MMO Archives - Page 309 of 438 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Love Our Guild

July 20, 2015 by Belghast

Unlocking Dungeons

This weekend was a little bit split as far as gaming goes. I spent about four hours in SkyForge and the rest of it wandering around in Final Fantasy XIV. I had a bunch of side projects that I never really got off the ground. One of the things about being a tank is that you are constantly getting called on to do tanky things. Last night for example, I had all intentions of simply wandering around the new zones doing hunt mobs, but I ended up getting drafted to tank both Neverreap and Fractal Continuum for a friend who just dinged 60. Since this would allow him to unlock the content, and be yet another possibility for a daily expert roulette, as well as providing three of us in the dungeon run some tasty tasty first time bonus, I did not mind giving up my relaxing evening of hunting to help out.

Both runs went fairly smoothly other than Warenwolf falling off the side of the final boss in Neverreap. Luckily we had the stamina to go ahead and finish that boss without him. Fractal Continuum went extremely smoothly other than some annoyances with bomb placement on the final boss. Luckily the loot gods seemed to be at least a little favorable and Waren walked with a bow and some other items helping him inch towards that all too critical level 170 mark for Alexander. It is my hope that in this last week we will have increased our item level enough to be able to put a good attempt in on Bismarck Extreme tonight. I found out that apparently the dps constraint is that you be able to break the spine in a single attempt without also blowing every cooldown. Wednesday we were able to break the spine, but it was a “just barely” situation and we absolutely had to abuse every cool down available to get there.

Love Our Guild

Last night I had a moment when I was overcome with warm fuzzies. Folks were doing what they always do and filling my screen with green happy spam, and somehow it came around to the discussion of the free company. I am not sure if I remember who started it but someone made the comment that they were happy that I had recruited them into the guild, because if not for that they probably would not be playing. Then in a burst of activity a bunch of people chimed in with pretty much the same thing. So I wanted to talk a bit this morning about how much all of my guildies mean to me. There are so many days where I have had a rough patch, that I can log into our free company and within moments of seeing the cheery conversation I am in a much better mood. Having a happy guild family is ultimately what helps me keep returning to one game over another, and ultimately is what keeps me engaged in Final Fantasy XIV.

Sure the game is awesome, but having this big group who is willing to drop what they are doing to help someone else out, makes the experience so much better. Yesterday during the evening I worked through a backlog of dungeon runs that I had recorded, and came across a video that didn’t turn out quite as intended. Since the launch of Heavensward the guild crafters as lead by Solaria have been working away on making us an Airship. When it came time to launch it for the first time a good chunk of us gathered in the workshop basement of the guild hall. In part we hoped a cut scene would happen, and as a result I had OBS rolling away in the background recording the event. While the event did not turn out as I had expected, looking back on the footage it makes me exceptionally happy to see so many of my guild members roaming around in one place. I love the housing district for the constant flow of guild members popping in and out as they go off to other adventures, and this moment was probably the largest meeting of sorts we have had. It made me realize that we need to do something like this more often.

More SkyForge

The SkyForge open beta finishes up this Wednesday and in the mean time I plan on playing for a little bit each night. I have to admit while there are still problems with the game for me, it is growing on me in ways I can’t quite fathom. During yesterdays run I finally figured out something that had been bugging me. I said in my videos and in my blog posts that it seemed like the combo system was largely ineffectual, and for the most part this is true. However I noticed on my character to the right of the health bar was a charge counter of sorts marked with a lightning bolt. This is directly above the dodge counter that shows how many times in a row you can dodge, and how long before the counter regenerates when they are all spent. This lightning bolt number tied to the special combo attacks, and if I use a combo while I have a charge available it does significantly more damage. However any additional combos while that charge is regenerating end up being largely useless.

Knowing this is a thing, made combat feel more purposeful. Essentially I had one special move to use every 30 seconds or so, because that seemed to be roughly how long it took to regenerate a charge. When that ability was not available however I could happily wail away on the target then set up for the next special attack. This little bit of information seemed to dynamically change the way combat felt. Additionally doing the more open world zones, seemed much more enjoyable to me given that if I started wailing away on a boss, chances are someone would come along behind me to help me finish it. Running around with a group of other players also made me realize just how little damage the paladin does comparatively. In all honesty… I might end up playing quite a bit more of this game because it feels like I am starting to grasp the reason why it does the things it does. It is not the sort of game I would ever play as a primary mmo, but I have been enjoying playing it in these short bursts, where I complete a single objective and then log back out for awhile.

More SkyForge Thoughts

July 19, 2015 by Belghast

Controller Support

One of the questions left unanswered from yesterday was whether or not the game had controller support. On a whim I picked up my controller towards the end of one of yesterdays streams and I noticed that I could in fact control my character with it. Today I popped into game with the mission of trying to test this theory out. It seems that maybe they are working on controller support but that it does not actually work fully. I could control my character perfectly using both of my analog sticks, and if I hit the A button on my XBox 360 controller I could perform any of the normal actions that require the spacebar. However it did not actually seem to interact with the world, and pressing A when not hovering over an objective did not perform the jump action, which is normally the default action for spacebar. I went so far as to go into the keybindings section and it would not let me bind anything to controller presses.

Now of course if you wanted to go so far as to use Xpadder you could easily get this game up and running. It takes care of the toughest part which is getting the analog movement feeling right. My hope is that in subsequent patches it is going to add full controller support, and then this game is likely to increase significantly in enjoyment. Left button spammy attacks feel less spammy when done with a controller button. Since writing yesterdays post I have added another few hours worth of gameplay, and I have to say my verdict is still very mixed. I even talked about it a bit on last nights podcast. On some level I am feeling about this game much the same as I felt about Guild Wars 2 when it was in testing. There is something that compels me to keep trying to figure it out, but at the same time I find it extremely easy to stop playing after completing a single mission. The act of running a mission just wears me out, in a way that content in Elder Scrolls Online used to wear me out. Things are so ridiculously tightly packed that on normal solo missions you spend so much of your time mindlessly grinding through huge encounters.

Isola Digs

This morning however I ventured into what seems to be another large shared cooperative zone, much the same as the very first mission in the game. It involved a series of around 25 smaller objectives that were scattered throughout the map. The frustrating thing about this zone in particular is that the objectives were super linear, meaning when I tried to do my normal thing and hop off the path… I missed an objective that I then later had to double back through the entire zone to go find again. As a whole though I have to say I like this style of zone so much better than the little instanced mini dungeons I had completed more recently. The game also feels better when lots of other players are wandering around, which greatly speeds up the amount of time it takes to burn through the various health bars of the bosses. This tells me that a lot of my frustrations was simply that I was soloing content designed for groups to take down. The fact that I could fairly easily solo content as a paladin, maybe points to that class being a little overpowered for this sort of thing? Then again tanks in most games are adept at soloing bosses that were originally meant for a group to take down… I am looking at you Deathknight.

The other cool thing about this region is that it seemed to be full of boss encounters that did not seem to be tied to a specific objective. There may be a quest that I missed somewhere that opened these up, but from what I saw there was a fire, water and wind warden. Above you can see me taking on the fire one. The only thing missing elemental wise is earth, which I did not really see while wandering around. I managed to get a few greens off these bosses, so my theory is they are just there to make your experience more interesting. The boss fights with other players helping were significantly more enjoyable, but I could still shield up as a paladin and whittle them down until I succeeded. There was only one single encounter where I even came close to dying. At the last minute a wave of players rushed in and helped me finish the boss off.

Combat Still Repetitive

All of this said… my problem with the combat still exists. It just doesn’t feel like I can do anything interesting with the encounters. I did add a new combo attack to my repertoire, and while I abused the hell out of it.. each individual fight still seemed to take a little bit longer than they should for the game to feel really “fun”. The mobs still suffer from the same problem where they tend to be one trick ponies, and keep using the same attack sequence over and over. There is almost always one thing that you should dodge out of, but other than that it is grind them down with your main attack until they are gone. There are a lot of things I do like however when it comes to the interactions with other players. This seems like a game where everything is open tagging, and if you are in an area and have dealt any damage to a pack… you seem to get full credit for the entire pack. Similarly if there is an objective, it seems like everyone can click said objective, and that seems to have changed from one of the closed beta streams I happened to watch.

As a result I found myself wading into a lot of fights that I did not strictly need to just to help out the other players. Unfortunately not a single one of them did I actually communicate with. There are a lot of ifs about this game, and I am not quite certain how much I will be playing of it. In theory I kinda dig the model of purchasing classes or having a slow tedious process of unlocking them. To some extent I wish I had gotten in on the ability to play the Berserker, because I think that might be a class I would really enjoy. I have heard that you can go to the training center and test drive all of the classes, much like you can test drive champions in a moba, so that might be one of the things I do next. At this point I have played around five hours of the game, and I have enjoyed it just enough to keep me coming back to try and find the secrets that I seem to be missing as to why this game is really fun. Ultimately there will be a point where I just give up on it, but I have not quite reached that yet. After all it gives me a bit of a diversion from leveling my Dragoon and gearing in Final Fantasy XIV. If you want to check out the last two videos I have posted since yesterday I will be embedding them below.

Port Naori – Instanced Dungeon-like Mission

Isola Digs – Open World-ish Shared Zone Mission

(was still encoding at the time of posting this… so might have to check back later)

SkyForge Impressions

July 18, 2015 by Belghast

Recreating Belghast

Skyforge is one of those games that I have consistently been unable to decide if I am interested in. There are certain aspects of the game that I really like, but then again there are certain aspects that I am really uncertain of. [Edit] Having to rewrite a chunk of this real quick because I was under the false impression that this game was from a Korean publisher. I guess this is primarily a Russian game with the assistance of Obsidian an American company. I guess this explains why I could easily create a character I liked when I have so much trouble doing this in most Korean MMOs. [UnEdit] So I was pleasantly surprised that I could create “Belghast” or at least a reasonable facsimile. In the above comparison you can see the traditional old school “WoW Bel” against what I was able to create using Skyforge, and I am pretty happy honestly with the look and feel.

Last night I spent some time streaming my first few adventures into the game, and as such did not take a lot of screenshots. The result is you are going to end up with a lot of screen captures from my stream that include my little chat blocker box thingy. As the weird little man that is touching my face asked me what I think… that is ultimately going to be my mission this morning. I can’t really call it a review, since I have not spent more than a couple of hours playing it. I can however talk about my thoughts. There have been so many times I have missed out on a games open beta period only to kick myself later when I start to get interested in the game. Similarly there have been many games that I bought my way into… only to find out later that I didn’t really care for the game at all. Even though I am still very much engrossed in Final Fantasy XIV and spent about four hours playing that last night AFTER my foray into Skyforge, I felt I owed it to myself to give the game a test drive. Similarly if you are on the fence and looking to my article to give you some guidance… I highly suggest you just try the game yourself while it is free.

The Setting

For those who have been around MMOs for awhile, you will remember a game that was discarded somewhere along the way called Imperator. Mythic games had originally planned on building its “Rome in Outer Space” title but quickly dropped the title when they got the license for Warhammer Online. After playing a little Skyforge I seriously wonder if someone from that original Imperator team rebooting this idea over at either Obsidian or Allods. There are only a few screenshots from the original Imperator team around, but to the right is one of the more interesting ones. From what I have seen of the world of Skyforge, it very much shares the same look and feel of a “Rome in Space” concept. To carry this even further the enemies and their leaders have a very “ancient egyptian” feel to them, which makes me wonder if we are going to see a lot more of these “high tech ancient civilizations” concept as we get deeper into the game.

The game does a decent job of setting up the story of how you came to have the powers you do and setting up a reason for why you can die multiple times and keep respawning. Your character is an Immortal, and just like in Highlander your powers do not manifest until you have died the first time. The introduction to the game is the story of how you died during what turned out to be a suicide mission. One of the interesting things about the game is that you play a fully armored character during the introduction and then choose your appearance later as you are telling your tale. While I may have missed it, it did not seem like I had a way to change my gender during this introduction. So I am wondering if that means that quite literally everyone is “male by default” until you get back to base and choose your gender and appearance. This did not bother me on a personal level, but I could absolutely see how this would really be a sticking point for some folks and rightly so. As you can see from the screenshots… the world is absolutely gorgeous and every little aspect of it feels highly detailed.

The Paladin

Since I tend to always play tanks in MMOs… I opted to roll the paladin. I am not sure if EVERYONE starts as one of three classes, or if this is just limited to the Open Beta, but I was limited to a choice of Paladin, Cryomancer and Lightbinder. These represent the tank, dps and healer essentially, and this is a game much like Final Fantasy XIV where you can swap your class at any given time. Unfortunately the Paladin is the only one of the starter classes that I have any interest in… there are really three classes in this game that interest me and that is the Paladin, Knight and Berserker. Now we are going to start delving into some of the negatives. Combat is similar to Neverwinter Nights which in itself is not bad. Essentially it is a combination of mouse clicks augmented by abilities you cast off keys around your WASD and numeric keys that tend to have long recast times. It uses a system similar to TERA in that your secondary mouse button is a variable combo ability.

As a Paladin my combos offered an impressive 360 degree whirl attack that you can see above, a single target lightning bolt, and a frontal cone slash attack. The problem being is that the combo system seemed to have a mind of its own. In Tera it related to a certain number of clicks… in Skyforge it seems to be tied somehow to your character animation. As a result I found it really hard to predict when I could hit a specific attack and always seemed to have the wrong ability available as my combo attack at the wrong time. Now this combo tree is something you can fiddle with freely and maybe given some time I could sort out how best to use it. However it gives the combat interaction a bit of a “sloppy” feel to its design. I find myself greatly preferring the ability to press a unique button for each attack rather than allow the game to sort all of that out for me. I know at least if I press the button, an ability will fire… instead here it felt more like the game was playing for me sometimes and I was simply mashing the attack buttons blindly.

I feel like all of the attacks were designed to look and feel impressive. For example the above screenshot is of me executing my finisher, that shows up when the mob is low on heath and there is a pop up window telling me to hit E to use it. It involves me throwing the mob up into the air and then a bolt of lightning or holy power or whatever it is that Paladins care about striking them back down to the ground. Again this felt like something I had to freaking mash E for whenever the mob was getting close to being low enough to use it… because my main attack seemed to run away with itself and I would get locked in a combat animation that seemed to be of variable length. The thing I keep coming back to is that maybe this game feels significantly better when played with a controller than with a mouse and keyboard. I need to sort through the settings and see if it supports my Xbox 360 controller because this might be an awesome offering to the console market more so than it is to the PC one.

My Impressions

Like I said at the start of this I have really not spent much time playing the game at this point. I got in yesterday morning and last night, and between those two play sessions I have completed two of the small instanced missions. After the second mission I went back to the main hub and got yet another one… and then decided that I was not really having enough fun to keep playing that night. That is a bad sign, for me personally. I love combat and combat missions, and if a game wants to throw me at kill X things… I generally eat them up like warm cobbler covered in ice cream. The problem is… I just found the combat boring and repetitive. I feel like maybe I am not grasping the “master plan” to its design but it really felt like I had to wail away at random with abilities and mash my shield whenever it was up to keep from taking damage. It really did not feel like there was much structure to the flailing about, and I found this frustrating especially compared to say the Cryomancer that I watched Jabberant play that seemed to have lots of strategy to it. It could just be a side effect of my being used to Final Fantasy XIV where every single key press feels like it has some importance behind it.

I’ve embedded my play session from last night so that you can see how the game looks and feels while moving through combat. I am not giving up on this game quite yet, but I will say my first day of play was “strike one”. Maybe it feels better as I go along, but I have a feeling that pretty much all of this game is going to be a Lobby/Instance approach with no real “open world” to go exploring. I might be wrong, and maybe I just have not seen “leveling zones” yet but the whole thing feels a lot like the way DDO did content, mixed with the combat styling of Neverwinter Nights. All of this said, since you can get in now for free and give it a spin… then I suggest you try it out for yourself. Maybe you will find it a refreshing experience, and not the boring and repetitive one that I found. Maybe I was simply in the wrong mindset, because yesterday was a really long day. In any case I am going to give it a few more shots this weekend to see if it does anything for me. Sometimes games take a bit for me to enjoy, and this might be one of those. In any case I am happy I gave it a shot before “buying in”. So far the verdict is pretty mixed, but I wanted to at least put my thoughts to paper for anyone who might be interested in them.

Games I’m Not Playing

July 17, 2015 by Belghast

Too Many Games

Right now I am suffering from a problem, in that there are just too many games that I want to be playing and simply not enough time in any combination of lifetimes to actually play them. Last night I downloaded and installed Skyforge, and gave it a quick spin this morning… and as interesting as it seems I just don’t know when exactly I am going to fit it in. For the first time in years I have been relatively monogamistic in my gaming, and with the dropping of World of Warcraft I pretty much have all of my focus on Final Fantasy XIV. Last night I ran dungeons with the guild and after doing my hunts managed to push my Dragoon to 56. As a result the desire to get that job to 60 is real, because I desperately want to be able to fill more than one roll when it comes to grouping.

By the same token I really would like to give some time to Skyforge so that I can give it a shot for free, before plunking down any money on it. I watched a bit of the MMO Show stream the other day as Jabberant played the game and I have to admit it peaked my interests. Playing this morning it feels like a better version of Neverwinter, because the janky control scheme of that game was always a major detractor. So now I get to juggle competing desires and figure out how to spend my weekend. So this morning I thought I would write about the games that I am wanting to play but just can’t seem to find adequate time to devote to them.

Star Wars the Old Republic

I have this strong desire to go back and experience the storyline that I have not yet. Essentially I have not really played my main in this game, a Jedi Guardian… since launch. Each time I go back I always end up playing alts because I am finding it really hard to get back into the swing of playing a level 50 character. I know there have been numerous expansions since launch, each with their own storyline content… and I am struggling to get back into the swing of doing it. Instead I mostly spend time playing my Light Side Sith Warrior, who has been stuck in the hell hole of Balmorra for at least two years. So one of my gaming regrets is that I have not figured out how to make progress on my main and see the Makeb and beyond storyline. Additionally I have this nasty habit of paying for a month, and then playing one day and never returning to it. I’ve gone through this sequence at least a half dozen times since we left this game. The draw of Final Fantasy XIV is always too strong to keep me playing there for long.

Wildstar

On my second attempt at playing this game I reached a point where I really was enjoying what I was doing. In fact there was a stretch prior to the launch of Heavensward where I was playing this one more than just about any other game. I have an awesome group of friends in this game and I love the Black Dagger Society guild that I am in. I had a blast roaming around the zones and taking down world bosses with them on a few occasions. For whatever reason however I am just not logging in right now. Once again the draw of Final Fantasy XIV is too strong, and maybe I just love our guild there too much. This is on the list of games I absolutely want to keep returning to, but I doubt I will until a bit more of the shiny has warn off from Heavensward. Right now I am in this push to reach a point where I have multiple useful jobs to help people with, and I think until I get there I won’t be happy playing much else.

The Secret World

I am woefully behind in my Secret World content, because the last update I think I played was the whole “Last Train to Cairo” sequence. I know there have been multiple updates since then but I am just not logging in and playing them. There are problems I have with this game that preclude me from really digging into the end game content. However I have loved all of the story mission content that I have played and I keep meaning to poke my head in and do them. I’m a life time subscriber, and I should have tons of goodies waiting on me… but generally speaking what happens is I log in and buy a nifty new outfit… then log right back out. Of all of my gaming regrets this is one of the strongest because I really would like to find a way to play this game in addition to whatever game I am “maining”.

ArcheAge

Just prior to the launch of Heavensward there were several of us on the AggroChat cast that had a brief love affair with this game. I want to find a way to return to playing this game on a regular basis because I don’t feel like I have consumed all of the good that I can get from it. This is the game that I was told once I reached level 30 I would be in forced pvp areas. While we are playing on Tahyang the supposed roleplaying server, I am 38 and have yet to encounter even another enemy player. There is a lot of great PVE content in this game, and we found the dungeons to be among some of the rougher we had experienced since say Dark Age of Camelot. I’ve logged in a few times since the launch of Heavensward, but never for terribly long because I keep feeling like I really should be in FFXIV gearing or helping other people gear. I still have things I want to do here, so I need to figure out a way to play it as well.

Skyforge

I talked about this as the start of the blog post, but I really do want to spend some time getting to know this game. At face value it didn’t seem like it was going to be anything I would be interested in. However after playing a brief few minutes this morning I think I might dig it. It is action combat that still feels like an MMO. Honestly I put Neverwinter in that same category, however there the combat just felt forced and janky. The proof will be in the pudding as to how the Paladin feels once I progress it a bit further. I admit the whole “switch roles at any time” thing is a huge draw for me, after getting used to that in Final Fantasy XIV. I doubt this would ever be a primary MMO for me, but it might be a fun weekend diversion. Ultimately I keep looking for a solid secondary game to have the duality that I did with Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft. I have yet to find the game that seems like the perfect match, but who knows this might be it.

Elder Scrolls Online

The game that I least understand why I am not playing it… is The Elder Scrolls Online. Everything about this game should be squarely in my wheelhouse considering the number of hours that I have spent playing games in the Elder Scrolls universe. I have access to it both on PC and on PS4, and I had this idea that the console client would somehow revitalize my interest in the game. The problem is… it hasn’t at all. I feel like the problem I have with this game is that even though I have people moving around me… I feel like I am ultimately alone. The other players are just a backdrop in part because I never see their names. I think in part I am experiencing Beta regret, because after testing this game for a year there are previous incarnations of the game UI that I just enjoyed more. If I could go back and play THOSE incarnations… I would probably be enjoying myself still. When names over the top of mobs went away… the world felt like it shrunk for me, and the game became more or less a single player experience. I still would love to find a way to make this game that at one point I was so devoted to still feel enjoyable, but I just have not found it.