Tales of the Aggronaut – Page 574

Too Soon

May 2, 2018 by Belghast

I really do not have a lot to say this morning because I did next to zero gaming last night, nor do I really have a huge back log of topics that I feel like I need to talk about. Instead of gaming I saw Avengers Infinity War and I have plenty of words to say about that. However I also feel like maybe it is just too damned soon to really be digging into that movie as of yet. When there is a huge spoiler laden experience out in the wild I try really hard not to be part of ruining someone else’s experience. I used to be one of those folks that thought so long as you were quiet during opening weekend you were perfectly fine.

Then life happened and I have turned into one of those people who so very rarely actually goes to see a film on opening weekend. Like as it stands right now the only absolutely guaranteed movies for me are the Star Wars films. Even then I largely feel like I am going only to insulate myself from any possibility of having the experience completely ruined. The truth is I don’t much enjoy the theater experience because above all I don’t like having to deal with the people. I also don’t like having to deal with either paying a lot more for a ticket to get reserved seating… or getting there a massive amount of time ahead of the film just to sit there twiddling my fingers while someone makes bad jokes and shows me advertisements.

In my perfect world I would be able to stream a film on opening night in the comfort of my own living room and much like the “millennials” supposedly killing things like diamonds… I would love for them to kill the theater going experience. Then again I also sorta want to just pay one licencing fee and have access to whatever I choose to consume at any given moment. I also would love to stop having to pay the ESPN tax to get the other channels I want in a cable package… but now I am just talking nonsense and mentioning a bunch of shit that won’t actually happen. The movie industry is predicated on the concept of a limited experience and making all of its money in a very short up front burst to fund the next project, and the theaters are the drug pushers distributing the product for them. It will take a thermonuclear shift to dislodge that bond, but I think it is also something that is going to happen inevitably.

With Infinity War I would love to be cool and quote Morgan from Walking Dead and say “It is not gonna work out how you think”… but it might… I honestly don’t know. There are a lot of theories that have circulated around, some of them are more right than others. Additionally I think it all depends on your ability to cherry pick things from the comic book source material. If you read comics heavily back during the early 90s you have very specific expectations as to what is going to happen. As someone who did this thing… I went into it with a lot of thoughts on my own and while some things did in fact play out just like my expectations… there was an awful lot that didn’t.

In the grand scheme of things it was a good film and a film that needed to happen to make this long slide to this moment make any sense at all. I highly suggest you check it out and get to the theater before major plot points are spoiled. What has annoyed me the most however is the flood of YouTube videos that were up and available by Friday night… that were so blissful to dig into the minutiae of every single bit of the film. I realize they are trying to get that early money from people exiting the theater and feeling they need to talk about it… but can’t talk about it with anyone. However even the titles of said videos and thumbnails are often spoilers in themselves. I can at least go into a huddle room at work now and talk to the folks at work who have been dying to talk about the events.

Red and Gold

May 1, 2018 by Belghast

One of my favorite aspects of Monster Hunter World has been the constant revolving door of limited time events. It seems like at some point we will run out of brand new ones, and that they will begin cycling through the past happenings… but for right now it seems like every time I turn around there is something brand new and shiny to interact with. Starting on April 27th we got the Code Red event which involves fighting four “red” monsters in the standard arena, one after another. So you have to work your way through Anjanath, Odogoron, Rathalos and then finally the Elder Dragon Teostra. Doing this gives you a special currency that looks like a monster gem called a Red Orb. Collecting seven of these and a slew of parts from all of the monsters included in the quest allows you to craft a set of rank 8 gear patterned off of Dante from Devil May Cry.

What makes this set really interesting is unlike past offerings… this is not a complete suit but instead individual pieces allowing for some interesting Mixed Build options. For the unindoctrinated… armor pieces have specific stats on them and by mixing and matching them you can often times come up with really interesting builds that benefit specific weapons. The boots for example have two levels of weakness exploit which I can see very easily mixing into other sets to achieve the desired affinity boost while hitting weak areas. The other special thing about this event is the fact that we get a brand new Charge Blade that is themed after Devil May Cry as well and starts out Rank 8 without any need to do a follow on upgrade quest. Instead of a sword and shield… it is a short sword with a run that serves as the shield… that then turns into a giant two handed sword giving it a very unique appearance and feel while using. A good chunk of my last week and some change has been spent collecting bits for this set and weapon… and last night I finally managed to craft the final piece when Teostra dropped that last piece of webbing.

The other big thing I have been participating in is the Kulve Taroth “raid” quest that drops materials to create a really awesome set of armor that you can see me wearing in the above image. Other than that it is also a chance for a lot of really interesting semi-random weapon drops. During the course of the runs that I have participated in I have managed to get a purple or better weapon for every slot other than bow… which seem to be extremely stingy for some reason. I had enough blue weapons that when I sold them all last night I jumped from 10,000 zenny to just shy of 300,000 zenny. The keepers have been 9 orange rank 8 weapons and 23 purple rank 7 weapons. Like I have talked about before the real benefit of this quest is it gives you a stable of usable weapons that allows you to branch out a bit. Like I have a decent Hunting Horn now… why not try it out and learn to use it?

Among the weapon drops I have gotten one of the more interesting ones is this Rank 8 longsword with 330 paralysis on it. If a monster is at all susceptible to this status effect… it seems to proc quite often. I was clearing out some of my quests last night and took out a Lavasioth and during the short time it took me to lower it to skull territory and trap it… I managed to proc paralysis four times. While these weapons won’t likely ever outdo a truly tuned weapon… because they are spending some item budget on defense… I like them as well rounded general use options that I didn’t have to spend a lot of materials to create. The Kulve Taroth quest goes away May 5th and the Dante quest goes away on May 10th. I am curious to see what replaces each of them which I guess we will start to see late in the evening on Wednesday? The content release schedule is odd and ends up with some things releasing Wednesday night and others releasing Thursday night. I want to get some more farming in of Kulve tonight for more attempts at shiny gold weapons, but in the grand scheme of things I am pretty happy with the progress I managed to make.

Blurry Cats

April 30, 2018 by Belghast

I’m somewhat all over the place this morning and struggling to get started, so in the meantime here is a picture of a confused cat. This is Kenzie, she is my real life palico and “helps” me do lots of things… including fetching me rubber bands and string that I didn’t even know I needed. She then wants me to throw the string or rubber band so she can find it again and prove how good of a Palico helper she is. She is trying to show how much better the real version is than the in Monster Hunter World version. She also largely looks like this every time I take a photo because it is like she has never seen my phone before.

I guess this is an upgrade from the ferret who won’t stop wiggling and then yawns… so that every photo looks like she is about to bite me. Example in the photo above… I promise she did not just bite me after the photo was taken. In fact the most aggressive thing she ever does is lick my hand and she is a lovable wiggly fluffball. I wrote on twitter the other day that I am consistently jealous of people who can take good photos of their pets. Ours seem to exist in two states… asleep or shapeless blur. By the moment I get my phone out, unlock it with my thumbprint and open the camera app… the moment of adorableness that was just happening is always over. What you end up seeing are the hollow after moments of what was a really cute photo ruined by the fact that my pets do not understand photography.

They are however great at sleeping on me or around me. Like right this very moment Kenzie is laying on my headphones because apparently that is a comfortable thing to do… just sort of drape your body over an awkwardly shaped object. Basically she likes being near me at all times when possible and meows incessantly the moment I lock her out of the bathroom to take a shower. Similarly when I record a podcast on Saturday nights she gets really confused that she cannot also be in the room… and if you have ever tuned into one of my streams you have probably hear her talking to me or me talking to her. The thing is… I have several blankets on my desk for the cats to lay on… but more often than not she is just going to lay on a controller or something else that cannot possibly feel comfortable.

Since this has apparently turned into a post where I just sit here talking about pets. This is Allie, she is our old lady and mostly just wants to lay on things. The majority of the time she is either laying on the blanket I keep on my recliner end of the sectional or draped over top of me while I am sitting there using my laptop. She is awesome in that she has figured out how to lay in such a way as to not obstruct my keyboard and mouse movement. The only problem is when she is doing this thing I basically cannot type with my right hand. When I am using a controller she has figured out how to basically cradle herself up against my beard as not to obstruct the use of said controller. She is a great girl but is starting to show the signs of age and ultimately we are just going to love on her as long as we have her. Once again… the moment I took this shot she moved slightly causing it to be a little out of focus.

Then we have Mollie our youngest and most blurry cat. I took like six shots in rapid succession and this is the least blurry of them all. She had a rough start of her life and as far as I can tell she was found as a kitten in a parking lot and taken directly to a primarily dog animal shelter. So she lived there for like the first six months of her life having to content with the constant barking of puppers. When we first got her she was insanely skittish and over time has improved… but she also isn’t quite there yet. For whatever reasons she seemed scared of me at first, but I largely chock this up to the fact that the lady running the shelter was about the same height and build as my wife and she maybe thought she looked “safe”. Over time she has become my little shadow as I move around the house, hopping up on things and wanting attention. However she bolts the moment she hears a loud and strange sound or sees Kenzie. There are times though when kenzie is sleeping on the blanket on my wife’s end of the sofa… and Mollie will sneak in and snuggle with me and those are the best times ever.

Since this morphed into a pets post… I figured I should also show off a picture of Shiloh when she is sleeping and adorably curled up in her toy box. Ferrets love toys and she will drag them around the cage and shove them into the toybox or under blankets, though she rarely falls sleep in here. I am guessing she was playing and got tuckered out. Ferrets are sorta like windup toys in that they have all sorts of motion and action until they run out of charge… and then basically conk out wherever they happen to be at that moment. As a result you will find your ferrets sleeping in all sorts of weird positions because they ran out of energy at exactly that moment. There have been times I have woken up in the morning and Shiloh will be conked out halfway between the litter box and one of the beds… because apparently she woke up just long enough to go potty and then ran out of steam again. She has always been a sleepier girl than any of our other ferrets have been and when she is sleepy… she is REALLY sleepy. Then again when she is active she is really active and wants to be picked up and subsequently tries to climb up my shirt. The funniest thing is that she also plays with the cats… especially Mollie and she will wait at the side of the cage when she is near by. Mollie also tries to pull on her blankets when she wants Shiloh to wake up and play… so inevitably there will be a tuft of fleece blanket sticking out through the cage in the morning.

So those are my pets… I did not exactly intend on the post to take this trajectory but it is what happened. I hope you have a great day and a great start of the week.

MTG Arena Economy

April 27, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I spent a tiny bit of time in Magic the Gathering Arena because they unleashed the new Dominaria expansion. The funny thing is the digital version of Magic got Dominaria long before I actually got the box that I ordered. If you currently have access to Arena just the act of logging in gets you three packs, and once again remember these packs have 1 rare/mythic, 2 uncommon and 5 commons… and or a combination of wildcards. Wildcards as always can be traded in for any card you are missing of that rarity and they do not appear to be set dependent. This means that more or less you seem to be able to bank them and then turn in a bunch of them any time you want to build a deck.

The other thing that went in yesterday was the ability to spend money and buy the intermediary currency of Arena… Gems. There are two currencies in the game… Gold that you earn by completing quests and such and Gems that you plunk down hard earned cash. The prices range from $4.99 for the first pack of 750 gems making it roughly 150 gems per dollar all the way to 20,000 gems for $99.99 making that 200 gems per dollar spent. The thing that concerns me the most at this point is the fact that MTG Arena is a beta and I have yet to actually find any place that talks about whether or not there will be a wipe before launch… and if there is one if money spent will be refunded. This is the biggest hurdle for me personally against spending any money at all… because I would really like assurances that I would at least keep the value of that purchase even if I don’t keep the cards.

Now we get into the prime thing you can buy with your gems… packs of cards. At the 45 and 90 pack range you get what was the Dominaria buy the box promo card… making me think that they consider 45 packs to be the equivalent of a 36 pack Magic the Gathering Booster Box. I did some nonsense via spreadsheet before I actually noticed that there is a post on the forums with pretty much all of the economy elements outlined. As it stands the only scaling is on gem purchases… where the more money you spend the more gems you wind up getting per dollar. At the high end of buying 750 gem packs that places the price per pack at $1.33 and if you are buying on the low end at 20,000 gems the price per pack drops down to $1. That means 45 packs would be $59.88 buying 600 gems at a time and $45.00 buying 20,000 gems at a time… similarly the gigantic 90 pack bundle comes out to $119.76 and $89.99 respectively.

For an economy reference… Hearthstone buying in the smallest package ends up being $1.49 per pack and in the largest package $1.16 per pack… for 3 fewer cards each pack. The biggest problem with each and every gem pack is they do not exactly sync up with the dollar amounts meaning you are going to have a remainder of gems that are not really usable for the purpose of buying packs. Contrasted again with Hearthstone there is no intermediary currency so you always know what you are getting per dollar spent regardless of some nonsense exchange rate. My friend Toadchild also did some math and figured out that the most efficient way to purchase cards if you wanted the maximum number of packs for your gems… would be 1-45 card pack, 2-15 card packs and 4-6 card packs giving you a total of 99 packs for 19,800 gems. This still gives you an annoying remainder of 200 gems though in the process. If you are curious about the full range of nonsense here is the google sheet I was working things out in.

Other than just the ability to purchase cards for cash… they implemented the beginnings of a draft mode. Quick Draft however is not the pod drafting you were expecting however and instead something significantly different. Effectively when the event is going on you can enter the draft at will and be placed up against some AI that drafts with you. This apparently gives you the ability to leave the screen and return to your matches later any time while the event is active. The buy in is going to be 5000 gold or 750 gems… aka the $4.99 pack and rewards you a blend of cards and gems in prizes. Essentially you keep anything you draft into your collection and have the possibility to win additional prizes if you get to 7 wins before you get to 3 losses. Draft packs have the same distribution as tabletop giving you 1 rare/mythic, 3 uncommon and 10 commons making it a more familiar format for those who have drafted before. The prize support breakout looks a little something like this…

0 Wins: 50 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
1 Win: 100 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
2 Wins: 200 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
3 Wins: 300 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
4 Wins: 450 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
5 Wins: 650 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
6 Wins: 850 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted
7 Wins: 950 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card boosters, and all the cards you drafted

The boosters are all listed as a “Chance for Extra Boosters” but there really isn’t any particular information surrounding that… maybe if you go 7 and 0 you get 3… or 7 and 2 you only get 1. This isn’t really clarified that I saw.

The other thing that went in is Quick Constructed which is effectively a tournament in a box allowing you to hop in and play in a competitive structure with prize support. The buy in here is 500 gold or 95 gems and has significantly more meager rewards primarily allowing you to gamble your gold for the chance at winning your 7 and getting it doubled in the process with a few randomized cards in the process. This would feel better were it not for the fact that they completely removed random card rewards at the end of winning a match, meaning this is now your way for getting that sort of thing. I actually loved the whole get a random card after you win thing… because it sorta felt like an Ante card even though that concept is an element of a bygone era. For those interested the prize support structure looks a little something like this…

0 Wins: 100 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
1 Win: 200 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
2 Wins: 300 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
3 Wins: 400 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
4 Wins: 500 gold, 2 individual Uncommon cards, and 1 individual Rare card
5 Wins: 600 gold, 2 individual Uncommon cards, and 1 individual Rare card
6 Wins: 800 gold, 1 individual Uncommon card, and 2 individual Rare cards
7 Wins: 1,000 gold, 1 individual Uncommon card, and 2 individual Rare cards

In a worst case scenario you spent 500 gold and got back 100 and 3 common cards. In the best case scenario you spent 500 gold… doubled it and got back 2 rares and 1 common. Unlike draft this is not an AI mode and you are playing against players. They suggest that this is game mode primarily for players who have already completed their daily quests and are looking for a way to get more goodies.

All in all I am mostly happy with the economy of the game so far. It seems rather reasonable especially if you contrast it with paper magic. For your dollar you are getting way more value out of Magic the Gathering Arena both in the sheer number of rares and uncommon you get per dollar and the fact that wildcards exist. Wildcards and stockpiling them seems to be a really good way to prepare for the oncoming release of a new expansion. As it stands right now… I could sit on my stash of mythic and rare wildcards and then the moment the next expansion releases buy everything outright that i need to make a deck work. Cracking packs is always going to be fun for me personally, but for players who would rather just buy what they need… cracking packs becomes a way to get those much needed tokens to finish their custom “brew”. The only concern I have is that since this mode seems so much more equitable to the player… what will it ultimately do to the physical hobby?