Turn 9 down last night. Finally.

We’ve been dedicatedly plugging away at that fight for a long time. Months, since before I moved to Seattle. Having beaten it, finally, I feel like it’s something I can unpack in my mind. If you’re in my raid, or otherwise looking for an exciting victory post, it’s probably best to stop here. I’m about to not be terribly positive for a while.

It is almost, ALMOST, an exquisitely designed fight. It’s worth noting that it’s a single phase that has given us such trouble for so long– we started regularly getting to the final phase of the fight– which lasts from 46% until the boss is dead– about six months ago, and it was a wall. Prior to that, we could make appreciable if slow progress, and then we reached that final phase and it all fell apart. It’s a high technically demanding section of the fight, and messages appallingly poorly as well. There are raid-wiping mechanics that require you to see a tiny debuff icon within a second or two, targeting a random character, as well as critical mechanics whose only indication is a thin beam of light connecting to a single random character amid a slew of spell effects… at a point at which everyone in the group needs to be stacked up together. In addition to these “die randomly” mechanics, there’s also an abusive amount of damage going into the tank, particle effects amid the mess that require you to react instantly and run to one of two points on the edge of the circular arena (that lacks landmarks to orient yourself), randomly targeted area effects that can kill easily, and the need for the entire group to move together and separate at important moments, and know exactly when these moments are as they change second-to-second.

This is one mechanic of about 15, in that one final phase.

That’s one phase. It takes ten minutes, by itself, to describe, and it comes after four or so other phases, each with their own unique mechanics. There is zero room for error– if you’re standing slightly wrong or don’t react fast enough, either you die, the group dies, or both. We were doing this while heavily overgeared and with a not-insignificant buff– 20% to everything to help us along, and that’s what we’ve been working with for six months. It’s beatable, but requires the kind of technical precision that demands, essentially, rote memorization: just do the fight over and over, frequently enough to sear it into your memory. We raid one night a week, not enough to keep that flame kindled.

As a point of comparison, we cleared every other piece of content we had access to. Extreme primals, other portions of that dungeon, all got smashed before us in (usually) record time. Turn 9 was a wall, thanks to a particular design choice that required a very particular sort of group.

We went back into Turn 9 tonight with a single, slight difference: we were almost all level 60, not level 50, with the full array of expansion abilities at our disposal against a boss tuned for people ten levels lower. It still killed us twice, more a testament to the gentle gear curve of FFXIV than anything else, but still notable. We did down it on the third try, turning our superior power to this boss that’s haunted us for more than half a year. Dropping the boss lacked the usual elation we have on a new boss kill– this one lasted too long and was too personal.

As a game designer and raid leader, it’s something I paid really close attention to. No one objected to us turning on “overpowered mode”; there was no voice of dissension saying “hey, maybe let’s try this the proper way instead of just powering through it”, but when the boss died, there was no cheer of victory. We all, I suspect, just wanted to be done with it, to see something new instead of the same boss and the same arena that we’ve been staring at for months on end. It made for a victory that rung hollow, but it largely didn’t matter– the vibe was that people just wanted OUT. I’m in the same boat; I have been tired of that same boss for months, and the excitement of potentially winning had long given way for me to a desperate hope that we’d win THIS TIME, just so I wouldn’t have to dance this same dance yet again.

I worry that robbing ourselves of a proper victory will hurt the raid’s morale, but I’ve been worried about this boss destroying our raid for months now. It’s the dark side of the high points of raiding. For every glorious victory and sweet celebration, there’s a chance that the next boss will be the one that you stare at for months, unable to beat and unable to progress past, leaving you no choice but to either give up on moving forward or slam your face against until something changes.

Right now, though, I don’t secretly dread Monday Night Raids anymore, and I’m genuinely excited that we can do some new, interesting content. It’ll be hard, and probably kill us repeatedly, but it won’t be Turn 9.

Source: Digital Initiative
Long Overdue

I’ve been level 60 for about a week now, mostly because the Heavensward release synced up with a week off for me, so I could delve completely into it. I’ve technically been level 60 since Sunday of last week, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I really felt like I was “properly” max level.

I’ve mentioned that FFXIV has story arcs, like TV show seasons, that each encapsulate an arc, generally end with a teaser setup for the next arc, and roll credits at the end. Heavensward is no different, and there’s some (damn impressive) finale stuff for you to do upon hitting level 60 before the credits roll. I’d hit level 60, but hadn’t done that part, because I was waiting for a few other people to hit that.

This weekend, I got to run through four new dungeons with mostly new folks, which is probably my favorite possible MMO experience, enough so that it’s worth twiddling my thumbs for a week to get to do it. Going through a new dungeon blind is a fantastic experience, and it’s one of the only reasons I tend to push along the front edge of content. Playing through the new dungeons was a ton of fun, even in pick up groups, where no one had been in there before. When I fell slightly behind the leading curve and people were no longer mostly seeing the dungeons for the first time, I found it a lot less interesting, and I wound up dropping out of a group or two who refused to respect my request not to spoil me on the dungeon by telling me what the bosses did ahead of time.

I will say that, for all of the awesome it brings to the table, Heavensward reinforces two big beliefs that I’ve held for a long time. I’ve talked before about flight-as-GM-move, so I won’t go into it again here, but suffice it to say that having played through the expansion flight, once you have it, is no less a cheat than it is in WoW. It’s done better in FFXIV, but I wouldn’t say done well.

The other thing is this: levels have to go. Every single down moment and every single disappointment I had with the expansion was tied to level. Oh, I’m super enthralled by this story but I can’t play it because of my level. Oh, I want to run this dungeon with my friends but I can’t because we’re not all the right levels. Oh, I found a cool drop for my buddy who… can’t equip it because she’s not the right level. We’ve got people on for a dungeon but we can’t run it because they don’t have the right classes at the right levels. I hate grinding find-the-moogle quests for hours on end but I have to because level.

I get the need for a feeling of progression, but this whole level-locking thing really hurts the experience, especially in an expansion like Heavensward. I’ve focused on one class, because that’s how I play, and as a result I’ve gotten to run all of… one dungeon with Ash, who has dabbled in a few different classes and, despite having played the game plenty since its launch, doesn’t have access to the stuff I’m running, and doubly doesn’t have it on a class that necessarily meshes with a group. Several people went from being able to fill any role a party needs to only being able to fill one, if that, another function of level.

In the meantime, they proved that they can give you a sense of progression without it being tied to levels. To get into the Heavensward content, FFXIV makes you play through all of the story leading up to it. It’s its own “levelling system”, just linked to story progression and not the numbers on your character sheet. It’s rather more meaningful than numbers you don’t look at getting bigger– I highly suspect most people remember which bits of the story they were doing at each level more than how much more their attacks hit for or how much more HP they had each level. My example here is Bel, the staunchest opponent of my “abolish levels” mantra, who mentioned the story at each and every level of his path through Heavensward and did not once mention any cool new abilities or crazy stats without being directly asked about them. I know in my case, as someone very motivated by new abilities that do cool new things, I got hooked by the storytelling that was going on for each one via my class quests.

In the end, though, Heavensward is amazing, so much so that my biggest frustration is that I can’t play more of it with my friends. I feel like that says enough on its own. I’d previously mentioned that I hadn’t been this excited about an MMO expansion since Burning Crusade, which is true. I can now say that I haven’t been this excited about an MMO expansion after “completing” it… ever.

Source: Digital Initiative
Properly 60 in Heavensward