Other MMOs and their issues

(Lots of posts recently! If you haven't checked in a while, go back and read the recent guest posts by Ark & Caoimhe! They're quite informative!)

I've bounced around a few MMOs over the last two years. As you can see, none of them have really managed to hold my interest. Hopefully FFXIV can do so, but we'll have to see. Here are some of the MMOs I've tried out, what I liked about them, and why I eventually quit.

Star Wars: The Old Republic
This was the first MMO after FFXI that actually looked like fun. Quite a lot of people from FFXI played SWTOR, including Fuji, Val, Ark, Ghiren and Rooks.  Done by BioWare (famous for the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series), it had a large amount of voice acting, decision wheels, and of course, a long extended storyline. Actually, 8 long extended storylines covering the 8 different main character types.

The Bounty Hunter with her companions at the end of the story. (Last time I posted I only had a trooper character. I created and finished a Bounty Hunter with Ghiren earlier this year)

Gameplay wise, this is a classic MMO with the trinity (tank, healer, DPS) with hotkeys and a global cooldown, similar to FFXIV. There is also a companion system which lets you have a NPC come help you fight, or heal you, similar to the chocobo companion of FFXIV, but a little more detailed in the equipment and orders you can give to them. There's also a relationship storyline with the various companions and you can marry one of them. Gay and lesbian marriage was added in a later patch, though I haven't checked that out yet!

Whee, romance!

Content wise, there was quite a bit. Space battles, the classic questing system, dungeons (called flashpoints), and finally, endgame operations. The last is considered the endgame activity with 8 or 16 people needing to go through a number of fights and boss fights.

Star Wars! See? Stars? And they're fighting!

Some things that stood out about SWTOR:

• The storylines were generally pretty good and interconnected. They basically created a ton of content for you to go experience. To get the full SWTOR experience, you'd have to finish 8 different alts. Each character takes between 1-2 months of casual gameplay to finish the story.
• Unfortunately, the filler quest content is the same for each character to create, so while you might create a Smuggler and a Jedi Knight, other than the individual class quests, all the rest of the quest experience is the same. 
• Crafting was very easy. All you had to do is select what you wanted to craft, then your companions would go craft it for you. You can even set them to go gather materials for you if you have the credits for it. The only thing is that as you go up in levels, it will take a longer time to complete. Some of the crafting missions took ~2 hours to finish.
• PvP was generally fun. There are 8v8 arenas with different objectives, like "Huttball", a football-like game where you can shoot up other players, or a capture 3 flags type game. The PvP and PvE gear are clearly separated so you'd have to earn your way through either one.

Fooling around and dancing before starting an operation. Are those lightsabers safe to be waving around like that?

The biggest problem with SWTOR is the lack of endgame content. The existing endgame content is very solidly tiered. As in, you start off doing the most basic operation, and only after you farm enough gear from that operation will you be able to do the next operation, and the next after that. If you don't have gear from the lower tier, you have no chance of completing the next tier. In theory, once you get through the first few rounds of the endgame content, you can turn on a "nightmare" mode to get the *next* tier of gear. Even though the operations themselves are initially interesting as you learn the different tricks that they throw at you, it quickly becomes tedious as you're literally doing the same thing every time your group gets together for weeks at a time. You're also locked out of doing operations for 3 days after you complete one, meaning you can only do an operation at most twice a week. Once you hit level cap, there is very little to do in terms of variety. A friend of mine still playing told me that after they raised the level cap to level 55, they went back and simply slapped new labels on the old operations, raising the level for those to level 55 and making you redo everything all over again.

Phantasy Star Online 2

This was an unusual MMO to try out. For starters, it's only released in Japan at this time, though a US release is supposed to becoming out in 2013. There is also a PSP Vita client which lets you play on the goal. Whether SEGA will actually release it in the US or not is still up for debate as they have delayed it many times. Still, since it's a free-to-play MMO there was no harm in trying it out. Ark & I created accounts on the JP server and toyed with it for a few hours! 

Fan-created patches also make the game playable

PSO2 is a lobby/instance type of MMO, where you can interact with people in the central hub, create a party, then select an instanced mission to go do. There are cutscenes and dialog of course, but I have no idea what they were saying!

Yay squigglies!

Gameplay was highly simplified, a few buttons to press and relatively simple classes (Long range gun shooter, short range close combat, and spellcaster). I'm guessing this was to handle the PSP Vita players as well, though I remember Phantasy Star Universe as being relatively simple too.

Combat consists of lots of dust!

The "pay" store seemed to be focused on cosmetic items, event items and stuff. The whole thing definitely felt like a Phantasy Star type game and story, though the gameplay and graphics are quite dated by today's standards. The character expressions are very robotic (I mean, even the non-CAST characters looked robotic!) 

The game as a whole definitely didn't feel very big, though it might have been fun to play around with once in a while. If they ever come out with a US release, I'll probably play around with it! 

Big gun, big sword or big staff?

One interesting thing about PSO2 is that they have a benchmark program where you can design your character and then use the designed characters in the benchmark cutscene sequence that they run. The designed character can then be saved and the profile information loaded into the actual PSO2 game to use as your character. The FFXIV team has announced the same feature for a FFXIV 2.0 benchmark, with this character designer scheduled to be released between beta phase 3 & 4.

Tera Online

Tera was the next MMO that a bunch of us played after SWTOR. Many of the same suspects.. Fuji, Ark, Val... I guess it was really lolipedo and skimpy outfits online!

Bunnies! Just one of many races such as kitties, squirrels and other cute sexy animals!

Graphically, the game is quite impressive, very pretty areas, great graphics that probably rival FFXIV in terms of quality and in-game cutscenes. The leveling process is very WoW-like... run to new area, pick up quests, kill X mobs, collect Y items, turn in quests, move to next area and repeat.

Cutscene with in-game model. Also, fantasy low-level warrior-type armor that only exposes the belly

Gameplay wise, Tera was a nice refreshing change compared to the standard tab-targeting type MMOs like FFXIV and SWTOR. The actions you did were in the world and whether you hit the enemy or not was almost entirely due to your own skill. Dodging and avoiding big enemy moves is a big part of gameplay, and if you want a challenge, there are open world "big-ass monsters" (yes, that's what they are officially called) where you can go up against for a challenge. Easy to fight against when you're in a party, but they can be taken down solo by a skilled player.

Highly configurable UI. You can do *some* of this in FFXIV as well with the chat boxes that can be broken out into different places

The control scheme is also quite interesting and in many ways, similar to FFXIV. You have the standard keyboard 1-= hotkeys that you can use, but if you use a controller, you can also simply use the four face buttons on your controller to trigger actions. You can also use the triggers to access even more buttons, making it very much like FFXIV. The action-oriented gameplay made this controller-type play very fun, like playing an action game on a console. One thing I really liked in Tera was that combos can always be done by pressing the same key (spacebar, or X on a controller). Unlike on FFXIV where you have to press different buttons to pull off combos.

Did I mention the skimpy outfits?

When it came to endgame, this is where Tera showed its Korean roots. The basic endgame sequence was to just go grind... grind grind grind... repeat the dungeon multiple times to get weapons, use the same weapon to upgrade your weapon. You can upgrade the weapon by sacrificing weapons and expensive catalysts for a probability of increasing the quality. Try to upgrade the weapon to a +9 by farming weapons and money, or repeating daily events... erm... daily to get points to get more gear. There is a "Nexus" event for people at level cap that happen at specific times of the day. Virtually everyone at endgame level would go to these places and fight enemies to get points to get gear. Of course, this lead to huge amounts of lag and graphical glitches. For a game that ran smoothly in all other places, you'd drop down to around 5 frames per second.

Whee... people as far as the eye can see.

The dungeons are a decent amount of fun the first couple of times through, and many have interesting mechanics. For example, in the screenshot below, at some point during a boss fight you have to assign one person to go to a cannon and shoot the boss to prevent it from launching a special move. 

If I miss, you all die!

Overall, the game was a decent amount of fun. If not for the randomness of the endgame upgrades, it might have made it for a long-term game. The problem was that there was only a limited amount of endgame activities to do, and they were extremely repetitive with very little advancement. The Korean grind was too much for me.

Still... Tera did have a lot of vanity items too, and fanservice!

Glowy high level weapons, plus a halo, bikini and glasses!

Guild Wars 2

GW2 made for an interesting change of pace. Unlike most other MMOs, the concept of the tank-healer-DPS "holy trinity" was not used in GW2, but instead every job was a hybrid job, capable of doing a variety of roles. This also created lots of different types of gameplay. I played a Mesmer, basically an illusionist that can multiply her damage with extra clones, or fool enemies (and players) with illusions. 

Three Ascys attacking one mob!

You could also change what attacks and abilities you had available by switching the active weapon you were using. You could do this in the middle of battle too, giving quite a few different options for poking things. For the basic leveling, they did a modified version of the WoW-questing model. Instead of having to pick up quests, whenever you entered a new area, you would get the quests automatically with the objectives popping up for you. There were also dynamic events that occur either on timers, or can be activated when someone talks to a NPC, almost exactly like the FATE events of FFXIV. There are also instanced dungeons for group play, or for advancing the storyline, just like FFXIV.

Yay, I'm like... 4 people!

One fun aspect of gameplay was the "realm vs. realm" where different servers would fight against each other in a grand battle royale across a huge map. This included siege weapons, defending and taking castles, and coordinating a ton of people. Unlike Tera, there was little-to-no lag or performance problems during these big events.

To mix up gameplay, there were also various environmental weapons you could use... siege weapons, battle armor, random weapons lying around, so if you wanted to do something different instead of your usual class, you could.

What's a gun doing in a fantasy world... oh well, pew pew!

Graphically, the game isn't as good as Tera, at least in my opinion. The engine seemed simpler and the character models are less detailed, but it does allow for a variety of environments and armors. Much of the story is told through these cutscenes which have a NPC across from your character, like an old-style RPG...

Yes, I'm having trouble breathing in this outfit! Thanks for asking!

Like Tera, there is a fair amount of fan service in this game... Lots of revealing outfits, and even the beginning outfits show a lot of skin. I guess that's the trend for many of these MMOs. At least FFXIV isn't like that!

As a Mesmer, I'm supposed to... mesmerize people?

One thing that stood out for GW2 was the equipment dyeing system. Unlike other MMOs, you could change the color of your gear in different places. Up to three different choices of color could be made in your gear, changing things like the trim or colors of the design. It made it so that everyone in the world had a different look.

Whee... I'm a magical girl!

Overall, the game was a lot of fun to go from level 1-80. The real problem came at the end. Well, there were two main problems. The first was that the final, FINAL dungeon was bugged. As in... you could not access it... At all... due to bugged quest chains leading to it. As you can imagine, not being able to finish the final dungeon in the game due to bugs is very annoying, especially after spending time to set up a group and fighting our way to the entrance.

The other is the highly annoying jump quests which require you to jump around like Mario would to reach certain areas to complete quests. These are present not only as one-shot things, but daily quests, and special events. I don't like this sort of game to begin with, and having to do it online is... well... it frustrated me.

Big event mob. I'd rather fight than jump all over them :(

Neverwinter

Neverwinter has the distinction of being the first (and hopefully only) MMO I've played where I felt like I've finished all the content the game has to offer before it was officially released. As a free-to-play MMO, Neverwinter had nearly two full months of open beta where you could play all content, from level 1 to level cap. Ark & I finished everything in... maybe 3 weeks of casual play.

I'm a generic looking rogue that shows off my belly... hmm... another MMO outfit standard

Gameplay is nothing special, standard holy trinity, quest hubs where you click through, pick up quests, run around, turn them in and move on. You can only set a small number of abilities to use in combat (I think 6?) so you have to pick & choose what you want to do. Sadly, for my class, at around level 8 I found a combination that worked really well and used it all the way to level cap.

Fighting a generic dragon...

Neverwinter had a unique capability of having player created dungeons that you could play. While some people put together somewhat interesting storylines, you were still limited by what the engine could do, limiting most of the stories to blobs and blobs of text. Of course, when you let players have access to tools, people quickly figured out that they could simply make exp dungeons where you can attack or instantly kill tons of mobs without a way for them to fight back. Many many wizards went from level 1 to cap in a couple of hours from this system. There were also many other bugs in the game, allowing for exploits which eventually lead to a server rollback. Definitely a game to avoid!

Conclusion

That's a tour of most of the MMOs I've been through since stopping FFXI about 2 years ago! None of them held my interest for very long for various reasons. I think the longest was SWTOR for 4 months before losing interest there. Hopefully FFXIV will break this pattern! I'm hoping that the good system of having a single character to do everything instead of needing to create alts will be as addictive as it was in FFXI! 

To close, here's a pic of Limsa Lominsa from the FFXIV 1.0 Alpha!

(P.S.: For FFXIV beta phase 4 and release, we will be on the Hyperion legacy server. If you have a 1.0 character you'd like to play with us, please remember the deadline to apply for world transfers is July 15! New players should be able to create characters straight on Hyperion. It's currently a medium population server)

Long time no post, been busy

It's been a long time since my last post... I'm not sure anyone still reads this, but here goes :P

I've been pretty busy for the last few months with a lot of personal/work stuff. I've changed jobs, bought a house, did a lot of traveling and more over the last few months and haven't been playing FFXI much, if at all. I've picked up the bad habit again a couple of weeks ago so... I guess I'm back into it!

Meanwhile, it looks like I've missed out on a lot of content... I think almost everyone now has an Empyrean Weapon or two and it looks like everyone has leveled almost every single job to 90! People are coming out of the woodworks with jobs I never thought they'd have leveled... (Fuuji with BLU, Mendhall with DRG and more) There's new content that I don't quite understand yet, higher merit caps and more. Add to that a new level cap of 95 with today's update and even newer content... well, I guess I'm pretty far behind.

Personally, I really don't know how people can juggle so many jobs... I've pretty much given up on most of my jobs as it takes too much organization to gear them up properly, update all the macros and... "macros". Plus all that gear was overwhelming in terms of space, so I've pretty much put most of my jobs into the new (old?) Porter Moogles and focused only on three jobs. The three jobs are DNC, SCH and... THF! Well, THF was cheating since it overlapped so much with DNC anyway. For everything else... well, let's face it, I'm pretty badly equipped in DRG, COR, BLU & WHM, and don't even have all the spells for BLU or WHM. My PLD is really out of date(though it's decent for level 75!) and unlike most people in the linkshell, I still don't have most of the Empyrean Armor for my other jobs. There are other people out there who can do the job better!

So anyway, since I've been back I've been trying to play catch up... I've been working on the Twashtar trials and made surprisingly fast progress through the NM trials. Thanks to Kelhor(Rooks) who helped me through the evil Black Triple Stars trial! I also ran into a ton of people camping NMs... I guess Empyrean Weapons are now farmed easily? /shrug. I also lucked our on Saturday with a group doing the VNMs and we managed to hammer all our requirements out in an extended morning/afternoon play session. I'm up to the item collection section now and getting discouraged from the huge requirements and... well, inability to really progress. I guess everyone has a supermule these days :(

Meanwhile, I've also started taking THF seriously and am trying to gear it up properly... which mainly consisted of making sure I got the Raider's Poulaines +2 so that I could have the max possible treasure hunter stat. I lucked out with the very last dynamis Xarcabard run and got a pair of Assassin's Armlets before we gave that event up for good!. Well, big thanks to Fuuji & Vanh as they helped me finish off the seals for the feet as well as the +2 items, so now my THF is actually ungimped and fully usable (who cares about the other gear or doing damage! TH, right?)

So... ya, that kinda catches things up to the world of FFXI.

Next up: A few completely random pic from a Walk of Echos run we did for fun.

Only one mob, somehow we managed to win after lots of kiting and I somehow got first place even though I was on DNC and running all over the place. Weird event... not sure if we did any more of it, but I liked it!

Oh ya... I guess this is old news but I finished my DNC +2 armor some time ago xD

Leave a comment if you still read this! Otherwise... this might be the last post!

Long time no post

Hmm... does anyone still read this? Hello? Hello?

Well, just for those of you who still do read this... I figure I owe an explanation of what is going on.

No, I haven't been been caught up playing FFXIV... in fact, if I were playing that more, I would probably have more posts showing off the world (it's very pretty!) FFXIV is as bad as the reviews out there say it is. I haven't played it in over two weeks at this point. I think I have until the end of November before the initial "free trial" ends, at which time I'll most likely shut off my account.

Instead, I've been playing more FFXI, ironically... The Abyssea atmas have finally got me started on doing the nation quests, getting rank 10 Bastok, working on Windy right now and I hope to finish Sandy by the end of the month. I've also been doing a LOT more in FFXI then I had planned, partly because of the way Abyssea is structured where the longer you stay in, the higher the rewards and... well, wanting to beat the silly time stones things.

I've gotten a lot of good gear from Abyssea and stuff so far... including the Pluviale, lots of seals for DNC, SCH, and even completing my DNC "AF3" set (though I still need two more feet seals). Big thanks to DO and everyone else who stayed after exp last Sunday to farm these. I know that DO was capped merits like me and was just there to try to get drops.

So... now for the good... or bad news, depending on how you look at it. I just accepted a new job at a very fast-paced company, so... it'll take me a few months to build things up to the point where I can automate my job. Which means... no more weekday events before 7:30pm for the most part. Or just assume I'll be late. This is pretty much the same schedule as when I was in grad school!

Which should be fine since FFXI is dying, right? ;)

Lack of updates - More of a pattern

It has been just over 3 weeks since my last blog post... I'm still here, though feeling a general lack of interest in XI. The lack of updates isn't limited to just me either. The few XI blogs I follow are also down to almost no activity, including GM Dave, Talint's blog and of course, Kanican.

This is... despite the new content added so far, announcements of the next level cap increase, new armor and everything new that we're doing. It's not that we aren't doing new stuff... we actually are doing a lot of new things now (VNMs, Abyssea missions/NMs, even MMMs are now part of the regular stuff.

It's just... it's not really that exciting to blog about.

I guess a big part of it is my general feeling that everything happening in FFXI is transitionary. We've been promised a level 99 cap, and the level cap is increasing at (now) regular intervals of barely enough to get your jobs and subjobs up to the next cap. The level cap increase also means that things that we struggle with now will be a cakewalk in a few months.

It also means that nearly everything we are currently working toward will be obsolete shortly. The most obvious example would be how the new Abyssea Cruor armors completely obsoleted all the ZNM and Nyzul gear, and is obtainable at a fraction of the effort. It really reduces the incentive and reason to go after get and do events since you know that at level 99, there will be some other piece of gear to replace whatever you're currently working on.

Finally, the one thing that might not be transitionary is the Trial of the Magian weapons, or Empyrean weapons. However, there are two major things working against this.
1. SE continually revises the requirements of this trial... and revises it downwards, meaning if you just wait a little, you won't have to put as much effort/time into it
2. The trials become easier as you go up in level

Last Wednesday CTR fought Kukulkan, one of the Abyssea popped NMs that is for the Abyssea mission line. This mob drops a fang that is a requirement for the staff Empyrean weapon. To upgrade the weapon, you need 50 of these in total. The mob can drop between 1-2 fangs. It took our full alliance (really closer to 24 people) 3 weeks to farm and pop this mob 3 times, in which a total of 4 fangs dropped. Furthermore, this wasn't exactly an easy fight. Each pop took about 30 minutes to complete with quite a few deaths and complete concentration from the tanking PLD/NINs and their support crew to avoid wiping.

Granted, we only spent 2 hours per week doing this. It would be, in theory, possible to coordinate an alliance to focus on gathering items and popping this mob to farm fangs. At a rate of 4 fangs / 6 hours, you'd need 18 people to spend in total, 75 hours working on this just to gather the 50 required to upgrade one weapon. And... keep in mind that this is only one stage in god knows how many stages. The level 80 weapon would probably go on further all the way to 99, if SE's marketing is truthful.

Wait another week, then another few months, and possibly in another year, two people could probably duo these mobs on their level 99 jobs. Of course, by then SE probably has some other mob that will need 50 drops from some super-mob that requires 18 people to kill and 4 weeks to farm one pop set if you're lucky. (Supreme Virtue? Omega Warden?)

So, there really is no point in working seriously on Empyrean weapons at this time. Just wait a bit, and the requirements will drop, you'll get stronger, and who knows, maybe SE will offer to sell it to you for purchasing another $50 trinket (or attach it to a FFXIV subscription! Have access to a relic as long as you have an active XIV character!)

On FFXIV
Another big reason behind the transitionary feeling of FFXI would be the imminent launch of FFXIV. Who knows how many people in CTR are planning on quitting XI to go there? Would we be able to field people for upcoming XI events? Is the item that you help someone get going to go completely to waste as they quit XI to go to XIV?

Too many changes at one time is just leading to me not really getting into XI enough to blog about it... Other games beckon for now.

(Side note, my prediction of FFXIV is that it will launch buggy but strong, then rapidly lose people over a 6-18 month period until the SE directors come out and blame the XIV failure on their catering to the stupid western audiences)

DRG relic completed, Abyssea exp, job stuffs, FFXIV

I guess Dynamis probabilities worked in my favor last week!

6/6 on DRG relic armor. That's the 5th complete set of relic so far with BMO/CTR and more importantly, +4 inventory spaces! Currently missing the PLD body and back pieces for my last job. I'm also missing only a couple of pieces for WHM, BST & PUP, all jobs that I would have considered leveling if not for the level cap increase.

I'm not too hopeful of being able to complete the PLD set given the stupidly low drop rates of these items, especially considering that we've been going after these items in every Dynamis for as long as I can remember.  I'm also not very hopeful of completing my DNC relic +1 pieces. Funny thing is that I'm only missing the relic -1 feet & hands which are not the super-rare Tav pieces.

In any case, Dynamis seems to be wrapping up as an event. With almost everyone at level 80 now, the event itself is becoming a joke at how quickly we plow through the mobs. Unfortunately the drop rate for the things we need is also a joke since we're barely getting any drops at all now (yes, with TH4) and rarely anything people actually want. With new events and new items popping up now with Abyssea and Walk of Echos, I wouldn't be surprised if interest in Dynamis started to taper off. Unfortunately, there are still lots of items in Dynamis that have attributes that can only be obtained via Dynamis. Many of the newer jobs like SCH & COR for example, have job-specific buffs that can only be found on relic armor.

Abyssea exp
Nice part about Abyssea exp is how quickly you can finish a job... The bad part is that it really requires a dedicated amount of time to do.

This past Saturday, we did yet another Abyssea exp alliance... 9am - 3pm Pacific time. I managed to take SCH from 17k into 75 to capped at 80 plus two merits in that time. This was the 3rd job I took to 80 (or near 80) using Abyssea, and 2nd last job that I have to complete. My COR is my last sub-80 job at level 77 and will likely be completed next weekend during another Abyssea exp session.

The draining part about Abyssea is simply the time it takes to do. Even in a properly executed Abyssea exp alliance, you're still looking at spending at least the first two hours getting into a proper chaining position where you can expect chest drops and time extensions, as well as the exp rate to increase to a reasonable amount. It really makes it tiring to actually do one of these sessions, but the alternative -- spending many more days exping in various parties in different locations -- is even more painful to get a job to 80.

Still... I can't imagine doing this all over again for all 6 jobs for the next level cap increase.

Job Stuffs
Since getting more jobs to 80, my perception on my jobs has changed somewhat.

* Dancer
Still overall my favorite in terms of soloing and healing capability. The ability to do heal people outside my party has made this job even more powerful, though I am disappointed that Healing Waltz does not work. The changes to the job itself haven't been really that useful -- I rarely use Presto and Climatic Flourish is amusing, but overall not something I would really use for damage. The biggest change has really been Sekkinoki since that gives DNC/SAM a lot more damage dealing potential. DNC/NIN still wins for overall survivability and damage reduction in nearly all situations.

* Paladin
Native Phalanx and that new Divine Emblem job ability have really enhanced the ability of a PLD/NIN to tank. However, the nerfing of the RDM enmity spells has also severely crippled a PLD/RDM's ability to hold hate. PLD is no longer my #2 favorite job simply due to this, though I still like tanking in PLD/NIN situations.

* Blue Mage
BLU was my first job due to the flexibility and capability of the job, going from anywhere from heavy DD to magical nuker, debuffer or even a full-time support job. The main reason why I avoided playing BLU was due to the support that it required in terms of Refresh. This update gave the spell Battery Charge, a 4MP/tick Refresh that lasts for 150 seconds. Yes, that is higher compared to the RDM Refresh spell, and pretty much means that I almost never run out of MP on BLU anymore.

BLU also got some other interesting spells, including a new full-strength Haste spell that lasts almost twice as long as the normal Haste spell, a new healing spell that also increases attack & magical attack, a regen spell and some more magical nuking spells. Furthermore, BLU/RDM gains the ability to Convert, meaning that a BLU could effectively go on forever. However, I haven't dared to actually use BLU/RDM for anything yet given the amount of hate BLU already pulls simply from doing damage and casting healing spells

Since the update, I've actually been pumping my merits into BLU. Just one more upgrade to Assimilation, then I can move on to completing Enchainment, Chain Affinity Recast and Physical Potency. BLU may end up being the 2nd job I actually finish meriting!

* Dragoon, Scholar
Both of these jobs are now 80. Neither has really gained much from the update. The most I can say is that DRG/SAM can now WS a little more often, and SCH/RDM can now Convert and never run out of MP.

FFXIV
The Final Fantasy XIV beta has started up, and I popped in for a quick look. Pretty much nothing has changed. It's still just as laggy and slow as before. It's also just as pretty as before, graphics looking like they are taken out of a CG movie. However, gameplay is pretty horrible and boring still, with no direction for plot, no guidance and... well, considering this is the second time I played through the opening sequence and it *still* took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get out of the very beginning area... (it's not obvious and there's a gate preventing you from running directly out) You should see the shouts of people asking basic things like how to fight or form parties! (actually, how do you form parties? I still don't know how to properly do this)

Except for the opening cutscene, there really hasn't been any real NPC dialog, with everyone I talk to so far giving very generic, forgettable statements. It's as though someone turned off the storytelling element that SE used to be good at? Also, I thought that SE added a "new player" tutorial/set of quests in FFXI recently... years after the game launched... You'd think that they would be applying the lessons they learnt to their new game? I haven't seen anything resembling a tutorial or anything to teach you how to do anything in XIV. Keep in mind that this game is supposed to launch in less than 2 months.

Still.. it's amusing to see hundreds of people camping rats like NMs :)

A tale of 3 betas

In a somewhat strange scenario, I find myself having access to three game betas: Final Fantasy XIV, Starcraft II and Halo: Reach. Very strange to have three very different experiences from well established publishers.

FFXIV
Basically unplayable. To participate in this beta, you have to plan your life around their hours. The game itself is... well, even staying connected at all was a challenge, much less dealing with lag or actually playing the game. They've since improved, but FFXIV definitely earns its label of being alpha-quality.

The sad part is that alpha code is really not supposed to be tested by the public. They may call it a "closed alpha/beta" but it is still going out to people in general, and not restricted to just the developer and internal QA. I think they really should have fixed the glaring issues (especially in performance) before releasing this to the public.

My initial impressions have pretty much turned me away from bothering with this game. FFXIV has issues that internal QA should have caught much before it goes out to public. While they are making strides in improving it, I think I'll wait for their beta phase to begin before touching this again. Maybe by then they won't expect you to plan your life around their schedule!

Oh, regarding gameplay... well, let's just say I agree fully with the many articles that are out saying how boring XIV is... for example: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-05-14/final_fantasy_xiv_criticized_for_too_dull_combats_in_japan,1.shtml

Starcraft II
I understand that this beta has been going on for a while now? Seems like they are just adjusting unit balance and... well, so far gameplay has been flawless and actually fun! They do not have a tutorial, but it was fairly easy to jump right into things.

I think at this point, this feels more like... well... release the game already so we can play with everything else in the game! Maybe they should stop calling it "beta" and call it" Multiplayer trial"? Beta ends in 2 weeks, but supposedly they're going to open it up again after that. With a scheduled release date in July, this definitely felt like a beta.

Halo: Reach
This is a weird one... basically everyone who purchased Halo: ODST can participate in the Halo: Reach beta... However, the beta is only run for... 2 weeks? It really doesn't sound like they were looking to find show stopping issues or to do much tweaking in the game. It feels more like a way to get people to buy ODST, and as a teaser instead of actually a beta.

The short timeline for the beta meant to me that... well, I just never bothered with loading it up even though I had access to it.

Car shopping round #10293

As many of you know, I ran into some car problems on Monday which is prompting another round of me trying to figure out which car I want to get next.

This time, however, I'm pretty low on ideas. Nothing out there seems to suit me or my budget so I'm opening it up to people in general to suggest something that I might have missed

Criteria:

• At most $30k out the door. I might go as high as $35k, but there would have to be a good reason for the premium. I just don't like the idea of having something so expensive out there that any idiot in a Prius can ruin by running into it!
• Something classy, maybe a bit of luxury
• Not one of those "fresh college grad" cars like the Honda Civic, Fit, or VW Golf
• Fun on the road -- don't suggest SUVs, trucks or minivans :P
• No BMWs -- I've seen too many fall apart at year 3 once the factory warranty expires
• I guess preferably a coupe, though these days I'm open to more
• Also preferably new

Mmm... I think that's it for criteria... I've been considering a weird variety of cars, anything from the Audi A3 to the Nissan 370Z. I just can't narrow it down yet :(

Any ideas/suggestions?

Still here

Still here... still in XI... though not as often these days.

Still want to:
- Do some WotG missions
(maybe even do some... dare I say it... rank missions?)
- Finish off events and organize some VNM stuff

But... right now I'm mainly occupied with finding a new hobby, one that doesn't need much prep time or long drives out to go somewhere, and doesn't need organizing many people to go do... any suggestions? xD

Yes! Yahtzee did it!

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

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

    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.

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:

• 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!)

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 :)

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?

Ascule's most recent adventure

http://www.dayswithmyfather.com

PC gaming - Necessary still?

Mmmm... due to uncontrollable reasons, exp isn't coming this week, so I can't post pics of my latest full outfit because I'm too low to wear it all :P

Instead, here's a completely non-FFXI post!

I've been playing Mass Effect 2 for the last few days, working my way through the game. Previous to this, I was playing Dragon Age. Both of these games are available for the PC, and the Xbox 360, but I picked up the 360 version mainly because I didn't want some crazy installer clogging up my XP partition on my Macbook Pro (since Apple computers are highly unreliable).

I was thinking about putting together a gaming computer this year to get off this annoying Mac, as well as to take advantage of advances in hardware. Ironically, I'm having second thoughts about this right now since I can't really name that many games that are coming out for the PC only that would be that interesting...

Off the top of my head, all I have are:

- Starcraft 2

- Next big MMO - Star Wars: The Old Republic, or... something else.

About the only game I've had a slight inclination to try out on the PC at this time is the new Star Trek MMO. However, I'm not certain that spending $1-2k on a gaming setup is really worth it with most multi-platform games also coming to the PS3 or 360. The added hassle of putting together a computer and debugging it does not really appeal to me anymore, and so far, I haven't found any PC manufacturer who sells a gaming desktop at a reasonable price.

Thoughts? Is PC gaming worth keeping up with?