Guild Leadership Archives - Page 62 of 108

Crimzon CLover World Ignition

June 22, 2014 by Belghast

Technical Difficulties

Last night was probably the roughest time I have had editing the AggroChat podcast in the eleven episodes we have been running. Mostly this centers around us trying to change the way we record the show. Since its inception we have been recording it on the House Stalwart mumble server in a private and locked down channel. This worked pretty well and produced the first ten episodes without much issue. However on July 19th that server will be going away and as a guild we will be permanently switching to the Alliance of Awesome Teamspeak server. In theory Teamspeak does the same type of things that mumble does, so I thought we could simply record our channel without much issue. Turns out that was not quite the case.

Mostly we had a lot of issues with Kodra coming through either garbled or not at all when he was holding down his push to talk key. Apparently on his end it was me that was coming through like this. Oddly enough Ashgar and Rae didn’t seem to have any problems at all. It might be something we can fiddle with codec wise to make it work better, but honestly after the trouble I had with last nights podcast I am just of the opinion that we not try and record on teamspeak again. We have access to a more private mumble server, and I am guessing from now on we will just use that one instead. A lot of folks have suggested skype, but none of us are really skype users… so that would take its own trial and error to figure out how to really use it.

Last night we finished recording around 9:30 and I started editing by 10 pm. I did not actually finish editing the podcast until well after 12:30. The hard part was trying to glue together enough audio out of the garbled sections to make sense of what was being said. I’ve listened to most of it while I was editing and I think the end result works. However if you hear something that doesn’t quite make sense… it was probably me trying to make the of a corrupted segment of speech. While I don’t think the show was our weakest, it definitely made for some strained recording time since we kept having to redo segments that did not transmit. Hopefully what did make it through is enjoyable.

Fly That Geek Flag High

In this weeks episode we have the original cast reunited again. Ashgar is back from doing whatever it was that Ashgar was doing the week before, and Kodra is back from the awesome gaming convention Origins. As we had talked two weeks ago, Kodra gave us a run down of what exactly he did at Origins. This leads to a little discussion about something that is unfortunate in the gaming and geek communities… geek on geek shaming. Apparently Kodra catches some crap from the Magic the Gathering gamers for his choice of playing the My Little Pony card game. But hey we pretty much support all potential diversions here on AggroChat.

Additionally we talk about the Warlords of Draenor expansion and my experiences so far with the Alpha. We also talk at length about the Wildstar patch schedule and our hopes that they are actually able to maintain it. Join us for these topics along with a bunch of other ones that just get slipped in here and there was we go. Since neither Ash or Kodra were here to talk E3 2014, we do a bit of a callback there as well to talk about a few things that make people excited. Remember to let your geek flag fly high, but remember to respect everyone else’s choice of flag as well.

Crimzon Clover World Ignition

For the last couple of weeks I have been trying to get enough time to really give this game a proper playing. My friend Ashgar and I seem to be the only folks in our immediate circle of friends that really appreciate the “bullet hell” shooter. So when a new one comes out, he sometimes throws it on my game pile because he knows I will actually play it with him. The latest one of these is a random gifting of Crimzon Clover, and if you want to see a more logical and proper write-up about the game check out Ash’s blog. The other night when he was working on his indepth reviews of the game I took a break from Four Job Fiesta and Wildstar to play Crimzon Clover with him. I say play it with him… but mostly we just happened to be on voice chat at the same time while both of us are in game. It sadly does not support internet multiplayer gaming.

The game actually does a fair bit of bait and switch. When I booted it up and started playing the other night I originally thought it was going to be a “Shmup” and not really a “Bullet Hell” shooter. This however changes quickly as it somewhat eases you into the game play as you get used to the movement controls and various attacks. By the time you reach the first boss however things have escalated to the point where you are dodging the attacks like crazy. The game itself is extremely clean and the controls responsive. This is the sort of game where you just hold down the fire button at all times and spend the rest of your time looking for the only safe spot on the screen. I question in this genre why the fire isn’t just toggled on and left on, since there is never really a point at which you don’t want to be holding it down.

As is often the case with this type of game you end up with the choice between different ships. Type-I tends to be the most baseline and the easiest to control, whereas Type-II and Type-III give you a benefit in one area but make another area variable through the play session. I started off trying Type-II but quickly fell back on going with the tried and true “default option”. Ash actually managed to beat the game, but I only made it through boss number four before deciding my fingers were too sore to continue onwards. Apparently in order to truly beat the game, you have to make it through without hitting continue. If you do that you get a different ending and I believe a different boss encounter. This also seems to be a theme with a lot of these very serious games. I remember in the BlazBlue games there were “good” endings and “bad” endings depending on how you did in the earlier content leading up to the final encounter.

I have to say this game is a really good entry into the genre, and combined with Danmaku Unlimited 2 gives some seriously good options for Bullet Hell shooters on steam right now. I am happy that this genre is alive and well and did not die with the death of arcades. This specific title is interesting in that it is what they call a Doujin or essentially the Japanese version of an Independent PC game. This appears to be another thing that steam is doing right, in that it is giving these games a market in the united states. Recettear is another one of these Doujin games and it has been wildly popular and also likely would never have been seen here without steam. If you dig the Bullet Hell shooter genre, this is one of the more pristine examples I have seen in a long while. You should totally check it out because right now during the steam sale you can pick it up for only $7. This game is more than worth that money even if you only slightly like shooters.

Working as a Group

June 21, 2014 by Belghast

Different Expectations

Lately there has been some discontent in the guild, and it has made me painfully aware that different people are looking for vastly different things. There is no right or wrong answer here, but simply a case of wildly different expectations of what they have come to expect out of a guild and MMO relationship. I am not speaking for the guild or anyone in it in making this post, but I thought it might be useful for me to outline how I personally view a guild. Like I said just because I see something this way doesn’t mean there are not a wide variety of other opinions on what is proper and good in guild etiquette. However I’ve learned the fastest way to resolve any rough spots is to simply outline what you are expecting out of an arrangement.

Each of us comes to MMO gaming and guilds from a different set of past experiences. While some of these overlap many times they do not, and that is where the misunderstandings stem from. Massively Multiplayer games are not this monolithic experience, regardless of how we might think of them as such. For me I come from a raider background, and even though I am mostly “casual” these days it still colors everything about my gaming experience. Some players approach a guild from a PVP standpoint and then get frustrated when not everyone embraces the aspect of the game they enjoy the most. Similarly role-players could feel left out in the cold when the guild as whole does not share their interest for deep personal character development. While we might all think we play exactly the same game… that is almost never the case.

Working as a Group

I love doing big epic things with my guildies like raids or dungeons or even some pvp encounters. The problem is… that while I love grouping up for these few cases… I don’t ever want to quest with another person. I did Star Wars the Old Republic as a dedicated Duo… and found the experience to be both rewarding on one hand, but deeply claustrophobic on another. I’ve always found the group leveling experience, and especially the group questing experience to be extremely chafing. Someone is always a quest ahead of the group and someone is always one or two quests behind. There is a constant awkward struggle to try and keep this many armed abomination moving forward efficiently. As a result my preference will always be to quest alone, and have my personal time.

That is not to say I am not willing to group up at a moments notice… but I want there to be a “purpose”. If you need help killing this or that objective, or if there is an over world dungeon that you just can’t quite survive by yourself… those are awesome times to group. That said I like there to be a fixed duration of the grouping and a fixed goal in mind. I am a truly horrible group mate, because I will wander off on my own constantly. I’ve spent so much of my gaming time with other people depending on me for this or that, and when I level it is my time where I get to not give a shit about the needs or wants of others. When we are in a dungeon and I am tanking however… I am all about the needs of the group and the goal of getting us through the dungeon successfully.

The Reality Check

For most of my gaming experience I figured most players felt like I did, and preferred to quest alone. However over the last few weeks I’ve come to the realization that there is a specific group of player that wants to literally be grouped up 24/7 and working together towards everything. I think this is both noble and cool to have a leveling buddy like that… but I want no part of it at all. What is cool is that there are enough of these folks that they should be able to form their own little “band of brothers” and conquer the world together, but they lack the spark to do just that. I guess in part I didn’t even realize players wanted this since the ability to solo at all for me at least feels like a hard fought battle. In the early generations of MMO games, grouping was required to do anything at all, and it often meant a multiple hour long commitment.

I cut my teeth playing Everquest, and as a Dwarven Cleric… trying to solo anything was an act of futility and my nights were often dictated by whoever happened to be tanking for the group. I felt helpless and completely out of control, being forced to depend on someone else for my fun. It was a feeling I did not like one bit. So when I entered more modern games, I would pick whatever archetype could solo well and be relatively self sufficient. Thankfully these were almost always tanks, since they mostly had the survival ability to take whatever the game threw at them. So I decided that I actually liked being able to solo on one hand, and being the cornerstone of a group on the other. The further into management I have gotten in my real life, the more I have craved my “solo” time in MMOs, where I can just do whatever the hell I want to do without having to worry about the needs and wants of the many.

Role of a Guild

So I am sure at this point you are asking yourself… why do I focus so much on the importance of guild and community. Well honestly the guild gives a foundation and friendly faces that I see on a daily basis. It gives me the sense that even though I am off on my own doing whatever I want to do… that I am working together with others towards a common goal of progressing the guild. It is both friendly chat group and a constant source of inspiration and support when you need it. Additionally it gives you access to a lot of really great people when it does come time to group up and do something meaningful in an MMO. The guild shines when it comes time to run an Ship quest, Adventure, Dungeon or PVP match. The other night we had a grand night of doing pvp and it was extremely fun… even though I traditionally shy away from player versus player gameplay.

I’ve always seen my role as a community organizer to be that of laying the ground work and collecting the awesome people all in one place, so that they too can take fate into their own hands and do cool stuff together if they choose to. There lies the problem however, is that so many players want to sit back and have a “Cruise Director” plan events for them to attend. I on the other hand counter that it is the responsibility of each player to take responsibility for their own fun. If you want to do something, do it and convince people to come along with you. I’ve posted a few times about what I term the art of Groupcraft, but I will link it here again. One of the most empowering things you can do for yourself is to learn how to be confident in the assembly of a team that will work.

There are absolutely more successful ways of pulling together a group and making something happen when you want it to. Essentially in my experience you have to talk to people directly to get them to actually notice that you are trying to do a thing. This is much easier on voice chat, since you get the immediate feedback, however I did this same thing for years without the advent of voice chat. The critical knowledge however is what exactly you need to be successful. If you are a tank, then you need to find a healer and a few dps. In order to find the healer, you have to know what classes CAN heal and who in the guild falls within those search parameters. Basically for me a good guild is a friendly group of people that you like chatting with, but also a way to ease the finding of people to do something with. A hand crafted guild group will always be more enjoyable than a PUG, and usually more successful.

Just My Point of View

WildStar64 2014-06-20 22-30-01-908 Please note, like I said before this is just my point of view on the subject and what I am looking for out of a guild and the people in it. This is not some maxim that I will not cross, because lord knows I am liable to turn around this afternoon and end up grouped with someone for a long period of time and enjoy myself. These are just my tendencies and I thought it might be useful to open a dialog about what folks are expecting, by outlining what I am actually expecting. The Alliance of Awesome has been an interesting experiment because it is this big glorious amalgam of a bunch of different communities with their own rich traditions. House Stalwart had a shared guild culture that had been built up over the course of a decade, and it was pretty much expected that everyone in the guild felt the same way.

Going forward into this new experiment, we can no longer afford to expect that. Each of us comes from potentially different backgrounds with some shared and some disparate experiences. We have to come up with a brand new cultural norm as a result. I don’t feel this is the time for anyone to throw their hands up and walk away in a huff because they did not get whatever it was they were looking for. Instead it is time for folks to talk clearly about what exactly they are expecting out of this larger relationship. I think we are on the precipice of having something truly amazing, that we can all benefit from. We just need to take the time not to nurture it as it grows. I would not have poured so much effort into it so far, if I didn’t think it could be great for everyone involved.

Fires of Kel Vorath

June 18, 2014 by Belghast

The Vanishing

There are things that happened yesterday, that I feel like I want to talk about… but at the same time I probably shouldn’t. Suffice to say a good friend of mine pulled the ripcord yesterday and jettisoned out of the internet briefly. I kept trying to figure out if it was something I did or said, but it seems like there were just larger things happening that I will never fully understand. While it was happening though I was supremely confused and depressed to be watching it going on… and felt rather helpless to stop it. I have a bad habit of trying to internalize these things, and trying to figure out how exactly I had failed the person. Luckily for us at least, the person seems to be reversing course a bit… and since friends are friends I am ready to welcome them back with open arms regardless.

A few weeks ago I was moved to send out a blanket tweet and I honestly don’t even remember why at the moment. While I don’t remember what started it, the sentiment is very heart felt. Each and every one of you makes my life better in some way. We might grouse and bicker and have bad days, but at the end of the day I am better off because each of you exists out there and has touched me in some way. We use the word “community” a lot, but in many ways it doesn’t really sum it up. You guys are my family, and not the uncle that you never see and always thought was kind of weird… but the ones you wish you saw more often. As an adult, your friends are the family you choose to associate with. I don’t draw lines between real life and online… because the effect is real either way. So I just wanted to start my blog post this morning in trying to remind you all what you mean to me.

Fires of Kel Vorath

The better part of last night I spent trying to finish out the Auroria zone in Wildstar. The further into that zone you get, the more intense the questing becomes. The other night I ran the Ruins of Kel Vorath dungeon with some guildies, and last night I finally reached that area in zone. It is absolutely massive and everything seems to exist on this grand epic scale. The only thing I can really equate it to is doing the quests outside of Dire Maul in World of Warcraft, but imagine that Dire Maul was maybe four to five times bigger. Almost an hour of that time was spent doing a single zone event quest as I helped the dominion retake Kel Vorath. The rewards were minimal but the experience gain was phenominal. At the beginning of the night I was level 22 and now I am level 24 and about halfway into it.

I came into Wildstar expecting fun mechanics and a really enjoyable world to wander around in and explore. I had zero expectations of epic story so I am really pleasantly surprised to find it. I have no clue how much of the zone I have left. Right now I am hung up on a main story quest because I cannot for the life of me find the mob I am supposed to be killing. The indicator is on my map, and I have wandered around the entire area without finding any place that lets me go underground where the indicator seems to point me. Unfortunately the game is just new enough that there really are not many guides out there that I can even lean on as a crutch. So if I ever manage to find Kaarg the Divine… then I imagine I will be wrapping up the zone in rapid succession. I have the quest leading me out of Auroria to speak to someone at Palerock Post, so I think I am as “done” as it comes other than this one straggler.

PVPness

I don’t have any proper screenshots from last night, so instead here is a shot of me standing on this giant gun. Zelibeli decided to schedule a PVP night last night, and in an attempt to spur it on I showed up and participated. Several of my friends had a pen and paper game going on, so I knew attendance would be at least somewhat limited. I am supposed to be participating in the game, but for one reason or another I have not actually made it to a single meeting. So I figured it was just fine if I didn’t make this one either. We actually had five people ready to go for PVP, the only problem was that we were not complimentary levels. This might be an oversight on their part, but for whatever reason it does not seem like you can mentor down to the lowest player and queue together for PVP. Maybe this is their way of trying to prevent “smurfing”, but in any case it also meant that we all needed to swap to alts to make this work.

I grabbed my level eight warrior, because quite literally… that is the only character I have other than my engineer that has finished the “ship” starter area. First thing I have to say is that I suck horribly at pvp, and as a result I tend to actively avoid it. That said PVP in this game is much like PVP was in Warhammer Online… as in it is a phenominal way to level a character. I went into the night about halfway through level either, and exited the night almost level eleven. We ran maybe five matches, towards the end we were starting to get the swing of things. We were playing Walatiki Temple, which in many ways is like a remix of Warsong Gultch. Instead of being a pure capture the flag scenario, it is a “collect the things” one. In that you capture these Moodie Masks that spawn in the center of the zone and take them back to your base.

The catch is that you can also capture masks from your base. So in theory you have to guard the middle objective and your own base to be able to win it. We were doing a fair job of limiting the hemorrhaging towards the end of the night until someone started shooting off his mouth about how dumb we were for guarding the masks at home… causing the entire team to get distracted and fumble. People really are the worst part of PVP, and I wish in many ways there was NO chat in the battleground. If they simply had a smart ping system like league of legends has, I think most of the chat could simply disappear. The challenge we had last night is that ultimately we ended up against other premades, and quite simply we were not exactly “premade” quality.

In World of Warcraft, if you queued as a five man you got matched against other groups that queued as a five man. From the way that we got trounced I am guessing that the Exile players were a combination of two five man premades. They each worked flawlessly to whittle down our defenses and at the same time keep pushing forwards and taking masks. All of this said… I really was surprised just how much I enjoyed myself, and bolstered by just how little the rest of the AofA folks cared about winning. We were there to play the game and play it as well as we could while we could. With that sort of attitude I can totally see this becoming a regular thing. I like playing anything… and so long as folks keep a good attitude about it I can deal with losing all night long if we do. The big positive is that win or lose you still get a ton of experience and a satchel of goods, so I came out way ahead at the end of the night.

#Wildstar #WalatikiTemple #Auroria #FiresOfKelVorath

Ruins of Kel Voreth

June 17, 2014 by Belghast

One More Day

Tomorrow has a fairly significant sequence of events happening. Firstly my wife is flying back into town from the first conference of the summer, and secondly she is doing so on my birthday. Currently I care far more about the first part of that statement than the second. These conferences are always rough especially when they straddle my birthday. There have been times in the past when I was all alone for the occasion and it is really hard to keep from disconnecting from the world. However tomorrow when I ding 38 I will have my wife back home, and I hope her trip is safe and expedient. The flight back home from this event in past years has been riddled with downtime and layovers… and I hope she actually arrives on time this year.

As far as the birthday part of tomorrow, I really have no clue what I will be doing. I took the day off from work mostly because she would be flying in and I would need to get to the airport and pick her up without really knowing an exact time based on past years experience. I figure I will likely either play Wildstar or something on the PS4 while waiting. Past that I have no real big plans, as I won’t likely get together with family until the weekend. I always have a sort of contest to see which automated bot wishes me a happy birthday first. So I am curious who will win that race this year. Its funny when we live in a time when that is a “thing” and I take a perverse sense of pleasure in it.

I just hope that I will be breathing tomorrow. For the last several days my allergies have been going haywire and this morning it finally hit my lungs. I woke up today struggling to breathe, and am contemplating taking a breathing treatment. If it stays too bad even after the treatment I am not sure if I will be able to go to work in this condition. Having asthma and allergies is a blast… and right now the cottonwood is blowing hard outside. I wish I could find wherever the cottonwood tree is and remove it… because it seriously makes my life miserable every year. However I guess were it not for the cottonwood… the would be something else to take its place in the making my life miserable department.

Buying Rapidfire

As of yesterday morning I was sitting outside the Fire Powered Ship sequence that ultimately leads to the fire crystal. I had been assigned the Geomancer for my fire job, and having had it in the past… I knew I really wanted no part of it. As a result I ended up using Gilgabot’s Job Fair to buy my way to freedom. If you end up with an assignment that you really do not like for whatever reason, you can donate more money to charity to “buy” the class you really wanted. As a result I ended up picking up the ranger for my fire crystal, though it might have been interesting to see what it would be like with a ninja instead. The ranger gives me access to rapidfire, probably the most overpowered melee-friendly secondary ability in the game. With the knight it will likely be an i-win button against a few of the later fights.

Last night I played through the Fire Powered Ship, collapsing Karnak Castle and the Ancient Library in rapid succession. I continued on to Jachol and Cresent Island and now have officially gained my Ranger crystal. Tonight I will play through the Ancient Desert which should be interesting to say the least. Not sure if I will steam roll the sandworm or get steamrolled to be honest. I would really like to get through Soul Cannon tonight if I can and pick up my earth crystal. I went ahead and requested this yesterday when I picked up the fire crystal just so I would know whether or not I wanted to buy my way to freedom again. I was given the Dragoon which honestly I am fine with. I’ve always loved the dragoon in the Final Fantasy games that have had them, so actually looking forward to finishing with it. Maybe it is that I have just recently played through this much of the game already during our draft game, but it seems like it is going so much faster for me.

Ruins of Kel Voreth

Last night at some point during the night I had muted Teamspeak, and not realized it. So while I had wondered why everyone was being quiet I didn’t really think much about it until Tam messaged me asking what I was up to. I guess they were pulling together a dungeon run, and while I had considered going to sleep… I opted to stay and dps the run since Shandrah would be tanking. I have to say the Wildstar dungeon experience is kinda amazing. I know I have said this about other games, but Wildstar dungeons really do feel like World of Warcraft raids. We would have likely wiped over and over were it not for the fact that Shanbot has been running the dungeons with pugs since she often plays during a west coast timeframe host often. As a result she knew exactly what to do on each of the boss strategies, and we managed to make it through the instance without much in the way of wipes.

As the dungeon went on the encounters ramped up significantly. One of the things i liked was that there seemed to be a bit of randomness to the dungeon itself. One of my friends mentioned that when they had been in the dungeon the quests they were given were completely different. The final encounter was something that could only be described as “Bullet Hell MMO”. As a fan of the Bullet Hell shooter, I found the encounter really interesting. We wiped the first time because it had bugged out and we managed to get phases one and two happening at the same time. Without this bug occurring the encounter was actually rather manageable. I am honestly amazed that any pugs are able to get through this dungeon, let alone do so in a timely manner. Now I find myself really looking forward to running it again.

The big change for me last night was that I had literally just finished setting up a DPS build in my second slot. I had been slogging through content since about level 20 as a full tank, and honestly I thought I might have an easier time dpsing my way through the encounters. It was fortuitous that at that moment almost exactly, Tam got ahold of me to dps the dungeon. Now I feel like I have both hotbars set up and ready to go if I need to do this again. I really liked dpsing as an engineer and might have to install damage meters just to see if I am even vaguely close to the other dps in performance. I feel like I am lagging behind, but maybe that is just because I am not used to doing it. A lot of the engineer dps abilities are tightly targeted and it is hard trying to lay them down in a way that the mobs won’t move out of them until the effect fades. I look forward to giving it another try another night… and increasing my performance.

Wildstar PVP

Tonight ZeliBeli has scheduled a PVP night in Wildstar, so I will be doing that along with some FF5. If you are on Evindra Dominion you should totally check out the anook event if you are interested. I have not even touched PVP so far in the game, so I look forward to getting my feet wet with friends. As it stands right now, since tomorrow is my Birthday I do not have a Elder Scrolls Online night scheduled, because really I have no clue what tomorrow evening might bring. Here is hoping that my wife is back home and that all of her flights were successful. In the meantime, going to beat things up with the guildies in Walatiki Temple.

#Wildstar #FF5 #FourJobFiesta #RuinsofKelVoreth