ffxiv Archives - Page 45 of 92 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Shoddy Shipyards

June 29, 2015 by Belghast

Struggling to Blog

This morning I am struggling a bit to find purpose as I sit down at the keyboard. As of last night I reached level 58 in Final Fantasy XIV on my Warrior and am not quite to the next level wall. Things are happening that are enriching the experience, but those same things are massive revelations and spoilers and I am concerned about giving too much away. As a result I am just not sure what to talk about. I could break out some more of my existential angst that I can presently only be a tank when someone in guild asks for groups. I could comment vaguely about how much I am enjoying the story, and how awesome it is going so far. Neither of which seem all that fulfilling however and as I sit here tickety tacking my keys my mind is a blank page when it comes to other things that I might talk about.

I had these grand ideas that I would stream some more this weekend, but since my wife spent most of her time downstairs… I was inclined to do the same. I don’t like streaming when I could be disturbing her, so instead I just kept playing. I really wish Forge did what I wanted it to do… namely that it would take real screenshots to a directory, instead of getting uploaded to the Forge website. The problem I have run into in the past is that I cannot run Fraps at the same time as Forge, and without Fraps I don’t have my stable source of screenshotting anything that crosses my screen. I tend to disable the in game screenshot keys and use fraps to dump all of my game screenshots into one standard directory to make pulling from it for blogging purposes easier. The other problem with forge is that the clip size was too limited to snapshot an entire boss fight. I also wish there was a way to back up my stream to youtube the same way I can with twitch. Nonetheless I might give it another shot soon.

Shoddy Shipyards

Yesterday I spent some time in World of Warcraft, for all the wrong reasons. The night before I had left my phone upstairs on the charger, and by the time I got situated on the sofa and realized that I didn’t have my phone… and as a result did not have access to my FFXIV authenticator I could not be bothered to get up. The Blizzard client on the other hand authenticates far less often, when connecting from the same machine over and over… and I was able to get in with just my account information. As a result I played for a bit, long enough to unlock Shipyards and the first and I think second camps in Tanaan Jungle. The renovations to my garrison however that resulted in the building of my shipyard however were not quite so successful as I noticed I now apparently have a break in my wall. It was one of those things that I caught out of the corner of my eye as I rode past, and now I cannot keep myself from seeing it every time I ride to the shipyards to check on progress.

The journey into the jungle is pretty much the same as the journey out of it. You complete objectives which moves the storyline further, and unlocks an additional base camp. I am not terribly far into it at this point so I am not sure how long this mission goes. It was around the time I got to the second camp that I needed to stretch my legs… and while I was up I grabbed my phone so I could play other things. I have to give Blizzard credit because they do this moving target as you go through a zone thing really well. There were several moments like this during the leveling process, where you help this or that base to progress the storyline, and those tended to be the best part of this expansion. If they had somehow managed to create an entire expansion around moving the ball forward and delivered new content on a monthly basis I think I would be significantly happier than I am currently. As it is right now patch 6.2 just feels like too little too late for me. Other than the break in my outer defenses, the craftsmanship of this patch seems to be on par with the rest of the content they have released, so at some point I want to finish to see how things progress.

More Mobile Gaming

One of my biggest complaints this expansion has been that Garrisons turned out the way they did. I was hoping for player housing, and what I got instead was a mobile game… that was not mobile at all. All of the mechanics that go into the garrison and the shipyard as well are the same sort of ploys that go into getting people to keep playing a mobile app. I have been playing the hell out of Fallout Shelter for example, and it is the exact same sort of gameplay as you find in the Garrison. You have abilities that you use and then timers that you are waiting out… so you can do additional things… all the while juggling limited resources and trying to find ways to replenish them. There is nothing really “wrong” with this sort of cooldown based gameplay, because it seems to work phenomenally well in getting us to keep pushing buttons on our phones. The problem here however is… we are not on our phones. In fact we are having to do this sort of upkeep based gameplay on a client that requires a PC to log in and check. The end result has been me logging into my characters in the morning and in the evening for most of this expansion to do nothing but swap missions.

I think more than anything… this has been what has grated on my nerves this expansion. These mechanics place me into the game on a regular interval… but I am not actually “playing” the game when I am in it. Instead I am juggling the upkeep of a mobile game, without an easy to use mobile interface. As I have moved forward into the Shipyards it feels like they are taking the whole follower mechanic to the next level with allowing players to customize the ships… which means you need to go locate the blueprints to make various upgrades, while also locating blueprints for various ships. It just feels like this would be a really enjoyable experience had they added it to the WoW Armory app as a mini-game that you could either interface with in game… or through an easy to navigate menu on your phone. Instead the result is giving us something that feels more cumbersome than daily quests ever did, and at the same time extracting us from the game world… and keeping us holed up in our garrison scheduling this next batch of missions for our dozen alts. This experience makes me question even further if Blizzard actually understands its player base at all… and what made their game great for all those years.

So Many Sads

June 28, 2015 by Belghast

Storming the Castle

This morning I admit that I have been struggling to figure out what to write about. It is not from a lack of material, but a conscious effort to filter myself. Last night I leapt over a content wall in Final Fantasy XIV and it was quite possibly the best dungeon experience I have had since first stepping foot into Deadmines back in 2004. It was so over the top amazing, that it is hard to put into words much about it because quite simply I do not want to ruin the story for anyone. Square Enix has somehow managed to capture all of the magic of Scarlet Monastery, distill everything that made it fun… and then amply that and unleash it onto the world. The dungeon design is vastly different than anything else I have seen in Final Fantasy XIV to this point. On one level it almost feels like a kung fu action movie, where you are deluged with impossible odds yet somehow manage to hold things together enough to keep moving forward. The fourth dungeon in the game is now the pinnacle of “storming the castle” experiences for me.

What makes it so amazing is the fact that the dungeon is set up by some truly phenominal storytelling. By the time you reach this point in the story arc, you feel like righteous avengers off to save the day. I had been stalled on this dungeon for awhile, but had been holding back doing it so that I could do it with a full guild group. Kodra managed to get caught up last night, and the two of us entered with two others that were gleeful in keeping silent about the tactics of the dungeon. Somehow we made it through, and our raider instincts kicked in enough to keep us from doing anything too stupid. It is funny how those instincts are now fairly universal regardless of what encounter a game throws at you. Final Fantasy XIV does an excellent job of messaging things you should avoid or at least take note of… and when it down… get the hell out.

So Many Sads

Does this picture not just break your heart? This is the saddest Bel I have ever seen in this game. So not only does it excel at giving you moment after moment of excitement… it can also manage to punch you in the gut when the story turns in a sad direction. Things happened… things that made us sad, and the game is doing an awesome job of letting us know it. Not to mention me the person behind the screen was effected by these events too, so it feels reassuring in a way to see my on screen facsimile struggling with the events as well. I cannot expound upon just how amazing the experience of Heavensward has been so far, with the storyline from last season picking up and continuing where we left off. I call it a “season” because really that is what it feels like. The original 1.0 launch was Season 1, A Realm Reborn was Season 2… and now we are entering the Third Season of this really awesome television show… where I absolutely cannot wait to see what happens next. It is a game like this that makes me feel like a game can both be engaging and deeply narrative at the same time. I feel like I am telling the story… more than I usually do in a story driven experience. Sure the story is happening to me… but I identify so completely with my character.

The thing is this feeling we are having is apparently completely intentional. The above quote is from a ZAM video interview with Yoshi P from E3. It is very clear that he feels like he is stilling one large episode of the same story, and as a result all of the little elements and people that you meet along the way have a lasting importance. Just because you go several levels without seeing someone, does not mean they will not show up at some point in the future. The characters in this world have their own destinies and do not just support that of the main character. Everyone has an agenda and are given the latitude to shift in and out of the focus of what we ultimately view as the “main story”. Ashgar and I were talking for a bit last night and he made the comment that there is enough story content in here to make an actual “traditional” Final Fantasy game. Thinking about this I absolutely agree and in many ways this sort of storytelling that we are experiencing is the same sort of storytelling we saw in Final Fantasy VI for example… where characters shift in and out of your party but you are constantly moving forward towards an end goal. This time we the player character are the constant in a world that is constantly changing around us.AggroChat

AggroChat 63 – There Came an Echo Show

Last night we recorded the sixty third episode of AggroChat and the fifth AggroChat Game Club game show. This time around it was Kodra’s pick a quirky voice controlled story driven RTS called There Came an Echo. My experience was vastly different than the rest of my co-hosts, but it seems that pretty much everyone other than Kodra and Tam had some measure of technical difficulties with this title. For example Thalen, Ash and I were all missing significant UI elements during our play throughs. Several of us had to content with moments when the game seemed to just stop accepting voice input commands as well. I however had the most issues with the game constantly crashing on me. There was no point when I was able to actually load anything without the game going unresponsive and having to hit the “wait for program” button in the hopes that maybe just maybe it would wake the hell up and start working again. As I said I was the only person who had issues quite that severely, and I am hoping that maybe this is just a bad patch as they recently rolled one out.

The positive however is it has good enough story and voice acting to make me futz with this game for two hours trying to make it work for me. During the course of they show the folks that did manage to beat the game exposed all the spoilery content and I got enough of a feel for how the story goes that I really want to see it play out. At the very least I am planning on watching a play through, and preferably one without much streamer dialog to preserve as much of the voice acting experience as I can. The one I was watching for a bit yesterday kept talking over the character dialog… which kinda ruined the experience. This game feels very much like a tech demo with good story and voice acting… and I would love to see this same level of effort taken and expanded into a more traditional game experience. Sure this voice control thing is somewhat neat, but I hate talking to devices. Devices like the Amazon Echo, Siri and even my own Google Phone experience are lost on me… because the last thing I want to do is talk to my device to have it do something for me. The voice control was deeply awkward for me, but your mileage may vary… Kodra and Tam both seemed to enjoy it greatly.

Chain Run Dungeons

June 26, 2015 by Belghast

Worst Party Comp Ever

Last night I was feeling more than a little out of it, or at least too out of it to actual do much of anything meaningful in Final Fantasy XIV. So after finishing my hunt quest and randoming my way into an Aery dungeon group… I opted to just log out for the night. For a period of time I considered simply going to sleep… and this is honestly the option I should have taken. The Four Job Fiesta is like a religion to my good friend Ashgar, and until the night before last I had not actually even registered for it officially. So as I sat there swaddled in a comfy blanket on the very comfy sofa… I opted to dig the xbox controller out of the console beside me and officially start my fiesta. The rest is history as I was up fairly late getting my start in the world. In past Fiestas my party comp has not been terribly horrible… or at the very least I have bought my way to freedom using the Jobfair donation system. This time however being I think my fourth year participating… I am just going to let it ride.

So when the game assigned me monk for my Wind job… I didn’t think much about it. I figured that would be an easy beginning to the game. When it gave me Berserker for my water job however… I started to dread this decision I had made. Then when I was assigned Beastmaster as my fire job… I realized this was going to be a really odd ride. I figure the answer to my freedom will once again be out level the content, and I have already gotten a start on that notion as I just defeated the Library of Ancients at level 21 which is about five levels or so off the normal pace I believe. Next time I play I will be going after my earth job.. and wondering if it will be salvation or another nail in the coffin on this horrible party. Admittedly I have never actually used the Beastmaster but I always hated how fiddly Gau was in Final Fantasy VI and never actually used him as a result. In theory this is going to be a return to that sort of thing, but I need to do some serious research on what all I need to do and when I need to do it, especially as I am just about to get an airship for the first time giving me a wider range of freedom to go off collecting abilities.

Chain Run Dungeons

In part the reason why I opted to log out last night instead of play is that I am sitting on a strange wall. Right now I am about half way to level 57 and I have a bunch of options on how to get there. I could go do all of the quests that I missed doing while skipping my way around the world and ignoring most of the side quests. I am sure that Square has intended me to level using these, and the fact that I am largely ignoring them is completely breaking their content design. I could always go join a FATE train somewhere, as this has always been a viable method of leveling especially now that so many people are doing it and there are almost always FATE groups in the party finder. It seems that Northern Thanalan is once again an active hotbed of FATE running, and in theory this would even be good experience for a Heavensward character. I am doing my daily hunts but they are honestly more for the currency provided and while they each provide a decent chunk of experience… there are far better and quicker ways to get it.

All of these are completely viable options, but I would far rather just run a bunch of dungeons. The problem is that my preference will always be to run dungeons with the Greysky Armada folks. Unfortunately they are either quiet about what they need for dungeons, or have not unlocked a given dungeon yet. I’ve run a few groups a night for the last several nights, but if I am going to rely on dungeons as a means of leveling I am going to have to step out into the larger community and just start random queuing. Now we get into the dilemma last night… I could have tanked a run for the guild, but I did not have the presence of mind to do so with strangers. Don’t get me wrong I love the FFXIV community, but dealing with anyone that I don’t already know inflicts a mental toll on me. My default and original state is that of an introvert… and over the years I have forced myself to be more extroverted… but doing so… drains me. Last night I was an energizer bunny that had wound down, but tonight hopefully I will begin chaining dungeons once more in order to get the last of my level so I can move forward in the story again and hopefully unlock dungeon four.

Unusually Trying Week

Not really sure why but this week has been a really rough one for some reason. In part I think it is because at the start of the week I had to deal with the being alone, as my wife was once again travelling. Thankfully only for a few days and as of Wednesday she should be home for the rest of the summer. It just seems like everything has been stressing me out far more than it should. I labored over the decision to go ahead and cancel the World of Warcraft account, just to keep it from auto renewing. I have stressed over a dozen different small issues at work, and I have been stressed that I no longer have the ability to do everything in Final Fantasy XIV. Right now I am a tank… and if the group already has one of those it means I have to sit out and watch from the bench as the group goes off and has fun. I liked that I could work my way into any group and fill whatever slot they happened to need, because in truth… running things with my guild is always the thing that I love to do the most.

The problem is that I will get there once again, but there is an almost insurmountable amount of leveling standing in the way. I have this odd relationship with grinding… I enjoy it, but only when I don’t realize it is there. If I am grinding towards a goal of some sort… then I realize how much work is going to be needed to get to where I want to go… and simply start to shut down. When I am just grinding as part of my default state of running around and attacking everything in sight… it becomes a happy and carefree place instead. The problem being that right now I know the end goal… and for whatever reason I am having trouble compartmentalizing and ignoring the finish line. I think I am just wired strangely… because so long as I don’t know where the finish line is I will keep pushing ahead blindly until I finally accomplish whatever it was that I wanted to accomplish. However once I know where the boundaries are, and what it is going to take to get there… the game changes and in a strange way goal setting de-motivates me. So long as I am on this fun romp of discovery, life is grand… but right now I need to somehow figure out how to ignore the goals and go back to playing everything for sheer enjoyment.

The Aery

June 24, 2015 by Belghast

Login Boss Slain

I will admit that last night I was fully expecting to spend my night playing a lot of ArcheAge. All signs pointed to World of Warcraft 6.2 being a buggy mess, and after all of the issues that we had during the head start with the Aether Data Center and not being abler to log in.. I had set my expectations pretty low. So when I got home I started something cooking in the oven and wandered upstairs in order to attempt a login, while waiting. Much to my surprise I got right in and the servers were joyfully painless. In fact around 9:30 pm last night folks were still saying they made it through without an issue. It seems that Square Enix had something up their sleeve and actually did put a fix in place even though it did not make it into the patch notes. Once upon a time I said that I had faith that they would learn from their mistakes seen during A Realm Reborn, and it seems that sure enough they did. While we are only a single day into it, I have to say that was one of the absolute smoothest “official” launch days I have experienced. Things just worked, and I was able to keep trucking along and progressing forward.

Once upon a time there was an initial crush of new players on opening day after the headstart finished. I am wondering however if this is actually the case anymore, or if now that we are so familiar with doing so… everyone just preorders to make sure they get access to the game as soon as possible. For most of the headstart my screen had been blissfully absent from gold seller spam, but I have to report last night… I got my first third party RMT message. The funny thing about it is that it was far less intelligible than normal, so I am wondering if somehow they have upgraded their filters and the spammers have had to figure out new methods around it. The reality is that hopefully the fact that they have to have completely the 2.55 storyline will deter some of the popup spam accounts at least while in the Heavensward content. Ash was saying they placed some additional restrictions on trial accounts, so in theory that might be helping as well. In any case my screen is no longer filled with a constant stream of spammers so whatever they did the improvement is appreciated.

The Aery

My goal for the evening was to be able to get through the third dungeon called The Aery, located in the Churning Mists. This location of the map as Kodra and I talked last night seems very much like the Netherstorm region of The Burning Crusade. The main difference being that instead of being an area where the land simply doesn’t exist… this is a series of floating islands high in the sky presumably over another land mass. Traditionally I have been nabbing Tamrielo to do these dungeons, but since last night was a class night for him… I had to wait around until enough other willing participants showed up. While I have generally felt like I am behind the curve it seems that in reality I am actually ahead of several of our guild members. Eventually I was able to gather up Mor, Kodra and Liyhe and tackle the dungeon. I have to say that once again I really enjoyed the experience of pushing through this instance without much prior knowledge about it. I knew that it was essentially a giant nest of dragons, and I knew that at the end I would more than likely face off against Nidhogg… but everything in between was new and fresh to me.

My bags are quite literally loaded down with spare white mage and ninja gear, because it seems like that is the only sort of thing that I can make drop when doing instances. Last night however I finally got something else to drop… apparently a tanking skirt. They call it a “Longkilt” but in reality it actually is a skirt… but a skirt that was a significant upgrade both in ilevel and stats so I am rolling with it. I figure I will not likely be wearing it long enough to warrant spending a glamour prism on it. Most of the gear upgrades I have been getting have been coming from side quests at this point. I have had pretty abysmal luck with dungeon drops, which is unfortunate considering that there is at least theoretically a lot of really cool gear that comes from these leveling dungeons. I figure at this point I am hopefully going to be running these places quite a bit for various guildies as they reach that point in the story. Right now I am pretty much offering my tanking services to anyone who wants to take me somewhere. I have yet to resort to actually random queues, not that I have a real objection to them… I would just still rather run with my free company over just about anyone else.

The Other Game

Traditionally my morning blog posts have this three section approach, but this morning I am finding myself struggling to put anything here. Right now when it comes to Heavensward content I am just overwhelmed by the amount of new things to do and experience, and if I had limitless time I would still feel like I need more of it. As for the other major item that released yesterday the World of Warcraft 6.2 patch… I admit I logged in, got the quest in my garrison to go to the Iron Docks… apparently took the wrong flight point and after running around for a few logged right back out. I lacked the drive to go back to the flight point and fly somewhere else. I guess part of me had hoped that I would simply log in, start my shipyard building and be done with it. Unfortunately it seems you have to go through a series of quests to be able to unlock this feature and right now that might be a bridge too far for me. Its like right now World of Warcraft is a packaged Oreo cookie… good on its own right, but I have a piece of homemade pecan pie with whipped cream on top staring at me… and that Oreo just doesn’t look as tasty compared to it.

With the raid seemingly in a state of flux, and my return to it uncertain… I am starting to wonder how long it will be before I go ahead and simply cancel my World of Warcraft account once more. It is a perfectly fine game, but lacks whatever it is that I am looking for in a game. I always find myself back at this point, where the little things about the game end up annoying me. Each time I go through this song and dance however it ends up being less passionate. There was a time when I would write fiery posts about how wrong Blizzard was about this or that, but in the end much like the name reclamation thing… I am just finding it isn’t worth the effort. I feel like World of Warcraft is on this course to a destination that I just am not interested in going. The ride itself is comfortable enough, and there are interesting people to chat with on the train… but eventually you realize that you don’t actually want to go to the same place they are going. I will admit this last week not having a raid to go to on Tuesday or Thursday has been like a weight lifting off of my shoulders. This alone makes me think that more than likely I simply won’t be returning from this sabbatical.