A Boring Book

5th Oct 2020

Today I learned a new game. Yesterday evening dad called asking if I would play a game called Settlers 7 with mum. I used to love the settlers' games so I said why not. But before I got to it we first played some ESO.

Today was the end of an in-game event where we had to kill world bosses for neat loot. David and I got up and spammed the life out of it with as many characters as we could. I probably slowed things down a little bit as I also did my crafting dailies with each of those characters but we still managed to get through quite a few characters before it was over. Unfortunately we both still had missing parts of the main sets of outfits that were part of the loot boxes and will have to buy them from other people with in-game gold at a later date. I probably wont worry about it personally until I want to use them, which is a little dumb because they’ll be more expensive with less of them around. The other option is to hope they will run the same or similar event again next year, but it’s not guaranteed as they might introduce a new set instead. It was actually a lot of fun for the most part, as we definitely weren’t the only ones grinding out the end of the event. In fact there were so many people on some of the bosses that we didn’t even get to loot them after they died. That sucked a little, basically it’s because there is only a limited number of people who will get loot from a creature. David tells me that it was a measure put in to help players against bots which ESO had a large problem with in its early days. The actually fun part about this though was the fact the massive bosses, which are supposed to be really challenging and hard to deal with, lasted sometimes at most, a single second, like, blink and you’ll miss it kind of time frame. There were just so many people trying to do the same as us, it was thrilling and my poor rather old PC didn’t like it much, as my frame rate was down to like 10fps in these areas, it was really funny.

After ESO, I started up the new Settlers 7 game, dad had said mum wanted to play it this evening so I would need to learn the basics if nothing else. I was planning to only play a couple of hours then play Conan, but this was not a short tutorial like I had hoped. The campaign had whole missions which introduced you to another part of the game, one new mission for one new aspect. This was a little frustrating, I managed to complete 3 of these between then and when mum came online to join in, so no Conan today, sadness. 

The game itself is an interesting take on the series, it takes a lot of its style and mechanics from the earlier versions but has added in some completely new mechanics too. The two biggest differences that I have seen are the way the map is laid out and the way you have to place the buildings. 

I’ll start with the map. In most games in this genre the map is one open world environment, there are always mountains, rivers, and lakes that you normally can't build on, but it is an untouched natural environment within which you can place what you want where you want. If you have opponents on the same map as you, there tends to be a territory which is the area you can build within and is produced by particular buildings. In this new game the map is pre-cut into territories which have roads which you can't change and a military base which you can't relocate. To use one of these areas you have to send a small army to conquer it. I am finding that the pre-placed stuff is never right for me and wastes a lot of the space that I would otherwise have, but it does add to the challenge, and how you have to think more strategically. 

The buildings are also quite different to how these games normally play. Normally each building has its own specific purpose and you can place them wherever you like, sometimes that’s on a grid either square or hex, sometimes it’s more free-form. It’s a simple system which has been the base of these games for years. This game has the free form of where you want to place things but these peaceable buildings are a core that then can have the more specialised building attached. So for example if you want to cut down trees for logs, you need to have the core building that can then have the woodcutter building added to it. This means that the buildings can be much bigger than they first appear and you have to think about where you are putting them so as not to get in the way of ones you have already placed. Again i’m not sure I like it all that much, it makes the limited space you are given even harder to manage, but it does make you think more strategically.

Well mum got online and we set up a game, it took awhile to figure out how, needing to mess around with Uplay etc to be able to get us connected to one another. I hate Uplay, I bought the game on Steam, why can’t I just use their systems that are so much more intuitive. Once we managed to connect to each other I put us as co-op against a single AI player. I thought that two against one we should be fine. Well I was quite wrong, turns out mum had also not completed the tutorial and we were not good at the game. I learned a lot, mind you, should be ready to trounce the next tutorials, but it seems just knowing the basics of the game isn’t enough. If we had continued and not stopped where we did, I’m confident the AI would have won with ease.

After mum went off David made some food and I jumped onto Conan to check things out. I had had the server running and wanted to make sure nothing had gone wrong in all that time. Everything was fine and my new sabertooths were ready to come hunting with me, unfortunately neither were a greater type, but still, they will kick arse no matter what. I called them Fang and Claw, I’m so inventive with my names! 

The rest of the evening was spent watching more Fluffy, it was a nice way to round off a relatively nice day.