tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63538207280787721452024-03-05T19:28:12.250-08:00The Eorzean FrontierDannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-4331845036716337322020-03-06T14:23:00.001-08:002020-03-06T14:23:14.278-08:00Lets rip the band aid off and talk about 5.2I know i know. I was planning a big write up on 5.0/5.1 but honestly i think at this point its better to save for another end of expansion wrap up at this point like i did with Heavensward. I've been sick, hospitalised -hell of a christmas right?- and been busy besides so i thought i would just jump back in the saddle with the current content since x.2 is usually when the expansion really shows its hand in an MMORPG. The class balance should be solidifying, the new jobs/classes should have found their place and the x.0 story enters its final arc while setting up the overall world story.<br />
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So i've done all the new content up to this point. What did i think of it?<br />
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<i><b>Story:</b></i> by this point in the story we have dealt with the Sin Eaters, Vauthry and fan favourite Emet-Selch and discovered a lot about both ourselves and the true nature of Hydaelyn, Zodiark, the Ascians and are really left with 3 major questions. 1 - What is Elidibus' deal? 2 - If the goal is the rejoin all the worlds created when Hydaelyn shattered Zodiark and the Source then how do we get around the 13th being destroyed rather than rejoined? its kind of a jigsaw with a piece missing scenario right? and 3 - Getting the Scions back to their slowly dying bodies in the first.<br />
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Elidibus' seems at first kind of obvious. He is revealed to have possessed Arbert's corpse and with the reveal that any 'echoes of a falling star' -in our case Dalamund- in the Crystariums case a fake meteor shower- awakens the Echo which is in fact a remnant of Ascian/Amourotine creation magic that sparks into life at anything resembling the soul scarring trauma of the Terminus Event that nearly destroyed the original Source 10,000 years ago.<br />
He spins this as Hydaelyn choosing a lot of people as Warriors of Light who he convinces to abandon their posts. Maybe just to create instability, maybe to create another flood of light? The greatest twist here is that we learn "Elidibus" was used as the sacrifice to summon Zodiark as Ysale was for Shiva or Yotsuru was for Tsukuyomi. Which could mean that perhaps the white robed Ascian <i>IS</i> Zodiark or perhaps he is more than one person? a primals core shattered into 14 pieces but with the power of 'The Eldest and most Powerful of Primals' at even 1/14th of its full strength could seem comparable to Lahabrea or Emet-Selch in theory right? perhaps we have spent the last six months thinking we are down to one Ascian left but there is in fact an entire "Council of 14" of a far different sort who was even manipulating the Ascians themselves? Or to go a slightly less tinfoil route consider that Emet-Selch was a title of office as a member of the Amourotine Council of 14. The fan favourite villains actual name was Hades. So we know <i>A</i> Elidibus was the core of Zodiark but we also know there was enough time between Zodiarks first summoning and Hydaelyn's that a resistance had time to organise and splinter from the other Ancients. Maybe this Elidibus is a new character given the title? perhaps he is not tempered by Zodiark but follows him as the successor of the Elder Primals core to follow his masters wishes?<br />
For now all we know for certain is that there is a new Ancient on the cards, the woman who formed the core of Hydaelyn being introduced but beyond that a lot of this is setup for the final act while really cementing that Elidibus is one of the two main antagonists left. The other of course being Zenos.<br />
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Unfortunately in that regard we get a small reveal that Zenos has been reliving the Terminus in his dreams his entire life and a new white cloaked Ascian in what might be the body of Yotsuyus brother, or just Eldibus using a different host for each world in the story right now, ends the brief scene about to tell Zenos what Emet-Selch told us back in Norvrandt. Honestly given his body jumping artificial echo stuff i would not be surprised to see Zenos somehow show up in Norvrant or Amourot in some fashion. Creation magic and Zenos sounds like the kind of horrible combination that could lead to some "another Terminus will cull the weak from the strong" scenario Square loves for its jrpg villains. I mean Garlemalde proper IS building the gem themed weapons from FFVII now so may as well go whole hog on jrpg bad guy bingo right?<br />
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Meanwhile Eden continues and story wise its okay but mostly what i expected bar Shiva being Rhyne rather than some Shiva Twins fight of Hauchefaunt and Ysale. But we did get a double primal fight in the tier which was something i guess. Right now its hard to say where the overall story is going since i thought Gaia was from the 13th but now she is just a random Eulmore girl possessed by a voidsent? I guess giving Rhyne a friend means she will have more than just your and Feo Ul to visit her when everyone else returns to Eorzea but overall? i can't tell what direction the next story hook is going for. Though i do still think Eden will be the maguffin to solve our "how can rejoining zodiark be a threat when a world/piece of him is missing" and Eden will take norvrants excess of light aspect Aether and use it to rebalance the aether in the void of the 13th world to let it coalesce again. We save two worlds at the cost of solving the largest problem the ascians had in their grand scheme. Though of course were that possible why wouldn't they have done it when Eden first showed up 100 years ago? unless it takes Rhynes special abilities to do so of course. Still i wouldn't be surprised if Gaias Eulmore and Rhynes are not in fact the same and the reason they share so many similarities is because she is the Rhyne as Ardbert was to us.<br />
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Overall it felt like a brief story update lacking the story twists or development of the last two major updates but topping 5.0 in particular is something i have not seen another MMORPG ever do, haven't even seen another FF game do in almost twenty years so its tough to fairly judge when the bar has been set so high for me. I would say overall its a minor dip in overall intrigue and progression but still comparable to the best of Stormbloods post 4.0 content.<br />
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<b><i>Dungeons.. i mean, Dungeon:</i></b> Only one dungeon this time. Also kind of a simple one but also one that kind of has some weird stuttering or lag at times. We ride Bismark down to the sea floor to an isolated part of the ruins of Amourot to find a flooded archive of Ancient Creation magic templates. Instant monsters just as aether! overall its pretty easy and mostly just generic beasts and sahagin but the monsters are a nice number of movement heavy fights which compared to other dungeons recently -the previous Amourotine dungeon in particular- was a welcome change even if the dungeon around the boss fights felt very 'been there, done that'. Overall its fine but just fine. It feels more like a "well its an MMORPG we need to add a dungeon" than a crazy new idea the devs were burning to bring to life. Call it was it is: its gear catchup. Not the worst dungeon in the game but certainly not the most memorable either.<br />
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<b style="font-style: italic;">Raids and Rubies: </b>On the other hand i'm pretty pleased with the 8 man content. Bar one fight i'll get to Eden's second wing is much more enjoyable than the first and Ruby weapon is the most enjoyable and challenging trial we have had in a hot minute. So lets go through them.<br />
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First off we have the reveal that the thing we fought as Estinien was a prototype not for another Ultima Weapon but new models of Weapon. Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire and Diamond. A certain former Garlean general from the ARR box art has returned to Ala Mhigo to inform us of the oncoming threat blazing across the wasteland of the Gimlet Dark and its up to us to stop it. Hey Ultima and Omega were no problem right? this will be a cakewalk. Right?<br />
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Theres some minor twists involving who is piloting these mechs and how its fusing with and mutating them but i think thats a pale secondary draw compared to the fight. Might be controversial but honestly? its a two phase fight where i vastly prefer the first. The second is basically a DPS race with one neat meteor blocking mechanic but the first is fast, frantic and adds some great twists on mechanics we haven't seen i like half a decade from a FFXIV boss. Its a fight that you enjoy doing even after you figure it out because of the spectacle and how good it feels to pull it off well. Even on normal it was a refereshing bump in challenge when most of the story part launch week Titania is very much 'story mode' difficulty nowadays outside Savage and Extreme but this felt more comparable to Ozma and if you have read my past word vomit you know thats one of my favourite normal difficulty fights from back in the day.<br />
The musics great, the production value is great and the fight is a blast. Even if optional trials aren't usually your thing i recommend beating it at least once before its likely nerf just to say you did and experience it as it is now which is just a great fight.<br />
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Moving on to Eden with E5 we have Ramuh... or Ixion...Ramixion? Whatever. Openshirt centaur butler is on the scene. We need to down him to restore storms and current to the atmosphere of the Empty!<br />
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Overall a solid first fight in the new tier of raid bosses. A much more interesting and entertaining fight than Eden Prime was and with the nostalgic music track and remixes of old moves its basically just Ramuh but better in every way. It just suffers from the old '1st boss syndrome' where the moment you got the mechanics down it is a cakewalk unless you get one person not paying attention and dropping a stormcloud in the wrong place at the wrong time. Its a well made fight that i've done quite a few times and not gotten bored which happened to me with Eden Prime -excellent FF8 music remix aside- after like a fortnight.<br />
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But then hoo boy. I don't like to say this but i'm no blind brand loyalty shill so i gotta call it like i see it: This is one of the most disappointing raid fights in years.<br />
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Two primals at once. Ifrit and Garuda to restore Fire and Wind to allow for rainfall, warmth and temperate climates. Surely a double primal fight will be crazy right?<br />
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Honestly? no. Not really. You fight Garuda a bit and has like two moves that are a threat until you realise how they work and you just stand aside and Ifrit is about as bad. Theres a neat twist when they combine into a new dual element primal but honestly the fight is just red light, green light -pun not intended- movement based gameplay with what i think might be Sokens first remix i found bland and underwhelming. I hate to say it but its just a total disappointment. Its not fun. Its not even good fan service for the primals its meant to be a remix of. I would rather just fight Ifrit or Garuda extreme. Or both at the same time i guess. This was just the low point for raiding for me in general since maybe some of the throw away Goblin fights in Alexanders middle tier. But theres always gotta be an idea that sinks rather than floats now and then and boy is this one of those.<br />
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Thankfully though things take a turn for the interesting right after. That dark spirit in Gaia makes their appearance already as the 'Iconoclast' A crystalline voidsent that controls a massive flock of avian Sin Eaters. Its light and dark coming at you at once, ever played Ikaruga?<br />
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Honestly this is another Ozma style fight where its simple and brainless when you know it. But you go in blind? its so much visual noise and new mechanics that it wrecks you. But slowly the mechanics click like a very Ikaruga style light shield for dark attacks and vice versa mechanic that make for a very enjoyable raid boss. The musics great, visually its something pretty unique and mechanically its a lot simpler than it looks but it looks and feels just so tightly tuned and balanced so its never too hard nor too easy to be bruteforced. I honestly enjoy this fight the most out of the tier so far.<br />
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Then finally we get a bit of a twist. To Summon Shiva Rhyne offers herself up as the sacrifice/host becoming at times a slightly aged up more Ysayle looking version of herself and then transforming into a light aligned primal in this wierd Bayonetta 1 opening cutscene bodysuit thing. Overall its a very fan service heavy fight -and i'm not talking about the questionable taste of attire for a young girl- but in its mechanics and how it redoes some of Shivas moves but also adds in neat references to other fights and even other games. Theres no way the final fake out wipe followed by beating down a dps race meter isn't a homage to the final fight of Warcrafts Wrath of the Lich King raid in Icecrown against the Titular icy necromancer.<br />
This fight is for the most part very similar to Ramuhs. Simple mechanics but certain moves like her mirrors which echoes her attacks with different placements can mess up people not that good at maintaining orientation on such things but overall it was a nice memorable fight. Especially compared to E4 which fun as Titan was the first few times i actually had to look up what it was because in the end outside his tiny quadbike backpack its kind of forgettable. The set piece alone garauntees that wont happen here and the nice twist of adding a second elemental stable of attacks was a welcome shakeup that pulls off what E6 tried but succeeds everywhere it fails. For me at least.<br />
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I'm pretty happy with the raid bosses this patch to be honest. Sure E6 is far from a favourite of mine but the whole package feels much stronger than some other patches, in heavensward in particular where the bland loot pinata was in full effect in more than a few mid tier fights. Here the balance feels smoother and the concept of taking old bosses and remixing them like this is interesting alone. Though i do wonder how they will do a dark and light primal fight since all i can think of is Odin, Atomos, and Bahamut for dark aligned Primals and for light? ...Mogglemog i guess? we have to wait and see. Its more Yoko Taro goodness in the second Nier raid next so its going to be a while before we conclude the Eden line and for now Shiva is a pretty solid place to stop and Ruby Weapon is a wonderful side jaunt one and done trial to boot.<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">Odds and End: </i>This is a bit of an odd one since we have a lot of stuff coming in a .5 update such as the relic weapons and a new area/questline all about saving the Queen of the Hrothgar/Ronso and a bunch of side content to lose countless hours in so for now it seems a bit sparse.<br />
We have the new beast tribe but since i've been pretty sick and also capped my crafters and gatherers in the first month of the expansion its not really got any rewards down to xp worth rushing for but so far i'm almost done and the idea of just randomly picking and shaping the history of the little rat guys seems questionable at best. But at least we get more about the Viera/Vis and the Ronkan empire which is an area i felt the levelling experience teased so much but showed very little of overall. Its good to get some more of that before we head home and back to the Garlean issues waiting for us.<br />
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Then there is Ocean fishing. Or 'Rainbow Fishing' as its being called even though technically i think folks are talking about an Aurora. You head down to Limsa as a FSH from any level from 1-80 and once per <i>2 real world hours</i>, yes really, you can spend 15 odd minutes at 3 locations fishing for points that get you scrip, xp and prizes.<br />
Its a nice idea and i like Fishing don't get me wrong. I think its fair to say no other MMORPG on the market has a better Fishing set up than XIV does but honestly it kind of feels like another Diadem style thing where the moment people get the shark mount the participants will plummet and then so will the packed ships and so will the points buffing 'rainbows' that anyone can trigger for the whole party. No doubt some fishing maniacs will form party finder groups for it but it seems like unless they expand on it in future, maybe airship fishing in the sea of clouds perhaps? then it feels like a fair bit of effort for low reward and these things often seem to end up forgotten like Chocobo Racing. More power to them for experimenting rather than settling but i feel like this needs support or its going to be a ghost town sooner rather than later.<br />
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So thats that for now i suppose. I've got my crafting macros to rejigger after the move pruning, levelling Gunbreaker to 80 and getting those monotenous desynth levels up because muh OCD and maybe the Gil incentive but overall its nice to be playing more and to be writing again.<br />
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Sorry it took so long :pDannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-66444022023885786362019-12-24T17:03:00.000-08:002019-12-24T17:03:02.436-08:00The obligatory "no i'm not dead" postVery long story short for a Christmas update: I held off after the release of Shadowbringers for a big update since things like the combat shake up i wanted to wait till 5.1 to really talk about. Then blogger had an issue where it just wouldn't let my account log in. Then i started doing some more video stuff for work and thought i would step it up and make some video content. Right when My ancient Adobe CS3 mastersuite finally gave up the ghost and simply wouldn't run on modern hardware anymore. So i picked up new software like Clip Studio Paint (if you see it on sale get it, its so much better than photoshop and you own it, you dont pay a sub for it) and Final Cut Pro X which i still need time to get to grips with. Then i got hit with the worst illness of my life and i've barely had time for the game itself let alone writing.<br />
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Honestly i hate these kind of posts because its like admitting a failure but i had someone ask after i got name dropped on MassivelyOP so i thought i'd mention it. So post Christmas stuff will resume when life slows down again. I guess its nice to have people actually want something i wordvomit out to read really.<br />
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Also spoilers: Shadowbringers is fantastic. Just putting that out there for now.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjydwvwtS7s-pr1Wjxzwv8-_Q-Nug8pqdQ2FwTcIW_jn9ljdKtGGxFC-_dQNEXW6Rt40WrbUVUelGpjw7bWRxSeGq2xCUl5re3NokkBQ4maXrTRkH9yEBO-p8dzET2oN5jtq7XcRY3khURs/s1600/EMmBfVbXYAEu7w5.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjydwvwtS7s-pr1Wjxzwv8-_Q-Nug8pqdQ2FwTcIW_jn9ljdKtGGxFC-_dQNEXW6Rt40WrbUVUelGpjw7bWRxSeGq2xCUl5re3NokkBQ4maXrTRkH9yEBO-p8dzET2oN5jtq7XcRY3khURs/s400/EMmBfVbXYAEu7w5.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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So see ya' later folks, Merry Christmas!Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-14810723127717265602019-07-15T16:12:00.002-07:002019-07-15T16:30:46.747-07:00Workshop Wisdom #3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvNWrw-lcsIlXWb0aU42Tnym5jx7nXYxyD5j7oRgbEr-Rt1r3iaKVn68Fikg6VL-ZBKLCxdHlijAkcUYyGrSDXdIEvO0luJtKINM-R4UnpKncH8K-C9pVEY-b4dIJ9jEiJ1yjSiAZsPrRe/s1600/D_jTt9QXsAAMRiB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvNWrw-lcsIlXWb0aU42Tnym5jx7nXYxyD5j7oRgbEr-Rt1r3iaKVn68Fikg6VL-ZBKLCxdHlijAkcUYyGrSDXdIEvO0luJtKINM-R4UnpKncH8K-C9pVEY-b4dIJ9jEiJ1yjSiAZsPrRe/s400/D_jTt9QXsAAMRiB.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I was honestly waiting till Eden released and we got all the 5.0 content to start writing again so i would give my opinion on the expansion as a whole (spoiler: its real good) but i found this too useful early on to not pass the info on to others. In this case its Collectibles in Norvrant.<br />
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To begin with you can start getting garaunteed collectibles with the correct rating at lvl.72. Which basically means mine like 3 stacks of crap in Amh Areang, do your first Crystalline Mean gatherer quest for the respective Job and then maybe 6-9 levequests and you will hit 72 no problem. Now the scrip endgame starts early!<br />
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Now hit up the gear vendor at Fort Jobb in Lakeland and get the lvl.71 gatherer tools and gear then either craft if you can or hit the market board for HQ Smilodonskin accessories. At this point in the expansion they will be common and the HQ versions all the moreso, i snapped up everything for 400k gil which honestly is less than i made during the MSQ on my first job during early access so should be easily affordable.<br />
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Now use V or higher gatherer materia to meld till you hit 1300 gathering, 1200 perception and 700gp. Thats it. You can now get 2 450ish collectibles everytime with ease. But we can make that easier with the following macro:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">/ac “Discerning Eye” <wait.3></span></b></span></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"></span></span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;">/ac “Methodical Appraisal” <wait.3></span></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;">
</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"></span></span></b>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;">/ac “Discerning Eye” <wait.3></span></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;">
</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><div style="text-align: center;">
/ac “Methodical Appraisal” <wait.3></div>
</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><div style="text-align: center;">
/ac “Single Mind” <wait.3></div>
</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><div style="text-align: center;">
/ac “Methodical Appraisal” <wait.3></div>
</span></span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">/echo Macro Complete!</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">It also doesnt hurt to have Field Mastery II or Sharp Vision II evn though your gathering rate should be 95% or higher just in case but in my experience with the gear and stats mentioned above but the rating was already pretty high but with that as well you cannot fail to gather twice and thats good for over half a million xp which at lvl.72 is 30 nodes for the level. The more important thing here is yellow scrip. Along with new items and cosmetics to blow them on they can also be turned into tokens for folklore books. Its 100 per token and 40 folklore per book. So you need 120 of them or 12,000 scrip to unlock all 3 folklore tomes. Which across 3 jobs from lvl.72 onwards with this macro and this gear -which should be good up to lvl.76 collectibles- should be around cap if you dont just stick to the base ones which would take like 600!. Still the sooner you start getting them the better. Not only to save those leves for levelling crafters but to have the folklore required for Easy white scrip the sooner the better.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Its no huge gamer changer but its something easy to brainlessly automate and the sooner you start the better. Gotta have something to do while waiting for the healers in roulette queues right?</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">-i know this looks terrible, its a blogger glitch.</span></span></div>
Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-52547922222064745912019-06-27T04:46:00.002-07:002019-06-27T04:46:30.605-07:00Now i can post it.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzp48gzBDZNcWojWbA5cAQ8qsi3uRSGvrPxyDGt0rhS8ZeIX6lU8Gp0ZWRRg4BZNBGsswn92zqEJll7nETi4hIYlgzHPpl8gztk22WslnEysTHhndt0iE-Rbzh-VZmnJf753X9VqjGKso2/s1600/2u5mlbj5wx021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzp48gzBDZNcWojWbA5cAQ8qsi3uRSGvrPxyDGt0rhS8ZeIX6lU8Gp0ZWRRg4BZNBGsswn92zqEJll7nETi4hIYlgzHPpl8gztk22WslnEysTHhndt0iE-Rbzh-VZmnJf753X9VqjGKso2/s400/2u5mlbj5wx021.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-63647626750207009422019-06-26T04:52:00.001-07:002019-06-26T04:54:47.495-07:00Cleaning House, too early for a 'dawn of the final day' reference EditionSo here we are. Feels like its not been that long since we were doing this in Heavensward but the time is rolling around again where its like 48 hours or less till Early Access for Shadowbringers. Which means its time to clean house!<br />
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So the best reminders for players old and new are as follows:<br />
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<b>1 - Clean out your inventory AND your Armory:</b> If you haven't maintained this while levelling up all the jobs then you probably have an inventory full of crap. Its all precursor to levelling gear again now so you take the piece for SAM/MNK with the highest ilvl and store, sell or desynth anything below that. Do that for every gear type and every job you have. Then move on to your inventory. Have you not used something for months? then its time to store it or sell it as other things are going to replace it.<br />
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<b>2 - The days of Main Stat Materia is over:</b> So pack that crap up, port over to Black Brush Station in Central Thanalan and -do the quest there if you haven't- head north to the Golbin materia fusion npc to recycle all that useless Materia into stuff like Crit, Det, Direct Hit and so on for whatever your main jobs stat weights are.<br />
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<b>3 - Dump those Moogle Tomestones:</b> Even if like me you didn't want to grind out for Namazu earrings and owned all the mounts and stuff already there might be something you can buy to throw on the market if you earned any of these tomes. Soon they will be gone.<br />
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<b>4 - Plan your route and log out accordingly:</b> Are you planning to mainline the MSQ? then log out at the Scions base in Mor Dhona. Planning to jump right into Dancer? then Limsa Lominsa is your destination and Gridania for the Gunbreaker.<br />
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<b>5 - You don't have job quests this time but Role Quest that unlock during the questing process in The First:</b> Just so you remember not to spam teleports around the world trying to find which npc continues your job quests. They are now a level 80 'epic quest' and everything before that is new Role Quests that take place in the past and let you play as Norvrandts Warriors of Light instead to flesh out the history of The First and what lead to the Sin Eaters taking over the world. You will unlock them in the new zones during the questing experience though only one is apparently mandatory.<br />
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<b>6 - Going Bunny or Lion? then get naked first:</b> No this is serious and no its not just for people on Balmung. To save time and avoid queues ensure you have your Fantasia, get to a load easy area and remove your gear, pop the Fantasia and -after you are sure you are DONE done till Shadowbringers you log out. Next time you log in the expansion should be live, you select your character and change their appearance <i>then</i> log in and hopefully only have to deal with a login queue once. Assuming nothing goes wrong with the character creation stuff.<br />
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<b>7 - Check the marketboards for last minute deals:</b> People cleaning house will be dumping stuff on the market. That means you might find something that will be far less common when its rewarded from content being run less. Don't forget we have World Visit now so you can check your whole data center for people dropping their garage sale deals on the market ready for snapping up.<br />
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Its a small list but you don't want to forget and have to deal with some bullshit later right? So check off the list, check your character and heres to a (hopefully) seamless expansion launch and i'll see you in Norvrandt!Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-52042885743046704852019-05-24T08:35:00.002-07:002019-05-24T08:35:27.983-07:00Shadowbringers Live Letter Part 1: or "How Yoshi powerbombed the sound guy"<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4t-RWiLzniLzMxp7JDS9TfszGs5nG_L8IH0z3jx1qwohdvDaSQzTjKEa01STAb4R-awsAtyI8KJ55O1l1huvIRHMCPKN-Y1fp_WR91UjKR13iUpATpAmwak2ZR6UuL5hdQh1FwGYUUMiv/s1600/6zyrpminf1031.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="541" data-original-width="966" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4t-RWiLzniLzMxp7JDS9TfszGs5nG_L8IH0z3jx1qwohdvDaSQzTjKEa01STAb4R-awsAtyI8KJ55O1l1huvIRHMCPKN-Y1fp_WR91UjKR13iUpATpAmwak2ZR6UuL5hdQh1FwGYUUMiv/s400/6zyrpminf1031.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">credit to The_Ganey on reddit for the image</td></tr>
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Well first off <i>Fucking Woof</i> that was painful to watch at times. You could see Yoshi practically start to boil over like a kettle left on the hob too long. The friends i watched the stream with all said some variant of "Oh Yoshi is going to tankbust that sound guy when this is through" and i wouldn't be surprised. Don't get me wrong in the end we got a wealth of information but holy crap did the audio guys shit the bed on this stream on a level i personally have no comparison for. From random bursts of very loud, high pitched screeching static to "uhh, maybe just hold one of your mics up to a tv?" comments while leaving the mic on while going on a break this was <i>bad</i>. Which for us in the west at like 10pm was no biggie. Just kick back and relax, but in Japan where the core domestic audience was going out to work? thats a real social faux pas. They had to give a deep bow apology at the end and put something up on the Square Enix website. Along with a job posting for a new opening in sound engineering for streams. Ain't that somethin'?<br />
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So onto the actual content of the stream. Largely it was job changes. There was some interesting tidbits at the start but not too much. Regardless i'm just going to run through my notes with a bit of input from my worthless opinion on each. Here we go!<br />
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<b>General information:</b><br />
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<b>-<i>"14 Million Players"</i></b>: Not subscribers mind you, at this point i don't think any MMORPG including WoW is realistically pushing over 2 million active subscribers for a game as the sub model and interest in the genre in the mainstream is at a low its not been since the 1990's. But 14 million players is a lot of game copies sold. For comparison FFXV -a game that went way overbudget and contributed to the largest fiscal loss since the Square Pictures disaster of the early 2000's- 'only' sold 8.1 million. That means a steady increase in new players and while not all of them will stick around it does mean the game, as mentioned in the last earnings call, is still steadily growing and profitable which for us players just means we don't need to worry about budget cuts or content slowdown in the near future.<br />
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<b>-"Pets are no longer autonomous units you must control but largely cosmetic with their abilities tied into your own skillset":</b> This ones a bit sad in a way. Your egi's, Fairies and new stuff like a certain MCH skill i'll mention later are not targetable party members in their own way anymore. Just a flashy effect which honestly i don't think i'm a fan of. It also means Topaz Carbuncle and Titan Egi can't tank anymore as they can no longer count as an entity in combat to hold aggro and will be reworked. Of all the changes shown in the live letter this is the one i just kind of squinted and made a 'hmm' noise at. Maybe it will be an improvement but so far it sounds like one sacrificing major rpg flavour for convenience that i can't say i'm a big fan of.<br />
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<b>-"As part of improving combat flow and to add new mechanicas some existing and new skills will have charges on their own external cooldown":</b> So not too alien a concept if you played stuff like Monks in World of Warcraft. You can have a skill on your hotbar that every few seconds builds up a charge at a set rate to a number like 2 or 3. You can use one when you wish or burn all of them in a row instantly. The example given being DNC's no target required forward dash/blink. It can build to a charge of 3. You can burn them all to cover a large distance instantly or use only 2 and save 1 while the charges start to tick back up. Its a simple change that i can say from experience works very well for what its intended to do. If your party members remember to keep track of when you exhaust them all!<br />
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<b>-<i>"Main stat materia is gone"</i></b>: This one left people a little confused. Not that its gone thats self explanatory with the stats bundled into future gear. But more the questions of <i>"So what do armour crafters do to make money now?"</i> and <i>"what do i do with the stacks of main stat materia i currently own?!?"</i> because all they said is its being out and out removed. Not replaced by something like Mhatchi matter to trade in for secondary stat materia. Its just creating a vaccum in each servers economy overnight with nothing -as far as we know right now- to replace it. I don't really rely on materia as much as selling my retainer loot for easy money but the stream chat was full of comments like <i>"well there goes my entire revenue source"</i> or <i>"so i guess my crafter job is useless at endgame?"</i> and that felt like half an answer that missed out the most vital information. Maybe they just intend for it to balance itself out over Shadowbringers and it probably will but its still kind of iffy.<br />
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<b>-<i>"Only one Job quest at lvl.80 with 'Role Quests' replacing them from 70 onwards as you level"</i></b>: This one seems pretty easy to explain. Some job quests get more love than others already and we are getting closer to 30 jobs with each new job released. How many of those would be phoned in like the HW WHM questline nobody enjoyed if the resources got spread thinner and thinner with each major content release? This also explains what the Alphinaux and Ysh'tola segments of the last two patches were teases for. In Shadowbringers we will get quests as we level for your role, not job. But these are very much Role Playing quests comparable to certain sections of past games like FFVI. You stop playing your character and no doubt using the echo or simply by being told a story you take on the role of one of the past heros on The First. This is a really cool idea. We are on a different world so more info on our Job and the characters we know doesn't make sense and at the same time we can flesh out this alternate world more by giving its past some more weight. Making it seem less like a new theme park crapped out to spend time in for an expansion and more like a world that was storywise chugging along right beside ours the whole time. Something that other MMORPG's alt world expansions like the famously disliked Warlords of Dreanor really failed to do and was commonly criticised for it feeling like a side jaunt into a theme park in a vacuum where nothing really felt like it mattered. Plus hopefully this can make the lvl.80 quests be a bit more of a bigger affair comparable to stuff like the RDM battle in the Weeping City and not just filler for fillers sake.<br />
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<b>-"Crafters and Gatheres meanwhile will have 4 questlines centered around a location called 'The Crystarium Mean' as they level': </b>This one feels a little more iffy to squash things together. Like maybe Botanist and Fisher are helping catalogue and save some endangered species on the verge of being added to the list of now extinct life wiped out by the Sin Eaters and the blinding light burning off all habitable ecosystems on the surface of The First? we have to wait and see but its strange we still have no news about Rebuilding Ishgard quests huh?<br />
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<b>-"Role Skills system revamped entirely":</b> So now you don't pick and choose skills. The days of levelling a alt class just to get a single spell for your main job are now truly dead and gone. Now you will get a silence at a set level, a self heal at a set level and so on. With ranged magical dps having the least and tanks having the most. With a new none magical silence to act as a stackable stun where enough players can shutdown powerful boss abilities. The example given was a Chimeras 'Rams Voice' the bane of Healers and laggy melee DPS everywhere. These skills will now have an orange aura around them to show you can spam stuns from the party to shut down these moves like big aoes, tank busters and buff purges.<br />
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<b>-<i>"Quality of life improvements"</i></b>: A range of smaller focus comments like normalising tank gear, reducing bloat on skill lists to make room for the new ones and most interestingly 'making healers refocus on healing'. You can still dps but it should not longer be mandatory. Personally i like to dps rather than standing around waiting to whack a mole but i hope the now uniform 10k mp bar replacing mp and tp bars we have right now in the live game means dps'ing as a healer isnt a huge mp loss to brute force sticking to heals. Beyond that they paradoxically want to <i>"reduce synergy so you don't feel like certain jobs are mandatory"</i> while at the same time calling Dancer <i>"the synergy king they hope isn't mandatory for raid groups"</i>. Which feels in hindsight more like they just want the underused classes to get more play, not that theres anything wrong with that of course.<br />
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<br />
<b>New Job Skills:</b><br />
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<b>-Ninja: </b>Kage Bunshin no Jutsu summons Shadow Clones that double your attacks, essentially a much stronger Duality. Visually neat and i hope it changes it enough that its not the playstyle in SB i hate but i remain skeptical.<br />
<b>-Dragoon: </b>Building up the SB version of the Dragon gauge now lets you use moves like Nidhogg possessed Estiniens Flashy dive attack. Looks cool but mechanically seems very similar. Shame we didn't see anything of the rumours saying DRG would get their Dragonling pet like in FFXI, so far at least.<br />
<b>-Summoner:</b> Can Summon Pheonix, not a demi or egi but finally at lvl.80 Summoners are starting to summon actual Summons. Egis are now more visual effects than pet characters and can be changed instantly on the fly even in combat to combo into various 'Egi attacks' as part of the Summoners rotation. Not much to say about this. Shame the pet aspects gone but Summoners finally getting their FFIV/IX/X Job fantasy have been patient and deserve it.<br />
<b>-Dark Knight:</b> Inner Darkness literally rips out your Darkness which once again takes the form of Fray from the HW questline to fight alongside you. Effectively a Jojo style STAND ability which might just be Duality for tanks but if theres some form of intentional move delay you could drop a taunt then focus on more dps as Fray then taunts again. Given the overall 'you shouldn't need to spam to play well' focus of Shadowbringers this feels like a neat, unique way to get around it for the job.<br />
<b>-Black Mage: </b>Now can hold Astral/Umbral stacks for longer and has a new single target Flare -but don't call it Ver-Flare or the RDM will get jealous!- that you can build up two casts of on your new gauge. Simple but its a simple job really. You build up fire for the big boom but now its finally got a single target option which as a job that was basically the aoe trash pest control is a nice addition to its toolset which gets very samey on single target fights.<br />
<b>-Scholar: </b>Gets a new Titania Egi named seraph for super heals as a cooldown. Honestly as the healer summoner its been a long time coming for that to get some love. For a class fantasy based around 'finding lost arts of healing summoning' it felt way too focussed on being 'The Tonberry loredump job' and this is a nice addition to the flavour of the job.<br />
<b>-Astrologian:</b> Complete card system rework. Honestly a bit wary about this one and i will have to wait till just over a month from now to get my hands on it myself. AST is my go to healer job and i hope its not just a buff turret now. We will have to wait and see for this one.<br />
<b>-Gunbreaker:</b> Uses attacks to build a bullet gauge, sorry MCH its not yours anymore, to buff and defend party members while having an off cooldown mechanic to crit like Squall's R1 on attack mechanic from FFVIII<br />
<b>-Red Mage: </b>A new AOE spell to follow up Ver Holy/Flare called 'Scorch' which is an element free explosive spell. Bit 'eh' but as one of the last new jobs i didn't expect many changes when it just had a rebalance for the last patch in the live game. Dull but if it ain't broke right?<br />
<b>-Monk:</b> Greased Lightning now stacks to 4 for more raw dps and is easier to maintain. It feels -and theres more coming later- that Monk is the new Machinist and they don't know what to do with it but just know the hardcore Monk players aren't happy with it. I expect a lot more changes for this job as the expansion unfolds.<br />
<b>-Paladin:</b> A new gap closer and part of their rotation makes skills like Celerity instant cast. Like RDM very safe changes but again 'designed so you don't need to spam abilities' which is nice since Flash Spam to salvage an overeager dps'es mass pull is stressful/annoying to deal with.<br />
<b>-Warrior:</b> Very little new stuff. Only one stance now with higher dps rolled in as baseline. Effectively the dps that can taunt everyone joked it was but now thats officially its role. I have yet to hear a WAR complain about this.<br />
<b>-Dancer: </b>Rarely attacks themselves but moves around the arena to input directional based combos to fill their guage and buff the party while building up for powerful high damage finishers or heals. Effectively Final Fantasy's version of the Monster Hunter Hunting Horn support role and as a RDM main i find the concept fun and i'm eager to play it but its core mechanic they get to later sounds like a nightmare for players with bad ping.<br />
<b>-Machinist:</b> Gauss Barrel and Bullets gone, in its place we have all of Edgars tools from FFVI and the ability to summon a Magitek Knight to fight with us including a pile bunker finisher. If you look back at my last post i said MCH needed the most love and in this liveletter it really explains why we only got two new jobs. Because technically Machinist is the third. I've seen nothing but positive reactions and a lot more people starting to level MCH in time for the next expansion because of it.<br />
<b>-Bard: </b>At level 80 unlocks a new 'Soul Voice' gauge for new, more powerful spells. Basically just a new power tier to replace older outranked, or in a few cases removed, songs. More of BRD being BRD. Nothing bad but nothing too interesting either.<br />
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Overall the new abilities range from Cool to just kind of 'eh' as a baseline but nothing thus far has gotten a bad reaction from the playerbase so they are clearly doing this right on paper. What holds up in the live game remains to be seen of course. Right now however it looks neat and what followed was some more info per role that is pretty interesting in terms of significant changes to the dynamics of gameplay.<br />
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<b>Tank changes:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>-"All tanks are now designed as both Main and Off-Tank viable":</b> This is one of those things that needs to be seen in game to see how effective it is but on paper its a sound idea. There are jobs -particularly during Heavensward- that were seen as MT or OT exclusive and would not be taken for raids if they weren't the right job. Which frankly sucks and this is a change to combat that. You want to Tank then you play the Job you enjoy. End of story and thats really all we want when we tank right?<br />
<b>-"All Tanks will now have some skills that buff the rest of the party or grant them defensive skills": </b>I can see the players that just want to lay back and tank something simple as an aggro magnet for the party finding this a chore on paper alone but personally i like it. The Tank is the vanguard. The forward leader of the rpg party. So the idea of them inspiring their party members is really cool and since i'm used to AST throwing out buffs i won't have trouble doing the same as a Tank.<br />
<b>-"There is only a Tank stance now, the DPS one is gone and that is all baseline toolkit all the time": </b>I guess this also makes you question why keep stances at all then but maybe its just some way to balance the levelling curve or something. They said themselves people stuck to the stance that was the greatest DPS gain so they just made it the norm so i guess the only change is less tanks losing threat because they stance danced too long?<br />
<b>-"Enmity generation combo's are removed":</b> so effectively more passive threat gen and less doing the same 3 moves to fight with the other tank before the tank busters. With some moves changing to compensate. The Example given in this case that Paladins Riot blade no longer combos to build enmity but combos to give a instant cast proc for things like Clemency. Which gives you a wider variety of things to do without interrupting the flow of combat which is a new way to make it feel more like an rpg and less like an mmo, a genre i love but is not know for its smooth gameplay flow across most of the genre.<br />
<b>-"All Tanks have a baseline 20% damage reduction/Enmity generation stat": </b>Inb4 'tanking for dummies' comments but this seems to be part of the role wide normalisation. If you tank you are basically the DPS that holds threat and takes less damage. Again more 'play the job you want rather than whats meta' which as someone that accepts but hates the concept of rpg 'metas' at all i like the sound of but know numbers are numbers and the new meta will show up not long after.<br />
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Overall some interesting changes that look to simplify the role as a whole while allowing each individual job to have more flavour and fun stuff to do. Which when you are playing should be how it goes. You want to play a Job because its fun without worrying how other jobs do your job better the whole time.<br />
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<b>Healer changes:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>-"Healers all being unified to refocus on healing first, dps second if ever":</b> I like to dps so i'm a bit wary of this making healers boring but they are following the same design as tanks to make them all feel unique without any feeling less mandatory so maybe it will work in the longrun? things like Protect being removed are a bit sad from a nostalgia point of view but its really just a pointless, mandatory upkeep buff at this point so i can understand in the name of making room for cool new skills per job.<br />
<b>-"New actions to balance out each jobs repetoire":</b> The examples given being a new instant cast heal for WHM and SCH having more active spellcasting and less bubbles. Essentially so you dont have moments where you encounter situations where you dont have the skill for the job but others jobs do. The jobs will still have their niches but you wont find people going <i>"i wish X other Job was here instead"</i> because you couldn't do something. To use a DPS example the fact RDM will now have a silence like every other dps means it wont have moments where any other job could stop a nasty spell cast while it just stands around and takes it because they have no options. Same thinking applies to healers here and downtime as a healer is the most boring part of MMORPG combat for me so i hope this reduces that.<br />
<b>-"For WHM Lillies accumulate at a fixed rate automatically with skills proc'ing a Black Lilly for a new damaging skill":</b> So the focus now is less on "oh i guess i generated some lillies, neat" and more having a fixed rate of lillies and knowing when and where to use them while the Black Lilly appears to trigger a proc to cast Holy 2 which damages and heals or buffs the party. Its a small change but makes Lillies feel like a part of the job rather than a tacked on side thing you don't even really have to notice at all.<br />
<b>-"SCH is mostly the same with some more active spells to cover the changes coming to pets in Shadowbringers":</b> So with Eos and Selene literally just being a cosmetic now -they even do the same thing since one was numerically, objectively superior in 100% of situations for years now- the only fairy that matters is the new Titania Egi 'Seraph' which is basically the new 'oh shit' big aoe heal for Scholars. Overall its a just thats lagged behind in player interest in terms of healer jobs and maybe managing the fairies was part of that and the dev team had the numbers to prove it. Personally i think its a 'fine' job but just 'fine'. This didn't sell me on it but hopefully makes it more active as more than a heal turret for people who love the job but found it growing stale in Stormblood.<br />
<b>-"AST cards are now all straight buffs with each suit for a specific role, at lvl.80 they can change stances at will during combat for a limited time":</b> So in terms of healing AST is my main job so this was a little worrying. It looked at first glance like losing flavour and complexity for the sake of others not playing the job because they couldn't deal with the gameplay i enjoyed. That could still be the case but it looks like they are focussing more on AST being the hard buffer healer rather than a cobbled together blend of ARR versions of WHM and SCH. Which could be great and i hope it is. But as someone who loves the current state of AST this does worry me some. The new lvl.80 skill however may seem a bit underwhelming but boy is that going to be useful in Alliance raids i can tell you that right now!<br />
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For Healers it feels like a lot of trimming and shaping to fit an idea of what each job should be without putting them in the same position they are trying to get Tanks out of. It feels experimental and honestly could go either way. But as long as we get to something that works i'm hopeful for it turning out okay. Thats the beauty of MMORPG's. No mechanic or class is ever truly set in stone and nothing thats unpopular or anti-fun has to stick around forever.<br />
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<b>DPS Changes:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>-"Some jobs, effectively everything but BRD, DNC and MCH have had their rotation conditions made less strict":</b> Effectively dealing away with the <i>"I missed this one button due to lag or having to move to avoid a plume or something and have to startup my buffs and mechanics all over again fresh" </i>stuff that made us all at some point or another eat a one shit kill because we chose to risk trying to pull off that finisher before moving. I've done it, you've done it we've all done it. At first i assumed they just meant making things less complex but when you see the changes below its more of the 'balance the jobs out so none consistently outshines the others in theory'. Which lots of MMORPG's try as their 'bring the player, not the class' ethos but it rarely means more than a numbers shift which changes a meta at best in the long run. I can't complain as long as there are fun jobs to play but again we gotta wait and see on this idea.<br />
<b>-"Lots of MNK players complained about the state of the job in SB so even though the developers didn't want to they added a 4th greases lightning stack for dps increases":</b> This one came out strange and feels like not nearly the rework the job needs. But its a start. Albeit a very small one.<br />
<b>-"Heavy Thrust is gone to streamline DRG's combos":</b> No complaints from players i've seen. Its an annoying upkeep that can interrupt and totally screw up the flow of your rotation. It should have been gone in Heavensward.<br />
<b>-NIN's enmity moves are gone as Tank changes make them redundant":</b> Well i hope they are sure about that. I don't know how many times back when i was a NIN main that i had to save a healers butt when the tank had trouble holding aggro off them using the NIN's skills.<br />
<b>-"Moving between combat as RDM slowly depletes your gauge":</b> My knee jerk reaction is "aw shit, this sucks man" but really if i'm saving a verholy or flare its because we are already nuking our way through packs anyway and it appears to decade very slowly so it seems more for saving it to cheese fates or something rather than in dungeons so maybe its just to compensate and balance their new Scorch spell being a big numbers opener to steal threat or something? god knows in SB i can steal threat all the time as RDM if i get a good string of procs going.<br />
<b>-"No significant changes to BRD and SMN rotations":</b> Somethings got to be the safe option i guess. But i see it more for BRD than SMN based on the previews thus far.<br />
<b>-"Nobody liked the gauges, gauss barrel or ammo mehcanics so we effectively redesigned MCH from the ground up": </b>Like i said this is really our third new job this expansion. With GUN taking up the focus as the bullet using rooty tooty slash and shooty job -and MCH being abandoned en masse as the objectively worse job in the game in Shadowbringers- they are shifting focus to bring Machinist back to its engineer/magitek routes more in line with Magitek Knights and Machinists of past games. I liked the reload flavour but overall it felt like trying to add complexity for the sake of it. Of the three HW jobs it was always the stand out sore thumb that felt unfinished and hopefully its going to get the love it deserves. The devs sound happy with it, MCH mains sound finally happy about anything and its sold a lot more players in picking the job up after dropping it months or years ago at this point. I hope it works out.<br />
<b>-"SMN relies far less on Aetherflow, you shouldn't be focussed on saving a full stack for boss fights":</b> This seems like a nice way to cut down on complexity. Its very much felt like there are three stages of ramp up to get SMN to a solid 30 seconds of its peak potential before burning out and having to start the ramp up again. It feels like only being a full contributing member of the party for like a third of the time and from a design standpoint that just sucks. You shouldn't spend most of your playtime in combat trying to get to the fun part. Its not some massive dramatic change but should be one that makes SMN mains enjoy their experience as much as the other dps which honestly should never have gotten to the point its at now to begin with. This was a longtime coming.<br />
<b>-"With Job synergies scaled back across the board certain songs are now gone with new ones to replace them, meanwhile procs will occur more often and build up new effects":</b> Again simple but welcome. BRD is a solid job but its core rotation can leave you starved for procs and just wishing for a single proc while you watch the RDM and BLM of the party burning through them at a breakneck pace. BRD has always been a funny blend of <i>"Yoshi likes bards but also wanted to be an Archer"</i> thats left it thematically a bit confused but with some of the changes in the last few patches an the new 'Soul Voice' gauge i hope its more in line with BRD's of previous games like some of the other job changes. Also lets hope DNC doesn't make it feel totally redundant. Speaking of-<br />
<b>-"DNC chooses a player to be their 'Dance Partner' and they move together to build up 2 step basic or 4 step technical dances to buff the party in general and each other to a greater degree as your partner builds YOUR gauge for you. DNC also is the first 'PVaE' dps. With the same attacks doing different effect, e.g single target or AOE, based on distance to the enemy": </b>Hoo Boy did they end on a strange on. First off we have a really neat idea for a Hunting Horn style support job, but how does it compensate for if their dance partner lags or DC's? thats going to be interesting to see in practice. The new adaptive combat abilities however is very interesting and it would be cool to see other jobs get some of this sort of thing as well. As a guy who likes support roles like Hunting Horn in Monster Hunter this job as me excited much more than MCH does. Its a shame its another dps rather than a healer but overall the more i see the more i want to get my hands on it and try it out.<br />
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They finished with the new Benchmark trailer -which interestingly may have teased TRUST Npc's in the open world rather than just squadron reskins for dungeons- a reveal of a left handed gaming peripheral Yoshi worked with famed fighting game controller designer Hori to create and news of a Titania challenge at their E3 event where the second half of the Live Letter including the patch notes will be shown.<br />
Overall, massive tech support screw up's aside of course, there was a lot to get excited for, a little to worry about, and more general build up of excitement.<br />
It feels like without being divided between two major workloads like Ala Mhigo and Doma we are getting a more focussed but experimental expansion which can always go bad as easily as it can be good but from what we have seen there is nothing that worries me that can't be fixed in a patch so far. I'm excited for the new mechanics like Role Quests and hope they give just as much love to Crafters and Gathers so they feel less like being a collectibles bot.<br />
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Now we just wait for the final live letter and any last minute big reveals (please not another Diadem/Eureka Yoshi!) and beyond that its time to start counting the weeks if not days. Its currently May 24th at the time of writing this and the July 2nd release date -not counting early access of course- is getting real close already. Boy has Stormbloods last few months really flown by!Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-65833858475445868562019-05-14T07:19:00.004-07:002019-05-14T07:19:43.687-07:00I'm finally done!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For like what 2 months? eh better late than never i suppose. I got through the Disciples of Hand and Land really fast thanks to collectibles. I was done before they even added the Namazu beast tribe in fact. Combat Classes however was a different story. I hit RDM, DRK and AST fast at the start of the expansion but really fell off and got most of the others through beast tribe dailies and the odd Main Story or Alliance Raid Roulette. In hindsight you spend too much of the expansion on alt jobs just rerunning Bardam's Mettle which can be a nightmare when the healers not able to deal with an overconfident tank bulling that entire winding path at the start in one run. It was a real easy recipe for alt burnout in a period with some great videogame releases. Hard Drive death aside of course.<br />
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So with all of them levelled, Job storylines finished and as geared as i want them to be here is a rough opinion on each before the big combat revamp coming with Shadowbringers:<br />
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<b>Paladin:</b> I know a lot of people that will swear by PLD. Its the bread and butter tank. The sword and board shieldwall that protects the party. It still is and it works just fine. Its also super boring. For me at least. They are visually boring, the quest story is boring and i left it last purely because i was doing this job for completionists sake and no other reason really. If you liked it in HW its still the same but does better.<br />
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<b>Warrior:</b> This job surprised me. I was never fond of WAR and it still does the worst first impression in beginner group content in my opinion. But nowadays? honestly really fun. The squishier tank but it holds threat very well and does a lot of damage to boot. They feel fast and theres a satisfying weight to their animations and this time the story was pretty fun. It was nice to see a different aspect to the whole Inner Beast storyline. I ended up tanking the most recently as WAR and never expected that back in HW.<br />
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<b>Dark Knight:</b> This one sucks but its lessened slightly by the very likely notion that this is the poster job of the next expansion and will get a rework to go with it. Because right now DRK sucks. It feels weak, the story around it is weak and you are just chasing one proc forever. This was my main Tank job in HW but now it just feels so inferior in mechanics, numbers and general fun that it feels like it got left behind.<br />
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<b>White Mage:</b> Boring but competent. The PLD of healers really. Everyone loves a good WHM backing them up, nobody goes "boy, i'm having such a good time playing WHM" though because its just 'bleh'. The lillies feel bland. You cast basically the same stuff you did in HW with no variance for the most part and thats about it. Its inoffensive but reliable.<br />
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<b>Scholar:</b> Tried some new things which made it more than the bubble healer with a pet but its just not as reliable as either of the others and its story is neat but beyond that theres a reason you don't see too many scholars nowadays.<br />
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<b>Astrologian:</b> Still my favourite healer no question. You can aoe, you can buff, bubble, dot, drop timebombs and so much more. The story is a very interesting look into Geomancy and the new abilities are a nice option to have during the times where your cooldowns ensure theres nothing to spend a royal road on. My go to healer job that is fun, visually distinct and the mechanics around the Tarot deck only got better in SB.<br />
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<b>Monk:</b> Great story that feels very tied into the Ala Mhigo stuff, the job itself however? eh kind of the same. It does high damage and has good survivability when solo but its very bloated and needs a look at from the ground up in my opinion.<br />
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<b>Dragoon:</b> DRG is 'if it aint broke, don't fix it' as a dps job. The story and mechanics add onto whats already there. It looks the same, plays mostly the same and if you love DRG in HW then the SB version will be right up your alley as well.<br />
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<b>Ninja:</b> This ones a bit of a sore spot for me. I mained NIN since it first came out in the Dreams of Ice patch in ARR and loved every minute of it right up to downing Niddhog and Alexander. Then SB happened and i was hopeful that the whole Doma aspect meant a lot of love for the far eastern job. Instead it feels like Samurai out and out replaced it. The story was bland and forgettable, the new jutsu ability feels more like a punishment than a power fantasy and it just flows worse than it did in HW and outputs worse damage. RDM replaced it as my main for a good reason: its not fun anymore.<br />
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<b>Samurai:</b> speaking of SAM this one took a while to grow on me. Its very much just building a combo for a buff, build one for aoe and build another for a finisher. Its simple. Its raw damage is high and when you have the full toolkit it does end up feeling like how NIN did in HW. The story was a little generic but its a Samurai story so of course they had to go the route they did with it in the Doma expansion.<br />
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<b>Bard:</b> BRD like DRG is another expanded but still competent job. It does what it did before but better and if you enjoyed it you still will. Nice story however and i did not expect this one to tie into Ala Mhigo as much as it did. Not too original but made me very nostalgic for ARR in its style and tone.<br />
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<b>Machinist:</b> Honestly i think the team doesn't know what to do with MCH. The new meter feels like filler. The new moves feel like filler and would you be surprised if i told you the story feels like filler? its not terrible and does the damage in a pinch but its kind of being left behind by the playerbase at large for a reason.<br />
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<b>Black Mage:</b> This was my original Job back in ARR pre NIN but HW changed it in ways that really soured me on it. Happily i can say SB really rebalanced it in a nice way. It still lacks mobility and seems to lag behind on single target fights but its the aoe dps king and the story this time around was pretty interesting and expanded more on the history of the job which too many others failed to do over the last few years.<br />
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<b>Summoner:</b> Another job like BRD or DRG that feels like a natural expansion of its core mechanics with a nice story to go with it. You really feel the new power tier when Summoning Demi Bahamut and while it feels like the job lost a little aoe capability to compensate it just feels so nice when you get the rotation down.<br />
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<b>Red Mage:</b> My new main job and easily my favourite both in terms of story and playstyle. The story of Amdapoori and Mhachi defectors and the revisit to the Weeping city were really interesting and memorable. The class blending melee and ranged while having healing to cover the raid when both healers die is a nice variety of options which keeps you on the move and always doing something even when theres nothing to dps. You heal, you buff the party, you raise dead players. All while building up spell meters to do a melee combo ending in a mininuke spell. Its simple, satisfying and while the dps might be a little low the support it brings to the party overall really makes it the most enjoyable dps job for me.<br />
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<b>Blue Mage:</b> While still stuck back at lvl.50 right now BLU is a very enjoyable job. I enjoy being able to heal, dps or tank in dungeons with friends and the scavenger hunt was a hoot with the story giving us a bit of info on the new world as well. It just kind of tapers off though and outside the carnivale' gets quickly forgotten by most. Very, Very fun job i would main in all content if i could but as it is right now its just a novelty to play with friends in ARR content.<br />
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So overall its a bit of a mixed bag. Most of whats good is just things remaining the same but expanded on and the bigger reinventions often didn't sit well with me. Jobs i liked i don't really touch and others just seem kind of left behind. Theres nothing beyond WHM i would consider truly torturous to play but it feels overall like there are less jobs i choose to play when i have the whole roster at cap to choose from at my leisure. I just feel like i varied a lot more back in Heavensward than i do in Stormblood.<br />
Right now i can say concretely i'm going into Shadowbringers with RDM as my Main/DPS Job and AST as my Healer Job but thats about it. Will i start Tanking as WAR? will DRK get a huge revamp i love? or will GUN end up being a new Tank Job i adore? we can only wait and see but boy do i hope Yoshi and the team gives us more variance when levelling them all this time around because 1800+ levels in and another 200+ on the horizon i need something to start mixing this up beyond beast tribes and the roulettes!Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-81006452732396773582019-04-16T07:12:00.000-07:002019-04-16T07:12:17.108-07:00The Man in Black drove across Thanalan, and the Machinist FollowedHey so points for trying to make that work at least right? no? alrighty then. A swing and a Miss. Now here is an event that i'm pleased to say held up. A lot of the events in XIV during Stormblood has been pretty lacklustre and while this one is pretty late for its intended cross over with a game from two years ago its still been a fun event. Its been a long time since i took multiple screenshots and recorded video to remember the event.<br />
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First off you can breath a sigh of relief. This is not just another dull Fate grind like Lightnings was. There is a fate where you fight Magitek Troops -or MT's- but you need do to it 3 times tops, it takes like 30 seconds to beat and nets you a currency to buy 6 Orchestrion rolls of what most would agree are the best tracks from the FFXV soundtrack. After that? shockingly its a short but enjoyable single player questline instead!<br />
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The story was simple enough. The Warrior of Light runs into a certain Lucian Prince broken down at the side of the road in Thanalan and introduces him to Cid -but not the Cid Noctis is expecting of course- to repair the Regalia. In the meantime you and Noctis investigate reports of things from Eos invading Eorzea. At first its just Magitek from Niffleheim but as nightfalls you get the first solo duty fight against a Demon, Eos' version of Voidsent for those who havent' played FFXV. Its a simple fight is smoked as RDM but tried again as BLU and while it took a little longer was still pretty easy but it was fun. After that you go camping and fishing as Noctis explores the shroud looking for something to tell the boys back home about. He even stops for a photo opportunity with you. Really, that actually happens.<br />
The real fun comes after that when reports come in of the MT's attacking the Ixal in the North Shroud and this drove them to summon Garuda. Only for them to run in fear when it is "like our goddess, but is not out goddess!" as the Astral of the same name from Eos shows up, following the power of the King of Lucis to this shard from their own.<br />
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Honestly this fight is fun and its a shame we can't redo this one. Its a rework of the ARR Gardua fight but instead of using a close to the middle ring of stacked stones for cover you use an action move, in this case the blink strike from temporarily being given the power of a Kingsglaive from Noctis, and you blink around and link strike with Noctis for big damage. Honestly if i wasn't playing a RDM with Corps-a-Corps this probably would have seemed cooler than it felt but it was still pretty great.<br />
You beat XV Garuda and she says Noctis passed this trial and its time to return home, just as Cid pulls up in a repaired Regalia. Noctis says his goodbyes and everyone gets a brief vision of a woman in white calling him home. He rides off into the sunset so to speak with a promise of 'lets meet again someday' and you end the brief side story with a new outfit, the Kingsglaive title and a trip to the Golden Saucer to drop 200,000 MGP on a G-Type Regalia for your troubles!<br />
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Overall i liked the event and i'm not even that big a fan of FFXV in terms of the whole series of mainline titles. It even made me contemplate reinstalling it to finish the DLC but not quite enough to bring me to do it.<br />
I think in retrospect i enjoyed this one more probably <i>because</i> it was delayed. Because lets be real these cross overs are advertisements at the end of the day. They are to sell a product. This one was just stuck in dev hell much like the game its trying to cross promote so came at a time long after the games a current product on the new release shelf to be shilled. For Lightning, granted i cannot stand her character as Toriyamas tulpa waifu insert, the event felt cynical as it was right around the time Lightning Returns came out and so it felt more like an invasive advert getting in your fantasy MMORPG.<br />
This like the FFXI events were years after the fact so were more of a 'hey i know that track' or 'they name dropped the thing, i know that reference!' type stuff that gets a smile and a prize. Personally i see the odd rare Lightning cosplay once in a blue moon but when did you last see anyone use the weapons from her event? years? ever? this feels like we will be seeing Regalias in regular mount rotation for a long time and the orchestrion music is already in the rotation at my Free Company house so clearly it did something right.<br />
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In general if i have one complaint its that the event made me want to play FFXV again right until a brief glimpse of Lunafreya showed up to remind me what an absolute mess of a game FFXV is and that its not really worth the trouble.<br />
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So yeah like i said at the start "A swing and a miss" with its intended purpose.<br />
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But points for trying though right?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-86846192553845264132019-04-11T14:35:00.001-07:002019-04-11T14:35:35.168-07:00A Nocturne for Heroes: FFXIV X FFXV<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well this one has been a long time coming hasn't it? over 2 years since its release in November all the way back in 2016, and boy thats flown by hasn't it?, FFXIV is finally having the crossover with the last mainline single player entry in the franchise. A little bittersweet since the actual release of FFXV was kind of a hot mess in some ways. The game launched pretty unfinished, the had to patch in scenes from the movie Kingsglaive to try and explain events, the story goes nowhere then falls apart trying to wrap up a story that barely began, strange wastes of time and money on things like an Assassins' Creed tie in and generally trying to be this "jrpg as a service" that helped contribute to a colossal multi million dollar loss for the companies fiscal year that saw the games future content cancelled and the creative director left or was let go from the company. So not only has general interest in the game as the new hotness faded but in general its taken a place for some as the new worst entry in the mainline series that for most was held, depending on who you asked, by FFXIII or FFIII.<br />
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So just like Lightning showing up in Eorzea was met with groans as it was used to advertise what rumours suggested was a Valkyria Profile sequel -something fans of that series have been crying out for for years that got reworked because FFXIII's production overproduced assetts that needed to be flipped to make a profit while Agito XIII came out as the forgotten on release FF Type - 0 and 'Versus XIII' was considered dead until it would later be reworked into the frankensteins monster of a title FFXV limped out of a loooong production hell- with Episode Ardyn seeing the finale of the whole disastrous "Project Fabula Nova Crystalis" the connotations to FFXV and Noctis showing up might seem less like enjoyable fan service and more of a reminder that the single player games in the mainline series haven't really been good since XII and haven't been truly exceptional since IX back in like 1999.<br />
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Not that groans and eyerolls at another failed mascot will put people off chasing a flying car thats a four player mount right?<br />
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What we know so far is that the event starts next Reset. Outside the Immortal Flames Gand Company building you will find an NPC named 'Kipih Jakkya' who starts the quest "The Man in Black". You need to be lvl.50 and completed the Ultima Weapon questline ending with the fight against Lahabrea at the end of A Realm Reborns pre inital credits roll MSQ. All we know so far is from the trailer. You fight the Imperial Soldiers and mechs, do some camping and fight a different form of Garuda. The camping suggests that this might not all be farming the same two fates for tokens like Lightnings event was.<br />
The rewards shown thus far are Noctis' outfit, his hairstyle, his Triple Triad Card, half a dozen Orchestrion scrolls and of course the Car Mount which rumours suggest has been datamined to cost 200,000 MGP at the Manderville Golden Saucer. Personally i'm sitting on nearly 500k as i work my way through the last couple of things i dont have but i just save it from the super easy challenge log stuff. It probably won't be that hard to get during the event and i imagine it was made in such a way returning players can easily get it, maybe as part of the event the MGP buff comes back or something?<br />
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Personally i like the mount well enough, we already have Clouds Motorcycle, a Magitek Walker AND Claw to fly around on so at least this actually has a flying mode compared to the Bike or the bloody Elephant from the Ananta! i am surprised there thus far doesn't appear to be any weapons though. The Engine blade is kind of a bland, forgettable weapon but they tried to push it in a bunch of stuff the year after release like in Nier Automata and a boatload of Square Enix owned Gacha Mobile Games.<br />
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All in all i'm predicting a lot of foot traffic at the golden saucer for many, i know a few people who took long breaks coming back just for this, but also thing those of us who have the MGP already will breeze through the quest. So if its time limited and not something like monster hunter i'll take some screenshots, maybe record some footage and then back to the usual routine.<br />
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I swear i'll get Paladin to cap by Shadowbringers! Maybe.Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-73272977446656798832019-04-08T06:27:00.002-07:002019-04-08T06:27:40.514-07:00JP Fanfest 'we can't use the 'before the Storm' puns this time' Edition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well this was a bit different to the usual Fan Fest affair wasn't it? not much info but what there was was surprising and significant. Some announcements that had people going nuclear to the point of sending Yoshi death threats, yes really, and overall exciting things to look forward to in game, also a reminder that by and large people are trash and jump at the chance to be trash but thats a rant i will spare you. So eye rolling at people turning on a guy they have sung the praises of for nearly 6 years aside what was announced?<br />
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<b>The World:</b> So my guess before now was split between another Shard and the Future. Turns out the former was correct. In Shadowbringers we are travelling via the Crystal Tower to "The First", specifically to the last surviving land of Norvrandt and The Crystarium (which some of you no doubt recognise from the original tech demo for 1.0, apparently Yoshi liked the design so much he chose to bring it back here). The last bastion of life on a dying world built around their Crystal Tower. Something that makes me wonder if the Allagans opened a doorway to more than just the World of Darkness back in the day. All we know for now is this is a world so suffused with light night doesnt exist, darkness doesn't exist and anyone who knows a little about sunlight and the planets knows constant light beating down like on a planet caught in a orbit without rotational movement on its axis means one side is going to be burnt to a crisp and the other frozen in permanent night. Only in this case the source is not a star but magical in nature. Everywhere is turning into a scorched wasteland. Patrolled by roaming lightsent monsters called 'Sin eaters'. Creatures apparently being designed by one of the artists who worked on the Shin Megami Tensei franchise which explains why they gave off such stark Persona/Megaten vibes to me.<br />
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So for the most part people live as refugees in a shanty town, huddled together counting down the days till the encroaching light burns away the last of all life while up above in a building that looks suspiciously similar to the Aftcastle of Limsa Lominsa this worlds Miqo'te, not the stringy nomadic tribal people of our world but sedentary literal fat cats, live a life of wilful ignorance as they choose to throw a party to bring in the end of the world without a saviour. That is until we arrive.<br />
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It has been a few weeks now so i assume you dear reader have caught up on the MSQ at this point. In it we are directed to our own Crystal Tower to find a "Beacon to throw wide the gates" by a hooded figure with a crystallised hand (i'm putting my money on Ardbert but who knows) who is calling us to The First to help the world and find some way to combat the Ascians without the same thing happening to our world as well. Its our duty to become the Warrior of Darkness these people need to fight off the Sin Eaters and bring back the Night Sky and save the world. So y'know, just another day on the job right?<br />
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The key difference here of course is its quite the opposite of 'same shit, different day'. These are places familiar yet strange. Silvertear Lake and Mor Dhona in this world is "Lakeland" a zone on the edge of the Crystarium and one of the few habitable regions of Norvrandt not yet ruined by the Sin Eater crisis. Will we see buildings we recognise? will we see people? i don't know about you but i would not be surprised to see a certain merchant lady trying to set up a import and export business with a tired old blacksmith in tow who doesnt recognise us but seems awfully familiar to us.<br />
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See for the most part everything that is on our world may exist in some fashion. The worlds split 10,000 years ago. After that point life diverged down differing paths. That doesn't mean however that things can't have happened again albeit in different ways. A key example of that is the reveal of the Dwarf Beast Tribe. A diminutive race that hides behind a set of armour, a large helmet and a big fake beard. Turns out Dwarf is the Norvrandt term of Lalafell. In this world they are seen as something like a Kobold or Sahagin while Hyur are called Humes, Viera the Vis, Elezenn the Elves and so on. These are races we might think we know but as with the fat, lazy Miqo'te or 'Mystel' as they call themselves on The First the culture and history of the people will be very different indeed. Personally i am a big fan of 'what might have been' alternate history stories and its going to be cool to see alternate versions of people we know. Which only makes some of the stuff going on with the scions still a little muddy. Are they waking up? does going to the first return their souls to their bodies? are their souls in their other world counterparts? do we all have counterparts? was Ardbert our counterpart literally? or as a line in the trailer suggests are the Scions holding down the fort back on The Source with the whole Garlemald/Black Rose situation while storywise we are spending the 5.0 portion locked away from the crisis on our own world until the issues on The First are dealt with? right now we still don't know and since i hate going into a rpg knowing beat for beat whats going on i'm perfectly fine with that, its the mysteries that keep us wanting to know more right?<br />
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Personally i am excited. Its the sort of thing i enjoy but i can see why it has a few people wary in a 'i've been down this road before' kind of way. Once again going back to World of Warcraft, because MMO's nowadays always need to right? the end of Mists of Pandaria appeared to wrap up the Horde vs Alliance conflict and a character specifically told the player "the Burning Legion is coming, get ready" and people were excited for the big bads who have been teased but not seen significantly since the RTS games were on their way right? well actually no. Instead Blizzard revealed "Warlords of Dreanor". The players were going to an alternate world and travelling back in time to that worlds past. An alien world, the original home to the orcs and now an irradiated hellscape floating in the void, was once a primal, verdant world similar to Azeroth. The villain of the last expansion went back in time to before that world blew up, introduced advanced technology to this pre industrial level society and was sending them as an invasion force to the current day Azeroth. Instead of a warlike tribal savages that sold their souls to demons it was a fully industrial empire of sorts waging a unified war campaign to invade and take over the world. Interesting idea right? well aside from the execution falling flat on its face and beginning the downward trend for the game and Blizzard in general the mere announcement left players upset. They were going to an alternate dimension? so none of this actually matters to the world they pay a sub fee to play on? that seems a bit absurd since story is story but they had a big demon invasion coming, were straight up told that by an ingame npc of significance but now that was being shelved for what felt like a straight filler expansion? I haven't seen many rumblings of that here, mostly because we have always had the paralell world deal in the core story in FFXIV and its not a random asspull to maybe fill a huge development gap between retail releases, but for some the worry is still there. MMORPG's in general tend to follow the trend of "one great expansion, one middling expansion, one disappointing expansion and the downward trend begins and recovery is nigh impossible" so with rumours of Yoshi P leaving -not being helped by him announcing a new game in the works last week- players in some small number are worried this is a sign of phoning it in, perhaps the Crystarium isn't a nod to 1.0 but recycling assetts cut from the original game as productions winding down?<br />
Its not my own opinion and i think its absurd but other games crashing and burning when they try to pull off a setting shift like this has people wary of going through the same let downs again. I don't agree but i also can't blame them after putting nearly 6 years into this game and growing attached after certain others they may have put longer in turned to crap while exploring the same ideas. But thats enough rambling about the world, we have two other major bits of information to talk about.<br />
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<b>New Job - Dancer:</b> The... ranged DPS?!? Hoo boy. This was the start of the buttmad train that didn't stop. The new job is Dancer. Yes it has support elements like BRD and uses dances to buff themselves, their party and debuff their enemies. No it isn't a straight healer. No it isn't using daggers or ribbons to get in close and kick and twist their way around their enemies with style and grace. They are kind of another turret dps. Standing back and slinging Chakram or Shuriken style "Thrown Weapons" to do damage. Thats fine i guess, but really no version of Dancer people wanted is seeing the light of day and instead we have something that right after 2 dps, including RDM as a range that can buff, heal and dash around to be a fencing dandy it feels a bit weird. The people who wanted a healer are upset. The people who wanted a true support are upset. The people who wanted straight up Primrose from Octopath Traveller are upset its another hang back and stay out of most mechanics ranged job. In fact, while i haven't seen many truly upset Dancer is the job, i haven't seen too many excited for the version of Dancer we are getting.<br />
Personally i would have liked either a new Healer since its been a few years now since Astrologian was added with Heavensward or a melee job. Perhaps they don't want it overlapping with MNK too much since some of the move animations seem ripped right from Lys's routine in the Stormblood trailer. Who knows maybe DNC was meant for Stormblood and swapped with Red Mage which was magic from The First or something? who knows.<br />
I mean i level every job to cap for completionists sake (i swear i'll get PLD 60-70 sometime this month to finish the lot again!) and i hope its fun but it doesn't look terribly interesting thus far compared to most jobs since Ninja onwards. But we don't even know what the combat revamp is going to look like, let along who the current jobs will play to compare and contrast. I'm glad we got Dancer, maybe Puppet Master someday, i just think a lot of people aren't pleased with the role/combat type it is and i think thats fair but after BLU i think its like a double whammy of "heres the thing you were asking for, just not in the way anybody appears to have wanted" which is a bit of a sour note. Though not the worst of the night in terms of reveals with a reaction i'll be kind and call "mixed".<br />
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<b>New Race - Hrothgar:</b> Leak of the name aside i don't think anyone was that surprised to see FFX's Ronso joining the roster under a different name. There has been rumours of two playable mono gendered playable races coming for a while and with BLU so recently added and Viera covered it was the common theory with BLU on the mind that, much as people would like something crazy like Yukes or Ivalician Moogles or something, it ain't gonna be the Qu so its probably going to be the Ronso. Sure enough Yoshi reveals a second all Male (hey its magic they can figure something out i guess) race that just as expected is tall lion dudes with horns. Personally i wouldn't play as one but FFX has a lot of unique art assets and people/creatures that have been long overlooked and the Ronso have been a firm favourite with players. On top of that there is also the east vs west mmo style division. Players in the east want characters to play as that are slender, pretty and magical. Its why Blizzard added Blood Elves to the Horde during The Burning Crusade in fact. While the west for the most part prefer their beastial, animal races. This was the people who want their pretty race get Viera, the ones who want a beastly one get Hrothgar. Everybody wins. Kind of.<br />
See the problem here isn't the Hrothgar, if you said "hey do you want Viera AND Ronso in FFXIV" i doubt a soul would have said "what? no. Thats stupid and lame" because its another popular race in the franchise right? The trouble here is both races are mono gendered. You can only play female Viera and Male Ronso. When It was rumoured to just be Viera sure people were upset, some who clearly just wanted 'Alphinaux with bunny ears' wank material going so far as sending death threats and trying to drum up an angry mob online, but at least in the story Viera males are rare and reclusive. In the entire IP i think Viera have been in about 7 or 8 games now and i don't think they have done a single instance of a male one. So while thats a disappointment for people its just a continued trend. But the you have the Ronso which as shown in FFX clearly do have 'furry melwyb' looking females. These are documented. They have been in two past Final Fantasy games and are common place. Thats when it gets a little iffy.<br />
I myself don't really care. Viera are neat but are confirmed they can wear helmets or use head glamour model wise so i dont think i'd race change from my current Au Ra for one. Hrothgar are cool but i tend to play casters in FFXIV and i am not a fan of robs in giant silhouettes with the Roegadyn as is. But in an ideal world there should be male Viera and female Hrothgar. I don't really care myself but as people have said male Miqo'te are meant to be the reclusive male Viera equivalent in XIV already and that doesn't matter. I wouldn't even mind if they came later in the expansion as resources were directed towards it but i think it should happen. Though i'm also not one of the people going nuclear just because they see it as 'gender locking'. I don't freak out when the Tomb Raider games 'force' me to play as a woman. A character is just that. A character and as long as i like the character i'm fine with the ones i'm handed to play as options wise. Granted there are people that treat characters more like avatars of themselves and true self inserts into a story but i can only speak for my opinion and not theres. Its a issue they should have seen coming and at the same time some people are taking it far too seriously and looking like complete jackasses. Time will tell how its received and how issues get resolved though i guess.<br />
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<b>New raid: Eden </b>Finally they announced the none Alliance Raid for Shadowbringers and its based on Eden. The Cruise Chaster-esque Airship to robot transforming super summon. It was eventually going to happen after Alexander and bosses like Ozma and with the whole 'overwhelming light' aspect Eden seems like a good fit. Apparently the story involves people, after the 70-80 story of the Warrior of Light/Darkness, trying to restore the elements which have been consumed by the Light/Sin Eaters. Also being done by another guest creator. In this case famed Final Fantasy regular Tetsuya Nomura.<br />
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This is when people started to worry.<br />
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See Nomura is most well known for his work on FFVII and his baby Kingdom Hearts. In more recent years however Nomura's name has been less associated with quality projects and more "things that take a very long time to end up not as good as stuff he made in a faction of the time 20 years ago" with a sentiment that he is artistically one note with his black leather and buckles/zippers fetish and he spreads himself over too many projects at once and they all suffer for it. Considering he is supposed to be working on the FFVII remake thats rumoured to be in development hell, Kingdom Hearts 3 DLC and multiple other small projects you might see why some people were concerned to the point of saying "Your monkeys paw wish gets Taro Yoko working on Final Fantasy, but Tetsuya Nomura has to come with".<br />
Don't get me wrong i have enjoyed a lot of his work and don't want to outright shit on the guy. But he is not the creative powerhouse with the finger on the pulse of what rpg fans want anymore and hasn't been for about 15 years. His games have stories as predictable as his character designs and Eden brings to mind FFVIII which, love or hate the story, used the art direction of Yusuke Naora for a very unique take on blending the mundane modern day with fantastical future tech in a way he also tried in FFXV which is itself getting a XIV collaboration he worked on in like a week or less at the time of writing. I don't know about you but when i think of Eden i think of VIII's science-fantasy and not Nomuras Soft Goth, Toriyama inspired deiselpunk style of Final Fantasy. Its not bad but its not what i and apparently based on comments many wanted to do Eden justice and more to the point Nomura has bigger projects he should not be taking time off like this to avoid working on at this point and just in general his modern perception as a guy who is thrown at projects to make a generic, serviceable FF look while making completely forgettable games is kind of a lame reveal after Taro Yoko bringing his brand of absurdist, atomistic thinking to a straight fantasy universe.<br />
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Maybe it will be great and it will be the think that lights a fire under Nomura again but we have been saying that about projects he has been working on for the last two console generations and to put it into perspective Kingdom Hearts 3 came out a month or two ago and has already pretty much been forgotten while 1 and 2 were cultural phenomenon's amongst jrpg fans back in the day. His work ain't what it used to be and that has people worried.<br />
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But on the plus side Yoshida was being very coy as he pointed out the character "Gaia" shown in the concept art for the raid is using a hammer and said "Hmm, i don't think there are any jobs that use hammers yet" which of course has people speculating about another post 5.x patch job. Perhaps with the elemental restoration storyline this is going to lead into GEO as a hammer user? Maybe a hammer healer who knows? if theres one thing this Fan Fest proved its that the FFXIV team does not like to settle and will always keep us guessing.<br />
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All in all i think this is the most mixed the reaction from the fanbase has been to a Fan Fest yet. Can't all be home runs i suppose but the mood was a little more disquieted than we are used to. Doesn't say bugger all about the quality of the product of course, but for their big domestic market event with the biggest amount of attendees i feel like it was a bit of a damp squib compared to the smaller but roaring with overwhelming cheers kind of crowds we saw in the EU and US audiences. It always sucks to write about something that left people a bit disheartened in some fashion but i'm still excited. I can't wait to go to The First, to try the new jobs and see where the story takes us. Which i guess is at least partially the point of Fan Fest and the rest is to bring the community together. Granted it wasn't really in an overwhelmingly positive way this time but you can't deny it still did that.Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-10695264842842126832019-04-02T15:11:00.002-07:002019-04-02T15:11:24.544-07:004.56 The conclusion of the Stormblood Story aaaaand its finished already. Did you blink? you may have missed it then. I kid but i logged in, got the 'put time aside for this' message and was expecting another ARR/HW 2+ hour deal. Instead we get two solo duty fights and a little bit of exposition and then credits. Unsurprisingly this left people a little down going "was that it?" but honestly i was expecting this considering the nature of the ending this time.<br />
Spoilers for those who didn't attend or watch the JP fan fest stream -which i will be writing about after this post- but Shadowbringers begins with our character using something related to the Crystal Tower to make the jump to another of the shard worlds created by Hydaelyn, the First in fact. So no long trip running from Uldah to Ishgard on the lamb, no waiting for the Ala Mihgan resistance and the whole Shinryu deal to go down. We are going in direct continuity from the end of Stormblood where we wake up in Ishgards Chirugeon's ward to grouping up with the Scions at Rising Stones to go find the way to the First. I'm sure in the future when its not during the awkward waiting period it will flow well and have a sense of immediacy to the urgency. You finally get a lead on whats been afflicting the other Scions and its time to jump on it and continue trying to solve the mystery! For now? we wait. Finish off levelling jobs, clear Eureka if you want, do the side quests and the FFXV tie in event when it hits. We still have stuff to do but for a story heavy game like a mainline Final Fantasy it is going to leave some people feeling like the waiting period came too quick. Personally i found it short, but i understand why.<br />
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As for the MSQ itself? well no shocks here we beat up Elidibus/Ze-not just like in the Shadowbringers trailer but then that creepy Echoe like effect occurs mid battle and strikes you down. Before you can be killed by "Zenos" however you black out. When your character wakes up you are greeting to a scene right out of kingdom hearts including an appearance by a character whos design may as well come from there as well. A hooded man with a crystallised arm tells you that oblivion is coming wether you win or lose the war with Garlemald and the only path to salvation is through him. He has left a 'Beacon' at the Crystal Tower for you to find. You wake in Ishgard to be informed by Ser Amyeric that Estinien showed up to save you, which we get shown in a single still image which honestly seemed a little lazy, and then you return to the Rising Stones where Tataru and the gang welcome you and set off to the Crystal Tower to find this Beacon and 'Open the Gate' to the First.<br />
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What do you mean "and thats it?" well mostly. There is a final scene back in the throne room in Garlemald. The emperor, those suspicious as hell twin bodyguards we fought in the last dungeon and Zenos are there alone. An uprising of sorts is starting due to the rumours of a demon possessing the heir to the thrones body and the Emperor "will not fight for the throne a second time". They also mention that curiously Solus, scene chewer de jour, is absent with neither the Emperor nor the Ascian knowing where he is and assuming he is 'using this chaos as an opportunity for his own ends'. The scene ends with the chief scientist making a return to confirm the Black Rose is ready to begin production again. Ending with a strange fade to black and static close up on a manic Emperor reminiscent of Kefka and Spehiroth to a lesser degree. Wether this was to show his internal, hidden feelings or to suggest some form of mania or possibly even some form of multiple personality syndrome we can't say for sure but it was a bit of a jarring shot to end the expansion on as the very, very long credits roll for a good 20+ minutes after this shot.<br />
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Finally for the after credits we see Zenos aka 'EleZenos' cut down a Garlemald soldier and look at the flag nearby to state it is "time to reclaim what is rightfully mine", his body or the throne or both we don't know while lamenting that he missed meeting "his friend" again and hopes we "grow more savage" on our jaunt on another world. Finally our character stands on a hill and stares up at the Crystal Tower and a closing comment of "Sow the Seeds of darkness" marks the end of Stormblood, along with Tataru giving you the most Edgelord outfit for a none DRK player since the Void Ark raid gear sets were the in thing.<br />
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Combined with the events of 4.5 i mentioned a little while ago my overall opinion remains the same. I am interesting in where its going, i find the increasingly cartoony jumps to make the Emperor evil shallow and a bit of a bruteforcing that wasn't needed. I'm glad we didn't get a character death just for dramas sake as i was honestly expecting them to try another Hauchefant with Hien at the end but thankfully they avoided that one.<br />
So all in all the main story quest of Stormblood was fine. Not exceptional, not emotional like Heavensward was to a lot of people but just fine. Not quite the usual standard we expect from the team overall but i've said many times that trying to fit two major stories into one really seems like its been a detriment from the outside looking in. The characters were likeable and the world building was great but i would be lying if the minor trip back to Ishgard to see the Heavensward characters wasn't much more impactful than anything related to the current story, for me at least.<br />
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Beyond the main quest we have the Beast tribe finale, the Hildibrand Finale and the associated Trial to round off the expansions wrap up phase. The Beast Tribe questline involves Hancock inviting the Ananta to Kugane, no doubt for some kind of trade deal, with you dragged along to be a tour guide of sorts but naturally for this series a familiar face shows up to ruin everything. You know the drill. Its a greatest hits victory lap, though in this case the animation kind of outdoes the MSQ finale honestly.<br />
Then we have the finale of a certain Manderville Man's latest investigation. To this point i have felt like Hildibrand has kind of been on a declining level of entertainment since A Realm Reborn. I still get the odd chuckle but you can tell this was something they wanted to do once and it was just so popular, which is understandable, that they are not feeling forced into doing it and it kind of shows at times. This time around the culmination of the questline honestly feels longer than the MSQ did for this half of the update. The Yojimbo trial was fun, effectively a remix of two earlier trials but felt like it was over very fast compared to the other trial fights this expansion. Story wise i got some laughs out of it and overall i think this storyline held up better than the GiGi storyline of Heavensward which felt like late in Development they decided to rush a Hildebrand questline out because they noticed how popular he became during A Realm Reborn. This time around it felt a bit more planned out and varied plus it gave us more time in Kugane which adds to it overall and its a shame we didn't get more stuff in Rahlgrs Reach the same way as the expansion went on. But some Thavnair interaction was neat and the ending to it was a real "oooh, thats how they are setting the next one up" moment that was a nice nod back to FFV.<br />
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Overall it was a brief maybe 4 hours of new gameplay content but with the expansion over its really just tying up loose ends at this point. It still feels like Ultima was the finale of the expansion and this is just set up with little actual shock value compared to things like Nanamo and Papalymo's events in the past.<br />
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But i guess thats Stormblood over and done. Still got one more job to get from 60 to 70 and some cleaning house on a couple of side things before i call it all done and dusted and give it a write up but hey we still have the FFXV event to go before we are truly done with Stormblood so still a little to go before we are waiting around for Shadowbringers eh?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-33824019657245298882019-03-07T07:30:00.000-08:002019-03-07T07:56:49.553-08:00Patch 4.5 in review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well it took a while what with the crazy number of excellent videogame releases lately but as usual i have cleared all the content in the current update (outside of Eureka that is) and feel i'm ready to ramble about the update that really feels a lot like <i>"Stormbloods over, this is the set up for Shadowbringers"</i> in retrospect.<br />
Overall the quality feels like a marked improvement over 4.4 which i believe is the only time <i>"boy, lotta spelling errors in this update"</i> was part of my review of a big budget MMORPG's content update. Without the Doma/Ala Mhigo split the story is no longer serving two masters and it feels far more obvious here than last time that this is seeing an improvement to content quality. So as usual lets start with my go to content on patch day:<br />
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<b><i>The Story</i></b><br />
This is a story that, much like the expansion as a whole, felt very divided. There are two story hooks here and one only got more interesting after the extended Shadowbringers trailer while the other just fell flat to me. Overall it flowed well and left me wanting more but it really is night and day between the two storylines.<br />
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First off you have the big story teased in the patch trailer. War has come to Eorzea again and the new Emperor might be revealing a shocking twist! Exciting right? is he going to turn out to be some anti hero thats been waiting to turn on Solus (aka Not-Ardyn) all along? Intrigue and double agents on both sides? No. No he's just a humanity first nazi analogue. Thats it. All the set up just for a 'muh master race' villain. Its not quite the 'the church is evil all along' level of bland but in terms of jrpg tropes that were old on the PS1 this is pretty up there.<br />
The question of course is why fart out such a lame 'twist' at all right? and i think the best way to explain this is to drop a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure spoiler so hey fair warning <b>This spoils part of Jojo Part 7: Steel Ball Run</b>. Jojo part 7 stands out for a few reasons. Its a universe reset, its a western, its Joestar character is actually the sidekick of the protagonist and so on. Most importantly however is the change it makes with its villain Funny Valentine. The President of the United States of America. Yeah you heard right. In a series who's previous villains range from Vampires to Serial Killers Araki decided his series reboot needed a villain shake up as well and the way he did this was simple: Make the reader <i>almost</i> agree with the villain.<br />
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Valentine is chasing the stories maguffin that will allow him to increase the powers of his Stand ability 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap', which allows him to hop between parallel worlds and timelines, or pull things from them. With the maguffin upgrade this would allow him to grow strong enough to actively alter the world around him so his timeline is always the most beneficial course of events.<br />
The example given is that if someone tried to shoot him the gun would misfire but somewhere else in the world a soldier in a warzone has his gun go off by accident and shoot a child to karmically balance this out so to speak.<br />
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So he's just a self centred villain out for some form of personal gain right? actually no. Quite the opposite. Valentine wants this power to use it to protect the entirety of America. He is a former civil war soldier and patriot that deeply loves his nation and its his own sense of 'justice' that drives him to ensure a conflict like the one he barely lived through will never happen again. His actions to get there are evil. He will assassinate people, rig elections, lie, cheat and steal to get to the goal, but his goal is <i>"no American child will experience loss from war ever again, no more bloodshed will happen on American soil, as the President this is my solemn vow"</i>.<br />
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He is arguably doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. You can imagine how the character has been twisted in recent years for the whole 'make America great again' deal online but at the end of the manga when his back is against the wall he gives an impassioned speech about how he has no personal gain he is chasing, he sincerely wants to be the best President he can be by making America a nation that experiences everlasting peace using his abilities rather than some form of authoritarian or facist control. The interesting part? <i>the protagonists actually back down</i>.<br />
Even for a minute the villain of the series who has killed people close to the heroes has them think "maybe he is actually right" and that leads to an agonising dilemma for them and that is superb writing. When the villain can argue that he actually believes he is doing the right thing <i>and can almost convince the hero that he is in fact trying to do the right thing</i> you have a character you can invest in.<br />
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Why do i bring up this Jojo character? well because many people i know including myself who read Steel Ball Run felt like the Emperor role was going to end up like Funny Valentine and we were ready for the Garlean leader to be someone we would stop, even for a second, before readying weapons for the inevitable loot pinata style Trial boss to ask ourselves "<i>is he even the villain at all, or just a puppet of Solus ready to turn on his master and make the Garleans truly free for the first time?"</i><br />
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We wanted him to sit down the leaders of Eorzea and reveal he wasn't a 1 dimensional villain doing evil because the villains must be evil but make them wonder if theres more to Garlemalde in general than being the generic Final Fantasy villainous Empire trope again.<br />
He isn't though. He is just fantasy Hilter now and thats so lame. Its a massive let down and while i still think there are some interesting hooks to come, his two female bodyguards that totally aren't XIV's version of Melti Gemini for example, in a vacuum it was maybe the most disappointing story reveal since <i>"Oh hey Nanamo never died, its only been a few quests since then in the MSQ but lol jk jk :p"</i> and i thought FFXIV's writing was better than this. Which brings me back to 'the why' of it.<br />
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This is personal opinion, though i've heard it elsewhere since the patch dropped multiple times, but i believe that because people were expecting a reverse heel turn the writers tried to brute force 'this character is evil' upon the players in the laziest way outside of setting fire to an orphanage full of children. He is literally talking about genocides and a master race, do you get it? DO YOU GET THIS IS THE EVIL GUY?!? and yeah we do. Message received. But it was a poorly delivered one and not up to the standards of the game or the series in general. People wanted General Leo and got 'really shitty Kefka' instead and its just such a black mark on the story which is pretty famous in MMORPG's for being solid enough to be comparable to its single player outings. Usually it is at least. It left me disappointed and feeling a bit let down by the writers who resorted to such a easy cliche to bruteforce opinion on a character who could have had depth and is now reduced to little more than a cartoon. After Yotsuyu or Fordola its a objective step down that clearly annoyed me enough to rant about it, sorry about that.<br />
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Its not all bad however. Conversely the other side of the story was very interesting. The fate of the Scions, the confirmation that -shocking nobody- the Shadowhunter is Gaius Van Baelsar- and the knowledge we have from the extended Shadowbringers trailer is starting to pull these threads together to make for a very exciting prelude to our next big story as the Warrior of Light. Well, y'know, Warrior of Darkness i guess but you know what i mean.<br />
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We have some solid character development for characters like Alisae and Gaius. The sense of helplessness and urgency throughout creates a tense vibe that can make you forget this is an online game that limits developments to a patch cycle so there is no real pressing for time and any mmo story that can make you get so into it that you forget its an mmo is a success in my book.<br />
There isn't too much to say since it feels largely like set up for what i expect will be a shocking reveal in the 4.5 part 2 update coming in the next few weeks. I don't think any of the Scions are at risk of dying or in some severe peril from a writing standpoint, but i think these events are all leading up to a factor involving the Echo which has not been given as much time as the whole <i>'relive the memories of others'</i> aspect has overall.<br />
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Now this is something most recently touched on with Xenos turning into, as the fanbase calls him, EleXenos but this secondary aspect to the Echo first showed up waaay back in <i>Patch 2.2: Through the Maelstrom</i> and has since largely been forgotten. In the MSQ of that patch Melwyb leads the Scions to a Sahagin cult that is working to summon Leviathan lead by a Priest that can use a version of the Echo with a dark purple aura. He is quickly killed but rather than his soul returning to the planets Lifestream he uses this Echo to transfer into a body of a nearby worshipper and supplant the victims consciousness with his own. Claiming the Echo has made him 'Immortal'. After seeing things like "Master Matoya" in the Shadowbringers trailer, the fact the story hook was brought back with Xenos and whats going on with the Scions i think its a safe guess that someone is using the Echo to forcefully pull the Scions souls from their bodies to bring them somewhere <i>or somewhen</i> else. We just need to wait a few more weeks to get an answer but that Kingdom Hearts looking image in the trailer that wasn't in this update at all and the general 'Throw open the Gate' line has a couple of tinfoil hat theories going around in my head but for now all i can say is the Scion side of the story was very interesting and left me going <i>"no come on, give me more of this!"</i> which is always a good sign in patch based storytelling in my opinion.<br />
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So overall the story is a mixed bag. Some very nice set up, some very disappointing reveals. Heres hoping part 2 of this patches story will end up more of the former than the latter. With the story out the way its time to move on to the other content starting with the good old Dungeon crawling!<br />
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<b><i>The New Dungeon</i></b><br />
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Dungeon singular this time but boy is it a doozey. The Ghimlyt Dark is an very visually striking dungeon. Blending World War 1 trench warfare with a suggestion of conflict on a size comparable to the Cartenau Flats conflict at the opening to ARR when Bahamut nuked the continent. It feels desperate, oppressive and urgent. I noticed people seem to treat it almost like a speedrun, but not in the usual 'i want to get my bonus fast and bounce' way but its almost as though people act like theres a countdown going on. So stark and urgent is the vibe you get during the dungeon. The dungeon itself is about average. Lots of chain pulling required as staggered mobs spawn at choke points. Lots of ally NPC's fighting with you which is probably testing some stuff for the Trust System to a degree and while mechanically quite easy the bosses, particularly the last one is a treat to fight. Overall its not the most challenging dungeon around but in terms of tone setting and vibe it feels very much like Scaling Baelsar's wall to fight The Griffon back at the end of Heavensward. As for the final bosses this time? i'm guessing they are showing up later as a fused flesh horror nightmare creature thats a recurring monster in the series. Those mirrored red and blue helmets? tell me i wasn't the only one getting mild Xorn and Thorn vibes off those two.<br />
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<b><i>Seiryu/Wreathe of Snakes</i></b><br />
Sadly not much to say about the new 'not-primal' fight. Its as competently made as usual but while Suzaku's Rhythm game fight is up there with Titan or Ifrit Extremes as fun, challenging fights. Seiryu is just a little bland and more on the same tier as Ramuh, Susanoo or Knights of the Round. Visually impressive, also little in the way of interesting mechanics. Its not good, its not bad. Its another Zurvan the Demon. It ends a storyline on a bit of a downward note thats not as interesting as its predecessors. Just as Sophia felt like she should have been the finale to the Warring triad i feel this should have ended with Suzaku who also felt the most actually outraged over her connection to Tenzin.<br />
The story meanwhile was okay, lacked the mystery of the masked child from the Triad but i got a few laughs out of it and it was some neat worldbuilding too. Like Seiryu the story as a whole was competent if a little too safe and dull.<br />
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<i><b>The Raid</b></i><br />
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I began this section in the last patch with <i>'Omega has been a mixed bag for me'</i> and while i would say the same about Ivalice's Orbann Monastery raid i mean it in a positive way rather than negative. This really felt like the follow up to the Void Ark Trilogy people wanted. Some challenge, gorgeous level design and music and a story that really hooks you with its nods to the worlds past and the series itself. I'm a huge Ivalice fan and this ended on a series of 4 great boss fights ranging from good to excellent and an ending that i'm sure would be a bit of a tearful moment for those who grew up playing the Tactics games.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW0_WUAwKf8rzvCOmusCiDQ0s142TwCpZjjSwjrBNatYZiyxZLvEUW3rEE7S9UcUtfImOeAz1tyj9JEnCDLAyYsZ1bcwWFpWiH2zR4IrPvXWBpjmR-DQmbVrJaDT1TrD7H39VYsYGi6tFp/s1600/FFXIV_Mustadio.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW0_WUAwKf8rzvCOmusCiDQ0s142TwCpZjjSwjrBNatYZiyxZLvEUW3rEE7S9UcUtfImOeAz1tyj9JEnCDLAyYsZ1bcwWFpWiH2zR4IrPvXWBpjmR-DQmbVrJaDT1TrD7H39VYsYGi6tFp/s320/FFXIV_Mustadio.png" width="320" /></a><br />
First off we have <i>Mustadio the Machinist</i>. The weakest fight overall, recycling a fair bit of what we just had with Omega but with a neat twist on the positional mechanic. It felt a little more like something that should have been in the Lighthouse raid both thematically and mechanically but its a fun intro that keeps you on your toes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmQNwIEnglp3ZgXCLAlnfIt120KvrA5SRiCrFk4IGeVea5m99y6IdmX8lwpVz0EN1kK3VwmNJnY-sCpGRtgLXr-N9_SbiqbbPCvYmUjeZXfWfGgAqJZ36gN4TA3mGiquAh0ZlxyMxlp_8/s1600/maxresdefault+%252835%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmQNwIEnglp3ZgXCLAlnfIt120KvrA5SRiCrFk4IGeVea5m99y6IdmX8lwpVz0EN1kK3VwmNJnY-sCpGRtgLXr-N9_SbiqbbPCvYmUjeZXfWfGgAqJZ36gN4TA3mGiquAh0ZlxyMxlp_8/s320/maxresdefault+%252835%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a>Second is longtime fan favourite <i>Agrias the Angel</i>. A very enjoyable fight that uses the extra action button to great effect as something more than the 'oh shit' button to avoid a wipe its been in the past. Its visually exciting and doesn't feel quite like any other raid boss in the series yet and letting people do things related more to the other two roles than their own was a refreshing shake up. Be it healers swinging a sword to kill ghosts or dps dropping a big shield of light to block a ridiculously powerful aoe attack for example. Its at this point you get the idea that this raid is a straight incline of complexity and difficulty last seen to this degree of success in the Weeping city of mhach, to this day considered a fan favourite raid in the games growing list of them.<br />
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After Agrias we move on to what can basically be summed up as "Ozma 2: wipefest Boogaloo". A boss simply named <i>The Thunder God</i>. A boss fought on a floating ring around him, sound familiar?, with nooks and crannies to drop aoes or simply to avoid his multiple forms of sword strikes that either swing around the out of the ring, the inner edge or in repeatedly slams roatating clockwise or anti clockwise around the board. It even has a section where you are transported to another place to fight 3 large adds. Its visually different but it is straight up Ozma all over again. Parties wiped. A <i>lot</i>. However over time people got 'the dance' down and when pulled off its another extremely enjoyable fight just like Ozma which proves these 'ring arena' fights are always going to be a solid go to design choice in MMORPGS'.<br />
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All of which was just a precursor leading up to the final Raid Boss of Stormblood: <i>Ultima, the High Seraph</i>. A visual blend of Garuda, Sophia, The Ultima Weapon and Yunalesca from FFX. This compared to Alexander Prime, Omega M/F or Diablos Hollow really feels like an end of expansion boss fight. Not so much in difficulty, though it is challenging, but in terms of what goes on and where. We begin the fight with the boss embedded in a wall of Magicite. She regularly spreads walls of the stuff to seperate parties and box you in while aoes and plumes drop to make for some very tight spots to get around, this then escalates to summoning in the Eidolons Famfrit, Hasmal and Belias from Rabanstre. Hope you remember the signature moves from those fights because now they are all going off at once! After that she bursts out of the wall revealing her upper angelic portion hides a sinister, monstrous lower half kind of like Anima in some respects. Then she reduces the entire room to a aoe deathtrap and you must all run to a tiny bubble where even then healers must battle through constant raid wide damage as the entire raid fights through a dps check to repel Ultimas strongest attack. After this the final phase begins where she uses mechanics from all the raids bosses in increasingly fast rotation which turns the fight into a positioning race that must be a nightmare for jobs like BLM or WHM. Thanks to procs i had a much easier job as RDM but even then there was a lot of time in this phase spent cancelling a spell to move than successfully casting one. All in all its hectic and feels like a true endgame boss fight that you feel a real sense of accomplishment for beating.<br />
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Beyond that the story was a safe but satisfying epilogue to the bittersweet ending of Final Fantasy Tactics, War of the Lions. I found myself just saying "god Square Enix just really needs to give us a new Ivalice game" because after FFXII's rerelease last year and this i was left only wanting more from a setting that honestly could pull of an mmo all by itself. It was a nice ride to revisit versions of these places and see nods to versions of beloved characters from Ivalice games passed, though it was a bit sad Lea Monde and Vagrant Story got no love in the end, but overall i enjoyed the storys finale tremendously and i wonder if Fran will be showing up in Shadowbringers since her people are now confirmed to be the next playable race. I doubt she will be a faction leader like Raubahn or something but hey you never know with FFXIV right?<br />
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After all that the really big thing left to talk about is Blue Mage but i think i'm going to make that its own article since there is a lot to write about concerning SE's first experiment with a 'Limited Job' so for now i'll say this patch had some let downs in writing but in terms of engaging content there was a lot to love here and it left me eager for more in the second half coming soon!Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-77916502729992872442019-02-15T04:59:00.001-08:002019-02-15T04:59:28.446-08:00A little something to cure what ails you<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Valentiones Day has come around once again and while the usual stories of ooey-gooey love and longing are the norm for the Seasonal Quest and the return of its 2 player Puzzle Dungeon -which is the kind of design i wish we got more of as a regular kind of side content, though maybe its once a year nature grants it some charm?- and you know the gist of it by now. You do the dungeon, get your chocolate hearts and turn then in for some decorative housing items.<br />
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and thats... thats it? No mount? no gear?<br />
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Welllll <i>kind of.</i><br />
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See this year they are trying something different, its easy to miss -most folks i know did- but something i'd like to see more of. See you would be forgiven in thinking that its just some lame tabletop items for your house, because you totally want to be "That Guy/Girl" that decorates their house in valentines stuff all the time like some form of Crazy Coeurl Lady in training right?<br />
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A more observant player might notice that there are quite a few npc's around this year, including the fortune tellers from the super awkward <i>"form a couple with other players for romantic fortunes"</i> event thats now been retired. Difference is theres now a new addition to the event. To the left of the Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre Atheryte Crystal there is now a shading looking <i>"Furtive Fortune Teller"</i>. A crotchety old woman who gives fortunes for the people wandering around alone in full "tfw no virtual gf" mode. After a brief cutscene she mentions that she has concocted a "Magical Elixir" for these lonely times and for the low price of 999 Gil you can purchase it for its unique properties. You are going to want to purchase two of them.<br />
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Next take the Aetheryte to the Lancer's Guild and follow the path up the hill to a closed gate. Look to the rear balcony of the small building on the left to see a curious new addition to the location. A "Magical Pot" imp monster right out of the Labyrinth of the Ancients.<br />
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A jump over to the balcony will let you talk to the Imp. It will demand Magical Elixirs from you and turns out to be a unique secondary vendor for the event! Instead of chocolates from the couples quest it takes these bitter drinks from the loners instead and what does it get you?<br />
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You get a Gigas Greatsword, the giant blades used by the Gigas that roam the crystal wastes of Mor Dhona and a Tonberry Knife for Culinarians. Two weapons used by lonely monsters known for bearing grudges like a curse. How anti-romantic!<br />
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The event should have ended by now but due to the server issues with Eureka causing all instances to crash they have kept the event live till the 19th so even if you don't care about the actual valentine couples stuff theres now an extra 4 days to get these items in this 'secret quest' as well!<br />
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Personally i love stuff like this, even if i hate that i can miss it as a completionist. I was just showing a Sprout player around who was lost and on my way back to the Atheryte noticed the new NPC. To see an NPC and go on a little exploratory jaunt that ends in finding a secret vendor for unique weapons that will be gone -outside of the mogstation no doubt- is a really cool thing you only really see in MMORPG's from a bygone era for the most part and it was a really nice little thing to stumble upon. So while the info in this article will be useless a week from now its still a nice thing to talk about and i hope we see more of these 'secret quests' to stumble on in the future. Honestly i would love to see some Limited Jobs get this treatment in the future, can you imagine how fun/frustrating that kind of scavenger hunt would be?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-5242165492157216292019-02-10T09:51:00.003-08:002019-02-10T10:23:59.776-08:00"What do you mean this isn't World of Warcraft?"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So for those not in the know World of Warcraft is not doing so hot. There are a number of reasons why. A over reliance on RNG, too much time gating stretching content out purely as a "sub trap", trimming abilities away in a fashion that makes classes less enjoyable to play and general designing as though its mechanically looking at mobile games rather than rpgs for design ideas. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/9uywpc/we_have_many_of_our_best_developers_working_on/">Given some of the developers comments about preferring mobile games to pc or consoles</a> this might not be far from the truth but regardless of reasons the games not quite the unrivalled monster it used to be. Which brings us to the topic today. A situation leading to the term "Wowfugee" and the growing stereotype associated with it.<br />
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Now i played WoW for about a decade before FFXIV and i've mentioned it on more than one occasion and maybe in the past i will have mentioned that while they are both basically similar hotbar combat MMORPG's the biggest difference comes from the WoW userbase on the whole being absolute poison outside of an insular Guild environment.<br />
Theres plenty of reasons for that. Cross realm zoning, the ability to jump characters on the fly since everything isn't tied so often to one main and lack of ramifications means theres no actual reason to not be an asshole in World of Warcraft since you can get away with it all the time scott free and that has basically lead to it becoming the norm. Newer players then come in and see its the norm and behave the same to propagate it and this vicious cycle not only continues but from Wrath of the Lich King onwards has only appeared to exacerbate year over year. Compared to the literal in game queueing mindset of FFXIV its a world of difference. I will revisit it once per expansion and be astounded that every time it is worse than i remember it being the last. Every single time. Compare this to FFXIV where by and large you have one character and as such one name and face your in game reputation will be associated with and i believe that only compounds this sentiment of <i>"you wouldn't behave this way irl, why is it okay here?".</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit to WhyMaige on Reddit</td></tr>
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Right now though this really seems to be showing up more often in the most irritating of ways. In FFXIV none hardcore content the common sentiment is <i>"the party can only move as fast as its slowest member"</i> and <i>"if someone is a 'Sprout' with a green leaf by their name then they are new and deserve the same help and patience we were given when we started". </i>Which is totally antithetical to the modern WoW ideas of <i>"you assholes exist to serve MY good time"</i> and <i>"well the party wiped once, time to ragequit the group, thanks for nothing you fucking retards"</i> which is totally alien to the FFXIV userbase.<br />
Sure during ARR there was a period of the <i>"fuck you, you don't pay my sub"</i> 'Ice Mages' that eventually got the idea that the game wasn't for them and moved onto other games and i hope they found something they enjoyed in the process but nowadays? if there is a more patient and chill online game userbase than FFXIV i can honestly say i legitimately don't know of it. Maybe Monster Hunter in none persistent content or perhaps when Animal Crossing hits the Switch unless theres a cutthroat Bell economy?<br />
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Not that this means there are not problems in our own userbase in other ways, but they are far less regular and argumentative as the situation i'm seeing lately. I still have a few jobs left to get to cap and naturally that means doing my daily dungeon roulettes for the easy xp to get those 60-70 runs down without having to spam things like Bardam's Mettle for hours on end. During that time i have repeatedly witnessed the fascinating display, almost like clockwork since Shadowbringers trailer came out, where someone with a name like "arhtass lichkinge" or "princess silvanas" -misspellings of Warcraft character names if you don't know- basically spending most of a Alliance Raid, Dungeon or Trial doing little as their character and mostly just heckling others and trying to shit on the Sprouts for not knowing things while at the same time ninja pulling and spamming "GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO" as we attempt to explain things like King Behemoths Meteors or Phlegethons Ancient Flare. The truly fascinating thing with these people is the reliable reaction from the other players.<br />
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For the most part its total silence, you ignore the dickhead whos not contributing right? not like we can't clear Crystal Tower due to one arse who didn't know Yoshi had yet to add the Keyboard Warrior job. What was interesting though was when others broke their silence. Silent until the time it was when these players started to specifically target Sprouts, trying to shame them and in cross party alliance chat try to get them kicked, choosing to generally shit on them and tell them to kill themselves. The usual <i>"i'm an anonymous dickhead and theres no repercussions for this behaviour"</i> bingo. <i>That </i>like clockwork is when the veteran players across all parties all chimed in to say some variant of <i>"Leave them alone, grow up"</i> or most commonly <i>"i know this game is popular for wowfugees right now, but that behaviour doesn't fly here like it does there"</i>.<br />
Often the offensive player just calls everyone else a 'faggot' or something equally charming and keeps going but every so often you get one who pauses and goes <i>"doesn't every mmo shit talk the bads?"</i> because they have been trained to treat any slip up, even when its clear the player is a beginner, this way as the norm.<br />
Hopefully they learn thats not the case and players only get better with help and experience. Hopefully they will integrate with the community and find a more friendly userbase where they don't spend all their time on the defensive, expecting a insulting attack from other players as the norm/baseline expectations. But thats not really the point i'm making here. The idea that assholes exist on the internet should not exactly be a grand revelation should it? the issue is the idea of the 'wowfugee' becoming its own black mark regardless of the player <i>because</i> of these stand out douchebags.<br />
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We all remember the days of ARR and Heavensward where, after Dragoons fighting the lag on Titan, the running joke was all the "Kirito Starks" running around with 8 lines long speech macros for their limit breaks that were perfectly polite but considered the height of cringe. It became such a regular gag that the SAO/GoT characters kind of just stopped being a fad over time. Now it seems wowfugees are the running fad and sure someone named after a WoW character being a venomous dickweed to everyone does have an air of 'fresh off the boat and in the wrong neighbourhood' about them but can't that also get pushed to the point that ironically the very sentiment leading to dislike becomes the default due to stereotyping?<br />
Like i said i myself made the jump from WoW to FFXIV over half a decade ago now. The 'asshole as default' stuff in WoW started years before that. By that logic shouldn't i have also been one of those assholes if everyone coming over is? if we default to 'everyone from WoW coming over for Shadowbringers is a douchebag' aren't they going to see it like we are being preemptively prickly douchebags ourselves?<br />
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The fact that some of the people coming over include these assholes is a sad fact indeed. But i'm a firm believer that no one person can truly represent a group outside generic comparability and no group can be representative of the single person. Its important to remember why XIV as a community has its reputation and keep up those appearances so to speak. Its easy to see someone be a totally demeaning asshole out to ruin another beginners good time and yeah the fact that they might be driving a much nicer person away is enough to get your virtual hackles raised but the best way to deal with the asshole is to remember not to become the asshole yourself. To not let that sickness infect your own community like a communicable disease. More often than not i've seen these people go quiet when they see their opinion is not the norm and won't be tolerated or outright leave. Either they do some self reflection and learn from the experience or just decide its a game full of easily offended snowflakes and try somewhere new which ain't no loss at all is it?<br />
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I guess ironically given we are about to go into an expansion where we go from Warriors of Light to Warriors of Darkness i'm saying 'Don't let others change your own disposition' in this way but its a strange situation where another game is having a sizeable drop off thats stepping their toes into other games and we just have to remember that while the standout volatile dickheads should be given a polite what-for we should also maintain our own sense of community identity because there are also people who may have played a MMORPG for 15 years and are now dejected and looking for a new home and this might be the right fit for some of them and its far more important to make the good ones welcome than assume they are another one of these assholes just because they are a "wowfugee".<br />
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Because like i said, for a very large number of us back in A Realm Reborn we <i>were</i> the wowfugee's being welcomed by Legacy players. Remember the story i told of the guild that tried to take over my servers economy and how we beat them by working together as a community? thats Final Fantasy XIV to me and that should be the FFXIV we welcome those people too even as we let the bad apples know the toxic elements of World of Warcraft are not and will never be welcome.<br />
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Like the big blue Crystal Lady says:<br />
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<i>"Hear, Feel, Think"</i></div>
Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-28163069152828480652019-02-02T04:56:00.001-08:002019-02-02T04:56:24.110-08:00EU Fanfest 2019Well this one actually snuck up on me. i've been real busy lately, hence why no post yet about 4.5 since you should know by now i save my opinions till i've seen everything and have yet to complete the Ivalice raid or the last few fights of the Masqued Carnival, so i'll get to that soon as i have more free time, but in my business i straight up forgot fanfest was today. So i was pleasantly surprised to be woken up by my phone going off with people sending me pictures of a certain someone i'll get to later.<br />
Overall bit of a quiet fanfest in some regards, but last time was kind of a info dump blowout along with the CEO showing up to announce BLU as well. We got some confirmations, some clarifications and a bit more info but it feels like they are saving the last big hurrah for the JP fanfest which isn't surprising since thats the domestic market after all. But what we were shown was exciting and i have seen so many people i know go <i>"so where do i go if i want to start this game now?"</i> on forums and social media this morning so i guess Yoshi and the team sold it well.<br />
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First off we get the expected reveal of the extended teaser trailer as we did for Stormblood last time around. Not too much new stuff here but what there was was interesting.<br />
We see Urianger as an Astrologian addressing Ysh'tola as Matoya while she appears to be a Black Mage, meanwhile Thancred gets a bit more where he outright calls the young girl Minfilia. Thats about it for new stuff but it does make me wonder: Are these even<i> our</i> scions at all?<br />
Some fan theories lean to them being 3 from a dark future where we fail, others see them as counterparts from the Warriors of Darkness' world and maybe the guy in the trailer is <i>not </i>'derplander' at all but Arbert from Heavensward who returned to his shard with Minfillia two years ago. Its interesting we are like 5 months away from release and we still don't know the story or setting of the expansion. New landmass, alternate shard or even a days of future past style dark possible future? we have no idea and personally i find that exciting. A big problem with MMORPG's is telling you everything before you go in, shame they spilled the Minfillia reveal in that regard, but i think that one was kind of guessed by almost everyone at the moment she was shown with Thancred.<br />
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Then we have the first Job reveal and would you believe its a Gunblade user, who could have predicted this shocking reveal eh?<br />
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Jokes aside the Job is called Gunbreaker. It is a Tank which starts at lvl.60 in Gridania and also unsurprising seems based on/inspired by Squall from FFVIII.<br />
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Its nice to get a new Tank. Personally i think we can go a little while without more DPS jobs. Theres some i want like GEO but they can't keep padding the dps gear lists on bosses and not giving the people that only tank or heal nothing. Hopefully Viera bring in Dancer as a healer as well. As for GUN i'm excited. My main tank job is DRK and thats probably getting a nice revamp but VIII was my first Final Fantasy and jank as its conflicting systems were i have a soft spot for it and i can't wait to throw on a gunblade and that Squall glamour set for a while!<br />
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Next up they move onto talk of areas, no Moon says Yoshi "maybe for 7.0", but we do see the Rak'Tika Greatwood. A clear analogue to the Golmore Jungle from FFXII. Home to a certain bunny eared people, wonder if they are showing up somewhere...<br />
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Its a nice enough looking zone but i wonder about both the ancient ruins that don't match any culture we know of and the burnt out buildings that look decades old at best. We still don't even know where this is. Is it on the edge of Dalmasca and its a burnt out imperial fort? or is this somewhen rather than somewhere and thats a familiar location after years of disrepair yet to occur? not in a video i can find yet was also 'Il Mheg. The more bright and Sea of Clouds feeling area home to the Pixie Beast Tribe who worship the Primal Titania.<br />
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Someone people are quick to point out bears a certain resemblance to Allisae. The last, and really only caster Primal in XIV is Ramuh and that will be a full half a decade ago almost dead on by the time Shadowbringers releases which will be a refreshing change of pace. Its only on reflection you notice how many of the Primals are no more a caster than a King Behemoth casting Meteor is. Unless plumes Make Titan a wizard rather than beefed up Elemental? i mean maybe Lakshmi counts too but you just can't beat a giant boss with a staff raining spells down on you in a fantasy MMORPG can you and we've been starved of that for a while.<br />
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It got a little bit more bullet points in its pacing after this for a bit:<br />
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-New skills from 70 to 80, naturally<br />
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-The Battle system revamp will be revealed around May<br />
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-World visit should be in 4.57<br />
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-Trust NPC's are dungeon only, maybe too many made Fates a nightmare like ole' King Behemoth and the Chobobo issue back in the day?<br />
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-Preorders start next week, expansion releases on July 2nd<br />
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Then we got the last two big bits of information. First off, surprising nobody we see the next playable race for FFXIV and if you played the current Alliance Raid content the race probably wont surprise you even if you missed the bugs bunny shirt at the US fan fest.<br />
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So yeah. Thats bunny girls alright. Guess now we know how the companies $133 million loss is going to be recouped. Hope they have the fantasia stockpiled. Shame Miqo'te will probably go the way of the Elezenn after this. Seems like a mono gendered race thus face but maybe they are saving something for the JP fanfest in a few months?<br />
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Finally after all that we get the last big surprise. There had been rumours of Yoko Taro, famed internet gif producing crackpot and tortured mind behind the 'DarkeNier' games, working on something Final Fantasy related since last year. People seemed to assume he was just being given the reigns to FFXVI after the attempts to make XV a strange 'jrpg as a service' that fell flat. Turns out he's working with the FFXIV team instead!<br />
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Yes thats real and not an early April Fools joke. The Alliance Raid storyline for Shadowbringers is going to be written by Taro and be a Nier story. For some this is a gross level of cross over that kills their immersion and its gotten some people upset. Personally i have been a fan of Taro's games since the buggy but memorable mess that is Darkengard/Drag on Dragoon and while i love Automata a lot the original Nier Replicant/Gestalt is the rpg i wanted from Square during the PS3 generation that i got while games like FFXIII were massive let downs. Taro's storys defy traditional rpg conventions and are often about loss, morality and the choices we make that are rarely the same kind of basic moral quandaries rpgs throw at their protagonists and more, in his own words, 'if you believe you are doing the right thing then you can do great evil for the most selfish of reasons' and maybe that thinking really resonates with the core story of Shadowbringers?<br />
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All i know is Taro is jrpg equivalent of a Hideo Kojima level Auteur and i cannot wait to see what we get out of multiplayer Nier content. A bit bigger than the Lightning Returns style fate people asked for an expected all of last year huh?<br />
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So with that the shows over. One more fanfest before the expansion releases and we know more but we still seem to know so little outside of the mechanics/features side. Which to some is probably frustrating but personally i hope they don't just blow their load and give us a massive reveal of all the story like they did with Stormblood. I remember the ending to A Realm Reborn had people in a mad panic and all we knew was "we go to Ishgard on the lamb" and it made things feel more like an adventure than another tier of levelling content. Hopefully we get that back again as Stormblood seemed to lack that feeling of 'mystery' and has not kept people as interested as Heavensward did. So i really hope this is a return to form in that regard. Beyond that i'm super excited, all the more so with Taro doing work for the project so bring in June!<br />
<br />Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-14252434115328033982018-12-14T08:27:00.000-08:002018-12-14T08:27:14.401-08:00So lets talk about a peddler from the New World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So allow me a minute to feel a little smug about this one. Since the rumours of it or RDM for Stormblood my theory on BLU and how it would work was constantly met with <i>"thats stupid, you are stupid, they would never implement a class like that!". </i>However Fanfests announcements have come and gone and after waiting for <a href="https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/patch/4_5/">the 4.5 special site to show up for confirmation</a> i can whip out 'smug_anime_girl.png' in any forum argument over it with a great big 'told you so' on this one.<br />
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With that moment of smug ass behaviour i earned out the way lets get to Blue Mage and why i didn't shit out some heated reaction like so many other people i know over this 'Limited Job'. So what <i>is</i> a 'Limited Job' in this regard?<br />
Essentially it is a job with a specific focus or you could say 'market' of user. There have been MMORPG's in the past that to some measures of success or failure introduced new classes with a focus on being a pure pvp class, or a support in a game with nothing else outside the 'holy trinity' of traditional roles. Theres are intended to not be the endgame class for every activity and to not really excel in the same ways as others. Just to throw a twist in the mix and give players something to do as a fun alternative. Like how you can level by quests, fates and dungeons on an alt Job or if you want to just hit the Deep Dungeon train hard. Kind of.<br />
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Basically it goes like this: Next month when patch 4.5 drops a questionable looking trader will spawn somewhere in the 2.0 areas. He claims to come from 'The New World' which if memory serves has only been this strongly name dropped before by the Mamool-Ja in Wanderers Palace Hard Mode and is assumed to either be an analogue to the undiscovered Americas of the world or a reflection of Vana'diel in the same way our Ivalice is to the Tactics games setting. He has brought with him strange new Soul Crystals that confer a new type of magic neither White nor Black but one that taps into the aetherial abilities of monsters. Simply put 'Monster Magic'. For a price, as in Gil not some kind of Bloodpact mind you, one of these new sketch as fug Job Crystals can be yours. You get one starter ability and then its on your way as a new lvl.1 Blue Mage!<br />
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So pretty much this is mechanically at least exactly what i predicted. Like Quina or the Warriors of Light from FFV you go out into the world, fight monsters and some run ins give you the ability to learn some Monster Magic. Cactuar will give you 1000 Needles, Malboro/Morbol will give you Bad Breath and so on. Treated like drops some skills are common, some very rare and some inbetween. There are -to begin with at least- 49 skills out there to find.<br />
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Once you have gained a skill it can then be dragged onto a cross role style set up to allow you to arrange up to 24 of those 49 skills to form a loudout of sorts to match the activity or simply your tastes. Maybe there is a situation where 'Lvl.5 Death' is super useful but close range skills are pointless? Maybe you are going to constantly be dropping in and dragging out Spells and Abilities for every kind of situation. Not that you will be doing <i>every</i> kind of situation mind you.<br />
See this is what has some peoples jimmies all up in a rustle and i'll touch on that in a minute but the BLU mage is 'Limited' in the sense that it isn't a class you rush to 70 and jump into the final Ivalice raid with. In fact upon release they will be hard capped at lvl.50 with level increases coming during Shadowbringers. Perhaps this is so its not a balancing nightmare they dont need when it would just need the same again in 5.0's system wide combat revamp. Perhaps its never intended as something you take to endgame like the other three Mage Jobs at all?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_t-XWnmfagGuGUR56zK1z-vZjtlYMA8BnHyQXKadLBb_rzx6Yg_k9MdNmCXWCIoObTMfGt9AaLCDfLqiFuuVNl69noltWItl-fD9mhsXP0vEoLb_f_IPtYGy8PhKXZW5Rh9B2iyffaobx/s1600/MIWHZ9AGiMafMya-DupqpCyiIA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="479" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_t-XWnmfagGuGUR56zK1z-vZjtlYMA8BnHyQXKadLBb_rzx6Yg_k9MdNmCXWCIoObTMfGt9AaLCDfLqiFuuVNl69noltWItl-fD9mhsXP0vEoLb_f_IPtYGy8PhKXZW5Rh9B2iyffaobx/s320/MIWHZ9AGiMafMya-DupqpCyiIA.jpg" width="320" /></a> The only clear cut thing to go on from Yoshi and the team right now is this: The Job is going to have some ridiculously overpowered moves and will not be allowed in Party Finder. Period. Does this mean you will have to stick to PUG's for some content or you just cannot enter at all? Does this intended the class to be a way to get more life out of older content as a move hunting minigame? we just don't know. In some ways it almost makes BLU feel more like a combat version of a Disciple of Land Job than a traditional PVE MMORPG combat class. Not that you are just revisiting old content that is.<br />
Announced with the Job is a new activity called 'The Masked Carnival' which they seem to be teasing as BLU specific Guildhests but lets be honest anyone who has played World of Warcraft from Mists of Pandaria onwards can recognise this: Its the Brawlers Guild. A enclosed single player PVE combat scenario with increasingly challenging bosses or combinations of enemies right out of the Olympus Tournament from Kingdom Hearts. I doubt it will be for everyone but after seeing the Brawlers Guild grow a fanbase and knowing how crazy the min maxers can get with things as simple as materia melding alone i could see this having some ridiculous speed run style competitions as people try to get the right combo of abilities and tactics down to shave time off the servers high score for a clear or something.<br />
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Now we need to talk about people, shock of shocks, being mad on the internet.<br />
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So fanfest ends its opening show and already the news that BLU won't be something you can speed to max level and jump into new content for has people ranging from mildly disappointed to what i can only describe as <i>"Platinum Tier Buttmad". </i>A whole lot of 'not a real job' and 'what a waste of time and resources' going around. Ranging from people from XI who have been waiting to retake their old main job as i did with RDM and finding for now at least thats not going to be the case to people who honestly seem made for the sake of it.</div>
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To a degree i can get it but at the same time <i>this is a game with a job system</i> y'know? You aren't being locked into BLU and being left behind. Just as i have all the crafters and gatherers maxed because i want to live out muh Log Horizon production class fantasy doesn't mean everyone wants to or has to. Like Chocobo breeding/racing, Lords of Veminion or Triple Triad BLU seems less like yet another dps job in a game thats really not starved for dps right now at all but a new minigame/sub activity and personally thats fine. For me at least.</div>
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Right now if i log in i need like 2 more yellow script items and i'm done with crafting. I finished Doma and the Namazu last night after taking it real slow so after completing the MSQ in the next patch my options are going to be BLU or Eureka <i>WHICH APPARENTLY STILL HAS ANOTHER BLOODY AREA TO COME I FORGOT ABOUT?!? </i>so you know what i'm going to do? I'm going to walk right by the Eureka npcs as usual and go pick up that BLU job crystal. Why? because it looks like fun. Does it suck for the people from XI who wanted their main job back? absolutely. I was worried when we first heard the leaks about RDM that it was just going to be a severely limited BLM in mechanics and thankfully its a Rune Fencer with Black and White magic and while not exactly the same i got my main back. For those who haven't yeah they should be as buttmad as they wish to be and more power to them.</div>
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The people otherwise who are still acting like the sky is falling? i say what i say when i recommend the game over its competitors: <i>Your character is your account, not your class. </i>You are never locked into anything so if BLU sucks its a shame but at best it cost you some gil and time. Thats it. If its great eventually its level cap will be increased for more content but who cares if its fun right now doing the 50 levels of stuff it has to do now? it honestly beats the SB 60-70 of <i>"do you want to spam like 3 of the possible dungeons inbetween the daily roulettes? again? 14th times the charm right?"</i> alternative right now. After a year of that yeah i'll go stomp around our ARR grounds on a BLU vacation till Shadowbringers. </div>
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Who knows, if its popular enough and can be balanced or given a 'locked in for duty finder content' rotation maybe 'Limited' wont be a prefix forever?</div>
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right now i'm excited for the job after enjoying it in multiple other games in the series and worst case scenario i don't care for it and simply don't take part in it longterm. Considering the fact it scratches my completionist/collector itch and offers a unique activity i'm going to guess its probably my kind of thing but who knows right? roll on January so we can all get our hands on it and find out!</div>
<br />Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-56786139533528531062018-11-29T11:22:00.002-08:002018-11-29T11:22:22.996-08:00Fan Fest in review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well i let this sit for a while rather than vomit out a word salad like a fair number of places i visit in the last week or two. All in all this fanfest has been an interesting one. We have an expansion name and rough release window, but we don't know where or even when its set. We have a new job, but we don't know what its for. We have new mechanics, but we don't know when we will be using them.<br />
Its not like people are upset, its just a lot more vague and i imagine some of that is because they dont want another thing like the previews to Heavensward that spoiled the absolute shit out of the shocking twists at the end of A Realm Reborn. I guess its just an unusual feeling for FFXIV to know about content, but also to know comparatively little when put up against the fan fest reveals of Heavensward and Stormblood.<br />
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So anyway. Shadowbringers. Guess the leaks were legit thus far huh? What we know however is pretty slim. The trailer shows the highlander going through all his jobs from 1.0 Archer to 4.0 Samurai/Monk while talking about becoming the warrior of Darkness. We see Thancred with a Gunblade, perhaps as the rumoured Soldier job escorting a young girl and -something which i feel people haven't really touched on that seems important- both Thancred and the warrior of light are being attacked by Amdapori constructs. Last time we saw them was when the magic levels in the ruins of Amdapor were going haywire and the SB Summoner questline where you find out Kuribu was in part connected to a summoning ritual rather than just being an animated statue. I can only imagine the latest patch talking about the aether being drained out of the land is related to this. Beyond that very little story. We know Zenos/Elidibus will be the final big bad of Stormblood so thats no spoiler. It was nice to hear Sokens theme since Uematsu is on a break but on the whole it was a great teaser trailer that ultimately tells us very little and thats weird but new content is new content so thats that announced.<br />
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Now we come to the quickfire info:<br />
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<i>"Multiple new jobs coming in the expansion"</i> - Strange thing here being that BLU was announced, i'll get to it later, and thats <i>not </i>coming in the expansion. Its a patch job for Stormblood. So whats coming in Shadowbringers? we know a Gunblade user is confirmed but aside from that? nothing. Just 'multiple jobs' and with the leak suggesting Blue Mage, Soldier and Dancer maybe multiple just means two in 5.0 and Dancer is coming later and Soldier uses a Gunblade? who knows. Personally i'm hoping SLD is a tank and DNC is a healer as we have enough dps for now and could use more tanks and healer jobs for variety. Lots of mmos treat tanks and healers like second class customers and give them one new job every 5 or so years in general and it would be great to see FFXIV give them some more love.<br />
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<i>"Level to 80 in all new areas"</i> - Big question here was "where?". We have new zones listed. The Rak'Tika Greatwood which looks extremely similar to a locations from FFXII and is home to a certain race of note in that game and Amh Areng which is a destroyed castle dotted landscape similar in appearance to the final area of Dark Souls 3. Apparently a new culture, well a new old dead one that is, but beyond that we know nothing. Where are these zones? are they even connected to each other? we simply don't know anything more about them at this point. New areas are always exciting for me regardless but its odd to see an MMORPG expansion reveal without a big "and we're going to [BLANK]!" during said reveal. Maybe its Thavnair. Maybe its undiscovered parts of Aldenard. We just don't know right now.<br />
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<i>"9 dungeons at launch and new raids and alliance raids to follow"</i> - nothing too shocking but 9 is a solid number to start with. It feels like you only really do Sirens Song, Bardams Mettle and Doma Castle before cap nowadays in SB and the lack of variety really makes levelling alt jobs a bit boring so variety is very welcome. Big question is whats the raid storyline this time? theres no Alexander or Omega set up thus far and we don't have many large tier bosses from previous games to dust off in this regard. These speculation of time travel in this expansion so maybe it comes in there, but i feel that could just feel like Alex again even if its not clockwork and gobbos.<br />
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<i>"Take the war to Garlemald while averting the greatest Umbral Calamity of all and become the Warrior of Darkness"</i> - This ones interesting. I wasn't expecting Garlemald so soon and the trailer makes it hard to tell if we are the hero's or the villains of the story. Perhaps the Kuribu style entities are attacking to defend something rather than be mindless monsters attacking the player? When we were warned of 'the world being destroyed in overwhelming light' does that mean a straight up army of light aligned constructs like the amdipori creations?<br />
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<i>"Nu Mo beast tribes, a familiar face from XII showing up in the final Ivalice raid and a new playable race"</i> - So Nu Mo from 12, a certain character thats a 'fan favourite but not balthier' in the next patches raid and a race teased by a Bugs Bunny shirt? Hmm. I wonder what that could be? (yeah we all know its Fran and Viera, get ready for SE to make back those recent losses on Fantasia alone!). Overall its nice to see Ivalice love. Hope the rumours of 16 being a return to that setting but viera being the last race isn't that surprising. In terms of archetypal FF species they are really the only none beastial one left that could wear current gear models.<br />
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<i>"TP is gone, freeing up the GCD and DRK getting a rework"</i> - TP is interesting. Were it at the end of HW it might seem a bit more dramatic but considering a lot of the gauges are good for so little i can easily imagine those reworked to be a resource gauge like how RDM uses it for its melee combo attacks. As for DRK? well i've not had much issue with it right now as a casual tank but the people i know who main it and only tank have barely played Stormblood because they hate the class. Apparently thats quite common and we all know what happened to PLD and WAR in the past and with Shadowbringers looking like the DRK expansion as the current is SAM/MNK and the last was DRG/PLD leaning who knows how big the changes will be?</div>
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All in all it was some interesting stuff but nothing too breath taking. There are a couple of other things i will talk about in other entries to break this up but we all know it ended with a bit of a surprise thats left people 'mixed' in terms of reactions, shocking for the internet i know, but i'll get to that at another time. For now its more FFXIV and we have 4.5 on the way and thats also promising to make Stormblood go out with a bang so exciting stuff all around, but a bit more vague than usual and Yoshi alluded thats clearly for good reason. We just gotta wait for the next fanfest to see what it is!</div>
<br />Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-55683905237367380642018-11-14T06:58:00.001-08:002018-11-14T06:58:24.514-08:00No i'm not making a pun about the 'I'm Blue' song.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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But lets talk about the Blue Mage Leak/Rumour anyway. According to said rumour not only is Blue Mage or BLU one of the Jobs for the next expansion but it will be a preorder bonus of sorts and will become available to players who prepurchase the game. Sort of like how Blizzard did with the Demon Hunter Class for World of Warcrafts Legion expansion.<br />
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<i>So first off what is a Blue Mage? </i>Blue Mages first appeared in Final Fantasy V as a new option alongside the traditional Black, White and Red. While Black was damage, White was healing and Red was a weaker blend of the two Blue Magic was essentially a form of mimic magic. In Most examples of the Job -even times like in FFIX where it was never actually given the name- the Blue Mage does not learn their skills from a mentor or a tome but by experiencing it themselves. Most often from Monsters. Fight a monster that uses the regen spell White Wind? well you can use 'copy' or a similar skill to learn it should you defeat the monster and you keep the spell forever. Notable examples being the Warriors of Light in V, Quina Quen in IX and most popular with fans Khimari Ronso in X. As a notable side thing the rumour also states Ronso are a playable race in 5.0. Perhaps they are the more tribal mages who created Blue Magic while the Amdapori and Mhachi worked on Black and White magic?<br />
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<i> So how did that work in an MMORPG?</i> in FFXI Blue Mages showed up as a Job in the Treasures of Aht Urghan expansion. They were basically elite anti monster tanks, trained to become a monster themselves and take in the essence of powerful monsters while struggling to combat their "inner beast" lest they become a mindless force of destruction themselves. To any WAR's reading this i'm sure the concept sounds familiar to a degree.<br />
In gameplay terms they were a close combat, tanky mage. They had a few basic attacks and buffs to power up Blue Magic but by and large their focus was on -shock of shocks- utilising Blue Magic spells to deal damage and resist damage. Crazy i know! But unlike other mages they were regarded in two ways. Physical spells were close range, impactful magic. In XIV terms think something like a RDM's Enchanted Rapier Skills. Then Monster Magic or Monster Affinity Magic. None impactful stuff more connected to elemental abilities. For example you might fight a crab and learn a water element spell. Just like a conjurer casting Stone or Water. The big deal for BLU was <i>how</i> you got them.<br />
Monster Magic is acquired by defeating, or being in a part with allies that defeat a monster using the skill you want. You just need to be a BLU and not get KO'ed while doing so. You them, based on level have a number of BP or Blue Magic Points you can use to spend on a hotbar of skills from your library of skills. Basically imagine the cross role spells of XIV but with the mod mechanics from Warframe. Have 8 BP free for your last slot but Bad Breath costs 10BP? too bad you dont have the points even though the slots open.<br />
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<i> Now how would i implement this in XIV?</i> Essentially i would use job quests to give the core skills and the hunt log to point you in the direction of what you can get skills from. I know they kind of want the hunt to replace the hunt log but it just seems like such a perfect fit. You leave your early town and can get your stun from the jellyfish outside Limsa Lominsa for example. You just take the hit, beat the monster and bam. Now your spell list has a monster magic spell to add onto your BLU specific version of the cross bar. Simple. Kind of.<br />
I would make it a tank myself since magical cloth tank is a really neat idea, maybe give it evasion based stuff and use NIN gear? but knowing how popular dps are in online games over tanks i could see it becoming another BRD or RDM. I wouldn't care for it as a RDM main who already heals and res'es players in raids with no desire for another supportive mage job but you never know.<br />
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A lot of people think the leak is legit and honestly i wouldn't be unhappy to see BLU added to the game. It could fit with the Ronso and we all saw last time around the demand for it is really up there in terms of FF jobs yet to show up in game but honestly i also wouldn't be upset if it didn't show up this time. I can take or leave it.<br />
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What about you? excited for it? worried it wont be the role you want?<br />
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What kind of BLU do you want to see in FFXIV?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-80398880978985708922018-11-13T12:52:00.001-08:002018-11-14T13:30:32.973-08:00Happy 5th Anniversary! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Good lord. Half a decade gone by already? It feels like just yesterday the internet at large was having a laugh at Square -not popular at the time during its "decade at lightning" debacle- shoving out FFXIV 1.0 or "4.0" as it was known based on review scores at the time with people considering the game dead on arrival.<br />
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But we all know what happened, or who happened, to FFXIV next and Yoshida saved the game and arguably salvaged the Final Fantasy brand that once again seems to be in need or another goodwill boon from just about every product but XIV again giving the consumer issues with the brand. roll on Fanfest right?<br />
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I've mentioned it to a degree before but i think the only reason i got into FFXIV as a Final Fantasy die hard that had finally written the ip off after its disastrous PS3 experiences was the novelty of getting a beta code to try an mmo on my PS3. I had to delete all the installed games and it ran like shit but playing that A Realm Reborn beta as a WoW veteran getting disillusioned with World of Warcraft i found myself exploring Gridania and the South Shroud and thinking <i>"Hey now, theres something to this game. Maybe this is worth looking into on release?" </i>and the rest is history. From Raiding Coil as a BLM with his brand new Stardust Rod to taking down Nidhogg on the final steppes of faith as NIN with my Sandungs Lux to Taking down Omega as RDM and just waiting for the big bad of the expansion to show up for a bruising its been a hell of a ride.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhzH6VvQQtmKZfcSSZQrT3hZV_wSo1Ek1Qpc_xcLLP1IKwpPJsbds6Ruv0lUlJeZKm-50XrOFsl_MH7Vv1tqpNIX6k7VQwakHsrdT0iwjv57tXufsiD2zAiNqx69v4iJh-_nEJDbHBfSi/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1552" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhzH6VvQQtmKZfcSSZQrT3hZV_wSo1Ek1Qpc_xcLLP1IKwpPJsbds6Ruv0lUlJeZKm-50XrOFsl_MH7Vv1tqpNIX6k7VQwakHsrdT0iwjv57tXufsiD2zAiNqx69v4iJh-_nEJDbHBfSi/s320/FullSizeRender.jpeg" width="310" /></a>Now just in game however. I can gush about the art style, amazing music that puts all over MMORPG's to shame and the like but what keeps me going is also the community. People that unlike every other online game i've tried don't rage on the first wipe. Don't quit over the smallest things. They come together be it to solve a new raid boss, deal with a massive organised group of assholes trying to crash the server market in a bid to take over the economy or worse. This is a community that cares about being in this together. Its not the individual power fantasy or the single player game with optional multiplayer. These are names and faces you know, for years now. You wave when you pass. You recognise each other from memorable times in expansions past.<br />
To say nothing or outside the game. When i'm running into a Hildebrand cosplayer at Comicon and dancing the Manderville, playing the FFTCG at a local tournament and shooting the shit over what might be coming in the next expansion or as simply as having someone in a comic book store tap me on the shoulder, point at the Job Stone on my bag and say <i>"Hey man, what server?" </i>both inside and out its the first fanbase for a game i've ran into that feels like an actual community comparable to stuff like the FGC or TCG crowds. These are people with a passion and its the same one you have for the same virtual world we all inhabit and thats really the MMORPG dream, isn't it?<br />
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Now days from the next Fanfest and the expected reveal of 5.0 and while excitement for Stormblood has been honestly pretty muted over the last 6 months or so people are really revving up the excitement for what the future holds. Heres hoping they can keep this up for another 5 eh?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-62631898870278440782018-11-13T02:09:00.001-08:002018-11-14T13:30:51.766-08:00Its pre fan fest expansion predictions time! again!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Is it really that time again? so soon after the shitstorm of nobody's paid stream working for the last one? boy how time flies eh?<br />
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Naturally of course this means its time to speculate our hopes, dreams and far less exciting expectations for the next expansion in what at the time of writing appears to be Square Enix's only ongoing Final Fantasy project thats not some form of burning trash fire. No pressure Yoshi.<br />
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So this time around i'm basically listing things two ways: What i want to see and What i expect to see. One is my personal wants no matter how unlikely and the other is what i honestly expect based on the games support up to this point. So lets cut to the chase and jump right in!<br />
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<b><i><u>What i expect to see:</u></i></b><br />
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<b>New Job GEO/Geomancer:</b> Will be a melee ranged magical dps with support elements like BRD. With positional effects added to moves right out of FFXI. You hit from the north and a move adds a fire dot, hit from the south and the same move gives your nearby allies a small attack speed buff. Positionals have had a bit of a rocky history in this game but i dont see how else you use the job without making it just another mage -or conjurer for that matter. But the entire SB expansion has been dropping strong hints and while i can't consider any expectation set in stone this certainly feels like a job in XIV's future even if its not in this particular expansion<br />
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<b>New Job SLD/Soldier:</b> Not a personal want but something a lot of people are expecting and i can see why. In working with Garlean rebels -gunblade users included- we have an already very fleshed out set of flashy moves and story connection. If MCH's can make artificial job crystals in some sweaty workhouse in Ishgard is it so unlikely the Garleans havent made similar? Folks seem to be expecting Squall: the class, personally i'm expecting a tank like FFVI's magitek knight as a defensive equivalent to Machinist. Things like the SMN questline in SB in particular has started pushing the idea that allagans pre collapse were beginning to augment weak magical abilities with technology and that sounds like something Garlemald would dig up and learn to use doesnt it?<br />
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<b>New Playable Race Viera:</b> Its been in high demand forever, they have been namedropped in the Ivalice storyline and most importantly they modelled a woman with bunny ears for the Tsukuyomi primal fight. They know people want it and some measure of the works done already. I could see them before something like Bangaa or some form of beast tribe.<br />
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<b>New Regions:</b> Now personally i <i>don't</i> think we are heading right to the empires front door with this expansion. I think they are intending for rebellions and internal struggles to push Garlemald over the course of the next story arc to become the big bad. Perhaps in reference to FFXV they are put so far on the defensive they do something unspeakable to weaponise the innocent civilians to turn them into some monsters or resort to summoning like beast tribes? i think they are going to be pushed to cross some line and have yet to reach the point to be desperate enough. We need to fight back and break down their expansion for a bit longer to rationalise that i think.<br />
Instead i think we are going to head south to southern Islabard, Thavnair -with the expansion capital in tropical Radz-At-Han, home to the morden Eorzean school of Alchemy and the only nation to trade with Garlemald- and perhaps the end of Erueka will lead Krile and Alphinaux back west to the 3 island chain of Old Sharlayan?<br />
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<b>Class changes:</b> Instead of something like another meter i imagine upon hitting level 80 our signature skills will change. They started to implement this in SB. If you hit the right level of Summmoner Bio II becomes Bio III automatically for example. It scales down for level synchs but at max level is a stronger, more flashy version. I think thats the direction in general for lvl.80 abilities.<br />
To use Summoner as an example i think we will finally see Egi changes with max level changing them so Titan Egi becomes Sephirot Egi for example. Its not as exciting to some as straight up new moves but it allows your character to feel more powerful without buttonbloat. You might hit lvl.30 and get your carbuncle replaced with an Ifrit Egi as a new player and then see a lvl.80 summoner with a Ramuh Egi replacing it and go "oh man, i want to get to <i>that</i> level of power!"<br />
I also think we will see a couple of class revamps. Not as dramatic as PLD and WAR have had in the past but i firmly think DRK, NIN and WHM are all going to get some form of soft rework as their participation numbers have dropped dramatically in Stormblood and the sentiment seems to be DRK is mindlessly easy and NIN/WHM are either boring or their new SB mechanics made them actively less fun to play. I think 3 jobs being left behind is something Yoshi and the team wont want to see left to sit and thats going to change.<br />
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<b>Theming:</b> I think, based on the writers past ebbs and flows and the current state of the MSQ while writing this that the next expansion is in some ways going to be a lean back to ARR in some aspects. I think Ascian influence and Allagan tech causing trouble will come back to the forefront. Perhaps as some kind of arms race, perhaps as Garlemald is put on the defensive it simply gives others more time to dig too greedily and too deep but i think 'digging up forgotten secrets' is going to be the active theme of the next expansion and theres nothing that represents that better than stuff like the Allagans. Maybe we will even get a new zone by Mor Dhona? Beyond that i think they can't leave the idea of 'overwhelming light destroying the world' to just sit. Something has to give and i think thats going to start happening soon. Something is draining aether out of the land and if its not Zodiark then perhaps its actually Hydaelyn? What if the 'Shadowbringers' rumour is true and we have to end up taking a role more akin to the warriors of darkness?<br />
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<b>Raiding:</b> This is a bit of a muddy prediction but i think something is going to chance. Again. People are getting very vocal about missing something like Coil and having "the baby raid where everyone wants a carry and wipes all the time" or "savage with the perception that its only for the hardcore" which completely ignores normal modes as anything but a training mode and ultimately hurts the raiding overall. Back in ARR we went into Coil for the story and the fights. Sure there was gear but it wasn't seen as a pinata like alliance raids but nor was the early coil seen as the hardest of the hard stuff like savage that drove people away. Anyone who was playing at the time remembers the huge crowds at Wineport as pick up groups got ready to take their first steps into the Binding Coil of Bahamut and while few got to the end it was a memorable experience for all. In the current system it seems like the options are brainless loot farm -though i think the last Ivalice raid that released was a nice balance in terms of difficulty- or savage that people view as the elitist content and by and large dont bother with.<br />
I'm not sure what the easy remedy is to be honest but i feel like the raiding model is going to change once again. Raiding proved far more popular in its domestic market than anticipated and they want that draw to still be there. But if you arent a savage raider it seems like the overwhelming majority see extreme primals as their endgame and for one item per job. I just dont see them settling on that as the happy outcome. I dont know what the change will be but i predict there will be one.<br />
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<b>Gimmicks:</b> The little things, the quality of life changes, the things you use to sell the casual player. These aren't the big sweeping changes but the things that add a little something to the core to expand upon it. We've had flying, swimming, diadem, eureka, treasure maps, squadrons, housing. What do they do next?<br />
Personally i don't think we see a new transport gimmick. Flying is already suffering from 'the warcraft problem' where upon its introduction it was like getting the Zoras Flippers in Zelda. Now places you could never reach are easily accessible and thats great. Its feeling like you reached a new tier and all these new secrets are waiting to be found. Then in SB i'm basically using it to reach mining nodes and otherwise just to skip gameplay just like modern WoW and to be frank that sucks. Swimming even more so. Without underwater combat swimming only serves to collect items for quests and thats so bland. So i think they have no ideas for them as gameplay ideas and probably wont try new ones anytime soon. Perhaps bring back real time airship rides and have them fly over zones with the option to jump off to get to out of reach places or something instead?<br />
I imagine housing might get a new area or simply new wards but i would love some more interaction with them. Technically you can make your house a item shop, blacksmith or cafe but why would players go there and how would they even know it exists? that needs work.<br />
As for another Diadem/Eureka? ehh i think its been a failure as an experiment. Personally i think its more rational and logical to expand on successful systems like the Hunt or Khloe's diary instead. It just feels like time to revamp and improve existing systems instead of another time consuming experiment and while SE is not exactly doing so hot nowadays it makes sense to improve your core rather than waste time on another risky potential for failure.<br />
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Now thats all i expect to see. There may be more stuff i havent mentioned or maybe less stuff changed with more dramatic changes but what would i actually <i>want</i> to see but dont expect?<br />
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-Puppet Master as a job. Some kind of pet using tank that has constructs hold aggro while you lay traps and use the puppets to bring them into their path. With some kind of gothic/baroque aesthetic like the clowns/jesters from devil may cry.<br />
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-2 announced jobs and a 3rd kept secret. This would never happen with dataminers but i love how in FFXI there were times i just want into the quest to unlock a none starting job like DRK and it was a nice surprise to show my friends i was this new job they didnt even know was in the game yet. It would be spoiled in hours for most of us that keep up with the game news of course but i still love the idea of finding some old dude in trouble and getting a BLU job crystal as a reward and freaking out.<br />
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-Replace triple triad with an ingame version of the FFTCG like Hearthstone but for XIV. I like triple triad, but i love the physical card game, my XIV deck in particular. Trouble is finding people to play with is a hassle but if the ingame card game wasn't a 30 second steamroll i would be more inclined to play it and collect cards. Will never, ever happen but i can dream can't i?<br />
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-Give us a reason to fly and swim. Underwater combat, High up villages like some native people that live off the land you can only reach via flying for new endgame content. Stuff that makes us use the mechanics as something to move from A to B to collect something and avoid the mmo gameplay we pay a sub fee for. Give me adventure and a reason to explore!<br />
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-Highly unlikely but with the Ivalice stuff in game i would love one of my favourite underrated games to get some love with Vagrant Story's Sunk City of Lea Monde as an underground, inside based quest zone. We've had a sky zone, a sea zone and deserts, forests and more. Why not underground? and why caves when ivalice has a perfectly explorable buried ghost town right out of demon's souls?<br />
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But these are things i want that i also know are never going to happen. Its now a couple of days to the US fanfest which will at least be an expansion reveal and a trailer, maybe they will be kind and give the Americans a job reveal or something for once but who knows. For now we can only wait and dream of what new jobs and adventures we will be getting in the next major expansion pack to our mmo of choice. What are you expecting? What do you want?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-77627186711669039422018-11-06T07:11:00.002-08:002018-11-14T13:31:37.861-08:00A quick break from our usual content to talk about Vanadiel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So ain't this something? Square Enix has announced that accompanying the FFXIV Fan Fest we know and love there will be a smaller 'Fan Event' for Final Fantasy XI.<br />
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This is interesting for two reasons. First 3 years ago they effectively said the game was dead and going into maintenance mode, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z5XfjmyNBA">i even made a video about it on my youtube channel at the time</a>, and with this announcement all official fan events came to a close. It was sad but after 13 years and the game becoming a straight up Ghost Town it was a sad but understandable development. Yet here they are 3 years later where the game saw some level of resurgence, both in player interest and in development of new small scale updates, and once again this 16 year old game has news to announce.<br />
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Secondly a lot of people either forgot or never saw it to begin with but there <i>was</i> in fact confirmation of a mobile remake of FFXI in the unreal engine that had a few screenshots leak but then it vanished and years later has never been heard from again. Perhaps its not as dead as people expected?<br />
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Personally i see SE going out of their way to do this after years without for two reasons:<br />
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1 - The game is actually dying this time and this is one last hurrah to toast the players that stuck with it for 16 long years.<br />
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2 - The Unreal Remake is finally being revealed and its not just coming to mobile anymore.<br />
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Now i'm a cynical bastard and would usually lean to the former. If not for the state of the mmorpg industry since the 'soft maintenance mode' announcement 3 years ago. Classic/Progression servers are a thing thats growing in popularity. Even Blizzard is doing it with World of Warcraft. So maybe Square is looking at that project thats been on the downlow for mobile for years and thinking 'hey, the markets changed, maybe theres money in this?' and a FFXI resurgence of a sort is on the way?<br />
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Honestly i have no idea but the concept of them touching on Vanadiel again is always a welcome one.<br />
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What do you think they are up to?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-21547427462385044442018-11-06T06:09:00.000-08:002018-11-14T13:31:10.169-08:00The Final update to Eureka and Good Riddance!<br />
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Now its no secret i have a dislike for Eureka. Intense isn't quite the word since my general sentiment to it is <i>"Why would i waste my finite free time playing a gold farming bot simulator?"</i> and as such its not really some smouldering outrage and more a simple case of regarding the content as utterly redundant and having no reason for me to engage with it.<br />
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Personally i've said more than once while talking about it to other players that i feel it was intended as the "laidback, chill grind" filler content to launch with the expansion and serve as the backbone of the whole experience. However it came out late after multiple delays. The experience was boring, monotonous and all around a chore to take part in. From everything i've seen the drop off levels appear to have been pretty spectacular. Very few people i know, play with or just see regularly on the forums and the subreddit stuck with it into its second area. Their reasoning being <i>"well the relic will probably be some 390 weapon with amazing stats, right?". </i><br />
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So about that.<br />
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Now that Pagos is out and datamined to be giving 385 weapons with randomised stats those people are now understandably less than enthused with the idea of joining in on the grind for a third time. Meanwhile one last Omega run today and i got my 380 Rapier for RDM with great fixed stats and it took me a grand total of around 10 minutes per week for 7 weeks. So just over an hour for a great weapon that will last the rest of the expansion versus hours upon hours of grinding over the year for a <i>chance</i> at a weapon that at best is a nice model and will last a few levels into the next expansion as your levelling stat stick.<br />
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Personally i don't think the trade off is worth it.<br />
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Bare in mind i got every relic from ARR and HW. Including all the Padjal Weapons and the like. To say nothing of all the gear from all the tomestone and wolf mark vendors. So grinding for rewards is a total none issue to me <i>as long as i am having fun doing it and the reward isn't randomised</i>. Compounding the issue of lame rewards put simply i have had no fun in Eureka. At all.<br />
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Now you have to ask yourself 'whats the difference between this and things like Diadem right? Is it the variety of fates and monsters leading to different situations? not really since eureka has that. Is it the ability to go in as a Disciple of Land/Hand and actually do something other than killing mobs? perhaps thats an element. But personally? i think it comes down to two things based on the type of player: the explorer vs the chaser.<br />
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The Explorer plays games to dig in every nook and cranny and find secrets. Wether they are rare treasure or simply easter eggs to find this is a more meta level experience where you appreciate the craft of a virtual world made from nothing and all its nuances. Doing things as a NIN main at the time like using Hide to go stealth and sneaking through caves and such to find chests full of rare treasures for the entire group was a satisfying experience. I was using my class abilities to do a thing completely separate from the completion state goal we set out to do and sneaking around finding treasures for the team. That was great. Can't really do that in a bland instanced island full of trash mobs and nothing else can you?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOa4yKyIrgLXpOXfCaCIjtJYnCQCyI371x0PbRsAEuhfqMrslLm-ElPa06Xxk2-ZCwBQH36YcEH3J1xChpnbaHQcO1P7BIrhlSdac22kKOen6YqpsVB-OVuxXCzlC0SbWR9x9nVBtn0das/s1600/Leaping-Lizzy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOa4yKyIrgLXpOXfCaCIjtJYnCQCyI371x0PbRsAEuhfqMrslLm-ElPa06Xxk2-ZCwBQH36YcEH3J1xChpnbaHQcO1P7BIrhlSdac22kKOen6YqpsVB-OVuxXCzlC0SbWR9x9nVBtn0das/s1600/Leaping-Lizzy.jpg" /></a>Meanwhile the Chaser has a goal and works towards it. Maybe they plan, maybe its organic but for them the fun of the gameplay is working towards a specific goal. In Diadem it was <i>"okay team we got X, Y and Z to do. Lets jump on it!" </i>and they got a structured experience without the stress of organised raiding and with some more free roaming than a linear dungeon to let them have their fun. Place the same people in Eureka and its like they went from a day of regular grocery shopping to trying to get that super cheap flat screen on Black Friday and theres 20 for sale and 300 people after it. You are not just given your goal. You are given competition. You may as well log back into FFXI and get your 2005 on standing around the spawning spots for Leaping Lizzy hoping you can tag her before all the farming bots do. Its basically the same thing but with a little more moving around involved.<br />
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All to say nothing of a story that nobody i know is experiencing purely based on the off putting gameplay. I still see folks like <a href="https://twitter.com/SlyTheFox">Sly</a> on State of the Realm say stuff sometimes like they <i>"just never got around to Scholisticate"</i> and i go <i>"what? come on its story how can you just ignore it!"</i> but here i am with Eureka and i went in wanting to discover what that building was and why Krile was on a personal mission there. Yet i never did. The guy who has done every quest no matter how monotonous -see my Whisper-a-Go-Go mount for proof- and loves the story of this game and i just found the gameplay so off putting its the one thing i dont think i'll ever see myself. So its a case of of the gameplay being so dull it actively dissuades my far greater interest in the story. Thats bad.<br />
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Regardless of what personally rubs you the wrong way the crux of the issue is you are not having fun doing what you did in Diadem because of the way Eureka is structured and you can't fix that with patches. With time and the drop off of players who like myself simply consider it not worth the time this has only gotten worse as the groups in it for the long haul are getting more aggressive with each other. Every time a player from another group 'steals' mobs around you thats your combo going down. Thats resources taken from your group. Thats extra time you need to spend. Thats time and again constant negative reinforcement tailoring you to see other players as <i>"assholes interfering with MY good time"</i> and its not even a good time to begin with in this case!<br />
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Now Pagos is the apparent end to Eureka's storyline and content i sincerely hope that Yoshi and the team take a good hard look at the thing in its totality. Player retention, player reaction and sentiment. This was multiplayer game poison on a level not quite there but comparable to WoW's "Garrison" system that left players sitting in a soft instanced solo hub that did everything for you if only you sank time into the monotony of it. That lead to the biggest critical bomb in maybe Blizzards entire history as a company (before a certain Diablo announcement at this weeks Blizzcon that is) and there really seems to be two possible extremes here:<br />
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1 - The userbase abhors Eureka in such significant numbers that its never touched on again and its time and resources are spent on either additional options for existing content or another new experimental idea.<br />
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2 - Either enough stuck with it, god knows why, or in terms of time and resources it was so cheap to make that they consider it a worthwhile filler which means we continue to get less content like dungeons and new minigames and just more of this nightmare.<br />
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I'm kind of hoping its the latter and some of that <i>"we can admit when we shit the bed"</i> sentiment is still around so the typical corporate shaming doesn't make them double down like other developers do when mistakes are made. Because its not like this is the kind of thing that leaves people screaming <i>"heads must roll!" </i>like yet another angry mob on the internet falling for the outrage culture meme. Simply put sometimes you experiment with new ideas and they don't work for the majority of your core audience.<br />
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But who knows, perhaps when the next FFXIV census does the rounds the number of players with the endgame achievements for Eureka will be shockingly high and i'm full of shit? but based purely on player sentiment and what i'm seeing personally the thing is dead and obviously they had to release the whole thing rather than leave it unfinished and abandoned but even the devs seem to have lost interest about it in live letters compared to the first big reveal where they were so excited to talk about the elemental levelling system.<br />
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The best we can hope for is that it was a learning experience for the future. Its looking like Stormblood has been somewhat less popular compared to A Realm Reborn and Heavensward and i think some of that -when not putting blame on trying to divide the team over two core stories at once- is things like eureka eating time and enthusiasm. No dev wants to work on something, send their baby out into the word and get back a resounding <i>"yo shit sucks man"</i> from their users and that kind of thing, especially if this <i>was </i>intended as a core pillar of the expansion can be a real defeating moment for developers who wanted to try something new. All i can say is sometimes you try something new and it is bad. It is just not a fun time. Yet if people didn't love your game and believe you can do far better we wouldn't still be here paying a monthly subscription fee would we?<br />
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For now at least we can, some of us at least, be glad that Eureka is done and dusted. Wrap it up, tuck it away and lets quickly move on. We've got the final Ivalice raid, the conclusion of the Stormblood main story thats really heating up and Fan Fest on the way!<br />
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and in the longrun who's going to care about totally optional timewastes after they lose their relevancy in terms of gear rewards when the Big Bads are on the horizon, both far more intertwined than we possibly imagined.<br />
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So long Eureka, you should have stayed Forbidden!Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-16454280923367469192018-10-12T12:39:00.001-07:002018-11-14T13:31:49.817-08:00Raiding, Casuals, Tryhards and the 'Meter Debate' Now i don't talk about this kind of thing much mostly because i'm not a huge group player in FFXIV. I have my real life friends in our little Free Company and we do stuff together now and then, often separately because of our differing tastes for in game activities but i stopped with the '3 figure organisation of players that regularly raid/pvp' schtick back in the first tier of WoW's Mists of Pandaria. So i'll pug a raid now and then but its never a burning need to progress beyond normals for me since its not really what i play for.<br />
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So as you might gather i consider myself an average player. Middle of the road in all roles who isn't amazing but always gets the job done. Thing is there are people to whom thats not good enough and others who consider it being 'try hard'. Really i think it comes down to a few different kinds of players i would roughly sum up as the following:<br />
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<b><i>The Tourist:</i></b> These are people that use MMORPG's like a very detailed chat room. For them it is a virtual world they can walk around and talk with people in. They will do endgame content at its easiest level and its fine. They saw what they wanted to, took some screenshots and moved on. The world and the people are its own experience for them and they may spend hours just standing around in their house with FC members trying on outfits and talking about the last movie or tv show they saw or something. They are the number padding users you will see in town but never run into in any matchmaking content.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_aMMDYmVbo9_5C-dkRm6JHUR1yi1DniM5npMAvdDwsPDpb3_ANbvflYMqFPQTKe0b9Z99tjomm9QEw_8FVBq8KY0VC0ixDh6hL32VFI82U7tM5R38VfLTd-J4bDstrLVvQ3dDgPGCKbcM/s1600/Angry_Kadaj.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_aMMDYmVbo9_5C-dkRm6JHUR1yi1DniM5npMAvdDwsPDpb3_ANbvflYMqFPQTKe0b9Z99tjomm9QEw_8FVBq8KY0VC0ixDh6hL32VFI82U7tM5R38VfLTd-J4bDstrLVvQ3dDgPGCKbcM/s320/Angry_Kadaj.png" width="320" /></a><b><i>The Anchor:</i></b> One of the more disliked subsets by and large. Players that are in most situations, to be blunt, a detriment. You would recognise them from the use of phrases like <i>"Fuck you, you don't pay my sub!"</i> or standing still and silent when asked if they need to know a fight while getting extremely angry if you point out a mistake they made and offer advice on how to improve. They are a combination of lazy and selfish mindsets that are really a fun void. I'm a firm believer in the old saying that 'The Party only moves as fast as its slowest member' and these are the people that dont use cooldowns, often for jobs like RDM or BLM wont even do their full rotation and spend more time in a fight dead than alive. Essentially they want a carry. They believe a subscription fee entitles them to everything without trying and we are all there to facilitate their good time over everything else.<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">The "Average": </i>People that consider themselves the baseline in terms of skill, commitment and ability but actually might be more skilled than they believe they are but lack the drive or 'hardcore' mindset and don't like to brag. These are the players that are not the "no lifers" that min max everything but read up on patch notes, ensure all their materia is melded, they have the right cross job abilities and do things outside their role such as dps that battle res to save healers in a pinch. They treat the game less like a social experience or a job but just as another videogame where they get out what they put in but often its only one game out of many they play regularly and as such dont commit as much time to it as the progression crowd.<br />
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<i><b>The Statistician:</b></i> No not a job in game but the 'number crunchers'. It doesn't always have to be progression raiding for world firsts, it can be obsessive crafters or rare item hunters. Regardless of drive these are the people that crunch the numbers. They have to squeeze every gil, minute and point of damage/healing to get the optimum output for their input. For them part of the fun is to know they did the best they could and for some who use parsers to know that others saw they did better than them.<br />
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<b><i>The Vanguard:</i></b> First in on patch day, last to leave at the end of the night. These players put their nose to the grindstone not just to progress but to be the first to do so. For them the game IS raiding. Its about pushing the numbers beyond even above average to get to places the average player wont for weeks if they ever will. The chase is brief but for that week of a new content drop it consumers their free time and inbetween its all just upkeep for the next challenge. Golden Saucer? Beast Tribes? completely meaningless content with no relevance to them.<br />
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So why mention all of these? because i've seen a lot of debate brought up lately about the state of the FFXIV userbase and a conflict between the hardcore, casuals and the extremes of either. The arguments can be summed up into a few subsets:<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">Stalkers:</i> Some people don't just take a bad run and brush it off. Some take it as the beginnings of a vendetta. They will stalk users they dislike and take to forums to badmouth them. Too demanding 'no lifers' or 'asshole shitters looking for an easy carry' are the obvious extremes but in general its a game with a comparatively small userbase of characters with so few players making alts. So your name is your name, your face -until you fantasia- is your face. You have a reputation. I still remember the german dude who melded the Materia for my Stardust Rod back in the day and sometimes we pass each other by at crafting hubs and wave and talk about the recent game updates now and then. Personally having a character rather than an account has always been part of the draw for me. I dont consider my character myself, but i consider it my character. When people think about experiences they have playing with me that character is the name and face and i like moments like someone asking me if i can craft a sword because their friend whos got them into the game bought theirs from me. Thats the .HACK fantasy right there and its great.<br />
Buuut it also means you get this kind of stalking. Dont get me wrong theres at least 6 people i know that in game are huge loot ninjas or trade scam artists and i would always warn anyone away from them. I think i mentioned a good while ago that in the first release of ARR a bunch of french players crashed my servers economy claiming they were trying to 'drive the english pigs out' but in the end their names were blacklisted and nobody would buy from them or run content with them so they fled to Balmung or Moogle since those servers are known for being the 4chan/Reddit unofficial servers where they could find like minded arseholes. So sometimes its okay to remember a name/face in game and warn others. But it just as easily used by dickheads themselves to constantly harass and target others. Maybe they join the same raid and say 'i have logs that say they are shit, kick em' and wether they have improved or not since then its a kick. It also says something about the state of players i'll get to but point is there is this meta creeper idea to the two extremes trying to police each other. Sometimes a little of a userbase policing themselves is fine. But like anything its also very easy to abuse and lead to abuse.<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">The Changing Face of the Community: </i>Now this is one that is kind of hard to deny. MMORPG's by and large are known for the shit rising to the top in terms of players representing the userbase at large. World of Warcraft in particular has the most rude, arrogant, short fused players in a large number i have ever run into in an MMORPG. If a party wipes once in a dungeon usually 2-3 players just up and leave. If someone makes a mistake theres liberal use of "FFS" and "GTFO FGT" and worse.<br />
Comparatively it used to be different for FFXIV.<br />
I remember the ARR beta. There was a version of 'Raubahns Wall' back then too. it was the MSQ that introduced Yda and Papalymo involving interacting with a stump in the South Shroud. Ask any beta tester and they will no doubt remember this. See there was one issue with this quest: <i>Only one person could do it at a time. </i>Were this any western game it would have been a mad dog pile like the infamous jedi holocron situation that killed Star Wars Galaxies. In a japanese game however? People queued. They formed an orderly line, chatting about the game and what they liked in the beta over 1.0. It got articles all over the web written about 'the most polite mmo userbase in the world' and for a time that was true.<br />
But i don't think it is anymore. Its no secret the game has 'settled' and isn't really drawing in huge new user numbers and as the userbase is stable -though some would say shrinking- the pool of people for any in game activity shrinks. This means the crap rises to the top and its far harder to get people to go from the casual tomestone capper to a full on raider when their first experience is far more likely to be off putting. From what i've read this seems to be a bigger problem for american data centres over eu/asia ones. But just because i dont see it much doesnt mean its not well documented as a growing problem. The crux of it can be summed up pretty easily as one of two things listed below.<br />
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<b><i>The "You dont pay my Sub" faction:</i></b> This is a game with a sub fee. That alone can instill in people a sense of 'its MY time and MY money, how DARE you tell me how to have fun' and in theory its not wrong. You dont pay to not have fun, you dont pay to play a game only to be told what to do. This is a fact.<br />
The issue with the extremes of this is the aforementioned 'Anchor' playertype. They are a weight holding the ground back because they dont want to try and dont see why they should. If they are playing badly, doing their rotation wrong or failing mechanics any attempt to helpfully inform them of how to solve this will be met with vitriol and verbal diarrhoea from a player who either feels insulted/embarrassed by being singled out or they simply dont have the drive to try and since they pay a fee are insulted that you would dare tell them how to have fun.<br />
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<b style="font-style: italic;">The "You are holding us all back" faction: </b>Conversely however an MMORPG is by nature a collaborative, team based experience. You work together or grind alone. You do your best as part of the team or everyone else suffers due to your inabilities. Fights take longer, Instances timeout, Wipes happen that did not need to. These lean more to the hardcore crowd. They care about the destination, not the journey and are conscious of the group effort with other players existing as part of the team rather than a carry to facilitate personal gains. Some of which can be impatient and this leads to arguments over parsers and the idea of what is 'good enough'.<br />
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So parsers in general are a big part of the issue. I play on PS4 exclusively nowadays so it doesn't mean anything to me but there are people that sim on the Sky, Stone Sea dummies for hours trying to get down THE rotation they need for peak performance and should someone not be doing the same numbers or similar they call them out leading to one of the two above reactions. A defensive, offended solo player or a hardcore minmaxer making everyone else awkward.<br />
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These are the extremes of course with varying levels of people inbetween but the long and short of this is that as time goes on the more extreme, abrasive and hard to ignore these camps become. On one side there are people that dont try to give it their all and don't see why they should when its their time and money. On the other its people that put in an obsessive amount of time and demand everyone else do the same.<br />
Personally i can empathise with both. I dont do savage much because i dont want to. I pay my sub for a good time and i get it doing what i want. At the same time if i see a RDM not doing the melee half of their toolset then i will mention it in case they simply dont know, but if they are intentionally phoning it in so to speak i can understand the distain too because at the end of the day i have to try harder to compensate for them in the group content.<br />
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The issue here is essentially <i>'does this harm the longrun "player economy" for raiding and recruitment?'</i> and on some level i think it is, or its starting to at least.<br />
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The players who don't want to try make anyone who screws up look bad and many of them are afraid of trying because they see the reactions they get from others. Conversely the hardcore players parsing people and shaming them before they learn the basics can put them off trying at all and i think its starting to look like there are less people getting into raiding to replace the ones stopping because they are getting tired and would rather settle in the 'average' camp instead.<br />
The devs themselves have said in the past they never expected raiding to be the draw it is to so many and compared to other games you can ignore raiding and still have plenty to do rather than be funnelled to the treadmill so to speak. So in a game where there are so few incentives to do so surely these debates, shamings and fueds are only serving to push people away before they really try in a game that was once known for its welcoming, patient userbase.<br />
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I think in the long run you should be able to play how you want but this isn't a game with millions of people so you never run into the same assholes twice. This is a somewhat set userbase where grudges and issues can linger, festering for months as you keep running into each other. I dont think theres some big answer to give at the end of this post to magically solve this but more to highlight that the <i>'we are all in this together'</i> sentiment remains the key to my own opinion and no matter your playstyle and opinion if you act like a dickhead and teach new players grouped up with you that its okay then it spreads like a goddamn plague.<br />
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Sometimes to avoid burnout you gotta ask yourself <i>'what am i playing for'</i>, the thing asked far less often is the equally important question for looking at the people around you <i>'what are THEY playing for?'</i><br />
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<i> </i>I think far more people could do with asking that nowadays.Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-65822623974353167172018-09-20T08:19:00.001-07:002018-11-14T13:32:03.368-08:00Patch 4.4 in review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm pretty happy to say this has thus far been a much, much better experience then the previous patches for Stormblood. Better fights, better variety in music, more going on and generally it just felt more focussed than it has since Heavensward. Again i have to say i believe in part this is because with the Ala Mhigo and Doma stories wrapping up they are no longer so divided in terms of workload in this regard. We are back to the Empire/Ascians and that focus allows for a more linear creative process that allows most of the work to flow better. Though that said i do have to comment on just how many spelling and grammatical errors there are in the English translations on screen. Not only do they often not match the voice actors but there are straight up misspelled or duplicated words like "they were were" as the VO says "they were" for example. Its the first time i've actually seen an mmo do it this much beyond beta testing. Perhaps there were issues with the team, some were sick and the rest got overloaded i dont know. All i can say is it was noticeable on more than one occasion and this many years in you would think the scions names would be spelt right in conversation text.<br />
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So onto the content. I've got it all out of the way bar the Savage Omega fights, and any Eureka content because i simply refuse to waste my time on it, and all in all i can say its good but like usual i'm going to break it down a little below.<br />
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<i><b>The Story</b></i><br />
<b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>Quite honestly the story hasn't interested me in Stormblood much at all. They could afford so little time to both regions that Yotsuyu was really the only standout and beyond that most of the story was forgettable and completely paled in comparison to ARR/HW in general. This still suffered from a lot of "walk to this person to start a cutscene" just like SB has in general but much like the finale of the last patch did with Alphinaux this patch gives other characters some time in the spotlight and it was very welcome. As time goes on i find Lyse and Hien increasingly uninteresting. Likeable characters to be sure but storywise what are they bringing to the table compared to what the likes of Nanamo or Ameryic in their storylines in the last few outings they had? so far not much and since they were the focus of so much i found it hard to care. Here we return to familiar characters and give more time to folks like the Xaela tribes on the Azim Steppe and it was a very welcome change of pace.<br />
Beyond that, without heading into spoiler territory, this saw a refocus of the story on what i consider the 'core' story to Final Fantasy XIV rather than just the contained story of the expansion. The Ascians are making their moves, we get some character reveals and a tease for what i assume is a certain Big Bad we haven't seen mentioned since like The Chrysalis or earlier. Overall it felt a little more substantial even if it does still suffer from 'talk to the cutscene npc' syndrome a little too much still. I was invested in the events, exclaimed out loud at certain reveals and was genuinely bummed when it ended because it left me wanting a lot more which is always the sign of a story patch doing its job well. Something i found myself really saying for the first time for this expansion so all in all not perfect but a total improvement and step back to the quality HW taught us to expect.<br />
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<b><i>The New Dungeons</i></b><br />
Now these were interesting. Overall they are fine dungeons, MSQ one is a bit too linear feeling and the other a bit too flat in terms of layout, but other than that i've done both multiple times and enjoyed every run. Compare that to previous additions like the Drowned City which i did once and its another case of the update feeling less simple. Like they saw complaints things were too easy, people were bored and not bothering to run the content and they spiced things up again which is great.<br />
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The Arboretum Hard Mode is honestly easier than its Normal Mode if i'm honest. Copperbell HM it is not! but the bosses, second and third in particular, are good fun and there are a fair few great new mechanics both in battle and out. For example all the mobs are covered by a mud based formula making them hyper aggressive but if you hit switches for water valves it swap the mobs model out for a clean version thats less aggressive and easier to fight. That kind of fight control thats entirely up to the players to shift difficulty should they choose reminded me of the similar systems in WoW's critically acclaimed Ulduar raid. Something people always lamented was never really brought back. Its nice to see them experiment with that here. Along with some new ideas like telegraphs not for damage but for effects that physically move you around could really lead to some interesting fights in the future if the ideas prove popular enough. Its a nice enough dungeon but the music, a broken scratchy version of the original like a run down malls spooky intercom still playing old ambient shopping music when its long abandoned, does add flavour to the scene but also gets pretty annoying as the dungeon goes on. Still its a fun if easy run i would compare to Xelphatol or The Vault.<br />
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The MSQ however is great in a very different way. As a dungeon its basically "take X boss and their mechanics and spice them up, but its still very much like fighting the same boss" -a theme that ran through the whole patch but more on that later- and its very point A-B as you clear a lot of trash that only really serve to pad the place. Where it shines is the visuals. You go in knowing theres a giant monster on that part of the world map, you go in seeing teasing signs of said monster, you are sure knowing SE its just that and its a lame attempt at surprise but then you crest a hill and the party just stops dead. Its exactly not what you expected and then when you realise what IS waiting at the end the reveal is all the more exciting because it set up your expectations then completely pulled a 180 on them. Its a eye candy dungeon thats great but trash heavy i would compared to The Fractal Continuum or Amdapoor Keep HM. But boy is that final boss Stone Vigil 2.0 in terms of a hard story wall for people with bad connections i tell you what!<br />
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<b><i>Suzaku/Pheonix</i></b><br />
<i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>A lot of the stuff is just described with a shrug and "hey its signs of improvement" but good lord this is the best trial since Nidhogg hands down. Great looking boss, great arena, great music. Throw in some Rythmn game style mechanics -a sadly dwindling genre i adore- and this was all around a delight to run and i can't wait to do it again. Story is still completely barebones and uninteresting for the Four Lords stuff but but is this a step up compared to everything but Shinryu in the Trials category for Stormblood. Totally worth running just to see it. Unlike Byakko or Tsukuyomi this didn't just feel like the "storymode for dumb babbys" and it was easy to wipe in and people had to do the mechanics rather than get carried through by a healer. Fantastic fight and can't wait to try the harder version.<br />
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<b><i>The Raid</i></b><br />
Omega has been a mixed bag for me. Yeah its great fan service but a lot of the first while visually cool are a bit too simple. For every Phantom Train theres 3 or 4 thats just 'a thing in the middle of a flat area' and after so much of that in Alexander i preferred the stuff that stands out. Thankfully -and i will not spoil the reveals- the fights for Omega's final ark are very satisfying. An easier final fight than Alex but on the whole the difficulty spiked up to a more satisfying degree. Making it feel less like a chore and more like a challenge which i the longrun is what feeds that need to conquer content and chase gear to increase your power an MMORPG needs for longevity. Part of why so many people seem to have dropped off in 4.1/4.2 was because the content was all pretty damn easy so there was no need to gear up much. Here across the board theres a minor but noticable increase to what i would consider closer to 'just right for an rpg challenge' instead of the previous 'dont pay attention its here for the cutscenes really' monotony of the difficulty in previous pre savage difficulties.<br />
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The first fight is A pretty simple stance dance i would compare to Titan HM but with a faster beat to it. The second is the same for Nidhogg while the third feels like a lot Alex mechanics tied together and the finale is just kind of Kefka meets elements of Sephirot and Cruise Chaser. It starts simple, ramps up and up and then gently inclines down with a victory lap finale. It was just challenging enough for a blind pug to 2 or 3 shot everything but feel accomplished rather than checking off a objective when you did. I don't feel there are any like the Gravity fight in Deltascape that i simply just don't want to do after clearing because its anti fun for me. It was all a bit rounded in mechanics but fun. Sometimes you don't need a gimmick fight in a tier and thats just fine.<br />
As for the story? well its mixed. Its not as satisfying as all of Omega's build up was but at the same time feels a bit more thought out and deep compared to the earlier sections or parts of Alex. It almost felt like an episode of an anime, the ending in particular and while its a shame they don't expand more on Omega's origins some characters show up you don't expect and it really feels like a nod to the people who have been pretty vocal about missing the themes and tones of Heavensward ever since it finished.<br />
Still it left me wondering: <i>Where the hell did Estinien go?</i><br />
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So overall i'm happier with this patch than the last two. I had a lot more fun and i think thats because of a number of things. The story is no longer split and as such can focus again, theres are new mechanics being experimented with -no doubt for the expansion being revealed at Fan Fest- that freshened things up and personally it feels to me as though there has been something of an ethos shift in the design team. They seem far more comfortable with challenging players a little more at the entry difficulty levels which is just fine by me. The content felt more satisfying to beat and i found myself going 'okay when i come back with better gear-' which is music to an MMO devs ears as thats a subconscious commitment to play more, because you want to.<br />
It also feels both in story and mechanics a lot more like "lets try to reinvent what we have" compared to Stormbloods thus far "lets try and make up new gimmicks". So many fights in this patch are "Oh this is Titan, but better", "Oh this is isgebind, but better" or "Oh this is Nidhogg, but better" and happening so many times feels a little too common to be just coincidence. It feels like they are looking at what worked and what players enjoyed more than throwing extremely casual content out and telling us we need to enjoy it wether we like it or not.<br />
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For the most part 4.1 an 4.2 left me somewhat worried about the future of the game and my interest in it. 4.4 and to a lesser extent 4.3 has reinvigorated my interest and i am not alone. Its still a shame Eureka is getting so much focus and we never got a true relic questline to go on an adventure to get rather than a reskin from a mob grinder but on the whole this is the perfect time for this when buzz about the next expansion is starting to show. How many patches do we have left? personally i'm guessing 2 majors. One for the final Ivalice, the other for the end of the Four Lords and the story trial. Perhaps one in early December and the other in late March with another summer release for 5.0 in 2019?<br />
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Its all speculation really, we don't even have the job conspiracy theories doing the rounds till we see the shirts Yoshi wears at Fan Fest in a few months of course, but people are back playing, people are enjoying the content again and personally i'm logging in to cap tomes, do my roullette dailies and i'm having fun doing so. Something i really burnt out on doing for the last few months PS4 meltdown or not. This is a hopeful sign of better things to come and if you have burnt out or taken a long break i recommend maybe paying for a month of sub time to check all this stuff out for a good time. The quality of life changes were nice, the new GATE at the Golden Saucer is fun but probably not for too many repeat tries but i'll still take it over the damn jar one thats not thankfully been replace with this one. As a RDM it was great to get buffs, not so great to see the FOTM crowd naturally jump on it and need all the gear i'm chasing in the new dungeons while bringing back the 4.0 "ummm, ya, no im a mage? why would i ever do melee attacks? lol" stuff that means i can be with 3 others in a trial and i'm the only one casting Verholy/flare because they simply don't know how. Thats not so fun. Overall its mixed but satisfying. Hopeful but still wanting more. Little more vague overall i know, but boy are we getting into end of ARR level spoiler stuff with this one folks which is making it real hard to talk about some of this stuff, but i guess that shows its still investing folks in the material, right?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6353820728078772145.post-77495201746864711742018-09-12T05:43:00.002-07:002018-09-12T05:45:36.330-07:00Coming back from my Azeroth vacation So not only did it take forever to get my PS4 repaired but then i had to redownload the client, the hard drive died, then i had to redownload it again on crappy country wi-fi, yeesh!<br />
Downside is i missed my first seasonal event, upside is it was a jumping puzzle which on a PS4 is a goddamn recipe for frustration so i cannot say i'm that bothered. It was a change however to try the new World of Warcraft expansion to compare and contrast.<br />
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Overall Battle for Azeroth was 'fine' but really just fine. I never missed dropping the faction conflict idea when i picked up FFXIV nearly 5 years ago after Mists of Pandaria felt like the end of my interest in WoW as my main go to mmo and revisiting it now i can say my opinion hasn't changed. The questing was neat, certain elements like Wavecrest Manor almost certainly influenced by a certain Gridanian Manor house falling to ruin were a case of Blizzards infamous 'take successful ideas and make them your own' design ethos but on the whole? not a lot to do really. I outgeared most of the content that wasn't a weekly lock out and just kind of felt like the game wanted me to swap to another character after a week. Throw in crafting being something you can effectively be done with in about an hour or less depending on if you use the AH or rely on mob/node drops and that was completely uninteresting compared to the lauded crafting system in FFXIV where you actually feel like you are making something. Shame all my UI and macros were lost in the hardware failure so i gotta set that up to get back to it but you get the idea.<br />
To sum it up i had some fun, but not enough to warrant a sub fee so i got my loremaster and pathfinder achievements in a week and considered it done. Maybe an interesting update can pull me back but i still left it feeling like FFXIV is my main MMORPG.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBi6GKrEioWhXHF8SNWDBlu-5qYyXyee6Zrvcitwll9YuXdG4OP75C6uVCyAxDa5-yl6kFfJkodTsUXVvbt89k-WBktiKoqvs325KAm-MInLw7Bg5BmUua-33f9mkmOVXdUWNYA8UD49IV/s1600/MFQojm0v7eKeiJbLcaB0F4muNU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBi6GKrEioWhXHF8SNWDBlu-5qYyXyee6Zrvcitwll9YuXdG4OP75C6uVCyAxDa5-yl6kFfJkodTsUXVvbt89k-WBktiKoqvs325KAm-MInLw7Bg5BmUua-33f9mkmOVXdUWNYA8UD49IV/s400/MFQojm0v7eKeiJbLcaB0F4muNU.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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That said of course i can't say its all sunshine and roses in my 'home' MMORPG now either. Upon logging back in i discovered the Rising event was on! Fun times and a complex event right?<br />
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...Right?<br />
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Sadly no. The Rising this year was a quest where you talk to 3 npcs then turn it in for a thank you cutscene starring Yoshi P. Not to sound ungrateful or disingenuous but half a decade in this is starting to go from 'touching outreach from the developers to a userbase they are grateful for the patronage of' to 'uh, yeah dude, we get it' and the lacklustre nature of the event kind of felt like one more in a tiny list of disappointments that i think are why i've been playing -and obvious writing- less about FFXIV even before my hardware issues. In short i think the game is being spread to thin right now.<br />
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Look at everything we have gotten in Stormblood and a running theme for the most part is 'more stuff than HW, but less of each option'. Less dungeons, less floors in Deep Dungeon even, less quests, less story, less content for crafter/gatherers. In short the way it feels is like the Golden Saucer: Theres lots of things to do but depending on the person each person has only a little to do. You like Triple Triad? great. But that means nothing if Lords of Verminion and Chocobo races don't interest you at all.<br />
A lot of people argue that this is a problem because the Doma and Ala Mhigo stories should have been their own expansions and by trying to do both they split the art teams into twice the story, twice the art assetts, twice the everything, right?<br />
I can agree to a degree. Personally? i don't think its just that, or as others said the devs running out of new ideas. If i have to point an accusatory finger at any aspect of the game that i consider a detriment right now it has to be at Eureka.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg__sW2diJrbQ7kHVaEBo6Suw_oA6kekTJvkAxeP8HkXSLnHkZoCG6D9LrBd9aIIkXF90vhMy_t4Xf4eUgFuMjsidU80tUAbEE50CGE-BYwUwv87oASthv0z5tH1TxUeOxtMFy1638SUhie/s1600/tumblr_p7sv66EbeZ1xqljz0o2_1280.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="1280" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg__sW2diJrbQ7kHVaEBo6Suw_oA6kekTJvkAxeP8HkXSLnHkZoCG6D9LrBd9aIIkXF90vhMy_t4Xf4eUgFuMjsidU80tUAbEE50CGE-BYwUwv87oASthv0z5tH1TxUeOxtMFy1638SUhie/s400/tumblr_p7sv66EbeZ1xqljz0o2_1280.png" width="400" /></a> Now you should know by now that i love me some stupid grinds. I got all my Relics and Deep Dungeon weapons. Surely i should be eager for the grind right? its totally a nostalgic throwback to FFXI right? right??<br />
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Wrong. Holy shit its so wrong. Think back to playing FFXI. Using switches to open hidden doors, guessing numbers and solving riddles to open chests, exploring to see whats hidden around every nook and cranny and so on? nope. You just kill mobs on an instanced island. Thats it. <i>I cannot stress how much this shit is not made for me. </i>It is soulless, hollow, mind numbingly dull. Worst of all? I think this was designed as the structural backbone of the entire expansion and if thats the case? whoo boy they messed up.<br />
Remember me ranting about where the hell the new relic questline was? turns out its here. But its not a questline. Its farming one item. Forever. You just keep turning it in for upgrades. This is a horror show of monotony. I'm not doing X number of dungeons then X number of hunts then X number of raids. I'm killing mobs. Forever. I think i got to level 4 in its unique levelling system and straight up said 'sorry, i'm out' and never returned. To this day its had a new update with Eureka Pagos and i have never even visited it. I'm the typical 'heavy user' MMORPG player that consumes content voraciously and i simple wrote this off as redundant and not worth my time. I did Kuja 7 times instead, got my RDM weapon and that was that while my friends and people i know online were lamenting this hours of suffering where a death cost xp and reinforced this negative feedback loop. Constantly.<br />
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I know its now how everyone plays but i play MMORPG's for exploration, crafting and working with a world of players together. Not sticking in one place and farming something forever. I play these games for fun and enjoyment. Not to pay to act like a farming bot which is essentially what Eureka is in execution.<br />
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Now look at the last year of content and what if the reasons its spread so thin and numbers are dropping (last night i saw 2 people in Rhalgar's Reach and 3 in Kugane, the lowest i've ever seen in an mmo hub including current year FFXI Windurst and Bastok!) is because Eureka has been an experiment in design that was a mess behind the scenes, a mess in execution and everything outside the raid team have been hampered to facilitate this hot mess.<br />
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I know its coming back on a bitter note but hey man, if you don't love the game you leave, if you care you voice your worries right? For me this is the first time i have worried about FFXIV. I considered it totally stable, chugging along as the 2nd place sub MMORPG to WoW. But now? what few people i know that are still playing either just gear up from raids, have nothing left from crafting to do and so chase achievements or are simple still logging in to keep their virtual house. Everyone else -and im talking people that have their Encyclopaedia Eorzea and Job Stone key chains and everything- have just stopped and said 'i hope they learn from this and improve or i'm just not coming back' and all i can think is 'hope do you burn so much goodwill in a single year?'<br />
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Personally i'm still playing. I'm waiting for 4.4 where hopefully i can get back into it in a big way after the current period of trying to remember 20 odd classes hotbars, macros and subtleties again. That said i am really worrying if they are expecting Eureka to be the backbone of Stormblood that keeps players busy till 5.0 because personally? i'm never touching it again and don't know anyone personally who will either. Which is genuinely sad that this world we all love is chasing us away like that.<br />
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All we can hope for really is that the team takes notice of any significant drop off and sees what is pushing people away. If not i don't think Eorzea can stand another Calamity and neither can the dev team.<br />
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-but hey at least they reverted that bloody Awful raid loot change. Did that even last two lockouts?Dannyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04934461492702642898noreply@blogger.com1