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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!

Our Own Convention

August 11, 2015 by Belghast

Noble Aspirations

@jaedia @heyitsliore @ysharros I think we need a Blaugust-Con but it would really just be hanging out and playing board games while drinking

— ▪Bel▪Writes▪Things▪ (@belghast) August 10, 2015

This is potentially going to be one of the stranger morning blog posts I have made in awhile. Yesterday during the midst of another conversation entirely I planted a seed, and got a significantly more favorable response than I had expected. Essentially I have thought for awhile how awesome it would be to have some event that let all of the great people I know through gaming or blogging to meet up, hang out, and cause mischief. This year it was my hope to be able to make Pax Prime since there are a significant number of people in the Seatle area now. The problem being by the time I even knew the tickets had gone on sale, they were already completely sold out. Our backup plan was to try and get AggroChat qualified for press passes, but we were summarily rejected without much notice as to why. Every major convention has this same issue, with having way more demand than there are tickets available for folks to attend. So this sent me down an alternate line of thinking… maybe we just need to create our own convention. I know that sounds crazy at first glance but bear with me for awhile.

My wife is heavily involved in the twitter math community, and five years ago they were lamenting how every single professional development workshop they have been to was essentially a waste of time. One discussion lead to another, and the idea was mentioned that what they really needed was a way to get together so that they could share ideas. From there they organized the very first Twitter Math Camp in St Louis, and it was a huge success. That first year only around fifty teachers attended, but each additional year it has grown to this year in Los Angeles there were over 200 teachers. So seeing this go from someones vague idea to fruition maybe gives me a different perspective than the average person when it comes to the thought of forming our own convention. I mean ultimately that is how most gathering start, with a basic idea and then just branching out from there.

Our Own Convention

I loved Pax South, but not really because the convention itself was this magical place. The floor was busy, and there were so many people wandering around that it became hell to find a quiet spot to yourself to think. What made the convention awesome was getting to hang out with people that I had only ever talked to online. When I realized this… I realized that I didn’t actually need a convention to have fun, but in truth could potentially have more fun if I just somehow managed to gather up a bunch of people in one place and time. Even if we quite literally did nothing but hang out and play board games and talk about life, it would still end up being an amazing experience. That said I do think we could convince enough people to show up to make it an interesting experience for all of us. Think about the sort of things we go through with the Newbie Blogger Initiative each year, and ultimately how much we learn from one another. It would be easy enough to throw together a series of panels discussing the finer points of various blogging skills that we have. I mean it would be pretty awesome to record an impromptu live Podcast for example, or a technical discussion in how to get the most out of WordPress. There are real things we could talk about, and with that many game bloggers in one spot we might even be able to talk some game companies into showing up as well. Maybe I am brutally naive… but I think it is a thing that might be doable.

Location, Location, Location

@ysharros @jaedia @heyitsliore @BlueKae all joking aside… I have thought far enough to figure that either St Louis or Chicago would ideal

— ▪Bel▪Writes▪Things▪ (@belghast) August 10, 2015

I literally have thought about this for awhile now, and those thought processes were just made more concrete after returning from Pax. I’ve long thought that the best place for a meetup would be in a central state. Conventions have this problem of being super convenient for people living on one particular coast, but damned near impossible for anyone else to attend. So after a lot of thinking basically I came up with two potential locations.

St Louis, Missouri
Chicago, Illinois

Both locations have strengths and weaknesses, but both are also fairly centrally located making it not too horrible from pretty much anywhere in the United States, and potentially even doable for Canadians. St Louis is significantly easier for me personally… because I know the town decently well and have several friends in the area that I could potentially recruit to help. Chicago on the other hand… other than flying through O’Hare I know nothing about it, and I really have zero support structure to help out with the planning and the details. Its biggest strength however is O’Hare airport, because essentially it is a straight flight from any major airport cutting down the overall travel costs. That said St Louis hotels, venue rentals, and pretty much everything else would be significantly cheaper which might offset the travel costs. All of this said… they both have strengths and weaknesses, but as I said my personal leanings are towards St Louis simply for the familiarity point.

I guess the ultimate question is… would some sort of convention/meetup be something that our community would even be interested in? We would have to set a date well into the future and begin planning now to make it work, but before any of that… I need to know if people would actually come. I think it could be a really awesome experience, and if nothing else let a whole bunch of people that have only ever communicated online hang out and get to know each other. I also think there is a lot of cool stuff we could learn from each other, so I feel like it could be more than just a “gathering”. Over the last several years we have gone from being a vague connection of island states, to being a serious and formidable community constantly welcoming new people. Blaugust while stressful, is an amazing event and just one in a long line of events that we do each year. While I jokingly referred to this as BlaugustCon… it is more than just that. I think we could build something amazing in the real world in addition to all of what we are doing in the virtual world. Like I said.. the real question is do people even want this? I don’t often ask for feedback, but in this situation I absolutely need it. Leave me a line and let me know your thoughts.

Communing with Fae

August 10, 2015 by Belghast

Freemium Magic

While I still have aspirations to cease the swiss army posts… I guess in reality I live a fairly swiss army life. This weekend was really no different, and the one hundred plus degree temperatures just caused us to spend more time than normal indoors. When this happens I start to get a little wanderlust at least from the standpoint of what games I am playing. As a result this weekend I played a mixture of Final Fantasy XIV, Star Wars the Old Republic, Minecraft, and some Magic Duels. You can blame the podcast we recorded Saturday for the later, because both Thalen and Kodra talked about playing it. I have several assorted versions of the Duel of the Planeswalker magic game cluttering my steam account. I end up picking them up when they go on sale and then only ever playing them a few times. Ultimately part of the excitement of magic for me is playing with physical cards and opening physical packs. We have joked about it before but “that new pack smell” is really a thing, and it can be intoxicating. That little tingle of excitement as you rush through the “commons” to find out what rare you got in that pack is a thing I have repeated thousands of times over the years. So is the sinking feeling when I see that rare is a blue or a white… the two colors that I most have a negative reaction towards. The real life magic really really wants me to play White, because I have an insane number of rare angels… but all I ever really want is the dark and sinister Black cards.

Right now I am still about halfway through the unlocking story of the White deck of Gideon Jura. The game does a really cool job of telling you the story of how each of the planeswalkers found their spark, which according to Kodra is the central focus of the Origins story line. The only negative that I have so far is that you have to wade through a lot of tutorials before the game just lets you play. Normally I would say these could be skipped but the game rewards you in gold for watching them, and that is gold that you will need later for purchasing packs. Where this gets really frustrating is when a new card mechanic is introduced and it stops whatever duel you are in the middle of to show you a tutorial on how that mechanic works. I can absolutely see however how this would be beneficial to brand new players, and even for me there are card mechanics that are being called by names that I don’t recognize in spite of fully understanding the game play behind them. The other big frustration with the Duels client is the fact that it crashed on me, numerous times… so I am guessing they are still having some issues. From what I can tell you stay connected to their servers even though you are essentially playing a single player match, and if that server connection wavers your game cannot seem to recover gracefully. I figure this is going to be something I piddle with from time to time when I am not in the mood for other games.

Communing with Fae

As I wrote yesterday Arcanist has always been the class that I struggled the most in playing. For whatever reason I have caught the desire to play it, and I spent most of yesterday working my way through content doing a mix of low level roulette, Haukke Manor, and guildhests. As a result early yesterday evening I managed to push across the line and ding 30 while in one of those Haukke Manor runs. After that it was chasing down two different job quests and learning how to be both a Scholar and a Summoner. The thing that I did not initially realize was the fact that the two Carby summons ultimately become the Faerie summons. I guess this makes sense, as without them somehow overwriting those low level abilities there would be no way for the job to scale down and effectively heal low level content. The other thing that I was not really expecting was how “un-healer-like” low level instances ultimately felt. My first dungeon as a Scholar ended up being Halitali… where I have exactly one useful heal button. So instead I just made sure I was standing next to the tank and dotted everything up. I am not sure when the class feels more “healer-ly” but until then I am just pretending I am still playing an Arcanist.

The other shocker for me was just how relatively easy the Summoner job quest ended up being. As you can tell by the Summon III icon, I had to fight Ifrit and after fighting him in several different versions… I have to say it was way easier than I expected it to be. I cast dots on all of the things, and then eventually he fell over… which I am guessing is how summoners are supposed to play? This play style is just so weird to me because it feels oddly passive. Maybe a better way of putting it is it feels like I am playing a completely different game than the rest of the people in my group. Much of the time leveling to 30 was spent tabbing through targets, applying dots, and then tabbing back to the first one to reapply dots after I had finished one circuit of the mobs. This just doesn’t feel natural to me I guess because it feels like the sort of triage that I do as a healer… but to damage all the mobs rather than heal all the players. I guess the truth is that I have never really successfully played a damage over time class, and it almost makes me want to fire up and play my Warlock again to see if this new outlook makes that class more enjoyable. In any case I now have a Scholar so I can begin leveling that through the instant duty finder queue. I should try and catch up to Tzi and Rylacus and run up with them.

Blaugust Games of Week – Week 2

August 7, 2015 by Belghast

Another Week Down

One of the things that I find easiest to blog about is when I am experiencing a new game, or re-experiencing a game after some time has passed. As a result last week I started doing the Blaugust Games of the Week thing, and for the first week I posted three vastly different titles. While Marvel Heroes 2015 has been in my gaming rotation for some time now, Everquest II and Dirty Bomb were not and as such I spent a bit of time this past week playing both. While I didn’t really talk much about any of the games this week, I hope some of you out there at least gave them a shot. I spent the most time playing Everquest II on the Stormhold Time Locked Server. It has been so strange starting from scratch without having some of my favorite leveling spots. The later leveling zones like Darklight Wood and Iceclad Ocean are just better designed than the original Everquest 2 leveling process was, and as a result you could tear through them so much more quickly.

As of last night I hit level 10 on my Iksar Shadowknight, and in part I think I was doing things the hard way because I stormed right out into the Commonlands and attempted to start leveling off the mobs out there that tend to be significantly higher than my level. One of the things that I had forgotten about the Commonlands were all of the Small Chests that drop additional quests. At this point my quest log is full of level 15-20 Far Seas supplier quests that essentially ask you to kill X of a thing and then turn in the end result at an NPC. I remember these being the bread and butter of early leveling, but I have to say the thing I miss is all of the individual neighborhoods of Freeport. I think it was a huge disservice to the game when the revamp of Freeport got rid of these completely. They are now instanced zones that you can only enter on specific quests, but I have to say these zones made up a lot of the feel of both Freeport and Qeynos and did a good job of explaining why the cities were the way that they were. Of the three titles from this week, this is the one that I am most likely to keep playing because I am finding an odd enjoyment out of retracing my EQ2 roots.

Trion Theme

Since it is once again Friday it is time for me to pick another three games to talk about and suggest. This time around I decided to go with a theme and as a result I am picking three games from Trion. Again I am limiting my selections to games that you can download and start playing immediately without having to purchase a game client or pay a subscription fee. My goal is to make it so folks who are stuck and in need of inspiration can pop into one of these games and get instant “blog fodder”.

Rift

Considering the announcement of the World of Warcraft expansion yesterday, I thought it was fitting to lead off this morning talking about Rift as it was the first game to actually pry me away from the WoW Juggernaut. The game is designed in such a way so that in theory you can play one character and provide every possible role in the game. This was not necessarily the case at launch but over time they have provided additional talent trees or “Souls” to help flesh out the missing abilities. So now you can absolutely be a healing warrior or a tanking mage. This game has an absolutely phenomenal early leveling game, and the first fifty levels are an absolute joy to level through. The expansions however are a completely different thing. I personally found both leveling in Storm Legion and Nightmare Tides to be extremely tedious, and found myself wishing they had not abandoned the early game that I enjoyed so much.

The core of the game though is great, but there are various things you are going to have to content with especially along the lines of ability bloat. One of my key complaints about Rift has been that you end up with a lot of abilities where ability 2 and 3 are absolutely better than 1… but have long cool downs. The end result is that you usually end up macroing all three together, which can lead to some fairly uninteresting game play. That said the game excels at letting you literally branch out in any possible direction and build a character out however you want to. There are some less than optimal options, but in theory any combination of three Souls will make a potentially viable character, which gives you a lot of freedom to customize things as you see fit. Fortunately the game has an excellent set of prebuilt specs to at least get you going in the right direction. As far as the free to play goes… it is among the least restrictive and there are not really any pay walls standing in your way.

Steam Download – Direct Download

Trove

I was lucky enough to get in on the first wave of Alpha invites for Trove and having played it that long… has been an interesting experience. The game has changed massively in that time, and the key elements have shifted and morphed but the basic game is still the same. I tend to think of Trove as Minecraft meets Diablo, and my recent Bel’s Big Adventure series of Minecraft videos has made me appreciate how important this really is. Minecraft has a fairly horrible combat system, that is passible but frustratingly bad if you are going to spend much time fighting anything. Trove on the other stand decided to go in a direction that allows you to pick one of several classes that each have their own built in abilities and a MOBA style character design. I tend to have a natural synergy with the base Knight class, but have spent significant amounts of time playing the Gunslinger and Neon Ninja as well… and they are all extremely well built. The core gameplay loop in Trove centers around going out into the world and fighting baddies to find interesting stuff in level ranged based worlds that steadily increase the challenge.

On top of this however there is a very awesome building system where you can build extremely complex custom worlds for your “Club”, or you can build out your cornerstone which is a traveling spawn point that you can move with you as you go out exploring the world. I love this aspect of the game because it feels like I am able to take all of my most important resources and keep moving my base of operations as I go exploring. The other thing that makes this game amazing is the community support, and the vast majority of the weapons that you will get were created by fans just like you. The game has a silliness to it that is contagious, and I will forever cherish my Dapper Raptor mount that you can see above. Another favorite of mine is the ability to collect item appearances and then make ANY piece of gear that you get look like that, so as you keep exploring you just keep opening more and more unique looks for your character. If you have never played Trove I highly suggest you download it and give it a shot.

Steam Download – Direct Download

ArcheAge

ArcheAge and I have an extremely checkered past. I was in the early Alpha process of this game and found the community to be among the most toxic I have ever experienced in any game genre. As a result I pretty much actively ignored the game for some time. However with some of the AggroChat folks started testing the waters and playing it… I decided to give it another shot. The end result has been a pretty enjoyable leveling experience and allowed me to see just how subtle and nuanced the game really is. I am not a fan of open world ganker style pvp… and early in the game that seemed to be extremely prevalent. More so than that, the players seemed to revel in griefing others in non-combat ways as well. If you AFK’d in town, someone might come along with a tractor and push you out into the middle of a dangerous area just to watch you die. However all of those elements seem to have gotten bored and moved on, and what is left seems to be a bunch of generally nice folks.

The game play itself is also rather good, and while the quests are pretty basic the world is gorgeous and huge, and the class designs are really interesting. While Rift has an issue with duplication of abilities, ArcheAge seems to be designed in a way so that there is natural synergy between talent trees without giving you a bunch of abilities that you will never actually use. I have gone full circle on my opinion of this game and you can track the progress if you flip through some of my blog entries. The game is absolutely playable on the free to play model, but there are some serious constraints. Namely it is very difficult to do more than just one thing as a “free” player because every action is throttled by your abysmal labour points. As a Patron player your labour regenerates when you are offline… as a free player you have to be logged into the game waiting on your points to come back. The other huge constraint is that free players cannot own land, which means if you get very serious about this game you are likely going to end up subscribing. However in the meantime the free model does allow you to get your feet wet.

Steam Download – Direct Download