Action RPGs Archives - Page 186 of 254

The Good Grind

February 19, 2018 by Belghast

Over the last few days I have been thinking about where Monster Hunter World has succeeded and Destiny 2 has failed. I know this is probably a strange way to start off a post, but I am playing MHW the way that I fully expected to still be playing Destiny 2. If you add up the total time I have spent with the Destiny franchise across different platforms you wind up with 741 hours. Given that sort of track record I fully expected to be playing that game currently. That said I have missed two faction rallies, two iron banners and have not really even logged in during the current crimson doubles event. Sure I could be getting all manner of cosmetic gear from them… but the weapon and gear system just feels hollow given that I have collected most everything I am interested in using.

While I love the token loot system, Destiny 2 has a problem with not giving us a meaningful grind to be focused on. Doing event after event hoping to get a Masterwork Weapon or Piece of armor doesn’t really count. When I say meaningful grind I mean something that I can do on a nightly basis that is fun, but also feels like I am making progress towards some larger objective. In many ways the fickle nature of loot in Destiny 1 and the existence of things like the Court of Oryx and Archon’s Forge gave me something I could do… that felt like I was potentially moving in the direction of something that I wanted from the game. As it stands there are too few interesting weapon options and the watered down version of exotics no longer really make them worth chasing in the way we used to before.

It may simply be because I am playing on the PS4 with friends that I am drawing the conclusion… but as I play Monster Hunter World I think about the ways that it has given me this path to madness paved with little incremental rewards. When you kill or trap a Monster you are hunting you are showered with a bunch of monster parts… some of which are useful and some of which are not as useful. The thing is, regardless if I have 50 of an item… I am still sorta excited to see them because I know that eventually I might need to use them to craft some new weapon that I then have to upgrade up to the final version. I might suddenly decide that Hammer is awesome and then have to start building up my collection of weapons much the same as I do for my beloved Longsword.

I know that every thing I kill, and every object in the world that I loot is taking me towards some bigger goal. The number of times that I have had to go out lately and farm herbs… one of literally the first items you encounter in the game… is shocking given that I am dealing with a completely different set of monsters than I did back then. However it doesn’t seem like tedium because they have placed value on almost everything you can encounter out in the wilds and while you may not need it today… there is likely going to be a time at some point in the future where you will be wishing you had more of it. While literally every moment I am not hunting a big epic monster is busywork… none of it feels like it because it feels valuable to the larger mission of the game.

While Destiny has never really had something close to this grind, I am thinking maybe it should. The central focus of all of this for me personally is the Smithy, which is a menu driven crafting system that allows me to turn all of these bits and pieces of critters I have taken down… and meld them into usable gear with interesting stat combinations. I’ve spent a good deal of time farming up Odogoron, which is a giant hairless blind hell hound looking thing. I personally really like its armor set and I want to be able to wield the full thing a a potential replacement for my mishmash of gear I am currently wearing. This gives me a goal, and the grind itself is slow enough that each kill feels like meaningful progress without ever giving me that landfall moment of getting everything I possibly need in a single round.

Imagine for a second if you had gear and weapons in Destiny based on a similar concept. Each time you took down the Fallen example, there was a chance of getting an item that could be used in the crafting of Fallen themed weapons or armor. The common items would drop from Dregs, medium rarity items from Vandals and the rare bits from Servitors and Walkers. Then say you wanted to craft the Vex Mythoclast you would need to maybe take down a Gate Lord to get the focusing lens, and a bunch of Minotaurs to get the armored housing. All of this is more meaningful than collect 40 of token Z and hope the RNG gods smile upon your en devour as you may or may not get the item you want from a relatively deep loot table. It also turns Banshee-44 into more than the Gachapon machine that he currently is, by giving him the actual ability to craft specific items for you.

What Monster Hunter World does better than almost anything is that it gives me a target for my nightly nonsense. Granted right now I cannot craft the Chrome Slicer I because I lack the zenny to do so…. but I know where every single piece that it requires drops from. I know that I can run loops around High Rank Wildspire Wastes for most if it, but to get the Fucium Ore I am going to have to make my way down into the Elder’s Recess. If I notice a weapon requires parts off of a specific monster I am given a bunch of different ways to target that one specific encounter and run it over and over if I so choose. In my case what I personally tend to do is answer SOS beacons for that specific encounter, feeling like I am actually helping out someone else in the community take down that critter for fun and profit as well.

More than anything what I think Monster Hunter World does so well is that it eases you into all of this. You quickly learn the value of the items you can grab out in the world as new patterns start showing up that you can craft. You notice that items have ??? beside some of the materials and it drives you to go out and explore until you find them. All of this creates a feedback loop of take down epic feeling monsters, get items, craft interesting gear… so you can take down even bigger monsters. Sure a lot of the gear is not strictly required… but for someone who is very gear focused it certainly makes the journey feel a lot more meaningful. The monster battle portion being fun enough that while I am actively engaged in fighting… I am not even thinking about what might drop which is not the case in most MMORPGs.

When they first started talking about Destiny 2 being a much more open world and quest driven game… this is honestly the sort of experience I had been envisioning. What if you could fight a Destiny boss the same way you do a Monster in Monster Hunter World? What if getting every player to focus on taking out a Gatelord’s weapon arm caused it to no longer be able to fire that weapon… and instead forced it to change up tactics and start engaging in melee attacks. What if the way you fought a boss mattered just as much as the weapons you took into the fight? When we got Destiny 2 and it was a stripped down version of what we had in Destiny 1… I was disappointed, but the mechanical loop of the game kept me engaged for way longer than the game itself probably deserved. I had enough hype built up to carry me through the console launch and restarting with the PC launch… but now I just don’t ever feel like even logging in.

What I want is a good grind. That doesn’t necessarily mean running Omnigul hundreds of times hoping that maybe just maybe you will get that one in a million perfectly stated Grasp of Malok. What that means for me personally is something that I can do on a nightly basis that feels like I am eventually heading towards some goal down the road. Maybe at some point in the near future I will feel like I am out of grinds in Monster Hunter World, but I can at least see a road map in front of me that seems like it is going to be an interesting ride. Right now I am almost overwhelmed by the sheer number of objectives that I could be chasing, and as I move up… it feels like the world keeps expanding out rather than narrowing down to a pin point like the raid cycle does in an MMORPG. Monster Hunter World is a really great grind, that is attached to a really fun experience of taking down giant monsters that fight in a fluid and believably organic manner. Maybe Bungie will find its footing at some point, but for the moment I am enjoying discovering the Monster Hunter franchise.

Wolcen Alpha Thoughts

February 5, 2018 by Belghast

This weekend was a largely chill en devour that focused on lots of gaming while either upstairs in my warm warm office, or downstairs snuggled into a blanket on the sofa. It was my original intent to spend lots of time hunting monsters with friends, and I did in fact manage that for a bit Sunday afternoon. I also managed another goal which was to craft the Horizon Zero Dawn set of Palico gear which Kenzie is currently wearing. It admittedly feels a little weird at times to talk about Kenzie in game versus Kenzie the real life cat, but I still feel like if you didn’t name your Palico friend after an actual cat you are a monster. The other big happening of the weekend is that I dove head first into a game that I had been wanting to try for a bit.

Wolcen Lords of Mayhem is an Action Roleplaying Game that draws its inspiration from Diablo 2, Path of Exile and to some extent Diablo 3. It’s funny how a genre that largely spawned from a single came can branch and wind up fairly divisive. There is an entire community that feels like Diablo 2 was the ideal version of the game, another that feels like Path of Exile is the true successor to the throne… and a whole other group of people that care nothing about that noise and happily play Diablo 3. Wolcen is this weird amalgam in which I can see some of the best traits of each of those camps, as well as pulling in some other games in the genre like Titans Quest and its eventual successor Grim Dawn. Essentially it is a good start at trying to build a brand new modern ARPG.

The game itself is completely gorgeous, which admittedly was the first thing that I noticed about it. I stumbled onto this game when D3 community YouTuber Rhykker did a video talking about it. I have been trying very hard to avoid playing alpha/beta/early access games because they tend to sour my impression and excitement when the final product is released. However when I saw the game play I promptly threw that rule out the window and slammed my $19.95 on the table to join the testing. Firstly please note the game is very much an alpha build and in my short time playing it I have encountered all sorts of bugs including being hit by a monster a few times and having it teleport me back to base without actually dying.

This is absolutely a buyer beware sort of experience, but for me at least I felt like I wanted to help fund the games development because they have some pretty big plans. They are even brave enough to post their long term roadmap in the form of a Trello board for the backers to look at and comment on. Similarly there is a community Discord available as well so folks can leave bug reports, comment on game play and leave feature requests. The little bit of time I have spent roaming around the chat channels have made me realize that the game already has a super devoted following. As far as the lineage of this game goes… it is my understanding that it originally started out as a mod for the game Crysis designed to allow folks to create an ARPG on the CryEngine. From there it turned into a Kickstarter project called Umbra, and then at some point the name shifted to Wolcen which I find insanely awkward to pronounce.

What makes the game extremely interesting to me is the fact that there are no classes. You start as either a Male or a Female character with pretty robust sliders and character creation options. From there your character becomes whatever you want it to be in the form that everything is treated like a spell… be it a melee attack or an orb of lighting being hurled at the target. How you begin to spec out your character determines how effective you are going to be in your goals. Not surprisingly I have largely focused on melee with a sword and shield build designed to get in… dish out a bunch of damage then use the games active dodge system represented by the green pips above the skill bar to get out safely.

Admittedly it does not always work because the monsters in this game hit super hard and involve a lot of movement to be able to take them down successfully. I spent some time streaming Sunday morning and died over and over to all sorts of silly situations, and with no difficulty slider currently… it could get frustrating if you are not willing to keep throwing your face against this game. As far as speccing your character you are given a combination of the traditional stat based system that allows you to allocate points each level into the core areas that you want to be improving. On top of that each individual skill has its own tree of sorts that largely involves you choosing one of two options… with one focused on efficiency and another focused on either dealing more damage or increasing the effect of your attacks.

Lastly you have the “Gate of Fates” or what I tend to call it the Sphere Grid, which is a sequence of thematic choices you make as a character in how you want to build it out. Now when I said there were no classes in this game… in theory that is probably a lie because you could think of the skill trees presented on this grid as classes. On the inner ring you have Arcanist, Guardian, Legionary, Thief and Hunter. On the second ring you have Elementalist, Warden, Maleficent, Gladiator and Trickster. Then on the third ring they have a single tree so far called Assassin, but I fully expect that their goal is to keep expanding outwards. What makes this interesting is there is an NPC in town that allows you to rotate the rings connecting up any first tier tree to any second tier tree. So as a result right now my Legionary tree is rotated to meet up with Gladiator and in theory your “Class” becomes the combination of which trees you choose to mash together.

Admittedly it was in the sphere grid that Path of Exile largely lost me as a player because it kept expanding… and keep seeming more and more like nonsense. However with Wolcen it feels more manageable because essentially I am making one of five choices… each time I move outwards on the grid and can feel pretty happy to just stay within those lines. There are a lot of things not messaged well in the game… including this sphere grid. So for example I did not realize I could rotate it until I had already started putting some points into Guardian. That said it doesn’t necessarily feel like those points were wasted either because I am getting the blended effect of both trees at the same time. I would imagine late in the game you would have more than one tree fleshed out on each of the rings… and as such keep tweaking the subtle nuance of your character design.

Essentially I broke my no alphas rule… because I really want to see this game come to fruition. What is there right now… has an awful lot of potential and I can see how it could be turned into serious competition for the Diablo 4 throne. I will always love Diablo and the action rpgs that have spawned out of it. I’ve spent many an hour playing games like Titans Quest or even the MMO variants like Devilian. Already Wolcen has managed to capture the essence of what makes a Diablo style game good… all the while taking this raw material and blending it into something fresh feeling. They are taking the genre into an interesting direction that combines the accessibility of Diablo 3 with the madness of Path of Exile to produce something that I think will have staying power. I fully expect that this is going to be one of those games that I keep popping back into as new features are added. I am sure it is still a few years away from exiting early access, but the product that is there already feels good to play. If you are so inclined and are willing to deal with a slightly buggy product… I highly suggest checking it out.

Radiolarian Paradox

December 28, 2017 by Belghast

The world is a really weird place and I sometimes have trouble reconciling just how random it is. Yesterday after legitimate decades of not being in contact… I had a friend I grew up with reach out via the email address on this blog. As the day went on we chatted and for the most part found out that we are still drift compatible. We fell out of contact for reasons that quite honestly I have probably talked about on this blog at some point without assigning names or faces to the situation. However I always sorta hoped at some point he would find his way back into my monkeysphere and that seems to have actually occurred. It is super weird to get back in touch with someone who hasn’t been around for the last two decades. Like for example he knows my wife, but at the time we were last in regular contact we were dating and not married. In that time I have shifted through many jobs and titles and positions… and had the birth of the blog and podcast and my attempts at writing for a gaming site and then determining that wasn’t really for me. So much life has happened for both of us and it is weird trying to slip back into a friendship from so many years ago. Regardless it was a really cool happening to close out 2017, a year that has been generally crummy in so many other ways.

Lately I have fallen into a pattern with my evenings where I spend a little time in World of Warcraft knocking out the daily emissary chest and doing any world quests that have interesting rewards. Then I usually end up swapping over to Destiny 2 and doing whatever package schematic is available that day to get more Dawning rewards for free. I’ve talked about it at length in another post, but the Dawning being a largely cash shop holiday has been immensely frustrating for me. This was an event that I was so into when it happened in Destiny 1 in part because it brought back the sparrow racing league and ushered in the beginning of strike scoring. As it stands now I cannot seem to bring myself to run strikes of any form because they largely feel pointless. The bane of my existence at the moment is the Advanced Paradox Amplifier needed to get several of the prophecy weapon unlocks. These come from Strikes, Heroic Adventures and Crucible matches… and come extremely sparingly at that. I have been mostly grinding them out by chaining the new mayhem mode crucible matches and unfortunately most of the time you wind up with a single Paradox Amplifier per match… that you then need to turn in ten of to get the advanced variety. Unfortunately both the Strikes and Heroic Adventures award with the same frequency meaning that you can either do two things that take a significant amount of time… or grind your face off in PVP. I feel like part of me is completely dead inside from all of the crucible I have done lately, because I really don’t enjoy it… but I want the items that I can potentially get from doing it.

What makes this so painful is that Radiolarian Cultures seem to drop like candy from every public event or chest you open. I can spend 30 minutes and roam around opening chests on a planet and get more than enough to do several weapons, and then I am stuck grinding for legitimately hours to get a single blue quality advanced Paradox Amplifier. Throwing another thing into the mix I apparently need Fossilized Hermaion Blossoms which drop in Nightfalls. I need two of these so does this mean I will have to complete two Nightfalls in order to get this step done, or does this simply mean that they drop two at a time? The prophecy weapon grinds are largely frustrating because there is no real casual activity on the Paradox side of the equation. Had they said… you could do strikes, crucible matches or lost sectors… that would have been something that I could piddle around on my own happily doing for hours. Instead strikes feel too long and unrewarding, crucible matches are mind numbing, and the heroic adventure mechanism is just generally unfun especially since they included another god forsaken timer. At this point I have completed Hand Cannon, Pulse Rifle, SMG, and Sword… and now seemingly am working on the Saint-14 shotgun. I need to chain run a bunch of strikes over the next few days so I can get the currency to purchase Curtain Call from Zavala before the weapons swap again next Wednesday. I am in this weird place with Destiny 2, where I keep playing because I love the moment to moment gunplay… but keep getting frustrated by the myopic design.

Dawning Sorta

December 20, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday the new and revised Dawning Holiday started in Destiny 2, but I feel like in order to understand the rest of this post we need to talk a bit about what Dawning was in Destiny 1. This holiday originally ran from December 13th 2016 to January 3rd 2017 and was lumped in with a major update to the game. As a result it is a little hard to separate what is the Dawning and what is the content, but I am going to talk about it anyways. In Destiny 1 we had these things called record books that included a bunch of achievements and completing them unlocked loot. There was one of these specific to the dawning event and featured achievements that involved either the brand new strike scoring system also included with the patch or the triumphant return of the Sparrow Racing League (SRL). SRL is legitimately my favorite part of Destiny 1 and when it came back over the holidays last year… I ground my little face off running endless Sparrow Racing League matches. With this it also introduced a ton of new SRL themed gear and sparrows including these really awesome class items that left a neon streak behind you as you raced on your sparrow. In addition to that three exotics were introduced into the game, as well as a series of presents that were in the tower allowing you to open one each day and get a mixture of good items and complete junk. Needless to say there was a lot of stuff included in the holiday and a good deal of it like Strike Scoring became a permanent part of the game after that.

This year around The Dawning is running from December 19th through January 9th and as much as I hate to be one of those folks… seems to be largely a bunch of new Eververse Trading Company items. You are given one Dawning Engram by logging in and then there are milestones that allow you to earn one each week. When you XP up it appears that you still get a Season Two Engram rather than one of the special event ones, so your ability to actually get items from this event without spending some money seems to be at least somewhat limited. Instead of presents that give you stuff for free… you get to loot a quest item each day that requires you to do some stuff and then turns in at one of the tower NPCs for some dawning loot. The first one is a pattern that goes in your ghost shell slot and requires you to collect 10 phase glass on Io and kill 15 servitors… which largely meant hanging out and farming the Servitor events as they spawned in the EDZ. I turned in and got an exotic ship and a shader, but based on what I am seeing this appears to be essentially the equivalent of opening one of those Dawning Engrams… so wide loot table including full sets of class armor, 4 unique emotes, 10 unique ghost shells including 1 exotic, 10 unique ships including 2 exotics, 11 unique sparrows including 2 exotic, 4 unique shaders, and 6 unique transmat effects. At any given time there are seven of that assortment of forty five items available for purchase with bright dust on the Eververse vendor… pending my math is correct. Essentially this is an Eververse holiday with Eververse rewards… and a minimal method of earning them through normal game play rather than swiping your card.

The biggest problem I have with the event is the complete and total lack of the Sparrow Racing League. Instead we get Mayhem Crucible modes… which admittedly are amazingly fun, but no crazy swoop bike racing action. For the uninitiated Mayhem is a mode of the Crucible where your super regenerates at an insane rate… and grenade and melee are slightly increased as well. It means that it takes what feels like a minute to get your full super bar, and as a result you are running around doing really silly things the entire match. I played quite a bit of it last night and it was enjoyable to run around the map trying to out super all of the other supers. Oddly enough I got plenty of normal weapon kills also as I sat back and picked off weakened targets when two different super saiyans clashed in battle. As fun as Mayhem mode is… unless it sticks around as a new permanent fixture it is going to feel super hollow. The original Dawning added so much new permanent content to the game, that this version feels extremely lacking. Strike scoring is one of those systems that is desperately needed in Destiny 2 and with the bulk of the dawning items coming from cash shop purchases rather than a book of achievements… it just feels cheap. I am as big a backer of Destiny 2 as they come, but even I have to stop and think that this seems more cash grab than content.