Emergency Trap

A thing about being anti-social and an introvert is the constant ebb and flow of being efficient, like the undulating ocean swell way out in the deep. It’s a never-ending roller-coaster of feeling energized, get-er-done motivation followed by a down-spell of getting nothing at all accomplished.

For awhile I’ve been on the upside and thinking of things I want to get done and how to better budget my life to actually accomplish things. I haven’t done a good job, at all, but I can at least try to comfort myself a little and try to actually start doing the doing.

These are the things I want to do.

1)Become a teacher: I’ve been re-evaluating my life and I find that I genuinely still want to be a teacher. I’ve always liked kids and, at least, used to be good with kids(maybe because I’m a kid myself). I think kids and our education system need all the help it can get.

2)Write a book: I still write, but it’s haphazard and intermittent. I have a collection of poems I’ve been working on as well as a book. I’d like to become consistent with my entire life to work towards accomplishing this as well as everything else.

3)Create an MMORPG: I found a neat open-source development platform that’s very powerful, works with other proprietary and open-source programs to accomplish just about anything I could imagine. And with the skills and knowledge it can even be of very high quality, even to today’s standards.

4)Start or join a non-profit: I’d like to create or join a non-profit organization, preferably in the U.S. My father always told me “How can we help others, if we can’t help ourselves?” and that rings true to me, today. I wouldn’t shun the opportunity to work in another country and do other helpful services; sometimes you take what you can get and do what you can do.

5)Create a photo-book: Lying somewhere between writing and photography, I have a couple photo-book ideas I’d like to complete. One is a coffee-table book of fences with captions on a bit of history of fences(what little there is). I’d also like to make a tour-guide of sorts.

6)Create a side photography business: Not a huge career at this point, but I want to get my photography site up and running and try to possibly sell my stuff. I also found the cool world of Second Life and would like to spread my artistic wings by taking my photography into SL and using SL to create totally new works of art by combining photography, both in and out of SL with each other. I can also literally build a photo-studio to show and sell my work in SL.

7)Travel the world: I don’t necessarily want to constantly be on the move all over the place, although, if I were afforded the continual opportunities, that would be great. I’d still like to go to Japan(big surprise, for all that know me). Maybe unbeknownst to those that know me, I’d actually really like to go to the United Kingdom and possibly for long-term living.

8)Find more or one ultimate writing job: I love writing and even if there’s things about it I don’t like, I’d love to find a full-time writing job that I can support myself on, or multiple writing jobs that would serve my purposes.

This is my list, so far. I’ll add stuff as I find things. I suppose, all-in-all, it really isn’t a very large life list at all, but it is too me. I suppose there are a number of other things like go to a convention or get a classic car and such, but those to me are secondary, “frivolous” things compared to the above list, that I find to be of greater importance for myself.  I really am having trouble staying “with it” to work on this. I, greatly, need to organize my life, sort things out to where I can work on all these things consistently, a little at a time, all the time.

I’ve been rather cynical, and extra hard on this game, because of the hype and what it’s doing. I think it’s a fun game. I’ve played the Beta and already pre-purchased and know I’ll be satisfied(at least short-term), but, cynically, I think the weight of the success is going to be on the shoulders of PvP.

I hope I’m wrong, but PvE isn’t just looking lack-luster, but still seems to fall short for an MMO. It feels so much more like they slapped Skyrim onto the side of a PvP Box and said “Here’s something to do when you aren’t PvPing and to, maybe, satiate PvE’ers hungry enough to be satisfied by almost anything.”

That is very cynical, I know, but RP and chat elements are really lacking, the story(while great) feels very linear, to the point, once you play through to level-cap, there’s not much reason to start again. I know, amazing choices to mix up and make multiple play-throughs. Yeah. The few, what 5-6 “choices” that only affect 1% of change amidst fighting and leveling up isn’t any different than the amount of change and choice in a single-player game and I usually have no inclination to sludge through the leveling experience to see my character meet Joe, instead of Mary, after 50 hours of the same leveling experience.

It feels very much like a single-player experience. Yes, there’s the choose-your-story, but, cynically, that’s not that much. You choose like 5-6 questions to change a few directions throughout your leveling experience. It is very much like what they do in a single-player game.

Add to that the feeling I had of being all alone while surrounded by players. I’ve complained about this for years: That players should not be asking for the false illusion of “equality” and “fairness”. It doesn’t exist, and now GW2 tries it, but it still doesn’t exist. All it did is separate players without segregating them. Nothing you do matters, no one you do it with matters, it doesn’t even matter who they are. There’s even a streamlined system of healing and other systems that encourages not finding out who others are. So everyone becomes a robot, faceless number just running around, not really affecting you, that can’t take part in what you’re doing.

Sure. Fighting is grouped… yeah… kinda. So the only thing that is a group activity is fighting, and only the more intense fighting. I played the mine-event in the Norn area. I didn’t need anyone, I didn’t need to talk to anyone. I forgot the chat window existed. All I needed to do was care about me and that’s it, it really isn’t a group activity. Everyone’s in their own little bubble of existence and the multi-player aspect just takes advantage of the fact that someone will be there. Some of the events even scale, so it doesn’t matter how many people are there. In that respect, it doesn’t matter if anyone exists. You just run in and do your own thing.

I’ve argued this before: Players are complaining about the very things that make us human. They complain about node-jacking. If you don’t believe or like it, don’t take part in it. That’s a big problem. Players say one thing and do another. They say, I don’t believe in exploiting to get the gear, but I do it because others do it. Then they say, “he/she shouldn’t get a prize if I didn’t”. “He/she shouldn’t get to the ability to make more money off of an item than me”.

The only possible answer to any of this people, is to take the people away. Not every single person is going to play nice, but you were still largely in control of everything.

Take Runes of Magic’s decision to turn nodes into one-click gathering from the original multi-click. That’s fine with me, it’s inconsequential, but what I want to highlight should be very illuminating to players when you think of this pattern in every game, concerning every system: that is, players yelled loud enough that they filed the forums and demanded something be done about node jacking.

Runes of Magic’s gathering system has nodes everywhere. More-so than any other MMO in existence. The world is littered with nodes every 2-inches.

So the stupid gameplay decision(Yes, I said it, of course highly pragmatic for a company that wants your money) was made to make nodes one-click, but also so you couldn’t node-jack when someone else was using it.

That’s fine, it was largely inconsequential to me at the time, but this is an example, not an isolated incident. Think of this in terms of game-design-philosophy for your entire game. Now, no one can interact, now there is no chance of gathering turning into something else, say a group activity, like Vanguard, where friends can help you gather.

This issue was large enough to clog the RoM forums? You gotta be kidding me, seriously? And they changed it. Players were 100% in control of this system. Nodes are freaking everywhere in that game. Someone griefing you? Stealing your node? Just walk 2 bloody inches in any direction!

This is why, if I won a million dollars, I’d make a game and would be very careful of the info I accepted from players. There’d be no communication between devs and players. I don’t know why players think that’s so bloody important anyway. No. I’d build an MMO, one that you would see what truly mattered. One in which I rarely listened to the players to screw it up, simply because I need to listen to players to make money and not actually good game-design decisions. You’d see an MMO built around the idea of fun gameplay, instead of around how to best make money.

All these ideas of fairness and equality never existed. They are fake, a lie and delusions that never existed and never will. No one has ever been equal in any MMO to date. World of Warcraft battlegrounds, nope. No one is fair in that, no one is MORE fair, thanks to the gear system. That’s all an illusion. The gear caps and restrictions are there, yes, to keep the game from blowing up and being total chaos, and they are there, in specific forms to combat bots, and they’re implemented in ways simply to keep you playing a certain way, which certainly isn’t fair and equal.

There are too many variables to add to the mix to keep WoW or any other game from being truly fair.

And now we have GW2 as the result, the poster-child for what it’s like to push the illusion to the extreme.

It’s an incredibly fun game. I enjoyed it and pre-purchased it, but for how long.

It feels like single-player “Skyrim” slapped onto the side of a much larger PvP box. And that kind of PvP isn’t a long-term thingamajig. It’s existed before, actually, in Shaiya Online. I played for 2 years. Giant maps with hundreds fighting over relics to control for the winning faction. Yep, been done before. Not as good as GW2, but it’s enough to show the world what may happen.

Me, personally, I won’t be able to have the stamina to sit with a group of 20 or 30 other nameless, faceless numbers for hours while one-side slowly pushes the other back, then the other side sowly pushes us back, because that’s primarily what’s going to happen. I’ve seen it hundreds of times.

You get dividing points where it’s an eternal stand-off. More players will come help one-side, you say? That’s what happens a lot of time, for both sides, and the stand-off stays.

Now, I am being very ranty and cynical, but I think GW2 will do a better job of this, but at it’s heart: I’m not sure a single-player “Skyrim” will keep me playing very long. I’ll probably get bored in the same way I got bored of Skyrim and not have any inclination to play the many characters and all the super-awesome-amazing many choices of…. 5-6 “simple” choices to “affect” me, when I’ll largely be doing the exact same thing with each character for leveling, and that will all be quick and the only thing left will be… PvP.

I like GW2 and will probably play it a lot at first, then after maybe 3 months, give or take, I see myself slowing down and only playing with close personal friends, because making friends may also be harder in this game of perfect anonymity, and then only playing it the way we play Halo…. once in awhile, in short spurts.

Yes. Anyone who doesn’t like GW2 or even hates it, and believe me there will be players who down-right “hate” it, are entitled to not like it. It’s not a contest to segregate all of us. We play what we like. I myself had fun in the Beta, but have my reservations of it actually holding my attention more than 3 months, due to the fact it felt very lightweight on being an MMO, RPG or MMORPG of any kind and much more like a FPS in third-person view(TPS?). It felt like the game was mostly all about jumping into PvP matches the way you do in Halo or Call of Duty while the world felt less like a world. Even crafting is pretty much shoved at you with the tag “here, we made it negligible - craft 100 bars in 10 seconds so you don’t have to craft again”. PvE, to me, SO FAR, felt game-ish and not world-ish. Even RPers and crafters are disliking the absence of so much actual crafting-gameplay and very little to no chat functionality or emotes for RPers. It’s basically like Arenanet killed or is trying to kill any last vestige of RPGs. People will love this game, it’s fun, but some will not, and even some who do, for how long will it keep them occupied doing PvP and playing through a fast-progressing linear story-mode?

Take naivete from me and leave me isolated
all at once I feel so free, yet so captivated
you make the endless waves of time -
seem so temporary.
you’re my missionary, emissary… Adversary!

You define the line between human and divine
in this empty place intrinsic grace, so necessary.
See the skies divide.. when hope and fear collide
from this cemetery, offer me this sanctuary.

There is violence when you move
yet I’m stationary
devastate all my design and make it arbitrary
you break my legs yet leave my knees…
my will penetrated.
I’m eviscerated…
consecrated…
Lacerated!

This heart, you break it and make it sacred
these eyes awaken, this breath is taken from you

You define the line between human and divine….

-Echoing Green

(I love this).