[Hi gang! I don’t wanna run a whole friggin’ website anymore, all I ever wanted was to make with the fake lies, yelling, and jokes that aren’t worth the legwork for the people, to be a simple blogger. To that end, you can now find me over at The Naming Way courtesy of the truly excellent Pika, alongside such Dudes of Quality as Jason and Brenden! It’s The Bageler will stay up until my subscription runs out next year and I’ll continue to cross-post until then; thank you all for reading, and I hope to see you over at my new pad!]
Here follow some thoughts on Final Fantasy XIV. Carry on.
I.
Today, my friends, I found myself in that most loathsome state: suckin’ at everything and not having any fun. Screwin’ up my trials and raids and similar, repeatedly dying before I could rez anyone as White Mage, not being punchable enough as a Gunbreaker, letting my teammates down to the point of eliciting chastisements (‘can our tank; tank?’ quipped one meanie-bo-beenie¹), so I took to my group of choice to ask what they do when they still wanna play but just can’t get a handle on playing?
The answers were diverse but consistent: raids, trusts, Fates, crafting, domestic stuff, hunting logs, glamour dresser, the Gold Saucer, and a surprising number said “peoplewatching”, which is very cute. I took their advice to heart and did some fishing², and in doing so got an achievement with an attached reward, AT WHICH POINT I NOTICED THAT SOME ACHIEVEMENTS HAVE ATTACHED REWARDS!
I’ve clocked 400 hours in this game and never realized this, although in my defense they’re only accessible in the one place, and since most cheevos don’t give rewards (I’d say maybe 7 in 10) you’d have to scroll through to some of the biggies to catch one; this whole time I thought they were only good for bragging and buying the occasional novelty from Jonatas, and now I’ve got all this cool shit to collect on! Allamaraine!
II.
The good folks of my group suggested many in-game activities I haven’t discovered or engaged with yet, but one particularly intrigued me: The Palace of the Dead, an old-fashioned, room-by-room, just-treasure-traps-or-monstros dungeon crawl smack in the middle of Gridania. Now, the main reason I sucked as a Gunbreaker as mentioned above is because when you get the job it’s already at Lv. 60³, and being handed that entire huge palette of abilities was really overwhelming; the only way to really learn a class is by playing it and seeing what feels good to you and how to best fulfill the class’s intended role in a party, and while most players are cool about being patient when you’re new to a class³, it does suck more than a little bit to be a hostage in somebody else’s learning experience. This is where the Palace comes in: in addition to being a dungeon crawl, it’s unique among duties in that no matter what level your class is when you go in, you start at Lv. 1 and level up as you progress through the Palace’s floors, providing the perfect opportunity to learn a class from the ground up while you’re clearing the Zelda-ass map of monstros and loot.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far: Dark Knight kicks ass and I MIGHT??? actually just not like the way Gunbreaker plays, which is a bummer because their weapon will make guys, gals, and nonbinary pals say hell yeah:
Interestingly, there’s some speculation that the classes introduced in the game’s expansions mirror the protagonists of a handful of the middle mainline Final Fantasy titles: the Machinist could be interpreted as a nod to FFVI’s device-using Edgar, the Dark Knight is brooding and uses a huge sword like FFVII’s Cloud⁵, the Gunbreaker could not be any more clearly based on FFVIII’s Squall/Leon since he’s where the weapon originated in the context of FF, and the Viper in the newly-released Dawntrail is a fast, zippy fighter who uses twin daggers/ shortswords that can combine into a polearm, and who could only more clearly be FFIX’s Zidane if it sported a blond Jonathan Taylor-Thomas-style middle-part haircut; one of Zidane’s weapons is even called The Viper for Halone’s sake. Naturally this leads to the next expansion (hypothetical as it may be right now) having something referencing FFX; thematically it seems like it should be Tidus (Warrior), but we don’t really need another guy with a sword (meaning not Auron, who would be a Samurai, either), we’ve already got a Summoner (Yuna), Black Mage (Lulu), Blue Mage (Khimari), Thief/Machinist (Rikku), White Mage (Yuna again), and Dragoon (Khimari again), which leads me to suspect that if they continue this trend, it’ll have to be a ranged melee DPS in the vein of Wakka and his weaponized Blitzball, which could be a lot of fun.
III.
I have finally finished the entirety of A Realm Reborn and embarked on Heavensward, and the storytelling is simply without equal in video games in my experience, especially the swing they took their time winding up and unleashed at a critical juncture: the Scions of the Seventh Dawn have united warring factions into an international alliance, prevented (?) the resurrection of an empire whose last attack was so destructive it changed the calendar, and defeated literal gods, but they’re completely eviscerated in one fell swoop at the last second by fucking capitalists because we took our eye off them long enough for them to take their shot. It’s not subtle, and given that Heavensward focuses on a xenophobic, oppressive religious regime, I think we can expect this rough thematic flavor (“Fuck the Man”) to continue, and I for one cannot wait for it.
IV.
I’ve been doing a lot more large-group raids and trials and such, just by virtue of where I am in the game, and they present an interesting dynamic: they’re absolute shit to try to get into, for real, waiting until you’ve got 15 DPS on the bench or whatever sucks, but once you get in the feeling of being part of a huge crowd of technicolor badasses running en masse through the Library of the Ancients or whatever FUCKING RULES, and interestingly I find that not just group stuff, but especially high-level group stuff is just plain easier; it’s a lot harder for a handful of baby Conjurers to keep a group alive and healed than a squad of Sages and Scholars dropping cyclical Regens and Medicas and Esunas while a dozen Ninjas, Lancers, and Red Mages carve a superboss apart. Don’t get me wrong, if the group is out of sync or fucking around you’ll still absolutely get wiped, especially if there are cheapass TPK mechanics involved (looking at you, Livia sas Junius), but I do have to admit that I Get playing with people online now in a way I never have; I’m not planning on joining a Free Company or anything, but I might stop just outright ignoring most other players in the game-world.
V.
Hey check out this cool water-bottle sticker I got:
And there is nothing else interesting going on here. Nothin’ to see. Move along.
#StealthPaisley
Pray return to the Waking Sands,
— C.W., Semiprofessional Rez Mage
¹ I joke, I joke, I totally get being annoyed that you queued for a trial or whatever and finally getting in, and then some dope’s in there ballsing the whole thing up, and finding their perspective understandable just made me more annoyed with myself
² “Desert Catfish prefer Sand Leeches as bait” my furry Miqo’te behind
³ In fact, with the exception of Blue Mage, every added class starts at a higher level, such as 80 for Viper and Pictomancer or 50 for my beloved Red Mage
⁴ Here I will reiterate that while I’ve never played an MMORPG or any other kind of online game before (unless we’re counting NeoPets), I simply cannot imagine one that has a more generous, welcoming community, it’s just so full of amazing, kind, helpful people
⁵ And both of those things are openly inspired by Berserk anyway, so, vague gesture