MMO – Page 5 – Many Welps

Trove’s Delves Update

May 6, 2020KluwesLeave a comment

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The last time I played was just after the From the Deep patch dropped. Before then, my interest was already winning but I stuck around to see what the new update had in store. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep my interest. Random events that require cooperation from 10 plus random people in Trove…no thanks.

Just yesterday I learned that a new update was coming. And by coming I mean launched on the day I heard about it. Looking a little farther back, I’m actually surprised it launched so quickly. I found patch notes from the PTS server dated March 30th and a trailer was dropped sometime last week saying the update was coming this spring. I guess it is spring now. So, I messaged the old Trove crew and let them know we should check it out sometime this week.

You can find the full patch notes here.

Delves

Delves are the biggest chunk of content/ change in this update. I’m sure that surprises no one. These are procedurally generated endless dungeons that can hold up to 8 players. These dungeons mix the Geode side of Trove and the combat side of Trove as the players race through the dungeon completing an objective under a time limit. At the end of each floor, there’s a boss that must be defeated in under 3 minutes to progress to the next level. This, of course, comes with its own currency to collect for mounts, wings, banners, and allies.

There are 3 types of Delves: Public, Private, and challenge. Public Delves can be queued for in the Hub and will pair you with players of your similar power rank. You can craft portals for Private Delves at the Delve crafting bench which allows you to for premade teams of up to 8 people. Challenge Delves are generated each week so that players are on an even playing field for leaderboard competition. Rewards will be based on depth level reached in the Challenge Delve and for clearing 3 consecutive tiers the fastest.

Delves can be done by anyone at any level but this looks like more of an end game activity. Delves are replacing the previous end game dungeons, Shadow Towers, and all of the rewards from Shadow Towers are now obtainable in the Delves. I like this change, I was getting bored of killing the same bosses every week. Now I can run these and mix it up a little. Shadow Towers still exist but with no rewards. Shadow Tower portals will take you straight to the boss room now.

Tomb Raiser

I used to love the Tomb Raiser pre-Mante of Power update in 2016. That update took him from a viable class to the bottom tier. I haven’t touched him in 4 years. This patch brings much-needed buffs to the class. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s a playable class now.

Minor Updates

There are a lot of little things that were updated in this patch. Things of note were Class Leaderboards are no longer based on the Power Rank of the class and now “require effort on the class”. I would argue, getting enough power rank on a class to get rewards on the leaderboard was effort enough but it looks like now you’ll have to play the class to get rewards. There’s a whole list of activities in the Patch notes that boil down to things you’d typically do in Trove on a Weekley basis anyways. This is a little disappointing as a majority of my empowered gem boxes came from the class leaderboards every week.

Bomber Royale no longer gives Tome Experience. That’s a shame, it was an effective and fun way of getting those tomes done every week when your sick of running dungeons.

Legendary Tomes now nag the player once every 30 seconds if they are still equipped after being fully charged

This is my favorite patch note. So many times I haven’t noticed this was filled up. I welcome a notification that will “nag” me to change my tome out.

Thoughts

This looks like a decent update with content I can sink some time into again. I haven’t had a chance to test out any of the new features yet but I’m sure we’ll be playing sometime this week. The Public Delves are either going to be great or it’s going to be a few people trying to do the objective while 5 guys sit AFK. It’s Trove after all.

Apparently, the Shadow Towers were one of the main sources of lag in the game due to how they spawn a zone for each person doing them. I’m interested to see if the lag has improved. I’m not holding my breath though. Trove just wouldn’t be Trove if you weren’t rubberbanding every 5 minutes.

TemTem: It’s Not Exactly PC Pokemon

May 4, 2020May 4, 2020Kluwes1 Comment

I want to start this off by saying I know that TemTem is early access. It’s very difficult to forget as it’s plastered everywhere. There’s also this giant notification that you get when launching the game. I also know that early access games can change a lot from the time they “launch in EA” to the time they “actually launch”. You can see the roadmap here. There’s a lot still to come.

So I wasn’t expecting a finished game. From most of the reviews I expected a not quite finished but very playable game. And so far that’s what I’ve gotten.

This weekend I spent some time re-acquainting myself with the game and working towards beating the first Dojo. I bought this a few weeks ago after a friend picked it up. The main draw for me was a Co-Op pokemon game so I wasn’t too interested until someone I could play with had it. I played around 2 hours that first day and didn’t touch it again until last week. At the time of this writing I have 12 hours in the game but I haven’t done enough Co-Op to form an opinion on it yet.

For the most part, TemTem is a reskinned pokemon you can play on PC. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After so many years of learning which pokemon are which type and what those type match-ups are, it’s refreshing to have to learn something new. This leads to situations where using certain attacks will do very little damage. But after a while, I’m starting to learn what moves to use when and when my TemTems are about to be at an extreme disadvantage.

I was going to list all of the similarities and realized it would just be easier to list what’s different: The Battle System. While it’s still turn-based and relies on knowing type match-ups it has a few key differences that make it it’s own.

The first is that every battle is a doubles battle. With two TemTems out at all times there’s some interesting strategies and synergies. My favorite is to use Chain Lightning with a partner who’s resistant to electric damage. Chain Lightning hits 3 TemTems clockwise so you hit both of your opponents and your partner. When you forget your partner is a water type things don’t go so well…

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Then there’s the stamina system. Instead of PP in pokemon where each move has a limited number of uses TemTem has stamina amounts for each move. Each TemTem has a different stamina pool based on their stats. You can use a move if it exceeds your stamina pool but it will take a chunk of your health depending on just how little stamina you have. If a TemTem overexerts itself by using all of its stamina it needs to rest for a turn. I find this adds a bit more strategy to battles. Do I go for the big hit and hope for a knockout or do I reserve my stamina for a few rounds with little attacks? Do I sacrifice some health and take out the opposing TemTem this round or take 2 rounds to KO?

I will say that TemTem is harder than recent Pokemon games. There is a lot of grinding involved to level up a newly added team member. In the first few zones, there aren’t a lot of effective type match-ups so battles go on longer. After the first Dojo when you h have access to the water, leveling new TemTems is easier but still slower than recent

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The whole game feels tougher thanks to the doubles format and the stamina system. I find that I have to switch TemTems mid-battle a lot more than I do in Pokemon. Beating Sophia, the first Dojo leader, took me two tries with about 2 hours of leveling in between. Unlike Pokemon’s gym leaders, Sophia had different types of TemTems so I couldn’t exploit one type match up the whole time.

Whether or not it’s worth the $35 price tag right now remains to be seen. Judging from the steam reviews there are 30-40 hours of PVE content right now. 12 hours in, I’ve only beaten 1 dojo and there appears to be 4 in the game right now so I’d say that’s about right. The game also just got competitive matchmaking, if you’re into that kind of thing, which is sure to extend the time you can spend with the game.

Let’s Talk About Warframe

March 24, 2020May 4, 2020Kluwes6 Comments

A quick look back shows I have exactly 0 posts about Warframe. Which is weird because I have 120 hours in the game. Making it one of my most played games. But that’s because my gaming group has never stuck with it long enough for me to form any kind of opinion on it.

3 years ago when we were getting into streaming we wanted a game we could all play together regularly. Warframe seemed like the perfect match. The group size was 4 and there were four of us. And thus began our on-again-off-again relationship with the game. We’d play for a month or 2 abandon it and then someone would get the bright idea to play it again. We’d all wonder why we didn’t keep playing it and then BAM! everyone loses interest again.

This time is different though. The benefit of streaming Warframe is that the community likes to help people out. Warframe has a lot of moving parts and the game is notoriously bad at explaining how any of them work. So you get great advice and tips from veteran players who don’t mind showing people the ropes. We have a much better understanding of how to progress and what we should be doing. It only took 3 years…We’re finally on Uranus. Which, for the record, is not very far.

We’ve started playing as a group on Saturday nights consistently which hasn’t happened in a while for any game. Our play sessions center around progressing on planets until someone has to log off. Then the rest of the group spend the night grinding materials or Warframe / weapon parts. It’s a slow road but it’s always a great time to get everyone together.

Warframe also makes a good podcast game. I’ve been sorely lacking a good podcast game since Trove. A game where I can turn the in-game sound off and keep my hands busy while I listen to The No Sleep Podcast.

Warframe and Trove have a lot in common. They both feature classes with small skill bars that turn into press “x” to win. They both feature a heavy material and experience grind. Both feature the gameplay loop of rush to the objective to get your reward and do it all over again. And you can do TONS of damage! Warframe is prettier though, and get’s updated more, and is more fun to play right now.

Starting up in Neverwinter

February 27, 2020February 26, 2020Kluwes2 Comments

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I’ve been dipping my toes into Neverwinter for the past few weeks. It’s one of those games that I kind of forget about until I see it has an update. And it seems like it’s updated consistently. It’s also a game that I’ve never given a good chance. What initially got me interested was Telwyn’s posts about Neverwinter. Then I read some posts from Syp and more recently from Bhagpuss. What can I say? I’m easily swayed by the opinions of others.

For starters, when I logged in I was met with 2 characters who hadn’t been touched since 2014. I could have sworn I had made a bit of an effort to play Neverwinter on a 2 handed Weapon Fighter, turns out that wasn’t the case as he was sitting there at level 4. Well maybe level 4 harder to get to in 2014 but I doubt it. The other was a Dwarf Cleric who I played maybe once. Both of them were promptly deleted.

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The first character I made was a Halfling Ranger. I played her until level 19. I wasn’t digging the weapon swap mechanics. If I’m going to play a class with a bow I want to play with the bow all the time. Plus there were 3 extra skills to keep track of and I just don’t have time for that right now ok?….

Thus, Kadjik Kard, the Half-Elf Paladin was born. I like the Paladin class for two reasons. The first being he only has 3 skills I need to worry about. The other being I wanted to play a healing class and also wear heavy armor and carry a shield. Plus, with my own healing spells, I don’t have to spend money on potions!

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I’ve gotten to level 28 so far. I’m pushing for 30 so I can specialize and queue for dungeons as a healer instead of a tank. Speaking of dungeons, I’ve done two of them so far and have rather enjoyed them. I was actually surprised that the queue for a tank/healer and DPS were about the same length for the first dungeon I unlocked. It was a rather low key experience that I quite enjoyed.

Neverwinter has not been what I was expecting. For some reason, I thought it was a lobby based dungeon game. Nope! There are in fact open areas and instances that quests take place in. I remember hating the sparkly trail last time I played but I’ve learned to appreciate the simplicity it brings to questing. The biggest surprise is the lore pages are actually well written and I read them every time I find a new one.

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I feel like Neverwinter is the B-Movie of MMOs. It doesn’t quite have the production value as other games and the animations and character models are questionable at times. The voice acting is also…questionable. There are some NPCs who’s voices completely change from quest to quest. There are some NPCs who are over the top and some that sound like they’re reading straight from a piece of paper. But I love them all! I find myself laughing sometimes when I probably shouldn’t be but I am very much enjoying my experience every time I log into this game.

RIP Fallen Earth

September 5, 2019September 5, 2019Kluwes3 Comments

20190114213050_1 — Just a man, a horse, and his frying pans

There was some sad news on Tuesday. Fallen Earth will be taken offline on October 2nd, 2019 following its 10th-anniversary event. Little Orbit cited low population and bad server performance as the main reasons to shut it down.

Fallen Earth is one of those free to play steam games that I always like to go back to every now and then. Earlier this year, I was getting back into it and playing it fairly often. It has a unique setting, decent combat, and a very in-depth crafting system.

The player population was in the 50s on any given night. While it made the game feel as empty as a post-apocalyptic world should be it didn’t give me much confidence in the longevity of the game. Eventually, I just didn’t want to put more time into it because I didn’t know how much longer it was going to be around. I kept an eye on Fallen Earth to see if there were any updates to the game over the year. While there was some developement it wasn’t a whole lot to inspire confidence.

There is some hope though. While the game in its current form is being taken offline there are plans to continue working on a new version. It’s hard to say how this will play out. I’m giving it a 50% chance that Fallen Earth will return to us. I personally hope it does. Fallen Earth is such a unique game in the MMO space I think a fresh coat of paint and better server performance could do it some good. I also think reworking the free to play model would also help in the future. When your game has such a heavy focus on crafting, it’s frustrating when you can only craft 2 items at a time that take 15+ minutes without paying.

This month I plan on revisiting Fallen Earth one more time. I’d like to see as much of the world as I can before the servers shut down. Road tripping seems like the best way to say farewell to the game.

WoW Classic is Not for Me

September 3, 2019September 2, 2019Kluwes3 Comments

I’m gonna be that guy. That guy that comes out and says, I’m not into WoW Classic. I tried, I really did. I put in some hours over the long weekend and most of the time I asked the question: “Am I having fun?”. That answer was no far more often than not and I’m trying to figure out why.

I managed to get an undead rouge to level 10 by the time I packed it in. At first, I liked the novelty of no quest markers on the mini-map. That ended fairly quickly when I had more than a couple active quests and couldn’t figure out where the NPC was for the turn in. Those quest markers have become such an integral part of games now it’s hard to imagine a game without them.

I tried a few characters. Before the undead rogue there was a dwarf priest who I got to level 9. I wasn’t enjoying having to wait for my health and mana to come back up after one or two rounds of combat. I rolled an Orc Rouge to check out their starting area. I stuck with that for a level or 2 until I had the idea that I really wanted to play an undead rogue.

I can see where everyone else is coming from. The sense of community in the game is great. General chat is full of people talking and sometimes even being helpful. There are roving groups, random invites, and even some conversations to be had while leveling. I joined a guild and had a good time chatting with the people there but that isn’t enough to hold my interest.

I spent a good chunk of time on my priest like this.

I know a lot of that is because I don’t have that nostalgia to get me into the game. I don’t have friends who want to play it with me either. I came in curious to see how it all began, what it was like 15 years ago. Turns out, games have come a long way in 15 years, I’m sure to no one’s surprise.

I would have loved this game in 2006. I was a freshman in high school, this was exactly the kind of game me and my friends would have loved playing. Many of us were playing Runescape the year before and I think most of them would have been playing World of Warcraft if they could have gotten a subscription. Classic is grindy in a way my highschool self would have loved. Grinding weapon proficiencies, joining groups to level, finding quests in a giant world, and working on professions. There’s a ton of time to be sunk here and that’s just something I don’t have as much of anymore.

And I think that’s what it’s really all about. I spent a good 10 or so hours playing to get to level 10. Unshared tags make it hard to get quests done. Grouping up is a way around that for sure but the quests still take a while because others are also doing the same quest that isn’t in your group. Everything feels slow and I just don’t like the pacing.

Right now, I can’t see myself putting a ton more hours into Classic. I may dabble a bit more in the coming weeks, I still have a full month subscription after all. Or maybe I’ll go try out retail again and see how that goes. In the meantime, I look forward to reading everyone else’s stories from their time in Classic. I’ve said this before, and it may just be true, I enjoy reading about WoW more than I like playing it.

Trove Team Letter 2019

August 29, 2019KluwesLeave a comment

Trove press.jpg Trove, as of the time of this writing, has been down for 50 hours. On August 27th, the team announced there would be a 12-hour downtime as they moved the server to a new location. They must have dropped it somewhere along the line, maybe down a flight of very large stairs. As usual, players are calling for fair compensation for not being able to play for 2 days. I’m more than content to play something else, maybe a certain MMO with a new classic server.

But there is good news on the Trove front. Out of the downtime came a Team Letter about the future of the game. They’ve now moved beyond what the team at Trion had planned when they released Gardening 2.0. Now it’s time to see what Gamigo has in store.

Moving forward, the plan is to release two major updates, two minor updates, two quality of life each year while continuing the hotfixes every other Tuesday. Consoles will also get these but rolled into 2 ultimate updates a year. There will continue to be 2-week events throughout the year, the team says they’re trying to get these events out at least every 2 months.

Four types of content updates for new gameplay, features, and bug fixing:

Major Content Update – Focused around a major feature like Crystal Combat or Gardening

Minor Content Update – A gameplay enhancement, like Bomber Royale Season 2

Quality of Life Update – Improvements to the gameplay experience, focusing on bug fixes.

Hotfixes – Small updates, as required, targeting new or critical issues.

So it looks like there are plans to keep producing content for Trove. Which is a relief, I was a bit worried after Gamigo bought Trion that the game would slowly fall into maintenance mode. There is an upcoming patch titled ” From the Deep!” that will focus on fixing the Club leveling system as well as add big, bad, bosses to the Geode Topside Worlds. These new types of bosses will have a higher rate of dropping crystal level 3 gear as well as some unique rewards. More new things to kill is technically new content.

There are some patch notes for From the Deep! currently on the PTS. This patch goes into a little more detail about the new Leviathan World Bosses. They live underneath the surface of Geode Topside and will despawn if not defeated within 15 minutes of spawning. They’ll drop an ego potion for those who defeat them which makes your head bigger, this is something I very much want. They’ll also drop Torches which are temporary equipment that adds light. Presumably, to make it easier to get into higher-level Geode Topside Worlds.

At least there’s a bit of a plan laid out going forward. After the gardening update, it felt like there wasn’t much discussion on what comes next. I will definitely take a few new world bosses over no content at all. And with the Club leveling balances, maybe my small little Club could actually get some guild buffs. Now they just have to put that pesky server back together.

The latest update, at 2: 43 am EST, stated they’re looking to finish the server move today. No ETA on when the game will be back online.

Trove: Buisness as Usual

August 28, 2019August 26, 2019KluwesLeave a comment

It’s hard to tell but there’s like 6 of us in here

I still look forward to Monday night Shadow Towers with Jay every week. Once again we were able to complete the whole Shadow Tower on Ultra getting the max rewards for the week. We’ve started to develop a small group from players we meet on Twitch. We’ve been trying to help out newer players with getting over the Stellar gear wall when we can and have been giving advice when asked. It’s great to be able to give back to the game’s community.

This week I got the 3 star, stellar, empowered, water gem I needed after 2 months. It even had the correct stats and everything. Currently, I’m pumping gem dust into it until it’s maxed level to swap out with my 2 star stellar. Once that’s been socketed, all I need to do is augment the gems and continue to ook for a crystal level 3 face. Waiting for the right empowered gem to drop was such a slog, at least these next steps I can actively work on without praying for good RNG. I may be able to boost my Power Rank to 30k which is the next milestone. He’s sitting at 29701 right now.

I was also able to replace one of my gem’s first hit stat with a % max health. This boosted my Dracolyte from 500k to 700kish health, and man does it make a difference. I’ve noticed my survivability in higher-level shadow towers was a lot better. Also, I’ve had to refill potions way less in U-10 Geode Topside. The less time I can spend refilling the more time I can spend looting.

A Brief Moment with WoW Classic

August 27, 2019August 26, 2019Kluwes1 Comment

While waiting for Jay to log into Trove, I wanted to see if I could get into WoW Classic. I’d been reading queue times were horrendus so I didn’t have much hope at 6:30pm EST, a half hour after launch. The queue for my server, Myzrael, was 2 minutes. Much, much, MUCH, shorter than I was anticipating.

When I got in I was greeted by dozens of dwarves. Dwarves and gnomes everywhere. Around the first quest giver, around the first spawn point, and there were plenty bludgeoning wolves just down the hill.

I don’t know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t to burst our laughing. There was something just so funny about the sheer amount of characters running around. I joined the crowds for wolf slaying. Fighting for each spawn to collect a meager 8 meat. After 20 minutes I returned with my hard-won prize and settled in to do some more. Except that’s exactly when I was called away.

I tried to get back in and play a bit more before bed. I wasn’t sure if this was going to be possible. I was greeted with a 76 minute wait.

Ah, that’s more like it.

Jumping on the WoW Classic Train

August 24, 2019KluwesLeave a comment

WOW

I didn’t grow up with World of Warcraft. I wasn’t allowed to have an account in 2004 and my parents didn’t see the value in having a subscription for a video game. I don’t have any pining nostalgia for it. I don’t have a long personal history with it where friendships were forged and memories were made. But, nevertheless, I am interested in Classic. I’m interested to see how well it does, how well it’s received, and if it’s everything everyone wanted. I decided today that I will be exploring it when it launches next week.

WoW has always been this big, intimidating, game to me. It’s a 15-year-old game and there’s a lot of content and history with it. I’ve given it a go a few times and have found my time with it enjoyable but it’s never stuck. Classic feels like one of the big moments in gaming and I don’t want to miss out this time.

I’m interested to see where it all began. I know from my experience on EQ2 progression servers that this won’t be kin to launch. People already have the knowledge they need, they have the internet for the knowledge they don’t have, and there will be plenty of people rushing to the end. But I think it will still be a lot of fun to be a part of.

I’ve reserved names on a Fairbanks PVP server and Myzrael Normal server. I’m interested to experience what a PVP server is like but I want that back up option with my preferred name if I don’t end up liking it.

I want to see how this all plays out. People have been wanting this for years and now it’s finally here. I think it’ll do well for the first few months. I do wonder what the drop off will be after people have their fill of nostalgia. A part of me knows that forums and Reddit will be full of people complaining, but that’s par for the course.

And now we wait!