Update(s)

Super busy the past couple weeks during the day, so haven't had much time to really sit down and put too many of my thoughts out here on the web. Now that I have a little time, here's several updates on...erm...updates.

FFXI Version Update

A couple Mondays ago, the March update finally happened. Included in this that's really noteworthy are:

Trial of the Magians

This was probably one of the bigger pieces of news that came out of Vanafest 2010. A way to upgrade your existing gear. While I tend to think of this as a way for SE to avoid having to implement more gear for levels 76+, it's also a way for people to extend the life of gear they fear will become completely obsolete if/when SE does decide to release gear that's 76+.

While I'm of the mindset that all gear is made to become obsolete, there are two particular sets of gear that you just don't make obsolete. Relic and Mythic weapons (some would argue Salvage bodies). SE seems to have realized this fact and included them in the ability to "upgrade" through Trial of the Magians.

They announced this facet of it at Vanafest, so this was something I eagerly waited for with a large degree of trepidation. Turns out, my initial fears were correct.

I had a feeling they were going to make the upgrades significant enough to where you didn't want to pass them up, but in order to obtain them, you were going to have to do something insanely long and arduous. This is SE after all. Repeating the same task for years on end is a fundamental question that's asked when designing new content.

"How many years do we want this to take?"

And yes, I get it's a business and you don't keep accounts active if they don't have some long term goal to work for.

I haven't looked that far into the other normal weapon paths, but when I see:

Trial 1039: Use Geirskogul 1500 times on Amorphs.

I groan a bit, but just get to work. It's not that much worse than spamming skill chains for new weapon skills.

However, when I see:

Trial 1040: Use Geirskogul to land the kill shot 1500 times on Lizards.

That's just about where I draw the line.

Are you fucking kidding me? Not only do you have to do that on monsters that give xp, but you're likely fighting things that will end up being able to kill you.

And this is just the first 2 stages in the Gungnir path. What's next?

Trial 1041: Use Geirskogul to land the kill shot 1500 times on the Dynamis Lord on Lightsday while entering the zone during double ice weather?

Sick and sadistic SE. Relic and Mythic owners have already literally busted their asses for at least a year trying to complete the quest to even obtain a relic and now the weapons aren't even a finished product when you obtain them. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea behind the Magian trials, I just don't think relic/mythics should have the asinine quests that they do when it's possible that a normal magian weapon (which often times rivals a relic in terms of stats) can be done in a fraction of the time.

Adding to this frustration is a little feature SE finally decided to implement where your progress is announced via /echo. I'm glad it's there in a way so I'm not having to constantly check to see if an elemental resistance has worn off, but at the same time...

...it's like counting the mile markers down on a cross-country trip...

VNMs

This looks like it's a lot of fun and easy to set up and organize. So much so, that I've added it to the list of events Obsidian will start doing. It seems to be a very well thought out series of events that don't actually eat up tons of time unless you want to spam the piss out of them.

What I learned pretty quickly is that in a large group, this can turn into a clusterfuck really quick if everyone's running around /healing to track down the critter their crystal is currently tiered with. Also learned pretty quick that Krabkatoa is sirius biznez.

We had our first official run with them last Saturday in Obsidian, which brings me to...

Obsidian Expansion

I've discussed this for a while and tried to beat info out of people as to how we want to do this. While we've pretty much got the logical structure down and sky runs have already started, the website (which is the focal point of all our organization abilities and whatnot) is what's going to take the most work. This is also hindered by the fact that Gawayne has a real life complete with career and girlfriend.

So I've been doing what I can to take some of the workload off of him. Since this job of mine requires that I learn about database programming, Gawayne was nice enough to give me access to the back end of the Obsidian databases and allow me to piddle around setting up the table structures and whatnot. It's relatively mundane work, but I'm learning pretty quickly where a lot of the pitfalls with database programming are.

The main idea around the overhaul of the website is to make it a lot more flexible. When Gawayne originally set it up, it had one purpose and no one had any intentions of expanding it beyond that purpose. When Einherjar came along, a lot of the code that was used for Dynamis could be re-used for Einherjar, but that required him to create an entirely new set of tables. So right now, the back end of the website is essentially two sets of the same tables. If we wanted to add events, that means we end up having to create that whole new table set, etc etc.

So we wanted to build the new site in a manner that allows us to make a few simple changes to some tables when new events come along. We also wanted to allow for FFXIV things. As of this post, a lot of the tables are done. I wouldn't venture to guess what percentage are done since it's become rather apparent to me that there's always something you think of when you're working on something else, but I'd be willing to say a lot of the main tables are finished just waiting on Gawayne to tie it all together with code.

As far as the "new" events with Obsidian are concerned, we've had decent turnout for all of them. While some haven't had as many as I originally hoped and others have had more than I expected, it's at least become very clear to me there's a demand for it still and if we do it right, we should be good for a while. :)