Benie's Games Blog

The last time I’ve played Autonauts, I can’t really remember. Nor can I remember why I stopped playing. That was until I stepped in my save and.. suddenly realized. It’s another one of those ‘buildy games’ that I stress more over how to make things look good than actually playing the damn game.
Don’t let the always smiling (or grinning) rosy cheek characters fool you. This game is
hell. But for those who have never played Autonauts, just go back to 2020 where I reviewed the game. A warning though, it’s slightly outdated by now. There’s now 8 Tiers instead of 6, and there’s four gamemodes now.
And that’s where the hell comes from. As I stated before (which is still viable), the training wheels come off when you get into Research. You can do anything you want to make your way to Tier 8, as long as you feed your heart shitters for their research currency.

Now, here comes my problem. It isn’t really the game wanting you to prep for a Tier in advance of your current tier (so you’ll be ready), it’s the planning part. There’s nothing out there that says “if you want your village to be optimized yet also look good, put this here and that there.. but prepare to also put what you built over here now as you’ll need room for this in a tier from now”.
This is what hurts, and this is my bane in every fucking buildy game. Minecraft, Factorio, Satisfactory.. you name it, I struggle with it. Every game out there does this to me, putting more and more, expecting me to just.. know where to put everything, yet ALSO come up with a plan to move it for other shit.
If you don’t have fast moving bots, you have to keep everything close together to maintain efficiency (similar to Satisfactory’s early game). But unlike that game, there
aren’t any true ‘cheat’ mods that could help me. Most of the mods on the Steam Workshop are balanced. You also cannot throw a speed boost on your crops to grow faster, or produce more.

But then there’s Settlement mode, which I’ve been told gives a more direct (yet also limited) approach to learning the progression tree of the game. So I thought, nice. This would teach me what I should build, and when I should build it.
However… it cannot be fully used to learn, as it shifts certain plans around to either be obtained sooner, or later than in the original gamemode. A good example is the upgrade to the Crude Bucket, called the Good Bucket. I was able to obtain this in Stage 4 of the original. But in Settlement, this bucket is locked until Stage 6. My assumption is the devs either like to see you suffer, or the bucket was never intended to be used as an upgrade that early.
…Why does Settlement mode feel less of a tutorial on the game’s progression, and more of
a ‘challenge mode’? Yet, the research cost of Wuv in this mode is majorly
decreased, allowing faster research early game. So if it was a true challenge mode, it would take everything from the original mode and crank the difficulty knob to 11 (such as requiring the mid to late game Metal Ore much earlier by changing the recipes).
Settlement mode doesn’t change any recipes, that I’m aware.

With that said, let’s look at the new gamemodes;

(was originally called Colonize)
1. Original (standard) gamemode that all the trailer videos go over, getting
your Colonists (Folk) from Tier 1 to Tier 8 to progress as fast or slow as you want.
2. Gives an option to toggle bot recharging.
Pros: Doesn’t change anything from the original, as it is the original.
Cons: Gives too many options that might cause some players to feel confused on what’s the most efficient way to progress.

1. Build your village in order to progress. Gives a more directed, limited approach for people unsure how to progress in the original gamemode.
2. The research cost of Wuv is much cheaper, allowing you to complete research
faster (earlier on).
3. Disables bot recharging, but adds a challenge mode (that you can thankfully
disable) which caps your max bots at 300. Turning it off disables the achievement in the world it was done.
Pros: Limits what you can do in order to teach you how certain things work.
Cons:
1. Doesn’t tell you where to put what for maxinum efficiency, still causing me to feel confused on how to progress.
2. Forces you to use Bulrush during Stage 4 (Clothing) instead of Cotton.
3. Removes the Bot Storage structure due to the 300 bot limit.

(Unlocks everything in the game at the start, but you still have to build them)
Pros: I dunno what this is used for.
Cons: Kind of pointless?

(Mainly used for testing purposes)
Pros: Good for testing village designs.
Cons: Doesn’t teach me how to play as everything’s unlocked.

Time for my final thoughts. So.. look, I know experimentation is key when it comes to games like this: trying to learn what works and what doesn’t. But that doesn’t really work for me, most of the time. My experimentation has more fails than wins, and most of the time I’ll be stuck in a fail streak which doesn’t bode well for my mentality. The whole ‘great idea, poor execution’ comes to mind.
And it doesn’t help when my brain finally is ‘happy’ with a design, only to later feel
it’s ‘boring’ and it ‘needs to be changed’ (which has a high chance of it looking even worse than it did or.. never really getting another idea how to improve on it but not letting it go for another task). It’s freakin’ annoying.
I think that manifested from my years of playing The Sims; the ultimate game to
say “ugh, this is ugly. I don’t care if I spent four hours on it, I want to tear it down and start over.. but I can’t think of a better idea! But I have to do something! But I can’t
think!!”.. and over, and over. It’s unending until I just stop playing the game from frustration.
Aka, why I had stopped playing this game a few years ago. The game isn’t bad, I’m just bad at buildy games as the biggest puzzle is design and planning of a base. 😖

It upsets me that so many have little to no issue with this and have completed the game way before I have. Because they don’t fear the unknown (they experiment to see what works with them and what doesn’t). They don’t fear when something looks ugly.. it doesn’t bug them.
I wish I had this superpower, over my mind. Disappoints me that I can’t be like this.

==============================================================
Skyscale wasn’t worth it & Got the Roller Beetle (finally)
==============================================================
So I’ve been waiting ’till after the arctic freeze passed by fully before getting back
into GW2. The temperature has definitely improved since then, even going above normal for this time of year.

Now back to GW2. To tell you the truth though, I’ve been putting off once again
grinding XP to complete Masteries. I’m sick and tired of this DLC. Plus you could also assume the fact I finally have the Skyscale, I’d be done with the game (finally achieving what I’ve wanted).
But, nah. My journey doesn’t end there. I got to see if getting 3rd Mastery for
the Skyscale, makes the fucking pointless ‘flight range’ bar any more tolerable. And after so many bounty runs I did to get all the XP I needed (and having a guild nearly being forced upon me (yet the first person who asked said “if you want to”) that the ‘Few little players’ popup saved me from having to say “No”), I’m finally proud to say…
NO!! It wasn’t worth nearly a month of pain and suffering for this mount. It was as bad of a disappointment (if not more) than I thought it would. Yeah it’s good I’m able to regain that 66% of the flight range bar.. the problem is ANet thought of every possible way to make it as unbelievably painful as possible.
As in, when doing a Wall Grab, all cooldowns (and your Endurance bar) stop moving until you let go. And you’re forced to descend due to the red bar. Please, please make it legal to storm a video game company and slap the holy fucking SHIT out of whoever employee (or employees) in ANet that thought of  this HORRIBLE idea, and make them undo it.
How in the fuck is this ‘balanced’ in any way? ANet, what’s wrong with making your playerbase happy? Stop caring about money, you SADISTIC ASSHOLES!! The way they enforce their BS like this, still has me questioning why do people still play this game.
Either that or I clearly am not using the mount ‘correctly’, and it seems the game punishes you for ‘playing your way’ (aka still having the mindset that all flying mounts are
like WoW, which stay in the FUCKING AIR!!). I truly have been spoiled by them.
What gets me is, regular dragons in GW2 can stay in the air. Yet Skyscales cannot.

I could go over many theories why Skyscales (includes Griffons too) cannot stay afloat for a long time (like a regular dragon can). And none of them have anything to do with air density. But a problem is there’s no actual ingame lore for them (such as where in the hell did they originally come from since the island was ‘created’ by an event in Living World Season 4). The only ‘lore’ that’s known is.. they’re a dying species, and it’s unknown how to make an egg hatch (except subjecting it to extreme conditions).
There’s so, so many more questions than answers. And ANet, in all its glory, refuses to explain why flying mounts suck ass as a utility mount compared to ones in WoW.
My only other theory is, Griffons and Skyscales are young. They don’t have the strength to fly as regular dragons do… yet, explain that one moment in Season 4, when you’re on a young dragon who can fly just like a regular dragon. What about that, ANet? Huh?
“Because it’s scripted” is your reason? Or is it the fact the game would “get boring”? But if you wanna talk about boring, lets talk about your Renown Hearts being the only real way to level up.

I wish I could say “I’m really sick of this shit”.. but will ANet give a fuck? No. Will the playerbase give a fuck? Hell no. Why would they? They just deal with it. And I’m trying my damnest to deal with it. But it isn’t going to be easy.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
In other news, I finally got the Roller Beetle. But I also managed to acquire
every (accessible to me) Mastery Point in Path of Fire. There’s one more, but it requires me to do a ‘Dragon Response Mission’ (requiring a sizable PuG) to acquire it.
But acquiring the Roller Beetle.. I have to say was a 5 out of a 10 difficulty scale. Mainly for not one but two group events I had to be there on a specific date, at a specific time, in a specific location. However, thankfully these events had a lot of people doing them.
…Also requiring 50 more Inscribed Shards PLUS having to complete a Renowned Heart to talk to the asshole to get what I needed. So yeah, I had to do more Eternal Ice Shard farming which I absolutely ‘love’ (sarcasm intended).
But the Roller Beetle is definitely a good utility mount when it comes to going through a large mob-infested area rather quickly. Definitely better than the Raptor when it comes to speed.

==============================================================
Steam releases.. my own yearly statistics (and yours too)
==============================================================HOLY privacy issues, Batman!! I honestly never expected to get something like this in my email. It’s kind of creepy, yet also quite cool at the same time.
It feels like as if Amazon sent me a message like this, and showed me a list based off of what my Alexa picked up from all of my (and my mother’s) private conversations. Yet didn’t make them public (thankfully). That is basically it. It shows what games I’ve played this year, when I played them per month, and how long. And I do find it funny yet also a bit sad that when it showed the time I got my Steam Deck, 88% of the time it was VRChat.

But anyway yeah, check your inbox as you likely have one from Steam which will show your stats as well.

“Thanks to your training”…? The only thing I felt I was ‘training’ was not going completely insane from what I’ve done. And trust me, I actually came close due to the endless farming. I felt myself starting to go mad.
But NapPie helped to keep my sanity in check by simply telling me, the truth: that this was going to take awhile. It helped me to focus on doing the Ice Shard farming, plus doing the two meta events (Storm and Drakkar).
Though IMO, the ‘Storm’ one seems to have a 50/50 chance of success (depending on how coordinated everyone is). It’s mainly because the Storm meta is a bit more complex than Drakkar (having to move around a lot), and it’s a DPS race + having enough people chaining the ice giant, at the very end. But if the event succeeds, an area to the NW of the zone opens up with 5 minibosses to kill. Once they’re all down, you’ll be able to loot all of those chests.
Which is obviously why you get a higher reward payout from the Storm event than Drakkar, where you only get three chests after a successful completion. Risk VS Reward.

Anyway, this took about 2-3 days to reacquire the three materials I mistakenly consumed. I had fully acquired the Kralkatite Ore with the Eternal Ice Shards, and through a stroke of luck I managed to acquire a pretty strong group to do some Icebrood Saga strikes to reacquire the Inscribed Shards and Difluorite Crystals. Couldn’t believe I finally did it. And I did it before hell is going to be freezing over in just a few hours from the time of this
post. This was what I was aiming for, to ‘die happy’ if we’re going to freeze to death.

…I really didn’t want the Skyscale to be “the last thing I ever do in this game”. But in a way it’s actually kind of good as End of Dragons XP wasn’t going to work anyway.
Next thing I’m going to do is grind XP until I max out the Skyscale mastery, then I’m going to work on obtaining the Roller Beetle to be the last thing I do in this game, and by doing so will also complete the PvE mount collection.

I don’t really remember a time in my gaming life, has a video game company’s decision if they’re going to screw me (personally) or be nice to me, would decide if I should stay with said game or not.
Think the last time this happened was WoW, when my account was compromised. Except that was 100% my fault. I had forgotten to change the password after I paid for powerleveling.
–
But what I’m going through now, over a decade since then,… is partially my fault. But I put the blame on the devs and the game mechanics.
So basically, as I said in my previous post I’ve been aiming for the Skyscale again. And I have good news: I finally have all the resource ‘currency’ I need for the parts for the saddle! Or at least, I did (and I barely got started on it). I feel, the game screwed me. And no, I don’t mean I was never given the rewards for completing Tier 4 in all of those ‘Return to’ achievements. Basically, you have an option to either use it as currency, or consume it into Volatile Magic.
I (obviously) want to use it as currency. And my mind assumed consuming what I’ve gotten, meant it goes into my bank’s resource storage (where I can use it as
currency).
…I was wrong. So yes, it’s partially my fault for ‘not doing it correctly’ (which is right clicking and selecting ‘Store Material’). But I still put the blame on the devs as well for not making the process simple, or auto-moving the material into the storage. And I feel I should get these materials returned to me as that’s NOT what I was planning to do with them. It was a mistake, yes. But it’s still the dev’s fault as well.

So, how they respond will determine if ANet’s willing to work with me and fix this
mess by restoring what I’ve lost…
Or ANet showing just how sadistic they truly are as a video game company, by giving me the biggest HAHA FUCK YOU ever with saying it’s not their fault (that their mechanics
are ‘working as intended’). And if it’s the second thing, I’m deleting my chars and completely uninstalling the game. And if I could get all the money back that I wasted
on Gems, the Living World seasons, and the DLCs, I would as well.

EDIT: Welp, I told them to delete my account. Goodbye 7 long years of memories. Also deleted everything related to the game (my characters, everything).
But they forced my hand. And… they also aren’t the bad guys either. Their support team, aren’t the bad guys in this.
So as I was halfway typing this blog post, they had responded to me. But I didn’t want to read it incase it was bad, and it would force me to rewrite the entire thing. After I got done and published the post, I read it. And… they couldn’t help me. They said “we’re just a support team”. Yet, they’re also GMs. And from my years of playing WoW, GMs have the power to fix things like mine. So.. why are they called ‘GMs’? They’re more like CMs. Community Managers. Yet that still doesn’t explain why they’re GMs. Nor will I ever get an answer as they stopped talking to me after I chewed them out on it (plus telling them to just go on and “delete my account”.
…But now I feel really, really bad for doing so. I’ve been talking to Kovo about it for some time and decided to link what they last said, and he suddenly felt sorry for them. He said the support team are actually saying that if I want the game to be better, to get ahold of the devs. What. the. fuck. That’s.. that’s extremely disappointing coming from their own support team. Wow. I just don’t have words for this.
There’s definitely a disconnection between their greedy dev team and their trying the best they can support team. And usually you would want to speak to a dev to have your issues be heard.

But this isn’t going to undo for the hours/days of effort I did to get the material I need. And since I cannot speak to a dev (and their support team lacks the tools to fix my
issue).. the only option is to tell them to delete my account.
I could create another account, recreate my Necromancer (but under a different
name) and once again pay for the Living World seasons/DLCs and work until I finally get to this point again (and make SURE to not consume the damn materials this time), but I just dunno. That isn’t teaching the dev team a lesson.
But what am I actually “teaching”, when my account is nothing but molecule sized water vapor in the bucket, compared to the thousands of concurrent players who don’t mind this shit? Honestly nothing.

EDIT2: …I made a mistake. The game’s mechanics didn’t screw me. They didn’t screw me at all.
I screwed myself!
I had forgotten, the ‘Deposit All Materials’ button on the upper right. This would had saved me those lost hours/days of effort. I decided to.. go back to the GW2 Discord. Luckily for me, they’ve forgotten about my ‘outburst’ with how ANet was doing illegal gambling with the mount skins. But I basically asked if there was ‘an alternate achievement’ I could do that’ll give me what I’ve lost.
A random person said “ANet didn’t screw you”. I asked “Huh? Explain.” And they said to remember the button on the upper right of your inventory. For awhile I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about… until it hit me. Oh. my. god. So it wasn’t ANet that screwed me! …I screwed myself! UGGGGGHHHH!!! 😖😖
Plus he said “how in the hell did you even think ‘consuming’ them would go into your material storage?! When you consume them, the game assumes you don’t want them!”


I deserve this, so much. I put so much effort into getting those materials, only to screw myself over. …Why. Why why WHY!!!
But I’m not completely screwed. There are alternative ways to get the three materials that I mistakenly ‘ate’. But sadly, they aren’t achievements. It’s pretty much farming
the Eternal Ice Shards from The Icebrood Saga (mainly in Bjora Marches), which can be used to buy the materials I need. And there’s two ways to collect them;

-‘Bjora’ (aka Essence) chests (claims “they give a ton”).. but only can be opened once a
day. Plus I have to grind three different Masteries (get them all to the second tree).
-Doing the ‘Drakkar’ and ‘Storm’ meta events once a day (and loot the reward chests).

These shards, I was told can be used to ‘buy back’ the lost materials. I’ve also been told that the Kralkatite Ore would be “the easiest” to reacquire, as you get 25 per 75 shards.
But other two however, I’ve been told would be a real grind. Especially Inscribed Shards as they cannot be farmed via resource nodes (as an alternate means to reacquire them).
Finally, there are Icebrood Saga strikes I could do, that reward ‘Blue Prophet Shards’ that from what I was told have a “much better conversion ratio” for reacquiring the lost materials. They also claim the strikes are “super easy”. ..Yeah, we’ll see.

Not going to lie, watching the credits roll after completing a DLC was.. something. But it’s to mark the end of an era, but the beginning of a new one.
Whatever that era will be, remains uncertain. All the (original) Elder Dragons are dead. The 10,000 year Dragon Cycle has been broken.
So what’s next for Tyria? All we know is the mortal races can finally flourish, and not have to worry about another ‘end of the world scenario’ any time soon. It’s kind of like MoP for WoW– a breath of fresh air after defeating Deathwing… without a crazed war hero trying to make the Horde strong again, and fucking everything up.

So if I was ANet, what would I do to keep the playerbase alive for two more years until the next game (in 2025.. if I even live that long)? I don’t know. I’m not a sadistic video game company that enjoys watching their players suffer.
Nappie believes they will continue to release new content: new DLCs and Living World seasons. I mean, they got to, or their game will eventually get stale and die out (and there goes their money). ..Yet what the hell could they do with the story? Kovo thinks we’ll go back in time to Guild Wars 1 (for some reason.. I personally dunno why they would do something so dumb).
But who knows, except ANet themselves.

==============================================================
I got a Griffon instead
==============================================================
And it took half the effort, and 1/4 the time required to get it compared to the Skyscale. It only took two days.. and 250 Gold. There was still some effort involved, but it was seriously half the effort.
All it requires is to complete two Renowned Heart quests, 1-2 open world (Group Events/Bounties), and gathering 3-4 Griffon Eggs. The only thing that took the most time for me, was trying to get help with the open world events. See, I picked the worst possible time to do this, as it’s Wintersday in Guild Wars 2. Everyone (even their Grandma) is
in Lion’s Arch right now, finding ways to get rich quick with the events there.
I don’t give a fuck. If I need gold.. I be ANet’s bitch and bend over, and take it up the ass while they take $20 from my bank for 1,600 Gems, then convert said Gems to 250 gold. Actually had to do it, to buy the rest of the components needed for the mount. But I
got Trade Contracts in exchange, so at least I got something out of that 250 gold.
–
It felt good to hear “the final” when watching the video, and knowing I was nearly done. All I had to do was fight a final boss to get my hands on the mount. His mechanics have you master the Griffon’s attack button to take down the boss’s shield. Though once again in the game’s ‘grand splendor’, it completely fails to explain this during the fight. Your only hint is the Griffons that are around the boss, have a halo glow around them. This is supposed to hint to use them… but never explaining how to use them. 🤦‍♂️
Ohhhh ArenaNet. Do you ever test your shit before you release it?
Oh wait, that reminds me. There was a Renowned Heart quest I needed to do in The Desolation, and one is getting a lost ghost to follow you to their resting place. This thing has a 10% chance of a success. I lead them to where the minimap tells me where to go, and they respond saying “I remember this place! We’re close!”
I stand, right on top of where the ghost’s AI is supposed to trigger and say “finally I can rest!” or something like that… but most of the time the ghost will just stand there and
do NOTHING!! I back away from the spot and approach again. I have approached from multiple angles.. and the ghost refuses to ‘see’ they’re at the spot!

“YOU’RE STANDING RIGHT ON FUCKING TOP OF IT, JACKASS!!!!!” – Me
There’s an option to tell the ghost to not follow me. When I click this special button, the ghost then ‘triggers’ its success state.. but I don’t get credit. OH my GOD ANet!! 🤬

But I got it. Finally have a flying mount. It’s not what I wanted, but it’s better than
being SCREWED by ridiculous requirements for the Skyscale saddle and getting nothing.

==============================================================
‘More’ ArenaNet scummy practices (and why I’m done with the GW2 Discord)
==============================================================
So I got my Griffon, and I saw how much Gems I had after re-converting half of the gold back to gems and said “maybe I should get a skin for it”.
On to the BLTC I looked, going over the various skins. And there’s something I kept noticing: a ‘Mount Select License’ and a ‘Mount Adoption License’. I didn’t see the point of having both there, when one is 400 Gems each and you can buy more (a pack of 5 or a pack of 20), or the more expensive Mount Select License which is 1,200 Gems.
I decided to ask the GW2 Discord to explain the purpose of these, as it seemed both do the same thing (you can pick which skin you want).
…I was wrong. So wrong. So the Mount Adoption License, that’s 400 Gems each? Think of these, as a fucking LOTTERY TICKET!!!! Yes. Gambling your Gems, for a completely random mount skin. And I just love the tone of that “yep” from the one that confirmed this completely unbelievable bullshit.
So, I wanted to say: “How, and most importantly Why, do you guys feel this is an acceptable business practice?” But I wanted to say a more than that, for this is gambling. Predatory gambling. And you guys.. are ok with this? Please, someone give me whatever drug you guys take, to erase your common sense. As it’s clearly not being used at all.
But instead of waiting for the flood of ‘Many people are typing…’, I bailed out of my argument by leaving the server. For I have heard all I wanted to know. And I rather not see everyone trying to defend these actions. ..Save their souls for being brainwashed
by ANet.
Later, in the call, Vale explained this in a way that actually made sense to me. He didn’t see this as ‘gambling’ at all. He said the more expensive ones are the ones that ANet put a lot of effort into. He reminded me what NapPie told me, that they aren’t trying to scam anyone (when it comes to the BLTC).

Sorry you too, but you can really fool me. If they truly didn’t want people to
feel scammed, then why not have entire mount collections be for sale (at a reasonable price)? And no I’m not talking about the ones with four or so skins for one specific mount. Those can kindly fuck off as that’s a scam all by itself.
I’ll just stick with the base skins. Thanks anyway. This feels too much like an alternate reality if noone cared when Bethesda made skins in Skyrim behind a paywall, to ‘support’ creators. A very dark time in gaming history.

==============================================================
Adventures are (a required) part of The Icebrood Saga story…
==============================================================
One of the required things I need to get 75% into a ‘Return to X’ achievement just to acquire the currency, to buy one of the parts needed for the Skyscale mount, are Adventures. These are timed events that absolutely require perfection. This was one of the reasons why I said “no” to the Skyscale.
And now, I’ve recently discovered while getting back where I started in The Icebrood
Saga.. these things are part of the story. I would rather do another event grind run than these. I would rather do jumping puzzles or wait for a World Boss, than these.
And what’s worse, you have to do THREE of them! The first one, you only assume (as once again the game gives absolutely NO FUCKS if you’re confused on what to do) you have to gather all of these red energy orbs, in 3 minutes.. while trying to dodge these white orbs that move the speed of light.
Here I thought, the Sous Chef in Path of Fire was the most hated NPC I’ve ever come across. No. It’s this bitch, that literally DEMANDS PERFECTION from you if you fail!! I swear this is the voice of ArenaNet, telling me I cannot escape from doing these fucking things.

So I watched a video, begging it to BS me that I only had to get the big orbs and that’s it. No.. I had to get, all of them. And so I decided to say “fuck you” to the season, that I don’t give a fuck that Jormag wakes up. It isn’t going to matter anyway, as history has already been written (its dead, and so is Primordus). So there’s no point to even do it now, as it was spoiled by that time glitch. Though it makes me wonder if said time glitch ‘saved’ me from the season.
Didn’t really like The Icebrood Saga anyway. Sort of reminded me of WoD. Too
much Charr.
End of Dragons is better.. so far.