MMORPG – Page 211

Mobile Matters

July 13, 2017 by Belghast

For years I have said that I really did not think that gaming on my phone was really my “thing”. It was a platform that I largely felt didn’t quite fit my lifestyle, because in part I felt like I either had access to PC and Consoles… or simply didn’t have the ability to game period. Recently however I have been eating the hell out of those words. For the last week or so I have been getting used to a new phone, and at some point I will probably do a proper review of it. Functionally I could not bring myself to spend $800 to $1000 on a new phone… and my Samsung Galaxy s5 had lots of problems. This lead me to branch out and look into some other options… and I finally landed on the ZTE Axon 7 which is a very solid attempt at a Chinese flagship killer. When I finally do a proper review I will get around to more about that, however suffice to say I am enjoying it. There is a thing that happens with PC gamers… when we get new hardware. We go through this phase of installing everything that we have cared about in the past… and trying it out on the new setup to see what has and has not improved. With this new phone being so much more powerful than my previous one… I found myself going through this same routine and testing out things like the android Hearthstone client. When I say the previous phone had issues… it is because once upon a time I rooted my phone in an attempt to bypass the AT&T blockade against tethering/wifi hotspots on my current plan. I still have one of those ancient grandfathered in iPhone unlimited plans… and while they have raised the price there is no way in hell I am giving up $25 a month unlimited mobile data.

While the S5 is technically no longer rooted, I seem to have tripped some anti-tamper seal of a sort on the phone and it fails the Google Safetynet test that app manufacturers have started incorporating into their apps. This means that I was forced to stop playing Pokemon Go when they patched in this protection, and similarly have been unable to experience Fire Emblem Heroes, Mario Run or a whole slew of newer games that just do this check by default. The biggest problem with me and phone gaming in the past however was the battery life, and the way that a few minutes of Final Fantasy Record Keeper could shave off 25% of my battery before I even realized. With the new phone this seems to no longer be the issue that it once was… and either because the processor does not need to work nearly as hard… or the fact that I have a 3250 mAh battery (instead of 2800 mAh) I can functionally play games and still use my phone for everything else that I want to. As a result lately I have been heading to bed fairly early and then chilling out there and playing mobile games until sleep finally claims me. Similarly while I am out and about I am starting to play a lot more Pokemon Go, but have not really gone out on catching jaunts like I did around the release a year ago. I contemplated going out last night but it was still over 90 degrees outside after 9pm, so I figured I would leave that to a cooler evening.

The games that have seemed to clamp down the hardest on my attention however are Fire Emblem Heroes… which is a thoroughly charming tactics style combat game and of course Final Fantasy Record Keeper that I already played a significant amount of in the past. This is the point where I admit that I have never actually played a Fire Emblem game in the past, and while I am sure the actual games are not terribly similar to this mobile title… it does make me a hell of a lot more interested in them. The premise is largely nonsense… but it is the sort of nonsense that I find myself enjoying at the moment. The biggest problem with these games is that I really have no clue what I am doing on a regular basis… and not even sure what the best way to do anything in game is. I’ve been slowly working my way through the story in Fire Emblem, and in Record Keeper I noticed that they seemingly have gotten less sparing with handing you a bunch of characters. I worked my way through most of a Final Fantasy XIV themed event dungeon… and picked up Yshtola, Minfilia, Yda, Papalymo, and Cid… and started working my way through a similarly FFXII Zodiac Age themed one. Much like in Pokemon Go… the excitement for me is in the collection of new characters and not so much in the leveling and battle.

Lastly I have been slowly working my way through Final Fantasy V on the phone as an attempt to do things like play over my lunch break… which admittedly has not actually happened yet. I got completely wrecked last night by Garula, which means I am going to have to sort out a decent strategy for this one. Of course I am not playing the game legitimately… and instead am doing the Four Job Fiesta… which means I am attempting to take him down as a party of four Black Mages. Its time to go figure out some strategery so I can get past him and get my next set of jobs. I find the mobile FFV client a little wonky… and especially in mobiles where you need fine motor control… that is not a thing the touchpad really gives you. Getting through the poison plants at the top of the mountain was not really a thing… so I simply opted to walk through a couple and take antidotes. Regardless it works well enough for my needs and gives me a reasonable platform without really shackling me to a specific location for playing it. I kinda hope we eventually get a version on the switch through either virtual console… or a release of this mobile port to it. Whatever the case…. someone seems to have replaced me with a doppelganger that does not mind mobile gaming all the sudden.

Warbears and Stormsplitter

July 12, 2017 by Belghast

We will lead off with the accomplishment of the night. I knew I was pretty close to the ARR Warrior “Raid” mount but I had lost sight of actually going after it specifically. I never really did anything to purposefully grind for this, and for the most part got my 200 “high-levelhemse prompted a trip to the guy near the waterfall in Gridania… who also apparently had the Maelstrom themed mammet waiting for me as well. The way I ride this mount is sort of insane, with me reaching down and trying to hold onto the fur and it runs around insanely. It is funny how animation cycles affect how we feel about the speed of a mount, because while this is technically the same speed as everything else I own… the feels so much faster because of the dynamic run loop. Grizzled warbear is probably the most Bel mount in existence… and it is only slightly sad that it doesn’t fly. There is however a newer bear that supposedly does have the ability to fly… and at the moment I am 49 of some silly number of 70+ content needed for that achievement. I doubt I will purposefully grind for it, but instead someday also be surprised when I see its achievement scrolling by after tanking a dungeon for someone.

Once upon a time in a small town far far away… I was a little skater punk kid. Technically I only grew up an hour away but we are going to call it far away for sake of the narrative. I was lucky enough that I had a half pipe in my yard, that we bought second hand and moved to our location and reassembled. Now this was too small to have a roll in, so it was functionally a “drop in” style ramp. For those unindoctrinated… most ramps have a bit of metal coping at the top of the lip that is there to protect the wood of the ramp from the “trucks” aka axles of the skateboard as you come up to the top and grind. Getting onto the ramp involved danging your board out over the edge of the ramp, with your back trucks butted up against the metal coping and then shifting your weight from the tail of the board to the front causing you to “drop in” to the ramp. I found this process completely terrifying, and each time I went out to skate the first few runs involved me not being willing to give myself over to gravity… and ultimately sliding down the ramp on my ass. Eventually I would loosen up and get comfortable and be able to drop in just fine for awhile and be able to ride the ramp legitimately for the rest of the day.

The reason why I have related this analogy is that for the most part… doing new organized content in an MMO is like dropping in for me. I am super hesitant for awhile and unwilling to venture off on my own and give it a shot. I didn’t do a whole lot of solo grinding of Alexander because I felt like I needed that safety net there in case something went wrong. Similarly this expansion I have thusfar been unwilling to join a party finder group to do Susano Extreme or Lakshmi Extreme, and last night… was the moment I dropped in for the first time. My friends Mor and Grace decided that we were going to do the encounters, and we recruited Muspel as well… and the four of us… two tanks and two heals set forth to build a party finder group. Susano was for the most part a learning experience, but very quickly it became a situation of having to work the kinks out and get our dps up high enough to be able to beat the enrage. With about 20 minutes to spare we manage to do it and I got my first kill under my belt. Lakshmi did not go so well, and not only was it much harder to pull together the group… but it also was pretty clear early on that we had nowhere near enough dps to be able to finish the job. After some wipes… having someone drop… refilling the group and re-queuing… only to wipe again due to not enough damage… we opted to call it for the evening. That said I now feel significantly more comfortable in either fight as a tank, and in theory I would probably be willing to solo queue from now on. I got over the coping… and got my weight shifted in the right way and now am more or less fine. However it is only because I went into the content with some people that I trusted… that I was eased over the edge, so I appreciate it when someone is willing to just hang out with me and answer my questions while I do new harder content.

Leveling DPS is Butts

July 10, 2017 by Belghast

One of the best parts about Final Fantasy XIV is that you can literally be every possible class be it crafting or battlecraft on the same character. One of the worst parts of Final Fantasy XIV is that for the most part leveling alt jobs has been a pretty grindy proposal. When you first set down to level in Final Fantasy XIV, you have all of these side quests and main story quests to keep the game feeling fresh and keep the content moving forward at a decent clip. Unfortunately when you sit down to level any of your other Jobs you find out just how much of your original quest experience came from that unrepeatable main story. As always I leveled my Warrior first because well… like it or not I am a tank at heart and for three expansions now I have not deviated from that mission. There was some brief flirtation with potentially going Dark Knight, but in the end Warrior just suits me best. However now I have reached that point where I have functionally geared the warrior as far as I can without the aid of Omega drops, and as a result I have turned my attention to trying to run my first DPS up. You can tell by the above image that my DPS of choice this go round is the brand new Samurai job. The only problem there is… quite honestly leveling as a DPS without the aid of the Main Story Quest… is butts and highlights some of the problems that Final Fantasy XIV still has when it comes to a lack of reasonable alternate leveling paths.

Previously in A Realm Reborn era especially… I used to hop in a FATE grinding party and move on with life. There were fabled zones like South Shroud or Northern Thanalan that were largely devoted to groups of players running around and trying to kill the FATEs as fast as possible. Unfortunately with the transition to Heavensward, there was a massive nerf of FATE experience and with it the grind party devotees started to disappear. When Palace of the Dead was introduced it gave us a ladder to follow to slowly bring those alts up to speed through grinding sets of 10 floors at a time. Unfortunately however the PotD experience is pretty horrible with the bar barely moving at level 61. There is a bit of a FATE presence in The Fringes, but everyone is fairly disorganized with no groups available through the party finder. There was some talk over the weekend of maybe starting up a guild FATE party just to get all our various alts leveled in a reasonable manner. My current MO has been to queue for a dungeon or roulette and grind FATEs until it pops and in the grand scheme of things this has worked well enough. Over the weekend I went from 60 on my Samurai to 65 as of last night, which a huge chunk of that happening during recording the podcast and simply bouncing from FATE to FATE until we finished. I remember that is also how I leveled my gathering professions, since while I am podcasting I can seem to grind something without even noticing it. I would also try this with Palace of the Dead, but before long I would find myself running circles in Quarymill while we recorded… much the same as I used to run circles in Dalaran.

I honestly thought I was being clever in this expansion, and after the end of Raubahn Savage… I found myself up enough in experience that I started attempting to ignore every side quest and only push through with a laser focus on the main story. My thought was this would ultimately help out the first alt that I leveled, and over the weekend I returned to Ruby Sea where I had dozens and dozens of quests to complete. Unfortunately… these quests provide next to no experience and simply only add bits of story to help flesh out the world a bit. I spent about an hour and completed a dozen or so quests… when I realized that my experience bar had moved less than if I had gotten gold in a single FATE. Hell to be truthful just wandering the world grinding random mobs seemed to be better experience than the side quests were providing. In the past this would be the moment that I would start leaning heavily on Battlecraft Leves… but unfortunately much to my frustration it seems that they simply do not exist in Stormblood. There are crafting leves in Kugane but neither there nor Rhalgar’s Reach have anything for the battlecraft jobs. I mean leves were a horrible experience in Heavensward and the thought of having to keep popping back to the Foundation between rounds was maddening. However they were there if you got desperate and there were many times I got desperate enough to see some steady progress on the experience bar. There are hunts of course, and I have been doing my daily hunt logs but again… while they are an excellent source of seals… they are a pretty crappy source of experience.

If I am playing a tank or a healer… then this whole question of how to level becomes moot. You simply queue for dungeons and ride the constant string of instant queues until you hit 70. However there seems to be something missing to help the DPS get a leg up. Now the leveling roulette and 50/60 roulette seem to go significantly faster than queuing for a specific dungeon. Over the weekend leveling roulette seemed to be about a 10-15 minute queue for dps, and 50/60 somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes… with queuing for an individual level and gear appropriate dungeon taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 minutes. If I was able to run FATEs while waiting on the queue to tick down it did not feel too horrible, or at least it felt like I was making steady forward momentum. However if I happened in one of the patches where the folks were not touching the FATEs at all… it was noticeably dragging. Compare that to the experience of playing a healer or a tank… with their push button get dungeon mechanics and it just feels lousy. At least with Palace of the Dead providing reasonable experience, you could skirt a lot of the issues and get by just fine with four dps parties in there. I am not sure where it is on the roadmap, but I am really hoping we see the next iteration of Palace of the Dead launching with 4.1. Until then… I think once I finish leveling the Samurai I will probably focus on my other tanks and my healers before returning to the DPS queue hell again. This is also why I have been trying to offer my short tank queues whenever possible to the free company… because leveling DPS is butts.

Army of Bone

June 28, 2017 by Belghast

As I said yesterday morning I took a break from Final Fantasy XIV and the trial that has a good number of us completely high center on finishing the game. For those unaware Diablo 3 released its first in what I hope is a series of smaller addon packs that infuse the game with a little new blood… or skeletons in this case. While not really an expansion pack, Rise of the Necromancer adds the much wanted class to Diablo 3 and it is implemented in a way so that it blends seamlessly with the rest of the game. I will talk a bit more about that later, but here is functionally what you get for your $14.99… which is amusingly easily within the bounds of converting a single WoW Token to Blizzard Balance.

Non-Combat Pet – disgusting half baked flesh golem thing
A Pair of Cosmetic Wings – you can see me rocking them in the above screenshot
Necromancer Themed Banner Shape, Sigil and Accent
Necromancer Portrait Frame
Pennant – looks similarly Necromancery
Two additional character slots – which I was apparently close to being out of
Two additional bank stash tabs

Lets be honest… I probably would have paid $15 for two more bank tabs but as far as I am concerned that is plenty of goodness for the price. The Necromancer itself is insanely fun and most of last night I went around being followed by an army of undead minions. I cheated a bit in that I crafted a full set of Cain set gear and hung on to my Leoric’s Crown which had a 95% multiplier on it… for the Flawless Royal Ruby that I slotted in it… giving me 130% bonus experience and 112 bonus experience per kill. Now in my travels I have never leveled a Gem of Ease, which was the route that my friend Grace took to leveling significantly faster than me. Regardless the experience is flying and last night I managed to make it to level 56.

The key difference this time as compared to my normal seasonal characters is that I opted to play through the original game story as is to try and catch any changes that were put in place for the necromancer. I have been pleasantly surprised at just how well this new class blends with the original experience because they have shimmed in Necromancer specific responses from NPCs and Companions alike. This is the first time I have actually run the game with the scoundrel as my companion and he regularly makes comments about not needing any more empty skulls following us around. There was an event in Act II where I encountered a Necromancer out in the desert… which I greeted as a long lost friend rather than a strange traveler. Sure it feels a little weird to have the Paladin accept you as a friend… when you functionally defile the dead and bind them into your service… but whatever if you can manage a minor bit of hand waving what is left is a really enjoyable experience. The other thing that was awesome… is that it has been years since I last saw these cinematic and I was impressed with just how well they still hold up. I have so much love for Diablo 3 and it is the game that I am always rooting for good things to happen to… and small content packs like this one definitely seem like a viable way to continue growing the game. I am more than willing to keep plunking down this $15 price point to get new classes and assorted stuff to go with it.

I am really hoping this means we might see the Druid or Amazon as a result. Even more than rehashing characters from Diablo’s past… I would love to see them branch out and start giving us brand new concepts for characters. What about giving us a redeemed demon, or a fallen angel to control for ourselves. I just feel like there is a lot of life left in this game and I want to see them keep moving forward with expanding it. What I think is cool is that functionally this expansion pack was split into two halves… the first being the content listed above… and the rest being simply patch 2.6.0 which adds three new areas to the game for everyone regardless if they purchase the pack or not. Something called Challenge Rifts also went into the game as well as the usual number of tweaks and balances preparing us for the next season. I like this idea of expanding both the free content at the same time as giving us an additional way to keep spending money with the game and supporting its development. This is a weird balancing act that all of these “buy once, play forever” type of games seems to struggle with… as in what is content that should just be free because you bought the game, and what is content that is reasonable to charge an extra fee for. I feel like this balance with Diablo 3 seems about right and I think at this stage in the game it probably works far better than releasing a full expansion with a complete new act and 10 more levels to grind through each time you start a new character. I would love to hear my readers thoughts on this one. I for one am a happy camper, but I would be curious to hear some dissenting opinions.