Morning Friends! One of the problems with me as a human being is that I often have these ideas… and then either don’t act upon them or take for freaking ever to do so. This mornings post is firmly planted in that second column, because over a year ago I started paying for access to YAGPDB.xyz a very noob friendly discord bot that can do a whole slew of things. This thing was done precisely for the project that I am announcing today and I have effectively been paying $5 a month for nothing. In the “better late than never” camp I bring to you this madness I “thunked”

The Pitch

Hi I’m Belghast, a 45 year old gamer that has had to deal with his stable group of friends becoming far less stable as we have all aged and moved further along in our careers. The thing is… I still really like MMORPGs but these are far less enjoyable to play without a group of friends to experience them with. I still have a great group of friends, but timezones are a thing and have pushed start times out to where I as a working adult cannot cope with PST based start times.

Another particular challenge that I have is that I suffer from a not-insignificant amount of social anxiety, which I know is probably a shock given the community initiatives I end up leading. As an introvert I go through these periods of time that I lovingly refer to as “turtle mode” where I pull my head up into my shell and forget the world exists. When I return from one of these I find it harder and harder each year to get over the hump that is “grouping with strangers”. I am also a tank which makes this exceptionally worse because not only am I grouping with strangers… I am expected to be the defacto leader of whatever party I happen to be in.

The idea is pretty simple… what if I didn’t have to group with strangers? What if I had a community of players that went into groups understanding that it would be a very low pressure and non-judgmental environment where we help bolster each other and make it through the content come hell or high water? I thought to myself that I can’t be the ONLY person to have these feelings and I can’t be the only person to feel like it would be nice to have a safe circle for group activities. So legitimately over a year ago I had all of these thoughts, and even went so far as to come up with a name and a logo and everything… and then just sat on it because the pandemic sapped all of my energy.

Super Dungeon Friends

Today I present you with Super Dungeon Friends, a discord designed to help you find low pressure groups in Final Fantasy XIV. I am specifically launching it with FFXIV because firstly it is the game I am engaged with right now, and two the community already tends to be way more chill than some other MMORPGs. The thing is Final Fantasy XIV already has a pretty group community and grouping environment, but still I have anxiety about pushing that queue button. Super Dungeon Friends or SDF (yes a very purposeful robotech reference) is there to bridge that gap and is a fully public community asking Final Fantasy XIV players that maybe have some of the same hang-ups as I do to come along for this journey.

When you first join the server you are going to be presented with a single channel called #Server-Rules and a big long statement. Below it are two reactions for Yes and No. If you hit Yes, you get assigned to the Friend role and can fully participate in the server. If you hit No, however you will effectively be stuck in the void for all eternity. You can change your mind, but the idea is that everyone that is on the server will have agreed to the following terms:

The rules are pretty straight forward I hope, and they set forth the basics of how the community is expected to interact. I bounced them off a handful of friends who helped me tweak them and make them a little more clear as to the intent. The server is completely open to anyone who would agree to these terms and if it ends up getting big enough I could see it spreading to other games. However for the time being we are focused on Final Fantasy XIV specifically. That is not to say that the friends you make here might not carry over into other places.

Role Assignment

Once you are on the server and have accepted the terms you will be given access to a number of channels, one of which is #Role-Assignment. In this channel I will be setting up various bot reaction commands that allow you to assign yourself specific designations. For the moment I only have a few role menus, but the most important one is Data Center, which will toggle on specific Data Center based grouping channels. This becomes significantly less important when 6.0 releases and we get grouping between multiple data centers. The other option is to flag yourself for specific roles that you feel comfortable filling in a group setting.

So using myself as an example, I’ve changed my server specific name to be my actual FFXIV character name and the specific server that I play on. I have the role of Friend, which grants me access to all of the channels. I have flagged myself as feeling comfortable playing the role of a Tank or Melee DPS in a group setting, and indicated that I play on the Aether North American data center. The rename thing is completely optional of course, but it does make things a little easier when it actually comes to forming a group. Yesterday I talked a bit about the process of how you group across servers in a data center, which might come in handy.

Other Roles of Note

• Guide – these are going to be the server administrators that you can turn to if you need help with something not working as intended or if an issue arises.
• Mentor – these are players with a wealth of experience in Final Fantasy XIV and can be turned to for help and advice about not only gameplay mechanics but also specific issues you might be having. If you feel comfortable filling this specific role, reach out to me and we will have a discussion about it.

There are a lot of channels on the server and some of them may not be entirely intuitive so here is a run down of each of them and some of my general thoughts about them.

Channel Structure

• Administrative – These are channels that don’t allow messages and are designed as serving some administrative role.
  • Server-Rules – This displays the server rules and can be looked at at any point. Any future rules changes will be announced publicly over the server and this channel will be updated to reflect them.
  • Role-Assignment – This is the channel that will house all of the various role assigning widgets. Currently this only contains Data Center and Group Role, but might expand over time.
• Social – Non-Game Specific “Off Topic” style channels.
  • The-Waking-Sands – You have to go there constantly during your journey in Final Fantasy XIV, so I thought I would name the general game specific chat channel that as well. The intent is for any general game specific discussion to happen in this channel.
  • Seeking-Help – Are you struggling with something? This channel is here to help players work through problems be it with specific game mechanics, a quest that is giving you trouble, or just gaining some knowledge.
  • Crafters-Corner – This is a specific channel about the deep crafting systems in the game. Crafting discussions can get highly technical and I felt it was probably best to give them a space of their own.
  • <DataCenter>-Grouping – Choosing a Data Center in the Role-Assignment channel is going to grant you access to its corresponding “Grouping” channel. This gives you a space to talk specifically to the members of your data center for building groups for dungeons, trials, raids or just doing fun things like maps.
• General Voicechat – This is the equivalent of the Social text channels but for voice.
  • The-Alehouse – Named after the bar in Buscaron’s Druthers in South Shroud, this channel is designed to be a place where folks hang out while playing games and is not activity specific.
• Grouping Voicechat – This is a number of non-specific channels named after the gods of Eorzea aka The Twelve. The idea is that as you find a group, you can hop down to one of the channels and use that for whatever activity you are undertaking. There are currently twelve unique channels, but if those end up being filled regularly more will be added.

That’s it friends! That is the plan for the Super Dungeon Friends community. I hope this post reaches a number of people who might be interested in following me on this adventure. Please feel free to spread the word if you have friends who also might be interested in this undertaking. The server is up and ready along with all of the bot rules configured for the time being. I am certain there will be needs along the way that might change a few things, but I think it is a fairly solid approach. If you are interested here is the Discord Server link:

• Super Dungeon Friends – FFXIV Discord Grouping Community

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.

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.