Guild Wars 2 Archives - Page 15 of 16 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Lost in Maguuma

February 9, 2015 by Belghast

Wanderlust

Yesterday was a bit of a busy day for many reasons. Firstly getting home super late Saturday night, and then recording AggroChat extremely late, meant that more or less I just straight up crashed instead of editing the recording. This meant first thing yesterday morning I had to edit the podcast and post it. After that I of course still had a blog to write, and needed to spend some time working on another article as well. Throughout all of this there were two problems. Firstly I had a splitting headache the likes of which I have not seen in almost a year. Secondly it was absolutely gorgeous outside, with the temperatures rising up to roughly 80* F yesterday. So my wife and I hemmed and hawed as to whether or not we would actually go do anything. Finally around 3pm yesterday afternoon we decided to get outside and go wandering about.

I’ve talked about the fact that any town of a decent size around me has a Wal-mart. It has always been this way, because quite honestly I live in the Wal-mart heartland, with Bentonville the home office only about two hours away. The first first Wal-mart supercenter in existence is about 30 minutes away in the town of Wagoner for example. Big Wal-mart stores are boring, utilitarian and predictable… but going to smaller less shopped stores often provides this strange melange of products that they still have on the shelf. Each store has a certain amount of discretion as to what they can clearance, so this means that shopping multiple stores might yield completely different results. As such a few times of the year it is prime territory for hunting down clearance Legos.

We set forth on an adventure that took us through three very small locations, and while my wife found more interesting stuff than I did, at the second store… a store I had good luck with last year… I managed to pick up a couple of really cool Star Wars sets at a deep discount. First up I found the Lego AT-AP walker which was originally $60 for the much more reasonable price of $30. Then at a considerably worse deal I picked up the originally $25 General Grievous Wheel Bike set for $19… which admittedly I only jumped at because the General Grievous figure is just so badass looking. This season honestly has been pretty slim pickings, largely because Wal-mart has started doing this annoying thing. They will throw something on clearance… and change the sticker color to red… but have the item marked at its normal price. Essentially I look up each Lego set and if the savings is not 50% off I generally don’t jump at it. This has netted me some pretty cool finds like the SWTOR Sith Fury for $60 but in order to find them… you have to be diligent, and for me the fun is more about the hunt than the finding.

Lost In Maguuma

One of the other things of note that happened yesterday while watching the return of Walking Dead is that I managed to hit level 60 on my Warrior in Guild Wars 2. I am still knee deep in the Maguuma jungle region and right now I find myself shifting between Sparkfly Fens and Bloodtide Coast, largely be cause the Fens simply got too “big” for me as I kept wandering into level 62 areas and having to deal with constant glancing blows. This leaves me 20 levels to go before I hit the Guild Wars 2 endgame, whatever that might be. One of the things that has always bothered me about this game is that I never managed to max a character out. Eighty levels is a rather daunting task, especially when you don’t find yourself really enjoying the game play. That said I am generally known for having multiple max level characters in any game I play, so it felt like a weak spot in my armor that I could not stomach the grind in this one game.

Maguuma region is a bit of a slog, which has me concerned for the Heart of Thorns expansion. I really do not like Jungle or Swamp regions in video games. I was having a blast so long as I stuck to the snowy peaks of the Norn regions, but once I wandered into the swampy zombie filled wasteland… the fun factor of the game went down significantly. Here is hoping that I can stomach it just enough to graduate into the higher zones. All of the guides I have read say that I should really be doing dungeons to level… but I am admittedly scared of them. The shitty dungeon experience was what ended up killing the game for me the first time. Right now I am enjoying the soloing over world gameplay style, and I am afraid if I go into the dungeons again… and they end up still being the chaotic and exploitative mess that they were originally… that it will enrage me enough to halt my journey.

The Real Game

One of the biggest frustrations for me when it comes to online games is when a massive shift in the way the game feels happens. Most games have this highly tailored starter experience to ease players into the game, and then something happens as though the really polished section of the game flew away. Sometimes this transition is gradual, and other times it is quite literally like having the bottom dropped out from under you. I’ve not written much about Albion Online because to some extent I fell off that rather steep cliff. The first two tiers of content felt really fun and natural as I wandered around the world collecting resources to be able to craft nifty things. Then I reached tier 3… and the fun drained away quickly. The game up until that point had been around gathering materials and lugging them back to town so that you could use the crafting machines and fashion them into whatever you might like. When you hit Tier 3, the crafting machines start charging you a fee to use them. This is the equivalent of having to pay every time you need to use the anvil in a World of Warcraft town.

The problem with this is that there really aren’t that many gold fountains that I have seen so far, but the machine problem ends up to be a rather massive gold sink. Granted at this point I don’t even know if there is such a thing as gold in the game… because I have only managed to gather up a few silver to my name. Admittedly this is their pricing scheme… to get players to purchase gold, to ease the process of playing the game. According to the pricing listed on the founders pack information, it looks like $20 would get you 4500 gold, and $50 would get you 12,000 gold. Not that either of these is an absolutely insane price for what seems to be the purchasing power that gets you, but I have essentially stopped playing because I quickly realized this game was unsustainable without either grinding bandits for days… or plunking down some cold hard cash for a game that was only mildly enjoyable in the first place. This is a bit of a shame, because really Albion does have some really interesting ideas at work. I might piddle with it off and on still to see just how deep the money chasm is, but if nothing else for the time being it has most definitely halted my forward momentum.

A Calling Card

February 7, 2015 by Belghast

Out of Order

This morning is an odd one for me, in part because there is a natural order to my weekends. Generally speaking I get up, get dressed, go find some food… bring it up and spent the next period of time working on my daily blog post. This morning however things are a bit off, because my mother in law will be coming around noon, and in the week since coming back from Pax South our house has gotten a bit disordered. So as a result I gobbled my breakfast and set forth to clean on the house. Generally speaking I do the grunt cleaning, picking things up, straightening, throwing out trash… and my wife comes back through with more surgical precision considering she sees dirt that I don’t. Together we can get our house in manageable order in under an hour generally speaking.

The other awesome and scary thing that is happening this morning is that I will be sitting in on the recording of an episode of battle bards. I’ve been a long time supporter of the show, having listened to I believe every episode. I too am a huge fan of game music, and tend to spend most of my days listening to soundtracks looping in the background. So I am pleased to be able to share some of my favorite tracks along a theme… that I am not going to give away. As a result of this I ended up spending my normal writing time while eating… going back over my notes about the various tracks we will be reviewing. I admit now that it is the actual day we are recording I am a bit nervous. Normally when I guest on a podcast it is no big deal… because I am being myself. This time it feels like we have a higher purpose, and while I have some formal musical training… that feels like a lifetime ago. So hopefully I don’t make a complete ass of myself.

A Calling Card

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a little side project. I originally started thinking about it while at Pax South and it just took a bit to finally pull the technical bits together. I’ve owned the domain Belghast.com for some time but I never did much with it. The idea was always to create a site that somewhat combined all of the different things that I do. At this point I am all over social media, have two podcasts, a daily blog, a youtube channel, and hitbox stream… in addition to the stuff I am starting to do for MMOGames.com. When I was having to pull together the information to hand off to the community folks at each of the game companies during pax… I realized just how spread out everything is. It would be so much more simple if I could just say… go to Belghast.com and that will link you to all of the projects that I do. So I guess in the idea is part calling card, and part resume.

The hard part was figuring out how to do what I wanted to do. In the end I found a plug-in that would allow me to syndicate posts from damned near anything with an RSS feed. Honestly the plug-in is a bit scary, and likely designed for some really nefarious site cloning purposes. It was however the only thing I could find to do exactly what I wanted it to do. Thankfully all the functionality I need is in the free version, because the paid version is like $15 a month. Essentially I am just excerpting my posts on Aggronaut, AggroChat, Bel Folks Stuff and MMOGames but the plug-in was designed to copy the entire post, images and all. I still plan on writing and podcasting in all the same places… just plan on having the other site to connect all the dots. I like the banner, because it finally gives me a reason to use the “real life” chibi that Rae did for me. Not completely sold on the theme, but for now it works. I might do something more custom later.

At Peace with GW2

I’ve had a very checkered past with the Guild Wars franchise. I was not a huge fan of the original, largely because I had no ability to jump… and Ruined Ascalon was so damned ugly. Then you zoom forward and the manifesto trailer was released… and everything it said I thought I wanted. When I managed to get into the Alpha program through a friend, I was more excited for any Alpha I had been to that point. When I actually got my hands on it… I had this overwhelming “I don’t get it” feeling. In fact there was a three hundred page thread on the forums essentially saying the same thing. I felt that all criticism of the game approach was being ignored, and as a result it was the only Alpha program I have ever resigned from. Then we scan forward to launch, and everyone I know is excited about the game. I obviously lost access to the test servers, but did manage to get into the open beta phase. I got in and the game was not as bad as I had remembered it, and I had lots of friends playing it with me… so I ended up buying the game. A few weeks in however I was hit by the same sense of pointlessness, like nothing I was doing in the world mattered. The final nail in the coffin was how bad the dungeon running experience felt, when that was the majority of what I spent time with friends doing.

I had not really followed the game from that point on, other than to use it as my whipping boy for what happens when grouping is done badly. Then we move forward to Pax South. I had been asked to sit in on the panel to see what they had to say, so I dutifully did so. Maybe it was the excitement of the crowd, or the well crafted sales pitch… but when I got back to Texas I reinstalled the game and I have been poking around. I can’t say that the game has changed drastically, but I think maybe I have in the intervening years. At this point I am 59 on my Warrior, and have been running around aimlessly completing the objectives on the map. I have to say I am really enjoying myself. It is a vastly different experience than any of the games I am playing, a much more disposable experience… but that is okay. There is some serious depth to this game, but it isn’t the same sort of depth that you see in a traditional MMO. I find myself actually looking forward to the Heart of Thorns expansion. This game has become my cooling down experience after raid nights. I pop it open, running around for a bit and finish a few objectives… feeling like i have accomplished something without spending a lot of time. That seems to be where this game excels, giving you bite sized moment to moment experiences that feel like they are building to something larger. I have to say… and I realize how much crow I have to eat… but I am enjoying myself in ways I never expected to.

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!

World Without Levels

December 20, 2014 by Belghast

Holiday Hassles

Today is going to be an extremely quick blogpost because I am pretty much under the gun. Were I a proper and responsible adult I would have posted something last night. However when I got home from work I was completely drained and while I hung out and played games for a bit… I also crashed significantly earlier than even my wife did. Today is going to be an extremely day as we are officially beginning our Christmas shopping. This is actually pretty good for us because in general we are those folks wandering around on Christmas Eve trying to find those last few gifts. I like getting stuff just as much as the next person, but I really wish there was a way to turn Christmas into Thanksgiving 2.0. The gift giving just seems to get in the way of what should be an otherwise amazing holiday.

There is the pressure to get something awesome for people who have literally not seen since last Christmas. Then you end up with the gift of shame… the gift card because really you have no clue at all what this person might want. Instead if it were just Thanksgiving 2.0… we would share a meal together, and a conversation and not be constantly dreading the impending gift exchange awkwardness. Personally I am one of those people that if I wanted it at all, I probably already bought it, and my wife is the same way. So I feel like we are both exceptionally hard to buy for… so mostly people just don’t try and we ultimately end up exchanging cash, either in gift card form or actual crisp bills. Which brings me back to… what exactly was the point? A nice meal, a conversation… those are the things that are really valuable.\

World Without Levels

Yesterday a couple of my friends spun topics off of yesterdays post. Lord Tridus commented that games should “Flatten or wipe out the level curve entirely and content now becomes scaled on gear”. As Rowan stated in his follow up post, this system already exists and is alive and well in The Secret World. The problem that I see with that system however is that you still have leveling in the form of total Ability Points gained, which are then used to purchase ability unlocks. In theory it works, but the problem with the system is it becomes increasingly difficult to “restart” and try and go down a completely different path. Ultimately this became a wall for many of my friends because the classes we wanted to play… ended up being ultimately completely unviable when we reached the endgame aka “Nightmare” content.

Without a way to completely reset your character we had no way of really retooling after spending all of this time leveling ourselves into a corner. Actually I experienced the same problem with playing Champions Online. If you failed to follow the magical golden functional path, that game became an unplayable mess with you reaching a point very early on when you simply could not do the content you needed to. The part of this equation that I feel has not been solved is how to grant abilities in a way that is not grindy. I personally find The Secret World somewhat frustrating when I think about grinding out enough ability points to earn all of the abilities. I spent probably hundreds of hours killing vampires in one of the higher level zones doing essentially just this… that and farming gear to be broken down into crafting materials. I just don’t see that as being the answer to the level problem either.

New Ability Gains

Ultimately the problem that remains is we need a new an interesting way of gaining abilities. I think maybe Guild Wars 2 at least had part of this equation right, in that the equipping of gear SHOULD be what unlocks your abilities. The component I would change to this equation however is that they “Teach” you abilities instead of only give you abilities while the item is equipped. This completely changes what is considered a valuable item. Sure a sword might not have as good of stats as the one you are currently wielding but if it gives you a new “Life Drain” ability that can be learned while completing content with it equipped… that would make it worth keeping until at least you had learned that ability. Random loot becomes interesting again because it might have an ability that you have not yet unlocked.

Ultimately this sort of system only works if you also have a limited amount of slots for you to put abilities in. I think this is pretty much going to be the rule going forward that you should have no more than one hotbar worth of abilities at any given time. This does two things for your game… firstly it makes it significantly easier for a new player to get into the game because they only have to learn so many keys to press at a given time. Secondly it allows your game to be ported to a console significantly easier due to the limited number of button press combinations available. The importance of making abilities in such a way so that no one ability is that much better than everything else is also key, that way there is a significant opportunity cost to each choice. In any case… I feel like a game without levels can work, but you also have to take away the ability grinds. To me at least, learning a new ability from an item, feels significantly less grindy than simply racking up a currency that you then spend to unlock things. I would love to hear other players thoughts on this concept as well.