MMORPG – Page 264

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.

Squirrelghast

January 21, 2016 by Belghast

Flak Cannon Time

When it comes to playing Warframe I have quite literally spent almost 99% of my time playing the game…. in a full or partial group. This greatly colors my feelings about the game, and in truth it has allowed me to play in a super inefficient manner. Last night we had several group missions and then when Tam went to class and Ashgar went to bed… it just kinda broke up and never reformed in spite of us having several people there. Instead of grouping I opted to start working on some of the missions I had not actually unlocked, and I have to say… I am pretty bad at this game. At the very least my chosen play style is not exactly a solo friendly play style. When I am playing my Excalibur with a Bow…. it works great, because I can sneak around and get a bunch of stealth kills. However last night I was trying to level my Atlas with a Braton… and the ability to stealth kill anything was non-existent. In truth I feel like most of the problem is the fact that I have yet to really sort out how I want to mod anything. At some point I need to spend an entire evening leveling mods, and deciding which ones work best with which weapons.

On the positive side of things, I did manage to finish up all of the sub components of the Rhino Prime and now simply have to wait the 72 hours crafting time to get it. I also managed to finish up the Drakgoon Flak Cannon last night, so I spent some time playing with that as well. I keep calling it a Flak Cannon because it very much reminds me of the Flak Cannon from Quake 3. At close range it can be fired like a shotgun, but if you charge up the attack it can be fired from a much longer range and still be effective. I am digging it quite a bit… and managed to have quite a bit of good luck with it running some missions. I still think that the Strun is probably a better choice for a charge in and sword damage playstyle like I tend to favor, which is something that Ashgar suggested. For the time being I am having a blast with this weapon…. and yes that pun was intended. The other thing I did last night was start building a Boltor rifle, to see if I like that as was suggested to me by Scarybooster. I mean in theory I could have gone shopping for a Boltor prime, but I happened to have all of the crafting mats available to make one without really dipping low in anything. I guess tonight I will give it a shot and see what I think about it.

Blade and Soul

Right now the new hotness at least among the blogosphere seems to be Blade and Soul, which just launched this week. In fact at this moment it seems like unless you are paying for the game, it is highly unlikely that you are going to actually get to play it. My twitter timeline has been full of folks posting pictures of the insane queue times just trying to log in. The other big problem that I have seen is that it seems like no one is actually playing on the same server. I did a few quick queries and it seemed like everyone I know is playing on completely different servers. I had no real interest in this game prior to launch, and honestly…. there isn’t much about it after launch that interests me. That said…. since it is a freemium game I have this overwhelming desire to at least give it a shot. I have to admit I have some pretty severe biases against Korean MMO art styles. There is just something about the art aesthetic that annoys me… the cloyingly pretty men, and the insane “Jessica Rabbit” style women… its just not my thing.

The positive is that there is a Lalafell like race in Blade and Soul so I decided to try and focus instead on the maximum cuteness potential of that. The problem there is… it just isn’t as good as a Lalafell. I created what I am dubbing Squirrelghast on the Old Man Cho server…. simply because I liked the name. At some point if I end up liking the game I will try and sort out another server to roll on that actually has people I know. The only negative is that I have yet to get any further than character creation because I end up getting dumped into a massive queue… and decided that I would simply rather play Warframe or Diablo 3. It is my hope that over the weekend I will be able to get in and give the game a proper try. The only thing I really know about it from clips is that it seems to be an MMO about the whole flying wire “crouching tiger hidden dragon” style of combat. These movies never really appealed to me either, because they just felt so over the top silly to see someone calmly flying across the screen. I’ve heard however that the localization job that Carbine did on this title was really damned good, and much like Final Fantasy XIV they slipped in a ton of cultural references. If for no reason other than that… I kinda want to play it. I really love the folks at Carbine and they seem to do a great job with the games under their care, so it is my hope that I will be charmed enough by the localization effort to overlook all the things I don’t care for.

Rhino Prime Incoming

January 20, 2016 by Belghast

Secondary Market

Once again last night I spent most of it running around with friends in Warframe. At the moment this seems to be the new hotness among the AggroChat podcast crew, and I guess in part I am going to ride the bubble as long as it lasts. I know like many games this one is likely to burst at some point, when either we enter the endgame grind…. or one of us tries to do something that the game doesn’t really allow for. However in the meantime I am enjoying my space ninja action, and spent most of last night leveling “stuff”. Another really important thing that I discovered yesterday was the trade market. Now Tam and Ashgar had both been talking about the deals that they had been getting in trades with players, and I never really spent much time thinking about it… that is until I realized that I was quickly becoming the only player without a prime frame. In many ways the prime frames are just flat out better than a normal frame, and since I had already been laboring towards trying to get a Rhino, I thought maybe I would check out the potential of just bumping that up to prime.

Within a few minutes I was able to find a Prime frame for considerably cheaper than the price of the base Rhino frame on the game store. So I guess in truth if you are willing to spend ANY money on the game at all… you can pick up some bargains. I know some of our crew have picked up really nice weapons… and managed to get some freebie mods thrown in to fill out the rest of the trade window. So for me in particular… last night was all about farming up the rest of the components I needed to craft my Rhino Prime over night. Unfortunately when I checked in this morning I still have a few hours left to go on the build, and then 72 hours after that before I actually get to drive my frame around. In the meantime however… I need to sort out exactly what I want to use for weapons on my stompy mech. I love my excalibur, but there are just times where it does not seem well suited for some activities. Mostly I feel like I need to have a solid backup for when running around like mad and slashing things with a sword is not necessarily the best idea.

Atlas Rising

The other big activity of the night was to begin work on my Atlas frame, that I had picked up some time ago… but never spent much time working on. For the time being I have it decked out in a Braton, those starter fist weapons, and a Lex pistol…. all pretty much for the purpose of leveling them since we were running low level content. Early in the evening we were trying to make it through Phobos, and we ended up struggling quite a bit… so it forced us all to switch back to our “main” frames for the purpose of finishing up that planet. However after that we shifted to doing low level defense runs which are pretty amazing for leveling stuff. By the end of the evening Altas was hovering around 14 with the weapons I think in the 16-18 range. The big draw right now of Atlas is the rock shield ability that I can also push forward as a ball of stone to bowl over enemies. This was absolutely amazing for “wave clear” when the Grineer were stacked up in neat little columns. Nothing yet has beaten the pure joy of hitting the giant “Nope!” button that is Excalibur’s Radial Blind, but this comes close.

I absolutely feel like an earthbender though, and there are several of the abilities I have yet to even play with… like the ability to summon rock golems to fight by my side. The other takeaway of the night is just how damned awesome the Braton is. I was looking for a good light machine gun, to give me that almost destiny like feel… and that really does it. I also plan on building a Latron soon, because several other members of my team have had good luck with that. From the sounds of it… the Braton is more of an Auto Rifle in Destiny terms, and the Latron would be something more like the Scout Rifle. Both are weapons that I really enjoy, but for vastly different purposes. The only thing I wish this game supported was the changing of loadouts while in a mission. Because sometimes you hit situations where your weapons are just ineffective and it would greatly improve the experience to be able to swap things up planet side. Maybe there is a way and I just have not found it, but in any case… because I don’t think I can do it… it makes me pick more generalized builds so that if my primary is ineffective, then my secondary will work as a backup. Regardless… I am still very much enjoying myself and looking forward to getting to play with a Prime frame.

Banking and Bosses

January 18, 2016 by Belghast

Busy Morning

Trying to knock out a really quick blog post, because if I don’t right now I am not entirely certain when I will get the chance. Both my wife and I are off today for the holiday, and as a result we have tried to schedule as much as humanly possible to do today. Largely this means finally getting in to talk to the bank about refinancing our loan. Adulting is frustrating and horrible… and hopefully it will go smoother than I have made it out to be in my head. In a perfect scenario we will be able to do this without much hassle. In theory it should only really be a case of someone from the bank coming to look over the house and appraise it, and after the recent renovations that should go a hell of a lot more smoothly. I mean we have a relatively new roof and very new siding, so the house has looked better than it has in years. All of that said… there is still so much anxiety for me anytime you are dealing with finances and banks and such.

After that I have this feeling that we are going to run around looking at dish washers. For whatever reason… it is suddenly a big deal to my wife that we have a non-functional dish washer. Don’t get me wrong I understand, I hate washing the dishes but for reasons entirely different from probably hers. When you are 6’4″ they simply do not make a sink that is comfortable to stand at, and by the time I finish washing dishes my back is killing me from stooping over the sink. Why it is suddenly a crisis is the part that I am not quite understanding, because the thing has been dead for several years now. All of that said… if she wants a new dishwasher we are getting a new dishwasher. I know she has looked at a couple of them, and I know she wants my input… but basically whatever one she wants I am completely happy with. I just hope this one I can actually figure out how to use…. because the last one… every time I seemed to run a load of dishes something horrible went wrong.

Boss Farming

It was fairly late by the time I finally filtered downstairs and got set down, and by then a bunch of my friends were in Warframe so I decided to join them. We spent the next hour and some change farming a boss mission trying to get myself and Thalen the last pieces of the Mag Warframe that we needed. Unfortunately… we didn’t have much luck. It seems that through killing planetary bosses you have a chance of getting parts to drop to a specific type of warframe. The boss in question was at the end of Mars, and drops all three parts of the Mag frame. I am not really sure why we cared so much about it, other than the fact that we both had all but one part… and it was the same part we were missing. I am in that same position with Rhino, and that is a mech I am far more likely to use. But whatever the case we were wrapped up in the moment of killing stuff for loot, and I have to say… we walked away with a bunch of awesome stuff.

If nothing else… it was a great source of the various crafting materials needed to create mechs. There is a single piece that I am missing for a couple of helmets that I will need to track down at some point. I also had plenty of materials to craft a bunch of weapons, including two new swords, a new bow, and a set of fists for me to use on my Rhino frame. Right now I am really liking the moment to moment feel of this game, and it seems to be the ideal drop in and hang out type co-operative experience. The question will be how long it takes for one of us to get super serious about the game, because this feels like the sort of game that is fun to play casually… but deeply frustrating to play seriously. There is one mission type that I absolutely hate, and that is the sneak up and capture the target type mission. I never can seem to get in close enough to them to keep from triggering them to make a run for the escape vessel. Then when they start running… I am simply not fast enough to take them down before they get away. There is one mission that I tried four or five times yesterday and never seemed to be able to finish successfully. Other than that mild frustration… I am enjoying pretty much every other mission type I have done.