The Robot Apocalypse Is Upon Us

Careful, he getting huffy and puffy and may blow your house down

I came to realize the singularity (moment when robot intelligence surpasses humans and rise to be our overlords) has come. It was a gentle thing, a small moment that most people would think, “Hey, you’re just being a sore loser.” But no, I say, listen to my wisdom!

I was playing the Jackbox Party Pack 4 on Steam with a couple of friends. The games were innocent enough, the kind you wouldn’t think world ending prophecies would occur. We played the ‘Survive the Internet’ game first. Big mistake. Since it was just us three, the game decided to throw in a robot player to even the odds. Long story short, the AI was beating me on the scoreboard, making my prompts look the fool. But then the game sort of froze and we decided to move onto the next game. The computer probably had to pause so it could plot our demise.

We had fun playing a couple other games free from the influence of Skynet meddling in our affairs, and then decided to end it on ‘Monster Seeking Monster.’ I forgot it was a pretty awkward game where you must chat to each other to try and get one another to go on dates. Not exactly a game to play between a bunch of friends, but behold, the game threw in a robot player again. I had the bright idea to see who the robot would choose, and we all tried to date the bot. Three rounds later and not once did that s.o.b. pick me. The nerve! That’s it, everyone. Game Over! The robots know how to play us as fools and relish in our misery.

What else could it have been? That RNG just wasn’t in my favor? I’m too good for that!

You may also be going, hey wait, you haven’t posted anything in over 1 year and 10 months, why now? My answer is… robot uprising! Yeah, why else would I post this? To guilt someone to give me sympathy for being a sore loser? Pfft, it was the uprising.

Either way, stay safe out there.

-Tyrannodorkus

Ark: Breeding System [UPDATE]

[UPDATE] I made an important update to this post down below. My perception on how to feed the baby and how long was skewed by very early experience. I’ve played with the system more and have a better grasp on how it works. [END UPDATE]

My Trike family are now the proud parents of a newborn male baby trike. This adorable little muffin’s name is Kree and packs a huge appetite. I’m constantly looking for berries to feed the hungry little fella, but his future's looking grim.

I have to say I put in a lot of time into hatching this little bugger, keeping the egg within the right temperature. I would stay up all game night and read it stories and sing to it. Now that  it finally hatched, first thing I noticed was how quick he ate berries and how little he would hold. I’m at the stage of feeding him by hand.

So far the mechanic is unbalanced to me, like it was meant to be done by a very large tribe with a big portion of them dedicated towards raising babies. Each hatchling requires constant attention and a constant stream of food. So I was curious how long it would take to raise this baby until it would eat from a food trough.

ALMOST 5 HOURS?!?1?

That’s a lot of time for someone to shove berries down just one trike’s throat. Not to mention another would need to go out and grab those berries unless you spent a lot of time collecting and storing them in a preservation box. I believe the trike was eating a berry every 5 seconds. Doing some math, that would mean I would need about 3,360 berries until this goober would eat from a trough. I would need about 34 stacks of berries and 3 preservation boxes to hold them in.

From the looks of this system, the developers wanted to make breeding a large tribe only thing, which I would have to disagree with. Unless these bred dinos are super dinos once they are fully grown, then this system needs rethinking because I was looking forward to being a dino breeder, and this system is out of my time investment.

I love my little trike, it’s so cute and cuddly, but I don’t think I’ll be able to keep him alive with such an investment needed. I’ve lost dino’s before and was saddened by it, but this is going to be harder on me since I’m going to actively let it starve. I don’t have a way to stuff him in a preservation box until I can feed it more berries like I did when he was an egg. So what would have to change to make this system more friendly to small tribes and solo players like myself?

Food System

From what I am experiencing, the food system is where the deal breaker is. I can’t sit around staring at an inventory system for almost 5 hours for one baby. I have other things I like to do, such as gathering materials, building up my base, and general exploring. I would also like to take care of other babies if I could.

[UPDATED] The food system is very deceiving. At first when I was trying it out, it felt like I would be glued to the little tike (trike too) for the whole 5 hours while he was growing up to be a juvenile. Well, I was planning on letting Kree kick the bucket, but when I logged in, I looked into his puppy trike eyes and I said I have to at least give it a shot. At first the fella could only hold 4-5 berries, but as time went on, he was able to hold a little more. After about 20 minutes, he was able to hold on to about 20 or more berries. Here’s the turning point, since he would eat a berry every 4-5 seconds, this gave me time to go check on some other parts of my camp. When I got back, he could hold some more berries and that extended the timer a little more. I’m about an hour or two in and noticed he was increasing inventory about .01 per 3 seconds. Some math showed that he would reach 10% of max inventory in about 3 hours, much sooner than the chart suggested. Right now, I can effective get around 20 minutes of me time with mejoberries to run off and harvest more with the father trike and have him stand by holding on to all the berries I need. This feels a lot more tolerable and open up to small tribes and solo players. Right now some of that me time is going into updating this post, but I still like my suggestions so I’ll keep them up in case the devs take a peek here. [END UPDATE]

My first suggestion is have the “feed by hand” shorten to around 2-10 minutes depending on the intelligence of the creature until you can teach it to eat from a trough, or from their parent. This still has you spending a lot of attention towards its first few moments. After that, you are now free to spend more time elsewhere while they are able to feed themselves. [UPDATE] The current system feels pretty similar to this. After about 10 minutes, I can start doing other chores around the camp [END UPDATE]

Another suggestion is let them eat until they are full, and then let the food meter tick down faster than an adult, but slower than it is now to give the player enough time to deal with other matters. I would suggest about an hour before they’ll need to feed them to full again. That would mean I would need to check my trike around 5 times before it would be able to eat from a trough. That feels like a far more reasonable time investment. That would also mean I can deal with real life matters if I was playing on a server that I couldn’t pause or stop.

Either of these would make the amount of food bearable as well since I can go get food as I need it instead of storing a ton and have to take into account spoil times. The food system is also where the largest risk is involved of losing your investment because of the large time scale (discussed below) and how easy you could lose hours of play time.

Incubation

The next suggestion is how incubation works. I love how I need to incubate the eggs, by actually keeping them in an environment at the right temperature. This makes the game feel more real since I’m not just throwing it in the incubation box or some special structure I would have to make first so I can complete a boolean check if I can incubate the egg or not. This system adds depth, but there is an issue.

These eggs are just too darn fragile at the temperature they ought to be at. Honestly, how do these eggs hatch out in the wild? The system is currently too precise to hatch an egg on its own, but I hope it’s because it’s still in development. I don’t mind going around and dropping the egg in locations to incubate it manually, but I’d like for a way for them to do so naturally as well.

My suggestion is to come up with dino nests that spawn near protective parents. These natural nests made of thatch would act like a foundation structure that will keep the temperature more in check. I could also sneak in some eggs of my own if I didn’t have the engram to make a man-made one. This would have to be balanced out to some species allowing for “adopting” non-owned or non-same-species eggs, and some that would destroy or eat them. This would also give the Oviraptor something more to do and look for. This means I would also have to come back around the time they hatch and retrieve them before the parents notice.

Timescale

Honestly, I can handle the timescale because I find raising young to maturity should take a while. From the chart I’m reading, I’m in for a 49 hour and 10 minute investment to raise my baby trike to maturity. This doesn’t scare me away, however I find it at odds with the taming system. Currently, to tame a trike at official max level of 120 would take normal berries 5 hours and 15 minutes according to this calculator. That is a huge difference when breeding the dino you want and just taming it, this gives tamers a huge advantage.

I don’t know if the devs already have a balance for this since I’m still trying to keep from reading ahead of this game. I want to learn as I go.

If there isn’t a balance, then my suggestion is let dinos plop down more than one egg at a time. If I could raise a herd instead of a single child, that would let me keep up with tamers. I saw that eggs could spawn twins or triplets, but I would rather have multiple eggs to take care of.
 

Homeless MMO veteran LFG

OMG, that's me! I should really clean up...

With EverQuest Next now kicking the bucket before it was allowed to stand on its own two feet, I’m now free to walk aimlessly. I was on board with Daybreak thinking they were close to a sure bet with getting out the next EQ game. Even though they aren’t backed by Sony any longer and loss some prominent faces from their team, they have the strength of two previous MMO games and countless other video games, trading card games, stories, toys, soundtracks, and who knows what else fueling the fandom to ensure the company that there is a market for a third in the series.

When they first announced EQN, I was excited to have a modern game with my favorite IP attached to it. I remember starting out around 2003 with the Legacy of Ykesha expansion. That expansion introduced Frogloks as playable characters. Since then, my love for EverQuest only got stronger and eventually I ‘hopped’ on over to EverQuest 2.

Even though I have so much love for EverQuest, I do get tired of it. I dabble in EQ2 from time to time, but I got a lot out of it already and kind of looking for something new. EQN was suppose to be that new hook to really bring me back.

When it comes to games, I’m either hooked on the story, or breaking down / mastering the mechanics. When I have neither to do any more, I slowly get bored and move on to another game.

For many people, social aspects keep them playing long after they are bored of the game. Since I have commitment issues, and a slew of social skill ineptitude weighing me down, I tend to shy away from building connections in game. I'm not proud of this. As a matter of fact, I would like to be part of a group, but I have the hardest time including myself, which I’m usually left out.

Since EQN is no longer on the horizon, I’m still drifting from game to game. Currently I’m on the hunt for my next MMO home, but money is a little tight for me, so I’m sticking to Free-to-Play games and ones I’m already established in. Currently I’m adventuring in the beautiful lands of Guild Wars 2 again, but I’m already feeling the sameness set back in. Soon, it will be time for me to mosey on to the next game or go dormant again in single-player purgatory.

Wildstar looks good from what my fellow blogger Chestnut has shown on her YouTube channel. Though it looks like Wildstar is having some trouble too, as of late.

I still have a lot of story to play through in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but I kind of need a subscription going in order for me to enjoy the game and money is tight at the moment.

I could go back to Star Trek Online and Neverwinter Online, maybe play around their player made stuff. I actually have a lot of fun with those. Speaking of Neverwinter, I’m getting interested in trying Dungeons and Dragons Online. Not sure how solo friendly the game is, but I might give it a try.

Lastly, I could look to smaller games instead. Get more involved with indie games or older games I’ve missed.

Anyone have a good suggestion or want a hitchhiker or to drag me into their game? I can work for gold, credits, tokens, crafting materials, or even just some crafted food if you have it.

You can also listen to me lament about the closure as well below.

EverQuest Next Canceled

If you haven’t heard the news yet, EverQuest Next has been officially canceled.

I’m so angry right now. This was my most anticipated game and it’s gone. There was so much promise and it was going to be a more modern version of the EverQuest franchise. The official response was “Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun.” That’s right, they gave us the same excuse that Blizzard gave us for Titan. I would like to know more on why it wasn’t fun. Were they just mimicking their previous games and finding it to be boring? Did the new stuff they wanted to do not work together? Could they not find a proper balance between systems? Or are there more reasons that they aren’t sharing?

The biggest thing I’m mad about now are those two or three bone heads that was “predicting” the game to fail from day one and become vaporware are now sitting smug. I’ve been burned by SOE before, but I came around and could enjoy their games again. Some people just wouldn’t let go some of the mistakes and want to see SOE, now Daybreak, fail at everything. I just can’t get behind that.

I’m actually running through a lot of emotions right now over this news and don’t want to get into name blaming, or absurd accusations on how Daybreak is running things. Instead I’m just going to mourn in peace and wait to see if Landmark can ever pick up the slack and become something more than a test bed for mechanics.

I can’t speak for the whole community, but Daybreak, you really hurt me on this. I was already sitting on the fence since last year about you guys and now I’m feeling rejected. EverQuest Next was my only reason for waiting around and now that’s gone. All I can ask of you now is to just keep active. I’ll check on you from time to time as I’m done sitting on the fence.

EDIT: Made a change to my second paragraph to make clear that not everyone that could see this coming are bone heads. There was like a small handful of people I've read that seemed to be very angry at SOE. I don't want to down anyone that could actually see this coming honestly because I was blind to it.

The Life of the MMO

I’ve been seeing, off and on, a subject being talked about over the years that irritates me, “The Death of the MMO.” I’m very protective of my favorite genre to the point that I’ve decided to throw my own little rant about it. My own little Death of the “Death of the MMO.” I’ve even called my post today “The Life of the MMO” to thumb my nose at it.

Doing a Google search on the subject, many major sites tend to show up; PCGamer, GameSpot, Eurogamer, etc. The only people I don’t see talking about it are the ones who make it their jobs to eat, breath, and live MMO’s - Massively OP and Massively-that-was. I did a search on the topic for both and came up empty. True champions of the genre, in my book.

The MMO genre is all encompassing, so it confuses me why people think it’s failing. Just about everything and the kitchen sink is in an MMO from other genres, plus some stuff that isn’t. If this genre fails, it’s because no one likes games anymore. But the essence of this post is not about death, but life - as a wise god of thunder once put it.

MMOs have been around since the 70’s, meaning it’s been around longer than many of us have been alive. These early MMOs were in the form of MUDs or multi-user dungeons. Even though they didn’t have millions of players at the time, their frameworks were in place to make them an MMO in my book. A game that plays online with other players that allows all players to work on personal goals independent from each other, while allowing for them to interact and help each other to work on the same goals. This is what separates MMOs from lobby shooters to me, or online cooperative games like Borderlands. By my definition, I see games like League of Legends and Call of Duty as not being MMOs because they are all basically working on a single goal, dependent on each other’s actions, while games like H1Z1 and Guild Wars 1 as being MMOs because they allow for personal goals independent from other players.

Years ago, when I started playing EverQuest, the term MMO was widely unheard of. Even when I talked about them with other gamers, they’d have to question what it is. That is until World of Warcraft brought the term into almost every gaming household. People who’ve never played an MMO have heard of WoW.

Also since Everquest, there were only a handful of MMOs available to play - like Ultima Online. Again, nowadays there are bookoos of MMOs out, and more in development on the horizon, and even more being localized across different countries. Same for the population for these games.

Games back in the day were healthy with a few ten thousand to just a couple hundred thousand players in them. Today, many large games host many hundred thousand, to over millions of players. I’m sure there is plenty of overlap of the population between games, but that is mostly because of the free-to-play monetization that’s taken hold of the genre.

The genre’s monetization is, and has always been, the genre’s weakest point. With most other games, you buy the box and can continue to play that game for as long as the medium is physically capable of playing it. That means if I bought a copy of Tomba! and a playstation 1 or 2 that still works and can read it, I can play it right now (or if I download it and an emulator to run it). Later, there would be a sequel made that you’d buy to continue playing that game in another story. Sequels later became DLC which added onto the original game, but all this was still a buy and play for as long as you can monetization.

MMO monetization is much different than what most gamers are used to. Going from a buy and play monetization, you have to figure out if the MMO you want to play is subscription only, or is free-to-play, or has some sort of hybrid model. If it’s subscription, does it still have cash shops? If it’s free-to-play, are the cash shops going to be exploitive of certain playstyles? There’s a lot to take in when you are used to just buying the damn box and shoving it into the system. Luckily, some games have decided to stick to the traditional model, calling it buy-to-play. Guild Wars 1 and 2, and The Secret World uses buy-to-play. But they do come with cash shops and TSW has DLC like packs you can buy. If anything hurts this genre more, it’s probably because of this overly complicated monetization scheme being used and modified between each game. If they could develop them to be bought once with buyable DLC/expansions, then this genre would be in a far better place with the rest of the gaming industry.

When it comes to this genre’s strength, I would say it’s their inherent ability to be a cooperative multiplayer game. I’ve spent many hours in the past constantly searching for games that I can play with my brother, and have become dependent on them being MMOs. Being able to create a character and knowing I can join up is a big plus to me, and is usually my biggest wish for many single player games of the past. This could be another point in how an MMO hurts itself by segregating their population between silly factions that either don’t or no longer make sense and have no way of changing sides. Biggest culprits of this are WoW, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Wildstar. For whatever reason the developers decided to do this, it just adds tension and stress on their communities, forcing them to choose a side they may not actually like because all their friends are there. Games like EverQuest 2 have factions you start out in, but it’s not permanent. You can do a quest to change sides, plus you’re not prevented from grouping with players from another faction.

The MMO genre has always been on the up and up as I’ve observed over the years. The new games of 2014 had a rough start, but I’m seeing them change and fix their mistakes. That’s because MMOs are in it for the long haul, something that other genre’s don’t seem to concern themselves with. I don’t see the death of this genre any time soon, as a matter of fact, I see other genres trying to copy them. So the MMO is a safe bet, in my book.