Monday, April 13, 2009

GSL 7 Final Thoughts

I'm back from a week-long vacation from blogging, made necessary by an insane work load. While I still have a 700 pound gorilla on my shoulders, it has shifted its weight enough to make blogging possible again. So, before I return to special topics tomorrow with the long-overdue posting of "The Seven Deadly Sins of Achievement Fanatics" (slight title change), I thought I would offer some thoughts on the recently concluded Gamerscore League.

Drama: The pre-season was full of petty whining. The first half of the league was full of nerd rage, finger pointing, and more heads rolled than during the French Revolution. The second half was so quiet it probably made certain people bored. I could have done without the BS, but the last half seemed positive enough that I think another GSL will happen in the future. I hope so, but I'm officially retiring from GSL play until season 9, at the earliest. I need to let the easy crap pile up for a while, while I clean up my mess of a card, and play good games. The Hand of Thrawn was never embroiled in any of the drama, which I'm greatful for. [Well, one person tried to get me involved, and spread my name around a bit, but I let it be known that I only listened to what went on, and wasn't going to do anything unless I was shown proof. Such proof never showed up, and I stopped getting bothered.]

The Hand of Thrawn: I'm proud of my team. We lived up to everything I had in mind when creating the team. I wanted a team that could score some serious points, but would focus more on having fun than winning the thing. I wanted a team that could stick together and laugh while drama and cheating caused other teams to implode. We outscored and outlasted almost every team out there, which is a credit to their personal integrity and level-headedness as much as their scoring skills. What a great group of guys to work with. They made my job as a captain so easy, and that's greatly appreciated.

Hand of Thrawn Accomplishments:
  • Silva crossed 100k
  • Derek crossed 100k
  • Bishop crossed 100k
  • Dark went from 6k to almost 27k (multiplied his score 4x is six weeks!)
  • Sabre nearly doubled his score in 5 weeks.
  • I came with in 2k of 100k, which was my goal for the whole year!

On Captaining a Team: It was an interesting challenge. These guys made it easy for me, but I still wonder how I did, overall. It's tough to tow the line between being hands-off and letting everyone do their thing (our emphasis was on fun, remember) and making sure decent points were going up on the board. We made some mistakes with the hanlding of My Horse and Me 2, and there's a chance I could have done better in managing the schedule. Of course, when my leadership icon is Grand Admiral Thrawn, it's hard to measure up to that level of perfection, though I do try. Since nobody over the course of the season expressed any complaints (i'm always open to constructive criticism), and seem to still have a good opinion of me, I'm going to assume I did a pretty good job overall =) I was certain my obsessive reminders of Dash load times and such would piss a few of them off. They're patient with me LOL. Better to be a little annoying than have anyone forget, right?

Captaining a team is certainly something I'd be willing to do again. Maybe in a future GSL (I'm thinking 9, so save those easy games folks), I would love to get a team going with as many members of The Silent Assassins or Hand of Thrawn as possible. If I'm going to go through another 8-week session, I want to know the people I'm playing with are cool.

Post-GSL gaming: The pace is going to go way down now. I'm burned out on "whoring." I'm going to play whatever the heck I want for a while, and simply focus on leisurely getting points from those games. This week will be mostly an arcade week, as I want to focus on Feeding Frenzy, Penny Arcade Ep. 1, Boom Boom Rocket, and Puzzle Quest Gallactrix. There will certainly be some Gears 2 and maybe some RE5 in the mix, as well. I'm trying to ease off on RE5 so the game isn't totally stale by the time my brother gets back.

Operation Jedi is necessary now more than ever, but will be on the backburner mostly for the next couple months. I simply am not ready to return to crappy games yet. Most of any Op. Jedi work I do will be on games I don't mind playing.

Introducing Operation Excellence and J-Quest: Yes, my stupid habit of having to give my goals fancy names continues. These two goals are related, and have to do with completions. Operation Excellence is my goal to put harder and more impressive achievements on my card. Anyone can get 100k on all the easy games. I feel I'm behind on putting achievements on my card that are truly achievements, like the full 1000 in EDF 2017. J-Quest is all about playing and completing J-RPGS, which I love, but have a shitty track record with on the 360. I want to finish the ones I own, then move on to Tales, Star Ocean, Infinite Undiscovery, or Last Remnant. 1000 in a JRPG is always impressive. These two goals will receive a good amount of focus over the next several months, as they'll be the most fun, and easiest on my wallet.

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