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Ravana Attempts

August 18, 2015 by Belghast

Unbreaking Google+

Last night I had a message from a long time friend of mine, asking me why I was no longer posting my daily posts on Google+ to which I kinda gave a head tilt and went “huh”? I had certainly seen my posts making their way to G+ anytime I checked my messages over there. Then I took a closer look and saw that they all said “shared only with you” which kinda defeats the purpose of syndicating posts in the first place. It turns out that nothing I have posted since July 28th has made it to G+ which is more than mildly frustrating. I un-linked my account from Jetpack Publicize and relinked it a few times, but I never saw the prompt that I once saw asking me to select what type of sharing level for my posts. So I took to the search engine to try and figure out what was happening. Sure enough it seems like Google did something to change its policies with what level of access external apps have access to your account. You apparently need to go into Settings > Manage Apps & Activities and then find the WordPress app or whatever else you are using for syndication. This will allow you to edit the permissions for how it will be sharing to your feed, and like I said before apparently the new default is “Only You”.

After posting about this last night it seems that this pretty much happened for everyone universally. I thought I would take a quick moment and at least explain how to fix it. As far as syndicating my posts… I tend to take the approach of broadcast what I write pretty much everywhere. Each of the social networks kinda has its own vibe and while I greatly prefer using Twitter, there are folks that read my content that equally greatly prefer G+ or Facebook or even Tumblr. My goal has always been to deliver my content as in as painless of a manner as possible for folks to read. I personally am not a huge fan of Facebook, and in fact I went through the crazy process of deleting my personal account once upon a time because it annoyed me. However when I started blogging I signed up for an account just for the purpose of reblogging my content because I know there are people who do prefer to use Facebook. Granted it might get annoying as shit if you follow me on multiple platforms to constantly see duplicate postings, but I guess that is a chance I am willing to take because I don’t want anyone to feel excluded or left out of the process. Maybe this is strange but my daily posting thing… feels like all of us are taking a journey together and I don’t want to leave anyone behind.

Ravana Attempts

As is always the case last night was we gathered up the Monday team and did some eight player content in Final Fantasy XIV. We started the evening by burning through all four parts of Alexander Normal for the folks who are not running it and capping out early like I am. At this point my Warrior is sitting at level 190 and I have everything I can get out of Alexander other than the chest piece. So as of today I will be largely running the place to help out the gear on my Dragoon. At some point I hope to get the chest piece but largely for cosmetic reasons because the Alexander gear set looks amazing. Last week we managed to burn down Bismarck Extreme and now both the Monday and Wednesday teams are keyed for the next primal encounter. As such instead of beating the sky whale again we decided to make attempts on Ravana Extreme. Now going into this place we had heard horror stories about how rough the encounter was and how it was another Titan Extreme where you had to move exactly at the right time and keep repeating a pattern. Honestly I didn’t see that at all. Instead I saw an encounter with a repeatable pattern but significantly more wiggle room to adjust as we went.

We made some serious progress last night, and I think more than likely we will be able to defeat him next week. Each attempt we kept creeping closer to the goal, and essentially what is going to be the make or break moment is dealing with the Final Liberation phase. If we can learn that particular dance we will have the encounter, and it honestly did not feel like we were too terribly far off from that process last night. Granted at this point we are significantly better geared than the first groups that attempted the fight, but my hope is that we can get in and start farming this guy so that folks can get the really awesome weapons. In truth I hope that we can farm both primals because there are absolutely weapons that come from both of them that I would like to see. We had the two handed sword drop from Bismarck last Monday and it looked amazing. It is the stupid things like getting glamour items that motivate me, and at some point I want to organize 2.0 extreme primal farming runs so that we can start to get folks their ponies. As it stands we only have a couple of ponies in the guild, and I think my Leviathan pony was the first. We need to figure out a method because really I would like to make sure everyone gets at least ONE primal pony before other people roll on it. Granted eventually it would be awesome to have people get a full set, but I would be happy with having everyone with just one as a starter.

Entering Whitevale

This morning I am having one of those mornings when I am easily distracted. The cats are tearing through the house chasing each other like they have gone mad. There is a dog barking and it sounds like it is coming from my back yard… even though it is really across the green belt. I keep flipping over to twitter, and having to force myself to put my fingers back on my keyboard and type in my WordPress window. Largely since this is Blaugust I wanted to include this little tidbit because it absolutely happens to me too. There are days when you cannot keep your train of thought, and I have learned to just go with it. Start writing the things that seem most natural and eventually somehow you will get back on track. Last night was one of those nights for me as well, and I flipped back and forth between games quite a bit as the evening wore on. Before the raid I spent time over in Wildstar with the purpose of trying to “finish Galeras”, which is a bit of a daunting task because there are a silly number of quests in that zone and many of them you will never actually find unless you go wandering around aimlessly. Bit by bit however I explored the regions of the map that had yet to be explored and I am now relatively confident that I have at least gotten most of the quests out of the way.

That now means the moment I have been dreading is upon me… and I had to take the flight out to Whitevale. I guess in part the reason why I have been avoiding doing this is that Whitevale ultimately was the zone that broke me when I played the game at launch. I am not sure entirely what it is about the place, but it felt like moving slowly through molasses. I think in part it was due to the fact that Dominion side there simply were never that many players in the zone, meaning that I could never get a group to do any of the group objectives, and the mob density meant that it was super hard to move anywhere without having to fight a dozen mobs. The zone also seemed to have a higher concentration of the challenger and superior difficulty mobs than the other zones. It seemed like I could not move anywhere without seeing one of those horrible flashing red shielded mob types that I had to try and chew through in vain. As a result I have honestly been scared of getting to this zone because it was my fear that once again it would break me. I have actually been enjoying the content so far, and finding playing the game refreshing. So hopefully maybe I can make my way through Whitevale because supposedly everything on the other side of it… is significantly better.

Blaugust Halfway Check-In

August 16, 2015August 16, 2015 by Belghast

Tabulating Results

We are now at the halfway point of Blaugust, and I thought it would be cool today to take note of who has achieved their “Survivor” rank or not. As a refresher I have changed the requirements slightly from last year, and you can find the entire rules post here. Last year a significant portion of the contest was about not missing a single day, and quite honestly there were a bunch of people who got their 31 posts in… but had not done them contiguously so it felt dishonest to rule them out just because they missed a day. Instead this year I am judging the contest based on number of posts, which allows people to play catch up if they need to. At this point we are technically on day 16, and I had said I was going to classify anyone as a survivor who had managed to make 15 posts during the month. There are a lot of folks on this list, and a lot more than are only one or two posts off from it. That said I thought it would be awesome to celebrate those who have already reached the halfway point.

I'm really starting to see the benefits of #Blaugust.

— Sonja (@SGMSoultamer) August 16, 2015

I am going to pick on SoulTamer a bit because she made this tweet yesterday. When I see something like this is makes me exceptionally happy inside. Blaugust is a strange ordeal, for some people it gives them strength and they reach the other side a more prolific blogger. For others it defeats them and they go for month or more long lapses afterwards. It was for that second group that I considered not actually doing it this year. I didn’t want to be the cause of anyone dropping off the radar in our game blogging community. However there were enough people constantly asking me if I was going to do it that I reluctantly said yes. I am happy that I have and I am immensely proud of the progress everyone has been making towards the final goal. Another note… just because your name does not currently appear on this list does not mean all is lost. You can still reach 15 posts and you can still reach 31 for the month, and I think this is the aspect of the 2015 running that I like the most. Instead of demoralizing someone for missing a day, there is always hope that you can catch up and cross the finish line as well. So I challenge all of you folks who are not on the list to get there!

AggroChat 70 – Calibrating “Main Gun”

This week we are joined by Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tam and Thalen, with Kodra having to deal with some family stuff. I was not certain how much we would have to talk about, but like always we managed to fill a show full of all sorts of games that we had been playing. Thalen starts it off talking about his further adventures into the Magic Duels free to play game. Similarly with the launch of Fallout Shelter for android he has started playing that as well. Finally he talks about the recent Fantastic Four event in Marvel Heroes and how The Thing is the tankiest of tanks. Tam spent the day at an Infinity Tournament and talks about just how awesome the Seattle minature gaming scene has been.

Grace talks about her recent swap to spending most of her time in Wildstar and the excitement surrounding the impending free to play drop that is now on the public test server. Additionally she talks about her recent foray into the PVP system, and how generally cool the community seems to be surrounding it. While board games are normally the territory of Kodra, Grace mentions the Exploding Kittens card game and how much fun she has had with it since receiving it. Ashgar has followed in Tam’s footsteps and talks about his experiences playing Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment. Ash has also started on a brand new playthrough of Mass Effect with the intent of carrying one save game from one all the way through three. This of course spawns a conversation where we talk about our experiences with the Mass Effect series.

Finally I talk about my recent return to Rift, and my obsessions with Hellgate London. Additionally we talk about next weeks show, where we plan on talking about the storyline of the Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward expansion. We have purposefully kept discussion of plot points to a minimum, but we feel it is generally safe enough to start talking about where we think the game is going. We are announcing this ahead of time for the purpose of letting our listeners and readers join in the fun. Do you have any interesting theories or are there parts of the story that you didn’t quite grasp? We are taking in questions via email for this coming show, and we will go over them on the air. I should be a lot of fun and it is our first real attempt to do something like this.

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Exploring Draumheim

August 14, 2015 by Belghast

Great Sell-Off

Normally this morning I would go into my new game picks for the coming week to serve as alternate writing fodder to Blaugust. However that is not going to happen because I am not really feeling like writing that post today. I am struggling right now with a mix of allergies and asthma that have conspired to make me miserable. One of the things about being sick is that you tend to surround yourself by things that feel comfortable or nostalgic. Just as there is comfort food, there is also comfort gaming… and when I feel like shit I find myself wandered off into games I have pushed to the side. Essentially when I am feeling my worst I am lease capable of dealing with the stress of interacting with other people. As such yesterday and last night I ventured into a realm where almost nobody knows my name anymore… Telara. Rift was one of my games of the week for this past week, and with it comes a series of problems. Namely when I log in I am staring at a bag and bank full of dimension items and crafting materials. I am not sure if you are the same as me in this aspect, but if my bags are a mess there are so many times I will log in and then log right back out because I cannot be bothered to fix that situation. Honestly if I don’t do something quickly in Final Fantasy XIV I will be nearing that point as all of my retainers are clogged and my inventory continues to get more and more semi-permanent additions.

With Rift however I finally did something drastic. Last October Rift released the Nightmare Tides expansion, and I still don’t have a character to the new level cap of 65. During this time I have been accumulating crafting materials from doing the Minions minigame, and quite honestly I have more than I will ever actually use. By the time I actually get around to hitting the level cap I will more than likely have just as much materials I do now. So instead I decided to reinstall BananAH and post every single crafting material on the Auction House. It cost a lot of plat to post everything, but luckily by the end of the night I had managed to quadruple the amount of plat I had going into this experiment, and there are still a bunch of auctions up there that may or may not have sold over night. The money gained was a side benefit, the real mission was simply to clear the shit out of my inventory. At some point I will do the same with the various housing bits, because there are some things I will quite literally never end up using in any design. With the bags clear however I finally felt like I could actually go out into the world questing, and it improved my outlook on the game considerably.

Figuring Logistics

While the great sell-off took care of one issue keeping me from playing Rift, I still had another big one standing in my way. Rift has quite possibly one of the most complicated character creation systems, namely that for a given class you can have any combination of three different souls from a pool of ten potential souls for each slot. If my math is correct… and I would seriously question that… but I believe that gives us 120 possible combinations with a pool of 76 talent points to distribute between your three trees. What I am trying to say is that basically every time I decide to play the game it requires a bunch of research on my part to determine what the current “viable” builds are and what purposes they serve. To say that Rift changes a lot is an understatement… they are constantly patching the game and tweaking things and often times these have ramifications have effects that trickle out and make or break the last patches specs. The class that I tend to care about the most however is the Warrior, and while I have a level 60 rogue and a level 60 cleric… I tend to mostly focus on Belghast first and foremost. So over the last week I have poked around the Class Guide forums and stumbled onto one that looked promising titled: Warrior Solo Leveling (61-65). Luckily it was not too far off from the build that I had tried leveling with before, so I was able to tweak out my hot bars without much issue.

One of the big strengths of Rift is also one of it’s great weaknesses. The macro system is excellent and allows you to do some really interesting things with it. The problem being the game also gives you so many sideways and optional abilities that you feel like you are required to macro everything together for fear that you miss some opportunity for not having 32 fingers to hit abilities with. The big thing I like about this incarnation of the soloing build is that essentially I am really only using one macro, and all that does is chain a series of high cool-down single target abilities onto Empowering Strike. The combo point dump abilities are on my bar separately, as is the main reactionary ability that I hit after using one of them. The feeling is that things are less random than they have felt before when I have played a suggested spec. I am hitting buttons largely because I know what the effect is going to be, and because I want to use it at that moment. Sure I still have one single mixed bag ability, but it feels like it is less important than the things I am not macroing. The other big thing is that it seems like my survival has gone up significantly, which was a huge problem I had previously. I am still under level for the region I am hunting in, but I am wondering if that just means that I missed something important in the previous zone.

Exploring Draumheim

At this point I had a spec and I had clean enough bags to be able to venture out into the world. I had two ports available in Draumheim so I grabbed one and hoped that I had picked the right one. It seems that I did as when I landed there were numerous quests available. The zone is extremely cool with all manner of nightmarish abominations wandering around in the midst of the ocean that is being drained away. The coolest thing about Draumheim is that it seems to be a nightmarish echo of Telara. There are numerous places in the zone that represent areas from the game, for example there is absolutely a version of Meridian and Sanctum as well as a nightmarish version of Port Scion. Similarly I ran into a copy of the great toad-like Greenscale, who represented the aspect of hunger. When I first attempted to play Nightmare Tides I was not sure if I liked it or not, largely because I am not the biggest fan of underwater settings in MMOs. Now almost a year later the subtlety of the expansion is starting to sink in. It is less about us traveling to the physical plane of water, and more about us traveling into the physical manifestation of dreams and nightmares. Nothing in the zones are quite what they seem, and last night I ended up helping out a series of existentially confused hay bales… and I am not making that up… they are quite literally named that.

I still wish we had a more directed questing experience similar to the old world. I know they went in this direction as a way of distancing themselves from the standard questing format of MMOs, but personally I find it somewhat lacking. The story that is there is really good, but there just doesn’t feel like there is enough of it. Mostly it feels like you can’t get through the content by only following the quests. Instead of feeling like questing is optional it feels like I have to do every single quest, and do every single carnage quest that pops up when you kill any mobs… and still do some dungeons or instant adventures or you run into the situation I am in… where I am one to two levels below the content I am trying to do. The leveling experience is much less directed, and this is a change that went in with Storm Legion… but the end result in both expansions was me constantly wondering what I am supposed to be doing next. For most MMOs the leveling experience gets better over time, but I feel like Rift went in the opposite direction. I get it that quest content is fairly expensive to create, and without the subscription model they don’t have that stable source of monthly income to keep said quest content coming. The quests that are here however are really good, and one I did last night took me through a series of “computers” that showed little recorded vignettes from the past, all of them fully voice acted. I like all of the things they have done to make finding quests more interactive… but I wish we had more hub based quests as well to fill in the gaps in content. I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t enjoy myself however, because I absolutely did. I needed a game where I could be anonymous and lose myself in the experience of playing an MMO, and that is precisely what Rift gave me yesterday. I still very much love Trion and the team behind Rift, and it is one of the games I will continue to suggest people check out on a regular basis. I feel like they did the absolute best job of a free to play conversion that I have experienced to date, and I am willing to keep giving them more of my money. I am just nostalgia for the way that questing used to feel in Rift is all.

Tam’s Liebster Questions

August 13, 2015 by Belghast

I posted yesterday a bit about the backlog of posts that I have had that I wanted to make. Yesterday I was also called out by Tam about not responding to his Leibster post, but in truth I just had not gotten down to it. Since tomorrow will be another Blaugust Games of the Week post, I had planned on getting his Liebster post either out today or Saturday, but since he is getting antsy I guess I am going to make sure it happens today. For those who don’t know the Liebster is this well intentioned “award” that is essentially the blogosphere’s version of a chain letter. Normally it is supposed to float around with a cover page full of rules outlining how you are supposed to proceed, and explains things like that you are supposed to choose a candidate that has never been Liebstered. This seems to go around once a year, and based on some of the questions I have seen… I am guessing this is a continuation of last years “strain” because at least one of the questions I have seen floating around is one I came up with. All of this said I am absolutely not down on the concept of the Liebster. I think it is a pretty awesome way to introduce people to new folks, but at this point this will be the third time I have been Liebetered. I am going to ignore the “rules” of the award and not name any successors because by the strictest of rules I should not be getting this again.

Onwards to the Liebster Questions

1 — What is the best spell to cast?

Anything that buffs my melee ability or causes me to take less damage. In truth however… I have to say Resurrection would be the best spell to cast most of the time. Considering how much death I have had to deal with in my life, I have a feeling that is the one I would end up using the most.

2 — What food item(s) from a game do you want to eat above any other?

Nothing from any Fallout game ever… In truth I am not sure if I have ever salivated over any in game food, but I will say I have always wanted to eat a Tel’Abim Banana since they are supposedly sentient beings from another land. Wondering if they taste significantly different than a normal Banana.

3 — You’ve got an infinite supply of one consumable, and can never carry any others. Which consumable do you choose?

That one is simple… Health Potion. Seriously there is no reason for any other consumable if you have an infinite supply of health.

4 — You have to choose a race and class that you’ve never played seriously before. What do you pick?

Honestly this one is hard because I have played most roles seriously in the past. The one class that I always thought I would like but could never really get into was the World of Warcraft Warlock. At face value it seems like a very “Bel” class summoning demons and shit, but the whole damage over time aspect has always baffled me. After starting to get used to the Arcanist a bit, I am going to say that Warlock is something I have been interested in giving a more serious try. I have one somewhere in my 60s in WoW but I largely got there because the leveling curve in that game is laughable and I just made my demon beat things up for me. I would like to try playing it as a proper dot dropping madman.

5 — What game did you think you would hate but actually loved?

This one was a little tough, but I finally came up with an answer I am happy with: The Saints Row franchise. You are thinking… but Bel it is a crazy game where you get to beat everything up with dildo bats… that absolutely sounds like a game you would be interested in. Sure but you have to understand something key here… I really do not like Grand Theft Auto games. Well I take that back, I found one and two good mindless fun, but I could not stand GTA 3… and then each of the games afterwards that I played I also found frustrating. In all fairness I have never really given GTA 4 a fair shot, which I need to do at some point. I am getting off track here, but essentially I always thought of Saints Row as a GTA Clone, and I guess in truth that is precisely how the series started out. What it has morphed into is this insane “no rules” sandbox, and THAT aspect I absolutely love. Saints Row 3 and 4 are both amazing, and I really need to devote more time to playing them.

6 — What game did you think you would love but actually hated?

Citizens of Earth… which coincidentally ended up being our first AggroChat game club game. Everything about that game sounded awesome… until we actually started trying to play it. Hate is a strong word, but really… I never want to play that game again. It was just the worst of smarmy repetitiveness and laughing at itself jokes I have experienced in awhile. Additionally the combat really was not fun at all. I was so amped going into that game, and those hopes were dashed within the first hour.

7 — Pick a zone from any game to live in. Why?

Moonshade Highlands from Rift without a doubt. Gorgeous storms, awesome Dwarves, and big mountain highlands full of little pools and rivers. The crazy woods filled with murderous Fae I could deal without, but the rest of that zone… absolutely perfect for me. Again other than the whole nightmare demons thing I would absolutely love to live in Hammerknell.

8 — You can excise one class from every future game. Which? Why?

Probably anything with a stealth mechanic. It is probably going to surprise people that I did not say “Mage”, but in truth I find stealth mechanics to be among the most frustrating experience I have ever had in any game. The truth is I like the “rogue” archetype, I just don’t want them to be stealthy. I am all about the swashbuckler type character slashing away at things furiously with two swords. Probably the best stealth mechanic as far as I am concerned is that of the Nightblade in Rift because they just used it as a limited time opener, not something to stay in for long periods of time.

9 — What’s your favorite story?

Hmmm this question is so ambiguous. My favorite set up for a game has to be Hellgate London. In fact yesterday was lamenting how awesome the opening cinematic for that game and the subsequent story was. The problem is the game was not really worthy of it, and I would love to see it rebooted into a movie or a television show with its own new game. I have to say though of all of the game stories I have played, the one I most want to see made into a television series is Mass Effect. Imagine that story told over the course of five or six seasons of a high budget television show? Would be amazing.

10 — What hobby does no one (yet) know you have?

The problem with having a blog for as long as I have had… everyone pretty much knows everything about me at this point. In fact I did Factoid February a few years back where I spilled the beans on a lot of these details. I really don’t have any hobbies that would shock someone. The hobby that I need to get back into doing more of however is Photography. It has been a few years since we were regularly going out on photo shoots each weekend, and that needs to change.

11 — What is your favorite secret shame?

Again I can’t really think of something that I have not already talked at length about here on the blog. I am a sucker for John Hughes films, so that would probably be about the closest thing to a “guilty pleasure” that I have… that and I love 80s pop music. It just reminds me of my childhood, when everything seemed possible. As a kid I thought John Hughes films were about the underdog getting their way in the end, but as an Adult they have a much darker theme, namely you can have whatever you want so long as you change everything about yourself in the process. Think back to the Breakfast club… you have Ally Sheedy playing this girl that just wants to be loved by hear parents… and everything is set right in the world by a make over turning her into Molly Ringwald 2.0. Even with the darker interpretation… I still can’t help but love those movies.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I am breaking the chain here and not naming a victim. I still think the Liebster is a good idea and something pretty cool, but at this point I am getting tired of doing them myself. However Tam put a lot of thought and effort into his questions, so I felt obligated to answer them. In fact I think his questions would make a pretty great Blaugust prompt if anyone else wants to answer them. For now I am signing off because I spent way more time writing this out than I expected to, and am now late for work!