Most content creators don't blow up overnight. When you first set out on that journey, it's the equivalent to a bright eyed bumpkin from Ohio getting off at the bus stop in Hollywood with nothing but a suitcase, 20$ in their pocket, and a dream. You start with nothing, doing what you can with what you got. Small gigs, testing the water. It's a lot of finding what works and what doesn't, and a lot of playing to an empty house. It's frustrating and you'll be left with a feeling of existential dread that maybe you weren't cut out for this kind of thing. You invest what you can, new microphone, audio equipment, sound boards all that. But all that means nothing if you don't put in the work.
This conversation branches off into a lot of different directions but today I want to talk to you about the topic...Is today a good day?
How's your day going? How are you feeling? Have you been keeping up on your obligations? Bills paid, errands run, all that?
Chances are you're like me and you work a full time job with maybe a decent chunk of the day to maybe sit down and get some streaming in. But...you're stressed out, things aren't going so well in your personal life, work's being a hassle all the time, and maybe you're not feeling good. Headache, bathroom related problems...How warm's your forehead? These can all come together and really put a hindrance on your motivation to get online and entertain people. It's like the last thing you want to do, but you know the golden rule- You gotta put in the work.
But. BUT...Just because you're walking the path of a Content Creator doesn't mean you're immune to life's little inconveniences and ups and downs. You're not a machine. It doesn't matter if you make Cosplay, paintings, gaming videos, or whatever, you HAVE to take care of yourself. And that sometimes means you have to tell yourself, sometimes a little firmly...Maybe today's not a good day for it.
And there's gonna be this little voice in the back of your head that will try and egg you on. What if today is the day we hit the mark? What if this is the stream/photo set/video that marks our break out, it says. You have to be firm with yourself, that day will come, and it won't come in one day. You're not going to fall off the face of the earth into the void of internet obscurity because you took a day or two to get yourself together, get some things done you've been ignoring because of the computer or the crafting table. Work/Life balance applies to being a Content Creator about as much as having a mundane job. And when you have both going on side by side, self-care is almost a mandatory. You gotta take care of yourself, or all the stress of work and the grind on the internet will build up inside you like a warm soda bottle in July dropped on the curb.
But just because you take a day off doesn't mean you can't still work on your growth. Growth is all on you and how you market yourself online, you know. No program or website is going to do that for you. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook...We have so many tools now for us to interact with people. Post something funny. Maybe you get an idea and wanna blast it on social media. That's still attention to your brand. And your followers will appreciate the occasional off-time candor. Best of all it takes what, fifteen seconds to mash out a Tweet?
If you're a gaming streamer: When was the last time you played a game just because you wanted to play it? When was the last time you enjoyed a single player game? Gamer's game, and sometimes switching off the camera just to enjoy a little personal time in a favorite can do a lot for your morale and mindset. Maybe you got a backlog of games you haven't gotten around to finishing because they don't really hold Stream value?
If you're a cosplayer/model: I'm a guy and I'm nearly attractive enough a one to tell people who put their everything online what to do with their time. I follow enough on social media to understand that it's no less stressful, which makes sense because they're using their whole being to create their craft. Arranging photo shoots, making the costumes, making sure everything fits, posing all pretty or handsome for the camera, looking through results to see what passes, traveling to locations for shoots. It's a lot. My only advice I can give them is put the phone camera down and maybe enjoy a hot cup of cocoa once in a while and some Netflix. Wear the baggy sweats and splay out like you own the couch. Enjoy not being focused on.
More generally, when I get stressed about life, I go out to eat by myself. I find a crowded restaurant and have a meal by myself and soak in the chatty atmosphere. It helps bring me down from whatever's bothering me and put me in the moment. It's refreshing.
Go out for a walk, breathe in some fresh air and soak in some sunshine. Get away from the computer for a while and enjoy a little nothing. When you're a kid, you always want to do something. But as an adult and our livelihood is always doing something, there is nothing more relaxing, than a nice bit of nothing at all.
The best part of doing these little things, is you're not focused on The Work, and you can let your mind wander, and when you do that, ideas can come. You'll be minding your own business, and boom, the lightening happens, and you get that surge of energy back that you've maybe been missing for a couple days. Now you got a little more direction, and all it took was a little bit of doing you, as nature intended.
So...Next time you wake up and go "Ugh, I really should get a Stream/costume/whatever done today", do a little check. Is today a good day?
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Borderlands 2 and why I never played it twice
Lately my brother has been replaying Borderlands 2 again in preparation for the proper third installment in the franchise, using this new mod setup that changes up how the item spawns operate and the quirks and loadouts one can achieve. He's also been hinting that I should give it a go as well, but I have a hard time expressing how long ago that train left the station.
At some point in my gaming hobby, I started to drift away from games where the core meat of the enjoyment was unloading insane amounts of ordinance upon mentally and morally questionable degenerate psychopaths and fine tuning a character loadout to achieve something akin to a ballistic lovecraftian monstrosity, leaving nothing but Armageddon in my wake. Couple this with a story narrative so grim and edgy, and mixed with a dark sense of humor messed up enough to make the writers for late night Cartoon Network wonder what they were on, I bottom line do not find it to be a 100% satisfactory experience. I played through it once, I played through the DLC once, many many years ago. I've had my fill.
With Borderlands 3 looming on the horizon, Borderlands 2 has become a hot topic in streaming circles for content creators cashing in on the hype. They are playing through it multiple times, to get that higher difficulty and play it "as it was meant to be played". I never understood this mindset, submitting myself to repeating the same trodden path again and again to achieve some altered state for maximum enjoyment.
I say this, and as I was typing it, I called myself out as a hypocrite. I play MMO's dominantly these days due to my love of open world exploration and roleplaying. Essentially every character you make, with simply different combat abilities, you are retreading the same steps, the same zones and encounters again and again, to achieve some altered state for maximum enjoyment.
This said, what is the difference? Is it the setting? The story? Am I just so sick and tired of Handsome Jack having been hashed and rehashed as this tragic villain twice now (the Tell Tale game and the Pre-Sequel), that his very name makes me convulse? Maybe it's because I find the characters so grossly unlikable. Most of them are criminals who've done things that make Handsome Jack really seem like the valiant hero and savior he makes himself out to be ad nauseum throughout the game.
Ah yes, that's it. I never found a character I could honestly connect with. All of the characters are strange parodies of tropes, coupled with an almost forced attempt by the games writers to make them repugnant, but also endearing.
Borderlands, the original, kept it simple. These characters you played as were blank slates, with a character in the beginning giving a brief blurb to their background and motivations. But also, I could embody them mentally as I saw fit, that Roleplayer inside me kicking in, much in the same way why Link and Gordon Freeman are strictly silent protagonists; It makes it easier and more enjoyable for the player to inflect themselves upon them, become them, in a sense.
Borderlands 2 throws this concept out the window. Now everyone has a backstory to explore and a voice. It's less intimate, less personal. And I honestly wish Lilith would shut the hell up. They took characters I moderately liked in the original, and turned them all into renegade bullshit munching robin-hood wannabes.
But no one plays these games for the character dynamics and chemistry, or the narrative. That's all secondary and serves as a reason to explore more dangerous environments and obtain bigger and more volatile weaponry. It's not about saving Pandora, or seeking the secrets of the Vaults. It's about the sound a gun makes when you pull the trigger and watching your enemies whittle away to nothing in a hailstorm of bullets and explosions. Everything else, like Moxxie's provocative appearance (of which I am a fan, by the way), is simply decoration.
At least that's how I feel about it.
At some point in my gaming hobby, I started to drift away from games where the core meat of the enjoyment was unloading insane amounts of ordinance upon mentally and morally questionable degenerate psychopaths and fine tuning a character loadout to achieve something akin to a ballistic lovecraftian monstrosity, leaving nothing but Armageddon in my wake. Couple this with a story narrative so grim and edgy, and mixed with a dark sense of humor messed up enough to make the writers for late night Cartoon Network wonder what they were on, I bottom line do not find it to be a 100% satisfactory experience. I played through it once, I played through the DLC once, many many years ago. I've had my fill.
With Borderlands 3 looming on the horizon, Borderlands 2 has become a hot topic in streaming circles for content creators cashing in on the hype. They are playing through it multiple times, to get that higher difficulty and play it "as it was meant to be played". I never understood this mindset, submitting myself to repeating the same trodden path again and again to achieve some altered state for maximum enjoyment.
I say this, and as I was typing it, I called myself out as a hypocrite. I play MMO's dominantly these days due to my love of open world exploration and roleplaying. Essentially every character you make, with simply different combat abilities, you are retreading the same steps, the same zones and encounters again and again, to achieve some altered state for maximum enjoyment.
This said, what is the difference? Is it the setting? The story? Am I just so sick and tired of Handsome Jack having been hashed and rehashed as this tragic villain twice now (the Tell Tale game and the Pre-Sequel), that his very name makes me convulse? Maybe it's because I find the characters so grossly unlikable. Most of them are criminals who've done things that make Handsome Jack really seem like the valiant hero and savior he makes himself out to be ad nauseum throughout the game.
Ah yes, that's it. I never found a character I could honestly connect with. All of the characters are strange parodies of tropes, coupled with an almost forced attempt by the games writers to make them repugnant, but also endearing.
Borderlands, the original, kept it simple. These characters you played as were blank slates, with a character in the beginning giving a brief blurb to their background and motivations. But also, I could embody them mentally as I saw fit, that Roleplayer inside me kicking in, much in the same way why Link and Gordon Freeman are strictly silent protagonists; It makes it easier and more enjoyable for the player to inflect themselves upon them, become them, in a sense.
Borderlands 2 throws this concept out the window. Now everyone has a backstory to explore and a voice. It's less intimate, less personal. And I honestly wish Lilith would shut the hell up. They took characters I moderately liked in the original, and turned them all into renegade bullshit munching robin-hood wannabes.
But no one plays these games for the character dynamics and chemistry, or the narrative. That's all secondary and serves as a reason to explore more dangerous environments and obtain bigger and more volatile weaponry. It's not about saving Pandora, or seeking the secrets of the Vaults. It's about the sound a gun makes when you pull the trigger and watching your enemies whittle away to nothing in a hailstorm of bullets and explosions. Everything else, like Moxxie's provocative appearance (of which I am a fan, by the way), is simply decoration.
At least that's how I feel about it.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Red Dead Redemption 2: The Horsening
For the past few months I have been playing copious amounts of Red Dead Redemption 2, sequel to the much acclaimed Red Dead Redemption, spiritual sequel to the lackluster Red Dead Revolver. Does anyone even remember Red Dead Revolver? I know I don't, except for a multiplayer deathmatch mode where each kill counted towards cards in a poker hand, and you were trying to somehow make a winning hand.
RDR2, which I constantly have to correct from R2D2, is a prequel more than an actual sequel, and tells the story of what the fuck happened to John Marston and his gang to cause the first game to happen in the first place. This time you play as Arthur Morgan, a member of the Van Der Linde gang along a younger John and their leader Dutch and company. You're all on the run from The Man after a botched robbery, leaving you all stranded in a cold frozen hell that acts as the games tutorial phase. From there the gang ventures out to try and rebuild and recoup their losses while plotting and scheming to get rich, and get back the nest egg they were forced to abandon in Blackwater, an area where you are permanently wanted by The Man, aka The Pinkerton Detective Agency, the black suit wearing douchebags from the first game who had no qualms about kidnapping a wife and child and holding them hostage to get a saddle weary cowboy to do their dirty work for them. It was a more sensible time in American history.
Gameplay wise, there's a lot in this game, far too much to cobble together coherently so I will regale you with some tidbits from my time in RDR2...
-While just out for a ride on my horse, purchased for a whole 15$, which is a lot of money by 1899 money, I didn't see a short cliff and sent me and my pricey pony sailing off the ledge. I survived, but ol' Gluestick was dying, and it was a little heartbreaking. Especially when it gave me the prompt to put him out of his misery. I couldn't do it, and I had no Horse Revive on me at the time, so I just walked away...forcing me to walk an in-game day to the nearest train station back to the major town of Valentine to get a new one. Thankfully, my saddle game-magic'd it's way back to the horse merchant. Because I hadn't taken my saddle...I had been forced to walk, without my rifles, because they all go into your horse saddle. Keep this in mind, it's a major gameplay feature.
-Poker and other table games make a return, and they feel immersive and lively as in the first game, to the point I was down 50$ at 5$ a buy in...because I am really bad at poker.
-One of the early missions had me tracking down renowned gunfighters to get quotes from them regarding a book some city fellow was writing. Naturally all but one thought I needed more lead in my blood. One in particular I met on a train, and he took off running, assuming I was some government bounty hunter. Our chase led to the top of the train where we had our expected gun duel. After which I noticed that the train by now was very far from my original destination, and still running. So I figured I could ride it to the end, and then noticed my horse was still keeping pace with the train. I saw the prompt to leap from the train to my horse, but apparently my input was off timing-wise, and I leapt off the train and landed just short of my horse, face down in a muddy bog. Arthur lay there for a moment, as though contemplating his life choices before getting up. We proceeded to ride the rest of the way to the biggest city in the game, San Denis.
-San Denis is a playground if you have money to spare. On top of actual vaudevillian acts you can take in for cheap, there are saloons, stores, and other distractions to separate you from your ill-gotten gains, it is also where you can get the most fetching of wild west clothing. One such instance was a man selling me a book on how to get rich quick...for a whole 50$. What I had bought turned out to be a wordy and lengthy reference to modern get rich quick E-books that can be summarized as "you got scammed, you bitch", though I have no doubt this book actually existed.
San Denis is also where I learned that people will get annoyed if you are walking directly behind them for too long. And by too long, I mean longer than five seconds. The city is dense and the streets are crowded, so this will happen a lot, with you using the context sensitive prompt to apologize and try and wiggle past the crowds, or get rowdy, or risk getting rowdy, just trying to get to the barber...
-A mission concluded with me out in the middle of nowhere with my horse too far away to hear my sirens whistle call to beckon it to me, forcing me to hoof it to the nearest train station once more to get back. I was bitten by a snake in the brush.
-I came across an oddity in the road, it turned out to be a dead eagle. Thinking it might be worth something to the Poacher, I tossed it on my saddle and proceeded to hoof it. On the way to the Poachers camp, the Eagles remains started to decay, which unfortunately ruined it's value to the poacher.
-I happened upon a bandit riding off with a woman as his hostage, so I gave chase. I managed to shoot the bandit dead off his horse, but the horse kept riding with the woman in tow. I never saw her again. I can only hope she and the horse, made it out okay, and lived happily ever after.
-After a pivotal story mission, the Van Der Linde gang had a hootenany, aka a party. This culminated in everyone singing a song that was about anal sex.
-There are hookers, but you can't acquire their services, much like in the first game. You can however take a bath a hotel should you and your clothes get filthy, and employ the aid of a comely lass to assist you, which it does appear she gives you a handy.
-The story mission A Quiet Drink is perhaps the funniest damn thing you will ever see in your life.
-RDR2 Online feels more of the same, but now you play as a character of your own creation, centered around you being sent to prison for something you may or may not have done and sprung out by a rich well to do woman hunting down the very people who put you away, and wants your help in settling a score with these choice individuals. It feels almost exactly like GTA 5 Online, but in the wild west, and character creation is honestly horrific. Hilariously horrific.
If you haven't played it, you should. At the time of this writing I haven't completed it and spend most of my time wandering around and messing about. I'm at the point in the story where I have to rescue Micah from jail and to be honest...I know how this story ends. We all know things are going to fall apart which leads to John Marston's one man war against the remnants of the Van Der Linde gang. When last I checked there was no Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 1, which means his story will take a grim turn in the worst of ways, much like John's story ended in a hail of gunfire.
9/10, go play it.
RDR2, which I constantly have to correct from R2D2, is a prequel more than an actual sequel, and tells the story of what the fuck happened to John Marston and his gang to cause the first game to happen in the first place. This time you play as Arthur Morgan, a member of the Van Der Linde gang along a younger John and their leader Dutch and company. You're all on the run from The Man after a botched robbery, leaving you all stranded in a cold frozen hell that acts as the games tutorial phase. From there the gang ventures out to try and rebuild and recoup their losses while plotting and scheming to get rich, and get back the nest egg they were forced to abandon in Blackwater, an area where you are permanently wanted by The Man, aka The Pinkerton Detective Agency, the black suit wearing douchebags from the first game who had no qualms about kidnapping a wife and child and holding them hostage to get a saddle weary cowboy to do their dirty work for them. It was a more sensible time in American history.
Gameplay wise, there's a lot in this game, far too much to cobble together coherently so I will regale you with some tidbits from my time in RDR2...
-While just out for a ride on my horse, purchased for a whole 15$, which is a lot of money by 1899 money, I didn't see a short cliff and sent me and my pricey pony sailing off the ledge. I survived, but ol' Gluestick was dying, and it was a little heartbreaking. Especially when it gave me the prompt to put him out of his misery. I couldn't do it, and I had no Horse Revive on me at the time, so I just walked away...forcing me to walk an in-game day to the nearest train station back to the major town of Valentine to get a new one. Thankfully, my saddle game-magic'd it's way back to the horse merchant. Because I hadn't taken my saddle...I had been forced to walk, without my rifles, because they all go into your horse saddle. Keep this in mind, it's a major gameplay feature.
-Poker and other table games make a return, and they feel immersive and lively as in the first game, to the point I was down 50$ at 5$ a buy in...because I am really bad at poker.
-One of the early missions had me tracking down renowned gunfighters to get quotes from them regarding a book some city fellow was writing. Naturally all but one thought I needed more lead in my blood. One in particular I met on a train, and he took off running, assuming I was some government bounty hunter. Our chase led to the top of the train where we had our expected gun duel. After which I noticed that the train by now was very far from my original destination, and still running. So I figured I could ride it to the end, and then noticed my horse was still keeping pace with the train. I saw the prompt to leap from the train to my horse, but apparently my input was off timing-wise, and I leapt off the train and landed just short of my horse, face down in a muddy bog. Arthur lay there for a moment, as though contemplating his life choices before getting up. We proceeded to ride the rest of the way to the biggest city in the game, San Denis.
-San Denis is a playground if you have money to spare. On top of actual vaudevillian acts you can take in for cheap, there are saloons, stores, and other distractions to separate you from your ill-gotten gains, it is also where you can get the most fetching of wild west clothing. One such instance was a man selling me a book on how to get rich quick...for a whole 50$. What I had bought turned out to be a wordy and lengthy reference to modern get rich quick E-books that can be summarized as "you got scammed, you bitch", though I have no doubt this book actually existed.
San Denis is also where I learned that people will get annoyed if you are walking directly behind them for too long. And by too long, I mean longer than five seconds. The city is dense and the streets are crowded, so this will happen a lot, with you using the context sensitive prompt to apologize and try and wiggle past the crowds, or get rowdy, or risk getting rowdy, just trying to get to the barber...
-A mission concluded with me out in the middle of nowhere with my horse too far away to hear my sirens whistle call to beckon it to me, forcing me to hoof it to the nearest train station once more to get back. I was bitten by a snake in the brush.
-I came across an oddity in the road, it turned out to be a dead eagle. Thinking it might be worth something to the Poacher, I tossed it on my saddle and proceeded to hoof it. On the way to the Poachers camp, the Eagles remains started to decay, which unfortunately ruined it's value to the poacher.
-I happened upon a bandit riding off with a woman as his hostage, so I gave chase. I managed to shoot the bandit dead off his horse, but the horse kept riding with the woman in tow. I never saw her again. I can only hope she and the horse, made it out okay, and lived happily ever after.
-After a pivotal story mission, the Van Der Linde gang had a hootenany, aka a party. This culminated in everyone singing a song that was about anal sex.
-There are hookers, but you can't acquire their services, much like in the first game. You can however take a bath a hotel should you and your clothes get filthy, and employ the aid of a comely lass to assist you, which it does appear she gives you a handy.
-The story mission A Quiet Drink is perhaps the funniest damn thing you will ever see in your life.
-RDR2 Online feels more of the same, but now you play as a character of your own creation, centered around you being sent to prison for something you may or may not have done and sprung out by a rich well to do woman hunting down the very people who put you away, and wants your help in settling a score with these choice individuals. It feels almost exactly like GTA 5 Online, but in the wild west, and character creation is honestly horrific. Hilariously horrific.
If you haven't played it, you should. At the time of this writing I haven't completed it and spend most of my time wandering around and messing about. I'm at the point in the story where I have to rescue Micah from jail and to be honest...I know how this story ends. We all know things are going to fall apart which leads to John Marston's one man war against the remnants of the Van Der Linde gang. When last I checked there was no Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 1, which means his story will take a grim turn in the worst of ways, much like John's story ended in a hail of gunfire.
9/10, go play it.
Still playing 76
It's early 2010 and I'm trolling around in the Bethesda Softworks official forums during the hype storm of Fallout: New Vegas. The post that comes to mind today now that we have Fallout 76, is one that begged the question, does the game even need a story? Why not a game where we start on one end of the map and make it our goal to just survive? Well, eight years later they got their wish. And I am certain they are still complaining. Because that is what you do when you're in a gaming fandom- you complain.
Flash forward to today. I'm playing Fallout 76, wandering the zone that encompasses a majority of the beginning content. I call it the Green Zone, sandwiched between Toxic Valley to the north, and the Mole-Person ridden ash pit that makes up the south. I'd been relying on .308 ammo so much that now I was pretty much ammo starved and what ammo I did have I didn't carry that particular weapon. My inventory is almost always 90% full for some reason despite judicious management. Even with all of my weapons, which just get heavier the more you upgrade, that only dropped about maybe 40 to 50 off my weight. That still begs the question what all in my inventory is adding up to 134 pounds on my person unless it was all the crap in my Aid tab. My stash box is very soon to hit the 600 pound limit thanks to missiles and fusion cores eating up a decent chunk of weight.
I'm still enjoying the game, but I also feel I am not progressing, or at least not in the way I feel I should be. I'll be hitting level 50 soon, and level 30 enemies can still give me grief. Some of the quests at this point I can't really do by myself because they usually involve wandering where Satan himself wouldn't stick his pecker.
It hearkens back to my days in City of Heroes, where if by level 20 you weren't running with a couple of friends, you probably weren't going to be getting through the questlines easily. It was going to be a painful slog, but you might get to the end if you're stubborn and tenacious.
For the most part, I wander the realm, poking into ruins and hoping the game doesn't decide to have a Wendigo decide it wants a piece of me. I'm constantly on the search for materials to keep my weapons and armor repaired, because eventually they will break, and normally at the worst possible times, and frequently. I can't really rely on my Luck based perk card that grants a chance for my stuff to repair itself when I really need it to. Hunger and thirst are also an issue, and I'm always keeping an eye out for my next meal, be it a tin of dog food, or blackberries in the bushes to stave off the health damage.
This is my goal. Survive. Not so much hunting nukes or trying to get upgrades or to progress a story. My objective has become to not die and safely return to my camp. Maybe I specced wrong, and some lack of cohesion in my perks has left me squishy and vulnerable. Maybe the games just hard unless you grind out a lot of resources. I tend to favor single shot or semi-automatic weapons over the heavy miniguns and the like because you can make ammo last longer. Usually the Hunting Rifle upgraded and a sniper rifle. A combat rifle also gets the job done. I'm not exactly pulling the levels of damage some of my friends do, but they're already in the higher levels, so that's to be expected.
As an avid roleplayer, I found a community for it. Good people, but even they are slightly frustrated with the game. It's all voice chat, with the lack of a text chat to connect with players in the world. I wonder if this is by design to get players to go to each other and seek each other out. It creates an isolated and at times lonely atmosphere with only your radio to keep you company at the best of times. It fits the game they made.
But through it all, I keep thinking to myself...This could be better. This can be improved. And granted they've cleaned it up a lot since the B.E.T.A. The game doesn't crash when I log out anymore, they expanded the stash box. The usual tweaks and fixes. I see big things on the way
Flash forward to today. I'm playing Fallout 76, wandering the zone that encompasses a majority of the beginning content. I call it the Green Zone, sandwiched between Toxic Valley to the north, and the Mole-Person ridden ash pit that makes up the south. I'd been relying on .308 ammo so much that now I was pretty much ammo starved and what ammo I did have I didn't carry that particular weapon. My inventory is almost always 90% full for some reason despite judicious management. Even with all of my weapons, which just get heavier the more you upgrade, that only dropped about maybe 40 to 50 off my weight. That still begs the question what all in my inventory is adding up to 134 pounds on my person unless it was all the crap in my Aid tab. My stash box is very soon to hit the 600 pound limit thanks to missiles and fusion cores eating up a decent chunk of weight.
I'm still enjoying the game, but I also feel I am not progressing, or at least not in the way I feel I should be. I'll be hitting level 50 soon, and level 30 enemies can still give me grief. Some of the quests at this point I can't really do by myself because they usually involve wandering where Satan himself wouldn't stick his pecker.
It hearkens back to my days in City of Heroes, where if by level 20 you weren't running with a couple of friends, you probably weren't going to be getting through the questlines easily. It was going to be a painful slog, but you might get to the end if you're stubborn and tenacious.
For the most part, I wander the realm, poking into ruins and hoping the game doesn't decide to have a Wendigo decide it wants a piece of me. I'm constantly on the search for materials to keep my weapons and armor repaired, because eventually they will break, and normally at the worst possible times, and frequently. I can't really rely on my Luck based perk card that grants a chance for my stuff to repair itself when I really need it to. Hunger and thirst are also an issue, and I'm always keeping an eye out for my next meal, be it a tin of dog food, or blackberries in the bushes to stave off the health damage.
This is my goal. Survive. Not so much hunting nukes or trying to get upgrades or to progress a story. My objective has become to not die and safely return to my camp. Maybe I specced wrong, and some lack of cohesion in my perks has left me squishy and vulnerable. Maybe the games just hard unless you grind out a lot of resources. I tend to favor single shot or semi-automatic weapons over the heavy miniguns and the like because you can make ammo last longer. Usually the Hunting Rifle upgraded and a sniper rifle. A combat rifle also gets the job done. I'm not exactly pulling the levels of damage some of my friends do, but they're already in the higher levels, so that's to be expected.
As an avid roleplayer, I found a community for it. Good people, but even they are slightly frustrated with the game. It's all voice chat, with the lack of a text chat to connect with players in the world. I wonder if this is by design to get players to go to each other and seek each other out. It creates an isolated and at times lonely atmosphere with only your radio to keep you company at the best of times. It fits the game they made.
But through it all, I keep thinking to myself...This could be better. This can be improved. And granted they've cleaned it up a lot since the B.E.T.A. The game doesn't crash when I log out anymore, they expanded the stash box. The usual tweaks and fixes. I see big things on the way
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Why GTA Online Fails But Survives
Grand Theft Auto 5 was released in September of 2013 to critical acclaim, revolutionizing many of the aspects of the franchise that made it truly feel like a successor to the PS2 era San Andreas. A month later, GTA 5 Online went live as a side escapade in which you yourself could create your own morally ambiguous knockaround guy and engage in illicit affairs.
Unfortunately what we actually got was not so much the Grand Theft Auto MMO many people were expecting, and instead what we got was a playground full of teenagers and 50 years old Call of Duty players waiting out their current suspensions. On a good day, most other players, a total of 30 per instanced session, will usually leave you alone unless they are feeling particularly spicy. Other times you'll find yourself being sniped, run over and gunned down for the sheer thrill of the kill.
Missions and events in the game will throw you into an oftentimes endless void of waiting for other players to join up to whatever mission you're currently trying to get going, just to have someone waste all of the teams allocated lives, and having Little Jimmy ragequit back to Fortnite and forcing you back to the endless void to try and regain your lost partners.
Once during a Heist I literally cost my team the mission, because during a pursuit I was sniped from the back of the getaway van, a position that I was in no way capable of defending myself. Honestly if you're just a casual player I wouldn't even bother with Heists, as they require a level of resources and skill of the highest regard, or you will only taste failure and the salt of your team mates for being a lesser beta.
If the mission involves a helicopter or an airplane in anyway, you're screwed.
A lot of mission content has come out since it went live, recently with the ability to own and manage a night club under the tutelage of GTA 4 fan favorite Gay Tony. But you need money to get a lot of the additional content, and lots of it. The Doomsday Heists in particular can require millions of dollars, and even my nightclub required an easy investment of a million and some change to get started. Your ingame cellphone will constantly be blowing up to remind you of these additional expenses, in an attempt to annoy you enough to throw down real world cash for digital currency, just to get the game to stop jingling the keys in front of you.
Outside of the missions that try to connect themselves to an overall narrative or at least a lackluster attempt at immersion, there's the usual array of activities like racing and deathmatches. My personal favorite being RPGs VS Insurgents.
If you come into GTA Online expecting an MMO experience you may as well look elsewhere. Everyone is out for themselves and their respective bank accounts. If you come out of a mission and your team mates are near you, fully expect them to try and take you down and take your cut before you've had a chance to deposit it in the bank. Even the games equivalent of guilds, Crews, are merely a means to an end to pad out your wait for certain missions and for certain revenue generating activities that always end in other players in the world hunting you down to take their pound of flesh off your corpse. The lighter activities, like golf, tennis, or even darts, will leave you in the endless void of seeking other players long enough for you to consider the entertainment value of solitaire, because these activities are meant for fun rather than profit, and this is a heresy.
Does it fail? Yes and no. The game has survived almost five years since it's release and is still pumping out content. Unfortunately this is only for the Online and not the single player. There is always new and expensive weapons being added, new clothes to enhance your wardrobe, and more and more overly expensive vehicles for other players to aim their rocket launchers at. It's all about obtaining the almighty dollar so you can feed your habits and obtain bigger and better things.
But beyond the acquisition of material wealth, there really isn't all that much to do in GTA Online. The load times can be soul crushing, and more often than not I was left hanging in a overhead view of the city, obscured by clouds, because the game bugged while exiting out of a finished activity, forcing me to reset my connection just to get it to load back in.
It's a troll's paradise, and you should always expect to be carpet bombed, or have a bounty put on your head or mercenaries sent after you, just because someone didn't like your screen name. Hackers and modders come out in legions, and you will be griefed endlessly. The only way to truly win, is to not play.
Alternatively if you're still seeking an immersive experience, you can always attempt to join the various RP servers, that require third party programs and application processes to access, to enjoy attempts by people to roleplay akwardly over voice chat. The one I joined as a means of science, was plagued endlessly by people failing to understand that running around an RP server gunning people down, was not cohesive, and would easily get you kicked from the servers, because no matter where you go in Los Santos, whatever it's form, it is still a troll's paradise.
If you're thinking of getting GTA 5 purely for the online, you really shouldn't. The frustrations aren't worth the price of admission. What you see on Youtube and Twitch are not the norm. Sadly the real world setting isn't often used to MMO styles much save for The Secret World, and if memory serves right APB closed down years ago. Regardless at the end of the day, GTA Online is a good lesson in why excessive materialism is bad, and will always lead to discontent.
Unfortunately what we actually got was not so much the Grand Theft Auto MMO many people were expecting, and instead what we got was a playground full of teenagers and 50 years old Call of Duty players waiting out their current suspensions. On a good day, most other players, a total of 30 per instanced session, will usually leave you alone unless they are feeling particularly spicy. Other times you'll find yourself being sniped, run over and gunned down for the sheer thrill of the kill.
Missions and events in the game will throw you into an oftentimes endless void of waiting for other players to join up to whatever mission you're currently trying to get going, just to have someone waste all of the teams allocated lives, and having Little Jimmy ragequit back to Fortnite and forcing you back to the endless void to try and regain your lost partners.
Once during a Heist I literally cost my team the mission, because during a pursuit I was sniped from the back of the getaway van, a position that I was in no way capable of defending myself. Honestly if you're just a casual player I wouldn't even bother with Heists, as they require a level of resources and skill of the highest regard, or you will only taste failure and the salt of your team mates for being a lesser beta.
If the mission involves a helicopter or an airplane in anyway, you're screwed.
A lot of mission content has come out since it went live, recently with the ability to own and manage a night club under the tutelage of GTA 4 fan favorite Gay Tony. But you need money to get a lot of the additional content, and lots of it. The Doomsday Heists in particular can require millions of dollars, and even my nightclub required an easy investment of a million and some change to get started. Your ingame cellphone will constantly be blowing up to remind you of these additional expenses, in an attempt to annoy you enough to throw down real world cash for digital currency, just to get the game to stop jingling the keys in front of you.
Outside of the missions that try to connect themselves to an overall narrative or at least a lackluster attempt at immersion, there's the usual array of activities like racing and deathmatches. My personal favorite being RPGs VS Insurgents.
If you come into GTA Online expecting an MMO experience you may as well look elsewhere. Everyone is out for themselves and their respective bank accounts. If you come out of a mission and your team mates are near you, fully expect them to try and take you down and take your cut before you've had a chance to deposit it in the bank. Even the games equivalent of guilds, Crews, are merely a means to an end to pad out your wait for certain missions and for certain revenue generating activities that always end in other players in the world hunting you down to take their pound of flesh off your corpse. The lighter activities, like golf, tennis, or even darts, will leave you in the endless void of seeking other players long enough for you to consider the entertainment value of solitaire, because these activities are meant for fun rather than profit, and this is a heresy.
Does it fail? Yes and no. The game has survived almost five years since it's release and is still pumping out content. Unfortunately this is only for the Online and not the single player. There is always new and expensive weapons being added, new clothes to enhance your wardrobe, and more and more overly expensive vehicles for other players to aim their rocket launchers at. It's all about obtaining the almighty dollar so you can feed your habits and obtain bigger and better things.
But beyond the acquisition of material wealth, there really isn't all that much to do in GTA Online. The load times can be soul crushing, and more often than not I was left hanging in a overhead view of the city, obscured by clouds, because the game bugged while exiting out of a finished activity, forcing me to reset my connection just to get it to load back in.
It's a troll's paradise, and you should always expect to be carpet bombed, or have a bounty put on your head or mercenaries sent after you, just because someone didn't like your screen name. Hackers and modders come out in legions, and you will be griefed endlessly. The only way to truly win, is to not play.
Alternatively if you're still seeking an immersive experience, you can always attempt to join the various RP servers, that require third party programs and application processes to access, to enjoy attempts by people to roleplay akwardly over voice chat. The one I joined as a means of science, was plagued endlessly by people failing to understand that running around an RP server gunning people down, was not cohesive, and would easily get you kicked from the servers, because no matter where you go in Los Santos, whatever it's form, it is still a troll's paradise.
If you're thinking of getting GTA 5 purely for the online, you really shouldn't. The frustrations aren't worth the price of admission. What you see on Youtube and Twitch are not the norm. Sadly the real world setting isn't often used to MMO styles much save for The Secret World, and if memory serves right APB closed down years ago. Regardless at the end of the day, GTA Online is a good lesson in why excessive materialism is bad, and will always lead to discontent.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
How Roleplaying in MMO's helps me write
What is Role-Playing?
This question pops up a lot in a lot of places, and the genuine answer is it's the adult term for the art of playing make believe. Another word for it is acting, but there's no stage or camera pointed at you. It's the time honored art of putting on a fictitious show in a given medium. Some jobs use Role-playing as a tool to illustrate a point or scenario. A simulation if you will.
I've been Role-Playing as a hobby for a very long time. Before the internet, me and my brother and school chums would play pretend we were characters from popular cartoons and whatnot, engaging in made up battles or scenarios using whatever was handy. When the internet became a thing I was exposed to the wonders of chat room role-play in circa 1999 when Geocities chat was still a thing (it might still be, I haven't checked back on that).
Eventually the medium moved out of the chat rooms and into the chat bars of Online Games. Even though the show itself is taking place in the chat, the visual aid of having characters and scenes at the ready helps tremendously. It's a beautiful collaborative practice in storytelling, where each person involved brings their own personalities and characters to the proverbial stage. Over almost 20 years of engaging in it, I've written enough stories with people across the internet to cover several trilogies of books, and enough characters I keep a personal lexicon of them, all very dear to me, and who occasionally wind up in my personal writings.
What is an MMO RPG?
I'm pretty sure by now you've heard of World of Warcraft. It's 2018. You have, right? It's only the most successful online Role-playing Game in the world right now. You can plug that question into google and get a definite answer if you want. I'll just say it's a video game connected to the internets and there's a lot of other players running around the game world. I'm just going to assume if you're reading this you've at least played an MMO. If not, I'll include the names of a few you can play for free at the end of this blog entry.
Why do you role-play?
Primarily because it's great fun. It can bring people closer together, and you can learn a lot about a person from how they role-play. Also for me, it's a means of escaping from the stresses of real life for a period of time and immerse myself in another world. Also as a writer, it allows me to experiment with a variety of character types. What some people call being an "Alt-aholic" (term for person who rolls up many characters in an MMO), I call fleshing out a roster and tackling a different character type.
But you're already playing a game, why play make believe in a--
Let me stop you right there, because yeah that comes up a lot. Everyone has their thing in an MMO. Some people are in it purely for the combat. Some are into doing nothing but running dungeons and demolishing everything in their path. Some are all about that PVP and pitting themselves against other players. Others seek to create the prettiest or most outlandish character they can imagine, and then some. Then you have people like me who like to get together with friends and invent our own stories and situations within the game world for our own amusement.
How does Role-playing in an MMO help you write?
Excellent title drop.Let's get to that part, shall we?
Inspiration- The lifeblood of any writer is the ideas on which we build upon. Every story, every article we write can be traced back to that "Ah Ha!" moment. A scene with friends online might just click on that light bulb for that sword and sorcery epic you've been hashing and rehashing in your brain for five years. Perhaps a scene or session just finished but you have an awesome follow up scenario come to you afterwards. One thing leads to another, and you build and build on it.
Working on our flaws- As a writer, I admit to making a lot of mistakes in the storytelling process. I tell people in my personal circles that I can always tell a fledgling writer or inexperienced role-player, because they always put more focus into describing what their character looks like over their personality. Granted, MMOs being a more visual medium, I personally find describing one's look to be a moot point, I can see what you look like. I want to know about them, not their clothes. Or maybe say I'm having a bad time in my personal life and it's reflecting in my role-play. How's my grammar? How's my writing flow? Am I writing too much or too little? Is my brevity making people think I'm not really feeling this scene? Am I not really feeling this scene? Role-playing is like equal parts dress rehearsal and opening night all at once, where you have the freedom to adjust as you feel you need, and learn from your mistakes.
One of the biggest lessons you can learn from MMO's is allowing yourself the ability to have your characters change over time. Allow them to evolve with the stories they participate in. They may be digital constructs, but their personalities and likes and dislikes are all your invention.
Testing out concepts- Role-playing in MMO's gives you a lot of freedom to experiment with storytelling conventions and character types. You shouldn't be afraid to try out things to see if they stick, you can always go back and retool a characters personality. Don't think everything is set in stone. It's a very fluid medium. Sometimes it even means rolling a level 1 character of a different type than you're used to and see the world from a different perspective. Admit it, you see a game world through very different eyes as a magic user in an MMO than a Melee class. You approach situations differently, you focus on different skills and abilities. It broadens your horizon, and maybe gives you a little more appreciation for the healer in your dungeon group when you yourself walk a few miles in their shoes.
I wouldn't be as passionate about storytelling or writing as I am today if it wasn't for playing a lot of MMOs. Working with other players to tell a story that's satisfying and enjoyable for everyone involved is to me more fun than actually playing the games' content the developers spent years cooking up. Exposure to other people and their ideas can help us formulate our own ideas, our own storytelling voice and flow that can carry over into our own original writing works.
So if you're interested, there's a few MMOs on the market as of this writing (but I certainly hope they survive well into the future) you can play for free without much restriction and not a dime spent, but they will certainly tempt the ever loving hell out of you.
-Wildstar
-Star Trek Online
-Blade and Soul
-The Elder Scrolls Online
-Black Desert Online
Gives these a spin and see which is to your liking, see what speaks to your creative muse. Take a chance and see what stories come out of it.
This question pops up a lot in a lot of places, and the genuine answer is it's the adult term for the art of playing make believe. Another word for it is acting, but there's no stage or camera pointed at you. It's the time honored art of putting on a fictitious show in a given medium. Some jobs use Role-playing as a tool to illustrate a point or scenario. A simulation if you will.
I've been Role-Playing as a hobby for a very long time. Before the internet, me and my brother and school chums would play pretend we were characters from popular cartoons and whatnot, engaging in made up battles or scenarios using whatever was handy. When the internet became a thing I was exposed to the wonders of chat room role-play in circa 1999 when Geocities chat was still a thing (it might still be, I haven't checked back on that).
Eventually the medium moved out of the chat rooms and into the chat bars of Online Games. Even though the show itself is taking place in the chat, the visual aid of having characters and scenes at the ready helps tremendously. It's a beautiful collaborative practice in storytelling, where each person involved brings their own personalities and characters to the proverbial stage. Over almost 20 years of engaging in it, I've written enough stories with people across the internet to cover several trilogies of books, and enough characters I keep a personal lexicon of them, all very dear to me, and who occasionally wind up in my personal writings.
What is an MMO RPG?
I'm pretty sure by now you've heard of World of Warcraft. It's 2018. You have, right? It's only the most successful online Role-playing Game in the world right now. You can plug that question into google and get a definite answer if you want. I'll just say it's a video game connected to the internets and there's a lot of other players running around the game world. I'm just going to assume if you're reading this you've at least played an MMO. If not, I'll include the names of a few you can play for free at the end of this blog entry.
Why do you role-play?
Primarily because it's great fun. It can bring people closer together, and you can learn a lot about a person from how they role-play. Also for me, it's a means of escaping from the stresses of real life for a period of time and immerse myself in another world. Also as a writer, it allows me to experiment with a variety of character types. What some people call being an "Alt-aholic" (term for person who rolls up many characters in an MMO), I call fleshing out a roster and tackling a different character type.
But you're already playing a game, why play make believe in a--
Let me stop you right there, because yeah that comes up a lot. Everyone has their thing in an MMO. Some people are in it purely for the combat. Some are into doing nothing but running dungeons and demolishing everything in their path. Some are all about that PVP and pitting themselves against other players. Others seek to create the prettiest or most outlandish character they can imagine, and then some. Then you have people like me who like to get together with friends and invent our own stories and situations within the game world for our own amusement.
How does Role-playing in an MMO help you write?
Excellent title drop.Let's get to that part, shall we?
Inspiration- The lifeblood of any writer is the ideas on which we build upon. Every story, every article we write can be traced back to that "Ah Ha!" moment. A scene with friends online might just click on that light bulb for that sword and sorcery epic you've been hashing and rehashing in your brain for five years. Perhaps a scene or session just finished but you have an awesome follow up scenario come to you afterwards. One thing leads to another, and you build and build on it.
Working on our flaws- As a writer, I admit to making a lot of mistakes in the storytelling process. I tell people in my personal circles that I can always tell a fledgling writer or inexperienced role-player, because they always put more focus into describing what their character looks like over their personality. Granted, MMOs being a more visual medium, I personally find describing one's look to be a moot point, I can see what you look like. I want to know about them, not their clothes. Or maybe say I'm having a bad time in my personal life and it's reflecting in my role-play. How's my grammar? How's my writing flow? Am I writing too much or too little? Is my brevity making people think I'm not really feeling this scene? Am I not really feeling this scene? Role-playing is like equal parts dress rehearsal and opening night all at once, where you have the freedom to adjust as you feel you need, and learn from your mistakes.
One of the biggest lessons you can learn from MMO's is allowing yourself the ability to have your characters change over time. Allow them to evolve with the stories they participate in. They may be digital constructs, but their personalities and likes and dislikes are all your invention.
Testing out concepts- Role-playing in MMO's gives you a lot of freedom to experiment with storytelling conventions and character types. You shouldn't be afraid to try out things to see if they stick, you can always go back and retool a characters personality. Don't think everything is set in stone. It's a very fluid medium. Sometimes it even means rolling a level 1 character of a different type than you're used to and see the world from a different perspective. Admit it, you see a game world through very different eyes as a magic user in an MMO than a Melee class. You approach situations differently, you focus on different skills and abilities. It broadens your horizon, and maybe gives you a little more appreciation for the healer in your dungeon group when you yourself walk a few miles in their shoes.
I wouldn't be as passionate about storytelling or writing as I am today if it wasn't for playing a lot of MMOs. Working with other players to tell a story that's satisfying and enjoyable for everyone involved is to me more fun than actually playing the games' content the developers spent years cooking up. Exposure to other people and their ideas can help us formulate our own ideas, our own storytelling voice and flow that can carry over into our own original writing works.
So if you're interested, there's a few MMOs on the market as of this writing (but I certainly hope they survive well into the future) you can play for free without much restriction and not a dime spent, but they will certainly tempt the ever loving hell out of you.
-Wildstar
-Star Trek Online
-Blade and Soul
-The Elder Scrolls Online
-Black Desert Online
Gives these a spin and see which is to your liking, see what speaks to your creative muse. Take a chance and see what stories come out of it.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
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.
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.
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