My Life in WordsThoughts, scribbles, doodles, videos.
Welcome to my blog where all my thoughts and ideas get put into text. |
|
Well, this is frustrating. It seems like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is having some login problems that are affecting quite a few people, including yours truly. The biggest problem with these issues is the simple lack of information given by Nintendo. No words that they're working on the issue, whether a patch will come up and fix things, what the issue even is. I've tried changing languages, in game and on my phone. I've tried doing a forced fix on the game. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling. I've updated my OS. I've restarted my phone. I've gone on Wi-Fi. I've gone on data. Nothing makes a difference, and nothing helps. Meanwhile, events are still happening and people are left in the lurch, unable to complete them for what, a year? If we're lucky, and the events repeat without being something new and having the items be unobtainable forevermore? Never mind the whole issue of not being able to log in looks badly on your friends list timer. Who likes having friends who don't log in for days, weeks, at a time? How useful will they be to helping you get into the quarry, for keeping their item boxes filled? This issue is so extremely frustrating. Nintendo hasn't even acknowledged the Android problems, speaking only to iPhone problems, even though there are Android exclusive items available now, that Android users can't access due to the login issues. If this lack of information is what's to be expected from the company for their mobile platforms, I don't really know what to think. In most games, things aren't so time sensitive or are fixed quickly, but it's been 3 days at this point with absolutely no word and so many issues still happening. I almost want to just give up already. The worst thing that can happen is to give your customers and consumers no information, and it absolutely drives me up a wall. Instead, they just keep tweeting about new updates and events coming up with no public acknowledgement over the issues. Even emailing customer support gets you nowhere. I enjoyed the game for the few months it was available, but if it takes over a week for it to get fixed, I'm pretty sure I'm going to return to an empty friends list and having missed two irreplaceable events, which will make going forward bittersweet, and still upsetting. It may actually kill the game for me, simply because I don't enjoy being treated like I don't matter as long as other people are still able to log in.
0 Comments
Language is powerful. Hearing new phrases can be exciting, and easily incorporated into daily language simply through repeatition. Video games and streaming platforms Twitch are great examples; there are so many streamers who create their own words centered on memes, to the point where it's become an official term within a certain context, and video games have always had their own terminology that often doesn't leave the context of the game itself. "C9" is a popular phrase found in Overwatch. It means to leave the objective of the map uncontested during the final moments, and essentially grant a "free" win to the enemy team. "PUG" is an acronym for a group of random players joining together to complete an objective, a "Pick Up Group". These are phrases that are easy to understand and adapt to when hearing them in context, or sometimes even out of context. They're short words, relatable, and centered around things with tons of fans and exposure. However, there are a lot of words in the English vocabulary that are just as prevalant, if not more, that have a negative affect on many people. Curse words, slur words, derogatory language, these are all things that are regularly used in day-to-day speech. Often, when taken in context, these types of words aren't intended to be malicious or harmful, but a way to express a feeling like anger or frustration. The usage of negative words has expanded into daily lingo for a lot of people, but that doesn't mean that all of the words or phrases are OK or without consequence. Language is powerful. Words have the power to hurt people, to cause damage, especially if someone's been hurt that way before. Using terms that target demographics, specific people, genders, etc., can be a lot more harmful to the people around you than you realize. There are so many more ways to express a feeling or sentiment than to fall into language that can cause pain. English has some of the most wonderful and descriptive words borrowed from multiple languages, which means there are so many options and variations to get your point across without having to use charged up vocabulary. It's a brand new year, which means it's a great time to start fresh and improve something new and wonderful about yourself. Language is powerful, and using words to create a positive experience for someone else something to be admired. It's getting closer to that time of year again, where temperatures dip and people need to snuggle up to keep warm. Or maybe that's just a good excuse to take time away from playing on multiple screens and have some quality time together IRL and in-game. With game companies moving further towards having to own multiple copies of the same game for people to play together, what gems are left that enable some local fun?
Steam Games (in no particular order):
Some of my absolute favorites from this list, that even non-gamers can enjoy, are Overcooked, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Ultimate Chicken Horse and Tiny Brains.
OvercookedOvercooked is a game, not surprisingly, about cooking. You and your friends (2-4 players) take the position of chef at a restaurant, and must do everything in your power to see the dishes come out prepared and on time. Chop, carry, stew, and fry your way to victory by creating meals as they appear on your screen. It takes some practice to get into the swing of things, and every time you think you have a handle on the mechanics, you've beat the stage and have a whole new set of challenges to overcome. This game is local co-op only, so get snuggled up, and then prepare to beat a hasty retreat as you drop yet another dish into the freezing waters on an ice level.
Lovers in a Dangerous SpacetimeLovers in a Dangerous Spacetime? What's that? Oh no! The forces of Anti-Love have attacked, and are threatening to take over the universe! Quick, into the Space Ship! It's up to you (and your friends) to show the universe that the forces of love won't go down so easily! This is an awesome 2-4 player couch co-op game that has a lot of flexibility in terms of how it is played. If you have someone you want to play a game with who maybe isn't super awesome at games, there are "jobs" on the spaceship that are simple, yet satisfying, to play. Shooting down colourful enemies, protecting the ship with a giant movable shield, or piloting the ship itself, every part of the ship serves an important purpose. The levels are randomly generated, so even if one person has played before, it's always going to be a new adventure for everyone.
Sit tight, lean back, and enjoy the ride as you rescue Space Bunnies in the name of love! Ultimate Chicken HorseA return back to platforming, Ultimate Chicken Horse's premise is simple: get to the end of the level. What makes the game more interesting and difficult is that each player gets to place various parts and machinery to create a "path". How difficult the path becomes is entirely up to the players. You can have a nice, gentle journey with stairs and wooden blocks, or introduce cannons, crossbows, rotating saws, to try and trip up the other players in the game. Oh, and as an added incentive to not take the nice route, the only way to get points is if not everyone completes the stage; otherwise, it's too easy and no points will be awarded. There are a bunch of animals to play as, a ton of levels to enjoy, and can be played with 2-4 players locally or online.
Note: this game functions a lot better with a controller. It has a similar dash/jump, where your jump is increased if you're dashing, as the Mario games, and it's pretty difficult to get used to when using a keyboard. Tiny BrainsEscape the lab of a mad scientist with your animal buddies as you traverse a giant maze of a room until you can escape to freedom. Combine powers with your furry friends, as each puzzle can be solved in multiple ways based on how you choose to combine your powers. A couch co-op exclusive with a Portal/Tim Burton vibe, the game can be completed with 2-4 players each controlling either an individual animal or swapping between them as needed. The levels are varied, from solving puzzles, to platforming, to defeating hordes of enemies. It's probably one of the shorter games on this list, coming in at 2-4 hours, but it's a wild ride with a fun story and memorable characters. If you want more of a challenge, there are leader boards for each level based on completion time!
Grab your favorite blanket, hook up your PC to your TV, and get settled in for night of old school gaming fun.
This is exciting! It's week two of the Overwatch League, and right in the nick of time, Blizzard announced that Twitch was going to be hosting all the games, in 720p/1080p! The games look gorgeous, the team colours are super fun to see, and the skins are out in game as well!
A lot of the teams seem to be more evenly matched than people initially thought, which makes the games way more exciting to see. Constant stomps and one-sided matches would be way more tedious to watch, so the fact that the base power level of the teams is relatively even is a pleasant surprise. Some teams are struggling more than others, and some may be concealing their true strength until the later stages, content to drop/tie a few maps but win the overall series to maintain their ranking on the leaderboards. The players from Contenders and the Overwatch World Cup are spread out through-out the teams, with only three teams having a single nationality (Korean), and there are enough star players everywhere that those watching can feel comfortable cheering for their favorite player, a team based on their geographical location, or even just their favorite team colours. Personally, I'm cheering for one of my favorite teams from Contenders, the Immortals roster that has picked up new players and turned into the LA Valiant. The colours are great, the players are fantastic, and they've already made some amazing plays. I can't wait to see what each week brings in terms of successes and challenges they'll face. Oh, also, new sprays and player icons have been released! Who to pick, who to pick, for a new player icon? I always want to pick Sombra, but ugh, her player icons are always off-centered, and this one is still no exception. I think, with all her inclusion in the Overwatch League so far, just seeing her icon or a player playing her won't cause as much immediate tilt, so I may just go for it anyway! Wish me luck! The Overwatch League began its inaugural preseason today, and it's already off to a rough start.The stream isn't available on popular streaming websites YouTube or Twitch, and is instead featured on MLG which has no Chromecast support. This made it extremely difficult for me to even begin watching the stream, taking me an extra 30 minutes to explore all my options to see if I could stream the matches directly from my phone (I can't), and then go, turn on my PC, get everything set and stream the full site page from MLG to my Chromecast. Yes, full site page. There's no way to remove or hide the chat unless you install an adblocker, and direct the adblocker to the chat window. Seriously? Where's the TV support? How are people supposed to easily watch this major e-sports event comfortable in their own home, attached at the hip to their PC? Does no one at Blizzard stream to their television, and they somehow didn't anticipate that watching what's supposed to turn into a huge sporting event on your couch would be something people looked forward to? Do people now watch the Superbowl on their PCs instead of in large parties? Did I miss a memo somewhere? I was really looking forward to this whole thing, but now I'm more frustrated than anything else. I don't want to have to come home and go to my PC to watch something on my television, especially when the standard for every single Overwatch event previous has been for it to livestream on Twitch. This is a huge inconvenience, and will likely impact the viewership if they don't get it figured out. I'm literally writing this post instead of watching the stream because it made me so frustrated I don't even care about watching it right now. Blizzard. Seriously. Get some Chromecast/SmartTV support going on, let your viewers watch the streams from the comfort of their beds and couches, and let us hide chat. Not everyone likes seeing POGCHAMP spammed a hundred times in a row. I've played a lot of Mercy in the past, with her being my main choice of healer when I do solo or multi-queue in competitive. I've always found her to pretty fun to play, darting around with Guardian Angel, and doing tempo resurrections to keep the tide of battle in my favour.
Playing with a good team.As a result, I've been playing the new Mercy on the PTR as well, and I've come to some conclusions given her current state. As she stands on the PTR, she is less fun to play, and less fun to play against. In a GOOD team, she has the constant ability to provide tempo resurrections, and her team will be able to protect her. She seems to be encouraging a Deathball team composition, especially if you take into consideration the pushing potential of her ultimate ability, Valkyrie. In a Deathball composition, she can heal/buff her whole team as they move forward for 20 seconds, and resurrect fallen teammates every 10 seconds. This makes her even more of a "kill this hero first" than ever before, but on a GOOD team, she'll be protected and able to do her thing.
Playing against a good team.If you're facing a good team, then this will be a nearly impossible Mercy to kill, unless you solo ult her. This is pretty much what happened to me every time. I would get solo ulted by a Pharah, a Junkrat, Hanzo, Soldier, you name it, they focused on bringing me down before anyone else. In return, when I was facing a good team, I did the same thing. Getting to that Mercy player in the back was so difficult that I felt the need to use an ultimate to break through just to hit her, and then if I missed, seeing her resurrect someone immediately, then ult and again another person, feels even worse than it ever did seeing her get a 4-5 man resurrection on live.
Playing with a bad team.If you're on a bad team with Mercy 2.0, it's so difficult to do anything. Your teammates run off, die on their own, you can't get to them to resurrect them due to the 5 yard resurrection limit, plus line of sight, or if you do, then you can't get back to safety easily either. You may not have any protection, or people to dash away to, so then you just do what you've always done, sit back around a corner and heal people. I've done more healing hiding behind cover as this Mercy than I ever have live, because I can simply do less for my team with the limitations on the E resurrection. My ultimate gives me a free resurrection, this is true, but everything is still 5 yards, and still line of sight. I still can't get to anyone without being in trouble myself, I move too slowly, so it's simply too dangerous to play aggressively. If anything, the ultimate is useful to run away from enemies, unless it's a soldier who pops his ultimate as soon as Mercy flies up, because we can't actually duck or stay very close to the ground. On top of this, when two people die together, you can't actually select which person to resurrect. It's a gamble which the server will pick, because the icons are literally on top of each other.
Issues with "E" ResurrectionOr better yet, when there's an icon floating somewhere, but no matter where you stand, on top of it, behind it, circling it, you still can't resurrect the icon with your teammates face on it? If a person died, say, inside a building, the resurrection icon has shown up outside the building, even though they actually died inside. If they were outside on a balcony, the icon may fall down even though the player died up above. This means that on occasion, if you go to resurrect that person, you may not be able to because where the icon of the person is showing isn't actually where it is, and is line of sight. So now as Mercy 2.0, you're in danger out in the open, you can't actually get the resurrection off, and your Guardian Angel is still on cooldown for another second, where you have to fly through a mild-moderate battle to get back to safety.
Is it "fun"?It's honestly really boring to play as a Mercy, it's not fun to play as her, and it's really not fun to play against. On the PTR, I've won every game I've been Mercy in, and I stopped playing it because I just got so bored. I felt like I had no impact in the game with anything I did. Sure, the tempo resurrection helped by keeping the pressure up, but so what. If I killed an extra person on the enemy team as a Zenyatta, I would've had the same effect, plus a way more impactful ultimate where not only am I invulnerable, I actually can heal through multiple enemy ultimate abilities. Why should I play as this new Mercy? What does she bring to the table that's better than the other healers?
"But she has a really high pick rate!"I've been seeing a lot of numbers thrown around on the forums where she "needed to be nerfed due to her pick rate". Friends, there are 4 healers available. Two of those healers can be classified as main healers who can survive as a solo healer in a match, and she's one of them. Of course her pick rate seems high compared to some DPS heroes, there are 15 of them!
Final thoughts.I really hope this new Mercy doesn't come out in her current state. If she does, it's very likely that many players will either avoid picking her in a pug game, or will only pick her in a Deathball composition team.
I'm guessing Blizzard will likely keep her as she is, since it seems like they're encouraging the Deathball meta with the recent buffs to the heroes, to break away from the Dive meta that's currently active. They've yet to respond to any threads referencing Mercy on the PTR forums, whether it's a "We hear your concerns" or even better "We hear your concerns and are working on some changes". All they've actually done is nerf Mercy 2.0 twice already, without responding to any active feedback. On the plus side, Zenyatta is likely going to be an active pick regardless, due to his kill potential and ultimate ability, so time to learn some Zen. Very glad I didn't buy my golden gun yet. RIP Mercy. I've been trying to connect my email to AdSense, and to be frank, it's the most painful process I've ever encountered. You have to apply with a google email address, which is fine, and it gives you the option to link it to a website. Awesome. I link it to this one, but I apparently have insufficient content. Ok, fine. Except that the email I used is also associated with my YouTube account, and now I'm completely locked out of monetizing any videos I have ever created and posted on that account, because I can't remove the link to this website. I can't edit any information for Google AdSense unless my account is approved, which means any email that is EVER used can be deactived for inactivity, and then completely locked and remove your access to any funds you may have already earned or potentially earn in the future. There's no contact for support, there's absolutely no way to talk to anyone to resolve your issues. I am honestly shocked that Google has such a terrible system in place where you can't even cancel your links or applications without being an approved user. The forums are flooded with people who can't remove or adjust their applications, because the system is so poorly created. I can see why people are moving to Twitch, where at least the revenue and potential for monetization is well integrated. Update: My YouTube account got pushed through after I tried contacting them, and this website got approved roughly 5 months after submitting the application. There is hope! I don't normally do book reviews, because it's rare that book really strikes me in such a strong way that I feel the need to tell the world about it. Foxlowe is a book I received an advanced reader's copy of, due to my position as a book seller, and as I recently decided to slog through the hundreds of books I have sitting listlessly on my bookshelf, I gave it a whirl. Starting with the positives, the characters are easily identifiable and recognizable from each other. Each one seems to have a distinct personality that distinguishes them immediately upon speaking. Unfortunately, I think that's all the positives I have to discuss. The negatives start with the general writing style and theme. The author tried to do something different, in terms of how her paragraphs are written during moments of speech. Unfortunately, it lends itself to being rather awkward, as it's simply a large dash, occasionally followed by the name of the speaker. This might not be so difficult to read if it also didn't include a large amount of book-specific jargon. There are a lot of words and concepts thrown at the reader in the first few pages that aren't ever really explained. All you can do is use context to create a best guess at what the author is trying to describe. This brings us now to the plot. The book and its plot centers around a cult-like environment, where children are essentially kidnapped and brought into the house to be raised by the few adults there. Once they enter the house, they're given a new name and an identity, and a whole slew of rules to prevent "the bad" from entering them. What is "the bad"? It's the evil influence from outside. It causes people to act with negative or harmful intentions, and that's why no one is allowed to interact with the outside world, why darkness is evil, etc. If one of the elders thinks you have been influenced by the bad, or that the bad is inside you, you must do penance. This involves scraping your arm across rusty nails (the spike walk), burning yourself, being ostracized from the rest of the society, etc., and has such a large role in the book where scars are a point of pride and shame. There's never any true rationale given behind the punishment either, as The book essentially normalizes abusive households, as the main character was born to the household, and knows of no other life. Even in the end, once she's free from the house, she's not actually free from the cult. She still talks to them, eats dinner with them regularly, and seems to be trapped in the same mentality she had growing up. It's honestly hard to tell, because the epilogue where she's portrayed as an adult is literally seven pages long. In it, she returns to the house she grew up in, and gets upset when people describe the environment as neglectful, as though being raked over with nails and a fire iron was a normal way to get punished. She takes it a step further, and actually tries to groom a small child visiting the house with her family, by telling her the lovely stories of her youth. This is supposed to be a children's book, for ages 9-12. I can't honestly recommend this book to anyone, because it seems to be disturbing for disturbing's sake. The main character doesn't learn anything, she doesn't grow as a person. Sure, she rails a little bit against her lot in life, but she actually actively perpetuates the cycle of abuse on a baby that's brought into the house, and then again on some innocent stranger once she's an adult. I can't find anything positive or redeeming in this book that would cause me to recommend it to another person. Honestly, if I saw someone planning to buy it for a child, I'd actively urge them against it. It basically comes across as one of those horror movies where the only value in it is if you're solely looking to be actively disturbed by an environment or theme. Even if that was the reason someone chose to pick up this book, if the child in question is able to comprehend and grasp disturbing themes, there are so many better written choices in the general fiction section. I'm so excited, I can hardly stand it! I've been very busy the past few weeks, in no small part due to my new ventures with video recording, editing, and drawing. What has me the busiest so far is definitely the drawing.
I've recently started doing commissions of player characters from the World of Warcraft, and it's going so great! I've completed four so far, with another one on the way. Hopefully, I'll receive another couple commissions before the month is out. So far, since I'm building the pose and the background from scratch, it seems to be taking me anywhere from 2-4 days, depending on the race of the character. This male Pandaren definitely took the longest, clocking in at 4 days total. My shortest was a female undead, taking only about 6 hours, followed by a female Tauren taking about 2 days. I'm creating an art portfolio on DeviantArt, and I'll add a link in the "About Me" section of this website, so stay tuned for those pictures getting uploaded. For now, here's a sneak peak at my latest completed commission! I've been playing an awful lot of Slime Rancher lately, because there have been so many updates in the past year where I haven't had a chance to log in. The game officially released yesterday, and I couldn't be more thrilled. The most recent update, just in time for the game's official launch, introduced what our plucky protagonist, Beatrix, actually looks like.
I love it! She looks amazing! Her outfit, her hair, I love it all. It changes literally nothing about the way the game plays, aside from that she's now standing inside your main building whenever you go to check your mail or make your ranch more fancy. I can't wait to play more of it, and find out what other new features have been unlocked. I've already managed to get myself lost in a forest, and attacked by angry raccoon monster slimes. The future is looking bright, and squishy! |
Teaching, family, games, how to do it all? I'll try my best! Archives
February 2018
Categories
All
|