Tamriel Renaissance

by

Hey Friends! I seem to have pretty much played nothing but Elder Scrolls Online this weekend and had a blast doing so. Right now I seem to be going through a little bit of a renaissance with this game and it is happening for a bunch of reasons. Firstly I had been grasping for something to really engage with in the month until the Outriders launch. Secondly and probably considerably more important is that I connected with my friends Bells and Zuu who are themselves having a bit of a revival with the game. This lead to a whole sequence of events that has folks coming back and joining my guild and effectively revitalizing the entire experience.

That is nothing to dilute the fact that Elder Scrolls Online is just a really solid game right now and they seem to have nailed the release cadence for content drops. For awhile now they have been on this cycle of releasing a new expansion every year and then three minor drops throughout that expansion content cycle. On top of that they seem to keep investing in new systems and supporting aging systems like player housing. The myriad of content that is still fresh and viable is staggering to me, because it all more or less centers around build diversity and the gear that you gain after a certain point effectively staying evergreen.

This is more or less accomplished in a structured manner. Each zone has a specific set worth of gear that drops in it, and that set is more or less unique and stays effective regardless of how many new sets get added into the game pending you want to focus on that specific play style. In my travels I stumbled across this listing of the Overworld set drops and zones they drop in. There are also dungeon dropped sets but they are probably more straight forward. Then far as I can tell there are specific activities in that zone that can drop specific items. Based on my research it looks a little like this:

  • Jewelry – Dark Anchor Chests
  • Waist/Feet – Delve Bosses
  • Head/Chest/Legs/Weapons – Overworld Public Group Bosses
  • Shoulder/Hand/Weapons – Public Group Dungeon Bosses

I spent a good chunk of last night running around in a public dungeon and those drops seem to align with the sort of things I was seeing in there. Essentially you have specific targets that you want to farm in order to get the drops that you need for a specific slot and specific set type.

What is great about this is given enough resources you can turn a random green set piece into something that is actually end game viable. The crafting system and the ability to upgrade rarities of items not only applies to the things you create but also the drops you get out in the world. So you with enough crafting resources you can upgrade the green to blue and then again to purple and again to orange quality essentially capping the item out. If you end up with less than perfect affixes on the item, then there is a way to fix that through transmutation as well. Through all of these interweaving systems it actually becomes fairly reasonable to single out a specific drop and then focus actually getting that thing. The same is true with dungeon loot and while you can get orange items straight up from Veteran content, a lot of players just farm the normal version and convert up whatever rarity they get to drop there.

Weirdly Elder Scrolls Online has been a game where I have rolled a number of alts but never really played them much. I actually decided to focus on one for a bit and played through all of Stros M’Kai, Betnik and Coldharbor on my Bosmer Warden. I am having a blast playing it was Two Handed with Stamina based morphs on the Animal Companion line of skills. During the Morrowind campaign I picked up the Scarlet Judge outfit and I am rocking that appearance for the time being on the character because I think it looks really cool. Coming back to Stros M’Kai which I believe is the first area I ever tested in the game… felt like coming home.

The love and nostalgia that I have for Elder Scrolls Online is significant, but I have to admit a lot of what is making this return trip so enjoyable is all of the folks that are showing up in House Stalwart. Bells and Zuu have been busy recruiting and Zuu is actively decorating the home that will eventually become our Guild Hall. I love these assistants that you can get and consider them to be pretty much the best crowns I ever spent in the game, so it feels super right to have them be our guild bank and guild merchant. I am having a blast and I think this underlines the point that enjoyment in a game is a combination of the game being really good, but also having a bunch of folks around you who are also enjoying the game.

A number of my most enjoyable experiences in MMORPGs has been moments in time where people were just excited about the vibe of the game. While I have yet to actually group up with anyone, just knowing that there are other people around enhances the experience. You have to understand that my wife and I enjoy being in the same room doing completely different things, because just knowing the other is there enhances our evening. The same is true for online gaming. Just knowing that there are friends out there if I feel like talking…. even if I never actually talk… is a positive. Not sure how long this current run will last but I am enjoying the wave before it breaks.

AggroChat #337 – Revisiting Comfort Games

by
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

Tonight we have a bit of an odd show at the end of a painfully long week.  We talk about Outriders some more and how odd it is that they are patching the demo and being completely transparent about it.  Since more folks have played it there are some fresh impressions to go along with that. This breaks out into a broader discussion of live service games and the looter shooter genre.  From here we sorta make a trip down into comfort gaming and revisiting old familiar stories as a way of regulating mood.  Tam and Kodra talk about how they are wired a little differently and their version of this is playing some sort of game where they can enter a flow state and find peace and calm in the challenge.

Topics Discussed

  • Outriders Patching the Demo
    • More thoughts about the game
    • Concerns about the setting
  • Broad Discussion about Live Service Games
    • What makes success
    • Are regular story drops achievable?
  • Comfort Gaming
    • Revisiting a story in a time of need
    • Tam and Kodra wired differently
      • Flow state games
    • Using media to regulate moods

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Evening in Vvardenfell

by

Morning Friends! I am going to apologize for the rapid tonal whiplash of my posts right now, but like I said the other day I have a case of the inbetweensies and am bouncing around a bit. One of the things that I wish I was better at was staying engaged with Elder Scrolls Online. At least once a year I have this revelation of just how damned good this game is and what a phenomenal success it has been at delivering good story content on a pretty regular release cadence. I am weird when it comes to this game however in that I want to experience content in the order it was released. One of my favorite things about the game initially was that I could experience all the content on a single character and that is more or less what I have set out to do. So far I have tackled:

  • Daggerfall Covenant Campaign
  • Aldmeri Dominion Campaign
  • Ebonheart Pact Campaign
  • Imperial City
  • Orsinium
  • Thieves Guild
  • Dark Brotherhood
  • Morrowind

I’m in the middle of the Vvardenfell campaign, and I think I bounced the last time I was playing because some of the Morrowind area cities have a lot of Z-Axis nonsense on trying to find the next objective. Coming back over the last few nights I have pushed through this and gotten back out into the open countryside which is more my jam in the first place. This game is really damned good folks and if you have never played it, you should really check it out. I have a long history with ESO, and even I sometimes forget what a crowning achievement this game really is. The combat at times is a bit of an acquired taste, but I always find myself greatly enjoying the story.

If my calculations are correct, once I get to the end of Vvardenfell, the content order looks a little bit like this. Please note this is just me being weird and as far as I know none of the content needs to be tackled in any particular order.

  • Clockwork City
  • Summerset
  • Murkmire
  • Northern Elsweyr
  • Southern Elsweyr
  • Western Skyrim
  • The Reach
  • Blackwood

There has been an excessive amount of content released for this game and that is completely skipping over all of the dungeons. I’ve largely mentally done that because I didn’t have a good static group of friends to tackle them with. However more recently I have been hanging out with my good friends Clockwork Bells and Zuulzilla while we all sorta do our own things in game. They similarly have been disappointed by Shadowlands and looking for something else to latch onto, and apparently have some other friends looking to play as well. The big thing is so far we seem to have pretty drift compatible play times, which means in theory we could start tackling the dungeons.

I apparently am still fairly tanky as I managed to maintain threat on this world boss extremely successfully. I am consistently surprised by just how much activity there is for given encounters. Generally speaking when I roll up to a world boss spawn, I don’t have to wait terribly long before a crowd assembles and we can easily take it down. This all feels super organic and I even see calls for assistance answered in general chat, which is such a weird concept to me coming out of seemingly much more toxic game communities. Not saying it is this bastion for all that is good and wholesome in the world, but I have been relatively impressed so far.

There is a love applied to the content and you can tell it. These folks love what they are creating and moments like the freaking Buoyant Armigers like Captain Naros speaking in poems is pretty great. As she says… Warrior-poets are quite versatile. Each time I come back I enjoy myself and wonder why I left in the first place. I think I just sorta get easily distracted and the challenge with Elder Scrolls Online versus a World of Warcraft, is the moment to moment questing gameplay asks a lot more of you. A more traditional MMO I can grind mindlessly while catching up on my favorite shows, and a game like Elder Scrolls requires a bit more focus. There are times I want that and then there are times I just sorta want mindless busywork.

No matter how many times I leave and come back, one thing stays the same. My town of choice will always seem to be Shornhelm in Bangkorai. It might just be my Daggerfall Covenant pride, but I am pretty certain this is the most efficient town in the game. I posted the map so I could have a visual reference while talking about it. The portal is in a super handy place which is just up a hill from the bank, blacksmith, woodworker and stables. Additionally you can get to the thieves guild without encountering any town guards which may or may not be handy depending upon your playstyle. The only thing that isn’t super convenient is the wardrobe and enchanting/jewelry stations but given that the town itself is super small… you can get there expediently if you need to. If my character would have a home town it would be Shornhelm, and based on the high level player traffic I am guessing I am not the only one who feels this way.

The game is set up in a manner now that you can pretty much start any of the expansions and play that as your first content. I however still believe that the best content in the game to start with is the original starter islands of Stros M’Kai, Bleakrock and Kenarthi’s Roost. That is just my personal feeling however and it is entirely valid to start wherever you want in the content stack. The game will default to starting you in whatever the latest expansion is I believe and then from there you have quests that can take you to the other areas.

I have to admit that one of the major highlights of the evening was dusting off House Stalwart and inviting Zuu and Bells to it. I heavily recruited when this game first came out in 2014, and as a result we used to have a pretty massive and active guild. Largely I was just relying on my natural instant of trying to collect all of my friends into a single basket, but that doesn’t always work out in the manner I hope it would. The traditional MMO bounce happened and I quickly found myself in a pretty empty guild home. Over the years various folks have been active for various periods of time but for now we are mostly just using it as a shared chat room. I am hoping that we can actually make good on the idea of running some of these dungeons, because it would be awesome to see some of the more serious content that got added into the game over the years.

Optifine and Nostalgia Shaders

by

Good Morning Friends! I spent most of my evening playing Destiny, but for a little bit in the early evening I resolved to get something working that I had thought about for awhile. I do not have an RTX series graphics card and as a result I cannot play Minecraft RTX. That said my preference is the Java Client and I don’t believe the RTX shaders work for that anyway. However there are a number of community supported shader packs that provide a very similar experience. I’ve installed this sort of thing before in the past and form what I understood it was a much simpler process these days. As a result I sat down and sorted it out, and the results are phenomenally cool. I thought this morning I would share the process.

This entire adventure begins with a little utility known as Optifine. I’ve been using this for years because it greatly expands the graphical options available to Minecraft and tweaks the way that textures are applied to the blocks. For example instead of rendering glass as a bunch of individual panes, it will instead render an entire wall of glass blocks as a single seamless mass of glass. Essentially this is a JAR file that once double clicked acts as a guided installer much like that of a standard Windows wizard installer. It is going to attempt to find your Minecraft folder, which in theory should be auto populated but if not type %AppData% in the windows run prompt and double click the .Minecraft folder and then copy that entire path and paste it into the Optifine installer.

Once this has been installed successfully you should see a new profile show up in your Minecraft Launcher. For example I have three in my drop down, Optifine for 1.16.5, the latest release which will always update to the most current client, and then an older legacy edition of Forge 1.14.4 which is a similar mod manager. If you want to use Optifine or any of the shader options, then you will need to launch Minecraft under this profile. In theory it shouldn’t negatively impact any of your existing saved games but there will always be the little caution icon indicating you are playing a modified version of Minecraft from that point forward.

Next we will need to grab the Nostalgia shader, which for sake of this discussion is the RTX replacement we are going to go with. Thing is there are a bunch of different Optifine compatible shaders and if you are curious about other options check out this Rock Paper Shotgun article. I personally went with Nostalgia because it is reported to have a minimal hit to performance. Some of the shader packs will cause a dip in performance and given that the Java client already performs worse than Bedrock aka the C# client… I didn’t want to take a lot of chances. Ultimately this time you are going to download the shader zip file and hold onto it for a few minutes because you are going to drag it into a specific folder shortly.

Now you are going to launch Minecraft and make sure you have selected the Optifine profile. From there you need get into game, hit escape, choose options, choose video settings and now finally choose shaders. You should be staring at a screen that looks very similar to the one in the above screenshot. From here click the Shaders Folder button, and this is going to pop open the folder where Optifine is expecting shaders to be stored. Copy the zip you downloaded from the Nostalgia website into this folder and within a few moments it should show up in the list of selectable shaders. Select it, click done and you should now have Nostalgia shaders installed and impacting your game visuals.

The difference in how the game looks is not subtle. The world becomes significantly darker, but the lighting effects become more meaningful. You can see that were are getting realistic looking water reflections on this screenshot taken from the dock on the back of my multiplayer realms base. Additionally as I have placed torches around the perimeter, you see them all casting their own halo of light.

Similarly look around the torches in this screenshot, you can see the rain that was pouring down being illuminated in a somewhat natural manner. The game still feels like Minecraft since I have not done anything to tweak the block skins, but it feels like a more naturalistic view of the same game.

Things got really trippy when I went down into Grace’s undersea base area because we were getting block a reflection from the surface of the glass as well as a ghosting reflection from the water.

The transition between water and land represented by her waterfall entrance to the ocean from the sea base ends up looking like a portal to another world. This was taken from me standing on the sea floor staring back into the base.

This however is looking the other direction out into the ocean floor… as some of the underwater plants are now apparently flagged for bioluminescence. The ocean in general because a much more dark and foreboding place.

Finally we have the Nether which also becomes significantly more dangerous because everything is much darker. It would be SUPER easy to walk off the edge of a cliff and fall into a morass of lava in this version. I do really like the way that the lava has a glow to it however.

This mornings post is largely just show and tell and explanation of how to get to the same point yourself if you are so inclined. I’ve used these sorts of shaders before, but the install process was considerably more tedious. I already had optifine installed, so for me personally it was just a case of clicking on the folder and dragging the zip file into place. I am probably going to experiment some with other shader packs to decide which one I like the best. I do really like the warm glow that Nostalgia has.

Most of the screenshots I have included were of night time, because that is when the difference is the most dramatic. Daytime however looks very solid as well and gives you a sort of depth of field experience fuzzing out the far distance and giving you more naturalistic shadows. The one thing of note is with these sorts of shaders it becomes a bit harder to tell if something is sufficiently lit. When I am running this sort of shader I often times pop open the debug menu with F3 so I can check the actual lighting levels for the purposes of spawning monsters. I honestly think the part that I enjoy the most are the more smooth clouds, because Minecraft clouds have always bothered me.

Whelp folks that is it. I just wanted to explain how one gets shaders in Minecraft these days and that it is much easier than it used to be. On that note going to close the post and get on with my morning.