We welcome Grace back after a few weeks away and talk a bit about life in pandemia.  Bel talks about the introduction of RTX Voice and its nonsense ability to filter out background noise from your microphone.  Kodra and Thalen talk a bit about gaming with youngsters focusing on Mario Kart and Katamari or “The Ball Game”.  Ash talks a bit about how bad the storytelling is in Phantasy Star Online 2.  We shift over to some talk about flying in Eorzea and some general talk about alting in Final Fantasy XIV.  Finally we wrap up with Sea of Thieves as Tam has been recently exploring this title and how PVP apparently doesn’t matter as much as it once did.

 

Topics Discussed:

  • Life in Pandemia Updates
  • RTX Voice
  • Games with 3 Year Olds
    • Mario Kart
    • Katamari
  • PSO2’s Terrible Storytelling
  • Flying in Eorzea
    • Alting in FFXIV
  • Sea of Thieves
Direct download: aggrochat_episode296.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:50am EDT

This is the first show of our seventh year of AggroChat, because we are apparently bad at tracking time and said nothing about our anniversary last week.  We start off with another “Bel was dumb” story as he ventured forth to battle the boxpocalpyse. From there we wind around a bit through a few topics and land on another exploration of levels in video games as a concept being a bad idea.  We talk about a bunch of ways that games do this and how some have figured out meaningful horizontal progression. Next up we talk about the effective death of Kotaku with the departure of Jason Schreier and this leads to a larger discussion about the odd place that “video game journalism” finds itself in and the rigors of trying to fill content for the 24 hour news cycle.  We go down the rabbit hole that is Star Wars Galaxies crafting system and contrast it against a few other approaches like that of the original Everquest II system. Finally some brief discussion as Tam finds Beat Saber and the shockingly good work out it ends up being.

Topics Discussed

  • Bel and the Boxpocalypse
  • We’ve outgrown the concept of levels
    • WoW’s leveling buff
    • Marking progression horizontally
  • The Death of Kotaku
    • The challenges of gaming content creation
  • The Brilliant Madness of Star Wars Galaxies crafting
  • Beat Saber
Direct download: aggrochat_episode295.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:48am EDT

Tonight we are back, and we start off with an apology that logistics did not work out last week to get the band together.  We start off with some discussion of the Stellaris group that has been playing as a weekly game night thing. From there Bel talks about his sojourn back into World of Warcraft Retail and his new practice of naming his Hunter pets after people.  Ashgar talks about his recent experiences with Phantasy Star Online 2 and how both him and Tam bought a SADBox to play it. From there we dig into the meat of the show as we give a global spoiler warning that we are going to be talking about plot points in Final Fantasy VII.   We tried to stay away from any specific plot points from the Remake, but the original is discussed an awful lot. Finally we wrap things up with some brief talk about the new PS5 Controller design and how we all generally like it.

Topics Discussed:

  • Stellaris Group Play
  • World of Warcraft Retail
    • Naming Pets after People
  • Phantasy Star Online 2
    • SADbox for everyone
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake
    • Misremembering The Game
  • PS5 Controller
    • Fully On Board With This
Direct download: aggrochat_episode294.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 10:01am EDT

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