Currently Playing...

Today, a short post about what I've been playing. Don't you just love those? Everybody does them. I'm never exactly sure why, although I will say that it's both terrifying and revelatory to go back a few years (Or even a few months, sometimes.) and find out how immensely important something seemed once that I can now barely remember at all. It's a reminder of how arbitrary and fleeting our obsessions can be.

Well, that was a cheery start. Perhaps I should just get on with the notes.

So, I've really only been playing three games: EverQuest II, Solasta and Wuthering Waves. I've patched up quite a few more with the intention of playing them - Once Human, Blade & Soul NEO, New World, Lord of the Rings Online - but the only one I actually got as far as logging into was LotRO and I only did that because I'd read all the news about the 64bit servers and I was worried I might lose access or names for all my characters.

As it turns out, that was premature, or at least I think it was. I read the ridiculously long and complicated FAQ on what to do and the upshot seems to be "Nothing, yet." Please feel free to correct me in the comments if there actually is something I should be doing. Otherwise I'll just wait until Standing Stone set some dates.

Of the others, as I think I mentioned before, the update process for Once Human is now so flaky and unreliable I ended up uninstalling the client and I haven't gotten around to reinstalling it on a different drive yet, which had been my plan. B&SNEO is still a few weeks away and as for New World, I lost interest there even before I could log in. I think that one may be cooked.

Of the games I was playing, albeit briefly in most cases, just short while ago, all have dropped off the schedule completely. Outer Worlds never got a second session, Divinity: Original Sin started to annoy more than it entertained and The First Descendant somehow got away from me. That one, I didn't intend to stop playing, I just did. I might go back at some point but not right now.

As for Cloudpunk, although I had every intention of carrying on and finishing the various side missions, it seems my brain is quite clear on something being "finished". I can't seem to persuade it to carry on.

Of the three games I have successfully managed to fire up and stick with for at least a full session, EQII and Solasta are far ahead of Wuthering Waves, which remains a sporadic pleasure at best. That's disappointing in one way but in another it's useful, in that it adds a very useful data point to the graph of game-playing compulsion. It appears games can be just too good to play often.

What I mean by that is that Wuthering Waves offers a very rich experience. The story is excellent, the gameplay requires thought and attention and an hour or two spent there feels very much like watching a really good movie. 

There was a time when I'd very happily watch a couple of movies in an evening, then do the same the following afternoon, but those days are long gone. Now, I have to build up to watching a film and then cool down afterwards. I don't think I've watched more than one movie a week for years. Wuthering Waves, at least while I'm pursuing the storyline, requires a similar degree of concentration and investment and a session every few days is about as much as I can handle.

Which brings us to EQII and Solasta, neither of which suffer from any such issues. The plots in both barely merit the consideration I'd give to a not particularly well-written TV show. In Solasta, the story serves mostly as a series of pegs on which to hang some enjoyably tactical fights, while in EQII the questline largely acts as a conveyor belt to move you across the map, while providing an ostensible reason to kill everything that gets in your way.

Both games manage to hit that difficult-to-achieve balance of immersion and relaxation, making them unchallenging yet still fun to play. For EQII, the lack of tension comes from the knowledge, common to almost any modern or modernised MMORPG, that no failure is ever going to set you back very far or matter very much, whereas Solasta allows you to save your game just about whenever you like, meaning it's possible to take any risk without worrying about the consequences, should it fail to pay off.

Also strongly in both games' favor is the fact that they run well on my laptop via Splashtop, something Wuthering Waves refuses to do. Since I like to go to bed early at the moment because it's just about the warmest, most comfortable place to be in this prolonged cold snap we're enjoying, that gives them a considerable advantage.

Replayabilty is another factor. I had thought, having gotten to the end of the main storyline in Scars of Destruction with my Berserker, that I might be done with EQII for a while but no. I used the free boost that came with the standard edition of the expansion to raise my Necromancer to the level cap, then I kitted her out with all the free gear that comes with it.

For what seems like no good reason at all, none of the boosted gear has Adornments so I had to go to the Tishan's box in Sodden Archipelago and add the relevant Adornments from there. The gear in the  box has identical stats but already has the Adornments in place, so I might as well just have used that. Not to mention I needed the mount and the familiar and some other stuff out of the box too. Someone needs to give the whole expansion onboarding process yet another sanity check.

Once I'd finished setting my Necro up, though, the results were impressive. Every year I tell myself I'm going to focus on her and stop running the newest content for the first time with my Berserker. Then, when it comes to it, I balk at the difference in their gear and skills and end up back where I began.

This year I'm determined to be ready, when the next expansion arrives, to go through it on the Necro first. The sheer difference in power between them is astonishing. She's significantly less well-geared than he is, with lower quality spells and few of the incremental advantages he's gained from having been my main character for years and yet her time-to-kill has to be at least half of his, plus she has far greater versatility. Given my repeatedly-stated preference for going the easy route, it makes absolutely no sense for me not to be playing her far more than I do.

To that end, I will need to take her all the way through the storyline, something I usually don't bother doing with all my characters. I also should level up a tradeskill for her since, as I've observed many times, being able to do the crafting timeline is a huge advantage for adventurers, particularly when it comes to getting a head start on flight in the new zones.

Tradeskills are slow to level in EQII but there is a boost you can buy to skip the bulk of the grind. It's quite pricy but I have a lot of Daybreak funny money saved up. I might as well spend it on something useful. It would be a good project for this year, making sure the Necro is there and thereabouts as well set-up as the Berserker by the time the next expansion rolls around. I'll try to remember to do it this time.

Solasta is likely to remain my late-evening wind-down game for a while, a role it fits very well due to its pick-up/put-down nature. I can't say the story or the setting is doing a lot for me as I meander through the maze-like swamps and jungles, trying to balance one faction against another while not getting killed by the despotic ruler of the region but who cares about the story when the fights are such fun?

The important thing to remember about the DLC I'm playing, though, is that it also includes the feature that adds player-made scenarios to the game in a manner very similar to Neverwinter Nights 2. I haven't tried any of the add-on scenarios yet but I've had a look at some of the more popular ones and it looks as though there's no shortage of highly-rated adventures, most of which almost certainly have better stories than the official one. I wonder if they also have player-made voice acting? That would be... intereresting.

It's likely I'll be playing all three of these games, on and off, for the rest of the year but no doubt some new fad or obsession will bubble up soon enough to shunt them to one side for a while. Whetever that might be, I doubt it'll be the one game I ought to have been playing this last week but haven't played at all - Stars Reach.

There were several tests, a couple of which were at times I could have made, but I actually forgot all about them until it was too late. I think the sheer number of emails I get from Playable Worlds, what with them sending three (And now, for some reason, four.) copies of each has trained my brain to disregard them almost entirely. 

It's a shame because the most recent tests opened up just about everything for immediate use in an attempt to show potential backers the full extent of what's available in the game already. That meant I could have tried out a few things I haven't been able to get to so far, without having to spend most of the session grinding through stuff I'd done already. Didn't happen though. I'll have to wait and see what Wilhelm thought of it all, assuming he managed to play a few sessions.

The Kickstarter ought to launch for real this week, which should be interesting. I wonder if they plan on keeping the accelerated testing schedule going throughout the campaign to support it? 

If so, maybe I will add Stars Reach to the "Currently Playing" file after all.