March 2019 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Friday Smorgasbord

March 29, 2019 by Belghast

Anthem Loot Issues

First up in the Friday Smorgasbord is some more Anthem discussion. I have been playing pretty much every night since the patch drops and at a bare minimum completing the steps required to get a key to unlock a “cosmetic” chest. That is in quotes largely because I am still getting way more useless tier 1 materials than I am actually getting decals or materials. At least they came out and stated that there are no armor pieces in the Elysian Chest, which is I think in part what we were all hoping to get. The vinyls have all been super lackluster at least compared to some of the other vinyls available in the game. On the loot front there is an article from Paul Tassi at Forbes that pretty much sums up what is wrong with the game right now… it is literally all about the loot. He suggests increasing the drop rates by 300 to 400% and then still questions if that would be enough for the sort of game Anthem actually is… but the Devs apparently don’t understand that it is. RNG can be amazing or it can be a harsh mistress. For example Wednesday night I had a grand ole time where I managed to rack up three new legendaries during the course of the evening… a component actually for the right class from a GM2 Legendary Mission, and then two new weapons… one each from GM2 Strongholds. This still felt stingy to me, but at least was something. Last night however I walked away with nothing really of use from doing two legendary contracts and a stronghold all at Grandmaster 2 level.

There are so many things in this game that just feel bad as the player once you reach what currently passes for an end game. The truth is there is nothing that would normally be classified as end game. The game has no PVP so no super serious equivalent of the Trials of the Nine would ever exist in Anthem. Similarly there is nothing along the lines of a Nightfall and there is most definitely not a raid that can be completed weekly with a group of other players for a shot at amazing rewards. There are no weekly bounties that you can complete that guarantees you an item that will be an upgrade, and we are completely missing something similar to exotics that have a guaranteed curated roll. So what is left is a lot of grinding and perfecting your builds, which is maddening when it is entirely dependent on the slow trickle of Masterworks and Legendaries. I have friends that are doing GM2 nightly… that have yet to see ANY Legendaries and consider me extremely lucky that I have had multiple. While the game desperately needs a true end game… the more pressing problem will always be the loot and until they open the floodgates no one is really ever going to be completely happy.

Divine Beast Vah Ruta

I eventually took a break last night and returned to my Cemu Breath of the Wild play session. When I was last playing I had been working my way into the general area of the Zora kingdom to tackle the first of many Divine Beasts. I am not sure if there is a chosen order, but the furthest I managed to get with this game before setting it back down again… was to head in this direction. So last night I made it through the sequence of annoying lightning attackers to get to Zora land and made my way about collecting Lightning Arrows. I set about collecting the arrows while avoiding the Lynel… which went fairly quickly given that pretty much every tree in the vicinity had at least three stuck in it. There were a few times I had to duck out of view and wait but managed to get it taken care of then glided my way down to where I was meeting Sidon to make the run on the Divine Beast. I made it through the sequence surrounding disabling the “defenses” and started on the first level of the dungeon before I finally called it for the night. I do like that Breath of the Wild pretty much just lets you do a save state wherever you happen to be in the world. I greatly appreciate its mobile roots allowing me to pretty much abandon ship whenever I need to. So tonight I am likely to return and actually finish the first of the Divine Beasts because I am finding the gameplay way more compelling when playing it on the PC… I am weird like that.

Borderlands 3

I had to work yesterday and was in meetings… so I completely missed what apparently was a mess of a reveal at Pax East. However I did manage to watch the nice and pristine YouTube videos later that afternoon. I have to admit at first I was not super impressed with what I saw, but largely this was due to my own false expectations. In my mind when I think of Borderlands 1 and 2 Trailers… I am actually thinking of the Game Intro sequences which are absolute masterpieces. I forgot what a Gearbox Borderlands reveal trailer actually looked like… and judging it by those standards this one is a better trailer than the ones that came with either 1 or 2. For example the original Borderlands Trailer… feels absolutely nothing like what we think of as the Borderlands Style. Then with Borderlands 2 we pretty much got a very similar type of reveal trailer as we just saw with Borderlands 3… like shockingly similar. So by those comparisons… Borderlands 3 comes out just fine.

I feel like there were probably story beats that I completely missed because I never played the Telltale Games spinoff game. What I was hoping for was some semblance of the story beats that we would be seeing in the new game. For me what makes Borderlands as a series special is a mix of the interesting characters, quirky humor, almost MMO style questing, intersting gunplay, the faucet of loot, and a bunch of interesting character class choices. The trailer doesn’t really give me much to go on other than there are a bunch of guns… one lady can become shiva, another pilots a mech and then you have two gunner classes that while visually different didn’t do much to actually distinguish themselves from what we saw. There were characters shown that I recognized as being part of the Tales from the Borderlands series but that I don’t know much about. I would be lying if I said I would not be playing it, but I am also not nearly as hyped as I thought I would have been at this point. I am sure as more tangible information comes out about the game I will get more so.

I am guessing based on what are the villains that we are going to see a way more raider-centric storyline than we did with Borderlands 2. The biggest problem with my general sense of disappointment after watching the trailer for the first time… is that I was ultimately expecting this instead.

Monster Hunter Belghast and Kenzie

March 28, 2019 by Belghast

This morning we are going to mostly talk about this amazing comissions that I just got back from my good friend Ammo. For the uninitiated she effectively is the unofficial artist of this blog, and what I mean by that is if given the chance I spend a lot of time paying her to do artwork for me of my various versions of “Belghast”. For reference here are some of the other “Belghasts” she has done for me in the past.

Basically… she has drawn a lot of my characters over the years and I knew at some point I wanted her to do a version of the character that I mostly run around as in Monster Hunter World. Basically I operate in two modes with Ammo… either I give her months of lead time… or I beg her to rush something out the door. She has been super gracious in both cases, but the MHW Bel was something I had wanted for awhile but our schedules finally lined up to where we could give enough attention to both at the same time. I prepared several gigs worth of reference photos of both my character and my trusty Palico Kenzie… which is named after my very attention hogging middle cat.

I technically have an art degree but I just never really sketch anything these days. However occasionally I am able to sketch something together quickly that denotes the sort of feeling I had in mind for the piece. I did this with the Elder Scrolls Online commission as well and in both cases it worked out perfectly. However the posing with the Monster Hunter World piece is phenomenal and perfectly illustrated what I had in my minds eye. For reference the above screenshot is one of the ones I sent over to Ammo to work from. She nailed the feel of Extermination’s Edge the Rarity 8 Nergigante Longsword that I spend most of my time wielding. Additionally she got the feel of my usual outfit which involves a Dober Chest, Teostra Arms, the Eyepatch and a bunch of other gear obscured by the Samurai cosmetic waist and legs. This is more or less my signature look unless I am going for a specific set designed for a specific encounter.

One of the best parts about this commission is that it allowed me to correct something that I simply could not do within Monster Hunter World. This is Kenzie, who as you can see is an adorable butt and also a tortoise shell calico or “tortie” for short. The Palico creation system is just not complicated enough to do that sort of a design, so as a result I am stuck with a weird version of a dark calico to try and do my best to represent her in game. Ammo was of course not constrained by those limitations and when she asked me for reference photos for Palico Kenzie… I sent her a bunch of my girl here instead. I think she nailed the feel of Kenzie’s orange nose blaze perfectly.

Ultimately I have plans for this image that won’t quite come to fruition until a little closer to the actual anniversary of the blog which occurs April 17th. I am not exactly sure when it will happen, mostly whenever I get time to mess around with things. I feel like it is time for this blog to have a bit of a face lift so in theory one weekend there will be a rapid sequence of changes one day. Firstly I wanted to make today’s post to really dive into how the commission process has worked for me personally in the past, and how Ammo and I tend to coordinate on the various artwork that adorns my corner of the world. I also want to do a shameless plug given that she does such an amazing job and has done artwork for so many people that I know. She did an amazing holiday card that Chestnut sent out this year… that I don’t think I have actually seen a digital copy of that I can share here. Essentially… she does great work and you should totally use her skills for your artwork needs.

Here is a Giant Dump of How to See Ammo’s Amazing Artwork and Even Purchase Some of It!

Twitter
Ammosart.com
General Tumblr Blog
Art Only Tumblr Blog
Pinterest
YouTube
Society 6
Red Bubble
Tee Public – Has the 7th Anniversary Aggronaut Shirt!
Ko-Fi

I know she keeps pretty busy with commissions so you would have to check with her directly to see if she has any bandwidth. On the 7th Anniversary Aggronaut shirt I didn’t want any cash from that, but did want one for my own personal use so I asked her to throw it up on one of her storefronts. Just to make sure this is out there… we have no financial relationship at all other than the fact that I spend money getting her to make cool artwork for me. I am just one of those people that will rabidly promote the things that I am into… and Ammo is the best. There are a lot of artists in what I would call the “Warcraft” style, and they are all quality without a doubt… but Ammo being roughly my age comes from a different genre… namely Comic Books and as a result I love the more comic style she has developed over the years.

Losing Hope

March 27, 2019 by Belghast

Despite my own admonishment yesterday morning I allowed myself to get a little hyped about the possibility of finally getting to cut loose in Anthem and make progress again. I should not have done this, because once again… Anthem is a buggy mess following the 1.0.4 update. This starts early when you are greeted with an empty news screen, which isn’t the end of the world but was sort of a harbinger of events to come. The patch included a bunch of quality of life improvements, some of which exist like the summary screen you are seeing above showing all of my gear and sort of giving us the beginnings of what I hope will ultimately become a stats page. Additionally there is no load time to get into the Forge and you can access it anywhere within Fort Tarsis just by bringing up the escape menu. However the whole being able to see what World Events are active thing does not appear to be in the game, because in none of the four or five freeplay sessions I joined last night could I actually see any events up and active.

One of the big tweaks that was supposed to be coming was an increase in the general quantity of good loot that we would be getting from doing stuff… namely anything that rewarded a chest or from the bosses at the end of Strongholds. This appears to have completely broken and now those Stronghold bosses are no longer rewarding the guaranteed Masterwork at all, and instead just seem to give you a fist full of purples and blues. I spent a significant amount of time on Hard mode running content with Neph last night and something seems to be broken there as well. Previously when running with friends on a sub Grandmaster difficulty I would see a lot of those “Starter” Masterworks dropping. In spite of doing three Strongholds and a could of contracts I saw zero Masterworks which was previously unheard of… just doing anything on Hard seemed to reward me a handful of those starter weapons. I did manage to get a single Legendary but it didn’t actually drop anywhere that I could see it and instead was the harbinger of another bug… apparently players can pick up your loot and then stuff just randomly shows up in your inventory. I mean I am thankful in this case and in truth I think loot should work more like Destiny in that if it drops it automatically gets tossed into your inventory without having to pick up anything. Sidenote… I took this photo because if you notice three characters are the same base model standing side by side which is a little uncanny valley.

The other big thing that was touted with this patch was the introduction of Elysian Chests at the end of Stronghold missions. These were supposed to sweeten the pot and make us want to start running strongholds again with a touted inventory of a couple hundred cosmetic items available for us to find. When they were announcing them they stated that there was also a chance of crafting materials and gave the example of 30 Masterwork Embers… which seemed like a reasonable trade for a cosmetic item. Getting 30 Chimeric Alloy on the other hand is not worthy of giving up a cosmetic and just feels like shit given that this is the most basic generic level 1 crafting material that you can gather up spending five minutes running around in freeplay. It feels bad wasting your daily key on something like this, and there are thread floating about showing that four chests were opened and all four gave low tier crafting materials.

I did however manage to get a Vinyl later in the night, but that just spawned another bug with the patch. When you get something cosmetic from an Elysian Chest, it won’t show up in your inventory until you have logged out of the game and logged back in. Even then… I am not sure if Overcast is bugged or what but it doesn’t seem to appear on my Lancer at all so not sure what it is actually adding but it certainly looks nothing like that icon… which I am assuming is a generic icon for all cosmetic rewards given that it shows a bunch of materials in the background. Additionally this patch was supposed to allow us to stay in flight longer… but it feels like it has had the opposite effect given that I no longer have the longevity in air that I did before and seemingly diving no longer lowers heat as much as it did. Basically… we got 1.0.4 and already desperately need 1.0.5 to fix the shit that was broken again this time.

The problem for me is that I am ultimately losing hope that they will manage to pull their shit together. What I used to view as being scrappy and responsive to issues… I am just now seeing as a very sloppy development methodology that apparently involves little to no quality assurance. The fact that loot was bugged at the end of Strongholds… should never have made it into production on a patch that was touted as fixing Strongholds. It took exactly one time running a Stronghold to notice “hey… we are not getting our guaranteed loot”. The fact that loot is still as stingy as it is now is a complete sin, given that was the beat being pounded fervently like a drum from day one… that Diablo only works if the loot flows like water allowing you to account for the completely useless items that you get and shard. What we are left with is signs that Bioware has nothing up their sleeve and are just trying to eek out for as long with the limited an repetitive content that is available, and rationing of Legendary and Masterwork drops is seemingly their master plan in trying to make this content last until they can create more.

I had fun playing with Neph but there was a slight pang of bitterness as I didn’t even see starter Masterworks as was regularly the case when dropping down to the lower tiers before. Right now I am contemplating starting a brand new Pilot just so I can have a set of Javelins that match the level ranges of my friend still down in the lower rungs, hoping to maybe be able to get them up in level enough to run the higher stuff with me eventually. Tam, Ash, Kodra, Waren and Shiana have all moved back to Warframe which is apparently having a great streak of content to engage with… and Thalen, Grace and Neph are all way down in the level range and fighting against the fact that there is limited queuing available sub Grandmaster 1. Then there is the problem that if you want to solo this content you will end up getting effectively half of the experience as if you were grouping… because the Alliance bonus matters that much. Neph for example played the game entirely solo other than a bit of running around and doing World Quests and as a result finished the main story and all of the side content at level 15… whereas I was something closer to 22 from never not grouping.

I am getting frustrated at this point, and super close to just giving up. I want Anthem to be a great game and in some aspects it is… and in other aspects the Bioware team does not seem to understand what sort of game they want it to be. After seeing the second failed patch in a row that seemingly caused more havoc than it cured… I am starting to fear that we will have to wait for whatever this games “Taken King” or “Patch 1.8” ends up being, when they finally grasp how to make it fun and rewarding. The gameplay feels fun… but the rewards feel like a mockery of what they should be.

Anthem Patch Day

March 26, 2019 by Belghast

Today is in theory a big patch day for Anthem that should be clearing up a lot of the ills that the game has. However I am not exactly holding my breath. What I mean by that is I am certain that there will be in fact a patch today, Game Update 1.0.4. What I am doubting is if it will fundamentally improve the situation for those of us stuck in the limbo between Grandmaster 1 and being able to feel viable in Grandmaster 2 and beyond. What is needed to fix this is Legendaries, and not only that but viable Legendaries. Both patch 1.0.3 and the server side loot tweaks were supposed to give us some remedy, and while I have seen a greater frequency in Masterwork drops it has done nothing to help fill my screen with lime green. Ultimately knowing that today’s patch was on its way served to disincentive me from playing the game at all… because why should I invest any time at all in a largely broken loot system when if I just waited a week there would in theory be some fixes.

Game Update 1.0.4 for #AnthemGame will release Tuesday, March 26th on all platforms. We'll have Update Notes tomorrow as well to go along with the download going live.

FYI: We also have scheduled server maintenance tomorrow from 6:30am – 8:30am PDT/9:30am – 11:30am EDT as well.

— Andrew Johnson (@UNTDrew) March 25, 2019

I think where I am with this game is that I really enjoy the moment to moment game play, but now that the progression train has slowed I am struggling to stay invested given that there is such a limited pool of content available to players. I think the Elysian Caches will help somewhat because it gives a long tailed chase mechanism… and quite frankly what better reward is there than things that make your Javelin look awesome. So that alone will make Strongholds worth running again. Additionally there are the Legendary missions that should produce some replayability of existing content and given how enjoyable some of those story missions were… I can see that helping as well. Quality of life changes like being able to see what World Events are active at any given time will also be a welcome change. The main problem I foresee is that the game really needs fresh content to add to the mix, because as it stands three Strongholds just isn’t enough… when a good deal of us have every line of dialog in them all memorized at this point. I would prefer never to hear again about not wanting that omelet.

I will of course be checking it out tonight and I am hoping that I am wrong, but I am sort of trying to tamp down my expectations so I don’t turn into one of the heaps of rage that inhabit the main reddit. Once again I highly recommend LowSodiumAnthem if you are hoping to stay a fan of this game rather than wading into the mire of hatred of the official Reddit. Bioware Devs post on both locations.

What I wound up spending most of my time last night doing however was playing some more Breath of the Wild via Cemu. The screenshots don’t exactly do it justice of showing off just how damned good this game looks running in 4K resolution. I am consistently impressed by just how good it works, but then again… the developers of Cemu have been tweaking and refining this for roughly two years now with a lot of community modding support that adds in compatibility fixes. I’ve surpassed where I was progress wise from the Switch and have put in around nine hours of gameplay so far, almost all of it stable. The instabilities thusfar have involved encountering something I have not seen yet and having the emulator pause to build shader cache. There are in theory downloadable shader caches that would fix this problem… but I have not really spent any time investigating how to get my hands of them.

Essentially everything about this process is sort of caveat emptor… but seeing as I have done this level of nonsense many times in the past it didn’t worry me too much. Suffice today however there has been copious amounts of virus scanning before I interacted with anything that I acquired in this process. This is probably the first time however that I have seen modern emulation give a game that is on a current platform a run for its money… or in this case greatly improving the visuals. I know there is similar magic you can do with a 3DS emulator, but thusfar I have not really had the horsepower to really make those games perform to their fullest at 4K resolutions. However if you are interested in that sort of nonsense then I would point you at the Simply Austin Youtube channel to see examples of what can be done. It is so bizarre to me how far emulation has come from the days of me trying to play Final Fantasy V on ZSNES and having to apply a frame skip to get some semblance of something playable, to being able to run modern games on high end PCs.

Please note… that while I totally support emulation, I don’t do so as a dodge to getting free games. I have a closet full of classic game systems, and in the case of both Cemu and Citra the Wii U and 3DS emulators respectively I have owned all of the games that I have tried playing. Especially in the era of struggling game studios… they need you buying the games instead of figuring out ways to get free copies. I didn’t exactly have clean hands throughout my high school and college years, but now I think in part I buy so many games as a way of making up for my former warez peddling past. If Nintendo for some reason started releasing these games on PC… I would likely lose all interest in emulating them in the first place. However I somehow doubt that is ever going to happen, and as a result… Nintendo consoles will always be the most widely supported emulation platforms.