MMORPG Archives - Page 341 of 408 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Pre-Warlords Patch Time

October 15, 2014 by Belghast

Tis the Season

I have to say I am more than a little bit scared that this crap I have had for the last few weeks is not just “allergies” as I had originally thought. The last couple of days whatever it is seems to have settled into my lungs, and it is getting a bit harder to actually breathe. I still would not think anything about it really, apart from the fact that my boss has been out the last few days for a fairly serious case of bronchitis. I guess in truth it isn’t so much the bronchitis that is serious but more so the fact that he has bronchitis… and only one lung. In any case something appears to be going around, and considering the close proximity in which we all work together… it is likely if one of us catches something we are all going to catch it.

The positive I guess is the fact that today is my Friday. Since my wife is off for fall break the next couple of days I decided to take them off as well. As of yet we don’t really have any solid plans other than a few projects around the house. In any case even if I feel like shit, at least I don’t have to go into work right? Thankfully most of the projects are just time intensive rather than labor intensive so I can totally muddle through them with junk in my lungs. If things get much worse I will either go to the doctor or go to urgent care and hopefully get a steroid course or something to clear it up. I would probably call in this morning, but since my boss has been out for the last two days… and I have been attending meetings in his place… we need to actually do a bit of an information dump before I am gone from the office as well.

Pre-Warlords Patch Time

Yesterday twitter was completely abuzz over the release of the 6.0.2 patch in World of Warcraft that brought in all of the major changes that are always the precursor to a major expansion. One of the biggest of these was the entrance of the brand new player models for all but the Worgen/Goblins. While I had played quite a bit in Alpha… I had not actually copied most of my characters over to see what they would end up looking like. I copied my main Belgrave, but since he is a Worgen it really didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. I made a handful of premades, but when I last did that they still had the whole “single face” issue going on so it was really hard to see just how they would match up the appearances. So when I logged in last night I have to say I was a little shocked at just how strange the transition looked. Above is an image of Belghast prior to the patch and Belghast after the patch.

Something was just off for some reason in the appearance. It didn’t feel like “my” character that I had spent so much time playing and tanking on. So like everyone the first thing I did was run to the barber shop and try and improve the appearance. After some tweaking I finally landed on a look that feels “closer” to how I felt Belghast looked in appearance. What is strange about this entire process is how much I realize that the characters no longer feel like they are “mine”. I am not sure how to articulate that, because it wasn’t until I saw what my characters looked like that I realized how much the face apparently DID matter to me. The differences aren’t that massive, but they just don’t feel like they belong to me any more. They were just these higher fidelity things that happened to have the name and all of the gear of my previous character.

The characters I feel that translated perfectly however were the Dwarves. This shot is of Lodin my original raiding main from vanilla and his after the patch translation. I have to say it is perfect, it captures everything I intended for the character and feels just about perfect. So the handful of characters I have that were dwarves feel the same to me as they did previously. The big problem I seem to be having is with the Humans and Draenei. For whatever reason they just seem to be off in ways that I can’t fully articulate. If I did ever come back, I have a feeling I would be race changing most of my characters to be dwarves, because so far that seems to be the clear winner in this upgrade to me at least. Granted that could just be my natural affinity to the subterranean folk in the first place. In any case my curiosity was sated and other than things feeling odd, I didn’t really have much emotion about the translation either way.

Lalafell Badass

The real fun of yesterday was the fact that Tuesdays are reset day in Final Fantasy XIV. This means I was able to pop back into Syrcus Tower to try for another piece of gear, or one of the tokens needed to upgrade an existing piece of gear to ilvl 110. In addition this was the week that I finally would have enough tomestones of soldiery to be able to purchase the chest piece. Granted I already had a level 100 chest, but there is just something about this chest that the moment I saw it… I knew I had to get it. I have this thing for plate mail skirts in games, that I likely will never fully understand. In world of Warcraft, my favorite set of gear will always be the Paladin Judgement set, and in FFXIV it seems to be right now the soldiery chest. The problem with it is that my bunny samurai helmet no longer really went with it. Thankfully last week I managed to get in on a Behemoth kill which netted me the really badass looking plate helm I am wearing in the above image.

Tuesday nights are traditionally our raid night, but over the last several weeks we have been struggling with getting enough people online at the same time. Last night we sat there with seven for quite a bit, and then two of our newer 50s that are considerably less geared came online. We opted to get their weekly elite hunt done, which would allow them to get just enough gear to be able to enter something interesting. As a way of breaking them into what raiding in FFXIV is like, we opted to do Hard Mode Ultima Weapon. It had been quite some time since we had downed it ourselves, so we were all a bit rusty, but we managed to work through the issues and the massive lag issues our newest charges were having… and defeated the boss. Hopefully over the next few days we can start knocking out the various hard modes for them so that they can do the Hard and Elite duty roulettes for gear and tokens. If nothing else going into Ultima allowed me to take this really badass screenshot. I love my new armor, and while I will miss the bunny samurai hat… the behemoth helmet just looks amazing.

#WoW #FinalFantasyXIV

Sandboxes and Sheep

October 14, 2014October 14, 2014 by Belghast

Defense of Open World

While I might dip my toes in the water of player versus player every so often just to see if I still don’t enjoy it… at my core I am very much a Carebear. I’ve always assumed I simply lack the competitive streak needed to make the dance of “you kill me I hunt you down and kill you” enjoyable. Even in the hallowed days of Doom multiplayer, I greatly preferred playing co-operatively with friends rather than playing a Deathmatch. Generally speaking this wouldn’t effect me because I never willfully choose to expose myself to a PVP environment or mentality, however for some reason folks keep seeming to get hung up on requiring it to play in their sandbox. I like the concept of a sandbox world where I can go anywhere and do anything… but for a certain stripe of player that means that they can also grief and gank anyone as a result.

Yesterday there was a really good article talking about the psychology of a Carebear by Aywren that tries to delve into the reasons for not wanting open world PVP. This article references several other really good articles, the first of which being “What’s So Bad About Open World PVP” over on Gaming Conjecture. Later on during the article another post is referenced on Endgame Viable that takes a very similar stance. Essentially the argument sums up to that in ArcheAge the game in question, there aren’t any real lasting consequences of PVP combat, so why should anyone have a problem with it. I guess from a certain standpoint that is true, there are no lasting mechanical consequences to my character… but that standpoint relies on someone actually seeing player versus player as a meaningful experience.

Wasting My Time

When I sit down to play any game, be it online or offline I generally have some broad overarching goals in mind, things that I want to accomplish for that night to feel like I actually did something. Granted I allow myself to get side tracked all of the time, but that is generally tracing down various shiny bits that I happen across along the way. These rabbit trails are entirely my choice and I allow myself to indulge them as I move around the world. My key problem with open player versus player combat is the fact that someone is imposing their enjoyment on my playtime. I am all about folks enjoying their game play until that enjoyment comes at my expense. I am never going to be the type of player that attacks first, it is just not in my nature and I have waved and hugged countless “flagged” players during my time in World of Warcraft. So if I get attacked and killed it will be done and over 90% of the time before I even get a shot in… because I am not looking to fight other players.

What happens then is a series of things that take me out of the place where I was enjoying the game and force me to deal with the whims of another player. Either I wait until the player gives up and stops camping my corpse, which could be any length of time. I could allow myself to get drawn into a conflict and start trying to kill trade with that player until either of us gets bored. More likely I just log out of the game and go find something else to do, because the groove that I was in is now lost thanks to someone interjecting themselves into my game play session. Now the fans of PVP will talk about how much it enriches their game play experience, how much they enjoy the constant sense of fear of getting attacked. For me I just view it as a waste of my time, and I don’t cherish or enjoy it any more than any other waste of time. I don’t look longingly at waiting in a long line at the super market, nor do I think fondly of waiting in traffic because someone is gawking at an accident. That thing you enjoy about the game, the pvp aspect… I consider it about as meaningful as both of those things.

Sandboxes and Sheep

The biggest problem I have with the current generation of Sandbox games is that they attract two completely different types of players. For me at least I love the intricate systems of the game and the fact that you can craft anything you can imagine and run huge trade cartels if you so choose. I like that there are housing that are meaningful in the world and give you a physical foothold. I like the fact that you can choose from a large number of combat classes and each mix and match of them offers meaningful gameplay results. I like that there are interesting places in the world to explore, bosses to take down and events to conquer. I am very much there to consume all the PVE goodness that the world can offer and experience the epic journey that it has to offer. I feel like a lot of players want all of those things and more or less try to ignore the player versus player aspect. We in essense are the sheep, and the fact that we are plays a necessary role for another type of players enjoyment.

In order for a ganker to have fun, they have to have someone to gank. The ganker mentality doesn’t seek out a challenge, they seek out the weakest link in the chain so they can exploit it and get their enjoyment out of making someone else feel weak. It is going to be us sheep that get drawn into their power games, and us sheep that are inconvenienced by it. Granted that is not to say that all PVPers are gankers and griefers, because that is very much not the case. There are noble defenders that are there to engage in epic battles between factions for control of sections of the map. These players aren’t the ones inconveniencing me, because chances are if I ignore them they will also ignore me. They too are engaged in goal based play, and their goal is to seek out the competition and conquer it. The folks that will find me, when I least expect it, when I am getting the most enjoyment out of the game are the folks who just want to ruin my night.

Living Breathing World

Yesterday I posted a very truncated version of this statement over on the Gaming Conjecture website. I condensed the bulk of everything I wanted to say into two paragraphs, and for the most part folks seem to accept what I said at face value. There was one response however.

But I’d like to ask whether you feel the gain can outweigh the loss? So for example, I might have my intended plan ruined by a PvP intervention, but does gaining a living breathing world make that a price worth paying?

Once again I think this question comes from a mindset of someone who feels that player versus player combat enriches their experience. For me at least the fact that I can attack other players does not make it a living breathing world. The fact that the world is populated with lots of things that I can interact with, harvest, plant, and build makes it a living breathing world. What would make it MORE of a living world is if players were less focused on trying to kill each other, and somehow screw over each other… and more focused on collaborating on massive scale public works projects. Once upon a time there was a game called Horizon.. that later on got rebranded as Istaria. Unfortunately the current version is a mere shadow of what the original was like to play, and has mostly become a game for folks who desperately want to role-play a dragon.

That game was a sandbox environment before I even knew to call it a sandbox. It had a rich crafting system, and an equally rich multi-classing combat system. In truth it is everything that ArcheAge is, but a decade earlier. What make the game so compelling to me is that on Dawn the role-playing server we had massive crafters unions that worked together on big projects. The game set these obstacles in our path that could only be solved by devoting both crafting and combat resources to them. For example in order to access a brand new continent we had to build a bridge, and the construction of it was a month long project of crafters constantly applying materials to its construction. The problem being that the nearest quarry was a considerable amount of distance away from the bridge, and the entire path was lined with enemies that could easily kill the players wearing their crafting gear.

As a result being primarily combat focused, I along with lots of other players took up the role of guarding players as they applied materials to the construction. These huge public works projects, and entire player built communities gave the world a living breathing feel… and there was not a single amount of player versus player combat in that game. I guess what I am saying is I don’t feel it adds anything to my experience, and doesn’t make a world any more real than anything else does. My world is about collaborating with other players to do interesting things, not tearing down others so I can feel stronger. That might be a dangerous oversimplification, but that is how I view forced PVP in an otherwise PVE rich setting. I view it as a few players forcing themselves upon me so they can get their enjoyment at my expense.

#ArcheAge #PVP #Carebear

Tremors in the Force

October 13, 2014 by Belghast

Glorious Weekend

The entire weekend was pretty crummy outside here in Oklahoma, so as a result we spent most of it inside. I curled up on the couch with a brand new fuzzy blanket and spent it gaming on the laptop while watching stuff on television. It had quite literally been a few months since I had last watched television really. Granted there was a bit of television each night and each morning while going to sleep and waking up respectively, but I had not actually sat down to watch anything of any importance in a very long time. As such I had a bunch of shows stacked up that I wanted to catch up on. The most important of these was this seasons Doctor Who. I had watched the premiere several weeks back, but had not seen any of the episodes since.

I feel like the jury is still out on how I feel about the new Scottish Doctor. I guess I am just used to the normal fun loving slightly insane Doctor, and this interpretation just feels strange. The dynamic between Clara and the Doctor also feels a bit strained. Granted the companion that survives a regeneration I guess is always a bit odd, but this one seems more so. It seems in part that the Doctor still has a crush on her, and as he is watching her get on with her life… it feels a little awkward. As far as the stories have gone, I think I like the “Time Heist” episode the best. Trying not to go into much detail for fear of spoilers… because I am sure there are others out there that have not caught up yet. In fact public television here in the United States tends to be one full season behind.

Tremors in the Force

Other than Doctor Who I finally got around to watching the first two episodes of the new Star Wars animated series “Rebels”. What amazes me is just how well both of the animated series have managed to get the feeling of the universe, whereas the prequels failed so miserably. Star Wars Rebels is pretty much the perfect Star Wars show. You have a scrappy group of fighters, and interesting relationship between reluctant Jedi Master and a force sensitive padawan… all after the fall of the Republic in a super scary time where being a Jedi means being hunted. There are just enough call backs to the original series to let you know when exactly this adventure is set. In the first episode Ezra the main character happens to open a Jedi Holocron with the message Obi Wan Kenobi left for all Jedi during the events of Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith. Then in Episode 2, you encounter C-3PO and R2-D2 who are on their way to the Tantive IV. With those two little vignettes it tells you that the events are sometime in the gulf of time between episodes 3 and 4, which is a super fertile place to base a new series.

The characters are likeable from the start. They are just “scoundrel” enough to come across as being selfish… but quickly transition into a cell of rebel fighters trying to survive however they can. The entire series has a very “Firefly” vibe too it, and honestly I am just wishing there was more of the show to watch already. So far you have Hera Syndulla the Twilek Pilot/Engineer, Sabine Wren the Mandalorian Weapons Expert, Garazeb Orrelios the Lasat Muscle, Ezra Bridger the Street Kid Force Savant and finally Kanan Jarrus the leader of this group and a former Jedi Padawan at the moment Order 66 happened. The mix of personalities and skill sets makes for a really good viewing experience. Since Star Wars meant so much to me growing up, I am always happy to watch the fires get reignited for new generations. I just wish that it was still on Cartoon Network rather than Disney XD, since I seem to be far better in keeping up with Cartoon Network than any other channel. If you have not watched any of the show and are an old school Star Wars fan I highly suggest you check it out.

Eating some Crow

I finally decided to start giving ArcheAge a chance this weekend, in part because I have realized that so many people I know happen to be playing all in the same place, and same guild to be more specific. Other than ventures into Final Fantasy XIV this was the ideal game to sit on the sofa wrapped in my blanket cocoon and watch television while playing. The game itself is still intriguing and intricate, but the thing that turned me off of the game in beta was just how horrible the community had been. So far the launch servers seem to be far better than they were before. I was able to complete the early quests without much attempt at griefing. The place where I had so much frustration during alpha was when you are asked to take a rowboat across a bay. In alpha there were tons of high level ships waiting there to capsize players as they attempted to cross. This time around there was just a single high level ship and they seemed to be loading up for a trade run and completely oblivious to the fact that I was trying to do something.

Similarly I have actually had some decent random grouping experiences. So while the community is nowhere near as nice as say Cactuar in Final Fantasy XIV… it is at least up to WoW Standards… which admittedly isn’t saying much. I did have a really positive experience in doing an elite quest. There is this event that happens in a fallen fortress where between the hours of 2am and 2pm in game time hordes of undead spawn with a boss and you are given quests to kill multiple undead. I noticed that it was nearing the spawn so I wandered up into the hills and decided that I would just kill undead while waiting. There were numerous people up there waiting, and it was moments later that I was invited to a raid team. Folks were relatively well organized and the leader made sure that everyone had gotten all 20 kills before we downed the final boss. Granted this might be an aberration, but it seemed like a pretty reasonable response to the situation.

At this point I am still not terribly certain how often I will play. Right now I have a level 16 Doomlord on Naima Western Continent. This seems to be where most of the people I know are playing, and white honestly I HAD to play Nuian because they were the only race that offered anything even closely resembling proper facial hair. Additionally the Western faction is supposedly going to get dwarves whenever XL Games decides to give the North American servers the expanded racial options. I’ve applied to be in the same guild as Liore, Zelibeli, and several others from both the Machiavelli’s Cats and Multiplaying/Alliance of Awesome communities. I have to say being patron seems to make all the difference in the world because as a true free to play account you have next to no labor points. I am not declaring this game the “best ever” or anything like that, but it seems to no longer be nearly as toxic as it was in early testing. I still prefer FFXIV, but right now I just haven’t had the oomph to grind up another character. So mostly I am working my way through my book quest and doing my daily elite dungeon. However since my friend Eliyon is now a newly minted 50 I can see myself probably playing a lot more in the evenings there. It was a fun weekend nonetheless and I look forward to piddling around in it some more.

#DoctorWho #StarWarsRebels #ArcheAge

Rostygold and Primordial Shrieks

October 8, 2014 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff

For a few weeks I have been kicking around a concept, and I’ve finally decided to start moving towards the goal of making it happen. The concept is pretty simple, that I have a conversation one on one with a personality in our community or in the gaming industry. Instead of bringing them on to promote something, or actually talk about their gaming… I want to delve into the person behind the screen, what makes them tick and what they are passionate about. I decided to give the show a quirky name “Bel Folks Stuff” which as you can see from the logo is short hand for “Bel Talks to Interesting Folks About Really Important Stuff That They Enjoy Doing”. Because pretty much that sums it up in a nutshell. I personally find a lot of the people in our community super interesting and I have a sneaking suspicion that listeners would as well.

Now as far as the details of when I would record, how often I would record, what kind of turn around I am expecting… all of that is up in the air. This is the sort of thing that I would consider a “bonus” podcast rather than a serious scheduled one. There might be times that I schedule a recording and we realize there just wasn’t much to talk about. Other times I might record way more audio than I could ever cram into a podcast and have to release multiple parts. I am keeping all of this pretty flexible. Think of this as more of a “boutique” project than say AggroChat where we keep a weekly schedule. I am pretty pumped about the prospects, and the closest thing I can really compare it to is Actor’s Studio with James Lipton. I still need to firm up some of the things I plan to ask, but the idea is to keep it flexible and go wherever the conversation happens to go. I am also purposefully not making this specifically a “gaming” podcast. If folks want to talk about their passion for gardening… we are going to talk about their passion for gardening. The people behind the screens that we play interesting me more than what happens on the monitor.

Syrcus Grind Starts

For years I have been enamored with the concept of a “reset day”. So many MMOs have various gates that block you from completing too much content in a single week, as such once a week all of these gates unlock again and you can enter them to get awesome baubles. If I am being absolutely honestly with myself, I do not raid for the challenge… I raid for the spiffy things that I can obtain through it. Over the last several weeks I have been fastidiously gearing my Warrior job in Final Fantasy XIV through running Syrcus Tower and careful application of Tomestones of Soldiery. Over the course of these last few weeks I have managed to take my average item level up to 98 which is nothing to sneeze at. Quite honestly most of this has been sheer dumb luck. I’ve entered Syrcus each week and during the course of the first or second attempt at the run a piece of gear has dropped that was an upgrade and I won it. Now however I am down to just two pieces of gear that I can obtain from there… apart from the Sands and Oil of Time which I will focus on eventually.

Over the course of the night last night I ran Syrcus a grand total of four times, and in none of those times did I manage to see either the Helmet or the Legs drop. I feel like I have managed to pick up the easy pieces, and now that I only need two… both of which drop from the same boss I am going to have a much slower time to go. I will probably limit myself to a single running of Syrcus a night to keep from making it absolute misery. If by the end of the week I haven’t gotten either the helm or the legs I guess I will go after either an oil or sands with the hope of upgrading one of my existing soldiery slots to 110. I posted the picture above because there is a rule in FFXIV that I have noticed… if more than one Lalafell is standing in an area for too terribly long… dancing will happen. This is a bunch of us waiting on the last person to realize they had not yet rolled on the Onion Knight cosmetic pet. Of course I didn’t win it, but by god I am not leaving the instance until I at least see that my chance at it is over.

Rostygold and Primordial Shrieks

Several weeks into the game and I still find myself hopelessly enamored with Fallen London. I guess I have Tarantella to thank for this… and in turn my circle of friends has me to thank for their present addiction as well. I guess what surprises me the most about this game is just how deep the rabbit hole gets. In various areas of the game there are “Ambition” storylets, and for the uninitiated a storylet is the equivalent of a quest in other games. You might do something in an unrelated series of a events, which sets a flag that now opens up a bunch of stories that cascade off of it. The ambition quests tend to be the most intricate and detailed and also time consuming. While playing Fallen London there are many positive statuses you can earn, but additionally many negative ones as well. Each of the negative statuses has some consequence associated with it. For example if you allow your nightmares to reach 8, you quite literally go insane and can take no actions other than ones attempting to reclaim your mental faculties.

Yesterday I got an Ambition that involved me purposefully getting thrown into Newgate Prison to track an enemy of yours that is residing there. In order to accomplish this I had to raise my suspicion to 8, triggering a sequence of events that ended with being unceremoniously thrown into prison. From there I could go after my mark directly, but the problem is… once that was completed I still was sitting in prison. At this point I was forced to take actions in an attempt to lower my suspicion back to zero again. These actions involved calling in favors that I had earned in the rest of Fallen London, blatant bribe attempts, or doing actions that show “good behavior”. The problem is while the ability that got me into prison swapped 1 action for 1 suspicion… digging my way out of the hole took a considerably amount of time.

That seems to be the “negative” consequences in this game, are that you can get yourself into a situation where you have to spend copious turns correcting the mistake you made in the first place. I am still slowly working my way into the confidence of the devils. I had reached a point where I was getting dangerously close to losing my soul in game, and I took actions to delay that… which cost me a ton of faction in the process. As such I have been slowly building back up to that point, because really I think it might be interesting to see what the game is like if you have gone through the “abstraction”.

The problem with courting the devils is that you end up constantly teetering dangerously close to the fail condition on both Nightmares and Scandal. As such I am constantly in search of creative ways to lower both of these negative statuses. In any case I am still digging the game, and enjoying the setting. I really need to spend more time digging into Sunless Sea, but I keep hearing there is a major patch in the works that will fix a good number of the problems with the game, and as such I am mostly holding back. If you have not played this game and enjoy roleplaying games with quirky settings… I highly suggest you check it out. If you do add me as a contact, so that we can be “delicious friends” to borrow the verbiage of the game.

#FFXIV #FallenLondon