Diablo Franchise

Seasonal and Sundry

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Good morning everyone. Welcome to the end of my first week of remoting, and the beginning of a weekend that suddenly means significantly less. I had originally taken today off, but I cancelled my vacation because in theory we are not going to go anywhere due to trying to do our part and social distancing. I had been following a routine of going to the corner convenience store and this morning I even stopped that because we officially have community spread. So I am like so many and just trying not to freak out about everything and live what passes as a normal life. Thankfully I like my house and I like my spouse and we’ve spent over twenty years of coexisting in the same place without fighting so I think I am better off than a lot of people.

Since my last Diablo 3 related post I have “finished” the four chapter seasonal journey and have the 6 piece Natalya set, which allows me to comfortably run through Torment IX without much issue. I’ve done a solo 45 Greater Rift, and I ultimately NEED to get it to the point of being able to do a 55 for the seasonal conquest. So far I plan on doing a solo 75 which should be easy when I get my multi-shot build working, and last night Grace and I did the achievement to kill over 300 critters during a cursed chest event… we got something silly like 450 which admittedly was mostly her because I don’t kill that fast yet. So the last of the three conquests is likely going to be getting through a GR55 on 6 different class sets, which should work because we plan on running up a pair of Witchdoctors as well.

On the home front I wanted to share a little innovation I had with you, pardon the shadow and the adhesive residue from what used to be hanging on the back of the door. Ultimately I have a large number of controllers and wanted a good way of storing them to get them out of the way and keep their cords from getting tangled. My wife has used over the door shoe storage for various purposes and it gave me the idea to try and use it for controllers and other gaming kitch. So far it seems to work beautifully and all of those controllers for systems I don’t use regularly are neatly hanging behind the door with only the Xbox 360 and its enormous cord looking a little unseemly. For reference I am using this 24 pocket organizer from Dollar General, but I am sure you can find something similar at pretty much any other store.

Another thing that I have been playing around with quite a bit is my RG350 emulator console. This is of course a publicity shot and not my actual unit, but I did get it in the same color scheme because it reminded me more or less of a gameboy. There are a bunch of different versions of these custom emulator consoles running OpenDingux coming out of China and originally I was just looking for one that would play Super Nintendo and Gameboy Advance titles, which caused me to land on the PocketGo. However at the time I placed my order it was out of stock and I was given the option to upgrade for $5 to the RG350 which was capable of emulating way more systems including pretty flawless PSX games. Since then I have been spending a bunch of time poking around in Nintendo, Super Nintendo, TurborGrafx, Gensis and Playstation games. Playing Legend of Dragoon on a handheld is pretty freaking awesome, and this gives me a good system for Four Job Fiesta this summer. Additionally it gets roughly six hours of constant play out of a battery and charges quickly off USB Type C.

Lastly we have the significance of today. I will be adventuring off on an island getaway and playing a core Animal Crossing game for the first time. I mean I also have the other big release which is Doom Eternal, but more than anything I am interested in getting engaged with and seeing how the Animal Crossing fans live. I may or may not have it running in the background while I am typing up this post and am getting lulled to sleep by the Nook Inc island music. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and stay safe out there. Again I am reminded that I should keep telling folks that I love them, so I love all of you out there who are my regular readers. Writing this blog is mostly therapy for me, and you reading it means you are playing a part in that process. I hope we all make it out of this weird time we are living in safely and can tell stories about it on the other side.

Zombies Calm Me

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The first day of going on remote protocol was interesting. For the most part the entire day was spent with triage of why various members of the team could not get connected remotely to specific resources. I did however manage to make it through the entire day without finding something I had to drive in for, so I guess that is working as intended? It very much is like raid leadership, but if your raid is acting independently of each other and that you are having to talk to them in tells. The two stand up meetings more or less worked as intended and I limited them just to critical issues. The first one unfortunately was pushed back due to a mandatory meeting, but we managed to get started just fine an hour later than originally planned.

The thing that I am noticing is that while working remotely I tend to put in more hours overall. I tagged in and did my first “work” about 6:30 in the morning and I tagged out for the night around 5 pm, and also ate lunch at the keyboard. So maybe I need to work on setting up a bit of time boxing and only making myself available during my normal 7:30 am to 4:30 pm window. Were it not rainy as hell I would have probably gone out into the backyard to eat lunch just to get a bit of a change of scenery. I have Shin Ramen for days and I wound up eating a cup of that for lunch much like I would have were I sitting in the office. In theory I might partake of Doordash and start ordering in lunch for my wife and I. Yesterday the Tulsa metro escalated its protocols and all restaurants and bars that do not have a delivery or carry out service are closed. As a result we are going to try and order take out from as many small establishments as possible over the next few days to try and keep them in business.

As far as gaming goes when I went downstairs and fixed dinner I eventually settled in and tried to play some more Diablo 3. Firstly I do not really love the Natalya’s set build, but it is functional and I can do Torment 1 pretty easily with only having my 4 piece and none of the other important items needed. My biggest problem still is the fact that I am gold locked in that I need roughly a million gold per attempt to keep trying to socket a weapon so that I can get my 6 piece set and finally start the season properly. The challenge there is that I am just not making that much gold per run and it feels like I am in a super grindy place. I need to catch up with Grace so we can use the Puzzle Ring and I can at least get my Boon of the Hoarder gem.

On a whim I opted to fire up my Playstation 4 remotely and start playing Last of Us. Yes I know I should be branded as a pariah for making it this far into my gaming career without having played this game. I have to admit part of this is spurred on by the fact that there is an HBO series in the work and another part by the fact that the second part should be releasing soon. So far I am really digging it, but I also don’t love aiming guns with a controller so we will see how long this lasts. I would have so much rather played this with a mouse and keyboard and on some level I kept hoping that like Horizon Zero Dawn it would also eventually release on the PC.

I didn’t make it terribly far into the game but I have to say that even on a baseline PS4 it looks gorgeous. I will likely play some more tonight as weirdly games and fiction about post apocalyptic settings calm me when the world is falling apart around my shoulders. I guess it is a way of showing me that “it could be worse”, and really for me it could be very worse. You know when you are wandering around in Silent Hill during the day time and everything feels wrong… but at the same time nothing is really dangerous? That is how living in pandemia feels right now because for the most part things are close to normal… but not quite. I am still hoping we all make it out safely on the other side of this mess. I am a prime candidate for having a bad time of it due to my health problems so I feel like I keep needing to tell everyone around them that I love them just in case things go badly at some point in the future.

Tres Cazadora

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This weekend was the beginning of another Diablo 3 season and once again we are on our bullshit. I was super happy to see that Byx was around and wanting to do nonsense and since we are all sorta stressed to the highest degree we seemingly all chose the easy mode. Demon Hunter is pretty much the default state for me and a Diablo season because I know with a little push I can get in and get the content knocked out in relatively short order. I decided to rebirth an older Demon Hunter which lead to the above state of our party, where we are all desperately in need of clothing and kicking demon butt in high heels.

This was a fairly low gaming weekend, because we spent a lot of our time doing various cleaning activities both for the sake of covid19 and for the fact that it is spring break and we always seem to do big cleaning projects. We went out shopping for awhile on Saturday and managed to get a new pair of outdoor rugs for the backyard, so pending things ever warm up again we will get everything set up back there again. This is mostly for our own mental fortitude because if we are sequestered for very long in the near future we will want access to our peaceful oasis with birbs, squirrels and neighborhood cats. Huge thanks to my friend Kolrath for giving me a lift from 55ish to 70 on Saturday morning fairly early, and Grace and I finally managed to catch up with each other on Sunday night to hang for a bit again.

I am currently stalled out on the seasonal journey and my six piece gear set by a single thing. I cannot for the life of me get a weapon to roll a socket. I’ve completely bankrupted myself on five or six occasions trying to roll a socket on a yellow bow and it just isn’t happening. Ultimately my game time has been spent farming gold and then blowing all of it on a futile attempt to get through chapter four. The worst part is that I don’t even love the gear set that is for this season, but I have been rat-holing other set pieces I come across because I think ultimately for farming purposes I am going to want a Yang’s Multishot build, which is probably my favorite? I am not sure what sort of shenanigans I can get up to this season with the ability to have odd combinations of cube items but I figure bolas and grenades are on the menu for nonsense.

The other thing that I did this weekend was spend the podcast getting reacquainted with Elder Scrolls Online. Effectively patching up right now will replace your current client with a brand new one, and while this is in itself a cumbersome and lengthy process… the end result is amazing. Elder Scrolls Online has always had significant performance issues, namely when it comes to loading into the game initially and loading into new areas. This client seems to completely fix these issues for me at least and has greatly improved general performance across the board. As always I am several content releases behind and am now working my way through the Morrowind content drop. I have no clue where I picked up the bad-ass Khajiit mask but I am absolutely rocking this cat lord vibe right now.

Mixed Frustrations

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I have a sad folks. I had been on a chain of playing games by the studio Spiders, because I found the thing that they were doing shockingly compelling. I greatly enjoyed Greedfall which lead me to try out Technomancer… which ultimately lead me to finish Mars: War Logs. However there was a game that happened between Technomancer and Mars War Logs, and last night I did my best to get engaged with it. I failed miserably because there is just something about the game that feels like a slider was pushed too far in the wrong direction. As a result I just couldn’t bring myself to continue playing for more than a few combat sessions.

The other games by Spiders that I have played have not had what I would call amazing combat. They were fine for what it was, which was largely mash an attack until the monster dies without being super tricksy about it. Greedfall definitely had some particulars to the flow of combat but for the most part it felt fairly fluid and intuitive. Combat in Bound by Flame it seems as though they were trying to branch out in a different direction and the end result just feels cumbersome and random at the same time. Games struggle often with trying to find that balance between fun “Arcade” combat and an attempt at realism, and generally speaking I will always land on the pure mashy arcade side of that line.

Part of the arcade formula that makes games feel good is that you are actually interacting with only a handful of encounters at the same time. When you play a brawler you will always see a line of encounters waiting at the edges of the screen for you to finish your encounter with the current pair that you are sparing with. Sure this is unrealistic but it also keeps you from being completely overwhelmed. In Bound by Flame I found myself trying to deal with monsters blocking my attacks while at the same time getting pot shot by every archer at the same time making it feel like I was paralyzed between either taking no action and surviving the encounter or taking action and watching my health bar evaporate.

A Spiders game is best when it is focused on the story and their unique spin on the Bioware-esc genre. My hope is that they view Bound by Flame more or less as a failed experiment, because both Technomancer and Greedfall didn’t seem to try for any of the things that this game is. I just feel a little sad however that I won’t be continuing my journey downwards into their back catalog. I still however feel like the three games I did finish are worth playing. I wholeheartedly recommend Greedfall and I still recommend Technomancer and Mars War Logs but with some asterisks included to make sure you are understanding that they are going to be slightly awkward experiences.

In other news I attempted to start the new Destiny season last night and more or less bounced out. I am not sure what is going on with me and Destiny right now, but it seems to be failing to hold my attention for more than a few minutes at a time. This also makes me sad because from all appearances they are doing a bunch of really interesting things. I think the problem is that much like Final Fantasy XIV, I feel completely overwhelmed at all times with too many things that I could be doing and yet at the same time nothing I necessarily have a strong burning desire to complete. Sometimes there are just too many different brands of ketchup on the shelf, and I am feeling deeply distracted while playing.

I think the biggest problem I am having with Destiny is that it feels like I need to be playing it as my only game to really get the most out of it. I only made it to like level 65 of 100 on the seasonal track last season and it feels bad to know that I stranded various things that I will never be able to acquire. So when confronted with what seems like an insurmountable wall of busywork in front of me, my instinct is to just give up and go do something else that doesn’t require as much from me. Grinding out the Seasons of the Undying forced me to play in a manner that was unsustainable for me and my attention span. If I knew that all of the content was waiting on me to finish at my own pace I don’t think I would have the strong desire to “nope” out of it when being forced to play on someone else’s schedule.

The Irony is that I am looking forward to playing Diablo 3 this weekend as the new season opens. The difference there being that it takes me a weekend or two to get through the entire seasonal journey in Diablo 3, and then I can comfortably put the game to bed for another three months. Destiny 2 on the other hand takes a constant level of grinding that I am unwilling to commit to, and as such I end up just feeling like a failure for not ticking off the various check marks before the timer runs out. Putting something on a timer that feels unattainable without extreme levels of focus will always reduce my enjoyment and willingness to engage with it.