Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
We assure you that we are in fact not a cat… but maybe some of us are cats. Tonight we start the show off with a discussion that probably should have happened last week but completely missed the list. Final Fantasy XIV announced its next expansion and in Endwalker we are going to the Moon. We talk about this. This sorta leads its way into a discussion about Guild Wars 2 and drop in drop out grouping. We also talk a bit about how Google seems to slowly be killing Stadia but shuttering the studio that was supposed to be making first party games. Last we talk about Eli and hitting his first 12 sads out of 10 RPG ending…. which is fitting given Kodra’s propensity for finding those games.
I have been completely out of the loop on all things Final Fantasy XIV for awhile now. I bounced pretty hard after completing the phenomenal Shadowbringers storyline and never quite came back. So it completely snuck up on me when Friday night they were having a big reveal stream about the next expansion. So if you were like me, here is an attempt to catch you up. Granted this is by no means going to be a detailed rundown of the events. If you want to see the entire presentation you can check it out here. If you want a highly detailed rundown then I suggest Nova Crystallis which tends to be where I watch via twitter.
Based on what I have gathered, this expansion is going to represent the end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark storyline. I don’t want to go into too much detail about that given that you really should play the story content to experience what we know up to this point for yourself. I myself plan on playing catch up soon and working through the story quests to get wrapped up and prepared for the expansion. Essentially there has been a story arc that has been lovingly crafted that starts with A Realm Reborn and will end with this expansion. Yoshi-P made it very clear to point out that this is not the end of Final Fantasy XIV nor is it the end of his involvement with the project.
Where are we going? Apparently the moon! It seems like it is finally time to mine Final Fantasy IV for story tidbits and that means we are visiting the moon and all the weirdness that it entails. They have announced a Lunar Whale mount that you can get as part of the digital fanfest package… which makes me wonder if we will in fact be riding a giant whale to the moon and back like we did in the 16 bit era game. I am super on board with this if it is in fact a thing that happens. Additionally since each expansion has had a chosen class to represent the Warrior of Light/Darkness it seems that for this one we are going with Paladin. So lets run down the sequence of classes so far…
FFXIV 1.0 – Archer and Gladiator depending on the marketing
A Realm Reborn – Warrior
Heavensward – Dragoon
Stormblood – Monk and Samurai at different times
Shadowbringers – Dark Knight
Endwalker – Paladin
Other places we are going apparently includes Thavnair and apparently the city of Radz-at-Han. I am not sure if this is going to be a main destination or something crafting related given that this city shows up so much in crafting lore. The city this artwork shows off seems really freaking cool to explore and it almost gives a whole walled city vibe but suspended in the air. Maybe we will just be able to buy the onions in the market?
We are also apparently visiting Garlemald proper, rather than just through a series of cutscenes not involving our character. I think more than anything this proves that this is in fact the end of this storyline and maybe even this world. Garlemald has been something held over us from day one, and I figured we would finally arrive there and visit in the final expansion. The last expansion gave us a way out of this being the end of the game, but I think it might be the end of this world since we are finally seeing the evil empire for what it is.
As has been the standard when an expansion is released, we get one new class reveal early on. It seems we are getting a new healer this time in the form of the Sage. The thing is… this version of the Sage is nothing like I remember from other games. It looks very Allagan in theme with weird floating swords called Nouliths. It was described as a “Barrier-Type” healer which sounds like the realm that the Scholar already occupies? They seem to be splitting the healers into two categories of Barrier and Pure, which is only going to serve to cause much drama among the healers. I forsee gatekeeping in the future.
Allisae got her “glow-up” during Stormblood when she was announced to be a Red Mage. This time around it is time for Alphinaud to get his turn and instead of forever being an Arcanist, he finally gets a proper job in the form of Sage. I will sorta miss his grossly overpowered Carbunkle action. I do think that the class looks sorta badass and if I ever play a healer I might run one of these up. Other tidbits of note is that there is a level increase but also at the same time a stat squish of sorts to bring the numbers down. It seems like any game that successfully runs a sufficient amount of time has to have one of these.
I’m linking the full sage reveal trailer so you can find that easily if you so choose. As far as the other class they have announced that it is a melee class but we don’t have many solid lead to go on. Some folks are saying Templar which apparently is sort of like the Mystic Knight from FFV. Others are saying that it is going to be Necromancer using a scythe as the weapon. Others still are claiming once again that we are going to get Beastmaster which never seems to work out given how hard that class is going to be to implement properly. I have no ideas at all because most of the classes that I could think of that would be interesting are casters.
The thing that honestly interests me the most is supposedly there is going to be an Island Sanctuary we can go to that is essentially Stardew Valley meets Final Fantasy XIV. Depending on how well this is carried out and how grindy it feels… this might be that thing that keeps me engaged with Final Fantasy XIV for the long run. If we got our own version of Stardew/Animal Crossing in Final Fantasy with adorable Final Fantasy themed encounters… I would probably be completely there for it.
So have you been following the news about Endwalker? What are your thoughts? Drop me a line below.
Good Morning Friends. This is a post that I have found myself avoiding for a month now, but I think it is probably time to make it. If my screenshot archive is correct, I have not logged into World of Warcraft since December 10th. That means I have had over a month to try and summon the desire to return to the game and it just hasn’t arrived. Shadowlands represents the expansion that I made the least amount of progress in before ultimately leaving. Generally speaking when a new MMO expansion launches I get two to three characters to the level cap and then ultimately bounce. This time I made it through one character and just could not bring myself to repeat the content again for a second character. I attempted to level a third character with Threads of Fate since that is a permanent choice and locks you out of the story content, but found it equally unenjoyable.
The Leveling Process
The disappointing thing is that I was greatly enjoying the leveling process prior to the launch of the expansion and managed to push up a full roster of horde characters to the new squished level cap of 50, along with six alliance characters as well. I am not exactly sure what is wrong, but I didn’t enjoy the overall leveling experience in Shadowlands. There were some zones like Bastion were just pure hell for me to make it through, and other zones like my favorite Maldraxxus were nowhere near as enjoyable to go through a second time once the story beats were known. On my second character I stalled out a little bit into Maldraxxus, and on my Threads of Fate character I didn’t complete a single zone worth of content. My favorite leveling experience was probably Legion, and I am not entirely certain what differs so much between the two expansions. It might simply be that I was in a different frame of mind this time around and as a result I had a vastly different experience.
Torghast
The feature that I was looking forward to the most in Shadowlands was Torghast, and the end result did not match up to my expectations. In Final Fantasy XIV there is a system called the Palace of the Dead which is this amazing endless dungeon leveling experience that has a chance of dropping some really cool items along the way, and also serves as a way to unlock once powerful and now at least cool looking weapons. Mentally I was expecting that sort of system to make its way to World of Warcraft and not a largely pointless mini game. Sure you get Artifact Power… I mean Soul Ash… but the end result is just a long grind for a benefit that feels like it does not match up to the amount of time that the activity just took. It feels sorta like you are being asked to solo a Heroic dungeon with no gear payout. Were I to fix it I would make it so that mythic+ dungeon loot could drop in there or something worth chasing.
Legendary Gear
I loved the Legendary armor from Legion, and as a result I was super excited to see a system like that returning. In Legion, knowing there was a chance of getting a Legendary drop pretty much elevated every single activity in the game for me. The problem was there was no way of chasing a specific legendary item, but past that the system was perfection as far as I was concerned. With shadowlands instead we got a system where you collect the patterns for Legendary items, grind Torghast to get soul ash and then combine that with exceptionally expensive crafting materials in order to craft a piece of gear that is going to fall behind the curve unless you pour a constant supply of money and materials into making it better. I essentially bankrupted myself crafting a single Legendary, and the piece that I liked about Legion was having multiple allowed me to rapidly swap up my play style to fit a specific encounter. Sure I got one that was useful immediately, but knowing it is likely the only one I will have kinda kills the Diablo 3 build creation joy of the earlier system.
Then there are the Legendary patterns which were extremely poorly implemented. They drop from specific encounters, some of which are the first boss of a dungeon… or can be engineered in such a way as to force them to be the first boss of the dungeon. Players are going to take the path of least resistance every single time and what ended up happening as a result is that folks would queue for a dungeon, steamroll the first boss… not get the drop they wanted and then bail out accepting the deserter buff. Most of my runs of Mists of Tirna Scithe saw us loosing either a Tank or a Healer after the first boss… and in some cases the entire party. De Other Side is a great dungeon, but Tanks would join… make a beeline for a specific one of the three starting encounters and then bail immediately following. Sure in some cases people were chasing gear, but more often than not they were chasing whatever happened to be their best in slot Legendary pattern.
The Maw
The Maw is all stick and no carrot. The attempt was to create something Soulsbournian in World of Warcraft with this purposefully obtuse experience that you have to struggle with to slowly improve and unlock new things. The problem here however is that essentially The Maw, Torghast and Legendary Crafting are supposed to be this self perpetuating cycle. You run Torghast to get the material gate for crafting Legendary items and you run Maw to improve your experience running Torghast. The problem is that if any of that cycle is broken then the entire cycle of reward is broken. For me since I did not enjoy Torghast and ran out of money to craft Legendary items… The Maw quickly became something that I was doing each day to complete the daily quests but wondering why the fuck I was putting myself through the hassle. I logged in a few minutes ago to snag a screenshot… and apparently had just bailed in the middle of the maw the last time I played.
This could have been really cool, but again the reward systems are the problem. Just like Torghast you need to have some sort of reward other than more systems in order to interest me in coming back. I am super loot motivated and without loot as the reward waiting on me at the end… I am not sure I want to go through your obstacle course. Even if they had put a rare chance of something interesting dropping from the boss encounters, I probably would have farmed them every single day dealing with the constantly escalating series of bullshit in the form of the eye of the jailer. Instead I knew that going to the maw was going to yield absolutely nothing useful and little things like the inability to use a mount just pissed me off to no end.
Covenant Faction Systems
Now this is the one that I probably understand the least. I loved the Class Order Hall in Legion. It grounded me in the expansion and played into the whole class fantasy narrative in a way that has never been in the game prior to that point. It was amazing and each of them was filled with so many neat easter eggs linking back to past content. On paper the Covenant system seems like it should be fairly similar but in practice it just did not feel good to experience. I realize that the gates are there to keep players from finishing the Covenant system in a single week, but the gates also served as a disincentive for me to keep playing given that I knew I could only do so much in a given weekly reset period. It felt like everything I wanted to do required something that I could not get until the next reset and there were no slow and grindy systems that allowed me to make up that difference.
Additionally there were too many different systems going on at once and creating a dissonant experience. I’ve never loved the War Table style systems in World of Warcraft, but in the past you could always automate this experience with an addon. The Covenant table system looked like it might be different and more interactive, but in reality it is just complicated enough that you can’t easily automate it but requires no more interaction. As a result it sorta ends up being the worst possible version of the War Table because now you can’t even employ an addon (or couldn’t last I checked) to just sorta take care of it for you and it is still just a series of dice rolls. The soul bind system was kinda cool but the acquisition of these felt bad especially given that there were slightly better versions that you needed to somehow track down.
Loot Drought
The dungeons felt really good, and I give them credit for making a cycle of really enjoyable experiences. Unfortunately it also felt like I was not really making much in the way of progress. I ground my face against Heroic dungeons with a reckless abandon in an attempt to “gear up” and so often I walked away with nothing but an expenditure of time and a repair bill for my trouble. Blizzard shifted the way gear dropped in an attempt to make obtaining loot feel more important, which is probably a double edged sword. Sure when I finally got the thing I had been chasing it felt amazing… but similarly the thirty two times I attempted to get it before and got nothing felt soul crushingly awful. I have no clue how this applies to raiding but I feel like more than likely the loot distribution feels equally bad there. I didn’t survive long enough to actually attend a raid.
Healer Drought
I think the thing that probably contributed the most to my bouncing is the fact that I could not find a reliable source of healing to make groups happen. I have a lot of friends and almost all of them seem to be playing DPS these days. My usual partner in crime Grace, did not even make it through the leveling experience for some of the reasons outlined above. My guild seemed to have two active healers, both of which were available during times that were generally too late for me to commit to running anything. This ended up with me abandoning my goal of being a Paladin Tank, and instead spending most of my time pugging as a Retribution DPS. There are a lot of things I am willing to do… but tanking for pugs is not really one of them. I tried tanking a Mythic plus from the group finder and it went just as frustratingly as you might expect.
I think I probably would have stuck around a little longer were I able to reliably run all of the Mythic plus dungeons each week, but the struggle to make a single one happen just didn’t make the possible rewards worth the effort. Had I been enjoying any of the above items… I could have shifted my play style up and just melted back into the background leveling alts. Unfortunately the only part of the game that I did enjoy was the Dungeon game… and that required a constant flow of healers that simply did not materialize in order to make it happen. I am not sure what is up with healing this expansion, but it seems like folks that have been constant healers previously have abandoned it for the way of the DPS.
Unintended Path of Post
So here we are at the end of a post that I did not mean to turn out the way it ultimately has. I’ve said before that I often times have no clue what I am going to say until I sit down and the keyboard and start typing. Originally I meant this to be a post just stating that I was largely giving up on World of Warcraft Shadowlands after a month of not playing it and having no desire to return. What ended up happening instead is a long rant about the things that frustrated me. I guess maybe I needed to get it out of my system and since this is my blog and everything is me editorializing… rant happened. I have friends who are still enjoying the expansion and I am happy to see that. The last thing I want to do is burn down the building on the way out. I am just not sure if this specific combination of systems was what I wanted out of World of Warcraft.
I was hoping for another expansion to rival Legion, which now sits atop the list of my favorite expansions. Instead I got something that is more down towards the Battle for Azeroth end of the list. Truth is I probably found more joy in BFA than I have so far in Shadowlands, but I feel like I am certain to give it another shot after a few patches to see if that impression changes.
Good Morning Friends! Seeing as this is the first non-aggrochat-syndication post of 2021 for this blog, I though it was a good time to look back on the previous year of gaming. More specifically MY previous year of gaming and talk about some of my favorite experiences. This isn’t a strict top X list, but the order is more or less sorted in a good to phenomenal manner. Lets get started!
The Touryst
This is a curious little game that originally released on the Nintendo Switch, which is sort of a puzzle platformer for lack of a better category. You are a tourist and you have come to visit this island get away, but it turns out there are mysteries to be solved along the way. You end up travelling across multiple islands and unlocking the secret of the temple contained on each. There really isn’t true combat in the game, apart from occasionally hopping on the top of things to stun them. Extremely charming game and also a really interesting technology supporting it. The load times and rendering prowess is a good show piece for the Switch.
Atom RPG
This game plays like you remember the original Fallout playing. Like going back and playing those first two Fallout games is a bit of a challenge at this point, because they end up feeling more than a little kludgy. Atom RPG is Fallout… but if you had set the game in post-apocalyptic Soviet era Russia. There are so many things interesting about this game, namely it gives you a window into the world that was the USSR before the break up and the alternate reality of what might have happened in the event of nuclear war. There is a sequel out that I have yet to play, but eventually I am sure I will.
Streets of Rage 4
I’ve always been a big fan of beat-em-ups and while I was originally super partial to Final Fight, the Sega competitor Streets of Rage left it in the dust with the release of the second outing in that series. Streets of Rage 4 is a project that lovingly recreates the feel of playing a 90s era fighting game, but with modern era graphical design. The artwork is gorgeous, but if you so choose you can downgrade everything into a pixel based equivalent of the original art style. Exceptionally good game, and also plays extremely well on the Nintendo Switch.
Animal Crossing: New Horizon
I had never really played an Animal Crossing game prior to the release of New Horizon, and this game dominated my headspace in a time when I was desperately needing some pleasant escape. This landed right as the pandemic was ramping up, and I even named my island Pandemia because it was my plan to get through the worst of it. Sadly at that point we had no clue how “worst” things were going to get, and as a result I eventually stopped playing the game and have not returned when it reached a point of being a little too “daily quest” for my tastes. I greatly appreciate it filling a role that I desperately needed at a specific time.
Phantasy Star Online 2
While I had gone through some complete nonsense that allowed me to create a Japanese account, I never really spent a lot of time playing it. So when PSO2 released in earnest for North America this year, I grabbed hold with both hands and enjoyed the hell out of it for about a month. I have no clue why exactly I faded away from the game, but I hope to return at some point because it is a fun mix of mindless shooting and loot collection. Additionally it has one of the best gacha systems out there which releases cosmetics at a pretty regular cadence, all of which are also capable of being resold by players. RoboBel probably misses me.
Horizon Zero Dawn
I love Horizon Zero Dawn. It was my game of the year in 2017 when it was originally released, however this year we finally got the PC port and it was so enjoyable for me to revisit this game. Playing HZD with a Mouse and Keyboard is so much better than playing with a clunky old controller. The game finally can be played in the way I hoped it would someday, and it looked amazing with glorious PC 4k graphics. I have written so much over the years about this title and all of those words still stand. One of the best gaming experiences I have ever had and the added precision of the mouse just makes everything better.
Jedi Fallen Order
I realize I just talked quite a bit about this game last week, so probably not much new to say. I played this originally when it first released at the tail end of 2019, but bounced pretty hard when I realized a point where I was uncertain what the game was asking of them. Throughout the entirety of 2020 I had it in the back of my head that I wanted to restart this game and play it instead with a mouse and keyboard. That finally happened over the Christmas break and I sailed through the experience smoothly and this is probably the finest Star Wars game out there. I mean I would even put it up there with KOTOR in the amount that I enjoyed the world building contained within. Very different type of game mind you, but still extremely enjoyable.
Hades
I am not certain that Supergiant can create a bad game. Like… they created a sportsball game and managed to even make me interested enough to play it and enjoy if nothing else the story. Hades is Supergiant taking on the Rogue-Lite genre and crushing it. Not only does the game feel fluid and responsive but it weaves an interesting tale being told a tiny bit at a time as you repeatedly die and start all over again in your attempt to escape the underworld. The interactions you have with the cast of characters aligned to help you in your journey is what makes the entire experience so enjoyable. You don’t mind the deaths because you know it is likely going to unlock at least one interesting tidbit of story along the way.
Death Stranding
If Animal Crossing was the game I thought would get me through the pandemic… Death Stranding was the game that actually helped me come to terms with it. First off you have to understand this is the first Kojima game I have ever played, so I was not quite certain what to expect going into it. I had tried playing Metal Gear games, but my hatred of Stealth Mechanics ended up causing me to bounce almost instantly from them. Death Stranding is set in a world where the eponymous event made it extremely dangerous to live around other human beings. As a result the society is fractured and your mission is to travel across the entirety of the United States (or a very condensed version of it) and link up these disparate islands of humanity so that they can all communicate freely again. It hit home the way we are all isolated in our own homes and leaning super hard on the internet and technologies like Zoom to stay connected in this time when it is similarly dangerous to be around other human beings. The emotional conclusions of the game hit me in the gut like a sledgehammer and I still feel the impact of it today.
Genshin Impact
Every so often a game comes along that transcends the normal gaming experiences and almost becomes a phenomena over night. This happened with Pokemon Go, and to a slightly lesser extent it happened with Genshin Impact. For awhile this game was the thing that everyone was playing and talking about and it all happened for good reason. Genshin has some of the best action roleplaying gameplay out there, but it also comes with a lot of negatives given that this is firmly a Gacha game. You hit some pretty hard walls that can only be solved by time or money spent. While the game gives you serious opportunity to win free character pulls… it also has lead some folks to spend literal tens of thousands of dollars on this game chasing specific characters. If you find yourself susceptible to gambling mechanics… maybe check out Immortals Fenyx Rising instead because it ends up being a very similar experience.
Ghost of Tsushima
While I am seemingly nowhere near beating this game, it has been something I have chewed on for the better part of this year. If I were to create a simple description of this game it would be “exquisitely crafted”. This is a game that lives up to the highest forms of development and everything is polished to a mirror shine. The interactions with combat and the world both feel fluid and interesting, and the story that is being told ducks in and out of the main story and side quests effortlessly adding up to one of the more interesting open world designs I have experienced. My favorite thing about the game is the stand off system, allowing me to stroll into an enemy camp and challenge them to send out their strongest to fight me in a duel. What I like the least are the few missions that force you to play the game from a stealth perspective, which are thankfully only really associated with a single NPC. Now that I have my PS5 I have been back playing the game in earnest and loving every moment of it.
Cyberpunk 2077
If I were going to pick a game of the year for this blog, it would ultimately be Cyberpunk 2077. I realize that this is a deeply controversial game for so many different reasons, but it was also the most fun I have had playing a game all year long. The level of intricacy in world building and storytelling… is unfortunately matched at times by things simply being unfinished. This game likely needed another year to cook before release in order to finish out the systems that were very obviously only stubbed in in order to make the every shifting release window. I’m technically on my second play through now as I am approaching the game from a different origin and already seeing quite a few changes. I hope they keep releasing updates to where this game can at some point be the absolute masterpiece that is The Witcher 3. There is just so much going on here that I worry will be missed for all of the major issues the game has going on. This is a game deserving of your time… if you can play it on a platform where it runs well like the PC. Until that is true for all platforms… maybe give it a pass and pick it up once the discounts start happening.
Games I Missed
I know there are a bunch of games that I for whatever reason never got around to playing. Spiderman and Miles Morales for example… did not play yet but hope to in 2021. You might notice that Shadowlands expansion for World of Warcraft is missing from the list, and while I enjoyed my initial play through I don’t like it enough to hold it up there as one of the best experiences of the year. There are other games that I wanted to talk about like New World, but have not been officially released so it seemed weird putting an Alpha on the list.
What were some of your games of the year? Drop me a line below or of course feel free to contest my opinions.
