Grace

Content by Grace

Company and Misery (and also Fun!)

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I’ve been playing WildStar and WoW mostly solo the past few weeks, and have recently resolved to at least make an effort to be more social again. So when I saw my buddy Lonomonkey (sorry for revealing your WoW shame, friend!) had logged into WoW for the first time in a year or so I grabbed him for some legacy raid silliness. Not only was I being social for a change, but it also kept both of us from just sitting around in our garrisons being bored and boring. I had been meaning to try soloing Elegon for the fancy celestial cloud serpent mount, so I dragged him along to pandaland to try it together. There were a few missteps due to him being out of practice and me playing a mage I hadn’t taken out of the garrison in a few months but we eventually killed Elegon and unsurprisingly there was no mount.

This is the moment where the afternoon started going off the rails. We decided to keep going to kill the last boss because neither of us was sure we had ever finished the place outside of LFR. Unfortunately between our lack of gear and our rustiness with our characters we just couldn’t get it down. Having resolved to be more social, I decided to reach out to Belghast to see if he could come help finish this fight with us. The three of us were more than a match for it, and killed it easily on the first try. Delirious from our victory, we decided to move on to Dragon Soul, which Lono had never completed on any difficulty. Since that raid was 2 expansions ago you’d think it would be a piece of cake, and it was…except for Spine of Deathwing. That fight has way too many needlessly fiddly moving parts, and is one of those sad circumstances where soloing it is easier than doing it with a couple friends because of the way the mechanics work. We died an awful lot, and there were a few way too close attempts where the last person standing got rolled off before they could finish the encounter. At this point I’m regretting my social attempts because after this everyone is about to murder each other. We did eventually win, no thanks to my squishy mage who ended up dying almost every attempt. Killing the final boss in that place always feels so anticlimactic after the stress of Spine.

Now in a flash of utter stupidity I decided that the best thing to follow that up with is a quick jaunt to ICC to get my blood infusion, a part of the legendary quest line from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion that my paladin has been sitting stuck on for forever. It required a lot of silly antics with mechanics again, and poor Lono had to keep dying multiple times each attempt on his warlock. It took fewer attempts than Spine of Deathwing, but felt even worse since this time my friends were dying for a silly quest for me. I’m so grateful that they both stuck around until we succeeded. After we won everyone seemed to disappear very quickly, I think we were all really eager for a break after so much frustration.

I still think that my social attempt was a success though. It is funny how even doing something kinda awful with friends was more fun than soloing dailies in WildStar or rotating through a dozen garrisons all day in WoW. I certainly wouldn’t want to make a habit of this exact choice of activities or we all might not remain friends for very long I think.

P.S. Speaking of social, don’t forget that the Diablo 3 season 6 is about to start this Friday evening! Leveling is way faster and more fun with friends, and I’ll be rolling around in a ball of murder with various folks all night until I get to 70. Are you excited about Season 6 too?


Company and Misery (and also Fun!)

AggroChat #104 – Star Wars and Design

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Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen talk about the best Star Wars stories and also Level Design constructs

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Tonight we had a bit of a strange show, that traversed a wide number of topics.  First Ashgar talks about a game that he and Belghast played at Pax South called Stories: The Path of Destinies and how it is a good game in spite of largely being overlooked because of the horrible title.  Belghast goes into a discussion of the “Sherpa” culture in Destiny and how it shapes player’s actions in random groups. Kodra talks about Eterna the logical successor to Folding, which strives to solve the medical problem of properly sequencing RNA… and at the same time being a good puzzle game.  We get into a length discussion about level design constructs and what makes a universally good design.  Finally we delve into the topic mentioned last week, as we try and decide if there are more good Star Wars games than bad ones.  We also get into a discussion about what the best Star Wars story was.

Topics Discussed:

  • Stories: Path of Destinies
  • Sherpa Culture in Destny
  • Eterna
  • Level Design Constructs
  • Good Star Wars Games
  • Best Star Wars Story

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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AggroChat #103 – Reboot Done Right

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Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen celebrate two years of AggroChat and discuss more games!

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This past week marked the second anniversary of the AggroChat podcast.  For two years we have been coming together every week to discuss whatever we happened to be playing.  So this is a great time to thank you our listeners for putting up with our rambling.  We still very much feel like we don’t know what we are doing, but keep doing it anyway.  This week we discuss the Overwatch Beta weekend that finally some of us managed to get into.  Belghast contrasts his experiences in Overwatch with the Doom multiplayer weekend as well.  Grace talks about the Wildstar Faction changes and how they are essentially the worst of both worlds.  Ash and Bel talk about the Ratchet and Clank reboot, and how this is the way that all reboots should work.  Kodra has continued to dig further into the world of Dark Souls and has some thoughts about it as it relates to learning Raid Boss encounters.  We all get sidetracked on a discussion about good movie ports, and how we probably need to have an entire show about good Star Wars video games versus bad ones.  Finally we wrap things up more or less with a lengthy discussion about how important it is to like the way your character looks in a game.

Show Topics

  • Overwatch Beta Weekend
  • Doom Multiplayer
  • Wildstar Cross Faction Letdown
  • Ratchet and Clank Reboot
  • Good Movie Ports
  • Dark Souls
  • Importance of Looking Good in Games

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Chipping a tiny hole in the faction wall

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The first dev connect for WildStar has ended and the results are in. Here’s what Pappy has to say about the changes coming for factions in WildStar:

  1. We will be dropping the Content Finder faction barrier.
  2. We will be allowing players of both factions to communicate openly with each other. There will no longer be a faction filter in chat.
  3. The faction barrier for open world grouping, housing, social systems, and guilds (which includes Arena teams and Warparties) will stay in place for now.

Well that’s very disappointing. Depending on where you sit on the faction issue, you can find reason for complaint here, or reason for hope. My opinion is that I would have liked to see the faction wall go completely out the window. I want to be able to play with my friends on either faction without having to reroll a new character, and I want to be able to inhabit social spaces with them without restrictions. Unfortunately these changes do none of that. Let’s see what we are getting out of this.

1: Dropping the content finder faction barrier. I understand this choice. Queues can be long, and this will help shorten them. I do think it will feel incredibly weird to be randomly dropped into a group with the other faction but know that there’s no way to reconnect socially with those folks once the run is over (see point #3 below). It may feel a bit jarring to end up in a mixed group if you are a strong advocate of the faction wall, and it is almost made worse by the fact that there’s no lore or social context at all for this. Basically the only place in the game where mixed groups can happen is in a random group setting.

2: Removal of faction filter from chat. This is such a non-issue for me I don’t even know what to say about it. There’s been chat mods and even workarounds in the built-in systems that have allowed cross faction chat since launch. The people who really wanted this already have it, and the people really don’t want it are going to be annoyed at having it forced on them when they’ve chosen to avoid it up to now. It should make coordinating world boss groups easier at least since everyone will be able to understand each other.

3: No changes to open world grouping and social systems. Well shit. This is what I really was hoping for, and now it feels like xmas is canceled. I wanted changes that would let me play with my friends no matter what faction. I was hoping to be able to check out the other faction’s housing, or to convince my dommie friends to join my awesome guild. The housing thing especially frustrates me since it seems like it would be straightforward to add an “Exiles only” toggle to the housing settings to appease folks who don’t want dommies stepping on their lawns or in their private RP areas. Housing is such a bastion of community and creativity which absolutely does not follow strict faction, lore, or even genre restrictions, so it makes me sad to see it stay closed off.

I have spoken with some faction purist folks who are upset about these changes because they wanted the walls to stay in place as-is. I almost feel like this result is bad for both of us. For them, they can be randomly placed into groups with the opposite faction with no context and no way to avoid it. For me, the only faction crossover is happening in a place that I don’t spend any time, since I usually run group content with friends not random pugs. I really think opening up the social systems would have been much more preferable. Those who want to play with their friends or meet new ones while questing or grouping in the world could do so, while the faction purists could choose to keep their guilds and personal social spaces to one faction only. There would be no forced grouping with the other faction. I believe enough in the lore team of WildStar to give us interesting reasons why this could work, and I believe enough in the player base that they could continue to create social spaces and events that make them happy.

I hope that this is not the final word on this issue. These dev connects are an interesting way to gather feedback, but I hope there continues to be a dialog even after the decisions are made. One of WildStar’s greatest strengths is the way the devs interact with the players, long may this continue.

P.S. Don’t forget to check in on the new dev connect, they’re asking for feedback on race/class combos!


Chipping a tiny hole in the faction wall