Stabby People

Have I complained here about rogues/thieves/assassins/hunters/insertmediumarmorevasionclasshere yet?

They suck in multiplayer games. You might be surprised by this, you might not be. You might really really not be. I find that this is a thing that a wide variety of video games fail at, or at least I see them as pretty major failures. I’m not talking about Nova or the FFXIV ninja. Those things work fine because of their systems. Yes, I’m saying the stealth is fine. Piss off.

It’s the Guild Wars 2 and action games and even Destiny where the whole “agility” thing is just bad. Bad. It’s not a substitute for armor. The essence of games is give and take, back and forth. The concept of the agility character, the “don’t get hit” character, is bad for entertainment.

I don’t want to never hit you. That’s not fun for me. You don’t want to die in goddamn hit. That’s not fun for you. Somehow, this is the kinda crap that keeps getting shoved forward. I mean, that’s not all of it. I have a laundry list of things I find to be just bullshit designed about Hunters in Destiny. That’s not really the point of this post though.

This is, for once, a post of hope and inspiration! Shut up, it happens.

I had a chat with a friend today, and after meandering a bit, he came to a pretty lovely conclusion that the era of guns is the era where your agility people and their stealth and rapiers and daggers and whatever the crap matter again. Because there are no more big guys in armor that they couldn’t actually fight.

Think about it. Everyone running around not in armor. It won’t matter at that point! You can have your sneaky things, and your “warrior” types are musketeers. Not to be confused with the people with muskets. You know what I mean.

Guns, magic, stabby daggers, people with rapier and buckler dueling. It could totally work. I mean, sure, it sounds funny for tanking, but you people accepted that a bear can tank a dragon, so I think you can manage something here, right? And let’s not forget the ninja tank phenomenon of FFXI.

I’m just saying, the agility guy is a cool concept. Hell, I dabbled in rapier a bit back in college and had a blast. I mean, no, it’s not actually an agility weapon, but rule of cool as it were. Appreciate that there is a setting where it might actually make sense and not be a hideous burden on an action game.

Too bad no one will ever make it.

Stealthies, stealthies, everywhere, and Square hates mages

Final (final) Fantasy XIV

It has taken me less than 30 days to become bored with FFXIV again. There isn’t enough to do in the game that I actually care about. It’s the hunting community. I enjoyed the act of hunting, and even most of this run has been great (for hunting), but the community is falling apart again on Cactuar.

I like the general hunting community. They are courteous, active, and interested in chatter and generally being social in a medium that is designed for it. Also, there aren’t any queues for your bullshit. You just do it.

A rash of unreported kills, early pulls, and a lack of hunters has left the whole thing pretty rotten for me. Given that the only job I actually play is ninja, and that gearing up is literally a weeks-long thing, and mostly being done by a single Void Ark run each week… the incentive to carry on is weak.

The one goal I really had for this run, other than checking out the mudra changes (fantastic by the way!), was to ding 60 on black mage finally. I didn’t do that. The job is just too damn boring to level after ninja. It’s REALLY boring to level. Nothing I read about the job or continue to see about the job makes me think it is in any way going to grow more interesting.

Square has a hateful relationship toward black mages, so I knew this going in. Black magic is the bastard child of these games, and may only actually be good in VI. Summoning magic tends to be straight-up better than black magic, and frequently not usable by the same character. Not that it matters. Ifrit beats fire every time basically. I’m pretty sure in III it was better to just be a ninja and throw shuriken. Remember this, both of you people who read this blog: Square hates black mages. Poor Vivi.

 

Xenothingy something X

I was given my first introduction to a Xenoblade(s?) game today. It was the latest one. I watched a friend play it. It was horrible. That was the sum total of the experience. Actually, I discussed this at length with said friend. It’s like there are a ton of really great systems and even entire other games contained in this one. There are too many. It is pointless and overwhelming and dear god that gameplay is insanely boring.

There was a brief moment when I was tempted to actually ask to see a bit of story. Very brief. Before the commentary on the opening lore and cinematic that is referenced in a flashback more than once in the first hour of gameplay. That’s… too much bullshit.

Couldn’t we have just learned something from “Good morning, Crono”?

 

Heroes of the Stealth

I finally like stealth. Okay, that’s a dirty goddamned lie. Stealth is still an evil blight on gameplay and I have been seeing firsthand how much it changes things. I did have fun with it though.

Nova is free this week in Heroes of the Storm and I picked her up for fun after playing a lot of Cho’gall, who is absurdly fun, and the various other heroes in my roster who are more conventional. She’s a lot of fun, and the amount of silly burst you can have is awful and amazing. You’re also a weird aspect of the fight.

I have finally played enough games that I got my “dark templar vision” back and can see stealthies pretty easily. My friends who play my tanks don’t have that, and I was left in a lot of really ugly situations with enemy Nova players where I was hideously exposed. It was interesting to note that my life was much more interesting (read: difficult) when there was an enemy Nova who was watching for me as much as I was for her. At that point, it becomes a game of how well the other members of the team function without you while you wait for a chance either to kill a crucial target and run like hell, or, even better, get the other Nova killed.

In contrast, games without an enemy Nova were almost freebies to just murder people. No one actually looks for you. Despite there being a reasonable visual cue, no one will see a damn thing and you will legitimately be invisible. With burst. And an all-range satellite laser. It’s… almost mind-boggling.

The caveat, of course, is that you have zero escape mechanisms except just running like an idiot until you can cloak again. Patience is your ally. Also, tanks who know how and when to engage. Mostly though, you’re just a horrible killing machine the enemy… doesn’t even try to deal with until you kill them?

This is what gets me. I realize they could just learn to see me, but that’s still an absurd skill you have to learn for two characters in the entire game. I could probably play Nova effectively *without* stealth, but stealth makes her this awful creature that will either inflict paranoia on the enemy, or just wreck them. I’m not even a good Nova!

Okay, playing her without stealth might suck a bit, but no worse than playing Lux in LoL, and I was great at that. Full AP too, because vitality is for losers.

I’m totally saving the 10k to buy Nova.

 

 

Soccer with the Enemy

My faith in WvW was restored. I don’t know why I should be surprised. I vented my frustration about the state of things, it follows naturally that the universe should laugh at me. Who am I to complain about good things being delivered to me anyway?

I ran into a mesmer while roaming on my little guardian. Hanging out west of my borderland garrison, looking to snipe dolyaks. We had a nice scuffle and I ended up losing, because I’m not actually very good at the moment and also because holy crap mesmers are amazing right now. That’s not the good part. The good part was after.

After respawning at the garrison, I ran straight back out and waved to the JQ mesmer, now hopping around on the rocks of a nearby ruin. They waved back and hung out in the little arena it forms. I jumped across the rocks and joined them, and we proceeded to scuffle a good 7 or 8 (or more…) times. They never finished me.

I never won a fight. I got close repeatedly, after fiddling with my build repeatedly, but I never managed to down them. It was the most fun I’ve had in ages. What made the experience better was that my team would come rushing in gung-ho to save me, and as soon as I mentioned dueling they would peel off with a quick wish of good luck. Everyone was just… nice.

We actually started chatting at some point, and they were kind enough to offer advice, discuss the state of things, and mention what works when. Everything was fine and dandy until a particularly skilled Blackgate ranger came by and murdered us. Oh well!

I’ll admit, despite generally considering Blackgate to be dishonorable scum, and having that fully reinforced for most of the time I wasn’t dueling the mesmer, I did run across a couple who were interested in having a duel and not outright murdering me or anyone else just because. Of course, some other Blackgate people were just looking to kill for the hell of it and that maybe ruined the experience.

Actually, the experiences I had between mesmers, rangers, eles, thieves, and guards yesterday really made me appreciate just how… weird balance is right now. Power meditations was a little lacking a lot of the time, and I found burning meditations, even a very hastily put together build, to have a lot more oomph most of the time. The one time it doesn’t, as if you fight power mediguard.

The Blackgate gentlewoman I was attempting to scuffle with was a power mediguard that had gotten the drop on me previously in burn build, and I wanted a chance to properly fight them power to power. After the fiasco with their scum server-mates, I ended up fighting another mesmer on power because I was trying to find them, and barely lost. So I swapped back to burning and then ended up… well it was kind of all a joke.

I’m not sure where the balance is. I feel like the thing that holds me back is consistently a lack of energy. I can’t take my dip into Honor for vigor on crit now, and that’s screwing with me. I tried dropping a DPS line and picking up Honor, which I generally am disgusted with. I felt a lot more comfortable with that trait setup though. Maybe I’ll have to drop a DPS sigil in favor of Energy…

Regardless of how screwy my build is presently, or how horrible Blackgate is, I had a great time in WvW yesterday, and largely just wandering around doing solo things. I fully intend to keep at it 😀

Friendless Fantasy XIV

I am actively taking a break from FFXIV. One reason being that I’m literally not going to have a computer starting mid-August, because I’ll be on a month-long vacation to various parts of Europe. Another reason being that the intervening period of time is going to be more or less entirely about packing and figuring out the logistics of shipping all our stuff back to Seattle. Reason three is that I seriously need a break.

I’ll admit that I hit Heavensward hard. I definitely got ahead of a lot of people, got geared up thoroughly before people, and dove into Alexander day 1. One of my best friends is in that group of people that was left in the dust. I felt weird pushing forward mostly alone, he felt kinda lame only hitting 60 last week. I have the free time, he had a wedding to plan, and 3 hours of time difference made it difficult to even get time together.

Something I really appreciated while I was active in Guild Wars 2 was having a regular partner. I had someone who joined me on my WvW escapades constantly. That friend was easily the best part of the game. We all like having friends, right? Well, as much as I love my FC, it wasn’t quite the same to have this brand new leveling opportunity, and to just blaze through it solo. I definitely missed that sense of camaraderie. I’d rather play the game less and tackle things together. I didn’t realize that, and I’d kinda forgotten about the idea.

During our 1-50 run in FFXIV, my now-happily-married friend and I did most things together. We beat the story together, we did Ultima HM together, we did the HM primals together, and we leveled some alt jobs together. It wasn’t always constant, but we did a lot of it, and I think it was important. I’d rather not leave him horribly behind and have my own Tam-Tara HM happen >>

This is part of why I need a break – to reset where we are together.

There is also a fourth reason: I don’t know what to play. I’m going to keep this part brief, because I have vented my frustration over the state of ninja enough lately. It’s felt terrible, the timing is bad, and I just hate playing it now, and refuse to pay money for a service to just make the game run correctly. Maybe I’ll paladin? …or summoner? or actually keep up with black mage which is actually 51? I don’t know. The state of ninja bums me out though. It might not be quite such a bummer if most of the new skills weren’t… just stupid. After lots of testing, there is no actual use for hate skills during end game. Tanks in DPS stance can still keep hate without me doing anything. They are terrible skills. I just don’t get the point of Dream Within a Dream or Duality. They are boring, filler, and don’t seem to have any inspiration. Armor Crush I like, despite it being an admittance of failure in the ninjutsu system. Oh well. I’m sure I’ll get over it eventually.

Or play Guild Wars 2.

GW2 – Tactics Guardian

I went home to Seattle recently for a wedding. None of that is noteworthy here, except that it gave me the opportunity to go home and hit up old games my brother still has lying around. Of all the silly things I could pick up, I picked up Ogre Battle 64 and kept on with the file I started last time I was in town.

Ogre Battle 64 is a fun game. It’s a fantastic, interesting, nuanced, and long game. I love having so many characters I get to care about and develop. One of my favorite game characters to date is still the little second-in-command sorceress that stuck by me all the way from beginning to end in my initial play. Her name was Butterfly, and her element was ice. She was quite possibly the strongest member of my army despite never upgrading her class. This game was great to me.

What I didn’t recall about it from years past was that it is *cruel* if you make a mistake. It’s definitely challenging… possibly because I’m not doing any extra training… but I made a mistake that killed off two whole squads in the last mission I played. Two. Whole. Squads. Soft reset to –

– last night, when I picked up Guild Wars 2 again. I don’t know why I did it, really, since this game aggravates me as often as it makes me smile. Probably more so, actually. Anyway, I dove into my borderland to defend the realm yadda yadda. I played with some builds, tried being an ele a bit, went back to my guardian as usual, and generally tried to stick to the action. There is a lot of action going on in the T1 stuff and I’d been annoyed, VERY annoyed, that roaming is practically dead. It’s not a thing you do much of when there are multiple pockets of 5+ enemies roaming around looking specifically for stragglers to pick off while they are moving to real objectives.

So it started off frustrating, but I decided to persevere through the obnoxious tactics and just skirt everything like the ninja that my guardian definitely is not these days, and go join up with the actual army and stake out some people to follow. It was actually a blast to just run with the army and be in a loose squad of people. There were multiple commanders moving around, and multiple subsets of people, partied or not, and somewhere in there it kinda clicked.

WvW is Tactics Ogre.

I know, it’s kind of a silly idea. It made me feel a little better about the whole thing though. It made me think, yeah, I want to party with people and have a group. I want to work as a unit. Maybe I can make my build still fun, but more party-centric and have a stronger army. It was an inspirational moment. I liked it too. I really did. I liked looking at what I could do and having a real impetus to try something different.

I just wanted to share this fun story.

I’m trying to think of proper mini-games in FFXIV and I’m failing off the top of my head. There is no Crazy Motorcycle. There is no submarine. I’ve yet to see a squat contest. Or a soda guzzling contest*. No Tactics Moogle. No Tactics anything actually. No snowboarding either. I’ll go out on a limb a little and mention the lack of rafts, or magic-only towers, or party-splitting. I’m the tiniest bit sad my magitek armor doesn’t fire/ice/lit/cure beam, but I can probably let it go.

The point is that there is a lot of MMO fighting pew pew pew and a decent amount of clicking things (Oh Halatali HM, I still think you’re silly), but where the hell are the random fun things? Where is my opera, damn it?

Which is also to say that FFXIV is fantastic and amazing and I have a ton of fun with it (when it isn’t lagging my ninjutsu), but there is a certain silliness that has come to be sorta standard in FF that I can’t quite grasp here. I’ll say that Hildibrand has the feeling right, but there’s more to it than that. I’ve yet to fake sword fight in a play. I can probably survive not knee-jerk hitting X to dodge lightning. Give me a ShinGARLEAN parade, maybe?

I will say that I love having Triple Triad around, even if it is maybe too easy to acquire cards and the tourneys are a little silly, but I love that it is included and that you can challenge other people. Even the silly games at the Gold Saucer actually do it for me in this regard, just a little. Until this really pops up somewhere in story, or dungeons, or really just become something you can go DO (snowboarding mountains in W. Coerthas! Come on!) I think I’m going to miss that feeling just the tiniest bit.

Oh well 🙂

*if you know the reference, you get a cookie!

Red Magic

Red Mage came up again somewhere in a Reddit thread dedicated to reminding us all that S-E will add no new jobs to FFXIV during the course of 3.0. Every time this comes up, there is always the discussion of what it would do anyway, and how it would have to pick a role and shouldn’t be a single role and blah blah blah and then everyone who likes it puts a shout-out for what role it would be.

I’m slightly confused by the inability of some people to see Red Mage working. It would need some kind of support for white magic, some kind of violent magic, and some kind of stabbing people in the face. Melee… harmful magic… support magic. If you look at it purely from *what it does*, effectively, that job already exists.

It’s Summoner.

Seriously. It’s Summoner. Take Ifrit-egi, the wealth of nonsense damage spells, and the battle rez and never-used physick, and you have the stabbing, blasting, supporting trifecta in a completely different aesthetic package – which makes a lot of sense given that Summoner moved from a Black Mage+ to a White Mage+ in later games. It’s a sort-of WHM with nuking a la Yuna and Garnet, pushed even further toward Summoning and DPS.

So what would Red Mage be? The melee version of Summoner. There you go. That’s really it.

Okay, it’s not THAT simple, but I think it would work really easily as a melee DPS if you look at it this way, and it could even get fun about. For instance, instead of the double cast stuff, give them a trait (like that ninja nonsense with the falling and the running) called Fast Cast, or even Haste and give it this effect: spells now function like weapon skills. Red Mage can now use spells as combo actions! That would be hot, right? Stab-BOOM-ZAP-STAB. You could also cross-class something like Thunder or Cure and it could actually fit into your rotation in a fairly normal way potentially. Since S-E has complete say over design, they could even add actions that combo off of those abilities! Yes, you’ll take those cross-class. Does anyone actually NOT take Swiftcast? No. Let’s ignore the false choices and accept that being able to use Thunder and combo into an awesome sword maneuver would be fantastic. Enthunder re-imagined as a cool sword maneuver instead of a flat, boring buff skill? Or maybe as both? That would be hot.

I’ll admit, I’m still less solid on what you give this thing for support. Looking at MCH and BRD, it seems like it wouldn’t be remiss to mirror skills from someone else, like Summoner. Rez? Sure. Heal? Sure. I actually like the idea of bringing back Dia and making it a line of healing attacks that do something and provide some kind of protection buff or small regen effect or something cool and groovy for your party on use. Balancing this to not make healers obsolete (like it effectively did in FF1 XD) would be tricky, but that’s what the professionals are for!

Anyway, I just thought it would be fun to bring this up since Red Mage is *awesome* and I too would love to see it come in for 4.0. Gotta keep the dream alive, right?

Nexus, Nael, Ninja

WildStar didn’t do it for me as a subscription game. I bought the box and I played it for a while, but it was a long, grindy experience. It takes a long time to reach anywhere that feels significant, and I never even saw a dungeon. By the time I got a house, everything was so complicated and out there that I couldn’t countenance playing as often as I would need to to make the most out of it while feeling okay about the sub.

With WildStar going free to play, I’ve already started installing again and intend to jump into the trial and re-acquaint myself with it. It don’t know if it’s something I can devote to the way I did Guild Wars 2 or Final Fantasy. It’s definitely something I would love to play with more though. The combat was really entertaining, and I still haven’t tried a dungeon! I even enjoyed the PvP when I gave it a chance. I’ll also say this – there are few games that make me appreciate stealth as a skill, and WildStar did that for me. Stalker was just so much fun to play! The only part of the experience really in the way was the questing. Is that bad?

I don’t actually know where to start now though. I guess gather friends and read up and see what’s changed. It’s a lot to absorb, and a long-term experiment. The game isn’t free to play until fall, so I’m just gathering info and figuring things out. I’ll probably say more when I’ve played around a little.

As an additional note, another problem I had with the game personally was that I wasn’t able to really cultivate a community while I was playing. I had one or two interested partners, but that was about it – and they didn’t share my schedule much of the time. Adventuring is lonely 😦

Final Fantasy

In other news, I have a static in FFXIV. This is really the first time I’ve gotten a real group like this and tried to tackle something difficult in a game. It’s a little weird to actually have set gaming time. Commitments usually chafe, but I’m okay with this. Maybe because I want to get through Coil? We aren’t a full group yet though. We have people from other raids and we’re kinda filling things in. Progress is still being made though!

We are on Turn 9 of Bahamut’s Coil, aka Turn 4 of the Second Binding Coil of Bahamut. Or something like that. Honestly, I think it’s a silly fight until you get to the second half. It’s almost not really a fight until then, and it’s not nearly as insane as I thought it would be. Playing through it helps quite a bit. The fight continues what I think of as the trend for Final Fantasy XIV’s “difficult” – awareness.

Turn 9 is so heavily choreographed that it feels like a couple attempts (at staying awake) are all that is needed to get to the next phase. If you do the same thing every time, you will actually get the same results. The first half feels very trivial now, having devoted a couple nights to trying it out. This was, I believe, my third night trying it, and we are consistently hitting final phase at this point.

The final phase is fun. Seriously. I’m not looking forward to marking divebombs, like I apparently am going to, but there is so much to watch! Debuffs, ground marks, blah blah blah. It’s entertaining to try and mix all of that around. The divebombs will add another fun level of paying attention. It’s also worrying.

Where is this game going to go with fights? If T9 is one of the big markers for difficulty, and it’s mostly just from a little coordination and paying attention to what’s going on… how much can we reasonably be given to pay attention to and coordinate? Especially with the heavy choreography style that S-E seems to be favoring for the game, I can’t see this getting much more difficult, and it feels like the only reason we don’t fly through T9 is that we just get caught up fighting and stop paying attention. It doesn’t sound interesting for what makes the fight difficult, but that’s kind of it.

The design team has provided a wide array of fights so far, which makes me think they can definitely come up with some grand ideas that will be different and still engaging. I’ve just noticed this one trend and feel like this has to be the limit.

Looking Heavensward

I haven’t really gone through an expansion before apparently. I didn’t play WoW until BC was out, and I didn’t put that much into the game. Guild Wars 2 hasn’t expanded yet, and um… yeah, those are the other big ones. So I’m really excited for FFXIV!

I’m excited to see how much they really branch out from A Realm Reborn. I’m also super excited for flying. Final Fantasy needs flying in my opinion. I want my own airship sooooooo much. Also, the hints at warring triad are the best things ever. I care so much less about everything that is not related to FFVI. The hint of FFVI overshadows all things. Magitek mount for life, yo. I can’t put everything I am looking forward to in here, so I’ll move on to a more interesting topic.

Having read over what we know of the changes to ninja in Heavensward… I’m cautiously optimistic. There isn’t that much changing, which is nice. The things that *are* changing… could be good or bad.

Ninja is getting more positioning requirements added to skills. Positional skills don’t sound fun. They don’t actually make the gameplay more complex, they really just take power away from you. That’s my view anyway. moving around the target while fighting isn’t difficult in the slightest. I could see maxing DPS on Turn 9 being insanely easy even with positioning involved. The boss and the tank don’t move that much. For a lot of fights, for a lot of dungeons, you get tanks doing weird things, or trying to figure things out, and bosses that squirrel around to throw things all over the place, plus AoEs. It does not look fun to me. Am I supposed to run all the way around to what used to be the front to keep going with DPS? Because that’s… um… silly. Silly and pointless and why does ninja need it if monk already has it and dragoon has given it up to a large degree? What is the value in making ninja more like the others when a lot of people liked it for the difference? Also, I see half as many melee DPS as I do ranged. I’m lucky to see 1 melee per team in the Crystal Tower these days. It’s a little concerning. Adding this particular change to the job that represented not dealing with this nuisance… sounds silly. The big consolation is probably…

Ninjutsu. Ninjutsu isn’t changing. Ninja is getting some skill or another that extends the timer on Huton, meaning less 3-step ninjutsu casting and more fuma shuriken. Let’s be honest here. 3-step ninjustu always make your gcd late. 2-step ninjutsu basically always make it late. Fuma is a widely accepted substitute for raiton, meaning ninjutsu is about as complicated as mug for most of the time you use it. I can understand why S-E did this. They can’t fix the fact that ninjutsu feels wrong and clearly can’t happen as quickly as intended. This is their way of admitting defeat and trying to make it better. It also, unfortunately, makes it a little boring. I’m not going to say huton-suiton-fuma-repeat was that interesting, but if I only have to remember suiton for most of the fight, it’s going to become a *very* stupid system. It makes it easier to just use doton over and over and never have to refresh huton, but that’s also not that interesting. I think I just don’t like this decision because it’s making the job simpler, and not more rewarding. If actually getting the refresh is based on positioning… it may be the breaking point for me.

I know it probably shouldn’t be, but the two points so far are not part of what makes ninja interesting in any way, and actively works against what was enjoyable about it. Ruining that, while not addressing how poorly refreshing DE, SF, and mutilate times out along with how ninjutsu doesn’t work as intended… it’s not the same job.

On the plus side: I actually like the enmity skill. This skill, plus goad, means the team can push their limits and do whatever is necessary to just make the fight go faster, and you can make sure the tank has resources and keeps hate. These are weird abilities, but powerful. No, goad does not see a lot of use outside long fights or big AoE pulls, but for those long, obnoxious fights when the tank needs to throw out everything they have, yes, it’s very useful. I can see this skill being used early to help establish hate and keep DPS pumping. I can see it being used to make the tank a back-up for grabbing adds, and to help manage threat when one of your tanks bites it or something. It’s situational, but it is a solid skill.

Then there is the weird one: the 3-step attack thing I have yet to see real details for. I have no clue what this is, and without details it sounds like just another attack, which um… k? Hopefully it has some interesting properties! Otherwise maybe it’s like… ninja’s version of jump? >>

Soooo um… yeeaaah ^^0  That kinda ran away from me there. Maybe I’ll go actually get work done now…

Daydreams Lost

I used to daydream. I actually used to daydream a lot. I’m not sure how I learned anything in school. I made up elaborate stories in my head about all the people in my life, about cartoon characters, about more or less anything. I used to seek out fanfiction because it meshed so well with what I liked doing myself, and I enjoyed seeing what other people thought.

I don’t do that much now, and certainly not to the same degree. I can’t blame other interests – I consume media as much as I ever did, really. I guess I just don’t come up with it as much now. Sometime in high school I started hating everything I made myself. It was hard to accept what I made had as much validity as what anyone else did. I know I haven’t really gotten over that feeling.

It’s funny to look back on those feelings now. I can say that I really wanted to be a different person than I’ve ended up being now. I don’t know if that’s good or bad necessarily. I understand who I actually am better now. Is that reason to stop looking at who I wanted to be? Who I still want to be maybe?

I like starting over. I like it in games, I like the idea of it in life as much as possible. All the mistakes I make, I want to learn from, and then wipe them away as much as possible. I want to move to new places, meet new people, and secretly want to drop the old ones. There is too much memory in the world now about who people “are”, and I want the chance to grow and be someone else. I want to be someone else now even 🙂

That is not to say that I dislike who I am. It’s more that I’m a fan of second chances, and it’s hard to actually get that in life. It’s also hard to want to actually take risks with other people and put myself out there, because I well know how bad things can be if they fall apart.

All of this feels like the same idea to me. A desire to grow into someone different and have new experiences, and to be able to do something different. I want it for myself, and for everyone really. I like seeing other people grow, and I want to give everyone a chance.

Is that something that can happen now in the world? Does the internet make that difficult? Frankly, I didn’t know this blog was still here. I thought I had deleted it and was going to start a new one. I’m bored, embarrassed, and annoyed by my old posts. This is probably why I didn’t have a blog before ^^0

Complaining about my characters or something

This is something that bothers me about MMORPGs after playing an awful lot of single player RPGs. Actually, this just pertains to any RPG that lets you design your character, and the mental processes that usually go with it.

My character’s race matters entirely too much. What are these people like? What do they dress like? What is iconic for them? Do I want to be iconic? Do I want to be counter-iconic? If I just go for something unique, does that even say anything or do I just become a little faceless? Why does this feel influential even when it has zero bearing on anything in the game?

I find it difficult to really be grounded in my characters in an MMO. FFXIV tries very hard, I think, but somehow being an actual adventurer by trade, fully sanctioned by a higher government, actually isn’t as interesting to me as I thought it would be. I always liked the idea of just being someone who is on an adventure, or is an adventurer, but it’s so tied into the FFXIV system that it almost feels a little cheap. Maybe it’s just the 1.0 weirdness. I don’t really know.

Thus far though, I don’t get the same kind of enjoyment from MMO characters that I do from solo RPG characters. Hell, I had more attachment to one of my Ogre Battle 64 sorceresses than I do to most of my GW2 characters. Butterfly was awesome though. I probably shouldn’t use her for comparison.

Or maybe that’s the point? That character was really memorable. My GW2 characters really don’t end up that way. Maybe I’m just bad at this? I generally have issues with characters and ideas I create myself. They don’t feel like they have real roots anywhere. Maybe if I write a book someday and lots of people like it and share an affinity for the things I thought up, then maybe it will start taking life. Until that ridiculous time period in an alternate reality future though, I am having difficulties.

I don’t want to say that trying to RP would help me. It probably won’t. Or maybe it would? The problem seems to be voice. Or maybe that voice is expected? I always did like silent protagonists. My characters don’t have noticeable voice or personality, despite having dialog with an awful lot of people. Actual spoken dialog even.

Maybe I need to just go run some jumping puzzles and have fun…