Author Archives: Azuriel
Price Hike
You have likely heard the news already, but in the last few weeks Microsoft has increased the price of Game Pass, kind of significantly. The Ultimate tier went from $19.99 to $29.99, for example, which is a 50% increase. Even the PC tier where I’m at went from $11.99 to $16.49, which is a 38% increase. While Microsoft has tried spinning the “value added” from things like free battlepasses to a few F2P games, most everything is the same or worse.
I have a couple of things I wanted to say about this.
First, the amount of “I told you so!”s from people – including former FTC chair Lina Khan – who suggest the price increase is a result of the Activision Blizzard merger is kind of ridiculous. Yes, $55 billion is a lot of investment money that Microsoft expects a return on. However… do we imagine the Game Pass subscription was going to stay at the same level if the merger didn’t occur? Was Microsoft not going to lay off the same game devs as before? Subscriptions go up and to the right. It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that Netflix and Disney+ will have a(nother) price increase within the next two years, with or without any mergers.
Incidentally, the math on people canceling their subscriptions is interesting. Even if just under one-third of people cancelled their subscription… Microsoft would still break even. Hell, depending on the network traffic and other server costs, Microsoft probably comes out ahead even if half of everyone quits.
For the record, I’m not here to defend the price hikes or Microsoft in general. We are absolutely seeing an across-the-board decrease in Consumer Surplus as a result of this, and it behooves everyone to double-check their internal math to see if Game Pass still makes sense. If all you’re playing is Hollow Knight: Silksong for the month, well, you were better off just buying it outright. Even the “free” copy of Call of Duty is going to start costing you extra starting in month 3 versus 7+ now.
But let’s not pretend that where we’re at today wasn’t worth how we got here. Microsoft was going to Microsoft anyway. The fact that we got to enjoy a comparatively cheap way to play videogames for years and years was phenomenal. The party is over now? Oh no, back to… buying videogames again.
Compare that to what’s going to happen when the AI music inevitably stops.
Self-Correcting
I feel there are many elements about AI that will eventually be self-correcting… in a sort of apocalyptic, crash-and-burn kind of way. For example, the AI-summarized web doesn’t leave much economic oxygen for people to create content worth summarizing. Assuming, of course, that ad-based revenue streams continue to make sense at all as we cross into over 50% of all internet traffic being bots.
On an individual level, I am experiencing some interesting changes that may also be self-correcting.
I have mentioned it a few times, but I have had a problem with watching Youtube (Shorts). As in, I would pop on over to quickly decompress from some other activity, and then 2-3 hours later, awaken from my fugue, algorithmic state having not accomplished anything that I had set out to. It’s a problem.
…or, at least, it was. Because I am now beginning to encounter (presumed) AI-directed, curated, and/or created content. And it repulses me in an uncanny valley way. Takes me right out of whatever hypnosis I was under and immediately causes me to close the tab. Which, of course, is great for me.
I put “presumed” up there though, because sometimes I cannot really tell. For example, this video about “15 forgotten garden traditions” is probably AI generated – it features generic voiceover on top of stitched-together montage of others peoples’ (at least attributed) content. Much like the now-maligned em dash however, perhaps that style of video is now just guilty by association? Another video was on The Saver’s Paradox and my AI-dar went off immediately. Looking further into the channel and thinking about what it would require to prompt that level of video though, it seems like it’s legit.
Perhaps neither of those videos bothered you in the slightest. In which case, congratulations! You are absolutely set up for a future filled to the brim with… content. For me though, the magic is gone.
It may well be inevitable that the quality of AI generation is such that it become indistinguishable from human content. In which case, why would I be on Youtube at all, instead of in my own prompt?
Self-correcting! As it turns out, even black holes evaporate eventually.
[GW2] Tasks
It’s been 2-3 weeks since I’ve started playing Guild Wars 2 again. So… what am I doing?
Thus far, I have been really leaning into the current Fractal event. Which, to be fair, is primarily due to the FOMO elements. The introduction of the new Legendary gloves you can get for running Quickplay versions of the early Fractals will be sticking around, but there’s another “reward track” that grants two Bag space slots, a 20-slot bag, and a Legendary starter kit that will be going away on October 7th. Theoretically, you can still grind most/all of it by the time this post goes Live, but I have enjoyed gaining some extra progress – via Daily/Weekly achievement resets – by spacing things out.
There is probably some debate to be had as to whether adding the Quickplay feature to Fractals will lead to more players doing Fractals after the event ends. Honestly… maybe? It certainly has demystified the game mode to an extent, as my normal M.O. for this sort of group content would be to watch YouTube videos to understand all the mechanics before even stepping inside. That sort of thing is not particularly viable when Quickplay has like 10ish options randomly picked for you. Of course, everything has been toned way down for the game mode, so you get the gist after seeing the maps several times even if you aren’t reading text (since everyone is Go-Go-Go).
Another piece of “content” I have very much enjoyed is the Wizard’s Vault. This is a rework of the Daily Achievements (read: daily quests) system with a fancy new interface and currency called Astral Acclaim. It was very annoying at first, as it had a mixture of PvE and PvP objectives, but once I figured out that you can uncheck the PvP box and get all PvE-based objectives, everything was grand. You have both Daily and Weekly tabs you can work on, and then you have a large menu of rewards to choose from that eventually reset every quarter or whatever. So, for example, you can choose to spend Astral Acclaim on certain cosmetics, or a Legendary starter kit, or a bag containing 1g (x90), or your choice of an Ascended Weapon, and so on. The Weekly tab requires six objectives to get the big bonus chest, but there are eight total options so you even have some choice to skip ones you find annoying.
The one thing I haven’t done is purchase any expansion content. For one thing, Visions of Eternity is right around the corner (Oct 28). While $25 is not onerous for an MMO expansion, purchasing three of them back-to-back is another matter. Plus, you know how I am: why pay full price when the expansions were literally on sale at the beginning of the month? I missed that boat, but I’m assuming there will be another sale around launch day. Of course, waiting is always kind of risky, as I could easily come to my senses and start playing other things again.
[Fake Edit] Steam Autumn sale is on, and now those two expansions are $17.50 and $19.99. Huzzah!
The other thing I haven’t (yet) started in on are unlocking Legendaries. In pretty much every guide out there, the recommendation is for players to not do weapon or armor Legendaries first, but instead go for accessories (rings, amulet, etc). This makes some sense, as accessories apply to every character you ever make, whereas armor is broken up into weight classes (can’t use Light Armor Legendary on your Thief). Weapon Legendaries can apply to multiple characters… but not if they are off-meta or off-spec. Well, this is GW2, so meta probably doesn’t really matter all that much.
Regardless, the “problem” is that I have effectively decked out all my alts in Ascended accessories already. It’s been like seven years since this post, but farming Winterberries an unholy amount of times will get you most everything you need. Berserker stats won’t help Viper builds, but as long as you alternate what you get your alts, you can usually just shuffle the accessories around each time balance patches change the math. Grinding out Vision or Aurora or whatever may provide a little QoL bump, but it will not actually improve any stats. So, dilemma.
For now, I will continue what I’m doing for as long as it remains fun. Which it is. For now. Although, I came across this “resolution” while looking up past GW2 posts, and… yeah. We’ll see.
What Do You Get with GW2 Expansions?
The question that Google failed to (succinctly) answer for me is this: what do I actually get with the three latest Guild Wars 2 mini-expansions? You know, aside from the story and everything. What unlocks? Are there new Legendaries? If I had to pick which to get first, or maybe only one at all, what would the biggest bang for my buck be?
Since I had to look this stuff up for myself, I figure I may as well write it down. Note: all expansions retail at $25 and come with a Shared Inventory Slot plus level 80 boost. And, you know, story content.
Secrets of the Obscure
- Mastery to unlock weapons for use regardless of spec (Scourge can use pistol from Harbinger, etc)
- New open-world focused Legendary Armor set
- Faster Skyscale mount unlock, plus additional abilities
- Exclusive Relics that are often Best-in-slot (Relic of the Fractal)
Janthir Wilds
- Introduces land-based Spear as a new option for all classes (Best-in-slot for some meta builds)
- New Legendary Spear and Backpack
- Homestead is your own private customizable house
- Warclaw mount gets a lot more functionality (double-jumps and such)
- Exclusive Relics that can be Best-in-slot (Relic of the Claw)
Visions of Eternity
- One new Elite spec for each class (nine total)
- Skimmer mount gets a lot more functionality
- New homestead map (if you own Janthir Wilds)
- “New system updates will make raids easier to access” (Quickplay?)
- Note: not yet out at the time of this post
Hopefully helpful to Googlers down the road.
GW2 Too
It has been about 2.5 years since I last touched Guild Wars 2 (GW2). At that time, I had been puttering around, completing daily quests to net the equivalent of $0.20/day, and basically stewing in my own cognitive dissonance. What broke me out of the cycle was the then-pending release of Secrets of the Obscure expansion. Even though GW2 is one of the few MMOs out there that doesn’t obsolete content once expansions come out, just knowing that everyone else would be doing all the cool stuff while you’re stuck gathering Flax or whatever sucks. On the other hand, I didn’t necessary want to pay $30 for more GW2, so I took that as a sign to uninstall and do something else.
And so I did. Another expansion came out called Janthir Wilds, and I let that one pass me by too. It even featured the ability to have a decorative house, introduced a spear weapon for every class, and so on. Neat. Have fun with that.
There is even yet another expansion coming out in October called Visions of Eternity. I think there are even new Elite specs this time around. Haven’t really looked into too far.
So why am I writing about GW2, and in fact have reinstalled the game? They finally introduced LFD.
It’s technically a beta feature, but it’s called Quickplay, and it’s the same automated group finder feature from WoW circa 16 years ago. Press button, get an instant 5-man squad and teleport right next to them. Right now, it is pointing towards even-easier versions of T1 Fractals, but presumably it will be expanded in the future to actual dungeons, perhaps Strikes, maybe raids? Moreover, ArenaNet has erected an extremely generous set of Achievements surrounding spam-queueing T1 Fractals for the next several weeks, resulting in extra bag slots, a Legendary glove (!!), and other such goodies.
As dumb as it sounds, yeah, reading about Quickplay (and the rewards, obviously) is what pushed me over the edge into downloading GW2 again.
…sorta. Honestly, I had also reached a point where I realized that I was logging into No Man’s Sky just because I couldn’t think of a better game to play for those “don’t want to commit to 1+ hour game sessions” moments. If I’m not committing to something, why not not commit to something that could possibly be relevant in the future? Then again, Guild Wars 3 is going to be a thing at some point, rendering everything moot. Also, heat death of the universe.
Anyway, bottom line, I’ve been playing GW2 a lot the past few days.
Old Man’s Sky
They just keep bringing me back, don’t they?
If you haven’t heard the news, No Man’s Sky (NMS) recently released yet another massive free update to the game. This time around, you can build a corvette-class ship that will allow you to… get up and walk around in your ship. That might not sound like much, but it is actually kind of rare even in space games, especially considering you do so with no loading screens. In any case, I decided I need to give things another go after 5 (five!) years.
What I encountered was still one of the worst opening sequences for almost any game.
I apparently have never commented on it before, but NMS starts with you awakening on an alien planet, your suit powering up, and then a number of warnings about your environmental protection waning. Conceptually, this is fine; other survival games start you out in imminent danger too. For example, ARK has you awakening on a beach and sometimes being eaten by a raptor right away. In NMS’s case though, it just feels… bad. Your visor scanner doesn’t work, sometimes you don’t spawn near required resources to refill your environmental protection, and you don’t have the terrain modification gun yet which otherwise trivializes most hostile weather (e.g. dig a tunnel and get underground).
Worse, I actually tried starting things back up by immediately choosing an Expedition. Big mistake. Expeditions were added to the game several patches ago, and they are basically more focused experiences where you start out on predefined planets and need to accomplish specific goals. The problem is that these are absolutely tuned more for advanced players with a good grasp of the underlying mechanics. Well, and the other problem is that everyone is thrown into the same subsets of planets, so you might spawn in an area where everyone has mined most of the nearby ore. More annoyingly to me though, is that when you are looking around for resources, you’re bombarded with dozens of (useless) player base icons, making finding things difficult.
So, yeah, don’t do what I did. Instead, get a foothold in the game and then go into an Expedition – including bringing some good loot in with you! – via a vendor you unlock a few hours in the game.
In any case, since I hate myself, I chose to start a brand new save on Survival difficulty. C’mon, I had 130+ hours logged already, right? Beginning is brutal, as mentioned, and you have to contend with some extra nonsense like smaller stack sizes for material, etc. Within about 15 hours though, I’m back to having 22 million units, 6000 nanites, and unlocking all 10 freighter storage racks.
No Man’s Sky has indeed improved tremendously over the years, but fundamentally it does still have a problem with “but… why?” It’s the same place I landed on five years ago, and unfortunately it does not appear much has changed. Well, OK, there have been a lot of changes. Expeditions, there are now Dissonant planets with corrupted Sentinels, there is a Settlement system, Pirate Dreadnaughts to fight/own, the new bespoke Corvette-class ship building system, and so on.
Fundamentally, though? When you’re on foot, none of the randomly-generated creatures matter; only Sentinels pose any threat whatsoever, and there are only like a half-dozen types. Why even have so many different kinds of weapons for your multi-tool if only one is needed to take down every enemy? Meanwhile, if you spend more than 30 seconds in space, you’re likely to be accosted by fleets of hostile pirates that will absolutely murder you if given half a chance. The space gameplay “loop” is not particularly deep, but nevertheless feels miles more complete than what you are doing in the other 80% of the game, e.g. walking on planets.
Having said all that… yeah, 130+ hours plus however many I muster this time around. I’m harsh on the game because I’m mad. Hello Games have added so much and just inexplicably left such a gaping hole in the center and I don’t understand why. Maybe having Gek pirates running around on foot blasting you would feel too weird or whatever, but apparently it’s fine when they’re faceless ships? OK, just use some of the six trillion randomized alien creatures and make some of them require that fancy mech to fight! Or lean more into those bug aliens that are apparently as ubiquitous as the Sentinels for (presumably) some kind of lore reason.
Or, I guess, ignore all that and hurry up and give me Light No Fire.
Impressions: all the Switch Stuff
We have successfully returned from vacation near a beach. One element of which included the introduction of the Switch (and games) to my kiddo. Impressions:
Nintendo Switch itself
I think there was technically a way to hook up a Switch to a TV and not need the dock, but I decided to bring the dock as well. I was extremely wary of the dock snapping in half somewhere – given its U shape – but it’s either stronger than it looks or I’m luckier than I look. Packing it in my carry-on instead of a checked bag probably helped. Everything else was in a travel case that held up beautifully.
And not to belabor the point much, but the Switch was very portable; I doubt anyone is packing a PS5 into a carry-on or whatever for a one-week trip. The last time I felt comfortable traveling with a “regular” game console somewhere was in the GameCube era, when I’d bring that to-and-fro over college breaks. If there was an appropriate use case, this was it.
For all the games we played, we exclusively used the… half controller (?) configuration. Pretty awkward controller for me, but it was OK for the types of games we were playing.
Mario Kart 8
Started out with Mario Kart to try and leave a good impression with a game that had a lot of replay value. Kid was ready to give it up after a couple circuits.
Near as I can tell, there are two degrees of Assist Mode when it comes to Mario Kart 8. The first appears to be a generalized “automatically stay on the track.” You can still fly off if struck by something while airborne, but I believe the game otherwise keeps you from getting turned around or going out of bounds. The second level of assist is acceleration. For sure, I had this turned off for myself, even though I’m not certain how. My son, meanwhile, was otherwise able to leisurely putter around with only minor course (mis)corrections when the mood struck him. I had heard from a friend that Assist Mode is sometimes able to win races all by itself, but I did not at all see that in the 50cc difficulty.
My own impressions of the game “for real” will have to wait for a later opportunity.
Super Mario Bros Wonder
This was the first real hit with the child.
The way two-player works is its own sort of Assist Mode. One player has the “crown” and the camera follows them, pushing the other(s) along if they go off-screen. If someone falls down a pit or hits an enemy, they return as a floating ghost with a 5-second timer. Connect with an alive player in time and they will respawn with no loss of lives. Additionally, if someone is controlling Yoshi or a rabbit-looking dude, they become immune to dying by enemies… but cannot transform with power-ups.
Overall, what I have come to realize is that platformers are, you know, kinda hard for kids. Somehow we all made it through back in the day, sure, but god damn. Hate to even think about what our parents had to go through listening to us die in the original Mario Bros. Maybe that’s why they beat us with belts and/or shut us outside until after dark?
Super Mario Bros Odyssey
Odyssey is what we played after Wonder, and is the clear favorite currently.
The Assist Mode for Odyssey is that there are blue arrows showing where the player should go next, and I think that the penalty for falling into a pit is more relaxed (just 1 less heart vs… something else). Additionally, the second player gets to control the hat, which can be pretty cool.
Unfortunately, the platforming is not especially designed for a 6-year old here either, so there are some sequences when he wanted me to take over. Even being the hat was tricky, as you have to contend with having your perspective change if Mario moves around. Plus, sometimes you have to use the hat right now to prevent damage or make the boss vulnerable, or whatever. It’s a big responsibility.
We’re getting pretty close to “Bowser Wowser” as he’s been christened though, and my guy is having more fun watching than playing sometimes. We’ll see how things shake out in a couple weeks/months.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Didn’t actually get around to this one, despite my asking him several times if he wanted to try a different game. My guess is that he could still have fun on a team with daddy against whatever the equivalent of a bunch of Level 1 CPU Jigglypuffs there are in this one. Probably still Jigglypuffs.
Vacation
I’ve been on one. Posts to resume next week.
That said, I’ve also been (re?)reading the Expanse series while I’ve been here. Hard to tell if I’ve already read a few before, or if the TV series was just so accurate that it may as well have been a transcript. In which case… doesn’t the TV version just win by default?
In An Age 
Dumb Problems
Oct 23
Posted by Azuriel
I’m going to talk about a dumb blogging problem I experienced recently, so feel free to skip this one.
Like most problems in the world, it started with Tobold. I’ve been a persona non grata in his comment section for years now, but I’ve kept his blog on my Feedly for masochistic reasons. One of his latest posts was so unbelievably asinine though – “Trump isn’t doing any permanent damage!” – that I had had enough. That’s when I realized that I still had him linked over in the Blogroll section of my sidebar, so I figured I should take care of that too.
Big mistake.
Over the years, I have often heard people complain about WordPress, sometimes vehemently enough to drive them to self-host and even try and reinvent the Comment section wheel. While I had misgivings when WordPress changed to the “block” format many years ago, for the most part all the nonsense seemed to just happen to Other People. As it turns out, that’s because WordPress does indeed make inexplicable changes and then hides them in a sort of load-bearing Schrödinger’s box to surprise you with if you ever open it. “Looking to edit your Blogroll? Well, now it’s a Legacy Widget. Also, that widget doesn’t exist anymore! Enjoy the dead cat.”
Now, on the one hand, I can kind of see the logic. The original setup was clunky as fuck: you place a Blogroll widget in your sidebar, and then add entries to the “Link” section of your blog. The new setup is… add a list block to the sidebar with some hyperlinks. Technically, it’s a more elegant solution. Or would be, if they also added information on how to recreate the sort of red bar thing.
Guys, I was raging. It’s bad enough when you have a problem that you find difficult to articulate in a searchable way. But when the problem is caused by someone else laying a goddamn trap in your code… I get it now. The extra dumb thing was how I stumbled onto the solution. After several hours, I was finally giving up and willing to try and grab a JPG of the red bar and manually photo edit some text on it when I ended up right-clicking and Inspecting the bar, e.g. looking at the HTML code directly.
For future reference:
More specifically, you have to add the “Custom HTML” widget to the sidebar and then paste that in. Change the title in the Span section to match your needs, of course. I’m assuming that the H3 (header) design is keyed off of the overall Theme (I’m using Mystique) and color options of the blog.
Anyway, that was a lot more of my yesterday than strictly necessary. Also, the Blogroll itself is looking a bit sparse after trimming Tobold and several bloggers who no longer post. Honestly, I never even liked the static list in the first place – it’s just a poor substitute for the glory that was Blogspot’s dynamic blogroll. You know, the one that allowed you to link to 50+ blogs or whatever and display whichever ones posted most recently at the top? If there was ever a wheel that needed reinventing, it is that one.
Posted in Commentary
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Tags: Blogging, Blogroll, Dumb Problems to Have, Schrödinger's Cat, Wordpress