Monthly Archives: February 2021

Screenshot Longings

One of the safest ways to make me miss an MMORPG and make me want to jump back in, is when I see beautiful screenshots by active players. I love taking screenshots myself and browsing through old albums makes me feel very much like looking back on events that have happened in real life. I think that’s when games are at their most powerful: when you live the in-game experience and are fully immersed in the environment. The same is true when you get fully engaged in guilds and other social groups of course, although the single-player experience still has a lot to offer in MMOs that allow you to go solo.

Coming across a new twitter account by fledgling LOTRO player Burcwyn, I was reminded of the power of screenshots this weekend. Burcwyn has a great eye for capturing atmosphere and story, and LOTRO remaining my favorite MMO that I’m not playing, his screenshots sent a pang of nostalgia for Middle Earth through my system. I have written before on the magic of this particular game so it’s wonderful watching new players discover it for the first time. I hope he keeps up his Flickr gallery in the coming weeks and months!

While I’m still playing FFXIV and am woefully behind my own screenshot documentation there, I have been thinking of returning to LOTRO myself lately. It so happens that I was even gifted a co-workers lifetime account a year ago but have never found the willpower to start over with a new character on there. It was bad enough leveling my Loremaster past Moria the first time, I really don’t think I can start from scratch. The much bigger issue I have however is that nobody I know is really playing LOTRO regularly anymore.

The game is so many expansions ahead of me that it’s really overwhelming and I’ve never warmed to the slow, static combat. The only thing that would get me to play again would be a steady, committed group of another 2-3 like-minded players which can keep the same playtimes as me and remain serious about it. Which is essentially why I’m not playing LOTRO and never will be playing it for more than a split-second maybe, which I would likely spend in the Prancing Pony playing my lute.

It is what it is. Nobody I know of keeps up regular MMORPG commitments anymore, let alone appointment gaming. Some groups start off with enthusiasm and dwindle away within a fortnight. They fall apart because of playstyle differences and different advancement speeds, or whenever another title happens to release an expansion that needs to be played desperately. MMORPGs are at best a regular vacation resort for those of us who still love them. We return every now and then but it’s rare that somebody we used to meet is vacationing there at the same time.

Alas, the screenshots and memories persist. Middle Earth remains beautiful and whoever gets to dip into its magic for the very first time is in for a treat. Enjoy it while it lasts, I say.

FFXIV Endwalker Reveal

There was a lot of hype regarding a big reveal for FFXIV this week and some 10 hours ago Square-Enix finally answered the community’s most pressing questions:

Yes, there’s going to be a new expansion and it’s called Endwalker
The approximate release date is Fall 2021
The story will be taking the Warrior of Light to the Moon and Garlemald
Yes, they’re finally adding a fourth healer to the game: the Sage
Another new class will be melee dps (to be revealed in May)
Level cap will be raised to 90

While the teaser trailer didn’t particularly blow me away, the over two hours long announcement showcase covered a lot of ground as to what to expect for Endwalker. As final as the title of the next expansion sounds, Yoshi-P was quick to point out that it marks both a ‘New Dawn’ while simultaneously ending the long story arch of Hydaelyn and Zodiark in 6.0. He was also very clear that he had no intentions personally to go anywhere and was going to remain at FFXIV’s steering wheel for the foreseeable future. Good news.

As for the Garlemald Empire, nothing concrete was revealed other than that it will be part of the Endwalker storyline. A final showdown between Zenos and the Warrior of Light was hinted at while Yoshi-P mentioned it was all going to get complicated (again). Considering how great an expansion Shadowbringers has been, I really look forward to finding out where the story is going!

The design approach, or ‘cultural flair’ if you will, of some of the Endwalker zones scream sub-tropical (some commenters have said latin American) and are very colorful. I’m not much into the whole Dancer class vibe so I’m steeling myself for another experience à la Stormblood rather than Heavensward. Us high fantasy, renfair dragonslayer types can’t always win.

Thoughts about Sage

So the fourth healer class in FFXIV is going to be Sage which came as a surprise to me personally. Yoshi-P has pointed out many times in the past how difficult it is to balance the healing meta in FFXIV while keeping the gameplay fresh and different for each class. Playing a WHM myself when I’m not melting faces, I prefer the pure and powerful healer type (why play anything weaker than the best healer?). For this reason I’ve never been much into SCH or AST.

The Sage has been introduced as another ‘varied healer’ in the showcase which means a mixture of healing, mitigation and dps. What I’ve seen of the play style so far with the 4 Noulith weapons performing different actions, it’s not gonna be my cup of coffee.

Maybe the most exciting reveal about Sage for me personally is the fact they will be revamping AST to become the second pure healer next to WHM in Endwalker. SCH and Sage will occupy the varied healer role and thus become more distinct from the other two, registering differently in the duty finder as well. AST has always had fabulous class design so maybe I’ll be able to enjoy it more after the changes.

No words as of yet on glamour overhaul

One area the announcement showcase sadly didn’t touch upon was the glamour system and glamour inventory issue. While the system has been improved over the years, it is still leaps and bounds behind many other MMORPGs, forcing players to deal with physical items (and physical single-use dyes) that occupy a fairly restrictive inventory space. Considering FFXIV has the one-character-for-all-classes approach, keeps adding 2-3 classes per expansion and is piling on gear sets like no other game does, this is an increasingly pressing and frustrating matter for FFXIV players.

Gear is the true endgame and we all know it, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed we’ll see great changes in this department for Endwalker. Keep your varied healers, gief more shinies space!

Games I’ve Played: Cloudpunk

Cloudpunk is a more recent title that I acquired on Steam and that got some glowing reviews for its retro design and cyberpunk world building. Not similar in any other way to Cyberpunk 2077, it’s basically a chill Fedex game where you’re delivering parcels of more or less dubious origin across the city of Nivalis. Every now and then you get to make a choice none of which ever feel particularly meaningful.

I really enjoyed exploring in Cloudpunk for the first two or so hours. The vertical city is superbly made and oozes cyberpunk atmosphere in a dark yet glam way which reminded me of a darker version of the 5th Element. Exploring the different maps is interesting at first and gets better once your HOVA vehicle is somewhat upgraded for smoother navigation. The HOVA is capable of landing on different parking hubs from which you get to continue on foot in either 1st or 3rd person. Besides the fetch and delivery quests, there’s a ton of talking to NPCs and looting involved too. Every now and then a side quest is triggered but they seem rare and mostly repetitive. Nothing really stands out in a good way.

Putting another 4 hours into the game, things started to go downhill fast. You keep delivering parcels to different city blocks and listening to the often unnatural or inconsequential dialogues that are peppered across the city. At some point you unlock a companion AI that insists on presenting and acting like a dog who is an old friend of your character Rania. He is called Camus which is almost insulting considering what a dull character he turns out to be. The dialogue and jokes between them are horribly written at times and the twist of an AI acting like a pet isn’t nearly half as clever as it sounds. The fact that Rania’s voice acting is fairly bad too doesn’t improve matters. There’s an underlying background story to her character that gets unfolded ever so slowly and made me care exactly zero about her for this reason.

After almost 8 hours of monotonous delivery quests, the final nail in the coffin were dialogues between Rania and various NPCs which insisted on randomly introducing politics. There’s a quest in which you escort a male prostitute android to his next client. The game makes clear to point out that androids are lesser citizens and property of the real humans despite their sentient capacity. On the road, the android insists on educating you that he has chosen to become somebody’s sex property out of his own free will and that sex work is work, as you go through a series of cringey dialogue choices which feel like the game is trying to trap you on some non-existent bias.

Another random quest has Rania talking to a singer/songwriter who really likes the style of a family heirloom (a flower) she’s carrying. When he proposes to purchase it off her, she starts lecturing him about cultural appropriation and then scams him out of a bit of cash, selling him a fake version of the heirloom.

Why these topics needed to be awkwardly thrown into random side-quests in a game that otherwise has no narrative ambition beats me. They felt disconnected and poorly executed like so many things in Cloudpunk once you take the time to dig a little deeper. It’s a crying shame because from the outset, the game had the potential to become a 10/10 indie title thanks to the immersive city and atmosphere. The synthwave soundtrack is pretty good too, although you end up listening to the same tame themes for most of it.

There’s much that could’ve been done with the gameplay, had there been any stakes to it and an existing, engaging story. Alas, it’s repetitive gameplay, poor writing and unlikable characters that bring the game down so much I decided to quit. Cloudpunk is boring and that is really one of the worst verdicts I could give a game such as this!