Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Still in the oven

Hmm - three things to talk about today ...

Ovens, money printing and blank minds.

I think I've missed out tonight, I watched Deadliest Catch, Falling Skies and now there's cricket on. I could have been watching :
Love it. I'll watch it at leisure tomorrow when my brain isn't fried. Ok, I might be destressing somewhat but I'll be starting a 3 day weekend with lots of cricket on the telly. Mel and Sue, the presenters, are awesome and the Top Gear Lunatic Fringe missed out by scaring off Sue, who was just an innocent bystander in the rubbish around a certain arsehole being fired. Ok. Judging by what I'm hearing about Bake Off, perhaps "innocent" isn't quite the right word.

Where would we be without a lovely bit of innuendo to make us chuckle, swell with laughter and wish we were nibbling the muffin of our own local Master Baker. (Good job this isn't a show about fishing).

It has been too long since I've had the pleasure of grabbing our Snow Queen's buns. (Our local Master Baker) I wonder what a soon arriving Master Baker's cakes will be like. I also fondantly remember the cupcake that the wonderful Pixie made for us a few years ago. You probably get the idea that I like cake. Cake is life.

Money printing ?

A recurring theme here is how much I've been loving playing Elite Dangerous. Here's one reason why :
I've let GIMP have a go at enhancing that, which is why it's a bit stylised. It's a game where you fly about the place and then see something utterly gorgeous, like the purple star. It's purple ! A screenshot was totally necessary. The original was very dark and didn't show the ship at all well. Lighting effects are excellent in this game but that does make it tough to get proper illumination on your ship for screenies.

Outside of the very pretty graphics, it's actually a bit boring. There is no epic storyline like in a classic like Freelancer. I find it cathartic to play, very relaxing and there's that sense of seeing new pretty spacey things just the next jump away. Is it strange that I find hot boiling suns to be visually appealing ? Maybe I've been watching too much Andromeda with Trance Gemini, wonderful character with a lovely smile.

So why money printing - I had my doubts about Elite Dangerous when it was in its pre-release kickstarter phase. I didn't believe they'd come out with an interesting product with good gameplay. It's surprised me that they have. They didn't fail by trying too much, they got just enough in and they've expanded the game from there. But now ... we have a release for an expansion, after the game has been out for only 8 months. That's pretty soon ... Eve has released a few but you don't pay anything for those outside of the subscription. WoW makes you pay for them but ...

Original game cost - £40
Expansion cost - £40
Discount if you have it already - £10.
So I could get this expansion for £30, or I could pay £130 now for of the expansions later.

I thought £40 for the original was steep and I'm balking at paying that again for the expansion. It would let me land on planets but to be honest, in Frontier Elite 2, you could do that and the novelty wore off quick. I'm just not convinced that represents value in any way. It should have been baked into the game when it was still in the oven.

What's more disturbing is that the overwhelming impression on the otherwise excellent Facebook community is :
Opposing views are being ridiculed. I'm keeping my head down and avoiding the subject because ... my views are heretical. A usually helpful community has turned bullying with quotes like "If you don't like it, play something else". Not helpful. I will go elsewhere.

After paying £40 for the game after release and another £40 on a flightstick (which will be used for ... it's coming) and getting so many hours out of the game, I have my moneys worth. But I'm not convinced that they deserve any more of my money for features that they promised as part of the base game. Hell, they promised an offline mode, which was a promise broken which upset me (but was willing to go along with). The implication is that they withdraw access to the game because you don't keep up with expansions. Or only people with the expansion get the good stuff.

Not happy with Frontier and this announcement. Certainly not shelling out £130 for one single game. That's very obnoxious. I'd recommend waiting for :

No Man's Sky. It's promising all the stuff that should have been in Elite in the first place and I'm well and truly getting caught up in the hype. Perhaps this is the new Elite we were waiting for.

Enough about games - mind blanks ?

Actually - with that teaser, maybe I'll leave that one until later and just remember those things that make my mind happily go blank.

Pretty Ladies smiling at me;
Pretty Ladies laughing at my really bad jokes;
Trying to find words that fit instead of the ones in my head (words are hard);
Messages coming in from ... you guessed it ... Pretty Ladies;

This one is appropriate and I've been looking for an excuse to use it for a while :
Except it's me smiling, walking into pole and wondering how I can answer the message that just came in.

Stay smiling. I'm going to give Elite a miss tonight because ... tireds. But I'll remember those bubbly chuckles, the helpful prods, the haha's from my jokes, the "yey this tweet was about me" and one lady who smiled today because I asked her how she was. That one is really struggling at the moment, trying to help her as much as I can and at the same time, I'm getting help in staying positive from a few other people I know.

It's a better world if we help each other out.

PS I'd kinda like to get a response from some of the internet micro-celebs who I send tweets to. It's intended to make them chuckle but they rarely get a twitch of a response. Disappointing.
PPS As I hate to end on a downer, it's disappointing that I don't get a response but I made myself chuckle while writing/making the tweets and they tend to get :-)'s from other followers. Which makes me happy.

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