January 2016 – Page 9

Underwater Interlude

January 14, 2016 by Grace

Last night was very odd for me gaming-wise. It was one of those days where I got home from work and felt exhausted no matter what I did. My intention was to try out Warframe with the other Aggrochat folks, but it was taking a few minutes to download and I was getting sleepy and impatient. I spent a bunch of time staring at my Steam library and poking at things until I finally settled on Subnautica.

Reusing this image because these giant squid monsters are still amazing.

I talked about my feelings for this game a while ago when I first got into it. I really loved building a cool undersea base and exploring. Unfortunately a bit before the holidays they added an update that changed some of the terrain and messed up my structures. These are the perils of playing a game that is still in Steam early access. On the plus side, they do keep adding new cool things almost every month or two. The newest one supposedly lets you access some new areas of your crashed ship, so I definitely wanted to check it out.

Starting up a fresh game was a bit daunting after all the hours and work I had put in and lost, but it was the only way forward. I waffled for a minute trying to decide between a normal game, or an exploration-mode only setting where you don’t have to worry about silly things like food, water, or oxygen. Eventually I decided to stick with the normal survival mode, since the “story”, such as it is, supposedly doesn’t progress in exploration mode.

This game is perfect for relaxing. The sea creatures, underwater vistas, and even the music are very pretty and for the most part very chill. Sure, every once in a while a sea monster tried to eat me, but that’s a small price to pay. Starting from scratch was a little annoying, but within a half hour or so I had a store of food and water and an all-important O2 tank. By the end of the evening I had a 1-room structure and had even managed to build a mini-sub, so the next time I play I should be good to go exploring and gathering resources.

I didn’t manage to get far enough to start exploring the new stuff yet, but I did see some signs of the changes in the past few updates like new crafting recipes. I am incredibly glad I fired this game back up , it was a perfect calm way to spend the evening. If you weren’t sold before by “sweet underwater exploration plus building cool sea bases and submarines” then there’s probably nothing new that would change your mind. If you were on the fence though, it might be worth checking out. It is definitely more than enough to distract me until Diablo 3 takes over my world tomorrow night!

Daydreams and Anger

January 14, 2016 by Belghast

Powerball Mania

It seems like the only thing that people have been talking about over the last few days at least locally, is the insanity that is the 1.5 billion dollar powerball jackpot. This sounds only slightly less impressive when you realize that the cash payout was 900 million… and that the IRS would have claimed at least a third of that before it ever actually got to you. Still however roughly 600 million dollars is a lot of money, more money that I would ever know what to do with. Which is a fact that became more clear as the days went on. I’ve been part of an office pool for years, that I largely look at as “insurance”. Enough people are in said pool that if they hit the numbers there would be a lot of tendered resignations the next day…. and I feel like I would like to at least have that option. If all of those folks walked…. work would be a pretty miserable place to be for awhile. The thing is… for me it is exactly like paying an extra tax and I never really consider what would happen if they actually did win. However when the powerball itself was up this high, I had to actually purchase a handful of tickets for myself.

The thing about holding something in your hand that could potentially make you at least on paper a billionaire, starts you daydreaming a little. However I feel like maybe went in different directions than most people. Quite honestly the only things I could really think of that I would want to do with the money is buy a new gaming rig and a new gaming laptop. I mean there is the usual “lets quit work and do what we want to” pipe dream as well, but that one is probably common among all people. I have no burning desire to buy a bunch of cars, or buy a new lavish and extravagant house. In the grand scheme of things… I life a pretty damned charmed life and how “meager” my lottery daydreams were only served to prove that I guess. Most of the things that I would ultimately end up doing… are already in the realm of possibility for me… well other than the quitting work thing. Even though my brain consistently tries to tell me that I am not… fuck you depression… I guess I really am fairly happy with life in general. Now if someone wanted to give me part of their winnings however…. I wouldn’t say no.

Calm Night

Life affirming message above aside… yesterday was a really really bad day. Nothing truly catastrophic mind you, because there are lots of worse things that could have happened. We have just been dealing with this vendor at work, that seems to keep pulling new requirements out of their ass at the 11th hour. I get really tired of parachuting in and fixing messes, that never needed to be messes in the first place. I have some rage issues, and I always have had them. As a kid I used to push down all the negativity until it eventually erupted and all of that bile and bad blood ended up getting targeted at usually the wrong person. Over the years I have learned to blow off steam in little bits here and there, rather than letting my problems get big enough to cause a thermonuclear explosion. Yesterday however… I came precariously close to losing my shit on a conference call. There was a point at which I just had to stop talking for a little bit… I am not sure how long… but I knew if I continued talking a stream of hate would spew forth in a manner that is just not acceptable in the work place. Within a 45 minute period I had to configure a new reverse proxy server… on the existing application box… configure it… and all the while keep from trying to break the vendor application sharing the same space. I got it done… and then a friend took me out to lunch to get me out of the environment long enough to reset the fuse.

So on the way home from work last night, I stopped by the liquor store to get something that would hopefully cause me to chill out and relax the rest of the evening. I took a red solo cup… because there is just something comforting about them… filled it up one third buttershots, one third baileys, and the last third with milk. If you want to chill out… I highly suggest this drink because after that the world felt nice and warm and fuzzy. After that I had a night where I flitted around games, popping into World of Warcraft and messing with my garrisons and shipyards…. but not really settling on any one character long enough to play much of anything. I eventually popped into voice chat and logged over into Warframe running a few things with Tam and Ashgar until Tam needed to go to class. From there Ash and I attempted to do a bunch of things… the last of which was defeating a planetary boss. The unfortunate thing is that Ash ran out of resurrections… and I barely finished the boss off… but he didn’t get credit which is kinda bullshit. As an Excaliber the best thing about me… is my melee abilities, but unfortunately on that boss that seemed useless. Hopefully when I am not imparied the fight will go a hell of a lot easier, and we can get him through it maybe tonight.

More on Warframe (Playing With Friends)

January 13, 2016 by Tamrielo

Last night we managed to get a group together for Warframe– Ash, Bel and I got together and rocked some missions, it was a ton of fun. I want to dive in a little bit more to talk about why, after the initial coolness of motion and combat has settled down a bit, I’m still really interested in playing more of this game.

I started with the Volt frame, and I’ve since picked up a few other frames (Ember, Trinity, Ivara), and traded a few rare items I’d picked up for the start of a Prime frame. A “frame” is essentially a character, like in League of Legends– they have their own stats, their own unique abilities, and their own appearance. A Prime frame is essentially a souped-up version of a standard frame, with better stats and usually a unique trick or two. They can’t be bought on the store, the parts have to be found on missions and constructed.

I’ve played a LOT in the last few days. I’ve got a goodly selection of mods, I’ve got a decent sense of how to level them up and how a handful of different frames play, and I know how crafting and various other systems work. Ash has about the same knowledge of the systems with a bit of a deeper understanding of the item stats and how they interact, but less playtime and thus fewer levels on fewer frames. Bel started playing this afternoon, with basically no knowledge of the game other than what he’d read about.

Bel played the first two tutorial missions, roughly twenty or thirty minutes’ worth, and then Ash and I jumped in with fresh, unlevelled frames to join up with. The entire thing was seamless. What’s more, I had an unlocked mission that the other two did not, and I was able to load it up and bring them with me. Ash and I ran a mission that he wasn’t even close to unlocking, and when we beat it he got unlocks for the other surrounding missions, just as if he’d reached it normally. We were able to then go and fight the boss of the planet and unlock the next planet in the series. We also jumped into a mission with wildly uneven frame levels, and it worked just fine. I wasn’t overpowered and dominating the mission any more than he was underpowered and struggling. This includes story missions as well– Ash and I jumped in on several of Bel’s story missions and got XP and useful rewards, despite having played them already.

I have a hard time expressing how much I like this. Levelling up isn’t meaningless, but it is in no way an impediment to you playing with your friends. I could jump in with a max level frame with my friend who’s just started and we’d still be able to have a good time. I can carry over my progress on weapons and mods to a new frame I choose to play to get a little boost, or I can start totally fresh with an unlevelled frame and weapons with a buddy, and play at exactly their level while still benefiting– credits, XP, and levels on new frames are all worthwhile.

There’s even a player level, which rises much more slowly than everything else and requires that you pass an exam to level up. Exams can only be attempted once per day, whether you succeed or fail. Raising your player level unlocks new options for weapons, frames, and various game features like trading and factions, but has little effect on your frames themselves. What I find interesting is that it doesn’t rise with XP earned, it rises as you level up frames and weapons. In order to get a high player level, you NEED to keep trying new weapons and frames and levelling them up, so you want to level up something new with a new friend who’s joined the game.

Kodra is out of town, but I suspect he’ll like the game once we get into it and have his own set of favorite frames. I have a frame set aside to try out once we can play together, as does Ash (I believe), and none of it will feel unnecessary or like it’s holding us back. The whole setup is very elegant, and brings a “play with your friends” mentality that I found absent even in games like Borderlands, Destiny, or even the majority of MMOs, where even a mild level or gear gap was significantly noticable.

When I go on about games needing to let you play with your friends, and removing “levelling”, Warframe is a prime example of what I’m talking about. Sure, individual parts of the game have levels, and increase in level as you play, but none of them separate you from playing with other people, and the biggest “overall” level (your player level) is largely insignificant in actual gameplay. Levelling is distributed across a wide variety of parts of the game, and the sense of progression and advancement isn’t diminished.

My Diablo 3 Seasonal Plan

January 13, 2016 by Grace

From my last post you may have guessed that I’m a bit hyped about the new D3 season this week. To help calm and distract myself, I’ve decided to write down my plans and goals for the season. Maybe some of this will be of use to you if you’ll be joining me on Friday for Season 5.

A new area to explore!

The Plan

Stage 0: Being prepared. In the last few days before the season starts, I’m looking up builds and figuring out what and how I want to play this season. I’ll be leveling a wizard first, because I just love wizards and they’re my go-to class. The seasonal reward set for the wizard class this season is the Firebird’s set, so I can plan my initial build around that. There are tons of guides and build suggestions out there so it helps to be able to narrow them down to just the ones that use that set. Knowing ahead of time is really useful since I can be sure to save and cube any specific legendaries I might need if they drop while I’m leveling.

Stage 1: Reasonably speedy leveling. I’ve done lots of different flavors of speed and power leveling in the past. At the start of a new season power leveling is not an option since that requires a higher-level friend to drag you around, so the focus is on speed leveling. Usually I level solo, since it lets me go at my own pace. I’ve found I like to do bounties on hard difficulty. Higher difficulty settings give more xp but seem to slow me down more than they are worth. Running rifts can sometimes be faster, but at the start of a new season there’s a lot of value in grabbing the cube crafting mats that you get from completing each act’s bounties.

This time around there’s a good chance that I will be leveling with a group, so I hope to try out the slightly modified bounty method. Basically if there is a bounty to kill a boss for the act, everyone goes together to do it (for sweet boss xp and loot). After that, the group splits up and each person does a different bounty to finish them quickly. Once they are all done everyone will get credit for the act, with the big chunk of xp and loot that comes with it. Rinse and repeat for each act.

Gearing up while leveling is not a hugely exciting process, but there are a couple key things to keep in mind. Mostly it is important to craft the highest level 2-handed weapon you can equip, and remember to socket a red gem in your helm as soon as you can. There are some other tricks you can use, like trying to craft a level 60 and 70 weapon with reduced level requirement, but honestly you’ll level so fast anyway it may not be worth the time and mats to try to craft it. Hang onto any legendaries with useful abilities that drop, and cube them when you can. The level of the legendary doesn’t have any impact on how it works in the cube. I will be saving any puzzle rings I get until I hit 70 and can do the vault on a mid range Torment level for maximum gold though.

Stage 2: The surge. This is honestly when the game is at its most fun for me, because your power level changes dramatically over a very short time. You’ve hit level 70 but don’t have a ton of gear yet. Running rifts can be a challenge but it feels like everything is an upgrade. Usually as soon as I hit 70 I craft as much gear as I can use, then bump up the difficulty to torment 1 or 2 and chain run rifts for a while. Hang onto any ring or neck that has a socket, even if it doesn’t seem that great, because you’ll probably want it once you get some legendary gems. This time around I will also be making sure to complete anything I need to for the seasonal journey, since I want to get my free Firebird’s set ASAP.

Once I get a few keystones I’ll start on greater rifts. The goal here isn’t really speed or gear, but rather to get the legendary gems I need for my build. Even without upgrades they can make a huge difference. Once I have them I’ll focus on speeding through regular rifts to stockpile gold and hunt for legendaries, pausing to do some bounties as needed to spice things up and get mats for the cube. As I get better gear I can start bumping up the difficulty for regular rifts some, but until I’m in my full class set and reasonable legendaries/cube powers the plan is to prioritize fast runs.

Stage 3: The meat. At this point I should have a full class set and most or all of the other legendary pieces that I want to go with my build. Now it is time to have some fun. I will be checking out the new class set dungeon at this point, as well as starting to push into greater rifts to upgrade gems and start searching for ancient legendaries. Hopefully by this point I will be done with the main part of the seasonal journey for the cosmetic rewards. That means I can start working on the bonus objectives for the fancy versions of the portrait frame.

This is also the stage where I’ll be starting to think about other builds. Just because the Firebird’s set is free this season doesn’t mean I will want to use it the whole time. Also, any class set item is getting saved so I can try all the different dungeons available. Hopefully I get the chance to complete all the wizard ones before the season ends.

Still missing so many things.

Stage 4: The grind. This is when the game starts slowing down for me. It is all about pushing ever higher into greater rifts, searching for the elusive ancient legendaries, and upgrading gems and items as much as possible. Around this time I’ll probably start getting bored and level my witch doctor, or start a hardcore wizard that I’ll never finish. Maybe the chase for all the different class sets and the challenge of those dungeons will keep me interested a bit longer than previous seasons, I guess we will see.

I expect to get to stage 3 by the end of this weekend without too much trouble. Here are my goals for Season 5:

Hit level 70 on Friday night.
Complete the Seasonal Journey for the pet by the end of the weekend.
Reach solo greater rift 50. (My best last season was 45).
Reach paragon level 400. (Last season I hit around 350).
Complete greater rift 30 with 2, 3, and 4 players.
Bonus goals: Reach level 70 on a hardcore wizard or complete at least one set dungeon on a witchdoctor.

Only 2 more days left to wait!