30 June 2018

Is My Hero Academia's Full Cowl Possible? (Part 1)

A few months ago I made an episode on Midoriya's training in Boku No Hero Akademia or My Hero Academia, where I explained from a wizard's point of view that it could technically be a real thing. I'm interested in whether or not it's possible or plausible in real life, or if it's a myth to be busted.

Energy Control

I've also talked about being able to control what seems to be energy in my body, I can focus it or move it around, which basically seems to work very similar to the way All for One most likely works on Quirkless people. If we look at the ability of Full Cowl, we can see it primarily enhance the strength of the user, which in return allows Midoriya to increase his speed as well. This makes sense if you're applying more force to the ground or an object you jump off of the opposite force is applied to you allowing you to gain greater speed or higher jumps, Newton's third law.

Assumption

If we assume "Full Cowl" to work the way we described it just now, it can be assumed that a person who is assumed to be able to control his bodies energy, Chi, Qi or any other phenomena similar in nature to enhance their bodily functions to increase the force applied to adjacent objects. As an example given a person who uses this phenomenon can increase their running speed.

The Experiment

I'm using that example for a good reason. If these hypotheses are indeed correct, I should be able to apply my practice from the past months to manipulate my running times. Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors that play in, especially since I'm anything but an athlete and at the same time I don't have that much spare time to spend. I still want to do this so I came up with a plan.

I want to measure the time it took on a certain distance while running and alone. Getting a distance is rather easy since all you need is a start and an endpoint. The sport place at my old primary school will do good since it's open space to my knowledge. For the time measurement, I will need a stopwatch that fits into my hand. It needs to be handy, as I'm going to stop the time myself and something like a smartphone won't do the trick. Since there's a time constraint I can't just run 24 hours, additionally there's the weak endurance I have. Another factor is the "getting warm" phenomena.

All these factors need to be added to it, so I came up with the following. I'm going to do some jogging first. Then I'll give myself just a measly five minutes of rest. After this, I'm going to do the first timed run. This will be a normal run to get the time without and modifications. This too will be followed by a break, but this time 15 minutes. This will be followed by another run now focusing the energy on my legs and feet. Assuming the way I described it earlier works this should yield a faster time. This too is followed by a 15 minutes break. After which I'm going to do a run using the "Full Cowl" technique. Then taking another rest of 15 minutes before I'm doing a last normal run as a control run to make up for the improvements since the first run.

Thoughts

While this schedule only gives me two normal control runs and each one enhanced and a "Full Cowl" run it is still a tight schedule. If the times of the "Full Cowl" and applying energy to my feet and legs should fall into the control run times, the experiment is over. However, if there's a slight but significant difference, the experiment should be reattempted on another date. The schedule I created here takes 5 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 50 minutes. It's neither too long nor too short. The result of these experiments may be a prove for there being more than we think, or I just might be one of the first people to evolve Quirk.

I have no plans on when to do this experiment yet and it heavily depends on a lot of factors in my real life. Well, at least I have this planned out now, hooray!

29 June 2018

100th Blog Post - Self-Analysis

I've been thinking about half a week on what I'm gonna do on my 100th blog post. Is it gonna be just another blog post? Will it feature every topic I've covered so far, will it be about me personally, will I do something self-aware or am I going to post something about how certain numbers seem just nice to us.

Well, I've decided it's going to be something self-aware. Particularly, I'm going to analyze what people who visit the blog are most interested in. Well, since I make more "advertisement" about certain topics there - of course - is a greater amount of views on those featured posts. These are mostly theorycrafting that I share on Reddit.

Blogs Topics

First of all, let's look at what my blog has the most. In the beginning, I tried to balance everything with a higher focus on theorycrafting but it all kinda crumbled down over time so it's much more mixed or monotone in comparison with before. Yet, looking at the labels we can easily see what the most topics focus on and what the least topics do.

The Top 10 Tags Are:
  1. Theorycrafting - 42 posts
  2. MMORPG - 39 posts
  3. gaming - 35 posts
  4. thoughts - 32 posts
  5. math - 31 posts
  6. guild wars 2 - 26 posts
  7. game design - 24 posts
  8. magic - 21 posts
  9. spiritualism - 20 posts
  10. spirituality - 18 posts
The Least 10 Tags Are:
  1. yoshisisland (my old username, I assume) - 1 post
  2. training - 1 post
  3. superstition - 1 post
  4. stone - 1 post
  5. speedrun - 1 post
  6. slice of life - 1 post
  7. sleep paralysis - 1 post
  8. sexuality - 1 post
  9. reason - 1 post
  10. puzzle - 1 post

Popular Posts and Unpopular Posts

Next up we have the posts that are the most popular. The top three are always shown in the right column, but here are the top 10 in all time.
This is gonna be a bit tougher. The way I'm going to determine this or these are by checking how many views the posts have gotten and how old they are, the more recent and the more views the more relevant. This is because older posts can accumulate more views over time in comparison to fresher newer ones.

An easy way to do this is changing the current and the posts date to a number that can be divided from each other. I'm counting in days so we have the year being on average 365 days, months being on average - let's say - 30 days and the days being days, duh. So when this post was written it's the 29th 6th of 2018. That's 2018 * 365 + 6 * 30 + 29 = 736779. The first post I'm comparing this to is from the 24th, 6th of 2018. So that's 2018 * 365 + 6 * 30 + 24 = 736774. This is a difference of 5 and it got 9 posts in those 5. That's a view to recency rate of 9 / 5 = 1.8. The post with the highest view to recency rate wins. So, here's the resulting list.
  1. Guild Wars 2: Legendary Armor - How Long? (Part 1 - PvE) [28.2222 views/recency]
  2. Guild Wars 2: Fractal Grind - How Long? [8.8537 views/recency]
  3. Guild Wars 2: Time Consumption of WvW Pips [6.1640 views/recency]
  4. Guild Wars 2: Damage Increase Part 1: Gear [4.3810 views/recency]
  5. Guild Wars 2: Magic-Warped Packet - Worth It? [4.2704 views/recency]
  6. Guild Wars 2: Magic-Warped Bundle - Worth [3.4067 views/recency]
  7. Guild Wars 2: Legendary Armor - How Long? (Part 2 - PvP) [2.875 views/recency]
  8. Guild Wars 2: Christmas Without Procrastination [2.8535 views/recency]
  9. Guild Wars 2: Lunar New Year Without Procrastination [2.789 views/recency]
  10. Guild Wars 2: Velocity [2.4294 views/recency]
Congratulations to Guild Wars 2 for dominating this category completely.

Earnings & Total Stats

It's no secret I'm running google ads. Well, so how much did I make? It's just 0.27€. So since the blog has been running I've made 0.00€ on average. Much much more interesting the blog has gotten 14,958 views in total that's 70.89 views a day on average. Well, disregarding the spikes it's probably around 20 views a day. Feels good. Now if only I had a way to receive criticism, aside from other sites I post in. (e.g. Reddit)

For the next special blog post which will probably be either 500 or 1000, I need to do something else though. Don't want statistics to be the only bonus when I'm posting about such a broad area of subjects. Well, "GreenyNeko out, for now" and "Good-Bye Sapient Being"!


24 June 2018

Guild Wars 2: Legendary Armor - How Long? (Part 3 - WvW)

Three game types, three Legendary Armors, three posts. This will finish the first category of my Legendary Armor analysis and with this, we'll be able to compare all three Legendary Armors. Which one will take the longest and which one will be the fastest? Let's get to it. I have 13 Gifts of War Dedication lying around anyways.

Legendary World vs World Armor

This Legendary Armor was created for those who dedicate their time to World vs World as such we're expected to need items from this game mode primarily. Just like the PvP and PvE armor sets we need the same items for this one but one of them being an armor you get from WvW instead. The following items are needed for each armor piece:
  • 1x Gift of War Prosperity
  • 1x Gift of War Prowess
  • 1x Gift of War Dedication
  • 1x Triumphant Hero's Armor or Mistforged Triumphant Hero's Armor
As you can see, ArenaNet keeps their consistency with the ingredients and their names only this time it's "War" instead of "Competitive". Even though both WvW and PvP are competitive... but, whelp, designers choice. This doesn't tell us much about how long the armor takes, which means we need to step in to further detail.

Gift of War Prosperity

For the WvW version of the Gift of Prosperity, we need almost the same items.
  • 1x   Gift of Battle
  • 15x Mystic Clover
  • 1x   Gift of Condensed Might
  • 1x   Gift of Condensed Magic
The difference is the Gift of Battle, these are awarded for finishing a certain reward track. As you can see it technically comes down to the same procedure as the PvP Gift with the only difference being the game mode. However, WvW reward tracks work a little different than PvP reward tracks and as such also require a different amount of time.

The way it works is, that you get participation for... participating in events and the general WvW match. That means whenever you defeat an opponent, capture something, defeat NPCs, damage building to a certain extent, get awarded for defending or repair a building you get participation. Once you reach a certain amount of participation your participation tier is increased which means you are awarded a higher amount of reward points. After you've reached the maximum tier of six you will get 195 points on the main maps and 146 on the Edge of the Mists. Keeping the highest tier up is usually not a problem. The reward tracks in WvW also take 20,000 reward points, just like in PvP. Of course, there are boosts for this out there as well and you can increase the points to 390. In comparison though, these points are not awarded for every match but every five minutes instead. With this data, we can calculate the time it takes us to finish the track or we could simply use the number on the Guild Wars 2 wiki. Anyways it's 20,000 required reward points divided by the 195 points we get every tick and multiplied by the time in of 5 minutes it takes to get the points. 20000 / 195 * 5 = 512.82 minutes or 512.82 / 60 = 8.55 hours. With the boosts it's 20000 / 390 * 5 = 256.41 minutes or 256.41 / 60 = 4.27 hours instead.

Gift of War Prowess

The Gift of Prowesses all use the same materials except for the first one.
  • 1x   Legendary War Insight
  • 1x   Eldritch Scroll
  • 50x Obsidian Shards
  • 1x   Cube of Stabilized Dark Energy
So, what does this beautiful Legendary War Insight item cost? Just like the PvP one, this one costs tickets as well. This time it's WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets though and 1095 at that. These are awarded for - would you have guessed it? - progressing the weekly reward chests. The thing you need Pips for. Wait, did I just say Pips? Hey, I've made a post about the time consumption of Pips in WvW already, awesome. Unfortunately, this is not the only amount you'll need. So let's keep this in mind for now.

Gift of War Dedication

This one is the main Gift. Like all the others it requires dedication into the game mode. The items we need are:
  • 1x     Certificate of Honor
  • 1x     Glob of Condensed Spirit Energy
  • 1x     Certificate of Heroics
  • 250x Memories of Battle
Most of these can be bought. The Certificate of Honor, for example, can be bought for a price of 500 Badges of Honor. This is a currency that you will get for simply playing World vs World. There's no cap on them, so as long you do something in the game mode that can be considered playing it you should be able to get them. The Glob of Condensed Spirit Energy can be bought - again - via Spirit Shards, which are rewarded for leveling up which then again happens multiple times a day and it's nothing you should worry too much about except if you plan to craft every single legendary in the game. Which is a post for itself that kinda piques my interest coming to think about it? Anyways the Certificate of Heroics can be bought for either Proof of Heroics of Testimony of Heroics both currencies awarded for leveling up your WvW rank. Just like the other currencies, this one happens while playing World vs World. Last but not least we have the Memories of Battle. 250 may sound like a lot but honestly, if you only put a little dedication into World vs World you'll end up with tons of these. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, whenever I was overcapped with these currencies I would have made a Gift of War Dedication and I have 13 lying around. That's enough for two legendary armors already. The fact is all these currencies can be farmed technically.

Triumphant Hero's Armor and Mistforged Triumphant Hero's Armor

The armors need to be bought as well. The Triumphant Hero's Armor costs between 175 and 350 and the Mistforged Triumphant Hero's Armor costs between 350 and 700 tickets. The difference is the skins as well as the price. The none mistforged armor requires other materials that the mistforged doesn't. The price is something I'm gonna look into on another day though. Here are the prices of the armor pieces:

Armor Boots Legs Gloves Coat Shoulder Head Total
Triumphant Hero's Armor 175 260 175 350 175 175 1310
Mistforged Triumphant Hero's Armor 350 520 350 700 350 350 2620

So we need 1310 + 1095 * 6 = 7880 to 2620 + 1095 * 6 = 9190 WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets.
We know that we can get 365 tickets each week and we can calculate how often we need to work our way through. Thus we can calculate how many weeks it would take us. For the Triumphant Hero's Armor that's 7880 / 365 = 21.59 weeks and for the Mistforged Triumphant Hero's Armor that's 9190 / 365 = 25.18 weeks.

The Legendary PvE armor was 8.82 10 to 17.65 20 weeks and the legendary PvP armor was 19.77 to 31.43 weeks.





21 June 2018

Guild Wars 2: Legendary Armor - How Long? (Part 2 - PvP)

And off to the next Legendary Armor, we are. I haven't decided if I'm going to equip my characters with the PvP or WvW Legendary Armor after being through with the PvE one. Definitely not going to do the Provisioner Tokens anymore then. :P

Crafting the Legendary PvP Armor

Last time we looked at the Legendary PvE Armor, now let's look at the PvP version. The materials we need for this are slightly different. For this one we need:
  • Gift of Competitive Prosperity
  • Gift of Competitive Prowess
  • Gift of Competitive Dedication
  • Ardent Glorious Hero's Armor or Glorious Hero's Armor
Well, that's creative. It's all called the same except there's the word "Competitive" is added in and the armor skin is different. So let's take a closer look at each of those items.

Gift of Competitive Prosperity

The COMPETITIVE Gift of Prosperity - putting emphasis on the competitiveness of this competitive item - uses
  • 1x   Mist Core Fragment
  • 15x Mystic Clover
  • 1x   Gift of Condensed Might
  • 1x   Gift of  Condensed Magic
So, for the gifts, it's one to one the same as the PvE armor. This also counts for the Mystic Clover. The Mist Core Fragment is time-gated in such a way that the respective reward track needs to be completed. We've already calculated from our previous analysis of PvP Pips that an average match including queue and wait times takes ~13.11 minutes. Additionally, we can get the information from the wiki that we need 20000 reward track points for one completion (which is all we need). And last but not least we also get the information that one ranked or unranked lose rewards us with 350 reward points and a win with 700, assuming no buffs. With buffs, the values increase by up to 120% assuming we get all the buffs.
  • 10% from the Guild Enhancement
  • 10% from the Celebration Bonus
  • 25% from the Greater Call of the Mists
  • 50% from the Experience Booster
  • 25% from the Black Lion Boost
Worst case scenario we lose every match, best case scenario we win every match and have all the boosts active. This means the worst-case scenario would be 20000 / 350 = 57.14 matches. Best case scenario we get 700 * 1.2 = 840 reward points per match and we win every match requiring us to do just 20000 / 840 = 23.81 matches. Of course, we need to round this as there is no 0.14 match or 0.81 matches. Which means we need between 24 and 58 matches. Since we know how long a match takes this would be 24 * 13.11 = 314.64 minutes resulting in 314.64 / 60 = 5.244 hours. For the other case we have 58 * 13.11 = 760.38 minutes or 760.38 / 60 = 12.673 hours. So, between 5.244 and 12.673 hours.

Gift of Competitive Prowess

The competitive version of the Gift of Prowess requires
  • 1x   Record of League Victories
  • 1x   Eldritch Scroll
  • 50x Obsidian Shards
  • 1x   Cube of Stabilized Dark Energy
Just like the PvE version we don't have to worry about the latter three items. The interesting one is the first one the Record of League Victories because for this one we need 30 PvP League Tickets. These are awarded for progressing through the PvP season reward track with pips. To get more information about the PvP Pips, check out my older post. Fact is: You get 100 of this per Season and we need more than just the 30 in total. That's why I'm going to skip on any calculation here for now.

Gift of Competitive Dedication

According to the name, this would require one to do a hell lot of PvP and yet you only need
  • 1x Record of League Participation
  • 1x Glob of Condensed Spirit Energy
  • 1x Star of Glory
  • 1x Jar of Distilled Glory
So, what's the deal behind these items? The first one just like the Record of League Victories requires the PvP League Tickets but 20 this time. If we sum up the amount we need; It's 50. Each season gives us 100 for completing the whole track. Since we are making six pieces of armor we also need six gifts and thus 6 * 50 = 300 tickets. This means it will take three seasons. Let's look at the other materials before we calculate any further though; To check if they have a heavier time-gate. The Glob of Condensed Spirit Energy requires Spirit Shards which should be no issue for people to get in a few weeks. Especially in the time frame, we are given by the time-gate. The next one is the star, which asks us to accumulate 400 Ascended Shards of Glory. While these are rewarded correspondingly to the PvP League Tickets, repeating the last chest rewards additional. Completing the whole track rewards us with 400. Repeating the last chest awards as an additional 100 every time. Last but not least the Jar of Distilled Glory requires normal Shards of Glory that are awarded by simply playing PvP. And the armor is given by the same resources, costing more Ascended Shards of Glory.

Having to farm between 2400 and 3600 Ascended Shards of Glory of these would mean the 400 * 3 = 1200 we get for completing the three seasons is not enough. We need 1200 to 2400 more. That are 1200 / 100 = 12 to 2400 / 100 = 24 additional repetitions of the last chest. That one takes 180 Pips. Thanks to our calculations in the older topic we know that finishing the whole reward track takes ~13.33 to ~48.94 hours. Thanks to the oldest PvP post where we calculated the average Pips you would expect to get, we can take those numbers to calculate the number of matches we need here now. We get 6.5 Pips to 8.5 Pips on average. That means we need between 180 / 8.5 = 21.18 to 180 / 6.5 = 27.69 matches. This will take us 21.18 * 13.11 = 277.67 minutes to 27.69 * 13.11 = 363.02 minutes. In hours that's 4.63 to 6.05. Summing it up we get 13.33 + 4.63  = 17.96 to 48.94 + 6.05 = 54.99 hours. (I hope that does it for you personally that commented this request anonymously in the comment section several months ago)

Now, How Long Does It Take?

So, the real time-gate is the PvP League Tickets here. We need to play three whole seasons, but how long does it take to wait for another season? Analyzing the season start and ends according to the wiki-page, you can figure out that all seasons are always 55 to 56 days long depending on when you're working. This is not the case for the breaks in between. Here are the end and start dates as well as the time in between.

End Date Start Date Time Between
January 25, 2016 February 23, 2016 29 days
April 18, 2016 May 17, 2016 29 days
July 11, 2016 August 9, 2016 29 days
October 3, 2016 December 13, 2016 71 days
February 6, 2017 March 7, 2017 29 days
May 1, 2017 June 13, 2017 54 days
August 8, 2017 August 22, 2017 14 days
October 16, 2017 November 7, 2017 22 days
January 2, 2018 January 16, 2018 14 days
March 13, 2018 April 3, 2018 21 days
May 29, 2018 June 12, 2018 14 days

So the minimum days is 14 and the maximum is 54. On average the break takes

(29 + 29 + 29 + 71 + 29 + 54 + 14 + 22 +14 + 21 + 14) / 11 = ~29.64

days. Taking this information into consideration we need to play 2 whole seasons and in the third we just need to play until we get our tickets. This means we have 2 * 55 = 110 days from the first two seasons and 14 * 2 = 28 to 54 * 2 = 108 days in between. On average 29.64 * 2 = 59.28 days. Summing everything up we get 110 + 28 = 138 to 110 + 108 = 218 days for the Legendary Armor and on average 110 + 59.28 = 169.28 days.

Almost There

All we need to do now is get out 100 last tickets. For this, we just need to get through the PvP season track and get the Pips. We already calculated that, so we know it's 9.83 to 48.94 hours. Now adding it on top of the other information we have 138 days and 9.83 hours to 220 days and 0.94 hours.
For better comparison we convert this number to weeks for that we need to convert hours to days which is just diving through 24 resulting in:

Minimum: (138 + 9.83 / 24) / 7 = 19.77 weeks
Maximum: (220 + 0.94 / 24) / 7 = 31.43 weeks

20 June 2018

Guild Wars 2: Legendary Armor - How Long? (Part 1 - PvE)

I'm currently continuing my legendary armor. I got the legendary insight's gathered now. However, I still need to do provisioner tokens. I'm coming achievement, I'm coming.

Legendary Armor in Guild Wars 2

Aside from there being an achievement for collecting 18 unique pieces of PvE armor, there's also PvP and WvW armor by now. With all these different possibilities one may wonder how long it takes to get the legendary armors. A lot of people might already know this and people most likely even shared it on Reddit, however, I want to get through it myself. I also want to compare the prices of the armors and answering to a request on how often the reward tracks need to be repeated for the respective currencies in PvP and WvW. Aside from having a unique skin and a nice purple legendary color their attributes can also be changed to other stat combinations.

Crafting the PvE Armor

To know how long an armor takes to craft we need to know what you need for it. The recipes are very similar in their style. The basic structure can be found summed up on the wiki and it boils down to
  • Gift of Prosperity / Gift of Competitive Prosperity / Gift of War Prosperity
  • Gift of Prowess / Gift of Competitive Prowess / Gift of War Prowess
  • Gift of Dedication / Gift of Competitive Dedication / Gift of War Dedication
  • Precursor armor / (Ardent) Glorious Hero's armor / (Mistforged) Triumphant Hero's armor

Gift of Prosperity

The gift of prosperity for the PvE armor uses
  • 1x   Gift of Craftmanship
  • 15x Mystic clovers
  • 1x   Gift of Condensed Might
  • 1x   Gift of Condensed Magic
Aside from Gift of Craftmanship, the other ones consist of materials that can be farmed. The Gift of Craftmanship, however, is sold by Faction Provisioners for a price of 50 Provisioner Tokens. These tokens are time-gated. Thus it is possible to farm all the other materials during this time-gated period, which allows me to disregard them as their influence on the time required to make the Gift of Prosperity is too small in comparison.

Full armor consists of six pieces, which means we need 50 * 6  = 300 Provisioner Tokens. To get these you need to bring the Faction Provisioners a piece of armor or weapon to get a token. Each Faction Provisioner can be given one item per day per account. There's a total amount of 12 Faction Provisioners. However, depending on how much gold or resources you want to spend you might only get 9 to 10 a day. Keeping this in mind we have a minimum and a maximum amount of time. The minimum is 300 Provisioner Tokens in total with 12 per day. This results in 300 / 12 = 25 days or 25 / 7 = 3.57 weeks. The maximum is 9 days and the same total amount. This means it would take us 300 / 9 = 33.33 days instead. That's 34 days, actually, since you can only do it daily not every third of a day, which equals 34 / 7 = 4.86 weeks.

Gift of Prowess

The Gift of Prowess for PvE armor requires
  • 25x Legendary Insights
  • 1x   Eldritch Scroll
  • 50x Obsidian Shards
  • 6x   Cube of Stabilized Dark Energy
The Legendary Insights is a drop mostly from bosses and a few events from the raids and they only drop once per boss per account. This resets every week. Since these are limited, as there are only 17 15 weekly rewards in the raids that pass you these insights. The Eldritch Scroll item can be bought by Spirit Shards, a currency that is awarded for each level up which happens a ton after reaching your maximum level as you can continue to level up for these. Obsidian Shards can be bought in amounts of Scrooge McDuck's safe. It just takes some karma which is awarded constantly by simply doing some events. Last but not least the Cube of Stabilized Dark Energy consists of materials. Sure, you need to salvage ascended armor, but this can be crafted and dropped - even if rarely. So, technically it's farmable. Again, we don't need to worry about this since the Legendary Insight time-gate is much, much higher than this one. For your first PvE armor, you need 150 Legendary Insights and for your second you need 300 Legendary Insights. This means we will need between 150 / 17 = 8.82 weeks and 300 / 17 = 17.65 weeks. This means you will now need between 150 / 15 = 10 and 300 / 15 = 20 weeks. Of course, this assumes you get all 17  15 every week. So, here's a table showing the correlation between the number of Legendary Insights you get and the time it would take you for the 300.

Legendary Insights 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Time in weeks Inf. 300 150 100 75 60 50 42.9 37.5 33.3 30 27.3 25 23.1 21.4 20 18.7 17.6

Gift of Dedication

This Gift consists of materials that can be partially bought or farmed in the Heart of Thorns map. The hardest item to farm is the Chak Eggs, yet, it's still possible to do it. Thus we can ignore this.

Precursor Armor

The first precursor armor is awarded for the achievement which takes a few weeks. For any other armor following the first, it takes twice the amount of Legendary Insights compared to the first one which we already went through with for the Gift of Prowess.

Finishing Off

Okay, let's finish it off. If you compare the numbers we figure out the longest time is required to accumulate the 150 or 300 Legendary Insights with a time of 8.82 to 17.65 10 to 20 weeks. That's only the PvE armor, though. The next post will be about the legendary PvP armor as well as analyzing the length of PvP Seasons and the breaks in between them.


Modification Notes

19.09.2018: The amount of Legendary Insights has changed. Hall of Chains no longer rewards Legendary Insights, which means you get four less now. However, the event before Gorseval and the event before Xera reward Legendary Insights now too. Thus the maximum is now 15.

18 June 2018

Update Post June 2018, GDPR / DSVGO, Copyright

All of a sudden the comment, like and dislike function is gone and a weird German page appeared, what's going on?

Updates

I've talked to a friend who gave me some tips as a website programmer and I've followed them to my best to prevent huge issues with the GDPR / DSVGO. For some reason I missed it, probably just like it silently came to be and for some reason, I was never informed about this when we learned about homepages in school, though I guess that was way too far back. So say goodbye to all those nice features and intelligent google ads that show things you might have cared about just for safety. That's good, right? Trading in freedom and individuality for safety. Awesome.

My Stance on GDPR / DSVGO and Copyright

I didn't really think about writing about these topics at first but after the video, I saw from MatPat's game theory on PUBG and Fortnite, heard about the whole GDPR / DSVGO topic and saw it in a video of PewDiePie as well it starts to really get on my nerves. Just like I explained earlier, safety is important and anonymity is really precious. It's not worth creating a lot of work for this though. I just have a little blog and that's already quite a few things and with every feature, I provide people the more work it gets. If you have your own homepage as a private person where you sell some artwork, provide videos, have a forum and maybe some comment section and maybe even more... you're screwed by that. The biggest complaints I heard about the GDPR / DSVGO is that:

1. You need to provide users with all the saved data from them on request.
I don't have much knowledge about the exact technology of cookies and data that is saved when someone visits your page. I never really read deeply into website technology. So, a person who does not have the knowledge about that should not be held accountable if they can't provide it then. These most likely counts for private people that work in a creative field. Another issue is using a host like Blogger, Wordpress, Wix, etc.. Users of these platforms don't know what's happening in the background and as such it's hardly possible for these people to work with such a request. What if the host says no? This is outrageous. 

2. You need the consent of people in pictures you take.
Sounds okay, doesn't it? Well here is the fun part: It doesn't matter if they are identifiable. Yes, if you take a picture from a helicopter of a city as an artist or private person you need the consent of every person that is in the picture, I'm exaggerating. Honestly though, if you take a picture of the concert, you really need the consent of every person that's in the photograph. That's impossible.

This law clearly shows that people have no idea about the internet yet. Of course, there are complaints and concerns about data and cookies but it shouldn't affect people who try to earn their living with private passions. That's just wrong. When I hear about things like Art. 11/13 which they want to get through, where you have to pay money for linking to another page and stuff, where are we going with this? They're also planning to change fair use making reactions, let's plays and all that impossible due to you needing consent from the game creators/videos you use for reactions, etc. etc.. With these laws evolvement and development will take a huge blow.

My Issue With Copyright

And then there is the copy strike story with Fortnite and PUBG. They're both battle royal games, yes, but there is no reason for Fortnite to be taken down by copyright. The goal of copyright is to prevent other people from using your ideas to create a clone essentially and make it look better to cash in on your idea. Worst case they take away the customers. However Fortnite is not a copy of PUBG, sure they took the battleground royal styled game and took many elements from the way PUBG realized this genre and idea, however, they added a fully new mechanic - multiple actually - on it. Fortnite is like PUBG mixed with Minecraft, as such, it's completely different. Even better, it's an improvement for humanity. If you can take what MatPat mentioned in his video PUBG most likely evolved from Minecraft Hunger Games and Fortnite evolved from PUBG and Minecraft, the next game will take this inspiration and maybe create something even better. That's the way it should be. Imagine Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and would've copyright stroke anything that uses electricity to make light. That's just ridiculous. If someone invents something people should be allowed to use that to make something even better or different. If this copyright strike goes through, then it just shows how we're screwing ourselves over.

Where to Now?

I'm using my right to free speech to share these opinions and complaints of mine. I don't know if you agree, I don't know if I'm correct or wrong and due to preventing complications and making it easier for myself you can't share your opinion or correct me since there are no commenting options anymore. See where this is getting us to? The internet has already been screwed. I guess the only options there are is to raise awareness, try to do some petition or wait for a revolution, I'm not a fan of aggression in any way though. I joked with a friend of doing an online-Gandhi.

Links


About Content

Oh, you weren't scared off by the tl;dr stuff? Great. Here's some updated news about my content instead.
So, I've finished a prototype of "Against the World" and it's getting reviewed and constructive criticism (hopefully) on Coursera. By Wednesday I should know more about it. Basically, I've finished the fight scene with all the fight and interaction options plus forfeiting and defending. The secret mechanic is implemented and the mercy function as well. There will be a closed beta on the 8th of July and an open beta for Patreons on the 11th of July. The release date is the 15th of July. If you want to know a little bit more about the project you can read more here.
On the 30th of July, I have an interview at a university. This is my second try to get into studying game engineering. I have my hopes up now that I know more about how the system works.
Due to the project and the Diablo III season I've taken a break from releasing Youtube videos and from continuing the Desmina Research. I'll get back to it this week though so stay tuned.
I'm also planning to get real after the release of this project. I've got some encouragement and I'm going into getting a prototype done for a game I've planned that's called senses.
Yeah, now you're up-to-date, I guess.




14 June 2018

Gamification

I'm considering creating classes on Skillshare, to #1 share my knowledge and #2 earn some extra cash. Remember money rules the world and without getting passive money I can't devote myself to more theorycrafting, more game design, and more research. I noticed there aren't any general Gamification classes on there which got me thinking. I also wondered if I did a post about it. Whelp turns out I didn't. Since I'm planning on making a class, of course, I can't just give you all the info on this, thus I'm just going to explain what Gamification and what the concept is. The elements in detail and examples, as well as the implementation, can be found on skillshare then. So without more text-wall here we go.

Gamification

We've used reality as an inspiration to create the wonderful world of video games and games. We also figured out that games keep people invested, sometimes even so much they don't care about reality anymore. We have trouble getting people to work on boring jobs, to stay sharp in school. There must be a solution to that. Gamification is the idea to use elements from video games that make those interesting and apply these elements to real life. As you can imagine there are tons of elements and I'm gonna mention a few.

Example Elements

So here are two examples of the history, how they are used in video games and how you could use them back in real life with a given example.

Experience / Leveling

Many RPGs implement the ability to gain experience and level up gaining more abilities over time. This game element came from real life to represent the learning of a character or player. If you do something over and over you get better at it in real life.  This can be represented via experience and the upcoming level-ups. Repeating something gives you experience and once you've accumulated enough you get better by a step, a level. We can use this element to give the players a visual cue for how they're getting better at it. Usually, a bar is filled with the gain of experience. Once it is full it empties, increases the needed amount of experience and increases the level counter. It's also a good idea to combine this element with others. This is most often used in combination with learning skills, like learning a new language or maybe a new concept or technology.

Achievements

We reward people with awards, medals and other unique prices for outstanding or unusual performances. There are even people who dedicate themselves to collecting these. Ever met a person with 7 doctor titles and 1 professor title? Yep, most likely a collector or someone who prefers learning to work-life, maybe? I don't know. Anyways there's no doubt that people will be happy to achieve something but make sure not to just hand it over. Achievements need to be earned they need to be challenging, but don't make them all too challenging. They could be awarded for doing homework for a whole month or for showing up to work on time for a month.

More Elements

There are tons of game elements that can be used in gamification, you can look at different genres of video games to see, there are books on this, as well as scientific papers. I once looked through some for a project in school in which I discussed 10 elements even sorted by need satisfaction (which is another topic I need to discuss on this blog at some point). During my search, I also found websites that feature up to 50 or more. Once my skillshare class is done you will most likely find a link here to check it out if you're really invested in Gamification.

The Future

With this, I've given you a little introduction to Gamification. So what now? What's ahead? People believe that Gamification will play a huge role in the future, as it motivates people of all ages. Whether or not companies will feature more gamification in the future and the school system applies these is something we will see over time. Implementing all these elements into the school system would match the mind of the children though. Besides we all enjoy playing, don't we? So why not...

"Learn by Playing"







08 June 2018

Existing Game Genres According to Wikipedia

It's really interesting to check out and learn about different genres. This allows you to think about mixing genres or it allows you to try to make up a completely new genre that does not exist yet. To come up with something that does not exist you need to know everything that does exist. Even though you can argue that it's better to know nothing as you're not inspired by something and you can prevent copying. That's another topic though.

All Game Genres on Wikipedia

I went through all the subpages from the game genre page of Wikipedia listed them accordingly and then I removed all duplicates. I'm planning to make a singular post for almost all of these going into detail about the elements they use so you know how to implement them. Just search the 'genre' label to find the respective posts. 


1 Action
  1.1 Platformer / Jump 'n Run
    1.1.1 Puzzle-platform game
    1.1.2 Run 'n gun game
    1.1.3 Cinematic platformer
    1.1.4 Comical action
    1.1.5 Isometric platformer
    1.1.6 Platform-adventure
    1.1.7 Endless Running
  1.2 Shooter games
    1.2.1 Shoot 'em up / STG / SHMUP
      1.2.1.1 Fixed shooters
      1.2.1.2 Rail shooters
      1.2.1.3 Tube Shooters
      1.2.1.4 Scrolling Shooters
        1.2.1.4.1 Vertically scrolling shooters
        1.2.1.4.2 Side-Scrolling Shooters
        1.2.1.4.3 Isometrically scrolling shooters
      1.2.1.5 Multidirectional shooters
      1.2.1.6 Bullet Hell
      1.2.1.7 Cute 'em up
      1.2.1.8 Run and gun
    1.2.2 Shooting gallery
1.2.3 First-person shooters
1.2.4 Third-person shooters
1.2.5 Hero shooters
1.2.6 Tactical shooters
1.3 Fighting games
1.4 Beat 'em up games
1.5 Stealth game
1.6 Survival games
1.7 Rhythm games

2 Adventure
2.1 Interactive fiction
2.2 Interactive movie
2.3 Visual novel
2.4 Dating Sim
2.4.1 Eroge
2.4.2 Bishojo
2.4.3 Otome
2.5 Escape the room
2.6 Action-adventure
2.6.1 First-person action-adventure
2.6.2 Third-person action-adventure
2.6.3 Immersive sim
2.6.4 Platform-adventure games
2.6.5 Isometric platform-adventure
2.6.6 Stealth games
2.6.7 Survival horror
2.6.8 Survival games
2.6.9 Metroidvania
2.7 Graphic adventures
2.8 Real-time 3D adventures

3 Role-playing
3.1 Action RPG
3.1.1 First-person dungeon crawl
3.1.2 Point and click
3.1.3 Role-playing shooter
3.2 First-person party-based RPG
3.3 MUD
3.3.1 Hack 'n Slash MUD
3.3.2 PvP MUD
3.3.3 Roleplaying MUD
3.3.4 Social MUD
3.3.5 Talker
3.3.6 Educational MUD
3.3.7 Graphical MUD
3.4 MMORPG
3.5 Sandbox RPG
3.6 Tactical RPG
3.7 Roguelikes
3.8 Fantasy
3.9 JRPG

4 Simulation
4.1 Construction and management simulation
4.1.1 City-building
4.1.2 Theme park management
4.1.3 Colony management
4.1.4 Business simulation management
4.1.5 Government simulation management
4.1.6 Sports management
4.2 Life simulation
4.2.1 Digital Pet
4.2.2 God
4.2.3 Social simulation
4.3 Sport
4.3.1 Arcade
4.3.2 Simulation
4.3.3 Management
4.3.4 Multisport
4.3.5 Sports-based fighting
4.3.6 Racing
4.4 Vehicle simulation
4.4.1 Flight simulator
4.4.1.1 Amateur flight simulator
4.4.1.2 Combat flight simulator
4.4.2 Space flight simulator
4.4.2.1 Space combat
4.4.2.2 Space trading
4.4.3 Submarine simulator
4.4.4 Train simulator
4.4.5 Vehicular combat
4.4.6 Farming simulator
4.4.7 Boat and naval simulation
4.4.8 Tank and mech simulation
4.4.9 Trucking simulator

5 Strategy
5.1 4X game
5.2 Artillery game
5.3 Real-time strategy (RTS)
5.4 Real-time tactics (RTT)
5.5 Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA)
5.6   MMORTS
5.7 Tower defense
5.8 Turn-based strategy (TBS)
5.9 Turn-based tactics (TBT)
5.10 Wargame
5.11 Grand strategy wargame

6 Other genres
6.1 MMO
6.2 Casual games
6.3 Party game
6.4 Programming game
6.5 Logic game
6.6 Trivia game
6.7 Board game / Card game
6.8 Serious game
6.9 Educational game
6.10 Exergame
6.11 Electronic sports

7 Idle gaming

Wikipedia Doesn't List All

Wikipedia is a website where humanity can accumulate information. So, new genres that are created on the go are not listed here. Also, there might be more subgenres that either haven't been named yet or focused on. Since - technically - you can create a genre of any individual game once there are multiple similar ones. Another thing is that you can categorize games by graphic style. Like the genre of 8-bit games or something. However, the ones listed and used nowadays usually describe the game elements and gameplay.

06 June 2018

Game Genre: Run or Rape

Yep, this is no mistake and this is no clickbait. There is a run or rape genre in gaming actually and I'm discussing it in an educational if not at least analytical way for other game developers. Regardless of how well this can be salvaged or used for your games, it is a game genre in itself and as such should be mentioned at some point somewhere. Though I guess it might be one of the newer ones and I don't know how long it will hold up.

Creation of the Run or Rape Genre

The run or rape genre is more a sub-genre of the jump and run type. That's also where the name comes from. We're talking about games that will have you run, jump and fight enemies just like you would imagine it from a jump and run game. The difference is the rape part which is usually done in different ways.

Side-note: Even though the genre title would be thought to only describe games that contain sexual content in combination with running away from the targets, the genre is often used to describe any action type of games that contain real-time gameplay and sexual content, such as jump and run, run and gun, fighting games and beat 'em up games as well as the action-adventure sub-genre of adventure games.

Typical Elements

Typical elements or most common elements for this genre include...

Grappling
Grappling is usually done by enemies under different circumstances or events. These events usually are 'on enemy contact' but are sometimes limited to 'when armor is broken', 'health is below x%' or player 'died'. When grappled the player is tasked with varying jobs, depending on the game, to break free from the grappling. Failing to do so will usually result in a sexual animation. Most often this sexual animation can be interrupted by still breaking from the grappling. Examples for the jobs that have to be done go from literal button mashing to passing in combinations of directions. (using directional keys)

Armor System
"Ghouls 'n Ghosts" is not the only game where you lose your armor. I don't know whether this idea originated from that game now that I think about but often you can see the protagonist lose their armor depending on an armor value that decreases on taking damage or tied to the amount of health the player has left.

Lust System
Many games even contain a lust system. Even though it's contained in many games it's purpose differs immensely. Some games use it to make it harder to break the grapples and other games use it for a completely different game mechanics. There are even games out there that only use it as a cosmetic effect. (lame :P)

No Death
Another aspect that should be mentioned here is that this genre of games does not include the idea of "death" as other games. The only deaths that are linked to this type of game are exhaustion, vore (being eaten alive) and strangling. Additionally losing all health is considered losing your endurance to move and to defend.

Sex in Video Games

Sex, sexuality, nudity and so forth in video games can create huge issues. It's not like video games didn't have a bad light in the past years, the treating of sexuality by developers in an immature kind of way is still an issue. Then again sexuality itself is a tough topic that is not so easy to talk about and treating sexuality maturely is not as easy as one might think. (I should definitely address this topic as well)

Conclusion

Aside from the RPG genre and few exceptions, this is the first time I actually saw a platform type of game pick up an armor system, so kudos for that, however, it is just weird that this genre of games has involved. Though it could have been predicted if you look at what kind of crazy sexual movies, books or even fanfiction exists. Then again gaming - just like art - is an artistic medium, so as long it complies with the law it's fine.

I know it's weird to read, see or even play such a game genre, especially if your idea of sex is something sacred on a ritual level, yet a game genre is a game genre and the more game genres you know the more you can draw from. As I mentioned before the armor system is very unusual for platformers. Grapples are usually only used in fighting games etc. etc.. Additionally we don't know where the future will lead us, I can only hope it's towards a better future. Oh and last but not least... again freedom of expression, so don't attack creators of these games.

(Great, now this is on the front page... I need to make sure to start writing the next post almost immediately... whelp!)

02 June 2018

My Experience With Sleeping Paralysis Phenomenon

This was a very shocking moment. I'm intentionally not saying that it was frightening or scary because it wasn't.

Good Morning, Sun!

It happens too frequently and too often that I happen to go to bed when it gets light outside and I really hate it. Regardless of that, I think there's no reason to trying to stay up it doesn't feel right so of course, I lie down into my bed, prepared to go to sleep. Occasionally depending on my mood, I try the energy practice I talked about in the My Hero Akademia post and sometimes I just fall asleep. It often happens that I hear weird noises but I either think it's just something explainable or my imagination. That's most often the case, not always though.

This Was Unexpected...

I didn't experience this before though, it's the first time for me. I don't know if I slept already but I assume I already drifted off, regardless I was awoken by a weird noise. It was like something holding its breath and breathing out near my ear. As a reaction to this noise, I immediately open my eyes widely. Well, what do you expect, we're driven by curiosity, obviously, and there I saw it. It was a black figure leaning towards my bed with its hands outstretched.

How I Reacted

Now, of course, many would've panicked. This is not how I reacted though. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was in sleeping paralysis, however, my body did not feel stiff, quite the contrary I was even able to look away closing my eyes from the shock. I mean if you open your eyes and something is too near to you, of course, you want to get the distance. Moving from a lying position is a bit tough though so it was only my head that moved, besides my consciousness or unconsciousness was already determined it was something like sleeping paralysis. After a short moment of having my body calm down, I opened my eyes again and it was gone.

Recall

The way I felt after seeing it, the way my body was pounding and my heart raced, I recall this feeling. I've felt it before. Every time I have such an experience of seeing something like that is bad, regardless of how it looks like. Spider web, shadow person, orb, vortex, whatever it is, the immediate reaction from my body is the same and afterward, it's always gone.

Final Thoughts

As a wizard I've been training myself already to get rid of any feelings of fear, these are toxic for yourself. I remember writing a post about fending off demons where I mention it that fear is a bad thing. I assume my unconsciousness is not ready yet, as I'm linking these symptoms (heart racing, throbbing body) that are initiated by the sight of something unfamiliar to fear and even though I know I'm not scared I still feel them. Then again it's the same with performing a presentation. Even if I'm 100% ready and prepared for it and I don't have any doubts my body still can't be calm.

Regardless I still think I handled the situation as good as I could, I just wish I would be able to stay unconsciously calm to better understand the situation and maybe even ask or interact with it?
For science, you know.

For the science of magic, spirituality and the psyche.

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About Me

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I'm a B.Sc. Games Engineer and I created this blog to share my ideas, theorycrafting, thoughts and whatever I'm working on or doing.