Have Helmet will Lali-ho

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This morning I have so many things to say… but don’t feel like I can really say any of it? By the internet rule of too soon I have fallen off the precipice that was the normal flow of Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve seen some stuff… and now really don’t feel like I can talk about it without ultimately ruining the game experience for all of the people who were further behind than me. As such I am just opting out of talking about any of the various bad ideas I experienced this weekend. Instead lets talk about Dwarves.

The level 78 gear set that comes through questing is the “Dwarf” set. For those not yet playing this game… Shadowbringers takes place in a “through the looking glass” sort of version of the world we known and love. In that world instead of Lalafell, you have the mining and tinkering Dwarves that are most widely known for wearing a helmet that gives them a non-descript black orb face with glowing yellow eyes. While there were technically Dwarves in the first Final Fantasy title… the ones we have come to love and respect for their Lali-ho-ness first appeared for me at least in the 4th title that we instead got as the 2nd title. Numbering is hard.

At least some part of my attachment to Lalafell is because I love small races… but small races that tend to be about the scale and proportions of a Fantasy Dwarf. Gnomes don’t do it for me… and depending on the game I can take or leave Halflings. Where my joy lies is with the subterranean masters… in part maybe because I secretly dream of a purely underground existence far from the reach of the evil sun? So once I was able to start BEING a Dwarf in FFXIV… you damned well can bet that I made some glamour happen. The 78 crafted set is dye-able and I have chosen soot black for the time being because it more or less goes with everything.

So yeah… for the time being that is all you are going to get out of me. Lali-hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! In part this gives my brain time to wrap itself around the events that just happened, and also you as the player time to catch up and experience it for yourself. There are spoilers… and then there are SPOILERS… and what I have been experiencing lives firmly in that second camp. Please do not leave comments below spoiling what I am talking about for my readers, because wow some stuff happened. Me saying that alone is probably bad enough.

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is I believe now officially my favorite Final Fantasy game ever. I am just hoping they manage to stick the landing. At this point I am level 80 and working my way through to the ultimate climax of the game… but like a nesting doll things seem to keep unfolding before me. I’ve already gotten effectively two more areas to explore that I was not expecting… and it just sorta keeps going. They managed to pull a Phantasy Star Online 2 on me… and well I am holding on with both hands for now.

Batsquatch

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Yesterday was of course a holiday here in the United States… and as such I allowed myself to go into holiday mode and sleep in super late. We really didn’t do much of anything to celebrate, in part because having a single carved out day in the middle of a week is kinda butts. Sure when I go back today it is Friday… and thus the weekend-eve but it still feels jarring. I could have in theory taken the day off, but we already had the director and another manager gone… just leaving two managers to cover everything. That said I sincerely doubt there will be much going on as probably the majority of the workers took the day off if they could.

This weekend was the weekend of the great server split. I happened to get up to use the restroom and get a drink, and when I got back my client had cashed. This began a sequence of getting the 2002 Lobby Server error until I finally made it back in and was plunked in an over 2000 person queue. This was effectively the reality of Wednesday night, and I managed to fight through two of these queues, when finally I got disconnected again and simply gave up on making it through a third one. This seemed to be some localized issues to that specific night, as they did some maintenance in the wee hours of the morning and things were back down to 15-20 person queues all yesterday.

As far as the story goes… I am now stuck up against the pre-77 wall. The one that I hit at 76 seemed to be pretty short and was able to do my daily hunts and a few rounds of FATEs to get through it without much issue. This one unfortunately has me hitting it well before I have hit the halfway point of 76. That means tonight I am probably going to need to buckle down and grind it out in random queues of the 75 dungeon. That said I am mostly okay with this… as it contains my new spirit animal… the Batsquatch.

All in all I am still digging the story, but the flow slowed down a bit once I cleared the forest moon of Endor. When the game devolves into the more political stuff, I struggle to stay engaged. When it is all big damned call to action… I am fully on board with whatever nonsense it seems to throw me in. I feel like we are in the third act lull before things start to get really good again. I’ve officially got context for what the big trailer reveal presented, and I have to say I am feeling really weird about that sequence of events. I do not know who I can trust in this world.

The above screenshot is being shown without context, but I am happy to see it. It is a place I hope we will one day visit. I am sorta jealous of the side group that is operating there. In truth the Wednesday night server apocalypse is as close as we have gotten to seeing real problems with the Shadowbringers launch. All in all it has been a really smooth experience and hopefully I am not cursing myself… but I have yet to see anything similar to Raubhan Extreme. I look forward to getting off work and grinding my way past the wall I am against and seeing hopefully the 77 dungeon.

Regularly Playing: July 2019 Edition

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For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing” where I attempt to update the sidebar on my blog.  This is the second month where I am trying to do this at the beginning of the month rather than remembering to do it towards the end of a month. June was a pretty stable month as far as game playing, and effectively there is really nothing much changing in the mix. However I am still going to go through the actions of this post to keep myself in the habit.

To Those Remaining

Bloodstained – PC and Switch

I am completely in love with this game. I’ve written so much about it recently, but effectively this is as thought you had sat down immediately after creating Symphony of the Night and just kept going on and adding in all of the features you ever wanted in the game. The experience is flawless, and while I am hearing there are issues with the Switch port, I am too busy making my way through the PC experience to care. They have all the time in the world to fix that. I have gotten the “bad” ending, and now am trying to work on better endings.

Destiny 2 – PC

I went on a brief binge of playing this game and then once again got distracted by something else. I want to return to playing on a more regular basis, but I am going to have to burn down some of the other games I am working on to free up the mental bandwidth. Bungie is doing a great job of stewarding the game into this new era and I am looking forward to some of the changes that are coming with the new expansion. The game is in a great place, so well worth checking out.

Diablo 3 – PC and Switch

This is still very much in the rotation because I have more objectives to accomplish during this season. I’ve completed one conquest which can be seen in the above screenshot, involving collecting a 50 million gold streak. The next up is going to be doing a bunch of GR55s as multiple classes. I still have yet to master any set dungeons so I should probably knock that out soon as well. Essentially I got distracted but I still very much want the penultimate reward this season.

Dragalia Lost – Android

This game is effectively my night cap. I crawl into bed and spend 10-15 minutes playing this on my tablet before eventually closing the lid and going to sleep. Dragalia Lost lives in this weird place where it is just engaging enough to keep me playing on a regular basis… and not engaging enough to keep me playing it constantly to the point of burning out. In part the later part is in thanks to its mobile mechanics which favor short bursts of play rather than extended play cycles. Whatever the case going on two years I am still doing this thing.

Elder Scrolls Online – PC

I am playing nowhere near as much as this game deserves but I am still periodically logging in to move the needle forward. Right now I am deeply distracted by all of the other games that are on the market and calling my attention. I will return to you at some point when a lull happens to continue adventures in Morrowind proper.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC

I am completely back on my bullshit folks… and loving it. Just prior to the launch of Shadowbringers I found a way to get re-engaged and as a result I think the expansion thus far has been all the more meaningful. I am not sure what else I can really say about this that I have not already said in a bunch of recent blog posts. Final Fantasy XIV is a lovingly curated game experience, and I am enjoying the hell out of the ride.

Magic the Gathering Arena – PC

This month I have not spent an awful lot of time playing, but it is still on the list of things that I dive into when I want something more quiet and contemplative. I am not entirely certain this one is ever really going to leave the proper rotation, at least not for the time being. The pace of magic sets being released really reinforces the need to keep popping ones head back into the game every so often. Yesterday Core 20 was released, so I need to pop in and check it out.

To the New and Returning

For the very first time in the history of this column of sorts… I don’t have any new games being added to the mix. I reached a point of stasis this month and for the time being it is a pretty great mix of titles to be engaged in.

To Those Departing

Once again… nothing to see here. I didn’t out and out stop playing anything this month but continued largely playing the same things.

Honorable Mentions

Wizards Unite – Android

This one is sliding in as an honorable mention and not something new… because quite frankly I don’t think I will be spending any more time with the game. Wizards Unite released for mobile platforms and represents an attempt to capture the same magic as Pokemon Go… but with the Harry Potter IP. I feel like they have failed to do that, and as a result have created a fairly cumbersome and often times unfun experience. It is worth mentioning, but only just.

E3 As a Whole

A lot of my bandwidth was taken up by watching the E3 coverage unfurl, and as a result I am giving it an honorable mention as well. It was not a great show, but there were several gems. The new Commander Keen game is not really ones of them, but I am just in part happy see ANYTHING to do with that IP. It was probably a toss up between Microsoft and Square for who had the best showing, and then everything else falls down significantly after that.

Excellent Messaging

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I am rapidly getting to the point where I do not have much in the way of screenshots to share that are also not massive spoilers. Last night I took down my very first Trial of the expansions, and I was very pleasantly surprised with how that went down. I had done a little bit of reading up on the mechanics since I would be queuing as a tank, and they warned me about several tricky spots to watch out for that tripped groups up. However went it came time to actually doing the Trial I queued in… and everyone did the mechanics as necessary and we largely one-shot the encounter.

I have to think this is in part because Final Fantasy XIV does an exceptional job of messaging what the player should be doing. As we have arrived at this point in the third expansion, or fourth if you consider A Realm Reborn as an expansion… they have differentiated each type of effect so that it has a very unique visual signature. When you need to stack up there is a giant pictograph showing arrows pulsing in towards a center location. When the boss is about to do a mechanic that will have a rotational effect… there is a spinning wheel graphic around the outside of the boss indicating the rotation direction.

Final Fantasy XIV is a game that gives the player very clear advisement on what they should be doing at any given time and all they have to do is effectively pay attention to these. The first dungeon of this expansion was a bit of a wake up call and refresher course, and having done that it largely set the tone for the expansion and the expectations of the players. You will be doing mechanics, you already know how to do this… you just need to follow the directions. Doing this up front seems to have bore fruit in how generally smoothly that Trial went. Now we did have some struggles in the 2nd dungeon with a Dragoon that did not want to mechanic… but whatever the case we pulled through it and adapted quickly.

Last night I pushed into 74 and have started the forth and I believe final new area of the expansion. I’ve reunited with more friends… but I am still absolutely confused to some details of that reuniting. I am also deeply confused by other things going on, which sorta gives me an idea about what events have transpired since we were last with them. Final Fantasy is really good at making a deep cut that calls back a couple of expansions, and I think one of these is happening and will eventually unfold. I’ve also made a handful of predictions about what is to come. I think a major character that we keep running into is a Light Warden for example, but I won’t go into any level of detail on that one yet.

As far as the launch contest, I had some entries… actually way less than I would have expected. Regardless there were a bunch of good comments, which was in theory the point of this. I had a spare time card and since I pay on the maximum cycle I never can use them as square only allows you to accrue so much play time credit at once. It seems that google now has a random number generator if you search for “random number generator” and I used it to draw the result.

So Congratz to Blu3 who is winning the time card. I will be reaching out to you today to send you the code. I hope everyone is still enjoying the expansion, and honestly I am in that point of looking forward to getting home every night to see more story unfold.