Looter Shooter

Adjorjan Still Lives

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Hey Friends! Still enjoying my recent return to Outriders. I am not playing a ton of it, but I am popping in periodically to collect some loot before scooting off again. Most recently I have been working on my Technomancer… which I apparently call Marksman in my most recent video. I have to admit at this point I don’t remember any of the names of the classes that are not Pryomancer because that one is pretty clear cut. Mentally I think of them as the Hunter, Tank, and Assassin even though those are technically called Technomancer, Devastator, and Trickster. You can obfuscate the holy trinity out but I will always ultimately use it as the lens in which I view online games.

I actually recorded a really quick video at lunch, because while I did one over the loot cave mission I never actually updated it to include the more recent method I use for gear farming. Essentially what I do more often than not is reset the Typhon Hunt mission and run it over and over. Each time it drops at least two epic items and now that I am largely farming gear for cosmetics, it is a great way to get five or six potential unlocks in really short order. I’ve heard that at higher tiers it is possible to get legendaries to drop this way, but I have never actually had that happen. What it is useful for is farming up a bunch of drops to collect mods and appearances which is how I am utilizing it on my alt.

Another thing that happened yesterday is a big new world patch, that had a number of less than awesome consequences. Firstly a number of the items that I carry around in my inventory to swap for equipment got downgraded from Purple to Blue. Additionally something seems to have changed with the way health is calculated and in the process without changing any gear or my attributes I have lost roughly 1500 health. Another super frustrating change is the regeneration from food seems to have been nerfed significantly with the regen tick rate being 1% of your health every 2.5 seconds. I can still do the drinking water trick to trigger slightly faster regeneration but overall it feels like I am struggling to stay alive more than I did previously.

A number of camps have been ruined due to changes in the patch as well, with Priests no longer being as doable because you can no longer skip the corruption portal due to terrain changes. This made me want to go check out our good friend Adjorjan to see if any changes were made to ruin that farm. When I talked about it previously I did not include a map, but he can be found in Edengrove and initially I went out there last night in the hopes of getting a Void Gauntlet to play with. What ensued instead was a combination of Waren, Eliyon, and I ended up farming him for about two and a half hours. He still drops relevant gear and while the watermark increases seem to have slowed they were still happening especially with weapons. So this is very much still a valid camp for watermarking purposes.

I am a little concerned about some of the other things that I heard throughout the night. The zerg on our server starts at 5:30 my time and I was not online and available to do content when it started up so I did not participate last night. However I have heard that there are some sort of anti-zerg mechanics that have more or less made Myrkgard a pain in the butt to run like we used to. Again I did not experience these first hand, but hearing discussion about things being unkillable to a large group of players, but a smaller group could take it out without issue. The zerg and priest farms were honestly the most enjoyable things I had experienced in the game and if both of those are effectively dead… I do sorry about my longevity with the title. Amazon seems to be making sweeping changes regularly that swing between extremes… and I am not sure how on board I am with their master vision right now.

I don’t care at all about PVP and if they make PVE content too painful I will just end up wandering off… as will I think most of the less hardcore player base. A lot of what they are doing feels like stalling to me… trying to spread the butter super thin to slow players down and buy them time to release more content. This has happened a lot in other games as the developers have this “oh god they are consuming content too fast!” moment. The watermark system was painful enough as is, but if they are actively ruining the farms we had developed to raise our level… then I am not sure it is worth sticking around. I know in December when Endwalker releases I am probably gone anyway, but was hoping to enjoy the remaining month here.

In other news it seems like at least someone in the guild “Run It” has found my blog post about the fall of Everfall. I feel like I need to qualify my definition of a Slum Lord when it comes to New World. If you own territory but are not keeping the machinery upgraded and keeping a constant flow of townboard quests going for your patrons to complete and assist in the leveling process… then by my personal definition you are a Slum Lord. At the time in which I posted this… most of the towns were running a full compliment of quests but as I myself was using them to level… I noticed that Monarch’s Bluff never really had any other than the default free “Upkeep” quests. Run It has done a perfectly cromulent job of running Everfall the two times they have held it, but Monarch’s Bluff is still unappreciated. So if y’all are reading this blog stop being a Slum Lord and load some damned quests for people to complete. Additionally the Freeze thing y’all were doing WAS an exploit and it WAS patched by New World, so I stand by everything I said.

Outriders Wants Us Back

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Hey Folks! Sorry that a blog post never actually materialized yesterday. I have had a couple of really hellishly busy week, which means I just did not have time to deal with a blog post yesterday morning. By the time I had finally cleared my schedule enough to bang out a post… apparently my host had some significant issues and the database server associated with my blog had died horribly. When this issue was resolved I was back to being busy as hell, and as a result no post happened. What I was going to talk about actually was better delayed because yesterday the Outriders New Horizon update released and I got my hands on it.

I am going to be honest… this year has been a rough year for me and as a result mentally I assumed this game came out in 2020… and not April of this year. So when I heard there were new updates going into the game my first reaction was “wow that took awhile”. I mean it did take over six months to receive our first meaty and substantial update, which I guess makes sense given that they advertised it from the very beginning as not being a “live service” game. What Outriders New Horizon brings is a bunch of tweaks to the way that the game plays along with a few new expeditions, which are the games end game dungeons. Here is a rundown of the features that I am aware of:

  • 4 New Expeditions
  • Timers Removed as Reward Qualifier for Expeditions
  • Improved Relevance of Drops
  • Crossplay Actually Works as Intended
  • New Chase Epic Weapons hidden in each Expedition
  • New Legendary Vendor with “Random” legendary available
  • Full Transmog/Cosmetic Appearance System
  • Worldslayer Expansion coming in 2022

Of these the one that I spent the most time playing with last night was of course the Transmog system. Essentially if you bring up your menu, at any point you can hit L to go into the appearance customization system. From here you have total control over the look and feel of your character, and I say feel specifically because you can customize your weapons to sound a specific way if for some reason there is a gun that you like but cannot stand its timbre. It uses an appearance acquisition system, so as you get drops it will automagically collect its appearance for you to begin using. This means for me who has progressed through the story already… I am going to have to farm content in order to see those drops start appearing. For a new player whoever in theory just playing through the game will make sure a large number of these items are filled out, and given that this is cross account… it might make me suddenly care about playing alts.

It is time once again to break out the handy graphic that I recreated showing mission difficulty as it scales with both Expedition Challenge Tier and Story Mode World Tier. I spent most of yesterday running around on World Tier 15, which is completely manageable. However as I start going into expeditions I am realistically going to need to start doing Tier 9 if I want to start seeing improvements. One of my biggest problems with Expeditions was the timer, and with it gone I am suddenly significantly more interested in that content. Additionally now that they have hidden chase weapons in all of the expeditions, it becomes a more interesting proposition for me to take my time and crawl through the dungeon experience. For pure farming last night I returned to good ole Typhon hunt mission and at some point I will do some of my “loot cave” to see what appearances I can collect easily.

I enjoyed Outriders quite a bit, and returning last night has made me realize who much I actually did. The core problem with the game for me was that all of my immediate circle of AggroChat folks bounced heavily for thematic reasons. The story is bleak as fuck, and it is very hard to chew through. I think of us only Tam actually made it all the way through, and he isn’t the sort to repeatedly farm content for loot. However there are other communities that I am a member of that did play a bit longer, and I am hoping through those I might be able to find some groups and actually try multiplayer content. I would like to actually push my gear level up a bit higher and farm some more legendary gear, but in order to do that I think I am going to need to play with a somewhat balanced team.

For those interested in maybe returning, it seems that you can for at least a little while get a free weapon from Tiago. The weapon that he has currently is The Juggler, which is probably my favorite auto rifle in the game. It has this truly broken ability to fire a grenade at your target that does silly amounts of damage each time you reload the weapon. This means that I abuse this by reloading constantly to get another free grenade. The weapon also comes with Minefield II, which causes a bunch of bombs to drop down each time you kill an enemy. On the version I use regularly I replaced Minefield II with Minefield III which changes the grenade condition from “On Kill” to “On Crit” making it much more reliable for burning down elites with. I will need to take some time to dust off the cobwebs and relearn the basics of the game, but I figure before long I will be spending at least some of my week grinding expeditions.

Rooftop Magic

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Good morning friends. I have to say our Medium beach front home in Shirogane has grown on me in my time back in the game. For the longest time, I was deeply nostalgic about our original FC home, but I think more than anything I was nostalgic about that era in the game when I was so engaged with it. The house simply became shorthand for explaining my feelings, and I put way more importance on that one location than I really should have. Now that I have been back in the game and have actually reached out to begin meeting our neighbors, I have come to realize that we are still in a pretty phenomenal neighborhood. Yesterday morning while I was blogging I taught one of our neighbors the joy of hanging out on the roof of our home and the amazing view it provides. There is a bit of a process to get up there, but I spend enough time that the neighbors are finding their way up there as well.

The highlight of yesterday is represented by another roofline shot, this time of me in my level 70 gathering gear set. I usually glamour this stuff, but I have to say the base appearance is pretty adorable. I’ve been spending a not-insignificant amount of time in the Diadem and been focused on trying to get at least one level per day on all three of the gathering professions. I need to catch Fishing up at this point, but right now I have Botany and Mining both at level 71. Ultimately the reason behind this push is twofold. Firstly I want to be able to contribute more than my single solitary map each week to Maps night, and that requires a high-level gatherer to get those level 80 maps. Secondly, I figure having a max level gatherer will make leveling all of my crafting all that much easier because I can make my way into the Diadem to stockpile the materials I need for the Ishgard Restoration stuff. For now I am putting most of those materials gained on the market which serve as a pretty reasonable way to gain a little cash quickly.

The other big activity that I knocked out last night was starting the process of catching up on the YorHa Alliance raids based on Nier Automata. I had started the precursor quest some time ago, but like so many things in my quest log never quite got around to finishing it. I ran The Copied Factory and The Puppet’s Bunker last night, and at the end of the night unlocked the final of this triad of raids The Tower at Paradigm’s Breach. This area of the game is way more detailed than I expected, allowing players to basically roam around the areas represented by each raid in a sort of exploration mode. I am pretty certain that The Copied Factory is straight from the beginning of Nier Automata, or at least is very similar to what I remember from the beginning of that game. Side note I really need to get back to that and finish it at some point.

My favorite visual from the raids is when the entire alliance queues up at a checkpoint and then takes the pods down to the next area at the same time. It ends up looking like a roller coaster as everyone glides down in unison. I was apparently extremely lucky last night because, on the second raid, I managed to get bot the 2B and 2P minions, and then after the raid Rae ended up mailing me two of the hairstyles that she got from her own run. There was a lot going on, but I like this series far better than I do the Void Ark sequence from Heavensward or the Ivalice sequence from Stormblood. There are a few mechanics that are not messaged like FFXIV normally are, but I adapted. I did however take several deaths to stupid things as I was learning. I really want to farm a set of gear from this series of raids, maybe for my dancer because it seems fitting.

All told I am extremely impressed by the level of the content and am also realizing that I need to dive back into the Eden raids and finish those out. I think I only actually did the first set of them, but they were pretty enjoyable. I need to tabulate the results of my raiding survey and try and zero in on both a group of 8 players and a timeslot to start trying for more focused raiding attempts. The Scholar is still progressing and I managed to get another two levels on it, and finish off a level on the Dark Knight. I have a lot of different balls in the air but so far juggling them is providing me with a good amount of enjoyment. The only thing that could potentially derail this is me getting distracted by another game… and I am afraid that might be happening soon.

Yesterday there was a Bungie Showcase event that I believe tied into the larger Gamescom show happening this week. During it they revealed the trailer for The Witch Queen expansion, and the new seasonal content that started last night. I miss Destiny 2, and I am feeling the subtle tug as some of my friends are engaging with it again. For a long time I managed to play both FFXIV and Destiny 2 at the same time, and given that they are wildly different experiences I might be able to make it work. So at some point over the next few days I expect to dip my toes back into D2 and see how well that concept works. My core focus remains FFXIV, but there are times I could go for something a little more visceral.

Unsupported Alts

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Good morning friends. Today is my Friday because I took tomorrow off and depending on my mood may be calling it part of the weekend. I am not sure which one of you commented that remembering random things is a sign of a midlife crisis, because lord is it hitting me with a vengeance right now. While getting ready this morning I remembered this one story from my childhood which is dumb but I am still going to share it. My entire life my father had the side hustle of a portrait photographer, this is in part why I tend to take those sort of things for granted because I effectively grew up in the darkroom and one of my first jobs was helping him photograph weddings. My dad gave his business a pretty generic name “Bill’s Photography”, and paid a local calligrapher to create a good clean masthead for him.

During the 90s when direct mail started to computerize some weirdness began happening. Always in the past he would get mail addressed to himself and mail addressed to his business, because a human being was effectively interpreting that business name correctly. However at some point this shifted and he started receiving mail for the mythical being known as “Bill S. Photography” which at the time I thought was the funniest thing that had ever happened on the face of the planet. On very rare occasions it would come through as “Bill S. Photograph” which was even better. So here I am this morning giggling like a madman as I am remembering this, and I am sure my wife thought I had completely lost it.

I think I might be done with Outriders. Recently I started leveling a Technomancer in part so that I could see how the narration and story worked with the female voice actor. I’ve now been through the entire story and I have to say if you are wanting to start the game fresh… absolutely go with the female character because the line delivery just works better. There are so many times when you are playing as the male character, that the line delivery makes it sound like he doesn’t actually understand what he is saying. I was never certain if this was a problem with the audio editing, or the line delivery itself… but after playing through with the female voice actor it seems like maybe it was the later.

Essentially I have reached this place where I don’t feel like going through the world tier grind once again with a second character. I think this is the general problem with the way levels and gearing works in Outriders is that there is zero “catch up” benefit to your alts. Sure I have a vault full of level 42 gear from my main character, but my alts can’t use a single bit of it because they have not “leveled” to the point of being able to use it. In theory this should have worked in a manner like Champion Levels in Elder Scrolls Online, where the World Tier and Challenge Tier are associated with your account and not your character, and once you finished the main story you would zoom forward to whatever your “Account Level” was at that point.

Outriders was an enjoyable but flawed game experience, which I guess is pretty par for the course with outings from companies who are not already seasoned in the looter shooter genre. Then again… I guess I could say the same about most of the other games in the genre as well, they are all sorta flawed experiences. I am hoping that Outriders sold well enough that we might see an Outriders 2 that makes good on the promise of this title, fixes some of the tonal issues of the story, and actually has a proper plan for what to do with players upon completing the final bit of story. They told us in no uncertain terms that this was not a “live service” title and I guess we should have believed them. There are a lot of things that need tweaking but I get the general impression that they are moving on to other game titles and not really that interested in anything that is not strictly a bug fix.

In other news… Fallout 76 is unabashedly a “live service” game and has seemingly found its stride. I have been enjoying myself greatly as I roam around Appalachia, which I really wish was easier to spell. At least with the Commonwealth it was two easy to spell terms jammed together, but maybe over time I will get used to it. That said it took me years to be able to spell shenanigans on the first try… and I LOVE that word. As of last night I am level 8 which means I am rapidly catching up to where I left off with the game the first time. The quests and the NPCs make the entire experience feel more enjoyable. The responder area is more or less intact with it being largely told through audio diaries, but what makes all of that feel more alive is that there are random human NPCs wandering the wastes adding flavor here and there and making it feel less dead.

I’ve built a somewhat nonsense house that cantilevers off the side of the main structure. Given that there is no actual gravity in this game… I didn’t have to do anything to make this more logical but I nonetheless added some support struts because visually it bothered me. Sometimes in a game like this I just keep building in a very “weasley house” manner until I run out of materials. Ultimately what I really need to do is pick up my camp and move it somewhere that works slightly better. For now it has been handy to be next to the Wayward while doing quests, but eventually I can see logic in uprooting it. I wish there was a way to do some terraforming, but you are pretty much stuck with way things are which is what lead me to have the second story wider than the first.

What I really need to do is sort out a more stable method of healing myself and a better source of water and food that don’t irradiate the hell out of me. I mean I have radaway, but I also know that is a fairly limited resource right now. I do pretty well in a stand up fight, but end up needing to heal pretty regularly afterwards. I did find an interesting option for grinding… up at the lighthouse on top of the mountain which seems to have a nigh unlimited number of rad toads. If I hang out in the house I can pretty safely kill those at range. There is also a quest up there for filling up the lighthouse with bioluminescent fluid that I should probably do as well. I wish there was a way to upgrade a piece of gear to the next level range rather than needing to craft a brand new item, but the game is what it is.

All in all however I am having a blast in Fallout 76, so I apparently was away from it the optimal amount of time for it to feel fresh and for the game to have evolved while I was away. Maybe at some point I can return to Outriders and have that same feeling.