Once Human Creator: P4wnyhof

 It is Creator Appreciation Week for Blaugust 2024 so I wanted to take a moment to recognize one of my go to Once Human creators: P4wnyhof. You can find his entire Once Human playlist here.  He features a mix of build guides, boss fight breakdowns, and general commentary on the game.

 I found his take on the season resets to be really good. Check it out and dig around his channel if you are looking for help with the game.

Once Human Update 1.1 Patch Notes

 Once Human is trucking along with changes to the game and have a long list of patch notes coming in update 1.1 set to land on August 15th.  The update brings a new animal "ranching" system, an overhaul of the fishing system, improved base building, a new ancient trial, and a ton of balance changes.  There is a lot in the patch but a few items I wanted to touch on.

Animal ranching in Once Human patch 1.1

 First is the headline addition to the game: animal ranching.  This will allow players to build enclosures to keep the various animals in the game.  Players will have to provide the right type of home and the right type of food to keep the animals happy.  With enough positive treatment players will be able to harvest skin and other byproducts from the captive animals.

 I think this is a neat addition and one I had not expected.  I am a fan of "farming" games so look forward to adding animals alongside my garden beds.  I hope this makes it less tedious to gather the animal byproducts needed for many crafting recipes.  It was annoying having to chase down herds of deer or pigs or rabbits and only end up with a couple items per harvest.  Compared to other systems such as mining/logging where you get hundreds of items per gathering attempt the animal harvesting was annoyingly slow.

Fish and chill

 Fishing is also getting an overhaul.  The fishing system at launch was borderline functional and the mechanics from a user interface perspective didn't line up.  Sometimes you catch fish, sometimes you don't.  Choosing a bait from those available in the game also didn't seem to change anything.

 With the updated system a new stamina-based fishing system is coming into play that should solve the user interface situation.  There are also changes coming to bait and it is hinted at that certain baits, such as using fish you catch as bait, will increase the chance at certain predator fish species.  As a fan of fishing games and fishing in games I am looking forward  to the changes!

 

Ancient One plane whale thing!

 There is also mention of a new trial for players who are willing to venture to the top of Chalk Peak.  Not much information is shared about the encounter that awaits players but the image (see above) shared looks really cool.  It alludes to having to jump onto a giant flying ancient one that is part flying whale merged with an airplane!  This is the sort of thematic flair that I love about Once Human!

 The patch also covers a lot of other areas that I want to make brief mention of:

• Server invitations are coming so players can invite friends to locked servers.  It is not clear this can be used to transfer your character but it should help get new players onto your server with you.  There is still a maximum cap so could still lock players out.
• Battle pass and cosmetic shop purchases will now be account wide instead of specific to one character.  Having restarted 3 times I've been waiting for my battle pass to become available on the character I finally settled on playing with!
• They are nerfing some items that make players harder to kill in PvP which seems odd because many builds can one shot players in PvP.  If anything I'd of thought they'd make the defensive items more available to more builds so PvP wasn't a "who shoots first" affair.  With that said PvP is pretty terrible so not sure this changes much about it still being terrible.  I'll still play on PvP servers but not for the PvP right now... just the chance that PvP gets better in the future.

 Since it is also Creator Creator Appreciation Week (August 11th – August 17h) for Blaugust it is only fair that I share a Once Human creator that has covered the patch in more detail.  Go on over and check out MrApocalyptic's video.

End Game Thoughts On Once Human: Finished LEA Research Labs

 I recently completed the endgame dungeon for Once Human's first season: LEA Research Lab. It was the toughest content I've faced in the game, requiring numerous attempts and different teams to conquer. Now that I’ve finally done it, I wanted to share some thoughts.

One of the LEA Research Lab bosses

 In my initial posts about Once Human, I noted how easy the game was. I was using the same gear I started with well into the later levels. I didn’t upgrade my gear until long after clearing all the normal mode max level content. Nothing in the open world or instanced dungeons (silos/monoliths) seemed to put up much of a fight. It’s worth mentioning that PvP is terrible in this game, so that didn’t push me to upgrade gear either.

 I did eventually upgrade my gear when the hard mode versions were released with phase 3 of the season. But honestly, I didn’t really need to, as hard mode was still too easy. With max-calibrated armor and weapons, hard mode felt no different than the rest of the game: easy.

 Phase 4 of the season introduced the pro modes. At first, tackling the pro mode silos/monoliths I’d done before didn’t present much of a challenge. I could solo them fairly easily, and playing duo with a gaming friend made them even easier. Pro mode initially seemed like just another way to burn through resources for bullets and repair costs.

 Then my buddy and I took on the big phase 4 content: the Forsaken Giant and LEA Research Lab. The Giant took a few tries, but the failed attempts were more about learning the mechanics (we went in blind) than about gear. Then we ventured into LEA Research Lab and hit a wall. We couldn’t finish it as just two players. We managed to get through three of the four challenges, but not the final one. Even when grouped with four players, our first teams failed. Had we finally encountered challenging content in Once Human?

 I’ll give a hesitant “sort of” in response. The lab is laid out in progressive stages, with fights that teach the mechanics for the final stage. The final stage then combines all the previous mechanics, along with a boss that, as my buddy put it, “won’t leave me the f!*$ alone” throughout the fight. It’s a long battle with overlapping mechanics, requiring solid coordination and fully upgraded gear to succeed.

 However, even with good gear and coordination, the unpolished nature of Once Human starts to show. Quirky movement, unreliable button presses, no line of sight for enemies hitting you, janky animations, desync between client and server—these issues didn’t matter much when the content was easier, but they rear their head in this final fight. This means a lot of the challenge comes down to battling the game itself rather than the actual encounter.

 Perhaps the most frustrating part is that by the end of the fight, even with max upgraded gear, all your armor—and sometimes weapons—are broken. No armor means everything kills you in one hit. A broken weapon means no damage. In theory, you could bring an entire extra set of gear or portable repair potions (if you’re lucky enough to have access to them, which I’m not), but that’s not a viable strategy in the middle of the fight. The gear damage happens way too fast. You shouldn’t start a single boss fight at 100% durability and end up at 0% and broken before it’s over.

 Another source of frustration is the line-of-sight and battlefield visibility issues. In the final phase, a lot of ranged attackers spawn, conveniently sitting in corners and behind walls, plinking away without line of sight. All you know is that you’re taking damage, often from something hitting you through the floor because they’re in a pit on the other side of the map. It doesn’t help that there are flying enemies throughout the fight as well, and with no way to get a wider view of the battlefield, you spend a lot of time not knowing what just killed you.

 Then there’s the hit detection issue. Guns are hitscan, so in general, they’re almost foolproof for hitting targets. But if you switch to melee (assuming weapon swap responds reliably), it’s a lesson in frustration. You might as well rule out ever being a melee-oriented build in this game. But that only applies to players—enemies, on the other hand, suddenly have massive range and hit detection well beyond where their attacks animate. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been hit when it looked like the enemy swung at the air. The animation is horrendous (which is easy to overlook in the rest of the game when you’re killing things in a few hits).

 The issues with the interact feature also rear their ugly head. For PC, this is the F key. In parts of the fight, you need to pick up objects to throw them at targets. It can be maddening trying to get one to pick up, and the animation is so slow that more deaths than not come from simply trying to pick up the item you have to pick up! Then mix in how terrible F can be when trying to revive teammates, and it’s just a big F in chat.

 If that wasn’t bad enough, the problems with weapon swapping come into play. Sometimes weapon swap works, and sometimes it doesn’t—or maybe it swaps, but then you press fire, and it swaps back to the other weapon. Even worse is trying to swap between a tactical item, like a grenade, and back to a weapon. More often than not, you end up throwing several grenades before realizing your weapon never came back up. They need to get tactical items off the hotbar and onto a dedicated button, like in any other shooter game.

 The inconsistent registering of actions extends to everything, it seems. Reload your gun? It regularly doesn’t register that the reload finished, and your next action cancels the reload. Apply a healing activator and the animation finishes, but the healing doesn’t apply until a second later, which means you accidentally cancel the heal, thinking it’s done. As mentioned, tactical items like grenades are very quirky.

 I’ve posted before that Once Human has no right to be as popular as it is. Any mainstream developer would get torched over how buggy, unfinished, and unpolished this game is. Yet the gaming community and players keep giving Once Human a pass. Even I am giving it a pass. I keep logging in. I keep playing. I keep fighting the game as the primary challenge, with the content’s difficulty level coming second.

Monday Screenshots: LEA Research Lab FINISHED!

 Just a single screenshot for today to mark that I completed the LEA Research lab in Once Human which is the end game dungeon of Season 1.

Not the highest damage but landed the killing blow.

And since one screenshot is never enough; here is a giant tree I cut down.

Big ole' tree!

And it's down.  Sorry about your house.

8/10/2024 Saturday Post

 Oh hey; there was a football game yesterday which means I need to get back to my posts about the games.  Which means a few minutes in Paint.net making something that amuses me.

1-0 ... undefeated in the preseason baby!

My Gaming Mouse: Glorious Model I

 Simple Saturday post to round out the "Introduce Yourself Week" of Blaugust 2024.  Here is my current gaming mouse of choice: Glorious Model I (wired). Skip down for some thoughts.

Model I (wired)

Reasons I like the mouse:

1. The mouse is lightweight which I didn't realize I liked until I started using light weight mice instead of chunky "gaming" mice
   
2. It has the classic shape that I've loved since my early days of PC gaming with similar shaped Logitech mice
3. There are four side buttons

The only aspect I don't like about the mouse is the feel of the scroll wheel.  It is not my favorite scroll wheel but is not enough of a detractor to make me want to switch.

 If you are in the market for a new mouse I'd highly recommend checking out Glorious and their selection.

Inventory management should NOT be a mini game!

 It is "old man rants at the open sky" time.  Games, especially RPGs, should NOT make managing your character's inventory a game in and of itself!  It is irritating and detracts from otherwise great games.

 This topic came to mind after I read Nerd Girl Thoughts post on Crashlands.  She describes how the game has the audacity to have an unlimited inventory:

Did I mention you can carry, well, everything? One of most annoying parts of crafting-focused games is that you never know what you’re going to need later, so you’re spending resources crafting a million chests just in case those early game resources are needed again later on. Not in Crashlands, because your inventory is infinite. If you can pick it up, you can carry it. No inventory management, no chests, no worries.

 The "crafting a million chests" hits close to home for me right now playing a lot of Once Human.  My house has chests... everywhere.  Chests for all the logs that I keep piling up.  Chests for overflowing collections of disassembled parts.  Chests for that thing I may just need a week from now.

 Fortunately Once Human at least lets crafting supplies be sourced from the crates without having to go and get it out of the crate (well at least most of the time; some inconsistency with some of the crafting stations that don't do this).  Also Once Human lets players carry a lot of misc items for free in their backpack.  Nice but still irritating with so much in the backpack.

Ashes of Creation's inventory

 Even with the quality of life features Once Human has it still has "manage your inventory back at base" in it's core loop which is a common offender for my "old man rants at the open sky" trigger.  It makes sense that you go out on an adventure in a game and then return home to prepare for the next adventure.  But it's a game so I want to relax and enjoy my home; not micro manage inventory!

 Another big offender in games is various currency tokens.  Massively multiplayer games especially LOVE their currency tokens and even more than that they LOVE being inconsistent about the tokens.  Some go into a currency bank and others go into inventory or sometimes it goes to some hard to find account wallet you don't even realize you have.

 Once Human as a recent example for me is a poster child for inconsistency.  Where did that starchrom you just picked up go?  Oh it's just tracked as a number on your inventory screen.  Picked up some stellar planula?  That is in your backpacck.  Got a blueprint fragment?  That is in the blueprints screen.  Oh you got the other thing called blueprint? That is in your inventory.  Once Human content creators are making bank on just explaining the inventory management interfaces in this game!

 If it's not obvious by now I don't like managing inventory which is why you will see me barking about games like Ashes of Creation planning a "tetris like" inventory management system or why you will see me rolling my eyes at a game like Star Citizen trying to make an entire career path in the game for "loading a ship".  Just stop.   Let me play the game; not an inventory UI!

New World just can't win right now

Not bad? Not good? Not sure.

 

 New World posted about their wrap up of the closed beta for the console release.  They were rightfully called out on Reddit for the lacking quality and content of this update.  As /u/randrogynous broke down:

In the spirit of sharing statistics, the official News Article that this was pulled from contained 240 words. 81 of those words were a reminder that the Closed Beta was under an NDA and breaches would be treated seriously.

Over a third of their 'recap' of the Closed Beta was a reminder/threat about not talking about the Closed Beta.

New World is starting to resemble Fight Club. The first rule of New World is you do not talk about New World. The second rule of New World is you DO NOT TALK ABOUT NEW WORLD.

 Ouch.

 It is never a good situation when developers are more focused on NDA enforcement than building excitement and Amazon has made the rounds having videos and other content taken down that came out of the beta.

 The worst part is most of what has leaked out is so minor in nature it baffles me why there was an NDA in place.  Does a new artifact and some changes to some quests need to be behind an NDA?  Do a few tweaks to some weapon skills along with other balance changes warrant an NDA?

 Damn it AGS stop digging New World's grave.

Blaugust: What is a favorite Quote/s, and tell us why?

 Uninspired today so grabbing an item off the Blaugust prompt list: What is a favorite Quote/s, and tell us why?

 One of my favorite quotes: "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing wrong"

 I cannot say definitively where it originates but I first heard it from Joel Salatin during a Mother Earth News Fair speech he gave about homesteading.  Looking around the Internet I found that the quote "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing wrong" is often associated with Murphy's Law, which emphasizes that taking action is more important than achieving perfection.

 That last bit "taking action is more important" is where I wanted to focus because it's relevant to Blaugust and highlights why I really love this quote.  Some folks want to blog for Blaugust and they will spend time on social media wondering what to post about.  Analysis paralysis is a real problem.  At that point the desire to do something right is irrelevant if you never do it.

 This is why I like the weekly focus areas for Blaugust.  It helps me form a plan and take action for that week.  Then when my brain gets stuck the prompt list is a good backup to get that drive to action. Underlying this is the reality that blogging has no rules except for those that you make for yourself.

 A blog post doesn't need 1,000 words.  It doesn't even need to be edited.  There is nothing wrong with grabbing a screenshot from your favorite game, writing a sentence about it, and publishing it.  That counts.  Check the box.  You blogged!  I even recommended this yesterday to a fellow blogger that was getting stuck.  Since the rules of blogging are your own only you know if its right or not so be flexible with yourself and you can find success!

 In the real world I am in senior management and oversee a lot of projects.  My team is well known as the "get sh!t done club".  We do lots of things wrong but we do them fast. We get feedback and work to get them "right" (which is often 80% of the way there since the last 20% of anything is perfection and not worth the squeeze).

 I've been asked numerous times by more senior folks how we do it.  I always answer with some form of "we just get going".  There is also an aspect of breaking big things up into small things.  People understand small and are less likely to get analysis paralysis when presented a puzzle piece vs the entire box of puzzle pieces.  Big things don't get made into smaller things without getting started and just getting started is often where so many projects fall down.

 

Stars Reach

 This blog is my blog.  It goes where I go.  I am probably one of the biggest Raph Koster fan boys out there.  He even once posted on his blog about me.  Yes, me!  Now Raph is making waves in the MMO community with his new game Stars Reach.  So why haven't I talked about Stars Reach yet?  Well that's simple: I've been playing games and blogging about them.

 Blaugust is a great chance to switch things up a bit and talk about fresh topics and Stars Reach is right up my alley.  It also fits well with the "get to know me" week of Blaugust because in order to talk about Stars Reach we need to step back and talk about Star Wars Galaxies (SWG)!

 First I should note that I am a huge Star Wars fan.  I can't pinpoint specifically where in my life that I became a fan, but I do have a core memory of sitting on the living room floor as a kid and watching the opening scene of A New Hope being broadcast.  My family didn't go to the movies so catching a movie on the TV was about it.  Eventually I was known to check out every Star Wars book from the local library and the rest is history (and I still maintain the original expanded universe, now called Legends, is far superior to what Disney is doing).

 Now take a love of Star Wars and combine it with the early days of massively multiplayer games and throw in a shaker of Raph Koster and we got Star Wars Galaxies.  For me personally I saw a lot of Ultima Online in SWG and that was exciting.  At the time I didn't know much of Raph Koster but through being in early alpha tests for SWG I learned about him and found myself nodding along to most things he was saying.

 I ended up having a love-hate relationship with SWG.  I loved that it was Star Wars and that it was an open world where I could build my house anywhere and be the moisture farmer I always wanted to be in Star Wars.  I hated though that the game didn't focus on the moisture farmers and eventually with the infamous New Game Experience (NGE) it was clear combat was the focus.  SWG never delivered on the promise for me.

 Fast forward today and we have Raph Koster hard at work on a spiritual successor to SWG.  He even went so far as to say the words out loud: Koster calls Stars Reach a “Star Wars Galaxies 2.0,”.  So what does that mean?

 It means an online game that is focused on more than just combat. A game that is trying to do so much more than  just be a themepark.  To do the scope justice let me pull from Raph's announcement blog post:

Stars Reach uses simulation to a degree never seen in an MMO before. We know the temperature, the humidity, the materials, for every cubic meter of every planet. Our water actually flows downhill and puddles. It freezes overnight or during the winter. It evaporates and turns to steam when heated up. And not just our water — everything does this. Catch a tree on fire with a stray blaster bolt. Melt your way through a glacier to find a hidden alien laboratory embedded in the ice. Stomp too hard on a rock bridge, and watch out, it might collapse under your feet. Dam up a river to irrigate your farm. Or float in space above an asteroid, and mine crystals from its depths.

 That is a lofty goal and takes me back to memories of SWG.  For example; SWG had dynamic materials that could be gathered from the world.  There was an entire path for players that wanted to be nothing more than gatherers whereby they improved their ability to scan for and find materials.  That information could then be sold to others and it had value.  Why? Because the materials in that exact state with those exact variables were finite and once mined were gone forever.  Those materials then were used in blueprints that could only use those materials resulting in limited runs of items such as blasters and armor.  Materials gone?  So were those specific outputs.  The inner moisture farmer in me was jumping for joy.

 Stars Reach is aiming to take this level of dynamic world to another level and multiply it across a universe.  That has me super excited for what they bring forward as a game.