Why I'm Not Playing Fury

So, Fury. It's been out for a few days now and, from what I hear, the results have been generally positive for people. Easy to see why, too. Fury is pure PvP. It strips away everything else and focuses on making a fun combat experience with more depth and strategy than your typical shooter. It's supposedly a stat heads dream with attributes and equipment and skills to juggle. I even know a few of the people who've developed it - for the sort of start-up company that I always like to reward for trying to innovate - from the Guild Wars scene. It seems tailor made to appeal to someone like me. Someone who likes - loves, really - the PvP side of Guild Wars. Someone who's always complaining about what's required to get up to speed, the amount of grinding and PvE necessary before you can field a competent character. Someone who's been looking for a good, competitive game that rewards people who can think, and plan, and practice rather than those with the twitch reflexes of a housefly on meth amphetamines. Everything I hear about the game makes it sound promising, that they're really trying to make it as friendly as possible to new player and finely balanced on the tip of the knife for the experienced. It's like they've watched and learned every lesson and set out to do things right. Should be a competitive player's dream.

So, you might wonder why I'm not playing? Well, I tried to get in on the open beta to see what all the fuss was about. My system took one look at the requirements and started laughing at me. It's a bit graphically intense, I'm saying, and I'm only a few steps up from having a orange monochrome display and running Lotus Notes off of 3' floppies. My gaming computer is old, is what I'm getting at here. I could always upgrade my machine and, you know, if there was a good enough game out there, I probably would. It's just not in the cards at the moment because I'm broke and stubborn in equal amounts. And I'm not really motivated enough. Not for Fury, anyway. So even though the system requirements are a surmountable hurddle, just why aren't I playing? Well, the answers right there. Fury is Guild Wars with the serial numbers filed off and everything but the PvP experience removed. And, when it comes right down to it, I actually like PvE.

I wouldn't have gotten into the PvP scene if I hadn't been captured by the game's single player experience. PvP is what I do when I'm bored with PvE and vice versa. It's part of the reason I like Guild Wars so much, the complete package. It comes with a serviceable PvE experience wrapped around the rich, creamy core of PvP goodness. And it all comes in the same box for one low, affordable price. It's the totality of the picture that really appeals to me, not any one single facet. I know I'm going to get bored with any one part eventually, that's why I want a game filled with new things to do and try until my interest for my old favorite activities comes back. Fury is too narrow, too focused to hold me for very long, even putting aside the strange pricing scheme.

And, having playing a lot of Guild Wars PvP I know what's involved in getting up to speed with a combat system of that depth and complexity. Before I felt like I could play up to my standards, there's a raft of skills and mechanics to learn - I'd have to get a handle on this whole "charges" thing, for instance. Strategies to pick up - which are the skills and classes to use, which are the ones to pass over. Practice to be done - honing those skills over and over until they're at the level of reflex. Experiments to be performed - sure, everyone thinks this skill or class is crap but what happens of you use it like this? Icons, abbreviations, statistics, and everything else that goes into getting that last little bit of advantage to make up for the fact that I'm getting older and slower and, probably, no where near as good as I think I am. And I need to just digest all of that information in order to feel competitive. And then go out and get my butt kicked several times until I learn what I really need to know. It's a project. A massive commitment to start at the bottom of the ladder and wrench my way to the top that I just don't have the time for at the moment. I can barely manage to squeeze in an hour a day to run missions in Guild Wars, I'm not going to be able to play enough to get good at a game like Fury. And that's before I go into full time writing mode for NaNo next month. And by the time I actually do manage to sit down and play everyone will be weeks, months ahead of me on the skill curve and it'll be that much rougher to learn.

In so many words, it's a journey. No doubt a fun one and I wish everyone taking it good luck with it. But it's not really the right one for me, even if I had the time and patience for it.