AggroChat #470 – The Impact of Epoch

Hey Folks we’re back! Sorry for the week off but we return with a full docket of topics.  We start off with some more discussion of Last Epoch and how everyone is still enjoying the game.  Bel dinged 100 for the first time and we talked a bit about buildcraft and approachability.  From there Bel talks about Dwarven Realms an ARPG of a sort that has gained traction this week amongst some of the streamers that is just “big dumb fun”. From there Ash goes down a list of Roguelikes that he has been enjoying lately namely Astral Ascent, Spiritfall, and Balatro. Tam revisits his topic surrounding the ambitious process of remaking Final Fantasy VII and his thoughts after having played a good deal of the second part.  Finally, Bel uses volatile reversal and brings us back to the topic of Last Epoch and namely the impact it seems to be having on the ARPG genre as a whole.

Topics Discussed:

  • Last Epoch
    • Bel Dings 100
    • Buildcraft Discussion
    • Approachability
  • Dwarven Realms
    • So Dumb So Good
  • Roguelike Lightning Round
    • Astral Ascent
    • Spiritfall
    • Balatro
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake Thoughts
    • Entirely remaking a classic
  • The Impact of Last Epoch
The post AggroChat #470 – The Impact of Epoch appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #411 – Twitter Thanos Snap

Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, and Tamrielo
This week was one of those shows when I was not entirely certain we had enough material.  Yet in spite of that…  we once again ran over our intended hour-long recording time.  We start off the show with Ash engaging in some Bel-like mechanical nonsense and attempting to repurpose a dedicated dance pad into something more universal.  From there we dive into some discussion about what is going on at Twitter this week and how it feels like somewhere between a guild falling apart and the closing of an MMORPG.  Kodra talks about Overhaul…  which is a roguelike Sudoku.  He completely lost Bel when he got to the Sudoku part.  From there we dive into a discussion about how weird and frustrating it can be to come back to a game after being gone for a very long time, and how none of them really do a great job of re-onboarding you.

Topics Discussed

  • Beethoven Virus
    • Adapting a dedicated dance pad to general purposes
  • Twitter and the Thanos Snap
    • Speedrunning the Death of a Company
    • Feels like playing a dying MMORPG
    • Mastodon doesn’t want to be the next Twitter
  • Overhaul
    • The Roguelike Sudoku
  • Returning to Games
    • Games Do a Bad Job of Re-Onboarding
The post AggroChat #411 – Twitter Thanos Snap appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Literal Ankle Biter

Literal Ankle Biter

This was a bit of an odd weekend.  Lets get the bad out of the way.  For several months we have been trying to figure out how to get Luna to a point where she does not attack the other two cats on sight.  We’ve kept her sequestered in my wife’s office and each night I grab her and we hang out in my office while I play games.  She almost always ends up snuggled on my desk, and in truth is just about the sweetest cat ever…  when not around our other two.  This is an important distinction before I tell you this next bit… because she is adorable and cuddly…  when she is by herself.  In my infinite lack of wisdom I decided that I wanted to make one last attempt to socialize them since she had seemingly bonded with me so tightly after our many many weeks of chilling in my office.  We locked our eldest cat up in the bedroom and brought Luna out, at first carrying her and holding her on the sofa.  Before long thought she wanted to explore… and for the most part our youngest and her were not interacting at all.  However there came a point where we were moments away from a cat fight, and I tried to gather Luna up and carry her off to my office.  She struggled to try and get away but I got her up to the office without much issue.  I turned to shut the door and I felt this searing pain on my leg around my lower calf.  She had bit me… and now I was left with the decision of how the hell to get out of my office without letting her out so she could go after Kenzie.

I snuck out and by the time I got downstairs I was bleeding pretty badly.  There are five marks…  so I am guessing one is maybe a claw mark or she drug off of me and raked me with her fang again.  Two of them are about a half inch in length and pretty deep… and two others are deep puncture wounds where she chomped down hard on my leg.  It hurts quite a bit to walk and just generally exist in the world right now, but I don’t think there is any real damage.  After going through the crap with my wife when she got bitten we are being extra cautious, and using the super duper antibiotic creme that they gave us back then.  Walking is not comfortable and today is going to be interesting.  I had to venture out to get more extra large band-aids, because in theory you can hit all of the spots with two of the largest size.  After getting bandaged up I went back upstairs where she seemed as freaked as I was by the event.  She sat on the floor in the back of my office up against the accordion closet door for a long while looking freaked.  Eventually I peeked down underneath the desk towards where she was at and said “it’s okay, I’m not mad” and almost instantly her demeanor changed and she bounded over and hopped up on the desk laying down beside me.  The thing that is breaking my heart is that I now know that this is probably never going to get any better, and we really do need to find her a new home.  Unfortunately the friend that we thought was going to take her… had her landlord say no.  It was in their contract that they could have pets if landlord approved… but I am guessing the asshole is biased against cats, because he assumed they were talking a dog.

Literal Ankle Biter

Other than the cat thing…. and hurting…  I streamed a lot of Iron Banner.  I think it was Friday night at some point that I managed to hit Rank 5 with the Banana, and from that point on it was just gravy as far as loot went.  I guess in theory I should have been swapping to the Warlock or Hunter to get them to Rank 5 but instead I simply made a poor attempt at farming some more gear to increase my light levels.  This last 10 points is going to be slow as hell, but I entered the weekend at 390 and exit at 392 which I guess is reasonable.  According to beam I have now streamed seven hours of game play, which I guess isn’t a bad start for my first week.  Now a good chunk of that on Sunday at least was to an empty audience, but I entertained myself and have a bunch of footage to sift through.  There was one Iron Banner match where for whatever reason I started humming the Super Mario Brothers theme song inserting “Nope” instead of some of the notes.  All in all I think I like Rift for an Iron Banner match type, but like I said before I struggled a bit at first because the game play feels so vastly different from anything I had been used to.  The best item I got all weekend is still the above Branded Lord with Hammer Forged, Enhanced Battery and Range Finder… which I now have fully leveled and am almost using exclusively.

Literal Ankle Biter
LET IT DIE_20161211162544

Lastly I played some “Let It Die” as evidenced by the first screenshot in the post today, and streamed it as well…  except for whatever reason my audio was being overpowered completely by the game audio.  I will have to fiddle with that and adjust it some.  This game is just strange as hell, and I guess in many ways it feels a little Dark Soulsian, in that the mobs that you encounter are somewhat brutally powerful at times.  There will be times that you get stunlocked to the point where you simply cannot do anything to deal with the encounters other than die.  The strangest part so far is the types of weapons you encounter…  hot irons, router drills, hammers…  firework launchers.  As you ascend the Tower of Barbs you encounter all sorts of monsters that should be in a silent hill game with bizarre implements that are trying to kill you, all the while you are using a zombie corpse thing as your avatar.  You start out buck naked each time and have to scrounge up armor and weapons to be able to survive for terribly long in the tower.  This is of course a “free to play” game and where the money aspect comes in is that in order to resurrect yourself using “death insurance” you need to spend a rainbow skull currency, that the game gives you a handful of to start out.  However in the brief period of time I played yesterday I wound up using two of them before realizing… that in truth I had not really made any actual progress and should stop doing that.  I’ve not quite figured out what the point is yet…  as far as how you actually improve your character.  I thought after I cleared a level I would be taken back to the lobby… but apparently I have to do that manually so I essentially lost all progress on that character and had to grab a fresh corpse to start the climb all over again.  It has some deep rogue like elements, all the while mixing in bizarre Neo Tokyo and Silent Hill tropes…. with a dash of Dark Soulsian difficulty.  Given that several of those checkboxes are things that Kodra likes, I think he maybe should try this game out.  What I am wanting to know is if you can play it multiplayer, because this would probably be super enjoyable with friends.

 

AggroChat #122 – Glimmers of Hope

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Thalen talk about a bunch of stuff… with a significant emphasis on the launch of World of Warcraf Legion

aggrochat122_720

Tonight we are down a Tam thanks to Pax West Shenanigans, and in theory at least we will be talking soon about those experiences.  However for the time being…  we talk a bunch of stuff but mostly World of Warcraft Legion.  Right now Ashgar, Belghast and Grace are playing… and talk about their experiences with the launch, and the revisions to the game.  The long story short is that we all seem to be enjoying ourselves.  The main story is still frustrating, but the sub stories are amazing.  We also talk a little bit about the game of the month Tales of Maj’Eyal, largely related to a few tips for getting started and things that players should really avoid getting bogged down in.  Finally Kodra talks about his experiences with Deus Ex and Necropolis in recent play sessions for both.

Things Discussed – World of Warcraft – Legion – Class Halls – Spec Fantasy – Leveling Content – Tales of Maj’Eyal – Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – Necropolis