By Ben, on March 14th, 2011 Now that I’ve finished Dragon Age 2 I’m prepared to share some of my thoughts. Keep in mind the following:
- Played the role of the eternally good champion
- Had a relationship with Anders
I knew I was close to the end before my last post but it turns out I was at the final battle, after which the game just sort of ended.
The game’s story is held together by an over-arching narrative between a templar seeker and Varric, a dwarf companion you will gain early in the game. The templar is looking for our character, the champion, with events of the game actually occuring as Varric retells everything up to that point.
Suffice to say I was destroyed when Anders’ betrayal became clear and killed him for it, but the end where I would have expected some sort of revelation just petered out leaving a hint that the Hero of Ferelden and the Champion of Kirkwall had both disappeared.
I played the entire game on casual because I was interested in the story, not the challenge of battle. Having said that, some of the battles towards the end were challenging even on casual.
I’ve been trying to think if the game was better for forcing you into the role of a specific character compared to the originals flexibility and have come to the conclusion that for players it makes no difference. For Bioware it was probably a hell of a lot easier to develop without the myriad of possibilities though.
I’d love to hear other peoples thoughts, please share.
By Ben, on March 13th, 2011 The Japanese earthquake/tsunami has sent both Final Fantasy XI & XIV offline for at least a week (it’s not like I was playing), the weeks episode of Fringe ended with a very peculiar Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) doing the voice of William Bell (Leonard Nimoy), and Dragon Age 2 destroys me with the realisation that it is The Empire Strikes Back of the series – I trusted you, you bastard! (this will make sense upon playing the game).
I will post more concerning my thoughts on Dragon Age 2 as I would like to share with my myriad of readers, who all adore the regularity with which I post.
By Ben, on November 4th, 2010 Having the sum of five hours of travel to and from work each day leaves me plenty of time to think when I’m not sleeping. The most recent thing I was thinking about was how the promise of fast ADSL speeds are used against consumers.
ADSL2+ speeds can be anything from 1.5Mb to not quite 24Mb, dependant upon your proximity to the exchange. Technically though it’s not a straight measurement between point A and B because your proximity to the exchange is measured by the cable path/length between your modem and the exchange.
ISP’s never tell you where the exchange is. Because of this the speed you actually receive cannot be measured against any benchmark such as this handy graph from Internode:
 There are 3rd party tools available to determine where your exchange may be, such as http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/, though due to their 3rd-party nature they are not accurate. For example, that site reports that my current connection speed would be 1.5MB when I have 4MB (thank god it’s wrong!).
Here is where the fun begins: how many people do you think live within 900m of their exchange? How many in terms of physical household size could possible live within 900m of their exchange?
According to ABS data the average new house size in 2002-2003 was 227m² (link) but let’s be generous and say it was 200m². The area of a circle with .9km diameter is 2.55km². We can’t assume that the houses and exchange have no roads near them or that the exchange itself occupies no space, and local governments require a certain area of additional land per house, so let’s deduct 50% of that space to allow for them (this is an approximation). This leaves us with 1.275km² in which, assuming a perfect world where everything fits, we can place 6 residental properties.
Based upon these generous numbers 6 households will receive the maximum speed ADSL offers per exchange, assuming that the cable runs directly from the exchange to each house. The caveat here is that exchanges are not necessarily located in the middle of a residential area. In my case it is located dead in the centre of Campbelltown which is entirely commercial with residential premises beginning at least 400-500m away (in a direct line, not as the cable goes).
2.5km from the exchange, the apex at which you can expect a maximum of half the speed advertised (12Mb), is little better.
Area of circle of radius 2.5km = 19.625km²
Minus the previous 2.55km² = 17.075km²
Allowing for spaces that are not houses (minus 50%) = 8.538km²
Number of houses which can be held in 8.538km² = 42
42 homes can receive speeds ranging from below 24Mb to 12Mb per exchange, assuming that the exchange is situated in a residential area and that each house has a cable running directly from the exchange to the house.
Is selling ‘up to 24Mb’ internet speeds while knowing full well that very few, if any, will ever receive that, or that more than half will be luck to receive 12Mb, deceptive? Hell yes.
I would love to delve further into this by examining ISP pricing and bandwidth costs to understand at what level they set their pricing. I presume this would show that a majority of customers are paying for a price established for a higher amount of bandwidth they are receiving but without the data to back it up this can’t be anything more than conjecture.
By Ben, on October 20th, 2010 If you haven’t heard, FF14 has been universally panned as a piece of garbage to the point that they’ve given an additional free month to everyone who bought it in the hope they won’t leave. They’ve also published a long list of expected fixes planned prior to the end of the year, which may possibly be too late.
The entire game is designed to make everything take as long as humanly (or not) possible and nothing whatsoever is explained. You can only do 8 quests of any kind (except the main story quest) every 36 hours. Teleporting anywhere you’ve been costs anima, which replenishes slowly over a 48 hour period, so you’ll spend a lot of time walking. Did I mention everything in the world is really far away?
Going anywhere starts with the problem of not only figuring out where you have to go, but also where exactly that is. There are two maps in the game. One shows where quests are and nothing else (including your character), the other everything else but nothing about quests. You can’t view both at the same time. You can’t scroll/zoom the map using the mouse. Apparently you can scroll the map using the keyboard but I’ve never been able to figure out how to do it.
The class you select in the beginning of the game only determines your initial equipment because the game is surprisingly flexible in that equipping different weapons/tools changes your class. You can and will be every class there is to allow the ability to get better gear and such.
Crafting/Gathering is incredibly obfuscated. Don’t know how to fish? Too bad, figure it out. What? You don’t have any bait? Idiot, back to town to get some. You’re going to mine now? Good luck figuring that one out! Trying your hand at cooking? You idiot.
Crafting also has the added benefit of there being no record anywhere in the game of recipes so make sure you have a notepad handy while doing quests because this is the primary method of learning new recipes. The other way is through experimentation. Oh, and don’t think you can be clever and have a document you can alt-tab to because FF14 will crash if you try.
The game lacks visual indicators of pretty much any kind. You won’t know who is a vendor, who gives quests, if a mob is too hard or easy for you. Actually, there are some areas where vendors are located but the signs at their shop provide no means to determine exactly what they sell without manually looking.
The interface is incredibly backwards. There is no key to open your inventory, skills, character sheet, quests, etc. You must navigate the menu to get at those.
While the graphics are pretty, the entire game has a noticeable lag between you initiating an action and the action being performed. This includes battle where you’ll find that you’ve killed enemies prior to the killing blow being dealt.
I’m still giving it a go, but I don’t think I will stick with it.
By Ben, on September 26th, 2010 I was just reading a list of known issues for Final Fantasy XIV and laughed out loud at the last one:
-If a player has viewed the credits, the game may display the error message ” An update error has occurred. Error 20524″ and fail to update properly.
*We apologize for the inconvenience, but if this error occurs we ask that you please reinstall FINAL FANTASY XIV.
Holy hell that’s a bug and a half! Whatever you do, don’t view the credits or you will need to go through the pain of reinstalling/patching. Maybe it’s ok to run them and not look at the screen (this is a Japanese game after all).
Can you imagine this sort of thing ever occurring with World of Warcraft?
By Ben, on September 26th, 2010 Last weeks Q&A, wherein they discussed Euthanasia, was one that I’ve been mulling over since. Most of the discussion was your usual crap that serves no purpose but one of the panellists briefly touched upon the informal euthanasia which is currently practised by hospitals.
This made me think of my mum.
My mum had cancer of the liver but it may interest some of you to know that wasn’t what killed her. What killed my mum was the hospital starving her to death because they decided without consultation that she needed a push to hurry her along. I don’t know precisely why they decided this, though I can guess it most likely had something to do with the cost/benefit ratio of keeping her alive and comfortable had tipped too far in the wrong direction.
I’m not angry at them for making the decision that we couldn’t (either legally or emotionally) and would never consider being litigious, but when I think of my mum in that last week it hurts because I know that was not what she would have wanted, regardless of it being for the best.
This is the only thing I have difficulty coping with about mum’s death.
By Ben, on September 13th, 2010 On my way to work yesterday I accidentally got onto the wrong train and ended up at North Ryde station. The last time I was in the area was when I was working for Gateway and the train line was in the planning stages. What a sexy station though, it makes me want to live there just to be able to use the facilities.
By Ben, on September 13th, 2010 I’ve come to realise that the game expects that you will talk to every NPC available, similar to the single-player games by the same name. They think that visual indicators to know who gives quests, who sells equipment, and who will provide completely meaningless banter, are not needed and that discovering who gives what is fun. To be honest it would be fun, if the game world was a hell of a lot smaller.
I still haven’t figured out what you’re supposed to do when you get killed which should tell you a lot about the game.
By Ben, on September 8th, 2010  I need you bad
By Ben, on September 6th, 2010 I downloaded the FFXIV open beta over the weekend to check it out and what a chore. Despite the updater using Bittorrent tech it was quicker to open the torrent files in uTorrent than to use their downloader.
I tried FFXI in the past and thought that it not only looked drab and ran like crap, but it had a very high barrier to entry in terms of gameplay. It also was a game that forced you to group. My experience with FFXIV has shown me that Square-Enix have learnt very little. While the graphics engine has received a much needed overhaul, the interface is mostly exactly the same as before, and it is very unresponsive down to the very mouse pointer itself.
The game opens with you on a boat and a room full of NPC’s. There is no indication at all of what to do. There is no tutorial telling you how to move with your character or how to interact with NPC’s. Once you figure out for yourself how to interact with NPC’s you realise they provide just two completely meaningless conversation options (which are repeated for every NPC I’ve encountered so far). There is a door on the other side of the room why you can use by walking close to it, but of course there is no indication that you need to walk close to it or that it is even something you can interact with.
Once on deck the in-engine cutscenes ensue and at one point you are expected to work out how the battle system works with no help whatsoever. You eventually arrive at a town and are stuck at a dock until working out that you need to talk to a certain NPC (of which there are about ten in the area). Not just any conversation will do, you’ll need to select the correct option before the game will send you to a zone in which you have more freedom.
After more cutscenes you are dropped into the world and instantly expected to know where to go, what to do and how to do it. Even worse is that after you’re dropped into the world and after each time that you interact with anyone it takes a full minute before everyone else will reappear, including NPC’s!
It’s games like this that make you appreciate the value of quest indicators which are completely missing from this. There is no direction (that I’ve seen), no tutorial, and the games interface is slow as hell.
I’m honestly shocked at how bad it is but in retrospect it is, perhaps, a good thing considering I have little time in my life for another MMO. Thank you Square-Enix for letting me see the game for the shit it is before I laid down actual money for it (and got myself in trouble for doing so).
PS I neglected to mention the biggest mistake of all – putting Australian players on European servers!
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