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Overwatch Frustrations

October 29, 2015 by Belghast

Overwatch Hype

On Tuesday October 27th Blizzard opened the doors of Closed Beta for it’s highly anticipated shooter called Overwatch. As you might expect, the internet as a whole quickly lost their shit and reverted to a state of chain refreshing the battle.net account page to see if they were among the lucky few to get granted access. What I did not expect however was all of the infighting this process called as folks essentially called down a pox on the house of those who did manage to get in. It is one thing to be frustrated that you did not get into whatever the hot new Beta happens to be, but it is an entirely different to wish harm upon those who did. There were even a few folks who decided to flail about declaring that their not getting into Beta shows how little Blizzard cares. Others talk about how they should have earned access with this or that deed. At first I thought to myself… are we really this entitled? Because seriously… there have been some serious entitlement issues going on over the last few days.

Then I noticed something else happening that disturbs me even more. For those mere mortals like myself that do not make a living off gaming… then absolutely it would be entitlement. However for the folks that make a living through creating content related to Blizzard games… I started to read this impotently lashing out… as cold hard fear. When you make your money by presenting the freshest content on your Stream or your YouTube channel… you are in essence relying on being able to play whatever everyone else is playing. Not having access means you are missing out on all of these eyeballs that are now suddenly flocking to the internet to gaze into the window at those chosen few who get to play whatever game they want to play. Right or wrong… Blizzard is essentially saying who is really important to the future of their product and who is not.

The Hunt for Eyeballs

I am a shitty Streamer and an even worse YouTuber… but the most eyeballs I have ever had on my collective “stuff” is when I happened to get into the first wave of Alpha invites to Trove. I got to be one of a handful of people playing around with that game, and broadcasting it to the world and it was really noticeable. It is 6:30 in the morning right now… and one of the Overwatch streamers has over 10,000 viewers at this hour. During prime time… Overwatch has consistently been the highest watched game on the network. When you tune into one of these streams, especially the ones going on during the day… you will see a who’s who of internet celebrities fighting each other. Whether or not they intended it… Blizzard did essentially judge who was important to them and who was not by determining who got into that first wave of invites. That can be a pretty harsh reality check, especially if you have essentially devoted your career to supporting Blizzard products.

What worries me more however is what this says about the current state of video games in general. I remember how I felt the first time I got into a Friends and Family Alpha program… or FFA. I remember the excitement, and the desire to tell the entire world… but the reality that was I was bound behind a very serious Non Disclosure Agreement. I remember for one of these FFA programs I had to fax in a signed copy of a thirty page document back to the studio before being granted access. What made this work is that the company could literally focus on testing the game… rather than having to showcase it to the public 24/7. Sure it is frustrating to be in a thing that you cannot share… and sure it sucks for streamers especially to need to play something that they cannot show off to their viewers. However I think the model worked pretty damned well because up until these last few years it has been the model that almost all of the games you can think about nostalgically have been released under. It lets testing happen beyond the prying eyes of the public and bugs get fixed before it is ready for people to see it. The problem is… we the gamers have started to feel that there is something dishonest about this process… and that if a company isn’t completely transparent in every single minute action that they take… that it must be the sign of something horrible going on behind the scenes.

Marketing Cycle

The big problem is… we bore of games before they are released. There are games out there that seem to have permanent alpha and beta cycles, and as we go through seeing them displayed on our screens for two years… then the final release just seems lacking. There have been numerous times on AggroChat for example when someone brings up a title… and I have to ask “wait that actually released?”. There is this constant battle to control the hype cycle about a game, and make sure that your product is getting enough spin among the social media influencers. So when a game like Overwatch goes into one of these lengthy beta cycles… the company needs these streamers just as much as the streamers need the game to showcase to their viewers. They need those all important eyeballs peeping their wares… and getting excited enough to plunk down their hard earned money to purchase goods in it. The frustrating thing about it… is it feels like we are always in a hype cycle for something. It becomes much like the American Political system… where the candidates… or games in this case are always running for the next election. The market at this point is simply saturated with new titles that all sound interchangeable. MOBA with FPS roots… FPS with MOBA Character Styling… FPS gameplay MOBA spirit… the marketing spin that gets applied to games just seems meaningless after awhile.

Where I really start to get frustrated however is when this hype machine starts hurting people. Sure watching someone have an internet meltdown is entertaining while it goes on… but behind the screen is someone obviously in pain. I am not coming out to support those tantrums… but I am coming out to say that for all that is good and right in the world… lets stop hurting each other over a game. I have been just like you among those people frantically checking my battle.net account each time a new wave of invites comes out. So I get it… I get the desire to play that new shiny game. I’ve done this cycle over and over, and will continue doing this cycle until the games industry changes the way it works. Even if I want something really badly… I make it a goal in life to be excited for the people who are having good things happen to them… rather than being that selfish person who is lashing out at others because they got left out. I get the frustration and fear especially if you make your living from this sort of thing…. but having a meltdown in front of your followers isn’t going to help either. The truth is… we are eventually all going to get in… and the additional truth is… most of us will play a handful of games and then move on to the next shiny thing. This is not as important as we happen to be making it out right now… and within a years time… this will feel like another silly incident in the gaming community. What will stick around however… is how people feel about you and the way you have treated them. So lets just be awesome to each other while we wait for the next hype cycle to spin up.

Slight Progress

October 26, 2015 by Belghast

Titan Improves

This weekend once again was mostly a Destiny weekend for me, as I worked on both my Titan and my Hunter trying to slowly inch up their gear. On the Titan I hit a bit of a milestone, and finally pushed forward to get my light level… aka item level to 295. The funny thing about this is it seems to be a significant number, because I have noticed that a lot of things simply feel easier now. I spent a good bit of the weekend running the level 36 strikes, but as per Cortical’s suggestion I tried a few 20 strikes. The strange thing about them is… in some ways they seemed more difficult. At the very least the level 20 strikes seem to throw more cheap mobs at you, and I guess if you have really good AOE damage you can shred through them. Ironically I died far more often in the 20s than I normally do in the 36s so I think I am going to return to doing the slightly “harder” ones. I would rather have harder bosses and easier trash I guess. It also seems like once I hit 295 I started getting slightly better drops. I still have yet to see a single item over level 300, so I am not sure at all how I am going to bridge that gap.

I guess Nightfall would be the next big jump forward for me, but I have to say I am slightly gunshy. Heroic was maddening at times, and I am guessing there are lots of mobs in Nightfall that will straight up one shot you. It feels like to do those really well you need to know the placement of the mobs and predict every sniper or big gunner type mob to take them out quickly before they whittle down the party. The other side effect that I am really not digging is the way that the community seems to love to glitch out content rather than complete it. Most of the times I have been on the Restorative Mind map… something happens and the other two players disappear on me… only to end up with me getting teleported to the final boss room moments later. So there has to be some sort of shortcut that I am just not understanding, or some glitch somewhere that lets them bypass the gates. I guess I get the reason why Destiny “Sherpas” are a thing.

Hunter Viable

The progress I am happiest with however this weekend is that of the hunter. It seems like it was only a week or so ago that I was 285 on the Titan, and I have now reached that point on the hunter as well. I am still largely focused on Nightstalker, but I did pick up the Bladedancer helmet this week. I also picked up a chest engram and pulled a Crest of Alpha Lupi which works pretty well. I am also really really loving my Zarinaea-D Auto Rifle, that I got the first week Armsday orders were available to me. I’ve had a couple of these now but the one my hunter uses seems to be the best so far. I am running a combination of Partial Refunds, Rodeo, and High Calibur rounds on it… and it is a beast at taking down mobs in general. I also really really like the LD Watchdog sights on it. I’ve heard the Suros legendary auto rifle is the one to get,but so far I have had little to no luck pulling that one. I did manage to get a Villainy pulse rifle from Future War Cult faction package, but I have yet to really put it through the paces.

At some point this week I guess I am going to work on my Warlock. At this point I am only level 8 on him, and I don’t have a cheaty item that will zoom me to 25 this time. The early game is really somewhat bland… and while I have weapons for 20ish in my vault… I don’t have much stocked away to make the low levels go smoother. The only negative about boosting the hunter is that I had made essentially no progress on my classes, and had to basically start leveling from 25 on… with nothing much to rely on other than the basic super and basic grenade. At least on my Warlock I have a fair number of the abilities ready to go, and that at least should make things good more smoothly. I have this overwhelming desire to have one of each at high levels, and since I went Solar sword on the Titan, and Void sword on the Hunter… I guess that means I am going to go Arc sword on the Warlock and throw sonic booms. Largely I just like the idea of eventually being able to swap swords between them based on the need. I wish there was such a thing as a Legendary kiosk like there is the Exotic one… because man… there are certain Legendary weapons I wish I could have on every character.

Week In Gaming 10/25/2015

October 25, 2015 by Belghast

The Sickly Bel

This week was an odd one in that I managed to catch some flu-like chest crud. I felt pretty awful most of last weekend, and then struggled to exist Monday and ended up coming home halfway through Tuesday. I chained Wednesday as well, and found myself in that place where I wanted to play something… but anything seemed to require too much concentration. This was after all the week I had early access to Star Wars Fallen Empire, and I did exactly none of the content. I poked my head in a few times to attempt to play my Sith Sorcerer and failed miserably at it. I have a few comments to make about my experiences, but the majority of my gaming time was spent playing Destiny. Apparently that game is largely muscle memory, and I can play it without having to think too much about it.

SWTOR: Fallen Empire

As I said in the intro, this week was the early launch of Fallen Empire the massively game changing expansion for Star Wars the Old Republic… and I barely touched it. I did pop in enough to get sorted out how some of the new systems work. Namely the way companions now exist as being independent of the abilities they use. This means if you no longer have to deal with companions you cannot stand just because they fill the role you want. As a result I swapped to using Andronikos Revel on my Sorcerer, because he loves it when I shock the shit out of NPCs that are not giving me my way. Similarly I would probably never run with a companion that is not Vette on my Sith Warrior, or always run with Kira Carsen on my Jedi Guardian. There is seriously nothing cooler than running around with Kira and feeling like a Jedi strike force, and having her also be a healer… just icing on the cake. As you can tell this is a super important change for me, and I am damned happy to see it go in.

Other than that the other big change for me is the fact that the NPCs are actually labelled as to what type of quest they give you. For example in the above image you can clearly see that this NPC is going to give you the Belsavis planetary quest. This makes it easy to ignore things like the non-soloable heroic quests or flashpoint quests you are not quite ready for… to keep them from cluttering your logs. The other big thing that I noticed was the way that the level scaling works. It seems like when you land on a planet you are scaled to the maximum level for that area, somewhat like Final Fantasy XIV scales dungeons. This means you can overlevel content… but just barely making it a bit easier if you wait for awhile to do a quest rather than doing it when it is on level. However there is never a point where content ever becomes useless to you, which means you can easily go back and farm early content if you are struggling a bit to progress forward. The loss of 12x class experience however means that pretty much to stay current you are always going to have to do your class quests as well as the main planetary story arc. In any case I think the expansion content is going to be enjoyable… if I ever actually play it.

All-Saints Wake

I don’t have a lot to talk about when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV this week, but I did poke my head back in for a few hours. This week was the release of the All-Saints Wake event that serves as Halloween for the game. As we talked about last night, holidays in Final Fantasy XIV are largely the tale of incompetent villains and in this case it is a repeat appearance of the Impresario the mastermind behind the Continental Circus. Over the years we have learned that this is really a group of voidsent that are trying to cause mayhem each year, and we the player finds new ways to thwart them. As cute as the story line is… the reason why you do holidays in games is to get stuff. This year we get the purple outfit that my character is showing off above, a new Pumpkin Butler minion, and for the first time this year an actual mount. We get to ride around Eorzea on a flying broom… that actually does fly if you have unlocked flight in a given zone. The thing I love about Final Fantasy XIV holiday events is that they are adorable, provide awesome rewards… and end up taking only a few minutes to complete rather than being a grindy mess that brings out the worst in players. If you are subbed you should definitely check it out, because while the quest is more enjoyable if you have done the previous years… it is still fairly easy to follow without that ancestral knowledge.

Devilian

I have some issues with this game, but since I am now in alpha/beta/whatever phase it is and the NDA has dropped I thought I would talk a bit about it this morning. My number one issue is the gender locked classes and the fact that they have very specific styles to them. The Berserker is a guts clone, the Shadow Hunter is a bare chested Bishi-elven alucard like character, the Evoker is spilling out of her dress, and the Cannoneer is a Loli. Out of those options… there is exactly one I can stomach playing as, which is the Berserker. The thing is…. all of these design decisions unfortunately have nothing to do with Trion Worlds which is the company bringing the game to non-Korean markets. As fraught as the classes are… the game is actually rather enjoyable once you get past its slightly odd control scheme. By all looks it is a Diablo clone, but it controls vastly different… and honestly reminds me a bit more of the way skill shots in League of Legends feel. You use your mouse for character facing and then use your number keys to fire off abilities. You can bind an attack to your left mouse button, and I am probably going to do that with my basic attack to make it feel more Diablo-like. What I have seen of the combat is kinda interesting, and the dungeons are really enjoyable. I am just struggling to get past the art direction decisions, because honestly… they make me really sad. This could be a really great game, if it didn’t have gender locked classes and the art design did not seem to be from a thirteen year olds “tee hee hee boobs” mindset. It will be interesting to see if I am still piddling with it by the time the next beta comes around or if I have decided that the game is simply “not for me”.

Destiny

Week In Gaming 10/25/2015 — Magical glow of an Exotic Engram… only to be dashed moments later when you find out its a damned helmet.

This week has been almost entirely devoted to Destiny. As I said before this was the game that I could play without having to apply much thought to it. A good chunk of the week was spent working on my Hunter who is now I believe 270ish light level, and all of the way through the TKK content. I cheated a bit and jump started the character to level 25 using the item I got from purchasing the Taken King. I have to say if they want to sell something on the cash shop… I would absolutely buy a second one of these. Going from 25 to 40 was not that bad, but I am just not looking forward to taking my Warlock from 1-25 to get there. This week has also been the resurgence of my appreciation of Auto Rifles. I completely the third Gunsmith faction quest and it ended up giving me an exotic rifle called the Fabian Strategy. This thing is just a blast to use and I love the way it sounds and feels as I rip through mobs. This has also caused me to dust off the auto rifles I had in my vault and I found a few others that I really like, one of which my hunter is currently using.

The other key activity for this week has been running level 36 strikes in an effort to get exotic engrams with three of coins. I found out today that I could be just doing level 20s, but honestly I kinda enjoy the slight effort the 36s provide. They go so much quicker than the heroics, but don’t feel like I am simply steamrolling them in quite the way that the level 20s do. Essentially my pattern has been to run strikes using coins until I get an exotic, then take a break for a bit and do something else. I am also attempting to keep both characters up to date on bounties each day, and my regular farming runs on the dreadnought manage to pay off big time… as I had more than enough Hadium Flakes to get my Hunter his sword almost immediately. The big chore is still trying to increase my light levels, and the most 290 grind is extremely slow. That said it still feels enjoyable because I am seeing a ton of drops in the process. Even though half of the things are going to turn out to be something I cannot use… it still feels good to see drops. Its like the game is giving me hope… even though moments later it is just going to dash them once again when I find out the exotic is another damned helmet.

Week in Gaming 10/18/2015

October 18, 2015 by Belghast

One Track Mind

This week was quite literally… all about Destiny. We have a trio of myself, Damai, and Saldonas aka Carthuun that have been running around together quite a bit. Alternately I have been spending some time with Euron as well when we can manage to meet up, and both “actually” be on at the same time instead of afking for long periods of time and leaving our Playstation 4 on while connected to Destiny. Of note… if you do not exit out of Destiny before walking away, your PS4 will not fully go to sleep. I know I have frustrated many people on my friends list who tried to invite me to parties at all hours of the day… when I am not actually at my console. I have really been so into the PS4 this week that last night when we recorded the podcast, it was my first time on voice chat and really my PC since last Sunday. Anyways… on with the games!

Rift – Primal Urges

This week on a whim I decided to try and win one of the Wilds Packs being given away by Trion on their Twitter account. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time… and apparently choosing the right code to try. I opened the image that had six codes in it, and keyed it in quickly into my account and BAM… it gave me the Wilds Pack. I did not at first realize it but this was the big $100 pack of goodies, but the only negative so far is that it did not seem to give me ANY of the loyalty. Otherwise it would have pushed me from the Orange tier that I am currently on into the the Red. I put in a support ticket to ask, but my working theory is… that you get the loyalty for purchasing the pack, not for redeeming it. In any case I am more than happy to have a slew of free stuff including the new Primalist calling.

I have to say that mechanically it is really interesting. Instead of an energy or mana based mechanic, you have this push/pull mechanic that shifts your character between Fury and Cunning. Abilities that are scaled based on Fury push your bar closer to Cunning… and Cunning abilities push towards Fury. So you are constantly switching back and forth between the two stances and the gameplay feel reminds me quite a bit of the solar/lunar cycle of the old Boomkin. I say old Boomkin because I honestly have no clue if this push/pull thing is still in that class or not since I have not played one since Cataclysm. The calling itself is a leather wearing heavy weapon wielder, and so far I am digging it. As you can tell I shunned the tribal feel of the class and ended up making mine a steampunk dwarf. I’ve not really made it terribly far, but I have enjoyed the little bit I have played. I hope at some point soon I will devote a few days to getting really up close and personal with the calling.

Star Wars the Old Republic – Sith Happens

Last night during the podcast I returned to my Sith Inquisitor and am working on trying to finish it. I realize there is no way now that I will finish ALL of my classes before Tuesday, but I am at the end of Alderaan now and it seems like maybe if I can focus attention on it today I will be able to wrap this one up. I am still having a very love/hate relationship with the Sith Sorcerer. Namely I love that I can burn things down quickly with lightning, but hate how horrible of a healer I am if my companion ever seems to get into trouble. I switched from Khem Val to Treek and am enjoying that decision so far. Namely the big problem I run into is that my instinct is to burn harder as our health gets lower… and unlike my Scoundrel I cannot pull us out of quite the health deficit. So that means I really need to watch the companion health more closely and start healing sooner. As a result I end up dying quite a lot on this class, which just slows down the process. The storyline isn’t really “catching” me either… and I think largely the problem is I ended up choosing the finger-wiggler path instead of the melee path. Were I slashing things with my dual saber I would probably be enjoying this class significantly more. It does however give me a healing option Sith side… so I am just going to go with it for now and struggle through.

Destiny – Struggling for Exotics

I have reached the point in Destiny where those upgrades are no longer coming as quickly. I am now in the 290 light range and the engrams are being assholes to me. Right now the best source of gear seems to be doing Heroic Strikes, but our trio still struggles a bit with them. I realize that through running copious amounts of them that problem will solve itself. I also am frustrated by three of coins, which seem to be far less effective for me than others. It took me eight coins before I got my first exotic drop, and I am continuing to feed the beast and have not seen a second so far. I will say that the exotic that I did get was pretty sweet… Invective. I like shotguns, but my frustration has always been their relatively small ammo pool and clip size. Invective seems to take care of that for me, in that it regenerates ammunition at a fixed rate… which is actually pretty damned quick. I am finding it useful in strikes for when mobs get too close and personal.. and the fact that you can fire off the four rounds in full auto style… means you can absolutely shred a heroic minotaur for example. Then I shift back to my pulse rifle and by the time I need my shotgun again, the ammunition is back and ready to go. The only thing that could be better about it is if the chamber reloaded…. but that would probably be asking too much.

The funny thing is… I am in this place where I am really happy with my assortment of weapons. I just wish I had more high level blue fodder to feed to them to level them up. Right now I tend to mostly use… Hawksaw, Hung Jury, 1000 Yard Stare, Invective, and Sol Edge. I would love to have the exotic shards and fodder to power up my Hawkmoon… but I don’t have the steady income of exotics yet. I love that gun… but at 280 it is just too low right now to keep up with my other weapons. For the most part I am happy shifting back and forth between Hawksaw and Hung Jury… both of which are weapons that feel great and can precision shot pretty easily. The other big thing that happened this week is that I dug deep into the lore of Destiny, and if you ready yesterdays blog post you will see a bit write up about a series of videos. Last night I also ended up going on at length about this factor on AggroChat and probably bored the pants off of my co-hosts. What can I say… I am loving this universe and as I still continue to work my way through the missions I keep seeing more interesting parts of it. Destiny is one of those games that has grabbed hold of me and does not show signs of letting go. My hope is that I will be able to get it mostly out of my system by the time Fallout 4 launches…. because I want to spend some close and personal time with the wasteland.