Tales of the Aggronaut

Faffing the Steppes

March 24, 2014 by Belghast

Fitbit Logic

So this is the point where I am supposed to come up with something interesting to talk about for a blog post. I kinda over did it a bit yesterday with the double posting, but that family drama piece really needed out of my head. Once I finished posting it, we both dressed and went out into the world to run the errands that needed running. The fit bit does funny things to you. I find myself parking way the hell out in the middle of nowhere just to be able to get some extra steps in. This also permeated our grocery store trip. I am normally one of those people who goes exactly to the areas of the store for the items I need and then zips straight out. I used to be able to do the weekly shopping trip in about fifteen minutes.

However yesterday we purposefully meandered up and down every possible isle, not because we didn’t know exactly what we needed… but we were trying to milk the trip for as much walking as humanly possible. So we wandered up and down the isles, saving the frozen foods for last. Not unexpectedly we probably bought a lot more groceries than normal but we got our maximum amount of walking from the trip. It feels like cheating, since I am going out of my way to try and put in as many steps as possible into everything I do. However… I guess that was really the point of gamifying exercise. Funny thing is, last night at one point I got up to get a drink while watching the walking dead. When I got back I ended up pacing around for a bit while watching the television before sitting back down.

Faffing the Steppes

Watch live video from Belghast on TwitchTVMost of yesterday was spent faffing about in World of Warcraft. With the impending launch of Reaper of Souls tomorrow, and the headstart for Elder Scrolls Online soon… I really want to get my mage to 60 so I can boost it. My gameplan in general has been to work on quests while not in a dungeon. But I am pretty much habitually queuing at every chance I get. This has been interesting to say the least. Normally speaking I can stomach pugs if I am not tanking, and for the most part this has been the same with playing a mage. The only problem I run into is when I have a tank that simply doesn’t know what they are doing. To make it worse, many of these tanks in question are not speaking English. I really question the logic behind blizzard lumping non-english and english speaking servers together.

Granted this happens with European servers in pretty much every single game. However speaking more than one language is a much more common occurrence there. While I can pick out a few words here and there of Spanish, I am by no means fluent enough to get my point across. At one point last night the tank in question skipped half of the zone. Since we were all leveling, and killing things means more experience… I didn’t really get the point. Since the tank was only speaking Portuguese I had no real way of conveying my questions. Maybe blizzard needs to look into embedding Google translate into their API, or maybe that is an add-on idea waiting to happen. There have been many games that have bridged the language gap very well with some auto translation. I think maybe it is time for Blizzard to look into doing the same.

Veronica Mars

I finally got around to watching the Veronica Mars movie this weekend, and I have to say I liked it quite a bit. I started watching the series on a random whim, and thought my wife might also enjoy it. So together we worked our way through the entirety of the series when it was on Netflix. It is one of those rare instances where a TV show appeals equally to both of us. Mostly for me… I like the title character. I love the random quirky smartassery that comes out of her mouth, and the creative solutions to awkward situations. I find it odd just how this show, much like Firefly has found such an active “life after death”. If nothing else this proves to me that Hollywood knows exactly jack shit about what people want. Kickstarter and similar community backing seems to be a way for the huddled masses that don’t fit into the neat bubble of “pop culture” to finally get the things they have always wanted.

I did not back the show, mostly because I was feeling more than a little bit of Kickstarter fatigue when it happened. Thankfully not everyone was me. When it came out I bought the $20 digital copy from Amazon, because I wanted to put my money where my mouth. The only problem with the digital offerings here is they are all pretty much heinous, and none of them are really compatible with my chosen method of watching television and movies. Namely I prefer to stream things to my television using Chromecast and Plex. Granted I could do the crappy tabcasting thing, which is fine for say a twitch stream, but ends up annoying me when trying to watch something more “long form”. As a result I went out an acquired a downloaded copy of the movie to back up the one I paid for. Dear Hollywood… your DRM is dumb for making me pirate the movie after paying legally for it. You are doing it wrong.

As far as the movie itself goes… I liked it a lot. I am not sure exactly how I can give it a proper review without absolutely giving everything away. The characters I liked from the television show that I cared about, all made cameo appearances even if they didn’t always factor heavily into the plot of the movie. The quality of acting and cinematography was great, especially considering this did not go through the traditional channels. That said however… the movie felt a bit off at times, or more so it just felt like I was watching an hour and a half long episode of the television show. The movie ends in a perfect place for them to pick up a sequel or even another television show. So here is hoping this is not the last we see of Veronica Mars.

Miracle of Normality

March 23, 2014 by Belghast

Visiting Grandma

So today you are getting a bonus post out of me. Sometimes I post out of a sense of duty, other times I post because I need to get something out of my head. This is going to be one of the later, and as a result it is going to be deeply personal. Gratz… you guys get to go inside my head for a bit. If you only care about the gaming side of my blog then today’s post is likely not for you. Yesterday afternoon we made the trip up to my hometown, because after not going for a few days… we felt like we needed to. My mother has not been dealing with this terribly well, and honestly I feel like I haven’t even really started dealing myself.

The big event that has transpired since last up there, was that Grandma was ready for viewing at the local funeral home. I am not a big fan of funerals, and not a huge fan of viewing the body. People talk about how the body “looks just like them”, or how good of a job the funeral home did. I have to say objectively… that the funeral home did do a good job. They made my grandmother look pretty, but the problem is… my grandmother is not laying there in that casket. What remained laying there was a carefully decorated husk left behind when the person they were, died.

I am not a deeply religious person, in fact after my catholic upbringing I have pretty much avoided allegiance to any religious doctrine. I tend to believe the things that I can directly observe, but I do believe in the soul. I think we just lack the technology yet to observe the fundamental spark that makes each of us a unique person. I have been there as someone died, and watched the light leave their body. Moments before they were the person I knew and loved, and then almost like a balloon deflating whatever magical stuff made them the person… was just gone. So that is why I say that no matter how pretty they attempt to make the husk… it never “looks just like them”. When I die I want to be cremated… I want to dispel all illusions that what remains when I am gone, is anything but my remnants.

Miracle of Normality

Once we finished viewing the body, we went out to my grandmothers house to see my mother. My mother and uncle have more or less been holding vigil at grandmas house trying to contact the family and figure out what all they needed to do before the funeral this coming Tuesday. The more time I spend there around her siblings and my cousins… the more amazed I am that I made it out of the environment relatively unscathed. That is not to say I don’t have my own deep furrows and scars… but I fared far better than most. My mom and dad for whatever failings they had somehow managed to provide me a relatively normal upbringing, my cousins did not end up so lucky.

It seems like the only real way to be okay, is to escape the gravity of this small town. My cousin didn’t make it out, and now he is a drug infused mess. He managed to marry a woman who was even more messed up than himself, and together they brought into this world a lovely and intelligent little girl. The problem is… the longer she is caught in the gravity well of the two of them… the worse off she will be. He claims that he is no longer using, but the signs betray him. He is severely fried, doing all the telltale signs that my friends did in high school when they were “flying high”. So either he is using, or his wife is using enough to give him a permanent contact high.

He has pretty much burned all of his bridges with local employers, who give the assessment that “he is a hard worker, when he shows up for work and is sober”. Essentially what he needs to do is take his daughter and go somewhere far far away from the influence of his “friends”. Because he is basically destroying her life as well. Right now he is making money by scavenging for metals to sell for what will ultimately end up as drug money. He was talking about how good his daughter had gotten as spotting copper. How she ends up dragging home extension cords, and various other things that have copper in them. I fully expect that this is going to end up in tragedy.

At this point… I am wondering what exactly I can do. He at least cares for her and tries really hard to be a good father. If I turn them into DHS, she is old enough and far enough gone that she will bounce from foster home to foster home and likely end up more messed up than she already is. Her best hope right now is for him to essentially give her to his sister to raise. His sister escaped the gravity well and moved far far away. So much so that when my mom called to tell her about grandma, she didn’t answer the phone and had to call back after listening to the message. She said that she no longer answered phone calls from our area code, because she refused to let her family be torn apart by her brother.

Still Dealing

So anytime I try and break down over missing my grandmother, I just find that I can’t. I live such a charmed life in comparison to the rest of my family. I feel like in some way I don’t deserve to break down. I realize at some point I will have to “deal” and it won’t exactly be pretty. Thankfully I have a very supportive wife, and a vast support structure of friends that will be there to catch me when I fall. In the meantime I am going to keep soldiering forward towards Tuesday, and the funeral. There were so many times I had to bite my tongue yesterday, and I was very proud of my wife in that she was able to as well. There was a constant flurry of texting between the two of us, but through that we were able to keep “stable”.

Grandma would not want there to be fighting, and there is a very tentative peace currently between the siblings… and they don’t need me straining it. Right now everything of grandmas entered a trust, where the four brothers and sisters… and my cousin who represents the fifth now have to work together to make decisions. This is not going to end cleanly, and I imagine shortly after the funeral a war will erupt between the siblings. I can already see people cracking up, and my mother is not exactly helping this by being extremely overbearing. I realize they are all hurting, they are just dealing with that hurt in some bad ways. In the midst of all of this… my internal conflict and suffering really doesn’t matter much. So I will do my damnedest to keep a stoic face until everything is finished.

Assassin’s Creed II

March 23, 2014 by Belghast

Steampowered Sunday #10

I have had a really lousy week, and if you have followed my blog you know why. However that said, I did not want to break the Steampowered Sunday tradition. This week we had a tie between Assassin’s Creed II and Evoland, and in order to settle the tie I essentially flipped a coin. As a result I played roughly and hour and a half of Assassin’s Creed II. At face value this seems like a game I would not like very much, considering in general I do not like stealth titles. However so many friends of mine have been so into this game series that I felt like I had to give it a try. I feel like I am somehow losing gamer cred by admitting that I have never played ANY of the Assassin’s Creed games before today.

Watch live video from Belghast on TwitchTVAll of my friends have said that the essential title that I needed to start with was Assassin’s Creed II, so as a result that is the title I have placed in the running for a few weeks. Initially the title suffers from many of the console game tropes that I hate. Namely the “long introduction” and the forced “stealth” to get to an area where the game opens up. Then when you finally get into the action, there is yet another trope that I cannot stand… “the un-skippable mini-game” namely in the form of the rooftop race with your brother. So early on… things were not looking really good for this title. Within the first 15 minutes it had committed three cardinal sins. That said I kept playing and eventually got a grasp on why exactly this game is fun.

Where this game shines is the open world exploration aspect. While they only give you a small area at a time to roam around, for the most part you are allowed to get to your objective in whatever fashion you like. Additionally the “stealth” aspect of the game is extremely forgiving. If you are “feeling your wheaties” you can beat the shit out of your pursuers, or if you don’t feel like fighting you can simply run away and in a grand theft auto style wait for the coast to be clear again. Your enemies show up as very clear red dots on the map, and in many times you can simply blend into the crowd to avoid them. The only time they seem to notice you is if you are extremely close or doing something like running about or doing something to draw attention to yourself.

I realize at an hour and a half into the game I have barely scratched the surface. So far it seems like the game progresses in a very GTA style, where you are presented a series of small quests. Some of them involve going and fetching something, others beating up a person, and others still following around NPCs and helping them with some task. All of this is pretty boring, but the fact that you can accomplish these missions by wandering around the rooftops of the city make it far more enjoyable. I can see why people are into this title, and I think I would like it even more if it were more open and free. I can only imagine how great this title would be if it were presented in a more “fallout” type sandbox manner. Right now you are given pretty clear direction in what the quests do and which ones you should take.

So far the only real frustration is when I manage to get a “timed event” style quest. I find movement in this world to be cludgy at best, especially after being used to the parkour of newer games like Titanfall. There are many times where I do something like leap off of a building that I did not intend, but did so because I either didn’t wait long enough for my camera angle to readjust or waited too long. If I can get used to the quirks of the movement I feel like my enjoyment will improve, however when you put me under a timer and the movement does something screwball I feel like throwing the controller across the room. I have to remind myself that this game was initially released in 2009, and since then game controls have become so much more responsive. I am sure if I cracked open Assassin’s Creed IV many of these issues have been solved.

Overall I think this is going to be a title I play quite a bit more of. In fact once I finish a few chores this morning, I will probably boot it back up and play some more. I am hooked enough on what is there to make me want to play some more. Right now I am also feeling deeply antisocial, so a single player title is a good option. At this moment I am tentatively positive about the game and considering I got it as part of a massive package of other Assassin’s Creed titles, I can see maybe going back and playing the others as well. My friends all told me to start with 2, because there were some serious controllability issues prior to that point. If that is the case I am very glad I did, because I already feel like 2 is more than a little awkward, I would not have likely made it this far in a title where the controls were worse.

Comfort Gaming

March 22, 2014 by Belghast

Classy Defined

This morning I got up like I do most weekend mornings, and threw on enough clothing to make myself presentable. Generally speaking I don’t shower until later in the day, so generally this means I have to throw on a skull cap to tame my hair that is sticking straight up. In the winter this makes sense… in the summer not so much. Honestly in the morning anytime I see someone in a skull cap or baseball cap… I pretty much assume they are doing precisely what I am doing. As always I went to QuikTrip to gather up sustenance, and walked away with chocolate donut holes for the Mrs. and a jalapeño sausage roll for me.

While there… I saw the definition of classy. This woman walked in, who looked like she was already three sheets to the wind. What was she buying you ask? Well she planted an “Olde English” 40 oz malt liquor on the counter. Granted this is 8 am in the morning, most of the people in the place are buying donuts or juice or something more breakfast appropriate. In addition she had a package of twinkies and asked the guy at the counter if he sold single swisher sweets. After some fumbling around he found her a three pack, and I guess that was “close enough”. So yeah… I guess that is how some people roll. I am guessing this is not breakfast but a “night cap” of sorts. Just not something I normally see in the neighborhood QuikTrip.

Comfort Gaming

I think I grieve differently than most. Since the news of my grandmother, all I have really wanted to do is “turtle”… aka pull my head inside my shell and forget that the world exists. One of my chosen ways of doing this is to go off and play games that have always made me happy. One of the games I always cycle back to eventually is Everquest 2. It is like an old friend that I have spent so much time with, that I don’t even need to talk anymore… and I know that it understands me. Yeah I am sure it is odd that I personify a game like that, but really EQ2 was a thing I did for “me” and no one else. All the while raiding in WoW I would steal private time by logging into Norrath and wandering around aimlessly on my army of alts.

Just as a coincidence, right now my absolutely favorite event is going on in EQ2. Once a year Chronoportals open up allowing players to revisit areas from the original Everquest. Some of them are rather funny, like the Ancient Cyclops event in Sinking Sands. Back in the day there were all sorts of “theories” for how you get the ancient cyclops to spawn. Some of these involved killing all the madmen, spiders or mummies… and none of them really worked. It was a fairly random chance that you would get him to spawn. Why did players care? Well the Ancient Cyclops dropped the item needed to start the Journeyman Boots quest line, which of course provided the player with their own personal way of casting “Spirit of the Wolf”. SoW Plx!

Basically they are a really awesome way of getting account bound gear for your alts. I am not sure when I will actually level an alt again, but sooner or later I always seem to, and having these weapons and gear makes a bit difference. On my Shadow Knight I am still using the sword that comes from the Lower Guk chronoportal event. It is precisely the kind of mindless nostalgia that I need right now. The above video has me running through several of the events, or at least the ones I could remember off the top of my head. However if you are looking for a full listing, the place to check is Zam as always the amazing Cyliena does a great job as always with updates.

The Great Wipe

The end of Alpha is I believe next Wednesday morning, and the beginning of Closed Beta begins Wednesday afternoon/evening when the servers come back up. What this means is everything we have created along the way… will be gone. The only thing that will be kept are your characters, and the various entitlements like things that came from the trailblazer packs and things purchased from the store. This means all of the claim data will be wiped. I have a big mixed opinion about this. I don’t mind the idea of losing the work I have done on my claim, but I really don’t like the idea of losing my claim in general. I like my claim, I like where it is. My frustration is that there will be a massive landrush Wednesday evening… which is going to suck.

My plan will be to try and get a spot similar to where I had it before on Liberation/Pingo, but if I cannot… who knows where I will end up. Basically the acquisition of goods begins a new. So that means we will have to go back to square one with only our extra special trailblazer axe to start and work our way through the gearing tiers again. Here is hoping that with the addition of heartwood the grind for stuff is far less painful. As a result I got in for a bit yesterday, but I didn’t really feel like doing much. I made a few claims extension flags to see how well that worked, but really with everything going away, I don’t feel much like screwing with it. I have a bit of my stuff templated, but really I found using super huge templates really awkward so I will probably build everything back from scratch.

The cool thing about closed beta is that each of us trailblazers are getting friend keys. The notice from the other day says these are no longer going to be time limited keys… but instead permanent access to the beta from this point onwards. I know a few people who wanted them, so I will be trying to hand mine out that way. However there should be a lot of them up for grabs as I know a lot of people in the blogosphere who are Trailblazers. My hope is that they pretty much limit the closed beta access to just the friend codes for a bit, at least until the great landrush is over. My goal is to get another claim somewhere in a forested area and then start over from there. I really liked being in the forest, especially since the later item grind ends up being wood, and not ore.