Tales of the Aggronaut

Exploring Draumheim

August 14, 2015 by Belghast

Great Sell-Off

Normally this morning I would go into my new game picks for the coming week to serve as alternate writing fodder to Blaugust. However that is not going to happen because I am not really feeling like writing that post today. I am struggling right now with a mix of allergies and asthma that have conspired to make me miserable. One of the things about being sick is that you tend to surround yourself by things that feel comfortable or nostalgic. Just as there is comfort food, there is also comfort gaming… and when I feel like shit I find myself wandered off into games I have pushed to the side. Essentially when I am feeling my worst I am lease capable of dealing with the stress of interacting with other people. As such yesterday and last night I ventured into a realm where almost nobody knows my name anymore… Telara. Rift was one of my games of the week for this past week, and with it comes a series of problems. Namely when I log in I am staring at a bag and bank full of dimension items and crafting materials. I am not sure if you are the same as me in this aspect, but if my bags are a mess there are so many times I will log in and then log right back out because I cannot be bothered to fix that situation. Honestly if I don’t do something quickly in Final Fantasy XIV I will be nearing that point as all of my retainers are clogged and my inventory continues to get more and more semi-permanent additions.

With Rift however I finally did something drastic. Last October Rift released the Nightmare Tides expansion, and I still don’t have a character to the new level cap of 65. During this time I have been accumulating crafting materials from doing the Minions minigame, and quite honestly I have more than I will ever actually use. By the time I actually get around to hitting the level cap I will more than likely have just as much materials I do now. So instead I decided to reinstall BananAH and post every single crafting material on the Auction House. It cost a lot of plat to post everything, but luckily by the end of the night I had managed to quadruple the amount of plat I had going into this experiment, and there are still a bunch of auctions up there that may or may not have sold over night. The money gained was a side benefit, the real mission was simply to clear the shit out of my inventory. At some point I will do the same with the various housing bits, because there are some things I will quite literally never end up using in any design. With the bags clear however I finally felt like I could actually go out into the world questing, and it improved my outlook on the game considerably.

Figuring Logistics

While the great sell-off took care of one issue keeping me from playing Rift, I still had another big one standing in my way. Rift has quite possibly one of the most complicated character creation systems, namely that for a given class you can have any combination of three different souls from a pool of ten potential souls for each slot. If my math is correct… and I would seriously question that… but I believe that gives us 120 possible combinations with a pool of 76 talent points to distribute between your three trees. What I am trying to say is that basically every time I decide to play the game it requires a bunch of research on my part to determine what the current “viable” builds are and what purposes they serve. To say that Rift changes a lot is an understatement… they are constantly patching the game and tweaking things and often times these have ramifications have effects that trickle out and make or break the last patches specs. The class that I tend to care about the most however is the Warrior, and while I have a level 60 rogue and a level 60 cleric… I tend to mostly focus on Belghast first and foremost. So over the last week I have poked around the Class Guide forums and stumbled onto one that looked promising titled: Warrior Solo Leveling (61-65). Luckily it was not too far off from the build that I had tried leveling with before, so I was able to tweak out my hot bars without much issue.

One of the big strengths of Rift is also one of it’s great weaknesses. The macro system is excellent and allows you to do some really interesting things with it. The problem being the game also gives you so many sideways and optional abilities that you feel like you are required to macro everything together for fear that you miss some opportunity for not having 32 fingers to hit abilities with. The big thing I like about this incarnation of the soloing build is that essentially I am really only using one macro, and all that does is chain a series of high cool-down single target abilities onto Empowering Strike. The combo point dump abilities are on my bar separately, as is the main reactionary ability that I hit after using one of them. The feeling is that things are less random than they have felt before when I have played a suggested spec. I am hitting buttons largely because I know what the effect is going to be, and because I want to use it at that moment. Sure I still have one single mixed bag ability, but it feels like it is less important than the things I am not macroing. The other big thing is that it seems like my survival has gone up significantly, which was a huge problem I had previously. I am still under level for the region I am hunting in, but I am wondering if that just means that I missed something important in the previous zone.

Exploring Draumheim

At this point I had a spec and I had clean enough bags to be able to venture out into the world. I had two ports available in Draumheim so I grabbed one and hoped that I had picked the right one. It seems that I did as when I landed there were numerous quests available. The zone is extremely cool with all manner of nightmarish abominations wandering around in the midst of the ocean that is being drained away. The coolest thing about Draumheim is that it seems to be a nightmarish echo of Telara. There are numerous places in the zone that represent areas from the game, for example there is absolutely a version of Meridian and Sanctum as well as a nightmarish version of Port Scion. Similarly I ran into a copy of the great toad-like Greenscale, who represented the aspect of hunger. When I first attempted to play Nightmare Tides I was not sure if I liked it or not, largely because I am not the biggest fan of underwater settings in MMOs. Now almost a year later the subtlety of the expansion is starting to sink in. It is less about us traveling to the physical plane of water, and more about us traveling into the physical manifestation of dreams and nightmares. Nothing in the zones are quite what they seem, and last night I ended up helping out a series of existentially confused hay bales… and I am not making that up… they are quite literally named that.

I still wish we had a more directed questing experience similar to the old world. I know they went in this direction as a way of distancing themselves from the standard questing format of MMOs, but personally I find it somewhat lacking. The story that is there is really good, but there just doesn’t feel like there is enough of it. Mostly it feels like you can’t get through the content by only following the quests. Instead of feeling like questing is optional it feels like I have to do every single quest, and do every single carnage quest that pops up when you kill any mobs… and still do some dungeons or instant adventures or you run into the situation I am in… where I am one to two levels below the content I am trying to do. The leveling experience is much less directed, and this is a change that went in with Storm Legion… but the end result in both expansions was me constantly wondering what I am supposed to be doing next. For most MMOs the leveling experience gets better over time, but I feel like Rift went in the opposite direction. I get it that quest content is fairly expensive to create, and without the subscription model they don’t have that stable source of monthly income to keep said quest content coming. The quests that are here however are really good, and one I did last night took me through a series of “computers” that showed little recorded vignettes from the past, all of them fully voice acted. I like all of the things they have done to make finding quests more interactive… but I wish we had more hub based quests as well to fill in the gaps in content. I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t enjoy myself however, because I absolutely did. I needed a game where I could be anonymous and lose myself in the experience of playing an MMO, and that is precisely what Rift gave me yesterday. I still very much love Trion and the team behind Rift, and it is one of the games I will continue to suggest people check out on a regular basis. I feel like they did the absolute best job of a free to play conversion that I have experienced to date, and I am willing to keep giving them more of my money. I am just nostalgia for the way that questing used to feel in Rift is all.

Tam’s Liebster Questions

August 13, 2015 by Belghast

I posted yesterday a bit about the backlog of posts that I have had that I wanted to make. Yesterday I was also called out by Tam about not responding to his Leibster post, but in truth I just had not gotten down to it. Since tomorrow will be another Blaugust Games of the Week post, I had planned on getting his Liebster post either out today or Saturday, but since he is getting antsy I guess I am going to make sure it happens today. For those who don’t know the Liebster is this well intentioned “award” that is essentially the blogosphere’s version of a chain letter. Normally it is supposed to float around with a cover page full of rules outlining how you are supposed to proceed, and explains things like that you are supposed to choose a candidate that has never been Liebstered. This seems to go around once a year, and based on some of the questions I have seen… I am guessing this is a continuation of last years “strain” because at least one of the questions I have seen floating around is one I came up with. All of this said I am absolutely not down on the concept of the Liebster. I think it is a pretty awesome way to introduce people to new folks, but at this point this will be the third time I have been Liebetered. I am going to ignore the “rules” of the award and not name any successors because by the strictest of rules I should not be getting this again.

Onwards to the Liebster Questions

1 — What is the best spell to cast?

Anything that buffs my melee ability or causes me to take less damage. In truth however… I have to say Resurrection would be the best spell to cast most of the time. Considering how much death I have had to deal with in my life, I have a feeling that is the one I would end up using the most.

2 — What food item(s) from a game do you want to eat above any other?

Nothing from any Fallout game ever… In truth I am not sure if I have ever salivated over any in game food, but I will say I have always wanted to eat a Tel’Abim Banana since they are supposedly sentient beings from another land. Wondering if they taste significantly different than a normal Banana.

3 — You’ve got an infinite supply of one consumable, and can never carry any others. Which consumable do you choose?

That one is simple… Health Potion. Seriously there is no reason for any other consumable if you have an infinite supply of health.

4 — You have to choose a race and class that you’ve never played seriously before. What do you pick?

Honestly this one is hard because I have played most roles seriously in the past. The one class that I always thought I would like but could never really get into was the World of Warcraft Warlock. At face value it seems like a very “Bel” class summoning demons and shit, but the whole damage over time aspect has always baffled me. After starting to get used to the Arcanist a bit, I am going to say that Warlock is something I have been interested in giving a more serious try. I have one somewhere in my 60s in WoW but I largely got there because the leveling curve in that game is laughable and I just made my demon beat things up for me. I would like to try playing it as a proper dot dropping madman.

5 — What game did you think you would hate but actually loved?

This one was a little tough, but I finally came up with an answer I am happy with: The Saints Row franchise. You are thinking… but Bel it is a crazy game where you get to beat everything up with dildo bats… that absolutely sounds like a game you would be interested in. Sure but you have to understand something key here… I really do not like Grand Theft Auto games. Well I take that back, I found one and two good mindless fun, but I could not stand GTA 3… and then each of the games afterwards that I played I also found frustrating. In all fairness I have never really given GTA 4 a fair shot, which I need to do at some point. I am getting off track here, but essentially I always thought of Saints Row as a GTA Clone, and I guess in truth that is precisely how the series started out. What it has morphed into is this insane “no rules” sandbox, and THAT aspect I absolutely love. Saints Row 3 and 4 are both amazing, and I really need to devote more time to playing them.

6 — What game did you think you would love but actually hated?

Citizens of Earth… which coincidentally ended up being our first AggroChat game club game. Everything about that game sounded awesome… until we actually started trying to play it. Hate is a strong word, but really… I never want to play that game again. It was just the worst of smarmy repetitiveness and laughing at itself jokes I have experienced in awhile. Additionally the combat really was not fun at all. I was so amped going into that game, and those hopes were dashed within the first hour.

7 — Pick a zone from any game to live in. Why?

Moonshade Highlands from Rift without a doubt. Gorgeous storms, awesome Dwarves, and big mountain highlands full of little pools and rivers. The crazy woods filled with murderous Fae I could deal without, but the rest of that zone… absolutely perfect for me. Again other than the whole nightmare demons thing I would absolutely love to live in Hammerknell.

8 — You can excise one class from every future game. Which? Why?

Probably anything with a stealth mechanic. It is probably going to surprise people that I did not say “Mage”, but in truth I find stealth mechanics to be among the most frustrating experience I have ever had in any game. The truth is I like the “rogue” archetype, I just don’t want them to be stealthy. I am all about the swashbuckler type character slashing away at things furiously with two swords. Probably the best stealth mechanic as far as I am concerned is that of the Nightblade in Rift because they just used it as a limited time opener, not something to stay in for long periods of time.

9 — What’s your favorite story?

Hmmm this question is so ambiguous. My favorite set up for a game has to be Hellgate London. In fact yesterday was lamenting how awesome the opening cinematic for that game and the subsequent story was. The problem is the game was not really worthy of it, and I would love to see it rebooted into a movie or a television show with its own new game. I have to say though of all of the game stories I have played, the one I most want to see made into a television series is Mass Effect. Imagine that story told over the course of five or six seasons of a high budget television show? Would be amazing.

10 — What hobby does no one (yet) know you have?

The problem with having a blog for as long as I have had… everyone pretty much knows everything about me at this point. In fact I did Factoid February a few years back where I spilled the beans on a lot of these details. I really don’t have any hobbies that would shock someone. The hobby that I need to get back into doing more of however is Photography. It has been a few years since we were regularly going out on photo shoots each weekend, and that needs to change.

11 — What is your favorite secret shame?

Again I can’t really think of something that I have not already talked at length about here on the blog. I am a sucker for John Hughes films, so that would probably be about the closest thing to a “guilty pleasure” that I have… that and I love 80s pop music. It just reminds me of my childhood, when everything seemed possible. As a kid I thought John Hughes films were about the underdog getting their way in the end, but as an Adult they have a much darker theme, namely you can have whatever you want so long as you change everything about yourself in the process. Think back to the Breakfast club… you have Ally Sheedy playing this girl that just wants to be loved by hear parents… and everything is set right in the world by a make over turning her into Molly Ringwald 2.0. Even with the darker interpretation… I still can’t help but love those movies.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I am breaking the chain here and not naming a victim. I still think the Liebster is a good idea and something pretty cool, but at this point I am getting tired of doing them myself. However Tam put a lot of thought and effort into his questions, so I felt obligated to answer them. In fact I think his questions would make a pretty great Blaugust prompt if anyone else wants to answer them. For now I am signing off because I spent way more time writing this out than I expected to, and am now late for work!

A Quiet Night

August 12, 2015 by Belghast

Second Time Just as Sweet

Every now and then things get left on the cutting room floor for one reason or another. For example I really wanted to make my post about the possibility of making our own convention… but I had lots of other things to talk about as well. In Final Fantasy I am presenting sitting in this interesting position being a part of two very different static raid groups. Last week in the Wednesday night group we managed to get Bismarck Extreme, and I was absolutely over the moon about it. This had been one of those challenges that we had struggled with over the course of a few weeks, namely in getting enough geared people online at the same time to take it down. That has been the biggest challenge for Wednesday nights honestly is getting people to commit to regular attendance. With my original raid group on Monday nights, attendance was never the issue. The struggle there was mostly gearing, or at least the fact that we did not have two geared tanks for awhile. However that changed as soon as Ashgar got his Paladin to 60, and geared it in record time. Over all the gearing levels of Monday still lag behind Wednesday, but we found out this week that it apparently doesn’t really matter all that much.

Last Monday we finished up turn 13 of the Final Coil of Bahamut and started the first turn of Alexander Normal. This week I figured the plan was to run all four phases of Alexander normal, mostly to help folks get some gear pieces. I did not realize that we had intended to do attempts on Bismarck at the end of the night. After struggling so much to get through that fight on the Wednesday group, I honestly expected us to walk away with a lot of experience but no kill under our belts. I was absolutely wrong, and I am shocked at just how amazing getting a first Bismarck kill felt with my second raid team. In the past in World of Warcraft, the first kill of a boss is special, but additional kills feel significantly less so. I remember getting my first 10 man Arthas kill several months ahead of us getting it as a 25 man raid and that blunted the excitement considerable. I have to say getting through Bismarck Extreme a second time is just as sweet as it was the first time. My hope is that both groups can start doing this on a semi regular basis which will give me access to so many expanse totems. Now I guess I really do have to get serious about the Ravana Extreme fight.

A Quiet Night

I had every intent of coming home and working on getting my Alexander drops for the week, but that didn’t really pan out. I hit somewhat of an irrational low spot yesterday, and as a result I didn’t really feel like being around all that many people. As such I avoided logging into Final Fantasy XIV and instead played a few other games. Mylin started a discussion over twitter about the Everquest II Time Locked servers, which I guess was responding to some comments I had made earlier in the week. The problem being that I was spending the evening downstairs on my laptop, and I guess I had never actually installed Everquest II on it. There is a streaming client for these occasions, the problem is that the EQ2 streaming client is horrible. The performance halts every few minutes as the game downloads more assets, making the game experience nigh unplayable. I should have simply waited the thirty minutes to an hour that it would take to download the full thing… but I was being impatient. The end result was a frustrating stutter stop experience as I attempted to quest my way through Freeport. Honestly this is a dual problem for me, because no matter what I try the new Freeport always performs like shit. I really miss the old multi-zone Freeport because I never had these issues back then. Now I generally want to avoid going to that town like the plague. I noticed both the Neriak and Gorowyn ambassadors were offering me a switch in my allegiance, but I was uncertain if Gorowyn even existed in this version of the game.

Ultimately I need to do some reading because I will more than happily pop to the Darklight Woods starter experience if given an option. I consider it the absolute best starter zone in the game. I’ve burned through my stockpile of station cash and I feel made some awesome decisions. I ended up picking up a handful of the bags that are being offered since I did not really want to go tailor just to make bags, and I ended up picking up a set of shadowknighty looking cosmetic armor. I have long felt that if you look good you feel better about playing your character. Finally I spent the last of it picking up the tanky rhino mount, but I’ve never really cared for the way mounts look in this game… so I tend to have it permanently hidden. As a result I feel like a bard in that I am just running irrationally fast for no apparent reason. Mounts can make moving around cities awkward as you ultimately end up blocking some of your view as you try and get into buildings and such. I am still only level 11 because really… I had forgotten how slow progression used to go in this game before all of the assorted experience bonuses.

Saving Farmers

I could only handle the stutter and stop gameplay of the streaming client so long before I jettisoned Everquest II for favor of Wildstar. This is a game I want to devote more time to playing because I am really enjoying myself. It scratches the World of Warcraft style game itch pretty well, and playing the Exiles has this fun firefly vibe to it. Quite honestly I think had I started Exiles I probably would have stuck around longer than the initial month. I was not a huge fan of the Dominion, but the Chua made playing them tolerable for awhile. Personally I still think red versus blue faction divides are extremely dumb, and this game is just another reason. My friends wanted to play Dominion, so I joined them there and had a fairly miserable time being a cartoon bad guy. If I could have grouped with them on my Exile it would not have been a problem. Instead there was a faction wall, and I am pretty much universally against faction walls. The difference this time however is that no one I know actually plays Dominion on Entity. This is actually somewhat sad as I can log into my Chua and the Dominion capital city is an absolute ghost town. I roamed around for a good ten minutes one night before seeing a single other player, and when I finally did it was because there were a few people hanging out at the bank.

As of last night I dinged twenty two and finally can use a spiffy sword that I had been holding in my inventory for awhile. There is just something about a weapon upgrade that is special. I could be wearing ten levels lower of gear in every other slot, but if I have a current weapon… I feel good about my life. There were some oddities going on with the server, because it seems like the opening of the free to play beta made more people realized that the game still existed. I admit I am guilty of forgetting to log in. I get caught up in Final Fantasy XIV and doing Eorzean things, but I think I am going to make an effort to start logging in more. Since I have friends playing over there already it might be easier to remember. I am trying my best to push through the Galeras content as fast as I can because I am just ready to see new areas. I did move into the desert region of the zone so that was a bit of a welcome change, although as of last night I was back in rolling hills and farm lands. At some point I need to do the two dungeons I recently unlocked to see if I can get any spiffy upgrades. The highlight of the night however was getting to the next Shiphand mission, because so far those are my absolute favorite part of Wildstar.

Our Own Convention

August 11, 2015 by Belghast

Noble Aspirations

@jaedia @heyitsliore @ysharros I think we need a Blaugust-Con but it would really just be hanging out and playing board games while drinking

— ▪Bel▪Writes▪Things▪ (@belghast) August 10, 2015

This is potentially going to be one of the stranger morning blog posts I have made in awhile. Yesterday during the midst of another conversation entirely I planted a seed, and got a significantly more favorable response than I had expected. Essentially I have thought for awhile how awesome it would be to have some event that let all of the great people I know through gaming or blogging to meet up, hang out, and cause mischief. This year it was my hope to be able to make Pax Prime since there are a significant number of people in the Seatle area now. The problem being by the time I even knew the tickets had gone on sale, they were already completely sold out. Our backup plan was to try and get AggroChat qualified for press passes, but we were summarily rejected without much notice as to why. Every major convention has this same issue, with having way more demand than there are tickets available for folks to attend. So this sent me down an alternate line of thinking… maybe we just need to create our own convention. I know that sounds crazy at first glance but bear with me for awhile.

My wife is heavily involved in the twitter math community, and five years ago they were lamenting how every single professional development workshop they have been to was essentially a waste of time. One discussion lead to another, and the idea was mentioned that what they really needed was a way to get together so that they could share ideas. From there they organized the very first Twitter Math Camp in St Louis, and it was a huge success. That first year only around fifty teachers attended, but each additional year it has grown to this year in Los Angeles there were over 200 teachers. So seeing this go from someones vague idea to fruition maybe gives me a different perspective than the average person when it comes to the thought of forming our own convention. I mean ultimately that is how most gathering start, with a basic idea and then just branching out from there.

Our Own Convention

I loved Pax South, but not really because the convention itself was this magical place. The floor was busy, and there were so many people wandering around that it became hell to find a quiet spot to yourself to think. What made the convention awesome was getting to hang out with people that I had only ever talked to online. When I realized this… I realized that I didn’t actually need a convention to have fun, but in truth could potentially have more fun if I just somehow managed to gather up a bunch of people in one place and time. Even if we quite literally did nothing but hang out and play board games and talk about life, it would still end up being an amazing experience. That said I do think we could convince enough people to show up to make it an interesting experience for all of us. Think about the sort of things we go through with the Newbie Blogger Initiative each year, and ultimately how much we learn from one another. It would be easy enough to throw together a series of panels discussing the finer points of various blogging skills that we have. I mean it would be pretty awesome to record an impromptu live Podcast for example, or a technical discussion in how to get the most out of WordPress. There are real things we could talk about, and with that many game bloggers in one spot we might even be able to talk some game companies into showing up as well. Maybe I am brutally naive… but I think it is a thing that might be doable.

Location, Location, Location

@ysharros @jaedia @heyitsliore @BlueKae all joking aside… I have thought far enough to figure that either St Louis or Chicago would ideal

— ▪Bel▪Writes▪Things▪ (@belghast) August 10, 2015

I literally have thought about this for awhile now, and those thought processes were just made more concrete after returning from Pax. I’ve long thought that the best place for a meetup would be in a central state. Conventions have this problem of being super convenient for people living on one particular coast, but damned near impossible for anyone else to attend. So after a lot of thinking basically I came up with two potential locations.

St Louis, Missouri
Chicago, Illinois

Both locations have strengths and weaknesses, but both are also fairly centrally located making it not too horrible from pretty much anywhere in the United States, and potentially even doable for Canadians. St Louis is significantly easier for me personally… because I know the town decently well and have several friends in the area that I could potentially recruit to help. Chicago on the other hand… other than flying through O’Hare I know nothing about it, and I really have zero support structure to help out with the planning and the details. Its biggest strength however is O’Hare airport, because essentially it is a straight flight from any major airport cutting down the overall travel costs. That said St Louis hotels, venue rentals, and pretty much everything else would be significantly cheaper which might offset the travel costs. All of this said… they both have strengths and weaknesses, but as I said my personal leanings are towards St Louis simply for the familiarity point.

I guess the ultimate question is… would some sort of convention/meetup be something that our community would even be interested in? We would have to set a date well into the future and begin planning now to make it work, but before any of that… I need to know if people would actually come. I think it could be a really awesome experience, and if nothing else let a whole bunch of people that have only ever communicated online hang out and get to know each other. I also think there is a lot of cool stuff we could learn from each other, so I feel like it could be more than just a “gathering”. Over the last several years we have gone from being a vague connection of island states, to being a serious and formidable community constantly welcoming new people. Blaugust while stressful, is an amazing event and just one in a long line of events that we do each year. While I jokingly referred to this as BlaugustCon… it is more than just that. I think we could build something amazing in the real world in addition to all of what we are doing in the virtual world. Like I said.. the real question is do people even want this? I don’t often ask for feedback, but in this situation I absolutely need it. Leave me a line and let me know your thoughts.