Sunday 12/17/2023 Post

 If you get the reference... you get the reference.  Nothing more to say.

Reddit Recap 2023

 It's that time of year for recaps!  Here are a couple highlights from 2023 for my Reddit browsing.

Not Final Thoughts on The Finals

 The Finals is an objective-based game where teams of players compete to "cash out" of a futuristic kill-or-be-killed game show complete with bombastic announcer.  Featuring a heavy dose of destruction (that matters) it is easily the most refreshing FPS experience I've played in a long time.  

  I knew I was in for a ride when in my first game I started the match out with a building collapsing around me and players making a mad scramble up the crumbling pieces to fight over a cashout box.  A lot of games promise destruction, but there is nothing quite like the destruction that The Finals allows for.  Destruction is as much of a strategy as coordinating movement with your team.  Objective on the floor above you?  Destroy the floor and bring it down to you.  Team defending a hardened upper floor in a building?  Bring the entire building down like a lumberjack bringing down a tree.

 To go with destruction there is also a plethora of traversal options for players (worth noting that destruction itself is a traversal option).  Grappling hooks, ziplines, wall running, invisibility grenades, and anything a creative mind can come up with like jumping on an exploding bottle and hitting it to send it off like a rocket.

 The game breaks down into three classes: light, medium, and heavy.  Light is light and mobile but are paper thin.  Medium are the support class and the main healing class, but is no chump as they are able to dish out damage. Heavy is a bulldozer; whether sledge hammering down a building or Juggernaut-style charging through walls (in fact it makes me want to say the line every time I use the charge ability).  

 Each class has access to it's own set of gadgets and primary weapons so each class can carve out its own role.  The game also allows a backup inventory that can be changed out between respawns.  The backup is not a full selection so there is decisions to be made going into matches.  This isn't that much of a concern in quick play matches but I suspect it will be a big part of competitive play.  For my casual games so far it's been nice to be able to change stuff up to try things out inside of a match instead of having to wait between matches.

 What I like most about The Finals is that it doesn't take itself too seriously.  There are so many "that doesn't make sense but I'll allow it" moments.  The moment I realized you can melee attack an exploding barrel while holding it to "prime" it's explosion like a grenade was awesome.  Seeing folks slap C4 to casino chairs to use as mobile bombs, watching someone climb a building using turrets as a ladder, and using fire bottles as rocket sleds (stand on top of them and shoot the valve to give it a whirl) are all amazing moments you don't find in other games these days.

 The shenanigans may also be what gives the game a shorter shelf life than other FPS games.  For every eye catching moment there is a "what the..." moment to go with it. Much of those moments take away from an otherwise sensible objective-based game.  The disparity will grow between players who know the game's hi-jinks and those that are just jumping in for some fun which may leave this game to just the ultra competitive crowd which would be a shame.  Matches are becoming more and more lopsided as each day passes and for those of us not interested in rank play that may end the fun sooner than later.

 Over all the game is a blast to play and since it is free to play I would encourage anyone interested to give it a try.  If anything just load up the heavy class with a sledge hammer on the practice map and enjoy destroying the buildings there.

Monday 12/11/2023 Post

 Can a defense play any worse when it matters more?  Clock managmenet? Who needs it!  Got any more gadget trick plays that don't work for that crucial 2 point conversion? Packers basically said "hold my beer" and "found out".

You owe it to yourself to watch this New World update video!

 This is hands down the best holiday event video I've ever seen for an MMORPG.  As one commenter on Reddit put it "not the update we wanted but the update we deserved"!  My hat off to the New World team putting this together!

First Win in The Finals

 What a fun FPS!  Heavy is my go to atm with the lewis gun and "smash down all things"!

Packers GTA-Style

 This just dropped and I love it!  Green Bay Packers + GTA!

Modern Storytelling

 Just a random thought for the day as I had no creative energy for any other post.  I recently re-watched Groundhog Day for the first time in decades and it was as good as I remembered it to be.  It was a delight to be able to share with my teenager as well.  One thing stuck out to me at the end of the movie: it never explains the mystery of how it all happened and that is part of what makes it such a great movie.

 I think modern story telling, especially in games, could learn a lot from Groundhog Day.  So many movies, books, and games go out of their way trying to explain the mystery.  Anyone remember the Lost television show and it's eventual attempts at explaining the great mysteries of the show?  I do and it just didn't work.  

 This doesn't mean always explaining the mystery is a bad idea. Sometimes story tellers nail it.  If you've played Bioshock there is a lot of mystery to start that game and eventually it pays off in an amazing reveal.  So it can be done right, but it so often is not or the mystery is explained when it didn't need to be.

 Brandon Sanderson is an author who I feel falls into this issue a good bit in his stories.  He painstakingly goes over details of his worlds to the point where there is little mystery left and when mystery is a big aspect of his story, such as in Elantris, the eventual explanation was so unsatisfying (really; it was just a drawing a single line!?!?!).  I still like Brandon's books, but I do wish he'd sometimes just leave the mystery to us vs a need to have everything fit neat and tidy into the Cosmere.

 So if you are an author, game writer, or screen writer please take a moment to consider why a mystery needs to be explained at all because chances are it doesn't need to be. Sometimes its better to just not know so we can enjoy the story.

Sunday 12/3/2023 Post

 The Packers hold on against the refs to beat the Kansas City Chiefs!  What a game!

Ominous Gearscore in New World!

 With New World's max gear score now 700 I keep ending up with a peculiar gear score on gear... and I don't dare salvage these items.  They stay safe and sound in my storage.

666 Gearscore!?

Black Friday/Cyber Monday Gamer Haul

 It's that time of year again where we share what we bought over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shop-a-thon.  For me I nabbed a few gamer things!

 First up was what my teenager has been waiting for: his own gaming PC.  We ordered all the parts which will make up his holiday haul.  He is also getting some hand-me-downs from my recent upgrade (GPU and PSU).  We went with an AMD build again; Ryzen 7600X CPU, 5700 XT GPU (hand me down), 2 TB NVMe SSD, and 32 GB memory.  I'd say I got great deals but it was pretty lackluster as far as deals go this year.

 Next I snagged a couple items for myself.  First I jumped on Glorious's free shipping deal to get my Model I wired mouse.  I have a Model O wired currently and it sold me on the lightweight mouse.  The only downside of the Model O for me is that it has only two side buttons.  The Model I brings three side buttons and a fourth "sniper" button (defaults to lower DPI for sniping in FPS games).  It will take a bit to retrain myself to the four buttons but so far so good and it keeps the same lightweight feel!

 I was nostalgic for some holiday season tunes ringing through the halls (home office) so am finally filling the "no speakers" gap for my home PC.  I grabbed this soundbar to fill the role.

 Lastly I surfed the board game sales and like PC parts... it felt like a down year as far as deals go.  I did end up grabbing the Arkham Horror The Card Game Revised Core Set which was at an all time low.  This was on my "want to try" list and now that I have a teenager in the family it felt like the right time to adult our co-op games.  Looking forward to giving this a whirl.

 

 

Nerf Flamethrower!?

 Nyce Gaming posted a video on Youtube discussing upcoming changes in New World that he feels will push over the firestaff + flamethrower combo over the edge.  Let us discuss indeed!

 First, some context.  I have played Firestaff/Sword and Shield in Heavy armor since New World launched over two years ago.  I am well known on Castle of Steel as "that guy that runs heavy flamethrower" and having played many arena matches against Nyce Gaming himself I can't help feel I shaped his opinion somewhat.

 The first area that Nyce touches on is how flamethrower is "one button" press and how the player doesn't run out of mana and with the right haste abilities can scoot around with the flamethrower without getting hit (note: he shows this in PvE).  This is a fair assessment of the ability but I'd ask what is different with this than infinite left click melee light attacks?  Light attacks require no resource management, are area of effect (AoE) damage, and can hit much harder than flamethrower.  Many light attack chains also apply various debuffs and DoT (damage over time) effects.

 If you consider PvE for a moment where melee is king because of the cleave AoE most ranged weapons suffer a good bit comparatively (which is why AGS made it so ranged weapons do more damage in PvE).  Again no melee user is spending a resource such as "mana" to do their damage so it is a mute point that flamethrower can be used "without losing mana".  Mana is dumb in the first place in New World if melee has no equivalent such as having to use their stamina to attack.  Also the "kiting" shown in the video is doable by any ranged weapon; nothing unique to flamethrower here.

 If you consider PvP a lot of the same points as PvE are relevant.  Again melee is out there never even having to think about managing a resource to be able to attack.  Players also stagger and stun a lot more in PvP than you experience in PvE; each of which stops flamethrower.  Also popular in PvP currently is Alacritous Punishment which is +20% damage to players with haste so having haste + flamethrower going can open you up. Flamethrower also slows the player down, even with haste, which is problematic in PvP and allows players to get away.

 The only real point made at the start here is flamethrower is one button press vs other parts of the game require more button presses/clicks.  The argument about mana is mute until such time melee also has a resource pool to worry about. 

 Next Nyce talks about "they can whip it right back out" which refers to the flamethrower upgraded ability where it can be used without a cooldown compared to most abilities that have a cooldown after being used.  Having no cooldown flamethrower requires multiple investment points in the tree which means there is opportunity cost going this route as the player cannot invest elsewhere.  There was also a 2.5s cooldown added if the player is interrupted using flamethrower.

 Further into the video Nyce starts talking about the Firestaff artifact Inferno.  In the current version of the live game this changes damage to strike (instead of fire), damage scaling off STR, +damage to targets within 8m, and has the incinerate perk locked.  In the version on PTR (assumed for next patch) the strike damage is replaced by fire damage and the incinerate perk is gone.

Inferno Live vs PTR (as of 11/27/2023)

 

 Nyce posits that this change will mean Inferno becomes the defacto best firestaff and will encourage flamethrower use.  I think this is a fair argument; the changes to inferno look very strong.  I'd argue though it is not just about flamethrower... it will be good for any firestaff player.  And more worrying than flamethrower will be firestaff/blunderbuss combo as that combo is almost always done right into the face of the opponent. 

 So I'll jump on the bandwagon with Nyce that the PTR Inferno is too strong but will argue it's less about flamethrower and more about other builds such as the blunderbuss combo that is already top dog in PvP.  The only real downside of Inferno is it can't slot a gem (gem slot is not allowed to be added). 

 Personally I don't like when artifacts offer straight up mathematically better versions of the weapon the way Inferno is doing on the PTR.  I much prefer artifacts that are designed for the player to lean into the uniqueness of the artifact.  Original Inferno with Empowering Incinerate did exactly that.  The only issue with original Inferno was the conversion to strike damage vs staying as fire damage; that completely gimped the damage.  I think keeping Empowering Incinerate on the weapon would help offset the change back to fire damage and fit better thematically.

 If Inferno goes into live as it is on PTR it will be my goal to snag one as soon as possible.  My prediction as well will be firestaff/bludnerbuss will be that much more of a problem than it is currently.  This basically is giving that combo close to guaranteed max empower cap (+50%) on the firestaff portion of the wombo combo.  If you think it hits hard now wait until it hits even harder.

 Over all I think the constant cries to "nerf flamethrower" are less about it being too strong (Nyce says as much in the video that flamethrower is not too strong) and more about folks perception of how "easy" flamethrower is compared to whatever thing they are playing as.  If flamethower gets changed in some meaningful way there will just be whatever is next on the list for these folks that is "too easy" compared to whatever left click spam they are playing.

 Again, I've played with firestaff since day one.  I played it from when it was nerfed into worthlessness all the way until now where it is in a pretty good spot for my build.  I do see where over all firestaff is probably too strong (especially the combo with blunderbuss) and that is the larger concern in my book for the PTR version of Inferno.  The issue is not flamethrower; it is just the fact that firestaff + INT attribute bonuses make it some of the best damage in the game.  Flamethrower itself is in a good spot.  The damage feels balanced and the interrupt has done a lot to get away from the "whip it back out" of the past.  You also don't see many light firestaff players using flamethrower because it does open you up to big hits which is why you are seeing more of my style of flamethrowing: in heavy!