The big feature being added in the Warlords of Draenor expansion is the ability to create your own little city. A form of player housing, if you will, but instanced in a way that you don't need to compete with other players for land. They took a baby step in this direction with the farm in the last expansion and from the reading I've been doing today it seems like they've gone all in on making these garrisons awesome.
From the sounds of things you ultimately get to have 12 buildings and 20 followers in your little town. But there are 25 possible buildings and 291 possible followers so you sure don't get to have all of the things at once! So there's a lot of picking and choosing to be had as you build the buildings you most want to have and recruit the right followers to properly use those buildings. The buildings can all level up to level 3, and the followers can level up to 100 (and then can level up their gear) so there's an awful lot of numbers to make bigger in these things. I like making numbers bigger!
I decided to take a read through what the buildings do to see if I could come up with a preliminary plan for what I'll want to work towards. You get 5 buildings guaranteed (town hall, mine, herb garden, fishing shack, and pet house) and the rest are divided up by size of the building. You get 3 small buildings, 2 medium buildings, and 2 large buildings of your choice.
There are 10 possible small buildings and they mostly have to deal with crafting professions. 8 of the buildings are specific to a crafting profession (like blacksmithing) and are used to get the recipes for those professions, to give you access to more of the daily cooldown generated crafting materials, and to allow people who don't have those professions to craft most of the stuff. Like, for example, Darkmoon Faire cards, which can be crafted with the scribe house. That sure does make me tempted to get a scribe house for both of my level 90 characters... And makes me wish I had more characters to level up to get more scribe houses...
The other two small buildings are the salvage yard and the storehouse. The salvage yard looks like it lets you accumulate transmog sets (may be of interest to some people but not to me... I have axes on my head and shoulders!) and small amounts of gear for you and your followers. The storehouse lets you access your bank and the guild bank from your garrison and lets you start more work orders in the other profession buildings. It's unclear if that will increase throughput or just let you go longer without logging in to add more orders to the queue.
The medium buildings all do a wide variety of things. There's a pvp house which gives you titles and pvp related quests. There's an inn which gives you daily pve dungeon quests and gives you more control on what followers you can recruit. There's a lumber mill to generate extra garrison supplies. There's a trading post that lets you sell stuff for garrison supplies, gives you access to the auction house, and gives you a reputation gain buff. And there's a barn which gives you leather, meat, and a new crafting reagent used in all epic item recipes. It seems odd that everyone gets free ore and herbs but you need to use a medium building to get free leather. Sucks to be a leatherworker I guess? I also have no idea how hard it will be to get garrison supplies so I don't know if the buildings that give you more are awesome or just for people who don't play much.
There are 5 large buildings that do a variety of powerful things. The armory makes all quests you do have an increased chance of awarding bonus loot, lets you generate gear for your followers, and gives you free bonus rolls on raid loot. (You get at most 3 per week, but have to pay a fair amount of currency to get them. This gives you one for free.) The barracks lets you level your followers up faster, lets you fight in the open world with one of your combat followers helping, and raises the follower cap to 25. The mage tower lets you move quickly around the continent without needing to use flightpaths. The gearworks gives you a bunch of crazy engineering abilities including the ability to drive around in the open world with a tank of some kind. The stables gives you access to new mounts, lets you mine and pick herbs while mounted, and increases your mounted movement speed by 20%.
It's hard to know just by reading about these things how important the different things are going to be. Is the bottleneck going to be garrison resources? Follower levels? Follower gear? Specific followers? I believe you earn resources and followers just by playing the game and questing so my gut feeling to start is that they aren't terribly important for me if I'm going to be playing a fair bit at the start. So I probably don't need to worry about the buildings that pump those out? This makes me think my eventual setup is going to be a blacksmithing house, a scribe house, and a storehouse for small buildings. A barn and an inn for medium buildings. And a stable and a gearworks for large buildings. And I'm pretty happy the mine, the fishing shack, and the pet house are locked in!
Thursday, November 06, 2014
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
World of Warcraft: Professions in Warlords of Draenor
I did a bunch of reading last night to figure out what exactly is going on with all the professions in the coming expansion. If I want to level stuff on my alts do I need to also level up their character level or do they just need to get close enough like in the past?
Turns out the answer to that question is very simple. It looks like pretty much every profession is learned in exactly the same way: by killing monsters in a WoD zone. They have a chance to drop an item for any profession (primary or secondary) that you've already learned and that item will start a short quest chain for that profession. Complete the quest chain to unlock the ability to level that profession up to 700. The items all have a minimum level requirement of 90, so before any character can raise a profession up above 600 they need to hit the current level cap.
What's interesting is the quest chains give you some other stuff above and beyond just unlocking the ability to get up to 700. It gives you some stuff towards your garrison which I haven't really delve into yet and it gives you some initial recipes to use in leveling the profession. All of these recipes are worth skillups starting from level 1 and use stuff from the WoD zones. Gathering professions let you gather stuff in WoD zones even at level 1. It's unclear if archaeology will actually let you skip ahead or not but everything else looks to be guaranteed able to level from 1 to 700 just off stuff you get in the expansion zones.
You won't need to go running to a trainer to raise your profession cap every 75 levels like I had to do when I just leveled my mining back up. Even if you started at level 1, you get the ability to go all the way to 700 just from that one quest. They did also make it so you get a benefit from leveling your professions up though. You get a daily cooldown ability that makes 4 copies of an item at level 1 or 10 copies of it at level 700. You use these items to make all the good stuff, so making more of them is obviously better. But if you don't want to run around lower level zones to gather materials and level up the old fashioned way you can get in there at level 1 and catch back up pretty easily. And it's way better to get 4 of those items at level 1 than to get nothing at all until you get up to 600 or 700!
From the sounds of it you do may well need to go unlock the professions first before the quest items will drop, so if you're starting out or are switching things up you probably want to go at least learn the profession at level 1 now before the expansion hits. Leveling it up now will almost certainly take longer and be more expensive than waiting, but if you don't have anything more productive to do before the expansion hits it could be a thing to do.
It also seems like if I want to have more professions going I'll need to level more characters up to 90. With only a week to go I feel like that's not going to happen, though maybe I'll go fool around on my druid and see what happens...
Turns out the answer to that question is very simple. It looks like pretty much every profession is learned in exactly the same way: by killing monsters in a WoD zone. They have a chance to drop an item for any profession (primary or secondary) that you've already learned and that item will start a short quest chain for that profession. Complete the quest chain to unlock the ability to level that profession up to 700. The items all have a minimum level requirement of 90, so before any character can raise a profession up above 600 they need to hit the current level cap.
What's interesting is the quest chains give you some other stuff above and beyond just unlocking the ability to get up to 700. It gives you some stuff towards your garrison which I haven't really delve into yet and it gives you some initial recipes to use in leveling the profession. All of these recipes are worth skillups starting from level 1 and use stuff from the WoD zones. Gathering professions let you gather stuff in WoD zones even at level 1. It's unclear if archaeology will actually let you skip ahead or not but everything else looks to be guaranteed able to level from 1 to 700 just off stuff you get in the expansion zones.
You won't need to go running to a trainer to raise your profession cap every 75 levels like I had to do when I just leveled my mining back up. Even if you started at level 1, you get the ability to go all the way to 700 just from that one quest. They did also make it so you get a benefit from leveling your professions up though. You get a daily cooldown ability that makes 4 copies of an item at level 1 or 10 copies of it at level 700. You use these items to make all the good stuff, so making more of them is obviously better. But if you don't want to run around lower level zones to gather materials and level up the old fashioned way you can get in there at level 1 and catch back up pretty easily. And it's way better to get 4 of those items at level 1 than to get nothing at all until you get up to 600 or 700!
From the sounds of it you do may well need to go unlock the professions first before the quest items will drop, so if you're starting out or are switching things up you probably want to go at least learn the profession at level 1 now before the expansion hits. Leveling it up now will almost certainly take longer and be more expensive than waiting, but if you don't have anything more productive to do before the expansion hits it could be a thing to do.
It also seems like if I want to have more professions going I'll need to level more characters up to 90. With only a week to go I feel like that's not going to happen, though maybe I'll go fool around on my druid and see what happens...
Tuesday, November 04, 2014
World of Warcraft: Preexpansion Things To Do
When I started playing World of Warcraft again a couple weeks ago I had a few things I wanted to try to get done before the expansion hit next week. The three main ones were to level mining back up on my death knight, hit max level with my rogue, and complete the crazy legendary cloak quest that dominated the entirety of the last expansion.
I needed to level mining (again) because I'd dropped it for the better challenge dungeon bonuses provided by engineering. They got rid of all profession specific bonuses in this coming expansion so there's not really any pressing reason to keep engineering around. I like having a gathering profession to go with a crafting profession because sometimes I like running around in a circle picking stuff off the ground and I like to avoid the insane material cost at the start of an expansion when leveling my blacksmithing. They may have taken the realm first achievements out but I'm still going to level blacksmithing pretty early on. I'll probably be able to make a fair amount of cash selling pvp gear to people as soon as they hit max level. This took some time but was easy and fun and is now done.
I wanted to level my rogue because he's my main way of making money. He's my glyph maker and I want to be able to make any new glyphs and the new Darkmoon Faire cards as soon as possible. That'll probably require farming up some herbs on my own and he'll need to be max level to pull that off. This also took some time, and was less fun because a lot of quests are annoying for whatever spec my rogue is (AMBUSH!), but it was still fairly fun and is also now done.
The legendary cloak quest now looks like a pipedream. I missed a week or two of raid resets in the middle thanks to being hacked and moving and not having enough gear to pug the newest raid zone and that's set me back too far. This isn't something I can just throw more time at since it requires drops from raid zones and I can only try to get a drop once from each boss each week. I didn't really want the cloak other than it wasn't going to be possible to get it when the expansion hits. Pugging the raids was fun, and I may still keep trying in the hopes of getting super lucky and going on a streak of lucky drops, but I've pretty much given up on this happening.
So what now? I can level more alts to get access to more professions? (I miss having a jewelcrafter, for example.) I can farm up achievements by running raid zones from previous expansions? (I assume I can solo them now.) Apparently Blizzard is pretty serious about continuing to add actual Pokemon content to the game with crazy boss fights and the like... So maybe I should get on that? I've been playing it a bit while waiting for raid queues to pop and it's been pretty fun.
I needed to level mining (again) because I'd dropped it for the better challenge dungeon bonuses provided by engineering. They got rid of all profession specific bonuses in this coming expansion so there's not really any pressing reason to keep engineering around. I like having a gathering profession to go with a crafting profession because sometimes I like running around in a circle picking stuff off the ground and I like to avoid the insane material cost at the start of an expansion when leveling my blacksmithing. They may have taken the realm first achievements out but I'm still going to level blacksmithing pretty early on. I'll probably be able to make a fair amount of cash selling pvp gear to people as soon as they hit max level. This took some time but was easy and fun and is now done.
I wanted to level my rogue because he's my main way of making money. He's my glyph maker and I want to be able to make any new glyphs and the new Darkmoon Faire cards as soon as possible. That'll probably require farming up some herbs on my own and he'll need to be max level to pull that off. This also took some time, and was less fun because a lot of quests are annoying for whatever spec my rogue is (AMBUSH!), but it was still fairly fun and is also now done.
The legendary cloak quest now looks like a pipedream. I missed a week or two of raid resets in the middle thanks to being hacked and moving and not having enough gear to pug the newest raid zone and that's set me back too far. This isn't something I can just throw more time at since it requires drops from raid zones and I can only try to get a drop once from each boss each week. I didn't really want the cloak other than it wasn't going to be possible to get it when the expansion hits. Pugging the raids was fun, and I may still keep trying in the hopes of getting super lucky and going on a streak of lucky drops, but I've pretty much given up on this happening.
So what now? I can level more alts to get access to more professions? (I miss having a jewelcrafter, for example.) I can farm up achievements by running raid zones from previous expansions? (I assume I can solo them now.) Apparently Blizzard is pretty serious about continuing to add actual Pokemon content to the game with crazy boss fights and the like... So maybe I should get on that? I've been playing it a bit while waiting for raid queues to pop and it's been pretty fun.
Monday, November 03, 2014
Oculus Rift
My brother has a developer kit for a pretty cool virtual reality system that's being developed called the Oculus Rift. It's basically a headset with a couple of high definition lenses, an infrared camera, and a lot of infrared lights that combine to track your head movement while showing you a 3d display that moves around as you do. My brother's wrists are worse off than mine are so he brought it over to see if I could get it set up and working with my computer. My computer is a good 7 years old by now, but I did get set up with a good video card setup when I got it, and it turns out to work reasonably well.
I got a couple of 'games' working last night. The first is not really a game; it's just a demo called Tuscany which lets you walk around in a house in virtual Tuscany. There's a fire place and a fountain and the like and it all looks pretty real. And it uses stereo sound based on where you're looking so by turning your head you can change which headphone the crackling of the fire comes from.
The second one is a game called Windlands where basically you're exploring around in a 3D world filled with trees and platforms and such. You have the ability to shoot grappling hooks out of each of your hands (using the trigger buttons on a xBox 360 controller) and can use those to swing around and climb up as if you were Spiderman. You aim your shots not with the controller like you normally would, but by moving your head to look where you want to shoot.
Some people report issues of nausea with the system like with other 3D screens, but I didn't notice anything. I have no troubles with the 3DS either, so maybe that's just me. I did get a headache after using it for not too long, because I'm blind and I don't really like contacts. I've been told the headset doesn't play well with glasses (the screens need to be right close to your eyes) but there are other lenses in the box so I'm going to need to find out if I can use those in some way instead. Otherwise having everything be blurry is pretty much a deal breaker for me.
It does have me wondering about how one would actually use such a device to make a good game as opposed to a game that shows off what the device can do. It reminds me a little of the Wii controller. A cool idea when I first saw it, but ultimately really finicky/gimmicky. It can do some things you just couldn't do otherwise, but when it tries to work with a 'normal' game it just feels wrong. But then maybe I'm just old and crotchety.
A lot of the games I like to play are about mechanics and numbers, not so much about looking cool. I still like it when a game looks awesome, don't get me wrong, but Final Fantasy X is such a good game because it had a fantastic undercarriage before the great paint went on top. Is there the space for a cool looking VR game that also has a solid game underneath? I guess I could see something like Oblivion working well with this sort of system. Or a more movie like game? Alan Wake perhaps? Or maybe steal from Ready Player One and rebuild old games inside a world... Play a Pacman arcade table or such. Or run Zork as a 3D puzzle adventure instead of a text adventure. I wonder what the copyright timeframe is on something that old...
I got a couple of 'games' working last night. The first is not really a game; it's just a demo called Tuscany which lets you walk around in a house in virtual Tuscany. There's a fire place and a fountain and the like and it all looks pretty real. And it uses stereo sound based on where you're looking so by turning your head you can change which headphone the crackling of the fire comes from.
The second one is a game called Windlands where basically you're exploring around in a 3D world filled with trees and platforms and such. You have the ability to shoot grappling hooks out of each of your hands (using the trigger buttons on a xBox 360 controller) and can use those to swing around and climb up as if you were Spiderman. You aim your shots not with the controller like you normally would, but by moving your head to look where you want to shoot.
Some people report issues of nausea with the system like with other 3D screens, but I didn't notice anything. I have no troubles with the 3DS either, so maybe that's just me. I did get a headache after using it for not too long, because I'm blind and I don't really like contacts. I've been told the headset doesn't play well with glasses (the screens need to be right close to your eyes) but there are other lenses in the box so I'm going to need to find out if I can use those in some way instead. Otherwise having everything be blurry is pretty much a deal breaker for me.
It does have me wondering about how one would actually use such a device to make a good game as opposed to a game that shows off what the device can do. It reminds me a little of the Wii controller. A cool idea when I first saw it, but ultimately really finicky/gimmicky. It can do some things you just couldn't do otherwise, but when it tries to work with a 'normal' game it just feels wrong. But then maybe I'm just old and crotchety.
A lot of the games I like to play are about mechanics and numbers, not so much about looking cool. I still like it when a game looks awesome, don't get me wrong, but Final Fantasy X is such a good game because it had a fantastic undercarriage before the great paint went on top. Is there the space for a cool looking VR game that also has a solid game underneath? I guess I could see something like Oblivion working well with this sort of system. Or a more movie like game? Alan Wake perhaps? Or maybe steal from Ready Player One and rebuild old games inside a world... Play a Pacman arcade table or such. Or run Zork as a 3D puzzle adventure instead of a text adventure. I wonder what the copyright timeframe is on something that old...
Sunday, November 02, 2014
Bridge Match 3 - Board 24
Board 24 - Dealer West - None Vul
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Good
My hand: ♠ K Q 8 6 ♥ 3 ♦ J 8 2 ♣ Q 7 6 4 2
West opens 1 spade, partner overcalls 2 hearts, and East passes. That 2 heart bid is really awkward for me... My club suit is not good enough to bid at the 3 level and I only have 1 heart. I guess partner should have a decent enough suit to make that bid, so I'll just leave him here. West agrees.
East leads the 5 of spades.
Well, I have a club loser, and 2 diamond losers, and a spade loser, and some number of heart losers. Quite possibly 3 or 4 of them. I don't really have an entry to board to cash spades in order to pitch my club and diamond losers either. Maybe the enemies will put me in? Anyway, let's see when they let me in. 5-6-A-J. West shifts to a diamond, which gives me an entry. 6-3-A-2. Another diamond. My entry does go away if this gets ruffed, but there's not a lot I can do about that. T-J-4-7. Ok, the extra diamond loser is gone now and I can pitch the club loser here on spades. So I do that. K-9-3 of clubs-3.
North's hand is up other than all those pesky trump losers. And the diamonds could get ruffed. Should I cash the last spade winner to pitch a diamond? Probably not. I just need to get rid of the trump and I can finesse the K on the first round if I play them from board. So I do that.
3-Q-K-8. That Q is interesting. But I really have no play here except to draw trumps and hope. 4-6-2 of clubs-T. I'm now missing the A and 7 of hearts, so I should lose 1 or 2 more tricks. I only lose 2 if they ruff right here. They don't, as they play a club to my A. I draw out the trump and am up after losing to the A of hearts. Making 3.
1 pair made 3 hearts, 1 pair made 2 hearts, 1 pair went down in 3 hearts, and 5 of us played 2 hearts making 3. So we get 9 MPs on this hand.
Jack agrees with me all the way!
Ranking after board 24/60: 9/16 with 50%
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Good
My hand: ♠ K Q 8 6 ♥ 3 ♦ J 8 2 ♣ Q 7 6 4 2
West opens 1 spade, partner overcalls 2 hearts, and East passes. That 2 heart bid is really awkward for me... My club suit is not good enough to bid at the 3 level and I only have 1 heart. I guess partner should have a decent enough suit to make that bid, so I'll just leave him here. West agrees.
East leads the 5 of spades.
| NORTH ♠ J ♥ K J 9 5 4 2 ♦ K Q 7 3 ♣ A 3 | ||
| EAST ♠ 5 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ K Q 8 6 ♥ 3 ♦ J 8 2 ♣ Q 7 6 4 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1♠ | 2♥ | Pass | Pass |
| Pass |
Well, I have a club loser, and 2 diamond losers, and a spade loser, and some number of heart losers. Quite possibly 3 or 4 of them. I don't really have an entry to board to cash spades in order to pitch my club and diamond losers either. Maybe the enemies will put me in? Anyway, let's see when they let me in. 5-6-A-J. West shifts to a diamond, which gives me an entry. 6-3-A-2. Another diamond. My entry does go away if this gets ruffed, but there's not a lot I can do about that. T-J-4-7. Ok, the extra diamond loser is gone now and I can pitch the club loser here on spades. So I do that. K-9-3 of clubs-3.
North's hand is up other than all those pesky trump losers. And the diamonds could get ruffed. Should I cash the last spade winner to pitch a diamond? Probably not. I just need to get rid of the trump and I can finesse the K on the first round if I play them from board. So I do that.
3-Q-K-8. That Q is interesting. But I really have no play here except to draw trumps and hope. 4-6-2 of clubs-T. I'm now missing the A and 7 of hearts, so I should lose 1 or 2 more tricks. I only lose 2 if they ruff right here. They don't, as they play a club to my A. I draw out the trump and am up after losing to the A of hearts. Making 3.
| NORTH ♠ J ♥ K J 9 5 4 2 ♦ K Q 7 3 ♣ A 3 | ||
| WEST ♠ A T 9 4 2 ♥ A Q T ♦ 6 4 ♣ K J 5 | EAST ♠ 7 5 3 ♥ 8 7 6 ♦ A T 9 5 ♣ T 9 8 | |
| SOUTH ♠ K Q 8 6 ♥ 3 ♦ J 8 2 ♣ Q 7 6 4 2 |
Jack agrees with me all the way!
Ranking after board 24/60: 9/16 with 50%
Friday, October 31, 2014
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
I can remember going out and buying this game at Radio Shack of all places right when it first came out. I don't think I'd even played the original Final Fantasy Tactics at the time, but I had heard myths about how rare and awesome a game it was from Josh. I remember it had a job system with the jobs available based on what race your character was. Job systems are awesome, so this game had to be pretty good... But I don't remember liking it very much. I never beat it, or even came close. I remember being particularly frustrated by the law system where the rules of the game would change each fight, but you'd have to go look them up or get arrested. I like the idea that the rules can change, but I think I would have preferred something where you couldn't do things rather than getting in trouble for doing them? Maybe?
Now, I was thinking I was disappointed with this game the first time around, but I went and took a look at my cartridge today and it turns out I'd played it for around 30 hours last time. 30 hours is actually a pretty long time for a console game let alone for a handheld game, so that's actually a pretty good deal. And I didn't even come close to finishing it!
I was disappointed to find out the 3DS doesn't have a GBA port, so I couldn't actually play this game on my handheld. But then my sister came to the rescue with her original GBA! She was sad that she couldn't find the charger cable for it, but then I flipped it over and pointed out that it actually takes AA batteries. That's how old we're talking here! It also doesn't have a backlit screen, which I remember being a pain back in the day. But I'm sure I can find a place to sit that has a good light behind it... Or at least, I hope I can!
As far as a plan for the game goes, I don't really have one. I'd like to beat the game this time around, which I suspect means I need to keep myself from getting too distracted by side quests. That may well be easier said than done. Time will tell I guess...
I am a little sad with the intro to the game. It starts with a bunch of kids talking about how cool it would be if a video game came to life, and one of the kids says his favourite game is 'Final Fantasy'. And then the main character gets teleported to a world where 'Final Fantasy' came to life. Except it's actually nothing like the original Final Fantasy. It has Bhangas and Moogles and those weren't things in the original game at all. I guess they're just using Final Fantasy as a shorthand for some fantasy RPG game in their universe but that title has real meaning to me and I'm annoyed that they misused it. Bah! Bah I say!
Now, I was thinking I was disappointed with this game the first time around, but I went and took a look at my cartridge today and it turns out I'd played it for around 30 hours last time. 30 hours is actually a pretty long time for a console game let alone for a handheld game, so that's actually a pretty good deal. And I didn't even come close to finishing it!
I was disappointed to find out the 3DS doesn't have a GBA port, so I couldn't actually play this game on my handheld. But then my sister came to the rescue with her original GBA! She was sad that she couldn't find the charger cable for it, but then I flipped it over and pointed out that it actually takes AA batteries. That's how old we're talking here! It also doesn't have a backlit screen, which I remember being a pain back in the day. But I'm sure I can find a place to sit that has a good light behind it... Or at least, I hope I can!
As far as a plan for the game goes, I don't really have one. I'd like to beat the game this time around, which I suspect means I need to keep myself from getting too distracted by side quests. That may well be easier said than done. Time will tell I guess...
I am a little sad with the intro to the game. It starts with a bunch of kids talking about how cool it would be if a video game came to life, and one of the kids says his favourite game is 'Final Fantasy'. And then the main character gets teleported to a world where 'Final Fantasy' came to life. Except it's actually nothing like the original Final Fantasy. It has Bhangas and Moogles and those weren't things in the original game at all. I guess they're just using Final Fantasy as a shorthand for some fantasy RPG game in their universe but that title has real meaning to me and I'm annoyed that they misused it. Bah! Bah I say!
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Banished
At some point in time my brother told me Banished was a good game and I should get it, but I didn't want to pay full price for an unreleased game so I put it on my Steam wishlist. At some point after that it went on sale, I bought it, and promptly forgot about it. Then earlier this week I was over at his place after moving some stuff into storage and he showed me a video of Day[9] playing Banished and again told me I should play it. I didn't really want to go buy a new game, but when I found out I had already bought it in the past I figured I should give it a spin.
The game is a little like a medieval Sim City where you zone areas of the map into housing and food generation and manufacturing huts and the like. The twist is each citizens in your village is an individual actor and follows their own AI patterns based on what job they've been assigned. It feels a bit like how I've always imagined Dwarf Fortress to play, except with actual graphics.
I'm a little disappointed in how little the individual characters seem to matter. Jamie joked that I wanted stats ala Japanese dating simulator, but that's kinda what I want. I want someone who does a lot of farming to be better at farming than someone who brews a lot of ale. But as this game works the jobs are assigned randomly by the game to the individuals. I tell it I want 5 farmers and a brewer and it just picks some people to do those jobs. They're all equivalently good so it doesn't matter who gets picked. But I want it to matter! And I want things to go deep. I want the characters to have stats and get better based on who their parents were since this is a game that goes on for generations. But that isn't to be.
It's still fun even without crazy stats and genetic selection going on. I just want more...
I'm still in my first game, so I guess I learned from watching Day[9] die a couple times. I came close to getting wiped out because I didn't realize you needed to keep building houses or your population would stagnate. I got to the point where I had 37 adults, most of which were about to die of old age, and 1 kid. I figured out what was going on in time to build a bunch of more houses so that after about half my old people died there was room for the few younger people of breeding age to move into a new house and start making babies. My town ended up a little bit inbred as a result...
Mackery and Damaran are brother and sister. Also, Damaran graduated from the school at 17 and was assigned to take over as teacher. Mackery hit 10, went from being a kid to being a student, and moved in with Damaran. His teacher. His sister. And then they went and had a kid of their own. That's... That's not right.
I ended up rebuilding up to about 12 people, and then I built a building that let nomads show up and join my town. They came with 9 people of their own which brought in new breeding stock and made things at least feel like they could be on the level again. And now I'm up over 200 people! With only a few minor starvation issues when I ended up with way too many children and not enough adults to feed them all. Oh well, some of the kids will just go hungry and die and the problem will fix itself!
The game is a little like a medieval Sim City where you zone areas of the map into housing and food generation and manufacturing huts and the like. The twist is each citizens in your village is an individual actor and follows their own AI patterns based on what job they've been assigned. It feels a bit like how I've always imagined Dwarf Fortress to play, except with actual graphics.
I'm a little disappointed in how little the individual characters seem to matter. Jamie joked that I wanted stats ala Japanese dating simulator, but that's kinda what I want. I want someone who does a lot of farming to be better at farming than someone who brews a lot of ale. But as this game works the jobs are assigned randomly by the game to the individuals. I tell it I want 5 farmers and a brewer and it just picks some people to do those jobs. They're all equivalently good so it doesn't matter who gets picked. But I want it to matter! And I want things to go deep. I want the characters to have stats and get better based on who their parents were since this is a game that goes on for generations. But that isn't to be.
It's still fun even without crazy stats and genetic selection going on. I just want more...
I'm still in my first game, so I guess I learned from watching Day[9] die a couple times. I came close to getting wiped out because I didn't realize you needed to keep building houses or your population would stagnate. I got to the point where I had 37 adults, most of which were about to die of old age, and 1 kid. I figured out what was going on in time to build a bunch of more houses so that after about half my old people died there was room for the few younger people of breeding age to move into a new house and start making babies. My town ended up a little bit inbred as a result...
I ended up rebuilding up to about 12 people, and then I built a building that let nomads show up and join my town. They came with 9 people of their own which brought in new breeding stock and made things at least feel like they could be on the level again. And now I'm up over 200 people! With only a few minor starvation issues when I ended up with way too many children and not enough adults to feed them all. Oh well, some of the kids will just go hungry and die and the problem will fix itself!
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Final Fantasy X-2 Conclusions
A variety of events have conspired to cause my playthrough of Final Fantasy X-2 to come to a bit of a premature conclusion. I no longer have a PS3 (or access to my saved game even if I had one) so my second play capped out at 63% completion. That's not the 100% needed to see the final special cutscene. Which means it's probably time to wrap up that little segment of my marathon and look ahead to the next game, whatever that happens to be...
I was really looking forward to playing FFX-2 when I started this marathon up 3 years ago. (Uh... Jeez, I sure have been taking my time, huh?) But it didn't really pull me in. I think part of it is being jaded with the RTB system. I really liked the updates they did to it the first time I played (I can still remember the first time I used a megaphoenix, had my last character die while the item was in the air, and DIDN'T LOSE because the system let the megaphoenix resolve and bring the character that used it back to life) but I guess they didn't hold up so well. The big thing I think is how terrible anything that isn't an autoattack ended up being because attacking has a higher priority than using an ability or casting a spell. So you could get juggled out of doing your thing by enemies that attacked fast enough. Or if you were the one attacking, you could juggle them out of their things.
Just mashing attack is a thing I used to like doing a lot in RTB games. But somewhere along the way I wanted to do other things. I can remember being similarly jaded with FFIV in this marathon for similar reasons. I think there's a problem when the thing I most want to have happen is to have my characters get berserked so I stop having to input the only relevant command. If all I'm going to do is attack then the game might as well do that for me, right? But then you get into a state like I got into in FFX-2 here where I never actually played the game after I got the catnip. Rikku went first and killed one enemy guaranteed, and by the time someone else got an action and I could input a command she'd kill a second one. So really I could play the game, or I could not play the game, and the same thing would happen. Rikku would kill everything with no input.
The game remains incredibly pretty. I still like the concept of live swapping in what class your characters are on demand in the fights. I like the wide variety of abilities you can access. I really like the costumes and the character combat chat. But going to a RTB system meant most of that stuff was just a terrible waste of time. Sticking with the FFX system or tweaking it a little could have been really, really cool.
I often like minigames and this game is in a very real sense entirely minigames. The actual core plot is nowhere near as detailed or as epic as a normal Final Fantasy game, which I think has to count against it. Minigames are a great diversion from an epic plot, especially when they come with ways to become more powerful. Here it mostly felt like you were doing things just to have something to do. A way to raise that counter up to 100% to get the good ending. Which I didn't get.
I still do want to get that, and it's certainly an idea running around in the back of my mind to just do a run on the PS2 version now that I've looked up what it takes. There's a route to do it in one playthrough. I'm thinking that may be a thing I could do as a start to streaming if the internet here ends up being fast enough.
It feels like I'm pretty down on the game, but I think a bunch of things sort of conspired to make it feel worse than it really is. Taking 3 weeks off to go to WBC this year instead of 1 week put a big gap in my playing that made it hard to get back into things. Then hurting my wrist so I couldn't play at all for a couple weeks (and only sporadically after that) was not the fault of the game. And then needing to return the console/move across the country... None of those things should actually lower my rating here. And while going back to a RTB system makes me sad, it's mostly being compared to other RTB systems, and it wouldn't really be fair to ding this one more than those ones.
The character design is great, but that's leeching from the characters of FFX. Should that count against this one? The one new character (Paine) is actually pretty interesting. The new comedic villain on the other hand is just annoying. I think the real big strike against it has to be the lack of an epic feel. I get that the world is recovering from the actual epic evil from the first game but it does lead to a bit of a let down feeling when it's 'just' a single super weapon that is pretty easily destroyed that's threatening the world this time around.
All told, I think this game fits in around Kingdom Hearts on the rating scale. Awesome graphics and characters, but not really original ones. Fun enough gameplay, but not as good as it probably should have been. And I definitely enjoyed Kingdom Hearts more this time around, so it's going to get the edge here. FFX-2 will get slotted in at slot #9, just ahead of FFIX.
Next up is supposed to be FFXI, but with the World of Warcraft expansion hitting soon there's no way I'm going to be playing a different MMO. Which means I should probably be playing the handheld game Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which I actually just found in my move. I wonder if I can remember where I packed it...
I was really looking forward to playing FFX-2 when I started this marathon up 3 years ago. (Uh... Jeez, I sure have been taking my time, huh?) But it didn't really pull me in. I think part of it is being jaded with the RTB system. I really liked the updates they did to it the first time I played (I can still remember the first time I used a megaphoenix, had my last character die while the item was in the air, and DIDN'T LOSE because the system let the megaphoenix resolve and bring the character that used it back to life) but I guess they didn't hold up so well. The big thing I think is how terrible anything that isn't an autoattack ended up being because attacking has a higher priority than using an ability or casting a spell. So you could get juggled out of doing your thing by enemies that attacked fast enough. Or if you were the one attacking, you could juggle them out of their things.
Just mashing attack is a thing I used to like doing a lot in RTB games. But somewhere along the way I wanted to do other things. I can remember being similarly jaded with FFIV in this marathon for similar reasons. I think there's a problem when the thing I most want to have happen is to have my characters get berserked so I stop having to input the only relevant command. If all I'm going to do is attack then the game might as well do that for me, right? But then you get into a state like I got into in FFX-2 here where I never actually played the game after I got the catnip. Rikku went first and killed one enemy guaranteed, and by the time someone else got an action and I could input a command she'd kill a second one. So really I could play the game, or I could not play the game, and the same thing would happen. Rikku would kill everything with no input.
The game remains incredibly pretty. I still like the concept of live swapping in what class your characters are on demand in the fights. I like the wide variety of abilities you can access. I really like the costumes and the character combat chat. But going to a RTB system meant most of that stuff was just a terrible waste of time. Sticking with the FFX system or tweaking it a little could have been really, really cool.
I often like minigames and this game is in a very real sense entirely minigames. The actual core plot is nowhere near as detailed or as epic as a normal Final Fantasy game, which I think has to count against it. Minigames are a great diversion from an epic plot, especially when they come with ways to become more powerful. Here it mostly felt like you were doing things just to have something to do. A way to raise that counter up to 100% to get the good ending. Which I didn't get.
I still do want to get that, and it's certainly an idea running around in the back of my mind to just do a run on the PS2 version now that I've looked up what it takes. There's a route to do it in one playthrough. I'm thinking that may be a thing I could do as a start to streaming if the internet here ends up being fast enough.
It feels like I'm pretty down on the game, but I think a bunch of things sort of conspired to make it feel worse than it really is. Taking 3 weeks off to go to WBC this year instead of 1 week put a big gap in my playing that made it hard to get back into things. Then hurting my wrist so I couldn't play at all for a couple weeks (and only sporadically after that) was not the fault of the game. And then needing to return the console/move across the country... None of those things should actually lower my rating here. And while going back to a RTB system makes me sad, it's mostly being compared to other RTB systems, and it wouldn't really be fair to ding this one more than those ones.
The character design is great, but that's leeching from the characters of FFX. Should that count against this one? The one new character (Paine) is actually pretty interesting. The new comedic villain on the other hand is just annoying. I think the real big strike against it has to be the lack of an epic feel. I get that the world is recovering from the actual epic evil from the first game but it does lead to a bit of a let down feeling when it's 'just' a single super weapon that is pretty easily destroyed that's threatening the world this time around.
All told, I think this game fits in around Kingdom Hearts on the rating scale. Awesome graphics and characters, but not really original ones. Fun enough gameplay, but not as good as it probably should have been. And I definitely enjoyed Kingdom Hearts more this time around, so it's going to get the edge here. FFX-2 will get slotted in at slot #9, just ahead of FFIX.
Next up is supposed to be FFXI, but with the World of Warcraft expansion hitting soon there's no way I'm going to be playing a different MMO. Which means I should probably be playing the handheld game Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which I actually just found in my move. I wonder if I can remember where I packed it...
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