Good Morning Folks. I’ve had a week, and as a result… I’ve missed several days of blogging. On Wednesday morning I had an issue come up that forced me to stop what I was doing and rush into the office physically to deal with it. Then yesterday from 7 am I was on a conference bridge for the entire morning dealing with a production rollout. In both cases… I could have probably blogged later in the day but the realities of the working world drained any desire to do so out of me. I spent last night hanging out on voice and doing nonsense in Guild Wars 2 and that helped quite a bit. I also spent about 30 minutes on voice with Ace venting about various work related stuff on both of our sides, and that probably helped more. The only problem with not blogging for several days is time gets somewhat squishy in my head as to what happened when and in what sequence.
If my memory is correct, Tuesday I hit the credit roll for the main story of Destiny rising, which means that I have officially entered the endgame. The story was pretty freaking great and in truth much better than all of the core stories in both Destiny 1 and Destiny 2. Destiny was a game series with a lot of really interesting lore, but if you were not willing to watch a literal 10 hour long Destiny Lore video from Byf.… you were going to not understand 90% of it. Both games were exceptionally bad at explaining the world and telling a coherent story, and Destiny Rising is not. Sure it starts out a little twee at times as do most mobile games… it builds into something rather formidable and I legitimately look forward to the next content drop. This game is essentially a prequel happening in a slightly different universe… allowing them leverage to change whatever they need to change and I think this is a good thing. The speaker for example is a child in this version, which should give you a bit of a reference for how many years before the original game this takes place. Guardians for example do not exist yet as a concept… there are just lightbearers and there is evidence than our character might become the official first Guardian.
Similarly the concept of the various orders of guardians, do not exist either. There are no Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks… even though characters largely follow those same templates in the way that they move. Wolf for example gets double jump as opposed to distinct flavors of boosted jumps that Titans or Warlocks get. A given character is a combination of an Element, two unique abilities, and a unique super that then gets combined with a fixed primary weapon and a fixed heavy weapon. This honestly creates some really unique templating of characters in that two characters with similar loadouts might feel completely different because they have unique abilities to go with those loadouts. I still play way more of Wolf the default character than I do any of the other heroes, but I have become fond of Kabr, and Xuan Wei. None of these are the “meta” which seems to revolve around the 5 star champions of Tan-2, Gwynn, and Jolder.
I do have Tan-2 and just pulled Jolder yesterday off the free banner, so I might actually start investing in that character a bit with my limited resources. That honestly becomes the challenge is that it is really cumbersome to swap characters at some point. I greatly prefer games like AFK Journey where you are buffing one entire class of characters, rather than investing in one specific champion to pour all of your daily resources into. I’ve not really encountered much in the way of things that Wolf cannot do… save for missions that specifically require precision damage to take down what are effectively this games version of break bars. I greatly prefer the Auto Rifle to pretty much every other weapon in the Destiny universe… and swapping to a champion like Jolder means giving that up as their combo is Submachine Gun, and Sword. I am hoping i can pick up Riskrunner which is my all time favorite of the exotic Submachine Guns.
There is a new banner available right now and on that banner are a couple of new characters… one of which I’ve pulled a few times with what available currency I had. Umeko is essentially the Destiny version of a Ninja. She fires off Shuriken and then has a finisher that is essentially a massive one. The loadout is Scout Rifle and Sniper Rifle, which makes her an almost purely ranged champion and one that feels more than a little bit squishy. I really need to have a precision champion that I am comfortable playing, but that is likely going to be Tan-2 instead since I have that 5 star champ who is very much on meta because he also comes with this games version of the well of light. It does not hurt that he also sort of looks like Sektor from Mortal Kombat which is its own coolness factor. After playing an Exo titan for years in both Destiny games, I am partial to Exos as a whole. I wish the game honestly would have allowed me to play one here for the Wolf character.
Right now the game seems to give you about 120 of the daily activity currency, and it costs 20 to run any of the individual activities. When you complete one there is the option of spending twice as much currency when you loot the chest to get twice as many rewards. This is pretty nice and allows you to really efficiently make some progress on farming whatever you need to farm. I’ve been targeting the activities that reward Mythic weapons and engrams as I am trying to collect the full set. The Mythic Weapon Engrams allow you to buy new copies of any mythic weapon you have already found, whereas the Mythic Choice engrams allow you to choose any weapon that can drop from a given activity. There are about a half dozen weapons that I have not seen yet, and it is likely just going to be random chance to come across those.
The game seems to really want me to play Kabr, because at this point I have gotten enough duplicates to slot 4 of his 6 talent points… which means before long I will have him maxed out. This does the whole Genshin thing where getting duplicates of a character gives you currency to spend on buffing that one character. Thankfully I enjoy Kabr quite a bit, because his barrier really takes the pressure off on several boss fights because you can safely stand behind it blocking onerous beam attacks and such. The pulse rifle is not exactly my favorite weapon, but I’ve always liked the Heavy Machinegun because it feels especially good during boss burn phases where you need to do a lot of damage to weak points from range. I am also really partial to the fact that he walks around with a shield all of the time… which is admittedly one of the reasons why I am wanting to invest in Jolder a bit, because she gets the Captain America shield throw.
I am having a lot of fun with Destiny Rising, and it seems especially poignant right now how good this game is… when so many players are exceptionally frustrated with how bad the latest content drop is in the mainline Destiny 2. There has already been talk from mainline content creators about swapping over to more of a Destiny Rising focus, and I feel like this is only going to accelerate that. It isn’t really often when a mobile port completely cannibalizes the player base… but I do wonder if we are going to see something similar play out with the Mobile version of Final Fantasy XIV. For now at least I am having a blast and am happy to reach the relaxing daily grind portion of the game. I like consistent grinds way more than I like pushing through story content. I think my brain is just wired that way.
In other news I am contemplating giving the next Diablo 4 season a spin. I’ve skipped the last few but given that I am mostly done with POE2 and Last Epoch and POE 3.28 will not drop until the end of October… there is a bit of a lull where I might as well give it a shot. There is another livestream coming up on the 16th and I think that is really going to seal whether or not I am going to give this a go. Supposedly they are taking a lot of the feedback from players into account and trying to improve things. The problem is… Blizzard is a massive ship and seems to take forever for it to turn and adjust to things. I have no clue what I am going to play. I’ve only ever really played Barbarians, Necromancers, and Spiritborn so I might give something else a shot. I really wish they had a Paladin/Crusader because that is the other traditional Diablo character that I really enjoy. Druid always looks cool, but it is a pain to level at start. That really is the problem with so many ARPG classes is that they feel bad for those first 20 levels… which makes it hard to keep pushing forward.
As far as weekend plans. I really need to start making a pile in the backyard so that I can contact the folks that we have used to haul stuff away in the past. There is just a bunch of shit that I need to get out of the garage so I can have some swap space to start putting up shelving units. I really need to free up space in the garage so it can be more organized… and so that I can be ready to put away all of the furniture in the backyard as the temps start to drop. I also really want to clear off the workbench out there so I can set up at a minimum a FDM printer. There have been so many cases lately where I just want one to build brackets and storage options.
The post The End is the Beginning appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. This morning I hope you will indulge me in a bit of a rant. I feel like it is time for the humble Wisdom scroll to go away… permanently. For those uninitiated into the world of Path of Exile, or ARPGs in general… any loot in the game that has affixes on it… aka Magic (Blue) quality or higher drops as unidentified. You cannot equip it until you have spent a piece of currency called the Wisdom scroll on it to reveal its statistics. In the beginning of the game this creates a subtle pressure of having to pick and choose which items you identify, because Wisdom Scrolls are a scarce resource. However you rapidly reach a point where this is just busywork. You either dedicate one inventory slot to a stack of wisdom scrolls so you can identify items out in the field, or you have a trip over to your stash so that you can perform the process of everything you decided to pick up… before often chucking the items anyway because they were not actually that good in the first place.
We can blame this trend on Diablo, and creation of the Scroll/Tome of Identify. Since Path of Exile was essentially a giant love letter to Diablo 2 specifically… we got the wisdom scroll and also the teleportation scroll. I feel like it is way past time for both of these concepts to die. I get that there is something interesting about picking up an item and taking the risk that it might be useful… but we don’t play games in the same way that we played Diablo 2. You might clear a level and find two or three items that are even of the right type for the character you are building. In that scenario it is not that big of a deal to chuck it in your inventory in the hopes that it might actually be good. The opportunity cost of the Identification scroll is minimal, especially given that players are already used to sacrificing inventory grid real estate for charms. It is quaint and anachronistic… but still something I would consider to be poor game design.
However when you consider what loot looks like in Path of Exile it becomes less forgiving. I am already running fairly strict loot filters and still see lots of items that are potentially good… but most likely vendor trash. The GGG team has said countless times that they want loot on the ground to matter. However so long as we cannot see the stats that roll on the item… I am never going to pick up that random Imperial Skean that is sitting there on the left side of the screen… even though it is entirely possible it could have rolled with +2 to skills, and two Damage Over Time Multipliers making it far better than anything I am currently using. It was generated… cost processing cycles to do so… and is effectively dead on arrival because it is not worth the time to pick it up and identify it in the vague hope that maybe it might be useful. Instead as players we chase currency drops that we can then use to buy ideally rolled items from other players, when those items might have been rotting on the ground all along.
The thing is… even Grinding Gear Games knows this is bad design. They have all but removed the Wisdom Scroll from Path of Exile II and have entirely removed the concept of a Teleportation Scroll. Essentially they matter briefly in early Act 1, until you unlock and NPC called The Hooded One. Once you have done that.. you are never going to pick up another Wisdom Scroll or manually identify an item ever again. You can click on the NPC, choose Identify Items and it will unmask an entire inventory full of stuff. Diablo III for example still had unidentified items… but they just required you to click on them in your inventory… and by the time Diablo IV rolled around everything drops identified. Last Epoch has no concept of unidentified items and allows us to fully filter items based on the quality of what dropped… and is a much better game for doing so.
Why did I write an entire article complaining about this common practice? Not sure honestly. You can do something a million times and then one time it feels like it is a bridge too far. It mostly started as me mourning not having an NPC that would identify all of my items for me that Path of Exile II has. Then became a little stab of frustration every single time I had to click on a scroll. I only picked up this Full Wyvernscale because it is a good base and I am trying to grab some level 85 bases for Kodra to craft on. I did not expect it to be a good item, and were I mapping for myself… it is highly unlikely that I would have picked it up. Most uniques I completely ignore unless I know that it is something that might have value, or it is something like in this case that I have not picked up yet this league for the unique tab. It just feels like it is time for this practice to die.
Maybe it had a reason for existing… like for example maybe loot was not treated as itemized until you unidentified it in Diablo and as such required less memory as it was simply a stub. I know this is not the case in Path of Exile because attributes are assigned to the item regardless if it is hidden by identification or not. There have been exploits in the past that allowed people to see what the stats were on an item before using a wisdom scroll on it. This made it super risky to buy any item from another player that had not been identified. Mostly I just feel like it is time for this entire construct within the genre to die in a fire.
The post Wisdom Scrolls Need to Die appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks. I did not end up blogging yesterday because the morning just sort of got away from me. On Monday I talked about my adventures in Pohx League 2.0 with the Atlas Invasion ruleset. Immediately following that post… I rolled a character in Sir Gog’s league which is using a Softcore Ruleset based on the Gauntlet event. Initially my goal was to run up a Commander and do another attempt at Volcanic Fissure of Snaking. I didn’t get that far and am instead some sort of one handed mace sunder build… leaning into fire damage with the goal of at some point farming up the right main attack gem. One of the fellow league participants dumped a bunch of random uniques on me in early act 1… one of which was a Lead Sprinkler which essentially caused me to shift focus to building around that. Truth be told I have something akin to a functional build going, and after a bit of respeccing away from the early bleed iteration it is getting more functional. I do know that I will pretty much NEVER again level using Rolling Magma when I could be using Ground Slam and Crushing Fist any time I block something. The optimal slam tree is close enough to the Righteous Fire tree that I am just going to stop muling an Templar and roll with it going forward, because I really hate Rolling Magma.
I get why someone might like the Gauntlet ruleset, because there are a bunch of shocking changes to the flow of the game. For example it took me three deaths to get off the beach because Hillock was supported by The Maven, had a new leapslam attack, and summoned zombies. I decided to side with “Definitely Oak” here for the extra life, but I am sure that fight is pretty different considering that the other two most certainly were. On some level it is a bit fun to see how ridiculous this event was, but also… it feels like I am just grinding my way through the rough spots by throwing my body at it over and over until the monster falls down. A lot of the Act bosses specifically feel more cheap than they are interesting… I have no clue how in the hell a melee players on hardcore did the Vaal Oversoul for example. Looking back at actual gauntlet footage, a lot of players seemed to be playing cheap builds designed to oneshot encounters from a safe distance. Basically yesterday I decided that as I entered Act 5… that I wasn’t really having any fun. The novelty had warn off and all I was left with was friction… and I’ve never been a “frustration for frustrations” sake type gamer.
I could always roll back to Pohx’s Atlas Invasion league where I am progressed to the point of maps… but honestly… for a limited event with only three weeks left I am just not sure how much effort I am willing to put out there. Settlers of Kalguur specifically is starting to wear very thin. I’ve played the original league, Necro Settlers league, Pohx League 1.0, the Legacy of Phrecia Event, Pohx League 2.0, and Sir Gog’s Gauntlet league. During Phrecia I even pushed all the way to level 100 with my Righteous Fire Scavenger. I just feel like I have done this song and dance too many times to really find much joy in it. Sure it was exciting and refreshing to return to Path of Exile over the weekend… but once I cleared the campaign and got used to the new reality of map bosses in every map… the fun sort of drained away. I feel like I am going through a weird funk right now where I am struggling to find a permanent source of enjoyment. This could be because I have a bunch of real world things going on that are beating me down… but that is all the more reason why I need my diversionary tactics to keep me sane.
I had an absolute blast in Last Epoch, but similarly arrived at a point where I felt like I “beat” the game. There are a whole slew of alternate characters that I could run up and gear… but I am not exactly drawn to doing that right now. I made it further this league than I ever have before… and in large part that is due to the fact that the Judgement build is so freaking broken. I’ve cleared the Harbingers, gotten to 400ish corruption comfortably, and taken down normal Aberroth. I have no real drive to keep grinding away to the point where I could start farming Uber Aberroth. Basically I know what I would need and it either comes from being exceptionally lucky… or diligently trying the same content over and over. I spent a bit of time early in the evening yesterday running Monolith Echoes and they are still a lot of fun in the moment to moment game play, but I am struggling to find anything that really scratches that meaningful progression itch in the game right now.
Last week Path of Exile II released a pretty significant patch that in large part solved some of the loot problems that were happening with the game. I’ve been back and played a few maps and there does in fact appear to be way more loot dropping than had previously been. The challenge there is that adding more loot does not really fix the problems with that game. The moment to moment game play still feels pretty awful, and like I am wading into a pool filled with oatmeal. Yes I can clear entire screens by leaping into a pack of mobs and then hitting Boneshatter which gets amplified by Herald of Ash. Sure that works… but the whole delay and sluggishness of movement makes it feel sort of awful. That same type of build in Path of Exile 1 would feel phenomenal. Everything feels like it is locked behind animation cycles that feel awful to wait on. All of the most popular builds right now are largely focused around exploiting some bug that is currently in the game to cause a single attack to either wipe the entire screen or delete a boss in second. I just do not care enough about the game to shift to building one of those builds right now. So essentially… there is no fun left there either.
There is also a new Diablo IV season going on right now, so in my search for joy… I rolled a character with the idea of playing the whirlwind build that I never quite created during any of the other leagues. I recently resolved my performance issues that I had with the game and others… because at some point windows had decided to set my virtual memory to my slowest drive. Even though the game feels fresh and snappy compared to previous leagues… I am just not feeling it. Diablo IV gameplay is so samey, and it feels like the ideal method for leveling is to run from zone to zone chasing these new invasion events… where players will straight up oneshot everything before you can touch them. Playing a Barbarian was probably the wrong call because I am constantly starved for rage right now, since I am not getting the initial hit on things that are being nuked from orbit by random ranged players. This game would be infinitely more enjoyable if there were no other players in the world. Had they not tried to retrofit Diablo into the MMORPG model… there might have been a really enjoyable game there. I want the ability to play with my friends when I am in the mood to do so… but every other instance of other players in my games is a net loss. Which is ironic… because in games like Guild Wars 2… I love the existence of random players.
So ultimately last night I went in a totally different direction and left behind the ARPG games that have fueled me for the last five or six years. I’ve heard amazing things about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and fired it up yesterday. This game is phenomenal and I have only really just played through the prologue. I am not the biggest fan of quick time events in my combat… but am playing on the lowest difficulty setting as to avoid as much of the annoyance as I can. I would be far happier if this were truly just turn based combat instead of playing “press your luck” to avoid damage. However all of that said… the game world, the characters, the set design… all make up for those frustrations. I already want to know what the heck is going on in this world. It is also shocking how damned good this game looks for coming from what seems to be a really small studio with many of the folks having this as their first game release. I’m already hooked and really like the characters so far.
So I guess this is what I am going to be playing… at least until it too stops bringing me joy. Fun is a deeply ephemeral thing, because all of the above should in theory be fun for me. However for some reason my brain is wired in a specific manner so that very little is really hitting in the right ways.
The post Fun is Ephemeral appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. One of the long running themes of this blog is how much I like the concept of reoccurring posts. Another running theme is how bad I am at actually following through with them. One of these series was “Regularly Playing” where in theory I update the sidebar of my blog with the current crops of games that I am playing on the regular that then show my account information when you mouse over them so folks can find me if they so choose. The general idea is that you have a list of games that you are likely to hear information about advertised on the front page… even though we all know that I tend to fixate on a single game for weeks at a time before jumping to the next one. However behind the scenes I am flipping back and forth between games as my mood hits me.
The core problem with this is… my updates in this series tend to happen way less often. The idea was to have a monthly roundup of things that I was playing but what it ends up being instead is a semi-yearly truing up of the sidebar. For example my last update in this series was June 27th of 2024… when I acted as though I would now make it a regularly feature of the blog again. We can all see that this did not happen. Before that the last update was during the great blur in October of 2022. This is funny given that at least part of my claim to fame is being a consistent blogger. Anyways… I am not making any false promises here but I did think it was far past time to crank out one of these posts and to more importantly update the damned sidebar.
Traditionally these posts have been broken down into four categories:
To Those Remaining – The games that I am still actively playing or at least expect to be playing within the month.
To The New and Returning – The games that I am either dusting off and revisiting or are brand new experiences that I am enjoying.
To Those Departing – The games that I am finally removing from the list for one reason or another.
Ships Passing in the Night – Games that I don’t expect to regularly play but I spent some time with over the month and enjoyed enough to talk about.
Some of these categories only really make sense if I am doing this on the regular, but we are going to attempt to make one of these happen regardless.
To Those Remaining
Diablo IV – PC
After being very frustrated with the launch state of Diablo IV in 2023, it has honestly turned in to a pretty decent game. This has more or less taken the place of Diablo III as being that short term game that I am happy to play for a week or two before finishing everything up that I want to finish and moving on with my life. It also has some of the easiest group game play out there, and while it lacks the depth of Path of Exile it is a fun time to be had with my friend Ace as we tackle the seasonal journey. I am not saying this is a phenomenal game, but it is far from “bad” at this point and is honestly pretty damned great if you are interested in some super chill ARPG fun. That is not to say that the game does not have problems… all of which can be chalked up to the shitty design practices of Blizzard. Ace and I have a joke about Blizzard design philosophy. They give you this super sweet kitten that is loving and adorable… but it has permanent explosive diarrhea. They have some really cool ideas, but they always come with some shitty downside to them.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC
Being brutally honest… were it not for the fact that I own a home on Cactuar… and extremely hard world to get housing on… and had lost said home from not logging in previously… I would likely not be actively playing Final Fantasy XIV. I am very much in the mindset of playing Final Fantasy XIV during an expansion… and then at the end of an expansion right before the release of the next expansion. The rest of the time I am just paying yearly rent for the privilege of home ownership. I know this is dumb, and I know that I should stop doing this… but I keep doing it anyway. I think my mind might just be broken when it comes to the traditional MMORPG gameplay model. I enjoy them when I enjoy them… but struggle each time to get reconnected and back into the normal rhythms of logging in daily and treating it as my only game. I also really hate gearing… which is weird given that used to be one of my favorite aspects of playing MMORPG expansions.
Guild Wars 2 – PC
Guild Wars 2 on the other hand… is designed in a way that makes me love it. It has way more of an ARPG design aesthetic and it is so easy to drop in and participate in some epic feeling content… and then tag out without letting anyone down. I love large world group content and I love doing things like WVW where I can just blend in with the crowd and not have to give a shit about human connections. For me it is largely a solo game… that just happens to have lots of friendly and helpful people also playing it. Everything about the design model for this game rewards players for doing the right thing and stopping to rez players or help them out. When you see other players doing something, it is always a positive and a force multiplier. The long tailed grinds also give you projects to focus on when you want to play more seriously. Right now with the way my mind works, this is hands down the best MMORPG.
Last Epoch – PC
Last Epoch is going to be the best ARPG on the market at some point. This is just a fact. It has the best class design, and the best itemization and crafting already. What it lacks is endgame content, but given how solid the foundation is it is only a matter of time before they gather up enough to make this game into a proper rival of Path of Exile. Ten years down the line we will be thinking about EHG and Last Epoch in the same manner that we do about GGG and Path of Exile. I am extremely excited for the upcoming Season 2 launch on April 2nd, and with it a focus on more endgame content as well as a bunch of interesting crafting options. It looks like this is going to be landing in a lull in other games, but I would give up a Path of Exile league start to play this next season. If you have read this blog for the last few years you would know what a bold statement that is for me, given that I practically play every single league and event that comes out for Path of Exile.
Path of Exile – PC
For years when someone has asked me what my favorite video game is, I have always answered Castlevania: Symphony of the Night without missing a beat. While I still love that game with all of my heart, I have to admit the true answer is Path of Exile. I started taking this game seriously in 2019 and since then it has effectively dominated this blog for months at a time. During that time I have dedicated over 250 posts to this game and will likely keep doing so each time new content releases. It is a very hard hill to crest, and getting engaged in the game is going to take a lot of effort and research… but once you finally reach a point of comfort with it the endgame potential is limitless. Each new league also radically shakes up the game and changes how you need to interact with the character building process. I’m easily over 4000 hours into the game… and still feel like a beginner at times. There are almost no games on the market with the level of depth that Path of Exile offers.
To The New and Returning
AFK Journey – Android
One of the things that I am trying to do with this post is be a bit more honest about the games that I am playing. I almost never talk about mobile games on this blog. I think the only ones that I have actually ever really talked about at length are Pokemon Go and Dragalia Lost… the later of which is no longer even in operation. I had more or less stopped playing mobile games because my old Razer Phone 2 was performing so poorly that it almost was not worth it. However when I swapped to my OnePlus 12R, it opened back up the world of mobile games and I started adding them into my pre-sleep rotation. Essentially every night for the last year I have played a little bit of AFK Journey and find it an extremely enjoyable daily activity. I am not a big spender when it comes to games like this, but I have given them a few bucks here or there namely if there is a cool looking costume on their $7 pseudo-battlepass system. Essentially I level up my characters and play a round of all of the various battle modes and whatever events happen to be going on and when sleep claims me put it away for another day.
Monster Hunter Wilds – PC
I know this game has only recently come out, but playing it has made me remember all of the things I loved about Monster Hunter Worlds and how much it dominated my life for a point in time. There are around 150 blog posts that I have made over my time playing that game, and I can already tell that this is going to be a regular rotation for me for awhile. At a minimum I want to get geared up so I can start participating in the event quests as they get released, because Monster Hunter games have some wild collabs and some interesting cosmetic gear to collect. Now that I am in High Rank I am getting back into the swing of finding my own fun in the game and setting my own goals rather than following the main story quest. This is honestly my preferred method of playing and I am glad I am past the forced section of the game. I’m just about to HR 20 and looking forward to collecting the REAL version of the Arkveld armor that I am wearing in the above image.
Path of Exile II – PC
I had so many hopes for Path of Exile II, and honestly… it satisfied almost none of them. I am not actively playing this game but I know with the impending release of 0.2.0 I will give it another spin to see how much I want to keep playing it for the long run. Recently returning to Path of Exile 1 though… has made me realize just how lacking Path of Exile II actually is. Right now there is a battle for the soul of this game happening and depending on how it goes… will ultimately determine if I write this off in the long run. Right now the core game feels like a sluggish mess for anyone not playing one of four builds that are actually functioning pretty well. Even those builds take specific gear and a lot of levels to really make them feel phenomenal. Grinding Gear Games needs to do some real soul searching with this one and determine what sort of game they want it to be. If it is a cumbersome souls-like experience, then I am out. If they improve the leveling experience, add some decent movement abilities, and fix the endgame… then maybe it is going to be a great experience. I am thankful however that they split this game from Path of Exile because at least that game is largely in a great state.
Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket – Android
I will be honest. I am the wrong generation for Pokemon in general. I played Pokemon Blue a few years after it came out on a Gameboy emulator but did not play another game until Pokemon X and Y released. I watched my fair share of the Pokemon cartoon because it was playing while I was getting ready for work. I played some of the early WOTC version of the Pokemon TCG, but only because it was released by WOTC and briefly popular with the MTG community before the kiddies invaded the card shops. I am too old to really be in the core audience for Pokemon. However I do like opening card packs, and have a basic understanding of the card game mechanics. Essentially every night I open a few packs of cards as part of my nightly mobile gaming routine. I occasionally play some hands of the game against the NPC opponents. Calling this a game for me… is questionable. I am not going to spend money on virtual packs, but I do like opening virtual shiny cards every so often… but it will never mean quite as much as if something like this existed for Magic the Gathering that was mostly just a pack opening simulator. If Arena gave me two five card packs each day… I would probably be playing that.
To Those Departing
Diablo III – PC
This one hurts a little bit to admit, but I think I am mostly done with Diablo III. With the release of Diablo IV, this game went into true maintenance mode. There will be no new seasonal mechanics coming out, and since the launch of Diablo IV they have simply been rotating through previous seasons. Diablo IV is finally in a state where playing it mostly feels like playing a fancier version of Diablo III, and as such has completely replaced the niche that this game filled for me. Instead of Ace and I getting together for D3 season launches, it is now D4 seasons. This game will always hold a very special place in my heart, and I am sure every so often I will fire it up again just to revisit it… but there are just better ARPG experiences out there. I am sorry my old friend, but it is time we officially parted and I stop pretending that I am every going to truly play you with the same vigor again.
Fallout 76 – PC
I really love this game, but just have not really been in the mood to play it. I am not sure when I uninstalled it… but prior to that I was only logging in to collect daily freebies. I would absolutely play this again in the future, but never really got into the seasonal loop of this game. I also never leveled anything all the way to the upper levels to be able to participate in the “reindeer games”. I deeply respect the game that this has become, and were I playing on console I would probably be way more into it than I am. However given the choice between mindless grinding in Path of Exile and mindless leveling in Fallout 76… I just always chose Path of Exile. If I had a regular group of friends to play with, it would probably be different but this as a solo experience is not near as exciting. If the AggroChat crew started playing again I would likely happily reinstall and join in the nonsense.
World of Warcraft – PC
Like I said for Final Fantasy XIV… I am just not in the right mindset for playing MMORPGs these days. I enjoyed playing through Dragonflight, but it never really caught my attention as anything other than playing through the Main Story Quest. I loved Pandaria Remix, and when the next one of those type events drop I will probably be back immediately. I attempted to play War Within but never made it out of the first zone. I have all of the social reasons in the world to be playing this game as some of my oldest gaming friends are happily playing it… but for whatever reason it just doesn’t scratch the itch anymore. That is not to say that World of Warcraft is probably in the best state it has ever been since at least Legion, if not Wrath of the Lich King. It really is peak Warcraft, but I think I have just outgrown it. When I think fondly of this game I think about specific people and a specific point in time when it was the center of my world… not the actual game itself.
Wrapping Up
I would love to tell you that it won’t be another year before I sit down to write one of these posts. I am still very much an ARPG gamer and will probably continue to cycle through whatever active season/league happens to be going in between Diablo IV, Last Epoch, Path of Exile, and Path of Exile II. I also find myself with way more affinity for games that are ARPG-adjacent like Guild Wars 2 and now Monster Hunter Wilds. The drop in nature and largely single player focuses progression really hits the spot for me, and will probably continuing doing so for a long while. I marvel that there was an era when I used to raid three or four nights each week and arranged my schedule happily around the schedules of others. I miss playing with other people regularly, but I think I might just be too far gone to ever adapt to doing it again. I am an old gamer that has become very set in my ways at this point.
I hope you all are having a great week and have a good weekend ahead of you. For me… I plan on spending most of it in Monster Hunter Wilds and hope to catch up with some of my friends and do some hunts together.
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