Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Last week we failed to announce the 5th anniversary of our show so we start off talking a bit about that. From there Bel goes into a discussion about the BlizzCon Spirit and how he seemingly has caught the Star Wars version and returned to SWTOR after the Star Wars Celebration announcements. We talk about the game quite a bit and then get into a discussion of Jedi Fallen Order which we missed from last week. From there we talk Magic the Gathering Arena and how Kodra is finally playing Standard. We also talk about doing some direct Duels and the current Magnificent Momir format. Finally a discussion about Pagan Online that devolves into a discussion about upcoming ARPGs in general.
This week we are down half of our show, but weirdly enough ended up very close to our original line up from the first few AggroChat shows… only missing Rae. We were concerned we might not have enough material for a show, but wound up only about 10 minutes short of our average which seems pretty good. Tonight we talk about Monetization in Free to Play games and in part why some games it feels good to spend money on, and others it feels exploitative. This explores mobile games and mmorpgs as well. From there Bel talks a bit about his experiences restarting with Monster Hunter World PC and how weirdly most of the progress was raising his skill and not necessarily his gearing. Kodra talks about his experiences with Mega Man 11 which leads to a discussion of this golden age of modern 2D side scrollers. Finally we wrap things up with some discussion about Guilds of Ravnica and how it feels in a constructed and sealed environment on MTG Arena.
I am having one of those mornings that I am simply struggling to find any inspiration to write. It’s been one of those weeks, namely because I am juggling a huge meeting load and feeling like I am accomplishing nothing in the process. When you have a few 30 minute blocks between the rest of your schedule being in meetings, it becomes really hard to make any headway in anything. However I guess that is what happens when you move up to management. The problem being that when I finally do get home I sort of revert to a gelatinous state and struggle to find any forward momentum in games either. As predicted my forward momentum in World of Warcraft has stalled quite a bit upon getting the flight unlock. I could in theory alt all the things… but instead I am largely just logging in each day and doing whatever faction based world quest there is for a shot at fury friendly legendary items.
A few days ago I had installed an addon called Leatrix Plus, which adds a bunch of quality of life improvements for World of Warcraft. Among the tweaks were a few settings that I figured were largely good ideas. The first being to accept invites to groups from the guild/friends, and the second being to accept summons from the guild/friends. Last night however I learned that maybe this is not the best idea to run with enabled. Now in my head I had completely forgotten that Wednesday was raid night. I mean it was one of those things that I was aware of, but not completely cognizant of. So I found myself after eating dinner logging in to do my daily run at legendaries, and like I often do alt tabbed to do something else while the game finished loading in. When I finally tabbed back I found myself in a raid and sitting at the Nighthold summoning stone. While afk I had apparently been invited to the raid group and summoned… and my handy little addon absolutely allowed myself to get trolled. I bowed out once I realized what had happened because honestly I am not ready for “serious mode” raiding.
After doing my nightly bombing run on a legendary, I wound up logging and digging into Star Wars the Old Republic. When I started the night I was sitting on Chapter XIII and managed to play my way through to a good ways into Chapter XVI. The whole chapter thing feels odd considering I am functionally doing the same thing as Netflix binge watching. Its hard for me to see where the seams normally would have been between chapters, but I guess the content is naturally released in a format that feels akin to how Final Fantasy XIV does. Looking at the Wiki page it seems like originally the content was released roughly a chapter a month between February and August of 2016, with the initial content providing the first nine chapters at release. The only negative about binging the content like this is that I am not really spending much time with any of my newly acquired companions, since for the most part each mission requires me to use a specific combination. Also the reveals are probably less dramatic than they would have been if I was being drip fed the content. Whatever the case I am still very much enjoying it, and some of the shit is getting weird. Going to be interesting to see what it is like to roll into the Eternal Throne content.
Yesterday I had zero intent to sit down in the morning and start writing about level scaling systems. Sometimes posts just happen. However after writing it one of my friends mentioned a key point. There should functionally be a way to flip off level scaling if you absolutely positively want to just go wreck things. The prime example of this would be if you just want to farm up a bunch of low level materials quickly. I remember when I was leveling any of my various tailors up in World of Warcraft, I would simply find a dungeon in the level range and mercilessly wreck it for the sole purpose of getting as much cloth in as short of a time as I could. This would have been completely maddening were I not greatly over leveling the content. Once again I think we can look to Final Fantasy XIV as a good example here because some time ago they added in the ability to queue for content “undersized”, which functionally turns off the level synchronization process allowing you to just wreck the content if you so choose. However I still think I would prefer it if MMO worlds scaled by default, and then simply allowed folks to disable that option if they so choose.
I’ve said recently that I really love returning to an MMO after some time has passed and be confronted with potentially years of content to go off and experience. The thing is this also has an extremely negative side to it. Right now I am in this weird place where I am super into content that happened two years ago. There is something to be said about experiencing things at the same time as your friends, because it allows you to have conversations about what is going on. This has been one of the best parts of Final Fantasy XIV is that each time they give us a slow drip of story content we all consume it then can talk about the revelations that are contained within. This allows us to have moments of theory crafting and speculation… knowing that at some point in the future we will be able to resolve what is actually going on. With Star Wars the Old Republic and the Knights of the Fallen Empire content… generally speaking either folks played through this content two years ago when it released… or will likely never play through it.
That puts me in such a weird places because I have all these thoughts and feelings about the game and what it is doing… but I don’t exactly feel right talking about them on my blog. Knights of the Fallen Empire has some pretty big revelations that would be better experienced than told about. This is one of those times when everything about it is extremely heavy on the spoiler front. Each time new revelations come to light… I wish there was a group of people that I could talk through them with. Basically this is one of those times when I wish I had played through the chapter based content as it was being released rather than this current Netflix style binge sequence that I am going through. I have a feeling that Guild Wars 2 and its living story content is much the same… likely best experienced as it is being released a little bit at a time. This also makes me really want to get caught up so that I can at least join the discussion happening with the Eternal Throne content. However I am also extremely cautious of looking up too much information for fear of getting these plot twists completely ruined for me.
On the positive front I have stumbled across a really awesome YouTube channel that has helped me get back into the game and the modern concepts. Swtorista has this awesome Star Wars the Academy series that breaks down a bunch of topics like “What to do at Level 70” or how the Galactic Command system works. The best videos though are a sequence on the best looking craftable armors for each class, since we all know the true end game of an MMO is looking awesome. Through her videos thought I have been able to catch up pretty easily without risking spoilers too badly. Side note… there is a special place in hell for folks who put obvious spoilers in YouTube video titles… as I already have apparently one of the Iokath revelations spoiled because of this. For those interested I am largely playing Belghast my Jedi Knight on Ebon Hawk at least while I do all of the chapter based content. I have a large stable of character spread between the two factions and they are either in House Stalwart on Sith side, or Einherjar on Republic side. If you are also playing feel free to ping me and say hi.
