League of Legends

Or: Aren't Microtransactions Fun?


Side Note the First: I kept getting distracted so this is gonna be a long post. TL;DR, gushing and/or bitching about League of Legends. Go buy that. Wait, it's free.


Side Note 2: not feeling too good mentally today (Monday), so forgive any typos or anything. Woke up on the far wrong side of the bed, y'know? (By which I mean, I had this bizarre dream that ended with me waking up feeling like I had something or someone invading my brain that needed to die in a fire. Makes three times so far I've had that sense ... one of them long before hearing about the Mythos. Squicky. Each time they're met with violence - or at least the thought/impression of violent repudiation - of course.) Made me grumpy all day.

Side Note Three: Revenge of the Side Note: I got yet another search hit for "How do I leave Gilneas?" The answer is, you don't. You're stuck there for all eternity. All the other Worgen are hackers. The end. No, but seriously, just play through the storyline, that's your only option. Except for maybe a Warlock summon or something, I dunno. I don't even play WoW anymore, jeez.

Not my video, and you can't do this anymore. Got'cha!

Thanks to Soulsinger for finding this video, though.

Anyway!

I've been playing this game for a couple of days now (not as long as I've been playing Rift - sorry! I'll get to it, I swear!) and I think I've got a fair handle of what's going on with it anyway.

It's called League of Legends, and it's the genetically identical offspring of a very, very popular map named "Defense of the Ancients" from Warcraft III. It's also completely free to play ... in theory, anyway, we'll get to that in a bit.

So what you do, you download the game client, open it up, and play through the tutorial. It actually teaches you pretty much everything you need to know, which is handy since it's been ages since I've played WCIII, and I never really got into the online side of it when I did still play.

Let's be more specific though. LoL - and I love the acronym - is, like Plants Vs. Zombies and Gemcraft (another game I've been wasting time with off and on), a kind of Turret Defense game ... insofar as there are turrets, and it's generally wise to defend them. You can't really upgrade the turrets though. In fact, other than 'blow them up' and 'hide behind them like a sissy,' there aren't really a lot of other things you can do to/with/for the turrets, and, after they've been blown up, they're gone for good. So, basically, not like any of the other Turret Defense games on the market.

I'm going to back up even further and explain what Turret Defense means, since most of my followers are from the other 99,999 SM(TP, hahaha no, just SM) Blogs and the rest of my hits are from GILNEAS, WAT DO. Seriously, it isn't that hard.

Okay, so Turret Defense, generally goes thus: you've got a maze, or a lawn, or whatever, whereby the HORDES OF EVIL are trying to get at your goodies (townsfolk, brains, children, etc.). Your objective is, normally, to build turrets along the sides of that maze, which shoot down the HORDES OF EVIL as they come, at ever-increasing rates of speed and also DEATH.

In LoL, there are two mazes, pretty much exactly mirrored, facing one another. You play as a Champion of one of the HORDES OF EVIL, setting out to stab/burn/consume the entire other HORDE OF EVIL. In the face. At the end of each maze is a Nexus, which is essentially your/the other guys' townsfolk/brain/children/goodies/shiny things. Your objective is to blow up the other guy's Nexus while simultaneously preserving your Nexus from being blown up. Generally there'll be two to four other people/robots helping you out with that, along with the entire rest of your HORDE OF EVIL.

And honestly, gladiatorial matches where the combatants are made to fight endlessly without even the reprieve of a final death kind of makes both sides pretty evil, imo. I haven't given more than a cursory glance to the lore, what there is of it. Not exactly an RPG.

So that's awesome.

It's actually a really kind of cool game, and what little I've seen of it suggests that they're trying to constantly pump out new goodies. How are they funding that, if it's totally free to play?

Well, anything game-related is, technically, free to play. They give you a selection, which changes about weekly, of Champions to poke about with. It only takes six or seven matches to buy one with Influence Points (which is the currency you get from, y'know, actually playing the game). But the better Champions can only be gotten through a whole metric fuckton of Influence Points, translating into literally days of gameplay, especially if you get unlucky and lose a lot ... or, you can buy a handful of these Riot Points with real money, and play these awesome Champions now. So, exactly like real gladiatorial matches, only the Champions never get to buy their own freedom.

Which is how they get you.

Because, see, there are a lot of Champions, each with their own unique playstyle, ranging from 'set things on fire/death/NOMNOMNOM and hope nothing looks your way' to 'although you'll take five hours to kill anything, the same applies to your enemies hitting you'. So, you'll either be playing forever if you have any slight inclination to try out something new, or you'll be paying to play anyway.

In addition, everything cosmetic is bought through Riot Points, which is sad because there are a few skins I'd like but don't really want to shell out for. Good thing my two favorite champions' defaults are all right, I guess.

Oh, and Myk, if you're reading: so far I haven't seen much elitism in game, partly because I haven't seen much talking at all. The other part I think is that there are few to no barriers to entry, though. It's free, from a dedicated server that isn't going to tell you how tall you have to be for this ride, and the game really does its best to teach you what to do before you have to singlehandedly face down a horror from beyond or three. At once.

People get a kick out of denying you things that they have that you don't.

Because they're assholes.

Injury

Humans are such frighteningly fragile, warlike creatures.

The average person, it seems, has never actually been deliberately harmed by another human being, which is comforting, to realize, in its way. But no one is immune to the hardship of injury.

From a child's skinned knees to my Mom's fabulously bruised hands (she got special boffer-sword fighting training this last Saturday, I gather), everyone has been hurt at least a little bit, on occasion. In fact, not feeling pain is treated as a grave medical condition: if you don't feel pain, you don't realize when you're grinding your poor, fragile body into dust.

The games I play tend to treat injury and even death as nothing particularly noteworthy. Of course, having your hit points fall to 0 is generally treated as being "knocked out," rather than dead. But still. I had a character get turned to stone in my last D&D campaign, and she pretty much just dusted herself off, no worse for the wear. A shiny red potion later, and most injuries are rather suddenly nonissues ... then again, the point is to have fun. It's very, very hard to have fun if you're too busy contemplating how much pain your character is going to be in, or how even a minor head wound can lead to a major concussion or lifetime debilitation if not cared for properly.

I've got a scar on my leg from running carelessly through a friend's house. There was a radio with a busted antenna just lying on the floor. It cut through skin and muscle, so that there was "white stuff" showing underneath all of the blood.

Oh, dammit - I'm bleeding again.

I keep picking at scabs, without really thinking about it.

Really wasn't going anywhere with that, though - just realized I needed to post something.

AFK, NuSkin.

Dragon Mage: Origins

Entry #1

My first night in the Circle Tower as a full mage. I finally understand why my - no, our - confinement is deemed necessary.

I still feel it. As though the demon hovers over me, waiting to seize control again no - not again, it was never ... my thoughts are my own, my mind is my own. I cannot sleep at all - worry I may never sleep again. In the darkness of my bath this evening, I imagined I could see its eyes above me, watching ... waiting. Waiting for my guard to slip even an inch.

Jowan was there, when I woke from my Harrowing. He wanted to know what it was like. He's been on edge for days now, and I suspect this didn't help any. He said he wanted to speak with me, said it was important. I can't imagine why, truly. He knows I cannot tell him of the Harrowing. Maybe it's his "secret lover." Ha. Jowan is my friend, but sometimes I think he gets jealous of me. How easily I take to magic, how the First Enchanter himself has taken an interest in my learning. I never knew my parents. Sometimes, I suspect Irving thinks of me as the daughter he never had. I'd like that, I think. He is like the father that I never had, as well.

Oh! Two odd things happened today, besides my Harrowing, that is. I nearly forgot.

There is a Gray Warden staying here at the Circle, a man named Duncan. He seems like a good and upright fellow. I think I expected him to be ... bigger.

Astride a Griffon, perhaps?

Also, there is a Templar here who seems to have taken a shine to me. Edgar ... Edwin? Cullen, anyway. A Templar and a mage ... how silly.

Best not dwell on it.

I Actually Would Like to Set the World on Fire

So ... I remember why I quit Farmville. And Vampire Wars, and all of those Facebook timewasters, actually. Plainly speaking, I hate being told I have to do something.

Employment aside, of course.

Now, what this means is, I like games that offer me branching paths, and choices and such, because even the illusion of free will is better than nothing. And I hate games that basically devolve into a routine of "plant twenty dickberries and come back in ten hours."

Which ... is one of the unfortunate side-effects of daily quests in the old standby, World of Warcraft.

What's even more frustrating?

Starting back over at the beginning, through anything other than my own volition.

So, what relevance does this have to anything whatsoever?

Apparently when you perform a faction transfer, you lose your status with a neutral faction (The Argent Crusade) and have to build your way back up from scratch. Now, this is almost understandable since the faction that actually 0's out is the Sunreavers/Silver Covenant, not The Argent Crusade. Except ... none of the other factions, like, at all, do that. Even the ones that, like the Silver Covenant or Sunreavers, are just equivalents, not truly neutral.

And you lose all your achievements, and your titles, and access to the special crusader vendor.

Which means 28 days - at least, assuming you miss nothing - of building your way back up from the very bottom rank for ... apparently no reason.

Very frustrating.

It's not even current content, but it's important to my character's RP.

So ... I feel obligated to do it.

Bastids.

Games: Video, Vampire

3/9/11

Trying out this InkPad app.
In which I decide to live up to my claim of NOT being a Slender Man blog. (My deit(ies)y, Ava and Reach. Feel bad for them.)

So, I've gone back to playing Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines again. Not a bad game, by far. Buggy at base game, but that's what player-made mods are good for. I wouldn't willingly play Oblivion without the Unofficial patches, and I can't play VtM-B without one; trying to do so caused a game-breaking "you shall not pass" style bug, where my progress was stopped by a kind of Groundhog Day cutscene loop.

Very frustrating.

So, as you might be able to guess, my very favorite old World of Darkness vampire to play is Malkavian, because they put the "crazy" in Crazy Awesome. They're literally an entire clan full of Cassandra Truths and Power Born of Madness.

And in a video game with limited dialogue choices, they REALLY capitalize on the potential to see the future and pretty much outline the entire plot in the first act, while being circuitous enough in their speech patterns that you only really figure out what you mean by what you're saying after the event you're referring to has already happened. The difference between a normal playthrough and a Malkie playthrough is significant enough that it's definitely worth doing... Though if you're averse to spoilers, you should avoid it on first playthrough. Sometimes, the Malkavian ISN'T that difficult to comprehend, especially if you know your pop-culture and mythology.

I bring all this up as a wonderfully shameless plug for my Malkavian Let's Play, incidentally. You should totally check that out.

4srs.

Actually it sucks. So meh.

The End of the World as We Know It

... And I feel fantastic!

Oh wow, the Apocalypse Challenge. This is something I'm pretty confident I'm going to fail spectacularly, but it does make for something awesome to do while I'm home sick with something horrible. Pretty confident it's a sinus infection after some fashion or other.

Because having a cough that just won't go away isn't at all unnerving given my recent obsession.

So, because I figure it'll be easier, I roll together a male Sim named Joe Smith.

Per the challenge rules, he's assigned the Politics career track, which is roughly the most useless career to try and unlock in the game. It's not very useful to be able to build outside of your little 8x8 box when you're starving to death. But I go with it, figuring eventually things would work out.

Three out of four of the other politicians? Vampires.

This can only end well.

So, Joe slowly begins to climb the political career ladder, polishing podiums and a myriad of other things, I'm sure. Along the way, he inevitably catches The Death, and rises as a vampire. All good, except for the part where he's got a day job, but sure.

There's exactly one living person left that Joe Smith even knows. So Joe fixates on her, in the hopes of having living offspring (someday), not to say the occasional midnight snack.

He takes her home one day, feeds on her - and it's delicious, given the hefty mood buff he gets from it - turning her in the process.

And ... promptly keels over dead of thirst.

What.

As it turns out, Joe was suffering from this bug that caused him to suffer massive, permanent mood decreases every time he got a mood buff. Which ... is ... mind-bogglingly frustrating, not to say stupid. 

Apparently this caused him to contract depression and suicide on a full stomach. I don't even know.

So I started again, in the same neighborhood, with a different Joe.

Joe Mk II had the good fortune of being given the Criminal career track, which is immensely more useful than Politics. He's got a vampiric lover (who, herself, is in love with an Elderly Sim named Edgardo, as well; I'm pretty much letting Edgardo kick the bucket from old age). His subterranean bunker is coming along nicely, and he's almost done with the Criminal career track. He's written three books now, all of them nonfictional accounts of his life and times.

In short, Joe Mk. II actually has a chance in hell of succeeding at this.

Now we just have to hope true love really does conquer all ....

Singles' Awareness Day

Or: I am writing this on a Droid I bought with the money I didn't spend on Valentine's Day.

Swype is interesting in concept, but it doesn't always anticipate what I mean. Which is all right, I mean, getting a new phone is a process of adaptation, especially a new smartphone. Especially a new smartphone with no physical keyboard.

I guess this would be easier on the computer I'm sitting right in front of, but I'm doing this partly to acclimate myself to the layout.

So, no real theme to this anyway, just rambling a bit.

That said, this weekend I discovered something really fun to do, and I'm hoping people will catch me just a'doin' it, because I'm a narcissist who deeply enjoys attention: I learned that if there is one thing more fun than messing up and dying horribly in a video game, it's dying horribly in a video game while filming your failure.

What I mean to say is, if you liked the in-character Oblivion posts, you may enjoy something like them, but in video format.

Of course, I'm far too lazy to try and post THAT from my phone.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Slender Chess!

Eh, I'm not doing anything else, and this idea struck me as awesome and/or amusing while I was waking up around noonish today, so have a non-standard update!

Slenderman Chess

Pieces

Black starts with only one piece, representing Slendy - the queen.

White starts with the normal selection of pieces, and goes first always.

You will want surplus pawns of both colors.

Goals

The goal of the black player is to eliminate all white pieces from the playing field, while the goal of the white player is to prevent the black queen from being able to move (I'm not sure this is actually possible and would require playtesting, which I don't have the patience to attempt I think this might actually be only possible if you fill up the entire board a la Reversi with the amended pawn rules).

Rules 

This game is played with a standard chess board, (with as many pawns of either color as necessary: use pennies or something if you run out of pawns) and all rules not explicitly outlined here are borrowed directly from Chess (the, uh, non-Slendyful version).

The game does not end if the king is captured; black does not even start with a king.

The black queen (and only the black queen) can, at any time, teleport to any location on the playing field not currently under attack by a white piece (Slendy cannot move into check; it's called Offscreen Teleportation for a reason.) However, the black queen is not required to move out of check, and is allowed to capture white pieces that are not currently in a place that would otherwise be under attack.

When the black player takes a piece, remove the white piece from the playing field and replace it with a corresponding black piece (exceptions noted below), then move the new black piece to a new location of the black player's choosing that is not currently occupied.

When the white player takes a piece, remove the black piece from the playing field and replace it with a corresponding white piece (exceptions noted below), then move the new white piece to a new location of the white player's choosing that is not currently occupied.

If the black queen is captured, do not replace it with a white queen, but instead move it back to its starting point, instantly capturing any white piece occupying that space. Any black piece occupying that space will move instantly to a place of the black player's choosing.

Since the white player can't regenerate the white queen via normal methods, if the white queen is captured, instead replace it with a black pawn. The white queen can only be regenerated by a white pawn making it to the other end of the playing field. This feat can only be performed if the white queen is no longer on the playing field.





Soooo ... what do you think? I think it sounds like it might be amusing anyway - a cross between Chess and Reversi with a dash of Cosmic Horror. Feel free to adopt it and apply your own house rules!