The Final update to Eureka and Good Riddance!

 Now its no secret i have a dislike for Eureka. Intense isn't quite the word since my general sentiment to it is "Why would i waste my finite free time playing a gold farming bot simulator?" 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.

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 "well the relic will probably be some 390 weapon with amazing stats, right?". 

So about that.

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 chance 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.

Personally i don't think the trade off is worth it.

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 as long as i am having fun doing it and the reward isn't randomised. Compounding the issue of lame rewards put simply i have had no fun in Eureka. At all.

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.

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?

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 "okay team we got X, Y and Z to do. Lets jump on it!" 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.

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 Sly on State of the Realm say stuff sometimes like they "just never got around to Scholisticate" and i go "what? come on its story how can you just ignore it!" 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.

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 "assholes interfering with MY good time" and its not even a good time to begin with in this case!

 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:

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.

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.

I'm kind of hoping its the latter and some of that "we can admit when we shit the bed" 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 "heads must roll!" 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.

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.

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 "yo shit sucks man" from their users and that kind of thing, especially if this was 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?

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!

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.

So long Eureka, you should have stayed Forbidden!

Raiding, 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.

 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:

The Tourist: 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.

The Anchor:  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 "Fuck you, you don't pay my sub!" 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.

The "Average": 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.

The Statistician:  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.

The Vanguard: 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.


 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:

Stalkers: 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.
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.

The Changing Face of the Community: 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.
Comparatively it used to be different for FFXIV.
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: Only one person could do it at a time. 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.
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.

The "You dont pay my Sub" faction:  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.
 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.

The "You are holding us all back" faction: 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'.

 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.

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.
 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.

 The issue here is essentially 'does this harm the longrun "player economy" for raiding and recruitment?' and on some level i think it is, or its starting to at least.

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.
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.

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 'we are all in this together' 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.

 Sometimes to avoid burnout you gotta ask yourself 'what am i playing for', the thing asked far less often is the equally important question for looking at the people around you 'what are THEY playing for?'

 I think far more people could do with asking that nowadays.

Patch 4.4 in review

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.

 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.

The Story
 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.
 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.

The New Dungeons
 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.

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.

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!

Suzaku/Pheonix
 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.

The Raid
 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.

 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.
 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.
 Still it left me wondering: Where the hell did Estinien go?

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.
 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.

 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?

 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?

Coming 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!
 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.

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.
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.

 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?

...Right?

 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.

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.
 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?
 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.

 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??

 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 cannot stress how much this shit is not made for me.  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.
 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.

 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.

 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.

 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?'

 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.

 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.

-but hey at least they reverted that bloody Awful raid loot change. Did that even last two lockouts?

"Hey did you quit FFXIV?"

Quick response post to a question i got messaged a lot. No i haven't i just play on PS4 and my console straight up went into meltdown with the monster heatwave we are having and died. Can't replace it right now so unfortunately can't jump into all the recent content which sucks since i've been after more Deep Dungeon for ages.

Hopefully i can sort it out before my house is destroyed :p

Ever danced with Diablos under the pale Moonlight?

Man. People are not happy. They already weren't happy with Eureka. I mean i get it. I outright hate Eureka and have not touched it since my post about it. Its an anti-fun void i want to avoid in favour of time spent in Monster Hunter World or Warframe instead. Heresy i know!
 Like most however i was eager for news in terms of the next update. More story, more raids, all that good stuff right?

R-right?

Eeehh its been better lets put it that way. Or just say the reaction online is -shock of shocks- "Mixed". We have a name and a rough date. Under the Moonlight is the next major content update for FFXIV and its coming in the last week of May. Yes that means another month of nothing but Eureka. Yayyy... But theres a bunch of new things coming. Trouble is pretty much all but one or two come with a massive "buuuuut" followed by news that is leaving people disappointed, incredulous, apathetic or outright buttmad as the kids say.

So lets do the rundown:

-Patch 4.3 will be the end of the 'Doma story' but will continue afterwards in a rebuilding campaign. 
 Its odd that it feels like Stormblood has been around forever and yet still its story feels like things are wrapping up too quick. Most likely from splitting focus in two very different ways compared to the much more focussed -and in retrospect- superior experience of the Heavensward Main Story Quests. Thus far at least. As someone who used to main NIN i'll be a bit sad to see Doma wrap up but to be honest its also been quit a bland story so far and i would rather it ramp up and go out with a bang than just feel like overstaying its welcome just for busywork. The rebuilding is interesting as maybe this is where Rowena is going to set up her next shop to give the Relic quest? (please anywhere but Eureka!)

-MSQ with a trial that is being kept hidden and even being left out of the trailers.
 Lotta fan theories about this one. Is it Yotsuyus brother? is it fighting the newly crowned Doman King to protect her and stop him becoming a murderer? is it a certain someone shown at the end of the last MSQ's cutscenes? we just don't know and we have a wealth of choices this time. Of all the news in this somewhat sour liveletter this is easily the most exciting. Especially since the primals this time around have been considered a bit bland and this 'mystery' fight could be anything and with an extreme already confirmed folks are hoping for something special.

-The Four Lords story continues, but without a Primal fight.
So instead of the expected 'next on the checklist' animal spirit primal we have what looks like a single player trial against a familiar turtle in a half shell gone a bit gammy. Its been a while since 'The Wall of Rahbaun' so maybe it won't be a nightmare this time?

-More Hildebrand quests.
This is another high point. The last ones were an improvement and once again got a out loud chuckle or two from me. Can't wait for the detectives next chapter!

-Namazu Beast Tribe Dailies.
Honestly i don't know many players personally who kept up with the beast tribe dailies this time around. But people have levelled far fewer jobs so maybe the incentive isn't there anymore? personally i'm doing them now and then but the 'every mount must fly' ethos is getting a bit ridiculous when its stuff like a white elephant. Just my tastes but its a bit silly in a way that feels more 'videogame' than 'fantasy story' if that makes sense. Still there will be crafting and gathering this time around which -while i've capped all of mine- is a nice way to to have more stuff to do bar farm useless scrips.

-New instanced dungeon "The Swallows Compass".
Another dungeon set in the Doma region is a nice surprise but i guess if the story is wrapping up it makes sense. Being just the one i wonder how rewards will tier between current content and the new stuff that comes with it in the patch. Will it be a one and done for anyone not playing gear level catch up.

-Return to Ivalice part 2: The Ridorana Lighthouse.
More Ivalice story, this time more XII than Tactics but boy does the inside look better. The 'Lighthouse at the edge of the world' from FFXII looked great on the outside but inside was a lot of repeating tilesets of the same blue-grey stonework. All the clockwork and gears seems a lore more like Pharos Sirius on steriods and thats great. Buuuuuuuuut -and this is a big one- its coming with a new raid system. The 'only greed' system. Remember needing stuff for your job/role? yeah thats gone. Need is gone. Instead you can greed everything. Like everything everything. Dps that wants an easy queue? go Healer but roll on the Dps gear, to spite the Dps players competing more for their gear. Or go Dps for the larger number of spots to queue for and steal that tank gear the 3 tanks are now competing with everyone for.
Quite honestly i have no idea why they thought this was a good idea and we all know the incoming reaction will be "you rolled on my tank gear, fuck you i quit, find another tank to ninja" on repeat. This is maybe the worst idea the team has had since ARR and i can only imagine the inevitable shitstorms will hotfix this back to the current system fast.
But news of crafting and gathering tied into the raid is a neat new idea i will give them that.

-Deep Dungeon 2: Heaven on High.
Finally we get info on the new Deep Dungeon and surprising nobody its that giant tower of interlocking caskets in the Ruby Sea. What is a surprise is the apparent 31 floor main story levels and the following 69 are the intended for premades hard floors. Instead of the current 1-100 and 101-200 hard. Maybe its going to be super short, maybe the xp will be super great and finally an explosion of alt levelling will occur? Either way its something i loved in Heavensward returning far later than i hoped but better late than never.

-Eureka part 2: The Pagos Expedition.
Well i can't say i'm excited for this. More mobs to grind but in a snowy, coerthan looking map? great news for some but for me its just more content i will not be touching. I know im a grouch about it but in a game full of optional content its the only one i actively dislike after experiencing it.

-Ultimate Ballad Ultima Weapon.
Not quite the same mouthfull tier as "Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan" but we are getting there. Nice to see a beloved 2.0 fight return but apparently very different in ways not yet explained. Maybe Gaius plays a part? or the primals themselves?

-PVP updates.
Not groundbreaking but improving on it is no bad thing. A lot of games, even the giants like WoW, have a bad habit of shitting out pvp content and not working on improving it till the next paid expansion pack unless theres some truly game breaking or retention tanking content. Gotta admit they show pvp more love than most hotbar mmo devs do these days.

-The Final Fantasy XIV Companion App.
and heres the next shitstorm. Remember the app thats been in the works for over 2 years? well its finally showing up. With "funpay minibuys". Thats right once again Square Enix is taking a game you already buy the game, the expansions and pay a sub for and adding in more activities reliant on microtransactions.
 In this case an additional sub fee gets you 'kupo nuts' to use as premium currency to buy and sell on the market from your smart phone or tablet. In the grand scheme of things its lame and no big deal. As the latest in an increasing series of additional charges? players are starting to lose patience. Of course you can ignore it, it isn't game breaking and wont show up in game like cash shop gear and mounts. Still its getting close to that 'straw that broke the camels back' period for some people as they see another thing hyped up for ages be stained by the inclusion of real money transactions that not everyone can afford and definitely not everyone wants to support.
For some it is a none issue and there are cries of 'entitlement' and 'whining children' but personally i see it as gross. But i feel the same about a lot of systems like the retainers and character limits per server. Right now of course they aren't deal breakers and the core experience keeps us entertained. But this is a balancing act and every new micropayment makes us worry that one day that balance will shift and the love for the game isn't as great as the distain for greasy microtransactions. Its nothing right now to worry about really in my opinion. Still its a let down to see SE feel they need to resort to it at all.


so yeah. Mixed bag right? some neat stuff. Some disappointments and a couple of "what the hell are they thinking?!?" ideas that may bite them in the ass. Theres been a few comments of late about Yoshi having one expansion left in him and i think part of the freakout going on is the worry that maybe these strange choices are a sign of the 'saviour' of the game -and to many the entire brand- taking more of a backseat to new voices that don't have the same love for the product as anything but a money farm.
Could be worrying for nothing of course, but if people didn't worry they wouldn't care and thats one thing we all have in common when it comes to Eorzea, right?

"Magnai Fantasy XIV?"

God i miss when Square games used sprite art.

That is all.