Tales of the Aggronaut

Eight Man

September 21, 2013 by Belghast

Invasion of Fuzzy

Last night when I got home my mind was entirely on getting everything done so I could go participate in the game that must not be named. As a result I rushed inside, changed the ferret cage, started dinner etc without really being super observant. So by the time my wife got home, I was completely oblivious when she asked “what is up with all those fuzzy worms?”. I threw back on my sandals and went outside and sure enough… we were being invaded by dozens of large black furry caterpillars. They were climbing all over the garage door in groups of up to a half dozen or so. Seeing my photo this morning reminded me to do some research.

Turns out these are Walnut Caterpillars, and they normally forage for food in September/October in the south central region of the United States. The odd thing is… we have no Walnut/Pecan trees which are the only things they eat. So at first I was wondering why exactly they decided to try and find food in my front yard… then shortly thereafter I remembered… over the summer months I helped a neighbor haul out sections of a large tree. I am wondering if it was a Walnut, and by chopping it down he starved out these little guys. They could be desperately foraging trying to find any food source in the area… which lead them to spill out into my front yard. It is odd how cute and both creepy the experience of seeing them roam around my garage door was.

Stone Vigil

Lately I have been piddling big time in Final Fantasy XIV in an effort to let some of the new crop of players catch up a bit. As a result I have been leveling both the pugilist and archer quite a bit, and yesterday for awhile I focused on the gladiator and managed to get it to 25. However since the game that must not be named was not really cooperating… I noticed we had just the right number of people on for the next dungeon Stone Vigil. I had been hung up in the main storyline until I completed this dungeon, as had Rae so it would be good to get past it so we can continue on. As I have said before, every so often the game locks you at a story element and you will not receive further quests until you have completed it.

For going into the dungeon relatively cold… it could have gone a lot worse… however it also could have gone a lot better. There was one complete group wipe, and then another time that we lost me and Dallian our black mage. However the only times we actually struggled were on the completely egregious trash pulls. We managed to oneshot every boss in the dungeon so I can console myself with that thought, when I think about the rougher spots. It feels like the trash difficulty ramped up significantly. I don’t want to give any spoilers that you cannot already see from the dungeon preview video… but let me tell you… dragons are assholes in the Final Fantasy world.

Eight Man

The game has a series of encounters called Guildhests, that essentially try and teach players how to function in larger grouping dynamics. They educate the players in how to get out of bad things, how to focus fire the worst targets… various necessarily lessons that they will need to participate in larger dungeons. There are two hests every 5 levels after level 10, and they provide a ton of experience the first time you complete them. This is something I had almost completely ignored until recently, when the guild made a concerted effort to try and catch everyone up on them. The reasoning… the second level 40 hest… is the first 8 man content you can encounter.

Most of the dungeons and hests we had run, were 4 man groups… otherwise known as a Light Party in Final Fantasy lingo. The basic group composition is 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 dps. These are pretty simple to fill and get started. Eight mans on the other hand have a comp that is essentially two light partys… 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 dps. The problem with two tank encounters generally is that you have a “main” tank, and an “off” tank. As we went into this scenario I think both myself and Ashgar the other tank were really hoping that was not going to be the case here.

Much to our enjoyment the encounter was balanced in a way so that one tank was constantly tagging off between a fighting a boss and gathering trash role. Essentially we got attack from both sides at the same time forcing us to split up into two parties to handle the encounter. There was a lot of shifting of resources back and forth as the dps burned down one encounter while the next tank gathered up and got solid aggro on the next incoming encounter. I loved the synergy of the fight and the way that both tanks and both healers had to work in unison to cover each other. If that was any evidence of what the 8 man raids will look like, I think I am really going to like endgame content in this game.

Wrapping Up

I have to say the more I get into Final Fantasy, the more I am enjoying it. I went into this with an overwhelming meh feeling, but the longer I play it the more it has sunk its hooks into me. The leveling of alternate specs needs some work, as once you run out of quests you pretty much just have to grind fates…. but I feel they are working on this. I hate to say it but this is a game that could definitely benefit from daily quests other than the leves. I know this sounds odd coming from my post yesterday about game jumping, but I really hope this is a game we can stick with for awhile. I am really enjoying myself. I hope you all have a great weekend, and that you get accomplished whatever you need to.

Game Jumping

September 20, 2013 by Belghast

This morning I am struggling more than a tiny bit to stay focused long enough to actually write up a blog post. I feel like this is a side effect of my odd night. Firstly I was feeling extremely drowsy last night, so I had a few cups of coffee… which never fully woke me out of my slumber. What it did however is make me completely oblivion to the fact that it is past midnight and I was not in bed yet. Combine this with the fact that my wife woke me up in the middle of the night over essentially nothing, and we have a recipe for a groggy Bel. Here is hoping that I can focus long enough to make something intelligible.

Game Jumping

My post about being a content locust the other day, made me sit down and think. I am sure I have a bunch of friends who simply do not understand why I and a lot of my friends jump games so regularly. This is going to be my attempt to understand why the process is so alluring. Basically launch day is like Christmas morning for me… the game is so full of possibility. Everything is new, or at least new enough to lure me into a feeling of being on some grand exploration. The dungeons are all new, and there are no real guides to get in the way of figuring things out yourself. Every mob pull is unexpected, every level gained a treasure waiting to be opened as you find out what new abilities you get to play with.

The other thing that makes a game launch absolutely intoxicating is the fact that EVERYONE is playing it. Everywhere you turn there is a viable group combination, and everyone is excited to be doing them. Guild chat teems with “do you want to run X dungeon?” and a chorus of “hell yes we do!”. Everyone is excitedly talking about this thing they found or this trick they just learned. Lunchtime becomes a discussion of specs and strategy, and every single person is looking forward to getting home and logging into the game to experience more of it. The launch of a game is like a massive sugar rush where everything is sunshine, rainbows and magical flying ponies.

The Crash

Like any good sugar rush… you know there is a crash coming, but at the time you simply do not give a shit because it is just so pure and enjoyable. The problem is… an amazing game experience causes each of us to play in ways that are simply unsustainable for the long run. We might neglect to do this or that chore, knowing that eventually this will snowball and become a weekend we have to be COMPLETELY offline to take care of. Additionally we are all logging hours in a mad push to keep up with each other as we barrel through the content at breakneck speeds in search of the next new game high.

When the crash comes… it is sudden. We go from 30 players online one night, to 15, to 5… as everyone falls into recovery mode. Some recover their gusto for the game experience a few days or even a week later… but others still are just spent from the climb. Now is the point that the reality of the game sets in. As a player you start to notice the features that don’t work quite right, or are generally short sighted or outright missing. You start to complain politely that the company is not addressing whatever dire need you feel is there. Finally the feedback loop of players starts to become a chorus… and ultimately a handful of players will determine the game is unplayable and move on.

The Feet Draggers

In every game launch, there are a handful of friends that for whatever reason will not allow themselves to commit and jump head first into a new game experience. They have all manner of reservations, namely that folks will not stick with this one… but in essence they are missing the point. We are not necessarily looking for the next hundred year game… I think most of us are chasing the high of the launch. Launching a game is extremely intoxicating… everything is fresh and new and unsullied… and jumping into that experience is unlike anything else in gaming. Those timid souls who watch on the side lines, until seeing their friends having so much fun becomes unbearable… they are ultimately missing the best part of the game experience.

By the time they commit and download the game… they have missed the game in its heyday if you will. They have missed the times when everyone is excited to be doing something, even to the point of begging to do it. They have missed a time when we did not quite yet have figured out what spec did what, and what ability worked the best. They have missed a time when every loot drop was full of possibility, and we never knew what wonder might be lurking around the corner. They have to become excited in a time period when everyone in the guild surrounding them is becoming progressingly less excited.

I always feel the worst for the feet draggers. They are sold a tale of an undiscovered continent, but by the time they actually commit to getting the game they are delivered a depleted territory instead. I have a number of friends who will hem-haw and drag their feet trying to keep from committing to anything new that comes around the corner…. only to eventually end up buying it and wondering where the magic went. The magic is always spent in the hazy days of launch and the weeks leading past it, and that experience where everything literally IS magic and new… is worth any sticker price.

Pax Guildana

After the initial wave of pioneers have faded away, or at least returned to sustainable play times… we have a period of the guild that I like to refer to “Pax Guildana”. A quiet peaceful time when those of us who enjoy soloing, cast off the flurry of activity that a launch brings on and return to piddling around with some friendly guild chat to bind us together. This is the quiet after the storm, and usually remains this way until the excitement builds about a brand new launch on the horizon. As much as I love the thrill of being a pioneer into a brand new game world… I like this as well. I like logging in to a peaceful and friendly guild chat, not really knowing what I am going to do that night… but more than likely doing something completely devoid of stress.

Dungeons and group activity still happens, but more out of a sense of needing to get someone this or that thing… or through a quest, than out of the sheer excitement of doing them. Then one day someone comes to guildchat, talking about how they have discovered some new and amazing continent littered with riches everywhere the eye can see… and the process begins to build again. The first waves of scouts leave the mainland and soon after the second and third waves are off exploring this new land, plundering its bounty. This of course… leaves only the foot draggers to hold down the fort hoping that the excitement will return. If the basecamp was built well enough… folks often WILL return… but not in every case.

Home Base

For me right now, Rift is my home base and Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn my forward camp. I can say that my intent is to keep it this way… but at no time can I ever really say for certain how things will change. Sometimes the forward camp becomes the new home… and we discover a new territory on the horizon. Other times we fall back to home only to find out the new territory was fallow and uninhabitable. For the time being, my intent is to play these two games and enjoy each of them as much as I can. However with so many games on the horizon… at least one of them… Elder Scrolls Online… a game I have been anxiously awaiting for what feels like years. I am not sure if Final Fantasy will become the new home, and we will embark from it for the shores of Tamriel… or if that adventure will be sent out from Telara.

Regardless of from where the ships launch, I know that they WILL launch… and likely launch again for Wildstar. As much as I try and claim that I don’t have interest in a certain game… I too often get caught up in the thrall of the addictive nature of a big game launch. Having seen these events play out all too many times… it is just too enticing to not join in the fun. As always I feel horrible for the foot draggers… because they never get to experience a game in its purest form… but instead are always resigned to get the slightly used version of the game in the process. I keep thinking one of these days… one of these games they will get hooked on the launch process as well because they will jump into it whole heartedly with no reservations. It will only be then, that they truly understand why people jump from game to game.

Wrapping Up

Well I need to get on the road, but before doing so I need to pack my laptop and feed the animals. This Friday I have traded the super awkward coffee for a super awkward meeting. Not terribly looking forward to it, but we must do what we must do. I hope you all have a great weekend. Tonight I will be participating in something NDA restricted, so tomorrow morning I will have to come up with something interesting to say… that is in no way related to what I did last night. Hopefully inspiration will find me between now and then.

In Memoriam

September 19, 2013 by Belghast

In Memoriam

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of Warhammer Online, and much to the surprise of many people it was seemingly unmarked. I even retweeted a comment from Sypster that essentially said their ignoring the game was disgraceful. That they should either support the game or pull the plug. Well it turns out that is precisely what they had in mind. Thirty Minutes or so later we got this post on the front page of the official Warhammer Online page. They were pulling the plug active as of December 18th 2013.

I can’t say that this shocks anyone really in the gaming circles, because the game has been in a constant state of decline since its very early subscriber peak. A few months back I placed it as the game I was most disappointed in on my list of five biggest gaming disappointments. The game as a whole just had so much potential, and I enjoyed playing it for quite a while, until myself and my friends ran out of PVE content to consume. This was he game I had wanted to see the most rebooted as a free to play experience.

Ultimately they are stating that this is the point at which they are losing the license to Warhammer fantasy, and I believe that the statement can be taken one of two ways. Firstly you could conclude that like Star Wars Galaxies… getting a reissuance of the license by Games Workshop was an unlikely thing. However I tend to take the point of view that they were likely contractually obligated to run the game at least to the point at which the license period ended. Considering the complete and total lack of support shown by EA for the game, I feel like this is more than likely. The game as a whole was just a loss on their balance sheet that they were all to happy to take off as soon as they were able.

Free To Play Wishes

I feel the best case scenario would be for some asian game operator like perfect world to swoop in, buy the game assets, renew the license and resurrect it was a free to play game. I of course find this highly unlikely, but games like Hellgate: London have seen very unlikely resurrections in such fashion. Back in April I took Mythic up on one of their 14 day renewal passes and gave the game a spin again. I have to say overall Warhammer Online held up extremely well. They had greatly streamlined the leveling experience, which destroyed a lot of the originality of the game. Essentially they funneled everyone down either the Empire or Chaos path to try and make up for lack of subscriber numbers.

The world still looked good to me, and the ”stylistic realism” still very much fit the Warhammer world. The game innovated on so many things that have now become part and parcel for an MMO game. The game map was light years ahead of World of Warcraft at the time, and was the first out of the box map that provided a significant amount of information about what your quest objectives where, and where they could be fulfilled. If you like Rifts or GW2 events or even FATEs… we can thank Warhammer for giving us the first viable public questing system. The game still felt like a vibrant modern MMO to me when I played it… which only makes the severe neglect over the years that much more disappointing.

Not Designed For Me

For me… Warhammer Online was a game destined to be something I did not want to play. Everything sold about the game was pushing it into this “hardcore pvp” niche. This was not me at all and not even something I was vaguely interested in. However upon testing the game I found that the PVE experience was extremely good. I loved playing my Dwarven Ironbreaker, and it will go down in history as one of my favorite tank classes. The dual Grudge and Stamina mechanic meant I could regenerate resources as the fight went on allowing me to spend one while the other was recovering. I loved the fact that tanks had physical mass, and that you could in theory create human barricades to protect your team mates.

The only problem for me is that around level 25 the forced PVP started… and I simply did not really enjoy this. Keep raids were entertaining, but it added a level of unpredictability to my game play experience that I just did not enjoy. Could I complete the quests I had for X zone because we had recently lost it? I found myself leveling through an ever decreasing path of content, until there just was no meat left on the bone for me. I had enjoyed the low level scenarios, but as we leveled we kept getting pushed into new tiers of scenarios… and quite frankly the later ones were not as well designed as the first few. My favorite scenario was Mourkain Temple… aka “Kill the dude with the thing”. When I stopped being able to play that, I lost interest in the PVP aspect of the game.

Finality

I guess the most depressing part about this entire experience is that it is now over. Prior to yesterday I could always hold out a sad glimmer of hope that someone would decide to love this game and make it something that players would want to play. I realize this was a wholy unrealistic hope… but it was something I could hold onto. There are always games that I wish I could return to those heady days after launch. This was really the first game that House Stalwart broke out into in a big fashion. So many of us thought it would be our “new wow” and we stormed into the game with at least 40 active players. By the three month mark, very few of us were actually playing the game, and the large majority had slinked back into World of Warcraft.

We were PVE players, so each and every one of us hit the same level 25 wall where the content began to shift drastically. I had some friends that played Chaos that made it at least a year before quitting. However in the end… everyone DID quit, and move on to other things. The launch of Age of Conan was ultimately drew my PVP friends away from the game. However by that time, Mythic had already long since become a neglectful steward of the title. With no real new content being released and no viable hope of it… folks moved on. Ultimately Warhammer will always be an example of why I believe that no matter what players may say… they don’t actually want a PVP centric gaming experience.

No Petitions

Unlike the shutting down of both Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes… I don’t forsee much of a reaction from the community, if there is actually a Warhammer community left at all. Mythic killed this game long ago by forgetting about it. It has just been an animated corpse walking along in a stilted and syncopated rhythm for the last few years. I can’t say it is ever really “time” for a game to be turned off, but if there was this would likely be the poster child. So much of the brilliant things about this game, require massive armies of players to really pull them off… and quite frankly after about the year month mark they lacked that. This feels to me so much like the ending of Old Yeller… when you know the dog has to be put down, but you are still immensely saddened to see it get shot.

Wrapping Up

As soon as the news broke, I realized that it would likely be what dominated todays post. However I did not quite realize that I would ramble on about it for an ENTIRE post. I am sad to see the chapter drawing closed on the game but I guess at the end of the day I understand, and halfway expected this announcement to occur. Just sad to see it happen on the fifth anniversary of the game. I hope you all have a great day, and that whatever game you are really into manages to stay healthy and vibrant.

Stalwart Locusts

September 18, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy people in digital land. I am having one of those mornings where I am questioning why exactly I put myself through this every day. Not to be an intentional bummer, but this takes a lot of fortitude to keep doing this every single morning regardless of if I have something to say or not. I am just afraid if I stop it, for even one morning I will slip back into month long absences. I feel like I need the routine to keep me moving forward. I would really like to get a full year of daily posts, so for now that is my goal.

I’m a Jerk

I have to say, lately I have been feeling progressively worse about myself, so maybe this is just a downer of a post. Primarily the source of my lament, has been that I have been essentially non-existent over in Rift. I put all this effort and time into building an amazing instance of House Stalwart over there… and now so many of us are playing Final Fantasy XIV that it has almost over night become a ghost town. I feel like each and every one of us still like Rift and still enjoy it, we are just wrapped up in the thrall of the new shiny object in front of us.

To make matters even worse… Fynralyl and Psynister are being their amazingly awesome selves like normal… and ended up pushing the guild bank fund over the top and we were able to afford the third guild vault tab. However being the absentee leader like I have been… it took me a few days to pop in and purchase it, then forgot to give anyone access to it. I apparently did a piss poor job of promoting them to officers, only hitting a handful of characters for each of them. So generally I have been a pretty lousy person of late.

I feel generally conflicted. Firstly I still love Rift and enjoy it, and want the guild to be doing awesome things. Much like Everquest 2, Rift is one of those games that I have always cycled back to… and since the release of the game there is only a three month stretch where I have not been playing it. So I guess in the back of my mind I know it will always be there waiting for me. The problem is… the people currently playing it may or may not. Even if I am not around much, I still think breaking out and forming a permanent House Stalwart guild was a good thing for those times when the guild is super active.

Stalwart Locusts

The sad truth of House Stalwart is it is really a tale of two guilds. The first is a group of WoW players that have remained thoroughly devoted to that game since release and continue playing it or returning to it. The second guild is the large roaming band of “content locusts”, that consume the content in a game only to move on to the next tasty field when it presents itself. So as a result this guild is this massive amorphous war band that roams across the countryside pillaging things in our wake. It might not be the most pleasant metaphor, but considering we now have about 30 people in Final Fantasy XIV whereas we had around 30 active people in Rift previously… it seems appropriate.

In part this is my fault, but in part this is just the nature of most “post-wow” players. Once we dissolved the ties to one game, it changed the way we viewed games in general. The fact that Stalwart is so large and so broad and ever changing… means we always have a group of people playing whatever game the people seem to want to be playing. So when a new game comes out there are always a dozen or so people amped and ready to play it. It doesn’t so much feel like we are jumping games, but more than we are just continuing the same ties we have always played with… somewhere else.

For me personally… leaving WoW changed my perspectives a lot. Essentially I made a promise to myself that I would play whatever happened to be the most enjoyable for me at any given moment. As a result I have played a ton of cool games, and met an ever expanding cast of characters in the process. I now have so many life long friends that I have today, that I NEVER would have had if I had not given in to my wanderlust and experienced new worlds with different groups of new people. But all of this said… I still feel like an ass when I am off playing something other than a fragment of Stalwart is playing.

Big Apology

I guess in part, today’s post is a huge apology to those playing Rift that have noticed the active player base in the guild shrink significantly over the last few weeks. I don’t think any of us are “done” with Rift, this is just something that happens from time to time with Stalwart. We find a new shiny and go off and play it together. I have a years subscription to Rift, so I won’t be going anywhere forever, I just have so many things that I want to do in Eorzea. So many new sights to see, experiences to experience and adventures to conquer.

I still plan on trying to marshal the troops to logging back in on Wednesday nights for dungeons or rifts or whatever happens to occur. My hope is to single that out on the calendar as “Rift night”. Additionally as the leveling curve winds down a bit in FFXIV, I hope to push my rogue up on the weekends… because quite frankly leveling in Rift is a relaxing experience for me. Most of the time in FFXIV has been a LOT of dungeon running, and since I am one of two tank mains… I feel deeply obligated to all the friends that are playing the game.

This is ultimately what always complicates my gaming experience. The feeling of constant split loyalty… since there has never been a period of time when ALL of my friends happen to be in the same place at the same time. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view… I am the leader of House Stalwart agnostic of whatever game folks happen to be playing. It has and likely always will be a multi-gaming community, more so than just a single gaming guild. As games come and go the important thing to me is the community of players that we have cobbled together. That is what is eternal, and so long as we remain friends there will always be another opportunity to play together around the corner.

Wrapping Up

Sitting down this morning I had no intent of writing a post like this, but I guess it has been weighing heavily on my mind. Hopefully it was not too big of a downer for the majority of my readers. It still feels odd most of the time that anyone reads these ramblings. I will be over in Rift tonight, trying to dislodge anyone I can from FFXIV in the process. I have no clue at all what we will be doing, but I figure some opportunity will present itself. I hope you all have a great week, and those of you who are playing it… I hope I see you in Rift tonight.