Aggrochat Archives - Page 94 of 103 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Adventures with Sound

August 25, 2014August 25, 2014 by Belghast

The Crab Boss

Over the last several years every computer I have owned has had one thing in common. The onboard sound card has been made by Realtek, and with each of them I have experienced various quirks. Sometimes the mic output is too low, sometimes there is mechanical noise that I can never seem to filter out. In all cases I have been annoyed to no end with dealing with them, but for the most parts too lazy to really change. In part this is because I remember days when the only real option for a sound card was a Creative Soundblaster, and I’ve had my own series of issues with them. Additionally I remember add-on soundcards rivaling at least a low end graphics card in overall expense to pick one up.

About six months ago my on board sound card decided to go flaky. I made a mistake to decide to update my Realtek drivers when I was doing the same for my LAN drivers. After installing the reference drivers I lost all use of the soundcard. No sequence of uninstalling and reinstalling various community drivers, the reference drivers from realtek, or the ones posted on the MSI support page seemed to restore full functionality. In the past I have used a USB headset before with decent success so I shopped around to find one that I found comfortable. The end result was picking up the Logitech g430 headset, that comes in a rather fetching blue and black color palette. The install was easy enough, but early on I noticed a few quirks with it, in that I had to plug it into one of the two USB 3.0 ports on my machine. Once I figured out that this was what was happening, I resolved the issue and soldiered on.

Adventures With Sound

For the most part these headphones were excellent and the Logitech drivers provided some really nice 7.1 surround sound emulation. As far as communication went I seemed to be understood well, and transmitting both clearly and with plenty of volume. It was during this time that we birthed the ideas of our podcast, and it was with this headset that I have been recording all of the episodes. As I listened back to the recording however I noticed something that bothered me. All of the other guests came through with much more full sound than my own voice. My voice sounded very flat and tinny and no matter how much I fiddled with the settings did it seem to actually improve it.

After some research I found that this was pretty much a universal complaint with this particular headset and namely the usb soundcard that accompanies it. It seems like it does a great job of output, but a pretty poor job of input, only allowing for 16 bit audio. The result is the “flat” sound that I had noticed and that frustrated me. The suggestion universally was to hook the headset to onboard audio for the microphone, and the usb for the 7.1 surround output. This seemed like a hack at best, but no amount of fiddling with the drivers and settings managed to fix the problems I noticed. This eventually lead me to start looking for other options, and as always that ended up with me searching Amazon.

Xonar Ping

For years I have had an unnatural love for all things Asus. As a result I have owned a number of products and when I buy something I always tend to start with seeing what their product offering is. A search of Amazon lead to what I expected, there to be a lot of Soundblaster options, but mixed in among them was a Asus Xonar sound card that had relatively good reviews. The best part was it was cheap, currently $26.99. I ordered one with my Amazon Prime membership, and it arrived on my doorstep Sunday morning. I was shocked to find that something actually delivered on a Sunday, and it was not like I actually paid for overnight or anything of the sort. Within a few minutes I had popped it in my case, and booted back up. I grabbed the latest drivers from the Asus website and popped into a game… and the sound was amazing. It was every bit as good as the Logitech software was capable of and then some.

Then I hopped on Teamspeak to hang out with my friends and test it there. Immediately upon speaking I got “Is there a Helicopter in the background?”. I recorded some test audio and sure enough there was a very noticeable mechanical disturbance in the background of my audio that seemed to get worse the longer I talked. My heart sunk, and immediately I had flash backs of all of the fiddling I had done with both the Realtek and Logitech sound drivers to see if I could get something better than what I was. I could get the sound to go away momentarily, but it always returned regardless of the settings. Once again I took to the internet and found people complaining of this, and leaning towards that I would need to RMA the card and get a new one.

New Drivers New Hope

There in the middle of the stack I found a glimmer of hope. There was a thread by a poster saying that he had all of the issues I was having, and ditching the Asus drivers fixed his problems. I guess the Xonar drivers are notoriously bad, and that there is another group that has released a Unified Driver for the Xonar family. I downloaded the drivers hoping that this would maybe fix my issues as well. It took a series of reboots to uninstall the current driver and install this new unified driver. I booted into a game and it sounded amazing just as before, and this time upon firing up Teamspeak, I was greeted with “the helicopter is gone!”. This is the part of technology that I like the least, the wide variance in which drivers work best for which cards.

I realize that it has become tedious for companies to release a specific driver for a specific revision of a product, but I feel like the age of the universal driver for a “Family” of products has been riddled with this sort of issue. Right now for example I am currently self locking myself to a specific version of the GeForce drivers, as I had all sorts of hell when I tried to update to the latest version. In any case, I have recorded a few audio samples and am extremely pleased with the results, so here is hoping with future episodes of AggroChat there will be far less disparity between our voices as there was in previous episodes. Hopefully the tinny flat audio is a thing of the past.

A Darker Doctor

August 24, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat Episode 19

Last night we recorded the latest episode of AggroChat, and welcomed back Kodra from GenCon. For the most part the AggroChat crew has had their heads firmly planted in Final Fantasy XIV and that much hasn’t changed. Kodra regaled us with the tales of what he did with his time at the convention. LARPs are one of those things I have always been interested in but never really participated in. I did a little bit of a local World of Darkness LARP in High School, but it wasn’t really my scene. As Kodra talks about the ones that happen at GenCon it feels far more like improvisational theater than gaming. In any case it sounds awesome and if I ever make it to GenCon I will totally join in the fun with him.

Additionally we talk a little bit about MMO design and theory and how Final Fantasy XIV has made tweaks to the game in order to support the community aspect. So far it is working because that is the overwhelming thing that I am enjoying the most from our time playing. We also talk a bit about Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition and our upcoming campaign. There has been some talk about maybe streaming it, but I somehow doubt that is actually going to happen. Rae talks at length about her awesome character concept, and I talk a bit about the Grudgebearer Cleric I will be playing as well. This weeks episode had a very non-video gaming feel to it, and it was pretty enjoyable.

A Darker Doctor

Yesterday was the day the world was introduced to the new Peter Capaldi Doctor Who. So as the world was enthralled by the BBC airing of the show and subsequent BBC America rebroadcast… where was I? Well I spent my afternoon shopping with my wife and then my evening recording AggroChat. With all of the weight loss my wife has gone through, she pretty much is in dire straights on trying to find a new wardrobe for the school year. I figured it was far more important to help her find that, than to sit at home and catch Doctor Who as it was originally broadcast. As a result I have just finished watching the show this morning, and I have to say so far I am very pleased. I don’t want to go into any spoilers really, because hopefully you are going to watch it yourself.

First off I have to say I am of mixed opinion on the new Doctor Who intro theme. You can listen to it here as someone has uploaded it to youtube already. It just feels over produced to me… and extremely “muddy” if that makes sense. I can tell that they went went back to the fourth doctor theme and sampled it heavily…. and that aspect I like, but all of the modern crap that they seem to have layered on top of it is frustrating. I would love to see them just make a nice clean Doctor Who opening theme without all of the auditory graffiti. I am sure over time I will get used to it, but right now it is just grating on my nerves. As far as the show itself the production quality was impeccable as always. I always like the episode that happens right after a regeneration because you get to watch the doctor in his most vulnerable state, when he isn’t quite sure of this new body.

With Capaldi it feels like gone is the zany doctor that flails about, and a different form of “Mad Man” has replaced it. I am liking the darker take on the doctor so far, and I am also liking the fact that the series is distancing itself from “companion as love interest”. I am sure to some of the more modern fans this will be a point of frustration, but to someone who has watched a lot of Doctor Who over the years, I prefer the days when the companion was just that… a travelling companion for the adventure. I think the franchise will be in solid hands for awhile now, and I would love to see Capaldi have a run to rival Tom Baker. I am tired of the Doctor changing quite as often as he has been, especially since we have long retconned the original storyline of a limited number of regenerations. Overall I enjoyed it, but I look forward to seeing more episodes to really set my opinion of it in stone.

Return of Ultima Weapon

While waiting on the audio to render last night for AggroChat I got pulled into an 8 man raid with the rest of my Final Fantasy XIV guild on Cactuar. One of the quests that was added to the game post launch in Mor Dhona takes unlocks the Hard Mode version of the Ultima Weapon primal encounter. I won’t go into any of the details surrounding the Ultima Weapon itself because spoilers… but in theory we had heard that everything about the Hard Mode of the encounter is significantly harder than the first few turns of the Bahamats Coil raid. After last night I am guessing that was in fact the case. This fight is absolutely insane, but I am pleased to say after three tries we managed to down it and clear it from all of our quest logs. I returned to my role as a tank, and since at this point I somehow managed to pass Ashgar in gear I ended up starting off the fight and playing the role of Soak of a lot of the bombs that happen during the fight.

What makes the fight so cool is that it is the first tank swap encounter that I have run into here in Final Fantasy XIV. This is a common mechanic in World of Warcraft now as a way of keeping both tanks engaged in the fight, and they seem to do it very well here as well. Now the swaps have to be timed carefully, but since Ash and I have worked together on many occasions this ended up fine. Essentially you have to hit provoke which raises your threat to 1+the highest targets threat, and then start spamming your highest aggro ability to make sure you gain a decent lead. Basically during the swap I would hit provoke and then spam butchers block a few times to make sure I had a nice lead. At this point the target would peel away from Ashgar easily and I would be in control again for another three stacks of the debuff.

Now the coolest aspect of the fight is that we didn’t even realize there were weapons to be gotten. I feel like this fight is worth more than an ilevel 80 item… but in any cases it was one hell of a fun encounter to be done with guildies. As hard as it was, I could totally see myself doing it again because this felt like a true challenge. It required each of us to do something to add to the fight. Towards the end of the fight we had to have a few DPS sacrifice themselves to make sure all of the bombs got blocked, and then we slowed dps allowing the healers to catch up and ressurect them. It was awesome seeing each person fully engaged in what had to be done. I am so proud of my guildies for accomplishing this, and now I have no doubt at all that we will do fine making progress in the Coil.

#DoctorWho #AggroChat #FFXIV

Cannot Be Tamed Questionnaire: Part Two

August 21, 2014 by Belghast

Resuming the Survey

Yesterday I really did not make it terribly far into the survey before I simply ran out of time. If you want to check out the first part see my previous post. I will be picking up where I left off this morning and hopefully getting significantly further. There are a number of awesome responses to all of the questions floating about so I highly suggest you check out the other Blaugust folks as well. If you want to see the original survey you can still see it here.

7. Name a game that was popular/critically adored that you just didn’t like.

I am going to have to say Guild Wars 2 here. I have given this game a good college try on several occasions, but each time I play it I just get frustrated that I cannot for the life of me see what everyone else likes so much about it. I alpha tested this game and so far it has been the only alpha test that I actually went through the trouble of resigning from. When it launched everyone was interested in it so I decided to give it another shot, only to end up frustrated again. Since this is a buy to play title, I keep patching it up every so often to see if it is something I can enjoy yet.

I feel like I am less frustrated with the game at this point, than my inability to see any of its saving graces. I feel like I am somehow flawed in that I cannot understand why this title is popular. Don’t get me wrong it has a lot of really nice features, ones that I wish were in other games. However the lack of meaningful interaction with the world and lack of role based game play always end up with me uninstalling the game. I mean I understand that the world is pretty, but past that I can’t think of why someone would want to play it. This game will always be an enigma to me, and I have yet to actually make it past 45 or so in any character.

8. Name a game that was poorly received that you really like.

I struggled with this one for quite a bit, and I went on this morning writing most of the other posts below before returning to it. Mostly I didn’t quite know how to classify something as “poorly received”. There are a lot of games that do not necessarily do well upon launch that later receive an almost cult following. Then it finally hit me… the game I should talk about. In 2011 ID Software was working on a brand new engine, and a game that showcased it. Everything about it looked like we might be getting their take on the whole post apocalyptic fallout style genre. When it released however, not a single person seemed to like it. I however loved every single moment of Rage. I loved the setting, the engine, the characters you interacted with… and most importantly the moment to moment game play. The only problem I had with the game was that there simply was not enough of it. It was over well before I was ready for it to be, in fact I thought it was going to pull a “Link to the Past” on me and show me that the real mission was only just beginning. Sadly however the game was over and I had so many things absolutely unresolved. However the game that was there was absolutely sublime, and for whatever reason people just couldn’t seem to see that. Unfortunately due to lackluster sales and due to bad reviews… they never really released much DLC for the game, and I will be left with what might have been.

9. What are your favorite game genres?

I primarily play MMOs and Role-playing games or at least games with heavy character development and role-play elements. I like games where I can become the character, rather than playing through someone else’s character. Games like the new Tomb Raider are awesome, but it is like watching a movie. The games that really pull me in are the ones which I can inhabit and that become about me more than the characters I am playing. I want to be the big damned hero and save the kingdom… and if a game lets me do that I am generally happy with it. Similarly I can never seem to actually play the “dark side” option in a game. I cannot bring myself to willfully be a dick to people in games, because the character is really just an extension of me… and I can’t bring myself to act like that.

10. Who is your favorite game protagonist?

To be honest, I have to go with the above answer. I am my favorite game protagonist. When I play a game I am playing a version of myself. It might be Bel the Orc, or Bel the Monster Hunter, or even Bel the Crackpot Surgeon… but it is always me that inherits the character. I like playing versions of myself and when I play a game it is about me being able to do things I can’t actually do in real life… either that or shouldn’t do for the sake of you know not ending up in jail. So when I play Mass Effect I am not playing Commander Shepard… I am playing myself as a Commander. The games that do not disturb this internal narrative are the ones I tend to enjoy the most like Skyrim or Fallout. If you actually want me to pick a character from a game that I like the most… we will have to go with Link in all his many forms. I guess he most represents the heroic ideal for me or a weak person that goes on a quest and gets strong during the process.

11. Describe your perfect video game.

This is always the roughest question, because if I knew how to create the perfect video game I would likely be a game designer. For me at least like I said above the game that gets the least in the way of my personal narrative is the one that I tend to enjoy the most. So for me I greatly prefer the silent protagonist games like Secret World of Final Fantasy XIV. When someone is speaking the dialog of someone that is supposed to be “me” in this world, it causes so much cognitive dissonance. As far as the game play I tend to favor fantasy games or post apocalyptic world settings, because they are very open ended and allow for very loose moment to moment gameplay. I want a good overarching quest that drives the storyline along, but I also want there to be a ton of interesting side quests along the way that are in essence little bite sized chunks of adventure with very limited commitment.

The most important thing to my enjoyment however is the ability to go off the rails. Nothing frustrates me than having a series of cut scenes the moment you start a game, so my preference would be to dump into a world with little explanation, and allow me to figure out what is going on as I roam around. Cut scenes are cool, but I hate feeling like I am trying to play an “interactive movie”, so I would prefer that if they exist they are initiated by me and not forced upon me. I place a high premium on being able to explore on my own and find my own adventure where it leads me. I think this is why I like the MMO genre so much, is because I can carve out the game I want to play through all of the various things it offers. I have learned to appreciate narrative gameplay, but it so often feels like I am being handcuffed and forced to do things I don’t want to. So at the end of the day I feel like the “Theme-box” or “Sand-park” hybrid is my favorite thing. Give me a storyline that I can follow if I choose to, but also let me go off and build my own game play when I decide to do that.

12. What video game character do have you have a crush on?

This question is a little odd to me, because I can’t say I have ever really had a “crush” on any video game character. Maybe in part it is because I grew up in the era of gaming where storyline was an after thought and the characters really were just an assemblage of pixels. I guess the closest for me is I have a fondness for Tali’Zorah in the Mass Effect series and always tend to pick her for my parties. I can’t say that is a crush per say but I definitely like the character more than most of the others.

13. What game has the best music?

I listen to a lot of video game music, as that tends to be MOST of what I listen to at work. Instrumental music is what I can write or code to most easily, so it helps me focus on whatever I happen to be doing. Additionally there is a nice feel good element to it of nostalgia as in the back of my mind I get warm fuzzies when I hear tracks that remind me of good times in games. Right now the soundtrack that is on heavy rotation for me is Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn import CD. I am also a huge fan of The Secret World and Defiance soundtracks for various reasons… but primarily that they fit the game they represent and reminds me of those worlds. However if you absolutely want to pin me down to just one soundtrack… I have to go back to Castlevania Symphony of the Night. There is just so much to love about that soundtrack, and it will likely always be my favorite.

Finishing Up Tomorrow

Once again I have run out of time, but I feel like I can probably finish things up tomorrow morning. I feel bad that it will have taken me three days worth of posts to make it through one single 21 question survey. However I could not bring myself to give short answers on any of the questions really. The questions themselves serve to unlock a bunch of memories in the process, so I figured this is my blog and I might as well expand upon them.

Play What You Love

August 17, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat Episode 18

This week on AggroChat I am joined by regular hosts Rae, Ashgar and Tam which means we are unfortunately without a Kodra this weekend. He is off enjoying the sights, sounds and gaming opportunities of GenCon. I swear one of these years I want to go to this, because it has been like the pinnacle of all gaming shows in my head since I was a youngin reading Dragon magazine. I realize that in reality it is a fair bit smaller than likely even PaxSouth that I will be going to in January, but there is just something extra epic about GenCon. In honor of this convention we talk at length about the latest rendition of Dungeons and Dragons… the fabled Fifth Edition and why you should be excited for it. Wizards of the Coast at this point pretty much knows that they made some serious mistakes with fourth edition, allowing for the meteoric rise of Pathfinder. In 5th Edition it feels like they are trying to pay for the sins of the past with awesome.

In addition to D&D 5th, it was a pretty significant week in gaming in that GamesCom, the Blizzard Warlords announcement and SOE Live were going as well as an event for EVE and SWTOR. I talk about the things that really stuck out to me from the GamesCom feed, including the PS4 Shareplay system and the controversy over Tomb Raider exclusivity. We talk about the World of Warcraft Warlords launch announcement and the subsequent trailer, and the general feeling of “blah” we seem to have towards it. Finally we talk about Everquest Next and that it does in fact seem to be a game they are actually working on and not just vaporware. Additionally we talk about the upcoming changes in Landmark, and how it is a step in the right direction but not enough to get Ashgar interested again. It is a pretty packed show so hopefully you will tune in.

Play What You Love

Since coming back to Final Fantasy XIV and the release of the 14 day trial program, I have had a number of friends give it a shot. A good number of them have gone ahead purchasing and subscribing to the game and this is awesome. However for a handful of players it just didn’t click for whatever reason and they sent me heartfelt apologies for not being able to get into the game. This is perfectly natural, not all games are for all people… and in the current gaming climate we are in there is more diversity than ever, so there really is no excuse to play something you don’t enjoy. So I feel like each of us owes it to ourselves to play whatever it is that we love, and never apologize for doing it. Life is too short to spend time playing something you just don’t enjoy for some reason.

Right now I am enjoying the hell out of Final Fantasy XIV, and I feel like this is a game I could settle down in. However if I reach a point where I am not enjoying it any longer, you can bet I will move on to whatever seems to “feel good” to play at the time. If you stick around and play a game you just aren’t enjoying it only really leads to you either getting completely burnt out, or extremely bitter about the fact that your friends are forcing you to play something you hate. If you allow yourself to glide along through a whole bunch of different fun experiences… I feel like we all end up happier as a result. So please if you try this game or any other and you really don’t enjoy it… go play something else. All you ever have to tell me is that it just “wasn’t for you” and I will completely understand.

Blaugust Prompts

I have been rather slack with a lot of the Blaugust related things, but the biggest of these is my original intent to collect a bunch of writing prompts. While the threat on the forum has a ton of these already I still need to add a bunch more. So today here goes a few related to this weeks podcast and this weekend post.

What game do you love that none of your friends seem to enjoy? Is there a game that you keep returning to but wish your friends were playing along with you?
For me GenCon is this fabled event, what is yours? What is the event that you would love to attend but have never had the opportunity to do so for whatever reason.
What makes a good community? What aspects of a game or social community do you enjoy, and what aspects detract from it?

I am extremely proud of all the bloggers who are participating daily in the Blaugust event. Thanks for making this a truly awesome month.

#FFXIV #AggroChat #Blaugust