The Farstrider Scout

There’s a new game that was just put out by Infinity Ward called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare d20.  It’s really simple to play, all you need is this handy chart (see below), a 20 sided die and a 6 sided die.  You roll the d20 and the result determines what happens in the game, with the d6 filling in several minor variables.  Results are as follows:

On a roll of :

1:  Your lobby fills up and the game begins to load.  It stops on “Waiting for Server…”, and 15 seconds later, times out.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
2:  Your lobby fills up and the match starts to count down from 40 seconds.  After 40 seconds, it begins to choose a host, which takes 8 seconds.  A host is chosen, who then leaves.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
3:  The game lobby inexplicably closes.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
4:  IWNet is down, and you are unable to play any online matches.  Roll 1d6 to determine how many hours it will be before you can play.  As there is no advance warning or any sort of notification for this event, after the rolled number of hours has passed, roll 1d6 again.  After that final rolled number of hours has passed, reroll 1d20 and start again.
5:  You are able to get into a game, but the chosen host’s connection is poor.  Roll 1d6 to deterimine how many minutes of horrible lag you must endure, after which, reroll 1d6.  On a result of 1-3, the migration fails and you are kicked back to the lobby – Reroll 1d20 and start again.  On a result of 4-5, the migration succeeds, but the new host is no better – Reroll 1d6 to determine if you are the new host; 1-5, no, reroll 1d6 and start from the beginning of d20 result #5; 6, yes, go to d20 result #6.  On a result of 6, you’re able to play the match to completion without any further problems.
6:  You are the host, and your connection is poor.  Roll 1d6 and halve the result to determine how long other players must suffer through the horrible lag before the game chooses a new host, after which reroll 1d6.  On a result of 1-3, the migration fails and you are kicked back to the lobby – Reroll 1d20 and start again.  On a result of 4-5, the migration succeeds, but the new host is no better – start from the beginning of d20 result #5.  On a result of 6, you’re able to play the match to completion without any further problems.
7:  You are in a lobby with lower than the number of people needed to start the match countdown.  Roll 1d6 to determine how long you must wait for the required number of people, then reroll 1d20 and start again.
8:  The game lobby inexplicably closes.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
9:  You are able to get into a match, but one of the players is a hacker with the nuke killstreak reward.  Roll 1d6 and halve the result to determine how long it is before he sets it off.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
10:  The Steam Cloud is down, and you are unable to play any online matches.  Roll 1d6 to determine how many hours it will be before you can play.  Halve the result if you were smart enough to check the forum for maintenance warnings beforehand.  After the rolled number of hours has passed, reroll 1d20 and start again.
11:  You are able to get into a match, but there is a hacker on the opposing team.  Roll 1d20 to determine how many times you are killed by him before the match ends, then reroll 1d20 and start again.
12:  Unable to migrate host.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
13:  Your lobby is merged with another.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
14:  Your lobby fills up, and the match starts to count down from 40 seconds.  At 1d6 seconds, almost all the players dissapear.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
15:  You are able to get into a match, but one of the players has the nuke killstreak reward.  Roll 1d6 to determine the player’s temprament:  1 – The player is an enemy and uses it because their team is losing; 2 – The player is friendly and uses it because your team is loosing; 3 – The player is an enemy but no matter what, they never use it, or wait until the very end of the match to do so; 4 – The player is an enemy but uses it despite the fact that their team is winning; 5 – The player is friendly but uses it despite the fact that your team is winning; 6 – The player is friendly and no matter what, they never use it, or wait until the very end of the match to do so.  For all results except 3 and 6, roll 1d6 to determine how many minutes it will be before the nuke is set off.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
16:  The game lobby inexplicably closes.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
17:  Your lobby fills up, and then inexplicably tries to merge your full lobby with another.  Roll 1d6 to determine how long it does this until the game lobby closes.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
18:  Unable to connect to host.  Reroll 1d20 and start again.
19:  You join a game already in progress.  Roll 1d6 and halve the result to determine how many minutes are left in the match.  You are able to play for that long after which reroll 1d20 and start again.
20: You are able to play a full match to the end with no problems whatsoever.  Once the match is over, reroll 1d20 and start again for the next match.

I hope you all have fun playing this wonderful and entertaining addition to the Call of Duty series!

…Is the poor man’s CoD4.  That pretty much sums it up.  It plays almost the same, sans toggled stances (COD4 has toggled prone and crouch stances, CA has crouch that you have to manually hold).  The biggest difference is the unlock system.  In COD4, you gain experience and rank, unlocking weapons which are immediately usable.  CA has a system by which you gain experience and rank, unlocking items, but in order to actually use them, you must rent them with the in game monetary system.  Obtaining this money seems to revolve around a “more people you kill, the more money you get” setup.

The biggest difference overall is price.  COD4 still runs for about $40 in stores, and free to play.  CA is FREE.  What this means is that the game is flooded with skilless n00bs, and people who are veterans of COD 4 that play tend to shine.  This can be a good thing and a bad thing, but most of the time it’s just hilarious, especially when a teammate wastes two clips of ammo unloading on you, only to get his dumb ass blown away by someone from the opposing team.  What’s even worse, is that when you DO hit a teammate, you get an audible message to check your fire.

But that’s what happens when you appeal to the unwashed masses, just like WoW.

 

and up… and down…  Otherwise known as “Bunny-hopping“.  More prevelant in the FPS world, it’s also beginning to invade MMO’s, and it’s annoying. 

RPG players, if you’re doing it, it doesn’t do anything for you(with the exception of Age of Conan) except make you look stupid.

FPS players, if you’re doing it…  Not only do you look stupid, it’s a pretty cheap tacic.  I can pretty much gurantee that any soldier on the battlefield will not be jumping around like a jackrabbit because either A) He’ll get tired very quickly, or B)  He’ll be tired, and then dead.  Not that that argument holds any water… but still.  (Edit:  One exception to this rule – the Tribes series (Starsiege: Tribes, Tribes 2, & Tribes: Vengeance (to a lesser extent)  all rely on a form of this tactic, called “skiing“, which is a legitimate and accepted tactic within the Tribes community.)

Please.

Stop.

Think of the children.

Ok, so the timestamps don’t reflect quite right…  Things have been a bit odd lately, as I’m trying to re-adjust to my normal late night schedule, which will only last for another 2 days or so until I go on some much needed leave.  In any case, here we go…

I recently picked up Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat after trying the demo and getting blown away by it.  The graphics are amazing, and the single-player story was very well written in my opinion.  Multiplayer, however, I have mixed feelings over.  I like the play style better than Quake Wars, and I like what they’ve done with the unlock system, gaining different equipment and “perks” as you rank up.  The downside to the ranking system is that it is often easier for some skilless noob to just spray and pray, then actually take time and aim at your targets.  No co-op play is a downside, but I can deal with that, but a huge gripe I have is that I can’t patch the game.  This is because I have a digitally purchased/downloaded copy, and as such, the retailer (EBgames/Gamestop) has to supply a modified patch.  There isn’t one.  Soooo, I am relegated to playing on non-Punkbuster servers, which until earlier today, wasn’t too bad.  Then 2 players using an aimbot hack joined the server I was playing on, and things went downhill from there.  Must be compensating for something….

Next topic is “Welfare Epics”, since that seems to be the thing lately I’ll throw my .02 in, for what it’s worth and be done with it.  Blessing of Kings went through six blog posts, which is quite a bit to read, after/during which it was picked up by Shifftusk, Renoobed, and Out of Mana, and probably others that I haven’t gotten around to catching up with yet.  Keeping all those posts, and most of the comments (I didn’t read the ones from BoK), I’d have to say that many of the points that were brought up, I agree with.  Before I go into that though, here’s my inital take.

I consider myself a casual gamer.  This is probably out of date, considering my Xfire profile stating that I play up to and over 40 hours a week, but when it comes to WoW, I tend to be pretty casual about it.  I’ve been playing since release, with a few breaks here and there, but there are many places that I have yet to see, and will never see.  I have never completed going through BRD, and have never even seen the inside of UBRS/LBRS or anything beyond with the exception of a lone Stratholme run that I did a long time ago.  That’s a lot of content I’ve missed, and since the loot goes hand in hand with content, I’ve never had T1-T3 gear on any of the characters I’ve ever leveled.  I have significant blocks against raiding guilds and DKP systems, and dealing with human beings as a whole (see the CoD4 section for a small glimpse into why).  I haven’t even touched any of the Outland dungeons because of the human factor.  I feel, however, that I am confident enough in my skills as a hunter that if I applied to a raiding guild, I would be able to hold my own.  Not everyone is physically /mentally /emotionally /timewise /etc. able to participate in that kind of activity.  For me, at the moment, PvP is the only way I will ever see raid-equivelent gear.

That being said, yes, the current Arena gear system is rather skewed, and can be/has been played.  It kind of leads back to that whole “spray and pray” routine that I commented on earlier.  Elephante is a prime example of this.  I think that adjusting costs to require X before obtaining Y is a good idea, especially since this would level out the playing field a lot quicker once the ratings are reset, as you could probably set it so that people just getting into the arena scene don’t face off against those that have been around a while and are now in S3+ gear.  Granted, it might be possible for a very skilled S1 team to beat a poorly skilled S3 team, but the run wouldn’t last.  The S1 team would have to work their way up – probably quickly, of course – through S1 and S2 to get to S3.

There’s only one area that I see this as having problems though – Battlegrounds.  Gear matching works for BG’s like WSG and AB.  I’m not so sure about EotS, but AV seems to throw it all out the window.  I’m not sure how that could be resolved, and unfortunately, I’m out of time.

Not much time spent in WoW today aside from pick up the daily mail from the AH, slowly inching our way towards flying mount training.  No, today work sucked, and I spent most of the evening in Enemy Territory:  Quake Wars as a forward observer.  I sure love my artillery!

Now that I’ve hit 63, I’m able to tame a Warp Stalker, which I’ve been wanting since release.  Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of having to get rid of Taugar, a Rotting Agam’ar boar that I’ve had since I was first able to tame them.  For the love of god, Blizzard, please give us more stable slots!

Nothing more to write, but my little research project is moving along… slowly…  and I’ve got a few more bits and pieces here and there that I need to coalesce into completed thoughts/posts.