Tales of the Aggronaut

Tech Pedantry

February 23, 2015 by Belghast

Roguish Charm

This weekend was one of those where we stayed inside for the majority of it. For starters I still feel like crap, with whatever bronchitis type thing that I have. I think it might be getting slightly better, but still feeling drained from all the coughing. For the most part I spent my weekend in a blanket cocoon on the sofa catching up on the show scorpion and playing an awful lot of Final Fantasy XIV. While some of my time was spent with the guild running group content, a far greater amount was spent working on leveling rogue. The class is really starting to grow on me, primarily because of the extremely well done animations. Even though I essentially only have four buttons that matter right now, the animations feel important and it feels like I am the master of dagger based combat. I started the weekend at level 18 and ended the weekend at level 26 so I am pretty happy with that.

For the longest time I had struggled with what to level next. My monk was the closest to max level at 33 but really there is just something about it that does not excite me. I’ve never really liked unarmed/fist weapon classes in games. At high levels you can get some insane looking claws which I am sure improves the enjoyment… but in general I have never actually liked monk characters in the Final Fantasy franchise. Tifa, Sabin, Yang, and Zell all got a minimum of use in my parties, always favoring other jobs for my melee classes. So I guess for me I don’t have this fond nostalgia for the monk and as such it just feels like a less interesting dragoon. Rogue and I am hoping ninja on the other hand feels like this blade master that moves swiftly and delivers fast attacks on their target. I can see leveling both at some point, but I think for the time being I will be “yet another ninja” waiting in the party finder.

Tech Pedantry

The other aspect of this hibernation was watching all sixteen episodes of the show Scorpion to catch me up to date. For some time now my wife has been telling me that she thought I would enjoy the show. Some people are pedantic about grammar or spelling… for me it is about technology. If you show a technology used in an inappropriate way it grates on my nerves and I struggle to get past it. The logo for the television show is stylized as </scorpion> which is an ending html tag… and it drives me insane that they did not instead use the appropriate syntax for a single tag which would be <scorpion />. Anyways at some point I pushed past this frustration when I kept hearing from friends how good the show was. It took me a few episodes to start caring about the characters but right now I think I am officially hooked.

The strange thing about the show is that for the most part they do get technology right. When they go into a nuclear reactor they talk about SCADA based systems, which are an actual protocol that for the most part runs all major infrastructure. Other elements have a bit of science fantasy applied, but still the vast majority of it checks out in theory. The only question is just how much of the show is based on the real Walter O’Brien and how much is made up for the sake of Hollywood. The hacking NASA thing is supposedly true, but I feel like much of the show is romanticized for the sake of the screen. I am just happy to be watching a show that does a pretty fair job of representing tech, and doing so as close to reality as probably any other show has managed to get. Sure it suffers from the same “goofy interface” issues that any other show does, but I have connected enough with the cast of characters to get past that. All I have to say is that Happy Quinn is a badass, and so long as she continues to be an interesting character I will probably keep watching.

Best Shoes Ever

I have this strange attachment with Vans, Airwalk and Converse shoes. There is just something I like about canvas low tops that make me happy… especially the slip on varieties. I would not say that I collect them but I definitely have more than a handful of pairs that I swap back and forth between. The other day my wife stumbled onto the above pair of shoes and thought I needed them. That is how cool my wife is, that she found something like this on her own and suggested I order them. Granted for size 13 shoes they were a bit more expensive than I originally thought, but damn are they worth it. Today is going to be the first time I wear them, and I am sure I will get some goofy looks… but fuck it… they are amazing. They did have some really subtle Darth Vader shoes that I contemplated getting, but I only wanted to get one pair… and the choice was obvious.

While I am posting pictures, I figured I would drop this one on the blog as well. This is one of those rare moments when all three of our cats are getting along. It is a great size comparison picture that shows just how insanely huge Chloe is compared to Kenzie and Allie. As I write this I have Kenzie the kitten sleeping on the top of a computer case on my desk, Allie picking at a box on under my desk, and Chloe sprawled out blocking the exit to my room. They feel like they should be fed apparently, and are going to guard me until I make it happen. Every time I stop typing the look around anxiously as though I am going to bolt from the room and try and shake them. Living with my fuzzy menagerie is definitely an interesting existence, especially when at the same time both ferrets are demanding attention. These are all the reasons why I often am late getting out the door in the morning, but I would not change it for the world.

Battle in the Big Keep

February 22, 2015 by Belghast

AggroChat 45 – The Citzens of Earth Show

Last night we recorded the episode devoted to the very first AggroChat Game Club title, Citizens of the earth. During the episode we talked about the various aspects of our game play experience. For this game play experience myself and Rae played on the PC, Tam and Ash on the Vita and Kodra on the 3DS. It seems like this game was not quite ready for primetime, because all of the console experiences were somehow fraught with problems. We attempt to dive into the mechanics in depth, talking about the interesting way the game recruits new characters to your party. We also dive into discussion about the storyline and our general feel on how successful the game ended up being for each of us.

I have to say this first game made us completely re-evaluate our process for picking titles for the future. As such going forward we will be doing a round robin starting with Rae. This months title will be Trine 2 which is awesome because I know that has been in a number of Humble Bundles as well as a Playstation Plus title. Our hope is this will make it a fairly easy title for people to join in the fun with. Since this game has two very different experiences for single player and multi-player we will be trying both. I know personally I plan on playing some on the PS4 as well as on the PC to give myself a feel for how the game performs both on a PC and on a console. It should be interesting, and I hope you all will join in the fun and give Trine 2 a play this coming month.

Battle in the Big Keep

On Saturday nights before podcast time we have started doing a semi-raid night where we gather up whoever happens to be on and run eight player content with them. The random nature of these nights is quickly making it one of my favorite evenings of the week. Last night we finally had a full eight player group ready for the latest of the Hildebrand quests. Once again we get into a battle with “Greg” aka Gilgamesh, but the awesome part is this time we really do get to see Enkidu his longtime companion. This entire sequence has been huge for our guild, because we have deep ties to Final Fantasy V. For years Ashgar has been twisting our arms to participate in the Four Job Fiesta with him, and as such we are all very familiar with the shenanigans of Gilgamesh. The sequence of events is almost directly ported from Final Fantasy V and as such we love every new step. There is just so damned much nostalgia wrapped up in this game that it is amazing.

I have to say the conclusion of the Hildebrand quest chain was well worth the wait. I don’t want to spoil anything about the quest chain or the fight… but this is quite possibly my favorite encounter in any game. Everything about it is just so amazing, the only problem is I am not sure how someone is going to complete it being less geared than we are. I was taking so damned much damage as a tank it was silly… which makes me think it has to be percentage based. Otherwise it would flat out kill any paladin tanks I know in the game. I have roughly 11k health and when he cast Sword Dance it would whittle off about 8000 health in a short period of time. We ran the fight back to back, and I swear there will be not getting tired of it for me at least. Also it drops an Enkidu chicken pet.. so I must have it.

Random Groupy Bits

One of the things I am really enjoying right now is having so many different people playing the game at different levels of completion. This is meaning that we need to keep running different activities and revisiting older content. I am absolutely eating this up, because I never really know what I might be needed to tank each time I log into the game. I would love to see us do a semi regular night of doing nothing but the things that can drop pets. Last night Exale needed Good King Moggle Mog, but ended up dropping from a duty and garnering the 30 minute debuff. Instead we pulled together a group and did the Dragon Neck encounter… aka Ultros. The first few times we did this it was super frustrating, but the last couple of times we seem to be getting better. To mix things up Ashgar and I swapped roles and he took Ultros and I tanked Typhon.

ffxiv 2015-02-22 10-52-42-36

We had one bobble in not getting enough water in the various Kappa transformed players “bowls” to interrupt Typhon, but on our second try it went pretty much flawlessly. I am generally pretty horrible at rolling on pets, in fact on Enkidu I rolled an 11. However when Ultros dropped at the end of that encounter, I managed to roll a 95. You can see in the above image me in ninja form standing beside the adorably creepy wind up Ultros minion. I maybe have a problem with minions… right now I have 60… and am constantly looking to get more. It is the little fun things in the game world that make it enjoyable for me. I need to get off my ass and get on with doing the various beast tribe dailies because each of them has both a minion and a mount waiting at the higher levels of faction. I am a little disappointed that there are not more mounts in the game that are dropped off normal dungeon content rather than extreme mode primals. Eventually someday I hope to join in the extreme mount farming fun, but so far these always seem to happen on Saturday nights… when we are recording our podcast.

SkySaga is Pretty Great

February 21, 2015 by Belghast

Strange Days

Yesterday is going to rank among the strangest of days I have been through in my life. For starters I am rather sick, so much so that I don’t have much of a voice right now. How I am going to record AggroChat tonight is really beyond me. It might be one of those episodes where I pester Kodra to be the MC, and I just add some gravelly sounding flavor commentary here and there. So being sick and perpetually feeling like the room is moving aside… I posted a slightly unusual post for me yesterday that to some extent set the community on fire. On a good day I get maybe 150 readers hitting my blog… yesterday I had well over 700. Good or bad what I said seemed to strike a chord with folks… and it was very strange to be riding that out.

The thing that scared me however was the kinds of reactions I got. Everyone was extremely supportive, almost surprisingly so. The aspect that was a bit frightening is how everyone felt the desire to post their own comments on the blog in question. The blogger commented that I had sent my “gang” after her, and in truth I didn’t realize that I had one. If we are to form a gang however, we will have to wear awesome hats. Honestly that sort of power scares me more than a little. I am not sure if I want the ability to without meaning to call down a nuke of their blog from orbit. It just seems strange to be able to move that many people to action… especially when I wasn’t really asking for it. My chief goal was to have some voices that were being silenced heard, and that was the result of yesterdays post. Everything that occurred afterwards, while I deeply appreciate the support, felt like maybe it got completely out of hand.

SkySaga is Pretty Great

Over the last few days I have been lucky enough to be playing the current Sky Saga alpha. I have to say I really dig the game but it is also one that is somewhat difficult to sum up quickly in words. The game itself feels extremely like the various “next generation minecraft” offerings that have sprung up recently. The entire game is voxel based, and if I had to guess is likely using the same VoxelFarm technology that Landmark does. There are moments that in playing lots of landmark… the engine feels very similar in the way it draws nearby surfaces. If I could sum it up best I would call it Minecraft with a purpose, in that there are constantly objectives and mini-quests to be accomplished as you move through the world. The gameplay starts on a tutorial island that ultimately serves as your home base. Anything you build here persists between plays of the game.

The majority of the game play revolves around collecting key fragments, melding them together into a new key and then using that to open up portals to new areas. From here you have access to explore new realms, with enemies, treasure, and resources not available in your home dimension. The game itself is the pinnacle of charming as you play a either a human, cat person, or dinosaur person that gives you some limited customization options. You progress through the tutorial by crafting various implements that you will need like a pick axe, or a sword. The thing that stands out is how good the world feels. The art style and design ethic are carried through every element that you interact with. That means that everything from the breaking of a block to the swing of your sword feels like it belongs in this setting.

Pressure to Complete

There are two main issues that I have with the game design right now. Firstly when you craft a key it is a one shot item granting you essentially a one way trip to a new realm. When you exit that realm for any reason, be it porting back to your home dimension or logging out of the game… you lose all progress in the other realm. This makes it a hard game to pop in and out of for short periods of time. I feel like I need to get the most out of every key for fear that I waste the resources that it took to craft it. The other problem is that when you die you lose everything on your person that has not been dumped in a hotbar slot. The combination of these two make it extremely frustrating because there is no real way to pop back to your base of operations to “save” items in a chest without wasting the portal stone that got you to the new realm.

The other big problem I am finding is that resources seem exceptionally limited. Your starter island has a trove of material to get you started, but the problem is that most of these are in extremely small quantities. The minecraft way of gathering resources is to just find a place and start digging. The problem is I did this for a good thirty minutes last night and encountered absolutely nothing but stone. The world seems extremely static and once the resources are depleted it is essentially a waste to stay there. The frustrating thing here is that you get dumped onto a realm with a number of other players, and essentially you are all competing for the same few items. You may luck out and get a realm with fresh spawns… or you might get a world that is completely depleted meaning you just wasted your own resources getting there. I can already see that more than likely purchasing resources is going to be a key revenue generator for this game.

I have roughly another week to play this game during the current alpha test phase. My hope is that I can manage to sort out some of the issues I am having. The game that is here however is extremely enjoyable and it makes me way to play more of it. I just feel like somehow I am missing something when it comes to how to get the resources I need to complete quests. My hope is given time I will figure out the nuggets of information that I happen to be missing. I don’t really want to take to the wiki pages quite yet, because the game itself has a rather nice in game wiki feature to explain what everything you encounter does. I feel like I am just missing some key unlocks in the “chronicle” as they call it that will help me connect the dots. If you have access to the game I highly suggest you give it a shot. I will be righting a more complete review later once I feel I have mastered more of the basics.

Actual Free Speech

February 20, 2015 by Belghast

Calling Out

A few days ago a good friend of mine Jaedia posted an extremely heartfelt commentary about how the sexual objectification has effected her. It was a brave post, that touched on a lot of uncomfortable discussion points that most people would rather not think about. The awesome thing about it is that it sparked a really good conversation over twitter. In the middle of a series of comments about how Girl Grey had been effected by this same process, some random guy made a comment that completely derailed the conversation, and essentially proved the need for this discussion. I did what I thought was right at the time and called the guy on it, that escalated into a bigger ordeal because he clearly was not understanding what we meant about the context of the comment being important. This all happened on Monday, and after some time thinking about it I decided to post about it the experience Wednesday morning.

Later that same day a post rebuking mine showed up on the Gaming Couples blog. This by itself is no big deal because people disagree with me on a regular basis. Everyone has an opinion and they are of course entitled to it. I thought long and hard about whether or not to post about this today, because I have tried to keep my blog a place of positivity, but I feel like I have to say something because it has gotten too far under my skin at this point. I don’t care that someone called me out for my post, that is the side effect of posting “real” discussion on my blog. I took painstaking care not to directly call out the person involved in the twitter discussion. I went through the painstaking process of pasting the screenshots into Photoshop and then blurring out the names of those involved. What has frustrated me is that the blog post in response to mine is labeled “Freedom of Speech” and the author has not allowed any comments that differ from her opinion through the moderation queue. As such this morning I am taking my blog post to make sure the two responses that I have been sent see the light of day.

The Angry Response

One of the frustrating things about the “Freedom of Speech” blog post is that you could tell very quickly that the individual had not actually read the original post by Jaedia, and at least to some extent read what they wanted to read out of my own blog post. As such when Jae emailed me her response, she did so because she did not think it would make it through the moderation queue. Her response follows…

Hi, “someone he follows” here. Just feel a few corrections need to be put out there. 🙂
He didn’t call me pretty, we were having a discussion on how bullshit sexual objectification is with another Twitter friend and how she felt that before she lost weight she was insulted for being ugly, and after, she was at the other end of the scale and she really appreciated that she wasn’t alone in feeling like she was nothing more than her looks sometimes. Then the dude chimed in with “you pretty” and Bel and myself spoke up for our friend because it was ill-timed and uncomfortable.

No, it wasn’t the worst thing ever. But the fact that the guy kept on his case that he “just wanted to call his friend beautiful” was kind of uncalled for.. sure, it was sweet, but it was inappropriately timed and misguided.

Your opinion is a valid one, but in response to this particular event, you’d perhaps have been better reading my post and the resulting conversation before judging us because it pretty much reads, “I can’t be fucked to find out what they were talking about but I’m angry about it anyway.” We were trying to be civil. This guy decided we were insulting him because, and I quote, “he had a penis”, which wasn’t true in the slightest.

PS. Freedom of speech is totally cool, but it doesn’t mean that everything people say is RIGHT. And why does it always seem to come up when somebody speaks up for something they believe in? Kinda contradicts the freedom of speech argument.

Sure the response was angry and ranty… but for someone who supposedly values free speech so highly I would have assumed it would be moderated through. There have been several comments that I did not find valuable but still I gritted my teeth and pressed the “approve” button. I felt that in order to be true to myself I had to accept all criticism. However later that night I saw the above comment on twitter. Maybe the individual has a real problem with cursing… so I thought that I could let that slide. I didn’t agree with the decision to moderate the comment, but it of course is not my blog.

The Heartfelt Comment

While I could understand potentially moderating curse words, I can not see moderating this next comment. When Girl Grey got wind of the post she apparently made her way over to the blog and left her own commentary. Since she knew that Jae’s comment did not make it through the moderation queue, she also emailed me hers just in case the same fate happened. I told myself that I would give the blogger until this morning to have allowed that comment through the moderation queue before making my own commentary. This is not particularly the way I would have liked to have ended my blogging week, but I feel like I needed to make this post. Below is Grey’s comment…

I am actually the person that was being replied to in the twitter convo, not Jae. To context the whole situation: All involved are my friends, & all still are my friends.

During the whole conversation, I had posted about how, when I was 350+ pounds, I would get looks and stares coming into a room. My ultimate goal was just the be unnoticed. I felt shamed, I felt outcast, and I felt worthless. Fast forward 200 pound loss, and I was also explaining, I still feel that way. I walk down the mall and I hear cat calls. I get accused of showing too much chest area – when I’m still a large chested woman – and beyond turtlenecks, I’m going to show something. My boisterous and naturally flirty personality gets me called a tease. And in all this, I I found people who understood me.

And then the pretty comment happened. And yes, I do believe in the right to say what you want – but there is a time and place for everything. I get compliments every day. I take them with grace and appreciation, as I took this one no different. I actually had a nice DM with the person afterwards, and all was well.

However, that being said, I feel like this situation was akin to coming into an AA meeting and calling the lot a bunch of drunkards; it was inappropriate timing. If we all agree that mental health issues need to be addressed, but then turn around and say “Oh, but if someone says something hurtful, grow a thick skin because there is free speech,” I think we have an issue. I appreciated Bel & Jae stepping in, I don’t feel like Bel was in the wrong.

This morning when trying to decide if I was going to make this post or not, I noticed the above commentary on a second twitter account that the blogger uses. I knew then that no matter what someone posted, it would not end up making it through the moderation queue. It seems that the person is not actually interested in free speech like they claimed in their own post. In fact this is a direct quote from that same blog post…

Free speech isn’t just speech that makes you comfortable. Free speech means everyone is free to engage is speech regardless of the feelings of others.

The hypocrisy of that statement, given the turn of events actually makes me a little queasy to my stomach. I’ve never claimed to be more than I am, nor have I heralded higher ideals than just trying to be a decent human being. However if an individual is going to wrap themselves in the blanket of free speech, then by god they better mean it and live up to those ideals. I’ve tried to make this post as positively as I can, and I have still tried to protect the identity of the twitter accounts that I am referencing. I am just disgusted by this entire chain of events, and should have potentially let it go. However I felt like the comments that never made it through moderation needed to be heard. Thanks for your time and tomorrow we will return to regularly scheduled gaming discussion.