Mystic Worlds

Aging Gamer with Less Time

As the years go by, I find that I have LESS time to game, which is the opposite of what I was expecting. Being an empty nester and established in my profession, I had it in my head that I’d be able to game more as time went by. Instead I have a high pressure job and multiple entrepreneurial ventures depleting my energy and gobbling up my time. I also keep telling myself that I want to finish writing one of my false-start novels some day too.

The myriad of things pulling at my strings makes me more particular about the games if any, I play. There are always a dozen things I could be or should be doing; that treading water in a game I don’t REALLY ENJOY is a thing of the past. The more games I try, the more disappointed I become but clearer about what I’m willing to spend time doing versus what I’m not.

Existing the EQN Landmark Adventure

Over the weekend I submitted a Support Ticket to be refunded my Trailblazer purchase for Landmark. I was not unhappy with the building tools. I was not disappointed with game mechanics. What I didn’t anticipate was that the world would be so full yet feel so empty. All the claims taken but I don't see a living soul. There are very FEW player structures. There are no NPCs yet. It’s mostly you, yourself and your claim. All the great builds on YouTube, linked in the forums, posted on Reddit and the alike, represent a very small portion of the claim population. For the most part it’s crickets and dead space.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I wasn’t motivated to start a new project after completing my claim. I made templates of the individual structures, the whole structure and all of the custom objects I created Since the most recent patch I could tweak it with the newly added recipes which includes plants and trees but it wasn't enough of a temptation to for me to log into LM. It had the opposite effect.  I felt more strongly that without “game” elements, Landmark wasn’t going to be something I’d do very often and decided to wait for EverQuest Next.

EVE FW, EQN Landmark, Hearthstone, Star Citizen

EVE Faction Warfare

I definitely should have considered that I play EVE in spurts before joining Faction Warfare. I have more moments where I’m not looking for an adrenalin rush, than moments where I am. I haven’t played in a couple of weeks. Work and getting my shop ready for spring and summer having commandeered much of my free time, I don’t have the availability needed to get involved with pre-planned activities in EVE. My free time, mood and temperament seem to be counterproductive to participating in long term gaming commitments.

I must be doing it wrong! Before disappearing, I was still struggling with knowing for sure when it was safe to make the first hit in FW. Several times I had the advantage, having seen the ship on the scanner as I was nearing the area. However, they were not in my overview because they were cloaked and by the time I checked the pilot info to see their status, they’d started the engagement. Once I was saved when another friendly arrived. Another time, I just barely escaped.

EQN Landmark Beta

Across several mini sessions I’ve completed my first build – exterior and interior. It was fun. I enjoyed creating custom props much more than building structures. I think the template tool is great but I’d prefer if it, and all of the tools, handled micro voxels versus the manual way I have now discovered people are making them. My issue is that your ability to manipulate custom props is limited - rotate (some) and scale (not at all).  So once I create an object comprised of micro voxels it's difficult to turn that into something else or re-use it beyond the base micro voxel.  I dont have the patience for it.

My current assessment is that while I enjoyed constructing my claim, I had zero desire to knock it all down and start over – make something else. The world feels too dead, barren and lacking in visible player life to inspire me to “hang around”. Most of the time I played EQNL, I felt like I was in an offline building sim not a sandbox that supported other players. I saw what others had created when I passed by but VERY RARELY did I see actual signs of life. Sure it’s alpha but I’ve done many and this is the first one where it feels empty.  And yet, all the claims are taken. :-\

Without the usual MMO PVE traps and tropes, I think players will be online in spurts to farm and build. Cooperative building and new biomes will bring people back in numbers for a bit but I don’t expect to see constant hordes of players online in these zones. Consequently, I don’t know if it will give me what I need to sustain an interest. I will certainly build a “home”, maybe small town or street when it goes live and put my favorite templates on the market. But at this point, I’m not seeing what’s going to make me stick around for a long period of time other than checking in every so often to tinker with new templates.  Good thing it's free to play. I won't need to make that stay subscribed or unsubscribe decision.

EQN Landmark: Weekend in Review Part 2 of 2

Crafted props aren't solid objects

Crafted Props

Buildings completed, it was time to start decorating the interiors. Decorative items, including furniture and lighting, are called props in Landmark. Completing this part of my claim will take some time. I haven’t unlocked the highest crafting stations myself. Sorry, I don’t want to grind that much in Alpha. I am relying on the efforts of others to see the higher tier items that are available on the various crafting stations. One thing to know before you get started is that the prop recipes are metal hungry demons. Yeppers, they need lots of metals, so off to grinding I shall go.

I spent a couple of sessions harvesting like a madwoman in T1 and T2 zones. When I got tired of digging, I switched to chopping wood. When I got bored of that I went back to digging. The sun rose, the sun set, I kept running around collecting. I visited houses along the way to see what other players were building. There’s some really cool stuff out there. Unfortunately, the slow travel is a bit of a deterrent for me to see structures way off in the distance, when what I really need is right here underground. I think a fast ticket back to the portal would make me more inclined to take the long run out to see other claims, knowing I can get a quick ride back to ground zero.

The Basics

Being Alpha, there aren’t many prop recipes available at the moment. I made use of the standard items – tables, chairs, doors, lighting, etc. for my most basic needs. I put things here and there across my various buildings, filling them out in parallel as appropriate items were at hand. This part is like any other MMO that supports crafting. You feed the station the supplies and it births an item.

One disappointing aspect that I hope is only temporary, is that the station-made props are not solid objects. I can walk right through them. This a huge issue when you want to place items of top of crafted props. It’s not always as easy as let it be placed on the floor then use the move tool to change the Y axis. Sometimes what you’ve placed it under doesn’t allow you to see the dang item which means you can't select/move it. *sigh* In those cases, I had to put a big voxel where I wanted the item to go, place it on that, remove the voxel and then adjust the placement of the decorative item. Not a game breaker but definitely not idea.

EQN Landmark: Weekend in Review Part 1 of 2

All the gaming time I had available this past weekend was spent playing EQN Landmark. Server access and general client stability have improved since the last two patches. For all the claims taken, I still don’t see nearly as much construction as I’d expect. Perhaps they’re choosing to get all of their tools and stations before starting.

Most of my time was spent completing the exterior of my compound. I was already more than 125K worth of stone thrown at it. However, I was missing a few staircases and sculptural details on the platforms. When I decided that I wanted a third building in the back that mirrored my existing above ground building, I knew it was time to obtain all of the other building tools.

I can’t tell how long it took me to acquire the necessary components. My claim location is so inconvenient that when it’s time for lower tier harvested materials, I go farm each tier until I can’t stand it anymore. The next time I play, I return to building. Travel at this point is too tedious and inconvenient for a lot of back and forth. Once in awhile is no problem but I’m not doing the trek multiple times in a play session.

EQN Landmark: Building Minecraft Style

Now that the disappearing voxels issues has been resolved, I took a chance on building again. The only build tools I have at my disposal are the ones we started with – Add, Delete and Heal. There are more sophisticated tools available by crafting them but I haven’t gotten around to that part yet.

My plan was to keep it simple by hollowing out the ground on my claim – build by extraction method. I’m still gun-shy from having lost resources on half built structures previously. But you know how building goes. You get moving along, deleting here and adding there. One thing leads to another and suddenly, my plan of redoing a small dug out to see how things work flies out the portcullis.  The plan was to keep it SMALL then move along to crafting the more sophisticated tools to add more elements. Before I knew it I had built a structure on top of the dugout and a companion top level building too. You can’t just leave two disjointed structures so you have to marry them with a platform, steps, yada. Small is such a subjective term anyway.  *smile*

Over 105K blocks of stone later, I finally called it quits. I’ve only done the exterior. Nothing sophisticated but I’m happy with what was achievable by simply adding and removing blocks. This means that my nephews and especially my grandson, who is only 7, can play Landmark. They’re still nuts over Minecraft but enjoy MMOs too. This would be a great opportunity for us to be in the same virtual world again.

EQN Landmark: The Pain of Burled Wood

Muhahaha, this is for you Mr. Op.  Too cute.  Too funny.  And sadly, all too true.  The creator definitely needs some love.  Make sure to visit his YouTube page to leave a comment and Like.

  

 

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Landmark Alpha Live - Tell Us Where You're Planting Your Flag!!

EQN Landmark – It’s certainly alpha!

I’m questioning if it was wise of SOE to drop the NDA so quickly. Waiting another couple of weeks may end up having been a safer decision. I will preface this at the start by saying, YES, the game is in an alpha and anything can change between now and release.

First Impressions

The zones look and feel procedurally generated. They’re rather blah from a terrain perspective. Sarzan thinks they will feel more distinct once NPCs and NPC manned structures are added. To that I say, I’ve been in unpopulated zones in a game before that at least felt interesting. These don’t at all. I am making allowances for the fact that a good chunk of the landmass must be reserved for player structures which leaves wide swathes of barren landscape. Regardless, all I can say is how a game feels or doesn’t, and at this point it doesn’t feel visually inspiring.

One of the things that made MineCraft fun was the ability to quickly build as you go. You don’t have to harvest for hours before seeing the fruits of your labor. So far, the harvesting is a bit of a grind in Landmark. The number of subcomponents needed is too high in my opinion. Needing a 100 pieces of stone to build a single stone block is a bit much. Similarly, you have to gather multiple components to make your tools and unlock building skills. You end up needing 1500 pieces of this and 1000 pieces of that and 15 of this-that-and-other, to make a single tool. I do realize that this is their progression gate but in the doing, it feels like a lot for a single tool, let alone the tens of thousands of pieces needed to build a small structure.

Landmark Alpha Live - Tell Us Where You're Planting Your Flag!!

I'm currently installing the game but have to head off to the shop to teach art class this morning.  However, I will be running around Landmark this weekend.  At this point, most of us won't know where we're going to build anything. However, if we'd like to cluster near each other or know who's in the general vacinity, please feel free to comment on this thread once you've claimed a spot.  

Be sure to say SERVER, CHARACTER NAME and whatever regional information is relevant.  I have no clue how the zone names/identification works at this juncture since I've yet to get in game.

Happy exploring and flag planting!!

 

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