Tales of the Aggronaut

Uncomfortably Jaded

June 26, 2024 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks. Last night I made my way through the last part of the Alliance Raid for Endwalker and really enjoyed the story. Mastodon was sort of adorable last night as we all said goodnight to our Warriors of Light and put them to bed for a two-day nap. It feels really weird waking up this morning and knowing that I can’t log back into the game until the Dawntrail expansion has launched. I think I am fully back in the swing of all things Final Fantasy XIV and my mind is swimming with all of these goals. I am trying to pace myself so that I don’t burn out, but there are so many objectives that I want to complete. Will this be the expansion when I finally stick around for a while and do things like leveling my crafters? I have no clue… and honestly, I am supremely doubtful.

Yesterday this amazing video came out with 300 Musicians performing a medley of themes from Endwalker and Final Fantasy XIV in general. Firstly I was overwhelmed with emotions while watching this video. I am not sure what it is about music in general being an amazing vehicle for conveying emotions but it certainly is for me. When I hear something I am often transported back to exactly what I was thinking and feeling when I heard that same music at a pivotal time in my life. It was all I could do to keep myself from weeping as I remembered how fundamental the ten-year ride leading up to Endwalker was. As much as I love the joy that can surround a gaming community… I struggle to maintain this shine for long. I want to unabashedly love something without reservation and allow myself to get wrapped up in a thing for years at a time.

The problem is… I also know myself. Even games like World of Warcraft… I never played consistently for the entire run of the years I was extremely active in the game. I remember not even making it to 60 before bouncing and going off to play some Everquest II with a different group of friends. When A Realm Reborn launched… I am not sure I made it to 1.1 before checking out until about a year into the game’s release schedule and then playing catch-up. We were extremely active for the second year of ARR and a good chunk of Heavensward, even consistently raiding. However, for Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker I have been an MSQ-only player who played through the story quests and then bounced to come back late in the release cycle when the excitement for the next expansion reached its fever pitch. Side note… the above image is of my pre-Lalafel version of my FFXIV character.

There are times when I wonder if I simply have forgotten how to love something without reservation. Slightly related… let’s take the concept of Christmas as a holiday event. As a kid… from the moment the “wishbooks” started arriving until the day you were physically going to all the different houses… everything was manic levels of excitement about all of the possibilities that the season had to offer. Everything from the gigantic tree to the twinkling lights to the rituals surrounding it… seems like pure magic. As I got older… it became harder and harder for me to slip into the “Christmas Spirit” usually as an adult taking me until I was actually visiting family or seeing the magic reflected in the eyes of kids… before I really got there. However now that all our Grandparents are gone, and the rituals have been broken… I am not sure I ever really get into the spirit, or at least not the same way I once did.

The same is somewhat true for gaming events. I remember “Blizzcon Fever” used to hit me in the lead-up to that show and I would inevitably resubscribe to the game and fall back in love with Warcraft for a few months. I would look forward to the E3 press conferences and even devote a series of blog posts talking about the finer points of things I was looking forward to from each. While I know we technically no longer have E3 and it could be said that we have not for several years now… we still have big press conferences in June from each of the companies. I don’t think I wrote a single blog post this year about any of it… because I was struggling to muster the excitement that I once had. I find myself uncomfortably jaded, and I am not sure how I back away from that precipice.

I find myself in a mindset where I am very much enjoying Final Fantasy XIV again… and have all of these things that I want to do. I am back tanking for random strangers on the regular which is an impressive feat given that I simply was not doing that at all for most of Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker. I am having a lot of fun, but I am scared I am going to fuck this up. I always figure out some way to deflate my balloon of hopes and dreams. Maybe that is just what becoming an adult does to you, or maybe I am just more pessimistic than the average person. Whatever the case I would really appreciate it if my brain could accept the unabashed enjoyment of something for once without trying to analyze it to death. We will have to see how that goes.

Anyways sorry for a bit of a bummer blog post but it has been the thing that has been bouncing around in my skull. Maybe now that I have committed it to “paper” I can stop thinking about it. I think in this downtime from FFXIV I will probably be working on getting another world completion done in GW2 or grinding out another gift of battle.

Chilling with the Gods

June 25, 2024 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks! I started my mission in Final Fantasy XIV back in 2013 here in Limsa Lominsa as a Marauder main and I will be continuing that same lineage as Warrior in Dawntrail. Throughout all of it, however… I have sort of wished that the Aetheryte in Limsa was not the hub for the entire server. I feel like with the opening of Solution 9… a city that is way more fitting for all the folks who prefer to do modern glams with their catgirls is going to become the new hub. Not that I begrudge anyone hanging out in Limsa, it just makes loading into my free Aetheryte a bit slower due to the congestion. I’ve always personally preferred Hawker’s Alley or the Aftcastle as my haunts in the city.

I’ve been working my way through the Alliance raid from Endwalker and this morning I unlocked the final part. I have to say I really dig this content, not just because of the fights but because we are getting to learn more about the “Gods” of Eorzea. When you start the game you are asked to choose a patron deity, but up until this point, it had largely been a meaningless choice. You interact with various cults associated with the gods, but it is never in a positive manner. Hanging out with the gods during this quest chain has been delightful and it finally feels like this game has a proper pantheon. That was always something that Everquest nailed but World of Warcraft never seemed to really address, the religion of the folk of the land. Planes of Power is still one of the best expansions to hit ANY game because it did so much cool stuff with its pantheon.

This is going to get a bit spoilery so be warned. One of the things I had wondered about… is if during the quest chain, there would ever be a moment when my patron Deity acknowledges that fact. There is a point where you can bip around the phantom realm and summon forth various Gods to talk with. When I summoned Rhalgr, sure enough, he did in fact mention the fact that I was aligned with him. He also singled out something that I suspected… that the primals that we have fought are essentially incomplete reflections of these gods. Rhalgr mentions his connection to Ramuh and the Sylphs and if you go around the rest of the pantheon you can kinda connect the dots back to the other primals that have been summoned. Byregot seems somewhat like Titan, Azeyma somewhat like Ifrit, and Llymlaen maybe Leviathan. Anyway, there is a thread of connection there that I really dig.

In 2021 Square ran a promotion with Butterfinger that involved buying $5 of qualifying products and then submitting a photo of the receipt in order to get a code for a “chocolate” themed mount. This was a bit of a cumbersome mess and I never bothered. So while I will NEVER this mount because it looks entirely too much like poop… I will absolutely collect it just like I collected the Mountain Dew Zuu from this current promotion. Essentially Square has partnered with Twitch and is offering up the Chocorpokkur mount as a drop that comes from watching six hours of FFXIV-related streams. I will of course be farming this in a tab in the background… because six hours of Twitch viewership is sort of a “big ask” for someone who never really watches streams. Still cool that this is available again without needing to make any sort of purchase.

Also this morning the preliminary patch notes for 7.0 dropped, and if you are so inclined you can read through them all and daydream about the features coming into the game. It is a rather long read and I am slowly chewing my way through them. I gotta say though there is an armor set that seems to be leaning directly into the whole gunslinger vibe that I have been going for with my Mechanist. If nothing else I am going to need to collect that coat and I am hoping it has full support for both of the new dye channels. This reminds me that I REALLY need to level up my crafters because I hate paying the markup for dies. I’ve largely ignored that entire segment of the game because I didn’t want to buy them. Now that items have multiple dye channels though, I figure it will be too enticing to ignore.

Guildmom Shade Victim

June 24, 2024 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks! I am not sure why I used an exclamation point other than habit, but it isn’t that I have terribly exciting news to talk about. I spent a good chunk of the weekend playing some Final Fantasy XIV and along with a lot of roulettes and trials with my friend Ace, I also spent a bit of time unlocking the Endwalker Alliance Raid. I have these memories of playing Final Fantasy XIV super seriously… but they all stem back from ARR and Heavensward. I am realizing from Stormblood onwards I have very much been in a holding pattern of doing the expansion content and then disappearing until the next expansion release. I would love to figure out a way to more “sustainably” play Final Fantasy XIV in the future where I level up and do content as it is released rather than in one big burst at the end.

I gotta say though, what I have seen of it so far… I am really digging the Alliance Raid. Heavensward, Stormblood, and honestly Shadowbringers all had annoying Alliance Raids. This one however seems super chill and along the lines of the original Crystal Tower series before it was watered down massively. Alliance Raids SHOULD be chill experiences… it is the World of Warcraft LFR equivalent. Mathbot can die in a fire because no matter how many times I run it, I cannot seem to grok what the fuck I am supposed to be doing during that encounter. Dun Scaith… is a nightmare and starts with the hardest boss up front and center and then gets gradually easier after that. I’ve only done the first part of the Endwalker 24-player raid, but so far I am digging it a lot.

I’ve leveled the Gunbreaker to 87 at this point and there should be no possible way that I do not hit 90 before the expansion drops. This means I should be able to continue cleanout out tank gear that I do not want for cosmetic purposes. All in all, Gunbreaker is still “fine” and feels more dpsy than the other tanks. When it comes to a tank I really care about two things… how easy it is to generate threat quickly and how many survival tools I have on my toolbelt. Nothing really beats the Warrior, especially in that second column so as such that is the tank I tend to gravitate towards constantly. It was fun taking an expansion and playing a lot of Paladin, but I will be happy to get back to smashing things with an axe when Dawntrail drops.

For those curious… I did actually finish doing my class quests on the Gunbreaker. It took Solaria logging in Sunday morning and throwing shade at me to actually get off my butt and do it. The weird thing is I already had continuation on my hot bars. However at this point I am a “real” Gunbreaker and the combo options it opens up are nice, but also… don’t explicitly fit into either of the columns that I really care about for tanking. If it had given me another off-global cooldown heal… I would have picked it up sooner. I figure though if “Guild Mom” is willing to give me shit about it, then I probably should take care of business. Truth be told… once I ding 90 I likely will never play Gunbreaker again until I am trying to level it to 100.

In the larger column of “oh god why did you do that Bel”, I bid on another house. Truth be told there just isn’t much to spend gil on in this game and I am still bummed about losing my previous house. I found a plot that I like in Limsa again and will know in a few days whether or not I win it. I won’t be devastated if I don’t get it, and honestly, I don’t have a clue what I will actually do with it if I do win it. However, there is always that whisper in the back of my skull telling me that I need a house. I think maybe what tarnished the experience last time is that I found what I considered to be my perfect plot… aka the first Free Company house plot we ever had. The problem is… it wasn’t that house, and was mostly an empty shell that did not bring back all those memories… nor were any of the neighbors the same. I was trying to recapture a moment in time, more than build my own new moment. With that in mind, I think a house will feel more mine if it isn’t in that historic plot.

In the column of “things I remember that exist” is the Blue Mage. At some point, I really want to finish leveling this up and do more content with it. I still really dig the glam that I came up with for it. I also want to pick back up where I left off in the various Relic weapon quests and do some more of those. I think they might be my long-tailed grind in this game like trying to get Legendaries are in Guild Wars 2. It has been weird coming back this time, because on previous return trips I was still very much in that mental block mode against group content. I plan on raiding in Dawntrail and am actually looking forward to doing at least the normal mode every week. This has all reawoken something in me, and it is odd to say the least. I will probably still play ARPG seasons as they release but I think I have made my peace with MMORPGs again.

To be truthful I think Ace is feeling the same thing. There is this part of ourselves that was super vital to who we are as gamers that we both had sort of put up on a shelf. Now that I have taken it down and dusted it off… I am finding that it still mostly fits.

AggroChat #482 – Roguelike Asteroids

June 23, 2024 by Belghast

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, and Tamrielo

Hey Folks! We are down essentially half our folks and as a result, we have a bit shorter show than our normal fare. We start off with some discussion about Grace’s return to Final Fantasy XIV and how Bel “influenced” them into coming back. From there we talk a bit about Four Job Fiesta and how the White Mage start is REALLY rough. We dive into Nova Drift and talk about its roguelike take on Asteroids or Geometry Wars. Tam talks about his love of arcade racers and talks about playing the 2012 Need for Speed: Most Wanted and then Ash and Bel try and sell him on Forza Horizon. Tam also talks about What the Car… which is also loosely a “car game” but not really. Then we try and wrap up the show and suddenly remember that a Nintendo Direct happened and talk about some of the games showed off.