Apart from procrastination, there's this weird lack of drive. Maybe it's due to too much gaming. Perhaps it's due to this. Mayhaps 'tis a matter of cause and effect. Either way, maybe more blogging can contribute to more writing. Who knows?
Vital announcement: John L'Otter is officially offline in Neverwinter Online
No, this is no #fakenews for your info. You're not gonna see characters like Arylos and Cyrea Durothil in this game. The reason why being that John committed the same mistake of trying new MMOs. However, there's a key difference between this and then. Back then, the gamer is encouraged to log in daily just to get/do some things. Due to John's obsessive tendency to maintain a pointless schedule, John ended up developing an obsessive tendency to see things beyond the very end. It's like being Emiya Shirou in Unlimited Blade Works, just that it's not even one-tenth as awesome.
This time around, the situation changed. Due to considerations involving the need NOT to log in daily just to do the customary stuff, John decided that Neverwinter Online is officially offline for him.
To the good people at the Legacy of Magic guild, thanks for all the help given. The same goes for the guild alliance, in particularly the occasional raid in instances like Fangbreaker Island and Cradle of the Death God where frustrations tend to be a consistent fixture due to time and practice not readily available to this typing critter.
The most American game ever?
How American is modern-day America? Whenever we talk about rights, the left got a problem with religious liberty while the right got the same problem with gender equality. When it comes to justice, freedom of choice is basically about choosing between your POC neighbour and your other neighbour's unborn child. Like how Emiya Kiritsugu understood a righteous God more than Kotomine Kirei despite being an atheist, it's possible that he also understood America more than the typical American despite being... well, a Japanese.
This comes to mind a question: Is every brand of American creativity a case of Hollywooding every possible thing under the sun, moon, and stars? After all, the X-Men series was effectively Marvel retelling the civil rights movement with names like Purifiers, William Stryker, and salty Korean involved in the entire process. Okay, not the salty Korean but you get the drift. And it's not as if the right is more correct than the left.
Thankfully, things may not be the case here. While it's very likely that Hollywood ended up winding up the conservatives via works like Noah and Mother! like Cristiano Ronaldo winding up Wayne Rooney more than 10 years ago, there's something about DC which doesn't feel that... well, socio-political.
To be fair, John was first acquainted with Marvel. In fact, it's very likely that John knows more about Deadpool compared to Deathstroke. And yes, that part proved to be one of those quirky moments involving the famous Marvel-DC rivalry with Captain Marvel saying Shazam! as another such moment. It wasn't until he got his paws on DC Universe Online that things change.
In America, it's always either you choose the left or right when it comes to utilising the controversial parts as fuel for creativity. Use the conservative bias of others and you'll be called a war hero. If it's the other way around, you're a superhero. Choose both and people won't respect an ally of justice.
Not so for DC. In this sense, they're more daring than Marvel. A classic example of this would be the Gorilla Grodd where Darwinism wasn't the best way to save the world. Actually, it is never the correct way.
Then you have DC angering PETA and radical feminists via Poison Ivy.
At the same time, it remains to be seen whether DC will be sued for demonising sin and beings with horns.
No need for the daily log-in
One of the key aspects of DC Universe is that you don't have to log in daily to get stuff. That's good news for John since he doesn't have a normal human being's ability to manage time. Simply put, John would be given more time and space doing his own stuff albeit only in theory until proven 100% true. Of course, exceptions do exist. Like the Bonus Stabiliser weekend event.
This resulted in the line separating the casual gamer from the more hardcore type. The latter has got no problem gaming more often while one wouldn't see the former logging in on a daily basis. Effectively, this is the Daybreakers' way of saying "you have a choice and we're not going to play mind games just to make sure you log in on a daily basis". This is NOT to say that other MMOs are operating like a dictator. After all, you're still given the choice whether or not to do so. But did DC Universe make things easier? The answer is yes. At the end of the day, it takes a visual creature to understand another visual creature.
Some tips (?) for the casual gamer
Is gaming addiction a psychological disorder? Apparently, the WHO assumed the role of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung by saying yes. Be it psychology or psychiatry, Freud or Jung, gaming can easily turn a hobby into something else truly scary. At the same time, however, this also brings forth the question of whether the Korean remake of Scary Movie has anything in common with the fact that Taeyeon got groped years ago. Seriously, the groping part was real because John L'Otter does have the memory of a Manchester elephant.
This is not to say the Daybreakers at Daybreak are a bunch of charitable ladies and gentlemen. No one should ever say retrenchment in Singapore is a myth just because retirement in Singapore is... well, a myth since expiry age is more real than retirement age. In other words, Daybreak has been doing the very same things Singaporean employers have been doing since day one. At the end of the day, it's very likely that the Daybreakers were merely thinking out of the box in terms of business decisions. But that's good enough for the typical Korean and pseudo-Korean.
When it comes to pre-30 level content, you're most likely going to experiment with stuff just to see what works for you. This results in the AI fairly easy to take down. Case in point: Running around with a rifle here involves bringing down a non-boss target in a matter of shots numbering less than 5 or so. At the same time, an effective AoE close range attack is more than enough to wipe out any mob. The real challenge comes once Batman and his dual-faced (ex) BFF requests your aid in bringing down Danny DeVito and a kleptocrat (Note: The correct definition of a kleptocrat is unrelated to a Democrat in the same way kleptocracy is unrelated to democracy). That'd be when your combat rating goes like 40 or so after your character's level hit the ceiling. But even then, that's only two one-shot quests given. Simply put, what are the things you can do post-level 30? This is where the one-player instance raid content comes in.
Every week, you can complete up to 5 (if John remembers correctly) tier 1 single-player raid instance queue. This would drop a weekly reward box per run (note that weekly loot doesn't drop more than once in any specific raid). In fact, it's possible that the weekly reward box would drop in any instance raid from single player to the eight-player format. While the loot tends not to be at the higher end (at least for the single player ones), sometimes Harvey Dent does win the coin toss in the form of better gear instead of base decoration items. At the same time, better gear has a higher drop rate when it comes to winning any boss fight and completing the raid. This means you'd get at least two loot drops instead of one once per week. It depends on how many bosses you have to fight.
This gives casual gamers something to do without risking their daily schedule or whatever stuff they plan to do within the current 24 hours. Only have time for 15 minutes or so? Just run a single-player raid. If you're good enough, 15 minutes shouldn't be a problem. Have time for more but not wanting to screw up your time management? You can run just about any combination of single-player and two-player content (note that DCUO's equivalent of a dungeon crawl involves at least 4 players). Maybe 3 or 4.
Now it must be stated that DCUO involves a lot of grinding. While this is something other MMOs would always do (especially the F2P ones due to a business model concept very different from their subscription payment counterparts), there's something tactical about DCUO when it comes to getting things done. It's not that significant on a pre-30 level basis since combat for John was more about messing around with the controls without getting knocked out. Unlike Neverwinter where the combat system thrives on creating and maintaining the dps momentum, combat in DCUO involves harder-to-kill AI and knowing what to do when something like zerging comes. As a result, dps pace is more about the cards you have than the cards you play. In turn, this makes the combat pacing slower.
So does that mean you won't die that easily? It depends.
The art of counter-attacking
Counter-attacking is a matter of tactical art. Whatever this means. It's like Jon Snowgate trying to make Middlesbrough great again ever since Jeor Moggamont became a part of northern history. You can't win games by relying on attacking teams like Barcelona. Because it's not going to work once Martin O'Neill parks his Irish bus. And you know it's going to happen.
Pre-30 level difficulty wise, breaking free from control effects shouldn't be an issue since it wouldn't happen that often. And by that, it still happens often enough. A taste of what it's like on the higher end would be running the raid version of bringing down Mr Sinestro. That'd involve a two-player run plus the sexiest Canuck alive wearing green. Or at least something like that.
The so-called control-breaking involves pressing only one key. Namely, Shift. Needless to say, you can tweak the key binding settings to suit your style. So being too used to playing Neverwinter shouldn't be an excuse. After all, you can change from Shift to Tab.
Why John mentions this is very important: Your next move after control-breaking will affect the offensive momentum. In tactical speak, it's called staging a counter-offensive. For John, a jailbreak counter-offensive involves a two-attack sequence intended to nuke the surrounding enemies. More specifically, it's Vortex Trap>Karmic Backlash. Works well so far if John says so himself.
A tip for Jon Snowgate(?)
The final part involves something John L'Otter discovered post-level 30. If he remembers it correctly, that should be somewhere while busting Danny DeVito at level 43 (i.e. applicable only to him and the kleptocrat for now).
At this point, John has devised a simple way of right clicking. Initially, holding down the right mouse button would result in the rifle firing an endless barrage. Then the fun part arrived: Holding down the forward button and backward button. The latter would result in either a backflip barrage or mortar shells raining down like fire, fury, and brimstone. As for the former, it's rolling forward and firing a short barrage of artillery resulting in the target being stunned.
The backflip barrage is not just a simple jailbreak tactic. Moving forward after that, pulling off a Vortex Trap>Karmic Backlash would be 100% doable. It's like Jon Snowgate staging a counter-offensive by breaking up play at the defensive area only to play a swift two-pass move. First pass backwards and a long pass forward. To pull that off, however, the backline needs to have nerves of Teesside steel. So will Dael Fry be our Boy of Steel?
Raining down mortar fire, fury, and brimstone has to be the worst way to play football. The number one rule to the classic British strategy is this: You don't have to try it in order to knock it. One might say it's a miracle for John to fall asleep only after 45 minutes of Martin O'Neill's British football when Aston Villa was still in the top flight. Which was exactly what happened. John means the sleeping part, not the miracle. But if Jon Snowgate got no choice but to defend his Winterfell... well, beggars can't be choosers. Last time John did a check, a certain Mr Lee was still sighted in the city of Bristol.
John believes Ryan the Shotgun is still around. Just sayin'.
The forward roll tactic is arguably the fun part. Positionally speaking, this could be seen as the advanced version of Oda Nobunaga's 2nd Amendment tactics. How this works is very simple:
1. Stand and fire.
2. Hold forward while the artillery is still going off.
3. Move accomplished, target stunned.
4. Pause for a split, then perform step 2 again.
5. Once close enough, do a Karmic Trap (i.e. Vortex Trap>Karmic Backlash area nuke).
Steps 1 to 3 should be enough to take down any lower level target. At most, just right-click to pop an arching shell to end that fellow. In terms of crowd clearing, that'd be steps 1 to 5.
For Jon Snowgate, that'd look like securing possession via the backline with the midfield covering the defensive space in front. Sounds like a defensive tactic? Just play the ball forward to the midfield without the need to launch the Anglo-Saxon cannons. Once the midfield receives the ball, control the game with it via one-quarter of the pitch. Compact approach, yes. Long ball strategy, no. There's a reason why we need to secure the presence of Marcus Tavernier and Lewis X-Wing. As for George Jr, just plaster him at the other side of the midfield since Tavernier is a lefty. As for the Karmic Trap, that requires Huge Jordan and Big Bad Britt. Oh wait, would that be overly cavalier? Maybe Jon Snowgate should opt for a 4-4-2 since formation doesn't tell you anything beyond possibilities of approach.
P.S: Switching off now. And two more videos from DCUO and John's personal favourites.
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