December 2020 - Page 3 of 5 - Tales of the Aggronaut

The Game Awards 2020

December 11, 2020 by Belghast

Morning friends. I had plans last night and none of them really panned out as expected. I had been planning on watching The Game Awards which began at 5:30 pm my time. I also planned on running a Mythic +2 or two with some of my friends in Facepull in World of Warcraft. However as has been the case more recently we were limited by the lack of healing options. So instead of doing this… I ended up logging for the night and telling Kelsas to ping me over discord if it looked like we had healing options. This meant instead I spent my evening playing Cyberpunk 2077… which is a game that is not really conducive to watching a live stream during.

It was around this point that I had a realization. I don’t actually care about The Game Awards. I care about the fact that a bunch of Game Trailers get released during the show, but I don’t actually care about the awards themselves or the talking heads that appear in between them. The thing is… I have no skin in this game. Sure it is cool when a game that I like wins an award but it has absolutely no bearing on my life. What I care about is all of those game trailers and by the time I wake up the next morning those will all be available and syndicated on the internet in a number of various means. For example I was able to just tune in this morning and watch this playlist full of trailers.

So here is that thing where I run through a bunch of things I personally found worthy of talking about. Let’s do this!

To be honest… the thing that I was looking forward to information about before the Awards show as Dragon Age. While I was never really able to get into Inquisition, I loved the first two games quite a bit and was looking forward to more adventures in this universe. What I had hoped to see was some signs that a game was happening here, but instead we got another vague demo reel of footage. This is a sizzle reel and not anything even vaguely resembling a game. As such I figure this game is at least two to three years away and possibly even more… and has not really coalesced into anything resembling a playable experience. This honestly concerns me more than it bolsters me.

We also received “trailer” footage of Liara T’Soni wandering some snowy planet and retrieving a piece of armor bearing the imprint of N7, which is in theory supposed to make us think that this is Sheppard’s armor. Once again this is not even vaguely resembling any sort of game yet, so I would imagine this probably has the same timeline trajectory as Elder Scrolls 6 at this point of being vaguely somewhere off in the future. There was a message at the end saying that Mass Effect would continue… which combined with this footage would make one think that they are returning to the original Trilogy and extending it. What I actually want is more Andromeda to be honest, but I legitimately think this is something that was rushed out in order to combat the news of the Studio head and Dragon Age producer both recently leaving.

On the positive side… I am significantly more interested in Crimson Desert than I was before. The footage shown would lead you to believe that the game is a sort of God of War style single player narrative experience. There however is reportedly some sort of online multiplayer functionality, but it doesn’t seem like an MMORPG along the lines of its precursor Black Desert. The game looks incredible, but so did Black Desert. I guess the proof will be once the game gets closer to launch because Godfall also looks gorgeous but was a soulless husk of an experience.

It seems like it is officially time now to reboot the Left 4 Dead franchise… or at least a spiritual successor to it. Turtle Rock Studios the folks behind the original Left 4 Dead and the ill fated Evolve… are presenting a new game called Back 4 Blood. By all evidence this would appear to be a modern reboot of Left 4 Dead under a brand new name. I guess we can all hope that it will bring a fresh perspective to this style of multiplayer shooter experience.

Apparently also there is going to be an Evil Dead game that may or may not also be attempting to reboot the Left 4 Dead concept? There isn’t a lot to go on with this trailer but it certainly feels like it is going to be some sort of four player co-op vs hordes type gameplay mechanic. It also appears to be drawing characters from across the entirety of the confusing Evil Dead universe. It might be really cool, but it also might be a confused mess. It appears to be lead by Saber Interactive the folks behind the 2019 World War Z game.

This appears to be a fixed party RPG surrounding League of Legends characters and the Bilgewater setting from Airship Syndicate. These are the folks that developed Battle Chasers: Nightwar and Darksiders Genesis, and it appears to lean more towards the original of those two titles. The over world looks very Diablo style, with also combat taking place in a Final Fantasy style console RPG style. I am most definitely interested because League of Legends is a setting where I have been interested in the world building… but just not any of the games released so far.

Scarlet Nexus continues to look really interesting. It reminds me quite a bit of Astral Chain… which was a really cool game stranded on a console that struggled a bit with its graphics. I think ultimately will have to see how the final product comes together. Definitely something I am still keeping an eye on however.

This game really makes me wish a Nintendo Switch Pro existed. This is appears to be the Switch getting a game in the open world style of Monster Hunter World. The only problem here is the console will not be able to output the sort of visuals that Monster Hunter World did. Still going to play it because it looks great and also both Palicos and Doggos to go adventuring with.

The last of the games that looked interesting to me was Evil West, which is from Flying Wild Hog studios the folks behind the most recent Shadow Warrior games. So what I expect is a fast paced over the top shooter with melee combat. I like the mash up of Van Helsing with the Wild West that appears to be going on in the trailer. It should be an interesting game with a lot of really visceral combat if the lineage of this studio is any indication.

obviously the thing that some folks are going to be talking about is Sephiroth in Smash Bros… but I could give a shit about Smash Bros. If you watched the show last night, or did what I did this morning and catch up on only the trailers… what were some of your highlights? What are some of the things you are looking forward to? What are your thoughts about the Bioware “trailers” and non-announcements? Drop me a line below because I would love to hear your thoughts.

Mythics and Desperation

December 10, 2020 by Belghast

Good morning friends. The last few days have been rough. Getting up has been exceptionally hard and when I do get up… it sorta feels like I have been hit by a train. I am not “sick”, just weary. I could not bring myself to make a post or upload anything to Catfriend Television. The day itself was packed full of meetings, which I dutifully attended but still found myself mostly struggling. I have no clue what is going on necessarily but I am not in a great place. It doesn’t help that Covid continues to strike close to home with my friend and mentor coming down with symptoms and one of my employees as well. I’ve not been in actual contact with anyone for awhile… apart from the fact that my wife is back in person with kids in spite that they had to come up with colors more critical than “Red” to denote the community spread.

We live in “Dark Red” and my wife teaches in “Dark Red”. For reference according to the county board of health, this denotes…

Dark Red – Stay Home. Dark Red signifies an extremely severe and uncontrolled level of COVID-19, meaning outbreaks are present and worsening and testing and contact tracing capacity is strained or exceeded. At this level, residents should take every possible action to minimize contact with anyone who does not reside in their household. Use curbside or delivery services for food and medical supplies. Work from home. Participate in religious services virtually.
Definition of Dark Red Status

I think the stress of all of this is getting to me in a way that maybe it hasn’t before now. About all I have in my control is to prepare for the eventuality that my wife feels like she needs to quit her teaching job to feel safe again. Of note… pretty much all of the districts are on distance learning right now because of the rate of community spread. The district my wife teaches in is one of the lone hold outs and quite frankly watching her go through all of this is a grind. It is taking a physical toll on her health. I realize this is nothing quite like the front line medical employees, but still wearing.

This weekend opened the first “Season” of World of Warcraft Shadowlands. Can I just state how much I hate that games are not grouped in seasons. What this means however is that Mythic+, Normal and Heroic modes of the raid, and all of the World Bosses start opening up. The above screenshot is when I rolled over to where the world boss world quest was spawned and the massive number of randoms fighting it. I got absolutely nothing of use at all from running it, apart from I think 250 anima. The whole “you will get less loot but better loot” statement before the launch of Shadowlands largely just seems to equate to getting less loot.

I am still in desperation mode for trying to find some horde healer friends for running Mythics. This desperation even lead me to PUG a Mythic Dungeon group. I was tempted by the fact that so often in the premade group finder tool there are groups sitting there just waiting on a tank. While in truth with randoms I would rather sit back and do some chill dps… I have reached the point where I am willing to tank because I feel like I am timezoned out of running with the single guild healer that seems to be around on the regular. My normal go to is twitter… but thusfar my calls for Horde healers has been met with a chorus of crickets. It does seem like there are just less healers around this expansion than there have been in others, and I wonder what that says about the state of healing currently.

In other news on a whim I decided to power level up leatherworking because the price of leather seemed to be pretty cheap. This gave me access to the 151 item level patterns, and I was able to drop some of this on my friend Grace to help with the gearing curve. Similarly when the Demon Hunter actually gets up to level it will make his transition from Normals to Heroics that much easier. My hope is that by seeding some gear it might kick the World Quest system in the ass and get it to start producing something useful faster. Right now it seems to be completely useless for picking up free upgrades.

Similarly useless is the new Adventures system… aka the commanders table gimmick that has been rebranded each expansion since Warlords. Nothing of use seems to be capable of dropping and the rewards in anima almost don’t make it work churning through these on the regular. I did finally manage to get a Soul Ash mission, and I stacked every single character I had on it… only to fail. The whole arranging pieces on the board mechanic mostly just feels for show as it is still a “wait and see” type system. I know someone spent a lot of time working on this, but quite frankly it is absolutely no different to me than the Garrison, Shipyard, Legion Hall, and War Campaign systems. You click some things and then RNG happens and maybe you get a reward.

In other other news… I started Cyberpunk 2077 last night and so far I am enjoying it quite a bit. I decided to go with the Corpo start, because really it seemed to be the one that I found the most interesting. I am not sure what ramifications each start is going to have on the game long term. It seems based on the little I have seen, you more or less end up in the same location regardless of which you choose. I will likely spend some more time tonight playing around in it. I think I am just about to exit the tutorial mission.

So… Apologies for not having the oomph to push a post out yesterday. I am struggling a bit, but I will do okay as I always seem to. Occasionally there are going to be days where I just can’t conjure out a post demon and bind it to my will. Thanks for reading. If you have made it this far you are likely going to keep returning even if I miss a day here or there and I guess there is solace in that.

Mythicable Hordefriend Healbutts

December 8, 2020 by Belghast

Hi Friends. I am struggling a bit this morning to cobble together something resembling a post. I did not run mythics last night quite the way I would have hoped. I contemplated joining a party in the group finder, but was uncertain that I could handle that level of frustration. Ultimately I struggled finding a healer and in the “Bel School of Group Building” the first rule of business is to lock down a tank and a healer. I had the tank since I was willing to do that… but at every turn I was missing a healer. Ultimately I need to make more hordefriends that are mythicable healbutts that are not Grace.

We ultimately ended up running a heroic with the purpose of trying to get Kelion and Merrymoo some gear, but I am not sure if any of that actually happened. I know Moo walked away with a few pieces but I don’t think Kel managed to get anything other than a frustrating evening. I pinged a few friends that were playing classes that could heal, but much like me they had wisely chosen other paths. Whenever Grace manages to get to dungeon level I am going to devote myself to grinding for gear until we can once again do really fun things together. However in the meantime I need to start adding up a list of hordefriend healbutts that I can build groups around.

Other than that I spent some more time on my Demon Hunter and pushed further into the Maldraxxus storyline. Originally I had planned on just having a chill evening but really I should be helping out more in the guild to help gear people. I pugged my face off until I got Retribution geared, but that is an unpleasant proposal for most folks. I know my friend Mor has also been pugging his face off so at some point we should join forces so at least we won’t be alone in our madness. I am looking forward to reset because it should mean some additional things unlock giving me more stuff to do. The gating has been pretty extreme, but it also has meant that I was not done with the expansion in a single week.

Unfortunately there are also a lot of things that are just downright frustrating. One of these mornings I am ultimately going to end up doing a giant “airing of grievances” post. I mean Festivus is just around the corner so I might save it for then. This is one of if not “the” least polished World of Warcraft expansion, and in many ways it feels unfinished. However I will save all of that for another day. If you are hordefriend healbutts, especially if you are mythicable… let me know so we can be friends. Even if you are not mythicable I am also amicable to helping you get there.

Tanking Mythics Apparently

December 7, 2020 by Belghast

Morning Friends! This is the weekend that Christmas finally came the rest of the way to our house. If you have watched any of the Catfriend Television channel, you will have been able to see that it arrived at our front door some time ago. However a combination of laziness and the desire to progress in Shadowlands caused me to delay a bit in the more tedious task of assembling the indoor decorations. We have a tiny RGB tree on top of our entertainment center, because that is a place that the cats can’t reach. We’ve gotten three Christmas cards so far so I am starting the menagerie on the side and working left to right. Various ornaments that we have been given that the tree can’t support on its own are sorta around the tree skirt.

As far as gaming goes I have been spending my time in Shadowlands chasing the unknown goal of the item level required for raiding. As it stands right now, even though the time slot is not stellar for me… I am planning on joining in the madness with my guild Facepull and setting forth into Castle Nathria on the opening week. Currently I am item level 170 in my tanking gear and 171 in my DPS gear… with the real sticking point slots being the lack of a decent shield and the lack of a heroic or better belt. The shield could be remedied quickly with an outlay of gold, and the price of those is in the reasonable range right now. The belt however… is just going to require me grinding my face at either heroics or mythics a bit longer.

Since the last time we talked, I did manage to finally get a serviceable two handed weapon from a heroic. Sadly it was the worst possible one, but for now I am living with it. Haste is good but versatility is the worst possible itemization for pretty much any item. If we still had the wonderful system called Reforging in the game, this would have been corrected to Crit the moment it dropped. However I said I needed a weapon and I got a weapon, so for at least this very moment I am satisfied and in theory if I keep doing mythics and start into the raid I might be able to correct that soon from one of those locations. The one BOE weapon that would be viable is going for upwards of 500k now which is so far out of the range of reasonable that I don’t even want to think about it.

Last night I tanked my first two dungeons of the expansion… and they were mythics. I have mostly been dpsing as a Ret, so that all of the heroic grinding I have done has been in that spec and towards that goal. However if I was running a dungeon that didn’t drop a two handed weapon, I would flip it over to protection spec for the loot rewards and as a result I had managed to pick up a solid weapon. Still had yet to see a shield but I did have at least a 155 since I do all of my world quests as a tank. All in all I think it went pretty well and we managed to complete De Other Side and Sanguine Depths. The last was a bit annoying on that final boss gauntlet but we managed. I felt fairly squishy but I figure that will stop being the case once I get some more gear.

Other than that I have unlocked the final of my Abominations from the Factory, and I can now ride around on the shoulders of Flytrap which is mostly a novelty at this point. The one that I seem to keep using the most is Roseboil which offers me a heal. I had kinda hoped that Flytrap which costs more to create would be a combo of multiple different abominations, but alas that was not the case. I would never not use this one if Abominations were usable in the Maw because it would give me a functional mount down there.

Lastly I have been working on my Demon Hunter, and that was my original intent for last night until Mythic groups started forming and they needed a second tank. I just finished Bastion and am starting Maldraxxus. I think the character that I am going to start next is my hunter and I am probably going to use him as a test of the Threads of Fate system to see how I like that for leveling purposes. It seems sorta like doing adventure mode from Diablo 3, and to be honest… that might be a fairly relaxing option. Just log in each day on that alt and gobble up the World Quests and then log back out and do something else.

All told I am still enjoying myself in this expansion and that might be a remnant of the forced gating. I have not been allowed to run out of content because they are feeding it to us very slowly. I still miss systems that would come in really handy like the Flight Whistle and Reforging… but for now I am having fun.