Tales of the Aggronaut

Rostygold and Primordial Shrieks

October 8, 2014 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff

For a few weeks I have been kicking around a concept, and I’ve finally decided to start moving towards the goal of making it happen. The concept is pretty simple, that I have a conversation one on one with a personality in our community or in the gaming industry. Instead of bringing them on to promote something, or actually talk about their gaming… I want to delve into the person behind the screen, what makes them tick and what they are passionate about. I decided to give the show a quirky name “Bel Folks Stuff” which as you can see from the logo is short hand for “Bel Talks to Interesting Folks About Really Important Stuff That They Enjoy Doing”. Because pretty much that sums it up in a nutshell. I personally find a lot of the people in our community super interesting and I have a sneaking suspicion that listeners would as well.

Now as far as the details of when I would record, how often I would record, what kind of turn around I am expecting… all of that is up in the air. This is the sort of thing that I would consider a “bonus” podcast rather than a serious scheduled one. There might be times that I schedule a recording and we realize there just wasn’t much to talk about. Other times I might record way more audio than I could ever cram into a podcast and have to release multiple parts. I am keeping all of this pretty flexible. Think of this as more of a “boutique” project than say AggroChat where we keep a weekly schedule. I am pretty pumped about the prospects, and the closest thing I can really compare it to is Actor’s Studio with James Lipton. I still need to firm up some of the things I plan to ask, but the idea is to keep it flexible and go wherever the conversation happens to go. I am also purposefully not making this specifically a “gaming” podcast. If folks want to talk about their passion for gardening… we are going to talk about their passion for gardening. The people behind the screens that we play interesting me more than what happens on the monitor.

Syrcus Grind Starts

For years I have been enamored with the concept of a “reset day”. So many MMOs have various gates that block you from completing too much content in a single week, as such once a week all of these gates unlock again and you can enter them to get awesome baubles. If I am being absolutely honestly with myself, I do not raid for the challenge… I raid for the spiffy things that I can obtain through it. Over the last several weeks I have been fastidiously gearing my Warrior job in Final Fantasy XIV through running Syrcus Tower and careful application of Tomestones of Soldiery. Over the course of these last few weeks I have managed to take my average item level up to 98 which is nothing to sneeze at. Quite honestly most of this has been sheer dumb luck. I’ve entered Syrcus each week and during the course of the first or second attempt at the run a piece of gear has dropped that was an upgrade and I won it. Now however I am down to just two pieces of gear that I can obtain from there… apart from the Sands and Oil of Time which I will focus on eventually.

Over the course of the night last night I ran Syrcus a grand total of four times, and in none of those times did I manage to see either the Helmet or the Legs drop. I feel like I have managed to pick up the easy pieces, and now that I only need two… both of which drop from the same boss I am going to have a much slower time to go. I will probably limit myself to a single running of Syrcus a night to keep from making it absolute misery. If by the end of the week I haven’t gotten either the helm or the legs I guess I will go after either an oil or sands with the hope of upgrading one of my existing soldiery slots to 110. I posted the picture above because there is a rule in FFXIV that I have noticed… if more than one Lalafell is standing in an area for too terribly long… dancing will happen. This is a bunch of us waiting on the last person to realize they had not yet rolled on the Onion Knight cosmetic pet. Of course I didn’t win it, but by god I am not leaving the instance until I at least see that my chance at it is over.

Rostygold and Primordial Shrieks

Several weeks into the game and I still find myself hopelessly enamored with Fallen London. I guess I have Tarantella to thank for this… and in turn my circle of friends has me to thank for their present addiction as well. I guess what surprises me the most about this game is just how deep the rabbit hole gets. In various areas of the game there are “Ambition” storylets, and for the uninitiated a storylet is the equivalent of a quest in other games. You might do something in an unrelated series of a events, which sets a flag that now opens up a bunch of stories that cascade off of it. The ambition quests tend to be the most intricate and detailed and also time consuming. While playing Fallen London there are many positive statuses you can earn, but additionally many negative ones as well. Each of the negative statuses has some consequence associated with it. For example if you allow your nightmares to reach 8, you quite literally go insane and can take no actions other than ones attempting to reclaim your mental faculties.

Yesterday I got an Ambition that involved me purposefully getting thrown into Newgate Prison to track an enemy of yours that is residing there. In order to accomplish this I had to raise my suspicion to 8, triggering a sequence of events that ended with being unceremoniously thrown into prison. From there I could go after my mark directly, but the problem is… once that was completed I still was sitting in prison. At this point I was forced to take actions in an attempt to lower my suspicion back to zero again. These actions involved calling in favors that I had earned in the rest of Fallen London, blatant bribe attempts, or doing actions that show “good behavior”. The problem is while the ability that got me into prison swapped 1 action for 1 suspicion… digging my way out of the hole took a considerably amount of time.

That seems to be the “negative” consequences in this game, are that you can get yourself into a situation where you have to spend copious turns correcting the mistake you made in the first place. I am still slowly working my way into the confidence of the devils. I had reached a point where I was getting dangerously close to losing my soul in game, and I took actions to delay that… which cost me a ton of faction in the process. As such I have been slowly building back up to that point, because really I think it might be interesting to see what the game is like if you have gone through the “abstraction”.

The problem with courting the devils is that you end up constantly teetering dangerously close to the fail condition on both Nightmares and Scandal. As such I am constantly in search of creative ways to lower both of these negative statuses. In any case I am still digging the game, and enjoying the setting. I really need to spend more time digging into Sunless Sea, but I keep hearing there is a major patch in the works that will fix a good number of the problems with the game, and as such I am mostly holding back. If you have not played this game and enjoy roleplaying games with quirky settings… I highly suggest you check it out. If you do add me as a contact, so that we can be “delicious friends” to borrow the verbiage of the game.

#FFXIV #FallenLondon

Amazing Podcasts

October 7, 2014 by Belghast

A Network of Awesome

Yesterday each of the members of The Gaming and Entertainment Network blitzed the world with posts announcing this awesome new venture we are all part of. However since I ended up technically soft launching the network on Sunday when I posted the latest episode of AggroChat I opted to also follow up at the tail of the pack. At this point I am uncertain how someone could miss there is such a thing as The Gaming and Entertainment Network, but just in case here goes my attempt to explain just how great this concept is. TGEN as it will be referred to from this point on as the full name is longer than I want to type on an average basis, is really the brain child of Braxwolf from the Beyond Bossfights podcast. So the lions share of the credit for this venture has to go to him. I think each of us had considered the possibility of teaming up with other podcasters, but the most important thing is the person who gets the ball rolling.

Brax had quietly noticed that there were several of us that spring form the same basic community that surrounds MMO gaming and participated in events like the Newbie Blogger Initiative and my little creation Blaugust. Then over the course of a few months we proceeded to hash out the details in some extremely long gmail threads. At this point pretty much everyone involved has pitched in with some skill or at least voted in many polls that lead us to reach this point. So many podcast networks feel corporate and impersonal, and I think while we all wanted to present our best face to the world… we also wanted it to come from the same place as our blogs and podcasts did. As such TGEN is very much a podcast network for and by the podcasters.

Amazing Podcasts

The entire venture would be completely empty without the actual podcasts and I am not sure if it is absolute coincidence or careful planning but all of the member podcasts fill various niches and happen to be releasing mostly on different days giving us a pretty varied release schedule. We have a new podcast releasing almost every day except Saturday, but with the whole weekend being family time thing… at least as far as my blog is concerned that is a dead spot in the statistics anyways. I feel like at this point I should probably just cut to the chase and introduce the member podcasts.

AggroChat – you guys should know this one by now, since it is the podcast tied to the blog.
Battle Bards – awesome podcast devoted to something that is often times overlooked in the gaming experience… the music. Each episode is thought provoking as they delve into various game scores with the awesome cast of Gypsy Syl, MMOGC, and Sypster.
Beyond Bossfights – excellent thought provoking podcast by the man who started this madness. Braxwolf often digs into deeper topics behind the games and communities we love.
Cat Context – awesomely intelligent podcast that is in essence a conversation between friends: Liore, Arolaide and Ellyndrial. I started listening because they were my guildies, and stuck around because it was always interesting.
Contains Moderate Peril – One of the most polished podcasts I have listened to and always enlightening. Reminds me of the classic news discussion show, and always has interesting co-hosts. Additionally Roger has an amazing voice, and I could listen to him read a phone book.
Couch Podtatoes – Face it, every podcaster is jealous they thought of this name first. You come for the interesting name but you stay for the great dynamic of Izlain, J3w3l and Doone. They always dig into some interesting discussions and have been known to do some interviews as well.
Massive Failure – Join the MMO Troll as he talks about what is happening in MMOs and adding commentary to what is going on. Troll being tongue in cheek as he talks about the good, bad and the ugly in MMOs.
Roleplay Domain – And rounding out our founders is a cool podcast that I just started listening to myself recently. Roleplay Domain is devoted to roleplaying in any form be it on the computer, classic tabletop or live action.

That is one hell of a founding line-up if I do say so myself. I am absolutely humbled to be included in this venture, and I hope we don’t let everyone down with our more rambling style. TGEN provides an opportunity for us all to cross pollinate our efforts, and help support each other. I know personally even in the few days since the launch I have seen a boost in listeners to this past Sunday’s episode of Aggrochat, so it seems like the basic theory is working.

Shared Mission

What makes me the proudest of our network is that while many can say phrases such as “like-minded podcasters” without really hanging that on any sort of a framework, we sought to fix that. Early on when we started talking about this network we decided that we needed some basic tenets that we should all abide by. We went into this planning for the contingency that the network might grow beyond these podcasts and encompass new ones, and as we inducted them… we should have a clear “code of ethics” for them to follow as well to insure that the statement “like-minded” stayed true as we moved on. You can check out the full form on the TGEN About page, but I am going to copy the relevant bits here.

What can you expect from TGEN?

Honesty – If we like something, we’ll say so. If we don’t like something, we’ll say so. It’s a pretty simple policy, really.
Creativity – We value the diverse, unique talents of our creators. As such, we offer a wide range of shows. At TGEN you’ll find topical discussions as well as news, opinions, interviews, and even music! All of which relate back to our main foci of gaming and entertainment.
Diversity – We hail from all around the globe and represent a variety of backgrounds and experiences. As such, you can expect a variety of input and opinions!
Collaboration – Even as diverse individuals, we understand that we can accomplish more by working together, not only as creators within TGEN, but also with outside shows, personalities and networks.
Consistency – While our creators all lead busy lives and release schedules may differ, we want to make sure that we have a steady flow of new content available. All shows on TGEN are “active” shows that release on as regular a basis as life allows. No waiting months between releases for our shows.
Fun – This may be the most important, yet easily overlooked. The purpose of gaming and entertainment is to have fun. And if we’re not having fun, neither will our listeners. Let’s build something fun together!

I think all of this creates a pretty firm foundation for us moving forward. There has been talk of trying to do some regular mixed podcast roundtables in the future so I can only see things like that strengthening the network as a whole. Additionally I feel like there is plenty of room for us to grow, and I know personally I have a handful of podcasts that I would love to “adopt” as I am sure other members do as well. I am extremely excited to be a part of this, and am looking forward to seeing just what awesome things we can do together.

#TGEN #Podcasts

Death to Darkspawn

October 6, 2014 by Belghast

Lost in a World

One of the aspects of a good game that I have always been amazed by is just how lost you can become existing in that world. With the upcoming release of Dragon Age: Inquisition mid month, several of us have started re-playing origins in an attempt to get a new save file to import into Inquisition. I realize that the process for importing works a little differently than it has in previous Bioware games, and is done through an intermediary program called Dragon Age Keep that also allows you to choose the decisions you would have liked to have had from previous games. However with some experience with the Mass Effect 3 “comic book” tool, it tended to also make a lot of really horrible decisions for me. One of the most enjoyable experiences I have had with a game was playing through the entire Mass Effect series in sequence over the course of a Christmas break… so while the games in the Dragon Age series do not connect as tightly, I am hoping it will still be very rewarding.

Over the weekend I said that I had decided to start the “least” Belghast character possible for this play through. That I guess is not correct… the least recognizable character would have been me starting an Elven Mage. We all know that one is never going to happen, as I tend to be allergic to playing finger wigglers. Instead I basically picked something other than the high born warrior I always tend to play, and in this case that was a Dwarven Casteless Rogue. I love the Dwarves of the Dragon Age series, and having my very first play through be the Noble rogue pretty much ruined every other introduction storyline for me. That said the Casteless introduction is pretty great as well, and especially after having played through many of them… you see hints of the other introductions as you play. Like I know the events that are going on with the noble houses, and while they are only loosely alluded to in the casteless introduction… they are still very much there and very much the way they play out as a noble. I like thinking that there is a fixed story arc with multiple windows out onto it.

Death to Darkspawn

This game has always hit every trigger for me… in a good way. I love dark ominous demon filled landscapes where I am the only person with the tools to dispatch them. I love the political infighting and backstabbing and the identification of a truly wicked person that I can focus my anger and rage towards. But I also like that apart from that central story arc, nothing is really certain and the game doesn’t judge you much for dabbling in the grey areas. It is an absolute feat that this game manages to make me NOT side with the mage haters. Given my feelings towards finger wigglers, it would make sense that I would want to help the Templars eradicate the “Mage Threat”, but instead each and every play through I cannot bring myself to go against the Circle Mages. Maybe it is because I like the character of Wynne too much, or maybe they just manage to create a narrative that makes me actually care about magic users.

Granted personally I greatly prefer the side of the Apostates, and generally their cause is one that I can get behind whole heartedly. I am a huge fan of Morrigan, but I have found her character to be extremely polarizing even among my close friends. She is dark and brutal and abrasive… but I always enjoy listening to her quips. One of the things I am doing this time around that I have not in previous plays is varying my group composition based on what I know my intended action will be. Generally speaking if you make Morrigan happy…. you won’t make Alistair and Leliana happy for example. So I hedge my bets and end up simply not bringing the person that I know I will end up pissing off. It is a strange line to walk but at this point I have some duplication of most of the roles I might need. There are certain characters that I just absolutely cannot stand… I am looking at you Zevran. Though this time around I am finding myself softening to that character, especially after seeing him in Dragon Age II.

Slowly Progressing

I am taking my sweet time moving through the game. At this point I am just shy of 20 hours spent and have saved the Circle of Mages as well as Redcliffe Castle. I am however trying really hard to do every single side quest in a given area. This means that while I can just blow through Lothering… I am trying to do all of the little side missions which end up dragging out that area considerably longer than you might think. In a way I am treating this as though it were my last time playing Dragon Age ever. I realize that is likely not going to be the case, but I guess I am trying to make every choice count since I will ultimately be importing this game into Awakenings and Dragon Age II before finally importing the entire mess into Dragon Age Inquisition next month. On this play through I am more acutely aware that I am building a world around me, a series of consequences that lead to other consequences later down the line.

This is a strangely different feeling than when you do the same process in the Mass Effect series. There you are living the legacy of one person, your version of Shepard… and it is a direct lineage from game to game. The choices you make on one game, are effect the relationships you have in the next game because you were the person that made them both times. Here you are setting up a conflict that spans multiple generations, and while you are creating ripples it is somewhat uncertain how the final events will play out. It is also playing through a game knowing the beginning and the ending but having the steps between be rather fluid and changing. This will make my fifth play through of Dragon Age Origin since release, and I am still finding little details that I don’t remember from previous plays. That and the fact that I am not bored with the game, really are a testament to just how good the writing is.

Sneaking into Denerim

Right now I am tempted to save my game and then make a run at getting to Denerim before completing any other areas. I would really like to resolve the whole Urn of Sacred Ashes business before moving too much further in the storyline. I have also never actually gone to Denerim this early in the storyline before. I have no clue what the rammifications of doing that are, but I already have several quest chains that take me there. So I think that might be the order for tonight, to create a good clearly labeled save game so I can roll back if I am not happy with the consequences started by my actions. That is one of the things that is interesting about Dragon Age is just how unforgiving it is when it comes to your choices. It is super easy to close off a quest chain to you by picking the wrong answer… and there will never be another way to get that option back. In some of the later Bioware games they have given us the ability to escape out of a dialog tree, but this being a fairly early one has really strictly binding choices. As such it is making me super careful about what I end up choosing.

If it has been awhile since you last played Dragon Age then I highly suggest you dust off your copy and give it a proper play again. I am currently playing the “Ultimate” edition that comes preloaded with all of the DLC… and there was quite a lot of it. I’ve found this game plays significantly better through Origin than it does through Steam, as anytime I have tried to play through Steam I have issues with it not recognizing my DLC as being “genuine” and the official Bioware answer to this is to hack the save game file to turn off the protection bit. I would rather just play the game without doing all of that so I am using Origin and overall the experience is not too horrible. I have to say that Origin as a whole has gotten considerably better since its launch, and right now the only problem I really have with it… is that it is not steam. I still to some extent resent having to have a separate launcher just for Bioware games but the experience is worth it so for the time being I just deal with the frustration. Thankfully Ubisoft is taking steps to move towards better integration with steam so that the entire process will be transparent to the users. Unfortunately with the rather public falling out between EA and Valve… I doubt that will actually ever happen. In any case… I am having a blast with Dragon Age and look forward to completing it.

#DragonAge

Outland

October 5, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat Episode 25

Last night we recorded yet another episode of our weekly podcast AggroChat. This week we were missing Rae, but had Ashgar, Kodra and Tam to join me to talk about stuff and things. Of the four of us, three of us have almost spontaneously started replaying Dragon Age: Origins. In truth Ashgar started it and then Tam and I decided it was a pretty excellent idea to follow suit as we all realized we didn’t really have a good save to feed into the upcoming title Dragon Age: Inquisition. As such we have been lost in that title and remembering just how amazing it really is. We gush about about the writing behind the title and some of our favorite and least favorite characters. We try not to give many spoilers since Kodra has yet to make it terribly far in the game, so should be safe to listen to for complete Dragon Age nubs and pros alike.

We meander our way through a couple of indie games, namely Crypt of the Necrodancer that Kodra has been playing, and Outland the awesome metroidvania that I am reviewing as part of my Steampowered Sunday. Ashgar hooked me up with a copy originally with the intent of playing this co-op… but it seems like the latency for co-op play is still absolutely atrocious. So instead I played it all by my lonesome this morning… we at least as lonesome as you can be while streaming it to the internet. Finally we talk about Final Fantasy XIV and the odd sense of compartmentalism in that game. How you can progress among multiple vectors without the need to really mess with the others. Also we walk about how much we are looking forward to the as of yet completely announced 3.0 expansion, which is rumored to have as much content as the original 2.0 release had.

Two other really interesting things happened during the episode. For starters we announced that we were now part of TGEN The Gaming and Entertainment Network of podcasts. Quite honestly I am a bit humbled to be included with such illustrious podcasts as Battle Bards, Beyond Bossfights, Cat Context, Contains Moderate Peril, Couch Podtatoes, Massive Failure and Roleplay Domain. I am also quite humbled to be the first podcast to officially be launching the network, since we record on Saturday nights and launch Sunday, we are the first show sporting the new network bumper. Additionally we talk about the upcoming Extra Life gaming marathon and our team. Right now you can check out Ashgar, Kodra and Myself on the donor pages and our progress… and then tune in Oct 25th to the Alliance of Awesome hitbox team to watch the streamers. Being our first year I set a very low team goal of $200 and so far we have raised just shy of $600 dollars in pledges. Really looking forward to the event, and I hope you join us.

Outland

For a few weeks now my friend Ashgar has been talking about this particular metroidvania with some interesting twists. Last weekend shortly after recording the Steampowered Sunday for Mercenary Kings he hooked me up with a copy on steam, suggesting we might play it for this Sunday. Apparently there is some really cool co-operative play in the game, but at the time of writing this it is apparently completely broken in that the latency makes it absolutely unplayable. I can see how any matter of latency would be a problem, as there are several places where you have a very slim window to time a jump or an attack. Since the co-op was out of the picture, I opted to still play the game but do so solo… or at least as solo as you can be while streaming. At face value it is a really artistically slanted metroidvania game. It follows the artistic style to some extent of the current crop of mostly silhouetted figures against a colorful background. This almost always makes a game feel far more detailed than it actually is, and I tend to enjoy this style of art.

You play the role of the ancestor of a great warrior who tamed the twin sisters of light and dark to save creation. To be truthful while well done the narrative doesn’t seem to matter that much other than add a bit of flavor. You wander through the levels collecting coins and rare pieces of treasure and sometimes unlocking special abilities. The twist on the traditional Metroidvania genre however comes in the fact that over time you can harness the power of the Light Spirit and the Dark Spirit and use these to bypass certain obstacles. The Light is represented by blue, and the Dark by red and while in the same color as an obstacle you can pass directly through it. You can also use your color to active switches and platforms allowing you to traverse the levels. You are rationed these abilities slowly and I didn’t get the second color until I had defeated the first boss. Some of the later puzzles require you to switch colors midair to take advantage of a platform that activates when you land on it with a specific color. This is facilitated by hitting the right shoulder button on your controller. This definitely feels like the sort of game that is greatly improved with a controller, so I did not even attempt to pay attention to the equivalent keyboard controls for things.

Epic Boss Fights

At the end of the first level you have to fight a giant golem that is blocking your way. The scale of the fight is extremely impressive and makes the game feel much larger than it actually is. The camera zooms in and out based on how large the chamber you are in happens to be, and this gives a more dynamic feel to the gameplay. The boss mechanic was rather simple but extremely effective in that you had to avoid a ground slam and then climb the giant itself while it was temporarily drained of its power to attack and exposed weak spot. As the fight got on there were more details that had to be avoided, like a rain of red and blue bullets that gives the game almost a bullet hell feel to it. I had to stand in the blue beams to avoid taking damage from the red beams, and I am imagining that in later encounters you will have to shift back and forth between red and blue to soak specific abilities while flipping to the opposite to be able to damage your target. While you can soak beams of the same color… mobs of that color can still damage you, and you can only damage them when flipped to the alternate polarity.

The game is constantly compared to the fabled bullet hell shooter by Treasure called Ikaruga in that it has similar soak/polarity mechanics. However any many ways it reminds me of the gameplay of Silhouette Mirage and earlier title with the same basic mechanic by Treasure. Similar to Outland it was a side scroller and you had a dual polarity of absorption and repelling based on which direction you pointed your attacks. You can check out my entire hour and a half long play session this morning in the embedded Hitbox video. I have to say I dig the game so far and want to play more of it. I just felt like I needed to wrap up this mornings session so I could get my blog post out, however I played significantly longer than most Steampowered Sunday mornings… so that should tell you something. Right now the game is under $10 on steam, and more than worth that price. I would have paid at least $20 for it to be honest, had someone not ever so graciously gifted it to me. If you like the Metroidvania genre and especially like ones with interesting mechanics like Guacamelee you should check this out.

#Outland #AggroChat