AggroChat

Anook Community Award

August 5, 2015July 29, 2015 by Belghast

Prepping for Blaugust

At this point we are getting super close to the launch of Blaugust, and the sign ups keep coming on the Nook. There is still time to sign up and be ready for the start of this exciting month. Also remember there is zero penalty this year for starting late and catching up. Last year my friend Tamrielo did something absolutely insane and wrote 31 really well formed posts in a 48 hour period. While I would never suggest anyone do something like that, it is absolutely possible to start a week late and make up the missed progress. Similarly I know folks will be attending Gamescom or Pax Prime during this month, so it is absolutely a good idea to stage the content ahead of time. For the WordPress users out there I highly suggest you check out their pretty excellent mobile app (iOS, Android) that gives you access to your blog on the go, and does a decent job of letting you compose a post on the go.

I tend to be a very pro WordPress person, but blogger is perfectly acceptible as well and while I have never used it there seems to be a mobile blogger client also (iOS, Android). The primary reason why I tend to suggest WordPress is just that there is a path between WordPress.com free hosted service, and moving to a WordPress.org installation on your own custom hosting. There are a number of guides out there to help this process along. What I like so much about this is the fact that it lets someone get their feet wet and decide if this blogging thing is for them… before plunking down the money it takes to rent space on a web host and purchase a domain. There are lots of people that never make the jump between COM to ORG, but it is nice that there is always that option if you want to do something with your blog that is not supported through the official channels. There are also guides for going from Blogger to WordPress, but they tend to be far less straight forward.

Anook Community Award

Last night something really cool happened, namely that Lonrem the tirelessly working community manager of Anook.com posted an excellent “best practices” document on the Blaugust Nook. If the document were not enough in helping people get the most out of their Anook experience… he also slipped a tidbit of information in down at the bottom. For a few weeks now we had been talking about Anook wanting to sponsor some sort of award. It was finally decided that the best way to have an Anook reward is to have the users of the website vote on their favorite posts. Here are the basics of this award posted straight from his document.

I’ll also announce here that Anook is going to support Blaugust with a special prize! I’m going to tally up the Hearts that each blog post gets for each blogger (Blaugger?) and award the top blog with a game code. I’m going to see if I can round up other prizes from some of our friends and partners as well, no promises there! This does give a bit of an incentive to post regularly, start on the first of August, but also to share the link to your blog on Anook! If you’ve got any questions, let me know!

This is really awesome to have our first “real” sponsor… because my pocket didn’t really count. Last year when I started this, I decided to host the challenge off of Anook because it is a network that I love. Lonrem singlehandedly won me over with his devotion, and the features basically keep me from ever having to build yet another custom SMF forum for anything. So I fly the Anook banner on my stream and mention it on every AggroChat just because I love the site. I am humbled that the site is returning some of that love and helping us get this challenge started in a bigger and better way this year. I’ve had an idea through this contest of creating a games of the week where I suggest a handful of free to play games that folks play, and then write about their experience to help get those creative juices flowing. While I might have been dreading the loss of my free time that Blaugust means… I am absolutely getting pumped about how much more “real” this whole thing feels for 2015.

Surprise Alex

It is not uncommon for me to log in to Final Fantasy XIV in the evening and hear the all too familiar chime of a group invite before the game has completely loaded. My guildies are used to ninjaing me into tanking all manner of things, and I assumed that it was yet another case of “daily expert”. So I accepted the invite without thinking much about it, and found myself shocked when I saw the Alexander loading screen. To make matters worse the ninja alex was turn 2, which is quite possibly the most frustrating thing for a tank to take on without having a second tank in there that they trust. The problem being that pugs like to stack all of the mobs together, which makes it impossible for the tanks to effectively hold aggro on them. What happens instead is that both tanks burn through all of their resources and the mobs spend the entire fight bouncing back and forth between them. This would be fine and good if it were safe for a single tank to take them on… problem being that in the later phases you have to try and carefully split the damage to even it out. All of the mobs on one tank is pretty much a certain wipe.

The positive of getting pulled into Alex like this however is that it took away my normal reluctance to such things, and as of last night I now have three of my four pieces of loot for the week. All that is left is Turn 1, and quite honestly it is the least stressful for me to pug. The tanks have clearly defined roles and for the most part they go fairly smoothly now that most people are pretty well geared. At this point for that final item I want either a chain which would instantly give me a belt, or a pedal… which would also instantly give me an item because I have a second one in my inventory. I have to say the way gearing works in Alex is a little maddening, but I feel that honestly it is their way of trying to delay people reaching level 190 geared. With Esoterics in place, I can’t really see going for say the Alexander chest piece since it takes getting a lucky roll four weeks in a row on Turn 4. My first Esoterics item of course will be the 200 weapon, because for a tank that is the single most useful upgrade. After that I will probably assess my weakest pieces and go after what I need the most… which is more than likely going to be my chest piece. Of course in the mean time Square could do what they seem to always do… and change up the game by taking away loot restrictions. That said I still think it is a little early in the patch for that to actually happen, and more than likely won’t be until 3.1.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Anook Community Award

Aggrochat Game of the Month: Astebreed

August 5, 2015July 28, 2015 by Tamrielo

We talked about Astebreed over the weekend on the podcast, but as per usual I wanted to put a few more thoughts here.

I’m awful at memorizing things, which I’ve talked about a bit before. It’s kept me out of a lot of bullet hell shooters, because those are entire games around memorizing patterns and executing the right evasive maneuvers to match the patterns. I don’t really have the patience or interest to play the same level tens or hundreds of times just to get the pattern down. I like Astebreed because, for the most part, it lets me come up with my own solutions for each boss pattern without forcing me to memorize a specific set of “the right” moves.

Playing Astebreed, however, got me thinking about raid bosses in MMOs. They’re often pattern-driven, and almost always require that I memorize the associated attacks and the appropriate (highly specific) reactions to them. I like them, though, whereas I tend not to like the memorization-heavy bullet hell genre. The conceptual gap there bothered me, and I’ve spent a few days mulling over why I like one but not the other.

The two obvious answers are that MMOs involve other people and that they also are much less demanding and punitive than bullet hell shooters. Both of these lessen the impact, but don’t change the core concept. That being said, there are a lot of things where I don’t like the ‘pure’ version but dearly love the dilutions– the JRPG is a really good example of this. Similarly, I never really liked Forza, but I enjoy both Burnout and Mariokart, both pretty heavy dilutions of the racing mechanic. Having other people playing along with me also makes the experience more fun, because I’m both able to help out my friends and get help from their cues– it isn’t always a binary fail state, and the experience itself is shared.

Another angle I looked at it from is my own approach to the game vis a vis classes. Avoiding deadly attack patterns is only half the boss fight; the other half is actually fighting the boss. I tend to play healers and specific types of damage classes. In the former case, there’s no set rotation; I’m reacting to the fight on the fly and (ideally) proactively inserting abilities as the situation changes. In the latter case, I tend to avoid rotation-based classes in favor of ones that focus more on reacting to the situation. A lot of my favorite classes have been ones that lean on situational adaptation (often priority systems) rather than straight rotations.

Astebreed also separates itself from other shooters I’ve played by focusing a lot more on offense than evasion. I’ve played a number of games where evasion is the key (Touhou, Ikaruga, etc) and where actually attacking enemies is something you kind of do on the side in between avoiding shots. In some cases, the primary attack is simply always on, further emphasizing how incidental actually attacking is. It’s not something I like a lot, even in the other bullet hell shooter I’ve played recently– Sine Mora. Sine Mora is a Vita title that gives you a slow time effect, letting you slow everything down while moving at the same rate. It’s great for getting out of tight places or figuring out how to evade, and let me get away with less memorization throughout the game (probably why I beat it), but it didn’t really let me focus on offense over defense the way I like.

I’ll admit I’m tempted to pick up Astebreed on PS4 despite playing it already– a lot of my frustration with the game (as you likely heard or will hear in the podcast) was from a feeling that I was fighting the controls. Without that, I probably would have done a lot better, and there’s likely a whole rant about intuitive control schemes with the PC version of Astebreed as a catalyst, but that’s not for today.

Hope you enjoyed the podcast! At some point today the PS4 release of Sword Art Online: RE: Hollow Fragment is dropping, which I’m really excited about. I talked about it a bit before, as I played the Vita version, but honestly the retranslation is a huge draw for me. We’ll see!

Source: Digital Initiative
Aggrochat Game of the Month: Astebreed

In Praise of Dominion Housing

August 5, 2015July 28, 2015 by Grace

This “Cozy” Cassian House is huge!

You all know I’m an Exile at heart. I mean if you can’t be a space zombie, are you really living? Not that being a space zombie is exactly living in the technical sense, but you know what I mean. Anyway even though I’m a loyal Mordesh I do have a Dominion alt. I want to see how the story differs on the other side, and I especially wanted to be able to visit Dommie friends and check out their houses! Between visiting and poking around at my own house I came to a terrible realization: the Dommies have way better housing options, especially to start out with.

I’m not sure I want to live in something a Chua built.

The cozy Draken house reminds me a lot of the Granok version. It has weird curvy wall and lots of vertical space to play with. The Chua one requires some planning to use most effectively, since it is basically just a tall cylinder. I found some great ones that made them into warm, inviting, multi-story libraries though!

The real gem is the Cozy Cassian House, pictured at the top of this post, which is far too roomy to be truly “cozy.” I spent several minutes trying to get a good screenshot of just how spacious this thing is on the inside, but nothing I did could truly do it justice. I suspect this starter house has more space to work with than some of the “Spacious” houses. Most notably, it is a normal house shape, without a lot of weird little nooks and crannies, so you can partition it off in tons of different ways. I have mine divided into 3 floors and they still feel very open. I suspect you could get as many as 5 stories out of this thing if you really wanted to. The spacious version is even bigger, but like all the spacious houses it is divided up into a few rooms by default, so you have a bit less control over how the finished space will look.

I know that if you could purchase the opposite faction’s houses from the cash shop when WildStar goes free to play this fall I would probably be eager and willing to fork over some cash to get access to these houses. And the default music is pretty great too!

As a postscript, I’d like to announce that I will be participating in this year’s Blaugust event. Prepare to be amazed as my posting goes from “lackadaisical” to “forced march” as I try to meet the challenge of a daily post for the month of August. Wish me luck!

Source: Moonshine Mansion
In Praise of Dominion Housing

Muscle Memory

August 5, 2015July 28, 2015 by Belghast

Unexpected Happenings

There is a specific moment in my time playing Final Fantasy XIV where I realized that the Cactuar community was something special. It was the night that we purchased our Free Company house, and all of these neighbors showed up to welcome us to the neighborhood. Many of those folks welcoming us were from the Howling Moon free company, and over the months of playing I got used to seeing all of these people hanging out at the Marketboard right in front of our house. Among them the pair that I got closest with was Ayla and Joren Noye. There were many nights like this one where we did silly things to pass the time between queues. Then several months ago they disappeared, as did most of the people I had become close with from that Free Company. I asked around in the guild but no one seemed to know what happened. It is always hard when friends disappear that you are close with… but not yet close enough to exchange all of those personal details.

With Heavenward they were back as I had hoped, but started playing a little later than most. I guess over those months they had some personal stuff to deal with, but I was amped to have them back wandering around in our neighborhood. Since then at least once a night we exchanged random happy emotes and a flurry of /say conversation as we fiddled with our retainers. When I got the hint that maybe things were not as wonderful in their guild as they once were, I did the thing that I always do… offered them a home. I didn’t really expect them to take me up on the offer, but last night as I was starting my daily hunts… I got a tell out of the blue from Joren. He told me that things just weren’t the same, and if it was still okay he would like to take my offer. Needless to say I was absolutely thrilled and delayed a guild dungeon run until they were ready for the invites. I cannot put into words just how excited I am to have them on board, we may even have to reconvene the council of squishy hats to celebrate.

Muscle Memory

This morning I happened to randomly click through to a re-tweeted blog post from DragonChasers about SkyForge. On it was a comment from the blogger Jeromai that struck a bit of a chord with me, because I am absolutely the sort of person that would frustrate him.

You know what’s really frustrating to me? People who can do it (whatever it is), but cannot describe or break down or teach exactly -how- they are doing it, beyond “I dunno, I just do it” or “here, just watch a video of me doing it,” or worse, “lol, it wuz easy, I don’t know how come you can’t do it.”

To me, folks who really know what they’re doing can also break down and explain roughly what they’re doing or the tactics they’re using or what they’re keeping track of, even if execution by someone else requires a lot of personal practice.

Sometimes people say that they don’t really know how to explain it, because they don’t want to explain it. For me personally I quite literally cannot explain how I do half of the things I do. Essentially I try and commit as much of the things that I do to muscle memory as I can, so that I can do them… without thinking about them. So when I tank an instance… I do so many little things that I can’t really break apart the things that I am doing automatically… from the things that I am doing intentionally. I’ve always been a player that played mostly on instinct and reflex rather than mindful reflection on strategy. I think this all comes from why I play games. Ultimately they are a means of relaxation for me, and many times I find myself zoning out into the sublime motion of playing the game without really having to think about it. This has strengths and weaknesses, and the big problem that I run into particularly is when I have to unlearn my reflexes and replace them with something else.

For example on the Titan Extreme fight in Final Fantasy XIV there is a place where I absolutely have to ignore every instinct I have built up and stop myself from running back into the boss after an attack. I struggled with that for our first attempts, because I had to commit an exception to the rule to muscle memory knowing that there would be a follow up attack that would kill me if I ran right back in. The other big weakness is there are so many things that I do on a daily basis that I cannot tell you step by step what I am doing unless I happen to be sitting at the keyboard and doing them. At work I am awesome at fixing problems and troubleshooting things… but I am horrible at trying to walk someone else through the process of doing all of these things. The positive is… once something has been committed to reflex it stays with you forever. I fired up F-Zero the other day for likely the first time in two decades… and I still knew every corner and place to use my booster on the tracks and easily got first place. Same goes for an MMO, I can sit down in front of a game that I have not played in years… and if I set the hot bars up the same way as i had them before I can return to playing the game like no time has passed.

The Final Stretch

My big accomplishment for the night is finally pushing across the line and dinging 59. I was able to replace the lance that I absolutely hated with this pretty cool one from the Ancient Library dungeon. This is the point where I realize that I have apparently not run the library as much as I thought I had. When it came to the level 57 gear, I had most of a set… and apparently do for just about every possible class I would care to level. The 59 gear however from Library, I have only a small smattering of pieces and next to nothing when it came to lancer gear. Thankfully I had squirreled away a set of High Quality 58 gear from the quests… since at that point I technically had better gear on my Warrior from running dungeons. That should more than get me through to 60 before really needing anything else gear wise. When I hit 60 I have waiting on me a 180 weapon, and a bunch of 170 and 160 pieces that should make up pretty much a full set.

My hope is that I will be able to leap frog to 170 the Alexander requirement pretty quickly. The thing I need to sort out in the meantime is how to do a better job of maintaining the Blood of the Dragon buff. The problem that I keep running into is that I will get thrown into a situation where I cannot safely get back to the boss in time to hit either a Fang and Claw proc or Wheeling Thrust. So my buff drops… and I have to wait whatever is left of the minute long recast time to throw the buff up again. I assume that once I hit 60, if there is a situation where I know Blood of the Dragon is about to fall… this is when I mix in a Gierskogul to spend the buff on an attack rather than let it fade completely. Remember the whole muscle memory thing from above? I had a previous rotation committed to that swap space… and now have to revise it. Given some time at 60 I will relearn what I need to do, because honestly I am not looking for the insanity of the optimal dragoon rotation… but instead looking for something that is “passable”. I don’t care if I beat our top dps… but I just want to make sure I am not the bottom of the pack either. I feel like I just don’t have enough of a competitive nature to ever be a truly successful dps player.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Muscle Memory