June 2016 - Page 5 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Why Not Try Pax South?

June 8, 2016 by Belghast

This is going to be a bit of a frivolous topic, but I am writing it the night before posting. Tomorrow I have to be up well before dawn to take my wife to the airport. As a result I searched my thoughts for something worth writing about and landed on this discussion. Today the PAX West tickets went on sale… or PAX Prime for those not yet with the program… or just plain old PAX for those who have been living under a rock and missed the slow invasion of the show across the country and world. These notoriously sell out almost instantly, and unless you happen to be watching the site at the exact second it goes live, there is no way you are likely getting tickets. I have two friends who tried today… one of which practically lives for PAX… and while they both made it into the queue within a very short amount of time, but the time I actually arrived at a screen which allowed them to purchase anything… Sunday tickets were almost gone and Monday was in low availability. This is kinda insane given that they have expanded the show to a fourth day and seemingly keep expanding it. The problem is that more people want to go than are tickets available. I am sure a good number of the tickets get snatched up by speculators, and others are buying trying to get as many as their friends in as they can. I even found out that apparently folks have written scripts that are supposed to get them in the queue the second the page is published.

This same sort of madness goes on with Blizzcon but is magnified by the fact that they do several small batches of ticket sales, each of them selling out in a matter of minutes. Whereas with Pax West there is a nearly instant queue, and it simply takes awhile for those folks to filter through it to the other end. Still it seems that you had to get into the queue with the first few minutes to guarantee that you had any tickets to purchase. This presents a huge problem for folks attending, because at least for me a huge part of why I am interested in PAX at all is to use it as a destination to meet up with friends from the internet that I may never actually see otherwise. Just watching the reactions from folks attending both PAX and Blizzcon this seems to be the general consensus and the challenge is that it is nearly impossible to insure that all of your friends can actually attend. I know among my friends they had a complicated system of trying to make sure they could cover all of the people needed for Blizzcon with everyone trying to fight through the queue, and talking over chat to arrange who was buying tickets for whom when someone actually made it through the queue. Watching my friends today it seems like that is just about the only way to actually guarantee attending PAX West as well.

What I am presenting with this mornings post is another alternative. If PAX Prime is not your native PAX location… meaning it is further than reasonable driving distance away from you… might I suggest the alternative of PAX South? Granted it happened in January and is still over six months away… but I’ve been attending since its inception and I have to say it is a pretty great place to be. This past year we had something like fifteen people running around in different numbers taking in all that the convention had to offer. While I failed miserably at spending time with most of the people due to the sheer number, it was nonetheless awesome to get to see and hang out with everyone. PAX South has this super chill vibe to it and has a lot of positives going for it, that might not be the case with West or even East. The show is still very much in fledgling status, but the attendance was up quite a bit last year and expanded to a whole new area of the convention center in order to accommodate a significantly harder tabletop section. While the show was missing several of the headliners that were there the first year… such as Bioware or Gearbox… the indie section seemed to expand massively. What I liked about it was that I could pretty much lay hands on any of the devs attending, and get to talk to them face to face about the game they were showing off. Several of them were extremely excited to be talking about this labor of love that they had been working on so long.

I’ve always gotten the impression that at the larger conventions, unless you are wearing a media badge it can be really hard to actually get face time with the various exhibitors. That seems insanely easy to do at South. It also seemed like it was extremely easy to talk to the various streamers and gaming personalities. While that is not really my corner of the world, I spotted several dozen streamers that I recognized mingling out in the floor or tucked away in a corner always willing to stop and chat with fans. This was absolutely the case the first year as well, because one of the members of my party wound up getting a bunch of autographs from several of the personalities. It is my hope that the 2017 show can somehow pull together the best of the two years. Year one had some bigger names, but year two had way more stuff… and significantly more people in attendance. If this year they can convince several of the larger companies to show products, as well as keep the attendance on an upward trajectory I think there are going to be awesome things in the future. My goal as always will be to meet and hang out with as many people as I can from my extended circles.

I know how frustrating it can be to not get tickets for that event you wanted. I after all tried to get Pax Prime tickets last year, and after the frustrating debacle that it ultimately was didn’t even try this year. South is my home PAX, and is a roughly nine hour drive for me. I will likely attend it every year so long as they keep having them. I’ve gotten the impression that there are others like me that consider it their PAX. However for those really just wanting the PAX experience, without the hassle and overpriced after market tickets… I highly suggest you give PAX South a go. I will continue to trumpet it as the year goes on… or at least until they have sold out the passes. Throughout this post I have linked to a series of YouTube videos put out about the South show, as I am sure a way to try and drum up interest. I know this will be the last year in Penny Arcade’s contract with the Henry B. Gonzalez convention center. I think there is enough interest in the con to warrant it continuing in one form or another, but it might end up moving to another city. I’ve greatly enjoyed both years, and while I would love to have it in Dallas or Austin… just because they are significantly closer drives, I am more than willing to make the lengthy trek to San Antonio. Essentially if you failed to get into West/Prime… South might just be the convention you are looking for.

Wabbit Season

June 7, 2016 by Belghast

Outdoor Fuzzbutts

Yesterday I still felt like crap for the majority of the day, and even though I had the desire to play something video game wise… I somehow lacked the focus to actually accomplish that. Instead I laid around the house feeling pitiful for a large chunk of the day watching reruns of Teen Titans Go, Amazing World of Gumball and Steven Universe. Towards the evening I wound up on the back patio because we had some unexpected visitors. It seems that a huge cottontail has decided to take up residence in our backyard. My wife sent me a sequence of texts that ultimately summoned me out into the backyard. The bunny didn’t seem to give a shit about me opening the bedroom door and walking out onto the patio. Granted I tried to do both of these activities as quietly as possible but at that point he bunny was maybe three feet away from me. Generally this is well within the range of “bolt and hide” territory. I have this feeling that this kiddo has lived around our yard for several years given the sheer size… as an estimate would be at least as long as my hand and forearm outstretched. What was awesome is that even with us both on the back patio he continued to go about his business foraging. There was a point where he came within less than a foot of where we were sitting, and that was during a period of time when he encountered another rabbit hopping around the backyard.

I failed to get a shot of the two of them nosing each other because it happened super briefly, but you can use this shot as scale for the sheer size of the larger bunny. What was hilarious is that the little guy was more skittish, but actually wound up walking onto the patio rug with us inches away from it while it was dancing around uncertain of the intentions of the other rabbit. When I went to walk upstairs to write my blog post I happened to look out the stairwell window and I saw this little guy hanging out on the concrete. Ultimately I think this summer I am going to have to find something to put out for watering the bunnies. In past summers that have started as hot as this one… I have wound up coming home and having to fish rabbits out of the swimming pool. That is not really something I want to repeat this summer. I would love it if they became friendly… I mean I have known for awhile that we have a bunch of rabbits that seem to take up residence in and around our yard, and since we have never done anything against them… I am wondering if some ancestral knowledge of our yard as a safe spot has been handed down. We have a few places where they can easily pass in and out of our yard between the green belt behind the house and the front yard as well. I would totally start feeding them if I had a clue what to actually feed.

What is extra funny about this situation… is that after the little interaction with us I thought they had run off and hid. However at some point before we went in for the night I walked around the yard and wound up going up on our deck on the far side of the pool. Sure enough there stretched out on the lawn like he didn’t have a care in the world was the big bunny again. Just chilling, and even when I started talking it didn’t seem to phase him at all. I would totally bring stuff out to feed the bunnies, but then again I am kinda afraid to get them used to being fed by humans. We love bunnies in our yard… but not everyone is as happy to have random wildlife inhabiting their lawn. So while it would be awesome to have outdoor fuzzbutts to pet and play with while sitting on our patio… I don’t want to end up getting the bunnies harmed by someone with less than friendly intent. Between the bunnies and the birds though… I am loving our little haven outside. Sure it is kinda annoying to have to water the flowers every morning and evening…. and sure the birds seem to burn through a container full of seed in a mater of hours. The end result though is this peaceful place where there is always something interesting to watch while we chill on the patio. I still have yet to see any sign of the baby Robins, but the tiny Sparrows continue to visit on a regular basis. We have a pair of Cardinals and Blue Jays as well… and several of what I have been told after the fact are “Turtle” Doves. I am not sure if these outdoor posts bore the pants off of people as they read them, but yesterday especially I didn’t have a lot else to talk about.

Strange Weekend

June 6, 2016 by Belghast

Sickly Weekend

This weekend really didn’t turn out how I had hoped. I’ve picked up this crud in my chest and the amount of general lousy feeling seems to vary heavily. Today for example I feel like death warmed over. Sunday however I was feeling fairly decent and hopeful for the start of a new week. I think maybe I simply did too much and should have rested, because I fell for the traditional trap of “feeling a little better” and then starting to try and behave like a normal human being. I am not sure if this is an actual illness or just allergy overload, because both could be going on. However my boss did complain of having a big of a cold that he brought home from London, and I am thinking that maybe he passed that on to me. In any case I spent a good chunk of the weekend sitting around and playing games… badly. I also spent a good deal of time sitting on the back porch watching the birds and flowers. A few days ago I wrote about the nest of baby robins that we had found in our bush. It turns out that as my friend Thalen suggested, they were just about to leave the nest because as of yesterday morning they were completely gone with no trace. I keep hoping that we will see baby robins hopping around and looking for worms, but have not so far.

A good chunk of my weekend gaming was spent replaying Dishonored, which was the May AggroChat Game Club game. You can listen to our discussion of the game over here. I remembered this game fondly but upon a second playing there were a lot of details that I either overlooked or simply forgotten. Primarily it was the games setting that stood out, because everything we know going into it… makes it seem like the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin was a fair and just ruler. However if you look at the sort of kingdom she ruled… it makes you wonder just how just and fair it really was. I mean why would someone need the Arc Pylons or Walls of Light…. or the spooky mask wearing Overseers if the world the game inhabits was a good one? We don’t get to see much of the world before the assassination of the Empress, so I guess in theory depending on how long you were imprisoned all of the police state trappings could have sprung up afterwards when the slightly more evil forces too power. My first play through I thought I was doing the right thing by quickly dispatching everyone I happened to come up against… however when I got the “bad” ending it made me completely rethink things. This time around I managed to complete the low chaos ending, which simply means I didn’t kill that many people in the process. The ending felt much more fitting for the sort of person I was trying to be. I had thought I was bringing justice to this broken world, when in truth I was just inadvertently killing a bunch of civilians whose day job just happened to be the City Watch.

Spreading the Madness

The other interesting happening of the weekend is that I convinced my friend and fellow AggroChatter to play some Destiny. Not surprisingly she is playing a warlock, and at first she tried out being an Exo… but has since re-rolled to Awoken. That was honestly the class and race combo that I assumed she would play, but I have been trying to keep at least a step behind in this process. I want to make sure she actually is enjoying the game, rather than me trying to force it upon her. Yesterday was pretty fun however with us tag teaming a lot of her missions. The big takeaway from yesterday however is that I had forgotten just how bad that first strike was. Both the Fallen Walker and Sepiks Prime feel like the most bullet spongey of bosses especially compared to the missions that I am used to on a regular basis. I walked into the strike with my level 40 and 333 light hunter… and even then it took forever for me to push down the walker. I actually ran out of ammo on several occasions and had to go running around the map hunting for ammunition. That feels like it is not the best possible way to introduce someone to Destiny strikes, considering the later ones are way more enjoyable and have more moving parts.

We have also been working on the recruit a friends quests, but it seems that it has abruptly ended with a quest telling her to level to 40. I think after that the quest continues with a Heroic Daily, or a Nightfall or some of the harder content. I’ve picked up several doodads along the way, but I am not sure if Grace has actually seen anything from it yet. I am going to be supremely disappointed if the rewards are only for the mentor. That has always been my frustration with these programs, because it always feels sketchy if all the rewards go to the person who is being recruited. The other thing I played this weekend was Chroma Squad which is the June AggroChat Game Club title, and was a pick by Thalen. Essentially this game is a tongue and cheek take on the Power Rangers, and involves a group of stunt people leaving their crappy studio to go off and found their own. This is a bit of a cross between a tactical combat game and a “tycoon” game in that you control both the action of the “episodes” that are being recorded, and the layout and crafting of your studio as you fight to gain viewers. A lot of the dialog is really funny, especially if you were like me and a little too old to fully get into the demographic of the Power Rangers. It is definitely worth looking into, but at this point I have not played a ton of it.

Tiny Featherballs

June 3, 2016 by Belghast

Babby Birbs

Right now the highlight of our backyard adventures is the fact that my wife found a nest full of babies. I am guessing these are “Babby” Robins, largely because anytime I got near the nest a Robin would make a horrible racket I assume trying to drive me away. The cute little things have been trained well because they went from happily playing around with each other to being completely still the moment I got anywhere near them. I am guessing that is a defense mechanism to freeze up completely as to keep motion from attracting a predator. They are freaking adorable and they are in a location where we can pretty easily watch them as they do their stuff. There is a leaf in the way so I had to get pretty close to get this clear of a shot, but as far as seeing their general well being we can track that from the comfort of our patio. I am absolutely certain there are more babies out there, but I am guessing this might be the only group that is actually inhabiting one of our bushes… that they probably mistook for a tree considering how overgrown they were. It makes me wonder if there have been Robins nesting in it all this time. I know last hear there was a group of Robins that nested in a gap in the stonework on the side of our house near the garage. Unfortunately a huge windstorm came up and the next morning I found that nest on the ground with both eggs cracked open. I am kinda worried about how precarious this nest looks, but I guess since they have already hatched and are already fat little feather balls… hopefully they could function if something happened to the nest.

I talked yesterday about the batch of flowers that I thought were the first fatality of the backyard. Sure enough all of the red flowers died out, and the white ones looked pretty sickly for a bit. However yesterday after finally getting some solid sun, the white ones seem to be pulling out just fine. It is my hope that now that we have freed up most of the space from the dead plant, that the white flower will go ahead and fill that space in. I snapped this photo largely because of the droplets of water on the pedal. All of the other flowers seem to be thriving which is awesome, especially after getting some tasty sunlight. Honestly I wonder if the red one struggled not because of the watering situation but due to the fact that we went several days without much direct sunlight. In any case the backyard is just as peaceful and relaxing as ever… with the slight problem of it being insanely muggy. The pool however seems to have finally warmed up so I am looking forward to using it in the near future. I had stuff to do last night or I would have potentially taken a dip.

Challenge of Thursday

On Thursday nights I have a standing date with Jex and Squirrel to do some Challenge of Elders, and often times a Nightfall. Now the entire idea behind this is just to make sure that no matter what we get at least one set of characters through the Challenge of Elders that week. Often times folks start running these like mad on Tuesday nights, a night where I already have a commitment in the form of the FFXIV Pony Farm/Raid night. So that means I miss out on a bunch of the easy clan pick up group action. Now most weeks I slide into another Clan group without problem, but we simply set aside this night as a way of making sure that we get at least one set of drops from the challenge. I look forward to the night because I greatly enjoy hanging out with Squirrel and Jex, because the two of them are the folks that revitalized Destiny for me and introduced me to the amazing Axioma clan. Last night we got started a little earlier which means we also had time to squeeze in a Nightfall afterwards. This weeks Challenge included a score bonus for super abilities, so a couple of us were rocking the Bad Juju as a way of feeding our super/orb generation machine. One of the rounds we managed to score around 50,000 points which I am pretty damned proud of. Unfortunately we still were just shy of the 90,000 armor score, which allowed us to have one match where we broke out our Sleeper Stimulants and just tore down the bosses.

Aegis of the Reef

Darkblade Helm

As far as drops worth mentioning… I picked up a 330 Aegis of the Reef, which is the Taken themed Pulse rifle. So far I have to say I am in love with this thing and it dropped with a solid set of perks. In the first slot it came with Send It and Reinforced Barrel… which since the gun already has decent stock stability I have chosen Send It. In the second tier it came with Full Auto, which is an interesting perk to get on an already stable pulse rifle, but unfortunately you can really burn through your ammo reserves quickly. In the last slot it has a very interesting situational case of Third Eye and Life Support, letting me swap between the two based on what I need worse. For the time being I am rocking Third Eye because I love having radar up all of the time. When we got around to running the Nightfall I managed to pick up a second Darkblade Helm, this one sitting at 335 with almost exactly the same stat package as my original one that was only sitting at 305. It was a straight upgrade and I guess I will wear it for awhile to get it nice and upgraded as an option. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed running around with this helmet just because it looks cool. All in all it was a pretty great night, and through all of our shenanigans I managed to gain rank from Variks, Vanguard, Future War Cult and the Cryptarch netting me a bunch of random infusables and legendary marks.