Video Game Tuesday: Most Hated Mission Type

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering my most disliked quest genre in all of gaming. It’s my Most Hated Mission Type!

What is it?: Escort Missions, or Quests. I freaking hate doing these missions because I almost always feel like I have to babysit the NPC I’m escorting, who will do nothing but get into trouble and cause me grief.

Really?: Yeah, so I guess my hatred of the mission first really appeared with my time playing Vanilla WoW as an Alliance player in the Westfall zone. As anyone who played during that time will probably remember, that is the first zone most Alliance players will be in that allowed PvP on PvP servers. There’s one specific quest chain that was in the zone that dealt with the first dungeon many Alliance players would ever encounter, The Deadmines. The very last quest before the one that led to you being instructed to actually venture into the dungeon required you to escort an NPC to the entrance of the building that led into the dungeon. You were required to defeat many spawned enemies, in an area that was full of annoying rogue and mage type enemies as well.

In addition if you were unlucky enough to do it when a Horde player was skulking around they could easily just kill your NPC causing you to fail the quest instantly. This would mark them for PvP, but as most of these people were Rogues who could use the skill Vanish it was rather pointless trying to deal with them even if you were of the same level, which you often weren’t.

But they can’t all be bad!: Well that’s true, Bioshock Infinite for example actually had a great escort mechanic, in that not only did your companion Elizabeth not constantly draw fire onto her (she couldn’t die thank god) she also used her powers to change the battlefield to your advantage. She also threw you ammo occasionally during a firefight which would instantly refill your currently equipped weapon. But she is one of the few exceptions. Most of the time, Escort Quests are still a pain in the ass.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. What are some of your least favorite mission types? Leave your answers in the comments below!

Serial Saturday: Randidly Ghosthound Chapters 1-40 by Puddles

This week for Serial Saturday I’ve got a real treat for you all. It’s The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound by Puddles!

Plot Synopsis: As the system initializes, the world shifts. Geography is rearranged and mixed, and levels and stats are instituted across the globe. On that night, one young man was walking through an underground tunnel, his mind on the small problems of his easy life. Because of his location during the shift, he starts in a dungeon far above his level, with no knowledge or teacher, or Newbie Village to guide him. Without a class, he struggles simply to survive in this world changed by its new connection to the Nexus. But struggle he will, for he is Randidly Ghosthound, and this is only how his legend begins…

Plot: The plot of Ghosthound is amazing, I had more than a few sleepless nights when I first read the series and while the series isn’t complete yet, I have no doubt that this would sell amazingly well if ever published. These first forty chapters include the foundation for Ghosthound, and while by the end of it Randy has started to grow into his own, it’s still just the beginning of the story. To put it into perspective there are 330+ chapters as of writing this post.

Characters: Randy is an awesome main character, he’s neither stupid nor so intelligent that he’s not relatable. However the rest of the cast is just as amazing as Randy. My personal favorite is Shal, but the rest of the cast is excellent too.

Grammar: The grammar is excellent, and while there are some mistakes, there aren’t more than you’d find in a newspaper.

Overall: If you love any sort of fantasy, or gaming, at all you need to read Ghosthound. It’s one of the best English original Web Novels out there.

For those who like: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, LitRPGs, Magic, Excellent Plots, Fantastic Cast of Characters.

Not for those who don’t like:

Personal Status: Eagerly On Hold to allow more chapters to be written, and to save it for the months of hell called summertime.

Video Game Tuesday: Transmog Systems

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m continuing last week’s theme of customization. It’s all about Transmog Systems!

Transmog Systems?: Transmog, or Transmogrification is a term used in World of Warcraft that was introduced in Patch 4.3. It was a system that allowed the player to change the appearance of their armor to match other armor that they owned. It wasn’t the first of it’s kind, but it’s the one that gets pointed at the most in my experience. There might be other names in other games, in Final Fantasy XIV for example it’s called the Glamour System, but it’s pretty much the same thing.

What’s your favorite one?: Personally I’m a fan of Final Fantasy XIV’s system although World of Warcraft has the advantage of a library system to go with Transmog. Final Fantasy XIV’s is much less rigid, and allows you to modify almost any item to look like most others. Many items aren’t restricted by class, but there are some like the Artifact gear. I’d love to see a library system added to Final Fantasy XIV, but I know that doing so takes a lot of time to create and given that Final Fantasy XIV has a dye option as well, it’d be very hard to implement. However in FFXIV unlike WoW, you can wear ridiculous outfits into battle, do you want to be dressed up in a metallic gold pig suit as you run into battle swinging a big axe? Go ahead, that’s completely ok. WoW doesn’t allow for that which is a pity.

What games would you like to see a glamour system in?: Destiny for one would be a great place, but given how small of a pool of options that game has it’s probably not going to happen soon, although who knows with Destiny 2 supposedly coming out this year.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday, what is your favorite transmog system? What games do you wish had transmog? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Video Game Tuesday: The Pre-Expansion Slump

 

This week on Video Game Tuesday I’m talking about something that bugs me incessantly about MMOs. It’s that freaking Pre-Expansion Slump!

What is the Pre-Expansion Slump: It’s the time between the last content patch and the release of an expansion. World of Warcraft is notoriously bad about this and had one go on for nearly two years after the release of the Icecrown Citadel Raid patch, 3.3 and the next expansion Cataclysm. Yes there was an additional “Raid” consisting of one boss that no one enjoyed doing somewhere in between that and Cataclysm, but it didn’t really add anything other than that.

Why is it bad?: Well if you have a long time slump, you are going to lose players at an alarmingly fast and high rate. So it’s always a race against the clock to make the new content in that expansion. I’ve known many players who just flat out quit WoW because they were done waiting and when the expansion finally released, they didn’t care anymore.

How do you combat it?: It’s really hard to do, but I think the way Square Enix has handled the slump between Patch 2.55 and Heavensward is the correct method. Keep things spiced up for as long as possible by spreading story content out over the course of multiple smaller patches.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday, because it feels like it’s 100 degrees inside the room I’m currently typing in and I really want to get out of here.

Video Game Tuesday: Giving up on Destiny

 

This week on Video Game Tuesday I’m explaining why I’m done with Destiny until it gets fixed properly.

My Issues With Destiny: The lack of Story isn’t a huge factor in me no longer playing Destiny, but it does affect it. The bigger issues are the fact that it has taken Bungie Eight Months to do more than admit that there are major issues with bugs, and they choose to only address one of them. Another of them is the fact that they seem hellbent on pushing their idea of their ideal fairness on everyone. If they weren’t expecting to deal with exploits, like pushing Atheon and Templar and Crota off edges to their doom, they were beyond stupid.

The fact that people have to resort to things like pulling their ethernet cord out to beat a boss easily is beyond stupid. That says something major about their design team, and it’s not a good thing. It means that the majority of players aren’t able to complete end game activities without resorting to a glitch of some sort. In fact certain fights are impossible without resorting to it. A good example is the Abyss section of Crota Hard Mode, by the end of the mad dash to the end 3-4 players of 6 will be dead and those left have to fend off hordes of enemies by themselves. The only way to survive through that is jump onto a certain rock to avoid 98% of the enemies and take out the only ones that can hurt them, Ogres, from a distance before they get in range and kill you in three seconds. The artificial difficulty added in the entirety of Hard Mode is beyond dumb as you will always get one shot from certain enemies, and if they catch you unaware for even a second while you are dealing with the hordes of Thralls you are going to die very quickly.

Another fault I’m sick of dealing with is the fact that RNG rules everything in the game, from the inventory of the weekly weekend vendor Xur to the drops from a standard PvP match in the crucible. I’m sick of seeing someone who didn’t participate at all get one of the best guns while I’ve been trying since day one to get one and still haven’t gotten it. By the way I find the statement of his inventory being totally random to be utter crap as the week he sold the Icebreaker most recently had every top tier exotic for every class and helmet engrams for sale as well as the Icebreaker. That is so statistically improbable that it just can’t be possible.

Another issue I had with Destiny is the fact that the new exotics all suck. Every single one is terrible, from the No Land Beyond to Necrochasm. Not a single one is worth using over older guns. These are supposed to be some of the best guns in the game, but they all are so terrible that no one wants to use them.

The last straw for me though was this last week’s update informing everyone that they were punishing players for using guns that are effective over using guns that aren’t as effective. I understand the desire to balance the game, but when that strays into affecting one part of the game (PvE) because of another part that has nothing to do with it (PvP), it becomes extremely frustrating to the players.

So I’m done with Destiny, until they fix their mistakes and stop pushing their ideals on us. Will I play House of Wolves, maybe. I might go through the raid once, do the story missions to see if they fix anything, but I’ve got no hopes that it will go well anymore.

I have moved onto greener pastures with the friends I’ve made from Destiny and I’m actually going to play a game that doesn’t feel like screwing with you every chance it gets.