PC and First Story Game Experiences
PC was the best thing that has ever come to my life so far. It can increase my productivity for working and studying. It also introduces me to a better gaming experience than mobile gaming (that “mobile legend” players have another level of banter). Which i never imagined how this gaming experience would change my perspective on software engineering
I bought my first game from Epic Games (which i deeply regret to this day (you should buy from Steam folks)) titled “Red Dead Redemption 2”. When i bought RDR 2 I had thought to refund it, but suddenly (or just “path of Destiny”) i forgot to close the game and went outside for 4 hours and came back with the reality i could not refund this game and was forced to play RDR2.
When i try RDR2 as my first story game, i feel its kinda boring. But, that’s where I went wrong. When i play it for 2 hours a day i really love it and feel discouraged when not playing it in a day. This game has so many things to explore, the nature, resources, characters, NPC, etc feel so alive, I can’t imagine how in hell i had thought to refund it before and then played hundreds of times on this game. Had to say, playing RDR2 for the first time was a mistake because i can’t enjoy other story games, i have tried Assassin’s Creed, Spider-Man, The Witcher, Horizon, etc, but, nothing can give me the same fun and feeling as RDR2.
But one day, i saw sales on Steam for Elden Ring I heard about it from social media and many people talked about it, so i thought why don’t I give a try for this? My first impression of Elden Ring is great, it had a beautiful landscape, many items that i can explore, a great story, and fcking insane enemies. You didn’t hear it wrong, those enemies were insane and you need to be patient, good at reflexes, and many more to face the enemies in Elden Ring. You can’t use the same build with one boss to another boss, you need to mix and match the items to get more damage and win. In the first week, i felt this game was not for me because it was too hard and i couldn’t spare my time just for dying to enemies every day. But, when losing i started to read the walkthrough from Elden Ring Wiki, i started to learn how the enemies attack and defend so i can be fighting with that knowledge and git good every day. I started to learn about bosses, items, and enemies’ lore, how they became so strong, and who the hell they were.
Lores, Stories, and Reading Comprehension
Elden Ring came with a great story but we need to explore it by ourselves by reading through Wiki or video. I spent my free time exploring every resource about Elden Ring and it became part of my life everyday i found something interesting that i never thought of.
This kind of exploring lore and stories leads me to better reading comprehension. I started to like reading things outside Elden Ring and started to read specific things for my job like code documentation, code bases, engineering books, etc.
Previously, i was not a “dive deeper person” who always learned specific things from scratch. I am a person who prefers to trial and error by directly creating some real projects which is not recommended because when we start projects we must understand how and why a thing happens and we cannot know that thing without reading documentation.
As i explored more about Elden Ring my level of enjoyment for reading increased as well, i started to read more books from my office books catalog and i can enjoy that reading activity more than before. I also could find better solutions for the problems that i faced while coding by just reading the documentation without asking AI or Stack Overflow.
Elden Ring Build and Its Implications for Problem-Solving
While playing Elden Ring you will be faced with different types of bosses, they have different move sets, weaknesses, strengths, etc. You mostly should have more than one build to face those bosses by changing your weapons, great rune, incantation, sorceries, or by just changing your build level by using larval tear. This leads me to be better at problem-solving by orchestrating any resources that i have to solve my problem when coding for office projects or on my projects.
With experience in modifying and combining multiple builds, weapons, talismans, etc, i can easily maintain multiple projects with multiple tech stacks by implementing discipline as when modifying and combining builds on Elden Ring. I just realized when trying something we don’t need to be perfect first, we can just throw a “trash” solution that works and we could reiterate our solutions before with a better approach so it can be worked and perfect at the same time. Same as when trying to combine builds on Elden Ring, we can just try to mix and match builds even though with silly weapons, talismans, etc (sometimes it can worked tho) and go to the boss room to fight them and when it fails then it needs more adjustment.
Never Give Up!!!
Elden Ring was the hardest game I’ve been played, the enemies and bosses are insane i can just stuck at one boss for 2 days. Every boss has different move sets, skills, and difficulty. At some bosses, you can die 1-2 times only, but at different bosses, you can die more than hundreds of times and start to lose your sanity when fighting them. I’d died from Malenia 78 times before I could win and honestly, it was the best thing that happened that day when I finally defeated Malenia.
When building applications, we often face bugs in our codes, it can be bugs that we already faced before or bugs we never faced. Fixing bugs today already become easier, with the bits of help from AI we can just type little prompts to fix our bugs. But, sometimes it could be harder when the bugs were edge cases that we never saw and Stack Overflow doesn’t have resources/solutions for those bugs it became more difficult to fix, however, these types of bugs will reward us with satisfaction after we finally fixed it same as when we fighting bosses on Elden Ring.
Conclusion
Playing Elden Ring and Programming can be difficult, but sometimes when we already know “what and how is going on” it can be fascinating in the end. And that is the reason why I spend time playing these games, learning about characters, stories, and lore.
I think playing Elden Ring was a funny way to improve my software engineering skills by connecting things.
I hope you can find some ways to be a better software engineer without burning out yourselves.
And togethaaa
