Endgame Viable

I’ve been doing a lot of Alliance Raids in Final Fantasy XIV since 4.1, so I’ve seen the loot window a whole lot lately. This is a 3000-word screed on everything that’s wrong with the UI in this window. This is probably not unique to FFXIV, by the way. But it’s the one I personally see most often. First let’s go over how it works in case you haven’t experienced it. At the end of the raid or dungeon or whatever, after defeating the Big Bad, someone finds and clicks on the shiny loot chest (an unnecessary and antiquated step in the process, but let’s just go with it). A window then pops up on everyone’s screen that shows what’s in the chest. You then have an opportunity to choose whether to “roll” on each piece of loot in chest. The game then randomly selects a “winner” for each piece. It’s pretty standard for an MMORPG, though I might argue again that it’s a bit of an antiquated system. (3106 words.)

The-guy-that-Nathan-Fillion-voices from the open beta. Soon you will probably see a lot of talk about the launch of Destiny 2 on the PC. I’m trying to be more discerning with my game purchases these days, so I have no plans to pay full price for an over-hyped, mediocre shooter whose main attraction seems to be a large cult following. Maybe if it goes on sale I’ll take a look at it, but who are we kidding, this is Activision/Blizzard and it’s never going to go on sale, so I’m probably never going to buy it. (311 words.)

That’s the World of Darkness minion. I started to write this as a comment on Aywren’s post about Alliance Raids, but it was getting too long. I agree completely about using the Alliance Raids to level from 50. My testing shows you get 200-250k experience per run (tested at level 58 and 59), not counting rested experience, and Roulette bonuses, which add that much more. That’s a crazy high amount of experience-per-instance, bested only by dungeons, which usually take longer to get into and finish. (1135 words.)

I hate to say this, but once I finished the GW2 Path of Fire story, I found that my drive to keep playing rapidly dwindled. I think I understand now why they didn’t put very much of the story on the final two maps. They are less fun to play on. Bhagpuss alluded to this early on in his first first impressions post. There is a very noticeable ramp up in difficulty from Elon Riverlands to The Desolation. I have to admit I chuckled at his nailing the exact difficulties that I routinely experience in Heart of Thorns in his description of Path of Fire: (702 words.)

Last time I only talked about the story, but this time I want to talk about some of the new features in Patch 4.1. Royal City of Rabanastre The new Rabanastre Raid is typical for an alliance raid. Lots of mechanics and most of them try to kill you. By now I’ve learned that it’s pointless to try to watch a guide beforehand for these things, so I just jumped in totally blind. (The guides out in the first week aren’t that great anyway. Video guides just drone mechanics at you in a monotone with background video that may or may not be related to what is being said. That means you, MrHappy. :) Thankfully I recognized many of the mechanics from previous instances. But some of them are brand new, especially on the last boss, and some explanation is needed. That first PUG wiped three times I think. (Though honestly I don’t remember dying on the last boss even though I had literally no clue what to do.) (1223 words.)

I dragged myself away from Guild Wars 2 for a little while to play through the FFXIV 4.1 Main Scenario Quest, “The Legend Returns.” I’m so happy to be caught up with FFXIV and be in a position to play these patches when they come out, instead of rushing to catch up later. I didn’t even have to get any new gear. This is probably the first time I’ve ever been so caught up in any game. (821 words.)

Well, that didn’t take long. But before I talk about Path of Fire, in news that no blog reader cares about, I’ve uploaded the videos I recorded for Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns to my YouTube channel. (Cross-promotion!) I’m enjoying Path of Fire a lot. It’s very much like playing the original game again, which was the best part of Guild Wars 2. It almost feels like an “apology” for everything that’s been released since the original game. I spent time completing the first three maps to 100% before moving on with the story, something that has literally never happened since entering Orr roughly five years ago. (1852 words.)

Apologies for the delay, but my SSD drive failed and caused all manner of random crashing issues for four days. PC problems have a way of pushing all other concerns to the background. Once I finally determined it was the SSD (not so easy, since all tests indicated it was perfectly fine), I installed an older, smaller SSD from an old laptop and reinstalled Windows, so I’ve now got a blank new machine for all intents and purposes. This is the first time I’ve ever seen an SSD fail, but it’s only the third one I’ve ever owned, so I have to conclude they don’t have a very high success rate. (738 words.)

For the record, I’ve finished Living World Season 3 and started into Path of Fire. As of Monday morning, I’ve just gotten to the second map, Desert Highlands. It’s a far better expansion than Heart of Thorns already, although I just ran into a story gate that isn’t obvious how to open. Now back to the past… Living World Season 3, Episode 5, Flashpoint, starts off with a trip to Taimi’s lab, where we find Kasmeer chastising us for not inviting her to join Dragon’s Watch yet. As usual with Asura, there is a slight diversion as we fight back the experiments (hasn’t anyone learned yet to keep Asura far, far away from technical gadgets?). (1038 words.)

Episode 4 is entitled The Head of the Snake, and by the end, I was hoping someone would cut off my head to put me out of my misery. It began innocently enough, with a party at Divinity’s Reach with Queen Jennah. It reminded me of another story instance I vaguely remember from the distant past, perhaps in another Living Story, where you had to walk around talking to party guests. This time, White Mantle forces crashed the party by attacking Divinity’s Reach, which miraculously created a new map right next to the city where we’ve never seen one before. (Or was that little space there the whole time? If so, did they plan to put a map there all along?) (1226 words.)