Tales of the Aggronaut

Heir to the Throne

April 15, 2019 by Belghast

This weekend was largely about three things. Firstly watching the string of new releases coming out of Star Wars Celebration including a Star Wars Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker trailer, a trailer for the game that EA has a high likelihood of cancelling before it sees the light of day, and some leaked footage of the strangely press blackout Mandolorian Television Series sizzle reel and trailer. It was also a weekend about watching the first episode of the final season of Game of Thrones… and I had honestly forgotten how good that show was after watching so many recent seasons of Walking Dead when effectively nothing much happens. Lastly it was a weekend devoted to playing heaps of Grim Dawn. When I started this recent stint I was sitting at roughly level 15 but throughout the weekend I pushed through to level 38 on my Warder character.

The only negative is that I found out this morning that running in Windows Borderless mode causes you to get some really fucked up screenshots. The above image is an example of this where it appears to be capturing only the tiniest square of the upper left hand corner of the screen where I would assume the 0/0 coordinators are located. This means that pretty much all of the cool screenshots that I thought I was getting over the weekend wound up to be duds, and I had to scramble around this morning to take a handful of relevant shots for the purpose of this blog post.

The big problem with Grim Dawn is it never seems to give you a firm boundary between acts, so it is very hard to track exactly where you are in the progression of the main story. As far as I can tell I am firmly in the middle of Act 3 and have managed to get my way to another large town called Homestead which appears to have everything that Devil’s Crossing has except maybe the Illusionist. I am now questing for a group of Inquisitors called the Black Legion that is now sending me out into the wastes to kill stuff. I like the look of Homestead a lot, but it is somewhat of a pain to navigate given its multiple levels and the fact that this game sometimes has trouble with ramps. Ultimately you have to take any sort of a subtle ramp or rise very slowly or you just keep hopping right back of it.

The only real negative take away from the weekend is the fact that Multiplayer is not as easy as Diablo 3. Even then there doesn’t really appear to be any multiplayer activity to do like Adventure mode and it would simply be either me joining someone elses game in progress or them joining mine. The deal breaker however is the fact that both players theoretically have to own the same set of expansions in order for it to work. I slowly picked up expansion content for this game as it was released and ultimately went on sale… and as such I have everything available. So it would take someone paying the $24.99 for the base game, and then an additional $39.97 for all of the DLC content to catch up to the level my client is so we could play games together.

As a result this is largely going to be a single player game for me, but I still feel like this is the real heir to the Diablo 2 crown. It is a happy medium between Diablo 3 and Path of Exile and feels just about right to actually go out and experience. What is most interesting about it is how well the story line plays out and who it is way more intelligible than that of Diablo 3. It actually has actions that make a difference on the world because in most of the quests you are given multiple paths to reach resolution. I am currently paying for my actions because the town I am visiting is apparently missing one NPC because I chose to enact my vengeance during the events of Act 2. Of all of the various NPCs I have chosen to take the combat route…. I am wondering which other ones will wind up making me miss something as a result.

Still a great game, still very much worth picking up. However given that this is a single player experience you can probably bide your time and pick it up when it hits a sale point favorable to you.

Faking Sealed Magic

April 12, 2019 by Belghast

This morning you are going to get a tutorial how to do something that likely no one has actually ever asked for. One of the more poorly documented features of Magic the Gathering Arena is the ability to directly challenge your friends. This is also one of the more poorly supported given that there is no construct for keeping a friends list or seeing who is actually online and available for dueling. Regardless… there technically is the functionality of being able to switch over to Direct Challenge mode and input your username + random digits BattleTag style handle in and purposefully link up to another human being that you actually known. Recently Tam, Mor and Lyle have been dueling each other and having a good time building decks with the limited pool of cards that they had available to them. This largely meant that the three of them were relatively on even footing, and playing some really fun and really janky magic that mimics a sealed environment.

The challenge is that both Kodra and I have spent a lot more of our time and by reference money on MTG Arena, which also means that we have a much wider pool of cards available for building decks. This also means that in theory we can build way more efficient decks that are probably less fair than having to be forced to play with the cards available and not necessarily the cards you want to play with. It got me to thinking… Magic the Gathering is a community that has an amazing set of web based tools to simple Price Lists like MTG Goldfish or amazing search engines like Scryfall. I thought surely someone had already come to the point of wanting to fake out a sealed pool of cards… and if not I would potentially be trying to build one myself and at least needed to research the APIs that would be available to me.

What I found was MTGen a website that allows you to replicate a lot of the common sealed formats and generate lists of cards replicating the experience of opening packs… including as you can see above the various seeded boosters that occur in pre-release tournaments. The site more or less gives me what I was wanting minus a few problems. What I actually want is the ability to simply say I want X of this pack and X of this pack and X of this pack… but for sake of this experience I deemed it good enough. Now the challenge that we have in front of us, that I experienced last night is that the default sealed formats expect you to take the pool of cards and build a 40 card deck with them. When you are doing direct duels in MTG Arena it requires both players to have a 60 card deck meaning we are going to have to increase the total number of packs opened. So instead of 6 packs for a normal sealed deck you would in theory open 9 packs as Kodra suggested to me last night. Again if doing the pre-release format you would be adding 3 more packs… and thankfully the MTGen site supports this sort of functionality.

The only NEGATIVE however is that MTGen does not support Magic The Gathering Arena as an export format… and of course Wizards of the Coast had to be difficult and could not simply recycle Magic Online. This again lead me to find a work around. I figured MTGO would be the most common format for converting deck lists from that online tool to Arena. So I rolled with that and found that ultimately I just needed a list of cards minus the Sideboard heading. So when you copy the cards out from MTGen make sure to trip that first line.

Now we move on to another website… MTGArena.Pro and more importantly their Deck Converter tool. This allowed me to paste in that list of cards that I got from MTGen and it converted it to the more contorted MTGArena format. You can assign a deck name if you so choose, because the default in Arena will simple by “Imported Deck” if you do not. I personally left it alone given that I would not want to accidentally pick one of these “Jank in Progress” decks for playing proper magic with, and at least I would know if it was still named Imported Deck I should stay away. The site provides you a handy copy output button, which will place it on the clipboard stack… which is important because Magic the Gathering Arena works weird.

Lastly you go over to your Decks section of Magic the Gathering Arena and click Import… at which point it will automagically try and import anything you have put in the copy/paste buffer. This is not the behavior I expected… I would have instead expected to be presented a file dialog to go find a text file on my hard drive. I guess in theory they have gone this route to eventually make mobile support easier? I guess at this point all mobile devices pretty much have robust copy and paste functionality.

I realize I said lastly on the step before… but you are presented with a list of your cards that have been plugged into Arena. Now you can simply weed out the cards you don’t want to play and build your own janky sealed deck. There will of course be problems if you don’t actually own a copy of the card and as such will have to craft it using the proxies you have earned up to that point. This is also why you might want to draft a larger pool of packs if you happen to have a smaller pool of cards available. It also might steer you to certain colors, but while this is not a perfect solution it does at least allow you to manually replicate sealed environments and play directly against your friends in this manner without having to hope to get into the same draft or sealed event on Arena.

Exploring Grim Dawn

April 11, 2019 by Belghast

Last night was the very first night since February 15th that I have played no Anthem. Up until this point I had attempted to get a little bit in every night even if that just meant doing a single contract. Since the drop of Elysian Chests I had been trying to earn a key every night regardless if I actually ran the Stronghold to spend it on. After yesterdays post I realized that my frustrations were reaching a level where I simply needed to let it drop for awhile for my own peace of mind. For awhile I had contemplated playing some Destiny 2 given that it is theoretically in a pretty good state right now… however my fear would be that I would spend the night comparing it to Anthem and still wind up frustrated. I have been playing a lot of Diablo 3 on the switch, but again… there is the whole comparison problem seeing as we all compare Anthem loot to that game. Instead I decided to zig and zag off in a similar but different direction and spend some time with Grim Dawn. The game was announced in 2009, went through a successful kickstarter campaign in 2012, entered early access in 2013 and finally officially “launched” in 2016. Since then it has released three major content drops… The Crucible which is a sort of horde mode arena thing and then Ashes of Malmouth and Forgotten Gods that add new story and additional functionalities.

In spite of liking the game quite a bit I have never really made it terribly far because I have never played it as a primary game for any length of time. This has been my “go to” for moments when I feel like playing something LIKE Diablo but not Diablo. The game does not do much hand holding or explaining of anything… which is to its detriment given that some of the systems are less than clear. Effective you are thrust into a Victorian era world where demon like creatures called Aetherials have taken back the world is a Shadowrun awakening sort of event called the Grim Dawn. Magic the Aetherials and the Chthonians began flowing back in the world and as a survivor and formerly possessed you are trying to do your best to fight back for the sake of humanity. It is somewhat or a madlibs style remixed version of a bunch of different tales, but the long and short is you are in a world with both magic and guns and playing a game that sits somewhere between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 as far as feel. You fight zombies and demons and weird floating not-quite-beholder things for the purpose of getting loot and progressing your character.

When first starting the game you are asked to choose one of six masteries: Soldier, Demolitionist, Occultist, Nightblade, Arcanist and Shaman. At level 10 you get to pick a second mastery and effectively set what “class” you are going to be as a whole. For example I chose Soldier and Shaman which is apparently a combination called the Warder and known for its tanky goodness. I somehow arrived at this conclusion without ever actually doing research… it just seemed like the class combination that fit me the most. There was a terribly unreadable diagram on the Grim Dawn site with a really unfortunate font… so I decided to cobble together something more manageable real quick in Google Sheets. The Ashes of Malmouth campaign adds two additional masteries in the Inquisitor and the Necromancer and the Forgotten Gods campaign adds Oathkeeper. The names are rather evocative and honestly make me want to try playing a handful of those specific specs at some point or another. I am almost always deeply drawn to anything called a Death Knight.

Last night I managed to finally finish the first act of the game, in part because some of the quests are less than helpful in their directions. It is a game largely without modern quest advisement, so you have to sort of wing your way through most of them. There will never be an arrow pointing you in a direction other than maybe marking what general zone something takes place in. I still have a ton of side quests to knock out in the Act One areas, so tonight I might spend some time trying to clean those up before moving forward. Some of them I have PART of the things done… like I have managed to gather up 2 pieces of fabric but I need 3 total to turn in with the person in Devil’s Crossing which serves as the main quest hub. Occasionally Diablo style you might rescue someone out in the wastes that will turn into an NPC that either grants you quests or serves a functionality back in town. I seem to be missing whatever NPC allows me to craft things because I have picked up some blueprints but have nowhere to use them as of yet.

Ultimately Grim Dawn does a really good job of being an Action RPG without being a Diablo clone. It definitely has its own ideas about some things and while complicated… serves to be way more approachable than Path of Exile. I guess for the forseeable future I am going to spend my evenings in this game and see how far I can manage to get. I greatly enjoyed last night and found the whole thing super relaxing. I do however also want to play some Magic Arena with Tam and Mor over the weekend, so that might be what is actually on the docket for tonight. The biggest challenge I have right now is the fact that I cannot be on voice chat while playing over parsec. There are some cludgy workarounds that only work for Discord but getting Tam on Discord is a massive challenge. Even at that it forces me to try and relay through a second account which is a mess that I have just not dealt with. Essentially if I am downstairs on the laptop streaming through Parsec… then I can’t be on voice. Last night I started upstairs but Kenzie screamed at me until I went downstairs so she could in my lap while I gamed. Cats are like that.

Shazam and Geek Culture

April 10, 2019 by Belghast

I did not do much in the gaming front last night as I spent the evening watching Shazam. Firstly this movie is pure joy, and I really wish we had more super hero movies that could tell a good story while also maybe not pushing the envelope quite so far into Warhammer 40k Grim Dark future timeline. I realize this maybe only works for a movie like Shazam where you have childhood wonder mixed with instant super hero powers. Basically I loved it and want more of it, however I am not sure if you can bottle the same sort of lightning twice with a sequel. So far however this is probably my favorite DC movie? For reference the other two that I really love are Aquaman and Wonder Woman… so your mileage may vary if those were not your movies. I never really thought the Heath Ledger Joker was that amazing even though he delivered a pretty great performance… I loved the first movie in that series and they sorta went downhill from there for my personal tastes.

What I find weird is the situation we are in right now where DC is decidedly the more gritty movie series, which seems to be the exact opposite of my experience reading the comics growing up. Marvel was the one that had more “realism” and DC was filled with a large number of what I would consider hapless Pollyannas. Movie wise we have the polar opposites going on, where Marvel gives us movies that deliver both crushing sadness but also moments of pure joy and DC has given us “MAAAAARTHAAAAAAA”. I was never really a follower of Shazam or “DC Captain Marvel” depending on how you choose to refer to the character, and I think in many ways that helps with the joy. I went into Guardians of the Galaxy knowing only the most basic of information about those characters and was super fine with whatever tweaks they took to get them on the screen. For Shazam as far as I am aware they represented the character pretty well, but I also don’t know a ton of information and as a result wouldn’t know if they completely butchered something… or care.

There are definite times where our geek cred gets in the way of our enjoyment of things. I’m sure you have experienced moments where you are watching some pop culture recreation of something you loved growing up… and they completely failed at some small piece of it. Then that small piece works at the back of your brain until it starts to color your opinion of the thing as a whole. You don’t want it to happen but it sort of happens automatically without you meaning to, and the next thing you know you are spitting venom about whatever that thing is. I still personally find it hard to reconcile the Star Wars prequels for example, even though I realize they aren’t as bad as I originally thought they were. Also there are moments like when you listen to the actor who played Jar Jar Binks… and hear what hell he went through all over a bunch of fans galvanizing disappointment into something far more dangerous and militant.

Ultimately us geeks need to reach a point where we are capable of taking our loves not quite as seriously as we do. That is the core problem with a lot of the toxicity that I see online… is when disappointed love turns to hatred. Example… I am trying very hard not to allow myself to become that guy with Anthem even though I have already waded knee deep into those waters on many occasions. It is hard when your hope turns sour and you start lamenting all of the things that could have been… rather than focusing on the things that exist and are good. I think the opposite is also bad where you have a sort of toxic positivity that everything is fine and everything is working as intended. I think we need to reach a point where we can accept the fact that occasionally our heroes will let us down and that a lot of things will never quite live up to our expectations. I am trying to get to that place myself honestly, but the fact that I realize I am being unreasonable is probably the first step. The problem is… it feels good to ruminate on that anger especially when it comes in the form of snarky semi-anonymous posts on some message board or YouTube comment section.

The long story short… I loved Shazam and would love to see more movies like this. Not necessarily more Shazam movies… but more super hero movies that are capable of embracing joy. Weirdly one of the other movies that sorta fits these guidelines is Deadpool, which is a fairly joyous movie… in spite of the body count and ribaldry. I feel like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies also were very much in this same style as was Thor Ragnarok and the Antman movies. I want more movies that make me feel like I can ignite the spark of hope inside of me… rather than simply wallowing in the fact that the world is shit and will always be shit. All I have really seen is some reports that the movie did not live up to expectations… but then again much like with a video game release I am wondering if those expectations are deeply inflated and unrealistic. It is a good movie and if you need something that invokes pure joy in your life… then I highly suggest checking it out… especially if you loved John Hughes movies.