Free to play games..

does F2p games make more money then Payed games what happens with microtransactions is it worth it to pay more money for some skins or payed transfers does having microtransactions start at a young age why is it that the young age is more into microtransactions then saving money and working towards a better life ? when will people just say no to these scams to pump more money out of us free to play games seem to just pump out ex packs and skin to bring people in and it seem to work but when that main amount of people are just the young aged folks it dosent seem to go for the older folks maybe it just me but most of the young people are using their parents credit cards if it fair for the parents to pay for their addiction so when it comes down to it Microtransactions will they stay around to suck more blood out of us or will people catch on and say no more..

yours great fully

Gravediggaz333

When days get slow and get boring....

i have been slowing right down im not sure if the lack of games that are poorly made or the game with huge money that still fall flat but gaming needs to get back into the golden Age when game made you cry where you fell in love with the person or you had a secret romance ( cough Tali from mass effect ) .. are game like these suppose to be ignored can we go back to games that takes 30 hours  but we love them so much we played them for 60 hours when we wanted to finish every little bit what about time  when we dream about games.. not like now were everything is same old same old we as people need to tell the gaming companies that we wish a game had this or that we as gamers need to yell post and talk how a game should be and maybe the love that we have in the games we play maybe the companies to say yes and we have a new Golden Age were we as people matter again.. but the way its going it seems that a good or great game will only come out every year instead of every month...

thanks if you made it this far

your friend

GraveDiggaz333

A day in the life of a gamer..

my gaming life has slowed down i no longer playing wow i dont see my self going back but when crypt and i play No Sky Skies  im going to really enjoy it. its strange when you look at it gaming has really slowed down there one game a month that is really good but all the other games are really bad its like finding a gem in a pile of mud. when you think about it even AAA games are getting bad even with a lots of money ? when a indie game has more fun then AAA games why is that when everything is getting Stranger but im think wow has lost alot of people. Legion will bring back some people but from what i have seen it will bring back a few people but its mostly a reskin of older games i also heard that its has WoD Re skin like the follower system which alot of people never liked.

Well that my life as a gamer

thank you
GraveDiggaz333

A break in the Rhythm

Good intentions were no match for a heavy dose of Real life!  No blogging and very little gaming for several days has derailed my plans for regular updates here.  Even the little Elite Dangerous I managed was almost more of a setback than advancing the cause. One of the real life interruptions came while I was out farming at the High RES again. I went AFK during a relatively quiet time and came back 20 minutes later to the rebuy screen. I’m not sure exactly what happened but I suspect my ship was either shot at by or collided with hostile ships. I had left it stationary well above the asteroid field, “safe” from danger. Clearly that was not the case.  Rebuy cost was just under 1 million and adds a third destroyed ship to my history.

Since Elite Dangerous requires a certain degree of concentration and has no easy pause button, I’ve played more Diablo on my season 6 mage.  I was around level 40 after my last serious gaming session and over the last 5 or so days in short bursts I’ve managed to get to 70 and collect the first 4 parts of the free set. I have no decent legendary items at level 70 yet so am still struggling on Torment 1 or 2 for the most part.

Just last night I managed to get my Eve online characters updated and sorted out my buggy client. My trade character is slowly ramping back up with the buying and selling and my other characters now have more skills in the training queue. My accounts are so old now that I’m struggling to find untrained skills that will ever be useful, or that I can afford. I have level 5 mastery in pretty much all sub-capital ships and am now held back by the expensive skill books remaining. If I actually played the game more I’d be able to afford them!

Hopefully this evening’s game session is somewhere back to normal and I can progress decently in Elite Dangerous.

A close encounter

There is no Elite Dangerous flying to report on tonight. Its after midnight, so I’m technically late posting to the blog which I usually get done by about 10 pm.  Instead, I have a cautionary tale of the modern age – A close encounter with an internet link spiral! These unnatural phenomena warp time and space and can easily suck in the unwary web surfer. They can start from the most innocent place but soon descend into depths unknown from which you may never return!

Tonight’s link spiral actually started in the most beautiful way possible – I was trying to find music on youtube that my preschool aged daughter had performed to at today’s Mothers Day celebration at kindergarten. (Mother’s day here is this coming Sunday, 8th May).  All the kids were dancing to “I’m a Believer”, the version from Shrek. This lead to the original version by The Monkees and the remake by Smash Mouth. Then of course we watched the Shrek in the swamp karaoke, which is a medley of a whole bunch of songs. My kids loved dancing along.
The list is (From Wikipedia) :
"Just the Way You Are" by Billy Joel
"Like a Virgin" by Madonna
"Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-Lot
"Feelings" by Morris Albert
"YMCA" by The Village People
"Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" by Culture Club
"Stayin' Alive" by Bee Gees
"Who Let the Dogs Out?" by Baha Men
"Dance to the Music" by Sly & The Family Stone
"Happy Together" by The Turtles

Then, after the kids went to bed, I got sucked in watching several more
Such as
Culture Club - Karma Chameleon
The Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
MC Hammer - U Can't Touch This

But then some Elite Dangerous parodies appeared:
Here is a Link to CMDR Hugh Mann’s ED playlist.  I particularly liked “Let Me Interdict You” and “Livin La Vida Imperia” as well as “Uptown PvP” but all of them are very good.

... and then I remembered I had a blog to write and some game to play!
Of course I’ve been sidetracked again somewhat while finding all the links for this post. Maybe I haven’t fully reached escape velocity yet.

CMDR Cryptography, lost in 1990's techno videos!

D3 Season 6 and other pursuits

Instead of playing Elite this session, I started up a season 6 character on Diablo III.  I played a bit on season 5 as a witchdoctor so took mage this time around.  Even with my fairly limited play time I’ve zoomed through the levels pretty quickly.  Level 30 in a bit over 3 hours compares pretty favourably to my original characters which are 20+ hours in and only barely in the 30’s. I’ve seen a season 6 preparation guide which says I’m doing it slowly – they are at 70 already in a bit over 3 hours. I’m still having fun my way and am not in any real hurry.

I’ve also played a little bit of Defiance in ½ to 1 hour bursts over the last week or so. Shooters aren’t my usual game but I’ve quite enjoyed this one in the year or so I’ve been dabbling casually. Prior to restarting my blogging I’d spent about 70% of my gaming time in SWTOR where I have multiple max-level alts.  Since I’ve not even started the current expansion story line yet, there’s plenty of content for me there and I expect I’ll pick it back up soon.

World of Warcraft however isn’t of much interest to me now. I’m still subscribed and log in a couple times each month but Legion may well be the end for my time in Azeroth.  My account was opened in the final months of Vanilla and has been subscribed continuously since then.  It was still new and fresh to me throughout the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. I initially liked Cataclysm’s storyline and most gameplay changes but I began to find that the dramatic changes to most every zone broke my immersion into the world and it no longer felt like home. The introduction of goblins, worgen and later the pandas further broke my connection to the world. 

Some of the gameplay changes also reduced my connection to my characters, especially the nerfing of talent trees in later expansions. Making levelling content trivially easy hasn’t helped either. Warlords of Draenor was better in that for a while there I actually cared about the story but that soon wore off with all the scripted cut-scenes and confusing massed battles where I had no idea of objectives. Allied npc’s that simply face-roll the content for you doesn’t help much either. If simply spamming your basic attacks on random enemies still wins the event there’s not much incentive to care. Legion had better bring back some of the spark!

Its patch Tuesday for many games as I write this – right in peak evening game time here in east Australia so I’m not sure which I’ll play after posting.  Back to Elite for tomorrow most likely!

-        ~Cryptography

Elite Dangerous Session 9

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here.  Over the weekend I actually got the time to run quite a few sorties out to the RES. I started with an A rated “golden” Diamondback Scout and finished with an almost completely upgraded Vulture. My current limitations are not really money but the engineering capabilities of Haxel Port in LTT 15574. Some scenes from my recent trips should highlight the changes.

Balance at end of last report, as well as current balance. I’ve almost doubled wealth with only 154 more kills. High end ships make it a lot simpler.

 

A famous victim.  No idea what an imperial Baron was doing in a federal dropship!

A couple of combat shots. When taking out an anaconda you need to be up close!

 

 

The view of a flyby of a pair of moons not far from the ring system. These two moons are very close to each other and I believe landing is possible on both.

 

My new vulture speeds up money gathering significantly. Those large size weapons hit a lot harder than the small and medium on the Viper or Diamondback Scout making short work of any subsystems.  My original goal was to get 12 to 18 million to spend on an exploration ship but I’m considering pushing for a much better ship around the 50 million mark.  Grinding at the RES is probably the fastest way at least for the short term.

Back to the grind for now!

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 2^nd May 3302

Elite Dangerous Session 8

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here.  Silent running in a ship that uses lasers extensively is not terribly effective. I had the opportunity to test it out for a short time in my latest visit to the RES. My shields had been wiped out in a combat against a python when a Federal Drop Ship dropped in. Ducking and weaving seemed to avoid most damage long enough for me to finish off the python but once I turned on the FDS my ship was unfortunately directly in the line of fire.  With shields gone anyway there was little lost in activating silent running mode.  I am not sure if it helped to avoid incoming fire initially, since we were basically head on to each other but I feel it broke his tracking once I got around to his flanks. As soon as I opened fire myself however I rapidly overheated. An all multicannon loadout would probably have fewer issues.

Somewhere along the line I managed to pick up a wanted flag so I eventually had to run when a couple of police ships joined in. The FDS was almost dead before I made the jump.  That was basically the end for this session as I docked up, repaired and waited out the bounty timer before returning to LTT 15574 and Haxel Port ready for next time.

I have sold off the Viper and re-invested the surplus back into the DBS. I now have a “golden” A-rated ship  that flies pretty nicely! With the weekend ahead of me I can look forward to finishing off with this ship and probably switching to a Vulture. 

A quick look at my statistics says I’ve amassed 284 confirmed kills at an average of a bit over 28,600 credits per bounty. Smaller ships are just a lot easier to kill!

Until next time,

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 29/30th April 3302

Elite Dangerous Session 7

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. I spent the last session alternately flying the Viper and the Diamondback Scout. There is little to pick between them as a RES grinding ship.  The DBS’s weaker shields are more than compensated by higher armour and better agility. Both ships are fast enough in raw speed and boost that they can run from most enemies.  Weapon loadout is the same on either ship, being 2 small and 2 medium hard points. The larger powerplant of the DBS allows for more flexibility but both ships are capable of running all-laser configurations without too much heat trouble. 

 

One thing I did note with either ship is that gimballed pulse lasers seem to do more damage to subsystems than gimballed beams. I had less luck with multicannons but also flew fewer sorties with them active. My half-baked theory on pulse being better than beam is that each shot has a chance to penetrate armour into the module below. The beam laser’s continuous fire is treated as only one shot but the pulse laser gets half a dozen shots in over a similar time period. Burst lasers generate lots more heat than pulse, so I haven’t been flying with them.

 

Since I am still a pretty poor marksman I’ve not really tried rail guns or plasma accelerators.  They generate high heat so are more likely suited on the DBS than the viper. Missiles and cannons/frag cannons I passed over due to ammo limits. 

One interesting thing I saw when checking out GalNet articles for the DBS was a commander who flew with no shield, maximum armour and 4 multicannons. He made use of the DBS’s excellent heat management to fly in silent running mode, which makes the ship extremely hard to target. I am not sure that this is a viable configuration for RES hunting but repairs are relatively cheap so I may try it out.

Anyway, time to get back out in the black!

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 28 April 3302