Ok, I haven't played in a while. The basic reason is the lack of storage for the crafting I will want to do. I'm waiting until February to see if there's some more storage options. Until then, taking it easy. I was dishartened to see the new direction of the game heading towards a more FFXI clone from the new directors announcements with the introduction of wearable loot drops (implying no crafter involvement) and the fact they will be trying to fix the market place mechanics instead of simply scrapping them and putting in an auction house. But hey, they make the decisions, not us.
I'll mostly be in EVE online while waiting for this.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Working on my fishing.
Last night was pretty straightforward. Finish some leves. Make myself an Iron Chaser Hammer. Incidentally YG has this wrong. It can't be an R31 synth to make the head - I did it at 21 and only got 330 sp out of it. It did take me two tries but hey that's par for the course. I then helped one of my new linkshell members out with some repairs and a new pugilist weapon. And this is the first time I've been able to make my own Buffalo Leather (yay no more spetch shortage) and that was rather nice. Then it was back to turning in the leves I was doing and heading out to camp Horizon in Thanalan. From there I did one Regional Leve and then headed off to try and figure out the bait that Dark Bass likes.
Nothing dinged but progress was being made.
Nothing dinged but progress was being made.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Once again into the breach (of a new LS)
After falling back on the crafting shell for a day or two, I decided to take a chance on a new linkshell once again. This time I have more confidence that it will work out. For one thing there are the occasional name I recognize from just after beta. And although, due to the badly designed LS interface the leadership can't clean up the dead wood, the body count seems to be there. The lack of juvenile conversation elements was another big clue that this might work out longer. Time will tell of course.
On the progress front, Fishing hit 19. I managed to grind Goldsmithing up to 20 and knock off the R20 quest for that craft (and get the guild marks for same). I also hit physical level 49. Just one level to go until physical cap. The plan at this point is to go to camp horizon and try and nail down what bait dark bass bites on. Dark Bass is available there free fishing. After a bit of that then it's off to La Noscea to fish up some lightning generating fish (Spear fishing tarantulas for example). I'm going to need the lightning crystals for the Clothcraft.
This should get me to fishing 20-21. Then I should be able to polish off the fishing quest at R20 and that will be that for the DoH and DoL jobs. Except for local level quests (necesary for the guild marks) I will then be concentrating on all the DoW and DoM jobs. Step one will be getting all those 14s to 15 then getting them all to 20 and doing the class quests.
Physical: 49, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 19, Axe: 15, Archery: 14, Polearm: 14: , Shield: 16, Thaumaturgy: 14, Conjury: 14, Woodworking: 20, Smithing: 21, Armorcraft: 20, Goldsmithing: 20, Leatherworking: 20, Clothcraft: 21, Alchemy: 22, Cooking: 21, Mining: 22, Botany: 23, Fishing: 19.
On the progress front, Fishing hit 19. I managed to grind Goldsmithing up to 20 and knock off the R20 quest for that craft (and get the guild marks for same). I also hit physical level 49. Just one level to go until physical cap. The plan at this point is to go to camp horizon and try and nail down what bait dark bass bites on. Dark Bass is available there free fishing. After a bit of that then it's off to La Noscea to fish up some lightning generating fish (Spear fishing tarantulas for example). I'm going to need the lightning crystals for the Clothcraft.
This should get me to fishing 20-21. Then I should be able to polish off the fishing quest at R20 and that will be that for the DoH and DoL jobs. Except for local level quests (necesary for the guild marks) I will then be concentrating on all the DoW and DoM jobs. Step one will be getting all those 14s to 15 then getting them all to 20 and doing the class quests.
Physical: 49, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 19, Axe: 15, Archery: 14, Polearm: 14: , Shield: 16, Thaumaturgy: 14, Conjury: 14, Woodworking: 20, Smithing: 21, Armorcraft: 20, Goldsmithing: 20, Leatherworking: 20, Clothcraft: 21, Alchemy: 22, Cooking: 21, Mining: 22, Botany: 23, Fishing: 19.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
More progress
Humm, another general linkshell, don't know how long I'll last with that one. It's a little juvenile at times. That can be annoying. The crafter shell luckily I don't have any issues with. In other news I upgraded all my crafting tools that needed to get upgraded. One of which I had to turn once again to the services of Faeye, but that's par for the course at my ranks.
Tonight I managed to get Armorer to 20 and Blacksmith to 21. I had previously gotten Physical level 48. About the only amusing thing was that I HAD to level black smith that last bit to level 21 in order to make the R22 tool (specifically the Iron Doming Hammer Head). Lucky I was within striking distance. The previous R17 tool went to a crafter from the crafting shell instead of the vendor. Good thing for a +1 R17 tool.
Since I did the quest on my Blacksmith, there was no quest to do for armorer R20.
Now only goldsmith left to do on the Hand side of things. Then fishing on the Land side of things.
Physical: 48, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 19, Axe: 15, Archery: 14, Polearm: 14: , Shield: 16, Thaumaturgy: 14, Conjury: 14, Woodworking: 20, Smithing: 21, Armorcraft: 20, Goldsmithing: 19, Leatherworking: 20, Clothcraft: 21, Alchemy: 22, Cooking: 21, Mining: 22, Botany: 23, Fishing: 18.
Tonight I managed to get Armorer to 20 and Blacksmith to 21. I had previously gotten Physical level 48. About the only amusing thing was that I HAD to level black smith that last bit to level 21 in order to make the R22 tool (specifically the Iron Doming Hammer Head). Lucky I was within striking distance. The previous R17 tool went to a crafter from the crafting shell instead of the vendor. Good thing for a +1 R17 tool.
Since I did the quest on my Blacksmith, there was no quest to do for armorer R20.
Now only goldsmith left to do on the Hand side of things. Then fishing on the Land side of things.
Physical: 48, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 19, Axe: 15, Archery: 14, Polearm: 14: , Shield: 16, Thaumaturgy: 14, Conjury: 14, Woodworking: 20, Smithing: 21, Armorcraft: 20, Goldsmithing: 19, Leatherworking: 20, Clothcraft: 21, Alchemy: 22, Cooking: 21, Mining: 22, Botany: 23, Fishing: 18.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Hello new year!
Welcome to the new year. I haven't blogged in a while, been busy with that whole xmass/new years thing. But stuff has been happening in game that's for sure. I left both my previous linkshells. Hokuten because the leader kinda disapeared on us. Retribution due to bugfuck crazy leadership. Normal leaders don't have to roll up alts to pose as newbies to "test" their members is all I have to say on that note.
Meanwhile progress on the character development front. Quite a bit actually. I managed to get 6 of the eight crafting jobs to and past in certain cases rank 20. I managed to do all related rank 20 quests. I currently only have Armorer and Goldsmith both at rank 18 to go for the "Hand" jobs. On the Land side of things I only have Fishing left below rank 20, also at 18. I've managed to upgrade various tools to the R22 versions although I still need to get some upgraded.
Gladiator hit R19, and I've been progressing a lot of the other combat and magic classes. The current laggart is Lancer at R12. I've been slowly getting them all up above R15.
Thanks to Enid/Faeye, I've been able to upgrade my underwear to the R21 set - in green. Once I get all the combat/magic classes up to R20 I'll need to do a comprehensive upgrade of my togs. Heck at level 47 I've only got 3 more levels to go until level cap. So progress is being made.
I've pretty much managed to max out the storage on my retainers. *sigh*. The new year also saw the e-mail from Squareenix asking for some feedback on what we'd like to see (withing limited parameters of course - they are Squareenix). Liberal use of the "other" category to give actual feedback was necessary, since in a lot of cases none of their options were directly applicable. They seem to be feeling out the player base to see if "radical" changes would possibly fly. Not sure this is a good sign.
Now my point of view as a crafter should by now be abundantly clear. There needs to be less directly available gear from mobs and more crafter involvement. They are not bad compared to a lot of other MMOs in this regards but they could do much better.
Storage is still a horrible horrible issue. Originally the plan seems to have been "let the user pay for the storage they want" which was fine (although heavily advantaged the non-crafters). But with the "we're sorry - here don't bother playing while we fix the game" policy, they've effectively removed our ability to adjust storage to our needs and thereby killed the game for a lot of multi-class crafters.
The battelregimen system is a failure. The rest of combat is fine for me although the lag gets to be an issue since it's constant command based. One advantage an auto attack system has over a constant command system is it is less affected by lag. And this is a much laggier game than say FFXI.
The economy is a total shambles and a joke. It's a good thing for me that I'm fairly independent of the economy only needing to go to the wards about once a week. The storage mechanics also make it impossible for me to participate actively in the player economy since I need my retainers to remain mobile and available. I end up NPC vendoring A LOT as a consequence. Stupid, stupid system. This to me is where they saw what the micro-transaction and free to play Asian games were doing but did not properly analyze WHY they did things that way and just tried to tack on the mechanic. The thing is that these mechanics (limited sales space and limited storage and horrible handicap to the user's ability to find anything), all collectively introduce friction in the game, reducing market velocity. The gil sources are way out of balance with the gil drains. I could go on, but the short of it is someone over there needs to get a clue by four upside the head and see what EVE online does to support "crafting" in their market design. They went in absolutely the wrong direction from FFXI. I have little hope that they will come to this conclusion - even with a "we want radical change" management. We'll see if they can grow up as game designers or not withing a good 6 month time frame.
Don't get me wrong. I actually like FFXIV even with it's current warts. However that does not mean that they couldn't potentially "break" the game for me. There's enough irritants and problems that they could easily tip this game over from "It's ok" to "it's broken and they don't seem to be headed in the direction of a fix". My gut feel is that even with people having different opinions on "what" needs to be fixed, it can generally be said that it's 90% of he game play and 10% system related (still too many places lag can affect game experience). The artwork, setting and world all work fine. This IS a place I'd like to enjoy exploring. So long as they fix what's not working and don't break what is while they are at it.
Physical: 47, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 19, Axe: 15, Archery: 14, Polearm: 12: , Shield: 16, Thaumaturgy: 14, Conjury: 14, Woodworking: 20, Smithing: 20, Armorcraft: 18, Goldsmithing: 18, Leatherworking: 20, Clothcraft: 21, Alchemy: 22, Cooking: 21, Mining: 22, Botany: 23, Fishing: 18.
Meanwhile progress on the character development front. Quite a bit actually. I managed to get 6 of the eight crafting jobs to and past in certain cases rank 20. I managed to do all related rank 20 quests. I currently only have Armorer and Goldsmith both at rank 18 to go for the "Hand" jobs. On the Land side of things I only have Fishing left below rank 20, also at 18. I've managed to upgrade various tools to the R22 versions although I still need to get some upgraded.
Gladiator hit R19, and I've been progressing a lot of the other combat and magic classes. The current laggart is Lancer at R12. I've been slowly getting them all up above R15.
Thanks to Enid/Faeye, I've been able to upgrade my underwear to the R21 set - in green. Once I get all the combat/magic classes up to R20 I'll need to do a comprehensive upgrade of my togs. Heck at level 47 I've only got 3 more levels to go until level cap. So progress is being made.
I've pretty much managed to max out the storage on my retainers. *sigh*. The new year also saw the e-mail from Squareenix asking for some feedback on what we'd like to see (withing limited parameters of course - they are Squareenix). Liberal use of the "other" category to give actual feedback was necessary, since in a lot of cases none of their options were directly applicable. They seem to be feeling out the player base to see if "radical" changes would possibly fly. Not sure this is a good sign.
Now my point of view as a crafter should by now be abundantly clear. There needs to be less directly available gear from mobs and more crafter involvement. They are not bad compared to a lot of other MMOs in this regards but they could do much better.
Storage is still a horrible horrible issue. Originally the plan seems to have been "let the user pay for the storage they want" which was fine (although heavily advantaged the non-crafters). But with the "we're sorry - here don't bother playing while we fix the game" policy, they've effectively removed our ability to adjust storage to our needs and thereby killed the game for a lot of multi-class crafters.
The battelregimen system is a failure. The rest of combat is fine for me although the lag gets to be an issue since it's constant command based. One advantage an auto attack system has over a constant command system is it is less affected by lag. And this is a much laggier game than say FFXI.
The economy is a total shambles and a joke. It's a good thing for me that I'm fairly independent of the economy only needing to go to the wards about once a week. The storage mechanics also make it impossible for me to participate actively in the player economy since I need my retainers to remain mobile and available. I end up NPC vendoring A LOT as a consequence. Stupid, stupid system. This to me is where they saw what the micro-transaction and free to play Asian games were doing but did not properly analyze WHY they did things that way and just tried to tack on the mechanic. The thing is that these mechanics (limited sales space and limited storage and horrible handicap to the user's ability to find anything), all collectively introduce friction in the game, reducing market velocity. The gil sources are way out of balance with the gil drains. I could go on, but the short of it is someone over there needs to get a clue by four upside the head and see what EVE online does to support "crafting" in their market design. They went in absolutely the wrong direction from FFXI. I have little hope that they will come to this conclusion - even with a "we want radical change" management. We'll see if they can grow up as game designers or not withing a good 6 month time frame.
Don't get me wrong. I actually like FFXIV even with it's current warts. However that does not mean that they couldn't potentially "break" the game for me. There's enough irritants and problems that they could easily tip this game over from "It's ok" to "it's broken and they don't seem to be headed in the direction of a fix". My gut feel is that even with people having different opinions on "what" needs to be fixed, it can generally be said that it's 90% of he game play and 10% system related (still too many places lag can affect game experience). The artwork, setting and world all work fine. This IS a place I'd like to enjoy exploring. So long as they fix what's not working and don't break what is while they are at it.
Physical: 47, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 19, Axe: 15, Archery: 14, Polearm: 12: , Shield: 16, Thaumaturgy: 14, Conjury: 14, Woodworking: 20, Smithing: 20, Armorcraft: 18, Goldsmithing: 18, Leatherworking: 20, Clothcraft: 21, Alchemy: 22, Cooking: 21, Mining: 22, Botany: 23, Fishing: 18.
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