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Pope Belghast

March 20, 2015 by Belghast

On Spoilers

This week has been an absolutely insane one, and I have had this feeling of constantly being behind the curve. So it is no surprise that yesterday I was just not getting around to listening to the relaunch of the Contains Moderate Peril podcast, now with the addition Jaedia and Jasyla joining the cast of permanent hosts. One of the topics that landed on was a discussion about spoilers. I have this mixed feeling about the concept of information being spoiled, and it largely centers around the fact that I don’t generally mind them. If nothing else knowing there is a plot twist coming up, only serves to enhance my interest in the product. I can only think of one instance where a spoiler actually stopped me from watching the show… and that primarily was because the single character I cared about was killed, and I didn’t feel like going through the motions of watching it happen.

All of this said I am super sensitive about potentially spoiling someone else’s experience. For example on AggroChat when we are about to discuss major plot points, even if it is a game well past the statute of limitations on such things… we still tend to preface it with “spoiler alert”. All of this discussion however has made me realize how generally awesome my twitter feed actually is. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have seen information in it that was actually a spoiler to anyone. Similarly the group of people that I hang around with and game with seem to be equally sensitive to such information. I just find it interesting that we don’t consider reading the book before going to see the movie spoilers, but when we read a plot synopsis it is somehow different. I will say that knowing the “Red Wedding” was coming, only served to enhance my enjoyment of that season of Game of Thrones, because I knew at some point this event would happen. That said… I would have been pissed as hell had someone spoiled any moment of the Harry Potter books for me, so I guess it goes both ways.

Back to Blackrock

Since my world was insane Monday and Tuesday… I ended up missing my World of Warcraft raid group night. As a result last night was my first time back this week, and it felt a little odd to be back in the game. It seems on Tuesday they managed to down everything we currently have on farm but the Operator Thogar encounter… which is fine by me because so far that is hands down my favorite fight this expansion. It took a few tries but I think on attempt three we managed to down Thogar again. I was absolutely shocked when I saw loot pop up on the corpse, since we generally run on personal loot. Our raid leader said that we had very few upgrades that could be gotten so that personal loot was no longer the big draw it once was. Unfortunately I have to disagree with him as I have not had a single upgrade in going on seven raids. I’ve gotten nothing but gold, and in many cases double gold since I am spending tokens left and right. I kept expecting that one of the weeks the slot machine of a loot system would pay out… but I am guessing that is no longer the case.

I was really hoping this week would be my week to pick up shoulders, since I have been sitting on the chest piece for a few weeks now. Neither piece is an upgrade unless I am also getting the two piece set bonus for wearing them. I am annoyed that I still have four slots that are sub 670 gear, but given time I will hopefully find some upgrades. One of the things I was not expecting is that they bumped Blackrock Foundry gear up by 5 ilevels, which actually makes LFR worthwhile for a couple of slots like my 640 legs. As far as progression content we worked on the Heart of the Mountain encounter for a bit before popping out of the instance, flipping it to heroic and working on Hans and Franz. On our best attempt we managed to get them down to 8% but we had various issues. Largely we were flying without a safety net last night as both our Deathknight and our Healing Druid were not in attendance… meaning we had no battle rezzes at all. I am getting frustrated that we are struggling with this attendance hump, not quite being able to get all the right classes we need to succeed on at the right time.

Pope Belghast

Before and after the raid I spent time in what has become my more comfortable gaming home… Final Fantasy XIV. For a period of time I was splitting myself fairly equally between World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV, but honestly at this point I am only actually logging in twice a week because I feel a sense of commitment to the raid. The thing that has always been missing in every game we have played is a huge thriving community. Right now we have that in Final Fantasy in spades, and in fact I would say our average player base is easily twice the number of people who are actually online regularly in House Stalwart. I want to say Ashgar said that over the last few days we had 55 unique players online, and we often top 20 on a nightly basis. For awhile I was actively recruiting players, but folks seem to keep recruiting themselves once they hear about the Free Company. All of this makes me a very happy Belghast.

After yesterdays post about being a reluctant healer, Ashgar took it upon himself to convince me to heal expert roulette last night. I told them this was a horrible idea, but they didn’t really listen and I endangered the lives of not only Ash but also Thalen and Solaria. It turns out that I honestly didn’t do too horribly. We ended up getting Keeper of the Lake which is a frustrating instance at the best of times. We died to the very first boss, but I believe that was the only time we wiped, and I only managed to lose a player once… and that was on the final boss encounter where I swiftcasted a battle rez. Yesterday after the WoW raid I spend most of the time milling around in the housing district, when we had a brilliant idea. I have been sitting on the player commendation pope hat for awhile, and with my soldiery healer gear… it just worked too perfectly not to use it. I even have a proper miter in my hands. I introduce to you Pope Belghast, the reluctant healer.

Reluctant Healer

March 19, 2015 by Belghast

Tyranny of Blank Page

I’ve been going through a bit of a spell the last several mornings where I get upstairs, sit down, and stare into the abyss that is a blank screen not really knowing quite what to fill it with. So this is a post to tell all of the people that read me, that seem to think I have this limitless font of material… that sometimes it runs dry. In part it feels like I am just not doing all that much of any interest in the games I am playing. Due to various issues at work my in game time has been very distracted. Often times I might be at the screen but I am doing a generally poor job of paying attention to the people around me. Even last night while sitting on Voice Chat, it was like it was filtered and muffled in the background of my mind, taking a few minutes to pull my focus forward and actually understand what someone just said. Suffice to say it is me, not the games I am currently playing that is causing the problem and in an attempt to make things better I went to bed pretty early last night.

The last few days have just been odd to exist in my skin. I had a very interrupted weekend, where I did not accomplish much in the way of gaming. Then each morning my routine is thrown off because my wife is on spring break, and while in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t change my schedule that much… something feels fundamentally off. It has been nice having her home during the day because it means I don’t have to figure out something for dinner that can be reheated easily. Last night she made this amazing batch of Chicken and Dumplings, and from the sound of it the recipe was super easy. Largely just dump a bunch of stuff in the crock pot and give it an appropriate amount of time. The thing that frustrates me the most about my current “out of it” state, is that I feel like at any given moment I am letting down five people because I am not doing whatever they need me to do. Between MMOGames, the fledgling AggroChat site, the insanely growing free company in Final Fantasy XIV, the guild in World of Warcraft and various sundry other side projects I feel pulled in so many places. When I am “myself” and in my right mind, with the appropriate frame of reference… it all seems to work. When I am in this current stupor nothing seems to function and I am failing in equal parts at all of it.

Reluctant Healer

One of the more interesting side effects of my current mission to cap poetics every single week, is the fact that I seem to be absolutely rolling in Tomestones of Soldiery. As a result I have been using it to bolster all of my other classes, and most recently I have been pouring it into my White Mage. The ultimate irony is that I am sitting at 104 gear score, but have yet to heal anything at level 50. I have to say I am looking pretty badass though in my daystar gear set. Overall I am a huge fan of all of the soldiery gear, though I feel like I should probably be spending the points on my Bard instead. My bard actually gets use anytime we need a ranged dps for something and not a tank. This doesn’t happen extremely often, but far more often than I would ever consider swapping to heal something. I have to admit that healing in Final Fantasy XIV was really fun up through Brayflox… and then it is like things got too real for me. I had too many flashbacks to my early days as a healer, and it stopped being nearly as much fun.

I know I have covered this numerous times but I started my MMO career as a Cleric in Everquest. For years I had played Clerics in Dungeons and Dragons and managed to turn them into these awesome holy warriors. Picking the right deity here, and the right spells there… could turn what is usually a support class into an amazing front line battle priest. Unfortunately this design went against everything that was Everquest, and I spent a lot of my time soloing using the good ole Root and Nuke combination. Then when it came to raiding… I had to learn about the frustration that is the Complete Heal Rotation, where every 2 to 3 seconds the main tank is getting a full heal, so you have to time the 12 second cast so that someone is always starting up the next one. All of this makes me really reluctant to heal anything, because I never want to get back into a mode of operation where that style of game play is the normal. So I guess I have a bit of a mental block towards actually putting myself out there as a viable healer. I would gladly do it for anyone in the free company, but I just haven’t really made it widely known that it was an option.

Guild Tanking

Instead I am far more comfortable taking up the mantle of a guild tank. In my current daze I have probably missed a half dozen opportunities to tank for guildies. Last night I managed to catch one of these as Solaria and her daughter Isalenne needed to run Haukke Manor. I would have tanked anything for them, but it so happens that Haukke is probably one of my favorite dungeons in the entire game. I love the whole Castlevania feel to the place, and while leveling my healer I seemed to get that place almost every single time I popped into the low level roulette. As a result I have pretty much every pull memorized, and Isa commented on just how relaxing the run was compared to the average duty finder one. I actually got into a discussion on twitter yesterday about DPS queues and class balance and I realize that I am 100% part of the problem. I will happily don the mantle of the serious tank when it comes to my friends… but when I solo queue for the duty finder… I do so as a DPS. I’ve never really learned how to turn off that part of me that takes total responsibility for the success or failure for the group when I am tanking. As such I am willing to take that burden for my friends, but cannot bring myself to do it for strangers.

The problem is I know deep down in my bones how generally awesome the Final Fantasy XIV community is. I know that I have tanked for random strangers before while leveling… and actually enjoyed it. The problem is I have this mental wall that I struggle to get around. Since the introduction of the Ninja, the DPS queues in Final Fantasy XIV have been completely out of control. If you do a low level duty finder you can be sitting in that queue for over thirty minutes as dps, and if you are a ninja… it trends extremely close to infinity as the game seems to try to stick a ranged and a melee in a group if at all possible. The end result is a lot of frustration for newer players that just need to get dungeons running. As such I try my damnedest to intercept people needing dungeons and make them happen among free company members. The problem is… not all of my friends are on Cactuar, and not all of them are in our Free Company. I really should be a better person and do more “charity queues”, which is a term we came up with shortly after release when everyone seemed to need Ifrit but no one could get a group. Various members of our free company would queue for Ifrit and help a bunch of people through that obstacle. I remember one Black Mage had been sitting in that queue for three hours, so really I need to step up to the plate and do more random tanking. Knowing this however is slightly different from doing this… but I am going to try and force myself out there.

Disconnected Dragoon

March 18, 2015 by Belghast

Missing a Raid

Yesterday was one of those days when I felt like I was moving through molasses the entire day. In part it was the whole staying up late and babysitting servers bit, but also we had so much stuff going on during the day connected to the two outages. It turns out that after much research they were not actually related. I knew I was not exactly in “fighting shape” so I let my raid leader know that I would not be attending the WoW Raid that night. This is in part a good thing because they were apparently talking about having to do a paired down raid due to limited healers, and it is probably a good thing to rotate folks a bit. At this point I would never mind having to sit out for a night because I have so much other stuff going on that I could be doing. When I got home I took a nap and that helped quite a bit, or at least made me feel something vaguely human.

I asked my wife not to let me sleep more than an hour, since I generally struggle with the concept of napping. If I take a nap, it means I am not likely to get a good nights sleep. My body plays this game with me, where it only wants to get five to six hours of sleep a night. When I nap, it means I am going to have this massive bout of insomnia that night. Thankfully the short nap managed to do what it needed to do and I was still able to sleep fairly well as a result. I spent most of the night hanging out on the couch catching up on Better Call Saul. The irony of be getting into this series is the fact that I have never actually watched Breaking Bad. I mean I have watched the first episode, but since my wife showed some interest in the show I didn’t really want to start it on my own without her watching along. Otherwise there would come a point where I would have to start back from scratch and watch everything over again. I managed to catch up through episode seven, and that show is just becoming more interesting as it goes.

Disconnected Dragoon

When it came to actual gaming last night, I was a bit more distracted. I spent some time logged into Final Fantasy XIV because our Free Company is just insanely vibrant, but I really didn’t do all that much gaming. I ran a few roulettes, and managed to get yet another piece of 130 gear thanks to another carbontwine, but mostly I just spent a lot of time hanging out at the free company house when I got up from my nap. It really is surreal to see the number of people online… and at some point I need to catch up with my whole guild census project and record all the new people in our spreadsheet. One of the problems with FFXIV is that there is no good guild notes functionality so we are having to keep an external list of which character belongs to which personality. Its tedious but for whatever reason I struggle to relate in game names back to twitter and blogger names. I spend a lot of time thinking “I think that is this person” but never fully committing because my memory is extremely fallible. That is my deep dark secret, that in other games I remember everyone… because I can check the officer notes.

I am not sure how I really made it through the sequence of Labyrinth of the Ancients, Syrcus Tower and World of Darkness… but I am guessing at this point I can just do those on auto pilot. I am hoping I was not “that dragoon” in most of the instances, because I managed to get several commendations. Generally speaking if I go in, and manage not to die… I get commendations. I should have spent the night working on botany, but instead I mostly stood around a lot staring blankly at the screen. I feel like over the last several nights I have been particularly antisocial. Largely when I am watching something on Television I stay off voice chat, and go for large periods of time without reading free company chat either. I know at some point Arkenor asked for a group, but it was not until it had actually formed that I noticed. I have been a less than stellar “Bel” lately, and I am hoping tonight I will be feeling back to my normal self. I feel like I have missed a lot of what is going on, and I am hoping to remedy that.

Time to Landmark

It has been well over a year since I last played Landmark in any fashion. That game has evolved in such a way that if you are not playing constantly you fall behind in the number of changes. At this point I simply feel behind the curve and it has been a real barrier from me jumping back into the game. This morning I read something interesting however, that Landmark plans to have one more major character wipe before opening its doors to the public. My theory is that this might be precisely the ideal time to pop my head back in and see how the game has progressed. Right now this wipe is slotted for sometime around April 29th. So my hope is that I can pop in and experience all of the new content fresh and not be so entirely out of touch with it. Honestly the most enjoyment I had in the game was the process of “leveling up” which was completing a series of arbitrary goals to keep moving up through the different types of picks and tools you can create. Once I had access to everything the game quickly became stale for me.

For reference when I last played the game… the Caves system was not yet patched in. So this means I have that and all of the player combat to experience fresh. The problem is I am torn on the whole Daybreak thing. I am still rather pissed about the layoffs, but at the same time the folks who are still on staff there are struggling to make this whole thing work. My Landmark account is a sunk cost as I purchased it so long ago. I might as well get some use out of it, and see what this game has become in the months since I let my claim get repossessed. There was a point where I realized I was only logging in just long enough to mine copper to pay the upkeep on my claim. This is one of the things I don’t like about upkeep systems. If you are only playing the game to pay upkeep, are you really playing the game at all? I am actually looking forward to the character wipe now and hopefully I will be able to reignite the spark I once had for this game.

Guar Wrangler

March 17, 2015 by Belghast

Horrible Night

Last night was supposed to be our guild attempt on Turn 9 again in Final Fantasy XIV. I logged in ready to go, and then all hell broke loose. We had two servers go down at work, and I spent my night working with a coworker trying to bring them back online. While all this was happening, the guild rightfully filled my spot and the show went on without me. It sounds like maybe they got through another phase but I was not paying that close of attention to what was going on in Teamspeak. I spent most of the night watching those servers, trying to make sure that they were not going to go down again. I got a 9:30 pm call from my boss which freaked me out, because my mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that something had happened again. Turns out he was just returning my call from earlier in the evening that apparently he missed.

The problem is as stressful as my actual evening went… it apparently spilled over into my dreams. In my dream I was interviewing Robert Downey Jr. and he was extremely agitated. He was pacing around the room, and I kept trying to the bottom of why. Suddenly he got mad with me and transformed into the Ironman suit from his briefcase. He fired a shot at me, and I responded by turning into the X-O Manowar suit. We battled back and forth in this conference room. One of his repulsor beams blew a hole in the wall and outside I could see the Ultramarines fighting some sort of giant Kaiju. Finally they defeated it and stormed into the building to assist me. Moments from capturing Robert Downey Jr. turned Ironman… I apparently woke up. It was a strange night.

Capping Poetics

While semi-afk and working on servers I happened to notice movement in my game screen. It turns out the entire guild was swarmed around me trying to lure me back from wherever I happened to be. Unfortunately it didn’t work and it took another thirty minutes or so before things were finally restored. Since I missed the boat for raid time… and quite honestly I didn’t feel like I should get involved in something that serious I opted to run hardmodes for poetics. I went into the night sitting around 200 poetics of the 450 cap. Through a series of hard modes, trials and a random expert with guildies when the raid was over I managed to get within a single point of capping. This meant I was within a single trial of cap, so I stayed up and did just that… managing to get the most frustrating Ifrit Hard mode I have ever experienced. The tank failed to have shield oath up, which meant that the white mage quite literally tanked Ifrit for most of the kill.

If nothing else capping poetics was a bit of a silver lining to an otherwise shitty night. Right now I am very much in this mode of trying to cap every week so I can finish gearing out my main the Warrior. As far as pieces to purchase, I need a couple of pieces of jewelry, the belt and the chest piece… and then a bunch of weeks to past to get the necessary carboncoat and carbontwine to upgrade them to 130. In any case there is still a lot of upgrades ahead of me, and my hope is to get to as much 130 gear as I can before the release of the 2.55 patch which is supposedly March 31st. That seems really damned soon considering we just recently had the Golden Saucer patch, but I guess they are wanting to give players time with that patch to finish things up before June 19th and the Heavensward headstart. I guess now that I think about that, it is only giving players a month with 2.55 which makes sense as something that they would want to do.

Guar Wrangler

After the night that I had I should have just gone straight to bed. The problem is I was still very much still “worked up” over the events. I likely could not have slept if I had tried, so throughout the night I had been patching up Elder Scrolls Online, and decided to pop my head in. It turns out that they flipped the switch for Tamriel Unlimited a bit early, and folks were able to log in and play last night. Overall the transition seemed smooth enough, and all of my pets and such got sucked into the new collections system. Similarly I was granted 4500 crowns to spend on the in game shop, and with that I picked up the stealth armor pack that had this very cool covenant armor set, and the guar that I am riding on. I also picked up the Wildhelm dog pet, because he looked adorable.

As far as the game itself, I had been popping my head in Tamriel once or twice a week for awhile now. After the change I didn’t really detect anything to strange other than the fact that I now had a champion point to spend, and had to respec my character completely. That was the hardest part, trying to decide and remember what I had before. I feel like I probably ended up with a similar build to before… but I can’t be too certain. I am still heavily sword and shield dragon knight, and that seems effective. I wandered around and managed to take out a world mini-boss at some ghost pirate camp without much issue, so I am happy with the results. I look forward to getting more time to explore the Aldmeri Dominion now that the champion system feels like I am actually making forward momentum again. Now I just have to live with the consequences of having limited sleep.