The Division

Wilderqueen

March 1, 2016 by Belghast

Contemplating Forge

Last night was another night that was all over the place. Firstly I decided to reinstall Forge.gg and give it another chance. I have so many mixed emotions about this service, I like the concept that I can grab short clips at the end of my gaming session. I dislike the fact that I can ONLY grab short clips, which are generally too short to show a boss fight for example. I like the always on nature, and that it can just run in the background without me feeling like I need to be entertaining. However I ran into some issues last night where apparently even though I had push to talk set… it was still actively picking up my microphone the entire time as you can see in the above clip. So you get a snippet of a conversation between my wife and I about something I don’t even remember. I like the idea of streaming but I don’t always want to be actively interacting, and forge is this great middle ground. Ultimately I wound up muting my microphone at a system level just to make sure that it was not picking up. I am hoping this is just a bug in the current client, and I will crawl the site to see if I can find out why this was happening.

The other gotcha it seems is that it did not pick up and start recording Elder Scrolls Online. I spent the first part of the evening doing garrison dailies and doing at least one Tanaan objective in World of Warcraft and it recorded all of that perfectly. However as soon as I swapped into ESO, it never came up with the forge icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen letting me know it is recording. I will say that the really really nice thing about the client is sometime in between my last attempt at using the service and this one… it seems to work nicer with Fraps because there is no way I am giving up that just to use the service. I am too used to having a common and centralized screenshot tool for all of the games I play. It is an absolute necessity that I have a fresh source of new screenshots for this blog, and I hate having to try and find the screenshot directory for each individual game. So instead I tend to unbind the screenshot key if it is allowed and just use Fraps for everything. It was awesome last night that I was able to use fraps just fine while still recording on forge…. at least when it came to World of Warcraft. I am going to be a sad panda if that ends up being the issue with it recording Elder Scrolls Online.

Return to Greenshade

The bulk of my time last night was spent wandering around Greenshade in the Elder Scrolls Online. Generally speaking I tend to play this game by wandering aimlessly from objective to objective, but last night I actually seemed to move through the zone with a purpose. That purpose being ingratiating myself to the Court of the Wilderking, a forest spirit that controls the Valenwood and that the local Bosmer worship as a God King. As part of trying to quell the rebellion and steal forces away from the Veiled Heritance, my mission was simple… get the support of the Wilderking to get the support of the local forces…. thus ending the rebellion. I of course did a bunch of other stuff along the way, and I am not entirely complete with the main story sequence… but I am having a blast. I got sidetracked in helping a friend level in World of Warcraft, and then again by the Love is in the Air event…. and finally I am settling back into Elder Scrolls Online for a bit. Granted currently I will probably continue to hop games like mad because there is just so damned much stuff that I want to be playing. In Elder Scrolls I have yet to see any of the Imperial City content, or Orsinium… and they are just about to release the Thieves Guild as well. So much catching up to do… but at the same time I feel like I have all the time in the world to do it because I am not playing the game at a serious end game focused level.

The other big happening of the night is that I finally dinged Veteran Rank 4, allowing me access to the next tier of crafted gear. I was doing awesome…. until I screwed up and rushed to get my shield made and forgot to go to the set crafting area. Originally I was planning on having 5 piece Alessia’s Bulwark, and 4 piece Ashen Grip… except I am now sitting at 3 pieces in that set because I got sidetracked and ended up making a non-set shield. Unfortunately I am completely out of the right kind of wood so I will need to do some more adventuring before I can finish things out. For the time being I have opted to abandon my costume and go with the actual armor look because I dig the Imperial armor look. I will probably always favor the Dunmer sword type, though recently I did enjoy using an axe for a bit. The game looks amazing on the laptop, and I am so damned happy with how well everything is performing to be honest. It does get a little hot but then again what gaming laptop doesn’t. My previous one had a SLI graphics card configuration so had insanely hot air venting out of both sides of the laptop. At least this setup isn’t continuously baking my mouse hand. I just need to sort out why exactly Forge was not recording the game.

Also looming on the near horizon is the launch of The Division. At this point it is absolutely certain that I will be playing it on the PC, at least at first. When the price comes down a little I will probably also pick it up for the PS4 so that I have access to it for any of the friends that happen to be playing there. For the last few days since the end of the beta I have trying to sort out how best to organize folks for the upcoming launch. The game itself does not really have guilds or clans or any structure like that…. at least that I saw in the two betas I have been part of. So as a result this is going to make getting stuff going a little more difficult than in other games. However my friend Sigtric, the man who coined the hashtag #BelEffect is firing up a Discord group and attempting to get it to be the official/unofficial chat server for the game. If you are going to be playing I highly suggest you pop by and join the “Gone Rogue” community. There is a shared general chat and breakout channels for PC, PS4, and Xbox One to make organizing things a little easier. I honestly wish I had something like this for Destiny. Discord is one of those things that is growing on me, and while I still find Slack easier to use… there is a point in the near future where I could see abandoning traditional voice servers and moving to Discord entirely.

Wilderqueen

March 1, 2016 by Belghast

Contemplating Forge

Return to Greenshade

The Division

Unexpected Change

February 22, 2016 by Belghast

Strange Transition

I entered this weekend very much favoring the Playstation 4 version of The Division, because quite simply “it just worked”. Friday and Saturday both I had all manner of problems with the PC version of the game, but it seems like most of those issues were server side. Sometime during the day on Saturday they either ramped up new servers, or did sometime to improve the processing… because when booted up the game Sunday morning, everything seemed to magically “just work”. It is funny just how much network and loading lag can destroy your game experience, because a lot of the problems I had associated with the game client itself… simply went away. Before I thought the console interface felt more smooth, but in truth the PC one works just as well once you are no longer fighting with input processing delays. Additionally I was shocked and amazed at just how well I managed to get this working on my elder laptop. It isn’t perfect and it isn’t nearly as pretty as it looks on my upstairs desktop…. but it works, and enough for me to get in and run missions or explore the world while watching some television. Last night I even managed to do more than that, as I took down several bosses that I apparently forgot to pick up from the Hudson river camp. I had no problem whittling down significantly higher level mobs, and it feels like the longer I play this game… the more I get used to the third person tactical style.

The other big takeaway I have is how much I am now seeming to not only enjoy the PC client… but lean towards it. One of the big reasons for me is Teamspeak and to a lesser extent Discord. Both of which are simple voice solutions that sound so much better than Playstation party chat. Also it allows me to hang out with people who are not necessarily playing the same game I happen to be playing. Since I am part of a very social gaming community, this was a huge problem I had when it came to Destiny, because the entire time I was playing that game I felt walled off from my friends. Another problem I am finding starting to disappear was the whole lack of “space guns” issue I talked about. This game seems to have a really wide variety of weapon options, that cover more than just the AR/AK realm of assault rifles. I’ve picked up no less than four different flavors of shogtun, each of which felt completely different in the way it handled. I also managed to find what seems to be my “Ideal” weapon which is the Enfield L86 LSW rifle that you can see me firing in the above image. It has pretty great single round accuracy and also fires some really tight bursts that while they travel up… seem to do so in a more predictable manner. I guess this isn’t super shocking because in World War II games back in the day I used to love firing the Enfield MK1.

Remaining Challenge

Now the challenge that remains is where exactly to pre-order the game from. Everyone seems to be offering pretty much the exact same stuff for digital copies of the game… with Gamestop being the only retail difference offering the Hazmat Suit seemingly in addition to the National Guard outfit that comes with the gold version. For years I was absolutely opposed to darkening the door of a Gamestop, however at Pax South I met someone that made me start to re-evaluate that line of thinking. Any company smart enough to make @JetPackHattie a manager… and give her free reign to create awesome events for her store seems like a place that cannot be all bad. I also went int the other day when I was tracking down a Hori Fight Commander 4 controller, and no one tried to up sell me on anything…. which was always the problem I had with going in the first place. Problem being at this point… I am not sure if I can pre-order in enough time to guarantee that I get the special bonus stuff. I also hate physical copies of games, but it seems like GameStop now has a download only option for UbiSoft games at least. The problem being… part of me kinda wants this game tracking through Steam even though I still have to launch a horrible horrible secondary UPlay client. So I begin to ask myself…. will I ever actually wear the Hazmat suit? The answer is probably not… whereas I can absolutely see myself wearing the National Guard uniform… or at least parts of it.

In any case I will need to decide something since the game launches in roughly two weeks. Of note… just for the sake of anyone wondering how this game will look on their own aging hardware. Every screenshot I posted this morning is pulled from my laptop which is essentially running 720p and the lowest possible graphical settings. The game still looks really decent, or at least better than a lot of the previous generation of shooters. As far as frames per second… at the high end I could hit 50 and at the low end I was hitting around 35… both of which I consider very playable especially given that I was playing the game on a three year old laptop. Focusing in on targets that are a significant distance away is not the easiest thing in the world. However with the Enfield I was able to headshot enemies that were on a rooftop from the safety of my hidey hole behind a planter box. Sure I was targeting a blurry mess, but it was easy enough to determine where the “head” was in said blurry mess. Essentially at least until the official PS4 Remote Play app releases…. the PC version seems to give me the most options given that I can play upstairs on my desktop, where my PS4 is sitting… or I can play downstairs on my laptop… and in both cases I can play with or without a controller. The PC version also makes it significantly easier to take screenshots given that with the PS4 I have to constantly be swapping a thumb drive back and forth to copy the files off. So yeah… over the course of the weekend I shifted allegiance and am now leaning heavily towards picking it up the PC.

Cat Hangers and Raptors

February 21, 2016 by Belghast

Returning to Life

I am getting a really late start today, because I had to edit an extra long podcast this morning… then from that point on we have been doing adult type activities. We walked to lunch at the local Pho place, and then went grocery shopping. Finally I am now settling in to write my blog post. Anyone who has kept up with my blog over the last month will realize that PAX South kicked my ass in so many different ways. Firstly I was in significantly worse shape this year than I was last year. In 2015 I had been walking every single day… and in 2016 I had pretty much fallen out of that habit. So physically the exertion was real of walking 25 miles over the course of the days I was at the convention. I think I simply wore myself down to the point where it likely made it easier for me to catch something at the convention, because starting that Sunday on the drive home I struggled with this crud quite literally until right now. I am still in the process of fully getting back my voice, and I still go into random coughing fits. That said I am feeling so damned much better than I did, and yesterday really helped that. Also if you have read my blog for a very long time… you will know that one of the pastimes that my wife and I like to partake is what I lovingly refer to as “junking”. Generally speaking this is us going to a bunch of flea markets, thrift stores, and other “junk” shops in search of something. For me personally my constant hunt is for cheap Legos… and for her… the mission varies greatly. Recently she has been on the hunt for cheap board games for her class room.

The other thing that I really enjoy about the process is that I find some really strange shit while roaming around. I tend to take photos of these and either blog about them… or simply post them to twitter throughout the day. Yesterday was no exception, and you can see in the above image gallery some of the oddities I found. The first image…. is apparently a Cat Hanger…. for when you want it to look like your cat is wearing your clothing. The second was this insanely huge raptor mask…. that I thought I really needed, but had zero clue where I would actually put it. I thought it would have been amazing to try and stuff and hang on the wall like a trophy. Next up is the Freddy Krueger “Fright Squirter” which… is a disturbingly named product and I am just going to leave it at that. I really like old school technology, and while roaming around I came across what I can only assume is a key punch of some sort? Either that or a really strange adding machine. I also happened across this insane deal on Funko Pop Vinyl figures, and I managed to exercise real restraint in that I only managed to bring four of them home. They were roughly $10 each before the special so I picked up Illidan, Tyrael, the Lone Wanderer, and the Borderlands Psycho. There were so many that I wanted to pick up, and I probably would have if they had any of the Mass Effect series or some more of the Blizzard ones. Basically it was this awesome day of running around and for once the weather cooperated, making it what seemed to be needed to greatly improve my spirits.

Teetering On the Fence

I am guessing as the day went on yesterday, the folks at Ubisoft made some significant infrastructure changes because this morning I was able to play the Division PC without any of those hiccups I was experiencing yesterday. Now unfortunately I am on the fence as to which platform I favor. There is something nice about being able to play on the PC, especially since in theory my laptop is capable of running it…. albeit extremely ugly. The big thing that concerns me about this game is that I think the Dark Zone will actually be somewhat fun to play around in, especially with a team. On the PC how nice your system is will absolutely dictate how well you perform out there, and there is just something reassuring about knowing that you are on an even playing field with all of the other players you might encounter. I had quite a bit of fun this morning, because I finally completed the cleaner mission unlocking the tech operative and restoring power to the section of the city. I also spent a good bit of time wandering off the beaten path. Last night on the AggroChat podcast I talked a bit about my lament for the lack of content density, and I guess in truth I just needed to wander around off of the main streets. While roaming the back alleys I seemed to encounter quite a few more people than I did in other areas, which also seemed to be lucrative when it came to drops and other rewards.

Essentially I need to see who all is interested in playing the game, and what their platform of preference is. This is the sort of experience that is only really going to be fun if I can get a group of people to play with. The other question is…. do I really have the time to devote to something else. This game is only sixteen days away at this point, and I have so many other things that I want to be playing. After the discussion last night about Warframe I really want to give that another chance, and there is so much left that I want to be doing over in Elder Scrolls Online. Basically I question if I have enough time to devote to this new game, even thought I think it is going to be really fun. One of the problems that Tam and I talked about last night on the podcast was the lack of “space guns” or that the game was essentially locked down to guns that actually exist today. That said it does seem like there is a huge variety in weapons available, because I have at least a dozen different weapons right now that I have picked up as drops and they all perform vastly different. In any case… I guess I need to be making up my mind soon so I can get my pre-order in and lock in those pre-release bonuses. Mostly they are cosmetic in nature…. but you know me and my love of cosmetics. Though I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised in just how many outfit drops I have found by roaming around. The game looks to be a lot of the things that Destiny promised to be… which in some way makes me sad…. because I still very much love Destiny.