Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, and Tamrielo
We have a pretty small group this week as we are down a Kodra, Ammo, and Thalen for various assorted reasons. We start off the show with Tam talking about Viewfinder a bit which winds its way to Bel talking about the coin pusher indie Clockwork Owl. Grace has been playing a lot of XVI and we talk about the Giant Kaiju Battles that take place when two Eikons fight. Bel got into the Palia beta this week and he talks a bit about what feels like Stardew Valley the MMO. Many of us stopped playing whatever we were playing this week with the launch of Baldur’s Gate III, so we spend a bit talking about that game in largely general terms. This leads to a discussion of JRPGs and CRPGs and how they are generally telling stories in very different ways. We close out with a few topics and Bel shares that he no longer has concerns about Path of Exile II.
Good Morning Folks! This is me doing a Saturday post, which is not exactly something that I do often. However this month we have Blaugust running and I thought that just maybe for once I would try and hit 31 posts in my own damned event. In truth, the only day that I don’t normally post is Saturday given that I make weekly normal blog posts, and on Sundays, I advertise the podcast episode. So that really means I am only trying to squeeze a few more blog posts in total to hit 31 so I might as well actually make that happen. I figured that I would start off the first of these and talk a bit about what has garnered the majority of my attention for the past two days… Baldur’s Gate 3. This is a game that I have technically owned since 2020, but have avoided doing much with because I did not want to spoil the experience. I get that probably does not make a whole lot of sense, but I am a huge fan of Larian Studios and I viewed my purchase of Early Access as a way of helping fund the development. It turns out that faith was rewarded as all of the early access holders got access to the digital deluxe version free.
The original Baldur’s Gate was a heck of a lot of fun, but I will be honest it wasn’t really until Icewind Dale was released that I began ravenously devouring these games. So when Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn I was well enough indoctrinated into the series to be hyped and ready to go on launch day. Playing Baldur’s Gate III, over the last few nights has felt like my memories of Baldur’s Gate II. What I mean by that is that I have been transported back in time to an era when I could just meld with the game and become hopelessly engrossed in it. I’ve experienced “time loss” like I have not in years where I sit down thinking I am only playing for a few minutes, and I look up and three hours have passed. I mean this in the best way possible, and while it took me a bit to get used to the slower pace of a real-time-action game… now that I am engaged I am fully engaged.
I’m not going to dive too deeply into the story, that will probably come for a much later blog post. For character options, I decided to keep it simple and went with a Barbarian. I opted to go for an entertainer background which gave me performance and acrobatics, both of which have already come in handy. For the race I decided to follow my heart and go with a Dwarf and given the Ithilid roots of this game, I opted to go with Duergar. So far I am pretty happy with all of my choices save for maybe the voice I went with. To be truthful, none of the voice actors really felt like a Duergar should feel. Thankfully most of the time I am a silent protagonist, but there is a bit of a mental disconnect whenever I say anything.
For the most part, I like all of the characters. If you told me this was a Bioware game I would have believed you, because I already care about my little party of misfits. Like we really are a “bad ideas” party, but I am enjoying adjusting to the nonsense and I am glad I am able to be zero shocked when someone reveals more awful things that they are dealing with. It does feel a bit weird that in a party of “chosen ones” I seem to keep being set up as the “most chosen” of them all. The only character I am sus about is Lae’zel but mostly because she is a bit aggro all the time. I run around with her mostly because apart from me she is the strongest hitter.
I like Gale an awful lot, but he has this weird uncanny resemblance to a young Mel Gibson. I have to see it every time I play the game so now you do too. All things told though while I don’t normally like “finger wigglers” as I call them… he is pretty cool for a magic user. Like he has his own “bad ideas” traits about him, but he reminds me a bit of my love of Dorian from Dragon Age Inquisition. Shadowheart is probably my favorite, but truthfully… were Shadowheart introduced differently I probably would have hated the character. I have this thing against the “does not trust you” characters… so I could see Shadowheart reading as a “Corso Riggs” if I was not already inherently wired to want to help her because I saved her from a pod.
All told I am about ten hours into the game and still have yet to replace the weapon I got from the tutorial. Admittedly there are a lot of people who probably did not get that weapon, and I only did so because I happened to read a bit specifically stating that I should. Right now my party comp is Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and Gale and I am not sure if I completely missed getting Wyll. I’ve done some research as to where to find him, but I never seemed to bump into him in that area of the game. I do wonder if I screwed that up and am completely unable to get him now. I need to backtrack a bit and roam around the area just to make sure I did not miss something.
Anyways greatly enjoy the game, and will very likely be mainlining this at least until the launch of the Path of Exile Ancestor’s League on the 18th. I hope yall are having a most excellent weekend. It is raining this morning, which we desperately need because it hit 107 the other day… which is just not fun.
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Good Morning Folks! August is turning out to be exceptionally busy with me doing some build testing ahead of the 3.22 League in Path of Exile, the Launch of Baldurs Gate 3, and in the midst of all of this I finally got my email inviting me to Palia. For those who have not been following this game, it has been billed in the media as coming from former Blizzard and Riot employees, but frankly… given the colossal turnover at both companies, you would be hard-pressed to point at ANY game without being able to say that. It does have a graphical style that reminds me of an amalgam of World of Warcraft, Wildstar, and Free Realms.
What the game promises is an interesting concept, a hangout MMO without combat. What this feels like in practice is Stardew Valley the MMORPG. More than that I also get Landmark vibes when it comes to hunting down rare resources, and even a bit of Animal Crossing. Essentially you are teleported to this world and given an instanced plot of land and some resources to be able to harvest and craft your way into making it a home.
The character creation system is “aggressively fine” but that opinion might be coming from the fact that I also created my character in Baldur’s Gate 3 within a few hours of each other… and that creation system is phenomenal. My key complaint is the lack of beards, which is often a complaint I have with various games. However one of my friends came to the rescue to inform me that this is on the roadmap. Other than being clean-shaven, I was able to create a reasonable facsimile of “Belghast” as I often appear in various games. I would never wear skinny jeans, but I am going to blame some non-GenX artists for that one as they were the most non-descript black pants option I had. I assume over time more clothing options will open up. It would also be cool to have some different body options given that I am a very large man and I would absolutely give my avatar a belly.
Just like in StarDew Valley you are given an area of the map that is littered with volunteer trees, stones, assorted collectibles, and the remnants of a broken down fence and housing foundation. My OCD required that I harvest EVERYTHING within the boundary of my fence line. So now I also have a bulging storage shed filled with basic resources, which should hold me for a little bit when it comes to crafting.
The initial objectives were to build a tent, a workbench, and a storage bin and then the game sent me into town to meet a bunch of town folk. This in turn gave me a whole slew of other objectives. I’ve also learned how to hunt and fish. Hunting… I am extremely bad at it as it involves trying to slowly fire a bow as woodland creatures scurry around the map. Fishing… I got the hang of it pretty quickly once I figured out that I needed to move my mouse from side to side to keep up with the bobber. I’ve yet to learn how to actually go to sleep, or even if I need to but I have a way larger than I expected tent filled with nothing at the moment.
The game is charming as heck and I look forward to watching as it progresses. It definitely fills that Stardew Valley with friends vibe, and I want to see what grouping up while harvesting does. Landmark used to have this mode where if you grouped up and then gathered resources, everyone in the party got a copy of everything that was looted. I could see something like that going really well here. I would also love to see this game implement some sort of large-town project system. In Horizon/Istaria, there were these massive crafting projects that involved building bridges to new areas or building out towns, that essentially required the entire community to pool resources. This sort of experience would fit this game especially given that there is no combat.
I figure most everyone that is interested in this game has already signed up, but if you have not… please feel free to use my Referal Code. As far as I know, it does nothing to expedite your access to the beta but does give me sweet stuff for signing people up, and I believe you get a care package when you first log into the game. I know I had stuff waiting on me from the code I got from Scopique when I finally got access yesterday. All in all, this looks like a really cool game to watch as it develops into a chill game for nights when you just can’t handle anything too terribly complex. I am of course Belghast in thegame, so feel free to friend me if you are already there.
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Good Morning Friends! We are going to go on a bit of a journey. I’m very much in Path of Exile mode with the new league starting some 16 days from now. I have been playing around with various build ideas and trying out new things. This also means I am consuming a lot of content which in turn causes the YouTube algorithm to dredge up even more of it for me to watch. Trade is an extremely important part of Path of Exile, whether or not you want to admit it. If you are playing without access to the trade market, you are absolutely playing on the hardest difficulty settings. Solo-Self-Found is absolutely a game mode, but it is also one that expects you to know quite a bit about the even more obtuse crafting system in order to fix your resistances and craft your own gear. I feel strongly enough about this that I took the time to cobble together a rather detailed dissection of a trade encounter in an attempt to demystify the process.
Then I stumbled onto this video from All-Trades Jack who has been going on his own journey through this game much like I have over the last few years. He has an excellent video talking about the merits of following a guide which I highly recommend watching. Essentially he reached the point that I did two leagues ago, where I finally was willing to engage with the Trade system. He honestly talks about many of the very sane and reasonable objections that I also had. Trade in Path of Exile is needlessly cumbersome and it requires a human element to the trades that I have not dealt with since Everquest and setting up a trader in the Nexus. It should be as simple as putting items in a publicly flagged trade stash tab and then allowing players to purchase those items through an in-game auction house. However two leagues into wrapping my head around the trade economy… it works the way it works for a reason.
One of the core problems with an Auction House system is that it often allows for arbitrage, or essentially buying cheap goods and then selling for a profit margin. This is ultimately how the real-world stock market works, so it makes sense that players will figure out ways to carry over this same logic into a video game. In World of Warcraft, this has led to an arms race over the years of Auction House tools and changes to the way that the Auction House worked, in order to try and throttle the equivalent of “fast trading”. Essentially in an Arbitrage system, there is essentially an invisible broker sitting in the middle of a trade always making sure that prices trend upwards. This is an oversimplification because I don’t tend to engage in “economic pvp” as some call it. I know it works and I have a mount in Classic WoW entirely thanks to the fact that my friend Stargrace is extremely skilled at playing a market and looking for opportunities.
This is not me passing judgment on the system, but just saying that it isn’t really my jam. World of Warcraft specifically has systems in place to help limit the impact of runaway arbitrage. When you use an item, it often binds to your character meaning that you cannot then turn around and sell it after using it. When the game launched bags were not bound to the character, and as a result the bag cartel became one of the most rampant marketplaces. I remember getting very threatening messages when I crafted my first Mooncloth Bag and dared to price it cheaper than all of the other bags on the market. From Burning Crusade and beyond, all bags were set to bind to the character on equipment. BOE as a system is likely largely a result of the trade economy that WoW Devs were all too familiar with in Everquest where all of the gear was tradeable effectively forever. Nothing was ever truly removing gear from the economy because I could use the same Lamentation for 50 levels, and then trade it off to the next person when I got an upgrade.
Path of Exile is similar to the original days of Everquest in that almost everything in the game is freely tradeable between your characters or any other player in the game. This allows for some really interesting decisions where I can take maps with modifiers that I cannot personally run, but sell them to players who have builds capable of running them. I can also take every piece of gear that I find and sell it to any other player, or even when I decide I am done with a character use those items to fund my next character. It is an economy begging to be set ablaze by arbitrage, and there are in fact discords devoted to buying items in bulk for the purpose of flipping them. However, this is not something that the game itself supports, and by default, trade seems to be purposefully cumbersome and requires several human touchpoints in order to stop rampant flipping.
It might be Stockholm syndrome, but I have reached a place of acceptance that All-Trades Jack has yet to arrive at. I accept that the cumbersome nature of trade, and the inconvenience of needing to stop what I am doing in order to sell an item… is a fair tradeoff for having the ability to find reasonably priced items for the vast majority of the league life span. We are currently at the end of a league and the trade market is a bit tight, but my reasonably priced items are going like hotcakes as a result. I will say that the inconvenience factor has changed what I am willing to sell. I am no longer going to personally list 1 Chaos items because frankly, it isn’t worth my time to stop doing whatever I happen to be doing to pop into my hideout to complete that trade. In Sanctum my bulk bin was 1 Chaos, in Crucible my cheapest sell price was 5 Chaos… and going into the next league I fully expect the lowest price I am willing to sell at will be 10 Chaos.
While my personal price point has trickled up, it is not that I am charging more for individual items… it is just that I am only selling better quality items. There are enough dedicated traders out there who are more than happy to take on smaller trades to make sure those 1 Chaos uniques are in plentiful supply. I’ve basically figured out a way that I can live with the system. Would I like it all to be automated and require zero human interaction? Absolutely. However, I am not sure if I would like the ramifications of that system. I get the impression that Grinding Gear Games does not want their trade economy to devolve into a flippers paradise. I feel like they would like to reward players for going out and doing content and then selling the items that they find in the wild. Much of why I never really engaged with the Auction House market in World of Warcraft, is that it felt like it was stacked against the folks going out and doing the content.
Anyways I’ve made my peace with the system. I’ve tried to release content both in written and video form in an attempt to demystify it. There will still be folks who want nothing to do with the system, and at least among my circle of friends I am always willing to interact with trade for them when they are looking for something specific. Last league, I had a bag slot that had currency belonging to Thalen for example, and when he wanted something he would just send me the trade site link and I would snatch it up for him. I’ve reached the point where I am comfortable enough navigating the system that I don’t mind doing it for others. I’ve yet to touch the bulk trading options like TFT, but at some point, I could see myself dipping my toes into that market for no reason other than to get rid of some of my vault clutter. That said I keep buying new tabs in the guild bank so I can start sharing excess things like maps, because after a point I am generating them faster than I can run them.
Anyways! I doubt All-Trades Jack will ever read this… but I figured I would at least share my thoughts on the matter.
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