Final Fantasy XIV

Super Dungeon Friends

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Morning Friends! One of the problems with me as a human being is that I often have these ideas… and then either don’t act upon them or take for freaking ever to do so. This mornings post is firmly planted in that second column, because over a year ago I started paying for access to YAGPDB.xyz a very noob friendly discord bot that can do a whole slew of things. This thing was done precisely for the project that I am announcing today and I have effectively been paying $5 a month for nothing. In the “better late than never” camp I bring to you this madness I “thunked”

The Pitch

Hi I’m Belghast, a 45 year old gamer that has had to deal with his stable group of friends becoming far less stable as we have all aged and moved further along in our careers. The thing is… I still really like MMORPGs but these are far less enjoyable to play without a group of friends to experience them with. I still have a great group of friends, but timezones are a thing and have pushed start times out to where I as a working adult cannot cope with PST based start times. Another particular challenge that I have is that I suffer from a not-insignificant amount of social anxiety, which I know is probably a shock given the community initiatives I end up leading. As an introvert I go through these periods of time that I lovingly refer to as “turtle mode” where I pull my head up into my shell and forget the world exists. When I return from one of these I find it harder and harder each year to get over the hump that is “grouping with strangers”. I am also a tank which makes this exceptionally worse because not only am I grouping with strangers… I am expected to be the defacto leader of whatever party I happen to be in. The idea is pretty simple… what if I didn’t have to group with strangers? What if I had a community of players that went into groups understanding that it would be a very low pressure and non-judgmental environment where we help bolster each other and make it through the content come hell or high water? I thought to myself that I can’t be the ONLY person to have these feelings and I can’t be the only person to feel like it would be nice to have a safe circle for group activities. So legitimately over a year ago I had all of these thoughts, and even went so far as to come up with a name and a logo and everything… and then just sat on it because the pandemic sapped all of my energy.

Super Dungeon Friends

Today I present you with Super Dungeon Friends, a discord designed to help you find low pressure groups in Final Fantasy XIV. I am specifically launching it with FFXIV because firstly it is the game I am engaged with right now, and two the community already tends to be way more chill than some other MMORPGs. The thing is Final Fantasy XIV already has a pretty group community and grouping environment, but still I have anxiety about pushing that queue button. Super Dungeon Friends or SDF (yes a very purposeful robotech reference) is there to bridge that gap and is a fully public community asking Final Fantasy XIV players that maybe have some of the same hang-ups as I do to come along for this journey. When you first join the server you are going to be presented with a single channel called #Server-Rules and a big long statement. Below it are two reactions for Yes and No. If you hit Yes, you get assigned to the Friend role and can fully participate in the server. If you hit No, however you will effectively be stuck in the void for all eternity. You can change your mind, but the idea is that everyone that is on the server will have agreed to the following terms:
Hey Friends! Welcome to the Super Dungeon Friends server.   The idea behind this server is to create a low pressure venue for forming chill dungeon, trial and raid groups in Final Fantasy XIV.  The game already has a great community, but I know I suffer from time to time from anxiety about grouping with random people.  Here you can form groups out of a community of players that you know are going to be cool and supportive no matter what might go wrong. In order to maintain the right vibe we have a few rules that we expect players to follow. This community is supportive of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals. This community is also targeting adult gamers, so please no one under eighteen. Here are some of the things that we will not tolerate:
  • anything illegal
  • discussing/breaking game ToS
  • politics or religion 
  • racist, sexist, ableist, or homophobic remarks
  • inappropriate uploads, profile images, names or emojis including:
    • sexually explicit
    • violence/gore
    • racist/sexist/ableist/homophobic
  • abusive behavior; bullying, trolling, or name-calling
  • the sale of in-game activities/items for in-game or real-world currency
When it comes to grouping activities we expect:
  • Everyone should bring their best attitude and be prepared for light-hearted fun.
  • Be supportive of players that might be struggling with something, and help them out whenever possible without condescension or judgement.
  • Commit to the activity you are joining and stick with it until the end unless there are extenuating circumstances requiring you to leave the game immediately.
  • Group runs should be a zero shame environment and questions should be encouraged as we all learn together.
Do you agree to the terms as stated above?
The rules are pretty straight forward I hope, and they set forth the basics of how the community is expected to interact. I bounced them off a handful of friends who helped me tweak them and make them a little more clear as to the intent. The server is completely open to anyone who would agree to these terms and if it ends up getting big enough I could see it spreading to other games. However for the time being we are focused on Final Fantasy XIV specifically. That is not to say that the friends you make here might not carry over into other places.

Role Assignment

Once you are on the server and have accepted the terms you will be given access to a number of channels, one of which is #Role-Assignment. In this channel I will be setting up various bot reaction commands that allow you to assign yourself specific designations. For the moment I only have a few role menus, but the most important one is Data Center, which will toggle on specific Data Center based grouping channels. This becomes significantly less important when 6.0 releases and we get grouping between multiple data centers. The other option is to flag yourself for specific roles that you feel comfortable filling in a group setting.
So using myself as an example, I’ve changed my server specific name to be my actual FFXIV character name and the specific server that I play on. I have the role of Friend, which grants me access to all of the channels. I have flagged myself as feeling comfortable playing the role of a Tank or Melee DPS in a group setting, and indicated that I play on the Aether North American data center. The rename thing is completely optional of course, but it does make things a little easier when it actually comes to forming a group. Yesterday I talked a bit about the process of how you group across servers in a data center, which might come in handy.

Other Roles of Note

  • Guide – these are going to be the server administrators that you can turn to if you need help with something not working as intended or if an issue arises.
  • Mentor – these are players with a wealth of experience in Final Fantasy XIV and can be turned to for help and advice about not only gameplay mechanics but also specific issues you might be having. If you feel comfortable filling this specific role, reach out to me and we will have a discussion about it.
There are a lot of channels on the server and some of them may not be entirely intuitive so here is a run down of each of them and some of my general thoughts about them.

Channel Structure

  • Administrative – These are channels that don’t allow messages and are designed as serving some administrative role.
    • Server-Rules – This displays the server rules and can be looked at at any point. Any future rules changes will be announced publicly over the server and this channel will be updated to reflect them.
    • Role-Assignment – This is the channel that will house all of the various role assigning widgets. Currently this only contains Data Center and Group Role, but might expand over time.
  • Social – Non-Game Specific “Off Topic” style channels.
    • The-Waking-Sands – You have to go there constantly during your journey in Final Fantasy XIV, so I thought I would name the general game specific chat channel that as well. The intent is for any general game specific discussion to happen in this channel.
    • Seeking-Help – Are you struggling with something? This channel is here to help players work through problems be it with specific game mechanics, a quest that is giving you trouble, or just gaining some knowledge.
    • Crafters-Corner – This is a specific channel about the deep crafting systems in the game. Crafting discussions can get highly technical and I felt it was probably best to give them a space of their own.
    • <DataCenter>-Grouping – Choosing a Data Center in the Role-Assignment channel is going to grant you access to its corresponding “Grouping” channel. This gives you a space to talk specifically to the members of your data center for building groups for dungeons, trials, raids or just doing fun things like maps.
  • General Voicechat – This is the equivalent of the Social text channels but for voice.
    • The-Alehouse – Named after the bar in Buscaron’s Druthers in South Shroud, this channel is designed to be a place where folks hang out while playing games and is not activity specific.
  • Grouping Voicechat – This is a number of non-specific channels named after the gods of Eorzea aka The Twelve. The idea is that as you find a group, you can hop down to one of the channels and use that for whatever activity you are undertaking. There are currently twelve unique channels, but if those end up being filled regularly more will be added.
That’s it friends! That is the plan for the Super Dungeon Friends community. I hope this post reaches a number of people who might be interested in following me on this adventure. Please feel free to spread the word if you have friends who also might be interested in this undertaking. The server is up and ready along with all of the bot rules configured for the time being. I am certain there will be needs along the way that might change a few things, but I think it is a fairly solid approach. If you are interested here is the Discord Server link: The post Super Dungeon Friends appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

FFXIV Cross Data Center Grouping

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Yesterday was a pretty chill day playing some more Final Fantasy XIV. Since I was extremely sick Monday and Tuesday, yesterday was my first day in the office this week and I maybe pushed myself to return too quickly. When I got home I was pretty exhausted, so I worked on a few relaxing activities the first of which was finishing out the level 60 Paladin quest. After that I played around with the cosmetic system in the game to return myself to one of my favorite outfits. The bunny helm thing is sort of my signature and when playing Warrior I use it with that Artifact armor set pretty regularly. For Paladin I decided to mix things up a bit and go for the Noct Lorica and other pieces of that set. I think it works pretty well. Another thing that has been happening is I am working on crafting a grouping community. I am not quite ready to reveal it publicly, but the idea is to create a low key chill place for getting groups in Final Fantasy. Essentially I am working on configuring the Discord server and bots to assign roles and stuff like that to make telling who is interested in grouping as which roles simple. Additionally I want everyone that joins the server to take a simple pledge to be patient and understanding with members of the group, and to hopefully let go of any rage before they enter. Right now it is largely limited to cross Data Center grouping, but coming in 6.0 they are opening it to be able to travel between Data Centers.
Since I had to refresh myself on the process last night, I thought I would talk a bit this morning about how you visit another realm. The challenge that I ran into is that I have never actually managed to get a message to successfully reach someone on another data center that I am not already friends with. In theory the syntax should be something like this:
/tell Belghast Sternblade @Cactuar This is a Test Message

That ABSOLUTELY works if you are already friends with the character, but unfortunately there in lies the problem. What I have had to do each time I wanted to friend a player from another world is utilize the world visit system. The first step is you have to go to the main Aetheryte crystal in one of the original capital cities aka Uldah, Limsa Lominsa or Gridania. From the Crystal menu you are going to choose “Visit Another World” which will pop up the middle dialog shown above allowing you to select the world that you are going to travel to. After that you will get a popup that looks and sounds just like the dungeon finder dialog telling you that you are ready to transport and what your source and destination worlds are.
Once you are on the world that your friend resides, you can use the friend search functionality to locate them. After that it is just a matter of right clicking their name in the search dialog and choosing “Send a Friend Request”. After that they will show up in your friends list just like any other friend would with the difference being that instead of your home server as the “Location” it will show their home server. Things like Company information won’t transfer between worlds so they are always going to show up as having a company of — until you actually arrive on their world. Once friended you can do all of the normal things like invite to parties for grouping purposes.
I assume in 6.0 the Data Center visit options will work an awful lot like World visiting. It seems like a needlessly arcane system but it does what it needs to do I guess. If there is an easier way to friend someone across realms I would absolutely love to hear it, but this is the method that seems to work reliably for me. My only guess is due to the other social engineering features of Final Fantasy XIV… adding this bit of friction is designed to make it feel like you are having to go through some effort to leave your own server. I think the idea being that it reinforces server communities rather than it largely being a meaningless designation. I transferred back to Cactuar this morning and was welcomed with someone giving an impromptu concert in the Aetheryte plaza. If the friction of a “visit” system preserves server identity and activities like this… then I can I can stomach the temporary frustrations of it. The post FFXIV Cross Data Center Grouping appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Returning to Eorzea

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Morning Friends! I guess I need to admit that I am now properly playing Final Fantasy XIV again. Like I had no real intention to get back into another MMORPG right now, but it seems when you are least expecting it… is when a bought of the feels happens and draws you back in. I am trying to figure out how to enjoy the game on a sustainable level rather than the salted earth binge and bail pattern that I have been in for the last few expansions. In both Stormblood and Shadowbringers I bounced pretty shortly after finishing the initial patch content, and I have not really arrived at real integration with the game since ARR and early Heavensward.
I think ultimately coming back solo, I have been more interested in connecting with the community of the server once again. For those who are unaware I play on Cactuar in the Aether Data Center and it has always been a pretty great place to call home. This is Limsa Lominsa during primetime and it is hopping… there are so many people that the game engine refuses to load them all in at once. Each time I would take a step a batch of players would disappear and a whole new crowd would come into view. I’ve been reaching out and having conversations with people from my friends list that I did not remember at all. Some of them ended up being folks that I did know as another name like Liore’s husband Vajra and others just people that I apparently friended along the way. Thing is… every single one of them has welcomed me back and been excited to see me playing even if they only vaguely remembered me.
I’ve come to the realization that if I am going to reach a state of sustainability in an MMO, I am going to have to make new friends. That is super hard as a 45 year old gamer to reach out and make new connections, but FFXIV and Cactuar server is the sort of place that makes it fairly easy to do this. I had more conversations with strangers while hanging out in Quarrymill between Palace of the Dead runs than I have had in the last several years likely. I rolled up on this group of people who were very clearly playing their instruments by hand and not with a macro script… and many joyous “doots” were had by all. The thing is… it is the sort of place where if you wave it is highly likely that someone is going to wave back which seems simple but that has not been the case in a lot of MMORPGs that I have played over the years.
The other thing that I have been noticing while roaming the world is just how damned gorgeous it can be at times. Granted I am playing this on my beefy gaming rig that is complete overkill for the sort of game that it is. I had not really been back to the Sea of Clouds since Heavensward, and flying through it for a Paladin quest made me really appreciate how much care went into this world. I mean the same can be said with pretty much any MMO, but like… how do you create a zone full of floating islands without making it seem stale? You introduce a shocking amount of variety and interesting flora and fauna so that it feels like yeah… this could legitimately be an ecosystem rather than a chain of small destinations.
I wanted to ease back into the game and one of the jobs that I had been wanting to level for some time was Paladin. When I last left it I think I had just pushed it to level 50 before parking it. I picked up from there and it turns out that I really like the way the Paladin has changed since I last played it. Like I am enjoying it enough that I am contemplating switching to maining it over the Warrior. Last night I dinged 60 in Palace of the Dead and this allowed me to equip a bunch of level 60 gear. Tonight I am probably going to try tanking a few dungeons, since I have been effectively tanking PotD for the last several days. I feel like I have a firm grasp on the basics of the class at least and since I need to get to 61 before I can start running Heaven on High, it seems like a good option rather than more Palace.
All in all I am greatly enjoying my return to Final Fantasy XIV, but it is taking a bit to remember the various systems. There are so many things that I never engaged with heavily along the years. For example a few days ago was the first time I ever took my Grand Company Squadron out into a dungeon… because you can absolutely build up a team of NPCs and go dungeoning with them. Granted they also added a system in Shadowbringers that allows you to do the same thing with the other members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. It seems like a really solid way to go back and farm older content, but also not just “un-sync” and steamroll everything. Mostly I am happy to return and find out that the community is still pretty freaking awesome. Now I just need to get my confidence levels back and start tanking for strangers again. The post Returning to Eorzea appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Torghast and Palace of the Dead

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Lately I have been back playing some Final Fantasy XIV and enjoying myself quite a bit. I am not sure if is the cavalcade of “leaving wow to play ffxiv” videos that the YouTube algorithm has deluged me with, or if I am avoiding finishing FF7R because I don’t want the story to be over. Whatever the case I have been back and piddling around several old haunts, spending a lot of time on my tiny paladin… which I guess sounds weird because as a Lalafell everything is tiny. I never really leveled up my Paladin past around 50 and I have been doing so because apparently I really like the ways they have changed that class over the years.
Over the years I have spent copious amounts of time in Palace of the Dead, so much so that I would probably put it up there as one of my favorite activities in the game. At its most simple level it is a roguelike dungeon exploration game mode where you progress through an one hundred floor deep dungeon. It uses its own progression system in the form of Aetherpool Weapons and Armor which gain strength by finding specific chests in the dungeon. Each ten floors you face a boss of sorts and your progression is locked in, allowing you to restart at the last flight of ten floors that you left off. There are also temporary buff items that you pick up along the way that allow you to deal with traps and challenges specific to the dungeon.
There are a few things that I find really interesting about the game mode. Firstly any square you step on in your travels could contain a trap, which makes you cautious to travel uncertain paths or stay too clumped up for fear an explosion will KO the entire party. Additionally any treasure chest could be a Mimic, which applies a very hefty debuff making each chest you open a risk versus reward decision. Clearing a certain amount of monsters unlocks the gate to the next floor, and in general because of the traps and mimics, groups tend to only explore the bare minimum needed to move forward. This is especially true if you are doing floors 51-60 which players tend to run over and over as a quick way to level alts.
I personally love it because it means I can level alternate jobs without having to worry about gearing. You can legitimately step into Palace of the Dead wearing nothing but your job weapon and be just as effective as a player decked out in full savage gear. The other aspect that I have loved is that there are hidden coffers spread throughout the dungeon which can be turned in for a random item. There are a bunch of interesting things on this drop table but the vast majority are cosmetics. For example most of the outfit I am wearing in the above screenshot came from random drops in Palace of the Dead.
All of this is why I was looking forward to Torghast opening in World of Warcraft with the Shadowlands expansion. At least on paper everything I had read about it prior to the launch of the expansion made me think that maybe just maybe they were taking notes from FFXIV and introducing a similar system. In practice however Torghast ended up feeling largely pointless. Palace of the Dead has this join purpose of helping you level your alts and at the same time get some cool cosmetics while doing it. Torghast on the other hand is a forced grind that you feel like you have to complete every week… with your only reward being yet another random currency required to unlock something that feels require… legendary items.
While there are some mechanically interesting things going on with Torghast, it doesn’t feel as balanced and it is also a much bigger time sink than clearing ten floors of Palace of the Dead. There is so much RNG given that you get a choice of three buffs each time you open one of the glowing orbs. Some of these are really good and others are absolutely horrible. Then there is the whole feeling that nothing I gained this week carries forward to help me with next week. If you are unlucky you have a really bad time and if you are lucky your power seems to snowball out of control becoming an immortal god of death.
On the other hand in Palace of the Dead I have over time increased my Aetherpool Arms and Armor rating to +99 and am effectively as strong as I will ever get. That means I can drag alts in there and get a pretty predictable leveling experience, yet still feel like I get the random chance of getting something cool as a drop. I mean even when it isn’t anything I need, I can still share the love and gift those items to someone else. Like yesterday my friend Clockwork Bells happened to be on at the same time as me and I gifted her a pet, a music scroll and a nifty pair of cosmetic boots that I got as a drops. If I don’t have someone to send to, I have often times gone into one of the newbie areas and just dropped goodies on people.
The problem with Torghast I think is the fact that I felt like I was required to do it. If I skipped a week I felt like I was falling behind the curve in the amount of soul ash that I could have obtained. Similarly that end goal of maybe crafting a legendary… that I would have to spend hundreds of thousands of gold to obtain just wasn’t enough carrot to make the stick feel manageable. If Torghast also became a source of gear that you could take out of it and put to use in the rest of the game… maybe just maybe it would feel worthwhile. If they turned it into an alternate leveling path like Palace of the Dead and made it so that gear was completely normalized and you could effectively walk in naked… also like PotD I think that would have been enough to make me get into it.
As it stands, Torghast seemed like someones pet project… crafted by someone who maybe heard a FFXIV player talking about how much fun Palace of the Dead was, without actually understanding any of the things that made it enjoyable. However what is more likely the case is that Torghast was initially designed to be a super challenging replacement for the Mage’s Tower from Legion, that just sort shifted purpose somewhere along the way. The end result is something that isn’t fun enough to do just for the sake of doing it… and not rewarding enough to make making to do it feel like a good use of time. There are so many ways that they could improve upon the design, but at the end of the day we all know that it is going to stop being relevant the moment the next expansion is released. On the other hand I am still playing Palace of the Dead and it is still relevant some two expansions after it was initially put into the game. The post Torghast and Palace of the Dead appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.