Fun with Treasure Maps

Good Morning Friends! The weird thing about the whole Mixtape Monday thing is if I did have something I really wanted to talk about, the impact is somewhat blunted given that I can’t do so until Tuesday. Firstly as you are all aware I am back and playing an awful lot of Final Fantasy XIV. So much so that I am probably going to ignore most of the New World Closed Beta that I was looking forward to. Greysky Armada once again feels populated with lots of folks on any given night logging in and hanging out. Thalen, Rae, Waren, and I have been spending an awful lot of time online and with it has come more impromptu grouping opportunities. Something that has happened a few times recently is a treasure hunt map night, and we had a phenomenal time Sunday doing just this.
First off for the uninitiated, there is a thing collectively known as a treasure map in Final Fantasy XIV. For the most part, these come from gathering nodes and you can get one per day on a high-level Fisher, Miner, or Botanist. Additionally, there is a system called Wondrous Tails located in Idylshire, and for doing 9 events from the list of 16 possible events each week you get a guaranteed level 80 map designed for a full party aka 8 players. You “Decipher” the map which reveals the location in the world you need to head to. Once you feel like you have found the correct spot you execute another ability called Dig, which surveys the area looking for the chest. Upon opening it a series of encounters spawn and if you manage to defeat them all you get to open the treasure chest.
Starting in Heavensward there is a chance when you open the chest to instead spawn a portal to a special dungeon. Effectively you are guaranteed a single encounter, with a chance of additional encounters after the first one. These seem to come in two varieties, the roulette-style shown above and one where you are presented with actual doorways. In the doorway scenario, you are given your choice of two paths. If you choose correctly a new room opens up in front of you and you can proceed to the next encounter. In the roulette scenario, once the loot is dealt with an automated spin of the wheel takes place. Each symbol around the room represents a potential outcome. Essentially you are wanting to avoid landing on the purple portal with the monster face because that means a sweeper comes through and kicks your group out of the dungeon.
The fights themselves are sheer nonsense. We kept getting this one that was a giant mandragora that was honestly almost a minor raid boss in difficulty, and had a gimmick that the party had to deal with. Essentially there were two batches of tiny mandragora adds that spawned in. The first clump the tank aka me would take care of and hold with the boss. The others would run around the room and had no aggro table and each of them had a number over their head. The party had to kill these adds in numerical order in order to gain a bonus sack of loot before finally collapsing on the boss and normal adds to burn them all down. We went in with only one tank and one healer and for most of the night only six players but ultimately made it work.
The loot rewards are super varied and range from high-end crafting materials to things like housing items or minions. You also gain a shocking amount of gold in doing these maps along with a handful of the highest tier of tomestones, or as I will inadvertently call them “Bookrocks”. Right now the game plan is to start doing these every Sunday night and draw as much as we can from guild, friends, and the Super Dungeon Friends discord. The only challenge that got in our way there with one invite, is that the World Visit system was taking 3 hours or more to transfer players to Cactuar because he-who-must-not-be-named was streaming. I need to sure up a start time, but I am guessing sometime around 7 pm CDT/CST is going to be the start of festivities.
How fun these maps are and how shockingly lucrative they are for all players… is now leading me down a very specific rabbit hole. The most reliable way to get them is through gathering. You can harvest a map each day and then if you add that with the one you get from Khloe Aliapoh, that gives you a threshold of 8 that you can get in a single week’s time. There however is a challenge to how to store them, because you can only have one map in a bottle in your inventory and another map deciphered in your key items. That means you need to shuffle them to retainers and each of them can have a single one in their inventory, and an unlimited number posted on the Market Board… but also they sell quickly so you would, in theory, need to price outrageously to hold onto them. In order to feel like I am contributing to the mayhem… that means I REALLY need to get my disciples of the land up to 80. So I started doing some of that yesterday with Mining at 63, Botany at 62, and Fishing at 61.
There is definitely an “if you give a mouse a cookie” aspect to playing Final Fantasy XIV. The thing is though I am having a lot of fun and definitely feeling engaged. Between doing daily roulettes and beast tribe quests as well as trying to level more jobs and now falling into the gathering hole it seems like I will probably stay engaged for awhile. On top of everything thought there is just a feeling of the world being alive with so many new players coming and trying out the game. My city of choice is Limsa Lominsa and it is absolutely throbbing with new players, so many that often times moving causes a whole other set of players to load in. This game has a vitality that has been lacking from other MMORPGs I have played more recently and it reminds me of the way cities used to feel in Warcraft. The server downtime legitimately pained me that I could not be playing, and that hasn’t really been a feeling I have had for a game in a really long time. The post Fun with Treasure Maps appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #351 – Greysky is Active Again

Featuring:  Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
This year has probably had more missing shows than pretty much any to date.  Last week storms blew through and Belghast lost internet for a good chunk of the night so we did not record.  This week however we recorded a slightly longer than average show as a result.  We start with Bel and Grace exploring Rune II and how it is a flawed game but also enjoyable.  Tam shares his experience of playing Final Fantasy 7 Intergrade and the adventures of Yuffie.  This bleeds into a discussion about Yakuza Like a Dragon and how Final Fantasy is going realtime and Yakuza is seemingly going to menu-driven combat.  Kodra and Thalen share their experiences playing the new Forgotten Realms-themed Magic the Gathering set.  Then we dive into a discussion about Final Fantasy XIV since a large number of us are active once again.

Topics Discussed

  • Rune II
  • Final Fantasy VII Intergrade
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon
  • Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
  • Final Fantasy XIV Live Letter
    • Returning to the game
    • Systems within Systems
    • Bel Breaking his Tanking Block
  • Final Fantasy XI Nonsense
The post AggroChat #351 – Greysky is Active Again appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

The Battle for Azeroth’s Soul

Growing up did you ever have a friend that you got along with swimmingly and had some amazing times and then something changed.  You aren’t exactly sure what changed but there was a shift where they moved from being this loveable goofball that you cherished time with, to being something that just could not ever seem to get their shit together.  You would try and go hang out with them again, but you always felt worse about everything after spending a significant amount of time in their aura.  You would try and offer advice or attempt to help them get their shit together, but it always ended up backfiring somewhere along the way.  Eventually, you found yourself distancing from them just to keep your own hopes and dreams from coming crashing down around you as they pulled you into their void. I’ve had that friend, actually more than one of them over the years.  I’ve also had a very similar relationship with Blizzard and more specifically World of Warcraft.  When you are in this situation you want the world for this person that you love, but also know that it is actively harmful to have them in your life.  The thing is I have learned to cut myself off from those influences in the real world, or at least significantly distance myself from them to where they are no longer impacting me.  I’ve never really managed to do the same with World of Warcraft because even though I know it is bad for me…  I still care.
So as a result it hurts a bit when news comes out that they are flailing and are not so great condition right now.  In part, I am talking about the supposed leak that was circulating or the long-winded rant thread by Grummz the other day adding to it.  Side note…  that is not a leak friend.  That is not something that came from official company emails or documents that were then circulated without the permission of Blizzard.  That is someone having a rant and while I don’t know the circumstances of that rant, it was purposeful and very much not something that leaked out.  I am not sure if it is real and someone thought they were venting in a safe place…  and someone copypasta’d it onto Imgur or if it is corporate cosplay.  Whatever the case it is still a bad look at a bad time when World of Warcraft is seemingly already reeling. I’ve been following this drastic turn from the zeitgeist on their opinion and general sentiment about World of Warcraft.  The thing is it isn’t like we have not been collectively “mad” at the game before.  This always seems to be a cyclical happening and there is always something in every single expansion cycle that pisses someone off enough to start sharpening that axe.  However this time it feels a little different.  For years on the podcast, we have raised the question of what happens to Warcraft when they release two poorly received expansions in a row.  Blizzard had been on this cycle of a good expansion and a bad expansion and the goods are always high enough points to pull up the public sentiment creating a mindset of “just wait for the next expansion and everything will be alright again”. Battle for Azeroth was not well received and for me personally, it was the doubling and tripling down on the big dumb Red versus Blue narrative of factional conflict.  I enjoyed the storyline Horde side quite a bit but never could seem to get into the Alliance narrative in spite of on paper it seeming to have a bunch of elements I would care about.  Shadowlands had moments of brilliance like the Maldraxxus but zones I had to force my way through like Bastion…  which unfortunately was the very first zone of the expansion.  Normally I manage to level my main and an alt before bouncing from World of Warcraft but I only actually made it to the new level cap on a single character before tossing the game aside.
I am not a proponent of Classic World of Warcraft because it creates this revisionist narrative of the past.  Coming back and playing that game made me realize that so many of the elements that I deeply cared about and remembered fondly…  specifically involved the people that I remembered them fondly with.  There is no going back to a better time in World of Warcraft because you will never actually capture that lightning in a bottle that was gaming at that exact time in history.  However, I do look fondly upon the first trilogy of World of Warcraft like a magical time and I have been trying to understand why it felt so much better back then at least compared to the more modern incarnation that really started with Cataclysm. The thing is if you follow the arc from World of Warcraft to The Burning Crusade and into Wrath of the Lich King not only did you have a strong narrative path that connected directly to Warcraft 3, but also a game that was built on constant and iterative improvements to the existing formula.  Sure there were some wild changes here and there, but for the most part, each expansion added to the things that were available to the player base and offered not only quality of life improvements but also changes that enrich the existing systems rather than radically changed them.  An example of this is Gem Sockets, which is a system that layered on top of the existing gearing systems and enriched them adding another layer of customization to something that already seemed to be working. With Cataclysm we started what I will refer to as the “Wild Moodswing” era of World of Warcraft.  This is marshaled by what seemed to be a desire to erase the past and create something completely new.  They were not going to actually create a Warcraft 2.0, but with each expansion, it felt like they were making radical enough changes that they might as well have called it that.  Cataclysm started this off by quite literally nuking the world and replacing almost every single old-world zone with a slightly different version.  It was ambitious as hell, and while it didn’t work for me I think the concept was cool.  For me, it was oversteering while you are already hydroplaning and I think the game ended up in the ditch as a result.
The problem with radical change is it ends up creating a vastly unpredictable user experience.  We all have a love for World of Warcraft and all of this nostalgia…  but end up having them try and apply those feelings to a game that no longer feels like we want it to feel.  The end result is you wind up with great vacillations between moments of unexpected brilliance like Legion and extreme low points like Warlords of Draenor.  So the thing with WoD is that on paper it seemed like everything going into that expansion was going to be awesome.  I actually greatly enjoyed the leveling process, but the huge gaps between content after the initial burst left a bad taste in so many mouths.  I will always remember it fondly because it gave me the one-player fantasy I have always wanted…  DPS Warrior with Sword and Shield. After years of gnashing my teeth about what makes an MMORPG great, and I think I have ended up with a basic template.  Here are the bullet points I have boiled it down to:
  • Small iterative changes over time that feel like they improve not only the quality of life for the player but enrich the existing systems and build upon them.
  • A predictable release cadence that allows your player base to know when then the next content drop is going to happen so that they can play their schedule around it.  Additionally, the content quality needs to be consistent and meet most of the player’s expectations.
  • Support multiple styles of play so that your raider, pvper, crafter, and your extreme cosplay aficionado all have a home and feel like they have equal footing in your game.  The content drop should give each of the groups of players something they feel is theirs and can be excited about.
  • Make additive content not subtractive content.  The world should feel like it is getting bigger and there should be systems that make the older content evergreen and still relevant in spite of times changing.  The alternative makes you feel like the world shrinks each time content drops as this new thing is the only part of the world that now matters.
  • Catchup mechanics that allow new players to easily slide into content if they have walked away for a while.  Games need to support the ability to fade in and out of a game as your life changes and not feel like the player has sacrificed too much in the process.
The thing is there are a number of games more or less following these bullet points.  You have games like Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XIV that have slowly been building momentum for years.  There is also Guild Wars 2 that is doing its own thing but should probably be mentioned even though the thing that it is doing is not really in my wheelhouse.  The problem is there are two games that I love that are absolutely NOT doing these things…  namely Destiny 2 and World of Warcraft.  I struggle in both cases because the world seems to shrink each time a content drop happens as the players are funneled towards this new thing that just got added in, with no real reason to keep doing the older things that were still enjoyable.  That is something that Final Fantasy XIV has excelled at is bribing players to keep doing the back catalog of content because it is good for the health of the game to make sure everything stays active.
I think another important note we should talk about is console support for games.  World of Warcraft does not have console support, nor does it appear like they are heading in that direction.  Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online both jumped early on the console bandwagon, and while at least in the case of FFXIV system design being initially limited because of the PlayStation 3 I think that flexibility has paid off in other ways.  Folks might have been PC gamers in their High School or College years but found as an adult that sequestering to a dedicated room of the house to play games no longer fits their way of life.  Having the flexibility of still playing the MMORPGs that you loved in your younger years, on the console that is more practical in your older years is a big boost in the total pool of players that you can draw on. So I have said a lot of words today and unburdened myself with a lot of concepts I have been thinking about.  I want to close things out, but I feel like I need to draw back a specific point that I feel is extremely important to underline.  I do not want World of Warcraft to fail.  I do love and want Final Fantasy XIV to be successful, but I do not want it to be entirely due to the failure of what was a long-time friend of mine.  World of Warcraft is that friend that cannot get their shit together, but even though you have been distancing yourself…  you still really want to see them succeed.  I would love for us to tell in a decade’s time the riveting tale of the revival of World of Warcraft and how it is the second greatest comeback tale of all time…  because let’s be honest no one is going to outdo the FFXIV 1.0 to FFXIV 2.0 story.  As much as I want this success for an old friend, I am just resigned to the fact that we are going to get more of the same with an added focus on mobile game mechanics and alternate streams of monetization.  I want World of Warcraft to be a better game than it is today, but I have lost my faith that it can be. The post The Battle for Azeroth’s Soul appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Wagonload Of Sprouts

Good Morning Friends! My blog has been a bit of a dumpster fire this morning and as I am writing this I have no faith that what I am saying is actually going to publish. Last night I had my very first “rough dungeon run” since coming back to Final Fantasy XIV. It was not a situation where I had trouble with individual players being toxic or anything of the sort, but just that I was randomized into a tougher than average dungeon with a wagon full of sprouts. In truth we had a number of mistakes along the way, but nothing that couldn’t be adjusted around. That was until we reached the final boss: Annia quo Soranus and Julia quo Soranus. This fight in particular just has a large number of unforgiving mechanics, some of which that player has probably never actually encountered up until that point unless they were doing “raid” content. There are two particularly that were causing issues. The first was Commence Air Strike where Eight Ceruleum tanks drop from the sky, and the player needs to deftly move into a zone after an explosion to avoid more explosions. The other was an attack sequence called “The Order” where one sister performs a “Crosshatch” where thin shimmering gold lines are drawn on the ground, and the player needs to not be standing near one. When the attack executes the sister will charge back and forth along that golden path dealing damage to anyone that is along one of those trajectories. This is a hard concept to explain but after three attempts I managed to walk the group through it and we finished. All the while I was trying my best to keep the sprouts from getting their hope tarnished, because I was certain we could do it eventually.
I managed to get my Paladin to 79 and am roughly 1/3rd of a level from dinging 80. This evening I will be able to finish it off quickly and start hopefully running some “big kid” instances. There was a method to my madness and I have been focusing on Clan Nutzy Hunts in part because you can now purchase a full set of 460 item level gear with “sacks of nuts”. After I finish off the hunts for today I should be able to finish purchasing my set, which means in theory I should be able to walk straight into level 80 dungeons when I ding. The act of finishing hunts for the day may actually be the catalyst that dings me. After that I will probably actually start working on catching up the Main Story Quest or MSQ.
In other exciting news… I built an airship. Well actually I helped the Ixal build an airship and as a result I finished leveling up my faction with the first of the crafting beast tribes. I’ve also managed to push Carpenter up to almost level 50, which means I should be using it to pull the other crafting professions up to 50 through the daily Ixal quests as well. My goal is to gear out the one profession and then use it for turnins that I can farm out to the other professions. It is going to take forever but slowly bit by bit I will work up my trades to where they are all 50… then start the process all over again in getting them to 60 through the Moogle dailies.
Maxing out another Beast Tribe means that I also got a brand new mount. This has been my key source of expenditures for awhile is purchasing the new mount each time one unlocks. I am not sure WHY I am collecting mounts other than it is a thing to do. At some point I want to start back up pony farms so I can complete my set and unlock the double special pony that comes from owning them all. After that I guess I want to start collecting birds or doggos or whatever the next special mount in sequence is. For the short term however I am very much looking forward to starting bigger dungeons again and collecting bookrocks that I can turn in for cooler gear. Now let’s see if this effort that I just went through actually works and hit publish! The post Wagonload Of Sprouts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.