Action RPGs Archives - Page 254 of 262

Destiny is Gorgeous

September 9, 2014 by Belghast

Squandering the Morning

This morning I have absolutely squandered my morning away, because today the servers for Destiny came up. In truth the servers came up over the night, and there are already a large number of folks milling around in Tower that are level 10 or so. This morning my overriding goal was to get a character created and get it to tower so I could eventually meet up with friends and play. This formidable mug you are seeing represents the new version of me in Destiny. At character creation you are given the choice between Human, some sort of translucent skinned humanoid, and robots. Generally speaking I tend to heavily favor humans but there is a fatal flaw in the character creator… no beards. Since I can’t have a beard then I pretty much have to go robot.

All in all I am fine with this because I feel like a badass with the green glowing eyes. I played robotic characters in City of Heroes and Champions Online, so I guess that fits my motif anyway. I ended up rolling a Titan again, because I have to admit I like having the insane attack that slams the ground and knocks all of the enemies away. Additionally I found I liked having a jet pack better than some form of a modified jump. In theory the titan becomes more tanky over time, which also definitely fits my overriding goals in pretty much any game. Similarly I know that there will already be a lot of Warlocks and Hunters among my friends, so I figure it is best to stick with what I know and enjoyed playing in alpha and beta.

Destiny Is Gorgeous

The thing I keep forgetting after large blocks of time being out of the game is just how damned gorgeous this game is. I guess as a habitual member of the PC master race, I have a hard time realizing that the consoles have finally caught up. Always in the past there was something wrong with the console images, either they were grainy or washed out or blurry. They lacked the saturation and definition that I was so used to from playing on a PC. The PS4 however playing destiny looks amazing, and I doubt it would perform any better on a PC, or at least not with the mid range video cards I generally purchase. The big difference of course is that I am running around this landscape with the joystick rather than a keyboard and mouse. This is the biggest adjustment for me, because I still don’t quite feel comfortable without the precision control to make headshots that a mouse gives me.

Thankfully Destiny has more than a fair amount of aim assist, and while I can’t really draw a bead and get head shots reliably, I can chew down encounters with body shots. I managed to make it through the first tutorial level in pretty good time, and as I now idle in Tower to write this… random people keep landing and dancing with me. I am not exactly sure when I will really get a chance to start this game properly. I know we have plans for this evening, but I might pop in after that to at least run the first couple of missions. This is one of those games that I don’t mind being behind the curve. I am not really competing with anyone to get to max level first. I feel like Destiny is going to fill the same role that Diablo 3 does. Fun game that I can get into quickly, kill some stuff and pop back out without many hard feelings. I like the big open world areas in Destiny for this, in that I can land and make my own objectives or simply run around looking for interesting stuff.

Beginning Coil

The picture is completely unrelated here, but I look adorable like always in my White Mage outfit. I mentioned earlier that we already had plans for tonight, and primarily that is because we have decided to start raiding Binding Coil, and this evening is the time that seemed to work the best for most people. I honestly figure by the time evening rolls around Destiny will be completely unplayable, so I thought this might be a good idea to give us all something to focus on other than the inability to play with our new toy. For some time we have been gearing up and wanting to start Binding Coil fresh as a guild. I believe that mostly we will be going into this one completely fresh, in that none of us are really doing research ahead of tonight. One of my biggest joys is figuring out content with my friends, and I think we will do just fine.

One of the most awesome footnotes about the community however is the reaction folks have had to us beginning Binding Coil. Now this raid in one form or another has been out for a year, and they simply keep adding new turns to it. So as I have talked to some fairly serious raiders about our guild starting the Coil fresh, I’ve received a completely unexpected reaction. Were it World of Warcraft, I would have gotten reactions like folks chiding us for being “Months Behind”. Here I have gotten nothing but positive responses, talking about how they wished they could go back and see the Coil with fresh eyes again, and that we would enjoy ourselves. This overwhelming sense of others wishing us well and being happy for us is extremely refreshing. I am glad that this same strong community attitude extends to raiding as well as the dungeon content we have experienced. Hopefully we will go in, clear the first turn and walk away with some awesome memories.

#FFXIV #Destiny

Follow the Shiny Bauble

July 19, 2014 by Belghast

Too Many Things

So for whatever reason this weekend has conspired to have a bajillion competing things happening at once it seems. Firstly this weekend is like the prep weekend for the conference that I will be taking off from work next week to help my wife with. Three years ago her and several of her twitter buddies decided to make a conference appear out of thin air, and this year it is being hosted here in the Tulsa metro. As a result I am being a dutiful husband and helping out however I can. That means today I will be moving things and testing out the various technology in each of the classrooms that will eventually host random speakers.

Right now my only fear is that the systems are designed to be hooked up to a VGA out and 3.5 mm jack. Some of the newer laptops only actually have HDMI out… especially the Mac laptops. So here is hoping those people bring their own hookups because otherwise we might be pantomiming some of the power point presentations. Needless to say my entire day today will be spent running around like a madman trying to get things set up as much as we can. The problem is there are lots of other things going on this weekend. Honestly I think game companies do this shit on purpose… where they should time their events to be on opposite weekends as a thank you to the fans.

Destiny Beta

This weekend is the return of Destiny to my PS4. I wish I could embed some video from my play sessions to date, but alas the Hitbox export to Youtube is still on the fritz and I have not figured out how to embed videos directly. But if you are so inclined you can check out the first and second videos. At some point this weekend I want to record some more footage in the hopes that someday I can upload it somewhere meaningful. The second video is especially hilarious because I did not realize that it was picking up teamspeak while I recorded as well as my PS4 chat. However once again it seems like the PS4 only picks up MY side of the conversation even though I am picking it up from an external capture card. I really wish I knew a way to hang out on teamspeak, but have my voice from teamspeak get transferred as mic input to PS4 party chat. I have some ideas but it involves a massive rube goldbergian effort.

I have to say I still very much love this game, and compared to the Alpha weekend… it seems extremely polished now. A lot of the issues with voice acting are gone and the end product feels really good. Similarly I seem to get items that are way over my level a lot less, so I am actually able to use and equip the various ingrams I find. Ingrams for un-initiative are basically like unidentified loot from Diablo or similar games. You get them while out in the field and you have to take them back to town… or in this case Tower to have a scribe identify them for you. Most of the time the items you get are way better than anything you have access at that level, and they often have the side effect of “leveling up”. When an item reaches a certain point they unlock special abilities that you can purchase on the item. I have a pair of gloves for example that greatly increases the striking power of my grenades.

Everything about this game is awesome if you really want to get down to it. You take a really good shooter, probably one of the best I have played in years and wrap it in a warm blanket of MMO style progression… and you have a game that is right in my wheelhouse. My only question is just how many of the traditional Call of Duty/Battlefield crowd will be jumping ship. I really don’t feel like the game is for that demographic, but instead for the players that absolutely love Borderlands 2. While the loot doesn’t drop quite as frequently as it does in BL2, all of the leveling options feel really good. The one thing I wished from BL2 was that I would have a persistent character that existed on the server, instead of one that existed in my local save game, with all of the things that come along with that. Destiny gives me that, and I really think we are looking at the new model for MMO gaming. Player Interaction light, action oriented co-operative and competitive environments. That is not to say that grouping is not key in Destiny, but it is on a scale that is much more casual friendly in that you only need two other people to really tackle the most intense of situations.

Once again I am playing a Titan, because it fits my personality. I want to be able to rush in, gun things down and throw them the hell back with a shockwave. I don’t remember the name of the attack but you get it around level 5 or 6 and it is executed by pressing left and right shoulder buttons at the same time. There are few more satisfying things in a game than jumping up in the air and watching everything fly away from you in brilliant slow motion ragdoll physics. This class makes me feel powerful and mighty, and about as subtle as a nuke. All of which fit me perfectly in how I like to play. Kodra was playing through Wolfenstein last night… and to make a point Tam asked if I could remember what the crouch button was. Kodra immediately chimed in “you mean the most important button?” and I was like “Nope! I have no clue what crouch is… I just baited the enemies to come attack me in the open and gunned them down.” Subtlety feels like a complete waste of time when you could just kill every last thing that moves.

An Old Friend

Another thing going on this weekend that is fighting for my attention is that they are having a free weekend for Final Fantasy XIV ARR. For whatever reason lately I have been missing the game, and I feel like it is one of those games that I parted on good terms with. I simply ran out of things that I wanted to do. Right now the biggest problem I have with the game is that the people I know that are still playing it… are spread out in various tiny puddles scattered across a long list of servers. When I first connected to the game it had me choose my Data Center, which temporarily gave me some hope that they had done something to consolidate the long list. Apparently that is not the case and each server is still its own little island as far as grouping and guilding, but instead the Data Centers serve the purpose of the Battle Groups in World of Warcraft. They are essentially your pool of players for doing anything that requires a group.

The game is just as enjoyable as it ever was. The hardest thing so far was remembering where the hell I kept my abilities and getting my hotbar back in order. I think I got most everything to a place where my fingers can return to muscle memory for hitting. I am sure a few things are out of place but the key combos that I hit constantly are all in the right places. The main thing I did last night was participate in a hunt, which is a kind of daily event that appeared in a patch while I was out. Basically each day you got to a hunt NPC and they give you this card… which is a physical item in your inventory with a bunch of wanted posters for the day. These involve wandering around the world and killing specific mobs that appear in specific places. The first three were pretty easy, and then the tedium set in for the last two. Apparently these mobs were part of rarely occurring FATEs so I had to just sit around waiting for it to spawn. For the most part it wasn’t too bad except one of them occurred in a level 3 area… so I couldn’t even work on leveling my chocobo while I waited. I am not sure if there is enough here to keep me for very long, but I am enjoying playing for the time being.

The Path Not Taken

Another big thing happening this weekend is the beginning of ArcheAge closed beta. Up until this point there were only two ways to get into Alpha testing. Either you had to know someone like I did, or plunk down your $150 and buy the most expensive founders pack. This weekends the floodgates have opened letting everyone in that has bought even the cheapest of founders packs. The problem is I feel like I have been burned by my experiences in Alpha. The community was so heinous and toxic that I just don’t want to have anything to do with it. At this point Glyph is running in the background right now downloading the 21 gig patch that is needed to get it up and running in closed beta, but that said I am not sure if I will play it much. There are a lot of problems I have with the game, not all of which can be improved.

I still have a fundamental problem with the character design. While I managed to find one I could live with, I am still not terribly happy with it and the lack of “real” beards in most Korean games. I do want to give it a try to see if letting in all of the closed beta players may have fixed some of the problems with the community. One of two things is going to happen… either the super toxic voices are going to be drowned out in the sea of not so horrible… or they will adapt to the “young eating” culture that is the Alpha game. I know Trion is working hard on trying to find ways to moderate the toxicity, but I am just not sure if it will be enough for me. At the end of the day I am a huge carebear and want to spend my time collaborating with other players… and not competing with them.

Follow the Shiny Bauble

The thing that frustrates me the most about this weekend and weekends like it when it seems like every single company is fighting to steer the hype train, is that it trains us to be flighty. I feel like what is happening right now is that each of these companies is trying to fight for front page presence against any news that might be coming out of QuakeCon. The problem is… your player base is nowhere near as loyal as you might want them to be. By constantly dangling shiny baubles in front of our faces… all it really does is train us to constantly be on the look out for the next shiny bauble. So many weeks when it comes to gaming I feel like the James Woods character from Family Guy “Oooh a piece of candy”. Ultimately I feel like the constant vying for our attention is only serving to make us less interested in staying any one place for terribly long.

Look at me for example… I already play a long list of games with no real signs of landing in any one place for terribly long. This weekend I am looking at playing three more games that I was not really playing before. But I didn’t start out this way, because I played Everquest for 3 years, Dark Age of Camelot for 3 years, and then World of Warcraft for a solid 7 years before the launch of Rift and the beginning of my rampant nomad phase. Now I just follow whatever happens to suit my mood, and as a result I am popping between games on a weekly basis. I feel like in part I was trained to be this way by the game industry constantly dangling an every tastier steak in front of me. So I feel like stacking all of these events on the same weekend is just the highly of how frenetic things have gotten. I decided long ago that life was too short to be playing something I was not enjoying, so I doubt I will be changing my nomadic ways any time soon… but folks have to stop and thing that the constant fight over the hype cycle is only serving to make more people nomadic in the process.

#Destiny #FFXIV #ArcheAge

Pairing Down

June 24, 2014 by Belghast

The Struggle

One of the biggest challenges about this whole “blog every day” concept is that some mornings there is just nothing at all in my head to talk about. When I am sick like I was yesterday, I tend to turtle and pull my head up inside my shell, disconnecting me from the interwebs and all of you fine people. Unfortunately when my biggest source of inspiration is gone, I can get a little bit of writers block. It is mornings like this that I feel outline the importance of just allowing yourself to write whatever happens to pop into your head. It might not be epic and exciting, but it is staying true to the mission as a whole. Unfortunately we are well based the NBI 2014 initiative, otherwise I would spin this into some sort of an inspirational post about struggling through.

This is not a slight in any way to the previous NBI groups, but I have been really impressed with just how tenacious the Class of 2014 has been. Generally speaking there is a significant drop off the month after the initiative as folks take a massive breather after having survived being the focus of so many folks attention. When the spotlight fades a bit, it is rough to keep posting when you inevitably notice fewer people are reading. However this group either is blissfully oblivious to the existence of blog statistics, or they really are writing for themselves, because they seem to still be going strong. A few of the “newbies” are among the most prolific posters in my blog reader, and I am amped to still see them enjoying the whole experience.

Pairing Down

WoWScrnShot_061314_062051 Right now I have come to realize that I am playing entirely too many MMOs to feel like I am making any significant progress in any of them. Over the last two months I’ve played Warlords of Draenor, Rift, ArcheAge, Wildstar, Star Wars the Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, Defiance, Everquest II, Landmark, The Secret World, Diablo 3, Lego Minifigures Online and Trove. While I embrace the whole polygamerous thing, I think even for me this is a bit too much especially when you throw in League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm on top of those… and occasionally some Hex and Hearthstone. Mostly I think I need to drop some of the games that feel similar to me from the rotation, or at least games that scratch the same itch.

I feel like I have to keep testing Warlords of Draenor in part out of remembrance for River, and him being so damned excited to have gotten into the alpha process. While I won’t be playing with the same wide eyed amusement that he would have, I am trying my best to enjoy the experience in his honor. However I can safely say that I will not be playing the actual live World of Warcraft anytime in the near future. I think maybe WoW has run its course with me for awhile, and Wildstar has stepped in to take its place in my heart without me really wanting it to. Wildstar really is a much better version of WoW, and I am just embracing that fact. As a result Rift and SWTOR are also losing out, because to me they still fill the same “wow-like” niche. As a result I won’t be renewing my patron account in Rift.

The Non-WoW Itch

It was fun trying to get into Defiance, but the problem is I got into the Destiny alpha… and it was pretty much everything I had hoped Defiance would be. So I won’t be spending much more time trying to get into that game when I know there is something I will like much better coming later this year. ArcheAge I want to like, but it has without a doubt the worst community of griefers I have experienced anywhere. So unless Trion comes out and announces there will be a co-op server… it is pretty much a nonstarter for me and no sense really spending much more time on it. Landmark on the other hand has an amazing community, but right now there just isn’t much game there for me to play. They have built this amazing crafting sandbox, but without combat it isn’t all that interesting to me past the initial build phase. They have added caves so I figure at some point I will poke my head back in, but exploration without combat just sounds boring to me. I’ve officially allowed my claim to be repossessed at this point.

I still have a special place in my heart for Everquest II, and I can’t say I won’t return to it in the future… but for now I think there are just too many other options. EQ2 was one of those games where I hated the combat system but loved everything else about it. Wildstar with its systems within systems is really filling the niche that EQ2 always did, which might be why it is feeling so sticky considering it is replacing both EQ2 and WoW for me. The Secret World is one of those games I love to remember fondly, but never seem to have a desire to log into on a regular basis. I know there is a bunch of storyline that I have yet to participate in, and I keep thinking that some weekend I will play through all of it. That weekend just has yet to arrive, and lately the only time I seem to log in is when I get new hardware and want to test how it performs.

The Also Rans

Diablo 3 is enjoyable, and at some point I would really like to get a crusader to 70… hell I would like to get my monk to 70. I just struggle to find any drive to play it when my own personal internet zeitgeist… aka the folks I hang out on voice chat nightly, are not also playing it. It was really fun up until the release of Elder Scrolls Online and then boom we all vacated the premises. For the time being I am pretty much crossing it off my list until there is another upwelling of desire among my friends to play it. Trove is similarly really fun, but without a lot of people that I know playing it on a regular basis I have fallen back out of love with it. I will likely continue to poke my head into the game irregularly but when I do play… so much has changed that the experience feels very off-putting. The game is in a pretty much constant state of flux, which is awesome if you are devoted to this game, but confusing if you are a “sometimes” player like me. League of Legends will be a permanent fixture in my gaming rotation so long as I have friends who are devoted to playing it. I don’t necessarily love the game, but I enjoy playing with my friends. I personally like Heroes of the Storm so much better, but the problem is with it being in a limited release “technical alpha” state there just are not enough people around regularly to play with. The MOBA genre is really only fun for me if I am playing with a group of friends, and in this scenario League wins out every time. That is not to say that I won’t keep poking my head into Heroes especially as they add new waves of players. As far as Hearthstone and Hex… I am back playing Magic the Gathering in real life with friends at lunch time… so the draw of these games is minimal right now.

Those Who Made the Cut

So after spending all of this time culling games for this or that reason, I figure I should talk about the games I am deciding to keep in the rotation. Warlords of Draenor I am actually enjoying when I do manage to get in and play it. So yes I am partially doing it in honor of River, and his desire to be in the Alpha, but there is something charming about the new content. I don’t feel like it will be enough to keep me in WoW, but for the time being I am enjoying it while I can. Wildstar has pretty much filled the corner of my heart that desire to play a theme park MMO, and it really is the most glorious theme park of experiences once you give yourself over to it. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface on what it has to offer, and I am intrigued at the schedule they have put out before us. I really like that they are choosing to put in “hardmode” single and small group content before augmenting the raid game. That says a lot that they understand that they need to focus on both going forward to keep players.

I still feel like I have so much more that I want to do in Elder Scrolls Online. I want to finish the Aldmeri Dominion content and see the Ebonheart Content, as well as spend time exploring Craglorn. I love this game even though I am not playing it much, and I can’t see dropping it from the rotation anytime soon. I realize that not many players feel the same way about the game as I do, but really for me it is like the best possible version of Skyrim. I have been out so long at this point that I feel like I am going to be extremely rusty. There game has problems, namely it is awkward as hell to do anything as a group other than Cyrodil. They really need to fix this, and I hope that the good folks at Zenimax are looking into things like mentoring. Right now it is a really awesome single player experience, but gets cludgy when you start adding in more people. That said it still does have amazing dungeon design, and there are so many of them that I have yet to experience.

Last but not least is a game that has come in and taken my heart by storm. Lego Minifigures Online is absolutely adorable and I love everything about this game. Last night this was the only thing I actually played, and grouped up with Rae she managed to catch me up almost to her level in experience. Right now we have a vastly different set of mini figures, and it is really enjoyable to group together. We have both opted to get memberships, and the pocket dungeons are awesome… some of them ending up extremely challenging like the Dragon’s Lair dungeon with I think five different boss fights in it. I’ve already gotten more than my moneys worth of enjoyment out of it, so this is definitely going to be in my weekly rotation for a long while. It basically scratches the itch that Diablo 3 did, and cashes in on my absolute love of all things Lego.

So there you have it, going forward I am mostly going to be focused on Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online and Lego Minifigures Online. I of course reserve the right to change my mind and undo all of these in the blink of an eye. That said I do have a ton of single player games that I want to play through, and both the PS3 and PS4 ready to stream content. I spent a good chunk of the weekend playing Assassin’s Creed 4 for example… and I am absolutely horrible at it, but enjoying myself quite a bit. As far as online games, I am going to try and limit myself to just these games above for the time being. I know in September I will be digging into Destiny and playing that online with friends quite a bit, but it doesn’t directly conflict with the types of games I chose above. Maybe with this abbreviated list, I won’t constantly feel overwhelmed when I sit down at night and try and figure what exactly I am going to do.`

Eternal Youth

June 23, 2014 by Belghast

Something in the air

Struggling to exist a bit this morning. Yesterday evening we had a series of storms and something blew in with them that is pissing my asthma off. So at the moment I am taking a breathing treatment while doing this mornings post. It sucks when my lungs conspire against me, but after almost four decades of this you get used to it. That seems weird to type that out, but I dinged 38 last week… and as my wife puts it I am officially in my “late” thirties now. I don’t really feel any older most of the time, but there are moments when it catches up with me… like when I am talking to a teenager and I realize they were not alive when I graduated high school.

Age is one of those things that sneaks up on you. You assume everyone has the same experiences you had until you try and make a cultural reference that only really works well for folks born in the same decade as you. Rae that cohosts the podcast with me is literally a full decade younger than me, and I am constantly reminded of the gulf of time between us. Being a teacher my wife occasionally brings home of the the famous Mindset Lists for the incoming class of high schoolers. Nothing is guaranteed to make you feel old like reading through one of those, and seeing it peppered with events you think are “recent” history.

Eternal Youth

So in contrast when I find something that makes me feel eternally youthful, I latch onto it with both hands. I think that is one of the things I love most about Lego’s, they bring me back to an earlier time when I was sitting in the floor building 1980s era insane space ships. It is awesome to see that Lego Minifigures Online captures this optimism and bottles it into a Diablo like form. I spent a good chunk of the weekend playing and I have to say I find it both adorable and infectious. The gameplay is simple, but at the same time nuanced when you add in the way the different characters behave in the setting. Right now I have settled on a team of the Roman Soldier, Forest Maiden and oddly enough the Waiter.

I have to admit, when I got a pack of minifigures to drop and I pulled the Waiter from it… I was more than a little disappointed. I had hoped for the Cyclops or the Knight… or even the Space Invader… but got a guy in a suit with a wine bottle. The awesome thing about the waiter is he exactly represents the ludicrousness of this game. Who would have thought that a waiter would be a badass combat character. All characters come in one of three basic types: Defender, Striker and Builder. Defenders have more survival at the cost of slightly weaker attacks. Strikers have extremely powerful offense at the loss of survival. Builders are odd things, because they can complete building objectives extremely quickly, but otherwise are pretty useless. Essentially my lineup is a melee defender, ranged defender and a melee striker and it seems to be working pretty well.

Over the weekend I decided to take the plunge and become a member, as there are quite a number of features paywalled. Most importantly you cannot really complete any dungeons unless you are a member, and the world is scattered with these little offshoot areas full of treasure and minibosses… aka exactly the sort of thing I love doing. Additionally as a member you get a pack of minifigures a month as well as a batch of their cash shop currency. For the most part the game uses a league like structure where instead of buying individual champions you buy packs that contain a random champion. Here is where my only sticking point comes in. If you purchase or win a pack… there is a chance of getting a minifigure you already own. Instead of giving you back the diamonds for your purchase… they give you the other in game currency stars, like 1000 of them. The problem is… that 1000 stars is in no way worth as much as the diamonds that went into purchasing. Especially since as a member you have a massively increased rate of star drops.

Lego Minifigures

That said I feel like this is a game where you could play it completely free if you so chose. Essentially by the end of completing the introduction to the game you have four different minifigures. The first three you choose upon creating your character, and are doled out your team through the series of a few quests. The starter team I chose was the Roman Commander, Bee Girl and Fortune Teller, but there are three different sets you have to choose from and they are designed to be a “balanced” team with a defender, striker and a builder on them. At the end of the tutorial you get a single random minifigure pack. This is where I picked up my waiter, and while I was disappointed at first he has become one of my favorite characters to play. So having four minifigures is a good start at playing the game, and I am sure you could complete almost all of the content with only these four.

The only other barriers seem to be level based. The big thing I have noticed since switching to being a member is that the drop rates in general are far better. You get both a significantly larger amount of stars from breaking apart structures and diamonds from completing quests. So this is going to make progression without payment significantly slower. Honestly though I feel that is pretty much how it should be. Free to play games have to make a profit somehow, and after watching Lego Universe crash and burn, I would love to see this one end up far more successful. Funcom has made an extremely fun game, and it is the perfect… I want to play something, but I don’t want to think too hard game. Seeing the Lego universe recreated flawlessly in online game form, is sure to be the source of hours of enjoyment.

#Lego #Minifigures #FreetoPlay