MMORPG Archives - Page 208 of 411 - Tales of the Aggronaut

290 Power and More Weapons

September 21, 2017 by Belghast

Last night I pushed through and hit another Milestone in Destiny 2, and that is hitting the 290 light barrier. While our clan lead seemed to hit this practically over night… it has been a long slog for most of us. I’ve talked about this before but the gearing process slows down greatly at 265 and then each additionally point of power seems to be a struggle to obtain. This is going to be the phase of the game that loses most people because if you have never dealt with how rough Destiny 1 was to get light… then this is going to seem like a chore. For the most part I am enjoying the process because I like watching the numbers go up. For frame of reference however… the game was released on September 5th and sixteen days later I have logged roughly 57 hours of play according to Destiny Tracker. Now for additional point of reference I spent just shy of 500 hours playing Destiny 1 on the PS4 and just shy of 50 hours on the Xbox One. Basically all I am trying to say here is that 290 power level is a significant investment of time, but in theory you could probably also get there just by focusing on the few powerful gear rewarding objectives that you can do each week. My process has involved a lot of doing random stuff hoping to get exotic engrams that then push me up every so slightly.

As far as things to talk about this morning I don’t have much. I thought instead I would share a few new weapon pickups that I am enjoying. Each week I do the crucible milestone so that I can get the luminous engram associated with it. During one of the many matches I had to play to get 100% completion to get my loot… I managed to get this gun to drop. As far as I know this is only available from the crucible itself or from turning in crucible tokens for faction with Lord Shaxx. This gun is amazing in PVE and I imagine similarly amazing in PVP given its propensity for one-shot killing almost anything but yellow bars, and even then a single shot will usually strip their shield. I was using it last night while running around on Io and straight up 2 shotting Vex Minotaurs… one to drop the shield and one precision shot to kill them. It did similar magic on Taken Centurions, except their shields seemed to take to shots to drop them. If you get this gun, I highly suggest you play with it a bit before sharding it because I think you are going to like it. I also love the name because its a play on two infamous guns from Destiny 1: The Devil You Know and The Devil You Don’t.

As the reward from completing the nightfall, I managed to pick up an Origin Story. I have no clue what weapon I chose at that step in the quest chain… but I know it was not this gun and whatever I did wound up as infusion fodder somewhere along the way. At this point in my life I was deeply connected to Scathelocke and could see no other weapon taking that primary gun crush position for me. However after hearing people talk about this gun, I decided to play with it a bit before using it as power level fuel. I am certainly glad that I did because my god this gun is amazing. It is a much slower rate of fire archetype as compared to the Scathelocke… so if that is the Haakon’s Hatchet then this is closer to the Suros Regime or Genesis Chain. This has quickly taken my primary slot and the only time I am not using it… is when I am rocking Better Devils.

A weapon that I have loved for awhile but was not using a lot at the time of the last post is Uriel’s Gift. I try really hard not to run double auto rifles because it limits the things that I can do, however there is a period of time when I did. Now that I have started using Better Devils a lot more this is filling in as my secondary slot. Similarly I am using this a lot in crucible because it just has an insane time to kill. Out of the gate the gun has really good stability in spite of what looks like on paper a relatively low stat… or at least it has a very predictable recoil pattern. This allows me to choose High Caliber Rounds to get the stagger effect against enemies. This has been the game where I suddenly greatly favor Omolon weapons. In Destiny 1 I always thought they looked cool, but never really liked the way they felt. This time around I am digging both. Functionally my two primary setups are Origin Story/Manannan or Better Devils/Uriel’s Gift and I swap back and forth between those as needed.

This has been the version of Destiny where pulse rifles are just not that good. I’ve tried a bunch of them and none of them really feel like they used to… or have the ability to shred enemies like they used to either. Of the pulses I have tried, I have largely standardized on using the Nergal because it feels the best and seems to perform the best out in the field. I’ve actually used it a bit in crucible and it works well enough… the problem is it is just outshined in every way by the Auto Rifle options I have now. I have this feeling that we are going to see an Auto Rifle stability nerf which will clear the way for the pulse to shine a bit more. Previously Pulse was the stable multi shot option… and Autorifle was all about learning how to ride a bucking bronco into battle. If you are looking for a pulse however I highly suggest you check this one out. I get it regularly from the gunsmith, and it seems to be on a pretty generic drop table.

Convenience Items

August 28, 2017 by Belghast

Generally speaking I am pretty neutral towards “cash shops” in MMORPGs. I’ve come to look at them as a sort of necessary evil in a world where the subscription model is largely broken. When monthly subscription revenue stopped being able to support MMO titles… they were forced to branch out and look in other directions to figure out a way to pay for the development of new stuff. There are times where this feels largely okay… and there are other times when it feels exploitative when more limited time cash shop only content is coming out then patch content. All in all the model gets a lot of crap from the gaming community, but there are times when the benefit gained more than makes up for the generally icky feeling inside you get by having to deal with it. In the case of a game like Guild Wars 2 where there is no “player plus plus” sort of system to entice you to go back on the monthly subscription plan to get additional access to shiny baubles… it probably feels better than a lot of options. There is a lot of stuff on the gem store… most of it of no interest to me. Generally speaking the Guild Wars 2 shop is full of a bunch of convenience items and cosmetic items. The value of both is extremely personal, but this morning I thought I would talk about a handful of items that I have picked up over the years that have made my life in game more enjoyable. Something of note… in all cases I caught the items when they were on sale and did not pay the full market value.

Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic

This is hands down the single best purchase I have ever made in Guild Wars 2. One of the biggest problems I have with the game is that it has a constant upkeep cost… namely that you have to keep running to a vendor to buy more salvage kits and as I will talk about later… harvesting tools. Now there are times when I care about what I am getting from salvaging an item… in those times I either dip into my stock of Black Lion Salvage kits that I have accumulated… or my Mystic Salvage Kits that are extremely reasonable to make. However most of the time if the item is green or lower I just want to grind it into bits to get it out of my inventory. In those situations you are largely just going to use basic salvage kits that you can pick up off the vendor cheaply. What the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic does is save you that trip and simply charge you 3 copper per item salvaged. This is ultimately a savings over the 3.52 copper per salvage from Basic Salvage Kits… but you would ultimately need to grind down something like 3 million items before saving enough money to have it “pay for itself”. The convenience however makes it well worth the normally 800 gem price… and when it goes on sale it is significantly cheaper.

Unbreakable Gathering Tools

In a similar vein to the Salvage-o-Matic… my next favorite purchase is something lumped in the general category of unbreakable tools. I harvest everything in this game, because you never know when you might need all of those Strawberries. As a result I used to have to constantly run to vendors and buy new tools… or in my case I used to carry around a stack of them taking up inventory space just in case one broke… and I was standing beside a rich mithril node. There are lots of different individual tools that have various effects on them… and I managed to pick up my first set of unbreakable tools by slowly snagging them one by one as they went on sale. As a result I have a mismatched set of a Clockwork pick, Molten Axe and Mad Scientists Foraging tool, but the functionality of never having to worry about running out of resources makes me extremely happy. They also have a way less frilly set of tools simply titled Unbreakable Gathering Tools that gives you normal looking versions of each of the tools that simply never break. This basic set normally goes for 2400 gems but over the weekend due to the Anniversary sales was going for 1680.

Mistlock Sanctuary Passkey

One of the things that Guild Wars 2 added in is a number of cloistered areas that require some sort of access pass. All told there is the Captain’s Airship Pass, Lava Lounge, Mistlock Sanctuary, Noble’s Folly, and Royal Terrace… and with Path of Fire they are giving us another one called the Lily of the Elon. Functionally they all serve the same role of giving you instant access to a condensed area that contains every possible NPC that you would need to interact with. What makes Mistlock interesting is that it doesn’t exist in the normal world map… so instead they give you a portal merchant that will take you to any capitol city in the world… or return you to the zone you were just in. I find this functionality to be amazingly useful especially when I need to just step AFK for a bit, and the ability to return me to almost exactly where I standing before is insanely useful. Where this really comes in amazingly well is on alts that maybe don’t have access to the rest of the world yet. There is one weird glitch however… if you take an alt to Lion’s Arch before the story actually takes them there… it will play the intro video as though you had just zoned in every single time you go there. The weird bit of Mistlock Sanctuary… is that it is rarely actually for sale. When it is you can pick it up for 1000 gems… but you have to watch the store like a hawk for when it is listed next. There are limited time passes available on a regular basis… but I personally only care about something like this if it is unlimited use. This may or may not be why I have a bank full of short term convenience items that I will likely never actually use…. and wish I could put up on the market board.

Shared Inventory Slots

I don’t really have a relevant image to this one… but one of the super handy things you can pick up in the game that is super cost prohibitive is shared inventory slots. Sure your bank is shared by your entire account but starting with Heart of Thorns they started giving us the ability to add a special bag at the top of our inventory with items that are shared between all of my characters. This becomes extremely handy when you say… put your Copper-Fed Salvage-O-Matic up there… or your Mistlock Sanctuary Pass. Then every single character you log into can easily benefit from access to these items. I wish the unbreakable gathering tools could work similarly… but unfortunately for those you either need to hot swap them between characters or own multiple sets. When I say these are cost prohibitive… you get one for purchasing heart of thorns and another for purchasing path of fire… then from there they cost 700 gems per slot with price breaks if you buy 3 and 5 at a time. You can in theory have 18 total per account… but I imagine most players have significantly fewer given the cost. Right now I largely use them as a way to give my Salvage-O-Matic, Mistlock pass, and my growing stack of Teleport to Friend items to all characters. In theory if I ever managed to pull one of the unlimited use bank or market passes… they would go there as well. Combined however all of these items have lowered the amount of day to day upkeep I have to deal with when playing Guild Wars 2… and as a result have greatly increased my overall happiness with my gaming experience.

Enjoy the Path

August 23, 2017 by Belghast

The first image of the evening is what happens when you catch the daily completion bonus train. I am still floored by the sheer number of people actively participating in events. One of the cool happenings of the night though is that I organically crossed paths with @vbarreirojr who was one event behind me in the progression. I sort of love the concept that happens in this game of the commander… because you can see the telltale icons on the corners of your map and generally speaking are a reasonable indicator of where some manner of activity is going on. I’m also starting to learn to get a bit better at watching chat. Often times as new events are starting up someone will link a waypoint to allow folks to jump to it relatively quickly. Through a combination of follow the catmander and waypoint jumping I managed to knock out the daily completion bonus in what felt like record time. I think part of it as well is I am starting to develop a little ancestral memory, as to which are the best areas to harvest resources and which are the easiest vistas to view to get completion and such. It’s funny how I almost look forward to the daily completion bonus because it ends to give me some focus… and from there while participating in it I come up with some other game play for the evening.

Early in the day I was talking to a friend who is contemplating trying to restart the game, and was questioning what sequence of things she needed to purchase. Firstly I think Guild Wars 2 is either something that feels good or doesn’t… and lord knows it took me five years of trying it to finally figure out the secret to being able to enjoy it myself. You can scan back through the history of this blog and you are going to find a bunch of posts that are pretty negative about this game. I wrote one in particular where I called it one of my five biggest MMO disappointments just so you have an easy reference. You are going to ultimately have to decide if the game works for you or not, because it absolutely did not for me for a very long time. However the truth that I finally landed on is that you have to forget everything you know about how an MMO works to ultimately make Guild Wars 2 work. What I mean by that is for the most part MMOs are very task oriented and involve you completing a sequence of objectives in order to move on to the next sequence of objectives. The quest is the most common version of this and that least to more quests and ultimately provides a ladder for you to traverse a given zone with. When you attempt to play Guild Wars 2 in this fashion… your brain rebels against you. There is no quest structure and the concept of hearts are what I tried to latch onto as the replacement. The end result felt like this grindy busywork as I attempted to complete my way across a zone so that I could then move to the next area, making sure to 100% everything in my path. In doing so I kept getting frustrated each time something took me off path or off whatever my current task was, and as a result I bounced exceedingly hard off of the game.

Instead I personally find Guild Wars 2 works better if you view it like an ocean that you happen to be floating in. If you allow yourself to move along with the current you get to experience all sorts of interesting things that happen along the path. Instead of staying focused on some large overarching goal… I find it works best to focus on whatever is presented in front of you. If there is an event spawning near you, go over there and participate because it often times leads its way to other events in the same zone. Instead of trying to traverse things in an A B C D E F manner… I find it just feels better to let the zone explore itself almost. Sure you end up often times going from A to F to G to C to E and eventually back to B and D… but it is done so in a more organic manner. The only negative to this approach is that I find it completely impossible to stay on task. Ultimately I started playing Guild Wars 2 like I play Skyrim or Fallout… just letting myself wander off into the horizon and check out the next shiny object in my field of view. If there is a commander on the far side of the zone… then I should probably head that way to see what all is going on. Sometimes this has lead me to zone events that I didn’t even realize existed. To some extent at times it feels like the game is playing you… but I think in this case it is probably perfectly okay. This game is full of these extremely intricate micro objectives and feedback loops to keep you caught in their gravity and constantly doing stuff. The fact that everything scales… means that you are never going to be doing stuff that isn’t potentially valuable or lucrative. Basically my advice to learning how to enjoy Guild Wars 2 is to stop focusing on the goal… and start enjoying the path.

Saltines and Weaponcraft

August 22, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday was a weird one, namely because everyone seemed to have eclipse fever for lack of a better term. As a group we had largely made a plan to go over to the roof of the parking garage next door, and by the time the festivities actually started there were between fifty and a hundred people that had the same idea. The positive is that everyone was more than willing to share their assorted ways of viewing the eclipse. In Oklahoma we only actually had about 90% occlusion, which made the world feel like a storm front was just about to blow in. The sky darkened, the temperature dropped a very small bit… but for the most part you could have easily not noticed anything going on unless you happened to look up. I took the first image with the selfie cam on my old phone and that was just about the peak of occlusion… and as you can see the day star still seemed pretty formidable. The second shot is the idea of using a saltine cracker to project the shadow, and the third shot is this awesome box that the same coworkers husband had rigged. The last shot is the eclipse through the filter of a pair of those shades… but unfortunately it was hell to get the focus to latch onto it at all. There were so many sets of shades that people were passing them around pretty freely, and I got to take more than a few peeks at the spectacle. The only problem is… my eyes felt really funny afterwards. Like in part they felt like they were strained… or like I had been driving into the sun’s glare for too long. It took about 2 hours for the effect to fully wear off, so I was concerned for a bit that maybe we ended up with some cheap knock off shades and I had done some actual damage. My eyes are super sensitive to light in the best of conditions… so forcing myself to be out and looking up… probably just caused them to strain a bit.

When I made it home for the evening I was still feeling a little off though. So my evening activities ended up leaning towards the chill side of things. Other than doing my daily completion bonus I largely focused on crafting and pushing up my weaponsmithing. I had this weird sequence of events happen where I saw my character hit 402… then somehow was back at 392. Guild Wars 2 has this problem where the UI sometimes freaks the hell out, and in order to fix it I sometimes have to log out and back in. In doing this I went from the 402 I was supposedly sitting at before I logged back to the 392, which is a bit frustrating. However since for some reason I didn’t have the pattern to Orichalcum Ingots… I am leaning to the side of this just being a presentation bug since the UI was acting up anyways. I still had the materials though to push my way through to the 400s and now everything I craft seems to take a ton of time and materials. I need to do a heck of a lot more farming of the level 80 zones because I only had the materials for I believe 64 ingots of Orichalcum. I was in even worse shape in the Ancient Wood department, so I know I will be spending a lot of time in the end game zones doing content. I am largely going down this path because I want to be able to craft my own ascended gear, and be able to craft my own exotics for the purpose of trying to gamble and get that precursor. I realize I should just focus on making a lot of money and buying the damned thing… but I have a long ways to go until I will be able to do that.