Tech Pedantry

February 23, 2015 by Belghast

Roguish Charm

This weekend was one of those where we stayed inside for the majority of it. For starters I still feel like crap, with whatever bronchitis type thing that I have. I think it might be getting slightly better, but still feeling drained from all the coughing. For the most part I spent my weekend in a blanket cocoon on the sofa catching up on the show scorpion and playing an awful lot of Final Fantasy XIV. While some of my time was spent with the guild running group content, a far greater amount was spent working on leveling rogue. The class is really starting to grow on me, primarily because of the extremely well done animations. Even though I essentially only have four buttons that matter right now, the animations feel important and it feels like I am the master of dagger based combat. I started the weekend at level 18 and ended the weekend at level 26 so I am pretty happy with that.

For the longest time I had struggled with what to level next. My monk was the closest to max level at 33 but really there is just something about it that does not excite me. I’ve never really liked unarmed/fist weapon classes in games. At high levels you can get some insane looking claws which I am sure improves the enjoyment… but in general I have never actually liked monk characters in the Final Fantasy franchise. Tifa, Sabin, Yang, and Zell all got a minimum of use in my parties, always favoring other jobs for my melee classes. So I guess for me I don’t have this fond nostalgia for the monk and as such it just feels like a less interesting dragoon. Rogue and I am hoping ninja on the other hand feels like this blade master that moves swiftly and delivers fast attacks on their target. I can see leveling both at some point, but I think for the time being I will be “yet another ninja” waiting in the party finder.

Tech Pedantry

The other aspect of this hibernation was watching all sixteen episodes of the show Scorpion to catch me up to date. For some time now my wife has been telling me that she thought I would enjoy the show. Some people are pedantic about grammar or spelling… for me it is about technology. If you show a technology used in an inappropriate way it grates on my nerves and I struggle to get past it. The logo for the television show is stylized as </scorpion> which is an ending html tag… and it drives me insane that they did not instead use the appropriate syntax for a single tag which would be <scorpion />. Anyways at some point I pushed past this frustration when I kept hearing from friends how good the show was. It took me a few episodes to start caring about the characters but right now I think I am officially hooked.

The strange thing about the show is that for the most part they do get technology right. When they go into a nuclear reactor they talk about SCADA based systems, which are an actual protocol that for the most part runs all major infrastructure. Other elements have a bit of science fantasy applied, but still the vast majority of it checks out in theory. The only question is just how much of the show is based on the real Walter O’Brien and how much is made up for the sake of Hollywood. The hacking NASA thing is supposedly true, but I feel like much of the show is romanticized for the sake of the screen. I am just happy to be watching a show that does a pretty fair job of representing tech, and doing so as close to reality as probably any other show has managed to get. Sure it suffers from the same “goofy interface” issues that any other show does, but I have connected enough with the cast of characters to get past that. All I have to say is that Happy Quinn is a badass, and so long as she continues to be an interesting character I will probably keep watching.

Best Shoes Ever

I have this strange attachment with Vans, Airwalk and Converse shoes. There is just something I like about canvas low tops that make me happy… especially the slip on varieties. I would not say that I collect them but I definitely have more than a handful of pairs that I swap back and forth between. The other day my wife stumbled onto the above pair of shoes and thought I needed them. That is how cool my wife is, that she found something like this on her own and suggested I order them. Granted for size 13 shoes they were a bit more expensive than I originally thought, but damn are they worth it. Today is going to be the first time I wear them, and I am sure I will get some goofy looks… but fuck it… they are amazing. They did have some really subtle Darth Vader shoes that I contemplated getting, but I only wanted to get one pair… and the choice was obvious.

While I am posting pictures, I figured I would drop this one on the blog as well. This is one of those rare moments when all three of our cats are getting along. It is a great size comparison picture that shows just how insanely huge Chloe is compared to Kenzie and Allie. As I write this I have Kenzie the kitten sleeping on the top of a computer case on my desk, Allie picking at a box on under my desk, and Chloe sprawled out blocking the exit to my room. They feel like they should be fed apparently, and are going to guard me until I make it happen. Every time I stop typing the look around anxiously as though I am going to bolt from the room and try and shake them. Living with my fuzzy menagerie is definitely an interesting existence, especially when at the same time both ferrets are demanding attention. These are all the reasons why I often am late getting out the door in the morning, but I would not change it for the world.

Lost in Maguuma

February 9, 2015 by Belghast

Wanderlust

Yesterday was a bit of a busy day for many reasons. Firstly getting home super late Saturday night, and then recording AggroChat extremely late, meant that more or less I just straight up crashed instead of editing the recording. This meant first thing yesterday morning I had to edit the podcast and post it. After that I of course still had a blog to write, and needed to spend some time working on another article as well. Throughout all of this there were two problems. Firstly I had a splitting headache the likes of which I have not seen in almost a year. Secondly it was absolutely gorgeous outside, with the temperatures rising up to roughly 80* F yesterday. So my wife and I hemmed and hawed as to whether or not we would actually go do anything. Finally around 3pm yesterday afternoon we decided to get outside and go wandering about.

I’ve talked about the fact that any town of a decent size around me has a Wal-mart. It has always been this way, because quite honestly I live in the Wal-mart heartland, with Bentonville the home office only about two hours away. The first first Wal-mart supercenter in existence is about 30 minutes away in the town of Wagoner for example. Big Wal-mart stores are boring, utilitarian and predictable… but going to smaller less shopped stores often provides this strange melange of products that they still have on the shelf. Each store has a certain amount of discretion as to what they can clearance, so this means that shopping multiple stores might yield completely different results. As such a few times of the year it is prime territory for hunting down clearance Legos.

We set forth on an adventure that took us through three very small locations, and while my wife found more interesting stuff than I did, at the second store… a store I had good luck with last year… I managed to pick up a couple of really cool Star Wars sets at a deep discount. First up I found the Lego AT-AP walker which was originally $60 for the much more reasonable price of $30. Then at a considerably worse deal I picked up the originally $25 General Grievous Wheel Bike set for $19… which admittedly I only jumped at because the General Grievous figure is just so badass looking. This season honestly has been pretty slim pickings, largely because Wal-mart has started doing this annoying thing. They will throw something on clearance… and change the sticker color to red… but have the item marked at its normal price. Essentially I look up each Lego set and if the savings is not 50% off I generally don’t jump at it. This has netted me some pretty cool finds like the SWTOR Sith Fury for $60 but in order to find them… you have to be diligent, and for me the fun is more about the hunt than the finding.

Lost In Maguuma

One of the other things of note that happened yesterday while watching the return of Walking Dead is that I managed to hit level 60 on my Warrior in Guild Wars 2. I am still knee deep in the Maguuma jungle region and right now I find myself shifting between Sparkfly Fens and Bloodtide Coast, largely be cause the Fens simply got too “big” for me as I kept wandering into level 62 areas and having to deal with constant glancing blows. This leaves me 20 levels to go before I hit the Guild Wars 2 endgame, whatever that might be. One of the things that has always bothered me about this game is that I never managed to max a character out. Eighty levels is a rather daunting task, especially when you don’t find yourself really enjoying the game play. That said I am generally known for having multiple max level characters in any game I play, so it felt like a weak spot in my armor that I could not stomach the grind in this one game.

Maguuma region is a bit of a slog, which has me concerned for the Heart of Thorns expansion. I really do not like Jungle or Swamp regions in video games. I was having a blast so long as I stuck to the snowy peaks of the Norn regions, but once I wandered into the swampy zombie filled wasteland… the fun factor of the game went down significantly. Here is hoping that I can stomach it just enough to graduate into the higher zones. All of the guides I have read say that I should really be doing dungeons to level… but I am admittedly scared of them. The shitty dungeon experience was what ended up killing the game for me the first time. Right now I am enjoying the soloing over world gameplay style, and I am afraid if I go into the dungeons again… and they end up still being the chaotic and exploitative mess that they were originally… that it will enrage me enough to halt my journey.

The Real Game

One of the biggest frustrations for me when it comes to online games is when a massive shift in the way the game feels happens. Most games have this highly tailored starter experience to ease players into the game, and then something happens as though the really polished section of the game flew away. Sometimes this transition is gradual, and other times it is quite literally like having the bottom dropped out from under you. I’ve not written much about Albion Online because to some extent I fell off that rather steep cliff. The first two tiers of content felt really fun and natural as I wandered around the world collecting resources to be able to craft nifty things. Then I reached tier 3… and the fun drained away quickly. The game up until that point had been around gathering materials and lugging them back to town so that you could use the crafting machines and fashion them into whatever you might like. When you hit Tier 3, the crafting machines start charging you a fee to use them. This is the equivalent of having to pay every time you need to use the anvil in a World of Warcraft town.

The problem with this is that there really aren’t that many gold fountains that I have seen so far, but the machine problem ends up to be a rather massive gold sink. Granted at this point I don’t even know if there is such a thing as gold in the game… because I have only managed to gather up a few silver to my name. Admittedly this is their pricing scheme… to get players to purchase gold, to ease the process of playing the game. According to the pricing listed on the founders pack information, it looks like $20 would get you 4500 gold, and $50 would get you 12,000 gold. Not that either of these is an absolutely insane price for what seems to be the purchasing power that gets you, but I have essentially stopped playing because I quickly realized this game was unsustainable without either grinding bandits for days… or plunking down some cold hard cash for a game that was only mildly enjoyable in the first place. This is a bit of a shame, because really Albion does have some really interesting ideas at work. I might piddle with it off and on still to see just how deep the money chasm is, but if nothing else for the time being it has most definitely halted my forward momentum.

A Quiet Evening in Norrath

May 4, 2012 by Belghast

I have to say, it has been a fairly crazy week. At work I have been dealing with a “brand marketing” company, as we try and stand up a brand new promotional website. On the blog, the Newbie Blogger Initiative has kinda kicked me in the ass, and made me start trying to post some useful stuff on a regular basis. In game, as I mentioned yesterday I picked up TERA on a whim, so I have added it to my rotation of SWTOR and EQ2.

Checking In On The Republic

After spending the weekend in the Guild Wars 2 beta, and a good chunk of the week playing TERA, I felt like I needed to spend last night in SWTOR since the troops were getting restless. Leading a guild in Star Wars has been an interesting transition. I lead a very active guild in World of Warcraft for a little over seven years, so since the Star Wars guild is a combination of the same people, one would think I would be used to it.

I have to say however, it has been an interesting experience. I’ve talked about it before, but I really am not the same player that my friends knew and loved form WoW. After being committed to raiding 3-4 times a week, I find myself having trouble even committing to running a dungeon as a group. I’ve developed this resentment towards anything that ties me down, or forces other players to depend on me.

The Reluctant Guildmaster

After several nights of piddling around in other games and a weekend of soloing while testing, coming back to SWTOR last night was a bit jarring. I logged into a sea of tells, similar to like I used to get on a nightly basis in WoW. Each person that contacted me, had been waiting patiently for me to show up again, because they had some real need of my attention. But I have to say, it almost invoked a fight or flee instinct in me. Instead of actually going out and trying to get into my new Chiss Smuggler, I wound up simply logging in my 4 characters all night and running slicing missions.

I can happily report however, that the last patch did in fact seem to fix the slicing bugs. I was able to make a meager profit from running high end slicing boxes. When 1.2 came out, I ended up blowing through around 300,000 credits, trying to figure out a mix of lockboxes that actually was able to at least break even. Our guild crafters really relied on getting materials from those slicing missions, so it will be nice to be able to provide them once more.

I’ve hit a wall right now in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I have 3 characters at 50, each of them geared at least in purple mods in moldable gear. All that is missing from my stable is a smuggler. I made a push to do dailies on all three of my max level characters, and farmed up the 1.5 million credits to unlock the Chiss race I was wanting. Problem is, I just can’t seem to push forward anymore. At almost legacy 30, there really is nothing left for me in the system that does not involve prodigious amounts of credit grinding.

Norrath Calling

After last night feeling very much like returning to a job after a vacation, and knowing that tomorrow would be spent on the road, I decided tonight I would relax over in Norrath. Everquest 2 is one of those games I can always return to, and always find something interesting to do. I seriously think there is more content in that game than I will ever be able to complete.

I have a level 90 ShadowKnight, with around 300 AAs, so I could be off doing the new 90-92 content. Problem being that I don’t really feel like doing anything that serious. The rest of my guild seems to be moving happily through the content, and from all accounts it seems like the Withering Lands and Skyshrine are extremely awesome. For whatever reason though, I just have more of a desire to play my level 80 Dark Elf Dirge, and my level 20 Froglok Paladin.

Belglorian of Marr

Tonight I decided to log into my little frogadin, and take a trip to Stormhold. Over the years this has been one of my favorite dungeons. I love the way Norrathian dungeons are laid out, and anytime you give me one filled with tons of undead I am a happy camper. Other games have pretty dungeons, but for whatever reason they don’t feel like something the mobs would actually use. EQ2 dungeons are replete with kitchens, store rooms, audience chambers, and are populated with everything from the butler to the chef. I honestly think this was why I liked Karazhan so much. It was the only wow dungeon that felt like someone could actually inhabit it.

I’ve completely stacked the deck on my Belglorian, my paladin. I picked him up one of Fippy Darkpaw’s swords during the chronoportal event. In addition I have crafted some nice armor, including the level 20 reactant “of authority” chest piece. Essentially my gameplay is to keep him locked at 100% AA at level 20 until I can get at least 100 AA levels. Right now I am sitting at 45, and each AA makes life a little easier. There are so many good level 20ish spots, and I find running around killing random stuff in Everquest 2 really relaxing.

I had a bad pull deep down inside of Stormhold, wound up getting two bosses and wiped. I took a quick break to come over her and write something up, but I can hear the soft crackling of the braziers near the entrance in the background as I right. It is softly calling me back, to come bash heads again. I hope you all have a great weekend, mine will be busy chaperoning a college trip with my educator wife. As a result not sure how much playtime I will actually get other than tonight, so I am planning on savoring it.