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Contacting me

With Twitter not going great. I thought I just create and pin this on my blogspot so I can be reached if for some reason people actually wan...

Monday, July 24, 2023

Playing Black Desert Online as a new player


As with most things, I'll start by reviewing my own bias and gaming history. I would label myself as a pretty old gamer (in my 40s). In my early years, I played, you know, the NES and mostly platformers. During my teenage years, I dabbled in JRPGs and spent a lot of time playing fighting games in arcades (this will become relevant later as I talk about my experience in the game). In terms of MMORPGs, my first game was surprisingly a Korean MMO called Nexus Kingdom of the Winds, followed by Ragnarok Online, and then some other assorted games like Seal Online and Yogurting (if people actually remember that game). I also played Mabinogi before moving on to PSO2 / PSO2 New Genesis. In total, I've been playing MMOs for over two decades now.

I approached Black Desert Online like any well-seasoned gamer after three decades of playing games – being cynical as f**k. The first thing I heard about Black Desert Online (I'll abbreviate it to BDO from now on) was that the game is pay-to-win to the extreme for an MMORPG. I was told that certain systems hinder you from having a good experience, and players who flash their wallets would be well ahead of everyone else.

Recently, there have been many videos discussing how the new user experience and the general experience of BDO have improved significantly. Curious, I decided to try the game out, and this is how I got to this point.

 



I downloaded the game, checked the official page, watched a video on which classes are interesting, and then sat on the game for a week. Why?



Because the amount of information was overwhelming, and even just looking at all the features was exhausting. When I finally started the game, it was in Bahasa Indonesia for some reason. It took me about 10 minutes of Googling Reddit to figure out how to switch to English for South East Asia.

Next, I picked Drakania and proceeded with Character creation. I don't think I need to elaborate on this much, as its character creator can keep you entertained for ages. So, I picked something simple, tweaked some parts I wanted, and left it at that.

I threw myself into the tutorial, went through it, and then entered the actual game world, immediately getting bombarded by non-stop notifications about player upgrades, guild activities, events, and more. The upper part of my screen was constantly filled with notifications every 10-20 seconds. It took me about 40 hours into the game to discover that I could turn them off – imagine how jarring that was. Not only were the notifications huge, but they were also loud and actually drowned out the voice acting when I was doing the starting quest areas and the main quest NPCs were talking.From there, I proceeded to do the main quest until I somehow reached level 55 (I cannot remember how) before I had to refer to a leveling guide and an upgrading guide. It was a surprise how I got to level 55 without any guides – just following most quests and what the game suggests – before the mobs handed my ass to me.

Clearly, I didn't know where to level up once my experience gain started slowing down and my gear wasn't good enough. The wall I hit was when enemies became too hard to kill and were hitting me very hard. This is because the game has no boundaries for harder content, but again, I don't have much experience with sandbox-style MMOs, so I was completely lost.

As for the questing itself, it was mostly run-of-the-mill "kill things" and "bring things to NPC." The magus quest was interesting, feeling like small mini-games, but many of the games/puzzles were not clearly explained. Again, I had to look up a guide for the ones I didn't understand.

I think the worst offender for poor quest design is what the players call "Valencia 2" of the main quest. The quest has parts where you need to go to the titular Black Desert and find things. To find these things in the sand, you need to dig. One of them requires digging in a very specific spot, and the other randomly drops. The game doesn't tell you that. Also, why doesn't the game have a separate inventory for quest items? You can easily have 10 quest items in your inventory just taking up space. Those parts are easily the worst parts of questing in BDO.

To be honest, the story of the game is interesting, but even for me, it is kind of wordy. It took me about 2 hours before I started skipping most of the text, paying attention only if I felt the NPC was giving important details.

As for the combat, it is probably one of the few MMORPGs that have good action combat. There are things like armor for your moves, moves that automatically block any frontal attacks, cancels into movement into attacks, etc. It's sort of like fighting games, where you are constantly moving in to attack and canceling out of moves to evade enemy strikes. Though any mobs with crowd control skills that stun you will quickly lead to your death, as in dungeons/enemy territory, they come in huge numbers and deal massive damage quickly.

As much as I find the combat extremely fun, this same combat can be difficult for MMORPG players coming from tab-targeting or slower-paced action combat to learn (just like fighting games!). Though I would still prefer the PSO2/NGS style of action combat.

I like the fact that most bosses are solo encounters, testing your knowledge, but probably because I am on a seasonal character, the campaign bosses die quickly. Though I believe you can fight the campaign bosses at higher levels for more challenge.

The world itself is massive and takes a while to travel from one end to the other, even on a mount. If you do not rely on the map, you will quickly find yourself lost, and that's actually the fun part for me.

Now, coming to the parts of the game I do not have any context or interaction with. I like to first note that I play my MMORPGs solo-style, meaning I usually do not interact with other players outside of the market. With that perspective in mind, these are the parts I am unable to talk about:

1. Community and Support
2. Player interaction
3. PVP

I have explained points 1 and 2 earlier, why I am unable to talk about them, but for PVP, the reason is simple. I do not play any PVP in any MMORPGs because I play fighting games on the side. No MMORPG PVP can be as good as fighting games, especially once gear comes into play. I do not even want to think about class balances for PVP because even in fighting games, there are never clear answers, and MMORPGs tend to change things very quickly. A fighting game can be nearly 30 years old, and you would think the meta would have stayed the same due to no patches/updates, but actually, it gets changed because of better player understanding of the characters, matchups, and the game engine itself.

I hope you find this useful, or at least entertaining to read.

Monday, July 3, 2023

The painful process of extracting things from the bird

Since the platform has currently become so unstable, it is time to look to moving away. I am mostly looking to where the JP folks are going.

The other thing is I use twitter to follow a few topics as follow:

- FGC news, people, event
- Game dev / Software info, people, event
- Artists and Musicians
- Entertainment between some of the funny / parody accounts
- Emergency notifications
- Some official accounts from Companies for updates etc
- Trend checking (mostly for Japan)
- Point of contact that isn't directly my email for personal / private communication (I have another email for business or work related)

Personally I do not mind if I need to have 2 different SNS, One for JP, one for international. It is really time consuming to prepare all this. Also I have prepared a link tree link page so the rest of the contact is there. Not going to put my discord up for obvious reasons and yes I have Instagram but I just have it so people don't use my online alias.

No I do not have Tik Tok. Not going to. Not a fan of short video formats. I hardly even watch anything YouTube shorts.

Anyways this is just an update for the bird platform. Lets see where things go from here.

Contacting me

With Twitter not going great. I thought I just create and pin this on my blogspot so I can be reached if for some reason people actually want to reach me.

https://linktr.ee/kilvear

Monday, September 5, 2022

Wanting to travel to Japan as a Singaporean with the new "non-guided tour" guidelines starting 7th Sept 2022

What I am doing here is consolidating what I have found out from researching online and talking to the JTB (Japan Tourist Board tour agency - https://sg.jtbtrip.com/

Firstly, even today (05 Sept 2022), JTB has not officially received on the full guidelines on how the "Non-guided tour" is suppose to be. What I have is guidelines from the Japan Tourism Agency (https://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/) which is only in Japanese listed here https://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/content/001510151.pdf. I am not going to fully go into the guidelines as the travel agencies might have a different set of them or there might be changes.

 

What I am going to do here is ignore the guidelines first and let you know the process assuming:

1.  you need to book your hotel and flight through the agency

2. you have time to actually plan your trip

The reason for point 2 will be clear once I start explaining. 

 

First, you need go to the travel agency to whatever flight/hotel bookings. Once that is done, the agency will provide you with all the documents you need to apply for the visa needed to travel in Japan. You will also need to get your printed vaccination certificate (https://www.notarise.gov.sg/) ready.

Now with the documents go to https://www.sg.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_ja/11_000001_00505.html and make an appointment to apply for your visa. Now that you are advised not to book the appointment earlier than 6 weeks before your travel date.

After applying for your visa, you need to wait at least 5 working days before your will know if your visa is approved.


As you noticed, you need spare time to prepare and do all this. Hence point 2 needing spare time to actually plan your trip. I also like to note from the kind staff from JTB travel agency letting me know that they are unable apply for visa on your behalf. So more time needs to be arranged to visit the JP embassy. 

Also you notice very quickly the visa issue is a chicken and egg problem being its a bet whether you can actually get a visa to Japan even if you booked and got your all documents ready.

All I can really say, the whole process is going to be an abundance of problems and you need to plan at least a month in advance for any Japan trips coming end of the year. Good Luck.

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - the game

If you follow my twitter and came here you will know that I am separating my opinion about the game itself and the my opinion about the series. If not, yes this is part 1.


Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is a game by team Ladybug. Currently they are known for their 2 earlier games Megami Tensei Synchronicity prologue and Touhou Luna Nights.

If you played either of the mentioned games then the easiest summary for you in regards to Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is very very smooth and well animated pixel art, very interesting and fun mechanics, great boss fights and a good soundtrack to go along with the game.


For this game, you play as Deedlit from the Record of Lodoss War and she has awoken in a place she cannot recognise. You navigate the labyrinth to figure out where she is and what is happening. 

The game in general is very thin in story and well the characters are cryptic. There is the assumption that you already know who Deedlit is and who are the characters you are meeting. So if you did not have all that prior knowledge, the whole premise will be lost on you. 

In regards to the back story of Record of Lodoss War I would recommend to at least read the summary online as I won't be doing it here. There are far better people who can explain the premise of Lodoss War lore better than what I can write here. 

The Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth like team Ladybug's 2 earlier games, they fall under the genre Metroidvania. Though the exploration part is on the lighter side and the focus is more on its combat. Exploration do net you some spells / gear that makes the upcoming boss fight easier. 

Speaking of gear and spells, the game resolves around 2 main mechanics. First is the 2 elemenal spirits which you get very early in the game. 

The fire and wind spirit switching mechanic is the main mechanic you will be using to solve puzzles, traversing the Labyrinth and boss fights. Each spirit changes some of your attacks and movement option. E.g.wind spirit allows you to float downward a jump, fire spirit allows your sliding to move further and gain invincibility.

Not taking time to understand the mechanic will make your whole experience of the game terrible as bosses often come with moves that cover the whole screen until you switch to the right spirit if not you are going down fast. 


The other mechanic is your spells / weapons. When I said weapons, it is actually mostly your bow. Almost no puzzle require the use of spells but there are several now puzzles that are interesting and fun once you figure out how the bow works. Again the game punishes you for not having a good grasp of bow usage. So keep that in mind.


Your other weapon is mostly just swords and it is close to what you get in Castlevania Symophony of the Night which is weapon attack speed / damage dealt or weapon attack animation.

The game is very pretty. You will be awe by how Deedlit moves (very Alucard like), the bosses, the backgrounds. 

I would say the weaker side of the game is exploration being very linear. You will quickly figure out most of the stuff except 1 hint which is probably not well worded.

Game is what most people would call short. 4-6 hours. Though people tend to forget Metroidvania are not very long games. Game is also not padded which is fine for me.

Like to note I am not fully explaining some of the mechanics as they are part of certain puzzles.

I hope that is enough information for you to figure out if you want to buy the game.