Tales of the Aggronaut

Regularly Playing: June Edition

June 29, 2016 by Belghast

Back in May I decided to make a monthly ritual of “truing up” my “Regularly Playing” widget on the sidebar to more closely represent the games I quite literally was playing on regular rotation. Given that it is that time again… here is the list of things for June. I added a few new games into the mix and also removed a few more… even if one is really only temporary. Doing the thing where I write a blurb about what I happened to be doing in each of them.

Rift

In a weird bit of nostalgia, I decided to come back to Rift and give it another push. There has never really been a period of time when I have not actually at least dabbled in this game, but so many times I failed to gain traction. This time around I somehow managed to push from 61 to 65 and have started on this mad mission to raise all of my tradeskills. Now having almost accomplished that I will be pushing into the Planetouched Wilds and giving it a real amount of effort. On top of this I am focused heavily on my crafting dailies, which often times means I need to venture out into the world in search of Sarleaf and Thalasite. With the shift of WoW to the Garrison for most of your farming needs… I had forgotten just how much I really did love going off and ore farming. There is just something relaxing about wandering around a zone with a purpose, looking for the next ore pop and trying to get to it before anyone else notices. It is this weird game within a game that actually seems to work well for me. I spent many an hour flying circles around Icecrown or Sholazar Basin in Wrath… and now am loving doing the same thing for Gelboro Reef. Largely I am focused on that zone since, firstly I know it pretty well… and secondly the mobs are low enough level that I can go afk as needed and make it back to the keyboard before something actually kills me. I am certain that I could be farming ore while wandering around the Planetouched Wilds, but the mobs out there are truly brutal. Whatever the reason… I am deeply invested in Rift and its community once more and loving it.

Destiny: The Taken King

While I have slowed down considerably in this game, there are still regularly sessions of it… namely because I have been trying to get fellow AggroChat member and good friend of mine Grace settled in game. Monday night we managed to get her to level 40, and pushed through the Taken King quest content… which means that there is an entirely new world waiting for her of endgame stuff. With Iron Banner going on this weekend, I highly expect that the two of us will be working on that or at least attempting to show her the ropes of the event. We also have several more steps in the recruit a friend process, but as we get her gear level up there it should get easier to do cooler stuff. Other than that other games have taken priority over the last few weeks, namely with my return to active duty in FFXIV and running stuff in Rift. Hopefully the Iron Banner will be a good event to get me back into focus and moving forward in Destiny once more. I feel pretty disconnected, and I miss the Thursday night Challenge of Elders stuff horribly, I just had a few crazy weeks with the St Louis trip, and Kansas City trip… and a bunch of other random occurrences that knocked me out of my schedule. Hopefully I can start to rebuild said schedule and get moving forward once more.

ArcheAge

In a similar fashion to Rift, I have suddenly become involved and attached to the ArcheAge community as well. Right now I am largely focused on leveling, but at some point I plan on doing all the tradeskilly things in this game as well. Last year the AggroChat crew made a serious push into this game, and while we faded into the background… I still found it extremely enjoyable. Additionally like I said yesterday, many of the early toxic aspects of the community as a whole seem to be gone. Right now I am trying to get back in tune with the game and try and remember how the hell to do half of the things. On the positive as I grind away at questing I seem to keep getting really nice drops for weapons and armor… however I remember that most of the best stuff I had was crafted. I just happened to time my return to coincide with some welcome back campaign, and I keep accruing rewards into my inventory that at some point I will figure out how to use. Mostly I would like to hit the level cap before worrying too much with them, but I believe some of them are xp bonuses that I might as well use now. If you are actively playing I am Belglaive on the Tahyang server, but I am not sure what all it requires to actually friend someone in game. I am not sure if cross server friends lists are a thing there like they are in Rift.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

I spent most of the month deeply frustrated with this game, namely because I was sitting at what felt like an artificial gear cap and being prevented from progressing in the story. Since then however I managed to get a Void Ark run with some friends and got over whatever anxiety I happened to have about tanking it. As a result I am now sitting at 205 gear score, and bumping up against the Nidhogg trial in the story. It is my hope that at some point this week I can get a few friends together and run this and hopefully complete the 3.3 patch story. I am still enjoying the game, but I lack the drive to play it… that I have in say Rift or ArcheAge right now. For at least the foreseeable future my activity in game is probably going to be limited to our Tuesday night activities, or the occasional expert or other event that I organize with friends. I love playing this game… but right now I only seem to love playing it with a group of friends logged in at the same time. It is still an amazing game, but it has shifted into the sort of role that World of Warcraft has been in the past… that game that I only played when there was an organized activity.

World of Warcraft

This one admittedly is barely making the list, and keeping its space on my sidebar. Right now I am occasionally logging in to run Garrisons and get my free gold, but not doing much more other than that. There has been talk of myself, grace and a few others doing random old world content for transmoggy bits and honestly… that right now is about all I am interesting in World of Warcraft as a whole. I feel like I am in a “desperately waiting for the Legion pre-patch” mode. Largely because I am tired of not having any bank space, and removing any of my outfits is simply not an option. I am not joking when I say that right now the only important thing to me in this game… is looking cool with my collection of old raid gear littering my bank vault. If the new transmog system were actually patched in… I would more than likely go through a flurry of activity as I once again do awesome old world content for cool threads. However I quite literally have hit a point where I maybe have 15 bag slots total between inventory, bank and void storage…. so I simply cannot play Belghast anymore without risking removing something. So instead… I run the occasional garrison mission as I alternate through my army of alts… and then log out once again.

Things Removed From List

Overwatch

Zero clue why on this one… but the game released and I just have had no desire to really play it. I am amped about just how excited everyone else seems to be about this game, but honestly it feels like I am more interested in talking about the world and the characters… than actually playing it. If the player versus bots game were more compelling I would likely play it more often, but right now it feels like to enjoy it I need a group of friend to play it. Ironically I have a huge group of friends playing it… but I think I am going through a “quiet time” phase where I just want to piddle around on my own in games rather than do a lot of organized play. The few nights I rode along with people… I lasted 3 to 4 games before feeling the need to run and hide again. I am certain at some point I will once again get the Overwatch bug, but the truth is I am just not that into competitive games.

Diablo 3

Removing this one again temporarily because well…. the season is over. I have accomplished everything I could ever hope to accomplish, and now is the quiet time until the next patch. This will be returning once again as another season starts and we all go through the crazy happy madness that is a season launch. For a bit I was still farming for pets and such, but with the addition of several games this got removed from the docket. I still very much love this game and look forward to adding it back to the list, but for the moment we are in the off season and the game for me at least is dormant.

Revisiting Old Ideas

June 28, 2016 by Belghast

ArcheAge Resurgence

I have been on quite the Trion Worlds games kick lately after coming back to Rift, and that has how officially spilled over into ArcheAge as well. ArcheAge and I have a bit of a torrid past, or at least it was not a game that I really latched onto from the moment I first played it. In fact in those early Alpha and eventual Beta days… the game had a less than stellar community. That however has changed with time and a significant amount of effort by Trion staff, and the community that exists today is pretty great. I blame Kiwi entirely for me starting to poke my head back into the game, and right now I am largely focused on leveling. Right now I am playing a Firran Bloodreaver on Tahyang server, however as soon as the 3.0 patch lands I will largely be restarting as a Dwarf which will place me on the Nuia faction instead of Haranya. Because of the lag between the South Korean and American versions of this game, we have known that Dwarves and Warborn would be something that would more than likely eventually cross between versions… so I have been patiently waiting. Of the starter races the Firrans were by far my favorite… but if you put Dwarves in the game there is zero contest. So I will have to bid a farewell to the crazy oriental steampunk land that I have grown up in on my cat, and get used to a more european fantasy setting once again. Not necessarily a bad thing, just different.

I believe the level cap is somewhere in the 50s, so I still have a good ways to go since I am sitting at only 36 and that leveling in general does not go terribly quickly in this game. It seems like my return was well timed, given that they gave me some sort of a welcome back package. It included a quest that opens every 24 hours for various rewards, and a bunch of tokens that can be spent on Mirage Island, but I have not ventured back out there to see what all I can purchase with them. At this point I am sorta waiting until I hit the level cap before being too tempted by the shiny baubles. The game has so many little systems and currencies and things that can be done… but I feel like I would need to do a bunch of research to even begin to start taking advantage of half of it. That is why in the meantime I am largely focusing on the leveling game, because combat is something that I understand… and honestly enjoy quite a lot after settling on the Bloodreaver class that is a mixture of Battlerage, Occultism and Auramancy. One of the big concerns I can remember having about this game is the fairly open PVP system, but for the last several zones I have been in “High Tension” zones and really have remained largely uninterrupted in my pursuit of leveling. The ArcheAge community staff deserves some pretty major Kudos for turning the course around in this game, and fostering what appears to be a real sense of community in its players. Looking forward to delving further into it the longer I stick around.

Working on Something

Last night was largely devoted to helping a friend of mine get to level 40 in Destiny and through the Taken King storyline missions. However after I logged out of that game I poked my head back into Rift. I worry that maybe folks reading this blog are getting tired of me talking about the game, but then again I am certain they also felt that way about Destiny, The Division and Diablo 3… or any of the other games I have latched onto and obsessed over. The weird thing about Rift is how much it has felt like “coming home”. What you have to understand is that there has never been a period of time where I did not log into Rift, but for a good chunk of it I was honestly confused by the options. What I mean by that is there are just so many different things that you can do in this game, and I felt like I was missing any real sense of bearing. I would log into the game… see my insanely full bags, see the fact that I was nowhere near the level cap and struggle to sort out exactly what I wanted to do with myself. Then like a sad little puppy I would log right back out feeling confused and frustrated because I had the desire to play… but somehow lacked the force to break the inertia of standing around in the Tempest Bay Canals district. Granted right now… I still spend a good deal of my time in that location… however current it is out of a sense of feeling like I belong there, and not out of a sense of being trapped there. I go out into the world and explore all manner of new stuff, but I wind up returning back to my home base in the crafting area.

A little over five years ago when Rift launched I did a series of posts called “Why You Should Be Playing Rift”. The purpose of these posts was extremely misguided, and was my way of rebelling against “the man” at that time… aka trying to convert the folks still playing World of Warcraft to being Rift players. It worked for some, and others it just caused them to delete my blog from their blog roll, and un-follow me over on social media. The other day I started thinking about these posts and what I was trying to do with them, and decided that it might be interesting to revisit that concept. However instead of writing them in spite, as a way of trying to show the world what they were missing… the idea this time is for me to tell you all what I see in the game. Rift is like that friend in high school that you have maybe drifted apart from… but when you get back together it is like no time has passed. Except in this case your friend has quietly evolved and developed a bunch of cool new things they know how to do. Rift has remained trucking along in the background, seemingly ignored by a lot of the MMORPG players as a phase they maybe went through at some point. It is a game that seems to keep figuring out new quality of life tweaks to make the game more enjoyable. However it is also a game with a bunch of scary looking monetization methods that I think frighten too many players, and keep them from spending more time and getting to know the game the way I do. So while I am adopting the same sort of name that I had the first time… as a sort of revisiting effort, the purpose is completely different this time. My goal is to show you my readers why I feel the way I feel about various aspects of this game. I am still working on the first part, but hopefully soon it will make its way to the front page and kick off the sequence properly. More than anything I guess I wanted to warn my long time readers, that you are going to likely be reading a lot more of Rift and ArcheAge content in the near future.

Of Obsessions

June 27, 2016 by Belghast

In Search of Trays

I could start this post off with a grumpy rant about changes to a game that I found out about over the weekend. However that would just end up creating a general down point for the coming week, so instead I am opting to try my best and push it out of my mind. Instead I am going to focus on the fun that I had this weekend and the positive points. The weekend also involved quite a bit of chasing wild geese, which in itself was a little interesting. My wife is of course a teacher, and over the summer she does what I figure most teachers do… obsess about the upcoming school year. For the last several years Target has had some multi colored trays that serve well as hand in baskets, but unfortunately the last set became brittle after sitting in the incoming sun for an entire year. So one of the things we have been watching for is them to start stocking them once again, and while we were in Kansas City we found two of the six colors, but did not end up picking them up because we assumed they too would be plentiful in our area. That however was not the case and this past week over lunch I went to check a few Targets, ultimately finding none. Saturday we wound up at our own local store and they happened to have four colors, allowing us to pick up most of a set.

The challenge with the Target dollar spot… is that every teacher ultimately stocks their classroom with the stuff located in it. That meant that we had a very limited window to be able to get the last two colors of trays. So Sunday after my wife got back from church we went roaming around the Tulsa metro area hitting quite literally every single Target store looking for a yellow and a purple tray. Fairly early on we found the yellow tray, but it was not until the very last store we went to that we managed to find purple. Ironically it was at the last store… the one furthest away from us… that they happened to have all six colors in one place. Had we reversed the order it would have likely been the one closest to us that had all six. As I commented this weekend on twitter, this is the life of a Teacher’s spouse. I cannot count the number of times we have made such trips hunting for this specific item or that… be it office supply stores, dollar stores or in this case a Target. Over the years I’ve spent many an hour sifting through disheveled bins of stuff looking for that one item that matches whatever other item we happened to be looking for. The sheer dedication that the average teacher has is just phenomenal, and even more so is the rapid sharing of tips that happens when you get two together. In Kansas City we rolled into the Target dollar spot and found the obvious signs of other teachers… and before we knew it folks were sharing tips on best ways to clean white boards or where you could find this or that item at a better deal. Long story short… we managed to complete the set of bins which marks this mission off the list… which I am certain will only be replaced by a dozen other similar adventures before school starts back up in a month and a half.

Of Artifice

As far as gaming goes I spent the bulk of my weekend running around in Rift, shifting back and forth between several different activities. Out in Twilight Highlands there was a limited time event called Arclight Ascendancy that allows players to run a couple of quests to get a currency… that can ultimately be saved up to purchase an Arclight Rider or Lifter mount. At some point I have apparently completed this event… either that or some account entitlement gave me a slew of currency. Essentially this event allows you to slowly gather the currency needed to purchase what would normally be a store only mount. In the past I have participated in similar events for the Budgie mounts, and in the grand scheme of things these are not intended to be completed in a single pass but instead over the course of multiple events. The interesting thing about them however is that one of the daily quests requires you to mentor down to within the 25-30 level range to accomplish it. As far as that goes Rift’s implementation of that system is probably the best I have seen because you simply right click your name and choose a new level… and then bam you are functioning at that level without having to give up any of your abilities. The other thing that I am enjoying about doing the quests is that it puts me back in Twilight Highlands and Scarlet Gorge on a daily basis… two zones that I absolutely loved from Telara.

The other big thing that I worked on this weekend was leveling my Artificer skill. This is of course slowly bankrupting me, but nonetheless I still felt the desire to keep pushing forward. I spent many an hour this weekend roaming around Gelboro Reef doing quests that I never finished out there… and farming up Thalasite ore and Sarleaf that would ultimately be converted into fuel to feed the fires of industry. Yesterday evening I managed to push ahead and get to the current level cap of 450. Now will I actually do anything with that level other than daily crafting quests? I honestly am not sure… I’ve never had a max level artificer before now. At this point in the cycle I doubt there is anything I can craft that is not better than the gear I can get from a combination of weekly patron chests and instant adventures/experts. However having a whole slew of crafters means that I can rapid-fire through the crafting dailies and get patterns quickly. I need to some time researching what if anything I can craft that is a damage upgrade… or more importantly a hit upgrade. Now that I have finished with another crafting obsession I really need to get back into the process of digging into the Planetouched Wilds. That area is huge and full of all manner of weekly quest opportunities, and I have barely scratched the surface.

MMOs and Steam Sale

June 24, 2016 by Belghast

The Sale is Here

It is that time once again, for the Steam summer sale… one of two major sales that seem to happen each year on the Steam platform. Over the years however it has changed significantly. The first one I actually participated in was just a bunch of bundles, that allowed you to get the entire game library of a specific company for insane discounts. I remembered I picked up the entire THQ library at the time including something silly like 40 games for $30 dollars. As the years have gone by the sale has morphed multiple times, often times incorporating mini-games into it, and even saw the introduction of the trading card product. The other thing that has changed… is that the discounts are nowhere near as insane as they once were, but instead the same basic price throughout the entire week. So instead of catching a four hour window of a game being 75% off, it might simply be 50% the entire duration of the sale. I guess this is both positive and negative, in that those flash sales inspired a ton of impulse buying… but also a ton of frustration in that if you didn’t happen to be watching the site at 3 am you maybe missed that one game you really wanted to pick up. Instead now it is just a good time to pick up those games that you had on your wish list, but for one reason or another never got around to picking up. Last night for example I picked up The Witness and Firewatch, because both are games we have kicked around as possible AggroChat game club titles in the future. Neither were really things I was in a rush to pick up, but I might as well catch a bit of a break in doing so.

How About MMOs?

Over the last several years a good number of MMORPGs have filtered their way onto the Steam library as a method of expanding their base, so while you won’t find Star Wars the Old Republic, or any of the Blizzard products because they are locked behind their own digital distribution systems… you will find a good number of other games. I thought I would poke my head around this morning and see what kind of deals are out there for those who heavily favor MMOs like myself. The result is a pretty mixed bag, and to be honest I just clicked on some of the games that interest me. There are likely deals out there for titles that I have never even heard of because Steam has been the great equalizer in expanding this genre. Additionally the term MMO has become utterly meaningless… which means you have everything from a MOBA, an Area Shooter, a Creative Building Game, and traditionally MMORPGs all sharing the same generic banner these days.

Final Fantasy XIV

I figured I would start this off with what I consider to be one of the better deals. Final Fantasy XIV is a huge game, and right now you are able to pick it up for half off the already fairly low starting price these days. You can pick up the base game for $9.99 and the Heavensward expansion for $19.99. The collectors edition version of the game is also available but you are only going to get a %20 break there.

Base Game and Expansion 50% off

Elder Scrolls Online

A similarly good deal is ESO which offers both the base game and the Imperial Edition at 50% off currently. The thing that I did find surprising however is that none of the DLC is actually sold through steam, which means you will have to watch the Crown Store if you want a break on those. The way to skirt all of the DLC issues is to of course subscribe, and still with only the base game you have a bunch of play time there. You can pick up the vanilla version for $19.99, but I would highly suggest just going ahead and grabbing the $29.99 Imperial Edition because it has enough perks to make it worth the little bit extra.

Base and Imperial Edition 50% off

Warframe

Warframe is of course a free to play title, and you can grab it from Steam at any point you like and start playing. However at some point you are going to want to spend some money, and in our brief experience playing the game… the Steam bundles seem to be a phenomenal deal. There always seemed to be some little perk that pushed them ahead of what you could get for the same amount of money from the in game cash shop. During the summer sale all of these bundles are 50% off making them even better deals. Generally speaking you get some in game currency, a bunch of really nice weapon and armor mods… and then some boosts which I never actually used. Well worth checking out if you play Warframe.

Currency/Mod packs 50% off

The Secret World

The Secret World has morphed payment models over the years and is now a “Buy to Play” title, which the base game being extremely cheap, and every few months them releasing a new “Issue” that includes new content. I ended up getting in on the ground floor of this game and purchased a lifetime subscription account, and as a result there is honestly no reason for me to ever buy anything else. That has been a double edged sword for Funcom, because it got them quite a few big purchases in the beginning… but a good number of the most devoted players these days are also Lifetimers so not really adding much cash flow to the product. All of this said… this game goes on sale rather frequently and each time I make a big production of spreading the word because it is a really amazing game. It has some of the best storytelling I have experiences in any MMO full stop. Right now you can pick up the base game for roughly $10 and the Ultimate edition that includes a ton of the Issue based DLC content for $20. If you do not own this game stop what you are doing and buy it now… that is all.

Base and Ultimate Edition 66% off

Wildstar

Wildstar has been down its own rocky road lately, and it is pretty new to the steam platform. As a result there are a lot of the offerings that are not participating in the summer sale. However if you missed out on the madness that was purchasing cheap retail boxes of the game to turn them in for subscription time and bonus goodies… then I highly suggest you check out the Cute and Cuddly pack. This includes both the Glitterkitty Hoverboard and the Snarflyx mount… and several other things. The discount is only 20% but right now Wildstar needs your love so if you are at all interested check the bundle out.

Cute and Cuddly Bundle 20% off

Eve Online

I have tried to play EVE and it just doesn’t click with me. It is the best asteroid mining simulator ever created, but I can never seem to break myself out of doing just that. It is one of those games that is extremely interesting to read about, but just not that interest for me to actually play. Once upon a time I was supposed to write a four part article series on this game, but I failed miserably to get past part two. All of that said… if you are an EVE player there are some extremely interesting deals during the Steam summer game. The base game is 75% off and the premium edition %50 off… but in addition since this game requires an active subscription steam apparently sells those too. It is hard to tell if those subs are actually on sale, or if they are just showing you the traditional “buy 12 months” discount. In any case it is not a bad time to buy into the game if you have always wanted to give it a shot.

Base 75% off, Premium 50% off

Rift

Rift is another one of those games that has seen wild mood swings in the payment model department, however as it currently stands the game is entirely free… with a few caveats. Each time they add new content as in zones and dungeons and systems… those are completely free and you can go from level 1 to the currently cap of 65 without spending a dime on the game. They do however offer you a plethora of methods for giving them money for little incidental things. Where the DLC packs come in is that you enter the game with a base set of souls, and over time they have released a new set with Storm Legion, Nightmare Tides, the recent Ascended Pack and entirely new class with the Planetouched Wilds. These are not included in the base game and have to be added on piecemeal, and this is largely the sort of thing that is being offered on Steam. There is also the grand daddy of all DLC packs the Rift Ultimate edition that packages up and includes everything you can get from the other packs. During the Summer Sale these are all 25% off, so its a good time to catch up on whatever souls you might be missing like the new Ascended Pack which is currently $26.24.

All DLC 25% off

YMMV

There are also a bunch of games that are not participating at all, like the Perfect World titles Neverwinter Nights and Star Trek online for example. While Rift and Trove are participating, ArcheAge does not appear to be. Basically this morning I wrote this post because at least for me personally… I rarely think of using the Steam sale as a way of catching up on my MMO content that I might have neglected. For those who only have the base game of Final Fantasy XIV for example… right now is a damned fine time to pick up Heavensward even if you have not gotten to that point in the story. Similarly like I said above if you were going to pick up various souls packs from Rift, you might as well do them now at a cost break. The Steam tagging system is often times a pretty horrible thing, but you might check out the Massively Multiplayer tag because it shows most of the deals that I was talking about above and much more. MMOs are kinda the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to gaming, and all of them you will be playing for months and potentially years ahead. It is well worth checking out during the madness that is the Steam sale.