Things I had to learn through online gaming

My gaming skills are average

Do you remember what gaming with friends and family was like before the internet? People would ask me to play for them. Help a friend through a particularly difficult level, beat a boss for my little brother, destroy the whole neighbourhood in Street Fighter II. I was the best damn gamer around. I was a god!
Today I get facerolled by 12 year olds on Call of Duty. How? Why? Are they breeding a creepy new generation of virtual killers?

You wouldn't believe some of the shit he's done to my mother.

A much more likely explanation is that I may have overestimated my skills.
If you owned a console in the 8/16bit era, there's a pretty good chance you were really good at playing those games. There was no DLC back then, your favourite franchise didn't get 3 sequels a month and you've played the shit out of every game to get the most value for your money. I know I did. I mastered that shit, because if I had to spend all my hard-earned cash on video games, I also wanted to see the damn ending credits. And back in my day, you couldn't just look them up on youtube or look up all the cheats and exploits on gamefaqs.
So it's not really surprising that I was better at this stuff than my friends and family. Besides, I owned the damn games! I could play as much as I wanted to, whenever I felt like it. Most friends who challenged me in Mortal Kombat either didn't have a console or weren't allowed to buy the damn game. And some friends simply sucked at playing video games. Being a noob wasn't such a big deal when the term noob didn't actually exist and people couldn't see how shit you are at Angry Birds on Facebook.

When you play against other people online, chances are that most of them are just as competitive as you are. They don't play for fun like your little sister did when you beat the tree monster for her in Castle of Illusion. They play to fucking destroy you. They spend just as much time playing the game as you do, they have proper gaming hardware and they're pretty fucking good at what they do. Because that's what happens when you spend 18 hours a day doing only one thing. Practice.
Oh well. Most emulators have internet multiplayer capabilities now, so I can still challenge all my friends at Street Fighter II and destroy them when I want to feel good about myself.

The internet is a lot like Thailand

Final Fantasy XI, roughly eight years ago: A friend pays me several million gil to see nude pictures of me. Well, actually he's looking at nude pictures of my ex, because my sexy catgirl avatar has lead him to believe I'm female. But I'm rich, he's gonna be happy until he finishes in 28 seconds and realizes what a complete idiot he is, so it's a win-win. The internet today: Everyone is a female night elf.

Even on Star Trek Online.

I can log on to Neverwinter right now, join any random group and there's a 90% chance that every character in the group will be female. Which is a bit weird, but tolerable and usually followed by the same old explanation. "I don't wanna stare at a male character's ass all the time." And there's a bunch of weirdos out there, who aren't just hard for female polygons. They live out some strange, fetishy fantasies online. So if one of your group members can't stop talking about what a raging, hardcore lesbian she is, then you're most likely dealing with a male teenager. It gets particularly hilarious when two of those guys start virtually making out with each other. Ahh, cyber love!

Some are more obvious than others.

People pay any amount of money in exchange for power

Games like Neverwinter are 'Free2Play' and it is perfectly possible to create a character, play all the quests to the maximum level and see all the stuff there is to do without ever paying a penny. Lots of people play it like that and they're happy that way.
There is also the "Hero of the North" pack for nearly 200 Bucks. It lets you play one of the ingame races a little earlier than free players and you get a relatively useless battle pet, an epic mount, a bit of item shop currency and a whole lot of useless tat in the box.

"Buy now! Offer must end soon!" So they keep advertising, but 'soon' never comes.

Surely, nobody in their right mind would pay such a ludicrous amount of money for some pretend goods in a free game, right? WRONG! Apparently, there are tens of thousands of people who have already bought the package and the number is going up all the time. The whole thing was so successful in fact, they've expanded their overpriced package system to Fury of the Feywild and Star Trek Online:

And this time they're only 59.99 and 159.99! What a bargain!

The madness doesn't end here. Star Trek Online has long introduced special lockboxes, which, according to the forums, have a ~.5% Chance (HALF a fucking per cent!) to contain ultra rare ships, which you cannot obtain any other way, unless some other player is willing to sell them for ungodly amounts of ingame cash. Opening a lockbox costs roughly 1 Dollar each. It's perfectly possible to spend 500 Bucks or more in order to obtain one of these ships. And you see the damn things everywhere!
People are so desperate to be special, to stand out, to have something cool that nobody else has got, they lose all reason and responsibility and pay virtually any and every amount of money for some cool new ingame item, only to realise that every other fucking idiot around them has already done the same thing and their special new toy isn't as OP as it was cracked up to be. But they don't learn. There's a reason why every online game in existence is plagued by bots advertising gold-selling and power-leveling services.

We're all greedy, selfish scumbags

Modern MMOs like Guild Wars 2 have abandoned dubious features like mob-tagging, meaning everyone can attack any monster and receive experience points and quest updates for it, regardless whether the monster is already fighting another player or not. They're doing it that way, because online gamers, you, me, everyone, are complete douchebags.
What did you do in World of Warcraft, when some other player attacked a boss or some monster, which was relevant to one of your quests and you could see they were about to get their ass handed? Did you jump in and help? You've probably watched them die, waited for the monster to reset and claimed it for your own quest progress. We all did this. You've probably need-rolled on items now and then, which you put on the auction house, because you never really needed them in the first place. You may have felt the need to /spit on a member of the opposing faction. Corpse camping? Hell yeah! If you're a veteran, you may have lured a whole train of baddies onto an unsuspecting player and got them killed. Some people are more selfish than others, some have elevated asshattery to an art form, but we're all guilty. We're all dicks, because we know we can get away with it and we don't have to face the consequences of our actions. Not in the shape of a fist to the face, anyway.

And some of us simply enjoy being full-time assholes.

The problem is that we tend to forget our own greedy behaviour. Or we may even justify it, because "everyone else does it", so it's only fair if we ninja a few things here and there, right? That is, until somebody else cheats us out of a monster, an item or some other virtual thing that we feel is rightfully ours. Then we bring on the nerd rage. And that leads me to my next point.

Discussion is a waste of time

So that guy in your pick up group has screwed you over, grabbed an item, which is rightfully yours or maybe he's your healer and went AFK without warning and got you killed on the first pull. And you feel the need to chew him out, to tell him what a complete asshole he is and how and why he screwed up. And damn are you gonna destroy him, because you have empiric evidence that his behaviour is antisocial and wrong, Wikipedia is on your side, you've done your research and there's no way in hell he could possibly counter any of the points you're about to raise.

"OMFG! You put my fucking mage set on your HORSE?"

Except, he's probably too stupid to understand any of your excellent points, he may choose to ignore them by insulting your mother and no amount of arguing and discussing will make him see your point of view. What's worse, your other group members probably don't give a shit about the whole thing, they're here to run a dungeon and they didn't ask to see you going mental on some ninjalooting troll. And even if by divine intervention or some some supernatural event you actually make the other guy see your point and have him apologize and admit he was wrong (which, according to my studies, happens 0% of the time), you may have won an argument, but you've probably lost your dungeon group, who got tired of your shit and left. And for what? To convince some random stranger on the internet that you're right. Some kid you'll never see again in the game, let along meet in person anytime in this life. Well done!

People are stupid and hate responsibility

What's the one thing that makes waiting for a dungeon group boring, tedious and time-consuming? Lack of tanks and healers. The tank calls the shots, sets the pace, keeps the group alive. If he fucks up, the group dies. The healer makes sure the tank can do his job without getting hacked to bits too much and spends all excess mana on overzealous damage dealers, who don't understand the concept of tanking and frequently pull their own mob groups. These jobs don't usually show up anywhere near the top of the DPS meters and playing them requires more effort and talent than simply dishing out.
"But wait", you might say, "finding the perfect spec, gear and rotation for maximum DPS requires just as much work as being a good tank!" You nimrod! And tanks and healers don't have to work on their gear, spec and rotation to be efficient or what? They have to do the exact same shit you do, but they carry the whole group. If the team dies, it's always their fault. Or when was the last time somebody blamed crappy damage dealers for not killing a boss fast enough?

Xxshadoasasindaethrougeftw
Is that a toilet under that curtain?

And what do particularly stupid damage dealers call their class? "Rouge". "Assasin". Seriously. The word Rogue is on the character creation screen, it's the first thing you see when you log on as your rogue character, it's in your character menu and printed on to every single one of your class-specific items. It's the one word that's constantly on your god damn screen, you look at it for 12 hours every fucking day, yet you're too fucking stupid to spell it properly! And it doesn't end there. You've probably named your character "Raeper" or some shit, because you're also too fucking stupid to spell your own damn name. And dyslexia is not an excuse - they've invented Google so dipshits like you can look things up before typing them out.

-Cat

STO: A closer look at the Andorian Escort Ships

I did it. Against all sense of reason and accountability, I actually went and bought the damn Andorian Escort premium package for 5000 Zen. Over 40 Euros for a fucking ship! Greedy, greedy Zen-Store! "But Kitten", I hear you say. "You get three ships in that bundle!" Actually, I get one ship in three slightly different variations, only one of which is viable, but I'm forced to buy the whole package in order to get all the consoles and set bonuses. Yes, yes, I could have bought only one of them for 20 Euros and gimped the hell out of it, but who does that?

Enough bitching. Why am I looking at a ship, which has been around for months? Because I haven't touched STO in over a year and only just got back. And I find the Kumari relevant to my play style. And by blogging about it, I'm adressing some issues people have raised with my previous STO videos:

- Little to no information on the setup
- "Is this thing any good in STFs?"
- "You never give enough answers!"

Alright, alright!
This video begins with a few seconds of no-HUD fly-by droolage to show off the escort's phallic look, then we move right on to the installed weapons and goodies and then there's a relatively flawless Elite Borg Conduit STF run in a random PUG. Hurray!

So let's start by describing the setup.
WARNING: This is by no means the best ever/the perfect/the ultra mega pwnage 3000 Setup. It's just the stuff I personally chose to put on my ship, because I happened to have it sitting around and/or had the credits to afford it. I'll explain to you how and why I chose it and the video shows you what it does, what performance and damage to expect, how it all plays out. Whether you think this would work for you or whether you find it utter shit is entirely up to you.
Also, be aware that I have only just started the reputation grind with Omega, Nukara and the Romulans, so I'm missing passives that more dedicated players may have in their videos. Also, I'm without a fleet and have no access to elite weapons.

Weapons:
Kumari Phaser Wing Cannons [Dmg]x4 (298 DPS)
Phaser Quad Cannons [Dmg]x4 (286.6 DPS)
3 Phaser Dual Heavy Cannons MK XII [CritD]x2 [CritH]
2 Phaser Turrets MK XII [CritD]x2 [CritH]

I know that neither phaser damage nor [Dmg] are flavour of the month right now. So why did I choose this particular setup? Because it's decent damage for a moderate budget. The wing cannons come pre-installed with the ship and while they may not have any extra crit on them, the bonus damage is alright, however unpopular. I still had the Phaser Quad Cannons from my old Sao Paulo refit sitting around the bank. I like the quad cannon firing effect, the damage is decent enough and with the wing cannons already installed, phaser was the way to go, so this one's a no-brainer.
I went with a phaser setup in every remaining slot and I pity you, if I still have to explain why. I'm going for extra crit damage and a little extra crit rate on each weapon, because I've maxed out Starship Targeting Systems and picked the Accurate Trait for my captain. That's all the accuracy I'll ever need in pve, so no point in going for more.
UPDATE: I have switched from [CritD]x2 [CritH] to [CritD]x3, since most of my crit chance comes from abilities, anyway, and an additional 2% doesn't make a big difference. 20% more crit damage>2% crit chance.

Deflector/Impulse Engines/Shield: 
Borg set (+ console) with Maco MK XII shields instead of Borg shields.

No particular reason, it's just what I currently have access to and it works. I haven't looked into the full Maco/Omega set bonuses and may or may not switch once I get my Omega reputation up to Rank 5. For the time being, this setup gets the job done, as shown in the video.

Warp Core:
Hyper Injection Warp Core MK XI [EPS] [W->S] [WCap] [Trans]

Again, possibly not perfect, because Warp Cores didn't exist the last time I played STO. I chose this particular one, because of the extra engine power. I put as much power into weapons and shields as I can, so my engines are usually a bit low by default. With weapon power being my highest setting, having 7.5% weapon power added as a bonus to shields made the most sense. The weapons capacitor is a nice plus - having an active buff to boost weapon power whilst spamming all those abilities can help with the DPS a bit.

Devices:
Subspace Field Modulator
Nimbus Pirate Distress Call

These devices are far from being the proverbial canine's testicles, but they're fun. I like the field modulator for it's little extra defensive buff and the distress call summons two more targets for my enemies to shoot at while I gtfo. You should probably just use shield and weapon batteries.

Consoles:
All 3 Wing Cannon consoles
Plasmonic Leech
Assimilated Module
Field Generator MK XII
4 Phaser Relay MK XI/XII

Again, the wing cannons are a no-brainer. I've bought them all, I'm gonna fucking use them. I find the wing cannons to be a lot more useful and not anywhere near as annoying as hangar pets. The shield/hull set bonus special attacks are insanely powerful. Watch me crit that Borg cube for over 52k at 01:40 - with the damn wing cannon! Outside of STFs I crit as high as 80k with this thing, so it stays in my setup and that's that.
I like the Plasmonic Leech, because it drains enemy power and gives it to me. My engines and auxiliary power levels are notoriously low, so this thing helps a bit. It also helps keeping those weapon and shield power levels maxed whilst spamming abilities.
The Assimilated Module sits in there for the Borg set bonus and it's added crit rate and damage.
The Field Generator is entirely optional - I feel a lot safer with 20% of extra shield capacity, seeing as the Kumari Escort likes to pop when you hit it too hard. If you're too hardcore for extra defenses, you could always slam in a point defense system or something.
All our damage comes from Phaser type weapons, so again, this one should be self-explanatory. Not going for a 5th relay, because the damage bonus is already significantly lowered on the 4th console, a 5th one would no longer be noticeable. MK XI consoles add 28.1% damage, MK XII adds 30% damage. The latter cost well over 30 million credits and bring no real damage over the MK XI consoles, so there's really no point, I just had enough credits.
UPDATE: Been experimenting with 5 phaser relays as opposed to 4 and my wing cannon's special ability started critting for up to 120k. Further investigation is required.

BO Abilities:
This should also be very obvious, so I'll keep it brief. Obviously, there is absolutely no point in any tactical abilities to buff mines, torpedoes or beam weapons, so you'll want Cannon Scatter Volley II and Cannon Rapid Fire III (or the other way 'round, whichever you prefer) and all the attack patterns you can get. I also like to have Tactical Team II + I available, because it realigns my shields for me, so I can focus on the shooting. For our modest science and engineering abilities, we're going with anything to repair shields, plain and simple. I didn't bother with hull repair, because a) not enough slots on a Kumari and b) if they're starting to destroy my hull, I'm already dead. Let's focus on those shields, shall we?

So, does this thing work in STFs? You tell me - in the video, our little PUG finishes the mission + optional objective with more than 7 minutes left to go and no casualties. Can you score 1st place in competitive PvE like Starbase 24 with this setup? Seriously, which escort can't? Does this setup work in PvP? Don't know, don't care, I've never enjoyed pvp on here aside from the occasional 1vs1. Got any more questions? Spam the comments section on here or on Youtube.

STO: Freak show with relaxing, casual-friendly endgame

I really didn't want to come back. I swore to never touch Star Trek Online again and I've been clean for over a year. When they introduced premium ships, which you had to buy three times in order to unlock all their abilities (50 bucks total), I got fed up. And things didn't get better in the pay2win department during my absence: In order to use ships like the ultra-rare Jem'Hadar lockbox carriers at their full potential (as in, set bonuses + unique hangar fighters), you need to own a set of three ships, which can cost you anything from 80 to 300 USD to obtain. Per ship. You absolutely don't need any of this stuff and 99% of the content is so easy, you can beat the whole thing blindfolded with stock ships and f2p items you find along the way. It's about the e-peen, the feelgood-factor, the tiny edge over an opponent during those rare moments where you're fighting another player 1vs1. Which is also completely optional.

Whether this makes such ludicrous prices okay or even fair is down to personal opinion. I'd be happy to own a set of super rare ships to get all the goodies and extras, but there's no way in hell I'd shell out triple-digit amounts or more to be slightly more powerful in a casual MMO. To my great surprise, you see more of those incredibly pricy ships than regular ones, which shows that Perfect World Entertainment must be rather successful with their alien price range. And that makes me want to grab each one of those premium players and shake them around a bit for supporting this kind of crap. If it wasn't for so many idiots shelling out near-infinite amounts of money on pretend starships, then maybe the price tags would become a little more reasonable. Ahh... capitalism.

And why do they have to look so awesome?

But enough whining about money. There is one other unfortunate side-effect to all of the popular, unusual, "rare" stuff: It completely changes the overall look and feel of STO.

And it looks like this in-game.

This is probably not what comes to mind when you picture 'Starfleet'

Okay, the holographic doctor in the above pic of my crew is pretty canon, but Jem'Hadar ships in Starfleet? A Gorn, a Breen and an Orion chick? Okay, the fucking night elf is my fault, because I'm a huge troll. But it's not just the freaky aliens and weird new ships.

The prime directive: Meet strange new aliens and blast them to bits!

This is my away team. They're carrying an assortment of gatling guns, akimbo pistols and even a fucking Klingon Bat'Leth. Whatever happened to diplomacy? Can you set a minigun to stun?
Okay, sure. In this game, Starfleet is at war with just about everyone. The Klingons, some angry Romulans and Remans, the Borg, Dominion time travelers, the Mirror Universe, as well as assorted obscure aliens such as the Breen, the Elachi and god knows what else. You're not gonna leave home bringing only a standard-issue phaser in that scenario. And it makes sense to form alliances with as many aliens as possible, use their technology, yada, yada, yada. Just - when a game says Star Trek Online on the box, you'd probably expect a little more of this:

Those recognizable ships and uniforms are still there. They're just hard to notice with all of the crazy new stuff everywhere.

They've also added another season's worth of content (takes about 2 hours to finish) since I've left about a year ago, which is fun, high quality and comes with strange cutscenes like this one:

He's a doctor and a Starfleet officer. And he threatens to kill people.

The new missions ('episodes') and ships are fun, it's good stuff and the game badly needs every last bit of content it can get. However, if you're a newcomer or a potential returning user, you may have a bit of a hard time getting used to how these things affect the overall look and feel of the game.

If you're a very dedicated gamer and you've quit playing STO because there wasn't enough to do, well... you're still not gonna miss much. Yes, the game has seven sets of missions now - or seven 'seasons' as STO calls them. You can easily beat a whole season in a single playthrough, which usually won't take more than 3 or so hours total. Multiply that by seven and you can realistically experience the biggest chunk of this game's content in under a week's worth of play time. There's also some basic pvp, which doesn't reward you with any special item sets or anything you could not obtain by any other means, so the motivation to go there, if any, lies within the pvp itself. There are the user-generated foundry missions, some of which feature excellent storytelling and great adventures. You may not care about them all that much if you're progress-orientated, as none of these missions reward anything useful once you get past the leveling stage.
One nice new addition on top of the Federation and Klingon storylines is the new Romulan story. Romulan players experience a whole new tutorial and background story and, upon reaching level 10, choose to side with Starfleet or the Klingons. Again, that's not a huge amount of playable content, but their story is exciting, there's a lot of great voice acting and cutscenes and the new Warbirds are pretty damn awesome.

Okay. So after about a week of moderate play you reach the level cap. And that's where you start farming tokens and grinding faction reputation. Sounds boring, I know, but it's actually pretty damn fun. It's easy and straightforward, too!
All you have to do is fire up a queue system that lists you all the available reputation missions. They come in all sizes, flavours and difficulty levels.

Wanna board a shuttle and blow shit up on a planetary surface? They've got you covered.

Shuttles have nice, new interiours, too.

There are ground-based missions, space missions, shuttle missions, elite difficulty missions with extra crispy rewards and everything in between. Successfully completing one of them nets you a small amount of marks, which you hand in to the corresponding faction in order to raise your reputation. As reputation goes up, you unlock new abilities and passive bonuses (higher crit rate, shield boosts and so forth) and you gain access to special set items, such as the cool-looking armor on the character in my screenshots.

You can also fight the Crystalline Entity, which has been made enjoyable for the first time since launch.

Obtaining enough tokens to gain your daily reputation boost doesn't take more than 20-30 minutes per faction. You can repeat your favourite missions and gain as many tokens as you like (mission cooldown is 30-60 minutes each), but you may only hand in a fixed amount every 20 hours. This can be a bit frustrating, because in theory, you could farm marks all day long and max out your reputation within just a few days. With the enforced cooldown timers, maxing out your reputation will take several weeks.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless you demand instant gratification. Every day you can play a quick mission or two, raise your reputation a bit and then focus on something else. Rather than playing 12+ hours a day, you do it in small, enjoyable sessions, which don't feel like a frustrating, repetitive chore. Speaking of repetition: With various ground-, space- and shuttle-based mission types for all factions to choose from, you won't have to do the exact same stuff again and again every single day if you don't want to. It's pretty neat.

You still need to join elite STF missions for the top tier items, but they've become a lot easier.

STO also no longer forces you into certain missions in order to obtain certain items. A while back, you had to play some insanely difficult elite level missions for a chance to grab some ultra rare items, which could be traded in for the absolute best tier of endgame gear. Not only were many of them nearly impossible to beat for pick up groups, but the drop rate for these precious tokens was so insanely low, it would often require dozens of successful runs in order to obtain them. Not fun.
Said missions since had their difficulty adjusted and all of them are guaranteed to reward you with a token upon successful completion. You get to hand-pick your favourite missions and get to ignore the rest if you're not interested. Nice!

I actually quite like this casual-style endgame stuff. Sure, without the artificial reputation timers I could probably get all the goodies I want in just a day or two, but then what do I do? Right now I can log on, play just a quick mission or two or pull an all nighter, unlock a new passive ability here and there, slowly work my way towards the rep cap and all the cool items I want. And anticipation is half the fun.

Much unlike Neverwinter's "buy all endgame gear on the auction house" nonsense, this is endgame done right. I also prefer this to being forced into the exact same raid, heroic dungeon, arena or some other repetitive thing for countless hours every week. That stuff was awesome when it was still new, I loved it when WoW and all of its clones were still fresh and innovative, but over the years, the urge to prove myself and "work" towards virtual gear has died down a bit.

And during those moments where I can't resist flashing my e-peen, well...

First place in competitive PvE guarantees two purple items.

Plenty of competitive missions to go around. Do a better job than everybody else and be rewarded with items, which may sell for millions on the exchange. It has never been so easy to get rich in an MMO!

STO is easily one of the most casual-friendly MMOs out there, which makes perfect sense. A huge part of the player base consists of trekkies. Or trekkers. Or whatever the fuck you elitist bastards like to call yourselves. And many of them have never played any other MMO before, they don't know shit about class and build roles in groups, about need or greed, about optimising their gear and specs. You'll end up with level-capped folks in your pick up group, who show up in a level 20 starship, because they don't care about stats and just like the damn ship. They just want to play Star Trek and they don't care about your DPS or tanking or completing the optional mission objective or the difference between an EPS flow regulator and an RCS accelerator. And STO's content, the difficulty of which, everything you can do on there, is aimed first and foremost at those players. Which is fine, they're paying customers after all.

STO has an overwhelming amount of abilities, skills, ship components, weapons and bridge officers to let you fine-tune your setup to perfection, if you so desire. Tweaking your ship and crew can make a big difference and chances are, neglecting to do so will get you eaten alive in pvp. However, if you just want to board your favourite ship and play, without wanting to figure out whether plasma beam arrays are better than antiproton cannons, whether you should use ablative hull plating or warhead prefire chambers, then the game won't punish you too hard. There are some pretty powerful items out there if you care to quest for them, but none of STO's content is difficult enough to require any of them. And when you look at it this way, then maybe the insanely expensive premium stuff isn't such a big deal anymore, however morally questionable.

-Cat

These are the voyages of a troll

Two games this week. Shadowrun Returns and (why? OHGODWHYYYYYYYYYY?!) Star Trek Online.

Shadowrun on the Sega Genesis. Or Megadrive, depending on where you live.

That thing up there was my first contact with the Shadowrun universe. Pen & Paper? Didn't even know what that was back then. Where I'm from, it was practically impossible to get your hands on anything P&P or tabletop, especially if you didn't want it to be outdated by a decade and ridiculously overpriced. Well, unless it was somehow related to Warhammer, Magic: The Gathering or stuff actually made in Germany.
Still, that old 16bit game was one of my favourites, I really loved the setting and I still fire it up on my PSP now and then. Ahh... homebrew.

When Shadowrun Returns successfully kickstarted, I really just gave it a try out of boredom. The visuals somehow reminded me of the old Sega game, which would have been a bad thing if it wasn't for nostalgia. I mean... come on:

It looks... okay... I guess?

This is a trend I absolutely HATE! Today's hardware is more powerful and affordable than ever, a mid-range gaming rig has enough power to render the nostril hair of every fucking character and we get graphics like this. Because "indie", "retro", "gameplay>graphics". I can't get myself to enjoy games like Cubeworld, Minecraft, Terraria and countless other popular, allegedly fun games, because they look so incredibly shit. Shadowrun Returns has some nice artwork, the character portraits are great, but the rest of the game looks shit. When you zoom in on those character models, they look like something from Quake. The first ever Quake.

Anyhow. The game is fun. Any reviewer seriously comparing this game to Baldur's Gate deserves to be shot even more than idiots rating the visuals 7/10 or higher, but it's a fun game.
My main problem with Shadowrun Returns is the complete and utter lack of freedom. It's entirely linear and on rails. If the story wants me to talk to a guy or find an item in a particular area, then I have to stay in said area until I do what the game wants me to do, I cannot leave, I cannot explore the rest of the game world. There is nothing to explore, there is rarely ever any reason to stray from the obvious path and there are no side quests to speak of, unless you wanna count one or two "hey, wanna kill some guys real quick for extra money?" stuff, which has been crammed in between two story sections. So no, it's not like Baldur's Gate. It's not like fucking Fallout. Zero exploration, random events, anything. Fine, the turn-based combat is like a simplified version of Fallout's combat. Which is good. Good combat.

What's really great about Shadowrun Returns is the writing. The story, the characters, the setting, it's all fantastic. Now, I'm a notorious hater of the dreaded wall of text. Give me a game with zero voiceovers and lengthy quest descriptions, I'll just click okay on all that shit and play it by ear, because having to read all that crap bores me. This game has no voiceovers. And so much dialogue. You're solving a murder case. So much sleuthing. Investigating, talking, digging around, 75% of the game is just that. Heck, you don't even get any good gear or experience ('karma') for killing stuff, so the game encourages you to avoid combat by talking your way out of it. Thing is, the writing is so fantastic, I didn't even mind. I've finished the entire game in one sitting (supposedly takes up to 12 hours, I didn't count) and read all the dialogue, all the descriptions, everything. There's just something about being a big, fat, grumpy troll in a trench coat, who is trying to figure out who killed his friend. Well, or you could be an elf or a dwarf or some shit, but come on.

Scary, hulking badass with horns. Or an elf. COME ON!

Oh well. And then I'm playing this:

This picture of my crew stands for everything that is wrong with STO and their vision of Starfleet.

My biggest problem with Star Trek Online is its greedy, evil Chinese publisher. They're both the best and worst thing that ever happened to STO. When the game went from Atari to Perfect World Entertainment, the game suddenly had localized version in all kinds of languages almost over night. Suddenly there were cutscenes, voiceovers, remade tutorials, ship interiours and a whole lot of polish, that the game had been lacking since day one. PWE are pumping a shitload of money into this game and it shows. When I gave the game another try last night, I bumped into one of the original characters from TNG. Yes, it was only Tasha Yar and nobody gives a fuck about her, but she was voiced by Denise Crosby, the same actress who played Yar in the tv show.

When STO first went live, there were some references to Kirk, Sulu, Picard, Worf, Data and the like, but you'd never meet any of those iconic characters in person. Instead, you got to hang out with Riker's transporter clone, Q Junior or Tom Paris' kid. Who the hell gives a shit about these people?
They did add Scotty and McCoy in a weird time-travel mission later on, presumably, because their original actors are long dead and it was probably a tad cheaper to legally put them into a video game. We may never know.
Somehow I doubt that they'll ever manage to drag Patrick Stewart into voice acting a special Picard mission on there (shame, he's lent his voice for Oblivion and Castlevania), though they have both the old and new Spock, which is nice.

Long story short, the game got better with its rich new publisher. More content, more features, more polish. More love.
And a whole lotta pay2win.
PWE have added a mechanic, which I consider to be the most evil, bastardic and annoying thing I've ever seen in any F2P game. Well, except Allods Online, the level of greed there was legendary. Ahem, anyway: Lockboxes.
Every so often, a defeated enemy, be it in space or on the ground, will drop a lockbox. Said lockbox has a minute chance to contain an incredibly awesome, incredibly rare, powerful, amazing ship, which you can only obtain by lucking out on a lockbox or buying it off another player for an obscene amount of money. And you open up a lockbox by throwing money at your screen.

Okay. Not really. You have to buy a key with real money. You MAY also buy them on the auction house for about 1.5 million credits (which is as much as it sounds) and then you get a .1% or so chance to win the rare ship. If you do (don't worry, you won't), the server will broadcast a message to every single player out there: [Player Name] has obtained [Rare Ship Name]. Yeah. You get those annoying popup messages every other minute and they can't be turned off. Make sure people get jealous and start spending money on keys.

Greedy publisher. But they added giant scorpion boss battles! Giant! Scorpion! Boss! Battles!!

The main problem with these ultra rare ships is how none of them have anything to do with Starfleet. They're Jem'Hadar ships, Romulan Ships, Fish'n'Ships (scnr) and when you hang around earth these days, you see all of those crazy ships and pretty much nothing that comes to mind when you think "Star Trek".

Okay. A super rare ship with some cool new weapon and/or ability isn't really pay2win. A super expensive bundle of three ships, which can be combined for insanely powerful set bonuses, on the other hand...
Yes. They've added the Scimitar from Nemesis. Claire saw it and I had to spend the rest of the night removing the wet patch from our sofa using a hair dryer. I don't care how much some of you assholes hated Nemesis - this is the single-most awesome ship in the entire Trek universe. It's also the most overpowered one in this particular game.

Some ships in STO cloak. You know, go into stealth, become undetectable until they attack. This is balanced in a way so you can't stealth while getting shot at, your shields don't work while you're cloaked and attacking automatically breaks stealth. With the Scimitar, well... not so much. Fire while cloaked for a whole 15 seconds, keep your shields up whilst cloaked AND get an oh-shit-button, which adds a second set of shields on top of your main shields, which need to be drained before you can be damaged. Oof!
If you want all of these goodies, however, you're gonna have to buy the ship not once, not twice, but three times. There are three slightly different versions of the Scimitar, all of which come with one of these OP abilities - collect them all, to get the full monty. They're offering the whole set in a nifty package for only about 50 bucks (or over 30 Euros, if you will).

I don't know what to do with all this. In terms of quality and content, the game is better than ever. It's a really good game! But when I see a publisher pulling off greedy shit like that - and getting away with it - I fear I may have to find a new hobby, because gaming is getting too expensive. Maybe I should breed unicorns or something.

-Cat

Do I hear wedding bells?

What a fantastic month it has been! Probably the busiest one of my career so far and now I can sit back and wait for the best part: Getting paid. Okay, all of the money will go into evening out our bank accounts and paying all our bills, but at least we'll enjoy financial security for a while now. And the best thing is: There's gonna be more where all that work (and money!) came from. For the past three or so years, the biggest part of my job went into print articles, not counting the occasional guest appearance in a podcast or the odd "hey, didn't you play that?" article for gaming websites run by friends. Tomorrow I'm gonna learn how to put stuff online on one of the bigger websites out there, which is all gonna be part of a regular job with regular pay. Just a little something on the side, on top of all the print stuff, but extra money is always welcome. I'm also getting into professional video editing some more, which is a massive pain in the ass compared to the youtube stuff I do for the fun of it, but I get paid for these things now, so... it's 2013 and knowing how to write is no longer good enough, plain and simple.

I need to come up with a concept that combines this blog and my youtube channel into one thing. Some of my more popular youtube videos get a few thousand hits, the blog is getting an increasing amount of frequent visitors, but most of my videos lack commentary and plain old blog text doesn't really cut it anymore nowadays. I should probably combine the whole thing a bit and benefit from my sexy voice and accent - that's what random podcast/youtube followers say about me, mind.
Anyhow. This year has been really good so far and it keeps getting better. Three major publishers want my stuff now, work keeps coming in regularly and on top of the upcoming new online side job, I might be looking at yet another regular thing involving Neverwinter. Not set in stone just yet, nothing might happen with that one at all, we'll see. For now, it's another potential small thing on the side.

The crazy thing about it all is how I don't mind working like a madman. And I'm the laziest fuck on the planet. I've avoided all yardwork (wait... UK... they call it gardening, right?) for as long as I've lived in this counry, up to a point where the neighbours couldn't take it anymore and removed the jungle from underneath our windows and started planting pumpkins and venus flytraps. Which is kinda fucked up, but I like it. I haven't been to the supermarket in over a year, because I can order all my shit online. In between social events, which I absolutely cannot avoid being invited to, I don't shave. At all. Okay, I think you get the idea.
But when it comes to my job, well... thanks to an incredibly tight schedule I had to test two new dungeons on some MMO last weekend, then finish a massive article over night, which took until 7 in the morning, but it didn't bother me one bit. I love doing this stuff.

It's not just about playing video games for money, though. It's about getting away with everything when you're good enough. When you have the balls. They gave me my own column in one of the magazines, where I can write about whatever the fuck I want and they give me money for it. So yeah, if you're anywhere near Germany and if you happen to find the upcoming new issue of buffed, be sure to read it. My column is entirely about wanking and silly porn names. I'm not making this up. I get money when I write about masturbation in a gaming magazine. Mind you, it's a fucking good article.

We're gonna be debt free this month. And there's plenty more work coming my way. Give us another month or two and we can finally tie the knot.
I know we've been engaged for over three years now, the whole thing has turned into a bit of a running gag, but we didn't want the whole thing to suck. Sure, we coulda pulled it off kinda low-budget and everything, but where's the fun in that?
Well. You know how it goes. Right now it looks like I'm finally getting somewhere, we're getting enough money to afford the roof above our heads and to eat things that didn't crawl out of cans. But the moment you make plans... you know. So, one baby step at a time. See where we're at in a few weeks. But if everything continues to work out the way it does right now, we'll be known as the Nicholsons. Yay!

Oh, one more thing. Skyrim. Duh, right?

Beautiful bewbs! Also, mutilation:

This fixes two things, which used to annoy me about Skyrim for a while now. 

You see, the default followers in Skyrim look like this:

I find this difficult to masturbate to. Not impossible, but difficult.

There are hundreds of community-generated overhaul and replacer mods to fix that problem, but they tend to go straight for the other extreme. Allow me to demonstrate:

This one, on the other hand...

I don't care if she's sexy. She's 15 and a whore.

Most, if not all attractive followers are clearly designed by male users, for male users. And lesbians, who don't want their girls to walk around like guys. I never really understood that. I mean, being lesbian means you're into girls, right? So what's with the male haircuts and outfits and the working out and... um, where were we? Oh yes, sexy followers.

Let me give you another example:

Not sure if rain or bukkake...

See what I mean? First of all, user-generated followers either look like children or they have the most complicated hairstyles imaginable. Sometimes both. They rarely wear more than a thong and a bra (if that), because they've spent all of their money on make-up and hair care products. 

"I can't fight a bear! Do you have any idea how long it took to get my hair to look like that?"

These characters are an assortment of porcellain dolls, hair models and underage hookers. One might argue that the characters in my "quickie" video aren't much better, but... BUT!

Normal. Fucking. Hair. They don't look like jailbait. And while there is absolutely no reason to show off so much skin, at least they're not running around in only their underwear or a fucking swimsuit. Because "sexy" means leaving a little something to the imagination, not blatantly flashing your goods like some horny bimbo.

As for the violence thing, well...

Look. I'm hitting some bandit with a massive, two-handed axe. Super sharp and deadly, the size of a truck and Mr. Bandit is protected by some furs and a leather strap across his chest. Would I cleave him in half like in that little video up there? Probably not. But that's still a lot more likely to happen than him just peacefully going to sleep with only a tiny scratch or two (which also have to be modded, because there are no visible injuries in Vanilla skyrim). Cutting off an arm here and there, making somebody's skull explode with a giant warhammer... yeah, I want that.

I'm happy. I like this game and all those fun mods. Elder Scrolls Online can go fuck itself.

-Cat

On the importance of rodents

Back when I was a kid, my dad would turn the cleaning process of his computer mouse into a bit of an exaggerated ceremony. He'd remove the trackball and place it in a shotglass full of water and a drop of dishsoap and stir around in it with a Q-tip. Sure, back then a computer was some kind of mythical machine, which would do wondrous things if treated right, so one did not simply anger the gods of hardware. A much more likely explanation for this scenario, however, is that my old man is just an attention whore.

Then came the optical mouse. Truly, we had reached a whole new age of technology! And they looked so incredible! Ahem...

Basically, we went from this...

to this...

and eventually even that.

0-1 thumb buttons, no sidescrolling mouse wheels (heck, I remember when even the damn wheels were a novelty), how the FUCK did we browse the web?
Simple. Most of us didn't.
When I finally started exploring humankind's largest porn collection some 16 or so years ago, the majority of the fun took place inside some shitty, tiny AOL window. "How do I get out of AOL and find the real internet?" was a borderline valid question back then.

So, why the fuck am I babbling on about ancient computer peripherals and crap? Because after about five years of service, my Logitech G9 has more or less kicked the bucket. The whole thing didn't go up in smoke or anything, but the microswitch on the left button has become somewhat unresponsive and making it register a click requires the strength of a thousand men. Which makes it a bit useless, really.
One could probably unscrew the whole thing, have a look at the switch, fix it, replace it, maybe just clean it and get it to work again, I don't know and frankly, I don't care enough to find out and risk breaking the whole thing even more in the process.

Now, one not so fantastic thing about being a freelance writer is that you can never say for sure when you'll get your hands on some disposable income. In theory, there should be a cozy 4-digit amount in my bank account, allowing me to replace whatever broken hardware I want. Reality check: Two employers haven't paid their oustanding bills to me yet, a third one would gladly pay me, but my article for them got delayed, because a game I was supposed to preview is virtually unplayable and the PR people, who could provide useful material and answer questions have gone on vacation. And I can't bill people for work I haven't yet completed. And of course having to make up for delayed cash flow means additional overdraft fees, late fees, yada, yada, yada. No money, no mouse.

So I went for the cheapest replacement I could get. Imagine going from this:

to this:

I'm shocked at how cool this thing actually looks on the picture.

This beauty costs a little over 8 Quid and is made of the thinnest, lightest, cheapest plastic they could roughly sculpt into the shape of a mouse. It is so light in fact, that I have to keep my hand on it at all times to prevent it from gently floating up into the air.
Now, while it does cover the most basic mousing needs (thumb buttons, wheel), there is no sidescroll-function. Something I've been using on the G9 for half a decade, so suddenly being unable to tilt the mouse wheel is more annoying than you'd think. On top of an ergonomical design, which was clearly created with no human being in mind and a stubborn mouse wheel coated with the slickest surface known on this side of the galaxy, to make scrolling entirely impossible. Sweet!

But I sucked it up. It's only temporary. Only until I'd get my money to buy a new mouse. Then the microswitch went funny. As in, 50% of my clicks wouldn't register at all, the other 50% were double-clicks. Go ahead! Try using a mouse, which registers nothing but double clicks! Click on the wrong savegame in Skyrim? Too fucking bad, it's a double-click and you're now overwriting it! Oh, you wanted to move this file somewhere else? Well, now you're gonna open it. And suddenly, the damn thing has become just as useless as the defective G9, whilst being twice as annoying.
But they can't all be shit, right? WRONG!
We own three of the damn things now. One has a faulty left button, the other one ceases to work when you twist the cord too much and the third one doesn't work at all. Ironically, the money we've spent on those shitty things could have bought us one working, expensive mouse.

Having no money and no functional mouse, I delved into the scary depths of hardware purgatory. Basically, that's a loose collection of old sound cards, hard drives, possibly entire motherboards, plugs, cables, converters, controllers, joysticks and sometimes mice. One of the horrible things that lurked inside was this:

The Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop

Another horrible pile of cheap, shitty plastic. I got it in a promotional press review package ages ago and it has never really worked at all. The "natural" ergonomic shape of the keyboard is a mess, the mouse feels rough and unpleasant and the cheap silvery coating dissolves within minutes of use and the whole damn thing is unresponsive and ugly and oversized and full of useless, stupid extra buttons nobody is ever going to use.
And of course the mouse just stayed dead when I plugged in the ridiculously oversized receiver. What a shame.
There was also a nondescript Logitech mouse, which was part of some old laptop ages ago. Didn't really do anything when I plugged it in. Why the fuck am I even keeping so many broken rodents around the house?

Oh well. Ended up finding an old favourite from 9 years ago.

I know. Why the hell would anyone want to fire up a playlist, skip tunes or change the volume setting using special mouse buttons, especially when one owns an old G15 Reloaded keyboard? I don't know. You can probably map other functions to all those fancy media buttons, but they're all located in such awkward places, you wouldn't map any vital gaming hotkeys to them.

But this mouse is almost perfect for me. It's very slim, which is good when you have small hands and makes it more comfortable to use than my broken G9, which is designed for people with hands the size of a bear. An actual bear, not a bear's hand... paw... whatever. The mousewheel can be tilted for sidescrolling (whoopie!) and doesn't get filthy and rusty like the G9's, there are nice, big, rubbery back and forward buttons and the whole thing feels nice and precise.
Like all cordless rodents, it eats batteries, which sucks. It also doesn't have any nifty buttons to change sensitivity in the middle of a game, which is a shame, but I've used this feature on the G9 about twice in my life. And I can't change any colours, meaning the buttons will always shine at me in a fancy, blue light, which is okay, because that's my favourite colour.

This was my favourite mouse back in the day. First expensive mouse I've ever spent any cash on and it felt a million times better than the bog-standard MS optical mouse I had used previously. Which isn't really a surprise. And one day I stepped on the wireless USB receiver and it all stopped working. So it went into purgatory with all the other broken, dodgy, outdated and spare hardware I had. Until last night.
Having tried all other options, I plugged in the dodgy old receiver for kicks and giggles. It has a massive crack in it, the USB connector is wobbly and dented and just dangling around like what I assume my cock will feel like in 50 years. "Logitech Wireless USB Input Device" it said in a little window as it installed the drivers. Whoa, surprise!

I had to disinfect the mouse before even trying to use it. Did you know that rubber can get mouldy? This mouse had grown all sorts of nasty things and was rather unpleasant to look at, let alone touch. But an intense cleaning session and a fresh pair of batteries later, the little buttons lit up and the ancient toy came back to life. Well... theoretically. Windows recognized the receiver, the mouse had power, but the pointer wouldn't move at all. Clicking didn't do anything. Neither did pressing the connection button on the mouse.
Oh well. Godzilla bless Google and PDF versions of old manuals. Turns out there's a tiny hole inside the USB receiver, which can be pressed with a pen to reset the whole thing. And that's what fixed it. So I had a perfectly functional, my favourite ever mouse, just sitting around for a half decade, because I thought it was fucked and I just couldn't get myself to throw it away.

Searching for drivers and a manual has also revealed that this thing is still being sold on Amazon today - for a whopping 150 Dollars!
By today's standards, the Logitech Mediaplay probably doesn't really qualify as a useful gaming mouse. There are probably much better alternatives for a fraction of the price. I don't even know what my past self was thinking when shelling out a ton of money for such a completely stupid, useless gadget!

But that's not the point. This is my favourite mouse! This is the one. The one that feels right, the one you don't have to get used to, that doesn't feel awkward, that has that one little stupid button you always press on accident or some shit like that, it's the perfect fucking mouse for me. The wheel feels perfect, the buttons need just the right amount of pressure, the shape, everything. Think of it as your favourite console's controller when you were a kid. I had Atari, C64, Sega, Nintendo, Nec and a billion other controllers before a Playstation or Xbox had even been invented. But for some reason, one of them would probably stand out and just feel right, one of them was better than all the rest, right? Some of my friends felt that way about arcade fightsticks, which have been enjoying a popular revival for quite some time, others say that the one true controller for them was the Gamecube Gamepad and so forth.

To most sane people, my resurrected mouse will look like an old, overpriced, slightly yucky piece of plastic. I gave it a quick test run on Neverwinter, fired up a pvp session and killed 20 people without dying. Which is mostly because I get all the most powerful stuff for free from the publisher and I've written all the guides and shit, but I'm sure the mouse has done its part to help. Like some old sword you've carried into battle a million times, it's now a bit rusty and looks a bit shit, but you'd still pick it over any new one, because they don't have the same balance, the same weight, the same feel to them. Which is also the cheesiest, nerdiest analogy possible.

I can't wait to use this in Skyrim. And Hawken. And everywhere else. But now I have another ten pages to complete for work. To finally get paid. On the plus side, I won't have to spend any of it on a new mouse now. Hurray!

-Cat