Legendary

Need to stroke my e-peen.

Decklist

My Learnings

  1. Dr. Boom is imbalanced. Whether you slam him on turn 7, innervate him on turn 5, or coin-innervate-innervate him on turn 2, he is always the correct play.
  2. Sludge Belcher is not that good anymore. A turn 4 Goblin Blastmage makes a turn 5 Sludge Belcher feel like shit. Since he wasn’t helping me in the aggro matchup and he’s pretty terrible in the control matchup, I just swapped him out for Azure Drakes.
  3. BGH is now mandatory in every deck because of #1.
  4. I won ~9 straight games from rank two to Legend. I now know how Firebat felt like in the World Championship finals. Wild Growth + Innervate in every opening hand is pretty good.

Legendary Hearthstone

I finally hit legend rank.

Legend

The Deck

Deck

I grinded to 5 using miracle rogue and a weird reincarnate shaman deck. Then Mad Scientist came out and everyone started playing Hunter. At this point, I switched to priest because I had the right legendary cards and it seemed broken with Dark Cultist. It started as a cookie cutter, Amaz style priest deck but it still kept losing to hunters. For a brief period, I experimented with a weird Ancient Watcher/Silence deck. It showed some promise but was just too weak to Buzzard/Unleash the Hounds. I fluctuated between rank 2 and rank 4 for about a week. By the end, I got so frustrated that I basically said fuck it and put in 2x Acidic Swamp Ooze and 1x Shadow Madness solely to counter Hunter.

The moment I did that, my win rate shot up. I managed to get from middle of rank 3 to 5 star rank 1 in just one day. It then took me 5 attempts at 5 star rank 1 to break into legendary. Overall it took around 80 wins with priest, which put me at about a 60% win rate. However, this included about 40 games where I stalled out at rank 3-4, so I measure the current variation is probably 65-70%.

The Meta

With a hunter heavy meta, everyone plays either Hunter or the counter to Hunter (currently Control Warrior). So as long as you can break even with one of those classes while winning the other, you will surely but slowly climb. The stupid thing is that my original intention of including Ooze was to hard counter Hunter. Even with two copies of Ooze I still barely maintained a 50% win rate against them. What ended up happening was that I basically won every game I played against Warrior. Paladins were even easier, as Ooze > Truesilver Champion. Priest is already pretty strong against Zoo and nobody plays mage. Unfortunately, I lost every game I played against Reincarnate Shaman and Miracle Rogue. I don’t feel like those match ups are unusually bad for me I just couldn’t seem to draw well against them.

Deck Tech

The core of the deck is pretty similar to any standard Priest deck.

2x Acidic Swamp Ooze
Should be obvious but Ooze counters weapons.

1x Mind Control
I think playing 1x Mind Control is 100% correct when laddering. The reason I think this is that it’s literally an “I win” card whenever you are matched against another control deck that doesn’t play it. Yes, 10 mana is expensive, it’s a terrible card to draw early, and it’s useless against super aggro decks even if you survive to 10 mana. However, most of the time 1 dead card in hand isn’t going to lose you the game. Losing 1 game against an aggro because you got Mind Control instead of a Holy Nova sucks, but winning 5 matches because you Mind Control the Warrior’s Alexstraza or Ragnaros is worth it.

1x Shadow Madness
I was really impressed with the utility of this card. It’s fantastic against aggro as it can constantly trade 2 for 1 and every now and then you get the dream scenario. In the less than impressive case it kills one of their guys and denies a deathrattle.

Matchups

Vs Hunter
Mulligan for early game plays like Ooze, Dark Cultist, and Wild Pyromancer. Shadow Madness and Holy Smite are best if you can get lucky. Never have more than two creatures in play once the Hunter gets 5 mana to play around Buzzard/Unleash. When turn 6 or 7 comes around, you need to kill Highmane as soon as it drops, with Holy Fire, SW:Death, or just running your guys in. If he plays another one after you clear the first, you’re probably dead.

Something I always do is play Northshire Cleric on turn 1. This might just be incorrect but over time I felt it was right. It works because it often denies early Webspinner and Haunted Creeper. It’s very important to do this, as it keeps the board clear of beasts for Houndmaster. It sometimes backfires and just dies for free. However, I tend to want to stall out Hunters and Northshire Cleric doesn’t matter too much.

The overall goal is to just maintain board control with 2 units on the board while stalling till turn 10. Then once it gets to that stage, hope you can Mind Control a Highmane.

Vs Warrior
Mulligan for early game plays like Ooze and Dark Cultist. Always throw away Northshire Cleric and never play it early. Dark Cultist is a great card because it tanks War Axe like a champ. Cabal Shadow Priest is an all star in this matchup as it steals Acolyte of Pain and Armorsmith for super value. Overall, this matchup is incredibly easy since Ooze denies their weapons and you can normally seize board control. This forces the Warrior to waste Shield Slam and Execute on your 3-5 drops, leaving your legendaries to get major value. If things don’t work out early, you always have Mind Control to steal their 9 drops and basically win any game

Vs Priest
Mulligan for Injured Blademaster and Dark Cultist. If you get ahead on board, it’s hard for the other Priest to regain control without committing one of their legendaries. The goal of this matchup is to make the opponent use their legendaries or Mind Control 1 turn before you do. This deck isn’t that greedy (e.g. I only play 2 Legendaries + Mind Control. I went up against people playing 4-5 Legendaries + Mind Control) so sometimes you will just lose. However, most Priests run the standard Sylvannas + Ragnaros and you will almost always beat those.

Vs Paladin
Mulligan for early drops like Ooze, Dark Cultist, and Blademaster. Northshire Cleric turn 1 is actually OK since it denies their hero power until turn 4 when they Truesilver. As I mentioned earlier, Ooze wins this matchup straight up for you. Just don’t commit too much to the board and die to a massive Equality/Consecrate. Keep 2-3 units max on the board and keep them healed up. Save Mind Control for Tirion.

Vs Shaman
Reincarnate on Cairne or Sylvannas, 2x hex and Earth Shock silence is probably too much for you to handle. Cabal Shadow Priest is probably good to deal with their deathrattles. I only played Shaman twice the entire time so I don’t have much insight into this matchup.

Vs Rogue
Mulligan for Loatheb and low drops to apply pressure or protect against aggro. Blademaster/Circle of Healing is incredibly strong, as they have to waste Sap or 2-3 cards just to remove it. Save Ooze for deadly poison or the 3/5 weapon. Hold onto Sludge Belcher until the last possible minute so you can deny the Leeroy combo and at minimum force them to Sap it first, thus reducing the total combo damage.

Vs Warlock
Assume Zoo and mulligan for 2 and 3 drops. Shadow Madness single handedly wins games here if you can grab a deathrattle guy. This deck has a lot of low cost creatures that can trade with Zoo early until your AOE board clear comes online, so it’s not the worst matchup. You will lose if they curve out, but that’s pretty much how Zoo works.

Vs Mage
I only played against two secret Mages but from what I could gather, you treat it like another aggro deck. Mulligan for low drops and try to wrestle away board control. Bait out Counterspell with low mana cost spells like HW:Shield or Circle of Healing. Not much insight here.

Vs Druid
Cabal Shadow Priest gets serious value here, as Harvest Golems and the Keeper of the Grove are great to steal. Ditto for Shadow Madness. Save your Northshires for midgame to try and draw multiple cards.

Analyzing Drinking Games

Like Mew2King, I take games very seriously. While this usually applies to the video variety, it inevitable carries over to drinking games as well. Drinking and drinking games have always been a particular interest of mine. Not because I’m an alcoholic (although I do occasionally enjoy a good binge drink) but because drinking has such interesting effects on people’s behavior and personality.

One of the things I frequently think about while drinking is the design behind the games. I ponder over what makes drinking games I’ve played before fun and exciting. In addition, I note down when situations become boring or inconvenient and think of how I would improve them. This includes not just the game mechanics itself, but the logistics and setup that is often unique to drinking games.

Easy learning curve

Most people are generally stupid and have a difficult time learning new games. This tends to be magnified even further when drinking. Therefore, the rules of any drinking game should be easy to explain. Any physical actions should be simple to perform and players should not require extensive practice to complete the basic goals. Drinking Magic the Gathering might be a great idea, but good luck trying to teach a drunk person the “stack”.

Accommodating a flexible number of players

Drinking is a social event and typically happens around a large group of people. It’s important that the number of participants in any game is flexible. Nobody wants to be left out and forced to “wait” till the next round. Beer Pong is a game that suffers immensely from this problem. The game typically allows for a max of only four players, and anyone who has been to a crappy frat party can tell you how long the waiting list typically is.

Allow players to enter and exit with no break in action

One of the absolute truths of drinking is that everything you consume eventually has to come out. Whether that be through one end or another, people will constantly be getting up to go to the bathroom. Drunk players are also easily distracted, whether it be by the cute guy or girl that just walked into the room or some friends coming to talk. A player that needs to step out for any reason should never stop the game. You’ll see this happen in a variety of games where all the players of the game are required to progress.

Losers should be punished more

The loser(s) of the game should drink more than the winner. While some people may not consider drinking more as “losing”, the truth of the matter is that drinking games exist to force someone to drink. Without that factor, you might as well just sit around and drink casually. Flip Cup is the most egregious violator of this rule, as the losers inherently drink less than the winners.

Standardized penalty

The amount you drink must be a pre-defined constant. This means no “sips”, “seconds”, “drinks” or “gulps”. A cup should be filled with a quantity of liquid, and that cup must be finished completely before the game continues. The point of a drinking game is to force drinking when one would rather not. If you give players control over how much they can drink, you always end up with 10 second drinks consuming absolutely no alcohol.

Luck and Skill

A game should require some sort of skill, whether it be mental sharpness, a quick reaction, or good hand eye coordination. However, there must also be a high level of luck involved so that newer players have a chance of defeating veterans. Nobody wants to play drinking chess. Beer Pong is a fantastic example of a good luck vs skill balance. The game takes an incredible amount of skill to play well. I can attest to that, since I used to practice shooting ping pong balls at a single cup of water in my basement. However, the weight and size of a ping pong ball make it very difficult to shoot consistently. I’ve read online that there are professional players with insanely high shot percentages, but even the most skilled players I have ever met (I knew someone who won the CMU Inter-fraternity Beer Pong League) wouldn’t shoot higher than 25%.

Opportunity for low chance but high impact actions

With a lot of luck comes a lot of opportunities for incredible “one in a million” plays. Nothing is more exciting in a Beer Pong match than coming back from a large deficit in redemption. These are things that happen rarely but are statistically likely to occur after enough play. Human memory tends to focus on the single, exceptional moment, while conveniently forgetting the mundane hour leading up to it. By adding very impactful but difficult mechanics to a drinking game, it makes the game feel more exciting than it really is.

Creating a sense of rivalry and competition

Games should allow one player to target another and also allow players to team up against one person. This creates drama and tension that completely random drinking lacks. Teams and temporary alliances creates camaraderie between players, resulting in more interaction.

No night ending penalties

While forcing the loser to chug an enormous amount can be amusing, it is generally better to have multiple small losses that slowly add up. Alcohol is best taken in manageable amounts, consistently throughout a night. Games like Kings, which accumulate alcohol in a central cup over the course of a game, typically end with the loser stepping out of the game, passing out, or worse. You want everyone to eventually become drunk, but it should happen at the end of the night once the game is over, not in the middle.

The Pinnacle of Design

I lived for a few years with players from the CMU Rugby Team, and there is only one useful thing I can pull from that experience. They played a variation of Quarters where players sit around a table with 2 shot glasses, a central glass of alcohol, a refilling pitcher, and some quarters. 2 players attempt to bounce a quarter off the table into the glass, and when successful, pass the shot glass to their left. If a shot glass is passed to you while you still have a glass, the glasses are stacked and you have 1 chance to make this double shot. If you do, the double stack is passed to your left for the next player to make. As soon as you miss the double shot, the player to your left takes the top glass and continues shooting. You must then drink the central cup, refill it, and then continue shooting. If you manage to bounce the quarter into the shot glass on your first shot, you can pass it to anyone not already holding a shot glass.

Why is this game so well designed? Outside of some hardware requirements (a table, 2 shot glasses, and quarters) it satisfies every single positive aspect I listed above. The game can accommodate any number of players from 4 up to 10+ by simply adding a 3rd or 4th shot glass into the rotation. Individual players can leave and re-enter the game at any point and the rotation continues like normal. The game has a standardize central cup as a penalty, and players can fill it as much or as little as they want, allowing for extremely tense moments when a full cup is at stake. The game is very skill based, but luck still players a heavy part in the bounce. The double stack shot provides constant chances for a “low chance, high impact” moment for everyone to cheer at. Passing the glass to anyone if you make it on your first shot allows you to target specific players.

I’ve played a very wide range of drinking games and I’ve found that this variation of Quarters provides the highest combination of entertainment, competitiveness, drama, and fun. Try it out some time if you’ve never experienced it, and I’m certain you’ll agree with me. And on another note, I have my Quarters table ready anytime someone wants to come play. Yes, I went to Ikea and bounced quarters on every one of their tables until I found the optimal one to buy.

Diablo 3

I finished Diablo 3 on normal with Allison. I was playing a Barbarian and she was playing a Wizard.

All I can say is that normal mode is repetative and boring, with little to no challenge. It is like playing World of Warcraft except they took out all the interesting elements and left in the boring grinding.

The game is unreasonably simple. WoW was already pretty mundane because you never really needed more than 7 or 8 of your skills. Diablo 3 decided to limit you to 6 skills, and you probably only need 3-4. In the case of my Barbarian, I could get away with just 3 skills for normal mobs. The entire time you fight things you just left click nonstop and everything dies in front of you.

Bosses were pretty much big trash mobs with more HP. I didn’t find a single boss interesting or unique, and almost all of them involved just standing in place and left clicking them until they died. For example, when we faced Diablo, the final boss in the game, I was grouped with two other wizards. Somehow, both of my companions died and I was left soloing a final boss that was buffed to handle 3 people. I quickly modified my strategy to stand in one place and left click him. Sometimes, I would shift to the left a few inches to avoid a red circle on the floor. Every now and then, he would grab me and take me to under half health. I pop a 15s cooldown shield wall and lifesteal back to full. Having no party members actually made it somewhat easier, as Diablo stayed in place instead of chasing after the other 2 people. After a few minutes, Diablo died and I beat the game, without even using 2 of my long cooldown skills which I was saving in case I came close to dying.

Overall, I don’t find Diablo 3 to be particularly interesting. However, I feel that I might continue playing it solely because my friends are playing it. I also assume that nightmare will be more interesting.

Dark Souls

I finally finished playing Dark Souls yesterday.

First of all, it plays exactly the same as Demon’s Souls. It could have picked up at the end of Demon’s souls and I wouldn’t have noticed I was playing a new game. Outside of a few minor tweaks (such as healing flasks), it is the same game. So I’m going to assume you know about Demon’s Souls (http://baconfriedrice.com/2010/12/more-video-games/).

The Good
Boss Fights: There are less stupid boss fights where you can glitch out the Boss AI and basically get a free win. One of the “multiplayer” features of Demon’s/Dark Souls is that other players can leave messages on the floor. In Demon’s Souls, most boss rooms has a “safe” spot which would be marked with a message. This spot was usally behind a rock or in a nook where the boss would try to futilely attack but be blocked. Then you just shoot 200 arrows and watch the boss slowly die, which was 100% safe. Dark Souls seemed to fix this problem well, as I actually had to fight all the bosses head on in the way intended. Plus, I think there were more overall mechanics. For example, there is one boss that is completely invisible and you have to hit her based on her footprints.

Level layout: One of my favorite things about this game is the way the different sections are interlinked. There is clearly one or two expected paths where the difficulty scales approximately with your character. However, you can pretty much go to any zone in the game from the starting hub if you chose, although they are typically guarded by a monster that serves as a gear/skill check to prevent you from entering areas that are too strong for you.

What’s amazing is that playing through the expected path, you will often go down a path or staircase and encounter an entrance to a zone that is too high level for you and get your ass handed to you by this gear check monster. Later on, after you’ve progressed on the expected path, you will find yourself in the high level zone and come across this same monster but from the opposite direction. It really causes you to go “ohhhhh, so that’s where this staircase always led!” All of the zones are so different feeling, but each is connected through real paths. This is different from Demon’s Souls, where each world was accessed through portals in a central hub. Having to actually walk to each place makes it feel that much cooler.

The Bad
Stupid narrow bridges: Unlike many games, Dark Souls has no concept of boundaries. If you walk off the edge you fall to your death. You have to pay attention when just running around, because you often have to cross narrow bridges or ledges, where pushing the control stick a little bit too hard results in death. I won’t say that it’s unfair, because everything is doable without dying. It’s just a huge pain in the ass and doesn’t really add anything to the game, especially when you have to travel over it dozens of times.

The Ugly
Targetting System: One of the annoying things about this game is how the targeting system works. You tap down on the right joystick to “target” a unit in front of you, which locks your camera onto it and prevents you from looking around. This is pretty crucial to keep an enemy in sight, particularly when they are jumping back and forth. The problem is that there is a maximum distance that you can lock on, so if the enemy jumps away or up high, it breaks the lock. Then you have to keep pressing down to relock, and sometimes it won’t lock onto the same enemy.

Camera: Most of the bosses in this game are big. Most are several times larger than your character. So when you hit them, you end up hitting their ankle. This means you are up in their face, and the camera gets blocked or clips through the boss/wall and you can’t see anything. Similarly, when you lock on you tend to lock on to to the center of their body, which is way to high to hit. So your camera is pointed up at them but you’re hitting much lower. In one fight, I spend most of the time just watching a boss’s feet and spanning this homing spell because the room was too small and I couldn’t see shit.

Overall
Play this game. Buy Demon’s Souls and play that first if you haven’t already. Both of these games are some of the best things to come out in recent years. If it’s too hard look up stuff to help you through it, but there is absolutely no reason to not finish it at least once.

Dragon Age 2

This game came out a year ago but I just finished it now, so here goes:

It’s like Dragon Age 1 except more boring, a worse story, a worse battle system, and worse characters. That basically sums up everything.

Story
You start the game running away from the Blight (a bunch of demons called Darkspawn) that has ravaged your homeland. Some tragedies happen and you somehow end up in a new city called Kirkwall, hoping to start a new life. Now in Dragon Age 1, you quickly learn from the start of the game that the Blight is coming, the world is in danger, and it’s your job to fight it. The evil force is clearly defined and constantly reinforced throughout every quest in the entire game. NPC’s constantly talk about the threat of Darkspawn. You fight hordes of Darkspawn at every corner. Even though there are unrelated side quests, you’re ultimate goal of stopping the Blight is always the main focus.

In DA2, the game is broken into 3 acts, each separated by multiple years. So what epic adventures do you encounter in DA2? Act 1 consists of you doing random jobs to make money so you can buy a nicer house for your mom and elevate your social status. I’m not even joking here. You literally get a bunch of letters of people asking you to help them collect goods, capture escaped criminals, retrieve an item in a cave, etc.

Act 2 begins after you’ve found some treasure and are now rich. Note that 1/3 of the game has passed (probably 10-20 hours of game play) and there still isn’t a clear, endgame goal or even any significant threats. The Blight (you know that thing that raped and pillaged your homeland) is never mentioned again and is apparently never going to reach Kirkwall. You still wander around doing unrelated fetch quests. The only real tension is some racism conflict between the humans and these stupid looking horned people called the Qunari. Eventually a revolt breaks out and lots of people die and you are tasked with settling the conflict and killing all the Qunari.


Who are you and why do I care?

Act 3 begins and now everyone refers to you as the “Champion” because you saved Kirkwall from the Qunari. There still isn’t a clear purpose to the game and nobody is really a true evil force you have to fight against. Once again, you wander around doing menial quests until another conflict between mages and templars breaks out and you’re forced to choose one side. Oh, by the way the head templar is possessed and wants to try and take control of the city. So you end up banding together and killing her. Game over…

How do you even put together this pile of crap? It’s not until Act 3 where the final boss is even introduced, and it turns out to just be some woman trying to use the revolt in Act 2 to cover her ascent to power. In Dragon Age 1, you’re fighting against an army of Darkspawn, led by a dragon, threatening to destroy the entire world and exterminate humanity. In DA2, you fight one corrupt woman yearning for political power, who just happens to be possessed by demons. Imagine Lord of the Rings where you learn about Sauron trying to take over Middle Earth. But then the book decides to ignore that and just talks about the steward in Gondor trying to unjustly take the throne.

There’s no impact or purpose to anything you do in DA2. In DA1, you travel across the world and make decisions that affect entire civilizations and cities of thousands. DA2 mostly involves individual people, and whether you should kill them or spare them. It completely lacks impact and purpose, and makes the entire game feel like a grind.

Characters
The characters in this game weren’t nearly as interesting as DA1. Anders is a whiny, annoying character who’s constantly asking for help and approval. Varric is just kind of annoying in general. Fenris and Carver are constantly just being asses. Merrill is constantly making mistakes and then being like “Oh! I didn’t mean for it to happen like this!” Isabela is only likable because she’s a selfish woman who wants to have sex all the time, but she’s really nothing more than a generic “I only care about myself but now I like you so I’ll come back and help!” The thing that was really good about Morrigan from DA1 is that even though she was a selfish woman, you also got to see her pragmatic, ends-justify-the means attitude which gave her more character. I think the only character I really liked in DA2 was Aveline. She tries to be a beacon of order, justic and discipline but ultimately she still falls in love with one of her guardsman and is reduced to being a shy, nervous girl. Her companion quests actually had character development to them, while everyone else’s companion quests were usually asking you to do some errand for them.


You’re all boring

Battle System
The battle system is pretty much the same as DA1, except for some unknown reason they actually increased the cooldowns of spells and reduced how many are available. Instead, now you just spam the X button to do auto-attacks while you wait for spells to cool down. For some reason, I prefer healing in Dragon Age as opposed to DPS or tanks. I think this is because I like managing my team with tactics and ensuring they all stay alive. So when I started DA2, I naturally went down the Spirit Healer path, thinking it might be similar to DA1.

The main strategy behind DA combat is similar to any MMO, where you have a tank, a healer, and some DPS. The tank draws aggro of all monsters, forcing them to attack them while the healer heals the tank and the DPS slowly kills everything. So I typically have one character who focuses solely on defense, one character solely focus on healing, and 2 characters focus solely on DPS. It’s generally better to highly specialize in one task, rather than build a bunch of balanced people. It’s basically exactly how you would setup a party in World of Warcraft or any other mmo.

The problem is there are only 2 true heal spells on long cooldowns, that heal a large percentage of health. In DA1, heals were weaker and on a much shorter cooldown, meaning you had to constantly spam them. In DA2, due to the lack of heals, they are not meant to be spammed but used only when a character is very low on health. It also means that characters don’t take nearly as much damage as they did in DA1. On normal trash mobs, I would kill everything before even needing to heal. So when I played my healer, I did nothing except spam X to autoattack, while waiting to heal a tank that never lost health. It got so boring that I just permanently switched to playing my rogue or mage, because it gave me more to do during the fights.

Now from a rogue or mage standpoint, the battle system is alright. Unfortunately, they failed big time by making the mana/stamina pools so small. As a mage, I would cast all my spells once and be out of mana, resorting to spamming X the rest of the fight. As a rogue, you literally don’t have enough spells to use, so they are always on cooldown and you’re stuck auto-attacking.


90% of my battles were just me staring at this ring

My guess is that they wanted to place more emphasis on the strategy of controlling all 4 characters, rather than just 1. I understand where they were going with this, but I think it’s a little too much for an RPG. Basically, when you open the radial menu to cast a spell, the entire game pauses. This let’s you slowly select and aim all your spells for optimal damage. I played on hard and some fights were literally impossible unless you controlled every action for all 4 characters. You would pause the game and assign an action for each character. Then immediately pause again to assign the next set of actions. It meant pausing every 1-2 seconds and while it did make it much more challenging and strategical, it became really tedious. Especially when you have to do this on trash mobs that you just want to pound your way through.

I think they needed to strike a better balance between the slow, menu driven combat of the radial menu and the fast, real-time combat where you just spam every spell and monsters die. I think there was a little too much emphasis on using the radial menu. The one really positive thing they added was the ability to set rally points for characters to run to. Nothing frustrated me more in DA1 than moving a ranged character far away, only to have the AI run them through fire to stand in front of the dragon. There was also 1 or 2 boss fights that were actually fun and reasonably well thought out (the elemental spirit in the Deep Roads).

Overall
I’m not even going to go into detail about the other problems with the game, like the constant copy/pasted level design, crashes, graphical bugs during dialogue, and other weird bugs like having to repeat the same dialogue scene multiple times. Overall this game just feels like BioWare had to pump out a sequel to DA1 before EA came knocking at their door. Everything about it just feels rushed and incomplete. While I won’t complain because I got it for only $20, it definitely doesn’t live up to such big names as Dragon Age or BioWare.

Life update – auto-immune disease, resolutions, video games, projects, and kitties

I’ve been meaning to write this since Christmas, but I kept putting it off, so it’s a little late.  Haven’t posted in a long time, so it’s going to be long! Here’s a table of contents, just in case… Topics aren’t in any special order.  Also I was writing the end in a rush so it’s not as comprehensive as I’d like…

Auto-immune disease
Resolutions
Video games
Projects
Kitties

Auto-immune disease – pemphigus foliaceus

After many, many doctor visits, I’ve learned that I have this random auto-immune disease called pemphigus foliaceus.  My immune system basically attacks my skin, so if I don’t take medicine, I get blisters all over.  It’s not curable, but it’s controllable.

In September, I noticed that I randomly started getting open wounds on my stomach.  At first I thought it was the kitties accidentally clawing me when they slept on me at night, but as I paid more attention I discovered that I actually had blisters for a short amount of time, before my clothes rubbing against them would pop them.  At the beginning they only appeared under my t-shirt line, so I thought I might be sensitive to our detergent or something, so we changed it and waited a few weeks but I still got the blisters.  Around Thanksgiving I started getting a rash on my face too, so I finally went to the doctor.

Multiple visits, blood tests, and biopsies later, the dermatologist told me I had pemphigus foliaceus.  Here’s a site with a pretty good description of it (it’s about the more severe version pemphigus vulgaris, but everything is basically the same except I don’t get sores in my mouth – yay, I guess): Pemphigus Vulgaris Network.

Basically right now I am taking a steroid medicine that has been toning down the blisters and rashes a lot.  When I went down to the lowest dose I still got some new blisters, so I’m on a medium dose right now.  I’ve been feeling some of the side effects, so it’s kind of messing me up a bit.  I haven’t been able to sleep a lot lately as it gives me a bit of insomnia.  The doctor said it may make me anxious – so far the only thing I’ve noticed is that on my regular drives to and from work, I sometimes start to feel like all the cars around me are narrowing in and boxing me in, and it freaks me out as I’m driving.  Every once in a while the lanes just feel really really narrow and I feel like every car is inches from me.  Also the medicine makes me gain weight :(  I have to watch what I eat as it makes me really hungry, and even though I’ve been watching what I’m eating I’ve gained 10 pounds in the month since I’ve started the medicine.

However the steroid medicine is bad for you long-term, so I’ve also started a new medicine that takes 6-8 weeks to take effect.  Hopefully this one is better – in essence it is turning down my immune system so that it doesn’t attack my body.  I’ve always had a weak immune system so now I have to be really careful to eat healthier.  I’ve been taking iron, calcium, and vitamin D supplements – I take 7 different pills in one day :(  It’s interesting though, because apparently I had slight anemia due to low iron, so I was always tired and feeling faint.  Lately, though, I’ve been feeling so much more awake and energetic – I never realized that how I usually felt wasn’t normal!  I get up easier, have a lot more motivation to get things done, and feel so productive every day now.  The only thing I’m not sure about is if it’s a result of my iron level being normal, or the steroid medicine – hopefully I am still as energetic (but with no insomnia!) after I get off the steroid medicine!

My dermatologist referred me to a dermatology auto-immune specialist at Stanford, so I will be seeing him soon just to confirm my normal dermatologist’s diagnosis and treatment.  I have never appreciated health insurance before this.  My dermatologist told me that before he referred me he had already pre-authorized the visit with my insurance, so I already know that it will mostly be covered.  All the doctors I’ve seen so far (urgent care, normal family doctor, dermatologist, hematologist) have been in the Palo Alto Medical Foundation‘s network, and I am really impressed by how high-tech and efficient everything is.  I gave my information once at the Sunnyvale center, and since then every time I go I just tell them my name and show my ID.  The Mountain View center has just about every type of doctor in one building, and even the labs are there, so after my doctor visits if I need to get blood tests I just walk down to the lab.  The doctors immediately send prescriptions to your pharmacy during your appointment, so as soon as I get home I can pick them up.  They’ve also got this awesome online system where I can see all my upcoming appointments, send messages to doctors, see the results of all my blood tests, see all my prescriptions… Everything is so high-tech in Silicon Valley!

Resolutions

These resolutions are late, and I haven’t really started, but putting them here will push me to follow them:

  1. Health
    1. Eat healthier – more vegetables and fruits
    2. Exercise three times a week – Tuesdays and Thursdays at work, Sundays at the apartment complex gym
    3. Get back down to my normal weight (110 pounds)
  2. Money
    1. Eat out less – try to bring lunch to work more often
    2. Control my random bursts of spending sprees
    3. Be more aware of how much of my money goes to what
  3. Work
    1. Learn more – delve deeper into the new things I’m using rather than only dealing with the minimum
    2. Be more aware of user experience – it’s fascinating!
    3. Collaborate more with other people – talk in person rather than IM if possible
    4. Speak up more with my thoughts and ideas
    5. Take useful classes that become available
  4. Projects
    1. Work on projects more consistently! Don’t just start them and forget about them for a few years
    2. Keep up with crafts projects
    3. Start more technical projects, especially related to web development
    4. Keep track of project progress, optimally here on Bacon Fried Rice
  5. Miscellaneous
    1. Be more productive, do chores more willingly, resist the urge to just lay on the couch and read articles on my phone
    2. Follow a weekday schedule so I don’t get lazy and do nothing when I can’t decide what to do. Tentatively:
      1. Monday: Video games! EDIT: and reading
      2. Tuesday: Crafts project (probably finishing my cross-stitch projects)
      3. Wednesday: Technical project (discussed later)
      4. Thursday: Do something with Jack (play games or do a project or something)
      5. Friday: Free choice

Video games

I’m still playing Arkham City right now.  I like it, and it’s usually the type of game I really like to play, but for some reason I just can’t really get myself to finish it.  I think it’s because it disturbs me.  The villains are terrible.  I want to just get it over with so I can finally play Assassin’s Creed Revelations.

Uncharted 3 was awesome, but kind of short.  Also the ending was very anti-climactic.

I got a DOTA2 key, so I started learning it and playing with Jack.  I suck though.  Also Jack apparently logged into my Steam account and gave away my two extra keys without telling me -__-

I need to find other games to play with Jack too, I can’t see myself being able to play multiple DOTA2 games in a row without getting bored… We played the Uncharted 3 local multiplayer but now that we finished it it doesn’t have much re-playability.

Projects

I’ve been neglecting my projects a lot.  I have two categories: crafts and technical.

In terms of crafts, I usually do them with a purpose (cards for people’s birthdays, holidays, etc.) so I guess it makes sense that I haven’t been keeping up with them.  However when I was going through my boxes of junk I discovered more than five very large cross-stitch projects that I’ve either started very little of or haven’t started at all.  I’ve decided I’m going to focus on those, so my Tuesdays are going to just be cross-stitching.  Right now I’m working on one of kitties in a window that I started for Jack two years ago – I wonder how long it will take me to finally finish it!

For technical projects, I’ve decided to pick up web development again.  I’ve always been interested – taught myself HTML from a book in fourth grade – but it kind of died off once I got into high school, and all of the programming I did in college wasn’t related at all.  However due to some of the stuff I’ve been doing at work my interest has been rekindled – I’m going to write about this in a separate post later so I won’t go into detail here.

Kitties

I’m in a rush and have to leave so I will just leave with a short note about the kitties.  They are still awesome, Jokulhaups is big and heavy and too smart.  He figured out how to open all the cabinets so now we have to Velcro them shut.  Dragon is so much tinier than Jokulhaups!  She loves to snuggle now, every morning she comes up to Jack and asks to be let under the covers.  She used to sleep on my pillow every night but I guess snuggling with Jack in the morning was warmer :(  She loves sitting with me when I’m at the computer though, so I guess that makes up for it.  Here are two kitty photos before I go:

Jokulhaups would like a belly rub please

Dragon says Mini Panda is snuggly and warm

The Witcher 2

There are so many good things about The Witcher 2 that end up getting brushed aside due to stupid quirks with the interface or controls. I would say story wise and entertainment wise, it was as good as Dragon Age 1. That is saying a lot, because Dragon Age was the kind of game where I stayed up past 3-4am playing sometimes.

Quests are fun. Story is solid and engaging. There are 2 unique storyline paths and lots of twists and turns. The world is pretty, graphics are OK, and dialogue is fine. It’s an “Adult game” so apparently it needs to have an excess of sex scenes. Everything about this game is top notch, except for some glaringly bad interface problems.

Looting Items
When you want to loot the corpse of the monster you just killed, you have to go up to the remains and left click. Unfortunately, left click is also the button that swings your sword and if you are not exactly over the body, instead of looting you make a lunging sword slash, moving you out of range to loot. If you play this game, I can guarantee this will frustrate you throughout the entire game.

When you loot, it pops up a window of all the items. Unfortunately, it pops up the window in a static location, not under your mouse. You then have to move your mouse to the window and click to collect all the items. Back in the old days of WoW, you had this stupid looting system as well where you had to make additional clicks to loot specific items from the corpse. People got so frustrated by it that they invented mods that would automatically position the loot window to appear under your mouse cursor. Then Blizzard finally invented an option for auto-loot, where you automatically collect everything assuming your inventory isn’t full. This is a change that is absolutely necessary in any game where you loot the corpses of enemies. At the very least, you need to allow a 1 click thing to loot all and not require the user to move your mouse to the small “Loot All” button every time.

Menus and Inventory
This game has possibly the worst inventory screen of all time. When buying new equipment, it’s impossible to compare it to what you are already wearing, so you don’t know whether what you’re buying is better. You can’t sort items, so by the end of the game you have hundreds of crafting items in a random list and you have to manually scroll through it to find the 1 leather piece to finish your armor.

Equipment and crafting diagrams often have long lists of stats or information, which does not fit on the screen. You can’t manually scroll through and read this though. The information slowly scrolls and you have to wait for to get to the part you want to read, like the old scrolling TV Guide channel.

Meditation
The game is strongly based around taking potions before combat to temporarily increase your stats. In order to do this, you have to “meditate” and then drink potions, which involves two painfully long animations of Geralt first kneeling on the floor, slowly drinking a potion, then cracking his neck due to the toxicity. It’s probably 30-45 seconds of wasted time. All of this can only happen out of combat, so there is no reason to require this mechanic. You should be able to set some hotkeys or at least just click on things to instantly drink potions. It’s just plain stupid.

Combat System
I played on Hard (they had easy, normal, hard, and some super hard adjective I forget). I did that because I expect that most games nowadays have dumbed down normal modes to accommodate baddies, and I expect their super hard is probably geared towards Witcher enthusiasts that probably have already played through it once. Hard seemed like it would give a good challenge while not being stupidly unfair.

Initially, the game has some really hard sections. The Kayran, the game’s first boss fight, is incredibly difficult. You can only take 2 hits before dying, and there is no healing. It probably took me 20 tries just to get into phase 2 and then another 10 tries to figure out what the heck you’re supposed to do in phase 2. Unfortunately, after that fight, the game starts to become kind of easy.

There are a bunch of fights where you are with allies. You can always trick the game AI into only attacking your allies (who are invincible by the way) and you just come behind and slash at them, with no risk. After a while, you just start spamming left click to whack down enemies as fast as possible. There’s some magic spells which are marginally useful, but since I did sword specialization I stopped using them except for the one that gave me a shield.

Anyway, the game is solid and definitely worth playing. If they fixed up the interface problems, it would be one of the best games I’ve ever played.

E3 2011

Here’s my take on Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

Sony
http://www.examiner.com/handheld-games-in-national/e3-2011-sony-press-conference-summary
Their game reveals were somewhat boring. I guess Uncharted 3 will probably be ok, but I got really bored of annoying cover based shooting where the game can’t differentiate between rolling and sticking your ass to the wall. I would consider picking up the God of War HD remake because I’ve always wanted to play that but didn’t want to bother with getting PS2 out. Otherwise, the rest of the games looked stupid.

The PSVita is probably the one thing that saved this from being an utter failure. There is probably a 0% chance of me buying it, but the $250 price point is amazing. When I first saw that Sony’s Next Gen Portable would have 2 touchscreens and all this other hardware, I was thinking “How expensive will this thing be?” Is this going to be like an ipad and be $500+? It really blew me away that Sony was able to release this at $250.

When I saw the Uncharted demo running on PSVita, I basically just laughed. There are 2 methods of control when climbing walls. You can use the control pads to actually navigate the handholds and make jumps. Or you can be pro and just tap on the screen where you want to go and Drake will automatically climb the wall and reach that point. Tap on another building and he will automatically run and jump across. I’m waiting for the day they just make it you tap on the enemy and Drake automatically shoots and kills him.

Nintendo
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/220069/e3-nintendos-press-conference-the-roundup/

They announced a bunch of games that have been coming out like clockwork for the past 20 years. It always confuses me when people get excited about another Mario remake or another Zelda remake, particularly 3DS remakes which offer nothing new. You definitely need MORE Mario Kart versions that are all identical.

But really, all Nintendo had was the Wii U, their new console. So the selling point is that the controller has an inbuilt 6″ touch screen that can be streamed an image from the console. They then showed a bunch of concept videos of how you could use this touch screen to enhance your game experience.

There are 2 things I think this touchscreen could be useful for. The first is displaying HUD and additional game info, so that you can have a completely uncluttered screen on your TV. I guess that is kind of useful. The second thing is that it allows you to have more buttons, meaning you can have more complex interfaces. Instead of having to scroll through lists of abilities and such, you can just instantly press them. But I guess having a controller bigger than the original Xbox controller affords you the space to do that.

However, Nintendo seems to think this touchscreen shit is going to revolutionize how you play games. One of their selling points was that since it streams the game to the touchscreen, you don’t even need the TV to play. OH REALLY? Because I’m going to buy a full sized HD console and instead play on a shitty 6″ screen. Get a fucking PSVita and you can play on a tiny screen except also take it outside your living room.

Another selling point was that one person could play on the touch screen and other people could play on the TV. Then the touchscreen player would have a different role than the TV players. How is this any different from just a normal split screen, other than screen looking? It won’t matter for any online game because everyone gets their own screen anyway. It’s a party game gimmick. They should just bundle the Wii U with a free TV and they’d get the same result, except better.

All the unique control schemes and motion control is a big gimmick that doesn’t make games better. I don’t want to have to swipe the touchpad to shoot ninja stars. I don’t want to have to lift the controller and look “through” the touchscreen when I zoom in on a sniper rifle. I don’t want to have to wave it around to block fireballs being thrown at me. I’m calling it now that in the new Zelda game, you will come across some locked door with a puzzle on it. They will make you do some stupid minigame on the touchpad like outlining some secret shape in order to unlock the door. Those are gimmicky party game mechanics that don’t add anything to the game besides the fact that you have to perform some arbitrary action.

However, I’m sure it will outsell everything else because people have boners for touchscreens.

Microsoft
http://www.wpcentral.com/microsoft-s-e3-2011-keynote-summary

I briefly watched it and it had so much Kinect BS in it I stopped. Kinect is the king of stupid gimmicks.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Game is legit.



It’s been a long time since I’ve played a good RPG where I’ve really felt good about the story. I was playing Eternal Sonata but the gamewas so unbelievably boring I sort of put that aside. FF13 was such a huge waste of potential that I can’t see anything but that. Dragon Age, despite how much I liked the gameplay, had a voiceless main character and overly serious storyline. You can’t actually beat Demon’s Souls, you just do a little better each time. Thinking back, the last time I really enjoyed an RPG’s story was FF9 back in like 2004.

The storyline for Star Ocean is solid and well put together. There’s enough twist and turns to surprise you, and important characters actually die. I have two pet peeves when it comes to people dying. Too many people sacrificing their lives and it starts to lose meaning (I’m looking at you Gurren Lagann). Nobody dying makes it seem meaningless and trivial. Star Ocean hits that magic number where all the deaths really feel like sacrifices.

Besides that, they really have a lot of character development. There are dozens of cutscenes where party members are just dicking around or doing stupid stuff. It develops their personalities so much more and makes them all more likable. Edge sort of grew on me after I got past his ridiculous name. The Edge/Reimi relationship was very touching, because they spent so much effort developing the tiny details that go on between them. Amazingly, I found Lymie to be absolutely adorable. It’s weird, because I normally hate little girl characters in anime. But for some reason, Lymie really struck a chord with me.



Animation and effects are top notch. It’s not FF13 1080p brilliance, but the backgrounds are crisp, battle animations are flashy and elaborate, and everything just looks nice.

The battle system is well designed. The blindside mechanic is interesting and the chain combos are neatly designed and flow naturally. Star Ocean allows 4 members in your active party, and I’m convinced that 4 or greater is the ideal number of party members in an RPG. Anything less and there isn’t enough action going on at once to keep my attention. It also allows you to switch between any 4 of those members and control them, while the AI controls the other 3. Looking back, I realized it is extremely similar to Dragon Age, which may be why I enjoyed it so much.



The number one thing that pisses me off is how I can’t customize what my AI party members do. All you can choose between is “Attack with MP, attack without MP, focus fire on 1 target, or do nothing”. Where is my system of commands to customize actions based on number of enemies, health, mana, etc. Half the time, I find my AI friends wasting mana on spells like silence when the last enemy is 1 hit away from dying. Or they’ll be shooting fireballs while 3/4 of the party is dead. Seriously, any game that has AI controlled needs to implement a system where you can customize their actions. FF12 and Dragon Age got the system right. Never deviate from it.

Secondly, the actual attacking in the game is kind of counter-intuitive. You have attacks that pop enemies up into the air, similar to FF13. However, while they are in the air, none of my attacks can hit them. I’d find myself chain combing an enemy, only to have my AI friends pop him into the air so I miss my finishing move. It completely baffles me how a blatant game flaw like this slips into the final product.

Finally, they really need to cut back on the cut scenes. In order to play this game, you have to devote at minimum 2 hour chunks. 1 hour to get from save point to save point, and another hour to watch the cut scene that happens when you reach that save point. It’s just mind blowing how long some of these things are.

Overall, this game is amazing. I got around 40 hours of gameplay for just the main storyline. There are a ridiculous number of mini quests and fetch quests from dozens of NPCs in towns, as well as a few bonus dungeons/bosses to go through. I could easily get another 10-20 hours out of this game, which I may inevitably decide to do. Given that it’s only $30 now, this game is a must buy.