Monster Hunter Belghast and Kenzie

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This morning we are going to mostly talk about this amazing comissions that I just got back from my good friend Ammo.  For the uninitiated she effectively is the unofficial artist of this blog, and what I mean by that is if given the chance I spend a lot of time paying her to do artwork for me of my various versions of “Belghast”.  For reference here are some of the other “Belghasts” she has done for me in the past.

Basically…  she has drawn a lot of my characters over the years and I knew at some point I wanted her to do a version of the character that I mostly run around as in Monster Hunter World.  Basically I operate in two modes with Ammo… either I give her months of lead time…  or I beg her to rush something out the door.  She has been super gracious in both cases, but the MHW Bel was something I had wanted for awhile but our schedules finally lined up to where we could give enough attention to both at the same time.  I prepared several gigs worth of reference photos of both my character and my trusty Palico Kenzie…  which is named after my very attention hogging middle cat.

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I technically have an art degree but I just never really sketch anything these days.  However occasionally I am able to sketch something together quickly that denotes the sort of feeling I had in mind for the piece.  I did this with the Elder Scrolls Online commission as well and in both cases it worked out perfectly.  However the posing with the Monster Hunter World piece is phenomenal and perfectly illustrated what I had in my minds eye.  For reference the above screenshot is one of the ones I sent over to Ammo to work from.  She nailed the feel of Extermination’s Edge the Rarity 8 Nergigante Longsword that I spend most of my time wielding.  Additionally she got the feel of my usual outfit which involves a Dober Chest, Teostra Arms, the Eyepatch and a bunch of other gear obscured by the Samurai cosmetic waist and legs.  This is more or less my signature look unless I am going for a specific set designed for a specific encounter.

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One of the best parts about this commission is that it allowed me to correct something that I simply could not do within Monster Hunter World.  This is Kenzie, who as you can see is an adorable butt and also a tortoise shell  calico or “tortie” for short.  The Palico creation system is just not complicated enough to do that sort of a design, so as a result I am stuck with a weird version of a dark calico to try and do my best to represent her in game.  Ammo was of course not constrained by those limitations and when she asked me for reference photos for Palico Kenzie… I sent her a bunch of my girl here instead.  I think she nailed the feel of Kenzie’s orange nose blaze perfectly.

Ultimately I have plans for this image that won’t quite come to fruition until a little closer to the actual anniversary of the blog which occurs April 17th.  I am not exactly sure when it will happen, mostly whenever I get time to mess around with things.  I feel like it is time for this blog to have a bit of a face lift so in theory one weekend there will be a rapid sequence of changes one day.  Firstly I wanted to make today’s post to really dive into how the commission process has worked for me personally in the past, and how Ammo and I tend to coordinate on the various artwork that adorns my corner of the world.  I also want to do a shameless plug given that she does such an amazing job and has done artwork for so many people that I know.  She did an amazing holiday card that Chestnut sent out this year… that I don’t think I have actually seen a digital copy of that I can share here.  Essentially… she does great work and you should totally use her skills for your artwork needs.

Here is a Giant Dump of How to See Ammo’s Amazing Artwork and Even Purchase Some of It!

I know she keeps pretty busy with commissions so you would have to check with her directly to see if she has any bandwidth.  On the 7th Anniversary Aggronaut shirt I didn’t want any cash from that, but did want one for my own personal use so I asked her to throw it up on one of her storefronts.  Just to make sure this is out there… we have no financial relationship at all other than the fact that I spend money getting her to make cool artwork for me.  I am just one of those people that will rabidly promote the things that I am into… and Ammo is the best.  There are a lot of artists in what I would call the “Warcraft” style, and they are all quality without a doubt…  but Ammo being roughly my age comes from a different genre…  namely Comic Books and as a result I love the more comic style she has developed over the years.

Losing Hope

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Despite my own admonishment yesterday morning I allowed myself to get a little hyped about the possibility of finally getting to cut loose in Anthem and make progress again.  I should not have done this, because once again…  Anthem is a buggy mess following the 1.0.4 update.  This starts early when you are greeted with an empty news screen, which isn’t the end of the world but was sort of a harbinger of events to come.  The patch included a bunch of quality of life improvements, some of which exist like the summary screen you are seeing above showing all of my gear and sort of giving us the beginnings of what I hope will ultimately become a stats page.  Additionally there is no load time to get into the Forge and you can access it anywhere within Fort Tarsis just by bringing up the escape menu.  However the whole being able to see what World Events are active thing does not appear to be in the game, because in none of the four or five freeplay sessions I joined last night could I actually see any events up and active.

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One of the big tweaks that was supposed to be coming was an increase in the general quantity of good loot that we would be getting from doing stuff…  namely anything that rewarded a chest or from the bosses at the end of Strongholds.  This appears to have completely broken and now those Stronghold bosses are no longer rewarding the guaranteed Masterwork at all, and instead just seem to give you a fist full of purples and blues.  I spent a significant amount of time on Hard mode running content with Neph last night and something seems to be broken there as well.  Previously when running with friends on a sub Grandmaster difficulty I would see a lot of those “Starter” Masterworks dropping.  In spite of doing three Strongholds and a could of contracts I saw zero Masterworks which was previously unheard of…  just doing anything on Hard seemed to reward me a handful of those starter weapons.  I did manage to get a single Legendary but it didn’t actually drop anywhere that I could see it and instead was the harbinger of another bug…  apparently players can pick up your loot and then stuff just randomly shows up in your inventory.  I mean I am thankful in this case and in truth I think loot should work more like Destiny in that if it drops it automatically gets tossed into your inventory without having to pick up anything.  Sidenote… I took this photo because if you notice three characters are the same base model standing side by side which is a little uncanny valley.

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The other big thing that was touted with this patch was the introduction of Elysian Chests at the end of Stronghold missions.  These were supposed to sweeten the pot and make us want to start running strongholds again with a touted inventory of a couple hundred cosmetic items available for us to find.  When they were announcing them they stated that there was also a chance of crafting materials and gave the example of 30 Masterwork Embers…  which seemed like a reasonable trade for a cosmetic item.  Getting 30 Chimeric Alloy on the other hand is not worthy of giving up a cosmetic and just feels like shit given that this is the most basic generic level 1 crafting material that you can gather up spending five minutes running around in freeplay.  It feels bad wasting your daily key on something like this, and there are thread floating about showing that four chests were opened and all four gave low tier crafting materials.

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I did however manage to get a Vinyl later in the night, but that just spawned another bug with the patch.  When you get something cosmetic from an Elysian Chest, it won’t show up in your inventory until you have logged out of the game and logged back in.  Even then…  I am not sure if Overcast is bugged or what but it doesn’t seem to appear on my Lancer at all so not sure what it is actually adding but it certainly looks nothing like that icon…  which I am assuming is a generic icon for all cosmetic rewards given that it shows a bunch of materials in the background.  Additionally this patch was supposed to allow us to stay in flight longer…  but it feels like it has had the opposite effect given that I no longer have the longevity in air that I did before and seemingly diving no longer lowers heat as much as it did.  Basically…  we got 1.0.4 and already desperately need 1.0.5 to fix the shit that was broken again this time.

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The problem for me is that I am ultimately losing hope that they will manage to pull their shit together.  What I used to view as being scrappy and responsive to issues…  I am just now seeing as a very sloppy development methodology that apparently involves little to no quality assurance.  The fact that loot was bugged at the end of Strongholds…  should never have made it into production on a patch that was touted as fixing Strongholds.  It took exactly one time running a Stronghold to notice “hey… we are not getting our guaranteed loot”.  The fact that loot is still as stingy as it is now is a complete sin, given that was the beat being pounded fervently like a drum from day one… that Diablo only works if the loot flows like water allowing you to account for the completely useless items that you get and shard.  What we are left with is signs that Bioware has nothing up their sleeve and are just trying to eek out for as long with the limited an repetitive content that is available, and rationing of Legendary and Masterwork drops is seemingly their master plan in trying to make this content last until they can create more.

I had fun playing with Neph but there was a slight pang of bitterness as I didn’t even see starter Masterworks as was regularly the case when dropping down to the lower tiers before.  Right now I am contemplating starting a brand new Pilot just so I can have a set of Javelins that match the level ranges of my friend still down in the lower rungs, hoping to maybe be able to get them up in level enough to run the higher stuff with me eventually.  Tam, Ash, Kodra, Waren and Shiana have all moved back to Warframe which is apparently having a great streak of content to engage with…  and Thalen, Grace and Neph are all way down in the level range and fighting against the fact that there is limited queuing available sub Grandmaster 1.  Then there is the problem that if you want to solo this content you will end up getting effectively half of the experience as if you were grouping…  because the Alliance bonus matters that much.  Neph for example played the game entirely solo other than a bit of running around and doing World Quests and as a result finished the main story and all of the side content at level 15…  whereas I was something closer to 22 from never not grouping.

I am getting frustrated at this point, and super close to just giving up.  I want Anthem to be a great game and in some aspects it is… and in other aspects the Bioware team does not seem to understand what sort of game they want it to be.  After seeing the second failed patch in a row that seemingly caused more havoc than it cured…  I am starting to fear that we will have to wait for whatever this games “Taken King” or “Patch 1.8” ends up being, when they finally grasp how to make it fun and rewarding.  The gameplay feels fun…  but the rewards feel like a mockery of what they should be.

Anthem Patch Day

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Today is in theory a big patch day for Anthem that should be clearing up a lot of the ills that the game has.  However I am not exactly holding my breath.  What I mean by that is I am certain that there will be in fact a patch today, Game Update 1.0.4.  What I am doubting is if it will fundamentally improve the situation for those of us stuck in the limbo between Grandmaster 1 and being able to feel viable in Grandmaster 2 and beyond.  What is needed to fix this is Legendaries, and not only that but viable Legendaries.  Both patch 1.0.3 and the server side loot tweaks were supposed to give us some remedy, and while I have seen a greater frequency in Masterwork drops it has done nothing to help fill my screen with lime green.  Ultimately knowing that today’s patch was on its way served to disincentive me from playing the game at all… because why should I invest any time at all in a largely broken loot system when if I just waited a week there would in theory be some fixes.

I think where I am with this game is that I really enjoy the moment to moment game play, but now that the progression train has slowed I am struggling to stay invested given that there is such a limited pool of content available to players.  I think the Elysian Caches will help somewhat because it gives a long tailed chase mechanism… and quite frankly what better reward is there than things that make your Javelin look awesome.  So that alone will make Strongholds worth running again.  Additionally there are the Legendary missions that should produce some replayability of existing content and given how enjoyable some of those story missions were… I can see that helping as well.  Quality of life changes like being able to see what World Events are active at any given time will also be a welcome change.  The main problem I foresee is that the game really needs fresh content to add to the mix, because as it stands three Strongholds just isn’t enough…  when a good deal of us have every line of dialog in them all memorized at this point.  I would prefer never to hear again about not wanting that omelet.

I will of course be checking it out tonight and I am hoping that I am wrong, but I am sort of trying to tamp down my expectations so I don’t turn into one of the heaps of rage that inhabit the main reddit.  Once again I highly recommend LowSodiumAnthem if you are hoping to stay a fan of this game rather than wading into the mire of hatred of the official Reddit.  Bioware Devs post on both locations.

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What I wound up spending most of my time last night doing however was playing some more Breath of the Wild via Cemu.  The screenshots don’t exactly do it justice of showing off just how damned good this game looks running in 4K resolution.  I am consistently impressed by just how good it works, but then again…  the developers of Cemu have been tweaking and refining this for roughly two years now with a lot of community modding support that adds in compatibility fixes.  I’ve surpassed where I was progress wise from the Switch and have put in around nine hours of gameplay so far, almost all of it stable.  The instabilities thusfar have involved encountering something I have not seen yet and having the emulator pause to build shader cache.  There are in theory downloadable shader caches that would fix this problem…  but I have not really spent any time investigating how to get my hands of them.

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Essentially everything about this process is sort of caveat emptor… but seeing as I have done this level of nonsense many times in the past it didn’t worry me too much.  Suffice today however there has been copious amounts of virus scanning before I interacted with anything that I acquired in this process.  This is probably the first time however that I have seen modern emulation give a game that is on a current platform a run for its money…  or in this case greatly improving the visuals.  I know there is similar magic you can do with a 3DS emulator, but thusfar I have not really had the horsepower to really make those games perform to their fullest at 4K resolutions.  However if you are interested in that sort of nonsense then I would point you at the Simply Austin Youtube channel to see examples of what can be done.  It is so bizarre to me how far emulation has come from the days of me trying to play Final Fantasy V on ZSNES and having to apply a frame skip to get some semblance of something playable, to being able to run modern games on high end PCs.

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Please note… that while I totally support emulation, I don’t do so as a dodge to getting free games.  I have a closet full of classic game systems, and in the case of both Cemu and Citra the Wii U and 3DS emulators respectively I have owned all of the games that I have tried playing.  Especially in the era of struggling game studios…  they need you buying the games instead of figuring out ways to get free copies.  I didn’t exactly have clean hands throughout my high school and college years, but now I think in part I buy so many games as a way of making up for my former warez peddling past.  If Nintendo for some reason started releasing these games on PC… I would likely lose all interest in emulating them in the first place.  However I somehow doubt that is ever going to happen, and as a result…  Nintendo consoles will always be the most widely supported emulation platforms.

 

Vacation Gaming

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Today is going to be the first day back after a lengthy break, and as such I am struggling a little bit to get up and around this morning.  Last week was the universal spring break week for Oklahoma schools and with that I opted to take Wednesday through Friday off to spend time with my wife.  We went back and forth about taking some sort of a trip, but instead just dealt with a lot of things around the house that needed dealing with.  I cleaned and organized my office, she tackled the closet, we got a new rug for the living room, made two trips to my mechanic to fix my drivers side window that was having trouble rolling up, finally dealt with our taxes and didn’t have to pay…  and a slew of other small things that filled most of the time I took off.  In between all of the running around I got in a fair amount of gaming, with the largest single target being The Division 2.

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I am completely in the swing of this game and am slowly pushing my way across the map clearing control points and side missions along the way.  At this point I have largely cleared the White House surrounding area, Downtown East, Federal Triangle, East Mall and have been focusing my time on clearing out content in the Southwest area.  I am spending 99.9% of my time soloing the content and it is going more or less fairly well.  My jam is still some sort of a fast firing single shot rifle and a shotgun to back it up when things get too close.  What I am actually using for either of those varies based on what I happen to have seen drop…  which is the weird thing about this game is the large number of drops I seem to get that are in no way upgrades to the weapon I was using from 3 levels earlier.  However as with any Division game… the really important drops are the ones with a teal border like the one shown above.

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Another major accomplishment of the weekend is that I finished the Final Fantasy XIV 4.5 content.  I was ONE dungeon away from doing so but Anthem launched and then Division 2… and I just couldn’t seem to bring myself to log in and take care of it.  Huge kudos to the awesome player who guided three of us newbies through Ghimlyt Dark and did an excellent job explaining the mechanics.  I have to say though… it was a WAY easier dungeon than the Burn…  which I think Thalen still needs?  I need to check into that and help him out this week if that is the case.  All in all I am ready for the next content drop to finally explain how we get from this point…  to the point shown in the Full Trailer released at Fanfest Tokyo over the weekend.  One of my employees is a super serious raider type… so I will be quizzing him this morning as to his thoughts about what was shown.

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Another thing that has been stealing my time…  namely the hanging out in bed before going to sleep time…  is Baba is You.  This is a weird puzzle game where you essentially hack reality and rewrite the rules of the universe to get a win condition.  It reminds me of this mix between the old shareware title Paganitsu and Basic Programming logic.  Paga was a significant title for me growing up because it fit neatly onto a floppy and we could play it clandestine like from the computer lab at school.  Baba Is You is great because so often in puzzle games you get introduced to the mechanics and then they simply start dialing up the precision and speed that you need to react in order to complete puzzles.  Baba on the other hand keeps challenging your conceptions and does not care at all about the fine motor skills or speed of execution… and as such gives you unlimited rollbacks as you sorta figure out how the pieces move on each map.  Well worth checking out if you are interested in such things.

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Lastly I started messing around with Breath of the Wild again…  but if that were the end of that statement it would not be as nonsense as it ultimately is.  I own this game on Wii U and Switch…  but last night I started dinking around with Cemu the Wii U Emulator to see just how well it runs and what sort of resolution I could get it working at.  The game looks gorgeous running in 4K but requires a bunch of fiddling to get it there.  Not to mention just the act of getting it up in running was a pain in the butt which involved a whole slew of hoops to jump through to get the game patched and the emulator running.  Then there was the added step of getting it working through Parsec so I could have the same experience while hanging out on the laptop downstairs…  which involved installing controller emulators.

Basically I have NO CLUE why I did this thing, but I had a lot of fun and made it as far as Kakariko Village last night.  I never made it terribly far into Breath of the Wild in part because of the restart.  When the game first came out I did not have a Switch, and then at some point along the line I managed to find one in stock and re-bought the game on that platform.  That meant having to redo everything over, which sorta killed my forward momentum.  I seemed to log in more to summon treasure chests with Amiibos than I did to actually do anything else.  My save game is littered with chests around the Dueling Peaks stable.  It is truly shocking how well it runs, but there are a lot of frustrations… because the first time you encounter anything new there is a massive game freeze as it builds shader cache, however from that point on things are fluid again.

Basically chock this up to a long line of stupid things I have done like created a Chinese account so I could try Monster Hunter Online and setting up a Sega of Japan account to play Phantasy Star Online 2.  I will likely wander away from it boredly at some point in the near future, but last night I had an awful lot of fun doing things that I should be able to do.  I will however due to the potentially shady nature of this not be assembling a guide.  I own two copies of Breath of the Wild so I figured it was completely legit for me to do shenanigans, but the real more stable answer to playing Breath of the Wild is to get a Switch.