MMO Archives - Page 266 of 438 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Light Improving

April 20, 2016 by Belghast

Catching Up

One of my favorite things about the April patch is that I finally feel like I am catching up to all of the folks who have been playing since the dawn of time. More important than that… I feel like I have a clear path to be able to reach 335. There are things within my control that I can do solo that will allow me to slowly but certainly make progress. Namely one of the big ones right now is faction packages. Many of the factions have the code that make sure an item that comes from that package is better than your current light level. So this means I am constantly getting upgrades that I can either use as is, or infuse into my existing item from doing Vanguard and the three Tower faction missions. This also means that those daily bounties are more important than they have ever been, and the same goes with the crucible bounties whenever I am feeling my Wheaties and decide to do some serious pvp. More importantly than any of this… I feel in control of my own “Destiny”… pun intended.

Much of my early frustration with this game is it felt like there were missing rungs on the ladder that I had to have someone show me where I should be climbing. Now I feel like there are objectives that I completely understand that I can be knocking out regularly to better myself. At this point as the above image shows I have managed to take my Titan to 321, Hunter to 310 and as of last night Warlock to 302. The Warlock and Hunter will likely always be second stringers for me, but I do want to spend more time pushing them up. Namely I would really like to unlock all of the stuff on all three sub classes but that simply requires a lot of play. As for now I am still very much enjoying the process of infusing up old weapons and dusting them off to enjoy them once more. I have a lot of really great weapons, that were just lacking light level to be used on a regular basis. At some point however I am going to have to reconcile a bunch of the stuff and figure out which versions of which weapons I intend to keep permanently. For example I have six different Havoc Pidgeons sitting in the bank and five different 1000 Yard Stares… as well as a large assortment of Zarinaea-D. I don’t really need ALL of them… just keep the best rolls and swap weapons as needed via the web site or mobile apps.

Pipe Dream

Every so often I come up with an idea that while I lack the technical know how to actually build it… I know it is functionally possible. Within the server services world.. there is a marvel of modern science referred to collectively as the IP KVM or remote keyboard/video/mouse switch. While remote desktop is a thing that works great most of the time… there are times when you need to literally lay hands on a box because something has hung on boot up. This is where the IP KVM steps into play, because it emulates sitting physically at the keyboard from quite literally anywhere on the network that can reach it. The other awesome thing about them is that generally speaking they are almost as good as sitting on the box with many of them getting to the point where you can hardly tell the difference. What I want is for some budding entrepreneur or kickstarter campaign to come up with this technology… but for consoles. Sure PS4 Remote Play is cool, but I also want to be able to play remotely from my PS3… or even say older analog systems. The idea would be a rack mounted type system so in theory you could dump all of your consoles in the equivalent of a server room. Instead of harddrive arrays you could build special four unit high rack cases that allowed you to plug in a whole slew of console games and have them selectable remotely.

The other idea would be that each console had custom hookups and the hardware KVM device would allow you to configure emulation of the devices. So you could remake your Nintendo controller to be fully functional from something like a PC connected Xbox 360 controller. Now there are oddities like the Wii/Wii U that would be difficult to emulate but in theory most controllers work just fine for other controllers. For years I’ve loved this idea of having all of the games I want to play “on tap” and thanks to both the Twisted and official PS4 Remote Play app I am using the hell out of this functionality. It is cool as hell to be able to sit downstairs on the sofa with my laptop and have full access to all of my PS4 games, and be able to play them with minimal latency. I just wish this same concept worked with everything. It feels like this is the sort of thing that would be doable, just no one has tried to make it work. Even if you started with only consoles that supported USB controls and HDMI output… that would give you a decent base unit that could then maybe be expanded with retro modules that daisy chained onto the base unit. So here you go… I give this idea freely to the world… just someone make it happen because I want to throw money at you.

Ship Happens

April 19, 2016 by Belghast

Meeting Folks

It feels like over the last several days we have gotten an entire years worth of rain… all at once. There is so much standing water in my front yard that I am beginning to think I actually do have a pond. The only positive of this is that once it has all soaked in everything should green up even more than before. The only negative about the rain today is that I am supposed to go out to lunch today, and the place we picked is within walking distance of my work. It would seem silly to drive for something that close, but I am hoping by the time lunch rolls around the rain has at least slowed to a sprinkle. The reason why I mention this happening at all is because who I am meeting for lunch are long time gamer friends Damai and Erry which is kinda cool. They are passing through town on their drive across the country, and in theory they should be getting to Tulsa around noonish. Now I got to meet Damai at Pax South, but this will be the first time meeting his sister Erry which is kinda cool. As far as where we are going, I picked a BBQ joint that I like because honestly… when it comes to Tulsa cuisine I always struggle to pick that one quintessential thing that everyone needs to try. Normally I would have suggested a sausage cheeseburger from Ron’s but that doesn’t always make great “travelling for long distances on the road” food given the copious amount of grease.

The funny thing about meeting folks that I have known for years online, is that no matter who it is I always get nervous. I always worry that I won’t live up to whatever impression of me that they might have in their head. Granted at this point I have met a bunch of folks that I have gamed with for years, and it has all essentially worked out fine once the initial awkwardness of translating that teamspeak voice to a physical body. That said it still stresses me out far more than it should. The positive about going out for a meal is that it gives an activity to focus on other than trying to fill all of the gaps with discussion. Hell even with people I have known for years, my vehicle of choice for hanging out is over a restaurant table. There is something primal about sharing a meal together, and there is also something comforting about it as well. All of this said I am not terribly stressed about this situation since as I said before I have at least met Damai in the flesh before. It should be really cool and I have blocked off a decent chunk of my schedule to allow for variance in when they actually get here. I should probably totally ask Rae to see if she wants to come too since she at least knows Damai.

Building a Fleet

Space-Age Mariner

Crypt Hammer

Gloriole Jump

Ripship Pardoner

Ketch Me If You Can

The strangest thing about the recent Destiny patch has been what seems to be a massive increase in the number of ship drops. All five of the above ships I’ve gotten since the patch last week. One came from the loot boxes, three from doing various activities, and one from opening treasure boxes. I am not sure if I just hit a lucky spot in the randomizer or if they changed the magic formula that indicates if drops happen. It feels like what they have actually done is made the chance of a ship drop disconnected from any other rewards, which in theory makes you roll on a much shallower loot table. In any case I am a huge fan of whatever these changes are because it is helping me build out my fleet. I am still chasing the taken ship from the loot boxes however, because I love that ship model and I have yet to get any of that variety. I do think that the Ripship Pardoner above is just about the quintessential “Titan” ship… big bulky and heavily armed. There are times however that I kinda wish that the ships actually “did” something, or that there was some sort of a ship to ship combat mini-game along the lines of SWTOR. Granted I never played the one is SWTOR but it was nice knowing it was out there.

Another aspect of this patch that I am loving is the fact that it once again rewards me for doing patrol missions. That seems to be just about the fastest way to level my Vanguard and Faction reputation. Every ding rewards you a package and those packages take your currently equipped loot into consideration meaning that more often than not I end up with an upgrade. Yesterday I pushed a faction across and wound up getting a 322 piece of armor that was immediately infused into my Iron Banner arms. I love that almost anything I can do right now has the chance of giving me an upgrade. I’ve also noticed that PVP seems to be dropping weapons more often, because last night pretty much every round I played had someone walking away with a legendary weapon. I ended up walking away myself with a Red Spectre with a less than amazing roll… but I am still going to try and make it work because I love the whole “Red Death” graphic. The biggest problem is the stability on the weapon, but I am willing to see if I can make it work. In any case right now I am just in love with all of the options I have and each one of them has a path that can get me upgrades.

Old School New School

April 18, 2016 by Belghast

Doomed

Firstly if you didn’t check it out I highly suggest you read yesterday’s blog post if for no reason other than the amazing custom artwork by my friend @Ammosart. As far as this weekend went, it was a bit of an odd one. I once again played a lot of Destiny, but this morning that is not one of the shooter experiences I am going to be talking about. I really hate it when game companies gang up on each other, because this weekend there were “special” beta tests going on for Overwatch, Battleborn and Doom. While at first they might not seem all that related, they are each chasing a multiplayer experience that they would really love you to care about. Battleborn is not even on the list of games I was interested in, thanks to a really bad alpha experience causing me to pitch it to the curb. Doom however… I really want to like and keep giving it ample attempts to sell me on its regressive notion of what first person shooter multiplayer should be. Now please note… I’ve had access to the alpha for quite awhile now thanks to a strange presell deal that they had for Wolfenstein The New Order. I have not really talked about it before now however due to the NDA it has been wrapped in, but with this weekends big beta event… that has been dropped.

Doom Multiplayer is a game that really hopes that you remember Quake 3 Arena fondly, and have been craving that sort of gameplay with marginally better graphics. The gameplay honestly gives flash backs to playing Rocket Arena… during a time when even then I thought the Quake Arena experience was far inferior to Unreal Tournament that I tended to play more often. If you miss the days of being shot across the map from someone you can’t even see as you spawn in… then this is going to be the game you have been hankering for. The big problem I had was in all of the matches that I have played… I never really found myself having fun. I mean I did okayish, but it very much felt like wandering around the same claustrophobic hallways that we used to in Quake. The worst sin however is the movement… it feels completely unrealistic and the same sort of stiff speedy running that those original Quake games had. What it is trying to be is fast paced run and gun action, but in an era when we can do that without sacrificing animation and design aesthetics. I’ve now played several different PC alpha tests, and installed it on the PS4 to give it a go there… and no matter what I keep coming up with the same impression. This is not a fun multiplayer experience.

Molten Core!

The general “unfun” nature of Doom was only drilled home thanks to also being in Overwatch this weekend. It feels like both games are trying really hard to deliver something similar, at least in the department of a faced paced shooter department. Also both games really want you to want to watch them as some sort of an e-sports extravaganza. However Doom is a world that traded the drab green and brown nothingness of Quake for various shades of orange and blood red… whereas Overwatch is almost more game world than it actually needs to support the combat. As you wander around the world there is a constant barrage of tiny details. Posters on the wall, images up on computer screens… advertisements for murloc themed restaurants. The world is vibrant and feels alive, and almost begs you to inhabit it, and what makes it even better is that every single character is just as vibrant and well designed. Playing Torbjorn feels unique and completely different from playing Pharah or Reaper or Reinhardt. The only negative here is that at times they almost feel too unique, in that the control scheme of one champion doesn’t begin to map up to playing another one. It is fairly normal for “league” style champion design to differ wildly, but at least in League you are always going to be using QWE, but for Overwatch champions there is essentially an array of hotkeys that get used… and not all champions use all hotkeys. The most confusing aspect of this is how some champions have a movement key and others don’t… and even among the ones that do they don’t always sync up to exactly the same key.

So what ended up having to happen is that I started to compartmentalize “this is how I play this champion” from “this is how I play overwatch”. The only unfortunate thing about this game is that you can see how much effort they put into building the world, and personally I get a little nostalgic about “what might have been”. Titan was supposed to be Overwatch the MMO, and I would have loved that. Even if they had given me a game along the lines of Destiny or Division I would have eaten it up completely. So as you are playing through the levels you see signs of what might have been. As far as the game play itself it centers around running multiplayer matches, to rank up… to unlock loot crates… to get sweet skins and other cosmetic stuff… that improve your game play experience for those champions that you really love. At its core this game is a really tight multiplayer team based shooter, and if that is not the experience you have been looking for… this probably isn’t the game for you. It plays like a modern version of Team Fortress 2 and feels tighter than that game ever did. Every aspect of the experience seems like it has been painstakingly planned and the awesome thing about it is that for once Blizzard is probably being more forthcoming with information than any other multiplayer game has been. For example they went into more detail about the netcode behind the game play than any company I have ever seen. The only unfortunate thing is that I am going to have to likely wait until May 3rd to get to play the game again, given that is when the pre-launch open beta period begins. The game lived up to all of my expectations, and I am amped to get to play it with friends.

Rising Light

April 15, 2016 by Belghast

Unintended Kings Fall

The original plan for last night was to chill on the sofa and play some Ratchet and Clank over the PC Remote Play application. However as the day went on yesterday I noticed that there was a new raid scheduled for last night that my good friend Sagacyte would be attending. Since the Tuesday night Rookie Raid… now called the Squirrel Squad didn’t make due to the patch and too much newness for folks to be exploring, I thought it might be a good idea to pop in and at least get some boss kills for the week so I had a shot at loot. Things went pretty well overall, but I think I blew all of my jumping skill early on. I managed to make it through the ship puzzle without falling and even make it over onto the ledge that leads up to the chest. However by the time I got to the wall puzzle, I was apparently out of juice because I fell so many times trying to get over to the exotic chest. There was one jump where I kept bouncing off the damned wall. The jumping is the only thing that I dread each week when I run Kings Fall, and while I seem to be improving… there are times where it feels like I can simply do no right and either land too hard, or can’t quite get over the gap. In any case I eventually gave up and headed to the end of the puzzle and managed to do that without much issue. It was just the ledges leading up to that chest that I seemed to be having problems with.

322 – Vell Tarlowe’s Vigil

318 – War Numen’s Chest

318 – War Numen’s Boots

318 – Smite of Merain

316 – Red Death

As far as the raid itself things went really smoothly other than that time that I got torn during sisters… and had no clue what platform I was supposed to start from. Now I know however that you apparently look up and find the orb and then start counterclockwise to it. While we wiped on that round we managed to pick it up and wreck them on the next. Probably the best moment however was one-shotting Oryx doing it the challenge mode, especially considering how much issue we had with him in the previous few weeks. I failed to get back from the exploding balls in time, but we still managed to get the kill. The best best part however was getting a bunch of loot that were upgrades, and finally getting a Red Death. Smite of Merain has been my go to weapon for awhile now, and I ended up picking up a 318 version of exactly the same roll. Getting Red Death however was the icing on the cake since that was one of those exotics that I had been hoping to see. All in all the run went really well, and while Squirrel keeps trying to tell me that I am no longer a Rookie, I still very much feel like one. I know the fights, but I still feel like there is a certain amount of skill that I am lacking. The fight I feel the most comfortable on is Oryx oddly enough, because I really like the bubble titan duty there. Above is a gallery of all of the nifty things I picked up throughout the evening of playing.

Rapid Increases

The thing that has felt insane for me is how I floundered at sub 300 light level for the better part of a year, and over the last two months I have shot up to as of last night 318. I guess it is like any game, that if you have access to raiding your gear levels increase rapidly. Early in the evening I spent some time with Broken and Squirrel running the Challenge of Elders, which was one of the new pieces that went in with the patch. The idea is that once a week you grab a scorecard from Variks, and then there are two challenges that need to be completed. The first is to finish the three round Challenge of Elders while earning at least 30,000 total team score. We failed barely to get this on our first go, but on the second and third attempts we blew the score completely out of the water. The second challenge is to get a weekly total accumulated score of 90,000 which we easily hit within three outings in the area. Each match rewarded some decent infusion fodder, and at the end we managed to score a guaranteed weapon for the single match objective, and a guaranteed armor piece for the cumulative challenge. Unfortunately the roll on the helm and machine gun that I got were kinda crap, but they did serve nicely as infusion fodder taking my Iron Companion helm and my Bretomart’s Stand to 318. I have to say the Challenge of Elders was really damned fun, and I look forward to doing this one at least once a week.

Quite honestly all of the Prison of Elders content has been great, and it is the sort of thing that I am not really going to turn down if anyone is looking to run it. Squirrel mentioned that he plans on running Prison of Elders quite literally all day Sunday and that doesn’t seem like a horrible idea. I am wanting to see how doable the level 41 version of the event is to complete with total strangers. I am assuming that you can queue for a group like you can for a strike, and after experiencing it… it seems like it would be doable with strangers. As far as for farming gear this seems like a decent way to go since every match I ended up walking away with at least one if not two legendary engrams with a chance of one of the special legendaries to drop. Honestly the thing I am enjoying the most about this patch is it feels like I have lots of different ways that I can be increasing my light level. I’ve run a handful of crucible matches and each time I managed to get something at the end. The getting nothing problem seems to have either been fixed or greatly reduced, because now the consolation prize seems to be coins or a few motes… and the best option is some infusion fodder. Either way I am down with it, and will probably try and use crucible to farm a few more motes before Xur disappears this week. I need to replenish my stock of three of coins.