Weekend at a Glance – FFXIV: Ninja GW2: Party AA: Husbandry
Tai doesn’t look much like a Ninja in that picture up there, but a Ninja he’s becoming in FFXIV. I did a variety of gaming activities this weekend, but mostly focused on riding the FATE train to speed level Ninja. I’m currently level 36, which is moving pretty fast considering my normal play style. I’m hitting it hard and heavy, though, because I know in time, the FATEs will wind down and the ease of leveling will decrease with each Ninja that hits level cap.
Impressions
Of all the class quest lines, I admit that I’ve enjoyed Rogue the most. I’ve experienced quite a few of the class quests, having leveled everything to at least 15 on one character or another. So far, the writing, humor and characters really set this guild apart. I even felt a little sad when I realized I was moving beyond the Rogue guild as I started my path to become a Ninja.
But then, the Ninja storyline has also been fun and interesting! I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I’d say that there’s a lot about these quests and the class itself that speaks of higher quality. I noticed the skill icons for ROG and NIN were all brightly techno-colored, and while they didn’t look out of place, they looked crisper. The transition into NIN was also visibly apparent while in battle. Tai does this neat double-dagger speed run and flips when he jumps – things I don’t remember other classes doing.
These little details really endeared me to the direction this game is going. They didn’t have to make the NIN run differently from other classes, but they did. And I like it.
It’s still early on for me to determine how much I like NIN. It has some personal positives to it, all cool style aside:
- Far fewer positional attacks compared to Dragoon and Monk – Melee DPS annoys the crap out of me because to perform well, you always had to be beside, behind, or flipping between the two during battle. That really sucked in PUGs when you had a tank that just didn’t know to keep the enemies still.
- I like the idea of the combo-built Ninjutsu. It reminds me a bit of Warden in LOTRO.
- It piggybacks off of Dragoon and Monk skills, which I have.
- Aside from good DPS, it also has some support abilities. I was surprised when I got a Silence skill in my lower 30s, much earlier than I did on my Bard
Again, I haven’t done anything but FATEs with NIN, so I don’t know how it feels to play in a dungeon with an actual party. No matter, it’s been fun to see FATEs active again, and I’m mulling over possibly pushing my Paladin to cap as well while there’s still a rush in the open world.
GW2: Dance, Dance, Dance!
DJ Boss of Paragon Broadcasting hosted a fun GW2 Halloween Tumblr party on Saturday. It’s been a long time since we’ve had one of these – used to do them quite frequently after the game launched, so I decided to take Nipp in to check it out. It was an awesome party and DJ Boss’ music didn’t disappoint. The usual hijinks were involved, and I found Nipp dancing alongside of celebrities such as Scarlet, Taimi, Jory and Tybalt.
Okay. Not the real ones… but players have done a good job in creating characters that look a lot like them. Someone even brought in Gold Freddy Fazbear from Five Nights at Freddy’s fame.
While it was a fun party, it became really apparent that I knew few of the Tumblrs attending. Most of the Tumblrs who I knew from the golden age of GW2 blogging weren’t there – either they couldn’t make it, don’t play GW2 anymore or didn’t know about the party. This isn’t knocking these newer Tumblr folks – I’m sure they have great and fun blogs. But it just wasn’t the same for me without my old Tumblr pals.
Just another sign that it’s time for me to move on from GW2, I guess. I’ll still play the upcoming Living Story issues, but I’m not all that excited about the release tomorrow. I’ll probably be FATE-training my Ninja instead.
ArcheAge: Indecisive
I’m having trouble deciding what I want to do with AA right now. Mostly because I’m having more fun in other games at the moment, and the grind to actually level any of the crafting skills in AA is atrocious.
I find myself logging in to take care of my farm a few times a day, then logging out to play something else. I even accidentally capped labor points once last weekend and ended up burning them to create tax forms instead of taking the time to actually craft. I’m really ambivalent about the whole situation because I want to hang in there with this game. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into building my farm and getting the things I wanted.
Tomorrow marks the release of the North continent, but seeing I’m not a PvPer, I don’t think I’ll ever visit that place. So that content isn’t for me, and I’m not excited about it beyond the idea that maybe PvP guilds will vacate some of the land and move up north. I might check in on my character on Tahyang and see if the land situation improves any there.
In other news, I finally leveled my second skill to Rank 1 – husbandry. Now I can make chicken coops from my farmer’s workbench. Yay! I guess?
As you can see, I really haven’t leveled my crafting skills… and that’s not for lack of trying. I’ve logged in every day, planted and farmed every day, and still it feels like it takes sooo long to level anything. It takes 10K LPs to reach the first rank of anything… and the fact that crafting skills all are bound to LPs has really put a damper on my desire to keep moving forward in this game. I knew that would eventually be the thing that made me call it quits. But as I’ve paid for another month, I’m going to continue to play and see if the release tomorrow changes things for me.
I’m having the most trouble with the thought of giving up my little farmhouse that I put so much effort into building. I know I’ll probably not be able to earn another like it if I cancel my sub. So I know that once I take that step, I’d probably not come back to AA. It’s just a question of whether something changes for me, or that I find something of interest, before I stop caring about the farm.