I R Blogger

Gosh, where to begin? Between holidays and going into quasi-hermit mode for a little bit, I haven't posted in a while. Let's remedy that, shall we? What have I been up to?

Gaming-wise, I've mostly been playing Warframe for the past couple months; the game of being a space-ninja in space. It continues to entertain, mostly when enough of us are on together to do group content. There are daily sorties that consist of three missions of escalating difficulty which are decidedly tuned for a full group, and we've been having fun with those occasionally. They can get pretty rough at times, particularly since the missions have additional modifiers applied to them, such as being limited to a single weapon type, or all the enemies having improved armor or added elemental damage, etc.

We're ninjas on the moon, we carry a harpoon.

I've also been playing Stardew Valley a good bit. It's a very entertaining Harvest Moon / Animal Crossing style game where you farm, fish, fight monsters in an abandoned mine, befriend townsfolk and so forth. It's got that 'one more turn' aspect that can keep you playing far longer than you ever intended to. My first spring has just ended and summer has begun, and I've spent about half of what I've earned so far on summer crops. The rest is earmarked for a chicken coop once I can catch the carpenter lady at home to hire her.

It's simple yet, but it's mine.

I haven't been devoting as much time to reading recently as I should, but currently I'm working on Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh (who will be named a Grandmaster by the SFWA in May). She's an author I've been aware of for quite some time, and have always intended to read, but this is only the second book of hers I've read. I'm enjoying it so far. I've read a few other books over the past few months; I haven't decided yet if I'm going to post about them, or skip to the current book. Once I finish this book, I've got a copy of REAMDE waiting for me. Getting through that in a week's time might be a bit difficult, so having some previous books to talk about could be useful.

Finally, I've been re-inventorying my comic book collection and getting it recorded at a site that I started using recently, League of Comic Geeks. I discovered it initially via their app, which is excellent for organizing my weekly pull list, and have decided it's an easier site to record new comics than the one I was using. Also it's free, which is a big plus. I've recorded just over 5000 comics in it so far, which is about a third of my collection. This is one of a few things that I've been needing to do as part of the overall 'clean up my office so it doesn't look like a hoarder lives in it' plan. So far it's going well.

AggroChat #99 – Faction Walls and Robots

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen suffer some technical difficulties and sound like robots.

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This week we suffered some setbacks.  Firstly we were late getting started by about an hour, and then once we started…  we kinda mostly sounded like robots.  We muscled through for this week but hopefully by next week we will have acquired a new infrastructure for recording the show that sounds better.  The worst part is however…. the conversation this week was really interesting.  We dug int the whole Faction Wall question currently happening in Wildstar and how we generally as a group feel like games are better without them.  We also delved into everyones continued addiction to Stardew Valley.  Ended up being a fairly short show as far as AggroChat episodes goes, but a pretty content dense one.

 

AggroChat #98 – Sociopath or Savior?

Tonight Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen talk about a lot of games, and get into a moral debate about the world of The Division.

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This evening we had a pretty strange show as far as subjects go.  It feels like we can never just talk about how much we like this or that game without delving into deeper subjects.  First up we talk Stardew Valley and how it has seemed to take the internet by a storm… or at least most of our social circles.  Next up we talk The Division and instead of getting into a discussion about what we liked about it…. we ended up getting into a discussion about the morality of dispatching extrajudicial executions.  Eventually we do however get into a thread about the things we really enjoy about the game.  We also talk a bit about the bad news of the week relating to the cancellation of Everquest Next and the severe layoffs at Carbine for Wildstar.  This spawns a discussion about MMOs in general and their viability for the future.  Finally we talk about the new Flamestrike event going on in Infinity allowing players to participate in a larger campaign through the internet.

Topics Discussed:

  • Stardew Valley
  • The Division
  • Wildstar News
  • Everquest Next
  • Infinity Flamestrike

 

AggroChat #97 – Fallacy of Early Access

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Thalen talk about a bunch of things including the pitfalls of Early Access.

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Tonight we ended up recording a pretty strange episode as far as our normal AggroChat episodes go.  We talked about the weirdness that happens when you play a game that requires a very special controller, and that manufacturers future is up in the air.  We delve into the feeling of rehashing old content, and when exactly that stops being fun.  That leads into a lengthy discussion about the pitfalls of Early Access… and gives us the title of this episode.  Belghast talks a bit about his experiences with the Master of Orion reboot early access, and Kodra talks about the newish trend of persistent board games as he and some friends start Kingdom Death.

Topics

  • Master of Orion Reboot
  • Warframe Patch
  • Custom Controllers in Games
  • Rehashing Old Content
  • Pitfalls of Early Access
  • Persistent Board Games
  • Kingdom Death