Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

FFXIV Cross Data Center Grouping

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Yesterday was a pretty chill day playing some more Final Fantasy XIV. Since I was extremely sick Monday and Tuesday, yesterday was my first day in the office this week and I maybe pushed myself to return too quickly. When I got home I was pretty exhausted, so I worked on a few relaxing activities the first of which was finishing out the level 60 Paladin quest. After that I played around with the cosmetic system in the game to return myself to one of my favorite outfits. The bunny helm thing is sort of my signature and when playing Warrior I use it with that Artifact armor set pretty regularly. For Paladin I decided to mix things up a bit and go for the Noct Lorica and other pieces of that set. I think it works pretty well.

Another thing that has been happening is I am working on crafting a grouping community. I am not quite ready to reveal it publicly, but the idea is to create a low key chill place for getting groups in Final Fantasy. Essentially I am working on configuring the Discord server and bots to assign roles and stuff like that to make telling who is interested in grouping as which roles simple. Additionally I want everyone that joins the server to take a simple pledge to be patient and understanding with members of the group, and to hopefully let go of any rage before they enter. Right now it is largely limited to cross Data Center grouping, but coming in 6.0 they are opening it to be able to travel between Data Centers.

Since I had to refresh myself on the process last night, I thought I would talk a bit this morning about how you visit another realm. The challenge that I ran into is that I have never actually managed to get a message to successfully reach someone on another data center that I am not already friends with. In theory the syntax should be something like this:

/tell Belghast Sternblade @Cactuar This is a Test Message

That ABSOLUTELY works if you are already friends with the character, but unfortunately there in lies the problem. What I have had to do each time I wanted to friend a player from another world is utilize the world visit system. The first step is you have to go to the main Aetheryte crystal in one of the original capital cities aka Uldah, Limsa Lominsa or Gridania. From the Crystal menu you are going to choose “Visit Another World” which will pop up the middle dialog shown above allowing you to select the world that you are going to travel to. After that you will get a popup that looks and sounds just like the dungeon finder dialog telling you that you are ready to transport and what your source and destination worlds are.

Once you are on the world that your friend resides, you can use the friend search functionality to locate them. After that it is just a matter of right clicking their name in the search dialog and choosing “Send a Friend Request”. After that they will show up in your friends list just like any other friend would with the difference being that instead of your home server as the “Location” it will show their home server. Things like Company information won’t transfer between worlds so they are always going to show up as having a company of — until you actually arrive on their world. Once friended you can do all of the normal things like invite to parties for grouping purposes.

I assume in 6.0 the Data Center visit options will work an awful lot like World visiting. It seems like a needlessly arcane system but it does what it needs to do I guess. If there is an easier way to friend someone across realms I would absolutely love to hear it, but this is the method that seems to work reliably for me. My only guess is due to the other social engineering features of Final Fantasy XIV… adding this bit of friction is designed to make it feel like you are having to go through some effort to leave your own server. I think the idea being that it reinforces server communities rather than it largely being a meaningless designation. I transferred back to Cactuar this morning and was welcomed with someone giving an impromptu concert in the Aetheryte plaza. If the friction of a “visit” system preserves server identity and activities like this… then I can I can stomach the temporary frustrations of it.

Returning to Eorzea

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Morning Friends! I guess I need to admit that I am now properly playing Final Fantasy XIV again. Like I had no real intention to get back into another MMORPG right now, but it seems when you are least expecting it… is when a bought of the feels happens and draws you back in. I am trying to figure out how to enjoy the game on a sustainable level rather than the salted earth binge and bail pattern that I have been in for the last few expansions. In both Stormblood and Shadowbringers I bounced pretty shortly after finishing the initial patch content, and I have not really arrived at real integration with the game since ARR and early Heavensward.

I think ultimately coming back solo, I have been more interested in connecting with the community of the server once again. For those who are unaware I play on Cactuar in the Aether Data Center and it has always been a pretty great place to call home. This is Limsa Lominsa during primetime and it is hopping… there are so many people that the game engine refuses to load them all in at once. Each time I would take a step a batch of players would disappear and a whole new crowd would come into view. I’ve been reaching out and having conversations with people from my friends list that I did not remember at all. Some of them ended up being folks that I did know as another name like Liore’s husband Vajra and others just people that I apparently friended along the way. Thing is… every single one of them has welcomed me back and been excited to see me playing even if they only vaguely remembered me.

I’ve come to the realization that if I am going to reach a state of sustainability in an MMO, I am going to have to make new friends. That is super hard as a 45 year old gamer to reach out and make new connections, but FFXIV and Cactuar server is the sort of place that makes it fairly easy to do this. I had more conversations with strangers while hanging out in Quarrymill between Palace of the Dead runs than I have had in the last several years likely. I rolled up on this group of people who were very clearly playing their instruments by hand and not with a macro script… and many joyous “doots” were had by all. The thing is… it is the sort of place where if you wave it is highly likely that someone is going to wave back which seems simple but that has not been the case in a lot of MMORPGs that I have played over the years.

The other thing that I have been noticing while roaming the world is just how damned gorgeous it can be at times. Granted I am playing this on my beefy gaming rig that is complete overkill for the sort of game that it is. I had not really been back to the Sea of Clouds since Heavensward, and flying through it for a Paladin quest made me really appreciate how much care went into this world. I mean the same can be said with pretty much any MMO, but like… how do you create a zone full of floating islands without making it seem stale? You introduce a shocking amount of variety and interesting flora and fauna so that it feels like yeah… this could legitimately be an ecosystem rather than a chain of small destinations.

I wanted to ease back into the game and one of the jobs that I had been wanting to level for some time was Paladin. When I last left it I think I had just pushed it to level 50 before parking it. I picked up from there and it turns out that I really like the way the Paladin has changed since I last played it. Like I am enjoying it enough that I am contemplating switching to maining it over the Warrior. Last night I dinged 60 in Palace of the Dead and this allowed me to equip a bunch of level 60 gear. Tonight I am probably going to try tanking a few dungeons, since I have been effectively tanking PotD for the last several days. I feel like I have a firm grasp on the basics of the class at least and since I need to get to 61 before I can start running Heaven on High, it seems like a good option rather than more Palace.

All in all I am greatly enjoying my return to Final Fantasy XIV, but it is taking a bit to remember the various systems. There are so many things that I never engaged with heavily along the years. For example a few days ago was the first time I ever took my Grand Company Squadron out into a dungeon… because you can absolutely build up a team of NPCs and go dungeoning with them. Granted they also added a system in Shadowbringers that allows you to do the same thing with the other members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. It seems like a really solid way to go back and farm older content, but also not just “un-sync” and steamroll everything.

Mostly I am happy to return and find out that the community is still pretty freaking awesome. Now I just need to get my confidence levels back and start tanking for strangers again.

Torghast and Palace of the Dead

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Lately I have been back playing some Final Fantasy XIV and enjoying myself quite a bit. I am not sure if is the cavalcade of “leaving wow to play ffxiv” videos that the YouTube algorithm has deluged me with, or if I am avoiding finishing FF7R because I don’t want the story to be over. Whatever the case I have been back and piddling around several old haunts, spending a lot of time on my tiny paladin… which I guess sounds weird because as a Lalafell everything is tiny. I never really leveled up my Paladin past around 50 and I have been doing so because apparently I really like the ways they have changed that class over the years.

Over the years I have spent copious amounts of time in Palace of the Dead, so much so that I would probably put it up there as one of my favorite activities in the game. At its most simple level it is a roguelike dungeon exploration game mode where you progress through an one hundred floor deep dungeon. It uses its own progression system in the form of Aetherpool Weapons and Armor which gain strength by finding specific chests in the dungeon. Each ten floors you face a boss of sorts and your progression is locked in, allowing you to restart at the last flight of ten floors that you left off. There are also temporary buff items that you pick up along the way that allow you to deal with traps and challenges specific to the dungeon.

There are a few things that I find really interesting about the game mode. Firstly any square you step on in your travels could contain a trap, which makes you cautious to travel uncertain paths or stay too clumped up for fear an explosion will KO the entire party. Additionally any treasure chest could be a Mimic, which applies a very hefty debuff making each chest you open a risk versus reward decision. Clearing a certain amount of monsters unlocks the gate to the next floor, and in general because of the traps and mimics, groups tend to only explore the bare minimum needed to move forward. This is especially true if you are doing floors 51-60 which players tend to run over and over as a quick way to level alts.

I personally love it because it means I can level alternate jobs without having to worry about gearing. You can legitimately step into Palace of the Dead wearing nothing but your job weapon and be just as effective as a player decked out in full savage gear. The other aspect that I have loved is that there are hidden coffers spread throughout the dungeon which can be turned in for a random item. There are a bunch of interesting things on this drop table but the vast majority are cosmetics. For example most of the outfit I am wearing in the above screenshot came from random drops in Palace of the Dead.

All of this is why I was looking forward to Torghast opening in World of Warcraft with the Shadowlands expansion. At least on paper everything I had read about it prior to the launch of the expansion made me think that maybe just maybe they were taking notes from FFXIV and introducing a similar system. In practice however Torghast ended up feeling largely pointless. Palace of the Dead has this join purpose of helping you level your alts and at the same time get some cool cosmetics while doing it. Torghast on the other hand is a forced grind that you feel like you have to complete every week… with your only reward being yet another random currency required to unlock something that feels require… legendary items.

While there are some mechanically interesting things going on with Torghast, it doesn’t feel as balanced and it is also a much bigger time sink than clearing ten floors of Palace of the Dead. There is so much RNG given that you get a choice of three buffs each time you open one of the glowing orbs. Some of these are really good and others are absolutely horrible. Then there is the whole feeling that nothing I gained this week carries forward to help me with next week. If you are unlucky you have a really bad time and if you are lucky your power seems to snowball out of control becoming an immortal god of death.

On the other hand in Palace of the Dead I have over time increased my Aetherpool Arms and Armor rating to +99 and am effectively as strong as I will ever get. That means I can drag alts in there and get a pretty predictable leveling experience, yet still feel like I get the random chance of getting something cool as a drop. I mean even when it isn’t anything I need, I can still share the love and gift those items to someone else. Like yesterday my friend Clockwork Bells happened to be on at the same time as me and I gifted her a pet, a music scroll and a nifty pair of cosmetic boots that I got as a drops. If I don’t have someone to send to, I have often times gone into one of the newbie areas and just dropped goodies on people.

The problem with Torghast I think is the fact that I felt like I was required to do it. If I skipped a week I felt like I was falling behind the curve in the amount of soul ash that I could have obtained. Similarly that end goal of maybe crafting a legendary… that I would have to spend hundreds of thousands of gold to obtain just wasn’t enough carrot to make the stick feel manageable. If Torghast also became a source of gear that you could take out of it and put to use in the rest of the game… maybe just maybe it would feel worthwhile. If they turned it into an alternate leveling path like Palace of the Dead and made it so that gear was completely normalized and you could effectively walk in naked… also like PotD I think that would have been enough to make me get into it.

As it stands, Torghast seemed like someones pet project… crafted by someone who maybe heard a FFXIV player talking about how much fun Palace of the Dead was, without actually understanding any of the things that made it enjoyable. However what is more likely the case is that Torghast was initially designed to be a super challenging replacement for the Mage’s Tower from Legion, that just sort shifted purpose somewhere along the way. The end result is something that isn’t fun enough to do just for the sake of doing it… and not rewarding enough to make making to do it feel like a good use of time. There are so many ways that they could improve upon the design, but at the end of the day we all know that it is going to stop being relevant the moment the next expansion is released. On the other hand I am still playing Palace of the Dead and it is still relevant some two expansions after it was initially put into the game.

Don Corneo and Remote Play

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I exist in a very odd space when it comes to gaming, or at least my gaming habits are less than average. Much of what comes with console gaming takes for granted that you would be playing said games in a comfortable couch based set up. That is not the case for me however because the screens that are “mine” and not considered communal space are up in my office. I’ve always felt like I couldn’t exactly commandeer the Livingroom television for the hours that gaming would require, when my wife might want to be watching some program downstairs or just basking in the silence and reading. When I am hanging out downstairs it generally means I am on a laptop with headphones.

This has generally meant that in practice I end up playing a lot fewer console games because it is just easier to remote control my gaming desktop upstairs and play PC games through either Parsec or Moonlight. In the past I have tried using the PlayStation Remote Play app and even an unofficial Remote Play app to varying degrees of success. Though as I sit down and write this article it looks like the second option has changed drastically and probably deserves a revisit. Basically the problem that I ran into is that the baseline PlayStation 4 that I had ultimately has fairly slow wireless and was limited to 720p game streaming… which looked and felt awful.

Since getting the PlayStation 5, I have to admit there have just not been a ton of games that I felt like I could play through remote control. Ratchet and Clank for example… has just enough input lag to make it exceptionally difficult to time some things. Playing Final Fantasy VII Remake however seems to be just fine given that most of the inputs are not exactly twitch oriented. I did struggle a bit with a puzzle that required me to pressurize a valve and then do another action extremely quickly to seal in the pressure. However for the most part I spent last night chilling on the sofa happily playing PS5 through my laptop with a Dualshock 4 connected.

I’ve now made it through the entire Don Corneo/Wall Market story arc and I am not back in Sector 7. I have no clue how much more there is to go in “Remake” but I feel like I have to be circling in on the end of the game at this point. It is going to be really weird to reach the end… knowing that the story is so far from over. I’ve been pretty pleased with how the story has gone and Cloud is finally starting to grow a heart. There are events that I know are coming… but I am curious to see how they play out. This mornings post however is mostly me re-exploring Remote Play with the PlayStation 5. I do need to investigate what became of TMACDEV and the new REPL4Y product. Previously it had way less input lag than the official offering so I want to give it a test and see how that goes.