Contemplating

All dressed down in the latest urban gear. Now comtemplating where to go from here.

Life and times in Odinville

Odinville Highstreet

A couple of days ago I had made my first visit to Odinville. It was my first journey away from Midway. I spend my time just having a look around town. Before I had a change to talk to the local people I got whisked away to fight Zombies somewhere between Midway and Clinton FARM. And as I had posted earlier that adventure left me stranded in Clinton FARM. But before I left I had the change to visit the high street. The two people you see walking there are an estate agent showing prime real estate to his customer.

After our zombie adventure I hang around in Clinton FARM and had a few interesting courses in pathology, surgery, and medicine. As well as some search and rescue operations. I even did my bit together with other clones to stop a full scale attack by the blade dancers on the local mine. (the game had a different swing on the concept of a public quest.) In the end I had more or less learned everything there is about the area. I had been tasked to do a full scale sweep of the mine, but it requires a team. (We should team up and give this a try together with another attempt at the zombies soon!)

Posing for the camera with my new horse

So I packed my bags, and headed back to Odinville. Along the way I passed a container storage facility, which is turned into a free for all killing zone. Since I felt all knowing after my work at Clinton FARM I decided to have a look. Before I properly realized what it meant some bully was shooting down my horse. Old nag is not exactly the toughest of horse so she collapsed almost instantly. I managed to get off in time and run to safety. Still not having learned my lesson I walk back in and *pew* *pew* I am dead.

There is a lifenet terminal very close by, but I had enough of playing shooting target so I set off to walk to Midway. While hiking the wilderness I realized I so need a new horse. As I reached the outskirts of Midway I stop at the horse merchant to buy an untrained horse, some feed, and a training kit. It was all I needed to train myself a new horse. In the end I was only set back 3 blue chips, so not that bad. Of course it takes some time to get the horse in shape, so I continued on hiking to Odinville. By the time I reached there, and helped out a poor farm girl along the way, my horse was ready for its first ride. (As it turned out Old Nag was not really lost. I could tow her carcass to the stables and probably heal back to life again, but for now she is parked there.)

A view from Odinville's watchtower

Now that I made it back to Odinville it was time to get busy. Plenty of work to do in this fancy town. A bit surprising those CHOTA fools actually made such a decent town. There was even a completely stable and intact watchtower. It gave a nice view over the city. Of course there are problems too. And a lot of them of the nasty kind. The villains and critters around are quite a bit tougher than in Midway or Clinton.

Me, my horse, and a grave robber

Another very surprising yet very cool thing happened just outside town. I was just roaming around a bit after visiting the mining facility where its miners seem to be turning into zombies. I ran into a valley that was filled with roaming grave robbers. I am not completely sure why they were there, since I actually didn't see that many graves, but that is not too important. What was surprising how they reacted when I tried to attack one of them. I shot an arrow from my crossbow, and in stead of that the robber came running to me, he dropped to the ground to take some cover and started shooting arrows back at me! The sneaky girl! I was a bit dumbfounded, but realized quick enough I could do the same. It was pretty epic.

(I even had some time to play my usual Sunday City of Villains fun. And that went successful too. Our entire group made it to level 50. Woohoo! Corporal Picker can now hang up her Arachnos uniform and open the inn she always dreamed about.)

Common decency

This is pure a rant. And it are probably the first signs I am turning into a crumpy old guy. But it irritates considerably nonetheless.

In Fallen Earth a lot of the NPCs are inside buildings, often even upstairs. Although the game allows it, I wouldn't think of crossing the doorstep on horseback. But plenty of players are just barging in without a second thought. I was at the ER in Clinton FARM, which is on the second floor. There are three beds where some NPCs are twitching in pain, and I am trying to heal them a bit with bandages and in comes this rude ape on horse crushing through. Of course telling him to get off didn't help much. Is it really that hard to use normal common decencies in a beautifully crafted online world?

The Science of Fallen Earth

This isn't a Post of Wisdom, just me thinking and rambling out loud.
Feel free to join in and start a discussion.

Fallen Earth Crafting has two spheres:
Sphere 1: Baisc gear
This sphere encompasses Armourcrafting, Ballistics and Weaponry.
These are pretty much selfexplanatory.

Sphere 2: Reusables
This Sphere encompasses Cooking, Mutagenics and Medicine.
These different takes on what you'd be used to from Fantasy MMO's. Cooking is pretty normal, providing low level buffs for extended time (usually an hour, probably longer at higher levels) . Mutagenics provide bigger short term bursts, more like potions in Fantasy MMO's and Medicine is the usual band aid and debuff removal.

Gathering
Split up in Nature (harvesting/skinning) Geology (prospecting/mining) and Scavengning (dumpster dumping)
These are essentially the same ability with a few themes. Regardless of what your crafting specialty is, developping these skills is recommended as there's an obvious interdependency at least on the materials level.

Odd ones out:
I left ou Science so far. Also the Horse Training Tradeskill set. The latter is arguable not crafting. Animal husbandry normally isn't considered such. But Science, which is the miscellaneous catch all set, allows for motorized mounts and definately is a crafting skill. Besides. Horse Training is set up as a tradeskill with producables such as feed and veterinary kits.

Science is a bit of an odd one out. You can make perma-buffs for weapons like scopes with it, or components. Making it a bit like Augmentation crafting from Fantasy MMO's. But it's also the Dyes tradeskill, and you can make vehicles through it. It's almost as if this was supposed to be a third Sphere (Augmentation) but they didn't have enough parts for it, or decided to keep the number of Tradeskills down and they ended lugging Vehicles in with it. Odd that Horse Training isn't part of Nature then. Or is it?

Actually, my description of each Tradeskill except maybe the first three are too narrow. The developers did a nice job of making things just a little not so clear cut. Very Anarchy Online-esque in a way. Actually that's what Fallen Earth feels like.

A Modern Day AO.

Just slightly less heavy on the ovscure interdependency and Excell sheet skills requirements.
Also without waiting 24-49 seconds for your "Automatic Rifle" to be able to fire another few rounds. And that's a good thing in my opinion. I'm glad Phè convinced me to give it another shot.
Anyway, it's probably a good idea to pick one Tradeskill from the first two spheres, all the gathering ones, and either Horse trading or Science. Player trading and / or buddy gift culture should take care of the rest.

Gathering isn't a necessity at first as basic components can be bought at premium rates from NPC's. No doubt though that later on this will either disappear or you'll find you need rare parts which aren't for sale at the least. Actually I hope the components will always stay available from NPC's. Even at high rates. Good money sink. I still recommend lots of Gathering. From what I can tell each Gathering skill provides components for each of the Crafting Tradeskills.

In closing, Phèdre found a very nice information site here:

Zombies nibbling your neck

It has been quite a long time. Maybe going down the Ksaravi Gulch during a short return to Vanguard. Or a journey into the subway of Borealis. And that was already last year. So I was thrilled and excited yesterday when I go run off into the unknown with Lani at my side once again. The task we set out to do sounded easy enough. We just had to upload some computer program on a lifenet computer station.

(someone'd just ridden out of the frame...)

As we were getting near the station the we started to see zombies wandering aimlessly around. Fortunately on horse back we were fast enough to avoid all of them. Then we reached the rim of a rather large crater with a bunker like building at the bottom. Which was of course where we needed to be. What I didn't expect was that the roaming zombies all came from there. They were everywhere!

We found a good spot to stall our horses, and we started clearing the path towards the station. The zombies really acted like zombies. Unlike other creatures, shooting them didn't make them rush towards you. They just kept coming at their slow steady pace. We managed quite nicely to drop them with our crossbows before they reached us. And so we reached the door feeling pretty confident. Our team play worked wonders! As soon as we opened the door ten more zombies swarmed us. It got a bit hairy and panicky, but we managed to disperse all of them.

So we proceed inside and find a lot more of them down the stairs. It looked like a perfect funnel for us to tick them off one by one. And we did. But we heard some other sounds and then I felt it too! We had zombies nibbling at our necks. No idea where they came from, but they were there. And they had us trapped. A few seconds later we were piled up on the floor with the other pieces of meat. It was a hard lesson learned.

Good way to filter your Inventory

Fortunately we got ourselves reanimated at the nearest lifenet terminus. Which turned out not to be familiar Midway, but some farmstead called Clinton. We stood outside a bit dazed for a moment, and then the reality sank in our horses were still near the computer station. And we were 'here'.

It was wonderful!

Brave New World

Every time I start playing a new MMO I am enthusiastic about it. It is something different, so I am entertained. At least for a little while. But as I have seen so many online worlds of the years I seem to be getting bored with them quicker and quicker. Aion didn't last a month. And that despite the fact I had a great guild to keep me entertained. But I really did like Aion the first week as my post Some Aion Screenies shows. Now I am playing Fallen Earth, and once again I am enjoying myself. So I better make a post quickly before this ends as well.

But I am relatively optimistic this time it will last me a bit longer. Fallen Earth has a couple of things going for it that is really in my alley.

At the scrapyard outside lovely Midway

I think one of the biggest charm is the fact that everything is new. Not just for me, but for all players. We have all been thrown into a new world, and we are learning our ways around in it. You get some basic training in the two tutorials you can play through, but after that you feel like you have been send out into the scary world in which you will have to swim or die. And that attitude shows in the chat channels. The busiest channel is the 'help' channel. It is a constant flow of asking questions and getting answers. There is no WTS/WTB/LFG/Recruitment blah, just people trying to figure out the game and helping those that follow. It is almost like I am back to the early days of the internet. It also helps there is almost always a GM active on the channel keep things in check.

In search of the thief with a horse.

One of the things that makes it different should actually be a reason for me to not play it at all. The controls are like a FPS. I have to move around with WASD, and actually aim with my mouse for both ranged and melee attacks. But I am doing surprisingly well. I am (probably) still rather pathetic. The scorpion that poisoned and killed me can vouch for that. But the game has much more to offer so that I don't feel useless because of it. It actually motivates. Yesterday evening I have been practising my kiting, circling and hit-and-run skills on the coyotes outside town.

I found the thief, and now I have a horse called 'Old Nag'.

Besides the (for me) different fighting controls, the game is still a real MMORPG. There are levels (woohoo! I made it to level 2), action points, skill bars, xp progression. The way leveling up works is a bit more like Anarchy Online. You get x amount of points (AP) that you can distribute over 20 or so skills. And each skill has a level cap beyond which you can't raise it yet. All attack skills and all basic skills (int, dex, str etc.) are raised by points gained through quests and kills. The harvest and crafting skills are raised by actually doing the harvesting and crafting. Crafting and harvesting are very important parts of the game. Everything can be made and/or found in the world. Skinning animals, stripping of pieces of broken cars, looting, digging through garbage, it can all be done. And about 90% of all the bounty I got can be used to make stuff. There is very little vendor junk.

Crafting works also interesting. It is all about finding out how to make something. Once you have managed to get the right instruction manual (which you can craft as well), the right raw material and the required skills you click on 'craft' and you start. Each item you make takes a certain amount of time. I made some lead pipes that was going to take 7 minutes at metal workshop. Of course I didn't want to stand around so I ran to look for some veggies I needed to make the burger. Of course I got myself in trouble again, and got killed.

On my way to the kitchen to make some tasty burgers.

I get regenerated at the lifenet station, and I was off again. 15 minutes had passed and I remembered I had been busy making that pipe. Apparently dieing and running around in the wilderness slows things down a bit since I still had to wait another 30 seconds for my pipe to be complete. This means they introduced a nifty system in which crafting is still a time sink, but it isn't anymore dumb staring at a picture of a workbench. It is all about finding the right raw materials and recipes. Which means I can start wandering around in search of materials.

I haven't ventured outside the starter town much yet. The world feels big and scary. Which in a awesome feeling. The map is not all that precise either, which only makes it even better. Fortunately I have a horse now. I just have to remember where it is because it doesn't disappear into your bag after you dismount. It just stays where you left it.

Of course there are issues too. The graphics are not super, there are still tonnes of bugs, including a broken power that requires relogging on the very first quest. It also is rather AnarchyOnline-ish in not being very clear about certain steps you are supposed to take. I actually like all those issues. The world isn't perfect, but it is a world, my brave new world.

How things change

It's take a while but at some point he describes the Internet community in a way that's completely opposite of how anyone would describe it today.

This and other interesting things can be found in the Article/Timeline A people's history of the Internet. It's rarely techy but a good trip through memory lane, with some things you may have heard of peripherally but never connected with what would later become the Internet.

Machinarium

A few years ago I bumped into a wonderful, wonderful little browser game called Samorost 2. I remember sharing my joys at that time with the folks of GameAmp, and I got Jeni all worked up a bit with it. Especially the art style made it something special. I happily spent the $5 to play the full version just to thank the makers for the work they had done.

Yesterday all of a sudden I received an email from them stating they have completed their first full-scale game. I haven't tried out the free demo yet since I was busy playing a crappy FPS, but I definitely will! Here is the full email I received

Hi,

After three years of hard work we finally finished our first full-scale
game Machinarium. Please visit our website where you can try to play
web-demo (3 levels). If you will like it, you can buy the full version
for download on the website.

http://machinarium.net/demo/


Sincerely,
Amanita Design

I hope you, the readers of Yammob, will give it a try as well.

I didn't listen

And so far I don't regret it. I had more fun in this tutorial than I had in FallOut3's tutorial.

Too good?

Yesterday I got the change to play my beloved City of Villains again with the usual Sunday gang. Due to travelling both by me (mostly me) and them we have hardly played at all the last few months. Thus this Sunday almost felt like a reunion event. With the latest issue (issue 16?) they have improved the ease at which to team up and specify the challenge even further.

City of Heroes/Villians already had the best team friendly features available with their sidekick/mentor options, but they now went even a step further. Now anybody can join any group, and everybody gets scaled to settings and level of owner of the chosen mission. You can now specify how big the groups of enemies should be, how many levels above your level (that was already there), whether you want bosses when playing solo, whether you want arch villains or 'just' elite bosses.

After playing together for over 4 years now we are a well oiled killing machine, so we pushed everything to the max. Enemy groups are scaled to 8 player, +4 in level, with multiple bosses. It was hectic! We died a few times due to just too much spandex, but we always got our revenge. The only thing we couldn't handle were the Arch Villains. They became 6 levels above us, and they just healed faster than we could scratch them. Especially against Lord Recluse himself we got seriously whipped.

So what am I crying about in the title of this post? I am not sure really. But I have the feeling they are grasping for straws. The community is ever swindling down. Champions Online is pulling the already not too big superhero players away (for a while). The great thing about these changes is that I can always play with my friends, which is brilliant. I wish I could do that in Aion. But it also means for most players the story of the game is becoming less and less relevant. It is more and more just about the action, xp and grind. It is also enabling solo play even further. That does allow you to get the story, so maybe my point is not so valid. I don't know. It is probably just all good. Especially for a close group like the one I am part of. But I still have a lingering feel of loss. It is just another piece of the original charm of COH/V that got lost.

PS. I still don't understand why no other MMO has ever bothered to implement even close to the same sidekick/mentor system. It is an essential feature if you want people to sticking to your game.

A classic reimagined

The original Aliens versus Predator game is one of the two FPS games I truly enjoyed, the other being Delta Force 2. The creepy atmosphere of both the Colonial Marine and Alien campaigns were incredible. Needing to use non-infinite flares to light your way through dark corridors with that classic *beep* *beep* of the motiontracker, starting to panic when you hear the skitter skitter of a fachugger somewhere nearby... Rushing through complexes as an alien, going up and down walls & ceilings as easily as the floor, to the point where you'd sometimes would let go of CTRL (the stick to walls button) and fall sideways to the right rather than straight forward as you were expecting. Trying to kill everyone using the special timed headbite attack, e.t.c.
The Predator campaign was great to if in a slightly different way, that was mostly about the cool different weapons you had at your disposal. Something a lot of people got from generic FPS games, but for me those always ammounted to bigger is better. The Predator's weapons were about finesse, and bagging trophies.

Multiplayer was fun too, with different game modes like Hunt the Alien (Called Feeding Time for the Alien) to a co-op Mission where you and your Marine buddies would have to defend a bunker from horde after horde of Aliens until you ran out of ammo or they tore the bunker apart and then you. Yes, Valve stole that concept and made a whole game out of it.

The AVP2 game tried to be more of same with obligatory extra's like bigger guns, badder aliens preddier Predators which ultimately failed. It's a game where being true to the original material (not talking the AVP Movies here actually) but the Alien and Aliens movies works the best. So maybe this reimagining of the concept will allow us to recaputre some of that sheer terror of the COlonial Marine, the stalking hunter of the Alien and that of the Bad Ass prowling Predator in a true to concept manner.
The second