The One That Got Away : GW2, FFXIV:ARR

After a hard day's dragon-slaying there's nothing relaxes an adventuring sort like a spot of fishing.

Well, I say "dragon-slaying". In my own case, of course, I mean "dragon-fighting". No actual dragons died, especially not that one that's dead already yet manages to look so exceptionally well on it.

The Battle for Sparkfly Fen raged all weekend on Yak's Bend, fitfully and feebly the first few times when most of the server was asleep, then with increasing vigor and determination as the day wore on. I went so far as to join the Mumble channel, named with grim irony "Tequatl the Funless", to take direction and it was quite a revelation to hear the calm and orderly way in which teams were organized and orders issued.

Each attempt improved on the previous run. We whittled Tequatl from 75% to 50% and there seemed a good chance that if we just kept coming back every ninety minutes we might eventually drive the overgrown gecko back beneath the waves and reap the rewards we so richly deserved.

Sir! Yes, I do have prior experience on turrets, Sir!

Maybe we did. I wouldn't know. By late-evening in my time zone Yak's Bend was spinning up Overflows a good half-hour before the start of the window of opportunity, itself half an hour long. I managed to grab an invite via Mumble to escape overflow once but after that even the Overflows were supposedly spitting out Overflows of their own and there was no chance of getting back to The Yak.

The whole thing has been enormously instructive for me. I spent some lengthy periods just standing around in Sparkfly Fen, waiting. One time I was there for a full hour doing absolutely nothing before the show started. I enjoyed that time every bit as much as an hour spent fighting things, questing or crafting. Even before I joined Mumble, map chat kept me entertained and with the background chatter added it really did have that buzz of being part of the crowd at a sporting event or a festival.

Odd, unfamiliar thoughts began to drift through my mind, like "is this what people get out of raiding?" and "it's really quite relaxing to be told what to do, where to stand, what buffs to cast, what food to eat". Individualism's all very well but there's something to be said for just following orders.

Water sprites. They're more scared of you than you are of them. Just keep telling yourself that.

Still, it's good to have something to do with your hands while your waiting. Not being much of a one for jumping repeatedly on the spot (always a popular pastime in every MMO I've ever played, or at least those with a Jump key) I wish GW2 would discover fishing.

All MMOs should have fishing. Most of them do, or at least most of the ones I've spent any significant time in, not that I'm saying there's any causal relationship there. Fishing in MMOs isn't always just about the fish, of course. Many an impoverished Norrathian got his start on the adventuring ladder by fishing up and selling rusty daggers at two silver a shot and in Vanguard it was faster for crafters to fish Silver Masterwork Seals out of the sea than to, y'know, craft for them.

A Charr could wear that hat. Just sayin'.

In FFXIV, fishing is mostly about the fish. Probably. I'm only a level 12 Fisher so what do I know? I can say, however, that I'm not catching any rusty daggers, old boots, treasure chests or discarded furniture. Just fish.

Fisher is one of the Disciples of the Land, the gathering professions, and there are probably some cross-class, interdisciplinary synergies of which I am unaware since I haven't yet taken any of the other options. I just fish. There's a Fishing Log, which I have neglected even more than I've neglected the various Hunting Logs on my adventure classes. There are Fishing Leves, which I haven't done and Fishing Class Quests, which I have. Because, Straw Hat!

The fish caught can be cooked, of course. Maybe one day, when I get round to crafting I'll learn how to braise a haddock. For now I just hand them all to my trusty retainer for safekeeping. I hope she has a refrigerated compartment in those packs. And that she can keep her greedy Miqo'te paws out of it.

For the while fishing is its own reward. It's very pleasant to stand on a high platform in Limsa Lominsa and cast out into the sea far below or to ride my chocobo out Aleport and stand on the dock looking out across the shimmering water, waiting for the herring to bite.

If I could only stand between the reeking, plosive fish-heads on the wide, flat, sands of Sparkfly casting my bait out into those shark-infested, dragon-haunted waters, how sweetly the waiting hours might pass. And who knows what horrors I might hook?

Going On A Bear Hunt : GW2, FFXIV

Yak's Bend has downed Tequatl, which I know from reading the internet, not from being there when it happened. As more servers get their first kill, a certain amount of debate seems to be taking place around tactics, organization and competence. The wiki now boasts a very detailed walkthrough.

On a positive note, this event offers more strong evidence that server cultures are real and do matter. The OP in this thread exemplifies the degree to which a player's experience of an MMO can be defined by the server on which they chose to roll. As a very strong believer in multiple servers for MMOs I see this as immensely positive. I dread the day when megaserver technology allows MMOs to present themselves as bland, uniform, benevolently totalitarian paradises, crushing local idiom and practice with the oppressive, monolithic boot of efficiency.

On the other hand, there's the whole Guesting thing going on, complicated still more by the appearance of mercenary guilds offering their services to come show your feeble server how to Do It Properly. The fluidity of movement between servers plus the existence of unnamed, temporary Overflows, on some of which Tequatl has also been downed, blurs the lines more than somewhat.

It does seem that ANet are on to something here, even if the motivations behind all this activity are curious and unclear. In the mysterious, veiled world of MMO population figures anecdotal evidence acquires an unhealthy prominence but the near-constant generation of overflows throughout the Scarlet invasions and now for Tequatl Rising would seem to indicate that massive events generate massive interest. The exact nature of that interest is another matter.

Tequatl looks a bit dull, all those muted greens. Megadestroyer takes a much better picture.

There are the rewards, which include several things calculated to drive certain player personalities into a frenzy - mini pets, a title, new dyes. There are practical upgrades to gear - rare underwater breathers and ascended weapons. Then there's the more nebulous satisfaction of beating the Big Bad, both personally (if being a face in the crowd counts as personal) and collectively as a representative of your server. Lastly there's the fun of it all.

Playing FFXIV last night we fell into a discussion of the Brayflox's Longstop dungeon, Black Mages and pointy hats. I'd been grouped with a mage wearing a conical hat that reminded me strongly of Zippy the Pinhead (who, it turns out, doesn't wear a pointed hat at all - so much for memory), which in turn brought to mind Zippy's eternally unanswered and unanswerable question "Are we having fun yet?".

It strikes me that "Are we having fun yet?" would be the best possible name for an MMO guild. Or possibly for an MMO. I'm sure I don't know whether I am most of the time and from the comments and conversations around me I'm not sure how many other people know when fun's being had or even what having fun would feel like if they were to have it.

Brayflox's Longstop is aptly named. It's stopped both Mrs Bhagpuss and I dead in our tracks as far as the main storyline of FFXIV is concerned. It's not that its necessarily particularly difficult. It just has to be done if we want to see what happens next. How essential seeing what happens next is to continuing to play FFXIV is unclear at this stage.

Goblin village. Wasted in a dungeon.

S. Tolga Kirtiloglu posted a very handy list in the comments on an earlier post here of things one cannot do in FFXIV if one avoids the main storyline. The list and my own experience with it both stop around level thirty. Whether other aspects of gameplay and character development are gated beyond that I'm not sure. I can't immediately think of any that might be, other than access to some specific dungeons via the Duty Finder. I imagine that now I have gotten as far as Brayflox I could probably opt out of the storyline altogether and still progress at least as well as I progress in most MMOs.

Unlike deciding to drop the Personal Story in GW2, something I did almost from the beginning without a qualm or a second thought, dropping out of the main storyline in FFXIV doesn't sit comfortably. It will niggle at the back of the mind, something that should have been done but wasn't. It will fester. The corollary to which is that this particular dungeon now becomes something I have to do in order to go on playing the game with equanimity and satisfaction.

I have a very, very strong dislike of mechanics in MMOs that dictate my gameplay. Suggestion is fine. Encouragement is fine. Even bribery is fine. Telling me what to do is not fine, not at all. Revamping the Tequatl battle from an event I really liked to an event I'm not all that interested in might be a little irritating, but it doesn't tell me what to do with my time when I log in. It may change my options, but options they remain.

Everything's dead, time to explore.

MMOs are all grey areas when it comes to compulsion. The code can prevent activity but it can't control attitude. If you wanted to solo in Everquest you could. Just because everyone else raided didn't mean you had to join them. I'm sure there are players playing FFXIV and The Secret World right now who haven't read a word of the storyline or watched any of the cutscenes. There are probably characters being played every day who've never left their starting cities. "Play the game, don't let the game play you" is a very sound motto to have. It's been in my motto quiver for many years. Still, some roadblocks are easier to bypass than others.

There's every chance that in a day or three Brayflox and his annoying Longstop will be behind me. I will resent it, though. It will leave a taste and not a sweet one. Others felt the same about the sudden switch to a dungeon for the required Zhaitan fight to complete the Personal Story in GW2. Tequatl, assuming he's intended to stay as he is now, something I'm still not clear on, simply risks becoming a tick on a list of things I don't do. A neutral state. The difference is hard to define but unmistakeable when encountered.

On such design decisions player retention hangs.

You're Not The Boss Of Me! : GW2

On paper, my take on Tequatl Rising, the latest of GW2's inexorable biweekly updates, ought to be diametrically opposed to Jeromai's. That was certainly the case for the preceding two week's worth of 8-bit hell that he both completed and chronicled so exhaustively but which I scrupulously avoided to the point not just of skipping The Box itself but of not logging in to the game at all for the entire two week period during which it was the starring attraction.

The current offering eschews casio tonalities and kindergarten color schemes, offering instead a whopping great "evolved" dragon and a difficulty pass for all his Bossy pals; not just his dragon buddies Shatner and The Claw but all the rest of the Pinata Gang from the Fire Elemental to Megadestroyer. These bosses have been favored content of mine since the first of the various loot passes turned them from sideshows to main events, so having a whole update complete with Achievements and Dailies based around them would appear to be right up my street.

Well, you'd think so, but there's a catch. The one carry-over from Super Adventure Box seems to be the idea that if players like to do something they'll like to do it even more if they have to do it while someone sprays them with a fire hose and throws stones at their head.

Being in no particular way unhappy or discontent with the difficulty level we've had for the last few months, I was not clamoring for the Tequatl fight, nor any of these fights, to be made harder. I was not bored with them. I found them relaxing and fun. Believe it or not, I didn't do a few of them every day because I wanted the loot but because I knew if I went to The Frozen Maw or Jungle Wurm I'd be guaranteed a good time.

Last night I logged into GW2 for the first time since I got seriously stuck into FFXIV. My Necromancer virtually lives either in Sparkfly Fen or Mount Maelstrom so she got the call. She found herself in a vile green mist. Taking stock of her somewhat unfamiliar surroundings she noticed the inelegant addition of dozens of four-foot tall rotting fish-heads sticking out of the sand and being an Asura she began immediately to investigate.

After a kind bystander revived her, then revived her once more after the fish-head respawned and one-shotted her again just as she was thanking him for reviving her the first time, she took up a judicious observing role on a nearby podium until the traditional Hylek call of "Therrre's somethning in the waterrr!" announced the arrival of the star of the show.

A lengthy and quite enjoyable battle ensued, during which she adopted the traditional Necromancer role of area denial, keeping wave after wave of Krait and sundry undead from overwhelming the cannons, so long ignored but which now perform a vital, nay essential task. Lose the canons and you've had it, basically.

That went well enough, although it was already beginning to wear out its welcome by the time a clangorous sound announced the charging of no fewer than four Asuran megalasers. The Dynamic Event teleprompter warned that to lose even a single laser would spell disaster, which was exactly what happened not much more than a minute or two later when the first one fell to the mindless hordes of undead that had appeared out of nowhere (or possibly the sea).

Tequatl kicked up a vast tsunami and sent it rolling across the beach, leaving every player quite literally dead in the water, along with the event itself. Someone must have hung back because the revives began, along with the post-mortem. Guests from other servers said we'd done well to get the dragon to somewhere around two-thirds health, or maybe it was eighty percent. Hard to count when you're fighting for your life in two feet of filthy water, especially when you're only four feet tall. It was deemed "a good try", anyway. Apparently the best any server had managed at the time was half-way.

On a single exposure my feeling was "that was quite amusing but once is probably enough". From the comments in map chat that was an opinion shared by many, although sometimes without the "that was quite amusing" part. I'm not sure if this version of Tequatl is a one-week only performance, after which he will revert to something closer to his former punchbag persona, but if by any chance it does turn out to stay this way then I'd say the chances of gathering the required 80+ people to give him anything like a run for his money will be slim.

Next I checked the timer at Dragon Temple and saw that Claw of Jormag was due soon so I moved one of my rangers over to meet him. Most of the server seemed to have had the same idea and Jormag, as we know he isn't but everyone calls him anyway, flew in to face probably the greatest force ever raised against him, at least on Yak's Bend.

As well as giving all the Bosses (I hate that term with a passion but this is officially Boss Week so let's go with it) extra hit points and a fix for all the various bugs that have pretty much neutered some of them since launch (Hi, Golem!) a timer has been added to all of the events. A pretty generous timer in most cases, it has to be said, although I'd back Gamarien any day to ponder and muse his way through the full fifteen minutes he's been given to finish his hunt the for Great Jungle Wurm before he ever even gets to see the thing.

Claw of Jormag gets half an hour, which is not far off what it often takes. Or took. To my immense surprise, this fight seemed to have been made much easier. Firstly most of the leftover mobs now despawn when the ice wall goes down. Secondly the walls themselves seem to melt like, well like ice in a fire. Lastly, and most importantly, the golems no longer collapse into scrap metal at the slightest brush against an ice pillar. Oh, and his wings no longer fall off, which is nice, for him at least. Whether it was these changes or the sheer number of players present, far from needing thirty minutes we were done in less than half of that.

My last Boss of the evening was the Inquest Golem MkII. As Jeromai points out, this "World Boss" used to be soloable. My necro soloed him once, or would have had some johnny-come-lately not turned up when she had him at 5%, reducing her Great Achievement to a mere duo kill. Won't be doing that again. All the various AEs he always did but which everyone used to ignore now hit like freight trains. We still killed him, though, even though half the zerg jumped ship when someone popped into the zone and yelled that Teq was back.

My feelings on the whole affair are largely this: making these events harder does not make them any more entertaining. Ninety-nine percent of the people doing them are only doing them to get the loot and if the loot is deemed good enough they will jump through as many hoops as you care to put up, but that does not mean they like jumping through hoops, it just means they like loot.

While there are also achievements and it's flavor-of-the-fortnight it won't be hard to hold a critical mass to get results but I'll be interested to see how many people are bothering to do these Bosses by October, especially if Champions still dole out the same or better rewards for a fraction of the effort.

I'm very curious to try out all of my other old favorites to see how they've fared. Teq wasn't terrible although he's clearly not going to be handing out his miniatures any time soon unless and until the nerf everyone seems to be expecting arrives. Jormag was, arguably, improved. Golem I preferred when he just span round and round and let us dis-assemble him at our leisure but maybe that's just me.

In general, though, no matter how much players complain that bosses are too easy, I remain to be convinced that a majority of the players likely actually to go and do that content on anything like a regular basis really want things to be hard enough for the outcome to be in any way in doubt. Zergs like to swarm over things and tear them apart at no risk. That's what zergs do. And, for better or for worse, GW2 has built much of its positive reputation on providing that sort of gameplay to the large crowd that wants it.

Which talk of zergs brings me neatly to the changes to WvW. Seen 'em. Gimmicky. Don't like 'em. I think that's probably as much discussion as they require.

Tequatl The Sunless : GW2

Yesterday I met my first Tyrian dragon. I'm not a big fan of dragons in MMOs. They tend to be overused and under-impressive. Not so here.

I believe there's some back-story that I haven't really been following concerning Elder Dragons. I hope Tequatl's one of them because if he's just a Junior Dragon I may need a bigger screen.

 

The fight itself lasted a few minutes. For a good deal of the time I was running around playing cub reporter taking photos and shooting video and for quite a while I was stuck inside a bone wall Tequatl dropped right on top of me, so I missed the finer points of the battle, such as whether that Asuran Laser ever fired.


In the end the dragon was defeated somehow and I got Gold for doing...something. Best dragon fight I have had in any MMO. Bring on the big ones!