The Greatest Tales Ever Told

I wasn't really shooting for this, but I discovered it about a week ago when I got MIN up to 30.  Finally got around to finishing off this achievement for the Chronicler's Crown.  It looks pretty sweet too, always a tough choice between this or the Paragon's.

A Life of Adventure

I haven't written much on my time on FFXIV yet; I've been meaning to--and have a number of things to write about (opinions on the game, I'm now leading a successful, modestly large endgame Free Company with 3 groups at Turn 4 or higher in Coil, etc) but haven't really had the time.  I've got something worth documenting for today though so I'm gonna post this quick:

Completed A Life of Adventure and got my Paragon's Crown.

On tanking speculation in Final Fantasy XIV

This is meant to be a reply to this topic in the Wiping as Intended tanking forum, but they apparently haven't added me as a member yet so I can't post it directly there.  WaI is a guild/free company created by some guys I sort of knew in SWTOR that I'm joining at Callsign's behest as part of a compromise to get them to come to Behemoth.  Anyways, here goes:

This is going to come off as a bit ranty and maybe a little hostile but bear with me, I've got good intentions.

A lot of the "theorycrafting" that has been done here and everywhere else on the internet that I've seen so far (especially with regards to tanking in FFXIV, which I'm invested and have personal experience in) is basically full of shit.  By way of introduction let's start with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YzzZ99AoMU.  You want to know how I know it's complete bullshit right away?  Without any real evidence or supporting justifications, he claims that PLD is easier to play than WAR.  All you have to have done is played GLA and MRD in phase 4 to know that he already doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

Here's your GLA flowchart circa level 20:
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have MP? => yes => Flash => Are you an idiot? => no => Flash again => Is one of the DPS attacking a target out of order or is the healer not playing somewhat conservatively? => yes => Sigh, Flash again => Now what? => Resume Fast Blade>Riot Blade>Flash until stuff dies
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have MP? => no => You're doing it wrong, now hurry up and Fast Blade>Riot Blade => okay => Now use Flash
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Are you way ahead on threat? => yes => Fast Blade>Riot Blade
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Are you way ahead on threat? => no => Fast Blade>Savage Blade

Here's MRD:
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have TP? => yes => Overpower
Is there more than one enemy? => yes => Do you still have TP? => no => You're shit outta luck, hope nobody's attacking mobs you don't have threat on => /panic
Is there more than one enemy? => no => Alternate Heavy Swing and Skull Sunder

Marauder "Bind All Keys to Overpower and Smash Keyboard" Tanking is hardly much of a challenge at 20.  Maybe it's trickier at 50 but clearly Mr. Happy doesn't fucking know about that either.

IRL I'm a pharmacist, and a large part of my job is dealing with medical research literature.  Distinguishing between quality research and research that has cut corners and used faulty methodology to reach a reasonable-sounding conclusion is a difficult skill to learn and practice.  The reason I bring this up is because I experience the same sort of frustration reading this thread and others and watching all the YouTube drivel on the subject that I get at the exact moment I realize a study has only been constructed to support alterior motives or agendas, support faulty per-ordained conclusions, to serve the zeal of its authors, or to make some chaps some cash down the line at the expense of the science of healthcare.  You look at something like Mr. Happy's video and it's instantly clear that he didn't make it with any consideration on whether his information was accurate or useful, it's there for clickbait, views, and subscriptions and it's really helping nobody.

There's something you all need to keep in mind.  There's no data.

No.

Data.

(Or maybe there is, but nobody seems to be keen on citing anything.)

We don't know how the environment will act at level 50, we don't have a clear picture of what stats or stat growth will look like, what items are available, the types of encounters that will be easy or difficult, how party sizes and composition will affect raid efficacy, etc, etc, etc.

Perhaps more importantly there's no tools yet with which to accurately collect data.  Plus, SE as an MMO developer has a long history of obfuscating the information you're given, which is why actual, verifiable numbers are even more important.  Anyone who has played FFXI probably has a pretty good idea what I'm talking about.  This isn't WoW where tooltips give you all the numbers and freely accommodate data parsing.  Early HNM through the first few years of FFXI were kind of magical in how much of an art there was to figuring out what works and the extent to which the game had to be brute forced to extract useful data.  I was still an officer in Memories of Xendor when Ginnai was developing the MoX parser for SWTOR and having actual data and numbers completely revolutionized the raiding scene for us.

Your heads are in the right place and it's a great showing of the passion with which you're all eagerly approaching XIV, but we have no numbers.  Making guesses and calling it theorycrafting when it's speculative at best is, well, a tad intellectually dishonest.

Update: I eventually posted an edited version of the above here.

WONDERFUL

Payday 2 is unplayable without some coordinated friends.  I hadn't experienced anger in 20 minutes so I decided to try a few pubbie games.

Game 1: Watchdogs
-On day 2, explain how we can get all bags out after the second boat
-Few minutes later: "Hey guys, we'll load up the second boat then just leave one bag behind."
-Did you not read what I just said about getting out with all the bags?
-"That doesn't work"
-Yes it does, I even went and took screenshots because I got sick of arguing with idiots like you
-"No it doesn't"
-Yes it does, look at the goddamn summary screen at the end
-"No it doesn't"
-Yes it does
-"Fine"
-"Were you in the beta?"
-Yes, it worked then too
-"..."
-Few minutes later, host DC's right when a pair of Bulldozers show up

GREAT

Game 2: Bank Heist: Gold
-"Cool, glad to see you can bring a saw"
-Five minutes in to the game, same guy asks if I'm a tech because if not he can restart the drill faster after I beat him to restarting the drill because I was next to it and he was with one other guy in the lobby wasting ammo
-I literally had to start the thermal drill, start a drill on the safe in the manager's office, run out to grab three sets of boards (the fourth were picked up by the above guy who just held on to them the entire game), and saw open the ATMs by myself while the rest of them sat around dumping ammo needlessly into police
-Vault's about to open, two of the other guys are demanding I drop ammo bags because they're somehow out of ammo on both guns, tell them I'm not dropping them until we're in the safe
-Set up shop in the safe, sawing open deposit boxes
-Ammo bag is gone before I can reload my first set of saws
-Second ammo bag's gone before I can even make it a third of the way across one wall
-Whatever, at least we manage to finish the damn game

COOL

Game 3: Watchdogs
-Okay, well there's a level 100 guy in this game and other two are higher level than me, guess it's weird that you'd bring a saw on Watchdogs but whatever
-Guy with the saw immediately opens the truck, apparently the 100 guy gets butthurt and leaves
-Some random fourth guy joins, everything goes smooth
-First escape arrives, we're all waiting on the street, it's unarmored but whatever it doesn't need to be
-Random fourth guy dicks around meleeing swat and generally being dumb instead of getting to the SUV with the rest of us, driver gets killed
-Host returns to lobby, then kicks random fourth guy, I'm sitting there wondering why he didn't just boot random fourth guy on the street so we could finish this shit and anyways it's not like it's appreciably more difficult having to take the helicopter escape
-Whatever, definitely don't want to play with these guys any more...
-Lose will to play Payday 2

NEAT

I HATE

So I actually got so furious when, for the second time last night, I was booted RIGHT AT THE GODDAMN END of Watchdogs Day 2 because people are too fucking stupid to realize that you can walk out of the mission with bags and save a ton of time that I actually went and did a solo run on Normal just to gather screenshots as proof.  Here they are.

I only brought 5 bags along because I wasn't willing to waste the time flinging around the 9 bags you normally start with by myself.  They're sufficient enough to prove the point since you need at least that many to fill up the first boat and unlock the escape and have one left over.

SEE, I'M CARRYING A BAG, IT'S RIGHT THERE.

 OH WHAT'S THAT?  5 BAG(S)?  OH JEE, $500,000?  NEAT HUH.

Bonus screenshot to highlight the fact that not only can you do that on Day 2, but if you carry bags out of Day 1 regardless of how you manage to escape (getting out via car starts you closer to the truck carrying the bags on Day 2, taking the helicopter puts you a ways away) the bags spawn next to you right at the start of Day 2.

Final Fantasy XI: Kurohyou, Jillia, Phoenix, TiamatsFangs

I have a lot I'd like to write about this post and I'm gonna take it from the top in just a moment, but before that I'd like to take a moment to explain that the title of the post is intentionally weird and I'll get to explaining it somewhere below (or in another post).  Jillia, if you somehow manage to find this, please, please, please send me an e-mail at spantera@gmail.com or find some way to get in contact with me.

A couple weeks back I came across a post on Facebook: one of my old friends from FFXI, Techno, talking to another old friend, Margulis, about the FFXIV beta.  I interjected to ask a couple questions about it since I was kind of in an MMO drought and I then went and signed up for the beta for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.  Last weekend I managed to snag a key from Alienware Arena's giveaway (and then later got a key direct from SE for this weekend) and got a chance to try it for a few hours and catch up with some old TF buddies that have been playing XIV.  The game itself is amusing, kinda eh but I'm really relishing the chance to nostalgia bomb with some old friends and familiar character/class styles (making up for lost Mithra time).

Oh, and I was seriously, seriously giddy to have auto-translate again.  That thing is so much fun.

When Final Fantasy XI first came out I was still in high school and didn't have the means to procure and subscribe to an MMO, but as a big Final Fantasy fan I vowed to myself that one day, one way or another I would find a way to play it.  About a year after I graduated I finally was in the right position to pick it up.  My senior year of high school I was really big into Tribes: Aerial Assault and by the time I got into FFXI I still was in touch with a few old clannies who were now playing it, and they managed to get me a friend code for Phoenix and I hopped on board their social linkshell.  I can't quite remember the name of it...

I was Kurohyou, a Hume male, beardy style.

That first LS (we'll call it LS1 for now) introduced me to the environment that would typify most of my FFXI tenure: bittersweet drama.  The distinguishing feature I'll always remember most was the Lexi/Talenar/Elvaan-PLD-guy-whose-name-I-forgot trio.  Lexi was the only female and WHM in the LS, which meant despite the fact that nearly everyone absolutely fucking despised her, they were obliged to kind of put up with her.  She was married to a guy called Talenar (a THF), and this almost wouldn't be worth mentioning except that she was near constantly hitting on and generally fawning over a second guy, the Elvaan-PLD-guy-whose-name-I-forgot.

My first main was WHM, entirely because I hoped to relieve Lexi's stranglehold as the group's only healer.

At some point, when I was doing the first level cap raising quest, on the part where you have to get THAT paper I had been struggling, stress-fully, to farm it all day.  At some point some friends from LS1 offered to help and somehow Lexi and co. came along.  I don't remember the details but for whatever reason Lexi's presence put me into an incredible, seeing-red fury.  I do recall she was bitching about having to come help me and this upset me greatly because by luck it happened to drop shortly after they all showed up.

Anyways, the only other notable thing I can remember about Lexi is that later a guy named Atistab (whose name I only remember because of the below image) and I became really good friends when we discovered we had a mutual hate for Lexi (who had been in his Dynamis LS for a long time).

There was a second LS I was in between LS1 and TiamatsFangs, all I remember is that the leader was a guy called Ninboy who was one of the few max level goldsmiths on the server.  And man, digging up that image I came across a number of interesting images from those days.

This is Astarael, a career BLM who was another of a constellation of old friends from my Tribes days.

There was some point when I was partying in Valkurm Dunes (would have been in the earliest area) when I joined a party with Jillia and Margulis (they were a couple at the time IIRC).  We had one member of our party who was pretty bad and the three of us were arguing with him which made us all fast friends, and from there I joined TiamatsFangs--a group that I've been involved with in varying degrees over the years but I've always maintained contact with at least a few of them as time has gone by.

Jillia and I were close friends.  I hesitate to say she was my closest friend ever because at the time I was still quite close friends with Brandon Seidler (whom I'd dragged into FFXI at some point).  I'm not too shy enough to not admit that I had a smouldering unrequited crush on her for quite a while as well, but I also don't mind saying that at the very least I loved her like a sister.

This was the picture she posted on the TiamatsFangs forums.  She was a PLD and an absolutely badass tank.  I'll come back to her because there's a baffling backstory that leads into the last time I left the game so we'll save that until then.

I'm actually going to cut this post short here and come back to things.  Topics for another post: Nikki/Moosey/Clashes, Aurawyn, Kiren, Arithia/Faux/Kazeryushin, Girr/Homer the Scammer/SWTOR follow-up, more Jillia, playing FFXIV.

Quick tl;dr on the post title/first paragraph: I lost contact with Jillia shortly after she quit to go to university and the combination of our close friendship and the really bizarre circumstances surrounding her exit from the game form a seriously haunting mystery that I hope-but-don't-expect might someday be resolved.  Got the idea earlier today that if I can get this post to pop up on Google or other search engines with the right combination of keywords she might stumble across it someday.

Edit: It's a number of weeks later now and I was cleaning out some tabs on my browser when I noticed this post pops up at the top of a Google search for "Final Fantasy XI Jillia Phoenix" and quick searches confirm that "Kurohyou Phoenix", "Jillia Phoenix", and multiple other permutations show this post at or very close to the top, so mission accomplished.  The TF gang and I (especially) would love to hear from you again if you're reading this, Jilli.

Remember Who?

Remember Me: not particularly impressed.  I'll give it a few brownie points for trying but everything about it was kind of disgustingly sub-par.  It's kind of a mess to critique because you can see where so much work was put into it to make it into the alarmingly bland experience it was.

The premise for the story was interesting but commits the cardinal sin of not properly exploring its depth.  Here's the gist of the background so I can give an example of what I mean: in the near future a genius inventor has created a method of digitizing memory so that memories can be stored, transfered, quarantined, or deleted and the technology is so developed and so ubiquitous everyone has implants that allows them to network with virtually everything (Plot immersion breaking point #1: everyone?  Seriously?  Nobody thinks this is a bad idea?).  You play as Nilin, who is a memory hunter--a type of criminal who specializes in memory theft--but as a twist her abilities to manipulate memories are so advanced that she's able to "remix" memories, altering them so as to fiddle with the fabric of her victim's personality (Plot immersion breaking point #2: it's hard to sympathize with a character who wants to take the moral high ground when she's literally meddling with the fabric of people's identities and in numerous instances flat out cleaning out everything.)

Anyways here's the example-of-what-I-mean about the game not exploring the depth of its own ideas: midway through the game you break into the office of the CEO of the big evil megacorporation you've been fighting against in order to alter a key memory in their past to make them suddenly decide to take the company in a less evil direction.  First of all, it's weird that it's one event--and secondarily right from there the event is a car crash that they bitterly blame on their child.  Second, how is changing one memory from 20 years ago make up for everything that's happened since?  I mean the CEO literally just got done telling their secretary to prepare a list of everyone who went home early that day so they could be summarily fired the next day.  It's never hinted or mentioned anywhere that further memories are altered recursively (which would have cleared all this up)--in other words, they're going to remember each and every decision and action taken along the road to being CEO of Evil Megacorp Inc.  Third, what's to stop them from realizing they've been tampered with the instant they consult another human being and discover their recollection of events doesn't match others' and/or the physical or historical evidence?

Maybe that's a weak example.  Anyways, the game conceptually treats memories as distinct, almost-physical objects but fails to really explore how memories interact with each other to form the fabric of one's collective experience and identity.  Instead memories are absconded with, deleted wholesale, and generally mucked about with without really exploring the consequences.  They kind of deal with it in a very nebulous way in the form of the Leapers but it's wholly unsatisfying.  Lots of the plot is, frankly.

And also, like Yahtzee put it, the moment you establish at the beginning of the game that the main character can manipulate memories you might as well throw up a big gigantic neon sign saying TWIST COMING.  READY FOR THE TWIST?

The setting is pretty disappointing too.  We have this rich environment in Neo Paris and it's really elegantly fleshed out and put together--in the background to all the linear corridors you run through.  The camera is both hilarious and frustrating in its un-cooperativeness too, it really seems to fight back when I'm trying to move around and inspect the details of the environment in a way that's really baffling, like they were so obsessed with adhering to some sort of cinematic vision, the developers are actively fighting against your efforts to take a moment and look around and appreciate the art direction.  And even the game's attempts to direct your attention to some big scenic background are poor--there was one segment where I was climbing a pipe and would have missed a very nice image of the sprawling city if I hadn't suddenly noticed the music was doing some awkward swell and I was probably supposed to be looking at something other than the precarious ledges I was climbing.  The worst part is you're in a sprawling future metropolis and you literally visit 3-4 of the same general locations 2-3 times each.

The gameplay is likewise a bit disappointing for different reasons.  The keystone gimmick--memory remixing--is really, really cool but is very limited in scope and only shows up about 5 times.  The game gives you periodic ability unlocks in a kindasorta Metroidvania style but the entire game is pretty hardcore linear (if something branches off to a tiny detour you can be sure there's a collectible hiding somewhere).  The combat is slightly interesting but very samey.  They made the excellent choice of using an Arkham City style combat system but then watered it down but then give you the neat little cookie of customizable combos.  And, while this is nice, there's no real depth to it, no cost-benefit decisions to make, it's just simple pick-what-you-want-put-it-where-you-want-it visual dickery that's frankly kind of hard to appreciate when you're busy dodging shit and keeping an eye on other enemies in the thick of combat to really appreciate.

The bulk of the gameplay is the acrobatic conveniently-placed-ledge crawling and it's applied liberally and everywhere, and while it's not atrocious the game sure beats that dead horse into a pulp.

The director was some French guy and the entire first segment of the game was pretty reminiscent of Indigo Prophecy (I hope it's not the same French guy who directed that because I haven't taken the time to go make sure it wasn't).  The entire experience screams game-that-should-have-been-a-movie.  Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was trying to decide how possible it would be to just record the entire game and edit it down to an un-interactable movie.

Overall it wasn't an unpleasant experience.  The real star here was the art direction and the visual themes--the concept art for the game is gorgeous and it really came through.  Unfortunately they're the face of a superficial and dull plot and a gimmicky excuse for a video game.