SquareEnix has always had a very odd pricing scheme. Any of the prior FF games regularly go in the $20-$60 range, depending on when they have released. FF12 Zodiac Age was released in 2017 and still sells for $60 (Nintendo is right up there with this sort of thing).

The FF7 remake was originally a PS exclusive but now we can play it on PC. Here’s a screenshot of the price point.

I am sure there are some people out there that will pay this price, no doubt. There are whales in F2P games after all. This PC price is $15 more than the PS4 version, brand new. And the game offers nothing new for the PC compared to the prior release.

It doesn’t help that the game isn’t optimized for PC either. I can’t for the life of me remember a time where SquareEnix ever did optimize for launch.

Looking at my wishlist, I could buy 3 “expensive” games for this price. I could buy the original FF7 for $8 (If I didn’t already have it). It’ll be interesting to see how this works out, or how long this price point lasts. Until then, let’s see the craziness of cats and dogs getting along.

I picked this up on one of those crazy sales a few weeks ago, figured I should take a look at what the hubbub was about. This is a good example of a game where the vision is out of the reach of the developers.

You know how we’ve had to deal with the dark ages of Star Wars games since EA took over? As much as the games themselves were really quite horrible, there was the added tax of managing expectations. Cyberpunk 2077 has a similar battle, where the setting itself is both widely exploited yet has some dark corners to explore. Whatever you imagine Cyberpunk to be, well, it’s here. People with technology modded to their bodies. Gangs. Corporations running everything. The game never goes beyond expectations here, and feels bound by its familiar trappings. The biggest missed opportunity is that the city itself never becomes a character.

I won’t harp on it too much, but there are still plenty of bugs in this game. People randomly pop in, they go through walls, and enemies/cops have horrendous AI.

The “game” parts are ok I guess. The hacking game really stands out as being painfully boring. Driving feels like someone forgot how car physics works. Melee combat “floats”. The shooting part feels ok, at least in terms of recoil/spread, though the amount of clips/reloads required to get through anything does not scale appropriately. The start takes too long, then it cruises in the middle, then the end has massive bullet sponges. I do enjoy the BrainDance section, where you move around in a video recording experiencing other’s memories. Stealth also feels good, with quite a few missions offering good options in that regard. The less said about the character progression or crafting, the better. It’s meaningful in a P&P session, but doesn’t work here.

The highlight here would be the quest writing and voice acting. Appropriate to the setting, there are only a few “good” and “bad” choices, with nearly everything else fitting in the grey zone. The main quest itself is incredibly short (but awesome), in hindsight, with an expectation that you take on the various side jobs along the way. That quality is less strong… for every River crime investigation you get 6 Delamain rogue taxi cab quests. It feels like there’s missing half a game here in terms of opportunities.

The major complaint is with regards to gigs, smaller side quests that require about 5 minutes of time. Either you take out a bad guy, or unlock a door, or find one item. Complain about Fallout 4 if you like, but it has 10x more meaningful content than this game.

It’s hard to imagine that this game came from the same folks who made the Witcher series. Or rather, it’s hard to imagine that they actually launched this. It would be a great game if it was made by someone else, again to that point of managing expectations. It’s worth $30, but at that price point, nearly any game is worth it. Alternatives in this setting: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Shadowrun, The Ascent, Ghostrunner, or CloudPunk.

Time seems to be slipping like sand through my fingers of late. A high level of exhaustion, compounded by frustration, and now this emerging Omicron variant that is quite likely going to prevent a “normal” holiday season… all playing pinball with my sanity.

At work we delivered a critical piece of tech early, save millions of dollars in doing so, and now the natural endorphin crash is showing it’s head. Frustration abounds due to continual poor planning practices which seems to always generate more work that we should have avoided. I’ve been 6 months in this new role and found a tremendous shift towards more a more strategic approach within my realm of control… outside of it though, what a right mess. I’m also aware that the grass isn’t greener… it would just be a different set of problems to solve. At least here I can have some influence.

Hockey was going great. The team was firing on every single cylinder at their last match, effectively reaching my end of year goal 3 months ahead of schedule. I say was because up here in Igloo-ville, Omicron is just tearing through our medical services. It’s one thing to have the vaccine and mild symptoms, but there are those that are having larger reactions and stuffing hospitals. There are more than a few now that have all but shut down and diverted patients to other provinces. Shutting down just before the holidays and some semblance of finally normal really, really sucks. Our city hasn’t yet locked down, but quite a few sister cities have. It’s now a matter of time/luck.

And to top it off, my gaming laptop fell yesterday. The charging port wasn’t working and the screen bezel had detached, meaning the hinges were breaking the case. I’ve still got my PC building gear here and I was able to get both “fixed” with some special glue. I’m conscious how much of an outlet my gaming is, so having that put aside for any period of time isn’t so pleasant a thought. Did I mention that FF14 queue times are still in the 6000+ range? Oh, they are also dropping slower now too. Thanks to supply chain issues (and primarily crypto miners), that issue is not going to get solved anytime soon.

So backlog it is, and the upcoming holiday game sale. I’ll likely pick up another gaming laptop too, they are cheaper than an after-market 3060 up here. Think about that for a minute.

I would love to exalt the neat and new things that FF14 has brought out in their most recent expansion. How the new zones flow, the MSQ is better, and the music somehow continues to improve. And then how much fun it is to play the Sage and Reaper.

I would, truly.

But there are 6,977 people in the queue ahead of me. And it drops by about 100 every 2 minutes. That’s around 2.5 hours in the queue. I’ve tried just letting it stand, but error 2002 abounds. I do not have the time (or frankly the patience) to just let a queue sit and eventually work itself out.

Network Architecture

I know enough about this field but not enough about how SquareEnix has designed their authentication to provide much insight. Given the consistent queue issues since the summer, it would be foolish to assume that they have not gone to great lengths to try to change their scaling and design. Given that they have mentioned supply chain issues would infer that cloud offloading would not be a full relief valve on this problem.

I would be quite surprised if this issue gets solved anytime soon, aside from people just stopping from playing. If anything, this is likely to get worse as there aren’t many other games vying for eyeballs (SWTOR does have an expansion mind you, and there’s certainly some overlap) and we’re about to hit the holiday break.

Was this foreseeable? No question. Was this preventable? There’s no way for anyone but the devs to answer that.

In the Meantime

Time to fill with other bits. I coached a hockey tourney this weekend, so there was 3 days completely absorbed.

I gave Outriders another pass yesterday. A few recent balancing patches were applied, and I figured I’d give it another run. At the time, I was running T12 (of 15) runs, making gold time. With the exact same loadout, T12 feels as hard as prior, and the rewards don’t appear to have been improved. I guess I’d need more time to get a better idea of what the changes actually are. And get into a decent spot for the upcoming DLC. Still consider it one of the better looter/shooters, what with the complete lack of PvP.

I also finally picked up Disco Elysium on sale. I’m an hour or so in. I like the format and the story, but have a general dislike for the controls. The game part isn’t too much fun, but the actually content certainly is. Probably be giving this burst over time.

I figure I’ve got a few weeks, if not until January until FF14 is sorted out. Should be ample time to clear out some other bits in my library.

My feeds of late are chocked full of speculation that SquareEnix is working on a remake of Chrono Cross, the sequel to Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is an absolutely astounding gaming achievement, one of those markers where you can see games before, and games after. When Chrono Cross came out, it had some massive shoes to fill, and didn’t really hit it all the way out of the park. It is still highly regarded, no question!

First, the art style was a whole lot different, what with it being on Playstation. The relatively seamless battles of CT, where replaced with the more FF variant of an overworld, and a battle view. There was a whole lot of RNG here, compared to CT.

Second, the battles themselves had a somewhat complicated mechanic of chaining elemental effects. So complicated in fact, that the true ending requires you to get 7 elemental attacks in order – including the enemy attacks. The leveling an skill system also added some complexity. I loved the strategic elements, way more than in CT.

Third, the story was no longer about time travelling but travel across 2 dimensions. You still had actions in one area that impacted another, but they were harder to detect and understand. There are 2 story quirks along the path as well that can be really hard to follow when they immediately show up. You really need to play the game twice to get the full picture – not something everyone is willing to do.

Fourth, there are 45 playable characters. That’s insane. And it will take at least 3 playthroughs to get them all. Each has a specific nuance to the story and will impact a future playthrough. It’s just wild when I write this out, that I actually collected all of those multiple times.

Fifth, there are 12 endings in Chrono Cross. 12! Only 2 you can get on the first playthrough. That feels like a giant hurdle.

I have tried to play Chrono Cross over the years; I still have the disks. Unfortunately, the scaling is wonky between the game and the menu, as the latter appears hard-coded. Which is honestly a shame, since the game really is quite good. Even in the emulation scene, CC is notoriously hard to configure.

The last bit here is if this is a remaster or a remake. From a resource perspective, I don’t see how they would have a team to remake the game, in secret, while also working on FF7. Nor that the sales would ever justify that investment, unless it was a pitch to get a new entry in the series (like with Mass Effect). Remaster seems the more reasonable approach, where the interface has a simple update, and we get the overlay boosts (faster combat/travel/etc…)

It’s no secret that SquareEnix is looking to recoup some money after recent financial hurdles. Pixel remasters of 1-6 abound. FF12 Zodiac Age made mint. Given the recent re-release of FF9, it’s certainly feasible to remaster Chrono Cross for today’s PC / Switch crowd. I’d certainly give it a go.

There are countries where by law they cannot mark an item on sale, unless said item was actually sold at the original price for a set period of time. The concept of MSRP (suggested price) is irrelevant. If the sale price lists 20% off, then the product had to have sold at that price prior.

We’re in the middle of Black Friday, which comes with “sales” everywhere. In the dark ages (pre-interwebs), you really weren’t able to tell if it actually was a sale or not. Today, sites like camelcamelcamel give easy reference to historical price point. So that 4K streaming stick at 50% off… well that’s the actual regular price. For most physical assets, you’re actually better off buying at a different time of year – perhaps of benefit if you’re trying to close off some holiday shopping. It’s a bit like COSTCO… if you need a lot of stuff now at a good price, great option. If you are looking for better price points, then a regular grocery store sale is a much better deal.

Virtual assets aren’t a whole lot different. Nearly all stores allow you to build wishlists, and they will let you know when there’s a sale on that item. Cyberpunk2077 is on sale, but it’s also on sale every month. Disco Elysium as well – $2 cheaper than 2 weeks ago. Epic Games, Steam, GMG, GOG are all having big sales, and my library of unplayed games is feeling a bit “meh”. If history repeats, the boxing day sales, in 1 month, will be an even lower set of prices.

Tangent – I still remember the joy of being a kid and unwrapping a game for my birthday or Christmas. I will forever remember unwrapping Hero’s Quest (Quest for Glory 1) at my grandparents. Today, I can still by a virtual game as a gift and delay delivery… well on some platforms at least.

The slight exception to all this is the Nintendo e-shop. There are very rarely any 1st party sales… in fact most games are still selling for brand new prices. Breath of the Wild launched in March 2017 and still sells for full price. It doesn’t help that the e-shop itself was designed by drunk monkeys in 2011, and has the least useful interface since AOL. You still can’t buy a gift for anyone on the store. In a fun time travelling twist, your best bet for a Switch game is to rummage through a sales bin, or a used games rack. If you want to buy for yourself, there are “sales” in the concept that BotW is on sale for more than the base price of Cyberpunk2077.

If you’re looking to get a bunch of stuff in a short time window, Black Friday/Cyber Monday may scratch that itch. If you’re not bound by time, you’re better off just creating a watchlist and checking other sales. And obviously, if you don’t need it, the best sales price is when you don’t actually buy it.

We’re 2 weeks or so from Endwalker releasing, and with any new release to an existing game, there are bits that are made redundant from that launch. In really great expansions, there’s a build on the prior material so that it remains relevant – in particular with single player games. XCOM 2, Witcher 3 and similar games are super examples of this model.

MMOs can be a bit different, especially those that focus on the destination rather than the journey. Themepark MMOs often suffer from this, where the content itself is only relevant for a window of time, primarily due to the power scale problem (the carrot is bigger numbers). When the content is predicated on start and end state (e.g. you have to be between this level and this level), then there comes a point where you either make it irrelevant OR you find a way to ‘hobble’ the player to keep it relevant.

There’s the approach of ‘mandatory’ content in order to access the new stuff. Maybe you need to complete a specific quest chain or achievement. Or maybe as a crafter you need to make the stuff from content A in order to be good enough for content B. There’s a legacy cost when something like that is implemented, where you have gates that extend the experience before the larger player mass. FF14 has like 200 hours of MSQ before you get to the ‘end game’ (which is somewhat of a misnomer). WoW used to force you to go through older content simply to have your levels increase. You hit a number and then left that area. WoW’s current leveling experience is irrelevant now. You can level anywhere, and the sole goal is to hit a magic level – so people all follow the most efficient route (WoD).

Today, if you had skipped the last 3 expansions in WoW, it wouldn’t matter. Heck, it wouldn’t matter if you never played at all, your experience would be near the same as an existing player re-rolling. It’s like 2 days of playing to get to max level, which negates 8 of 9 pieces of content (Vanilla to BfA). When’s the last time someone did Wailing Caverns? The flipside to this is that content becomes irrelevant means that it’s quite hard to actually complete it. If you wanted to see any raid in BfA, good luck getting a team organized for it. When the next expansion comes out, who in their right mind is going to even set foot in Torghast as group?

FF14 is different, in that the wide majority of content is mandatory. You are going to step foot in 80% of dungeons for sure, a few raids, a bunch of trials, and every zone. Whether you do dungeon A today or wait 6 months, you will still need to do it. It’s practically impossible to miss out on something. Now, there are exceptions. Things like Eureka are not relevant at max level, and Bozja will soon follow. Crafting and gathering is still relevant, all the way through. And even once you reach max level, all the group content forces scaling on the player to keep it relevant. I still run Satasha, the first dungeon from 8 years ago.

There are other MMOs that find a middle ground. You need to go through the dance in LoTR and SWTOR of main quests, but you never really need to do group content to progress… and it doesn’t scale at the end. I really enjoyed the flashpoints at the start of SWTOR, and outgrowing them felt less fun.

I get the idea of FOMO when something new is coming, because we’ve often been trained that the stuff we are doing now won’t be relevant later. Maybe there’s a mount or some cool looking gear to pick up that just won’t be there. I guess the question then comes, “does it really matter?”, and then you kind of realize it doesn’t. So for those playing FF14, there really isn’t much FOMO to be hard. Even if you don’t complete the MSQ to 5.5 prior to launch, it doesn’t matter because all the content will still be there, still accessible to everyone. That’s a super refreshing thought.

Quarterly results came out for ABK yesterday. No big surprises. Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 are delayed further (their leadership all left / was fired). Income is not pipeline based but MTX instead. Diablo 2 remake made some bits of money. Stocks are down ~15%. Fine enough, they are getting hit in the bottom line. Maybe something useful will come from it?

Or maybe they will get rid of their BIPOC Blizzard leader instead? Jen Oneal leaves Blizzard, and Mike Ybarra takes over leadership.

Hot take time! (brought to you through knee jerk armchair reactions!)

J Allen Brack left ~90 days ago, replaced in all but title by 2 people, which was really weird at the time. Felt more like grasping at straws with no succession plan in place prior. It was obvious something was going to shake out.

Jen Oneal ran a successful company. Vicarious Visions delivered quite a bit over the years and was good enough at their job that they were bought out by ABK. While there was hope they could stay a studio under the umbrella, the company was fully merged a few days ago. When that happened, it was pretty clear that other changes were coming.

When you’re actively being sued for discriminatory practices, by multiple fronts, perhaps it’s not good optics to lose your BIPOC leadership and go deep with the white male demographic. This isn’t to say Mike Ybarra is a poor leader, at all. But to somehow find a way to lose your first and only Blizzard female leader in 20 years gives a crazy message to the public. What kind of clown show exists where you can’t find a way to make this work? How bad of a work space is it, that you can’t keep an executive on staff?

Again, it was always clear that either Jen or Mike had to move aside to support a restructure. That the concept of a Blizzard President was all but dead, it was too corrupt and incompetent to survive under the Activision “shareholders first” approach. It’s that in all of this mess, where there’s a clear opportunity to implement a more diverse leadership structure Bobby said so: We will increase the percentage of women and non-binary people in our workforce by 50% and will invest $250 million to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent 

There’s enough piling on Blizzard’s missteps these past few weeks. It would be great if they could actually walk the talk for just a little bit. And that’s only the stuff the public gets to see, which is just the tip of the iceberg! It’s a car wreck that just won’t end, and the rubber necking will continue.

Am I ever late to the game!

Want a rogue-like dungeon crawler, that has increasing difficulty, some randomization, character growth, AND rewards for participation? Holy cow, coming here AFTER having experienced Torghast is an eye opener.

Palace of the Dead is 5 years old. That’s just before patch 7.1 in WoW-Legion. It’s a standalone dungeon crawler that exists outside of the rest of the game. Your level, gear, skills, consumables, and pretty much everything else doesn’t matter here. It’s 200 levels deep, with bosses and exits every 10 floors. You start floor 1 at level 1, and gain experience up to 60 (usually before floor 50). If you are level 13 outside the dungeon, you can still unlock level 60 skills inside the dungeon.

Why run it?

• You get experience, gil, and tomes from completing floors. It’s one of the most efficient leveling methods from 1-50.
• You can get cosmetic weapon skins
• There are random cosmetic drops within (accursed hoards)
• It’s a challenge!

What is it?

• 200 floors of death
• Around 10 enemy types per 10 floors
• One boss per 10 floors
• Ability to save progress every 10 floors
• Ability to have “permanent” damage/armor increases for future runs
• Support for solo, fixed or matchmade parties
• Can mostly do without a healer or a tank
• Hidden traps
• Chests with temporary or permanent buffs
• Mimics!
• Heaven on High is PotD part 2, relevant from 50-60.

Lessons Learned

• The permanent buffs (aetherpool gear) are the source of offense and defence power increments
• The permanent buffs have a cap per floor, so even if you had +50 if you restart at floor 1, the value is closer to +15
• All temporary items (pomanders) are removed after killing a boss. Use them.
• Once you complete level 50, you can restart at floor 50. This should be the first goal.
• Defence is more important than offence. Bosses in particular hit like trucks.
• There’s no durability or gil costs
• You cannot exceed floor 100 if you have even a single death
• Floors 100+ require a fixed party (or solo)
• Solo runs are quite hard, and very dependent on RNG. Red Mages have the best toolkits, followed by tanks.
• Mimics will end your run.
• Most group runs take 15 minutes to clear 10 floors.

Torghast Deltas

PotD is a mix of the rewards from Mage Tower and the structure of Torghast. When PotD was new, you could swap your progress for some decent gear increments – that’s not relevant today. The rest of the differences:

• You can save every 10 levels. You don’t spend an hour+ and lose all progress.
• All starting and progress is specific to PotD. Your ilvl before entering, or character level, have zero impact. You can’t brute force it.
• PotD is still relevant after 5 years. Torghast stopped being relevant a long time ago.
• The RNG for player power is capped at 30% offense, 40% defence. Torghast had simply broken RNG where you either turned into a walking god or reset a run.