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Shoryuken!

Street Fighter IV was one of the first games that I picked up when I got my Xbox 360 last year and one of the main reasons I wanted the 360 in the first place.  I used to love playing fighting games with my childhood friend Taurean and there was a lot of nostalgia behind my interest in the game.  I still remember playing the original Street Fighter II for a quarter in a little grocery store by were I grew up.  That store has been torn down and turned into a parking lot for years.  That along with all the arcades within a 50 mile radius being out of business, Street Fighter 4 has given me a little flashback to different times in gaming.

I’ve been playing Street Fighter quite a bit since I picked it up and while I am not at competition/tournament level, I have a pretty solid foundation in the game and enjoy it a lot.  There’s also a very deep community around it that has sparked quite a resurgence in the fighting game genre’s popularity – and in turn caused some pretty terrible games to be released to try and leach off it’s success. *cough* BlazBlue *cough* King of Fighters XII *cough*.

Besides the nostalgia of playing Super Street Fighter II with my old friend; over the course of the last 5 or so years and being mostly focused on MMO games, I have grown quite discontent with the competitive PvP aspects of MMO’s.  Quite honestly I don’t find them to be good “competition” at all – well at least the theme park style ones like Aion, WoW, WAR, AoC, etc.  I have some different opinions about the open systems of games like EVE/Fallen Earth but that’s a different topic.

Most PvP in those themepark style MMORPG’s is heavily dictated by equipment (and level of course) thus the main influence is time available to spend playing the game and “grinding” gear.  Now this doesn’t mean time spent practicing in a fighting game isn’t a factor.  It certainly is.  However there’s a difference between taking the time to practice combos, game mechanics, matchups vs. the taking time to “grind” equipment.  It removes a major portion of the human element from the competition and replaces it with game dice rolls and chance.  If I practice PvP (execution/strategy/etc) on my frost mage for 2 weeks and am wearing mostly green gear than I will likely still be killed fairly quickly by a fully geared gladiator rogue even though I may have superior skills in PvP.  This is an extreme example in many ways.  While it may be technically possible to kite the rogue 100% of the time if you got the jump on him and kill him due to game mechanics, your margin for error is incredibly small and in most cases you’ll be 2 shot by the rogue in reality.  There are dozens of variables on why someone wins a fight in both MMORPG’s and fighting games but ultimately in a fighting game it comes down to who is better at it.  While PvP in an MMORPG comes down to who has more time.

Now I’m not ragging on people for spending a lot of time playing games because if I was, I’d be struck down for being a hypocrite.  My point is in a dice roll combat system heavily influenced by stats/gear; a major portion of the fights control is taken out of my hands and decided by the game’s mechanics thus I no longer consider MMORPG PvP to be competitive or fulfilling.  I have had fun with it as a meta game within the larger scope of an MMORPG but to play an MMORPG for the sole purpose of PvP competition I find to be pointless and unrewarding.  Did you win because you’re better or because you got a lucky crit and they didn’t?  Did you win because they were wearing their PvE gear instead of their PvP gear because they’re out mining?

Now there are advocates that “war isn’t fair” so who cares if they’re lesser geared (i.e. don’t have as much time to play as me).  I still won!  Well I suppose you can look at it that way but to me it seems like you’re trying to sell the griefing session to yourself as a victory.  These type of people are usually also the first to complain about lag, an exploit (that doesn’t exist) or some other excuse when they loose; and it comes down to a simple truth.  They’re not playing to be competitive.  They’re playing to feel superior to other people or in the case of battlegrounds/arena; they are playing as a alternative way to grind gear.

Any form of skill brings with it an inherit sense of arrogance and pride.  That’s human nature and to deny it is to be untruthful.  The issue can resonate in two ways.  People that feel inadequate so they feel they must “conquer” other people to feel satisfied and people that have exaggerated egos and arrogance and can not handle the emotional impact of failing (and in turn crushing that ego).  These two situations usually result in camping, griefing and other unpleasant acts in MMORPG’s that I just don’t find in fighting games.  Now there’s bad losers in everything; I should know as I’ve gotten my share of hate mail on Xbox Live from sandy vagina’s in SF4 but even with that, the sportsmanship is still on a whole other level than what I’ve experienced in MMORPG’s.

Of course the amount of PvP that takes place in the open world, at least in World of Warcraft is small compared to arena/battlegrounds.  However the same issues apply in regards to gearing/stats/dice rolls taking priority over player skill.  There is one aspect of MMO PvP that fighting games don’t capture and that’s of teamwork.  Fighting games are mostly 1v1 scenarios.  However I would prefer an FPS over an MMO for a team style PvP game even though my FPS skills are pretty mediocre.

In conclusion, PvP is best served where player skill is the dominate factor over dice rolls and gear stats but that doesn’t mean MMO PvP can’t be an entertaining side game at least some of the time.

So I kind of got into a hurry making a post for 2009.  I wanted to spend some additional time talking about some things in more detail.

Gaming

I spent a lot of time exploring different interests in gaming through the year.  In 2008, I covered my interest in this a lot better, and I want to get back to that.  A quick look at my Raptr profile shows I’ve been pretty busy:

http://raptr.com/XingYuen

There’s some games there I finished and need to review, some that are an ongoing interest and some that I’ve stalled on and need to get around to finishing.  One thing I do want to point out about my reviewing; that is that I am a cheap ass for the most part and it’s very rare for me to fork over $60 for a single player game I’d probably beat once and never come back and play again.  Couple that with the fact I’m still years behind on the console gaming scene means the stuff that I’m playing and is new to me, will be old news to most people.  Don’t say there wasn’t a warning.

Games I finished in 2009 that I am going to review for sure:

• Warhammer 40K: DoW2
• Left 4 Dead
• Fallout 3
• Titan Quest
• Torchlight
• Plants vs Zombies
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance
• Company of Heroes
• Burnout Paradise

Games I’m still playing that I will write something about at some point:

• Street Fighter 4
• Tekken 6
• Left 4 Dead 2
• Guitar Hero series
• Mass Effect
• Assassin’s Creed
• Various 360 Arcade titles
• Borderlands
• Halo 3
• Bioshock

Other topics of interest:

• Various MMO experiments
• Call of Duty series and why they can suck a goose egg
• Hellgate London (die already!)
• Steam and digital distribution
• MMO’s in general
• More up to date progress in WoW/EVE (yeah EVE)

As you can see, this will give me plenty of subject matter over the year.  If I can get half of it done, it’ll be a huge step in the right direction.

Music

Quite honestly, I have been completely stagnant on this interest for the past couple years mostly.  I grew pretty tired and uninterested in the digital sampling production methods I had been using and felt blocked creatively.

I’ve thought about trying to pick up an actual instrument of some sort and explore that interest.  We’ll see where this goes.

Professional Life

Things in my professional life are going well.  I am working for RestorePro in Sandusky, OH.  They are a disaster damage restoration company and have been kind to me and given me a great opportunity to support their IT infrastructure from within the company and help develop some marketing solutions all while trying to keep up with the insane speed of web technology development.

Personal Stuff

As for personal stuff, I keep this pretty simple on purpose.  As always, I despise drama and bullshit in my life so this is pretty straight forward.  Sorry, no Springer to be had here.

Going on two years with my wonderful girlfriend Michelle.  Things are great on that front.

Got a new Jeep Liberty in the fall to get ready for the frozen tundra that is Ohio during the winter months.  So far this has been a good investment as last Saturday’s 4 foot snow drift in my drive way proved.  Fuck you snow drift.  Jeep > Snow Drift.  The downside of course is the thing sucks down gas like a crack head on the first of the month.  Guess that’s the cost of not pushing my car through a Blizzard.  So be it.

I started a weight loss regiment 6 weeks ago.  Down 30+ lbs so far.  Not too bad.  Moving into the IT industry 10 or so years ago did a number on my health but I’m going to fix it while I still can and so far things are progressing as intended on that front.  I’d like this to lead back into picking up my training in martial arts where I left it.  Still got a ways to go.

That should just about do it for now.

Well, another year in review.  I only managed to produce like 3 posts since my 2008 review.  LOL.  Pretty terrible use of a blog.  In any case, I do plan to make more use of Orboro.net this year (not that I have said that before or anything).

2009 went by fast, but not fast like the 7 or so years preceeding it where time was just a massive waste and blackhole but rather fast; because I pretty much enjoyed it.  I am still together with my wonderful girlfriend Michelle who has been supportive of me and all my strange quirks and personality.  My friends still kick ass and are true.  I have a better job now which has been motivating, a new Jeep (Justin 1 | Snow 0) and I’ve been setting things in motion to get back into shape.

Going to keep this short and sweet.

I’ve been neglecting the ol’ blog a big, but things have been busy.  I’ve also been sort of stuck at figuring out a “focus” for where I am going with this site but on reflection, maybe that is just an excuse for me to procrastinate writing more.

Gaming

Not too much going on, been playing Left 4 Dead on PC.  Always fun shooting legions of zombies in the face.  Trying to catch up on the many single player games I let rot over the last year.  Watched a few MMO’s come out and fail (WAR/AoC).  Others shutdown entirely (Hellgate/Tabula Rasa).  By the way, I still hate Richard Garriott.  Otherwise gaming has been pretty quiet.

Music

Haven’t been writing much for a while now.  Mostly because I feel like I hit a wall in creativity and have just been recycling what I know over and over.  I really want to explore this more the next year with something truly different.  We’ll see.

Technology

Didn’t get to learn as much as I’d have liked.  I have pretty much completely moved away from Microsoft and ASP.NET and work mostly with PHP now, nothing much has changed other than some syntax.  The reason for the change is mostly because of accessibility and I just like the direction the open source community is going and didn’t feel that .NET was embracing that correctly.

Personal

My personal life started off as a bit of a mess last year but ended up turning around for the better.  Lost my job.  Ended a seven year relationship.  On one hand, it feels like a lot of wasted time, but on the other, I can’t even begin to measure how much happier I am.  Not really sure why it’s necassary to say bad things about each other now, but it appears I missed some type of memo that that’s what we’re supposed to do.  Ah well.  Some people need justification for the things in their lives while others can just accept them and move on.

I’ve been doing IT consulting/web development for Accurate Business Machines here in Sandusky, OH for a while now and that’s going pretty good.  If you need good deals on your office supplies/ink/toner, hit us up.

I am in a new relationship now and things are going great.  Got a new apartment which is a little bigger.  Overall, things are looking pretty good.  Now just to update this thing a little more this year.

Since I first played Warcraft II back in 1995, Blizzard always had a special place in my heart as a game developer.  I didn’t really think of game developers individually at the time but I couldn’t help but recognize the quality of the game as something “different”.  That became the industry known Blizzard “polish”.

Now it’s 2008.  Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is a behemoth in the gaming industry let alone the MMORPG market with it’s boasted 10 million subscriber mark.  10 million customers forking over a $15 monthly fee on a 4 year old game title is something that would make the biggest oil company executive envious.  With all that success, it seems like things have changed a good bit over at Blizzard.

Back until the release of World of Warcraft, Blizzard was a fairly quiet company letting it’s games do the “talking” for them.  Even World of Warcraft’s release wasn’t heavily marketed compared to some other titles.  Their Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft franchises utilizing Battle.net to offer free online gameplay raised the bar for many other services at the time.  Blizzard became a sort of martyr.  A game developer made of gamers.  Their fanbase was quite rabid about it – waiting eagerly for any news of a new Blizzard title.

Whether it’s because of working with Vivendi for so long or their recent merger with Activision; or maybe neither and Blizzard has just outgrown that comradeship feeling by getting so successful.  Either way, their new approach to business and gaming is starting to feel a lot less like the warm and fuzzy “gamers making games” and a lot more like the corporate fist feeling me up with no reach around.

Whether it’s charging $10 for the pleasure of changing your name or paying $6.50 for a little dongle to do my job of protecting my user name or password.  It seems like everything Blizzard is doing is a way to raid my wallet with little regard to me as a customer.

What happened to just making good games and selling some gimmicky paper back books?

Now we’re seeing entire diasters like the Blizzcon problem, DirecTV ripoffs and even going so far as to charge me for wanting to change my elf around a little bit.  It really feels like Blizzard is losing touch with me as a fan and just wants my $$.  Any sensible person would tell me that’s the way “businesses” work and normally I agree but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that my romanticized belief that there was a company out there that cared a little more is simply not true anymore.  If it ever was.  Ah well, reality here I come.

It probably qualifies as pretty cliché to blog about how fast time goes.  Never the less, it’s been on my mind lately how much things in my life have changed over the last 10 years.  I guess that sort of wound up in my last track.

Fragments In Time

I find myself wishing the weekend was a bit longer tonight. I was just putting the finishing touch on a track and thought it applied pretty well to this feeling.

Long Weekend

The first task I decided to take on was uploading some of my music experiments. You can find it all under the Music page for the time being. It’s pretty simple but get’s the job done. I have a few more tracks in the works and will update when they’re ready to go.

After having this domain dormant for over a year, I finally decided to do something with it. While I haven’t really been in favor of making a “blog” for myself ever, I wanted a way to create a sort of “sandbox” where I could collaborate and explore different aspects of my interests. So for now at least; we’re going to give this a try.