Fallout TV – Season 1
I have been hyped about the Amazon release of the Fallout TV series for a while now, and the entire 8-episode run dropped around a week ago. I’m going to talk about it in this post, but I also understand how someone talking about a show you haven’t watched yet can technically constitute as spoilers. Like if there is some drama out there and a friend says “I liked it, but the ending was sad,” a good slap to their face is an appropriate response. So, this post will have stops and you can exit at your leisure. The comments though, are a free-for-all.
That said, Fallout TV: it’s good.
But is it good?
For me, I had an excellent time watching it. Going in, I am not even sure what I was expecting. Well, I was hoping that the show wouldn’t suck and otherwise be another entry on the Very Long List of Bad Game Adaptations. And I do believe that it, ahem, vaulted over that very low bar. The humor was there, the ultra-violence was there, shit even the common player-behavior tropes were there (e.g. getting distracted by side-quests). It was a very faithful and respectful recreation of the games.
I just don’t know if it’s good for non-Fallout viewers.
I mean that quite literally: my wife isn’t really a gamer, and I don’t know if I should even recommend it. Again, I enjoyed the show and felt it was worth my time. Would she? Like, think about all the retro 1950s aesthetics, the general Vault-Tec intentional weirdness, and so on. None of this would have been independently chosen for a post-apocalypse tale; these things do not enhance the plot or character arcs in any way. It’s there because it’s Fallout. Which, fantastic, I’m happy to see one of my favorite franchises be more culturally recognized. If this gets people curious about the games, that’s more potential fans later.
Maybe that’s enough?
At the same time, I think about Game of Thrones. You don’t have to have read the books or even be into low-magic medieval fantasy shows to be entertained – the acting and dialog and action carries itself. In comparison, I do feel that the source material for Fallout does most of the heavy lifting – Lucy and the Ghoul notwithstanding. Perhaps it is an unfair comparison to begin with though, considering Game of Thrones had a ready script for most of the seasons whereas Fallout is telling a new (canon!) story within the setting.
Speaking of canon, I do want to comment a bit about some of the “controversy” I see online.
Err… I was going to talk about it, but everything appears to have been settled in the interim.
For posterity though, in the show there was a blackboard with a timeline of important dates written on it to illuminate the post-post-apocalyptic things going on in the Fallout universe. One of those dates was “2277 – The Fall of Shady Sands”… followed by an arrow further pointing to a mushroom cloud. Some fans took that to mean that Shady Sands was nuked in 2277, which contradicts the events of Fallout: New Vegas, e.g. no one mentioned the city being destroyed, the NCR were still a prominent faction in New Vegas, etc. Furthermore, the parting shots of Season 1 clearly show New Vegas in a, let’s say, less civilized way than encountered in-game. Ergo, Todd Howard is wiping New Vegas from canon in his years-long quest to get revenge on Obsidian devs who dared make a better Fallout game!
Or something.
Except… nah. Emil Pagliarulo (writer/director of Fallout 3 & 4) said New Vegas is canon, Todd Howard (Bethesda man) said New Vegas is canon. They showed a pre-war Mr. House in the goddamn show! “Ackshually, the games say that Mr. House predicted when the bombs would fall, which contradicts the show where they just tell him who would launch them.” Unless, I dunno, China (or the US!) launched them before Vault-Tec was ready. Perhaps that is a mystery better explored in deeper detail in future seasons of the show. It might even be especially topical as the gang heads toward New Vegas, as seen in the final minutes of the ending.
In any case, I had zero issues with anything the show presented continuity-wise, and am excited to see where it goes from here. Are there still some lingering questions? Sure. But I’m more interested in things like “what happens next?” rather than “How did Hank not instantly recognize Moldaver” or “How did Moldaver survive the war,” and so on. Season 2 has been approved, so we’ll possibly get answers to those questions and then see what New Vegas purists will get mad about next. Since there’s pretty much no way to dance around a canon ending to that game, there will be plenty of material.
Questgate: Hearthstone Edition
You know what would be a great idea? In the patch which you release a new, hyped-up game mode you also make an indefensibly irrational change that guarantees a predictable, hostile fan reaction across your entire playerbase. You know, so that everyone is talking about that instead of whatever we were talking about before. I believe the technical term is “slamming your dick in a car door.”
The change in question is to Weekly Quests in Hearthstone. Specifically, the requirements for completing them increased by ~300% (or more!) whereas the reward, e.g. Reward Track XP, only increased by ~20%. The more XP, the more progress you make along the Reward Track, the more freebies and in-game currency you earn to buy more packs, mini-sets, and so on. It’s how to F2P.
Now, some of these quests are the kind that you achieve organically from just playing the game. Things like “Spend 500 Mana” or “Draw 30 cards.” Then there are ones a bit more annoying to achieve, like “Use your Hero Power 50 times” or “Play 50 Battlecry Minions.” Those can technically be achieved in the course of normal play, but only if you’re playing a deck/class that wants to be pressing the Hero Power button and/or casting Battlecry minions. You can reroll one Weekly Quest per day, so I typically rerolled those in the hopes of getting something easier to complete in Battlegrounds or in the Tavern Brawl game modes. Finally, you had the standard “Win 5 Ranked Hearthstone Games” that everyone gets at the beginning of the week.
…except now it’s win 15 games. And you now need to play 100 Battlecry minions. Or play 60 (!?!) Miniaturized/Mini minions when it was like 16 previously. In return, you get an extra 500 XP over what it was rewarding previously, e.g. 3000 vs 2500, or 2250 vs 1750.
For context, you earn approximately 400 XP/hour by playing Ranked Hearthstone without any quests at all. So, yes, technically there is more XP to be earned. But that very much depends on one’s ability to actually complete any of these Weekly Quests before they reset.
And that’s the rub. How long individual games take will depend on the individual and what decks they use, but I’d say the average for me would be 10 minutes per Ranked game and 20 (or 30+) minutes per Battleground. If we assume you are being matched with people of appropriate skill, you will only be winning 50% of the time. So the one “win 15” quest jumps from 100 minutes to 300 minutes for Ranked, and 200 minutes to 600 minutes in Battlegrounds.
If Hearthstone is your primary game, spending 10 hours a week playing Battlegrounds is probably something you were doing anyway. But if it’s not? Well, Blizzard clearly doesn’t want you playing at all.
If there is actually any other reasonable conclusion to reach, I’d love to hear it.
Hurry Up and Wait: April Edition
Once again, I was already looking stuff up, so why not just share it?
April 23rd – Bellwright [Early Access]
This one is seems to be billed as an open-world Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but it also has some Medieval Dynasty vibes. Hard to say whether it will be worth anyone’s time yet. I originally thought it was going to be a survival-crafting game, but the store page makes it very clear that there is a sort of linear plot going on heading towards a rebellion against the Crown. If they can channel the general feel of Kingdom Come: Deliverance without some of the design jank, this could be good. We shall see.
April 26th – Manor Lords [Early Access]
Banished meets Total War in this medieval city-building tactical battler. Supposedly. All I know is that the game looks gorgeous, like an insane level of detail, and the city-building aspects are the most organic-looking I have ever seen in this space. Also, important detail: Game Pass Day 1.
May 8th – V Rising [1.0]
I snagged a copy of V Rising on sale before its recent pre-1.0 price increase, so I’m looking forward to… I guess playing it a month from now? That’s kind of fucked up, now that I think about it. Why increase the price like a full month before release? Anyway, it seems a combination of survival-crafting + Action RPG and I’ve heard some good things, so I hope it’s worth the wait.
May 14th – Diablo 4 [Season 4]
Diablo 4 landed on Game Pass a few weeks ago, but I didn’t dive in due to other priorities (read: farming virtual crops). Then, when I was actually starting to get ready to play, I hear about a “transformational” update coming in May. This is the summary from the IGN interview with the devs:
When Diablo 3 got its pre-Reaper of Souls expansion patch dubbed ‘loot 2.0’ in 2014, it was credited with turning Blizzard’s action role-playing game around. Critics and players called loot 2.0 a big improvement on Diablo 3, with changes that sparked renewed interest from a community that had dropped off following the base game’s 2012 release. Now, 10 years later, Blizzard is aiming to repeat the trick with Diablo 4 Season 4.
I mean, I guess that’s a good thing. Eventually. Although it’s a bit odd how they keep leading with “loot 1.0” when they know loot 2.0 is better. Rod Fergusson mentions it’s more due to “overshooting the mark” in a quest for depth and complexity in the looting system. Which I am unqualified to talk much about, considering I haven’t played the game. But it all kinda sorta maybe sounds like Quality of Life shit that was sorted out a decade ago already, and probably should have been in the game from the start. I could be wrong.
May 16th – Ghost of Tsushima [PC]
The once PlayStation exclusive is finally making its way to PC. And while I am liable to wait for ages more before it drops to a “reasonable” price, I am excited that it is coming to PC at all. If I did ever buy a PlayStation 5, this would have been one of the games I would have bought it for.
Farm-Sim Annoyances
Although I am continuing to play Stardew Valley, this experience is reminding me of design annoyances frustratingly common to the genre at large. Non-exhaustive list:
Challenge/Interesting Decisions are Front-Loaded
When you first begin any farm-sim, you have a mountain of dilemmas to resolve. Which seeds do you buy first? Do you focus on fast-growing crops to maintain cash flow or do you invest in long-term payoffs? Should you spend time clearing the farm, foraging for extra crops, mining for ore, or fishing? Do you spend your first wave of cash on building a Chicken Coop or buying more seeds? Do you focus on trying to complete the Community Center (or equivalent) in Year 1, or save that for later?
As time passes however, an inflection point is reached and things only ever get easier. Early investments in more passive income streams (Beekeeping, Animal Husbandry, etc) and Sprinklers free up all your time to do… nothing much. I mean, you could spend more time foraging/fishing/mining, but those activities were typically required to get you to this point in the first place, so they themselves may not be relevant anymore. While there may be endgame goals that require substantial amounts of cash, its achievement ends up largely a function of pressing the Sleep button over and over.
Robust (but Pointless) Cooking System Locked Behind Midgame+
It boggles my mind how consistently farm-sim games lock Cooking behind expensive home upgrades. Then comes the double-whammy of most recipes being a net-loss of income compared to just selling the ingredients – nevermind the opportunity cost of the home upgrade itself! Even worse, by the time you unlock the ability to cook, have the proper ingredients, and learned the recipes, the buffs (if they even have any) and Energy gained by consuming a cooked meal are largely irrelevant due to farm automation and/or character progression. In the Summer, I would frequently leave my farm with 50% Energy or less from watering crops. By Fall, I would leave with 100% Energy and have nothing to do to meaningfully “spend” it even outside the farm.
My assumption is that these game designers are afraid that making Cooking profitable will turn the farm-sim into basically a cooking-sim. Or perhaps Cooking itself is only intended to be another “Community Center”-esque achievement grind and/or money-sink. Nevertheless, it always just feels bad to be generating hundreds of crops and just throwing them in a bin because there is no reason to, you know, combine resources together.
Intentionally Limited Inventory Space
Managing inventory space is a key activity in several genres, but none feel so much like a punishment than in farm-sims. The primary problem is that you are typically restricted to a small amount backpack space and then given a dozen or more different crops that can have 3-4+ different quality outputs on top of tools, forage items, etc. There might be an argument that this leads to “interesting decisions” in whether to trash one item over another, but considering that this issue often appears even when on the farm, all it amounts to is an incredible annoyance of running back and forth.
Non-Trivial Amount of Trivial Combat
One of my deep-rooted disappointments in the genre is usually how little care is given to the combat side of the game. Now, yes, this is a farm-sim and not an Action RPG. And yet almost all of them feature monsters you must defeat in the Mines while you dig for ore. Presumably this aspect is included to make digging for ore more stimulating, but you know what would be even more stimulating? Supporting what ends up being 40% or more of the gameplay with some character progression.
Maybe getting random gear drops with different stats and abilities would feel a bit out of place in something like Stardew Valley – running around in plate armor isn’t quite the vibe it’s going for. Then again, there are a bunch of different weapons with stats, including weapon speed, crit chance, crit power, defense, rings with powers, and so on. Sophisticated gear systems aren’t necessary in every farm-sim, but if you are going to ask the player to engage in combat for 30+ hours, please make it a bit more meaningful than pressing left-click with the same weapon the entire time.
Tool Upgrade Timeout
The amount of necessary planning that goes into tool upgrades is quite absurd. Like, I’m never excited about upgrading my Watering Can or Axe. Instead, I’m meticulously scanning the calendar and weather report to gauge when I can safely forgo the tool for two days. And, inevitably, the next morning I realize that I needed some extra Hardwood or dig a patch of ground or whatever, and then become sad.
“No big deal. Upgrade the Watering Can the day before rain, go mine while your axe is in the shop, etc.”
Yeah, I get it. But… why have the mechanic in the first place? The verisimilitude of upgrading is too important to compromise, despite the fact that you can otherwise craft complex machinery instantly next to a wood chest? Perhaps it is to engender a sense of anticipation for how much more of the world the upgrade will unlock? I can see that… for the first upgrade tier. After that, the Watering Can becomes useless as you craft Sprinklers all over your farm, and the minute energy-per-swing savings from Axe/Pick upgrades is moot as your increased energy maximum (and ability to actually cook food) makes time-in-day the limiting factor.
I had some more annoyances written out, but I realized that many of them have become mercifully moot over the past few years. Sun Haven, in particular, slaughtered a lot of the sacred cows like only being able to Save the game when the day is over. The My Time at [X] games features a more robust combat system with more incremental gear drops. And so on. I remember reading a few days ago about another farm-sim game (whose name escapes me now) that would allow you to borrow a basic replacement tool while yours is being upgraded in the shop. Brilliant, if true!
There is a case to be made that the player friction created by some of these design decisions are integral to the fun. For example, if you could cook your first wave of crops into tasty Energy food, the entire “Energy economy” is liable to go away. Which it already does in the midgame due to Sprinklers and unlocking the Kitchen, mind you – nevermind how Sun Haven gets by just fine with no Energy bar (!!!) at all. Or how limited inventory space means you have to be more thoughtful about forays into town and/or the mines and develop a system of organizing the 37 different chests on your farm.
If this sort of friction is indeed integral, what does that imply when it all goes away in the midgame?
It could be the case that I’m playing these farm-sims more like survival/automation games than intended. If you just want to relax and farm shit with your bros and hoe, none of this really matters. “Oops, forgot to grow any Melons for the Community Center gift, maybe next year then.” I can’t imagine playing that way myself, but I have heard the same things said about my predilection towards optimization. In any case, I do hope that as the genre continues to evolve (or just iterate) one version will release that maintains the same density of interesting decisions from beginning to end.
Or maybe I should just go farm in Valheim instead.
Stardew Valley Revisited
For the past few days, I have been playing Stardew Valley again.
The reasoning was due to a recent 1.6 update, plus hearing good things about the “Stardew Valley Expanded” mod (which was recently updated to be compatible), which I never saw when I was playing back in 2018. Also, despite spending 50 hours playing the first time, I never actually made it all the way through a full year, dropping the game during Winter.
Well… they’re right. You can’t go home again.
When Stardew Valley first released, it was a pivotable indie phenomenon almost right away. It obviously did not invent the farming/RPG life-sim – Stardew Valley itself being an homage to Harvest Moon – but the genre itself saw a renewal and resurgence of interest due to its surprising success. Slay the Spire did the same thing with roguelike deckbuilders; not the first, but certainly a wild success that created space in which alternatives to flourish.
But that is precisely my problem with Stardew Valley: alternatives exist. Dare I say… better ones too. Or, perhaps, some amalgamation thereof.
In the years since 2018, I have played My Time at Portia, Sun Haven, Coral Island, and My Time at Sandrock. The first thing I noticed coming back to Stardew? All the Quality of Life “regressions.” For one thing, you have zero control over the length of the day. For another, in a shocking throwback, the game only saves when you sleep. That has always been dumb design with zero redeeming features, and is especially banal considering the mobile version of Stardew does allow you to quicksave. Other games have also realized that a map showing location of NPCs and important buildings is kind of important. That one can be remedied with mods, but it just makes you wonder why. As in, why play Stardew Valley instead of one of these other games?
And that really is the rub, ain’t it? Why play this over that?
I don’t have a good answer at the moment. Many of Stardew’s NPC stories/events have been lauded as being more realistic and/or nuanced than the genre average, but it’s hard to tell if that is even accurate. Sun Haven and the My Time at [X] series certainly have deeper combat and character skills. Coral Island definitely wins the graphics award, along with some very attractive character art. All of them have fishing, farming, Community Center-esque activities, and so on. I don’t particularly have any nostalgia for Stardew either. So… why this one?
For the moment, I will continue to investigate. I’m at that pivotal optimization stage where there are some interesting decisions going on – do I spend money upgrading my pickaxe, saving for a barn, upgrading the house, etc – but I already see an “endgame” of sorts taking shape. Like, I’ll be done with most of the Community bundles by the end of this first year, I already have a horse, and I just hit the bottom of the mines. From here, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of new stuff to look forward to other than more passive ways of getting money, to buy something or other. Then again, I never actually got to any endgame the first time around, so perhaps there is more to be seen (and was added in the past 6 years). Plus, you know, there’s probably something expanded in the Expanded mod.
We shall see.
Hearthstone Evolving Monetization
I mentioned it last post, but Hearthstone recently came out with a new expansion, Whizbang’s Workshop, which also heralds a new Standard cycle with several sets rotating out. But after 10+ years of playing, this is actually the first time that I intentionally didn’t purchase the expansion bundle.
Now, nobody needs to know the machinations that transpired that resulted in my declining to spend money on Hearthstone, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Because, well, I certainly found it interesting.
Hearthstone is like most TCG/CCGs (e.g. Magic: the Gathering) in that it releases expansions several times a year (and pushing older expansions out of Standard). Card packs can be bought for 100g via in-game currency or purchased using real money at any time (basically $1/pack). In the weeks leading up to expansion releases, Blizzard will offer limited-time pre-purchase bundles, which sweeten the deal: $50 and/or $80 for 50/90 packs, random Legendary cards, and cosmetic Hero portraits. If you are trying to build a collection, these are typically the best bang for your real-dollar buck.
Blizzard will also sell you a Reward Track Pass ($20) that gives rewards like specific Legendary cards, and even more cosmetics. There is a separate Tavern Pass ($15) for Battlegrounds, which unlocks cosmetics but also an additional 2 Hero choices at the beginning of each game (arguably the most naked Pay2Win). Hearthstone also has an in-game store which features bundles of cards (typically $20) or macrotransaction cosmetics ($60!) for “signature” Legendary cards, e.g. alternative art.
All in all, if you want to give Blizzard your money, they make it easy to do so.
The actual value proposition has gotten murky to me though. A few years ago, Blizzard implemented both a pity timer (e.g. guaranteed Legendary cards after X packs) and copy protection that was later extended to all card rarities. This was an enormous Quality-of-Life feature that doesn’t necessarily get the press it deserves. On top of that, Blizzard more recently added a “reroll” feature once they committed to alternative art cards, which meant you could get a different card of the same rarity if you already had a “better” visual version. This doesn’t come up too often, but sometimes it’ll let you exchange a weak duplicate on the free Reward Track for a chance at something much better.
Concurrently, Blizzard has also seemingly changed their design philosophy regarding the power of cards overall. Historically, it was all about the high-profile Legendary cards flipping games by themselves. While that is sometimes still true, most of the time the best decks are only good because of the supporting Common and Rare cards. This change appears more democratic… but it has a sinister edge. When Blizzard nerfs a card, they allow you to dust (disenchant) the card for its full dust value, rather than the normal 25%. Back when Legendary cards ruled the day, a nerfed Legendary meant you could just dust it and craft another brand-new Legendary and play with a different broken deck. These days, Blizzard nerfs the (relatively powerful) supporting Commons/Rares, leaving the Legendary cards alone. Except, without the support, the Legendary card is useless, but you can’t dust it for full value because the Legendary itself hasn’t changed. Thus, “investing” in Legendaries is risky.
As an example, Blizzard just released a balance patch yesterday that contained three Paladin nerfs to Common/Rare cards. Now, the Paladin deck did need adjustments, as it could kill you from hand with buffed minions. And these cards were problematic. However, if you crafted the 3-5 Legendary cards that went along with the deck (and improved your winrate thereby), well… oops. Best you can hope for is that some other Paladin deck rises from the ashes before the cards rotate out of Standard.
Coming into this expansion, I had actually accumulated 6700g, which meant I could buy 67 packs straight-up. The copy protections mentioned above essentially means that that is enough packs to get all of the Common and Rare cards, along with a handful of Epic and Legendary cards. What would another 50-90 packs give me on top of that? A few more pity Legendaries/Epics… but remember, they are less critical than they were before and/or more risky. I would get a lot more dust to craft whatever card(s) I want, but again, I will already have the important Common/Rare cards already, and thus be gambling on “investing” in the higher tier cards that may get stranded in nerfed decks. No thanks.
Finally, to really bury the lede: Whizbang’s Workshop is a weak set compared to what we just had.
The extra funny issue surrounding everything is how players – including myself! – react to new sets. Many times the top theorycrafters will say something like “Totem Shaman is still Tier 1, but no one wants to play it.” What they really mean is that a deck that was super strong two years ago is just as strong against the current format without needing new cards. But no one wants to play it. Because A) they already played the same strategy for years prior, and B) it means acknowledging you paid money buying new cards you can’t even effectively use. It’s a double cognitive dissonance whammy!
Blizzard has gotten a bit better at adjusting cards (including buffing them, which they almost never did before) at regular cadences, but all the interlocking factors I talked about really makes me wonder about unintended side effects for players like me, e.g. the ones that try to gauge the value per dollar gained. Moving heavy into more cosmetic options is a clear workaround, but even that is fraught in nature – if the alternative art Legendary isn’t competitive, you’ll never likely be able to play it. And if you never play it, you may never be enticed to purchase said alternative art.
Or maybe you don’t care and just want to watch it animate from your collection like an NFT and/or play casual games and hope you draw it before getting killed by a bot. In which case, you do you.
Veni, Vidi, Vici… Vitavi
Fresh off their supermassive success with Baldu’s Gate 3, Larian Studios confirms… they out:
I told you at the beginning that we were a company of big ideas. We are not a company that’s made to create DLCs [or] expansions. We tried that actually, a few times, and it failed every single time. It’s not our thing. Life is too short, our ambitions are very large. And so, like Gustav [the codename for BG3, taken from Swen’s dog who recently passed away], Baldur’s Gate will always have a warm spot in our hearts. We’ll forever be proud of it, but we’re not going to continue in it.
We’re not going to make new expansions, which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re not going to make Baldur’s Gate 4, which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re going to move on. We’re going to move away from D&D, and we’re going to start making a new thing. I’m saying it here because I have a forum and [we’re getting] bombarded by people that expect us to do these things, but that’s not for us. It’s going to be up to Wizards of the Coast, because it’s their IP, to find somebody to take over the torch. We think we did our job and so, for us, it’s time to get a new puppy.
It’s an amazingly ballsy move to just, you know, move on from something like Balder’s Gate 3. At least, until you realize that Hasbro pocketed $90 million of those BG3 dollars for licensing reasons. Why continue that arrangement when you could just, you know, put the same work into Divinity: Original Sin 3 and keep all the money in-house? Mystery solved.
“I’m always the one where it starts with the initial idea and then I give it to the team and they start iterating it and they turn it into something much better. During BG3 I pitched to them what the next game would be…If I see they’re excited, I’ll say, ‘Okay let’s do that.’ If they’re not, it’s back to the drawing board. So they were very excited about a couple of the things we were planning on doing. Then the pivot to start doing BG3 DLC was expected because it’s what you do…We didn’t have any antagonism against BG4 or DLC, but the heart wasn’t there. It was more routine work than actually being excited. Now we have the excitement back in the room and that’s a big important thing.”
Vincke says the next game won’t be Divinity: Original Sin 3, and that it will be “different than what you think it is” but that it’s “still familiar.” Elsewhere, Vincke said that the new project will “dwarf” the scope of Baldur’s Gate 3, which would be quite impressive given the scope of that game.
Well then.
Good on them. In this age of cynicism, enshitification, and corporate greed, Larian’s stance of actually caring about their team is wildly refreshing to see outside the indie space. Not many companies would be willing to leave giant piles of money on the table. Then again, perhaps it is precisely the passion of new projects that Larian understands will lead them to find other tables with fresher piles of money.
Chasing the High
It’s super dumb, but I have pretty much exclusively been playing Hearthstone Battlegrounds for the last 1.5 weeks. I say “super dumb” because this sort of gaming doesn’t mean anything. And, yeah, “does anything really mean anything?” but Battlegrounds is on a whole other level of frivolousness.
If you’re unfamiliar, Battlegrounds is a game mode within the Hearthstone client that is essentially an Auto-Battler. There are two main phases: Tavern and Battle. During the Tavern phase, you spend gold purchasing minions, upgrading the Tavern tier (unlocking higher-tier minions in the pool), refresh available minions, sell minions, use your Hero Power, and/or rearrange your minions. After about 60-90 seconds, you transition into the Battle phase. During Battle, minions take turns attacking from left to right, but their targets are chosen randomly (barring Taunt or other special effects). Whoever has a minion(s) left standing wins and deals X damage to the opponent’s hero.
Battlegrounds has been around for a while, but I didn’t really bother playing it for years. As my interest in Hearthstone proper started to wane though – I don’t care much about ladder ranks – Battlegrounds started to become more appealing. Throughout the seasons, Blizzard started to really shake things up with new, rotating features that added some spicey randomness. Granted, there’s already plenty of randomness in the game mode, but these were on another level. Things like Buddy units (unique to each Hero), Quests (bonus effects if you can complete them), and the latest season introduced Spells as something you can purchase in the shop. All of these things were introduced in a particular season, and then rotated out, keeping things fresh.
And then someone this season went nuts and added all of the things.
Specifically, this current season has Spells and then several weeks later… Quests too. The Quests have been revamped though, and some of them feature crazy effects like “Discover a new Buddy each turn.” That’s not actually the most powerful Quest effect, but I had a few degenerate games where I leveraged it to a massive win. Indeed, the sheer nonsense you can evoke depending on randomness – and the speed in which you must do so – is what is driving me to almost compulsively play Battlegrounds. I’m chasing the high I get from some of these games, or chasing the dream where I was a turn or two away from going nuts before getting wrecked by someone else’s high-roll.
Really though, the randomness cannot be overstated:
- Starting Hero selection is between 2-4 from random pool (94)
- Opponent hero selections are random (for you)
- Overall minion type pool is random (5 out of 9)
- The minions you’re offered in each Tavern are random
- There are only X copies of specific minions in the pool, which opponents can buy
- Getting a “triple” confers a huge bonus, which is a pick 1-of-3 minions from a higher tier
- Minion attacks are random (aside from Taunts or other special conditions)
- HUGE variance can that lead to losing to 5% odds
- Certain spells are random
- Steal a random minion from the tavern, Discover a Battlecry Minion, etc
- Quests are random on top of random
- At a baseline, you are offered a choice of three quests (out of 60)
- Your hero selection impacts which quests are available
- Quest completion methods are randomly assigned (out of 15)
- Play X Battlecry Minions; Speed Y Gold; Kill Z Minions; etc
- Minion types, hero selection, and quest power impact X/Y/Z values
- Some Quest rewards are themselves random
- Cast 5 Random Spells each turn; Discover a Buddy; etc
Sounds like it would be frustrating, yeah? And yet… it usually feels fine.
In Hearthstone, a card that does 3-6 damage is frustrating. Not drawing your combo pieces is frustrating. In Battlegrounds, the randomness is usually just presented as you needing to make the best decision out of available options. Did your minions miss the enemy buff target three times in a row and yet they hit your buff minion right off the bat? OK, that sucks. What’s your next play?
It also helps that losing early just means you can queue into a potentially better game right away.
Near as I can tell, whatever reward center in my brain that lights up from deck-building roguelikes (e.g. Slay the Spire) or survival-crafting games has been short-circuited by this season of Battlegrounds. I’m somewhat mad at myself because I should be playing Red Dead Redemption 2 (played one session) or anything else in my extended library. We’re talking like probably 30-40 hours of potential progress spent on otherwise wirehead activity in the past few weeks.
And yet… I need another bump. The next Battlegrounds season gimmick has been teased as being co-op, which honestly sounds pretty awful. I doubt that they keep Quests around for another entire season in any case, but maybe Blizzard will see the spike in (my) gametime and consider keeping it around. The fact that it may go away for a while makes me want to get my fill even more.
Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie! I need it.
Oh, and Hearthstone proper released a new expansion cycle too, I guess. Yawn.
Set the World on Fire
So, there’s a new Fallout TV trailer and it’s… fire.
The original trailer was pretty good, but this one is taking my hype to an entirely new level. Irreverent, ultraviolent, post-apocalyptic, tragic, it’s hitting all the tones that make the series one of my favorites.
Amusingly, some people on Reddit are critically examining the trailer for lore inconsistencies. Example:
There are some great “Acktually” moments in the comments though. Yes, if the bombs dropped on 9:47am on the East Coast, it’d be before 7am on the West. However, the whole war lasted “two hours” so it isn’t impossible for LA to be nuked 20+ minutes after DC. Besides, there are lore inconsistencies in the games themselves such as the clocks in Fallout: New Vegas being stopped at 9:47 despite also being in a different timezone (Obsidian likely just lazy with reusing assets), or why people were at drive-in movie theaters so early in the morning, children in school on a Saturday, and so on.
Regardless, these sort of “criticisms” are encouraging precisely because they are so trivial. If you have to go full Neil deGrasse Tyson to complain about something, everything else you’re doing must be pretty good. Compare that with, say, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show or the Borderlands trailer. Or don’t, in the latter case, it’s awful. Granted, Fallout isn’t out yet, but still! Really looking forward to this one.
In An Age 
7 Days to More Money
Apr 24
Posted by Azuriel
In a completely unexpected turn of events, 7 Days to Die is actually coming out of Early Access. Soon!
I say “completely unexpected” because, well, it is. The game has indeed been in Early Access for 12 years already, with Alpha 22 (now “1.0”) slated to come out in a few months. However, the Early Access period has been so long due to the dev team having no project manager – each major release has radically redesigned the scope of the game, changing progression mechanics, and otherwise putzed around art assets without actually making forward progress on systems or endgame.
But now they are, so… why aren’t I happy? Take a gander at the roadmap:
I don’t think you really even need to know anything about the base game to intuit that the stuff in the 2025 columns would, in fact, be a more appropriate 1.0 experience. In particular, Bandits have been promised for literal ages, and are still nowhere to be found. Do I believe we will get a UI/Main Menu Overhaul? Yes I do. Will there also be Bandits? Not falling for it this time, Lucy.
What is really going on with this 1.0 release is the increase in base pricing.
Look, my intent is not necessarily to paint The Fun Pimps as capitalistic assholes. I bought the game 7 (!) years ago for $10, and even now you can still purchase it this week for $5.99 ahead of the $44.99 (!!) price increase. In those years, I have played for over 327 hours. And regardless of any price increases, my copy will be upgraded for free, I’ll get all the updates for free, and so on.
It’s just that this “release” is clearly a business decision first.
This is especially true in terms of the console re-release. The history is that the game was released on consoles back in 2017 but had been stuck in Alpha 15 ever since then because porting company went bankrupt. We’re in Alpha 21 on PC, for reference. The Fun Pimps reacquired the rights a few years ago, but financially it never made sense for them to hire out another porting team. Until now.
Again, good on them for trying to get console fans a discount, assuming such a thing materializes. It also makes sense that you may have to cut your losses and start fresh with a new version given all the difficulties up to this point.
I just… I dunno. It’s complicated. As I mentioned last year, each Alpha has included a seemingly pointless overhaul of the progression system, although each iteration has taken it further and further away from zombie MineCraft and more towards something generic. Once upon a time, you would come across a small town and break into houses to scavenge for supplies and hope a big wandering mob of zombies didn’t stroll in after you. Now, 100% of the Points of Interest are mini-dungeons with traps, blocked corridors, zombies popping into existence when you cross thresholds, and a loot chest at the end. Which is cute the first time you come across the PoI, but later you just stack wooden frames and hack your way through the roof to get the loot chest and skip the mini-dungeon part.
Assuming you aren’t just spam-completing quests from the Traders, since that is actually the best way to get gear; crafting shit with resources you gather is sooooo 2017. Oh, and base-building? Yawn. Despite the fact the entire game is premised on a wave of zombies attacking you every 7 days, the devs have decided that the zombies are omniscient structural engineers who know both the shortest distance to your brains and which specific wall cubes in the way have the least amount of HP. Which, of course, means “traditional” structures like bunkers or buildings with a bunch of traps surrounding it are pointless. Instead, you need to construct Ninja Warrior obstacle courses for zombies to tight-rope walk towards you single-file for anything you build to have meaning.
Or just sit on top of a roof for a couple of weeks before moving to a different building. Whichever.
In fairness, all of this nonsense was introduced in patches, and it’s entirely possible to remove it in the same way. Given the consistency in which the devs have moved backwards though, I don’t have much faith in them spontaneously understanding why their game was popular to begin with and to stop undermining it. So while the business decisions they are making with 1.0 are rational and the last-chance deals magnanimous, I still don’t like it.
About the only bright side to all this is that, perhaps, having a firmer foundational codebase will encourage more modders to fix all the bullshit. Darkness Falls is already a transformational mod that improves the game in about every way, and I know of others (Undead Legacy). That last Q4 2025 slide does says “Steam Workshop Support” so that may be the golden ticket. We’ll just have to see.
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Tags: 7 Days to Die, Early Access, It's Just Business, Release, The Fun Pimps