Final Fantasy XIV Archives - Page 82 of 129

We Like To Help

March 24, 2015 by Belghast

Reluctant Roulette

I thought I would take a few moments this morning to address a few things we are noticing among new recruits to our Free Company. I believe for the most part the majority of this group reads my blog at least sometimes, so here is hoping that my post will find it’s audience. If nothing else this serves as a good reminder to anyone new to Final Fantasy XIV or considering playing it. The first behavior I am seeing an awful lot of is an absolute reluctance to EVER use the Duty Roulette system at all. It seems like most of the players have come from several years in World of Warcraft, where “pugging” has become a dirty word. I fully understand this and quite honestly I was scared to use the Duty Roulette system… that is until another FC mate tiptoed into the water and reported back that it was actually pretty awesome. I dislike random groups in other games more than most people, and I will be the first to say that the community in this game is simply better.

The other thing you should know is that those of us who are veterans are using the Duty Roulette system constantly. On a given night if nothing much is going on I will be queuing for either Hard Mode or Trial Roulette, and at least once a day I am trying really hard to get in at least one Expert Roulette. Sure you occasionally stumble onto an elitist, but it is nothing like other games where you are belittled and kicked from the group for not instantly being amazing. More often than not when a player says they are new, someone will take the time to explain the encounters to them. Honestly I often give my player commendations to new players for having the strength to stand up and tell the group. It makes the run go so much smoother when you know for certain if a player is going to have the requisite ancestral knowledge to understand the common way a given fight is done. More than anything I suggest you give Duty Roulette a chance. I’ve actually met several people on Cactuar through the roulette system, and it makes me happy to see them around.

We Like to Help

One of the other behaviors I am seeing a lot of is players not asking for help. I realize that in some groups this might not be the norm, but in our Free Company for the most part people enjoy helping others. Now there might be times for this or that reason that someone cannot help, and that is perfectly fine. However if we don’t know a given player needs something, it is impossible for us to read minds. Our hope is that this creates an atmosphere where people are freely saying what they need to do, and others are responding that they can help out. A prime example is that we have known for a bit that Neph needed Dzemael Darkhold, so when she popped on the other night we ran the dungeon to make sure she got it. Similarly we have done countless primal fights or lower level dungeons to help our dps players especially fight their way through the queue system. Self service and the Duty Roulette are always valid choices, but when you are confronting a thirty minute long queue… please speak up and pending it is not a raid night folks should be able to pull together a dungeon pretty easily.

Running dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV is not quite like running dungeons in other games. The fact that the game auto scales your level to match the dungeon, and rewards you with money if you are max level… means that running lowbies through dungeons is always a positive prospect. In other game my primarily problem with running low level dungeons was that it ended up feeling like I was babysitting players, because at max level I could just one shot most of the encounters in the zone. In Final Fantasy XIV, these dungeons are still viable, and it feels like you are doing something meaningful regardless of the level range. I will never get tired of running places like Haukke Manor or Stone Vigil, and Primal fights like Garuda still end up being a challenge for our scaled down groups. It is interesting trying to remember how you functioned without your high level abilities, and this alone makes a lot of things far more interesting than you might think. So please if you need help, be it a dungeon or help with some crafted gear… speak up in chat. Right now Tam is doing an interesting census of players to find out if they are interested in raiding, so I highly suggest you fill that out from the guild message of the day.

A Night with Nael

Last night was a bit of a refresher night in many ways. Namely we had a few people out, which meant we snagged one of our new recruits to help out with turn nine. The problem is our group does things a bit different than the “norm” for turn nine groups. So there was a bit of adjustment, similarly it had been over a week since I last set foot in the zone, and I was more than a tad bit rusty myself. I still feel like we made some progress, but we are hitting this wall on the third phase where we are just not pushing Nael hard enough to keep from getting two dragons. In our attempt to push harder, we are getting this awkward transition to phase four and getting a dragon at the same time… which is leading to a wipe. I feel like I am simply not doing enough dps on my Dragoon to really make up the difference. My tank is level 122 gear wise, but my dragoon is only 112. Honestly I never expected to be dpsing in a raid situation, so my Dragoon has essentially gotten table scraps as far as gear goes. I have been pushing to grab a piece of 120 gear our of World of Darkness each week in the hopes of boosting my dragoon dps just a little bit.

This however means repeating World of Darkness over and over without seeing any drops. Last night represented my sixth and seventh run of the week, and thankfully on the final boss I saw a piece drop that I did not already have. Sure it was only the belt, but at the 11th hour on the night before reset… I will take quite literally anything. I was just about to reach the point where I was going to start rolling on everything just to get a piece of gear before the zone reset today. Largely I feel like I am being a boat anchor on our group with this fight. We need more dps, and I am just not going to the extreme lengths that Kodra is willing to to tweak his dps. The optimal dragoon rotation is twenty seven steps long according to the guides I have read… and quite frankly there is no way in hell I am going to be able to pull that off flawlessly every single time. Instead I do a much more simplified and repeated sequence, but when we are on this razors edge of being able to do it versus not being able to do it… it feels like I am failing the group. As such my answer is to try and pour gear into the problem, and as soon as World of Darkness uncaps on the 31st I will be running it until my eyes bleed farming a full set of gear.

Night Means Business

March 23, 2015 by Belghast

Weekly Caps

Another weekend down, and I have somehow managed to cap poetics at the 11th hour. I did not get near as much playtime as I would have liked over the weekend, and I was pretty horrible about managing to do an expert roulette every single day. That said I still managed to cap without a whole lot of issue yesterday evening while watching television. This meant that I also managed to get a second item this week in the form of the ironworks neckpiece. Right now this only leaves me with the ring that is sub 120, as far as the full set of poetics gear I still need a chest and a belt. One of those will take multiple weeks to get, so at this point I am trying to decide whether or not to go after the expensive piece, or to go for another 375 item and upgrade my final 110 item to 120. I really wish that World of Darkness had a shot at dropping jewelry, or at the very least rings since that seems to be the problem item for all of my classes.

The problem with rings in Final Fantasy XIV is that they are unique equipped. Now there is a slight trick to this, that the unimproved and improved version of the same ring count as two separate items. This means I could buy a second ironworks ring now that I have an augmented one and get rid of that last 110 slot that way. This always feels wasteful since you are essentially never going to use that non-augmented ring for anything other than a bridge to slightly higher stats. This is one of those things that I hope they work around in the expansion, making more ways to fill that second ring slot without resorting to wasteful spending of tokens. Another thing I would love to see is for max level players to get a few tokens for running free company mates through low level content. I was honestly concerned that I might not make the cap this week because I spent most of my weekend tanking lower stuff for friends. I wouldn’t change a thing, but it would have been nice to know I am slowly inching towards the cap when we were running Dzemael Darkhold or Aurum Vale.

Lower Content

Other than the stress about hitting the 450 poetics weekly cap, I had a blast this weekend running free company mates through lower level content. Over the course of the weekend I tanked a few primal fights, a couple of trips into Stone Vigil, a couple of trips into Dzemael Darkhold, and if I am remembering correctly at least one trip into Haukke Manor. Essentially anytime a guildie needed something run, I stepped up and offered… sometimes with some caveats attached like that I was already in a run. What makes me even more happy is it seems like most of the guild is doing the exact same thing. Our folks really genuinely seem to enjoy helping, and this makes me extremely happy to see it in action. I find it interesting that even though we are spending a lot of time running content below our actual gear levels, that they still feel fresh and challenging each time we sit foot in them. That is a real testament to just how good their dungeon content is, that after running Haukke for what has to be close to the 100th time, it still feels just as enjoyable.

The awesome thing is that thanks to all of this dungeon running we have a whole new flock of players getting close to hitting the level cap on their first classes. I believe Syl hit 47 on her Black Mage, and I know Grace is somewhere in the 46ish range after our various runs throughout the weekend. What is so awesome about this is that doing 8 player content is going to be all that much easier as we keep adding new folks to the mix. The awesome thing is, there is a possibility that at some point we can actually be running two full parties at the same time. This is going to be great for offering lots of different content options to the group as a whole. It is a super exciting time to be playing Final Fantasy XIV in the Greysky Armada, and all of it just has me pumped to log in each night. I am thoroughly enjoying the game and really looking forward to June and the Heavensward expansion. That said also really looking forward to the 2.55 patch coming March 31st.

Night Means Business

I spent some time yesterday afternoon playing the Final Fantasy XV demo, otherwise known as “Episode Duscae”. The demo starts our cast of road trippers a bit into the content from the sounds of it. Their vehicle has broken down and they are having to make some cash to pay for repairs. This serves as a way to teach the player about combat. The other thing that it should have taught me better was that the day/night cycle means serious business. I did what I always do in games, and went wandering off the path looking for combat wherever I could find it. I took on packs of Saberwolves, and foolhardily a giant pack of what I think were called “Gerdua”. They were these huge lumbering tusked calf things, and somehow I managed to aggro around a dozen of them. I got a lot of practice using the parry options to take them down. As night fell the game reminded me that I really should camp for the night. The problem is it did not really message well where i should camp or even how I should go about doing this. On my map was a house icon, and an exclamation point there saying something about making camp.

So I wandered off in that direction in the middle of the night, and from out of the sky came a horribly bright light signaling an enemy drop ship was just about to flood me with baddies. After dispatching the first party of four heavily armored troopers, I started getting attacked by Goblins. The goblins were no big deal because they had minimal hit points, in fact after some time I started really enjoying wrecking them. That was until a second and third drop ship showed up… so I started trying to juggle eight heavily armored troopers and a half dozen goblins running in to fight me. I was actually holding my own for a bit, until the Saberwolves started showing up… and at that point I was pretty much done for. I thought to myself “That Escalated Quickly” and it really did… one minute I am doing just fine and feeling like I have a chance and the next moment the entire world seems to be attacking me. So when this game tells you to camp… I suggest you camp.

FFXIV for PS3 Closeout

March 22, 2015 by Belghast

AggroChat #49 – Road Trip Fantasies Type-0

During this show we are joined by our normal cast of Belghast, Rae, Tam, Kodra and Ashgar as we devote the majority of the show to lots of different things Final Fantasy. We talk the release of the Final Fantasy XV Demo and how this has sent Tam back into the 90s. We talk Final Fantasy Type-0 and how we are enjoying this very different Final Fantasy Offering. We also talk about how the Final Fantasy franchise going to more “on rails” games turned several of us off the franchise for awhile. Ashgar beats Ori and the Blind Forest and talks a bit about his feelings regarding the ending. Tam talks about his enjoyment of Dreamfall Chapters and how it isn’t really required that one has played the previous games. Rae talks about her new Noms website, where they plan on making a recipe a week and reflecting on what the various authors think of it.

I talk about my current funk with my World of Warcraft raid and how the frustrations there are harshing my enjoyment. We also delve into a deep session once again where we talk about the differences bertween WoW and FFXIV raiding. We also have a session of “Tam Told us So” now that the news about crafting specialization has taken some of the focus away from us all becoming Omni Crafters. I talk about my return lately to Elder Scrolls Online and the conversion to a Buy To Play system. I talk about a game I did not expect to like but find myself begrudgingly enjoying, and that is ZMR: Zombies Monsters Robots. Finally we close out the show with some discussion about the League Championship Series and the introduction of the new roaming support champion… Bard.

FFXIV For PS3 Closeout

Yesterday we spent the day mostly roaming around, in an effort to get out of the house more than anything. Tis the season for post Christmas clearance in all the various stores as they start closing out one seasons stuff in preparation for summer. This is generally an awesome time to pick up all sorts of random bits, but more often than not I am hunting for Legos. I’ve already found several sets deeply discounted and I have reached the point where I really don’t pounce on something until it is at least half off or more from the original price. In my journeys yesterday I noticed that it seems like all of the Target stores are closing out their PS3 copies of Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. This creates a unique opportunity for players who have been on the fence about playing the Game. Throughout my journeys yesterday I found it between $6 and $10 for a boxed copy of FFXIV PS3. Now if you act very quickly you can turn this PS3 copy into a PS4 copy with several caveats.

Firstly this offer goes away on March 31st, so you will have a limited amount to time to actually do it. Secondly you have to have a PS3 or access to a PS3 to make this work. You have to log your PSN account into a PS3 and bind that PS3 to your account. Then you have to boot up FFXIV and log into the game, thereby registering your PSN account to your Square Enix account. Finally you have to go into the Mogstation and you can click the link that should now appear at the bottom of your account screen. This should give you a code that you can then enter through the Sony Playstation store on your PS4 to get a copy of Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn of PS4. This is a ton of hoops to jump through but it should allow you to get a copy of FFXIV ARR for really cheap. There are some caveats here… firstly when you claim your PS4 copy, it nullifies your PS3 copy. Secondly this does not give your account a PC License, which would be a separate purchase. I did this some time ago myself but I had forgotten all of this bullshit that you have to do until yesterday when a friend was trying to make this work. I normally play on my PC but I like having the option to play on PS4 especially since you can remote play through a Vita or PSTV. Granted the controls are kinda wonky, but it would be well worth figuring it out for leveling and crafting as such.

City Building

Another game that I have been playing around with lately is the confusingly named Cities: Skylines. It seems like I was suffering the same confusion that so many other gamers seem to be… that Skylines was somehow connected to the Cities XL and Cities XXL franchise. That colon apparently is there to somehow differentiate the games, because they are in fact from two different companies. I had played XL in the past and was not terribly impressed, so when I say the buzz about Skylines I for the most part ignored it. That was until I actually watched some game play footage and saw that the game was essentially everything I wanted the last couple of Simcity titles to be. Overall the game feels very much like a logical successor to Simcity 2000, which was really the last big city building game that I enjoyed playing. If you take the concepts from that game, and bring them up to modern standards you have the Skylines interface. The game strikes this balance between trying to have mind bending graphics and being pleasant to look at and play with.

I took this screenshot because I am pretty damned proud of getting my first upgrade. Apparently in the years since I have played Simcity 2000, I have gotten pretty horrible at city building. The biggest problem I am having with skylines is that it seems difficult to figure out how best to build the roads and utilities to conserve space for zoning. The above city is actually my second attempt at creating something viable, and so far it is working okay. My first city was a complete mess because I didn’t really know what I was doing. I have a feeling that this second city will also be a learning experience as I try and figure out how best to optimize putting in an electrical grid and such. All I do know for certain is that skylines is definitely a way to lose an hour without realizing it. I started playing this as my wife was getting ready to leave yesterday morning, and next thing I know she was ready. I feel like I need to watch some people playing it to figure out how best to do things again. The standard grid that I used to build in doesn’t appear to really work here. If nothing else this feels like the true “next best city building game.

Pope Belghast

March 20, 2015 by Belghast

On Spoilers

This week has been an absolutely insane one, and I have had this feeling of constantly being behind the curve. So it is no surprise that yesterday I was just not getting around to listening to the relaunch of the Contains Moderate Peril podcast, now with the addition Jaedia and Jasyla joining the cast of permanent hosts. One of the topics that landed on was a discussion about spoilers. I have this mixed feeling about the concept of information being spoiled, and it largely centers around the fact that I don’t generally mind them. If nothing else knowing there is a plot twist coming up, only serves to enhance my interest in the product. I can only think of one instance where a spoiler actually stopped me from watching the show… and that primarily was because the single character I cared about was killed, and I didn’t feel like going through the motions of watching it happen.

All of this said I am super sensitive about potentially spoiling someone else’s experience. For example on AggroChat when we are about to discuss major plot points, even if it is a game well past the statute of limitations on such things… we still tend to preface it with “spoiler alert”. All of this discussion however has made me realize how generally awesome my twitter feed actually is. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have seen information in it that was actually a spoiler to anyone. Similarly the group of people that I hang around with and game with seem to be equally sensitive to such information. I just find it interesting that we don’t consider reading the book before going to see the movie spoilers, but when we read a plot synopsis it is somehow different. I will say that knowing the “Red Wedding” was coming, only served to enhance my enjoyment of that season of Game of Thrones, because I knew at some point this event would happen. That said… I would have been pissed as hell had someone spoiled any moment of the Harry Potter books for me, so I guess it goes both ways.

Back to Blackrock

Since my world was insane Monday and Tuesday… I ended up missing my World of Warcraft raid group night. As a result last night was my first time back this week, and it felt a little odd to be back in the game. It seems on Tuesday they managed to down everything we currently have on farm but the Operator Thogar encounter… which is fine by me because so far that is hands down my favorite fight this expansion. It took a few tries but I think on attempt three we managed to down Thogar again. I was absolutely shocked when I saw loot pop up on the corpse, since we generally run on personal loot. Our raid leader said that we had very few upgrades that could be gotten so that personal loot was no longer the big draw it once was. Unfortunately I have to disagree with him as I have not had a single upgrade in going on seven raids. I’ve gotten nothing but gold, and in many cases double gold since I am spending tokens left and right. I kept expecting that one of the weeks the slot machine of a loot system would pay out… but I am guessing that is no longer the case.

I was really hoping this week would be my week to pick up shoulders, since I have been sitting on the chest piece for a few weeks now. Neither piece is an upgrade unless I am also getting the two piece set bonus for wearing them. I am annoyed that I still have four slots that are sub 670 gear, but given time I will hopefully find some upgrades. One of the things I was not expecting is that they bumped Blackrock Foundry gear up by 5 ilevels, which actually makes LFR worthwhile for a couple of slots like my 640 legs. As far as progression content we worked on the Heart of the Mountain encounter for a bit before popping out of the instance, flipping it to heroic and working on Hans and Franz. On our best attempt we managed to get them down to 8% but we had various issues. Largely we were flying without a safety net last night as both our Deathknight and our Healing Druid were not in attendance… meaning we had no battle rezzes at all. I am getting frustrated that we are struggling with this attendance hump, not quite being able to get all the right classes we need to succeed on at the right time.

Pope Belghast

Before and after the raid I spent time in what has become my more comfortable gaming home… Final Fantasy XIV. For a period of time I was splitting myself fairly equally between World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV, but honestly at this point I am only actually logging in twice a week because I feel a sense of commitment to the raid. The thing that has always been missing in every game we have played is a huge thriving community. Right now we have that in Final Fantasy in spades, and in fact I would say our average player base is easily twice the number of people who are actually online regularly in House Stalwart. I want to say Ashgar said that over the last few days we had 55 unique players online, and we often top 20 on a nightly basis. For awhile I was actively recruiting players, but folks seem to keep recruiting themselves once they hear about the Free Company. All of this makes me a very happy Belghast.

After yesterdays post about being a reluctant healer, Ashgar took it upon himself to convince me to heal expert roulette last night. I told them this was a horrible idea, but they didn’t really listen and I endangered the lives of not only Ash but also Thalen and Solaria. It turns out that I honestly didn’t do too horribly. We ended up getting Keeper of the Lake which is a frustrating instance at the best of times. We died to the very first boss, but I believe that was the only time we wiped, and I only managed to lose a player once… and that was on the final boss encounter where I swiftcasted a battle rez. Yesterday after the WoW raid I spend most of the time milling around in the housing district, when we had a brilliant idea. I have been sitting on the player commendation pope hat for awhile, and with my soldiery healer gear… it just worked too perfectly not to use it. I even have a proper miter in my hands. I introduce to you Pope Belghast, the reluctant healer.