FFXIV – Page 57 – AggroChat

Remote Play Working

August 21, 2015 by Belghast

Remote Play Continued

I am not exactly sure why but I have been obsessing over the whole concept of using my laptop downstairs as a remote thin client for my gaming machine upstairs. My grand hope has always been to be able to devote time and resources to the gaming machine, and just use any laptop in the house to play games remotely. After last night I think maybe I have it working as intended. For the last several days I have been struggling with Splashtop Personal, and in spite of lots of folks reporting good results with it… I never could get anything even vaguely close to playable. Namely the biggest problem was mouse lag, and when you are playing games that require mouse movement… this is a huge problem. I spent time crawling the forums, looking for answers and after trying a series of supposed registry hack fixes… the best I could ever seem to get out of Splashtop was something in the neighborhood of 25 fps which a more common stable 20 fps. Yesterday I installed a brand new AC1200 wireless card in my laptop, so that should literally rule out ANY connectivity issues. I was seeing 650 Mbps stable wireless and did not see any significant improvement in performance as a result. Now on the other hand… web surfing and downloading anything is now absolutely amazing… so I don’t regret the $20 spent on the new usb 3.0 wireless dongle.

Now I said I thought I had solved it… but as to this point have talked nothing about the failures. What finally worked is Steam In Home Streaming… with some hackery. Steam Streaming has worked fine for steam games, but not every game that I want to play is on steam. The biggest elephant in the room is games on Origin, but I think I found a workaround for this one. If you add Dragon Age Inquisition to Steam and attempt to launch it directly, it will fail every single time. However the workaround seems to be that you add the Origin launcher to steam and then remotely launch it… and while that window is up you can launch the game you want to play. The caveat is that you have to completely exit Origin after every game play session or it won’t actually work. As a result Splashtop Personal is coming in handy anyway as a way of making sure I do not have Origin running before heading into game. The same thing seems to work with the Battle.net launcher, and the Final Fantasy XIV launcher. Having steam open those gives you access to the application that you are actually wanting to play over the remote session. As far as performance goes, there was some strangeness with audio that I ultimately solved by setting both the client and “server” machine to 2 channel 16 bit 48000 hz audio. After that I was able to play Dragon Age Inquisition remotely with the exact same frame rate I was seeing sitting at my machine upstairs. I am guessing the new wireless made all the difference in the world because I could feel zero lag input, and it made for a pretty amazing experience. As a final thought if you want to play a steam game that does not have a launcher of its own… I have heard having steam open notepad.exe works the same.

The Heavensward Episode

I just wanted to take a moment to talk about the upcoming episode of AggroChat that we will be recording Saturday night and releasing Sunday morning. After all of us had completed the 2.55 content, we recorded a full spoiler episode where we hashed out out ideas about what just happened and where the game would be heading. This week we plan on doing the same thing for the 3.0 story content to date as a preparation for whenever we receive 3.1. We had put off the show in an attempt to get as many people through the 3.0 story as possible, but at this point we figure the statute of limitations is officially up for these spoilers. I am mainly writing today because we are taking input from the community. There are several ways you can send us your ideas either through the aggrochat email or the aggrochat twitter account. Of if you feel more comfortable you can leave your thoughts below. Our goal is to talk through our own ideas and the ideas that we receive on air Saturday.

There is a lot of stuff that happened between 2.55 and 3.0 and some of it had some pretty major ramifications for the games story. I’ve been extremely careful not to spoil too many details even with the screenshots that I use. That said there are things I just need to talk about. There are characters that we lost along the way, and new characters that we gained… and it is going to be good to finally be able to openly talk about all of this. The final cinematic for 3.0 sets up a brand new villain that we will likely be facing, and I have so many ideas on what that one is going to mean. Also there are less spoiler theories as well like this being the expansion of multiple element primals. If you think of Ravana, he is very clearly a mixture of Fire and Earth. Bismarck similarly is a mixture of wind and water. Would that make the next primal a mixture of Lightning and Ice? I cannot think of any existing summons from other Final Fantasy games that really fits that theme, so I am guessing they would be crafting a brand new one just for FFXIV. That only covers three primals however and I fully expect that each patch will have its own new one. So are we going to start seeing new elements, or are they going to tie directly into the new primary enemy that I mentioned above. Essentially… we have stuff to talk about and would love to have your input.

Of Bird Boyfriends

The AggroChat game club game show is also quickly sneaking up on us, and I think of all of the hosts I am the only one who has yet to touch this months title. Grace picked Hatoful Boyfriend as the game of the month title, and I have to say at first I had a small bit of trepidation about this title. If you remember Kodra has gushed about this title numerous times and even streamed a bunch of his gameplay. I watched some of it… and it seemed like pure madness. At the core this is just not a me game, largely because there is not death and destruction. That said I am actually starting to look forward to finally giving this a try, because it DOES seem like pure madness. I could use a bit of surreal insanity in my life, and some of the possible endings sound so damned bizarre that I have to see them for myself. I’ve been largely putting off starting however because I thought it might be funny to stream my first moments in the game. As such I have been trying to find a time when my streaming would not be too much of a nuisance for my wife who is going through the normal “back to school” frustrations. It seems like tonight however might be an excellent time and right now I am planning on starting my stream at roughly 6 pm CST for anyone who wants to see me attempt to date some “birbs”. I plan on playing on voice activation so you can get all of my subtle responses and not just the ones that I want coming through over push to talk. I am not sure exactly what will happen, but I have a mixture of excitement and dread at the same time.

Stealing Good Ideas

August 19, 2015 by Grace

Blaugust 2015, Day 19

So I guess I’m super late to the “react to the WoW: Legion announcement” party. I’ve been trying to digest how I feel about it, and it is tricky. I don’t even play the game anymore (for now) after all. Why should I even have an opinion? Honestly after pouring years of my life into WoW, and having so many friends still there I have no illusions about how quick I will be to buy the expansion and try it out. Whether I will stick around much after leveling is the question.

This was pretty much peak WoW for me.

With this in mind I’ve been thinking about what features from the MMOs I am currently playing I’d like to see added to WoW, and vice versa.

What WoW should steal:

WildStar’s housing: People have wanted player housing in WoW for years. Garrisons did not do the trick. WildStar’s housing has the best customization and depth I’ve seen, and unlike Garrisons you never really feel trapped there or obligated to spend tons of time if you don’t want to. It is a great balance.
WildStar’s double jump: WoW partially stole this, but just for the new Demon Hunter class. I worry if they have jumping puzzles like in WoD either they will be super easy for Demon Hunters and there will be an outcry, or people will discover that their version of double jump is more cosmetic than useful and be disappointed. I hope it gets spread around to everyone.
Final Fantasy XIV’s content schedule: FFXIV never seems to give me much time to get bored or complacent, there’s always an event or something new being added every few weeks. WoW is infamous for long content droughts, if they could figure out FFXIV’s secret they should steal it.
FFXIV’s combat precision: Some folks dislike FFXIV’s combat because of the long GCD that slows everything down, which is fair. One thing their combat does amazingly well though is telegraph very clearly and precisely. If I’m standing 2mm outside of a telegraph I know for a fact I am safe. WoW’s telegraphs are not always well defined, and even when they looked clear I often still took damage when I thought I would not.
WildStar’s costume interface: It is still not perfect, but WildStar’s holo-wardrobe is lightyears ahead of WoW’s transmog. I know it is a ridiculous ask since WoW’s system is based on old code that never had these types of vanity options in mind. But who wouldn’t want to be able to clear out all that inventory space, have tons of dyes on multiple channels, and share your outfits across all your characters?
FFXIV’s commendation system: I don’t pretend that this one change would transform WoW’s toxic community into FFXIV’s somewhat more appealing one. It would be nice though to occasionally have a chance to reward people for being awesome instead of trying (and usually failing due to WoW’s inadequate vote kick system) to get rid of people who are awful. WoW would be way more enticing for me if I thought the devs were even slightly trying to turn the toxic atmosphere around.

To look from the other direction, there’s also a few things I think these games could steal from WoW:

WildStar should steal flexible raid sizes: Yes the population in WildStar should be growing again very soon when F2P happens, but it will probably never be as big as WoW or even FFXIV. Flexible raids will let more people experience their end game content, and let raiding guilds focus on killing raid bosses instead of the roster management boss. Alternately they could just steal the much smaller raid sizes of FFXIV.
FFXIV should steal the WoW token: Ok, so WoW stole this from WildStar (and EVE, etc.) first, but still- having a way to buy game time for game currency would encourage people who are on the fence to try the game knowing they wouldn’t always have to commit to a monthly sub.
FFXIV should steal WoW’s account management and store: There’s a ton of neat things in the FFXIV store but I will never get them. Even if I had the money to spend, the Mogstation is such a nightmare to deal with it just isn’t worth my time. Blizzard has a streamlined, well-oiled system. No matter what you think of their cash shop items, the fact is everything is accessible and just works.
WildStar should steal (and refine) WoW’s legendary item quest chains: Sure, this is probably going to be replaced in Legion by upgrading your artifact weapon, but the original idea was good, if poorly executed at times. Having a long quest chain that takes months to complete and gives you a best-in-slot item is a great way to encourage people to get into content. You just have to be careful that the tasks you set are accessible and reasonable (I’m looking at you, PvP requirements). Both WoW and WildStar could look to FFXIV’s relic weapon quests here I think.

What do you think? What ideas are so good that all MMOs should steal them?

Ravana Attempts

August 18, 2015 by Belghast

Unbreaking Google+

Last night I had a message from a long time friend of mine, asking me why I was no longer posting my daily posts on Google+ to which I kinda gave a head tilt and went “huh”? I had certainly seen my posts making their way to G+ anytime I checked my messages over there. Then I took a closer look and saw that they all said “shared only with you” which kinda defeats the purpose of syndicating posts in the first place. It turns out that nothing I have posted since July 28th has made it to G+ which is more than mildly frustrating. I un-linked my account from Jetpack Publicize and relinked it a few times, but I never saw the prompt that I once saw asking me to select what type of sharing level for my posts. So I took to the search engine to try and figure out what was happening. Sure enough it seems like Google did something to change its policies with what level of access external apps have access to your account. You apparently need to go into Settings > Manage Apps & Activities and then find the WordPress app or whatever else you are using for syndication. This will allow you to edit the permissions for how it will be sharing to your feed, and like I said before apparently the new default is “Only You”.

After posting about this last night it seems that this pretty much happened for everyone universally. I thought I would take a quick moment and at least explain how to fix it. As far as syndicating my posts… I tend to take the approach of broadcast what I write pretty much everywhere. Each of the social networks kinda has its own vibe and while I greatly prefer using Twitter, there are folks that read my content that equally greatly prefer G+ or Facebook or even Tumblr. My goal has always been to deliver my content as in as painless of a manner as possible for folks to read. I personally am not a huge fan of Facebook, and in fact I went through the crazy process of deleting my personal account once upon a time because it annoyed me. However when I started blogging I signed up for an account just for the purpose of reblogging my content because I know there are people who do prefer to use Facebook. Granted it might get annoying as shit if you follow me on multiple platforms to constantly see duplicate postings, but I guess that is a chance I am willing to take because I don’t want anyone to feel excluded or left out of the process. Maybe this is strange but my daily posting thing… feels like all of us are taking a journey together and I don’t want to leave anyone behind.

Ravana Attempts

As is always the case last night was we gathered up the Monday team and did some eight player content in Final Fantasy XIV. We started the evening by burning through all four parts of Alexander Normal for the folks who are not running it and capping out early like I am. At this point my Warrior is sitting at level 190 and I have everything I can get out of Alexander other than the chest piece. So as of today I will be largely running the place to help out the gear on my Dragoon. At some point I hope to get the chest piece but largely for cosmetic reasons because the Alexander gear set looks amazing. Last week we managed to burn down Bismarck Extreme and now both the Monday and Wednesday teams are keyed for the next primal encounter. As such instead of beating the sky whale again we decided to make attempts on Ravana Extreme. Now going into this place we had heard horror stories about how rough the encounter was and how it was another Titan Extreme where you had to move exactly at the right time and keep repeating a pattern. Honestly I didn’t see that at all. Instead I saw an encounter with a repeatable pattern but significantly more wiggle room to adjust as we went.

We made some serious progress last night, and I think more than likely we will be able to defeat him next week. Each attempt we kept creeping closer to the goal, and essentially what is going to be the make or break moment is dealing with the Final Liberation phase. If we can learn that particular dance we will have the encounter, and it honestly did not feel like we were too terribly far off from that process last night. Granted at this point we are significantly better geared than the first groups that attempted the fight, but my hope is that we can get in and start farming this guy so that folks can get the really awesome weapons. In truth I hope that we can farm both primals because there are absolutely weapons that come from both of them that I would like to see. We had the two handed sword drop from Bismarck last Monday and it looked amazing. It is the stupid things like getting glamour items that motivate me, and at some point I want to organize 2.0 extreme primal farming runs so that we can start to get folks their ponies. As it stands we only have a couple of ponies in the guild, and I think my Leviathan pony was the first. We need to figure out a method because really I would like to make sure everyone gets at least ONE primal pony before other people roll on it. Granted eventually it would be awesome to have people get a full set, but I would be happy with having everyone with just one as a starter.

Entering Whitevale

This morning I am having one of those mornings when I am easily distracted. The cats are tearing through the house chasing each other like they have gone mad. There is a dog barking and it sounds like it is coming from my back yard… even though it is really across the green belt. I keep flipping over to twitter, and having to force myself to put my fingers back on my keyboard and type in my WordPress window. Largely since this is Blaugust I wanted to include this little tidbit because it absolutely happens to me too. There are days when you cannot keep your train of thought, and I have learned to just go with it. Start writing the things that seem most natural and eventually somehow you will get back on track. Last night was one of those nights for me as well, and I flipped back and forth between games quite a bit as the evening wore on. Before the raid I spent time over in Wildstar with the purpose of trying to “finish Galeras”, which is a bit of a daunting task because there are a silly number of quests in that zone and many of them you will never actually find unless you go wandering around aimlessly. Bit by bit however I explored the regions of the map that had yet to be explored and I am now relatively confident that I have at least gotten most of the quests out of the way.

That now means the moment I have been dreading is upon me… and I had to take the flight out to Whitevale. I guess in part the reason why I have been avoiding doing this is that Whitevale ultimately was the zone that broke me when I played the game at launch. I am not sure entirely what it is about the place, but it felt like moving slowly through molasses. I think in part it was due to the fact that Dominion side there simply were never that many players in the zone, meaning that I could never get a group to do any of the group objectives, and the mob density meant that it was super hard to move anywhere without having to fight a dozen mobs. The zone also seemed to have a higher concentration of the challenger and superior difficulty mobs than the other zones. It seemed like I could not move anywhere without seeing one of those horrible flashing red shielded mob types that I had to try and chew through in vain. As a result I have honestly been scared of getting to this zone because it was my fear that once again it would break me. I have actually been enjoying the content so far, and finding playing the game refreshing. So hopefully maybe I can make my way through Whitevale because supposedly everything on the other side of it… is significantly better.

What I’m Playing: August 16, 2015

August 16, 2015 by Grace

Blaugust 2015, Day 16

THE BEST HAT

It feels like every week I’ve been doing this feature I’ve been playing fewer and fewer games. Here’s my rundown for the week:

Diablo 3: Barely touched this one at all. The end of the season is looming ever closer, and at this point I doubt I will care enough to finish leveling before August 23.

Final Fantasy V: I really want to complete the four job fiesta but I keep running into walls. The clock is ticking on this one too. Hopefully the charitable cause will motivate me to get this one done.

Final Fantasy XIV: Not a lot of new and exciting things happening here this week. Both of the groups I raid with are now at about the same place, having killed Bismark EX and the first 4 parts of Alexander. I’ve still got another week to go before my Wednesday group is back up to full strength, so I feel like I’m in a bit of a holding pattern. I can’t wait to start trying Ravana EX with both groups.

WildStar: I did some more raiding this week, and had a great time! I’ve also started working on PvP contracts just to change things up. Expect a post about that soon! This week I also spent literally all my platinum in order to upgrade my pistols to ilevel 74 ones from the auction house. No regrets, those things are amazing!

Twine: Ok this isn’t so much playing a game as messing around with a game-creation engine. I got an idea in my head for a game and started poking at Twine to see if I could turn it into a reality. I’m not sure anything will ever come of it, but it has been really fun learning and trying to make things work!