Tales of the Aggronaut

Twenty Legs

December 21, 2014 by Belghast

Double Feature

Last night was both amazing and horrible at the same time, for so many different reasons. Since it is holiday season our ability to record AggroChat is going to become increasingly strained. In fact last night both Rae and Tam were recording on location at their respective parents houses. For some time we had been kicking around the idea of having a “Game of the Year” podcast. The problem with this concept is it would require us all to actually agree on what we felt was our game of the year. While there is a lot of overlap in our tastes, there is also an extreme amount of divergence. The end result had us recording our “Games of the Year” podcast, in which each of us picked five games we felt were significant to us in the past year, and then we as a group talked about all of them.

The end result is that between last night and this morning I had over three hours worth of recorded audio to sift through. Thankfully we totally did this on purpose as it allows me to split this one episode into two still significant episodes worth of discussion. As such I have released part one today, and I will release part two next Sunday, giving everyone a much needed break from recording to go hang out with family and friends and not care about being home by 9pm on a Saturday night to strap into a chair and record a podcast. The other side effect of this whole thing is that I was up until 2 am last night, and then back up this morning at 8 am to finish editing. I quite literally just finished editing everything and uploading the first part when I sat down to write this post. It is going to be a really long day.

Shrine to Geeks

The reason why it is going to be a really long day, is that yesterday was ALSO a really long day. I got up fairly early, and as my wife was getting dressed and ready knocked out yesterdays rather frantic blog post. Then from that point until I literally sat down to record AggroChat last night, I was either driving or shopping. We took my mother in law with us to Joplin Mo, because one it is a really cool town and two it is not terribly far from where she lives. We had a whole bunch of things that we wanted to do, but one of them was to go to the Mall. It really is borderline suicidal to go to any Mall on the weekend before Christmas, and by the time I got out of there I was absolutely done with humanity for the day. One of the cool things about the Joplin Mall is that several years ago Vintage Stock went in and created this insane flagship store.

Now I have talked about Vintage Stock before, but it is really hard to grasp the scale of this place until you are actually in it. Imagine going to a Wal-mart, where everything in the store somehow pertained to geekdom. The amount of consoles, comics, rpgs, videos, puzzles, books, board games, and action figures is really hard to grasp. I tried to snap a picture to show you folks the scale of this place but it extends out on either side from the vantage point I took up. Hopefully at least you can get the idea. On a normal day it is absolute sensory overload… but yesterday with all the people packed in… it was a bit too much for me to handle. Thankfully we make it to Joplin fairly often so even though I did not really get to enjoy the bounty that is this store… there will always be another trip to explore it under more calm circumstances.

Twenty Legs

One of the regular themes of my blog is that we like to go to Flea Markets and junk stores. One of my favorite activities here is to take photos of the random strange things I happen to find. Sometimes you find an item that creates far more questions than you could ever possibly answer. For example the above photo is a box of 20 Furniture legs… for $5.95. While I am not really sure what the going rate for disembodied furniture is, that seems like not too bad of a deal. The problem is… why do they have a box of 20 furniture legs… and better yet who is going to come along and NEED a box of 20 furniture legs. I have a feeling these are the sort of thing that are extremely specific to the piece they came off of, so unless you happen to need exactly these legs for your furniture… you probably have no interesting in this box. Better question is why would someone purchase furniture without the legs in order to need said box of 20 legs.

There were a ton of strange and cool things to be found. For example I thought this Igloo style R2-D2 cooler was pretty awesome. The inside of it was roughly the same size as one of those large drink cooler that sports teams use to dump Gatorade on their unsuspecting coaches. While it was pretty great… it was not $75 worth of great. Had it been somewhere in the $20-$40 range I probably would have snapped it up, because seriously when the hell else am I going to find an awesome R2-D2 cooler. Then there is the just straight up bizarre collectables. The above photo is this group of mannequins dressed up in various outfits. For starters… I struggle to wrap my mind around why these were created in the first place. Secondly I also struggle to imagine who decided it was a good idea to purchase them. Thirdly… I find it even stranger that someone thought that selling them as another really good idea. I picture somewhere someone has a whole set of these disembodied figures in various bright outfits, because while I snapped a picture of four standing side by side, there were probably a dozen different ones in the booth. Since they appear to be missing legs… wondering if I can somehow reunite them with the furniture legs above.

Finally I always end up finding things that make me feel extremely old. I guess that ultimately is the sign of aging, when a good chunk of the things found in a flea market are things from your childhood. On the right we have the infamous Kraco Stereo Cassette Adaptor for your 8-Track tape player. This was awesome for vehicles that had an 8-track deck in an era that rapidly adopted the Cassette tape instead. I say infamous because it had a notorious reputation for completely eating tapes. I remember using this to survive a family trip to Colorado with my cousins, and as we went across country… it slowly mangled a Phil Collins tape until it was completely unrecognizable. Ultimately mangled or not… we considered the ability to actually play tapes in the massive conversion van worth the risk. I posted about this on twitter yesterday and it turns out a lot of other folks that follow me also had mixed memories of this device. In any case seeing it hanging there in relatively good packaged condition brought back a ton of memories.

World Without Levels

December 20, 2014 by Belghast

Holiday Hassles

Today is going to be an extremely quick blogpost because I am pretty much under the gun. Were I a proper and responsible adult I would have posted something last night. However when I got home from work I was completely drained and while I hung out and played games for a bit… I also crashed significantly earlier than even my wife did. Today is going to be an extremely day as we are officially beginning our Christmas shopping. This is actually pretty good for us because in general we are those folks wandering around on Christmas Eve trying to find those last few gifts. I like getting stuff just as much as the next person, but I really wish there was a way to turn Christmas into Thanksgiving 2.0. The gift giving just seems to get in the way of what should be an otherwise amazing holiday.

There is the pressure to get something awesome for people who have literally not seen since last Christmas. Then you end up with the gift of shame… the gift card because really you have no clue at all what this person might want. Instead if it were just Thanksgiving 2.0… we would share a meal together, and a conversation and not be constantly dreading the impending gift exchange awkwardness. Personally I am one of those people that if I wanted it at all, I probably already bought it, and my wife is the same way. So I feel like we are both exceptionally hard to buy for… so mostly people just don’t try and we ultimately end up exchanging cash, either in gift card form or actual crisp bills. Which brings me back to… what exactly was the point? A nice meal, a conversation… those are the things that are really valuable.\

World Without Levels

Yesterday a couple of my friends spun topics off of yesterdays post. Lord Tridus commented that games should “Flatten or wipe out the level curve entirely and content now becomes scaled on gear”. As Rowan stated in his follow up post, this system already exists and is alive and well in The Secret World. The problem that I see with that system however is that you still have leveling in the form of total Ability Points gained, which are then used to purchase ability unlocks. In theory it works, but the problem with the system is it becomes increasingly difficult to “restart” and try and go down a completely different path. Ultimately this became a wall for many of my friends because the classes we wanted to play… ended up being ultimately completely unviable when we reached the endgame aka “Nightmare” content.

Without a way to completely reset your character we had no way of really retooling after spending all of this time leveling ourselves into a corner. Actually I experienced the same problem with playing Champions Online. If you failed to follow the magical golden functional path, that game became an unplayable mess with you reaching a point very early on when you simply could not do the content you needed to. The part of this equation that I feel has not been solved is how to grant abilities in a way that is not grindy. I personally find The Secret World somewhat frustrating when I think about grinding out enough ability points to earn all of the abilities. I spent probably hundreds of hours killing vampires in one of the higher level zones doing essentially just this… that and farming gear to be broken down into crafting materials. I just don’t see that as being the answer to the level problem either.

New Ability Gains

Ultimately the problem that remains is we need a new an interesting way of gaining abilities. I think maybe Guild Wars 2 at least had part of this equation right, in that the equipping of gear SHOULD be what unlocks your abilities. The component I would change to this equation however is that they “Teach” you abilities instead of only give you abilities while the item is equipped. This completely changes what is considered a valuable item. Sure a sword might not have as good of stats as the one you are currently wielding but if it gives you a new “Life Drain” ability that can be learned while completing content with it equipped… that would make it worth keeping until at least you had learned that ability. Random loot becomes interesting again because it might have an ability that you have not yet unlocked.

Ultimately this sort of system only works if you also have a limited amount of slots for you to put abilities in. I think this is pretty much going to be the rule going forward that you should have no more than one hotbar worth of abilities at any given time. This does two things for your game… firstly it makes it significantly easier for a new player to get into the game because they only have to learn so many keys to press at a given time. Secondly it allows your game to be ported to a console significantly easier due to the limited number of button press combinations available. The importance of making abilities in such a way so that no one ability is that much better than everything else is also key, that way there is a significant opportunity cost to each choice. In any case… I feel like a game without levels can work, but you also have to take away the ability grinds. To me at least, learning a new ability from an item, feels significantly less grindy than simply racking up a currency that you then spend to unlock things. I would love to hear other players thoughts on this concept as well.

Long Live BLEX

December 19, 2014 by Belghast

An Interesting Thread

Today is my last day before going on a two week break, and I am absolutely pumped. However instead of talking about that, I am going to talk about an interesting thread I read yesterday afternoon. In the thread Blizzard talked about a series of potential changes coming in 2015 to improve quality of life. There was of course a mention of the new heirloom collection system that would make swapping heirlooms between characters on your account significantly easier. My hope is they also make the acquisition of these heirlooms significantly more straight forward. There was the announcement of a Legendary follower coming to our Garrisons as part of the legendary item quest chain. At this point I already have what feels like an army of followers sitting in disabled status, so that isn’t really that important to me, but its a nice to have.

However as you wade into the post there are significantly more controversial topics. For some reason a lot of folks on twitter seemed to stick on the fact that they were considering integrating WoW with twitter. This is one of the features that I absolutely loved about Rift, that I could hit /tweetpic at any point and send a picture to my twitter feed along with some text. Even more so I am hoping that they go as far as Rift did and allow us to see our twitter feeds in an in-game tab. I loved being to read and respond to tweets while playing a game. Now some folks are complaining that this is going to make twitter feel super spammy… and it probably will for awhile. That said we learned to tone it down in Rift so I am sure folks will learn the same lessons in WoW. WoW also doesn’t seem to give you an achievement every five minutes the way that Rift did, so that should help cut things down as well.

Long Live BLEX

The most controversial thing in the post was an announcement that Blizzard was considering creating a token system that would allow players to trade a month’s subscription on the auction house. Now this system works extremely well in Eve (PLEX), Rift (REX), Sony Online Games (Krono), and Wildstar (CREDD). From now on I have decided that I am going to start referring to this idea as “BLEX” or Blizzard Exchange, because it fits the Plex/Rex naming scheme. A good friend of mine suggested “BLUX” for Blizzard Bux, which is also pretty great. In any case this is not a new concept, but in fact one that is alive and working in many different games. The system has always felt like a win/win for me, but I know there are folks out there that are extremely skeptical of it. Essentially it allows two things… firstly players that have more time on their hands than money, can ultimately play the game for free by purchasing BLEX for gold on the open market. Secondly it allows players who have more money than time to purchase an extra months subscription and trade it off for in game currency.

Why this is important is that it almost instantly destroys the third party in game currency market. When I first started playing online games… gold farmers were quite honestly an army of players who sold gold and platinum to clearing house companies for real currency. While it was frustrating to see areas of the game camped by sellers… this was more a nuisance than a really dangerous problem. Then the account hacks started, as the criminal underground entered the business of selling in game currency. The primary source for the third party sellers was the pay folks to compromise accounts and then attempt to cleanse the money through a series of throw away alts before selling it to a customer. Every last bit of gold was in essence compromised because you could not tell the legitimately farmed currency from the stolen. When you legitimize the purchase of in game currency this market quite literally goes away over night. It becomes no longer worth the time to hack an account and steal currency, because the price gets driven down to margins where they cannot really profit from the sale.

BLEX is Good For Games

I’ve always seen these type of systems as a bit of an equalizer, in that if you are coming into a game your friends are playing months behind… you can spend an extra months subscription to help catch up on the currency side of things. In the games that have had the system it did not actually have any catastrophic effects on the market, in fact in many cases it drove the price of goods down significantly because they were no longer the sole means of money acquisition. The nice thing about having a market traded transfer of gold is that the value fluctuates with the game. When the REX system first went into play in Rift it was trading for roughly 900 platinum, now as the game has released additional content and the acquisition of money has gotten faster in game, that price has increased to around 1500 platinum. Items sold on the auction house themselves seem to move significantly more quickly, considering that players no longer feel quite so pressed for funds. During the Nightmare Tides expansion launch I crafted several pieces of armor that sold for a couple hundred plat a piece.

Rift however is not the only game I have seen this working in first hand. The Krono system also has been really good for Everquest 2. Prior to its launch there was an unofficial market of selling game time cards in open chat for platinum, much like there is an unofficial trade of purchasing items from the trading card game in World of Warcraft and then turning around and selling them for gold in game. The release of the Krono pretty much closed that market down entirely and with it no longer being an unofficial process… actually reduced the cost of a months subscription time. I watched the prices for Krono start about what folks were openly trading a game time card for a week before… and it quickly dropped down to something more reasonable for the players purchasing that account time. So ultimately this works out decent for the folks trying to purchase game time with their in game currency. I expect were BLEX to launch the currency tokens would start around 100,000 gold… and trend downwards for awhile. What is interesting is there is always a monthly up and down cycle… towards the end of each month the prices spike as folks are needing to purchase the next months game time.

Doubling Down on WoW

Ultimately I see this discussion that is happening as a positive thing. Blizzard has a strike against it in the RMT department, and fans are not quick to forget it. The real money auction house was a pretty horrible concept, but thankfully this “BLEX” idea is one that has been well tested in the market already. If they simply follow the same model that is working for everyone else, I feel like they will be just fine… so long as they don’t “tweak” it to make it more insidious. Essentially I see these changes as Blizzard trying to modernize their game. It lacks a lot of the features that we have just come to expect from other titles… and previously I think the end game was always that Project Titan would come along and offer a modern MMO under the Blizzard banner. However with that project now gone, and no new Blizzard MMO on the horizon… I see all of this as them recommitting to World of Warcraft being their flagship MMO title.

There are a lot of things that I would like to see integrated into the game. I still feel that it is in desperate need for a mentoring system, to allow you to play older content for real with your friends. One of my chief frustrations with the instant 90 system was that it functionally said that nothing released before Warlords of Draenor had any “value”. There is so much amazing older content, that I think players who have not experienced it… are missing something fundamental about the World of Warcraft experience. My hope is that they will devote the resources that had been lacking on making the quality of life changes needed to bring World of Warcraft back to truly top tier status. When this game launched it took the best ideas from all the games around it, refined them and applied a coat of polish to all of it. It is time for Blizzard to do the same thing again, gather up the current generation of MMOs best features… and integrate them into the game.

Dirty Santa Playtest

December 18, 2014 by Belghast

Presentation Given

Yesterday the tension was all built up over a presentation I had to do at work, and now that it is over I feel like I am officially checked out mentally. Friday is my last day before I go on an extended holiday break that lasts until January. At this point I am just so ready to be not at work, and fortunately it seems like everyone else around me is in the same condition. Unfortunately there are still a few things that need to be wrapped up before I can in good faith leave for break. As far as the presentation went, by all accounts I nailed it. In fact one person commented that I should have dropped the mic as I walked away. Unfortunately we did not win the contest, but that is partially because even I did not think we had the best idea. We had a strong showing, but our application is mostly for internal use… whereas the person who won, and that I actually voted for myself… would be used by the public and be really cool for them.

There was a small cash prize riding on the line for the contest, and while it was cool it wasn’t really a motivating factor. I wanted to give a strong showing for out team, just to do it. What was kind of amazing is just how fundamentally humble the winners were. Early in the projects life I had helped do some high level system design, and at various points along the way we added some help here and there. The web group is a really cohesive entity, and we are constantly helping each other out. Well when the team got their cash prize, they immediately tried to stuff some of it in the hands of me and another co-worker that had helped them along the way. So much so that they would not take no for an answer. The entire process gave me far more warm fuzzies with the way things turned out, than had I actually won.

Dirty Santa Playtest

didntplaytestthisatall Before the presentations were given we had a big group outing where we went to an Irish pub and commandeered the back room for a Christmas party. I mentioned the concept of “Dirty Santa” online yesterday but a few people had never heard of it, so figured I would give a quick explanation. It is known by a lot of different names but around here it is mostly referred to as “Dirty Santa”, because it involves stealing presents from other players. You somehow pick numbers for the people in your group, for us we went on number of years employed at the company, with the “newest” person going first. When it comes your time you have two choices… pick a gift from the pile of gifts not yet picked, or steal from anyone in the group that has a present that you want. Then that person has to go pick a gift as well. To keep it from cascading forever we have a rule that any given gift can only be stolen twice… meaning the third person with it has it for life. This often adds a strategic element to the game, especially if there is something everyone wants.

What is awesome about our group is that we pretty much bring gifts in one of two categories. The vast majority are somewhat geeky, or at least are something a geek would care about. The second category is alcohol which is always a fun gift. Often times the gifts play on he vices of the group as a whole, so Legos make a frequent appearance. I personally brought a Walking Dead starter kit with the first season and a couple of those funko random boxes. My goal was for someone to end up with it who was not already hooked on the show… since several of us watch it pretty much religiously. I ended up walking away with the card game above, that I had actually seen before and wanted to play. Right now I am leaving it at work and some lunch we are going to grab a conference room and play it. It is really awesome to have a work family that you actually like, and its moments like this that reinforce my decision to stick around.

Roflstompy Good Time

Last night we once again queued for LFR as a guild, and I have to say I am digging doing this. In part because it assures that we will have enough people to remove any abusive troublemakers from our group, and two it lets us get our strategies down smoother in a completely zero pressure environment. For the most part we just take over any group we are put into, and control the pulls and progress of the raid… and as such clear the content in what feels like record times. I think last night we did both raids in less than 30 minutes. I had a decent night overall picking up boots and bracers that were technically upgrades… but pretty horrible stats. Then I picked up a really nice cloak that actually had semi-ideal stats for what I do. I am at a weird place with gladiator dps in that I can feel myself starting to fall behind the other dps classes… but I bring quite a bit of utility especially since we do not have a warrior tank. The two biggest being that I am essentially constantly debuffing the targets armor… and at the same time stripping off positive buffs with my shield slam. I am starting to feel like the Hemo rogues did back in Vanilla… I make the raid work more smoothly… even if I am not topping the meters myself.

Another thing I managed to do last night was finally get Gold on an invasion. Sadly I got nothing of use from my epic invasion reward bag, well unless you count garrison resources, gold and apexis crystals as useful. In truth I really do need all of the resources I can get right now because I am in the process of renovating my garrison significantly. Last night I destroyed my enchanting hut, because as an enchant I found it of limited use other than for getting epic shards… which we will ultimately be rolling in later. In its place I erected a salvage yard… which is pretty much the best thing ever. I love the completely random nature of salvage, and supposedly you can end up getting just about anything in the game including the Tier 3 armor sets. Additionally I managed to get Phylarch the Green for my Garrison, which means more than likely once I have built up a stockpile of resources… I am going to wreck my Lumber Mill and replace it with a Trading Post. More or less I am still enthralled with Warlords of Draenor, and am really into the raid side of things. I am hoping we can make some good progress on the next boss tonight in normal after having seen it last night in LFR.