The Gaming Scene
Well, let's see...
Offline roleplaying has been stalled since our regular GM left town. I don't really have any expectation of that changing in the foreseeable future - folks have plenty of other things to do these days. Online roleplaying is still fairly limited to small groups, though I'd say I've been in more scenes of late than just a month or so ago.
The online Lords of Gossamer and Shadow game has been sort of hit-and-miss as far as attendance. In theory, characters were supposed to be able to slip in and out as players were busy or not, but in practice... eh... that just doesn't work so well, at least in my view. I think my interests lean toward 1) action and accomplishment (the doing of things and overcoming of challenges) and 2) interplay and development between characters. The latter is unavoidably hamstrung when you don't get a solid "party" together for any length of time (or when people don't play to that and their characters are just sort of "there"). Ah well.
WoW continues on, and I still love to see the familiar faces, but some of the luster is wearing off just because there doesn't feel like much interesting variety for me to do at the endgame. That isn't to say there aren't activities to do, but I find several of them inaccessible (normal+ raiding) or not particularly appealing (pet battles, PVP). If the legendary quest line didn't require ridiculous amounts of raid runs to collect materials, I probably wouldn't do more than a few LFR runs of each wing to see everything. And while our dear guild leader is constantly eyeing the active list of players hoping to get some group activity going, there just isn't much reason/incentive for most of it.
Now, I still like running follower missions and even some of the apexis daily quests, but they are pretty repetitive in design. I liked the Harrison Jones quests, but they're brief. And I don't seem to have seen a Campaign quest this week yet. Hmmm. Outside garrison/follower management, I'm basically doing apexis dailies and running weekly current LFR instances, and that's about it.
I've said before that the people behind the game are not stupid. And I still believe that. They are, however, somewhat prone to 1) taking a lot of time on patches and 2) overreacting. I'm not sure how much there is to do about the former, but I wish they could temper the latter. The current (mostly lack of) daily quests seem due to backlash over MoP design - which had less to do with the number of daily quests than it did the way rewards were gated behind them and how that made them all feel mandatory. We've had a lot of total flip-flops in design rather than iteration over the years, and I think that's... not ideal.
Meanwhile, I haven't a lot to say about GW2. Still doing weekly missions and once-in-a-while something else. The change to daily achievements has encouraged me to log in for 2 minutes a day instead of 30, which I suppose cuts down on burnout, but there's just not much reason for me to play more actively there.
More info has come out about the expansion, and I would say it looks okay. Nothing has wow'd me yet. The near class looks like it might be neat, but it doesn't make me want to play an alt. Specializations have potential, but so far I don't see any signs that will apply to the dagger thief I play. Masteries are being pitched as means of progressing to new abilities, some of which (like gliding and mushroom bouncing) access areas you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise. Maybe I'm a glass-half-empty sort, but that just sounds to me like content gated behind unlockable abilities - that isn't exactly a selling point. I'll probably buy it, but there's nothing about it exciting me at this point.
I've also poked my head back into FFXIV recently. Being out for a month or so, there have been quests to catch up on, but gear hasn't progressed to another tier yet. I have yet to really try much of the new Golden Saucer minigame content yet, so can't comment on that. The trial battle with Odin though - sooo much damage, much unavoidable. Aieee! Also the latest story progress raised a lot of interesting questions as the Warriors of Light sort of get the rug pulled out from under them.
And that game has an expansion coming in June. I haven't been studying much of that, though I find it marginally intriguing at this stage.
Offline roleplaying has been stalled since our regular GM left town. I don't really have any expectation of that changing in the foreseeable future - folks have plenty of other things to do these days. Online roleplaying is still fairly limited to small groups, though I'd say I've been in more scenes of late than just a month or so ago.
The online Lords of Gossamer and Shadow game has been sort of hit-and-miss as far as attendance. In theory, characters were supposed to be able to slip in and out as players were busy or not, but in practice... eh... that just doesn't work so well, at least in my view. I think my interests lean toward 1) action and accomplishment (the doing of things and overcoming of challenges) and 2) interplay and development between characters. The latter is unavoidably hamstrung when you don't get a solid "party" together for any length of time (or when people don't play to that and their characters are just sort of "there"). Ah well.
WoW continues on, and I still love to see the familiar faces, but some of the luster is wearing off just because there doesn't feel like much interesting variety for me to do at the endgame. That isn't to say there aren't activities to do, but I find several of them inaccessible (normal+ raiding) or not particularly appealing (pet battles, PVP). If the legendary quest line didn't require ridiculous amounts of raid runs to collect materials, I probably wouldn't do more than a few LFR runs of each wing to see everything. And while our dear guild leader is constantly eyeing the active list of players hoping to get some group activity going, there just isn't much reason/incentive for most of it.
Now, I still like running follower missions and even some of the apexis daily quests, but they are pretty repetitive in design. I liked the Harrison Jones quests, but they're brief. And I don't seem to have seen a Campaign quest this week yet. Hmmm. Outside garrison/follower management, I'm basically doing apexis dailies and running weekly current LFR instances, and that's about it.
I've said before that the people behind the game are not stupid. And I still believe that. They are, however, somewhat prone to 1) taking a lot of time on patches and 2) overreacting. I'm not sure how much there is to do about the former, but I wish they could temper the latter. The current (mostly lack of) daily quests seem due to backlash over MoP design - which had less to do with the number of daily quests than it did the way rewards were gated behind them and how that made them all feel mandatory. We've had a lot of total flip-flops in design rather than iteration over the years, and I think that's... not ideal.
Meanwhile, I haven't a lot to say about GW2. Still doing weekly missions and once-in-a-while something else. The change to daily achievements has encouraged me to log in for 2 minutes a day instead of 30, which I suppose cuts down on burnout, but there's just not much reason for me to play more actively there.
More info has come out about the expansion, and I would say it looks okay. Nothing has wow'd me yet. The near class looks like it might be neat, but it doesn't make me want to play an alt. Specializations have potential, but so far I don't see any signs that will apply to the dagger thief I play. Masteries are being pitched as means of progressing to new abilities, some of which (like gliding and mushroom bouncing) access areas you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise. Maybe I'm a glass-half-empty sort, but that just sounds to me like content gated behind unlockable abilities - that isn't exactly a selling point. I'll probably buy it, but there's nothing about it exciting me at this point.
I've also poked my head back into FFXIV recently. Being out for a month or so, there have been quests to catch up on, but gear hasn't progressed to another tier yet. I have yet to really try much of the new Golden Saucer minigame content yet, so can't comment on that. The trial battle with Odin though - sooo much damage, much unavoidable. Aieee! Also the latest story progress raised a lot of interesting questions as the Warriors of Light sort of get the rug pulled out from under them.
And that game has an expansion coming in June. I haven't been studying much of that, though I find it marginally intriguing at this stage.
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