Tales of the Aggronaut

Twitter GOTY “Poll”

April 26, 2017 by Belghast

Last night was a bit of a rough night, because we had a massive storm blow through. A side effect of the storm was the fact that about 11:30 my wife woke up on the couch because something dripped on her foot. In the middle of our living room, dripping from one of the beams was a slow trickle of water. At that point there really isn’t much to do other than put down a towel and a bucket and hope it stops. However that sort of ruined any thoughts of a really solid nights sleep. This morning I had originally intended on writing about a rather hamfisted absurdist article that is making its way through my twitter circle, but in truth I am simply going to not deal with that today. It reminded me of conversations that myself and Tamrielo have on a regular basis… but I also wanted to approach the topic with more grace than I probably have in me right now. So instead I am going to answer a twitter poll in blog form.

TWITTER POLL: Quote this tweet with your GOTY for each year for the last five years, 2012 to 2016.

— Alex Carlson (@PostMesmeric) April 25, 2017

While technically not a poll, it is definitely a thing that I thought looked interesting so this morning instead of tearing into discussions that I don’t really want to get into… I started thinking back upon various years and trying to determine the games that mattered the most to me during that time. Also I may or may not be applying a little “in retrospect” to a few of these choices, but that is also ultimately my prerogative. I limited myself to only picking games released during a specific calendar year, but in many cases the true impact the game had happened much later.

2012: The Secret World

I really cannot say enough good about this game… from the perspective of someone just starting out playing it. I’ve said an awful lot about this game over the years in three pages worth of blog posts… and probably some others that I failed to categorize correctly. This often makes my “best games I am not playing” list whenever I compile one. Functionally there are two vastly different game experiences… the leveling game when you are digging through the story and trying to solve the mysteries of the world… and the end game where you lose all creative freedom that you had while leveling. The first game is phenomenal and something that I feel everyone should experience at least once. The later… is ultimately what caused us to quit and keeps me from reattaching to the game for any length of time. However that said the ride is well worth it, and the game has some of the more interesting dungeons in MMOdom… until you reach nightmare levels where everything sort of falls apart. I am really looking forward to the re-release of the game under the Secret World Legends name… and hoping beyond hope that they can give me an experience to latch onto with both hands.

Aggronaut Posts about The Secret World

2013: Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

The impact this game has had on me and my friends is immeasurable. Largely because it gave us a common ground in the form of an MMO experience that we all care about. More than anything however it knows how to tell story in and interesting and serialized fashion, where the story arc from one expansion sets up the key players for the next. This is also the only MMO that has ever sufficiently pulled off a surprise plot twist, and has done so many times…. and been willing to assault structures that I assumed were fixed and sacred to the game itself. From August onwards in 2013… my life pretty much belonged to Final Fantasy XIV until we slowly petered out when we ran out of things we were capable of doing. However we came back and had a renaissance with the game that has continued to the present times with this still being the game we can all sort of agree on.

Aggronaut Posts about Final Fantasy XIV

2014: Destiny

This is another game that realized its ultimate impact on me long after the year it actually released in. Destiny is a really important game to me for a whole lot of reasons. Firstly it has amazing moment to moment gameplay and it is hands down the best feeling shooter I have ever played. From the moment I heard about the world and the setting I was completely sold… and in truth this is the game that pushed me to buy my way into the current console generation. I got my PS4 console the week the first PlayStation exclusive alpha was happening, and the little I played of it hooked me extremely hard on the concept. Year one had a lot of problems, and I sort of picked at it like you might pick at the remains of a meal you know you are done with… but just keep nibbling on. I did return to paying regularly towards the tail end of the first year, so that I was primed and ready for the launch of The Taken King. From Year Two on however I have been a dedicated acolyte of the world, and own it for both PS4 and Xbox One… and am contemplating making the leap to PC version with the launch of Destiny 2. The game still has some narrative problems, but it does not stop me one bit from enjoying it.

Aggronaut Posts about Destiny

2015: Fallout 4

I love Fallout as a franchise. I still remember saving up the cash to buy the first one when we were in college, and I was completely hooked. I am not old school enough to remember Wasteland fondly, but I have always been a fan of the whole post apocalyptic nukepunk genre. So while I am listing this as my game for 2015… it is a hype cycle that began long before and continues long after. This is still the game I boot up when I am in a specific mood. Similarly I have played Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas countless times, and Fallout 4 simply replaces those in succession. This game is proof to me at least that I care far more about systems, and gameplay… than I really do about the main narrative in a game. In fact the only reason why I probably beat this game is because we chose this as our November/December AggroChat game club game for the tail end of 2015. I would probably still be avoiding the main story… and still off on my own having adventures in my head…. which is in truth my preferred method of playing a game. Just talking about the game has given me this huge urge to boot it up… right now… which would be a horrible idea considering I have to go to work.

Aggronaut Posts about Fallout 4

2016: World of Warcraft: Legion

I have to give a lot of credit here to World of Warcraft and the rebirth of the game that happened with the launch of the Legion expansion. They took a game I thought I no longer really cared about, and was legitimately done caring about…. and turned it into an experience that I rabidly played. I even managed to return to raiding and didn’t check out this time until we were a few bosses into Nighthold… which is in truth way longer than I lasted in Draenor. I’ve reached this point where I am not really playing the game or following it now… but the transformation that took place should nonetheless be honored. They tried a whole bunch of new ideas that they admittedly borrowed from other games… but wove it together in a fashion that felt new and fresh. Similarly I feel like it has to be said that they have done and continue to do a great job of managing patch cycles. They finally broke the “three and done” mold that had happened with Pandaria and Draenor and by all accounts are still releasing interesting content. I know at some point I will return and at the very least finish out the Legion flight meta achievement, but for the time being I am simply not forcing myself to play a game I am not super into. Legion however is probably going to go down in history for me as their best expansion… toppling what was previously my current favorite Wrath of the Lich King.

Aggronaut Posts about World of Warcraft

So now that I have given you mine… what are yours? Feel free to post them in the comments section here… or join in the twitter poll. I am curious to hear everyone’s thoughts.

Unlikely Agent

April 25, 2017 by Belghast

This is absolutely one of those mornings where I am staring blankly at WordPress sort of hoping that a blog post materializes in front of my eyes. I have this fitful relationship with sleep. It is something I crave but something I can never quite get at normal levels. I mean I have my own normal, which is four to six hours of sleep a night. If I get over that I tend to get groggy… which is what happens to be going on this morning. Sunday night I had a horrid bout of insomnia, which when combined with the fact that our middle cat was being insane… meant I probably got two hours of real sleep. So by the time I hit 9 pm last night I was conking out at the keyboard, and decided to put the house to bed and crash. That means I managed to get roughly eight hours of sleep… and my body is confused as hell. Its like… what was this thing, I think I like it… lets do nothing but that from now on! Hence the sitting in my office chair in a dark room, with a cat laying on the desk beside me… staring blankly into oblivion.

Before the impending crash however I spent a good deal more time with Star Wars the Old Republic working through the Imperial Agent story. I mean there is a good reason why I saved this one for last… because in truth this has always been the class that I had zero interest in. I am not a stealthy person… nor am I necessarily a normally deceitful person. So the idea of flying around the galaxy and crushing rebellions through unsavory means did not exactly sound that fun to me. In true Bioware style however… it is allowing me to play a fairly atypical Agent that regularly talks back to his handlers. In truth I am trying to play it much like a smuggler that somehow got drafted into imperial service, and and for this reason I am not using any of the traditional imperial garb, but instead decided it was a great time to break out the Nico Okarr duster.

I am occasionally breaking out the HK-55 helm when I want to feel more bounty hunter than smuggler. I did most of Hutta in this fashion because I felt like anyone called the “Red Blade” simply would not do to be wearing Imperial Garb. All of these mental adjustments are helping me to enjoy the story as I am sort of re-purposing what is happening into the narrative that I would rather be playing. The positive is that apparently Kaliyo is eating it all up, given that she apparently likes violence against those who deserve it… and general smartassery the rest of the time. Because of my general stance of only harming the wicked… I am playing a fairly “grey” character, sitting on straight up neutral currently. This is an interesting departure from the “did you say force lightning” options of the Sith Inquisitor. At the point I crashed for the night I had just started Imperial Balmorra, which is probably my least favorite planet. However just focusing on the class and planetary stories means I tend to get off the various planets pretty quickly, but at the same time feel like I see the entire place through the new classes eyes.

Touch of Darkness

April 24, 2017 by Belghast

I am deeply susceptible to fits of nostalgia, this is a known quantity if you have spent any time at all reading my blog. One of the ways this regularly manifests itself is with a constant sequence of abrupt returns to games that I thought I had packed neatly away. Without fail it seems like the moment I finally get around to uninstalling a given game… that is ultimately the one I am going to be poking my head in next. There are a few times of the year when I feel excessive “Star Wars Patriotism” for lack of a better term. Obviously whenever a new movie releases that is an extreme time of loving all things Star Wars. Similarly the made up internet holiday of “May the Forth” and “Revenge of the Fifth” have some effect but they are largely just contact highs brought on by the extreme amount of tweets I am going to read with pictures from the universe. The one that apparently worked this time however was the Celebration Weekend, which I have several folks in my social feeds that attend. However the absolute tipping point for me was setting a tiny adorable Jyn Erso delivering Deathstar Plans to every Leia cosplayer she came across. When you combine this with the fact that I am kinda in a high point with Bioware right now after wrapping up Andromeda… the two combined turned into me reinstalling SWTOR and picking up where I left off. Ironically I had literally just uninstalled the SWTOR client from my laptop a few weeks back to free up some space.

Around the launch of Force Awakens, myself and a few others of our crew had a short renaissance with Star Wars the Old Republic. At that point I went on a bit of a bender trying to see all of the class story lines, and when eventually faded away from the game I was pretty near the end of the Sith Inquisitor content. So instead of going out and experiencing the new content on my Jedi Knight main… I wound up settling right back into the comfortable groove of running around and being a largely dark side Sith Sorcerer. Its funny how each class really seems to dictate if I can go full Dark Side or not. With the Jedi Knight, if you go Dark Side you just end up being the biggest asshole on the planet. With the Inquisitor however, choosing those Dark Side options just feels right most of the time, especially when it allows me to use force lightning as the answer to any question. One of my favorite sequences involved needed to smuggle someone off of a planet… and using Force Persuade to get past some guards… and then Force Persuading my Ally when he asked how I did that. However as I got later in the content, there were several moments where I just could not be cruel to those who didn’t deserve it. Functionally if someone was loyal to me… I would even go so far as to take a light side option to save them.

When we last played the game it was during the twelve times story mission multiplier, meaning you could get through the game just by focusing on nothing but the main story. Now instead the game highlights anything that is part of the main planetary story arc, and all of your class quests in purple… and in theory it seems like just by focusing on those you can accomplish much of the same thing. However it also seems like every last drop of experience has been increased, because when I hopped back in the game all I was missing was Corellia and the final show down between Republic and the Sith. During the course of wrapping up the tiny bit I had remaining on Voss… and doing all of Corellia… I wound up almost 56 before finally finishing the story. So while the game is no longer quite the elevator to the top that it once was… it still seems to go insanely fast. I started an Imperial Agent last night after wrapping up the Inquisitor… and made it to 12 before leaving Hutta, doing nothing but focus firing the purple quest elements. Functionally it is the Agent that is the last bit needed before having completed all 8 class stories, and it is also the least “Belghast” of all possible class stories. So far it is interesting, and I opted to go Sniper instead of going healer once again on another smuggler type class. I am not entirely certain if I will regret this or not, but I was somehow shocked to see that apparently at some point they did away with commendations, and all of the mod components are purchasable with credits.

I am not entirely certain how long this whim is going to last, but for the time being… I am enjoying myself and I guess that is all that really matters. In the short term I will be playing a lot more Belgeist to see if I can actually manage to finish out the Agent story this time and get the achievement for having finished all eight classes. I am not sure why this matters to me so much, but it is really similar to Elder Scrolls Online, and not wanting to do any of the “expansion” content without having finished all three realms of the original content. I am in a similar holding pattern with not wanting to start any of the Fallen Empire content without having done all eight of the original story lines. Fortunately it feels like the SWTOR goal is a hell of a lot closer than the Elder Scrolls Online goal given that I have yet to wrap the second realm there and have an entire third realm to go. One of the awesome things about being woefully behind in several of these games… is the fact that I can always return whenever I feel like it…. and it seems like I have mountains of content waiting on me to sift through at my pace. This is also why I tend to bounce pretty hard off of the games that have limited time content that functionally means if I am not playing it as my primary game… I will never get to experience it. Whatever the case I enjoyed my weekend of comfort gaming, and time will tell how long it lasts.

Liberating Provinces

April 21, 2017 by Belghast

Last night I played what I would consider a truly excessive amount of Skyforge on the PS4. There was even a point where I left my office upstairs… and logged into laptop downstairs to play more Skyforge over Remote Play. I am not entirely certain why this game is so damned sticky for me right now… when arguably better games like Horizon are not at this moment. My working theory however is that I can only really handle playing one deeply narrative experience at a time… then need the gaming equivalent of celery to clear my palate. Skyforge makes an awesome version of celery… which is probably not at all what the folks behind the game would want me saying about it. However what I mean by that is that it presents a sequence of bite sized interactions and does so in a fairly enjoyable and no nonsense manner. Functionally in the past this is always what I used Destiny for, but with the impending death of that game and the release of Destiny 2 in September… that has really harmed my joy about spending a whole lot of time over there. I mean sure I want to do all the raiding stuff in the new and improved 390 light versions… but that also requires a lot of personal investment in trying to figure out what my clans schedule is like and how I can manipulate my own schedule to somehow be playing Destiny in the nights they are doing the things I need to do. That was one long contorted sentence but it fairly adequately represents how I am feeling about raiding in general right now regardless of the game.

I think one of the big improvements that happened at some point… and is probably not directly tied to the console release is the campaign map. When I last played the game you functionally went to the Aeleon observatory and would be presented with a number of chicklet sized images that represented missions you could run. It felt like there was no real clear order to which you should be taking the content… and as a result I wound up skipping around something horribly and subjecting myself to things that were probably much harder than I should have. The campaign make takes the game and attempts to make a clear narrative, so instead of playing a god answering 911 calls from various parts of an entire planet… you are on a campaign to liberate your people from the invading monsters. Functionally right now I am about halfway through the first fourth province in the sequence of nine provinces, and as of last night… I had barely just left the first one. There are what seems to be four types of content that you can encounter during this process. First there are solo missions that largely involve killing a bunch of mini bosses until you reach the end and ultimately drive the monster influence from an area. The next type is solo boss fights, and these have been pretty rare… but occasionally you are sent up against some sort of “big bad”. Thirdly there are large open world zones where you are ultimately dumped in with a random assortment of other players to complete a bunch of mini objectives. Lastly there are actual proper dungeons that require a group of adventurers to complete… and unfortunately as of yet I have not actually done one of these.

Last night I focused entirely on the solo mission/bossfight types along the main path of the campaign map, and completely ignored the dungeons and large open world areas… because they simply take a bunch of time to get through and don’t actually serve to unlock new areas of the map. I had a purpose in mind, and that single focus was to get to a temple for a class that I had not already unlocked. The reasoning being that I wanted to know just what madness was involved with getting something other than the base three classes unlocked. Sure enough by the time I hit map three I had access to the Archer temple… where I was prompted with two options [Purchase] and [Donate 3,000,000 Credits]. I tried the purchase option and it acted like it was sending me to the Sony store… only to error out a short period of time later. As far as Credits go… at first I thought that was sheer madness but by the time I finished the night I was sitting at around 1.5 million Credits. Sure it is going to suck to unlock all of the classes you might want to play, but it seems like there is going to be a time in the near future where 3 mil credits is no big deal. The purchase option however has me confused because it seems like at least on some level the game is wired to let you buy your way into a specific class. However for whatever reason this does not seem to function on the console… which is making me want to fire up the PC client just to see how the hell it works there. Whatever the case however… I am finding this game extremely enjoyable at the moment and if you can get past its flaws… atrocious boob jiggle and being limited to 3 classes at the start… I am hooked.