Good Morning Folks. I’ve had a week, and as a result… I’ve missed several days of blogging. On Wednesday morning I had an issue come up that forced me to stop what I was doing and rush into the office physically to deal with it. Then yesterday from 7 am I was on a conference bridge for the entire morning dealing with a production rollout. In both cases… I could have probably blogged later in the day but the realities of the working world drained any desire to do so out of me. I spent last night hanging out on voice and doing nonsense in Guild Wars 2 and that helped quite a bit. I also spent about 30 minutes on voice with Ace venting about various work related stuff on both of our sides, and that probably helped more. The only problem with not blogging for several days is time gets somewhat squishy in my head as to what happened when and in what sequence.
If my memory is correct, Tuesday I hit the credit roll for the main story of Destiny rising, which means that I have officially entered the endgame. The story was pretty freaking great and in truth much better than all of the core stories in both Destiny 1 and Destiny 2. Destiny was a game series with a lot of really interesting lore, but if you were not willing to watch a literal 10 hour long Destiny Lore video from Byf.… you were going to not understand 90% of it. Both games were exceptionally bad at explaining the world and telling a coherent story, and Destiny Rising is not. Sure it starts out a little twee at times as do most mobile games… it builds into something rather formidable and I legitimately look forward to the next content drop. This game is essentially a prequel happening in a slightly different universe… allowing them leverage to change whatever they need to change and I think this is a good thing. The speaker for example is a child in this version, which should give you a bit of a reference for how many years before the original game this takes place. Guardians for example do not exist yet as a concept… there are just lightbearers and there is evidence than our character might become the official first Guardian.
Similarly the concept of the various orders of guardians, do not exist either. There are no Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks… even though characters largely follow those same templates in the way that they move. Wolf for example gets double jump as opposed to distinct flavors of boosted jumps that Titans or Warlocks get. A given character is a combination of an Element, two unique abilities, and a unique super that then gets combined with a fixed primary weapon and a fixed heavy weapon. This honestly creates some really unique templating of characters in that two characters with similar loadouts might feel completely different because they have unique abilities to go with those loadouts. I still play way more of Wolf the default character than I do any of the other heroes, but I have become fond of Kabr, and Xuan Wei. None of these are the “meta” which seems to revolve around the 5 star champions of Tan-2, Gwynn, and Jolder.
I do have Tan-2 and just pulled Jolder yesterday off the free banner, so I might actually start investing in that character a bit with my limited resources. That honestly becomes the challenge is that it is really cumbersome to swap characters at some point. I greatly prefer games like AFK Journey where you are buffing one entire class of characters, rather than investing in one specific champion to pour all of your daily resources into. I’ve not really encountered much in the way of things that Wolf cannot do… save for missions that specifically require precision damage to take down what are effectively this games version of break bars. I greatly prefer the Auto Rifle to pretty much every other weapon in the Destiny universe… and swapping to a champion like Jolder means giving that up as their combo is Submachine Gun, and Sword. I am hoping i can pick up Riskrunner which is my all time favorite of the exotic Submachine Guns.
There is a new banner available right now and on that banner are a couple of new characters… one of which I’ve pulled a few times with what available currency I had. Umeko is essentially the Destiny version of a Ninja. She fires off Shuriken and then has a finisher that is essentially a massive one. The loadout is Scout Rifle and Sniper Rifle, which makes her an almost purely ranged champion and one that feels more than a little bit squishy. I really need to have a precision champion that I am comfortable playing, but that is likely going to be Tan-2 instead since I have that 5 star champ who is very much on meta because he also comes with this games version of the well of light. It does not hurt that he also sort of looks like Sektor from Mortal Kombat which is its own coolness factor. After playing an Exo titan for years in both Destiny games, I am partial to Exos as a whole. I wish the game honestly would have allowed me to play one here for the Wolf character.
Right now the game seems to give you about 120 of the daily activity currency, and it costs 20 to run any of the individual activities. When you complete one there is the option of spending twice as much currency when you loot the chest to get twice as many rewards. This is pretty nice and allows you to really efficiently make some progress on farming whatever you need to farm. I’ve been targeting the activities that reward Mythic weapons and engrams as I am trying to collect the full set. The Mythic Weapon Engrams allow you to buy new copies of any mythic weapon you have already found, whereas the Mythic Choice engrams allow you to choose any weapon that can drop from a given activity. There are about a half dozen weapons that I have not seen yet, and it is likely just going to be random chance to come across those.
The game seems to really want me to play Kabr, because at this point I have gotten enough duplicates to slot 4 of his 6 talent points… which means before long I will have him maxed out. This does the whole Genshin thing where getting duplicates of a character gives you currency to spend on buffing that one character. Thankfully I enjoy Kabr quite a bit, because his barrier really takes the pressure off on several boss fights because you can safely stand behind it blocking onerous beam attacks and such. The pulse rifle is not exactly my favorite weapon, but I’ve always liked the Heavy Machinegun because it feels especially good during boss burn phases where you need to do a lot of damage to weak points from range. I am also really partial to the fact that he walks around with a shield all of the time… which is admittedly one of the reasons why I am wanting to invest in Jolder a bit, because she gets the Captain America shield throw.
I am having a lot of fun with Destiny Rising, and it seems especially poignant right now how good this game is… when so many players are exceptionally frustrated with how bad the latest content drop is in the mainline Destiny 2. There has already been talk from mainline content creators about swapping over to more of a Destiny Rising focus, and I feel like this is only going to accelerate that. It isn’t really often when a mobile port completely cannibalizes the player base… but I do wonder if we are going to see something similar play out with the Mobile version of Final Fantasy XIV. For now at least I am having a blast and am happy to reach the relaxing daily grind portion of the game. I like consistent grinds way more than I like pushing through story content. I think my brain is just wired that way.
In other news I am contemplating giving the next Diablo 4 season a spin. I’ve skipped the last few but given that I am mostly done with POE2 and Last Epoch and POE 3.28 will not drop until the end of October… there is a bit of a lull where I might as well give it a shot. There is another livestream coming up on the 16th and I think that is really going to seal whether or not I am going to give this a go. Supposedly they are taking a lot of the feedback from players into account and trying to improve things. The problem is… Blizzard is a massive ship and seems to take forever for it to turn and adjust to things. I have no clue what I am going to play. I’ve only ever really played Barbarians, Necromancers, and Spiritborn so I might give something else a shot. I really wish they had a Paladin/Crusader because that is the other traditional Diablo character that I really enjoy. Druid always looks cool, but it is a pain to level at start. That really is the problem with so many ARPG classes is that they feel bad for those first 20 levels… which makes it hard to keep pushing forward.
As far as weekend plans. I really need to start making a pile in the backyard so that I can contact the folks that we have used to haul stuff away in the past. There is just a bunch of shit that I need to get out of the garage so I can have some swap space to start putting up shelving units. I really need to free up space in the garage so it can be more organized… and so that I can be ready to put away all of the furniture in the backyard as the temps start to drop. I also really want to clear off the workbench out there so I can set up at a minimum a FDM printer. There have been so many cases lately where I just want one to build brackets and storage options.
The post The End is the Beginning appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! I took a bit of a break this week as I worked my way through the Dawntrail expansion Main Story Quest. I decided to just pause my blog posts until I had finished because I did not really want to discuss this expansion piecemeal. First I feel like we need to talk about the journey leading up until this point. Endwalker was released in December 2021 and represented the culmination of a ten-year journey the Warrior of Light has made since the bungled launch of the game in 2010 and relaunch in 2013. It felt like the awkwardly named “Creative Business Unit III” stuck the landing and apart from a few sour notes… gave us the finale to this series that we all wanted and deserved. Zenos can still fuck the hell off, but that is a rant for another day.
The challenge with Dawntrail is that honestly, I was uncertain I would be playing it. I had thought I was ready to say goodbye to this franchise as it had given me everything that I had wanted. Dawntrail is a new beginning and ultimately will be looked upon to set the pace for the next ten years, and I was uncertain how well anyone could do with the challenge of a clean slate. Last night I finished the Main Story quest and completed all of the expert dungeons, and I have to say it feels like Yoshi P and crew managed to pull off a miracle. Dawntrail is a deeply weird expansion, but it is no less compelling than anything we have gotten to this point and should blaze a trail for the new role that the Warrior of Light plays in the coming years.
The first ten years of Final Fantasy XIV were unequivocally the hero’s journey of the Warrior of Light. It was our tale being told as we begin humbly and arise to the stature of being one of the most powerful beings on our star. Dawntrail is not our story. If Dawntrail were Highlander we would be Ramirez, not Connor MacLeod. If Dawntrail were Star Wars we would be Obi-Wan Kenobi, not Luke Skywalker. We’ve had our tale and are now helping out others as they build their own legacy. This is potentially going to rub some players the wrong way, but it felt so perfectly crafted to me playing through it. Much of this game centers around Wuk Lamat a young uncertain Warrior who has set forth to prove herself because she has to for the good of her people. We are her mentor and as a result, we are not actually the person driving most of the story.
The sights that we see and the battles that we tackle are no less spectacular than anything we have experienced to date. We are very much the elder statesman, lending our gravitas to the cause of others and it feels fitting. We are not about to languish in retirement… we are an adventurer after all first and foremost. We will see the world and help those who we can along the way, and occasionally it will mean teaching someone else how to stand on their own two feet and be confident in the face of certain destruction. Because of this, it feels like we are playing an even more important role in the fate of our star than being the sole savior figure who can accomplish great things. The challenge I think is that Dawntrail is as meaningful as it is… only because I experienced the last ten years worth of content and felt like I successfully completed my own hero’s journey.
Do I think Dawntrail was perfect? Absolutely not. It feels like they listened to the wrong people and made a good deal of content that large swaths of the player base are going to struggle to get through. I figure there will be rounds of nerfs to bring things back in line with the rest of the content in the game, which should help those who struggle. Do I think Dawntrail is a good first step out into a new journey… absolutely. I am curious where we go from here and what becomes of our fledgling group of “not-Scions”. There are some aspects I probably would have seen play out differently. I would say the first half of Dawntrail is perfect… no notes are needed. The second half of Dawntrail lingers a bit too much for my taste and becomes more visual novel than MMORPG. I am still not entirely certain what I think about the final “zone” of the game… but hopefully subsequent patch content will color my feelings.
Dawntrail succeeded massively in being this love letter to Central and South America and I am here for it. I am happy to see Final Fantasy XIV branch out into brand-new themes, and I am very interested to see what other new areas of Eorzea we discover in the coming expansions. I am also largely happy with our role in the new scheme of things, as a helper rather than the de facto leader. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, some patches will sand off the rough bits around the edges and Dawntrail will set itself up as one of the better expansions. I think right now in my current mindset I would rank the content like this:
Shadowbringer – This is still the best expansion
Endwalker – A great Expansion but benefits from wrapping up the entire journey.
Dawntrail – A promising new beginning.
A Realm Reborn – Especially in its current state I feel like it is amazing.
Heavensward – Good but I don’t like Ishgard.
Stormblood – Largely solid but has some deeply disappointing notes.
So while I don’t consider Dawntrail the best thing ever, I feel like it is on solid footing given that there are none of the expansions that I would consider “bad”. I’ve tried to keep things spoiler-free as best I could other than talking about some general themes. If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines of Final Fantasy XIV you owe it to yourself to play through ALL of the story… and don’t be a cutscene skipper. You can skip them if you like, but you are only robbing yourself of the best RPG experience of the last several decades. I still feel firmly that taken as a whole, few games can hold up to the story that is told within Final Fantasy XIV, and Dawntrail is no exception to that lineage.
Anyways! I would love to hear your own thoughts as you finish your journey. I know I am out ahead of the curve a bit here, so feel free to return later or ping me over any number of ways folks can contact me. Please however keep things spoiler-free for the moment. Everyone deserves to experience FFXIV without the experience being tarnished.
The post FFXIV Dawntrail MSQ Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Â Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we talk a bit about Monster Hunter World Winter Star Event and how maddening the Tempered Kirin is. Â From there we talk about the closing of MMOs and specifically the loss of Wildstar. Several of us have returned to Final Fantasy XIV as is often the case at the end of an expansion. Â We briefly talk about some frustrations with World of Warcraft and then go into a discussion about puzzle games you can zone out while playing specifically Tetris Effect in VR and the amazing Lumines.
