AggroChat Podcast

AggroChat #297 – Easing the Learning Curve

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

Tonight we start off the show with a special announcement.  Cat Context was effectively the podcast that inspired Bel to go out and try and do the same thing with some of his friends.  After a three year absence, this week we get a brand new Cat Context episode that can be found hosted on Aggronaut.com.  Today Kodra is going to be playing some Hollow Knight randomizer since there are a bunch of new updates and he has been given an entire day for gaming.  From there we get into a topic that has been skipped a few times due to the potential length regarding easing into a learning curve and how Infinity is trying this with Code Zero.  Bel segues into a discussion about what happens when the servers go offline and a game goes dark and the concern that there will be an entire generation of games that are eternally lost.  Finally we wrap things up with some talk about the Mario Maker 2 Final Update and the interesting things that level builders are doing with it.

Topics Discussed:

  • Cat Context Podcast
  • Hollow Knight Randomizer Updates
  • Easing into the Learning Curve
    • Infinity Code Zero
    • Magic the Gathering
    • Warhammer 40k
    • Timeless Games
  • Lost Generation of Games
    • What happens when a game permanently goes offline
    • The age of private servers
  • Mario Maker 2 Final Update
    • Fun with World Maker
    • What makes a quintessential Mario game

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Cat Context Podcast #117 – Three Years Happened

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Featuring:  Arolaide, Ellyndrial, and Liore

The circular nature of life can be strange.  You are oftentimes presented with opportunities that you never quite expected.  The Thirteenth of April was the six year anniversary of AggroChat, and that is extremely germaine to today’s topic.  In 2014 I was listening to a podcast created and hosted by one of my good friends called Cat Context.  The shift to listening to it was extremely natural because at the time I was playing Rift as part of the Machiavelli’s Cat, so it felt like I was listening to an extension of guild chat.  It was effectively three friends, hanging out on voice chat and talking about a bunch of loose topics for roughly an hour.

The chemistry that this group of friends had was staggering, and it planted a seed in my head that I could in theory do the same thing with the large cast of characters that I hung out with on a nightly basis on Teamspeak.  Little did I know at the time that making a conversation seem effortless is way harder than it sounds, and I am still in awe of the great interactions that always happened on the Cat Context podcast.  Over the years I would get wistful and tweet at Liore or Aro about how much I miss the show.  Apparently this stuck in Liores head as earlier this week I got a DM announcing that they had gotten “the band back together” but lacked any place to actually host or advertise it.

So it is with great pleasure that I have the opportunity to announce Cat Context episode 117, or at least we think that is the appropriate number.  Three years ago life happened to all of these wonderful hosts and the show sorta dropped.  As a result we have a show that talks about at least in part what has happened over the last three years and more importantly what life is like now living in the time of pandemic.  I hope you are all as pleased to see a new episode of Cat Context and I would absolutely be willing to set up more permanent hosting for the trio if this thing starts happening more frequently.

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AggroChat #296 – Sea Shanties and Scurvy

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

We welcome Grace back after a few weeks away and talk a bit about life in pandemia.  Bel talks about the introduction of RTX Voice and its nonsense ability to filter out background noise from your microphone.  Kodra and Thalen talk a bit about gaming with youngsters focusing on Mario Kart and Katamari or “The Ball Game”.  Ash talks a bit about how bad the storytelling is in Phantasy Star Online 2.  We shift over to some talk about flying in Eorzea and some general talk about alting in Final Fantasy XIV.  Finally we wrap up with Sea of Thieves as Tam has been recently exploring this title and how PVP apparently doesn’t matter as much as it once did.

Topics Discussed:

  • Life in Pandemia Updates
  • RTX Voice
  • Games with 3 Year Olds
    • Mario Kart
    • Katamari
  • PSO2’s Terrible Storytelling
  • Flying in Eorzea
    • Alting in FFXIV
  • Sea of Thieves
YouTube Version of the Show

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AggroChat #295 – The Levels are Dumb Club

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

This is the first show of our seventh year of AggroChat, because we are apparently bad at tracking time and said nothing about our anniversary last week.  We start off with another “Bel was dumb” story as he ventured forth to battle the boxpocalpyse. From there we wind around a bit through a few topics and land on another exploration of levels in video games as a concept being a bad idea.  We talk about a bunch of ways that games do this and how some have figured out meaningful horizontal progression. Next up we talk about the effective death of Kotaku with the departure of Jason Schreier and this leads to a larger discussion about the odd place that “video game journalism” finds itself in and the rigors of trying to fill content for the 24 hour news cycle.  We go down the rabbit hole that is Star Wars Galaxies crafting system and contrast it against a few other approaches like that of the original Everquest II system. Finally some brief discussion as Tam finds Beat Saber and the shockingly good work out it ends up being.

Topics Discussed

  • Bel and the Boxpocalypse
  • We’ve outgrown the concept of levels
    • WoW’s leveling buff
    • Marking progression horizontally
  • The Death of Kotaku
    • The challenges of gaming content creation
  • The Brilliant Madness of Star Wars Galaxies crafting
  • Beat Saber

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