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How to properly change jobs

I have been working since I was 14 years old and have changed jobs and industries a lot but it did not always go as planned so I wanted to explain some things that I learned along the way. I had some good and some not so good transitions and I will tell you how to avoid the bad ones. At first I thought that this will be one article but once I started to write it, it turned out a lot longer than expected so I will break the article into multiples, each focusing on one aspect. The first part is actually not about starting a job but leaving one and exiting early.

I can't stress this enough. If something is bothering you in your work and you have no way of improving it or you are having some sort of disagreement with the management, you need to find an exit as soon as possible. I have 2 bad experiences with this. The first comes from when I was working as a data entry and customer support specialist some 7 years ago. The job was good in a way. My hourly pay was around 10 EUR (from where I come from it was good at the time of the recession) and I had to work only around 40 hours per month. It covered my expenses and I could pay for university. But the company was mismanaged and was losing money. I thought that this will not harm me in any way but then came the first month when they could not pay me my full salary. And then the second. And then the third. And so on. They paid me something and kept me on the hook for almost a year. By the time I had enough they owed me somewhere around 2.5K EUR. If I would have made my exit a lot earlier (once the problems started) then I would not have gotten myself into some debt. Now some of you might think that when I stayed I displayed loyalty to the company and to some degree I did but at a great personal expense. 

But even if I would have decided to exit early from this situation, I was afraid and this fear is mostly what kept me from leaving. It was in the middle of a recession. The market was still not recovered. Worldwide unemployment was still high and without a job, my situation could have been a lot worse so my advice for this particular situation is to look for alternatives. Even if the situation is dire, an opportunity will come but you might have to do a job that you do not enjoy. If you lower your standards you might find the opportunity you need for an early exit. I could have gotten a job as a bartender or a waiter (and I did later) and yes that would mean more hours for the same amount of money but at least I would have been paid in full.

The second bad experience did not cost me anything of monetary value but did cost me a possible promotion at a different company. Around 4 years ago I started my QA career and it went great for a while. I was doing my job good and it was recognized. Management was happy and I felt somewhat comfortable in the company. But I wanted to move up to a senior position so I did everything I could to achieve that. Worked unpaid overtime, went the extra mile and so on and my senior at the time was promoted. So I thought that this will be my time. My manager hinted at the possibility that I might get the position and at one time even said that I am the next senior. Now at that time, I was already burned out and the only thing keeping me at the company was the promise of a promotion. I started to resent that place. But I waited. I turned down one offer with better pay and the possibility of a promotion within a year but I still wanted that senior position. 6 months passed, yearly review. I did a lot better than the company expected and everything pointed to the promotion but my manager said that they cannot do that. They cannot promote me this early (2 and a half years I was there) since the IT teams had a level system and I would be promoted 2 levels and that is against company policy. Now 6 months is not a lot but if I would have taken the other offer, I would be 6 months away from a promotion. And to this day I am still not a team lead or a senior specialist in the name. 

The message I am trying to relay with this second story is to take opportunities. If an opportunity comes along your way and you're already thinking about exiting you should think about the opportunity already in front of you. I missed mine. but in hindsight, I am better off with not taking that one but I have taken every other opportunity life has been so generous to throw at me. I might not have the senior specialist title but my life has become a lot better. Each new opportunity I have taken has introduced me to some great specialists in the field and I have gained a great amount of experience. Leaving is hard and scary but taking chances will give you the experience required to overcome obstacles not only in your professional life but in your personal as well. Who knows, maybe with a change like this you could change as a person as well.

But an early exit might not always be the best idea. My general advice is to leave early and take opportunities but only when you are already starting to think about an exit. Don't be hasty in your decision and think about it before making it. It might change things for the better or it might harm you. Weight all the pros and cons but do put your feelings first in this case. If you are not feeling well in the company then maybe taking an opportunity would be good. But if you are feeling good in your team then maybe staying will be the correct answer

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The internet is indeed stupid (RiceGum goes to Hong Kong)

In my daily life, I consume a lot of content. Working as a software tester I have the opportunity to listen to podcasts, news and a whole lot of other content. It helps me focus a bit better. But there are times when something I listen to is so stupid that I pause for a moment and try to figure out what the hell is going on. These situations happen more often than I would like so I decided to give my opinion on some of them. 

This section of the blog will focus on the stupid things that are going on in the world or what the internet is freaking out about again. Sometimes the outrage is even dumber than the situation. And its times like these that I want to document. So, what will I cover here? Everything that I find dumb, outrages or just plain stupid. Like the "Florida man" situations or disastrous events or anything else that I find and I wanted to start with something I heard yesterday and this is just beyond stupid. 

RiceGum went to Hong Cong and it went about as you expect when someone like him goes abroad. Something similar to when Logan Paul went to Japan. Being disrespectful to the locals, making racist comments and just being a plain idiot. So what happened?

Well, RiceGum was doing everything in his power to be disrespectful, obnoxious and racist like asking strangers to show him where is the "Mew Mew", as in where is the cat and dog meat. Later he was trying to make this into a social commentary and turn it around by showing that people in China eat normal food and that he was just trying to show everyone that people in China are not eating that kind of food and that the stereotypes are wrong. My reaction to this was, What? You are trying to break down the stereotype by asking random people on the street where to find cat and dog meat? How can anyone think that this will be helpfull? If anything RiceGum was reinforcing the stereotype that most big YouTubers and bloggers are disrespectful morons that will do everything for views. And sadly we live in a society where this kind of content is consumed a lot. But this is not all. The Stupid goes on. 

He was harassing locals asking them "Where the hoes at" and with similar questions. RiceGum got a huge backlash from the Chinese media and their social media and he was trying to mitigate this in one of his videos. RiceGum was saying that all of that was a joke. How was any of that a joke? That was just plain disrespectful, stupid and ignorant. 

This is not really how you make social commentary. If RiceGum wanted to show everyone that the stereotypes are wrong then maybe he could have reviewed some food and talk to some people, document their thoughts and interview them about their lives. Not harras people on the street and disrupt retail workers. 

The one thing I really do not understand is how people like this have this huge of a following. People think that this kind of content is worth following. And I do get some of this when its just stupid and no one else is involved but when these people start to involve strangers and are just plain harassing them? It's just plain wrong and stupid. So please, stop making stupid people famous. I will cover stories like these, so you do not have to. 

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Happy review (TV series)

Last week I finished the Syfy's new series Happy and I was pleasantly surprised by it. Netflix has been pushing the series in my recommended section for a couple of months now and I was put off of it because the premise did not seem too interesting but I did notice that it was directed by the Crank director, Brian Taylor and that peaked my interest a little bit and I decided t give it a go for a couple of episodes. I was not expecting that much from it and I am happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised by it. 

The story revolves around a disgraced "super cop" Nic Sax that went mad after one of his investigations and started to spiral out of control abusing alcohol and changing his ways by turning to crime. After being contracted to kill 3 mob members he suffered a massive heart attack and started to see a small blue winged unicorn named Happy. Happy is an imaginary friend to a little girl named Hailey and she has been abducted. Happy wants Nick to help him save Hailey but Nick himself has some issues to deal with and is reluctant to help. I won't go anymore into the story to not spoil it a lot but I will say this. It is an interesting story with a couple of elements that do not make any sense at the beginning but once you will get a little more into the series, it starts to click.

The story is interesting. It has some twists and turns and has some supernatural elements to it that are a bit hard to explain. They vary from something that might happen if a person goes insane to completely unbelievable and that can be explained only with magic. And that is fine. It's actually refreshing to see a story that has a little magic in it that is well written and interesting. The magic aspect is not a huge part of the series but it makes for interesting twists. 

The visuals of the series look good. It has this noir look to it and that reminds me of Max Payne a little bit. Also, some characters remind me of Max Payne 1 and 2 as well so that made me wonder if the creators and writers are fans of the games but maybe I am just trying to see something that is not there. But none the less, I liked how it looked. The color palette was a little too dark sometimes but it felt like a good fit for the story. 

The camera work was where you could really see that it was directed by the Crank director. A lot of close up shots, a lot of shaky cams that actually fits well in this frantic world. Usually, I do not like the use of shaky cam because it gets too frantic and hard to see anything in the scene but here, the same as in Crank, it complemented the madness that was happening on screen. 

So all that is nice and it looks good and the story is fine. But is it fun? Oh yes. It's so damn fun to watch. It rarely slows down and keeps you interested at all times. Oh, you think, this scene slows down finally? Wrong, have a fight scene. Oh, this is a conflict resolution scene? Have a  shootout for good balance. And it does this all the time. It even puts up some horror elements. Not like a slasher flick but there were a couple of scenes that felt uneasy and really tense. 

One last note I want to say before I wrap this up. Happy has quite a bit of blood in it. Happy is a dark and gritty comedy series with a lot of serious undertones and it shows those undertones a lot. Stories of drug use, child trafficking, sex workers and so on. So watch the series at own risk. If you are not ok with blood and some light gore and some of the themes that are explored in the series, then this might not be for you. But for the rest of you? Go see it. I binged the whole series in 2 evening after work and now I can't wait for the next season. It is rumored that it will come out in April of 2019. 

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Weight loss is not that hard

Weight loss can be a daunting task for a lot of people and it was the same for in the beginning. My first thought was, that I will have to work out like crazy and keep a strict diet but this does not need to be the case. I started to lose weight in January of this year and so far I have lost 20 kg (44 pounds) and I wanted to talk about how I did it, what I did and how it impacted me. But first I just want to tell everyone who is reading, I am not giving you dietary or workout advice. I am not a trainer nor am I a medical professional. This is just my experience and what worked with me. If you do want to lose weight, consult a dietary expert (go to a medical one, there are a lot of fake experts) or a doctor and if you want to start working out, find yourself a trainer. You can get injured really bad if you do something wrong. But now let's get into it. 

6 months ago I decided that I am done with being fat. And that is what I was. Fat. I was at least 30 kg overweight and it started to impact me really bad. I had trouble breathing, trouble going up the stairs (I live on the fifth floor) and I was done. Something needed to change if I want to live a long life and not go out with a heart attack at the age of 35. So I contacted a friend of mine that is a dietitian and asked for some advice. She told me that I need to start eating better (no shit) and recommended me some things that I can do. I started eating less and counted my calories but made little to no progress. So I asked her again, what should I eat and all that. She suggested a diet for me, that could help but has very little food in it. I started on it but I felt constantly hungry and could not keep it up. So I went to a doctor, who said, that sure, the diet is fine and I will lose weight with it but it will take a lot of willpower. So I tried to keep at it. 4 weeks later I have lost around 3.5 kg. Not bad but I fell off the diet for a couple of days and regained nearly all that I lost. So something else needed to be done. Enter the gym. 

I went to my local gym and signed up for membership, got myself a trainer, worked out a training programme and started to spend 6-8 hours per week on training. The result was a lot better I lost around 6 kg in the next 4 weeks and I started to feel a little better. I felt stronger, regained some strength in my arms and upper body and just felt a lot better. But I was still constantly hungry and started to lack energy quite a lot. So back to the doctor. Told her what I was doing and she praised me for what I was doing but when I explained to her the lack of energy, she told me I need to change diets and work out a bit less. Ok, I can do that. Talked to my dietitian friend again, she suggested another diet and I started going after that. 

Fast forward a month, I had more energy, worked out less and started to feel better again. Weight was dropping with around 1 kg (2.2 pounds) per week so things were going well. But I started to get lazy at the gym. Started to find excuses not to go, cut my workouts short and had bad cheat days in regards to my diet. So it started to go downhill again. I was not gaining weight but I was not losing any as well. So back to my dietitian friend and she suggested a modified keto diet. I heard the word meat in it and I was hooked. Can I have a lot of meat? Really? Where do I sign?

After going another month with poor workouts but on my variation of keto, I felt full of energy, I started to wake up earlier, my mental health improved a little (more on this in another article) and I was losing weight. Felt great. I was behind on my weight loss schedule but I was still dropping it. And I decided, that I am a lazy fuck and will quit gym at all. So last month I canceled my gym membership and was trying to see what will happen. It has been around 6 weeks since my last gym visit and I have dropped another 8 kg. 

Dropping 20 kg does not seem like a lot to a lot of people but for a person that is 170 cm (5 ft 6'') being 102 kg is a lot. And dropping 20 % of my body mass is a big step. I still need to lose another 10 kg and my journey is not over yet but I am getting there. So to summarize what I did, I started a low-calorie diet and was hungry all the time, fell off the wagon, started working out, did not feel like it and now I am on a keto diet that is going great. I have cut out all sugary drinks, have just 1 cup of coffee per day, eat mostly cheese, meat and vegetables but I do sometimes have cheat days and I have not quit alcohol. And I feel great. I needed to buy new clothes since all my old clothes are just plain too large at this point and that was a pain in the ass since I am still a bit big and its hard to find the right size, but I am getting there. Staying strong on the diet, drinking plenty of water and feeling great.

What I want to tell all of you who are trying to lose some weight. Please don't try to do it all by your self. Consult some people on it, figure out what works for you and you can do it as well. If I (a drinker, smoker, bad eater and just plain lazy person) can do this, so can you. It won't be fast, but it does not have to be hard. Again, find what works for you and just keep at it. 

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review - Good game with missed potential

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a good game and I enjoyed my time with it but it fell short on so many fronts and that is why I do not understand all the praise the game gets. It's by no means a bad game but it is also not the 10/10 that everyone lost their shit about. 

The game has issues. There are no doubts about that. And they come in different forms from design choices to performance. First thing I absolutely hated was the weapon durability system. Who thought that this was a good system? It does not encourage you playing with different weapons but it does force you to use the weapon you started since you have no idea when it will break. This was so frustrating in the beginning of the game when you do not have a lot of weapon slots and when weapons break by killing 2 enemies. Who in their right mind thought that this was the way to design a weapon system? Why not have this huge weapon diversity and let the player upgrade in a natural way? You go through the game and find better weapons and replace the old ones. You know, as does every other RPG?

The weapon issue does get mitigated a little at the end game but even then there is an issue with too many weapons. When you have 12+ weapon slots changing a weapon becomes unintuitive. You have to scroll through a list to find the one you want. This in itself is not that big of an issue but something that could be fixed with a little different inventory system. Maybe instead of a list, make it into a weapon wheel. Press right on the d-pad and a weapon wheel opens up. BOOM, fixed. You would need to limit the weapon slot amount but that would be fixed with the removal of the weapon durability.

Then there are the temples. This was such a huge missed opportunity. Some of the temples were designed very well. They were so interesting but there are so few of them. The rest? Well, the rest seems like a copy of the previous ones. You use one power to solve an obvious puzzle and you're done. And the combat ones seem just plain lazy. You fight the same enemies no matter the difficulty of the temple. They are literally a copy of each other. And there is a way to fix these issues. 

Now bear in mind, I am no game designer but I do have some thoughts on the fixes. First things first, there could be fewer temples but make them more interesting and make the player use more than 1 power. This could have been introduced in the tutorial as well. In the tutorial, you go through a temple for each power. Why not add one more where all the powers are used thus introducing the player to that concept? And then design the rest of the temples around this idea. As for the combat ones? Add environmental hazards to make them a bit more interesting. That way there is atleast some sort of variety in them. 

Ok, those are design choices the devs have made but what about the gameplay? Well, it depends on what aspect of gameplay you are looking at. If its combat then there are some issues so let's go over them. The enemies need some balancing. The lizards are especially bad. They move too fast and all the combat with them revolves around you waiting for them to attack and then counterattacking. Rinse and repeat. Either make them jump around less or lower the jump distance. This would at least make it somewhat engaging because as of now I felt like fighting the lizards was a chore. 

Then there are the insane difficulty spikes. I had this happen multiple times when transitioning from one area to another where I just get one-shotted by any enemy. I get that it's because of the armor system and this can be mitigated by food and some skill but couple this with some bad camera when locked on and the clunky dodge mechanic it made some fights really frustrating. And the only thing you can do about this is upgrade your armor. And you need to grind for it quite a bit. 

I wanted to get the bad stuff out of the way because there is a lot of good in the game and what the game does well it does really well. First of all the game is drop-dead gorgeous. The art style they went with makes it look so great. If you get on a high enough mountain you can see most of the map and this makes you want to explore. You see something interesting in the distance and for some reason, you just want to go there and see what it is. The exploration is amazing in this game. You can get lost in the game world exploring. There is always something to find, somewhere to go, something to gather and some cool stuff to be found. I spent hours upon hours just exploring, finding one interesting thing, then seeing something in the distance and going there and so on. I never ran out of stuff to fond during my play time.

The movement mechanics were amazing. This has the be hands down the best movement mechanic in any open world game I have seen. You can climb any mountain you see and then glide down from them to get to another mountain. This freedom of movement made it enjoyable to explore all the corners of the world. When combined with the huge open world it makes for an experience everyone should have.

Overall it's a good game and I enjoyed my time with it. It was the only game I played for 2 weeks straight. But because of its shortcomings, I cannot tell you that it's a 10/10. I do highly recommend it. It's a beautiful world full of interesting locations and things to find. And you do get used to the combat and weapon mechanics. Once you get over the first few hours there is a lot of fun to be had. My suggestion, don't run for the main quest straight up. Go to the area where the main quest is located and explore. Once you feel like you have explored enough, go for the quest. I feel like this is the best way to play.

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Deadpool 2 review

Last week I saw Deadpool 2 finally and it was alright? I was expecting something more from it but in the end, the movie felt a little underwhelming. Maybe it's my own fault by expecting something more but I did not feel that they realized their full potential. It did some things well but it also did some things bad.

The first thing that felt off about the movie was the pacing. There were some moments that were dragged out for "comedic effect" but did not really deliver and felt a little forced but this was not the only pacing issue. The movie just plain slowed down at sometimes and I was even checking my watch to see how long is it still going to be. This is in part due to having some great action scenes and a big slow down right after them. It did not just slow down but it felt like it even stopped at times. 

My other issue with the movie is the CGI. At times it was just plain bad. For some reason, I did not see this much in the first movie but in this one, it's noticeable so bad, that it takes you out of the movie at times. And this feels a little odd since the budget of the movie is larger. I was expecting a better CGI quality overall. 

But what about the story? Well, the story is a mixed bag for me. The driving motivation for the movie felt a bit off. You see, all movies should have a motivation that drives the plot forward. Some driving force for the characters to advance the story but in Deadpool 2 it felt somewhat odd. I don't want to spoil the story for people, who have not seen the movie yet, but I do want to say, that some characters were just somewhat shoed in for no reason. But do these issues make for a bad movie? Not at all.

The movie did a lot right as well. The action scenes were great fun to watch, altho I would like to see fewer cuts in the fight scenes. And the humor was written well. At timed it did fall flat but it was well written for the most part. And the references were great. Most of them were not obvious and that was great. Some of them were "look at me, I am a reference" but it had a nice balance of them. 

All in all the movies was just average. I was expecting something better. Parts story, parts visuals kinda just break the movie for me. I would still suggest seeing it but just lower your expectations.

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God of War review

God of War has grown up and in a really good way. At first, I was a little bit scared and worried about the game (before its launch) since it was heavily marketed and this usually is not a good thing but all my worries were put to rest once I got the game. In the first hour, I was hooked. It looked amazing. I do have some minor troupes with the game that I want to address but first, let's start with the good. Full disclosure, this was my first God of War game so my opinions about the previous titles are based on seeing my friends play for a bit and Youtube videos.

As I already said, God of War has grown up and matured and in such a fine way. From the story to the gameplay, God of War should become an example of how you make sequels or reboots. It kept the core of the previous titles and improved upon every aspect as far as I can see. This time the story of God of War is not revolved around revenge and just killing everything that stands in front of Kratos' vengeance but its a heartfelt story of a troubled individual trying to cope with loss and trying to teach his son about the world and how he sees it. Be warned. Some spoilers coming up about the game. 

The story starts with Kratos' wife's death and him and his son preparing to fulfill her last wish - to spread her ashes upon the highest peak in the nine realms. Before they set out on their journey they are confronted by a strange man, who claims to know who Kratos is. After Kratos beats the mysterious man, he gathers his things and son and starts their journey. During this journey they encounter multiple Norse mythology characters that help them or driven by their own agenda, are trying to kill them. It's not revenge but something a lot more meaningful that is driving the story. 

Kratos is trying to teach his son how to survive and the ways of life that he knows. He is teaching him to hate gods and not help anyone and this makes perfect sense in the game. You see, Kratos has been betrayed by gods, tricked into doing a lot of bad things, killed a lot of gods and this is the only way he knows how to survive. But he is not the only teacher in this story. He is also the student. His son has learned a lot from Feya and is teaching compassion and understanding to Kratos as well. This dynamic between the characters creates a natural interaction and back and forth with both characters. They both learn, they both grow and they become better. 

The cast of supporting characters is amazing. The talking head is telling the player lore of the world in the downtime and sometimes I was stopping before docking with the boat just to hear the end of the story. These stories keep the travel time interesting and it does not feel like filler. It gives actual context about the world and how it got to the stage it is right now. And then there are the dwarfs. I loved these characters. A germophobe master blacksmith and a foul mouth, no fucks given master smiths that have created some of the most powerful weapons in the world. And they provide a great comic relief. 

To be honest, I did not expect this kind of deep storytelling in a God of War game. My impression of the God of War games was that they are mostly about fighting gods in an action game. And I have heard that the story of previous games is good and understandable but not very deep. So I was not expecting this kind of writing. And the story should be experienced by everyone. I did not notice any glaring issues in the story or something that makes no sense. It is entirely possible that I have missed something or have overlooked some story issues but nothing really stuck out to be out of character or immersion breaking. But how is the gameplay?

As far as I can tell and gather from what some of my friends have said, God of War has always had good gameplay and I was expecting the same here and oh did the game deliver. Kratos' new primary weapon is an axe this time and the chaos blades have been buried and my first impression was that this will be the only weapon that will be used in the game. I prefer to have weapon variety in games but I was open minded with this. And to be honest, there was not a single moment in the game where I wanted to have another weapon. The combat just works so well with the axe. Skills keep the combat interesting and when you pull off a parry and a combo right after that, it feels really satisfying. When you do get the chaos blades, I found myself returning to the axe when I did not have to use the blades. 

The puzzles were interesting to some degree. They incorporated axe skills in a way that felt natural and for the most part, did not feel like a gimmick. I really hate when games make puzzle sections into gimmick's and tend to do something illogical with them. But here they felt somewhat natural. Some of them still felt a little out of place but it was nothing major and they were spread out well enough that they did not overwhelm me. Some of the puzzles involved using the axes skills and some involved Artreyas' bow skills. And this is another aspect of the game, that was great. Artreyas in the combat.

At first, I was a little worried about this, since I did not want to have another Resident Evil 4 situation with babysitting but this was not the case. Artreyas gets more and more confident in combat as the game progresses in a natural way, he does not need any babysitting and you get control over some of his skills and can incorporate them into your own combat rotation. It felt like a natural extension of combat. This is how you do multiple characters. This. RE4, look here. 

But how is the world? Well, this time around the world is somewhat open with multiple realms to explore. Some are larger than others but they are not overwhelming. As with every open world game, this one has side quests and activities as well but in this case, they will not hinder your progression and are totally optional. If you do decide to do them, you can get upgrades and some shiny new armor. For the completionist's out there, there are collectibles as well for you to collect. 

So what did I not like about the game? So far everything I have written has been praising the game for every aspect from story to world building. Well, I had some things that stuck out not as a negative but more of a design preference. I would have loved if there were more finisher animations. When you do finally get a finisher, it feels amazing. You truly feel like you take down this colossal being. But once you have done that five or six times, it can get a little old. Varied animations would be amazing but this is not my biggest gripe about the game. It's the menus. 

This was the only thing I really did not like about the game. The crafting and store menus did not feel right for me for some reason. I found myself leaving the dwarfs because of misclicks and this would be fine if this did not happen almost every time when opened the shop or upgrade menus. Also, the inventory and upgrade menus had the same issue. I kept switching between tabs on accident and socketing armor was confusing. I can't really put a finger on why this was happening, maybe because I am so used to PC menu management, but yeah. This was my biggest issue with the game. 

All in all, I absolutely loved the game. The small (and I mean very small) issues I had with the game had absolutely no impact on my opinion. Its an amazing experience with great gameplay and a rich story that will not leave you indifferent. The cast of characters are great and they all have a personality. They are all memorable and interesting and I did not feel any need to try to skip dialog or just rush ahead. I got immersed in the world and just wanted to know more about it. 

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Why I keep returning to World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is a game I keep returning to every couple of years or so, mostly when a new expansion rolls out but this time I returned just before the next expansion. Battle for Azeroth is scheduled to release on August 14th and to be honest, besides the trailer, I don't know anything about the expansion and its release is definitely not the reason why I returned. There was a different reason. I got bored of other games. 

It's a little odd that the core gameplay loop of World of Warcraft is so entertaining. It's basically the same thing each time I return to the game. I create a new character, play to level 20 or so to get back into rotations and see the skills and then go back to my main to max it out. And each time all I do is run quests, run dungeons and then raid at max level. Its the same thing each time, yet I enjoy it every single time so this got me to thinking. What is the reason for me enjoying it so much and why I keep returning to the game? Well, there are a couple of reasons so let's go through them. 

Blizzard is a master at story writing. And I mean it. They somehow manage to write quests, that are interesting, gripping, give lots of backstories and a great amount of detail of their world. Each time when I run through a new zone, I make it a rule to myself to read quest descriptions. Most people ignore this but with a little time spend on reading the quests, the player can gain a lot of stories. And I believe that since I don't read a lot of fiction (I mostly read education materials and books) this approach to the story is more accessible to me and thus pulls me in a lot more. It's easy to understand the lore without reading a ton of lore articles and its introduced to the player in a natural way.

Another point on the question is that Blizzard tends to introduce new mechanics to World of Warcraft questing to keep the players interested. This makes it so that a returning player has the familiar questing feel but with a twist on it. For instance, now I am running trough Legion zones you have a quest tracker, that displays where you are in the zones story and what to do. Might seem like a minor detail, but the way questing flows now is a lot more natural. As for the mechanics? Quests have grown up. They are not fetch or kill quests anymore. I remember the time somewhat 12 years ago when I started playing World of Warcraft, that most of the quests were just that. Fetch and kill quests. There was little variety in them. But now a lot more introduction is introduced thus making it a lot more interesting to run quests and leveling up.

But questing is not the only reason why I keep going back. Dungeons and raids play a huge part. I love running dungeons. Its the most fun part of the game for me and each expansion gives new dungeons to run. And a lot of the dungeon running mechanics have been improved from finding a group to boss mechanics. Now bosses have interactive mechanics introduced to them. In the past, this was not the case for most of the time. Dungeons felt cool to run, but bosses mostly were just a buffed up mob. Blizzard has tweaked this in the past but I feel like the latest 2 expansions have done this the best. Sure, some of you might say that the dungeon content is not as challenging now, and I tend to agree, but its a lot more interesting. 

But not counting the reasons stated above, there is one reason that trumps it all. Nostalgia. You see, this is the only game I have been playing on and off for 10+ years and it feels nice to run through the zones I used to run when I was just a kid. It takes me back to the childhood days and reminds me how much fun I used to have in the game with my friends. Most of my friends, that I used to play with, have been gone from gaming altogether for a number of years now but getting back into the game does the job of reminding me what fun times we had. World of Warcraft was the most played game in my circle of friends and the nostalgia hits hard when running a dungeon or a raid. 

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The future of gaming

Last week I had a discussion with a person who has not played games that much. Some games here and there but he was never a gamer so to say and he was intrigued where gaming is going as of now. I tried to explain the concept of VR but he was an older guy and has already seen some of the first VR iterations that gaming tried. And this got me to thinking, where is gaming going?

I did a bit of research and watched some promotional videos on gaming and found some interesting stuff and how people are going about it. The first one, that interested me is how people are creating racing "simulators". I tried one of these at a friends house. The setup he has has a VR headset and a racing seat with pedals, gearshift and a steering wheel. But the most interesting thing he has is self-made hydraulics system. The seat is somewhat motion activated based on the sound in the game and where it comes from. I did not ask about all the technical details regarding this, but I have to say, it was impressive. It felt really good on the race track, but rally track was a bit disappointing. Non the less, the setup costs around 2K euros and is somewhat affordable if you are into racing. And that is for the whole setup. PC, VR, racing seat and peripherals. 

Next thing I thought about was a space flight simulator. Games like Elite Dangerous (used to love it) are the perfect playing ground for setups like this and I have tried one of these a couple of years ago. The setup I tried was nothing too impressive, basically a VR headset with a throttle control and flight stick. It does not sound too impressive, but when you are flying the ship in that setup, it feels amazing. The immersion felt great. I actually felt like I was in the ship and piloting it. Dog fighting was amazing but the only thing that was missing was the feeling of G-force. And at first, I did not think, that its possible in a home setting. But lo and behold, here is a Youtube video, that shows exactly that. The video shows a somewhat crude application of a movement simulator, that moves based on your location in the game and the force that is applied in game. Its far from perfect but I believe that with better hydraulics and starting to mass produce the seats, they can be made somewhat affordable. They would not be for the average gamer and to be honest the average gamer does not need this kind of a setup, but for the hardcore gamer? Sign me up.

And these kinds of setups go beyond racing and flight sims, or as I like to call it, seat sims. Meaning simulation of a pilot seat or any kind of seat. When Battlefield 3 was coming out I saw a promotional material with a full combat simulator. Here is the video. Now imagine the huge screen replaced with a VR headset and a small form factor for the treadmill and you have a full-blown first-person shooter simulation. Some time ago I saw a company, that is creating a smaller form size treadmills, and they do have some issues, but think about this. If the treadmill has pressure plates and moves based on that, the player has motion tracing gloves and a gun at hand, you could have a full-blown combat simulator. It would still be far from the real thing, sure, since you would be wired up with all the gadgets but I believe that this might become a reality within the next 10 years. Make the gadgets lightweight and the VR headset smaller and you're good to go. Now I estimate this setup to cost around 5-10K euros when all is done and thus they would not be affordable for the average consumer but think about these kinds of setups for entertainment complexes. Place 10 of these in a complex and make 5v5 games for 10 bucks for 10 minutes. And you have an entertainment business. With time this tech might become more affordable but I still do not think that this will become a standard for home users. 

What did I want to say with all this? Well, gaming is evolving and going forward. Lately, VR news has died down and it seems like there is no innovation in the gaming market and its true to some extent, but we need to perfect the existing tech first. Once that is done, maybe some new tech will rise. There is a future in gaming and it's coming rather fast and what we need is more information. If you're not actively following gaming or new tech, you have no idea what is going on and what might be coming. But for now, I will hope that one day I will be able to afford one of those setups. 

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Concerning Battlefield 5 news

The Battlefield 5 trailer and behind the scenes information has been revealed and for the most part, it seems like a redesign of the core formula of the game. JackFrags goes into a lot of detail about the game and I would recommend watching his video for more information here but with all the mechanical and design changes the big one was no season pass. And this is great for the most part since it will not split up the player base anymore. All maps will be available for all players. This is a great change, but what concerns me is the monetization. Most of the money seems to come from microtransactions and DLC but since map packs are free and no premium pass, then another method has to be implemented. 

Now we already know, that there will be a lot of customization options for players regarding visuals, so its fairly safe to assume, that this will be one of the ways the game will be monetized. There will probably be some sort of loot box system, that offers weapons and skins for each and every customization option but there was one thing, that I thought of an interesting design change, until I saw the potential monetization for it. One of them is soldiers and company. I assume that the soldier slots will be limited and extra slots can be purchased. If you can have a soldier slot for each class, then this should be fine but if the players are somewhat limited in this choice, then this can be a huge issue with the players. But this is not the biggest issue I saw in the video. Class archetypes are what concerns me. 

We already saw in the Battlefront 2 how classes are limited by star cards and that the players had to purchase loot boxes or play an absurd amount of time to unlock everything for the class and here, since the archetypes have specialization trees, I feel like this is going to be the same thing. I feel EA has removed the season pass for maps to gain some good press and distract the potential players with it and will do something with the archetypes. Now I am not saying its all bad and there is potential to create a monetization for this that will not hurt the player but as of now, I see that it will be the same situation that happened with Battlefront 2. 

You see, if these archetypes and skills are unlockable with experience, then it opens up the possibility to limit the unlock potential and do the same as was with Battlefront 2. Lock these archetypes behind a huge grind so the players are more inclined to purchase packs or boxes or some sort of skip thingy to get the unlocks. If this is the case, the casual player will be at a huge disadvantage and the multiplayer can become a pay to win once again. Some of you might say, that because these archetypes can be unlocked by playing, this is not pay to win but this is not really the case. If you have to grind for 20 hours to unlock something and there is the option to just purchase it straight up, then this is pay to win. New players will be at a huge disadvantage and if you come to the game late, for instance, 6 months after the release, the player will have a hard time to keep up or even compete. Sure, skill will be involved but when you attach perks like decreased explosive damage or faster sprint speed, then pure player skill will be decremental based on the perks.

Now, where does this leave us, the players? Well, since we do not have all the information yet we really do not know what kind of model will be implemented and will probably know about it only when the game launches. There will probably be some sort of open or closed betas where we will be able to try and experience the game before launch but we already know that EA can tweak the experience gain and unlock cost just before the launch. My advice, be cautious about getting hyped up and buying into the marketing. The game looks great as always and I will probably get it since I am a long time Battlefield fan, but if their business practice will be horrible, then this might be the second Battlefield game I will skip. 

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Lost love for Skyrim and Fallout

I used to love Skyrim when it first came out and Fallout 3 was my most played game for a while but something changed in me and in the games as well. I wanted to explore a bit what changed and why I lost all love for these great games. I have played both Fallout 4 and Skyrim in the past month and realized that I don't really enjoy my time with the games anymore and I wanted to explore the reasons for this.

As mentioned before, Fallout 3 was my most played game for a long time and when Fallout 4 was announced, I got really excited. After I finished New Vegas I wanted a new Fallout fix and here it was. A new Fallout game to explore, new wasteland to explore, new mutants to kill. But when it came out, I was somewhat disappointed by it. I played for somewhat around 20 hours but never finished even one of the main quest chains. So what happened?

Well, some technical and design issues I faced. There were a lot of changes to the core formula of Fallout and for the most part, I did not mind it but then came some lore breaking issues, that were implemented in the game as well. One of them being the power armor change. I remember in Fallout 3, once I got the Brotherhood of Steel armor set, I felt like a beast. The full set looked awesome and I felt like a badass. But in Fallout 4? You need power cores. Ok, I thought at first. Get a power core, power your armor and go nuts. Not that bad. And then I found my first power armor. What surprised me was that I got it very early in the game. First thought was, alright, you get an armor early, power it, but have to maintain it and repair it. Based on the lore, a power core can power the armor for 100 years but in the game, I can run around for 20 minutes. What? So getting the armor, maintaining it, repairing it, gathering materials for repairs and I still need to find power cores to power it? So if I want to go out and feel like a wasteland bad ass, I have to have power cores and exchange them (I know they exchange automatically, but you know what I mean). And this was just the start of my issues. 

The leveling was changed to mostly give you a stat boost and some unique effects. At first, I thought, that this was not a big deal but a while later I noticed that leveling adds very little to the game. Almost no unique effects, no interesting interactions, and no multichoice perks, that allow the player to approach situations in a more interesting way. Remember Fallout 3's nuke in the center of  Megaton? And how you can approach the situation based on how you feel as a player and skills you have? Almost all of that is gone. The interesting stat interactions were removed (low intelligence was so fun) and lack of a morality system was starting to put me off of the game. And after a little while, I stopped playing.

But around a month ago I got a shiny new laptop and decided to give Skyrim and Fallout another go. I installed both games, modded them somewhat and BAM. Technical issues after technical issues. Both games do not support widescreen. This was the first thing, that got on my nerves. How come Bethesda, a huge publisher, not think of this? My laptop is hooked up to a widescreen monitor with an aspect ratio of 21:9 and it is not supported. I could understand this 10 years ago, but widescreens are fairly common these days. So after fidgeting for a long time and looking on widescreen guides I finally figured it out and made it run on the screen. But then other issues started. For whatever reason when I was playing Fallout and Skyrim (and only these games) my FPS would drop to a slideshow every 10 or so minutes and stay there for around a minute or 2. So another thing to figure out. After around a week of research, I found out that it is somehow connected to the games engines. You see, my laptops monitor is on as well when I play and because of that, the engine sometimes taps into the integrated graphics card and since that card does not have the power to support the games, the FPS drops like a brick. Battlefield, Overwatch and so on work without an issue, but Fallout and Skyrim are just a mess. 

Once all that was sorted, I played each of the games for around 10 or so hours and I hated my time with them. I have already forgotten how many bugs and glitches are in Bethesda games. Screen pop in, poor draw distances, lighting bugs and glitches and even quest-breaking bugs that somehow passed QA. And I was done. Done with the franchises and probably will not touch Bethesda games anymore. Why? Because they as a publisher think, that they can do whatever they want, create a glitchy mess of a game and we will buy it. They treat the gamers as trash (I am looking at you, creation club), re-release the same game 15 times and charge full price each time WITHOUT FIXING THE CORE ISSUES. And I don't really understand, how we allow this. 

Now you might think, that I am only looking at Fallout and true, for the most part, my issues were with Fallout, but Skyrim is no better. The same issues on the technical side and a lot of removed features as well. Morrowind was my first Elder Scrolls game and I spend hours upon hours in the game. It was a true RPG experience. Cool armor and weapon enchantments, interesting magic combination and unforeseen effects that took a bit of creativity to get rid of them. In Skyrim? None of that. 

And with this, I want to conclude my rant. I used to love both Elder Scrolls and Fallout, their mechanics were great and interesting, they offered something no other games offered, interesting interactions, player choice, morality systems that actually influenced the game and story, but now? Now, these games are a husk of their former selves. If game devs and publishers think, that this is innovation, then they need a reality check. 

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Avengers: Infinity War review

Last week I saw the latest Marvel movie Avengers: Infinity War and it was alright? I am not the kind of person that will get on a bandwaggon just because but I want to formulate my own opinion, so here it is. The movie was just alright and I do not understand why the internet is losing their collective shit over it. 

The movie was just what I expected, nothing more, nothing less. It was a fun action movie with some comedic relief and was not too demanding on the audience. It was like a roller coaster. You get on it knowing what to expect, get that experience with excitement and then go home and forget the experience a couple day later. And this is what I felt Infinity War was. A somewhat forgettable experience. 

Now don't get me wrong, the movie is good and I enjoyed it a lot but I did not lose my shit over it. But let's get into the movie and whats what. Also, this is your spoiler warning, so if you have not seen the movie, go watch it before reading this. If you do not care about spoilers, good on you. 

First I wanted to talk about the visuals and sound and they are fantastic. The movie looks and sounds excellent. The CG in it was something truly great. At no point in the movie I thought "hey, that looks off". It all looked realistic and detailed. And the attention to detail was truly amazing. Just look at the CG faces. Every single detail is made to almost perfection. But I would not say that this was not expected. With a budget of over 300 million dollars, it is expected and it delivered. The same goes for the sound. It was great. The sound helped to get immersed in the movie and experience it together with the characters. But there was one thing about the sound I did not like. And it was not even connected to the movies sound or music. It was the audience. The theater audience clapped at the movie multiple times. I don't understand this. I can understand clapping after a  music concert or theater to show appreciation to the artists after the show, but doing this during the movie WHILE the scene is still going? Just why?

But enough about the visuals lets talk about the story and this is where Infinity War has issues. For the most part, it was an on rails, straightforward story, that takes place right after Thor: Ragnarok. Thor's ship is being destroyed, everyone is getting killed and Thanos gets the Space stone and the story kicks off. For the most part, the story was fine, but there were some things that were just plain stupid or illogical. For instance, the scene where Thanos is incapacitated by Mantis. Why did Strange not just teleport half of the hand to some other place thus cutting the gauntlet off from Thanos? We see in an earlier scene, that this is possible, so why not do it now? Cut off the hand, gather the stones, hide them. Or you know, kill Thanos after that? Or why did Thanos just freeze time when he is getting the last stone? Why have the theatrics? And this is the issue with most movies, books, and games that implement magic in their stories. The story can revolve around magic and this works fine for the most part, but when the story is the magic? This creates a lot of issues like the ones listed above. 

Also, I wanted to say something about the ending. Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter - all of my social media were buzzing with memes and descriptions of how everyone was surprised by the ending. So Thanos wins and destroys half of the population of the universe. But was this really that surprising? Was it that big of a twist that everyone has to lose their collective shit about it? When the movie was nearing the one hour mark I was already expecting this. I don't know why but this was the only ending that made sense to me. Plus it did not help, that we already knew that there was going to be an Infinity War sequel. 

All in all, I think that I am just burnt out by the Marvel movies. They are still good movies that tell great stories, but at this point, there have been so many of them, that I feel they do not offer anything new or surprising anymore. The excitement is somewhat gone for me. Maybe its because I grew out of them, maybe I am burnt out. Who knows, but the movie was alright. Would I watch it again? Maybe with friends at home while having drinks and conversations but I would not be focusing only on the movie. 

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Trying something new - Cupcakes

A friend of mine and myself came up with the idea, that we need to do something new, try to better ourselves, experience something new and find some way to become better humans. Now this did take some time to take off and we are still not done with everything we wanted to do for the start but I already did something new and I wanted to share my thoughts on it. 

The idea of these articles is to try new things and well to be something we are not. For me, this means to try different things. My goal is to try something new every other week for 3 months so all in all try 6 new things. And trying a new drink or food does not count. I have to actually do something new and try something I have not done and last week I did something. I put myself in the shoes of a pastry baker. 

I baked some cupcakes for work. Now how I got to this point? Well, my fiance likes to bake pastries and sweets and since my birthday was coming up and I thought that I would treat my colleagues to some sweets and learn something new at the same time. Lo and behold, I baked cupcakes. Here is a picture. Now, these are not as good as my fiancee's ones, that she made some time ago and sure, I am lacking imagination when it comes to styling and making them interesting but I think it's not half bad for the first time. 

Now I do not have a lot of pictures and I will try to take more pictures next time I do something new but I will do my best to put the whole process into words. 

Holy fuck does it take a fuckton of time. Before this, I somehow did not think about how much time baking something takes. For these 48 cupcakes, I spent somewhere around 4-5 hours and these ones are not that hard to make. You make the base, bake it, make the topping and apply it. Simple enough, but gosh is it time-consuming. See the picture on the right. This one was created by my fiancee. Took around 8 hours total for 2 boxes of them. And the heat from the oven. UUU sweaty my pants were. 

All in all the experience was kinda fun but you really have to love doing this to do it all the time. Will I do this again? Maybe but I am not too certain of it. If I help someone to make them, then sure, I will help out. But I will probably not do this by myself again.

So there you have it. The first new thing I did. I think that this will be a fun experience and maybe open up some new perspectives on life.

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Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia review

The latest game in the Total War series is out and its good. How good is it? Pretty good so let's talk about it and see whats what. 

Thrones of Britannia takes the Total War game to the British Isles in the Viking invasion period of history. The year is 878, the Vikings are invading and you can change history. But how does it play? Well, there are a couple of things to talk about so let's start with the performance. 

The game runs great. I played it on my old rig, that had a GTX 970 and an old AMD processor that created an incredibly unoptimized build, but it ran steadily on 60 FPS with a few dips on the campaign map. And this was happening only on the campaign map. But I had to disassemble my PC and now I mostly play on a Lenovo Legion Y520 with a GTX 1060 and an I5 in it. And I was a bit surprised but my performance was a lot better on the laptop. Smooth 60 FPS on high settings, no hiccups and no issues at all. I was really surprised about it and even the FPS drops on campaign map were happening only after playing for around 5-6 hours straight. But what is the game like? Well, I wanted to look at it from 2 perspectives - campaign gameplay and battle gameplay. 

The campaign has almost everything that you expect with some tweaks and new additions. You create armies, recruit units, move your armies and so on. The basics are still there but there are a lot of new things so let's go over them. 

Province management is somewhat changed. The new addition of minor settlements and the removal of military buildings shakes this management aspect up a bit and to be honest, I like it a lot. Units are upgraded with tech now (we will get to that a little later), so there is no need for military buildings. Now you mostly have to build buildings that produce food or money, but that is not the only reason to build. Some victory requirements can be sped up with buildings, mainly fame victory, and there are a lot of buildings that add a trade resource. Minor settlements now have a set amount of buildings that you can only upgrade and major settlements are where you will be doing most of your building. Oh and there are no more siege battles for minor settlements, instead you just steamroll them and move on. This opens the game for more strategic army maneuvering and it makes these settlements a lot more important in times of war since they produce most of your food. Once you run out of food, then your army will start to desert and this can be devastating. If you lose an army in Thrones of Britannia, it can cripple you for multiple turns, since you cannot recruit a 20 stack in a couple of turns. And this brings us to the army changes, so let's get into that. 

Unit recruitment is changed a lot. Now there is a global pool of units and once a unit card is recruited, you have to wait for it to replenish to recruit another unit of this kind. This makes it so, that your armies will be composed of different units and almost no army will be the same unless it's composed of the most basic units. The replenishment of a unit card is handled with a % chance per turn. You can feel this with cavalry units especially since they have a low replenishment chance and you have to wait for you to be able to get more cavalry units. But this is not the only unit change there is. Now once you recruit a unit its not instantly at full force. You have to wait for it to "heal". This combined with the replenishment % makes army recruitment a lot slower and a lot more valuable. And once an army is lost, it can be devastating to your war effort since you will not be able to get another full force army that fast. 

Besides the recruitment, unit tiers are also changed. Now you can upgrade your unit tier with tech, but in order to research that tech, you have to achieve a pre-requisite to unlock the tech branch. And this goes for all tech. Unless you have built, done or conquered something, you cannot research tech. And I feel like this is great. It creates mini-objectives for you to do alongside the victory objective. 

The last thing on the campaign front is loyalty. Now characters have a loyalty stat that can help or hinder you. If a character's loyalty gets low enough and you do not do anything to increase it then a civil war can break loose and this can be costly. If you are at war with any other faction and a civil war breaks loose, you can lose all your progress if you do not manage it more. And I feel like the characters and generals actually live a longer throughout the game and are a lot more impactful. The upgrades for generals and governors last longer and you can get somewhat attached to the characters. I only wish there was more interaction with characters, but this is not Crusader Kings, so I believe this can be forgiven. 

Thrones of Britannia battles actually do not have a lot of changes. I feel like CA is a little afraid to change the core formula on the battles, but it still works and it works great. Your units have a rock, paper, scissors formula to them. You deploy them, create a formation and go ham on the enemy. But I did have some issues with this. On normal difficulty, I felt like the battles are too easy and the AI is somewhat brain dead. I found almost all my armies using the same formula. 5 archer units, 5-7 front line units, 2-4 spear units and the rest cavalry. By the end, I noticed that the AI is barely using its cavalry at all, so I opted out for the following formation - 6 archer units, 2 spear units, 3 cavalry units and 9 front line fighters. And this one tactic was working fine almost at all battles. See the screenshot for my formation. Now what I do with it, it advance the formation until the enemy is in my archer range, start to rain them down with arrows, push my infantry into the enemy and then focus my archers on one enemy unit at a time from the right-hand side. Once one enemy is routed, march the free infantry behind the next and charge in. All this is done while the cavalry units are chasing the enemy archer units or charging in from behind into the non-spear infantry. That is all. This one formula has won almost every single battle for me. To be fair, I have not tried a higher battle difficulty, but I do wish that the AI had some tricks up its sleeve and better use of cavalry. 

And siege battles are no better. The AI is really bad at them. I have won all my sieges by building 2 siege towers, marching it up to the gate on both sides, put one infantry on gate destroying duty and just push my units on the walls with the help of the towers while focusing the engaged infantry with my archers. As good as this looks, it does not make for a fun gameplay. By the end of my first campaign, sieges almost felt like a chore. The battles themselves look amazing, but it just felt a little too tedious to do the same thing all the time. 

All in all what do I think about the game? Its fun but it will not pull more than a couple more campaigns out from me. HOI4 is the kind of unique game, that keeps me returning to it since there are a lot of things you can try and do, but Thrones of Britannia, once you have figured out the formula that works for you, you can start over, since you will win from that point. I still think I will get a solid 50 hours out of the game, but that's about it. 

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Microtransactions should be banned, or should they?

“Microtransactions should be banned” is a sentence that I saw quite a lot when I was writing my series of articles about microtransactions and on one hand I can see from where this is coming. There are a lot of microtransactions that should be banned but not all of them are this horrible big beast that is destroying the industry we all love. 

I agree that some microtransactions should be banned, for instance, the ones that are gambling like, like the latest Call of Duty ones. When you open the box, there is an animation similar to that of a slot machine. Other games do the same. And I do agree, these microtransactions are bad and should not be allowed. But are they all bad? My answer is no. 

In my microtransactions series, I talked about the Overwatch microtransactions and that they are actually good and do not harm the player. With some more research, I found out, that this is not necessarily true. What they do is stimulate your pleasure centers of the brain every time you open a box. Now there is no harm from the items themselves, pure cosmetics, that cannot be traded or used any way outside the game, but the process of opening the box itself should be changed in my opinion. 

I based my opinion of Overwatch on my own experience, and that I never felt the need to purchase any boxes to get the items I wanted since I don't care much for cosmetics but a younger mind that can be easily influenced may not see it that way. They might feel something while opening the box thus making it more likely to purchase it in the future. 

So should microtransactions be banned then? Still, the answer is no. If they would change it up a bit and allow players to just purchase the skins and cosmetics they want to this would eliminate the psychological aspect of it. Sure, Activision / Blizzard would be losing money in the process and I not talking about their sales going into negatives I am talking about them having a smaller profit but the gaming media exposure would be huge and they would get a lot of positive press for it. Will this offset the long-term profit loss? No. Will this create a better landscape for gaming? Yes. If a big publisher or dev takes steps like these to improve their business practices then a smaller dev or publisher might follow. 

The issue of microtransactions has been talked to death already but I believe that we should continue to have the conversation for as long as the business landscape does not change regarding this question. Some microtransactions should be banned, I agree, but not all of them are bad and not all of them are made to pressure you into purchasing them. Sometimes they are the only way to monetize the content devs are making and as long as they do not take advantage of the player they should be fine and allowed.  

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Single player is dying, or so they say

A lot of gaming news outlets and influences are trying to sping the narrative that single player games are dying because developers and publishers are trying to push more multiplayer games and are focusing their attention on microtransactions. True as this might be most articles do not mention one very important thing regarding this. It's not that single player games are dying its that publishers are seeing the money that microtransactions are bringing in and are trying to make more games based on this model. 

This does not mean, that single player games are dying out. We have great examples of games, that are exclusively single player. Look at Sony exclusive titles. Most of them are single player. And most of them are great games. Horizon Zero Daw, the new God of War, Bloodborne and so on. There are still plenty of single player games. I have already written about Dead Cells and Slay the Spire, great games, single player only. But why do we see this narrative so much in the gaming media lately?

I believe it's just because big publishers are going that route more and more. The next Call of Duty is rumored to not have a single player campaign and the latest Battlefield campaigns were just painfully average (altho I did like Battlefield 3 campaign quite a lot). The good old times were with Bad Company 2 campaign and Modern Warfare campaign but what players wanted was multiplayer. And I think that its only natural for the devs and publishers to go that route. They are a business at the end of the day and they are looking to make more money.

I actually believe that this is not a bad thing at all. If a developer can skip the single player at all and create a great multiplayer experience then I believe that this will only benefit the gaming market. The big titles can focus on multiplayer and the smaller ones can be great at single player thus balancing it all out. You do not need to have a huge budget to create a great single player experience. Just look at Hellblade Senuas Sacrifice. It's an excellent game and was not made with a huge budget. It looks great, it sounds amazing and it delivers on the story. 

Single player games are not dying and single player is not going anywhere it's just that the market is changing and sometimes we as the consumer just do not see it like that and we think that there is some sort of a huge shift going on. There will be devs that focus exclusively on single player. Look at CD Project Red. They made all the money in the world with Witcher 3 and will probably make more with Cyberpunk. The argument that single player games are dying is just plain wrong. You want a great shooter, play Doom or Wolfenstein. You want an RPG, get Horizon or Bloodborne. There are a ton of great games out there, but you just have to look a bit. 

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Top 5 Slay the Spire tips for new players

In the previous articles, I gave you my personal Top 5 Slay the spire tips for each character but I wanted to expand on that a little bit with some tips that are applicable to both characters. They can help you too to slay the spire and defeat the final boss. 

First things first this is my personal top so if you feel that I have said something wrong, or want to add to the list comment on the article and we can talk about it. But other than that here is the first tip. First-floor elites. I have seen some discussions about the first floor and how you should tackle it kill elites don't kill elites and skip them all together but I believe its situational. If you got lucky with some half decent attack cards then I would say go for as many as you can since this will help you on the next floor but avoid them if you are unsure or low on health and this brings us to the next general Slay the Spire tip.

Rest when you have to. Do not put off resting because you feel like you have enough health. See your deck. Does it have enough defense or burst to deal with the enemies? What about an elite? If yes then sure you can skip a resting site but if not just play it safe and go rest. There is no need to take huge risks and then just restart. A single relic or a couple of cards can turn the run around. No need to make that hail mary in the hopes of hitting it big. Play it safe.

Also connected to the resting sites, this one should come as a no surprise to any player, that has some hours in the game, for new players this might not click right away. What I want to say, upgrade your cards. Sometimes upgraded cards have unique effects that help you greatly, sometimes it's just a flat damage increase so plan ahead on cards you want to upgrade. You can check a box to see the upgraded version of the card you are inspecting in your decklist. Use this to your advantage and plan ahead a little bit.

My Slay the Spire tips might not help all new players sure but for some of you who are newer to games in general, is one that will help you in other games as well. Don't hoard your gold and spend your energy. Gold is just a resource the same as energy. Spend them. You might want to have some gold for a later shop and that is fine but check out the map and see if there even is another shop in your path. If not spend that money on some bling.

And here is my las Slay the Spire tip for new players. Losing a run is fine. You do not have to win every run. Sometimes you will get incredibly unlucky with draw, relics, and cards. And that is fine. You are allowed to lose a run. Just don't get too frustrated with it. When I started I lost about 8 or 9 runs till my first victory with the Ironclad and even more losses until my first victory with the Silent. And this is fine. The game is about exploration and learning. Learn the card effects and synergies, how cards can interact with relics and how to turn a bad siituation into a good one. Its all possible in Slay the Spire.  

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