Thalen

Blaugust Returns, Day 1

by

I originally started this blog on the first day of Blaugust last year, so I suppose it's somewhat fitting that I return to it on the first day of Blaugust.  I'm not really certain why, but I just haven't felt much inspiration to write in recent months.  Time for a fresh start though, and to see if I can keep things going this time around.  We shall see.

What are you hoping to get out of Blaugust this year?
 Belghast posted that question as a writing prompt for the first day of Blaugust, and it seems like a good question for me to answer.  What am I hoping to get out of this?  I'm certainly not it for the phat stacks of blog cash.  I have a day job that works just fine for me; this will only ever be a hobby.  I think I mostly want to blog as a way to think about my ideas and get them out into a more concrete form.

That's why I blog (when I do), but why Blaugust in particular?  I've found that I tend to work best with concrete goals.  That's one of the reasons that I'm a big fan of in-game achievements; they provide me suggested goals to work towards which give me sufficient structure that I'm not just flailing around wondering what to do.  Blaugust serves a similar purpose, setting a goal of one blog per day for a month.  I've done it once, but this time I'd also like to try and use that month to come up with some ongoing structure to keep me going.  One of my friends had a few suggestions for ongoing features I could write each of which could run for a year or more if done on a weekly basis.  I may try to do one or more of those and see how that goes.

In any case, Blaugust has come and the challenge has begun.  Let's do this.

Blaugust Day 2: Never Make the Same Mistake Twice

by
One of the things that continually impresses me about Final Fantasy XIV is that the developers are very good at learning from their mistakes. Sometimes systems don’t work quite how they were intended to at first, but improvements get made and the game develops over time. One good example of this is cutscenes.

The storyline in FFXIV includes a lot of cutscenes throughout, many of which can be fairly long. All well and good, but at first those cutscenes would often be in the middle of dungeons. If not everyone in the dungeon wants to watch the cutscene, then you end up with some members of a group either having to wait for the others to finish, or running on ahead and starting fights without the person who was watching the cutscene. The very worst offenders were the final two 8 person trials in the initial story, Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium. It is entirely possible for a player to watch the cutscene triggered before a boss in one of those trials and find that by the time the cutscene is over the rest of the group has already defeated the boss and moved on without them.

In the content that was added in later patches however, mid-dungeon cutscenes are noticably rare. When they do exist they are usually very short. Cutscenes at the beginning of dungeons are usually quite short as well, with the long ones almost always placed at the end of dungeons where watching them won’t hold the rest of your group up. The lesson was learned and adjustments were made to avoid repeating the mistake.

I’ve been working on my crafting jobs recently, and I’ve noticed the same sort of thing there, where choices appear to have been made to address weaknesses in the crafting system or to fix elements that don’t have the expected effect.

Crafting in FFXIV is a mini-game that involves using various abilities to fill a progress bar while also trying to increase a quality bar as much as possible to improve your chance of producing a high quality verison of the item you’re making. For final products a high quality item is noticeably better than the normal version, having higher stats across the board. You have a limited number of actions to do this with as well as a limited amount of crafting points to spend on your abilities. To complicate things even further, your craft has a material condition which can vary over the course of the craft, adding an element of randomness to the process.

In theory, one needs to pay attention to material condition and react differently depending on the current condition since it heavily affects the amount of quality added by abilities. In practice, at most points in the process changing which ability you use would result in wasting the effects of previously used abilities or using too many crafting points and running out too soon. Thus, condition ends up just being something you don’t pay much attention to that occasionally greatly helps you or screws you over.

In Heavensward, all the crafting jobs get a new ability at level 53, Precise Touch, which increases item quality. This ability is identical to the very first quality increase ability you receive, Basic Touch, with two differences. Precise Touch can only be used when material condition is Good or Excellent, and it adds a level of Inner Quiet to your Stack. Inner Quiet is a status you can stack that increases the effectiveness of all you quality increase abilities.

That’s useful in and of itself, of course, but more importantly that stack can then be spent to fuel the ability Byregot’s Blessing, which increases quality by an amount dependent on the size of the Inner Quiet stack.

What this means is that any time you would normally use Basic Touch, it is better to use Precise Touch if possible. Now you need to pay attention to material condition so you can use the better ability. It’s not a huge change, but a small step to slightly more complex crafting. Of course, whether you think that’s a good thing or not will depend on whether you view it as interesting complexity or not. I’m still not entirely sure on that point, but it’s at least an attempt.

Blaugust Returns, Day 1

by

I originally started this blog on the first day of Blaugust last year, so I suppose it’s somewhat fitting that I return to it on the first day of Blaugust. I’m not really certain why, but I just haven’t felt much inspiration to write in recent months. Time for a fresh start though, and to see if I can keep things going this time around. We shall see.

What are you hoping to get out of Blaugust this year?

Belghast posted that question as a writing prompt for the first day of Blaugust, and it seems like a good question for me to answer. What am I hoping to get out of this? I’m certainly not it for the phat stacks of blog cash. I have a day job that works just fine for me; this will only ever be a hobby. I think I mostly want to blog as a way to think about my ideas and get them out into a more concrete form.

That’s why I blog (when I do), but why Blaugust in particular? I’ve found that I tend to work best with concrete goals. That’s one of the reasons that I’m a big fan of in-game achievements; they provide me suggested goals to work towards which give me sufficient structure that I’m not just flailing around wondering what to do. Blaugust serves a similar purpose, setting a goal of one blog per day for a month. I’ve done it once, but this time I’d also like to try and use that month to come up with some ongoing structure to keep me going. One of my friends had a few suggestions for ongoing features I could write each of which could run for a year or more if done on a weekly basis. I may try to do one or more of those and see how that goes.

In any case, Blaugust has come and the challenge has begun. Let’s do this.

A Prediction for Heavensward

by
This entire post is CHOCK FULL OF SPOILERS for the most recent story events in FFXIV. Seriously, if you don't want spoilers turn back now.

Not a spoiler:  There will be internet dragons

Alright, so I'm going to be theorizing based on the state of things as of the end of the current storyline, and particularly one scene that shows up after the ending credits. I'm assuming if you're reading this you already know what's gone down, but if not you can listen to us talk about it on the latest Aggrochat podcast. The important thing for our purposes here is that the Scions of the Seventh Dawn appear to have been nearly wiped out. Yda, Papalymo, Y'shtola, Thancred, and Minfilia all remained behind and apparently gave their lives in Ul'dah to aid our escape.

What really got me thinking, though, is the final cutscene where we see Urianger speaking to Elidibus, the white-robed Ascian. We don't see much, but Urianger appears to be ready to enter into a deal with Elidibus.  My theory is about that deal and the possible repercussions.

I think Urianger, already hit hard by the death of Moenbryda, was devastated by the apparent deaths of the other Scions. Willing to do whatever it takes to save them, he enters into a deal with Elidibus, offering him the stone from Louisoux's staff if the Scions can be returned to life. Elidibus accepts, and the Scions are restored, but not without cost. They come back in the thrall of Elidibus' "One True God", effectively tempered.

This would lead into a storyline where we find ourselves having to face our former friends and desperately search for a way to free them of the Ascians' influence.  I see us facing them one by one, most likely starting with Moenbryda, and collecting a dark crystal from each as we defeat them. Adding Moenbryda to the five Scions who fell in Ul'dah would give us a total of six dark crystals to collect, just as we collected six light crystals from the primals in the Realm Reborn story.

Dark Crystals, you say?

I might be entirely off base with all of this, but this seems to me like something that fits in with the sort of story the FFXIV team have been telling thus far and also hearkens back to aspects of previous Final Fantasy games (collecting dark crystals, friends mind-controlled and set against the party). I'm looking forward to seeing if I'm right.