Obdurate Fruit Salad (games I’ve been playing)

Obdurate Fruit Salad (games I’ve been playing).

raisdandthings is now Avatars of Steel

I quite enjoy blogging and have decided to keep doing it for a goodly while – the focus of my gaming has changed as things do though. And I want a fresh start with alllll my mistakes learned from. So a new blog it is.  And here is a link: http://avatarsofsteel.wordpress.com/

Since WoW turned into a metajob, I have…

started roaming.

and while I havent found another game to call my main, I found something else even more important – fun!!

And aside from the “will it run on my machine & will it cost too much” baseline fail-trap, I do believe I can give an equation (for me personally) on what makes a game enjoyable – a very simple one too – more choices = more fun. The more choices I have, the more control over how what/how I play – the more fun I have.

There is a such a rush to lock people into behaviour.

The worst at the moment, and prevalent and all over and to me, utterly unengaging is forced socialisation. I’m sure they have their reasons but frankly its a pain in the bum. If someone tells me well thats what the MMO in MMORPG is for – well woopdedoo you can read and have understood the acronym – so what. So what if it means a lot of people are playing. Doesnt mean I have to log on & do stuff with ’em. Some days I want company & some days I don’t is all. Nothing tricksy about that part.

Where it does get dodgy of course is progression. There is no point in playing anything without some sense of progress. And to a game they all insist on one and only one route to that sense of progress; and almost all of them insist on “grouping” of some kind. Now I’m a guild leader, nobody can accuse me of being anti-social but my insides eventually scream “will ya back off with these darned groups for everything!!!!” “GIT! Leave me some personal space & let me achieve stuff that way too.”

So yes, a choice on any given day whether to group up (in various forms) or do my own thing would be nice, and different ways to progress would be nice – and I dont mean pale shades of progress I mean full-on yes-it-counts progress.

Tried Forsaken World a bit – it is truly fascinating because it’s a patchwork of successful stuff from other games – like a reference game. Will have a go at a lot of others in due time. Warcraft – I’ve set up storage alts – a lot of storage alts – on one Warcraft account. Once I’m done, my subscriptions will dwindle to one. The guild is going fine, so I’ll keep that one account. The rest can lapse & freeze, or whatever happens to them, I won’t need those alts for anything, and I have stored their stuff. They aren’t who they were when I started them, what with all the class changes – I feel just about enough attachment to not outright cancel the accounts, but its thin. In WoW everyone looks & does the same too – the alts are more like utilities or fighting interfaces now. It’s not v engaging. Play twitchy – roll a hunter, play slow – someone tell me I’ll roll one. Easy to keybind all classes. Opener, pet/dot,main attack, quickest cd, resource generator, resource dump, finisher, cds, specials… defensives. You just categorise & put em on the corresponding key no matter what their fancy name. Not much point in creating your elf  or orc or whatever with any thought – she looks like a million others, does the same as everyone else & has nothing to call her very own beyond a generic armory entry for measurement purposes. n current raids being the only one people look at, nor will she have adventures, just follow a predetermined path – which is fun the first time only.

Sigh,  I dont want to be forced into: groups, grinds, gearwheels, timesinks, homogenuity, certain areas, times of play – basically any of the things devs hold dear. Gaming needs to be approached from somewhere else than “we want you to…”.to move forwards. It’s not a necessary activity – people can live without it.

Being a mind tool, an imagination firer, a mental construct, games should start from that feeling of hmmm…. how do I feel today, blue skies, open seas, where shall I go & what shall I be.

The game’s part is to supply : what might I find, what might happen – and sometimes – whom shall I meet?