December 2016 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Games Played 2016 Edition

December 30, 2022December 30, 2016 by Belghast

First I want to take a quick moment to talk about the awesome avatar adorning the right side of this paragraph. Some time ago I talked about doing the Icecrown Challenge and to the best of my knowledge most of the folks I challenged have since completed their own and donated some money to the cause. I still feel slightly sorry for Mort who ended up taking almost 50 minutes to get through the raid because had apparently never actually raided during Wrath of the Lich King. I did the challenge because one… I end up doing Icecrown Citadel almost every week anyways, and two because of the weird connection that Ratsel and I just found out that we have. Then of course there is always the part that it is a good cause. Of all of the reasons however… none of them was to win any prizes but apparently I did. The prize I happened to win was the amazing Faebelina doing an avatar, and instead of my character I chose to have her do a “Me”. So I supplied her some images and set her loose in a specific direction… and largely wanted to see what she came up with on her own. The end result is something really interesting that so far everyone has said “yup, that looks like you”. In the end though I really need to get the hat, hoodie and shirt so I can cosplay myself. I am mostly using it on my “real life” accounts but I wanted to show it off nonetheless because I think it is really cool.

Full Spreadsheet Link

Last year I realized that with the whole daily blogging thing that I had a decent way of telling exactly what games I had played during the year. Like I often do I took to Google Sheets and started a spreadsheet trying to track what games I played during what months. This year I went sorta overboard with that concept and you see the image above as a result. Essentially if I talked about a game during a given month… I put a 1 in that square and ultimately colored it it. Then in the last column I did a calculation that added up all of the months that a given game appeared in… and as a result you have the sort above… by number of months played and then alphabetically. The first thing we can take away from this graphic is that there is no denying the fact that I am an online and MMO gamer. Based on the data above I played the following MMOs…

World of Warcraft – All Twelve Months
Destiny – 10 Months
Final Fantasy XIV – 10 Months
Rift – 8 Months
Diablo 3 – 6 Months
The Division – 5 Months
Guild Wars 2 – 4 Months
Overwatch – 4 Months
ArcheAge – 3 Months
Elder Scrolls Online – 3 Months

As far as non-online games that I played… you end up dropping down significantly into single digit territory with only a handful of games like Fallout 4, Skyrim, and No Man’s Sky making that repeat list. The big shocker for me is always seeing all the various singlets I end up playing throughout the year that I completely forget about. All told I played 57 different games during the year… which seems like a lot but is a bit down from last year and it’s 67 unique games. So I feel like the real tale of the year is just how much World of Warcraft and Destiny I wound up playing. Sure FFXIV is up there at 10 months but some of that is a technicality while I was subbed but only logging in once a week or every few weeks. Destiny and World of Warcraft really were constant things throughout the course of the year. This was the year I feel like I really learned to love WoW again, more than just a passing fancy that let me play with my friends. With the launch of Legion I was legitimately and unabashedly happy to be playing the game for the first time since the launch of Cataclysm. In fact Destiny dropped off the Radar only for the blip around the launch of Legion because I was just playing that game so damned much.

Even More Madness

Full Spreadsheet Link

The problem with spreadsheets is that they crave more data… and once I start down a path I tend to go into really insane territory. I had data that I had collected for 2015, and now data that I had collected for 2016. I wondered what would happen if I went all the way back to 2013, the year I first started the daily blogging experiment. Now of note… the 2013 data is super spotty given that I did not officially start the daily blogging thing until April. However I managed to piece together some data based on my archive of screenshots mixed with actual data from the blog. The end result is a view of the games I have played since 2013 copied into my weird google sheets format. Once again you can see that I really am an MMO Gamer overall. The top ten games played in total number of months is as follows…

World of Warcraft – 37 Months
Final Fantasy XIV – 35 Months
Rift – 35 Months
Elder Scrolls Online – 24 Months
Destiny – 19 Months
Diablo 3 – 16 Months
ArcheAge – 13 Months
Wildstar – 12 Months
Everquest II – 11 Months
Guild Wars 2 – 9 Months
Trove – 9 Months

Of note… Trove and Guild Wars 2 are technically tied for 10th place with the same number of months. The only one that gets a little weird is Elder Scrolls Online, because I am counting time spent playing in the Alpha and Beta process which I could not of course talk about on my blog. However I entered that process in February of 2013 and we had one or two events a month through launch. During that four year period I played 172 different unique games. Again however if you look at the distribution of titles played… you have to go pretty far on the list until you get into single player territory with Minecraft, Fallout 4 and Final Fantasy V leading there. Minecraft technically can be a multiplayer game, but generally speaking I go on single player building binges. Final Fantasy V pretty much accounts for all of the years I have gotten talked into participating in the Four Job Fiesta thanks to Ashgar.

At some point I want to true up the data even further by going through my screenshot archive and sorting it by dates. I have literally every screenshot I have taken over the last several years archived and sorted by game sitting on a network attached storage device. I am maybe a little obsessive about such things, especially since screenshots tend to play such a large role in my blog. I like having a deep archive of things that I can go back to for getting reference material. From that I should be able to get a few more games that maybe I played but didn’t actually write about. However I think for the most part this represents a pretty true picture of my gameplay for the last four years. It took awhile to compile, but much of it was done while hanging out downstairs on the laptop as we watched something on television. The end result gives me a really interesting tool to use going forward, and I plan on keeping the spreadsheet up to date as I go through 2017. The biggest thing we can take away from this however is that… firstly I am a creature of habit and keep returning to the same games over and over. Secondly I tend to be one of those players that keeps returning to MMOs that I have played in the past to see how they are getting along. Lastly… I really do not play the number of single player games that I would like to play, mostly because while playing them I get lonely. It feels strange to roam around a world without lots of other people sharing it with me.

Tunneling Addiction

December 28, 2016 by Belghast

I think we need to talk. I have a significant problem on my hands… and that problem is Minecraft. What I mean by that is that I have been obsessing about the game since Christmas day, and wound up staying up until 1:30 last night. I apparently was digging more tunnels that never seem to end… and just when they appear that they might… I find a way to start a new one. I’ve said before how my bases in Minecraft tend to be more a complex of interconnected tunnels and underground areas than really anything big and above ground… and in truth that is happening again in a big way. The project I happened to be obsessed with last night, however was my treasure room.

When I play Minecraft, it is less that I am willfully building structures and more like discovering them in the existing land. I almost always start out exactly the same way… which is burrowing into the side of a nice large hill with the purpose of creating a temporary shelter to survive that first night. However what inevitably happens is that I then use that cave as a sort of starting point for burrowing deep into the hillside and connecting up a bunch of disconnected areas. Then it is almost as though I am uncovering a lost civilization… and connecting up pieces to create a former empire or something. Which lead to the thought that I really needed a proper warehouse/treasure room… and where better to put it than deep under the ocean. I have a dock of sorts and off of it is a large building hovering out over the water… which then leads to my obsession of the night which is a large stairwell shaft that leads down into the water and underground beneath the ocean finally ending up in a room with tons of chests for storage…. and then apparently I dug a shaft back up to create a skylight of sorts.

There was then a point last night when I realized that I had no real way of getting back out of my tunnel system other than jumping from one of the many bridges I have built. As a result I constructed this entrance point of sorts that leads out onto the mainland… and being me I then apparently started off a whole new tunnel complex to the left of the above screenshot. Now my previous tunnels had quickly ended up in the ocean… where I built some sort of an outpost. One of which literally is a staircase that goes deep down into the ocean and all the way down to bedrock. That was a bit of a challenge to build and I ultimately flipped on creative mode since I had to be underwater for large chunks of time during its construction. It is cool however because as you are going down the staircase I have windows that allow you to see out into the ocean and it is really cool when the sun is coming up and the water is swarming with squid.

This new tunnel project however that has consumed most of today… is apparently going off in a direction where there is nothing but land and mountains. So as a result each time the tunnel has broken free of the mountain briefly I have created a little outpost or at least an exit into whatever area happens to be surrounding it. There are roughly five of these… and another that I discovered yet another ravine while tunneling, so I took time to build a ladder all the way down to its floor. The problem with my tunneling obsession is that I have zero clue where exactly I am going or if I will ever reach a point where I consider it “done”. This is ultimately the challenge I face each time I boot back up Minecraft, is that I get caught up in a project that I never quite know when it is going to let go of me. However since it had literally been a few years since I last built anything in the game… I am guessing I had a lot of tunneling pent up inside of me.

A Shit Year for Idols

December 27, 2016 by Belghast

In the microcosm that is my life today was a pretty good one. My wife and I spent it running around Northwest Arkansas… more specifically the sprawling corridor that connects Fayetteville to Bentonville and all points between. We have family there and quite honestly… its just a nice place to go visit every now an then. We always say we should do it more often… but in truth we seem to get there once a year… almost exclusively over Christmas break. However while running around and enjoying myself… I was also processing the news that this asshole of a year 2016… took yet another awesome person from us. So now that I am finally home I thought I would write a thoroughly bummer post and talk about all of the amazing people we lost this year… or at least a small list of them.

@belghast its just a sign were getting older combined with the speed news can travel. this same kinda of thing happens every generation

— Squirrel Pope (@squirrelpope) December 25, 2016

The other day I commented about just how many people this year has stolen from us and my friend Squirrel gave some sage advice. Firstly that we are getting old, and that the people that are dying… are finally folks we looked up to as kids or at least came to know through out our lives. I remember my parents going through this same phase, and I guess it is my time. They now joke that they attend more funerals than anything else… and since I have gone through the “everyone is getting married” phase, and the “everyone is having kids” phase… I guess I am beginning to enter that territory as well. Since the Idols we grow up with tend to be a generation ahead of us… I guess that it makes sense we are entering that territory with them first. Tonight I am going to talk a little bit about some names that we lost this year.

David Bowie

This one hit me way harder than I expected it to. Bowie was one of those presences that always just sort of existed as a beacon that you could literally be anything you wanted to be. Throughout my life I watched this man re-invent himself every few years and still seem just as genuine in doing so as he did the very first time. He was a force of constant evolution that made me realize that we never had to stop growing as people. Tin Machine still will stand out as probably my favorite of his phases… but I can find something from literally every one of his phases that I can relate to.

Alan Rickman

Such an amazing actor that I am still pissed that this shitty year conspired to rob us of. Sure he was Snape, but before that he was Hans Gruber, the voice of god, a hair stylist, and so many other roles that always played out in unique and interesting ways. By Grabthar’s hammer, by the Sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged!

Garry Shandling

This is the theme to Garry’s show, the opening theme to Garry’s show… Garry called me up last night and asked if I could write his theme song. I grew up during that weird time during the early days of the Fox Network… and one of those early shows was the Garry Shandling show and I loved it so much. He has a sense of humor that seemed to match mine and he even played a great bad guy… as evidenced from Winter Soldier.

Prince

Now I am not the biggest Prince fan in the world, but no one can doubt how much of a force he was in music. So insanely talented, and even though he become the brunt of many punchlines during the era when he shifted to being an unpronounceable symbol, he managed to continue trucking on and making solid music. I guess the biggest thing about him is that he was an individual much in the same way as Bowie was, and served as this alternate focal point to say you could grow up to be any damned thing you wanted to be. All of his music holds up today in the same way as the day it was released.

Morley Safer

For me at least this man represented seasoned journalism in a way that probably few could. I grew up with him as the face and voice of so many stories on 60 minutes. In many ways it feels like the end of an era… and in this political cycle where the truth seemed not to matter much… we are far worse off for it.

Kenny Baker

This was the first of the Star Wars cast that we lost during 2016, and for those who might not know who he is… he was the actor behind R2-D2. For me he will always be Fidget from Time Bandits, or honestly a long slew of roles he played.

Gene Wilder

I am pretty sure if you did not like Gene Wilder you did not have a soul. He was the only Willy Wonka as far as I am concerned. There is an entire chunk of my childhood devoted to laughing at movies like Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein.

Leonard Cohen

So if anyone is going to single out a single song by Leonard Cohen… they are going to bring up Hallelujah. It has been covered time and time again… because in truth it is just that damned good. It would be hard to find a more perfect song in composition or lyrics that conveys a certain feeling of lost innocence and longing and still a tinge of hope for better things to come. I was late to know about him to be honest, because it was not until the Natural Born Killers soundtrack that I even knew he really existed. There was something about his voice however that was just so damned unique and intoxicating. I am personally partial to The Stranger Song.

Carrie Fisher

This one is possibly the hardest right now… because it is also the freshest. It is impossible to put into words or adequately explain how much Star Wars meant to me growing up. Luke and Leia were almost family members, and as those characters shifted into the very real world Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher they almost felt like the Aunt and Uncle you wish you had. There has been a certain pride as I followed each of their careers, and it was absolutely glorious and triumphant to see both in Force Awakens this time last year. Star Wars was the second movie I saw in my life… and in many ways it was the character of Princess Leia that taught me that Princesses didn’t really need saving in the first place. While that might sound cheesy it was a powerful lesson that I carried with me from that point on. The real Carrie Fisher though… was a freaking badass. I angrily shook my fist at 2016 when she had her heart attack and told it that the year could not have her. This year really is horrible, and I am saddened that it won.

There are so many others that I didn’t mention for one reason or another… but earlier I paged through a list of some hundred or so deaths this year… and so many of them were really important figures that we lost. With each one I think there was a certain feeling of “it can’t get any worse right?”… but no it continued to get worse as the year went on. I am ready to put a close to this chapter and hope the next year will start to get even the slightest bit better. In the immortal words of Ripley… take off and nuke the entire year from orbit… it’s the only way to be sure.

Christmas Basebuilding

December 26, 2016 by Belghast

My friend Grace calls today Super Xmas… or the day that you get to chill out and rest after the manic running around that happens around attempting to make everyone happy on Christmas and Christmas Eve. This absolutely used to be the case for me, but over the last few years Christmas has become a much more low key affair. I’ve talked a bit about the concept of an anchor household, but for me most of those are now gone. Instead we have to sort of make our own new traditions, and one of those recently has consisted of going out to dinner on Christmas Eve with my folks, and then coming back to our house and doing gifts together. For years there used to be a strict schedule of… my folks and mothers side of the family on Christmas Eve, and my Dads side of the Family early early Christmas morning… then my wife’s family for Christmas lunch and eventually another gathering Christmas evening. Over the years deaths in the family have taken the corner stone of each of those gatherings to where there really isn’t a whole lot going on during the holidays on either of our families.

There were of course a few options… one of which was the household that introduced me to the term “titty milk” a few years back and we opted out of that one. Instead for the most part we just chilled out at home and enjoyed the fact that it was freaking 70 degrees outside for Christmas. In the afternoon between thunderstorms we went out for a walk, which is something I need to start doing every day in an attempt to get myself prepared for all of the walking that is going to happen at Pax South. As far as gaming goes… I spent a lot of time not actually gaming yesterday but more in an extended state of transitioning between games… as I checked twitter and surfed the web. I did play a significant amount of the Sparrow Racing League, but largely playing remotely through the laptop. I am getting surprisingly good at dealing with the input lag that comes from playing PS4 via PC, so much so that it actually takes a bit to get adjusted to using the real console again. I am now in this place where I need two items to hit 400 light… Ghost and Heavy. I’ve since gotten two Exotic Heavy Engrams… but both of them decoded to 399 light instead of bumping on up to 400. This seems like a massive bug because every engram seems to decode at 399 rather than giving me what is usually a level bump. As far as the ghost goes… I tried some more forge only to have it bug out on me with the waves sitting at 100% for 10 mins and then eventually failing out without actually spawning the boss.

Another thing that happened yesterday is that I fell into a giant Minecraft shaped hole as we hung out and watched some shows on demand. It has been several years since I had legitimately played Minecraft and as a result I went back to pure vanilla for the moment at least while I get my bearings. Before long I was back into my standard operating procedure which is digging a big hole and then eventually erecting some large structures. I decided to have my main base out over the open water with a big tunnel leading from what is ultimately turning into my quarry. I used the seed “BelChillingChristmas2016” and wound up with a pretty cool spawn. My original cave opened into a giant chasm underground and I have been building the infrastructure needed to explore it more properly. I wound up digging down into the rock and laying a bunch of ladders as I went which ultimately allowed me to create a shaft straight down to the chasm floor. I have a hut of sorts down at ground level that lets me get down there in relative safety and at least see what monsters happen to be around.

I plan on building a dock of sorts under my base that should allow me to launch boats easily for exploring new areas, and I also plan on building another big land bridge/tunnel to the other nearby coast giving me access to new areas. Right now a lot of my time has been spent simply quarrying cobblestone and hollowing out the mountain side for that purpose. There is a bunch of gold in the chasm, but I don’t really have much need for it yet. I have not seen any of the more useful materials like Diamond or Red Stone so at some point I am probably going to have to do the whole dig down to bedrock thing and start some branch mining. At this very moment however I am trying to expand my base of operations and make more safe space for me to travel in. Minecraft is one of those games that triggers my base building instinct to the extreme, and I am ultimately falling back into the familiar patterns I do when I always play this game. In truth I should be playing Diablo 2 since we plan on recording the game of the month show this coming week… but for now I am indulging myself in a little bit of structured madness.