It's been a little while since I've uploaded, or even recorded anything, work has been kinda cray cray. Don't worry though, the lack of content is nothing to do with not wanting to record- just not having time to do so. I literally haven't even been on my computer, hence the not streaming too - if anyone even knew I did.
Another apology to start with on this video, hopefully it'll be the last. I've pretty much got everything under control in terms of how you get this recording business down. As explained at the start of the video, the frame rate issues were down to not recording to the correct HDD- it caused slowdown and I confused it with the reported frame rate issues this game has.
You know what to do, click Mr. Mays for a spoliery discussion of this episode.
League of Legends (LoL) and Heroes of the Storm (HOTS) are titles that both belong to the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre of video game. They're basically a sub-genre of Real tine strategy( RTS) but in this version you (normally) control just one character. The aim is the beat the enemy team, usually composed of 5 different other characters, and destroy their base/nexus/core. To do this, the teams "push" against each others lane(s). In most MOBA's the various maps will either be this map, or a variation of it.
This is starting to feel too much like learning.
The blue dots represent towers that attack anything hostile that comes near them, in most cases it'll be the "minions" that spawn from each teams base. Minions are NPC that automatically push down a lane towards the enemy base to absorb tower hits and deal damage to enemy towers. In most MOBA's, enemy minions can be killed to award XP and gold. XP will level your character up and award better stats and skills, gold will allow you to buy items that increase your abilities, or defensive stats. The green part of the map, in almost all cases is referred to as the "jungle" the jungle houses various neutral objectives that both teams will want to have, and is often the cause of many team fights.
The genre got super popular after the DOTA mod for Warcraft 3. It existed, to an extent, before that but the formula found its footing around that time. At this point in time, there's a whole fistful of MOBA's floating around but I'm going to focus the two I play, because DOTA2 is too much for my mere mortal mind.
HOTS doesn't exactly have exact statistics in regards to current player base, as it's relatively new compared to other titles in the genres. However, according to this Reddit thread HOTS boasts a 4.8 million strong player base. Keep in mind that this figure is first and foremost 3 months old. It's also based from data from a third part website. So, it's possible it could be higher or lower or even a number that humanity hasn't discovered yet.
LOL's data is a lot more reliable, unless you're cynical, as it comes directly from the source. According to RIOT's website 67 million people play every month. So, there's clearly a big gap in terms of popularity.
This is in part due to LoL being released in 2009 and HOTS being released this year, in 2015.
The next part of SOMA is here, there's only one more in the chamber - but I'll be recording another set of 4~ tomorrow. For those of you wondering why I keep saying "boop" when I press buttons, it's partly (and mostly) because it's fun, and just help me sync the audio. That is, until I find a better way of doing it. I apologize for the short episode, in both the video and now. I was recording to the hard drive I was running the game from like a complete Muppet so it was causing some slow down. I think, maybe now, all video problems have been addressed so hopefully from now on it'll be as smooth sailing as it can get.
Let's talk about the game a little more, follow my good friend Billy for spoilers from *this* particular video.
So, there's a bit of a story behind this video. Despite being the second video in the upload order, and series - it's the 5th one I had recorded. I recorded 3 episodes after the first upload. However, the second episode freaked out and stopped recording the video for about 5 minutes towards the end of the video.
Lucky enough for me, I had checkpoints and quick saves all over the shop and was able to return right to the end of the first episode and just start again. That in of itself isn't exactly a huge issue, if I didn't say anything I doubt you would of noticed. The issue with this video, as I'm sure you are aware is the sound mixing.
You hear everything I say twice, this is due to Fraps recording my microphone as well as Audacity. I didn't even notice that this was the case until I had finished uploading the episode to YouTube. This entire situation came about because I wanted to cut corners. When I record live commentary, I record the video using Fraps & the Audio using a separate program - I do it this way (as do many others) so you can edit/fix the audio in post. Making it louder, or slowing it down for dumb effects and bullshit. I did however, test recording the audio with Fraps instead- removing the need for me to sync the audio across the two tracks, as it would be embedded into the audio track of the video file.
It turned out that the audio was too quiet so I scrapped the idea, and went to rerecord my episode using the same set up I always have. Thing is though, I forgot to un tick the record audio box on Fraps. Thus we have the double dooble sound. This is in part due to me not being able to sync the audio correctly, because if it was done super well the audio files would be layered and you wouldn't be able to notice it in the first place.
Making video more frequently has allowed me to get more accustomed to the software, and what I need to do to get it to follow my lead. I've taken steps to better sync the audio now, so you'll see it improve over time and hopefully we'll get to the point where I'm talking about nothing but the game in these posts - and not the mistakes I made recording it.
But wait, there's more! I'll be talking about the game after the break, be warned spoilers (up to where this video ends) will not be tagged, make sure to watch the video first!
I promise a video, and within a week it went live. AMAZING. I've recorded 4 episodes at this point in time, though none of them are edited or uploaded at this point due to wanting to play the new HOTS patch. This episode just features me fucking around with physics, enjoy!
So, we've looked at the amount of gold required to purchase the two single player modes, and the amount of time required to earn that gold. Next I wanna talk about the two free expansions that come with hearthstone. The game originally launched with 245 cards. 135 are class cards, 110 of which are neutral and can be used by all classes. The next expansion, goblin vs gnomes included 123 cards. 51 neutral and 72 class cards. Finally, the grand tournament comes with 132 cards 50 neutral and 82 class cards. So a total of 500 cards. Keep in mind, other cards do exist. Special cards that bosses will use, or cards that are created when using other particular cards. I haven't included those in this list as it isn't possible to collect them.
Again, getting hold of these cards can be done in various ways. In game gold, at 100 for a pack of 5 cards. The packs are split into the 3 sets I've previously mentioned. Real world money of varying prices depending on the amount you buy in one go. As discussed before, playing in arena can also net you free cards or free random card packs.
Finally, individual cards can also be crafted with dust, with he cost changing depending on the rarity. Dust can again be earned as a reward for arena, or by disenchanting extra or unneeded cards.
In the last post I discussed the amount of time/effort and or money required to earn enough gold to purchase a single expansion with hearthstones in game currency, I did however leave out the potential earnings from running arena in hearthstone.
For those of you that don't know, in Hearthstones arena you can pay 150 gold, or £1.49 for entry. This entry will allow to you play against other players that have also paid this price. In arena, you have to build a deck out of completely random cards. You have to pick a class, out of 3 possible random choices and you get to make 30 choices, split into a selection of 3 cards per choice. A total of 90 cards. Each phase you have to pick one card, and there is no take backsies. Once you've selected a card, you're locked in with that choice. There is an entire meta game of being able to build decks well, you can be great using your constructed decks but if you don't know how other decks work or cards you don't normally use you'll be at a loss.
In arena, you get 3 lives or losses and then you're out. With a maximum of 12 possible wins. You'll get to play against players with a similar record to you own. So your win/loss ratio will affect decide who you go up against. Each win will net you another tier of rewards, there's a chart explaining them all here but in general each tier has guaranteed rewards & random rewards. tier 0 - 2 has 2 guaranteed awards with everything above having 3. Tier 0-2 will have two prizes to open, tier 3- 7 will have 3, tier 8- 11 has 4 and the 12th and final rank has 5.
With 7+ wins, you will definitely make your gold back at this point RNJesus doesn't need to be on your side. If you consistently get about 2-3 wins in arena you'll at least break even and possibly earn more. If you're looking to get more cards for constructed, then the maths of the whole situation will change - but we'll leave that for when we get into the free expansions of the game.
Depending on your skill level, arena can work out to be better for you particular if your quests can be completed at the same time. Assuming you're a brand new player, this is likely not going to work out for you - but I think when we're talking about someone trying to catch up with all the Hearthstone vets playing arena may not be the most cost effective, but it's the best way to learn the game.
So, I just finished recording and editing the first episode of SOMA. It's about 25 minutes long, and I had a really fun time doing it. All of my other videos are of things I've played before, and I guess maybe that coloured how I felt about recording them whilst doing livecom, perhaps I'll try to do post for stuff I've played before and live for stuff I haven't. It's even rendering and everything.
I guess that cats out of the bag, I use power director 12 - I bought it on sale when I recorded those Dark Souls episodes with Devyn and I've never looked back. Don't judge me.
About an hour ago, I watched an episode of the unreleased mass effect video series I made. Upon reflection, I thought it was pretty good. The video & audio quality we're actually spot on this time round. It was post commentary so I knew what I wanted to say about everything, and I didn't have any awkward pauses. I then tried to record a second episode, and the magic was seemingly gone.
Maybe I was tired, or lucky the first time or perhaps and I think this is most likely - the part of the game I was playing was boring as fuck.
I want to talk about the game, but I don't want to write about the game. Doing an LP of a game I've played to death is really fucking difficult on my own. The only real thing you can talk about is the story, or the content of the lore.
I may consider trying something a little bit different with Mass effect, but for now I think I'll play some SOMA and do livecom. See how I feel about that. I miss making videos, I think. WHO KNOWS MAYBE IT'LL EVEN GET FINISHED LIKE WOW.
