final fantasy xiv Archives - Page 27 of 69

Making Story Matter

June 21, 2015 by Belghast

The First Trial

Today begins the third day so far with Heavensward and I am feeling so completely behind. This is of course something I am doing to myself, as I am still significantly ahead of several of the other free company members, but I have this sense of falling behind. I guess it part it comes from the fact that expansions are by nature a reset. On Wednesday night I was that guy that had two max level and well geared tanks, a max level and well geared healer, and both a ranged and a melee dps also max level and well geared. I could literally fill any role I needed to fill in a party, and this gave me a great sense of confidence knowing that I could also we be useful in some way. Now as of Friday all of that is gone… and I am back to clawing my way uphill to try and arrive at that position of comfort again. I am focusing on my Warrior and as a result I can ONLY tank an instance. So that means I either fill that role or I have to watch from the sidelines as people have fun without me.

That is the stress of an expansion, the immediate feeling of inadequacy that only goes away with copious amounts of time spent pouring levels into all of your characters. It is a real struggle to keep myself from powering through everything so that I can reach that point of safety faster. Like in the back of my head I have this order in which I intend to level things to get back there, but if I am not careful the whole thing can be overwhelming. Everything is new and shiny and I am sure I will have plenty of time to level and still experience all of the content as it was intended. Right now I am held up on the first trial encounter, so I am hoping that as soon as I finish writing up my blog post I can pop in and try and defeat that so I can move forward in the story. The thing I find interesting is that they have apparently skipped “normal” mode entirely because this first trial is flagged as “hard”. I guess it makes sense as it happens post 50, but in the grand scheme of things I feel like maybe “leveling” content cannot really be deemed “hard” modes.

Making Story Matter

The story is getting extremely good, and that is the thing that I am the most impressed with. Usually when an MMO expansion happens, there is a resetting of things to square one and the world essentially forgets what its last state happened to be. I’ve always found this frustrating because I want the world to remember where it has been before. I want things to change and that the NPCs that I spent time working with, will remember who I am when I meet them again. One of the single most immersion breaking moments for me is when I encountered Alexstraza in Twilight Highlands and she had no memory of working with me at Wyrmrest Temple in the Dragonblight of Northrend. Sure years have passed by I was set up as a big damned hero through the events, and I am still the same big damned hero today. She should have embraced me as a friend based on those past events, not as another nameless and faceless NPC.

More than anything Final Fantasy XIV seems to do an excellent job of working with your character being the badass that it supposedly is. The reactions that you get are extremely human. Some people fear you for your power, and others seek to test their mettle against it. But regardless of their reaction… there is no NPC that at this point does not realize you are the “Warrior of Light”. The storyline of Heavensward takes place literally moments after the final events of 2.55, and while sure it would be frustrating to a new player to be told that they cannot enter the new content without catching up in the storyline… this is because the storyline would seem unintelligible if you did not experience the events of “A Realm Reborn”. This is really a new experience for me when it comes to MMOs and I have to say I am absolutely in love with it. Square Enix has figured out how to make MMO storyline and lore matter… and I am so damned thankful they did. I just hope that other games see how well it works in Heavensward and start adopting it in their own games.

AggroChat #62 – Flight and Chocobos

I originally thought that when we set down to record this episode of AggroChat we would end up putting aside all pretense and simply talk about the Heavensward expansion for Final Fantasy XIV. However what happened in reality is we ended up recording an extremely length show where we basically did that… AND a normal show as well. While many or our weeks revolved around the launch of this new expansion… we had to do something to bide our time until the Friday launch. Grace has apparently been completely hooked on Marvel Super Heroes so we talked about that for awhile. The other game she has been playing is Wildstar, so we spent a good deal of time chatting about how that game has been progressing.

In Final Fantasy XIV before the outage we managed to take down Shiva and Odin once again so we talked a bit about that. Then myself, Tam and Kodra have been playing an awful lot of ArcheAge so we talk again about that and our progress so far. Then finally when we start talking about Heavensward we get sidetracked on a lengthy debate about the merits of flight in MMOs and whether or not it is simply GM cheats. Each of us brought our own perspectives to the conversation and quite honestly this could have been a show topic in itself. Finally we talk about our experience so far with the Heavensward expansion to close out the show. It is an extremely packed show, and clocks in just shy of two hours.

It’s Finally Here!

June 19, 2015 by Belghast

Birthdays are Weird

Having a birthday and being an active member of social media… is a strange thing. Yesterday I was completely overwhelmed by the number of birthday wishes that came flooding through. I tried to respond to all of them and thank each person individually… but I am almost certain I missed a few people in the furious scroll. I have to say how special all of you guys made me feel yesterday, and more importantly how loved. It made an otherwise stressful day seem more manageable. I had taken the day off from work, but also my wife was to be flying in mid day. I talked about this a bit yesterday but she was off grading AP exams again, and we were both concerned that she would get delayed by the weather. Technically this did happen but she was lucky enough to make the connecting flight in Dallas and got home on time. However about the time I picked her up is when the worst of the weather starting hitting. I am not used to this whole gale force winds and pouring rain thing, so I have a whole new appreciation for the folks that are used to riding out tropical storms.

We made it home safely however and eventually changed into dry clothing. We grabbed a whataburger on the way home, and almost immediately after eating my wife was conked out on the sofa snuggling with all three cats. I put Venture Brothers on Hulu and broadcast it to the television via chromecast and continued my leveling in ArcheAge. The more I delve into this game the more it reminds me of older games. I absolutely found a Kithicor Forest last night, and for those who are not familiar with that name… it was a forest in Everquest where during the day relatively harmless and non-aggressive mobs spawned, but at night large amounts of max level undead spawned and roamed. In this case in ArcheAge I happened to find a rice paddy that by day had some crocodiles but nothing major, however when the sun sets, a whole slew of skeletons spawned in. While they were not max level they were however damned near instant spawn making it extremely easy to get overwhelmed. I am still very much enjoying this game and even though Heavensward is happening I still plan on poking my head back in every now and then.

Sleep Won

I had all the intention in the world to get up this morning at 4 am and begin playing Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward as soon as the servers came online. However when it came around to last night, and heading to sleep around 9 pm, I opted that I should just sleep in. Systems are always glitchy when they first come online, and instead I got up around 6:30 and after getting out and getting breakfast started streaming around 7 am. I have to say so far everything has been going pretty smoothly all things considering. I had to fight the login boss about five times, but eventually I got to the character load screen and managed to do the introduction quests that got me into Ishgard and house Fortempts. I have to say the new city is gorgeous, but confusing as hell to navigate. This one has tons of ups and downs and it seems like the quest you need to get to is always on the wrong level of the zone.

With this said it is going to take a significant amount of time before I can navigate it near as well as I can any of the existing cities. However I would put it along the lines of Limsa Lominsa as far as frustration taken to learn the layout. I had similar issues rolling a Marauder and starting there originally. As far as the expansion it seems to have completely cured the DPS queues, with everyone rolling Dark Knights. Apparently folks are reveling in the fact that they can now instantly queue as any dps class, and I have to admit it is giving me pause and making me want to level my ninja a bit. Instead I am forged ahead with my plan to level the warrior first. I have to say I am impressed with the difficulty of the mobs. The early quests in Ishgard reward level 115 gear and I am rolling into the expansion with 127 combined ilevel. Things hit hard, and take a long time to take down… so I cannot imagine coming straight to Ishgard after leveling through the original storyline. I guess in a way this might be why they are forcing people to defeat 2.55, because in order to do that… you have to have gotten your ilevel up significantly.

It’s Finally Here!

Right now in Coerthas Western Highlands, the fates are rolling nonstop, and I have to admit a big part of me wants to take advantage of this while I can. As a warrior I can pretty much cheese my contribution and get gold rating almost 100% of the time. Earlier on the stream I rolled up on a FATE that was 90% complete and managed to generate enough threat to get to gold before it despawned. Right now it feels amazing to see that experience bar moving again and so far I am really happy with my choice. As far as what the future will bring… I just want to play the game 🙂 I am not in a massive rush to get to 60, but I also want to be able to experience the dungeons with my friends. Here is hoping that I can unlock the first dungeon before too much long and check it out before the end of the day. In the mean time I am going to cut this blog post short and wish you all a great day… I know I will be having one as I explore Heavensward.

Splashy Pony Brothers

June 18, 2015 by Belghast

Thanks to my Friends

This morning I had every intention to sleep in, but I guess my body the way that I have trained it over the years conspired against me. I woke up moments after the alarm would have gone off normally, and then stayed in a sort of half sleep half awake state until I finally gave up around 6:30. Now an hour later… I am finally pulling myself away from my insanely scrolling twitter feed to attempt to write a blog post. I guess I had forgotten just how overwhelming being on twitter can be on your Birthday. I love each and every one of you, and maybe this year more than most… which is something I will elaborate on shortly. June is the travel season for my wife, and each year she has a series of conventions and other events that she travels to. This has been a thing for several years, but no matter how often it happens… you never quite get used to it. During the month of June she will be gone for a week, home a few days, gone another week etcetera. So the best Birthday present I could possibly get right now is her flying home today… and I am really hoping that her plane is not delayed by the remnants of the Hurricane.

Now in the past I have struggled with this existence of being alone for the better part of a month. This has generally been the time of the year when my depression flares up the most, since I am generally speaking sitting alone in a house with my thoughts and a menagerie of animals. This year however has been different, and I think it is thanks to all of you out there that relentlessly check in on me. I feel like I am surrounded by so many awesome people that seem to love me that I am never really completely alone. There is always a message waiting on my response somewhere, or someone looping me into a conversation. The AggroChat crew especially has become this second family that hunts me down if they don’t hear from me in a few days, because they know my tendencies to cocoon when the depression starts. I want to thank all of you for essentially keeping me from dropping into my normal yearly funk. My friends and my free company have been this offsetting force of amazing in my life and as a result have kind of made every day my wife has been away more tolerable.

Splashy Pony Brothers

I spent my final night in FFXIV before the downtime the same way I have spent many nights, hanging out on Teamspeak and helping folks do content. It seems so strange that last night was the end of one era of Final Fantasy and tomorrow morning will begin another. In a way I kind of like the fact that we have this entire day outage, because I guess in some way it makes the whole process seem more real. In some games I have literally logged out of one client and back into a brand new one over the course of thirty minutes, and it always felt strange. I am sure there are people out there that are frustrated by being locked out of the game for this period of time, but I guess for me it makes the experience more meaningful. I am just hoping that I can get to sleep early tonight and that the excitement won’t be too overwhelming, because in many ways it feels a bit like Christmas Eve and I am five years old.

Last night we managed to down Odin with a batch of new people, and in the process met a really nice White Mage on Cactuar, that I have subsequently friended. I am consistently surprised by just how nice people generally are when we find them through the server party finder system. In fact this one gets bonus credit because we screwed up and originally thought we needed another dps. Upon explaining our screw up she was cool and said that she also could heal the fight. Moments later we were making attempts on Odin and shockingly I think it only took us three tries before we defeated him. After that we attempted to sort out what we were doing next, with many people mentioning Titan… but in the end we wound up going to do Leviathan Extreme instead. This is one of my favorite fights, but this time they needed me to be a Paladin and do the stun lock thing. I am just not comfortable tanking as a paladin and the whole experience felt frustrating, as compared to my warrior. However I managed to do a decent enough job that we pushed through and got the defeat. To make things even cooler a pony whistle dropped and now Mor and I can be splashy pony brothers!

A Strange Birthday

So now that I am wrapping up my blog post I need to hurry around like mad. I need to be at the airport to pick up my wife around 1:30, and in the meantime I need to attempt to pick up the house. While it is not exactly in bad shape, because really I haven’t done anything that crazy since she has been gone… it needs a round of sprucing up so she has a nice place to come home to. Additionally I need to gather up the information I need to get my car tag, since she mentioned maybe doing that on the way home today so that we don’t have to get out of the house and do it tomorrow. So while I would love to hang out in my pajamas and play video games all day… I suppose I will have to go off and be and adult. It is going to be awesome to have my wife home again, but it is also a strange experience getting used to not being the only person in the room. Unfortunately it will be a short lived experience because if I remember correctly she is heading back out again on Sunday, but this time for a much shorter trip.

In the meantime my Final Fantasy XIV client is patched, and I am floored that it was only 4.3 gig. From what I am hearing this morning however they have apparently been patching in assets for months. Supposedly half of the zones that we will be exploring have been in since the launch of A Realm Reborn. I hope this all means that tomorrow is going to be an extremely smooth launch, but I still need to get my laptop started patching as well. I am sure there will be some sort of a final patch when the servers come back up from the downtime that lets the client know it is time to be Heavensward, but I am hoping it is a small one. I guess in theory this game is scaled to work well over consoles, so it makes complete sense that it would have really tight patches. So far I am impressed and I am hoping that feeling continues through the launch. This game had an exceptionally rocky start with the relaunch in August 2013, and I am hoping they have learned their lessons.

Shiva Down

June 17, 2015 by Belghast

Last Of the E3 Shows

I think at this point I am ready to be done with E3 2015 for awhile. In theory yesterday was the tail end of the major conferences. I have to say that when I originally made my statement that Bethesda had won E3, I was doing so with an over exaggerated amount of hyperbole. I have to say however as the dust settles… they still managed to put on the best event and was the only show where every single thing they announced was something I cared about, at least on some level. The most frustrating event for me personally was the Square Enix event, in part because they combined a line up of amazing games… with a high school speech classroom quality of presentation ability. I am not sure how they managed to make these games seem boring, but they certainly did. All of that said I am completely amped to get my hands on Just Cause 3… or that game that lets me blow everything up. I got a see a little bit of game play on Twitch yesterday evening that showed them taking out bridges… and I could not be more enthralled.

The surprise of the year still is Microsoft in the fact that they presented me with what was an overall enjoyable conference after several years of being frustrated by their product offerings. The problem being that last night during PC Gaming show they pretty much destroyed all interest I had in picking up an Xbox One, when they started announcing that several more previously Xbox exclusives would be coming to PC. It seems as though I am going to finally get to play Gears of War in the new premastered form, and get my hands in the new Killer Instinct. This makes me question even more of their previous “exclusivity” statements because it seems like they are treating Windows 10 and Xbox One as the same platform. I guess in the grand scheme of things I am completely fine with this. This lets me focus on a Gaming PC to get the Xbox exclusives and PS4 Console to get any remaining Sony exclusives.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5

Of all the games that I saw over the course of the last three days, the one that I am the most gleefully happy about is probably a surprising title. I am so damned excited to see the return of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater franchise to modern gaming, and yesterday I got to watch some game play on the twitch stream. It looks and feels like a beautifie d version of the game I loved and remember spending so many hours playing in the original playstation, and later the playstation 2. I cannot fully explain my love of this game, other than the fact that one upon a time I was a little skater punk kid. While I never had the skill to do half of the things that you can do in THPS, I always wanted to carve and insane session out like my one time idols. This is absolutely a guilty fantasy fulfillment experience for me, that allows someone who is relatively uncoordinated and has a shitty sense of balance to do insane grinds down every possible surface I can find.

Now Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD has been available on Steam for awhile now, and while I enjoy it quite a bit… it is missing a lot of the reasons why I enjoyed the THPS series. Firstly I loved the create a Skater mode that allowed me to essentially create a version of myself in the game and work my way through a “career mode”. This feature thankfully has been confirmed to be in the new THPS5, as is the create a skate park feature that is also missing from HD. Apparently there is going to be an in game market of sorts that will allow you to swap skate parks with folks online, greatly extending the replay ability of this title. The negative is that it will initially release on the PS4 and Xbox One and then later on the other platforms including PC. For me this is a simple decision since I played all the original Tony Hawk games on with a playstation controller in my hand, I have no problem picking this up for the PS4 which will also let me play it over my Vita. Watching folks play this game, and seeing the new version of Warehouse and School 2… that has been renamed to School 3… just put a massive cheesy grin on my face.

Shiva Down

I had originally intended to write about this yesterday, but wound up with far too much to talk about on the E3 news front. Monday night was our last raid night before the expansion lands Friday morning, and as such we focused on the two things that have been in our way for awhile now. The first of which is the last of the extreme primal encounters, Shiva. This fight is such a frustrating experience because it combines elements we are horrible at. Namely our group is bad at doing the same dance over and over. For example on Turn 9, everyone else does this method where they stack up and run as a group to drop the meteors. However for us we simply do this thing we lovingly refer to as the “Benny Hill maneuver” where we just try and spread out around the edge of the room and move as the meteors drop. Shiva combines elements of get away from everyone and stack the hell up in a way that ultimately ended up in many deaths along the way.

The worst of her mechanics is the bow attack, which she starts in phase two. This fires arrows in a 270* arc from the front of her meaning that you have to be stacked tight on her ass to keep from getting hit. What makes it worse however is that the normal damage dealt by bow to the tanks is truly insane. Ashgar and I had to essentially cycle through cooldowns while in bow phase to have a shot in hell of staying alive. On the attempt we defeated her, our strategy absolutely revolved around staying alive long enough to get a level three limit break… and then using that to resurrect the entire party and finish her off. There is something so damned satisfying about the level three healer limit break, it is like a giant screw you to the boss when you can bring back your entire party. It makes the whole experience seem like one of those insane Anime come from behind victories. While we did not get much further in Turn 9, we did manage to take down the last of the Extreme primals so I can go into this expansion with a feeling of accomplishment. Granted I know we will be fighting all of these extreme primals again partially for ponies and partially to get other guild members through the quests. I feel like I am completely ready for Ishgard now, and I am going to have so much trouble sleeping tomorrow night.