This weekend was a bit of an odd one, because at least for me it centered around recording our “Games of the Year” show on AggroChat. This is generally speaking a huge ordeal given that our show is made up of six very different minded people. Back during the days when we had four regular hosts it was less of a proceeding but now that we essentially have six people each picking three games a piece… that means we wind up talking about 18 games, which as it turns out divides neatly into two 9 image panels. The above image is the first of these and serves as the backdrop for our normal show card of sorts, however with the text over it you can’t necessarily make out all of the images involved so I decided to post it here. You can as always find the show on AggroChat or my method of choice for sheer simplicity of listening… YouTube. The reason why this largely dominated my weekend is because we ultimately recorded two podcasts that were both two hours long before I set down to edit them. Post edits they both clock in around an hour and twenty minutes, which really is shocking given that I did not actually time anything out in an attempt to make them work as relative set pieces. I guess however if you set out to record nine games per show… the end result comes out fairly evenly. I did make an attempt to shuffle the deck in such a way as to put the games I thought we would most likely talk the longest about divided evenly among the shows.
So we recorded from 8 pm CST until just after midnight, and then I got up around 7:30 Sunday morning and edited until 12:30… and as a result every other element of the weekend felt like it was shoved to one side or the other. Of course all of this madness has a purpose since the double episode is timed perfectly to cover the absence of myself and Ashgar as we go to Pax South. Now in theory Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen could record without me… but that would mean I had the forethought to have the mess that is our show in a state that I could easily hand over the reigns to an understudy. I have not planned ahead that far, and while I do have a series of Audacity and Photoshop projects to speed up the process… I am not sure if I could even properly explain what exactly I do each week. It is my hope however that I managed to not only publish yesterday, but also schedule everything else to publish next Sunday while I am driving home from San Antonio. Staging a publish to happen without me is always a fraught thing for me… because so rarely does it actually work as intended. Even if it does… I am literally stressed beyond reason until I see the tweets show up in my timeline from the publish process actually doing its thing appropriately. In the grand scheme of things however… it is not the most important thing in the world… but it is important to me.
As far as gaming went this weekend that was equally scattered. I patched up Final Fantasy XIV and made it far enough to hit the first instance gate, before ultimately walking away. Similarly I patched up Wildstar, created a Chua Warrior and played to around level seven before once again walking away like a bored child. As far as gaming that managed to last for more than an hour… we had World of Warcraft where I finally hit 35 points on my Protection Artifact and started pushing up Fury instead. I have gotten back in the habit of logging in each day to do my Emissary quest because now there is also a potential legendary upgrade waiting at the end of the grind. I started doing my Time Walking dungeons… but only managed to make it through the first one tanking it before once again wandering away. The game that seemed to stick the hardest was Elder Scrolls Online where I completed a good chunk of Malabal Tor, a zone where I am already completely enthralled by the storyline… even though it involves largely nothing but elves and their internal politics. I’ve decided that the Bosmer are what it takes to make me really enjoy Elves. I am really enjoying the whole lore regarding the Green Lady and the Silvenar, and I guess in truth that was an aspect of the lore that I had either forgotten or ignored in playing other Elder Scrolls games. I even managed to have a few emotional gut punches last night, when I lost characters that I actually really liked during one quest chain. In truth all I want to do right now is hide in my blanket cocoon on the couch and play more ESO, but that said I do want to at some point get a Mythic+ in for the week since I have a +5 Maw of Souls key.
Last night I had every intent of attempting to get a Nightfall going. As a result when I first got home from work I grabbed some food and popped upstairs to fiddle about on my warlock. It is odd how my order of enjoyment has shifted when it comes to my alts. Nothing is ever going to dislodge Titan as my primary class in Destiny, but the other two appear to be in a state of flux. Originally speaking my secondary character was always my Hunter, and my Warlock generally sat in this realm of just one or two steps removed from “afterthought”. However with Rise of Iron and even some of the late Taken King content… that sort of shifted around and I tend to enjoy my time spent on the Warlock far more than the Hunter. I think part of it is that the movement options for the Hunter seem awesome at face value… but double jump just feels more limited than either the Titan or Warlock jumps. Admittedly I have constant issues with the Warlock jump because it essentially works backwards of that of the Titan. However in both cases it feels like I can get where I am needing to go more easily than trying to time a bunch of jumps in order to get up to anyplace high. On the Hunter I feel like there is never a situation where I do not want to be using the Bones of Eao… so much so that I question if it would not simply be better for the class if that Exotic were phased out and that function just defaulted. I still wish there were artifacts that allowed you to switch which jump your class had… because in truth I would still give everyone the Titan jump if given the chance.
Now I said I had every intent of running a Nightfall last night, but instead when my wife managed to make it home I popped back downstairs to fix her some dinner. After doing so however instead of filtering back up to my office, I decided to chill downstairs on the sofa with her… which mean’t no PS4. I realize I am one of the only people on the planet for which “sofa gaming” does not mean a console, but I have all of my consoles hooked up next to my gaming PC in my office so I can capture from them easily… and also that is where the Television that I can dominate lives. Before long I was on the laptop and playing some more Diablo, and eventually connected with some friends chain running Rifts for fun and profit. All in all it was a really good night for me and progression, because firstly… managed to get all of my gems to “Flawless Royal” level. Additionally I managed to knock out a few more items from my set build namely that I now have the right armor and “weapon” in my cube. I am now down to a place where the only things I am missing are my jewelry… but these are also some of the more expensive items to buy from Kadala. There is a more powerful Legacy of Nightmares build that I am working towards, largely because I have never actually tried doing a build using that pair of rings. The game apparently wants me to try it however since I wound up with an Ancient version of one of the rings last night. However I am in the very awkward place of needing Justice Lantern, both pieces of the Endless Walk jewelry set, and the ever present Convention of Elements in the cube. On a positive note last night I managed to pick up a pair of Nemesis Bracers which I can swap with my Heart of Iron in the cube to make farming runs go more smoothly. Additionally I managed to get all three of my primary build gems over level 25 so they finally start doing interesting things. All of these things combined seem to now allow me to pretty easily farm Torment X content, which means that 7/10 of the next Seasonal step is knocked out… with the only truly heinous thing left being mastering the set dungeon. For that I am largely going to need to tweak my build because I don’t actually use consecrate anymore, although it is definitely worth trying given how bed of nails works with it.
Tonight however… will most definitely be a night for Destiny because in theory it should be easier to get two characters through Nightmares on reset day 🙂
My weekend was largely dominated by the launch of Diablo 3 Season 9, and the Darkening of Tristram event. Up until this point I had not really touched any of the anniversary content, and to be honest the season beginning had completely slipped my mind until Grace asked me if we were doing our usual push. It has become a bit of a tradition to hang out Friday night and push as far as we can. While I rarely actually make it to 70 that first night, we both end up with a good head start into the season. This time around however we opted to do the Darkening of Tristram content… which is essentially a 16 plus level Greater Rift. I say plus because there are a number of offshoots that grant access to boss battles like the Skeleton King and other side areas. The interesting thing is that as much as I was not feeling Diablo 2… I absolutely enjoyed the weird nostalgic romp that is the darkening content. Basically glorious retrovision was cute… but did not destroy the fact that the underlying game is one that I still greatly enjoy. However for Diablo 2… I had simply moved on past that style of gameplay and the sort of character decisions that game asked you to make… permanently or at least relatively permanently.
As far as Season 9 goes I opted to play a Crusader once again… which is honestly my favorite of the Diablo 3 options. Primarily my decision this time around was due to the fact that the Invoker set was one again the freebie, allowing me to play quite possibly my favorite build… the one I loving refer to as “stop hitting yourself”. It is all about maximizing your thorns damage and then watching the mobs grind themselves to death on your armor. Essentially it plays into my ultimately player fantasy… and that is being this immovable object that survives being swarmed and walks out unscathed. The unscathed part however is a little open to interpretation since there are a handful of mob types that can just eat my lunch, but overall I am extremely happy with the progress so far this season. So far I have soloed up to a 42 greater rift, and had more than enough breathing room to probably be able to bump that up to 45 without issue. The most interesting thing is… I am already doing the equivalent of Torment 8 while still missing most of the items I need to do my proper build. I am following the traditional Thorns/Invoker build and am still missing: Traveler’s Pledge, Compass Rose, Heart of Iron, Justice Lantern, Akarat’s Awakening and Convention of Elements… and in truth I could probably use a better Hack than the one I managed to pick up.
I managed to complete through step 5 (Slayer) in the Seasons journey and am just now starting to slowly work on the Champion aka step 6. However the bulk of my time has been spent working on finishing the various Anniversary events. There is an excellent guide up on Icy Veins that I have been working on, and to the best of my knowledge I have completed them all. The one that took the longest however was “Protector of Tristram” which I included a screenshot of the completion above. Essentially as you go through the Darkening of Tristram Rift each floor has specific mobs that can spawn. You are usually only going to see a single spawn per floor, but in at least one rare case I didn’t see any rares up. Similarly in other rare cases you have a shot at seeing all three mobs up on a given floor… because that happened to me for certain on the fourth floor of the dungeon. Where the guide comes in handy is after a few runs of the event you are going to get your list of 40 whittled down to something more manageable. Towards the end of my grind I realized that I needed mobs on floors 5, 6, 7, and 12… so I began focusing those specific floors and simply rushing to the exit on any floors that I didn’t need. Finally both myself and Grace wound up needing the same mob… which feels like a rare spawn on floor five Foulwing.
The other item that took a long time to finally complete was the collection of Cultists pages which can be found off special Temporal Priests that spawn in amongst existing cultists out in the world. In theory there will only be a single Temporal Priest in a given spawn location, so once you have found it it is probably safe to move on to the next area. The Icy Veins guide has the zones that are likely to have them up at a given time. That said we did manage to find quite a few of them while doing normal rifts, and it seems like the “one per area” bit is unique to a given floor because we wound up with multiple pages in the same run a few times. For those curious about drop rates of pages… by the time I finished I managed to obtain:
Page 1: 1 copy
Page 2: 4 copies
Page 3: 3 copies
Page 4: 1 copy
Page 5: 3 copies
Page 6: 1 copy
Page 7: 3 copies
I doubt any of the pages are intentionally rarer than others, but for me I spent a lot of time grinding away still needing the very first page to drop. At this point I am extremely happy to have finished up all of the anniversary event and can now just start pushing towards that stash tab. This feels like a good season so far, and I am hoping that my drive maintains itself as I get into the harder content.
This break has been a bit of an odd one… namely because I have completely screwed up a few times and failed to blog. Even worse… I forgot I forgot to blog. It is as though I have been in a bit of a weird time warp where I lived a bit separate from the rest of the world for awhile. So instead of being connected like I usually am… everything has just sort of flown over the top of me without ever really sinking in. I have not been logging into MMOs hardly at all… and when I did it was for a specific focused purpose rather than just hanging out there. The break has been about falling into a number of game shaped holes… including Destiny, Minecraft, Bloodborne, and most recently Tyranny. However today represents the beginning of me trying to get into the swing of things. I technically have two full days left… well not full given that its 9 am when I am finally getting around to writing this morning. However it is time for me to do my sham of an attempt at an Awards Show… that I started last year, where the categories really don’t exist and no one actually wins.
Something Is Missing
Pokemon Go
Recently in the name of better health and that whole tradition of trying to start the New Year off right… my wife and I have been spending a lot more time walking. One of the things I greatly miss that was a huge part of my life during 2016… is Pokemon Go. One of the updates essentially screwed me over and locked me out at least semi-permanently from playing the game. The Google Safety check… seems to think my phone is rooted even though it is not. My only work around is to actually root my phone and install one of the many applications that will hide root from Pokemon Go… defeating the entire purpose of their safety check. However I am reaching a point where I really want to play the game… and I might just resort to this. Essentially this game was a good chunk of my year… or at least I was obsessive about it for two months. Pokemon Go did something that no game really has… made me care about mobile as a gaming platform and as a result it should get a significant shout out.
You Can’t Go Back
Diablo 2
For the AggroChat Game Club, we tend to pick a game for both November and December… since once you take the holidays into account… you really have a single functional month. Last year the game that spanned the two was Fallout 4, and this year Grace chose Diablo 2 as her pick. At first I was all about this because I have some seriously rose colored lenses about this game and my memory of it. I remember trying to see who could get through all of Act V in a single lunch break, and so many farming runs to see if we could get the coveted set pieces. However on replay… I have changed drastically in my tastes since this game released, and while I was on the Diablo 3 doesn’t feel right bandwagon initially… I have evolved. Diablo 2 now feels like a grindy mess of a click fest with very little carrot and a hell of a lot of stick. So I am honestly wishing I had NOT replayed the game… and could leave it sitting happily in my memory untouched. My recent experiences… are proof of that adage that sometimes you can’t go back home.
But Maybe Sometimes You Can
World of Warcraft: Legion
Saying that however… there are apparently times when you can go home and enjoy yourself in the same ways you used to. There was a period of time when I was convinced that Warcraft would always only tangentially matter to me. That I mourned a time and a place and a specific group of people that were long going and could likely never been aligned and arranged in the same pattern again. I’ve devoted a lot of digital ink to this lament throughout the years… and then Legion comes along and proves me to be completely full of shit. I am not exactly sure what it is about this expansion but for the first time in seven years… I feel more hope for the game ahead of me… than nostalgia for the time that has long passed. I thought I was done raiding in World of Warcraft… and instead I am actively raiding three times a week… one night of progression, one night of farmed content, and an amazing karazhan team. I am super happy with the state of the guild, and the game… and how far we have come. I am amped about the prospects of starting Nighthold on time when it releases… and while I have not spent much of this break in game it still very much feels like home. While I still have issues with some of the disjointed feeling of the forced faction storyline at times in Legion… the bulk of the content is amazing and just seems to keep getting more interesting.
But Sometimes It Doesn’t Last
Final Fantasy XIV
The other subtext of the year is how I have apparently fallen out of love with Final Fantasy XIV. We made an attempt to get the band back together and start raiding once more… and it worked amazingly for awhile. Honestly the Free Company is still an active and happy place… just with myself not really playing much of a role in it. I keep thinking that it will be fun to return… but I knew something was a miss when I started completely blowing off the holiday events that I used to love so much. Now I am significantly behind in gear and in story… and it is going to take a significant push to catch back up. This push however is just something that I have not been willing to do as of yet. I am excited about Stormblood… but nowhere near as much as I was prior to the launch of Heavensward. I guess the scale of Heavensward felt limited… with two dungeons per patch instead of three, and that alone wore on me. When you are grinding two dungeons in an expert tier… it gets super old really fast. They have since added in other content to occupy time like the deep dungeon… but it also feels extremely grindy in nature. I know at some point I will return and happily do so… but in the meantime I have simply not been forcing myself to log in and play a game I was not entirely into.
With Guns Blazing
Destiny
The real winner of the year as far as my total time spent… I feel is probably Destiny. This game has gone from being something that never quite clicked…. to turning into a game that I obsessively play on an almost nightly basis. Over the break I spent a good chunk of my time playing “Not-Wipeout” and participating in the Sparrow Racing League. I managed to hit the currently light cap of 400, and instead of it diminishing my desire to play… it seems to have only spurred me on further trying to get infusion fodder to upgrade all of my favorite items. I cannot tell you how much being able to bring my favorite weapons from Year 2… into Year 3 has improved the game for me. Traditionally MMO items are just stat sticks with a look and a feel… and cosmetic systems make it so that you can look however you want therefor really negating any need to keep using older items. Destiny however… your items have a feel and a purpose and greatly effect the gameplay. I have guns that I love… that feel amazing to use… that I cannot actually quantify in words as to why. For example I love the Fabian Strategy… even though I technically have far superior legendary items that don’t eat my single exotic weapon slot. I just feel sorry for my friends who are casually interested in the game… because I go from zero to “let me show you my pokemans” in a frighteningly short amount of time.
Bad Christmas Was A Bust
The Division
This time last year… I was looking forward to the impending launch of The Division. I thought this game would end up being my new Destiny, and even better so because it allowed me to get the sort of gun play and looter shooter action I craved without having to resort to consoles. Unfortunately that was not the case and I never actually made it to the level cap. Going into Division I thought I would have a strong community to support me… but one by one my friends checked out quickly for a lot of reasons not directly connected to the game play. Largely they objected to the themes… and enough so that at least one of them immediately turned around and refunded the game through steam. I could have reached outside of my circle of friends and found new communities… but I was left with the awkward situation that my PS4 clan was of course playing on that platform and that I just didn’t really want to have to pester folks to play with me on the PC side. As a result I solo’d a hell of a lot… and reached a point where to progress at the speed I wanted to progress I needed some people with me. There was also the technical problem that I just don’t really like playing a third person over the shoulder shooter nearly as much as I enjoyed playing Destiny. Even more than that… the thing that was missing was the futurism of Destiny weapons. None of the guns felt any different than any other gun to me… so ALL SMGs felt the same, ALL LMGs essentially felt the same etc… they were more stat sticks than something that felt unique or individual. I still hold hope that at some point that I will be able to get back into the game and push the last bit to hit the level cap and start doing interesting content.
Awesome But Not My Deal
Overwatch
Sometimes there is a game that I am way more into the game world… and the lore than actually playing it. This is very much the case with Overwatch. I love the characters, and all of the storyline that is coming out surrounding the game… and while I enjoy playing the game in small bursts it just never seems to be the game I choose to play on any given night. As a result I am something ridiculous like level 6… and have only logged a few hours in total playing the game. I think much like with League of Legends… I would enjoy playing with a team of friends… but then you run into the issue of getting bored with bots… and not having the chops or desire to learn them to play against other pre-made teams. I also tend to be most happy when I am playing Torbjorn, but always end up playing Reinhardt or Mercy because I end up getting randomed into a team full of Hanzos and Genjis. I wish I had the burning desire to play this game because I love everything about its world and what it is doing with its narrative. In truth I find myself mourning the game it could have been… back when it was originally slated to be a new MMO. I would to play a Destiny like game… set in the Overwatch universe.
