To give you an approximation of my amount of play last week, I hit 46 on the leaderboard: Not great, not bad, just there it is. I was having fun earning trophies for my guild and the leaderboard rank was just kind of a fun footnote to the week. Nifty, I thought, top 50 and I wasn’t even trying.
This week, I began with my same goal of earning resources and trophies. I’m pumped, let’s do this!
But then something psychologically intriguing occurred.
My AI defense started getting hit a lot by other players. I then found I was unable to do revenge battles against said assailants. Certain players would hit my AI multiple times and never show up in my ranked PvP list. In the past, I had a handy list of people that I got to go medieval on.
But now? I wanted to remove my glove and smack them, demanding satisfaction!
But now … they were ghosts.
And like the old song goes—grammatical train-wreck that it is, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” They hit me and I cannot hit back.
How am I supposed to do my usual Taken scene where I mention my “very particular set of skills” and do my usual Taken speech before owning THEIR ai?
Like Sysphus, condemned by the gods to Hades, I suddenly became aware that I was ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, only to have the boulder roll back down under its own weight. I am no game designer, so I do not know what it causing this desuetude to intrude upon my usual Gems time. I just find it interesting from a behavioral standpoint.
My playtime has tanked this week. And whenever I log on, I find a whole slew of people have beaten the AI again and I cannot recoup those resources or even witchslap them into next week for their impertinence.
As Shylock had it: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Apparently not anymore…
;tldr some nub speaking Whine’ese. Here, have an Ewok:
