Gaming – Page 330 – A Pixel Nomad

Does Any Game Truly Welcome you Back?

I have been meaning to play a little FFXIV for some time now, but with work, holidays, and a zillion other little excuses cropping up I just had not found the motivation to download the client (again) and log in before now. I played at release but was also distracted by xyz other game and didn’t get that far.

I have a main on Diabolos, but a number of friends are over on Cactuar so I swapped. Plus I had made some annoying mistakes over on Diabolos in regards to my class (nothing permanent thankfully) so I didn’t mind starting fresh. I’m playing Velours Reveurs, a right now level 6 conjurer with aspirations of going White Mage.

I do have one issue with returning, the same issue I have in every single game I return to. Very few of them actually help a player who has been away for some time. I have no idea what changes have taken place, what is new, what has been updated, or even how to play. I wish more games had a method, perhaps a tutorial (optional of course), where everything could be laid out for a returning player. Maybe NPC that discuss the recent changes from the time your account has been inactive for – or a set period that you could select (ie: I have been away for x amount of time, please highlight the important stuff). Knowing how to play, what my hotkeys are, where I should go, etc. All of these things would do wonders in helping me get back into a game, and I would probably be more inclined to stick around. Of course there are websites and patch notes and friends and all the rest but why do we still have to rely on these in order to feel comfortable returning.

With that being said, because my character is at such a low level, I’m not overly concerned with what I have missed. I’m hoping that I can pick things up easily enough and in the mean time the game is just so incredibly beautiful and I’m sad that I never got further than level 15 my last time around. Hopefully I’ll stick with it for a bit, but knowing my nomadic gaming style, I’ll be happy if I even stick around for a month.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

New Year, New Game – Salt

I had not heard of Salt before, but a friend recommended it to me thinking it may be something I was interested in (knowing my love of sandbox games) and so I decided to try it out. I know there’s a demo available, but instead I watched some “Lets Play” on YouTube and a few trailers and videos that Lavaboots Studios released.

The game is about exploration and adventure, with some crafting tossed in. You start out on a remote island and wander your way around collecting resources to help you get to other islands. Crafting is very simple, but you’re not given a lot of information about what you can craft. I wandered around picking up wood (E) and plants, and then stumbled into a pickaxe and a chest with a few treasures inside (some cloth, 2 gold, etc). With those items I was able to create my first “ship” a raft that barely floated. Boat control is a bit difficult, but fun. I parked my boat at the nearest island that I could sail to, and started the true adventure.

The lands are filled with pirates and other treasures to be found. I was running out of food so I created a bow and some crude arrows. Painstakingly snuck up behind a deer and made a quick meal of him. It didn’t fill me up, so I wandered some more and found a few mushrooms to eat (which gave me a buff). I only got one pelt which isn’t enough to make any armor yet, but I’ll hang onto it.

The pirate I ran into almost killed me but I landed the last blow. He dropped a bit more gold, and a key for – I have no idea what. I hear you can use them for pirate treasures, but I haven’t found any yet. Salt reminds me a lot of Banished, even though the two games are completely different. It’s a slow paced game where players may feel that they have “done it all” once they reach some specific goals (making an actual ship, getting a full set of gear, etc). It is still in early access, so there’s a lot of work to be done yet, but I really enjoyed my casual stroll through the different lands, trying to search for neat treasures.

After leaving my boat at the 2nd island and wandering for a bit, I noticed a ship in the water. I was excited – until I realized it was MY boat, sailing away with the tide, without me! I didn’t have enough cloth to make another boat, so it was really important that I not lose it. I swam out to sea in an attempt to rescue the ship, and some how managed to get it back on shore. I did too good of a job, and was unable to push it out to sea when I actually wanted to leave. Thankfully the water once again worked its magic and freed my boat from the shore for me and as it drifted out I managed to climb on board so I can head out and explore yet another island. There’s no map, and I don’t have a compass or other means of guessing where I am at the moment, but I know you can craft / obtain those items. For now I have just been going off of guesses. I leave a flag on the beach where I land so that I know I have been there before. I try to make sure I explore the entire island before leaving, and pick up everything of note.

There are no levels, classes, or progression per say, but I don’t need those things in a game in order to enjoy it. I’m liking the very calm and quiet excitement that comes from finding a new item to use, or a new ruin discovered. Next I need to find / make some better weapons, I keep losing arrows to deer, and I’d like to be able to hold my own a bit longer against pirates.

Gaming in 2015

I’m taking some inspiration from Sypster over at BioBreak, and writing about what I’d like my goals to be for gaming in 2015. As he says, lists constantly change, so I don’t expect this to be set in stone in any way. Plus I hardly know what new games may be just over the horizon. These are some lists of mine, lets see how this year pans out.

MMOs I know I’ll be playing:

World of Warcraft (for how long, I’m not sure, but I currently have a subscription until February)
Wurm Online (currently have a subscription until February of 2016)
WildStar

MMOs I May Play:

ArchAge (I dropped out of this after the mad rush for housing just became too much for me)
Rift (I keep going back to Rift and just can’t seem to get back into it, for whatever reason, but I keep trying)
Diablo 3 (The new season isn’t slated to start until at least February, probably more like March which is discouraging, but I still really enjoy the game)
Landmark (I’m waiting for some polish, mobs were JUST added, and it was hard to get back into)
Heroes of the Storm
EverQuest 2 (I always end up going back here and there)
Guild Wars 2 (Much like Rift, I return only to feel incredibly lost and end up leaving again)

Games On the Horizon:

The Repopulation (I keep hearing about this game, and I’m very interested, but early access is expensive, and I’m just not sure)
Rising World (Loving this so far, but right now it’s very alpha)
Clockwork Empire (I’ve played this game a few hours worth so far, and it’s got a lot of promise. It’s in early access though, and we all know how long those can take to push forward. That being said, it’s probably one of the better early access games I played this year)

Disappointments:

Castle Story – This game has been in development for quite some time now. It’s still early access, still full of bugs, and the dev team has slowly been removing features from it instead of adding to it. The length of time it takes to get a game out the door varies, I know, but it feels like this is more of an unfinished product now than when I started playing it over a year ago. I know it’s not exactly fair to place an unfinished game on a list of disappointments, but I really had big hopes.

I have a lot of non-mmo games I want to get to in 2015. These include my ‘regulars’

The Sims 4 (that game just makes me so happy)
Banished
Craft the World
Cook, Serve, Delicious!

Plus a handful of others. I have a LOT of games I haven’t even touched yet. I’m tempted to do a weekly spotlight on one of my ‘non regular’ games throughout the year, but I tend to be horrible at sticking with those sort of things. Still, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try. As being a ‘gamer’ becomes more mainstream, I’m awed by the number of games that are out there. The decision on what to play and how to spend those precious moments becomes harder and harder.

How does your 2015 look so far?

A Year in Review

Of course Jetpack once again provided some neat-o information about my site for the year in review. It’s not that exciting, but I thought I’d share it with everyone none the less. You can find it located here, but for a brief run down it gave me the following stats:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 66,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

The busiest day of the year was January 30th with 815 views. The most popular post that day was How: Level 1-62 in Two Hours #EQ2.

This report only shows data since you connected Jetpack.

In 2014, there were 171 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 2,653 posts.

The top referring sites in 2014 were:

A big thank you to everyone who stopped by. I certainly appreciate it! I just renewed the site for another year, so I’ll be sticking around for a while yet. Hard to believe that this will be the 9th year I’ve written here on MmoQuests.

Trying to Embrace Dailies

I dislike dailies. They make me feel obligated to log in for a bunch of chores that are not much fun and by the time I’m done them it’s usually time to log off. Lately I’ve been trying to embrace these dailies to see if I can look past them to the rest of WoD, because the rest is pretty fun.

Yesterday PR was due to spawn on our server. This is a named encounter that can spawn in 5 locations, and has a respawn timer of 46-92 hours. All information subject to change, this is just what I overheard while sitting in the raid. I waited a few hours while I worked on a crochet project, but the creature never spawned. By the time I had logged back in later in the evening, the crowd had dispersed, the mob having finally spawned for those who were patient enough to wait around for over three days. No thanks, not my cup of tea.

This morning I’m sitting in a queue for Ashran so I can try to complete the group daily. Unfortunately the queue lasts a long time, it’s limited by your faction. 100 players from each faction get in at a time. I’m not sure how long I’ve been waiting yet, but there’s a lot of complaints about the length. In the mean time I have other chores that I can work on. I managed to raise my cooking and fishing both to 700, and have been working on other achievements. I haven’t started playing any of my alts yet, which is a surprise. Normally I’m bouncing all over and not completing anything on anyone.

So can I look past my dislike of dailies to enjoy the actual expansion? So far I’m doing alright, but whether or not it will last is another story.