Tales of the Aggronaut

Fall of Gigantic

February 2, 2018February 2, 2018 by Belghast

This morning I want to take a little bit to talk about a game that I used to have a lot of faith in… that just announced they were closing down the servers this coming July. This game was originally announced at Pax Prime 2014 and I first got my hands on it during my very first Pax… the inaugural Pax South 2015. To say they were the belle of the ball was an understatement… they had the biggest booth and also had really awesome media and tournament suites upstairs. On the floor of the convention they had computers set up to have constant running multiplayer battles and in order to make this all work… had called in this legion of devoted fans to help ease the new players into the experience. I managed to get in to the press suite on the first day and was completely blown away with the game that I had seen.

You have to understand this was pre-Overwatch even being announced, let alone releasing and taking the world by the storm. This was also pre-Paladins being a thing… so the only experience similar was Smite which was a fairly faithful port of the MOBA genre to a more player point of view experience rather than the traditional top down isometric. The biggest challenge out of the gate was what to call the game… we largely referred to it as a MOBA but even then… it didn’t quite conform to that concept. The characters were really the part that stood out because they were vibrant and animated extremely well… you had some that played like a traditional shooter and others like The Margrave pictured above that felt very much like an MMO tank.

It felt extremely fresh and when I left Pax I was super excited to the game launch. They had their press game on point giving out these really cool thumb drives that were super detailed vinyl/plastic versions of the games logo… that then had an executable you could run that would connect out to their ftp server and grab whatever were the freshest media assets available.

On Day two I managed to sneak everyone that was attending from AggroChat into the press suite again to do battle against other folks attending the media demo. The above image wound up on the Motiga twitter account and I am super grateful someone took a picture of us playing. Side note… we completely trounced Angry Joe and his entourage, in part because we had devs and community folks constantly trying to help us ease into playing the characters. Basically I went away from Pax South 2015 singing the praises of this game and was super pumped when I got my email a few weeks later getting into the alpha/beta program.

The excitement sorta died off however once we started actually playing the Beta client due to the lack of reasonable matchmaking. What seemed so damned polished at the show… was a carefully cultivated image. The actual experience was anything but, and largely focused on logging into the beta voice server and convincing people to group up with you… then dropping to a private channel and trying to join on each other and queue as a complete group. That said I did this a few times and Lonrem helped ease me into this community a bit, but it felt like too much hassle for me at this point when I am not really even a big player of this sort of genre. My stance had been that I would come back when things were a bit more polished and I could queue on my own without need of the very manual matchmaking.

In November of 2014 the oxygen started being drained out of the room… when Blizzard announced Overwatch. While these were not exactly the same… they were definitely similar enough feeling to be serious competition. I told myself that all Motiga needed to do was get to the market first… and develop an initial foothold. The experience was interesting enough to keep people engaged if they could just launch. In February of 2016… Motiga went through a massive round of layoffs and this is really the first signs that maybe the future wasn’t nearly as bright as we might have hoped. They did a deal with the devil at this point… securing additional funding from Microsoft in a trade for console and windows 10 exclusivity… forcing them down a path of the Windows Store instead of something more mainstream and actually used by gamers… Steam. This also cut them off from being able to do some sort of Steam early release program that has been effective for a lot of games as they worked out the kinks getting them to market.

I kept expecting to hear an announcement that Gigantic was going to be releasing… especially with the support from Microsoft to help them get across the finish line. I went through the hoops to convert my original Gigantic beta account to a Windows Store beta account and downloaded the game to give it a go. The only problem is… the game didn’t feel anywhere near as fresh and unique as I remembered it. I was now standing in a world where Paladins had also released in a pretty widespread beta program and Overwatch was constantly looming over its shoulder. Additionally while match making was a thing… the player base had dwindled to a point where I had to sit there waiting for fifteen to thirty minutes to get a match. When I did… you had one of two options… the map that was awesome and tuned… and the map that was way the hell too big and had some memory leak issues. Once again I put the game away and thought “I will try it again at launch” because honestly I thought surely there had to be a launch window just around the corner.

Things got more complicated in May of 2016… when Motiga announced that it would be inking a deal with Perfect World to become the official publisher of Gigantic. We all knew the writing on the wall with this one… it meant they needed more money and this was a way of obtaining it. This erased that Windows store exclusivity… but also probably watered down any support Microsoft was willing to give. Additionally it set up a scenario where the player base was forever going to be fractured. One version of the game would be working with Xbox One and Windows Store users… and another version of the game would be running through the Perfect World Arc client. Overwatch released in May 2016 and Paladins in September 2016… triggering an arms race of companies trying to create their own version of this new genre that was being branded the “Hero Shooter”… all without even a potential date on the horizon for the launch of Gigantic.

When it finally launched in July of 2017… it was the textbook definition of too little too late. It released on Windows Store/Xbox One and a version that ran on the Arc Client available through the Perfect World store or Steam. At this point unfortunately… nobody really cared. I’ve never actually played the released version of this game because while I filled up a hype balloon at Pax South 2015… over the course of the next few years a bunch of tiny punctures drained every bit of it away to where I was left with a flaccid balloon that could never be inflated again.

Amazing little gem of a game whose light is dying along with its playerbase.

The above quote is from a review on steam… and I feel like it sums up Gigantic as a game nicely. It was in fact an amazing idea and it was doing a lot of things that were revolutionary for its time… but the constant failure to launch caused everyone who was once interested to eventually fade away and start playing something more viable. Multiplayer games live and die by the player base… and once you lose the trust of a large core of gamers… there is absolutely nothing you can do ever to get it back. I have to admit I sort of mourn what might have been when it comes to Gigantic. I still feel like it was a great game concept with extremely interesting characters… the problem is… Overwatch did everything better except for the core concept of having two gigantic monsters duking it out for control of the map.

Motiga was a really cool company, and I hope that each of the folks that managed to hang on through the end… find a good home in another company where they can bring their interesting ideas to a game that actually has a chance. I feel like both Microsoft and Perfect World kept the balloon afloat for way longer than it would have were they not in this story… but in the end we wound up with a really complicated sequence of event and a fractured player base which is a critical fault for any game. This is by no means the complete tale of this game or some gripping piece of journalism, but instead just my personal experience as I watched and hoped that they would get their shit together and make it work.

Flame Broiled Defeat

February 1, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I met my first real defeat in Monster Hunter World and completely failed a quest. That quest was me attempting to beat Anjanath in the Ancient Forest, which admittedly I am super happy I did the tracking work I already did for this mob in spite of what everyone has told me. I managed to find it super fast and now we get into the part of the show where I talk about my horrible ideas. I have thought this thing was serious business since the first moment I saw it… and as a result I went ahead and threw up a flare to see if anyone wanted to join me. Within moments I had a full party of people tasking on this monster and in the grand scheme I thought it was going pretty well… then I started noticing other players fainting. It was around or about this point that I remembered that you get four faints per party… not per person. So when I finally fainted myself… it happened to be the fourth one our party had gotten and the quest immediately failed out. In theory I should have just tried this on my own because I was managing to land some significant hits in on the big guy but I guess the truth is I just sorta like running with party tactics going on. I have been joining other folks quests and enjoying trying to learn how to play off of the strengths and weaknesses of the other weapons. Mostly I am wanting to learn how not to trip up other players with the Longsword which has been a problem that other people have reported with the weapon. As far as I could tell this was not actually happening because I tend to favor surgical strikes rather than just flailing away with R2 sweeping attacks. My goal for tonight is to seek revenge and down a flame breathing dinosaur.

My enjoyment of this series is way more focused on playing with my Palico than probably any other element. So much so that the first thing I do whenever I drop down on a map is find where the free roaming tailrider Palicos are and go get one. I love the sequence of events that happens when your Palico meets one out in the wild. They get together and then high five and cheer… and moments later you have a new friend following you around and helping you. This is literally the best part of monster hunter and the most purest joy I feel in the game. Last night I found a Palico wearing the Horizon Zero Dawn Watcher suit and I just about lost my mind. It too had the Pukei-Pukei bow equipped so it was an interesting combination of two mostly ranged characters helping me out. My weapon development is sort of stalled out at the moment because I am not exactly sure what I need to get the next ranks as I have been using the Bone Shotel III for a few nights now. I can in theory make an elemental version… but its base attack is slightly lower so for the moment I am sticking with what I have.

I will close out this mornings post with a video of one of the varied Monster Hunter World cooking sequences. I just cannot explain how happy the Palicos and the Felyne chefs make me. I find myself getting a meal cooked even when I am just going to go wandering around in the wastes doing nonsense for an hour completing bounties. There are a lot of people who lament the change in the cooking song, but I never knew the previous one so its not like I am missing anything particular. What I love is the completely over the top cooking sequence… which admittedly was also one of the things I loved about Final Fantasy XV so maybe I just like digitally rendered food? I’ve tried to play Generations again but find it particularly hard to control the game with my existing 3DS XL… which is still way too small for my tastes. As I have talked about in the past… I have large hands and a lot of controllers just feel awkward in them. I play PS4 with the Hori FPS Plus which itself is a way larger controller than the default PS4. It really makes me wish that Generations existed for the Switch because I think I could get into the game there knowing I had the option of playing docked if I want to… which admittedly I play switch docked 90% of the time. Side note… I consider the default Xbox One controller a little small as well and similarly have found an aftermarket alternative that I love in the form of the no longer made Power A Fusion Pro. Thankfully I have managed to pick up a couple of those… one for PC and one for Xbox One off Ebay for way cheaper than that Amazon listing.

Catfish Dargon

January 31, 2018 by Belghast

At least on some level I feel like I might be playing this game wrong. I’ve put a little over eleven hours into the game at this point and I am just now hunter rank 4. At this point I have managed to take down Great Jagras, Kulu-Ya-Ku, Pukei-Pukei, Barroth and Jyuratodus. Now some of those I have taken down multiple times like I keep farming Barroth for bits and pieces to craft gear and I have taken down Kulu several times just because killing the angry chicken is fun. Side note… hunting Kulu in Wildspire Wastes is so much easier than Ancient Forest because it doesn’t keep running away up into the canopy of the trees. My mission for last night was to farm some Barroth and attempt to get better gear… and another Monster Bone M which I did in both cases. I don’t have a full set of gear yet, but I did manage to upgrade two pieces of Barroth gear and one piece of Jyuratodus. It is around this point that I decided to start using the Samurai cosmetic armor because wearing Barroth armor makes you look like you are a walking rack of prime rib. Jyuratodus so far has been the most annoying thing I have fought to date because it cannot decide if it as a Catfish or a Dragon… so from now on it will simply be known as Catfish Dargon. I never really got to a point where I was in danger…. I just found it terribly annoying to fight because being in the water and mud is dumb and I never want to do that.

On my Palico front I now have Kenzie kitted out in a full set of Pukei-Pukei armor which seems to be working well. I am completely in love with my Palico, and it sorta makes me sad that in the above screenshot she ever doubts that I will be bringing her along on the next hunt. Side note… I have no clue if my Palico has a gender but in my head canon Kenzie the Cat is female so Kenzie the Palico is also female. I feel like I am improving at the game largely because of the continued shortening of time it takes me to hunt certain things. My first Barroth kill was a complete bear and I wound up firing an SoS flare because I had run completely out of mega potions. On kill number two at the beginning of last night I still struggled a bit, but never really got close to either fainting or running out of resources. On kill number three… it finally felt like I knew what I was doing and simply executed a sequence of attacks I had rehearsed over time. The other thing that I finally started getting the hang of last night was mounting the monsters and going into rodeo mode. I think more than anything that has probably sped up my process because when I finally knock them down I can get in a bunch of really powerful attacks. When I took down Kulu last night after my first ride the monster was already limping. So far all of the monsters have been challenging, but I feel fairly comfortable in my longsword abilities and it is mostly me just executing on the same things I have learned to this point… which I guess is maybe the point of the game?

I love the cheesy grin and weird uppercut pose on my guild card, so you are likely going to keep seeing it over and over. The biggest thing I am not quite grasping at this point is how the hell multiplayer actually works. My theory was that I could potentially hop in on quests that folks were doing in the game session I happened to be in. However when I click on a name everything seems to be grayed out. I have no clue how social connectivity is supposed to work in this game and I have no clue what throwing someone a guild card actually does but I keep receiving a bunch of them. Connecting with other people to play the game just feels way harder than it should be. It should be as simple as… is a friend of yours on… okay click to join their game and kill monsters together. Instead it feels like this weirdly contorted system that makes absolutely zero sense to my western brain. I keep thinking back to the madness of Final Fantasy XI and World Passes… and trying to place my mind into that sort of mindset because I just do not get it. If someone could explain to me like I am five how this system works… I would greatly appreciate it. I would love to be able to just hop in on someone else’s session and kill monsters because at this point I could give a shit about quest progression and just want more crafting bits. Based on what I heard from Grakulen last night apparently people can’t join me when I am in an expedition, which seems sorta broken. Regardless I am having a lot of fun in my own little sandbox… but sorta want to start learning how to group to take things down.

Barbecue Heroes

January 30, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was apparently all about Monster Hunter World. The game seems to have gotten its hooks into me because quite honestly all I could think about all day long was getting home and playing. More than anything I spent a fair amount of processing cycles trying to figure out how I was going to shift up my attack combos to be more efficient with the Long Sword. Right now I am focusing on a single weapon, and mindset wise… I am tending to think about this game much the same way as I would a fighting game. Traditionally with a fighting game I will focus on a single character and learn them first, so for example… with Street Fighter II I originally focused in on Ryu and learned everything I could about playing him before branching out and picking up Guile or Chun Li for example. Additionally I tend to focus on finding a workable sequence of attacks and getting the most out of those before introducing new things into my mix. For the moment this largely means building spirit gauge with triangle four times and then dumping spirit gauge with r2 four times. I’m trying to work in fade slash in place of just rolling out of the way, but the press X to survive behavior is already deeply ingrained. I need to sort out how to actually do the fade slash that turns you blue and gives you invulnerable frames… but I am not quite there yet.

As far as the evening went… I spent a good deal of it wandering around in the desert. I made it far enough in the quest chain to unlock the next major area of the map and immediately found myself going into explorer mode trying to scout everything I could find from the new area. One of the things I did not realize was that objectives do not show up on the map until my scout flies have found them… so as a result I spent a good deal of the night trying to train up my scout flies for the new area while working on bounties. I am still desperately hunting a M class monster bone, which I am guessing I cannot really get unless I take down something else big. I have been sitting on one for awhile and need another to move up to the Bone Shotel III. Ultimately I think I need to take Barroth down a bunch of times because I could use the materials from him to upgrade the armor for both me and my palico given that is the next big boost stat wise from the bone set I am wearing. Unfortunately Barroth is also the first monster I have had to call for help on… not necessarily because I fainted too many times… but because I saw myself quickly running out of resources. I was down to my last two mega potions and I was having hell gauging how close to finishing it up I was so I went ahead and threw up an SOS flare to get someone to come help me. Unfortunately by the time it was answered I had almost managed to take him down solo… with Barroth falling within a few minutes of the new hunter joining me.

Hunting with a second player though does make things like needing to sharpen your weapon way easier, and stopping to do that constantly really made a difference in my kill time and efficiency. When I fought Pukei Pukei it took me forever to actually find the damned thing because it wasn’t pathing where I had seen it the night before. However once I did… I managed to take it down way faster than I had almost any other monster to date. It ran twice but I managed to kill it at the third location by I believe disabling its wing. I am constantly ripping parts of monsters but also sorta not really understanding exactly what I am doing. I’ve taken off a bunch of tails largely because that and the hind quarters in general seems like a place where I can get solid combo hits without fear of bouncing the attacks. I wish I more fully understood what causes a bounce versus what causes a solid hit. I struggled with bounces constantly with Barroth and I am guessing that was just a side effect of its armor coating. Once I knocked off some plates and exposed the sinew below I managed to land really good hits and started dealing serious damage. I am guessing this is where a weapon like the hammer comes in handy for knocking off the armor plates. I can definitely see how each weapon is functionally deficient against specific types of monsters and why something like the charge blade that is flexible becomes a huge boon. For now however I am focused on my Long Sword and getting the most out of it before moving to something else… which admittedly may be the hammer or great sword next to see how bigger slower weapons feel. The goal for last night was to finally get in the squad and I managed to do that finally towards the tail end of the evening. Monster Hunter does not make grouping with others very easy, and I feel like it is still stuck in the mindset of having a bunch of 3DS around a table where everyone is physically present with each other. All in all though… I’ve already gotten far more out of this venture into the Monster Hunter world than I have with any other version of it I have played in the past which was my ultimate hope.