Belghast, Author at Tales of the Aggronaut

Bungie Divorce

January 11, 2019 by Belghast

I had a totally different post planned for today, but since the news of the Activision and Bungie split was announced yesterday… there really wasn’t another topic that I would be discussing today. I also committed memery last night and cobbled together this… since yeah it is sorta relevant. So the details that we know… in 2010 Bungie entered into a 10 year publishing deal with Activision. Over the last few cycles Activision has been making a point of announcing that Destiny 2 as a franchise has been failing to live up to expectations. Behind the scenes for quite some time Bungie devs have been leaking tidbits about them feeling constrained by that relationship.

So at this point we really don’t know how the split was started… did Bungie buy out the remaining two years of the contract? Did Activision decide that Destiny 2 looked bad on their balance sheet and kicked them to the curb? Bungie learned the lesson with Microsoft and seemingly retained the rights to their intellectual property going into the arrangement with Activision, and as a result it appears that we have a newly liberated Bungie with all of the rights to keep making Destiny 2 and in theory Destiny 3… but I will talk a bit more about that later.

I think the question on a lot of minds is going to be… who’s idea was Tess Everis and the Eververse store… and will this change see the focus on this as a monetization vehicle lessen. In truth I think this was a “both of them” sort of decision and not necessarily something we can really pin entirely on the Activision Evil Empire as it were. Going into Destiny 2 I think Bungie knew they had to have some vehicle for long tailed sales… and this new version of Eververse was their answer to that. Now the shop has vacillated back and forth between being grossly unfair at release… to honestly having the deck stacked greatly in favor of the player in its current state. I talked a bit about my thoughts there in the Bright Engrams Revisited post, but I think we have seen all of the tweaks we are going to see to Eververse.

The hard truth is… there will not be a major game release that lives in the MMO space that does not include some sort of pay for cosmetics or loot box scenario. The fact that Destiny 2 hands those Bright Engrams out like Candy for playing through the content, and the fact that you can break down anything into Dust and pick items up as direct sales during the weekly resets… means to me at least that the system is actually pretty reasonable already. Sure people would prefer to simply cherry pick the items that they want each season… but I am okay with the amount of friction that exists. It gives us a reason to keep checking the store each Tuesday and to keep doing the weekly Eververse Bounties to stockpile bright dust and whatever the cores are called that unlock items from the list.

The other burning question is… who’s decision was it to move away from story driven content? This is another one that I don’t really know the answer to either… but I would tend to land that one more in the lap of Activision, given that they just pushed out a Call of Duty game with no single player story in it. I would love to see them return to story beats each time we get a major update, rather than a purely activity driven focus. I think ultimately we will have to see what Penumbra ends up being like to determine if everything is going to be like the Black Armory going forward or not. With this change however I have a whole bunch of wish list items… some of which are wildly speculative but would be amazing.

Shared Game Saves

If I understand it correctly… the Playstation exclusivity deals were between Activision and Sony… and Bungie was not necessarily a party to them but in turn constantly effected by them. I think what this means in the short term is that soon all of the formerly Playstation exclusive content will trickle down to the other platforms as soon as everything is finalized. What I hope this paves the way for however is a shared save state between all of the platforms. Sure I would love it if all of the platforms could play together at the same time… but as an easier hurdle… I would love it if I could log into my PC characters on the Xbox or PS4 so I can keep playing with friends on those platforms. At this point it would require an account merge system but I could see various ways where that might work.

Since the game largely uses an entitlement system now instead of actual items for everything but Forsaken forward… you could do some sort of a system where you choose a primary account and every other account would simply just copy over the achievements and entitlements. Of course at some point I want the ability to play with my PS4 friends while playing on the PC… and with the consoles moving further towards accepting keyboard and mouse as an input option (something both Xbox and PS4 support in limited ways currently) it might be a reasonable option. At the very least it should be completely fine for any PVE activity… with PVP being the outlier where they might still have a segregated “Console” and “PC” play lists. Look we are setting up a wish list here…. so even if it is unrealistic at this very moment… it still definitely falls on it.

Bring Back Destiny 1

It is as simple as it sounds… I would love to see all of the patrol zones and activities from Destiny 1… make an appearance in Destiny 2. They have been cherry picking elements from the first game already, but a lot of us players from Destiny 1 felt a great sense of loss in losing all the places we loved from the first game. It will take some work, but in theory they could start shimming in zones here and there as they release other content. I would love to be able to do Prison of Elders again or take on Oryx. You could even bring in some sort of a time walking like mechanic that lets you run older content without effecting the flow of the current storyline. What if there was an ascendant realm that contained pockets of these old settings or something of that sort. The Destiny story is kooky enough to be able to support it via space magic.

Table Destiny 3

Along the lines of the last topic… I would honestly love to see them completely table the discussion of a Destiny 3. Hell at this point my preference would be for them to rebrand Destiny 2 to simply be “Destiny Franchise” or something of the sort and start treating the game like a more traditional MMORPG with semi-yearly expansions that keep adding new content without doing a nuke from orbit reset every few years. Sure a new game gives players a chance to come back into the game on the same footing of every else… but I legitimately do not thing we will be gaining a much larger audience than the game already has. Destiny 2 was a big push and burned a lot of people… and getting those players back won’t happen with a new numerical release.

Keep the Course

I like the roadmaps that they are now doing… and I like that there are little trickles of new things flowing into the game every so often. Ultimately my hope is that we will see more content without the thumb of Activision… but quite honestly I am not sure that is realistic. The company will be getting a larger share of the profits… but those initial purchase profits are already a sunk cost. They are going to have to prove to us that annual pass is worth it at this point, and I am not entirely certain that Black Armory did that. Additionally they are going to have to give us other things to purchase to keep the cash flow incoming. It will be interesting to see how things move forward as we clear the rest of this year.

If they straight up released Destiny 1 for PC as a stand alone game… I would probably throw money at the screen and buy it. However if they released the content FROM Destiny 1 as an expansion to Destiny 2 that was not part of the Annual Pass content… I would probably throw MORE money at the screen. I do however think they might need to rework Eververse drastically however to give us more reasons to give them money. That does not mean that I think they need to fuck with the math and make Bright Engrams stupid, but instead offer other avenues. Like for example… if I could spend bright dust/silver to unlock shaders permanently… I would probably do that. SWTOR had that functionality of buying things as unlocked for your entire account, so in theory they could do something similar.

Additionally I would throw lots of money at the screen if they created an expansion that added better cosmetic options to the game, and allowed us to create outfits of our favorite gear appearances… decoupling them from what we happened to be actually wearing. Basically there are ways that they can keep improving the game, but also creating vehicles that get us to spend money with them. There are folks that are predicting a switch to a free to play model like Fortnite, but I question if that would actually work. Destiny 2 is not exactly a game that is great at onboarding new players, and they would have to think long and hard about how to address that problem.

At this point I have rambled at length… but these are some of my thoughts. What are your thoughts about this announcement?

Another Seed Down

January 10, 2019 by Belghast

This mornings post will probably have some minor plot point spoilers for Far Cry 5… so be warned.

I am going to have a pretty short post this morning as I need to get into work earlier than normal… and I apparently did not have the foresight to pre-stage something last night. I am finding myself still very much enthralled with Far Cry 5, and quite honestly this is a bit of a rare occasion with me. I am not normally one of those players that has to finish something they have started. My super power has for years been being able to wander away like a bored toddler from literally any game and pick up another shiny object in my field of view. This is why I have not finished God of War for example, in spite of everything up to the moment I sat it down for a bit… being a truly great experience. Maybe 2019 will be the year that I actually start being games instead of just playing them for a really long time and never quite finishing them.

At this point I have finished another chapter of the game, this one involving Faith Seed… the “temptress” of the Seed family. This played out so much differently than I was expecting based on the media I had ingested about this game. I was sort of expecting her to seduce the player… and in some ways that is exactly what happened… but not in the manner that games normally try and seduce players. Instead of sexual gratification… Faith trades in Bliss… a drug induced state where everything is peaceful and joyous. In this state of ecstasy you become the unwitting puppet for whatever she wills her followers called “Angels” to do. The truth is… I thought the section of the game surrounding John Seed was disturbing… but Faith cranked that sense of everything being fucked up and wrong to eleven.

From there I have moved on to Jacob Seed… the hunter that views that the only way to progress as a society is to constantly cull the weak. While Faith was able to invoke a sense of Bliss… Jacob seems to be able to pervert this into a sense of animistic rage. So far however this appears to be the weakest of the chapters… because while I prefer playing games in Murder Hobo mode… that doesn’t exactly make for a compelling character. There are disturbing things about this chapter, but they seem to be largely centered around the stories that the survivors tell and not the actual actions you are having to go through. You end up working a lot for a character that is essentially the living embodiment of Darryl from Walking Dead which is always cool.

This chapter also seems to have my favorite companion… Jess Black who looks like a jacked up Robin Hood. I like her however because she stays the fuck out of the way… as she focuses entirely on far ranged attacks with the bow. Right now my party of choice is her and Boomer… though as always Hurk is pretty entertaining and also arrives during this chapter. For those who have played any other Far Cry games… Hurk is a repeat character that links the worlds together. He shows up in Far Cry 3 and 4… and you find out he actually comes from Hope County as you meet his very cantankerous and very conservative nut of a father.

All in all I am still enjoying the hell out of this game, but the complaint made in the comments the other day still holds true… the cut scenes that involve the various members of the Seed family always feel like they are interrupting the actual enjoyable part of the game. The fun for me is running around and blowing stuff up.

Pay for Placement Scam

January 9, 2019 by Belghast

I am breaking my review of the games coming out in 2019 to talk briefly about a weird experience I am having with a website. In my travels the other day I stumbled across one of those “Top 100 Gaming Blogs” lists, and I clicked through to see if there were any blogs on it that I recognized. Generally speaking this is not the case because in my experience these lists tend to include a ton of corporate blogs managed by the game companies themselves. The sites listed largely fit this bill, but as you got towards the bottom of the list I saw a bunch of smaller sites… none that I actually recognized but still smaller than MassivelyOp that was also on the list. Looking around the site it seemed to be a mishmash of two things happening… firstly it was some sort of a RSS reader tool that seemed to suggest that you could subscribe to a bunch of sites and get their content delivered to your mailbox.

Secondly it seemed to be selling access to the blog information to marketers, since when you register a site you are providing a contact name, the URL and an email associated with the blog. Claiming to be able to provide relevant bloggers in a given subject area. There was a form that allows you to submit your blog and on a whim I decided to do just this. At this point things start getting really weird and shady. You notice I have not mentioned the site yet or linked to them… it is largely because of the behavior that followed and my not wanting to give them any eyeballs as a result. Within minutes of signing up for the website I got the following email in my inbox.

feedspot-payforplacement

So essentially on top of selling to marketers, they are also double dipping on the back end and running a pay for placement scam. This email arrived so rapidly that it has to have been scripted, and that they did not actually take any time to review my website. Additionally it isn’t really a “top 100 gaming blogs” list if you are letting people pay money to get onto it. As a curiosity I clicked through to see how much it cost for this gold service, and things get even stranger. For reference its roughly $24 a year, to essentially place your website on one of their lists, which is a thing I was not interested in. However two hours after clicking on the link to view the pricing… I got this email.

feedspot-goldoffer

Of note… I am blanking out the guys name because he keeps email from his personal account on the site in question and in general I don’t think it is terribly cool to spread someones actual name around. I am not trying to Dox the person after all. Things keep getting weirder from here. Roughly eight hours pass and I get an email from the site telling me that I need to verify my email address. My working theory is that since I had not been responding to this guy at all… he is assuming at this point that I must have given him a bogus address. At this point I am finding this whole process interesting… so I validate the address and upon landing on the site it tells me that my account is in violation and that I have signed up for too many websites. That in order to keep using the service I will have to upgrade to Gold.

feedspot-furtherpush

This morning I got the above email which is honestly what prompted me to take time and write about this scam. Notice how that it has switched from being listed on a top 100 list to being listed on a top 200 list. Additionally they are pushing a bunch of information about the site trying to sell you on how many eyeballs your $24 a year is going to be buying you. Back in High School there was something referred to as the “Top Scholars” scam, and there were a few perpetrators out there. They would request mailing lists for all of the graduating seniors and send out a message targeted at the parents touting that their child had been selected as some sort of an elite scholar and that they had earned the rights to be listed in some book. They go on at length about how much this book is going to improve their chances of getting into a good college, and that the only catch is that they needed to purchase one of these deluxe edition gold leaf adorned $150 tomes to go ahead with the listing. Thankfully our gifted and talented coordinator warned all of the parents about this scam and as a result my parents did not fall for it… but I know others who did.

What we are seeing with Feedspot is a confusion amalgamation of product offerings… including something that is very much the digital version of that scam. They seem to be targeting the bloggers themselves and promising fame and more traffic and targeting the marketers promising a verified list of contacts to get them in touch with people who could influence their customers. For everyone else… you have a RSS feed site that offers an email digest service. There is nothing necessarily “wrong” with a capital W about anything they are doing, but it is nonetheless somewhat shady. The thing is… this isn’t the only site offering a somewhat questionable top 100 list and likely not the only site that is going to offer to place your site on said list for a small fee. This is more or less a public service announcement that when you see something like this… it is likely going to be a scam.

I’ve still not responded to any emails from the site, because at this point I find it sort of entertaining. Hell if they actually do read my blog they might make a response here, but I have been pretty careful not to actually include links to any of their content. Posts like this one are likely why no one will ever take this blog seriously… however I do have an interesting product review in the works. I’ve always said that I was willing to review products if they actually were something somewhat related to my interests… and if there were no strings attached… and someone actually finally nibbled on my conditions. So we will see how well that works out once the product actually arrives.

2019 Looking Forward: Games with Release Dates

January 8, 2019 by Belghast

Over the weekend I talked a bit on the podcast about the various games that were coming out this year that I happened to be interested in. This morning I thought I would start a series where I talk about some of them here on the blog. It is a really big list so as a result I felt like I needed to break it up a bit. This morning we are starting off with the games that actually have fixed release dates… so I would say these are the MOST likely to release during the 2019 calendar year. I’m going to be talking about them in chronological order of release dates. I’m also listing the platform I am currently targeting at playing the game on.

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – Switch – January 11th

There is so much wrong with the name of this game and it represents all of Nintendo’s jacked up naming conventions colliding at once. That said I am really looking forward to playing this on a console that I actually enjoy playing. Sure this is another repackage of a WiiU game for the Switch… but I am in support of this practice because I have no interest in actually playing my WiiU. It was not a great console… but it happened to have more than a handful of really interesting titles on it. I hope they all get the re-release treatment, because the switch is just a more versatile platform. This comes out in three days so it represents the first of the titles on the list that I am interested in.

Onimusha: Warlords – Switch – January 15th

I loved the Onimusha series on the PS2 and am super amped about this game getting a re-release. It is coming out on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch… and quite honestly I am not really certain which platform I intend to pick it up on. Given that it appears to be a remaster and not a remake… I figure it is going to control like a PS2 era game which leads me down the path of favoring playing this on a console as opposed to the PC. I figure even on PC it will mostly be required to hook up a controller to be able to experience the title, so I might as well just start out on a console for the native controller experience. At this very moment I am leaning towards Switch as it gives me a wider breadth of play options.

Metro Exodus – PC – February 15th

This list is going to include a bunch of games that I am excited about… but likely won’t play at release. Metro Exodus is the first of these, largely because it is releasing in a time with a pretty packed number of releases… and a game that I way more interested is releasing a week later. I’ve come to peace with the fact that the Metro series is not in fact Russian Fallout as it originally appeared. I can live with it being a mostly on rails shooter experience, because the world is so rich and interesting. This game however supposedly opens the world up a bit giving you more freedom to roam around in the maps a bit. There is also supposedly part of the game that takes place on the literal rails… and I loved Snowpiercer. It looks really interesting so it goes on the list.

Far Cry New Dawn – PC – February 15th

This appears to be the year of neon color palette post apocalyptic games. I talked briefly about this game yesterday when I spoke of Far Cry 5, and I am still really interested to see how that setting turns into this one. This is also likely to get played way after the release date because once again it butts up against a game I am looking forward to more fervently. I feel like I might be in a kick of playing single player titles, and this is another on that fits into that list. However I still have a pretty hefty backlog of titles I have started but never finished… like Assassin’s Creed Origins and God of War… so it seriously might be a while before I try it.

Anthem – PC – February 22nd

Now for the title that is holding the last two hostage. I am super limited in what I can say about this game because NDA… but I have an awful lot of hopes riding on it. I also want to give Bioware a shot at making this work, because I feel like this might be the last chance EA gives that studio before shuttering them. I am not being hyperbolic here… EA has a proven track record of closing studios when it deems they are no longer profitable. As a new IP… it looks really interesting and I think there is going to be enough meat on these bones to satisfy the fans that cut their teeth on the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series. I also think this game is angling for splitting the difference between Destiny and Warframe and creating a game that probably appeals to both tribes of players. All of those things seem really good… it just depends on how the game launches. I will be playing on PC, so if you are also planning on playing let me know. I have no clue what the Guild/Clan systems are going to be like but it would be nice to gather up a decent amount of folks for launch.

The Division 2 – PC – March 15th

Now for the first of two titles that I am really not certain about. I liked The Division for about the first twenty levels of gameplay… and then it became a slog as things started to get more serious and the mobs became more bullet-spongey and I seemed to be wearing paper thin armor. I finally reached the level cap back in October… but that was a really long ride of me bouncing out pretty regularly before I finally got there. I have not pre-ordered this game, because in truth I really want to see more of it before that happens. I was hoping I would get into an Alpha or Beta so it could win me over, but a combination of the bleak setting mixed with the third person shooter game play… it may not be the game I am looking for. That said I know a lot of people will be playing it. Ultimately whether I give this a shot depends largely on how engaged in Anthem I am just shy of a month after its launch.

Rage 2 – PC – May 14th

I feel like I am one of the few people who hold a serious candle for the original Rage. I loved everything about it… except for the fact that it felt like it simply was not finished. As you near the end of the game… I legitimately thought that we were working on a world two scenario with the game about to open up in a big way and let me explore new areas. Instead I got a credits roll… and the game was over. I THINK that the intent was to keep releasing DLC content but the poor sales of the game and the technical problems on literally all platforms… especially console… lead that plan to get scrapped. Now we get a new game and it appears to be part of the ushering in of the neon apocalypse. I am not sure if I will like this game… because I am not sure if enough of the original still lives to make me interested in it. If this ends up just being a neon mad max sim shooter… I am not entirely sure how interested I will be. I am still interested enough however for it to make the list.

What are some of the games you are looking forward to in 2019… specifically with set launch dates? Tomorrow I am likely going to talk about some of the things that are going to release… we just don’t have launch windows yet.