Volume 1.1: 2017 and Beyond

IS IT ENOUGH?

I often wonder if a science fiction MMO is going to be enough to satiate my gaming needs. To date, only fantasy has held that position.  Although  I’ve played EVE Online on and off for many years, it has never risen to being my primary MMO. There’s something personal, exciting and visceral about combat in fantasy games. Whether it’s sword-and-board or magic, it’s your character that is the star of the action. There’s very little between you and your foes. For my own tastes, I always partake in crafting and the economy to help ground my character as a citizen of that world.

In science fiction, advanced technology is required. It’s the star of the encounter, much more so than the avatar. And the weaponry can be rather mundane – fancier rifles and pistols. I don’t play FPS games. Those types of encounters don’t appeal to me.

I’m sure that Star Citizen is going to rise above any other science fiction MMO that has ever come to market in terms of having fantastical worlds, creatures, and settings.  Our adventures will vacillate between deep space and planetary.  And still, I have this small concern that I won’t feel the same attraction as I do, to the organic interactions of fantasy settings. I’m certainly hoping that’s not the case. I putting a lot of eggs in this basket. I don’t have any other MMO on the near horizon that I’m following or looking forward to getting. The genre as a whole has stagnated. Here’s hoping that Star Citizen IS enough!

MISTAKES WERE MADE

I didn’t think I wanted to keep the Caterpillar as a full-time member of my ship fleet. Even for all its versatility, the modules duplicate roles readily available in my other ships. And I’m not particularly a fan of Drake ships in general. I melted one of my floater ships and kicked in the additional $90USD needed to get on temporarily, by upgrading from the Gladius I was rewarded by the referral program. It’s the first time I’ve done so. I don’t want the Gladius per say and it’s just sitting there so why not?  I often get the new ships coming in a patch temporarily to do a ship review and provide more variety of in-game footage for my vidcasts. So doing this much wasn’t unusual.

The first problem reared its head when I couldn’t refund (melt) the Caterpillar when I was done. I was like WTF??? It appears that melting is disabled on ship upgraded from a reward ship but there’s nothing that warns you about that during the upgrade process. Hrm. With the Caterpillar duplicating what I already had, I wasn’t very keen to keep it, especially since I’d melted something else for it. In a bit of panic, I reviewed possible holes in my fleet for what I could upgrade the Caterpillar to that might provide me more value. The closest was the Starfarer which although not excited by it, it could be a good addition for supplying my own fuel and testing out the mechanic when it’s introduced into the persistent universe. So I upgraded to that… And then I remember fudge, I have the LTI version as a buy-back option, so why on earth do I want this one that I’m not excited about when if I want it in the first place, I might as well have the LTI version. *Sigh* Mistakes were made.

I put in a Customer Support ticket to ask about not being warned that you’re stuck with a ship if you upgrade from a reward ship and if that can be credited back to my account aka please melt this thing for me. I’m hoping they can oblige. I’d just as soon have the ship I melted to play with the Caterpillar back anyway versus the Starfarer. If they can’t, meh, it’s not the end of the world.

STAYING ON TRACK

My friends and my boss at work constantly ask me how I get so much done in my personal life. They know the demanding job I have, my family responsibilities and yet, I have time to accomplish quite a bit with my hobbies. I credit this ability with being very organized and a bit anal about keeping task lists. However, I think my ability to go above and beyond in 2016 is due to keeping a Bullet Journal.

I ran across this tool in mid-2016. It’s like a more personalized version of using the Franklin Covey system, something I practiced for many years of my career. Bullet Journals run the gambit of being glorified tasks lists to being life planners. I went the route of life planner.

I read somewhere a long time ago that if you’re not working on your future plans today, they’ll never be realized. I organized a Bullet Journal that looks at Life Goals, 5-Year Goals, 2-Year Goals and then has objectives from each of my things to do This Year Plan, where the detailed tasks reside. In 2016, I found this to be an amazing method of accomplishing important tasks while also ensuring that I was working toward where I want to be, in addition to keeping “today” on track. I credit my Bullet Journal for getting Alysianah’s World off the ground and steadily moving it forward to my dream end-state.

My 2107 tasks use the same formula of pulling goals from my forward-looking desires while keeping this year on track in my personal life, gaming life and hopefully broader voice over narration hobby. If you’re looking for something to help you stay organized, give Bullet Journals a try. My Journal is a Google Sheet so that I can have ubiqutious access to it.

WELCOME 2017

Although the Star Citizen universe is celebrating the arrival of the year 2947, my feet are firmly planted in 2017. I have two big initiatives planned for Alysianah’s World that I hope people will enjoy and appreciate.

Aly’s world 1.0 released in August of 2016. Since that time I’ve done 3 major updates to the site features in an effort to continue evolving the use of the physical world represented in the official ARK Starmap, combined with the official lore and canon, to aide backers in logistics planning for player careers. Making the lore more easily accessible, is also helpful for those interesting in it for entertainment purposes. As well as using it for reference material when working on fan fiction.

In 2017, I want to refine what’s currently available by enhancing its usability and improving the website’s overall performance. The one big feature update currently on the drawing board is to add a more flexible Jump Planner module. While this type of feature isn’t needed in the current alpha, it will take quite some time to build my particular vision of one. For that reason, I’m starting early.

Another huge focus will be providing more content – more news, information, articles and lore turning it to an entertainment resource for all things SC related. For the majority of 2016, most of my time that was allocated to the website was for development. This year, I want to shift that to providing more actual content. Providing content is what I enjoy most and huge incentive for creating Aly’s World in the first place. It’s time to start furnishing the rooms.

In December I was able to launch The Star Citizen NightBus, a more casual vidcast about Star Citizen that uses an Op-Ed format and includes fan fiction. I’m also looking into doing an internet radio channel of sorts via Twitch somewhere around the 2nd quarter of the year. And I’m also collaborating with the SCLoreCast group to narrate more official lore and fiction.

Thank you so much for the support during the journey. I’m looking forward to continued growth and the adventures that lay ahead in Alpha 3.0 and beyond.

FIRST COLLABORATION WITH SCLORECAST

A couple of months ago, I was asked to collaborate on producing lore narrations with SCLoreCast. SCLC is a group dedicated to bringing Star Citizen lore to life by narrating the official dispatches and fiction published by Cloud Imperium Games. I’m looking forward to an on-going relationship with this very talented group, all of whom are members of the SC community.

You can listen to the episode here.  Please support their labor of love by subscribing to their YouTube channel, where they’re also running their first contest.