I’ve been having a few minor issues (some on the front-end and some on the back-end) that I want to try and fix. Sometime tomorrow, probably in the afternoon, we’ll be going on maintenance while I poke around and try to fix and/or improve things. I’m also going to be looking at the theme more closely and try to improve legibility and navigation, as well as make sure everything looks good on mobile (something I’ve admittedly neglected up to this point). So just a heads up there. I hate just doing blurbs but that’s really all I’ve got to say about it prior. I may post about some of the changes after I’m finished, though.
It’s a shame this is only temporary for now. I wanted to play a few matches before I gave an opinion about this mode, and I have, so I shall.
I only played four matches so far: three wins, one loss. The first match was with my Tirpitz B and didn’t go well at all. We got stonewalled before we even got close enough to start shooting at transports. Quick and brutal loss.
The next match I used a Lenin and it was going very poorly at first. I got taken out after we sunk the first or second transport–can’t remember which since they both died within moments of each other. We went on to win though.
The third match I was also on the attacking team because of course I was. I was getting sick of battleships so I dusted off my Prinz Eugen and secured the game by shooting and sinking the last transport. That one was a fun line up with all the T8 Hipper hulls present save Tallinn.
The last match I used my Graf Zeppelin B and finally got to play as an escort instead of an attacker. My performance wasn’t stellar since I haven’t played GZ regularly in quite a long time, but I did my part and got fairly close to knocking out the enemy CV (Kaga) to tie up the match. I was a few hundred hitpoints shy and I think we had only lost one ship by that point, so the focus fire was immense. She was going down within a few seconds no matter what. I just happened to do a good chunk of damage near the end.
I think I prefer escorting transports to attacking them but while writing this I’m not quite sure. I think I’ll need to play some more matches this weekend to really get a feel for the mode. The battleship gameplay is fairly hit or miss though with the way convoy interception works. It forces you in close so it’s better to have a brawling ship than a sniper. The problem is that Asashio is a thing and deep water torpedo ambushes are pathetically easy to pull off when you know where all the big ships are and where they have to go to be effective. That’s why me and a Massachusetts B got walked all over near the beginning of my first Convoys match.
I’ll play the mode more this weekend and see how I like it, but regardless of anything else, it’s a breath of fresh air and I really hope this isn’t the last we see of the mode. Wargaming should make it a permanent game mode, even if they have to put it into some kind of rotation in the random battle mode. That’s better than doing nothing or leaving it as a one off or annual experiment. The mere mention of convoys was enough to get people excited, so hopefully WG doesn’t let this go to waste.
I couldn’t settle on what to post today. I was looking back through previous posts, even going back through the old archived stuff, but I quickly realized that at the rate I was going I’d just spend the evening reading old content. So I decided instead of reading my old thoughts, why not just muse about it and post that? Couldn’t hurt for today. I’m honestly too tired for what I had planned this morning.
Looking back on the last year and a half or so, I’ve tried a lot of different approaches to keeping myself posting consistently, everything from relaying news I’m interested in, to quickly dipping in and out of politics. Some days I just threw in the towel and left a small blip on the blog to let the net know I was still alive. I already know what the real secret to consistency is, at least to spurring it on once it starts. It’s the audience. I haven’t lifted a finger to draw traffic to the site because I prefer to finish the building before I invite anyone into it. It’s fine if someone curious comes along and leaves a comment, but I’ve always been a presentation type. If something’s not finished, you’d have to hold me at gunpoint for me to start waving people over to see it. It’s one of those weaknesses I’ll have to have sorted by early 2022, I think.
As for finishing the building, I’d say having things a bit more organized and having a few more of the free stories and some bits of media published here would be good enough. Unfortunately that’s a ways off still. I might have to settle for ‘the beginnings’ of as much as I can and hope that the kind of people I attract lean more toward curiosity and constructive criticism than the dismissive gammas that started flooding the Earth a while back. We’ll see.
I don’t know exactly when I’ll start trying to drive traffic to the Praedian Records, but I’m looking at no later than my birthday this year, so not past winter. No pressure, Phee.
I’m getting excited about this. I’ve never tried making a height map before. While I didn’t plan to originally, I’ll need a lot of different variants of this dual continent, and height maps are extremely useful for the things I’m planning. It’s not just going to be used for a single time period either, so the political maps will be all over the place depending on the period.
Though … I guess now’s the time to consider if I want to move any islands around or not. I’ve made some changes since the previous version of the landmasses, but nothing major, as I didn’t really have any ideas. I’m starting to get some now, though. We’ll see. There’s still time, since I’m doing the height map in two groups, the “Above Sea Level” or ASL group, and the “Below Sea Level” or BSL group. ALS and most of the big details come first so if I need to move things around later on, I won’t have to change everything in the BSL group to match. The BSL group just won’t be made until the ASL group is finished or near enough.
Keep an eye out for these map posts. The look of this thing is going to change quickly and dramatically.
In a previous post I said I wouldn’t be spending any money on World of Warships unless a special event or a specific Black Friday ship showed up. Well, I’ve got mixed feelings on this, but it looks like the Enterprise B will not be making an appearance this year. They chose Saipan B. Enterprise B was my condition for any and all Black Friday purchases which is disappointing because Yoshino is a ship I’m actually saving coal for in the armory. Just buying the Yoshino B would have saved me a lot of effort and let me focus on a different coal ship like the Immelmann or something. Pommern B would also have looked nice beside my Tirpitz B and Scharnhorst B, but assuming Wargaming doesn’t seriously improve before then, that’s not happening either.
I guess it’s just as well. My wallet has endured enough and my time is precious these days.
Speaking of my wallet and my time, I’m also getting to a point where I may start pulling back from Phantasy Star Online 2 and New Genesis as well. Sega had probably the easiest setup imaginable, but because of terrible release schedules and next to nonexistent player progression, they’ve managed to shoot themselves in the foot multiple times. I’m having a really hard time figuring out why they’re staying on their current course and not switching things up for the sake of the player base. They shouldn’t be banking on the hardcore PSO2 crowd to carry NGS through this content drought. They should be moving things forward as quickly as they can.
Hell, even I’m putting more time into Final Fantasy XIV than NGS and I vastly prefer the latter’s combat and UI. FFXIV is a newer game than PSO2 with vastly more content than NGS, so it falls into a sweet spot that made the switch extremely easy. Now I’m not the type of person to drop a game for good when things get boring. I’ll come back if things get interesting, but in the big scheme of things, I don’t matter. It’s the huge swaths of players that do drop these games for good that matter here. First impressions matter and I really hope Sega doesn’t think that the competition isn’t relevant here. They’re not going to be able to bring back nearly as many players at the end of the content drought if they stay their course. Moreover, the content they’ve let us in on isn’t looking to be anything spectacular or game changing, either. I’m actually worried it’s going to come down to the new Mission Pass system and the new area, because raising the level cap, adding more skills to the existing classes, and introducing one new class, is about 5 to 10 hours of new content at best. What then?
Even Rappy Burst threw in the towel, and I don’t blame them. I’m not quitting, but I’ve been on a bare minimum approach to playing the game for more than a month now. I only log on to buy and sell items on the player market, try out new looks for my characters, and do daily missions and alpha reactor gathering. That’s it. Unless there’s someone to chat with, NGS doesn’t warrant a second more of my time at the moment. I hate to put it that way since I love this game, but it’s just gotten that stale thanks to Sega’s quiet, stubborn, drip feeding of content.
I don’t know why this is so hard for them. I’ve heard spectacular ideas from people who play NGS on how it can be improved at next to no cost to Sega, and I’ve even come up with a few of my own. What we’re seeing from them right now could easily be mistaken for self sabotage. It’s honestly baffling considering PSO2 and the way that game is structured. It’s a huge game and it’s an old formula for success that Sega could shamelessly copy without much if any complaint from the players. Why are they putting all of us through a content drought with no player progression or NGS specific achievements to hold us over in the meantime? Is this an attempt to preserve the PSO2 side of the game? If so, that’s stupidly dangerous because the player numbers in general are going down, not just NGS. There’s no new content coming in for PSO2 so the state of NGS is going to have a direct impact on PSO2 as well. Sega needs to account for the short term and not just think long term because a lot of people aren’t coming back. Why should they? There are other great games out there that will respect the time they put in and reward them accordingly.
If there’s a Chocobo Burst out there I’m sure I’m going to run into it soon.
Shifting gears, it’s good not to sink too much time into these games. I’m more concerned with their health and longevity than how long I can enjoy playing them. No matter how well they are or aren’t doing, I’ll pull back from things if I feel they’re getting in the way of my own work. So this isn’t all bad; I just want WoWs and PSO2: NGS to do well for as long as they can. Live long and prosper and all that.
