aggrochat Archives - Page 24 of 35 - Tales of the Aggronaut

The Monkeysphere

February 15, 2015 by Belghast

AggroChat 44 – Tragic Relationships

As we were getting close to recording this weeks episode two things happened. Firstly we decided that it was probably better for all parties combined if we tried to record on Friday instead of Valentines day proper, that would leave the day open for any holiday plans that our cast might have. Secondly Kodra suggested that we try and record a Valentines episode talking about relationships in video games. At face value this seemed like a great idea, and generally speaking even if an idea is destined to fail… I am more than willing to try it. The problem is as we sat down to record, we quickly realized just how flawed and tragic most relationships in video games are. We can’t even make it past three relationships in the episode without hitting in the fact that man… video games are really bad at this.

The problem is that video games seem to be good at two emotions revenge fueled Rage, and utter soul crushing Sadness. We joked about indie games being hung up on sadness a few episodes ago when Tam kept giving each game Kodra talked a sadness score “Seven Sads out of Ten”. It seems as though we are not quite ready to talk about actual adult relationships that are productive and not abusive or hostile to the well being of the participants. I think the problem is more that we have not figured out how to do meaningful stories that are not relying on these elements as a way of moving the plot forward. After all if someone is happy with their life, chances are they are not going to go off and be and adventurer. In any case the episode ended up being pretty interesting to record in spite of itself.

The Monkeysphere

Yesterday Braxwolf wrote an interesting follow up to my post diving into my post and trying to explain some of his own thoughts. His post was awesome for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it gave me a real name to a theory that I have used for years. Once upon a time I was driving home and heard some researchers talking on NPR about the “monkeysphere” theory… well it turns out this is more properly known as the Dunbar number. Essentially it is the maximum number of people that we can care about at one time. The idea is that our brains are literally only capable of caring about a fixed number of people at any given time, so in order to start caring about someone knew… we have to punt someone out of the sphere. I’ve long thought about this and I think my zone of caring maybe works a little different than the extreme examples of these studies.

While I am not sure if my sphere is larger than most, but I think it is arranged in some distinct regions. I attempted to draw these out above, to make sense of them. If you take that 150 is the maximum number of people that you can care about at any time like the initial study I read, my numbers would break down to something like this. I generally have about 25 people that I would consider my inner circle, and these are folk that maintain their orbit relatively safely and I ultimately end up talking to them almost every single day. After that we fall into a close orbit zones of folks I would consider close friends, and among this group I would say there are about 50. From there you fall into what I refer to as the “hotswap” zone, to borrow a term from technology. This would be a field of 75 people that gets swapped in and out of the larger pool of every single person I have ever met.

Points of Data

Each person that I meet gets stored in my brain as a pattern of data… the closer I am to a person the more data points I remember. The odd thing is… when someone moves in and out of orbit I don’t delete that data. I can remember things about friends that I have not seen in years and may never actually cross paths with again. Essentially I feel like I have a fourth sphere that is made up of the thousands and thousands of people I have ever met in my life. At any time due to circumstance one of these people can come zooming into orbit and bump someone else out of that “hotswap” zone and I can functionally pick up where I left off, as though no time had passed. I realize that not everyone functions in this state of constantly looking for new interactions with people, and pulling them into their own personal gravity for as long as possible. But that is the way I work, as some sort of empathic computer looking for new inputs.

The biggest flaw in my system design however is the fact that there is no delete key. When a group of individuals break out of orbit attempting to shun me… there is no system available to write those individuals off as a “loss” and purge them from my memory. The sting of rejection will always be there, even after decades pass.. it can be summoned up on a whim with brilliant Technicolor realism. I can remember every disappointment, every failure, every time someone made fun of me. Which seems horrible until you realize that I can also remember every single positive event that has happened to me, each warm fuzzy felt and recalled at a moments notice. The problem is… this makes it extremely hard to ever truly forgive someone. I can reach a point of “being able to exist amicably” with someone, but I can never actually forget any of the transgressions… and in the back of my head will always end up holding a grudge. So having this deep empathic memory… is a double edged sword, but I would not change the way I function for anything.

AggroChat Game Club

February 6, 2015 by Belghast

Failure to Random

Last night was our second night of raiding in Blackrock Foundry, and our second night of attempts on Oregorger. This boss has become the pinnacle of everything I love and hate about Blizzard raid encounter design. The thing I love is the fact that it is a really inventive fight that lets us play pacman as we gobble up crates of ore throughout the arena before Oregorger can get to them. What I hate about it is the fact that there are some serious RNG elements to the fight. After our first night of attempts the raid lead and others poured over the logs, and did some serious research finally finding a video showing how the process worked. In theory Oregorger will always choose to go a direction where there a boxes So the theory goes that if you clear boxes in a certain order he will favor a specific path over others. The problem in practice is even then… there is still a large amount of RNG into the encounter as to which specific direction he will turn and charge.

You can watch the video we stumbled onto purporting to have the solution. The problem is no matter how many times we watched the video, no closely we aspired to follow the golden path… something went wrong. It is moments like this that I get frustrated since really I have no clue what is going wrong. If we can ever figure out the magic behind the box phase we will down this fight because we are now doing the first phase flawlessly, or what appears to be flawlessly. Largely this has always been one of the problems with World of Warcraft raid design. They tend to view “random” as a positive thing, and to some extent I get it… but don’t make these random occurrences raid wipes. The Oregorger encounter is long enough as it is… to have a single mechanic take out half of your raid. I guess I find myself preferring the Final Fantasy XIV raid design ethic of extremely difficult… but follows a predictable pattern. That way when you fail you know it is because you didn’t do something… not because the random element decided to screw you over this try.

Hans and Franz

When we took our break half way through the raid, we opted to switch gears and shift to the Hans and Franz encounter. The mob names are Hans’gar and Franzok, and I find it absolutely hilarious that they a reference a skit that came out when I was in elementary school… and large swaths of our raid was not even alive when it was a “thing”. But I am told apparently there is a State Farm commercial bringing the characters back… so I guess it makes sense. The encounter is in a room filled with conveyor belts with thin strips between them that don’t move. At the start of the fight the belts are off, but when it enters the environmental damage phase they turn on making it harder to avoid the obstacles. The first phase is avoiding the “pop tarts” as they have become referred to by the raid… which are these molten metal slabs that come into the room. The second phase of the environmental damage is avoiding the metal stampers, that come down from the ceiling in a certain pattern. There seemed to be four turns of a specific pattern before the encounter picked a new pattern. Granted it could potentially pick the same pattern twice in a row for eight turns.

There was also a tank swap mechanic happening, but as DPS I never quite grasped what was actually occurring. There was a point in the fight where a specific tank in the rotation needed to have an external damage cooldown cast on him while being slammed to the ground. The rest of the fight was simply avoiding damage that could be avoided, and pouring damage into the boss during the few times when they were standing still. This meant that you wanted to make sure you blew your dps cooldowns and took your second potion during one of the windows where you could stand on the non-moving sections and pour damage in. Everything about this fight is like a better designed Oregorger, and what I mean by that is… there is still a fun quirky mechanic, there is still an element of randomness… but the randomness is predictable and something you can adjust for quickly. I will admit on the first pull seeing everything play out felt like madness, but it was simply to adjust after that to match the pattern in play. As a result we downed Hans and Frans last night and I managed to pick up two more drops… one of which again I won’t be using.

AggroChat Game Club

I figure at this point… the statute of limitations on the podcast we announced our first AggroChat Game Club title. As a result I am going to talk about it today for anyone who happens to read my blog… but not listen to our podcast. One of the ideas we kicked around for awhile was to have a single title that all of us played during the course of a month. Then during the last show of that month we dive into the game completely with no concern about spoilers. The idea is for us to talk everything about that game, what we liked, what we didn’t like and how we felt about the major plot points. During Episode 41, we deliberated about a long list of games and finally decided to go with a consensus title for the very first one. As such we chose Citizens of Earth by Atlus, and over the course of this month all five of the AggroChat members are going to be playing it. To make things even more interesting… this is a title that is available on Steam, 3DS and Vita and in actuality we have folks playing each of these versions.

What I want from you… is to play along with us! I thought it would be fun if we also collected some of the best comments sent into us by listeners to the podcast that are also playing. So pick up the game on whatever platform you choose, play the game, and then send in your comments. We will try and pick out several of the comments we receive about the game and mention them while recording our podcast. The show in which we are recording is February 28th, so please try and have the comments to us by the 26th to make sure we have time to read them. Each of us are already knee deep in the game, and I look forward to this little experiment. For those wondering… all of the titles mentioned during AggroChat #41 that did not receive a “hard veto”, are still technically in play. We are sorting out how this club will work from this point on, but more than likely we will be round robin picking future titles from that same list. Hopefully you will join in the fun, and don’t forget to let us know what you think.

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So Damned Charming

February 1, 2015 by Belghast

Episode 42 – Gigantic Personality

This week is the first live show we have recorded in two weeks. In the intervening time Bel, Rae and Ash went to Pax South, and Rae and Ash managed to catch the dreaded Pax Pox. Kodra represented our podcast on the Inaugural episode of the TGEN Tribunal podcast featuring members from all of the various TGEN podcasts and then became the grand Wii Bowling champion of his cruise. During the course of this episode my cast members try and convince me that I am a “media personality” to which I still deny. In addition to all of this madness we talk about a lot of games.

Kodra talks about his experiences with the 3DS port of Citizens of Earth, playing a lot of Sudoku and the punishing game 1001 Spikes. Ash talks about a week of playing Final Fantasy XIV, and the rogue like overture. Tam talks about time spent playing the new generation of adventure games including Dreamfall Chapters and Life is Strange. Rae talks about some FFXIV and her frustrations with the current state of League of Legends Lag, as well as the controversy of them completely blowing off Pax South. Finally I talk about my experience taking media appointments at Pax South, and getting to play a lot of Gigantic and Moonrise. We deep dive into Gigantic talkinga bout our experiences playing together, and what the various champions we played were like.

Finally at the end I talk a little bit about my joining the staff of MMOgames.com. It is a big episode full of lots of stuff and I hope you all enjoy it. We are happy to be back and happy to be hanging out and recording aggrochat once more.

So Damned Charming

One of the things that makes me happiest in life is when a bunch of my friends happen to be playing the same game at the same time. Over the course of the last week Syl, Jaedia, Liore, Aro and a few others have started playing Final Fantasy XIV on the Cactuar server. This morning was the first time I had actually caught Syl on since she started up, because of time differences and the fact that last weekend I was kinda a Pax South. While waiting on one of my filters to run on the podcast this morning I popped over to see what she was up to in Camp Drybone. While there I played show and tell with various outfits and then decided to show off my Draught Chocobo, the two player mount that comes from the recruit a friend program. She I think jokingly asked if it could take her to Vesper Bay… but sure enough that was precisely what I did. Granted I had to run across three zones to get there but it was super enjoyable, and all the while she was emoting all sorts of happy things sitting behind me.

Its moments like this that make Final Fantasy XIV so damned charming. Sure there are problems like goofy invisible walls, or things being gated behind group content… but the overall package is just so adorable at times it hurts. I mean what is more awesome than a pair of Lalafell trekking across country on a big damned chocobo? I love how group friendly this game is, that any one of us can easily help another guildie get something accomplished. We have started over the last few weeks doing a guild raid night of sorts directly before our podcast on Saturday. Last night we managed to catch a few people up with Shiva and Ultros, and then turned around and finished the Chimaera fight for another guildie. It is so painless to make this happen, no fiddling with hotbars, no fiddling with gear sets… the game just auto levels you down to the content that you need to run. I think in part the ease of helping others is what leads to the game being so friendly to new players.

Hard Mode Roulette

Another thing that happened recently is we managed to complete all of the new set of dungeons, unlocking hard mode roulette. I have to say it feels like Square has ramped everything about this patch up since in theory it is the last major one we will get before the expansion. Everything is leading towards what feels to be us entering Ishgard and joining in the battle against the dravinians. I spoke about the Keeper of the Lake dungeon earlier, and it definitely ties in to this theme. The other two dungeons feel more like us dealing with consequences of our actions. In Wanderer’s Palace we face the King Tonberry and through the course of the events end up defeating him. Upon entering Wanderer’s Palace hard mode… we see that this really destroyed the Tonberry people allowing a beast tribe to come in and take over, enslaving them. So here I am hanging out with my Tonberry Buddies after saving the day.

In Amdapor Keep hard mode we are going back in to deal with the havoc that the cultists started the first time. Cleaning up the remainder of the demonic hordes that were summoned. This is really the first dungeon that it did not feel there was a vastly different storyline. Granted you take a completely different path through the keep, and face entirely new enemies, but the story of the dungeon itself felt a little on the weak side. I did remark several times at just how pretty the dungeon was this time around. In all cases the new content was rather challenging, forcing us to use our limit breaks to get through almost every encounter. So far of this new set I would definitely say that Keeper was the hardest, and is likely going to be the one folks bail on if any. I felt like maybe Amdapor Keep was the easiest, leaving Wanderers Palace somewhere in the middle. I love the hard mode dungeons and am amped to see what they give us with the expansion. In the mean time I need to make my way into World of Darkness and see how that works.

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AggroChat 41 and Pax Day Two

January 24, 2015 by Belghast

A Tale of Two Days

It was not until today that I realized that yesterday at Pax was a bit of a downer. I had a lot of fun playing around with various games that I had media appointments with, and I am so happy I caught moments like “Pax South Plays Pokemon” where a guy in a costume was accepting and mimicking commands just like Twitch Plays Pokemon. The problem is I mostly focused on the four appointments I had, and treated the day like I was working the convention. In theory I guess I was but the biggest thing that lead to this feeling was the fact that more or less I was completely alone. Sure there were people at the convention that knew but since I was so focused on making sure I was on time for the four meetings I didn’t really focus on mingling much other than with the random strangers I stood in line with. That was one of the things I found most interesting is just how comfortable I felt around strangers. I think part of it is that I knew if conversation did happen… it would at least be about something I was probably knowledgeable. It was like the entire weekend was this safe little bubble of geeks and dorks… and we all inherently sense we were among our own kind, and somehow safe.

Today however was a completely different experience. Upon arriving there I got into the line for the Guild Wars 2 expansion reveal, and immediately after that I met up with Ashgar who was also watching the panel but had arrived late. Shortly after that we met up with Rae and her brother and from that point on at least two of us were together at all times. This completely changed the entire dynamic of the show for me. Instead of being about milling around looking for something interesting… it became about having this grand adventure with friends. I of course had to sho them everything I thought was cool from day one, which involved trying to get them a play session of Gigantic. Sure enough the folks were amiable to the idea of having two more members of the podcast playing. While I wasn’t really expecting to play along as well we all ended up on a team opposite Angry Joe of the Angry Joe Show. It seems like the Gigantic Live twitter feed caught us playing, and while it was an extremely hard fought match our team pulled ahead in the end and seized the day. For those playing at home… faces right to left at the machines are Myself, Ashgar, and Rae… with the every awesome Lonrem beside Rae offering words of advice.

Heart of Thorns

This morning of course was the big announcement of the Guild Wars 2 expansion pack. The fact that it was happening was of no real surprise because apparently the ending of this most recently living story episode concluded with some heavy hints about the expansion. What was a surprise to me at least is that Arena Net seems to be shoving aside the MMO tradition of releasing an expansion and raising the level cap. Instead they are introducing an alternate progression path called Masteries. This system will apparently be account based so once something is unlocked it is available to all of your characters. Some of the unlocks will be quality of life things like a new hang gliding skill, and others will be as game changing as brand new specializations. The only one that they gave examples of is that the Ranger will apparently be able to specialize into a Druid giving them access to staff weapon type and brand new druid abilities.

The other big announcement for me at least is that they are adding a third heavy armor class to the game. It seems their flagship character Rytlock has gone through a transformation turning him a warrior to the brand new revenant class. It seems the revenant focuses on channeling the mist and gives access to retelling certain legends that give it special abilities. In the video above it shows him summoning a giant dragon spirit, or dashing around the battlefield striking all targets. I have to say both the trailer and the expansion content sounded cool, but at the same time I know my history with Guild Wars 2 in general. I am not sure if the revenant is enough to make me care about the game, but it is at least a step in the right direction since I love me some “shadowknight” style classes. They plan on trickling out information between now and the expansion about what will await players in Maguuma. I had to share the above photo because people were pumped for the show… they gave us these boom stick things and folks were putting them to good use.

AggroChat 41 – AggroChat Game Club

Since we will be on the road super early in the morning I am writing this post after coming home from my last day at Pax South. I had a phenomenal time and spent the day hanging out with some of my favorite people on the planet. However since myself, Ashgar and Rae were all at Pax this weekend… we were unable to do our normal aggrochat recording thing. We actually got our shit together and planned ahead for this eventuality and recorded double episodes last saturday night releasing the first as AggroChat 40, and then I have just published the second episode tonight through the magic of “publish on date” functionality. With the second part we are announcing a new idea we had. The idea is relatively simple… we have a book club but with games. We will pick a game, play it through a given month and then record a show where we spoil everything allowing us to tear into the game completely. We did this some time ago for Transistor, where we recorded a very non-spoiler show first… and later recorded a deep dive show about the plotline.

Leading up to this show we each compiled a list of games we wanted to nominate for the inaugural game club game. During the course of this show I made the folks who posted each game defend their title, explaining why they thought it would be a good pick. At the end of the show we arrive at title, but I am not going to spoil what our pick is just quite yet. You can of course skip to the tail end of the show and find out for yourself really quickly, but where would the fun be in that? In any case whatever game we chose… on Saturday February 28th we will record a game descending into the title and picking it clean. From this point on we will figure out a more equitable scheme for picking games, to make sure we also get some “non-consensus” titles but I figured for the first pick it was probably good to grab a game we were all wanting to play. As we play the game I encourage our listeners to play along and then share your comments about the game, but I will give more details on that later. In any case… I am going to close down this evenings post and start packing up. It was a great weekend at pax, but I am amped for life to return to normal, so see you all soon in the regularly scheduled social channels!