Gaming Podcasts in 2018

/ / 2 Comments / Blaugust, Podcast

I might have mentioned it, I’m listening to a few podcasts, originally the list was pretty small, but it kinda grew over time:

  • Battle Bards – I think this was the first podcast I listened to regularly
  • AggroChat – I’ve listened to every episode except for 2 that are on my todo list (145 and 151)
  • Massively Overpowered – Listened to it for a while in the past and again lately. I like it, but I’m not so much interested in “gaming news” as in the hosts telling stories about exploits.
  • All Things Geekery – Stumbled over this via Blaugust Reborn and listened to the whole Season 2.
  • I used to listen to a few EVE podcasts while I was playing, but I don’t really remember right now
  • And too bad that Cat Context hasn’t been running for a while 🙁

As to how I’m listening? Only when I’m playing something moderately grindy, e.g. leveling in a zone for the umpteenth time where I already know all the quests. Doesn’t work for cutscene-heavy stuff, e.g. GW2’s personal story, or KotFE or KotET in SWTOR. Works fine for all the levels in between (and I can easily pause it for the important cutscenes). Sometimes it’s even “I want to listen to the latest episode of X, so I may as well level a bit in the meantime” 😛
I already bookmarked a handful of other gaming podcasts during this month and will have a look at them, but if you have any recommendations, please do post them! (Preferably no Twitch/etc streams, please, I’m really not a fan of live content and/or the usual content of streams.)

PS: Blaugust has started and this is my thirtieth post. Stay tuned for a summary tomorrow!

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Mixed bits of progress

/ / Leave a Comment / Blaugust, SW:TOR

My short one-week vacation is coming to an end, back to work tomorrow. Didn’t do much but play SWTOR yesterday and today while recovering from sightseeing and catching a light cold on my trip.
First I tried to speed-run a 2h Command XP buff, because I really, really, really want to get to Command Level 300 on my Bounty Hunter. I managed to do the dailies (with a weekly each) for Ziost, Black Hole, CZ-198, Yavin 4, Corellia Heroics, and nearly managed to do Voss (would’ve needed like 3mins more, grrr). I had a few Bonus XP packs to open, but still – from CL 211 to CL 236 isn’t bad in 2h – so that means I need to that twice more and then maybe once without a buff and I should be set. With 2 people it probably would have worked to get Voss done as well. Maybe there are even faster things to do, but I’m too lazy to research, it’s not so bad if I have to spend 2h more on this.
Next up was my last missing (base class) character who’s not 70 yet, my Sith Assassin. So I did Makeb and started on the Shadow of Revan pre-quests. I’m kinda getting sick of the “Assault on Tython” and “Korriban Incursion” flashpoints, especially as they’re followed *very* soon by “Depths of Manaan”, “Legacy of the Rakata”, “Blood Hunt”, and “Battle of Rishi” – and I’ve done them quite a few times now. Ugh. I’m at 57 now after these first two and need to regain some rested XP first.
To relax a bit I continued the story line on my baby Sith Marauder and finished Balmorra at Level 23. Next stop: Nar Shaddaa, but again waiting for some rested XP.
Before the dailies reset this morning I quickly finished Ziost and CZ-198 on my Commando, then the afternoon was mostly spent with my Sith Juggernaut, who is kinda different than most of the others. I leveled him as a duo and we didn’t rush the planets, but did most of the story lines – so he was Level 70, but hadn’t even seen Ilum yet. Now I caught up a bit, but doing the Tython/Korriban FPs twice a day is really not my cup of tea. At least I found my fun again playing him – mobs just kinda fall down if I manage to position them right for AoE. I can’t even decide which class/spec I like more right now. Powertech BH, Telekinetics Sage, or Vengeance Juggernaut.
Finally I progressed a little in KotFE on my Jedi Sage, at Chapter IX now, in the progress made a few levels. But I’m mostly interested in getting my companions back and being able to do some Archaeology, I have this character at 551 Synthweaving and my Juggernaut at 550 Artifice and would really love to get both to 600 soon…
So yeah, many small steps and a few bigger ones, but my play time will be going down a bit now.
Some quick short- and midterm gaming goals:

  • Levels: Get an 8th Level 70 character
  • Command Levels: Get Bounty Hunter to 300, then grab the permanent 25% boost and work on the next toon
  • Professions: Synthweaving and Artificer from 550 to 600
  • Achievements:
    • Get to Social IV on Juggernaut
    • Get to Valor 30 on BH
    • Finally do the last missing Heroic Missions: Balmorra on both sides
    • Grab some missing Datacrons
    • Start (and finish? :P) the HK-51 quest line
    • Finish the last “Kill 1000 mobs with this companion” achievements:
      • Agent: 3/5 done
      • Consular: 3/5 done (because of the meta at launch I *only* played with Qyzen)
      • Knight: 3/5 done
      • Inquisitor: 1/5 done (damn stealth playstyle :P)
      • Smuggler: 3/5 done
      • Trooper: 4/5 done
      • Fortresses: 2/6 done

PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-ninth post. Only two more to go!

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Gear as character progression

/ / 2 Comments / Games, WoW / ,

Telwyn wrote about gearing, and gear as character progression in WoW in detail. I wanted to comment, but this was one of those “loo long for a comment” posts very soon..
I don’t want to say I have a strong opinion on the topic, but maybe I have several, mixed, not-so-light opinions 😉
Just relying on drop luck sucks, it’s what I’ve always hated in raids in Vanilla and TBC, thus I found DKP a lot better. Show up more, get more loot. I also didn’t like Loot Council (oh, the raid leader’s favorite people get their best in slot items, but the people who show up 90% don’t get anything, and the slackers get showered in loot so they catch up…), but let’s leave those organized multiplayer loot systems behind and just talk about “gearing” in general.
If my toon has no means of getting gear outside personal loot drops and tokens.. I prefer a mixed system. I don’t remember seeing a full-on “there are only tokens” system, you always get a modicum of gear to drop and then collect some kind of tokens or points and can buy stuff for your missing slots, hopefully one per week, or at least more than one every 2 months (hello WoW, looking at you). I don’t want to feel pushed to run a heroic dungeon every single day to not lag behind, but ok, 1h investment per day can still be considered fine for a raider – bonus points if there’s a weekly cap and not a daily one.
This had worked kinda fine in past expansions, I bought some items for Heroic tokens, sometimes even the odd PvP piece (Was that Bracers/Belt in TBC? :P). What I absolutely hate the most was this “oh I bought it yesterday and now something of the same quality or better drops after I had saved up 2 weeks for that piece. Just let me at least sell it back for half the value or get rid of random drops altogether. This makes me literally furious, much more than not getting the item (or its too-quick replacement) at all.
Legion changed all that – at least for the Weapon slot. For the first few toons (and specs) I kinda liked it. One less thing to care about upgrading, or let’s say – there’s no real alternative, it’s just a nice, quick progression. On the other hand.. there’s no catch-up mechanic (IIRC there came one, a lot later, but if you -like me- don’t spend the first 6 months on your main, but play some alts, the catch-up mechanic was kinda meh. I had already invested a ton of time into my alts’ artifact weapons). But in general I really liked it. No more “should I really upgrade this to X when tomorrow something with X+1 might drop for me?” I can get carried away real quickly in pondering about weapon upgrades. As an aside, I’ve always hated the PvP gear grind. My suggestion had been for years: Let everyone buy a set for 100g/1000g or something equally low (free is fine as well) and then it’s 100% a skill game, and has nothing to do with gear anymore. Not sure if they ever implemented that to the fullest, but by that time I had (and still have) burned out on WoW PvP for a long, long time. (I was Rank 11 in vanilla and didn’t too to bad in TBC arenas, then I stopped).
Now, I haven’t played BfA, but so far it sounds ok-ish. But I’m not sure I wouldn’t have preferred to keep the weapon approach (but transmoggable, and maybe not one per spec, but 1 per class). Sure it’s boring, but it’s nice and handy.
This Azerite artifact? amulet? seems to be some kind of proxy to your /played and meaningful earning of a certain currency, so the longer you play (regarding contributing activities ingame) the more your power grows, just like with the weapon, but it’s more customizable, as it’s a different tier that’s not tied to a certain slot. I don’t really see this as very different, but I guess I’d have to play to comment, really.
Oh, and all this talk was now just about the mode of character progression via gear, there are some totally different models, which all have something going for them:

  • I like SWTOR’s datacrons – you unlock them account wide and every single one gives you a little boost, but I haven’t run the numbers how many of them bump you like 1 Tier of gear, if at all
  • I like EVE’s training mechanic a lot. If I am “actively playing” that month (in the monthly active user metric *cough*) I get to level something – I don’t have to be playing 24/7. This had the downside of never being able to catch up, but as total noob I’d say that after N years (N might be 3 or 7 or more) you won’t get better for a certain amount of ships, you can only really go broader, not deeper. Also there were skill injectors, which fixed this problem to a degree but brought others. Wilhelm had a good post about it lately. And yes, this is pay-to-win on a very basic scale. On the other hand, I once forgot to cancel a 3-month sub for EVE and while in any other MMO I would’ve felt regret, in EVE it was “ah well, time to queue up some of the nasty long skills, while I’m not actively playing”.

PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-eighth post; and even after all these years, “eighth” is one of the hardest words of the English language for me.
PPS: Something I’ve noticed this Blaugust: the more I post, the more likely I am to reference one of Wilhelm’s posts. This time it’s even two – because between me reading Telwyn’s post and posting this, he wrote something on the topic as well. Gladly I’m not that philosophic and don’t even get started on the reasoning if gearing and character progression makes sense, I’m absolutely happy to just voice an opinion 🙂

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Still motivated I guess

/ / Leave a Comment / About this blog, Blaugust

This week’s theme is “Staying Motivated Week” and that’s kinda bad for me, because I’m still 100% motivated, I’m just content-starved 😛
I know this blog is a mix of me journalling my exploits in games, sometimes bragging about my meager achievements, and some random rambling – but as you noticed this is hardly a blog about my life outside of gaming – I wrote such a blog for years, elsewhere. Maybe it’s refreshing to just being able to focus on one (very broad) topic, maybe it has to do with not posting with my real name. To be fair I’d say I’m still telling friends on IRC and Discord and Messengers enough of my daily life that I could as well be still blogging. That would at least provide ample material for a daily post, not just for a month, but longer. I really like what Belghast is doing – although it’s not daily daily anymore, to me that’s still one of the most high-frequency blogs I know, but I didn’t run the number, maybe Syp and Wilhelm are close or even ahead. I’m checking their feeds daily if I have time, and in the winter, when not commuting by bike, those 3 are probably my first blogs to check. For once the time zones are not all bad, because I can read their “yesterday” post on my morning commute. But just because I’ve read them for years that doesn’t mean they’re exclusive. This Blaugust I’ve noticed a few people I’ll definitely put on my daily list – and a ton of others that will move to my regular “Games” category. Also time and time again I find it fascinating that there are some people I can have awesome discussions on Discord but their writing style and/or topics just don’t fit me well, sorry folks – I’m nearly as finicky with blogs as I am with podcasts, so please don’t take it personally.
Anyway, Blaugust went very well and now it’s just the home stretch of four days. I’m not sure if it was mostly “I’m taking up this challenge and want to finish with the Rainbow Diamond Award” or, more likely, the Discord was awesome and everyone was chiming in, asking questions, answering questions, and talking about life, the universe, and everything (wow, that was an oxford comma’d oxford comma sentence, is this even legal?).
 
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-seventh post.

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Mixing Up The Gaming Diet

/ / Leave a Comment / Blaugust, Games / ,

I might have mentioned it once or twice, but I’m really bad at mixing up my gaming diet. If you didn’t just stumble over here, you’ll notice I’ve been posting about SW:TOR for weeks.
There’s stuff I really want to try, or get back to, though:

  • WoW’s Battle For Azeroth expansion. I’m curious, I want to see the new stuff. Downside: might be sucked into a hole again.
  • FFXIV: I’ve read SO many good things about it, one of them is that I can play a single character and don’t have to create an army of alts
  • GW2: I’m still logging in nearly every day for the free gift, but I want to play again
  • So much for the MMOs, I surely missed some, but there’s also Quake Champions which is really fun… but it’s not the space fantasy opera MMO that I need right now
  • Dead Cells is awesome, but I saw no progress, so I kinda stopped.
  • EVE Online is something that was really fun, but I kinda didn’t want to commit to hours at a time for an op or mission running…
  • Project Highrise

PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-sixth post if scheduling still works.

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Pen & Paper Games – The Alternative Future

/ / Leave a Comment / Blaugust, Pen & Paper, RPG

Continuing from my last post where I wrote down what I played and what I read into, there’s more – the stuff I might play at some point in the future!
Sadly there are a lot of systems I never really got in contact with, and I would have loved to play them or just read more about them.
In no particular order:

If I didn’t have a huge backlog of books I might just scour ebay for the Earthdawn core book and maybe just buy some Pathfinder & Numenera books, those are the ones highest on my interest list for the last few years.
But there’s also stuff that’s well-known that never really sounded very interesting to me

  • MERP (MERS in German) back when it was new
  • Call of Cthulhu
  • HârnMaster – I read a scathing review many years ago that said you’d have to take like 5 skill dice rolls already just for getting out of bed and brushing your teeth 😀

So yeah, I’m basically interested in Pen & Paper game systems and I read many more source books than I used actively playing.
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-fifth post if scheduling still works.

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Pen & Paper Games – The Past

/ / Leave a Comment / Blaugust, Pen & Paper, RPG

I’ve played my first Pen & Paper role playing game in 1995 or 1996 – and as many Germans the system was “The Dark Eye” (Das Schwarze Auge), because D&D wasn’t so popular and well-known as in other countries. It’s heavily inspired by D&D of course and it’s been around since 1984 – but at least from the people where I learned about it.. there was no talk about D&D.
Later on I played some Shadowrun (and we have group going again after a few years’ pause) and Vampire: The Masquerade, Hunter: The Reckoning, Paranoia, Lord of the Rings (the new one, not MERP), Engel and some other stuff.
Then there’s a few systems where I have bought and/or read a few books, but never really played it (except maybe for a shirt one-shot at a con):

  • World of Warcraft – *cringe*, one of the worst source books I ever read, pure money-making and I fell for it
  • Star Wars – we nearly started an online group via IRC/Skype going…
  • Fading Suns – awesome world, I loved this core rule book
  • Kult – so refreshingly disturbing

PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-fourth post if scheduling works 😉

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What Class Do You Refuse To Play?

/ / 4 Comments / Blaugust, Games, SW:TOR / ,

Ocean Mariee asked an interesting question, Endalia chimed in and this topic got me thinking.
In Ragnarok Online I started with a Hunter, I liked it, but my preferred character was a Rogue. I also liked the other Melee DPS and didn’t really enjoy the casters.
When I started WoW I first rolled a Warlock, but after a few hours went for a Rogue again – who turned out to be my main from 2006 until 2014 and I didn’t really abandon him, I just tried another faction in Legion at first (Demon Hunter). My “main alts” were a Protection/DPS Warrior and a Resto/DPS Shaman. So I raided 90% as a Melee DPS (over the years) but I did heal a few progression fights and tanked in our non-main raids for years. So there’s not much I refused to play – but I absolutely did not enjoy the Monk – and I don’t know why. It’s my least favourite WoW class by a large margin, followed by DK and then Holy Priest and Fire Mage I guess. I liked Frost Mages and Disc Priests.
In GW2 I didn’t really enjoy the Elementalist when I tried it (for a very short time) and I haven’t really warmed up to the Revenant. The Mesmer is ok, but also not my favourite.
Now in SWTOR I equally like my Bounty Hunter, Commando, Sage and Juggernaut – but I only healed back at launch when I was briefly raiding, everything else is DPS – but I did notice I like ranged DPS a lot more in this game than in WoW. Of course sometimes it’s just magnitudes easier to not stand in the bad etc.pp (Melee DPS raider speaking, feel free to ignore me ;))
So is there a role I refuse to play? I used to tank and heal *a lot* but at some point I guess I decided to not be in the mood for random people in dungeons to be cursing just because I pull too slow or can’t heal them when they pull a whole room – I’ve never been one for the gear grind, so my toons in dungeons are usually a little undergeared, as I’m only doing them for gear and not for some “NEED TO FARM BADGES FOR 0.5% IMPROVEMENT IN MY TRINKET SLOT”. Yeah, so the last few years I was one of the people just doing moderate DPS – always trying not to be the worst, but usually not carrying the group, sorry other players.
If I get back into WoW I’ll really try to have at least one tank or healer geared as well and not do only DPS. IIRC I actually did tank on my Demon Hunter, just not the harder Mythics – I stopped too early in the expansion for that. I’m not doing any random dungeons in SWTOR right now anyway.
Did I forget any MMOs? I guess not. So I definitely refuse to change my main just because the group needs it, the benefit of mostly soloing or duoing these days. I guess it depends a lot on the game, in WoW I prefer Melee DPS over casters, in SWTOR I prefer casters over Melee or close-range DPS. In GW2 Melee DPS is fine, but for some fights ranged is like literally half as challenging. *cough* Tequatl *cough*
Oh, and I managed to get 70 on my Operative by finishing Yavin 4, Ziost, doing the Ziost and CZ-198 dailies. Good riddance, you’re now rewarded of being my GTN mule for Weapons to sell, I don’t plan on playing you for a while.

Level 70 Imperial Agent

 
Stay sharp, Evil Elvis
Stay sharp, Evil Elvis

PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-second post.

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Never thought I’d do that

/ / 2 Comments / About this blog, Blaugust, SW:TOR /

“Just booked a short holiday and the first thought was: argh, have to schedule 4 posts!” as I wrote on Discord last night – so while I (for the first time in my 18+ years of sporadic blogging) made a real effort to prepare posts during an absence from my computer… I didn’t prepare something for today.
Also kinda sucks if it’s your last day at work before a short 1 week holiday and you got so much to do you don’t get to play much. Or maybe because you pre-wrote 3 blog posts… I guess I even at one point posted Blaugust is a bad time for continuous blogging for me because I tend to leave the country for at least a week every year. Only a few days this time though, and it only came together early this week, no planning months before.
I’m playing my Operative (Imperial Agent) right now, trying to get him to 70 asap. I needed to finish Yavin 4 (having finished Rishi yesterday) but – and I might be wrong – you can only do certain Weekly quests once per account, at least I couldn’t do Yavin twice when I tried, a few weeks ago. So I first had to do this on my Bounty Hunter (need to use up those Command Level XP boosts, and really, really want to reach CL 300 this month). Also did Black Hole on her, as it counts towards the weekly Conquest and then threw in a quick 15mins of Ziost. Didn’t I just say I had no time to play? Well it’s past 1 am already. So my Operative s 68 now and ready to start either Oricon, Ziost, or KotFE – I guess I’ll do Ziost to unlock the dailies first (as usual) and I think I never did Oricon – but I’ll hopefully be Level 70 by the time I finish Ziost (for the 5th? time?) and then I’ll probably switch to another character again – I don’t really enjoy this class, although the class story from 1-50 was kinda neat.
I also started a Sith Marauder in the last few days, finished Dromund Kaas and sitting at Level 20. Part of my ongoing project to a) have one of every advanced class at 50 or more and b) experience the same story line with a character of the other gender. So far I had done a female Jedi Shadow (after a male Sage) and now a female Marauder (after a male Juggernaut). Still a lot to do.
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-second post. And I have no shame to backdate it 2h – this counts for yesterday because I’m still awake.

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Developer Appreciation Week Part 2

/ / Leave a Comment / Blaugust, Games /

The Blaugust weekly structured format post is “Developer Appreciation Week” and I already made a post about that topic and mentioned an upcoming rant.
A big problem in the game industry is working too much and not being paid enough (and gamers being idiots), so I’ve decided very early on that I don’t want to work in games. I wish the industry was better for the people working there and I’m not upset if a game comes a year late, I’d prefer that to the poor souls working 80h weeks. But sure, I could do more – and maybe buy more games full price at launch, but if you scroll past my posts over the last few years you will notice I’m not really playing many games. I’d go as far as to say that I’m not the target demographic. I play a few games heavily, I even did that before MMOs were a thing. I’m also happy to pay a monthly subscription – but that’s a bit winner-takes-it-all, I’m then not buying other games for a while.
So I’d really appreciate if if game companies of a certain size would pay their developers enough money and most importantly stop the soul crushing crunch time.
This customer who buys your games (sample size: 1) usually doesn’t mind if anything gets delayed, as long as you keep the status quo of the game running. And if it’s not coming out yet.. maybe you shouldn’t have announced it a year early? How about announcing it and then capturing the hype from announcement until launch a few months later. Why would I care how I felt about your game last year? For indies it’s a bit different. If they’re a single person or duo or three people who do kind of bootstrap a startup as equals (and not abuse their employees)… sure that’s hard, but they chose this. They have all my support to do what they love, they just don’t get to whine about the world being a tough place. Feel free to see me as not eligible to comment if I may bot buy your game – but if I like it, I may buy it, but I’m not a games hoarder, I don’t even buy all the games I’m instantly excited about.
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-first post.

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