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Shiphand Buddy Wrap-Up

August 27, 2015 by Grace

Blaugust 2015, Day 27

Time for the money

Whew! We made it through all seven shiphand missions! Time to relax and reap the profit. But first let’s hand out some awards:

Most fun: Fragment Zero

Murdering swarms of things is super satisfying, and it also comes with a healthy dose of jumping around in zero-g. Win-win!

Shortest / Best cash per minute: Infestation/M-13 close call

If I just want one or two quick runs Infestation is my go-to, but if I’m chain running I will always throw some M-13 into the mix just for variety. I find waiting around for the hull breach section in Infestation extra annoying if I’m running them back to back.

Most annoying: Gauntlet

I hate exploding splorg. If the point requirement was a little lower or the timer was a little more relaxed for that section it would be fine. It is otherwise a fairly fun place but I can’t enjoy it knowing how much I struggle trying to get gold.

Yep. Still really hate these guys.

Now for the best part of shiphands: making cash money. Sure, the daily quest rewards a little money which is nice, but really the market board and commodities exchange are your best friends. You’re guaranteed one imbuement-type item, which can sell from 5g to upwards of 1p. If you’ve managed to get gold the reward baggie can have some great stuff. Once you’ve collected the dyes and mounts for yourself, throw those extras on the market! Usually the decor doesn’t sell too well on the market, but they do vendor for 1-3 gold a piece so I don’t complain. The runes were my bread and butter for a while, but with F2P and the stat changes looming on the horizon the market has cooled off quite a bit. They will still sell, but prices are very low right now. You can also hold on to them and exchange them for runes of your choice when F2P arrives!

Ooooooh! Shiny new intro cinematics!

Speaking of F2P – I did get the opportunity to run a few shiphands on the PTR, and there are some changes to keep in mind. First and foremost, they’ve been renamed “shiphand expeditions” or just “expeditions” in the group finder. All of the older missions have gotten fancy new intro videos a la Fragment Zero, which is a fantastic change. Not so fantastic is the re-tuning of the difficulty. I went in with the most badass raid gear I could buy from the PTR vendor, and the enemies were still noticeably more difficult to kill than they are with my normal gear on the live servers. Supposedly this is still being tuned, so hopefully when the drop launches these will still be closer to the difficulty we’re all used to already. The other big difference is that the rewards are being toned down a bit. Currently running quick shiphands is one of the most profitable pastimes in the game, and that will be less true when these changes happen. I’m disappointed, since I’ve been making a tidy profit from these, but I understand why the devs think this change is needed. I’m looking forward to the F2P transition no matter what though!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. I really love the shiphand missions in WildStar for content that is bite-sized and great either solo or in a group. What are you waiting for? Check them out and let me know in the comments which one is your favorite!

On Heavy Rainfall

August 27, 2015 by Ashgar

Blaugust Post #22

This was supposed to be a post months ago, but it got written on paper and never typed up. I’ve since lost it.

Risk of rain is a mostly platformer with rogue-like elements. It’s (so far) my favorite example of such, although it’s quickly becoming a crowded genre (Spleunky, Rogue Legacy, and the recent Warlocks Vs. Shadows all qualify). I find Risk of Rain interesting largely because of the risk/reward mechanism of its time mechanic.

Drizzle

The primary goal of Risk of Rain is to get to the final level (which is always the UES Contact Light), beat the final boss, and leave the planet that you crashed on. This is accomplished by playing through a minimum of 5 other levels, finding and activating the teleporter in each level, and surviving through the wave of enemies that assault you when you do this. Enemies also spawn naturally over time, at a rate determined by what level you’re on, and how long you’ve been playing the current game. The largest difference in difficulty settings is how quickly this process occurs.

There are 12 characters, 11 of which must be unlocked, and 10 different stages, where which ones you visit are determined semi-randomly. Each of the first 4 levels will be one of 2 options, level 5 is always the Ancient Temple. After that, you can either start revisiting levels or move on to the end of the game. Along the way you will pick up a wide variety of items, mostly randomly determined. There are a few places to influence what items you get, as well as a really big way that you can eventually unlock.

Rainstorm

One of the more interesting things about Risk of rain to me is the character variety. You start off with just the commando, who is fairly decent, but I find somewhat boring. The thing is, starting out, you’re going to die on the first level. You’re going to die on the first level probably more than once. Despite this, you can be making progress toward unlocking the other characters. Beating the three boss options on level 1 will unlock the enforcer. Collecting enough drones will eventually get you the engineer. Enough monster logs will get you the huntress, but there aren’t actually enough monster types until you get to the second level(s) consistently.

Then there are the ones that you won’t unlock by chance. The Sniper requires that you beat the game once, and the Mercenary that you do it 5 times. There are also a few that you need to find, which requires that you a) get the right level, and b) get the version that has that character. HAN-D is a bit easier (in a manner of speaking) because he’s in the final stage, and will therefore always be there if you can get that far.

Monsoon

The other interesting thing is the item selection. The longer you spend on a stage, the more money you have to open chests and get items, but the harder the enemies will be, making for a generally enjoyable risk/reward mechanism. Some items are better for some characters than others: Acrid tends to kill things while they’re clumped up, so the item that causes enemies to explode on death is amazing. The command attacks extremely quickly, and so gets more out of items like the ukulele or missiles.

Recently artifacts were added, and these let you modify the game in some ways, which can make things easier or harder, depending. One in particular, Command, allows you to choose what items you get (within the bounds of rarity). Glass cuts your health to only 10%, but makes you do significantly more damage.

Co-op doesn’t use Steamworks, so it’s a little iffy. Even so, this is one of the best small indie games I’ve experienced. It goes on sale for very few dollars pretty often, so take a look.

Drag Experience

August 27, 2015 by Belghast

Youtube Gaming

The big buzz worthy thing that is happening right now is that Google is rolling out its Youtube Gaming platform. It proudly announces that finally there is a youtube for gamers! Which causes me to pause and ask… wasn’t YouTube already for gamers? At least 90% of the content that I watch on YouTube tends to be video game related so… I think it was doing a fine job before. What gets slightly lost in the marketing spin however is that they are now offering twitch like streaming services. Which in itself is a big confusing because I have had the ability to stream to YouTube for roughly a year now. There was even a page in my channel settings that explained how to connect OBS to the YouTube RTMP servers. I guess the big difference is that people are starting to actually use it. I played around a bit watching various folks streaming and there were a few issues. The biggest thing I kept running into was the stream was hitching periodically. It also seemed that people were confused and simply unprepared to field YouTube chat. Also it feels strange that when I interact with other people I show up as “Tales of the Aggronaut” which is my YouTube channel and not “Belghast”. I am wondering if this is a setting somewhere I can configure, but thusfar I have not found it. In fact there seems to be really limited configuration options for channels in the first place, which means… I sure hope you had your YouTube channel set up how you wanted it before the gaming site imports it!

On some level I find this all interesting, but mostly in passing. I’ve recently switched from attempting to make Hitbox a thing, to giving up and just using Twitch because I simply got more random viewers. I felt like Hitbox was the superior service in every way, because the most crucial thing for me is minimal delay between your stream and the channel chat. It becomes so awkward to try and hold a conversation with someone who happens to be watching your stream where there is a lengthy delay. Twitch recently put in functionality to help alleviate some of this, and it works… sometimes. In order for me to even consider switching to YouTube, there would have to be a set up similar to Hitbox where there was little to no delay. The problem being that what I am hearing in practice is that the chat delay is often longer than that of Twitch currently. I guess at some point I will swap the configuration in OBS and give it a test to see how precisely it works. The other thing that concerns me is that from what I understand your stream gets backed up to your YouTube channel regardless. I liked being able to pick and choose what I exported from Twitch, keeping my YouTube channel as a cleaner version of whatever I happened to stream. What are your thoughts so far if you have tried it or watched someone else streaming on it?

Drag Experience

When Diablo 3 2.0 was released the AggroChat folks played it quite a bit. For the most part all of us had characters in the level 60ish range… that is except for Kodra. Kodra had not really played much Diablo 3, but we knew that the game granted some extreme experience to folks being drug along with you. Over the course of a few play sessions we managed to catch him up, but it was an exceptionally fraught experience for him. Last night after our Final Fantasy XIV raid, my good friend Grace asked if I wanted to tag along as she farmed in Diablo. She would get bonus loot and I would be able to soak in the lions share of experience. During the course of an hour and a half I went from level 40 on my Crusader to level 70 gaining about 5 paragon levels after that. I got to experience first hand the sort of game play Kodra did, and I have to say I understand why it frustrated him. I would have leveled so much faster… if I could stay alive. Grace was farming Torment V which meant if anything even glanced in my direction I exploded in a violent eruption of giblets. I was simply playing a different game than what she was… which was more akin to dodgeball. Carefully trying to stay in the part of the screen where the mobs were not spawning, and dodging projectiles as they came in.

The resulting experience however was just silly. There was no point in ever repairing my completely broken body, because I was leveling out of my gear too fast for it to matter. Finally when I hit 70 I was able to piece together enough gear to be “passable”. The biggest problem is just how behind the curve you end up being when you finally hit the level cap. While I could survive damage for a bit, I lacked any semblance of gear to be able to actually do Torment V style damage. We did manage to encounter a few bugs that kept us from getting loot. The saddest of these occasions was when some treasure goblins died just out of bounds and I was able to watch a dozen legendary patterns rotting in a place I could not loot from. However we also completed a number of bounties, and from those I got plenty of patterns as well. This allowed me at the end of the night to craft a few legendaries and a green chest piece and get my gear at least to a point where I could function. I am super thankful for the speed run, because this gives me something to dink around with until the new season starts Friday. Right now the game plan is to start a Female Warrior, since I love Sonya so much in Heroes of the Storm. The crusader is awesome, but I am not sure if I want to duplicate that experience again so quickly.

#Blaugust Day 26: I’m a Rocker. I Rock Out

August 26, 2015 by Thalen

I've never thought of myself as particularly musically inclined. More generally I've never had a high opinion of my own creativity. As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that a lot of that is just my own insecurity. Everything I create tends to seem trite or derivative because I'm fully aware of what my inspirations were. There's also the fact that I tend to be more comfortable following established guidelines than having complete creative freedom. I think that's a lot of why I don't really have any difficulty with Blaugust, but the rest of the year my blog has tended to wither. I definitely lean more lawful than chaotic.

In any case, one of the game series I've been a big fan of for a while now is Rock Band (and Guitar Hero before it). I know it's not 'actually playing music' but it's a lot of fun, and I'm actually pretty good at it. I play guitar on Expert difficulty by default, and it's only the very hardest songs that give me any trouble.

#Blaugust Day 26: I'm a Rocker. I Rock Out

I'm lookin' at you, Steely Dan. You know what you did.

Rock Band 4 is on the way, coming out in just a couple months. It's only on the current generation of consoles though, so if I want it I'll have to finally break down and purchase either an XBox One, or a PS4. By default I lean toward the PS4; I'm much happier with PSN than XBox Live, and historically XBox exclusives tend to be shooters I'm not interested in anyway. But there's a catch. All of your purchased tracks for previous Rock Band games work with Rock Band 4, but only in the same console family. All of my tracks are on the 360. And that's a lot of tracks.

I had been extra torn about this because the other upcoming current gen game I actively want is Kingdom Hearts 3, which I had thought was going to be PS4 exclusive. Looking around however, it looks like it was announced on Xbox as well (though as a port from the PS4 version, so....). So it looks like I'll be getting an Xbox One. I don't know if it'll be right when Rock Band 4 comes out; I'll likely wait until around Christmas to see if I can find a good deal.