The Business: This Shit's Coming To Corporate Tabletop

Recently the devs for Final Fantasy XIV announced what the new Beastmaster Job will be.

Since most of you don't play this MMO, allow me to define what "Limited Job" means: a Limited Job is a type of character class that is intentionally unbalanced on the understanding that it cannot engage with playable content as the non-limited Jobs do; how these restrictions manifest, and what exclusive content they access, varies by the Limited Job.

So no, Beastmaster (BSM) cannot join parties with the other Limited Job (Blue Mage) or the full Jobs (Dragoon, Machinist, White Mage, Red Mage, Warrior, Black Mage, Ninja, Dancer, Viper, Reaper, Paladin, Gunbreaker, Sage, Scholar, Summoner, Samurai, Monk, Bard). It cannot go the current level cap (100), or even access any expansion content due to being capped at level 50 and thus only to the base game of A Realm Reborn- which would be acceptable if it was open to Free Trials, but it's not (unlike Blue Mage) as you need to have Dawntrail (the current expansion as of this post) on your service account to do so.

Put this in Tabletop terms.

You're Wizards of the Coast. You announce a new Class or Subclass for Current Edition, but it's paywalled behind a specific tier on Beyond and not in any digital or print product; you can't use it in Organized Play unless you're rolling alone or in a single (sub)Class party, and you're capped at 10th level while everyone else can go to 20th or more. (N.B.: Roll For Combat has a Third Party take, which is Please Don't Sue Me Nintendo: The Class.)

Does this sound like good product design--nevermind game design--to you? It does if you're a Mammon Mobster. Those folks occupy WOTC's C-Suite as well as Hasbro's.

"This can't work."

Bullshit. It already has. The majority of Current Edition players and Referees are already hopelessly yoked to Beyond; they damn well will go along with being milked in this fashion if the value proposition for microsubscription is good enough and WOTC is smart enough to deliberately release new stuff under this model in an overpowered state (as is further incentivized with the adoption of a Seasonal content release schedule; make the new Season's new widgets overpowered and players will pay to win every single time because if they don't they lose, hard).

The only thing needed to finish this pivot is to yank Referee discretion on what players can access to use, meaning that the same optimize-your-fun dynamics we see in MMOs, Battle Royales, and Extraction Shooters will come to Corpo-Approved Tabletop because theirs is a model that maps closely to Blizzard's World First Raid Clear race model and the parallel Mythic Plus Tournament race model (and will incorporate a lot from the more PVP sort of competitive play). Racing to see who can clear modules fastest, mapping out routes, optmizing parties, all of that stuff- this is what WOTC wants for Current Edition because it's proven to make people pay, pay more, and pay more often.

Normies want this. Casuals want this. Tourists want this. They say they don't, but Revealed Preferences prove that they do.

WOTC wants Normiebux. This is how you get it. Cargo Cultists can't even grasp what's going to happen, but they're going to find out sooner than later and they'll be forced to either conform to stay in the Network or get left behind.

This is as radical a change in their Just So Cargo Cult paradigm as the Clubhouse model is, and like the Clubhouse it's far more social and Normie-friendly so they'll lose out by resisting it. The pressure from above will be overwhelming; the Clubhouse coming from below removes their road of retreat, trapping them in the middle and unable to move out of the way.

Their time is over. Shit like this will be why, and they will not be admitted into the Clubhouse; they're done.

The Business: Conventional Play Slowly Realizing That Tie-Ins Aren't That Great

Last week, Roll For Combat talked tie-in Tabletop products for IPs external to the hobby.

Derik (yes, that's how he spells his name; blame his parents) got it: if you can nail emulating the feel of the source material, you will find sufficient success.

The Gold Standard for this is the d6 System iteration of Star Wars, which had the unique benefit of being designed and published in time for the 10th anniversary of A New Hope in 1987 but also in the lull time between Return of the Jedi (1983) and The Phantom Menace (1999) where Lucasfilm worked with West End Games to help achieve that end. (Oh, and Stephan nailed why Star Wars is so hard to get right.)

Very few licensors even bothered to do half as much, and it shows in the product; this is why almost all of them are dogshit that deserve to be relegated to footnotes or articles that come down to "It could have been cool, but it wasn't because they screwed the pooch."

Stephan had the other big thing driving this: most such product is bought because of Pop Cult dynamics; they exist to be Objects Of Worship and Adoration, not to be even read- let alone played. (Again, d6 Star Wars was the exception that proved the rule.)

Then Mark comes in with the reality check: even the best tie-in game utterly pales compared to Pink Slime Fantasy, especially D&D.

Also, I am reminded that post-2000 Tabletop design is terrible. Most people have no fucking clue what they are doing; I did an article abou this at the Clubhouse- read it.

The Business: Network Effects Proven By Science

Josh focuses on MMOs. Everything he did here applies to Tabletop games.

Also, this is a far more honest and ethical approach than most academic works- including those done in government think tanks.

While Josh tries to say "Play what makes you happy" at the end, he knew as he said it that it wasn't true- and it was on his face. (Go ahead, go look at it; he knows he's bullshitting.)

There is a Master (WOW) and an Apprentice (FF14), and they are contending to see Who Is The Master. Everyone else is a an also-ran that does not matter. Yes, even EVE Online.

People value playing with (or around) others over "fun". That's why WOW and FF14 are Master and Apprentice, and each is attempting to convince the same audience that they do what the audience wants better.

You won't see another MMORPG become a contender without figuring out what both of these games gets right, what they get wrong, fix the latter and sell it to that same audience. Furthermore, the only reason this state of affairs exists is because the company owning the Master screwed the pooche so hard with Shadowlands that is caused a notorious mass exodus of users to FF14 and Square Enix more or less successfully capitalized on that fuckup. That's why WOW did its abrupt turn with Dragonflight and going forward have tried to keep that going- to notable success. (That, and it successfully set up "The WOW Bubble", which also helped Blizzard a lot.)

As WOW is to MMOs, D&D is to Tabletop.

The problem? There is no Apprentice.

What Apprentice does Current Edition face? Pathfinder fucked itself. ACKS doesn't have that critical mass yet. No other retroclone ever came close, and no not-D&D did either. (Yes, Uncle Kevin, that includes yours.) Current Edition's only competition is itself, in the form of Past Editions that had critical mass popularity: 1st, 2nd, 3rd. If not for TSR and WOTC missteps, no one would know or care about anything else ever.

The proof that I am correct is in the attitude of Wizards of the Coast towards Tabletop: utter disdain and disrespect. WOTC doesn't see Tabletop as competition, but instead as unruly supports that need to be tard-wrangled from time to time to keep in line. WOTC sees Vidya as competition, which is why Next Edition is Vidya and not Tabletop at all.

The only other alternative is to go outside the commercial publishing business paradigm entirely. That's what the Clubhouse is about: a return to non-commercial hobbyism.

The Culture: Videogames Superseded Tabletop For Conventional Play By 1980

Do you want to know why I keep harping on Conventional Play being surpassed and superceded by videogames?

What do they go on about? "Muh Narrative" (read a fucking book, and not the wizard book) and "Muh One True PC/Party".

That got solved by 1980.

This is where "Rogue-like" came from.

The following year, Conventional Play had its first Muh Narrative videogame.

Which would soon have others joining the party over the 1980s.

SSI's Phantasie would join that list by the end of the decade alongside the officially-licensed Gold Box AD&D games.

Now add in the Japanese games such as the long-running Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series, then arcade games for more fast-paced versions, and it becomes very easy to see why those not already involved in the tabletop hobby by 1990 presumed that "RPG" meant "videogame genre".

Yes, 2nd Edition. Yes, Palladium. I was there; I remember.

And I recall that getting anyone to play any tabletop game at all who was not a Gross Nerd was like pulling teeth, and then it was 2nd Edition, The Anne Rice Game, or Uncle Kevin's Kitchen Sink Non-Game (which still has the best wholly unintentional tie-in movie adaptation).

They were right to refuse, and not just because of who did the pitching.

They didn't have to round up a bunch of people to play. They didn't have to put up with bad behavior. They didn't even have to worry about purchase prices because by 1990 we started to see rentals be a thing.

They had a better Conventional Play experience before Ronald Reagan left the White House.

You had something closer to the real game with folks playing Car Wars, BattleTech, and SpaceMace 39K.

Meanwhile, people now going on about how they were playing the real game all this time were deep into Not Teaching Hobbyists What They (Claim To) Know like the Boomers they are.

And folks wonder why I say Conventional Play in Tabletop is screwed.

The fight got lost nearly 45 years ago. It's been nothing but a long, slow defeat ever since.

Why should I stick with a losing proposition when videogame alternatives are 100% superior and the real game gives me all I ever wanted from this hobby. Tabletop Conventional Play has never delivered, and it cannot deliver, so I welcome its demise in Tabletop.

And you can take your wretched "industry" with you.

Geek Gab Finishes The Horror Round Up, Pundit Talks The Real Magic, & More

Yes, there's a new Geek Gab today. Yes, I'll be in the chat. 1pm Central today.

David Stewart had a gaming stream on New Pub Talk at the same time.

Yesterday the RPG Pundit put out a review for supplement for Lamentations of the Flame Princess that made him cringe.

Lots of stuff to throw on screen today, either to give full attention to or to have on while doing something else.

The Business: Friction Is The Special Sauce of MMOs

Stupid Irvine Game Company has a proposed subsystem change that might not such for its flagship game.

Bellular's comment that this proposed change to how item crafting will work, and its criticism by the key demographic driving the game's business on terms of efficiency, is why Bellular made the crack about "Do you want to play a MMO?"

He used the word "friction" to describe that necessary element of a successful Virtual World game, as it gives the game more things to do and more ways for players to participate other than constantly farming the battle content and engage in player-v-player combat, something Stupid Irvine has been lousy about for over a decade and competitors have constantly shown them up over.

This is not confined to the economic sphere. Friction indicates a lack of processes automated into the game's code that smoothes out the information flow, demanding less effort and dedication from the player to attain success in their endeavors; the live game now tells you where to go, what to do, and even how to do it at time in no uncertain terms- and before that it allowed third-party addons do all that as well as automate picking up and turning in quests.

Then there's the well-known fact that Irvine has always allowed for third-party addons to automate the information flow of combat encounters, both against NPCs and against other players, allowing players to perform far beyond what the native user interface and their own native ability would allow- and we see proof of this when top-end raiders come to games that ban such tools like Final Fantasy XIV.

Automated group formation tools negating the need to solicit other players to perform group activites, such as running a dungeon or dealing with a hard overworld NPC, turn the game into a glorified lobby where other players might as well be NPC bots- and often don't play as well as those provided.

All of this removal of friction happened incrementally over time in response to common player complaints, complaints themselves born of the developers' own incompetence and intransigence in fixing it (e.g. Irvine implenting automated dungeon group formation because too many players playing off-meta races, classes, or specializations got benched and thus hit a hard wall in gameplay progression; this could be avoided if that meta problem got properly addressed).

Yet each step further turned the game into Action RPG With Extra Steps, and away from a MMO.

The answer, as with tabletop RPGs, is to accept that many players are Normies and reintroduce the friction anyway. Then do your jobs and put forth a game that actually works, a process that will necessarily have a development time of multiple years in Alpha and Beta status before launch; we're looking at no less than five and easily ten or more.

And Corporate just can't accept that, which is why AAA will never be the ones to do what must be done.

The irony here is that tabletop shows the way, and I don't be Current Year by Wankers or their across-the-street fellow travelers Baizuo. I'll expand on this tomorrow.

The Business: The MMO Problem Stems From Violated Expectations

As a follow-on to yesterday's post, here's Josh Strife Hayes talking about tutorials as a vital element of bringing players into your game.

To summarize, the objective is: "...the goal isn't hold the player's hand as you force them to have fun. It is to make them aware of what they can do, give them a chance to do it and combine it until they eventually know everything." How?

1. Introduce a new mechanic in a safe play and let the player use it at-will. Then present a challenge that must be overcome using said mechanic.
2. Stack previous mechanics together into increasingly complex situations. Give them the opportunity to see how everything they previously learned works together in harmony with that they're learning now, giving them that "Ah-hah!" moment when they realive how things work together.
3. Present this information to them in the same way that the rest of the game is presented, keeping narrative and media cohesion.
4. Integrate this entire process into the opening of your game so that it doesn't feel like a tutorial, but the natural opening of your game. If they say "Ugh, tutorial", you failed.

Josh's video shows very easy-to-reference examples of good and bad introductory experiences, and you should heed these if you are a videogame designer because if you don't snare a prospect right away you'll lose them over four out of five times, closer to nine out of ten. While there is applicability for tabletop gaming here, that's for another post.

What a tutorial does is not just instruct a player on how to manipulate the controls and navigate the playspace, it sets the expectations of required effort to succeed. This is what all those MMOs having issues with players skipping or quitting are actually reacting to: a violated expectation.

This is because MMORPGs, by and large, are terrible about the New Player/Early Game experience. Even the better ones don't have good tutorials, if they have them at all. You may learn how to use the control and move about, but you do not learn how the core gameplay content actually works due to not being in it much until you're near or at the endgame. What you play, aside from a dungeon or two here or there, is so easy that it is effortless and so the player comes to expect this as the norm.

That may be tolerable in a single-player experience, but it is not in multi-player. Other players are not there to train you; they are expecting you to be competent and just slide into your chosen role, doing what you are expected to do at the level you're expected to perform at, as revealed by over 20 years of Revealed Preference. If the game doesn't train you to meet the expectations of endgame, then you won't and that's when that sudden difficulty jump slams into you and you hit that Quit Moment.

Now couple that poor establishment of expectation with the following things: most content in a MMORPG is at endgame, most players are at endgame, and the top levels of prestige and power are at endgame. The result? Disdain for, and discounting of, everything short of endgame; the "Ugh, tutorial" sentiment is applied to everything before endgame and thus is born "The real game starts at the cap."

(Note: This problem varies greatly across the sector, with World of Warcraft being the worst; others, such as Final Fantasy XIV, are far less riddled with this cancerous meme but all MMOs are still afflicted by it because most players will quit if there is no endgame- again revealed by over 20 years of Revealed Preference. No players, no revenue, no business, no game, no paycheck for the devs.)

The way out of this is not just to make a competent tutorial, but the entire game must be consistent with the tutorial. Everything you intend for endgame must be present from the start and introduced in the same consistent manner aforementioned. Do you want a mechanic where the entire group stacks together to split the damage? Have the player do this with a NPC group first, and make this visual and audio cues consistent thereafter. None of this "Use red this time, blue the next, mark with a star, then with a circle" nonsense that just makes players mad- looking at you, World of Warcraft.

It's not enough to make your early game a natural part of the entire game. Your entire game must be treated like a competent tutorial. The best games--as Josh notes--do this, and the best franchises do this consistently; it's why the Souls series and its close cousins (Demon Souls, Bloodbourne, Elden Ring) remain popular and the older games still get played to this day and most complaints about games are traced back to this failure to establish and maintain expectations of what is required to succeed. Fix this shit or get left behind.

The Business: The MMO Business Has To Adapt To Survive, And Some Already Have

Josh Strfe Hayes suffers so you don't have to. This is his video on Lord of the Rings Online.

TLDR: It's better than he expected, and likely the best LOTR videogame out there.

What I am seeing with commentors and developers--the better ones, anyway--accepting that the MMORPG business has to accept that the past is gone, that new genres arose that better satisfy certain segments that fell away, and therefore what must happen is to make a virtue of necessity and incrementally change the games to deal with reality.

Take a look at what Josh liked about LOTRO. Its single-player experience was one he liked, albeit with caveats. He didn't play long enough to do multiplayer content, so that's still unknown, but this is indicative of a larger trend.

On the dev side, we have FF14's new patch turning a huge amount of the base game into something you can do solo- including instanced dungeons. This is the start of a long-term project to make the entire game into something you can play as if it were any other title in the franchise, titles that (barring 11) are stand-alone single-player games. Feedback to date has been positive; those who truly do not want to deal with people are increasingly able to disregard them entirely, play until they're satisfied, and go away until there's more.

Unlike Blizzard, Square-Enix is fine with players coming and going because the latter company isn't so focused on quarterly reports and similar short-term thinking at the cost of long-term, year-on-year retention of existing audiences while attracting and recruiting new ones. Not everyone likes to race chocobos, go fishing, or slam their heads against the wall on one of the most difficult encounters in the game.

The MMO developers and publishers need to accept this. They have to make the cyclical nature of MMO player attention an ally, and the sooner the first big player does this the better everyone will be due to witnessing the impact and wanting to exploit it themselves. You can do it wrong, as all Western MMOs have done so far, but you can also do it right; 14's approach so far has worked, with no timegating and cursory bitchwork to provide narrative cover for the activities.

There needs to be more information gathered, analyzed, and publized before a truly useful solution can be implemented; at this time, actors are iterating around the edges because that is all they can really do to address the matter, hoping that the tinkering does more good than harm. 14 has hit this so far, but there's a lot going into that success which does not transfer to other MMOs. Until solid data applicable across the field is made available, this is as good as it gets.

The Business: Respecting Your Players' Time Proves More Profitable In The Long Run

Game designers in the videogame world get increasing pressure from the bean counters and C Suite to turn their game into the sort of casino-style madhouse that World of Warcraft has become, and the incredible profitability of Pay To Win trash mobile games--all of which are even worse about this--just rachets up that pressure. Fortunately we have a counter-example in Final Fantasy XIV.

Remember what having your time respected feels like? That's 14's business model in a nutshell. Already the massive queue times are lessening as those who just play for the story are finishing their playthroughs and dipping out to do other things, making the less-populated servers return more-or-less to pre-expansion states and the really busy ones (like I'm on) come down from 6-8 hours having to babysit a queue to 2-3 hours where you can confidently tab out and be useful elsewhere while you wait.

As 14--and thus Square-Enix--profited greatly from this user-friendly model, and word spreads about how (unlike WOW) you have no Fear Of Missing Out going on (you can go back at any time and play through what you missed, and the Level Synch system ensures that you get the intended experience), you have solid evidence to shove in the faces of those same retarded rhesus monkeys when they screetch at you about Number Go Up!

MMOs in particular require the cultivation and maintainence of large user numbers over a long period of time. Embracing cyclical population number variation is the smarter play, and not invalidating past content offerings is another (both in not making it easy to skip it and not making only the most recent stuff relevant); 14 embraced the Long Tail model, and it is paying off big now for the team and the company. Players feel no guilt in not playing for months at a time, knowing they can just pick up where they left off and not be abandoned by all and sundry; now this is paying off handsomely and the usual mouthpieces are agape at this contravension of Mammon Mob antimorality.

Remember that when you go forward. This is another example where being the turtle is better than being the hare.

My Life As A Gamer: On Completing "FF14: Endwalker"' Main Story

There are people out there that have cut videos about the main narrative for the Endwalker expansion, gushing about how emotional it was and how touching it was and all that. As I alluded to yesterday, I did not have this reaction because I'd seen this exact narrative several times before; one does not become a life-long enjoyer of Super Robots without seeing the narrative beats play out several times over.

This is not to say that it is badly done. It is not, especially for a MMORPG; the writing team again punched well above its weight and fulfilled very large expectations, but I nontheless failed to be roped in because once I saw what this narrative conflict was about--Despair/Hope with Emotion-driven superpowers--I knew exactly what the enemy, and the NPC allies, would do well before they did it.

Again, without actually telling you what actually went down, this scene played out at the very conclusion:

I was sitting there, as I called back my NPC allies from apparent annihiliation using The Power of Friendship (and this Ancient Magic I'd been hoarding) for the finale wherein I go punch the Totally Not The Anti-Spiral in the face.

And then punch my Best Frenemy in the face until he finally drops, apparently dead for the final time (but alas, no confirmation, therefore Not Officially Dead Yet).

Gurren Lagann, Gaogaigar, and may other Super Robot series have hit these same beats and often involved sheer Hot-Blooded Determinator Power in overcoming Literal God-Like Despair by punching/drilling/hammering/Spine Sharking/Breast Firing/etc. the enemy away. Hugging it out with the defeated enemy is optional, but recommended to nail the point home.

That said, it was satisfying to see that the writing team--unlike their counterparts pretending to write for World of Warcraft--actually write such that your past deeds are remembered and acknowledged as justification to intervene in your favor when the literal End of All Things is about to go down. Oh, and it is precious to see that several of your NPC allies actually all but confess their love for you; no wonder so many players engage in parasocial affairs with one or more of them.

Would I recommend playing the game for this story alone? No. It is a well-executed one? Yes, it is, and so long as you're not overfamiliar with the narrative archetype you'll get your money's worth. My disatisfaction is entirely on me, and should not be taken as a reflection of the ludonarrative experience in general. If you're just in it for the story, find a video recap; certain of my friends, I'll arrange to log in and replay the cutscenes if enough of you request it.

Endwalker: 8/10

So, what now? Clean up loose ends, and then throttle down so I can refocus on to other affairs.

My Life As A Gamer: On Picking A MMORPG To Play (Or Not)

Josh Strife Hayes talking about picking the MMORPG for you.

This is very much about making a sober analysis of what you want from your entertainment, and choosing the option that best fulfills those desires. Pay close attention to how Josh goes about this process, because this is generally applicable for other things that share a general classification but its array of options show very different ways to go about it. However, there is a trend to tease out here.

The thing to take from this MMO breakdown is that some games lean harder on the "massive" element than others, and we're finding out that the emerging and enduring games are those that don't lean hard on being massively multiplayer or myopically focused on current endgame; creating and sustaining a long tail of entertainment that is friendly to casual players and busy adults--e.g. you can complete everything but Ultimates in FFXIV on a pick-up group basis--while one of the reasons for the fall of World of Warcraft has to do with catering nigh-exclusively to the Endgame-Uber-Alles cohort and telling the Normies to go farm gold.

The only thing I disagree with is that you can be active in multiple MMOs at once.

Unless you approach every game as a single-player game with some multiplayer on the side--and FFXIV is heading that way, with more NPC bots being usable in dungeons to replace other players--this is not possible. MMORPGs are meant to work off the Network Effect, so that means you have to go where the action is or you'll have a bad time once you come out of any bubble of single-player activity. The older games lean heavy on the Network Effect, and punish you for soloing. WOW is where this started turning around, but then the raiders took the throne and here we are. The newer games don't lean so heavy on needing people to do things, but you need them for more macro-level concerns like server economies and certain content types (e.g. PVP) so it still matters.

Otherwise you get something like Destiny or Guild Wars 1, where it's really a lobby to hang out in and do logistics/advance PVE stuff and everything else is instanced, which is just a PVE version of PVP games like Apex, Splitgate, Warzone, etc. and we've seen that most players aren't keen on that in online multiplayer RPGs.

Until this changes, you really do only have one or two MMORPG options at any given time. Right now that's WOW and FFXIV, with the former on the downstroke and the latter clearly surpassing it, just as TRPGs remain dominated by Current D&D and Past D&Ds, and everything else--even stuff I like--is an also-ran. If this is not to your liking, avoid MMOs and all similar games (such as Battle Royale shooters).

My Life As A Gamer: "Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers" Reviewed

I finished Shadowbringers this past weekend. I am all caught up now, and ready for Endwalker's release late this year. For those coming in late, here's the original trailer--the one still accessable from the menu--that lays it out in retrospect. There is no spoiler protection.

There's plenty to say. That means this is a long post, so you'll see it after the jump.

My Life As A Gamer: "Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood" Reviewed

I completed the Stormblood expansion in its entirety this past weekend. Time for my thoughts, but first here's the trailer.

Summary

Stormblood moves the story of the game to focus upon the previously mentioned threat of the Garlean Empire and its conquests of Doma in the Far East and Ala Mhigo on the border of Gridania.

My Life As A Gamer: Twitch's Biggest MMO Player Reviews "A Realm Reborn"

Let the Bald One speak for himself.

Who Is This Guy?

What you're getting here is an intelligent and knowledgable gamer giving his take on the game.

Asmongold is one of the biggest streamers on Twitch. He's one of the most influential streamers in the gaming world, earning direct lines to developers that want him to check out their games. He's known for being a (former?) World of Warcraft.

"Asmongold" is also a persona, a mask worn to entertain an audience, which is not present here. This is Zach, the man behind the mask, speaking as himself and not as Asmongold; think of the difference between a major radio DJ on and off the air. Alex Jones, Wolfman Jack, Casey Kasem- all of them exaggerated for effect when doing their jobs. Turn off the camera, go off the air, and they are someone else for all intents and purposes. This is the same thing.

So when you see this, see the man as he is and not the persona that gets clipped a lot in highlight channels and meme videos.

Observations

His take isn't that different than mine, even if his frame of reference differs; I refer you to my own review if you want details.

The thing that I see is that he comprehends that this MMO is very different from what he is used to, that he gets what Jesse Cox said in refering to 14 as a JRPG first and a MMO second, and adjusted his expectations accordingly.

Because he adjusted his expectations, he made himself able and available to engage the game on its own terms in good faith. He did not rush through. He did not pay to skip to the end. He did not fail to learn how to manipulate the controls and read the telegraphs. He did exactly what a new player is expected to do, and he appreciates the result of that effort.

Zach is also a serious gamer, not a Normie, but his MBA background does mean that he understands Normie psychology; on videos like this, and in his second channel livestreams where he also isn't in his persona, you'll see him explain in Normie-friendly terms how the business of gaming actually works because he gets what's going on in those development offices and business suites.

He knows that Normies don't work for their entertainment; he can see that the stuff put in a Normie's path in the game is as easy as it is because it is meant to keep a Normie entertained and excited, not to make him frustrated (and thereby likely to quit) or to bore him by making him wait much.

The side content, on the other hand, gets away with being more difficult (more or less) because Normies aren't likely to bother seeking it out and the top-tier difficulties are entirely opt-in with no unspoken incentive to push Normies into it because it. Furthermore, older side content is often soloed by higher-level characters that have quests going into such places; this is a common Normie approach to dealing with difficulty, so it's not uncommon to see Normies not bother with top-level stuff until two or four years later when they can outlevel and outgear it massively.

I can't wait to see what his take on Heavensward will be now that he got there. He already unlocked the Dark Knight Job--hence his Berserk talk, since that Job is Guts as a class--and leveled it into the level range for HW, so I expect he'll proceed apace shortly to the Level 60 raids and Trials. (He's going to love the Knights of the Round fight.)

Zach gets Normies. Zach gets gaming. Zach gets business. This is why people like Amazon listen to him when they have him play their games--he demoed New World and Ashes of Creation recently--and justifies the attention he garners. He's also a funny entertainer that knows his audience and how to make them want to spend time watching him screw up names that are not contemporary Anglo-speaking while hacking up raid bosses like they owned him money.

If Zach gives your game a good review, it's a game worth playing. FF14 got a good review. It is worth playing.

My Life As A Gamer: "Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward" Reviewed

Late last week, I completed all of the first expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, Heavensward. It's time to put down my thoughts. If you haven't read my review of XIV: A Realm Reborn, go skim those first and come back, and then to set the mood here's the original opening cinematic.

And to repeat the previous policy: There is no reasonable expectation of spoiler protection for anything older than six months. You've been warned.

The Cold Shoulder Isn't How You Welcome New People

You're new. First day on the job. First time at practice with the team. First meeting at the organization. First time doing a boss fight with other players.

You introduce yourself, tell the others that you're the New Guy. Do they tell you what you need to know, things outside the manual? No. Do they look askance at you when, inevitably, you fuck up and cost the team valuable time (and, in many contexts, money)? Especially in a competitive race against other teams or organizations? Yes, they do, but unless the loss is big enough they still refuse to tell you a goddamn thing- they just get exasperated with you being a fuckup that's a millstone around their neck.

Now add this to the situation: said co-workers, teammates, comrades, co-players proclaim how they love new players and welcome them with enthusiam.

The reasonable response is to call out this dissonance, to state that it is unreasonable to expect new people to know what to do or how to do it without instruction from the veterans that already know all of that. The unreasonable expectation is to insist that new people suffer through going about it blind because it is unworthy of the veterans' time to properly instruct new people on proper procedure, despite the simultaneous griping by said veterans about the new guys constantly fucking things up.

While I'm running into this fucking retarded attitude most recently in Final Fantasy XIV, when I cited workplaces and sports team and organizations I speak from personal experience going back over 30 years- mine and that of others I've seen, heard, and witnessed. While some instances can be put to Baby Boomers being their usual retarded selves about passing on the patrimony they received, hoarding it all for themselves and saying "Fuck You, Got Mine" to their successors, it is far more often that this behavior is in fact a form of gatekeeping.

Any reasonable person would interpret this dissonance for what it is: ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT, followed by GET THE FUCK OUT.

This is the Cold Shoulder. Freezing out unwanted people, giving them only the absolute minimum of attention required--and resenting even that--because for whatever reason you can't forcibly eject the unwanted party.

It is required of the new guy to learn proper procedures and get up to speed. The reciprocal obligation is that the veterans are to instruct and oversee the new guy until that proficiency is acquired. New Guy must learn; Veteran must teach. Expecting the New Guy to perform up to standard otherwise is unreasonable, and inevitably creates a hostile work or play environment; when this is not accidental, it is wholly intended as a means of freezing out unwanted people by neglecting and abusing them until the unwanted people leave.

I have seen this play out first-hand many times. So have you. I will hear no gainsaying about this, as I know with certainty that this is not only a thing, but how this works.

That FF14's players dare to claim that they love new players, while simultaneously giving them the Cold Shoulder whenever new players ask to be briefed on what to do (if that is even allowed to be asked; this too happens, going so fast that there is no time for new people to even make the request). If this is what I wanted, I'd remain commited to World of Warcraft.

If you want your organization, your workplace, your game, whatever to be something other than an exclusive club with an inevitably waning membership/roster then this is what is required of you and there is no getting around this. Don't like it? Too bad. It is what it is; conform or die.

My Life In Fandom: The Moment Has Come (In The MMO Space)

Josh Strife Hayes just premiered this video.

A timely release, because yesterday the new raid in World of Warcraft just released and it was already cleared within an hour on Normal mode once the servers came up from a very lengthy maintenance session that doesn't speak well for either the company or for California's infrastructure. The reaction from the target audience is less than neutral; they hate it--look at that Dislike ratio, on an unlisted video--because every bad writing trope that got called out before Shadowlands released got confirmed here- including my own "Write By MadLibs" comments. See for yourself

The enthusiasm for this patch isn't there. Between incompetent, amateurish, and insulting writing and incompetent, half-assed game design--including broken and bugged quests, despite EIGHT MONTHS to get this ready, even their value cohort of raiders just ain't feeling it. They're going through the motions, but they don't care and it would not take much right now to induce them to leave.

Like, say, a better game with top-tier raids that are no less demanding of player skill both as individuals and as a team- like Final Fantasy XIV does with Savage and Ultimate raiding.

Which brings me to WOW's top influencer: Asmongold.

When he streams, he normally has 50-60K viewers on Twitch. Roughly one in four are paying subscribers. He is always on top when he streams, and his second channel--also monetized--is now also pulling five-digit viewer numbers with about the same ratio of subscribers. He may look like a loser, and he plays that role, but he's not; he's not at all hurting for income, and he's taking care of his mother with it.

He is WOW's biggest magnet, and the company--as it is now--hates him for it. He is exactly the player the SJWs running the show want to replace with compliant soyboys and simps, and thus he single-handedly kept the game a going concern in the realm of gaming public relations far better than anything Blizzard has ever done. To say that they repay such loyalty with dogshit is an understatement; he's actually banned from Blizzard events.

So, when the most important asset the company has for PR goes off the reservation to play their top competitor and gets massive six-digit viewer ship for it as well as a hearty welcome by Twitch's FF14 streamers, it's a big deal and any competent marketing/PR guy recognizes this fact. Square Enix? Some of their guys go into Asmon's chat and purchase gift subscriptions to random chatters. Blizzard? Official silence, and unofficial hostility in public.

Why in God's name would you play a game made by people that hate you?

A critical mass has finally gotten the hint and made the move, because Asmongold wants to reach the cap and raid in 14 and that means everyone he brought with him will (a) follow him there, (b) take out full accounts with paid time to do so, (c) buy the upcoming expansion to keep up with him and that (d) means more people doing more actual play across the board.

To say that Square Enix isn't noticing is to be so very wrong. The people bothering Asmongold over the weekend got banned or suspended on Monday, taking hits like bolt of lightning hurled by Zeus in one of his many spasms of anger at mortal arrogance. Blizzard, by the way, have never said or did anything thing to address the exact same problem in all the years Asmongold played the game--either Retail or Classic--and won't change now; they can't be bothered to protect an asset. SE can and does. Go where you're valued, Asmon.

And yeah, Asmongold is enjoying the game. He's engaged the narrative and picked up tanking in 14 with ease. (Just needs to stop moving when he doesn't need to, so he stops fucking over melee DPS.) Because the leader of the pack is in public enjoying the thing, it is clear to the pack that it is okay to enjoy the thing. The pack does what the alpha says it may do. This is it, the moment of decision, where the momentum shifts and we can see the rival begin to overtake the champion.

To quote Terenes Menethil, "No king rules forever."

My Life As A Gamer: FFXIV Addendum

And today, we're going to have a little fun with the Endwalker trailer. If you expect spoiler protection for anything older than six months, you're retarded.

Notes:

• (00:20) This generic-looking man is the stand-in for YOU, the player a.k.a. The Warrior of Light. He switches Jobs often, but in this trailer he is a Paladin.
• (00:56) The world map is updated to reflect (a) what will be accessible in Endwalker and (b) the state of the world in this expansion.
• (01:03) This is Alisaie Leveilleur, one of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. In this trailer, she represents the Red Mage Job and she is in combat with a trio of Terminus Beasts. The "Z" is a Red Mage melee attack, not just a flourish of the video editor.
• (01:25) You save Alisaie from herself, reminding Red Mages all over to stop pulling for the tank.
• (01:32) Fin Funnels appear under license from Bandai Namco and Sunrise, Inc. (okay, they'll be called something else) as the Job-defining weapon of the new Sage healer Job, which Alphinaud represents here. Also, no Alisaie you can't look after yourself.
• (01:56) Ragnarok is come! LET'S FUCKING GO! (And I thought I was hype when Legion was announced.)
• (02:07) I may have to swap to Dragoon for this expansion. Real Fury Warrior vibes here. That's Estinien, The Azure Dragoon that debuted in Heavensward; he identified his companion as Vitra, youngest of the First Brood.
• (02:33) The Ascian Fandaniel, possessing the body of Asahi sas Brutus, goes up to the top of a tower speculated to be 14's Tower of Babel to speak with Zenos yae Galvus as a Garlean Navy Airship sinks with all hands before them.
• (03:06) Thancred (representing the Gunbreaker tank Job) meets with Urianger (representing the Astrologian healer Job) in a new city, Radz-at-Han.
• (03:28) Old Sharlayan is where most of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn either come from, or spent time at heretofore, as many of their members are Archons (the weird neck tattoo, akin to a Doctorate) of Sharlayan. This is also the Player Hub of Endwalker.
• (03:52) The Crystal Exarch, G'raha Tia, looking at tomes likely only he--being of royal Alagan blood--can access with heretofore unrecovered secret lore. Job represented is unclear here.
• (04:08) Y'shtola, representing the Black Mage Job, appears before the Forum--lead by Alphie and Ali's father, Fourchenault Leveilleur, who is a colossal dick--and chides them as cowards before a global existential threat before she turns to strut away like a boss. By the way, still blind.
• (04:38) Zenos again, this time revealing the scythe that is the signature weapon of the new Reaper Job, a melee DPS job with Bloodborne vibes. Everyone looks up at the Moon leading back to you.
• (05:11) You--as a Paladin--are jumped by The First Doom, a Terminus Beast previously seen in Shadowbringers.
• (05:42) That spaceship is likely the means by which you travel to the Moon to complete the 6.0 Main Scenario Quest chain, a call-back (out of many) to Final Fantasy IV. At this time, it is good to note that while you--the Warrior of Light--took up the Dark Knight Job to do battle in Shadowbringers, you switch to Paladin for Endwalker. That, in itself, is a FF4 call-back. Other call-backs to 4, as well as to 6, are also present (Zenos is likely one also, and given his presence since Stormblood that speaks well for the deliberation going into Endwalker).

14 clowning on World of Warcraft continues.

Okay, so you're interested. What next? As I said on Monday, there is a Free Trial. Unlimited play time, PC and PS4/5. You can get it here. One of the most prominent FF14 livestreamers and YouTube channels, ZeplaHQ, has a video about its limits here. Zepla's YouTube channel has plenty of useful videos for new people, and her Twitch channel is a very comfy place that loves to welcome new people to the game. Just be prepared for a lot of dadjokes and puns based around bunnies.

MrHappy is another prominent figure in the scene. He's the Dad to Zepla's Mom, and he's just as open to new folks. He's also one of the hosts of "State of the Realm", a FF14 podcast that covers the game and its news. He also has a YouTube and Twitch channel.

From there, you'll find plenty of others--some of them utter weirdos to avoid--and some comedy goldmines. If you know Tex of the Black Pants Legion, he has a brother from another mother in CiderSpiderr. He also streams on Twitch, but it's his YouTube channel that garners him his audience. Below is the video that put him on the map, and you need not have played the game to get the jokes.

This game is actually fun. The players are actually having fun. The water is great. I'm happy to have joined the party, and if you find it to your liking then do as I did and play the Free Trial.

My Life As A Gamer: Final Fantasy XIV-A Realm Reviewed (Part Four)

Naivete Begets Predation

The youngest of the Scions, Alphinaud Levelleur, decided that the Scions--being about seven people--are too little to be the rapid-reaction force needed to stomp out the Primal threat and assist the city-states in maintaining order in the realm. What does our genius decide to do? Form a private military company of his own. Not just some handful of mercenaries, oh no, but a full Grand Company--a standing army--whose only loyalty is to the Scions.

The only naivete more shocking than this was the reactions of the city-states' respective Heads of State. Granted, all three are allies of the Scions and rely on them to do what they cannot (because they are too weak-willed to do the needed work themselves) so they can--and do--convince themselves to go along with it out of necessity, but the gangsters of Ul'dah--the Syndicate--rightly see this as a direct threat and immediately get to work sabotaging it.

They do it by making a mockery of the funding rules--funneling money through a myriad of weak front companies--and putting a man they own on top as the company's field marshal, the second-in-command after Boy Wonder himself.

They put their man to the task of setting up the Scions for getting framed for the murder of their immediate cockblock to Real Ultimate Power, the Sultana of Ul'dah and her attack dog Raubaun, CO of the Grand Company the Immortal Flames. They do this by having their man lead a real and successful counterintelligence operation to expose a Garlean spy in the Flames, making Raubaun look like a fucking idiot and damaging his credibility (and by proxy the Sultana). They do this while keeping up the lawfare pressure on Her Grace to act as they dictate and not as she wishes.

As a second plot thread, they funnel reagents needed for summoning to an Ishgardian heretical cult knowing this would keep the player--you--busy being God-Killer while they turned the Scions' PMC into their pet wetwork team. It worked. The Scions take the fall for the Sultana's murder--yes, folks, I know about HW's changes to this--and all but the player, Alphin, and Tataru Taru (the receptionist) escape to take refuge in Ishgard. Thus is HW set up.

I could not help but find this satisfying. The heroes and their allies got got and they deserved it. They refused to do what must be done to permanently end the Primal threat. They refused to do what must be done to end the political instability of the city-states. They refused to do what must be done put down the Imperial threat in Eorzea. Their enemies, sensing weakness, pounced on them and punished them savagely for refusing to finish the job when they had the chance. This rout--and it was a rout--was entirely of their own making, and to the writers' credit Alphinaud has a serious change of character going forward because of this. Dead predators can't predate, morons.

But Gameplay

Levels 40-50 is when your character's gameplay really takes off. You get the rest of your Job's skills, the rotations start feeling like you're always doing something during a fight, and when you hit the arc between 2.0 and HW--the aforementioned Wonder Boy Fuckup--you get to test that skillset against a much-expanded array of dungeons, trials, and raids as you play through the various episodes of the 2.0-to-HW interval. Much of the narrative you experience here is foreshadowing for later expansions (e.g. Crystal Tower for Shadowbringers), but the type of content you first experience here will become more frequent later on; getting introduced here is useful, therefore, for multiple reasons.

You are also introduced to a taste of endgame with the access to ARR's endgame gearing being unlocked, and I am still using some of that gear well into HW, so go ahead and snag some of that. (Start with your weapon and pick up others as you wish.) Exactly what currencies you will use will vary with expansion, but the overall structure remains the same: get widgets, find trader NPC, trade for gear, done.

My experience at this point was that I really began to enjoy the gameplay by this point, having passed the early game hump and now needing to go into the UI customization to mess around with keybinds to make it easier to execute the Bard rotation and be an asset to my group. (This paid off; got plenty of player commendations.) I also began digging into some side activites, as I knew that if I were to level another Class or Job I'd want to have those activites available to me to make that easier to accomplish since I had not the MSQ to easymode my XP gains.

My complaint at this point is that, while other players are frequently friendly to new players, they are not communicative. They do not tell you things you need to know about boss mechanics, so you can and will get murked by something out of nowhere and no one will say anything unless it's a wipe and you have to restart the encounter entirely. This is the case even when you specfically ask for that information. Veteran players vastly overestimate what is common knowledge and then wonder why the new guy eats floor.

The game itself is fine. The side activities are plenty capable of delivering depth and breadth, but if you just want to play the MSQ you can and no one will care. Sub for a month, play the story, unsub- it's fine. Which leads me to the biggest selling point for FF14: the game and the audience respects your time. There is no "falling behind", there is no "dead content", none of the stupidity that afflicts WOW or other MMOs like it. Is it for everyone? No, thank God. Is it for people who want some multiplayer in their single-player? You bet. For people who want to be social while playing for an hour or so at a time? Sure. For people who dream of a crafting or gathering system as detailed as fighting is? Hell yes, you're golden. For PVP? Nope, PVP is an afterthought in FF14, and will be for some time.

It is for me, so soon I'll convert from a Trial to a Regular account, and come January I'll leave WOW behind for good.

Verdict: ARR is a solid 8 of 10.

My Life As A Gamer: Final Fantasy XIV-A Realm Reviewed (Part Three)

The Rise of a Hero

Between Levels 15-20 the game opens up both in scope and in scale. You are sent, via a quest chain, to the other two city-states to acquaint yourself therein before returning to complete your mission: to launch a realm-wide public relations campaign meant to counter the plumetting morale of the city-states' population, whose despair opens them to corruption and subversion by hostile parties. It is also during this time that you get your first mount--a chocobo, fittingly--and thus transportation other than by teleportation and taxi is now unlocked for you.

Accordingly, so does the scope and scale of the adventures now open to you. It is during this period, when the concept of what a "Primal" is gets explained to you, that you first fight one; it is also the first time that you do instanced content for more than four players. These are called "Trials", and they are arena fights against a single boss. In Story Mode, they are very basic fights and hard to screw up for anyone with prior experience with raiding in World of Warcraft or anything like that. There are harder modes, which are unlocked later; some are not part of the MSQ and so you unlock as a sidequest.

Finally, as you go from Level 20 to 30, you complete the last round of Class quests (ending their stories) and get set up for the transition from Class to Job. During this time you will fight more Primals, unlock more difficult dungeons, and the narrative establishes you as the new Warrior of Light and a Hero of Eorzea for facing down such threats and winning. What makes these feats worthy of fame is the threat: getting mind-controlled by the Primal, called "Tempering", which--at this time--is irreversible and turns victims into fanatic cultists of said being.

It is during this time that you are brought into the Scions of the Seventh Dawn--a small group dedicated to realm-wide threats, focused on Primals--and the reason for your power is revealed: the Echo. The leader of the Scions also has it, and by means thereof do you get a lot of information dumped on you while plot threads play out. Your rise becomes theirs, and soon you're The Man and everyone knows your name and face.

This nicely segues into the Class-Job transition. Jobs in FF14 are specific professions, each of which builds around something called a "soul crystal"--"Soul of the Bard", etc.--and without it equipped you are locked out of Job abilities (and there are no more Class abilities). Each Job in ARR--with one exception, Blue Mage--builds off a Class; I began as an Archer, so I transitioned into a Bard. Each Job class explains the lore behind the abilities you pick up, even if most of them are easy quests to do, promoting emotional investment into the game's narrative and immersion into its setting.

By the time you finish your transition into your Job and you're well on your way through the midpoint of ARR, the MSQ will have you running here and there to smite Primals, put down dungeon threats, open relations with friendly aliens (which will lead to Beast Tribe reputation sidequests), and putting a big target on your back for the predators within the realm as well as without to zero in on. You--the player--will become aware of the internal threat of Ul'dah's Syndicate well as an increasing resurgance of the Garlean presence in the realm.

The capstone to this mid-point is your travel into Coerthas, the borderlands of isolated Ishgard, to recover Cid's airship in order to face the Primal known as Garuda. This will become foreshadowing for Heavensward, but for now its your time and deeds here that prompt (a) those aforementioned predators to move against you and (b) one of your own allies gets the "brilliant" idea that makes those predators' aims viable to pull off.

But that moves into ARR's final act, and for that I'll have you pray return to the blog tomorrow.