Zero Punctuation review of Final Fantasy XIII!
Only covers the first 5 hours
Very accurate
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1569-Final-Fantasy-XIII
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
VNMs - Verthandi path strategy
Since ZNMs were canceled last night due to lack of pop items due to the silly server reset, we gathered a group to go try out the VNMs mainly as an experiment to see if we could defeat the T3s. It was also an experiment to see what a "VNM event" might involve.
Anyway, here is a writeup of my impressions of our fight and strategies for the Venthrandi path. This is probably the easiest path to start since the zones where the mobs pop are right outside Jeuno, which is where you buy the necessary key item to do VNMs. There are also 6 zones in total, making it the most numerous of all the VNMs.
T1 - Elementals
This is really simple... level 80ish elementals of all types. They appear to take double damage from all spells, so any BLM, SCH or probably BLM can easily handle them. They do cast -ga spells and ancient magic, but that's nothing that a well placed stun, or simply running away from the mob in case of a -ga spell can't take care of.
If anything, BLMs can probably get a nice exp chain going with these.
Easily soloed or duoed by most jobs. If you're a melee, sub NIN and save your stun moves for the -aga spells. The ice elemental is probably the most painful one due to ice spikes, so stun that move if you can. Recommend you just go out in a duo pair for safety
T2 - Skuld & Urd
One thing to note about T2s is that if both T2s are up in a zone, you won't know which one you'll get until you pop it. That said, if you kill one of the T2s, then you'll at least know that the other T2 you pop in the zone will be the other one... i.e.: if you pop Urd first and kill her, then the next T2 you pop in the same zone will be Skuld.
Skuld - RDM/BLM
Notable moves:
- Chainspells frequently, once every 20% I think?
- Can cast -ga spells. This includes elemental magic for lots of damage, as well as enfeebling magic such as Paralyga, Slowga, etc.
For the most part, Skuld is fairly tame. Any decent /NIN job can tank her as long as you have good stun support to stun -ga spells. The dangerous time is during her chainspell when she can deal out tons of damage. For this reason, I highly recommend that a BLU be around that can use Head Butt every 5-7 seconds to keep chainspell in check. Basically spam Head Butt and damage from chainspell should be under control
Urd - DNC/WHM
Notable moves:
- Cyclonic Torrent - Heavy AoE damage, knockback and mute - Mute is basically silence that cannot be removed even with echo drops
- A targeted move that causes amnesia - Not sure what this is called
- Uses Trance frequently. This appears to let her spam TP moves
- Likes to buff herself with WHM spells, Protect, Stoneskin, Regen, etc.
I think Urd is the more dangerous of the two T2s. Mute has a nice effect of stopping the most common damage mitigation method, as well as preventing healers from curing the party. Amnesia disables waltzes, so you could end up with a situation where there is a pixie going wild killing people left and right. However, amnesia is single-target (or possibly conal) soit shouldn't disable the whole party.
My recommendation is to bring a DNC to guard against mute killing your entire party. The DNC should have evasion gear since Urd isn't the most accurate, and in the case where the party is fully muted and the DNC has amnesia due to being the target, you can survive for quite a long time on evasion alone. Bring a BLM, or BLU to try to stun Cyclonic torrent. Finally, bring a RDM to spam Dispel so that Urd stays busy buffing herself instead of doing damage.
Tackling T2s
Overall strategy for T2s should be to setup a mixed party capable of handling either. So... my recommendation is a BLU for countering Skuld's chainspell, a DNC to counter Urd's mute move in case the party is disabled, a RDM to keep Urd busy with buffing, then fill the rest appropriately. Throw in a PLD/NIN tank, WHM and DD (or THF) and you should have a decent chance of winning with just a party of 6.
T3 - Verthandi
The big sister of the other two pixies... Yes, anime fans out there are probably wondering where Belldandy is, but if you look at the actual Norse gods that the Oh! My Goddess anime was based on, you'll see that Verthandi is the correct form of her name.
Notable moves:
- Cyclonic Torment - even more damaging version of Cyclonic Turmoil. Yes, it does mute as well
- Targetted amnesia move
- Norn Arrows - strips your clothing and gives you encumbrance status, preventing you from putting any armor or accessories on. This appears to be AoE as well.
- WHM-type mob, casts lots of buffs, and has super-fast casting Holy II
- Highly resistant to magic
- Builds resistance to Stun fairly quickly
Fighting her can be funny! You might get to a point where you have a naked tank that can't cast spells, can't use any job abilities and is standing there punching a little pixie! This... actually did happen... at least encumbrance does not last too long.
With lots of close in AoE moves, we did the 2x PLD/NIN tanking method on either side with mages as far away as possible. Unfortunately, knockback moves do mean that there is quite a bit of running around. For DDs, we weren't sure what would work, so we had a mixture of RNG, SMN, BLM and SAM/THFs. Magic damage does not work too well, and Verthandi will always try to use Norn Arrows even if it is stunned, BLM is probably not necessary for this fight.
The overall tactic of having SAM/THFs (and THF) use the surrounding weak mobs to build TP, then run in purely for WS seemed to work well in keeping hate on the PLDs. Due to magic resistance, Atonement damage seemed to be capped at half max potency. I tried Swift Blade once, but it missed completely, so I'm not sure what physical damage would be like for PLDs. RNGs, SMNs & SAMs seemed to be doing decent damage.
One final quirk is that Verthandi has a hidden HP bar. The HP bar only appears for a short time after she uses Norn Arrows. This gives you an idea of how much progress you've made. Even if you can't see her HP, it is going down with the damage you're dealing out. We saw her HP bar twice only in our fight, once at 50%, another at 20% before she was killed.
Strategy for Verthandi
Tank party:
- 2x PLD/NIN tanks, 3x if you have people to spare, but 2x should be fine
- 2x WHM healers. We had one, and it is a tough fight to heal
- 1x RDM. Mainly to Refresh + spam Dispel to keep her busy with buffing herself
- 1x BRD. Ballads for mages, Marches for tanks
This tank party should be able to hold most normal mobs in the game for an indefinite period. Unless the mob requires some weird tactics (JoL comes to mind) that require special handling, this seems like a good combination.
DD party:
- SMN/WHM - Pet attacks can be quite powerful and do not run the risk of pulling hate away from the tanks
- RNG - Ranged attacks work well, and you stay out of DD range
- SAM/THF, or DD/THF, or THF - Plant hate on the PLDs, TP up on surrounding "Too Weak" mobs
- COR/WHM - Buff up the SMNs or DDs, backup heal, do some DD as well
Basically any combination of the above should be fine as a DD party. The more people you add, the faster the fight goes and the more likely you will win.
Conclusions for VNM
Winning the T3 is quite encouraging. We won it last night with a group of 12: 2x PLD/NIN, WHM, 2x RDM, BRD, 2x SMN, BLM, RNG, THF, SAM/THF. Our damage wasn't optimal, so in theory, we should be able to tackle it with maybe 10 people on the low end. A properly setup alliance of 12 should tackle her with no problems, and an alliance of 18 would easily smash through her.
I'm hoping to put together a small team of around 12 people to go tackle VNMs with the express purpose of completing one good "occ. atk. twice" weapons for us all. This would be a long-term commitment of about 2 hours per week, maybe more frequently if we can figure out a schedule that works for us. This would be a long-term commitment where we stick together until all 12 of us complete the requirements for our weapons. Once we complete one weapon each, we will consider this event "completed" unless there is demand to continue. My initial estimate is that completing this would take between 9-12 months if we meet once a week.
An event would probably consist of:
- Gathering and killing T2s once the bare minimum personal has been assembled
- Killing 2-3 T3s once we have a large enough group
- Rotating between the different paths on an event-by-event basis. One night we might do the Verthandi path for people who need that, another night we'll tackle the crab path.
If you are interested in taking such an event, please let me know, either by tells, or posting below. Let me know which T3 you are targeting and your availability for a regularly scheduled event.
Anyway, here is a writeup of my impressions of our fight and strategies for the Venthrandi path. This is probably the easiest path to start since the zones where the mobs pop are right outside Jeuno, which is where you buy the necessary key item to do VNMs. There are also 6 zones in total, making it the most numerous of all the VNMs.
T1 - Elementals
This is really simple... level 80ish elementals of all types. They appear to take double damage from all spells, so any BLM, SCH or probably BLM can easily handle them. They do cast -ga spells and ancient magic, but that's nothing that a well placed stun, or simply running away from the mob in case of a -ga spell can't take care of.
If anything, BLMs can probably get a nice exp chain going with these.
Easily soloed or duoed by most jobs. If you're a melee, sub NIN and save your stun moves for the -aga spells. The ice elemental is probably the most painful one due to ice spikes, so stun that move if you can. Recommend you just go out in a duo pair for safety
T2 - Skuld & Urd
One thing to note about T2s is that if both T2s are up in a zone, you won't know which one you'll get until you pop it. That said, if you kill one of the T2s, then you'll at least know that the other T2 you pop in the zone will be the other one... i.e.: if you pop Urd first and kill her, then the next T2 you pop in the same zone will be Skuld.
Skuld - RDM/BLM
Notable moves:
- Chainspells frequently, once every 20% I think?
- Can cast -ga spells. This includes elemental magic for lots of damage, as well as enfeebling magic such as Paralyga, Slowga, etc.
For the most part, Skuld is fairly tame. Any decent /NIN job can tank her as long as you have good stun support to stun -ga spells. The dangerous time is during her chainspell when she can deal out tons of damage. For this reason, I highly recommend that a BLU be around that can use Head Butt every 5-7 seconds to keep chainspell in check. Basically spam Head Butt and damage from chainspell should be under control
Urd - DNC/WHM
Notable moves:
- Cyclonic Torrent - Heavy AoE damage, knockback and mute - Mute is basically silence that cannot be removed even with echo drops
- A targeted move that causes amnesia - Not sure what this is called
- Uses Trance frequently. This appears to let her spam TP moves
- Likes to buff herself with WHM spells, Protect, Stoneskin, Regen, etc.
I think Urd is the more dangerous of the two T2s. Mute has a nice effect of stopping the most common damage mitigation method, as well as preventing healers from curing the party. Amnesia disables waltzes, so you could end up with a situation where there is a pixie going wild killing people left and right. However, amnesia is single-target (or possibly conal) soit shouldn't disable the whole party.
My recommendation is to bring a DNC to guard against mute killing your entire party. The DNC should have evasion gear since Urd isn't the most accurate, and in the case where the party is fully muted and the DNC has amnesia due to being the target, you can survive for quite a long time on evasion alone. Bring a BLM, or BLU to try to stun Cyclonic torrent. Finally, bring a RDM to spam Dispel so that Urd stays busy buffing herself instead of doing damage.
Tackling T2s
Overall strategy for T2s should be to setup a mixed party capable of handling either. So... my recommendation is a BLU for countering Skuld's chainspell, a DNC to counter Urd's mute move in case the party is disabled, a RDM to keep Urd busy with buffing, then fill the rest appropriately. Throw in a PLD/NIN tank, WHM and DD (or THF) and you should have a decent chance of winning with just a party of 6.
T3 - Verthandi
The big sister of the other two pixies... Yes, anime fans out there are probably wondering where Belldandy is, but if you look at the actual Norse gods that the Oh! My Goddess anime was based on, you'll see that Verthandi is the correct form of her name.
Notable moves:
- Cyclonic Torment - even more damaging version of Cyclonic Turmoil. Yes, it does mute as well
- Targetted amnesia move
- Norn Arrows - strips your clothing and gives you encumbrance status, preventing you from putting any armor or accessories on. This appears to be AoE as well.
- WHM-type mob, casts lots of buffs, and has super-fast casting Holy II
- Highly resistant to magic
- Builds resistance to Stun fairly quickly
Fighting her can be funny! You might get to a point where you have a naked tank that can't cast spells, can't use any job abilities and is standing there punching a little pixie! This... actually did happen... at least encumbrance does not last too long.
With lots of close in AoE moves, we did the 2x PLD/NIN tanking method on either side with mages as far away as possible. Unfortunately, knockback moves do mean that there is quite a bit of running around. For DDs, we weren't sure what would work, so we had a mixture of RNG, SMN, BLM and SAM/THFs. Magic damage does not work too well, and Verthandi will always try to use Norn Arrows even if it is stunned, BLM is probably not necessary for this fight.
The overall tactic of having SAM/THFs (and THF) use the surrounding weak mobs to build TP, then run in purely for WS seemed to work well in keeping hate on the PLDs. Due to magic resistance, Atonement damage seemed to be capped at half max potency. I tried Swift Blade once, but it missed completely, so I'm not sure what physical damage would be like for PLDs. RNGs, SMNs & SAMs seemed to be doing decent damage.
One final quirk is that Verthandi has a hidden HP bar. The HP bar only appears for a short time after she uses Norn Arrows. This gives you an idea of how much progress you've made. Even if you can't see her HP, it is going down with the damage you're dealing out. We saw her HP bar twice only in our fight, once at 50%, another at 20% before she was killed.
Strategy for Verthandi
Tank party:
- 2x PLD/NIN tanks, 3x if you have people to spare, but 2x should be fine
- 2x WHM healers. We had one, and it is a tough fight to heal
- 1x RDM. Mainly to Refresh + spam Dispel to keep her busy with buffing herself
- 1x BRD. Ballads for mages, Marches for tanks
This tank party should be able to hold most normal mobs in the game for an indefinite period. Unless the mob requires some weird tactics (JoL comes to mind) that require special handling, this seems like a good combination.
DD party:
- SMN/WHM - Pet attacks can be quite powerful and do not run the risk of pulling hate away from the tanks
- RNG - Ranged attacks work well, and you stay out of DD range
- SAM/THF, or DD/THF, or THF - Plant hate on the PLDs, TP up on surrounding "Too Weak" mobs
- COR/WHM - Buff up the SMNs or DDs, backup heal, do some DD as well
Basically any combination of the above should be fine as a DD party. The more people you add, the faster the fight goes and the more likely you will win.
Conclusions for VNM
Winning the T3 is quite encouraging. We won it last night with a group of 12: 2x PLD/NIN, WHM, 2x RDM, BRD, 2x SMN, BLM, RNG, THF, SAM/THF. Our damage wasn't optimal, so in theory, we should be able to tackle it with maybe 10 people on the low end. A properly setup alliance of 12 should tackle her with no problems, and an alliance of 18 would easily smash through her.
I'm hoping to put together a small team of around 12 people to go tackle VNMs with the express purpose of completing one good "occ. atk. twice" weapons for us all. This would be a long-term commitment of about 2 hours per week, maybe more frequently if we can figure out a schedule that works for us. This would be a long-term commitment where we stick together until all 12 of us complete the requirements for our weapons. Once we complete one weapon each, we will consider this event "completed" unless there is demand to continue. My initial estimate is that completing this would take between 9-12 months if we meet once a week.
An event would probably consist of:
- Gathering and killing T2s once the bare minimum personal has been assembled
- Killing 2-3 T3s once we have a large enough group
- Rotating between the different paths on an event-by-event basis. One night we might do the Verthandi path for people who need that, another night we'll tackle the crab path.
If you are interested in taking such an event, please let me know, either by tells, or posting below. Let me know which T3 you are targeting and your availability for a regularly scheduled event.
Why FFXIII has turned me off from SE (and FFXIV)
(Level 75 FFXI character for sale! 6x 75s! Comes with XIV alpha/beta account!)
So, this is a big rant against the latest company to join my list of "companies that do horrible, horrible things and should die in a fire and hopefully will go out of business once everyone wakes up" - Square-Enix.
SE is the 2nd company to join the list.
I've been a SquareSoft fan since a friend of mine introduced me to both Chrono Trigger & Final Fantasy III (VI) for the SNES. I've played every Final Fantasy game between that and the latest version, including X-2. However, SE has finally pushed me over my limit with 13 & the latest additions to 11.
Final Fantasy XIII Critique
Sad part is that I see FFXIII as an indication of what SE considers to be content... both for FFXI, FFXIV and future Final Fantasy games... Let's go over what really rubs me wrong about this game.
Gameplay
I'm sure everyone has seen the jokes about FFXIII being completely linear... This link has a picture that shows the map from the first 6 hours of the game, and let me assure you, that continues for the next 40 hours. Even funnier is if you look at the very bottom of that image you see that there is a shortcut you can take to skip some of the linear sections of the map!
The actual "gameplay" of FFXIII consists of running through these very linear maps, getting cutscenes at certain points of the map, and combat. There isn't any actual gameplay outside of combat. There are no mini-games, you can't talk to people and find out about the background or side plots. At least in other games you get to talk to NPC characters, find out more of what is going on, and there tend to be more to do other then just fighting.
You get access to one "mission/side-quest" in chapter 11, when the world "opens up". The missions involve.... performing tasks for various NPCs I guess? However, these tasks are simply to travel through (highly linear) different parts of the open world and kill specific mobs.
Combat itself consists of:
- Setting up "paradigms" outside of combat... this is basically a simpler version of the "gambit" system in FFXII. You can choose between a mix of offensive, tanks, debuffers, buffers and healers
- Switching between paradigms... which mainly consists of going all out offensive, then switching to healing whenever your party is low on HP
- Beating up a mob with 5 million HP when your characters do between 1-10k damage per hit
- Mobs doing around 1k damage per AoE swipe to characters that have between 3-5k HP, ensuring that you will constantly be switching between healing and offensive paradigms
- Auto-Battle
The first few times you paradigm shift, it seems really hectic and fun. However, once you get to some of the stupid boss fights which take a good 10 minutes to fight, all that repetitive shifting between healing and fighting just becomes plain boring. If you set up a mixed paradigm, you can literally get away with pressing X and doing something else while waiting for your game to finish playing with itself.
Add to that the following things for exp:
- In chapter 10, they literally tell you "well, this next zone is for us to grind exp to get stronger... let's get to it!"
- Starting in chapter 10, the CP (aka. exp) requirements for each small upgrade skyrockets from being around 500-1000 per ability to 8000-12000. Each fight gives you between 1000-3000, including the small fry that take under a minute to kill.
- Remember those linear maps? Well, not only are the maps completely straightforward, but they REPEAT CONSTANTLY so that you fight the same mobs over and over again to just grind exp... with... maybe a short 10 second cutscene in between
- Oh, and chapter 12, the CP requirements bump up yet again for each level.
- And finally... you *have* to grind exp in order to finish the game. At the 45 hour mark, I got bored of all the grinding and decided to try to finish the game instead of killing the same mobs over and over again. Nope... I wasn't strong enough. I was making progress on the final boss, but SE has a hidden timer on the boss so that if you take too long, it'll give you a "Doom" status and kill your main character. You pretty much have to grind exp to finish it. I finally gave up and borrowed Kuraikaze's save game (with almost 80 hours of gameplay) to finish the final battle.
That's just exp for your characters... what's "new & innovative" for FFXIII is that you also have exp for your weapons! Each weapon you get, you can upgrade using components that you buy with gil. So, for weapons:
- You have to upgrade separately from your characters
- Whenever you get a new weapon and want to use that... well, there goes all the gil you just sank into the old weapon
This leads to pretty much sticking with one weapon for the whole time you play FFXIII -.-
Gameplay is a complete failure in FFXIII. Combat itself is boring and extremely repetitive. There is no exploration whatsoever in the game, and there is actually no gameplay outside of the boring combat itself.
Plot
It's hard to talk about plot without giving away too many spoilers... I'd say that I am highly disappointed by this plot. I usually enjoy JRPG plots due to some twists or a curious background or reasoning behind things. Maybe the characters actions and motivations might be interesting, and usually there is some big plot twist somewhere. The ends usually give you a sense of satisfaction and completion.
FFXIII's plot has the following problems:
- Most of the details in the plot are hidden in the "Datalog" that you have to stop and read. Yes, the details are not explained in the gameplay (or lack thereof) or in the cutscenes, but are explained in great detail in the datalog that you have to read. They should just publish FFXIII in a book.
- What's worse is that after training you to read the datalog, some parts of the plot are exposed in the datalog before they happen in cutscenes. Imagine going to the movies to watch Citizen Kane and seeing in the movie poster right outside the theatre "how the sled named Rosebud confused a bunch of people".
- The motivation of the characters, especially in the end is confusing. It's like watching a disaster in the making... Many times, you'll go.. "wtf are they doing?" and "aren't they doing exactly what they said they did not want to do?" Best analogy I can think of is a bunch of children all talking about how you shouldn't run with scissors while running around with scissors in the corridors screaming about how they shouldn't run with scissors...
- The ending is a complete cop out, falling into the magical "humans > all" and have magical powers so THERE! The end!
Sadly, the world itself, background and characters actually had a lot of potential. The individual motivations and internal conflicts of all 6 main characters was well presented. Too bad the overall plot, motivations for the main storyline and presentation fell completely flat.
Music & Graphics
I'll have to give SE this... they do know how to make pretty graphics and have good composers working on their side. The soundtrack for FFXIII is quite energetic and catchy. The overall theme from the game can be heard in various variants throughout the game. Battle music is completely different from previous games, and they... they added words to the Chocobo theme... Yes, the chocobo music in this game has lyrics. You can hear the english version here. Be sure to listen to the end xD
Cutscenes are beautifully rendered. They've come a long way since even Advent Children. However, some of the combat cutscenes are much too crowded... too much going on at the same time, making it difficult to even see what is going on. The actual in-game engine is also surprisingly good and there was very little difference between the pre-rendered cutscenes and the in-game engine.
Unfortunately, this ends turning FFXIII into a mere barely interactive movie. If they had cut out the gameplay entirely and made FFXIII into a 2 1/2 hour movie, I'd actually pay to watch it and most likely enjoy it. Too bad they saddled it with tacked on barely thought out gameplay.
For anyone even considering playing this game, I highly recommend that you not bother and instead goto http://finalfantasy13ultima.com/ and just watch all the cutscenes. You aren't missing a thing. I can't wait for Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation to give a review on this game.
So what does this have to do with FFXIV?
I believe that what I've seen in FFXIII is a horrible indicating of what SE developers believe is "content". It appears that SE has spent all their money hiring graphic artists and didn't bother hiring anyone who knows how to make a game fun.
Consider that FFXIII's gameplay consists entirely of:
1. Running down straight corridors
2. Combat consisting of pressing "X"
3. Repeat 1 & 2 for about 80 hours, 20-30 of which is simply filler material before you can fight the final boss
Now, let's look at the latest addition to FFXI. Just taking the new "Trial of the Magians" questline as an example wasting time for the sake of wasting time. I've gone over some of the findings myself in my previous post and put up some estimates of what sort of time waster it is. Let's see what other people have said:
- From FFXIOnline.com - WHM task consists of:
Kill 100 Treants under a weather effect.
Kill 100 Spiders under Fire, Lightning or Light weather.
Kill 100 Arcana under Light Weather
Kill 100 Beasts with Holy
Get 10 Bottled Pixies
I'm not sure where you can even get light weather + Arcana... and... wow, killshot with Holy :o
- From Allakhazam.com - NM hunting
So, this is a big rant against the latest company to join my list of "companies that do horrible, horrible things and should die in a fire and hopefully will go out of business once everyone wakes up" - Square-Enix.
SE is the 2nd company to join the list.
I've been a SquareSoft fan since a friend of mine introduced me to both Chrono Trigger & Final Fantasy III (VI) for the SNES. I've played every Final Fantasy game between that and the latest version, including X-2. However, SE has finally pushed me over my limit with 13 & the latest additions to 11.
Final Fantasy XIII Critique
Sad part is that I see FFXIII as an indication of what SE considers to be content... both for FFXI, FFXIV and future Final Fantasy games... Let's go over what really rubs me wrong about this game.
Gameplay
I'm sure everyone has seen the jokes about FFXIII being completely linear... This link has a picture that shows the map from the first 6 hours of the game, and let me assure you, that continues for the next 40 hours. Even funnier is if you look at the very bottom of that image you see that there is a shortcut you can take to skip some of the linear sections of the map!
The actual "gameplay" of FFXIII consists of running through these very linear maps, getting cutscenes at certain points of the map, and combat. There isn't any actual gameplay outside of combat. There are no mini-games, you can't talk to people and find out about the background or side plots. At least in other games you get to talk to NPC characters, find out more of what is going on, and there tend to be more to do other then just fighting.
You get access to one "mission/side-quest" in chapter 11, when the world "opens up". The missions involve.... performing tasks for various NPCs I guess? However, these tasks are simply to travel through (highly linear) different parts of the open world and kill specific mobs.
Combat itself consists of:
- Setting up "paradigms" outside of combat... this is basically a simpler version of the "gambit" system in FFXII. You can choose between a mix of offensive, tanks, debuffers, buffers and healers
- Switching between paradigms... which mainly consists of going all out offensive, then switching to healing whenever your party is low on HP
- Beating up a mob with 5 million HP when your characters do between 1-10k damage per hit
- Mobs doing around 1k damage per AoE swipe to characters that have between 3-5k HP, ensuring that you will constantly be switching between healing and offensive paradigms
- Auto-Battle
The first few times you paradigm shift, it seems really hectic and fun. However, once you get to some of the stupid boss fights which take a good 10 minutes to fight, all that repetitive shifting between healing and fighting just becomes plain boring. If you set up a mixed paradigm, you can literally get away with pressing X and doing something else while waiting for your game to finish playing with itself.
Add to that the following things for exp:
- In chapter 10, they literally tell you "well, this next zone is for us to grind exp to get stronger... let's get to it!"
- Starting in chapter 10, the CP (aka. exp) requirements for each small upgrade skyrockets from being around 500-1000 per ability to 8000-12000. Each fight gives you between 1000-3000, including the small fry that take under a minute to kill.
- Remember those linear maps? Well, not only are the maps completely straightforward, but they REPEAT CONSTANTLY so that you fight the same mobs over and over again to just grind exp... with... maybe a short 10 second cutscene in between
- Oh, and chapter 12, the CP requirements bump up yet again for each level.
- And finally... you *have* to grind exp in order to finish the game. At the 45 hour mark, I got bored of all the grinding and decided to try to finish the game instead of killing the same mobs over and over again. Nope... I wasn't strong enough. I was making progress on the final boss, but SE has a hidden timer on the boss so that if you take too long, it'll give you a "Doom" status and kill your main character. You pretty much have to grind exp to finish it. I finally gave up and borrowed Kuraikaze's save game (with almost 80 hours of gameplay) to finish the final battle.
That's just exp for your characters... what's "new & innovative" for FFXIII is that you also have exp for your weapons! Each weapon you get, you can upgrade using components that you buy with gil. So, for weapons:
- You have to upgrade separately from your characters
- Whenever you get a new weapon and want to use that... well, there goes all the gil you just sank into the old weapon
This leads to pretty much sticking with one weapon for the whole time you play FFXIII -.-
Gameplay is a complete failure in FFXIII. Combat itself is boring and extremely repetitive. There is no exploration whatsoever in the game, and there is actually no gameplay outside of the boring combat itself.
Plot
It's hard to talk about plot without giving away too many spoilers... I'd say that I am highly disappointed by this plot. I usually enjoy JRPG plots due to some twists or a curious background or reasoning behind things. Maybe the characters actions and motivations might be interesting, and usually there is some big plot twist somewhere. The ends usually give you a sense of satisfaction and completion.
FFXIII's plot has the following problems:
- Most of the details in the plot are hidden in the "Datalog" that you have to stop and read. Yes, the details are not explained in the gameplay (or lack thereof) or in the cutscenes, but are explained in great detail in the datalog that you have to read. They should just publish FFXIII in a book.
- What's worse is that after training you to read the datalog, some parts of the plot are exposed in the datalog before they happen in cutscenes. Imagine going to the movies to watch Citizen Kane and seeing in the movie poster right outside the theatre "how the sled named Rosebud confused a bunch of people".
- The motivation of the characters, especially in the end is confusing. It's like watching a disaster in the making... Many times, you'll go.. "wtf are they doing?" and "aren't they doing exactly what they said they did not want to do?" Best analogy I can think of is a bunch of children all talking about how you shouldn't run with scissors while running around with scissors in the corridors screaming about how they shouldn't run with scissors...
- The ending is a complete cop out, falling into the magical "humans > all" and have magical powers so THERE! The end!
Sadly, the world itself, background and characters actually had a lot of potential. The individual motivations and internal conflicts of all 6 main characters was well presented. Too bad the overall plot, motivations for the main storyline and presentation fell completely flat.
Music & Graphics
I'll have to give SE this... they do know how to make pretty graphics and have good composers working on their side. The soundtrack for FFXIII is quite energetic and catchy. The overall theme from the game can be heard in various variants throughout the game. Battle music is completely different from previous games, and they... they added words to the Chocobo theme... Yes, the chocobo music in this game has lyrics. You can hear the english version here. Be sure to listen to the end xD
Cutscenes are beautifully rendered. They've come a long way since even Advent Children. However, some of the combat cutscenes are much too crowded... too much going on at the same time, making it difficult to even see what is going on. The actual in-game engine is also surprisingly good and there was very little difference between the pre-rendered cutscenes and the in-game engine.
Unfortunately, this ends turning FFXIII into a mere barely interactive movie. If they had cut out the gameplay entirely and made FFXIII into a 2 1/2 hour movie, I'd actually pay to watch it and most likely enjoy it. Too bad they saddled it with tacked on barely thought out gameplay.
For anyone even considering playing this game, I highly recommend that you not bother and instead goto http://finalfantasy13ultima.com/ and just watch all the cutscenes. You aren't missing a thing. I can't wait for Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation to give a review on this game.
So what does this have to do with FFXIV?
I believe that what I've seen in FFXIII is a horrible indicating of what SE developers believe is "content". It appears that SE has spent all their money hiring graphic artists and didn't bother hiring anyone who knows how to make a game fun.
Consider that FFXIII's gameplay consists entirely of:
1. Running down straight corridors
2. Combat consisting of pressing "X"
3. Repeat 1 & 2 for about 80 hours, 20-30 of which is simply filler material before you can fight the final boss
Now, let's look at the latest addition to FFXI. Just taking the new "Trial of the Magians" questline as an example wasting time for the sake of wasting time. I've gone over some of the findings myself in my previous post and put up some estimates of what sort of time waster it is. Let's see what other people have said:
- From FFXIOnline.com - WHM task consists of:
Kill 100 Treants under a weather effect.
Kill 100 Spiders under Fire, Lightning or Light weather.
Kill 100 Arcana under Light Weather
Kill 100 Beasts with Holy
Get 10 Bottled Pixies
I'm not sure where you can even get light weather + Arcana... and... wow, killshot with Holy :o
- From Allakhazam.com - NM hunting
I had an alliance of 75s in Tahrongi camping a level 20 Dhalmel NM. SE is nuts.
SE seems to enjoy wasting people's time. If anything, I'd say that raising the level cap to 99 is nothing but a blatant attempt to get people to waste more time by grinding through days, maybe weeks worth of exp per job to cap exp, AND to level your subjobs. Exp in FFXI for me now consists of lining up things to watch on Hulu and hitting the same macros over and over again.
It has stopped feeling like a game and more like... boring dull work.
And... let's look at FFXIV. SE has already stated that leveling and jobs in XIV is based on your weapons. They certainly seem to be liking the system. Considering that they've basically recycled the character designs, environment from XI, just updating the graphics a little, it wouldn't surprise me if they're going to recycle the weapon exp system from FFXIII, or even from the new "Magian" system from XI.
So... it would be really funny to start up the FFXIV alpha to see a combined weapon system from XIII and XI where you have to feed your weapon lots of gil-based components, and kill hundreds of thousands of mobs to level up enough to fight a nice big boss which... drops another weapon which lets you start from square one all over again.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
New content analysis - Magians & VNMs
Besides the chaotic server merger and the exciting new summons, this new version update brought a few new systems to lay with. I've been researching and investigating some of these systems, and I thought I'd bring you some of my findings and thoughts.
Trial of the Magians
This is the new "upgradable weapons" system that allows people to upgrade relic & mythic weapons as well. For us mortals, we can pick up a free weapon and jump through various hoops to upgrade the weapons to much more usable forms.
More information on this is available on the wiki at http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_the_Magians
In general, the weapons come in two notable forms:
- Final form has "Occasionally attacks twice"
- Final form has various stats that push it above and beyond current level 75 weapons. For example, the Marksmanship gun can get "Str+4, Ranged Attack +12", or the dagger can get "Agi+4, Evasion+12" which are quite overpowered compared to anything else. There is a +dmg dagger that has a damage rating of 38, which is just one below the relic/mythic daggers
- While the "Occ. atk. twice" weapons are aug/rare/ex, the stat weapons are only aug/ex, so you can potentially have two daggers with Evasion+12
Now, with such fine weapons, what are the hoops to jump through to get them? Turns out that there are two main hoops, and one extra hoop for one extra-special weapon
1. Kill mobs under various conditions
This starts off innocently enough... the first trial starts of by killing 100 mobs of a certain family, like aquans or rabbits. In fact, the relic condition is similar to this, except you're doing 1500 relic WSs against a certain family.
Things get a lot more complicated as you move through the other trials as you work towards the final form of your weapon. Namely, they add in weather/day conditions and more beasts to kill. Just for example, for the THF/BRD/DNC dagger "Dakini" with the following stats:
* DMG: 25 + 9
* Delay 195-5
* AGI+4, Evasion+12
You have to do the following all with the weapon equipped:
- Kill 100 rabbits
- Kill 100 crabs under fire, wind, lightning or light weather or on these days
- Kill 100 mobs on windsday or under wind weather
- Kill 100 vermin type on windsday or wind weather
- Kill 150 bird-type on windsday or wind weather
- Kill 200 morbol-type on windsday or wind weather
The first couple of trials are actually simple, but the last few basically have you camping specific days to go kill specific mobs. This is what SE considers "soloable" since, yes, technically any solo person could go do this. Keep in mind, however, that SCH weather effects do not count, so you can't cheat that way, and the specific day you want comes about once every 7 hours.
So, let's say you're an awesome killing machine and can kill one mob per minute... and let's also say that you can find mobs to kill constantly. The first 200 mobs would only take just over 3 hours to kill, but the next few... 550 mobs that have to be killed on windsday or winds weather. You camp a zone and wait for it to come up. That's just over 9 hours of killing at 1 kill per minute. However, your specific day only comes up once very 7 hours, so that's really about 64 consecutive hours if you really want to rush through it, assuming you can kill 1 mob per minute average.
1 mob/minute sounds like a TP burn to me, so... if you make it your mission to go out every windsday to kill specific mobs, you can probably finish it about 12 non-consecutive hours.If you take longer, say... 2 minutes per mob, then that would double it to 24 non-consecutive hours. Fairly reasonable by SE standards. Keep in mind that the mobs have to give exp, so easy prey or higher... You can't just farm too weak mobs for this.
However, you *can* do this in an alliance/party situation. In theory, if you gather a group of people who all need the same objective and you mow through a whole zone on a specific day, you can probably complete the objective in a much shorter time. The only stipulation is that you need to be within range to receive exp for the kill to get credit.
Recommendation: Gather a group of people who all need the same trial and go slaughter an area of Easy Prey mobs. A party of 6 killing easy prey mobs close to each other should be able to hit the 100/trial easily within one hour/one game day. This isn't WS points where you have to wait for each other for TP... you're going all out to kill these mobs! In a best case scenario, you might be able to finish one of these stat-type weapons in about 12 hours of "work".
2. Kill NMs
The other trial for many of these weapons is to get kill various NMs with the weapon equipped multiple times. These NMs relatively low level, starting with the ones in the starting zones, and could go as high as the level 80 VNMs. You also have to kill them multiple times too.
For example, for the THF/BRD/DNC dagger, the first three trials are:
- Kill Nocuous Weapon x3
- Kill Black Triple Stars x3
- Kill Serra x3
This also means that you have to wait for their repop times, kill placeholders if they are lottery pop, and wait for pop conditions (such as Black Triple Stars will only pop at night). Good news is that the mobs they chose seem to have short repop times, 1-4 hours, instead of say... asking you to kill Serket 3x. The other good news is that you just need to be in the party/alliance to get credit for the kill, so hopefully this means people will be teaming up for it. I saw a party of 6 DNCs & THFs camping Nocuous Weapon in the ruins last night, so it seems that people are teaming up. I also saw an alliance of SAMs, with over 20 SAMs in Giddeus last night ~.~
If you can get claim every time the mob pops, you could spend between 3-9 hours on a single trial. That would get you past the initial trial. For the dagger "Occ. atk. twice" weapon, your hoops are:
- Hunt the 3 NMs listed above
- Kill 400 Arcana-type mobs
- Kill 300 Hippogryph-type mobs
- Either:
1. Kill 500 Amorphs, 600 Plantoids & 400 Peistes
2. Obtain 10 Eyes of Virthandis
Option #1 would be SE's "solo" option as you *can* do that alone, though it would take a long time... again, assuming the TP party rate of 1 kill/minute, that would only take you 36 hours to do all the kills. However, you can get people to help you kill! On the other hand, I think 36 hours would be optimistic considering how difficult and annoying Peistes and Hippogryph-type mobs are to fight.
Option #2 requires obtaining 10 drops from the T3 "Voidwalker NMs", which is what I'll talk about next. It is a much more difficult path and requires a solid alliance. Why would you want to do this? Well, comparing the two daggers:
Both Athames have:
* DMG 18, Delay 190
* Delay +21
* Occ. atk. twice
BUT the better one has "DMG+13" which brings it to: DMG: 31, about average for a DNC-type dagger except for the attacking twice property. The solo version is merely a TP-gaining piece which has much lower damage.
Recommendation: Truthfully, I think we need to wait to see what "Occ. atk. twice" means. Is it the frequency of the Joyeuse? Or is it a much lower rate? If it is the former, then I can see a reason for doing this path. My other recommendation would be if you decide to go down this path to obtain a double-attacking weapon, you work on farming the VNM items FIRST before you bother camping the NMs. Getting the NMs and killing 700 mobs is a lot easier compared to the VNM system.
Personal Opinion
For the "Trials of the Magians" system, I'm a little mixed on it... I'm kinda interested in the stat-type weapons, but I'm not 100% convinced that it is worth it. My current dagger mix is Azoth/Ermine's Tail, which gives me a combined stat of +4 accuracy, +12 evasion. Doubling up on any of the stat daggers would be pretty crazy, giving either +24 evasion or +16 accuracy, but mixing two of them would be just +4 accuracy over my current combination. However, getting even one of these daggers takes a ton of work... and it isn't even something you can start and unlock eventually like say a WS latent. You have to actively go hunt the different mob types.
The "occ. atk. twice" weapons on the other hand are quite attractive. A Dancer with this and a Joyeuse would be a sight to behold, and would definitely not have any TP issues. However, the effort of the final task is such that I wouldn't even bother starting this quest until I completed the final requirement. I'll talk about this requirement in the next section.
My current conclusion is... wait & see. I'm not inclined to start the stat-based weapons just yet... maybe if I can figure out a way to team up with others to make that part go by quicker... I'm also not starting up the "occ. atk twice" path unless I can put together a team to hunt VNMs to get the final requirement. Finally, with the level cap raise coming up, who knows... maybe there'll be a level 80, 90 or 99 dagger that I can buy off the AH that beats all of these for 1k gil in a couple of months?
Voidwalker Notorious Monsters
The new VNM system is much easier to get into compared to the ZNM system introduced 1 1/2 years ago. All you need to get started is 1k gil to buy a key item in Jeuno, then to run around the appropriate zone and hunt for your targetted NM.
More information can be found at: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/VNM
This system is quite amusing as you can't actually see the NM, but you have to play a kind of "hot & cold" game with it by /healing in the appropriate zone. You'll get a direction and distance to go... Incidentally, this is the first time I think that I've seen "yalm" used as an official distance measurement in XI. All you distance plugin users can rejoice :)
The NM can, and DOES move around invisibly, so you'll have to check if you are on the right path frequently. It will pop into the "real world" claimed when someone with the appropriate crystal key item does a /heal close enough to it. This can lead to some really funny situations where the popper leads the group running around in circles, or... maybe someday some mage in an exp party will accidentally MPK the whole party when he or she goes to /heal for some MP xD
While the Tier 1 VNMs do not seem to drop anything, the T2s drop situationally interesting items, and the T3s drop some fairly good accessories. For example:
- T2 VNM Lamprey Lord drops a Hirudinea Earring which "Enhances effect of Drain & Aspir"
- T2 VNM Farruca Fly drops an Alert Ring which has "Evasion +6" but also with "Accuracy -3"
- T3 VNM Lord Ruthven drops a Strigoi Ring which has "Str+6, Attack+3"
- T3 VNM Blobdingnag drops a Blobnag Ring which as "AGI+6, Ranged Accuracy +3"
Not all items have been found yet since the system is still so new. However, they seem to follow a pattern... each mob has a specific job, and will drop something that relates to that job. The T2 Pixie Skuld does chainspell multiple times, and drops a Veela Cape that "Enhances Fast Cast".
Fuuji & I went out to play with some of these VNMs last night. It started off with the two of us duoing T1s, but we gathered(tricked?) a group of AP people into coming out for the T2 Pixies. In the process, we learnt quite a few things:
- Killing a mob on one tier does not necessarily mean that you will advance to the next. Fuuji could advance on the first kill for his T1, but it took 5 kills before I could pop a T2. We've killed 3 T2s together so far, but neither of us have advanced to the T3 yet
- Each zone has their own VNMs that are roaming around invisibly. Once you kill them in the zone, you have to wait for them to repop. We don't know how long it takes to repop, but it is likely to be an hour or more
- Each VNM "path" can be done in multiple zones...We started in Battalia Downs, but once we killed the T2s in that zone, we moved over to Rolanberry Fields. It also looks like the past [S] zones also qualify, so you have up to 6 zones, or 12 mobs that you can try to kill to complete a T2 before you have to wait for repops.
- You can move from any T1 path to any T2 path, but the T2 mob you kill determines which T3 path you advance to
Now, let's go back to the "occ. atk. twice" weapons. For the good weapon, you need 10x drops from the T3 VNM. Each kill of the T3 VNM appears to drop 0-2 of these, so in a best case scenario, you're looking to kill at least 5 T3s for one person to be able to upgrade their weapon. To get to these 5 kills, you'll probably have to kill... I don't know... maybe... 10-30 T2s, and... 20-60 T1s? Since advancement is random, you might end up spending a whole night killing T2s without being able to advance to that T3.
So... let's say I want to go get those 10x Eye of Verthandi for my dagger... I'd need to gather an army capable of defeating Verthandi at least 5x, probably a lot more considering the drop rate. And in between these relatively big fights, I'd need to gather people to kill the T1 & T2 mobs, of which the T2s have to be on the Verthandi path (aka. Skuld & Urd only). Multiply that by the number of other people who want to go kill their own mobs and we'll have quite a mess on our hands for organizing such an event! Especially since the in between rewards aren't *that* good.
Fighting experience
I can't say for sure how difficult the various fights are, but I can give you an idea for the mobs on the Verthandi path.
T1 - High level elemental
Pretty basic fight... Fuuji & I duo'ed this easily on DNC & MNK. Probably could have gone a lot faster if we just came as 2x mages, but I wanted to be safe on DNC xD The elemental you get is random, so it could be a silly light elemental that spams holy, or an annoying ice elemental with ice spikes.
T2 - Skuld
Skuld was the 2nd T2 we popped. RDM main that uses chainspell multiple times. Also can cast BLM spells like Poisonga, and annoying spells like Paralyga, Gravga, AND hits for a lot of damage, about 200-300 each.
Hate gets reset during Chainspell, making being a mage for this fight a risky proposition. We took Skuld on with DNC, 2x WHM, RDM, 3xSAM. While we took a lot of damage, the fight itself isn't too bad. If anything, I'd bring a BLU for this fight to spam Head Butt to interrupt Chainspell as much as possible. I was doing my best with Violent Flourish, but the timer on that is still 20 seconds.
Our one Skuld kill dropped the Veela Cape, which our pet JP WHM won the lot for :)
T2 - Urd
Urd is the NM that I was going after. She's a Dancer main that uses Trance multiple times and also casts WHM spells. She has some crazy moves such as Cyclonic Torrent that does massive damage (500-600 per person) and AoE mute that cannot be removed using echo drops, as well as some either single target, or conal Amnesia moves. Like Skuld, she resets hate every time she uses Trance, so there's a high chance that WHMs & RDMs will not only get beat up, but also muted! Her amnesia move also means that not even a DNC can guarantee that you will have healing available ~.~
We fought her twice... first time was very nearly a disaster with DNC, 2x WHM, RDM & 3x SAM. Cron died when she was at a low HP. We simply couldn't keep up with the amount of healing going on. We ended up using 5 out of our 7 2-hrs and we barely managed to kill her the first time.
The second time brought reinforcements... I think it was DNC, 3x WHM, 2x RDM & 3x SAM. This fight went a lot smoother, especially with Fuuji & Radack keeping her busy by constantly dispelling her buffs. This lead to her being distracted and rebuffing herself instead of trying to kill us. Still, she does do a lot of damage. While I might change the lineup of jobs I bring to this fight, I think that anything less than a full party would be suicide, and 8-9 people would definitely be safer for her.
The 2nd one we fought dropped a Choreia earring, which "Increases Step Accuracy" and is now part of my Step macro :D
How would you put an event together?
We haven't fought a T3 VNM yet, but judging from various reports, and also from the strength of the T2 mobs, I'd guess that at the very least 2 full parties would be required for the T3, if not a full alliance.
Now that has me wondering... how would you put an event together to get people these items? You'd be looking at recruiting up to 18 people to do these fights many times... especially since just about everyone would want the weapons... The items from the T2s seem to be a common drop, and given how many T2s and T3s you'd have to fight, it's very likely that everyone would get what they want easily... I guess the melee rings would be in high demand.
How about... how long would the event run? Let's say you ask people to go get the T1s solo... this is certainly easy enough to do with most decent level 75 jobs.... A good portion of the time we spent last night was gathering people to fight the T2s. The actual search for the mobs took maybe 10 minutes each, and the fights themselves were around 5 minutes, definitely no more than 10 minutes.
So... you might have an event where you gather up an alliance in a pre-determined zone which people are interested in, then you smash through as many T2s as possible, moving between zones. i.e.: start in Battalia Downs, move to Rolanberry, then to Sauromugue, then to the past versions to kill all the NMs possible. Once we have enough of the T3 pops, we'd do basically the same to farm that tier, just that it would take longer to do. You might be able to do 3-4 T3s in say... 2-3 hours of work.
I'm still not sure if this is worth putting together as an event... I wonder... anyone else out there interested in doing these?
Trial of the Magians
This is the new "upgradable weapons" system that allows people to upgrade relic & mythic weapons as well. For us mortals, we can pick up a free weapon and jump through various hoops to upgrade the weapons to much more usable forms.
More information on this is available on the wiki at http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_the_Magians
In general, the weapons come in two notable forms:
- Final form has "Occasionally attacks twice"
- Final form has various stats that push it above and beyond current level 75 weapons. For example, the Marksmanship gun can get "Str+4, Ranged Attack +12", or the dagger can get "Agi+4, Evasion+12" which are quite overpowered compared to anything else. There is a +dmg dagger that has a damage rating of 38, which is just one below the relic/mythic daggers
- While the "Occ. atk. twice" weapons are aug/rare/ex, the stat weapons are only aug/ex, so you can potentially have two daggers with Evasion+12
Now, with such fine weapons, what are the hoops to jump through to get them? Turns out that there are two main hoops, and one extra hoop for one extra-special weapon
1. Kill mobs under various conditions
This starts off innocently enough... the first trial starts of by killing 100 mobs of a certain family, like aquans or rabbits. In fact, the relic condition is similar to this, except you're doing 1500 relic WSs against a certain family.
Things get a lot more complicated as you move through the other trials as you work towards the final form of your weapon. Namely, they add in weather/day conditions and more beasts to kill. Just for example, for the THF/BRD/DNC dagger "Dakini" with the following stats:
* DMG: 25 + 9
* Delay 195-5
* AGI+4, Evasion+12
You have to do the following all with the weapon equipped:
- Kill 100 rabbits
- Kill 100 crabs under fire, wind, lightning or light weather or on these days
- Kill 100 mobs on windsday or under wind weather
- Kill 100 vermin type on windsday or wind weather
- Kill 150 bird-type on windsday or wind weather
- Kill 200 morbol-type on windsday or wind weather
The first couple of trials are actually simple, but the last few basically have you camping specific days to go kill specific mobs. This is what SE considers "soloable" since, yes, technically any solo person could go do this. Keep in mind, however, that SCH weather effects do not count, so you can't cheat that way, and the specific day you want comes about once every 7 hours.
So, let's say you're an awesome killing machine and can kill one mob per minute... and let's also say that you can find mobs to kill constantly. The first 200 mobs would only take just over 3 hours to kill, but the next few... 550 mobs that have to be killed on windsday or winds weather. You camp a zone and wait for it to come up. That's just over 9 hours of killing at 1 kill per minute. However, your specific day only comes up once very 7 hours, so that's really about 64 consecutive hours if you really want to rush through it, assuming you can kill 1 mob per minute average.
1 mob/minute sounds like a TP burn to me, so... if you make it your mission to go out every windsday to kill specific mobs, you can probably finish it about 12 non-consecutive hours.If you take longer, say... 2 minutes per mob, then that would double it to 24 non-consecutive hours. Fairly reasonable by SE standards. Keep in mind that the mobs have to give exp, so easy prey or higher... You can't just farm too weak mobs for this.
However, you *can* do this in an alliance/party situation. In theory, if you gather a group of people who all need the same objective and you mow through a whole zone on a specific day, you can probably complete the objective in a much shorter time. The only stipulation is that you need to be within range to receive exp for the kill to get credit.
Recommendation: Gather a group of people who all need the same trial and go slaughter an area of Easy Prey mobs. A party of 6 killing easy prey mobs close to each other should be able to hit the 100/trial easily within one hour/one game day. This isn't WS points where you have to wait for each other for TP... you're going all out to kill these mobs! In a best case scenario, you might be able to finish one of these stat-type weapons in about 12 hours of "work".
2. Kill NMs
The other trial for many of these weapons is to get kill various NMs with the weapon equipped multiple times. These NMs relatively low level, starting with the ones in the starting zones, and could go as high as the level 80 VNMs. You also have to kill them multiple times too.
For example, for the THF/BRD/DNC dagger, the first three trials are:
- Kill Nocuous Weapon x3
- Kill Black Triple Stars x3
- Kill Serra x3
This also means that you have to wait for their repop times, kill placeholders if they are lottery pop, and wait for pop conditions (such as Black Triple Stars will only pop at night). Good news is that the mobs they chose seem to have short repop times, 1-4 hours, instead of say... asking you to kill Serket 3x. The other good news is that you just need to be in the party/alliance to get credit for the kill, so hopefully this means people will be teaming up for it. I saw a party of 6 DNCs & THFs camping Nocuous Weapon in the ruins last night, so it seems that people are teaming up. I also saw an alliance of SAMs, with over 20 SAMs in Giddeus last night ~.~
If you can get claim every time the mob pops, you could spend between 3-9 hours on a single trial. That would get you past the initial trial. For the dagger "Occ. atk. twice" weapon, your hoops are:
- Hunt the 3 NMs listed above
- Kill 400 Arcana-type mobs
- Kill 300 Hippogryph-type mobs
- Either:
1. Kill 500 Amorphs, 600 Plantoids & 400 Peistes
2. Obtain 10 Eyes of Virthandis
Option #1 would be SE's "solo" option as you *can* do that alone, though it would take a long time... again, assuming the TP party rate of 1 kill/minute, that would only take you 36 hours to do all the kills. However, you can get people to help you kill! On the other hand, I think 36 hours would be optimistic considering how difficult and annoying Peistes and Hippogryph-type mobs are to fight.
Option #2 requires obtaining 10 drops from the T3 "Voidwalker NMs", which is what I'll talk about next. It is a much more difficult path and requires a solid alliance. Why would you want to do this? Well, comparing the two daggers:
Both Athames have:
* DMG 18, Delay 190
* Delay +21
* Occ. atk. twice
BUT the better one has "DMG+13" which brings it to: DMG: 31, about average for a DNC-type dagger except for the attacking twice property. The solo version is merely a TP-gaining piece which has much lower damage.
Recommendation: Truthfully, I think we need to wait to see what "Occ. atk. twice" means. Is it the frequency of the Joyeuse? Or is it a much lower rate? If it is the former, then I can see a reason for doing this path. My other recommendation would be if you decide to go down this path to obtain a double-attacking weapon, you work on farming the VNM items FIRST before you bother camping the NMs. Getting the NMs and killing 700 mobs is a lot easier compared to the VNM system.
Personal Opinion
For the "Trials of the Magians" system, I'm a little mixed on it... I'm kinda interested in the stat-type weapons, but I'm not 100% convinced that it is worth it. My current dagger mix is Azoth/Ermine's Tail, which gives me a combined stat of +4 accuracy, +12 evasion. Doubling up on any of the stat daggers would be pretty crazy, giving either +24 evasion or +16 accuracy, but mixing two of them would be just +4 accuracy over my current combination. However, getting even one of these daggers takes a ton of work... and it isn't even something you can start and unlock eventually like say a WS latent. You have to actively go hunt the different mob types.
The "occ. atk. twice" weapons on the other hand are quite attractive. A Dancer with this and a Joyeuse would be a sight to behold, and would definitely not have any TP issues. However, the effort of the final task is such that I wouldn't even bother starting this quest until I completed the final requirement. I'll talk about this requirement in the next section.
My current conclusion is... wait & see. I'm not inclined to start the stat-based weapons just yet... maybe if I can figure out a way to team up with others to make that part go by quicker... I'm also not starting up the "occ. atk twice" path unless I can put together a team to hunt VNMs to get the final requirement. Finally, with the level cap raise coming up, who knows... maybe there'll be a level 80, 90 or 99 dagger that I can buy off the AH that beats all of these for 1k gil in a couple of months?
Voidwalker Notorious Monsters
The new VNM system is much easier to get into compared to the ZNM system introduced 1 1/2 years ago. All you need to get started is 1k gil to buy a key item in Jeuno, then to run around the appropriate zone and hunt for your targetted NM.
More information can be found at: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/VNM
This system is quite amusing as you can't actually see the NM, but you have to play a kind of "hot & cold" game with it by /healing in the appropriate zone. You'll get a direction and distance to go... Incidentally, this is the first time I think that I've seen "yalm" used as an official distance measurement in XI. All you distance plugin users can rejoice :)
The NM can, and DOES move around invisibly, so you'll have to check if you are on the right path frequently. It will pop into the "real world" claimed when someone with the appropriate crystal key item does a /heal close enough to it. This can lead to some really funny situations where the popper leads the group running around in circles, or... maybe someday some mage in an exp party will accidentally MPK the whole party when he or she goes to /heal for some MP xD
While the Tier 1 VNMs do not seem to drop anything, the T2s drop situationally interesting items, and the T3s drop some fairly good accessories. For example:
- T2 VNM Lamprey Lord drops a Hirudinea Earring which "Enhances effect of Drain & Aspir"
- T2 VNM Farruca Fly drops an Alert Ring which has "Evasion +6" but also with "Accuracy -3"
- T3 VNM Lord Ruthven drops a Strigoi Ring which has "Str+6, Attack+3"
- T3 VNM Blobdingnag drops a Blobnag Ring which as "AGI+6, Ranged Accuracy +3"
Not all items have been found yet since the system is still so new. However, they seem to follow a pattern... each mob has a specific job, and will drop something that relates to that job. The T2 Pixie Skuld does chainspell multiple times, and drops a Veela Cape that "Enhances Fast Cast".
Fuuji & I went out to play with some of these VNMs last night. It started off with the two of us duoing T1s, but we gathered(tricked?) a group of AP people into coming out for the T2 Pixies. In the process, we learnt quite a few things:
- Killing a mob on one tier does not necessarily mean that you will advance to the next. Fuuji could advance on the first kill for his T1, but it took 5 kills before I could pop a T2. We've killed 3 T2s together so far, but neither of us have advanced to the T3 yet
- Each zone has their own VNMs that are roaming around invisibly. Once you kill them in the zone, you have to wait for them to repop. We don't know how long it takes to repop, but it is likely to be an hour or more
- Each VNM "path" can be done in multiple zones...We started in Battalia Downs, but once we killed the T2s in that zone, we moved over to Rolanberry Fields. It also looks like the past [S] zones also qualify, so you have up to 6 zones, or 12 mobs that you can try to kill to complete a T2 before you have to wait for repops.
- You can move from any T1 path to any T2 path, but the T2 mob you kill determines which T3 path you advance to
Now, let's go back to the "occ. atk. twice" weapons. For the good weapon, you need 10x drops from the T3 VNM. Each kill of the T3 VNM appears to drop 0-2 of these, so in a best case scenario, you're looking to kill at least 5 T3s for one person to be able to upgrade their weapon. To get to these 5 kills, you'll probably have to kill... I don't know... maybe... 10-30 T2s, and... 20-60 T1s? Since advancement is random, you might end up spending a whole night killing T2s without being able to advance to that T3.
So... let's say I want to go get those 10x Eye of Verthandi for my dagger... I'd need to gather an army capable of defeating Verthandi at least 5x, probably a lot more considering the drop rate. And in between these relatively big fights, I'd need to gather people to kill the T1 & T2 mobs, of which the T2s have to be on the Verthandi path (aka. Skuld & Urd only). Multiply that by the number of other people who want to go kill their own mobs and we'll have quite a mess on our hands for organizing such an event! Especially since the in between rewards aren't *that* good.
Fighting experience
I can't say for sure how difficult the various fights are, but I can give you an idea for the mobs on the Verthandi path.
T1 - High level elemental
Pretty basic fight... Fuuji & I duo'ed this easily on DNC & MNK. Probably could have gone a lot faster if we just came as 2x mages, but I wanted to be safe on DNC xD The elemental you get is random, so it could be a silly light elemental that spams holy, or an annoying ice elemental with ice spikes.
T2 - Skuld
Skuld was the 2nd T2 we popped. RDM main that uses chainspell multiple times. Also can cast BLM spells like Poisonga, and annoying spells like Paralyga, Gravga, AND hits for a lot of damage, about 200-300 each.
Hate gets reset during Chainspell, making being a mage for this fight a risky proposition. We took Skuld on with DNC, 2x WHM, RDM, 3xSAM. While we took a lot of damage, the fight itself isn't too bad. If anything, I'd bring a BLU for this fight to spam Head Butt to interrupt Chainspell as much as possible. I was doing my best with Violent Flourish, but the timer on that is still 20 seconds.
Our one Skuld kill dropped the Veela Cape, which our pet JP WHM won the lot for :)
T2 - Urd
Urd is the NM that I was going after. She's a Dancer main that uses Trance multiple times and also casts WHM spells. She has some crazy moves such as Cyclonic Torrent that does massive damage (500-600 per person) and AoE mute that cannot be removed using echo drops, as well as some either single target, or conal Amnesia moves. Like Skuld, she resets hate every time she uses Trance, so there's a high chance that WHMs & RDMs will not only get beat up, but also muted! Her amnesia move also means that not even a DNC can guarantee that you will have healing available ~.~
We fought her twice... first time was very nearly a disaster with DNC, 2x WHM, RDM & 3x SAM. Cron died when she was at a low HP. We simply couldn't keep up with the amount of healing going on. We ended up using 5 out of our 7 2-hrs and we barely managed to kill her the first time.
The second time brought reinforcements... I think it was DNC, 3x WHM, 2x RDM & 3x SAM. This fight went a lot smoother, especially with Fuuji & Radack keeping her busy by constantly dispelling her buffs. This lead to her being distracted and rebuffing herself instead of trying to kill us. Still, she does do a lot of damage. While I might change the lineup of jobs I bring to this fight, I think that anything less than a full party would be suicide, and 8-9 people would definitely be safer for her.
The 2nd one we fought dropped a Choreia earring, which "Increases Step Accuracy" and is now part of my Step macro :D
How would you put an event together?
We haven't fought a T3 VNM yet, but judging from various reports, and also from the strength of the T2 mobs, I'd guess that at the very least 2 full parties would be required for the T3, if not a full alliance.
Now that has me wondering... how would you put an event together to get people these items? You'd be looking at recruiting up to 18 people to do these fights many times... especially since just about everyone would want the weapons... The items from the T2s seem to be a common drop, and given how many T2s and T3s you'd have to fight, it's very likely that everyone would get what they want easily... I guess the melee rings would be in high demand.
How about... how long would the event run? Let's say you ask people to go get the T1s solo... this is certainly easy enough to do with most decent level 75 jobs.... A good portion of the time we spent last night was gathering people to fight the T2s. The actual search for the mobs took maybe 10 minutes each, and the fights themselves were around 5 minutes, definitely no more than 10 minutes.
So... you might have an event where you gather up an alliance in a pre-determined zone which people are interested in, then you smash through as many T2s as possible, moving between zones. i.e.: start in Battalia Downs, move to Rolanberry, then to Sauromugue, then to the past versions to kill all the NMs possible. Once we have enough of the T3 pops, we'd do basically the same to farm that tier, just that it would take longer to do. You might be able to do 3-4 T3s in say... 2-3 hours of work.
I'm still not sure if this is worth putting together as an event... I wonder... anyone else out there interested in doing these?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
COR 75, update stuff, FFXIII progress
Whee... finished Corsair in a crazy party on Friday night. I started to get worried about the upcoming server merge, specifically that exp parties would be a bloody pain since there would be 2x the amount of people competing for the same number of good exp spots. Soooooo... I went seeking on COR and got a varied number of parties.
While my last party to push to 75 was a level sync party to 57, we had both Lesser Colibri camps open to us by the leypoint. We managed to hit 20k/hour without any exp bands doing infinite chains with Corsair's Roll up. 3 hours of this was enough to push me from 73 to 75 :)
This exp party also marked my highest pull chain so far... Previously I could only manage 20ish chains on DNC simply due to having to time the pull correctly. Since I can't sleep on DNC, I have to pull late enough that the party would kill the mob before I get killed, and early enough for the mob to reach camp in time. Pulling on COR is a little different... My gun is a lot slower compared to the throwing weapon on DNC, but I can pull as long as I have Quickdraw charges ready since I can sleep the next mob at camp. It really becomes just a matter of managing the Quickdraw charges.
Well, COR is done now... and I've unlocked the main merit abilities: Fold, Snake Eye and Loaded Deck. I actually use Random Deal quite a lot on COR, mainly to get Phantom Roll up faster so that the first round of buffs go up quicker, though sometimes I also use it to try to get Quickdraw ready earlier. Ghiren also helped me unlock Leaden Salute for COR already, so now I just need to skill up the last few points of Marksmanship before I can get the WSNM quest.
Update Stuff
Server merge is complete, and looks like I'm still Ascule... so I've changed the blog title back from the temporary "Ascoo's Adventures" that I had up for a while xD Not sure how many people actually noticed.
The merger did screw up a few things... like... the shell color for ZeniBailout ~.~ I thought I had the right color, but it ended up coming up with too much blue in it... It looks like the old Xwinds shell color now... I'm debating tossing it and remaking, but right now the linkshell vendors are completely sold out of linkshells. Maybe this baby-blue color would be okay... Xwinds is not being recreated, so the color wouldn't clash xD
Meanwhile, I've been going through the discussions and findings from the new content added from the update... Here are my early conclusions:
New Avatars:
While my last party to push to 75 was a level sync party to 57, we had both Lesser Colibri camps open to us by the leypoint. We managed to hit 20k/hour without any exp bands doing infinite chains with Corsair's Roll up. 3 hours of this was enough to push me from 73 to 75 :)
This exp party also marked my highest pull chain so far... Previously I could only manage 20ish chains on DNC simply due to having to time the pull correctly. Since I can't sleep on DNC, I have to pull late enough that the party would kill the mob before I get killed, and early enough for the mob to reach camp in time. Pulling on COR is a little different... My gun is a lot slower compared to the throwing weapon on DNC, but I can pull as long as I have Quickdraw charges ready since I can sleep the next mob at camp. It really becomes just a matter of managing the Quickdraw charges.
Well, COR is done now... and I've unlocked the main merit abilities: Fold, Snake Eye and Loaded Deck. I actually use Random Deal quite a lot on COR, mainly to get Phantom Roll up faster so that the first round of buffs go up quicker, though sometimes I also use it to try to get Quickdraw ready earlier. Ghiren also helped me unlock Leaden Salute for COR already, so now I just need to skill up the last few points of Marksmanship before I can get the WSNM quest.
Update Stuff
Server merge is complete, and looks like I'm still Ascule... so I've changed the blog title back from the temporary "Ascoo's Adventures" that I had up for a while xD Not sure how many people actually noticed.
The merger did screw up a few things... like... the shell color for ZeniBailout ~.~ I thought I had the right color, but it ended up coming up with too much blue in it... It looks like the old Xwinds shell color now... I'm debating tossing it and remaking, but right now the linkshell vendors are completely sold out of linkshells. Maybe this baby-blue color would be okay... Xwinds is not being recreated, so the color wouldn't clash xD
Meanwhile, I've been going through the discussions and findings from the new content added from the update... Here are my early conclusions:
New Avatars:
- New Alexander & Odin summon quests are going to be annoying. The Alexander quest has one part that needs you to mine 3 things from Mount Zhayolm. Lots of people mine there for the chance at Khroma Ore, so... I guess this means a ton of pain for those who want to do this quest. The Odin quest requires you to farm a Rare/Ex item from Shades, and even then, there is a chance that your item won't be accepted
- The SMN rewards themselves aren't that good either unless you're a SMN main since they can't be used at low level. I don't know about the effectiveness, though if you are a SMN main, you'll be going after them anyway
- However, the other rewards are really good... Odin has an Aesir Torque which gives +7 to elemental and dark magic skill, which is equal to the elemental torque, and it gives +10 on darksdays. He also has an Aesir Ear Pendant that gives Attack +7 & "Conserve TP +3" and a mantle that give Attack +8 & Double Attack. Alexander has an earring that has -1% physical damage, a mantle that has -2% magical damage, and a torque that has healing & enhancing magic
Voidwalker NMs (aka Abyssea NMs):
- Easy to start... 1k gil to a NPC in Ru'Lude Gardens to get a "Clear Abyssite" key item to start, which is a ton better compared to the annoying ZNM startup
- 5 different paths, 4 tiers each, with the 4th tier being the same for each path
- Easy to do... all you need to do is go to a zone and /heal with the key item and you'll get a pointer to head towards the NM. Once you /heal close enough to it, it'll pop and you can fight.
- However, annoying to farm since you have to kill the tier 1 & 2 NMs a random number of times before you can pop the Tier 3 NM.
- These mobs have annoying effects... like mute, moves to strip & encumber you so that you're naked and can't put gear on, -40/tick poison that can't be removed and more
- Tier 3 & 4 NMs are a pain, requiring an alliance or more of people to tackle
- The mobs themselves drop some nice gear, including an ammo item with HP+30, the rings with +dex & +accuracy, haste
- The T3 mobs drop stuff that is necessary for the "Trials of the Magian" weapon quest
- Would require another "event day" to tackle, kinda like ZNMs... Go out with groups of 3-4 to farm T1 & 2s to get your crystal upgraded to be able to pop the T3, then gather an alliance and go beat it up
- Overall... I think this may be the new event that... well... gets people somewhat excited about. I'm already finding a few items that I want from this, including the new Choreia Earring that has "Increases Step Accuracy". The interesting part is that the mob that drops this is a pixie-type dancer NM, which might make it the first Dancer mob in the game :O
Trial of the Magians
- This is the new "enhanced weapons" questline that you can take. The good news is that at least the weapons themselves are free, and you can start multiple weapons at the same time. For people with relic or mythic weapons, they can also upgrade their weapons, though the requirements are *really* steep
- Requirements for upgrading even the basic weapons can be pretty steep... from "kill 100 aquan type mobs" to "kill 300 lizard type mobs during rainy weather" or "kill Argus 10 times". It also seems like if you want the very best "occasionally attacks twice" augment, you have to do VNMs and get 10 drops from the T3 VNM...
- There is a "solo" path available for people who just want to kill mobs, and don't want to compete for NMs or do any of the VNM stuff. You end up with a slightly inferior weapon, but you still get some of the good stuff
- However... this seems to be designed to be a complete timesink ~.~ killing 100 of a single mob, even an Easy Prey mob... I don't know... doesn't sound like fun to me. Much less doing the VNM climb multiple times to get the drops for the nice augmented forms.
Maybe I've just been burnt too much on the Synergy armors... part of me wants to do this for a nice double attacking dagger for DNC... another part of me is wondering what the point is, especially considering that this is obviously some sort of beta-test for the features of FFXIV
Overall... I have mixed feeling about this whole update. On one hand, the content looks interesting... on the other hand, it looks like yet another multi-month, if not YEAR grind to get some marginally interesting gear. VNMs would require yet another event to be added to the schedule, which means that something has to give. With the level cap raise coming up, I'm not even sure I want to keep bothering.
FFXIII progress
I'm in chapter 11 of FFXIII... which as some of you may know, is the "wide open exploration" part of the game after 10 chapters of straight line corridors.
Except... this game isn't really good at that... you get dumped out into a wide open field, with mobs that can easily one-shot you. If you take on the optional side-quests, you'll find that they are basically simple NM hunts that have you spending hours running through... long linear corridors... fighting lots of mobs, many of which can one-shot your party if you don't shift paradigms at exactly the right time. The side quests are stupidly boring, and the amount of exp(CP) you have to grind to get your new level stuff is... well... it makes meriting in FFXI look attractive.
I've put in about 5 hours in this "open" area so far. If not for Kuraikaze telling me about the Blitz -> Ruinga trick that basically stun-locks most mobs, I would have given up on XIII in frustration hours ago. After nearly 30 hours of hitting auto-battle, they expect us to actually use the ability and technique menus?! As it is now, I'm merely very frustrated with this game. Especially the last Eldion fight which really is... stupid with the trick that you have to use to win -.-
Right now, I'd give FFXIII a 3/10 overall. 9/10 for story, graphics and characters, 1/10 for gameplay(or lack thereof). Highly, HIGHLY recommend that if you have not yet purchased FFXIII that you simply go to Youtube and search for "Final Fantasy 13 cutscenes" and watch them there. Alternatively, simply watch the FFXIII movie here: http://finalfantasy13ultima.com/ (Japanese with english subtitles. English dub coming!)
Friday, March 19, 2010
Random musings, server merge
FFXI stuffs
Weird times on Hades in FFXI...
Well, first off, the server merge (aka forced transfer) is taking place on Monday. That means I've had to empty out my delivery box of all the junk I keep in it that I do not use. I've also returned some low level COR gear that I've been borrowing from Fuuji and Ghiren. Too bad I haven't finished COR yet, so... I guess level-sync parties will be suffering with a gimpy COR for a while! At the end of the day, I'm going to end up with about 3 slots available for the transfer. I keep a lot of junk in my delivery box... costume food, fireworks and more xD
I'm pretty apprehensive about this merger... I'm fully expecting things to completely fall apart after the merge with the huge crowds. It'll probably be days, if not weeks before the dust from this settles. I just hope that I can finish COR and retire it before things get too crazy
And... the weird thing is... recently all these new(or old) people are coming out from the woodworks and showing up everywhere... it's kinda scary to me to see these unfamiliar names all about. Dynamis has exploded in people and I don't know half the people anymore xD
Other games
Meanwhile, FFXIII has been distracting me from XI these days. The plot is interesting, though convoluted, and the gameplay is... well... it is different. I'm both amused and annoyed at where I am in the game right now. I'm at a point where the game itself tells you that you are supposed to go grind mobs for exp... I mean, literally... they say so in the cutscenes that they are in an area specifically designed to go grind mobs up for exp.
I guess they want to bring the MMO feel to XIII?
Anyway, on the lineup after I finish watching the XIII movie:
- Dragon Age: Awakening
- Heavy Rain
- Mass Effect 2 DLC
- White Knight Chronicles
WKC has been sitting on the shelf for quite a few weeks now ^^;
Looks like SE is also dropping the ball on the FFXIV beta... or alpha... or whatever they wanted to call it. That, or they really suck at communicating(most likely!). The "launch" date turned out to be nothing more then opening their forum/site up to people to post about how awesome XIV is going to be and how they are going to totally camp all the NMs and whine about how they are going to lose their beta characters once retail starts.
Mostly a no-op...
PC gaming
Mmmm... I'm kinda annoyed right now... I ordered a laptop capable of PC gaming (well, at least more so compared to my current computer) which was supposed to ship this week, but it has not yet shipped ~.~ Getting angsty waiting... I don't like waiting.
Meanwhile, I'm reading more about stupid DRM policies that various companies are putting into PC gaming... From what I understand, you can't play Assassin's Creed 2 or Command & Conquer 4 on the PC without an active internet connection. As in... you can't play it at all, not that you need it to install or register the game.
This basically kills any hope of gaming while travelling, or if power or internet goes out at home for these games. I guess I need to put together a list of games to avoid... that, or start pirating -.-
Weird times on Hades in FFXI...
Well, first off, the server merge (aka forced transfer) is taking place on Monday. That means I've had to empty out my delivery box of all the junk I keep in it that I do not use. I've also returned some low level COR gear that I've been borrowing from Fuuji and Ghiren. Too bad I haven't finished COR yet, so... I guess level-sync parties will be suffering with a gimpy COR for a while! At the end of the day, I'm going to end up with about 3 slots available for the transfer. I keep a lot of junk in my delivery box... costume food, fireworks and more xD
I'm pretty apprehensive about this merger... I'm fully expecting things to completely fall apart after the merge with the huge crowds. It'll probably be days, if not weeks before the dust from this settles. I just hope that I can finish COR and retire it before things get too crazy
And... the weird thing is... recently all these new(or old) people are coming out from the woodworks and showing up everywhere... it's kinda scary to me to see these unfamiliar names all about. Dynamis has exploded in people and I don't know half the people anymore xD
Other games
Meanwhile, FFXIII has been distracting me from XI these days. The plot is interesting, though convoluted, and the gameplay is... well... it is different. I'm both amused and annoyed at where I am in the game right now. I'm at a point where the game itself tells you that you are supposed to go grind mobs for exp... I mean, literally... they say so in the cutscenes that they are in an area specifically designed to go grind mobs up for exp.
I guess they want to bring the MMO feel to XIII?
Anyway, on the lineup after I finish watching the XIII movie:
- Dragon Age: Awakening
- Heavy Rain
- Mass Effect 2 DLC
- White Knight Chronicles
WKC has been sitting on the shelf for quite a few weeks now ^^;
Looks like SE is also dropping the ball on the FFXIV beta... or alpha... or whatever they wanted to call it. That, or they really suck at communicating(most likely!). The "launch" date turned out to be nothing more then opening their forum/site up to people to post about how awesome XIV is going to be and how they are going to totally camp all the NMs and whine about how they are going to lose their beta characters once retail starts.
Mostly a no-op...
PC gaming
Mmmm... I'm kinda annoyed right now... I ordered a laptop capable of PC gaming (well, at least more so compared to my current computer) which was supposed to ship this week, but it has not yet shipped ~.~ Getting angsty waiting... I don't like waiting.
Meanwhile, I'm reading more about stupid DRM policies that various companies are putting into PC gaming... From what I understand, you can't play Assassin's Creed 2 or Command & Conquer 4 on the PC without an active internet connection. As in... you can't play it at all, not that you need it to install or register the game.
This basically kills any hope of gaming while travelling, or if power or internet goes out at home for these games. I guess I need to put together a list of games to avoid... that, or start pirating -.-
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Final Fantasy XIII initial impressions
Not much to talk about in XI-land this week, sooooooooo... time for some off-topic stuff!
In other news, I've recently finished BioShock 2 and am now moving on to FFXIII. I have a feeling that leveling COR will take a back seat to other games in the next few weeks since there are so many other interesting things coming out!
Anyway, here are my initial impressions about FFXIII after the first 3 1/2 hours...
Gameplay
This game is awesome! It almost plays itself! I mean, the "Auto-Battle" option picks the best attack to use for the situation, so all I have to do is hit "X" 5-6 times per battle and I win! If only there were some way for the game to automatically push that button for me whenever I encounter an enemy... maybe those "turbo" buttons from old controllers can make a comeback.
Alright... seriously... I know this is the tutorial stage of the game still, but... this really is FF-easy-mode xD The "Auto-Battle" option seems to be a strange compromise between the "Gambit" system of FFXII where you set up rules for your characters on what action to take, and the micro-management that we're familiar with from older FF games. it seems to be dumbing down the system so that you no longer have to set up the rules on what to use to fight, in exchange for a lot more button pressing. I actually liked the gambit system in FFXII and had it perfected to the extent that I didn't have to touch the controller for most fights.
The good news is that you don't have to think about what elemental weakness spell to use on the mob, or whether you should use an AoE attack on a group of mobs -- Auto-Battle does that all for you. The bad news is that your role as a player is relegated to simply choosing when to use potions xD I guess you can still ignore Auto-Battle and play it as a "traditional" game, so I think Auto-Battle is a general win here.
One little nitpik I have right now is the location of treasure chests. When you're dumped into a new area, you pretty much have to turn right around and look behind you as they like to hide treasure chests behind your start point. Especially annoying since the camera control is a little wild, and, well... they put the goal and where you're supposed to go in front of you, so your first instinct is to go forward
Oh... and yes, the gameplay is completely linear.
Graphics & Sound
It's SE... they are great at cutscenes, and catchy music. Not going to say too much here, except that if FFXIV has similar graphics & music, I'm jumping ship :o
Story
Final Fantasy games have always had good stories that draw me into the world, and XIII is no exception.
[WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW]
FFXIII starts off with Lightning infiltrating some evil corporation/government entity in disguise on a train to save her little sister with her friend with an afro and a chocobo chick. At the same time, Snow is taking his resistance group along with the same mission when they come across some civilians in the crossfire and decide to save them. It feels a lot like FFVII in that sense where you're thrown right into the action, but I'm sure they'll explain things as things go on like... w... what? What are these weird terms you're throwing about? What's a fa-ciel? How come Lightning's sidekick is so clueless?!
So... I'm not sure how SE dropped the ball here, but... the bulk of the background and story is actually expressed inside text that you have to read inside their "Datalog". In there, you find out about the background of Cocoon, Pulse, what the hell fa'ciel and l'ciel are, and the relationship between the main characters. More importantly, you also find out how they got into the situation in the start of the game, and it's VERY different from my first impression ~.~
I think this is where they completely screwed things up. I know other games have lots stuff where you can access encyclopedias worth of information about the background and world. Mass Effect 2 and Xenosaga are just two games that come to mind. However, these games used the database as add-ons to flesh out details in the world, not as the primary source of information.
Initial Impression
Well... so far it is look like a really good semi-interactive movie. And if I think of it as such, I think it will be an interesting ride. The plot, however, seems really predictable at this time, but that generally seems to be the case for most FF games in the first half of the game.
As a game though, it isn't too impressive. Definitely too simple to be called a "game", little thinking required. I've only just been introduced to "Paradigm Shifts", which seem to be a FFX-2 dresssphere job-change thing.
Doesn't SE also publish manga/anime? I'm under the impression that they own the Full Metal Alchemist IP? Maybe they should stop making games and publish FFXV as an anime? xD Or... at least remove the requirement to use the left stick and the "X" button for battles so you can put the controller down and watch the pretty CG!
Other stuffs
It's business as usual in FFXI... Zurar getting banned again is putting my plan to level COR up to 75 back on hiatus. I'm still hoping to finish COR before the move so that I can get rid of some low level COR stuff and empty out my delivery box. COR71 now, just 4 levels to go x.x
FFXIV beta(alpha?) starts tomorrow... in theory... My new computer hasn't shipped yet, so... I'm not sure if I have a computer capable of playing it yet. From my experience in previous MMO betas, the first couple of days tend to be a mess anyway, so I might simply concentrate on XIII and not touch XIV until things settle down a little.
Hmm... am I allowed to talk about XIV anyway? Or is that a violation of some agreement? I'll probably be banned from XI for this post now :)
In other news, I've recently finished BioShock 2 and am now moving on to FFXIII. I have a feeling that leveling COR will take a back seat to other games in the next few weeks since there are so many other interesting things coming out!
Anyway, here are my initial impressions about FFXIII after the first 3 1/2 hours...
Gameplay
This game is awesome! It almost plays itself! I mean, the "Auto-Battle" option picks the best attack to use for the situation, so all I have to do is hit "X" 5-6 times per battle and I win! If only there were some way for the game to automatically push that button for me whenever I encounter an enemy... maybe those "turbo" buttons from old controllers can make a comeback.
Alright... seriously... I know this is the tutorial stage of the game still, but... this really is FF-easy-mode xD The "Auto-Battle" option seems to be a strange compromise between the "Gambit" system of FFXII where you set up rules for your characters on what action to take, and the micro-management that we're familiar with from older FF games. it seems to be dumbing down the system so that you no longer have to set up the rules on what to use to fight, in exchange for a lot more button pressing. I actually liked the gambit system in FFXII and had it perfected to the extent that I didn't have to touch the controller for most fights.
The good news is that you don't have to think about what elemental weakness spell to use on the mob, or whether you should use an AoE attack on a group of mobs -- Auto-Battle does that all for you. The bad news is that your role as a player is relegated to simply choosing when to use potions xD I guess you can still ignore Auto-Battle and play it as a "traditional" game, so I think Auto-Battle is a general win here.
One little nitpik I have right now is the location of treasure chests. When you're dumped into a new area, you pretty much have to turn right around and look behind you as they like to hide treasure chests behind your start point. Especially annoying since the camera control is a little wild, and, well... they put the goal and where you're supposed to go in front of you, so your first instinct is to go forward
Oh... and yes, the gameplay is completely linear.
Graphics & Sound
It's SE... they are great at cutscenes, and catchy music. Not going to say too much here, except that if FFXIV has similar graphics & music, I'm jumping ship :o
Story
Final Fantasy games have always had good stories that draw me into the world, and XIII is no exception.
[WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW]
FFXIII starts off with Lightning infiltrating some evil corporation/government entity in disguise on a train to save her little sister with her friend with an afro and a chocobo chick. At the same time, Snow is taking his resistance group along with the same mission when they come across some civilians in the crossfire and decide to save them. It feels a lot like FFVII in that sense where you're thrown right into the action, but I'm sure they'll explain things as things go on like... w... what? What are these weird terms you're throwing about? What's a fa-ciel? How come Lightning's sidekick is so clueless?!
So... I'm not sure how SE dropped the ball here, but... the bulk of the background and story is actually expressed inside text that you have to read inside their "Datalog". In there, you find out about the background of Cocoon, Pulse, what the hell fa'ciel and l'ciel are, and the relationship between the main characters. More importantly, you also find out how they got into the situation in the start of the game, and it's VERY different from my first impression ~.~
I think this is where they completely screwed things up. I know other games have lots stuff where you can access encyclopedias worth of information about the background and world. Mass Effect 2 and Xenosaga are just two games that come to mind. However, these games used the database as add-ons to flesh out details in the world, not as the primary source of information.
Initial Impression
Well... so far it is look like a really good semi-interactive movie. And if I think of it as such, I think it will be an interesting ride. The plot, however, seems really predictable at this time, but that generally seems to be the case for most FF games in the first half of the game.
As a game though, it isn't too impressive. Definitely too simple to be called a "game", little thinking required. I've only just been introduced to "Paradigm Shifts", which seem to be a FFX-2 dresssphere job-change thing.
Doesn't SE also publish manga/anime? I'm under the impression that they own the Full Metal Alchemist IP? Maybe they should stop making games and publish FFXV as an anime? xD Or... at least remove the requirement to use the left stick and the "X" button for battles so you can put the controller down and watch the pretty CG!
Other stuffs
It's business as usual in FFXI... Zurar getting banned again is putting my plan to level COR up to 75 back on hiatus. I'm still hoping to finish COR before the move so that I can get rid of some low level COR stuff and empty out my delivery box. COR71 now, just 4 levels to go x.x
FFXIV beta(alpha?) starts tomorrow... in theory... My new computer hasn't shipped yet, so... I'm not sure if I have a computer capable of playing it yet. From my experience in previous MMO betas, the first couple of days tend to be a mess anyway, so I might simply concentrate on XIII and not touch XIV until things settle down a little.
Hmm... am I allowed to talk about XIV anyway? Or is that a violation of some agreement? I'll probably be banned from XI for this post now :)
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
FFXI - Return to the grind? + minor pics
The one thing I'm really bummed about with the most recent FFXI announcements is really the announcement of raising the level caps. To me, exp(in FFXI) is mostly a grind... there are a few short bursts of fun when you hit a key level and get some fun job abilities, but for the most part, it becomes a mindless grind of killing mob after mob on hours on end, basically a time waster.
You level a job to take it out for events and to have fun with it. The actual act of exping is like... working out on a treadmill. You do it to stay in shape and so that you'll be able to go do fun things like long hikes, or compete. The actual act of running on the treadmill is boring grinding that you only do because you have to do it, not because you want to do it.
I'm not exactly sure why SE would decide to raise the level cap now, of all times, except to maybe get people to waste more time playing FFXI? The only other reason I can think of is that they are anticipating a mass exodus of people (especially with the FFXIV beta) and are raising the level cap so that we can use less people for the current events after we get stronger. If you continue playing and level up your character, you would be able to solo/duo/trio events that formerly required alliances. I'm guessing that if this was their intention, we'd see that the new events coming out are designed for parties or smaller instead of the old alliance-sized fights. (aka. the slow death of FFXI)
Exp to 99
So, looking forward... let's see what I have to do with this level cap.
- It takes 44,000 exp to go from level 75-76
- A decentish exp party can get around 18-20k/hour (let's not talk about crazy unsustainable "60k/hr with anniversary ring + level 8 besieged + Corsair's Roll")
- Looking at about 2 1/2 hours of exp to get one level. Round that up to 3 hours to include travel time, and time to find the people to actually go exp together
So... with some luck and a well-motivated group, you can get approximately one level a night of exp. Assuming SE doesn't do something braindead and raises the amount of exp required even further (HA!), that's 24 days of doing nothing but exp for every job that you want to get from level 75-99. Yes, I know that they will spread out the level cap increases, but at the end of the day, in a best case scenario, they're going to have you grind the treadmill for 24 of your nights to get one job from 75-99.
Subjobs
But.... that's not all. Add to that the requirement to level your sub (or be called gimp!) So... not only do you have to take a job from 75-99, you have to gear up a subjob you probably don't want to play and take it from 37-49 (or 50 if so inclined). That's 13 levels, of which some have good exp camps (Hello super-crowded East Ronfaure [S]), but most of which aren't that good. Exp/level here is significantly lower too unless you find some sucker to level sync to (and with tons of people leveling their subs, I'm sure you can find some level 37 out there). Let's say... it takes another 3-4 days to level your sub to decent levels.
However, most jobs will use more than one sub. Even on DNC, I use /NIN & /SAM. I think SCH is the only job which there is only one "right" sub to use at 75. God save you if you're RDM and have to level WHM, BLM, NIN, DRK, and if you're obsessive-compulsive, SCH, BLU, PLD, SMN for subs.
So... add on at least another 6-8 days, and you're looking at a solid month full of grinding to get one job equipped for 99.
Multiple jobs
One of the things I really liked about FFXI was the ability to change jobs and be flexible. If you look over my previous musings, you'll find that one of the big reasons I leveled most of my jobs was that I wanted to be able to fill in various roles... SCH was to be able to nuke, PLD was to be a tank, DRG to fill a DD role, and finally, COR for the support role.
Unfortunately, if I want to maintain this flexibility at level 99, that would mean that I would have to take every single one of these jobs up to that level. That's 6 jobs in total, or half a year of solid exping just to take all my jobs to 99. Over half a year when you consider the variety of subjobs. And of course, it's much worse for others with more jobs.
Best case... worst case
So far, everything stated has been on an "average case" scenario... let's look at some best/worst cases.
How could things get worse?
- Exp requirements continue to go up as you level past 76. We've had huge TNL bumps in the past... what about the future? If they go with a simple 2k increase per level past 75, that increases the exp required by quite a lot. Level 98-99 would require 90k exp. In total, you would require an extra 600k exp ontop of what was calculated above, or an EXTRA 15 days of exp.
- And... what's to say that they won't increase it by even larger amounts? If the intention is to keep players grinding, increasing the amount of exp for the next level would make logical sense
- Add in some really weird limit break quests... lots of competition for camps and you have a nightmare waiting to happen already
How could things be better?
- They could lower exp requirements. They've done it in the past for the last few levels until 75... they could do it again
- They could increase the amount of exp a mob gives per kill. Right now, the cap on exp/hour is really based on the amount of exp you get per mob. In a well equipped bird merit party, the party is basically killing one mob almost every 30 seconds. You can barely draw your weapon and do a WS before it's time for the next mob. Increasing exp/mob would have an effect of increasing the exp/hour
- They could create new camps... Just imagine every level 75 on the server trying to exping at the same time. That's what the first few weeks after the level cap increase will be like. There just aren't enough camps capable of supporting that kind of traffic. Of course, some will be leveling subs between 37-50 too, so that would spread things out slightly. I guess MMM exp will become more popular, but they do not seem to have enough compute power to handle that (hands of darkness prevent you from getting your exp!)
Personal impact
FFXI already takes up a lot of time out of my schedule. Currently, my week generally looks like:
Monday - Sky & ZNMs
Tuesday - Sea & exp
Wednesday - Dynamis
Thursday - Free
Friday - Free
Saturday - Dynamis & KS99
Sunday - Gil farming, Einherjar & exp
I'm actually really hoping that the server shift gives a chance to move some events found to free up at least one day on the weekend. Given this is unlikely, I might end up looking again at dropping some events. In any case, my schedule currently only gives me two nights to exp. Soooo... take that 30 nights to hit 99, spread it out, and... well, in theory, it should take me just under 4 months to bring 1 job to level 99. (which may end up matching SE's schedule for rolling out the cap raises)
4 months... one job... for 6 jobs, that's 24 months, or 2 years of continuous playing. Starting to see why SE would want to raise the cap now?
(Side note: big reason why I only exp on two nights is that those are the nights other friends also play. Seeking is no longer worth it anymore. Even on COR I do not get an invite when I seek on free nights)
What this means is that I'll probably end up focusing on one... maybe two jobs going forward. Assuming I continue to play, those would be DNC & PLD. All other jobs would basically fall to the sides and... well... probably never get touched for anything over 75. That actually really pisses me off. If there was any hint at a level cap raise, I'd never have touched DRG or COR.
What's worse is that SE is promising new events as well... so, in order to participate in them, something is going to give... which will it be? I've only successfully shut down 2 events in the past: Nyzul Isle & Limbus... which will give this time? Or is it time for a full shutdown?
Uncertainty
Uncertainty in FFXI, or the future of is definitely sapping my will to play the game. Just some thoughts on current uncertainty:
- Will they lower exp requirements for all levels? If so, I shouldn't bother exping right now
- Will they make getting to level 99 totally unreasonable? If so, time to quit now instead of wasting time
- Who is going to quit? Will there be people around in a month or two to actually do events?
- How bad is the server merge going to be? Since the other server seems to be actively hostile towards us, will there even be space to do events? Much less exp?
- With FFXIV coming out, would more people quit? More server merges?
- Will Zurar finally be banned for good?
In any case, this update announcement has, ironically, raised the "is it time to quit?" question up to my attention again. I'll give you a link to Talint's blog where he asks, and answers the same question. With the FFXIV beta starting in just over a week, I'm sure it'll be even harder to get people together to exp and do things.
Photo time!
Ok, enough depressing update talk... here are some fun pics from the last couple of weeks!
This is kinda funny... if you try to Double-Up on a roll that was dispelled, this is what you get:
In a recent Dynamis wipe near the end I wanted to pit my evasion against a herd of Dhamels for fun. You can see the results below. This also gives a very good indication of Fan Dance in action
Starts out at 90% damage reduction, with each successive hit reducing it until you're down to a simple 20% damage reduction.
Last week, when we were doing some basic exp in the basement of Garliage, we saw Serket simply standing around... seriously. Anyway, that was a fun fight, and I'd like to try soloing him on DNC sometime.
Finally... the reason that MMM exp works are:
- COR exp buff
- The 1.5 exp bonus from the chest at the end
Basically, if you don't finish the maze and open the chest, your efforts are for naught, so this is quite an exciting way to exp. If you do succeed though:
Over 8k exp in one shot... and that's not even the highest. Since I'm the COR, I lose out on some of the exp as I have to cycle between rolls and there are times when I do not have Corsair's Roll on me. Of course, this is with an Emperor's Band, so normally the chest would only have about 5k+ exp in it.
That's it for now!
You level a job to take it out for events and to have fun with it. The actual act of exping is like... working out on a treadmill. You do it to stay in shape and so that you'll be able to go do fun things like long hikes, or compete. The actual act of running on the treadmill is boring grinding that you only do because you have to do it, not because you want to do it.
I'm not exactly sure why SE would decide to raise the level cap now, of all times, except to maybe get people to waste more time playing FFXI? The only other reason I can think of is that they are anticipating a mass exodus of people (especially with the FFXIV beta) and are raising the level cap so that we can use less people for the current events after we get stronger. If you continue playing and level up your character, you would be able to solo/duo/trio events that formerly required alliances. I'm guessing that if this was their intention, we'd see that the new events coming out are designed for parties or smaller instead of the old alliance-sized fights. (aka. the slow death of FFXI)
Exp to 99
So, looking forward... let's see what I have to do with this level cap.
- It takes 44,000 exp to go from level 75-76
- A decentish exp party can get around 18-20k/hour (let's not talk about crazy unsustainable "60k/hr with anniversary ring + level 8 besieged + Corsair's Roll")
- Looking at about 2 1/2 hours of exp to get one level. Round that up to 3 hours to include travel time, and time to find the people to actually go exp together
So... with some luck and a well-motivated group, you can get approximately one level a night of exp. Assuming SE doesn't do something braindead and raises the amount of exp required even further (HA!), that's 24 days of doing nothing but exp for every job that you want to get from level 75-99. Yes, I know that they will spread out the level cap increases, but at the end of the day, in a best case scenario, they're going to have you grind the treadmill for 24 of your nights to get one job from 75-99.
Subjobs
But.... that's not all. Add to that the requirement to level your sub (or be called gimp!) So... not only do you have to take a job from 75-99, you have to gear up a subjob you probably don't want to play and take it from 37-49 (or 50 if so inclined). That's 13 levels, of which some have good exp camps (Hello super-crowded East Ronfaure [S]), but most of which aren't that good. Exp/level here is significantly lower too unless you find some sucker to level sync to (and with tons of people leveling their subs, I'm sure you can find some level 37 out there). Let's say... it takes another 3-4 days to level your sub to decent levels.
However, most jobs will use more than one sub. Even on DNC, I use /NIN & /SAM. I think SCH is the only job which there is only one "right" sub to use at 75. God save you if you're RDM and have to level WHM, BLM, NIN, DRK, and if you're obsessive-compulsive, SCH, BLU, PLD, SMN for subs.
So... add on at least another 6-8 days, and you're looking at a solid month full of grinding to get one job equipped for 99.
Multiple jobs
One of the things I really liked about FFXI was the ability to change jobs and be flexible. If you look over my previous musings, you'll find that one of the big reasons I leveled most of my jobs was that I wanted to be able to fill in various roles... SCH was to be able to nuke, PLD was to be a tank, DRG to fill a DD role, and finally, COR for the support role.
Unfortunately, if I want to maintain this flexibility at level 99, that would mean that I would have to take every single one of these jobs up to that level. That's 6 jobs in total, or half a year of solid exping just to take all my jobs to 99. Over half a year when you consider the variety of subjobs. And of course, it's much worse for others with more jobs.
Best case... worst case
So far, everything stated has been on an "average case" scenario... let's look at some best/worst cases.
How could things get worse?
- Exp requirements continue to go up as you level past 76. We've had huge TNL bumps in the past... what about the future? If they go with a simple 2k increase per level past 75, that increases the exp required by quite a lot. Level 98-99 would require 90k exp. In total, you would require an extra 600k exp ontop of what was calculated above, or an EXTRA 15 days of exp.
- And... what's to say that they won't increase it by even larger amounts? If the intention is to keep players grinding, increasing the amount of exp for the next level would make logical sense
- Add in some really weird limit break quests... lots of competition for camps and you have a nightmare waiting to happen already
How could things be better?
- They could lower exp requirements. They've done it in the past for the last few levels until 75... they could do it again
- They could increase the amount of exp a mob gives per kill. Right now, the cap on exp/hour is really based on the amount of exp you get per mob. In a well equipped bird merit party, the party is basically killing one mob almost every 30 seconds. You can barely draw your weapon and do a WS before it's time for the next mob. Increasing exp/mob would have an effect of increasing the exp/hour
- They could create new camps... Just imagine every level 75 on the server trying to exping at the same time. That's what the first few weeks after the level cap increase will be like. There just aren't enough camps capable of supporting that kind of traffic. Of course, some will be leveling subs between 37-50 too, so that would spread things out slightly. I guess MMM exp will become more popular, but they do not seem to have enough compute power to handle that (hands of darkness prevent you from getting your exp!)
Personal impact
FFXI already takes up a lot of time out of my schedule. Currently, my week generally looks like:
Monday - Sky & ZNMs
Tuesday - Sea & exp
Wednesday - Dynamis
Thursday - Free
Friday - Free
Saturday - Dynamis & KS99
Sunday - Gil farming, Einherjar & exp
I'm actually really hoping that the server shift gives a chance to move some events found to free up at least one day on the weekend. Given this is unlikely, I might end up looking again at dropping some events. In any case, my schedule currently only gives me two nights to exp. Soooo... take that 30 nights to hit 99, spread it out, and... well, in theory, it should take me just under 4 months to bring 1 job to level 99. (which may end up matching SE's schedule for rolling out the cap raises)
4 months... one job... for 6 jobs, that's 24 months, or 2 years of continuous playing. Starting to see why SE would want to raise the cap now?
(Side note: big reason why I only exp on two nights is that those are the nights other friends also play. Seeking is no longer worth it anymore. Even on COR I do not get an invite when I seek on free nights)
What this means is that I'll probably end up focusing on one... maybe two jobs going forward. Assuming I continue to play, those would be DNC & PLD. All other jobs would basically fall to the sides and... well... probably never get touched for anything over 75. That actually really pisses me off. If there was any hint at a level cap raise, I'd never have touched DRG or COR.
What's worse is that SE is promising new events as well... so, in order to participate in them, something is going to give... which will it be? I've only successfully shut down 2 events in the past: Nyzul Isle & Limbus... which will give this time? Or is it time for a full shutdown?
Uncertainty
Uncertainty in FFXI, or the future of is definitely sapping my will to play the game. Just some thoughts on current uncertainty:
- Will they lower exp requirements for all levels? If so, I shouldn't bother exping right now
- Will they make getting to level 99 totally unreasonable? If so, time to quit now instead of wasting time
- Who is going to quit? Will there be people around in a month or two to actually do events?
- How bad is the server merge going to be? Since the other server seems to be actively hostile towards us, will there even be space to do events? Much less exp?
- With FFXIV coming out, would more people quit? More server merges?
- Will Zurar finally be banned for good?
In any case, this update announcement has, ironically, raised the "is it time to quit?" question up to my attention again. I'll give you a link to Talint's blog where he asks, and answers the same question. With the FFXIV beta starting in just over a week, I'm sure it'll be even harder to get people together to exp and do things.
Photo time!
Ok, enough depressing update talk... here are some fun pics from the last couple of weeks!
This is kinda funny... if you try to Double-Up on a roll that was dispelled, this is what you get:
In a recent Dynamis wipe near the end I wanted to pit my evasion against a herd of Dhamels for fun. You can see the results below. This also gives a very good indication of Fan Dance in action
Last week, when we were doing some basic exp in the basement of Garliage, we saw Serket simply standing around... seriously. Anyway, that was a fun fight, and I'd like to try soloing him on DNC sometime.
Finally... the reason that MMM exp works are:
- COR exp buff
- The 1.5 exp bonus from the chest at the end
Basically, if you don't finish the maze and open the chest, your efforts are for naught, so this is quite an exciting way to exp. If you do succeed though:
That's it for now!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Vanafest stuffs, various updates
Fast post... been busy lately. Last two posts pretty much cover what I've been doing outside of gaming life, so here's a fast one about gaming!
Vanafest Announcements
Tons of announcements about FFXI on the Vanafest website at http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/event/vanafes2010/index.html.
For this post, I'll just concentrate on my impressions on the "cons" of these updates. Maybe some other day I'll look at the "pros"
Level Cap Increase
I'm *really* not interested in grinding another... 24 levels, especially at the rate of exp that SE thinks is reasonable. Even doing 60-75 is a pain, and it just gets worse as it goes higher.
The way FFXI handles leveling is basically a time waster. It's the same as farming crops in Farmville or doing jobs in Mafia Wars. There's no value, no skill to it, and virtually no fun with the way it is currently set up. I'm currently trying to grind COR to 75, but will I grind it to 99? I mean, if I knew that they would be raising the level cap, I'd concentrate on one, maybe two jobs at all and not bother leveling everything else.
As it stands, I already know that I'll be focusing on DNC mainly, possibly taking up PLD, but probably no more than these two jobs. Yes, it'll limit what I can do, which was the main reason why I leveled up other jobs in the first place, but with the exp requirements even for 70-75, I'm really not willing to spend 2 years of actual time grinding exp for lesser jobs.
Add to that the pain of leveling subs from 37-49. They showed pictures of WHMs using Convert, so you know that you'll have to level your subs. For almost all my subs, it was a simple relief to be done with them and I threw all the gear out for the subs the minute I hit 37. Now I'll have to level at the very least NIN, possibly SAM, and if I take PLD up, RDM & WAR ~.~
Among everything, this is the #1 thing that will likely get me to consider /quitting.
Abyssea
Sooooooooooo... judging from the success of the last few add-ons, this is a great way to extract another $30 for... a zone or two and a HNM? Get those bots ready!
Server Merge
This is an amusing one... if anything indicates that an MMO is reaching the end of life, it's a server merge. This means that enough players have quit the game that they have to consolidate the servers to make the game viable to play. They are eliminating 8 servers out of 33, representing a general reduction in capacity of 24% for FFXI.
Of course, being one of the eliminated servers, this does mean that many people will have to give up names... character names, breaking of linkshells and stuff... Humans hate change. This is definitely a big change. We'll have to see what is left of Hades and the people who play with me to determine how much incentive there is to continue. May have people leaving the server, or simply quitting the game due to technical reasons. Losing your long-held name would be a significant one.
And... even if people stay around, with the server merge, this simply means that everything will get more crowded. I still haven't had a single day where I can go to a popular exp camp and see it empty even on the so-called "empty" Hades, and we've had many conflicts on Limbus scheduling in the past. Even doing MMM & Nyzul is difficult even though they are instanced because of the weird wait that the game imposes when someone else enters the instance. Given how badly programmed FFXI is, this all will just get worse.
Trial of the Magians
Minor nitpick... so... a series of successive quests, repeatable, with up to 80 different features that can be added to weapons/armor... wait... after experiencing Synergy/Evolith... and seeing the FoV NM fights and THAT randomness... this reeks suspiciously of yet another grind by dangling that 0.01% performance increase.
FFXIV
Wheee... beta starts 3/11! Who's in?
Vanafest Announcements
Tons of announcements about FFXI on the Vanafest website at http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/event/vanafes2010/index.html.
For this post, I'll just concentrate on my impressions on the "cons" of these updates. Maybe some other day I'll look at the "pros"
Level Cap Increase
I'm *really* not interested in grinding another... 24 levels, especially at the rate of exp that SE thinks is reasonable. Even doing 60-75 is a pain, and it just gets worse as it goes higher.
The way FFXI handles leveling is basically a time waster. It's the same as farming crops in Farmville or doing jobs in Mafia Wars. There's no value, no skill to it, and virtually no fun with the way it is currently set up. I'm currently trying to grind COR to 75, but will I grind it to 99? I mean, if I knew that they would be raising the level cap, I'd concentrate on one, maybe two jobs at all and not bother leveling everything else.
As it stands, I already know that I'll be focusing on DNC mainly, possibly taking up PLD, but probably no more than these two jobs. Yes, it'll limit what I can do, which was the main reason why I leveled up other jobs in the first place, but with the exp requirements even for 70-75, I'm really not willing to spend 2 years of actual time grinding exp for lesser jobs.
Add to that the pain of leveling subs from 37-49. They showed pictures of WHMs using Convert, so you know that you'll have to level your subs. For almost all my subs, it was a simple relief to be done with them and I threw all the gear out for the subs the minute I hit 37. Now I'll have to level at the very least NIN, possibly SAM, and if I take PLD up, RDM & WAR ~.~
Among everything, this is the #1 thing that will likely get me to consider /quitting.
Abyssea
Sooooooooooo... judging from the success of the last few add-ons, this is a great way to extract another $30 for... a zone or two and a HNM? Get those bots ready!
Server Merge
This is an amusing one... if anything indicates that an MMO is reaching the end of life, it's a server merge. This means that enough players have quit the game that they have to consolidate the servers to make the game viable to play. They are eliminating 8 servers out of 33, representing a general reduction in capacity of 24% for FFXI.
Of course, being one of the eliminated servers, this does mean that many people will have to give up names... character names, breaking of linkshells and stuff... Humans hate change. This is definitely a big change. We'll have to see what is left of Hades and the people who play with me to determine how much incentive there is to continue. May have people leaving the server, or simply quitting the game due to technical reasons. Losing your long-held name would be a significant one.
And... even if people stay around, with the server merge, this simply means that everything will get more crowded. I still haven't had a single day where I can go to a popular exp camp and see it empty even on the so-called "empty" Hades, and we've had many conflicts on Limbus scheduling in the past. Even doing MMM & Nyzul is difficult even though they are instanced because of the weird wait that the game imposes when someone else enters the instance. Given how badly programmed FFXI is, this all will just get worse.
Trial of the Magians
Minor nitpick... so... a series of successive quests, repeatable, with up to 80 different features that can be added to weapons/armor... wait... after experiencing Synergy/Evolith... and seeing the FoV NM fights and THAT randomness... this reeks suspiciously of yet another grind by dangling that 0.01% performance increase.
FFXIV
Wheee... beta starts 3/11! Who's in?
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