s Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep–got new DLC earlier this summer, just ahead of Borderlands 3’s release.

“Our biggest goal with [Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary DLC] was to canonize some stuff from [Tales from the Borderlands],” Winkler said. “A lot more people played Borderlands 2 than Tales, and so we didn’t want people to ask, ‘Where’s Helios?’ when they picked up Borderlands 3.”

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Click To Unmute

The First 20 Mins of Borderlands 2 DLC: Commander Lilith & The Fight For Sanctuary

Size:

Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

Tales from the Borderlands is an outlier in the franchise, the only game in the series that doesn’t star Vault Hunters as the main characters and also isn’t a first-person shooter. However, it took Borderlands’ ludicrous humor to new heights, and it’s this level of ridiculousness that Borderlands 3 strives for.

“A lot of people would say ‘Don’t do an extended five-minute gunfight without any guns,'” Winkler said. “And yet Tales did it and I still see that [finger gun fight] all the time on the internet. That’s the energy we want to bring to Borderlands 3. Have people say, ‘Did you play that one thing? It’s insane.'” In this, Borderlands 3 certainly seems to fit the bill. On Eden-6 (one of the new planets you’ll visit in the game), you meet an Ice-T-voiced AI that’s been trapped in a teddy bear by its angry ex-girlfriend. The jokes that follow in that particular chapter go to places that are as shocking and unsettling as they are morbidly amusing. Borderlands 3’s story is definitely closer to the creative weirdness and pretty-much-anything-goes tone of Tales, as opposed to the unhinged attitude of the previous mainline games.

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Click To Unmute

Borderlands 3 – Sanctuary Ship Tour Gameplay

Size:

Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

If nothing else, the story told in Borderlands 3 seems to be somewhat of an apotheosis for the franchise up to this point–rewarding fans with the answers to many of the series’ most long-standing questions. You shouldn’t expect to have everything laid bare though, as Borderlands 3 expands upon the franchise’s lore with brand-new concepts as well. “There are definitely events from previous Borderlands games that kind of reach an interesting culmination in certain ways,” Homan said. “The focus on Lilith from Borderlands 1 to Borderlands 3–there are some interesting stories that we’re telling there. People love the Borderlands universe and there are always more stories out there, and so when we’re trying to wrap up a story, we’re always trying to see new stories.” Winkler added, “Whatever Borderlands ends up looking like after Borderlands 3, I think that people will be able to look back and see one, two, and three as maybe a trilogy. But not necessarily with walls on either side of it.”

Borderlands 3 is scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on September 13. On PC, Borderlands 3 has a limited-time exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store that lasts until 2020. Borderlands 3 will also be a day one title on Google Stadia, a cloud-based game streaming service scheduled to launch in November 2019.

Source : Gamesport

#Game News

0 notes

felidae-charr · 7 years

Text

Why GW2 Just Can’t Keep Me

A mechanics post - holy cow, we haven’t done one of these in a while!

I haven’t fallen out of love with Guild Wars 2, but once again I find myself in a pit of complete disinterest with the game. Ironic considering that there’s an expansion coming out and there’s all this jazz with the Living World stuff, right? And yet here I am, logging into Final Fantasy XIV every single day, being far more excited about Stormblood than I am about the prospective GW2 expansion.

Why is it that GW2 just isn’t able to ever keep my interest? What does this game do that makes me look at it, and say “Eh. Whatever.” and leaves me playing it like a tide - coming and going and never able to just stay playing it? And I know I’m not the only one that has this problem, too.

Today, we’ll be looking at the endgame content of GW2 and why it, for me personally at least, dramatically fails to actually make me care to keep playing.

MMORPGs, in general, follow a very similar formula for their end-game. They all tend to apply a very standard “content drip” that is designed to keep loyal veteran players logging in, while also potentially capturing new players all at once. Many also make use of the infamous Gear Treadmill™ - easily one of the most controversial aspects to MMO games in general that employ the use of them.

Guild Wars 2 follows a similar set up, and yet for some reason of every game I’ve ever played, it is the least capable at holding my genuine interest. Why is this? Why is a game I love so much just so bad at keeping me playing? When I have 58 characters, when I’ve invested so much time and so much money, why then do I still reach these points where I just don’t care?

Well, part of that is because Guild Wars 2 might have a similar set up in the form of a content drip, ArenaNet have never been consistent until very recently (if we’re honest.) Veteran players will remember that, at one point, the game was suffering from a massive content drought with practically no real updates at all aside from the usual gem store nonsense. And if I’m being honest, I still think Guild Wars 2 suffers from content drought really badly, even after every update. Because, if we’re honest... they just don’t add a lot of content in the first place.

The ultimate reality of Guild Wars 2 is that their content drip, though now semi-regular and designed to consistently update the story of their game, still isn’t enough to prevent players from winding up starved of things to do. Dungeon rewards have been gutted to the point of them not worth the time to run any more, and ArenaNet have failed almost majestically at fixing the core problems as to why nobody ran the likes of Arah often or why Twilight Arbor’s Aetherpath went so criminally under-run. They have always been trash at making their dungeons - which are fundamentally fun and well crafted - worth running. And that’s sort of the problem, isn’t it? The Western gaming culture, and especially in MMORPGs, likes to be efficient.

They like to DPS as fast as possible to skip mechanics just because they can and because it makes it go faster. In the same way, we also like to know that if we’re going to spend half an hour in a dungeon, it’s going to be worth our time. If we could spend that half an hour doing something else and making double or triple the reward (with potentially less effort, too) then we would never run the dungeon. It’s a waste. And thusly, the GW2 dungeon team was scrapped, and we haven’t seen a real dungeon in actual, literal years. Content updates don’t give us new ways to play with other players in party-specific dungeon content.

Of course we have the infamous raids, but to be honest, I don’t like the raids in this game. I find that the classes and builds I enjoy playing don’t fit into the raids, which are slowly but surely trying to shoehorn the Holy Trinity of classes back into a game that’s original design was built around scrapping the Holy Trinity completely. I also find that while raids can be fun with friends, raids in GW2 can also bring out the literal worst in players - with people being kicked for not putting up enough numbers on the parser or being kicked because their class just isn’t optimal. Raids, for me, are not endgame content because frankly I don’t care for them.

The new story sections that our content drip in the form of Living World gives us are completed in, at most, four hours. And that’s if you’re playing kind of slowly and exploring. If you’re burning through the story alone, you’re often done in two hours or less. These solo instances are often fun to run once or twice, too, but they quickly become not-worth-running or outright boring because there’s never any change to them and it isn’t like a dungeon where you’re running with new people every time. Eventually these little story pieces just sort of sit there and the only time you play through them again is if you happen to be, I don’t know, farming experience points for masteries on a level 80 character.

And the new maps that we’ve been getting, while also fun for the first few hours, can just as quickly become boring content. The latest map released, Draconis Mons, I actually hated on pretty much every conceivable level. There was too much going on in that map, the mini-map was atrocious and I couldn’t make my way around it without getting lost somewhere, there was so much bloom and bright burning fire and particle effects that my eyes got about as sick shit of the map as my brain did, and none of the events were actually engaging. Kill this, kill that, oh a group event to kill something else. I out and out thought Draconis Mons was the biggest flop of a map ArenaNet have ever released, and I still do.

So what is there for me to actually do? The reality is: nothing.

The content drip that ArenaNet offers is simply not enough, because the reality is that it doesn’t give us anything new that keeps us playing. Raiders will continue to raid, certainly, but I find raiding to have been implemented very oddly and in a direction that seems to be very opposite from the core of the game itself. Similarly, World versus World is still criminally ignored by most of ArenaNet and I haven’t had fun in that basic zergfest for a long time, and PvP is just as neglected to the point that those funny little “tournaments” ArenaNet tried to hold when they wanted to break into the e-sports scene have been cancelled and most of the veteran PvPers basically abandoned the game to find pastures new, with developers that actually cared.

I could log in to do my dailies, but why would I? Dailies do nothing but give me gold, which I in turn don’t spend on anything, because there is nothing I want or need to spend it on. Most of the achievements are either easy to get or a boring grind and there’s rarely a nice middle. Aside from the couple of new ones in the last few Living Story updates, I’ve done every fun jumping puzzle. I have 20 characters at level 80 and I’ve done the Personal Story too many times to be willing to count.

Guild Wars 2 just doesn’t cater to me. And that’s fine, it is under no obligation to - but it also means that I am constantly going through phases where literally any other game is more fun than GW2 is. Final Fantasy XIV Online, for example, has taken me by absolute storm once again. The expansion looks promising, and while there are often several months between content being released in that game’s content drip, they always come with new dungeons, new boss fights, new story elaboration and quests. I still have plenty of side quests to do if I want to, other classes to level, I’m eagerly awaiting the next set of joking silly Hildibrand quests, I get new little emotes to play with, new furniture for housing, and so on and so on. FFXIV also does a fantastic job - in my eyes at least - at making the gear treadmill fairly fun. I always know the minimum rewards I’m going to get from doing all of my dungeon runs in a day, I can plan what to buy when to buy it, I never feel like the game pressures me into needing that gear as soon as possible, and I always have the option to do raids to see if I can get lucky and have gear drop for me instead. Honestly, while I initially fell in love with GW2 because of it’s no-gear-treadmill policy and the abandonment of the Holy Trinity that had always bothered me as a lover of DPS classes, I’m ironically finding that FFXIV is just flat out a better crafted MMORPG that takes a lot more care and puts a lot more effort into making sure end game players don’t just sit around waiting for poor excuses for content.

And that’s why I’m sitting here, staring at the GW2 icon on my desktop relabelled “Fashion Wars” trying to find the will to even log into the game at all for the sake of something silly like screenshots. Which I can also do better in FFXIV, for the record.

I love Guild Wars 2. I love Guild Wars 2 very, very much and it has an extremely special place in my heart, and it will always be one of my favourite games. But once again I’m stuck in that rut where I love the game, but the game really doesn’t love me that much, and I can’t find a reason to log in to even do something as simple as stare at my own characters.

#long post #Felidae rambles #GW2 #Guild Wars 2 #mechanics post #why is the endgame in GW2 so bad #especially the lack of dungeons #i'm really starting to feel that lack of fun party content #world events don't cut it anet

21 notes · View notes

mozillogames · 7 years

Text

Microsoft Held You Softly At E3 2017

Microsoft’s Press Conference was arguably a lot more eagerly awaited than EA’s, which kicked off proceedings of E3 yesterday with their rather lack luster show, and it turned out to be a fairly strong showing from Microsoft. Phil Spencer proudly announced that they’d be showing 42 games at their show while constantly maintaining the smug grin that I now think might just be his normal face. However, the games weren’t exactly the big actor on the stage in this show.

Project Scorpio was finally going to be revealed with all the juicy details one might expect. Big numbers like 1172MHz and even bigger words like teraflops. All in all, Microsoft could have made up the numbers and figures as 90% of people will end up turning to the nearest person who actually knows what any of it means and look for a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Apparently with Project Scorpio it’s a thumbs up. But wait, do I mean Project Scorpio or do I mean Xbox One X, I think the X is for Xtreme. I hope the X is for Xtreme. I’m already calling an issue that only I will have to deal with, Xbox One X sounds a lot like Xbox One S, as someone who works in game retail this will confuse about 90% of mums and dads. Pray for me.

It’s odd to think that the big “reveal” of the Xbox One X can be glossed over so easily, but we’ve known all the information about it already, outside of the X, which is definitely for Xtreme. It’s just that everyone outside of the name and what it looked like was mostly known already. It looks like a grey Xbox One S. Now the question on everyone’s teraflopped lips was how does it make games look? What better way to show how a game can look good than with a car game, things which traditionally always look unnaturally good.

It also wouldn’t be a car game reveal without an actual car. Hidden away in the weird space church that was the Microsoft Stage was an actual car. Someone somewhere looked on with more than a spooky building from an actual car being in the room. Phwoar. Kiss your dad for me, there’s an actual car in the room. Outside of that Forza Motorsport 7 is a game that exists with fake actual cars now with more weather effects than ever before, still, it’s not exactly Mario Kart.

In a more impressive display of the Xbox One X’s graphics we saw what could possibly be gameplay for Metro Exodus. It looked really quite nice, in a million shades of brown kind of way, although the lack of UI of any form begins to raise questions about whether or not it’s representative or not. I’ve never played a Metro game but the big mutant bear looked cool, so that’s always a plus.

This was when Phil Spencer strutted out to proudly announce they were taking the wind out of Ubisoft as the big space god voice made one of its many announcements. Assassin’s Creed Origins flew onto our screens and its set in Egypt! This was a massive reveal because no one knew it was set in Egypt, and haven’t known about it for literally months. By the way it’s been known for literally months. Gameplay to be shown, and sadly revealing that it still looks a lot like every other Assassin’s Creed game, except that it’s gone back to Black Flag, which is at least a step in the right direction. Where would we also be with a Ubisoft game without it including every game mechanic from every game they’ve ever released, now with eagle/drone. Also the gameplay showed a lot of aspects that really began to turn me off. The combat still looks clunky and awkward and now there’s an equipment loot system and RPG leveling elements, because damage numbers were always a big part of Assassin’s Creed games.

One of the biggest announcements, while possibly reactionary, was that Player Unknown: Battleground will be coming to Xbox One, although let’s be honest, that bubble will have burst by the time it hits Xbox One in September or November, whichever one it was. Microsoft began to pick the pace up a little bit as they started showing a plethora of games. The quickest turn off to a game was with Black Desert, a game that looked interesting and cool at first, and hints of a Japanese/Korean Dragon’s Dogma, only to have it ruined by turning out to be an MMORPG. There were some really interesting indie games like The Last Night which had one of the best art directions of the entire show (EDIT: but is also made by GamerGate supporting developers who continue to say awful and outlandish things, I’ll give it a miss). There was CodeVein as well which looked like a Dark Souls-esque JRPG that could be silly fun as well as many MANY others that had my interest piqued, the main issue with a lot of them is that they will all be released on PC or even released on PS4 as well.

Cut to Sea of Thieves. Still looking oddly interesting but we’re still not entirely sure how the multiplayer actually works. Would I need to get the same 10 friends together each time I wanted to go to the seas like some complex D&D group or will it end up being more of an MMO experience in which who decides who is captain, are we all the captain. I’m the captain now?

Following on from pirates with their raping and pillaging, except not that, was an odd insert with Super Lucky Tales. It’s a cute platformer taken straight from the 90s, which parents won’t buy their kids because they look at the design and think “Well, my child can play 18 rated games really well, so this is probably too easy”, you think it outrageous, it’s an actual statement I’ve had said to me by a parent about Shovel Knight while I was at work. Either way, a pleasant surprise in the sea of 18 rated murder sprees. However this did then lead straight into Terry Crews shouting at you and confirming that Crackdown 3 does still exist, hooray. Also Cuphead finally has a release date, after several years of existing only in the ether.

The barrage of fun looking indie games continued as Microsoft burst into a full sprint to reveal their 42 games in a montage that gave enough time to each game that you might have read the title or even comprehended what was going on. Some notable games in the barrage of titles included Ooblets, which looks incredibly adorable and is some weird Harvest Moon Pokemon game, from what I can tell, as well as Tacoma which just looks kinda cool.

If it seems like I’m rushing through things here, blame Microsoft, they had 42 games in their show and sped through them with little time to spare. Phil Spencer finally revealed the secrets behind his trip to Japan, other than to get all the figurines he ever wanted, Dragonball FighterZ, because Zs are cool. It’s a fighting game by Arc System Works, so it looks astonishingly good and visually impressive, but you know, Dragonball was all Spencer could walk away with? Maybe he really likes Bulma, understandable really.

In an odd tripling for a paragraph, we also saw some more information about Shadow of War, or Shadow of Wardor as it should be called, which revealed that it is in fact a sequel to the last game, so expect more of that. Not something I’m really into, except the accents were 10/10 and there was a decent level of humour to be had with some characters, although this is countered by a man calling himself “The Machine” and shouting about revenge. Life is Strange, not just a follow up to my prior line, has a sequel coming out. Again, something that I’m fairly sure everyone knew about already, but you know, cool! Also Ori and the Blind Forest is going to have a sequel with Ori and the Will of the Wisp which looks set to continue having really depressing images of dead animals and parental figures that tragically die in front of your eyes like it’s Bambi.

Some of the final things in the show included a price for the Xbox One X, which will set you back $499 or £449, as well as backwards compatibility for Original Xbox games which is great, if your mum probably hasn’t sold them all in a car boot sale. Why release new games when people can just replay the ones they already own and feel like they’re getting a service. Xbox One X, it’s still a dumb name, I just hope the X is for Xtreme.

The show essentially wrapped up with more information on Bioware’s Anthem. This time they revealed more of the setting, the graphics and vague gameplay with a definitely scripted segment of gameplay that somehow made me less interested in the game, EA taking a page out of Ubisoft’s book. Giant creatures that look like they were ripped straight out of Horizon Zero Dawn, the setting of Anthem is still not entirely clear other than you jump down from the city and fly threw tubes and tunnels like you’re The Thunderbirds. It also turns out that it is probably just Destiny by Bioware, bit of a disappointment really on that one. Shotgunning aliens in the face can be fun and all, but a shotgun is also a little unimaginative.

Showing off a rather stunning design, however, the game did look visually impressive, filled with little bits and pieces with the suits of armour the play uses to kill the local wild life, such as multiple rockets launching from one’s shoulder. It’s a game to keep an eye on, for sure, but even with a “gameplay” trailer, I still feel like I know very little about the game or even how online it is, just like the pirate game I’ve already forgotten the name of. The awfully scripted conversations that didn’t at least once involve one friend saying to another “alright fuck face” suggests drop in and out multiplayer, but is it more like everyone’s just running around fucking pigs and sometimes you’ll meet up to do a quest? Who knows?

Overall the Microsoft press conference was alright, I am forgetting more and more of it as time passes though, which doesn’t exactly speak for any of the big announcements that were in the conference. In terms of games there was nothing ground breaking and new in announcement when it comes to AAA releases, a lot of it has already been leaked or spoken of before leaving the show feeling more like the show of follow ups than the show of industry breaking announcements. For the most part the 30 or more indie games that Microsoft blitzed through held my interest a lot more than most of the other titles shown and that’s because I’d not seen a lot, or anything, on most of them.

Microsoft may have put a lot of its eggs in one basket, that basket having a giant X on it for Xtreme, which appeals to a VERY small percentage of the market. There wasn’t a lot driving anyone to go out and buy an Xbox One X in November, or an Xbox One for that matter, it was a lot of assurances for those who already own one, but little attempts to win anyone over with new IPs or long missed titles, like Fable, making a return. Also, what the fuck is Mixer and why was it mentioned so often?

#Microsoft #Press Conference #E3 2017 #Phil Spencer #Anthem #Forza Motorsport 7 #Assassin's Creed Origins #Xbox One X #Project Scorpio #The Last Night #Sea of Thieves #Super Lucky's Tale #Bioware #Metro Exodus #Crackdown 3

1 note · View note

thomasroach · 5 years

Text

Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG

The post Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG appeared first on Fextralife.

The first closed beta for MMORPG Astellia just ended, and I am already missing the tunes that slowly charmed me during the five days it lasted. Astellia is a Korean MMO that is making a jump to the Western market, with some significant variations from the Asian release, and we spent quite a lot of time checking it out to fill you in on what you can expect from this game.

This is a sponsored post. Please note sponsored posts are only sponsoring coverage, our opinions on the game are our own and not affected by any business relationships with developers or publishers

Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG

When I first saw the teaser artwork and trailer for Astellia, long before Barunson E&A contacted us, I felt pangs of nostalgia. Immediately I saw the game features a built-in wiki, so I decided against creating one on Fextralife, but there’s an inexplicable pull that this kind of fantasy world has for me. It signifies a change of pace from the western style MMOs and RPGs that I play a lot more frequently, and sometimes you just want something a bit different.

What is Astellia

Astellia is a buy-to-play MMO coming to PC in the Summer of 2019, with pre-orders starting at 30 USD and rising to 99.99 USD for a Special Edition, which includes 7 days early access and a plethora of goodies. It has just finished its first closed beta test, with a second one coming soon, before full live release. The Western adaptation breaks into the market through full localization in several languages, including English, French, and German. Barunson E&A boasts that they had their translation team play the game to ensure accurate descriptions and dialogue, and it did indeed feel natural.

But the adaptations don’t stop there. The Western release will do away with the Korean “Free to Play, then Pay to Win micro-transactions” model, and provide a “Buy to Play, Play to Win” model in its place. Further, it promises no gender lock on Classes, as well as quality of life improvements (like the removal of animations during casting).

Astellia Features

Classic MMORPG with a nostalgic but beautiful setting

Deep and complex progression mechanics, equipment upgrades, optimization

35-45 hours to get to level cap, solo dungeons available.

Unique party System: Astels

5 classes that evolve into further 3 subclasses each

Unique and upgradable skills for all classes

PVP modes

Astellia Monetization

“Play To Win”

These are the changes the developer envisions to transition from “Free to Play” to “Buy to Play”. The business model will be primarily supported via cosmetic purchases and some convenience items. The second round of closed beta, coming sometime in July, will give players a preview of the in-game shop and its prices, giving further transparency.

Cash Shop

The sale of Cash Shop items for in-game profit has been eliminated.

Cosmetic items will not have performance improving mechanics.

AP Boosting Potions are not sold for cash.

Astel Card Packs are not sold for cash.

Dungeon Tickets are not sold for cash.

Beeswax (Item Sealer) is also available for loyalty (Zender).

In-game “Loyalty” Store

Logging in each day earns a currency called Zender, and this currency can be used to make purchases on the Zender Shop.

The Zender Shop provides users with a means to access items that are too advantageous to sell for cash.

Dungeon Tickets

Dungeon Tickets allow entry into any dungeon within Astellia, and they now constantly regenerate, regardless of whether you are off or online.

Unique daily quests have also been implemented to allow users to accrue more Dungeon Tickets.

The classes of Astellia

Astellia has five classes to pick from, they are: Warrior, Assassin, , Mage, Scholar and Archer. These Archetypes follow the traditional tank, melee dps, healer, buff/debuff and ranged DPS categories of MMOs, however the implementation of their skills is interesting and varied. During my gameplay sessions, I focused on a scholar and found the return to more critical skill rotation engaging, and the further expansion of the skills via upgrades, and later on Class Specializations to be further encouraging.

Class Progression

Within the Beta, without any power leveling (or rushing), I made it to a mid-range level naturally before opting to try endgame via a Beta-only level up quest. This gave me many hours of natural progression, skill discovery and rotation optimization that I found straight-forward but deep in customization. The character development aspect of the game focuses on the upgrading of your main character stats, of which there are 8 total, with 4 physical and 4 magic based. From there you’ll also note “Secondary Stats” for Attack and Defense, and if you’re the kind of person that loves tinkering with builds you’ll likely be delighted to find there’s a fantastic granularity and plenty of opportunity for customization via both level upgrades and equipment.

Stat Upgrades

Stat customization is done by spending points and using special items that have a chance to increase stats by a percentage based on the item quality. Further customization is done by slotting equipment which is sub-divided into 6 slots and 2 “Treasure” slots that provide unique benefits such as auto-loot. A salient point of equipment is that Armor is not divided into pieces and instead is equipped as one unit, preventing your character from looking odd with a different mash up of random pieces. Then, each piece of equipment has 5 Gem slots for individual Attack or Defense effects. And, of course, the gems that you use for those upgrades can be fused to create other gems, adding even further depth.

Skill Upgrades

Skill customization is done by upgrading your unlocked skills with Skill Points obtained by leveling up. Skill upgrades can have many effects, from simple damage increases, to decreasing cooldown, or increasing the frequency of applied effects. This allows the player to enhance the Skills they enjoy using the most.

Given all these freedom and tinkering, at no point during my gameplay did I get bored of experimenting with my setup and rotation, and I even took on a group boss by myself with my Astels by optimizing the party composition. The amount of ways you can customize is staggering, and above and beyond my expectations by a good ways.

The Astels

NPC followers and party companions are not a common MMO feature, and this is by far the most uniquely interesting aspect of Astellia. You start off with one Astel, and can find more Astels to recruit by doing quests in the world, but there are even more that are only found as rewards for in-game achievements, as special drops and from dungeon loot. The initial Astels look rather cartoonish and silly, but there are plenty of endgame “badasses” to satisfy every aesthetic need. The companion system is actually surprisingly complex and rewarding.

Astel Decks

Astels come in three general flavors: Savior Astels, that cost a significant amount of Action Points to summon and then are active for a very short time before going on a long cooldown. Servant Astels, that consume a low to moderate amount of AP while out, meaning you can keep one out permanently, and up to three out for a limited time. And, Guardian Astels, that are high-level and powerful, but consume a high amount of AP, making keeping them summoned a difficult task.

Figuring out what Astels to have on your bar, and at what time to summon and un-summon them is vital to optimizing your performance, but there is a lot of trial and error figuring it all out. Certain Astels affect other companions or even your Party members, and have co-op skills that activate with your own or other class skills. Understanding the interactions between the Astels, their unique elemental effects, buffs, debuffs and the enemy you’re facing adds in to the complex chain-reaction of customization when creating a powerful party to speed-run a legendary dungeon.

Astel Upgrading

If the dozens of Astels to pick from weren’t enough, you can also level them up to increase their performance and power. Non-contract (non-story) companions are permanently added to your deck when you obtain an “Astel Card” for the character, which happens randomly when opening an “Astel Card Pack”, which are acquired as rewards for specific achievements, or dungeon loot. If you obtain the same card twice, the unlocked Astel levels up, increasing its performance. Further adding to this, players will obtain Star Jewels classified into Alpha, Beta, etc that can be slotted into companion cards to make that Astel more powerful with unique effects such as increased HP, Magical Attack, etc.

Astellia World

The game is set in a fantasy world filled with traditional RPG themes and spiced with JRPG style constructs. I found the artstyle of Astellia to be nostalgic and compelling. From the beautiful map and mini-map design, to the actual feel of the forests, landscapes and deserts, there was something magical about exploring the land. This game does not have breathtaking graphics, but the combination of an extremely soothing soundtrack, and magical destinations mixed in with classical RPG villages, made for a cozy home for what felt like a game unashamed to be a game.

I very much appreciate the gorgeous world design of Elder Scrolls Online, but there’s something refreshing and comfortable in visiting a town and knowing that a specific NPC will not have moved, because it will spend its entire time doing the same motion at a known location.

Astellia features several regions to explore, each with several different zones and distinctive landscapes. The first region goes from coastal city, to evergreen trees, to plains, and finally a magical forest with bright bird-like lights and colorful flowers. There are also caves and dungeons to explore, each with designs matching the inhabitants of said structure, or featuring long-lost ruins and castles. Each zone also contains special hidden chests, that make exploration more rewarding by unlocking achievements that give free gold and other items.

Each area treats players to new monsters, which I found to be in the positive side of design and variation. From wolves to orcs, giant mushrooms and deformed frogs, you’ll find humanoid cultists, giant snakes, golems and constructs, chimeras, ent-like creatures and even butterflies. In addition, each enemy type has an “Ancient” spawn in the area they are present, and can be defeated to obtain achievements. Enemies had individual attacks, resistances and effects, with higher level areas increasing the monster repertoire to match your more powerful character.

Astellia Gameplay

Gameplay is a core aspect of any game, and must be the backbone of a successful title. Astellia might prove to be divisive in this regard, as its main appeal is not solo-game questing, but rather in its complex endgame dungeons and PvP. The main story is over-the-top, and thus for many it will not be compelling, and the sub-plot and sub-quests feel rather generic and fetch-questy. It was not until I made it to the fourth zone in the first region, and moved on to the next region that the underlying plot of the game got some interesting tones.

Character Creation & Controls

The game sets off wonderfully with a fully-featured character creation that allows your imagination to run wild. During the beta, the gender unlocks were not available so some classes were limited in this regard, but I was satisfied with how my Scholar turned out.

I found adjusting to the controls to be a bit of a challenge, and this lasted for the first 5+ hours as Astellia does something very different. Your mouse must be clicked to look left and right. And, this change allows for you to interact with the elements on screen without having to change your POV, but it also means that you get some rather sudden angles as you learn how to traverse the world.

Automatic Movement

Thankfully, the developers have added automatic movement, where you can just click in a point of your map, or on a quest objective, and your character will proceed there on its own. During that movement, you’re free to look at your inventory, fiddle with your stats and customize your gear or check your achievements. This feature made my travels much more enjoyable, and rendered teleporting unnecessary, as I just used the roads to get places while I did my inventory sorting.

Combat

Combat is very straight-forward: point your Astel at your enemy, and attack. The Scholar class had several interesting crowd control and debuff mechanics, where I could opt to bind, knock down and slow enemies. My Astel of choice acted as a natural tank, so I summoned an extra DPS Astel, and then proceeded to take on enemies by rooting them in place and applying effects that would stack, until some higher level skill could be used for critical damage.

Since I had a ranged character, I could generally stay at a safe distance without risking much damage, but sometimes enemies would aggro onto me. The game then provides a “quick roll”, executed by double-tapping a directional WASD. You can also increase your evade chances by just simply staying on the move, and the words “escaped” show up in your screen to let you know you got out of some incoming attacks. The only downside to the system is that my lack of familiarity with the camera controls made it difficult to make my character face the enemy again quickly, sometimes resulting in missing seconds in my DPS rotation.

Thankfully, the game also includes a smart “target of target” system, so you can be targeting the boss and applying debuffs and damage, and heal the tank without having to switch to it. This was very useful in endgame dungeons, and could benefit from some further customization on the client side to be perfect.

Overall, leveling up combat was engaging enough to keep me entertained, easy enough as to not to stress me out, and hard enough to force me to learn a rotation and read my skills. This is a good combination in my book, as the road to endgame should be more than just adding stats, it should teach players about their skills and capabilities, and prepare them for monsters’ abilities and mechanics.

Inventory & Skill Management

During my time with the game, I only had an “inventory full” notice twice. This is significant because I am a committed hoarder and I usually have to stop at every town I visit to unload useless junk I have collected. That was not the case with Astellia, as armor and weapon rewards were infrequent enough to be welcome in my inventory, and materials found did not become overwhelming a few hours in.

Another positive note for me was the flexibility of the skillbar, that can be collapsed and expanded as a whole or individually. It even allows you to set an order so that a specific slot is replaced by another skill after you have executed it, and then reverts. So for example I could set Key 1 to “barrier” and after pressing it, the skill would auto-swap to “great barrier” and allow me to go for the further buff next.

Connectivity

Whilst I have heard from our community that some experienced lag and disconnects, I had zero lag, a total of one disconnect during the beta, and all skills executed instantly (and beautifully because I really like a lot of the animations and effects they have chosen). It is difficult to know from a beta what the actual servers will be like when the game is live and under a launch crunch, so if connectivity is a concern to you, waiting for reviews might be advisable.

Dungeons & Endgame

The Astellia Beta provided a unique NPC that allowed players to level up to max, obtain all Astels, and a set of endgame equipment to try out high level and legendary dungeons. I had done some dungeons as I was leveling up, and I found them adequate for solo play, with mobs that were a bit more challenging than outside, and some interesting mechanics such as barriers, traps and treasure chests guarded by mini-bosses.

Upgrading from level 25 to 50 (endgame gear and stats) upped my damage by 10 times. Skills that were doing 450 damage suddenly did 4500. It was a huge jump and when I went back to the starting zones to help some new players I was not nerfed to the zone, nor was it scaled to me (a common tendency in modern games), so I could satisfyingly one shot everything in my path.

Having managed my unearned abilities as best I could, and with little understanding of how to use them, I tried going into a legendary dungeon and soon found out that having gear and stats does not replace know-how, as we got our behinds summarily handed to us by mobs of rodents. We decided to instead do the normal version of a level 50 dungeon, and found them much more to our capabilities. We still ran into some troubles and had to optimize which Astels to keep out when faced with groups of mobs, but we did complete the dungeon and obtain rewards within the time limit, including unlocking new Astels and cosmetic items.

Endgame Dungeon Experience

The group dungeon looked the same as the solo dungeon in terms of enemy placements, but those enemies had much more powerful hits and larger health pools. The bosses also had more effects and mechanics, and with regards to these mechanics, I was an avid server-first raider for Lord of the Rings Online (before it was casualized) so I greatly appreciated them. With the limited amount of time that I had to explore Astellia’s endgame, I thought it did much better than other current MMOs in that regard, with varying AOE effects, character debuffs, aggro breaks, etc.

It was however noted that the tank’s Astels have a tendency to stay near their master, and as such are quickly killed by boss AOEs that the AI is not smart enough to dodge. This was a frustrating point for our tank, who ultimately died during the last fight due to my healer’s inexperience, and his companions being rendered useless. And then we discovered that to resurrect on the spot you need some special consumable scrolls – otherwise you’re thrown back to the start of the dungeon, and given they are in a timer you might not make it back to the boss room to claim your loot. Fortunately, the Scholar class has a resurrection spell that can be used on a friendly target, so nothing was lost.

Final Thoughts

My overall impression with Astellia is colored by the extreme nostalgia the title elicits in me, as I have not played traditional MMOs or JRPGs in a long time. This is a plus point in my view, as reinvigorating old concepts has a place in today’s video game market. I very much enjoyed the world design, artistic style and music score of the game, and I was compellingly intrigued by the depth of character development and party management.

That said, the game is not without flaws. There was some stuttering performance issues when entering new areas, particularly in the more populated low level zones – this is something the developers confirmed to us that they are working on improving, however. There are some questionable character design choices, and some silly ones like an Astel who looks like Donald Duck riding a hobby horse. Finally there’s a lack of polish on cutscenes and interactions with NPCs for side-quests, that adds to the feeling of “fetch quest” and linearity, because you simply want to skip the dialogue.

Will you enjoy Astellia?

With all of this in mind, the question becomes whether the pluses out weigh the minuses, and how interesting the whole concept is for you. Are you looking for an endgame-heavy MMO to bite into? This is probably a good choice, pending a review of monetization options. Are you interested in deep story and character choices? This is not the right game. Are you looking for a relaxing hobby to chill after a long day? This is definitely the game for it.

In short, for me: What Astellia lacks in polish, it makes up for in character development and party options, making a compelling case for getting to endgame, or having a leisurely and casual stroll through its many zones and landscapes. Polish can be added over time, but it’s rare that games change their core mechanics, so in this regard Astellia has a solid foundation.

Like how it sounds? Download Astellia here.

The post Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG appeared first on Fextralife.

Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

0 notes

gamerszone2019-blog · 5 years

Text

You Might Want To Replay Borderlands 3 With Different Vault Hunters

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/you-might-want-to-replay-borderlands-3-with-different-vault-hunters/

You Might Want To Replay Borderlands 3 With Different Vault Hunters

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Click To Unmute

Borderlands 3 – Breaking Down FL4K’s Skill Tree

Size:

Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Click To Unmute

Borderlands 3 Gun Manufacturers Explained

Size:

Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Click To Unmute

The First 20 Mins of Borderlands 2 DLC: Commander Lilith & The Fight For Sanctuary

Size:

Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Click To Unmute

Borderlands 3 – Sanctuary Ship Tour Gameplay

Size:

Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

By clicking ‘enter’, you agree to GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

enter

Source : Gamesport

#Game News

0 notes

thomasroach · 5 years

Text

Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG

The post Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG appeared first on Fextralife.

This is a sponsored post. Please note sponsored posts are only sponsoring coverage, our opinions on the game are our own and not affected by any business relationships with developers or publishers

Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG

What is Astellia

Astellia Features

Classic MMORPG with a nostalgic but beautiful setting

Deep and complex progression mechanics, equipment upgrades, optimization

35-45 hours to get to level cap, solo dungeons available.

Unique party System: Astels

5 classes that evolve into further 3 subclasses each

Unique and upgradable skills for all classes

PVP modes

Astellia Monetization

“Play To Win”

Cash Shop

The sale of Cash Shop items for in-game profit has been eliminated.

Cosmetic items will not have performance improving mechanics.

AP Boosting Potions are not sold for cash.

Astel Card Packs are not sold for cash.

Dungeon Tickets are not sold for cash.

Beeswax (Item Sealer) is also available for loyalty (Zender).

In-game “Loyalty” Store

Logging in each day earns a currency called Zender, and this currency can be used to make purchases on the Zender Shop.

The Zender Shop provides users with a means to access items that are too advantageous to sell for cash.

Dungeon Tickets

Dungeon Tickets allow entry into any dungeon within Astellia, and they now constantly regenerate, regardless of whether you are off or online.

Unique daily quests have also been implemented to allow users to accrue more Dungeon Tickets.

The classes of Astellia

Class Progression

Stat Upgrades

Skill Upgrades

The Astels

Astel Decks

Astel Upgrading

Astellia World

Astellia Gameplay

Character Creation & Controls

Automatic Movement

Combat

Inventory & Skill Management

Connectivity

Dungeons & Endgame

Endgame Dungeon Experience

Final Thoughts

Will you enjoy Astellia?

Like how it sounds? Download Astellia here.

The post Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG appeared first on Fextralife.

Astellia: A Love Letter to Classic MMORPG published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

0 notes