Games Archives - Page 463 of 690 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Bag Bloat

May 7, 2016 by Belghast

Overflowing

rift 2015-04-16 06-33-09-55

Last night I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about MMORPGs and she mentioned that she had logged into a game recently and had a visceral reaction. Upon logging in she saw what a state of disarray her bags were, and when she tried to go to the bank to simply just stuff it all in there… was confronted with the same thing going on there. She ultimately just logged out and went on to play something else. This exact sequence has happened to me time and time again and is the biggest obstacle for me playing certain games. A big game on that list is Rift. Right now every single corner of my bank is full, and most of my bags as well. Every so often I have the desire to play the game, but when I log in and see a few hours worth of sorting ahead of me to get my bags into a state where I can feel comfortable playing… I just log back out frustrated. In my case the bags are full of non-critical items like dimension stuff and crafting materials… but it isn’t stuff I am willing to part with either. So instead of playing the game like I originally wanted, I just lament how I don’t have a good solution to fix the problem.

I am in a similar place right now with World of Warcraft. My bags, bank, and void storage are completely full with cosmetic gear for transmogrification. I know that with Legion they are putting in a system that will allow me to save the graphic and not have to keep the item. However in the mean time I am stuck juggling all of this loot with no real end in sight. Sure I could get marginally larger bags, but that would only buy me a few slots worth of reprieve rather than being a permanent solution. So with World of Warcraft, I honestly doubt I will be seriously playing that game until the pre-legion patch launches… that hopefully gives us the transmog solution. This is a situation I am very familiar with because I have struggled with it for years in Everquest II, but in that case it is simply because the inventory maintenance systems they have are pretty horrible and I can’t remember what half of the items I have looted actually do. I wish games would have tool tips that clearly identified what an item is used for, because in the past I have accidentally sold that one important item that I could never get back to complete a quest, and I am in constant paralysis when it comes to potentially doing the same thing again.

Bulk Storage

Since Rift is the king of adding in new and interesting systems to solve problems. I would like to humbly suggest two more be added to the pile. Basically for me personally I need bulk storage for Dimension items and Crafting materials. So what I propose is an account wide bulk storage system. For the dimensions some sort of toolbox that you can dump items into and then place them directly from a panel that collects and shows you how many of each item you have. In order to remove items from the economy and not allow players to just horde items that they might later sell, I would suggest that adding a dimension item binds it to you so that it can only be used in dimensions attached to your account. There would probably need to be a limit to the number of a single item you are storing, but in theory it just goes into the void and then is summoned inside of your dimension via the toolbox panel. This solves a bunch of problems other than storage, namely that the toolbox interface would allow you to see just what you had to place, and even more so what you were lacking so you could go off and acquire those items in particular. Wildstar has a system very similar to this, and it works amazingly well. Having something in place similar would allow me at least to tame my bag bloat.

From the crafting side of the equation I suggest a similar system. When you dump your crafting materials into bulk storage they again go into the void and are only extracted through crafting. Once again this keeps players from stockpiling materials that could then be used to flood the market at a later date. Putting them into bulk storage would essentially remove them from the economy. Once again it would be best to have this system be account wide, so that you could farm materials on any of your characters and share them for the purpose of crafting. I would absolutely love something like this because I obsessively harvest nodes… but often times have nothing I really need to do with them. I simply stockpile them for that moment I will eventually need them. If I were smart I would simply sell them on the open market, knowing that I could buy them once more if I actually needed them for a project. Instead I dump them in my bank and they take up space. What I envision for an interface is a pretty minimal on, with just each of the crafting materials listed out by category… and a number beside each indicating how many you have in bulk storage. Guild Wars 2 has a similar system that works amazingly well, and seeing something like that in Rift would make my day. Basically having these two systems, combined with the “appearance saving” systems that Rift and Wildstar already have… and World of Warcraft is about to get… would fix almost all of my bag woes.

Evil and Phones

May 6, 2016 by Belghast

Society and Cell Phones

This morning I am going to talk about something that I have been kicking around in my head for awhile, but haven’t really been able to shape into a full fledged commentary. It feels like each week there is some new alarmist piece of media talking about the degradation of society, and placing the blame squarely on the cell phone. For awhile I have had this working theory, that these articles for the most part are written by extroverts, and I am sure for that group of people the landscape has changed in a very scary way. I use my cell phone as a cloaking device, and what I mean by that is I am fiddling with my phone in order to create just enough social friction to convince you that it isn’t worth the time to engage in small talk while standing in the elevator next to you. For years I’ve been frustrated by the fact that apparently standing in the same vicinity as someone is passive consent to be deluged with a bunch of conversation that I have no interest in. Having my smart phone at the ready has greatly cut down on that unwanted interaction, because they see that I am engaged… or at least LOOK like I am engaged. It is the same cloaking device mentality that I apply at work by wearing headphones every single moment I am sitting at my desk. I may not actually be listening to anything, and honestly often times am not. However the act of wearing the headphones stops a lot of “drive by” conversation.

More so than that I feel like access to the internet and social media allows me to engage people safely. I’ve had to learn how to be “normal” but face to face conversation with someone I am not extremely familiar with is a massive anxiety ridden trap. While talking I am actively trying to be normal, running through a checklist of things and constantly aware of how much or how little eye contact I am making. When I am hanging out with someone I am familiar with most of this goes away, and I can just let my guard down. The thing is… non face to face communication lowers all of these barriers for me. I can be a social butterfly in a text only interaction. When I first stepped foot onto IRC back in 1994, it greatly broadened my horizons and introduced me to a world of new people and new places to learn about. So for me, as an introvert… it allows me a certain measure of extrovertedness because it hacks my brain into thinking it is perfectly okay. However for the Extroverts out there… I have a feeling that this does in fact seem like an epidemic. They no longer have all these passive participants that they can forcibly engage in dialog, and instead have to seek out other Extroverts who are equally hungry for that interaction. What I think is happening is that finally introverts are getting a vehicle where they can express themselves more comfortably. I might be wrong, but this is my working theory.

Return of Thorns

The last couple of days has seen me completing my Invoker set for my Crusader, and gathering up most of the items needed for the build I have been working towards. I am just not a fan of the Akkhan’s set and I lacked a handful of the pieces really needed to make it a viable option. A big part of the Season are the Seasonal rewards, and the last major bottleneck for me was the set dungeon for Akkhan. In spite of having tried it numerous times I simply could not stay alive long enough to complete it. However with the Invoker set I was able to muscle through that dungeon and come damned near close to getting “mastery” on my first attempt. The thorns set just feels better to me and as such I have been testing the limits to which I can push it. I am still missing a handful of items, but last night I managed to solo a level 50 Greater Rift without much issue. Earlier in the evening my friend Grace and I who are similarly geared… managed to complete a Greater Rift 60 together. In theory I could probably do the 60 right now solo, but even as a duo there were some pretty sweaty moments. The big problem for me are still a handful of mob types that can straight up one shot me, or come damned close to it. I think that is the sort of thing that only improves with slightly better gear and more paragon levels.

I am still in a constant search for the goblin that drops pets. Some of my friends have found one but so far neither myself nor grace has seen one. Last night we burned through two of the rings that summon the goblin realm thinking that there are three to four goblins in there. However we still had zero luck, but I did fine a cute easter egg. Notice the name of the boss I am fighting in the above image. Essentially right now I need to spend a significant amount of time running Torment X bounties with the hopes of getting the rest of my gem patterns to drop. I think that would go a long ways into improving my overall survival and output, by upgrading to the highest tier of gems available. I am also still in search of the best in slot main hand, and I need to get a shield to throw in the cube. For optimum performance I also need to get another Aquilla chest, because right now I have those reversed with the Aquilla in the cube and the Heart of Iron on my person… when it really should be in the cube. In any case I am just happy that I am functional at Torment X and above. Now begins the long wait to get just the right items to drop when I need them. I also need to start working on the various conquests if I hope to get the extra bank slot for this season. This honestly is a point of frustration for me… I hate that you can ONLY get the slots through conquests. I think that they should sell the extra stash tabs, but also allow players to do the conquest to get one as well. That means if you are doing conquests you are getting the new cap twice as fast.

A Little Closer

May 4, 2016 by Belghast

Best Laid Plans

I had these grand plans for last night, and as is always the case when I seem to plan something… that is precisely what won’t actually happen. The original goal was to pop into Destiny “for a bit” and get CoE finished on my Titan for the week, so that I could end up doing it later in the week on both the Warlock and Hunter. I’ve managed to get the light levels up on both enough to be able to start getting decent loot. The other goal was to chill out downstairs and play some more Diablo 3 since I am one piece of gear away from being able to rock the Invoker set over the Akkhan set, which I think is going to improve my quality of life greatly. That said I am starting to maybe get the hang of playing Akkhan but still missing several items that make the build really viable. I am however loving the flail that gives me an army of phalanxes to run around with me. I think maybe that is ultimately going to be the best option for running with the Akkhan set since they seem to shred everything in my path. I did get to play a little Overwatch last night however when my friend Tamrielo got home, and was pleasantly surprised that he too enjoys the game. I am not sure if he is really a convert but it at least gets why the game feels better than Team Fortress 2, which was something I had trouble putting into words. I managed to get in a few matches before my wife got home, and we ended up walking to go get dinner.

When we got back I started in with the Destiny bounties, and ultimately ran a Prison of Elders to get my weekly loot box for completing that activity. Last week I experienced a glitch, where after running a CoE I could not seem to be able to get the loot box, so I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen. From this point onwards it was me trying to get Jex and Squirrel together in the same group at the same time, which is not something that happened until about 8:30. This weeks Challenge of Elders is a little tougher than past examples because the bonus damage and bonus scoring have no real synergy. For example in past weeks you had bonus damage from primary weapons, and bonus scoring from headshots… so those two worked nicely with you simply focusing on primary weapon headshots. This time around the bonus damage was melee based, but the bonus scoring was super kills. Meaning we spent a good deal of time wandering around waiting for our super bars to tick up so that we could get bonus scoring. We managed to get the 30,000 score step pretty easily in our first attempt, but did not score high enough to be able to get the 90,000 within two matches.

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

It was round about this time that the monkey wrench was thrown into the works, as Squirrel had signed up for the Crota’s End retro raid. So Jex and I ended up getting pulled along after our first Challenge of Elders match into that. Other than simply not being what I had planned to spend my night doing, I was totally down with this because I had never seen that raid. For the most part I think I did okay and didn’t screw anything up horribly. One of the group was hunting for the Crux of Crota that is used in the long quest chain that ultimately winds up rewarding you the Necrochasm Auto Rifle. As a result we saved off a number of check points, which meant jumping off the back wall into the abyss so many times. However this also meant that instead of just doing the raid on my Titan I was able to swap to multiple characters and get lots of stuff. The only negative here is that apparently you get rewarded the two shaders and emblem ever single time you kill Crota if they were not already in your inventory. What I did find odd is that every single time the Word of Crota hand cannon dropped, but with slightly different perks. The only potential gotcha here was that I had to break out a rocket launcher with tracking and/or the horseshoes and hand grenades perk. Thankfully I had a truth, that I ultimately leveled up… even though I never actually use rocket launchers.

In other news I am now down to the point where I need a helm, primary, class item, and artifact at 335 to max out. So the end result allows me to sit fairly comfortably at 334, which should help quite a bit when getting drops. As far as Challenge of Elders loot, I wound up getting arms and another copy of the Her Fury sniper rifle with crappier stats than the one I have been using. Speaking of sniper rifles this seems to be my week to get them, because I also managed to pull a LDR 5001 from a Vanguard package. This seems to be the sniper that a lot of the youtubers are actively hunting god rolls for, but I don’t even know for certain what a god roll would look like. The one I got has Partial Refund, High Caliber Rounds, and Firefly which is decent… but I would have rather had triple tap somewhere in there because that comes in so damned handy for boss fights. It is probably a great option for like heroic strikes or non-boss PVE content, but not having triple tap really places it below my existing 1000 Yard Stare or Her Fury. The main reason why I was interested at all is just because it is really damned cool looking. Also you can see from the above ship shot that I managed to get a ship from Variks, which for whatever reason I thought was a Trial of Osiris ship when I had seen people using it. Was ultimately a really great night, just one that didn’t got as planned. That however is perfectly okay because sometimes the end result is much better.

Survival Solved

May 3, 2016 by Belghast

Violated

Right now I am having a little bit getting started this morning. I went to the cleaners yesterday, and after I got home I forgot to carry in the clothing. As a result this morning I hurriedly got dressed enough to be seen outside, and went out to the truck to get the laundry. When I got out there the door was slightly open, and apparently I either failed to lock the car last night… or failed to completely shut the door. As a result someone got inside and rifled through the glove box and the center console, I can only assume looking for drugs. They passed up a bunch of change, and didn’t touch my work id badge, or any of the few packs of magic the gathering cards that were deep down in the console. I don’t really keep anything of value in the vehicle, so I am certainly they were sorely disappointed. Unfortunately the whole event has left me feeling a little vulnerable, because we live in this super quiet neighborhood… but every so often something like this happens. We have a ton of teenagers and I am certain it was probably one of them. I just lack the gene apparently to fully understand why something like this happens, and I am kicking myself for not having a more proper inventory of the stuff I keep in my car to be able to tell if anything is actually missing. There is this sense of dread inside me that something was taken that I will miss… I just don’t know it yet.

It seems like another one of those blog award things is cycling through our community, because last night I was tagged by my friend Sandrian. I was originally going to go ahead and answer the questionnaire this morning, but since it is all about positivity and blogging and all of that sort of stuff… I am maybe not in the right mindset to do it. I will have to do it before too much longer however, or I will forget about it… much the way I forgot about the last one and then didn’t actually do it until I was tagged a second time. These things are cute, and mean well but they also often feel like the chain letters of the blogosphere. They are always interesting ways to get to know the people who are filling them out, but by the same token I always feel horrible for trying to obligate someone else to keep the chain letter moving forward. While there are no dire predictions for not completing the task, in the same way as chain letters normally have… I still feel nonetheless obligated to complete the task. In any case… it will be answered in a morning I feel a little less violated.

The Slow Spot

RemotePlay 2016-05-03 06-25-14-68

As far as gaming and happier subjects go, I spent a good chunk of last night playing the tail end of Iron Banner. I am not sure if they ratcheted the drops down as the week went on, but the last few days after hitting rank five on all of my characters I really didn’t see much in the way of drops. I was hoping to get more 335 items to use as infusion fodder, but even though I played a dozen or so matches last night, the only thing I ever seemed to get was a bunch of blues, some strange coins and a single class item. I mean I did get a bunch of drops early on, so maybe there is a cap on the amount of dropped gear you can get from it or something. Either that or maybe I just had a lot of bad luck. In any case, right now my lowest item is 330 with the bulk of my gear being between 333 and 335. I only have boots, gloves and heavy maxed out at 335, so my hope is that with Challenge of Elders this week I will get another piece of armor to fix some of that. The lowest piece is the 330 helm, so getting a 335 helm would go a long way to bringing up my total light level. I am just pumped that I managed to get a set of gear that allows me to max out both intellect and discipline. This weeks Challenge of Elders is going to be strange, in that Melee does bonus damage… but you score extra points through super kills.

Diablo III 2016-05-03 06-23-36-78

I had every intent of logging in last night to Overwatch and spending the entire team playing that. However when I actually went downstairs, I wound up riding along with Kylana for some more levels and gear. The shitty thing about the item set this time for crusaders is that it feels like I need some super specific items to make it viable. I am sitting at four pieces of Invoker, so truth be told I might jump ship to that set if I find the last two pieces. I did however solve my survivability issues it feels, because after doing some fiddling I was able to survive incoming damage a whole lot better. I had fiddled with some stuff one night as an experiment and apparently never flipped back off the rune that made it so I could not dodge, but blocked more often. That alone was apparently the thing that was completely destroying me when running any content. Once that got turned off, I was amazed at just how well things went. I managed to solo a level 30 greater rift, but my damage dealing capabilities are still too low for me to really be able to do that comfortably. I do however need to spend a bit of time doing greaters so that I can get the rest of the gems I will need, and then also spend some time pouring levels into them. I think a lot of my lack of drive to play Overwatch is knowing that I am already “bought in”, and also knowing that there will be yet another reset before the game actually launches. I do however want to get in and play some with Tam, so I will need to check in tonight to see what folks are doing. It is my hope that I can get home with enough time to run Challenge of Elders in Destiny and then pop in for either Diablo 3 or Overwatch shenanigans.