Comforting Self Immolation

Good Morning Friends! This is probably going to be a bit of a short post because I really don’t have a ton to talk about today. We are an unknown number of days away from the league launch because quite frankly I’ve lost count and everything has begun to blend together. When I posted yesterday I was sitting at 68 maps unlocked and as of this morning, I am up to 73, so not a ton of progress. Essentially I am in the mucky phase of the atlas where I have to trade character levels for mapping progress, and it feels sorta bad. As I progress into red maps, they become more “rippy” as the community calls it and as such I take a lot more deaths. I can generally get through unscathed with the “six portal defense”, but it is sort of demoralizing.

So instead of making proper progress, I spent most of last night slowly poking at my Righteous Fire Juggernaut. I’m now near the end of act 6, and things are starting to speed up as more abilities come online. In theory, by the time we hit the weekend, I should easily be at mapping levels and through the campaign with this character. My survival is sort of iffy at the moment, but I should be good to knock out some of my trials today and actually become a proper “Juggernaut”. That should actually help quite a bit on the survival front. I need to fiddle with my gear so that I can run an additional aura and pack on purity of elements to fix elemental ailments.

Given that I have geared this character two times already in the past… I decided to go ahead and pre-emptively do a bit of shopping. It seems like a lot of the staples are really cheap right now, so I picked up an almost perfect Immortal Flesh, Saffel’s Frame, and Legacy of the Fury. I also managed to snag a pretty cheap 5-link chest that should hold me until I generate enough currency to buy another Brass Dome. That is the weird dichotomy of pricing right now… a number of the staples of RF are super cheap but others… like Burning Damage/Concentrated Effect Helms… are outrageously priced. Essentially if I can get an influenced helm on a decent armor base, I can attempt to craft my own BD/CE helm as I have done it before. Hell, you can have shockingly good luck just chaos-spamming one to get something usable.

I’ve played a lot of mapping characters in the past and had fun with them, and in this league, I wondered what it would be like to start as one. Truth is… as much fun as it is to tear through maps, it would feel better as a secondary “alt” character than it does as my “main”. It was a great way to start out and get some early progress, and lord knows progressing through the campaign is WAY easier on Lightning Arrow than it is currently on Righteous Fire. However much like I did with my test character, there is a big of a ceiling that I have bumped into as I am entering red maps. I could probably push through it but it would take a lot of currency to get there and significant upgrades. I can continue to “six portal defense” my way through the rest of the Atlas, but I sort of miss having that rock-solid and stable tanky character as my “main”.

I also greatly miss the stable currency generation that was Delve. It isn’t so much that it produced thousands of Chaos Orbs worth of merchandise to sell… which it did… but more that it also produced truckloads of what I consider “bubble gum currency”. My vault is just short on everything from bindings to jewelers to regals. I am not running enough bulk maps to make up for the difference, and truth be told… I am just not wired to blast through a map and ignore most of the stuff on it. “Map Blasters” as a gameplay style really seems to focus on casting a wide net across hundreds of map runs and trying to gather up a few good things each time. If I could get used to the speed, I could probably do this because I am over-sustaining maps by a large margin. I think I just prefer the mechanical loop of delve a bit more because each individual loop feels shorter and more concise. Delve is essentially the equivalent of running a Greater Rift in Diablo III and almost all of the loot is at the end of the event.

I think if nothing else… Trial of the Ancestor has cemented some of my preferences about how I want to approach the game going forward. I need to “main” a pretty tanky character and then use that to build out other alternate characters designed for specific purposes. Since mapping is not really my favorite thing about Path of Exile, then maybe I should not really pivot into playing that as my first character.

Molten Zoomy Lad

So yesterday my good friend Ammo decided to take up residence on Gamepad.Club with so many of us that have moved there. This is particularly relevant to me because I have so many different profiles spread throughout so many different platforms that I have given her credit for the Avatar that I use most often. The thing is over the course of the last decade, Ammo has crafted for me a plethora of hand-drawn versions of “Belghast” from different games. There are so many of these that we have finally come to the point where I am retiring one. Above is the “Destiny Bel” that she crafted in 2017, prior to the launch of the game officially. It was assembled out of a set of armor that was at my time the favorite from what was available in the alpha and beta tests. Given that I mostly played a Bubble Titan in Destiny 1… I assumed that I would spend all of my time playing the sexy new Captain-America-style shield-throwing Void Titan. So I had her create a version of that with a simulacrum of my head… charging in motion.

Issue number one… I never spent any significant amount of time playing Void Titan. Mostly I never really liked the way the grenade options felt and the super was really bad for burn phases. Given that I never really did much in the way of proper group play in Destiny 2 apart from being carried through exactly one raid… I didn’t have much reason to run Void for Weapons of Light. Sunbreaker had both my favorite grenade and favorite super… so I largely spent most of my time playing that subclass. Then there was also the problem that after they started sunsetting content… and removing some of my favorite places from the game… I stopped playing Destiny altogether. It has felt weird to me that the character occupied such a prominent place in my blog banner, while I had zero plans to return to Destiny at any point in the future. Now watch that actually TALKING about it… will manifest a desire to start playing it again.

The thing is… I really still liked the motion of that character and how it rounded out the end of my string of characters. So it got me thinking about what I could use to replace it. For anyone who has not been around for all of the commissions, what you see in my masthead is my Lalafell from Final Fantasy XIV, my Hunter from Monster Hunter, and more importantly my Palico that is based on Kenzie… a cat that is sadly no longer with us but will always remain close to my heart. Then you have a version of my character from New World wearing the level 40-ish set of faction armor followed by my Necromancer in Reaper form from Guild Wars 2. Next up you have the only commission that I did not make… a version of my World of Warcraft warrior meets Twitter persona that my friend Tam Commissioned, with my PSO2 RaCAST looming behind. Lastly, before you get to Destiny, you have my Elder Scroll Online Imperial character wearing the armor set I almost always have on transmog. Then there are moogles sprinkled in throughout who stole my stuff.

It was around this time that I realized two things. Firstly… none of the characters that Ammo has drawn represent my constant addition to the ARPG genre. That part of my love for games is completely missing from my banner. Part of this is due to the fact that MOST ARPGs don’t exactly have a robust character creation system. A Diablo III Barbarian for example… looks like an old man with a diaper or a young woman with a diaper, and not much past that. Path of Exile while not giving you any control over your character model, does offer a bunch of cosmetic options that allow you to decorate them how you like. In that game, I also have a “zoomy” character in the form of my Righteous Fire Juggernaut I have now played for the last two leagues as my main. I spend most of my time ignited and shield charging through packs of mobs, and quite honestly… I feel like I love that design so much that I will probably create a version of it in every league from this point forward.

So I did what I always do and gathered up a bunch of screenshots and thrust them in Ammo’s direction and said “Here make this!”. This was a weird case because so much of this appearance is tied to one specific microtransaction pack in Path of Exile. Thankfully there is still a video showing off this pack in detail that I was able to supply to her as well. As she always does… she takes my inane ramblings and turns them into something functional. Over the last few weeks, she has been supplying me with sketches and updates… but honestly, she was on the right track with this one from the start. The only regret I have is that the scaled-down version that now resides as part of the masthead of the website does not necessarily do justice to all of the detail she put into this one.

So last night officially, I replaced “Destiny Bel” with “RF Bel” in the masthead. I think the placement works nicely. The only thing I wish I had now were some more small characters like the Moogles to patch over the transition of the left foot. At some point, I know for certain that I want her to draw me a Choya Pinata on a similar scale to the Moogles and maybe a Quaggan… but more specifically the one with a Turtle Shell for a hat. Huge thanks to Ammo for continuing to translate my madness into picture form. I think what I dig so much is that while there are stylistic differences throughout the years, they all feel like they belong together because they were all crafted by the same person. While I absolutely love my new Molten Lad, I do sorta think that the best of these will always be Necro Bel from GW2. It is the feathers that really go above and beyond with that one. I absolutely have the best-looking blog on the internet that very few people actually care about.

Anthem Demo Weekend Two

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Outdoor cat has officially been fed so I can now sit down and start trying to compose my feelings about Anthem Demo weekend number two.  The first “VIP Demo” weekend was for folks who had pre-ordered the game and I will assume a certain batch of influencers that were brought to that special EA event to record footage.  You can scroll through my thoughts about that weekend in a post I made last week, but for me and most of the AggroChat crew it was a buggy and often times unplayable mess.  However there was enough good there laying just underneath the covers to make me interested and quite honestly miss playing the game.  So while I was not on nearly as much as I could have been… I played a significant amount of Anthem this weekend.  I managed to get in a Stronghold…  this games version of a Strike and spent a significant amount of time just roaming around and doing World Events and the little mini-dungeons that are available off the segment of the map we had open to us.  It galvanized my desire to play this game… and largely reinforced my decision to keep playing the “shootymans” class the Ranger…  who appears to be a really amazing single target dps class.

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What I want to talk about the most however is what a difference there was between the first and second weekends.  During the first weekend it was a constant struggle to be able to play this game…  and in the second….  everything just sorta worked flawlessly.  Sure there were some minor glitches like for some reason our javelins would not load on the “reward” screen.  Additionally I have never actually seen the full suit prep sequence because the game kicks me over to a loading screen when I assume that sequence is designed to make us ignore how generally long loading into an area takes.  However what was gone was the need to keep closing the game with task manager and loading back in to successful get into a mission.  I could just play the game as it was intended to play and this made me way more open to grouping up with friends given that it was a predictable sequence rather than a struggle to get all four players into the same instance.

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I’m very impressed with how communicative Bioware has been during this whole sequence…  and more than that I feel heard.  We all for the most part universally complained about how bad Mouse and Keyboard Flight/Swimming felt….  and they acknowledged that yeah… it feels less than optimal.  These changes are apparently already in the “live” build of the game, but what is even better is that they have started giving us a run down of things that will be fixed before the initial EA Premier launch on the 15th and what will be in place by the 22nd.

  • UI Clicking on visible options in menus fixed for 15th Feb (except social which is 22nd Feb)
  • Navigating Menu tabs with Q and E instead of old keybindings fixed for 15th Feb
  • Forge rotation speed with mouse improved – 15th Feb
  • Scrolling with mouse wheel wont zoom your javelin AND scroll the menu (will be contextual based on where your mouse is) – 15th Feb
  • D-Pad will show as keyboard bindings – 15th Feb
  • Turning off Motion Blur in settings now works (decoupled from post processing) – 22nd Feb
  • HDR toggle available – 22nd Feb
  • Camera Shake slider added – 22nd Feb

I’ve said it before but I believe that Bioware feels the pressure that this launch has to go fairly flawlessly, given the perceived failing that Andromeda was.  The whole multiple launch dates thing does not do it any favors, especially considering that a lot of the issues that plagued Andromeda were fixed by the end of that first week.  EA has a bad habit of shredding game studios, and the whole teasing a Dragon Age game…  I think is more insurance than anything else to try and keep delaying that decision.  If launch goes like last weekend however I think we are going to be just fine, and what I really want is the same level of communication that they are giving the community to continue into the first year of the game.

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I really do think that Anthem might be the game that can finally blended the different looty shooty genre players together.  There is enough here to intrigue the Destiny players with a rich and interesting lore and the Ranger class being essentially a “Destiny” class where it is mostly gun play with a few abilities.  There is also something here for the Warframe players that want move movement and ability spam…  and the Storm and the Interceptor fill those roles nicely.  Then there is a class for the player who just wants to be a big freaking mech in the form of the Colossus.  What is better is that gameplay feels more enjoyable when you are running with a pretty decent mix of the four classes.  Ranger as far as we can tell is going to be the class that has the highest single target damage…  so great for boss killing.  Storm is the battle tactician that takes an overwatch position over the battlefield and can effect large swaths of it with its abilities.  Interceptor is the fact melee shredder that is probably going to be excellent at grabbing objectives and avoiding taking damage.  Then you have the colossus which is the king of staying alive…  as was seen this weekend when Ashgar absolutely saved the day by surviving long enough to start bringing us all back up during a stronghold.  They all have their key niche and all feel great when played together.

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Ultimately I progressed my character as far as it probably could have been during the Demo.  I managed to upgrade every slot to a level 19 rare item and my final build was an Light Machine Gun for my main weapon… a Marksman Rifle for my secondary to melt anything at a distance like snipers.  Then I would run poison darts to act as my primer… that also doubles as a debuff that causes me to just deal extra damage to that target.  Frag Grenades after trying a bunch of different options seems to be my detonator of choice, and also a decent crowd sweeper.  Then muster point is what I was running as a damage boost for helping to burn down those big mobs.  As far as components I was running one to increase Frag damage and another to increase LMG Ammunition, and it was a build I was pretty damned happy with.  I could in theory go for a max damage build by picking up the devastator sniper rifle, but I never got one of those to drop for me and did not see it in the crafting tables.  I also settled in on the above paint scheme which is pretty much the colors I tend to choose in any game that gives me the options.

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Towards the end of the weekend they started an event that caused Primals to spawn in large numbers and frequency… so I managed to get in and take down a few of the bigger ones.  In fact I was fighting one of the big primals when the servers went down, so no clue what loot might have dropped.  Weirdly the game let me keep fighting, so I am guessing part of the world is cached on the client itself?  This gives me concerns when it comes to what hackers are going to be able to do to the game…  but without a PVP element I am not entirely certain how much it will effect me.  I am a little saddened that it sounds like while my weekend was smooth and flawless…  others that had a flawless previous weekend…  started encountering disconnect problems during this test.  I’ve now played 16 hours worth of the Anthem demo and can say that I am looking forward to starting on the 15th.  If you have not already picked up the game…  you can pony up for a month of Premier…  which gives you a discount that you can then apply to your preorder…  and will also give you access to the full game on the 15th instead of the 22nd.

So my awesome readers…  are you picking up the game?  Will you be joining me on the 15th or are you waiting on the 22nd…  or are you just going to take a hard pass?

Chat Goes On Left

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One of the things I am realizing is just how bad I am at responding to messages some nights.  Last night for example I was mindlessly grinding away in Destiny 2 while watching video full-screen on my second monitor.  All the while various folks were messaging me on lots of different platforms including battle.net, slack, discord, and even some resorted to twitter.  All of which I was largely oblivious to as I happily ground public events and took down high value targets pushing the warlock up in level so that I can start doing the weeklies on that character as well.  The problem is really two fold, firstly that I am so used to soloing at this point that I am not really watching messages like I used to for the sign of someone else popping online.  The second issue I will get into shortly.

At this point my Warlock is level 28 so nearing 30 but apparently completely capable of wearing gear of decent level because I am now rocking an energy weapon that is 350.  It is super hard going back to the warlock after only really playing the Titan for a good deal of time.  Hunter is simple…  multi jump will always be multi jump.  Warlock on the other hand has the wrong version of Titan jump and no matter how long I play it I never can quite get used to it responding the opposite way that I am expecting.  I feel like folks either bond with Titan or Warlock jumps…  and from that point on the other one just doesn’t feel like a jump should feel.  Hunter on the other hand always feels like you are riding around on a midair pogo stick.

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Now the other problem I was talking about earlier is that Destiny 2 UI design is designed wrong.  What I mean by that is in literally every MMO I play the chat box location is on the left hand side of the screen as illustrated above by my UI in World of Warcraft.  The chat you care about appears on the left hand screen, and in this ElvUI layout the chat I don’t care about at all ever…  appears on the right hand side of the screen.  This is pretty much how I lay out every MMO that allows me to shift around the UI, but I cannot remember a game off the top of my head that does not default to having the chat left justified for lack of a better term.  Destiny 2 on the other hand creates a super spammy loot window that you cannot remove on the left hand side of the screen and gives you the chat you actually care about on the right hand side of the screen…  that will constantly minimize to just a tiny notepad document looking icon.  When you receive a message it does not de-cloak and show you said message…  however any time some jackass loots some random item the game takes every opportunity to make sure you know about it.

This is a broken design and causes me to simply ignore that chat exists because it does not conform to the cultural standards I am used to.  By culture I mean the general cultural design of MMO games, of which Destiny 2 is a part of regardless of how Bungie feels about that label.  To make things worse…  Bungie themselves taught us that the only place that matters for text was the left hand side of the screen in Destiny 1 as they placed all of that spammy nonsense there.   There is in theory a sound that is supposed to play when someone messages you, but whatever sound that is is either inaudible to me personally…  or just blends into the din of everything else happening in game because I never notice it.  \

Ultimately what my inability to notice chat cost me last night was a run through the raid as my friends over in TQMB were trying to reach out because they needed one more to get started.  I am hoping when they put in the clan chat they also give us the option to swap the locations of the two chat panes so that the spammy nonsense goes on the right and the important chat goes on the left.  Otherwise I am honestly not sure if I can ever fully train myself to look for chat in a weird location.  After over two decades of online gaming… I am just too indoctrinated into a “chat on the left” mentality.