gaming

SWTOR cut-scene doodles.

Ripped male Nautolian with an eyepatch and no shirt.

Mr. Light-side (Sith Inquisitor).

Sketch of a voluptuous female Togruta and a skeletal, corrupted, gend-erindeterminate Nautolian.

Bug Girl and the Fallen (Imperial Agent and Jedi Knight).

Space Daddy (Sith Warrior).

Star Wars: The Old Republic character doodles drawn during cut-scenes.

I’ve currently finished three of the class storylines:

Sith Inquisitor (Assassin): My main, and the only class I’ve played to level cap. Class story is bananas in a good way, but was extremely meh on the companions. Played aggressively light-sided, initially romanced the padawan girl (… ick) but immediately ditched her for Space Husband Theron Shan in the expansions.1
Imperial Agent (Operative): Story starts a bit meh, gets strong in the middle, and kind of… never really delivers at the end. The “un-reveal” of Hunter left me so annoyed I just shot the guy without listening to any of his end-game speechifying, so no idea what he wanted to try and tell me. Another (mostly) light-sided play-through, romanced Vector, gave the Codex to the Minister and remained with Sith Intelligence. As an aside, the story really, really seems to want you to be mad at the Minister for the codeword thing, though honestly I thought his rationale for it was pretty reasonable in the context of how the Empire operates. The SIS using the codeword, however, was not; I killed everyone who did so and honestly it was enough to make me regret working with them on my main. I can see why people describe this as the best of the class storylines, even if I didn’t think it qui-ii-ii-ite pushed things far enough in the third chapter…
Jedi Knight (Sentinel): Ditched at Alderaan for Warrior (which see below). I just… couldn’t. The story is so boring and, honestly, I loathe the Knight’s voice acting.2 I can see why they chose it, but… ugh. No. Ostensibly playing dark-side for lolz, but the actual dark side choices for Knight are so boring—and honestly mostly petty and stupid to boot—compared to those in some of the other class storylines that I’m honestly struggling with it. On the plus side, I really like the aesthetics of Sentinel (setting enemies aflame with blue fire!), so… there’s that.
Sith Warrior (Juggernaut): Giant space daddy. Class storyline is straightforward but engaging, particularly if you’re a huge sucker for Lawful Evil like yours truly. Played aggressively neutral-aligned to confuse the galaxy, which was a lot of fun. Enjoyed the companions, but all the romance options for a male PC were super skeevy so romanced no one3 and slept with every NPC the game allowed me to sleep with instead. Enjoyed the play-style more than I thought I would, too.

Currently working on the Trooper (Commando) to unlock all four buffs, and I’m actually enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would—both play-wise and story-wise—though I’m not… hugely enthused with the direction they seem to want to take with the General…

But… yeah. That’s what I did in my New Year’s break!

Also: I still need to buy a new scanner…

He’s currently mad at me; I’m trying to betray the Empire, Theron, but it’s not like the game allows you to defect! I just wanna shoot purple lightning at my enemies is that such a crime? [↩]
I actually re-rolled to get away from the male VA, though the female one isn’t much better. [↩]
I’m also sensing a… theme with the whole “romance your impressionable young female padawan/apprentice/subordinate/slave” which… every class has at least one of these, so like… gross, Bioware. Gross. [↩]

Alis2020-01-06T08:10:53+11:006th January, 2020|Tags: gaming, mmos, my art, pop culture, star wars, swtor, video games|

Suppose the people who hate free to play games win the argument and get rid of microtransactions. Suppose they change the laws so you have to get your looter shooter Destiny/Anthem/Division dopamine drip for one fair fixed price. So you’re grinding hundreds of hours to get better armor, but you aren’t spending more money. Just time.

What is the creepy part? Is it evil to charge a dribble of money for a game so addictive it devours hundreds of hours of your time? Or is the problem making the game so addictive it consumes hundreds of hours of your time in the first place?

Jeff Vogel on addiction.

As someone who has far more money than she does time (or, frankly, patience), I confess I do have a preference for games that sell shiny cosmetic items via microtransactions (or even macro transactions) as opposed to making me grind shitty content I don’t want to do endlessly; it’s one of the reasons I prefer Guild Wars 2 over World of Warcraft, for example, because in the former I can just buy my shiny mount then use it to tool around running lowbie alts in the noob zone rather than repeating the same single boss fight over and over and over again for hundreds of hours.1

That being said, the microtransaction/loot box culture in mobile and triple-A gaming is… something definitely worthy of critique, at minimum.2

(Also probably worth discussing: the morality of “endless” games in general…)

Though GW2 certainly has that sort of content, too, if that’s your bag, baby. [↩]
Or, let’s fact it; regulation. There’s no universe in which the system of lootboxes currently implemented in most games isn’t gambling which is, y’know, at minimum highly regulated—and often outright banned—in most places. So… y’know. [↩]

Alis2019-09-04T11:40:18+10:003rd January, 2020|Tags: gaming, video games|

There were basically two ways to make money in the [World of Warcraft] Auction House: be a supplier or be a commodities guy.

A supplier would be the person that used professions (leatherworking, blacksmithing, gathering, fishing, etc) to gather or create valuable items and would then sell them on the AH. Most people start here, and few ever do more than this. Much like workers in real life, these people create all of the economy’s value.

Commodity traders exploited that value to inflate margins and make profit.

sandrockcstm on day trading.

Capitalism and the finance industry explained… WoW-style.

Alis2019-08-30T11:14:27+10:0024th December, 2019|Tags: economics, gaming, mmos, world of warcraft|

More random character WiPs.

This guy doesn’t have a name yet, though he’s kind of the male version of the Drard I drew a few weeks back.

The idea is that he’s some kind of travelling… plant whisperer guy? His other mom is the forest itself (hence the goat legs, not entirely pictured), and his staff magically produces one single apple a day so long as it’s in his possession.

Alis2019-12-18T09:52:58+11:005th December, 2019|Tags: dungeons and dragons, gaming, my art, tabletop rpgs|

It’s a Druid! It’s a Bard! It’s… Rosalee!

Okay but… hear me out for a second: the Drard.

The most ultimate min-maxy utility character ever? She’s stacked all her points in WIS/INT/CHAR and just Wildshapes if she ever needs physical traits. Buff the party! Heal the party! Feed the party! Entertain the party! Turn into innocuous animals and perform reconnaissance for the party! Turn into terrifying animals and attack enemies for the party! A+ party mom, would party again!

Also: she makes booze.

Drard!

Alis2019-12-18T09:52:57+11:004th December, 2019|Tags: dungeons and dragons, gaming, my art, tabletop rpgs|

Saying nothing is saying something.

I really like this look at the politics of Far Cry 5.

Alis2019-07-23T14:35:03+10:001st December, 2019|Tags: culture, gaming, politics, video games|

So we finally managed to get a pick-up one-shot of D&D at the nerdshop last night, and big shout-out to the DM who managed to keep his cool despite the fact I managed to destroy his campaign idea by being the only D&D player ever to remember the spell mage hand exists.

The module involved a lot of “navigate this trap room to retrieve a small gemstone you can see roughly 29 feet away” style puzzles which… oop.

Shockingly the third trap room had the stone suddenly forty five feet away… but luckily for me my Sorcerer premade had the Extend Spell metamagic, meaning the DM really had no one to blame but himself.

Then, in the final room, it was buried under magic quicksand, so props to the DM for thinking on his feet. (Luckily the party had like 250 feet of rope and a dwarf who was good at holding her breath…)

Alis2019-11-14T13:16:34+11:008th November, 2019|Tags: dungeons and dragons, gaming, tabletop rpgs|

Bit o’ the old ultraviolence.

So apparently working on photo-realistic, hyper-violent video games can have negative health impacts for developers. Would could ever have possibly guessed?

(For what it’s worth, a lot of the impacts seem to be related to the viewing of real-life violence and injury people like game artists have to do to get things looking “right”. So this isn’t a “exposure to fantasy violence is bad for you” thing so much as… exactly the opposite of that.)

Alis2019-07-08T13:14:17+10:007th November, 2019|Tags: gaming, video games|

Dice, dice baby!

So I ordered my Baby’s First Internet Custom dice set the other day, from Cosy Gamer, and holy shit they came fast!

I got four sets:

Amethyst Scepter: Super cool, probably my fav in the bunch. The foil and glitter is Peak Bling.
Enchantress Pearl: Basically clear resin with tiny pink beads inside. Very unique, and kind of almost… unsettlingly organic on first glance.
Fuschia: Mostly clear resin with “smoke” wisps of purple and orange. Like a sunset in your hand!
Lavender Galaxy: The only set I was a bit disappointed with. The colors are sort of… banded across the dice and the end result is a sort of muddied purple, unless the light happens to hit them just right. Still pretty, but a bit “meh” compared to the other three.

Overall, the dice are a bit lighter than I was expecting, but nothing like the flimsy feel of, say, Q Workshop dice (and it’s possible I just like my dice on the heavier side anyway). But all-in-all… yeah. Very happy. The worst part will be waiting a week until I can try and grab a game in order to use them!

Alis2019-10-31T07:44:46+11:0031st October, 2019|Tags: dice, gaming, tabletop rpgs|

Bearchickenbull!

I could have a regular chocobo or I could dress one up as Behemoth and ride that instead!

(Still needs a few more shades of feather dying to get blackerer but I need to, like. Save up the gil for it again, oy…)

Alis2019-10-31T13:20:13+11:0028th October, 2019|Tags: final fantasy, gaming, mmos, video games|

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