Long beta weekend

Sleepy... I overdid it this weekend x.x

Played much too much, almost entirely on Marauder, finished the main scenario content for the beta and nearly finished everything in beta! At this point, the last thing remaining among content in the beta is just the final level 32-34 dungeon.

In this beta, the 1.0 or legacy character import was added and I found that I had a character on the "Hyperion" server. This server is probably going to end up as the final server as Excalibur is filling up already.

Meanwhile, here's a screenshot dump! Brain no worky for thought deep ideas.

Even legacy characters start with the same opening sequence, like it's a new game

Legacy characters get branded in their upper back

2.0 engine

Same outfit, 1.0 engine. Any graphics people who can comment on the differences?

Full set of level 20 armor the Ark crafted for me. This was actually equal to, maybe slightly better than the dungeon drop for this level.

I swear that I didn't chop off that Lalafell's head! Really!

Ifrit says hi!

A lot of boss mobs are BIG! And this is the UI layout I'm becoming used to.

Lighting makes a different in how the world feels. This scene was at night. I wonder how the mood would change if it was during the day... (Music in the open world also changes depending on the time of the day)

At a certain rank, Lalafells can can get a special mount!

This is the Seed Seer, aka the Hyur Star Sybil! (Names that are S.S., leader of the city in the trees... even the flag's colors are the same!)

Some alien looking landscapes out there

Small temple in the middle of nowhere. Feels like this might be part of a quest or story eventually, or there should be NPCs here. There are a few outposts which look like they are missing NPCs

Camp Tranquil, which isn't very tranquil as there are high level plants waiting to eat you below

Ruins of an ancient civilization?

Hi Gigas!

And Mamool Ja... maybe they went overboard with importing FFXI stuff

A floating city

Sunrise at an onsen bed & breakfast! 

Floating city during the day

Costa Del Sol!

Wide open seas, though there are invisible walls if you try to walk out to the ocean. 

Local entertainment. The purple (!) on top of her head means that talking to her can start a dynamic FATE event. In this case, an escort quest where anyone in the area can participate

Which, if you do, leads to this conclusion >.>

There's an in-game military system where you can get promoted, buy uniforms and stuff too

Dungeons start with a cutscene which gives a fast, dramatic pan through where you'll be fighting and who you'll be facing

Like this friendly lizard!

I think Archers have some of the better outfits xD

Someone's cranky!

Many classic FFXI NMs are back as boss monsters in FATEs

Hmm... a house... Wonder what's in it?

Crazy floating women!

Classic party fighting regular mobs in the dungeon. This also shows the target marking system in action

Creepy floating eye

Yes, definitely haunted

Some people complain that combat is too flashy and has too many special effects... what do you think?

Well.. at least the house has a nice garden!

Whee! Giant crabs! This also shows my personal chocobo helping me as a party member companion (usually set to heal me) Unfortunately this means I can't ride her right now!

End of beta 3 part 2

That's it for this round... I'm almost done with the content that they're releasing for this beta, having just one dungeon left. If it seems that the game is progressing fast, it is probably because in the beta, there are a few parts where you can take leveling fast-forwards to bypass a few levels. For example, once you hit level 26, you can skip directly to level 29 by talking to a NPC. Similarly, once you enroll in a grand company at level 20, you can skip all the other jobs directly to level 15 after unlocking them. This lets us experiment with different actions from other jobs, as well as increases the pool of people to help out in the level 15 dungeon sequence. (You have to do 3 dungeons as part of the main storyline). It also lets you discover a lot of interesting other action combinations, like on Marauder, I have found that Flash from Gladiator really works well, even with the small MP pool.

Anyway, that's it for this weekend's photo dump! May have some thoughts later this week about the direction, and my experiences from doing the dungeons... Let me know if there's anything you'd like me to talk about in the comments!

Can FFXIV go the distance?

One question on my mind is whether Final Fantasy XIV can hold attention the same way as FFXI. Most of us played FFXI for many, many years, in some cases, over a decade. Some people are still playing it right now! Even in 2013, over 10 years after the original release, new content is still being released. World of Warcraft also lasted a long time for people playing it. Fuji put it best when he asked the question... "Is this the game for the next decade?"

Over the last year, I've gone through tons more MMOs and did not play many for very long. Tera, Rift, Neverwinter all lasted a few weeks. Star Wars: The Old Republic, lasted the longest at around 6 months. Zurar brings up some interesting points on my last blog post about how generic the combat and quest systems are, and how there isn't any variety in gear. How does FFXIV measure up to other games?

Story
This is SE. Story, graphics and cutscenes is one area where I'm confident they will deliver. They also have the big advantage of pulling in all the references to other Final Fantasy games!

Hello scary demon-looking thing!

Even though I never really played it, I do like the references back to 1.0

Is it just me, or do these guys look like they came from FFXII?

Pretty, likable heroes!

I'd put SE's skills in this department ahead of BioWare, even if the stories may be confusing and may not make sense at first. Heads and shoulders above most other MMOs which don't really engage you, nor do they have much NPC character development. This should give a decent amount of content to keep people interested through the first few weeks at the very least. The bad news is that this content is stuff you experience only one time.

The questing/leveling experience
This would cover the first few weeks, or months of gameplay. The questing system is fairly generic... go to new area, pick up quests, go kill X mobs/fetch Y items/talk to Z NPC. Not too different from Tera, WoW or SWTOR. At some point, the quests blend together and you really just don't pay attention to dialog, just following the arrows and circles on the map. I think FFXIV's questing system has the same general feeling here. The only semi-positive is that there do not seem to be as many quests per area, so the grind isn't as obvious. Some of them might have cool cutscenes too, but those are mainly restricted to the main scenario quests.

Is that galka taunting me?

Yay Marauders!

The good news is that FFXIV has a variety of ways to level. Besides the standard questing system, repeatable levequests, grinding mobs (like old school FFXI, though I'm not sure how well this works) and the dynamic active event system (FATEs) just like Guild Wars 2 and Rift. At the appropriate levels, you can just repeat dungeons for exp and gear as well. FATEs on the other hand, is something that requires active participation of many people. If there aren't enough players in the area to do a FATE, you can't go solo it even if there are NPCs hitting the mob. It's kinda like campaign in FFXI I guess, where if you're trying to solo it, you need to be very careful. There's a time limit to FATEs as well. In the extended future, I'm not sure how effective FATEs will be.

One unique aspect of FFXIV is the legacy players. How will they be pulled in here? Especially those who have hit level cap on all available jobs? Will they simply skip the questing and dungeon stuff here? Or will they play the new Arcanist job? I'm curious how this plays out.

Combat and gameplay
I'm splitting my opinions here into two different sections as I think they are distinct from each other, yet closely related.

Combat would be the actual actions that you take during a fight -- Casting a spell, using an action, even auto-attack. For this, FFXIV has a greater variety compared to the average MMO. Positioning makes a difference, stunning a mob's move can help in combat, you can move out of the way of a gobbie bomb. I'd say this is a slight step up compared to FFXI where you really just stand and take it for the most part.

Some aspects of FFXI gameplay are still here as well. Debuff effects on the mob, as well as on your character such as poison. However, these are nowhere near as common as FFXI where people simply avoided certain mob types due to the effects they could do.

Combat itself is faster compared to FFXI, but slow compared to the fast-paced button mashing of Tera and Neverwinter. The 2.5 second "global cooldown" does make each fight appear slow compared to the action pace of Tera. I do enjoy the fast action-oriented combat of Tera where the skill of the player makes a much larger impact, especially when taking on BAMs. However, this slower pace of combat at low levels gives the game some leeway to speed things up at higher levels. For example, look at the attack speed of a Thief in FFXI when they first start out, compared to the fully equipped high level thief with lots of haste, equipment, etc.

I have to disagree with Zurar's complaints about removing elemental damage/weakness. That aspect of gameplay is merely a memory game. The way that beta.3 handles elements for the mage classes  is more interesting. Do you want to use Stone and add a gravity effect on a mob? Or Aero and put on a DoT first? How much nuking with Fire can you do before you have to switch over to Water to regen MP? At the low levels, and especially when soloing, the decision of what skills you use is pretty simple and you end up just using the same combos over and over again, but that's the same for any MMO during the leveling up/grinding phase. It's during dungeons and bigger fights where you have to make actual decisions and manage your resources.

This brings me to consider gameplay... The dungeon mechanics have changed quite a bit between beta 2 and 3, with boss fights having many more tricks to them instead of the standard MMO "tank & spank" affair. For example, in the Copperbell Mines dungeon, there's a slime boss which you have to hold and use other nearby "Bomb" type mobs to damage. You can't attack them directly. There are also decision to be made as a group, like are you going to AoE down a bunch of small mobs, or kite them, or sleep them. This provides some variety of gameplay and requires at least some communication between party members. Contrast this with Neverwinter, where the average dungeon run has absolutely no communication between players as everyone's role is obvious, and there are no variations on how to beat the boss.

I don't think we've gotten high enough to come to a conclusion about gameplay yet. It wasn't till level 18 that I started to see other possible combinations of my moves in Marauder (and Archer) and I had to make decisions on whether I wanted to do more damage and get more enmity right now, or set myself up to do more damage over the fight. Remember, leveling up and getting to level cap accounts for only a small portion of the game as a MMO.

Loot & endgame
This is the aspect which I think will determine the long-term staying power of FFXIV.

First, during the leveling process, I'd expect gear to be fairly uniform -- quest rewards, dungeon drops, some crafting, etc. would create different types of gear, but I don't expect people would put too much effort during the actual leveling process to come up with unique gear. I'd expect most of the attention here would be placed at the endgame process.

SE has already done this for FFXIV during the 1.0 content. Primal fight weapons all look flashy and are interesting. As far as I can tell from youtube videos, there are also a few different types of weapons out there.

Now the interesting part would be the endgame activities and rewards. FFXI was an expert at the "sidegrade" type of loot drop. For the bulk of FFXI's life, you could start participating in any endgame event as soon as you hit level cap. You'd get some rewards, and when a new activity was released, you might want to get the new rewards which may enhance some specific scenarios. You ended up with lots of different situational gear.

Contrast this with a regular progression-type MMO. For most MMOs, you have various tiers of endgame activity you have to go through. In SWTOR, WoW, Neverwinter, Tera, etc. you have to grind and farm the first tier of dungeons, get enough gear there before you can even participate in the next tier. This ends up being extremely grindy and boring -- there was no variety in the activities you could do. It also really split the community up... The amount of time you had to play would determine how quickly you progressed through the tiers.

With the 2.0 relaunch, FFXIV is again coming from a unique position. Unlike other MMOs, they probably had various endgame activities from 1.0 that could be adapted to 2.0. They also have the experience from FFXI and time to develop different activities, unlike SWTOR which had to rush to add activities on before people got bored of the game and quit.

Can FFXIV pull off a good endgame? I don't know the answer to this... We'll have to see!

Final thoughts
Sooooo... erm... I found out that the 2.1 patch will be adding a barber, soooo... I'll be able to change my hairstyle! The poll on the right is still interesting though! Two weeks of voting left!.

And... I do like this lodestone feature where you can see all the characters and blog and stuff... Is anyone planning on using it? xD My Midgardsomr beta 3 character is up at http://na.beta.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/1587861/

Ascy: A Hyur Reborn

Hello!

Anyone out there?

I'm guessing not... but if you do see this and you haven't talked to me in a while... leave a comment and say hi!

In the 1 1/2 years since my last post, I've gone through a circuit of waaaaaaaaay too many MMOs! Star Wars: The Old Republic, Tera, Phantasy Star Online 2, Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, The Secret World, Vindictus... None of them have held my interest for very long for one reason or another, some of which embarrassingly so -- Ark & I had hit max level and finished all the Neverwinter content before the game was actually released! I might do a post on my experiences in each of the other MMOs if people are interested. I was considering reactivatin Final Fantasy XI for the new Seekers of Adoulin content until the Final Fantasy XIV 2.0: A Realm Reborn testing started up!

I've been playing this off and on since the alpha last December. Through the different phases, I've tried out healing as a Conjurer, DDing a an Archer, and tanking as both a Gladiator and Marauder. Now that the NDA is lifted, I figure I'd revive this blog and put some of my impressions out there for people, especially those former FFXI players who might be considering playing XIV.

First, the legal stuff. All appropriate images are:

 All company, product, system names and/or company logos and marks are the
registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners. 

 Copyright (C) 2010 - 2013 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved. 

I find it slightly ironic that the last time I blogged about FFXIV it was during the 1.0 alpha. Since this the game is still not released, and it has changed significantly between phases, I'll just talk about the latest beta. In this beta, I had original chosen to be Marauder, the axe wielder which eventually develops to become Warrior. I had originally figured on trying out a close-ranged DD for a different experience, but I quickly found out that not only is Marauder an effective off-tank, but also quite good at being a main tank!

Graphics & Sound
FFXIV is still one of the prettiest games I've ever seen. The good news is that unlike 1.0, you don't need a computer that is out of this world to play it! Framerates are smooth, the environment and rendering looks sharp and almost realistic.

(Mostly) Starting gear, just out of town

The UI is adjustable so you can edit it, move things around. The environment chases constantly too, with an accelerated day/night cycle, weather effects, etc. all things you'd expect from FFXI. Fighting effects are very flashy, with appropriate noises.

Yay lens flares! Just like J.J. Abrams

The sound effects are also impressive. Besides the usual stuff like footsteps changing depending on your armor and what you're stepping on, the environmental sounds change depend on where you are and what's around you. When I first logged on, the opening town was relatively quiet since there weren't many players around. Later, there was a crowd in the adventurer's guild and it sounded like a lot of noise. If you enter a cave, you'll hear the sound of your footsteps changing, adding an echo. The same thing happens for any actions you take.

Combat
Some people call this the "old style" MMO combat style, involving 2.5 second "global cooldowns" between items, tabbed targeting and hotkeys. They'd be correct here. The actual combat itself isn't anything special, with the usual actions like a few damage moves, stun moves, healing, raises, etc. The combat is faster compared to FFXI, but anyone from a classic MMO like WoW would feel right at home.

TP, HP, MP all regenerate at a decent speed and when you're in the open world, you have virtually no downtime. /heal is a thing of the past. The good news is that claiming mobs is also a thing of the past! If someone else is fighting a mob you need credit for a quest, go join in! If someone is near death, go help kill the mob too! Even more amazing is that they actually have aggro lines showing you not only who has the mob's attention, but which mobs will link if you attack a mob! There are even hate meters so you can see how much leeway you have to do damage compared to the tank.

Not the best shot, but you can see the red circle around the mob's feet pointing to who is under attack. The white bar next to the party member's name on the upper left shows the amount of hate. Also, see: "The Hole" and "Key to the Hole"

What else... they have a "combo" system which gives your attacks special effect or more potency if you chain two skills together. I guess a kind of self-skillchain, but you're doing this constantly. You can see there's a dash outline on the box of one of my skills. This means that I just did an ability that chains to this one and that if I use it, I'll get more damage compared to normal. There are also limit-breaks, but they are based on parties. I still haven't figured out how to trigger a limit break yet!

Overall, the combat system leads to something that feels fast paced compared to FFXI, but not as fast as modern action MMOs like Tera or Neverwinter. The good news is that it at least gives you some time to actually type and talk, unlike the other games where if you aren't moving, you'll be killed.

Controls
Since the game is being released for both the PC and PS3, the game has gamepad support. I've always played FFXI with a gamepad, though the method of hitting a button, then moving the cursor around and finally selecting something seemed slow. I've had many cases when I decide to simply abandon the controller and type commands directly (like '/ma "Cure IV" Fuuji') as it would be faster than scrolling and finding the macro. I did like how the buttons can be used to select items and interact with everything in the world.

I also liked Tera's method of using the face buttons to perform commands. For example, pressing X uses one skill, Y another. This made combat feel more real-time and interactive. You didn't have to look at the menu bar to see which action you were choosing and could do it entirely by feel.

FFXIV keeps the way that FFXI interacts with the world, but manages to add the hotkey-like buttons by using the shoulder buttons as modifiers. You can use the D-pad and buttons to interact with the world, but if you want to use a skill, you hold one of the shoulder buttons and press a face button. For example, LT+Y causes you to sprint, and you can also use the D-pad as buttons. This gives a default of 16 actions you can use (LT and RT are two different macro 'pallets', while the 4 buttons and 4 directions on the D-pad are individual actions you can take. FFXIV calls this the "cross-bar". You can also switch between 8 different cross-bar configurations, giving a theoretical 128 possible customizable actions you can take from just a controller

The classic MMO hotkey method (keys 1-=) can also be used. What's interesting is that you can actually use both at the same time, and they don't have to map to the same actions.

Busy picture, but look at the cross-bar just above my HP in the bottom middle part of the screen, and the hotbar just above it.

I found this actually worked quite well. I could have the rarely used things on my keyboard, playing with the controller just above the keyboard and quickly tap down on them when needed. In this picture, I have my potions and ether on the right side, and the "target marking" actions on the left, letting me very quickly mark the order which my party should attack mobs without sacrificing actions on my gamepad.

Gameplay

At first glance, gameplay seems to be the standard MMO stuff... pick up quest, kill mobs/escort npc/fetch items, turn in quest, go to new area and repeat. It's what WoW did for ages and is fairly standard for MMOs. Unlike other MMOs, FFXIV lets you have multiple classes/jobs on the same character, so you need other ways to exp. The semi-good news is for at least levels 1-15, there are 3 different countries where you can do 3 different sets of quests, so at least 3 classes can go through this manner. I think there is a split of quests after level 25 as well, but haven't confirmed.

There are also a few other ways to get exp:

• Hunting logs -- For the OCD of us, each class has a log which tracks the mobs you've killed. You can get exp just from killing different mobs in different places in the world
• "Guildleves" -- Essentially repeatable quests. You get 3 leve allowances every 12 hours, and the quests themselves give exp, gil and in some cases, items or gear. This would make it easy to grind exp solo. You can have up to 100 allowances, so if you simply don't do leves for two weeks, you'll be capped and can go on a levequest grind
• FATEs -- Real-time dynamic events. These pop up on the world map. Essentially mini-events that last a few minutes at a time, you can get quite a bit of exp from dropping in with a large crowd and smashing mobs (or picking oranges, or killing a big boss). It's very similar to Rift or Guild Wars 2
• Dungeons -- These are repeatable, give decent exp and gear. I think I was averaging just under 1 level per run through a dungeon, and they didn't take very long to do (~1 hour if you don't screw up). Dungeons are also enjoyable with interesting boss fight mechanics, not the simple tank & spank that so many other games use. You actually have to talk to your party members! 
• Exp chains! -- This concept from FFXI is still alive! Kill an equal level mob or higher in a certain time and you'll get a bonus of up to 50%. What's better is that they actually *tell* you how much bonus you're getting, what chain number you're on and how much time you have before the timer runs out. Self-chaining to 5 can be done for most classes Supposedly you get a bonus for partying and killing, but I haven't tried the sustained chain in a party concept before.

Another successful dungeon

Subjobs make a comeback... kinda. Unlike FFXI, you get to pick and choose specific abilities from the jobs you've leveled. For example, as a Marauder, I could choose to either enhance my damage with another ability from the Archer class, add another move from Lancer to increase my parry, or even add Protect or Cure from the Conjurer class. The number of abilities you can borrow from other classes increases as you go up in level, and the ability to unlock other classes starts at level 10, though you may have to visit other cities to unlock the class you want.

Cutscenes are of course, SE standard! Some random scenes:

No, I'm not your dentist

And my axe! (Yes, subligar, the FFXI standard armor is still around!)

Yay posing!

Traveling to Ul'dah

Entertainment in Ul'dah

The little things
I've played the initial starting experiences in two of the major cities so far -- Gridania to level 28 (thanks to some level fast forwarding they had in betas), and Limsa to level 20... I thought that the experience is fairly good, and has only gotten better in the latest beta. There are still things that aren't in-game yet that will be. I might put up another blog post about the leveling experience, including how the game introduces things gradually, but funnels everyone to experience dungeons together, much like how FFXI funnels everyone to Jeuno.

However, I found that it's the little things that have impressed me the most. Besides what I said about sound earlier, they've done a lot of things that make me feel like they've learnt the lessons of FFXI, from other MMOs and are actually listening to the players.

A few of what caught my eye so far:

• Traveling around the world is very easy. No more 15 minute chocobo rides to places, teleporting between cities, or even places in a zone, can be done for relatively cheap, airship rides are instant and you don't have to wait for the airship
• Abundant storage -- Not only do you start off with a crazy amount of storage (100 inventory slots), but each armor slot has their own independent inventory section in the "armory chest". Key items and quest items also have their own area, so you essentially have 100 inventory slots for crafting items and consumables. I haven't even touched individual storage or player housing, but I don't think I'll need to juggle around my inventory
• Emotes and facial expressions -- Besides the major motions whenever you do something like a /wave, you can see your character's face changing expressions even when you do something as simple as a /joy will show your character smiling

• Questing is easy -- They basically point you to where you need to go, and clicking on the map brings up where you need to go so you can easily travel to places. They also funnel people to the initial dungeons
• If you log out/log in to the game in an inn, you'll see that your character actually climbs into bed and lays down, logging you out when you fall asleep... just like ALfheim Online.

• You can set up gear set to easily change your gear for the job. No more hunting around your mog house searching for that Serket ring which you can't find when you need to change roles! Switching to WHM is just a click away! (This may or may not be a good thing)
• You can interact with the environment in limited ways, like sit down on a bench

• Detail on the outfits, down to the underwear! Look at how the designers created something just for the mi'qote tail!

• The taru-taru's worst enemy has finally been defeated! The newer stronger brand of lalafells have conquered the counter!

Thanks to Ark for the pic! Visit his tumblr at http://eorzeark.tumblr.com/ 

Ok, that's it for now. I'll save some pics for next time... but before I go, very important question!

Hairstyle! Which is better, long or short? Vote now on the poll to the right!

Long:

or short:

They're almost the same hairstyle, except the shorter version has an extra layer of hair along the left side of the face.

Vote now!

Ascy the Commando

It's been about 1 1/2 months since I started on TOR early access. Ascy the Commando has come a long way. I'm level 50 now, and still in the middle of act 3 in the Trooper storyline. Trooping along, taking some side trips to do some flashpoints with Fuji, Gibson and Ghir

We nearly have enough people hitting level 50 at this point that we can start thinking about setting up some operations. These are 8/16/32 people adventures which take up one part of the level 50 "endgame"

Some interesting things about TOR:

• Crafting and crew skills is crazy simple. I'm already at max skill for Armstech, Cybertech, Slicing, Scavenging, Investigation, Underworld Metals and Armormech. I'm starting to work on Synthweaving and associated skills as well on various alts
• Exping, or simply going through the plot is pretty easy too. There are more than enough quests on each planet to level up through content appropriately. I've actually started to skip various portions of boring planets to move on to the next major plot area. Space battles and PvP are optional, but are alternate ways to get exp quickly.
• Grouping up, while not mandatory like FFXI used to be, still has some advantages. You'll be able to blow through content a lot quicker, have less downtime, and the way the game is set up, you'll end up with more exp (which is one of the big reasons why I'm overleveled). The down side is that you'll get less credits since that is split up among people. 

In my opinion, the most fun way to play TOR is to do so with a partner. That way, you'll get social points for doing things in a group, and still have companion points since you'll have your companion around. Social points is important as there are various tiers of a "Social" attribute that can only be earned by playing in a group.

Some tricks for playing TOR:

• Use gifts to raise your companion's affection as soon as you get them. You can spam rank 1 gifts to get their affection up to 4,000/10,000 easily, after which you can use conversation options to increase their affection further. Raising affection not only makes them do crew skills faster, but also opens up a ton of extra dialog, quests, exp and credits from just talking to them
• At this time, most of the crafting skills are fairly pointless due to the "Commendation" system. You can get level appropriate gear from just trading in rewards you get from doing quests. If you do want to craft, the skill "Biochem" appears to be the current defacto "broken" craft due to the reusable consumable items that you can craft.
• Choosing "slicing" as one of your crew skills is highly recommended. There are tons of credit boxes just lying around the world which you can pick up for extra money. Furthermore, you can send your companions out on constant slicing missions for extra money while you are out questing, supplementing your income.
• Space missions have secret hidden bonus objectives which give a significant exp & credit reward, over 2k each. Use those missiles on big capital ship bridges!
• Spend some time in playing in the warzones, even if you're lower leveled. You can start at level 10, and the warzones boost your stats so that you can take on higher level players, though you won't have all the skills that they do. Warzones and pvp give you commendations that can be traded in for decent gear sets at level 20, 40 and are used to get pvp gear at 50.

Ok! Random photo time!

Full Commando level 40 PvP gear (helmet off). Also: See big gun

Havoc squad mission briefing

Funny warzone. I'm capturing the center turret with a stealth operative looking the wrong way

Havoc squad reporting in! All members accounted for!

View from the emperor's throne room

Troopers are aggressive!