Category: maxeditpls

Battlefield 6 is fine, but too expensive.

As we approach the end of the year, I’m pretty tired. I have a bunch of cool writeups I should finish up (Blue Prince! Omegathon!), and a few posts like my writeup of Horses that could go up, but I’m somewhat hesitant to actually post, because they’re both A) slightly soul scouring and B) I think Horses purely as a video game is pretty banal, and not some sort of incredible and transformative piece of interactive media. Wheels of Aurelia was more innovative in it’s mechanics and narrative.

So while scrounging around for something to talk about, I remembered that I’ve played 100+ hours of Battlefield 6. So lets talk about that real quick.

A quick confession.

I loved Call of Duty. However, just over four or so years ago, I stopped playing Activision-Blizzard games. If that wasn’t clear enough, when Diablo 4 came out, I made some statements that will probably prevent me from ever being invited to certain press events. Really, the kick-off for all of this was when Blizzard censored a Hearthstone player protesting for Hong Kong. I really don’t like it when companies kowtow to authoritarians of any stripes, so I stopped playing their games. No Overwatch. No Starcraft.

But I missed Call of Duty the most. I loved me my stupid gun shooty game, and I’d fire it up every day after work on my travel laptop. There’s some deep think-pieces on the the soft power image control of the military gun violence fantasy, or the jingoistic nature of the campaigns in these games.

I don’t think I’m qualified to write that piece and frankly, I’m not very interested in trying to write it. I didn’t even play the campaign in Battlefield 6, because I’ve never understood why you would play the campaign in one of these live service shooters. I’m just gonna talk about the game as it is for me, which is mostly Call of Duty methadone.

The General Overview

I was gonna joke that I could just copy my Battlebit review across for this part, but I actually can’t. My general take on Battlefield 6 is that once you’re in a game, the general experience is pretty good.

Guns work well. Movement feels good, and a lot of the weird secondary gadgets are quite useful. Maps are mostly even and pretty well designed.

There are definitely weak points. The map pool is a bit anemic, and pretty much every game mode reuses the same maps. I wish the engineer class had a second gadget that was actually useful modes without vehicles.

But once you’re in a game, it’s a good time. Everything that isn’t the game though?

It sucks.

The game is $70, with an in-game cash shop and battlepass. The battlepass has it’s own mini-battlepasses, with timed challenges for maximum FOMO. If there’s a way to make more then 3 loadouts for a given class, I haven’t found it in the labyrinthine menus. Getting the game to even launch for the first time is a pain, not a huge pain, but a pain.

Every update also seems to make the game slightly worse. The most annoying one for me is that helicopters seem to have some sort of animation culling turned on now when they’re far away from me, and given that helicopters are in the sky, they are usually far away from me. It makes it look like a Pokemon game.

Also, now it’s time for the longer set of complaints

Battlefield isn’t realistic, or super memorable.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading ACOUP, it’s that I don’t know anything about war. And if there’s anything else I’ve learned, it’s that games will almost always sacrifice fidelity for fun. By default this does not annoy me. When Battlefield 6 added the cash shop, I wasn’t pissed because someone could now play as their fursona, I was pissed because I had already paid $70 fucking dollars for this game.

That said, for a game about high troop number combat, you would think there would be literally any way to meaningfully communicate with the other 28 people on your team. I’m pretty sure modern war isn’t conducted by taking 32 dudes, giving them thousands of dollars in military hardware, and then pointing at a burnt out mall and saying “Go fuck em up!”.

But wait, you say. You say 32, then 28. Those are different numbers. Yes, they are, because you do have voice chat with your squad, but you only have text chat with the rest of your team. I have used the text chat maybe 4 times total. The only time it had any measurable impact was when one teammate was complaining that a challenge was too hard, that they could not overcome it, to which I suggested that “through jesus christ all things are possible”, which was followed by a series of “amens” from other team members.

They managed to complete their challenge.

Side Note: I suspect that the Lord, if real, and in the habit of intervening in the mortal world, has better things to do with their time then help someone get three air vehicles kills in one match, but what do I know.

I also mention this because in 134 hours, it’s the only memorable moment I’ve actually had in game. There’s no building, so there’s no real opportunity for anything clever or tricky, just destruction. It’s a bit of a bummer.

The lack of communication would bother me less if the classes were less obviously synergistic. The assaults spawn beacon is the only reasonable way to make extended pushes across the map, but you can’t push with one person. The engineer is the only class that can reasonably deal with vehicles, but without extra rocket rounds refilled by the support, is going to do have a very hard time doing that. Recon can paint vehicles with it’s gadgets, enabling faster lock-on for the engineer, but without that engineer to followup, it’s pretty much useless. Support enables everyone to do their job better, with extra gadget and grenade usage, but can’t do any of those jobs particularly well on it’s own.

It’s just aggravating for a game where communication is key to have no communication. Now, if I remember correctly Battlebit did have local voice chat, and the result of that was every game started with a cacophony of racial slurs, Free Bird, and Fortunate Son, but at least it was possible shout “Rez me” at someone.

Overall

I personally enjoy Battlefield 6. I don’t really recommend it though. It’s a pain in the ass to get running, it costs too much too much money, it’s lacking quality of life features, and goes hog wild everything that’s bad about modern live service games.

I don’t even think it’s a bad game. I just think you can more better games for $70. For that sort of money, you can go buy Titanfall 2 and Blue Prince, and a lot more if you’re willing to wait for a sale.

Battlefield 6 is that one restaurant in town that’s just a bit too pricey, but no one in your friend group hates. It’s a good place to hang out, chat, catch up, but if anyone could really make a choice, you’d all go somewhere else.

Path of Exile 2 – The (Beta) Campaign

The Path of Exile 2 beta is out. I got a demo a few months ago, but now that I’ve fully played through it, I have even more thoughts. I’m going breaking down my thoughts on it into two writeups, one on the campaign, and one the endgame. Technically, they are the same game, but mechanically they are very different experiences.

Now, before I get into that, there’s some brief background that is necessary. Path of Exile 2 is a sequel to my 2nd most played game of all time, Path of Exile. (about 3000+ hours?) My thoughts are going to be at least somewhat in comparison to it’s predecessor.

As a brief filter, I offer the following phrases:
“juicing maps”
“6L”
“Farming blood adqueducts for a Tab”

If you know what any of these mean, just click here to skip ahead. If you don’t, you are likely to find the following background information helpful.

ARPG’s in Brief

Path of Exile 2, hereby abreviated to PoE 2, is a isometric ARPG from Grinding Gear Games.

For those who might not know, ARPG stands for “Action Role-Playing Game.” ARPG’s are defined by having virtually no roleplaying elements, and the action parts dominated by spamming your abilities every second you have the mana/rage/potato points to do so.

Here’s a less cynical definition: ARPG’s are traditionally top-down or isometric real time action games defined by extensive skill trees, character customization and itemization. Combat generally has two modes, fighting against trash mobs, which are pinatas for stacks of loot, and fighting against bosses, which are also pinatas, except this time they have a baseball bat.

Trash mobs are fairly brainless and just rush the player, while bosses tend to be more correographed experiences, closer to something from a Bullet Hell, or Hades.

The first Path of Exile differentiated itself from other ARPG’s by making everything into game an item, and making those items tradable. Skills are items, (skill gems) which got socketed into other items you wore, and those sockets had colors determining which gems could be socketed.

The ability to refund skills points was an item. To enter endgame areas, specific items were needed. Same to fight endgame bosses. To buy items from vendors, it was necessary to have more items to trade them.

It’s other big differentiator was a skill tree so massive that one of my favorite things to do is pop it out as a joke, just to mess with people, who did not believe it was real.

Finally, there was the gem system. Gems could be supported by other gems. Take a fireball, link it to a multiple projectile gem, and now it shoots three fireballs. Link it to a piercing projectiles gem, and now they penetrate. Link it to a faster cast speed, make a few more tweaks, and now your character is a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Changes between PoE and Poe 2

PoE 2 makes a lot of changes to the above underlying systems, most of which serve to make the campaign much less punishing for inexperienced players. Gold exists as a flat currency to use with vendor NPC’s. This makes getting leveling gear a much easier process.

Gold can also be used to refund skill points. This is possibly the biggest change between the two games, because in PoE, a badly built skill tree would softlock a character. This would make it impossible to get the items needed to respec, and pretty much force the player to make a new character.

Sockets on items and their associated colors are also gone. Skill gems are socketed into a general skill gem menu. The types of support gems that can be used are limited by primary stats. There are even more small tweaks to make suggestions to players on what gems to use, and to prevent them from making choices that simply don’t work.

The skill tree is still massive. There’s now a dodge roll. Movement is a much more flowy thing then it previously was.

The general changes though result in much easier on-boarding experience with the games initial systems, instead of purely being thrown into the deep end, like the player was with the first Path of Exile.

Does all of this mean the game is easier?

Well, yes and no.

The Campaign

Generally I like the campaign. There are some incredibly sloggy bits, notably a single map in Act 2 that just goes on forever, and three or four of the Act 3 areas really tested my patience for just wanting to see the next few things.

That said, outside of these, I really didn’t have many complaints. The bosses feel far more diverse and interesting then their PoE 1 counterparts, and also much harder. The final boss of Act 1 in particular killed me about 10-20 times before I finally defeated it. It’s worth noting that I actually killed it right as it killed me, but that still counts, so on I went.

They’re also just much more fun as a general visual spectacle. My personal favorite is probably Crowbell, a giant crow-man thing that tries to beat the player to death with a bell. The fight isn’t particularly hard, but does have a fun transitions, with Crowbell running around, powering up, wrenching a bell off it’s stand, then using it as a bludgeon.

The trash mobs… well, they’re ARPG trash mobs. The nicest thing I can say about them is that they did in fact contribute to my /deaths count.

Finally, there’s the story elements. I generally quite liked these, even if the current content kinda ends on bit of a cliffhanger. I’m also the only person I know who cared about the lore of PoE, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. There are some callbacks to PoE, but I don’t think missing them will have any impact on your enjoyment.

I will say that I personally experienced a moment of glee getting to fight a character whose only ever been hinted at in flavor text from PoE, but another friend of mine who played the game before me didn’t even realize he was a recurring character, and thought he was someone new.

If you’re playing through the campaign without a build guide, or information about the game, I’d estimate it’ll take about 12-20 hours to play through? There’s a good chunk of game here. That said, the campaign does not currently conclude the story, as that’s planned for the games full release, so if you’re playing the game just for the campaign, I’d hold off.

Overall Thoughts

I like PoE 2. I have problems with the game, but they’re not present during the campaign. It changes a lot of esoteric bullshit that was required to play, made the boss fights more interesting, and is just generally more friendly, if not easier.

Some parts are a bit of slog.

That said, I think the main reason to currently play the campaign is to get to endgame. The campaign is not a finished game yet, with a complete story, and the beta is currently $30.

If the full campaign maintains it’s current level of quality for the remaining acts on full release, Path of Exile 2 will be worth playing purely as a standalone ARPG just for that. But for players who aren’t in a rush, or want a new ARPG, I would say to wait.

How to Get the Lorcana Starter Decks for Cheap

So, maybe you read the last post, and despite the fact that Lorcana boosters are currently going for a street value of $5 an ounce, (a ratio that really feels like it should be reserved for a different type of substance), you still want in?

All right. It’s a pretty fun game. But instead of buying those starter decks at prices people are selling them, we’re instead going to use the power of the free market in our favorite for once.

DeckSealed CostSingles Cost & TCG Player Link
Amber & Amethyst$34-38$24
Emerald & Ruby$23-25$16.28
Sapphire & Steel$30-32$24.37

Here’s how it works. First, click on one of the above links. This will bring you to TCG Players bulk entry page. It will look something like this.

If this all looks good, click the add to cart button! And presto, we have a cart with all the cards in the starter deck!

It’s also going to currently be costing you a lot more then the starter deck. No worries. We can fix that by clicking on the Optimize button in the lower left corner, right under the Paypal option.

After this, TCG player will try to optimize for shipping and buying from the fewest number of sellers. If everything looks good, you can send your purchase though, and end up with your very own Lorcana starter deck for less than a retail video game.

Ed Note: This writeup contains links to TCG Player, the management of which is a bunch of union busting corporate weasels. These aren’t affiliate links, (we don’t ever do that) and we don’t endorse their anti-competitive bullshit. That said, they’re owned by eBay, so it’s not like there’s a better place to go buy cheap singles that isn’t tainted by a desire to screw the employee.

Ed Note 2: This was written when Lorcana was being CRAZY scalped. It’s possible that the prices have gone down to a sane range by the time you look at this writeup. Such is the internet, and writing about collectibles. The general approach to using TCG Player, and the optimize functionality for buying singles likely remains the same though.