Final Fantasy XIV: A Blog Reborn

 It’s been a long time since I have blogged, however the thought of return to my blog has always been in the back of my head and awaiting a decent opportunity for me to start again. I recently got this opportunity when I realised that Final Fantasy XIV was offering a 14 day trial to those who had not tried it before. So I signed up and headed in, eager to see what was on offer, how this experience felt in relation to the Final Fantasies of old and exactly how much could I achieve in one day on this game.

So after a rather straightforward account setup and somewhat lengthy download I started the game and instantly recognised the music, tapping in to fond memories of Final Fantasy VII the musical score had clearly been given a lot of consideration.

Right from the start one thing is abundantly clear, Final Fantasy XIV is BEAUTIFUL! All of the character models are sharp and regardless which of the many face, body, hair or decorative options you choose your character will look absolutely stunning.

So having opted for creating something that resembled a human cat and choosing conjuror as my starting class, I set off for my adventure in to the world of Eorzea. It kicks off with a gorgeous cinematic in which I am told I need to ‘Hear…. Feel….Think’ before showing me a rather ominous looking person in a mask who my character then proceeds to attack with spells!

I wake up in the back of a cart all of the previous images all being the result of a dream (yeah right!). Suddenly I am visited by some old final fantasy favourites, a couple of Moogles appear (imagine a cat with a giant head crossed with a tiny bat!) and tell me that I am special before drinking all the wine and disappearing.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Our caravan is beset by Lizard men, some brave warriors hold them off while we make for Gridania, the starting city for my chosen class. At this point FFXIV begins to feel like a lot of other MMORPGs as I am given a variety of fetch and carry quests to help me to find my bearings. I get myself all registered at the Conjurors’ Guild and head out for my first taste of combat.

It was time to take out some squirrels and as a conjuror commanding the elements this meant only one thing, throwing big magic rocks at them! A few quests later I am still killing things with big rocks but I also have the option of laying down a whirlwind for a bit of variety.

Combat looks and sounds amazing.

After gaining a few levels I begin to notice some of the features of FFXIV that make it slightly different from other MMOs. Firstly all equipment for your character is stored separately from crafting and other items, which results in a lot of spare bag space. This is tied in to another difference, you can completely change your class (once you have reached level 10 in your starting class)! Bored with your archer? Pop over and join the Lancers guild! Crafting follows much the same process, once you hit level 10 you can register with the crafting guild of your choice and change to that class by replacing your weapon with the tools of your crafting class (a knife for leatherworking for example). 

I am tipping this guy for major evilness!

The main story goes along a decent pace and in my first day I was attacked by an angry tree as well as some over excited lumps of clay. I also bumped in to a fellow who looked suspiciously like the masked menace from the opening cutscene! All in all it feels like I have been able to achieve a lot in the first day, getting to level 12 in my starting class as well as level 5 in a crafting class. I have also participated in a few FATE battles, area events that draw players together to achieve a specific objective (such as defeat a certain number of enemies to protect a village).

There are limitations to the free trial, trading and communication options are limited and class levels are capped at 20. The game itself is very enjoyable due to its beauty and the Final Fantasy feel of it, battle-music plays whenever you are in combat, spell names and creatures are very familiar. It pushes all the right buttons to bring a Final Fantasy experience to an MMO environment. However the world itself can seem a bit empty at times, particularly if you are used to the constant activity of a populated WoW server. There are also a few questionable quests, one of which has you learn to use in game chat by talking to an NPC who will only respond if you type EXACTLY what is asked, punctuation and all.

 
I am not sure if I will subscribe once I have finished my trial, but I am certainly enjoying the experience so far! The game and free trial can be downloaded through steam, just press the download demo option on the page.

My First Battleship Kill: It’s like mining with missiles!

What with going on holiday and a variety of other bits and pieces I have not had as much time to blog as I would have liked. However, I am now back gaming and times are interesting in the world of EVE again.

I had become somewhat hung up on not being able to sell any of my salvage in nullsec, sitting on a 1 billion ISK heap with no way of getting it out to high sec. In a last ditch attempt to generate some form of income I bought a caracal fitted it with basic launchers and set off to kill pirates for the first time.

Suffice it to say things did not exactly go well, struggling to take out low-end pirates and completely failing to dent battleships until they had eaten away my shield. It was sad times all around, no income stream and now even less money. Again I was doing something wrong, but didn’t quite know what.

I got chatting to a member of my corporation who pointed out two key things to me; one, that I was using the wrong sort of missiles and 2, that if I get within about one thousand meters of the battleships they should not be able to hit me. He was even kind enough to clear a field and save me a battleship, low and behold it couldn’t touch me and so it was that I chalked up my first battleship kill.

I admit it take about 10 minutes, but man it feels great!

Over the next few days/hours I set to ratting with glee, clearing out the smaller craft and then orbiting the bigger ones while pounding them with missiles. I couldn’t help but grin at the mental image of my capsuleer rapidly piloting his craft in between streams of turret fire, all the while shouting ‘fire fire as fast as you can, you can’t track me I’m the gingerbread man!’. Indeed things were fine and dandy again, I had an income stream, it may have been slow (it really did feel like mining with missiles) but it was steady!

I even managed to take out multiple battleships in one go, netting me some healthy bounties! I admit that it’s probably not the most profitable approach, but man was it fun! Again a little bit of knowledge went a long way. It was nice to see my ISK levels rising, even if there was not much to buy and the nearest trade hub was a LONG way away.

Seriously those ships are bigger than they look!

But pride comes before a fall and my downfall came as a result of not really paying attention. I warped into an asteroid belt and started to lay waste to the rats with wanton abandon. I noticed that some of the smaller craft were not blowing up with their usual speed and that one of them was even webbing me (halving my speed). ‘Oh Well’ I thought as the offending craft exploded ‘I’ll warp our recharge my shields and then come back’, it was at that point that another craft disabled my warp drive and then it was bye-bye caracal.

Turns out Arch Angels (one type of pirates) are not the same as Angels (another type) and I had used the wrong missiles………. Again!

EVE: Get Offa My Land!!

Well it finally happened, after much waiting and debating our corp finally hauled it’s collective asses down to nullsec! This area of space is often referred to by many EVE players as ‘where the money is’ and so as something of an exploration fan I have been seriously looking forward to getting my hands on some decent ruins to explore and databases to raid.

This friends is an intergalatic piggy bank. Pass me my space hammer!

With every packed up and ready to be shipped the first challenge that presented itself was exactly how to get down there in the 1^st place, to which our CEO simply responded ‘Oh that’s easy just kill yourself’. Lo and behold I was able to move my clone over to a station in null and then simply self-destruct. So that was my first hurdle overcome, the second one was a tad harder, all my stuff was in high and would not be able to be freighted down until things had settled. Again, through another stroke of luck (and admittedly some very fast flying) I was able to fit a basic exploration heron. So my Adventures began…………

Within 5 minutes I had already tracked down an untouched relic site, despite a few mistakes (of the making ruins explode variety) 5 minutes later I had finished that site and was heading to the next. On route to another system I thought I would check my estimated cargo value 50 million, I did a double take, 50 mil from a single site, this was 3 times my highest ever take in high sec! Truly it appeared Null-sec was truly the land of milk, honey and power circuits!

However it was not to last, merrily scanning away as I was I noticed I was being hailed by some friendlies, who (once I had responded) promptly told me to ‘Get of their land!’. Not wanting to cause a scene, I profusely apologised and explained I did not know this was their turf (while admittedly finishing the hack I was midway through). Chalking it up to my newbieness I went on my way and lo and behold a few systems on another group told me to sling my hook.

Juuuuuuuuussst leaving system, give me a few secs!

‘Right’ thinks I, ‘I will just stick to systems with no-one in’. So again off I go finding empty systems and appropriating whatever I could find. All told I managed to make about 490million over the course of a couple of days and so at least, despite my run-ins with grumpy landowners in tengus, this looked profitable.

Not only are these sites valuable, they are pretty too!

However this was also not to last, merrily scanning down in an empty system someone pops in and politely asks me to leave. This person seeming the more affable type I asked them to explain why. ‘Oh don’t you know, the alliances around here stick to scanning in their own systems.’ At least I now had a sort of answer rather than the old rocking-chair, shotgun, tengu approach. Although this now leaves me with a bigger problem, our alliance is a small old thing and I can scan down our 5/6 systems in about an hour or so, so what do I do with the rest of the time?

I stayed with EVE because I got hooked on exploration, just for the shear freedom it offered. Rock up, fire your probes and race to the sites. Someone beats you there, tough, they got lucky, but you’ll get there next time. This whole parochial approach to scanning, while understandable (people need the isk to pay their system rent) does seem to go against the pioneering spirit.

I am still waiting for my covert ops skill to finish, but once that’s done I think its wormholes for me. At least it truly it no-mans land there and the worst they can do is blow you up, as opposed to politely asking you to leave! In the meantime I think I will sit around and play with planetary interaction. Wonder if I can name a planet……………………………….

Tropico 4: Help Help, I'm (not) being repressed!

 

Life as the dictator of a banana republic is never as easy as it appears from afar, or that is the impression of my girlfriend and I each time we sit down to play Tropico 4. It has become, for us, a game that we sit down and play together a couple of times a week as we chat, unwind and debate whether we really need to assassinate the Mafia Dons currently infesting our Island.

On the whole we have never really gotten the hang of the oppression of the people thing, in fact debates often rage over whether we should build more housing, hospitals or stabilise the economy with some factories. We have never established an inquisition, ordered a book banning or arrested more than 4 people without evidence. 

That's not a housing crisis.........

In fact between the two of us we try to create an island paradise for our people and only when things have become stable do we start to skim a little something of off the top. I would guess our style of play has a lot to do with our motivations for playing, we are both keen city-builders and are looking for something to fill the void left behind by games such as Zeus and the old-style Sim City Games.

Tropico has an affable light heartedness which we find very endearing, but this is supported by a series of mechanics that force us to make tougher choices with each subsequent mission. At present our big debates tend to be around housing and whether my cram-as-many-as-you-can approach can really be considered inhuman, when there is limited space available or exactly how much we can afford to spend on cleaning up the oil spill off our coast.

The biggest threats to our regime tend to come from Tsunamis, hurricanes and volcanos, rather than uprisings of the masses. However as the missions have progressed it has become harder and harder to stick on the dictatorial straight and narrow. The increase in natural disasters and external political pressures has begun to force us to make really hard choices about what to rebuild after the latest catastrophe, sure our people do need houses, but surely they can last a few years in shacks while we replace that factory. Continual complaining from various faction leaders (I am looking at you Sunny Flowers) is starting to make the ‘arrange an accident’ seem mighty tempting, after all an ‘accident’ means no repercussions so why not?

I think the church has had a new idea............. sure prohibition sounds great!

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the game pans out for us, will there come a point where we actually ban elections in order to save our regime or can we continue with our utopia approach? We have already begun to manufacture weapons (purely for home and recreational purposes) in order to support our island’s economy, while we get our tourism up and running (the main source of our income within the game). Is this going to lead to us oppressing our people (in the short term obviously) in order to create our perfect little Island in the long run?

One thing is for sure, it’s going to be fun finding out!

You can pick up Tropico 4 for a modest price on steam.