MMORPG Archives - Page 265 of 399 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Tanking for Strangers

April 13, 2015 by Belghast

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

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

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.

Dark Knights and Brayflox

April 12, 2015 by Belghast

AggroChat 52 – FFXIV Story Spoiler Show

Since August 2013 Final Fantasy XIV has been a fairly significant part of our lives. While we had a break in there, we have been in place for at least the last eight months soaking up every ounce of content that Square Enix can throw at us. Throughout this game the story of the game has been a constant topic of conversation among the aggrochat crew and friends. Each time a new tidbit of story was released it would start rampant speculation as to where the story might be going. As we made our way through the current patches content, I think it is safe to say that none of us could have guessed how this would have ended.

As the credits rolled on the conclusion of the 2.0 storyline… the first reaction is that you absolutey have to talk to someone about it. This week we do a complete no holds barred spoiler filled romp through the Final Fantasy XIV storyline to date, talking about its conclusion and some of the elements from previous patches that might play into the future of the Heavensward expansion. If you have not reached the climax of this story arc, then I highly suggest you file this show away and return to it later. During most shows we try really hard not to directly spoil any content, and we will be returning to that next week. This week… we need to get this out of our systems, and if you have finished the storyline, chances are you do too.

Dark Knights and Brayflox

We talk about this a bit at the end of the show but yesterday they had a big live letter at like 3 in the morning my time, going over more details about the Heavensward expansion including some concrete details about the new jobs and how they would be starting. For some time they had said that they would not be starting at level 1, and that they did not have classes backing up the jobs. We speculated what that meant, and started to wonder if this would mean like other jobs they would start at level 30. Sure enough as per the slide above this has now been confirmed that new jobs will in fact start at 30, which means these new classes will be cutting their teeth on the likes of Brayflox. Another interesting tidbit is that apparently in order to experience these new jobs, or the new Heavensward content… you are going to have to have completed the main story through the conclusion in 2.55.

This is quite honestly a shocking devotion to their storyline and one that I stand behind whole heartedly. One of the things that frustrated me about the Warlords of Draenor launch is the fact that it felt like they were essentially abolishing everything from the previous expansions from both a class standpoint by giving everyone a free level 90, and from a crafting standpoint in that you can level from 1 to max level through the garrison system. Sure this is going to create a barrier between new players and the content that players are now playing… but I have a feeling that Square Enix like always is going to find a way to make the old world content relevant. One of the slide bullet points that I have not been able to find much explanation about says something to the effect of “2.0 content adjustments”. So I hope this does in fact mean that we will have reasons to keep returning to older stuff.

Decisions Decisions

One of the slides that I saw that made me the happiest was that there are apparently eight new dungeons with the launch of the content. Now I have no clue how many of these will be “leveling” dungeons and how many will be “end game” dungeons. We also know that the expansion will be launching with the Alexander raid, and two primal encounters Ravana and Bismark. I know that over the course of 2.0 they introduced something like 18 new dungeons and I believe 16 trials. So I feel like eight dungeons is a pretty good place to be launching considering how much content gets added over time. Right now I am finding myself pretty torn in that I am not sure which direction I really want to take. I have waned to play a Dark Knight since the moment my friends first started trying to convince me to play Final Fantasy XIV. Now that I have it however… I am just thinking about much much fun I have running content as a warrior.

I know without a doubt that I will have both at 60 and well geared, but I am not really certain which one I am going to push up first. So quite honestly right now… a lot of this is going to depend on how much enjoyment I get out of the Dark Knight once early release starts. I doubt we are going to get any sort of a test realm to play with them on. I wish that were the case because I feel like Dark Knight is eight going to be a class I immediately love, or a class that I can’t really stand to play. The whole spell tank thing can go in either direction, but if it ends up being more akin to the Shadowknight or the Deathknight… then I am all a bout it. If the end result feels very casterly… then I will most likely just stick to smashing things with my axe. Basically I feel like either this is going to be the class that I have always wanted to play… or the class that Tam has always wanted to play. However I feel like one of us is going to end up disappointed.

A Better Night

April 10, 2015 by Belghast

Perplexed

Roughly a month ago I wrote a piece about the WoW Token, when it was officially announced and seemed to be something coming into the game “Soon ™”. There are a number of websites that index the price of wow gold, but I don’t plan on linking to any of those for reasons. At the time of writing those sites seemed to indicate the going rate for gold was something along the lines of $15 for 30,000g. Now the strange thing was that there were some absolutely insane outliers, like sites offering nearly 100,000g for $20. Now this week the WoW Token has launched, and I have been watching it thanks to an extremely excellent market website showing the current token price. Firstly I expected the token currency to drop in gold value, but not this fast and not for this long. I expected there to be a significant rebound once players started snapping them up in lieu of making subscription payments… and we may still see that towards the end of the month. The token started at 30,000g, raising to 35,000g and then tanking quickly down to as low at one point as 18,000g before coming back up and hovering around 25,000g.

All of this while more volatile than I had expected, doesn’t really shock me. What does shock me is the reaction from the third party gold sellers. Those same gold index sites seem to be painting a bizarre story. Gone completely are those 100,000g outliers, and they have been replaced by values that are almost lock step in line with the legitimate wow token pricing. I expected that as the wow token gained traction that the third party sellers would start offering more outrageous deals trying to tempt players into taking that risk. Instead if anything it seems like the WoW Token is now setting the standard operating price for gold regardless of how you obtain it. This is just puzzling to me, and I cannot fathom why this would be the result. Now as far as the WoW Token goes, I still think we will see a significant climb in price as folks subscriptions start coming due. For me personally the WoW Token still is not “worth” the price. Now if I could buy one or two of them and immediately purchase some big ticket items… I might be enthralled. For the time I already have access to the sorts of gold that it is currently worth so it is not a huge draw.

A Better Night

Tuesday night was unequivocally horrible. I am still not sure what was wrong, but for whatever reason we were completely off our game. We started as we often do with Heroic Blackrock Foundry, and downed Hans and Franz without much issue. Then we moved on to Gruul and wiped until we had lost our will to live. Finally towards the end of the night we moved on to Darmac… and squeaked by with a victory by the slimmest of margins. Last night once again we started with some attempts on Heroic Gruul, only to end up wiping over and over once again. I am not sure what has happened to us, or happened to the encounter… but it went from something we can do fairly easy to being damned near impossible for us. Thankfully we chose to shift gears and take on Normal instead after a handful of wipes last night, and in a large part that made for a more enjoyable evening. We went on to clear all of the content we have cleared before in the past, and since we were used to bashing our skulls against heroic… it seemed pretty simple.

The problem is we still have yet to touch the Iron Maidens fight, make any real progress on the Heart of the Mountain encounter… and then there is still Blackrock. I really want to make some traction on those fights and get to a point where we can at least say we are clearing normal. This piecemeal heroic work is nice, but it feels like right now we are doing it in lieu of forward momentum on actually beating the instance. This is one of those places where I am torn, because by god I really really want my heroic sword from Gruul. Once again I am pantsless, and I am trying to keep from going through the bullshit required to craft a comparable pair. I know the second I do… I will get a heroic drop, or mythic pair from my bi-weekly garrison crate. I simply don’t want to deplete all the money I have to make it work. Maybe the effect of the WoW Token will drive the price of Savage Blood down… with people trying to sell them in order to make the gold to “make rent”.

Elder Scrolls Online Console Pre-order

One of the cool emails that I received yesterday was to notify me that for the next thirty days I had the option of purchasing a digital copy of Elder Scrolls Online for my console of choice for only $20. This was one of the big selling points that they made several months back when they announced the official launch date of the console version. If you purchased the game prior to April 9th 2015 on the PC you could then get a cheap copy on the console, as well as the ability to transfer your PC characters to the console version as well. Since I was a long time alpha player, and ultimately a launch day player this was no major incentive but I am absolutely taking advantage of it. I honestly wish more games would give you a significant discount on other platforms when they re-release the game. For example I have purchased State of Decay on Xbox Live, Steam, and will more than likely purchase another copy when the Year One Survivor Edition comes out. It just feels nice to have at least some sort of a break here. As such I have already pre-purchased and am hoping that it offers a preload of the game as well.

From the day the game came out it always felt like it would potentially work better with a controller. I will tell you the real reason why I am picking it up with the ps4 is that I hope to play it through my vita. I spent a fairly significant amount of time faffing about in Destiny while playing on my Vita, and I cannot imagine a better experience than hanging out in bed and playing some Elder Scrolls Online. Similarly it gives me something to do while waiting on other things to happen in other games. Upstairs I have my ps4 set up beside my computer, and in the living room I have a PSTV so I have four places I can comfortably play some Elder Scrolls Online. I am amped for this release and I am hoping the game finds its true potential with the console audience. Right now the console players really do not have that many “meaty” mmorpg options, with Final Fantasy XIV pretty much being the absolute best choice. Elder Scrolls Online should cover a very different niche of players, and I think it will ultimately be extremely successful.

Foundation of Folks

April 9, 2015 by Belghast

Statistics Funk

One of the problems with creating content is every now and then you will have something that you are very proud of, but the community doesn’t seem to be all that interested in. That is not to say that I am not proud of most of the things I am involved in. I love what this blog has become, and I love AggroChat… but that seems to be less about me and more about the group dynamic that we have assembled. However I feel like “Bel Folks Stuff” was one of those projects that I poured more of myself into than most. The idea was that I would grab interesting people and have natural conversations with them where we discussed whatever happened to be on their mind. I feel like for the most part that mission has succeeded, and I am very proud of the six episodes we have so far. In the episodes I have talked with:

Unfortunately after the release of the latest episode I did that thing you are never supposed to do… I did a deep dive into the statistics. In many ways this secondary podcast has been a labor of love, and right now it gets several orders of magnitude fewer listeners than AggroChat. So I question… what I did wrong with it? Maybe I have simply done a poor job of advertising it? It isn’t part of The Gaming and Entertainment Network so that right there is one strike against it. I release them with questionable regularity, which is another strike against it. I also question whether or not it was a good idea to treat it as separate from the other things that I do. I have wondered for awhile if I should have just released it as part of the AggroChat content stream.. as a sort of bonus episode or something. In any case… since looking at the stats I am exceedingly bummed about the limited audience. Maybe there just is not the appetite for listening to gamers rattle on? Anyways… this isn’t going to necessarily stop me from making more but I also feel like my guests have been awesome in their willingness to do the show… when there really isn’t much benefit from it.

Foundation of Folks

For some time now, I’ve had various people tell me that I use exercise any connections I have within the games industry to turn the “Folks” podcast into an industry interview show. I suppose I could do that, but the problem is I am afraid that would fundamentally change the nature of the show. It might be idealistic, but I wanted to create a show without pretense about its purpose. I wanted to have people on and just talk, and whatever topics we happened to cover naturally is what we would end up talking about. If I have people on the show that are known for this or that, there is the pressure to ask them about what they are famous for. By the same token, I would feel obligated to give them time to plug whatever hot project they happen to be working on. At that point we have a traditional interview show and not what I was hoping for. Maybe it is strange but I was hoping to have authentic conversation with a bunch of people, and almost forget for a time that we were recording the conversation.

I guess I question if I could talk “industry” folks into that sort of notion. So far the people I have had on the show I have a deep connection with already. These are people that I have gamed with, blogged with, or exchanged more tweets than I can count. Right now it feels like I am just having a conversation with a friend. I worry that I cannot keep up that dynamic with people I am not quite so personally invested in. Then there is the problem of how would I even sell this notion to someone, when I obviously cannot guarantee much in the way of listeners. That is the obvious sell for most big podcasts… is “talk to me and I can give you X number of ears”. I don’t have that going for me on any level. So yeah right now I am in this existential funk about “Bel Folks Stuff” and even though I love doing it… I am questioning if it is worth the scheduling headaches and the extra work on my part to keep it up. I want to keep it up, but damn… just bummed.

Second Static

Last night when I got home… I was wallowing in my frustration over the podcast… so much so that I forgot that last night was to be the inaugural running of the second static group within the Free Company. The guild has been insane, and we are apparently so active and so prevalent that we jumped from 16th to 6th in the FFXIV free company activity standings. I will say for some time there has not been a single city I have been in that I did not at least bump into one person with the [GREY] tag. In order to help get the second static off the ground, myself and Kodra has offered to fill in as whatever role they needed us in. I ended up main tanking to Damai’s off tank as we managed to work through several content items. So while I started the evening in a bit of a malaise I finished it pumped about the prospects of having two active static teams within our free company.

We started off with Garuda Extreme, which I know very well… just not well enough to explain adequately apparently. This always seems to be a thing for me… I can do something, but I can’t necessarily tell you how to do it. For awhile we tried using the Duty Finder to fill our missing slots, but honestly had significantly more luck creating a party in the Party Finder. We met a few nice people on the server as well. We managed to clear Turn 1 and Turn 4 of Binding Coil of Bahamut as well. I was pleased that we one shot 4, since I remember having a significant amount of trouble with it initially when Ashgar and I tanked it. To add to the confusion for the sake of this arrangement… the roles were flipped from what I am most used to. The positive is… I feel like I could actually farm four over and over in an attempt to get my bear mount. I need to figure out which piece of high allagan I am missing so I can focus down those. I would really love to wear that full set of gear. Anyways the end of the evening was definitely better than the day, so I am thankful that I have such an awesome group of people to spend my game time with.