Yearning

Have you ever wanted something so much it hurt when you didn't get it?  Have you ever realized that you did not even want that thing until you had been passed over on it?  That is where I am at right now.  I have worked very hard to try and make something happen, to learn a new skill, and to be the best that I can be to others that I am able to.  If you do not know what I am talking about, I am in the passed over for belt promotion blues in my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class.  I have been a white belt for about a year and a half and even though I know that I am not quite good enough to be a blue belt, I am sad that I did not get the nod for promotions this Saturday.  I do not know how to get better and I know that we all earn our ranks at different speeds and I should be happy that I just turned 34 the other day and have been blessed with a body that is able to learn a martial art, but I'm not.  I feel that I have let myself down.  I have pushed myself to be better but I am unable to get better.  I for whatever reason have spiraled down a rabbit hole of self doubt as I think of all the things that I could do better.

The funny thing is I know that this belt is just a stepping stone on the path to knowledge.  I know that it should not define me as a human being, or give me a sense of self worth.  I had started to believe that maybe I had something, that maybe I had grown a little more as a martial artist and was ready to show that I could step up my game and be the best that I can be.  Oh well I need to take this pain and self doubt and tell it to shove it.  I have worked extremely hard to get where I am, and maybe it is time for me to work that much harder.  I will have to learn how to push myself to be better every day.  I think in order to do that I have to do a couple of things, which will be difficult but not impossible.

First, I need to stop eating and drinking stuff that is not good for me.  My diet has left me lethargic and unable to perform anything to the best of my ability.  I have faith that if I get my eating habits under control the good will come.  I will be pushing myself to substitute all added sugar out of my diet and get into better shape through the diet that I have.

Second, I need to hit the gym.  It is not enough to just go to jiujitsu and think that I am getting fit.  No, I need to work my hardest to make myself a better person.  That means that I need to start putting on some strength that will help me to compete with those around me and help me get better at what I do.

Third, I need to start asking God for some help.  I have been trying to balance so much in my life and have been failing miserably.  I will be asking and thanking God for all that I do in my life at all times.  I was raised in a very spiritual church and I know the power that is God, and I will be trying to live better through that so that I can come closer to Him.  

Sorry for taking so much time on a rant, but I have been told that the best writing comes from emotion.

Tired of the Rhetoric: 30 Days of Positivity

There are times in our life where it seems that the world is spiraling out of control and we don't know where to grab ahold and wait it out.  I have recently entered one of those stages where things just don't quite seem to make sense.  My normal comforts seem to have been pushed to the side, and my go to places have lost their draw to pull me out of the strange feelings.

I started a series of Facebook posts the other day where I choose a good news story or quote to flood my feed with uplifting and happy thoughts.  I did this mostly because I have a hard time seeing the hate that has been permeating our society as of late.  I wake up every day and pull up my news app on my iPhone which is good because it helps me stay informed, but then as I search for a news story that has the pull of being uplifting I get sucked into a downward spiral of biased journalism.  I am not super conservative and I am not super liberal either and all I see is both sides of the spectrum berating and hating on each other.  I am forced to see the people that want all members of a cabinet to be routed from the country that they love enough to be in office, I see people spewing verbal slurs at those without a voice because they look different from themselves.  All I see is a world that is slowly starting to unwind at the seems and all the people in it are blaming others without taking blame themselves.

I was always taught to lead by example.  If you want the world to be a better place it has got to start with you.  My wife she put up a quote in our house that read "Be the change you want to see in the world."  I want to live that way.  I want to be the change that I want to see.  The first thing I want to see is that all people no matter who they are receive equal treatment.  I used to laugh and joke and say I was the most unbiased person in the world because I dislike everyone equally, now I want to be the person that listens to everyone.  I will continue my 30 days of positivity on Facebook, I will continue to push for people to be treated as people, and I will try to be a more compassionate listener to both sides of the argument.  If people are trying so hard to be heard maybe it is time for me to hear them and try to understand both sides.

The Joys of Hard Work

It has been a long time since I have had the ambition to write anything on this site.  It is not for lack of interest but mostly, and this may come as a surprise, marriage is hard!!!!!

I have given up a lot of hobbies to try and fit into this new partnership, but I realized that giving up on your being is not the way to make sure that you are able to give everything to your wife.  I have started to get back into writing, only to find that I am so far out of practice that writers block has become a constant issue that I am trying to get over.  This is not much of a problem for a hobby blog like this one, which nobody really reads, but my wife and I have decided that we were wanting to create a travel based website.  This I will be giving myself actual deadlines and work for the express purpose of entertaining those that come across the golden pages of our endeavor.

In all seriousness I am very excited for this next chapter in our lives.  We are in the process of creating content for the site and it will be full of many fun adventures for you all to experience.  I don't want to go to deep into what the site will be, or even what the url is, but I will say that this project is one that is very exciting and through hard work we should be able to create content that everyone would be able to enjoy.

What this means is that this blog that gets very little time put into it might fall by the wayside for a bit.  I am still a part of the community and will be working diligently to make sure that the content you care about will be coming here at least once a month, but I will be taking some time off of the posting of video games and pop culture to create a blog of journaling our process of creating our new page, short stories, and still the what I've been playing.

I hope you all enjoy our short journey as we get ready to launch with us.  Subscribe to the feed here and comment with the phrase: "We go where the wind takes us" for a special treat when our website goes live.  Also comment with some of your favorite expeditions you have done, whether they are local or abroad we want to experience them all.

Final Fantasy XV: Initial Review

Over the weekend I broke down and bought the latest installment in the Final Fantasy series.  I have many fond memories of this series of games, from Final Fantasy 3 when I was very young to Final Fantasy X while I was in High School, I loved them all.  I have been a long time fan of the series, but have stayed away after the combat changes that happened after Final Fantasy X-2.

Here are my initial thoughts on the newest Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XV

On load up you are given a tutorial option for the combat system.  Even though I had played these games for as long as I can remember, so much has changed that I actually completed the tutorial.  My first thought was, "What happened to the series that I used to know?" You can sing that to the tune of Gotye, which I did as I wrote it.  Long gone are the turn based mechanics that gave it a great RPG feel.  Now I have to stay alert and respond in almost real time to stimuli making the series more action based than turn based.  At first I didn't like the change, but the more I work on my playthrough, the more it grows on me.

Control Basics:

• Your character utilizes a simple action based system.
• D-pad changes weapon type, B button is attack, X button dodge and parry, Y button teleport strikes
• There are more advanced options but I haven't fully explored them yet
• Instead of utilizing only a random number generator to figure out combat: now positioning, timing, weapon choice and ultimate abilities dictate damage done and received.
• This system does simplify the mechanics but also makes the game flow way less choppy than its previous incarnates.
• It is hard to be unbiased because I am such a fan of the game series and also one that does not like change.  That being said the live action combat system both works for the game, in regards to flow and graphics, and works against the game, in regards to strategy and planning.

Controls = 3/5

Visuals:

• The thing that always draws me to Square Enix productions is how beautiful their games are.  This is no different, after playing through the prologue and a bit of chapter one I can say this game is no different.
• Highlights:
• Sun shafts
• dust effects
• meticulous detail of a desert landscape
• 3D models so believable that you get lost in the game
• My only complaint is that I have never, in all my life, seen anybody stand with their pelvis that far in front of the rest of their body.  This detracts from an almost perfect human model.

Visuals = 5/5

Plot:

• What would a high fantasy game be without a fantasy plot.  This is no different, but the plot that they have chosen for this game has been used so many times that it comes across as fake.
• The basis for the game:
• Young Prince leaves with friends to go to neighboring kingdom.
• Young Prince must marry the princess to cement alliance and save his broke kingdom.
• Prince has really good childhood friend who is also female, they are pen pals, he is duty bound to marry princess.
• Vehicle breaks down and Prince learns about himself and life as he comes of age on a road trip.
• Now I know that I haven't beat the game yet so this plot may change, but for now this is the story that I see.
• The beginning plot is so over done in media today that the I feel that we have all played this game, or seen this movie enough that it isn't anything new.  I will update the review upon completion and hopefully as I play through this game the plot score will change.

Plot = 2/5

Writing/Dialogue:

• The tone of the writing hasn't found its voice yet, but I can say I am getting lost in the dialogue.  I feel like I am on a road trip with my best friends, which makes me want to continue the story that much more.

Writing = 5/5

Miscellaneous: 

• The Fantasy genre is always a great place to make an RPG, this game is no different.  
• It has been a long time since I have felt a part of the game I was playing.  Each party member has a unique personality and unique interests which makes the game deeper than most in its genre.  The depth of character in each person you come across makes for a detail oriented experience just as complex as life in the real world.  This level of detail makes for a game-play experience like no other.

Miscellaneous = 4/5

Overall = 3.8/5

• I will be doing a final review upon completion of the game.
• In the future there will be a tab on this blog where all review will go with links to the original review.  
• Also remember I do this for fun but the best way to support me is to share the love.  Thanks again for being a part of our community.

Programming?

How many of you have thought about programming for a living? Of being a part of your favorite company on the development side of the gaming industry? Of creating something that could possibly stand the test of time?

Well I have.  At least I think I have.

For those that do not know me well enough I work for the school district.  In my position I have had the opportunity to work alongside one of our talented computer science teachers.  This teacher always told me that I have a knack for computer languages and ultimately a logical brain that could solve problems through computer languages.  You know what I do when people tell me I am good at something?

I roll my eyes, allow my self doubt to kick in, and go about my business as if I was not any good at anything.

Yeah my personal sense of self worth is so good that I am the poster child for self affirmation.  

This time I decided to take my time to try and understand at least how these amazing machines I use to blog, record video, and more commonly play games on.  I did a quick web search in order to understand some of the common languages out there and came across this language called java.

Java is not one of the most powerful languages, at least that is the consensus from reddit users in the /r/programming forums, but it is a language that is almost neutral enough for me to at least learn a little bit about how to create a program.  I poked around /r/programming for a bit and came across the recommendation to use a website called hackerrank.com which operates as a tutorial center, a hiring platform, and a game.  The tutorials work in many different languages and help you to understand some of the limitations and processes of writing code.   The game form comes from these coding challenges that award points based on how you solve the logic problems that are presented to you.  I think in theory as you solve these logic problems through coding, you come to a point where you have the highest rank of all the other users.  This appears to be the point where recruiters will look at your abilities and offer you a job based on how well you are doing.

I am proud to announce that my current rank is at the bottom of the site, I can't even code the program Hello World yet but I am going to take the next thirty days to try and understand the coding language, the coders mentality, and mostly understand how this little machine that I am using is able to operate the way that it does.  Who knows maybe I'll be able to reach the point where I can write my own program to create something amazing in the future, or I'll just learn to appreciate the people that have developed these languages so that I can enjoy the many games that I do end up enjoying.

Legendary One is Here to Stay, Legendary Two is Far Away.

It finally happened, I got my legendary drop.  The funny thing is it happened exactly 20 minutes after uploading last weeks post about the drop rate of Legendary gear in World of Warcraft.  It happened while opening caches from the emissary world quests.  It happened because I had stopped looking for it.  I resigned myself to just playing the game and it happened just like people said it would.  Last week we had talked about some of the achievement hunting I had been doing.  We talked about Pathfinder Part One and Two as a whole, now we will dive a little deeper into the nitty gritty of it.

This week we will look at reputation.

On a boosted character reputation grinds are a little harder than they should be.  You start out at a higher level character with no reputation for the base races in Legion but the ability to go almost anywhere.  For pathfinder you need to raise your reputation to the third tier for all the groups.  This is a hard thing to accomplish because the world quests only give 150 reputation rewards per completion while the revered tier of reputation requires 12,000 + points to reach.  I found through some playing around that it is possible through world quests alone, but to really get that reputation you should also complete each zone.  So I have gone back to Azsura in order to finish the quest line for the zone.  This has taken my reputation to friendly on to honored, and just shy of revered.  I believe by the time I finish the story line in the zone the group of Azsura should be complete up to the revered in the zone.  I will continue these updates as I continue toward finishing the expansion of Legion in the most complete way possible.

Legendary stats:

Legendary one: 1/67 = 1.49 % drop rate on first legendary
Legendary two: 0/24 = 0%

Total drop rate =  1.09%

The current theory is that once you have one legendary others drop at a quicker rate.  I tend to think that is because the item level score is boosted by the legendary making more endgame content available not an actual change in the drop rate.

A Legendary Update: Part 1

When we last talked about this subject when it comes to Legendary armor dropping in the game "World of Warcraft" I had talked about the random number generator and the bad luck protection.  Well it has been about one week and I still haven't received my first drop on my test character.

This last week I have put an additional ten hours into the game.  During this play time I have done some things that increase my chances at a drop and some things that didn't increase my drop rate.  I have been working on my "Pathfinder" achievement for Legion which allows flying in the current expansion.  The achievement requires you to explore all zones by foot, complete 100 different types of world quest, raise all expansion base reputations to revered, and fully complete the story line in every zone within the expansion.  Once this is complete you acquire a faster ground mount speed and the chance to earn "Pathfinder Part II" which does allow flying.

You may be wondering why flying would be important in a legendary seeking experiment.  Well some of the drop chances are tied to world bosses, world quests, and Legion invasions.  These activities are spread all over the questing zones which makes a lot of your playtime spent traveling around the map, flying just seeds the travel time up just enough to cut yor daily playtime by a few minutes.  And we all know that every minute counts when time is limited.  These reasons are why I am choosing to grind towards completion of all zones this expansion, it is time to finally see what the game has to offer.

As far as activities spent working towards s a legendary drop this week, I had already cleared the highest tier raid so I was forced to do other activities.  I capped my rated player vs player conquest for the item level 915 drop, during which I opened around 5 battle chests.  I also completed 5 world quest chains and 2 legion invasions.  These activities took my drop chances up to 62, with a zero drop so far.

Legendary 1: 0/62 or 0% drop rate. 

Next week we will look at some of the other achievements in the game as well as give another update to how this experiment is going.