UWP 1Y

  • Reflecting On the Quarter in UWP

    During this quarter in UWP, I learned a wide variety of information about writing that I did not even anticipate covering. One of the biggest things for me was learning about the categories and genres when it comes to papers and writing which. For example, I have never really thought about if an article I read was academic or popular. There was an entire genre of writing called blogging that I have only heard about but never really indulged in or understood what it was. Before this class, I would have confidently said that I do not really read blogs but after doing research on what it was and what platforms people write blogs on, I realized I did read blogs. One of the content creators that I have followed for a long time wrote his little snippets on WordPress which I thought was fascinating because for my first blogs, I wrote about the same game. It felt like I was following his footsteps. But with all these genres, there were a couple of assignments that made me work directly with it that helped me learn and work with a UWP learning outcome/guideline.  

    One of these assignments was the Source Matrix that I did (I have included a picture of it above). I was researching my topic and finding as much information about it as possible in both academic and popular sources while also making sure that I was not writing down any primary sources. This activity helped me separate and categorize information on what they are exactly and what they can be used for. In that same assignment, we also had to categorize the source into a few categories for which it would be used in our essay/research paper. With constant practice on categorizing sources and understanding how each can be used, I understand the sources themselves more. The perspective of the author and the reasoning behind creating this journal/article and why it is important to learn this information are all things I can find much more easily now. 

    Flow diagram of categorizing sources taken from UWP slides

    In addition, although not specifically the same as categorizing, learning the definitions of a lot of writing terms has also helped me in understanding the language of writing. For the UWP guildlines, this falls under the Knowledge of Conventions. This included all the lectures that went over what we thought the definition of some terms were and what they were defined as. The ones that I remember the most clearly was the difference between tone and mood. When hearing these two words, they do sound as though their definitions are quite similar as they go hand in hand. Another pair that are remarkably similar were revising and editing. Learning these words will help me communicate with other students and professors much more easily. It feels as though I am learning the lexis required to join the English discourse community. 

    Stock photo with someone thinking taken from iStock 

    The most important thing that I have learned about myself as a reader and writer is that I do have a lot more interest in English than I thought on the first day in UWP. For one of our first assignments, we had to do a little introduction about ourselves and our experience with English in the past and I constantly kept writing about how I found it boring and that I had little to no interest in English whatsoever. But as I was researching my blog topic, I was having fun. I enjoyed researching about this area of a game I never really went in-depth to and learning about the niche areas along with what the discourse community was going through and what they thought. A lot of my old essays were just first rough drafts that I haphazardly submitted because I could not find even an ounce of energy inside of me to care about the paper. I believed sincerely that I hated English and everything with it but as I was writing my blogs, I found myself going back to the starting paragraphs and rewriting some parts. I put a lot more effort and care into the blog posts because I was finally writing about something that I had interest in and cared about compared to the old essays about the Declaration of Independence or something of the sort. 

    Image taken from my own blog post from WordPress  

     This class also made me more interested in reading but not as much as writing. The only assignment that impacted my interest in reading was The Boat. The visuals for the book were stunning and made me a lot more captivated by the story. Some would say that I am still not interested in reading at all, and I was only there because there were little visual clips of the story on that website. Though that may be true, if that version were never published, I would have never stuck around to read another 5 chapters of that story in my free time so I would call that one a win. Learning all this about myself will help me in the future because my preconceptions about a topic were completely wrong, and I ended up liking it. This would help me give things a chance or to not judge a book by its cover. I should not go into it thinking that I would hate it and that I am only doing it because I must and not because I want to. I should take my time and find things associated with that certain topic that I have interest in and work off that. 

    Screenshot from sbs 

    Out of all the classes that I have taken in UC Davis up to this point, this one class was the only one that has helped me improve this much. Because of this class, I will do my first portfolio and research paper. This was a big steppingstone into college as I would need to start doing my own research without each step being guided by an assignment made by my professor. At the end of the day, I am equipped with a lot more knowledge and skill when it comes to English and writing and reading. Although it is not a huge improvement, I am opening up a bit more to the English side of subjects and assignments and now understand the APA format and how to find sources and verify that they are peer reviewed and is useful to me or not. 

  • Now that we got the basics, what’s next?

    This post will be a sequel to my old post about how to play Puzzles and Dragons. It went over the basics of the game and how to move the orbs around while also introducing a few vocabulary words to get used to the lexis from this discourse community. So if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend you check that post first and you can read it here.

    We are now going to build off of that information and head straight into another aspect of the game that will help a ton with progression and that is team building. When going into dungeons, you need a team to work with. You need monsters that will give you bonuses or buffs that will allow your team to do more damage and kill more enemies. The goal of the game is to clear the hardest dungeons and to do that, you will need the strongest leaders and sub monsters. “What are those?” you may ask and I am here to explain to you the basics in making a team.

    Before we get to figuring out which monsters to put in a team, we need to go over how to actually get monsters. When playing a dungeon and killing a monster, there’s a chance that it drops loot which could contain a version of itself that you can add to your team. Beating enough dungeons will also grant a magic stone to the player and with 5 magic stones, you can roll the egg machine. These egg machines are basically gachapons which is why Puzzles and Dragons is considered a gacha game. When rolling these machines, there’s a chance that you could score a very strong monster with a very strong skill. This is usually where most of the strong units reside in so magic stones are your gateway to making an impeccable team.

    Picture of the rare egg machines taken from Gameskinny

    Each monster in the game has a leader skill and a normal skills. These skills will help you in your dungeon and give you buffs to beat the enemies. Firstly, the leader skill is a skill where only the first monster on your team’s will activate. That means that the first monster on your team counts as your leader and any monsters on your team that is not a leader does not get to activate that leader skill. This leader skill will always be active when you are playing unless you are binded which we will talk about later on. And secondly, we have normal skills where every monster has one. During a dungeon run, your skills will be available to use after a certain amount of turns has passed. Turns are counted each time you successfully match at least one combo on the board. These skills could change the current orbs on the board, hurt the enemy, make you own monsters do more damage and countless of other abilities. There’s even a monster with a skill that activates a random skill in the game. With these skills in mind, it is crucial to choose ones that are strong to add to your team

    Image taken from Mantastic Pad

    But having the strongest monsters does not mean that you have the strongest team. A team needs to have synergy and each monster needs to help the others to output as much damage as possible. The monsters that you have supporting your leader needs to be in line with the leader skill. If the leader skill makes any fire unit super strong, you obviously don’t want to put any other colored monster on your team other than red. Same goes for if the leader skill does the most damage after matching every single color, your supporting monsters should cover every color and have skills to help match. This could include increasing the amount of time you can move your orb around or skills that will reset the board into having all the colors you would need.

    Image taken from Ilmina showing a monster that can change the board to all colors

    Finally, we will quickly go over awakenings which is the final thing that people usually pay attention to when choosing what monsters they want to put into their team. In the image above, you can see that there are symbols on the right hand side of the screen that have different symbols with a red up arrow on their top right. Each of those are called an awakening and every monster has them. These awakenings are extremely important to the game as having the correct ones can make dungeons that were hard into a walk in the park easy. There are dozens of awakenings but they usually fall into three categories. There are resists, damage and utility. Below I have added an image of all the awakenings that are currently in the game.

    Awakenings taken from Pad Index

    So let me run down each category, for resists, the enemies could bind your monsters or change the board to harm you. Binding means that that unit would become unusable for a certain amount of turns. Their skills, leader skills and awakenings will all be inaccessible and the monster will basically be useless until it fades after a certain amount of turns. As you guessed it, there are awakenings that will be able to fend off these binds. Another resist are orb resists. The enemies could make your entire screen black so it becomes hard to match. They could convert orbs on your board into poison orbs so when you match it you take damage and many other debuffs you can think of. (Debuffs are the opposite of buffs, they are there to harm you and make your life more difficult by giving you negative status ailments). For damage, doing certain things could increase your overall damage. This could be matching 4 of the same color also known as a “prong” or matching an entire row of the same color aka “row“. There are also buffs that increase your damage depending on what monster you are currently fighting. Lastly, there are the utility awakenings that include skill boosts which make it so your skills will come up faster and you can use them more frequently. Awakenings are very important but still not as important as your leader skill and skills so keep those at the forefront when making a team. But that is all from me today. I hope to see you soon!

    Toodles!

    Picture of a tamadra (used to activate awakenings) from Pkluv

  • Obtaining Credits with the Credit Card

    500 credit drop from a loot box taken from Deviantart

    In my recent blog posts, it’s been clear that the monetization of Overwatch 2 is unfair toward the player but today let’s see the difference between the prices of the two games. In the original Overwatch, there were loot boxes you can purchase but you could not directly purchase the skins. The prices of the loot boxes depend on how many you buy at once. The more you buy, the price per loot box will be. The prices ranged from as high as one dollar per loot box to eighty cents per. Each loot box contained four items that ranged from skins to the lowest-worth cosmetics which were sprays that were 25 credits each if you wanted to buy them yourself. In Overwatch 2, the same sprays would cost 100 credits for each one which in the game is one dollar. For that same dollar, you can buy a loot box from Overwatch 1 that will net you at the very worst 100 credits or four sprays which is extremely uncommon. The only difference here is that spending those 100 credits will get you the exact spray that you want. The price markup for just sprays is four times as much but let’s take a look at what people are more interested about. This would be the skins and notably the legendary skins that look completely different from the base models of the characters. So let’s take a look at aquiring legendary skins in Overwatch 1 with their loot boxes. Below I have an infographic, though a bit outdated, regarding how often one would get a legendary.

    Inforgraphic from PCGamesN

    From this infographic, there are a few important things to make note. Each lootbox was one dollar or less depending if you bought in bulk and the average drop rate for a legendary was 1 in 10 loot boxes. That means a legendary skin was 10 dollars. In the game, if you wanted to buy with credits, the legendary skin would have costed 1000 credits. In the past years after this infographic was made, Overwatch implemented another way to get lootboxes and credits. Everyday, the first game you play will give you a loot box no matter if you win or lose. Every game after would grant you 25 credits. These are all bonus rewards on top of the free loot box after every few games. With this information, it is clear that getting credits and skins were a lot easier and spending money on loot boxes were completely uneccesary. Let’s now turn our attention to Overwatch 2 and obtaining skins there. In Overwatch 2, there are no ways of obtaining loot boxes but there is one way to earn credits. That is through the weekly missions which will give you 60 whole credits if you do enough of them. In the old Overwatch, 3 games would grant you 75 credits already but getting these 60 credits would take you at the very least 6+ hours if you were focusing solely on completing the missions and not having fun. The legendary skins in Overwatch 1 costed 1000 credits so with 60 credits a week, it would take you 16.6 weeks or about 4 months. This already seems quite insane since, with Overwatch 1, you can get 10 loot boxes in 10 days if you just play one game a day which will already grant you a legendary. This is then coupled with the increased prices in Overwatch 2. The skins went from 1000 credits to 1900 credits which puts you at around 8 months of playing on average an hour a day to get one legendary skin. There are 35 characters in Overwatch 2 so just getting a legendary skin on each character would take you just over 23 years. I played Overwatch 1 for about 1 year on and off and that already allowed me to have at least one legendary skin on every character. Below I have attached a video about the comparison of costs on Overwatch 1 and Overwatch 2 and how much skins really cost. This all needs to change quickly before the game fully dies off.

    Video on credits by Stylosa

  • Were Loot Boxes Really a Good Thing?

    When looking at the transition of Overwatch going from a version where you had to pay to play the game to a free version, it seems like it went in a good direction. It is able to garner a wider audience as there is no more gate to accessing the game. The in-game monetization model though changed from a generous loot box system that you can spend extra money on to a more secluded battle pass with a shop system. There have been countless amount of debates about this situation but the majority of the Overwatch community has been hating on the new system.

    New Overwatch Hero with an image from IGN

    With the new monetization method out, we can compare it with the old one and see at the end of the day which is truly better, and will this battle pass help with the retention of new players? Looking at a few Reddit posts, we see one where they are talking about how loot boxes were a good system and much better than the one we have now. With 1.8 thousand upvotes on the post, it seems that a good portion of the community does agree with this sentiment. Although loot boxes had a luck/random element to them, they were given out to the extent that it was accepted by the community even if money was being spent on obtaining them. Even though the community was okay with it, Mark Griffiths feels that it might not be a good thing. He believes that because spending money on loot boxes and having the reward become a chance to get a good item instead of a single transaction to get the said item, the system in itself is very similar to gambling. This can then lead to it being addictive and can negatively influence the youth into getting used to these patterns in the video games that they play. So although the community enjoyed the system, was having Blizzard take it away a good decision? They replaced it with something more concrete and all that you had to do to get the new items was to spend time. To fully profit and get the most out of your time, you would have to play a bit every day to collect the daily rewards so extended play time on one day will not be as rewarding as coming back the next day and playing again. This though also has a negative influence on the youth as playing the game will slowly get woven into their daily and daily schedules which in turn also leads to addiction until they get tired of it or they run out of motivation to continue. The current battle pass’s rewards are extremely lackluster and many players are opting out of playing it as the old loot box system was much more rewarding and fun for the players. In an article on Dexerto, they mention that many Overwatch players support the return of loot boxes into the game but in return do not have the ability to purchase them. I think this is a great idea as it gets rid of the possible gambling portion that comes with loot boxes in the original Overwatch. The game is dying as rewards are slow and boorish, and retention rates are ever so small so Blizzard needs to rework the cosmetics in Overwatch or this game will be doomed very soon.

    Overwatch battle pass from Windows Central

    Citations
    u/ThadiusMcCoy. (2022, October 8). Lootboxes were a Good System [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/xytvdy/lootboxes_were_a_good_system/

    Griffiths, M. D. (2018). IS THE BUYING OF LOOT BOXES IN VIDEO GAMES A FORM OF GAMBLING OR GAMING? Gaming Law Review, 22(1), 52–54. https://doi.org/10.1089/glr2.2018.2216

    Dexerto (2022, November 8, 2022) Overwatch 2 players want loot boxes to return, on one condition.https://www.dexerto.com/overwatch/overwatch-2-loot-boxes-players-want-1968050/

  • r/Overwatch is based

    So today, we will be taking a closer look into one of the discourse communities surrounding Overwatch which is the subreddit. I briefly mentioned this discourse community in my blog post last time but today I will choose a specific forum/post and dissect it to see how it works.

    Repost by u/bryvl

    Content/Author

    So today I will take a look at this post in the Overwatch subreddit and go through a few questions about the post. First off, the author of this post is u/bryvl but the original person that posted it was u/WinterInHyrule. u/bryvl just reposted the other person’s post that was in the Paladin subreddit. For context, Paladin is a game that is very similar to Overwatch but the main difference was that Overwatch 1 was 20 dollars while Paladin was free. People in general also loved Overwatch a lot more because of the graphics, characters, and how the game itself felt. u/bryvl’s main point in reposting this was that they felt that it was funny and was a great way to start a discussion in the Overwatch community by comparing the two games in their current state. On the left, we see a skin/cosmetic in Paladin that costs 14 dollars and adds a lot of new aspects to the character. This includes new visual effects in the game and new voicelines. On the right, we see the new Overwatch 2 character’s skin that costs 20 dollars which is almost 50% more expensive but all you get is that the character wears a jacket with a tank top and no skirt. Anyone can tell that you aren’t getting the bang for your buck if you buy the skin on the right in Overwatch.

    Images/Symbols

    This is the main image used in the discussion/post and there aren’t really any other images or symbols except for the awards people can give each other to show their support for other people’s thoughts. This is similar to an endorsement to show that you also agree with their sentiment. Images are usually not widely used in comment sections on Reddit since it shows a URL instead of the image which is sometimes annoying to click into and such.

    Audience/Purpose

    The surface-level audience for this post is the community members themselves to show each other the unfair pricing of the skins in Overwatch 2. The audience that everyone here including the comments is trying to get to are the game developers. The main goal of this post was to add to the idea that Overwatch 2 skins are overpriced and they want the game developers to rethink their decision on the new monetization method because it is drastically different from Overwatch 1. Posts similar to this are popping up on the subreddit almost every hour complaining and ranting about how the new prices are stupid and way too expensive. For comparison, the original Overwatch was 20 dollars but this new Overwatch 2 is free. For the price of one skin in Overwatch 2, you can straight up buy the original Overwatch which is crazy. My favorite game of all time which is Hollow Knight is only 15 dollars which is less than removing a skirt and adding a jacket to my in-game character in Overwatch 2.

    Appeals

    This post uses logos and pathos to get its ideas across. Logos is shown here by the comparison of the two skins with the two prices underneath them. When looking at it, the one on the left is a deal compared to the scam on the right. It makes it quite clear that the creators of Overwatch 2 are really on here to get your money in any way they can. Pathos is used here as the title pokes fun at the idea that Overwatch is better than Paladin that everyone used to have back in the day and how in the current state, it might be reversed. It is funny as it shows how the tables have turned. Pathos is also used here by overexaggerating how good the Paladin skin is by forcibly extending the list on it by putting down a new voice and new voice line when in reality they are the same. Then compared to the two bullet points that the Overwatch skin has, it looks pathetic. This makes us more annoyed and angry at the developers because when we look at this post, we see the skin on the right has 4 perks with the skin while the skin on the left only has 2. This was purposely done by the original author to differentiate the two skins even further and show the big gap between them.

    Conclusion

    This post along with many others is just pleading to the game developers to start changing their ways on their monetization methods. They understand the game needs money to fund their projects but this is the wrong way to go at it. The community wants to be treated like normal people playing a game to have fun and not full piggy banks looking for places to spend money on.

    Citations

    [u/bryvl]. (2022, October 28). This is NOT a call to action* but check out the value a $14 dollar skin vs $20+ skin gets you in Paladins vs OW2 [Online Forum Post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/yfpbua/this_is_not_a_call_to_action_but_check_out_the/

  • Overwatch 2 is a Huge Disappointment and It Isn’t Getting Any Better

    If you don’t know already, Overwatch is a game made by Blizzard which has also made many big-name games like World of Warcraft and Starcraft. Overwatch is their first-person shooter game and recently has been updated to Overwatch 2. There was a lot of hate and backlash from many Overwatch communities towards this update and I agree with that sentiment.

    The article was written by Kotaku

    Overwatch was already a good game in my eyes. Blizzard ended up completely shutting down Overwatch servers and transferred all those players into Overwatch 2 servers. Any cosmetics that you had beforehand will still be in your inventory but the way of acquiring them was completely different. In the original Overwatch, they had a loot box system where playing matches could earn chests that contained random cosmetics which was not an issue. In the new Overwatch 2 though, they completely removed the loot box system and implemented a battle pass. This meant that you had to play a certain amount of games just to earn a fixed cosmetic that everyone else was getting, so your character’s individuality was virtually nonexistent. You could, however, spend a bunch of money to purchase the specific skins you want instead which seems reasonable until you realize that the prices have skyrocketed. In the original Overwatch, almost every skin was available through loot boxes you didn’t have to pay for. If you’re still thinking that this isn’t a big deal or anything and that the battle pass can already provide all the cosmetics you need then you’re wrong. The battle pass is also split into 2. A premium version you can pay for and the free one gives absolute garbage cosmetics that look terrible compared to all the free ones you were able to get in the original Overwatch.

    A picture of the battle pass and what possible cosmetics you can get from Reddit

    Finally there are the weekly challenges. You can get premium currency from them where you can buy any skin you want. This sounds amazing, right? It is just like Overwatch 1 where you just play and play and you get what you want. Nope. You are limited to how much premium currency you can earn in a week and it is way too low. You can earn up to 60 coins per week and it will take more than just a few hours to get that. You will have to keep playing throughout the entire week just to earn these 60 coins and can you guess the price of a legendary skin? It’s 1900 coins. This equates to about 19 dollars if you want to spend real money or about 8 months of consistently playing the game. In the original Overwatch, the chances of getting a legendary from a loot box was 7.5%. Your first game of the day always gave you a loot box and so did every 3-4 games. Judging by those numbers, it’s clear that it will not take you 8 months to get a legendary skin. In the old Overwatch as well, loot boxes could contain premium currency that you can also use to buy whatever skin you wanted. The difference between Overwatch and Overwatch 2 is mainly the monetization system. The actual gameplay is about the same with a few new characters and a few new maps but other than that, it is quite literally the same game. People are outraged because Overwatch 2 was not a sequel but an update they could’ve just added Overwatch 1. The Overwatch Reddit community has been joking that the 2 in Overwatch 2 is just a new way to get money from their player base and I can’t disagree. I am extremely disappointed in this new update and many people are as well. We want Overwatch 1 back but all those servers are closed so everyone is now forced to play Overwatch 2. Many people are quitting and so am I and I do genuinely hope Overwatch 2 dies off in the upcoming weeks.

    Art from PC Invasion article

  • Discourse Communities Communicating Inside Dungeons Doing Puzzles Or Something…

    Puzzles and Dragons (PAD) does not have a very big community unlike other games like League of Legends because it is not that popular and the game does not necessarily need a community or friends to play. But this doesn’t mean that our communities are drab and boring either. One of the biggest places online that PAD players convene and discuss the game is on the Discord server (which is open to everybody).

    A screenshot of the PAD Discord news channel

    In the PAD community, the demographic is very wide from middle schoolers all the way to working middle-aged adults with outliers here and there. This is a rough estimate as since this game came out around 10 years ago, high school and college students who were very into this game would be in their late twenties to early thirties now. Another way to see the age group is by looking at the content creators on Youtube and working off of their general age range. But the most useful way to see what kinds of people actually play this game is by looking at how they interact with each other on Discord. Looking at their profiles and seeing how they message each other and what language they use. The race demographic for Puzzles and Dragons also seems to mostly be Asian and a portion is white but those are the two main biggest groups in NA servers.

    There are many different channels and each one has a different reason for discussion and participation. Usually, people seek help and ask questions in the channels and forums and other community members in turn answer them. This discord community mainly serves to help organize and allocate questions and answers to those types of questions together. For example, there is currently a dungeon that when cleared will grant the player an additional tag they can add their name to show that they cleared that hard dungeon.

    King Title on a player, image is taken from Blogging Mama

    The main common goal for this community and this game is to be able to construct a very strong team and improve at comboing (matching orbs) so that one can beat the newest and hardest levels/dungeons. There aren’t any specific beliefs or values but for both the Reddit community and Discord community, being respectful is the most important one out of all of them. PAD players are almost always extremely nice and helpful, unlike some online multiplayer games that are popular right now like Valorant where toxicity runs rampant. Here I have included a Youtube video that shows a snippet of just how bad it can get. PAD communities are very welcoming and that is very helpful for new players as they come into channels with a bunch of questions regarding terminology. Obviously, the game provides tutorial dungeons or floors to get new players familiarized with some of the abbreviations and such.

    Here’s a bunch of dungeons that teaches you basic game mechanics.

    There are resources like google docs that people have made in the past that have a list of all the abbreviations and common sayings related to PAD that beginners can look through. They can also just toss their questions into a channel and people will respond to them really quickly as well. At this point, I do feel like I’m going in circles stressing the same point over and over again but the community really is one of the nicest ones I’ve ever been in and I am proud to share it. But I’ll see you guys next time. Toodles!

  • So how do you play this impeccable masterpiece of a game anyways?

    So how do you play this impeccable masterpiece of a game anyways?

    So when you first look at the game, it has an extremely striking resemblance to Candy Crush or if you are a bit older, the game Bejeweled. Just like those two games, you have to match the same colors together to score points and in this game, it converts into damage and beats monsters.

    A game of Bejeweled taken from Bejeweled Wiki

    The one thing that really makes Puzzles and Dragons so unique is that instead of having a set amount of moves you can do. You are given a time limit and when you grab a piece or “orb” as we call it, you can keep moving it within the time frame as long as you don’t let go. For some people, this is very hard to imagine and pick up which was why a lot of people quit the game very early on as this mechanic felt unusual and uncomfortable to play with. To give you a quick sense on what I am talking about, I have attached a video here that shows someone playing and teaching how to find common patterns and way of matching them. The way I like to explain it is that the game is like Candy Crush but on crack. You are changing positions with the orb you are holding and the orb you are going into just like candy crush but you can do it hundreds of times each turn if you wanted to. Since the game does give you so much freedom in moving, making just one or two matches or “combos” will not really reward the player. At that point, you must learn to combo every thing on the board. Let’s say there is an orb in the bottom left that you want to get to the top right. There are two ways to move an orb. You can either grab it and drag it all the way to where it needs to be or you grab another orb and keep pushing it to the right then up with a series of place switching. Below I have three images of me playing the game and trying to move on the bottom yellow/light orb.

    I was holding the fire/red orb and I moved the light/yellow orb to the right twice. The blue arrows showed how I moved the fire orb to get to where I am. If I kept making these circles, the light orb will eventually be in the bottom right corner and then I can change the circle so I would be bringing it up. Then I can leave it with the two light orbs on the top right and that would be a combo. This game is very hard to pick up since to move an orb to the right, you have to use the orb in your hand and swap places with it when you’re on the right of it. This was just a very light introduction to just moving the orbs around but if you are serious and want to learn more, there are hundreds of Youtube videos out there and there is even a Discord with a specific channel where you can upload your board and they’ll tell you exactly how to move your orb to maximize points/combos. The game still has a lot to offer like making the proper team and playing dungeons/levels with specific rules set and all that good stuff. The game is hard and challenging but over time your skills would get better and so will your team. I look forward to playing the game because of all the interesting monsters you can get. They include many gods into their game as well as original monsters and I enjoy seeing ones I already know as well as learning about gods that I’ve never heard of before. I hope you try the game out sometime and maybe you’ll enjoy it as much as me! Toodles!

    Here I have an image of Zeus taken from Ilmina

  • Dungeons and Dragons? Nah, I’m talking about that Puzzles and Dragons

    Now you must be sitting on your computer wondering in your head, ” What in tarnation is Puzzles and Dragons?” Is it just a knock off of this Dungeons and Dragons everyone knows about and that Stranger Things is based around? Well if you read my last introductory blog, you would have known that it is actually a mobile game that was made in Japan back in 2012. I started playing this game when it first came to the United States App Store when I was in 5th grade or in the year 2013. I have basically grew up with this game and have been there whenever there has a been a big event or a milestone. This topic is very close to me and I want to start a blog surrounding the communities that play this game to the current events and challenges to tutorials and learning how to play the game and get better.

    Photo taken from Wikipedia page of the game

    The picture above was what you would call a classic representation of this game. This came out with the game when it first released and it shows the three evolved starters (just like Pokemon which was one of the reasons I tried and enjoyed the game). When this game first came out, it was an extremely big hit, many people started to play it and millions of downloads kept pouring in but the problem was that not many people kept playing it. The main thing that drove many people away was that this game felt grindy and unrewarding. You would be playing this game for 40-50 minutes to have enough of their premium currency which are Magic Stones to try and get a new character only to get a really weak one and have to spend hours again to try to get another. This game was also one of the first gacha games that came to America on the phone. A quick rundown on gacha games was that you would spend money to have a chance of getting something good which was the game version of gambling for kids. I have attached a photo of the little “machine” you would put your premium currency in and pull the little arm lever for it to drop an egg that might house a very strong but more than likely, a bad unit.

    Image taken from Gameskinny.com

    Like many new games, there would be a huge amount of people that start playing it only to realize it isn’t for them. Maybe the gameplay is too confusing and too difficult to play or like I said before, the game just isn’t rewarding enough. Though for the people like me that has been playing for a long time and have endured the annoying aspects of the game, we enjoy it though we do admit it does get boring sometimes. Here I have linked a Quora post asking for opinions on the game as well as a Reddit post. This game in a sense gets repetitive once you enter endgame or when you can complete most if not all the levels (dungeons) and there are only a few where you need specific characters to beat it. The game goes into a cycle of trying to get the brand new super strong characters to beat the brand new very difficult dungeon. This game is mostly a single player game though there are occasional competitive dungeons where players try to score points and try to get the highest amount or doing dungeons together but they aren’t that rewarding so multiplayer is kind of a dead zone. I will not lie, this game is all about grinding and spending a lot of time for little reward but the joy of having all your effort paid off with a strong unit is what keeps me and many people going. They also do collabs with popular shows or toys like Hello Kitty and they even had a Marvel Collab where you can get Marvel Characters.

    Images taken from Blogging Mama and Anime News Network

    As of right now, there are a few communities that are associated with this game and they are the usual categories that most games have as well. Since this is mainly a single player game, people in forums and on Reddit usually discuss the upcoming events and what is worth it to try to go for but it mostly falls into the category of helping each other. The community is very supportive and two main sites that I use are Youtube and Reddit to connect with other people. The game has many aspects to it that I might of over in my future blogs but help can come in the form of helping people make teams, to understanding the state of the game to actual gameplay and how to match the colors efficiently and properly. There are many Youtubers that specialize in explaining/teaching a part of the game and they each have their own community in their comment sections building upon the video. Though the American community is quite small compared to the Japanese one, it is nice to see a much less toxic one compared to when I played League of Legends. But that is all for now, I’ll see you next time and a fun fact is that I am currently playing Puzzles and Dragons (PAD) while I am typing up this blog (is it procrastinating if its on topic?). The game is too addicting for me and it is very hard to set down. I do recommend you to start the game and play with me as I update my blog page and teach you tips and tricks and everything you would need to know about this wonderful game. Toodles!

  • I Love Spaghetti And I’m Tired Of Acting Like I Don’t.

    Puzzles And Dragons from Google Play Store

    What’s your favorite hobby? How do you engage with other people who are in the same hobby?

    I like to play video games, which means that I spend a lot of time playing them on my computer or phone. Playing video games is also a good way for me to relax after a long day at school. I mostly play first-person shooters, like VALORANT and CS:GO, but I also enjoy strategy games like League of Legends that require more skill to play well. Recently, I’ve been playing a lot of Puzzles and Dragons. I’ve found that it’s a good game to play when I just want to kill time, but it’s also a fun game that makes you think more, and rewards players who are skilled at it. I recommend Puzzle & Dragons for anyone who enjoys strategic games or puzzle games in general. In terms of sports hobbies, I like to play ping pong in the park when I am back at home in San Francisco. I use to take lessons for it when I was younger, but now am out of practice. It’s a great way for me to exercise without it being too physically intense.

    Cover art for Hollow Knight Voidheart Edition by Microsoft Store

    What fandoms are you a part of? How do you interact with other fans? Where do these interactions happen?

    Hollow Knight is a 2D RPG adventure game with difficult, yet fair combat. Players explore the world of Hallownest, uncovering lore and challenging bug-like monsters. The part I enjoyed most is when I played against the boss, Hornet, who is a very popular character in the franchise. I love the soundtrack for her battle. They are working on another game featuring her as the main character which is coming out later this year and I look forward to playing it. The level design and character progression are fantastic, and the world has pretty interesting lore and backstory to it. I don’t always interact with other fans, but I try and suggest the game to anybody who has similar interests.

    Cover Art for Vol 7 from Amazon

    What are some of your favorite things to talk about? Who do you talk about them with and where?

    I am an anime and manga fan, as well as an aspiring chef. I love to talk about these topics and share my experiences from trying out new recipes and watching/reading a new series. I recently started watching an anime called Oishinbo with my girlfriend after she bought me the manga rendition as a present and it made me happy to know that she’ll buy me presents alike even though she’s not interested in anime. I suggested she watch the anime with me and she took up the offer. She loves it! I like to share my interests with others so they can get more into what I enjoy. Oishinbo teaches everything from different ingredients to cooking techniques and how to prepare them. It’s a great introduction to Japanese cuisine, as well as a wonderful anime in general.

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