Good Morning Folks! Yesterday over lunch I pushed my character over the level 100 line and forever secured its place in the pantheon of folks on the ladder for 3.27. Now I have reached the point in the league where I no longer give a shit about taking a death, which means I start doing riskier things. I had banked up a bunch of Aul fights, that I burned through last night… before sadly realizing that they were not actually counting as Pinnacle encounters. This is a bit of a weird thing in Path of Exile, because they use this term liberally to mean a bunch of different things, and in the past Aul absolutely would have counted. However in this league Aul is part of a different group of encounters that unlock bloodline ascendancies.
I had run all of these that I could easily run, and was down to just needing one more of this bloodline ascendancy fights for knocking out the Bloodline Boons challenge. This morning before sitting down to start writing my blog post I did a 15 wave Simulacrum and wrapped it up. The other options are way more tedious to get to including Lycia or the really variable boss fights like Olroth, that is something you are only going to see if you are farming a lot of expedition. Weirdly I was shocked that so far I had yet to get any of my shipments interdicted by the pirate dude, which I need for another one of these challenges. I might start running mappers because there is another one of the challenges where I could chip off a meta achievement by collecting rewards from 30 maps.
Grueling Game Grinds is ultimately the big lengthy grind, at now that I have hit level 100 I only need to complete one more meta achievement to knock that one out. For the moment I am planning on doing Invitations because it has synergy with some of the other challenges that I am working on. If Aul would have counted as a Pinnacle boss for the sake of this achievement, the 12/75 number would have been considerably higher. I could in theory do a bunch of Elder fights, which are without a doubt the easiest of the pinnacle bosses. However I think the fragments are still a bit expensive at this point, and I hate running Elder Guardian maps since you don’t get credit for Maven Witnessing a map boss on those.
Speaking of synergy, that is another thing that I am slowly chipping away at is doing Maven Witness maps with Destructive Play active. I really wish that they would change the way Destructive Play works, so that you can chain run the same map over and over and keep getting new bosses witnessed. This is the reason why I never do Maven content is because I prefer to run the same map layout over and over for consistency sake, and have my favorite map slots set up in a way so that I can produce large quantities of one of two maps that I alternate back and forth between. For example I am running a lot of Tropical Island, but producing a truly prodigious number of Strand maps while running down through my stockpile of Islands.
The other side effect of doing Destructive Play is that I am working on building a Feared invitation along with knocking out the various named invitations that reward atlas passives. I forgot about the 70% quant achievement, so there are a few of these that I am going to have to do over again. I’ve successfully run feared before, but I am not sure I have done it on anything other than that one deeply broken penance brand character from a few leagues ago. It will be interesting to see how well this goes. Really the only thing that I have to worry about too much is Sirius and his physical damage over time nonsense. I am curious if I can buy a bunch of cheap Polaric invitations or something like that to burn through the rest of gear grinding goals.
Mostly I am trying to wrap up whatever I can in the next two days because I figure once I start down the Path of Exile II rabbit hole, it will dominate my attention for awhile. I did not last very long in 0.3.0 so I might find myself returning back to POE1 pretty quickly, but I am hoping that will not be the case. I think some of the things that are happening with Bear and Fire Damage are right up my alley. I am hoping it is pretty fun, because I did enjoy being a big poison bear in my last D4 league. Other than that… I have to admit I have had a bit of an itch to give Warframe another shot. Then there is my backlog of single player games that I have not touched in ages… which is only increased by the fact that Ash sent out the form for our games of the year show this morning. This is the challenge with me and these type of respective shows… is that in truth I mostly play forever games.
What prompted the Warframe desire though is a conversation I had with Ammo about it the other night, and then this morning seeing Ironmouse doing the best Warframe song, We All Lift Together at the Streamer Awards. If you have never seen the original Warframe animation video for this, you should absolutely watch it first so that you can appreciate the effort that they went into with the backgrounds and such for the Streamer awards. Who knows if I will give it another go or not.
The post One Hundred Again appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks. There has been a lot of discussion over the last week about the release of Concord and how poorly it is doing. Right now it has a 24-hour peak user count on Steam Charts of around 260 players with an all-time peak since the launch of 660. Granted this only represents numbers on Steam, but can be used as a way of extrapolating how well a game is doing in general. If it is performing poorly on PC, it is likely performing poorly on Playstation 5 where it is a console exclusive. Across the board, this seemed like a game that no one really wanted that was released into an already packed hero shooter genre, put up against games that were free to play as opposed to its $40 buy-in price. I remember briefly getting excited about the trailer only to lose all interest when I found out it was “yet another live service game” and more than that… focused on PVP combat. The trailer was this really cool science fiction heist thing and I felt like it could have been a really interesting game along the lines of the Guardians of the Galaxy game that came out a few years ago. Unfortunately, it was not and was part of the larger forced march that Sony seems to be on towards trying to mint a live service goldmine.
Why do we find ourselves on this path? The answer is simple… FIFA Ultimate Team exists and it was enough to make the financial types stand up and take notice and believe that live service games were an infinite money glitch. This feature went into FIFA soccer in 2009 and has been the prime revenue earner for Electronic Arts almost since that point. Just like World of Warcraft levels of success poisoned the waters for future MMORPGs, every game now is seemingly expected to produce “FUT” numbers. Just so you understand what this means… in 2020 during peak pandemic spending FIFA Ultimate Team brought Electronic Arts 1.62 Billion Dollars. That is from selling what are effectively digital trading cards that come along with a stat package for your game.
It was not until yesterday that I realized just how much money Sony has seemingly poured into trying to make Concord a thing. Secret Level is an Amazon Prime Streaming project from Blur Studios… aka the people who created pretty much every big-budget game trailer you have ever loved as well as the popular “Love, Death & Robots” anthology series. In the teaser trailer the text flashes by “15 Stories Inspired By Your Favorite Games”. So let’s take a look at the list of games that are going to be included.
● Armored Core ● Concord ● Crossfire ● Dungeons & Dragons ● Exodus ● Honor of Kings ● Mega Man ● New World: Aeternum ● PAC-MAN ● PlayStation (Highlighting various PlayStation Studios beloved entities) ● Sifu ● Spelunky ● The Outer Worlds ● Unreal Tournament ● Warhammer 40,000
There are a few of these that don’t really fit, that “your favorite games” bit. Firstly you have New World: Aeternum which I am guessing was included because Amazon is at least in part bankrolling the project and that they really want their console rebrand to work. Honor of Kings was new to me, but apparently, it is a really popular MOBA in mainland China from Tencent. Similarly, Crossfire is wildly popular in the South Korean market. Then you have Concord, which I am assuming was included in the list as part of the Sony marketing push behind this project or potentially part of a larger deal to allow for other properties to be included. This feels like an awful lot of money to put behind a product that had not been released and that is an IP that is unproven.
There has been a spate of large-budget flops lately. Suicide Squad for example looks like a massive winner compared to Redfall and Concord and reportedly it was an over 200 Million Dollar loss for Warner Brothers. Redfall cratered hard enough to effectively destroy the studio because Arkane Austin is no more. Concord will likely destroy Firewalk Studios as that seems to be the stakes that are on the line currently when a large game fails to find its market. 2023 was a brutal year for Video Game Studio layoffs and closures, and this year has reportedly already surpassed it. I don’t exactly revel in the death of these studios, but I do think that we have been on an untenable trajectory for a while. Video Games have been financed through the cult of green candles, and the belief that the line will always go up.
Even games that were large successes are beginning to flounder. Helldivers 2 was a massive success, but then as Sony pushed some unpopular practices like required use of the PlayStation Network…. it began to shed players. Recently they have been shedding players due to balance decisions, proving once again that a live service game is only one bad patch away from failure. Similarly, the title that Sony bought to herald its new Live Service push was Destiny 2, and it has been bleeding players for years. I know I used to be a massive supporter of the game but left more or less permanently after they removed the Forsaken content from the game. Now that the game has entered what is effectively maintenance mode after the release of the Final Shape and what is reportedly the last major expansion for the game, it is similarly shedding players.
The weird thing about “Live Service” games is that while the big budget money grabs are failing to gain purchase… a lot of the existing games are trucking along and doing just fine. If you search for “best live service games” you will find a ton of listicles and the vast majority of the games listed are all around ten years old. Warframe for example is potentially the best looter shooter on the market, and it has pioneered a business model that seems to have worked for them. Sure they do not generate FIFA Ultimate Team money, but they have reached a place where it is sustainable for the studio. Similarly, Path of Exile is doing amazingly well hitting brand new peak concurrency numbers for the Settlers of Kalguur league. Similarly, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and hell even the often-panned Fallout 76 seem to be hitting their strides. This leads me to believe that “big business” has been bad for games as a whole because they do not care about the sustainability of platforms… only about extracting the maximum amount of value out of the players.
I am sure this is terribly naive of me, but I would love to see more “Indie Darlings” like Last Epoch which is financed in large part through supporter packs similar to the model that Path of Exile pioneered. They are not massive successes necessarily, at least not in the billions in the sales department… but they are functional and enough to keep the studio churning out new content. Games have been a bubble and I am sure it will continue to burst, but my hope is that what is left in its place is something that makes more sense. The zero-sum game that we have been playing over the last few decades clearly is not working as intended.
Unfortunately, we are probably going to lose a few more studios before this tale is finished. Bungie recently laid off a massive number of employees due to “underperformance”. In this, they canned several projects leaving themselves with only Destiny 2 which is on life support, and placing all of their eggs in the Marathon basket which is an IP reboot turned extraction shooter. The thing is… it doesn’t seem like there is a lot of hype surrounding Marathon, in part because just like Concord it is attempting to launch itself into an already packed genre. The only people who really remember Marathon were Macintosh gamers from the 90s who subsisted on playing it when everyone was playing Doom. You know what a bunch of 40 and 50-somethings are probably not big on… extraction shooters. Those who are into that genre are already probably Tarkov stans. I feel like this is maybe not the right play for the already stratified ecosystem that the game is launching into.
Maybe I am being overly hyperbolic, but I feel like a lot of these games would have made really fun single-player and co-op PVE experiences. Suicide Squad, for example, seemed like it was itching to be the next game in the Arkham series, with similar gameplay. Concord, the game that started this post… at least based on the trailer felt like it really wanted to be a PVE game where you built up a team and planned and pulled off successively larger heists until you uncovered some plot where you had to save the world. Redfall similarly felt like given a bit more time baking and a story-driven focus… it could have leaned on the best parts of that Arkane DNA to create a memorable experience similar to Dishonored. It feels like these games are failing because they are being pushed into a mold that relies on massive player engagement to succeed.
Anyways… I am done rambling and yelling at the clouds. Maybe I am off my base, but Concord feels like a gauge of customer sentiment more than some of these other games. We went from “low interest” to what feels like “no interest”. All of this said… what the hell do I know? I will very likely be over here in my corner playing the same damned games that have been out for the last decade or longer, and enjoying myself doing that.
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Last Epoch – Fire Warpath Auto-Smite Paladin
Friends… I had a weekend where nothing was quite right. It was one of those weekends akin to wandering into your kitchen and knowing you want something… but you cannot figure out what it is. I was all over the freaking place. For example, I played some Last Epoch and got to Empowered Monoliths on my Fire Warpath Auto-Smite Paladin, and even took down my very first Harbinger. However, shortly after that I just lacked the will to keep pushing forward. Not that there is anything wrong with Last Epoch, but after playing a lot of Path of Exile during this league it just felt lacking. I wasn’t sure why I was trying to push forward, because I wasn’t sure what I actually wanted to accomplish. The moment-to-moment gameplay is fun enough, and there are brief chucks of excitement when you find a nemesis device on your map, but that is quickly over once you realize that you are killing monsters to fill bars so that you can fill other bars. Don’t get me wrong I love Last Epoch, but I think Path of Exile has just spoiled me.
Path of Exile – Widowhail Deadeye and Bleed Gladiator
Then there was Path of Exile, which has its own problems. I have my Righteous Fire Chieftain main that I have largely taken as far as I really can save for completely redoing my entire tree and diving further into the madness of cluster jewels. I have two alts my Widowhail Deadeye and Tanky Bleed Gladiator that are both fine, but both have their own problems that will need to be solved. The problem is, I am just not sure if I am willing to stick around and solve them. Widowhail Deadeye has NO defenses which means if anything looks slightly in their direction they fall over. Bleed Gladiator feels like a worse version of Righteous Fire in that I am plenty tanky… but also have to hit a bajillion buttons to make anything that feels like optimal progression. I was having more fun when it was just a Two-Handed Sunder build… but that had significant survival problems. Both of these characters can be fixed with an investment of time and gear and levels… but I am just not sure I am willing to go through the motions.
Path of Exile – Settlers of Kalguur Shipments
The League Mechanic has also become a bit stale. I loved it while leveling and gearing because so much of the gear that I am especially wearing on my alts and to a lesser extent my RF main… came directly off a boat. The problem is we were given a bit of a bait and switch when it came to the shipping mechanic because the reveal trailer promised three screens full of loot… and even when folks are shipping over 50 million in value they just end up with a single screen. I’ve not maxed out my workers but I am not sure I am willing to spend the gold prices that it would cost… or farm enough content in order to get said gold. Right now I am sending shipments to Riben Fell for 100k to 120k value and getting a reasonable amount of stuff back… but it is nowhere near as interesting as the giant loot pinatas we were promised. Acquiring stuff just seems to take more time than I am currently willing to put into it.
Diablo IV – Season 5 – Level 55 Barbarian
My friend Ace had been having a really good time with Diablo IV so I figured… what the hell since I seem to be floundering anyways I might as well give it a shot. I started off another Barbarian because of course I did… and I was originally going to go Whirlwind and I still might… but it felt MISERABLE to level as that. I fell back on good ole reliable and comfy Upheaval and as of last night was sitting at level 55. The leveling went extremely quickly, and in theory, I could probably even limp through the dungeon to convert over to World Tier 4 at this point. The problem is… I find the loot uninteresting in this game, and the tempering system is a bit miserable. So I am not sure what I am grinding towards save for completing seasonal achievements and progressing the Battle Pass.
Diablo IV – Tier 1 Infernal Hordes
Infernal Hordes is rather enjoyable. I am glad they are making this an evergreen part of the game going forward because it adds yet another thing that players can focus on. So far it doesn’t feel terribly rewarding given the amount of time it takes to complete one. The final boss phase can also be pretty miserable depending upon which negative affixes you choose along the way. That is probably my biggest problem… you only ever get to choose negatives. It reminds me of a worse version of the Red/Blue Atlars in t14+ maps in Path of Exile. With those you get some negative thing that is going to happen but also some massive bonus… either in the form of specific items dropping or the ability to duplicate loot or increase the quantity and rarity of drops. The carrot to this particular stick is just more aether… which lets you open more chests… which themselves feel rather anemic when it comes to rewards. Maybe these get better as I move into World Tier IV, but for now, mechanically they are a lot of fun up until the boss wave and seem to reward a lot of experience so just for fun’s sake they are worth doing.
Since coming back to Final Fantasy XIV, I have been entering the housing lottery again in the hopes of maybe winning back a plot after losing mine due to my own negligence. I realize it is kind of silly for me to do this given that I have already had a home and lost it, because I got distracted and busy around Christmas time. However this past period the same plot that I used to own was up for grabs, and I thought maybe just maybe fate would smile upon me and let me have it back. I did not in fact have the lucky number for the plot and yesterday I got back my deposit once again. I will once again try in a few days to find another housing plot, because what else am I going to do with the money that I have saved up? It is a bit frustrating, but I am largely resigned to doing this song and dance and never being the lucky winning number.
The thing that probably shocked me the most this weekend is that I actually booted up Warframe and played through a few missions. Of all of the games I have played over the years… Warframe is the one that I really wish that I could get into. It has such an amazing community and really some significant support from Digital Extremes. It is essentially Path of Exile levels of complicated but for a genre more akin to Destiny… and I would love to get into it, but I still find it largely obtuse and incomprehensible. I wish I could reset the progress and play through the game with the updated new player experience, but given that my account is 11 years old and I have all manner of legacy items… that is not going to happen. I might try and find some sort of new player experience guide to see if I can limp my way through unlocking whatever I have not unlocked.
What I should have been playing this past weekend was Guild Wars 2, because tomorrow the new expansion drops, and with it comes a glow-up for the Warclaw and what appears to be an amazing housing system. I’m about five quests away from completing Secrets of the Obscure and probably if I really set my mind to it tonight I could push through it. The biggest problem I have is that I essentially ground to a halt when I hit Inner Nayos. That zone is miserable, full stop. I was playing through it the night I had my little retina detach freak out and all of the shit floating in the air… really seems to aggravate me being able to see the floaters shifting around in my left eye. It does not help that at times it has Heart of Thorns levels of aggro and density just making it extremely unfun to play through. Secrets of the Obscure did some interesting things, but across the board, it is probably my least favorite expansion content from Guild Wars 2. I will be happy to move past it.
So basically where I stand currently… is that I have zero clue what I will be focusing on this week. Hell, it might be something that I have not even mentioned here. I’ve had a rough few weeks and continue to struggle with insomnia issues, so right now I just want something comfortable that can alleviate my frustrations. I am not sure such a thing exists. Hopefully, things chill out so I can get back to normal, but for the moment… I am not even really paying attention to everything going on with Blaugust. I am extremely thankful for the mentors who are largely keeping things running in my absence.
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Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Going into the show we had what seemed like a pretty slim set of show notes… but somehow we actually ended up bumping topics. We start off with a discussion of Grim Dawn since Bel and Grace have been playing it. This leads into a talk about loot generosity spawned by the loot filters in both Grim Dawn and Path of Exile and that ends up going off in its own direction. We talk a bit about the Star Wars Episode IX trailer which spawns a discussion about the Star Wars Cinematic Universe… which winds its way to the Marvel Comic Universe… which winds its way to a general discussion about Comic books. Finally a brief topic about a Warframe learning from its mistakes and trying a do-over on the Hildryn event.
