AggroChat #233 – Games of the Year 2018

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

aggrochat233

This evening we do our traditional Games of the Year show, and apparently we are way less verbose than we used to be.  These shows used to get chopped into two roughly hour and a half long shows… but this year we managed to do it in pretty much two hours straight.  What makes this even more interesting is the fact that we churned through nineteen games in the process. Ultimately we each pick roughly five games that were important to us during the calendar year, and some overlap always occurs.  This year less overlap happened than is normal.

Games Discussed

  • CrossCode
  • Destiny 2 Forsaken
  • Dragon Quest XI
  • Fallout 76
  • Subnautica
  • Gloomhaven
  • Heroes of Hammerwatch
  • Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2
  • Diablo 3 on Switch
  • Magic the Gathering Arena
  • Night in the Woods
  • Super Smash Bros Ultimate
  • Hitman 2
  • Return of the Obra Dinn
  • Spiderman
  • Hollow Knight
  • Dragalia Lost
  • Monster Hunter World

AggroChat #230 – Tonberry in Love

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tamrielo and Thalen

aggrochat230

Tonight we talk a bit about Monster Hunter World Winter Star Event and how maddening the Tempered Kirin is.  From there we talk about the closing of MMOs and specifically the loss of Wildstar. Several of us have returned to Final Fantasy XIV as is often the case at the end of an expansion.  We briefly talk about some frustrations with World of Warcraft and then go into a discussion about puzzle games you can zone out while playing specifically Tetris Effect in VR and the amazing Lumines.

Topics Discussed

  • Monster Hunter World
    • Winter Star Event
    • Tempered Kirin
    • Talking about Various Weapons
  • Closing of MMOs
    • The Last Hours of Wildstar
    • Star Wars Galaxies
    • City of Heroes
    • Games being Bought
  • Returning to FFXIV
    • Main Story Quest
    • Palace of the Dead
  • World of Warcraft Issues
  • Tetris Effect in VR
    • Lumines
    • Bejeweled
    • Peggle Loot
  • Missing Game Forums

AggroChat #223 – Freemium Monetization

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast and Kodra

aggrochat223

This week we are down half of our show, but weirdly enough ended up very close to our original line up from the first few AggroChat shows…  only missing Rae. We were concerned we might not have enough material for a show, but wound up only about 10 minutes short of our average which seems pretty good.  Tonight we talk about Monetization in Free to Play games and in part why some games it feels good to spend money on, and others it feels exploitative. This explores mobile games and mmorpgs as well.  From there Bel talks a bit about his experiences restarting with Monster Hunter World PC and how weirdly most of the progress was raising his skill and not necessarily his gearing. Kodra talks about his experiences with Mega Man 11 which leads to a discussion of this golden age of modern 2D side scrollers.  Finally we wrap things up with some discussion about Guilds of Ravnica and how it feels in a constructed and sealed environment on MTG Arena.

Topics Discussed

  • Free to Play Monetization
    • Mobile Games
    • Dragalia Lost
    • MMORPGs
    • Elder Scrolls Online
    • Star Wars the Old Republic
    • Neverwinter
  • Monster Hunter World
    • Skill Acquisition vs Gear Acquisition
    • Small but awesome PC community
  • Mega Man 11
    • Hollow Knight
    • Shovel Knight
    • Celeste
    • Bloodstained: Circle of the Moon
    • Retro Feeling Modern Games
  • Guilds of Ravnica
    • MTG Arena
    • Sealed Play
    • Constructed Play

Moms and Minor Gaming

Moms and Minor Gaming

This weekend was largely not about gaming, as is often the case when a major holiday is occurring.  In past years we have done the divide and conquer thing when it comes to Mother’s Day festivities, with me getting up super early to go to Mass with my mother and then my wife sleeping in and going to lunch with her mom.  However with the amount of work that my wife has been having to do lately trying to prep her kids for the impending AP Exam…  after missing two weeks of instruction time due to the walkout…  she is more than a little sleep deprived.  I was legitimately concerned about her making it home safely if she was on the road for long periods of time alone.

As a result we crammed everything into one day and left the house around 6 am…  getting home around 6 pm.  However in the middle of all of that I believe there were sufficient moms day festivities for all involved.  It did however lead to a really tiring Sunday experience given that we had lots of driving perforated by various other awkward moments like my wife’s sister referring to the litter box as a “poop bed” or her inviting an aunt that neither my wife or I can stand to lunch with us.  Later in the evening there was plenty of awkwardness as my wife’s brother and father got into some political diatribe that was just flat out factually incorrect and also highly racist.  We made it home in one piece and still have most of our sanity intact…  but I did have a rather fitful night of sleep.

Moms and Minor Gaming

As far as gaming goes I spent some of my time Saturday working on the weekly quests in Monster Hunter World.  I am down to just needing three arena challenges and I am hoping I can connect with someone before the reset happens to do some.  I can technically solo them, but I really really do not like soloing them.  I solo’d the Pink Rathian arena challenge with longsword and that one in particular is really annoying because you do not have the full compliment of healing items.  I pulled out a victory, but it took a long time and I wound up taking three of my eight deaths in the process.  I am one item away from having enough of the event only Sakura items…  but am nowhere near able to craft the set because of general lack of coins.

I wish you could roulette your way into the Arena Challenges because I really am not a huge fan of playing solo in Monster Hunter World.  Now that PizzaMaid is easing her way back into the game I might try and snag her for some shenanigans, because most everyone else I know that is still active gets online way later than I do.  Grace unfortunately bounced off the game as did Mor and while Thalen and I share a timezone… he is always around significantly later because baby happens.  If it does not look like I will have folks to do this with I will ultimately try and solo my way through it, because I know without a doubt I can do it…  I just won’t really enjoy it.  I also ran quite a few tempered roulettes just for the sake of fun and managed to get a couple of decent decorations from it.

Moms and Minor Gaming

Over in Destiny 2 I am still roaming around but have made all of the movement I can essentially before the reset.  I am still too low level to get into heroic strikes which is unfortunate given that I need to run several of them to move forward a quest line that I am currently on…  that I am assuming is related to the sleeper simulant.  The highlight of the weekend however was getting the Armamentarium again, which allows me to run around with dual grenades in both void and solar specs.  Unfortunately however it does not give me THREE grenades in arc striker spec.  This would have been a completely awesome item if it were able to do that…  now I am wondering if it is as good as my auto-rifle reloading chest but largely running around with it for sheer nostalgia sake.

I am still largely on the fence with this expansion and am contemplating taking Squirrel up on the offer to get the raid in.  I still have yet to defeat Gaul in the raid even though I have a stack of tokens from our attempts.  Folks bounced faster than we had time to progress our way through it, and while I would love to resurrect a Greysky raid I somehow doubt that will ever really be a thing again.  There just are not enough people active and playing, and part of me is contemplating just pushing the Greysky leadership off on my secondary PS4 account and moving my main back to Tequila Mockingbird so I at least have an active clan of folks to play with.  My main PS4 account never left and has always been in TQMB…  that is unless they punted me for inactivity.

Moms and Minor Gaming

I am still enjoying the mechanical loop of Destiny 2 again…  but I am also feeling somewhat listless as I don’t have a major goal apart from making my light higher.  I managed to level the Hunter to 30 this weekend but have yet to really touch any of the story content.  I like that Warmind seems to not be connected to having finished Curse of Osiris or versa vicea.  I need to push the Warlock up via event quests so I can at least start doing the milestones on each of them each week to slowly push up my weapon light level that way.