I was playing a game of Eye of the Storm, widely lauded as my least favorite BG OF ALL TIME. We were losing. We were losing so badly, it was as if a hundred angels had descended from the heavens right ontop of all of the towers, but you know what? I was having fun.

LOOK MA, A RANDOM PICTURE

FUN

I know, how strange, right? We were losing, the team was horrible, but who cares? I was holding off a million assholes, all trying to tear me a new one, I was fighting DKs left and right, fire-mages who cast frostbolt endlessly (I have no clue why, I wasn’t going anywhere (I would of won that fight except LOL CAUTERIZE, which was kinda confusing at the time)), and I was cackling like a madman.

Part of this has to do with how WoW’s PvP system never feels like a horrible grind. While Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds probably do a little bit, that is because people actually take them seriously, and then suddenly I stop having fun. >>;;

Speaking of fun, I ventured into the Raid Finder this week… that was an interesting experience. The fights are pretty easy, and it’s really… fun! It’s raiding for people with less than 9 friends! (I like it for the same reasons I like the LFG tool as a DPS. It makes grouping easy (no finding groups), and it makes the content easier, it’s a win win win situation)

Your face when you realize this image is irrelevant too.

Huttball is entertaining, but 90% of people have no idea what to do in it, which often makes it an exercise in frustration. That being said, if you get a decent team you can have a lot of fun (before winning the game really fast). Civil War is 3-point AB, and TOR’s general bias towards defenders in PvP means it’s a race to cap 2 points before the other team does, most of the time – it also feels like it goes FOREVER. Voidstar is okay, it has the Attack/Defend stylings of Strand, but again, the bias is towards long defensive games there.

Actually, let’s get into some more details. Firstly let’s go over Strand.

EPIC ART SKILLZ

Obviously, the circles are the boat dock spawns, and the attackers then use demolishers (powerful, big, obvious things) and seaforium bombs (items that can be grabbed and dropped next to doors, kinda hard to disarm), to blow through the HP of the various gates, eventually reaching the relic (or running out of time).

This means that the attackers can chip away at each gate, or amass a great force and blow through, or whatever they like. More options are usually better for the attackers, assuming they can co-ordinate a little bit.

MY ARTS, THEY ARE THE BEST ARTS

Voidstar, on the other hand, tends to be a bit more punishing for the attackers. This partially has to do with the mechanics of breaking doors (more like capping a flag than breaking a gate), and TOR’s pretty strong defending bias.

The best strategy here is to co-ordinate with a couple of Sage/Inquisitors (or whoever else has sprint) and quickly cap the bridge (2nd point) and 2nd door before the defenders can regroup and bring the pain.

Voidstar also feels really long. I’m still not sure why that is. Although it’s not uncommon to see both teams failing to reach the goal, and the winner being decided on how many doors were broken.

Not sure what brought on that, but whatever. It’s also interesting to note that a lot of people really hate Strand. I’m not sure why, I really like it as an objectives focused PvPer.

Still, getting back to my point, I like PvPing for fun. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t take my games seriously. I’ll hound that objective like nobody’s business, because, to be honest, I really like winning.

However, I like losing, too. I love the whole ritual of raging at my enemies, or my teammates, or whatever. Venting is important. But once I’m off that field? It’s gone. I’m not going to abuse you outside of the BG for something. I’m probably not going to abuse you anyway, most of my anger comes from passion, and it’s not a bad thing. When I get passionate I start 3-capping flags and killing DKs.

Which reminds me, one of these days I should sit down with a microphone and PvP for an hour or two, and see what comes out the other side. Haha. Although if I know people will hear it I’ll hold back or something. This is why I am usually much quieter when playing with people over Skype/Vent/Whatever, they don’t need to hear an endless stream of “WHY YOU NO FIGHT ON FLAGS ASLKDJHASLKDJALSJKDASDlkAJSDLas” and I can’t deadpan “oh no what are you doing why are you chasing that champion to their tower oh god now you’re dead and there’s two of them and now I’m dead yay” for more than 5 minutes.

 Anyway, I’ve been rambling for a while, go figure. Turns out writing about PvP is pretty enjoyable. Although I must stress that I am not some strategical genius, and you should take any PvP advice dispensed here with a heaping fistful of salt. That being said, I will gladly ramble like I know what I’m doing for extended periods.

I play this game a little bit. Also a ton of another game I didn't think to get screenshots from. :x

Anyway, aaaaanyway. Recently (read: literally 2 days ago), I totally went back to WoW. I’m not quite sure how to put ‘how’ into words.

Nothing to do with TOR, I’m still playing that a bit, and as I said in the AEPlays episode on it, it’s a good game, but suffers from a lot of there being nothing to do solo at the level cap. I still have alts to level there, but I’m unlikely to spend much time on my ‘main’, just because there’s nothing to do (apart from raid, and eeeeeh, I’m going to respectfully pass there (grouping in general, esp in a performance-driven environment? Not really my cup of tea, although I do like playing with friends)). (Also there is PvP, but WoW’s is better, and the gear doesn’t look half as horrible)

So, WoW. yeah. I was away for all of a month or so since I actually let my sub go, although in practice I’d not played much since pre-4.2 (although I did do some of those dailies for a while). I’ve been doing, amusingly, LFG-tool 5 mans. You know why? Because (as a DPS) they’re super relaxing, for the most part. DPSing is easy, and this takes care of the hardest part about grouping, which is actually finding people to play with.

Mostly inaccurate image of what I've been playing recently.

Still, I’ve also been playing other games, as that doesn’t account for the other week and a half of game-playing that has been taking place recently. I’ve also been playing more Sonic Generations, because I like that game a lot, and a frankly silly amount of Final Fantasy XIII (which becomes less silly when you realize XIII-2 comes out in 10 odd days and I need to be prepared), also Skyrim. I am the best at being a sneakthief, but I am not the best at being a combat guy. Even a magic combat guy. >>;;

I’ve also been slowly organizing everything in my life into lists, because why not (alternate reason: after 3 months of summer vacation, my mind has finally broken into a million pieces, and it really likes lists)

Alternate alternate reason. I FUCKING LOVE LISTS (also I am best at arts)

I’ve also been playing all sorts of other stuff, like “write all the things” and “read all the things” and “listen to all the things”. You know me, I’m not one to do things by half-measures.

Still, once I finish FFXIII (read: when I stop grinding for lulz and instead actually continue playing the game), I will probably move onto OTHER GAMES (oh noes), in total I’ve probably spent a few 100 hours playing games over the last month, which, frankly, doesn’t feel like enough. I’ve only done… 10 work week’s worth of gaming? Maybe 15? Over the last month. What kind of game addict am I? NEED MOAR GAMING. (Figures do not account for time spent ‘double dipping’ playing Pokemon while in queues or whatever)

This week I play a lot of the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo, and a little bit of Dustforce. What do I think of them? Listen and find out! :3

You can get the episode here, or subscribe using the feed, here. (should be  indexed on iTunes soonish)

Written post should be up in the next day or two, keep your pants on.

You can grab the episode here, or subscribe to the podcast using this feed here.

iTunes should be up in the next week or so.

Get the episode here~ iTunes & a podcast RSS feed should be up in time for next week’s episode, so you’ll have to sit tight for a little while there.

This week I have no special guest, although I’m trying reasonably hard to rectify that for next week. This week I talk a lot about the show in general, and then a fair bit about anime. Because, this show is “Arcane Envoy Talks About Whatever It Likes” :3

Visual Novels are an interesting type of ‘game’ for the most part, the best way to describe them in layman’s terms is kinda like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Not every VN has choices, but a large majority of them do. Using Katawa Shoujo as an Ur Example (Warning, TVTropes link) is hilariously inappropriate, but will suffice for being a good example of an Eroge, that more importantly, is super easy for you to get your hands on, it being a free download.

The primary thing you do, is, of course, read. I like to read (while always relevant pony images aren’t my thing, here you go), so this suits me quite nicely. While I certainly don’t read as much as I did when I was younger, I still read a good two dozen books a year, at least (with a few rereads thrown in for good measure).

Occasionally a choice is presented to the player, and these can dramatically alter the path of the story. While they’re often less common than choices in your  choose-your-own-adventure books, they usually alter the course of the story in a more dramatic fashion, even if it’s not immediately apparent.

The ‘VN’ (actually, it’s a Sound Novel, although it plays like a VN, it tastes like a VN, it practically is a VN) I have been playing a lot of recently is Umineko no Naku Koro ni. It has 0 decisions to be made for the most part. I am at the beginning of the final chapter, but am dragging my feet there, as I don’t want it to end. I just want to keep the cat box closed, although that’s the same as believeing in the Endless Witch. Haha.

Ultimately, I think the key thing here is that they are an interesting way to experience a story, and probably the best version of books to exist in a digital form. I cannot recommend Umineko highly enough, and Katawa is a very cool thing, although it’s entirely possible that a VN is simply not your cup of tea. They’re certainly not the sort of thing the vast majority of gamers would enjoy, but that doesn’t make them any less enjoyable to me.

This will also probably take the place of a written review, although who knows, I might decide to write one for my own amusement. It’s not like you can really review an MMO anyway.

This week’s episode has a tonne of shoutouts, so that’s nice, and it felt like a fine way to celebrate the end of the Arcane Envoy Plays series. We’ll be back next week with the first episode of the Arcane Envoy Podcast. Well, yeah, that works.

Anyway, linky linky.

Unrelated, but I need to break this up a little bit, haha ^^;;

The simplest example of a binary reward is a feat from the 3rd  (or later) edition of Dungeons and Dragons. You either have them or not (so they have binary (2) states), and they are all bought at a constant rate of 1 magic feat point.

A simple example of continuous rewards is leveling up. Everything you do (kill) gives experience points, which as you accumulate, increase your strength. You can’t skip levels, the progression is a straight line, like a traintrack or something.

A more relevant example would be, for instance, gear. In most MMOs, the primary source of gear is through killing bosses and taking the gear from their corpse. With gear, you either have it or you do not. While you can have intermediate items, they are essentially separate from your obtaining of the final item.

Gear, of course, also has other ways to be given out. For instance, the highly common badge systems that has been in place in WoW since the Burning Crusade, and both TOR and Rift have had it at launch. Even here, the gear itself has binary states, even if it is earned in a more gradual manner. It presents an interesting set of decisions. Do you buy every gradual upgrade, or just save your tokens for the good stuff?

Crystalsong is pretty. This is a super old screenshot.

Some games gate the good gear behind lots of different currencies. Blizzard have the most elegant system at the moment, with their fluid point system. Although it took them plenty of iterations to get to that stage.

I for one, prefer the single currency with obscene inflation (see Burning Crusade), as it gives everyone a chance to get the good stuff with a bit of time and effort. It also makes it possible to twink people up by running them the higher tier content to let them swim in tokens.

The ‘every tier of gear gets a new token’ system I find annoying, as it leads to lots of gating that makes gearing up nigh impossible. It’s inelegant, and frustrating.

Blizzard’s “upper tier” and “lower tier” currency system, where the current content rewards points just for it’s gear, and everything else grants lower tier points is quite elegant, and is a good compromise between letting the raiders have their fancy exclusive gear, and letting the rest of us stay in touch.

Almost always, rewards themselves have specific states. Even leveling you have ‘tiers’ of XP at which you get to level up, which is when your power actually increases. In some cases, however, the reward scales as you gain whatever it is you gain. Usually these have an ebb and flow to them, much more like power ups than the rewards that have been discussed thus far.

Rage probably bears a mention here as a good example of a fluid system. It starts empty, you fill it up by getting hit in the face // hitting things in the face, and you spend it to hit things in the face hard. Of course, you don’t get stronger by having lots of rage. Although that would be nice, I’m sure. It would also make rage an even more interesting mechanic.

Come to think of it, there aren’t many mechanics that work like that that come to mind… well, I’m sure I’ll think of one 20 minutes after I post this, haha. >>;;

So pretty, my goodness.

However, I still wish to wish you all a happy Christmas, or other holiday of your choice.

Expect this week to be TOR heavy,  with a TOR post in the pipes for probably Wednsday, and AE Plays TOR on Thursday/Friday/Saturday (whenever it is recorded, really).

A lady defined by her love of hats. I can't blame her. Hats are great.

The point of this post is to be a discussion of what I’ve done over the last few days, in as many words as I can remember in. You’ll have to wait a week or so (at least) before I can really talk about how I feel about the game in great detail.

Most of my playtime has been spent on my Jedi Sage. She’s a pretty nice lady, who likes to help all the people with their problems, mostly in exchange for XP and light-side points.

While I’ll go into the group-based exploits of my character in more detail again, at a later date, I can and will reveal that I spent a significant amount of time grouping through portions of my 30 levels. Specifically, I grouped with people (specifically just Kiki) for all of Coruscant, Taris and Nar Shaddaa.

This was good fun. Although I wish we’d done a tiny bit more together, I’m at about 690/750 social points towards Social II, which unlocks more social gear (pretty dresses, fancy hats). Social points are earned by doing conversations in a group, and are gained pretty slowly. Still, it’s no biggie. I’m happy to be Social I, otherwise I’d not be able to have my fancy hat. (That I don’t use because better stats elsewhere, but it’s cool looking, so that’s something)

Let’s also talk about class quests. This probably won’t be so much of a problem if you’re soloing and taking the time to do all the missions and stuff, but these are hard to solo below the intended level. Not impossible, I know I did many 2-4 levels higher than my own, although that made them annoyingly difficult. I am slightly ashamed to say, but I may of ragequit from one particularly annoying boss. In my defense I’d been awake too long? Went and ground out gear & another level and kicked his ass.

I’ve also just started playing my Imperial Agent. She’s great. Like, super great. While her first companion isn’t as cool as the Bounty Hunter’s, she’s got a great voice, and she’s written well.

Anyway, this post has actually been sitting here a whole day, while I tried to think about anything else I wanted to say right at this stage.