Diablo Franchise Archives - Page 42 of 55

Diablo 3 Season Start and Anniversary Event

January 9, 2017 by Belghast

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.

Bel’s Fake Game Awards

January 3, 2017 by Belghast

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

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

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

wow-64-2016-12-28-20-36-59-91 — 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

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

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

TheDivision 2016-03-09 19-09-27-97 — 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 2016-06-21 23-03-33-56 — 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.

Social Structure and MMOs

December 15, 2016 by Belghast

I’ve talked off and on about Imzy, and how it is filling a niche for me at least that Google+ used to in that it allows for a sort of long winded discussion that twitter just simply doesn’t. Yesterday I read a post there that made me realize something I had been trying to sort out in my head for awhile. The vast majority of my gaming time is spent playing MMOs and I tend to have several that I am in various states of active in at the same time. However I rarely if ever gain any sort of permanent traction in them, and after a few weeks of play tend to fade away again until the whim hits me to fire it back up. I go through a cycle of curiosity that leads to excitement… that leads to confusion and disillusionment that ultimately ends with me leaving once more. I will pick up a game and for a few days to weeks it is going to be the most interesting thing in the world as I get adjusted to the systems and mechanics again. However I always reach this point where an overwhelming sense of “what now” hits me. When that happens I wind out going right back to whatever it is happens to be my core game… which if we are being honest with me is an alternation of World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. I have been working on my games played during 2016… and decided to extend that out to all of the games that are easy to track thanks to my blog. There is a clear pattern of when I start getting super excited about WoW I shift away from FFXIV and versa vicea. There is of course some overlap, but you can see a back and forth pattern that emerges.

So the question is then…. what do these two games seem to have that so many others don’t. The answer was sitting there waiting for me to notice. I often talk about games having great communities… but generally speaking this is in broad terms and extremely non-specific. Most games have some excellent niches in them, but in the grand scheme of things that doesn’t really do much to add core enjoyment for me. I keep returning to World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV… because those are the games that I have established communities in. There was a time when I was willing to branch out and meet new people… plunk myself down in a brand new game and start growing an entirely different infrastructure. The community that I have right now… is in large part the result of me doing this over and over. Each new game I go into I meet a whole new cast of people… but at some point that began to change. As I gathered a larger and larger core of players… I stopped looking outside to the community nearly as much and instead looking to my guild. While I am still meeting a lot of new people… they are coming with the pedigree of knowing someone I already know and am familiar with… which of course speeds up the social footnotes that come from meeting anyone new.

Last night was a prime example of this happening, because we were raiding in World of Warcraft and had someone pop by and join…. that I had not personally played with in several years. My personal community in House Stalwart within World of Warcraft seems to have this ability to stay evergreen… and always have a certain chunk of the population that is active and always happy to be there. House Stalwart my guild has existed for twelve years… in spite of my actions. When I left WoW to start playing Rift I tried my best to burn down everything about the game… actively recruiting people away to play this new an exciting game. I did the same thing for Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online… and countless other games. However at its core… the guild still remains and not only that… but has remained viable for the purpose of doing interesting end game content the entire time. Similarly the Final Fantasy XIV guild… while considerably younger just seems to endure whatever boom and bust cycles we go through population wise, and in both cases…. I know that I can return at any point and will be welcomed back with open arms. In truth I think pretty much everyone who has touched either guild feels the same way… which is why folks are constantly showing up from out of the woodwork and reintegrating back into the core at least for a little while.

So the problem that exists with nearly every other game… is I just don’t have anything close to this infrastructure… nor do I really have the emotional or intellectual strength to try and forge it. There have been House Stalwart offshoots in damned near every MMO that has existed… or at least as a guild community we have chosen a specific server and faction to all roll on. However for most… these interludes serve as a vacation from the game they were already playing… and after a break most folks wind up going right back to the familiar. In a traditional MMO I need to have something that I am building towards, and that object on the horizon is usually doing interesting things with my friends. So while it is absolutely fun to pop in and play Rift or ArcheAge for a weekend… I find hard keeping motivated when I know I have no real facilities to do any of the big interesting things… other than pugging. I am spoiled to be honest, and so many years of not having to PUG has soured my experience as a whole. Any random person I encounter is somehow tarnished by the memory of all of the good times I have had with my guild throughout the years. After generations of MMOs… this has lead me to be rather insular in my gaming habits and tending to return to the folks I already know and respect rather than trying to create something new.

So now days I tend to operate in two modes. I have the games that I am active in and have deep social connections… and the games that I slink off to when I need to limit my social connectivity and turtle for awhile. I tend to gobble up whatever new content is available, and then happy drop that game by the wayside as I return to active duty again. Games like Star Wars the Old Republic, The Secret World and Elder Scrolls Online are great for this role, given that they all have deeply engaging stories that you can find yourself completely lost in… so much so that you forget that you are essentially alone in a crowd of strangers. There are a lot of games that I think I would enjoy… if I had a similar stable infrastructure. However at this point… to be honest… folks are pretty stratified in their gaming habits. I can no longer really make an impassioned argument as to why they should abandon X game that they know and love for Y game that is new and different. I know this boom and bust cycle all too well at this point… and while it is a hell of a fun ride, to some extent I am getting that fix elsewhere. For me personally… the Diablo 3 season mechanism perfectly emulates the feeling of “unwrapping” a brand new MMO and rushing with your friends to level as quickly as you can. This time however we all know it is perfectly fine to fade away once you have achieved your goals… because its a game we will all return to again and again as new seasons happen. I have been the cause of so much frustration and disappointment in my gaming career… that I guess in some part I would rather slink off alone… than get folks excited about yet another game that I am sure we will all abandon within three months time. However that same instinct… is what keeps any of these games from actually gaining traction. What I realized this week when reading the post on Imzy is just how desperately I need that social infrastructure for me to be able to enjoy a MMO.

Journey Completed

October 24, 2016 by Belghast

This weekend represents quite possibly the quickest I have “finished” the Diablo 3 seasonal journey. I say finished with quotes because there is still a lot more that I could be doing, but I think I am ultimately as far as I intend to go. Of note… when I logged in this morning I got an anniversary achievement and the above Diablo pet so if you are interested you might check it out and make sure you log in within the next few days. For lack of a better word… Season 8 completely caught me off guard. Unfortunately the rotating three month schedule means that this is going to happen more often than not these days. Season 7 released during the Legion pre-launch event… so it too was a fairly truncated effort. I know my friend Grace managed to make it in on the day before Season 7 ended and push hard enough to get her extra bank tab. It would have been a great season to do that for, given just how good the hunter set was for pushing content. I however just let my attempt at getting that bank slot slip away because I couldn’t bring myself to push any further. This time around… we have a new set and a new optimal build. We started the season once again on a Friday night, logging in and beginning the push within moments of the season going live. Generally speaking we make it pretty close to 70 on that first night… but this time both Grace and I lost our “oomph” at around 54.

I managed to pick up the next day with another group and we ground together from the 50s through to 70 making it to roughly paragon 20 before needing to bail and get some dinner. Yesterday afternoon I focused on getting the various achievement bits needed to get the first four chapters of the seasons journey and unlock the cosmetic options, and finished gear set. This time around with the Demon Hunter it was Natalya’s set, which is a bit of an odd one given that it focuses on dealing damage with rain of vengeance. This is the basic build that I followed, substituting a few abilities for ones I prefer, namely I found Stampede way harder to control than Shade for Rain of Vengeance. I played a little of both but given how much I was in constant motion having the stampede actually pointed in the right direction was always a thing. Towards evening yesterday though I finally started to feel like I was getting a handle on the play style and soloing my GR20 was actually far easier than I had expected. The biggest problem is that this build just clears so much more slowly than the equivalent Multishot build did last season. If I were to actually push for the full compliment of seasonal achievements… I would more than likely try and farm up a full set of Unhallowed Essence again and just go back to the tried and true multishot.

However it is highly unlikely that I will spend much more time on this season. There was just something lackluster about it, given that nothing had changed since the previous season. All of the same builds worked as we left them in the previous patch. I was one of the people cheering on the three month seasonal cycle, but having been through it a few times now… I am thinking that maybe it is just too short a time period between them. Previously enough time had passed for me to start to miss the seasonal grind… enough to be truly excited for another opportunity to hang out and push to 70 together. This time… it just felt like we were doing it to get shiny cosmetic baubles instead of to really enjoy the experience. This makes me a little sad given just how pumped I have been in the past for the season to roll around and start anew. This time around I literally had no clue it was happening until Grace told me. In the past I almost marked the date on my calendar and started to get excited for the whole process. Who knows maybe in a weeks time I will feel differently and want to pick up where I left off… grinding out more seasonal achievements. That said I am perfectly happy leaving Season 8 as is, because I feel like I did what I set forth to do… collect another batch of exclusive cosmetic appearances.