Various Updates
Things are getting to (maybe?) more normal at work after the last couple days. Wrrf. That was rough. And while it looked like the connection issues were at an intermediary stage, it turns out it was hardware at our ISP. If traceroutes and similar tests are that deceptive, what good are they? Ah well.
Edit: Ah, fun. I can still get stuck working late... whee...
I've not done much in WoW lately.There was some talk about how a few guildies might be interested in the assault on Garrosh, but without an active raid team, we aren't going to be jumping into the 5.4 raid anyway. Still not much reason to renew a subscription and I think my time expires fully in a few weeks.
FFXIV was interesting and very pretty, but if feels overly-traditional to me. It also occurred to me that some of the beauty may be due to the zoning - seriously, most of the major hub cities are 2-3 separate zones before you even get outside them. But ultimately, combat (as a a low-level lancer, conjurer, and pugilist) felt dull, there was way too much back-and-forth running with quests, and there really didn't feel like anything new to rise above the sense of sameness. The irony here, is that I would probably play it and love it if it were redesigned a bit as a single-player game. There's enough story to interest me, even if I'm a little confused about timing (wait, so did the evil Imperial invasion happen 5 years ago or 50? Or both?).
GW2 is GW2, for good and ill. There's been some degree of guild drama, and I'm not even sure what I really want out of a guild in the game. There really are benefits to a larger guild, but it's certainly less impersonal and leads to a channel with a bunch of strangers.
The hunt for a legendary is still slow at this stage - I have many of the hard-to-get items, but the few I lack are expensive. And now, designers have pitched some upcoming changes that include new legendaries, which makes me wonder if I should wait for specifics. I'd rather have a shadow dagger than a fire one for that character, if that's an option.
A few other mentioned things make me nervous (though I try to avoid kneejerk rage). Crafting skills will be increased to 500 - I am so very much not looking forward to that grind, especially if required for a legendary. I don't see much benefit there, honestly. The Magic Find stat is being removed from gear, which I'd find less of an issue if I hadn't been specifically building a MF set over the last couple months. They say they want to replace it with account bonuses and want to keep negative impact minimal - but I don't see how they can do that when some people operate with +0% MF and some (like myself these days) frequent run around with +130% or more. I doubt they're going to effectively give everyone the higher values. So I'm waiting to see how that all pans out, but I'm not exactly optimistic.
Oh hey, and in the latest event, we're going to get to vote someone onto the Captains Council of Lion's Arch. We get to choose between a dedicated investigator that we worked with in tracking down the culprits behind a murder or... uhh... a merchant representative who appeared off to the side in one scene doing an ambitious little "muahaha, I can use this to my advantage" scene. ... ...
I watched, rather than played, The Last of Us. I think I'm happy enough with that decision. It looks like it plays pretty well, but I think I can handle two evenings mired in the somewhat dark morality of the post-apocalyptic setting better than a couple weeks. I've seen more depressing things, I'm sure, but it is a setting where most of the characters are suuuuuucky people. In some cases, maybe even irrationally so. The ending raises some moral issues for discussion, but that's spoiler territory.
Over the journey, Joel comes to view Ellie as a daughter, that's fairly predictable. Then he finds out she has to die for the doctors/scientists to (possibly) reverse-engineer a vaccine for the fungus/zombie plague in the world. Joel goes on a rampage to save her (yet again), even at the expense of a possible clicker-free future. Then he lies to her about it, when she wakes up, in order to keep her from going back - something she seems to suspect, but accept.
Do the needs of the few or one outweight the needs of the many? Is such a lie worth it to save someone you love, and is that a selfish act or a selfless one?
It's an ending meant to raise some discussion and doubt, I'm sure. But I find myself thinking around those questions. I wonder what the odds of success really were - Ellie's sacrifice would not have been a guarantee of anything. I wonder if a world where society is so messed up that humans are far more dangerous than monsters would really recover well if the monsters went away anyhow. It also occurs to me that if the doctors had talked to Ellie instead of apparently drugging her and taking her to surgey, she probably would have volunteered and convinced Joel to go along with it. So, in a very real way, they probably screwed themselves over by denying her the choice.
I've done a small amount of campaign work and rules writing in the last two weeks. Blargh. It remains a very really situation that between work, occasional depression, and being pulled in multiple directions online or in games, it's difficult to focus on something like that. Most of the developments have been in my head, where there's a risk of loss as I get more distracted. I really need to get more written.
Edit: Ah, fun. I can still get stuck working late... whee...
I've not done much in WoW lately.There was some talk about how a few guildies might be interested in the assault on Garrosh, but without an active raid team, we aren't going to be jumping into the 5.4 raid anyway. Still not much reason to renew a subscription and I think my time expires fully in a few weeks.
FFXIV was interesting and very pretty, but if feels overly-traditional to me. It also occurred to me that some of the beauty may be due to the zoning - seriously, most of the major hub cities are 2-3 separate zones before you even get outside them. But ultimately, combat (as a a low-level lancer, conjurer, and pugilist) felt dull, there was way too much back-and-forth running with quests, and there really didn't feel like anything new to rise above the sense of sameness. The irony here, is that I would probably play it and love it if it were redesigned a bit as a single-player game. There's enough story to interest me, even if I'm a little confused about timing (wait, so did the evil Imperial invasion happen 5 years ago or 50? Or both?).
GW2 is GW2, for good and ill. There's been some degree of guild drama, and I'm not even sure what I really want out of a guild in the game. There really are benefits to a larger guild, but it's certainly less impersonal and leads to a channel with a bunch of strangers.
The hunt for a legendary is still slow at this stage - I have many of the hard-to-get items, but the few I lack are expensive. And now, designers have pitched some upcoming changes that include new legendaries, which makes me wonder if I should wait for specifics. I'd rather have a shadow dagger than a fire one for that character, if that's an option.
A few other mentioned things make me nervous (though I try to avoid kneejerk rage). Crafting skills will be increased to 500 - I am so very much not looking forward to that grind, especially if required for a legendary. I don't see much benefit there, honestly. The Magic Find stat is being removed from gear, which I'd find less of an issue if I hadn't been specifically building a MF set over the last couple months. They say they want to replace it with account bonuses and want to keep negative impact minimal - but I don't see how they can do that when some people operate with +0% MF and some (like myself these days) frequent run around with +130% or more. I doubt they're going to effectively give everyone the higher values. So I'm waiting to see how that all pans out, but I'm not exactly optimistic.
Oh hey, and in the latest event, we're going to get to vote someone onto the Captains Council of Lion's Arch. We get to choose between a dedicated investigator that we worked with in tracking down the culprits behind a murder or... uhh... a merchant representative who appeared off to the side in one scene doing an ambitious little "muahaha, I can use this to my advantage" scene. ... ...
I watched, rather than played, The Last of Us. I think I'm happy enough with that decision. It looks like it plays pretty well, but I think I can handle two evenings mired in the somewhat dark morality of the post-apocalyptic setting better than a couple weeks. I've seen more depressing things, I'm sure, but it is a setting where most of the characters are suuuuuucky people. In some cases, maybe even irrationally so. The ending raises some moral issues for discussion, but that's spoiler territory.
Over the journey, Joel comes to view Ellie as a daughter, that's fairly predictable. Then he finds out she has to die for the doctors/scientists to (possibly) reverse-engineer a vaccine for the fungus/zombie plague in the world. Joel goes on a rampage to save her (yet again), even at the expense of a possible clicker-free future. Then he lies to her about it, when she wakes up, in order to keep her from going back - something she seems to suspect, but accept.
Do the needs of the few or one outweight the needs of the many? Is such a lie worth it to save someone you love, and is that a selfish act or a selfless one?
It's an ending meant to raise some discussion and doubt, I'm sure. But I find myself thinking around those questions. I wonder what the odds of success really were - Ellie's sacrifice would not have been a guarantee of anything. I wonder if a world where society is so messed up that humans are far more dangerous than monsters would really recover well if the monsters went away anyhow. It also occurs to me that if the doctors had talked to Ellie instead of apparently drugging her and taking her to surgey, she probably would have volunteered and convinced Joel to go along with it. So, in a very real way, they probably screwed themselves over by denying her the choice.
I've done a small amount of campaign work and rules writing in the last two weeks. Blargh. It remains a very really situation that between work, occasional depression, and being pulled in multiple directions online or in games, it's difficult to focus on something like that. Most of the developments have been in my head, where there's a risk of loss as I get more distracted. I really need to get more written.
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