- Play around with the external settings to get the game to launch in windowed mode. Today's computers are a lot better than PS2 era computers and they slowly added a few extra things like windowed mode to the game. I think I toggled most if not all of the settings available but windowed mode is by far the most important. Start -> PlayOnline -> Final Fantasy XI -> Final Fantasy XI Config
- Throw your mouse away. The game was designed for the PS2 so it works well with a controller. They did a pretty good job making a keyboard emulate a PS2 controller. They did not do a good job integrating the mouse. Feel free to give it a try, but everyone else I know said things made more sense without the mouse.
- Use the numpad to move around. 7 toggles autorun. / toggles walking mode. * toggles auto-lock if you have a target and toggles resting for hp/mp if you don't. - brings up the main menu.
- If at all possible get in touch with me outside the game so I can get you into the linkshell (guild) ASAP. In game you can send messages to people with /t name message. My character is Ziggyny.
- There's a starting NPC when you first log in that gives you an item to trade to another NPC. Trading is done via the numpad - menu. Tab is the best way I've found to target things. So you need to run up to the right NPC, tab to him, hit -, and trade.
- I believe they direct you over that way, but your next step should be to run a long way East until you're at the gates to Eastern Saruta-Baruta. There are two important NPCs here. Selele gives you a series of easy quests with good rewards that walk you through part of the game. Tih Pekeh starts a series of missions which are the main plotline for the original game.
- Just outside town is a book called a 'Field Manual'. You can get a quest from the book (individual training, grab a page to do that quest). These quests are just kill some dudes for bonus experience, gil, and tabs. Tabs are used to buy buffs and to teleport home and are really good to have. Do book quests when you can!
- Earn 9980 gil. Spend it at an artisan moogle for 30 more storage slots in your mog house.
- Build macros for your abilities. Macros are activated with ALT-1..0 or CTRL-1..0. They can have up to 6 lines and you can stack multiple commands into one macro. I have one that casts protectra and shellra with one key.
- Level to 18. At level 18 you can do a hard quest to unlock the ability to have a support job allowing you access to a second job's ability set. The quest is hard for 1 person at 18. It is very easy for someone a few levels higher. Hopefully by this point you're in the linkshell. Get Tom to help you kill the mobs.
- Level to 20. At level 20 you can do the quests which let you ride and raise chocobos.
- Level to 30. At level 30 you can unlock the remaining 14 jobs.
- Increase your fame with Jeuno to at least 3. This will let you increase the size of your bags. You do this by getting a lot of fame with the three starting towns. So either a lot of quests or the same repeatable quest many times over. Tom and I delivered corn to a guy in Selbina. 288 pieces of corn.
- Get your Race Specific Equipment.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Final Fantasy XI: Initial Goals
If you're just starting to play Final Fantasy XI (looking at you, Byung!) what should you be trying to do at the start? Here's a short list of things that seem important to me:
Friday, April 29, 2011
League of Legends
League of Legends is a real time strategy game based on the user created map Defense of the Ancients for Warcraft III. The basic idea is you control a single unit in a large battle with the eventual goal of destroying your opponent's home base. An individual game lasts for about 20-60 minutes and your champion starts each game at level 1. You spend the early game accumulating experience and gold which allows your champion to learn new skills and buy better gear. Eventually you start trying to kill opposing champions (bonus experience, bonus gold, and they can't play for a short time while they respawn giving your team a tactical advantage) or trying to permanently destroy defensive structures in an attempt to win the game. Each side has 5 player controlled champions and repeated waves of computer controlled trash mobs. With 74 different champions each having 5 skills and a huge number of items to buy the game has a lot of replayability just trying different things nevermind actually trying to be awesome as a team.
It's also free to play. Well, in a sense. LoL has completely embraced the concept of micro-transactions and built an entire meta-game around the individual game. There are 74 champions in the game but only 10 are available at any given time for free play. (The 10 change every week and seem to always have a good mix of tanks, support, melee, and mages.) Want to play a hero that isn't free? Well, you can pay some money and permanently buy the ability to play as that character. They've also built a level-up system for players so that each time you play a game your champions get a little better. You get talent trees and glyphs to modify your characters so even if two people are playing the same champion they could function differently if one talented into the defensive tree and one in the offensive tree. Talents are free but glyphs you need to buy with an in game currency that you earn as you play games. Or, perhaps, spend some real money to get more glyphs too. You can spend money on buffs to increase how fast you gain player experience.
A free player will get to max player level slower than someone who pays but eventually when they get there they'll have the same power as someone who pays a lot of money. The free player will have limited options each week on who they can play and probably only has one set of glyphs so they're only really optimal with one type of character instead of with all characters but when it comes right down to it a good free player will beat a mediocre paid player every time.
This is the kind of micro-transaction of which I approve. Games need to be paid for somehow and the people paying here aren't getting much of an advantage for their money. They're getting different skins for their champions and getting more flexibility and have to spend less time to level up, sure, but nothing earth shattering. I should note here that there is a match-making system when you sign up as 1 person in a 5v5 match such that the teams are fairly balanced so being a lower level won't mean you just get stomped every game. It means you'll just keep playing other low leveled people or maybe you'll get a high level dude on your team too.
It's a really fun game with lots of different numbers that get bigger both in an individual game and in the external meta-game. Being free of the WC3 engine meant some things changed significantly from DotA but a lot of what they did just feels right. (By contrast another DotA clone, Heroes of Newerth, was not nearly as fun as DotA was. LoL may actually be more fun.)
It's also free to play. Well, in a sense. LoL has completely embraced the concept of micro-transactions and built an entire meta-game around the individual game. There are 74 champions in the game but only 10 are available at any given time for free play. (The 10 change every week and seem to always have a good mix of tanks, support, melee, and mages.) Want to play a hero that isn't free? Well, you can pay some money and permanently buy the ability to play as that character. They've also built a level-up system for players so that each time you play a game your champions get a little better. You get talent trees and glyphs to modify your characters so even if two people are playing the same champion they could function differently if one talented into the defensive tree and one in the offensive tree. Talents are free but glyphs you need to buy with an in game currency that you earn as you play games. Or, perhaps, spend some real money to get more glyphs too. You can spend money on buffs to increase how fast you gain player experience.
A free player will get to max player level slower than someone who pays but eventually when they get there they'll have the same power as someone who pays a lot of money. The free player will have limited options each week on who they can play and probably only has one set of glyphs so they're only really optimal with one type of character instead of with all characters but when it comes right down to it a good free player will beat a mediocre paid player every time.
This is the kind of micro-transaction of which I approve. Games need to be paid for somehow and the people paying here aren't getting much of an advantage for their money. They're getting different skins for their champions and getting more flexibility and have to spend less time to level up, sure, but nothing earth shattering. I should note here that there is a match-making system when you sign up as 1 person in a 5v5 match such that the teams are fairly balanced so being a lower level won't mean you just get stomped every game. It means you'll just keep playing other low leveled people or maybe you'll get a high level dude on your team too.
It's a really fun game with lots of different numbers that get bigger both in an individual game and in the external meta-game. Being free of the WC3 engine meant some things changed significantly from DotA but a lot of what they did just feels right. (By contrast another DotA clone, Heroes of Newerth, was not nearly as fun as DotA was. LoL may actually be more fun.)
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Final Fantasy XI: Race Specific Equipment
Read even a little bit about FFXI on fan forums and you'll run into debates about which race people should play. One of the primary arguments on the side of 'race doesn't matter' is that Square put Race Specific Equipment (RSE) in the game which tends to balance out the weaknesses each race has. For example there's a set of 4 pieces of gear from levels 27-33 for each race. The Mithra set gives 41 def, 48 hp, 48 mp, 4 str, 5 vit, 3 mnd, 3 chr. The Galka set gives 41 def, 96 mp, 5 agi, 6 int, 3 chr. The Taru Taru set gives 41 def, 89 hp, 7 str, 4 vit, 3 mnd. Very different sets but used to bring the races closer together in terms of stats.
The 4 slots used are hands, body, legs, and feet. Combined my current pieces of gear in those slots have, I think, 8 def. Even if the RSE didn't boost the stats I'm weak in I'd want them anyway because they give SOMETHING. So I clearly should work on getting this stuff. Tom and I tried yesterday but were just a smidge underpowered for the zone we were in. (We could kill the mobs one at a time but if we pulled extras we died.) We eventually wiped a final time by clicking on something that spawned a really tough monster when we weren't expecting it to that was involved in a RSE ammo so I figured it would be a good idea to read about all the different pieces and how to get them.
27 hands, 29 feet, 31 legs, 33 body - From the quest The Goblin Tailor. You need to have fame 3 in Jeuno to start. (I got up that high by turning in 24 stacks of corn to a quest guy in Selbina. Right now there's a teleport service between San d'Oria and Selbina so I could teleport directly from the corn vendor to the quest guy.) Then a goblin in Lower Jeuno will send you off to a cave where you need to farm a key from level 31-35 monsters. Use that key to open a randomly spawning chest in the zone to get an item to bring back to Jeuno. Do so and you get to pick which of the 4 pieces you want. The tricky part here is there are 3 different caves you could be sent to and 8 different RSE sets (one for each gender/race combo) which can be collected. Only 1 of the 24 is active at any give time. Yesterday evening was Mithra in Ordelle Caves. We did get a key to drop for Tom, but it won't be time for Mithra to go to Ordelle Caves again until May 5th during the day. Basically each of the 24 combinations stays in play for one game week which lasts about 7.5 real hours. You can farm keys up in advance if you want to (they are rare so you can only have 1) but you need to wait for your week to come up before opening the chests. The next Mithra week is this Saturday morning in the Maze of Shakrami. A timer of who comes up when is available here.
30 ammo - Something of a side quest while doing the above quest. There are ???s scattered throughout the above dungeons. Click on one of them during your race's week to spawn a level 46ish NM. Kill him to get your ammo. The ammo actually seem to boost what you're good at instead of what you're bad at which seems a little weird, but means it's still good to have if you don't use actual ammo.
50 belts - drops from two different 50 BCNM fights, not exclusive so you can buy it
55 earrings - drops from a level 60 ENM which requires everyone who enters to be the same race (ENMs seem to be fights like BCNMs except you don't need any seals to enter. Instead there is a 5 day lockout for each zone.)
62 hands - 60 BCNM, not exclusive so you can buy it
62 feet - different 60 BCNM, not exclusive so you can buy it
70 belts - 2 different uncapped BCNMs, not exclusive so you can buy it
87 hands - drop somewhere in abyssea, not exclusive so you can buy it
The 4 slots used are hands, body, legs, and feet. Combined my current pieces of gear in those slots have, I think, 8 def. Even if the RSE didn't boost the stats I'm weak in I'd want them anyway because they give SOMETHING. So I clearly should work on getting this stuff. Tom and I tried yesterday but were just a smidge underpowered for the zone we were in. (We could kill the mobs one at a time but if we pulled extras we died.) We eventually wiped a final time by clicking on something that spawned a really tough monster when we weren't expecting it to that was involved in a RSE ammo so I figured it would be a good idea to read about all the different pieces and how to get them.
27 hands, 29 feet, 31 legs, 33 body - From the quest The Goblin Tailor. You need to have fame 3 in Jeuno to start. (I got up that high by turning in 24 stacks of corn to a quest guy in Selbina. Right now there's a teleport service between San d'Oria and Selbina so I could teleport directly from the corn vendor to the quest guy.) Then a goblin in Lower Jeuno will send you off to a cave where you need to farm a key from level 31-35 monsters. Use that key to open a randomly spawning chest in the zone to get an item to bring back to Jeuno. Do so and you get to pick which of the 4 pieces you want. The tricky part here is there are 3 different caves you could be sent to and 8 different RSE sets (one for each gender/race combo) which can be collected. Only 1 of the 24 is active at any give time. Yesterday evening was Mithra in Ordelle Caves. We did get a key to drop for Tom, but it won't be time for Mithra to go to Ordelle Caves again until May 5th during the day. Basically each of the 24 combinations stays in play for one game week which lasts about 7.5 real hours. You can farm keys up in advance if you want to (they are rare so you can only have 1) but you need to wait for your week to come up before opening the chests. The next Mithra week is this Saturday morning in the Maze of Shakrami. A timer of who comes up when is available here.
30 ammo - Something of a side quest while doing the above quest. There are ???s scattered throughout the above dungeons. Click on one of them during your race's week to spawn a level 46ish NM. Kill him to get your ammo. The ammo actually seem to boost what you're good at instead of what you're bad at which seems a little weird, but means it's still good to have if you don't use actual ammo.
50 belts - drops from two different 50 BCNM fights, not exclusive so you can buy it
55 earrings - drops from a level 60 ENM which requires everyone who enters to be the same race (ENMs seem to be fights like BCNMs except you don't need any seals to enter. Instead there is a 5 day lockout for each zone.)
62 hands - 60 BCNM, not exclusive so you can buy it
62 feet - different 60 BCNM, not exclusive so you can buy it
70 belts - 2 different uncapped BCNMs, not exclusive so you can buy it
87 hands - drop somewhere in abyssea, not exclusive so you can buy it
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Utsusemi: Ni
Utsusemi is the iconic ninja spell in Final Fantasy XI. This spell puts up a bunch of shadows and makes it so incoming attacks remove shadows instead of actually doing anything to the ninja. You get one level (Utsusemi: Ichi) at level 12 and one (Utsusemi: Ni) at level 37. The two have separate cooldowns so if you're going to be a ninja beyond level 37 you really want both spells. The first one you get from a quest but the second one is a rare drop from BCNM fights and sells on the AH for a cool million gil. It's sold 12 times in the last week so it's not like it's hard to get your million gil either. (Well, some sold for only 900k.)
Tom mentioned that it cost a million gil and my first reaction was we need to start farming it. I don't know if Tom actually wants the spell or just a million bucks but I could sure use some cash. And maybe the spell too, eventually. Ninja is certainly the best subjob for almost every job but I wouldn't need a level 37 subjob spell until I was level 74.
Utsusemi: Ni drops from the level 30 and level 40 BCNM fights. There are 15 minute long fights for 3 people and 30 minute long fights for 6 people at each level bracket. Given that we only have 3 people in our linkshell the 6 people fights are right out for now, so the question then is which 3 man fights could we do and what other stuff do they drop? Only 1 of us is even level 30 at this point (thought I did just hit 27) so looking at the level 30 fights to start seems wise.
Carapace Combatants - 2 beetles, one of which melees and one of which casts stone spells. Melee one can be slept or kited. Seems like any reasonable combination that can tank/heal/sleep/slow would work just fine.
Birds of a Feather - 1 named bird and 2 little birds. Named bird casts AE sleep so drinking poison potions helps? All suggested strategies I found involved using beastmasters to tame the little birds.
Creeping Doom - 1 crawler who doesn't do much damage. Instead he spams healing spells on himself and casts AE paralyze spells. Can be beaten by either running him out of mana with mana drain abilities or by chaining enough sleeps/stuns to prevent him from healing while you burn him out. Seems like a lot of diverse strategies work.
Die By The Sword - 3 weapon mobs which can only take damage from one type of attack at a time. Periodically they change which is vulnerable to which type of attack. (Piercing/slashing/blunt.) They can be rooted/slowed and it sounded relatively easy.
Petrifying Pair - 2 lizards which can't be slept but can be rooted/kited. Have conal ae stone spells which only hit people looking at them and the fight gets a lot easier if you unlock your attack and turn around when they start to cast.
As far as other drops go, here are some of the other stuff which seems worth trying for:
Leaping Boots - 200k - PP
Various absorb stat scroll for DK. 1-30k
Scroll of Dispel - 80k - all
Scroll of Erase - 60k - all
Various subjob specific belts and earrings
Mannequin parts
Random low value crafting materials
Leaping Boots are off the charts good. 6 stats on a level 7 set of boots! The next boots which have 6 stats show up at level 24 (and are actually the same 6 stats). Boots start to get weird abilities I can't evaluate but it doesn't look like boots with more than 6 base stats ever actually show up until end game gear. Apart from wanting 200k it seems like we probably just want a set of boots for everyone anyway. (There is an identical but exclusive (bop) set that drops from the NM Leaping Lizzie.) Dispel and erase are both must have spells for people who intend to level either red mage or white mage, but they seem to drop from everything Utsusemi: Ni drops from. So, I think Petrifying Pair seems like the fight to do. Guess I need to start leveling my red mage...
Tom mentioned that it cost a million gil and my first reaction was we need to start farming it. I don't know if Tom actually wants the spell or just a million bucks but I could sure use some cash. And maybe the spell too, eventually. Ninja is certainly the best subjob for almost every job but I wouldn't need a level 37 subjob spell until I was level 74.
Utsusemi: Ni drops from the level 30 and level 40 BCNM fights. There are 15 minute long fights for 3 people and 30 minute long fights for 6 people at each level bracket. Given that we only have 3 people in our linkshell the 6 people fights are right out for now, so the question then is which 3 man fights could we do and what other stuff do they drop? Only 1 of us is even level 30 at this point (thought I did just hit 27) so looking at the level 30 fights to start seems wise.
Carapace Combatants - 2 beetles, one of which melees and one of which casts stone spells. Melee one can be slept or kited. Seems like any reasonable combination that can tank/heal/sleep/slow would work just fine.
Birds of a Feather - 1 named bird and 2 little birds. Named bird casts AE sleep so drinking poison potions helps? All suggested strategies I found involved using beastmasters to tame the little birds.
Creeping Doom - 1 crawler who doesn't do much damage. Instead he spams healing spells on himself and casts AE paralyze spells. Can be beaten by either running him out of mana with mana drain abilities or by chaining enough sleeps/stuns to prevent him from healing while you burn him out. Seems like a lot of diverse strategies work.
Die By The Sword - 3 weapon mobs which can only take damage from one type of attack at a time. Periodically they change which is vulnerable to which type of attack. (Piercing/slashing/blunt.) They can be rooted/slowed and it sounded relatively easy.
Petrifying Pair - 2 lizards which can't be slept but can be rooted/kited. Have conal ae stone spells which only hit people looking at them and the fight gets a lot easier if you unlock your attack and turn around when they start to cast.
As far as other drops go, here are some of the other stuff which seems worth trying for:
Leaping Boots - 200k - PP
Various absorb stat scroll for DK. 1-30k
Scroll of Dispel - 80k - all
Scroll of Erase - 60k - all
Various subjob specific belts and earrings
Mannequin parts
Random low value crafting materials
Leaping Boots are off the charts good. 6 stats on a level 7 set of boots! The next boots which have 6 stats show up at level 24 (and are actually the same 6 stats). Boots start to get weird abilities I can't evaluate but it doesn't look like boots with more than 6 base stats ever actually show up until end game gear. Apart from wanting 200k it seems like we probably just want a set of boots for everyone anyway. (There is an identical but exclusive (bop) set that drops from the NM Leaping Lizzie.) Dispel and erase are both must have spells for people who intend to level either red mage or white mage, but they seem to drop from everything Utsusemi: Ni drops from. So, I think Petrifying Pair seems like the fight to do. Guess I need to start leveling my red mage...
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Final Fantasy II: Raising Agility
The leveling system in Final Fantasy II is such that you tend to get better at things by doing them. Want to level up sword skill? Attack with a sword equipped. Want to get more mp? Spend a lot of mp. Some of the stats are less straightforward and one in particular is flat out weird. That stat is agility.
How do you get more agility? Win a fight with a high evade percentage. You don't need to be attacked. You don't need to have a long fight. You just need to end a fight (without a negative status condition). The higher your evade%, the better a chance you'll get an agility stat up.
How do you have a high evade%? Have a high agility...
Ok, that's not the only way. Like in the original Final Fantasy wearing armor decreases your evade%. The heavier the armor the more it reduces your evade%. So, one way to increase your odds of getting an agility up is to run around naked. None of my characters are currently wearing a helmet, body armor, or bracer.
Another way is to equip weapons and shields. It turns out almost every weapon in the game increases your evade%, and it does so in an awesome way. Almost all of them have a 1% evade stat but it turns out that stat actually gets multiplied by your skill level with them plus 1. So if I'm using a sword with 1 evade% and have 3 sword skill I actually get 4 evade% from it. (I imagine this is because you're parrying with the sword and the better you are with a sword the better you can parry with it.) Shields work the same way but have real evade% numbers. The starter shield has 4 evade% on it. Get a shield skill of 2 and that's an extra 12 evade% right there. Now, you have two hands in FFII and you can stick a shield in each hand so with 2 shield skill I'd actually get 24 evade%. And now if I attack I do no damage but get twice as much shield skill experience!
How do you get more agility? By running around the woods naked, holding 2 shields, and showing them to the imps until they run away. (Can you blame them?)
How do you get more agility? Win a fight with a high evade percentage. You don't need to be attacked. You don't need to have a long fight. You just need to end a fight (without a negative status condition). The higher your evade%, the better a chance you'll get an agility stat up.
How do you have a high evade%? Have a high agility...
Ok, that's not the only way. Like in the original Final Fantasy wearing armor decreases your evade%. The heavier the armor the more it reduces your evade%. So, one way to increase your odds of getting an agility up is to run around naked. None of my characters are currently wearing a helmet, body armor, or bracer.
Another way is to equip weapons and shields. It turns out almost every weapon in the game increases your evade%, and it does so in an awesome way. Almost all of them have a 1% evade stat but it turns out that stat actually gets multiplied by your skill level with them plus 1. So if I'm using a sword with 1 evade% and have 3 sword skill I actually get 4 evade% from it. (I imagine this is because you're parrying with the sword and the better you are with a sword the better you can parry with it.) Shields work the same way but have real evade% numbers. The starter shield has 4 evade% on it. Get a shield skill of 2 and that's an extra 12 evade% right there. Now, you have two hands in FFII and you can stick a shield in each hand so with 2 shield skill I'd actually get 24 evade%. And now if I attack I do no damage but get twice as much shield skill experience!
How do you get more agility? By running around the woods naked, holding 2 shields, and showing them to the imps until they run away. (Can you blame them?)
Monday, April 25, 2011
Final Fantasy II: A Plan!
I somehow woke up an hour early this morning and rather than go back to sleep (and probably sleep through my alarm) I decided to just get up and get started on FFII. I still didn't have a plan but I thought maybe if I played a bit without beating myself up I'd get an idea. Even at starting stat levels I was barely getting any skill-ups at all from anything as I did the first couple plot points. Having an avenue to power and ignoring it for no reason is frustrating to me so I wasn't really enjoying myself. So I decided I need to come up with a good reason to ignore power or I need to just give in and play the game like I play games.
The most common complaint I hear from people when I explain the FFII battle system is that it just seems wrong to attack yourself or your friends in order to raise your stats. You should level up on monsters, fantasy gaming common sense says, and not on yourself. But does that complaint hold water? I asked myself if fantasy Nick would consider attacking fantasy Byung with a sword in order to get powerful enough to save the world. Which made me think of the fencing club at UW. I went to one meeting but couldn't get anyone else I knew to join with me and wasn't that interested in doing it alone at the time. But if Byung had joined with me wouldn't I have been spending the day hitting him with a sword in the hopes that I'd get better at using swords? Wouldn't he have gotten better at dodging swords and gain more endurance to dodge swords for longer stretches of time? Real Nick and real Byung don't even have a world to save and yet we could quite conceivably have hit each other with swords in an attempt to get better at using swords.
If it makes sense for real people why does it seem so wrong in a fantasy game? Is the problem that there's an imp watching me train? Is the problem that I wouldn't actually kill Byung in a fencing club (hopefully!) and could kill him in a game? Is the problem that games just intuitively involve grinding on mobs instead of rote training?
Having an imp along for the ride is a little weird for sure, but he can't hurt me. (Even at base stats the imps can't do enough damage to give me an hp stat-up.) It would make more sense to stand around fighting with no mob around but the confines of the game prevent that. That the most intuitive way to rote train is removed doesn't mean I shouldn't go for the next best thing.
Fantasy Nick can't actually kill fantasy Byung, either. Final Fantasy games have permanent deaths in them and they never result from generic combat. Even if I knock off all his health I just need to use a phoenix down, cast life, or take him to church. Even wearing him down to low health has no negative consequences. We can just drink potions or cast cure spells afterwards. Health is more akin to physical endurance than to a source of life, really. Run on a treadmill some and gain some endurance! I'm actually more likely to maim or kill real Byung with fencing swords than to hurt fantasy Byung and yet fencing clubs still exist.
Grinding on mobs certainly makes more sense in most fantasy games for sure. But this game doesn't work like most fantasy games. Unless you take "cheesy" tactics (I eventually equipped one of my characters with 2 shields so he wouldn't do any damage with the attack command in the hopes that the prolonged fights would allow for more stat-ups) it's pretty likely you're going to end up unable to get stronger. Monsters you can kill will die trivially and be worth nothing at all. Monsters you can't kill will kill you. FFII just doesn't have a smooth difficulty progression from dungeon to dungeon. Sometimes the difficulty takes a huge jump and if you don't do something weird you're screwed. Hitting yourself with a sword may seem wrong but so do the other tactics for getting stronger. (Swapping life with an imp, intentionally doing less damage to make the fight take longer, spamming buff or heal spells to rank them up, cancel trick, etc...) Different people may have different ideas for which tactics cross the cheesy line but pretty much any successful tactic is in that grey area somewhere.
The fencing club train of thought also got me thinking why I'm not actually good with swords. The answer there is time. There wasn't enough time in the day for me to sleep, eat, go to class, do assignments, fence, pump iron, and still play 16 hours of games each day. Something had to give and it turns out fencing and pumping iron were easy cuts. Fantasy Nick has much more pressing things to do than code Connect Four AIs and figure out how we can detect planets around distant stars. He has a world to save! So perhaps the best reason for why standing around hitting yourself in the head around the starting town is illogical is that he really has to get in gear and save the world. But the game doesn't have any such time restrictions on it, as games rarely do.
And then I had the answer to all my problems. My arbitrary limiting factor for FFII can be time related! Fantasy Nick can't screw around forever powering up because I'm saying he can't. I don't currently have a specific time limit in mind, just to try to get my game clock as low as possible when I win. I may search around and see if I can find a good benchmark on the internet but realistically all I'm going to do is establish a benchmark for myself when I do this whole thing again 10 years from now. But it gives me an actual plan and will let me twink up within reason so I'm pretty happy with the idea. I am, however, going to ban the cancel cheat. If thinking about doing things actually made you better at doing them then real Nick would be a much more powerful person. Fantasy Nick can do all the rote training he feels he needs to do but he can't just daydream and become awesome.
The most common complaint I hear from people when I explain the FFII battle system is that it just seems wrong to attack yourself or your friends in order to raise your stats. You should level up on monsters, fantasy gaming common sense says, and not on yourself. But does that complaint hold water? I asked myself if fantasy Nick would consider attacking fantasy Byung with a sword in order to get powerful enough to save the world. Which made me think of the fencing club at UW. I went to one meeting but couldn't get anyone else I knew to join with me and wasn't that interested in doing it alone at the time. But if Byung had joined with me wouldn't I have been spending the day hitting him with a sword in the hopes that I'd get better at using swords? Wouldn't he have gotten better at dodging swords and gain more endurance to dodge swords for longer stretches of time? Real Nick and real Byung don't even have a world to save and yet we could quite conceivably have hit each other with swords in an attempt to get better at using swords.
If it makes sense for real people why does it seem so wrong in a fantasy game? Is the problem that there's an imp watching me train? Is the problem that I wouldn't actually kill Byung in a fencing club (hopefully!) and could kill him in a game? Is the problem that games just intuitively involve grinding on mobs instead of rote training?
Having an imp along for the ride is a little weird for sure, but he can't hurt me. (Even at base stats the imps can't do enough damage to give me an hp stat-up.) It would make more sense to stand around fighting with no mob around but the confines of the game prevent that. That the most intuitive way to rote train is removed doesn't mean I shouldn't go for the next best thing.
Fantasy Nick can't actually kill fantasy Byung, either. Final Fantasy games have permanent deaths in them and they never result from generic combat. Even if I knock off all his health I just need to use a phoenix down, cast life, or take him to church. Even wearing him down to low health has no negative consequences. We can just drink potions or cast cure spells afterwards. Health is more akin to physical endurance than to a source of life, really. Run on a treadmill some and gain some endurance! I'm actually more likely to maim or kill real Byung with fencing swords than to hurt fantasy Byung and yet fencing clubs still exist.
Grinding on mobs certainly makes more sense in most fantasy games for sure. But this game doesn't work like most fantasy games. Unless you take "cheesy" tactics (I eventually equipped one of my characters with 2 shields so he wouldn't do any damage with the attack command in the hopes that the prolonged fights would allow for more stat-ups) it's pretty likely you're going to end up unable to get stronger. Monsters you can kill will die trivially and be worth nothing at all. Monsters you can't kill will kill you. FFII just doesn't have a smooth difficulty progression from dungeon to dungeon. Sometimes the difficulty takes a huge jump and if you don't do something weird you're screwed. Hitting yourself with a sword may seem wrong but so do the other tactics for getting stronger. (Swapping life with an imp, intentionally doing less damage to make the fight take longer, spamming buff or heal spells to rank them up, cancel trick, etc...) Different people may have different ideas for which tactics cross the cheesy line but pretty much any successful tactic is in that grey area somewhere.
The fencing club train of thought also got me thinking why I'm not actually good with swords. The answer there is time. There wasn't enough time in the day for me to sleep, eat, go to class, do assignments, fence, pump iron, and still play 16 hours of games each day. Something had to give and it turns out fencing and pumping iron were easy cuts. Fantasy Nick has much more pressing things to do than code Connect Four AIs and figure out how we can detect planets around distant stars. He has a world to save! So perhaps the best reason for why standing around hitting yourself in the head around the starting town is illogical is that he really has to get in gear and save the world. But the game doesn't have any such time restrictions on it, as games rarely do.
And then I had the answer to all my problems. My arbitrary limiting factor for FFII can be time related! Fantasy Nick can't screw around forever powering up because I'm saying he can't. I don't currently have a specific time limit in mind, just to try to get my game clock as low as possible when I win. I may search around and see if I can find a good benchmark on the internet but realistically all I'm going to do is establish a benchmark for myself when I do this whole thing again 10 years from now. But it gives me an actual plan and will let me twink up within reason so I'm pretty happy with the idea. I am, however, going to ban the cancel cheat. If thinking about doing things actually made you better at doing them then real Nick would be a much more powerful person. Fantasy Nick can do all the rote training he feels he needs to do but he can't just daydream and become awesome.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Moblin Maze Mongers Update
A couple days ago Tom and I gave the default maze you get given a shot. He was 5 levels higher than me so the mobs were all killable with just the two of us. It took a while to win and I think we were close to running out of time but we managed to get it done. But it seems 2 people probably can't level synch together to win so we either need properly staggered levels or to party with more people. It was pretty decent experience though.
It also turns out there's apparently a feature where you can use other people's mazes with their runes. So I may be able to try another maze without winning 13 default mazes.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
FFXI: Thieves: Still Bad
So in the original Final Fantasy I played as a thief and was just abysmally bad compared to everyone else. Tom and I played a little on our thieves in Final Fantasy XI and it turns out they're not very good either! They actually have several game changing abilities which only thieves have but they don't have those abilities at low level so they just take a lot of damage, do not much damage, and have nothing to change combat at all. They do get to steal every five minutes, though! I look forward to FFVI where the thief is the best.
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