Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Once again I burn thru my shards

I must learn to control my personal crafting.  I got some wood working done last night.  Managed to get it up one rank.  Then, after trading an iron ingot and a fine sand for some iron nails, I had all the materials for making the level 7 and 12 saws.  Which I proceeded to do.  2 Chocobotail Saws later and One was put up on the Bazaar for 45k and the other was use to replace the Weathered Saw I still had.

So the "quest" to replace my saw represented most of my play time last night (4 separate jobs used to make one item).  Unfortunately doing so ran my personal reserve of crystals (especially wind) into the ground.  I was down to 2 wind crystals...  I also discovered that even with master support, 13 Leathercrafting is not really high enough for working with Dodo Skins.  Ah well.

And of course I do this right after all the leves reset...

Ah well I will just have to do all 8 local leves tonight.

I also managed to make 3 Lauan Pattens.  One for myself (yay crafting stats on the feet) and two for sale.  So I've decided that the next few days (local leves aside) will be dedicated to farming crystals and working on my harvesting skills.  Initially I'll be in the grade 2 La Noscea area.  We'll see how it goes from there.

In other good news I noticed in the directors address to the players that the November update will be the one that allows us to get more retainers (drool, slobber, slobber).  I might actually be able to store quantities of raw and processed materials more than the bare minimum...  The sort function is also apparently coming in that update...  Oh bliss, Oh joy...

So in the meanwhile we will continue to enjoy an extra month of free access (it's like an extended beta).  My personal opinion is that it's nice but not totally necessary, but then again, I expect an unfinished product with a staged release over the first year out of MMOs.  Anyone thinking differently is highly delusional.  It's the nature of the beast.  The thing that IS important is that "the hook" needs to be there from day one.  EVE has it.  WoW has it.  I think FFXIV has it (for me at least).  In my case it's the evolution of the crafting from being a supporting player to being a major part of the game.

I think that the panel in the most recent GDC that was filled with the producers of MMOs that are over 5 years old was full of good advice for MMO manufacturers.  The pertinent point is that the company needs to plan for up to 1 year after release and a game has up to that point in time to "find it's audience".  The usual exception to the rule is EVE of course.  Personally I think this is because on so many levels EVE was ahead of the curve.  Seriously way out ahead of the curve.  It's audience is still growing up as the current generation of MMO player age, and it continues to evolve.  WoW is starting to imitate its longevity techniques with the upcoming Cataclysm release.  We have until next September to see where FFXIV settles on the spectrum.  The problem I had with getting back into FFXI was the restrictions of inventory and the necessity of configuring all those macroes and the changes in subjobs indicating a need to level up another job.  Sure it's all gotten faster, but still it represented more work than I wanted to get into.  I won't be going back to FFXI now that I have FFXIV.

Physical: 31, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 14, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm: 9, Shield: 7, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 12, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 12, Leatherworking: 13, Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 15, Cooking 13, Mining: 12, Botany: 13, Fishing: 11.

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