Tomfoolery Tuesday - Path Of Exile (And Another Segment Name Change)

Hello and welcome to Tomfoolery Tuesday; that strangely named day of the week where I can talk about games without trying to paw them off as technology. (*Cough* Richard *Cough*)

Screenshot taken from https://www.pathofexile.com/. Don't ask me about the blank timer. It's just weird.

Diablo has been cited as the classic hack&slash game to have played by many. So it should come as little surprise that its successful mixture of combat, character progression and treasure grabbing would be copied and improved by others. Path Of Exile is one of those games, but makes it a Free To Play Online game to boot.

Before I begin in earnest, allow me to explain the change in Tuesday's segment name. Unlike Thoughtful Thursday, the change was not inspired by a lack of topic's to talk about; but rather on the technicality of preference in topic. A certain friend of mine mentioned that games are not, in technicality, technology. Which he is not wrong about. However, he suggested talking about actual technological subjects such as "The evolution of the Wheel". Good as the idea is, after reading 2 pages of information on that, I figured that was boring as hell, and I know more about games anyways. And so came Tomfoolery Tuesday, bearing in mind that Tomfoolery is the only word that starts with a T that comes anywhere close to entertainment. (Besides, it's vague enough to allow me to talk about other strange things as well, like the Tabletop Roleplaying article I wrote.) Not to worry though, should there be any technology themed topics, they will likely be found on Thursday's or Saturday's.

Moving onto the topic; Path of Exile is a GrindingGearGames developed "Online Action RPG" available for download from Steam that a few friends and myself decided to start playing about a week or two ago. (This was following the realization that games like Unturned get boring rather quickly... ) Free To Play with a huge reputation as a good, fun and well made game, it seemed like a great choice for us to play, especially considering our enjoyment of co-operative Diablo dungeon raiding in the past. It sounded like a lot of fun, despite what can only be referred to as my general skepticism for everything. Turns out it actually is.

Perhaps not the most exciting home screen for a game, but that's partially the point considering the history of your character is told through the beginning menu's.

 When I first started PoE up, I expected a fairly average Diablo clone with online elements and a microtransactions shop that would bar you from everything if you wanted to play for free. Having experienced that kind of treatment in other MMO's, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Path Of Exile had  indeed chosen a different path with regards to it's development and the way it was being run. After a few days of involved playing; I must admit that I've been enjoying the game a fair deal.

First and foremost, a common trope in the so called "Free to Play" games these days is that they offer to let you play some of the game, but hide a deal of the features behind paywalls and "Premium Memberships", forcing the player to fork over money if they want to enjoy all the features of the game. Path Of Exile takes a leaf out of League Of Legend's fantastic free to play model, and allows all content freely to everyone, with only what they refer to as "Ethical Microtransactions" involving purely cosmetic items or other things which give no competitive edge over those who choose not pay money. (Thank you GGG for that, by the way, if you somehow end up reading this.)

A somewhat clever introduction of each available class is told below the decks of ship on it's way to Wraeclast with you, an exile from the lands of Oriath.

 Perhaps even better than their business model though, is that the game is actually pretty well made and genuinely interesting though. It should be obvious, but if your game sucks, even the prettiest business model won't attract anyone. Path Of Exile however, has taken the elements of Diablo and other action RPG's like it and improved on the formula enough to make the game feel well thought out and well fleshed out.

Combat with the creatures, which is obviously the focus of the game, feels genuinely challenging and interesting just as you would expect from a Diablo clone, with a large variety of creatures with varying abilities and strengths with which to test out you characters skills and strengths against. As said on the Path of Exile website, a large point of the game is replayability. As such, everything from the layout of areas, to the strengths of creatures, and the stats of the items you find are entirely randomized. Speaking of items, as you would expect, the items are varied and filled with interesting magical effects that are certain to leave you keen to find your next magical sword or suit of armor. The item system does what you expect it to, which is good because as far as I can tell, there's not really a way to improve on the tried and tested "Find item, use item, find item, use it instead" formula. However, there are some unique twists to the game. (Oooh twists. I love twists.)

If you've played one of the Diablo games or a similar clone in the past, you will likely feel at home with the familiar UI and elements such as the map and quest journal. 

Firstly, there is no such thing as gold in Path Of Exile. The selling of equipment gives players fragments of items such as "Orbs of Chance", "Orb of Alterations" and a variety of other appropriately named objects which become full objects when enough are obtained. These fully formed objects usually range from the mundane Scrolls of Knowledge which identify legendary items, to the aforementioned orbs which can change the stats of an item to better suit you and your needs. You can buy weapons and armor with these items, but I've never really found it necessary to do so.

Perhaps more interestingly though, is the way that these items are linked into the "Crafting System". Path of Exile doesn't allow for items to be created in the generic sense of the term, but there are item recipes that can be used to get various items of use from the vendors, such as giving them 3 small health potions will result in a return of a medium health potion. (Before you say that sounds kind've pointless, Path Of Exile all uses a tactic similar to Diablo 3's health orb drops by having potions refill as you kill enemies, allowing you to keep playing without continual returns to town for a restock.)

Combat is what you would expect it to be. Lots of action and fun. The ability to bind abilities to mouse buttons make combat far more interesting and fast paced than your average MMO.

 Finally, the third important part of Path Of Exile, characters and skills. Path of Exile has 7 character classes to choose from which fill the typical roles you would expect. (Witch that casts spells, Ranger that uses bows, etc) However, what it does differently is in the details. Firstly, skills and weapon use are not inherently linked to characters. You can create a witch that shoots bows if you wish, or a marauder that casts spells. (Not that those two combinations make too much sense to me.) This is all because of the way the basic stats of strength, dexterity and intelligence are obtained, as well as skills.

Each character does not possess a talent tree as you would expect, but rather have their own starting point in a mutual "passive skill tree" which is so big that I could only screenshot half of it. This skill tree infers various statistical bonuses to the character depending on what you choose, allowing you to design characters around the use of a bows, dual wielding, spells, or anything else you could think of really. The scope of it allows for a great deal of customization which means that making multiple characters is fun simply to see what new combinations you can get.

This is great thanks to the way skills are applied to the characters. Instead of selecting them from a similar tree, skills are obtained through gems which are found and then slotted into weapons and armor. This means that if you design your character correctly, they can effectively use any skill or weapon in the game based on your choices in the passive skill tree. The fighting skills also level-up as you use them, so there is no need to continually find new gems.

"Boss" creatures are always around to mix up combat with a variety of randomly generated stat modifiers.

There are a variety of multiplayer aspects as you would expect from a game like PoE, but apart from adventuring in PvE (Player Vs Environment) with friends, I've not had much experience with them. There are however guilds and PvP gameplay if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Perhaps less importantly, it's still worth stating that on my archaic AMD Athlon 2.51Ghz dual core and Nvidia 6800, I had no issues running this game at a reasonable frame rate, and rarely experienced any latency issues, even when partied up with other people. The graphical options are not extensive, but the attraction of PoE is hardly graphics by any length anyways. (Egads, that computer sounds older than your grandmother. It's possible. My motherboard is somewhere around the decade mark in age.)

This is the passive talent tree as it is called by the game. I should point out that this only the bottom half.

All in all, Path Of Exile is a fun and enjoyable game which takes the good aspects of hack&slash action rpg's, adds some interesting new choices to the formula and then holds it out for anyone to play. Well made and very well polished, having never crashed or had bugs or issues, Path Of Exile is definitely worth playing, and it a fair deal of fun to play with friends as well. (Path Of Exile hereby receives the OddballGreg seal of approbal. Play it. It's fun.)

In any case, I hope that you have found this review of Path of Exile interesting, informative, or just pleasant to read at least. (There are a few more screenshots below because I didn't want to scatter every paragraph between another image, but at the same time wanted to further represent the game. Peruse them at your leisure if you wish.) Think I put too many pictures in, or forgot to mention any important aspects of the game, make sure to let me know in the comments section below. Also, if you happen to have any bored friends, or just know someone considering playing PoE, perhaps consider sharing this review with them so that they can better decide if they actually want to try out a really cool FREE game. (Free. Should I say it again for emphasis? Free.) And of course, if you would like to read more reviews like this, make sure to like my Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the right so that you can get the latest articles, as I post them. Regardless of what you, I thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy appraisal; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Have fun my friends.

To add emphasis, the lit up line are the skills that my level 15 duelist has unlocked, focused towards dual wielding bonuses. That's a lot of skills and effects.

The "stash" as it's called, which is shared between all characters, allowing you swap excellent loot with ease. The far left of the stash also holds a variety of  "Currency Items" in the game

Fans of min/maxing are sure to enjoy the wealth of information with regards to everything that influences how your character works and the way it can be fine-tuned.

The settings are hardly over the top, but to be fair, the fact that this fairly pretty game runs so well on my ancient relic of a computer is a feat in itself.

Madness Monday - Freelancer Roleplay (The Definition Of Madness)

Hello and welcome to Madness Monday; the day of the week where I tel you about a really great game I played for years... and then mention how the Madness of it's players turned from a factor of enjoyment to boredom.

Freelancer boxart is the property of Microsoft. (Also, the mirroring of the planet is not part of the original image. Box art is too narrow for my header image, so I made do.)

Have you ever pretended to be someone else and done strange out-of-character things in the name of Roleplay? If yes, you're either an actor, a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, crazy as all hell, or really kinky. (You dirty dog you. Haha) Some people like to pretend to be other people online sometimes. It can fun... sometimes.

Freelancer is the space gamers special memory of way-back-when game that was made by Digital Anvil, with Chris Roberts at the lead, and published by Microsoft Game Studios in 2003. (If Chris Roberts sounds like a familiar name, that's probably because he's the guy running the development of Star Citizen. You know, that game that made headlines with now $49 million in crowdsourced funding.) Anyways, odds are, if you meet a space game enthusiast, they've probably played one of Chris Roberts's games, and Freelancer is one of the more popular ones. (The other being Wing Commander. And that game was hard as hell to play when you're 7)

In any case, "so why is this on a Madness Monday?", you may be wondering. A couple reasons. Space game enthusiasts are pretty crazy. One good reason is that considering this game was made in 2003, there are still mods being made and updated for this game regularly, one of which is the main subject of this article. The Discovery Mod for Freelancer, which is in version 4.86, is perhaps one of the few things I continued to play for years. (My average playtime for most games is weeks at most.) This mod has added countless things to the game, to the point that it's a wonder that the game still manages to run unofficial online servers for any period of time.

So what did I do for years in a mod for an ancient game? Roleplay. (Apparently roleplay is the topic of interest right now, considering Saturdays article.) I think there must be a lot of bored and somewhat mad individuals out there, (like myself), to go to an ancient spaceship piloting game, fly out into space and pretend to a Space Pirate who goes and steals from the other poor carebears who thought that trading goods in an online game was fun. And the madness didn't end there. Not satisfied with simple in game roleplay, there is a forum more or less dedicated to the mod's official server and all the roleplay that took place on it. And things get weird on there and in game, (and on Skype for some). A term I used in my review of Aura Kingdom; Lolicom, is a fairly accurate description of some of the weird things these people did. Picture two grown men sitting at computers, pretending to be a guy and girl and roleplaying their "story". (*Shivers* it is the internet i guess, rule 34 of the internet being what it is.)

Still, it's not all bad. At times it was an utter blast. If you enjoy writing stories and seeing how people react to and interact with them, there was a definite allure to the strange things we did on this single online server. And the people who liked to make these stories were always a pleasure to meet. To be fair, if I had never played this weird game online, I'd never have started learning to do Photoshop, and maybe wouldn't be quite the actor I turned out to be later in life. (Ah, yes, another crazy thing about this game, everyone and their mother had a fancy header image or graphic that they designed themself or had designed for them. It makes no sense, but I guess people will do lots in an attempt to suspend disbelief.)

In the end though, it wasn't the utterly strange people that played the game, nor the visible aging of the game, that eventually made me stop playing yeas later. It was boredom. In the wise words of Far Cry 3's antagonist Vass Montenegro, "The definition of madness is doing the same thing, over and over, expecting things to change." (Although some other person might have said it first.) Basically, the scope of the game began to limit the stories that could be told. There's only so many times you can fly in and start shooting before the reason for doing so starts to sound overused. Eventually it felt like a chore saying the same things again and again. "Maddeningly monotonous" is putting it lightly.

In any case, it could still be fun for other people I guess, if you can put up with the element of sheer strangeness that even I don't compare to. (And that's saying something.) Do you think that's hard to manage?Or maybe just want to tell me about some other weird roleplaying you've done, make sure to let me know in the comments below. (Not the kinky kind though; keep that to yourself. This is a relatively child friendly blog.) Also, don't forget to share this any friends who think that they do weird things. They might feel a little more normal afterwards. And of course, if you would like to read more articles like this, make sure to like my Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter using the associated buttons on the sidebar to the right. Regardless of what you do though, I thank you for taking the time to read this strange article; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Peace be with you friends.