Staying Motivated for Starfield

 For Blaugust 2023 "staying motivated" week I also wanted to touch on Starfield as it is right around the corner (8/31 for early access, 9/5 for regular folks).  The game is shaping up to be a once-in-a-lifetime launch and every passing day requires more and more motivation to be ready for it!

  Outside of the fact that Bethesda is a huge name in the gaming world what caught my attention most about Starfield is the scope.  There are other games like, No Man's Sky, that compete on scope but for me the ship sailed on No Man's Sky with its subpar launch (though all reports are now it is a really great game with lots of updates).

 Seeing the early gameplay trailers and deep dives on systems for Starfield I was blown away by things like building your own ship module by module only to be followed up by "oh and you can collect your own crew to have on the ship".  Then you can take your starship to a thousand different planets (honestly once these games get past like 10 planets it doesn't matter if its 1,000 or 100,000).  On top of this there will be fully fledged storyline!

 Then there are things like building bases and factories to make you stuff. There is resource gathering and combat.  All of it affected by a planet's gravity and other environmental variables.  Honestly the only thing that caught me off guard that is not included in the game is ground vehicles but I can let that slide if I can just hop in my starship and fly around a planet.

 I am trying to control my hype here.  This is going to be a massive launch and I expect problems; no doubt some interconnected online service the game relies on will hiccup.  Additionally it is a solo game with no multiplayer and my history is I fizzle out on solo games (but surely Starfield will be different).  So I need to keep myself motivated because I really, really want this game to be everything it is being hyped up to be as it looks very, very fun.

Staying motivated in New World (Gear Reset)

 Making an audible for Blaugust 2023's "stay motivated" week and swapping from my original plan to cover my Steam backlog.  Instead I am going to talk about New World and how I am staying motivated in the face of the pending gear reset.  The developers have yet to detail that gear reset, but we are getting drips of information in each update.  Knowing it is coming and lacking the details to go with it makes it very hard to stay motivated to play currently.  What exactly are we working for if it will be made irrelevant in a month's time?

 For me the answer to the "what keeps you motivated in New World?" question is simple: completing stuff.  New World has some vertical progression with it's expertise, gear score, and upgrade system but that is all behind me at this point.  There are many horizontal progression paths for me to work on now.

Ultimate Trophies

 This is the big one.  There are 9 ultimate trophies in the game to get and each one requires copies of each major trophy in that category (crafting, gathering, and combat) and a crafting component that costs an arm and a leg (45,000 gold + 100,000 faction tokens).  I now have 8 out of 9 of them and I ran out of arms/legs a while ago.

 What fascinates me is that I don't even craft but here I am knocking out the ultimate crafting trophies.  Just. To. Have. Them. In case I do want to craft.  The major trophies are fine but require you to teleport to all of your houses to change out trophies for each craft you want to do.  Ultimate trophies combine them together and thus remove the need to zoom around changing out trophies.  Soon I'll never have to ever think about changing trophies around in my house.  I will have all the ultimate trophies and be done!

 I need approx 30k gold and 80k faction tokens which I hope to finish out this week.

Crafting Gear Sets

 Crafting trophies are great but in order to hit end game gear score (590+) items in crafting you must also have the crafting gear sets.  The gear pieces drop from various named enemies all over the world or can be bought on the market.  I set a threshold of 3,000 gold.  If it was cheaper than that then I bought it; otherwise it was off to farm.

 I actually enjoy farming in New World.  I am aided by ample time to AFK back and forth to kill the named spawns.  I probably wouldn't do it if I had less play time.

Heartrunes

 Lastly on the horizontal progression is getting all the heartrunes in the game.  I actually only have a few and only a couple of them upgraded.  This will be where I change my effort over to once I am done with ultimate trophies.  These are also perfect "grind" objectives (except you have to complete an expedition 3x to get basic heartrunes to start with).  For example the brutal grasping vines required me to get 3,000 thorny vines from briars.  That was fun (not).  

 But I embrace the grind. Some folks Netflix and chill; I grind and chill.

 Other Stuff

 Then there is other stuff.  

With transmog now released there is a ton of skins to go out and collect.

I still love playing Outpost Rush and PvP Arenas and they give great rewards so there is always a new build to be looking towards.  I am eyeing up a heavy sword n shield/spear build along or a BB/IG medium build.

Then there is the company I hang out with; lots of returning players to help out.

Also at some point I really need to clean up my houses; so much furniture dumped everywhere.

My New World Transmog

 I finished out my first transmog set in New World today.  Here is my "wheelchair mage" (Heavy armor with Firestaff/Sword and Shield).  

• Helmet, legs, and boots are Fire Lord
• Chest and gloves are Expedition Captain (Arisen Commander skin name).  
• Sword is Falling Star
• Shield is Starfish defender
• Firestaff is Lodestar Lantern

Front with sword/shield out

Back with weapons stowed

Front with firestaff

My New World Day 1 Transmog (almost)

 This is my first (almost) transmog for New World.  And of course realizing now I don't have the gloves, pants, or helmet unlocked so off to The Depths to farm materia or wait for it to come back on mutation rotation.

Oddly enough the skin is from the Expedition Captain's set, but the skin name is under Arisen Commander

Steam Backlog: Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite

 For Blaugust 2023's "stay motivated" week I told myself I was going to play games in my Steam backlog, but then New World decided 8/21 was the day of days to drop transmog. So no backlog games played today, but since we were still in the Bs and next on the list was Bioshock it still qualifies as a game I can cover in my Steam Backlog series!

  Bioshock is one of my all time favorite games and those that know the game probably can guess why.  Even all these years later I hesitate to spoil it for anyone.  It's a must play!  Bioshock was more of an experience than it was a game, but that is not to say the gameplay wasn't great.  This game was an amazing marriage of story telling, game play, and that final satisfying twist.

 While Bioshock was more of an experience its successor, Bioshock 2, was more of a game.  The story featured some interesting choices and like the first game I'd rather not spoil them.  There was more game here as well but I am not sure it was for the better.  Some of the "more game" took away from the story aspects of the game but it was still a great game and story.  There was also a multiplayer mode.  Why?  I don't know. It was not needed and I didn't enjoy it.

 

 The most recent Bioshock entry is Bioshock Infinite and marked the series departure from the deep sea to the skies.  Like the first two the story elements of the game are best left unspoiled.  The underlying world that they are building is just fun and the expansion into floating cities in the sky was well done.  

 Bioshock was more experience.  Bioshock 2 was more game.  Bionshock Infinite was more of both game and experience.  Infinite is one of the few games where I feel like story telling and action combat are done well together.  And there is plenty of action in infinite with mechanics that on paper seem impossible, but the game somehow pulls it off.  

 Over all if I had to stack rank the games it would be:

• Bioshock Infinite
  
• Bioshock 1
  
• Bioshock 2

 Bioshock 1 is a must play, but if you've played it you know why you likely aren't going to play it much more than that first play through.  Bioshock Infinite however is fun to jump back into as there is so much fun to be had and different ways to traverse the game.  1,2, or Infinite - all of them are worth your time!

 This post is part of my running series: My Steam Backlog (see all MySteamBacklog tagged posts).

A sensible view on New World transmog tokens

 New World is launching it's transmog system tomorrow and with it there is an uproar in the community.  Tokens for transmog are approximately $2.50 USD each.  Additionally players can gain them via the season pass (free track and premium track).  The New World devs also included a 1% chance to loot them from elite chests up with the caveat of you can only loot one per week.  

 It is that 1 per week / 1% drop chance that has everyone up in arms.  I could write out more thoughts on it but I snagged this summary from Reddit that will stand as my response.  Anyone reading this that still thinks AGS is being unfair is just looking to argue for arguments sake.