MMORPG Archives - Page 394 of 399 - Tales of the Aggronaut

The Contest

December 1, 2013 by Belghast

Hello Self Conscious

I have officially finished my novel, and I say that in jest because really the hard part has yet to begin. The whole NaNoWriMo process was extremely draining. I almost viewed the past year of daily posts on aggronaut as training for the marathon that was Nano. The thing I was not at all prepared for however was just how draining coming home each night and writing a chapter of original material was. My blog is pretty much me just reacting or regurgitating “found material”. Nano on the other hand was me giving birth to characters, plots, settings and for all intents and purposes a big unique world of my own making.

Now that it is over it is time for me to return to the normal daily blog posts… and quite frankly I find myself a little self-conscious. For the last 29 posts I have simply dumped what I wrote the night before in private out onto the screen for you guys to read (or more than likely not read). Now I find myself sitting here having to come up with things to write that are relevant and timely. It is not that I find myself with writers block, because there are a month worth of topics backed up inside of me. I just find myself a little nervous about the entire process. I have to get back in the pattern of just dumping my innermost thoughts out onto a page for you all to pick over.

The Contest

During the month of my absence from morning posts a thing happened. Well actually if we are most truthful about it a lot of things happened. In this case two particular things happened. Firstly Trion announced the existence of Trove their new game that melds Minecraft, Cubeworld and MMOs. Secondly I somehow managed to get into the first wave of alpha invites. Thirdly when I realized that I was one of only a handful of people in the game, and that the alpha process had absolutely no NDA… I thought I should probably do something to show off the game. As a result I did a thing that I had thought about for some time… I recorded my very first lets play video.

So far I have recorded four videos in total, the first of which only being a super short test video in which I was trying to figure out the kinks of using youtube. I am completely new to this whole experience but so far the videos have been well received. An interesting thing happened however over the extended holiday weekend. I ended up getting a second alpha key. So I thought about what I should do with it, should I offer it up to my friends over twitter or g+? Then I came up with a constructive idea… hold a contest. The idea is to get people to provide feedback on features they would like to see in the game, so that I can compile this list in blog post form to present to the Trion folk.

The Rules

Since the video series is a youtube thing, I will be hosting the contest there. The basics are this… go to the Episode 3 link. Do the standard subscribe/like/comment youtube bs. In your comment describe a feature you would like to see built into Trove. The sky is the limit as far as features go since this is a melding of the traditional building game and an MMO. I will only be accepting comments that actually provide a suggestion in them, and will be ignoring all “begging for the key” and otherwise trolling posts.

I will be accepting comments through 12/3/2013 and Wednesday morning I will be pulling together a list of all of the comments and the posters name. I will be dumping this in a google doc and then using a random number generator to pick the winner. Everyone’s comments will be featured on my blog and I will cross post that on the trove reddit as well. Wednesday evening I will announce the winner over the various social platforms that I use. May the random number generator be in your favor! I just thought this would be a fun way to give away a key and hopefully provide some useful suggestions back to Trion in the process.

Pre-Endgame Game

October 29, 2013 by Belghast

Limited Time Stuff

First off I guess let me open todays post with a complaint. I really had nothing much to talk about as I sat down at the keyboard, so I did what I normally do and sifted through my RSS feed. I spent most of yesterday super busy and really did not have time to read anything much. One of the first posts was over on Rift Junkies talking about how apparently there was a new mount available for only four hours on the Rift store. They are apparently calling this unstable artifacts, which is a clever excuse to make something super limited that costs a hell of a lot on the store.

I am not against the 2700 credit price tag, but I am against the concept of limited time items. I hate when something goes into game only to be pulled out swiftly keeping anyone else from getting the item. I honestly don’t care about the red Kirin at all, because I think the mounts are ugly, but for me it is more a principle of it. When a game starts doing one time only things, I really lose interest quickly. I get extremely frustrated anymore when I am asked to play a game on someone else’s schedule. With the recent rapidly expiring world event each phase lasting only two days… this seems to be the direction that Rift wants to move in.

The more of this type of content goes into the game the less and less interested I am in it. There are so many things about Guild Wars 2 that I think I would enjoy, but the fact that content expires roughly every two weeks keeps me from wanting to dig in and try it. I don’t want to ONLY play this one game, and in order to farm up every new thing in the world… I would really have to do just that. The whole playing the same game every single night concept just seems foreign to me. There are so many different games I want to experience, so knowing I will go into a game missing out on things… makes me think my time is better spent elsewhere.

Pre-Endgame Game

I guess while I am complaining, I might as well not stop with Rift. Onwards to FInal Fantasy A Realm Reborn! We absolutely lucked out as a guild and had eight of us reaching 50 within a few days of each other. Well that is not true I guess, we had one super impatient gamer rush through to the end game and sit there without any additional support for about two weeks. However the majority of us arrived at the end game at roughly the same time. This made the sequence of three eight man instances seem not that horrible in part because it was fresh content for all of us. However now that we have another three characters up to 50, I am realizing what a slog it really is.

So much of the end of the main storyline in FFXIV reminds me of the trials and tribulations of having to key players for various raid instances in both EQ and WoW. Be warned there will be some spoilers, so if you care about that sort of thing, I would stop reading. I will try my best to do as few as possible, but it is going to happen. Essentially when you hit 49 you start down a sequence of events that leads to the finishing of the main storyline. The first of these is Cape Westwind, yet another trial. We have done this now three times… and quite honestly I cannot tell you exactly how the mechanics work. The biggest pain is getting eight players online at the same time.

Next you run through a few quests and end up unlocking Castrum Meridianum… which is surprise surprise another eight man dungeon. This takes a little over an hours time normally if you are not doing the speed run chicanery… and now that every mob in the instance drops decent money there really is no reason why you would. These places are decent money. Once you finish up in there, you do a few more quests and wind up stalled on The Praetorium… yet another 8 man dungeon. This one takes quite a bit longer than the previous one and is a wee bit trickier at times. Finally after finishing this sequence of events you can finish the main storyline and unlock Amdapor Keep.

We have been working our way through these for Cyl, Opo and Tivo… and the problem with an eight man dungeon is trying to accommodate eight different play schedules. We really only seem to have time to do one of the dungeons in the sequence per night. Last night we were trying to figure out when we could pull together a group next… and the problem is we are unlikely to be able to get ALL of the necessary players online until next week sometime. As we started going through the days, there was one player that could not attend on each of the nights. While the final storyline is extremely cool… it just seems like a lot of bullshit to have to slog through to even begin the end game grind.

Norrath Calling

Towards the end of the night I ended up logging out of FFXIV and popping into EQ2 for a bit. I have said it before, and I will say it again… sooner or later I always return to playing EQ2. I am not sure if I am ready to be back in it yet, but I did some questing out in Withered Lands and enjoyed the relaxed pace. My friend that recently returned was telling me excitedly about the guilds plans to start doing heroics, and while I think that is cool I don’t want anyone to factor me in their gaming decisions yet. I already have a game where I am a key resource for running instances… I really don’t want another one.

That is not to say that I don’t enjoy tanking dungeons, because I do… otherwise I wouldn’t keep returning to playing that role. I just find that tanking takes more out of me than it used to. I cannot chain run instances like I once could. So I find myself needing something else to play so I can have a bit of peace and quiet… and more importantly downtime. Everquest 2 has always been a good filler of this niche. I would like to get my Shadowknight up to 95 so I can be prepared for the new content when it releases as well. I still feel like in many ways I am running from WoW, because I know that will only end up in tears of frustration. I continue to ignore its sirens call by playing other things… just not sure how long that will work.

How Diablo Ought Be

October 27, 2013 by Belghast

Hibernation Weekend

This is one of those mornings when I really wish I did not have to write a blog post. I guess in the grand scheme of things… there is nothing forcing me to do so, but I would hate to break my streak of daily posts. This is one of those hibernation weekends when neither my wife or I really want to leave the house. In fact I went out and got breakfast in my fuzzy slippers that look like shoes this morning and a hoodie. Not like the folks at the convenience store really pay too much attention to what people are wearing, but it was a reasonable facsimile of “dressed”.

Yesterday I was completely all over the place game wise. I started off the day by playing quite a bit of Hearthstone, this was a side effect of me wanting the gold from my daily quest and a new friend just getting into the game. Once he got through the tutorial and unlocked a few decks we played a few games. The first game he trounced me liberally, and the second two I managed to pull ahead significantly mostly due to him not getting the cards he needed when he needed them. Playing against actual players has made me extremely aggressive when it comes to Hearthstone, and I am not really sure how to tone that back a notch.

Mixed Bag of Gaming

After hearthstone I poked my head into Rift for a bit, but really didn’t find much enjoyment there. I am not sure what it is but right now Rift is just not that fun of a game for me. I am sure before long I will cycle back around to it and it will once again be the next best thing to sliced bread. I have the same sort of thing going on with EQ2 as well. I have a desire to play some, but when I actually log in I have no desire to do anything. So in both cases I poke my head in and then log back out almost as quickly.

Right now I am still enjoying Allods quite a bit, but I have a feeling that very soon the bottom will drop out. I have heard that after a certain point there are very few non-group quests. Currently at level 8 I am still having no problem at all, and this is sufficiently scratching that World of Warcraft itch. However I get the sense that I am nearing the end of the starter city of <Insert Russian Sounding Name Here>. I am really enjoying the game, and it is extremely well crafted, but as a whole the storyline and missions are forgettable. There is really little “special” about the game other than the awesome soviet era steampunk feel.

Forced

After a bunch of mucking around yesterday, I settled into playing a brand new game with some friends. Forced had been a title that popped up on our radar during the Kickstarter, and was subsequently picked up as a Steam Greenlight title. Well it has officially released this week, and one of my friends decided to buy a four pack and distribute copies. They describe the game as Diablo meets Left4Dead… and to some extent that makes sense. However I do not think that description really explains just how much cooperation is needed to make it through the levels. In many ways it reminds me of Gauntlet Legends… if Gauntlets Legends required you to use the NES Rob the Robot to make it through the levels.

Each of the gladiators chooses a weapon that will dictate their active and passive talent trees as well as set the overall flavor of the arena combat. Above you can see an image of three weapons in the preparation room leading into any of the arenas. I am currently holding the magma hammer and all of the attacks both passive and active are somehow fire based. To the left of that pool is the green daggers, most of the attacks being about speed, stealth and health regeneration. In a way they are the support class in that they can generate combo points on the target than the heavier hitters can then consume. On the bottom left you have the Ice Shield, and this is the tank of the group focusing on being able to negate large amounts of damage. Finally you have the D&D Animated series style lightning bow, with chain lightning and energy based attacks.

How Diablo Ought Be

The controls are also extremely unique… or at least unique to me. In many ways it reminds me of Ikari Warriors in that you have one set of controls to move your body and another to control your facing. If you choose mouse and keyboard this means that WASD will move you physically around the arena and your mouse will choose your facing with Left and Right mouse buttons being your primary and secondary attacks to start out. Later on you will pick up additional attacks Q being the first of these. I assume with a controller one stick is likely your movement and the other your facing with your triggers being your primary attacks, but quite honestly I have not tried this out.

The pace of the action was so intense most of the time, that I quite honestly forgot to hit the screenshot last night. However the gameplay revolves around using the glowing sphere of light Balfus your “spirit mentor” to move around the arena and active switches and traps for you. As a team this gets super tricky since you have ONE balfus and each of you can call it at any given moment… so this involves a lot of communication to figure out who can use it next. Additionally if your timing is right you can position the next person to call it as soon as one objective is done. It is hard to fully understand how the gameplay works cooperatively without seeing it in action. So as a result I am going to embed the trailer that shows quite a bit of play.

Challenging Co-Op

So essentially there are so many ways to fuck over your friends while playing this game. There are maps for example where Balfus provides a protective bubble, and if you stray outside of that bubble you take large amounts of damage per tick. So these force your team to be placed JUST right as you pay your way through the map. It becomes progressively easier to abandon a player on the edges of the map and trap them. So for us… access to voice chat was SUPER handy. We kept communicating and I was generally the dullard that tried his best not to ever call the ball. My job was to call down orbital strikes in the form of meteors upon the heads of the big baddies and consume combo points with my heavy hitting attacks.

You get a crystal for each objective that you complete. On each map there is a completion shard, a time based shard, and one for getting a specific objective. They have made these in such a way as it is super difficult to get all three within one run. So as a result you can do each arena over and over to try and gain as many crystals as you can. Last night in our little 2.5 hour play session we managed to rack up 15 shards. The first world was honestly rather straightforward but as we entered world two… the frequency of cursing increased massively.

Downright Brutal

Face it… you are going to be seeing a lot of this screen. The game excels as forcing various no-win scenarios if you are not fast enough or clever enough to figure out the trick on the first attempt. We would have probably continued on for another hour and a half had one of our players internet not taken a massive dump. At that point we figured… it was a good place to take a break. The gameplay is extremely frenetic, but also amazingly rewarding when you and your friends manage to complete a scenario. If you too have a group of friends to game with… I highly suggest buying a four pack and distributing copies because forced provides an extremely unique gameplay experience for multiple people. As a whole I give the game a big thumbs up.

Playing Dice with Humanity

October 26, 2013 by Belghast

Tribalism

Yesterday my friends were having a long drawn out conversation that started out about the current Roma controversies, wound its way through discussions of any insular society… and like always an hour or so later ended up landing in the game world. Namely discussion fell onto the concept that even within small groups, cliques and teams form and the number over players it takes before that happens. Based on the discussion we agreed that likely the smallest number that really starts to occur is around seven people.

So none of this so far has any real bearing on todays post… but throughout the conversation we started talking about the openness to new players. One of the things that disturbed me a bit, is that one of my friends said that I was most likely the least open to new players, or at least the most suspicious. This went against my own personal vision of myself, considering I am constant abducting people into my guilds on a regular basis. So as I explored this line of thought further, he said that mostly it was due to my views on PUGs.

No PUGs Allowed

While this is not necessarily the thing I would like people to think of when they think of me… my guild as a whole has known for years that if they want me to tank for them, my price is that we have a full group of known good players. Usually this means that they are folks from the guild, but I am also completely open to friends of the guild in these scenarios. Basically… I don’t want to enter the group finder and play dice with humanity. The thing is… this did not used to be the case. I used to PUG players in a regular basis both in dungeons and even raids.

This got me thinking… what changed, why did I no longer even consider finding players outside of my monkey sphere to fill groups. I used to build groups on a nightly basis and even believe in it so much that I wrote a series of guides to covering the finer points of networking, communication and assembly of a winning PUG group. This was not something that was limited to WoW, but something I had done in many games previously. So I guess the question is… what changed to make me so fearful of the player base that I now refuse to pug even a single player into one of the groups I am responsible for.

Before the Dungeon Finder

Without too many leaps of logic I landed on the specific moment it changed… The Dungeon Finder. I have railed on the evils of the dungeon finder for years, but I don’t think I have really elaborated on that point enough. Essentially in the world before the dungeon finder I regularly relied upon social channels, trade chat, and other guilds to find folks to fill out my groups. I drew upon my friends list to fill the most basic elements. As a tank I knew that all I needed to do was find one of my many amazing healers that I worked with regularly, and then the dps could be filled out in short order.

The key point here is that with each player I talked to… I actually took the time to exchange a few lines of dialog with them before throwing them a group invite. It is amazing how much you can gauge about the personality, intentions and general character of a player from a few sentences. There was a very human element to this discourse, and over the years I developed and instinct about who would make for a good dungeon run by the way they presented themselves. To some extent I had learned to prune through the bad apples and seize upon the good ones only.

Additionally playing with players on your own server there was a bit of an honor code in the works. As the guild leader of one of the larger guilds on our server, I knew the leaders of most of the other guilds. So as a result if I had trouble with one of their players in a dungeon run, I knew precisely who to come to with those concerns. This lead most players to be on their best behavior, since there were potential social consequences of making an ass of yourself in public. Additionally I met a lot of really amazing people through this process, many of them that would end up in my guild or raid later on.

Playing Dice with Humanity

The Dungeon finder was the first blow to this world, but since we were dealing with mostly players from our own server… it wasn’t really that bad. I still regularly queued as a tank almost out of welfare to help the folks get those dungeon runs. I continued to still meet great players, and the bad ones were quickly added to my ignore list never to be seen again. However players complained, that the queues were still too long, and not enough tanks and healers were queuing. So as a result Blizzard started the cross server queuing madness and this was the nail in the coffin for me and pugging.

When there are no social consequences to ones actions… the worst possible behavior can be expected if not assumed. Periodically I would get convinced to queue with someone for a dungeon, and every single one of these occasions lead me to log out of the game frustrated and angry afterwards. I learned quickly that if you play dice with humanity, you are always going to loose. I met exactly ONE really awesome player through random groups, and that was only because the player happened to be on my own server. I didn’t really mind braving the bullshit as a DPS, but I refused to tank the instances any longer.

Rift Happened

So in a whole series of events I ended up leaving World of Warcraft, and entered a game without a dungeon finder system. It is funny how quickly I fell back into the old habits of building groups from social channels. Level 50 chat served as a launch pad for groups, and quickly within a few weeks time I had built up a long list of “known good players” that I could draw into dungeons. As a result we were filling out Elite groups on a nightly basis and happily clearing dungeons. I met enough people that there was even talk of merging in with another guild at one point… but we decided against it.

When the dungeon finder was released for Rift I watched the same events play out all over again. The social channels dried up, folks no longer responded to calls for groups in Level 50 chat… and everyone went back to the wow-like ways of relying on the dungeon finder to make a group for them. Additionally the community of the server as a whole suffered. The same old wow-like behaviors came back and the chorus of “PULL BIG” and “GO GO GO” returned as well. So once more.. I stopped grouping and resurrected a rampart around myself with a sign on it reading “No PUGs Allowed”.

From that point forward my rule as a whole has pretty much been… I will tank any dungeon you want me to tank, but you have to make sure we have a full guild group before we do it. I refuse to pug in any players that come from random dungeon finder systems. I would literally rather not do dungeons, than have to deal with the random chance of finding a decent person in the system. Most of the time this is not really a huge deal since I tend to bring a large group of people with me into whatever game we end up playing. However I am running a lot fewer dungeons than I would like to, and I am not sure how I can get past my phobia of strangers. So at the end of the day… after all of this… I guess I can see my friends point.