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AggroChat #104 – Star Wars and Design

May 21, 2019April 24, 2016 by AggroChat

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen talk about the best Star Wars stories and also Level Design constructs

Tonight we had a bit of a strange show, that traversed a wide number of topics. First Ashgar talks about a game that he and Belghast played at Pax South called Stories: The Path of Destinies and how it is a good game in spite of largely being overlooked because of the horrible title. Belghast goes into a discussion of the “Sherpa” culture in Destiny and how it shapes player’s actions in random groups. Kodra talks about Eterna the logical successor to Folding, which strives to solve the medical problem of properly sequencing RNA… and at the same time being a good puzzle game. We get into a length discussion about level design constructs and what makes a universally good design. Finally we delve into the topic mentioned last week, as we try and decide if there are more good Star Wars games than bad ones. We also get into a discussion about what the best Star Wars story was.

Topics Discussed:

Stories: Path of Destinies
Sherpa Culture in Destny
Eterna
Level Design Constructs
Good Star Wars Games
Best Star Wars Story

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On Honorable Mentions, 2015

April 18, 2016 by Ashgar

This is the other backlogged post I have, then we’ll be into more recent things. At the end of January we did a Games of the Year show, and there are a few things I really enjoyed in 2015 that didn’t get much time on that one. Some of these made brief appearances on the blog, and some of them in the podcast; I consider all of these worth trying if you get a chance.

Evoland 2

The subtitle of this game is “A slight case of spacetime continuum disorder”, and it does live up to that. It takes probably the best segment of the first Evoland (the time travel section where you’re moving between 3D and sprite graphics) and uses it as the central premise of the game. For most of the game you are moving between the past, present, and future, occasionally messing things up enough that it affects a later era. Where Evoland mostly stuck to pretending to be Zelda or Final Fantasy, Evoland 2 is less restricted, and borrows from things ranging from Street Fighter to Puzzle Quest (in addition to a core that is mostly Zelda). It also has a card game that isn’t a triple triad knock-off, and I really enjoyed it. This just barely missed the cut for top 3 last year.

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon

The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games have generally been pretty good, and I would call the DS series (Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky) some of the best games with pokemon in them. The previous title, Gates to Infinity, was much less outstanding, but this one’s a return to form. For those unfamiliar, the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games involve playing as a pokemon, working through a series of randomly-generated dungeons towards some goal. This tends to be save-the world-type stuff, and a lot more story (and more serious story) than the main series. This one features all of the pokemon revealed at its release (all 720 of them) and features a story that is far better than the main games. It eliminates the random element of pokemon recruitment found in previous Mystery Dungeon games, which is nice, because there are plenty of other random things to worry about. This is my top 3DS game from last year.

LBX

I mentioned this a bit earlier. LBX is a solid mix of RPG and Robot Fighting game. Even though the actual robots are only about a foot tall, the battle system most de-emphasizes this by placing you on artificial terrain, so it feels like you’re still piloting giant robots. It has an obligatory tournament arc, and is full of other cliches, but it’s not really any worse for it. The story also goes a few places I wouldn’t expect for a kids game. Add in the large number of postgame activities, and there’s a lot here. Give this a shot if you like Level-5, action-RPGs, and/or customizable robots.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

This got revisited when I was going Star Wars crazy right before The Force Awakens came out. The Knights of the Fallen Empire content is one of the best pieces of narrative I’ve seen in an MMO, and some of the system revamps that go along with this (allowing you to use any companion for anything) were really appreciated. Changes to the leveling content also mean that you don’t need to do all of the (generally lower quality) side quests when levelling a character, and it gave me a chance to see some of the class stories that I did not have the patience to complete when the game came out. I’ll admit that other than the story content, there’s not a whole lot here that interests me, and the F2P model is still “please subscribe”, but it’s still worth checking out. The next chapter came out somewhat recently, so I’ll pop back in at some point to check that out.

Old Year New Year

January 8, 2016 by Grace

Hello friends! It is a brand new year so it is a good excuse to try to get back in the habit of blogging regularly. I had some much needed time off over the holidays, and squeezed in a good amount of gaming. Here’s a quick summary:

The Good: Undertale

I’m just a few months late to this party but I have to say I’m very glad I finally got to play. It has been sitting in my Steam wishlist for a bit and a good friend gifted it to me for xmas (thank you, again!). I didn’t go in exactly blind, since I’d seen lots of folks discussing the game, but most of what I knew was focused on how the game is possible to beat without killing anything, and how it remembers and “judges” you if you do kill. I made it my mission to do a pacifist run, and was happy that I made it all the way to the king before I had to break down and look up how to finish a fight.

I played a lot in a hurry. It was that good.

I’m not sure what I can say about this game that hasn’t already been said before. I really enjoyed it, and it definitely gave me some feels. It did not make me cry but it came close. Gone Home still gets the prize for “made Gracie cry the most”. I have mixed feelings about how Undertale plays with the ideas of saved games, but I do understand why it works the way it does. I’m also glad I went in knowing I wanted to avoid killing at all costs. I don’t think my mental state would have dealt well with the guilt of murdering innocent monsters in addition to all the other stresses of the holidays.

Overall I am super glad I played this game, really enjoyed most of it and absolutely loved some of it. If you have interest in it I’d suggest picking it up. I think it is worth a try if the turn-based rpg style isn’t an immediate turn-off. The music alone is worth the price of admission.

The Adequate: SWTOR

I managed to somehow avoid Star Wars hype for the most part. While my friends were getting increasingly excited as the movie premiere approached, I was busy hardening my heart. I guess I had been burned too deeply by the prequels to have much hope. I did still get tickets for opening night, I just tried not to have any expectations. Then I saw the movie and fell in love with Star Wars all over again and all bets were off. No, it wasn’t perfect, but it was fun and funny and had a kick-ass jedi and creepy sith and adorable droid and my entire holiday became colored with Star Wars fever. Thanks Disney, you managed to pry my heart and wallet wide open again for all things Star Wars.

The only screenshot I remembered to take. At least I’m cute.

In a fit of Star Wars fever I did something I had vowed I’d never do again: I subbed to SWTOR for a month. Sure, it is F2P, but the F2P model is so punitive that if you want to play at all you might as well sub or not bother. I rolled up an Imperial Agent because that seems class most folks say has the best story, and I hadn’t seen it yet.

SWTOR was having some sort of bonus XP event, and with their new adaptive level scaling thing I ended up hitting the level cap of 65 well before I had even finished chapter 1 of my class story. This felt very odd, since the game was trying to gently shove me toward the new content, while I just wanted to finish the story without getting it spoiled. Once I hit 65 I stopped doing any quests except the class story ones just to get through it faster, which reminded me how much the game likes to send you back and forth between planets. During normal leveling it isn’t too noticeable but when you’re just doing the story quests it feels like you’re spending more time traveling than questing.

I eventually did finish the main (level 50) story for the agent, and promptly closed the game and have not logged back in since. The story was quite good compared to most of the other ones I had seen, and I still haven’t figured how it ranks in comparison yet. My bottom line seems to be that it was a good story but it didn’t feel “Star Wars” enough for me, especially right in the middle of my movie-fueled fever. The Sith Warrior for example, felt like a fairly strong story and way more Star Wars flavored. In any case I don’t regret the time and money spent, but it didn’t quite do what I wanted in terms of scratching my Star Wars itch. In retrospect, I probably should have picked a class that gets a lightsaber.

The Inexplicably Unsatisfying: WildStar

I love WildStar, and still think of it as my “home” MMO. But for whatever reason over the holidays I just could not get invested in it no matter how hard I tried. I still logged in almost every day, and did some of the holiday Protostar event stuff, but my heart just wasn’t in it. Some of this had to do with me needing some “alone time”, which meant I needed a change of scenery from my usual game. Part of the problem may have also been that I had too many other games vying for my attention, and the attraction of new shiny things is strong.

Bringing holiday cheer, for money!

I think some of it was also due to plain old liking the halloween event better than the xmas one. For me there’s no contest between the two holidays in real life, candy and spooky stuff are just way more fun than trees and snow. In-game, I liked the Shade’s Eve expedition much more. I love the idea of the mall in the sky, and the changing rotation of challenges each time you play through. However I wish some of the challenges were combat-based. it just didn’t feel like the rest of the expeditions to me and after a few runs I got tired of clicking on things in a way that I somehow don’t get tired of shooting things.

I ended up playing far far less than I did during Shade’s Eve, and never even got all of the rewards. I did at least get my rowsdower slippers, because I do have my priorities right.

The “Why am I still here?”: WoW

I subbed for a 2nd month of WoW using in-game gold. I’m not entirely sure why. This is the game that perpetually feels like going to visit your old home town long after you’ve moved away and lost touch with all your old high school buddies. It is technically the same place but everything is changed and even though it is familiar and you can’t help but go back once in a while to see how it looks it mostly ends up reminding you that the good old days are well and truly gone.

I continue to play almost completely solo, mostly running old raids for mounts and such, and messing with the follower system to earn more gold to buy more game tokens. It feels a bit like a self-perpetuating treadmill, but it is familiar and easy and oddly comforting in its way. My goal is to stockpile at least 3 more WoW tokens this month, and then take a hiatus until Legion is on the horizon.

I think a huge part of my indifference to WoW is that I have a huge stable of characters on a server where I have no friends and no guild. I can’t force myself to reroll someplace else because it is too hard to walk away from the self-sufficiency and gameplay options of 6 level 100 characters, and I can’t transfer because the cost of moving one character is prohibitive right now, much less 6-8. To make matters worse, by far most of my WoW-playing friends are Alliance side and my main stable of characters is Horde. So I play by myself because it feels like I don’t have much choice. I’m planning to use my 100 boost to plant a character on a server with my friends once I save up to buy Legion.

The WTF is this Even?: Hatoful Boyfriend Holiday Star

It’s ok, your hunter-gatherer instincts will save you!

I loved me some Hatoful Boyfriend, so when I saw that this holiday-themed addition was coming out in December I knew I’d be on board. I still haven’t finished the whole thing, but so far it has been enjoyable in a “I don’t know what is happening but I like it” sort of way. It feels even more like a visual novel and less like a game than the original, but I’m more used to the style now and am happy to just hang on for the ride. My main disappointment has been that I haven’t actually been able to date any birbs. I will be reporting back on this one once I finally finish it.

So that was my holiday gaming for 2015. Enjoyable. Comfortable. A little weird. Just the way the holidays should be.

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.