No Comment, In Which I Disappear Up My Own Fundament

I rather blew my chance of a good, meaty post today by using up a lot of the material in reply to a couple of very interesting posts by Kaylriene and Naithin. Looking at it from a Blaugust advice on blogging point of view, it exemplifies a perennial problem: when to comment and when to post.

A blogging "scene" requires certain key elements to sustain itself: enough people blogging to create a critical mass, a significant degree of interaction between them and a willingness to share. Get all those in place and you have a good chance of a stable community maintained by synergies that are self-sustaining.

Bouncing off other peoples' posts is an essential element. It's also crucial that, when doing so, each blogger not only credits their inspiration but links to the source. That's how blogs find new readers and readers find new blogs.

Commenting is also deeply important. Comments validate the effort of the blogger who wrote the post that inspired them and let them know that someone out there is not only reading but paying attention. More importantly, comments create conversations.

Individual blogs can exist perfectly happily in a void. If you're keeping a personal journal there's really no need for readers. Blogger actually has settings that allow you to make your blog available only to invited readers or even to make it unavailable and invisible to anyone but you.

I have absolutely no doubt that there are people out there knocking out thousands or even hundreds of thousands of words every year that no-one ever sees. Not everyone wants other people reading their diary, after all.

Random shot from Kingdoms of Amalur because you have to break the text up with something.

By definition those private bloggers don't matter to anyone but themselves. Effectively, for the rest of us, they don't exist. Everyone else likes a bit of feedback and if there's going to to be a blogosphere or a scene, the feedback needs to form a loop.

Most of the time I have no problem encouraging and facilitating that. I habitually bounce off other bloggers and spray links in all directions. It's one of the best ways to keep a blog lively and current.

Not infrequently, though, I find myself facing a minor dilemma. I'll be reading a post that piques my interest and I'll start writing a comment, because I can no more resist the sound of my own voice than I can breathe treacle.

As I get stuck in and the comment grows longer and more convoluted, it will occur to me that a) comments shouldn't have a dozen paragraphs and b) I could probably turn what I'm writing into a full post. At that moment I have to decide which way to go and it's not always a straightforward decision.

I often think it's a bit rude to remove a lengthy comment from consideration without the blogger in question having any idea it was ever there. If other bloggers are anything like me they'll cherish their comments, metaphorically rolling around in them like Scrooge McDuck in his money pit. It's cruel to deprive anyone of that pleasure even if they never find out.

My solution is often to write a very short comment saying I was going to write a longer one but then I decided to turn it into a post of my own. I'm never sure how welcome that really is. It could sound a bit like someone telling you they had a great idea for a birthday present for you but after they bought it they realized they liked it so much they decided to keep it. And then gave you a photo of them using and enjoying it. As your present.

It's getting prettier as I get further in.

On the other hand, discovering that a post you've written has inspired or provoked another blogger into a response post of their own is at least as satisfying as receiving a comment. More so if it's a good post that expands on the subject, as when Everwake posted something on Developer Appreciation Week which referenced my post on the same subject.

Then there's the question of how much you really want to write the post. It takes me about five per cent of the time to write even a lengthy comment than it would to put a full post together. I freestyle comments and don't read them back (as you can easily tell from the high incidence of typos, spelling and grammatical errors).

Even if I've already written an overlong comment running to a few hundred words the chance of cannibalizing any of it to cut and paste into a post is minimal. I sometimes try but it's more trouble than it's worth. Easier to start again from scratch.

It does sometimes occur to me to leave the whole comment in situ and then do the post as well but somehow that never sits quite right. It leaves me with the strange feeling I've just plagiarized myself. And it seems a bit of a cheat, as if I'm trying to get double credit, although from whom I couldn't tell you.

In both cases today, bashing out comments to Kaylriene and Naithin, I had in mind the amount of effort it would take to do a proper post on the highly nuanced and complex issue of Sandbox versus Themepark gameplay. I had ideas sparking like lightning across my synapses and I was uncomfortably aware of the minimal likelihood of any of them being amenable to tamping down.

Also, I'm absolutely certain I've pontificated at considerable length about this subject before. Several times. Not that that would stop me but I knew that if I wasn't going to just repeat my established position and trot out some of the same well-worn anecdotes I'd have to go and do some primary research.

Also hotter, drier and dustier. And more orange.

I do a lot of research. I enjoy it and I really hate getting facts wrong. I actually did some research even to comment on Naithin's post, because I was refuting something another commenter, Quin, had said and I wanted to be sure I wasn't talking through my hat.

As a complete aside and also an illustration of how rabbit holes can open up under your feet at any time, when I tabbed back to Time to Loot to get the above link to Quin's comment, I clicked on his name and it took me to his blog, Where The Monsters Are. I had seen his name as a commenter before but I had no idea he had a blog, let alone one in which his latest post is a direct counterpart to my DAW post (linked above, let's not over-egg it), taking almost the opposite stance on exactly the same developer.

Where The Monsters Are looks like a very interesting blog indeed and I immediately added it to my blog roll, not least because I'm already on his. If anyone else has me on their blog roll and I haven't reciprocated, please nudge me.

Unfortunately, when I checked to see if it had worked I couldn't see Quin's blog anywhere. I scrolled all the way down to the bottom and there it was, showing the most recent post as this from seven years ago. I fiddled around for a while but I couldn't get Blogger to recognize the current WTMA. Anyone with any ideas on how to fix it please let me know. It works fine in Feedly...

Getting back to the point, assuming I ever had one or could remember it if I did, sometimes a comment is all you really need but sometimes it takes a full post to get your message across. Knowing when to break out and when to tuck in is an art rather than a science. I'm still working on it.

Then again, you can always comment first then spiral off into a post that's tangentially related at best. That works too!

More Of The Same: KoA

Somewhat to my surprise, Kingdoms of Amalur continues to take up most of my playtime. According to Steam I have now racked up sixteen hours and very little of that has been afk.

Questing remains interesting and involving, with the side quests offering a lot of background information while the main questline chugs on in a coherent and comprehensible fashion. Absolutely nothing about any of it is original but the quality is solid.

Combat, as predicted, is getting easier, not that it was ever anything even close to hard. I do sometimes die. Occasionally I mistime a potion and a crit sends me back to the last saved game, which is annoying, because it's always avoidable if I didn't try to leave it to the very last moment.

I'm slowly remembering the joys of manually saving progress. Frankly, I can't see the point of it even in a single-player game. KoA has autosaves but I have learned from experience that they're far too far apart to rely on. Why the game can't just autosave every few seconds defeats me. Just one of those things, I guess.

Levels seem to be coming faster now. I'm about half-way through Level 8, which averages out at two hours per. I think it was more like three hours at the start so maybe it keeps speeding up. The level cap is 40 , which seems a very long way off.

Wouldn't you like, just once, to visit a fantasy world where the Gypsy Caravan had never been invented?

Each level means points to spend on skills and abilities. Although you start with a class and there are a whole load of advanced classes to choose from, it seems as though you can mix and match whatever you like. I had no particular plan for my character but she seems to have drifted into the kind of warrior-mage I wouldn't have given the time of day when I was fourteen.

Not that I had any interest in rpgs when I was fourteen, so maybe I would have, at that. I doubt it, though. If I'd played rpgs at fourteen I'd have been more likely to choose a bard with a serious drug problem and a tendency to extemporize beat poetry at the drop of a very fancy hat.

Armor comes in three types, Warrior, Rogue and Mage, which naturally equates to Plate, Leather and Cloth although those terms aren't used. Anyone can wear anything, though, so it's a moot point. My character has veered from a neat set of leathers to a long robe to her current full metal jacket and pants. If there's any difference in survivability between them I can't say I've noticed. I face-tank everything and it all seems much of a muchness.

For some reason, pants seem to be as rare as chicken molars. At one point the only pair my character had hit zero durability when she was out in the forest and she had to run around fighting barghests in her skivvies unti she was lucky enough to find some plate leggings in a chest. I wouldn't have done that in an MMORPG, that's for sure, but in a single-player rpg, no-one can see your butt.

Home: the place that when you have to go there they have to let you in - and then not let you move anything.

 I have a house now, which is very welcome. There doesn't seem to be any way to decorate it but it has storage and a bed in which you can sleep to recover health and also avoid night-time. The world, like every bloody fantasy world, is too dark too much of the time. There's "realism" and then there's being able to see what you're looking at.

The house is upgradeable by talking to an NPC and paying some gold. Literally getting the builders in. I added a dining room, although since there seems to be no food or drink in the game I'm not sure what the point of that is meant to be. One of the DLC packs supposedly adds a huge amount of functionality and variety to housing. I might get that at some point.

I'm doing a lot of crafting. It's a very satisfying system in terms of results and the mechanics aren't bad, either. I have sufficient points in Blacksmithing now to allow me to salvage the two lowest qualities of armor and weapons, which helps enormously with inventory bloat. I just wish I could do it in the field without having to come back to a forge but instant travel makes that not too much of an issue.

Drops are excellent and extremely common. The entire countryside seems to be littered with chests and hidden stashes, the latter being extremely poorly concealed once you invest just a couple of points in Detect Hidden. Most of the drops and are clearly intended to be salvaged but just often enough something really nice appears.

Home-made is better.

My flaming sword was just beginning to show its age when I got a purple quality Frostblade. Not as flashy but very elegant, with a nice particle effect. Ettins that had been giving me a lot of trouble suddenly started to come apart at the seams.

I was imagining I'd be keeping that blade for a while but the very next time I went to the forge and started to experiment I made a green quality Fireblade that was a small upgrade. Crafted gear is really good.

All things considered, KoA has turned out to be a very good impulse purchase. I'm waiting for things to to start to slide southwards as a couple of commenters, including the estimable XyzzySqrl , have suggested they will.

So far, though, so good. Not sure anyone really cares at this stage but I'll keep updating on progress until I'm not making any.

Kingdoms Of Amalur: First Impressions

Steam tells me I've played Kingdoms of Amalur for three hours now. It feels like more than that but in a good way.

Three hours is enough for a decent "First Impressions" post, I think. I've run through character creation and the tutorial, I've progressed the main questline through several stages and  done some side-quests.

I've picked a crafting profession, Alchemy, and I've done a lot of gathering to support it. I leveled up (just the once - leveling does not appear to be fast), spent some skill points and began to figure out how that all works.

I've also done a good deal of exploring in areas where I had no reason to be, including an abandoned mine, where I found some very nice gear. I've talked to just about everyone I've met and all of them have talked back to me.

Put simply, I've been having fun. So far, I like this game. Let's break that down a little.

Character Creation: 

Seemed very perfunctory although I didn't spend a huge amount of time there. Four races, two "human", two "elven", all of them extremely humanoid. I really didn't care much which I chose. There was some lore and a few racial perks but experience tells me these things never matter much so I just went with the one I liked the look of.

The sliders and choices were pretty limited. I fiddled about for a while, got something I didn't hate and left it at that. An in-game tip that popped up much later told me I could get a house of my own at some point, owning which would allow me to change my appearance. That means I can fix the very heavy lipstick that makes my character look like a particularly grumpy goth although, truth be told, I'm already used to her looking like that, so I probably won't bother.

Any chance we could get a wiggle on? I don't do caves.

Tutorial: 

Not bad, as tutorials go. It's in a cave, which always gives me Gloomingdale Deep flashbacks, but it starts in media res and moves at a very spritely pace. The game doesn't just give you pop-up tips and instructions, it pauses the whole thing and takes you through stage by stage, which I found helpful.

The tutorial also benefits from being the same as the rest of the game. None of those incredibly annoying pocket worlds (Blade and Soul and, especially, Fallen Earth, come to mind). It gets you accustomed to the absolutely enormous amount of talking you can expect, too.

Combat: 

It's an ARPG so obviously I don't actively enjoy the combat. It's okay, though. There's a load of stuff you can do with dodging and blink-teleporting and ramping up a meter to go batshit crazy. So far I haven't bothered. A simple, relentless hammering of LMB interspersed with a few judicious RMB bursts and the odd prod at the number keys for variety seems to work fine. 

Everyone said the combat was easy and it seems they were right. I'm playing on "Normal", which is what I play all games with difficulty settings on because I consider that to be the "real" game. I wouldn't hesitate to drop to "Easy" if I was having trouble but that looks unlikely.

A sword like that really desrves a name...

Gear makes a huge difference, which I like, so long as I can get some. I was fortunate enough to find a flaming sword in the mine I was exploring, which made me very happy for two reasons. Firstly I love flaming longswords. My very first AD&D character, a ranger, had one and I have had a thing for them ever since. Secondly, KoA is one of those games where mobs have weaknesses to different types of damage and I happened to be fighting a lot of creatures that catch fire easily. So that went well.

Healing:

I put this separately because it's weird. As far as I can tell you don't regenearate hit points at all. Mana comes back fine but if you're half health after a battle you stay that way until you either drink a potion or visit an NPC healer.

This is why I took Alchemy as my first crafting profession. I was getting some health potions as drops (mostly from chests) but not enough, so I went to buy some from the Alchemist in the starting village. They were so eyewateringly expensive I decided to make my own, which turned out to be a lot cheaper.

Since even the lowest level healing potion completely refills my health bar and has no cooldown, my plan is to make a whole load of them and give myself on-tap complete heals. Be your own cleric.

Crafting and Gathering:

Since we're on the subject of making potions, let's talk crafting. There are only three professions, Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Sagecraft. Alchemists make potions, Blacksmiths make and repair both armor and weapons and Sages make the gems that slot into your gear.

I worked all of those out by myself. Give me a gold star.

I've only dabbled with Alchemy so far (I'm guessing that, since it's a single-player game, your character can do all of them) and I like it quite a lot. It has recipes you can find or buy but it also allows for experimentation. The descriptions of the herbs are meaningful enough that you have a reasonable chance of working out what goes with what to make what, which makes the whole process quite satisfying.

As you skill up (level-granted points rather than on-use skilling) further options open up. It all looks quite promising. Gathering is incorporated within crafting, so some of your "milestones", as the game calls significant skill upgrades, affect what and how much you can gather. It all seems quite elegant but I won't really know until I hit the later stages. Still, good start.

Exploration:

The lure of an open world with few restrictions to exploring it was one of the key reasons I bought Kingdoms of Amalur and so far it hasn't disappointed. It's not one of those games where you can get to anything you see for the simple reason that there's no free jumping, but mostly I've been able to explore without too many problems.

Games that don't let you jump are always odd. The worst I've ever seen were probably FFXI and Guild Wars, where a two-inch kerb might as well have been the Grand Canyon. KoA does better than that by having specific "Jump Points" when the terrain offers a sudden drop. You have to hit "F" (the universal "do a thing" key) and your character hops down to the lower level. It's clunky but not terrible.

I think I've been here before. About a thousand times.

Other than that I haven't run into any invisible walls, restricted areas or roadblocks of any kind. Well, not unless you count bandits, who do like to jump out from nowhere and try to rob me at inconvenient moments. Their mistake!

Graphics:

Not much point exploring if there's nothing worth looking at. KoA's graphics aren't going to win any awards for Most Original or Most Gorgeous but they're perfectly fine. The scenery is a bit World of Warcraft here and there but that's ok. I'm probably going to need to see a few more biomes to make a real judgment but for now it'll do.

UI:

Not great. Quite fiddly with far too many button presses or mouse clicks to get to where you want to be - and particularly to get back again. I'm guessing the UI was designed for console controllers and only minimally revised for mouse and keyboard.

Come on, who takes screenshots of the UI? Seriously....

That said, the entire game pauses as soon as you open any window so there's all the time in the world to do whatever you need to do. I'm already fairly used to it and it isn't actively annoying me so I imagine after a few more hours I won't even notice.

Questing and Story:

So far, so good. An anonymous commenter on yesterday's post called the dialogs "primitive" but I've found them to be generally par or better. I do think that MMORPGs set an exceptionally low bar for both narrative and dialog, so anyone more used to single player RPGs probably has higher standards. For my money, though, just about all the dialog I've seen so far is significantly better-written than most of what I remember from Elder Scrolls Online, an MMORPG widely thought to have superior writing for the genre.

If the writing is solid, the voice acting is better than that. Absolutely everything and everyone is fully voiced and with very few exceptions so far the actors are more than competent and the line readings are correct. 

In this one a gullible newbie is tricked by a human wearing false ears into believing he's working for the Fae, who will teach him magic if he just gets a powerful item out of a dungeon for them. I soon put him straight. And I've got the item.

Line reading in MMORPGs is a particular bugbear of mine. By and large it's terrible. Far too many NPCs end up sounding like they've been called on by an English teacher to read the next few lines out loud to the class and they're trying to read ahead and guess the sense of something they don't have a clue about because they haven't been paying attention.

How this can even happen with a half-way competent director beats me but then so does all that quest text in imported games that looks like it's been run through Google Translate then poorly transcribed. You could hire a native-speaking student from a language school and pay them a pittance to fix it up but apparently no-one cares.

With one bizarre exception, none of that applies to KoA. The dialog isn't just coherently and competently written and performed but it's interesting, too. The main quest is ticking along but mostly I've been learning about the local religions, the ongoing war and the ambiguous and fragile relationship between Fae and Humans as they attempt to co-exist in peace.

This one's self-explanatory and suggests a very positive tone for the game. I was more than happy to get Zelda the book she needed, even if I did have to steal it from a priest.

I particularly appreciate the way every NPC has a different take on this sort of thing. When you see the same dialog options come up over and over (Fae, The War, named NPCs...) you might be inclined to ignore them, thinking you'd already heard all about that. You'd be wrong. So far I haven't had the same response twice and the differing points of view on the same subjects and individuals create a fascinating mosaic.

All in all I'd give the writing and questing a firm thumbs-up.

(The one exception  I mentioned is a gnome called Hugues, who every voice actor insists, presumably under direction, on pronouncing as "Hughes". I can't believe anyone actually meant to spell the very common and familiar name in such a ridiculous way, not even when it's attached to a gnome, so it's either a typo or a directing error. Either way it was driving me nuts while Hugues was in the picture but luckily he's dead now!)

Overall First Impression:

Very positive. I'm enjoying myself considerably. I like my character, I like the progression mechanics and I'm finding the stories interesting. 

We'll see if it lasts.

Impulse Purchase: Kingdoms of Amalur

There's a distinct possibility I might be in the process of being assimilated. By Steam.

I managed to ignore Steam for many years. Then, when I finally caved and installed it, I went a few more years using it only very occasionally.

Now find myself looking at it most days, picking through the suggestions and "ignoring" most of them, fiddling around with the screenshot folders and generally treating it as a resource rather than a potentially explosive package someone left in my porch overnight.

Today I did something I have never done before. Actually, two things, but the other is health-related and I am doing my best to keep that stuff out of here. I spotted something on sale on Steam and I bought it.

The offer I noticed was 75% off of Kingdoms of Amalur plus all three DLC packs. £7.99 for the lot seemed like a good deal and I have always been curious about 38 Studios precursor to the doomed MMORPG Project Copernicus. 

Rather than jumping straight on it, I took the time to see what was in the DLC packs. It didn't seem like much I'd want. The base game was itself on sale at 75% off at £4.99 so I decided to buy just that. Steam gives the game a rating of Very Positive from over 9,000 reviews but what really swung it for me were two specific comments:

 "The most underrated open world rpg there is. Massive open world"

and, from a negative review, 

"This game is incredibly easy and lacks any combat depth. Even on the hardest setting, it offers no real challenge after the first 5-10 hours or so. Potions have no cooldown, you can carry hundreds of them and they are easy to find. Crafting in the game allows you to make gear so strong you are practically invincible. The Fate mode allows you to lay waste to a boss without any effort. Even with self-imposed challenges, the combat is repetitive and shallow.

I would still recommend this game if you are someone who doesn't mind easy games, and wants a colourful fantasy world to explore"

Since I am exactly that person it seemed fated, so I bought it.

It took a surprisngly long time to set up and I had to make an EA account to get it running, even though the game doesn't appear to use it once you've made it. (I already have one, too, something I'd forgotten, so now I have two I'm not using).

Eventually I got it going, watched the highly generic intro, made a highly generic character and spent an hour going through a highly generic tutorial. In a cave. So far, so little to say, although I will put in a word for the voice acting, which is well above par.

The game really didn't want me to change any settings so I did the whole tutorial in the wrong resolution, which did the game no favors at all. When I finally made it to the outdoors I was able to correct that and suddenly everything looked a lot better.

One obvious problem is that it's virtually impossible to hide the UI. You have to download and install third party add-ons which, by some accounts, don't work anyway, so I'm going to have to put up with screen clutter if I post any screenshots. Unless I crop hard, which I probably will.

If I end up playing it to any substantial degree there will be a First Impressions post here at some point, no doubt. Only seven years late but so what?