Tales of the Aggronaut

Curious Case of Stadia

June 7, 2019 by Belghast

Yesterday afternoon was the unofficial kickoff of E3 Season, and it started with one of the more bizarre product offerings. For some time we have known that Google was making a large push into gaming with its Stadia product that serves to offer console gaming without a console. Now if this sounds familiar… it is because we have seen this same basic idea numerous times. Just off the top of my head I remember OnLive, Gaikai, Playstation Now and Geforce Now to name a few but I am certain I left off a half dozen of these product offerings. Where they have all fallen short however is in control latency and the amount of bandwidth required to create a playable experience.

Google however thinks it understands exactly how much bandwidth is required to be able to use their product and has produced a handy chart to show what level of gaming will be available and what level of bandwidth. The challenge unfortunately is a little bit more nuanced given that the total bandwidth picture is influenced by the hardware sitting between your device and your internet service provider. I’ve gone to a lot of effort to try and make sure I have more than enough bandwidth to do whatever it is that I want to do online… and I feel like I would probably fall short of what would be required to make 4K gaming on this device stable.

I have what I feel like is better than average internet for the United States. Additionally I have as much as I possibly can connected directly to a Gigabit switch attached hanging off of my AC 5400 router with two separate 5 ghz wireless bands theoretically capable of 2167 Mbps. I’ve segregated a business network and a gaming network all in an attempt to cut down on chatter. In addition to this I have 2 other AC 5400 repeaters helping to form a mesh network around the house. I use Parsec on a nightly basis and with a wired connection 4K streaming from my machine upstairs does not really work well enough to be something I would want to do on a regular basis. Similarly with all of this, none of the 4K video streaming options really feel viable and I always end up downgrading them to 1080p. Basically what I am saying is out of personal experience… their estimates are nonsense and will not produce the sort of results that they think they will.

What Google Stadia is really selling is a vision that I have long sought out myself. The ability to play the same games from any device in the house at any time I would like. In essence this is why I use Parsec, because it allows me to extend my more expensive and capable gaming desktop experience to my less than capable and aging gaming laptop. Even then however the experience works equally well when playing over my Chromebook via the native Android Parsec app, so I can see at least in theory that the vision of Stadia is possible based on my own experiences. I just question if we are at a point bandwidth wise where this level of fidelity is really ready for prime time consumption. Especially once you consider another potential monkey wrench… I am not really the target audience for this device.

That is ultimately the piece we are going to have to factor into our decisions about Stadia is the fact that most of us reading this blog are not what I feel like is actually the market for a device like this. For me personally… I own a 4k capable gaming desktop, an aging but still viable gaming laptop, effectively every console from this current generation and every console from the last generation. I’ve spent the money on hardware and accouterments required to be able to play games at a reasonable level of fidelity and with it comes a large library of games that I already own. Stadia more or less is going to require us to buy into a completely different library of games and potentially deliver a noticeable worse experience than being connected real time to hardware. Sure there will be the bleeding edge early adopters among us that dabble with this… but ultimately I expect we will all return to our comfortable world of hardware based gaming within the week.

I feel the true market for this device is the cord cutter that has already tuned their network and devices to fit a steady diet of media streaming from various platforms. The target individual maybe was a serious gamer in their youth but as life got busy they realized there just wasn’t enough time in the day to play these rather expensive consoles that used to just gather dust in their apartment. Every now and then a game comes along that through the Zeitgeist, friends and a dose of FOMO they really wish they could play… but that proposition seems less elegant when you consider playing a single game might have at a minimum a $360 outlay of cash associated with it. If this person could simply buy the game and be able to play it with a second hand direct input controller over their business class laptop… then I think you have the perfect use case for this network. Stadia is a system built for the occasional gamer and is going to be made or broken on expanding the range of gaming behind those of us who are already sworn acolytes.

I think the real tragedy of yesterdays presentation is the fact that they spent exactly zero air time talking about Stadia Base and instead made a hard push for Stadia Pro. The founders edition is $130 and includes 3 months of the $9.99 per month subscription as well as 3 months for a friend. However if you look at these charts what you are essentially getting for your “pro” money is 4k gaming and I have already stated that I think this is a pipe dream unless you happen to have Gigabit internet. What is way more impressive is the fact that they give you 1080p 60 fps stereo gaming without a reoccurring subscription and the ability to dip your toes into all of the free to play content that is going to be on the platform like Elder Scrolls Online and the recently announced as free Destiny 2 New Light.

This is going to be the real backbone of the player base… folks that purchased a single game or want to try out one of the free to play offerings. Maybe these are folks that are already mobile gamers but crave something more immersive, or maybe they just want to occasionally relive the nostalgia of their youth that their jobs keep them from on a regular basis. In those scenarios I think this platform makes a lot of sense. I do however think that “Netflix for Games” is probably a really bad way to look at this service, and I feel like the as of yet officially announced XCloud is going to be more of that since the Xbox Game Pass already does an amazing job of serving up a ton of games for the subscription fee. Ultimately at the end of the day… what makes Stadia so confusing is that the messaging seems to be targeting so called “core gamers” when in truth that was likely never their intended audience. Once you keep that in mind… the product makes considerably more sense and may just bring a brand new audience to gaming.

Mom and Cross Play

June 6, 2019 by Belghast

This morning I am attempting to make a quick blog post, but after yesterday I didn’t want to skip today. My Mom is doing considerably better and seems to more or less be out of the woods. The plan to effectively “melt” the clot with super high strength anti-clotting agent seems to have worked and they believe it is largely gone. There was a marked difference between yesterday and today in both her coloration and her demeanor. You could tell she was feeling better because she was way more chatty and also complaining about little things… which weirdly is a good sign. She was largely knocked out and fairly ashen grey when I first got there Tuesday morning.

At this point they have removed whatever the equivalent of a PICC line that she had delivering the clot busting agent directly to the location of the clot. They also removed all of the stuff that was going into her neck in general so currently she just has the IV which will ultimately remain until she is released from the hospital… which in theory should happen at some point today. Thanks for all of the thoughts, wishes and prayers for the last couple of days, and I am also super thankful to the folks in the ambulance for making the determination of what was going on and getting her to a cardiac unit quickly. For being a tiny spec in rural america, my home town has a pretty phenomenal volunteer ambulance service.

I don’t have an awful lot on the gaming front, but when I got home last night I played a bit more Destiny 2 and also spent some time catching up on the last few days worth of news. One of the more interesting rumors coming out of the pre-E3 leaks is that supposedly Bungie will be announcing today during a ViDoc or something similar that they are going cross play. This is legitimately a major wish of mine come true if it actually happens. Additionally there is talk about a Switch port of the game, and while Ashgar disagrees that this can happen it will be interesting to see. For all we know a more powerful version of the Switch is going to be announced at some point soon and that Destiny might be a launch title or something like that. Regardless I am super interested in seeing how well the cross play works.

In related news I have been poking around Dauntless now that it is officially part of the Epic Games store. if you look at the above image close enough you will see that I have a little PC icon beside my name, the second player has a little Playstation icon beside theirs and the last two have Xbox icons. I noticed absolutely nothing different about that fight until I got to the final screen and saw that we were all on different platforms. So this gives me lots of hope about the whole Destiny 2 cross play thing. I hope this also means that in the near future ALL titles will do this going forward.

For now I need to run so making an extra short post. Thanks again for all the thoughts. Hopefully life can get back to normal.

Season of Opulence

June 5, 2019 by Belghast

There has been a sequence of events that has happened recently that were a bunch of things that were totally out of my control. One of those occurred again yesterday. I was about to go into a 1 pm meeting that I could not miss or else a project was likely going to fail… and I got a call from my father saying my mother had been taken to the Emergency Room. The meeting wrapped early thankfully and I rushed up the highway to the hospital roughly an hour away. The short version is that she has a blood clot restricting blood flow to her lungs.

The prognosis thankfully seems to be good and they are pumping blood thinners into her expecting that to clear the clot within 24 hours. However it is a scary situation because so much could go wrong. I ultimately came home last night in part because I had to take my own meds and in part because she was not sleeping with us in her room and needed some rest. The goal right now is to head up once I finish my morning activities. I’ve texted both mom and dad but given that my dad also went home to take his meds I am wondering if he is still sound asleep.

I obviously did not get much game time yesterday, but I did poke my head into Destiny 2 for a bit since the season of opulence has started. This morning I am going to give you a fairly fragmented view at some of the changes that I noticed. First off when you get into game you will get a quest leading you to Nessus and to visit what appears to be Emperor Callus’s party barge hovering near a cliff face. There is an intermediary step where you have to go visit Benedict the reprogrammed sweeper bot, but quickly you wind up planet side working through a series of quests to refill a chalice. This serves as the progression system for the season and unlocking various talents on the cup give you various in game boosts.

The first interesting thing is that as you are completing steps in the quest you are being given 690 gear as a way of artificially boosting your light level enough to be able to start doing higher level content. Sadly I did not have a stockpile of infusion materials, and as a result I am mostly stuck using the blues in place of the purples that I greatly prefer. It is nice however to see that Bungie built in some sort of a catch up mechanic this time that does not involve auto completing content.

Another interesting thing is that we now have a pursuits tab in the director that has all of those annoying doodads that took up inventory space and effectively this becomes something approaching a proper quest log. I am not sure if you are limited to the number of items you can have in it like you were with bounties. It is however really nice to see an at a glance view of everything you are currently working on and what step in the quest chain you are.

Another thing that i noticed is that they changed the engine for displaying the shaders… which in theory tries to give you a more appropriate display of what they might look like on gear. It still isn’t perfect but it does seem to do a more reasonable job of faking out what the shader looks like actually applied.

The place with the biggest changes is the in game shop… aka the Eververse where they have swapped up a bunch of things. Namely while engrams still exist they are now seemingly removed from priority in advertising them. Right now they have “best of year one” engram that allows you to obtain items from anything that happened during year one. What is more interesting however is that they have a bunch of items that are now available as direct purchases for both Silver and Bright Dust.

For example they have a new seemingly exclusive sparrow with nifty animation effects called The Calypso that is purchasable for 800 silver. The minimum purchase needed to get enough silver is $9.99 for 1100 silver… you can do whatever math you want to dilute the amount of the cost of a single silver because like all cash shops the more you buy the cheaper it gets. However if you have no silver right now and you want this ride you are going to have to spend a minimum of $10 to get it. It is nice however to have a fixed price point rather than the previous answer of opening gachapon engrams until you got whatever it was that you wanted.

There is also a rotating inventory of things available for bright dust which can be obtained by breaking down items from previously opened engrams or from completing engrams. Among these is an exotic sparrow that looks like you are riding a single pod-racer engine. This should in theory give access to a different batch of new stuff rotating every seven days through a fixed stock of hopefully all of the items available during this season.

The gameplay itself feels different and I cannot quite put my finger on it. It might just be that I have been gone long enough that everything is starting to feel fresh again. My shotgun that I picked up from one of the boost packs however seems to be able to do things like one shot Vex Hydras… which is not something that I remember happening before. Additionally I seem to be able to one shot punch Vex Minotaurs… which again is not something that I remember being able to do. I am sure I will be playing more of this in the coming weeks but for now I am wrapping things up and heading to the hospital.

Keep my Mom in your thoughts if you don’t mind doing so. Hopefully everything works out okay but regardless it has been pretty scary.

Regularly Playing: June 2019 Edition

June 4, 2019June 4, 2019 by Belghast

For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing” where I attempt to update the sidebar on my blog. I failed miserably at the last incarnation, because the side bar never actually got updated. Additionally May was a crazy month with all of the weather issues and I never quite got one of these done. Instead I am shifting to a June edition where I attempt to start doing these towards the start of the month instead of the end of the month. I seemingly inhaled my coffee this morning so… lets do this!

To Those Remaining

I continue to truck along happily in Dragalia Lost and especially now that I have my Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 there is rarely a night that goes by that I don’t at a minimum play through my dailies. I’ve said this before but there is a release cadence of content that keeps me engaged and the fact that another character summon is just around the corner. The whole summoning process feels much better than that Wyrmprints have been completely removed from the mix. After playing effectively the entire time I have gathered up a good stable of five star characters that I have not even bothered leveling yet. I still sorta wish there was a switch version.

If you have read the blog over the last few days you will know that I am fully engaged with Diablo 3 right now. Last night I attempted to farm some more chests but sleep claimed me. I am however on a mission to get the Avarice Conquest and will get there sooner or later. I love Diablo 3 so much and while I fade in and out of its focus… I will always sooner or later return to it.

While I am not playing a ton of it… I am still very much engaged with Final Fantasy XIV and am looking forward to the upcoming head start on June 28th for Shadowbringers the next expansion. Pretty excited especially considering the drastic class changes that I think will lead to a more accessible environment. Right now the plan is to level the Samurai through the story quests and then level Warrior with Dungeon Finder given that Tank queues are a breeze. I’ve always done it the other way around and I think a lot of what leads to my burn out is trying to claw my way up to level as a DPS when I could simply go the easy route and level through the story.

While I am not playing it a ton I am still fairly engaged with Magic the Gathering Arena and the War of the Spark expansion seems to be pretty interesting. We talked a bit about this on the podcast but I am really wishing they would make it so that constructed is a format that is always available for play, given that is probably my favorite of the “event” types. It also serves as an amazing way to obtain cards from a specific set.

To The New and Returning

I did a lengthy post about this the other day but I am starting to play Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night which is as close as we will probably ever get to a proper Symphony of the Night sequel. While I only have the E3 demo version right now, I will be getting access to the full thing on my birthday… June 18th and plan on picking it up for pretty much every console that it will be available for. It is likely going to be a toss up between Switch and PC as to which version I actually play the most.

With the Season of Opulence starting I believe today… I’ve been poking my head back into Destiny 2 of late to try and reacquaint myself with the way that the game as a whole feels. I completely missed the Season of the Drifter because I was off doing other things, and the start of a new Season seems to be a good time to get engaged again. I still very much love the game but at this point am so far behind that I am not exactly sure what the most ideal catch up mechanic would be. This is the problem with Destiny as a whole is that there isn’t a painfully obvious way to gain a ton of light levels quickly.

I’ve also of late been spending a significant amount of time playing Elder Scrolls Online. A new expansion released and it has made me want to start playing again… in spite of not actually being willing to start the new content. Instead I am working my way through Vvardenfell… aka two expansions ago? The game is pretty great and ends up filling the same niche that Star Wars the Old Republic does… in that I mostly want to come in and gobble up a bunch of story content and then wander off.

To Those Departing

Grim Dawn

I know I will revisit this game again, but for now I am not playing it and it leaves the list. Based on screenshot evidence I seem to have stopped playing sometime mid April. Still a really great game and I expect to get the itch at some point in the near future… but being engaged with Diablo 3 again mostly pushed it off the table.

Marvel Future Fight

I played this a significant amount of time for a short period of time… and now find it really hard to get back into it. I feel like I hit the free to play wall where I have done as much of the content as I want to do before needing to spend a significant chunk of money. The grind set in and all of the things that would offer advancement require either a lot of money or a lot of time.

Mortal Kombat 11

Going forward I am going to try to filter titles like this off the list in part because there are a lot of things that I play furiously for a weekend and then never play again. Mortal Kombat 11 was one of these and while I fully expect to return to it periodically it isn’t really worthy of the moniker of “regularly playing”. Its still a really cool game and you should check it out especially when it goes on sale.

Outward

This again is another example of a game that probably shouldn’t have made it onto the list since I played it obsessively for a few nights and then never again. I’m going to start an honorable mentions section below for some of the games where I play in this manner because I have a few of them this month as well.

Star Wars the Old Republic

I came in… I gobbled up the entire Eternal Throne storyline and then wandered off once I started the content immediately following that. I have no clue why I suddenly stopped playing but I did. I expect honestly at some point soon to add this back to the list especially with a new full expansion on the way. I still really like this game and am happy it found its feet post launch. I would love more of the content along the lines of Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne because both were phenomenal.

Honorable Mentions

Again for those who didn’t read all of the blurbs above, this is a section I am adding in part because every month there are a handful of titles that I play furiously for a few days and then wander away from. They don’t really deserve the title of “regularly playing” but they are also worth noting.

While there is actually a game here I am not entirely certain if it is a game I want to play. This is something I have been poking my head in to check on since the backer alpha began. I had a few fun nights with it but more or less have consigned it to hibernation once again.

I have no clue how much of this I will be playing. I randomly installed it and started playing a few weekends back after watching a series of videos on it by Gaijin Hunter. It is a really cool game and I think it might be something that I could settle into as a bizarre “what if capcom had made skyrim” experience. Not quite ready to add it to the regularly playing list, will see if it returns by the end of the month.

I had a lot of fun with this game right around the time of launch and then I wandered away… and am not exactly sure why? I really need to get back to playing it and at least make my way through the main story. I get easily distracted when it comes to gaming and I am guessing me getting into World of Warcraft Classic beta was the shiny object that caused this one.

And… last but definitely not least… we have World of Warcraft Classic the aforementioned shiny object. This is coming in as an honorable mention and not a regularly playing in part because I have forcefully pulled myself away from it. This game launches officially in August and given the amount of time you need to spend leveling in this game… I don’t see a point in burning myself out before that point. We are completely nonsense and are going to be making an attempt at 40 player raiding again. I will give more information about this as time gets closer. However for now it claims a spot on the Honorable Mentions.