For a long time (6 games in a row, going from FFIV to FFIX) the Final Fantasy games used a combat system called ATB (Active Time Battle) where characters and enemies would charge up a meter in real time and could then take actions when their meter filled up. While that action was going on, or while you were thinking about what to do with that action, or while you were manually entering the commands to take the action everyone else's meters would keep charging up. In theory this was a system that was designed to make character speed matter (the older games gave each character exactly one action per round and speed only determined order in the round if anything at all) but in practice everyone's bars would just fill up while you were entering in commands anyway. Unless you played on a slow speed I guess, or are really fast at entering commands, or cheesed the system out by pretending to use an item since the ATB bars would pause when using an item in some games. I liked the idea of the ATB system, and liked it when I was a kid, but when you really dig into how it works it gets a little disappointing.
Final Fantasy X switched it up and went to a system more like Final Fantasy Tactics. In FFX the game pauses when it's someone's turn to take an action. You can use all the time you want to think about what you want to do, or to enter the command in, or to doze off. That happened to me the other day and in an ATB game it would have meant game over. Here the game just assumed I was thinking really hard about what to do with Kimahri. (What am I going to do with Kimahri?!?) When I woke up I was able to finish the fight, meander to a save point, and go to bed. Perfect!
But I digress... The system works by assigning every action in the game a number from 1 to 8 indicating how fast it is. Then you multiply that number by a value determined by your agility. That's how many ticks will pass before you get your next action. Monsters work the same way. The game has a nice list ordering all of the upcoming turns so you can see who is going to go next and what the ordering will be assuming everyone takes a standard speed action. I'd assumed agility was going to be a linear relationship with how often you get to go but it's really, really not. Early on the steps are in increments of 1 or 2 agility but the later steps are huge. There's no difference between 44 agility and 61 agility, but that 62nd agility gives you 20% more actions! The 98th agility is worth 25% more actions and the 170th agility is worth 33% more actions! But is it really worth spending all the levels to go from 98 to 170? Even if every node was a 4 agility node that would be 18 levels worth of agility, and they're not all going to be 4 agility nodes until you've reached the point where you're destroying the monster arena. Aiming for 44 or 62 seems pretty reasonable but if Rikku has hit those breakpoints she really needs to teleport out of her agility area and go find some strength or something! She can probably spend 18 levels on strength and end up doing more than 33% more damage per action...
There's one other aspect to the CTB system used in FFX, and that's the ability to tag in characters from the bench. Any time it's your action you can swap out the current character for one of the four characters not currently on the field. They come in and get to immediately take an action. Anyone who participated in the fight gets full experience too, so there's an incentive to tag in characters to do something, anything, in order to keep leveling up. This also let the game design monsters that are really hard to deal with, with one critical weakness, since you're guaranteed to have that tool in your toolbox. There are robots that are pretty tough, except if Rikku steals from them they instantly die. If this was a normal Final Fantasy game and there was a chance Rikku wasn't in your party this would be a bad design, but here it's awesome. It always feels like there's a reason to use each person, which makes you use your whole team for the whole game, which is a really different change of pace.
Everyone except Kimahri. All 6 other characters have something they do best. (Tidus hits evasive ground monsters, Auron pierces heavily armoured monsters, Rikku kills robots, Wakka hit evasive flying monsters, Lulu casts elemental spells on super tough monsters, and Yuna is the healer and can summon in aeons to deal with tricky fights.) Kimahri has no niche. He's the jack of all trades in a game where you can make the hot tag to the expert in every situation. He's the second best at piercing armour, sure... But when Auron one shots the enemy why do we need the second best one? I frequently send him down the black mage area since he starts with an ability that restores his mana, but then he's strictly worse than Lulu for pretty much the entire game. Maybe you make him into a healer? He's terrible compared to Yuna though, and do you really need two healers in a three person group? (It actually can help to have a second person with the life spell, but eventually you get some white magic spheres so that person could be anyone!)
I still use Kimahri. He needs experience because he never gets tagged in to do anything and I feel bad for the guy. And in a normal system he'd probably be the best character! He can do a little bit of everything so he'd be able to deal with the huge variety of problems the random encounters can throw at you. But the tag in system obsoletes the jack of all trades and that makes Kimahri sad. Don't worry Kimahri. I'll still use you.
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Calm Lands
Sometimes people complain that the later Final Fantasy games are too much 'on rails' meaning that you don't really have any choice in the matter on where to go or what to do. The story tells you to do something, NPCs block the way to walk in any other direction, and you go do it. FFX has definitely been like that this far, but I've never really understood the complaints. For the most part Final Fantasy IV was every bit as 'on rails' as this game, it just also gave you the option of meandering around aimlessly accomplishing nothing until you found the right way to go. Sure, when you unlocked the hovercraft you could go towards Fabul, but you'd get stuck behind a wall of ice until you went back, saved Rosa, and had her give Rydia a pep talk to learn fire and melt the ice. (Hilariously, if you use a game genie and gain max levels Rydia will naturally learn fire 2 and fire 3 but won't use those to melt the ice!)
The way I see it, as long as the plot is interesting you shouldn't mind being 'on rails'. And if the plot isn't interesting in an RPG maybe you should put it down and find some other way to spend your time... I understand the allure of a good side quest, don't get me wrong, and having some 'open world'ness going on can be pretty good. But to this day I still don't know what was going on in Oblivion because why would I bother trying to do the main plot when I could become The Grey Fox and the head of the assassins guild?
Anyway... Yuna has finally visited all of the temples (that we know of) on her pilgrimage and it's time to head to Zanarkand. Along the way we need to pass through the Calm Lands and Auron makes an ominous remark about how so many summoners lose their way here even though it just seems like a nice peaceful reminder of a previous battle with Sin. I don't know if they threw that line in as a warning to people who get trapped doing side quests or not... But that's what always happens here! The Calm Lands has the chocobo riding side quest to get a piece of Tidus' ultimate weapon, and it has the extra temple with the Magus Sisters summon, and it has the extra temple with the Yojimbo summon, and it has the monster arena. Oh, the monster arena! I think this may be the greatest side quest of all time. Why don't you go to every zone in the entire game and grind random encounters over and over until you catch 10 of every single monster that can spawn? If you do we'll unlock challenge bosses you can fight... Challenge bosses that are the only way to really, really twink out your stats... I know you like challenge bosses. I know you like maxing out your stats. I know you like collecting things...
Big battle to save the world from evil? Screw that! I want to collect some things and kill some hard dudes and max out some stats. Sin can wait.
The game was on rails, but now it's not (well, as soon as I go through another zone or two and get my airship, anyway), and the very interesting plot is now a thing of the past. So I don't know... Part of me thinks it's fine that a game is on rails, but as soon as there's a way off of them I'm grabbing my capture sword and jumping clear. I'll be back, rails. Promise. But first I need to catch all of the things. Oh, and maybe play some more blitzball...
The way I see it, as long as the plot is interesting you shouldn't mind being 'on rails'. And if the plot isn't interesting in an RPG maybe you should put it down and find some other way to spend your time... I understand the allure of a good side quest, don't get me wrong, and having some 'open world'ness going on can be pretty good. But to this day I still don't know what was going on in Oblivion because why would I bother trying to do the main plot when I could become The Grey Fox and the head of the assassins guild?
Anyway... Yuna has finally visited all of the temples (that we know of) on her pilgrimage and it's time to head to Zanarkand. Along the way we need to pass through the Calm Lands and Auron makes an ominous remark about how so many summoners lose their way here even though it just seems like a nice peaceful reminder of a previous battle with Sin. I don't know if they threw that line in as a warning to people who get trapped doing side quests or not... But that's what always happens here! The Calm Lands has the chocobo riding side quest to get a piece of Tidus' ultimate weapon, and it has the extra temple with the Magus Sisters summon, and it has the extra temple with the Yojimbo summon, and it has the monster arena. Oh, the monster arena! I think this may be the greatest side quest of all time. Why don't you go to every zone in the entire game and grind random encounters over and over until you catch 10 of every single monster that can spawn? If you do we'll unlock challenge bosses you can fight... Challenge bosses that are the only way to really, really twink out your stats... I know you like challenge bosses. I know you like maxing out your stats. I know you like collecting things...
Big battle to save the world from evil? Screw that! I want to collect some things and kill some hard dudes and max out some stats. Sin can wait.
The game was on rails, but now it's not (well, as soon as I go through another zone or two and get my airship, anyway), and the very interesting plot is now a thing of the past. So I don't know... Part of me thinks it's fine that a game is on rails, but as soon as there's a way off of them I'm grabbing my capture sword and jumping clear. I'll be back, rails. Promise. But first I need to catch all of the things. Oh, and maybe play some more blitzball...
Monday, April 07, 2014
FTL: Advanced Edition
Last week apparently saw the release of a free expansion for the game FTL. It brought in a new race, some new ships (including a C version of all previous ships), some new events, and a ton of new ship parts. It has some balance fixes for some of the truly terribly or overpowered parts in the original game. And it has a third difficulty setting for the really hardcore player. Apparently they also released the game on iOS at the same time. This game is awesome and totally worth picking up if you're someone with one of those devices.
I found out all this stuff not through Steam or email or anything, which seems a little poor. This seems like the sort of thing that Steam should be able to tell me about in some way. Instead I found out when I was looking for a Final Fantasy speedrun stream to watch on the weekend and saw someone streaming the new FTL. Tuning in to watch one of the experts at the game play was quite the eye opener. He was doing things like knowing the attack patterns of enemy ships just by seeing what the weapons on the ship looked like. He knew the timings of the attacks so he was able to use his shield drone thing to block missiles instead of laser shots by toggling it on after the lasers and before the missiles. He also ran short on reactor power because he was able to turn down his base shields when he knew he didn't need all of them based on what weapons the enemy ship had. Plus he had every event memorized so he knew what the possible outcomes were going to be.
That all seemed pretty crazy, but then he talked a bit about a balance mod that he made for the original game and how a lot of the balance changes in the expansion were pulled from his mod. I guess it makes sense that someone who has actually hacked the game to make it fairer would know what the events and stuff are, but it was still really impressive. And goes to show just how bad I am at the game! I only buy things when I can power them on, and I autofire most of my weapons, and I was never big in boarding the enemy ship.
One of the changes (and I think central to all of the new ships) is they added a different healing bay. Instead of being a room you could go to in order to get healed it's a room that passively heals your entire crew each time you jump, but can't heal more than that. Oh, and if any of your guys die they respawn in the cloning bay at full health but with a loss of skill points. This includes if they die by being on an enemy ship when it explodes, or in melee combat over there, or by GIANT SPIDERS in the stupid evil giant spiders event.
The new race also doesn't need oxygen to survive, and actually drains rooms they're in of oxygen. So I've taken to beaming two of them over to the enemy ship to attack the oxygen generator. They quickly empty the room of oxygen just by being in it which means they'll win any 2v2 fight unless the enemy has a bunch of extra guys to rotate in or an excessive number of mantis or robots or something. It's fun! I finally got the achievement for completely draining the oxygen out of an enemy ship.
I heartily recommend checking out the expansion if you liked the original game. Steam will auto download it for you and you just need to toggle on 'advanced edition' when you pick a ship in your hangar. And if you haven't played FTL yet... You should! Get it on iOS or through Steam or whatever. It's great! And you'll lose a lot!
I found out all this stuff not through Steam or email or anything, which seems a little poor. This seems like the sort of thing that Steam should be able to tell me about in some way. Instead I found out when I was looking for a Final Fantasy speedrun stream to watch on the weekend and saw someone streaming the new FTL. Tuning in to watch one of the experts at the game play was quite the eye opener. He was doing things like knowing the attack patterns of enemy ships just by seeing what the weapons on the ship looked like. He knew the timings of the attacks so he was able to use his shield drone thing to block missiles instead of laser shots by toggling it on after the lasers and before the missiles. He also ran short on reactor power because he was able to turn down his base shields when he knew he didn't need all of them based on what weapons the enemy ship had. Plus he had every event memorized so he knew what the possible outcomes were going to be.
That all seemed pretty crazy, but then he talked a bit about a balance mod that he made for the original game and how a lot of the balance changes in the expansion were pulled from his mod. I guess it makes sense that someone who has actually hacked the game to make it fairer would know what the events and stuff are, but it was still really impressive. And goes to show just how bad I am at the game! I only buy things when I can power them on, and I autofire most of my weapons, and I was never big in boarding the enemy ship.
One of the changes (and I think central to all of the new ships) is they added a different healing bay. Instead of being a room you could go to in order to get healed it's a room that passively heals your entire crew each time you jump, but can't heal more than that. Oh, and if any of your guys die they respawn in the cloning bay at full health but with a loss of skill points. This includes if they die by being on an enemy ship when it explodes, or in melee combat over there, or by GIANT SPIDERS in the stupid evil giant spiders event.
The new race also doesn't need oxygen to survive, and actually drains rooms they're in of oxygen. So I've taken to beaming two of them over to the enemy ship to attack the oxygen generator. They quickly empty the room of oxygen just by being in it which means they'll win any 2v2 fight unless the enemy has a bunch of extra guys to rotate in or an excessive number of mantis or robots or something. It's fun! I finally got the achievement for completely draining the oxygen out of an enemy ship.
I heartily recommend checking out the expansion if you liked the original game. Steam will auto download it for you and you just need to toggle on 'advanced edition' when you pick a ship in your hangar. And if you haven't played FTL yet... You should! Get it on iOS or through Steam or whatever. It's great! And you'll lose a lot!
Sunday, April 06, 2014
Bridge Match 2 - Board 49
Board 49 - Dealer North - None Vul
Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate
My hand: ♠ A 9 7 3 2 ♥ A 9 6 4 2 ♦ J ♣ A 6
It gets passed to me in 3rd chair and I have a 5-5 hand with 13 points but no intermediate values at all. I have to bid, but I'm not terribly happy with doing so after partner passed. I open 1 spade. Partner raises to 2 spades which is where we play.
West leads the 2 of clubs.
Well, I have 1 club, 1 heart, and 3 spade tricks. For losers I only have 1 club, 1 diamond, 1 heart, and 1 or 2 spades. But setting up extra tricks seems really hard. I guess I probably need to cross ruff the red suits? I might as well lose my club tricks now to cut communication later in the hand? 2-T-Q-6. 4-A-5-9. I duck a heart. 2-T-7-3. West catches on and returns a spade. Doh. 5-K-4-2. A heart back, ruff a heart. Hearts split 3-3 so my last two hearts are now good.
I guess I should just draw trump and lose a diamond, huh?
I do exactly that. Spades split 3-2 so I make 3.
Five tables made 3 spades in a spade partscore. One table made 2 spades. One table made 2 spades but bid up to 3, which is better than the table that bid 3 hearts and only made 1. For our 5 way tie we get 10 MPs.
Captain Jack doesn't like my pass over 2 spades. He wants me to bid 3 spades. Given that partner is a passed hand and that I have no good values I think my pass was fine. But I guess we made 3 and partner only had a 5 count. If he had 9 maybe we could have missed a game with my wimpy bid? But I also feel like we got very lucky to make 3 since I needed hearts to split 3-3 and spades to split 3-2. Besides, the right game try is probably to bid 3 hearts and hope we're double fit!
Ranking after board 49/60: 1/16 with 59.91%
Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate
My hand: ♠ A 9 7 3 2 ♥ A 9 6 4 2 ♦ J ♣ A 6
It gets passed to me in 3rd chair and I have a 5-5 hand with 13 points but no intermediate values at all. I have to bid, but I'm not terribly happy with doing so after partner passed. I open 1 spade. Partner raises to 2 spades which is where we play.
West leads the 2 of clubs.
| NORTH ♠ K 8 6 ♥ 7 6 ♦ Q T 6 4 2 ♣ T 9 8 | ||
| WEST ♣ 2 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A 9 7 3 2 ♥ A 9 6 4 2 ♦ J ♣ A 6 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | 1♠ | |
| Pass | 2♠ | Pass | Pass |
| Pass |
Well, I have 1 club, 1 heart, and 3 spade tricks. For losers I only have 1 club, 1 diamond, 1 heart, and 1 or 2 spades. But setting up extra tricks seems really hard. I guess I probably need to cross ruff the red suits? I might as well lose my club tricks now to cut communication later in the hand? 2-T-Q-6. 4-A-5-9. I duck a heart. 2-T-7-3. West catches on and returns a spade. Doh. 5-K-4-2. A heart back, ruff a heart. Hearts split 3-3 so my last two hearts are now good.
I guess I should just draw trump and lose a diamond, huh?
I do exactly that. Spades split 3-2 so I make 3.
| NORTH ♠ K 8 6 ♥ 7 6 ♦ Q T 6 4 2 ♣ T 9 8 | ||
| WEST ♠ J 5 ♥ K T 5 ♦ A 7 5 3 ♣ K J 5 2 | EAST ♠ Q T 4 ♥ Q J 3 ♦ K 9 8 ♣ Q 7 4 3 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A 9 7 3 2 ♥ A 9 6 4 2 ♦ J ♣ A 6 |
Captain Jack doesn't like my pass over 2 spades. He wants me to bid 3 spades. Given that partner is a passed hand and that I have no good values I think my pass was fine. But I guess we made 3 and partner only had a 5 count. If he had 9 maybe we could have missed a game with my wimpy bid? But I also feel like we got very lucky to make 3 since I needed hearts to split 3-3 and spades to split 3-2. Besides, the right game try is probably to bid 3 hearts and hope we're double fit!
Ranking after board 49/60: 1/16 with 59.91%
Friday, April 04, 2014
Wheel of Chaos 2014
It's that time of year again... FumBBL's Wheel of Chaos is starting up and if I want to join in I need to figure out where I want to apply. I posted about it a couple times last year and ended up deciding to just roll a die to figure out which group to join since that seemed sufficiently chaotic. In retrospect there was a 'soft' group that didn't get enough people signed up to it, and it was the group I thought would be softest, so maybe I should be using some logic this year?
This year the mutation prizes are horns, disturbing presence, two heads, and tentacles. I only have one box team high enough to really join up, which is the same human team that lost in the first round last year. My TV is much higher though, up at 2010, and the team is a lot better since I'm not dragging around a +AG Ogre and instead have 5 real players with +AG. I joke that they're my half-elf team. The only downside is my killer died in my last game so I don't have anyone with mighty blow+piling on anymore. Probably I should play some games to level up the new blitzer and hope I don't lose too much in the process. But either way this team should be guaranteed a spot in whichever qualifier I want to join.
How do I feel about the rewards? Horns is still pretty sweet on a killer if I build a new one of those. Disturbing presence is complete trash. Two heads would be particularly good with my odd focus on bonus agility. Tentacles would be super fun, especially since my current Ogre is really set up for it with block, guard, and stand firm as his skills thus far. Tentacles on the surface feels like it wouldn't have many people really interested in it since most strong teams have mutation access anyway. Elves really have no use for tentacles so I'd expect them to go somewhere else. Two heads has been under represented both of the last two years and I sorta expect that to keep happening this year too.
So I guess I should figure out how I feel about playing against elves. If I get a killer back I think my elf game is pretty good. I have the bonus agility to fight their positioning game and can whittle their numbers down. I also have really good one turn touchdown possibilities with my catcher having an extra movement and an extra agility. On the other hand I have a lot of guard and can really run circles around the stupid bashy teams. So I feel like I don't really care one way or the other. If I really wanted to avoid elves I'd join the tentacles group. If I really wanted to play them I'd join the two heads group. But if I don't care... I should flip a coin!
Or maybe I really want to avoid Khemri? They seem like they really should be joining the tentacles group. I hate playing against Khemri in general, but this team actually seems well built to match up against them. I have dorky linemen to throw on the mummies and I have lots of agility to dodge the key guys away to make them move very slowly up field.
Ok, I've convinced myself. I went random last year and lost in the first round... This year I want tentacles.
This year the mutation prizes are horns, disturbing presence, two heads, and tentacles. I only have one box team high enough to really join up, which is the same human team that lost in the first round last year. My TV is much higher though, up at 2010, and the team is a lot better since I'm not dragging around a +AG Ogre and instead have 5 real players with +AG. I joke that they're my half-elf team. The only downside is my killer died in my last game so I don't have anyone with mighty blow+piling on anymore. Probably I should play some games to level up the new blitzer and hope I don't lose too much in the process. But either way this team should be guaranteed a spot in whichever qualifier I want to join.
How do I feel about the rewards? Horns is still pretty sweet on a killer if I build a new one of those. Disturbing presence is complete trash. Two heads would be particularly good with my odd focus on bonus agility. Tentacles would be super fun, especially since my current Ogre is really set up for it with block, guard, and stand firm as his skills thus far. Tentacles on the surface feels like it wouldn't have many people really interested in it since most strong teams have mutation access anyway. Elves really have no use for tentacles so I'd expect them to go somewhere else. Two heads has been under represented both of the last two years and I sorta expect that to keep happening this year too.
So I guess I should figure out how I feel about playing against elves. If I get a killer back I think my elf game is pretty good. I have the bonus agility to fight their positioning game and can whittle their numbers down. I also have really good one turn touchdown possibilities with my catcher having an extra movement and an extra agility. On the other hand I have a lot of guard and can really run circles around the stupid bashy teams. So I feel like I don't really care one way or the other. If I really wanted to avoid elves I'd join the tentacles group. If I really wanted to play them I'd join the two heads group. But if I don't care... I should flip a coin!
Or maybe I really want to avoid Khemri? They seem like they really should be joining the tentacles group. I hate playing against Khemri in general, but this team actually seems well built to match up against them. I have dorky linemen to throw on the mummies and I have lots of agility to dodge the key guys away to make them move very slowly up field.
Ok, I've convinced myself. I went random last year and lost in the first round... This year I want tentacles.
Thursday, April 03, 2014
WWE Network
The World Wrestling Federation Entertainment company recently put out what boils down to being their own version of Netflix. Except instead of old movies and television shows they have old wrestling pay per views and old wrestling television shows. WWE bought up the WCW and ECW libraries a while ago so they've got all the PPVs from all three big wrestling federations from when I was a kid. They're also focusing on putting out a bunch of new content like Netflix does, in particular all of the new PPVs are going to be streamed live on the WWE Network. This has made some cable companies pretty bitter since a lot of the demand for the $60 PPVs has gone away now that people can pay $10 per month and get all of them. 1/6th the cost, no hassle with the cable company, and a bunch of other free stuff on top? I have to imagine a lot of people look at that deal and have a hard time saying no.
If they live in the US, anyway. The service is only available in the US and they don't expect to have it up in Canada for a year. I hate this sort of thing. I don't understand the need, in this day and age, to have restrictions based on where one lives. I have to imagine it's a copyright law issue of some kind because those laws are stupidly outdated. It makes me sad because Wrestlemania is this weekend and I wanted to give it a watch. A quick search on Rogers website doesn't even turn up anything about it, so I can't tell if I could even order it the 'old' way.
Anyway... I did some internet searching of other varieties and it turns out I actually live in Kentucky, which is in the US. Who knew? My computer is still in Canada though, but I found a free trial of an IP converter thingy so now it's down in the US somewhere too... The last couple of days while making food and eating I've been watching old Royal Rumble matches. It's pretty sweet, I have to say!
Wrestlemania is the first PPV they're running on the Network so I do fear it'll go wrong in some way. Probably server overload as more people try to watch than they're ready to handle. The claim is it'll be starting at 7pm on Sunday. If anyone wants to risk that it works and come on down to Kentucky to watch you're welcome to; if it's busted then I'll hopefully just end up watching it at 3am or something.
If they live in the US, anyway. The service is only available in the US and they don't expect to have it up in Canada for a year. I hate this sort of thing. I don't understand the need, in this day and age, to have restrictions based on where one lives. I have to imagine it's a copyright law issue of some kind because those laws are stupidly outdated. It makes me sad because Wrestlemania is this weekend and I wanted to give it a watch. A quick search on Rogers website doesn't even turn up anything about it, so I can't tell if I could even order it the 'old' way.
Anyway... I did some internet searching of other varieties and it turns out I actually live in Kentucky, which is in the US. Who knew? My computer is still in Canada though, but I found a free trial of an IP converter thingy so now it's down in the US somewhere too... The last couple of days while making food and eating I've been watching old Royal Rumble matches. It's pretty sweet, I have to say!
Wrestlemania is the first PPV they're running on the Network so I do fear it'll go wrong in some way. Probably server overload as more people try to watch than they're ready to handle. The claim is it'll be starting at 7pm on Sunday. If anyone wants to risk that it works and come on down to Kentucky to watch you're welcome to; if it's busted then I'll hopefully just end up watching it at 3am or something.
Wednesday, April 02, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Achievements
One of things you can count on being added to a remade version of an old game is achievements. Everyone loves achievements, right? Little things to give you some added direction on what you could be doing. I took a look at them to see if there was something I should be doing and they mostly seemed like things I was going to do anyway. Collect all the ultimate weapons, beat the new challenge bosses, follow the plot...
There are two, however, that seem both easy and like things I was not going to do. Steal 200 times, and bribe for a large amount of money. These are both things that center around using Rikku and are the ways to get lots of items to power up her awesome but spreadsheet heavy limit break. Now, I normally like stealing things, and I really like Rikku as a character, but I've never really used her in this game. I think it's probably because she's abysmally bad at doing damage when she joins up and I'm dragging the distinctly mediocre Kimahri around because he wants experience. Well, I must do any achievement that's even vaguely feasible so I'm now stealing from all the fights on top of using Kimahri. I've reached the point where by feeding him all the experience and basically ignoring Lulu entirely that they do about the same amount of damage. That's something, right? Anyway, I don't like rotating everyone in on every fight so I pretty much only level a few people at a time. Now that Rikku's in the rotation I'm using a rotating 4 person party with Tidus and Yuna. Auron is the big loser here, since normally I use him because he's pretty awesome too.
As far as bribing goes I decided to go read a guide about it and it sounds like I can get the achievement in one fight if I want to since you can bribe any amount of cash at once? So I just need to have a ton of money and learn the bribe skill? I guess Rikku can use all these levels I'm generating and try to head towards bribe. I feel like it should be somewhere in her section of the expert sphere grid. Apparently you can bribe up some level 3 and level 4 keys, too, so maybe bribing is something I should be doing anyway. But if not for the achievement I probably wouldn't have known. Hurray achievements!
There are two, however, that seem both easy and like things I was not going to do. Steal 200 times, and bribe for a large amount of money. These are both things that center around using Rikku and are the ways to get lots of items to power up her awesome but spreadsheet heavy limit break. Now, I normally like stealing things, and I really like Rikku as a character, but I've never really used her in this game. I think it's probably because she's abysmally bad at doing damage when she joins up and I'm dragging the distinctly mediocre Kimahri around because he wants experience. Well, I must do any achievement that's even vaguely feasible so I'm now stealing from all the fights on top of using Kimahri. I've reached the point where by feeding him all the experience and basically ignoring Lulu entirely that they do about the same amount of damage. That's something, right? Anyway, I don't like rotating everyone in on every fight so I pretty much only level a few people at a time. Now that Rikku's in the rotation I'm using a rotating 4 person party with Tidus and Yuna. Auron is the big loser here, since normally I use him because he's pretty awesome too.
As far as bribing goes I decided to go read a guide about it and it sounds like I can get the achievement in one fight if I want to since you can bribe any amount of cash at once? So I just need to have a ton of money and learn the bribe skill? I guess Rikku can use all these levels I'm generating and try to head towards bribe. I feel like it should be somewhere in her section of the expert sphere grid. Apparently you can bribe up some level 3 and level 4 keys, too, so maybe bribing is something I should be doing anyway. But if not for the achievement I probably wouldn't have known. Hurray achievements!
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
League of Legends: Ultra Rapid Fire
April 1st seems to bring with it two styles of 'pranks' on the internet. The first is where someone comes up with some sort of ludicrous or plausible lie and just throws it out there. I don't understand this at all. Some of it can be a little amusing I guess, but mostly it just feels pretty stupid. The other kind is where a website/game/whatever puts a ton of work into implementing something really absurd and cool for a day. Google has been pretty awesome with this sort of thing and this year they 'hid' 150+ Pokemon on Google Maps or something like that. This sort of thing seems fun for the users and like it was probably fun for the implementers too. I do understand this!
League of Legends has been coming out with new game modes to try on a short term basis and they timed their most recent one to coincide with April 1st. The 'back story' is that they're changing the big pro league to use just this mode starting next season which falls into the first camp which I don't like, but then they actually went out and implemented the game mode and put it live for a week which I do like. And getting two of the top pro teams to play a 'serious' game on the map as a way to introduce the mode was pretty amusing and they went far enough over the top that it's pretty clearly not true.
The mode involves knocking 80% off of the cooldown of every ability and making everything cost no mana. There are some other buffs as well like earning more money, moving faster, and getting more attack speed/crit from items. But the basic idea is everyone just stands around spamming buttons and making crazy things happen. I played a game and it was pretty fun. I think it would probably get old pretty fast but as a one week thing it's pretty great.
April Fool's Day is a pretty silly idea, but if people keep doing it like this I'm just fine with it. But you'll forgive me if I wait until April 2nd to listen to your baby announcements.
League of Legends has been coming out with new game modes to try on a short term basis and they timed their most recent one to coincide with April 1st. The 'back story' is that they're changing the big pro league to use just this mode starting next season which falls into the first camp which I don't like, but then they actually went out and implemented the game mode and put it live for a week which I do like. And getting two of the top pro teams to play a 'serious' game on the map as a way to introduce the mode was pretty amusing and they went far enough over the top that it's pretty clearly not true.
The mode involves knocking 80% off of the cooldown of every ability and making everything cost no mana. There are some other buffs as well like earning more money, moving faster, and getting more attack speed/crit from items. But the basic idea is everyone just stands around spamming buttons and making crazy things happen. I played a game and it was pretty fun. I think it would probably get old pretty fast but as a one week thing it's pretty great.
April Fool's Day is a pretty silly idea, but if people keep doing it like this I'm just fine with it. But you'll forgive me if I wait until April 2nd to listen to your baby announcements.
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