Tales of the Aggronaut

So You Want to Stream

May 12, 2014 by Belghast

Why I Stream?

This morning I found myself sitting here at the computer struggling to come up with a topic that I felt was worth writing about. For the last several days I have been kicking around the notion of trying to do a very basic streaming guide, but really like everything I do… I don’t actually feel like I know what I am doing. When I decided to start streaming on a whim a few months back, I had to pretty much figure everything out from scratch. Thanks to lots of Google searches I managed to cobble together just enough information to do a passable job. I am far from a streaming celebrity, and to be truthful no one actually watches my stream all that often. I am happy to have a single other person in twitch chat with me.

So you might ask me then, why do I even bother streaming? Honestly I am not really sure but it just seems fun to me. There is something neat about showing the world what you are doing, and in some aspect that’s why we do any of this. At least at a base level we blog, podcast, YouTube and stream all to share our lives with the world. When I decided to start streaming I set up a structure on our guild voice server. I created a channel called “Bel is Streaming”, and the basic idea was that if I was streaming I would join the channel and folks could pop in and chat with me… thereby making the entire feed seem more interesting. This has worked pretty well, and on many evenings most of the people in channel are not even playing what I happen to be playing.

As a side note… I would not have had the courage to start the Aggrochat Podcast were it not for these streams. For years I have said that we should be recording our mumble conversations… because some of the topics we end up delving into are really awesome. It was while listening to one of these game streams one day at while working that I realized our nightly conversations sounded quite a bit like an impromptu podcast. A few weeks later I was pulling together some of the regular members of these nightly discussions and AggroChat was born. So if nothing else my piddling around with game streaming has had a mostly positive effect. As to why I do it.. I am still trying to figure that one out.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to start streaming, is an account on a streaming provider. The defacto industry leader right now is Twitch.tv which is the gaming offshoot of Justin.tv. This is what I use personally but I have been hearing some really good things about Hitbox.tv for those who are wanting to use something different. For the purpose of this guide we are going to primarily talk about what I use which is Twitch. When you initially sign up, your username will be the default channel name for your stream. However you can go into settings and change the Display name property to switch this up. Basically I would suggest that you pick something simple and relatable to your blog or other social media efforts. I am a simple monkey, so I try and pick /Belghast on all of the things unless it is already taken.

Moving forward what you really want from the twitch website can be found on the Dashboard. You want to copy to a notepad document (or anywhere else you will remember it) the long string found on the Stream Key tab of the dashboard. You will end up using this from that point on in any third party software to let you stream to your channel. Another setting you might want to fiddle with while you are in the Twitch interface can be found on the Channel Settings page. I highly suggest you toggle on the “Automatically archive my broadcasts” checkbox, because this opens up a whole world of options. Firstly there will be folks that hit your page because it is “YOUR” page… not necessarily because you happen to be streaming something at the time. Checking this box means that anything you broadcast will show up under the “Past Broadcasts” tab inside of your twitch profile.

The other cool thing this does for you, is that you can export directly from Twitch to YouTube. Ultimately this is how I record anything that ends up on my YouTube channel. I like keeping things simple, and being able to export directly without having to fiddling with the YouTube interface is a huge win to me. The twitch interface is actually rather robust and it allows you to export individual segments of your video to YouTube, as well as having a default functionality to split videos into fifteen minute chunks. By default YouTube will only allow you to upload videos that long until you have gone through the process of verifying your account… which is an entirely different topic for a different day. I am by no means “good at YouTube” but I do a passing job at having a channel.

You Need Some Software

Now in order to get your video stream to twitch.tv you are going to need some software. I know absolutely nothing about Mac gaming… so if you fall into this category, I am sorry this guide is going to leave you in the cold. I am a PC gamer and as such only really experienced with PC configurations. The Twitch broadcast page has a bunch of different options, and I am assuming that one or more of them can run on a Mac. The “Gold Standard” in streaming seems to be Xsplit, as that is really what all the professional streamers seem to use. However, to get the most out of it… it is a yearly subscription service. I am totally fine with using the “Bronze Standard” in streaming software… because I am cheap. That honor seems to fall to Open Broadcast Software or OBS, a very solid open source alternative to Xsplit. Basically you have to ask yourself what your level of comfort is with software in general. If you truly dislike fiddling with things until they work… save yourself some headache and pay for Xsplit. If you are like me and are willing to scour internet forums for information to save some money… then OBS should work well for you.

This is what my OBS configuration looks like. The software is arranged into a few basic concepts. Scenes can be thought of as a “screen setup” that you plan on broadcasting to the world. I have one set up for each game that I happen to be playing, as well as a generic “Thanks”, “AFK” and “Pre-stream screen”. You can swap back and forth between these rapidly from within the software, so it is completely to personal taste how many you configure. You are going to need at least one scene to be able to broadcast anything to the world. The next concept is Sources… these are essentially things you want to place on screen at the same time. One of these will be your video game feed, then a lot of streamers include a feed from their web cam and various image overlays. You can use ANY transparent image, and overlay it on your video.

I personally keep things pretty simple, my personal preference is that I have an image in the top left corner identifying what game I happen to be streaming at a glance. I find this important since sometimes it takes a time or two for twitch to actually update your stream title and game you are playing. Additionally I have a “Tales of the Aggronaut” image that floats on screen… that I use for a pretty simple purpose, to cover up the majority of my chat box. Not that I do anything super secretive in game, but I would prefer to guard anyone’s account information that might happen to be sending me a message for guild business. Not that I have a lot of followers, but I don’t want to just assume that everyone I deal with in the games wants their information broadcast on the internet. The floating image does a nice job of obfuscating the text but at the same time advertising my blog and providing my twitter information.

For the purpose of this setup, the most important thing that you add is a “Game Capture” source. This will ask you to name the source, which can be anything that makes sense to you. Next you will get a drop down of every active application on your system. In this case you would choose whatever game you are wanting to stream. On this same screen there is a “stretch image to screen” check box and generally I would suggest doing this. This is going to be important for most Indie games especially since the resolution may not be the actual resolution you happen to be streaming. I personally stream everything 1080p, but a lot of streamers drop down to 720p for the purpose of compatibility. I can’t stand to play games at that low of resolution, so I have not really figured out a viable way to play at 1080p but have something scale me down to 720p without the stream looking like crap.

At this point you want to preview your new Scene by hitting the “Preview Stream” button. You should in theory see your game image coming through in the little window inside of OBS. If you see nothing but a black screen… now begins the “fiddly portion”. OBS generally seems to work best when playing a game in “Fullscreen Windowed” mode. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but in theory you will want to configure your game to run in that mode if at all possible. Black screen means you are not getting a feed of video from the game. There are also options for “Window Capture” and “Monitor Capture”, but those are more thermonuclear. If you choose to broadcast your Monitor, it will literally broadcast everything that comes across your monitor even stuff you don’t necessarily want to broadcast. I suggest only ever doing that if you happen to have a multiple monitor setup. Window Capture in general seems a little flaky, but right now I am having to use that for ArcheAge to get it to work well.

The Super Technical Bits

Now comes the hardest part of the setup, and the one I cannot give you any “firm” answers for. There are a few settings that you need to configure based on your internet connection. If you are not comfortable with thinking of things in terms of kilobits per second aka kbps… then you are likely going to find this bit frustrating. There are essentially two schools of thought here, the super technical is to go through a process of figuring out exactly what your connection will support and assigning the values accordingly. The second school of thought is to try 2000, and if that doesn’t work smoothly… try 1500. I am going to actually cover the technical aspects, because the trial and error method is exactly that.

Inside of OBS settings, there is the encoding tab, and more than anything else this tab dictates how smooth your stream looks. For the most part everyone should be using the x264 encoder. I did some tests with the Nvidia NVENC encoder, and the end results looked horrible. It greatly reduced the system requirements of doing the encoding, the end result was a choppy and blocky mess. Use CBR should also be checked as well as the CBR padding. This means it is going to try its best to keep your stream at a constant bit rate, which should go a lot way to preventing stutters and stops. The Audio settings should for the most part work for everyone as well. The piece that is going to be unique however will be Max Bitrate and Buffer Size. I personally like having a buffer a little bit larger than my Max Bitrate for extra padding and hopefully extra stability, however for most individuals they set these values to the exact same thing.

The above image is a test of my internet connection this morning while working on this post. I will be using it as an example, but ultimately you are going to want to test your own line… because quite frankly my connection is way faster than most internet connections. There are many testing providers out there but for this example I am using Speedtest.net just hit “Begin Test” and you should see your own results shortly. This tester ends up giving us our speed in mbps, which is fine but for the purpose of the tool that estimates what these settings should be in OBS, we are going to want kbps. This is simply a case of taking your mbps value, in this case 22.82 and multiplying it by 1024 the number of kb in a mb. The end result in my case is 23367.68 kbps and then I take that number and dump it into the OBS estimator. In my case it suggests that I set my max bitrate to 3500 and my buffer size to 3500 as well. I however did not want my stream ever to take up my entire pipe so I dialed those back to the settings I actually use.

Hooking it to Twitch

Now that we have our encoding configured, it is time to actually hook the thing to Twitch.tv and see what happens. Remember that stream key I asked you to copy out to a notepad document? This is the point where you actually need it. This is what twitch uses instead of a username/password authentication scheme to allow someone to broadcast to your channel. Guard this with your life… or at least take some precautions because with this key anyone can use your channel. You want to set the mode to “Live Stream” and since we are going to be piping our output to Twitch, you want to select the “Twitch / Justin.tv” option from the streaming service drop down box. The next setting is pretty important, for Server you want to select the closest location geographically. I live in the Tulsa, OK area so for me I choose “US Central: Dallas, TX” and it works pretty smoothly. Finally you want to paste your stream key in the “Play Path/Stream Key (if any):” box. If you did not copy this down earlier you can retrieve it from the “Stream Key” tab of your Dashboard.

Test That Puppy Out

If you did all of the things above, now you should be able to click the “Start Streaming” button and be off and running. Some things to make sure before you do this. Firstly make sure the game you are wanting to stream is running in the background and preferably running “Fullscreen Windowed” mode or whatever the equivalent is in that game. Secondly make sure you have the correct scene selected inside of OBS. Lastly I highly suggest you decouple your twitch account from your twitter account for the purpose of testing. Otherwise every time you press that start stream button you are going to be spamming the hell out of your twitter friends. In theory you should be able to open your twitch stream and see the output of your game on the screen. But before you do it… there is one last thing.

Make sure your stream is actually showing the correct game being played and the title you wish it to show. I have had more issue with this one than anything else, and now I load my profile three times in a row just to make sure the edit took. Initially it seems like the first edit NEVER takes. When when I reload my stream I have to log back in and change it again, and sometimes it doesn’t actually take until I do it a third time. I wish there was a way to set this inside of OBS, but as far as I know you have to keep logging into the Twitch website to set it up. The only reason why this is important is because it will broadcast to people browsing the twitch interface that you are playing a specific game, and in theory you want it to be the right one. At this point… press the start button, cross your fingers and hopefully you are live to the world. If not… it is time to hit Google and figure out why exactly a given game isn’t working with this setup. I am by no means an expert, but hopefully this guide will be useful to at least some of you.

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Podcast That Almost Wasn’t

May 11, 2014May 10, 2014 by Belghast

Graduation Day

I just thought I would start the post off with a picture of two ducks. These are the ducks that we encounter quite often on our evening stroll around the neighborhood. I guess they have decided that we are not really a threat, because shortly after snapping this photo the male duck decided to come up close enough to almost touch. Granted he might have just been putting some distance between me and his mate, but I would like to think we are a recognized thing by now. Now that you’ve had a lovely vignette, let me tell you about my day. My nephew graduated from college today, and being the loving family we are… we attended. This was an experience in both vertigo and insanely uncomfortable seating. For starters the basketball stadium it was held in had some of the steepest seating I had ever experienced. When they asked us to stand for the singing of the national anthem… I literally felt like I was going to topple over the “cliff” and down into the stands below me.

All in all it wasn’t really a bad day, but it was most definitely a tiring one. I did however manage to top 10,000 steps on the fitbit, instead of my usual 8,000 to 9,000. This was in part because we parked four blocks away from the stadium and walked it rather than fighting for parking. The whole side effect of today and what will inevitably happen tomorrow is that I simply do not have the “oomph” to stay up late enough tonight to do a Steampowered Sunday. In fact as early as we are going in the morning to see my mother, I won’t really have a chance to write a blog post in the morning either. As a result I am writing this one Saturday night, and will publish it in the morning. I hate when I have to “cheat” like this, but it is far better to do that than to miss posting something at all.

Podcast That Almost Wasn’t

This morning I talked about the little family of robins, that had nested in the white rock. When I came home tonight there were two chicks poking their heads out of the nest until I got close enough to investigate. They instinctively ducked down to try and remain hidden but I was able to get my phone up enough to snap the photo on the side. I feel like each of these photos is somehow softening the blow of what I am about to say. This week you damned near did not get a podcast. Admittedly this is one part miscommunication and one part poor planning on my side. It was Friday during the day when I realized that I would not be home in time to record the podcast. Originally for some reason my wife and I thought my nephews graduation was early in the day. However upon further investigation Friday, we realized that it was at 4 pm in the afternoon. That meant in a best case scenario figuring 2 hours for the graduation, an hour for anything after the graduation, and another 2 hours drive to get back home… this put me being back around 9 pm, and hour after we normally record.

To make things more interesting it seemed as thought both Ashgar and Kodra were not able to record at all this weekend. Ashgar had a similar situation to me and when I spoke with him Friday it was from an airport as he was flying home for his sisters graduation. Kodra on the other hand, I am not really sure what was going on, but he was neither available Friday or Saturday evenings. He would potentially be available very late on Sunday, but that didn’t really give me much time to get things posted, since I normally post our new episodes Sunday. After some scrambling, it seemed as though Tam was also not available. As the day went on Rae and I discussed whether or not we even wanted to record with two people down. I was of the opinion that we would just take the week off, but I guess Rae was really gung ho about going forward. She thought in a worse case scenario it would just be the two of us and we would do a relatively short podcast.

Doctor Hannah to the Rescue

While my wife and I were walking Friday night, Rae was able to get ahold of a good friend of ours Dallian and he was able to fill in for us. I had long thought that Dal might be a really good fit for the show, and him being able to do it on such short notice was almost serendipitous. So we almost did not record the show, but in truth it ended up being one of the more enjoyable ones to make. We talk about a number of gaming topics from Wildstar, to ArcheAge and the obligatory Elder Scrolls Online discussion. We also dip our toes into the world of comic books and Magic: The Gathering and Dallian tells us the riveting tale of how he created the @Doctor_Hannah twitter account. Hopefully the amount of fun we had recording this one translates to our listeners.

Hopefully next week things will be at least partially back to normal. We should have Ashgar and Kodra back, but I believe Rae may not be available. Dallian is coming into town to visit us, and either we will have both Rae and Dallian or neither of them. In any case next week should be interesting as well. At this point I am going to close off this post and crash, as I need to get up super early to make my Mothers Day visitations. I want to wish all the Mother’s out there a very happy day, and I will see you all Monday morning for another early morning post.

#AggroChat #Podcast #ESO #Wildstar #ArcheAge

Coming Home

May 10, 2014 by Belghast

Protect the Nest

As a rule my two favorite times of the year as Spring and Fall, in part because I love how alive the world is during these times of transition. This morning I got up, threw on some clothes and a beanie to disguise my cowlick and get breakfast. On the way back I stopped in the drive way for a bit as I listened to something on NPR wind down. I noticed out in the lawn there were a couple of bunnies and two robin parents out foraging. Our house has an external shell of rock that has been painted white over the years. This leaves huge shelves and little nooks, and apparently this year a pair or robin parents have decided to nest there. Were a proper home owner… I would probably be concerned about this, but for me… I think it is pretty awesome. Robins have always been one of my favorite birds, so the fact that I get to see them on a daily basis makes me happy.

I’ve noticed they have a little chick beak sticking up from the nest so it is going to be awesome to watch the little guy pop out at some point. For having lived around birds all my life… I really don’t know much about them. I am just happy to start seeing songbirds again in the neighborhood. There was a time where I tried to put up a feeder in the backyard and no one seem to notice it. Maybe I will make another attempt at that, because I’ve noticed a little cardinal poking around the bush on the other side of the house. I am also sure someone in the neighborhood is probably cursing our bunnies, but seeing them scamper about the yard makes me happy. I just fear what is going to happen when we open our pool. There was one long hot summer that I had to fish a half dozen of them out of the pool… because they kept trying to get a drink and falling in. Hopefully that won’t be the case this summer.

Coming Home

So first off I want to preface this with that I really did enjoy playing ArcheAge and if I get time this weekend I will completely play some more of it. However last night logging into Elder Scrolls Online after playing quite a bit of SWTOR and ArcheAge, felt like coming home. Everything felt so comfy as I moved around the world. It is funny how in such a short period of time I have gotten used to the way that world feels and controls, and I guess have come to prefer it. The world just feels right to me, and I guess that is a good sign. I know for a lot of my friends the non-traditionally MMO control scheme was a deal breaker. They were looking for something they could control with WASD, Mouselook and the traditional hotbar combat. However as a long time FPS and Elder Scrolls player it was more a shift in mindset than anything else. I was so used to MMOs controlling a certain way, that I just had to shift the abilities that I picked up from other single player games and adapt them to the multiplayer space.

There are so many reasons why people wanted ESO to control differently. Some people mentioned that it was impossible to play the game while holding a child, or doing this or that… and that is totally correct. The reason why I had been playing SWTOR and ArcheAge is that they didn’t require the precision and focus that ESO did. Over the course of this last week my allergies have been horrible, and as a result I have come home after work completely drained and “out of it”. I knew if I booted up ESO, I would die often and die horribly. I love everything about the game, but there are times it just takes too many of my already limited mental resources. My fear was that after being away for awhile that I would get back into the traditional MMO control scheme… and the game would feel odd to me. Thankfully however everything about it still felt right.

Finishing Bangkorai

The last time I played I accidentally followed a quest chain into Coldharbor, so at the beginning of the evening I worked through my backlog of items to deconstruct and then set off for Bangkorai again. I wanted to at the very least finish out collecting the Skyshards and getting zone exploration achievement. At the best I had hoped to make everything black on my map turn white showing that I can completed it. There were still a few issues with some of the world bosses however, so I realized early on that I would not be getting close to 100%ing the zone last night. What I did however do is explore every nook and cranny and find a number of really slick things. The picture in the section above is from this little hidden area that turned out to be a crafting shrine. You have to push through this disguised tunnel in a rock wall, and along a little river, past a waterfall and over a rickety rope bridge…. and then finally you are at the crafting shrine. The whole experience felt very “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to me.

The above image is from some Dwemer ruins that I stumbled into. It ended up that this was the public dungeon for Bangkorai and as I was seven levels over the content… I was able to solo most of it. That said it was still really damned challenging, and for the boss battles especially I had to hang back and wait for another player to get to the same area I was. Thankfully the dungeon is still very well trodden and I was able to complete both of the quests inside. Awesome thing about this dungeon is that at the end of the quest chain, you get awarded a really awesome Dwemer spider cosmetic pet. So if you were wondering where those come from… it is the public dungeon in Bangkorai (and I am sure the other equivalent factions). I managed to collect all of the skyshards and got my achievement for exploring the zone, so I can be happy enough with moving on. At some point I will pop back into the zone when the bugs have been worked out and complete the last few dots.

You can watch the entire adventure in the video above. Shockingly this is the 31st video I have recorded on twitch/youtube for The Elder Scrolls Online. While I would never suggest watching all of them… you can literally see most of my leveling process on the Dragonknight. Having MOSTLY finished Bangkorai I feel okay about moving on into Coldharbor. At this point I am about halfway into 47, so I feel like the journey to 50 is going to go extremely quickly in the higher level content. So far the quests I have done in Cold Harbor seem to be significantly more involved than the ones from the previous zones. Everything about the zone feels epic, as I lead this fight against Molag Bal and his forces. I am going to be really thankful that I have my faction up with the Fighters Guild I feel, because everything I see… is a Daedra. Additionally I am super happy I have my prismatic weapon… that does insane amounts of damage to Daedra and Undead.

#ESO #ElderScrollsOnline #Bangkorai #Coldharbor

ArcheAge Impressions

May 9, 2014 by Belghast

Peach Fuzz and Pretty Boys

As I said yesterday, a friend of mine hooked me up with access to ArcheAge alpha and throughout the day it downloaded and installed. I came home over lunch to take a breathing treatment, and when I got there it was ready and waiting for me. I didn’t get much time to play at that point, but I did manage to create a character. I have to say at this point my hopes were a bit dashed. I generally have a problem with the Asian and specifically Korean graphical style, in trying to create a character I really liked. I had this problem with Aion, GW2, and to some extent Rift. It very difficult in these style of games to create any form of a male that is not a “pretty boy”. I went into FFXIV with the same fears but found myself pleasantly surprised that I could create a character aligned to western ideals with a very nice beard and everything.

ArcheAge unfortunately… this was not the case. They have beard options but essentially they were choices between “Five O’clock Shadow”, “Peach Fuzz” and “Well Trimmed Peach Fuzz”. There was not a single “real” beard option available. This is a little bit disappointing considering from everything I have heard there are some massive configuration options available for the female models. So Trion if you are reading… not sure if this is something you can do but both ArcheAge and Rift for that matter need better beards for the human models. The above character is as “close” to the standard Belghast appearance as I could get out of the system. I can live with it, but I am not exceptionally happy about it. I feel like my choices were as good as possible with the system.

Solid Combat

Complaining about the character models aside, the game feels very good once you actually get into it. The first several levels are the same as every fantasy MMO with a series of punctuation leading you around the map and showing you the things you should do. Right now the experience feels a little disjointed since you are supposed to be getting treated to nice cutscenes… that happen to all be in Korean. This also causes some odd shit to happen… at one point last night a rock on the ground was speaking korean to me… and I never quite figured out what was happening there. It was some sort of a tutorial system, and I ended up disabling. The world feels good, and combat feels responsive for standard MMO fare hotbar combat.

I chose to go “BattleRage” for my initial tree and it is pretty much standard warrior fare. At level five I was able to pick a second tree, and I went for Defense… which is as you would expect the archetypal “tank” tree. At that point I had a kit that included a ranged pull, a charge, a multi modal combat attack that could hit multiple targets and a really powerful long cooldown shield bash. That is a pretty great start for any game that only a few levels in I feel like I have a complete enough kit to absolutely run wild with. At level ten I was able to pick up my third tree, which I went Occultism with. Basically this is the “Dark Knight” build from the Korean version, or as it is called here “Doomlord”.

My ultimate plan is to try and create a Shadowknight like tanky character with life drains to and maybe a cool summon or two. Right now I have this really awesome attack called “Hell Spear” that impales every mob within a radius around me on a fiery spear that comes up from the ground. They are rooted and take damage when it fades. This honestly is one of the aspects of the game that most appeals to me, that I can build pretty freeform classes. While it is zero shock that I ended up trying to create a Dark Knight given my love of Shadowknights and Deathknights… I am happy that I am in fact able to craft it however the hell I want to. Looking at the trees it looks like I will be able to build a tank with a charge and a deathgrip type yank ability, which should give me a pretty solid kit for tanking instances… if those even exist here.

Rift and FFXIV Had a Child

One big take away from last night is that the world is gorgeous. Not everything is amazing… and there are plenty of generic fields and forested nooks to explore. However every now and then you are just awestruck by how breathtaking a vista is. Overall like the subtitle says the game feels as though Rift and FFXIV had a child… and then spent time raising it with LoTRO and even an odd Warhammer Online feel to some of the quests. That description will either make you think “man that sounds great” or like some of my friends cause you to affix a firm “NOPE!” sticker to it and move on. I happen to like the mix and this is probably going to be my new “off night” game. I still plan on playing the shit out of Elder Scrolls Online, but this game is probably going to fill that space that SWTOR has recently been filling. The game world has plenty of downtime, so it doesn’t feel like I have to be “constantly on” like it does in ESO.

Granted all of this might change as I move out of the more themepark areas into the more serious sandbox ones. At some point soon I will be turning off most of the channels. I would say already it has one of the worst communities I have seen in a game. At one point I was given a quest where I had to cross a bay on a shitty rowboat. The folks with huge ships took a perverse sense of pleasure ramming into me and trying to capsize my boat as I moved across the bay. Granted they could not actually attack me, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t make my life hell for a few minutes. This “griefer spirit” seems to be infused with the game community so far, and ultimately will probably be the biggest problem I have with it. If you look at most of the streamers, they seem to be almost entirely devoted to ruining someone’s day. Although if you want to watch some streams that are not blatant griefing and high seas piracy… I highly suggest Kiwidream or IRLJasmine.

Systems Within Systems

That is the oddest thing about this game honestly, is that it can be so many different games to so many different people. From my limited experience so far it is very much a straight forward themepark style game. However after watching lots of streams on the game, I can see just how detailed the various systems are. You could in theory live your entire life in game as a crafter, doing nothing but running trade deliveries and crafting goods for sale. You could spend your time raising crops, or animals, or doing nothing but building really awesome houses for people. However you can also spend your time adventuring or as the community seems to be doing… griefing other players. Wading into this game is much like wading into Everquest 2 at this point. There are just a ridiculous amount of systems to try and figure out, and even though the game gives you a summary introduction to each… the depth there is almost staggering.

I still stand by my statement on the MMOPRG Game On podcast… I feel like this is going to be the game that has finally arrived for the Star Wars Galaxy player. One of the hallmarks of that title, was that so many different play styles were embraced and supported. ArcheAge so far feels like a spiritual successor, but with a really good combat system. I’m sorry to the SWG fans out there, but combat in that game felt horrible, even compared to what was available in Dark Age of Camelot at the time. What it had going for it however was all the open world goodness and player created content, and I feel like even with the seemingly asshole community… there might be a place to carve out a niche among the lawless. I know they are targeting free to play for this game, but it almost makes me hope that there might be a “patron only” server. I feel like a game with this much potential to ruin your day, needs a more curated environment.

Final Thoughts

I am starting to get used to the character especially now that I am starting to shift away from leather armor into plate gear. I feel like there will be a point where I actually enjoy playing the character and the way it looks. As far as the world goes… while it does not inspire me yet to go absolutely batshit crazy with the exploration like Elder Scrolls Online does… I figure as it opens up I will start to feel that way. Right now I am most concerned with staying on the path, since I don’t know where the free for all boundaries are. I want zero part in the pvp aspects of the game, so I will be doing my best to avoid them. I really like the way combat feels, the animations are nice and the abilities while essentially spamming hotkeys… feels good. I feel like it gives any wow-like combat system a run for its money. It is not extremely deep, but what is there is enjoyable. I feel as I keep unlocking skill points and subsequently new abilities it will keep feeling more “fleshed out”. While I do not feel like abandoning all other games and declaring ArcheAge the one true king… I enjoyed myself enough to keep playing periodically and see where the journey leads me. There is a lot to like in this game, and I feel as it progresses, that will increase.

#ArcheAge