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Week in Gaming 10/4/2015

October 4, 2015 by Belghast

Moving in Slow Motion

This morning I am having one of those days that feels like I am fighting against quicksand, to be able to accomplish anything. It is the fitting end of the week I have had where so many issues have come up, that I had to deal with. This week was one where my boss was out of the office for most of it, which meant I got to be the boss. This is a concept that sounds fun on paper, but after having done it for years… I promise it is not nearly as entertaining as it sounds. Being the boss means you are the one that has to deal with isssues when they arrise, even when the issues are of a magnitude that makes you just want to pull the covers over your head and forget the world exists. As such my gaming was a bit odd, because I needed to vent my frustrations in the form of shooting aliens. There were many nights this week where I intended to do something else, but ended up playing Destiny all night. As such there really are not a lot of individual games to talk about but here goes nothing!

Star Wars the Old Republic

As of last night during the AggroChat podcast I have officially completed the original Smuggler storyline, and with it… I have a lot of thoughts about what I experienced. When Kodra played through this content I can remember him being extremely disappointed… but maybe I am just more simple minded, but I absolutely loved the ending. It is everything I expected underworld dealings would be… romance, betrayal, and getting revenge on the people who betrayed you. It wraps up everything a good outlaw story should, and like the best ones… ends up with you on the side of justice. Maybe I just grew up with too many westerns, but it felt like it should to me. My character wasn’t necessarily a white hat, but he definitely was not a black hat… and at the same time I got to do enough things that felt like decisions I would make, to keep me hooked on the storyline. Now that I have wrapped this one up, I think I am going to work up faction on Risha and see what that romance option looks like. After that I think I am putting the Smuggler to bed for awhile, no pun intended… and moving on to something else.

While I doubt I will manage to play through the four imperial storylines before the launch of Fallen Empire, I think I am going to make a good college try to do so. It would be cool to go into Fallen Empire with the special perk for having defeated all eight storylines. Last night I swapped over and started working on my Sith Warrior which is the next closest to moving forward. I have to say once I stopped doing side quests and only focused on the character story the entire experience became far more enjoyable. Not that the side quests are not awesome… but when you have done them multiple times… they begin to drag on. As I play my Sith Warrior I will probably keep doing side quests because most of them on the Imperial side I have not actually seen. I wonder how many if any duplicate between the two factions. In any case I am still very much enjoying my SWTOR vacation and I think it has been a great way to spend the lag time between 3.0 and the 3.1 patch in Final Fantasy XIV.

Wildstar

I have to say the disappointment of the week has been the free to play launch of Wildstar. I guess I say “disappointment” in quotes because really… any time you do a major launch there are significant issues expected. Wildstar relaunch has not been smooth by any measure of the word. In theory from what I have heard if you can manage to get things are fine… but that was not my personal experience. I fought through the queues twice this week, and each time moments after actually getting into the game… I saw a message scroll across my screen warning me that the servers would be coming down in 15 minutes. What does not help I guess is the fact that I am entirely focused on the Entity server, which happens to be the most populated. At some point I will get some play time in, but at the very least I was able to go fiddle with my inventory and clear out my mail box. I also gathered up all of my new items, and I am almost tier 6 on the Cosmic Points system. I have premium sub time through next May so I am sure during that time I will play it quite a bit.

Destiny

Not really sure what I can say about Destiny that I did not already cover this week in my blog post about it. That said I am still having a blast playing, and several of my friends have also rekindled their interests in the game. I’ve been getting snagged into a fire time quite often and as a result we are doing quite a few strikes to help my friend Damai get geared up. Also this week Carthuun joined the game, so I have a feeling we will be doing some lower level content to help him catch up. To some extent I have been working on leveling my Warlock other than doing my daily bounties, and enjoying replaying through the content. This game is just so zen for me right now… nothing quite relaxes me like headshotting all manner of aliens, and in the strikes I have run I seem to get the lions share of the kills because of my focus. I am absolutely in love with the Sunbreaker because seriously…. every game needs the ability to throw flaming hammers at your opponents. I actually even spent some time running crucible skirmishes and enjoyed myself. I didn’t lead the kill count for my team but I did manage to place second, and I didn’t have the negative experience some of my other friends have reported as a result. I imagine that the community for Destiny PVP can be pretty horrible, I am just lucky that I have not seen that yet.

As far as today… I am probably going to spend a lot more of my time playing Destiny as while waiting editing the podcast this morning I managed to knock out most of the objectives. After I wrap those up I will probably migrate downstairs and spend the rest of the day SWTORing on the sofa while watching something on the television. Destiny has for whatever reason been the perfect blowing off some steam game for me this week. My hope is that as I continue to gain light and gear up it will stay just as enjoyable. I have yet to really try any of the true “endgame” content like the Raids and the Heroic Strikes, but I have to say if I have enough friends playing… it might be interesting. I am still just blown away by how much better the game feels to me. Once again if you played the game at launch and found it lacking… I highly suggest you patch up your client and at least give the game a spin. The changes trickle down through the entire game, and you should be able to see if you like the new feel before purchasing Taken King. Thankfully there is the option to ONLY buy Taken King without having to repurchase the entire game… but those options are only available for digital copies of the game. Not sure if you can upgrade a former physical copy or not. The Destiny theme song however is playing in the background as I type this… so I am going to go answer its call. Hopefully we all have an awesome week to come.

Performance Anxiety

September 9, 2015 by Belghast

Cash Shop Fodder

With the impending launch of the Wildstar free to play model, I thought I would talk this morning about one of my problems with cash shops in general. One of the most popular items in any MMO cash shop is the “experience potion” for lack of a better generic term. These are items that grant a limited duration buff and increase the aquisition of something. These sometimes apply to experience but also pvp systems and token currencies. They seem to be fairly ubiquitous when it comes to MMOs and they often times hand them out like candy in your introductory packs. My theory is that they want to get players hooked on these early so they keep coming back to the cash shop anytime they run out. Now if you had boomboxes in Wildstar you already have a few of these more than likely. My problem is… I never spend them. I just logged into my Rift account to take a quick census and I am currently sitting on somewhere between 150 and 200 of these in various forms. They are generally locked from you selling them on the auction house… and since I am not using them they just take up inventory space.

The problem I have with them is that I feel like there is a value associated with them. They cost money, and I want to make sure I get my most out of them. So when a game gives me one.. I hold onto it forever never quite finding the right time to spend it. If the potion is an hour long, it feels like I need to find the perfect time to use it when I will have an hour of uninterrupted time at the keyboard. Even more so it feels like I have to figure out the optimal way to spend my bonus experience time. I do a lot of running around aimlessly in video games, and when I have used an experience potion it feels like I am “on the clock”. I have to get the most out of my time and need to do whatever I am doing with minimal downtime. As a result I just end up crushed with indecision and so they sit in my inventory unspent collecting dust. I end up resenting them being there, because they are taking up space that I could be using for other things. I didn’t want them in the first place, and the game keeps handing them to me like they are important and special… and something that SHOULD be desired.

Performance Anxiety

This just highlights a bigger problem I have in games, that I will call performance anxiety for lack of a better term. It is like there are times when I have to be super focused on the game and take it more seriously than I really want to. When I sign up to raid I accept the fact that once the raid starts it is “go time”. The rest of my game time however I want to be able to stop and smell the roses. The problem is when I group with another living person… I feel like I am also “on the clock” and responsible for making the most of that time grouped together. So instead other than dungeons and raids I actively avoid grouping with anyone. That way I am only responsible for my own enjoyment and won’t feel guilty when I need to step away from the screen because my wife needs me, or the animals have knocked something over and I have to go investigate what they just broke. The worst is when I am in an MMO and there are quest objectives to be done. I feel like I not only have to be aware of my own needs… but the needs of everyone in my party and assure that they also accomplish whatever they need to get done before moving on myself.

I realize all of this is irrational, but this is the sort of mental struggle I go through each time I accept someone else’s group invite. Most of the time I can steel myself against the anxiety and just push forward, but there are other times… when I just cannot risk taking responsibility for others. I talked some yesterday about my current desire to “hide out” and as such I thought I would talk a bit this morning about the other side of the coin. Grouping with other people is often times a draining experience for me. I shift into responsible adult mode, and step up to the plate like I know what I am doing. I am willing to take on this mantle for my friends and my guild… but I am rarely willing to take on this mantle for strangers. I realize most other people don’t quite have the hang up I do with grouping with strangers. So when someone asks me to tank something, or dps something… I always feel strange asking if it is a guild only group. The worst of these experiences so far has been when it comes to partially queuing for raid content. The anxiety that comes with tanking for strangers in a dungeon… is nothing compared to the anxiety of tanking for a raid group full of strangers. For me at least it ranks among the least comfortable experiences, and I would rather simply do nothing… than queue with a bunch of people I don’t know.

Opening The Curtain

I get the impression sometimes that folks seem to think I have my act together. The truth is I am just as strange and vulnerable as the next person. I put on a really good front sometimes, and I do a fairly good job of pushing down my own insecurities. You might ask yourself… why in the world would I be opening up like this? Well the truth is that I know there are lots of people out there with their own quirks, that think they are somehow lesser for them. My theory is that by showing the weak points in my own armor, that others might be more comfortable with themselves as a result. Once this down cycle finishes I will be back to my normal self again, and the armor will go back up. In the mean time I am talking about the things I am struggling with, in hopes that it might help someone out there. We all have our own hang-ups and we learn to deal with them however we can. My coping mechanism tends to be disappearing for a bit while my shields recharge. Tonight I will be submitting myself to a raid group where I assume that we are ultimately going to have to PUG people… even though every fiber of my being tells me to run screaming into the night. There is a certain power in knowing your own limitations and forcing yourself to face them. I’ve learned over the years that everyone is broken inside… just most are better at hiding it than others.

Week In Gaming 8/30/2015

August 30, 2015 by Belghast

Stressed but Still Here

This week turned out to be a shockingly stressful one, but thankfully all of said stress happened at work… and I could more or less leave it there as well. There has been a twinge of sadness as well because months ago I had hoped to be able to attend Pax Prime and get to hang out with friends there. However that didn’t quite work out, and since I lacked tickets to go there… because AggroChat was not apparently qualified as a media outlet, I stopped pushing quite so hard. The beginning of the school year is especially rough on my wife, and it would have been even more stressful to be travelling during this time. As such I am doubting that Pax Prime will ever really be in my cards unless for some reason they decide to move it either earlier or later in the year. I will always have Pax South however, and I fully intend to go this coming year. I am going to be trying to talk as many people into attending as I can, and hopefully can organize a meetup or something while there. There were plenty of people at Pax South last year but I was completely overwhelmed by it being my first real convention, and the internet was pretty horrible… so I missed most of them. Anyways… on with what is I hope becoming a Sunday tradition, where I review the games I played over the past week.

Final Fantasy XIV

Currently “The Rising” event is going on in Final Fantasy XIV that marks the yearly anniversary festival. This year the quest that goes along with it is one of the most touching quests I have experienced in a game before. I don’t want to spoil too many details about it, but suffice to say there is a little bit of fourth wall breaching going on. Diehard Final Fantasy XIV fans have this hero worship for Naoki Yoshida and the rest of the team, and it is absolutely well earned. It feels like there is very much a symbiotic relationship going on there, and they understand fully just how important the loyal fans are to the continued success of the title. The game is in this interesting place where it is extremely humbled by the fact that it launched in 2010 and failed to capture hearts and minds. They are putting everything into the game and leaving nothing on the table, and it shows. Other than the anniversary event we worked on Ravana Extreme attempts, and I have every hope that we will be able to down him this coming Monday. Past that I have honestly been taking a bit of a break from Final Fantasy XIV, or at least not really logging in every day.

Diablo 3

If you are wondering where the bulk of my game time was spent, you can look no further than Diablo 3. I am not sure if it was my time playing Hellgate London, or the fact that I finally pulled my head out of the sand and realized there was such a thing as a “season”. Whatever the combination I have been pumped to be playing Diablo 3 again and have been spending a lot of time with my friend Grace was we worked on pushing up our seasonal characters. At the beginning of the week I managed to get my Crusader from last season to 70 with the help of Grace and her crazy torment farming ways. Then Friday when the new season opened I started work immediately on a female Barbarian. As of last night I am now level 60 and making the final push to 70. That is really what I intend to spend most of my time today working on, and hopefully by tonight I will be sitting at 70 and starting to work on gearing up for doing torment and beyond. I am having a blast, and I am not sure whatever mental block cleared that has allowed me to get involved once more with the click to attack madness.

Wildstar

I can’t say that I have made stellar progress since last week, but I am continuing with my new tradition of trying to play Wildstar Tuesday nights. At this point I am level 25 still in Whitevale but I think maybe I can see the end of the zone. My hope is to move on past it this week and hopefully into something less desolate. I feel about Whitevale the way I feel about most desert zones in MMOs. I have come to realization this week that it is never the biome necessarily that I like or dislike, but instead the zone design. I was warned that Malgrave is coming up, and a desert… but from what I have seen of the imagery inside it seems like something I will enjoy. I want to devote more time to this game, but for now I am going to settle with making it a Tuesday night thing.

Hearthstone

The game that I played that shocked me the most this week was Hearthstone. I have not really spent much time playing it since release, and with the addition of a new expansion of cards I decided to poke my head in. This is where I found a brand new game mode called Tavern Brawl. Apparently you have a different weekly challenge, and this week was essentially playing with a randomized deck. I played hunter and had a good amount of success. Playing with a random assortment of cards, including many of the brand new Grand Tournament cards gave me a nostalgic feeling much like the early days of Magic the Gathering. I used to love the days when I was limited based on the cards I physically owned and as a result made some odd decks to try and weave in my favorite elements. In truth I would probably play Hearthstone more often if this random brawl option thing was a fixed item. I know this coming week there will be a completely different Tavern Brawl, but I will likely poke my head in to see what it is and give it a shot. This might breathe new life into the game for me, and for that I am kinda pumped.

Fallout Shelter

My week in review would not be complete without at least talking a bit about Fallout Shelter. Now I have been technically playing this game for awhile now but since I do not regularly use my iPad, the sessions were limited and I went weeks between opening the app. With the release of Fallout Shelter for android I have been playing it far more often on my phone, and it has now become my default “moment of downtime” game as I check in on my little post apocalyptic ant farm. All things said I learned a lot of lessons playing it on the iPad that I have now applied to this new vault. Where Vault 999 was a relative failure, Vault 861 is pretty damned idyllic. Through a bit of luck of drops, and some careful planning I have managed to create a pretty safe environment that can absolutely shred raider attacks. I had a random person show up at the vault that was fairly warriorly, and once I equipped her with power armor and a plasma pistol she has been roaming the wastes dispensing justice. At the same time she has become a major source of income and the gear she brings back I am slowly outfitting all of my settlers in. I have jokingly started calling the restaurant on the first floor Cafe Death, because the raiders always go there…. only to get shredded by all of my shotgun toting vault dwellers. The only thing that I feel bad about is that I essentially have one couple that is slowly populating my vault. I have left them in the room for weeks now and they have half a dozen offspring roaming around as a result.

Hatoful Boyfriend

The last game that I played a significant amount of this week was of course Hatoful Boyfriend, and last night we recorded the AggroChat game club show for it. This was Grace’s pick and I think a lot of us went into this assuming that we would end up hating the game. We were mostly wrong as the vast majority of us had lots of good things to say about the game. To make it even crazier this is the first game that the majority of us have actually played through more than one… but given that an individual play session tends to only be around the hour long mark that makes sense. If you want to hear our length discussion about dating “Birbs” after the apocalypse you should totally listen into the show.

[AggroChat] [Direct Download] [iTunes] [Stitcher]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Pax Prime Hopes

August 28, 2015 by Belghast

The Big Show

It feels like we live in this world where there is always another big games show around the corner. I remember when quite literally all that existed was the Consumer Electronics show, at least for the United States. Now we have dozens of shows sprinkled throughout the year, all of which vying for exclusive announcements. As a result companies have to trickle information out so that everyone that attends one of the shows feels like they are getting to see something unique or special. This weekend of course is Pax Prime, and I had hoped this year I would be attending. The truth is however that Pax Prime will likely never be in the cards, as the husband of a teacher… August is a HORRIBLE time for me to be travelling. During this month my wife is in full on panic mode as she gets adjusted to another school year, and while for a bit I was bummed at not being able to attend, I am realizing it was ultimately for the best. As a result I will be a loyal yearly Pax South attendee and pretty much brush aside the thoughts of doing the Pax Prime thing. Instead at some point I will just go out to Seattle to meet my friends that seem to be pooling there, instead of trying to make one big combo trip. Having been to a Pax, I have to say in truth the folks at home have a much better view of what is going on there through the live stream. As a result I am looking forward to spending much of the weekend watching as much as I can. Which gets to the point of this mornings post. I thought I would talk a bit about the various things I am hoping to get out of Pax Prime 2015.

Final Fantasy XIV

The thing that I want this weekend… is a release date for 3.1. I know we are getting close, but I want to know a firm release date so I know just how long I am going to have to wait. Right now Final Fantasy XIV is going through a bit of a content lull much like it did after the release of A Realm Reborn. Quite frankly at this point I am tired of running Neverreap… since that seems to be the dungeon I get most often. Two dungeons in a roulette rotation simply is not enough, and I am honestly a bit concerned with the news that 3.1 is only going to add two more as well. My hope is that they create a four dungeon expert roulette instead of moving Neverreap and Fractal to Hard Roulette and making expert just be the two new dungeons. The other piece I am really looking forward to is the next 24 player dungeon the Void Ark, aka the creepy airship you sometimes seem flying around in the Sea of Clouds. The game needs a shot in the arm of content, because folks are starting to slow down… myself included. More so than this… I would like to see some future vision type stuff for 3.2 and beyond. In the past we have usually had this list of things that Yoshi P had promised for “future” patches and we are a bit low on that right now.

Wildstar

Similar to FFXIV… and honestly a lot of the things I am going to talk about this morning…. I just want a date for when the Free to Play conversion will happen. They keep putting new patches on the test server and it is starting to feel like maybe they are close, but what I need from them is a date. I am enjoying Wildstar so much more than I have at any point in the past, and a lot of the changes that are coming in with the free to play conversion are going to be generally good for the game as well. Past the free to play conversion… I would like to see some information about what their long range plans are. I don’t even know if they have a presence at Pax Prime this weekend, but even if folks don’t they tend to time announcements around major shows as well.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Since the expansion announcement at Pax South, I have had a strange connection with this title. Traditionally speaking I do not really enjoy Guild Wars 2 that much. That said I have to say the revenant looks more interesting than any of the previous classes. I fully expect that I will be picking this title up when it launches if for no reason other than the fact that it is once again “buy to play” and I have gotten my original purchase out of the game. This has been the year of announcements completely unfettered by timelines, and it is starting to get frustrating. Once again we have a big title looming on the horizon with zero date announced for when we will be expecting to play it. I am expecting that this one is going to be a lot like Heavensward was, where they announce the launch date and it is only a few months away. My hope is that Pax Prime finally is going to be the show where they talk about this at. Give your fans some firm dates.

Blizzard Titles

I am honestly not expecting anything new to come out of this conference from Blizzard. They did their big reveal of the World of Warcraft expansion at Gamescom, and I fully expect that with Blizzcon coming up in November that they will be holding everything else closely waiting on their big show to reveal it. I fully expect that they might announce a new Overwatch champion at Pax Prime, and potentially some more Heroes of the Storm champions or maps. What I am really wanting from them is an announcement for when Overwatch testing will begin and a beta key delivered in my mailbox. Everytime I launch the patcher and see that Overwatch button at the bottom of it… I get a little sad in side. I really want to play this game, and I sincerely doubt I will be doing so anytime soon. Over the last few weeks I have come to the realization that I still very much love Blizzard games… it is apparently only World of Warcraft that I am on tentative terms with. I would love beyond love them to announce something for Diablo 3… like maybe another expansion? They have already hinted that they might be doing a Warcraft RTS after they wrap up with Starcraft II… so that alone has me pretty pumped.

No Man’s Sky

I am so irrationally hopeful about this title, even though I keep telling myself that there is no way it can deliver on everything it has been promising. I love exploring new areas, and I love killing strange and interesting creatures. No Man’s Sky promises to give me a procedural generated world where I can do this… over and over again throughout the galaxy. On top of that the graphics are kinda cool as well with their hyper saturated version of reality. Again… all I really want from Hello Games is a release date. I have a feeling that we will have an announcement for some sort of beta testing to begin soon. Supposedly Amazon UK is already taking pre-orders so hopefully we will get a date this weekend.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

At this point I just want more information on this title. We saw a short trailer from E3 and I have been wanting more information since. Once again I have no clue if there will be a presence at Pax Prime, but I am hoping! I want to know more about the nuts and bolts of how this title is actually going to work. I want to know if there is going to be a multiplayer aspect, or if this is just one big single player skyrim-esc sandbox. I also want to know more about the world that surrounds the game.

Devilian

With my recent foray back into Diablo 3, it has made me extremely interested in Devilian a Diablo like Korean game that Trion is going to be publishing. I know Trion is going to have a good presence at the show so I am hoping we find out when the beta process is going to begin. I ended up with a key from Gamescom and I keep checking my Glyph launcher expecting it to show up in the list of games that are playable at some point soon. While on the topic of Trion Games, it is too soon to hope for a Rift expansion but I would still like to get more information about where that game is heading, and some more detail on the future plans for ArcheAge. The folks at Trion Worlds are awesome so I am always interested in what they have to say.