Tales of the Aggronaut – Page 771

So Many Sads

July 3, 2015June 28, 2015 by Belghast

Storming the Castle

This morning I admit that I have been struggling to figure out what to write about. It is not from a lack of material, but a conscious effort to filter myself. Last night I leapt over a content wall in Final Fantasy XIV and it was quite possibly the best dungeon experience I have had since first stepping foot into Deadmines back in 2004. It was so over the top amazing, that it is hard to put into words much about it because quite simply I do not want to ruin the story for anyone. Square Enix has somehow managed to capture all of the magic of Scarlet Monastery, distill everything that made it fun… and then amply that and unleash it onto the world. The dungeon design is vastly different than anything else I have seen in Final Fantasy XIV to this point. On one level it almost feels like a kung fu action movie, where you are deluged with impossible odds yet somehow manage to hold things together enough to keep moving forward. The fourth dungeon in the game is now the pinnacle of “storming the castle” experiences for me.

What makes it so amazing is the fact that the dungeon is set up by some truly phenominal storytelling. By the time you reach this point in the story arc, you feel like righteous avengers off to save the day. I had been stalled on this dungeon for awhile, but had been holding back doing it so that I could do it with a full guild group. Kodra managed to get caught up last night, and the two of us entered with two others that were gleeful in keeping silent about the tactics of the dungeon. Somehow we made it through, and our raider instincts kicked in enough to keep us from doing anything too stupid. It is funny how those instincts are now fairly universal regardless of what encounter a game throws at you. Final Fantasy XIV does an excellent job of messaging things you should avoid or at least take note of… and when it down… get the hell out.

So Many Sads

Does this picture not just break your heart? This is the saddest Bel I have ever seen in this game. So not only does it excel at giving you moment after moment of excitement… it can also manage to punch you in the gut when the story turns in a sad direction. Things happened… things that made us sad, and the game is doing an awesome job of letting us know it. Not to mention me the person behind the screen was effected by these events too, so it feels reassuring in a way to see my on screen facsimile struggling with the events as well. I cannot expound upon just how amazing the experience of Heavensward has been so far, with the storyline from last season picking up and continuing where we left off. I call it a “season” because really that is what it feels like. The original 1.0 launch was Season 1, A Realm Reborn was Season 2… and now we are entering the Third Season of this really awesome television show… where I absolutely cannot wait to see what happens next. It is a game like this that makes me feel like a game can both be engaging and deeply narrative at the same time. I feel like I am telling the story… more than I usually do in a story driven experience. Sure the story is happening to me… but I identify so completely with my character.

The thing is this feeling we are having is apparently completely intentional. The above quote is from a ZAM video interview with Yoshi P from E3. It is very clear that he feels like he is stilling one large episode of the same story, and as a result all of the little elements and people that you meet along the way have a lasting importance. Just because you go several levels without seeing someone, does not mean they will not show up at some point in the future. The characters in this world have their own destinies and do not just support that of the main character. Everyone has an agenda and are given the latitude to shift in and out of the focus of what we ultimately view as the “main story”. Ashgar and I were talking for a bit last night and he made the comment that there is enough story content in here to make an actual “traditional” Final Fantasy game. Thinking about this I absolutely agree and in many ways this sort of storytelling that we are experiencing is the same sort of storytelling we saw in Final Fantasy VI for example… where characters shift in and out of your party but you are constantly moving forward towards an end goal. This time we the player character are the constant in a world that is constantly changing around us.AggroChat

AggroChat 63 – There Came an Echo Show

Last night we recorded the sixty third episode of AggroChat and the fifth AggroChat Game Club game show. This time around it was Kodra’s pick a quirky voice controlled story driven RTS called There Came an Echo. My experience was vastly different than the rest of my co-hosts, but it seems that pretty much everyone other than Kodra and Tam had some measure of technical difficulties with this title. For example Thalen, Ash and I were all missing significant UI elements during our play throughs. Several of us had to content with moments when the game seemed to just stop accepting voice input commands as well. I however had the most issues with the game constantly crashing on me. There was no point when I was able to actually load anything without the game going unresponsive and having to hit the “wait for program” button in the hopes that maybe just maybe it would wake the hell up and start working again. As I said I was the only person who had issues quite that severely, and I am hoping that maybe this is just a bad patch as they recently rolled one out.

The positive however is it has good enough story and voice acting to make me futz with this game for two hours trying to make it work for me. During the course of they show the folks that did manage to beat the game exposed all the spoilery content and I got enough of a feel for how the story goes that I really want to see it play out. At the very least I am planning on watching a play through, and preferably one without much streamer dialog to preserve as much of the voice acting experience as I can. The one I was watching for a bit yesterday kept talking over the character dialog… which kinda ruined the experience. This game feels very much like a tech demo with good story and voice acting… and I would love to see this same level of effort taken and expanded into a more traditional game experience. Sure this voice control thing is somewhat neat, but I hate talking to devices. Devices like the Amazon Echo, Siri and even my own Google Phone experience are lost on me… because the last thing I want to do is talk to my device to have it do something for me. The voice control was deeply awkward for me, but your mileage may vary… Kodra and Tam both seemed to enjoy it greatly.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
So Many Sads

Pre-Ordering Games

July 3, 2015June 27, 2015 by Belghast

Long Winded Answer

Over on MMO Games we have a column called FAQ where during the course of the week someone proposes a topic, and we have until Friday to send in our responses to chime in on it. While I don’t exactly think the name FAQ really fits anymore… since we aren’t really posting any “frequently asked questions” I do think the format is pretty cool. Friday however was an exceptionally busy day for me, and I never got around to sending Ardua my paragraph on this weeks topic. Part of the problem was that the question while pretty straight forward didn’t have a straight answer to it for me. Or at least my response would have ended up far more long winded and nuanced than a simple question and answer column needed. So I thought today I would use this prompt for my morning blog post. The question seemed pretty simple and straight forward: “Do you Pre-purchase/pre-order MMO Expansions?”

The only legitimate question that I can answer is “sometimes”, which in itself is deeply unsatisfying. I feel like I need to delve into my changing feelings about pre-ordering things in general. There was a time when I thought anyone who pre-ordered anything… was a chump. I used to look at the folks at GameStop and EB Games with derision as they tried to get me to pre-order the next thing on the horizon as I held in my hands the current “hot” thing. I viewed it as a heinous form of up-selling product and nothing more. Once upon a time I used to get a rush from going out on opening day to try and find a copy of whatever game I wanted to play. I can remember a time when working at the mobile development company, when we called around to a bunch of stores trying to find enough copies of Battlefield 2 to purchase for the team… so we could death match it later that evening. I remember the adrenaline rush of checking the stack of games in the store to see if that one title you wanted was available.

Pre-Ordering Games

Ultimately what ended up changing this dynamic for me was the MMO. These games marketed towards a niche of extremely devoted fans, that absolutely had to at all costs have a copy of the latest expansion in their grubby hands on release day. After all we all know that anything less means you are going to get a late start and struggle to keep up with your friends and guild members. There were several close calls in the past, like when I tried to get a copy of Planes of Power expansion for Everquest and had to go to four stores to be able to find it, or when I quite literally bought the last copy in Tulsa of Dark Age of Camelot: Trials of Atlantis. The game that ultimately changed things for me however was World of Warcraft and the fact that quite literally if you did not manage to get your copy on opening day, it ended up being a month before more copies were circulating on store shelves.

I walked into Wal-mart at midnight on the night the game was released, and while there was a line wrapping around the corner at GameStop down the street… I was able to pick up a copy without issue from a massive display. I thought those folks who pre-ordered and were waiting in line were chumps. That was until at least half of my local friends were unable to find copies at all, because they didn’t preorder and didn’t go searching for copies that night. It was awkward having to try and catch them up when they finally got their hands on a serial code. If this lesson was not enough, I saw the same thing happen during Burning Crusade, which ultimately shifted me to the side of the “pre-order”. Something was different about the MMO and its player base, they were more dedicated… more rabid… and those previous expansions became harder to find. Something else changed… quite honestly I got older and less willing to go through frustrations in order to get that thing I am looking for. I simply wanted to be able to get my game, on time, and have it there ready to go when the servers come online.

Definitely Sometimes

Now if I am deeply into a game franchise or playing an MMO… I will pretty much always pre-order the game. Where the sometimes comes into play is largely based on what a company is willing to give me to buy that game ahead of time. Most games that I play that are non-MMOs I will divide into three categories. There are games that I want to play the moment it is available, and will likely pre-order no matter what. There are games that I want to play but whenever I get a chance, without much pressure… these games I will likely not preorder and will almost certainly wait until they go on sale… probably not even interested until they are at least 30% off the launch price. Then there are games I am vaguely interested in and would only be willing to pick up for $5-$10 on a whim. Where a game company can change this equation is by giving me exclusive stuff that I will only ever see if I pre-order the game. The problem here however is that almost all of the time… companies ultimately release whatever bauble they are “gifting” players as a DLC that can be added at a later date. This DLC also tends to go on sale just like the game does on Steam… pretty much destroying the allure.

Ultimately to answer the question properly in the form that it was posed… Yes I usually preorder an MMO Expansion… with some conditions. Firstly I play a lot of MMOs, so in order for me to snap it up the moment it comes out it has to be one I am excited to be playing, or that I expect to be spending a lot of time in. Secondly it has to provide me something that I could not normally get if I did not pre-order. Everquest II was the king of this, by offering limited time pre-order bonuses that you quite literally never saw again. I am still kicking myself on missing out on that white snow wolf mount that they gave out with the preorder of velious. So basically if they have some exclusive item that I think I will regret not having preordered to get… then I go ahead and do the deed. The big thing I do these days however is I never pre-order physical copies of anything. Digital copies are just nicer, because they do not rely on the mail to deliver. I am looking for the method of acquisition that has the least pain points, and a digital code that is often times automagically applied to my account is the clear winner.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Pre-Ordering Games

Chain Run Dungeons

July 3, 2015June 26, 2015 by Belghast

Worst Party Comp Ever

Last night I was feeling more than a little out of it, or at least too out of it to actual do much of anything meaningful in Final Fantasy XIV. So after finishing my hunt quest and randoming my way into an Aery dungeon group… I opted to just log out for the night. For a period of time I considered simply going to sleep… and this is honestly the option I should have taken. The Four Job Fiesta is like a religion to my good friend Ashgar, and until the night before last I had not actually even registered for it officially. So as I sat there swaddled in a comfy blanket on the very comfy sofa… I opted to dig the xbox controller out of the console beside me and officially start my fiesta. The rest is history as I was up fairly late getting my start in the world. In past Fiestas my party comp has not been terribly horrible… or at the very least I have bought my way to freedom using the Jobfair donation system. This time however being I think my fourth year participating… I am just going to let it ride.

So when the game assigned me monk for my Wind job… I didn’t think much about it. I figured that would be an easy beginning to the game. When it gave me Berserker for my water job however… I started to dread this decision I had made. Then when I was assigned Beastmaster as my fire job… I realized this was going to be a really odd ride. I figure the answer to my freedom will once again be out level the content, and I have already gotten a start on that notion as I just defeated the Library of Ancients at level 21 which is about five levels or so off the normal pace I believe. Next time I play I will be going after my earth job.. and wondering if it will be salvation or another nail in the coffin on this horrible party. Admittedly I have never actually used the Beastmaster but I always hated how fiddly Gau was in Final Fantasy VI and never actually used him as a result. In theory this is going to be a return to that sort of thing, but I need to do some serious research on what all I need to do and when I need to do it, especially as I am just about to get an airship for the first time giving me a wider range of freedom to go off collecting abilities.

Chain Run Dungeons

In part the reason why I opted to log out last night instead of play is that I am sitting on a strange wall. Right now I am about half way to level 57 and I have a bunch of options on how to get there. I could go do all of the quests that I missed doing while skipping my way around the world and ignoring most of the side quests. I am sure that Square has intended me to level using these, and the fact that I am largely ignoring them is completely breaking their content design. I could always go join a FATE train somewhere, as this has always been a viable method of leveling especially now that so many people are doing it and there are almost always FATE groups in the party finder. It seems that Northern Thanalan is once again an active hotbed of FATE running, and in theory this would even be good experience for a Heavensward character. I am doing my daily hunts but they are honestly more for the currency provided and while they each provide a decent chunk of experience… there are far better and quicker ways to get it.

All of these are completely viable options, but I would far rather just run a bunch of dungeons. The problem is that my preference will always be to run dungeons with the Greysky Armada folks. Unfortunately they are either quiet about what they need for dungeons, or have not unlocked a given dungeon yet. I’ve run a few groups a night for the last several nights, but if I am going to rely on dungeons as a means of leveling I am going to have to step out into the larger community and just start random queuing. Now we get into the dilemma last night… I could have tanked a run for the guild, but I did not have the presence of mind to do so with strangers. Don’t get me wrong I love the FFXIV community, but dealing with anyone that I don’t already know inflicts a mental toll on me. My default and original state is that of an introvert… and over the years I have forced myself to be more extroverted… but doing so… drains me. Last night I was an energizer bunny that had wound down, but tonight hopefully I will begin chaining dungeons once more in order to get the last of my level so I can move forward in the story again and hopefully unlock dungeon four.

Unusually Trying Week

Not really sure why but this week has been a really rough one for some reason. In part I think it is because at the start of the week I had to deal with the being alone, as my wife was once again travelling. Thankfully only for a few days and as of Wednesday she should be home for the rest of the summer. It just seems like everything has been stressing me out far more than it should. I labored over the decision to go ahead and cancel the World of Warcraft account, just to keep it from auto renewing. I have stressed over a dozen different small issues at work, and I have been stressed that I no longer have the ability to do everything in Final Fantasy XIV. Right now I am a tank… and if the group already has one of those it means I have to sit out and watch from the bench as the group goes off and has fun. I liked that I could work my way into any group and fill whatever slot they happened to need, because in truth… running things with my guild is always the thing that I love to do the most.

The problem is that I will get there once again, but there is an almost insurmountable amount of leveling standing in the way. I have this odd relationship with grinding… I enjoy it, but only when I don’t realize it is there. If I am grinding towards a goal of some sort… then I realize how much work is going to be needed to get to where I want to go… and simply start to shut down. When I am just grinding as part of my default state of running around and attacking everything in sight… it becomes a happy and carefree place instead. The problem being that right now I know the end goal… and for whatever reason I am having trouble compartmentalizing and ignoring the finish line. I think I am just wired strangely… because so long as I don’t know where the finish line is I will keep pushing ahead blindly until I finally accomplish whatever it was that I wanted to accomplish. However once I know where the boundaries are, and what it is going to take to get there… the game changes and in a strange way goal setting de-motivates me. So long as I am on this fun romp of discovery, life is grand… but right now I need to somehow figure out how to ignore the goals and go back to playing everything for sheer enjoyment.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Chain Run Dungeons

Content Walls

July 3, 2015June 25, 2015 by Belghast

A Different Dark Knight

So here is the point where I admit that I have never actually played any of the recent crop of Batman games. I own I believe all of them other than the latest one that just came out, because I keep thinking that they are games that I would really enjoy, but for whatever reason like so many games in my Steam backlog I never end up playing them. With all of the hype surrounding Batman Arkham Knight lately I have had this massive desire to delve into these games and see exactly what they are made of. Last night was an odd night in that I got home relatively early, but knew I would have to leave and go pick my wife up as she was getting in from our last trip of the summer. I knew I had an hour or so to kill so I opted to delve into this game and see how far I could get. So far there is a lot to like but some things that are a little bit maddening at times as well. Combat seems to take place in a three dimensional “final fight” style manner. NPC bad guys approach you in waves and you can beat on them to turn them away from your position.

The problem I have however is that the game employs a “bullet time” mechanic that I seem to have no real control over. Sure it looks cool to zoom in as your fist cracks against the jaw of a bad guy, but it is jarring in the same way that slow motion kills in Fallout 3 were. It pulls you out of the action and forces the entire world to slow down for a moment before unfreezing and expecting you to pick up combat where you left off. Hopefully this is something I will just get used to, as I didn’t make it terribly far into the game last night. I have to say the storyline and the plot are compelling enough to make me want to keep playing. I’ve always been a fan of Batman, and the dynamic between him and joker have been the stuff that has driven me to read more Batman comics than I can recall. Harley Quinn is another of my favorite characters in the universe, and she seems sufficient so far… but really I have not gotten to interact with her terribly much. Yes I realize at this point that this game is pretty “ancient” but I am going to enjoy it nonetheless.

Content Walls

I am still very much loving Heavensward but I wanted to take a moment to talk about my biggest frustration with the game so far. This game has some phenomenal story that makes you want to push forward so that you can see what happens next. The problem is quite frequently you hit a wall where you must be the next level in order to continue the quest chain. The red quest icon taunts you until you have managed to push through that next level… only to grant you access to a few more steps of story before locking you out again. I realize as I leveled my way through the original story in A Realm Reborn I experienced this… but it has been almost two years so I guess my memories had faded. Partially I think this is the fault of the way that I am currently playing the game, where I mostly focus on the Main Story, hoping to leave a lot of the side questing for secondary classes to get some experience off of. Unfortunately I think the designers intended you to do all of the new quests that open up in each area to help you push forward into the next content goal.

Thankfully I have dungeons to augment my leveling process, and since everyone seems to be comfortable asking me to tank for them… I am getting quite a lot of access to running these dungeons with my free company. The only problem being that I never know exactly how I want to level when I am left to my own devices… and have run out of story. I absolutely love FATEs but the problem being that they simply do not seem to be worth the effort. We have a running theory that they have watered down the FATE experience in an effort to force players to complete their main story content, rather than simply FATE grind their way through the levels. The whole FATE grinding to the end thing happened a lot in A Realm Reborn, and I could see them wanting to maybe nip that in the bud at least for the early players. The problem being that side quests, really don’t reward that much experience either. I’ve recently unlocked the second their of Clan Hunts, so I will have to see if they reward significantly more experience than the first tier that unlocks at 53. As it stands right now… I am hoping the first major patch gives FATEs a significant tweak as far as XP goes so I can return to doing those for my alts.

In That Old Place

This coming Tuesday in theory marks the end of our World of Warcraft raids break, and as I find myself moving closer to that date I realize… I am just not ready to resume raiding. In fact I am not really ready to play World of Warcraft right now on any level. So for the time being I will not be rejoining them in raiding, and more than likely won’t be playing at all for some time. I feel like my primary issue right now is there really isn’t anything other than the raiding tying me to the game. Sure I had some fun faffing about trying to farm mounts or doing old raid content for cosmetic gear… but that ultimately has a limit to just how long I can do that without something else keeping me rooted in the game experience. I’ve explored the new areas, and pushed three characters to the level cap in Warlords of Draenor. While the content was extremely fun to level through that first, second and even to some extent third time… the whole experience feels extremely disposable because it is also exactly the same each time you do it.

In many ways this expansion reminds me of the way I felt after leveling my third character in Star Wars the Old Republic. While the individual class quests there were excellent, it was all the other content that I kept having to repeat that ultimately wrecked my enjoyment of the experience. I thought walking into Draenor I would be awash with nostalgia about how much I enjoyed The Burning Crusade… and to some extent that worked for a month or so. The problem is it is like going back to your High school twenty years after you graduated… while some of the aspects are similar it is still very much a brand new place that does not synchronize with your memories of it. The reboot timeline just feels wrong, and with this patch and the reintroduction of Hellfire Citadel, I just find myself not caring anymore. Arthas and Illidan were bad guys I could really get behind taking down… a constant parade of grim dark future orcs… not so much. I made the mistake yesterday of checking my account to see when it would renew, and when I saw September I went ahead and cancelled it. I figure if the game has not grabbed my attention and made me want to play again in that time… it will just quietly close the door on another chapter of my own personal Warcraft timeline.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Content Walls