a realm reborn

The Wrong Proportions

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Comparing the Noct Tanking Set from my Lalafell main and my Roegadyn alt

Good Morning Friends. I have to say I was overwhelmingly excited when I got to the point of the ARR MSQ when it started doling out the formerly Binding-Coil-era gear sets. For pretty much all of my time as a Lalafell I have used this set, dyed jet black, with the bunny kabuto for my signature look. So I was ecstatic to be able to have this appearance on my Roegadyn alt. Sure I could not wear the tanking skirt with it that comes from a level 80 dungeon, but I could get MOST of the way to replicating the appearance. I bounced around between all of the servers in Dynamis until I found the cheapest bunny kabuto for 160k and snapped it up to be able to compile the look. Then in all of my horror last night I realized… the proportions are all wrong on a Roegadyn. It just looks too bulky and my bunny ears are way the hell too small to really work in the same way. So alas… I wasted a bunch of money on something I am probably never actually going to wear until I fantasia again.

I guess I should once again give a fair warning that as I am talking through this ARR revisit, I am going to be talking about spoilers. Be warned if you have not made it this far into the game.

Title Screen for Urth’s Fount the Odin Fight

We started off last night by running Snowcloak and then Odin which represented all of the new things that we had not run yet. Snowcloak was just as sleepy as it always is… and I maybe overpulled a few times leading Ace to have to scramble to keep my ass vertical. We pulled through it and it was a largely enjoyable experience. I still lament the loss of the proper version of the yeti fight where you throw snowballs at him. From there we ran Odin thinking it would be a long queue… but got in almost instantly. This fight is still exceptionally tough and we got some bad RNG on the first attempt and had to deal with a spear phase while he was casting his one-hit enrage attack. The second time though we managed to take him out right before the cast timer was finished. This fight is legitimately still probably more difficult than most of the ARR era Extremes.

Shiva Cutscene from Akh Afah Amphitheatre Hard

Knowing that Shiva was not too far off we put our heads down and quested along furiously until we unlocked Akh Afah Amphitheatre (Hard). It is sort of sad how stinking easy the ARR Hard versions are. When you have spent so much time farming the extremes to get mount drops for folks… the Hard versions just sort of feel like a cakewalk. I keep waiting for mechanics that never come, like I did not remember there was now ice floor phase in the Hard version, or at least not one we had gotten to yet. The music is still so freaking great and if you have not listened to it in a while, you own yourself to click through and do so right now. I have so much love for this era of the game because it represents the period of time when our little FC was the most active and dedicated. It was the era when we were actively fielding raids and hanging out with each other multiple times per week. While Ace and I have recaptured some of that in small bursts… I still miss all the rest of our team.

The Keeper of the Lake Entrance Unlocked in Mor Dhona

I stuck around last night and pushed through the story up until the point where Keeper of the Lake unlocked. I am very much looking forward to this dungeon because I can remember it being one of my favorites. It also has some freaking amazing music and a few really fun fights that make the player feel super cool for honestly dodging some rather simplistic mechanics by today’s standards. The story is heating up and honestly… I am starting to feel some “feelings” because I know what is about to happen in the next patch. It is hard to explain how emotionally it hit me to play through this content the first time. I was so oblivious to the catastrophe that was about to befall my character and my friends… but seeing it all again you can absolutely see the underpinnings of foreshadowing. A game had never quite doing anything like this before, not at least in the MMORPG space… so I was simply not prepared for the level of betrayal that was impending and as such did not heed the warnings.

The hardest part of this replay is having to run quests with Ilberd knowing what is about to happen. I so despise this person and everything that he and the Crystal Braves come to represent. I’m immensely bothered by what the hubris plays out in Alphinaud and I just want to shake some sense into his obliviousness. The writing was absolutely on the wall. I am seeing it now and it was clearly there for us… if we just chose to look at it. Last night seeing Ilberd say “you never betray your own” was just too fucking much. If I could change the course of the game I would… I would strike him down right now and suffer the consequences. I hate “Cold War” periods in video games… because I am a character of action, not politics. I was not designed for this, and quite honestly I think most of us are not equipped to handle it… which as a result is why this whole sequence managed to blindside so many. Unfortunately, this is a card that only works once… and every betrayal from this point forward has been spotted ahead of time because now we know it is possible… and now we are always on the lookout. Ilberd and crew shoot our faith… in a way that can never be regained.

Anyways… I am deeply looking forward to Heavensward because I want to hunt a Sky Whale. I’m probably looking forward to that fight than almost anything else at this point. Heavensward had some freaking amazing primal fights.

AggroChat #485 – The Fantasia Dare

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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We are back in fighting form with the entire crew.  We start off discussing SGDQ or Summer Games Done Quick a massive speedrunning community event.  From there we talk a bit about the Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalgur spoilers and some of the changes that are being made.  Then we roll into Last Epoch Cycle 2 which has so many amazing gameplay and polish improvements.  Lastly Bel and Grace talk about their nonsense mission to replay all of the FFXIV content and some of the experiences from running old content with perfect understanding of where the game story is going.  Bel has traditionally played a Lalafell and Grace a pretty dedicated Roegadamme…  and they have dared each other to swap races.  Last night after the show that happened and the show card shows the end results.  Lastly Bel talks a bit about Blaugust which is coming up in a few weeks.

Topics Discussed:

  • SGDQ
  • Path of Exile 3.25 Spoilers
  • Last Epoch Cycle 2
    • So many improvements
    • Amazingly polished experience
  • Revisiting FFXIV A Realm Reborn
    • Redoing Old Content with Full Understanding of the 10-Year Story Arc
    • The Fantasia Dare

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Farewell Wildstar

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Day Two Rundown

We had an amazing turnout in day two, and while a couple of folks didn’t end up making a post we picked up several more in the process.  Additionally there were two blogs that I missed in the day one rundown.  I have to say I am still floored by the quality of content that folks are churning out.  I guess once you get the ball rolling in something it just develops a mind of its own.  I really need to figure out a better way of tracking the individual posts, as I have been up since 7 am and the last hour has spent simply pulling together this list of links.  However it is totally worth it because there look to be some pretty amazing posts there.  I plan on reading them immediately after posting my own morning post.

So there you go 41 day two posts, and two that I missed from day one.  We are having one hell of an initiative so far, and I highly suggest you check out all of the posts.  I have my super happy face on right now because It is going so smoothly thus far.

Farewell Wildstar

WildStar64 2014-06-20 22-30-01-908 I finally did something yesterday that I knew was coming for awhile now.  I logged into the Wildstar account website and cancelled my subscription.  While I still have through October to play the game, I doubt I actually will.  At this point I have not played for two and a half weeks, and simply have no real drive to do so.  I did not actually make it to the level cap but stalled out at 26.  Why am I quitting you might ask?  Honestly I don’t really know.  Everything about Wildstar is something that I should like, but once the amusement of playing a Chua wore off I was left once again with the game I played in beta… that just didn’t quite do it for me.  I never really got into the game during the beta process and the highest I managed to get a character was to 10, but considering how much I had misjudged FFXIV in beta… I thought I owed it to myself to give the game a chance.

It does have a lot of nice things going for it, and the community and development teams do an awesome job of listening to the fans.  Wildstar however is kinda like a monster truck rally, when what I really want is a book club.  The game is awesome in an over the top 80s action movie kind of way, but after a point it just wears on you.  The wow-raider me would have loved this game, but I have changed considerably since I was raiding five nights a week.  I ultimately want something a little slower pace and a little bit more cerebral and less twitchy.  Who knows at some point I might fire it back up, but I kinda doubt it.  It was a fun experiment and I think overall it will do really well, but I think I wanted to like the game far more than I actually liked it.

I think what really started the downfall for me is as I watched our guild start to disintegrate around the time the free month ran out.  The aspect of the game I really liked was its group content, and that was really damned fun.  The problem is without active players, it became impossible to do the dungeons, and I was not quite ready to brave the dungeon finder.  Additionally we chose the wrong faction as a guild.  Not that I don’t love Dominion, but everyone I know from twitter and the blogosphere is playing on Evindra Exile side… which means we had no shot in hell of even getting their alts considering the 6 character per server limit.  Sure I could have started over and rolled Exile… and I did make a few alts… but quite frankly I just didn’t enjoy the game enough to start from scratch.  I wish all of you folks still playing the game luck, because it really is an interesting experience.

Not Final After All

Last night we got things back to normal and recorded Episode 16 of the AggroChat podcast.  Once again we had our entire cast of myself, Ashgar, Rae and Kodra.  On a whim we decided to pull in Tam as well since he was available.  I have to say it was one of the more chill shows we have recorded in awhile and everything seemed to flow pretty naturally.  I did absolutely no editing this time other than removing a few silences.  It sounds a little different however because I am recording from a different machine in a different location.  This weekend I had my main computer melt down and I have yet to get it back up and running.  As a result I recorded from my laptop, but we struggled through and I think the end product works just fine.

We talk about a bunch of things like Shovel Knight, Rogue Legacy, League of Legends, falling out of love with Wildstar… but more importantly our return to Final Fantasy XIV.  I guess for us it was not final after all.  I personally want to set down some more permanent roots in this game, and despite the cost prohibitive nature of guild housing… we are starting to price and talk about the location we want to buy in.  They made a ton of tweaks and in all cases it seems to have improved our enjoyment.  If you are thinking about giving it a spin check out the free 14 day trial.  We are on the Cactuar server in the Aether data center.  If you get in add Belghast Sternblade to your friends list and give me a shout.

Writing Prompts

I slacked off yesterday or more so I got caught up in the excitement for just how amazing day one was… and forgot to post any writing prompts.  Thankfully I had six already so it is not like you guys were at a loss for potential inspiration.  That said I do intent to keep throwing out the occasional batch of writing prompts and adding them to a list I have collected on the nook.

  • What is your earliest gaming memory?  We all have to come to gaming from somewhere, what brought you into the fold?
  • What is your favorite class?  Do you play a new type each game that comes out or is there always one type of class that you tend to favor?
  • Do you follow a games lore?  There is often tons of lore both in game and out of game, do you follow it and even track down the tidbits that are not obvious.. or are you mostly oblivious to it?

#Blaugust #FFIXV #Wildstar

End Game

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Slowing Down

ffxiv 2013-10-06 00-51-19-70

For most of us in House Stalwart the wild ride that was the Final Fantasy XIV storyline has come to a conclusion.  As a result a large number of us have dialed back our playtime a bit to recover.  This is only magnified by the fact that the game that none of us may speak of is having yet another event and a large number of us are actively playing that.  The storyline was extremely exceptional and did everything I would expect in the ending of a classic final fantasy game.  However this time it left the door completely open.

It felt much like that first time you transitioned Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past into the Dark World.  It feels like we just scratched the surface of the game, which I guess is how the ending of the storyline content should feel in every MMO.  Lots of things are resolved, but very quickly you realize that nothing at all is truly resolved.  Now that we have spent all the storyline we are left with the fact that other than the wonderful story… the FFXIV experience is a rather skeletal one.

End Game

ffxiv 2013-10-05 20-39-50-40

Basically eight of us have entered the phase of the end game at this point… which is extremely limited.  Each step along the path has some pretty severe gear requirements, so what we have ahead of us is a large amount of running the same two dungeons over and over.  Basically you are given two paths forward for gear.  The first of which is running two 8 man dungeons that reward a lot of tomestones, but absolutely no gear…  or running two 4 man dungeons that drop gear but very few tomestones.  Neither option feels really good, considering for the time spent running Amdapor you really do not end up with much gear.  I’ve run it three times as a tank and have yet to see a single drop.

The real problem is the fact that each run through the dungeon racks up a not insignificant repair bill.  One of the big problems I have talked about before is the fact that there really is no good way to gain money at level 50.  I carried with me into the end game about 200,000 gil, and that has been going fast as I use it for various needed things at the maximum level.  The options I have before me are grinding fates which pay out around 200 gil each, grinding leves which pay out around 500 gil each…  and playing the auction house.  The problem with the auction house is that `the only thing worth anything really are high level crafted items.  Leveling your crafting however can bankrupt your character… so it is a bit of a catch 22.

Relic Weapon

ffxiv 2013-09-27 21-13-22-72

The goal of the game right now seems to be to get your relic weapon and later on your +1 upgrade to it.  This is the best item in the game you can get, but much like the Everquest Epic weapon it is a long and drawn out process.  To start down this path is a rather expensive one.  Firstly you have to acquire the base weapon, for a Warrior this is the Barbarian’s Bardiche.  This is crafted by a high level blacksmith and is gathered together out of bits that have to be farmed from a combination of dungeons and overworld zones.  They currently go for about 10,000 gil on the open market, and since I do not have access to a max level Blacksmith that is the option I chose to go with.  In my experience it costs far more than 10,000 gil to get a smith to create one for you.

From there you need to infuse 2 Battledance III materia onto the item.  This once again has to be done by a level 50 blacksmith… and the going rate per infuse on my server is 10,000 gil.  Acquiring the Battledance III materia is a whole other matter that is far more time consuming.  These are gained from disassembling level 45 or higher items that are 100% spiritbound.  The problem is… individual items can be disassembled into a wide variety of different materia.  I spiritbound a set of Mithril Plate gear, and did not manage to get a single Battledance III.  Ultimately I had a guild member give me one of them, and I bought the second on the open market for 15,000 gil.

So just to get to the point of turning in the infused axe I have already spent over 50,000 gil once you factor in the material costs of the infusions.  I apparently got off easily… for a Paladin or a Scholar apparently the costs are more like 100,000 gil.  From here it is a series of monsters that I have to take down, starting in Coerthas with the Chimera and ending with Hard Mode Titan.  All of which is rather honestly a pretty horrific grind, considering by the time you get to Hard Mode Titan, you damned well better be in full darklight gear, the set you get from the tomestones I talk about grinding out earlier.

Grind, Grind, Grind

Ultimately this is going to be the thing that kills the game for me if they do not introduce some less grindy paths.  Right now I have the option of grinding for money, grinding to level other classes or grinding out end game gear.  There is nothing left to do in the game that is anywhere near as enjoyable as the questing experience was.  At this point, the game is a really fun ride to 50, and then grind city afterwards.  I still greatly enjoy the dungeon runs, and I look forward to doing more of that, but that involves getting a large number of people online at the same time.  When there is not a full groups worth online, I am finding myself lacking in things I really want to do.

At this point I have leveled my Warrior to 50 and my Bard to 50…  but any additional characters involve lots and lots of either mob grinding or fate grinding and right now after having done it twice… that lacks any sort of luster.  So I find myself piddling around in other games waiting on enough of a critical mass to form in FFXIV that we can do some dungeons.  At this point I really lack interest in doing anything else in the game.  I think as time passes I will want to level other classes, but after having ground out two to 50, I need a bit of a break.  As a result I have been piddling around in League of Legends and finding myself pining away from my Hex invite.  FFXIV still has a ton of potential, but they really need to make some changes in 2.1 to make the game more livable.