Year Behind and Loving It

AggroChat 46 – Hards for Cards Extreme


Last night we once more recorded an episode of AggroChat and this time as one might expect our episode was almost entirely about Final Fantasy XIV patch 2.51.  The patch introduced so much casual content to the game it is just silly.  The primary addiction for our free company however has been the search for Triple Triad cards.  While for some this has meant the constant dueling of NPCs to win specific cards, for me it has been doing hard content in the hopes that maybe just maybe it would drop a card.  Yesterday Tam did some quick math and realized that over the course of the week I had completed more than 90 hard mode trials.  Each of these trials rewards 5 poetics, and I capped almost exclusively through chain running them to get various primal cards.  There are still a ton more that I need but so far I have managed to gather up Ifrit, Garuda, Gilgamesh/Enkidu, Ultros/Typhon and Good King Moggle Mog.

What I find amazing about this patch is the way that each of us has reacted to it slightly differently.  Some of us have spent time racing Chocobos, others playing the catcpot lottery, and even others doing the various GATE events scattered throughout the golden saucer.  Last nights show was overwhelmingly about our love of Final Fantasy XIV, but we did manage to slide a few other topics in.  Tam and Kodra talk Elite: Dangerous and their recent missions to go asteroid mining.  Kodra talks a new game that he has started called Deer God, and how it is not quite ready for primetime… but still charming.  It was a fun show to record, and it is rare that all five of us are so completely enthralled with the same content at the same time.

Year Behind and Loving It

ffxiv 2015-02-28 20-48-57-14 One of the things that made last nights show so damned entertaining to record, is we were essentially basking in the afterglow of a big raid win.  Saturday night for a couple of hours before the podcast we have been doing this impromptu raid thing as a way of allowing some of the folks that cannot make our normal Monday night raid get some action.  We alternate between doing serious content, and doing whatever eight man content one of our free company mates needs to get them off center.  So as such last night we started off with the Chrysalis, the 8 man trial added with the last bit of storyline.  It took us a bit to learn this fight but I was really pleased to see we could step in after a week and essentially down it in our first attempt.  There was a bit of an intermission as we had to let Warenwolf catch up on the cinematic, but after that we set our focus on Titan Extreme.

For awhile we have had the awesomely named “Quake me up before you O’Ghomoro” sitting in our quest logs taunting us.  This has been one of those things that I think all of us wanted to put behind us… but quite frankly Titan Extreme is one of the most demanding fights I have experienced in awhile.  It requires the entire raid to move with confidence and precision, and there is a really slim margin of forgiveness.  As we talked about on the Podcast it also does something really interesting, in that it makes you relearn your instincts.  We died so many times because it is my tank instinct to run back in after a knockback and turn the boss.  However in this fight there are reasons why that is the wrong decision, and it took awhile last night for me to get past that urge.  Sure it is a year late in us beating this content, but damned does it not feel amazing that we did it… and that content that is over a year old is still relevant.

Faffing with the Mandervilles

ffxiv 2015-02-28 23-08-37-48 This has become my new favorite screenshot, that I took on a whim the other night in the Manderville Golden Saucer.  Before last nights raid, I opted to glamour my axe to the very awesome and very fitting Malignant Mogaxe.  Most of the Good King Moggle Mog weapons have a bit of a silly side to them, but this one is just a very brutal looking axe with a Moogle pattern inlaid into the blade.  It happens to match colorwise with my hair and my current chest piece nicely.  This has been the best part about chain running Hard Mode Trials is the fact that I am picking up so many of the awesome primal weapons for Glamour purposes.  I talked about this a bit last night, but since I have 5 level 50 classes… I have taken to collecting my Triple Triad Cards through running content because it kills two birds with one stone.  There is always the chance of getting the cards that I want to drop, but at the same time all the while I am trying to get it I am stockpiling tomestones of soldiery that I can then use to buy gear for my army of classes.

Over the course of the weekend I managed to get Warrior and Paladin to 116, Dragoon to 110, White Mage to 100… and now I just need to catch up my Bard that is still sitting at 95.  While it might seem tedious to run the same primal fights over and over… for me I guess it is much the same as soloing old school raid content in World of Warcraft.  The fights and zones just feel epic, and I am happy to repeat them over and over.  That has been one of the best things about having a fresh influx of new players… I am able to play “big kid” and run the old content with people seeing it for the first time.  There is nothing quite like re-running content that never actually gets truly trivial.  What I like the best is the fact that my chosen way of playing the game… is not the only one.  Each of my free company mates has figured out their own particular style of play… and all see to be happy doing it.  Nothing quite like being in a group where everyone seems to be happy.

Hards for Cards

Feeling Mostly Human

I guess for better or worse the second day of medication trick worked again.  Round about the time I took my fourth dose of prednisone I started feeling more or less human again.  Today I am feeling significantly better, but I am going to try not to push myself terribly hard.  The goal will be to simply take things slow and do what I can.  I got out long enough to go to the grocery store yesterday, as my wife suggested I get some vitamin C in me… and simply walking around long enough to gather up a few items damned near killed me.  So here is hoping I can successfully navigate my way to work and back home again.

I want to take a moment real quick to thank all the folks who have been constantly checking on me.  I log in each morning to a barrage of “feeling any better yet?” and I have to say it makes me feel really damned lucky to have some awesome friends.  This has legitimately been the worst I have felt in a really long time.  Largely I have kept people in the loop so they don’t expect miracles from me during this period of time.  I missed the raid on Monday completely, and barely made Tuesdays.  Time will tell if I make it through today with enough energy to be able to make the one tonight.  Largely I figure there is nothing I do in any of them that could not be missed for a week if I absolutely had to.  Mostly right now I am dreading going back to work after being away for a day and a half.  But I will struggle through with at least a feigned smile.

Hards for Cards

ffxiv 2015-02-25 20-48-46-39 We have decided to copyright the term “Hards for Cards” because while it sounds a little rude… it accurately describes what we largely did last night.  There are many ways to earn triple triad cards.  The two primary ways revolve around either repeatedly dueling NPCs hoping to get lucky, or repeatedly running dungeon and raid content…  also hoping to get lucky.  I have to say though, given the two options I would far rather run the dungeons and raids, because at least then I am also gaining tomestones.  I started off solo queuing for Trial Roulette, giving me a random assortment of whatever trials that folks seemed to be running.  For the most part all of the primal trials have a chance of dropping their Triple Triad card equivalent.  Before long we had a small team of us running Trials, and towards the end of the evening a full eight man.  Through all of the content I ran last night I managed to get the Ultros/Typhon card and the Good King Moggle Mog card… which are both far better cards than anything I had managed to earn through an NPC Triple Triad duel.

ffxiv 2015-02-25 17-50-03-53The other big accomplishment last night was through through an influx of tomestones from all the random trials… I was able to purchase the 110 weapon for my last 50.  Granted I have a slew of classes that I have yet to level to 50, but as of now I have 110 weapons for WAR, BRD, DRG, WHM and as of last night PLD.  This also means that since all of my gear is currently WAR/PLD that both of my tanks are sitting at ilevel 116 which makes me pretty  pleased.  I am not sure how much action my paladin is going to actually get however, since I have a definite preference towards the warrior style of tanking…  but I would like to at least bring it out of mothballs now and then for duty roulette.  I really need to psyche myself up to tank more for the duty finder.  The community is pretty great most of the time, and there is really nothing but my own anxiety keeping me from doing it.  I just greatly prefer tanking for friends… and last night I tanked several instances and really enjoyed myself.  I just need to push myself to do it more with strangers, considering I would definitely not mind the constant gil bonus for queuing as a tank.

The Little Things

Wow-64 2015-02-26 06-24-11-65 I have essentially bankrupted myself in World of Warcraft purchasing all of the heirloom items that I had access to, but had yet to pick up.  The majority can be purchased in the museum in Ironforge, however a handful can still only be purchased on the guild vendor.  Thankfully these have all had their cost lowered to the 500g for the level 60 step.  In the course of picking up the last few items I noticed a doodad for sale on the vendor that I had not seen before.  The item was called “Garrison Guild Banners” and did precisely what the name said.  I think this is probably a testament to just how few heroics I actually ran in this expansion given that apparently you get one from an achievement earned by completing all of the heroic dungeons.  I am guessing it is upper blackrock spire that I never actually completed.  The item was cheap, 100g but man has it added a lot of enjoyment to my garrison.

Wow-64 2015-02-25 09-41-58-79 Another little thing I can check off my list is that I finally have the level 2 Menagerie unlocked.  I was never one of those people that really had much issue with the fact that the Pet Menagerie was essentially a dead spot in my Garrison.  I simply never had leveled a pet to 25, and as a result was not able to participate in the quest used to unlock the Menagerie in the first place.  I always felt kind of bad that as much as I like mini-pets…  that I had not really spent much time playing WoW Pokemon.  However with the 6.1 patch they introduced a simple quest that allows you to earn an Ultimate Battle-Training Stone…  which in essence boosts one pet from level whatever to level 25 the current cap.  This is available to every level 100 character you have with a tier 3 Garrison, so I managed to build a team of three level 25 pets shortly after logging in on Tuesday.

I did no research at all, and instead went with three of my favorite pets…  which is a fact that I am sure will make my life more difficult.  I went with the Terrible Turnip largely because its special ability should make the capture of pets more easy…  which is the main reason why I wanted a level 25 pet in the first place.  After that I chose to level my next two favorite pets…  Mini Thor from the Starcraft II Collectors edition, and Murkalot which was a Blizzcon bonus item.  Currently the team makes me happy… but I doubt I will be wrecking much face anytime soon.  If nothing else they should allow me to power level additional 25s with greater ease.  With my heirlooms, and my new pet army… I am poised to start working on my Horde alts.  So that is likely going to be one of my many downtime activities in the near future.  In the meantime…  keep being awesome readers, and I will see you all tomorrow!

#FFXIV #WoW #TripleTriad

Heavensward

Fan Festival Was Amazing


Watch live video from finalfantasyxiv on Twitch
There have been several community events that I have watched over the years for the various games I have been into.  I’ve watched SOE Live, and Blizzcon… so I guess I was expecting the Fan Festival to feel pretty much the same, but in the end it felt considerably different.  With Blizzcon there is always the feeling that the folks from Blizzard are imposed upon to be up in front of the fans, especially during the question and answer sessions.  SOE Live on the other hand feels more like a gathering of loyal fans to a long running franchise, but even it felt different.  When one of the members of the FFXIV team was on stage, they were practically glowing with excitement at being there.  If you think about it, I guess it makes sense… because this is a game that was so bad during the 1.0 launch that they simply could not charge money for it.  These team members have through a monumental effort turned the listing ship around and not only stopped it from sinking but made it the second most successful subscription MMO on the market.


Watch live video from finalfantasyxiv on Twitch
I think it goes deeper than that however.  Each time a developer of any stripe was on stage, they were almost vibrating with excitement about talking to the fans.  Naoki Yoshida aka “Yoshi P” the producer of Final Fantasy XIV and the man mostly credited for the games resurrection… was only actually scheduled to be on stage a few times.  However he ended up sitting in on damned near every panel because you could just tell that he was having a blast at the festival.  The man however that needs the lions share of the credit for pulling off this event as smoothly as it ran is Michael Christopher “Koji” Fox.  Not only was he a constant bundle of enthusiasm over all matters lore, but he spent the majority of the conference live translating for every dev panel.  This is a pretty monumental feat, and his localization and lore panel is one that everyone should see.  Right now the twitch stream are these two 10 hour blocks of video… but I am hoping that these get broken up into individual panels.

Since the release of the game my friends and I have talked about just how awesome the localization and quest writing is for this game, and come to find out…  that is almost entirely the work of Koji Fox.  The Japanese version of FFXIV apparently lacks almost all of the flavor that the English version of the game has.  During the Lore panel they gave a few examples of a Japanese quest that was extremely utilitarian contrasted against one of ours that is all about amazingly bad puns.  I feel like the game would not have been nearly as successful were it not for all of this diligent work during the localization process.  Apparently it has been noticed, and the Japanese version is going to be much more closely related to style of the English client from this point on.  It almost sounded like things would even start in the English client and get translated to Japanese, but I might have misunderstood that bit.  In any case Koji for me at least is the reason why this game is so damned sticky.

Heavensward

heavensward It is safe to say that I have not been this excited about an expansion in any game since the months leading up to the Burning Crusade.  There is just so much that I am looking forward to in Heavensward, not the least of which is the unlocking of Ishgard.  I am in the minority among my friends but I love Coerthas, and not because I particularly like the elves that inhabit it.  I love snowy climates, and Coerthas is like the king of all snowy climates because it has Dragons and the Dragoons.  I am looking forward to having Ishgard be the fourth city state and am hoping that it has a grand company associated with it.  I am also hoping that the political assholery that is the Coerthas quest chains…  does not represent all of Ishgard as a whole.  The other thing that I am completely pumped about is that we don’t have to wait over a year to see this expansion.  It is currently slotted for Spring of 2015 which could mean as early as March, but potentially as late as May.  This is the way that you announce an expansion…  a few months before release so that your fans have enough time to get excited about it, but not so much time that it feels like it is extremely far away.

I think the thing that excites me the most about Heavensward is the potential for new classes.  It has already been stated that there will be several new classes and jobs to learn with the expansion, and over the course of the Fan Festival there were a few leaks.  During one of the panels Gondai the battle team developer held up a Batman shirt, verifying one of the long held rumors that we would be seeing the Dark Knight.  During another panel it was leaked that Samurai would also be included.  Between those two I am pretty much in heaven.  Both are two of my favorite jobs from the Final Fantasy series, and you can damned well bet I will level both of them… and depending on the particulars will likely switch to Dark Knight as my primary job from that point onwards.  I have loved that job since Final Fantasy IV and always found it so damned disappointing when Cecil changes to being a Paladin.  My theory is that Dark Knight will be the DPS half of Warrior, and likely use Two Handed Swords…  but who knows.

2.4 and Beyond

The most exciting bits for me however had nothing to do with the expansion.  We have been waiting anxiously for the 2.4 patch to launch, and during the Live Letter managed to get a definitive date.  Next weekend will be the London Fan Festival, and a lot of the job related information is being held back to reveal during that event.  However the Tuesday immediately following London, the 28th we are getting the patch that introduces Rogue and Ninja, the Final Coil of bahamut and a bunch of Quality of life tweaks.  What I am really hoping is that since Second Coil of Bahamut is getting uncapped in the amount of loot you can get from it each week… that they might be doing the same for Syrcus Tower.  If nothing else the Soldiery gear should be considerably easier to get since once again they are introducing a brand new Tomestone category “Of Poetics”, which means they will be converting existing tomestones and lowering the price of items.

Triple_Triad What is awesome is that Heavensward is not terribly far away, but they have a whole bunch of stuff that will be going into the game in the meantime.  They confirmed that the Golden Saucer area will be going in during 2.5 and with it Chocobo Racing, various mini-games and the thing I am absolutely amped about…  Triple Triad.  This was a card game that existed as part of the Final Fantasy VIII game where you collected various cards throughout the world and dueled other Triple Triad players.  The game play was extremely simple to pick up, but hard to master.  I am so ready for this to be in game and expect me to duel a lot while hanging in our housing zone.

Community Spirit

There is a massive rundown on Reddit of all of the things mentioned during the Live Letter during the show yesterday.  I highly suggest you check it out if you are wanting more information.  Needless to say it is a super exciting time to be playing Final Fantasy XIV.  If I was not already enamored with the community I would have been after the Fan Festival.  The community spirit was constantly apparent when they dealt with players.  There were a number of events set up for players who were attending the show to compete in.  Among these was a preview of the as yet to be released Odin Primal fight.  Teams of players had 15 minutes to defeat the encounter, which pretty much meant at maximum they had two attempts.  The end result was not only bragging rights, but also an “I Beat Odin” shirt only available during the convention.  What sprung up around it was an atmosphere of folks cheering on other teams as they tried to get their own shirts and the sharing of tips and pointers.  As you talked to players that were defeated by the encounter, all they wanted to do was get back in line and figure out how to tweak their strategy for the next try.

Watching the crowds and watching folks on twitter talking about the experience… it was like the entire group was this big family.  I was so happy to see that this same spirit that we seem to have on the Cactuar server, apparently exists on all other servers as well.  I feel like each player that has made a home on their server, feels the same way about their own server as being truly “awesome”.  The most interesting thing was listening to the various social channels in game during the event.  It felt like most of the community was tuned into the festival and sharing tidbits of information they just saw.  There was so much cheering over various things, not the least of which was the announcement that the Atma drop rates would be more than doubled starting in 2.4 and the Animus books themselves would be considerably cheaper after the Tomestone conversion.  Folks are amped about what is coming during the next few months, and I feel like there won’t be a single dull moment until we arrive at the launch of Heavensward in the spring.  If you could not already tell… I am extremely excited.

#FFXIV #Heavensward