Category Archives: Miscellany
Well and Truly Hexed
Now this is always a nice email surprise:
Title: Your account has been deleted!
From: noreply@gameforge.comGreetings XXXX!
Your HEX account has been permanently deleted. We hope you had a fun time in the world of Entrath.
Maybe you’d like to continue your adventure in the future?
Then visit us at http://hex.gameforge.com/.
We hope to see you again one day.Until then!
The HEX Team
And if you’re wondering, yes, it’s legit. Getting bought by a German company is serious business.
Almost exactly three years ago, I backed Hex on Kickstarter to the tune of $85. That remains one of the dumbest game-related purchases I have ever made, and not just because Hearthstone came onto the scene three months later and sucked all the oxygen out of the digital CCG room.
Looking through my archives, I don’t see many posts about Hex. Which sort of makes sense, as I believe I only really played it twice in the last three years. The first time was a session that lasted just long enough for me to realize that the card browser was a hideous mess and having to press Pass Priority a million times – an unfortunate feature just as shameless stolen from Magic Online as everything else – was not the future I wanted to live in.
I tried again about a year later, noted little improvement, found out that they were already releasing the third (or fourth) expansion set, and realized that my unopened Kickstarter packs were likely worth even less, assuming they were worth anything to begin with. Supposedly there is PvE now, but facing the prospect of needing to throw in additional dollars just to do basic stuff like drafting and seemed absurd in a post-Hearthstone world. Yeah, Hearthstone does have the option to charge you, but I haven’t been spending a dime to play in almost a year. In this game space, that’s a big deal.
In any case, I have not been back to Hex since then. And apparently I never will.
[Fake Edit] Word on the street now is that they are rolling back all the deletions, as it seems there was a “glitch” in the notifications that got sent out. Or didn’t get sent out, as the case may be. Glad everyone has the opportunity to download the client, accept the ToS, and promptly uninstall the game for another three years.
Battlefield 1
Okay… most of my yes. Concerns:
- Alternate timeline WWI, or is this down and dirty WWI?
- Will default weapons be single-shot/bolt action guns?
- Melee hasn’t really been Battlefield’s strongest suite.
- Going to be real interesting without a minimap. At least, there shouldn’t be one.
- I hope the weird fixation on the biplanes doesn’t mean will still see 40-1 pilots strafing all game.
- There might be some cannibalization via BF4 due to the (presumed) extreme gameplay shift.
I got into the series with Battlefield 2 and that remains my favorite to this day. So without any of the Battlefield 1942 nostalgia, the time period is a bit weird. But I definitely think DICE and crew deserve massive props for going forward with what is otherwise a huge gamble. Yeah, COD is doubling-down on near-future, so a Battlefield 2143 or whatever might have been too much SciFi. But ceding it entirely? That takes some gumption.
So, yeah. This will be an interesting Fall.
Grimwatch
Since I “saved” the $50 from not buying the 50-pack deal in Hearthstone, I turned around and pre-purchased Overwatch. In fact, I just got off a four-hour semi-open Beta session with some ex-WoW buddies as I write this. All the maps are open this time around, so things are pretty interesting.
Even more interesting though, was the trailer for Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 3:
I can’t even really begin to elucidate why the 40k setting grips me so. All I know is that spent 200+ hours playing Dark Crusade, and I’ve been missing that feeling since… well, Dark Crusade. Dawn of War 2 took the series away from RTS and more into a tactical direction, which is not something that it really needed. Now? It’s going back. It’s going home.
Exciting times, my friends.
Plus, you know, there will be information about the next Battlefield game this Friday. Battlefield Hardline was such an epic failure, that only a proper BF5 (or even BF 2142 sequel) could wipe away. If we see something like that and all this grimdark 40k business? I won’t know what to do with myself. Other than actually look forward to game releases again.
…Okay, that was cool
I remain deeply skeptical about VR overall – the whole “a solution in search of a problem” situation – but… I must admit this looked pretty cool:
It’s the game Budget Cuts, and Tycho wrote some more stuff about it already. Seeing it be played in that video though, especially starting around 7:05? I can start to grok how interesting it could be, even when you’re playing alone with other people in the room. Which would still be pretty weird, especially if you’re flopping around, diving to the ground and such.
Then again, I feel weird playing regular computer games with someone else in the room already.
In any case, at least the Vive has thus far addressed my earliest concern of, you know, being able to take a drink with the headset on: Tron mode. Which is almost cool enough on its own.
Ringing Endorsement
Does anyone else remember playing Dungeon Defenders? You know, that 4-player co-op pseudo-tower defense game from a while back? I knew that the sequel was in Early Access, so I decided to check on it’s progress since it reappeared on my Steam window.
“Still in Early Access, eh? Let me check the reviews…” Top one:
Oh, Steam. Never change.
Although the review goes on to point out that things have since changed – the endgame grind has become easier than before, best weapons were nerfed, etc – the juxtaposition between the 1,095 hours played and the Not Recommended score is just… I don’t know. Funny? Sad? Nostalgic from an MMO perspective?
The developers actually responded to Karthu’s review, assuring him that the changes are a work in progress as they shift some of the systems around in an attempt to provide more depth. Which highlights the Sisyphean absurdity of the situation even more as this dude played an Early Access game for over 45 days straight. Or to put in another perspective, that’s roughly 2.5 hours a day, every day, since it’s Early Access release on Steam (December 2015).
I dunno, man. That sorta sounds like a ringing endorsement to me. Even if it no longer takes 50+ hours of grinding the same map to get the best weapon. Especially if it no longer takes 50+ hours of grinding the same map to get the best weapon. I guess we’ll see.
It Worked
The final (?) chapter of my GTA 5 woes has come to its end.
After uninstalling the “corrupted” GTA 5 installation, I emailed GameBillet to ask them to reinstate their download page that I had brief access to when I originally bought the GTA 5 key from them. From there, I committed myself to downloading 30 individual 1.9 GB files from their servers.
Nothing (other than Steam) is ever that simple though. The first problem I encountered was the fact that Chrome would hang on 100% download completion without actually “finishing” the file. This was not a GTA 5-specific issue, but rather something I have been experiencing for the past month or two with Chrome, even on 125 KB downloads.
Ain’t nobody got time for that. Except for me.
To ensure this would not be a factor, I ended up reinstalling Firefox and downloading from there. This prevented the hung downloads, but Firefox was unable to handle downloading more than six files at a time, so that is what I limited myself to.
The next issue was that after a day of this, I couldn’t log into my GameBillet account, and the “forgotten password” request couldn’t be completed because it stated that my email account didn’t exist. Pretty goddamn strange considering I had two emails from their support team not four days ago. Luckily, I was able to find the original email that contained the download links, so I could still download direct from there.
The final boss, as in most RPGs, was somewhat of a let-down. Having downloaded all the .bin files, I had to run the installer to combine them. Which meant duplicating the 60 GB files on my SSD because of course. After deleting some other games I doubt I’d ever play again (or at all), I logged into Rockstar’s shitty Social Club interface…
…and had to download a 2 GB patch. At 200 kb/s. Fine. I made the time.
Then, the moment of truth.
Never felt so good driving around a corner.
It worked. It really worked. I was able to get to and through the 2nd mission. I didn’t play for much longer beyond that point, but at least I did not run into the exact same breaking point as before, and that’s something.
While this remains another example of my parsimony biting me in the ass, I don’t really blame GameBillet in this scenario: I blame Rockstar and every game maker with their own shitty download client. If Social Club downloaded at more than 200 kb/s, I wouldn’t have had to use a VPN and it wouldn’t have corrupted my files. The real lesson learned here is that Steam fucking earns their 30% cut, and Rockstar is going to eat that cut every goddamn time from here on out.
PvP Servers
It has been quite some time since I’ve had to bother with the issue of PvP servers, but Shintar’s latest experience with a “classic WoW” server really sums up my thinking after the years:
The truth is, I’ve never had the urge to initiate combat with the opposite faction, so if I’m being honest I’m just making myself a punching bag for other players by going along with it. All that ever happens is that I get attacked by people who are several levels above me, in twink gear, or in a group. Sometimes things get turned around and they are the ones who end up with egg on their face, but that’s a cold comfort when compared to the amount of my time that ends up getting wasted by corpse-running and having to re-do quests. I’ve put up with it because there were no other options at the time, but weekends like these really make me wonder whether it’s worth it when I could be having fun with something else where other players aren’t able to ruin my enjoyment every step of the way. My free time is really too precious to me these days to waste it on nonsense like that.
Is there excitement on PvP servers? Sure. Although I would more describe that as anxiety, considering I’ve only ever gone on ganking sprees after being ganked myself. So, really, that would be what I say to anyone asking if they should pick a PvP server: “Do you want to spend your time ganking mostly helpless players over and over? If not, then don’t go to a PvP server.” Those rare moment of cooperation and peaceful coexistence do not make up for the time you spend getting killed in the middle of a quest. They really, really don’t.
In An Age 