Loot Boxes and Cash Shops: A Love/Hate Relationship

Loot Boxes in video games are not new. They've been around for a good long while now. A lot of online games I play ranging from Wildstar, Star Trek Online, to prime linchpin of the Loot Box debacle, Overwatch. They're a micro-transaction that people hated from the get go, because they are not a guarantee that you're going to get the super cool shiny item you had dangled in front of you in the ads, and while they are not expensive, the unprepared could find themselves near 30$ in the hole because the gambling aspect of it kicked it and you told yourself "Okay one more go around, we can do this, big money big money no whammy".

Star Trek Online is perhaps the worst offender for me. Not long ago when Star Trek Discovery was hot, they had a loot box campaign featuring ships from the show. That's what sells the keys for those Loot Boxes in that game, the ships. People want the ships, and they don't drop often if at all...or at least for everyone but me, because I always wound up with nothing but crafting materials and Lobi Crystals (a residual currency given from opening the boxes you can spend at a specific merchant). Being a potato, I've probably spent more than 100$ on loot box keys for Star Trek Online because...well, they give away the loot boxes themselves like their candy in random enemy drops, you can wind up with 20 or 30 of them on a good afternoon depending on what you're doing, but you need keys to open them. How do you get keys? Right now I'm doing that rubbing my fingers together gesture to indicate the expenditure of currency. 

And you gotta know what's in the box right? It's right there in your inventory...what are you going to do, Jimmy? Discard it? Oh you could, probably. You could use your common sense, but there's always that part of your brain that makes you go...you know what, I feel lucky today.

There is a game out there that is purely about opening loot boxes, to unlock more loot boxes, to try and get rarer loot boxes, all a testimony to the mentality these things entail, which is akin to the joy we feel ripping the wrapping off a Christmas present.
Loot Boxes also serve as a means of revenue for the company. Me and others I know often will make the excuse (if an excuse you would call it) that there's no sin in tossing a company I like a few extra bucks for providing me with enjoyment. I know keeping a game online in today's market isn't easy, if not impossible. It's never long before 80% of all MMO's start subscriber only and eventually are forced to go Free To Play purely for the survival of the product, and that means the game needs to earn revenue somehow to offset costs. Game developers and their employee's don't work for free, so in that I can understand the philosophy behind the necessity of cash shops and loot boxes...and the RNG is just the spicy little detail that keeps you coming back for more. Have you ever looked at an update to a games cash shop and saw something you just had to have? Sure, possibly purely cosmetic, but you needed it, for whatever reason you favored. I fell into it with Star Wars: The Old Republic years ago when the game rolled out loot boxes containing costume pieces from the Knights of the Old Republic series, and there was a piece I desperately wanted and probably spent way more than I'm willing to admit on trying to acquire it, instead acquiring pieces that are backlogging my storage space in the game and just won't sell on the in-game marketplace.
Eventually, though, I got what I wanted, and I didn't feel a shred of regret or remorse except a scoff at the fact I paid possibly 50$ (rounded) for a virtual jacket. And to think I used to give Blizzard lip for charging 25$ for a mount.

Am I going to tell you to avoid Loot Boxes and the services associated? No. If you're reading this, I take every confidence you are a well adjusted adult or teenager who can make their own financial decisions. If tossing a couple dollars at a game for something that brings you a bit of happiness is your call, then I'm not going to judge. But I will warn you of games that make it feel a jaunt into the cash shop and rolling the dice is the only way to make progress in a game. The biggest offenders are on the mobile game market, that allow you to progress a ways into the game before it starts making it very apparent they want your money, and will bog down your progress until you're just frustrated enough to give in.
Black Desert Online is a big offender. A game I overall have a love/hate relationship with. Perfectly playable free, but where it gets you is not the cosmetic items in their cash shop...No, it's the utilities. With such limited carry capacity in your inventory, and the inventory weight system, you'll find yourself spending more time trudging back to a Warehouse to store your goods...unless, of course, you pony up the cash for a sufficient increase in your inventory and weight capacity. To me, this is just greedy. I could also point a similar finger at Elder Scrolls Online, where your inventory will be constantly buggered, unless of course you're a subscriber and get access to an infinite capacity crafting materials bag, which alone sold me on the mere 15$ a month charge, since now I could play the game longer than 15 minutes without needing to visit my characters bank or a vendor. 

Solo: A Star Wars Story (A review)

Going into this movie, and the days leading up to it, I was not sold on Alden Ehrenreich being cast as the iconic Han Solo. I was dubious and had the complaints a lot of people had. The face is wrong. The smile isn't quite there. You can give him the coif, Ron, but can he sell it? But being the kind of person I am, that afternoon heading into the theater I did my ritual of swallowing my expectations and allowing the movie to show me what it had, the only expectation I settled on was that it was going to be a sci fi heist movie.

Two and a half hours later I walked out feeling pleasantly surprised by the experience. Some may sharpen their pitchforks, but I felt this entry was stronger than The Last Jedi we got only this last December. It didn't try to burden itself with too many side plots since it was, like Rogue One before it, a standalone movie rather than part of a larger arc...Minus one scene towards the end where I was left scratching my head, because it rang alarm bells of them attempting to, or alluding to, a larger plot. Those who have scene it will no doubt know which scene I'm talking about, but for the sake of the review I will refrain from spoilers.

The plot is very much what you will expect, the origins of the Smuggler who would later go on to become a General in the rebel forces, and how he escaped a life of poverty to create a better life for himself and his lady love, going to far as to enlist in the Imperial Navy before his inherent nature as...well...Han...see's that fall on it's face where we see how he and his relationship with Chewbaca begins and grows. This I was pleasantly surprised with, as it shows the scripts attention to detail of the loose Canon many Star Wars fans such as myself hold close: Han was an pilot aspirant in the Empire, and rescues Chewbaca from bondage from the Imperials.
The rest of the film without going into story specific details can be summed up in this classic line...

That's right, we get to see Han perform the legendary Kessel Run, which according to some, takes 20 Parsecs (what a Parsec is varies depending on who you're asking...some say it's a unit of measurement in space travel, others say it's a unit of time).
The Kessel Run is a perilous smuggler route used by Spice Smugglers through a dangerous stretch of space known as the Maw. Before now, many have believed it to be a cluster of black holes that needed precious piloting to maneuver through. What we get in the movie is far more impressive, and terrifying and is easily my favorite part of the movie.

I honestly can't discuss this movie further without spoilers, so the big question is: Should You See It?

Yes. See it. If The Last Jedi put you off with it's disjointed storytelling and Leia Organa becoming Space Supergrandma, this will put you at ease. It's a fun movie, and hits all the right numbers to make it a legit part of the legacy of the Star Wars franchise. While even now I am still not 100% sold on Alden as Han Solo...there is part of me that hopes that there will be more Solo films in the future, because I'll admit, that smug grin is starting to grow on me.

Later, nerds.

Hah hah hah

Remember when I posted that id be writing here more? That was a lie. A bold faced lie.
Anyway, to whom it may interest, I started a book project for Nation Write A Novel Month that I didnt meet the word count for but am continuing.
Ive decided I will be posting early chapter rough drafts periodically on my Patreon for my 1$ tier.
For those interested you can view the announcement and intention here
https://www.patreon.com/everydayadinosaur

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Mediocrity

The movie opens with perhaps the most uninspired retelling of Batman's origin with the death of his parents and him falling into a cave and being swarmed by bats. It then jumps many many years into the future with Bruce Wayne bearing witness to Superman's battle with Zod that lays waste to much of Metropolis. This, I assume, is meant to indicate the erecting hate boner Batman has for supes.
They spend a lot of time in this movie painting a love/hate relationship the world has with Superman. Sure he saves people, but he can't be everywhere at once, and oftentimes there's a lot of destruction involved.
The rest of the build up to the climatic battle as referenced into the title is building up loosely why these two would fight. Batman hates Superman because he's an alien who's own people tried to take over the world. Superman hates Batman because this version of the Dark Knight likes to brand people with a bat logo and is kind of a prick. And then there's Mark Zuckerbergs take on Lex Luthor...
...you could have replaced Lex Luthor with the Joker, and his motivations would have made way more sense. They turned who, in the comics is a very smooth, very intelligent man into a babbling psychopath who's only real motivation seems to be a burgeoning God Complex against Superman.
Plot points are brought up and abandoned, others are used and go nowhere. Lois Lane discovers bullets made by Lex Corp that are there because...it somehow makes Superman look guilty? Oh and there's the scene where Batman receives a message from the future from The Flash, but it's unintelligible at best and is never brought up again. Bruce doesn't even freak out he just sits there like "well that happened".

Wonder Woman is kept very low key until it's revealed that it's even her. When she first shows up, I thought she was Zack Snyder's Cat Woman. Granted, our patience is rewarded by a very badass performance in the final act.
The rest of the Justice League are teased. But I am stretching at even calling it a tease. I wouldn't even call it a fondle or a tickle. They didn't even make the smart decision to cast the Barry Allen from the TV version of the Flash, because according to producers, it didn't fit the edgelord image DC wanted with their cinematic universe. Poor decision, in my opinion.

If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil the ending. But I will stress the amount I face palmed at them stuffing a historical Superman story line into the movie at the end, coming from nowhere and serving no purpose.

In all the movie tries too hard to get you invested in what DC is trying to do. And it falls flat on it's face with poor plot pacing and wayyyy too much of people staring off into the distance and looking very unhappy.
You could not pay me to sit through this a second time.

Back up and running

This is just a filler until I can find the time to write an actual article. I started this blog as a morning exercise to keep me occupied and optimistic about the job I had at the time working in a retail store bakery. A well known chain.

It was hell.

Well I no longer work for the overlords. And have moved on with my life but as it seems writing is still in my blood and I've decided to pick this blog up where I left off.

The focus will be nerdy but I also want to dedicate at least some of the content to stuff that is, at least to me, uplifting. Things to help people get through their day and through the grind.

While also promoting my upcoming writing projects.

Caffeinated Gaming: The Sims 4

I love The Sims, brainchild of Will Wright that hit store shelves in February of the year 2000. At least as far as I know, it was the first of it's kind, taking the world management of Sim City and making it all about the people and their lives. As the franchise went on, it got more and more elaborate, becoming not so much a game about simulating day to day life for digital entities, but putting said digital effigies you created into crazy situations and telling stories with them.
Why else would you kill off an entire family dressed up in stereotypical indian costumes, just so you could move in a new family and have the ghosts of the previous family haunt them as though it had been built on an Indian burial ground?

Whereas the original focused solely on the household, and later on in it's expansions, visiting community lots to shot, eat, date, shag, and play, you were always sort of tied down to one area of wherever you wanted to go. It eventually began to open out starting with The Sims 2, until the Sims 3 presented to us a seemless open world to explore with our Sims, even taking control of their jobs directly.

Now it's fourteen years later and with the release of The Sims 4, gone now is the open map, as well as a good many other things, on top of the cool things that you can do. But underneath it all, I have begun to sense a return to the series roots in the original, for better or worse.
For starters, the Open World is gone, as I pointed out, a fact that sticks in my craw. Instead, we are given the ability to explore the surrounding neighborhood our Sims occupy, littered with the expected collectibles. The focus is more on the Sims, because they are ten times more lively than they have ever been thanks to multi-tasking. We can do up to three things at once if they're manageable. You can read on the toilet. You can have a drink and watch TV while talking with the bae.
You can tell some very personal and interesting stories with The Sims 4. For instance, I made a sim with the Bro quality, who wrote Bro-related books, and romanced a local hottie. They saw a lot of each other, and had a great time...but when they got married, because of their work schedules, the only time they saw each other, was when they were going to bed. It was sad, and almost too real a situation.

Though, then I reflect on The Sims 3, where my Sim would get home from work, have a quick bite, and then pop down to the watering hole for a bit. To do that, my Sim would just get in his car and drive across town to the bar. In The Sims 4, with the removal of the open world, we have to go through a loading screen to get to the community lot where said bar exists. If you wanted to check on your other Sims in Sims 3, you'd just right click their portrait and it would just zoom in on them, because they still existed in the same game space zone. Sims 4 has to load the lot they are in. It's all minor annoyances, done for the sake of making the game run smoothly and require as little from computers as possible. And I appreciate that, but all the changes feel like such a step back. Three generations back...As though I'm playing a retro version of the original Sims. There is little reason to visit community lots at all except when your Sim wants to via their Whims. You can fill your Sims social needs just hanging out in your neighborhood, and unless your Sim is just really keen on doing stand up at the local bar, your day to day will be a lot of going to work, and coming home.
That is unless you get in on a good crafting ability to make money from home. Like writing books, or writing songs, or selling the collectables that spawn around your neighborhood (like magic, at dawn there are a slew of new fossils, crystals and ores. Laws of physics and geography be damned)

Granted, we are in the age of Vanilla Sims 4. Pre-Expansions. The expansions have always been what makes the series shine, expanding on existing features and heaping on new ones. I have some serious high hopes for whacky and insane adventures to put my Sims through in the years to come, just as the Sims 3 and previously, The Sims 2, had before it.


Should you buy it?
If you're a Sims fan, you've already bought it. If you're on the fence, to be honest, I'd wait and see what expansions come down the pipe to flesh out the experience.

Blog's not dead

Sometimes, life happens.
Sometimes things get put on the back burner.
Sometimes you lose that spark and have to go find it again.
Sometimes, you have to take the time to take care of your own business.

All in all, my job has been really keeping me tangled of late, while at the same time trying to maintain SOME kind of social life.
Hoping to get some things written and posted here in the coming days as they come.