landmark Archives - Page 3 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Uniblade Get

June 4, 2014 by Belghast

Scrounging for Copper

The above picture pretty much accurately represents the last several times I have played Landmark. Generally speaking it is on a Tuesday evening when I realize that my claim upkeep will be running out shortly. So I log in and make a mad dash around the area surrounding my claim to scrounge up enough copper to pay the upkeep for another week. Generally speaking I only spend just enough time in game to gather the 4800 copper I believe that is required to unlock another 8 days of upkeep. It really wasn’t until last night that this process started to grate on my nerves, and I began to question what exactly I am trying to protect. In theory I could get my claim repossessed and be free of this burden… but as of yet I have not wanted to give up my “prime real estate” next to the spires.

I guess the thing is I haven’t been super into the game since the end of Alpha and the wipe that lead into Closed Beta. My previous claim I was extremely happy with, this one I am not sure quite what to do with it. It is this hulking monstrosity that I have zero desire to decorate further. I have reached a point where Landmark just isn’t that fun for me right now, or more so there just isn’t enough “game” there yet. What they have is this great rules driven building game, but after a point building stuff becomes stale. I look at all the harvest time I would have to sink in to be able to build the things that I would want to build… and I simply am unwilling to devote the time. I feel like maybe once combat goes in, that the game might be more tangible for me, that it might feel like there is a purpose to what I am doing. It was amazing just how strong of an incentive “protecting against monster attacks” was to spur on my building sprees in Minecraft. For the time being however I am seriously considering harvesting up all of the stone and other resources used on my claim and just letting it get repossessed this week. That way I could mark one game off my list until it becomes interesting again.

No More Loot Boxes

Another decision I have made is to drop my Rift patron status. I’ve subscribed to this game for pretty much all of the time it has been out on the market save for about three months. There is so much that I still like about Rift, but at the same time I just have no drive to play it. I have a ritual of logging in every Wednesday to collect the weekly patron gift, opening it… seeing if I get any cool armor and then logging right back out. Since I have geared both my Warrior and my Rogue in this fashion… and I have faltered at leveling my Cleric, I just can’t justify keeping up the patron status for a game I really have not played much at all in the last year. I have 90 days left of patron status, so I might in that time change my mind, but presently I just don’t have enough people to play the game with to make it worth my while.

One of the things that worked out differently than I had hoped with Patron status is the way that loyalty and cash shop currency accrued. That first year when I picked up a year long subscription, I had a massive amount of loyalty and a ton of cash shop currency to blow through as part of the free to play conversion. I made the mistake of assuming that the same thing would happen when I picked up this past years patron status. One of the things I expect out of a free to play “subscription” plan is a month allotment of cash shop currency. Since this isn’t a thing in Rift, I really don’t see much benefit in keeping up the Patron status. Additionally I expected another huge boost to my loyalty level from subbing for another year, and that didn’t happen either. For the time being I will simply play the game like a free to play player does until they give me reason to subscribe again.

Uniblade Get

The last several days in Wildstar have been about one thing and one thing only… trying to get to level 15 and trying to accumulate enough currency to buy a mount when I ding. As a result I have completely ignored the crafting system and sold everything I could possibly sell in an attempt to buy my precious mount. Was it worth the effort? Well the jury is still out on that one, but I do like the looks of my Uniblade. I figured this was the obvious choice for a Chua Engineer, especially since the “Hamster Ball” mount just did not feel dignified. Right now the mount feels a little lackluster since it is only a 15% boost. However it is cool that you can still sprint on a mount and that feels awesome as your engine revs up and such when you do it. The physics of the Uniblade are a little weird, and I have to say I would have honestly rather had the Exiles Grinder mount instead… but all in all I am happy. One bug I encountered is that apparently in order to buy the mount you have to have enough currency to cover the undiscounted price. This means instead of the 1 gold 15 silver price listed you actually have to have something like 1 gold 65 silver to be able to cover the full price… even though it will still only charge you the 1 gold 15 silver.

Now that I have obtained my goal, I am going to be far more interested in random grouping. I kind of wanted to meet up with people last night and group, but I was so focused on grinding out my level and trying to get as many saleable items as possible. This meant doing much lower content than I should have been doing, since it rewards less experience but I was more likely to accumulate a lot of saleable items in the process. One of the interesting things about Wildstar is that unlike World of Warcraft, you only seem to gain guild experience while grouped with other guildies. This means that in order to unlock all of the perks like the guild bank, we are going to have to group together and go do content. Now that I have level 15 I am really looking forward to trying the first dungeon… and I am imagining that it rewards a ton of guild experience. My next goal is to find a decent weapon, as I am still using some random drop green. My hope is that whatever dungeon quests exist I will maybe get a blue weapon from them. I also need to do some research into which tanking abilities I need to do a dungeon.

Wildstar Groupage

Since we are taking the night off from Elder Scrolls Online my goal tonight is to get some Wildstar grouping going. The goal is to resume the Cyrodil nights next Wednesday, and I hope to play quite a bit over the weekend as well. I still want to see so much in Elder Scrolls, but face it… this is launch week for a new game, and for the most part folks are going to be playing it. Tonight I want to focus on getting a group going with some Alliance of Awesome guildies and trying to gain lots of guild currency. Zero clue what we will actually be doing, but here is hoping we can find another world boss like we did the other night. If we have enough people it would be awesome to pop our heads into a dungeon.

#Landmark #Rift #Wildstar

Too Many Games

May 30, 2014May 29, 2014 by Belghast

I’m a Cheater

Once again I am doing what I consider cheating… which is writing up a post at night that I intend to post in the morning. Basically tomorrow is another one of those “ride in together” days, because directly after work we have a big end of school cookout thing to go to. So I simply won’t have much time to do my faff about verbally thing tomorrow morning. As such I am staging a post tonight, and doing the same thing everyone else… but for whatever reason I feel like I am somehow betraying the ritual by doing. Today’s topic I have been kicking around for awhile, so I figure this is as good of a time to spring it on my adoring readers… look I like to pretend I have adoring readers okay.

Too Many Games

Right now things have reached a sort of critical mass with me, and there are entirely too damned many games right now that I want to be playing. This could not have hit at a worse time considering how busy the tail end of school is combined with the fact that we have weddings and graduations and such to attend. Normally I feel like I can reasonably juggle three to four games at a time bouncing back and forth between them. The other day I posted saying that multi-gaming was even an awesome thing to do… considering it kept you from getting bogged down in the decisions a game company makes that you don’t necessarily agree with. However for me, I am spreading myself super thin with a ton of different activities that I want to be doing. So today I am going out outline each of the games that I am playing and lament the things I would love to have time to do in them.

Elder Scrolls Online

Right now I still consider Elder Scrolls Online my primary game. At roughly two months since headstart I am still very much loving this game. It has some problems, namely with difficulty of grouping, but as far as the game itself goes I dig it massively. I’m working my way through Auridon and slowly creeping up on Veteran Rank 2. I have so much that I still want to do in this game, but lately my schedule has limited my time in it. This is the type of game that I can only really play if I am fully focused on it, and this is doubly so with the veteran content. Shit can go wrong in a heartbeat if you are not doing all the right things, so it means on the nights I am not feeling all that… I end up playing something else.

Wildstar

This game is the new hotness it seems and it launches tomorrow, at least for the headstart folks. I mostly preordered this game in case I decided I was in love with it, and I wanted to make sure I secured the preorder bonuses. I really dig the pre-order house, and I did not care for anything in the Collectors Edition pack… so I went with the normal. I am still so up in the air about this game… there are things I like and things I don’t like. Right now I am simply not sure who is going to win out, however since everyone is playing it, and it scratches the same itch that World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic do… going to give it a good college try.

ArcheAge

Speaking of games I am conflicted about… welcome to ArcheAge. I find so much about this game intriguing and repulsive at the same time. It is this fusion of one of the most interesting games system wise and class wise… combined with one of the worst communities I have experienced. This game has invented new ways for you to grief your fellow players… and this is the sort of thing I have zero interest in. That alone would be enough to make me go running and screaming into the night… but the class system is so damned interesting to me. I love the concept of “Rift without Restrictions” and that is pretty much what the open class system seems like. It reminds me so much of the way the class system for Horizon worked… and that is a great thing.

Heroes of the Storm

I want so badly to be playing this game right now… but I also want so badly to not be playing this game with strangers. The MOBA thing is one of those things that I really only enjoy if I am queuing with people I know. That said supposedly the queue times are greatly improved with the new client. If you are in the HoTS alpha… please let me know! I need more people to queue with, and I feel horrible for being in this game when so many people want in… and not playing it much.

Defiance

The last few nights I have been playing this game again and really enjoying myself. The whole shift in how I approach it has really helped quite a bit. I would love to see more people playing it because I think it would be far more enjoyable to run around as a group. I still have yet to really scratch the surface of any of the story content, and feel like I should do that. Really enjoyed the first season of the television show, and would love to get caught up on the in game content before the next season starts.

Final Fantasy 5

At this point I am behind my friends in this game, and quite honestly I am struggling to get the oomph to play it. That said I feel like I should really finish this game as part of the FF5 draft thing we did. I feel like I would be a horrible person if I didn’t finish it. That said I also know I am going to get talked into doing the Four Job Fiesta in a month… so not sure if I will finish before then either.

Trove

There is something about this game that makes my inner child squeal with glee. Things are just so damned much fun, and the mob design is amazing. That said I have been out so long and so much is changing on what seems to be a near weekly basis that I feel hopelessly lost. At some point I need to resort to reading through all of the patch notes starting around the time I last played in the hopes of understanding how things have changed. The combat in this game is just enjoyable, I only wish I could play it with a controller. I guess in theory I could use one of the keypad mappers but I have been lazy.

Landmark

Oh Landmark… how I love you and am completely bored with you at the exact same time. Right now it is less a game and more a toybox for you to build in, with a ruleset wrapped around it. This was really fun while I had giant things to build… and while I was progressing through the ranks of collecting the next best mining pick. Now that I have topped out, and have fleshed out most of what I wanted to build… I log in pretty much only to mine copper and pay my upkeep. What I need to make me care about this game is the combat system. Here is hoping I will fall back in love with it when I can run around the world killing things.

Diablo 3

I still don’t have a character to 70, and I feel like I have somehow failed for not doing this. Basically this released way too close to the launch of Elder Scrolls Online… and I never gave the game the attention it deserves. At some point soon I really want to work on leveling my crusader, since I have technically beaten the game on my Monk. I am struggling with the desire to simply grind the last two levels to ding 70. I figure at some point I will have a renaissance of caring about d3… but it might be awhile before I cycle around to it again.

Rift

The new souls were released and I have yet to even check them out. I really would like to level my cleric to 60 before the 3.0 patch hits, but I have no clue how long that is. Right now I am logging in on a weekly basis to get my patron gifts and that is about it. I thought it would be really cool to do a streaming series where I try and remember how to tank, and do a public service of tanking elites. I’ve heard the queue times are absolutely insane, and I know personally I have waited over two hours without getting a DPS queue. I still love this game, but at the same time don’t really know what I want to do in it.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

A few weeks back I was playing the hell out of SWTOR and enjoying myself. While I have let my subscription lapse again… I would love to pick back up on my Sith Juggernaut and see what happens after Balmorra. I have never actually made it off this planet imperial side, but I was really damned close to doing this when I was last playing. The real challenge will be if I can manage to play the game without subscribing… or will I re-up again only to cancel a few weeks later.

World of Warcraft

Finally there is good ole World of Warcraft. Once upon a time I had a grand idea of getting everyone to 90 before the expansion. I have failed miserably at keeping up with this ambition, but who knows if I will actually do this or not. Right now all I have left are the Priest, Monk and Warlock… all of which are over 60 at the least. The Warlock and Priest are both in Pandaria content, but at the very beginning. I might get a wild urge to play again and push these guys across the finish line. Either that or I might completely abandon this until the release of Warlords of Draenor. In any case the account is still active, because I pop in periodically to dink around with stuff for the guild.

Nothing at All!

Tonight I will be playing…. nothing more than likely. We have an end of school cookout and by the time we get done there… we will likely crash, or walk… or walk then crash. If anything I launch Wildstar and create my characters. Right now I am planning on having my Chua Engineer and an Exile Warrior of some sort… just not sure if that will be Human or Granok. In any case I have nothing exciting to report about my master plan for the evening other than hanging out in the real world and eating some good food.

A Path Not Taken

May 3, 2014 by Belghast

A Question Answered

I am getting a super late start today, or more so I am sitting down to write my blog post this morning later. I dropped the dry cleaning off yesterday morning, and then shortly after decided I felt entirely too bad to exist in the real world. So I went home and took breathing treatments throughout the day, in an attempt to convince my lungs to stop being assholes. It has mostly worked, but this meant that I needed to get up relatively early this morning and go pick up the dry cleaning so we would have it for Monday morning. I still have plenty of shirts in the closet to cycle through, but my wife had reached the limits of her wardrobe.

It seems like at least once a year a new social media technology is released, and the internet zeitgeist all flocks to it. I generally sign up for these the moment they happen in an attempt to stake my claim flag and then they sit dormant for years until I finally decide that I want to start using it. One of these is Anook, and I asked a very simple question last night on twitter.

While I was expecting someone like Maeka who has been posting on the site for a good deal of time to chime in, I did not expect to be drawn into a length conversation with the Community Lead. As you can see, we talked a lot and I started to buy into the vision. The problem that they see it is that there are all these services, that you load up with content once… and then forget about. Facebook is this way for me, I have a profile because I know that certain people would rather be notified of my content through that vehicle… but I don’t actually USE facebook. I hate the service, I hate the way it feels, so I feel bad each time someone sees the content that somehow got set up to syndicate from twitter… and thinks I am actually using that as a means of communication.

I know going into this that Anook is not what I have been longing for. I would love to have a gamer focused site that acts as a social glue for everything else I have content on. A single point of syndication for G+, Twitter, Steam, Raptr, Battle.net, Glyph, Playstation Network, Xbox LIve… whatever services I happen to have accounts on including my own blog and podcast. I think this is a niche that if someone fills it, will be amazing. What Anook is instead is trying to focus on creating a community with the ability to talk about disparate topics. I see this as trying to be a social network, but almost from a guild website type of approach. In the short time I am going to start populating it with my content, be it youtube vids, the podcast or my daily blog posts.

In the long term I could see maybe starting to try and use this for some of our other ventures like Stalwart Gaming or the Alliance of Awesome. When I first signed up for the site at launch, it felt fairly primitive, and I really did not grasp the concept. It just felt like Raptr or Steam without the nifty automation and game tracking functionality. Now I can see what it is trying to be, and while I may not be 100% sold on it, I definitely appreciate their goals. More than that I appreciate the kind of specialized attention this Community Lead gave me in trying to win me over to their vision. Hell that along is going to make me loyal to the cause more than anything. I will always reward amazing service with my patronage.

A Path Not Taken

This morning is going to be a bit “gaming lite” again, but with the hustle and bustle of the Newbie Blogger Initiative I’ve sat on a tale for a few days. I wanted to make sure I got the posting underway proper before taking a lot of screen real estate for something personal. My wife is a teacher, and this year her schedule aligned just right to allow her to attend the junior assembly. This is one of those deals where someone inspiration comes and talks to the kids about the dangers of the world. This is the sort of thing I as a teenager used to ignore, taking a sketch pad and doodling up in the bleachers instead of actually listening. I am sure for some of the kids there this will definitely be the case.

As the speaker was introduced, my wife thought the name sounded familiar but shrugged it off. Then he started talking about living in a town of 3500 in Northeastern Oklahoma. At that point she started to wonder if maybe he lived in her hometown. Finally when he started talking about his son… it hit her like a sack of bricks. Growing up I was best friends with two other guys, and for the most part we were inseparable. The man on the stage telling his story was one of those two boys father. He had been almost a surrogate parent to me, as much time as I had spent over at their house throughout Middle School and most of High School. When we first got together in College I was still telling stories about him and his son with fondness.

The thing is something changed along the way, and his son was getting into some pretty bad stuff. Alcohol changed to Marijuana changed to Cocaine binges… and eventually I had heard he was even dabbling in Heroine… not that you can actually dabble in that. Two things happened my junior year, one I started distancing myself from him… and two I got really sick. The combination of the two ended up with me picking up some new friends, ones better for my well being… and while we had no falling out or anything… we just faded apart. At some point after graduation we had managed to get back in contact. He was running a record label out of Ohio, and prided himself in sending me lots of indie recordings of the bands he was working with.

Every so often he would call and we’d end up talking for a few hours. When he moved back to town he got married, had a couple of kids and settled down as the director of an area Arts festival. I thought that things were going pretty well for him, or at least on the surface he seemed to have gotten his shit together. I visited him at least once at his office, and we went out to lunch, and then at our ten year reunion we of course hung out. So it was with complete shock that a few years later I hear that he was not okay at all. At some point the drugs had returned, and one day while driving home at lunch to get a fix he hit a special needs kid who had been riding his bike along a busy thoroughfare. The report is that my friend didn’t even stop the car, and the cops followed him to his house an arrested him on the spot.

They say he was going fast enough when he hit the kid, he practically exploded. They had to cremate him because there simply was not enough to bury. So as my friends father was retelling this tale, my wife is sitting there in shock because she knows the other side of a lot of the tales he is telling. She has this cold realization that had I not made a change and distanced myself… that it could have very well been me. I hung in the same circles, but there was just a point where their behavior was getting a bit too risky for my tastes. My friend deserves his fate, he did not get there over night, but over a course of multiple years of bad decisions. However I feel horrible for his parents, because as parents go… they were awesome. They were always so good to me, and treated me like another member of their family.

Once the assembly was over, my wife rushed up to the stage and introduced herself to his father, and apparently he just gave her a huge hug. Then asked how I was doing and how things were in our lives. He really was like another parent, and I feel like I need to get a hold of him. He lost his son, in ways that he will never get him back, but maybe I can reach out and be a little closer to him and his wife. They were always so good to me, that I want to be there for them however I can be. So what makes the whole situation that much more odd, is that I was one of those kids who didn’t pay attention to this sort of thing. I ignored more than my fair share of drug assembly, and ditched them whenever I could. However I am living proof that changing the path you are going down can make all the difference in the world. I could have easily been my friend, and that alone is pretty sobering.

Bangkorai is Huge

Last night I spent most of the night streaming some Elder Scrolls Online gameplay. Bangkorai is freakin huge. Each time I feel like I might be nearing the end of the zone, I keep finding a pocket of stuff that I have missed. At this point I am extremely overleveled for the content at level 45, and the highest mob I have found at all has been 43. This is a thing that keeps happening to me, I seem to move extremely slowly through content. My whole general approach to Elder Scrolls Online is to kill every single thing in my way. This means I probably kill far more badguys than the average gamer. I have watched my friends play through content, and they go out of their way to skip combat. This game gives you really good ways to skip combat in the form of “disguises”, however I NEVER use them. The only time you will actually see me wearing one is when the quest literally cannot be completed without one.

A good chunk of the night was spent working on a series of quests in an occupied town. I could have skipped almost all of the combat entirely by wearing the disguise. However I ignored the fact that it was in my inventory and proceeded to lay waste to everything with a red diamond on it. Which is a big funny considering my character is racially imperial… but apparently I like killing my own kin? I am still enjoying the hell out of the game, and while I am super interest in ArcheAge I keep telling myself… to wait until I reach a point in Elder Scrolls Online where I am not quite so in love with it. The game keeps giving me sufficient reason to log in every night and play, so until it stops doing that I will keep playing it. ArcheAge will always be there when things start to get dull and I want to do some full on sandbox… however as time consuming as it seems based on the few streams I have watched… maybe I am better off with Themebox or Sandpark.

Contest Entry

Watch live video from Belghast on TwitchTVToward the end of the night Rae pulled me over into Landmark. She has been working on the big contest that they have going on and wanted some feedback on her building. So far I think it looks pretty great, but this has been where she has spent all of her effort of late. Personally I still have so much to do on my temple complex that I am almost mired in a building funk because of it. Towards the end of the video I end up traipsing back into my own claim. I am not really sure where I am as far as the game is concerned. I like the game so much, but right now there is not something about it making me to want to log in regularly. I think maybe once there is combat or something other than “Lego mode” I might feel more strongly about the game. Quite truthfully lately I have enjoyed Trove more… and it is far more primitive. The reason behind that seems to be that there is more to “do” in trove. Definitely going to be active in the Landmark community, but right now past the initial rush of wanting to build something… there just isn’t much “stickyness” to the community.

#PathNotTaken #ANook #Landmark #ElderScrollsOnline #ESO

Dead Rising in Desert

April 19, 2014 by Belghast

Finishing The Spire

One of the things I love the most about Elder Scrolls Online is just how epic their zones feel. Last night I finally wrapped up Rivenspire and I had literally working my way through the zone for over seven days of serious playtime. At this point according to Raptr I have logged 113 hours of playtime at am just now level 36. When is the last time a game has managed to offer that much gameplay for the same level? I don’t want to embark upon spoilerdom but Rivenspire introduced me to a new cast of characters, with their own epic conflict. Some of them I really liked, and hope to see again as the overall storyline progresses. As I am writing this post I am listening the Castlevania: Syphony of the Night soundtrack, which seems fitting. Rivenspire is a zone about a battle against evil vampire overlords, and somehow they made the entire experience feel fresh with a few interesting plot twists on the standard mythos.

What is even more awesome is in wrapping up the zone… you are left with a feeling of unease. In Elder Scrolls Online you never quite “get the girl and save the kingdom”. There are always uncomfortable consequences that arise from your sequence of choices… consequences that you know you will have to life with in later zones. I am not at all at ease with the final decisions that lead to me finishing the Rivenspire. I most definitely saved the day, but I wonder at what cost. I fear what the ramifications will mean to the overall fate of Tamriel and Nirn as a whole. In any case I get to say good buy to the brooding and moody Rivenspire for the time being, and venture forth into the blazing deserts of Alik’r at the personal favor of Queen Maraya.

Dead Rising In Desert

Another thing that I have always loved about the Elder Scrolls franchise in general are the unique little quirks that all of the races have. The Bosmer for example strictly abide to the green pact, which states that they cannot harm any plant life. This has the interesting side effect of making them strict carnivores… and on occasion cannibals. As we move into the deserts of Alik’r we find that a necromancer has raised an army against the capital city of Sentinel. The problem is… for the Redguard they revere their ancestors so much that they believe it is sacrilege to strike down the risen dead. This means as you arrive at the docks of Sentinel it is being overrun by Ra-Netu (zombies) and the Redguard are unwilling to defend themselves against the ravening horde.

As a foreigner you save the day by doing what they cannot and will not do… strike down their ancestors. So far this has given the quests I have completed in the Sentinel area a “call to action” feel, like everything I am doing is all the more urgent. It is a bit of a refreshing change from the otherwise meandering zones I have experienced. I am sure once I have left the immediate sentinel area the aimless wandering will begin again. In truth it already has a bit, I realized I had been killing zombies for 45 minutes at one point yesterday and had no clue at all what objective I was supposed to be doing. I had a similar moment happily bouncing from assassin beetle to assassin beetle, so the zone is definitely prone to my random fits of bloodlust.

Potentially Lovely Day

I need to wrap this up because it looks to be a lovely day out in the real world. I was off work yesterday, and while I enjoy lazing around immensely… I didn’t get much walking in. So hopefully today we can go out and do something that involves copious amount of walking to make up for the fact that I closed the day yesterday with only 2 dots on my fitbit. My wife and I have both experienced this moment recently where we have hit a plateau, but have greatly increased our exercise. I think we are essentially swapping fat for muscle, and that eventually we will begin to lose weight again. At the very least I hope that is the case, I have noticed that I have a lot more definition in areas I didn’t really before, and I seem to still be losing inches by the fact that I keep having to synch my belts tighter.

I wanted to post a real quick reminder to pay your upkeeps in Landmark. I just logged in really quickly to check on that while writing this post and found I was 9 hours from losing my claim. I’ve had numerous friends who have lost their claims and have simply abandoned the game because of it. I highly suggest you log in and check on it just to make sure you have plenty of copper to pay the fee. I’ve put a ton of work into mine and roughly 600,000 stone so far and it would have been devastating to lose all of that. Granted when you lose your claim they do template the entire structure, but I have had numerous issues trying to place a template that large, needless to say I managed to get a pretty choice spot in the world and I would hate to lose it.

#ElderScrollsOnline #ESO #RivenSpire #Alik’r #Landmark