we're doing loot boxes now guys. as an sl creator myself, these scummy ass sl creators coming to sims can really go suck a duck.

Now that Zero Punctuation is over, I want to immortalize it with some of Yahtzee's best quotes. God speed you magnificent British bastard.

"Those who had the random chance of being born white in the first world are the most privileged fucking people on this unequal fucking planet and Call of Duty is just those people complaining about how hard life can be when everyone's jealous of you."

"We live in an age where mass communication has counterintuitively turned all attempts at verbal debate into a basketball game where the teams are on different courts, racking up meaningless points and throwing shit over the dividing wall. That's why the only way you can safely express your politics these days is to anonymously spend money. That's how homophobic pizza joints can mysterious aquire a million dollars in donations. So two groups of middle class people annoy each other, Hatred makes tons of money, and the world at large gives less of a toss than a quadriplegic shot putter, good night!"

"The only reason I wanted to talk about it was the depressing inditement of modern gaming it creates. Not by itself, but by Value's indifference to this waterfall of piss trickling down its legacy's nose. Twenty years ago, Half Life was a focal point in gaming's ever-growing development as an artistic medium. The next few years saw a slew of titles that combined triple A game design with genuine emotional story. But what happened between then and now?! Why are the games rewarded with triple A status and income exclusively loot box infested live service bullshit designed not to stimulate our emotions, but to numb them and hypnotize us into lab rats mindlessly pawing the button that makes treats come out while games created with love drown beneath bottom feeders like Hunt Down the Freeman as Valve themselves, once habitual founders of new eras of narrative gaming just waves them on, barely glancing up from their tax paper work. What happened to you! What happened to us!? To the people we were supposed to become!"

"Hogwarts Legacy is by every definition of the phrase, a game made by cunts. As well as very literally a game made by a cunt."

"We really need a better term for shit like Gotham Knights than 'live service'. It sounds too much like a good thing. Being alive is good and so is being serviced. We can't let the publishers control the narrative on this one, they'd call a kick in the bullocks a key entertainment reinvigoration scheme. Hmmm, how about... cunts. Games made by cunts. Evil money grubbing cunts who make soulless, emotion deading skinner boxes deliberately designed to foster addictive behavior. Demonitize me YouTube, I don't care. And neither does my editor. Probably."

"We as gaming audiences have always separated games into the worthies and the unworthies. My dichotomy is this. Games that make you feel vs games that make you numb."

*Begins review* "Undertale is a good game." *Ends review*

"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything, tee hee hee!"

*skitters into your inbox like a feral critter*

Hi

Viggo 5, 8, 20

*skitters out of your inbox*

what flower would i give them on a date

i feel like he'd have allergies... so I'd give him a Venus flytrap

what would their luck with loot boxes be

absolutely fucking terrible but somehow he manages to make do

how do i feel about their other dragons

you know how much i love his saviour. girl is so cool she saved his life like an absolute queen

his terrible terror i think is great because it literally blasts fire when he slams his fist on the desk like there are so many opportunities for things to go wrong there

i feel like there is sometimes a misconception about ads and microtransactions and gatcha in video games that i kinda want to address.

like. im a game dev. friends of mine have already released games or are working on games and while you can still bring out pc games that cost money, that just widely isn't the case anymore for phone games. like be really honest here: did you ever buy an app? even if it was like 0.80 ct? did you ever even consider buying it? i don't think you did and even if you did almost no one else does. phone games need to be fast to download, free and easy to play for people to be ready to spend their time with them

now if you worked on a game for a long time and it is a game you really care about, you are fucking heartbroken to ruin your own games with ads. like ive been to discussion boards, even ones where friends of mine were part of the discussion, and the general consensus (in indie companies) is: "if there is any other way, i would prefer not to cluster my game full of ads, because it destroys the game feeling i want to achieve in the game, leaves players frustrated and just really brings down the general experience of a piece of media i have put 100s of hours of work into"

like. the reason ads in games is the way to go is because there is literally no other way to ethically finance your phone games without literally going broke. if you put a price tag on your phone game beforehand, no one will play it, like when i say that, i don't mean: "you only get rich if you put ads in your game" i mean: "you can only make a basic income if you put ads in your game".

there are other ways to finance app games, but some of these are very unpopular by audiences and some of these are really unethical.

a friend of mine released a game both on steam and as an app. on steam it was payment up front and had really good reviews. on phone, he made the first level playable for free (as a demo, so to say) and all other content was to be unlocked when paying for the game. his game was reviewed by an average of one star in the appstore and playstore. why? because people felt entitled to getting phone games for free. playing one level of a game and then having to pay for the rest - a concept as old as video games - felt like a "scam" to them. (by the way getting review-bombed like that is fucking devastating if this game is your literal only source of income)

some other methods of financing your game are straight-up unethical: literal gambling apps and games with gatcha systems or loot boxes or games that have constant extra content you can unlock with microtransactions. so like. the most ethical choice app developers are often met with is putting ads in a game. believe me, most game devs dont want your UI constantly clustered with ads but the market has literally evolved in a way where that is the only thing you can still do without becoming entirely morally corrupt. that is the reason you often see ads hidden behind hints in a puzzle game or in situations where you have an actual choice to watch them

on another note: there is an alarming trend in pc games right now and while some people might be happy about it, you really shouldn't. genshin impact's extreme success is mostly due to the game being free to play. genshin impact is a game you would usually pay 60€ for, but it is completely free because it finances itself over it's gatcha system. for the average player, that gatcha system is almost harmless, if you want you might spend 5€ every once in a while, but won't be pressured into paying money to enjoy the game. i actually myself thought of the gatcha system as a means of financing the game as kind of harmless until i saw the stats of what people actually pay in this game. while most players might have spent between 0 - 50€ on the game, that is not what the game makes it's actual money with: gambling addicts and people who really want a rare, time-limited 5-star character spend thousands of dollars on a single banner, with extremes even cracking the ten-thousands. so while the average player might not at all pay for the game, genshin impact is disproportionately financed by exploiting people's addictions and driving them into debts for digital content that doesn't have any monetary worth

here is the very dangerous thing: if people now start to advocate that they don't want to pay 60€ for Breath of the Wild 2, because they got a similar game with constantly updating content and a massive world for free without the gatcha system feeling predatory to them, studios are put into a situation where they either see that success and want to make the same amount of money as genshin or don't want to do that but are met with more and more people being unwilling to pay full price for a game

smaller studio suffer unter the trends of big studios to go away from standard money-up-front models to unethical, exploitative models because the audiences that aren't the ones being exploited see these models as "better" than actually paying for a game, while big AAA studios usually don't have the moral backbone to stop these trends.

this trend also brings an entitlement to just get video games for free. i cannot stress how much WORK goes into making a video game and while we are always advocating to "pay artists" we don't seem to be holding video games to the same level of respect, even though we pay like 80€ for a commissioned 10h piece of art we get mad when a game that was in development for 2 years and had 80 people working on it isn't free to play. (if you think "who the fuck thinks like that" this might not be about you, but believe me there are enough people saying that every day)

so my message basically is: if you see a phone game or a computer game and you go "you want me to pay for that?", really question what the fuck you just thought

just a little eensy teensy rant about eso lately

im not looking for a discussion or anything like that, this is just a rant i couldnt stuff in the tags

eso is one of those games that i want to like but it feels like with each passing day i find theres more and more to dislike about it. sometimes i feel like im submitting a ticket every week bc theres something broken i come across. stuff environmental asset that were once entirely solid can now be clipped through which prevents people from getting loot the devs stashed ontop of it

lately theyve been celebrating the 10th anniversary jubilee, 10 whole years of eso, and of course they can even do that smoothly along with literally every other event theyve put on in 2024. it started out fine but shit soon hit the fan

they made an update to pts so players can test out the new dlc and some new pts features to test out higher level builds. things were going well until about an hour after the pts was brought back online when my server, pcna, was suddenly taken offline without any warnings. i had to hop over to the server to get some info which is where i learned that the pts update hadnt gone smoothly. zos somehow crossed the wires between pts and pcna where people could bring over their max level pts toons over to pcna and i heard people had billions in gold and trillions in loot. pts and pcna were taken down for this emergency bc it absolutely wouldve devastated the player economy to have that much money flowing around. speculation on how zos would handle this was grim on the forums, generally people were expecting a server rollback and all progress they had made that day would be erased. ill give zos credit, they didnt do a rollback but just locked the accounts of those who were affected by this pts exploit so the devs could dig through their inventory and xp histories to pick out the exploits; everyone else who didnt exploit the game would be fine to continue on playing when the servers came back online

pcna was taken down i wanna say around 7 am for me and was only brought back by around 11:30 pm so thats most of the day for the event gone. to my knowledge it took a couple days for pts to come back online. overall the issue didnt bother me beyond the time the server was down at that point. those with locked accounts would receive incredibly generous gifts from zos to make up for the inconvenience of being locked out during the event. theyd get...

-16k endeavours. they can use that to buy items from the gamble crates without spending any irl money. 16k is enough to buy like 400 of the bottom tier items or just 1 of the top shelf fancy as fuck items. thats about 10 months worth of constantly grinding for endeavours

-5 replica style pages released this year for the event. you can normally get these style pages through a handful of activities but the drop rates have become infamous for how abysmally low they are. ive heard of people running 700 dolmens now throughout the whole event and they have nothing to show for it. players whove been locked out get all 5 without putting in the work

-25 confetti scrolls to make the new jubilee horse mount. normally you get these by doing 1 daily quest to get a gold event reward box, you get 1 confetti scroll per box and the event was originally only meant to go on for 18 days, youd have to spend event tickets to buy more to complete the achievement to earn the horse

so locked out players get all 3 of these overwhelmingly generous gifts to make up for the time theyve spent locked out during the event. usually whenever zos actually feels bad about a blunder they just give us some ugly as fuck pity pet and move on with their shenanigans. theyre basically sucking the dicks of players here in my humble opinion. they even added on an additional 2 days to the event, instead of just 18 days worth of the event its not 20 days in total! hallelujah for that!

and then they decided to go back on the 2 additional days and essentially just make it 1 day for literally everyone on pcna. for the final day of the event, from 3 am to 7 am, pcna would be taken offline starting at 3 am when tickets are supposed to reset so that they can restore locked accounts. zos even stated that they expect the server to be offline for like 8 hours. just go fuck yourself if youre on pcna and were hoping to get the final 3 tickets and maybe some bonus rewards, those 2 extra days zos promised is effectively just 1 day and a broken promise

my gripe with the server being taken down is that it was scheduled for 3 am. thats when daily quests and tickets reset. if you werent already on and ready to get your tickets youre just fucked with no hope of getting your tickets, spending them, or earning any other rewards for the extra day zos promised you. they S E R I O U S L Y couldnt wait maybe another 10 mins so those dedicated to the event and to earning tickets could maybe actually have just a little bit more time to actually earn the final tickets and the last of the event rewards as well as buy event goodies from the impressario and indrik vendor merchants who are only around during events and tend to have items associated with specific events and seasons? they seriously needed to take the server down for the entirety of the final day of the event? players whove been locked out seriously cant wait just 10 extra minutes?

i consider myself to have be very lucky to be nocturnal for the past while. i was able to be online before the servers went down. i prepped some daily quests to turn in for my last rewards and was ready to earn my final tickets. i got the event boxes and my tickets. not many other players are awake at 3 in the fucking morning on a weekday and had absolutely no chance to earn their final event goodies! they were also p damn fast at taking the server down too. usually it takes like 3-5 mins but ive personally seen it take as many as 8 mins for the server to go offline. my clock read 3:01 by the time the server was pulled offline. thats unusually punctual for zos in my experience over the course of 3 years of playing eso. players who were locked out wouldnt even be able to get the rewards of the last day of the event either

im just fucking pissed that they promised us 2 extra days of the event and then unexpectedly backtracked in the worst way possible by giving everyone on pcna only the slimmest of chances to get the rewards of the final day. this round of maintenance has turned the forums into more than a bit of a warzone too with players fighting each other over whos fault it is when its so very clearly the fault of zos. it feels like the whole fucking dev team is made up entirely of clowns keyboard smashing their way through some very delicate spaghetti code so its just inevitable that like 50 bajillion things break with each and every update.

i dont fucking care if youre one of the players who got locked out or if youre also mad about missing the final day of the event. i just need to fucking vent about how god awfully stupid zos is at least this one time. the only reason why i even continue playing eso is bc its the only source for tes content nowadays bc tes6 is never coming out

So a D&D game I'm in is doing a "Westmarch"-style sort of thing, which is basically "there's way more than 5 players but we just divide up into groups of 5 out of them to do stuff whenever schedules align"

So currently there's 2 parties, and both just got a deus-ex-machina set of linked boxes so we can share loot back and forth between parties. However, we're all fucking paranoid in this setting, so nobody trusts the boxes. This has devolved into an inter-party prank war, with nobody knowing in-character that it's friends on the other side.

Current exchanged materials include:

-Infuriatingly poorly written letters

-A hand turkey

-40,000 copper pieces (the equivalent of "enough money to pay my DMV bill but in pennies")

-The smoke of a magic cigar, used to literally hotbox my party across time and space

-A single Electrum piece (technically worth half a plat, or half a gold, nobody knows because it's so rarely used; the sheer difficulty to remember and calculate the value of electrum makes this a prank in its own right)

Top 10 Video Games of All Time: bobgoesw00t Edition (Part 03)

I realized yesterday that if I’m gonna get the rest of this list posted by the end of the year that I need to step it up and post one every other day (with the exception of my top pick as I’ll be spending that afternoon with my family at our Christmas/Wintersday/Holiday party...as long as none of us get COVID within the next two weeks...but if that doesn’t happen, I’ll be back on the 27th with that post), SO HERE WE GO NUMBER 08 GOES TO:

Now I know a lot of people will tell you this is one of the worst entries in the franchise but let's all be honest, that award probably goes to Halo 5 Guardians. While Halo 5 has PERFECT gameplay IMO, it's campaign is a load of crap (with the exception of the opening cutscene which is FUCKING PHENOMENAL), War Zone is super one sided 99% of the time unless it's War Zone Turbo or War Zone Firefight and it's inclusion of loot boxes without any system to increase the drop rate of rarer items is a load of bullshit. But that's not what I'm here to talk about, I'm here to talk about Halo 4.

The first time I watched the Prologue upon booting up the campaign, I literally thought I was watching a live action cutscene and I continued to think that for a longest time. The one thing this game has going for it to be honest is how GORGEOUS it is and the team at 343 pushed the Xbox 360 to it's limits in order to get the game to look that good. The story was the most emotional one we had gotten at the time of release and seeing John struggle with completing his mission of saving humanity while not wanting to let go of Cortana is heartbreaking and it stabs me in the feels EVERY DAMN TIME!!!

While most people detest Spartan Ops (while loving the gorgeous cutscenes at the start of every episode), I was one of the minority in loving it. Having a series of bit-sized campaign missions to play each week while using my custom loadouts (one of my favorite gameplay features which I'll go over in a bit) was a good way to keep me coming back to play the game and it kept the multiplayer from getting too boring for me.

Speaking of which, I KICKED ASS in the multiplayer when the game launched and I think that's been some of the most fun I've ever had in Halo multiplayer. The fact that each of the guns felt good to use and they all sounded like they packed a punch (ESPECIALLY the DMR! The Halo Reach version of that gun is good in the campaign and Firefight but it totally sucks in the multiplayer IMO and it lacks the OOMPH the Halo 4 and 5 versions have that let you know it's a beast) is awesome. Hell, the Halo 4 Magnum is my favorite version of the weapon as it took everything about the previous pistols/magnums and melded them into a great sidearm. And the game's Assault Rifle is good as well to be honest, not just from an audio perspective but it has a good clip size, max ammo count, fate of fire (without feeling like a pea shooter like in Reach and Infinite at times), and it has decent range.

Gonna talk about gameplay real quickly before I give the score and the two honorable mentions for this entry and all I have to say is THANK GOD 343 GOT RID OF SPRINT AS AN ARMOR ABILITY!!!!!!! That's one of my BIGGEST criticisms with Halo Reach, Sprinting is locked behind an ARMOR ABILITY when literally every other First Person Shooter at the time had Sprint as a default ability that can be used at any point. The other Armor Abilities in Reach are great (Drop Shield will SAVE YOUR ASS in the campaign on harder difficulties) but I still can't get behind Sprint being something that needs to be swapped out for other options. Halo 4 also has some good abilities, with my personal favorite being the Thruster Pack as it's basically the games version of Evade from Reach and it has many uses outside of the obvious "dodge out of the way". Also LOOOOVE that they FINALLY let us use custom loadouts outside of private matches, something I was HIGHLY disappointed in when Reach came out cause in the previews and stuff before it came out, Bungie had said we could make Custom Loadouts but didn't specify that it was exclusive to private matches.

Overall, Halo 4 ended up being everything I wanted it to be and more, and it continues to be my favorite entry in the franchise, but Halo Infinite is a VERY close second for not only addressing the problems Halo 5 had, but also for bringing in an open world setting and giving me the one thing I never knew I needed in a Halo game...A GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCKING GRAPPLING HOOK!!!!! So I have to give Halo 4 the same score I gave it ten years ago:

A 5 out of 5

Honorable Mentions this week are:

Halo Infinite: Only fitting that I include my second favorite entry in the franchise.

Star Wars Battlefront II (2005): While the 2017 game is in a stable place now and is a lot of fun, matches can tend to be super one sided for me and nothing will ever beat my memories of spending hours playing Mos Eisley Hero Assault on my computer, abusing Aayla Secura's Force Pull from on top of the ship half buried in the ground and WAILING ON THE POOR SUCKER THAT WAS UNFORTUNATE ENOUGH TO BE MY PRAY xD

Also, I should mention that you'll be seeing a trend with the games that I've picked as my favorite video games of all time xP

Devil Day Pop Quiz [Math + Venting]

emotionally damaged by how the pop quiz rewards work. it's loot boxes. it's basically fucking loot boxes. tons of rng. it's completely possible to get just items as rewards and never actually get ANY cards. basically, each box has 250 items in it. you spend 500 pop quiz points to randomly unlock ONE item. So effectively in order to guarantee finishing a loot box, you need 500*250 points - 125,000 points. 125k points, FOR ONE BOX. Typically the demon SSR (Simeon's surprise, in this instance) has been available at 100k points - about the number of points a f2p player can obtain throughout the ENTIRE event. Now, this system DOES mean that it is theoretically possible for a lucky player to get everything with very few points. If your luck is exceptional, you can finish a box early... or if not, you will have to spend close to the entire 125k to finish the entire box. Certain items are only present in certain loot boxes, including the UR cards. The SSR is in the first box, then an SSR Voucher in the second, the memory UR in the third, and the demon UR (the dia card) in the fourth. And finally there is a UR Voucher in the fifth box. To get the demon UR for certain, you will need 125,000*4 points. 500,000 points. For the Dia UR. Yes, this is the worst case scenario of luck. However, each loot box you open, your chance of getting the correct item is 1/250. That's .004%. The odds of getting a UR from the current nightmare are .5%, or OVER 100 TIMES HIGHER. The above is something I said in the original post, and it's not correct math!!! Very sorry to have spread misinformation like that, I was tired and unhappy, wasn't checking my work. Your odds are 1 in 250 - that's true. And 1/250 = .004 However, when you calculate percentages, you don't just take that decimal number from the division. If your odds are 1 in 100, they should be 1%. 1/100 = .01 Therefore, your odds of getting the item you want ON YOUR FIRST ROLL (this is a very important point I'll elaborate on in a different post) are .4% So you are more likely to get a UR card in your nightmare, but not as much as my hack job fever dream math made it out to be. Just to give you a perspective on the mathematics behind this. I've taken plenty of math classes but it's been a while and I am not at all well versed in gatcha, so anyone with greater knowledge feel free to enlighten me lol. (ty for the person in the replies who corrected me <3) normally, a f2p player with a little foresight (some D-energies and diligence in unlocking everything) can get 100k points, netting them the demon SSR. and if you ARE willing to spend some money - on extra battles, or on cheat cards from the respective nightmare - then you can feasibly get the memory/demon UR without breaking the bank entirely. Usually, it's around 300k points. this pop quiz? it's loot boxes. it's just fucking loot boxes. just what this game needed, right? even MORE rng, to make it so that even IF you were to spend over a hundred dollars on this damn mobile otome, you could come out with literally nothing to show for it, because you got unlucky with the boxes. it's rough, really rough. i'm not f2p and i've never really been - i can't IMAGINE how f2p players must be feeling about the pq Dia and Luci URs. anyways, hope that was informative to some, I just had to get some of that off of my chest and all. NOW I WILL ADD A NOTE. The current pop quiz isn't complete, and the pop quiz will, supposedly, run for 20 days. This means the total number of points that even a f2p player can get should be much higher than 100k. A lot depends on how many chapters will be in part 2 of the second pop quiz, and other information we'll only really get once the second part launches. What's important to remember also is that the rewards for part 1 and part 2 use the same points, but, to my knowledge, they cannot be mixed and matched. If you get through box 1 and 2 for part A, and move on to part B, you still have to get through box 1 and 2 of

part B.

To make a very long story as short as possible (spoiler alert, I'm not actually making it very short):

I love salarians. They're my favorite Mass Effect species by a pretty wide margin. I've loved them since the first time I landed on the Citadel on what must have been New Years Eve 2007. I thought they were adorable and fun and great.

Fast forward to 2012. I played the ME3 multiplayer beta before the game came out, and immediately I unlocked a salarian to play as, and was so happy. I was like, "hey, that was a super easy unlock, and he's so fun to play as, that's awesome!" Pretty much exclusively played that for the entire beta. I think it was the infiltrator but it may have been the engineer. Expected it to be a first-week unlock for me in the full game.

Then the game came out. Progress and unlocks from the beta did not transfer to the full game. Oh well, both salarians are a pretty standard reward, so I'll stumble on them some time soon, right? Even though it's totally up to RNG, there is no possible way that it would take literal years of my life to unlock something as simple as a salarian.

So I kept playing ME3 multiplayer. And I kept playing it. And I kept saving up for packs and buying them and not getting either of the salarians. And then I realized I hated ME3's multiplayer, but I kept playing it anyway, through update after update. Putting in a few matches every once and a while just to earn credits and then hopefully get a goddamn salarian. Because I loved salarians! I could happily put the game down for good if I snagged one.

Except I NEVER GOT ONE!!!!! I ended up with all sorts of crazy and ridiculous characters and weapons! I had batarians and drell and geth and vorcha, I got the dinky little SMG that nobody likes that you're stuck with at the beginning of ME2 all the way up to level 10 before I got any other weapon up to even level 5, and still no salarians!

So at the start of quarantine I got ME3 on PC and started from scratch, since all my previous progress is on the Xbox 360 that's at my mom's house on the other side of the country. Hoped that by the end of the pandemic, maybe I'd have a salarian. And then... I gave up after a while.

Jumped back into ME3 multiplayer over the weekend and THE VERY FIRST PACK I BUY -- I got BOTH the salarian engineer and the infiltrator at the same time. HOLY SHIT

as;dfkasd;gaksjdfn this happened while Ash was in the kitchen and I fucking stood up in my chair and did the "praise the sun" pose at her. I smiled so hard my fucking face hurt. I cannot believe it finally happened. I am still filled with adrenaline even thinking about it.

Anyway, all of that is to say:

I forgot to take any screenshots when it happened, so this is the only photographic evidence I have: me dying on some stairs.

I can finally die in peace knowing I got my favorite little dudes.

RNG/loot boxes are GARBAGE and we should NEVER be forced to unlock shit this way!!!! Jesus christ, what the hell happened to unlocking things via in-game currency??? TOOK ME NINE YEARS TO GET A COUPLE OF LITTLE FROG TWINKS, BIOWARE

I also hate monetisation in the games industry. All that loot box micro transaction shit. I TRIED playing Halo 5 multiplayer, when I was gonna change the armour I found that 99.9% of it was stuck behind randomised REQ packs which I needed REAL money to buy. I just said "Fuck that." and shut the game off. Plus it could also lead children into thinking swindling people out of money is okay...or am I looking too deeply into it again?

God ikr? And tbh it's not thinking too deeply about it, people in the industry have literally admitted they want to use it to make paying for games the 'socially accepted thing', microtransactions literally are that fucking predatory. Plus the 'they need them to cover dev costs' thing is total bollocks, they make more than enough money without them (and underpay their devs anyway), they just line boss and investor pockets.

Gold For XP: A History

Experience points are a method for the game master to reward desirable player behaviour. It is a tool by the game designer (and the game master) to direct players to do things that they might otherwise not do, and to inform the players what sort of things they are “supposed” to be doing in this particular game.

The game of Dungeons & Dragons (broadly defined as any official edition of the game, OSR hacks and Pathfinder spinoffs) is a game about armed medieval characters going into a dangerous place (broadly defined here as “the dungeon”), killing or avoiding whatever lives there (defined hereafter as “monsters”) and taking their stuff (defined as “treasure.”) They do this because gaining treasure makes them more powerful, allowing them to get into more dangerous dungeons and fight more dangerous monsters, in order to gain more treasure.

There is no goal that a player character could conceivably have that wouldn’t be helped out by having a shitload of money. I challenge any reader to come up with a plausible goal that would not be expedited or solved by finding 100,000 gold pieces.

As a result, Dungeons & Dragons originally awarded experience points for the recovery of treasure guarded by monsters.

In this article, I will go through the history of every edition of D&D’s experience points, as long as they involve the recovery of treasure. Somewhere around 2nd Edition (1989) they transitioned solely to rewarding XP for killing monsters; the recovery of treasure was only worth the literal worth of gold, and gave no XP.

This article will also contain commentary on each method, and discuss ways you can use this in a modern game, whether that be 5e, Old School Essentials, Pathfinder, or whatever game you like to run.

For the future of the article, we are assuming a gameplay loop of town > wilderness > dungeon > wilderness > town. The players stay in town and stock up on supplies, travel the wilderness to the entrance of the dungeon, delve as deep as they can while keeping their resources intact, bail out of the dungeon when their resources are depleted or almost depleted, travel back over the wilderness, and rest in town again until they are once again ready to depart for the dungeon. 

From OD&D (1974)’s first book, Men & Magic, page 16:

Experience  Points:  Experience  points  are  awarded  to  players  by  the  referee  with  appropriate  bonuses  or  penalties  for  prime  requisite  scores.  As  characters  meet monsters in mortal combat and defeat them, and when they obtain various forms of treasure (money, gems, jewelry, magical items, etc.), they gain “experience.” This adds to their experience point total, gradually moving them upwards through  the  levels.  Gains  in  experience  points  will  be  relative;  thus  an  8th-level  Magic-User operating on the 5th dungeon level would be awarded 5/8 experi-ence. Let us assume he gains 7,000 Gold Pieces by defeating a troll (which is a 7th-level monster, as it has over 6 hit dice). Had the monster been only a 5th-level one, experience would be awarded on a 5/8 basis as already stated, but as the monster guarding the treasure was a 7th-level one, experience would be awarded on a 7/8 basis thus; 7,000 GP + 700 for killing the troll = 7,700 divided by 8 = 962.5 × 7 = 6,037.5. Experience points are never awarded above a 1 for 1 basis,  so  even  if  a  character  defeats  a  higher-level  monster  he  will  not  receive  experience  points  above  the  total  of  treasure  combined  with  the  monster’s  kill  value. It is also recommended that no more experience points be awarded for any single adventure than will suffice to move the character upwards one level. Thus a “veteran” (1st level) gains what would ordinarily be 5,000 experience points; however, as this would move him upwards two levels, the referee should award only sufficient points to bring him to “warrior” (2nd level), say 3,999 if the character began with 0 experience points.

This is FUCKED. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the composite math equations you would need to make this work. Keep in mind the reference above to prime requisites; in OD&D, each class had a prime requisite, what we would probably call today their “main stat.” Fighters had Strength, Clerics Wisdom, and Magic Users Intelligence. I believe in OD&D, a character did not require a minimum score to qualify for a class* but if you had a low score, you would receive less XP. A Fighter with 15 or more Strength would get 10% extra XP. This is, of course, after all the bullshit where you calculate the monster hit dice against what level of the dungeon there is (?!) so you would then take the 6037.5 XP above and multiply it by 1.1 in order to get your final XP earned. This is so insane that I can’t imagine any sane person doing it. So going forward we’re going to consider OD&D’s method worthless. It is, however, the first time we care about what level the monster is, rather than just the raw amount of treasure, which I suppose is the root of giving XP for simply killing monsters...

*I cannot find a reference to it in the Men & Magic book, at least. Feel free to correct me if you find it!

Let’s move on to the 1977 Holmes Basic set, aka the “Blue Box”:

EXPERIENCE   POINTS   AND   EXPERIENCE   LEVELS: Accumulated   experience   is   measured   by   experience points. Experience points are awarded on the basis  of treasure  obtained  and  monsters killed  or subdued. Experience for treasure recovered is on the basis of 1  point for every gold piece. Convert jewelry, gems, etc.  into  gold  piece  value.  (For  more  information  regarding  treasure,  see  TREASURE  and  BASE  TREASURE VALUES.)  Treasure  is  usually  divided  equally  among members  of the  party  and  therefore  the experience  is also.  If, for some reason, one character gets more of the loot, such as a thief stealing gems from the saddle bags on the way home, then  he should get the additional experience points. Monsters  killed  or  overcome  by  magic  or wits are worth experience points to be divided among the entire party.

This is the first time that we announce up front that 1 gp is worth 1 XP, throwing away the “Experience points are never awarded above a 1 for 1 basis” declaration from OD&D. We’re still modifying it later, but the basis of 1gp = 1 XP is solidly established here, and I doubt that will change as we move through.

This is the first reference we have to monsters giving XP, but it’s not very much. There’s a table of monster XP by hit dice, but it tops out at about 6HD for 225 XP, plus an additional 175 XP for every “special ability” the monsters have. Meanwhile the main method of gaining XP is the acquisition of gold. It seems in this version we are explicitly about the acquisition of gold. I am under the impression that some early version of the game is concerned with the recovery of gold; as in, the literal process of getting it out of the dungeon and taking it home. Holmes Basic is vague about this in the rulebook because of its reference to the thief stealing from the saddle bags; so when is XP awarded? When they return to town, presumably after the adventure? 

Moving forward:

If  the  defeated  monster  is  lower  in  level  than  the character   who   overcomes   him,    less   experience   is gained. The experience points for the kill are multiplied by  a  fraction:  monster's  level/character's  level.  For example,  if  a  third  level  fighting  man  killed  the  first level  orc  he  generates   1/3  the  experience  points.  The Dungeon  Master  usually takes all  the experience  earned  by  the  party,  treasure  and  monsters  defeated,  and divides  it equally among all surviving  members of the expedition. 

The  Dungeon  Master  should  have  the  option  of lowering  the  number  of  experience  points  gained  under  special  circumstances.  If  one  character  sneaks  out of  the  dungeon  with  all  the  treasure  while  the  rest  of the  party  is  being  eaten,  he  should  gain  some  experience points but not necessarily all of them!

Remember that characters with high scores in  their prime requisite get a bonus of experience points. 

No more experience points should  be awarded for a single game than will  move  a character  up one experience "level." Thus if a first level fighting men earns 5000 experience points this would ordinarily move him up  two  levels  (see  table  below).  He  is therefore  only allowed the number of points that would take him  up to second  level  and  almost  up  to  third.   He  therefore receives  3,999  experience  points,  not  5,000,  because 4,000 points would move him  up two levels. 

So we are still modifying XP based on your level compared to the monster’s level (basically, their hit dice). This is so annoying, I can see why they dropped it. Plus, we’re also still messing about with artificially gating player levels behind how much XP they earn. Frankly, this is all within the purview of the DM anyway--they decide how much treasure to award, so if you know the fighter will level up twice at 4000, why not simply not put more than 4000gp in the dungeon?

I moved forward a little to this version’s printing of B1: Into the Unknown to see what it says about awarding XP. In an edition of the game lacking a DMG, this is the closest thing we have to one:

At the conclusion of an adventure (the party's emergence from the dungeon), the surviving characters divide the treasure (with equal shares generally awarded to each and magical or special items diced for by eligible characters) and experience is computed. Henchmen and hirelings usually get an equal share of any treasure, although their experience point award may vary at the Dungeon Master's discretion from half to the full amount awarded to player characters, depending upon their accomplishments.

This is where it’s explicitly the party’s emergence from the dungeon. Apparently this is not when they reach town, at least by my interpretation. So you gain XP as soon as you leave the dungeon but before the travel back through the wilderness? Or does Holmes Basic assume that the trip back to town from the dungeon will be uneventful? Perhaps later versions will shed some light on this.

This is also the first reference we have to giving hirelings a share of the experience. OD&D said that they should be divided equally amongst “the entire party,” which under some definitions would probably include hirelings, but calling them out explicitly here and giving them the option of having a lesser XP share is good.

Now from the AD&D Player’s Handbook, 1977, on page 106 (what the fuck!), here’s what Gary has to say about awarding XP:

Experience is the measure of  a character's ability in his or her chosen profession, the character's class. Each player character begins the campaign at 1st level with no experience points accumulated. Thereafter, as he or  she completes adventures and returns to an established base of operations, the Dungeon Master will award experience  points  to  the character for treasure gained and opponents captured or slain and for solving or overcoming problems through professional means. 

…

Gaining experience points through the acquisition of gold pieces and by slaying monsters might  be  questioned  by some individuals is non-representative of how an actual character would become more able in his or her class. Admittedly, this is so, if the existence of spell costing clerics, druids,  magic-users, and illusionists is (unrealistically) granted; likewise, dwarven superheroes, paladins, elven thieves, half-orc assassins, and the like might gain real experience from altogether different sorts of activities. This is a game, however, a fantasy game, and suspension of disbelief is required. If one can accept the existence of 12' tall giants, why not the rewarding  of  experience points for treasure gained? While praying and religious-oriented acts are more properly the activities for which a  cleric would  gain experience points,  this is not the  stuff  of  exciting swords & sorcery adventure. So too, fighters  need physical training and weapons practice, magic-users long hours of study in tomes of arcane  lore, and thieves the repetition of their manual skills and discernitory prowess; but none of this is suitable to gaming. It is, therefore, discarded and subsumed as taking place on a character's "off hours". 

As a  rule, one point  of  experience will be awarded for  one gold piece gained by a character, with copper pieces, silver pieces, electrum pieces, platinum pieces, gems, jewelry,  and like treasure being converted to a gold piece value. Magic items gained  and  retained  have  only  a low experience point value, for  they benefit the character through their use. Magic items gained and sold immediately are treated as gold pieces, the selling price bringing an award in experience on the stated one for  one basis. Experience points awarded  for treasure gained - monetary  or magical - are  modified downward if the  guardian  of  the treasure (whether a monster, device, or  obstacle, such as a secret door or maze) was generally weaker than the character who  overcame it. A  4th level character versus a single orc is an overmatch, and only about 10% of the treasure value gained could count towards experience points; but if nine or  ten orcs were involved, the experience points awarded would generally be on the one for one bosis. 

Monsters captured or slain always bring a  full experience point  award. Captured monsters ransomed or sold bring a gold piece: experience point ratio  award. Monsters slain  gain  a set point  award. Low hit point/dice monsters have a low experience point  amount. Monsters with  high  hit point/dice have large experience point awards.  Special abilities such as magic resistance, spell capability, gaze or breath weapons, regeneration, and the like also increase experience points amounts.

Finally, clerics' major aims are to use their spell abilities to aid during any given encounter, fighters aim to  engage in combat,  magic-users aim to cast spells, thieves aim to make gain by stealth, and monks aim to use their unusual talents to come to successful ends. If characters gain treasure by pursuit of their major aims, then they are generally entitled to a full share of earned experience points awarded by the DM. 

Oh, Gary. Jesus Christ. Alright, let’s roll up our sleeves and see what’s actually relevant here.

XP in 1e is explicitly only awarded for gaining treasure and killing monsters. Magic items are no longer awarding XP for their worth in gold, as in Holmes Basic. We are also still fucking around with caring about how difficult the monster who was guarding the treasure is to defeat--I don’t understand this. I don’t really understand why you would sit around and need to worry about awarding more gold than XP and creating a situation where you would have 2000 gp guarded by a couple of kobolds against a 5th level party. Y’know?

The final paragraph just confuses me. Yeah, no shit the characters will do the things that get them XP, so give them the full amount of XP…? Gary, you suck at writing.

Furthermore, at least here in the PHB, Gary does not seem all that concerned about when to award XP. I don’t have the stomach right now to dig through the DMG, so we’ll put it off for a moment. After all, it wasn’t released until 1979.

Save me, Tom Moldvay. Save me from the wretched insanity!

When the adventure  is over, the  DM gives experience points to the surviving  characters.  Experience  points  (abbreviated  XP,  as  ep stands for electrum  pieces)  are given  for  non-magical treasure and for  defeating   monsters.  For  every   1  gp  value   of  non-magical treasure  the  characters  recover,  the  DM should  give  1 XP to  the party  (this  will be divided  among  all the player characters). Experience  points  are  not  given  for  magic  items.  The  characters  will divide the treasure  among themselves, but the  DM handles  all the experience.  EXAMPLE: A treasure  of 750 sp, a rug worth  100 gp,3  gems  each  worth  100  gp, and  a potion  of  healing  would  be worth a total of 475 XP (75 +  100  +  300  +  0).Experience  points  are  also  given  for  monsters  killed  or  overcome by magic, fighting,  or wits. Use the Experience Points  for Monsters  table  (below)  to  determine  how  many  points  to  give  the party.

Simple, straightforward, to the point. If they recover 1gp, give them 1XP. 

ADJUSTMENTS TO XP: The  DM may treat an unusually "tough" situation  or  monster  as  one  category  better  (use  the  next  line down). Situations  might  also  allow  the  DM to  give  partial  experi-ence  if the characters learned  from  the encounter  without  actually defeating  the  monster. The  DM may also award  extra  XP to characters  who deserve  them  (fighting  a dangerous  monster  alone, or saving the  party  with a great  idea), and  less XP to characters who did  less  than  their  fair  share  ("do-nothing"  characters).  The  DM should  consider  the  character's  alignment  and  class  carefully,  and should remember that guarding the rear is an important role in any party.

Unlike 1e, here Moldvay proposes that the players should never receive a penalty for fighting a weak monster guarding a shitload of treasure, but only get additional rewards for doing exceptional things. Of course there’s a suggestion that the DM can fuck over a lazy player but that seems...very subjective and could lead to a lot of issues. How do you define a character who “did less than their fair share?” Is the thief staying back behind cover and taking potshots less important to the encounter as a front line fighter? Whatever.

DIVIDING  XP:  Treasure  is  divided  by  the  party,  but  the  DM handles  all the  XP  awards.  At the  end  of  an  adventure,  the  DM totals  the  XP  from  all  treasures  recovered  plus  all  monsters  defeated  and  then  divides the total  by the  number  of  surviving characters  (both player characters and  NPCs)  in the party. EXAMPLE: A  party  of  7  (5 player  characters  and  2  NPCs)  goes  on  an  adventure  but  only  6  come  back  alive.  They  killed  monsters  for  a total  of 800  XP and also collected 5800 gp in treasure, for a total  of 6600  XP. Each  character  receives  1100  XP at the  end  of the adventure.  (The  DM may  give  each  NPC  1/2 normal  experience  —550  XP  in  this  case  —  since  the  NPCs  were  "directed"  and  thus benefit  less from the adventure.)

Again, the same stuff here about equally dividing XP treasure. Interestingly the reference to the “thief stealing gems from the saddle bags” for extra XP is gone here, probably because that caused more problems than it solved. The thief stealing extra gold shouldn’t receive more XP; the gold is its own reward.

By 1981 B1 has been replaced with the iconic B2: Keep on the Borderlands. Here’s what Gary has to say in it about XP:

Exploration  of  the  CAVES  OF  CHAOS  will  take  more  than  one game  session.  When  the  players  want  to  stop  play,  they must  find  an  exit  and  (preferably)  return  to  the  KEEP.  You May  divide  treasure  and  award  experience  when  this occurs. Remember to make adjustments to the areas they visited -the  monsters  may  build  new  defenses,  occupy areas  that  were  cleaned  out,  and  so  forth.

As far as I can tell this is the first explicit reference that XP should be awarded in town, and it’s a good time to do so. Of course, it could have always been done at that point, but it wasn’t as explicit in the modern sense.

Time for 1983’s Mentzer Basic, which became BECMI. This version of the game is often derided for its more childlike or all ages tone, and it’s easy to see why. Here’s what Mentzer says about XP:

For  the  treasure  you  found,  you  get 200  XP  (one  experience  point  per  gold piece  value).  For  killing  the  monsters, you  get  30  more.  That  adds  up  to  230XP, but  it's not  your  total.  You  also  get a bonus  because   you  are  a  Fighter   and have  an  above  average  Strength  score.This  bonus  is  +  10%  of  your  XP.  Sinceyou   earned   230,   you   get   23   bonus points,  for   a  total   of  253  XP.  In   theExperience  box  at  the  bottom   of   the page,  write  "253."

Did  you  notice  that  you  get  a  lot  of experience  for  treasure,  and  not  much of  killing  monsters?  It's  better  to  avoid killing,  if  you  can,  by  tricking  monsters or  using  magic  to  calm  them  down.  You can sometimes avoid the  risks of  combat. But  you  will  have  to  fight  many  monsters  to  get  their  treasures

Yeah, it’s really simply written. However, this is the absolute simplest XP system yet: 1gp is 1 XP.

Okay, cool, but where is the carousing rules? I keep hearing about these and how they existed, but I have yet to see them and we’re in 1983!

It’s at this point that I recognize I’ve missed the other materials. There’s Gary’s Greyhawk and Arenson’s The First Fantasy Campaign, which detailed Blackmoor. Ugh, I’m not looking forward to digging through these just for this, and I don’t want to go through the 1e DMG today either.

Old School Essentials, based on the B/X text, is probably the simplest system, but it still doesn’t do what I want. I like the idea of the carousing rules, but they enforce a certain flavour that I don’t enjoy--most players want to be a heroic dude who wouldn’t spend their time and money partying in town, and that doesn’t really help with Gary’s problem of addressing where the experience comes from.

wait. that sounds rly cool actually pls tell me more about this hermitcraft thing (i know your cant see me but i am: chin in hand, looking at you with so much curiosity rn)

am i....not supposed to use your name like it’s there in your lil mobile bio rayleene am i supposed to ignore that knowledge (i also : have a complex about my name so i like to use ppls’ names when possible)

oh bud i have anxiety *for sure* hence why i’m like. concerned about social pressures? which is a bit nonsensical of me i know. (but pls don’t feel bad and guilty i haven’t even been following you for that long i am just : very chatty)

(also if you want me to come off anon i will i am : always just vibing i’m mostly indifferent to it)

I MEAN IDK HOW BUT LEMME TRY. okay so uprisings.

scar (yter ) got voted mayor of the cowmercial shopping district and his promise as mayor was to remove the mycelium from the island. grian (yter) was like how wow scar put in so much effort what if i just.... put some mycelium back to mess with him. it kept escalating with both grian and scar building support groups and now we have HEP (hermit environmental protection agency) and the Mycelium Reistance. the resistance stole the diamond throne from scar (basically the hermits had to pay for their land. property tax i guess) and replaced it with mycelium and scar declared war.

corrupt government: after being elected mayor scar decided to literally tax the hermits so they had to pay a diamond block for each 10x10 space they occupied with their store AND they had to pay for a road access pass and if you didn’t pay scar got cub (yter) to fill the shop with roses. also cub was responsible for making people pay for the RAP and he ended up being unable to force the remainder so he traded with.... xisuma? (yter)... where cub got the outstanding diamond blocks and xisuma got a decked out key. also scar didn’t pay the taxes for his own shops.

tax evasion: ties in with corrupt government. ppl refused to pay the taxes and continued operating without having paid. also etho (yter) created a store called sneak-e-e’s and the concept was a) its floating so it doesn’t need a RAP and b) if scar can’t find the store then he can’t tax it. also c) it’s not taking up any ground space so he didn’t pay for the area it occupies.

pesky birds: pesky bird

dungeon w cute beasts that eat you: tango (yter) made decked out. it’s a deck building mini game but it’s in a huge dungeon and there’s 5 beasts roaming around and your goal is to find your loot box and other goodies and escape with your life and complete sets which you turn in for points. it’s kinda complicated to explain and that only covers the most basic objective but it’s actually so interesting and i can’t wait for decked out 2.0

upside down: grian went to the nether and decided to recreate his giant fucking mansion from the over world but it’s upside down and hanging from the ceiling. it’s actually insane

war declarations: well i mentioned scar declaring war on the mycelium reistance this season, but last season there was another war between the G Team and Team Star and it was insane on its own tbh there was capture the flag at the end, booby traps everywhere, a neutral government profiting from the war, cannons, a total division of the server, Team Star made a literal diss track abt G Team. and that’s only one tiny part of season 6 lmao

also what i mentioned and covered is only a small part of season seven like there’s so much in hermitcraft and tbh i only really know season 6 and 7 but those are so full of incredible content idk if i could handle all seven seasons

You know the like Gacha things? What's your opinion of them?

They're pretty neat in concept like "hey collect em all but there's less of a chance of you getting the rare ones so oooo let's see what you get!"

But then in practice it's fucking horrible like "AH YES YOU HAVE A 2% CHANCE AT GETTING THE ONE THING YOU WANT AND YOU HAVE TO WAIT 4 HOURS TO TRY AGAIN OR JUST GIVE US YOUR MONEY TO SKIP THE WAIT FOR LIKE A WEEK BEFORE WE ASK YOU FOR MORE MONEY" Because like- it's literally the loot box/gambling issue.

Games where this was implemented horribly: Cat Game. It literally revolves around a broken gacha and that's why I deleted the app despite loving the cute designs. After playing for a few days or weeks you gotta wait literal hours to get a 9% chance at getting the cat you want(I'm sure the odds lessen as time goes on soooo yikes), but you can craft furniture to increase your odds... Only crafting takes 1- time and 2- resources from your gacha cats so you have to wait for that too. It's fun at first when you only gotta wait 5 mins to get a 50% chance at cat, but when you're waiting 2 hours for a 9% chance that can't go up because you got all of the furniture? Yeah. The game sucks.

Games where I've seen this implemented well: Brave Frontier. It's an rpg game where you collect and evolve little peeps and fight enemies and stuff, it's great. There's a gacha there where you can either get 1- stuff to level up your units or 2- rare units. And like... I like this game a lot. You know why? THE GAME DOESNT REVOLVE AROUND THE GACHA. You can still enjoy playing without feeling like you need to spend all of your money! You also have a chance at getting units by defeating enemies! Like if you defeat a certain enemy, you have a chance at getting that enemy to use on your team, so you don't have to live around this dumb gacha!

So like... Tl;Dr: gachas in games can be cute and fun and stuff, and add some exciting suspense to collecting whatever you're collecting! But when that's the CORE gameplay and the game is unplayable/unenjoyable without a gacha... Yeah, you have a bad game. It even promotes gambling in some games, which is why so many people had a problem with Overwatch.

How to make games: Hero Shooters

So, class, today I posit this little question to you all: Do you want to be the next Blizzard? Fuck no, you don't want to be "Don't you guys have phones?" Blizzard; you wanna be Blizzard from 5-10 years ago when they were at the height of their popularity. But that's not what I'm shooting for here. Do you want a fount of endless revenue? Do you want to do the absolute baseline minimum in terms of engine and game design to actually create a game but aren't creatively and ethically bankrupt enough to make a gacha game? Do you want to build a game whose rules, designs, and themes were just stolen from the effort of others? Do you really like Rule 34? Then it sounds to me like you want to make a Hero Shooter game! Hero shooters are easy to make on account they fundamentally have only three gameplay modes: push a payload, kill the other team, and kill the other team while standing on top of a glowing circular thing. They're also equally easy to design as they require no thematic consistency whatsoever and what little writing you'll be expected to bother with will simply be character bios, which you can keep so vague as to be virtually meaningless. There's never a 'story' in a hero shooter game and what semblance of one does exist is pretense for the non-canon aforementioned three game modes you'll be forced to build around. Best of all, the individual mechanics of each hero are easy to design - just steal them from whatever games came before. Now create about three or four maps with some different sorts of themes, but don't make them in any way mechanically varied - the most complex obstacles on any given map should be walls and maybe elevators that move at a very low speed. We're making a hero shooter, not Mario Party, dammit. If anyone asks why you are essentially just reskinning the same maps you can explain that it's to ensure that the game remains a "test of the players's skills" even though that's a bold-faced lie for the same reasons people who play Super Smash Bros as "tests of skill" are full of shit. Meta-gaming retards make games algebra homework instead of fun, but that's precisely what you'll be banking on in this genre. Once you have that, we need to get into the most important thing about hero shooters: the Heroes. Heroes in these games take one of three major roles: 1) The retard scrub DPS heroes - who will be played by the vast majority of your one-trick glory-chasing mentally-stunted community under the pretenses of being 'the most fun' and will be where the better part of your "cool" themes and motifs will be dedicated toward. These work under the key principle of "Shoot everything until it stops moving" and requires zero brainpower whatsoever. 2) The under-estimated doggedly persistent Tank heroes, played by those with either the willingness to learn something other than "Shoot bad guy with gun" or those who find pressing and holding a single button for the duration of the 10 minute match time to be the highlight of their bleak office-job lives. Though, on the other hand, some of the really cool designs will ultimately end up in this family. 3) The unsung gods among men known as the Support heroes, AKA: the ones no one will actually play. These characters will never be given cool or interesting mechanics or designs, but you'll be at liberty to make as many sexy nurse outfits as you can come up with and no one will be able to tell you otherwise. Like an ungodly amalgamation of tanks and DPS, your gameplay experience will boil down to pointing at your target and holding down the button the entire match - except unlike DPS heroes, you'll be shooting at the blue team and not the red team. Now, some might argue that there are technically other families of heroes, like flankers, zone controllers, pseudo-supports who can debuff enemies, but remember that the key to any good hero shooter is keeping everything rock-stupid. Every hero should have only enough abilities to fill a role for the left and right mouse buttons and the Q and E keys. F or R can be for reloading where applicable, but if you demand anything more of your players, you're going to lose their interest because Hero Shooters are hugboxes for sociopaths who care for nothing more than getting that sweet, sweet 5-second long "Play of the Game" replay at the match's end. This is why the character who invariably rips off Team Fortress 2's Demo Man and can kill people he doesn't have direct line of sight with will always be the most popular, without exception. I mean, sure, you can have 30 or 40 heroes, each with incredibly detailed outfits, backstories, kits, and personalities but everyone will just play the Not-Demo Man so you might as well accept that your userbase is going to be the only thing more toxic than a puffer-fish or a modern-day feminist. But I repeat myself. I don't have the time nor particular inclination to tell you exactly what you need to make but I can give you some character types that are obligatory by law to be in any hero shooter game. This will at least give you a start before you realize that being creative is hard and just steal kits from better games than your own. Call of Duty Man - The main DPS hero and usually the face of your game. Typically a grizzled war veteran man and almost exclusively an American if your game is set in the real world - remember, creativity is hard! He'll have a medium-ranged assault rifle and precisely one movement skill and one healing skill in his kit making him a jack-of-all-trades. Will either be loved or hated by your community with no room for in-betweens. Sexy Healer Lady - The main support hero who is literally just TF2's Medic reskinned and with tits. You really don't need to do anything more with her, as the fanbase will handle the rest. And the less said of that, the better. Big Knightly Dude - The main tank hero who has a big shield that, regardless of origin, will be transparent so Call of Duty Man and Not-Demo Man can fire through it while guarded. Probably wields a melee-ranged weapon even if in a modern warfare setting. By law, they can never be shorter than 6'6" (or 7200 cm. Pretty sure I did my conversion right on that). Flamethrower Guy - Literally just TF2's Pyro. Mechanic - Literally just TF2's Engineer. Sniper - Literally just TF2's Sniper. Probably also a voluptuous woman in a tight suit because creativity is fuckin' hard, man. Not-Demo Man - The cancer in your fanbase you will never nerf. Doesn't matter that he can party-wipe the enemy team single-handedly without being anywhere near them because Hero Shooter maps are literally just a set of narrow corridors so his kit is extremely OP. No, better just nerf Sexy Healer Lady again, since your DPS fanbase is pissing and moaning about her again and, this time, not in the same way a cat in heat does. Next, just make characters around elemental themes. Once you have 30 or so, you can get around to actually doing really mechanically interesting and varied heroes, since there's really only like 10-15 good FPS character ideas to begin with. So don't be surprised if you have some overlap. But by then we should hopefully have completed the next major step after the game is made: alienating your fanbase! This step is easy and requires no particular skill or coordination on your part. First, make some events seasonal, such that you have at least a major event every other month. Any more than that and your fans might actually think you're trying to be anything but another generic Korean eSport event, so be sure to space them out and have at least half of them be terrible. Valentine's Day is a good excuse to dress your female heroes sexily, summer games are a fun and not-at-all tired motif, and of course you need some kind of Christmas event. Just make sure these events only run maybe 2 weeks out of the year, have lots of stuff that you can only get during those times and, as said, that most of them are terrible and not fun at all to play. And don't -EVER- make any of them PvE, as that requires coding AI characters and effort and shit - what do you think think this is? Warframe? No, terrible gimmicky PvP events will be a good start because there is no frustration quite as severe as being told you didn't grind hard enough for: Loot boxes! Shit yeah, your hero shooter's gonna have loot boxes in them! Remember, we want maximum money for minimum effort and there's nothing like a Skinner Box within the hugbox that is the sweet dopamine high of popping a loot box open only to get common drops every time! If MMORPGs have taught us anything it's that Sub-1% drops are TOTALLY good game design and aren't at all unethical and an artificial, cheap tactic to keep people hooked on your game. This is why, in addition to the e-peen bolster that is your arbitrary profile ranking also drip-feeding a loot box upon level up that you have "Weekly Resets" for additional loot boxes. This runs on essentially the same principle as a cell phone games making you wait for additional tries to make it more a habit than a game - but that's okay! You can just rationalize it away as "it was the player's CHOICE to buy 300 loot boxes for the low, low price of 799.99 USD!" and not at all a psychological compunction found in human psychology! You're not an unethical douchebag in the slightest! And speaking of douchebags, it's time for the third and most important step in alienating your fanbase: Balancing the Game! What do I mean by that? You might think it's something like "Oh, this one character has an attack that is way too powerful and so it should be retooled in such a way that it either isn't available as-often, or maybe make its hitbox narrower to make the game more skill-based" but you're dead wrong. That requires actual effort and we all know how we feel about that. So, instead, just start an eSports team. Why? So you can listen only to the DPS players from each team and only implement THOSE changes. That way, only tanks and supports get nerfed into irrelevance and since no one in eSports is ever going to play those roles anyway, who cares? Who needs healers when you respawn to 100% after 7 seconds of dying?! Who cares if the majority of your fans hate these changes and that you end up completely destroying the kits and frameworks of their favorite heroes with needless, superfluous, unwelcomed tweaks? God-damn it, the Not-Demo Man needs to be able to wipe out an enemy team with a 3-second Time to Kill! No questions! I have a very specific vision!! Once your fanbase has been alienated - congrats! You're no longer obliged to release new heroes and levels! The responsibility of server upkeep and releasing new content twice a year are lifted! Now, just reskin the entire game top-down and release a new, better hero shooter founded on the same grounds to re-capture your fleeing audience and fleece them all over again! Now repeat ad infinitum and gain unlimited money. Congrats, you're now another Chinese game manufacturer that shits out products with no care for their fans or reputation but you get to go whaling every single day and fill your bathtub with money. You're ready to work for actual Blizzard now! You're welcome.

Fallout 76

Okay... I won’t talk a whole lot about it because it’s not even out yet. So, the hubs signed up for the BETA and he got to play a little the other day... if you don’t want to know anything about the game, this is where this post ends... but if you want my initial thoughts on it and are okay with MAJOR spoilers for what’s out there now? Well... 

It’s boring. It’s like... okay... so, the graphics look... pretty much the same. The same facial structures, the same hairstyles. Nothing note-worthy at all about that. The controls are the same, which is to be expected in a franchised game. But... okay, let’s just make this easier on everyone. 

1. The World

It’s... Fallout 4 with color and leaves. To be blunt, it looks like Fallout 4 with a mod on it, nothing new... like... at all. Okay, so maybe one thing is new. The pip-boy, but technically that’s “old” compared to FO4. 

2. Caps and Loot

I’m hoping this is a BETA thing because wow... just... wow. Probably 80% of the containers/cabinets etc that I saw hubs open were empty. Nothing. There’s like... nothing there... caps are proving to be hard to come by which isn’t that big of a deal because there’s no one to buy anything from. 

3. NPC;s

Don’t exist. There aren’t any. The only “other people” that you deal with are robots and voice recordings. You don’t see anyone else outside enemies. The other people you see, are just that, other people. It’s an MMO, we all knew this, but damn... that’s... all. 

4. No Pause/Safe Place

Because it’s an MMO, you can’t pause the game. This, in itself, is nothing new. But... there’s no where ‘safe’. You have to hope you won’t be attacked when you’re changing your equipment, checking your stats, or agonizing over which Perk card you’re going to use. 

5. Perk Cards

What the actual fuck. Okay, so... the idea is that instead of a perk chart, you get perk cards and these cards can be leveled up (so they say). But... you can only equip a set amount of these cards (I think it’s 8, but don’t quote me). Now, these cards do show their information in a more clear and concise way than the perk chart did, and the cards are nothing to balk at but... you only have so many slots and you have to choose which ones you want to equip. Which... can be challenging when there’s no safe place for you to do that. 

6. C.A.M.P.

Your camp. It’s like a portable workshop... it gives you a little parcel of land that you can build on (provided you’ve found enough materials... took the hubs awhile just to find enough wood to build 4 floors and three walls). Now, you do have one safe storage option. Your stash. (Or, any container you build but don’t quote me there because that’s just what I’ve heard). Your stash is only accessible by you, if you look in someone else’s stash box, you’ll see your stash. So, that’s how that works. You only get one camp... and it costs you 5 caps to move it each time you want to. Oh, and, there were a few new things in the building menus, but a lot of them were locked because hubs wasn’t a high-enough level. But there were also a lot of the same stuff... was.. kind of expecting more new stuff... but whatever, they’ve only had three years. 

7. Content

So far, and this is just BETA so I’m praying they’ll have more content come release day but I doubt it. There’s... no story... there’s... nothing. You wake up in the vault, you leave... you’re supposed to find the Overseer. That’s it, so far. Nothing backing anything up, no clear line of what the goal is... not even a hint. The only thing that’s been pushed a bit is the nuclear launch thing, which we’ve seen in trailers and other information put out by Bethesda. It kind of sounds like the goal is to get those nukes, launch those nukes, and... try to kill everyone? I don’t know. It’s very vague. In previous Fallout games, you started the game with a basic goal. How you got there was up to you but the goal itself was fairly clear once you left the vault. 

8. Events

Like other MMO games (-cough-Destiny-cough-) they are trying to do live events. Now... there’s a petite problem with this idea from the get-go... they’ve already said that there will only be a limited number of people on the same server at any given time. That limited number is 24. Now... the map, the world? It’s pretty damned big. And these live events are designed to have multiple people participating. Hubs tried doing a few, but even with three people in one, it was impossible. There were specific locations that people needed to defend, and all were getting hit at once. The players were quickly overwhelmed and over-run. Hopefully this is something they’ll work on. Unlikely, but they might. On a side note, I saw the final boss for one even was that moth-creature thing... level 50... so have fun all low levels out there! 

9. Destiny

Okay, this may seem like a duh but the game really does feel like a cheap knock-off of Destiny, as far as the MMO goes. They have “emotes” in there, your “team” is usually slotted for three people... the live events... there are just some similarities here. Now, that’s not a bad thing... except... it’s Fallout... not Destiny, not Fortnight, not WoW. This is just my personal pet peeve, but there it is. If you’re going to do things that another, successful, game is doing? At least do them better... or at the very least, on the same level. 

10. Skyrim

It’s very Skyrim-esq. Remember playing Skyrim? You could play for a few hours and be utterly alone, run into no one, nothing but a few animals and maybe a dragon or two out in the wild. Unless you went to a town, you were pretty much only going to run into enemies out there. It was a massive map, a huge world, and you were just... kinda out there... like at night... alone... kind of wasn’t that fun when it was like that. 

11. Weapons/Armor

Okay, so, obviously we haven’t seen the big ticket items. But... I will say this, your weapons break, you have to fix them... your armor? You don’t find it, you make it. In fact, looting seems to just be skimpy all around. A few things that the hubs found weren’t really armor, just clothes. The armor itself? Up to you... and the materials you’ve managed to gather. 

12. The Food/Water thing

So, they’ve leaned on almost a survival type setting here. Your character gets hungry/thirst... everything except prepackaged food/drink will give you some rads, some more than others. If you don’t drink/eat then you’re character will suffer. Also, a lot of items have a disease percentage attached to them. Hubs ate something that had a 7% chance of giving his character a disease and sure enough, bam. Now, this might be a BETA thing though. There are disease cures out there though, he found one. 

13. V.A.T.S.

Ah, vats. The saving grace of so many Fallout players. Now, this is probably a BETA thing but VATS are slow to activate... and because it’s MMO, it doesn’t slow time, just helps you aim. Or, it should. You need perk cards, see... to make it so your dude will actually hit that target. No perk card? Barely any damage done because they’re just firing willy-nilly, no more separate limb/body location selection. 

14. Congrats on Level 5, now die!

At level 5, it becomes open season on your character. At level 5, you can now take damage from other players... and they can kill you... and take your junk. All those precious materials you’ve been collecting, they can get them. When you die, there’s a little bag that appears on the ground with all the junk you’ve been carrying, nothing else as far as I can see... but anyone can just come along and pick that up. It’s their’s now. Now, there is this whole murder thing they are going to do, supposedly, where if you kill another player there’ll be a bounty put out on you and you, in theory, will be hunted down and murdered back? I’m not sure how that’s going to work. But... at level 5, you take damage, from all sources, including team-mates - though the damage is supposed to be reduced from them. That’s... going to result in a lot of accidental kills. 

Final Thoughts:

I’m nervous. I’m worried, for all the fans of the franchise. They’ve already come out and said “this isn’t a Fallout game” (could have fooled me with that name, though). It feels like they completely ignored the things that made Fallout 4 such a success... and instead, embraced the things that people didn’t like about Skyrim. I’m worried that what happened to Mass Effect, will happen to Fallout. People have been waiting for this game, super excited about it, couldn’t wait for it! And... the game they’re going to get is more... Fallout-esq. Not the next Fallout game. Like they wanted to cash in on the MMO thing but didn’t want to actually come up with anything new. Which leads to the next thought and worry... micro-transactions. Playing the game and seeing the lack of content... the skimpy supplies and loot... you can very easily see them adding micro-transactions and DLC’s that should have been a part of the main game. Which is just not a good idea right now, not ever really... when you pay $60 for this, which feels like it is, quite literally, a “base” game. 

But, it’s not all bad... 

There were a few things that I did like about it. The photo/selfy mode is cute, though wholly unoriginal... and they have instruments around the world that you and your friends can play together (like a band). You see your character performing some actions that you didn’t before (laying down)... though, there isn’t any “sleep” to speak of, your character just rests, but that’s because your character never leaves the public space of their MMO world. Even in their own home. 

Now, I don’t know what they’re going to do come release day, it could be totally different (probably won’t be) but it might. It could suddenly drop a whole main quest line because they wanted to keep it all hush-hush from people like me (who will go and post about the BETA). Who’s to really tell... but as it stands... I’m glad we didn’t buy a second copy so the hubs and I can play together because... it just seems... like a huge waste. Such a shame. 

IT Decays (4/?) - Scavenge

The dead are living. The living are at war. So what will one group of misfit losers do to survive?

An IT Zombie Apocalypse AU

cast word count: 1647

Read on Wattpad! | Read on AO3!

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (coming soon)

Days went by. Weeks went by. Nothing had been fixed. One grave turned into four graves. Four crosses lined up almost perfectly straight. Four names of strangers they had never seen before their ultimate death.

New rules had been made. They had to cut back on what they ate and used for meals. Of course, they had the garden and crops but other than that, food would be hard to find. The severity of the dwindling world around them was finally setting in. So was the panic.

Ben sighed heavily as he slung his backpack over his shoulders and looked over at Mike and Richie who were doing the same. Mike checked the walkie-talkie and made sure it connected to the one in Beverly's hand. He sighed in relief when the two squawked out then looked at the rest of the group.

"Ben, Richie, and I are going to town. We'll see what it's like there" Mike told the others. His gun hung over his shoulder along with his backpack. Richie and Ben both had pocket knives hiding in their jean pockets.

"Please be safe" Beverly said as she stood and kissed her boyfriend on the lips then gave Mike and Richie kisses on their cheeks. "Return in one piece. All three of you"

"We will" Ben responded. His hand lingered in Beverly's not wanting to let it go.

"Nobody would dare to fuck with us. We look so damn badass!" Richie stated. He, of course, went above and beyond. He had a bandana tied around his face, a hat on his head, and a belt with handles for guns which he had none of. Beverly cracked a smile and rolled her eyes.

"We'll be back before the sun goes down" Mike stated. They gave their goodbyes and left for the Jeep. Mike got into the driver's seat, Ben in the passenger, and Richie in the back. He started the Jeep up and drove out onto the road. "I'm thinking we pull off into the trees just before town. Walk the rest of the way?"

"Why the fuck would we do that?" Richie asked. Mike rolled his eyes.

"Saves gas. Anyway, the town is probably a disaster with cars scattered all about. It would be hard to snake around them. Oh! If we do find a lot of cars, we can steal their gas. I have the tools to do that in the back and some gas tanks"

"Damn, we're really resulting in being criminals" Ben muttered.

"It's been weeks, Ben. We haven't even heard any updates on the radio. We're on our own out here" Mike stated firmly. Ben sighed in defeat, knowing Mike was right. He just didn't want to admit the facts.

"So, what if some gangs hold guns on us. What do we do then?" Richie asked. Mike rolled his eyes. "Serious question!"

"You keep your mouth shut and let Ben and I deal with it," Mike told him. Richie shrugged.

"Fair enough" Richie replied.

Mike pulled off the road just outside of the inner town of Derry. He pulled off into the trees then got out with Ben and Richie. They moved branches and bushes to hide the car the best they could then walked toward the road. Ben packed the tools needed to steal gas in his backpack and carried a gas can with them.

The town was emptier than they had ever seen it. Cars were randomly placed about along the roads, some even crashed. The town looked like a mess but there really wasn't much sign of other humans. At least, none that weren't dead.

"Where to first?" Richie asked softly as he eyed the dead lurkers down the road. Mike motioned toward the big convenience store and led the way. Ben and Richie followed close behind, keeping a lookout from all angles. Mike slowly pushed the door open, noting it was smashed. He pointed at the broken glass, warning his friends. They nodded in return.

They walked inside and looked around. The place was a mess. Counters were broken, empty boxes were thrown about, there were even a few lights that had fallen from the ceiling and smashed on the floor. Each of the boys let out a soft sigh.

"Alright, take what we can find. If there's even anything left" Mike stated. Ben and Richie walked away obediently to look for anything to scavenge.

Richie found some moldy bread and looked closely to find it's color. Once he noted it was blue, he tossed the bag of bread into his backpack. Ben saw him and slowly raised an eyebrow.

"Why are you taking that?" Ben asked from down the aisle. "It's moldy and disgusting"

"Eddie had mentioned at the house that the mold can be turned into forms of antibiotics. He read it in some medical book a while back" Richie replied as he shoved another bag of moldy bread into his backpack.

"Does he even know how?"

"We'll find out. If you find any honey or garlic, I think those are things that can be used too" Richie noted then turned away to check behind some empty boxes. Ben nodded and left the aisle to check other shelves.

Ben found a few cans of tuna, a few bags of chips, and a few boxes of seasoned rice. Each item was packed into his bag. He kicked some empty boxes out of the way and made sure to scan over every shelf thoroughly. He found more spiders and bugs than anything else in the aisle he was in.

Richie found various items to store in his backpack. He found himself in the children's section of the store out of pure curiosity of what would be left. Surprisingly, there was a lot. He found a big box of chalk and snatched it off the shelf with a small grin. He also grabbed a few boxes of crayons and markers. He stored the crayons and markers but carried the chalk with him. When he left the aisle, Mike was standing nearby and gave him a confused look.

"You never know if we'll need to mark something!" Richie stated. Mike just rolled his eyes but gave an amused chuckle. "I don't see spray paint here so this chalk is what we're using. Anyway, find anything good?"

"Some tools and dishes. A few boxes of baking ingredients. But a lot of it is a waste" Mike sighed.

"There's a tool shop around here. We should hit there too" Richie mentioned. "We have a lot at home but extra couldn't hurt"

"You're right, Rich" Mike responded with the nod of his head. "We can also check out the mechanic's building. Wouldn't hurt to stop by the pharmacy. I'm sure it's all gone by now but we have time to spare" Richie nodded. Ben came up the final aisle and sighed heavily.

"Didn't find much" Ben admitted. The others shared their findings and they headed out the door quietly. Richie opened the box of chalk and turned around. He looked up at the archway covering the sidewalk then moved a few shopping carts out of the way. He then knelt down. Mike and Ben watched him curiously.

Richie carefully wrote 'Nothing Left' along the sidewalk with an arrow pointing at the doors. Richie then put the chalk away, dusted his hands off, and turned back to his friends. Mike nodded and led the way to the next building.

They looted most of the buildings in the main part of Derry. Ben even stopped by the library to get enough books to entertain the readers in the group. Their findings really weren't much but even the smallest of things would help.

Richie stopped when he noticed a gun still holstered on a dead cop laying in the street. Richie looked ahead at Mike and Ben who hadn't noticed that he had stopped then walked toward the dead body. His knife was already although he could tell the cop was actually dead.

Richie slowly knelt down by the body. By this time, Mike and Ben both had noticed and looked back to see what he was doing. They walked back to his side.

"Is this even legal?" Ben asked.

"None of what we're doing is legal, Ben!" Richie muttered back as he unholstered the gun and checked to see if there was ammo in it. There was.

"But you're literally taking government property" Ben mumbled nervously.

"Ben! Laws clearly don't apply here anymore!" Richie snapped before he sighed heavily. "We need guns. You know how this world will be without laws"

"He's right" Mike admitted. Ben gave in and Richie was quick to place the pistol into his own gun holster. He checked for more clips of ammo but unfortunately, only found a few.

"It's better than nothin', right?" Richie looked at Mike with a raised eyebrow. Mike nodded and squeezed Richie's shoulder.

"Nice find"

Things went smoothly until they arrived at the mechanics building. Mike opened the door and as soon as it was opened, they heard a crash inside followed by a low groan. Mike sighed heavily and looked at Richie and Ben. They both nodded and Ben took the lead. Ben turned on his flashlight to see in the shadows. He carefully walked around the place and listened to the sounds.

"Hello?" Ben called out gently. "If you're alive, speak up. We're not here to hurt you" the only response there was, was a loud groan. Ben sighed. He hated this part. He noticed the dead man stumbling around the shelves and gulped. He had his pocket knife ready and waited for the dead one to get closer.

Just as the dead man tried to reach out for Ben, Ben quickly pushed his arms away and stabbed him through the skull. The dead fell to the floor, truly dead this time. Ben frowned and stepped over him. Richie and Mike frowned too but followed.

They looted the place of everything they needed. They left what they had no use for, hoping others that needed it would find it.

They made it to each building and took what they could. Most of the things they found was just junk but luckily, there were still a few good things left. Their backpacks filled pretty quickly and they couldn't possibly fill them anymore.

So they headed back for the Jeep. They dodged the dead that roamed the streets. Ben had gotten a full can of gas from the cars they passed and even went back with the other cans to get more. While he stole the gas, Richie and Mike made noisy distractions for the dead to follow so Ben was safe. When they were done, they then all piled into the Jeep and drove home. The sun had already started to set. The only light on the road came from the headlights of the Jeep.

Everything was fine, that is until they saw another pair of headlights directly in front of them.