Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, and Tamrielo
Tonight we are down a bunch of people and Bel is sick so we have a bit of a chill show with a handful of topics. First up Bel talks a bit about his recent experience with the various Everquest Emulator server options. First he explores Project 1999 or the most old school and legit of projects allowing you to see just how brutal the game used to be. Realizing that was not for him he however explores EZ Everquest a server that takes a complete opposite approach and in theory turns the game into a Raiding RTS. From there we talk a bit about the impending localized release of Phantasy Star Online 2. Kodra experiences Sayonara Wild Hearts which we have talked a bit about before in the past. We get into a length discussion about the Pathfinder Game Mastery Guide which is effectively Dungeon Master School, teaching you the elements other than what it is like to follow a predescribed module. Bel gets into a discussion of the various streaming options and how GeForce Now differs from them, and the frustrations about Bethesda and Blizzard pulling out. This leads into a discussion about who is going to be the next Bioware, Bethesda or Blizzard… and we talk a bit about Larian and CD Project Red.
Last night I managed to get the credit roll for Wolcen and this comes after putting roughly 40 hours into the game. I did not exactly rush through and spent a lot of time wandering aimlessly. I believe I was level 42 when I finally pushed through past the final encounter. Monday night Grace and I were both at roughly the same spot and even though I was insanely sick last night I pushed through to see the end. I’m happy that I did because the very last encounter is a gigantic pain in the butt and we only managed to make it through because I was so damned tanky in the previous build. Any time Grace would go down I could pop juggernaut effectively making me invulnerable and use those frames to bring her back up.
In general I am pretty happy with the gameplay experience and its story. I am sure there will be some folks for whom it was a disappointment, but I would rank the story overall as better than Diablo. There are some interesting factions and some events that I didn’t fully expect. Then again there are other shocking turns that I absolutely did expect. The final battle didn’t play out quite like I had expected it, but did cover some of the story beats I was assuming it would. I am being purposefully vague for those who are not quite there as of yet. The three act structure is pretty solid and the levels themselves take enough time to get through that the feels like a substantial experience. I admit I pushed through the last little bit on Story Mode and the final fight was difficult event then, so I hate to see it on normal.
Throughout the course of the game Stormfall has getting progressively more and more destroyed by the onslaught on the primordial forces. When you finish the game, something has happened to Damaskas and after some back and forth the factions have decided that they need to appoint a new leader of Stormfall to oversee its revival. You are now playing what is called the Champion of Stormfall mode of the game where it largely focuses on running randomized content in order to gain “productivity” and resources in order to begin the slow process of unlocking a ton of new systems.
In some ways it feels like you are suddenly thrust into a seemingly good version of the World of Warcraft Garrison system. Through choosing projects you can unlock additional skill slots, extra pips of stamina, permanent discounts on vendors and all manner of other systems that have not existed prior to the moment you pushed into the end game. This is ultimately your gold sink for the late game and gives you a purpose for running repeatable content over and over. Now this isn’t going to be for everyone, but so far I am digging what I have seen of it.
So far you seem to have two methods of grinding out productivity. The first is through running expeditions, which are a series of dungeons that block you from returning back to town. At the end of each floor you have the option of exiting the dungeon and going back into town or continuing on to the next floor. There also appears to be a vendor at the end of each sequence allowing you to do some selling of loot because I was tossing away whites to loot yellows throughout the entire run. This seems interesting but also seems like it is going to be a large time sink as well. You can reroll the modifiers trying to get a run with extreme gold find for example or some sort of specific bonus.
The other option is to run Mandates from what appears to be a quest board. These are more straight forward dungeons with some sort of a loot reward that drops at the end. The good folks of Reddit have of course created a flowchart of how the various upgrades work that might be worth looking at to sort of plot your choice to the ones that you want to unlock first. During our play through Grace managed to find an insanely cool looking Two Handed Mace and I have been holding onto it waiting for me to finally hit 40, at which point I swapped from Sword and Board over to Two Handers. I finished out the story with my weird tanky build but last night I opted to respec everything.
My previous build sorta went after any talent that could in some small way make me have higher survival. This time around I have been way more cautious in my picks and am specifically targeting things that increase my damage while still adding a bit of resistance and health. I made a beeline to get the talent in the bottom left hand corner which takes away wisdom completely and makes it so that I passively generate rage instead. This makes a massive difference and now I really can finally be spinning almost the entire time. Right now I am sorta making my way across a bit of green in order to dive down into another red warrior block across the board from where I started.
So far it more or less seems to be working for me as I can just shred things now with blade storm. I am trying to start gemming in a manner that buffs frost damage since a large part of the raw damage of the weapon comes from that. Additionally it procs a freezing effect, so it is probably worth having that up as much as possible just for the crowd control aspect. I am nowhere near as tanky as I was before, and the big monsters can shred me pretty quickly. As a result I am going to have to play way more nimbly than I was before and making sure I don’t end up getting trapped in a corner I can’t dodge out of. So far… I think I am going to like the end game, but I guess after a week of it we will be able to determine that further in another post.
Anthem released roughly a year ago at this point. Technically it released on February 22nd and I am writing this on the 26th but for sake of argument a year has passed. I had so much hope going into the release of this game. I had hoped that maybe just maybe it would find a way of uniting my friends who love Destiny with my friends who love Warframe, because the game sorta felt like it shot down the middle of those two fandoms. The awesome thing is that for a brief while it did exactly that because it provided really fun Iron Man fantasy with some interesting quest design and writing representative of what Bioware can do.
The problem is that all of this ended pretty quickly once we entered the end game, which effectively was the same things we had been doing up until that point. At launch we had three strikes… the two you were introduced to early on during the story and one that effectively was the end mission to the game. The Sunken Cell was added in April of 2019, but ultimately the writing was already well on the wall at that point and I am not certain how much it actually added to its hemorrhaging player base. I stuck around for roughly two months of grinding my face against these “strikes” and doing a whole lot of open world exploration in an attempt to keep making my numbers go bigger.
I was an active part of the Discord and participated in friend exchanges through Origin which ended up with my filling my list with hundreds of names. However even taking that into account one year later the only person who has been on fairly recently is Jaedia. The core problem for me was them ratcheting down the drop rate of Legendary items, and sticking to a throwaway loot system like that of Diablo. Diablo is a game that is based on rapid iteration of loot for you to find the one item out of hundreds that works for your character build. Stingy Legendaries means when you finally do get one, it is more than likely trash… but you are going to keep using it because of the item level boost which feels awful. The fact that raids never materialized really drove clear that ultimately there wasn’t much of a point in maxing out your gear in the first place.
The truth is that this mornings post is spurred on by the fact that Bioware is offering an anniversary gift to players and I wanted to make sure anyone out there that still might care is aware. Effectively you have between February 25th and March 24th to log into the game and claim them. They will automagically show up in your vinyls and materials and represent 1 new Wrap for each available Javelin and a new material called Painted Metallic Flake. Other than that the fort has been redecorated from the winter holiday theme to that of a spring one with increased greenery and potted/hanging plants. Bioware is supposedly working on “Anthem Next” a complete rework of the game from the ground up and I hope they can somehow pull off a Destiny Taken King, Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn or a Diablo 3 loot 2.0.
Anthem was a really great tech demo, and I am hoping we can at some point see the game that it ultimately was meant to be. For the time being however you can keep playing the shambling corpse of a game and keep chasing the hopes of seeing lime green appear on your screen. The cataclysm events seem to largely be active at all times, which is probably a good call given that a game in desperate need of content probably should never be removing it. I’ve done a few of them and they are enjoyable enough, if you can actually find a party. The last several I have done however involved me and another player trying to complete them because we were never able to match make a third person. This all depresses me terribly and I hope that maybe just maybe we can see this game rise like a phoenix from its ashes some day.
Anthem released roughly a year ago at this point. Technically it released on February 22nd and I am writing this on the 26th but for sake of argument a year has passed. I had so much hope going into the release of this game. I had hoped that maybe just maybe it would find a way of uniting my friends who love Destiny with my friends who love Warframe, because the game sorta felt like it shot down the middle of those two fandoms. The awesome thing is that for a brief while it did exactly that because it provided really fun Iron Man fantasy with some interesting quest design and writing representative of what Bioware can do.
The problem is that all of this ended pretty quickly once we entered the end game, which effectively was the same things we had been doing up until that point. At launch we had three strikes… the two you were introduced to early on during the story and one that effectively was the end mission to the game. The Sunken Cell was added in April of 2019, but ultimately the writing was already well on the wall at that point and I am not certain how much it actually added to its hemorrhaging player base. I stuck around for roughly two months of grinding my face against these “strikes” and doing a whole lot of open world exploration in an attempt to keep making my numbers go bigger.
I was an active part of the Discord and participated in friend exchanges through Origin which ended up with my filling my list with hundreds of names. However even taking that into account one year later the only person who has been on fairly recently is Jaedia. The core problem for me was them ratcheting down the drop rate of Legendary items, and sticking to a throwaway loot system like that of Diablo. Diablo is a game that is based on rapid iteration of loot for you to find the one item out of hundreds that works for your character build. Stingy Legendaries means when you finally do get one, it is more than likely trash… but you are going to keep using it because of the item level boost which feels awful. The fact that raids never materialized really drove clear that ultimately there wasn’t much of a point in maxing out your gear in the first place.
The truth is that this mornings post is spurred on by the fact that Bioware is offering an anniversary gift to players and I wanted to make sure anyone out there that still might care is aware. Effectively you have between February 25th and March 24th to log into the game and claim them. They will automagically show up in your vinyls and materials and represent 1 new Wrap for each available Javelin and a new material called Painted Metallic Flake. Other than that the fort has been redecorated from the winter holiday theme to that of a spring one with increased greenery and potted/hanging plants. Bioware is supposedly working on “Anthem Next” a complete rework of the game from the ground up and I hope they can somehow pull off a Destiny Taken King, Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn or a Diablo 3 loot 2.0.
Anthem was a really great tech demo, and I am hoping we can at some point see the game that it ultimately was meant to be. For the time being however you can keep playing the shambling corpse of a game and keep chasing the hopes of seeing lime green appear on your screen. The cataclysm events seem to largely be active at all times, which is probably a good call given that a game in desperate need of content probably should never be removing it. I’ve done a few of them and they are enjoyable enough, if you can actually find a party. The last several I have done however involved me and another player trying to complete them because we were never able to match make a third person. This all depresses me terribly and I hope that maybe just maybe we can see this game rise like a phoenix from its ashes some day.
