Another Game: Elder Scrolls Online

Have been waiting a while for circumstances to line up properly before acquiring this. MMOs aren't really my cuppa. Played Guild Wars for a while, some years back. That seemed to have a slightly better aspect about forming an adhoc group.

I waited until I could have my games PC on a really good internet connection (I have 175 MBits, at work (home is abysmal)), and the price was good ($10 on Steam summer sale).

So here's a couple of pictures taken on my phone because I don't know how to screen-snap the game and deal with it afterwards (I know, not hard, I just haven't tried).

Here's something funny, and not even slightly new:

Bethesda has been making games for a long time. Their 3D is excellent. But they still have a few issues--either that or their mages can float everywhere. Granted, the setting IS Morrowind, and the mages DID fly there. Or, as Doc Brown said once "Is there something wrong with gravity?"

Here's a another classic:

What do you know? Somebody feels a disturbance in the force...Vivec: "that would be me"

The setting is still the island of Morrowind, and it's WAY prettier than I remember...and it's WAY more dangerous, too. The mudcrabs aren't all angry and can be ignored, but virtually everything else wants to kill you.

Party formation is weird, it's simpler to do the routine of wandering wherever, wait for others to show  up to kill things you don't want to fight, grab the target loot while they're fighting, and run away. (Guild Wars was better about the party formation...there were meet points where you could find others waiting like you, and agree to go somewhere together. Once that was done, you were back at the meet point.) That way you weren't stuck with a group where folks couldn't agree on what/how to do (shades of Leroy Jenkins).

I haven't tried talking to anyone here yet. You can just join in a fight, get credit for the kill, grab the loot, and move on, without even talking to anyone. Did that yesterday.

A stupid, but interesting tactic...work a task solo, grab the loot, then let yourself get killed...you get to respawn at a waypoint that is somewhere away from danger. I did this today by accident and got out of a cave place where I didn't see how to escape and it was jammed full of opponents. That probably cost me something, but I don't remember what. Probably now I need to get armor repaired.

This game takes place before Dagoth Ur arrives, but the Red Mountain is leaking lava. No ash storms yet. Lots of giant mushrooms. I'm playing as lizard-man again, because of the water-breathing attribute. That has always been very useful.

----

Four weeks later: well, I haven't played more here as I got sidetracked pretty hard at work. Can't say this had felt interesting enough to hurry back to.

I bought SpellForce 3 during Steam Summer Sale. The graphics are better but I think the UI is distinctly harder to use.

Things that aggravate me in computer games...

Well, it's probably just one, really.

It's the situation in a game where the creators force you to play it *their* way, as opposed to allowing me to go at it *my* way.

Especially bad when you don't even know what you're doing at first. 

Cases in point:

Because I'm leading up to playing Wolfenstein 2...on Xbox:

1) Wolfie: New Order -- I played up to the point where you come back from the moon, and end up facing Mr Stompy. This is an arena fight, your ability to aim and do some other funky controller things that I am not good at, really it's the run+slide+shoot = too many things at once. So that's where I had to stop. My patience for these things is getting lower. I did, however, play through this successfully on the PC a few years ago, although I remember that being tricky then too.

2) Wolfie: Old Blood: You have to fight Jager, in the tavern. It's another arena, and it's tiny. Jager is in power armor. It turns out that you have to shoot the blue power nodes on his shoulders a few times; he powers down for a short bit, you have to go pry a piece of armor off while he's in that state. Then you have to do it again, several times. There's really not enough cover of significance to work with, the power armor seems to have dual-wield miniguns with infinite ammo, and he's in motion all the time. And this is after he smashes down the front door, but it's still blocked so you can't run outside where there's better cover--because you know he's going to come after you: you killed his dog.

3) Wolfie: Old Blood: Just before Jager, you fought the big mechanical dog out at the end of the bridge. This is really contrived, because you have to either be doing run-n-gun as soon as he shows up, or you have to find the one hiding place where he doesn't attack (except for the part where he does, and can hurt you *thru the walls*. I watched a couple youtube videos about this, and it turns out (at least on super-easy) that it takes two measly shots with the kampfpistole (which is essentially the single-shot grenade launcher). But I had to try various weapons a bunch of times to figure that out.

4) DOOM: there is the spot where, even on super-easy, there are two of those great big demons, it's an arena fight...

5) on PC: Wolfie: Return to Castle W: I'm in this cathedral thing, have to climb a ladder up a tower, and there's a grenade-girl at the top who is going to kill me before I get in position to aim at her. It's basically an arena except that it's really a tube, and the cover works against me. If I could actually turn around further...but you can't, your range of motion is explicitly limited.

OK, you get the picture, it's these arena fights. The arena is *always* a "locked room" and it won't unlock until your opponent(s) is dead. Mostly what I'd prefer is to be able to draw the opponent's attention and then run away. 

The problem on my end is of course that (1) *I* am not quite good enough to do this their way, and (2) the xbox controller isn't either, and finally (3) on PC I have to play left-handed for RSI reasons. That's less an issue on xbox, actually, b/c there IS NO left-handed-ness...on Windows, well, that's an imperfect modified key-mapping (but at least you can do that, which wasn't always true in the past).

This results in my preferring the Bethesda RPG vs FPS games, where I can fight and run away. 

The current situation with Wolfie is that I'm done playing those games. And not coming back to them later. Which is too bad, because I was near the end of (1), but not even halfway through (3) and (5).

Wolfenstein 2 is coming up, but I'm not sanguine about my chances there--it seems entirely too likely, in advance, that there will be some of this arena-battle stuff that I can't get through. (Later: yep, there was. The "courtroom" battle is an arena. With A LOT of opponents, and the scenery/furniture is destructible, which means you can't really hide behind it for very long.)

I played all the way through all of these things (exc Doom) on my PC when they came out. Mostly that was a few years ago and now I'm older.

Related to the "have to do it *their* way is the "I want to climb up to *right there*" but I can't. In (2), you're in the tavern, there is clearly a "trap-door" up some stairs to the second floor, but it's locked. (actually, it isn't even a door that *could* be opened, it's a visual decoration).

The visual aspect of "town" in (2) and (3) is fabulous--this is some really good-looking surface texture art.

-----

Later that night: played Wolfie 2 some. After the point, still on the flying platform, where you get the super-suit, you end up in an arena battle against *something* that is big, clearly tough, has dual-wield *something* that looks like big laser or railgun (well, not railgun, really seemed energy weapon, has a charge time with an associate noise). I've no idea how you take this one out, but it seems fairly stupid, and it certainly isn't fast--easy to outrun, but there's not really a safe spot. (OK, this is the "laser cannon", kinda like the minigun, you can't keep it). You need this weapon to burn a hole in a wall, so there's no way out of this battle. (At least it's not Jager in the tavern again). Ah, apparently there's a second one, a little later, before you get to leave the airship.



There's a play-style dichotomy in this game (as with the predecessors):
"You will see some icons with numbers appear on the screen. They indicate the positions of special enemies - the commanders - who are able to call in reinforcements. You should always prioritize these targets (preferably take them down quietly) first to avoid troubles."

This game is about killing nazis. Why would you want fewer of them? 

-----

Also: I hate "jumping games" where your jumping has to be perfectly timed/aimed/something in order to get around. You try to do that with wireless kbd/mouse...yeah, not so much.

I'd be more or less ok doing such jumping IRL, if I was, you know, 25 years old still (but I'm nowhere near)

European Economies and Economics

(cutting to the chase:) apparently it DOES take an Advanced Degree (tm).

Stardate: May 2018

A few years back Greece was having a real serious economic problem. Spending was out of control, government revenues were inadequate for debt service, yadda yadda. Heard it before.

All true, but not new. And still there.

The real issue was NOT that spending was out of control, but rather than federal tax revenues were inadequate to pay for services spending and debt was increasing to cover the gap.

Why were tax revenues inadequate? Why was spending so high?

Well, the spending was NOT so high. The revenues were short, for sure.

Why inadequate tax revenues? That is the real problem and question.

Citizens weren't lazy bums (altho others elsewhere certainly said so).

The problem is this: the gray-market economy is as large as the "real economy" (the reported economy). They don't trust the national government to be/do the right thing, to be honest and not corrupt, so the Greeks treat tax-evasion as a national pastime.

First off, what's gray market economy? ("black market" is illegal/stolen goods sold; white market is the regular market we participate openly, and is reported openly.)

Gray market economy is unreported financial transactions. Transactions that are handled as swaps, or all cash, un-reported as taxable income. You hire someone to cut your lawn, pay them in cash, they don't list that as taxable income anywhere, no one knows about it.

There is gray-market activity like this everywhere. You, as person hiring a lawn-cutter, do not know that the employee here is not going to report the income. You pay in cash, it's untraceable.

So of course no one knows the size of the gray market--it's not reported so it can't be measured. The *estimate* I've seen is that Greece's gray market is the same size as its white market. So if the gray market all moved to white, the tax revenues would be sufficient to meet national spending needs.

Everyone was worried about Greece at the time, but Greece is tiny. Problem not solved, apparently, but not in the news. GDP/debt ratio is bad.

-----

So that same problem exists in Italy now. Same origin, same reasons, same issues. You read about the problems here and there, will Italy remain in the EU? Can it? No one talks about the source issue. They talk about the Euro, as though unified currency is the problem, versus being able to devalue their own currency in the market. (Well, that might help, for a little while, but it's a terrible idea.)

The fundamental problem goes unspoken. Basically: the citizens are crooks. Well, that sounds harsh: they are tax cheats; they all know it. If you confronted one of them, you'd get an earful. Is/was the same in Greece.

The pure-cash/barter economy allows a lot of tax cheating.

I can't do it in my business, I need the proper openness of white market. But I see plenty of gray market around me. Participants drive around with snakes on their plates.

Italy's economy is 10X bigger than Greece. Had Greece folded, there'd have been much hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing, but the fallout would have been pretty small. Italy has a problem? That's going to be a bigger splash.

-----

This is a flaw in the economic models you hear about: why Alan Greenspan's view of economics was inadequate: the black and gray markets are things they can't think about, and are bigger than they imagine. When half the annual economic activity is unreported gray market, well, the white market has problems. The government cannot pay its bills.

And it's not like gov officials there don't know about it. The problem is that EVERYONE participates.

No, I don't know how to fix this. Well, get rid of cash. All transactions are electronic/online, therefore traceable. Otoh, that pushes people towards crypto-currency, which I'm not convinced is safe/secure.

-----

Later: this gray-market activity is also knows as "underground economy". All off-books, no-taxes-paid.