This week Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam, Thalen discuss a bunch of stuff, some of it not Pokemon Go
This marks the second week of the majority of our cast being completely enthralled by the apparent phenomenon that is Pokemon Go. So as you would expect this weeks episode is a hefty bit of our hosts recounting their recent experiences. Pokemon Go is a story engine, and we have many stories to tell as a result. Additionally we talk a bit about Augmented Reality gaming in general, and whether or not Pokemon Go is the “Everquest” or the “World of Warcraft” of this genre. This week also saw us “getting the band back together” as it were and raiding for the first time in months in Final Fantasy XIV. We discuss our feeling about raiding again and the hopes of what we might accomplish in the coming months.
Grace and Bel made their way into the Legion Beta finally for World of Warcraft so we discuss a bit in the way of the set up for that expansion. Bel talks at length about his experiences playing a Demon Hunter and why he thinks this might be a class Tam would actually like. Tam deftly deflects and turns the discussion back around to the story of Final Fantasy XIV and our feelings about what seems to be the wrapping of this expansion. In other news we discuss two similar gaming experiences in Necropolis and the brand new chapter of the Monster Hunter saga. Finally we get into a length discussion about the ramifications of Pokemon Go and what it might mean for Nintendo and accepting that the mobile platform is actually viable.
Topics: Pokemon Go, Augmented Reality Gaming, Everquest or World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV Raiding, Legion Beta, Demon Hunter, Final Fantasy Story, Necropolis, Monster Hunter, Nintendo Mobile Gaming, Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow.
The last several day have been interesting to say the least, but in ways I have not really talked about in my blog. We moved into our house in 1999 and at that time the air conditioning unit was original to the house circa 1980. So the fact that our unit would fail has been this weight hanging over us for well over a decade. For at least a decade it has had a slow leak which meant that roughly once a season it would freeze up solid, and the service folks would come out and top off the Freon and get us up and going again. Each and every service guy has said essentially the same thing… keep the unit going as long as we can because “they don’t build them like this anymore”. A few weeks ago we finally reached the endgame with our unit as something rattled loose and started trying to vibrate it to death. The actual fix was going to cost over $1000 and that was simply something I could not in good conscious do given that the unit as a whole would still eventually fail sooner rather than later regardless of said fix. I did however come up with a hedge fix that held us until them… which was essentially placing a huge sandstone rock on top of the unit which dampened the rattling enough to keep things going for a bit while we sorted out options for a replacement unit.
Old Unit vs New Unit
Now in some parts of the country air conditioning might be an optional thing… but in Oklahoma with our regular over one hundred degree fahrenheit days it is an absolute necessity. So Monday and Tuesday we had workers in the house installing the new unit, and the last several days we have been trying to get used to the way it works. Traditionally AC units are either on or off, meaning you either get 100% power or nothing at all. This new one has a stepper motor that goes from 35% to 100% in 1% increments, which is really odd to get used to because it rarely ever shuts off completely. It just sort of cycles down to next to nothing at times, but essentially tries to maintain a stable temperature at all times. The other thing this unit has is a built in dehumidifier, which means we have been going through this adjustment period when we are trying to figure out what the new norm is. Previously we kept the house around 73 degrees, but that is honestly way too cold now… so for the last bit we’ve landed somewhere around 75 degrees and that seems to be working out okay. Finally the unit has a built in hospital filtration system, which means all of the air in the house is almost completely allergen free…. which was almost immediately noticeable the first time I stepped foot outside of the house after sleeping a night under the new system. I was like walking out and hitting a wall of pollen and humidity.
Goobbue Rider
Chompy Teeth Monster FTW!
Needless to say the last several days this has taken most of my energy, and as a result my gaming has been extremely scattered consisting of some Pokemon Go and a bunch of logging into various things and doing maintenance type tasks and then logging out again. One of those tasks that I have been trying to do religiously however is the Sylph quests in Final Fantasy XIV… or as we usually call them the “Lettuce Fairies”. Since the moment I saw that there was a Goobbue mount I have wanted one, but the Slyphlands in general and the daily quests they offer are probably the most annoying set to grind. So during the 2.0 content I nibbled away at them but never really made a concerted effort to work on them. However at level 60 they are insanely easy and actually when everything is not aggroing out… the Sylphlands are rather charming. So over the last bit I have been focused on pushing through the reputation grind so that I could be a tiny Lalafell on a giant monster. Last night I managed to complete the last of the quests and now I am riding tall on my big buddy. Next up I am working on the Sahagin quests for no particular reason other than the fact that they were the next highest. I really did not know how much faster the quests go when you hit the rank three quests and can start doing nine a day. If nothing else this gives me a solid purpose to be in game and see folks every night even if I am not necessarily running complicated content.
Descending Further
Last night I also played quite a bit more Necropolis, and I think I finally get the comparison to Dark Souls. Both are games that when you encounter a completely new type of monster, you are likely going to die a lot. A number of my deaths have been caused by me learning how to properly battle a specific type of critter, and since my attacks are rather slow and deliberate it is not like I can simply spam my attack key and pray for the best. I’ve also found myself needing to bait monsters to keep them from swarming me at the same time. So those Everquest/DAoC body pulling skills are coming in handy. All of this said I am still not terribly far into the game. Last night I made it through the first floor and managed to transition to the second floor… where the mocked me for this achievement. Then moments later I encountered a brand new type of monster and died horribly within moments. I think the worst thing about restarting each time is going back to the original crappy starter weapon. I wish I could somehow carry my loadout into the next life, but I guess scavenging usable equipment is a large part of the game play. I think this is very much going to be one of those “play a bit each night” type of games for me, because I cannot really see grinding my face against it.
Sometimes in MMOs you run into little bubbles of time where things seem to line up in some perfect cosmic way and draw you completely in. Most of the time when I look back at these eras of my past, there’s something to mar the nostalgic glow a bit. My first social guild was a magical time of exploring the possibilities of social games, but it was also saturated with drama that eventually was terminal. That progression raid group I was in during Wrath was great and Ulduar was amazing, but the culture of that guild was toxic beyond belief. My SWTOR raid was like a second home, where I met several of my best friends, but the game itself was so broken and buggy that it’s a miracle we stuck with it as long as we did.
One of these bubbles that doesn’t quite fit this pattern was my raid group in FFXIV. This was a group of people who happily threw themselves at the same boss fight every week for months on end, never completing it until it was long past current but enjoying the process and each others’ company enough that the victory was still sweet in the end. When Heavensward launched the group fractured a bit, first to make room for more raiders in our free company, and then again as folks drifted away from the game during that first extended period without fresh content. Luckily, events last week conspired to focus everyone’s attention back on the game, and we got together for our first raid of a renewed campaign last night.
All but one of us were in gear that was about the bare minimum to enter the content we were doing, and most of us had never seen the fights before. Sure, Sephirot and Final Steps of Faith aren’t exactly progression raiding for folks who have been playing this whole time, but they were new to us. It took pretty much a full hour to scrape off enough of our rust to kill Nidhogg. Even though I had finished the fight once before, this time felt far more satisfying because we earned every inch of that kill together as a team. Nobody could see it, but I had a huge grin on my face when the cheers went up after that kill, because I did not realize until that moment exactly how much I missed that sound. After that we easily handled Sephirot in a few pulls in part because the fight was easier but also because our coordination and muscle memory were slowly returning after months of disuse. We ended the night by killing the skywhale, which was the last boss we killed before drifting away last time. It was a fitting way of coming full circle. Now I can’t wait to really pick up where we left off and hunt down a sword-wielding murder-bug.
Hooray for getting the band back together! Long may we play!
This has already been an interesting morning so far, and it is only 6 am. I got up and did my normal routine of making coffee for my wife and I. I heard what sounded like rain so I took a peek outside like I often do, because the pool is an amazing indication of rain. All of those tiny droplets breaking the water show up far better than they do on land. As I stared out at the pool I noticed something moving around in it that I could not quite identify, so I took my cup of coffee outside to investigate. In the pool was this poor little field mouse that looked as though it had been swimming desperately trying to find a way out of the pool for awhile. I basically had two options… either help him now, or fish him out of the skimmer basket later once he eventually lost his battle with treading water indefinitely. I of course opted for the first, and started looking around the yard for something I could use as a ramp to help him get up and out of the water. I finally landed upon using a shovel and then began the battle of trying to convince him that I was actually trying to help. Once I finally got him up and out of the water he essentially collapsed on the shovel making it extremely easy to get him up and out of the water and over onto our deck. The little guy sat there for a bit before realizing that he should be afraid of humans, and eventually scurrying off in the general direction of the green belt behind our house. Sure he was what most people would consider a pest, but to me he was cute and fuzzy and in desperate need of assistance. I am absolutely a sucker for such things.
Last night also was a super interesting night. I had talked about events serving as a bit of a catalyst to get a large number of us back and engaged with Final Fantasy XIV. Part of that was “getting the band back together” as it were, and namely that meant reconstituting our raid team. So we spent last night working through some of the things many of us had sitting unfinished namely The Final Steps of Faith and Containment Bay S1T7. Before going into the fight Morehnai had warned us that the Nidhogg battle is little overtuned, and might be a bit difficult given that a bunch of us were sitting at exactly the 205 item level cap. He was really the only one of us that could be considered even the slightest bit over-geared with the rest between the bare minimum and just shy of 210. We also largely insisted on going into the fight completely blind, so this meant a handful of wipes as we started to learn the mechanics. The first wall was the add phase dps check, which we quickly sorted out and figured out ways to optimize our dps including me shifting to Deliverance stance for that big. Other than that it was largely working through the moving parts, avoiding damage that we didn’t need to take and ultimately more optimization before we ended up getting the sweet sweet kill. Sure normal mode Nidhogg is not exactly extreme raiding, but it felt like a good return to working together as a team.
After that we went through the Sephirot encounter, which was not surprisingly an awful lot easier. With that once again mostly being use learning what various things meant and how to avoid the damage. Sephirot being interesting in that there are a ton of non telegraphed attacks, namely the one where he turns to face a direction and then does a potentially platform wide attack. Other than that it was also learning the dance of his knock back attacks, and within a couple of attempts we had a dead member of the warring triad. Finally since we were short on time we popped back into Bismarck and killed us a sky whale earning Thalen a spiffy looking bow and the rest of us more Expanse Totems. Next week we are going to kill us a giant bug and hopefully clear the second half of Alex. Past that the sky is the limit, but it felt really good to be together and working as a team once more. Past that I wrapped up the rest of the story and it very much feels like we are saying goodbye to everything we have known over this expansion. I am seriously beginning to think that when Fan Fest happens in October that we will be getting the announcement of a new expansion, and not only that but that it will only be a few months away. The Deep Dungeon will serve as something for us to play with in the meantime and a vehicle which allows us to catch up all of those jobs that we never got around to leveling. In any case it feels like a really good time to be back in Final Fantasy XIV and back working together as a team.
