Just a quick shout out to Massively OP for featuring me in their Global Chat feature post. As much of as an honor when they mentioned my comments on their podcast about how I listen to podcasts at 2x speed in the shower. If you want MMO news and insights then Massively OP is the site for you.
Welcome to week two of Blaugust 2024; outlined below:
"Introduce Yourself Week (August 4th – August 10th) – The idea behind this week is to have some structured time around getting to know the other bloggers. I realize that those of us who are veteran bloggers might have already written half a dozen introduction posts by now, but it is a great time to share anything interesting you might have in your arsenal."
As a veteran blogger I do have lots of different posts introducing myself. I will refer you to my first post of Blaugust this year if you want some links and more info. I also shared some info about the Real World me in that post but I left out one of my favorite hobbies: fishing.
I've fished since I was a kid and used to spend every summer day down at my local fishing spots. I was fortunate to grow up in a small town in the midwest with a local lake that I could ride my bike around. Even when I finally got into video games with Sega Genesis I jumped outdoors every chance I got to go fishing.
Speaking of video games I am a big fan of fishing games from Super Black Bass all the way to more modern takes like recent adventures in Russian Fishing 4 or Call of the Wild: The Angler.
My dad also took us fishing from time to time and some core childhood memories were watching my dad rake away weeds near shore so we had a spot to fish for bluegill/sunfish (our local lake was very weedy at the shorelines). Then we'd usually end up at A&W or Hardees for a lunch afterwards. My dad always got a strawberry shake. Good times.
Also I am posting this as a dad myself who is getting ready to take my kids fishing later today. We don't have a small town lake we can ride bikes to so it's a bit of a drive for a good fishing spot here, but I hope the memories for my kids form the same. Though we won't be stopping at fast food afterwards today; if we did it would be Culvers (since they are now down here in the south).
Want to post for Blaugust 2024 but stuck on what to blog about? Then I suggest you hit up the prompt list, grab a D20, roll that beautiful bean footage and count down the list to the prompt you rolled. Then get writing!
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| 2 |
In classic D20 fashion I rolled low; a 2. That prompts me to write about:
What are some key sources of media (games/movies/etc) that have shaped your worldview?
One of the best parts of the prompt list is that there are no rules, and the questions are open to your interpretation. In this case, I get to ponder what to do with "worldview" in the question. My gaming worldview or my real-world worldview? Hmmm. Let me think on this. Since I've shared a bit more about the real me this Blaugust, let me stay in reality and focus on one piece of media most may not think of: football announcers in the '90s.
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| John Madden |
Growing up, I religiously watched the Packers games (we were practically in the shadow of Lambeau Field). While I am obviously influenced by being a Packers fan, one aspect that went hand-in-hand with the Packers in the 1990s was John Madden. I will admit to not knowing a ton about John Madden outside of football broadcasts, but what he did inside those broadcasts left a lasting mark on me. That mark was one of positivity, keeping things simple, and a willingness to say the "duh" things out loud
The infamous Madden joke goes something like, "Well, you see the team who scores the most points wins the game." - John Madden ... probably. For diehard football fans, Madden's basic statements seemed unwarranted, but to many others, they made the game infinitely more approachable. There was an entire cast of extended family members in my orbit who bounced in and out of the living room to catch Madden's updates on the games. He delivered his commentary with such flair and simplicity that it met them right where they were as passerby fans.
Another part of this puzzle is that many in my family have entered the teaching profession; you could say it is in our blood. I personally did not, but every time I coach my kids' sports teams or lead my son's scouting activities, I always get asked if I am a teacher. I have a way with kids, and a lot of it comes down to just talking to them with a bit of excitement in a simple manner and saying the "duh" things out loud that so many adults skip over.
Nowadays, I am a director at my company and lead teams on big projects. We have a reputation for getting stuff done on time and above expectation—seriously, to the point where I have senior vice presidents saying, "That is just not how projects go in business. Good job." I am good at what I do. You know a big part of it? Simplicity and laying the "duh" things out.
If you are following along, you can see that this sounds a lot like what passerby fans got from John Madden. As a Packers fan, I am fortunate that he covered so many of their games and was there for our Super Bowl runs in the '90s. I really do think of Madden when I am laying things out for folks, and I use him as an analogy anytime I am working with a newer manager struggling with working with employees. No doubt most of my employees are the football fans and not the passerby, but the power of keeping things simple and breaking things down for the passerby also reminds football fans how they got to be the fans they are. I feel like a bit of John Madden is narrating when I lead.
Blaugust 2024 is here which means July 2024 is over! Let's take a look at what happened on the blog in July.
Blogger provided number (last 30 days graph so a bit off a full month): 29,200 visits
This is up about 7,000 from June and there was a spike around 7/5 while I was out of town. I did not dig into the spike.
In other metrics:
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| Look at that mountain in the chart all driven by Throne and Liberty searches. |
For the first month in close to two years the answer for "what I played" is NOT New World. I basically quit New World cold turkey after coming back from my trip. I do drop in to reset some long duration trading post listings and to keep my "days since last login" fresh on the company board but that is it. I have not actually "played" the game since June.
What I have played though is a lot of Once Human (all tagged posts). I really like the game even though it has tons of issues and is death marching towards a seasonal model that is going to piss a lot of players off with how the server locking has gone. We'll see if it has staying power after July.
I also took the opportunity to try out the Throne and Liberty global beta and I shared my thoughts. I wasn't hooked enough to say for sure I am playing at launch but having broken the New World grip on my gaming time it is entirely possible I give it a go in Sept. It will be free 2 play so not much risk.
In July 2023 I was prepping for my first Blaugust!
Season 2 of New World was in full swing and I was posting my daily checklist which was a long standing driver of traffic to the blog as it was picked up on the New World subreddit. Sort of makes me sad to look back and see how positive we were on New World and just a year later and its doom and gloom.
July 2019 was in the 'no blogging' era and nothing comes to mind.
In
July of 2014 I was also not blogging regularly so had no entries.
July of 2009 had us talking about the infamous Darkfall review debacle and eventually we got the real Kieron Gillen Darkfall re-review to talk about. To be honest the original review was fair. Darkfall was a turd of a game. Personally I liked my May 2009 take by taking Kieron's review of The Path and treating it like it was for Darkfall.
I was also enamored with Battlefield Heroes through the month of July. It still holds a spot in my "best battlefield" list. Sad that it closed so soon after launching. It was Fortnite-like before Fortnite!
Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.
In July of 2005 it was a mix of Battlefield 2 posts and posts complaining about World of Warcraft. Hmmm... that seems familiar.
Welcome to Blaugust 2024! This year many bloggers are participating in the “First Post of Blaugust” initiative. The idea is that for my very first Blaugust post this year I should take a bit of time and introduce myself and the blog. As Tipa so quoted on my post yesterday "Once more into the breach, and damned be he who first cries "Hold! Enough!""
First I think it is worth looking back at Blaugust 2023 (my first year doing Blaugust) and my "about me" posts on where the blog came from and how I became the gamer I am today.
In explaining who I am and why I have this blog I always go back to my first blog post and pull forward this quote.
This blog has officially started. It has been a process of thought pulling at my mind for a while. I play these games we call MMORPGs, but I don't even know if "play" is the correct word to describe it anymore. I live and breath these games. They are more than an escape from my mediocre life. Fun is no longer the driving factor. Social interaction with like minded nerds and geeks; people whom live through their in game characters as though it was version 2.0 of themselves.
As I said last year this statement holds true all these years later and if you want nothing more than to know about the who and why of Heartlessgamer that is it.
There is of course the personal side out in the real world as well which I tend not to share too much about but Blaugust is good a time as any to share some more about the real me:
July 31st means we are one day away from every bloggers favorite month: Blaugust! Blaugust 2024 is about to get kicked off.
The format and week by week playbook is mostly the same as last year. I plan to participate daily and looking to achieve Rainbow Diamond Award level by hitting the 31 or more posts in the 31 days of August. Check back tomorrow for my “First Post of Blaugust” (The idea is that for your very first Blaugust post you take a bit of time and introduce yourself and your blog.)
Weekly topics if you are interested:
Once Human is a buggy unfinished game with a laundry list of what should be fatal flaws. It has no right to be as popular as it is.
The biggest violation is that cash shop purchase are specific to one character. I bought my battle pass premium on my first character but since my server locked I had to change servers and thus characters so dont have access to my premium rewards now. And they are delaying fixing that to August 15th. How this was ever a problem in the first place is baffling!
Speaking of servers. The server design in Once Human is not ideal. Servers are divided into numerous world shards which spreads players out to a point that its basically a single player game. Even with this low player density servers are locked which prevents friends from playing together.
The game has a season model where content resets every six weeks and players start over leveling, unlocking the map, and rebuilding their base. While some progress carries over such as end game blueprints the entire unfun part of the game has to be repeated.
Seasons also gate content so players can only progress to certain points and the most rewarding content is available. This leaves players without much to do while waiting for season phases to unlock and condenses the main end game progression to late in the season. If you miss out you are out of luck and have to start over in a new season where you wait for the phases to unlock again.
Each server has its own season schedule so if you started on servers at launch and your friends started later you will arrive at the next season at different times. Characters are tied to servers and can't be transferred (yet). Its a nightmare to play together with friends if they all don't join at the exact same time. It is nearly impossible to join friends if you are late.
If the servers and seasons weren't strikes enough; the basic game play is unfinished (to put it kindly).
Enemy AI is brain dead. Enemies can barely manage attacking players let alone actually killing them. The only real danger is one shot kills to players which often happen due to bugs.
Players are also ridiculously overpowered. With the right build solo players can clear the hardest content in the game in a matter of seconds. Even if there wasn't the issue with player power the braindead AI makes most of the fights in this game easy.
Even the main attraction open world "massive multiplayer" events are plagued with bugs and easily abused enemy AI. Big open world bosses where the best strategy is just building fences everywhere. PvP events where the first player to shoot wins. Base raid extraction events totally negated by simply building on a cliff or in the water.
Speaking if PvP there are hackers everywhere. The games PvP isn't even good but yet ruined further by aimbots, wallhacks, and abusing every bit of terrain in the game.
The world itself is just a copy and paste masterpiece. The same buildings, cars, and set pieces are used everywhere. In the entire game players will only encounter a handful of enemies.
Most of the voice lines in the game are not voiced. The quests are amateur at best and click through material. Towns are deadzones with few characters but lots of empty set pieces; rarely do you see a player.
This unfinished nature of the quests and towns and they want players to believe they are going to deliver exciting new story content every 6 weeks with the new season? They are dreaming.
Many quests are supposed to do something unique but are often just bypassed by dumb enemy AI or buggy game play. For example a chest inside a fortress that you can just place your car next to and use your car to jump over the wall to get it.
This bypass mentality permeates the game. If there is some sort of system in the game there is some way to cheese your way by it and chances are you don't even have to willingly cheese... the game just cheeses itself.
Memetics are literally a meme in the game with their "meme points". They are meant to be the crafting tree for base building and crafting, but players can just assign/un-assign points in the system whenever they want so they can spec to get something and then un-assign the points while keeping what they made. At that point why not just let us get all the trees... we literally have to start over from level 1 for the next season.
Oh but specializations that go with memetics are totally random and sucks to be you if you don't luck into the best specs. Your character will just have to go without. Or you will have to rely on other players that did get the lucky spec to bail you out if it's something like refining gold/silver ore. Why is gold/silver refining a freaking specialization in the first place!?
We didn't even touch on the true progression for blueprints being a complete random lottery system. Sure they added some direct buy options but good luck getting enough of the key resource to buy everything you want. You still have to gamble for enough extra pieces to actually rank up. At least you keep the progress between seasons when you start all over again...
This game has so many issues and feels mailed in with the copy/paste and limited enemy variety. This game has NO RIGHT to be popular.
Anyway... I am still addicted to it and playing every day. I really like the game and so do many others. The Steam charts don't lie: peak concurrent players went up after launch and are staying steady. So I'm not alone. Maybe as gamers we just like our broke buggy games that lack polish and feel incomplete?
The Once Human addiction continues!
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| Yes I bought the battle pass for these bad a$$ looks. |
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| A sale in the vending machine! |
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| Disco fever. The events in this game are always entertaining. |
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| Baby disco ball and mommy disco ball. |
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| Playing with friends.... not sure that is safe. |
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| Lets dance boss man. |
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| Hanging out in the car. |
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| Players need to brush up on their red light green light skills for this boss. |
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| Loot the crate... or don't. |
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| Oh a cute bunn... oh wait... what are you doing! |
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| The fire frog improves your furnace's performance. I don't want to ask how. |
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| Broken lighthouse. |
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| Freeze! Fortunately the enemies as well. |
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| Ha, missed me. Note: the boss freezes you before deploying the lasers so you need to get to cover quickly. |
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| Janitor deviant janitoring on top of the refiner during a purification. |
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| Tunnel |
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| Flying alien space whale in the distance |
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| Fighting a level 60 elite. |
Throne and Liberty's global beta is a few days past now and while I am not settled on whether I am playing at launch I am still following along with the updates on the Korean version as they will be changes that are present at the global launch. There looks to be a few big changes coming: they are adding some life skills such as cooking/fishing and adding skill customization. Let's take a look and talk about each.
First I found this video helpful to understand the changes coming to skills:
One of my complaints (for lack of a better word) about Throne was that combat, especially the skills, felt overly complex and thus sort of mushed together with little identity. The weapon skills, before this system change, were already doing three, four, or more things just by themselves. I felt like this was too much and too complicated and forced the system into a stationary tab target combat experience where you spend more time looking at cooldowns on your hotbar than engaging in the combat.
The skill customization in the video seems to address some of that. The fireball example featured allowed the player to customize the skill so it could be cast while moving. I wanted to pause and focus on that one because that feels like something that should just be part of the combat system. I should be able to move in combat! It should be the exception rather than the rule that you get rooted in place when activating a skill.
So it's great to see them adding this ability to customize the skills but if there are too many of these "this should just be part of the normal skill / combat" then this is not the right direction. Again the skills are already too complex and players get too many to use at once which is fostering the static feeling of combat. Yes there is a lot of options in combat and now there will be even more variety in those options but that still doesn't address why combat feels off for so many players.
There was also some feedback in the community about "why didn't we get this in the global beta version so that we could test it?". I do agree it'd have been better to test with this system to make a better launch day decision since this will be in at launch.
Next a look at cooking and fishing.
Nothing major here. Cooking is pretty straight forward. I did like the way the visuals work with actually cooking. I am not sure I liked that there was a random chance for a better result. The better food will be the "best in slot" food of the game so I expect a glut of food that isn't that desired. As the first true "crafting" profession in the game though it's at least a start!
Fishing looked simple and straight forward which is good for me. I like to fish in my games!
At the surface Throne and Liberty is a very polished game. The graphics are amazing. Performance is top notch. It is massive and nails multiplayer with masses of players running around everywhere. Quality of life features abound. However just below the makeup there is some things we need to talk about. Here are my final thoughts after 15 hours with the Throne and Liberty global beta.
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| Welcome to Throne and Liberty |
First I do want to reiterate how amazing this game looks and how well it runs. I am still amazed how they are able to get the game to run without any loading screens. That alone is worth recommending the game as it is so refreshing to boot up a game, select a character, and then a few seconds (not minutes) later you are in the world. The same goes for teleporting. Add in the performance both in how it runs on your machine and how it seemingly maintains a lag-free world with hundreds of players running around it is clear they have some magic sauce!
The problem, for me, comes in that the game didn't hook me. For comparison I hit 50+ hours played in both the New World open beta and more recently in Once Human's open beta which both ran shorter than Throne's beta where I hit 15 hours. I did keep coming back to play Throne but once I got past how amazing the world feels, the shock of teleporting around without loading screens, and how fun it is to chase after the giant flying whale at some point I had to interact with the story and engage in the combat. That is where the game started to lose me (but not entirely).
I'll admit in my older age I am not one for sitting around dialogue screens or cut-scenes in RPGs. For a while now I've felt that if a game can't deliver the story content without having to stop and bring me to a separate screen that the story probably was click through material.
Throne delivers some of it's story via interactive mechanisms but there is still a lot of time spent in dialogue screens or cut scenes. By the end of the beta I was pressing F and ESC as fast as I could to get out of them. The story is just not interesting and most story quests are monotonous. Seriously; one of the last quests I did in beta had me talk to someone, walk a few feet to pick up a burlap sack, then walk a few feet and put the sack in a fire, and then just turn to talk to the person again! That was it. Nothing more. I don't need to be doing mundane quest steps in 2024!
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| F, F, F |
Dotted between the mundane story questing are instanced solo encounters which provide more meaty content usually focused around some sort of combat encounter. These are better than the burlap sack burning experience but aren't anything to write home about. I just don't have the patience for story in MMORPGs anymore. Get me to the world and interacting with other players! With that said Throne is not much different from other games in the genre and at least it has some cut scenes worth watching.
There are parts of Throne where the game does a better job of delivering information to the player. For example in the world events, as you are doing the event, a fully narrated set of updates for the event appear on your screen. They don't require you to interact with them and go away all by themselves. I found it a good way to keep me engaged in the event progress.
Additionally I think the team behind Throne realized that many players are like me and click through content as fast as possible. After most story moments or tutorial quests the game has a fully voice narrated "here is a summary of what just happened" that plays for you while you go about your business. Personally I feel they could have just done this vs much of the mundane dialogue screens in the game. In fact I really liked the after-the-fact narration (I know some testers did not).
Also in the story quest there are points where you interact with items and have to go to another screen to manipulate the item. This is it's own screen (again, taking you out of the world) and you have to flip the item around and then click on the right spot to unlock the next part of the puzzle. The first experience with this was a "fake" book that really had a key hidden inside. I did not find it interesting at all and felt like it was wasting my time.
It is rare enough to have to inspect an item that it's not a headache but it brings up a question of consistency. Why not make all quest items work like this? Why just here and there? I am a big believer in games being consistent and this just seemed like a tacked on feature used some of the time. The screen itself that you use is also not intuitive at all. I had to look up help on how to do it because clicking was doing nothing (you have to hold your click down when the cursor changes icons which means you can really just fake your way through it vs it being some sort of puzzle).
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| The item inspection puzzles are few and far between and aren't needed |
The quests and events in the game do offer variety. I did enjoy some early quests such as the one where I morphed into a mouse and had to literally play "cat and mouse" dodging a cat only to find out the cat was a morphed bad guy. However, too much of the main story was just run here do this then run there. I honestly think the game may have been better without the main story and instead just focused on the world events.
I say this because there are so many freaking events happening in the world in this game. It was refreshing to see a world that looked alive! Hitting the "schedule" button and seeing all the possible events occurring was cool. I barely scratched the surface of events and had fun in every event I jumped into. My only disappointment was missing an event and having to wait hours for the next time. I didn't even get to PvP yet and there are tons of PvP events!
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| A busy map. Events. Events everywhere! |
I did get to try the level 20 dungeon a few times as well and it was OK. I'll talk more on combat later and the state of combat was part of why I say it was just OK. The game does have a group finder which was nice as it made it easy to get into a group and get going on the content. As a more solo-ish player I tend to prefer this way of getting into group content.
The dungeon was mostly trash enemies and a couple bosses. The end boss was difficult to follow and I really didn't understand why some groups failed at that boss while others seemed to do just fine. I was "one shot" multiple times at this boss and still don't know by what or how I was supposed to dodge it (probably because I was staring at the hotbar UI vs the boss). At the end of the dungeons you have to spend a currency you gradually gain each day to get rewards and once that currency is gone I am not sure why you'd run a dungeon. That was disappointing to learn as its basically a "daily" but I get it being a way to prevent farming.
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| The first dungeon's end boss summon |
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| Group finder with match making for dungeons |
Next I want to touch on combat. I never got over the hump with it. It just doesn't feel as good compared to the rest of the game around it. The biggest issue I have is that it feels static with too much time watching the UI. I've said in the past that New World changed how I perceive MMO combat. In New World you rarely are looking at the UI and are almost always engaged with the combat encounter in front of you.
In Throne I kept missing things going on because I had to be either looking at a bar of 12 different possible skill cooldowns or trying to find whatever status message on screen I needed to find or having to swing my camera around to find the enemy. This leads to a lot of time with your character just standing in place while you hit the buttons and honestly 12 skill buttons + 4 consumable + 4 function keys is just too much.
Speaking of skills. I really don't get why the game starts players off with access to so many of the weapon skills. I don't want to sound like a newbie and say it is overwhelming but it honestly is and removes an aspect of progression and learning a game that I didn't realize I'd miss until I played Throne and it wasn't there. Aside from the first tutorial scenario that teaches you the defense timing mechanic there is nothing to walk a player through the hundreds of skills in the game. Players are expected to open the skills screen and figure it out; including figuring out what order you should use them in (i.e. rotation).
And it's needed because skills are complicated. There isn't simple "fireball goes boom" skills. Every skill is "does X% damage + applies Y effect and then has % chance for Z". Oh and then based on time of day it may do something entirely different. All I want to do is scream.... "why!?".
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| The skills screen can be daunting. An example skill that increases block chance and then also counterattacks but the counterattack isn't affected by critical or heavy hit chance. Then on being upgraded does even more. And you will have 12 skills of this complexity level in front of you at any given time in combat! |
I really had to dig through skills to make sense of what goes together well and what order to fire them off in. I can see learning your rotation being a huge part of success in this game. That is fine but just not something that hooked me. I'd much rather have been gradually introduced to skills and had the game give me more guidance on what works together. Don't even get me started on the fact you can have multiple hot bars of skills set up and swap mid fight.
I also felt there was little identity with the weapons. You can equip any two weapons and from their array of skills you can equip 12 (again feels like too many). All of them sort of had the same feeling. If it was a ranged attack it was a ranged attack. If it was a melee attack it was a melee attack. Wand, staff, sword, dagger... I didn't get a sense they were all that much different or maybe the game failed to explain to me how they were working differently. I really wish the game would have limited active skills to, at most, five at one time. That would have made it much more impactful to choose between the array of skills two weapons brings the player.
Ultimately whether its the skills bonanza or the stationary state; the combat in Throne and Liberty is it's weakest part. It didn't lose me but it didn't hook me. I really dislike that you have to focus so much on the UI and thus lose focus on the amazing game world in front of you. Less would be more in this game's combat.
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| You get a cat for your inn room |
There are some other areas of the game to touch on.
The guild system seems well fleshed out. I joined a random guild and was immediately helping complete guild contracts and getting rewards for the guild doing activities. I also had multiple ways to contribute to the guild via game mechanisms vs having to manage contribution outside of the game. I think this game will be a good home for guilds looking for MMOs that reward guild play. It will also be good for the less hardcore guild members (i.e. solo players) to be able to contribute to the guild.
Crafting is not really crafting so much as just a set of screens you use to combine things together. There is upgrading gear via enchanting but again its just a set of screens you use to progress gear vs any sort of crafting as you would think from most MMOs (i.e. you don't craft a sword hilt and blade to make a sword). Some crafting, like cooking, is coming in the launch apparently (and is available in the Korean version as of this week).
One of the biggest "oh really?" moments was when I realized the game has no in game economy. Zero. None. The only auction house is the one for the premium currency (which I am fine with). However, that auction house is limited in to just some specific named items. You can't, for example, craft potions and sell them (or at least that I could see). That was really disappointing as markets of online games is one of my biggest attractions. This may change since they are adding more life skills to the game like cooking.
Another point to make in Throne's favor is the quality of life bits. There is a lot of polished features in this game. I was amazed to find that I could save my preset skill build outs and I didn't have to buy any slots from a cash shop for the privilege. The same goes for armor and weapons. It is just there in the UI. The map is amazing and full of info. The schedule that details events really helps connect players to the active world. While there is probably too many overall screens in the interface I can't deny that each screen is still clean and super functional.
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| The quintessential MMO experience: the crowded town alleyway |
The end question is whether I will play the game at launch and I'll give an honest "I don't know" answer. Is it possible? Sure. I like to jump into MMO launches to get that launch day feeling but I'm not sure it would be much different than what I got out of the open beta here. The game did grow on me a little the further the beta went on and I used the extra day to play some more when they extended it.
I can tell you that this beta was nothing like what I got out of New World's open beta or more recently Once Human's. Both of those games hooked me and I ran out the clock on their betas and was happy to repeat at the launch of both. With Throne something just didn't fit together as well. The combat being mediocre and the lack of an actual game economy are not great selling points. I will end with "maybe" on whether I'll play. I really don't think the game is going to do much better in the west than it did in Korea. I can see now where many folks are coming from after they tried to the Korean version and now had access to the global beta.
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| Goodbye beta |
