There are times when I make significantly bad decisions. This is potentially one of them. I’ve been back and enjoying Destiny 2, and of course my brain has decided that I should totally sabotage that progress with playing the game “optimally”. There is a correct way to deal with the seasonal light grind, and that is to grind up all three characters and focus on your least favorite two first before moving on to your main character. The theory being that any light gain in your weapons along the process will help to boost your “main” character further each week. My main is of course my Titan, and probably my least favorite character is my Hunter… so I have instead been focused on grinding all of the weekly objectives on my Warlock.
Don’t get me wrong I do enjoy the Warlock quite a bit, but Titan and Warlock jumps are polar opposites. When I switch between the two I have to do a sort of mental remap of my reactions, during which I am performing horribly. I decided to use this period of time to get the two crucible objectives knocked out. Basically whenever I am having fun, I swear my brain purposefully goes out of the way to destroy that notion. Thankfully I was hanging out with my friend Grace on voice and more or less stopped caring about performance while we chatted away. At some point during the night I noticed that both my instincts and performance suddenly improved and I once again started taking down enemies. Since they apparently disabled skill based matchmaking… apparently I improved rather than just being de-ranked enough to no longer get put up against good players.
The impending weapon sunset is having interesting effects upon me. Firstly I am being way more brutal with deciding whether or not I want to keep a weapon. I have a bad problem with digital hoarding in games that allow me to do so, and my vault is filled with artifacts from the launch of the game. The fact that most of this is going to be useless in a few months makes me realize that I need to have a massive house cleaning and shard all the things. Essentially anything with a power cap of 1060 is going to stop being relevant when the next season changes. I believe everything in this screenshot minus the exotics is going to effectively become trash as soon as the seasonal reset happens.
This means that there are a lot of weapons that I really enjoyed using… that are just going to stop being useful. Take this Hero’s Burden, I got it from Iron Banner some seasons back and have used it a ton over the seasons whenever I didn’t want Riskrunner taking up an exotic slot. It is going to be sad to see it go, but I have a vault filled with tons of these things that just no longer have the value they once did. Sure I could keep it and run around completing bounties with it, but what is the point long term because I know that there is going to constantly be a refresh of new items to chase. Essentially I am going to have to start thinking of Destiny 2 in the same way that I think of seasonal content in Diablo 3… that it is entirely disposable.
What pains me however is to lose access to what has been one of my favorite auto rifles to date… what I consider to be the perfect roll of Steelfeather Repeater. At least in the case of this weapon it looks like I probably have one more season left in it after this one is over given it has a cap of 1260 rather than 1060. This seasonal reset could be really good, if Bungie plays it correctly. When Forsaken came out all gear in our vaults was magically upgraded to 750 light, and I think Bungie needs to do this each time a season changes. So when the next season releases we should all bump up to 1060 light, which was the previous cap so that everyone starts each season on a level playing field.
I admit that a significant amount of why I have not played my Hunter is because she is currently sitting at 857. The baseline starting point for this expansions content is 1000, and Bungie would love to sell me the ability to catch up to that point quickly. It is not however worth 2000 Silver to boost up to that point, but it also represents a non-zero amount of time to sit down and grind that level up. If I am having that feeling about a third string alt, then I imagine there are a lot of players who have not participated in months or years that are feeling the same way. I know my friend Warenwolf had not played since the gear boost to 750 and as a result had a lot of catching up to do before he became “viable”.
Ultimately I would love to see them get into a cadence so that each time the game moves forward in level, your characters get mailed a set of gear that represents the minimum level required to start the next grind. Eight blues don’t really do anything to destabilize the game or the gear economy, but they go a long way to making players feel like catching up is within reach. This makes it significantly easier for those of us who are playing the game actively to successfully talk our friends into returning to give it one more try. As it stands now however… the progression of the game feels like a runaway train to anyone who has not been actively playing, which is bad for bringing folks back into the fold.
The post Warlocks are Slow appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
I had one of those moments this morning, where I suddenly realized that it had been a really long time since I have done one of these topics. The intent is to use this opportunity to actually lock in what I have been spending my time playing and update the sidebar of my blog. The goal has traditionally been to do one of these each month, but I regularly fall short of this. The last one of these that I did was during the beginning weeks of Blapril, and prior to that… it was August of 2019. As with many things in my life I have failed to keep track of that goal.
It has been a weird few months for the world, and I think we can all agree that maybe goals deserve a little bit of slack right now. So this morning I am going to do the thing and talk about the games I am actively playing, an the ones that are getting removed from the list. Given that several months have passed I expect a significant amount of shake up.
To Those Remaining
Destiny 2 – PC
Hello Darkness, my old friend. Destiny and I have had a long tumultuous relationship since its original launch back in 2014, but it is never very far from my list of regularly played games. I had reached a point where I was deeply disillusioned about the seasonal system, and finding it really hard to muster the drive to grind out the content each time. Then recently I have found myself back in the orbit of this game and greatly enjoying my time. What changed? Well the Darkness has finally arrived and we are seeing some significant forward momentum in the story line. Additionally we have an event going on right now that is a farming bonanza that is a mix of Gambit and a Escalation Protocol. I am active and enjoying myself but time will tell how engaging the next expansion drop in September will be.
Diablo III – PC and Switch
Diablo you are so rarely very far from this list, but admittedly right now I am playing a lot more of you on the Switch than I am on the PC. A new season will be dropping very shortly, so I am sure that will change at least for a brief burst of activity. This has replaced Dragalia Lost as the thing I often play before falling asleep, because the length of time it takes to do a round of bounties or grind a handful of rifts is about how long I have before sleep claims me. My greatest wish however is that my Switch account was actually connecting to my PC account allowing me to farm real progress from the handheld. Cross play should be the rule of the land, and I am hoping as we enter this next general that it and cross save become more of a fixture.
To the New and Returning
Guild Wars 2 – PC
So recently Tam has been on a Guild Wars 2 kick and trying to upsell folks hard on playing it. As a result I have been back poking my head into the game and I still am not super happy with it. This is a title that I have had an extremely long and sordid past with, as we never could quite see eye to eye and still cannot. I’ve said it before, this is the first and only alpha program that I felt the need to actively resign from. It is doing something, and a lot of people love it… but it is a struggle for me to play it. I did however spend some time on the Revenant last night and had a significantly more enjoyable time than I do generally on my Warrior… but that seems like a mountain of horizontal progression that separates those two characters. This might get removed from the list as quickly as it was added, but for now I am throwing it on there.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC
I came back about a month or so ago and spend a significant amount of time grinding mounts and leveling the bard the rest of the way to 80. Now I find myself languishing a bit with not really being certain what I should be doing next. I leveled my three harvester classes to 70, with one of those being fishing that I leveled completely from scratch. The challenge I have with FFXIV is that I never seem to be able to find a rhythm of repeatable interactions. I show up… grind for awhile… burn out for awhile… and then return when more story drops to repeat the cycle. I wish I could find something more favorable to use as an engagement pattern, but I struggle for whatever reason to find it.
Phantasy Star Online 2 – PC
I gotta admit, this right now is the new hotness. This is the thing that I have probably poured more time in lately than anything else. I loved the original Phantasy Star Online back during the Dreamcast era, and previously went through the hell of playing on the Japanese servers. So of course when the game released to North America and on PC I would spend time playing it. As of right now my Ranger is sitting at 71 and I expect to keep grinding it up to 75. I spent a bunch of meseta to fix my previous transgressions with my mag and it is now a perfect 200 Ranged Power. Still deeply enjoying the game, but as I have said before it takes an awful lot to actually get through some of the nonsense systems. I need to sit down and push further into the story, but it is its own kind of slog. For now real happy to have Phantasy Star Online back in my life, and pretty much I am playing it and Destiny every evening at least for a bit.
Torchlight III – PC
I’ve been an alpha and beta tester of this game for quite some time, since it was originally called Torchlight Frontiers. However all of that time was covered by an NDA and as a result I have not really been able to talk about the game until recently when it shadow dropped on Steam Early Access. The game is very “early access” right now, but I am playing it intermittently while dealing the various bugs that are cropping up and the issues they seem to be having with the server infrastructure. I expect great things for this game, and expect it to be on the list for awhile as I play it every so often until it officially releases.
World of Warcraft – Retail – PC
World of Warcraft makes the list, but is kinda hanging by a thread right now. I am not actively playing it at this very moment… but I VERY actively played it since the last time I wrote about the game. WoW will always be comfort gaming, and as we adjusted to our new lives in the pandemic, I clung pretty hard to this game. It doesn’t hurt that there is a massive XP buff going on and I could abuse it as a way of catching up a bunch of characters. I started this recent run only having a Warrior and a Demon Hunter at level 120 horde side… and I closed it with having my first Alliance 120 with my Paladin, along with another Paladin, a Warlock, a Hunter, a Druid, a Death Knight, and a Mage horde side at 120. However the grinding ground to a halt and I have not been actively logging in much lately. That said I know I am never very far away from logging back in to World of Warcraft.
To Those Departing
Animal Crossing: New Horizon – Switch
Animal Crossing New Horizons was effectively my first Animal Crossing game, having only ever played the mobile title before. It was an interesting ride, and one that helped me to get through those first few covid tinged days. However the grind reached a point where I decided I just didn’t want to keep up with it anymore. Were I to play this again I would absolutely join team cheater and start time travelling, because the engagement pattern of ACNH is such that after awhile I felt chained to it. I felt like I had to log in every day because I was wasting potential progress time. Were it the sort of thing that I could play hard for a weekend and then walk away for another couple of weeks, it would probably still be in the rotation. I realize this is exactly how you can play if you time jump, so I might dust this off and figure out how exactly that works at some point soon. For now however I am going to be honest and remove it from the list.
Atom RPG – PC
You were a really cool game Atom but I never quite got around to finishing you off, and I am not exactly sure why I added you to the list of games I was actively playing and not just the “ships passing in the night” thing that I tend to do for more single player experiences. In the time since adding it to the list, they have released a sequel so I figure at some point I will return and finish this off. For now however it is getting bumped from the list.
Wolcen – PC
I can’t honestly tell you why I stopped playing, but it happened. I’ve heard there are a lot of issues going on with the game, and that in itself has kept me from returning. I had a lot of fun, but there were some issues that I had, namely that group play felt less valuable than single player play. The few times that Grace and I attempted to group up, it felt miserable. I hope they sort some of this out, and I am absolutely down with returning at some point in the future. However for now, it gets removed from the list.
Summary
During the time since the last post I have shifted further back into my MMORPG roots and away from the Single Player game sequence that I was on over the holidays. Destiny 2 and Phantasy Star Online 2 have more or less become my primary games, with occasional jaunts off into other titles. I will be curious to see if I find my roots again in Guild Wars 2 or not, but the external pressure isn’t exactly helping that desire. I have a few side projects that I am working on, and I hope to get to the stage of being able to unveil them soon… which might completely change the mix of titles. For now however we are back up to date, and hopefully I can get back in the habit of doing these as a monthly thing.
The post Regularly Playing: June 2020 Edition appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
With the AFK Forge Farm broken, the planetary activities appear to be back on the menu. I spent a good amount of time last night on Io rolling from one event to another with no fear of having enough folks to actually be able to defeat the heroic boss at the end. This is what Destiny feels like when it is good, an effortless series of events that ignite off the conclusion of the last. The unfortunate thing however is that it never quite stays this way. For now everyone has renewed vigor for something other than AFKing for hours and getting free engrams, and as a result I am riding it for all that it is worth.
One of the things that is making everything feel so damned good is a new auto rifle that appears to be in the rotation. I have no clue where it originally came from, but I played an excessive amount of gambit and never seemed to find one. I love this thing so much and for the first time in years that I have had anything that felt close to my beloved Haakon’s Hatchet from Destiny 1. I am very happy that I will in theory be able to carry this weapon forward for a few seasons. You can tell this fact by the little yellow number that shows 1360 power, meaning that this thing can be capped for a few more seasons before it becomes defunct.
What does not bring me joy is the stark realization that so many of my favorite weapons are going to be gone after this current season. Notice on my perfect roll of Bad Omens that it shows 1060 power, which is the current seasonal cap meaning that after this go round this weapon will no longer be able to grow. Bad Omens however is currently dropping from Umbral Engrams, so I am hoping that through all of this I can maybe get another one of these to drop that extends the life for a few more seasons. With cluster bombs and tracking this is pretty much as close to feeling like the Gjallarhorn as has ever exited in Destiny 2.
Nothing will ever likely replace the easymode farming that was the AFK Forge, but simply going out and playing the game seems to yield a fair number of engrams on its own. I played for a few hours last night and managed to walk away with six umbral engrams, a powerful engram, several random legendary drops and an exotic drop which seems like a pretty reasonable haul for playing some Crucible and Gambit. Right now I am mostly focusing down the various things that can reward powerful or pinnacle gear, as well as working on the various bounties associated with the season to stockpile on currency. I am not sure why I am back playing, but I am… and I think it is at least in part a desire for one last ride with my favorite gear before it starts to go away.
The post One Last Ride appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Birthdays are always a weird time for me, because they seem like they should be these important occasions in your life… but in reality it is just another Thursday. Traditionally I take today off, and as a result you don’t get a post because I go into “vacation mode”. However with the whole Covid 19 situation and the fact that I am still working remotely, combined with some stuff going on at work that I don’t feel like I can miss.. you are getting me in the flesh today. I had a subtle realization this morning and I thought I would share it with you, my friends and readers.
I have been writing to you through this blog for a quarter of my life. Back in April Tales of the Aggronaut turned 11, and as of this morning I myself turn 44. It is weird when numbers line up like that, but in truth I am not sure if I could have found a better group of companions to listen to me as I ramble on about nonsense. Thanks for being there on this journey, even if it has been in passive lurker mode. I do appreciate however each time someone comments about something going on in my life because I feel significantly less alone in the world.
Once upon a time I was one of those kids who made zines, and I was especially prolific during the fighting game heyday. I would print them up at home and then go pass them out at the various arcades I visited, because they also sorta served as a general guide for new players when something like Mortal Kombat II was booming. Admittedly there was a lot of rumor filtered in with the truth, but for the most part they were a guide to how to do all of those things like Friendships and Babalities, allowing new players to stop getting dunked on with a simple guide to all of the abilities. Writing my blog post each morning is sorta like trying to hand you a zine, and even the folks who didn’t want to take it… I appreciated them not throwing it away while I was still watching.
There are still several events happening in the winding down of what would have normally been E3 week. Today at 6 pm my time I should be able to tune in and watch the EA Play Live show, at which point I am hoping EA continues its path towards being a less horrible company. I mean to be truthful we have some pretty solid evidence that something has changed there recently. For starters instead of nuking it into oblivion, they are rebuilding Anthem and going to give it a second chance. A few weeks ago they put all of their games back on Steam, and even though they still require the presence of Origin… that is a start. Lastly we have the evidence of Jedi Fallen Order being a phenomenal game that exists without any micro transactions in spite of EA’s once stance of cramming them into every game. I am willing to give the company an olive branch, and also I am wondering if it is only Americans that personify companies like this.
Last night I played some Destiny, and I admit I am feeling a little rudderless. I am not exactly sure what I want to be doing or how I should be doing it. In theory I should be focusing the various avenues to get powerful or pinnacle gear, but this season doesn’t really seem to have a clear path forward. At the very least I am not exactly sure what I should be doing to level up the magical engram box for the Drifter. The acquisition of that level up currency seems significantly slower than any of the other similar seasonal mechanics. I feel like we are missing something like the Vex event to pour our energy into, because the planetary events are just painful to try and get started. I think right now everyone is focused on the next easiest way to get engrams… grinding Nightmare Hunts.
I’m also still playing a significant amount of Phantasy Star Online 2, but I gotta admit things have slowed to a crawl there as well. I’m level 68 and about halfway through it, and in truth what I really need to find is a group to grind advance quests with. The challenge there is that my natural play group that is associated with AggroChat podcast is time shifted from me. Kodra, Tam and Thalen are all getting on about the same time that I am logging out for the night. Ash is an option but I think he is back engaged with Guild Wars 2, and Grace never really attached to PSO2. In theory I should be running with Pizzamaid and friends but I am not exactly sure if those times line up either. Essentially it leaves me in a state of limbo where I spend most of my time soloing.
I realize this post turned weird all the sudden. I guess birthdays become a time for introspection. I hope the day goes smoothly, because there are significant landmines in front of me to cross. The day could go south really fast if a few things go the wrong way. Regardless thanks for hanging out with me all of these years and listening while I talk some nonsense. I write like I am talking to myself, but as I have said many times before I do greatly appreciate knowing there are real people out there reading what I write.
The post One Quarter appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
