No poor allowed – Opinion

I recently saw the announced price tag for the new generation of consoles. I’m a Playstation gamer when it comes to consoles. With the new prices and then the slowly creeping in $70 USD price tag on games that are coming out for PS5. I am slowly realizing that gaming is becoming a rich persons hobby kind of like golf, boating, etc. Consoles used to be the cheaper way for gamers to gain access to all the new titles coming out because having a PC is even pricer than a console. This is still true even in the new price arena. This is why I have come to the opinion that I have had.

Gaming companies be they console manufactures or game developers have lost touch with the lower end income markets. Long term this is going to cause a drop in their overall profits. There are a lot of people already that struggle to get one or two new games a year at the prices they currently sell for. I know that I can’t afford the new console and I would struggle to pay $70 dollars for a new title. This means that a lot of people, myself included, are going to have to wait for used versions of everything instead. Like I said it’s going to eat into profits for the makers. See the makers of games/consoles already greatly dislike the used market. They get very little if any of the profits from resale so they’d like to get rid of it. It’s one of the reasons they are pushing so hard for all digital. Then they have total control of how the consumer uses the games. In fact if you go into the small print on a digital purchase it actually says that you are paying a one time payment to LEASE the game. At anytime that they want to they can block access to redownload or even log into the game. It’s the same kind of small print on digital movie and tv show purchases.

Digital releases aren’t discounted even though there are no manufacturing costs involved with a digital version.

They are normalizing the takeover of consumer rights.

On top of this they are raising the prices of everything that can be used to game to a level that is going to become out of reach for most people unless they are married with an above minimum wage job with no children. Or higher income with children. I’ve been known on here as well is in person to get on a soap box about this kind of topic a lot. The price for a game, console, movie, etc. has increased much faster than actual inflation. Kind of like the housing prices in California. It can not sustain itself and is going to cause the market in those areas to crash or at the very least shrink down again unless they wake up.

Fallout 76 – Update 22

Okay, I spent almost all day playing Fallout 76 on both PS4 and PC. This is because not only was today Update 22 it is also the start of Season 2. I want to complete the season on both so that I don’t lose access to all the stuff I earn. This means at least four to six hours of Fallout 76 a day. Had I thought about it I would have done it with the first season as well as all of the Fortifying Atlas event. You live, You learn. The game on PC is behaving much better. I just reinstalled it last night so that I could do the update in time to be able to do the first day of the season. I don’t know if something was fixed in the background with the update or if the install had become corrupted last time.

So, Update 22 is a pretty big one. As I said above the new season has started with it, but, it also added Legendary Perks, One Wasteland, and Daily OPs. Legendary Perks are kind of awesome. There is the one called Ammo Factory that is fantastic to have if you are a Heavy Gunner build since it boosts how much ammo you get when you make it. You combine that with the normal Ammosmith perk card and you are going to get some serious amounts of ammo for a much lower materials cost per batch. I also like the card that gives Survival Syringes. They heal, fill up your food and water, and you get them for just being in game for x amount of minutes per syringe. You are limited on how many you can have at a time, but, as you rank up the card the stack you can horde increases as well. Ranking up the cards will be slow but so far from what I can see the benefits for the perks make them worth it. What’s great is that all those players who are in the 100’s or more are going to be able to do a rank or two for the ones they pick right off the bat because all you have to do is scrap normal tier perk cards you aren’t using or won’t ever use. At the 100+ level you have pretty much fine tuned your build and know which cards you are going to need and which ones are just fodder for scrapping.

Daily OPs are just repeatable dungeons with special requirements and enemy boosts. Like today you could only do the kill shot on enemies with melee. You could still use your guns to get them to low health but you had to either gun bash or quick swap to a melee weapon to finish them off. With a higher level character you can solo it, but, it is very much built for a group of players to do together just because of the amount of enemies that spawn. Plus the big bad at the end is ridiculous. In fact she is the only thing I have to bitch about with this mode. Assaultrons are already kind of overpowered. They have a head laser that is very much a death ray and then at close range they can hit HARD. I’ve had my ass handed to me at level 30 by a level 17 Assaultron before. The big bad for the Daily OP was an Assaultron that also had guns. They let the bot keep the head ray, though she didn’t fire as often with it, and then added almost continuous fire turrets on the damn thing. Even in power armor my highest level character died multiple times trying to take the bitch down to where I could melee hit her…. THEN I had to pray that I could run fast enough to get in close to bop her one so she would die. I got killed twice trying to do this because her gun turrets literally don’t stop shooting at you unless she can’t hit you at all. So fucked up. The only reason I even did the OP was because it is part of the challenges to earn SCORE points for the season for both Daily and Weekly. Despite One Wasteland they still set the Daily Op for today at level 50+ though you can do it in the high 30’s just expect to die A LOT and to run out of ammo, med-x. and stimpaks unless you have ungodly amounts.

One Wasteland – I had high expectations for this that weren’t met, but, at the same time it is better than before this came out. On one hand because there are now NO low level areas to go to you have to repair your armor, weapons, etc. more often than before and you go through healing items quicker than before the update since you run into same level or slightly higher enemies wherever you go. On the other hand if you are starting a new character from scratch you don’t have to worry about over leveled enemies and low level loot. I started a new character to see what it would be like and to help with one of the weekly challenges which asks you to level up three times. I found it much easier to get used to the new way things are done and to have equipment appropriate for my level than when I jumped in with my level 94 Heavy Gunner that has mismatched leveled loot, etc. This means that I will be beginning a new character on PS4 tomorrow and having to go through the Wastelanders storyline that I had literally just finished yesterday. I hadn’t hit level 50 yet so not as maddening as it could be to start over though it can be frustrating to have to buy the same plans for unique event decor items all over again. LOL

The new season is cool. The theme is Ace Armor and the Power Patrol. It’s like a Fallout 76 version of G.I. Joe. Though, they should have named Ace’s crew the Patriot Patrol since their job is to push back the commie red Subjugator! That’s just my opinion though. The theme is pretty cool and the stuff we earn for the most part is awesome. There is one that makes no sense to me… wood armor cosmetics? Really? I have never been able to craft wood armor. No one can craft it as far as I know. And, even if I could why the heck would you wear it? It is the most craptastic armor in the game. Most people in the game that I have seen wear either Power Armor, Combat Armor, or Marine Armor. The best protection in the game is Power Armor, but the next best is Marine Armor. Plus with the outfits most people can’t even see the armor anyway. Like my new character I just made. He is wearing a settler’s outfit and hat so everyone can see that, but, he also has his vault suit on and a full set of leather armor. For all intents and purposes though the vault suit and armor are invisible because of the outfit layering over top.

There are a few things that you can earn in the season that I am really looking forward to. There is a Foosball table as well as an Ace Armor arcade game. The big ones for me though are the wall and floor textures, the Brotherhood of Steel Field Station, and the Greenhouse set! I can’t wait to be able to build a proper greenhouse and to also have floor to ceiling windows in my house so that I can admire the awesome views I have off the side of a cliff. It’s all trees and mountains with a tiny cabin of Mothman Cultists in the near distance from the cliff. All you can see is the campfires they have if you know where to look. Gives that awesome nature vibe with a hint of civilization even if the cultists aren’t actually civil. LOL

It’s a GAME – Opinion

It’s a freaking game!

I see a lot of people out there complaining about the game economy and not making more caps, etc. in Fallout 76. It’s not like you can take those caps and exchange them to USD. It sums up to this for me… If you don’t find the game fun and the grind worthy of your time to get the things you want then move on to a different game!

It is so frustrating to watch the player vendors inflating the price of stuff that shouldn’t cost tons of caps. I actually saw someone selling a set of plans for more than the in-game vendors do! That is just plain GREED! What is worse is that it is greed over fictional money that doesn’t have any actual value!

People expecting Fallout 76 to be like Fallout 4, 3, New Vegas is crazy. Even though the assets came mostly from Fallout 4 the way the game works is way different. This is NOT a single player game with a fixed economy. Fallout 76 is an MMO! It might not be huge hordes of players on every server and require you to group up for most events but it is still designed in a way to encourage such game play. In fact the new Seasons system has daily challenges that make it so you have to group up even for a little bit, even if you aren’t actually questing together. Heck! Even without the needed challenges I still group up once in awhile in a Casual or Building group for the extra Charisma or Intelligence boosts they give because it helps with leveling or getting better gear. Which is the point of those boosts being part of the group mechanics. Its to make even people who want to play solo more likely to do groups because you don’t HAVE to do anything that the rest of the group is doing unless you want to.

This brings me to one of my other biggest complaints about some of the people who play this game. They keep comparing it to other MMOs as well! They make demands like auction houses, and Banks! This is not WOW! This is not ESO! The theme for this game is POST APOCALYPTIC WASTELAND! Most factions don’t trust each other… this close in time to when the bombs fell especially! Humans even in real life tend to look out for themselves even when they band together for survival! If you will take note of the in-game lore for Fallout 76 the uber rich elites that had no practical survival skills for the most part are the ones that ended up as RAIDERS and even then they splintered up and fought with each other as well as victimized those that were helping others like the Responders. I wouldn’t trust a Bank in a world that has organized Raiders in it even it was in Foundation! They get shit stolen from inside those walls DAILY. It’s a freaking quest to go out and get their items back from the Raiders who steal it! As for auction houses all that does is make the in-game economy just as bad as it already is because people decide that they need fake currency to make their lives meaningful. There are people out there in the game already charging so much that you can’t even carry it on one character. They have characters that are literally just mules for caps and items that they want to sell. They spend all their time getting fake shit to sell instead of actually enjoying the game!

I’m sorry but if the game has gotten to that point for you? Take a break and play something else. This isn’t Second Life where you can convert in-game currency to real money. This small business that you have in game? It doesn’t mean dick. If you are one of those that are selling items on eBay or something like that for real cash or someone who buys their items? You are part of the problem with the gaming industry and what you are doing should be illegal to do since you are selling or buying things that don’t actually belong to you as they are intellectual property of Bethesda.

Bethesda Petition

Okay, I started the Bethesda petition on Change.org. Click Here if you want to go and sign/share it. So far I am the only one that has signed it. Then again I haven’t paid for a wider viewership and I didn’t put a picture on it which are things the website keeps telling me would help spread the word more. Since this is a bust so far, I am going to keep it up until the site closes it down, I am going to write a letter to send to the company. I wish I knew more about business economics so that I could do charts and graphs, etc. But, since all I have is common sense and what I can see on the internet when it comes to what is working to gain goodwill and interest from players I will just have to use that instead to help me when writing the letter. I hope they will actually read it and pass it up because the idea is a good one that would do wonders long term to show that they care about the player base that supports them. In the growing competition field that the gaming industry is producing any angle that can give your company the edge when it comes to growing your player base, hype trains, and such should be given consideration no matter where the idea comes from. Bethesda, up until recently, was in a bubble with very little competition so they were able to get away with a lot of things that are now turning back to bite them in the ass. They also decided to grow the company a lot in a short amount of time while throwing huge projects at the new people that had never worked on their projects before and had to adapt to the new company culture/structure. This made the issues the company already had even more noticeable.

I know it is easy to point out issues from the outside, but, sometimes that perspective is needed. It is why consultants exist and also why listening to the player base that isn’t the hardcore fans is important. Though that is sometimes hard to balance since some of those people are the same ones that never played the game they are complaining about.

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a good Labor Day if you live here in the states and have a great rest of the week!

Been thinking… – Gaming

I’ve been thinking a lot tonight about making a petition to submit to Bethesda. I know that it might not do anything, however, it also will show how much it means to the Bethesda gaming community if I get a lot of signatures on it.

The petition would be asking them to make it so that anything that is bought or earned in a Bethesda title is shared across any platform that is connected to the players Bethesda.net account. It has been proven by Mojang with Minecraft that a company can be successful and make money with in-game transactions even with this kind of thing in place.

It would make a lot of people happy and be a great PR move for the company if they implemented it. I bet that more people would be inclined to spend money in the Atomic Shop and Creation Club if they only had to buy things once to access it on all the other platforms. It’s not like people don’t buy multiple copies of the games. I am in the process of getting every single title I own on PS4 through Steam if I can and sometimes I even buy the same games I have on PC for PS4 so that I have physical copies of them.

Anyone else think this petition is a good idea? How would you get the word out about it? Is there one out there already or one that was already done?

Quitting Fallout 76 on PC

Despite the fact that I put in a lot of hard work to finish the Captain Cosmos themed season I am quitting Fallout 76 on PC and will try to continue playing on PS4. My reasons for this are super simple. The PC version that I bought through Steam is unstable and the customer support isn’t helpful at all. I admit that I thought it was me too. Especially when Comcast discovered that our old modem was dying. However, the new modem is installed and I decided to use an ethernet cable instead of wifi to help make sure I had a steady signal to play on. The game is still laggy, having pop in issues, invisible enemies, and more. Nothing has changed in my PC hardware or software. I tested my internet and I am getting 17-18 Mbps with less than 20 ms in latency. On top of that I wasn’t having as many of these issues a month or two ago. I will be missing out on some of the BOS stuff from the Atlas Event as well but I will just have to suck it up. It isn’t anything that I can’t live without and doesn’t really change my game play at all. It’s all just cosmetics.

It is ridiculous that since my Bethesda account it linked to my Steam and my Playstation accounts that I can’t have the things that I have unlocked universally accessible. I mean Minecraft does it for crying out loud. I have my Microsoft account linked for PC and Playstation versions. Anything I buy for the game on PC can be used on PS4 and the opposite is true for PS4 to PC. The only thing I can think of that has made it so that this isn’t true for Bethesda titles, not just Fallout 76, is greed. If you like a certain thing in Skyrim that you got from the Creation Club on PC then you have to spend more money to get it again on any of the other platforms that you have the game. They could point fingers at Sony Playstation I guess but since I know of at least one title I own personally that can do it they would be lying in my opinion.

The more issues that I have with Fallout 76 and the more I am forced to look at the practices that Bethesda is pulling with even their single player titles the less hyped I am for their upcoming releases. I’ve even put off buying Doom Eternal because of it. The last game I bought of theirs was Rage 2 and the game while decent wasn’t great and when I got to the end it felt anticlimactic.

It’s pretty sad that the game developers whose first Fallout title got me into gaming to begin with is now losing my interest in supporting their future projects because the bigger they get as a company the less it seems that they care about quality or the gamers that made them a household name. It’s turned into a quest for more and more money. If the parent company wants more money they should go back to diversifying the markets they are a part of instead of pushing crap onto the people that actually pay for their products.

Speedruns for Grounded – Gaming

I was on Steam earlier tonight playing the Early Access title Grounded by Obsidian. When I quit for the night I saw a new discussion on the forums talking about how this guy just got his World Record speedrun title back and my first thought was Huh? Then when I actually thought about it I got irritated and I am going to explain why.

Speedruns for video game titles have been around for a very long time. I think they came about around the same time as High Score ones or No Death Runs. So around the time that Arcades became a huge hangout in the 70’s and 80’s. I have mad respect for people who legitimately get these records as I couldn’t see myself playing the same title over and over again for hours, days, or even years just to get this kind of record title.

So, when I saw that people are competing for the speedrun title for Grounded you would think that I would be respectful considering. Nope, I think these people are morons. The game is unfinished. There is only ONE storyline quest currently in the game while the rest are side quests given by a robot in the game which don’t count in speedruns. IF the game had a finished storyline then I wouldn’t irritated.

Since the title is Early Access it means that everything and anything can be changed whenever they update. New terrain, new enemies, etc. They will be adding to the storyline closer to the actual launch day. Once the game launches and has a finished base storyline I will respect those who do speed runs.

Until then all that is going on is a bunch of morons fighting over bragging rights for the beginning quest to an unfinished game. If you can’t actually finish the game then you can’t actually be speedrunning it for a World Record. That would be like speedrunning just the first level of Super Mario Bros. and then bragging about it because you beat the fastest run for just that level. I’ve never heard of such a thing and if that is where speedrunning is going then I don’t want to hear about it anymore.

Personal Responsibility and/or Parental Responsibility – Gaming

This post was sparked by watching a recent video by LegacyKillaHD. I am subscribed to him but most of the time I don’t agree with his opinions. However, he is a good source to find out about some of the less mainstream gaming news. This topic however has been a major discussion on his channel for well over a year now and that is Loot Boxes.

I understand how loot boxes can be explained as a type of gambling and how it can be addictive to certain personalities. I’ve had experiences with adults who were addicts of various kinds, heck, an uncle of mine used to be addicted to anything you can get hooked to… drugs, sex, gambling, drinking, smoking if you could get hooked he had done it. Being an addict can destroy your life, but , here is the thing and why I am writing this post. There is such a thing as a first step in an addicts path and personal responsibility is a real thing that needs to be addressed. The addict has to make the first choice to start on that path and continues to ignore their issues once they become addicted for whatever reason. Facing the hardships is part of personal responsibility and it does suck for them and everyone around them that has to re enforce that to them.

Now, I can hear a lot of you out there thinking What about the CHILDREN?! Well, it is the parents responsibility to not only monitor the spending of their kids, but, it is also their jobs to teach personal responsibility. Johnny or Susie spends money on a game that the parents don’t lock down the access for? Then it is on them because they didn’t lock it down properly so they have to take the hit financially. Then they need to turn around and find an appropriate punishment for the kids so that the mistake isn’t repeated even as adults themselves. I’ve seen plenty of stories over the years about kids spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on games using the parents credit cards, personal accounts on consoles/phones, etc. I’m sorry but it isn’t the game companies fault that it happened or the companies responsibility to pay that back.

Growing up my mother made sure that I learned that every action that I take can and will have consequences. She also made sure that I earned any money that I had access to for things I wanted. She taught me to spend responsibly and to plan ahead even when I was given money for birthdays and holidays. When she got into trouble with a credit card she taught me to bust ass to pay it off instead of filing for bankruptcy. After that she taught me to only get a credit line that I could pay off fairly easily. Basically she taught me to live within my means.

A lot of people aren’t taught these things anymore and would rather ban things, make laws of protection, and more instead of learning self control and personal responsibility. This issue is much greater than the video games industry but the industry is a great example of what is a huge failing in the majority of society right now.

I don’t want to get rid of loot boxes completely. Certain games they make sense to have them, but, I do agree on one thing that comes up in this debate. Video game companies are becoming too reliant on the income from them. They need to realize that the industry was grown and became as huge as it is because of good experiences, complete games, low glitches and bugs on release/launch, and the ability to stay true to the spirit of the franchises even if some of the stuff is updated. Players have multiple franchises that they play for a reason. There used to be staggered releases and such instead of the floods we get every year now. Some types of games shouldn’t be on quick turnarounds or yearly schedules.

I do understand the business side of things and the pressures that investors and stock markets can bring to the table. It’s up to the company though to bring understanding, knowledge, and proof that patience can bring higher long term rewards to those groups. There is proof in the history of the industry and the current scandals, horrible launches, and such to prove the point.

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Again it all boils down to taking personal responsibility.

Fallout 76 – Why I might be quitting

I love the Fallout franchise and I have since Fallout 3. Admittedly that means that I am a fairly new fan but I still love it.

I wanted to be able to play co-op with friends just like a lot of other players. So, when they announced Fallout 76 I was super stoked! When more detail came in and it was revealed that it would basically be an MMO I was irritated. I don’t like MMOs. They tend to be cash grabs and not altogether that good. They also tend to be a lot of grinding which makes them boring to me. I also remember the old version of them where you had to buy the game, each expansion as they game out, AND pay a monthly or yearly fee to even be able to access the game YOU ALREADY PAID FOR. Admittedly, they don’t use that structure with most MMOs anymore but I still remember it.

I bought the game on launch day for PS4 to play with my friend at the time. We liked it even though it was buggy as hell. Eventually because of the shortness of the storyline and the grind I became bored with it and moved on to other titles. My friend eventually did to and even gave his copy away to someone else because he couldn’t even sell it at the local game store for credit.

I’ve been spending more time gaming on my PC than on my console and I wanted to try Wastelanders when it came out so I waited for it to go on sale and bought the Wastelanders Deluxe Edition along with the Tricentennial DLC. With the new Wastelanders stuff added in I fell back in love with the game and have since May 2020 when I bought the title put in 207 hours, gotten 78% of the achievements, AND gotten the max Steam trading card level badge to put on my profile by buying and selling other cards. I have also spent an extra fifty to sixty dollars on Atoms.

I have an AMD 9590-FX which is 8 cores/4.7Ghz and a GTX 970 video card. The card is a little behind the times but still serviceable enough to run Far Cry 5 so Fallout 76 shouldn’t be an issue and it wasn’t until they updated the game for the first of the new seasons system. I love the season system btw. It gives me goals to keep me from getting bored of the grind and cool new cosmetics for my character and base. However, since the update I’ve been getting pop-in issues, texture blurring, invisible enemies that can harm me but I can’t harm them, and my load times are way longer than they used to be. I put in a ticket to their support and nothing they had me do fixed anything. I know it is because it isn’t my system it is on their end, but, they refuse to believe that and keep running me around in circles about it. Eventually I just gave up and adapted to it instead because it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t keep playing. It just meant that I could read while I was waiting to get into the game or traveling somewhere. It also meant that I had to be a Power Armor build because I would fall through the map from time to time.

Recently they added a new event that I call the Wendigo Event since it has a Colossal Wendigo as the bad guy in it. I’m not to fussed about it since it requires a nuke silo run to start. I will get around to doing it eventually because it is a permanent event just like the Scorch Beast Queen or the Sheepsquatch. But then just a day or less after they added that they started a yearly event called Meat Week. These two added events have caused things to get so bad that my game will freeze as I am fast traveling to a location or even when I am loading into the game! Enemies are now ALWAYS invisible when I get to a new area even if I go there on foot, C.A.M.P.s are having pop-in issues so bad along with everything else to the point where sometimes I can stand staring at where it is supposed to be for over five minutes before it comes in or longer! So, because it has gotten to the point where I can barely play at all now I sent another support ticket in.

I let them know that I had contacted them about this issue before and that I had done everything that they asked with no improvement. That when I first bought the game there were little to no issues at all but now all the issues have gotten so bad that I can’t even play. I also included the msinfo file and the DxDiag file that they asked for. You know what they sent back? A fucking CANNED response! Basically a form letter telling me that if I am having these issues it HAS to be on my end and that I should do all these things THAT I HAVE ALREADY DONE in order to fix it. So, I wrote back and pointed out that I had already said that I tried all of those and they didn’t fix it. That sending me that response only proved that they didn’t read anything that I said that they didn’t look at the files that I sent along. That I am a paying customer and I am getting tired of feeling like I am being ignored. That I KNOW it is on their end because my specs haven’t changed, my internet speed hasn’t changed, and yet the issues keep getting worse as they ad shit into the game! I went and looked at the requirements for the game… my specs are at the recommended settings but with more memory!

So, I am going to do one last thing to test and see if it helps before I completely wash my hands of this game and quit/boycott it for good. I am going to tell GeForce Experience to do a clean installation of the drivers. If this doesn’t fix anything it is the last thing I could try. I am so tired of fighting to be able to fucking RELAX!

Fallout 76 – August 7th, 2020

So, I spent a few hours on Fallout 76 today getting the S.C.O.R.E. challenges completed. It took forever to level up from 85 to 86. It is taking longer and longer to get there. I’ll have to start going over to my other character to do the leveling one soon.

I am looking forward to the One Wasteland update. This will make it easier to level up, it will make loot more awesome, and I hope that it will make players happier.

The last update had a lot of players supposedly quit because of nerfing and other issues. People are being big babies about the Fortifying Atlas event, even to the point of nuking the area to make it tougher for people to donate the materials. There is so much entitlement when it comes to prizes and such in the game that it would make a parent scream if this was a kid in a grocery store type scenario instead of players and game developers.

My game play today was smooth. I didn’t have as much pop in issues, I had a slight invisible enemy thing happen but I could kill them since I could see the guns just not the bodies of them, and load times were much better. This leads me to believe even more that the issues that I have normally since the update before this one were a combination of how many players were on the server, the servers themselves, and glitches/bugs that were happening in the background causing performance issues.

I think that Bethesda wasn’t sure if this title would bring in enough revenue to justify the start up and now they are kicking themselves in the ass for not getting better servers, a new engine, etc. before even launching it. If this plays out like ESO did then three years from now everything will be mostly smoothed out and the game will be awesome. Until then the players will suffer and only the ones that truly love and are dedicated to the game will keep playing through the growing pains.

Anyway, time for me to go and take a break. Tomorrow’s post is going to be all about a series of stories that I read over and over again since I found them a couple of years ago. If you like True Blood and Sookie/Eric as a pairing then keep an eye out in your inbox for the new post to go live!