October 2016 - Page 3 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Light Rising

October 19, 2016 by Belghast

I’ve been on a bit of a Destiny kick lately, and that has involved trying to do at a minimum all of the Rise of Iron bounties that Shiro hands out each week. These largely involve running around the plaguelands and doing “stuff” like specific patrols and participating in world events. I’ve also recently discovered the bounty that is the Archon’s Forge. I admit I was a little intimidated for awhile, given that when you enter the forge it essentially locks you out of leaving. My ultimate fear is that this place would murder me with great prejudice given my relatively low light levels. That fortunately was not really the case, and I was also pleased to see that the same sort of “key trading” behavior exists in the forge as it did in the Court of Oryx. I’ve been playing entirely solo so far since the launch of Rise of Iron, mostly because I am playing in short bursts rather than hanging out and making myself available to the clan for shenanigans. However pretty much any time I have rolled down to the Forge, there have been people there waiting and willing to summon stuff for us to fight. I still have trouble with the “purple” quality keys, but both green and blue ones seem largely feasible. Unfortunately it seems like you have zero control over what sort of key drops for you, and at this very moment I happen to be sitting on a purple key myself.

The forge is quite literally a modern day version of the “loot cave” because after thirty minutes or so of running keys back to back… you end up with a full mail box. This is not actually a screenshot from last night, but one I had laying around from one of my previous trips into the Forge. Last night however it became significantly more lucrative for me personally. Patch 2.4.1 did some juggling of things in preparation for the release of the Heroic Mode raid. As a result the light economy of items got bumped up a bit, allowing folks a slightly easier time catching up.

Rare Engrams will now decrypt up to 365 Light
Legendary Engrams will now decrypt up to 385 Light
Exotic Engrams will now decrypt up to 400 Light
Faction packages will now provide drops up to 390 Light

So as a result to these tweaks… I entered last nights play session at 554 and exited at 560 and on the cusp of pushing over the line with several 361 items. In the first screenshot I am decked out in Future War Cult colors… because I picked up some quest asking me to do a bunch of content both PVE and PVP repping the FWC. I have no clue what that actually will lead to but I am interested to see. The moment to moment gameplay of Destiny still feels as great as it ever did, and I am pumped that I can pop in for an hour and do a few things and feel like I moved the needle forward. I am super loot centric in my games, and so long as I am progressing my gear levels I feel like I am making meaningful progress.

The ultimate short term goal is to get to 365 so that I can join in all of the reindeer games… namely have access to the normal mode of the raid. I’ve heard amazing things about it, but I have just lacked the drive to grind things out in the strike play list. In fact I have yet to run a single strike since the implementation of Rise of Iron… which seems a little odd given how often I used to run them for nothing more than burning Three of Coins. I feel like I am torn in a bunch of different directions right now and trying to juggle actively playing four different games: Destiny, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV. As a result I am doing a somewhat shitty job of keeping up in any of them other than World of Warcraft, where I seem to be spending most of my time. That said in WoW I feel like I am bumping up against the ceiling for the gear levels I can realistically achieve other than through my Wednesday night raid… so some of my drive there is siphoning off. At the very least I am not really doing the world quests like I used to, because I know there is shit for gear out of them at my levels. This excess time seems to be getting funneled right back into Destiny, but I do need to steal a little bit of it and work on my gearing in Final Fantasy XIV as well. I am absolutely holding our group back from doing some of the new content because I am about 15 item levels short of being where I should be. If only I could clone myself… and keep those clones at home all day long playing all the things I want to be playing.

FFXIV Early Decisions

October 18, 2016 by Belghast

Last weekend was the 2016 Final Fantasy XIV Fanfest in Las Vegas and with it was the reveal of the brand new expansion… Stormblood. Also with it has come a brand new renewed interest in the game by folks who have yet to play it, or never really got a stable footing in the game. Yesterday a friend of mine started asking his twitter timeline a bunch of questions about the game, and it made me realize that a post explaining some stuff might be a timely thing. In traditional MMO terms, there are a bunch of decisions that you make at the beginning of any new game that can often times dictate your options later in the game. The most common of these are things like choosing a faction, or even sometimes a starting race. Final Fantasy has far fewer trip ups like this but those that do exist I thought I would explain a bit, namely from the perspective of someone who has played other MMOs.

Data Center

One of the first questions you are going to be asked is to choose a Data Center. For those familiar with World of Warcraft as I am guessing most players who are interested in MMOs are… this relates to your Battlegroup. While the individual server you are going to play on is super important because that limits your day to day interactions… equally and sometimes even more important is the Data Center you are part of. Data Centers are the pool of players that you draw upon any time you queue for anything in the Duty Finder, meaning the population of the servers in your Data Center is going to greatly effect queue times. I personally play on the Aether Data Center which is one of the ones suggested for North American players, and it also happens to have a whole slew of high population servers to pick from. So this data center contains the following servers…

Adamantoise
Balmung
Cactuar
Coeurl
Faerie
Gilgamesh
Goblin
Jenova
Mateus
Midgardsormr
Sargatanas
Siren
Zalera

Server

Inside of the Data Center you are going to choose a server. I for example am on Cactuar which seems to be a high to medium popultion server in the grand scheme of things. Square has a mechanic in place that keeps players from rolling on higher population servers during prime time. That means during the evening hours specifically servers often time lock down for new character creation. There is a thread on the forums that is updated every few hours with the status of these servers for new character creation. So at this very moment at 6:30 in the morning Cactuar is open for new character creation, but by the time evening rolls around it is likely going to be locked down. Still using Aether as an example, right now Balmung and Gilgamesh are already locked down barring new character creation. In World of Warcraft terms most players try to find a place on the higher pop servers, thinking they will have more options. However in FFXIV that absolutely means any time you have a major patch or the rollout of a new expansion, you are going to be locked out behind a pretty lengthy queue. With the launch of Heavensward Cactuar experienced some queues, but nothing along the line of the hour or longer queue times that say Gilgamesh did.

Sadly FFXIV does not offer cross realm play in the way that World of Warcraft does, so that means for doing FATEs or any of the raiding options that are not accessible through the duty finder, you are going to be limited by the active population on your server. I am completely biased about Cactuar, because I love the community there. However my ultimately suggestion would be to find a similarly medium to high pop server… rather than one of the “always locked” servers to play on. These communities still generally have active raid groups, but allow you to skirt some of the negative aspects of the end game community, as well as mostly allow you to skip the queues. Additionally the higher the population of the server, the less likely you will ever be able to own housing. Final Fantasy XIV housing other than apartment is non-instanced and has a limited number of houses available per realm.

Race

In creating a new character you are going to be asked to choose a race. For anyone who has played a faction based game this is immediately going to cause some anxiety because generally speaking that locks you into a subset of the population. Races however in Final Fantasy XIV are cosmetic choices in nature, as is the “god” that you follow… and your characters birthday. These are all flavor options, that really do nothing to limit your ability to play with your friends. Final Fantasy XIV is a game with no firm walls that ever segregate you from parts of the population. In fact Races are pretty fluid in this game, given that most folks change race at least once due to the fact that the game gives away Vials of Fantasia at a few points in the main story quest. I started out a Hyur Highlander, before ultimately finding my true calling in life the Dunesfolk Lalafell. I could extoll upon you the virtues of playing a Lalafell… but then again I have friends who feel equally passionately about pretty much all of the races. This essentially is about finding your own groove in the game, because you are going to spend a lot of time looking at your character.

Class

The other big decision you are going to be asked to make immediately… is what class you want to play. Normally speaking in MMO terms this is one of the more important things you have to decide. However in Final Fantasy XIV is is really not that big of a deal. This is a game where each character, can be every single thing in the game. I started the game as Marauder the class that ultimately becomes a Warrior… and I am still “maining” Warrior to this day. However I also have a reasonably functional Bard and Dragoon… and literally every other class/job combo in the game at least started. This is a game where it greatly benefits you to have a single character, that just happens to have a bunch of jobs because of cross class abilities, which are a sub set of class abilities that you can then use on other jobs. Of note a lot of this is changing, but it will still function in some form or another with Stormblood. Crafting works essentially the same way allowing you to be every possible crafting profession on a single character. The only thing that your class really does is lock you down to a starting city, because it takes awhile in the main story quest before you unlock the ability to travel between the three main capital cities.

Gridania
- Archer – Ranged DPS
- Conjurer – Healer
- Lancer – Melee DPS
Limsa Lominsa
- Arcanist – Ranged DPS/Pet Class
- Marauder – Tank
- Rogue – Melee DPS
Ul’dah
- Gladiator – Tank
- Pugilist – Melee DPS
- Thaumaturge – Ranged DPS

Grand Company

At some point in the Main Story Quest…. you are going to choose to join a Grand Company. These represent factions within the three main cities of Gridania, Limsa Lominsa and Ul’dah. Unlike factions in other games… they don’t really lock you from freely grouping with other players, but they do have some ramifications. For starters they dictate the capital city that you are going to be by nature spending a lot of time in, as you interact with the various vendors associated with that faction. Secondly they dictate what the appearance of your grand company weapons and gear looks like, as each of them has a very specific style… that trickles down to even chocobo barding. Finally there are a few PVP modes that are Grand Company based. However at any point you can swap grand companies… for example I started off as Immortal Flames the company associated with Ul’dah and decided at some point to switch to The Maelstrom the company associated with Limsa Lominsa. Swapping essentially throws you back to the beginning ranks with the new company, but also saves your previous progress with the one you are leaving. That way if at any point you decide to swap back again… you can pick up where you left off.

Permanent Ramifications

Ultimately Final Fantasy XIV is a game with a bunch of flexible boundaries. The only ones that are “permanent” are your choice of Data Center and Server… and even then there is a construct in place for paid server moves. Once you have chosen a server however… literally every decision you make can be undone and changed pretty easily. This is a game that expects you are going to want to “be all the things” and ultimately rewards you for doing so. For those looking at getting started in the game, I am hoping this run down of the decision making helps.

Breaking Routine

October 17, 2016 by Belghast

This weekend was a bit of an odd one, namely when it came to Sunday morning. Generally speaking I have the process of finishing up an AggroChat episode down to a fairly regimented process. Saturday night before I crash I try to do what I call the initial edit, which is most of the actual edit work. Then Sunday morning I write the small bit of copy, and upload and syndicate the podcast to the various sources where it gets put. However this week was the first week doing all of this on the new machine… and I was not prepared. For starters we recorded a really long show mostly about the Final Fantasy XIV 3.4 main story quest. We did not unfortunately ONLY talk about that, and that meant we had almost three hours of recorded audio to process… and didn’t actually finish things up until around midnight my time. Instead of staying up further, I decided to crash and deal with it in the morning. Then Sunday it was a carnival of errors, as the version of audacity on my new machine was apparently slightly newer than the version I had been using which means a lot of the filters had different options… or at least were arranged in different ways. Additionally there was the process of trying to find all of my source files off of the old machine, which is thankfully still accessible over the network.

The worst part of it however was the changes to the Truncate Silence filter…. which is a crutch we lean on heavily for AggroChat. We are fairly pensive folk, and as a result there are a lot of lengthy pauses in conversation. With truncate silence that 3 hours of audio becomes 2 hours… but on my first attempt it maybe clipped a little more than actual silence. For whatever reason it was clipping the hell out of anytime Kodra talked, giving his speech a record skipping characteristic. However this is not something I realized until I was just about to upload the files to our host. Thankfully I caught it in time and was able to redo that portion, lowering the granularity of the filter. This mean’t what is normally a couple hour process… ate up I think four hours in total. Admittedly I was piddling around in Guild Wars 2 during much of it, so there were probably moments when I didn’t notice a filter had finished here or there. The positive however is that every filter applied went massively faster than on the previous AMD FX-6300 based processor. That was really my hope with the new i7 based system, is that it would be able to chew through rendering tasks far more successfully. As with any system there is going to be an adjustment and moving in period, and I am hoping that now that I have finished a single podcast on this machine additional ones will be much quicker.

As far as the weekend itself went, I was all over the place. I played a significant amount of Destiny, completing a bunch of bounties and discovering the Archon’s Forge… or more so how easy it was to get a pick up group. Much the same way as the court of Oryx, you seem to be able to just show up and folks will either be doing it… or quickly swarm when they think anyone else is. I also played a lot of World of Warcraft, completely a few mythic dungeons as well as successfully completing my first Mythic+ keystone. I’m looking forward to seeing that upgraded loot in the weekly order hall chest. In addition to that I completed the five time-walking dungeons on both Belghast and Exeter, and on the later I used it as a way to gear him up. I am now sitting over the 825 cap needed to get into LFR so my hope is tonight I will be able to run the two parts available and potentially get more upgrades that way. Generally speaking on Belghast the 835 rewards are not super enticing, but I still ran it this week for the purpose of getting some rune stones. I also need to do a bunch of fishing, as I now have the pattern to turn the 300 versatility food that I spent a chunk of the weekend crafting… into a 375 version. I am only using this stuff for raiding and mythic+ attempts, as I keep a bank full of Faronar Fizz for other stuff.

The biggest take away from the weekend is that I am actually finding myself legitimately enjoying Guild Wars 2. Recently it had been a game that I was dipping my toes into for the sake of my friends that were also playing it. However before the podcast we ran several of the story mode dungeons and they were pretty enjoyable. Enough so that when I sat down to decide which game I would play during the podcast, I decided to go ahead and stay with Guild Wars 2. That means that I spent the next three hours roaming aimlessly completing little objectives here and there, and mostly finding my way to the next story mode dungeon. The post 80/ Heart of Thorns mastery leveling is pretty slow. In all of that time I only managed to get about half of a mastery level… and then I ended up wasting a bunch of experience because I didn’t notice I needed to click through and train it. I am pretty not sure what my purpose in game is, but I am still fairly dead set on the warrior… and more importantly hammer warrior. That makes me the make shift tank for the group, and I have been using rifle lately as my dps weapon because it allows me to have something that I can hit things with at range. At some point I want to pick back up where I left off in attempting to level armor smithing, but right now my craft window looks somewhat like madness to me. All in all I feel like I have come to terms with the game in accepting what it is… and more importantly what it is not.

Plenty of Tinfoil

October 14, 2016 by Belghast

Lately it has felt like there has been a bit of a mass exodus of folks leaving Blizzard or at least the World of Warcraft team. The highest profile of these of course was the departure of Chris Metzen, but yesterday another fairly high profile name joined the group. Tom Chilton posted a note on the forums stating that he would be leaving the World of Warcraft team to join an as yet unnamed project. This leaves Watcher… aka Ion Hazzikostas in charge of the team. This of course is simply two folks leaving a game… but in between there have been a number of lower profile departures as well. The rumor mill of course starts churning and contemplating what might be going on at Blizzard to spawn these events, and honestly I think something more benign is at work here. For some of these folks… they have literally been working on the exact same project for over a decade. Imagine if you, in whatever your line of work… had to work on exactly the same thing every single day. Granted at Blizzard there is a lot of room to branch out and work on other teams as new games come down the pipeline, but I have long felt that WoW was essentially the product that no one seemed super excited to work on.

I feel like it is time once again to dredge up “The List”. Years ago there was a supposed leaked list of expansions, that in theory covered the entire planned arc of the World of Warcraft franchise. Of note… this list was floating around the interwebs before the launch of Burning Crusade, and I remember seeing it roughly the same time as the original Naxxramas patch was released. I myself wrote about it prior to the announcement of Cataclysm, trying to draw upon it for wisdom as to what the path forward might be. Cataclysm honestly threw a giant monkey wrench in the proceedings, and from that point onward it stops being terribly accurate, but for both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King it was down right prophetic. What I think we can draw from it now however is that the “Legion Set” was always something that was planned to wrap up the cycle of World of Warcraft. I believe that from day one, it was the intent of the original WoW team to bring us back into conflict with The Burning Legion, and it was simply a matter of figuring out what path we would take to get there. For the sake of having this list in a more modern post I am reprinting it below.

Draenor Set

Azuremyst Isle – 1 to 10
Bloodmyrk Isle – 10 to 20

Eversong Forest – 1 to 10
Quel’thalas – 10 to 20
Hellfire Peninsula – 58 to 62
Zangarmarsh – 60 to 64
Terokkar Forest – 61 to 65
The Deadlands – 63 to 67
Nagrand – 64 to 68
Blade’s Edge Mountains – 66 to 70
Netherstorm – 67 to 70
Shadowmoon Valley – 69 to 70

Northrend Set

Borean Tundra – 67 to 70
Howling Fjord – 67 to 70
Dragonblight – 69 to 72
Grizzly Hills – 70 to 73
Crystalsong Forest – 72 to 75
Zul’drak – 73 to 76
Sholazar Basin – 75 to 79
Storm Peaks – 76 to 80
Icecrown Glacier – 78 to 80

Maelstrom Set

Gilneas – 77 to 80
Grim Batol – 78 to 81
Kul Tiras – 79 to 82
Kezan – 81 to 86
Tel Abim – 83 to 85
Zandalar – 84 to 87
Plunder Isle – 86 to 88
The Broken Isles – 87 to 90
The Maelstrom – 89 to 90

Plane Set

Pandaria – 1 to 10
Hiji – 10 to 20

Wolfenhold – 1 to 10
Xorothian Plains – 10 to 20

The Green Lands – 88 to 91
The Dying Paradise – 91 to 94
The Emerald Nightmare – 94 to 97
The Eye of Ysera – 97 to 100

Deephome – 88 to 91
Skywall – 91 to 94
The Abyssal Maw – 94 to 97
The Firelands – 97 to 100

Legion Set

K’aresh – 96 to 99
Argus Meadowlands – 97 to 100
Mac’Aree – 99 to 100
Maw of Oblivion – 100+
The Burning Citadel – 100+++

So at least in part… I think some of the recent leaves from Blizzard or the WoW team… are because the job if finished. Now please do not mistake me saying that I feel like World of Warcraft is done… but what I am saying is that the original story arc has reached its conclusion. There were a lot of changes and reworks as time went on.. and we ended up fighting the Legion at level 110 rather than 100, but we got there nonetheless. I think for some of these folks who have been working on the product for over a decade now, there is a sense of closure. They can make a break and walk away feeling like they accomplished whatever job it was that they set out to do in the first place. I imagine were I in their shoes, it probably would feel like a great time for me to go do something else now. Among the AggroChat crew there has been a lot of discussion about the way Legion feels… and more than anything else that it feels like the first truly “fresh” content that we have seen in a really long time. There is something going on in the game, and a stark difference between the feel of the awesome intra-zone stories and the bigger factional story that feels forced in there. I think what we are seeing is the evidence of two different teams at work, with different visions and goals for the game.

So while we might be losing the old guard, it definitely feels like there is some fresh new talent coming in to infuse something exciting into the franchise. I’ve said this several times but it bears repeating. This is the first time since the launch of Catalysm that I have hope for the future of the Warcraft franchise. What I mean by that is that this is the first time in all of those years that I feel like maybe just maybe the best days of this franchise are not something we will remember fondly from the past, but instead something that is on the road that lay ahead. Almost two months into Legion I am still completely smitten by it, and that seems like a really good thing. By this point in both Pandaria and Warlords at least I was losing significant amounts of steam. Here I am still more than happy to run almost anything someone points me in the direction of. I am absolutely enjoying raiding and happy to be sitting at 4/7 Emerald Nightmare now with our super casual raid. I am interested to see what comes next, and what news might filtered out of BlizzCon about where the future will take us. More than anything I hope that the awesome Class Halls can be a bridge to get us to finally bury the hatchet and take a step away from the vision of the red versus blue game play and storytelling. I want the next decade to be one I get to share with my horde and alliance friends both.