Tales of the Aggronaut

All Saints Wake

October 21, 2014 by Belghast

Path of Madness

For the most part I have willfully ignored the crafting systems in Final Fantasy XIV. By all accounts it is a black hole that is easy to fall hopelessly into. The reason behind this is that pretty much every craft… relies on every other craft. Blacksmith might require something from the Goldsmith, or Leatherworking require something produced by Alchemists. The folks in my guild who have fallen deep into the system, have ultimately ended up leveling every single craft. As a result we have at least two “Omni-crafters” as they seem to be called in the community. Over the weekend while watching the live stream I started tiptoeing down this path by working on Mining. I figured raising Mining to 50 would be a good entry point, and needed to gather materials for pretty much everything else.

As of last night I am closing in on 30, and I figure that now is when it actually starts to become difficult to push forward. The positive is that the fruit of my labor actually sells really well. For a bit I was grinding ore nodes near camp drybone for Alumen, because I could sell it on the Market Board pretty much as soon as I posted it. This apparently is needed badly in leatherworking, and since it is crazy easy to get I won’t mind gathering it up again later as I actually need it. I am finding that you can actually level crafting professions pretty quickly using leves, but unfortunately you have a limited number of these available at any given time. Thankfully I started with a stack of 99, and am slowly depleting them as I push up mining.

Level All The Things

When not working on mining, I have been working on my pugilist. Since they announced that the Rogue and Ninja would be Dexterity based, I have been wanting to level the Monk so that I can get rid of all of the low level strength gear I have clogging up my bank. This is the last of the Disciple of War jobs I have left to level considering I have a level 50 Paladin, Warrior, Dragoon and Bard. Granted on the 28th this will no longer be the case with the release of the Rogue/Ninja but I can work on that eventually as well. I have this goal that I am setting out before me, to try and level all classes to 50 before the expansion hits next spring. Right now you can see on the little image to the right what I have left to level. My intent is not only to level the battle classes but also the Disciples of the Hand and of the Land.

Of course this is going to take a lot of effort and a lot of time, but I am just crazy enough to do it. As such I feel like I am mostly going to focus on this game. I will of course go off on tangents and play other games like I always have, but this is something I would really like to accomplish, so that I can be ready to push up any class I choose come expansion time since all of them are getting upgraded to level 60. Not only do I want to level all of my classes but I would like to gear out all of them as well. Right now I already have the relic starter for my White Mage, but it is my intent to get that started for the others as well. Not to mention as soon as Syrcus Tower unlocks from its single item per week limit, I expect to be in there a lot soaking up gear for various classes. Quite honestly the idea of leveling all of the battle classes doesn’t really phase me… I was going to do this anyways. What worries me is if I will lose my sanity trying to level all of the crafting classes. Mostly I just want to be self sufficient. I am tired of buying things off the Market Board… and even more so I am tired of having to inconvenience other players to craft things for me. In World of Warcraft I had max level crafters of ever type in Mists of Pandaria, and I really liked being able to take care of whatever I happened to need… and I really want to get to that position here.

All Saints’ Wake

Tis the season for Halloween events in games, and generally speaking these are my favorite events. By far the king of Halloween events is the Nights of the Dead over in Everquest 2. If you have never experienced that one, you should totally fire up an EQ2 account just to do it. My intent is to do it over the weekend in honor of the holiday proper. In Final Fantasy XIV, this will be my second year doing All Saints’ Wake which is their version of this venerable tradition. One of the cool things I am finding about FFXIV is that each year they change the events completely. This is both a positive and a negative. It is positive in that you have a whole new set of rewards to collect and brand new quests to keep you entertained. This is a negative in that you can no longer get the past years rewards, so players new to the game are at a disadvantage… at least from a nifty cosmetic baubles perspective.

However during the Fan Festival they announced that they planned on offering the previous years items on a limited time cash shop, allowing folks to buy the ones that they had missed. The two ghost costumes from last years event are among the first two items on the shop, and I believe they listed the price of each as $5 which is reasonable if you actually want that item badly. I personally missed the Christmas events, so I am more than likely going to use the cash shop to catch up on the previous years goodies. In any case… things are still attainable, but the individual quests can only be completed during a specific years event. This year the All Saints’ Wake runs from Monday, October 20, 2014 at 1:00 a.m. (PDT) to Monday, November 3, 2014 at 6:59 a.m. (PST). Which should give players plenty of time to get in and do the quest chain that starts in Old Gridania, but ends up winding through all of the cities finally finishing with a FATE that occurs in Uldah. One of the highlights of the event is that you get illusions cast on you by the NPCs, and among them are all of the various city leaders as well as Minfilia. You can see me above doing the manderville as the ever adorable Nanamo.

The rewards for doing the entire quest chain is the costume that the NPC is wearing in my first screenshot. It is a really cool looking traditional witch costume, which works perfectly for casters. These of course are cosmetic items and can be glamoured over pretty much any item. To get the other rewards you are going to have to do a little grinding. The FATE in Uldah is a parade, where you have to cast a seasonal cheer buff on Citizen NPCs that appear along the parade route. You have to avoid casting the buff on the Thaumaturges, or they will dispell your illusion. What makes this a little challenging is that the Citizen npcs run around in a specific area, and the buff is a ground targeted AOE. The purpose of the fate is to collect Demonic Cookies which are then used as currency to buy the last two rewards. Getting Gold in a fate earns you 6, silver 3, and bronze 1. The two purchased rewards are the Eerie Barding as pictured above, and the demonic Pumpkin Earrings. Both of which are really cool so it is worth the time spent doing the fate, to get both items you need a total of 16 cookies which really isn’t all that much “grinding” at least nothing compared to the various grinds for WoW Holiday items.

Heavensward

October 20, 2014 by Belghast

Fan Festival Was Amazing

Watch live video from finalfantasyxiv on TwitchThere have been several community events that I have watched over the years for the various games I have been into. I’ve watched SOE Live, and Blizzcon… so I guess I was expecting the Fan Festival to feel pretty much the same, but in the end it felt considerably different. With Blizzcon there is always the feeling that the folks from Blizzard are imposed upon to be up in front of the fans, especially during the question and answer sessions. SOE Live on the other hand feels more like a gathering of loyal fans to a long running franchise, but even it felt different. When one of the members of the FFXIV team was on stage, they were practically glowing with excitement at being there. If you think about it, I guess it makes sense… because this is a game that was so bad during the 1.0 launch that they simply could not charge money for it. These team members have through a monumental effort turned the listing ship around and not only stopped it from sinking but made it the second most successful subscription MMO on the market.

Watch live video from finalfantasyxiv on TwitchI think it goes deeper than that however. Each time a developer of any stripe was on stage, they were almost vibrating with excitement about talking to the fans. Naoki Yoshida aka “Yoshi P” the producer of Final Fantasy XIV and the man mostly credited for the games resurrection… was only actually scheduled to be on stage a few times. However he ended up sitting in on damned near every panel because you could just tell that he was having a blast at the festival. The man however that needs the lions share of the credit for pulling off this event as smoothly as it ran is Michael Christopher “Koji” Fox. Not only was he a constant bundle of enthusiasm over all matters lore, but he spent the majority of the conference live translating for every dev panel. This is a pretty monumental feat, and his localization and lore panel is one that everyone should see. Right now the twitch stream are these two 10 hour blocks of video… but I am hoping that these get broken up into individual panels.

Since the release of the game my friends and I have talked about just how awesome the localization and quest writing is for this game, and come to find out… that is almost entirely the work of Koji Fox. The Japanese version of FFXIV apparently lacks almost all of the flavor that the English version of the game has. During the Lore panel they gave a few examples of a Japanese quest that was extremely utilitarian contrasted against one of ours that is all about amazingly bad puns. I feel like the game would not have been nearly as successful were it not for all of this diligent work during the localization process. Apparently it has been noticed, and the Japanese version is going to be much more closely related to style of the English client from this point on. It almost sounded like things would even start in the English client and get translated to Japanese, but I might have misunderstood that bit. In any case Koji for me at least is the reason why this game is so damned sticky.

Heavensward

It is safe to say that I have not been this excited about an expansion in any game since the months leading up to the Burning Crusade. There is just so much that I am looking forward to in Heavensward, not the least of which is the unlocking of Ishgard. I am in the minority among my friends but I love Coerthas, and not because I particularly like the elves that inhabit it. I love snowy climates, and Coerthas is like the king of all snowy climates because it has Dragons and the Dragoons. I am looking forward to having Ishgard be the fourth city state and am hoping that it has a grand company associated with it. I am also hoping that the political assholery that is the Coerthas quest chains… does not represent all of Ishgard as a whole. The other thing that I am completely pumped about is that we don’t have to wait over a year to see this expansion. It is currently slotted for Spring of 2015 which could mean as early as March, but potentially as late as May. This is the way that you announce an expansion… a few months before release so that your fans have enough time to get excited about it, but not so much time that it feels like it is extremely far away.

I think the thing that excites me the most about Heavensward is the potential for new classes. It has already been stated that there will be several new classes and jobs to learn with the expansion, and over the course of the Fan Festival there were a few leaks. During one of the panels Gondai the battle team developer held up a Batman shirt, verifying one of the long held rumors that we would be seeing the Dark Knight. During another panel it was leaked that Samurai would also be included. Between those two I am pretty much in heaven. Both are two of my favorite jobs from the Final Fantasy series, and you can damned well bet I will level both of them… and depending on the particulars will likely switch to Dark Knight as my primary job from that point onwards. I have loved that job since Final Fantasy IV and always found it so damned disappointing when Cecil changes to being a Paladin. My theory is that Dark Knight will be the DPS half of Warrior, and likely use Two Handed Swords… but who knows.

2.4 and Beyond

The most exciting bits for me however had nothing to do with the expansion. We have been waiting anxiously for the 2.4 patch to launch, and during the Live Letter managed to get a definitive date. Next weekend will be the London Fan Festival, and a lot of the job related information is being held back to reveal during that event. However the Tuesday immediately following London, the 28th we are getting the patch that introduces Rogue and Ninja, the Final Coil of bahamut and a bunch of Quality of life tweaks. What I am really hoping is that since Second Coil of Bahamut is getting uncapped in the amount of loot you can get from it each week… that they might be doing the same for Syrcus Tower. If nothing else the Soldiery gear should be considerably easier to get since once again they are introducing a brand new Tomestone category “Of Poetics”, which means they will be converting existing tomestones and lowering the price of items.

What is awesome is that Heavensward is not terribly far away, but they have a whole bunch of stuff that will be going into the game in the meantime. They confirmed that the Golden Saucer area will be going in during 2.5 and with it Chocobo Racing, various mini-games and the thing I am absolutely amped about… Triple Triad. This was a card game that existed as part of the Final Fantasy VIII game where you collected various cards throughout the world and dueled other Triple Triad players. The game play was extremely simple to pick up, but hard to master. I am so ready for this to be in game and expect me to duel a lot while hanging in our housing zone.

Community Spirit

There is a massive rundown on Reddit of all of the things mentioned during the Live Letter during the show yesterday. I highly suggest you check it out if you are wanting more information. Needless to say it is a super exciting time to be playing Final Fantasy XIV. If I was not already enamored with the community I would have been after the Fan Festival. The community spirit was constantly apparent when they dealt with players. There were a number of events set up for players who were attending the show to compete in. Among these was a preview of the as yet to be released Odin Primal fight. Teams of players had 15 minutes to defeat the encounter, which pretty much meant at maximum they had two attempts. The end result was not only bragging rights, but also an “I Beat Odin” shirt only available during the convention. What sprung up around it was an atmosphere of folks cheering on other teams as they tried to get their own shirts and the sharing of tips and pointers. As you talked to players that were defeated by the encounter, all they wanted to do was get back in line and figure out how to tweak their strategy for the next try.

Watching the crowds and watching folks on twitter talking about the experience… it was like the entire group was this big family. I was so happy to see that this same spirit that we seem to have on the Cactuar server, apparently exists on all other servers as well. I feel like each player that has made a home on their server, feels the same way about their own server as being truly “awesome”. The most interesting thing was listening to the various social channels in game during the event. It felt like most of the community was tuned into the festival and sharing tidbits of information they just saw. There was so much cheering over various things, not the least of which was the announcement that the Atma drop rates would be more than doubled starting in 2.4 and the Animus books themselves would be considerably cheaper after the Tomestone conversion. Folks are amped about what is coming during the next few months, and I feel like there won’t be a single dull moment until we arrive at the launch of Heavensward in the spring. If you could not already tell… I am extremely excited.

#FFXIV #Heavensward

Extra Life Marathon

October 19, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat #27 – Ice and Ishgard

Last night we recorded another episode of the AggroChat podcast. This week I was joined by the regular lineup of Ashgar, Rae, Kodra and Tam. Since the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival is going on right now in Vegas we had lots of news spilling out from it. The most exciting is the official announcement of the Heavensward expansion that is targeting a Spring 2015 release. I have to tell you developers, this is the way you announce an expansion, when it is only a few months away. Final Fantasy XIV has been a model for how to release content in general, with a lot of other exciting news coming out about the 2.4 Dreams of Ice major patch introducing the first new Class/Job combination since the release of the game. Most everyone I know is really looking forward to playing the Rogue/Ninja and I fully expect that every group that I run after a certain point will be full of nothing but Ninja dps.

We did not ONLY have Final Fantasy XIV news however, and we talked a little bit about the Trove Halloween event going on right now. Additionally Kodra and Tam talk about their experiences playing Borderlands the Pre-Sequel. I was pretty hesitant about this game because quite frankly they did a really bad job promoting it. It was made clear early on that this was the “B Team” working on the game, and the trailers seemed to lack any real effort and did not sell me on why this would be a game I wanted to pick up. Additionally most of the classes that were playable didn’t really interest me. However apparently the game is pretty damned good, albeit considerably more buggy than BL1 or BL2. My biggest complaint about the borderlands series to be honest is that we keep having to get new characters to play. I kinda wish that each game release would simply ADD more characters to play, without constantly removing the last games set. At the very least I would love to see DLC that adds back in the other characters released after the launch.

Finally since we did not talk about League at all last week, I let Rae loose to discuss whatever she wanted related to league. This is generally the point in the podcast where my eyes glaze over and I try desperately to follow the conversation. I find League and interesting game, but just not as interesting as my other podcastees do. It is a fun thing to play, but considering it seems to have its own language that is not entirely related to english I struggle to follow it. Additionally there is my whole problem of not really following e-sports in general. However if you are into league, and into e-sports I am sure this section of the podcast will make perfect sense to you. I generally wait patiently until the league storm winds down and we can move on to the next topic. We ran a bit long last night but I think there was quite a bit of really awesome conversation especially about Final Fantasy XIV and its current direction.

Extra Life Marathon

Another topic we discussed is the upcoming Extra Life marathon. I wanted to break this out into its own topic this morning because of its importance. Months ago several of the Alliance of Awesome community started talk about organizing a team for the 25 hour Extra Life marathon. I personally have always wanted to participate in this event, but doubted if I could actually make all 25 hours. As such we have formed a Hitbox Team, which allows us to all stream to the same shared page. So next weekend we will have 25 hours of Alliance of Awesome gaming, and I really hope that you tune in to check some of it out. Right now the schedule looks a little something like this. All times are in Eastern Standard Time

8 am – 12 pm – Stargrace
12 pm – 2 pm – Arislyn
2 pm – 4 pm – Ashgar
4 pm – 7 pm – Kodra
7 pm – 9 pm – Zelibeli
9 pm – 11 pm – Scopique
11 pm – 3 am – Belghast
3 am – 6 am – Scarybooster
6 am – 8 am – Cav

As you can see from the list three of the AggroChat hosts are going to be streaming, but more likely than not a large number of us will be hanging out on the Alliance of Awesome teamspeak streaming channel at any given time. I know I plan on doing this for most of the day, apart from when we end up recording the AggroChat podcast. I guess that too is still in the air, if we record an episode that day or not. In any case you should tune in and watch the festivities. If you want to do more than just watch… any of the streamers would greatly appreciate your donations. Right now the team as a whole has raised over $700 but since it is ALL going to an awesome cause we are hoping to get that number a bit higher. I personally would love to see us hit $1000 but not sure if that is feasible or not yet. If you are interesting in donating here are the links to the various team members.

AggroChat Hosts

Other Alliance of Awesome Folks

Something of note… Kodra is doing something special with his stream. Basically he is letting you choose what game he is going to play. When you donate to his stream, you can vote for him to play ANY game he has in his stream library… or if you are truly a griefer… you can gift him a game and then donate towards him playing that. There are certain games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent that he has only played a few minutes of… and it freaked him out too much to continue. All of these games… are totally fair game. In fact I think we should probably make him play something truly disturbing. In any case I hope you guys tune in next Saturday to watch the festivities.

The Future Is Now

October 18, 2014 by Belghast

Other Peoples Drama

Yesterday my wife and I went on an adventure to Northwest Arkansas. We have a deep sense of nostalgia about the Fayetteville area, because I guess it was one of the first towns we knew nothing about and wandered around together in. This is a thing we like to do, go to a new area without any real warning and see what all we can find. Combine this with the fact that my wife has a really awesome cousin in the area, and it is a location we try and get to as often as possible. For whatever reason however it had been a few years since we had managed to make the trek. I mean its not extremely far, but it still ends up being roughly a two hour journey from our home… so something we don’t exactly undertake lightly.

One of the coolest things about going up there is hanging out at our cousins place of business. She is a tattoo artist of some renown and the shop is always an interesting place. It gives us a window into lifestyles that are just somewhat hard to fathom. I guess I’ve always thought it was important to expose yourself to other ways of thinking, but there are times that I just sit back and cannot quite follow the logic that lead down some of the paths. I mean the family is awesome, but the shroud of drama that surrounds it is one part really bad luck and one part less than stellar decisions made in the midst of that bad luck. But what I love is just how valiantly they fight back against whatever circumstances they are thrown into. While constantly in struggle mode, you can feel the love and the life that they embrace.

The Future Is Now

Northwest Arkansas is known for a lot of things, but probably the biggest is that Bentonville is the headquarters of the Wal-mart corporation. As such you see some interesting machinations take root there that will likely filter out into the rest of the country. Yesterday while roaming around town we saw something interest, a Wal-Mart Pickup Grocery. In essence it looks like a non-descript warehouse building with a series of bright green drive in stalls similar to a drive in restaurant like Sonic. The idea apparently is that you order your groceries online, and then pull into the stall and punch in some code letting the folks inside know you are there. At which point they bring out your groceries and help you load them into your vehicle.

I have wanted exactly this same concept for years… and I am pumped to see that it even exists in a test market. For years I have wanted to be able to do my grocery shopping online and simply pull up to the store and load what I just bought. I really hate everything about grocery shopping, from the journey from cold to humid within each store, to the slow moving shoppers, to the desperate for small talk and validation cashiers. I mean I try my best to be pleasant through the average shopping trip, and keep from biting anyone’s head off… but it is a frustration that I would be more than happy to abandon. The prevalence of self checkout lanes greatly improved my shopping experience, and this is just the next step. The only thing that would improve it beyond this is maybe if robots delivered my groceries.

Playstation TV

Today I am wrapped up in my fuzzy little cocoon on the sofa, with cats napping beside me. After two days of heavy activity, I am ready to just be mostly comatose today. I got home late enough last night that I didn’t really get much chance to do anything. I did take a bit and hook up my Playstation TV and so far the results are mixed. I feel like I need to probably hard wire my ps4 into my network, so that only one of the two units is using wireless. Playing Destiny there was a noticeable lag to the gameplay. I mean it is probably no worse than when playing on the vita, but playing on a tiny screen with already awkward controls seems to make it less noticeable. I didn’t experience any of the graphical glitches that Pete Smith on G+. I am hoping if I hardwire my PS4 that it will help out the latency a bit.

I essentially need another HDMI hub downstairs as essentially I had to unplug my Chromecast to plug in the PSTV. The other thing that I guess I was not prepared for is that I would need another Vita memory card. So I have an HDMI hub and another memory stick on order that should arrive tomorrow. The base unit only has 1 gig of storage so there really was not much that I could even download to play on the unit. I will likely keep the chromecast hooked up until I get the rest of the bits to connect things up. Thankfully it recognized my Dual Shock 4 without any issue, and was able to play using that. The only problem I see there is that the PSTV doesn’t seem to take advantage of the touchpad at all, which makes some of the “Vita” interactions a bit awkward like the motion to “swipe away” a current application to close it is performed by holding down a button as the corner slowly peels away. I think once I get used to it, I will enjoy it more as it will extend the PS4 to yet another television.