MMORPG – Page 256

Old-Lady Suit

February 12, 2016 by Belghast

Best Intentions

I had psyched myself up yesterday to go off and do some raiding last night. Some friends of friends had graciously offered to drag me along with them for the first part of Heroic Hellfire Citadel. I thought to myself that this was an excellent opportunity, that could lead to gear and maybe even a moose at some point, so even though they raid PST, I figured I would make the good college try. The problem being my body is still conspiring against me. This is officially the sickest I have been in years, as we are now going on thirteen days for this crud. Admittedly my wife had something super similar weeks before we went to PAX and while she got over the bulk of it… almost a month later she still has the constant cough. The thing that is killing me at the moment is the sore throat, only exacerbated by the constant body shaking coughing fits and drainage. So by the time the raid was starting around 9:30 my time…. I was already taking NyQuil and planning to slip into bed. I politely begged off as best I could and if any of them are reading today… I sincerely thank them for the opportunity. One which I kinda hope will still be available when I am not feeling like shit.

The problem I am in with Belghast is the fact that my item level is artificially low, because there are four pieces of gear that I simply cannot afford to get rid of. I have the four piece normal Blackrock Foundry set, and every time I try and sim out swapping out of it for higher item level gear… it is a major dps loss. The problem being that I am playing a special snowflake class that will be going away in Legion. Gladiator just works strangely, and it feels like Blizzard inadvertently gave use the most perfect class set ever. The two piece bonus is “Shield Slam has a 8% Chance to Automatically Cast Shield Charge” which is massive, and helps fill in those spots where I could not normally have Shield Charge up for the damage bonuses. The four piece is essentially “Shield Charge increases the damage of Heroic Strike, Slam, and Revenge by an Additional 20%” which is the single best damage booster that I can get right now. So I simply cannot abandon this set bonus, and the only real option right now would be to try and find a Mythic Blackrock group so I could get the Mythic four piece set. Because of the way the Hellfire Dungeon set works… I can also squeeze in the two piece of that set giving me “Bonus Armor Increased by 145” which while not insane… is a decent dps boost since every point of armor translates to 2 attack power for Gladiator spec. So needless to say I am stuck in a corner where my 686 gear score does not exactly equate to my performance… but I don’t really have access to the upgrades that would actually help. I mean as much as I hate to see it go, I totally see why Blizzard is getting rid of this special snowflake spec. It is extremely hard to itemize for and gear for.

Madness and Cheese

So after getting frustrated that there was very little I could do to improve my lot in life on my Warrior, I ended up logging over into Elder Scrolls Online for some nice and peaceful questing. I actually managed to catch Solaria on at the same time, and I spent a little bit of time attempting to help her get started in crafting. The only problem being that during prime time it seems like all of the ore is heavily farmed down. Since I have the insane “see it from a distance” glow effect, I am wondering about dropping down to Betnikh and helping farm up a bunch of ore for her. She decided to go with a Heavy Armor Two-Handed Templar…. which was one of my favorite paths from alpha testing. It feels a little bit like a WoW Retribution Paladin in the burst damage department, and has some really high survival when running around questing. It also greatly simplifies the crafting, since Blacksmith can literally make everything they would need to use from the weapon to the armor. The problem there is Blacksmithing honestly seems to be the most useful profession, and as a result ore is always in high demand. I could in theory just pass over a bunch of bars, but she really needs the skill-ups from refining the bars right now, so I would be better served just going out and farming ore for her.

One of the things I had forgotten about Elder Scrolls Online was just how well written the quests are. I completed a sequence in Grahtwood where I ended up encountering my favorite of all Daedra… Sheogorath the Prince of Madness. You never know if he is going to attack you… or offer you cheese… and then attack you. What makes this sequence so great is the fact that I have tangled with Sheogorath in the past of this game. He remembers my interactions and even seems to comment based on my decisions…. in this completely unrelated quest line. The amount of time that they put into making sure that the dialog trees had little gems like this, is just awesome… and I am still really impressed by them when I find them. All of the content was designed knowing that your single character might be completing all three factions worth of it. There is just something warm and fuzzy about playing this game… and while at one point I was disappointed in it… I think most of that was really just me trying to make it into something that it was not. As a largely solo experience the game is exemplary, and honestly I look forward to trying to scramble enough people together to do a dungeon or two and see if that experience improved as well. Cheese for everyone!

Kitten Assist

January 25, 2016 by Belghast

Helping Hand

This is becoming a pretty regular occurrence in my office, where Kenzie decides to “lay” behind one of my two monitors and then spend time poking her head out under the bottom and bopping things with her paw. This morning she has been desperately trying to drag my phone that is attached to a usb cable towards her… which is making me rethink the placement of that charger cable. For the most part this weekend we hibernated to avoid the cold, and while we had nothing to deal with like the blizzard folks on the east coast… I am not equipped to handle 20* temperatures that well. The biggest news of the weekend is that we got our new dishwasher set up on Saturday. Its stupid but right now it feels like we are purposefully dirtying dishes just so we can “play with it”. I know it sounds like we truly are deprived of fun when you put it into those terms. The truth is… we’ve gone without a dishwasher for a very long time. The order of business was to rinse things out, and set them in the sink… until we had enough there to warrant washing dishes. Now we simply dump the dirties in the dishwasher as we dirty them…. which is making me have to rewire a bunch of my internal processes.

We also used this as an excuse to buy new silverware… and by silverware I really mean stainless-steel-ware because it is not like we are the “good silver” type. I am getting used to not eating on a mishmash of seven different patterns that we have had since college, but it is taking some doing. A few years back we standardized on one set of dishes and gave away the equally mishmash set of plates and cups and bowls that we got in college, and I guess it was time for us to do the same with utensils. So we are now eating with the best forks target can buy! Well not exactly… there were apparently ritzier sets available. The whole experience is just strange… its like I have to reroute how I exist in the kitchen now and it is taking some getting used to. One of the themes that you can catch running through the blog is that “bel doesn’t handle change well” so… it will take a few weeks before I really can tell you if I like it or not.

Crusader Weekend

I spoke a little bit about this one but on Friday night I got carried hard in Diablo III. On the night season 5 opened, several of us ran around together as a group… but one of that group has eclipsed the rest of us by a huge margin. On Friday night my friend Carth was nearing 500 paragon levels, and I am almost certain that by the time I am writing this today he is probably around 600 given his meteoric rise. Me however… I was sitting at only around 10 paragon when I joined the madness that was our leveling binge. Over the course of roughly three hours I got drug up in level to a point where I was actually somewhat functional. During that time I pieced together what was a pretty damned good set of gear, and Saturday morning I managed to wrap up the last few requirements for the season 5 chapter 4 rewards. At this point you can check out the particulars on my Diablo 3 profile, but there are still a handful of things that I am working on upgrading. Damai linked me this build and I am following it to some extent, but there are some places where I plan on diverging… namely on the choice of weapons.

There is no world where I would ever use the pig sticker with its constant squealing. The entire point of using it, is to have a fast attack speed… and technically my current sword already has a faster attack speed than the pig sticker. Most of the weekend past Friday night was about me figuring out just what I could do on my own. I can solo Torment VIII pretty easy, but it is slow enough going that for bounties I have decided to just stick to Torment VII as they go so much faster. While recording the double AggroChat this weekend, I managed to do one full circuit of Torment VII bounties and while I added a few paragon levels I didn’t really get much loot to write home about. At some point I plan on trying to solo more greater rifts to increase my blood shard count, but right now I have done through level 30 without much issue. I really hate doing timed events… they just bring out all of the horrible anxieties in me, so in truth greaters are not exactly my favorite thing to do in the world.

Rhino Prime

The other big happening of the weekend is the fact that I managed to finish up both my Rhino Prime and my ArchWing. The only problem is that I have a silly amount of things that now need leveling. I still have not capped the Lex sidearm, or my Drakgoon, Boltor, Latro… or even my Dual Skana. The frustrating thing about all of that is that I really don’t know how best to level them. This is one of those games where I really like running around with other people and playing it… but have not really enjoyed soloing much at all. So whenever I had a “solo” moment this weekend, I fired up WoW and did Garrison stuff or popped into Diablo 3. I need to sort out a solid and reliable way for leveling, and I thought just maybe it would have been a low level survival mission. While I got lots of loot from it… I didn’t exactly get lots of levels and only managed to put four levels on the Rhino frame.

I am in this strange state of limbo where I think I might want to like Warframe more than I actually like it. I absolutely enjoy playing with my friends, but unfortunately without also playing it solo… I am falling massively behind. The friends who are really super serious about playing this game… are playing it all of the time as their primary game right now. Which means I will always be behind in my ability to actually help them out in missions. It gets frustrating sometimes when you realize you are being carried hard… and there isn’t much you can do about it. I was slow abandoning the bow, and as a result I am struggling to play catch up with my other weapons. The bow is this awesome solo weapon…. but pretty useless for group activity. The problem there is that I feel like the non-bow weapons are less useful for soloing… so when I am stuck going through missions by myself to level them it feels like a sub optimal experience. So as a result… I really didn’t play much warframe this weekend because I am still sorting out my feelings about the game.

Literal Pay to Win

January 23, 2016 by Belghast

Actual Pay to Win

One of the bogeymen of the MMO industry for years has been the concept of “Pay To Win” or the fear that those with the most money can end up with the best stuff. The cycle of what makes an MMO has been right or wrong built on this illusion of a meritocracy. The general idea being, that if you work hard and get really good… you can have the best items in the game for your efforts. The problem with this is that it in itself has always been a lie. Last night I spent several hours hanging out with friends playing Diablo 3, and during that time I simply was along for the ride… getting carried so unbelievably hard that during greater rifts I was gaining a paragon level damned near every-time my friend Carth killed something. Nothing about this situation is me actually having any real merit, but instead was a situation of I knew someone who was willing to drag me along for fame and glory while at the same time increasing their own magic find chances. The same has always been the case with raiding in general, that it is more about who you have an “in” with and that can get you into this or that raid… rather than pure skill. However these games are built under the pretenses that these obstacles need to be there in order to maintain the social order, and keep the gamers from rioting.

In the past when there has been even an hint of “Pay To Win” there have been riots in the streets. The problem being that, there are many games right now with ways to shortcut your way to victory. Granted in many cases they don’t take you all the way there, and you still have to do a lot of things to truly catch up. It has become perfectly acceptable for games like World of Warcraft or Everquest II to sell character boosts, that allow you to jump instantly to an end game equivalent level and be decked out in equivalent gear, saving you the time of actually leveling. So the question is… why is this acceptable but it is not acceptable to sell armor and weapons? I’ve been mulling over these questions while playing Warframe over the last few weeks. The truth is… that game is absolutely a pay to win scenario. If you were to spend multiple thousands of dollars on that game, you could in theory have the absolute best in slot gear for every single frame. The funny thing is that while I know this is the case… it doesn’t actually hinder my enjoyment. I don’t feel like I am somehow being robbed of my experience, but instead I know in the back of my head there is always an out… if I ever get down a path that ends up being too grindy.

Money for Time

“Pay to Win” in the case of Warframe is a bit of a misnomer, because in the purest sense that would mean you are getting something with your money that no one else can get without stepping up to the plate and spending an equal amount. There are lots of games with lootbox grab bags…. and these always seem super insidious to me… I am looking at you Rift and your mounts. Warframe however just feels honest about it. You can farm a planetary boss over and over until you get all three parts of a Warframe to drop… and then purchase the equivalent blueprint off the market for in game credits, or you can just bypass the entire process and pay 200-400 platinum to have it in your grubby hands right then and there. You are paying to speed up time… because there is the act of actually grinding the components… and then gathering up the materials through running missions on planets. Finally there is the actual time of crafting the thing. Each of the three sub components take about 24 hours to craft, and then the final Warframe craft takes between 2 and 3 days depending on if it is a normal or a prime frame. So if you absolutely have to have something right then and there…. you can pay a premium to get it delivered into your hands.

What I find more interesting though is just how thriving the secondary market is when it comes to purchasing items. There are so many things that you can trade in this game, and for almost every single one of them there is a secondary market. Players are limited to a specific number of trades per day, but you can often times find what you are looking for in the secondary market for prices cheaper than the official shop. So while you can’t actually buy the Prime Rhino Warframe from the shop right now, you can find a player that has collected the four component pieces and essentially pay them platinum for the act of farming it for you. So the cycle is interested, in that those who have the time to run missions over and over to farm up complete pattern sets…. can easily turn that time into money. The folks who don’t have the time, but can afford to spend some money… can turn that money into the resources that help them play the game more efficiently. It is far from a utopia, but it is nowhere near the apocalypse that most MMO players would predict.

Two Way Street

I think the key to this feeling overall “fair” is the fact that it is absolutely a two way street. There are lots of times in MMOs where the “house” steps in the middle and offers a not entirely fair deal to both sides of the equation. For example in the case of the World of Warcraft token… it is not literally a case of one human selling a commodity to another human. Instead there is an algorithm in the middle, that buys tokens from players for a floating amount of in game gold… and then sells that token back to players who want to use it in lieu of subscription time. The problem is… this formula takes human nature out of the equation, the thing that makes the whole experience interesting. In games like Rift and EQ2, that have direct exchange of subscription token to currency between two players…. the patient player can wait out the best possible deal. There were many cases where I sat on a token for weeks until I found someone who absolutely had to have that token right then to continue their substitution, and wound up getting a premium for it. Similarly I am sure there are players who took advantage of market surplus to stock up on tokens when they were cheap and ended up spending far less in game currency as a result. The reason why that felt better, was that there were options… that you were not essentially dealing with a vending machine that took its on theoretical cut.

What I think I like the most about this situation in Warframe is that it feels like I have a lot of options. I can go much more slowly and solo the planets trying to collect the items I need, or I can pester my friends to run it with me multiple times . I could go to the aftermarket and hit the trade channel and look for the items I need to finish out a blueprint set. Or if i am really desperate I can simply open my pocket book, but in all cases I have several different paths to the end goal, and as a result I don’t feel nearly as trapped as I often do in other games. For example right now I would love to have a Moose in World of Warcraft, but the raid I have connections with… that can easily get me one… happens to run at the same time as we record AggroChat. Do I want a moose because it is some status symbol, that somehow places me above other players? God no… I just like collecting mounts, and I like the idea that it looks like a normal group mount but can also fly. If I could plunk down money and pick that mount up on the store… you can bet I would rather than trying to do the copious amount of social engineering it will actually take to get me that damned mount. Warframe…. I can take either path. I can work with friends towards a goal… or I can simply grease the wheels and get everything I feel like I want faster. In truth… I feel like we as players are far more scared of “Pay to Win” than is really warranted.

Blade and Soul Impressions

January 22, 2016 by Belghast

Change of Plans

This morning I was all ready and prepared to go on an angry tear about the change to specs in World of Warcraft on Legion Alpha. Then I thought to myself… my blog has already hosted more than enough “I’m Angry at WoW” posts that I really did not need to add another one to the pile. I still think the idea is quite possibly the dumbest I have seen yet, but I figure if it does go in… I can either deal with it, or stop playing again and no amount of gnashing of my teeth is going to make a change. I have next to zero clout when it comes to things like that, so better just to ignore it for the moment and try not to get worked up over it. In the meantime however I finally was able to pop into Blade and Soul and give the game a proper try. I talked yesterday about some of my misgivings…. of which there were many, so the game started off on negative footing before I even entered. Last night my friend Liore mentioned that the newly added servers had no real queues, so as a result I ended up rolling a new version of Squirrelghast on that server. I am guessing that names are game wide, since I could not create a “Belghast” on Gunma the server I ended up rolling on. So while I will always probably think of it as Squirrelghast I am guessing technically I am some sort of black fox… but the tail is so fluffy and curvy that it reminds me of a squirrel. Also if I was being super pedantic about it… I would be Squirrelgrave since I ultimately had to go with Belgrave for the reboot character.

The game is shockingly charming… and I say shockingly… because I really did not expect much. The localization team has done an amazing job of shaping the story into something that I cared about. I admittedly cannot really remember any of the names, but the opening story arc involves you training at the Hongmoon academy under a guy that I am going to forever call “Dog Grandpa” because he is a Lyn and grandfatherly. Then a lady with a name that I also don’t remember so I am just going to call her “Evil Bayonetta” comes into the neighborhood and causes a ruckus. You watch her kill your fellow classmates, and find out that one of them…. that is pretty much exactly like Byakuya Kuchiki from Bleach… betrayed you for the special school scrolls. At this point Dog Grandpa transforms into Akuma from Street Fighter and whipping some ass, until Evil Bayonetta threatens your life… and he pays his own life and the blade he had been guarding to save you. At which point you get blasted off of magical sky castle place into the ocean and are found by a village guard captain that also just happens to be a former Hongmoon student. With this you begin your journey to be the best that ever was… and I am guessing we will travel to other towns… and meet other conspicuous former Hongmoon students that have life lessons to teach us. The entire game intro really does feel like watching Anime, and while I made up names for people… it was enjoyable and I did actually have some feels when Dog Grandpa sacrificed himself for my characters life.

Rise of Cricket

Honestly I have to say the game itself is really rather fun, or at least fun in the same ways that TERA was fun. The primary difference here is that the quests that you do seem to have some merit to them… rather than just being random grindy nonsense. The localization team has given the various people you meet, including the random peasants… personality and humor and it makes going off and fetching five healing salves or slaying 10 blackrams enjoyable. The mechanics work out really similar to TERA where your left mouse button is used for your resource builder/default attack, and your right mouse button is your resource spender. Then in addition to that you have various numbered special attacks and openers that you can use during battle, in addition to some quick time events that occur that allow you to for example stomp your enemy when they are knocked down. The combat feels really fluid and the animations are awesome. While I don’t normally go for that running on wires nonsense from kung fu movies…. when you sprint with your arms swept back… it just feels nice and when you do the whole glide thing in mid air it is surprisingly addicting. The game progresses smoothly and most interactions are doing using the F key which serves the purpose of the generic “interaction” key that some other games have. If you are used to TERA or Neverwinter or an “Action” MMO of the sort… then you should get accustomed to this game rapidly.

The world itself is gorgeous… and works well. Sure the textures are not always the best in the world… but the overall presentation “works”. I think what adds the most to this is the fact that the soundtrack itself is really well woven into the game. It changes regularly based on area of the world, so when you step foot near the graveyard it suddenly becomes more sinister, and when you are back in town it becomes a happy market tune. The only nuisance so far is the fact that a number of the areas are instanced, and there is a slight hitch when you zone into them. I am not sure if this is due to server load, or if there will always be this little hitch but it gets frustrating at times. Some areas are completely seamless, so I am guessing this is mostly happening where there are phasing or in a location where the actors change frequently. For example the Mayors Office or the Healers building… are instanced… but in both cases I have had several different interactions in those buildings. Its a quirk and you get used to it, but just something to expect. There also seems to be quite a bit of delay on waiting for NPCs to load in on your screen when you first arrive in an area, but this is nothing worse than the stuff I am used to dealing with in WoW.

Reservations

So far I am enjoying myself, but not sure if I am enjoying myself enough to actually spend money. Nor am I really certain how long I will remain playing. I was plenty fine with logging out and playing some Warframe after a few hours of gameplay, knowing that I would likely not make it through the queues again that night. So when you contrast that with a game like Final Fantasy XIV when we played at launch…. and I got so damned angry about the prospect of ever having to log out and fight the login boss again… that tells you it was enjoyable but nothing world shattering. There is also a lot of silly bullshit that is happening in the game that is super cringeworthy. When you first meet the character of Namsoyoo above, you get the impression that she is a very young girl… then when it pans out for the first time you see her wearing some sort of gauze based dress with insane anti-gravity boobs. The games bread and butter seems to be gratuitous T&A action in a way not dissimilar from the Dead or Alive franchise. All of this is sad, because the game and the localization are actually rather good… and don’t really need the oversexed window dressing. Now I have yet to run into super insidious, but right now it just seems a little much like somewhere the original artists were blushing and going “tee hee hee boobies”.

The game certainly has some character, and the first time you meet a really important character you get this cool cinematic intro thing…. which unfortunately has these insanely pixelated fonts that send my eye twitching like mad. I mean I realize that this game has been out since 2012… but we had better computers than that back then right? As far as performance… I am running this at 1080p on my GTX 960 card with pretty much everything cranked up as far as I can tell because their sliders are also somewhat nonsense, and I am getting a smooth 60 fps all of the time with little or no dips, so I am guessing the game will run smoothly on a toaster. So long as I focus on Squirrelghast I am pretty happy playing the game and being an adorable but super serious blade dancer. The other big negative right now is that everyone that I know seems to be spread out pretty evenly among the servers. However the gold spam is so horrible that honestly I am completely oblivious to the fact that chat even exists, so if someone were trying to message me and have conversations I wouldn’t notice. I have this feeling that Blade and Soul is going to be a very solo experience for me, and one that I will work out of my system in a few weeks, rather than a game I am going to set down roots. However if you are looking for a pretty fun action based MMO, you might give it a look. I didn’t expect anything… but enjoyed a couple of hours of running amok in this pretty landscape, and I suspect that if you also go into it with similarly lowered expectations you might enjoy yourself too.