Tag Archives: Skyrim

My boiling point

Yup, I have one and the Guardian pushed my button. We all have buttons that can be pushed. If you sing “It’s a cruel Summer, leaving me, leaving me here on my own” really off key to Summer Mcintosh there is a chance she’ll blow a gasket too (it is based on classical music by Ace of Base, 1992). Some dislike the limelight, others (like me) have other buttons. And there is the start for today. The article by Rupert Neate a wealth correspondent (whatever that is) is by their own submission a reporter on covering the super rich and inequality, again whatever the hell that is. But let’s look at that article (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/may/29/2-tax-uk-rich-list-families-raise-22bn-year-reform-inequality) where he starts by hiding behind ‘could’ making him some clueless labor tool. The text “A modest wealth tax on the richest 350 families in the UK could raise more than £20bn a year – enough to fund the construction of 145,000 new affordable homes a year – according to research by fairer taxation campaigners” and there is the emotional useless stage. ‘Constructing 145,000 new affordable homes a year’ We will not get the equations there. We do not get locality because that pricing leaves London far outside of the scope. No his goal is limelight, to hide behind ‘could’ and emotions. Then we get “A 2% tax on assets above £10m held by all members of the Sunday Times rich list could raise as much as £22bn, according to analysis by Tax Justice UK, the Economic Change Unit and the New Economics Foundation (NEF).” And still we get no equations or justification on these numbers. We get another emotional ‘tax the rich’ by an emotional tool. And he merely ‘emotionally validates’ some Sunday Times list without justification. 

You see, lets take a look at the Guardian from June 2017 where we were given (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/21/battersea-power-station-affordable-homes-almost-halved-by-developer ) ’Battersea Power Station developer slashes number of affordable homes’, there we see how Malaysian investors slashed 40% of the agreed affordable homes. How did that end? Nothing (and nowhere), you useless tool! Where is the prosecution of exploiting foreign investors? Where are your values there?  In my personal opinion Rupert Neate needs to buy a lollie, sit in a corner, suck on that and shut the fuck up (pardon my language). 

It is always labour minded idiots that are heralding ‘inequality’ and that is a larger problem. I am not against PROPER taxation, but these people according to taxation law paid their fair share and then some. You see in 2022 according to one source “629,000 people paid the additional rate of income tax is 45%, and is paid on earnings above £125,140 a year”, so these people already are in the 45% bracket (don’t worry I have a solution). They have paid their fair share, yet there is another matter. I am not blind to certain levels of inequality. You see fair taxation is also needed on corporations, Apple didn’t become a trillion dollar industry because of their devices. Their tax write offs are unheard of and that had to change decades ago. I wish them all their profits, yet there should be taxation. Retail Gazette gives us ‘UK Apple stores paid less than £800,000 tax despite £971.5m of sales’ did that useless wealth correspondent look at that part? And they are merely one of dozens of companies that are legally stretching the lines of taxation laws. Then we are given “Those on the rich list include the prime minister Rishi Sunak and wife Akshata Murty at number 275 out of 350, with £529m, and the 32-year-old Duke of Westminster, with £9.9bn, at number 11.” And that might be true, so did they pay their taxation? It seems Apple didn’t. And that list grows, whilst the useless people are focussed on people who paid their dues according to tax laws. You see, there is another income stream. We get so much emotional garbage from magazines and newspapers that they should LOSE their 0% VAT setting, we can set that to 6% or 10%, there is your income right there. If you cannot properly report the news, you should be taxed. You forgot about the mirror image you see when you get up in the morning. So I give you another income source. If you cannot properly do your job, you get to be taxed as well.

Issue solved!

You see, if we are to believe the HMRC, six hundred and twenty nine thousand people pay their fair share and then some. So this rich list is utter BS, I say we tax the media, lets see how long they can play games whilst letting some useless wealth correspondent continue their ‘labor’ needs. Yes, this is personal, but we see this come again and again whilst no one is doing anything about tax laws or exploiting investors. Why not? It seems that the Guardian has a few fences to mend and I suggest that they hop to it, I reckon that they could spring that 10% VAT bill, but there is a chance that they will cry like little bitches, just like they did when the Leveson report was released. 

So, they pressed my button and this was my response. So, have a nice day whilst I kill a few people in Skyrim with a bow (we all unwind in our own way), they will never know what hit them.

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The anger within

I saw a headline on BBC (see below) I wondered what it was about and I got angry, this happens and it will happen to us all. 

The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64572328) gives us a view. In this case on a person who might call himself a reporter, yet as I personally see him, a mere political hack without a future. To get there we need to look at a few parts. The first one is that we see the mention of Hogwarts Legacy, but the ENTIRE article does not mention Avalanche software once, not once and I have an issue with this. You see hacks mention one thing and then talk about something else entirely. That happens here. As I personally see it Hogwarts Legacy is a clear labour of love. It is what happens when the art people are in charge and not the business people.

We are then given “The Guardian’s games editor Keza MacDonald wasn’t as enthusiastic as some, writing: “Hogwarts Legacy derives its magic from its setting, not from its game design, which is competent but unspectacular.”” OK, a person has an opinion and whatever this is is an opinion, I do not agree. The game is close to spectacular, it is HUGE and Hogwarts is HUGE. The game design is amazing, not entirely unique but amazing. That is my view and to add that I have had one glitch since I started playing it over 20 hours ago is evidence on how good the game is in its architectural way. The one glitch is not really part of anything, but honesty needs me to point that out and I merely found one glitch. I also found something amazing (see down the story). The additional issue is shown with “Travis Northup, reviewing for IGN, wrote: “Its open-world adventure captures all the excitement and wonder of the Wizarding World with its memorable new characters, challenging and nuanced combat, and a wonderfully executed Hogwarts student fantasy that kept me glued to my controller for dozens of hours.”” I agree with Travis on the game. I personally give the game a 92% rating (the glitch brought it down a little).

The beauty
The beauty is seen when I played the game a second time. The first I only got to the place where I can make my own potions (avoiding spoilers). I wanted to see how I did as I replayed it and I did better, but I also learned two additional things. The first was one mission it got handed to me in two DIFFERENT ways. The first time as a Ravenclaw via Olivanders and a different stage of finding things, the second time as a Hufflepuff via a painting that gave me another location and it also came with a short visit to Azkaban, and another location, they ended in the same place and of course that part was the same, but it shows the beauty of Hogwarts Legacy, I can only hope that we get two additional ways to get to this part. The second part is experienced as the gear has a different impact on the player, the second time my offensive skills were a lot higher (with the same gear) than the first time where my defensive skills were a lot higher. I cannot tell at present whether this is intentional, or if there is a random part in play. But the effect is awesome. My Ravenclaw character needs a different approach than my Hufflepuff character does and that makes for a great game. There is no mention of that anywhere. Optionally there is no real blame, but that does not make Steffan Powell any less of a hack. This game is awesome and the mention of “I think, 20 years after the books came out, the world is in a different paradigm now – where it’s not really JK Rowling’s any more. It’s the community’s instead” angered me. The wizarding world is the IP of JK Rowling and Steffan better get a grip on his stupidity. We are guests in the world of JK Rowling. I do not care about her personal views (I never did) and I do not know what exactly her views are because the media alters and edits to its own need for digital dollars. Avalanche used that IP and created a new view that is unique and even as it is linked to JK, there is every chance that this will continue, whether it is only in games is unknown to me at present. I have seen all the hate and all the BS, yet the reality is that this game became a massive hit and will most likely rule the award ceremonies all over the world until march 2024. Avalanche did an amazing job, but the BBC (the people who rehired a person that is seen as allegedly guilty of killing the former princess of Wales) is all about the next political setting via hacks (as I personally see it). This game is too good for that BS approach. There is also a mention of repetitiveness and that is not entirely false, but it tends to be the issue with a lot of RPG games. The previous part shows just how beautiful. This game is and I am playing the game, not racing the game. In 15 hours I got to 20% of quests and 4% of exploration, so this game is huge, no doubt about it and I look forward to seeing a lot more. 

I do not care about Eva Echo and her agenda, I am playing a game by Avalanche. On the other side, I am not really willing to go against her. She has her views, her opinions and I have mine. We are from different worlds, our worlds do not overlap and they do not need to, as such I will not go against her either. That is as simple as I can make it, but any political hack using a great game for his infantile needs get the not so nice side of me and in this so does his editor (Blathnaid Healy). We can point fingers all we like, but someone approved this article. I also have optional issues with Sebastian Croft, not the person perse, but he is mentioned as ‘distancing himself’, perhaps for very valid reasons, my issue is that the article does not clearly bring this out, merely a link to the tweet which had limitations on characters used. But the BBC knew that upfront, did they not? 

What you as a GAMER need to know is that this game is a lot better than most claim, it has a few issues that any RPG will have (even Skyrim) and the art is beyond believe. Yes there are limits to the enemies yet I have seen over half a dozen in the first 10 hours and in real life all enemies are human, as such the game gives us more. Now, there will be valid reasons why people do not like RPG games (they might like GTA more), there are people who do not like the Wizarding world, all fair enough, but lets keep gaming to gaming and not some BS approach to appease political hacks. 

I have seen too much hatred over the last 6 months on this alone to accept the BS settings especially from someone like the BBC. It angered me a lot more than I am happy about. A game as good as this one does not deserve this usage.

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When the pool is too deep

Twi days ago I wrote Brain switch, it was me on a joyride through my brain as I was reengineering  IP over and over and it went faster and faster. I got a handle on it by playing Hogwart Legacy. You see gaming is more than an escape for me. It is a passion that allows me to take my mind away from things and that is at times a good thing. It allowed my subconscious to work on Engonos, the story of the grandson of Hades. Weirdly enough I was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Or better stated, he gave me the idea to take a trip to the right. In part I was already doing s in another way, but I suddenly realised that I could enhance one character to get a lot more out of the whole. It is in part a little bit of a drag. You see, I can go memento on that character to keep the story in line and not give away too much, but that too has its advantages and drawbacks. The advantage is that two characters are drawn into the story, one makes sense already, the other one does not on the surface of things, but in Olympian lore it does. As such I tend towards that part of the solution, even though one of them already has a larger role to play and I set that in motion. Now that these roles are staged and partially set, I need to build the background stories for all involved. As such the memento approach, the other one is a historic jump, it seems cleaner, but it opens up too much mesh. A combination has benefits, but at that point I need to be cautious how I approach the matter and I need to script some elements, but that is not a problem. One lesson I learned a long time ago, when a problem is too big, chip it into smaller manageable pieces. That was all good and fine, but that suddenly gave me a few more ideas towards some RPG designs I was entertaining, to be made freely available for exclusive Amazon Luna materials.

I get that this does not make sense, but the reason is simple. Microsoft made valid steps in gaming, we might not like them, but they did what any corporation did, set yourself apart. Yet they did so by buying Bethesda and making parts exclusive to the Xbox. This is a valid, but unappealing approach. This setting changed when Avalanche launched Hogwarts legacy and they set the bar way higher than Skyrim ever was, making it a problem for Microsoft. You see if Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 are on par with Hogwart Legacy, Microsoft loses a lot more than they bargained for. Now if I can add to that pain by giving Amazon Luna developers a sight to more software that is close to on par with Microsoft (not an easy task) they will feel even more pain and that is what I had been after. I expected this to be a lot harder, but Avalanche gave me a trump card, they surpassed Bethesda (what they had up to now), this is not unexpected because Skyrim is 11 years old. Yet it makes my work a little easier. The RPG has storylines, it has a balanced economic system and it has evolution, I only need to set a new stage that has a new kind of nemesis system. Not some copy of Shadow of Mordor, but something new, something we haven’t seen before. I want to counter grinding to some extent. I have one side which is a much larger map, the other side is a new kind of adversarial system and I want to add to that. But it needs to enhance what is, not replace what could be. This is hard to explain for now, but it is in the works, in the meantime, those thoughts are helping me to give larger rise to Engonos, which was what I had in mind all along. Cogs within cogs, not the most elegant of explanations, but it will do for now.

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Wands, Witches and Wizards

To get to the good stuff, that yummie chocolaty centre we need to make a small detour and it matters.

Prelude
I have been a huge Skyrim fan. I bought the game on 11/11/11 and to the best of my knowledge it is pretty much the best RPG ever seen. I played it on Xbox360, Playstation 3, then the Legendary edition on PS4 and Xbox One and the Anniversary version on PS5. The game is close to perfect. This matters because it took someone 11 years to get there and surpass it. Avalanche got there and had room to spare. They upped the bar for quality gaming by a lot. 

Start
The previous part is important. This is not a Harry Potter game, it is an open world RPG with a wizarding world theme and they did one hell of a job. As stated it plays a century before the boy who lived came into the picture and what was done is as close to perfect as I have ever seen it. I am not fussed about the 1-2 second delays with some of exit parts of Hogwarts, it is a lot better then anything else and this matters. So far I played 10 hours and I got 4% done. This game is huge, the castle is huge and you will get lost there, but there are options (censoring spoilers). The world outside of Hogwarts is huge, optionally larger than Skyrim, but it is not a comparison, Hogwarts is so large it will strike you in many ways. I started as a Ravenclaw student (I like blue), but I already know that I will play the game three more times to see everything, Gryffindor most likely last. What does matter is that you will recognise parts and classrooms as you saw them in the movies, but that feeling of discovery does not wane and it merely improves and gets larger as you see more and more. Weirdly enough I lost my life three times and got to redo the fight. The game is invigorating and it leaves you with a sense of accomplishment as you progress. The game has puzzles, some are simple, some are devilishly evil and never boring. This game is for anyone who loves RPG and even more for those who love the (Harry Potter) wizarding world. 

You will see things, you will seek things and you will wonder and try to figure things out. The game is truly a step forward and I was speechless more than once. The important thing to realise is that I did not play it in 4K, I do not own a 4K TV and even then the game overwhelms. So, I reckon that once I have one of those puppies, this game will overwhelm even more. 

No matter how you slice it Avalanche software created something we all hope for and we never got it. Well, this time around this player (Avalanche) delivered. Avalanche created a new level gameplay so close to perfection, you are in for a treat. Any hater of this game is as I personally see it simple and stupid. People who dislike RPG’s might not go for this, but I urge them to try (if possible), If you disliked the Harry Potter movies, this game as an RPG is still fulfilling in several ways. This is definitely one of those must buy titles. But I do get that those who dislike RPG and Harry Potter will not go for it, but that should not make them haters, merely a gamer with other interests. 

Consequence
There is a consequence and it is for Bethesda and Microsoft. You see Avalanche has raised the bar after 11 years. Skyrim was the game everyone compared to and that is now no longer the case. It makes sense because it took 11 years to improve on it and Avalanche does pull that off. Yet for Bethesda and Microsoft it becomes a new issue. Starfield (which looks AWESOME) and whatever Elder Scrolls title comes next needs to be a lot better then this and that is a massively tall order. You cannot put them next to one another, but there will be comparisons and if these two RPG games fall flat next to Hogwarts Legacy their goose is pretty much cooked. I did not know what to expect but a game this good is a little overwhelming and possibly the other two titles will be better, but I have to say, it will be a herculean task for Bethesda. Avalanche the next generation of RPG that is never to be underestimated. 

Hogwarts Legacy is not merely a Harry Potter game, it is an open world RPG that will knock your socks off, that latter part I did not see coming. Well done Avalanche! And I would not be surprised if WB will turn this game into a TV series, the storyline is that good as are the locations (many we never saw in the movies). I reckon it will be a few months that WB will turn this 200 hour game (estimated) in a series with several seasons, but that is sheer speculation from my side.

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Equational parts

Today might take a moment. You see I was getting ready to write something else when my brain started to shout in my head. The phrase was ‘shifting sands’. I am uncertain what started that, but when the brain shouts, I tend to listen. I had to look it up as it was kinda familiar but the exact meaning wasn’t clear. The dictionary gave me “used in reference to something that is constantly changing, especially unpredictably” that did not completely helped me, yet a thought was getting hold there. You see, I offered part of my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And even as Amazon and Google decided to ignore the option, I saw the IP for what it was, a stage to something larger and the three elements that it did cover was a lot bigger then the sum of the individual parts, as such I thought I was sitting pretty, even  though I am not great at waiting. So as I was contemplating the individual parts, I suddenly realised that there are additional stages that interact. As such we get “used in reference to elements or parts that are constantly changing towards the engine that supports them, predictable or not” and if I am correct (still uncertain) then the IP picks up a few billion in value. Now, at this point I do not completely care about its total value, but the 20 year sales commission will take a leap forward. So let me try to explain it without compromising the IP. You have a game for example Skyrim, this came has locations and this game has clothing. You can see both as cosmetic parts, but when they become elements of the game they change application. For example cold Skyrim relies on warm clothing, we have (almost) never been been exposed to these elements, but what when that changes? What happens when the bad weather picks up? How useful will a bow be? All elements Skyrim ignored, but what if that is not the case? So what happens when you are dressed for Skyrim and you end up in a place like Valenwood? Now, you can see that when you are in a game like Elder Scrolls or Fallout. But what happens when we go into a game like Diablo? Or even more contextual, I saw today that someone is making Impossible Mission 3, a game franchise that flourished on the CBM64, so some people are picking up the ideas I had and they are evolving them. So what happens when we take the simple game below and make the terminals more interactive and more important, what happens when we do not have limited time, but limited access because elements are still unfound? 

Have you thought of that? I reckon Google did not and neither did Amazon, and no one cares what Microsoft thinks, but Apple remains an option. Now take THAT idea and add the game ‘V’. There on the CBM64, we merely ran from place to place and we were content, but what happens when we add the mini game of Impossible Mission to that game (or the other way round)? 

I had some thoughts in that direction in the past, but I never contemplated a larger stage but when the system is accepted by Saudi Arabia the larger stages become debatable and they become elements of discussion. They are not games, but the same setting applies. The shifting sands elements allow me to grow system one with system two and we get a much larger system 3. Systems like Facebook sort of gave it to you, but they basically added to the junk you had and called it novelty or ‘expanded opportunity’, but we could see that it was merely more for THEM. Yet when these systems are (partially) in YOUR control and you get to decide whether you want system two to enlarge system one? We get a form of system individuality, like a system SHOULD have been all along and that is at the back of my mind (without giving the IP away), as such we could optionally see that the application of shifting sands to a user system will make it truly user friendly, now consider that we add security like WE want it to be, whatever it is. Now we have a new setting, well optionally a new setting but these systems are up to US, like they should have been all along. I just never contemplated it because I was thinking like an American as the expression goes and now I see that more is possible, but the application is a new one, and it is not free of challenges. You see, how can we evolve a closed system? It has to be closed as there is too much cybercrime and cyber theft. There is not a way to make it zero, but we can make it so that only the top tier hackers might get away with it. So whomever the 80 people are that the NAB hires (see previous article), they are all about stopping hackers, whilst the access levels were the ones that required scrutiny. Should you doubt that then consider the news that we got merely an hour ago ‘Major crypto trader Wintermute hit by $160 million hack: CEO’, there we are being told “Decentralised finance platforms and software, which aim to provide crypto-based financial services without traditional gatekeepers such as banks, have been targeted by numerous heists in recent years. The sector is little-regulated and victims of crime rarely have recourse” yes, because hackers really take notice of rules and laws and a bank vault that is open is one they can access, and there is a reason that banks use traditional gatekeepers (pointless or not), the larger stage is that open systems are done for (like Microsoft) a new setting is required and that is what I figured out. I am certain that others have too, but the greed of Fintech is stopping them and as such they lose small amounts like $160,000,000 such is life. And as such the world turns, so congrats you hackers on getting enough to pay next year rent, but at some point Fintech will grow up (or they go out of business). It is merely a matter of time which of the two becomes the winner. 

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First tally of thoughts

After yesterday’s article, I started to make a tally of what the game ‘has’. In the first there was the article ‘Recap to the intro’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/25/recap-to-the-intro/) which had a run down of a lot. But that rundown was not enough. There was the search ‘Lawlordtobe + RPG’ which gave me a lot more of what I wrote (and weirdly enough at least one story I forgot about). The basics are covered. In the basics there is the map, the character and the story. In the deeper run, the map is also covering the environment, the economy and the map itself (which is an environment, challenges and spiking of the map).

Spiking
Spiking is an early term I had. Like in places like Skyrim and Oblivion, there is a lack of caves, ruins and other places. So we spike the map to have these places. Yet the maps to some degree have an approach to caves (and some look really good) but as I personally see them unnatural. There are two problems with my train of thought. Caves are set in stone (literally so), as such they are part of the permanent map. Some places have way too many ruins and these ruins are a weird  form of small. But the idea of some ruins are a good thing, yet how to employ them? 

Brush and thickets, Fallen trees, Hollow trees, Evergreen trees, Rock formations, Rock overhangs, Caves, Low landforms and high landforms. Some are for single opponents, some are for groups. Ruins are a side here. They tend to be a good place for groups. But the setting needs to be natural (or as close as natural as possible). If there is a ruin, there was a reason that the building was there before it was a ruin. And not always is it a castle or a keep. But spiking is a dangerous setting. There is a danger of making it a place of convenience, and that is dangerous for the game. 

As we look into the economy I saw the dangers of ‘loot’ in the game. In some game we enter an old (really old) place, but it has the most modern of ‘loot’. So we redefine what loot is. broken swords, daggers, broken shields, old coins, chains. Elements that can be reforged into metals, old coins (copper, silver, gold) that can be set into metals. Yes there will be chests with actual new(er) stuff. Like groups of brigands, they have bounty, they have conquered stuff (that needs liberating). It will not be about wealth. In one RPG I had 300K, so in what living form of delusional would an adventurer have this much money? Too many RPG seem to value credits as an indication of achievement. That too needs to change. 

I took examples from classical masters, from stories (the non-Robin Hood kind) and from historical events, but they need to evolve in RPG gaming. In the economy that side is merely a cog, but a cog that could evolve. Yet the station of evolution is a larger problem that I have not solved yet. I did like the nemesis system that we see in the Shadow of Mordor, but that was THEIR system, I need a similar but different system. This is to stop grinding, the stage where there will be spawning (one man’s ruin) is the next persons envy. But if the previous group was defeated, the next group will have better defences, and optionally one or two more brigands. There are shelters for singular people and those people are sly a lot more like cutthroats, so no warning. All sides we see very little of in current RPG’s. All sides that are new in the RPG.

Stories
I gave more than one story start and that is central in any RPG, yet there is also the additional stage. You see there is no stage where we can do it all, play it all, live it all (the latter is a matter of debate). But the stories cannot be around you, around the player. The main quests yes, but the side quests need a larger setting than we are used to. There is a side that takes me back to Robert Ludlum’s Scarlatti Inheritance (I think), a local village event and a burial that is part of the story. So to set a side quest needs the seeding of a story all by itself that has several connections. There needs to be an intelligent part in this, so that stories can be written en mass and spread in the game, so that some side quests are not part of every game (another way to prevent grinding) and there we see that we need 50-150 side quests. That can intervene to a larger degree to the character that you play at that time. So far we see the foundation of an RPG that can be played on console or streamer. 

Then we get to the cogs of the economy, I spoke about them but I considered one additional set of cogs for each part. About that in the next story which will happen during my weekend.

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Changing the setting

To get to here, some need to read up. In the first there is ‘Recap to the intro’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/25/recap-to-the-intro/) which was written on September 25th. There was another story, but you will stumble upon it. You see my mind was remembering both Oblivion and Skyrim. So what happens when the unique items are not in the same place? What happens when we add a new layer of non-predictability? What happens when some treasures are part of the story of a book? So when we add a level of books named ‘First editions’ what else can we find? More importantly, these books are not in the same place. They are either in ‘important’ (read: expensive) houses, treasured items of a book store and in some book cases. More important what happens when these 20 or so books are scattered over the locations with EVERY new game? More important, what happens when two gamers get a different first game. Consider all the news that will stage the media, will stage the personal social media. Titles like ‘The bookshop at X had book titled Y’ will stage the larger stage. Because an RPG is about adventure and learning new things. And that is staged on what we experience, but help pages do not teach, it makes sheep out of gamers. So changing on how a unique weapon is gained becomes a test again. More importantly when every generation in the RPG has minimum achievements, the game changes by a fair bit. And that is what we need, new game changers, new games and more RPG, preferably RPG we had not seen before. In all this the storyteller becomes more important and the game becomes more engaging. 

But that is only one side of the story. You see, the larger station of to prevent predictability. It is hard, especially for me as I tend to take a shine to symmetry. So how do we change that?

We can alter the bad guys we face, not merely one ‘boss’ at the end, but a mix of simple and veterans throughout the location with a boss at the end, but what is the end? In a cave it might be the end, in a tower it might be on the highest point and in some cases, it could be in the beginning. Then there is the faded response we saw in other games to stealth players. I can guarantee you that when a body is found, or when too many people are missing, the rest will not relax and that was missing in too many stealth games. And you can hide the corpses, but in the end if you are in a house with 9 others and when you only see 2, you will get nervous. This is seen in two ways. In the first many NPC’s have a limit to where they can go, or how far they can go. In the second NPC’s are often limited to a level, but what happens to tactics when that changes? What happens when the NPC’s are there to make you fail? What happens when the guards are there to murder you? Tactics need to change. There comes a time when stealth does not always holds the candle, and neither does brazen bashing. Most games do not adjust for that, why not? OK, perhaps in the age of PS3 and Xbox360 there was a need to adjust to limitations, we all get that, but now, in the age of PS5 the stage has changed, the RPG games however do not seem to have this trait, and change is valuable, especially in RPG games. But how to go about it?

Well, in my universe, the first thing is to remove all limitations, to remove breaks and barriers. There will always a need to have some in play, but the larger reason for having them is removed by the coming of streaming systems and the PS5. This also sets the need of a safety zone. Most towns were safety zones, but in the wilderness it becomes important to have a safe place too. In the old days, the riffraff and animals were kept at bay with a fire, but not always and there we get a new setting. The ambush play. When have you faced an ambush in either Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, or Fallout 4? That is merely one of the changes that the new RPG games need to introduce. In the old days (1050-1850) there would be bands of brigands on the roads, travelling to ambush and these games did not really have these groups did they? A larger station of gaming that was missing and should not remain missing. With new hardware we need to change the setting of gaming. In my case RPG gaming because that is my passion and it would be the passion of any storyteller, but it is not the only stage where things need to change. I created the premise of half a dozen games, and the game makers went on the same track again and again. So let the smaller people hide behind ‘Microsoft Seemingly Confirms Ubisoft+ Will Soon Be Part of Xbox Game Pass’, to replay what was and doing that again and again is a waste of good gaming time, to set a new boundary is what keeps the players engaged. So whilst we see settings like ‘Skull & Bones Leaks In A Big Way’, the larger consideration is that this game was rebooted and delayed again and again, all whilst it took me a week to set the foundations of half a dozen games, all new, all having edges never seen before. And as you saw in the blogs, one totally new RPG set to a station no game has ever done. Do tell me how far behind Ubisoft and Microsoft are. Streaming old titles seems nice, but without a strong presentation of actual new games, the Microsoft streamer is nothing more than a history lesson and at $18 a month, Disney+ is a lot cheaper and more entertaining. You did figure that out, did you not?

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That lucky blow

Yes, these things happen, the point where luck is a factor and in some games they do happen, but the factor is not as profound as a Ravenclaw boy hoping he gets noticed by Emma Granger, or was that Hermione Watson? No here we apply the Skyrim principle. Instead of grinding, later in the game, I enter the embershard mine wearing dragon plate and before the bridge there are two miners, I walk up to them and let them have a go at me, with Dragon plate my armour rating is well above 550, so they can pound on me whilst I have dinner, read a magazine and at the end I am up 1-3 levels and my heavy armour is now legendary 100. A simple solution.

Yet what happens when we change the premise? What happens when the bad guys get a lucky blow as well? Consider:

  • Bandit
  • Bandit Marauder / Plunderer
  • Bandit Chief

There lucky blow rating starts at 1%-3%-5%, yet as levels go they can go up to 5% – 15% and 25%. Now that game changes a lot, but we can introduce negative influx. A 25%-50% and 75% protection through blocking and defence parameters. A stage that alters the game somewhat. So my approach of walking into their midst would no longer work (well likely a very limited version). It is the old battle setting that all attack without defence is pointless and all defence without attack is useless. A setting we all forgot about, or at least too many of us forgot about it. Oh, and their lucky blow is a blow that does 300% of the normal damage.

That same principle applies to sneak as well, we tend to see ‘a failed sneak’ as a side effect, whilst a failed sneak giving the opponent a free first hit is much more intense and optionally realistic? Many RPG games see a failed attempt at the stage of a loss of positive elements, whilst introducing no negative ones. That failing stopped the gamer from becoming clever at what they to, a setting that is a failing in the game because the game needs to contribute, always contribute. 

I believe that having a lucky blow element is nice for us, but it needs to contribute by being nice for them too (to coin a phrase).

We can never rely on more of the same, we can never rely on the easy path because it will undo gaming in the long run. And in this Skyrim is a perfect example as it has shown itself to be close to perfect for over a decade now. And the only way we get better games it to push that envelope. Did you think I was kidding when I stated that Amazon with its Luna has an option to sell 50,000,000 consoles? It isn’t that Google is not worthy, they decided not to develop games. And any clear and massive bodyblow to Microsoft is a winning punch for gamers everywhere. We gamers must stick together because Microsoft only stands for itself, it has shown that for well over a decade as well.

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Upgrades

Upgrades, we all know them, at times we desire them or we hope to be around to see them. For the most, no upgrade was every loathed (except Windows Vista). So where can we take gaming? We have one stage, w have more stages and we have the ability to connect stages. Now, lets take Skyrim. The anniversary edition was a welcome edition, beside the glitches there is not much to tell, and focussing on the glitches with a game this big is utter BS. For the most I have had a hell of a time. But the mind keeps slipping, and it is not needed, I want to wait until Hogwarts Legacy is released to see what else is possible. So far I have created two new gaming IP, yet the mind is struggling to find a third. This matters to me, because that IP will focus on a separate station. Something that might not be unique, but this version has never been done before. A Greek RPG, that focusses on the three Olympian gods. You must choose between Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. You align with them and as such you will be instilled with the powers that align to that god. So we get basically several worlds. Olympus, Earth, the oceans (earth too) and Tartarus. A world where the gods have missions, they play games and you have to steer your ways into diplomacy, battle and conquest, and subterfuge. You will need to resolve issues, collect evidence, clean messes up and at all times you are rewarded with Ambrosia. Very small items and you need three full cups to become a genuine deity. So could you do that? It is not merely can you do that, can such a game be made? In this it makes sense to look at Skyrim. Now consider that I had the setup for TESVIII: Restoration, that setting had the map of Cyrodill, but now at 9 times the size, connected to that was Skyrim (about 50% larger) and for the main story Valenwood AND Elsweijr. Now consider that the map for Όλυμπος would be well over three Times the size of Όλυμπος and it would encompass the entire Mediterranean, Spain, Italy, Greece and north Africa. That is beside the setting that Tartarus would be massive as well, and mount Olympus would not be too shabby or small either. 

Why so big?
This is easy, to create a biodiversity, a larger setting for natural combat and survival, the need for interactions. The larger the map the more natural could feel. So this ends up being not a console game, but a streaming game. This leaves us with the Google Stadia, the Amazon Luna and optionally the Netflix console as well. And the game needs three main quests (three gods, three paths, three main quest lines), that is bedside the side quests that will take up a massive amount of time, there are two versions, the one you have as an aligned player, or an unaligned players. So you will need to consider what you can get away with and what you need to drop. That is the part we forgot about in Skyrim, is it not? We can do everything and there is always time to do everything. So what happens when time and alignment becomes a hindrance? We forget the oldest setting, we need to consider that some things cannot be done and that is before the people intervene. 

Not everything can be done, not even as a god, doubt me, then ask Hades. He’ll tell you when you die and he always has the same joke “So where is your wine now?” And that is before you see the impact that happens when the game-map is not static, it is actually dynamic. The Mediterranean map that goes from the beginning of the game 4500 BC – 2000AD, and the map will evolve and you can watch, travel or participate. A game setting that has never before been done. There would be a real consideration that this generation of streaming consoles cannot deal with it at present and that is fine. Yet should we stop developing to the fringes of hardware in the future? I believe not. 

And this is not a small project, it has never been done, so it is appealing, the stage where we can traverse this area over 6500 years, and as a god you are immortal, but the stage is still finite (reason classified for now). Consider mapping out the Roman Empire and the impact it had, an impact you can watch yourself. A stage where we need (beside the quest lines) well over 300 quests per alignment, well a lot can be replicated and aligned challenge versus unaligned challenge. And as you become more olympian and as you lose your humanity you might lose options and you might lose links but that is part of life and we forgot to add life to the RPG’s of the last decade. There is no blame, it is no ones fault. It is a mere setting of what the computer can deal with and now that we have the hardware that can deal with it, ignoring that much of a leap seems trivial. 

A game that is a challenge and educational in several areas, a game that has never before been made, because until recent there was no hardware to support a stage that big. 

So what do you think, would you try such an upgrade? 

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Delusion in two part harmony

There is a time when we get creative, we all do that and we let the mind take a gander into a direction we never considered before. In one part it is an essential journey towards finishing my novel, I left that part alone for the longest of time. Even as I already set out 55,000 words with about 20,000 on the back burner. Things were going from place to place, but it was too linear, too much of an expected anticipation (if that made sense). Then two things happened at pretty much the same time. The first one is that either I am getting hacked (in a clumsy way), or the Optus network is in a massive level of disarray, it is not doing its job, whether it is from a congested network, or services are failing on a much larger degree. But it also gave me an idea for the book.

I will try to explain.
Consider a cube, consider the image of a cube. The absolute centre is a large battery, it creates 101% energy. The corners of the cubes are smaller and in their way they also create 101% energy.

If they are maxed, they hand power over to their neighbour. First the other corners, then the midway points. As such the complete cube consists of 20+1 energy points.

As the power is maximised the system can operate on 100% all the time, the rest is bled out towards a matrix taking the cube to (for example) a hexagonal prism, from there to a 8 sided shape. The issues is when maximum power is maintained for too long. That is what my mind wanted to figure out. It seems silly, but it matters for the story and I believe that the story needs to be as well set as anything else. To let the story go on faith is for fantasy and I have nothing against fantasy, but there is a larger setting here, so I feel it matters that I try to make the story fit on as many parts as possible. 

In the image the symbols are atoms, but in this, what they are cold fusion systems? The problems is that ‘our’ version of cold fusion systems are flawed (to say the least) to get it to work you need two elements (see the book when it is done), one of these elements is on Jupiter (3-5 miles deep), the other one is not in our solar system because the element requires a specific situation, the element is called Celestrium and that is a 8 layer noble gas which we do not have here and it cannot be manufactured. As such we are in a quandary, but I always stated that is where we tend to get really innovative. 

So in this setting we can fuel a large system (or ship) but not all the time, or at least to some degree all the time and the larger this system becomes, the larger the ship or the larger the power output. In all these settings there is an equation, but that one eludes me for now (my science degrees only took me so far). So as I rely on science drenched fiction (which is not the same as science fiction). I see a larger station to add pages to the story and it also gives the larger reality of a place without all the elements and all the facts, making speculation and innovation a larger setting towards reality (or at least as I see it). 

So my delusional mind came up with a few more pages into a tory that might lead to something larger, or so I hope. Anyway, the idea goes back to anther state of mind, It is one I had in secondary school. I considered that a dimensional element has a shadow that is one dimension less. So a line leaves a point as a shadow, a cube leaves a 2d shadow, a 4d shape leaves a 3d shadow and so on. It is simple, lame and clearly debatable, but that was my thought at the time, so my mind was always in the setting that space leaves the shadow like a cube, so what does the shadow of time look like? And my young mind could never figure it out. 

But the journey of learning that I had limitations is also a nice one. You see, limitations are good, it allows us to look beyond and seek new paths to overcome limitations and some journeys are positive and some are negative, that is always the case. In this we rejoice in achievement, but we learn so much more from failure, some learn this early in life, some will never learn it. It is up to the person learning to handle that lesson and we all do that in our own ways. We always do.

The creative person finds a way, the less creative circumvents it, or avoids it, whatever their preference is. I am merely happy that I found another element in a larger story and that story matters, because it started in Iran, in early Mesopotamia, in the age when someone build a ziggurat known as the Tower of Babel (a much larger story) and that part is still important today, even if we ignore it, but not the fable, not the christian lore of apprehension, it is the real part of a story that has larger considerations, or so it is my thought on the matter. When the lore fails, the words can be seen for what they are and there is more into that side. We need to see beyond lore, especially in storytelling and gaming, because that will enable us to create and recreate what was into a story that we find easy and able to digest, because digesting stories is what it is about. It is our own approach to delusion in two part harmony. I have mentioned Bethesda several times in the last few weeks, but they did create greatness, it is seen in Skyrim, who did not consider to live in Skyrim? Who did not want to have a house like Windstad Manor, with our own fishery, a nice comfy bedroom and a cellar where we could smooth the day away? When you realise that want, that internal need, you can start seeing the application of lore, the application of an altered story. This is not about changing truths that are centuries old, it is about an altered narrative that comforts us, not history, but fiction and fiction is all about personal comfort, it has been for decades, even longer when we go back beyond Jane Austen, Charles Perrault, Laurence Aldersey and that already takes us back 500 years. We can go back a lot further, or we can see how far we can move forward. And what can we do to get there? I do not have all the answers, you will not either, but together we can see what is possible. Yet this is merely my view on the matter.

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