AggroChat #371 – Neon Kamigawa Lands

Featuring:  Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks!  Sorry for no show last week but Bel was not able to record.  If you follow him on social media you might have an idea of the weekend he had.  Additionally we should probably talk about how this is going to be our last show of the year.  Time and space has conspired to make it so our recording days for the next two weeks are Christmas Day and New Years Day which yeah…  are not going to be days we record on.  So instead we will see you again in the new year with our traditional “Games of the Year” show.

Tonight however we start off by talking about how generally hard it is to actually play Final Fantasy XIV.  From there Bel talks about the Bungie 30th anniversary event and what he has been doing instead of FFXIV since he finished the MSQ.  From there we talk a bit about Warframe and how the beginning of a new year tends to be when Ash revisits the game.  We talk briefly about the Game Awards 2021 and how Tunic finally has a release date.  Tam talks about his experiences playing Summoner in FFXIV Endwalker.  We then talk about crossing the uncanny valley with the Matrix Awakens Unreal 5 Tech Demo.  Finally we wrap things up talking about how freaking cool the Neon Kamigawa Lands are and how probably hard it will be to get our hands on them.

Topics Discussed

  • Not Being able to play FFXIV Endwalker
    • Ceasing Sale of Product
  • Bungie 30th Anniversary Event in Destiny 2
  • Warframe
  • Game Awards 2021
    • Tunic Release Date
    • FFXIV Winning Awards
  • Summoner in FFXIV
  • Matrix Awakens Unreal 5 Tech Demo
  • Neon Kamigawa Lands

Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 8 – Featuring Grace

Good Morning Friends. Earlier this week I released the last of the original Bel Folks Stuff episodes again since the entire project predated me actually putting things on YouTube. The nasty secret however is that in January of 2020 I started the process of recording brand new episodes of the show. This has always been a little bit of a passion project for me and I enjoy these way more than probably the people listening to them. I want to do more of them and I thought initially by re-releasing all of the episodes it would kick start me back into scheduling recording dates and such and making it happen. I had two shows recorded that I have been sitting on for almost two years at this point and now feel like it is time to actually let the world listen to them.

The pandemic wrecked a lot of us creatively, so it is a bit weird to be listening to this show knowing it was recorded well before most of us had to deal with lock downs, toilet paper shortages, or the fear of leaving the house. It is really hard to have “best friends” as adults, or at least it is something that I have struggled with personally… but if I were to try and sort out that thing Grace would absolutely be at the top of that list. In part I started this initiative up again with their show in part because I knew it would be relaxing and easy for me to get through. In truth all of these first episodes are me sitting down with various folks that I record AggroChat with so it would be low pressure. I was battling social anxiety pretty freaking hard when this all started and only recently have pulled myself out of that cycle.

I hope you enjoy listening to the show anywhere near as much as I enjoyed recording it. So without further rambling I present you Bel Folks Stuff featuring my amazing friend Grace.

Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 7 – Featuring Jaedia

A Discussion with Jaedia

Hey Friends! This morning I woke up and realize that I had committed a travesty and am trying to right that wrong. Almost two years ago I had this grand idea of rebooting Bel Folks Stuff… and had even recorded a few new episodes as part of the process. I had this entire plan of re-releasing all of the original content since it never existed on YouTube and then this giving me a ramp to start recording new content. Then like everything that happened early in 2020, it was derailed by the pandemic. I mean on one hand being stuck at home should have been the opportune time to record something like podcast episodes with so much of the populace now working from home. Instead I personally found that the pandemic and the constant fear of death… pretty much sapped whatever creativity I had in me and left me this hollow shell.

The end result is that I never actually got around to re-releasing the episode featuring my good friend Jaedia, and since today is her birthday I thought I would fix that today. Her blog Dragons and Whimsy is now on its third revision and quite honestly there are so damned many accolades I could throw out here. Many of you specifically may know her from her work that she did on MMOGames.com from 2015 through 2018. I would provide links to profiles, but it is grossly incomplete because the site seems to have a habit of replacing “by lines” and several articles I know she wrote now show up as someone else. I may or may not have pent up bitterness about my brief time writing for the site as well.

Not at all where I intended to go with this discussion, but here we are nonetheless! This episode was recorded in May of 2015, so an awful lot of things have changed in those six years. The discussion that was had though is just as relevant today as it was when it was first recorded. I hope you can enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy revisiting it in my memories. Here is hoping that this will also act as a catalyst for me actually releasing some of the episodes that I have recorded already as well of the new rendition.

AggroChat #369 – Become The Big Bad

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks!  Tonight we are down Grace and Ammo but push on with our ever growing list of topics.  We start with some discussion about the Stellaris expansion where you can become the Crisis at the end of the game featuring some interesting asymmetrical gameplay.  From there Bel talks a bit about the current failed state of New World and the degenerative gameplay of “pay for dungeon runs”.  From there we talk about the importance of numbers and whether or not we as players should actually see them.  We wrap things up with a discussion about Game Dev and how what is meant by a beta has changed over the years, specifically with the “very alpha” Star Citizen.

Topics Discussed

  • Stellaris
    • Becoming the Crisis
    • Aquatic Races
  • New World
    • Failed State of the Game
    • Buying a Seat in a Dungeon Run
    • Patch 1.1 Lost the game over 200k players
  • The Importance of Numbers
    • When you want to see them
    • When you maybe don’t
  • Game Dev
    • Star Citizen
    • Betas and Alphas
    • Gamer brain vs Dev brain
  • Kodra Streaming Speed Runs
  • Bel Revisiting Cyberpunk 2077