Final Fantasy XIV Archives - Page 115 of 129

We Survived Math Camp

July 28, 2014 by Belghast

British Vittles

I had said earlier in the week that the math conference I was working at not only represented teachers from almost every state, but also represented a handful of countries. Among those were a couple of Brits, one of which decided to bring a bunch of items for us to try. On the final day he set out a bunch of things that had not been consumed on a table for anyone to grab. I nabbed a box of Jaffa Cakes initially, since I had heard about them from various people but never tried them. This box represents the various things that were not taken, and since we were picking up the place to make it presentable they all came home with us. I’ve had a Cadbury bar before, so I have not broken into it yet, but I have managed to try both “cakes” and “biscuits”.

I am not sure what I was expecting when it came to Jaffa Cakes, but the reality was absolutely nothing like I was expecting. To put it into terms for the American palette when we think “sponge cake” we tend to think a Twinkie or one of the ubiquitous yellow cakes you buy to make strawberry shortcake. This version of sponge cake tastes more like a stale vanilla wafer that has been sitting out on a table for a week and soaking up moisture. The orange filling tasted a bit like a melted gummy bear, and the chocolate was more a kin to bakers chocolate. The end result was not unpleasant but just not what I had been expecting. I actually kinda like them, but I think that might be the fact that I am consuming something that I cannot otherwise get, so there is a bit of a forbidden fruit aspect to them.

On the other hand the Hobnobs or simply “biscuits” are rather good. Like it doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to wonder why they are popular. It is like a cross between an oatmeal cookie and a saltine cracker. More so almost like really good granola made into a cookie form. While I doubt I would go out of my way to eat a Jaffa Cake, I would totally be down with biscuits in the future. All of this time I honestly thought that British biscuits were just American cookies, but nope it is a completely different animal. We have things here called digestive biscuits, so I am honestly wondering if they are related to these kinds of biscuits. Now the cool thing is that if I ever get a hankering for either of these items… there is a British foods import shop in town that stocks all sorts of stuff like this. I likely would not have gone out of my way to try these things, but I am happy that I now know what they taste like.

We Survived Math Camp

I have to say it feels good to be able to say that we survived math camp. I feel like we need a t-shirt or something to commemorate the event. I honestly have a massive respect for the individuals who have hosted the event in the other locations, because the amount of prep work and little details that went into this undertaking was a bit staggering. On top of that the fact that my wife and I lived in a sort of split household during the course of the events, meant that neither of us slept really well. The first thing we did upon getting home yesterday was taking a nap. I was surprised at just how many people had arranged for trips to the airport of their own volition rather than needing to run multiple car loads this time around. I ran a single load on Saturday evening, and then another yesterday. I have one more to take this morning, but for the most part there was not the mass number of loads that we had as folks arrived.

While I feel like I really had little to do with it, it feels nice to see people talking about how much they enjoyed their time in our city. It is weird how after spending all this time prepping… I take comments about the school system with personal pride. I found myself using the royal we throughout the course of the week, like I was actually part of it or something. Granted I have done a lot of work for the school system over the years as my wife needed this or that, but I never really felt connected to it other than “that’s the place my wife works”. After essentially living for a week out of the building, and supporting those inhabiting it… I feel a deep connection to it all.

In other news… I tried Chicken and Waffles yet again… and yet again I don’t really see why the meal is heralded as so awesome. After the conference split up about 11 am all of the folks what did not need to immediately rush to the airport went out to eat. There I ordered chicken and waffles, since it was a place I had never eaten before. I’ve tried it three or four times now… and every time it is a rather bland chicken breast or chicken strips over a nice big thick waffle… with all of it drenched in syrup. It is charming but nothing earth shattering and overall I find the meal rather bland. I just feel like I am somehow missing some cultural touchstone. Like maybe I am supposed to be enthralled by the absurdity of putting chicken and waffles together. But considering growing up I made grilled cheese sandwiches with waffles… it doesn’t seem that odd to me.

Ding 40

When we finally got settled in for the night, I popped back into Final Fantasy XIV to work on my dragoon some more. Since the last time I played the game actively, it has made a number of really nice quality of life improvements. Namely the addition of the Duty Roulette system that allows you to get assigned to a random dungeon out of a large stack of potentials. The best part about this is that the experience gain inside the dungeon seems to scale to your level. That means you could get assigned to a level 15 like Halatali and still get the same experience you would running a much higher level dungeon like Cutters Cry. For the purpose of leveling this means you have extremely rapid queues, and while the gear that drops inside may not be usable, the experience gain stays consistent.

Another nifty thing that I learned last night is that apparently while we were gone, they added in some perks for having an account authenticator. In addition to having the three discounted teleport locations, you can now set a single free location if you have you account set up with the authenticator. Since my grand company of choice is the Flames, that made it an absolute no brainer for me to use Uldah as my freebie. This now allows me to move Coerthas to one of the discounted locations, since I no longer need it for Uldah. For better or worse Coerthas seems to be the best place for running FATEs, and I will likely be there until at least level 46 when Mor Dhona really starts in proper. In any case alternating between Duty Roulette and FATEs seems to be a rather enjoyable way to level, and if I get much play time today I will probably be able to push through to 45.

We have a number of errands to run today, and another math camp person to run to the airport. However once I get back from that my plan is to work on the level 40 Dragoon quest. Since the 35 quest so simplistic, I am expecting this one to be a major undertaking. The warrior quest chain had some definite gimme quests, but others that took all the skills I had learned to that point to be able to push through them. The cool thing is that it seems like we are starting to get a bit more activity in the game. A number of friends were talking about firing it back up last night, so it will be interesting to see how active it gets in the coming days. Cactuar is still an extremely populated server, as all weekend long it was barred from new character creation. However as of this morning it was open again. Hopefully the couple of new people can get in and create a character today.

#FFXIV

Podcast that Wasn’t

July 27, 2014 by Belghast

The Final Day

I am up bright and early for a Sunday morning, because today is the final day of the Math conference. On the arrival day I had to ferry trips back and forth between the airport, and today I am having to do the same thing. The conference only actually runs for two hours, but I imagine the school itself will be open a bit longer as folks wait around for their rides. My hope is that everyone checks out of the hotels before heading to the conference, so I don’t actually need to make any trips between those. That was the piece that actually slowed things down the first time was dropping folks off at the two different hotels.

At this point I am ready for it to be over, so that our lives can return to normal. I fully appreciate the gravity of what this event is for the folks who are attending it, but each night I have had to go home and sequester myself. I am not good at dealing with an overabundance of human beings, especially not ones needing something from me. There are a lot of things I feel bad about, but one of the big ones is that I spent most of the conference hiding out in my wife’s cube in the collaboration room. I watched twitter, and came out of my hiding place whenever someone needed something. However it served as a bit of a safe space where I didn’t have to try and make small talk or “act normal”.

Podcast that Wasn’t

Well it finally happened, a weekend when all of the members of AggroChat were busy at the same time. Because it didn’t really feel right to not do anything… I recorded a quick blurb that I am calling Episode 15.314 in honor of the fact that my entire week has been consumed by playing a supporting role in the math conference. This week I simply did not have the time to plan for a full replacement cast for the podcast. I could have maybe pulled something together last minute, but I was honestly too drained to carry the cast forward. At least we made it to fifteen episodes before needing a week off. Next week hopefully we all will return to normal and be ready to be entertaining.

The funny thing is… the moment I recorded and posted this… Kodra showed up. So in theory we could have maybe limped along last night with Me, Kodra and Tam. But I figured it was better just to take the week off if I thought I was not going to be my normal charming self. Like I said above… I have had to do so much glad handing this week, that my social normality buffer is just gone. I am not sure if I could carry on an intensely direct conversation with two other individuals… even if said individuals are really close and long term friends. The blurb I recorded hopefully is charming enough, and talks a little bit about what we all have been doing.

Svara Still Awesome

Coerthas is still an amazing place to run FATEs in, and I spent most of my evening running around out here hopping from event to event. The king of all FATEs will always be Svara, which for the undoctrinated is a series of three connected FATEs that tell the story of the Isgardian fight against the giant dragon Svara. First off it is completely epic to follow the path of this dragon and fend off the Isgardians from all of her children, then finally down the big beast at the end of the sequence. It is also epic the amount of experience you get, considering if you hit gold participation in all three fates it is worth around 40,000 xp which is a really nice chunk all at once for about 15 minutes of work. What makes Coerthas extremely awesome as a zone is that there are a bunch of this heavy xp fates and you can pretty much spend the entire night running between them all soaking up as much xp as you can. I figure I will likely stay here until I hit 40 before moving on to someplace else.

I am already enjoying playing the dragoon so much more than playing the bard. Don’t get me wrong, the bard is enjoyable… but it is also the class that everyone seems to be playing. Every time I solo queued for a duty roulette I would end up in a dungeon with a bard as the second dps. Playing melee is just much more my style, and the Dragoon delivers some seriously potent direct damage. Its weakness however has always been the fact that it has little to no area of effect damage. In fact if I remember correctly it has a single attack, that I do not even have yet. However they seem to have fixed some of the problems that existed in early release with FATE contribution. Back then spamming any AOE was the key to getting high contribution. However it seems like you can focus down a few spawns and still get the same scores that you would if you were just AOEing everything around you. My goal today after all of the madness is over with shuttling people back to the airport is to do some more duty roulette.

#FFXIV #AggroChat

Wildstar Woes

July 26, 2014 by Belghast

Crack Dealer

So my reputation as a gaming crack dealer is intact, as I spent part of yesterday teaching another gamer to play Magic: The Gathering. I guess it is fitting that we taught him at a Math Conference, considering it was invented by a mathematician. In my defense this time, the attendee asked for someone to tutor him in the ways of planeswalking, and considering I was not actually attending sessions but instead just waiting around to be needed, I volunteered. We met yesterday morning at 9:30 in the third floor commons area and I brought my patented “box o’ decks”. @Jay2thaVee was a complete rookie to the concepts of magic and had not purchased any decks. Thankfully I had left a few of the various $14 starters I have picked up in their original states, as those are pretty much the easiest way to learn.

Unfortunately I take “devotion to black” seriously, and every single deck in my box save for one had black somehow mixed into it. He played a white/black nyx prebuilt, and I was playing a black/blue theros prebuilt. Basically for the first game I played with my hand on the table, so he could see what exactly I was doing and when I was doing it. Additionally every so often when he seemed to lack a play I would nudge him a little bit to explain how the cards in his hand might be useful. By the time we got around to the second match he was up and running and ready to kick ass… and in fact he did just that. The second match was excellent in that it showed just how quickly fate can change with the play of the right cards. We both had cards in play that helped us soak back up some health in each upkeep so for a long time we were in a bit of a stalemate as I could only do as little more damage than he could heal up each round.

Thanks to an artifact that gave all of my creatures lifelink I was able to soak up quite a bit of health during this long drawn out stalemate. At this point I was starting to get a creature advantage on him as well as a health advantage. Then with a single play he rocked my world. Granted I had to explain how good the card he held in his hand was, and why he should play it… but when he plunked down Banishing Light. Now I must have been extremely tired or something, but I completely misread the card yesterday when we were playing. It says banish “target” and for some reason I read that as “all” non-land permanents. So I played it as though it was a complete board wipe, which made the game more interesting. He began to make progress on chipping down my extremely high health pool which was like 32 or something similar at that point.

Then I get the big guns onto the board with my Abhorrent Overlord. So I once again start whittling down his health at the same time as he chips away mine. I do 6 health, he regens 2, and so on until we get to a point where he has 11 health and a serious creature advantage on me, and I have my single big guy as he eats everything else I can get on the board and 9 health. He manages to do 10 damage to me in one turn and it is pretty much over. However of all the ways to learn magic this is one of the better matches I have played. It shows just how tentative a lead can be at any point in the game. When we misplayed the banish card, it looked like the game was over… but had i not had several rounds of getting crap to play I could have maybe pushed back to get the victory. In any case I think he is hooked and going to buy a couple of decks for he and his son to play together. Sounds like awesome times.

Wildstar Woes

Last night I got a rather frank question from a friend of mine regarding Wildstar. Some time ago another friend had handed him one of the free trial codes that we got for preordering. He just now got around to trying it a month and a half after launch. While he enjoyed the game, it wasn’t like the most enjoyable thing he had ever played. His question was how many of the Stalwart crew were still playing, and if he should pick it up. He followed us into Elder Scrolls Online, and while he loves that game, he finds it extremely solemn to be playing by himself all the time. The big thing is that he didn’t want to jump into Wildstar and it to be the same experience for him. His question was, should he buy the game. Now I could have put the hard sell on him and lead him down a path that would have ultimately lead to disappointment… but I was honest with him.

For the most part in the circle of friends that he is part of… Wildstar has come and gone. There are a few of us who log in periodically but this game had probably the briefest of “glory days” of any title we have played to date. I only made it to 26 before slowing down and to the best of my knowledge none of us actually made it to the level cap. I enjoyed aspects of the game, namely the dungeons… but for whatever reason as much as I should love this game… the drive to play it was just missing. I am still piddling around, this time on the Exiles side on Evindra but running into the same lack of drive to log in. Everything about this game should be something that I really enjoy, and you could not ask for a better community team or company supporting it. But when I ask myself what I want to play in a given night, this game never seems to come up on its own. To be honest most of the time I was leveling my Chua Engineer it was the boom boxes that kept me logging in every night more than anything else.

So while I think there is a great game here, I had to be honest with him that he probably should give it a pass if he is only interested in playing with the Stalwart/Masks crew. I think one of the things that really hurt this title was the fact that we simply rolled on the wrong faction for the wrong server. Dominion side on Evindra is dead… like when I got to Whitevale I sat around for two hours waiting for someone else to wander by so I could take out one of the world mini-bosses and not so much as another adventurer came by at any point during that time. To be truthful it feels like wandering around Illium you might see a dozen other players at any given point, whereas on the Exiles side you are constantly bumping into people. The problem is with only 6 slots per server, it really negates the concept of playing both factions. Within a few days all of the people who were primarily Exile, had deleted their Dominion alts to free up space for more Exiles.

So once again we are stuck at the problem of having all of my time devoted into what has essentially become a non-starter character. So when confronted with the idea of re-rolling… I just can’t be bothered to put much effort towards it. Ultimately if my immediate circle of friends is not playing… then what exactly am I rushing around to get leveled to be able to do? I am sure I could roll with any number of the guilds on the exiles side, but I just am not sure if I have the social oomph left in me to start from scratch without being able to rely on the folks I hang out nightly with on voice chat. I feel like Wildstar might have run its course through the internet as well. I am seeing a lot of folks who claimed diehard loyalty to the game “taking a break”, which we all know is the beginning salvo in the “quitting the game” conversation. I am not ready to cancel my subscription yet, but I am just struggling to find reason to log in.

Dragooning It Up

Lately I have been back playing quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV. I feel like I parted with that game on really good terms and it has always been extremely charming. When not working on hunts I have been working on leveling the dragoon. If we can convince a repeat of the other night to happen, when we all logged in to run a dungeon, that place me playing a DPS character. Ashgar unfortunately only has two tanks to 50, and I have a Warrior and a Bard. That said I have never really felt deeply connected with the bard. It does amazing damage and is super useful, and mostly was easy to level through Fates. The class I would far rather play dps wise is the Dragoon, so lately I have been taking advantage of the Duty Roulette option and running some random dungeons. I have to say the groups I am getting randomly are actually extremely friendly and communicative. I feel like maybe this game has crossed the threshold of shedding all of the folks who were caustic and toxic… and now really has devoted fans left.

I guess the real challenge will be what this game feels like trying to tank it with random groups. At some point I will work up the nerve and tank a random as my Gladiator seeing as I would really love to get to Paladin conversion levels. There is still a lot to like in this game, and it is the only Asian inspired title that has managed to create a male character I actually enjoy playing. There are proper beards here, and you have options other than “pretty boy” as far as facial features go. We will see how long it take for me to get this game out of my system this time, but so far I am really enjoying myself. I feel like at some point I need to dig up a list of what all new content is available, as there have been three rather large patches since I last played the game regularly. FFXIV is pretty horrible about advertising what is new from the game interface itself, so I think there are probably some other ways to level that I am just missing.

#MagicTheGathering #FFXIV #Wildstar

The Search for Internet

July 25, 2014 by Belghast

Gopher Belghast

Yesterday was the first official day of the conference and it went far more smoothly than we could have hoped for. Everyone seems so full of excitement and just brimming with ideas that when put together with the other teachers seem to cause random outbursts of inspiration. When you see the number 180 written out it doesn’t seem like that many people, but when you are confronted with that many at one time… it seems like a rather large group indeed. The conference has folks from around the country and many from outside of it. There is a pretty huge contingency from our neighbor to the north, and a few from across the pond as well. I’ve heard there is an Irish teacher here, but I have not met her. While watching the twitter hashtag during the day everyone seems to be getting so much from the process.

My morning was extremely busy, as I played gopher for any teacher that had forgotten something. I did a lot of runs to the store to pick up this or that and deliver it to their class room. From a tech support standpoint everything seemed to go smoothly, as the morning sessions tended to be put on by folks who are already seasoned presenters. After lunch they had the keynote session and twitter blew up after that, so I am guessing the guy was extremely dynamic. In the afternoon I finally sprang into action with a few last minute games of “trace the cable” to figure out what exactly had gotten unplugged in the shuffle. A number of the issues were ones we simply could not resolve due to the fact that my wife’s school employs a rather draconic web filtering system.

The Search for Internet

I admit much like a student I spent a good chunk of my time yesterday in search for a way to circumvent the web filtering system. It seemed like every other site I attempted to hit was either blocked for partially malfunctioning because some content delivery network they use as actually the thing being blocked. You find out just how many things you read are hosted off things like Imgur when you encounter a web filtering system like this. A few weeks back we lost our router, and I am still in the RMA process with Asus to get a replacement, but one of the nice features of the Nighthawk is that it comes with a really cool OpenVPN client. So a good chunk of my morning was spent trying to configure this.

For starters I could not remote into my machine at the house, as apparently RDP was blocked by the draconic filters. So I did one of the most truly contorted things to gain access to it. Apparently my workplaces web based SSL vpn worked just fine, so I remoted into work… and then turned around and remoted into my machine at the house. I was pretty sure I was moments away from ripping a hole in the internet. There I configured the client the router, and when it came to downloading the OpenVPN client… I had to do that on my home machine and gmail it to myself, since the OpenVPN website was blocked as well. Finally when I got everything installed I fired it up… and for a moment I thought it might be going to work… but the packets kept timing out.

So not only did they have a web filter in place but they also had a packet inspection firewall in place that was knocking down the packets coming in that it recognized as OpenVPN. In utter futility I flailed around a bit trying a different combination of port, maybe hoping I could disguise the traffic as something common. The problem is since I am on Cox internet, all of the common and benign ports are being blocked on my end since they don’t want you hosting a web, ftp, or mail server at your house. So after trying a dozen or so ports and going through the contorted process of transferring the configuration over gmail just to make sure it was working… I gave up and resigned myself to playing some Bejeweled 3. This is how you can tell I am really bored… I play Bejeweled because at this point I can play it on auto pilot.

Towel Day

After giving up for a bit and playing a few rounds of bejeweled I had another idea. For some time I have known exactly how to root my Samsung Galaxy S5, but didn’t do it for one reason or another. Like I felt like that was just a mess I didn’t want to deal with, and any of the potential ramifications of doing it. I want to be able to fiddle with my device freely, but at the same time I have no interest in doing a lot of the reasons why you root an android in the first place. Essentially I wanted to hold off doing it until I had a solid reason to. The complete and total lack of decent internet at the school was apparently that reason. The Samsung S5 has a built in Wifi hotspot but in their infinite wisdom AT&T seems to have installed a piece of software the blocks it anytime it tries to start. You have to be on one of the metered plans to use it, and since we are on the old grandfathered unlimited plan… this means we cannot.

The thing is I see the reasoning for blocking it. They don’t want someone using their phone as their ONLY internet provider and doing all sorts of random stuff like bittorrent over their wireless network. For me however I want to be able to use is as a backup network when I cannot for some reason connect to one. I feel like if I am paying for this device, I should be able to use its internet connection in any way I see fit within reason. The rest of the world can do this without problem, and carriers outside of the United States don’t throw up these artificial restrictions. So emboldened by my frustrations… I installed the Towel root on my phone, and turned to the dark side.

It still took me a little bit of doing, but right now I have my phone connected to my laptop via bluetooth and PDAnet and the connection is amazing. I figured all of this out pretty late in the day but I was able to get out and play some FFXIV with little to no lag. I just have to figure out how to also connect it to my chromebook, and then I will have a way to use it when I do not have access to WiFi. Even cooler this also means I should able to finally use a Dualshock 3 controller with my android to play some emulator games! Everything that I have heard tells me that the android is a truly amazing emulator system, but in order to get it working well you need root access. Now that I have finally crossed that threshold I figure this is dawning a new age of random crap I use my phone for.