I am rapidly getting to the point where I do not have much in the way of screenshots to share that are also not massive spoilers. Last night I took down my very first Trial of the expansions, and I was very pleasantly surprised with how that went down. I had done a little bit of reading up on the mechanics since I would be queuing as a tank, and they warned me about several tricky spots to watch out for that tripped groups up. However went it came time to actually doing the Trial I queued in… and everyone did the mechanics as necessary and we largely one-shot the encounter.
I have to think this is in part because Final Fantasy XIV does an exceptional job of messaging what the player should be doing. As we have arrived at this point in the third expansion, or fourth if you consider A Realm Reborn as an expansion… they have differentiated each type of effect so that it has a very unique visual signature. When you need to stack up there is a giant pictograph showing arrows pulsing in towards a center location. When the boss is about to do a mechanic that will have a rotational effect… there is a spinning wheel graphic around the outside of the boss indicating the rotation direction.
Final Fantasy XIV is a game that gives the player very clear advisement on what they should be doing at any given time and all they have to do is effectively pay attention to these. The first dungeon of this expansion was a bit of a wake up call and refresher course, and having done that it largely set the tone for the expansion and the expectations of the players. You will be doing mechanics, you already know how to do this… you just need to follow the directions. Doing this up front seems to have bore fruit in how generally smoothly that Trial went. Now we did have some struggles in the 2nd dungeon with a Dragoon that did not want to mechanic… but whatever the case we pulled through it and adapted quickly.
Last night I pushed into 74 and have started the forth and I believe final new area of the expansion. I’ve reunited with more friends… but I am still absolutely confused to some details of that reuniting. I am also deeply confused by other things going on, which sorta gives me an idea about what events have transpired since we were last with them. Final Fantasy is really good at making a deep cut that calls back a couple of expansions, and I think one of these is happening and will eventually unfold. I’ve also made a handful of predictions about what is to come. I think a major character that we keep running into is a Light Warden for example, but I won’t go into any level of detail on that one yet.
As far as the launch contest, I had some entries… actually way less than I would have expected. Regardless there were a bunch of good comments, which was in theory the point of this. I had a spare time card and since I pay on the maximum cycle I never can use them as square only allows you to accrue so much play time credit at once. It seems that google now has a random number generator if you search for “random number generator” and I used it to draw the result.
So Congratz to Blu3 who is winning the time card. I will be reaching out to you today to send you the code. I hope everyone is still enjoying the expansion, and honestly I am in that point of looking forward to getting home every night to see more story unfold.
I’m just having a really fun time watching tv with Sarah and playing. I’ve run into a few hiccups where my controller goes wonky on me but mostly it has been seamless with very little lag. I’m actually able to spend time in the same room as sarah again and not feel so much like a bear hiding in his den. So, well worth the money just for that.