Over the course of the last few days, not only have I for the third time tackled my anxiety by playing some Starcraft ladder games, but I have played 27 ladder games as the Terran race!
I watched professional streamer and Starcraft 2 caster Benjamin “DeMusliM” Baker use a very simple but effective opening to get ahead in one of his games. I tried to copy it and found more often than not that it would result in me winning the game, just by using his opening strategy. I further adapted it by making it an all-in strategy which guarantees short games, to help with my anxiety. If it works, I win quickly, if it doesn’t I surrender the game unless I did enough damage to justify trying to carry on. Using this strategy I earned 341 ladder points and, for the moment, I am top 8 of a platinum 3 division.
I will almost certainly lose this top 8 position unless I continue playing, and that’s fine. It’s just good to know that I can win games and be somewhat successful in this beautiful game. When I take a look at my match history, I can see that my strategy has improved over time, as has my win rate.
Any regular readers of this blog must be tired of reading about the few Starcraft games I have played and about my ladder anxiety. It’s just hard to keep quiet about something I am so enormously proud about. I don’t think I will play any more Starcraft games, at least for a while. The next time I do play I will need to decide to stick with it and play it hard, writing about every 75-100 games or if I get a significant promotion.
As mentioned in my previous Starcraft post. If there are any readers who are interested in getting in to Starcraft, feel free to get in touch. My offer remains open, even if I am not playing it right now.
This weeks game of Snooker Nation was disappointing to say the least. I was looking forward to playing the new mechanics and physics as mentioned in my previous Snooker Nation post but it didn’t turn out as well as I expected.
The developer for the game, Cherry Pop Games, released a wash up patch of sorts which in the patch notes include:
This patch has in my view rendered the online multiplayer aspect of the game unplayable. The first thing I want to mention is that the old bug of Snooker Nation being written over the table cloth for the player not hosting the match is back, this time with a vengeance and is even worse than before.
This I could live, what makes the game unplayable however is there is a 3-5 second delay between shots and everything seems to move in slow motion. I thought at first there might be some crazy setting to have things move slowly but there does not appear to be anything like that. Jason and I, through perseverance, managed to play just 1 frame.
Thankfully we were able to roll back to the 2016 version of Snooker Nation and decided to play a best 5 because of time lost. At one point I was down 2 frames to 0 with Jason at the table. Somehow however, I managed to turn things around and win 3 frames to 2. It was a disappointing victory though as I really wanted to invest my time in the new version of the game. To add insult to injury, neither of us secured a century break either.
In the patch notes, Cherry Pop Games have promised another patch which I am sure will address these issues. I hope it is delivered soon, until the game-play is fixed, Jason and I will have to stick to the 2016 version or, if push comes to shove, find a different game to play.
Today I fought my anxiety and played another 6 Starcraft 2 ladder games as Protoss, and I feel really good.
A little over a week ago, I wrote about playing 5 Starcraft 2 ladder games and that Starcraft caster Maynarde and current world champion Serral inspired me to play. That was when I was playing as random and that each game I would, at random, be given any of the three playable races. Today I decided to play my 5 placement matches playing the Protoss race.
The results were very similar, I lost 3 and won 2 of my placement matches which placed me in a gold league 1 division, then, just like before, I decided to play 1 more game which I won and immediately got promoted to a platinum 3 division.
All of the games were nice for the most part. This one person thought they would complain when I beat them in my 4th game, which was annoying. You can see from my screenshot below that either that person doesn’t like Starcraft 2 because I won or he/she didn’t like our particular match because of the way I won. I played a cautious game, but what really won it for me in the end was their lack of unit upgrades, my opponent had 1-1-1 (1 attack, 1 armour, 1 shield) upgrades where as I had 3-3-1, giving me a huge advantage.
I really should stop playing league placement matches. A professional player would suggest that I pick a race and stick to it, at least for a while, and keep playing the ladder. If only it was that simple, if only I could put this anxiety aside and play the ladder all day and write about the 20-30 games I played rather than just 5-6.
I am proud of what I have achieved but, for most people, these achievements are laughable and require no effort at all. I am happy for them, I wouldn’t wish these highly illogical anxiety feelings on anyone. For now, I will take what I can get and will keep trying, even if it means playing placement matches.
If any reader would like to play Starcraft with me, do get in touch. It would be nice to not face these ladder anxiety demons alone.
Over the past couple of days I have been trying out Path of Exile, a free to play RPG (role-playing game) developed by New Zealand based company Grinding Gear Games.
Path of Exile was released in 2013, I remember briefly trying the game out a number of years ago after Kripparrian, a successful streamer and Youtube personality started playing it. To this day Kripparrian speaks very highly of the game and still plays it on occasion.
Like Diablo, Path of Exile is a dungeon crawling game, where you pick and play a character in order to complete quests, explore dungeons and obtain loot. What makes Path of Exile arguably better than other dungeon crawler games is that your character and the items it uses are highly customisable. There is a huge skill tree in which you add points as you level your character, making it more powerful each time. This system reminds me of the sphere grid in Final Fantasy X, it even looks the same.
As well as this there are gems which you socket in your weapons and armour. These provide spells and abilities and will level up becoming more and more potent with each level. This reminds me of the Final Fantasy VII materia system. Like with materia in Final Fantasy VII, you can even link the gems together, providing additional benefits. Assuming the armour or weapon has slots which are linked.
The world is broken up in to acts with way-points to fast travel to different zones. This is very similar to Diablo II and III, as is having scrolls to identify items and open portals to take you to town where there are vendors and a place to keep a stash of items you’re not currently using.
Path of Exile is probably the best free to play game out there, assuming you have a taste for dungeon crawler RPG’s. I even think it is better than EVE Online when it comes to being free to play, which is hard for me to say. There is a micro transaction system in Path of Exile, but as far as I can tell, it’s only for cosmetic items and is not used as a ‘pay to win’ or even a ‘pay to get an advantage’ game, unlike many others which are free to play.
I really do not know if I will be putting aside the time to play Path of Exile fully, but I do intend to give it at least another day or two of my time, just to see where it takes me. The only problem I am faced with now is what to play it on? Path of Exile is available for the PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One but is not cross platform compatible, which is a great shame.
After not speaking to my friend Jason last week, it was good to play a game of Snooker Nation with him, or rather, Snooker Nation Championship 19.
It seems that after nearly 3 years, the developer for Snooker Nation, Cherry Pop Games, decided to release a content patch for Snooker Nation and have changed the name to Snooker Nation Championship 19. This, without a doubt, is a planned response to the release of Snooker 19, a game which Jason tried shortly after the games release a few weeks ago.
I have mixed feelings about the patch improvements, but for the most part I am fairly pleased. The main change is in the mechanics and physics of the game, which now uses the latest unreal engine. There is a black disc which indicates where the cue ball will end up, assuming it does not come into contact with any ball other than the target, which we have called ‘the black hole’. It’s harder to judge the power you are hitting a target ball, which we both like, it’s good to be given a new challenge and mix things up a bit. We can also strike the ball much harder than we used to and can even make balls bounce or go off the table. I am not sure if the new physics is necessarily better or worse but they are certainly different, which is welcome.
In a best of 7, Jason won 4 frames to 3, breaking my win streak. We both played what would ordinarily be terrible shots, but considering the changes, I think we did pretty good. Jason adapted quicker than I did which in part earned him his victory. Unfortunately however, neither of us managed to score a century break.
I finally did it, I have managed to briefly overcome my Starcraft 2 ladder anxiety and played 5 1v1 ladder (ranked) games. I am both overjoyed and relieved.
Back in November I wrote about how inspired I was when Serral (Joona Sotala) won the Starcraft 2 WCS (World Championship Series) for 2018. Shortly afterwards I decided to play 5 placement matches which would determine which league and division I would belong to in Starcraft 2. I played my first match and won with ease, yet, for whatever reason, the anxiety got the better of me and I just could not hit that play button. Later, I wrote about my Starcraft journey to date and ended with where I was with my anxiety issues.
Today I saw that Starcraft 2 caster Leigh “Maynarde” Mandalov produced a youtube video showing how to get into Starcraft 2 and once again I was inspired to hit that play button and complete my placement matches. Because I had already played 1 game in November, I had 4 more to play of which I won 2 and lost 2. This, combined with my win back in November, placed me in tier 1 of gold league.
At this point I was just happy to have played enough games to be placed in a league and that I didn’t lose every game. Because I was so close to league promotion, I thought I would play 1 more game to see if I could win and maybe get promoted into Platinum league, which I did!
To say that I am proud of myself would be an understatement. I have decided to stop while I am ahead having won 3 out of 5 games today. I don’t know if I will be playing any more games, I know I should, but until a time comes where I can play without this strong sense of ladder anxiety, I will probably just stick to a few games when I feel the time is right.
Thank you Maynarde and Serral for inspiring me to once again try my hand at playing this amazing game.
A little over a year ago I was looking for something different for my friend Jason and I to play. Years ago, I had enjoyed playing the zombie survival mode in the game Call of Duty and thought a game like that would be fun for us to play together. I found that Killing Floor 2 was offering a similar experience so went ahead and bought it from Steam and asked Jason if he would too. Unfortunately, after trying it a few times, the game wasn’t for him, which is a shame. While the game does have an offline single player mode, I think it’s more a game 2-4 players would enjoy.
There are several game modes but the general Idea is to survive as long as you can against waves of enemies known was Zeds. They start relatively easy and are slow, zombie like creatures which take 1 or 2 shots before they’re down. As you progress, the enemy waves increase in size and get harder each time until eventually you fight a boss with special abilities and a lot of health.
What makes this game particularly cool is that there are a number of character classes or ‘perks’ to choose from. You can for example choose to be a commando who is good at using automatic rifles, a gunslinger who best uses handguns, a sharpshooter which uses single shot rifles and many more. As you play, the various perks level up and obtain different abilities to choose from.
I really like Killing Floor 2, even when playing single player. After a long day or a frustrating gaming session, Killing Floor 2 offers some mindless yet oddly satisfying fun shooting stuff up while listening to the heavy metal soundtrack. Having played it today, I can see that the developers, Tripwire Interactive, have so far actively patched and updated the game which is very nice, to say the least.
I recently wrote about playing EVE Online for free as an Alpha pilot and created a new character. Since then I have periodically been logging in to check on the progress of my new character and complete the odd mission or two.
While the Algos ship I used was fit for purpose, I have invested in a Vexor which is a cruiser class ship and one step up from the Algos. The Vexor is so versatile and can complete so much of the PvE (Player vs Environment) content that this has been my most used ship over the years. Fitted and piloted properly, in high security space the Vexor can easily complete just about any combat site and escalation. This, in my view, yields high reward for low risk. Also, if searching for combat sites is not your thing, it can complete level 1, 2 and 3 missions with ease. It can also do most level 4 missions but I believe these are inaccessible for Alpha pilots.
The fitting and ethos I use is much the same as with the Algos in that I simply kite the enemy NPC’s (Non player characters) and let my drones do all of the work.
Low slots
Drone Damage Amplifier I x3 – The Vexor is primarily a drone combat ship, these are to boost the damage output of your drones as much as possible.
Omnidirectional Tracking Enhancer I – This enhances the range and improves the tracking speed of all drones.
Damage Control I – This is a passive boost to how much punishment your ship can take should it run into any trouble.
Mid slots
50MN Microwarpdrive I – This will give massive jolts of speed in order to get away from enemies and kite while your drones take them out. You can also use it to zone in on loot quickly but be careful to not use all of your capacitor.
Adaptive Invulnerability Field I – To compliment your shield resistances across the board, it will need activating and will use capacitor in small amounts. It can be left on indefinitely assuming you manage the microwarpdrive properly.
Large Shield Extender I x2 – In conjunction with the resistance boost from the invulnerability field and damage control modules, two of these will help you tank a lot of damage and will give plenty of time to get into a kiting position or warp away if necessary.
High slots
Core Probe Launcher I – To scan down cosmic signatures in order to find combat sites suitable for the Vexor. If you take a mobile depot it is also possible to swap out a mid slot shield extender for a data or relic analyser should you scan down data or relic sites. One thing to note is that while most combat sites will allow cruiser class ships to enter them, some only accept smaller frigate and destroyer class ships.
Drone Link Augmentor I – This will increase the control range of your drones. With low character skills, your targeting and drone control range should be about 60km.
Rigs
Medium Drone Durability Enchancer – While drones are inexpensive, it’s worth having, especially if and when your character can use more expensive tech II drones.
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I x 2 – All of the above fittings use a lot of your ships CPU (Computer Processing Unit). These rigs increase your CPU output so you can equip all of these fittings.
Drones
Hobgoblin I x9 – These deal thermal damage which is good against Serpentis and rogue drone targets.
Hammerhead I x5 – Slower than the Hobgoblin but pack a better punch and are ideal against enemies in cruiser class ships or bigger. They also do thermal damage and are medium drones.
Ogre I – Just one of these. They are very slow but are durable and are good at hitting the largest of ships. This too will do thermal damage and is a heavy drone.
Note: Swap out drones depending on the type of enemies you will be facing. Thermal damage is not so good against Angel Cartel for instance and you should take drones which do explosive or kinetic damage. If you do take the wrong drones, it’s not the end of the world, it will just take longer to kill them.
Charges
Core Scanner Probe I x16 – These are the probes required to operate the probe launcher and scan down cosmic signatures.
The ship including all of the modules, drones and charges currently costs between 11 and 12 million ISK (The in-game currency). This may sound like a lot but it really isn’t. It would take anything between 10 minutes and 2 hours to earn this much with the Algos detailed in my previous EVE Online post.
Best of all with the Vexor, and this way of fitting, is that everything can be upgraded. This is the platform which you can build upon as your characters skills develop and your in-game wealth increases. You can upgrade the ship to Vexor Navy Issue which is the same ship but better statistics. You can upgrade most of modules to tech II rather than tech I, making them more effective. Use tech II drones and even use the most powerful and expensive drone, Gecko. You could literally start with a 12 million ISK ship and end up, without changing the build or ethos of the ship, having a 400 – 500 million ISK ship, capable of dispatching enemies quickly and efficiently.
For me, this ship really is an all rounder and a workhorse. I would encourage any player to use all kinds of ships and fit them in all kinds of ways. Ultimately however, if you just want something which works and is easy, the Vexor is by far one of the best options which you can increase in power as you grow in the game.
In the week my friend Jason tried and tested Snooker 19. It was decided that it wasn’t the game for us and he got his money back. As such, we played another week of Snooker Nation.
This week we played a best of 9 which I won 5 frames to 3. At one point I was trailing 3 frames to 1 but managed to win 4 frames in a row which was nice. There were two century breaks, Jason got 101 in the first frame and I also got 101 in the 3rd frame. There were numerous opportunities on both sides to get more century breaks but I for one was pretty tired, I just couldn’t focus and was easily tilted.
What was annoying is that the game sort of crashed 3 times before we could get our match going. Each time Jason would be potting balls but the game would stop him and somehow think it was my shot. It would then allow me to play a shot, without aim, and then not allow either of us to play another shot. Quite frustrating really, we have seen something like this happen before but 3 times in a row is very odd indeed.
I am disappointed Jason and I didn’t play Snooker 19. I guess we will take another look in several months time and see if there are any improvements. Overall there is a mixed bag of reviews on Steam, but according to Jason, it’s not worth buying right now, especially as he could not see a way we could play online together.
Last weekend I completed the story mode for Grand Theft Auto: V on my Playstation 4 Pro. I had previously completed it on my Xbox 360 more or less as soon as the game was released back in 2013 but wanted to revisit the game. It’s hard to believe that this game is almost 5 years old.
I played the original Grand Theft Auto (GTA) game back in 1997/98 on both the Playstation and PC. One school summer holiday I recall that an extension was being built in the house I lived, the builder thought I was grounded and in some kind of trouble because I was always in my room. The truth is I was not in trouble but, at that time, hooked playing GTA.
For those of you who do not know about the GTA series, within GTA you play a criminal in an open world environment, working for gangs and other organised criminal organisations in order to make money. It’s violent, always 18 rated, and is known to always be pushing the boundaries of censorship levels in the video game industry. There is a film called ‘The Game Changers’ staring Daniel Radcliff and Bill Paxton which is set during the development of a GTA game and is well worth watching.
In GTA: V you play three villans, Franklin Clinton, Michael Townley and Trevor Philips and can usually switch between which one you want to play, each have their own personalities and traits. The open world is the city of Los Santos and is graphically stunning.
The story in GTA: V, while often juvenile, is incredibly funny. Especially when Lamar Davis is involved who is a friend of Franklin from the start. I think that’s what I have always liked about the GTA series, the mixture of violence and crazy humour.
While the game is not difficult, it has been nice to just start and finish a game. I have been playing so many sandbox and MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) games recently that I have almost forgotten how it feels to just sit down and beat a game.
This is the first GTA game which has an online mode, something which has been quite successful for the franchise. I will not however be playing this game online, in part because I want to move on, but also because it doesn’t look particularly fun to me. Unfortunately most of the development for the game since release has been for the online aspect. There is huge potential to expand the single player, story mode of the game, but I guess that’s not what the developer and publisher (Rockstar) wanted to achieve with the game.
With little or no effort, I have obtained 16 Playstation trophies (achievements) by completing the game in story mode. I might spend a few more hours trying to get 1 or 2 more before I move on to my next gaming adventure, but no more.