Day 53 - I need a nekomancer

 

Day 53

 

Today we got visited by a person with a cat, wishing to give us this cat, and her daughter... quite clearly aiming to go back home with the cat. Of course she couldn't say that, her family already has eight cats, but it was quite apparent. Dunno if it was her or just new environment, but the "braves of the eight" hid under the bed unwilling to meet any new humans. In the end cat returned home with missy, and my wife agreed for a second chance next week.

 

I don't have high hopes for that. Part of me thinks there will never be another cat quite like my old Garfield. He was a bossy warrior who liked to cuddle on his own terms.

Day 52 - turn back time and redo

 

Day 52

 

I love fencing, I hate dealing with incompetent managers. Wish I could simply come to office with a sword and fight the boss. Sadly I work from home. 

There's a topic that sometimes returns to me and my wife when we have no better stuff to discuss - what would you change if you woke up suddenly ten years ago, remembering all that happened but being stuck in the past as your past self?

We both agree we would probably get together a year or two earlier, maybe even more if our current personality overwrote our past selves. I think I would start fencing earlier, probably a year or two earlier. Most likely right after I become fully independent financially, which happens around the end of my first degree studies.

I would probably not grab Credit Suisse as my first employer in contract office. That ship was sinking faster than a slab of granite. We would probably not buy plot of land after wedding, instead choosing to safeguard our money as gold or something. It was an option we considered back then.

We would not, for the sake of everything that's good and decent, go to Malta for our honeymoon. That place was a fucking disaster full of bugs, smelly trash and homeless beggars. Perhaps we would choose Vienna or Prague instead. In fact we would be glad to forget we ever went to Malta.

All those changes wouldn't change the trajectory of our life much. We would still get together, marry after a year, have two kids and buy our current house. I would still choose contract office instead of normal job when our kids are small, since it takes a lot of bureaucratic burdens off me. We would still have the same hobbies, the same lives. Just a small quality of life changes.

Day 51 - my job here is done

 

Day 51

 

I got an offer to join another project in my contract management company. Which means quite a surprise for my current job folks is on the way.

I've spent a year in this company. Slowly more work was pushed onto me, often stuff not relating to my job description. Management replaced one competent person above me with five idiots and situation started deteriorating even more. I'm currently working as manual tester, automation tester, test architect... but also managing cooperation between teams and escalation of issues arising from it. I coined it mostly as laziness of new guys, but after boss directly above them decided that instead of helping when problem is escalated to him, he will give me coaching tips on how to be better manager... yeah that was the tipping point. That same day I asked for reassignment.

And now the offer is here. Of course it will not be fast, my current company has a month-long notice time before im gone. I'm happy to leave. Yesterday one of managers lied to the boss above him about what other team did for us. They didn't do it, but he claimed we have it. Today morning I asked him to provide the stuff, since he apparently has a better source than me. I know he will not provide, it's not the first time he lied to upper management. 

On the same meeting they even pushed onto me more work, making me all-important to the new project. Cool. Cool... The other tests is so lazy and dismissive that they even questioned if having him work with me (a stealthy question from me, as I know I will have to offload knowledge onto him sooner or later) will add any value.

 

Well... soon they will learn. 

Day 50 - tedious

 

Day 50.

 

I haven't touched translation of my book in a while. Probably because it's a type of work that is dangerously similar to my job. I'm a tester, technically speaking an automation tester but we all know that given the chance employers will shove manual work onto automation tester instead of employing dedicated manual tester. Use a feature, check for errors, pass or fix. This is what I do when I translate my book, this is what I do for a living too. 

Probably this is why I don't have an easy time finding energy and will to do it...

Day 49 - of money and scrolls

 

Day 49 of this log.

Elder Scrolls Online is experiencing deflation, it's economy is crumbling and the whole case is fascinating!

 

let me start with a little background. Most of the MMORPG games experience a strong inflation, because having players literally print gold by doing gold-awarding activities is perfect way to have hyper-inflation. Money for those rewards comes from thin air and never runs out, kinda like government printing bills. This is why every MMO has some kind of gold sinks, places where money leave the economy vanishing back into thin air. 

 

Elder Scrolls Online has extremely strong gold sinks due to it's decentralised economy. In most MMOs players have access to centralised trading post where they can buy and sell goods between themselves. That's not the case for ESO. In this game every guild has it's own trading post and guilds can buy one NPC trader each via an auction, to serve as access point to their trading post for the players outside guild. Those auctions happen every two weeks and depending on location such NPC can go for few thousand to even over a million of gold coins. Every two weeks trading guilds together flush down the toilet literal mountains of gold.

But that's not all! When you want to sell something you have to pay 1% of it's listing price up front, and 7% os the listing price is split between game and guild when item is sold. This means every time you sell something you loose 8% of it's value/... though 3.5% goes to your guild so not all is lost. Guild will most likely use this money on NPC auctions. Aaaand! If your item doesn't sell within 15 days, it's returned to you and you have to list it again. 

What ESO lacks though is material sinks, game mechanics that consume vast amounts of materials. Crafting is one and done - once you have your dream set, you only repair it... with gold! Travelling consumes gold, upgrading your horse consumes gold, houses cost gold etc. Most resources are now vendor trash that nobody will ever buy and all the others loose around 8% of it's value monthly.

Resources a plenty, money scarce, deflation stalling any economic activity. Many traders stopped selling because prices are racing to the bottom, while many clients stopped buying because waiting just a week or two will lower the price for them. This attitude causes prices to drop even lower and gold to become even more powerful.

Fascinating!

Day 48 - what gets barked on in the night

 

Day 48

 

What gets barked on in the night? Seriously. My dog woke me up in the later part of the night, barking at something in the nearly pitch black darkness outside. Solar street lamps already ran out of power, and there was only a field of rape there.  I grabbed my glasses but couldn't see a thing. Other dogs in the neighbourhood also made noise. What the hell was it?

I moved my outside trash bins away from home, chained them up to the fence posts so wind won't topple them when empty. They look like a pair of chained mimics now. Perhaps I should decorate them somehow... 

In the meantime I'm trying to rest. My wife and kids ain't helping with that.

Day 47 - with a throw of the dice

 

Day 47

 

How much randomness is acceptable in an RPG? That's the question I've been thinking about recently, after my friend complained that in DnD the core 20-sided die holds more power than skills of the player character. On the other hand another system I know and like - Savage Worlds is getting frequent slag for being too easy. Rolling a 4 or higher on either of two dice, one of which is always a classic d6, is not hard. In fact even if the other die is the smallest (d4) it still gives players a 62% chance of success on a skill they are the worst in. 

So where is the middle ground? Well, certainly in D&D it's randomness is also a part of design philosophy. When deciding on Challenge Rating for a monster you are advised that players should be hitting the monster at least 60% of the time and vice versa. Because it's boring to roll the dice and hear "you miss" too often. And because of HP system it's tedious in D&D to have battles with many monsters. Players will never feel that their skills improved if their enemies improve with them (kinda like in Skyrim). You can't feel improvement of +5 to hit if all your enemies got +5 to defense at the same time. 

Philosophy in Savage Worlds is completely different. Important characters get to roll two dice and pick the higher results because story is about them doing stuff, not failing to do stuff. So you are expected to succeed at about everything as a hero, but your nemesis is supposed to do the same. Only minions, servants, mooks and goons don't get the second die. They fail and die easily, because story is not about them. When you put a tough monster in front of the party, all it takes is one wound to kill them. Sometimes though this boss monster poses a question - how to do that one wound? Savage Worlds doesn't care about balance, enemy might as well double the power of your biggest fighter. However non-combatants in Savage Worlds can help the warrior in many ways, giving them a chance to do that one decisive attack. And skewed towards success system means that this chance they all worked for will most likely succeed.

Still the question stands - should dice of character sheet determine success more? Should players feel stronger with levels, or should they always meet challenges equal to their strengths? I think it would be fun to have system, perhaps a simple one, that allows for both.