Good Morning Friends! On Monday I talked about my general sense of unhappiness and how my prohibition of Blizzard titles, and specifically my beloved Diablo III had brought me nothing but misery. So the interesting part about that is… I was holding stable up until the point that I tried Diablo Immortal. I largely tried Immortal in the first place so that I could write my impressions given how much Diablo III and honestly D2 and D1 I have played over the years.
I posted a snippet of an article from the Washington Post yesterday on Twitter, and for me at least it rings so true. I think my falling back into Diablo III has been at least in part a way to wash the bad taste of the Diablo Immortal monetization out of my mouth. This seems to have been the case for at least a few of my friends as well. I legitimately had no intention of breaking my Blizzard prohibition but it has now happened… and I am happier for having done so. I missed this game so damned much.
I am still in the “building power” phase of the season. It took me a few nights to level from 1 to 70, and it has been a really long time since I have done that completely solo. When I usually played Diablo III I had Grace along with me, and we at a minimum duo’d most things… and occasionally had others like Byx joining in the nonsense. I was nowhere near as efficient in my leveling as I could have been, in part because I knew I needed a Ring of Royal Grandeur for my target build, and I figured since it was going in the cube I might as well try and get one from bounties as I leveled up. I wish I had managed to get some of the other items I needed for the build because it would have made the start of the season considerably easier.
For those who might have never started a Diablo III season, the general theory is that you create a Seasonal character and then immediately hop into whatever challenge rift was available for that given week. A Challenge Rift is essentially a snapshot of a specific build, often taken from the community… and you have to navigate that build successfully through a fixed Greater Rift in order to beat a specific time. Your reward for doing this… is a cache full of resources that gives you a headstart on the season and allows you to do some specific things. Essentially you get:
5,100,000 gold
475 blood shards
35 deaths breath
125 veiled crystals
350 arcane dust
370 reusable parts
15 of each of the different act bounty currencies
Essentially the standard order of operations is to use this to level the Blacksmith and Mystic all of the ways up, and then attempt to convert a Rare item into a legendary item in Kunai’s Cube. Based on what you get there this generally determines what item you go for in gambling with Kadala using those 475 blood shards. There are specific items that are suggested and I did not get any of them.
What I did get instead however was a nifty parlor trick that I was able to stick in Kunai’s Cube. I am not sure I have ever used Flail of the Ascended, and if I did I largely just used it as a temporary beater until I got something better. This ultimately lead me to build around Shield Glare and Shield Bash, so that I could bash my way through the level and then use Shield Glare as a big nuke to take out bosses or large packs. Honestly, it felt pretty good right up until the point that it stopped feeling good around level 66. In my challenge rift cache shenanigans, I managed to get a level 70 weapon that I could equip at level 49, so once I grew into that I had an express elevator to the top. I’ve had worse seasonal leveling experiences for certain, but I have also had much much better ones.
At this point, I can pretty reliably clear Torment VII Neph Rifts at a decent speed for farming and I have cleared through Solo 43 in Greater Rifts. I have three decent legendary gems and I just need to work on getting those leveled up a bit. This is the Diablo that I love, and this is ultimately what I hoped Diablo Immortal would be… but on the phone. This is what the loot from a Rift should feel like and only exists in Immortal if you spend $25 on Legendary Crests per run. I am having a freaking blast folks, and my hope is to finish off Season 26 before the timer runs out. The prediction is that this season will end sometime in August. With the current double bounty cache reward going on, I should be able to farm up Avarice pretty easily, but I need to really get my power up to where I can comfortably run T13 at a minimum before starting that grind. It is kinda dumb how returning to a game can make me so happy… but it is a thing that has happened. God, I love Diablo III.
The post Diablo III Season 26 So Far appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! I’ve found myself weirdly checked out most of the time during this “Not E3” period. Normally this is my Christmas catalog as I drool over all of the trailers of games to come. However as the various shows have gone whizzing by, I am having trouble even catching up on the news. One thing that is not this way however was the Microsoft and Bethesda show that took place on Sunday afternoon. This show I absolutely watched live and with much anticipation. Microsoft has uniquely placed itself through acquisitions as being the arbiter of good stuff for the coming years. There is part of me that is deeply troubled that a single company owns all of these franchises. Then there is another part of me that loves that I can start a game on my Xbox Series X and then continue it on my PC… and maybe even get in some playtime from bed on my phone via XCloud all without missing a beat.
Another thing that I love is the GamePass ecosystem because it gives me easy access to a large list of titles that I might have missed otherwise. This is really where XCloud shines for me because it gives me fast streaming access to games with a very low time commitment. While I am laying in bed at night, trying to figure out something to do until sleep claims me… this is often when I hook up my controller and try something out on the phone. It will take a lot of effort to really dislodge me from the Steam ecosystem, but just having games available and ready for me to play… as part of my existing GamePass subscription is a good start. I really dig that they are supporting smaller games in addition to all of the big titles because it means that there is a regular flow of new titles coming into the system. What I do wish is that they would include things like ESO Plus into GamePass to expand the player base of Elder Scrolls Online, or a World of Warcraft sub when the Blizzard purchase completes.
There were a massive number of titles that interested me, so here is a quick run down with some discussion about each.
Free Riot Game Champions
I have to admit this one blew my freaking mind. I don’t play League of Legends all that much anymore, but when I did… I regularly liked trying out new champions. Essentially if you have GamePass you are getting every champion in every Riot game unlocked as part of that subscription. This legitimately makes me very interested in diving back into the game and checking out all of those champions that were released since 2015ish when I last gave the game any attention. Granted I hated playing solo queue, and mostly only really enjoyed bot games… but still had a certain measure of enjoyment doing that. I wonder if Wild Rift supports a controller.
Persona Games
This was another massive mic drop because fans have been begging for a PC release of Persona 5 Royal since the game was released. As part of GamePass you are getting access to Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal on both Xbox consoles and PC. I’ve yet to really beat any of these games and I know that I should really attempt to get into P5R. There is just something about the daily chores section of the game that always kills my interest. I want to experience the story, but don’t want to have to shuffle through the dross.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox
I am extremely interested in this game. It pretty much looked like what you would get if you took Castlevania and took away the vampires and skeletons and instead swapped in elder horrors and void creatures. I love Symphony of the Night and this is giving me DEEP vibes. This is a perfect example of a game that is probably going to fall between the cracks, but absolutely will have new life because folks are going to play it as part of GamePass.
High On Life
Okay, I still unironically love Rick and Morty. This game basically seems like you take the weird as fuck space stuff from that cartoon and make an entire shooter-based video game out of it. The catch is you have talking sentient weapons. This legitimately makes me wonder if someone played Cyberpunk 2077… got Skippy and then thought… let’s make an entire damned game around this. I am absolutely at least going to give it a spin and check out whether or not I personally find this mess enjoyable or not.
Scorn
I like HR Geiger and I like Body Horror, so I think I am probably uniquely in line with the goals of Scorn. This has been appearing periodically at shows for quite some time now, and it just seems to keep getting higher resolution. I am mostly intrigued by the game at this point and want to see it in action. Do I think this is going to be a good shooter? No, not really, but I also don’t think that is the point of the game. It seems like avoiding combat is going to be the name of the game more than anything. Do I think this is going to be one of my favorite games? Nope! However again because it is on GamePass I am absolutely going to check it out.
Forza Horizon Hotwheels
So they spent way more time during the show on the version of Forza for people who get horny over cars, but I was happy to see we are getting a Hotwheels expansion for Horizon. If you have never played a Horizon game you really should. They are this weird fun arcadey car MMORPG for lack of a better explanation. They are just fun as hell to drive around in and unlock new cars, and I am super on board with taking my cars and now racing them on literal Hotwheels tracks.
Redfall
I am deeply interested in this game, but also probably deeply out of the core demographic. My hope is that this is going to be a game that is solo-player-friendly. My expectations are that it is going to be all groups all the time, and expecting you to bring your ready-made group of exactly four friends into the game with you. I already struggle at matching up with people to play games with, and I doubt Redfall is going to be the game that changes that. Between timezone constraints and my own anxiety over player expectations of me… yeah no this is going to be a fraught mess for me personally. I still think it looks cool as hell though, so I guess I will watch this evolve over time.
Ravenlok
I am getting deep Legend of Zelda meets Harry Potter vibes from this game and I am on board with that. Again this looks like it is going to be one of those many smaller titles that come out and the fact that it is on GamePass gives me the freedom to just check it out guilt free. The only thing that is really tweaking me a bit is the mix of voxel models and traditional models that seems to be going on. Like I enjoy voxel graphics, but I prefer if games completely commit to them like something along the lines of The Touryst. I just hope that the actual game while playing it does not seem jarring as the two model styles clash.
Hollow Knight Silksong
I would likely be disowned by several of my friends if I did not at least talk a bit about Silksong. This is a game that so many of the AggroChat folks have been anxiously waiting for. I am not sure what it is about Hollow Knight but it never really clicked with me. I think partially it is that the game requires so much more technical prowess than Symphony of the Night, and by reference Bloodstained Ritual of the Night. That is pretty much my perfect form of the Metroidvania. Ash and Kodra, however, love the skill-based games, and more specifically they both seem to enjoy the randomization mods for Hollow Knight. I am hoping this is the game that they have been anxiously waiting for. Me… I’ve not decided to devote the amount of time needed to actually get good at Hollow Knight so I could decide if I enjoy it or not.
Flintlock The Siege of Dawn
This is another game that I am cautiously interested in. I say cautiously because I am getting deep Dark Souls vibes from this game. Everything about the setting and lore makes me interested, but generally speaking, don’t want to work as hard at combat as a Dark Souls game wants me to work. I play games to relax, not cause more anxiety. Jedi Fallen Order bridged this gap because I just played the game on a lower difficulty setting and it stopped feeling like a Dark Souls game. So I guess I have hope that maybe just maybe this game will work for me as well. Again the low investment of it being on GamePass means I can boot it up… check it out for a bit and then decide if I like it or not.
Diablo IV
Oof do I have some feelings about Diablo IV. Of all of the Blizzard games, Diablo is the franchise that I have cared about the most over the years. First, it was weird as hell to see Blizzard games now just being included as part of the Microsoft conference. Second, I have been on this emotional rollercoaster lately thanks to the collosol fuckup that is Diablo Immortal. The team working on Diablo IV has come out trying to stem the bleeding and guarantee that this game will not be an egregiously monetized pay-to-win mess… but I am not sure if I am willing to trust them yet. What I saw in this trailer and the other trailers at the show excited me, but also made me think that maybe this game is going to be a direct competitor for Guild Wars 2. A lot of the big open-world multiplayer stuff felt a lot like events and zone metas in GW2. I am sad that there will not be a Crusader at launch, but generally speaking, I can be happy with a Barbarian for the time being.
Starfield
This was the reveal that I think most of the folks who tuned in were waiting for. I get that “No Mans Skyrim” is a meme, but this felt way more like a Fallout game to me. I have deep concerns for this game, namely that I think maybe Bethesda bit off more than they can chew with the whole “1000 planets” thing, including full space flight and seemingly a whole dogfighting game. That also gives me pause because I like the concept of spaceflight… but I don’t actually like flying ships. I really do not like flight sims, so I am hoping that this is very “starfox” in its interpretation of space flight. Either that or I hope there is an option to just let the computer calculate the space combat because I am not really interested in doing much of that. I would be down with the equivalent of VATs but for ship-to-ship combat. Planetary exploration and the improved gunplay though… I am all on board with that.
A Solid Show
This year’s Microsoft Bethesda show was legitimately one of the better ones I have seen over the years. There were so many things that I was either extremely interested in or tangentially enough to play them with GamePass. I need to spend some time and sift through the other presentations and cherry-pick some of the other gems. I might turn that into a single post covering multiple shows. If you have been more plugged into the “Not E3”, which of the shows should I check out? What games do you think I should watch trailers for? Drop me a line below.
The post Microsoft Bethesda Show 2022 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! I hope you all had an excellent weekend. Ours was a bit of a weird one, combined with the fact that we are dealing with an early heatwave. This morning it was over 80 degrees at 5:30 when I first woke up. That is entirely too hot for human beings, and that has been a trend the last few years of getting our heat spikes considerably earlier than normal. One of the side projects I have been doing over the last few days is editing our old episodes to package them up into a YouTube format. One of the things you maybe need to know about me is that I have every single episode we have ever recorded, as well as a number of side projects sitting on network-attached storage. That means I can crack open the original files, apply some tweaks to them and then paste them into something resembling a more modern structure before exporting and creating a video out of it.
One of the strangest things about going back and listening to myself from eight years ago is generally how much happier I sound. Like it might not be noticeable to anyone else, but for me it is jarring. Truth be told I am happy enough but I am not really experiencing much joy in my life at the moment. I mean on some level 2014 seems like a simpler time, when things were not quite as fraught as they are today. In 2014 we had yet to deal with GamerGate or the fallout that caused so many voices to be silenced and blogs to be shuttered as a result of folks “noping” out of gaming. We had yet to deal with the great unmasking brought on by the Trumpian area, and folks with fringe beliefs felt completely justified to bring them up in every public forum. The episodes that I have been listening to are from April of 2014, and at that point, Eric Garner had not been murdered and the sequence of events that lead to mass protests around the country regarding Police brutality had not been started.
On the gaming front, Sony Online Entertainment had not been sold yet, and as a result Landmark and Everquest Next were still things we were looking forward to. I was still looking forward to the Nightmare Tide expansion in Rift, and they had yet to be sold to Gamigo. We were in the middle of Mists of Pandaria and anxiously awaiting the announcement of the next expansion that would be the Warlords of Draenor. So that means we had yet to live through the great drop-off of players in World of Warcraft and the back-to-back stinkers that were Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. I personally was in the middle of being extremely happy about the launch of Elder Scrolls Online and looking forward to the launch of Destiny which happened in September of that year.
I was still regularly hanging out with friends on a nightly basis and was even streaming pretty regularly. This is prior to the westward migration of a good chunk of my friend group, which has put a two-hour gap between us making it very hard to organize things. I am generally going to sleep as they are coming online. I miss doing things with people and my great recharge moment had been Diablo 3 for the longest time. This is also before we found out how generally fucked up the situation with Blizzard was and their employees, which ultimately made me not want to touch anything published by them. This was also a time before the Pandemic and me not leaving the house all week long other than a trip to pick up donuts from a drive-through on Saturday and Sunday. As much as I enjoy working from home,I do have to admit that it only furthers the self-imposed isolation that I find myself in.
It also feels like the big moments of synergy that bring everyone together in one place… are getting fewer and further between. Even the most recent launch of Endwalker felt like a deeply fractured experience, as I rarely happened to overlap timewise with other people. I think during the entirety of that expansion leveling process I ran a single dungeon with a friend. I can’t blame my present isolation on anyone but myself to be honest. I could go out and make new friend groups that are more compatible with my timezone, but that just feels so freaking hard. When you have had a regular group that just happened effortlessly… it is so damned hard to put the effort to find that again elsewhere. I know I have people that I can reach out to, and do things with… but none of the groups that I am in the orbit of seeming quite the same. I mean… it is hard to replace a group that I have recorded almost four hundred podcast episodes, and the natural rapport we all have.
In the current malaise that I find myself in… last night I caved. I have been avoiding all Blizzard products, or at least until the release of Diablo Immortal. I used that as an experiment so that I would be able to talk about its gross monetization scheme from personal experience. Instead, all that it really did was make me miss Diablo 3 even more. This game is such an emotional experience for me, and I had last played it in April of 2021… and then found myself missing it almost every day since then. I’ve scoured so many other games looking for methadone for this game and never quite finding anything that really fits in the same way. I found myself crawling into a bubble that was the seasonal game in Diablo 3, and pretty much completely forgetting everything else existed. I didn’t even partake of the nightly Tequatl ritual in Guild Wars 2.
I love Diablo and I think that is why the whole Diablo Immortal fiasco has been so crushing. I spent so many years anxiously waiting for news on Diablo 4, and yesterday also brought us a brand new trailer as part of the Microsoft show… which I will talk about at a later time. I think the announcement, the longing, and this realization that I used to be a happier person is ultimately what lead me to spend my night leveling a seasonal character. I feel like I failed on some level because I had been trying to avoid anything Blizzard related for so long. However, I also think that this self-imposed activism didn’t really make me happy… instead just made me miserable.
I am not happy with the state of the world right now. I am not happy with the state of my isolation. I am not sure what I can really do about either, but depriving myself of things that were bringing me joy doesn’t make it better either. I use video games as an escape from the world, and since 2014… more and more of the world has seeped into that experience. Twitter used to be my happy place where I talked about games with other excited gamers… but now I flinch preparing myself for more news of the next shooting, or next corporate malfeasance. I am tired and hollow… and on some level, I wish I could pop back to 2014 when I seemed to be so much happier. I know that is not a thing that can ever happen, and I also have no clue how to claw back some of that joy. Last night, however… playing Diablo 3 again for the first time in over a year brought me some measure of that joy back.
The post A Happier Me appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring:Â Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, and Thalen
Tonight’s show is a bit of a strange one. We had a bunch of absences and at the start of the show, it was just Ammo, Bel, and Thalen. Then as we recorded a wild Ash and Kodra appear, but this does have the effect of causing a few topics to be rehashed. We start talking about the nonsense that Bel is doing where he attempts to fix the episode gap on YouTube and re-releases the original 73 episodes. We dive into Guild Wars 2 and specifically the Living World Season 1 and the current Dragon Bash event. Bel reprises the topic of Diablo Immortal this week and talks about having gotten to level 56 and all of the many monetization traps in that game. Then Thalen talks about his experiences playing Talos Principle and Stanley Parable. Kodra appears and we reprise the Guild Wars 2 topics a bit before Bel dives into a discussion about the universally good changes coming to New World.
