Rustled Jimmies: One Quest at a Time

Ghost here, and thanks for joining me today.

With a brand new year comes a brand new segment that I've decided to call "Rustled Jimmies."  I've called it that because I lack creativity and I enjoy that gorilla meme more than I probably should.  Anyway... basically this is a shorter set of posts that will just pop up randomly when I feel like complaining about things that will, most likely, not be important at all.  It's kind of like Jim Sterling's Nitpick Theater except, also most likely, not as funny.  This doesn't necessarily have to be about video games though I guarantee most of them will be.  Hope you enjoy my informal rantings as often as they show up.

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So here's something that irritates me.

You are playing a video game that you are quite enjoying.  You've decided to take your time with it and really soak up the atmosphere of this fantastic game.  As you play, you discover a way to do some side missions for this game.  Since side quests can be an excellent way to gain additional items, gain experience, or lengthen the play time of a game, you decide to take part of the side mission offerings.  You take a look at the message board, wanted list, or whatever format the game may offer this side content and... WHAT'S THIS????  Despite your full intention on doing all of the side missions, you are hindered from taking more than one of them at a time for no foreseeable reason whatsoever.

While this sort of thing has always annoyed me, it came to the forefront of my mind over my Christmas break.  I received a Playstation 4 for Christmas along with several games.  Two of these games were Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth and Final Fantasy XV... and you guessed it!  Both of these games, while being very good games, have chosen to only allow you one case (Digimon) or one hunt (FFXV) at a time. Now you may be asking yourself why this is such an irritation.  Well, I'll gladly tell you!

You know what actively makes for engaging content?  When you actually get to do things that enhance the story, make your life easier, increase challenge, or add to the lore of the universe.  You know what absolutely doesn't make for engaging content?  Wasting precious time walking back and forth across the same exact pathway over and over until my thumbs want to bleed.  Time which could be spent doing literally anything else more fun.  This drudgery is the majority of your experience doing side missions when someone on the development team decides that it's a good idea to only allow you to have one side mission at a time.  Lets talk specific examples so you can really feel what I'm talking about.

In Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth you have a whiteboard which has various cases for you to investigate and take on.  You have to make your way to the detective agency in the back area of the mall, pick a case from the white board in the back of the room, head into the digital space (or wherever the case takes place), solve the case, head back to the detective agency and investigate the white board to close the case... which starts the whole process all over again.  This option was apparently chosen as more beneficial despite the fact that all available cases at a single time are given to you in bulk and can be taken on in any order.  With this being the case, one would think you should be able to grab all of them and complete them at once but apparently that's NOT beneficial for some reason unknown to man.  Similarly, Final Fantasy XV has side content where you must go to various diners, take on one of several monster hunts available, walk all the way to where the mission takes place, walk all the way back to the diner to close the mission and do the process over again instead of just grabbing all the missions and making a singular trip out to maximize time and experience.  The main difference with FFXV as opposed to Digimon is that the monster hunt missions increase in difficulty and many of the hunts available you can't take on when you first encounter that diner.   While that does help with only picking one at a time, that also creates an entirely different problem as now you have to not only take one mission at a time but now you have to remember where every diner is, waste gas to travel across the whole region to get back when you're at a much higher level and then STILL only take on one at a time!

Why is it that I'm having to waste literal minutes out of my play experience to walk back and forth when I shouldn't have to?  I don't get this sort of incompetence with a Bethesda title.  You can pick up as many side missions in Fallout and The Elder Scrolls as you please and are at full liberty to take them on in any order you like.  "Now hang on", you may be saying.  "There's a very real possibility that the side content you are complaining about doesn't get generated in-game until you actually take on the quest hence the need to do them one by one so two quests don't accidentally spawn on top of each other or something."   Yes, that may very well be true, but that doesn't necessarily mean we need to be required to waste our time traveling back and forth to the area of origin to collect and turn back in side missions over and over.  Games should just allow us to collect all of them at once and restrict us to only activating one at a time if they don't get generated until we take the quest on.  This would eliminate the waste of time and make for a better experience overall.

So...that's something that mildly annoys me occasionally.

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If you want to see my other Rustled Jimmies rants then simply click here.

Best Quotes of 2016

Hello Everyone,
Another year has passed us by and many people are thankful to see the backside of 2016.  For me, 2016 was more of a "blah" year.  It just sort of existed as nothing particularly fantastic nor particularly horrid happened throughout this year.  It just... was.  As such I'm going to forego any sort of yearly update on things that happened and get straight to why you all are here.

This is my collection of quotes and dialogue gathered throughout this past year.  As per usual I will not be providing names for any of these quotes nor will I include the context involved (with one exception.)  So without further ado, I give you

The Best Quotes of 2016

"Or lighten up. Like me and u. We follow Jesus but don't act holier than thou about it.  So we can talk about NSFW things and not look like hippos"

"So he kills an Egyptian and runs cause that's one thing you can do when you kill someone...run."

"Because nothing says bi*** like a slutty, cheaply made Chinese cat."

"When the cat's away, the mice go gay?"

"If you wanna win that girl, just get them a sheep because sheep are cute and cuddly and... delicious."

"Here's some words that start with D and they aren't good words."

"Level 14 can go screw itself in a hole in the corner of a room on the top floor of a burning building during the apocalypse with 'Friday' blaring on repeat!"

"That's kind of messed up... me as the female character, I had to blow the butler."

"It was so damp that a bar of soap was all..... soap wet nasty."

"I promise I won't shave any of you."

"I have photos coming out my a**."

"It's called the spray and pray method of emailing.  Just send emails to everyone and hopefully someone who cares will receive it."

"I want to apologize to the people in my discipleship group because we've already covered this but you're probably still prideful so..."

Person 1: When I get to heaven, the first thing I'm gonna do after worshiping Jesus and seeing my friends and family is punch Adam in his stupid face for causing us to have yard work to do!
Person 2: LMFAO  Who's Adam?  OH wait  Adam and Eve.
Person 1: LOL yeah that Adam.  There may be a line for that butt whoopin though.  That would be a funny twist.  The first 20 odd years would be dedicated to everyone getting a whoopin (though feeling no pain because heaven) for everything stupid they did/caused :P
Person 2: And then your job in heaven will be yard work.  All because at the Bema seat, Jesus sees this convo right here  lmfao
Person 1: Probably cause that's my luck.  Well I guess if I'm taking the butt whoopin I'm gonna make it worth it LOL
Person 2: But at least in heaven your back won't hurt while doing yard work.
Person 1:  Truth.  No heat exhaustion, no pain, no tired.  I'd be fine with yard work under those conditions.

"I wasn't sure when I would be free from the clutches of the underwear."

"I ate all the chocolate because Mom keeps feeding it to me and I don't appreciate it."

"Goldfish aren't cheese flavored *looks at box*.... oh"

"Wait, you don't put water on electrical fires?  ...OOOHH"

"Immigration is stupid"  (said during Apples to Apples... I figured I should explain that before anyone has a heart attack)

"Hey ummm guess what Mistew Wes.  I'm a wainbow!  and.. and I went up in a wocket ship into outew space!"

"You know it's good if you fight Satan"

"If you can't tell, I'm looking forward to this weekend about as much as I would be looking forward to a hydraulic press to the genitals."

"Sometimes when life gets you down, there is no better stress reliever than going into a virtual world and killing anything in sight."

"You gotta take a shot every time they say the N-word in this game.... OH LOOK there's two more ni..uuuuuuummmm I mean two more shots!"

"Do you think ants have names?

"You know, Pokemon has done more for Downtown Kingsport than Downtown Kingsport has done for itself in the last twenty years."

"I've got five minutes and thirty six seconds left of this incest... INCENSE!!!!"

"Y'all going for that gym?  POLIWRATH GON' GIT YA!"

"I feel like there's 20 midgets in my head playing bongos."

"This dog does not have a butthole...this game SUCKS"

"Is penii the plural for penis or is it penises?  I've never known how to pluralize male anatomy.  That's why I don't go to orgies.  Well that and Jesus."

"It smelled like rotten a** death.  Like the a** of a hippo had fallen off in my dishwasher and decayed to a slimy substance that had then been baked in a 400 degree oven with a fan to spread the smell around.  That's how it smelled."

"If I ever go out of the country, I want to go to Connectica... Connecticut.. NO CANADA!"

"I'm not the boss of you?  Oh honey, you need to go back about fifteen years and check yourself because I wear the skirt... the pants in this family."

"If someone shoots and kills me I want them to have SEVERE PTSD."

Person 1: "I think it's in Arizona or something." 
Person 2: "F***ing Jamaican people!"
Person 1: "...WHAT DOES JAMAICA HAVE TO DO WITH ARIZONA???"

"The next level is Arabic so you can guarantee it will be an accurate representation of India or wherever Arabia is."

"It's a Chinese Buffet of spirituality."

"Other companies have been around for over a hundred years.  I won't mention these companies by name because some are in competition with us, so I hate them."

"When you're doing that with a client, magic actually happens."

"Today it was like everywhere I went there was a gnat, and I started getting paranoid that they were coming FROM me."

"Well, I did like you all and voted yesterday.  God please forgive me.  I told the lady working there that I went to work this morning to help the economy, went to donate blood to help the sick, and now I'm here for the mentally ill."

"Congratulations.  Be lifted up today.  Prepare for the pain."

"The controls are so bad it's like trying to butter corn with your d***."

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There you have it.  That was my fantastic look back at 2016.  I'll be collecting everyone's quotes through 2017 and see you again here next year

Have an awesome day!