Marvel Heroes Binge

A Truly Amazing Day

avengers-age-of-ultron-art-poster-133238 One of the huge positives about where we live is that we are close to an awful lot of things that are within reasonable walking distance.  Over the last year or so we have tried to take advantage of this fact by walking to dinner more often.  This weekend however I did something I should have done a very long time ago and walked to the movies.  There is a theater literally less than two blocks away from my house, but I’ve never actually walked there before.  Granted when walking to dinner we walk past it all of the time.  Sunday I decided to go to the 10:30 am matinee and watch the new Avengers movie.  The movie itself was pretty great, and i feel like I need to watch it again to really take in all of the sights the movie had to offer.  This is a very “busy” film packed with some absolutely insane action sequences.  I feel like it is a toss up between the Hulk and Black Widow as to who stole the show, but I have always been partial to both of them.

As I was exiting the theater I texted my wife to let her know that I would be on my way home.  However when I poked my head out into the light there she was waiting on me.  She walked down hoping to surprise me, and then the two of us walked over to get lunch.  It was a really beautiful day, and she is constantly telling me that I need to get more sunlight.  While I am still not the biggest fan of the sun, she is probably right because I feel better today after having done all of this yesterday.  We had some errands to run, but by the time we got back to the house we both decided it was nap time.  After getting back up we ran to target really quickly and then she went outside to read in the rocking chair, and I played games.  It was a pretty great day, and I am hoping to take advantage of the movie theater being so close in the future.  There are a lot of movies that I want to see that she has no interest in.  Walking down makes it feel less of a hassle for some reason, and also serves as some exercise.

Marvel Heroes Binge

MarvelHeroes2015 2015-05-03 19-40-14-108 It was probably because of the awesome Avengers movie, but when I got home I ran a quick expert roulette and then logged to play Marvel Heroes.  This game has really grown on me and I am feeling like a massive failure for not giving it a chance before now.  Normally the whole Diablo thing is a bit of a turn off anymore, but for whatever reason the combination of Super Heroes and Diablo works well for me.  I have been accumulating a lot of various boost potions, because they give you plenty of them as part of the daily login reward system.  Yesterday I opted to take several of the various 2 hour boosts and see what all I could accomplish.  I pushed Captain America that has become my main from 22 to 27 almost 28 over the course of those two hours.  Right now there are a lot of things working in my favor since there is an event happening that gives Avengers a boost.  The only bad thing is that the cosmic gear I am wearing has yet to be replaced which bums me out slightly.  I guess I might have to try my luck again at the cosmic boxes from Adam Strange.

I am just starting the Savage Lands which according to my friend is one of the more frustrating areas of the game.  I personally found that the tail end of Stryker’s camp to be extremely frustrating with Sentinels dropping on me every five seconds.  I keep feeling like I should probably play other characters up since I now have this whole synergy thing unlocked…  but really I am still having a blast playing Cap.  His skillset is almost perfect suited for my particular play style.  I can charge through a bunch of mobs taking them out, and then when I get into the center of a pack twirl my shield around taking all but the blue or better mobs out.  Then I just mob up with shield throws or punches and repeat.  It feels very enjoyable, but I am actually looking forward to seeing what the new heroic difficulty that I unlocked is like.  There are absolutely times that the game feels mindlessly simple, so I would be curious to see if Heroic is like hard is for Diablo 3… aka the new “normal”.

Closing in on Botanist

ffxiv 2015-05-04 05-52-41-84 Another thing I worked on last night was pushing Botanist up a bit more.  I really want to finish leveling this to 50, and have felt the need to do just this before really starting in on crafting proper.  I realize this might be a bit strange of logic but it works for me.  I spent my evening catching up on Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley, both shows that I had not really watched for the last few weeks.  While doing this I ran a whole slew of Botany leves and managed to push from 35 to 45 which hopefully means I can finish off the leveling process at some point this week.  I will be happy to have finished leveling the two harvesting professions that I am going to need to most while leveling my other  crafters.  Right now however I have to collect 20 high quality mistletoe to turn in to the quest giver.  This is going to be a fairly daunting task, given that I cannot simply buy my way through it.  It seems HQ mistletoe is in short supply as there was absolutely none on the market board.    As a result I will be spending the next little bit in the Whitebrim area harvesting like mad trying to complete the 45 quest.

The other thing I really want to do soon is push my Arcanist from 22 to 30 so that I can become a scholar.  If I manage to do that I can get to 50 relatively easily doing the fast healer dungeon queues.  Depending on how many leves it takes me to get to 50 Botanist, I might follow this interesting guide posted on the FFXIV Reddit.  Ashgar pointed this out, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable way to level.  I actually like chain running leves because it is also a decent source of retainer tokens.  I would love to see myself level a few more classes to 50 before the expansion, because I have 100 level weapons waiting on them.  I have been dumping my excess soldiery into buying the various weapons, and just have one left to purchase, which admittedly is a little insane.  The problem is… what else was I going to use that soldiery on?  I am actually right around the point where I need to buy the final weapon, which makes me feel like a slacker for not leveling all of those classes to 50.  Final Fantasy XIV has way more content than I could ever hope to do… so at times I just feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that I want to be doing.

Splashy Pony

The Lottery

ffxiv 2015-04-25 21-00-49-68 This weekend I had a pretty great time puttering around Final Fantasy XIV.  As of yesterday afternoon I am officially capped on Poetics again, and it seems like each week this is getting easier.  Right now my focus is on getting my dragoon 130 weapon since I am being called upon to dps in coil occasionally, and as such I feel like I should have the best weapon available to me.  Had I really been thinking straight I would have gone for the dragoon lance first instead of the axe.  At this point I need to cap one more week and then part of another to end up getting the weapon.  This week I got another encrypted tomestone, and this coming week I will get the carbontwine so that when I finally get the poetics together I will be ready for it.  We have a minor patch tomorrow, and I would really love if they completely removed the poetics cap or at least raised it…  but I don’t think that is actually going to happen.

Part of what makes my time in Final Fantasy XIV so enjoyable is the community.  In some games you want to spend as little time with other players as possible, but in FFXIV we all sort of congregate in several common areas and the casual interactions with other players ends up being a pure joy.  With the 2.51 patch they added the Golden Saucer and with it the Cactpot lottery system.  Once a week you can buy a ticket for the big drawing, that could be worth as much a million MGP.  This drawing happens every Saturday evening, and if you are there at exactly the right time you can see the above spectacle as a series of wheels raise from the floor and “roll” the new number.  What is awesome is a good chunk of the community gathers around to watch this happen.  I ended up chatting with a few people I had never met but that just had awesome outfits, and while I didn’t win anything other than the consolation prize… it is always a part of the week I look forward to.

Splashy Pony

ffxiv 2015-04-25 20-37-51-32 Before the podcast on Saturday evening we gathered together and worked on Leviathan Extreme.  Now a few weeks ago we had made some serious progress here, so we went into this adventure thinking we had a good shot at actually downing it.  Levi Extreme is probably one of the more enjoyable fights in the game I have experienced.  While it shares some unrecoverable mechanics with Titan Extreme, it seems to do so in a much more predictable manner.  The primary difference between normal and extreme modes is that when the elemental converter goes off, Leviathan knocks the sides off the boat making the players susceptible to being knocked off in the water if you stand in the wrong places.  Additionally there is a new add type that spawns that if not stun locked and burned extremely quickly can fear players off the boat.  The combination of these two mechanics and the fact that if someone dies… you have a few moments to resurrect them before their corpse is knocked of…  makes the fight extremely tense at times.

ffxiv 2015-04-25 20-41-29-38However we worked through all of these issues and on each attempt kept creeping closer and closer to success.  I think we had about ten minutes left on the timer when we finally defeated Leviathan, but as the night went on it felt more solid.  I think we could probably farm this encounter each week letting folks get their extremely awesome Leviathan weapons.  The amazing part is that we actually managed to get one of the mounts to drop.  These are not an every time occurrence from what I understand, and actually rather rare.  Not only did we get it to drop, but I actually managed to roll high on it.  Now in the above picture you can see me riding around on my splashy pony with water splash effects that it leaves behind everywhere it goes.  Leviathan has always been one of my favorite summons in the Final Fantasy universe, so I am damned happy to have his pony.  Hopefully we can get the guild a bunch more of these over time.  You can see Thalen sporting the Leviathan fist weapons, which are the item that dropped in addition to the mount.  I want the Leviathan axe so bad, so hopefully we can muster the oomph to do this one on a regular basis.

Ready for Heavensward

ffxiv_dx11 2015-04-27 06-21-20-50 This morning before sitting down to write this blog post I ran my way through the new benchmark application to test systems to see if they are ready for Heavensward.  I guess my system passed with flying colors, and there are some moments in the demo where it worked the hell out of my machine.  I tend to play Final Fantasy XIV on a frame locked 30 fps largely because that is what I have gotten used to.  I happened to be running fraps during the demo loop, and the highest frame rate I saw was around 75 fps and the lowest dip was during this “raid” section with tons of spell effects going off at around 35 fps.  All in all I am pretty damned pleased with that, especially since I never run with full spell effects on.  I prefer to run with the limited spell effect options because it makes 24 man raids feel less seizure inducing to be honest.  As the demo played out though I have to say I am getting really amped to be playing all of this content.  The world of Heavensward looks amazing, and the DX11 textures are so much clearer than what we are currently used to.

ffxiv_dx11 2015-04-27 06-20-41-93 The highlight of the demo reel however is seeing the new Dragoon rank 3 limit break animation.  If this is any indication then I think we are going to be really happy with all of the new class specific limit breaks.  The only thing that concerns me is that the dragoon dive is a really long animation, so I am wondering what the rest of the party sees as this is going off.  As you can see the Dragoon becomes a spirit dragon and then leaps up into the air crashing down on the target driving the force of the spirit dragon through it.  I tried to get screenshots at good times during its animation but it really does not do it justice.  Thankfully if you are stuck at work and cannot run the animation, they released a video of the entire benchmark so you can get your fix.  I am really pleased with the performance of my system however and I have no doubts in my mind that I will be able to run Heavensward without issues.  This whole releasing a benchmark thing is such a great idea, and I am wondering why more companies don’t do this.  This way if you do need to make upgrades, you have more than enough time to figure out how you are going to do this.

Tanking for Strangers

FitBit is Awesome

It is so rarely that you get to brag on a company so I thought I would take a moment to do so on my blog this morning.  My wife and I have had our FitBit flex trackers for a little over a year now, in fact when we looked it up it has been a few weeks over a year.  Mine is still trucking along happily, however recently my wife’s started developing some issues.  Namely it stopped vibrating, which was not a big deal other than the fact that there was no haptic feedback when you put the device to sleep or when you hit your milestone.  This weekend however she started having some significant problems with the battery.  She had charged it fully, and during the course of Saturday the battery drained completely.  This was the second time that it had prematurely drained the battery, so with that and the vibration motor issues… we just assumed the device was shot.

We had gotten a good year of use out of it, and figured at this point it was out of warranty and we would simply just have to buy a new one.  She shot an email to customer support, and then when she got home yesterday decided to give the support hotline a call.  Now this is either really awesome or creepy depending upon your perspective, but the technician on the phone could see various markers like that at the beginning of the day the battery usage on her fitbit was at 90% and drained completely during the course of the day.  We were correct in that the fitbit was out of warranty, but the tech no the phone said that it would not be a big deal.  They are now sending her a brand new fitbit and even checked to see if she needed a new band.  They didn’t have to by the letter of the law, but it is really awesome that they went ahead and took care of the issue.

Tanking for Strangers

ffxiv 2015-04-12 14-50-40-47 One of the things that I have struggled with in Final Fantasy XIV is capping poetics each week.  Now there is a rather easy way to do this, and that is running a random expert every single day.  The problem being that I was only actually doing these when I could muster a full guild group.  In spite of how wonderful the average community member is on Cactuar and the Aether data center, I still have this hang up about tanking for strangers.  This week however I forced myself to push aside this mental block, and I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised with just how enjoyable it has been.  Admittedly this all started for a strange reason, largely that I happened to miss the boat one night on the “guild group”.  I had logged in five minutes after the group formed, so I simply opted to queue as a tank instead by myself.  The result was that the run went quickly and I actually beat the guild group out of the expert.  Then another night, I missed the boat again because I spoke up on teamspeak… but not in free company chat and my comment got missed in the shuffle.  So once again I queued and made really good time through the instance.

These two events acted as a bit of a catalyst that set the chain of actions in motion, that have now lead me to queue almost every night and tank for at least one random stranger.  Before I do so I still ask if anyone wants to do an expert, but if I get no response I know that I can safely queue without much issue.  This ability to cap without much grinding has made other aspects of the game more enjoyable.  As a result I am more likely to offer to tank those low level instances when the guild needs it, because I know I am not quite so “under the gun” on the weekend to hit my 450 poetics cap.  I can’t say I am necessarily completely over my mental block about pug tanking, but I am definitely doing better.  Additionally I am really enjoying that extra 4500 gil from pretty much always getting the tank in need bonus.  Now if this trend continues I can see myself starting to queue for coil turn four…  and attempting to push towards the 200 victory bear mount.  On Wednesday night we ended up queuing for turn four and overall it went really smoothly.

Dusting Off Books

ffxiv 2015-04-11 21-29-26-41 Because of this practice of capping poetics over the last few weeks I am just about to reach one of my goals.  With the release of patch 2.55 they introduced a way for us to be able to get the Encrypted Tomestone needed for my Ironworks Magitek Axe.  All that was really stopping me from getting one was 1300 tomestones of poetics, which feels like a rather daunting task, but in reality is simply hitting the cap three weeks in a row.  It is my hope that between Tuesday and Thursday I can get the last few tomestones I need, and get my axe.  The awesome thing about it is that when I do finally get it I should be able to shift it to the Augmented version giving me a level 130 weapon.  The negative here is that I absolutely hate the appearance of the Ironworks axe…  so more than likely I will still be rocking my Malignant Mogaxe pictured above.  I’ve not been as happy with a weapon in a very long time as I have been with that one.

Now the strange thing this weekend is even though I am inching closer to the 130 weapon…  I ended up dusting off my Animus weapon books and started down that path once more.  I have no clue WHY I am doing this, but I apparently am nonetheless.  I think in part the dungeons were a hold up when I was unwilling to queue for them by myself.  In fact I had a book finished save for a single dungeon run for a very long time, and I finished that book up this weekend starting another.  Essentially I am rolling in soldiery right now, and I need to use it.  Now that I have two classes with 110 weapons simply waiting for me to level them…  I am feeling like maybe that isn’t the best use of my tomestones.  Instead I might as well venture down the path of madness that Ashgar has been blazing and start working on finishing up Animus and preparing for the impact that is the Novus step.  If nothing else it should consume all of my available soldiery for awhile, which is a good thing I guess.

Race to the Bottom

Bel Folks Stuff #6 – A Good Friday with Liore

Listen to the Episode Here

I had these grand ideas about having two episodes during the month of March to make up for the fact that I missed a February episode.  That never quite worked out.  I had a handful of people that I had talked to but scheduling never quite worked out since I try really hard to squeeze these episodes in whenever my wife is otherwise busy.  With the weekly schedule of AggroChat and the various guest spots I end up getting called on to do, it means she is having to bend her time around me quite often, that I try my best not to make this podcast also do that.  As such I tend to schedule people on a whim, and I am super thankful that the amazing Liore was amicable about that sort of timing.  I literally talked to her Thursday to see if she was available, and we recorded on the afternoon of Good Friday since we were both off work.

Liore and I have known each other for what feels like forever.  She’s been in my guilds, I’ve been in her guilds… and for a period of time in Rift we raided together multiple times a week.  During all of this time we have forged an unconventional friendship.  It feels like we end up on opposite ends of so many discussions, but at the end of the day we do so with the greatest of respect for the other.  During this podcast we talk about all sorts of things, but one thing in particular we highlight because we found it extremely humorous.  Both of us have been getting commentary from the community about a supposedly rivalry between the two of us since we do similar columns now for gaming websites that are technically in competition with each other.  I had a blast spending the afternoon talking with Liore, and had I allowed myself to do so I could have easily spent another full hour chatting away.  I always love it when the conversation flows naturally.

Race to the Bottom

wowtokenresults Yesterday we saw the release of the WoW Token out into the wild, and the demand for gold greatly outstripped the availability of people snatching up subscription time.  At the beginning however it was skewing the other direction.  The token started at a prematurely low 30,000g and I watched it yesterday raise up to 35,000g before taking a big dive into the territory that it is currently sitting.  Someone thought ahead and created an excellent stock market like tracking system on https://wowtoken.info/ and you can see the bottom starting to drop out.  Thing is…  most players already have an active subscription for the moment.  It was not until the end of the month when in other games with similar systems we started to see the demand finally climb again.  My advice, just like Wildstar is to snatch up these cheap tokens now because once the system matures a bit you will be paying significantly more per month of subscription.

The reason why I feel like this is the largest benefit of a system like this is it removes the temptation of players to turn to less than legitimate sources of currency.  When I wrote about this a month ago, my research at the time indicated that in the aftermarket this same $20 was buying players around 100,000 gold.  This means the legitimate route now costs you roughly five times as much as the illegal market, which is still going to be a huge draw for some players.  The WoW Token is a failure for Blizzard unless they can squash the third party gold sellers by starving them of their market.  Right now the token is new… and a lot of people are trying it out.  Given a month or two of sanity they will realize that it is greatly overpriced.  I guess for me, I won’t be doing this token unless I can buy a couple and get a big ticket item like an expedition yak, one of those things I have always wanted but was much too far out of my price range.  I have a feeling that this is going to be the case for your average customer.   If by the end of the month we do not see a massive spike in the price of a single token… then I will be extremely surprised.

End of an Expansion

ffxiv 2015-04-07 17-25-22-55 Now for the hardest part of my morning… how exactly do I talk about the wrapping up of the storyline in Final Fantasy XIV 2.55 without giving any spoilers.  I chose a very careful screenshot out of the stack of them that I took because this one really doesn’t say much about what is going on.  In the most spoiler free fashion I can, I am going to talk about my impressions of the events.  I have to say Final Fantasy XIV knows how to end an expansion.  This is hands down the most satisfying and at the same time most anxious ending to an expansion I have ever experienced.  In games like World of Warcraft everything is generally resolved at the end, and all the loose bits tied up… because the intent is for that expansion to live on its own forever without actually continuing the storyline in the next expansion.  In Final Fantasy XIV…  every aspect of this closing means massive ramifications that will hopefully be resolved as we travel into Ishgard.  Instead of wrapping up the lose ends neatly… for each one that is concluded two more ends stand open waiting to be explored.

The awesome thing is… this game has proven that it WILL actually explore them.  How frustrating has it been in the past as games have hinted at things, that never saw fruition.  After all there are still I believe three portals under Wyrmrest temple that go nowhere, that will likely NEVER go anywhere because the narrative has moved on past the original plans.  I expect that each event that happens during the closing of “A Realm Reborn” is going to factor heavily into a future storyline chain.  It was a pretty shocking and brutal conclusion, but it makes me damned happy that I am playing this game.  I quite literally did not see this one coming, and I highly suggest you push hard so that you can see this content before the expansion.  I pushed through in part because my friend Ashgar said that the trailer that was releasing this Friday supposedly spoils some parts of this impact.  As the credits rolled they showed a number of scenes from the past block of content… and I have to say sometimes you lose sight on just how much we accomplished during “A Realm Reborn”.  I am extremely excited to see what happens as we turn our eyes “Heavensward”.